Fall 2023 Preview: Blue Skies, Fast Cars and the Greatest Robot on Earth

Welcome to ANIWIRE! This week we’re talking about the upcoming Fall anime season, and what’s worth checking out in the midst of a tidal wave of sequels. Before that, though, here’s the news from the past week.

News

• The new Invoice System for Japanese Consumption Tax came into effect on October 1st. I recommend reading this thread by the anime news website Full Frontal, which discusses how this tax could be an existential threat not just to the anime industry but to all of Japan’s freelance workers.
• MAPPA, the studio behind popular anime like Chainsaw Man and Jujutsu Kaisen, is in hot water for asking its freelance animators to sign NDAs preventing them from publicly discussing the studio’s bad management practices.
• The Short Box Comics Fair opened for business on October 1st, and will run through the month. 100 original short comics by many talented artists!
• The first ten volumes of Hajime no Ippo: Fighting Spirit!, the beloved and long-running boxing manga, have finally been made available in English via Kodansha’s K-MANGA app. Talk about a blast from the past! (A friend of mine worked on the lettering, too.)
• Manga publisher Denpa, LLC. is releasing a limited edition of March Comes in Like a Lion’s second volume, featuring a cover by dearly missed artist Kentaro Miura (Berserk). More details to come at a later date.
• Pokémon wrapped up its September collaboration with vocaloid Hatsune Miku. We now have 18 different redesigns of the character by 6 artists, one for each type. Which is your favorite?
• Yoshitaka Tamaki, an artist that worked on classic video games like Shining Force and Landstalker, sadly passed away in July. I recommend checking out gosokkyu’s post on Cohost, which includes links to his past works.

Bookmarks

• A blockbuster piece from Kevin Cirugeda this week, about how new technologies developed to make animation easier are already destroying its future.
• For Anime Feminist, Cy Cantwell reviewed the premiere of Frieren: At Journey’s End.
• Renata Price, ex-Waypoint and Remap Radio host, released her first video essay about mapping the huge fantasy RPG Elden Ring.
• ThorHighHeels released a new video about Pokemon Colosseum, “the edgy one.” I thought this was the coolest thing in the world when I was 11, but then I didn’t have a GameCube to play it, you know?
• Another review of Hayao Miyazaki’s slippery new film The Boy and the Heron, by Cole Kronman.
• Kim Morrisey wrote about how the trashy but readable light novel series Liar, Liar was made worse by its anime adaptation.

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Here’s “C O N T R O L” by edeets.

This fall is absolutely bonkers for blockbuster anime sequels. There’s a new season of Spy x Family, one of last year’s most popular series. Attack on Titan is finally concluding in November. The Rising of Shield Hero, Goblin Slayer and The Faraway Paladin are all coming back if you’re into that kind of thing. Plus, Jujutsu Kaisen is now in the midst of adapting the fan-favorite Shibuya Incident arc.

I’ll be honest, though, and say that none of the aforementioned shows really interest me. Every season I keep an eye out for surprises: an original story, an unexpected choice, even just a cool credits sequence. The fall anime season has been dry in this respect, despite its banquet of riches. Just about everything I’ve seen so far is about as good or bad as you’d expect. It’s enough to make you swear off currently airing anime entirely and watch Gunbuster on Crunchyroll instead. Or, if you’re a cool trendy person, to marathon the 2023 cult classic BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!!

That said, the sheer number of shows airing right now ensures that a reasonable number are quite good. A handful are very good indeed, perhaps the best of the year. Here are my recommendations if you just aren’t in the mood for BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!!

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End adapts a popular and award-winning fantasy series about a sad elf girl. It is the newest project by director Keiichiro Saito, whose adaptation of Bocchi the Rock! beat out the likes of Chainsaw Man and Mob Psycho III last fall to become my favorite show of the year. Frieren may not have the name recognition of Spy x Family or Attack on Titan, but it is in all other respects the most ambitious anime adaptation to air this fall.

It’s very good! I reviewed the first four episodes for Comics Beat. It will be very interesting to see Frieren’s second season airing at the same time as the upcoming adaptation of Delicious in Dungeon next winter.

The Apothecary Diaries

Many of the stories published on Shotesuka ni Naro (“Let’s Become a Novelist”) are power fantasies for teenage boys. But there have always been exceptions. My Happy Marriage, as we discussed previously on ANIWIRE, is a very traditional romance despite its Narou origins. Then you have The Apothecary Diaries, a Chinese-style court drama mystery series. These kinds of stories are known for exquisite costuming, behind-the-scenes politicking and complex relationships between women. The Apothecary Diaries has those things, but it also has Maomao, a heroine with a taste for poisons who keeps being drawn into affairs of state despite her best efforts.

I’m tempted to say that while Frieren is the obvious slam dunk of the Fall season, The Apothecary Diaries has even better source material. Not every Narou web novel makes the transition to an award-winning manga. The only reason why I hesitate is that the anime’s director, Norihiro Naganuma, totally dropped the ball on adapting The Ancient Magus Bride back in 2017. Not to mention that one of the production’s two studios, OLM, was skewered just last season by Zom 100 of the Dead for its poor management. Thankfully, fumbling a hero as likable as Maomao should be impossible…right?

Overtake!

The anime studio Troyca was co-founded by producer Toshiyuki Nagano, photography director Tomonori Katou, and former ufotable director Ei Aoki in 2013. Since then the studio has produced a very good (if incomplete) adaptation of fan-favorite comic Bloom into You and three seasons of the male idol drama idolish7. Its original productions, though, are much more haphazard: Re:Creators is fun but messy, Aldnoah Zero bombed in its second season, and Shinobi no Ittoki may as well not exist. Ei Aoki himself is a long way from Fate/Zero, which defined ufotable’s modern identity back in 2011.

Overtake! brings back the other Ei Aoki, who adapted Takako Shimura’s manga Wandering Son that same year. It’s a sports series about F4 racing, a journalist struggling with PTSD and a broke independent racer desperate for a win. Shimura returns to provide the character designs, which are handled with flair in the first episode. Fans of F4 (or F1?) racing will appreciate how thoroughly the characters break down the sport for new viewers.

Personally, though, I was most struck by the small details: the journalist’s fear of capturing people on camera, the relationship he shares with his cantankerous boss, and even a racing assistant’s love of The Godfather theme. Not to mention the extensive 2D character animation, which makes up for the distracting CG cars. Wherever the series might go from here, the first episode is an enjoyable short film that’s essential viewing for gearheads.

PLUTO

In 1964, Osamu Tezuka ran a storyline called “The Greatest Robot on Earth” in his popular comic Astro Boy. It told the story of Pluto, a machine that challenges the seven most powerful robots on the planet in order to prove that he is the strongest. Atom and Pluto come to blows, and while Pluto is revealed to have a conscience he is ultimately destroyed. This tale would be adapted by the 1963, 1980 and 2003 animated seasons of Astro Boy. But its most famous iteration today is PLUTO, a contemporary retelling by artist Naoki Urasawa set in the midst of the War on Terror. An anime adaptation headed by ex-Madhouse producer Masao Maruyama has been teased since at least 2017. Now it is scheduled to air on Netflix as an eight-hour animated miniseries.

It’s tough to know what to make of this one. Maruyama’s fingerprints can be seen on many of the best anime films and series of the 1990s and early 2000s. PLUTO may be the last big project of his momentous career, and deserves consideration for that alone. Still, the art direction and digital effects featured in the trailer aren’t exactly what I had in mind from the comic. The wildcard is Urasawa himself, who has insisted in the past that adaptations of his work are at all costs faithful to his source material. My hope is that PLUTO is distinct enough from the comic that it succeeds on its own terms as a television series. That said, I’m sure Urasawa will do everything in his power to keep that from happening!

Kibou no Chikara: Otona Precure ‘23

While Sailor Moon shaped the sensibilities of an entire generation in the United States, Japan has long been ruled by the Pretty Cure (or Precure) franchise. The series has been running since 2004 and has featured everything from mermaid Precures to princess Precures to Precures with jobs. So far, though, there has never been a series specifically about adult Precures until Kibou no Chikara: Otona Precure ‘23. What’s even more unusual is that this new series is a direct sequel to 2007’s Yes! Precure 5 and 2008’s Yes! Precure 5 GoGo!, featuring an aged-up original cast.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Precure’s audience includes not just young girls and boys, but adults who grew up watching earlier entries. Otona Precure ‘23 looks to be a pitch down the middle, aimed to tease children with a fantasy of adult life while keeping the story appropriate for all ages. I don’t know if this new series will be as successful as Toei’s film Looking for Magical Doremi, the previous high-water mark for magical girl films grappling with fan nostalgia. If it works, though, we could see other series or films in this vein. Whether Toei has the bandwidth to produce these works is another question. (Otona Precure ‘23 is a co-production with Studio DEEN.)

By the way, here’s a fun fact for you: Go! Princess Precure directly inspired Clark Kent’s transformation sequence in the recent My Adventures With Superman. Never underestimate Precure.

Pokemon Concierge

Pokémon’s animated shorts have quietly been the most successful branch of the company for the past few years. Fans may have been divided on Scarlet and Violet, but they loved Gotcha!, Pokétoon and Twilight Wings. The new Paldean Winds should be just as good. Personally, though, I’m casting my lot with Netflix’s upcoming Pokémon Concierge. First because the idea of a hotel for Pokémon is just inherently charming. But also because the series is made by dwarf studios, a team of stop motion specialists whose back catalog includes the adorable and melancholy Rilakkuma and Kaoru as well as co-creating the excellent opening credits for Beastars with CYCLONE GRAPHICS.

You know what’s even better than beautifully animated 2D Pokémon? Soft, cuddly stop motion puppet Pokémon. While I don’t know if the series will add up to anything more than “puppet Pokémon cute,” but maybe that’s enough. Either way, it should be a fun opportunity to explore the world of the games, and hopefully answer questions like “do humans also receive free healthcare in the Pokémon world? How do airplanes and other vehicles coexist alongside Pokémon used for transportation? Can Pokémon consent to be employed in the hospitality industry?”