It’s time for the seasonal OP/ED roundup! I want to hear about your favorite OPs and EDs for the season (alternatively, your least favorites!). If you are looking for a collection of them all for this season, you can find almost all of them at the link below:
Just a note that you can absolutely use this thread like you would any other general discussion thread. So, feel free to post questions/comments/recommendations like any other week.
As always, remember to be mindful of spoilers. If you want to know more about how to handle spoilers in this community, check the guide here (also linked in the sidebar).
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Well, first then, of the ones that I’m watching, the only ones that really stand out to me are the OP and ED for Guild Receptionist (which switched places two episodes back). The current OP is gorgeous and the ED is adorable. Of the ones I browsed for the thread, the only ones that really stood out to me were the Apothecary Diaries OP, which is excellent, and the Aquarion: Myth of Emotions ED, which is awful.
So I started off the past week with the rest of An Explosion on This Wonderful World - Megumin’s KonoSuba spin-off - and loved everything about it. It’s just solid - good animation, voice acting and music, engaging characters, interesting stories, and laugh-out-loud funny.
Megumin, or more precisely her hat, regularly reminds me of an obscure one that’s been on my TBW list for years – Majimoji Rurumo, so I finally sat down to watch it, and it was mostly disappointing. Rurumo herself is a decent character, and the tropish Disciplinary Committee chief/tsundere childhood friend is at least better than might be expected, and… that’s about it. Most notably, the MMC is not only one of those intensely annoying harem protagonists who’s mostly in perpetual cringey horndog overdrive except when the plot demands that he set it aside entirely and become preternaturally noble, generous and wise for exactly as long as it takes to settle the current crisis, but is easily the worst version of that I’ve ever seen.
Then I knocked around for a bit, catching up with the current season series I was watching and adding another one, and bouncing off of a few things.
Honey Lemon Soda is still unremarkable but satisfying, and that’s fine. It doesn’t really need to be more than that. And Guild Receptionist is still on track to be awesome. And I caught up with Zenshu, which is… I don’t know. It started off great - the genre mix of an isekai animator with a mahou shoujo transformation scene was brilliant and the animation in particular has been stellar. But then the story did an abrupt faceplant in the last episode and didn’t really recover much in the most recent one. It’s possible that it’s just in a bit of a slog as it sets up drama to come, but it’s also possible that it just went sideways and isn’t going to recover. We’ll see…
Then, in what I thought was a stroke of brilliance, I remembered a series that’s been on my TBW for over a decade, and is generally considered something of a cult classic - Arakawa Under the Bridge But here I am, two days later and seven episodes in, and I’m pretty sure I’ve dropped it. I just have no interest in watching it any more.
The basic concept is great and the cast is great, with one glaring exception - Rec/Kou is just as much of an insufferable and stupidly pig-headed jackass as he was the first moment he appeared. Even after all the time he’s spent on the riverbank and all the experiences he’s had, his character growth remains at zero. And I just can’t tolerate him any longer.
Not sure what’s next…
Some thoughts about some of the OPs and EDs of the anime I’m watching.
- Apothecary Diaries OP has a banger song with cool visuals. Seemingly full of clues/hints too.
- Ameku MD’s OP doesn’t really fit imo. Maybe it’s because when I think of Aimer, I think of Fate.
- Bureaucrat Villainess’ OP and ED are both really fun, particularly the ED.
- Guild Receptionist’s OP is visually gorgeous, but musically it’s nothing special.
Also, the Attack On Titan Final Chapters is actually going to be in my local cinema. Very happy about that. Was think that it was about time for a rewatch anyway
I watched a small handful; here are my favorites, in no particular order:
- Bureaucrat to Villainess OP - The ED is nice too (I love the bit at the end with his family), but to me the OP is just full of charm.
- Hundred Girlfriends ED - That was just incredibly cute.
- Apothecary Diaries OP - I assume that much as the previous OP, this’ll hold a lot more significance once I’ve seen more than one episode of the season. In the meantime it’s a pleasant song with pleasant visuals.
- Apothecary Diaries ED - This one mostly stuck out because it’s so different from what I feel we usually get. I don’t even like it more than average, but I really appreciate it when they try something unusual. I feel like this happens a lot more with EDs than OPs.
- Medalist ED - It’s really cute, but not as cute as the Hundred Girlfriends ED if I’m being honest.
I picked out a handful of my favorite OPs and EDs and grouped them by shows that I am watching vs. shows that I am not watching. I also threw in a couple random mentions at the end for fun. These are in no particular order.
From shows I am watching
- Bureaucrat to Villainess ED - Matsuken Samba II - A cover of a pretty well-known song in Japan that is just a whole bunch of fun.
- Ameku M.D. ED - will be fine - A really well-sung duet that gets stuck in my head super easily.
- Guild Receptionist OP - Perfect Day - Cloverworks delivered some gorgeous visuals in this OP. They even made it a cinematic aspect ratio to accompany their cinematic visuals. Absolutely worth a watch. The song isn’t bad either, but that’s not why it made this list for me.
- Apothecary Diaries OP - Hyakka Ryouran - A great song and even more beautiful visuals. Now that we are a couple episodes into this season, the number of clues that are hidden in this OP upon rewatching it is really impressive.
From shows I am not watching
- Honey Lemon Soda ED - Wonderful World - A lot of fun. An upbeat song to match its silly visuals.
- Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun - These lists I do each season seem to always have at least one song from Masayoshi Ooishi. The other song he did this season is pretty good, and he has a song from last season that has carried through to this season as well.
- Solo Leveling OP - ReawakeR - Inject Felix straight into my veins. Stray Kids have become the go-to manhwa action adaptation music artist between their work on Tower of God and now Solo Leveling.
- Shangri-La Frontier OP2 - Frontiers - I really enjoyed this one. A good mix of hip hop and some choral backing.
Honorable Mentions
- Moe as Heck - Guild Receptionist ED - Ashita no Watashi ni Sachi Are - Just crank the chibi and moe to the max and this is what you get.
- Most Stacked VA List - Precure Mirai Days ED - Kisekira Link - Rie Takahashi, Saori Hayami, and Yui Horie play the three leads and sing the ED. The Precure series makes serious bank in Japan and they decided to use some of that for their VA budget.
- I Like Animation…But Not Like That… - Momentary Lily OP - Oishii Survivor - We get it GoHands, you animate. Now, can you tone it down just a bit? I feel like that hair is coming out of the screen to strangle me.
- Horniest Powerpoint - Aquarion: Myth of Emotions ED - Kokuhaku - This ED feels like you are browsing an artist’s past commissions rather than an animated ED.
This ED feels like you are browsing an artist’s past commissions rather than an animated ED.
I had to know what you meant by that and wow. As promised. Do the characters actually walk around like that in the show?
No, and it doesn’t even resemble the character designs used in the show proper—which is kind of a shame, because the artwork in the show proper is seriously ugly. (The ED visuals seem to be harking back to some flashback material from the earlier Aquarion franchise shows, but those showed the characters fully dressed, for Graeco-Roman-ish values of “fully dressed”, if I recall correctly. And not quite in that style.)
Weekly ranking roundup:
- Anime Corner - Full Results - Weekly Winner: I Have a Crush at Work
- Reddit Karma - Weekly Winner: Solo Leveling
Credit to /u/Abysswatcherbel for making the chart for reddit karma.
The AC chart this week is kind of wild. Chock full of romcoms with I Have a Crush at Work topping the list? What’s in the water over there at AC? Meanwhile, this week saw Solo Leveling pass Apothecary Diaries in karma to take the win. They better up their game for next week though since Re:Zero is coming back.
