Reaching my anime rankings is a high standard, it means everyone in the world should watch this anime sometime before they die. You can't make that standard just by being watchable. You certainly can't make that standard when you aren't even watchable. Daitoshokan falls into that first category, whereas Shigatsu falls into the second.
Daitoshokan has had five episodes to establish itself as a serious story with interesting characters worth knowing about, but it hasn't done much of anything with this time. The girls have been cute, there have been some good gags, and the protagonist has been entirely underwhelming. The whole mystery surrounding the shepherd seems boring and tacked on with no real connection to the rest of the cast. The show isn't offensive, and the romantic interactions are titillating, so I intend to keep on watching this show to the end, but I just don't see the need for anyone else to watch it, as there's nothing uniquely good about it that stands out and is worth mention.
Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso has another level of problems entirely. This guy is the most wishy-washy loser in history, a reluctant hero who never stands up for himself or what he wants. He just gets bullied into everything he does in his life and manipulated by others into following their will. A girl using false tears to extract a promise for him to do 'anything' for her to make up for his alleged wrongdoing which he didn't actually do, and then springing on him that he must participate in a piano recital, the one thing he most doesn't want to do, is just beyond the pale. In addition, him being bodyslammed against his will into a shallow, rocky river head first off a bridge when he was a kid is absolutely unforgivable. Then the nonsense of him jumping into a river and destroying an expensive pair of glasses for absolutely no reason is likewise unforgivable. All he had to do was take the glasses off first before he engaged in this reckless activity, but nope, this is a person who's health and property are both equally not treasured in the least. Talk about a loser. Nothing about him is off limits, you can just do whatever you want to this guy, and neither he nor anyone else cares.
It doesn't matter if it's for the guy's own benefit that he take up piano again. The way they go about forcing him back into playing piano is despicable. 80% physical abuse and 20% emotional manipulation just doesn't cut it. Far from the cheerful results the story will show of him getting back into music again and living happily after, in the real world this type of bullying would just result in the guy being a shattered emotional husk or committing suicide. If he wants to play piano again, he should seek professional psychiatric help because his issues are to such a point that they're physically affecting his body. That's how Goro Shigeno got over his yips and fear of pitching poorly in the Major league. You can't just will your way through serious mental problems. That takes mental illness way too lightly and is going back to the old dark ages where we thought any mentally ill person was an evildoer possessed by a demon. Believe me, if mentally ill people could just choose to be healthy again, they would have done so long ago. Pushing them to 'just get over it' with a few kicks or punches isn't going to help any, it's only going to make things worse. The message this show is sending is terribly ignorant and insulting to the entire mentally ill community.
This whole story has been one long road of force and fraud done to the same guy over and over again apparently over the course of his entire 14 year old life. He must be the most bullied person on Earth. No wonder his self esteem is shattered. I don't like watching a guy getting bullied. More importantly, I'm disgusted by people who allow themselves to get bullied by not fighting back. Losers like that should never be the protagonists of a story. Losers and scum are not the reason we approach stories. We approach stories in the hopes of finding heroes and ideals that are stronger and better than the real world. We are striving for perfection here, not a how to guide on loserdom. Not a way to be worse than reality already is. If we wanted that, we could just live in reality to begin with.
I thought, after the second episode, this show was going to be about maverick music styles and I would get to listen to a bunch of cool classical tunes. That just isn't happening. Instead it's just a long line of bullying and abuse with no music to speak of. This show was a fraudulent bait and switch. I have no reason to put up with it any longer.
Meanwhile, Grisaia no Kajitsu virtually skipped over Michiru's entire story in fast forward mode. You barely understand what's going on from the beginning of the ep to the end, and then suddenly it's all over and we're moving on to some other girl's story. This is apparently how the anime is going to be from here on, with ridiculous pacing and cutting of almost all the source material. It reminds me of Little Busters, but even worse. Grisaia is still a good story, but when you only get to see maybe 1/5 of what you were supposed to see to make sense of the show, it's not going to end up being as good as it could have been. In the end the only way to appropriately enjoy Grisaia is the visual novel itself. Many other visual novels have been transitioned well with no seeming problems with pacing, like Akane-iro or Steins;Gate, so I don't know why Grisaia is so particularly bad on this front. They should have made this anime 2 cour at the very least. Oh well, just one more disappointment to pile on top of all the rest.
Twintail, Yuuki Yuuna, Amagi Brilliant Park, and Shirobako are doing just fine and might even be getting better from one episode to the next. Not everything is in a tailspin. Akatsuki no Yona and Akame ga Kill are absolutely fantastic. The fall season is still going strong, but now we're only one show better off than we were in the summer. So it goes.
With that, my new fall season watching priorities look like this:
1. Sword Art Online II
2. Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works
3. Akatsuki no Yona
4. Naruto
5. Akame ga Kill
6. Shirobako
7. Amagi Brilliant Park
8. Ore, Twintail ni Narimasu
9. Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru
10. Grisaia no Kajitsu
11. Dragon Ball Kai Buu
12. One Piece
13. Sailor Moon Crystal
14. Ushinawareta Mirai wo Motomete
15. Yama no Susume Second Season
16. Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai
17. Happiness Charge Pretty Cure
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