Winter 2016 Anime Preview:

If the Fairy Tail anime continues along at this pace, it will reach the ending of the Tartaros arc at exactly the ending of the Fall season, which I'm sure is what they're aiming for.

The question, then, is whether or not the Fairy Tail tv series has any intention of continuing beyond this point?  Do they even plan to have a winter season of Fairy Tail in 2016, or does it all end here, this year, around Christmas day?

There hasn't been any mention of the show stopping, but neither has there been any mention of the show continuing.  The Tartaros arc was announced and advertised ahead of time as 'green-lit,' so it's weird that there's complete radio silence this time around.

The Tartaros Arc of the anime was announced as green lit in January 10, 2015.  It began actually airing April 4, 2015.  So we had three months of advance warning.  There's two months of the fall season left, but no advance warning has been given that any new Fairy Tail anime is planned.  Isn't this odd?  What are they planning over there?  Who knows.  We're always kept in the dark, no matter what anime it is, the studios never explain why they do anything.

If the Fairy Tail anime does indeed end here, there's no way it can keep its place at #1.  That's reliant on the series properly going until its ending like one would expect.  If it ends with Tartaros, it would probably drop back down to 5th place.  Still very impressive, but a huge shame of a lost opportunity, just like Bleach and Negima who were shafted before Fairy Tail in similar manner.

For now, we'll leave both Fairy Tail and Naruto off the winter anime list, because there's too many question marks concerning both of them.

In that case, what can we watch this winter?  Series that will be continuing since this fall include:

One Piece, Pretty Cure, Utawarerumono and Heavy Object.

Series returning from this summer include:

Gate and Durarara.

Sequels we know will be good include:

Ansatsu Kyoushitsu 2.

So that's seven shows, if I don't drop Heavy Object during this fall season at least.

Which promising newcomers can we add to this list?

Ao no Kanata no Four Rhythm was awarded the visual novel of the year award, so there's high hopes for this one.

Schwarzesmarken comes from the well-esteemed Muv-Luv franchise.

Kyoto Animation is always promising, and they have a new series called Musaigen no Phantom World.

That gets us up to ten.  As for the rest, I'll at least check the first episodes of these shows:

Active Raid
Boku Dake ga Inai Machi
Dimension W
Divine Gate
Haruchika
Hai to Gensou no Grimgar
Kono Subarashi Sekai ni Shukufuku wo!
Nurse Witch Komugi-chan R
Ooyasan wa Shishunki
Phantasy Star Online 2 the Animation
Shoujo-tachi wa Kouya wo Mezasu

If six of these shows work out, we'll have twice as many airing shows than this fall ended up having.  But without Owarimonogatari, it'll probably end up being worse anyway.  No big series are airing next winter, just a bunch of lightweights, so it looks like 2016 will have a sleepy beginning.