Thanks, as always, for the mention and invitation, Shizuna. It's a pleasant diversion to be called back to evaluation of the springtime since we're now almost a month or the first third through the summer season. It's funny that you say that going based off of last season's offerings that we may not get anywhere close to filling the slots and that you dropped every series you started. A lot of people complained about the selection of series last season, but I was actually quite excited for it and only majorly disappointed in a few cases. In terms of variety I found it better than the prior three seasons (winter of 2025, autumn of 2024, and summer of 2024) even if I liked some individual series from those seasons better than anything from this spring.
The thing that struck me about spring is that it had a sizable number of series I was very enticed by the premise and/or setting of which in a few cases were very disappointing comparatively to expectations, but in most cases were still good/good enough but just serviceable and within the realm of expectations but not excelling and really distinguishing themselves. In the case of some series the writing may have been lackluster and would have been no matter how much time they were given, but in the case of others, like Kowloon Generic Romance, one of the ones I most anticipated and my favorite series of the season but a hugely-flawed-in-execution one, I ended up rating it a 7/10 but wish and felt that it easily could have been an 8 or 9-tier series if it had like double the episode count and runtime. Some series continue to suffer from the one cour format and time constraints.
But even in these series which didn't reach their full potential from what it seemed like, there were still numerous instances of the characters shining.
So on to the tournament nomination stage, it looks like a number of those I may have chosen were already gobbled up (didn't get on the computer and see the relevant notification alerting me until five hours after the fact, after all), but that being the case and since I had throughout the season and my watch of the series a thorough enjoyment of the mindset, personality, and antics of this character (and cute as a bonus) who I didn't hear mentioned at the time much even among the series' smaller pool of viewers, I'll nominate Atsuko Chuuzenji, from The Mononoke Lecture Logs of Chuzenji-sensei: He Just Solves All the Mysteries.
https://xss.now.cc/character/28380/Atsuko_Chuuzenji
I noticed a while ago that even the picture on MAL used for her though is the older picture of the original iteration of her character from the earlier more known/established and popular related series she was in from 2008.
But from my understanding of the rules, it should still count, no? It's not a continuation of a continuously running series of course because the other series was 17 years ago with a short run. It's a fully separate series. It might be considered a prequel or spinoff or both.
Obviously I don't expect her to win or even necessarily get very far/anywhere since the series was quite under-watched, but that's my nominee for now unless there is an issue. |