For a full list of all the anime that aired in the Summer 2017 season, look here.
There’s a lot. Most of it was garbage. Although that is a common refrain for basically every anime season. And most media e.g. US Television, blockbuster mvoies, books, comics, videogames.
Anyway:
Centaur no Nayami– cute girls doing cute things, but they’re all various mythical creatures instead of humans. A fairly hamfisted discussion of racism interposed with amusing, generic highschool life plot lines. There is a massive red herring in the first ep where (spoilers) the class teacher is talking about how racism is bad and the class is being supervised by the cops. based on that I was hoping there would be some deeping diving into how fucked the world is that the anime occurs in. Nope. Doesn’t happen. Although there is a really out of place episode towards the end where half the episode deals with the effects of the holocaust and the other half is about amazonian toad people deciding to go to war with the rest fo the planet. Not ever mentioned before this episode, not ever dealt with in the following episode.
6/10. I did finish it (because of that red herring) and the generic/tropey stuff is generic and tropey because it is amusing. But unless you a a fan of the cute girls doing cute things genre, there are better things to watch.
Gamers– I’m a bit mixed on this. My peers loved it but I always wonder if it is because they like the idea of nerdy and weird people attracting the (sexual) attention of the super hot and successful people without any effort. I started the show halfway through the season for some reason and managed to coincidentally marathon the first six episodes which were a bit of a self contained story arc. And I marathoned it because it was awesome, the comedy was great and the characters plus their interaction were really well done. but the second half of the season kind of drifted a bit so I wasn’t as keen. The characters seemed to both develop in a bad way and not develop in a bad way. And the jokes were basiclaly the same jokes as in the first half but not as good. Also so many of the plot points/issues could have been resolved by one person going ‘Hey wait, why are you doing that?’ and thus resolving about a dozen misunderstandings
8/10. Still a pretty good show to be honest
Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni– if you respect anime, games, women or yourself you should not like this. This is an anime about a dude who dies, is sent to a fantasy world and becomes WAY too op for the world so he gathers a harem of very young girls as he goes on crazy adventures saving the kingdom and becoming real friendly with the royal family. It does have a few cool fight scenes and it can be quite entertaining to see an OP person absolutely massacre their opponents. But it is still a pretty terrible show. And I did still watch the whole thing.
5/10. And it ended with a clear second season set up :/
Knight’s and Magic– cool magic fights. Cool robot fights. Jam them together. And then have a series of one dimension characters and plots stringing them together. Great fun show. Also the engineering fights towards the end of the series were hilarious. Yes, engineering fights.
7/10. Not worth a second watch though
Koi to Uso– I’m quite torn on this. A drama/romance with an interesting premise and set up, good characters and great interactions/development. plus a few twists and turns, honest mistakes, reconciliation and high school life. But the ending suffered a lot from being an anime original. Where they didn’t really resolve which character pairing is the one that ultimately happens or any of the main plot/sub-plot questions. But as an overall series it was still very enjoyable.
8/10. Kind of like a more serious version of Nisekoi, with the same harem based issues.
Made in Abyss– a really good adventure series. It was a bit slow but the setting was super interesting, the main characters pretty cool and the surrounding characters were all pretty fascinating. The only thing wrong with it is that the story is clearly nowhere near finished after 13 eps even though it was presented quite densely and fast paced. One could go read the manga or light novel or whatever but who has time for that. In particular the last couple episodes have a real left turn of a story plot. Also the whole series I kept wondering why the people in this world didn’t try and drown the Abyss in ocean water given how fucked the place was and it was literally just a whole surrounded by the ocean. A bit of digging/drilling would solve the problem. Even so, definitely one top 3 series of the season
New Game!!– this show makes me angry. Season one of New Game was ok but unremarkable. I liked the characters and they did ok stuff but nothing interesting happened and there was no real development. It was like Lucky Star but set in a game dev studio. Then this second season rocks up and holy fuck it’s great. Every character goes on a massive character development arc and so much stuff happens and people’s worlds are changed and it’s so good. It’s like Clannad where season 1 was basically an extended intro to make you know and like the characters so season 2 could repeatedly gut punch you with the drama
9/10. Don’t overlook this based on the first season.
Tsurezure Children– this was one of these weird shows which is not a full length episode but is longer than a short. It’s basically a whole heap of sketches about high school kids being in love with each other but misunderstandings getting in the way. A really good portrayal of young love and the uncertainty that people feel with some good comedy mixed in. Towards the end there is even a serious note of a sexual assault and the repercussions that follow that. But yes a really fun show to watch with nice characters and stories.
7/10
Youkoso Jitsuryoku Shijou Shugi no Kyoushitsu e– ironically the last show I watched is my AOTS. Awesome characters, super intriguing premise, mysterious plots, big actions, big twists and surprises, dramatic development of characters. At the beginning it seemed to be a dark twist on the SNAFU formula but then evolved to have a hint of Grisaia mixed in. I was legitimately salty when I realised the last episode was the last episode as there was so much more I wanted to see in the story. In particular I really wanted to know more about the background of all three main characters because shit is clearly fucked for all of them.
9.5/10. Definitely the show to catch up on if you missed it
Honourable Mentions:
Fate Stay Apocrypha– is a two cour series that started this sason and I’m still watching it. It’s fucking great
Boku no Hero Academia– is a two cour that finished this season and I’ve been too busy to watch the last 9 or so episodes. Was pretty fun up to the point I stopped so I’ll definitely go back to it.
Also there were maybe a dozen other shows that, after watching 3 episodes, were neither good enough for me to commit to nor bad enough for me to drop. I can’t remember them all but given how bad some of the shows I did commit to were, I’d be surprised if any of them turned out to be great XD.