Anime Watchlist

I really enjoyed the first episode of Megalo Box. It had a specific charm that made it feel like a classic old school anime.

Golden Kamuy the anime is basically the same as the manga. Which means that you should choose one (or both) and go for it. The manga is fantastic (and an excellent source of Ainu knowledge) and the anime seems to be the same as well.

Megalo Box (aka 21st Century Ashita no Joe) is also well worth your time.

I’ve been watching a lot of anime recently and because today was basically just a bunch of meetings at work I spent the time in between with updating MyAnimeList after about 5 years. I keep just a text file at home with my backlog. Anyway, after adding a bunch of stuff to my “plan to watch list” that list now sits at 175 items. Most of that is though because some stuff is split into several seasons which MyAnimeList tracks individually, and because I added every single series from the Noitamina block that I haven’t watched yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxn-1s_boXs

I’ll admit here that I’ve been rewatching Hidamari Sketch. Some of you are going to scoff, and yeah, it’s a “moe series” for the most part and there isn’t that much substance to it, but I have to say I kind of love this series. My rewatch has been primarily confined to one episode per day in the early morning, because the show is just so enjoyable and a really fun way to start a day. The OPs alone are just relentlessly cheerful, and the show proper also does its darnedest to keep the mood up. The way that SHAFT handled that series makes it so much more than the rather forgettable yon-koma manga it is based on with their excellent use of backgrounds and composition. One shot I want to highlight here is this one. Here Sae (the one in the chair) is having a minor fight with her sister who is visiting, and though there are other characters in the room, they are being blocked out so only the two characters remain in focus.

Now this isn’t a “must-see” anime, but it is genuinely interesting and enjoyable, and they keep things fresh with the structure where each episode is a random day outside of sequential order. This means that some story beats are hit and come into play again at a later episode, or are explained by a later episode that chronologically would have happened before. While there is little to no conflict in the show, these little interweaving strings do add a certain something to keep your attention.

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Your need to defend yourself in the first sentence makes me really think there needs to be some rethinking on the automatic dismissal of “moe” and “cute girls doing cute things” slice of life shows. There’s nothing wrong with vicariously enjoying the sort of meandering, easygoing hangouts of a group of friends or enjoying a bit of light silliness. Is it high brow? No, but even here in the ivory tower there needs to be some understanding that its okay to enjoy “low art” and be free from being criticized for it.

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Just finished Death Parade, a series I’ve heard good things about but never got around to watching until now. The main cast are so called “arbiters” who, with the backdrop of a fancy cocktail bar, have freshly deceased souls play games to judge their characters better and draw out “the hidden darkness”. It is quite good and an interesting excursion about life, death, how you earn “salvation” and who gets to decide that on what basis. And the OP is absolutely fantastic.

However, the show also had a couple of flaws. For one while the characters in the show decide on whether a given person is reincarnated or sent “to the void”, no explanation is really given what those two options entail until the second to last episode. I kept expecting that “the void” is actually turns out to be the desirable option. The show toys with Buddhist symbolism, but does not establish the possibility of reaching a Nirvana, though it also makes quite a point that the arbiters are deliberately withholding information from the people they judge.

The other problem I have is contained in the overarching plot so consider this a spoiler warning. In the last couple of episodes we find out that the assistant to the bartender, Chiyuki, was in fact human. This is treated as a sort of revelation, though the show kind of fails in making the viewer assume that she was an arbiter to begin with. At least I never did. Maybe they could have handled that better by showing how Decim “awoke” as an arbiter to begin with and drew parallels to Chiyuki in how they were placed in their positions, e.g. by paralleling how Nona explained the work of an arbiter to Chiyuki in episode 2 but with Decim in Chiyuki’s place somewhere around episode 6 or 7.


Another show I watched recently is Kakegurui, a gambling anime set in a high school for rich kids. I kind of like these sorts of gambling shows, from the king of kings in that subgenre with Gambling apocalypse Kaiji, to series like One-Outs and Liar Game. Unfortunately Kakegurui leaves a bit desired there. For one, while it showcases some kind of interesting games, it burns through those games way too fast and doesn’t let the tension build enough. It seems to race toward a conclusion almost, though unfortunately the season ends with what basically amounts to an anti-climax.

Another problem with the show is that the stakes almost don’t matter. Sure people talk about exorbitant amounts of money, but they might as well be chocolate coins for as much as people seem to value it. There are some gambling scenes with a wager involving bodily harm, but those are then undercut by the one making the wager having already completely seen through the game at that point.

The show still does some interesting stuff, particularly with its usage of facial expressions and colors, and just the indomitable sexuality radiated by its main character, but it unfortunately falls a bit flat with the regard of what it nominally sets out to do. It’s still a glorious piece of trash in a similar vein to Prison School.


Finally I’ve been trying to make my way through Steins;Gate. For the unaware the series starts with a main character hamming it up to portray himself as a “Mad Scientist”, and he and his friends stumble into actually creating a time machine with which they can first send text messages, and later memories into the past, which of course turns out to be a horrible idea.

Usually these kinds of shows should be up my alley, and I heard good things about this show, but I find myself a bit dreading to watch it. It’s not that the show is bad, but the pale color palette and the equally bleak attitude of the show makes it tough to enjoy it. It almost seems to me that it tries to make the viewer suffer alongside the main character but for me it fails in that and instead makes it into a slog. I also have no clue how after this show concludes they can wring a second season out of it, which started airing this spring.

If you like Miyuki you’ll like Steins;Gate. If you don’t like Miyuki Steins;Gate will aggravate you as it prioritizes her above everyone else in the show.

Do you mean Mayuri?

Yes. I’m bad with names from TV shows.

Watched the first ep of Yakuza and psychic girl “Hinamatsuri”. Quick impression: Yakuza loves his vase collection. Psychic girl becomes a permanent house guest. Yakuza concedes to her demands or she will destroy his prize collection. The show follows a formula I’ve seen before but I’m not sure what to call it other a strange bedfellows team up. The Yakuza rather than immediately throw the psychic girl out his home, lets her live with him and he puts up with her odd and destructive behavior. Psychic girl could easily take over the city but is content with just eating snacks watching TV and go shopping. Was it funny? The joke at the end was kind of smirk worthy. I’ll probably watch one more and then move on to something else.

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So far I’ve only had time to watch the first two episodes of Wotakoi and it’s looking like it will be cute and fun and there’s not a trace of perversion. Definitely going to keep watching.

I was really hoping for crunchyroll to pick up Captain Tsubasa 2018. It was bought by VIZ media and I can’t find its legal streaming release anywhere.This is a shame since the classic anime was a blast, and this one is animated by David Productions.
Supposedly it will have two seasons, the first one re-telling the original middle school championship with 24 episodes. I think the classic show had 52 episodes, so this one is cutting all the filler from the classic show.
The second season will tell the story of the kids making their way into the Russia 2018 World Cup.
Someone really dropped the ball by not having this show legally streamed in the Americas.

In This Corner of the World is on Netflix. Incredible movie. A really endearing, slice-of-life that covers WWII Japan beyond just overwhelming oppression. The gradual escalation and how everyone adapted as time went on just made everything feel the most real. Love the animation style which is just distinct enough to be it’s own type of thing. It really made me feel how everyone was so down to earth so affected by their connected communities and families. The dub is pretty good even if a few performances are flat.

Really loved it, it would have been my 2nd favorite animated movie from last year behind Coco. Felt needed after I was disappointed by A Silent Voice.

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I bought felt the need to own In this Corner of the World after watching it last year at Otakon.
I push back the tears every time I watch it.
I am really afraid of buying the manga is only because I don’t feel I am ready to read it.

I also decided to watch In this Corner of the World yesterday, primarily after catching up on the Anime World Order Podcast and listening to their review. I was also admittedly pulled to that film due to its director Sunao Katabuchi who also directed one of my favorite anime series, Black Lagoon. However those two properties couldn’t be farther apart from each other.

As said by other posters above, the movie is about civilian life during war time and focuses on Suzu, an absent-minded but artistically talented girl from Hiroshima. She is made quite endearing with her mannerisms as we see some of her childhood, and the movie shows various scenes in which we are not quite sure whether it’s Suzu’s imagination or reality.

Coming of age in 1944, Suzu marries into a family in Kure, a Naval town on the other side of a mountain from Hiroshima. There she tries to make ends meet during war time rationing, the encroaching threat of air raids, as well as awkwardness in the household as Suzu’s awkwardness and slowness with domestic work draws the ire of her sister-in-law. The normalization of horrible circumstances brought about by the war is also showcased here.

At this point I believe we can argue the “tastefulness” (for the lack of a better term) of this film. The movie clearly sympathizes with the civilian population of Japan during WWII. However, with the background of real world knowledge one can question whether this sympathy is deserved as Japan was clearly an aggressor in WWII and wars leading up to it with its expansionist policy and the horrendous atrocities Japanese armed forces committed during them. That isn’t to say the civilian population deserves to suffer for the misdeeds of its government, particularly Suzu who was a child basically at every point prior to the events of this film, but it also means that the civilian population is suffering partially due to its own decisions and the government it allows. Nobody escapes a war unscathed. I say that as a citizen of a country that was similar to Japan an aggressor and victim in WWII.

There are also three specific scenes later in the movie that I want to talk about so consider this a SPOILER WARNING for the remainder of this post.

In the movie Suzu loses her dominant right hand and her niece when a time-delay bomb explodes next to them. Suzu blames herself and is blamed by her sister-in-law for the death of her niece, with Suzu asking what if she had done things differently, walking with her niece on her left side hold her niece’s hand with her own left hand instead of her right. At the end of the movie we see a similar scene play out, as we see a severely injured figure holding a girl by the left hand, sit down and pass away. The scene continues to follow the girl trying to survive on the street. The movie leads us to believe (or at least it did for me) that this is Suzu’s imagination, thinking about what would have happened if the scenario had played out the way she believed would have been better and her niece surviving at the expense of herself. Instead however the orphan from that scene actually encounters Suzu and her husband, who take the orphan in.

The obvious parallels between Suzu’s story and that of the orphan were kind of poetic to me. Suzu suffered with her regrets of not protecting her niece, but that also allows for her to now take care of a girl who was protected (or simply survived by happenstance). While both are struck by tragedy, the circumstances of which allow for them to help each other out of it.

The above scene also redeemed Suzu a bit in my eyes, as her character got broken for me due to her reaction to the Emperor’s address declaring Japan’s surrender in the wake of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (the calamity of which Suzu narrowly escapes by happenstance but the devastation she witnesses first hand) and Nagasaki. Suzu is angered by the address, running up a hill into her family’s garden, and screaming out her disappointment and how she had believed they were fighting “until nothing was left”, and how she still had another arm and two legs left to give. This was not an understandable reaction to me. She had suffered greatly in the war, which cost her a hand, a brother, a niece, in addition to nearly losing her house, her husband and her father-in-law as well as her own life multiple times. I could not understand why she would be okay with continuing the war and it soured me on her.

In retrospect however that scene has two readings which make it more palatable for me. For one Suzu is definitely being influenced by propaganda. I guess the movie could have done a better job in showcasing the propaganda, though moments like here niece being able to name different kinds of military naval vessels or a group of children being lead by a marching song glorifying the war effort give a taste in that. More importantly however I see it as a personal loss for Suzu as well. She never allowed herself to give up, partially because she felt the duty to her family but perhaps also influenced by the propaganda. The Emperor declaring Japan’s surrender confronts her with the fact that her suffering and personal sacrifices were for naught, and that she was lead astray by her government.

The last scene I want to address is rather awkward. About halfway through the movie Suzu meets a childhood friend who is now a sailor on a military vessel. As his short time on shore does not allow him to go back to Hiroshima, she offers him to stay with her family. We then see her husband ask him to sleep in the shed rather than the main house proper, but separately also asks Suzu to go to the shed under the guise of bringing the man a heater but also for them to speak before the man possibly dies in the war. This scene however also basically reads as the husband sending Suzu over for the sailor to have sex with her. The sailor in fact advances sexually on Suzu, but quickly relents when he realizes that Suzu in fact does love her husband (something not necessarily a given in japanese society, particularly under the circumstances how Suzu was married).

So this scene is all sorts of troublesome. I guess I can understand the husband in so far as that he was, without a doubt, conditioned to believe that the “needs” of even individual military members take precedence over anything from civilians (the husband working as a clerk in a military court plays a role here), but offering up Suzu to be raped is rather beyond the pale even in that light. What’s worse is that nobody in the rest of the family seems to bat an eye on this either.

END OF SPOILERS

So all in all this movie is very good and showcases a part of history that I think in western society is no longer talked about the way it should. However, I also have scene a ton of really glowing reviews which I don’t see address the issues inherent in the subject matter, as well as the two troublesome scenes I described above. While I like the art, animation, voice acting (I watched it in japanese with subtitles) and subject matter, I can’t say I believe this movie to be as good as some of these reviews make it out to be.

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I finally got around to watching Your Name. This is a really, really good movie, even though the initial premise is not my cup of tea. If you have doubts, just watch it, you will certainly not regret it. This movie is already being praised left and right and it definitely deserves it.

The art and animation is impeccable. I am particularly fond of the time lapse shots this movie uses. The voice acting of the japanese dub is also quite good and functions well in showcasing some character mindsets (haven’t watched either the german or english versions). The story is also quite interesting. I was about to write a long post recapitulating its events, but really I just want to say that I was certainly not prepared for the double whammy of a twist in the middle of the film.

In any case, just watch it.

Watched Mary and the Witch’s Flower tonight with my niece and nephew. We watched the english dub. The entire cast had english accents. Which was charming but felt calculated as if the producers were trying to draw in Harry Potter fans. That’s probably just me feeling that way. The animation was beautiful. I loved the backgrounds. From the countryside to the floating magical school. The interiors were amazing as well. I especially liked the headmaster’s study and the wich’s cottage on the island. The pacing was good nothing lingered for too long nor did go so fast the characters could barely breathe. The plot was kind of predictable but enjoyable nonetheless. My niece and nephew both were engaged with the characters and story. Nephew loves any story with magic in it and my niece only likes magic stories that have witches in it. She loved Little Witch Academia but does not care for Harry Potter. All in all it was a great anime film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo8oR-npUGs

I think the most recent episode of Shokugeki No Souma does a better job of establishing “what it’s about” than the first episode.

I’ve had the last week off since I was burning my vacation days and decided to catch up on some of the series I had missed out on this season. While this season has been absolutely packed with good shows, I really feel like the show I just started watching is going to be my anime of the season. MegaloBox is supposed to be a re imagining of the Ashita no Joe franchise, but I have no experience with that franchise, so I really can’t speak to that. What I can speak to is that this is probably one of the most tightly scripted fighting shows I’ve seen in a long while. All the characters are really well developed, the animation is super pretty despite being intentionally downrezzed. Each arc has it’s own feel and all of the characters come to each fight with their own distinct motivations.

Every once in a while a show comes along that I think people are going to remember going forward. The last one I can really point to is One Punch Man, and I think Megalobox is the next in that line of incredibly strong shows.