A post was merged into an existing topic: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Along with what Co99 said, he also did the one other thing Guaranteed to piss of many anime and manga fans - he pointed out(entirely correctly) that there is no valid reason to pirate Anime or manga that’s legally available in your language.
To give a little more context on the “Just people disagreeing with him” part, there’s some very popular shows that he wasn’t into, like Goblin Slayer(Which IIRC he called repugnant), Sword Art Online, black clover, so on. Oh, and he said that it’s perfectly fine to skip parts of Jojos if you’re not into them, because jojos does a good job bringing people on board with each arc - which naturally, sent some more ardent jojos fans into a frenzy.
There’s also a bunch of people who hate him for being kind of middle-of-the-road left wing - I recall a few times I’ve seen big threads in anime spaces where people were big mad at him for not liking or wanting to support nazis, pedos, homophobes and other assorted bigots, etc.
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I only watched one new series from this quarter which was the second season of Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid. Like the first season it was just a very funny and wholesome comedy series with some real emotional weight at its core. Unfortunately the issue with a lot of rather squicky elements with regard to very horny character designs and other elements. If you can stand those it is definitely worth checking out.
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Nuri watched this. It looked cute but also very big-anime-tiddy-oriented.
I couldn’t get past the first episode of the 2nd season. Introduction of
yet another big tiddy dragon girl was who did what she did was just to squicky for me.
I liked the concept of the show, but I bounced hard off of the creepy male gaze and other creepy elements.
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We watched the first couple of episodes of some random stuff on Croll. We’re again going with our foolproof method of “this sounds watchable, what’s the worst that can happen?”
Muv-Luv Alternative
The basic premise is that the earth has been invaded by mindless all-devouring aliens and humans are desperately fighting to survive, and also there are jet mechs.
Look, I am a sophisticated man, but also I fucking love some bullshit jet mechs filling aliens with bullets.
It is, interestingly enough, outright hopeless (minor spoiler), and the heroes do not save the day. Hey, I’m kind of into that!
Episode 2 introduces some kind of apparent parallel universe plot where a character wakes up in the past with memories of the doom that is about to befall them, and has to convince people to care. In principle, cool, but in practice it’s really sorta clumsy and a bit disjointed.
We only watched the first 2, but if it doesn’t come into focus soon, I think we’ll drop it, or at least I’ll stop caring.
Sakugan
Now this was cute and cool. There’s a subterranean world consisting of colonies linked by caverns that are full of monsters, there are mining robots, and there are “Markers” that are basically hunters or sentinels or something like that. There’s a little girl who’s a genius, her father who’s kind of a fuckup, and fuckin kaiju rolling in to wreck your shit.
The plot is fairly basic so far - girl wants to be a Marker, dad is like “no I have to protect you from the terrible secrets of this world,” people die, there’s a mystical map that leads to the surface, and they Set Off For Adventure.
It does absolutely nothing groundbreaking but it’s fun and heartwarming and there are mining robots and kaiju. Hard to fuck that up, but we’re also only 2 episodes in.
The World’s Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated…
I’m not typing that whole fucking thing, you’ll find it.
Obviously, it’s more hot isekai garbage shoveled directly into your facehole, so understand what you’re getting into going in. We turned it on because the title was abysmally idiotic and we had to see.
The opener made us pay attention - it’s got a cool aesthetic and good animation and production values, and definitely nails the spy/assassin vibe.
I’m not going to bother recapping the plot because the title literally tells you what happens in episode 1. A fair warning is that the show depicts human trafficking of minors right off the bat in the first 5 minutes - but the traffickers are bad dudes and they all get murdered, so it doesn’t linger there long.
There’s some unnecessary anime bullshit - a couple of panty shots, big tiddies, and some weirdly uncomfortable interactions that put it in the realm of self-insert male power fantasy - but also there are some absolutely great moments, and exactly enough decent stuff to make us watch a little more.
It’s not good, to be clear, but there’s good stuff in it. If you can get over problematic isekai tropes, it might be your thing.
EDIT:
Nuri also put on the first couple of episodes of Build-Divide and just in case you had any doubt, there are 0 things worthwhile about it. The show is just an ad for whatever bullshit CCG they released with it. I don’t know if she’ll watch more of it because it’s just mindless pretty noise to put on the screen, but it’s absolute drivel.
We also finally watched Odd Taxi and holy fucking shit.
Holy shit.
Yeah.
I have no idea what I expected, but it wasn’t that, and damn was that exceptional. I really appreciated how real these characters felt. Their flaws weren’t tropes, they were actual issues that real people deal with, and the show did a remarkable job of showing people in bad situations and how they normalize and internalize their traumas. Life is hard and ugly for many people, and they make flawed decisions because they’re flawed people trying to figure themselves out and just ugh, so good.
I also love that the main character wasn’t some kid in high school, he’s a fully formed adult with no fucks remaining.
I found, as a now middle-aged adult myself, that I connected pretty hard with characters making tough choices because life has been unkind to them, and the sort of numbness one develops along the way when you have to do that. It was honestly a little uncomfortable in places because of how on-point it was.
Anyway, great show, nothing else to say. It’s short, go watch it if you haven’t yet.
Verdict: A, literally one of the best shows I’ve seen
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Odd taxi is, bar none, one of the best anime to come out since season 2 of Mob psycho. When the list of top ten anime of the decade comes around in 2030, I expect odd taxi to be a contender
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We are now 5 episodes into Sakugan and it keeps getting better. It’s certainly no Odd Taxi, but it’s a solid adventure/romp with enough serious moments to give it some meat, and some interesting world-building. We await new episodes enthusiastically.
Verdict so far B, on track to be B+ given what I’m seeing
We are also 5 episodes into this show, and while it doesn’t really do anything wrong, it doesn’t particularly do anything right. It’s just sorta…there? The first 3 episodes are sort of awkward, but by episode 5 I feel like it’s finally started to get its feet under it. Absolutely unremarkable, but there are mechs that shoot shit and also alien invaders so.
Verdict so far: Solid C, could be C+ if it continues to develop stuff
Perhaps its a bit self-serving here, but I used to post a lot about anime I’ve been watching in this thread. It’s not that I’ve been watching less, though recently I haven’t been watching seasonal anime other than the ones I did mention. Instead I’ve been watching a specific niche subgenre I have a weird faible for, which is baseball anime. The reason for this is that I’ve been making monthly posts on on reddits /r/baseball to present those series to the community there while I got deeper into actual baseball myself.
Here is the latest post which I published today on the seminal 80s anime Touch. It also contains a list of previous posts including re-edits of material I posted here before but also new reviews.
However, a show I did recently watch just for kicks is Yama no Susume (ヤマノススメ), a short form anime about mountain climbing with each episode just 3-5 minutes in length. I picked it up on a whim after seeing a clip of it on reddit and thought it was cute and short for in between. While watching the first episode I thought about testing my skill since this seemed like a good and easy entry point, and watched the other 11 episodes and first OVA without subtitles. Was relatively easy to follow.
Narratively it isn’t much to write home about. Introverted girl with fear of heights gets dragged to climb mountains by here extroverted childhood friend, finds some fun and new friends. Easy enough, short, cute, inoffensive and relaxing.
Wrote another review targeted at r/baseball (as explained above).
While the Japanese media market, like most media markets, is dominated by properties targeted at male viewers, there is also a sizable market for media targeted at women. This extends down to many subgenres including series about baseball.
Princess Nine is the story of Ryo Hayakawa, a left-handed 15-year-old girl who occasionally helps her neighborhood team in their cities recreational baseball league, much to the chagrin of other teams in the league due to her strong pitching ability. This goes back to her late father who was an ace high school pitcher and taught her from an early age. However, she has little interest, let alone prospects in actually being an athlete.
This changes when surprisingly she is personally recruited by Keiko Himuro, the president of the prestigious Kisaragi Girls High School who wants to establish a hardball girls team to participate and win the Koshien tournament, Japan’s national championship in baseball, reserved usually only for boys.
Beside the obstacle of finding players to field a complete team that is capable of competing with boys, and gaining the respect of the chauvinistic baseball establishment, Ryo also has to deal with Izumi Himuro, Keiko’s daughter and a star tennis player at the school. The two come quickly at odds, primarily due to Izumi’s strained relationship with her mother and opposition to the plan of establishing a baseball team at the school. A love triangle involving Hiroki Takasugi, the star player of the boys high school of the Kisaragi academic group, also quickly develops.
Princess Nine feels a bit like a time capsule and not like your standard anime series, at the very least in modern times. Whereas today a series with a cast made of almost entirely women would be targeted at boys and young men, playing to the otaku crowd of idolizing (or if you want to be unkind, fetishizing) the appeal of the characters, Princess Nine takes a lot more from the shojo genre which is targeted at young women and girls. Each of the nine girls on the team feel like full characters with distinctive motivations and personalities that go deeper than just surface level and are consistent throughout the show. I guess a purist could deduct points though for the girls playing with their hair open and accessories in them to make them memorable and distinguishable.
The series also dips into some well worn tropes of the shojo genre with a number of turns in the story feeling a bit more than overtly melodramatic. However, this also is a bit of fresh air today as shojo series as a major production in anime has fallen largely out of favor. Perhaps the show could be called a bit campy, but it is entertaining and fun. In particular the final crescendo of the series which had me hooting and hollering, but also shed a tear in the end. They don’t make series like this much these days.
There are two more things that set the series apart from other shows discussed so far in my series on baseball anime. The first is that Princess Nine is an anime original, rather than based on a previous work in a different medium. The other is that the anime has an official english dub.
The biggest blemish of the series is that it has a tight budget, which is rather noticeable in some places with rough animation and off model characters. The character design also feels very much of its time around the late 90s, for good and for ill. These small technical details are hardly an impediment though, and the show proves more than a good time if you meet it at its level.
Still watching Sakugan and still enjoying it. Just finished episode 10, so two more left this season. It’s definitely not going to wrap up, so there will be more, and I will watch it when it comes out.
It’s definitely a B, not a B+. It’s starting to drag it out a bit, signaling a story that is still being developed in its source media. It’s adding complicating plot threads, and it has good relationships between its characters - but it’s starting to take its time moving things along in each episode. The first 6 or 7 really moved the plot along, and now it’s sorta marinading in the situation it’s set up.
I’d put it on par with Radiant in terms of being a show with solid action, an engaging world, and well-executed character interactions that make for a good story that doesn’t break any new ground.
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I guess I drop this here since its where I usually write my longform reviews and I did basically that for the first three seasons of Haikyuu! before that, but I’ve actually gone and finished reading the manga. I was going to finish the manga eventually as I am reading along with the german release of it, but I decided to read the scanlations.
Haikyu is of course a fantastic series, as I’ve stated repeatedly. The decision of putting the Naruto/Sasuke dynamic into a team sport that necessarily needs cooperation is just a fantastic choice. And the series is overall just an absolute masterclass for character development. If you’ve never read/seen the series, I highly recommend it. However, major spoilers ahead.
The series actually managed to shock me through a decision that is equally weird and strong. After the fateful matchup between Karasuno and Nekoma, they air was a bit out of the ball. While the following match against Kamomedai still was decent, I never expected them to lose then and there. However, looking back it was kind of the right decision as the major plot lines were wrapped up, and teams in a sports series rarely actually win the championship, least of all on their first try.
What follows is a timeskip and a final arc that also serves as an extende epilogue. Hinata does a two-year stint in Brazil playing beach volleyball and basically re-learning the game from the ground up while also honing his physical attributes and techniques. Meanwhile Kageyama goes on to college and a semi-pro league. Hinata returns and they face off in an official game with basically an all-star roster of other characters through the series as well as introducing some new veteran teammates. Everyone gets a final chapter or two to show off, while we get glimpses of other members of the very extensive cast that accumulated across the series’ run that are watching the game in the arena or on monitors, including short descriptions of their current life situation. Just a wholesome end overall that also gives some great action scenes in a full game situation.
Just a great series overall.
After my co-worker asked me to help source the english manga box set for the series as a gift for his son (which we were unfortunately unsuccessful in on the account of it being a rare find and we’re not being in the english market), I decided to finally watch Demon Slayer - Kimetsu no Yaiba. The show was already on my list for a while for the sheer hype it produced, setting records in manga sales for the source work after the anime adaptation arrived, and its associated movie becoming the highest grossing anime film of all time. Unfortunately that accolade is kind of unearned.
First things first though: The show is about Tanjiro Kamado, the oldest of six children of a widow who all live up a mountainside during the Taisho period around 1913. One winter day he descends the mountain to sell charcoal in the city. When he returns the next morning he finds his family slaughtered except the eldest sister Nezuko who was transformed into a demon.
Nezuko attacks Tanjiro but he is saved by a Demon Slayer, a member of a secret organization that attempts to exterminate this threat which is slowly fading into myth, as is the organization, during this era of technological progress. However, Tanjiro pleads to spare his sister’s life as he wants to attempt to transform her back. He is adviced to seek training with a hermit and to join the Demon Slayers.
So far I have seen the first season covering the first couple of volumes of the manga, as well as the movie and the first half of the second season which both cover the same plot marterial. The show is good, particularly in the technical aspects during the fight scenes which are well animated and stylish due to the special techniques used which are mainly coded toward the traditional japanese elements. There is also a very good blending of 2D character animation with 3D backgrounds, though unfortunately the 3D monster effects during the movie and the TV adaptation of the same material are far less impressive.
The story is also good and I very much like the theming. Tanjiro is characterized by his compassion, a welcome change from the standard shonen protagonist archetypes of brash hothead or gluttonous joyful simpleton, and this also serves as a basis to contrast his enemies who are often shown as people who were unable to cope with their situation or were lured into becoming demons by the big bad with the promise to sate their base desires.
Unfortunately, this description probably overstates things as some secondary characters introduced later on are rather annoying. Most of all Zenitsu who is kind of a tragic figure with his backstory, but he is just such a whiny bitch it is hard to sympathize with him, much less his rather creepy tendencies.
I think the weakest part of the series so far has been the movie. It is directly adapted from the manga which is unfortunately a deficiency for the storytelling as you can definitely see the seams of the serialized chapters that don’t really lend themselves to how a movie usually works, and there isn’t enough spacing to consider it an anthology movie. It works better in the TV series which completely replaces it and in fact improves on it, as the first episode of the 2nd season is an anime original and gives us some much needed context for another character whose death we are meant to mourn at the end of it, even though they have too little screentime and the last time we saw them in the main story they were A-OK with Tanjiro potentially being executed.
The show is probably overhyped as I find it more upper midtier among Shonen Action series and hardly reaching the heights of One Piece or Fullmetal Alchemist. However, it is a decent show particularly if you want well animated action scenes. It also motivated me to buy the manga which I am now catching up on.
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I totally agree, but guess what character was the most popular with Shonen Jump readers…
He’s easier to take in the manga, given that there isn’t an audible component to his character in that medium.
Less unbearable is still unbearable.
General opinion from talking with people here is that his past trauma outweighs his problematic tenancies, and “he’s really cool when it counts”.
I only watched three shows from this past season, and weirdly all of them have already had sequels announced. Also, all three have great OP songs.
Mieruko-chan (見える子ちゃん) was quite a trip. The title roughly translates to “the child that is able to see” and is about a first-year high school girl named Miko that suddenly is able to see ghosts, which are rendered as grotesquely deformed humanoid figures which gave me the willies on several occasions. Largely this is played for laughs with Miko trying to just ignore the situation as not to give away her ability to those ghosts. At one point I feared this would be a repetitive situation comedy, but thankfully as the season goes on we see that there is a bit of narrative with Miko trying to deal with the situation and find out why it is happening to her. So far that has been left unresolved.
Another small note should be that at least early the show also has a lot of unnecessary fanservice, though that goes away over time.
A pure comedy show about supernatural creatures is The Vampire Dies in no Time (吸血鬼すぐ死ぬ, Kyuuketsuki sugu shinu). Vampire Hunter Ronaldo accidentally burns down the castle of Draluc, a vampire who is both immortal and very mortal as even the faintest touch or even odor causes him to turn into dust, only to ressurect immediately. This jokes seems like it would get old very soon, but somehow never does. After his home being incinerrated, Draluc decides to just move into Ronaldo’s office and an odd-couple comedy begins.
Much of the humor in this show is derived from vampires not really being evil super-beings, but more like everyday nuisences with various kinds of vampires, from humanoid stalkers down to vampire-vegetables being shown and made fun of. Inter-character comedy with various people that surround the two male leads is also big. The show generally reminds me a lot of last year’s “Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle” in theme, humor and style.
Finally, Komi can’t communicate (古見さんは、コミュ症です, Komi-san wa comyu-shou desu) is a very funny and sweet high school comedy. The titular Shoko Komi is an extremely beautiful first grade girl who has difficulty forming friendships because a) she is extremely shy to the point where she is almost mute, and b) everyone else is putting her on a pedestal and thinks of her unapproachable. That is until she is approached by Hitohito Tadano, an extremely average but kind-hearted guy who meets her on her level. Together they decide to try and work on Komi’s issues with the goal of making a hundred friends.
This show is a lot of fun, mostly about dealing with classmates who conform to various archetypes with appropriate names (e.g. “Tada no Hito hito” can be read as “just a kind person”) and learning to connect with people. It is also a lot less depressing than some other shows that have a similar theme. Unfortunately due to it being a Netflix property the show is a bit delayed in its release, but thankfully not as much as other shows that were stuck in Netflix jail.
This season looks really barren. The only things that interest me are a new part of Demon Slayer (which is already ongoing), and the third season of Takagi-san. I guess time to catch up on a lot of stuff that I was pushing off, like Blue Period. At least the season after that already has a ton of things I’m interested in announced, like continuations of Kaguya-sama, Ascendance of a Bookworm and Komi-san, as well as the adaptation of Spy x Family.