The voice acting alone, particularly for Anya, makes the anime more than worth the watch even if you already read the manga. That they are adding some great animation in even anime original scenes is just even more added value.
1 Like
Anyone see this anime The Executioner and Her Way of Life | Shokei Shoujo no Virgin Road seems to be about a person who’s job it is to kill protagonist from Isekai. Which seems like if taken seriously/or humorously would be a fun concept :-p
Thanks for the recommendation. Being animated has added a lot of fun, little things that weren’t in the manga, and episode 5 was pretty much completely new and really fun.
@Cremlian That is what it’s about, but it’s not taken humorously; the isekai protagonists are presented as absolute menaces (high schoolers given control over fundamental aspects of reality) that need to be taken care of. The first six-episode arc has just finished, and I’m looking forward to more of it.
I just want to say that Birdie Wing hits amazing levels of camp, and I am here for it. If this season wasn’t jam-packed with great anime, this could have been a dark horse for AOTS. As is it probably ranks 4th behind SxF, Kaguya S3 and Kongming, though admittedly I haven’t actually gotten around to watching some other shows yet.
1 Like
Spy x Family is a good laugh. It doesn’t have all the action of a Mob Psycho 100/ One Punch Man, but has all the humour.
By chance I realized that my local cinema is showing Mamoru Hosoda’s Belle (竜とそばかすの姫, Ryū to Sobakasu no Hime, literally translates to “the dragon and the freckled princess”) so I went to watch it today. It is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast crossed with drama about a high school girl in the vein of Your Name, plus Hosoda revisiting a previous element of his movies with a global virtual reality environment previously seen in Summer Wars (one of my personal all time favorite films).
It is about Suzu Naito, a high school girl who has an interest in music, but after the tragic passing of her mother can’t bring herself to sing anymore. However, she joins a virtual reality with an avatar where she can convey her talent and quickly becomes popular. At the same time, a grotesque creature inside the virtual reality is hunted by self-appointed guardians of the space and she takes interest to find out who this beast is.
From a technical perspective the movie is great and I think worth a watch for that alone. The two worlds are distinguished by their animation style. The real world is represented with 2D animated characters and environments, while the virtual world is rendered in 3D. Anime with 3D characters often falls very flat for me, as often the characters look like dolls with faces drawn on them. Here they feel a lot more lively and well executed.
Unfortunately, storywise the movie has issues as the two separate worlds and plot points kind of don’t mesh well together and I had trouble following along with why certain characters acted in certain ways. Particularly the reveal at start of the last half hour which was one of the main driving factors of the film felt rather out of left field, introducing new characters that weren’t properly set up. I really wish Hosoda would finally admit that he is a better director than writer, and restart his partnership with Satoko Okudera, which I think was the reason why films like Summer Wars and Wolf Children were so great.
I did like the theme of identity though, and I also think that at the end of the film it also talks about an important topic that is not represented enough.
Spoilers
spoilers go here
The topic I am talking about is child abuse, as at the end of the film it is revealed that the hidden identity of the Beast is a 14-year-old boy who is abused by his father while trying to protect his younger brother. The main character saves them by standing up to their father and doing a real effort instead of just empty words which is good. Rather more squicky is when a confession of love follows which doesn’t really make all that much sense as there is no romance built up really, more of a maternal protective instinct.
The bigger issue though is that the boy and his brother only showed up in cutaway moments before, while the movie seems to hint that the beast is someone from Suzu’s sphere of friends. The reveal that they are complete strangers (though other factors make them kindred spirit) comes somewhat out of left field and feels a bit disjointed.
This season of anime has been absolutely fantastic. Even some shows I picked up “just because” like Kawaii Dake Janai Shikimori-san had surprising qualities that made them worth a watch. I even started another show from this season this week, Aharen-san ha Hakarenai which turned out to be an incredibly funny comedy that had me laughing really hard on several gags.
Unfortunately, next season seems absolutely dreadful, particularly in comparison. The show I understand to be good is the continuation of Made in Abyss, but I haven’t seen the first season yet. I also heard that Overlord is decent, but haven’t watched any of it yet. I tapped out in the first season of The Devil is a Part Timer. And I have no idea how complete trash like Rent-A-Girlfriend got a second season. I checked out the first season because it was the big otaku-show, but I made it only into the first couple of minutes of episode 2 before I turned it off.
I guess SCIENCE Saru has a new show out, but other than that nothing of the new stuff seems even remotely interesting.
I guess time to catch up on some other shows that I haven’t gotten around to.
This post made me look what’s coming up next season, and it does look dry. I guess it gives me time to check out things from this season I didn’t get around (and the endless list of older stuff I want to watch).
I feel the upcoming show I’m most interested in is the anime sequel to Kamen Rider W. But I have to finish W before watching that. Also I don’t think there is any guarantee that anime sequel to Kamen Rider show would be any good.
A couple of years ago I made a review of the first season of Kaguya-sama: Love is War. Now the third season has concluded and man, this is just one of the best anime ever made. The concept of the series already appeals greatly to me. A psychological battle as a means to convey a romatic comedy great and well executed, and the story beats build really organically together without the common pitfalls of romatic comedy. It is also seriously emotionally gripping.
But layered on top of that is in the anime version just everything executed to seemingly perfection. The show doesn’t have impressive action scenes, but the animators and directors just throw in animation flourishes and flexes that instead of distracting actually manage to emphasis things. They also add in a number of very funny sight-gags and referential humor that is actually fitting.
I already said in my previous review that you should watch this show. But seriously: WATCH THIS SHOW. Not only is it great, it also has demonstrated that it won’t falter in the long run.
I was confused when about a week ago it came out that Birdie Wing would only be 13 episodes, mostly because significant characters from the OP have yet to appear in the show proper.
Today a second season was announced. Unfortunately it doesn’t start until January.
Guess I’ll put this here.
When I was at a local book store looking for new manga, on a whim I bought Poison City (Yuugai Toshi) by Tetsuya Tsutsui. I had no idea about the series or the author, but I liked the cover of a person in a gas mask in a seinen-style illustration, and a sticker promised that it was the entire series in two volumes for just 11 bucks. Only later I realized that I had read another series by the same author, the horror manga Manhole, which I had picked up in a similar spur of the moment at the time.
The cover and title however are a deliberate trap, as it is a manga about a manga author, with the character of the cover being from the series created, a zombie survival manga named Dark Walker. This is used to illustrate a creeping form of censorship, making this work semi-biographical. As the endpages in the volumes explain, Manhole was designated as “harmful” by the prefecture of Nagasaki, with the consequence of it not being allowed to be publicly advertised, leading book shops to not stock it. Tsutsui attempted to have this overturned, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. Similarly within the story of Poison City the mangaka in the story contemplates ways around impending censorship and whether that is even the correct action as it would harm the story in a likely futile attempt to please the censors. Indeed those censors act self-righteous and unreasonably.
The manga isn’t world-shaking, but I found it very compelling in how it discusses the topic of censorship. It also goes into the history of comic censorship including the establishment of the Comics Code in the U.S., which I found surprising as manga and western comics are often seen as distant cousins at best that rarely interact. I also found it kind of important in the light of recent events and increased curtailment of public opinion across the world, with such events as the fake outrage over critical race theory in the United States and general advancement of right-wing ideologues across the globe.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is really doing it for me.
Kind of has a Devilman Crybaby feel too it, but done by Studio Trigger.
1 Like
Yeh, just finished it. 
Go watch it.
1 Like
Also here to highly recommend Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. Extremely great animation and a very classic type of noir crime story.
Just got back from seeing some Gundam.
Expectation: An anime TV episode only longer, fancier, and more drawn out.
Reality: An anime TV episode only longer, fancier, and more drawn out.
I watched Odd Taxi: In the Woods tonight, the movie version of the TV show I was ranting and raving about last year. The movie basically functions as a re-edit, but introduces an interview gimmick as a private investigative firm is trying to piece together the events. This adds additional dialogue and makes to some degree the perspective of the characters more clear. Unfortunately I find that it also severely undercuts the mystery plot that the TV show is built around as it doesn’t give the viewer the breathing room they need to follow along.
The movie also adds a canonical ending whereas the TV show left a certain plot point unresolved which I found a strong stylistic choice. While I enjoyed certain elements shown over the end credits because of it, I must say that unfortunately the execution of this resolution was somewhat lackluster.
The film doesn’t retroactively make the TV show worse, and you can definitely watch it in addition to the TV show, but I think it harms the story ever so slightly and is definitely not a replacement.
1 Like
Speaking of Gundams, has anyone seen the witch from mercury? The running pitch is “Gundam Utena”, and while they’re not entirely wrong, there are a few let pieces that I feel like they’re missing. That said, would be interested to hear the resident Utena experts take on it.
1 Like
I watched episode 0. It was looking a lot like Gundam except Newtypes were cyborgs like Ghost in the Shell instead of being genetically superior.
But now that episode 1 is out everyone is saying Gundam Utena. I’ll watch it soonish.
Mercury is the must watch of the season for me. The prologue and episode one were great and I’m hyped for where the story will go. I really enjoyed seeing 2d animated mechs again and the Gundam Aerial design is fantastic.
There’s an official short story by Mercury’s script writer that happens between the prologue and episode one, and a fan posted an English translation to the Gundam reddit.
So the first episode of “Do It Yourself!” aired and yeah, it is nothing really to write home about plot or character wise. Still fine watch for in between I imagine. However, I think I figured out why it felt so weird to you in the beginning: The show is styled and animated like a Imaishi Gainax/Trigger show.
Seriously, when I watched this show the one that kept popping up in my head was Kill La Kill due to how the characters look and are animated. I even went and checked a lot of key staff whether they worked for Trigger but to no avail. DIY also features two schools with a ridiculous class divide between them for no apparent reason which also reminded me. The nods may very well be intentional since there is at least to me a reference to another Imaishi show as there a mascot pig character that wears glasses similar to Kamina from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
