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Anime
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I finished a couple of things and was gonna do a roundup, but it looks like I’m watching a lot of what @Solstice is. All the big new things.
Insomniacs After School - This may very well be my favorite new show of the year. It’s only one episode in, so it could very well shit the bed in the latest episode, but I absolutely loved the first episode. Loved it! It reminded me a lot of Call of the Night, but there wasn’t any pedo shit in it, which is nice! Watch it at night, though. Just like Call of the Night, the night itself is one of the characters and it shows up in huge, beautiful backgrounds filled with stars. The two characters are super sweet and I love their developing friendship. I can’t wait to see more of this.
Loving Yamada at Lv999! - This is adorable. I was afraid at first that Yamada was just a jerk and Akane would be like I can change him 8D but it ain’t that at all. Yamada feels very much intended to be coded as somewhere on the spectrum and he just doesn’t get how he comes across, but he also has it in him to help when someone clearly needs it. Akane is a mess, and not in that ‘perfect girl whose primary flaw is that she’s clumsy haha she’s clumsy what a character flaw’ way, but she’s a genuine realistic mess of a person. And I love her for it. I’m rooting for her to figure things out. My only issue so far is that her friend Momo kinda sucks. Like, in Tomo-chan is a Girl her friend Misuzu was a bit of a jerk who got a lot of joy in the drama around her, but she realizes how she can be and genuinely feels bad about it. Momo seems like being a bad friend is just key to her personality. Oh, also I wish Yamada wasn’t still in high school. I mean, it still only seems to be like maybe one or two years difference, but I like that Akane is an adult. Well. More or less.
Konosuba - The description of this sold me on it, but had the description said it was a prequel to an isekai I probably wouldn’t have bothered. Didn’t watch a second episode. Instead, I’m enjoying a different backdoor isekai, which is…
The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady - Do you find the yuri elements of The Witch from Mercury and Lycoris Coil a little too subtle? Well, Princess Anis has you covered. The show is a lot of fun, and kind has a similar vibe to WfM in that it’s a lot of cute girls doing slice of lifey stuff that is so adorable you might forget about the politicking happening in the background, and then there are episodes where horrible shit happens and changes everything. The main character is the reincarnated princess in question, though it being an isekai is barely a thing in the first half of it. It just explains why Princess Anis can’t use magic and why she has visions of people performing magical feats without magic. (I’m not done yet, but I’m guessing ‘put magic in the hands of the common people’ is going to be a thing.) Note that it has a super generic ‘villainess’ genre first episode, but it really doesn’t fit the mold.
Hell’s Paradise - This show is very cool. I don’t know if that is the same as ‘this show is very good’, but it’s definitely cool. I liked the first two episodes a lot. I feel like the third one dropped a bit, just because the plot got a bit dumb. Manga readers have said that a lot is being censored so far, and that there is some LGBTQ+ content in the books, so I’m hoping that stuff doesn’t end up censored.
Heavenly Delusion - Or as Disney is calling it, Tengoku Daimakyo, because I guess everyone at Disney is kind of confused. Their own marketing used the English name! Whatever. This is also on my short list for best anime out now. I’ve really enjoyed it so far. There are like three mysteries right out the gate and all of them are super intriguing. The character design is wonderful (none of these characters are particularly cute, which is nice given that this is the post-apocalypse where no one is looking their best) and the animation is beautiful. I will say that the LGBTQ+ element here did disappoint me. (I deleted some specific stuff about the second and third episodes here. I wish I knew how to do inline spoilers!) This show makes me genuinely sad that the half hour episode is so standardized in anime. I’d prefer 6 hour long episodes of this over 12 half hour long episodes. Though obviously I’d prefer 12 hour long episodes. I think this world could use some breathing room, and I just need more of it every week.
Speaking as someone who does enjoy dubs, if you are like me, don’t wait for the dubs on Heavenly Delusion. Disney did such a shitfuck job on the dubs for Summertime Rendering, I wouldn’t bother waiting.
My Home Hero - I’m actually liking this one a lot. It might seem like a pretty cut-and-dry thriller, but a middle-aged salaryman who kills his daughter’s boyfriend isn’t exactly well-tread territory when it comes to anime. What I really love is how his wife is not at all reluctant. She walks in on her husband standing over a dead yakuza and she’s like, okay, what do we need to do? She knows her husband isn’t going to do this casually, so she’s ready to do what needs to be done to fix the problem. Their daughter is kind of an annoying brat, but have you ever met a 19 year old? Yeah.
Oshi No Ko - I’m not even gonna try, guys. The first episode is 90 minutes long and it needed every one of them. This show is buck wild and I am here for it. Do you need to hear more than that it’s by the same genius who gave us Kaguya-sama?
The Dangers in my Heart - Finally, a romantic comedy starring Dylan Klebold. I watched half the first episode and noped out. People seem to really like it, but I’m set.
Two I recently finished.
The Ice Guy and His Cool Female Colleague - Another romantic comedy, this one about two office coworkers, a reserved woman and a man who is descended from a Snow Woman, so when he gets nervous it causes blizzards around him, and snowmen to pop up and his legs to freeze. The background cast are his very tolerant coworkers, one of whom is a descendent of a kitsune. I loved this show. It was the lowest low key thing I’ve watched in ages. Everyone in the dub took ambien before recording. The problem is that it’s one of those shows based on a manga or webtoon or whatever that’s still going and the show was only 12 episodes, so you know nothing got resolved, and there’s no promise of another season. It’s frustrating to me. At least if My Dress Up Darling hadn’t gotten another season it managed to end in a very adorable place. (Speaking of which, MDUD is basically gonna instantly catch up with the source material after the second season. I wonder what they’ll do after that.)
I also finished Ningen Fushin - Apparently, Disillusioned Adventurers Will Save the World. The elevator pitch here sounds great. ‘Hero gets screwed over by his guild and dumped by his girlfriend and gives up on humanity and decides to become an idol fanatic instead, but joins up with other jaded adventurers with no faith in people to raise money to buy merch’. But it doesn’t live up to that. It was okay. Once again, twelve episodes to cover an ongoing series. I liked the characters, but the world has that annoying tendency to boil down fantasy concepts into RPG terms, so there are party levels and typical beginner monsters and dungeons. What’s worse, the fights aren’t all that visually interesting. It does have a super cute end theme. Look at this shit. It’s so goddam adorable.
Buddy Daddies - This show rules. It covers a lot of the same ground as Spy x Family (as I mentioned above) with a pair of hitmen running into an abandoned child while on a job, but I honestly like the main characters more. Kazuki and Rei are a great pair. Miri isn’t as adorable as Anya, few things are, but she’s cute enough. It’s also a full story in 12 episodes. Nice!
Laid Back Camp - My kid finished Komi, so I wanted something else wholesome she could watch. She’s all in. It’s perhaps a little too laid back? I could use episodes for the occasional nap. But it’s fun and cute and holy shit there’s a ton of it.
Uncle from Another World - Great fun. Very funny. Seriously troubled production and there’s no second season announced with way, way more story to tell. We learned about three years in the seventeen Uncle spent in Another World! It’s kind of a funny take on the isekai and harem genres, in that this main character is oblivious. And not oblivious in the oh-gosh-blush-blush-I-love-her-but-she’ll-never-love-me kind of way, but genuinely oblivious that the annoying elf girl he meets is genuinely into him, or that the ice maiden being willing to sing background music from Sonic the Hedgehog to him might be a sign that she’d be willing to do more.
Cyberpunk Edgerunners - This show sucked shit. I wrote a long review of it on another forum, but I can’t even be bothered to copy it over. A tepid story that telegraphs its ending from the beginning, but also telegraphs it every few minutes throughout its entire run. Despite all that telegraphing, it doesn’t actually earn that ending. Animation so bad that the idea it was up for Best Animation and in the same category as the fucking Entertainment District arc of Demon Slayer is insane. It’s a solid 2/10 that gets a boost to 6/10 thanks to a killer soundtrack, and even that comes down to one super iconic song. And the soundtrack is actually from the god damn game anyway! Guys, a 6 out of 10 is a passing grade, but it won’t count toward credit on your transcript.
Now can we please bring on the next seasons for Lycoris Recoil, My Dress Up Darling, Kaguya-sama and Link Click? Please?! (Also, can we please announce more Komi?)
love that perfect frown
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@Vulgar-Boy said in Anime:
Heavenly Delusion - … I will say that the LGBTQ+ element here did disappoint me. …
A wide variety of characters, and LGBTQ+ inclusion that has thus far been respectful. (Please don’t prove me wrong in later episodes, show.)
I watched literally one episode further than I had, and shall rescind this. Darn it, show.
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By contrast: Skip and Loafer’s depictions are absolutely fucking wholesome. Doesn’t gloss over the outside world being occasionally crappy, but protagonist thinks literally nothing of it. Just loves her aunt.
https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/133x4so/mitsumi_and_her_aunt_nao_skip_to_loafer/
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Zom 100: Bucket list of the dead!
We can all relate to having a lousy job and wishing it was over! But this is the next level! I love it so much, over the top and the main character is great!
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Definitely an impactful first episode.
Digging the kinetic energy and artstyle. Wonder how they’ll keep the momentum up when it settles into the plot, but definitely going to stick with it for a few more episodes to find out!
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boy. as much as I tried not to spoil the finale of Attack on Titan for myself, you still can’t help but learn some key facts about it through osmosis.
still, I was surprised to discover how heavy it all was for me, and I thought it was really well done. felt like the end of an era, for a really unique show with some crazy twists…
…until the credits, when the little snapshots just…kept going and going and going. I went from sniffling to, well, laughing at how absurd they get. if you haven’t seen it yet, maybe just shut the show off before they get rolling so you can sit with the poignancy for a while, imho.
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I feel it improved upon the manga, but only… barely. Still frankly alarmed at how many people walked away from the ending with the thought that
Eren was a tragic figure. Hey, chief, why’d you commit mass murder where you butchered 80% of humanity?
Oh, cool cool. Cool, cool.
So yeah, I’m real glad this is over.
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yeah, oof. personally,
I didn’t think he was a tragic figure because his desire to destroy humanity was relatable (that segment was honestly fucking baffling and contradicted almost everything they said before and after it), I found him tragic because the implication was that because he’d observed the future where he had chosen that specific course of action, he was powerless to change it thanks to time paradox/quantum wave function collapse fuckery.there is a really interesting take on determinism vs free will there that makes it engaging to me, buuuut your mileage may vary obviously, considering how problematic a lot of stuff in the show and some of the author’s personal views are/were.
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Overall, I definitely enjoyed it as a popcorn watch. Shallow, surface level, with amazing action animation and over the top nonsensical plot.
I think it’s one of those disconnects where I don’t really dislike the work, I’m just gnashing my teeth at the (very vocal) segment of the fan base that absolutely worships Isayama. I’m going to forever be grateful to this show (and yeah, sword art online) for being a gateway drug to so many people into this medium.
But gosh,
I’m extremely tired of hearing this story hyped up like it’s some literary masterpiece full of foreshadowing. Looking at the structure of things, it’s pretty easy to see that most of the stuff that was supposed to be foreshadowing was backfill. A lot of dangling pieces of that story make absolutely no sense, everything having to do with Historia ended up being of no consequence, and gosh there’s a lot of problematic things to unpack with having Ymir be in love with the person who raped and enslaved her. The 11th hour revelation that Erin murdered his own mother so that he could get revenge for murdering his mother, and the cut line from Armin, thanking him for becoming a mass murderer for their sake. The line doesn’t actually exist in the anime, but it really doesn’t have to.Anyhow, many problems, but I clearly liked it enough to finish it!
In the end, it’s a cultural phenomenon, and it’s very hard for me to complain about more people watching anime.
(I’m just maybe a teeny little bit chafed by the fact that it might run away with anime of the year again don’t mind me.)
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I’m gonna la la la la about AoT because I watch it with my spouse and we paused mid way through season 4 to wait until the entire show was over to finish at once.
We’re watching Shield Hero rn. Boy was that a shock after the first twenty or so minutes.
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Guys, please watch Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End.
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End [Crunchyroll]
Elevator pitch:
Where most stories end, this one begins. Frieren is the quintessential nearly-ageless elf caster who is part of the Hero’s party. Together with her companions, she embarks on a journey of a ‘mere 10 years’, culminating in the defeat of the Demon Lord. All of this offscreen, as our story begins with a celebration of that accomplishment with a backdrop of a beautiful meteor shower that Frieren bemoans as underwhelming - she knows a better spot for it. The party goes their separate ways, agreeing to meet up for the next meteor shower - in a mere 50 years.
What follows is the gradual thaw of an emotionally distant character, learning to not take the passage of time so lightly, and recognizing that every relationship she has is more valuable than she realizes, and a new journey retracing her former party’s steps with her newfound apprentices, doing good deeds, slaying demons and dragons, and facing other trials along the way.
I have an unreasonable
amount of anime under my belt, and this one’s special. I’d recommend it to damn near anybody, even non anime watchers.
It’s slow without being boring, with some of the most peaceful imagery as connective tissue.
It’s earnest without being saccharine,
it explores loss without being mopey and what it means to continue on with the memories of your loved ones always at your side, their life inspiring who you continue to be as a person - that loss is never total as long as there’s someone to carry the memory of you forward.
Its action segments have no right to be as utterly captivating or beautiful as they are for what’s sold as a ‘drama’.
And Frieren is a loot gremlin who can’t help but check every treasure chest. Every. Treasure chest. Even the mimics.
This is the best Fantasy show I’ve seen, hard stop, and it’s worth your time to give it the 3 (or 4) episode test no matter what your tastes in anime are. There’s something to like here for everyone.
(Note: Episodes 1-4 were released as a combined drop and were meant to be watched in one sitting. Optional, of course, but it’ll give you the proper impression of the show’s overall tone vs. just watching Episode 1.)
Did I mention it’s the current number one anime of all time on MAL?
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I ducking CRIED
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I love Frieren so much
