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Anime
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@Tez Utena is in my top five animes of all time. I showed my little one, and she loved it! Yes it is very much that! I’m on ep five of…season 1.
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Yes. They’re adorable.
Omagerd, she is adorable.
But Chuatury “Chuchu” Panlunch (aka Punchy McPuncherson) is awesome. That right hook!
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RIGHT! I love this character, might be my favorite so far!
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@BloodAngel Haha! I love how the one girl is just… watching the other get knocked out.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4T52cS8FZk
Just, that made my day!
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@BloodAngel Hehe, that was pretty cute.
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Now I need season 2, that was some of the best anime I have seen in a very long time! Thank you everyone for pushing me into finally watching it!
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Watched Witch from Mercury. Thanks to whoever in this thread mentioned it first, because holy shit was that good. It’s like, okay, we’re starting with something that seems as complex and nuanced as The Expanse, and then we’re going to have a bunch of episodes with the cutest shit you can imagine happening between giant robots punching each other, and then the last two episodes will be more shocking and tightly paced than the best episode of Game of Thrones and the last scene will have your jaw on the floor.
I also finally finished Summer Time Rendering, which was a fantastic mystery show. I’ve seen people say that it’s perfect, and while I wouldn’t quite agree with that, it comes pretty close. If nothing else go into it blind and watch the first episode. If that ending doesn’t hook you, I donno what will.
The show that was meant to air here as Heavenly Delusion, but which Disney still has listed as Tengoku Daimakyo, started on Saturday. I can see why some people have considered it one of the most anticipated new shows. It’s a neat little post-apocalyptic mystery and I look forward to seeing how the two stories we’re seeing so far come together. It’s also gorgeous, with fantastic backgrounds and animation. I like that none of the characters are particularly cute, too.
I binged Tomo-chan Is A Girl!! yesterday, just because I was home alone and needed some background noise and the whole series was dubbed and I’m burnt out on My Hero Academia. It was really cute. Tomo is crushing on her childhood best friend, but she’s tall and tough and he thinks of her as one of the guys. Cue romantic comedy hijinx. The side characters, especially agent of chaos Carol, make this one. Absolutely wild that Jad Saxton voices both deadpan and manipulative Misuzu in this, while also voicing the chaotic Chika Fujiwara in Love is War.
I also did the one-two punch of I Want To Eat Your Pancreas and A Silent Voice. Both are 10/10s, but I found them more uplifting than crushingly depressing. Did they get tears? Oh, plenty. But neither wrecked me fully. Not like every other fucking episode of To Your Eternity, for instance.
Apparently becoming an anime guy is part of my midlife crisis, since I was an anime guy as a kid and then just completely dropped it like twenty years ago and now I’m watching more of it than ever. There’s just so damn much.
love that perfect frown
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That’s a great list! This may be the most basic recommendation of all time given it was wildly popular when it released, but you may dig Your Name based on that list of shows.
Apparently becoming an anime guy is part of my midlife crisis, since I was an anime guy as a kid and then just completely dropped it like twenty years ago and now I’m watching more of it than ever. There’s just so damn much.
There are far more costly vices, and there are a great many worthwhile stories to be found in this medium. (Though many are saddled with some degree of Anime Bullshit.)
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That’s a great list! This may be the most basic recommendation of all time given it was wildly popular when it released, but you may dig Your Name based on that list of shows.
Your Name is a 10/10 for me. I’ve sinced devoured all of Shinkai and am eagerly awaiting Suzume, even tho none of the IMAXes around here have it at a time that is at all convenient for me.
Oh, I should also add Cyberpunk Edgerunners. I figured I’d give it another try after giving up on it pretty quickly before. The story is pretty good, not great, but good. And I still found the animation pretty lacking. Lots of static, empty backgrounds or repeated angles with minimal movement in them used over and over. Killer soundtrack, tho. It shouldn’t have been 2022 Anime of the Year. It wasn’t better than Spy x Family, Ranking of Kings or the surprising Lycoris Recoil. (Which makes for a good combo with Witch from Mercury if you like to taut action paired with girls who are definitely going to be in love eventually.) And to be entirely honest, they really dropped the ball since the best anime of 2022, and perhaps all time?!, Akiba Maid War, didn’t even make the dang list.
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YAY! It’s back! SO GOOD! The witch from Mercury!
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Heck yeah, Suletta sundays!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEOrYZhMsvw
I saw that and it made me watch EP 1. I love the concept. But I’m debating if it will be worth watching still.
Otaku are now illegal! OH NO!
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I found it to be something of a fever dream - like they made a pilot for a show and then just decided ‘eh, sure, this can be episode 1’.
Levels of disjointed that I have not seen since FLCL (No shade on FLCL, but it’s trippy.) Plenty of great cuts of animation, which… I mean, also very FLCL.
Not sold on it.
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The spouse and I are binging Attack on Titan. I stg if Eren doesn’t grow up and stop being so whiny I am going to throw him out of a window!
I just finished rewatching all the way through to the first part of the finale. Man, what a show. Buckle up!!
Eren finally grew up and Armin finally got rid of his awful hair cut!
I feel bad for
DaddyMikasa. Her love for Eren can only come to misery and pain. Also, if I weren’t already married I’d want to marry Levi. -
Saw Suzume. Absolutely destroyed me. I took my nine year old and she climbed into my lap to try and comfort me.
It may not be as good as Your Name, the way it hit me was in a way that was very personal to me and likely won’t be experienced by the majority of people, but Suzume will stick with me forever…
love that perfect frown
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Okay. I’ve had a little bit of time to let things cook. (And watch far too many things.)
There’s a frankly absurd list of anime this season that’s ‘worth watching’ or better.
Here’s what I consider the ‘Or Better’ so far:
Romance / Comedies / Slice of Life
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Insomniacs after School - This show is just an absolute vibe. If you’ve ever struggled with sleeplessness, this show’s started out as worthwhile right out of the gate. The weight of facing a day with very little sleep, the irritability, the nodding off, and then when it’s time to sleep… realizing that you’re more awake than you’ve been all day. They’ve gloriously rendered that, and added a slow burn romance on top of it as two characters experiencing the same crush of insomnia spend time together in the night and early morning hours.
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Skip and Loafer - From the boonies fresh into high school in Tokyo, our protagonist has a dream - she’s going to be the top of her class, never make a single slip-up, and get a cushy job in mid-level politics! The only thing standing in her way is that she… kinda makes horrible choices. Like rejecting help navigating Tokyo’s metro system and getting lost on her first day, when she’s supposed to give the commencement speech. Or staying up so late obsessing over how to introduce herself to the class that she inevitably botches it. The chemistry between her and the male lead is believable, and she’s utterly clueless, making it a great start for a romcom.
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Loving Yamada at Lv999! - This is punching above its concept when it comes to comedic timing and how endearing everybody is. Basically, our lead started playing an MMO with her boyfriend - until he dumped her for someone he met in the game. At a special in-person promotional event, she happens to run smack into one of her guildmates who takes the game way, way more seriously than anyone else in the otherwise casual guild, and he’s every bit as difficult to talk to as he is in the game. But oh no - he’s hot. The comedic timing has been a major hit for me, and I look forward to every episode.
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Konosuba - An Explosion on this Wonderful World! - It’s more Konosuba. If you liked that, you know you’re in for a good time. If you didn’t like that, you can avoid it! This one’s a prequel, following the childhood and formative years of the party’s inept wizard, who only knows one devastating (or sometimes utterly useless) spell that drains all of her mana instantly - Explosion.
Action/Adventure
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Demon Slayer: Swordsmith Village Arc - Unshockingly, this is off to a fun start. Being real, this is just a shonen show that’s doing shonen better than any other shonen is right now, and the animation of Ufotable is frankly without equal when it comes to 2D/3D compositing. The story is unlikely to go somewhere we don’t expect, but it’s gonna look damn good while it gets there - there’s a reason this show is as wildly popular as it is. Not reinventing the wheel, but it’s a fun, accessible ride.
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Hell’s Paradise - Speaking of looking damn good, MAPPA is screaming back with another wonderfully animated show after last season’s Chainsaw Man. This show is big on spectacle.
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Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury - It’s been talked about a lot in this thread, but if you’re lukewarm on the idea of mecha shows or the stigma of ‘Gundam’ as a glorified excuse to sell plastic legos (Don’t hate me, Gunpla fans), you should still give this one a shot. It’s self-enclosed, you don’t need to know a single thing about Gundam to start here, and it’s got wonderful animation, good characterization, and progressive themes. And tomatoes.
Serious
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Heavenly Delusion - The world’s ended. We’re in post-apocalpyse land, and two young traveling companions are (for different reasons) seeking a place that could be defined as ‘heaven’. Whether that’s a farm called the ‘heaven of tomatoes’ or a prefecture in Tokyo that was ‘like heaven’, they themselves seem to have little idea. Dangerous beasts lurk in the wilds, as well as the ever-present threat of other humans. At the same time, there’s a world without any such problems. A clean, idyllic walled off community, where children don’t see the outside world. These dueling narratives seem destined to clash in to one another. This came out of left field for me, and it features wonderful artistic and tonal decisions, beautiful and terrifying monster design, and horrific elements without being overly cynical. A wide variety of characters, though it fumbles some good opportunities.
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My Home Hero - There’s nothing especially heroic going on here. A father pieces together that his daughter is being physically abused by her boyfriend, and happens to overhear a conversation the boyfriend is having with one of his friends - apparently he has a history for conning women out of their money and oh hey, occasionally oopsy-daisy roughing them up too hard and killing them. He’s Yakuza, and his actions are swept under the rug. This conversation leads to an altercation, and Yakuza boyfriend ends up dead. Now, a mother and father need to dispose of a body, and dodge the Yakuza while keeping their daughter safe. Very grim in tone. Pretty cut and dry Crime/Thriller category.
Golf
- Birdie Wing, Season 2 - Golf. Golf, the anime. The anime of Golf. I hate golf, so this shouldn’t work at all for me. It’s so dumb that it circles back around to good. It’s like if someone mixed Hotshots Golf with the Yakuza series of games. Participating in the seedy underbelly of Underground Golf Matches, our protagonist learned to golf using only a Driver and calls her shots ‘bullets’, and golf betting crime syndicates and a bright-eyed prodigy who wants to beat the protagonist in ‘pure’ golf and save her from betting golf, and … you’ll either bounce right off this, or you’ll embrace the schlock, and if you can manage the latter, it’s an intensely fun ride. And also stupid.
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