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Anime
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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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Completely agree. There’s some valid criticisms to be had about whether the romance angle was necessary, but yeah. I loved it. And I could damn near print out any given frame and hang it on the wall. So worth it to see it on the big screen.
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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.
