Welcome to another general discussion thread! Feel free to use this thread to talk about things you have watched recently, questions you have, or recommendations you want to give!
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Enormous list of current series with my apologies in advance
Release That Witch - continuation from last season, and EXCELLENT. I really can’t recommend it enough. It’s not particularly groundbreaking (aside from the fact that it’s a donghua done very well in traditional anime style), but it’s one of those series that’s at least an 8/10 in everything - animation, art style, story, characters, setting, music, everything. It’s just really good.
Scum of the Brave - the second cour following on from last season. It’s gotten much better, but it’s still struggling a bit. There’s just been too much exposition and foundation-building and not enough direct story. It’s still interesting, but it’s also sort of tedious. I’ll undoubtedly watch it through to the end though.
The Ramparts of Ice - started out promising, but the FMC has already lost most of the standoffishness that initially defined her and the MMC is a bit too much of an asshole for my tastes. I’m still watching it, but I’m not optimistic.
An Observation Log of My Fiancee Who Calls Herself a Villainess - very enjoyable. Fairly tropish plot of a game fan isekaied into the role of the villainess in her favorite game, but in this one, she’s such a fan that she’s entirely focused on bringing the hero and heroine together. But she’s so unconsciously charming that the hero isn’t having any of that. And meanwhile, the heroine is also a reincarnator, and she’s getting more and more frustrated by the fact that things aren’t going the way they’re “supposed” to. Broadly it’s easy to see where it’s going, but there’s enough detail that it’ll likely still be interesting to watch it unfold, and the characters are quite good.
Snowball Earth - not really working for me. It’s an odd combination of hot blooded mecha vs. kaiju combat in a post-apocalyptic snowbound setting, and Bocchi the Rock style social anxiety and awkwardness and desperate longing for friends, and the two just don’t really work together. Watching the MC immediately switch from square-jawed determinator heroically saving the innocents to sniveling wretch whining about how he has no friends and stuttering and stammering in a blind panic when he tries to actually talk to someone is just too much of a tonal shift, and it destroys my suspension of disbelief.
Akane Banashi - okay so far, but I’m a bit worried. It started out really good, but it’s taking on a sort of shounen action feel - just in the context of rakugo - that’s a bit off-putting. I really like the character of Akane, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to stick with it or not.
Daemons of the Shadow Realm - I think I’m going to have to drop this one. It might be good overall, but the first episode included an utterly loathsome set of events that the series self-evidently wants the audience to just overlook, because the perpetrators “really aren’t all that bad after all because look - see what they’re doing now?” And I just can’t overlook it. It’s poisoned the series for me. I’ve kept with it for the time being, waiting to see if it’ll redeem itself, but it looks more all the time as if it won’t.
Mao - it’s as if it’s the early 2000s again. This reminds me strongly of Inuyasha, and to a lesser degree, the whole range of swords and demons anime of the era, even down to the very traditional art style. And like its progenitors, while it might not be really significant, it’s entertaining enough.
Agents of the Four Seasons: Dance of Spring - really odd and anachronistic mix of traditional gods and goddesses and modern political intrigue. So far, we’ve just been given fairly strong hints that all is not as it seems with the agents of the four seasons - mostly traditional Japanese gods and goddesses - and their shadowy governmental… overseers? controllers? slavemasters? I’m not sure where it’s headed, but I’m along for the ride.
Needy Girl Overdose - very stylized, talky, surreal peek at the current internet, and Vtubing in particular. Lots of symbolism and lots of subtext and lots of philosophizing. It could end up being a sort of 21st century Lain, or it could cringily fail. So far so good, but that’s more that it hasn’t failed than that it’s succeeded.
Nippon Sangoku: The Three Nations of the Crimson Sun - sort of Romance of the Three Kingdoms played out in a post-apocalyptic Japan, as an educated and strategically minded man sets out to reunify the country, currently split into three mutually hostile states. Has an odd but effective artstyle and has been pretty good, but I sort of unintentionally ended up dropping it, mostly because it’s almost work to watch it. I think it might be pretty good, but I’m going to have to binge it some other time or something, because I just sort of end up… not watching it.
Witch Hat Atelier - I loved the first episode, and haven’t watched any more of it since. I’m saving it to binge later.
The Klutzy Class Monitor and the Girl with the Short Skirt (aka The Klutz and the Skirt - probably my favorite abbreviated title ever) - pure, unadulterated fun. Proudly over-the-top animation, great characters, charming interactions and multiple laugh out loud moments in every episode.
Even a Replica Can Fall in Love - very promising. The basic setup is a girl finds herself in a very awkward situation and wishes there was someone else who could handle it for her, and an exact duplicate of herself appears in front of her, so she sends the double out to do it for her. From then on, she can summon the double whenever she wants, and make her go away whenever she wants. Jump ahead some years and she’s now in high school and is becoming something of a bitter and morose shut-in, sending her double out to deal with anything she doesn’t want to deal with. Then the double falls in love.
It’s been solid so far and while it’s too soon to be sure, I’m betting it’s going to be very, very good (and it’s worth noting that the LN original won the Dengeki Novel Grand Prize for its year of publication). At the very least, it’s definitely interesting.
Gals Can’t Be Kind to Otaku? - I’ve been following the manga pretty much from the start, so there aren’t any real surprises, but much like You and I Are Polar Opposites last season, it’s a very good adaptation, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it.
I Made Friends with the Second Prettiest Girl in My Class - similar vein to Gals Can’t Be Kind to Otaku, though I haven’t been following it as a manga, which turned out to be something of a problem. The first episode was sort of off-putting, because it didn’t feel like the supposed pretty girl otaku was sincere. As it turns out, reading the manga, the evidence of her sincerity is sort of subtle at that point, and the adaptation just failed to convey it. With that in mind, it’s settled down and is pretty good, though I prefer Gals.
A Hundred Scenes of Awajima - high drama, shifting alliances and betrayals, warmth and bitterness and even a bit of love played out in the dorms of an old, well-regarded and quietly cutthroat performing arts girls school. It could well be very good - it looked like it was headed that way - but that whole quietly simmering mostly behind each other’s backs drama thing just isn’t for me.
Marika’s Love Meter Malfunction - pure cringe. It started off stupid, but it might’ve been redeemable (and in fact, there’s a stupid one coming up that’s one of my favorites so far). I could’ve even forgiven the ham-handed fanservice. The thing that ultimately killed it for me is that it’s one of those series in which the blind panic is so overwhelming that the characters often don’t even have proper lines.
For example:
(FMC holding out bit of food for MMC): “Here [MMC] - open wide!”
(MMC, internally): “BWWWAAAAAAA…AAAAAAAAHHHH…AAAAAAAHHHHHH!”
And… that’s it pretty much.
My Ribdiculous Reincarnation - the localized title is just about the worst I’ve ever seen, but that aside, I really like this series. It’s over-the-top stupid, but in a good way. The MMC is completely earnest all the time, no matter how ridiculously stupid the things he’s saying are, and his counterpart - the goddess in charge of his isekais - is the perfect foil for his stupidity. And it just doesn’t let up - you barely get a chance to catch your breath between jokes, and all along the way, there’s an astonishing but somehow appropriate mix of art styles. I’m enjoying it.
Ichijouma Mankitsugurashi - amusingly enough, I followed this manga for a while, then just sort of lost interest, and the anime’s already done the same to me. The thing with CGDCT is that they depend almost entirely, in the long run, on the characters and the chemistry between them. And in this one, they just don’t quite click. It’s okay, but that’s about it.
Eren the Southpaw - someone with different tastes might enjoy it, but for me, it’s been almost unwatchably awful. The formula so far has been pretty simple - it’s just been standard shounen action - all hot blood and gritted teeth and ringing declarations of pride and determination - except that it’s all awkwardly centered around art instead of… you know… swords or fists or hairdos or whatever. And for me, that’s pretty much as if someone sat down and said, “Okay - how can we do a series about art and make it as absolutely godawful as possible?”
The only hope that it has for me is that what’s coming up is apparently taking place at some point in the future, when the characters are adults with settled (or unsettled, as the case might be) careers, so hopefully it’ll do away with the shounen garbage and settle down to a decent drama. I’m not too hopeful though - with such a cliched start, I sort of assume that if the storytelling angle does change, it’ll just change to something equally cliched - probably soap opera.
Pshew.
Not quite. Since you’re dropping the series anyways, here’s why all that happened:
Daemons of the Shadow Realm first few volumes
Asa spent the first several years of her life kept in a cage by this village. At some point her parents took her and ran, but they were forced to leave Yuru behind because the people of the village got in their way. She and Gabby have spent all the years since then being targeted by assassins from the village because of the power she has. They even succeeded in kidnapping her once, which is related to her missing eye. The fake Asa in the cage is there purely to keep Yuru around because the village wants him to awaken to the power he potentially might have, and then help to conquer Japan someday. They’ve sent people to attack him in the mountains as a false flag sort of thing multiple times before to try to get his powers to awaken; the only reason he’s still fine is his dad brought him up to be a complete badass. Every adult in the village is complicit in this; they’re told what’s going on when they come of age. Those who aren’t willing to go along with the plan are exiled, which is what “going to the lower world to earn money for the village” actually usually means.
Honestly this one is very very good but it might be better binged anyways.
@Rottcodd@ani.social Is Yomi no Tsugai your first Arakawa Hiromu anime? You can bet there’s more going on than you see in the first episode,
spoiler
since Arakawa’s stories are generally pretty nuanced, and Yamaha-ba was implied to be a suspicious character from the get-go.
I’m cautiously optimistic about this one, but I think it won’t really come into its own until around the middle of the season. Definitely recommend withholding judgement until that point at least.
Of course not.
I don’t recall either Fullmetal Alchemist or Silver Spoon opening with a character chopping an entire village’s adults in half while they screamed in agony and their children looked on, sobbing and screaming in terror and grief. And if they had (FMA had its share of broadly similar moments), we certainly wouldn’t have been expected to then sympathize with the person who so eagerly did it.
I mean - we weren’t expected to sympathize with Shou Tucker were we?
Yes - that was made pretty clear. And I don’t see how it can possibly be relevant to the brutal and horrific murders of a whole bunch of other people.
I haven’t entirely given up on it, if for no other reason than that Gabby hasn’t reapoeared and hasn’t been mentioned, so I don’t know yet how her and her actions are going to be addressed, if at all.
But everything I’ve seen so far indicates that they’re going to just be sort of swept under the carpet, and she’s going to be treated as not so bad after all, because she must be okay because she won’t kill children (even though she will leave them sobbing next to the corpses of their parents). So I’m not optimistic.
Thanks - saves me having to wonder if it might’ve been worth it after all.
I’m sure there are people to whom a story that unfolds like that is appealing. I’m not one of them.
Unsurprising, since the Mao manga is the latest from Rumiko Takahashi, who also did Inuyasha (and Ranma ½).
😄 That’d explain it…