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First time posting in one of these. Before I get into the current stuff: I’m looking for some anime recs. I always watch stuff when I exercise and at the moment if there’s no current episode out I’m out of stuff to watch.
In general I like a mix of stuff. Comedy, slice of life, romance, action/adventure stuff can be fine as long as there’s something more interesting about it than typical shounen, some shojo, and some weirder things. I’m also fine with some trash recs as long as they might be funny.
Not a complete list obviously, but here is a sampling of shows I’ve liked over the years in no particular order: * on things that I especially liked.
- Most Trigger shows. *
- Most Shaft Shows.
- Most Kyoani shows. *
- Zombieland Saga *
- Hinamatsuri
- Bookworm
- A Place Further Than the Universe *
- Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken
- Konosuba *
- Frieren *
- Apothacary Diaries
- Spy x Family
- Jojo’s *
- The first 2 Fate shows + The cooking show.
- Dress Up Darling *
- Dan Da Dan
- Bocchi the Rock *
- Ya Boi Kongming
- Apocalypse Hotel *
- Catcher in the Ballpark
- Call of the Night
- Slime isekai
- World in Colors
- A Sign of Affection
- Train to the End of the World
- Goblin Slayer
- Zom 100
- Iruma
- To Your Eternity
- FMA
- Mob Psycho 100 *
- First season of One Punch Man
- Magical Index/Scientific Railgun
- Machikado Mazoku *
- Kakegurui
- Death Note
- Golden Kamuy
- My Hero Academia Vigilantes
- Oshi No Ko
- You and I are Polar Opposites *
- Let this Grieving Soul Retire
- Campfire Cooking isekai
- Bakarina
- Dr Stone
- Witch Watch
I’d go on but this is getting long and I’m getting into the newer stuff I’ve watched with friends and we don’t always label the shows with their actual names lol. So hard to remember.
I guess in the interest of formatting I’ll just put the current season discussion in a comment.
I am going to be posting a new weekly thread in a couple hours, so you might have some better luck if you repost this question there, but I have made a pass at some recommendations below. You have a lot of the recent ones I have enjoyed. Some others that come to mind:
- Lycoris Recoil - Imagine John Wick but with anime girls
- Villainess Level 99 - the animation quality isn’t great, but the humor is and it wraps up nicely, not some cliffhanger that will never resolve
- Mushishi - Anthology series…don’t binge this one, take it slow and let your brain chew on each episode
- Silent Witch - kind of like if you made Bocchi into an OP witch
- 100 Girlfriends - Strap in to experience the best harem MC out there - Rentaro
- Dungeon People - A great SoL about the folks working behind the scenes to make a dungeon work
- Endo and Kobayashi - a fun take on the villainess genre; if you like tsunderes, you will like this one
- Fruits Basket (2019) - one of the pillars of shoujo, and for a good reason
- Slime 300 - a very laid back SoL, basically a CGDCT
- Kino’s Journey (2017) - anthology series…if you really like this, then you can watch the older 2003 series as well for some different stories
- Love After World Domination - the red ranger falls in love with an enemy general…
- Orb: On the Movements of the Earth - an anime about heliocentrism…yeah, it sounds weird as a premise, but it works…trust me.
- Heavenly Delusion - Traveling across a post-apocalyptic Japan and things are kind of off…
- Shimoneta - a world in which even the smallest dirty talk/gesture is literally illegal, meet the brave warriors fighting back against this censorship with the power of horny (note: don’t watch this with anybody else in the room)
- Yuri on Ice - dramatic ice skating (boys version) - Medalist is the girls version, but I haven’t watched it, so I can’t vouch for it, but I have heard good things.
Gotcha.
God I’m such a weeb I’ve already seen quite a few of these lol. But there are some ones I haven’t seen. I’ll give those a watch, thanks!
Before I get into the current stuff: I’m looking for some anime recs. I always watch stuff when I exercise and at the moment if there’s no current episode out I’m out of stuff to watch.
Hmm. A couple of older suggestions, then. First, The Slayers, which is a comedic fantasy series. Second, Kyo Kara Maoh, an isekai series that ran a decade or more before the term “isekai” was coined, also on the lighter side. Be warned that one of the gags is that the (male) protagonist ends up accidentally engaged to another male character, although nothing much ever comes of it, so if that kind of thing bothers you, give that one a pass. Those should keep you busy for a little while—I can’t remember how many eps KKM ran to, but Slayers was 104 plus OAVs, movies, and miscellanea.
Current Season: (Context: Most shows I watch with a group of friends and we cut down until we have 16. I will sometimes watch some of the cut stuff on my own. I’ll start with friend stuff.)
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Witch Hat Atelier: Enjoying this show. It’s reasonably high quality, creative, etc. I’d say that it hasn’t quite reached the level I enjoyed Frieren yet, but solid none the less.
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Short Skirt and Clutz: We’ve been surprised by how much we’ve enjoyed this. It’s still a mostly generic romcom, but it just has a good vibe to it that makes it feel different enough to have made the list.
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Always a Catch: Always down for some trashy villainess show. We had also watched May I Ask for One Final Thing and liked it. Is this a new subgenre: Vilaness who beats the shit out of people? Sign me up.
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Kirio Fanclub: One of the standouts of the season. It’s just really funny. Good character dynamics, some funny scenarios, and most importantly: Goofy anime faces.
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Slime: Oh boy, now we’re getting EVEN BIGGER MEETINGS! We still kind of enjoy this, but man it’s such a meme at this point it’s hard not to joke about it.
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Bookworm: The first anime that made me want to go read the source material. I’ve read all the books starting after season 2 and I really enjoyed it. Now that I’m a filthy source reader, I can see why some might not be completely thrilled with the adaptation. The animation is pretty basic and it skips over a lot of stuff, but I kind of see that as being necessary. It’s a LONG series. If we ever had a hope of getting a full adaptation they need to be choosy about what they spend their time on. Also one of my friends is also a source reader and the other isn’t, so it’s been kind of funny knowingly listen to him speculate or get confused by stuff we know from the books.
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Iruma: This is just such a great show. Fun, creative, etc.
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Ribdiculous Reincarnation: We were pleasantly suprised by this show. Somewhat original premise, decently fun character banter, and I’m always down for mixing up animation styles. It reminds me of Pop Team Epic.
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Scum of the Brave (Continuing): This is fine. I’m not sure if we would have definitely kept watching it if it ended and then we got a S2 later, but inertia carried it to a spot on the list. Not to say it’s bad, there just isn’t anything terribly special about it. We do get a kick out of trying to figure out what their card game is though lol.
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Marriage Toxin: Unique premise with fun characters. My only gripe with it is I don’t think we needed the stupid magic shonen battle system. It takes up way too much of the runtime to explain all of that when they could have just had him be a regular badass hitman and had a better mix between the action and romcom stuff.
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The Ramparts of Ice: I clocked this one as being from the same author as You and I Are Polar Opposites when they did the chibi bits. Really good in both similar and different ways to the first show. Solid character writing and it’s nice having characters who can more directly talk about their feelings with each other. The first one also jumped the will they won’t they by just starting with them in a relationship. This show has some of the will they won’t they, but it’s more tolerable than normal because the characters are interacting with each other in very natural ways. I haven’t even been sure who the ships would be until somewhat recently. It’s not like some romcoms where I’m just shouting at my screen: “OH MY GOD IT’S SO OBVIOUS! SOMEBODY SAY SOMETHING!”
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Akane-Banashi: It’s a topic I didn’t know about. I like the character design and personality of Akane. I just wish that the show would let us see more of the performances uninterrupted. I don’t want characters telling me why something is good. I want to experience it from the action itself. The commentary can be done before or after.
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Classroom of Black Cat and the Witch: The “Wait this trash show is actually kind of good” of the season.
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Daemons of the Shadow Realm: It’s ok but kind of frustrating. The opening episode went for shock value and tried to hook us with the intrigue of the story and then… idk they’ve just been kind of fafing about. It’s driving me nuts how they’ve met Asa and they just straight up haven’t asked her why the fuck she murdered everyone in their village. It’s not even just that I want to know, it also doesn’t feel natural that the characters would be interacting the way they are given the inciting incident.
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NIPPON SANGOKU: Interesting show with cool animation, but as it’s went on, I just kept thinking “Wait, why did this need to be set in a post apocalypse?” It’s pretty much just a period drama. The story barely makes any use of the setting.
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KILL BLUE: Decent action comedy. It’s not amazing but it’s fine for what it is.
As for stuff I’ve been watching on my own:
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I ended up watching a pair of romcoms that are basically just the same premise: Nerdy guy makes friends with a blonde gyaru and black haired girl in class, bonding over some shared otaku interests. They’re both enjoyable, but my god it’s hard keeping track of what happened in which series.
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An Observation Log of My Fiancée Who Calls Herself a Villainess: Interesting twist. Not amazing, but entertaining enough. After the pink haired girl snaps, I kind of thought it would be revealed that she is also an isekai, but that hasn’t come up, so idk why she thinks the same way as protag.
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Pardon the Intrusion: Decently fun shojo rom com.
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Warrior Princess and Barbarian King: A new entry into a shojo romance sub-genre I’ve decided to call either “Beauty and the Beast” or “Stockholm syndrome” romance. It’s alright. And then suddenly: BAM! IT’S AN INCEST SHOW!
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Dr Stone: This season has gone full “Draw the rest of the owl.” It has completely jumped the shark for it being believable that they’ve been able to reconstruct these complicated technologies so quickly. Even if Senku is ultra smart, technology is built on other technology and economics. It’s hard to build stuff without excess labor from agriculture, precision tools, machinery, etc. In the earlier seasons one basic piece of tech would be a whole adventure and now it’s just a throwaway part of an episode.
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Vending Machine Isekai: It’s still just an amusing premise with ok characters. It’s fun enough to watch though. Also I cannot believe all the different kinds of vending machines there are. I had to go look one up recently to see if it was real: They had a pizza vending machine. As a New Yorker, what kind of unholy crime have they committed against pizza? Why Japan? Then it turns out it’s actually an American company and… I’m more disappointed.
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Re;Zero: I bounced off watching it with friends sometime in S2 because I just found it was way too bloated with characters yapping about lore and I had forgotten enough from S1 that I just kind of zoned out after a while watching it. I decided to give it another chance with a rewatch to see if maybe we could watch S4 together since friends have kept up with it. It was a bit better on second viewing as a binge watch from S1, but I think I still stand by S2 not being that great. It’s just not as colossally bad as I thought it was. I ended up continuing but didn’t get to S4 before we decided what shows we were watching. It’s been alright. I am kind of annoyed about the memory loss thing that just happened. It feels like something to just kill forward momentum when we were maybe getting somewhere interesting.
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Wistoria Wand and Sword: We can’t remember if we actually watched S1 or not, so I ended up rewatching it before catching up on S2. Oh my god this show is so fucking stupid. It’s definitely making for a good trash watch.
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I watched through Overlord, rewatching S1 and going on to the rest. It was suitable trash.
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I’ve been showing my mom some anime. She’s been enjoying Bookworm, Eizoken, Little Witch Academia, A Place Further Than the Universe, Kongming, and I think one or two more that I’m blanking on at the moment. In particular it’s been really nice rewatching LWA. It’s like the 3rd or 4th time I’ve watched it. I love that show.
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I completed both seasons of Assassination Classroom last week.
My initial impression of season 1 was just “meh”. But the more I watched it, the more I enjoyed it. The humor was hitting for me, plus I liked the cast of 3E. It was nothing groundbreaking and has all the usual shonen tropes, but in terms of entertaining value it was fantastic.
The second season though…
It’s obvious that they were building up towards the climax all throughout season 1 and the early parts of season 2, which means my expectation was built up, setting a higher bar for it to clear.
And yet it exceeded my expectations anyway.
In hindsight, it did everything right for me. The comedy and soundtracks suit my taste, the main cast of characters were sufficiently developed for me to care about them, and are actually sufficiently smart, etc.
There are a few things that I could nitpick here and there, but if there’s one thing that I must call out, it’s that some of cast weren’t given enough screen time, and thus weren’t sufficiently fleshed out. However, I do acknowledge that it is tough to balance the writing of such a big group of characters versus pacing and duration. So really the anime did as best as it could in this regard too.
A more meta complaint is: I picked this up because I wanted something lighthearted after catching up on all seasons of Made in Abyss. But it ended up being a gut punch.
But it’s well worth it; definitely going into my Peak Shonen list
Not exactly a unique opinion, but that cliffhanger was wild. I need the next episode ASAP.
Is this the thread you meant to post that in?
Idk man. Thread was about what you’re watching and I just finished that episode and had to post somewhere get it out of my system.
Probably would have helped to include a title, but I figured the gif was a giveaway
Watched a sort of interesting movie - Kimi no Koe wo Todoketai aka I Want to Deliver Your Voice.
It was a valiant attempt at a heartwarming slice-of-life, and had a pretty good central idea and nice art and character designs, but that was about it. The story was told too fitfully - sometimes too quickly and sometimes too slowly and with too many gaps, so it didn’t flow as well as it should have. The animation, in spite of the nice design, was consistently subpar. The voice acting seemed to fail in random directions - sometimes too frantic, sometimes too dull, sometimes too loud, sometimes too quiet and so on. Overall, more than anything else, it felt like it was made by an unusually talented amateur anime club that got in way over its head - like it knew what it was trying to do, and occasionally achieved it, but mostly came up just a bit short, not through any lack of effort or anything like that, but just because the skill and experience wasn’t there to add that last bit of polish that would’ve made it genuinely good.
And I suspect that that’s pretty much what it actually was. It was made by Madhouse rather than an amateur anime club, but just from the feel of it, I’d be willing to bet that they took a few of their newer employees and maybe a few older employees who had never quite made it and said, “Here - here’s a bit of a budget - you go do this and let us know when it’s done.” Like the management didn’t really care one way or another and they were just sort of going through the motions to put out a slice-of-life drama, so the handful of employees were pretty much on their own with their pittance of a budget, and did the best they could with it, which was sort of admirable, but only sort of.
I liked it all in all, but it could easily have been much better.
Current stuff:
It struck me the other day that this has been an oddly mediocre season. It has a remarkable number of anime that are somewhat above average, but it also has essentially none that are much better than that. There hasn’t been a standout either way really - either amazingly good or amazingly bad. It’s just a whole lot of “Yeah - that’s pretty decent I guess.”
An Observation Diary of My Fiancee is still holding as my personal favorite of the season. As soon as you say “reincarnated as the villainess,” you’re notably getting into current cliche territory, but the story is told from a unique angle and has taken some unusual twists and turns, it neatly balances humor and drama and, most notably, Bertia is simply adorable, which is not only pleasant, but plot-relevant.
The Ramparts of Ice keeps getting better, essentially entirely because the characters keep growing and gaining detail as we get to know them better. What started out as a set of pretty straightforward stereotypes is becoming four very distinct personalities. Neat trick that - more anime should try it.
Agents of the Four Seasons appears to be setting up for a showdown, but is still scant on details, so that’s necessarily, and unfortunately, fill-in-the-blank conjecture. Overall, the series almost managed to be a good mix of traditional ideas of Japanese gods and goddesses with crass modern opportunism and faceless government intrigue, but it’s played its hand too close to its chest for too long. I have some pretty solid guesses about where it’s headed, but that’s all based on the most oblique of hints - even at this late date, they’ve revealed essentially nothing of any substance. And unfortunately, that makes it near certain that the end is going to feel rushed, because they’re going to have to reveal too much too quickly in order to fill in all the blanks.
In poking around a bit the other day, I stumbled on a very simple fact about Akane Banashi that, had I known it from the start, would’ve saved me having to wrestle with the then-unfulfilled fear that it wasn’t going to actually settle anything, and was instead heading toward bland shounen action perpetual motion - it’s a Shounen Jump series. So of course that’s what it’s heading toward - there’s literally no alternative.
I’m likely not going to drop Akane Banashi, but only because I’ve come this far so I might as well see it out. I don’t expect any surprises.
I have effectively dropped a bunch of series, but none of them because I’m no longer interested in watching them. Instead, it’s just started to feel too much like work keeping up with series that combine unusual settings and a fair amount of mystery and intrigue - having to re-acclimate myself to the setting and story every week, only to get a bit of it, then have to wait until next week for more. So instead I’m going to binge them all later. That includes Snowball Earth, Nippon Sangoku, Killed Again Mr. Detective, Needy Girl Overdose and Scum of the Brave.
And My [horribly localized] Reincarnation is still a surprising gem. Not only is it consistently funny and impressively animated - it keeps revealing additional details about the characters that are interesting in their own right. And funny.
Kimi no Koe wo Todoketai
Kimikoe: that’s in my PTW with a very interesting title that somehow combined three titles; Kimi no [na Wa] Koe [no Katachi] wo Todoketai [Kimi no Suizou wo Tabetai].
And I suspect that that’s pretty much what it actually was. It was made by Madhouse rather than an amateur anime club, but just from the feel of it, I’d be willing to bet that they took a few of their newer employees and maybe a few older employees who had never quite made it and said, “Here - here’s a bit of a budget - you go do this and let us know when it’s done.” Like the management didn’t really care one way or another and they were just sort of going through the motions to put out a slice-of-life drama, so the handful of employees were pretty much on their own with their pittance of a budget, and did the best they could with it, which was sort of admirable, but only sort of.
I liked it all in all, but it could easily have been much better.
From what I read about the movie, Kimikoe walked so Yorimoi (A Place Further Than The Universe) could run. If you’ve watched the latter, that’s essentially the finished product. The Windows 7 to the Windows Vista, if you will.
A Place Further Than The Universe is actually pretty much at the top of my current “I know it’s good so I’m in no hurry to actually watch it” TBW.
So the timing couldn’t be better, I guess.
I can already see some similarities in the character designs.
And in case I wasn’t clear, I would recommend Kimikoe, just so long as you keep your expectations in check. There’s nothing really wrong with it and some great moments, and the setting is very good. It just feels a bit… underdone.
I can already see some similarities in the character designs.
The first thought I had when I first learned of Kimikoe was why does its MC look like Shirase? 😆
I’ve been catching up with Nippon Sangoku, and it’s brilliant!
It’s produced by Studio Kafka, which is in the Twin Engine group of studios, and the animation is just super
It’s intelligently written, has an interesting and charming set of characters, and a very seinen feel to the plot.
Under the contrivance of a post-nuclear holocaust Japan that has reverted to Tokugawa technology level, this is effectively a Warring States drama, set in the ruins of modern Japan.
Although I do find it curious that nobody remembers how to make analog electronics, radio, or even industrial machinery from the post-WW2 era that Japan was famous for.
Edit: Best show of the season so far for me, but there’s a lot that I haven’t watched.
Although I do find it curious that nobody remembers how to make analog electronics, radio, or even industrial machinery from the post-WW2 era that Japan was famous for.
Analogy: We can make SLS rockets but the Saturn V is essentially lost technology. It’s either impossible or prohibitively expensive to make another Saturn V.
Or, to put it another way, supply chains. Our current technology was built up by making stuff to make stuff to make stuff to make stuff etc. If we suddenly lost access to modern factories, we might be able to hold on to late 19th/early 20th century (~WWI-era) tech. Move much past that, and you can no longer bootstrap yourself up in a reasonable time by starting with a talented blacksmith, a pole lathe, and some gumption—you need complex machinery, an electrical grid, and so on. (In the case of the Saturn V, we’ve lost just the last couple of layers of stuff-to-make-stuff. We could probably recover it if we really, really needed to, but it would be prohibitively expensive, and that’s without considering environmental controls and the like.)
It’s remarkable how much small stuff is vital and nearly impossible to make in reasonable amounts without a mechanized process (and perishable enough that you can’t keep them on shelves forever). Things like ball bearings and transistors. We don’t think about them much, but they’re vital for (respectively) modern mechanical and electronic technologies.
Plus, Japan isn’t exactly the most mineral-resource-rich country. They have little oil, no aluminum ore, only small amounts of iron and copper, and what’s left of their coal apparently isn’t of the best quality. It’s difficult to maintain much technology without at least some resources.
They’ve maybe regressed a little further than strictly necessary in this show, but not by much.
(What bothers me more is that they have food supply issues, and yet they apparently reserve a fair amount of land for growing . . . tobacco. Not exactly the smartest decision.)
TIL I’m surprised to learn that Japan indeed does grow tobacco.
You can’t put a price on looking cool adult-y and drawing those smoke curls to fill manga panels.
