Last week, I watched Mononoke Movie III: The Curse of the Serpent. It is another part of the series that maintains the high standard of its predecessors. Although the pacing is rather fast and I felt a bit lost at the start, I managed to piece everything together as the story unfolded, so it didn’t spoil the viewing experience. In this regard, the first installment was actually the most confusing for me, whereas the second and third handle things much better. Even though the film follows a familiar structure – making the outcome fairly predictable – it successfully creates a suspenseful atmosphere. Visually, things remain unchanged: it looks fantastic. The highly original art style is one of the series’ standout features, and it looks great here too. Unfortunately, the version released on Netflix suffers from a low bitrate during action-heavy sequences, resulting in noticeable visual artifacts. If you want to watch the film for its visuals, you might be better off waiting for the Blu-ray release, which is expected in about two or three weeks. Overall, the movie was really good – 9/10.

Continuing my round-up of last season’s series:

You and I Are Polar Opposites - Season 2

More fluffy, wholesome romance like in season 1. And not just of the main couple, but the side couples too! I gotta say, having gained the familiarity of its formula in season 1, some of its magic has fizzled out for me by th. This is meta but it’s kinda like the ennui of romantic relationships, isn’t it?

However, though formulaic, it still does its bread-and-butter well: its deep characterisation of the main cast. There were also some peak moments sprinkled throughout the season that made for great highlights.

Overall, I still enjoyed this season of Polar Opposites a lot. And it’s nice to see a complete adaptation of a story, which is quite rare AFAIK.

Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation - Season 3

Honestly, one-third of the way through, I was convinced this season of MT is an interlude - a bridging season between arcs where things actually happened.

So I was pleasantly surprised when we reach the climax of the season and drama started happening. And as other participants in the weekly threads never failed to remind us, it is peak fiction alright. It’s somewhat twisted but I was hooked watching the misery porn.

Without going too much into spoilers, Rudy still has much growing up to do. We have seen him grown as a person, overcoming his past traumas, but his maturity (if that’s the right word) is still stuck in the past. Excluding that one initial trigger, everything else that happened thereafter was all his own doing, nobody else to blame.

Since Saga of Tanya the Evil is also airing this season, I was wondering if Tanya could have done better than Rudy in the same situation. After all, Tanya is smart unlike Rudy. But I quickly perished that thought when I realised that Tanya is lacking in wisdom too. He/she would have easily been baited through some other means.

Anyway, to sum things up: peak story and story-telling.

P.S. I don’t think the characters’ flaws are reflective of the author’s personal flaws. I think they are just that good at writing flawed characters.

It has somewhat went out of fashion by now, and nobody asked for it, but here’s a summary / recap of my post-season thoughts in the form of a tierlist. After all, it’s not very often that I am following this many series in one season.

Notes:

• series are tiered (and scored) based on how much I enjoyed them, or how much I looked forward to each new episode
• series are sorted by alphabetical order within each tier
• if an anime isn’t on this list, that means I didn’t complete it - either because I did not start on it, or because I dropped it
• long-series running series like Pokemon Horizons are excluded