You know I haven’t seen a whole lot of anime, so sue me, but I’ll kind of agree with this take. They’re both pretty good anime, and probably even great, and an easy recommendation, right. At the same time, they really don’t inspire me in any way, or bring up like, interesting philosophical subject matter really at all, which are things that are value in media more than like. Cool fight scenes, and an accessible story.

Also, an aside, but these shows don’t have that great of fight scenes. They have pretty good “action”, I guess, pretty good animation, but fight scenes? I wouldn’t say they’re well written or choreographed, they’re about as basic as you can get. FMAB gets some points for having inventive solutions that crop up occasionally as a result of the setting’s alchemy and real chemical reactions and stuff, but that’s about it. Otherwise both of these shows are kind of extremely basic when it comes to their action. Both in the way that it’s conventionally written, but also in their direction and choreography. I think stylistically I might be opposed to anime generally, in this regard, as a medium that has, almost inherently, no limitations (being animation, right), and as a kind of, general style, that tends to place the setup basically right before the payoff happens. Rather than sort of gradually building up to more well-founded action scenes. In action choreography, maybe I just have kind of, infamously high standards for this stuff, or have different tastes from the norm, cause every time I’ve seen “great anime action” it’s always like, the most incomprehensible, stiffly animated, impact frame yutapon cube sakuga nonsense you could ever imagine.

I dunno, am I insane for the take the the vast majority of action choreography is better done when it’s grounded into an actual physicality, and implicit physical ruleset, rather than like, appreciating the tradeoff that comes with not doing that, the tradeoff of spectacle and absurdity?

You know, it’s been pretty good so far, I’d even say, really good, probably, and it has an advantage over FMA:B in that I don’t find the comedy kind of, grating and annoying, and I find it actually funny sometimes, even if it’s mostly just weird and kind of pervy or whatever. Not like, fanservicey, but it does feel like the comedy is just, sex-based, or something? I dunno. I might just be like overblowing it in my brain.

With all that being said, FMA:B is definitely better still. Frieren has specific arcs, FMA:B just straight up has an overarching story that basically never stops and never really falls into, like, specific sections. I dunno, I guess that’s mostly a pacing thing, but if you were to ask me which one I liked more on that basis, I would say FMA:B every time. There are some other anime that can match that pacing, right, but most of the time they end up being kind of older more adult-oriented animation, and they don’t really have as broad of appeal as FMA:B, so I think it still takes the GOAT position.

Frieren is really good though, I will give it that.

Damn, dead as hell in here, huh? Weird, I guess anime’s kind of mainstream enough by now that it’s kinda out of the purview of your federated lemmy nerds. Motherfuckers care a whole lot about linux and leftist politics, shit’s crazy.

Anyways, I found this episode to be pretty good, pretty decent. Unlike a couple of the past episodes, I didn’t notice any real stand out sequences of animation, like in the episode where laios goes into the painting, and they have the building joke where he eats a bunch, or the episode with the cockatrice, where they do a double reflection in the cockatrice’s eye, in a really impressive shot. Mirroring the artistic progression of the manga’s author and artist, I feel like this series is maybe a tad amateurish in terms of direction, like when they have the joke where they zoom in on marcille’s face, and then you can noticeably tell that they’ve literally zoomed in on the image, as it has compression.

But still, it feels like, at least with the shots I’m seeing, there’s a good amount of freedom animators are getting in terms of artistic direction, maybe, which kind of gives the series a good energy overall. For this episode, I’d maybe think of the shot with the squid over senshi, and that sequence, as being the most impressive of the episode, but it doesn’t really stand out all that much relative to the rest of the series.

I’ve read the manga, so nothing here is a surprise to me, right, but at the same time, I kind of find it weird how much, in hindsight, a lot of the series at large is just the author kind of like, wheel spinning, and how late the plot actually kicks off and picks up. How much of the plot just sort of, is episodic, and then cuts in for maybe one or two episodes, and then cuts back to being a dungeon crawl. You can definitely tell this is, maybe not her first solo work, I dunno, but you can tell how it’s kind of rough around the edges and lacks a lot of clear plot direction here.

The pacing feels weird, for a group of people who are kind of trying to rush down the dungeon as quickly as possible to save someone. It doesn’t get super insane at any points, right, but it does strike me as the mark of kind of amateurish plot direction, maybe. Without totally outstanding animation all the time to save it, and without being surprised by the novelty of the different takes on fantastical monsters, and, more impressively, the groundedness of those designs, I kind of find myself without a lot left.

Of course, none of this is actually a real downside, because that’s just not the focus of the series, really. There’s not a large focus on action, there’s not a large focus on like, a complex plot, the series is just kind of supposed to be a cute comfy dungeon crawl where we see some cool stuff.

I think I also kind of find the senshi-marcille character clashing to be a little bit repetitive as a character beat, and it’s not really funny enough to me to carry it, except for maybe when senshi has his kind of sperg rage moments, and sunwong cho gets a moment to do some voice acting. I think some very basic, like, plot direction for that, would probably entail marcille showing senshi that magic takes work too, just in a different form than cooking-

(how do spoilers work on lemmy? why can I not seem to get it to work correctly? idk)

I would say that I think a lot of manga kind of, has characterization baked into internal trains of character thought, that aren’t necessarily included in lots of anime, and I would say that a lot of manga gags that will work for a chuckle or two, because of a crazy, hastily drawn expression, don’t really end up working in anime, since the appeal is how unprofessional the image can look. If you don’t include that stuff, or if you include it poorly, it ends up draining your anime characters of a lot of their characterization. I think dungeon meshi, as an anime and as a manga, is doing that pretty well. It stands out relative to other stuff I’ve seen, anyways, in my admittedly limited experience.

Despite my complaints, I’m still gonna watch it, of course. It’s not really required that an anime adaptation necessarily adds a lot, compared to a manga, since that’s kind of the whole point of an adaptation, right. It’s just a medium shift, but I do find myself wanting a little more overall, as a manga reader. Not a lot of replay value, in this one, for me, is what I’m finding.

I dunno, I’m definitely interested to know the experience of a new, fresh anime-only watcher, for sure.