- 628 Posts
- 1K Comments
2·22 hours agoYeah, this only adapts the first chapter of the manga and Takuma kinda sucks here. I had kind of forgotten that this is how we are introduced to his character because it feels so different than how he acts in the rest of the story. Like, the obsessing over Mina is always there, but the drinking and overall patheticness are dialed back going forward and it is much more of just a romance.
What are your thoughts on Mina’s voice? Unlike Mina, I have mixed feelings about it. I am hoping that I get more used to it as time goes on.
Yeah…I was excited for this one since I really like the manga. However, my excitement has dropped a bit after the first episode. I am not sure if I am going to get used to the Mina voice or not. I hadn’t watched any of the PVs before diving in since I knew this was one I was going to check out already, but…yeah…will take some getting used to. This might be one of those things that is done better in the manga format, where the dialog boxes are shaped differently to denote that Mina is speaking:
Otherwise, this episode only adapts the first manga chapter, establishing the premise. Now that we got Takuma’s pathetic phase out of the way, we can focus on the actual fun part of the story. Reading into the OP and ED, it looks like we are going to get a pretty full cast of characters. However, some notable absences from the characters we see that I welcome:
Manga Spoilers
The robot research club students don’t seem to appear in the OP/ED which I find great because I think their part of the story is the weakest.
Looking forward to see where this goes and I am hoping that the Mina voice won’t bother me as much going forward.
Have you read the source for this one? I haven’t really looked at the Fall season too much yet to see what’s coming. The only show I know is airing this Fall I am definitely watching is Natsume. So, likely plenty of room to squeeze in a good otome story.
Their teaser visual is basically just a lightly edited version of the LN Vol. 1 cover. However, the date announcement I thought was worth posting. The series was originally announced back in 2023 with no updates since.
I am trying to think of demographics that wouldn’t really be represented here and I came up with a couple ideas, but the biggest is probably kids. So, I wonder if a show like Tonbo! did well enough with a young audience to get a second season, but it just isn’t showing up here.
It’s pretty safe to say that Astro Note bombed pretty hard based on the staff apologizing about the show.
Weekly ranking roundup:
- Anime Corner - Full Results - Weekly Winner: Kaiju No. 8
- Reddit Karma - Weekly Winner: Mushoku Tensei
Credit to /u/Abysswatcherbel for making the chart for reddit karma.
In the final week of the year, Kaiju and Demon Slayer made some gains on the charts. As the new shows pop up on the charts this coming week, it will be interesting to see how things shake out.
So, I usually try to quickly binge a show in the slow week between seasons. I had been planning for that show this season to be Patlabor. However, with the discussions around the upcoming summer season, I kept seeing people talking about Tower of God. When the show first came out, it didn’t really pique my interest and I pretty successfully just ignored it.
However, for the sake of community involvement, I thought it would be fun to quickly get caught up to try to be active in the threads this upcoming season. So, I started watching it the other day…and then just didn’t stop…at all…until I finished it. I went back and tried to capture the thoughts that were running through my head as I was watching. So, spoilers galore below the tags. Suffice to say, I will be right there with everybody when season 2 airs. Not sure how I will handle waiting week to week though.
Episode 1
What the hell is going on? Where are we? Who are these people? Why in the Hunger Games are there this many people (creatures?) fighting each other? Lots of unanswered questions here. I feel like I was just thrown into the ocean having never been taught how to swim.
Episodes 2-5 (through the Crown Game)
We seem to be putting together a main cast during this game. Also, Rachel is back, and she is in her hooded phase. I still can’t claim to have much of an understanding of this world we are in or most of the characters in it. I will say that one of my favorites almost immediately is Lero-Ro because it is so instantly recognizable as the voice of Shiki from Tsukimichi.
Episodes 6-7 (training)
Lots of lore on the tower and the characters during this training period. Also, some shady stuff happening with the test administrators. It is pretty clear already that this is the type of show where everybody is always acting with an agenda of some type or another. Any character might just be acting out a scheme and no character is safe (I should have suspected something like episode 12 at this point).
Episodes 8-9 (Playing tag)
Schemes upon schemes upon schemes. Turns out Khun is one of the better schemers out there. Also, metagaming is totally a thing through the use of stuff like that note. Some battles might be won before they are ever fought. All the betraying and (literal) backstabbing in this sequence should have been more hints at what was to come.
Episodes 10-12 (Underwater Hunt)
I literally, physically gasped at the conclusion of episode 12. For whatever reason, bingeing through this season at a breakneck pace, I never stopped to consider the possibility that Rachel was anything other than what Yoru had presented to us. I happened to watch this episode right before bed as well, so I was forced to sit with it and ponder it for a whole day before I could watch the finale. Rachel’s turn in this episode really, really makes me want to know more about Yoru and Rachel, about their time before the tower and before each other.
Episode 13 (Finale)
The way this season ends makes it feel like the story up until now was really the prologue to the actual meat of the story. I still think that there has not been enough establishment of the setting overall, but the show is cool enough that it doesn’t bother me too much.
If you think about this season as a prologue, then there is still a lot of story left to tell in which those gaps can be filled in over time. You get the sense also, that sometimes it just doesn’t matter. The Tower is a place where rule of cool wins…always. Screw your rules, power systems, logic, schemes, none of that matters unless you do it in a cool enough and interesting enough way.
Also, totally digging the new rurouni-version of Lero-Ro. Safe travels!
Overall, I can’t say that it is one of the best shows I have ever seen. However, it was certainly gripping and can’t help but ooze a cool vibe between its animation, characters, and the fantastic OST. Very much looking forward to the discussions coming this season.
I had kept up with this show but just didn’t really have time to keep the threads alive on my own. I have been really pleased with it overall. I would put on an episode before bed and just vibe (another reason I didn’t want to spend the time with the threads and instead I just crashed). I think my favorite little vignette of story was the one about trying to identify the liquor bottle that Miwa broke as a child. Just the thought of the chief having a nice bottle of liquor with his departed son kind of hit me out of nowhere. Runner-up was the romance that bloomed over a pack of cigars.
It’s been a while since I read a chunk of the manga, and I couldn’t remember, so I pulled up the mangadex page to check. It is listed as suggestive, but it has chapters labeled as (Uncensored). Flipping through a couple, it would indeed need censoring to be broadcast.
I heard good things about that one. However, if I remember correctly, it was only licensed partway through the season after my watch schedule was mostly filled up.
I haven’t read/watched Demon Slayer, but I think these movies should be the end of the main story if I am reading articles correctly. Congrats to all the fans of the series for getting a complete adaptation. That doesn’t happen too often.
Yeah, video game anime adaptations are usually not great. The last one I watched was Atelier Ryza because a friend is a huge fan of the series and hyped it up. However, the anime was so incredibly boring and the game structure was so apparent through the story that it was impossible not to notice.
I didn’t watch this series, but the only option I could find after a quick search in my region (US) is streaming through Amazon Prime. Otherwise, sailing the high seas is a fallback for when other routes fail.
If you were like me and wondered to yourself, “Is golf even popular in Japan?” Then, you might be surprised to know there is a long history of golf anime in the country. If you want to learn more, @LiteralGrill@ani.social wrote an excellent piece about golf anime and the surprising, recent influence that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on them over at Anime Herald. Definitely recommended reading.
Kaiju is able to claim the top spot this week on the chart as Demon Slayer is able to slot in right behind at #2. I haven’t watched either, but it is surprising to see both Date a Live and Mushoku Tensei falling down the chart (Date a Live even had an increase in vote share).
So, I have seen several people now in this community mention Tower of God. It is a show I had completely skipped over back when it aired, but since people here are looking forward to it, I decided to try to get caught up real quick before the next season starts so I can join in the discussions. I am working my way through right now and will probably be done before next week’s general thread, so I am going to save my detailed thoughts for that thread but…it has really made me look forward to the discussion threads next season to try to make sense of a lot of things that are not explained. It has been very gripping so far though, with a knack for ending episodes exactly when you want to see more.
This was an interesting little bit of history I wasn’t aware of. Australia trying to use its unique wildlife as a diplomatic tool makes some sense… There are lots of species that only live on the continent due to it long geological history of isolation. However, none of the species I can think of quite match the panda in its blend of public appeal and difficulty to care for and proliferate. It’s not like there is some global collaboration of zookeepers trying to figure out how to get koalas or kangaroos to reproduce. If anything, koalas might reproduce too much.
I also read through the first piece on China’s panda diplomacy as well. I was already somewhat familiar with the story of how the Nixons were able to normalize relations with China partly through the exchange of pandas. Smithsonian has a piece on it. I wasn’t aware of how much the diplomatic exchanges with Japan mirrored those of the US at essentially the same time. It does make sense though since post-war Japan has had their foreign policy so closely aligned with that of the US in the Pacific.
I haven’t watched it, but have seen it described as a delinquent fighting anime in broad strokes. The clips I have seen have shown some great animated fight sequences, and it is one of the shows I missed this season that I am planning on trying to catch up on for the future.
Paging @zabadoh@ani.social as they have been the one showing up in each of the discussion threads for the show.
Meta update:
I was able to automate the wiki updates like I had hoped. I was having a real hard time with the bash scripting needed and making no progress. So, I instead decided to just put it all in a python script. Got it all fixed up in no time after that. If you run into any issues, please let me know.
A quick search turned up a game for the Sega Saturn. I have heard of the series before, but didn’t know about the game until now.