Once again, I’m well behind on talking about what I’ve watched over the last threeish months. It’s been another good season of anime, and there’s nothing here I wouldn’t recommend. As usual, this is in declining order of recommendation, and the first three are all on my ‘everyone should see this’ list.
One Piece — Saw the second season of the live action series, and it is just as good as the first. It goes through Drum Island and Tony Tony Chopper; they did a good job on the CG for him. In some ways it’s not quite as solid because the first season did a good job with everyone’s background arcs, but that leaves more room for Chopper, and the main plot definitely works. Looking forward to season three!
The Owl House — We were at the end of the second season last time, so the watching here was just going through the three parts of “season three”. It feels like each episode is a summary of what could have been an entire season. I’m certainly glad there was a chance to wrap everything up, but I’d really like to see a more fleshed out version of it all.
Frieren — We’ve just now gotten to starting second season, and am only a couple episodes in. So far, a solid start to the season, but we haven’t had time to see much more than the reintroduction get established.
The Amazing Digital Circus — I started watching this just before the last episode came out. I’m… uncertain. I did like it, I think the overall arc was interesting, and there is a lot going on. It didn’t engage me as much as I’d kind of like, but it has a lot to think about.
To Your Eternity — We’re just shy of the end of the third and final season. I was very uncertain about the entire shift to a modern-style world, but it has actually worked out. The new environment has helped with bringing certain philosophical elements to the fore, though I have to say the exploration of that has been very uneven. A lot of it is that Fushi continues to be a very impulse character, and just doesn’t sit down to try and figure out what some of this means….
Shadows House — We’re well into the second half of the (released) series. It has long since lived up to my initial reaction of being something everyone would be interested in. It has certainly been nice to see a lot of sub-elements branch out and become their own little mysteries, and we’ve gotten the basic explanation of just what is the main mechanism of the shadows themselves.
Gamoverse — Saw the pilot of this shortly after it came out. I had been totally unaware of Glitch until about six months ago, and they are doing a lot of good stuff. This had a feel of ‘the pilot is still shaking things out’, but it was still a good setup, and I want to see more.
100 Meters — Just saw this with Smudge. A very good sports anime movie. As such, it invites comparison with First Slam Dunk, and suffers since that one was decidedly better. This one is more focused, and more internal character focused, which it does well. Pretty much everything is rotoscoped… which is fine; but different portions are done by different people, and the main character wildly shifts body language a couple times. There’s some really well done scenes such as a track meet in pouring rain.
Primal — Only seen the first two episodes so far: In every respect this is an excellently done series. It’s not exactly my genre, but I respect it a lot. This would be higher up a lot of people’s lists than mine simply because the ‘ahistorical caveman + dinosaurs’ genre doesn’t do much for me.
Campfire Cooking in Another World — So, the Japanese food fetish meets the hyperfixation on isekai (technically, this seems to be a portal fantasy). There’s a lot of bad attempts at doing off-beat subjects in the genre. But, this one works. Mukohda is an ordinary enough guy with a passion for cooking, and gets to really dive into it after getting called to another world. He’s competent to scrape by making it all work on his own, which is great to establish. And then his delicious food comes to the attention of some powerful monsters….
Dr Stone — Just finished off the latest arc of this, which looks like the next part could wrap it all up. Good science, bonkers engineering, but at least there was some real acknowledgement of needing several tries to get things right with rockets (this should have been true all along, with this just being worse…).
That Time I Was Reincarnated as a Slime — Currently near the end of part 4(?). As usual, this lives off its characters, though there’s enough now that the series has a hard time juggling them all. Still, the overarching plot has continued—Remeru has gotten Tempest recognized by the human world, and the various big powers, and people who want to influence them try to shift the ground under him.
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? — Any time me and Smudge are a bit short on our viewing schedule, this gets left behind, so we’re still just exiting the first half of series five. Certainly, things we’ve had bits of have escalated to new heights… on the harem front, instead of the nature of the dungeon front. It’s good, but not about the part I enjoy the most.
Pokemon: Horizons — We’ve recently started part three, Rising Hope, which has been an interesting shift. It’s a year later, so our main kids are a little older (in a Pokemon anime?! gasp), and the nature of the series has shifted a bit with the big past mystery solved, and now working through the consequences. Ult feels like he’s more there to be annoying, but I’m sure his character arc will underpin a good chunk of the action.
