Anime Spring 2022

by on July 2, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Anime

Okay, the ‘wait for me to finish a season’ delay got so bad that I missed an entire summary post. So, we should be about at the start of a new anime season, and here’s what I’ve watched semi-recently. …Not all anime, but in rough order of recommendation.

Picard — I picked up the first season Blue-ray a bit ago, and we all just finished watching it last week. Any raves you’ve heard about it are correct; they did a really good job, and I’m eager to see the next two seasons. It goes a little more shaky-cam than I’d like on occasion, but other than that, the production is really well done, and the writing is great all through the show.

Violet Evergarden: The Movie — The biggest problem was figuring out when we were going to schedule a 2 1/2 hour movie for everyone. The series was very good, and this movie lived up to it very well. The usual conundrum of how to explain things for people who haven’t seen the series was handled very gracefully, and makes this the best series-to-movie move I’ve seen. Highly, highly recommended whether you’ve seen the series or not. (Though, go back and watch that too, it’s worth it.)

World Trigger — My biggest disappointment earlier this year was actually getting through the (current) end of this, after a very long time of getting through it all. After a sub-par start, the series got very good, and kept it up in the more recent seasons. So, I’m sad not to have solid show anchoring my watch schedule.

Ascendance of a Bookworm — We’ve been showing this to the guys, who certainly started liking it once past the first episode. We’re just no hitting the second season, so we’re still a ways out from the most recent season that started about the time we introduced them to the show.

Wakfu — I was unsure of the start of the third series, but it rapidly got better, and the ending sequence of episodes definitely wasn’t what I’d expected from the early parts of the series. All of the Wakfu and Dofus series need more attention as they’ve been very good.

Orbital Children — Smudge and I saw the first episode, and put it on the ‘to watch with the guys’ list. We’re now about halfway through, and it is continuing to be impressive. The budget’s pretty good, the world building is very good. The plot is trying to juggle about three major ideas at the same time, and succeeding. More good SF is always needed, and this is delivering.

Hisuian Snow — This is a short Pokemon OAV series that’s started coming out, and like all the specials they’ve done lately, it’s really well done. They spend a lot on the art budget on these, and stories are good too.

Girls Last Tour — This is a quiet post-apocalyptic tale. Two girls tour through the wreckage of a giant wrecked city on a kettenkrad. Most everyone else is dead, so there’s only occasional extra characters, leaving most of the time to Chito and Yuuri talking, questioning, and philosophizing on various subjects. Think… philosophical travelogue.

A Lull by the Sea — Smudge showed me the first episode of this a while back, but I didn’t bite (I barely remember the fact of that). Currently, pickings are a bit thinner on the ground, and I’ve just started this (three episodes so far), and it’s being good. We have a world that looks a lot like ours (above the surface), but some people can natively live under the water. It’s really something of a metaphor for the emptying rural life in Japan, and the drama’s being fairly good.

Forest of Piano — Okay, I have problems. A piano sits abandoned in the woods for years, and is still playable. Past that bit of fantasy, it’s a good drama with the usual decent-sized cast of characters, and the world of classical music.

Kingdom — This continues to be a potentially good series wrecked by its own production values. The dub is very sub-par (not too bad for, say, an early ’90s dub, but we’ve moved past that now), and it’s hard to say just how many problems are the writing and how many are the translation, but I have feeling they’re not doing each other any favors.

Pokemon Journeys — I’m surprised. Smudge and I have caught up with this. Well, what’s been released on the Pokemon Network so far; it’s likely it’s being delayed from Netflix. At any rate, it continues to be okay, and generally not much more than that. They recently did the sequence where they go through the main 8th Gen games’ plot, which is often weak when it hits the show, and continued to be so here.

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Anime Fall 2021

by on March 10, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Anime

Okay, this is ages late. In my defense, I’m not even sure what there was new last season.

First off, I was in the middle, or more likely, near the end of several series last time, and they all carried through to good endings. Megalobox II and The Great Pretender especially were very good from start to finish.

Arcane — Smudge and I decided to try this out at the tail end of the big push on it. We watched the first episode, and put it on the ‘to watch with the guys’ list. And now we’re… two-thirds through? At any rate, this is a very well done series on several levels. This is the best-developed steampunk world I’ve seen since Girl Genius started (and may well beat that). Lots of very believable, if often not very nice characters. The writing it top notch, and is doing a good job with a complex structure.  And then there’s the animation, which also top-notch on several levels. This is easily some of the best CG there’s been, because they went for a style, they stuck with it, and they made it work. And then the quality of animation itself is just wonderful with lots of natural motion and real emoting.

World Trigger — I have recently gotten through all of the very long first series, and am now into the second one (I started watching about when the third one started). It continues to be quite good, and I think the current juggling between the usual ‘shonen fight tournament’ and outside events is helping the pacing. And of course, while the series is half about what’s going on outside of combat, the combat itself is dominated by tactics and teamwork, and not “powering up”.

Restaurant to Another World — Okay, this is the new thing from last season I’m aware of. But we got a late start and are about halfway through. And it’s pretty much the same as before. Nice, fairly simple stories wrapped around food porn. It’s wearing a bit thin for me, but it’s still an enjoyable series, that you should not watch while hungry.

Wakfu — By happenstance I noticed that Wakfu had gotten a third season while we weren’t looking, and was available on Netflix. We’ve just just started this, so there’s not a lot to say yet. It is looking to be an extended ‘climb the tower quest’ all season, which isn’t the most promising, but there’s enough going on character-wise that it will probably pan out.

Edens Zero — Okay, SF done by the creator of Fairy Tail. If you’ve seen that, you know what you’re in for. Smudge and I are finding it fun, the plot is maintaining a good pace, there’s certainly been some good humorous moments, but it’s nothing really special either. I really want a guide to the cosmology of this universe, because there’s a lot of places for ‘I don’t think that word means what you think it means’.

Kingdom — This… can be good, and when it is, it can be very good. And as a historical on the Chinese Warring States, has interest there. However, the production is fairly low budget, and the Funimation dub is also low budget (it’s bad when the narrator is your best voice acting). Despite being generally historical in nature, it does suffer from showing its shonen marketing too much, and the depiction of battles is fine… until it turns into Dynasty Warriors. So much promise, under delivered.

Pokemon Journeys — This has gotten better, but is still bottom of the heap, especially for recent Pokemon series. Showing all the various regions of the games at various times is not a bad idea, but it still needs a better continuing plot and character arc than the World Coronation Series worldwide tournament.

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Anime Summer 2021

by on October 28, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Anime

So another season started around the beginning of the month, but I barely noticed the summer season ending because my watching is so out of synch there was only two things that ended on me, and one of those I was watching about a year late.

Megalobox II: Nomad — I often don’t pay attention to the nomenclatures around separate seasons as its all still one big story. But this one really is a sequel story, with a very different feel and tone. It’s also that rare thing: a sequel that’s better than the original. We’re still working our way through the ending parts, but it has been truly excellent so far.

Great Pretender — We’re currently in Case 4, and it’s still being a great ride, though it has gotten overall more serious and a bit darker in tone. Overall, its’ a great series, with great art and writing, and manages to be witty straight through while presenting all these high-stakes capers.

World Trigger — This is a long series; I’m at episode 40, which is just nearing the end of the ‘first series’ (with the third one just starting). With a fairly slow start, this has really grown on me as its a well-balanced handling of typical shonen tropes and solid world-building. It’s not as flashy as many (and I think the budget might be a bit low), but it has a much more substantial foundation, and very good characters.

Beastars — We’re midway in the second season now, and it is another case of the sequel being better than the original, though it’s not as radical a change in story.

My Hero Academia — This is the main thing that finished up and told me the season was over. The last part was all diving into things that had happened earlier, but there was just now enough context for them to make sense in the overall plot. It ended up doing a great job exploring several of the main recurring villains’ backgrounds and motivations, while ratcheting up the tension for the big showdown to come—next time.

Star Trek: Lower Decks — Thanks to a borrowed blue-ray disk, we’re getting to watch this. We’re not that many episodes in, but the writing is definitely picking up as the characters get settled. The entire thing is a bit of a love letter to The Next Generation, with references all over the place.

Log Horizon — This one sat on the ‘to watch’ pile for a while as Smudge was sure we must have missed something in between the latest season and the previous. I’m pretty sure we didn’t, but the start was pretty jarring. It has been too long, and the first storyline was feeling fractured, either because we forgot things, or the series skipped a novel while trying to get to current content (or both!). Once over that hurdle, it was a good season, and it eventually touched on just about all the main unresolved threads. None of them actually resolved, but there was a good story concluding the season which also advanced things a bit.

That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime — I’m still getting caught up on this, there’s about a half-season to go. I think I might be caught up to the dub. At any rate, it continues to do well, though the power levels are truly of E.E. “Doc” Smith proportions.

Pokemon Journeys — This is the definite bottom of the list. We’re only watching it when we have time after going through everything else, and that’s because it’s just not that good. I do feel it has been picking up some as we get into the tournament prep, which is giving more of a longer arc goal. But… we’re still at two focus characters, and they’re feeling a bit bland.

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Anime Spring 2021

by on July 16, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Anime

The one new series I was watching this time finished up a few weeks ago, so that means it’s past time to sum up what I watched over the last three months.

Megalobox — Smudge really enjoyed this when it came out; I resisted because it seemed a bit too intense. But it’s now come up in the Thursday night rotation for the four of us, and is being very good. It’s odd to celebrate the 50th anniversary of a straight boxing story with a SF (boxing) story, but it’s very well written and produced. They’re going down the ‘retro’ route with making it look more like an ’80s anime, and doing very well there as well.

My Hero Academia — Funimation was having some sort of error in their system, at least they were on our Roku, so we didn’t start watching this until fairly recently, and are just finishing up the ‘tournament arc’ of the season. It’s well handled, and feels just a bit padded, but the series continues to deliver.

Astra: Lost in Space — After seeing the first episode, I nominated this for watching with the guys, and we’re now most of the way through, and everyone’s been enjoying it. We’re still at the ending couple of episodes, and answers to a lot of questions have been coming thick and fast.

World Trigger — Smudge started me on this a bit ago, and I’m now a ways in. At first, I wasn’t really impressed by the ‘magical boy show’, but as it’s gone on, it’s shown, and concentrated on, the internal politics of Border, a group is basically holding shut the door from extradimensional invasion. That has made it unique and more and more worth watching.

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime — I think we’re a little behind on this still, but I’m still in catchup mode after just starting earlier this year. The OAVs between series were good (though… the sumo one was… yeah), and we’re now fairly early in the current series. The series is always solidly in E. Doc Smith-land with power levels ratcheting way up, and of course the time-honored way to deal with that is to de-power everyone… which it looks like we’re going to be dealing with.

Demon Slayers: Mugen Train — I just saw the movie recently, and overall, it’s extremely good. Highest points for introducing everything a new watcher is going to need to know, and not recapping the series in the process. On the other hand, it’s basically two nearly full-length plots joined together. I think making the movie as a whole more about Rengoku would have helped, when as it is you start wondering ‘wait, it’s still going?’, and the characters are also asking (without any answer) why the second villain is there.

Infini-T Force — We recently started showing this to the guys on Thursdays, and they seem to be liking it well enough. They’re not really familiar with the properties crossed over except Gatchaman, but that puts them ahead of me. It does have its limitations, mostly in animation, but at the same time, the writing is good enough.

Dr. Stone — And I am now caught up on this. On the one hand, it keeps breezing over engineering challenges that should stop Senku in his tracks. On the the other, the character side has been good and largely getting better, and the obvious answers are often not where the plot goes. There’s a too-sudden flip with Tsukasa, that needed more build up/better foreshadowing, but was otherwise well handled.

Dragon Goes House Hunting — This is the only new series I ended up watching this season, and I had to wrestle Smudge into trying it. On one hand, it isn’t all that great, with so-so animation, the thickest neck ever seen on a dragon, and writing that feels very random. On the other hand, it kept doing better than my modest expectations for it, and kept managing to be laugh-out-loud funny.

Pokemon Journeys — This has finally started showing up on the Pokemon Network app, so me and Smudge are watching it. After the 6th and 7th gen series, this is a let down. I’m kind of guessing that Netflix (which helped fund it) wanted a bit of a cleaner start under the assumption they’d get more first-time viewers than normal. But the writing and animation seem to have taken a step down, and there’s not much in a noticeable overarching plot. Worse, I’ve stated before that the series is at it’s best when there’s a good number of continuing characters to work with, and here we’re down to Ash and Goh with some very secondary characters. Worst, Ash is feeling like a non-entity. His personality has shifted from series to series, but he’s always had a noticeable personality, but here he just feels flat.

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Anime Winter 2021

by on April 15, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Anime

So another season has wrapped up, and I got to see the usual mix of old and new, good and bad.

Planetarian — We had a spare time slot on the Thursday session with everyone, and Smudge and I finally showed this short series to the guys. They definitely liked it, and as expected, not a dry eye at the end. It’s really good and deserves a watch.

Golden Kamui — This continues to be an automatic watch for everyone here. In a way, this entire season was more of a diversion, as it’s a long trek north with a turn around south at the end. But the journey is an important one, and the climax for the last couple episodes pays off very well. We’re going to need… one, maybe two more seasons to get this all finished off, and deal with all the characters largely dropped for this arc.

Re: Zero — This continues to be a strong series, even if uncomfortable to watch all to often. The wrap up of the story here finally gets to a few things have been waiting for a while, and Roswaal and a few others get a well-needed kick to stop just living in the past. It was surprising that what kicked the story off wasn’t addressed at all to speak of, but it did spin off to this, and holds together as a story quite well. Now, to do something about Rem….

Journey of Elaina — As mentioned last time, we’re re-watching this with the guys, and are just getting past what we’d seen up to last time. They’ve definitely both been enjoying it, though the unpredictable nature of its tone from one episode to another has bitten us a couple times.

RErideD — Back at Crunchroll Expo 2019, this both looked like it could be interesting, and it was being pushed a bit too forcefully. All four of us have been watching it, and finding it good, but I think we all agree it could have used a bigger budget. Personally, I think another pass through the story would have helped as parts of it don’t seem to flow right, but I’ll agree that the action is hurt by a lack of budget pretty bad too. …Inventive anime story as told on Saturday morning television.

That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime — Smudge had held off introducing me to this one because it does have the problem that the main character is way overpowered, and pretty well undercuts any conflict he’s in. However, the comedic elements certainly work well, and actually serve to keep the series balanced. I’m just starting the second season and enjoying it. I want more of Veldora, the overpowered tsundere-dragon.

Dr. Stone — So, Smudge started me on this near the start of the season, thanks to the new series coming out. I’m still earlyish in the second season of the first series, and it has gotten fairly good. I wasn’t too happy with it at first, partially because of Senkuu’s nonsensical design. And there’s a lot of hyperbole…. But after a rough start, the writing has picked up.

Black Clover — Ugh. This latest season was really unbalanced, with lots recap for padding, and then a couple episodes at the end crammed full to make it to the dramatic break point. (The entire anime industry needs to be force-fed The Last Airbender as an example of how to do recaps.) Asta’s redesign made some sense, but came very suddenly… and yeah, the entire season’s a mess.

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