Posts Tagged anime

34 results.
Apr11

Anime Winter 2023

by Rindis on April 11, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Anime

Smudge and I just finished up a couple series, right as the new set is starting for a change! The new season’s looking promising, and the old one wasn’t bad either.

Yamato 2202 — We’re currently about two episodes from the end, and everything has ramped up to appropriately space opera high stakes. I’d say overall the first series is better, but this still an excellent production and a must-see.

Trigun Stampede — Excellent remakes strike again! All four of us are watching this and are very impressed. We started watching it a bit late, so we’re still somewhat early in. The main thing is the real story and the conflict with Knives gets started immediately. The background and characters are much better set, and it’d be interesting to really know just when all of this emerged in the original manga, because the guess is that the main parts only emerged as the original series was in production.

My Hero Academia — Okay, at long last, we’ve had the big turning point of the series. BBEG is loose! There was a big season-long battle! (More like three of them.) And, basically, everyone fought to a draw. We’re still in the aftermath, and presumably the story will be diverting to a slightly different trajectory now that Deku has a clear antithesis villain, and the thrust of the story will need to start centering on how to defeat him instead of Deku’s first steps towards being a superhero.

Kaina of the Great Snow Sea — Polygon Pictures does all computer-animated series, and has gotten good at the style. This happens to be a good planetary romance story (a little more modern in values—the princess is a co-equal star), and gets a little predictable if you know what the general story beats that genre has. But it’s well done, and I hope we get another season.

Knights of Sidonia — And just finished watching the second season of Polygon Pictures’ first production. I saw a couple pieces of it when Smudge watched it when it came out, and I’m happy to finally see it. The beginning of season two had a bit of a tonal shift, but the plot worked out well. There is a movie as well, which we will need to see.

The Fire Hunter — A very interesting world and some good writing. The animation, not so much. The production house seems well aware of this, and does some interesting stylistic choices try and make up for it. But, it still needs a better budget. However, I do recommend it, and don’t let the animation quality put you off.

NieR Automata Ver 1.1a — Smudge and I started watching this, Baron came to say good night as he went to bed and then sat down to watch the second episode. So, this is now part of what we watch with the guys. It’s… about as unusual as the game in storytelling. There’s some odd choices, but the series works well. I’m a little concerned about how much sense it’d make without Smudge offering commentary (she’s played the game), but I’m certainly enjoying it.

Komi Can’t Communicate — It is a testament to the quality of what we’ve been watching lately that this is nearly the last thing on a list ordered by quality. Komi is still being very good and very funny, but everything above this is still better.

Kingdom —Still going through this very long anime. We’ve just finished with the siege of Sai, which was generally well done, but it still suffers from being a shonen fastball.

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Jan25

Anime Fall 2022

by Rindis on January 25, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Anime

So the new season has started, and I’m actually getting on top of a few new things, as Smudge and I’s schedule just cleared out some. But in the previous three months, we’ve had a lot of really good shows, the top end is very crowded here:

Yamato 2202 — We’re still in the ending parts of this one, but the action has ramped up quite a bit, the stakes are high. The character development is mostly all on the villain’s side, and not on the main characters, even though there’s things that need doing there.

Golden Kamui — We just started watching the latest season with the guys, and so far it is living up to the previous material. The crazies are still crazy, and the new ones fit in with the rest of the cast all too well.

Mob Pycho 100 III — One of the amazing things about this series is how it will build up to the point that is what the initial high concept is all about—and then not do it. And it works. Mob Pycho has always gone in odd directions with it’s plots, and they’ve only gotten better at it. All three seasons are really well worth watching.

Ascendance of a Bookworm — We’ve hit the third season finally, so I’m in all-new territory for me. Myne’s world is continuing to expand, with action outside the city, and the guilds paying more attention to just what she’s been coming up with. Overall, it’s one of the more solidly-constructed looks at how medieval Europe worked.

Lower Decks — We’ve now finished off the second season Blue-ray set. Where’s third season? Because they had a really good run of episodes here, and we’re all up for continuing.

My Hero Academia — Yes this is good, and recommended. The fact that there’s so much I’m putting above it is just a measure of how crowded this season’s been at the top end. Also, Smudge and I have just recently gotten to this, so we’re only a few episodes in. The plot and action are already in full swing, and the tension has been sky-high for a couple episodes now, with things just about to get worse.

Goblin Slayer: The Goblin Crown — Just saw this the other night. I’m not happy with the recap at the start, there are much better ways of handling backstory than a big up-front expository lump. That said, I’ve seen far worse. Once the movie proper gets going, it is very good, with the main focus, character-wise, being on new characters, which means this is a side-story, and shouldn’t be needed for watching a second series if/when that comes out.

Komi Can’t Communicate — We’re into the second season/series, and it’s been very good the entire way.

Devil is a Part Timer — We also finished this off a bit ago. Overall, leaning a bit more on the action side of the series this time, which is perfectly fine, especially with the humor continuing to be very good even as it takes the back seat. We’re getting a lot more hooks into an overarching plot now, and that has been getting interesting.

Sea Beast — Very well-done and well-developed CG movie. The ending is a bit off; I think they needed one more draft of the script to get that where it needed to be. As-is, it feels a bit rushed, and ‘okay, now we have all the balls in the air, how to finish this?’ Still well worth watching.

Eden — This is a four-episode miniseries put out on Neflix. It’s well produced, and well done, but a bit predictable. I do recommend it, but there’s plenty out there more worth your time.

Utawarerumono: The Mask of Truth — Smudge and I finished this off last month. We had problems with some of the journey (especially the previous series), but it definitely came in for a very good (if typically overpowered) ending. Overall, I do give the two recent series a recommendation if you enjoyed the original, but it isn’t as good as it either. Oh, and they really love their ten-dollar Japanese words.

Dr. Stone: Ryusui — As ever, Dr. Stone is more entertaining than it should be. But this “special” has all the problems of the series as well. Characters are way over the top, too many things work right the first time…. However, there’s a lot of good bits in there, including some good psychology (it doesn’t matter if you’re giving a forced choice, as long as it gives the person a part in the process, a bit Machiavellian, but wise). Also, you will need to see this in between regular seasons, as this is obviously all set up for the next plot arc.

The Girl From the Other Side — This was a short miniseries that feels aimed at the art-house market. Overall, the focus ends up being on style rather than substance, and the plot is just too low key. It is well done, but it feels like it could have been even more.

Kingdom — Smudge and I have hit the end of the initial run, and the series has switched to a new studio, has a new cast for the dub, and has a different translation. Overall, this is all an improvement. I don’t entirely care for the new style, but it’s a little better. The translation is better, and the voice cast is a wash. The action/plot is in one of its better stages at the moment, but still not climbing out of the bottom of the pile by being aimed straight at the junior high audience.

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Oct02

Anime Summer 2022

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

Well, it’s been three months, and a new season of anime is about to start. There’s been more distractions and problems here than normal, so it has been more like only two months of watching.

Yamato 2202 — Now that the entire series is out, we’ve circled around to start over from the beginning to get the entire story fresh. We’re still in the part we’d seen before the long delays between episodes stopped us, but as ever is being excellent.

Ascendance of a Bookworm — We’re now into the second season of rewatching with the guys, and maybe midway through that. Everyone is definitely enjoying it, especially with the head priest’s growing exasperation of Myne’s nearly instinctual rocking of the boat with ideas that seem to come from… nowhere.

Lower Decks — I picked up the blue-ray of second season a bit after it came out, and we’re all of four episodes into it. So far, they’ve been solid episodes; the arc getting Boimler back to the Cerritos is an odd thing to juggle, and tended to occasionally disrupt episodes, but overall was well handled.

Komi Can’t Communicate — We’ve only seen the first few episodes (suggested by Baron). It’s been very good; one of those well-written anime that has a point far beyond its story. It got accidentally dropped thanks to our break in viewing, but we’ll certainly come back to watch the rest.

Devil is a Part Timer — We were all very happy to see another season of this finally come out. We’ve shifted gears on the plot, so I assume we’re about half way through and entering the second novel adaptation of the season. It has been continuing to be very funny and hitting a lot of the right notes with all of us.

Jobless Reincarnation — Okay, this has been far better than I thought it possible to be. Smudge and I are well into… third? season now. The main painful point is just how much of a pervert the main character can be, but much of the time there is way too much adventure and other things going on for that to impinge to hard. Better yet, there’s a lot of well-done characters, and Mr Pervert is truly growing as a character.

Orbital Children — Finished this off shortly after the last post. It got a lot more head-trippy at the end than I would have expected, though plot-structure-wise it carried out all its promises. Not excellent, but well worth a watch, especially if you need more SF.

A Lull by the Sea — So, we’re in the second half, which has a five-year transition break in the plot. Of course some of the characters have been in hibernation for this period, so…. It was a bit jarring to find out that this is supposed to be happening in modern-day Japan, instead of a place that just happens to look a bit like it and also has people who live underwater. The second half is really showing that this is developed from a visual novel; I’m a bit happier with the first half in retrospect for not making it so obvious.

Utawarerumono: The Mask of Truth — Smudge and I just recently picked up the latest series after the last one was a bit of a letdown at the conclusion. Again, it’s been long enough for us to have to spend some effort remembering who everyone is, but it is continuing along the route of well done-politics and strategy.

Kingdom — My comments last time are still true. A series that doesn’t even begin to live up to its own strengths. A lot of it is being aimed very squarely at a male junior high audience, and the lowest common denominator version at that.

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Jul02

Anime Spring 2022

by Rindis 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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Mar10

Anime Fall 2021

by Rindis 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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Oct28

Anime Summer 2021

by Rindis 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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Jul16

Anime Spring 2021

by Rindis 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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Apr15

Anime Winter 2021

by Rindis 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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Jan25

Anime Fall 2020

by Rindis on January 25, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Anime

Still something of a light schedule this season, and of course the dubbed shows are trailing behind a bit.

Haikyuu – Another season with a single set of matches in a tournament. However, writing-wise it’s still all of a piece with the previous season, as a few things finally come together for Hinata. Once again, it’s a pretty small focus for 13 episodes, but the writing holds up.

Journey of Elaina — Smudge and I picked this up at the start of the season, saw most of it… and then introduced it to the guys in the dubbed version, which is just getting started. It’s kind of a magical version of Kino’s Journey, with a fairly episodic format, and some very different tones between stories.

Arte — Renaissance Italy (drawn without reference). Actually, we have a feeling the original manga artist has a decent grasp on Italian clothes and architecture, but the production studio worked entirely from his art. In any case, its a fairly good, if cheaply produced, period piece.

Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? — Smudge and I actually saw the Sword Oratoria side story as well as the current third (main) series. The former reminds me a bit of the A Certain… series, with fanservice derailing too many parts of the series. On the other hand, the writing of the latter has really dissolved into incomprehensibility, while this is still pretty good. The main story was a bit better (writing and fanservice), and definitely moves forward some interesting bits of just what’s going on in this world.

Brand New Animal — Dave actually saw this first, so for once the flow of recommendations is going the other way. Personally, I’ve been finding it okay. It is getting better as it goes (haven’t finished yet). It’s been a little all-over writing-wise, which is weakened the show for me, but the overall arc has been coming a lot clearer in the last third, so my enthusiasm is picking up.

Black Clover — The plot is in the periodic ‘power up’ stage that shonen fight anime goes to too often. Outside of that, there’s been some good things, with a look at some of the under-served portions of the kingdom, which had a fairly good climax (I would like to believe that there’s a coherent in-world reason for the strong mana zone in the middle of everything, but so far it seems like it’s just a convenient way to keep the countries separated from each other). More surprisingly, we’ve actually caught up to the current episodes.

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Oct17

Anime Summer 2020

by Rindis on October 17, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Anime

Well, I got at least somewhat caught up on the watch schedule this season. So this post is just a little late, with a couple of episodes to go to finish things off.

Keep Your Hands off of Eizoken — Smudge and I saw the first episode of this a while back and immediately put it on hold to see it with the guys. And yes, everyone here is really enjoying it. Its well done, beautifully produced, and really well written. This series shows off as much love for the process of creating anime as the characters have in every scene. I didn’t really believe AJ when he called this the best series of the year early on in it… but yeah. It’s just that good.

Deca Dence — I would never have pegged this as the best series of the season. Definitely watch the first two episodes, as the second one starts pulling back the curtain. Nicely, ‘pulling back the curtain’ is not the point of the plot; that’s pretty much done after another three episodes or so, letting the series as a whole be fairly plot-driven. We’ve been seeing this with the guys, and its been great all around.

Ascendance of a Bookworm — Smudge and I got a late start on this, so we’re still about midway through the new season of it. I think it has slipped a bit with the expanding scope of Mine’s life defocusing the plot a bit. It is still good though, and I’ve been picking up enjoyment again as it goes.

Re:Zero — I’m always a bit surprised when something comes back after a gap of a few years. Again, took me a little to get back into it, not helped by the tradition of multiple gruesome deaths of the main character. But, it’s getting really interesting, and the rabbit hole is going fairly deep. Wondering how this will turn out.

Sword Art Online — And that’s finally over. The entire Alicization storyline is good… but it stretched out too long with too many “and now one more secondary plot” elements. The good news is that it does come to a good conclusion after all that, but it also implies a sequel that will probably be about as big. I’m willing to wait a while before we see that.

Appare Ranman — Okay, based off of seeing the middle of the first episode, this isn’t what I was expecting. And, what it is… is an anime version of Wacky Races, only so much better. We’ve been watching this with the guys, and I would normally think Dave wouldn’t go for it, but he’s been enjoying it. It goes over the top with a bunch of the side characters, but the primary and secondary characters are all a lot better grounded, which I think helps hold it together.

Flip Flappers — Unfortunately, this got lost in the shuffle, and there was a large gap between watching most of the series and the last couple episodes. It’s… a strange series, and the number of major puzzle pieces they finally drop on you at the very end doesn’t help. I have a general idea of what happened, but at this point I’d have to watch it again to pull out details. That said, its well-produced, and quite interesting.

Black Clover — Currently (I’m a couple seasons behind still), this is doing a bunch of shorter stories with the main part of the second big arc in the background… and the series is hanging on by virtue of its secondary characters. Both Smudge and I would like to see more Mereoleona.

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