pwhodges wrote:Well, there are a few other anime series about music around.

Yeah, I've got to give a look to some of them. There's also Kids on the Slope, by Watanabe, witch deals with Jazz. I haven't seen it yet.

I am watching Carole and Tuesday(trough not exactly legal means) and yeah, it's okay. I wish I actually liked the music the protagonists play, but the soft acoustic pop they throw out just bores me most of the time. There's still plenty of episodes to go though, so it might improve later.

Have you seen Beck pwhodges? I've been looking around and the dub for it seems to be good(this said by someone that never watches dubs though). I know you usually watch anime dubbed( or am I remembering wrong?) so I thought I'd mention it.

I've not seen Beck, but your comments have made me add it to my list. (I watch anime both dubbed and subbed - sometimes even both in turn.)

Kids on the Slope is good, and the disks have earned a place on my shelf; it's short, just one cour. The music is by Yoko Kanno.

The other music anime that comes to mind is Your Lie in April (two cour), about a young pianist who has fallen prey to stage fright and can no longer perform. A lively young violinist rescues him, and guides him back to performing, but there is a tragic ending - more tragic than is common. There is an unexpected twist to the underlying love story (the title's a clue). That's also on my shelf; I particularly like the designs in this one.

Quite apart from the musical series just commented on, it's been a while since I talked about what I have been watching.

In the current season, as well as those mentioned above I am watching Sarazanmai, Fruits Basket (2019), and Dororo.

Sarazanmai is good looking and fun to watch, but to be honest, I have little idea what it's really going on about. Maybe that will become clear on reflection after it's finished - who knows. Still, I would want to miss it.

Fruits Basket (2019) is a new animation of the manga, and will tell the complete story - which I guess will take at least four cours; presumably the present "Season 1" will be two cours. A new series is needed because the well-loved old series covers less than a third of the story, and naturally people would like to see the whole. A continuation from the old series was out of the question, not only because of stylistic changes, but because it had made very big rearrangements of the material then available to try to reach a satisfying conclusion. The mangaka is acting as a consultant, and wanted the drawing style to be updated. In general the new series is, as you'd expect, following the manga closely, but there are some small changes of emphasis which highlight things which some of us know will become a great significance later on. For a passing comparison with the old series, I can say that the animation is better (and there's far less use of static images), and the amount of detail in backgrounds is hugely increased, giving a lot more context to what's going on; nor have they fallen into the trap that FMA-Brotherhood did of spoiling the early parts by straining to be different from the previous version. But comparisons with the former series are not needed - this is simply the adaptation of the manga that we've really been waiting for, and is not disappointing us. The music is good, but doesn't push the music of the old series into the shade.

Dororo is a new adaptation of a very early iconic manga. I've not seen the old animation, which is in black and white except for the first (pilot) episode. The manga itself, however iconic, is flawed in that it just runs out of steam; much of the story remains untold, and the ending is just patched on. This adaptation (which is in its second cour) started as a faithful representation of the manga, but from the middle has been increasingly writing its own story which it tells through the remaining scenarios of the manga. This has made it much easier to remain invested in the story than was the case reading the book, as we are clearly heading towards a resolution of the demonic pact which started the story and is just left hanging by the original. I also like the characters, and feel that the cheeky Dororo is very convincingly portrayed. I'm glad to have come across this one (which I had missed when it started last season).

I also started watching Fairy Gone for some reason - but I've dropped that as each episode was less interesting than the previous one, and in the end I could see no reason to continue.

Last season's stand-out for me was The Promised Neverland. The opening episode didn't draw me in, but a friend told me to persist and I was glad I did. I wasn't much attracted by the character designs, though; but the story was more satisfying in the end than I had initially feared it might be. Although I enjoyed it, I can't really think of much to say about it...

Oh, and SSSS.Gridman was great!

And I'm continuing to enjoy slumming it with Black Clover - well, why not?

So I tried -- and didn't pick up -- a couple of this season's meme titles.

Senko-san -- apart from the feeling that anyone who writes code like this

is undeserving of a fox-loli mother-wife, it just leaves me wondering how many sarariman in danger of succumbing to karoshi watching this will be tipped over the edge knowing that they won't be thus pampered when they get home.

Miru Tights -- is what the future of anime distribution could be like : directly published to YouTube rather than sub-licensed for streaming, subbed in multiple languages, each episode after the first freely available for a week. It should not, however, be the future of anime itself, as a set of increasingly niche fetish-service titles.

Mr. Tines wrote:apart from the feeling that anyone who writes code like this

is undeserving of a fox-loli mother-wife

Seriously what the hell

There's some responses for pwhodges and justacrazyguy sprinkled all over the text.


Your Lie in April seems like melodramatic telenovela romp featuring an impossibly pure-hearted waifu, and after reading the synopsis and what happens at the end (and listening to the cringe-inducing one-liners in the trailer), my worst fears were confirmed.
(Over the years I've gotten extremely fed up with cheesiness in media...)
Also, while there was obviously put lots of care in the visual presentation, the overuse of bloom and the weird shading of the lips makes the show very hard to to look at.

On the other hand, I really loved Beck back when I watched 10 years ago. While the animation is reeaaally wonky, the tone of the show has this refreshing grungy earnestness to it, that is so rare in Anime. Yes, the EngRish is cheesy af, but endearingly so, almost MOE-inducing. The OP is one of my favorites in Anime as well. I generally am a huge fan of this direcotor's work; Paradise Kiss ist just amazing, one of the best romances in Anime (up there with Kare Kano, which I detested back when I watched it in 2013, but now I think it's a masterpiece, lol. I was heartbroken at the time). Also still need to finally finish March comes in like A Lion, it was shaping up to become a 10/10, but I fell off when I caught up to the currently airing Episode.

I don't have any fucking time for anything right now. How is it possible that I, of all people, have grown up to have responsibilities. #sadface

I remember Kids on the Slope as being quite good as well. What I like most about Watanabe is how he manages to induce everything with this laid-back attitude, he somehow manages to make cartoons feel like I'm watching real people. I'm really bad at handling Clannad or Kimi no Uso style presentation... My eyes just keep rolling backwards, which makes it impossible for me to watch the show. (lol) On the other end of the tone-spectrum, there is the overly-mega-cool and hard-boiled teen-romp steeped in sarcasm and cynicism. Many American productions suffer from this, especially indie movies, I feel like. Either way, despite being about teenagers, Watanabe knows how to strike a tone that doesn't annoy me. Which makes it automatically better than most media.

Tone is something rarely gets discussed, but it's something I greatly appreciate when done well. Ikuhara is a master of crafting complex emotions in the narrative. As I mentioned above, I really dislike shows that slap the drama into my face and scream "AND NOW FEEL THIS".


So yeah, I still need to get around watching Mob Psycho 200, Carole and Tuesday and Sarazanmai. I've sampled the first Episodes and all of them have the potential to be great. I have read that Carole and Tuesday seems to have a rather poor presentation of Trans People (something Japan still struggles with generally -> Atlus), but I'd have to confirm myself, if it's just the usual SJW hyperbole or if it's just Japan being Japan.

I just finished an old fan service heavy OVA called Agent Aika. The weirdest thing of all was it was actually pretty fun! The setting for the series is a flooded world and there are many boats and submarines with great mecha designs that remind me of things like Outlaw Star. Practical submersible vehicles with intricate grabby parts. There's some great airplane dogfights too. The heroine has a sci-fi body horror guyver esque transformation into a Queen's Blade style ecchi body suit too. The thing is the fan service is omnipresent. Even if someone is standing on the deck of a ship and just giving exposition there will be a girl standing over them for an upskirt shot. The creator of this made Project A-Ko but I don't think there's "more" to the fanservice in this like there was for that. I genuinely enjoyed the show though and had a lot of laughs though. The first four episodes of the OVA are one over arching story and I think worth checking out actually. I know I'm destroying any credibly I have praising this silly pantyshot show but I can find most things pretty enjoyable if you go in wanting to just enjoy a short anime!

-edit- Do not google this anime at work because the results will surely be NSFW! lol

bouncing between Demon Slayer, That Time I was Reincarnated as a Slime, Attack on Titan and the final FM Brotherhood arc.

Two series just ended, so here are some added remarks about them:

I enjoyed watching Sarazanmai, but I found it didn't really add up for me at the end. I think I need to marathon it again, and then it'll come together in my mind. That's the way it was with Mawaru Penguindrum.

The other series that's just ended (this afternoon, in fact) is Dororo (2019). I really liked this and recommend it. The manga (which is from 1967-9) just peters out without a conclusion (Dororo and Hyakkimaru part ways and agree to meet when Hyakkimaru's finished his quest). The old monochrome anime (from 1969) compressed his dispatch of all the rest of the demons into the last episode which sorta helped but was still abrupt. The new series makes some radical changes to the story (around Hyakkimaru not killing his brother Tahomaru when he does in the manga) and comes to a very satisfactory and moral conclusion for both Hyakkimaru and Dororo (you'll see what I mean when you reach the last episode). Even where the story has changed in the later parts, they place it in the scenarios from the manga, so it's still a pretty true adaptation.

Season over(mostly), come on!

Sewayaki Kitsune no Senko-san: A magical fox girl pleases an overworked and miserable salary man. It's supposed to make you feel all warm and fuzzy but it mostly just infuriated me that the protagonist just ignores all the reasons for his problems and just lets the fox girl pamper him for 12 episodes. It's the most irritating kind of escapism possible. Just ignore it. The ED is cute though, I guess.
5/10

Sarazanmai: A wonderful return to form for Ikuhara after the disappointment that was Yuri Kuma. It's not as good as Utena or Penguindrum, but it's still really solid. One thing that I find curious is that a lot of the weirdness that Ikuhara does no longer comes off as strange as it did before. I don't know if its because I got used to his quirks or this particular anime just isn't that strange when compared to his previous work.
8/10

Shield Hero: Complete garbage Isekai that only distinguishes itself through the controversy it created with its premise. False rape accusations aside, once the first 3 episodes or so are done it turns into a generic Isekai, harem and overpowered protagonist and all that good stuff.
There are unfortunately two positive aspects, the music, witch fits the fantasy theme well and is just good in general and the occasionally impressive battle and character animation. These aspects are unfortunate because they are wasted in such a show.
3/10

JOJO 5: After a rough start, I think I've gotten used to this new Jojo. It's not nearly as good as part 4, but it has its own charm. I'm hoping for a solid ending to wrap it up nicely.

Dororo: Just like pwhodges wrote in the post above me, Dororo is excellent and my personal favorite of the season by a substantial margin(not even Sarazanmai comes close). I have nothing to say about the story and characters, so let me just exalt the show's other virtues.

The music can be discrete a lot of the time and I struggle to remember any of it(OP aside), but it fits well with the show.
The animation is wonky on a few episodes, but it is generally high quality and has plenty of great moments, especially on the many fight scenes this anime provides.
The backgrounds are gorgeous, courtesy of the always wonderful Studio Pablo.

Sometimes I wish I could write one of those pretty anime reviews, like Xard used to do, because anime like these deserve it.
9/10

---

Next season looks good, hell, even a few of the Isekai anime look nice! I wonder for how much longer the Isekai trend will last?

I've never watched Space Runaway Ideon in full, and I'm getting the BD today. I'm very excited for this.

Oh man another season concludes, and I haven't found the time to watch any of it... Really wanna check out Dororo, Sarazanmai, Mob Psycho 200 and Carole and Tuesday before the year is out!

Dropped Rise of the Shield Hero, as it was just going full dumb-wish fulfillment, whereas before a few characters I thought had some agency at least.

But they've been flanderized to the point of having no other qualities or conversations left. BP

Gyrozetter episode 1:

Have you ever watched one of those Tony Seba transportation lectures and thought to yourself "this is pretty cool, but it would be even cooler as a shounen battle anime"? Because if you have, Gyrozetter has you covered. Back in 2012, the show was meant to advertise Square Enix's new arcade game with a transforming control scheme gimmick, enabling gameplay that switches from an arcade racer into a QTE-based robot arena fighter. Weirdly, even though it was a fairly simplistic game for kids, it featured dozens of licensed real-life cars from various Japanese manufacturers, because apparently that's a product synergy opportunity that makes sense. As one might guess, a game concept mashup like that is probably going to result in a pretty nuts anime version, but what makes this first episode really fun is that it keeps a straight face while going balls out with all the ridiculous shit, and it's exactly the sort of anime nonsense that I live for. I mean, when I think of words that probably shouldn't appear together in any non-insane context, "Prius" and "prophecy" make a pretty good pair.

In Gyrozetter's alt-future the Japanese government started investing heavily in self-driving technology as early as in 2003, and so in the show's present day AI cars are the norm and New Yokohama has become the Silicon Valley of new transportation industry. Curiously, the cars still seem to be running on some kind of internal combustion engines, which immediately dates the show pretty mercilessly. But anyway, our protagonists are a group of kids attending Waymo Hogwarts, where they spend their days learning to drive cars; we are introduced to them in the midst of some hot parallel parking action. Of course, all this driving practice is meant to stealthily train them into mastering the secret robot forms of their cars, but neither the kids nor their parents know this, so it makes me wonder why everybody just goes along with a driving-heavy syllabus in a setting where technology has made driving skill obsolete. But there's no time to dwell on this, as a villain group driving appropriately pitch-black cars invades the campus. They might be satanists, considering they're led by a big bad named Lord Goat. The headmaster of the school summons our lead kid, the high-energy pro-wrestling fan Kakeru, and tells him he's destined to become the first Gyrozetter pilot, and Kakeru doesn't need to be asked twice to get in the robot, kick ass and do the dab. It's all very cliche-soupy, but the matter-of-factly seriousness plays to its strengths. For example, when Kakeru gets his one of a kind hero robot car with a strong jawline, we are treated with a typically derivative launch sequence: heroic music swells, great steel shutters whizz open... and it's non-ironically just a car driving out of a garage. It's shamelessly stupid-awesome, and I can't wait to see more. A fantastic first episode, and another great reminder of why I love anime.

Attack on titan Season 3 was excellent. The season started strong with the uprising arc and then few final episodes (From "Hero" to the final episode of the season) lifted this series to a whole new level for me, which is impressive considering I thought back in 2013 that the first season was just fine.
I have not read the manga, but I hope the quality of season 4 is as good or better. (I've heard that the current, final arc is the best one so far).

8 Man After was a really interesting unique take on a classic show. The old 8 Man show was from 1963! It was a robot super hero who bizarrely would power up by smoking energy cigarettes. It's cute and pretty fun, certainly better than the old Marvel cartoons. 8 Man After was a 90's OVA that re imagined the world as dystopian cyber punk future where a large amount of cyborgs or people with robotic mods can take a drug that energizes them but also makes them go berserk and commit crimes sometimes. The new 8 Man is a detective and it's a cool mix of sci-fi and crime noir. Only four episodes so it's in and out but I think it's worth watching! Who knew a gritty reboot of a cheesy old comic could go well?

Finally after two decades of knowing about it's existence, I have watched the first episode of The Irresponsible Captain Tylor TV series!

It was so delightfully funny with Tylor's antics both with the admissions guy and Betty the A.I. questionnaire who I didn't expect would be aroused by Tylor's usual shenanigans but then again, it is a comedy show. Also involved is a bit of serious moments with Azalyn and the Raalgon Empire's politics of pressuring her to proclaim war against the United Space Force. The scene where she cries in front of a sympathetic captain while still maintaining a mask of composure was touching. Even though I wanted so much to watch it back in the day, it just slipped out of my radar but now I am gonna dedicate myself to completing this interesting journey into space dramedy.

Watched Code Geass over the course of the last week, and loved every second of it; I can only describe the plot as brilliant.

Then I went to watch the recap movies because I heard that they are an alternate universe and differ in a few points.
Having sen all three, I can safely say that this was a giant waste of time. Not only did they hypercompress the plot to the point where even with the show fresh in mind it crossed over into a barely coherent mess, especially in what would have been the second season; they also lost all of the strategical brilliance that made the original show so good.
To be fair, the movies do look pretty visually, but that's about it. They add a grand total of some 10 minutes of new footage combined, all of it being minor logistical details along the lines of "how did x person get into possession of y item", with every one of those either being answered in the original show through implications or being completely irrelevant to the plot.
The "different timeline" bit is the only reason these movies even exist, and it consists of drumroll... one retconned character death by just leaving out scenes related to it and then shoving that character into random existing scenes at later points of the story.

Technically you "need to watch" the movies to have the corect timeline for the fourth movie, but you can just watch the series instead and follow it up by watching the movie trailer, where one character will spring into your eye as "yeah that one isn't supposed to be alive" and then imagine the like two arcs centered around that character didn't happen.

I will be watching the Akito the Exiled movies soon, expecting better of those

Cop Craft

Buddy-cop set up via a genre mishmash of fantasy and hardboiled police drama."Bright the Anime" might not be too far off in describing it. But I only wish an orc had been the partner here.

Mind, I'm only one episode in. It looks fine, the character intro for the detective works... but the girl doesn't. She just feels like an out-of-place moe cash grab (which goes to 11 the moment you see the ED). I feel like the show could work only so long as we focus on the cop, and see little of her.

But this show is clearly about the mish mash, it's about juxtaposing genre expectation and elements, and seeing how they break each other apart. Here though, the genres just seem to sit side-by-side taking turns to speak up. It just comes across as a wasted opportunity.

I'm going to continue watch just because I like the cop (and Kenjiro Tsuda), but even that may wear old.

Summer season is a least being better than Spring.

I dropped Sounan desu-ka after the first episode, as it just didn't engage; and while I haven't dropped Granbelm after 3 episodes, it's on the borderline, for only half-heartedly delivering either magical mech beam-spam or engaging characters. At this rate, definitely lining up for "disappointment of the season" if we don't get some decent hook soon.

By being much as expected, i.e. hamming up the overpowered anti-hero title character, and going full-on "Don't make me angry; you wouldn't like me when I'm angry." Accelerator is on much safer ground.

And at the top of the list, of course, is Dumbbell nan kilo moteru?, which is just being a competent adaptation of the source material. There may be a few bits where the animation shows slightly questionable form (e.g. the demonstration of half-squats has a foot placement that would end up in falling over backwards, and the incomplete range of movement in the bench press), but the main change in the adaptation is the toning down of the fan-service (gone are the crop-tops with underboob, for example). Since I end up watching this over a meal, no, I haven't joined in with the post-credits exercises.