C.T.1290 wrote:Monster Musume
What can I say? Monster girls are kind of hot.

A fellow man of culture, well met.
Sadly, I find this silly sub-genre to be rather lacking in terms of decent titles. I can only really recommend Interviews with Monster Girls, although this is a far more wholesome affair. Still- it has a gorgeous Succubus teacher, so there’s that.

Couldn’t finish Monster Girl Doctor. The terrible animation and aesthetic were so bad this couldn’t even be classified as a guilty pleasure.

Gus Hanson wrote:Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040
I have to say Nene is far more tolerable in the original sub than the ADV dub where the nickname Leon-poo is just too cringeworthy than Leon-chan in the Japanese.

Speaking of dubbing, I can’t think of many worse decisions than having one of the main characters of a 26-episode show be voiced by Kelly Manison.
Being a fan of the noises Hilary Haag makes- I found Nene tolerable, myself.

MonMusu, that's a name I haven't heard in a while. Pretty sure that was one of the first anime I ever watched, found it absolutely hilarious. I even went as far as reading the manga to it, had some surprisingly dark arcs later on... and then went to milking fetish for longer than the two previous arcs combined, which is just about where I dropped it

chazthesilencer wrote:Speaking of dubbing, I can’t think of many worse decisions than having one of the main characters of a 26-episode show be voiced by Kelly Manison.
Being a fan of the noises Hilary Haag makes- I found Nene tolerable, myself.

Oh, truth be told I really am quite the Hilary Haag fan. The only thing in that series that I didn't agree on to use her voice with was the Leon nickname but that's all. As for Kelly Manison, she may be miscast as Linna but in other works such as Nadesico pulls off Minato well.

Tezuka's Firebird 2772 is everything Dr. Nick said it was (even if the subtitles I found were too embarrassed to give the Chief of Science's full name), only with way more by way of interludes that wanted to be in Disney's Fantasia when they grew up than I had expected. And less explanation of how Black Jack arrived in Iceland than one might have hoped for.

Saw the final two tv episodes and the ova episode of My First Girlfriend is a Gal.

The dub cast is swell and bringing their best meta material and the arc of Junichi and Yukana having relationship trouble brought about by Yukana's sleazeball past friend who the script made sure i surely despised when he bragged to his buds that gals like her are sluts begging to be fucked brought genuine satisfaction when he gets his comeuppance courtesy of Junichi's friends and Ranko including a confusing moment of whether you should feel happy for Minoru finally helping out a little girl given his preferrence for them but it does lead to a funny Hulk transformation which finishes off the douchebag.

As for the main couple's date at the amusement park leading to the long awaited first kiss was full circle and a satisfactory conclusion to a mostly fanservice providing show.

The other day I found out that Zone of the Enders actually has an anime as well, not just the games; always been a fan of the designs, probably will be giving that a watch soon™

Blockio wrote:The other day I found out that Zone of the Enders actually has an anime as well, not just the games; always been a fan of the designs, probably will be giving that a watch soon™

I have the prequel OVA Idolo on DVD to this day which features the Viola character from the games.

Macross Frontier episode 9

They make it so damn obvious that Grace is the villain beginning with her planting seed of doubt on Michel's sniping ability by commenting on his dead sister then snooping on the Frontier meeting. Also, the voice that orders Brera to go on his mission isn't even trying to disguise it's plain as day Grace.

Minimal usage of Ranka and Sheryl but the latter did have a flexible exercise fanservice moment.

Chihayafuru 3 was an interesting change of pace after the first two series -- much of the time Chihaya wasn't playing cards, being either away on a school trip, worrying about what career to follow after high-school, or in the audience watching 2nd and 3rd tier cast members playing each other in the Master and Queen tournaments. And there was even about an episode's worth of progression of the romance triangle scattered into the mix, before another cliffhanger ending.

To take up the slack, after finishing a series that had been half-backlogged all year, the next off the backlog is Samurai Flamenco, which is being amusing enough after half a dozen episodes. Getting to be about time for Chopping Chimp to make an appearance, I believe.

I’m no longer watching Higurashi week by week. I’ll be checking-in once every four weeks instead. Why endure the cliff-hangers?

Tonikawa has me hooked. The simple, sexless relationship of the two leads isn’t anything groundbreaking but plenty charming, and a welcome dose of sugar to look forward to on Fridays.
In the third episode a would-be rival was introduced, oblivious of the marriage and no-doubt added to the story to set up a love triangle and cause great conflict in later episodes… in episode nine the rival is seen again (only for the second time), learns of the marriage, momentarily breaks-down, accepts it and moves on in the space of roughly 5 minutes.

That tickled me.

DanMachi season 3. I know that “Is it Wrong to pick up Girls in a Dungeon?” was never destined to be a great example of storytelling, but blimey, they dropped the ball like a meteor between the end of episode 8 and 9.
I was expecting an emotional plea for mercy to resolve the commotion in ep 8, but was actually surprised to see

Wow, this show might actually have some guts. This is bound to become one of those before and after moments, with ripples that will affect everybody for the rest of their lives and- no, of course not. You don’t even get to feel the impact of this loss for two minutes before the event is completely undone. The episode ends with “a wizard did it” fix. How convenient.
Still- there might be something about this the show can explore a little. Sure, the village folk aren’t too happy with Bell’s actions, but how about Wiene’s feelings? The one at the center of it all and the one who experienced the worst of it? Is she traumatised? Does she hate humans now? Has she lost all faith in the people she once thought trustworthy?
Apparently- these questions were not interesting enough to address at any point during episode 9, or 10. Wiene is acting like nothing happened. Presumably because nothing of note really did.
Sad.

Oh dear, somebody messed up the lines on Hestia’s most noticeable feature in this frame.

After 4 episodes, Galilei Donna reminds me very much of RerideD, even though none of the lead staff on the one worked on the other, which is enough for me to declare it another Noitamina dud. By contrast the Toji no Miko OVA is shaping up to be a pleasant reminder of the original series, even if it is just more mobage tie-in publicity.

Magic Knight Rayearth season 1: Pretty much follows the manga in broad strokes, with some minor changes and additional monster fights, although I will have to reread the manga to figure out whether the ending in the manga also had (my memory of the manga is a bit spotty and not helped by the at times fairly shitty translation by the French publisher). Some of the filler has off-model art, plus sometimes plot elements that get ignored in the following episode. There also are a few fights that have very limited animation - basically the "Lets move the cell across the screen with flashy background"-process.
Comments on the Bluray box by Anime Ltd.: Thankfully they used the original art for the decoration of the box, and not the modern renditions of the characters that seem to have been used on the Japanese boxes where the characters look very not like themselves. I hadn't looked up the number of episodes for each series beforehand, so I was a bit surprised when 2/3rds through the discs the end of the series was announced...turns out the first series has only 20 episodes, and the third disc actually also contains seven episodes from season 2. Bonuses in the first box are a bit light: an art book on decent quality paper, that unfortunately only contains pictures from the anime itself and no original Rayearth art from Clamp.

First thoughts on season 2: The art is more generic and less Clamp-like than in the first series. However, the quality appears to be more consistent. There are a few early episodes in season 2 that suffer from DBZitis: characters just stand there staring at each other while screaming and not doing much. I love how each faction not only has its very distinct look, but the music also reflects the differences. So Autozam gets more rocking music, Chizeta sounds vaguely Middle Eastern, and Fahren gets distinct east Asian shades, while the music turns dreamily creepy whenever Debonair is involved.

Gave Girls und Panzer: Das Finale Part 2 a watch; as silly as one would expect, but rather fun, with some neat little references and actual tactics for once. Oh and that GODTIER sound design.
It's been a while since I enjoyed something is insubstantial this much

The Great Pretender.

For the record this is not a bad anime like I'd recommend it to anyone who is new to the anime it just wasn't for me.

Magic Knight Rayearth season 2 further thoughts: It diverges quite a lot from the manga, and IMHO that's good, because that makes it more interesting than the manga. The animation quality is consistently good. Minor nitpick that also applies to other Magical Girl shows (and the Super Robot genre): The girls gain new ultimate attacks with close to zero foreshadowing except character development, which kinda feels like asspull...

Magic Knight Rayearth OVA: Oh dear. Alternate universe, inversion of quite a few plot elements, and all that stuffed into three episodes, what could go wrong? The first episode starts off giving next to no explanation for how and what, making the behaviour of various characters quite jarring. Most of the villains; and also the girls up to a degree, are flat characters (that seemingly are murderous without a clear reason in the case of the villains). Some of the girls' lines are very strange, referring back to things that happened in the series that they didn't experience in the OVA, and yet they talk about it as if it happened to them (most obvious: Fuu reluctantly saying she killed Ferio as if he meant more to her than the villain he is in the OVA, before he even gave her his name ). The third OVA info-dumps the setting on you. Everyone has a mashin, some of which violently explode at one point and are completely destroyed, and then mysteriously are more or less intact again in the next scene or OVA, only to then violently explode again. The pilots usually are obliterated together with their mashin, only to show up alive a moment later. Rayearth is either earth itself or the fusion mashin of the three girls. Hikaru's mashin has been redesigned and renamed, and looks like the unholy fusion between the title mech from Cybernetic Guardian and a Pokemon (i.e narmy). Sometimes something happens offscreen, the aftermath of which you would think would show up in a later episode, except it doesn't (Alcyone is dead? Or still hanging there? What about the inhabitants of Tokyo who were spirited away to a time warp but in fact maybe not because Fuu witnesses some of them vaporising?). A large part of Tokyo gets leveled in the fights. The girls gain knowledge of their magical girl transformation out of the blue.
It's like a cross between every type of major geeky Japanese show (kaiju, magical girl, horror, mecha) with the Rayearth crew thrown in while intoxicated with some strange drug that causes them to act out of character. Curiously, it was made by the same studio as the TV series and supervised by Clamp...wait, maybe that last bit explains everything.
Oh well, the animation and art is quite pretty.

Anime Ltd. second box thoughts: The last Bluray is stuffed with bonuses, some of which appear to come from Media Blasters' 2005 DVD release. The interviews with the Japanese crew members are interesting even though the subtitles are incomplete and have some spelling errors. Some of the interviews with the US dub voice actors are unwatchable due to a high level of background noise (which idiot thought it was a good idea to interview someone in an arcade hall?). Now I usually watch my anime in Japanese with subs, so I figured I'd watch the US trailer - cue voice-over with cliché-storm so bad I didn't bother finishing it (why do US anime trailers always suck so badly? They almost always involve someone trying to sound super serious/mean and blurting out kewl words ). All of the openings and endings are included in high quality: original Japanese, US, international, with and without text. Also included are various Japanese promotional videos, in glorious non-remastered quality (and in one case likely pulled from a VHS tape instead of the original master), which get a bit repetitive after a while, but are a nice bonus. There also are a few art galleries which include art from the various art books, unfortunately in self-playing slide show format. The box itself also includes a few cards with art from the series.

While I was watching the abysmal Sword for Truth OVA, I finally came to the realization that the Manga dub may have made a mistake in naming a character. It happens during the lesbian scene of Okuni and (supposedly, according to the dub) Princess Mayu when Okuni orders "Princess Mayu" during an opium induced sex scene to bring her the Ginryu sword but I was watching the Japanese sub today and Okuni mentions TWICE the name Mio which implies a totally different character altogether. Doesn't help matters that this "Mio" looks so similar to Princess Mayu that it's understandable if confusion made it's way to the dubbing producers and the general public has had to suffer for this since.

Bruh, Higurashi Tataridamashi hen, with such this litteral disaster as an ending, how I am supposed to have good christmas eve, now ?

After the swamp that is youtube recommendations threw the openings at me, I'm thinking about giving Shin Getter a shot. animation looks pretty cool, it's short and one of the shows currently where "or I could not watch it" isn't the more appealing answer right now

Just finished Great Pretender on Netflix, it was great! Amazing art style, mature but funny at times story, unique premise for an anime, kept me guessing what next scam they're gonna pull off, very good use of different languages in the show and overall a conclusive ending but with open ended elements in case another season happens. I really loved it!

The season is over and not much of interest came out. Still...


Sport Climbing Girls- Yet another sow about cute girls doing stuff, this time around te rather obscure activity of climbing walls. Not much to say, although the activity does mean you get to see cute girls in unusual angles, if that is you stuff.
6/10

Golden Kamuy S3- It’s even better than the previous seasons, and I feel like the visuals have improved quite a bit. That said, if you didn’t like the previous seasons this one won’t win you over.
8/10

Also good in this season was Fire Force S2 with it's solid shounen action and Jujustsu Kaisen was consistently great looking.

Looks like next season is mostly sequels. Kind of boring, but hey, at least this Evangelion movie I heard much about is coming out too.