Justacrazyguy wrote: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

I think 6/10 sounds right for this one, though I did enjoy the show quite a bit. But it wasn't really doing anything new and couldn't really touch some of the phenomenal sports shows we've seen come out over the last few years.
But, it did make me want to climb some walls.
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This season I also watched The Day I Became a God, Nijigasaki Love Live!, Assauly Lily: Bouquet and Fire Force S2, with the second season of Fire Force probably being my favorite of the 5. I wasn't crazy about the first season but this one had me going the whole way.
The new Love Live was really good and was less meandering than some of these idol shows can be, and if you liked the other two series I'm guessing you'd like this one too.
Assault Lily Bouquet was maybe the show that disappointed me the most this year. The animation was really nice since it was done by Shaft, but the show didn't really have a plot or any characters to care about. It was a waste really.
The Day I Became a God was like Maeda's other couple shows, though less outrageous. It had the nice music and humor you'd expect from him, along with the tears and plot twists.

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With the year coming to a close, I'll probably give Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken my award for anime of the year, though with everything that's happened since the first 3 months of the year it feels like I watched it forever ago.
Rounding out my top 5 would probably be Id: Invaded, Kakushigoto, Appare-Ranman and Smile Down the Runway. I also got to see Ride Your Wave in theaters before everything shut down, so that was a real treat.

And there's still quite a few shows from this year I have yet to watch. And this was probably the year my anime fandom has done the most for me; having new shows to watch every week was one of the few things I had to look forward to. Looking forward to the new shows we'll get to enjoy in 2021(Especially the new Zombie Land Saga!)

I liked The Day I Became God, though mostly because those last few episodes hit shockingly close to home for me and ended up reminding me a lot of some rough times from my childhood in a way I really didn't expect going in.

Like that's probably not indicative of actual quality of the show or anything, but when something hits you it hits you, I guess.

Unfortunately I didn't feel much watching The Day I Became a God, some of the comedy was good, sure, and some of the dramatic moments were ok too, and the loli protagonist was cute, but I left the last episode with just a boring "meh" as my final reaction.

Another season ends... Iwa Kakeru was the only one I was following, and it was an adequate "cute girls do cute climbing things" offering, but no more. The quirky rivals from the other schools were mostly Chekov guns that never fired, with only Asuka Kurusu Anne being given much development, and again the curse of the 12 episode season hit -- the Nationals could have benefited from spreading over two episodes and leaving a little space to catch breath after the results were announced.

From the backlog, Samurai Flamenco was a fun love letter to toku, along the same lines as Gurrent Lagann was for super-robot, as well as being one of those rare series where the main cast are all adults well past their school days.

Picked up on a whim from having seen favourable mention years past, Blast of Tempest served the job of occupying a few dark evenings, but as a shonen series, having the two high-school leads out "keikaku doori"-ing the adults was just going to be part of the territory, even if it had the grace to stay out of school. The mid series plot-twist was handled elegantly, as was the guy who by rights ought to have been the big bad. That the main girl falls for the "literally me" character was only to be expected.

Looking forward to Yuru Camp 2 for the new season, but the rest of it is looking pretty thin. But then in 3 weeks time we shall probably be too busy to notice.

Justacrazyguy wrote:Unfortunately I didn't feel much watching The Day I Became a God…I left the last episode with just a boring "meh" as my final reaction.

This seemed to be one of those under-the-radar shows as nobody bothered to mention they were watching it, but it looks like there were at least 4 of us here on the forum after all.
The start being little more than summer fun and games was cute enough (although ep4 was a waste of time), but it was pretty obvious that this was all set-up for a big baw-trap ending which ultimately didn’t pay off for me.
Sure, the reveal in ep10 was sad and all, and I can imagine this sort of thing would affect others differently, as Killer said-

The Killer of Heroes wrote:when something hits you it hits you, I guess.

But the whole thing was just too predictable for me to care too deeply.

Justacrazyguy wrote:and the loli protagonist was cute

You know this image had to be shared

Joy Evangelion wrote:I'll probably give Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken my award for anime of the year

Oh! Is it time for end-of-year honours?

Seems the shows I enjoyed most this year were mainly continuations, such as Ascendance of a Bookworm, Fruits Basket, Re-Zero and My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU. Just more of the things I liked, some ending on a decent note, and others ending like Re:Zero.

My award for saddest, missed opportunity would have to go to: My Next Life as a Villainess. It had a neat premise and an endearing start, but refused to do anything interesting with it.

My award for most memorable, noteworthy, and culturally significant show goes to -pardon my sins- Interspecies Reviewers.

Justacrazyguy wrote:Unfortunately I didn't feel much watching The Day I Became a God

Apparently the series didn't go down well with the Japanese fans either, leading to Maeda Jun dropping off social media because of the negative reactions he was getting.

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In other news, the Toji no Miko OVA was little more than a reminder advertisement for the mobage, to showcase some of the in-game characters. Entirely harmless, but a bit of a let down compared with the series. Even the sword fights seemed mainly to be going through the motions.

Over the past two days, I gave Three assholes in a Robot a watch, better known as Shin Getter Robo. Hooo boy, what to say to this show. Honestly my main takeaway from it is that TTGL is a complete ripoff down to the green swirly shit, punching destiny in the face, drilltip collisions, weird metaspace shit at the end, the antagonist's motivation and the planet sized robots, but that's besides the point.
The visuals are great, soundtrack is amazing, and the mechanical design is really good.
The story is just kinda... there, has some interesting ideas, but can never shake the feeling of being just another monster of the week thing.
Overall 5/10

I've been finding a few odds and ends to watch -- someone has subbed the first couple of episodes of Six Hearts Princess, another rather different magical girl series, Different, as in it opens like this



with the use of ships as projectile weapons like that last seen in EoE.

Also, the legendary 1985 OVA Twinkle Nora Rock Me. Yes, that one. The one where they saved money by not doing any in-betweening. Entirely harmless fluff, but Nora herself stands as an example of a character with potential wasted by the rest of the production.

Blockio wrote:Over the past two days, I gave Three assholes in a Robot a watch, better known as Shin Getter Robo. Hooo boy, what to say to this show. Honestly my main takeaway from it is that TTGL is a complete ripoff down to the green swirly shit, punching destiny in the face, drilltip collisions, weird metaspace shit at the end, the antagonist's motivation and the planet sized robots, but that's besides the point.
The visuals are great, soundtrack is amazing, and the mechanical design is really good.
The story is just kinda... there, has some interesting ideas, but can never shake the feeling of being just another monster of the week thing.
Overall 5/10

Yeah TTGL takes a lot from Getter Robo*, but TTGL is actually a good show while every Getter Robo thing I've read or seen has been super underwhelming and vacillating from outright bad to just kind of average at best like that despite a few individually strong elements from time to time.

Now granted Shin is one of the ones I haven't watched, but I read Ishikawa's run on the manga, saw Armageddon, 70's crossover movies with Mazinger etc., and your complaints seem reminiscent of issues I had with those.

*Though TTGL takes a lot from other anime too. Like there's a lot of Xabungle in its first half as well.

Is Attack on Titan good? I have a lot of my plate and even in a pandemic I try to avoid getting into shows that are currently airing and plan to go on for years. While I prefer anthologies or shorter anime shows that wrap things up in 12 or 20-some episodes I get the appeal of long shows with epic storylines and occasionally like to get into them when they're in the final parts. I waited until Breaking Bad & Game of Thrones were on their final seasons before I started watching for example. Now that Attack on Titan is airing "The Final Season" I might be willing to finally give it a shot.

Truth be told only thing Attack on Titan I've seen has been the two part Live Action version Shinji Higuchi did a few years ago and really the only reason I watched that was because I knew he was co-directing Shin Godzilla with Hideaki Anno.

Gendo'sPapa wrote:Is Attack on Titan good?

Yes. Its not like flawless or anything but its good.

Since you've seen Game of Thrones I'd compare the general storyline of AoT to all of the early Jon Snow/The Wall plotlines from that show but generally done better IMHO.

EDIT: Blah I missed that you saw the live action movies. I never saw those myself so I don't know how they compare to the show.

Gendo'sPapa wrote:Is Attack on Titan good?

Season 1 has terrible pacing issues, it does a DBZ in that action gets delayed in places, this does improve around season 2 but the series also has issues in that it has yet to resolve a mayor plot line that's hung around for two seasons and in S2 opened another which it has yet to go in to. (I have yet to see S3) I would recommend reading the manga instead.

The Killer of Heroes wrote:Yeah TTGL takes a lot from Getter Robo*, but TTGL is actually a good show while every Getter Robo thing I've read or seen has been super underwhelming and vacillating from outright bad to just kind of average at best like that despite a few individually strong elements from time to time.

Now granted Shin is one of the ones I haven't watched, but I read Ishikawa's run on the manga, saw Armageddon, 70's crossover movies with Mazinger etc., and your complaints seem reminiscent of issues I had with those.

Quite honestly, I liked Shin Getter about as much as TTGL overall; as for Armageddon, I'm kinda enjoying that one actually

Getter Armaggedon was awesome as shit. TTGL takes that style and texture but uses it to tell a much more human and dramatic story, while still retaining the cool factor.
TTGL is one of my favourite things ever at this point. Just has been that significant throughoit my young years.

Gendo'sPapa wrote:Is Attack on Titan good?

I found the first season to be incredibly dull. I also was greatly annoyed by the massive overdramatization of every little thing, although I've heard they tone that down in further seasons.(that I didn't watch)
It is, however, plentifully in good animation and the OPs are catchy as all hell so it might be worth giving a look just for that.

I know a bunch of people who love it and some who hate it to death, it's one of those divise anime.

I watched the first season back in the day, it was alright. Nothing to write home about, but a solid action anime

Thanks for the Attack on Titan input! That sounds about what I was expecting. It's so hard to get an honest opinion online sometimes cause you'll only get the two extremes - Greatest show ever! or Worst most overrated show ever! - when the truth 99 times out of a 100 is somewhere in the middle. I think I'll wait until the last episode airs to give it a watch.

Went ahead with what I originally wanted to do and watched Shin Getter: Armageddon. I had way more fun with this show than I would have ever thought. Super Robot shit done right, some extremely nice visuals and music, great fight choreography and in a nice change of pace to the 2004 one interesting characters and at least some degree of stakes.
8/10 way the hell better than it has any right to

I’m watching Ima Soko Ni Iru Boko, otherwise known as Now and Then Here and There in English. I downloaded it on ITunes years ago and got access of it through Apple TV.

C.T.1290 wrote:I’m watching Ima Soko Ni Iru Boko, otherwise known as Now and Then Here and There in English. I downloaded it on ITunes years ago and got access of it through Apple TV.

SPOILER: Show

It’s about a boy named Shuzo Matsutani, or Shu for short, who found a mysterious girl named Lala Ru, who has the ability to manipulate water with her mystical pendant. While watching the sunset on top of the smoke stack, she and Shu were abducted by a woman named Abelia and the soldiers from Hellywood and are transported to another world, which is assumed to be the future in ten billion years time. The earth has become a dying desert planet under the ruthless dictatorship of the mad king named Hamdo. Shu also meets a girl named Sara, who is also from earth and was abducted as she was mistaken for Lala Ru, due to their similarities. Terrible things has happened to her as she is subjected to rape by the soldiers of Hellywood to produce future soldiers. Although not shown, it has been applied that it happened to her twice, and almost the third time before she finally broke free. However, she ended up pregnant as the result of her abuse and attempted to abort her unborn child by slamming a rock into her abdomen, it wasn’t until Shu had intervened to talk her out of her attempted suicide and the abortion of the bastard child, and persuaded her to continue on living.

The series deals with the subjects of war, the use of child soldiers, slavery, rape and the consequences that follows, poverty, genocide, and human madness. As someone had once put it, it’s not for the faint hearted. I highly recommend this series if you haven’t seen it yet. I first saw it while it aired on the SyFy channel back when it did AniMondays.

Anyways, give it a try. It’s only 13 episodes long and criminally underrated, but it was all worth it in the end.

This show ruined my entire month when I first saw it. It's that depressing. I just stared at the ceiling and thought about it.
It's a more effective horror anime than most known Horror anime. Because the whole trauma of the experience of seeing these children go through the most fucked up things a human being can go through, and how true to real world experiences it is despite it being fantasy. It just lingers and not in a good way.

I did not care for it at all. Not least of which because of how it handled certain aspects of a certain characters story arc, and the dangling unresolved plotthreads. Also with how the whole thing was set up and executed, I felt the ending was a bit hollow and pointless