Blockio wrote:I just watched Symphogear S1 with a friend; fun show, definitely gonna watch more. Said friend also played my expectations like a fiddle

Followed it up with S2 tonight. Lost A LOT of braincells to the dialogue during a certain fightscene, but had a blast overall

And now S3 the other night. I don't think anything has beaten S1 so far, but this was definitely a lot of fun

Finished Berserk '97, a fairly solid adaptation of the Golden Age arc in spite of character omissions and chapter skips, And the soundtrack is without a doubt a keeper.

I agree that Berserk '97 is a solid adaptation. I watched it before I read the manga and am glad to have done so.



And of course, the soundtrack is absolutely phenomenal.

Indeed, although I should forewarn that the first episode is a potential spoiler.

I honestly kind of think the first episode is skippable, given that the series doesn't end up tackling anything beyond the Golden Age.

Half agree, that speech Guts gave to the snake baron before ripping into him is too badass.

Blockio wrote:And now S3 the other night. I don't think anything has beaten S1 so far, but this was definitely a lot of fun

The Symphobinge went into the fourth round; this show is a lot, and I say this with nothing but love in my heart. Everyone here should go watch it, it's such a fun mess.

And tonight was the rest of the show/S5. That was very fun. Definitely recommend it to everyone in the mood for a somewhat sillier show with seriously good music.
There's a handful of things I'd have done differently, mainly pertaining to the ghosts of the dead people; especially Tsubasa could have used another interaction or two with Kanade, but overall those are relatively minor complaints

Bingewatched 86 - EIGHTY SIX; there has not been a show in the better half of a decade that got me this close to crying. I'm not yet sure if it's a 9/10 or 10/10, but definitely high up there

Although 86 - Eighty Six has ended for now, it is advertised as a split-cour show with another twelve episodes to come later to finish "season 1". What we've had so far is the whole of the first book of the original light novel series, but without the epilogue, and part of the second. My guess is that the next cour will use the rest of books two and three, ending up with the epilogue of book one (which they lead into). I agree that it's well worth watching (I'd originally missed it in the listings - thanks to Bagheera for pointing it out to me). The handling of the racism theme is not as brutally on the nose as it is in the books, where it's spelt out again and again, perhaps to a level that spoils it! There are many more books, so if this season is a success there is plenty of material for a follow-up.

Other than that, in the last season I've been watching Mashiro no Oto (Those Snow White Notes) which has been pretty good, but ultimately not as compelling as the similar Kono Oto Tomare! (Sounds of Life) was. It focussed too much on the main character, instead of presenting character growth for subsidiary characters as well.

Fruits Basket (2019) is coming to its end, and has been as good as I'd hoped for. The fact that the mangaka was involved in this adaptation (she was unhappy with the first) must have helped. And also the fact that the story is now complete, which it wasn't when the old series was made, is an obvious justification for the new series. It was interesting that the Japanese voices are all new, but the main English ones from the earlier dub reprised their roles.

SSSS.DynaZenon was pretty fun, silly though I find that kind of thing. The love story was nicely handled.

Back Arrow was also good fun, though also quite stupid when it came down to it - Darling in the FranXX or Gurran Lagann levels of escalation towards the end, but I enjoyed the joke in the last line.

Cestvs has just about kept my interest, but it's marginal. The CGI can be irritating, and I'm sure it plays fast and loose with historical accuracy!

The recent short Netflix OVA Eden about recovering from an environmental catastrophe, was fun and sweet.

The film of Given was a straightforward continuation of the manga from where the series left off, and it did the job perfectly. It would not work as a stand-alone item - you need to have watched the series.

From the last season, I'll just mention Yashahime. This is a next-generation sequel to the long Inuyasha series. While it was pretty good, I'm not placing it at the same level as its predecessor, at least on the basis of one season.

Of older anime, I have recently enjoyed Cross Game. I'm not into sports anime in general, but the handling of the balance between baseball and the love story was well done. I came across the show because of a common factor with one of my all-time favourites, Bokura ga Ita; they both have a character whose death at the start of the story (episode 1 in Cross Game, before the start in Bokura ga Ita) is key to how the story and the character relationships develop, right up to the end. (N.B., the anime of Bokura ga Ita is only half the story - the parallels get even stronger when the rest of the manga is considered.)

pwhodges wrote:Although 86 - Eighty Six has ended for now, it is advertised as a split-cour show with another twelve episodes to come later to finish "season 1". What we've had so far is the whole of the first book of the original light novel series, but without the epilogue, and part of the second. My guess is that the next cour will use the rest of books two and three, ending up with the epilogue of book one (which they lead into). I agree that it's well worth watching (I'd originally missed it in the listings - thanks to Bagheera for pointing it out to me). The handling of the racism theme is not as brutally on the nose as it is in the books, where it's spelt out again and again, perhaps to a level that spoils it! There are many more books, so if this season is a success there is plenty of material for a follow-up.

I'm super looking forward to that; 86 is definitely one of the best shows I've watched recently

Looking around yesterday at the upcoming season I noticed the continuation of Fumetsu no Anata e (To Your Eternity) which intrigued me enough to go back and see what I'd missed. It's by the same person as Koe no Katachi (A Silent Voice); however, it's nothing like that. It appears to explore identity using a SF trick. I've watched the first episode, which was really intense, and am looking forward to see how the story will settle down (there's also an element of the early-tragedy-sets-the-scene idea I mentioned in regard to Cross Game and Bokura ga Ita.

Even though these past weeks have been slow, I more than made up for it watching a little anime here and there. For instance, I got myself caught up with Aquarion Logos episodes 6 through 9 in English dub which I definitely am sticking to for the fact that Luci Christian voices Maia the female MC.

I would most likely title Sougon as the humongous of deadbeat dads, rivaling even Gendo Ikari. He wants to kill the whole world through the power of kanji but he doesn't even care about his own flesh and blood son Subete. The ninth episode where Maia is stuck in an alternate universe gave me Lain vibes (even though I have never seen Lain, the atmosphere is what drove me to it).

I recently watched Godzilla Singular Point on Netflix. I’m just a few episodes in, so I haven’t covered the whole thing yet.

I wasn’t sure what to expect after the film trilogy on Netflix, but so far, this new series got me interested. And it kind of gives off an Evangelion vibe, kind of like Shin Godzilla. And the plot and story is pretty similar, though that’s kind of to be expected of the Godzilla franchise.

With that, I’m also waiting for another season of Pacific Rim Black.

Last night, I went to Netflix to watch episode 2 of Maid Sama. Let me just say that hearing Monica Rial go extremely coconuts with her performance as a student council president disguised as a maid in a after school job felt very amusing because you can tell she's having fun with the role. Her constantly proclaiming that she hates men when clearly the blonde male MC is going to be the one to break that barrier she's made for herself keeps me coming back for more.

Also caught on blu ray episodes 4 and 5 of Bloom Into You. I really liked how Maki sees Yuu and Touko kissing but because he's been so in touch with his sensitive side hearing other couples with their problems that he doesn't mind keeping it a secret for Yuu's sake. Guys like that are a dime a dozen.

Godzilla Singular Point Netflix.

I'm only 4 episodes in, I'll review fully on the godzilla thread, but I do really like what I've seen so far. I also agree with C.T.1290 about the Evangelion and Shin Godzilla vibes.

Redline (2010)

Watched it in Japanese audio, felt I would understand the entire plot better that way than the one time I watched it English dubbed. Despite confirming that, the animation is top notch and one of the smoothest soundtracks I have ever heard. At the core, a love story between JP and Sonoshee which is the core of the story and worth every minute of development.

Watched the first episode of Getter Arc; man, that was a whole lot of nothing. The story is once again shaping up to be just another remix of the original plotline but slightly to the left, and the action scenes are floaty and uninteresting. I wasn't expecting anything groundbreaking, but I was certainly expecting better than this. Don't think I'll follow this one.

I thought it finished a little weakly in it's first season but Higurashi Gou season 2 opened up nicely the first 2 episodes with plenty of gruesome goodness!