What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

[The Killer of Heroes]

What got me was finding out that the real Jiro's wife never even had tuberculosis.

[Mr. Tines]

TWR was supposedly Miyazaki's final farewell tour movie, even if he changed his mind after; so it was self-indulgence with aeroplanes and should simply be taken as that. That it was also Anno's debut as voice actor was part of that self-indulgence, too.

[kuribo-04]

The Wind Rises is one of the best films I've seen.

I think it's pretty clear about being a fictionalized account of Jiro's life. It's dedicated as much to him as it is to author Tatsuo Hori, and based on both figures. The wife character is lifted from the latter's novel: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_Has_Risen

It's plane porn but its's also about how war can turn even a boy's dreams into eventual tragedy. I also think it's about how obsession with your dreams can make you miss the obvious, in Jiro's (the character's) case I think he (intentionally?) ignores how his plane will eventually be used, and he doesn't spend enough time with his soon to be dead wife.

It’s unfortunate to see that even 30+ years after Gunbuster, Anno still hasn’t learned that a single hero (well, duo of heroes) blitzing countless enemies in an action sequence doesn’t always make the hero(es) look powerful, it makes the enemies look weak.

In both Gunbuster and Rebuild you have prior frames of reference for how strong the space monsters and Eva units are. Idk if the protags being powerful is necessarily the main point either, it's more of an audiovisual celebration of the characters showcasing their abilities and such after moments of character growth (accepting Coach might die/confronting Shinji).

[Blockio]

What got me was finding out that the real Jiro's wife never even had tuberculosis.

That's the thing that made it really frustrating to me; I was vaguely aware that he had several children with his one wife before, during and after the war, so I was constantly doubting everything the movie did because you just could not trust it on anything it told you

[Mr. Tines]

Since Crunchyroll has been having problems here since the end of July, there's little to report on this front, except...

Tried again, and suddenly it started working again (at least on Firefox, but not Edge), so I went for a couple of episodes (prologue and Ep1) of G-Witch.

For all that the first episode hit the beats of "Utena in Mobile-suits" (as has been the apparent summary of the series), Suletta is no Tenjou-san - indeed I can't offhand think of another example of such a wittering ninny as the eponymous witch in the MC role, at least in anything I stuck with. Tell me - is it worth even giving this the three episode try?

[Justacrazyguy]

For all that the first episode hit the beats of "Utena in Mobile-suits" (as has been the apparent summary of the series), Suletta is no Tenjou-san - indeed I can't offhand think of another example of such a wittering ninny as the eponymous witch in the MC role, at least in anything I stuck with. Tell me - is it worth even giving this the three episode try?

It will probably depend on how much you like the very large cast. Suletta does develop through the series, but she never loses the "fish out of water" aura that she has on extremely thick. I'd say in general it's more interesting to see how the other characters react to Suletta being a weirdo than actually seeing what she does by herself.

I liked the anime quite a bit, but I like most Gundams, even the ones people tend to consider terrible, so I wouldn't trust my opinion too much, regardless of how strange it sounds to say that about myself.

[The Killer of Heroes]

FWIW I think WFM is one of the best Gundam TV series. I found it really refreshing after being tired of what Gundam has been putting out for very long time now.

The Utena comparisons come from more the initial setup with the duels over a bride, but character wise and thematically its fairly different. Suletta NOT having Utena's strongheaded personality is what makes her an interesting character IMO (And is big part of what prevents WFM from being pure RGU rehash). Likewise Miorine is in the Anthy "role" but is waaaaay different kind of person and has very different arc by the end of things.

[Blockio]

Witch S1 was absolutely joyful; I think S2 struggled a bit with itself. It felt to me like there was half an episode missing for every one that actually aired; a lot of obvious setups went unaddressed, many chekov's guns that never fired, while most of the secondary plots ended up kinda going nowhere or, in the case of Guel especially, I'd argue did not earn their runtime.
It's not bad by any stretch, and the core character arcs of suletta and Miorine are very on point, but I do think that it flops around a bit too much for me to consider it one of the greats

[The Killer of Heroes]

I caught "The Boy and the Heron" in IMAX and quite liked it. Felt very immersive and honestly as more people watch this I'll be curious to see what people make of this thematically.

To me is seemed like this movie had a lot of weird sexual subtext. Like I had been jokingly calling this movie "Boy x Heron" for weeks now but I did not expect a scene where the Heron actually asks the Boy to fill his "hole" lmao. There does seem to be some kind of Oedipal thing going on between with the boy and his fascination with the stepmom, the real mom being revealed at the end etc. too. Even the uh, time travel (I think?) arguably is similar to prophecy stuff in Oedipus myth in thematic way. Still gotta process this though.

EDIT: In a more general note my other big takeaway is that its hard to not view the wizard guy as a stand-in for Miyazaki himself, as both are guys who "create worlds". If Wind Rises is allegorically using the story of Jiro to talk about an artist being so dedicated to mastery of his craft that he can't even seen what's right in front of him, perhaps this film is about the same kind of genius completely failing to find a successor as a result.

I don't how far you can take this new movie's MC as being a stand-in for like, Goro probably, but I think that's the kind of thing on Hayao's mind here.

[chazthesilencer]

Watching –

Harem comedy junkies like me are being treated very kindly this season with both the second season of Girlfriend, Girlfriend and The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love you playing.
The former being the worst kind of junk food one feels ashamed for eating, yet can’t help ordering more and more of, maybe an “I can’t be arsed to think/cook” McDonald’s meal.
And the latter being like junk food bought from a slightly more expensive place, still bad for you, but filling you up with warmth and no guilty feelings; maybe a meal ordered from a Kokoro in town.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is a joy to watch, as are the continuations of Spy x Family and Doctor Stone.

Watched –

Suzume - When I first saw the trailer for this at the cinema (without paying attention to the subtitles) the synopsis as far as I could tell was:
Girl wears a ribbon/bow tie, and doors are involved at some point.
Having now seen the film I can confirm that a ribbon/bow tie is definitely worn, but Jim Morrison has little to no direct involvement.

The first half had some good energy going for it, a cross-country adventure chasing a whacky, god-cat thing with an animated chair companion, all the while meeting colourful strangers along the way. It was a good time.
The second half becomes a much calmer, road-trip movie, and the feel of the first half is sadly never recaptured.

The rest-stop scene is a bit of an odd duck; we get an emotional exchange between Suzume and her aunt, very grounded and human, completely blindsided and undercut by a supernatural intruder at the end of it. There was a bigger story there, between Suze and Auntie, but by the end of the film it didn’t feel fully explored.



Over-hyped (Shinkai = 11/10 rite?), but nice art and animation, not a bad way to spend 2 hours. Worth a watch.

Dropped –

I'm in Love with the Villainess - yet another isekai set in a bland magic-school, only now the MC has the hots for… you can read the title.
The first episode was mildly amusing with the bullying antics of the titular villainess proving counter-productive against the MC’s masochistic streak:
“If you’re going to step on me…step on me harder!”
But this gag couldn’t stay fresh for long. This was an easy drop.

Fortunately, I stayed long enough to see this exchange during episode 3:



This was the last show I expected to see a sensible, mature conversation about sexuality.
Quite the surprise, and a breath of fresh air. https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/GZ7UV ... -and-downs 14:50

[Joy Evangelion]

I caught "The Boy and the Heron" in IMAX and quite liked it. Felt very immersive and honestly as more people watch this I'll be curious to see what people make of this thematically.

I caught this in regular theaters, but I didn't really vibe with the movie. I quite liked the music, and it wasn't really like anything else I'd seen before, but I think there was just too much lying beneath the surface and weirdness for me to get into it. The MC had a lot going on with the dead mother, remarried father, WWII and then that bird giving him all that trouble. Miyazaki is pretty hit or miss for me, for every movie of his that is one of my favs, he does one that I see once and never again. I thought The Wind Rises would have been a cool last film for him, but I'm still glad people have been able to dig his new one.

I'm in Love with the Villainess

I liked this one for what it was. It was pretty basic and had basic animation but the protag was charming enough and the last episode set up a pretty cool plot point but I doubt there'll be another season and I don't imagine I'll be reading whatever the show was based on. Oh well. It was better than the show in which the protag become the villianess herself hehe.

It's that time of the year again so I've got to award my anime of the year... I'd usually like to give it to something that isn't in the middle of its run, but, I'll go ahead and reward it to Frieren:Beyond Journey's End. Things usually don't live up to the hype for me(I'm looking at you Oshi no Ko ) but I couldn't help but love this one. The animation style is really cool and clean and it really helps all the characters come alive. The characters themselves are all well fleshed out and complicated and it's cool having one that lives centuries and others that pop in and out of Frieren's life. It says a lot about our pasts and how our relationships do so much to shape who we are. And then it's awesome when people underestimate Frieren and she puts them in their place. It's very cathartic

I also really liked Dr. Stone. I'll probably pick up the manga and read that through since I don't wanna wait for the new season. Birdie Wing 2 was decent, but I felt like they botched the ending and it kinda fell flat. The Attack on Titan ending was great, but I had read the manga so I knew what was coming.

Looking forward to Metallic Rouge and whatever else we get next year.

[The Killer of Heroes]

I caught "The Boy and the Heron" in IMAX and quite liked it. Felt very immersive and honestly as more people watch this I'll be curious to see what people make of this thematically.

I caught this in regular theaters, but I didn't really vibe with the movie. I quite liked the music, and it wasn't really like anything else I'd seen before, but I think there was just too much lying beneath the surface and weirdness for me to get into it. The MC had a lot going on with the dead mother, remarried father, WWII and then that bird giving him all that trouble. Miyazaki is pretty hit or miss for me, for every movie of his that is one of my favs, he does one that I see once and never again. I thought The Wind Rises would have been a cool last film for him, but I'm still glad people have been able to dig his new one.

Normally I think Miyazaki movies are a bit too didactic (Though I've come to appreciate his style much more over the last year or so), but Boy and the Heron going so hard in the opposite direction is very much to my tastes. In some ways it feels more like a David Lynch movie or something. If that's not your thing I can see not connecting to it, but a large reason I even got into art in general are movies like this where you have to puzzle over them for years- if not only for what they mean, but also for how they make me feel.

Frieren:Beyond Journey's End

I caught up on this one recently (Well I still need to see the newest episode now) and have also really enjoyed it. It used to bug me how RPG's and fantasy stories would always have talk from elf party members or whatever about how they would live long after everyone else in the party when we never actually get see that play out, so its cool to see a show actually make that the starting premise. Very lovable and funny cast and a nice exploration over grief and regret without being too overbearing about it.

[Mr. Tines]

Starting a couple of backlog items, and finding that anime producers have wised up to the 3-episode rule as both have cliffhanger/to be continued endings on episode 3. Those titles being Wonder Egg Priority, which hasn't really grabbed me at all, and Vivy : Fluorite's Eye Song which has the disadvantage of having become so dated in such a very short time.

episode 3  SPOILER: Show

I was amused by the ep 3 "Hotel Sunrise" disaster - of course it's a colony drop : with that name, it has to be.

I guess I'm feeling a bit burned out at the moment, and fallen back out of the habit of sitting to watch things; but just looking at the lists of this year's anime there's not really anything that has grabbed me.

I caught "The Boy and the Heron" in IMAX and quite liked it. Felt very immersive and honestly as more people watch this I'll be curious to see what people make of this thematically.

This opens locally on Boxing Day. I shall have to see what times it's showing, given I'm almost certainly going to have to travel home in the dark.

[Blockio]

After bouncing around in search for something I am in the headspace for, I decided that my headspace was currently set for weird and arcane, so I loaded up Gasaraki; it is weird as all fuck, but a bit under a quarter of the way in, it is good. Preliminary judgement, if you liked Lain but wished it had robots in it, this is probably your cup of tea.

[chazthesilencer]

Tearmoon Empire - Princess Mia (basically animay’s Marie-Antoinette) falls foul of a revolution and is executed, but wakes up 10 years in the past with her memories intact. She uses her knowledge of future events to avert her doomed fate.



This looked to be a carbon-copy of My Next Life as a Villainess, just minus the existence of magic in its world. It has all the worst trappings of yet another forgettable (I can’t believe it’s not an) Isekai title; with mid to low quality character designs and animation, and a world design with no flair or personality to set it apart from any other vaguely European, 18th Century style kingdom-inspired setting titles like these share.
The first couple episodes weren’t a very convincing sell, I figured it might make decent background noise for my exercises, at most…

However, while it isn’t impressive to look at- where it shines is in its writing.
Through a mixture of mishap, mistake, miscommunication and misunderstanding- Mia manages to marvellously muddle her way through her dealings with people and politics. Her words and actions are self-preserving, often selfish, but are constantly (and comically) perceived as wise and benevolent by everyone around her, often resulting in positive outcomes for all.
It’s a farce, and it works. I found myself having a good chuckle at least once every episode.

This receives my coveted: Blimey, that was better than I thought it would be award.

========

It's that time of the year again

Funny, I was just wondering to myself- should I summon Joy? It’s approaching time to do the thing again…

Well, as much as I would like to do the traditional thing again- 2023 was a real dud of a year for me.
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_in_anime I only saw 11 titles through from start to finish, and 6 of those were sequel seasons or continuations.

I simply haven’t seen enough titles to pick out a best/worst animay of the year. I can offer only this much:

• The Blimey, that was better than I thought it would be award for 2023: Read the top of this post, wally.
  
• The Oh dear, that was a bit disappointing award for 2023: The Duck of Death and His Maid (season 2)

The first season ended with the Duke bravely proclaiming his love for Alice to his strict mother, the second season however- ends with the ensemble cast attending a wizard school, as the witch Cuff fights a water doppelganger of herself as she trains to “become stronger”.



Who on earth thought turning an excellent, gothic rom-com into a magic-academy shonen was a good idea?

========

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End – Probably would be my AOTY if it wasn’t still airing, and I want to avoid recency bias.
Who knows- maybe the final episodes will suck.

It’s nice to experience a well-animated, straight-laced fantasy adventure, with no vidya gaem speak or Isekai’d RPG-genre savvy characters who know exactly what to do and effortlessly deal with all problems… except for the titular Elf, because of course she knows exactly what to do and effortlessly deals with all problems: she’s long-lived, experienced and has already been there and slayed that.



…although it seems Mimics will still fool her.

One thing I don’t like about it is the opening. It sounds too…modern. It doesn’t mesh.

[Blockio]

Finished Gasaraki in a half-show binge; my verdict is that Patlabor 2 is no longer the best depiction of 21st Century warfare in mecha.
It's just... on point. The show is about equal parts really fucking good real robot, high brow political intrigue, and traditional Japanese themed occultism, and it does all three very well.
It also has its politics damn straight; the Japanese nationalist is just flat out wrong and deluded, alongside a number of other very good calls that you very rarely see JP properties address.

Highly recommend it to anyone on here, this is a show that strikes many of the same points that many of us like about Eva.

[Mr. Tines]

Caught The Boy and the Heron yesterday. It was OK (enough that I didn't feel annoyed about having to take my least favourite route home for night riding because of flooding on the quieter ones), but I feel that The Wind Rises would have stood as a better finisher, rather than doing one more encore. I wonder what his next movie will be.

because  SPOILER: Show

It felt to me that the film was rather about Miyazaki reconciling himself to the fact that Goro hasn't taken up the torch, and wonder about past events that might have surfaced in the film. Like that self-inflicted injury that I was sure was going to lead to wrath descending on the kid who'd bullied him, but went nowhere beyond writing the school back out of the story.

Finished Gasaraki in a half-show binge;..., this is a show that strikes many of the same points that many of us like about Eva.

That was one of the series where I picked up the first DVD in my post-Eva exploration of the medium, and I'm afraid that back then it failed the "who are these people and why should I care?" 4 (5?) episode test - "emotionally sterile" is how I described it at the time, in contrast to e.g. RahXephon which I did carry through with.

[Blockio]

I suppose that's a fair assessment, although I feel that is one of the strengths of the series, that feeling works nicely with the overall theme and setup of massive, multi-layered schemings that only few are in the know of.

[Mr. Tines]

Well I finished Wonder Egg Priority and Vivy in the end.

The former was a mess - so many things handwaved into the plot in the last few episodes to keep things happening, and then dropped or left dangling. Verdict - to travel hopefully is far better than to end in a soggy thud.

The latter kept itself together somewhat better at the end, though gave no explanation as to e.g. why going back a few more hours for the do-over to the do-over wasn't a thing. It was better when it was being an idol anime than anything else.

So that just leaves me with One Piece as an on-going thing, which is frankly better than either of them for having less pretensions to start with.

[Dr. Nick]

Sengoku Collection:

Represents probably the best way to adapt a gacha game to television. Cheeky freeform anthology nonsense, probably greatly benefitting from the original game being a product of Konami, a game company that famously doesn't give a shit. Whatever plot the game may have, the anime ejects it almost completely, instead opting to do movie and TV show spoofs with cute girls, and the picks are properly cinephile, from Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion to Dancer in the Dark. Kancolle would never. A lot of people probably dropped this back in the day because it's frontloaded with some of the weakest episodes, but overall, it's a gleeful exercise in IP disrespect, and one of the very few fun things to come out of modern cancerous Konami.

******

Looking back at what I wrote about the Rebuilds, I may have been a bit negative all things considered, seeing how other big mecha franchises have pushed out significantly weaker cinematic continuations. Gundam of course has a storied history of terrible compilation films, Macross isn't doing too hot, and although I haven't watched them yet, I've been hearing the Eureka Seven Hi-Evolution films are just absolutely spiteful things. And then there's of course Code Geass, trying to squeeze a franchise out of a foundational work that isn't really conductive to sequelization.

Having a highly idiosyncratic alt-history setting, Geass could have had some side story legs, but Akito the Exiled seems to have burned out that potential. The OVA is confused, undercooked nonsense that's been memory-holed for a reason. Even the lesser Universal Century Gundam OVAs tend generate discussion to this day, but despite its pretty fantastic production values, Akito was a sad misfire no-one seems keen to revisit.

The Code Geass compilation films aim lower, going the tried and disappointing glorified recap episode route. The second film of the trilogy comes alive for like a minute or so when it reaches the first season endpoint, and it briefly looks like the story might switch tracks and start following the original season 2 outline before it was lobotomized by executive meddling. Meaning, no time-skip and no return to status quo bullshit that really wounded the freight-train-like momentum that made season 1 so wildly enjoyable and bingeable. But no, immediately after Lelouch gets dragged before Charles these hopes are dashed, and we are treated to an embarrassing speed run version of first two thirds of season 2.

SPOILER: Show

One good thing is that Jeremiah's face turn is at least better explained, if certainly not better handled, but other than that, this part of the compilation is nigh unwatchable. One of the worst parts is actually a genuine big change: Shirley doesn't die, but all of Lelouch's morally most reprehensible actions motivated by her death still happen (Geass institute massacre, trying to use Rolo as a human bomb). So what was the point of such a seemingly random alteration in a retelling that tends to avoid altering things? Well, Shirley being alive (and nothing else) marks the compilation trilogy as an alternate continuity, separate from the classic OG Geass, and the fourth and wholly new film, Lelouch of the Re;surrection - the one where Lelouch comes back to life - is explicitly a sequel to the compilation films and compilation films only.

I'm not quite sure what to think of this. It's pandering to the continuity nerds, sure, as it basically preserves in amber the original ending. The original Lelouch from the hit TV series Code Geass is still dead, the integrity of his final heroic sacrifice honored. The sweet prince, bereft of life, rests in peace. There's a part of me that appreciates this and thinks it is a respectful thing to do. But there's also a part of me that acknowledges this branching timeline business is stupid and desperate, a brazen sleight of hand that allows Sunrise to both have its cake and eat it too. But it is what it is.

Other than that, how is Re;surrection, then? Subduedly ashamed of its own existence, I would say. Like, there is a scene that lampshades the fact that it would be screaming insanity to have a new Lancelot built, seeing how that mech was the personal symbol of Giga-Hitler's lead enforcer. And yet a new Lancelot is indeed built, because plastic models need to sold. And more broadly, this is a film that wants to keep doing Code Geass things with the classic Code Geass cast, except that back when our heroes were the plucky underdogs, their efforts ultimately resulted in world peace, and being the victors, they're now running the new and improved UN. So whoever is opposing them now will necessarily be the new underdog faction, which results in Lelouch the friendly revenant and his Scooby Gang staging an intervention in anime Sparta. At the end of the movie when the incident is wrapped up, UN is now occupying a small sovereign state, and I shit you not, Tamaki and Ougi, while looking at a stream of refugees, re-enact the Mitchell and Webb "Are we the baddies" sketch. It's still treated as a happy ending though outside of this one scene of moral unease, and the film then spends its final moments setting up a potential McGuffin-hunting sequel, with untold Geass fragments having been spread all around the world, because Geass powers apparently work like that now.

The big conflict of the movie is that Zilkhstan's royal family has kidnapped Nunnally to power their time manipulation machine. Despite giving these antagonists plenty of pathos, the film goes out of its way to avoid a more interesting grey-on-grey conflict by making their ultimate plan so excessively far-reaching that it just has to be stopped. To use the most mainstream analogy imaginable, the royals are doing the Avengers thing (a time heist) to enact Thanos' final plan (completely erasing the current world and starting a new one from scratch). The outward justification for this is that world peace is ruining Zilkhstan because the country's economy is entirely based on exporting mercenaries, but this is pretty dumb in multiple ways. First of all, it's not like peacetime does away with the need for quality security contractors. Secondly, why is Zilkhstan's economy like that anyway? The original show never explicitly highlights this in exposition, but Code Geass is solarpunk, the societies of its alt-history Earth being primarily powered by solar energy, presumably because Sakuradite is such a limited resource and has other applications (mainly weaponry). This is apparent just by looking at all the cityscapes, dominated by gigantic solar collector towers. So Zilkhstan, being a sunny desert nation, should by all accounts be an energy exporter. The movie even shows them having offshore solar towers, but I guess they're for domestic consumption only.

But okay, if the Zilkhies want conflict back, all they need to do time-wise is redo a couple of years to prevent the rise of Zero, so the complete world erasure part of the plan is down to the mastermind Shamna seeking oblivion to herself and her brother Shalio. And I get the idea is to set these two siblings up as these dark counterparts to Lelouch and Nunnally, with Shalio even being wheelchair-bound and apparently blind, but they just come off as self-centered bastards who are lashing out despite not really suffering comparable hardships. Shalio is a one-dimensional blood knight, and Shamna is literally blessed with the best possible sibling-protecting Geass one could ask for. And even if she did consider her power to be a curse, she knows about the Geass order and presumably also how to get one's Geass removed, so it's not like it's a horrible curse she's stuck with. The two are royals, but thanks to Shamna, shielded from the sort of court back-stabbing that hardened Charles' heart, and as such they should have very little to complain about. They're privileged people acting out, and they get taken out suitably coldly by Lelouch and co.

As a Code Geass product, the end result is timid and unsatisfying. I'm not sure how such a corporate-mandated sequel could have been made better, but I feel like it should have either leaned more into the morally conflicted interventionism angle, or alternatively, it should've been more of a classic team-up movie with more irredeemable villains; maybe Britannian royalist remnants and/or "Lelouch was right" evil emperor fanboys.