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The 7th Guest posted:i have no idea how the dragon house hunting show can sustain itself over a full season (maybe it'd be better as an 11 minute series), but letty is a sweet boy that deserves to be protected If nothing else it is a little bit interesting for me to see the way that the needle has moved on the intentionally generic fantasy anime setting. For the longest time the baseline point of reference was always Dragon Quest, but Dragon Goes Househunting has a good amount of Monster Hunter in its DNA. I'm not sure if this is a broader trend or just a one-off occurrence for the sake of some gags, I still thought about it while I was watching the episode. And Letty is indeed a very sweet boy who definitely deserves to be protected.
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Apr 4, 2021 21:33
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Doodles posted:He's our precious, fire-breathing, cinnamon roll. Sweetest dragon we ever met. I can see a possibility of it running out of steam at the end, but so far I'm enjoying the travails of poor Letty. Are we sure he can actually breathe fire?
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Apr 5, 2021 00:02
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wolfs posted:how much I hate Mineta That kid really is the goddamn worst. I passively watch the show via a friend of mine streaming old editions of Toonami, and every time he's on screen stream chat immediately turns into "shut up grape kid" and "gently caress off grape kid".
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Apr 9, 2021 00:33
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Nitrousoxide posted:Wow! The Spring Anime thread is talking about Endless 8. It's the reason we call it endless...
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Apr 9, 2021 01:17
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Thoom posted:His name is Mineta, have some respect. He deserves none.
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Apr 13, 2021 18:31
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I have this weird problem where when I'm watching Super Cub I keep expecting Shimarin to suddenly drive around the corner on her scooter and when she doesn't I get oddly frustrated. The show has a very similar chill energy to Yuru Camp.
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Apr 15, 2021 03:08
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Davincie posted:they take place in the same area Fair enough! I thought the Yuru campers were further north but I double checked and you're right.
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Apr 15, 2021 17:14
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A question that answers itself. What show are they referencing? I'm assuming it's Slime Hunter but isekai is isekai and it's sometimes hard to keep them all straight.
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Apr 15, 2021 18:57
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OnimaruXLR posted:Vivy 4 is still good though I gotta be honest I can't watch robot martial artistry without comparing it (usually not favorably) to Real Drive in the back of my brain The episode was quite good on a couple of levels, the problem I had was that the robot fisticuffs were completely disconnected from the background. It was less two people having a really fast and intense fight somewhere and more to people having a really fast and intense fight on a green screen as the camera swung around to make them look like they were moving. A bit annoying because shortly before that there was a quick action sequence that was legitimately very good and did a cool thing with the character in first person.
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Apr 17, 2021 21:43
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Raenir Salazar posted:Nagataro is interesting because there's two elements I think I see, one is a control things, where her messing with what's his face feels like its her way of feeling in control; then there's the way I am pretty sure she's basically playing chicken against herself, trying to see how close she can bring herself to not being in control. You can probably just call him senpai, his actual name really doesn't matter very much. As for the title character she really is something. I've not read the original source material, but I have some sense that she's trying to needle that particular uptight idiot into being slightly less of an uptight idiot. She pretty obviously has some kind of affection for senpai considering the way that Nagatoro just shut down the two faceless guys, but I wonder how much she's aware of it and if she really has any plan for what will happen if he actually does stop being a dweeb. Also I keep watching the show expecting to smash cut into a flash forward of "and that's how i met your mother."
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Apr 18, 2021 04:10
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Raenir Salazar posted:I'm going to be honest when people talk about how the plot of KH is like impenetrable or whatever, I don't really see it as being any worse than your average anime. Broadly, I second this. The reason Kingdom Hearts gets called impenetrable is because the overall storyline is ridiculously convoluted, not because it's actually complicated. Fundamentally, the series has good guys who are fairly simply good who fight bad guys who are fairly simply bad and it really isn't much more elaborate than that. There's a bunch of terms and concepts and a giant pile of characters, but the terms and concepts are all fairly simple and the characters are pretty stock. The people I kind of pity when it comes to KH are the ones who are trying to get ahead of the curve in figure out whatever the deep setting mysteries or whatever are in advance of the obligatory superlong dialogue scene where someone explains in great detail what's going on. Because it is very apparent that on a certain level the games actually don't care about whatever bees there are that collectively get in the fandom's bonnets, Kingdom Hearts' plot is more or less an excuse for people to go to Disney movies and fight monsters. Maybe once upon a time it was worth it to speculate, but nearly 2 decades in? Just repeat to yourself it's just a Strange Quark posted:i'm watching an anime with over 10 people in its main cast and i can't even remember all of their names 😔 If it's any consolation I have watched and enjoyed shows where I practically had to do flash card drills to remember everyone's name. Shout outs to Inazuma Eleven for having a handful of team members who, a couple years after viewing, I can't remember as anything more than something like "the one with the water dodge" or "the goalkeeper who I hate and refuse to use in the game". I'm currently watching Odd Taxi and I am really glad it's about animal people so I can just say "the loser monkey" or "the kangaroo lady" because I don't remember their names.
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Apr 18, 2021 06:07
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Brutal Garcon posted:Please tell me someone else here is still watching the Moriarty show, because that last line... I saw it coming, but couldn't make myself believe that's where they were going. I did not in any way shape or form see it coming, but then it happened and it is the best, most wonderfully stupidest thing ever. And oh my God, yes, more, more, MORE. If this series goes out like A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen I will be over the loving moon. Sindai posted:Moriarty S1 felt like it was almost all setup and kind of boring, but in S2 that's finally all over with and the story is spreading it's fantastically dumb wings in the best way.  I didn't think of the series as particularly boring in the first cour, and I was actually a little bit worried about the plot once they decided they were going to have one, but this episode turned it all the hell around. And the title the next episode says they're going to do an arc about Jack the Ripper? Yes loving please.
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Apr 19, 2021 02:10
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Maxwell Adams posted:I want somebody to go ahead and spoil the dumb thing Moriarty is doing. Well all right, here goes, obvious extremely major spoilers: The opening arc of season two is an expanded version of A Scandal in Bohemia, that one story with Irene Adler. Except it turns out that in this story she didn't steal some tantalizing photographs of the King of Bohemia, she actually stole proof that the French Revolution was an op performed by British intelligence and that Robespierre was actually secretly a British spy who orchestrated the whole thing to overthrow the government of France as a social experiment. Also, Robespierre is actually the ancestor of the Holmes family and that's one of the reasons why Mycroft Holmes, who functionally runs the government, didn't just burn the document in the first place. Also, Irene Adler, is an egalitarian social reformer who is using blackmail material to try and force rich assholes to do good things to try and transform Britain and got the document while trying to get dirt on the Prince of England. But that's just all prologue, Adler got this extremely incriminating document and Mycroft Holmes charges the Moriarty brother who's in the Army to recover the document and kill Adler without realizing that he is the Lord of Crime. After much skulduggery and some stuff with Sherlock the Moriarty brothers get their hands on the document, use it to negotiate a deal where they reveal themselves and their ideals and their plan for social reform to Mycroft and get his tacit support and a guarantee that the British government will overlook them being The Lords of Crime, and then stage Adler's death. At the end of the episode Irene Adler officially joins the Moriarty crime family and gives herself a new name. Bond, James Bond. Omnicrom fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Apr 19, 2021 |
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Apr 19, 2021 02:24
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Raenir Salazar posted:Basically this guy probably describes what the "chuuni" version is. Gonna bring up that pteradactyl dude there is named Sauron because he liked The Lord of the Rings. So yeah, that's a really good potted image of a chuuni otherkin supervillain.
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Apr 19, 2021 17:34
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The Islamic Shock posted:Fair enough. What do you lot call the worst characters, for both genders? I'm much newer to anime than I am to lurking in general. Try "Shithead". Who's Myne?
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Apr 20, 2021 01:57
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Raenir Salazar posted:I've been enjoying it immensely, I like how its fairly well focused. The most recent episode made it an important point that Matsumoto, for all his bravado, actually does not have perfect knowledge of the future. He was just flat wrong about what happened on the space station. Moreover, the show made sure to specifically highlight the one terrorist dude that Vivy saved having almost a change of heart, and how the final impact was going to be radically different from Matsumoto's history. For all of his swagger it doesn't seem like Matsumoto has realized that changing history is actually changing history. Put another way, the last couple of episodes call into question whether Matsumoto ACTUALLY knows why the AI rebellion started.
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Apr 23, 2021 18:01
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Detheros posted:Does Vince even know what Anime is, or that it exists? What has that ever stopped Vince McMahon? "Something something money for you" "sold American".
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Apr 24, 2021 03:37
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Raenir Salazar posted:e: Vivy Oh no, who could have possibly anticipated that trying to stop the future may actually cause the future, no one could have predicted this! Yeah, since the debut I've seen a couple of posts suggesting that Matsumoto is going to end up going all 12 monkeys by the end of this. This episode just reinforces that idea. And as pointed out, Matsumoto is nowhere near as smart or prescient as he thinks he is. His perfectly manicured plan got off track when Vivy saved the terrorist dude in episode two, but it completely jumped the rails when it turns out he was just dead wrong about Estella. He should have seriously started to rethink his assumptions and his calculations when the factory got built 20 years early, but he seems way too prideful and way too stubborn. Ironically, he's incredibly human in that regard. And I wonder if that may be the reason that the rebellion ultimately happens… That last shot, were all the cubes Matsumoto copying himself? Or were they alternate versions of himself from other doomed timelines...? I am definitely interested in seeing what happens,
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Apr 25, 2021 00:14
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The last episode of Vivy was super cool and I could manage to follow what was going on. And I know that sounds like a flex or a put down, and I'm sorry, I don't mean it that way and I'm not trying to make it be that. What I will say is that Vivy is super cool and has been super cool and is an easy shot at AOTS if not AOTY.
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May 22, 2021 23:48
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OnimaruXLR posted:Between this poster and the rumors of Part 6 being in London, I wonder if Lupin is going to be in some Dr. Jekyll trouble Alternately, Lupin will be Mr. Hyde and the problem will be that he has a Dr. Jekyll alternate persona who's repressed and no fun and nobody likes. And then Zenigata will begrudgingly team up with the rest of the Lupin gang to arrest the mad scientist who did it to him and get the old Lupin back.
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May 26, 2021 04:29
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My top three are Vivy, Odd Taxi, and Super Cub in some order or another. Those are easy, but getting to a top five or even maybe a top ten would require some pretty tough cuts, as a quick glance tells me I'm watching 20 shows this season. The very bottom of the list is a lot easier to populate, interestingly.
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May 27, 2021 18:41
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Ibblebibble posted:Dynazenon just had it's equivalent episode to Gridman's ep 9 aka the best episode of anime that year and it was amazing as hell. To give a sharply dissenting view, I was incredibly disappointed by episode 10, as I have consistently been with near everything in Dynazenon. I was let down by Gridman, everyone I knew hyped it to the ends of the earth and when I watched it I found it was just a pretty good anime series. Dynazenon, meanwhile, has barely managed to reach 5/10 television and the most recent episode has been no help. The episode of Dynazenon from last week was actually really good and bumped the show up in my estimation, but hoo boy did I not like this one. Gridman episode 9 was indeed masterful and was definitely the best episode of that show by leaps and bounds. Dynazenon episode 10 is not that. Dynazenon's version is way too loud, totally unsubtle, resolved itself in a pretty boring and obnoxious way, and I am sorry but the cast has not been fleshed out enough to carry the episode in the way that the show desperately wants them to. It honestly feels to me like they did this episode only because Gridman did it, not because they had a good idea to develop the characters because my hot rear end take is that they didn't and moreover largely haven't. There was no one like Akane here to grounds the episode, and we learned nothing new about 90% of the cast. To put it another way, there is absolutely a reason Minami got the majority of the scenes, it's because she's the only one the show is actually been doing things with and more's the pity because they seem to have resolved her storyline in a pretty underwhelming way. At least we didn't have to get shots of the consistently lame rear end villains after the intro. Dynazenon has consistently struck me as a show that thinks it is done far more than it has and that is really really disappointing. I was pulling for the show going into it, but it appears that the show is just going to continue to be an inferior reheated also ran of Gridman. Again, I'm not super up on Gridman but that show is leagues ahead of Dynazenon in just about every way. I was never superduper impressed with Gridman's cast, but man am I remembering them so much more favorably now...
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Jun 4, 2021 19:06
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The Black Stones posted:I mean, if you dislikes Gridman I don’t know why you thought Dynazenon would be amazingly different and I have zero idea why you’re still watching 10 episodes in. Stop watching? I was really pulling for it to better, I wanted to like the drat show. Gridman was a show that could have been truly great but never managed to stick the landing or fully assemble all of its pieces. In my estimation it was within a hair's breadth of truly being as great as everyone always said it was, something I could unreservedly love and admire and respect and so I came into Dynazenon hoping against hope that with a couple years more experience and some hindsight that Trigger would nail the sucker and be Gridman at its full potential. And it isn't and that is downright tragic in my mind. But you're right, if they're making another sequel I'm passing on it. I can only keep on with so much disappointment. Squidster posted:I really quite enjoyed the first Gridman, but I agree that Dynazenon is coasting on the laurels of its predecessor. It's a likeable cast and I appreciate the slice-of-life style pacing, but none of the character payoffs have felt earned. Several characters have had their arcs resolved in a single episode by outside forces. So much of this! Thank you so much. The cast had real potential and I was pulling for them. It's not like I'm happy that I watch every episode of Dynazenon going "this isn't working, you didn't set this up, this dynamic is undercooked, I don't believe this at all," to nearly every major character scene. Again, I wanted to like this show so badly, and I can't. I really just can't. Endorph posted:i don't think dynazenon's really trying to have a big thematic statement the way gridman did perse, i think its just trying to explore the characters. i like the characters a lot, but if they aren't doing as much for you then it'd make sense to not be as into it. I would like these characters more if they did anything with them because I maintain that they have done almost nothing with 90% of the cast of Dynazenon. On the hero side Koyomi had a sequence of scenes that didn't amount to anything and Chise is pretty much defined by being left out. In a show that opened strongly by stating it was going to be about these people they haven't really done anything with most of them yet, and it's been 10 episodes so don't think they ever will. Meanwhile the villains are incredibly boring to a man. Also, I have absolutely no love for Gauma, I find him both boorish and a bore, and the fact that the show seems to be trying to wrap the final central storyline to him feels like a complete mistake. He feels a lot like Kamina from Gurren Lagann with two caveats, firstly Kamina was way more charismatic, and secondly he died for the good of that show. And after dropping a big old hot take it feels offkilter to go "I'm not trying to stir up any trouble", but it's kind of true. I don't actually like rocking the boat all that much. There's a reason I'm not in the Dynazenon thread talking about the show because I actually don't want to get in some long fight over and anime that I find kind of depressing. At the same time, when I hear people talking about Dynazenon I start feeling like I'm on crazy pills because what's wrong with me? Everyone is watching this awesome sounding show and I'm tuning in to a lukewarm 5/10 series that doesn't really come together. I will say with absolute, complete honesty that I wish I could see the show everyone else sees in Dynazenon, but I don't. And that's basically all I have to say.
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Jun 4, 2021 22:14
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dogsicle posted:weekly back arrow update: how the gently caress are they ending this show in 2 eps lol I have no goddamn idea, but I will be riding this train all the way to the last station. By which I mean, I am completely there for whatever massive, stupid cluster gently caress trainwreck the show ends on because, seriously, how else is this ending?
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Jun 5, 2021 00:44
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I got a real kick out of the little disclaimer text in Super Cub this week. And even more of a kick when it came back the second time.
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Jun 5, 2021 01:30
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Edit: Nevermind. Should have kept on being quiet.
Omnicrom fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Jun 6, 2021 |
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Jun 6, 2021 17:08
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Wark Say posted:I haven't seen this show but anything that combines idols, time travel, explosions and kung-fu has to be at least a little badass, doesn't it? I mean, you aren't wrong and it is, but I'm not sure that's exactly how I would sell the show to someone…
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Jun 10, 2021 04:39
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Nitrousoxide posted:Shield Hero. Sad but true. The article also points out that depending on your definition both So I'm a Spider and Odd Taxi are Crunchyroll originals, with the former being quite fun while the latter is an AOTS contender.
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Jun 19, 2021 02:10
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Grouchio posted:So how was the ending of Vivy guys? I loving loved it.
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Jun 19, 2021 18:12
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Kwyndig posted:It's Drifting Classroom with a smaller cast and superpowers. Well, you sold ME at least.
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Jun 19, 2021 22:06
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Gilgamesh was also totally bullshit.
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Jun 25, 2021 18:59
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Arist posted:I mean, the actual reason that One Punch Man works beyond simple parody from what I've seen is that much of the story does not involve and is not about Saitama. Exactly this. To put it another way, there is a reason that every major arc spends a significant portion of time on people who are not Saitama doing things away from Saitama that are generally adjacent to Saitama but not involving Saitama. The videogame did it right, Saitama was essentially a fallback condition where if your OC character couldn't win eventually Saitama would get there and instantly solve the problem. Mentat Radnor posted:Like many of the MCs that he's a mockery of, Saitama hasn't really earned his OP-ness, and his workout routine is another great gag. Unlike most OPMCs, he's kinda a failed doofus in every aspect of life besides punching stuff. No wealth or social power, no recognition of his amazing deeds, no harem of suitors or following of devotees besides Genos. I love ONE's writing. Also this, Saitama is kind of a dweeb. And yet he is a hero, and the hero of the story, and used as a way to talk about heroism. One of the recurring things in the series is the way that Saitama is used as a lens to talk about ideals of heroism and what truly makes a person a hero, and it often shows that the reason Saitama should be considered a hero is for things COMPLETELY UNRELATED to being able to beat anyone in a single punch. It's not just that he gets no real reward or recognition for his feats, it's that he doesn't really care either way because he's a hero and that's not really what's important about being a hero. Yeah, obviously it's a good thing in most situations that Saitama can just delete the most powerful bad guy threatening the world when he gets around to it, but that's almost unimportant to the series when it gets around to being a think piece on superheroes. Saitama being the invincible One Punch Man was essentially a bait and switch. Mob Psycho 100 was kind of the same deal. Mob wasn't nearly as explicitly overpowered as Saitama is, but the whole point of the series in a lot of respects was that Mob being this crazy, ultra-powerful psychic did not actually do him any favors. The whole arc of the series was showing him grow as a person and form relationships and make friends and build his own self-confidence, and him being basically Akira was essentially unrelated to that.
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Jun 25, 2021 23:40
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It's one of the reasons why Akira is such a technical marvel, they animated the lip flaps to match the actual mouth movements necessary for a real person to actually say the lines.
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Jun 26, 2021 01:04
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Alright, time for a recap of the way too many shows I watched that finished this season. I'll just go down the week. Dragon Goes Househunting: I was pleasantly surprised by this one, the natural concern would be that this show was going to be a one joke affair that would wear itself out, but it actually wasn't. The show bothered to introduce characters and expand on the world and build its relationships and give back story and characterization to its cast. Don't get me wrong, it was still functionally a low stakes comedy, but it did way more with its premise, and was way more than its premise. It was also fun to watch just because of how unrepentantly dorky the show was, there were a lot of videogame references in it and more than just what you get from the standard baseline fantasy anime setting ripped from Dragon Quest. Quite a fun, if they make another season of this I'll definitely watch it. Also, Letty is the most precious scaly puffball who must be protected at all costs. Moriarty the Patriot: the first cour of this was a lot of fun, but in hindsight it was all set up for the back half of the show just go nuts, so it did! I had a lot of fun realizing that along with the original Sherlock Holmes stories the show was lifting liberally from some of the gonzo bits of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the introduction of James Bond to the mix was a stunning move of brilliant idiocy. I think brilliant idiocy is a great way to describe the show as well, it was at its best when it was being really dumbass over the top in the best kind of way. Sadly, the show never really managed to keep than manic energy up all the way through;it dipped a little after the Jack the Ripper storyline when the show actually started to pay more than lip service to its elevator pitch big idea and started trying to actually have the characters do the things they said they were trying to do. The villain they pulled out for the last quarter wasn't a bad choice for a villain, but they never really made him seem like much of a threat. I wonder this is down to adaptation since I think the manga is still ongoing. The ending was also a little bit disappointing, it didn't feel like it went big enough or was crazy enough to really be the cap off that the show wanted it to be. It worked, but it could have worked better. Odd Taxi: I was waiting until this show wrapped to do this writeup, because holy poo poo. Anime of the Season, easy contender for Anime of the Year. When the show is pitched as animal people in animal Tokyo from the perspective of a walrus taxidriver I was absolutely not expecting a ridiculously compelling neo-noir crime drama. The show had a big complicated tapestry of characters and motivations and storylines and interactions. The dialogue was incredible, and the cast was even more incredible. This show had a lot of meat to it as well, it was a show about obsession and self-destruction. It was both cynical and optimistic, it showed every one of its characters at both their best and their worst. It had a really strong sense of the zeitgeist, it was absolutely a show in and about right now and that made it powerful watching. Absolutely stunning, definitely worth a watch and maybe a rewatch. And that last shot, holy poo poo. The Saint's Magic Power Is Omnipotent: This one took me a couple of episodes to figure out because it was on the whole weirdly familiar but I couldn't put my finger on it. Then I realized what was happening was that this was a standard issue wish fulfillment isekai but the baseline was an otome game instead of an MMO. This is basically My Next Life As a Villainess in terms of setting and style, but played completely straight. It turns out the show was just a very gentle show about the protagonist ending up in a fantasy setting where she is very important and talented and popular and surrounded by very hot men. The end result is a very slight show. It could have been much more interesting than it was, but that would require the show to be something it wasn't interested in being. It's a low bar, but on the other hand it passed that bar easily and confidently. Not a particularly memorable series, I don't dislike it. Super Cub: Turns out I did get that third season of Yuru Camp I wanted! Well, not quite, but the show at the same kind of chill energy that Yuru Camp gave off, very much a good instance of the classic anime genre of "High School Girls Who Have a Hobby". And just like how Yuru Camp had the repeated gag of giving inanimate objects small and cute voices, this show had the repeated gag of the color saturation turning up whenever the cast did a particularly liberating thing. On a slightly more serious note vis-à-vis the writing it was a impressively solid show at depicting people basically growing up, when it wasn't about motorcycles is about making friends and finding new opportunities and the characters challenging themselves and expanding their horizons. And of course it's one of the most blatant instances of product placement I've ever seen (Protip: Koguma means "bear cub"). Very pretty show, incidentally. So I'm a Spider, So What: There's one episode of this left, but I feel pretty confident passing judgment now in saying this was an interesting show with a couple of odd structural issues and a serious case of the budget running out. There were some bad looking episodes in the second half, but the last couple of episodes have looked absolutely abysmal. And it's not just that they were using CG because Kumoko's part of the story generally looked pretty good, the problem was that it was really jerky, clunky, stiff, ugly looking CG put together without any grace or choreography and they were using it in half the show that was previously done with traditional animation and honestly looked pretty good. When the show wasn't distractingly ugly it was pretty enjoyable on the whole. The show also had the problem where the human characters were just less compelling overall than the spider half of the show, and while I'm told some of that is an adaptation I'm also told that a big chunk of that was there in the original and the human cast really are just less interesting. And of course Aoi Yuki absolutely loving hard carried the entire show, I cannot think of another actor who could've played Kumoko as perfectly as she did. I'm definitely here for another season of this, but I really hope the production is less troubled for the sake of the people producing it. Dynazenon: I feel I've already said my piece on this show and I have little interest in restarting the discussion on it, so I'll keep this short. 4/10 anime. Vastly inferior to Gridman in every way. 90% of the cast did nothing, and the character stuff they did do felt incredibly unsatisfying. The villains were incredibly boring. The show was paced weirdly and was overall uneventful and not a single one of its interesting concepts were particularly explored. It was well directed, very pretty, the individual episodes moved nicely, but it all felt pretty hollow. It wasn't painful to watch, but it could've been so much more. Definitely not watching the third series. Back Arrow: this show was dumb as poo poo and I was there for it. Loud, zany, stupid, arch characters engaged in big goofy action in a goofy setting with a goofy conceit getting into big, explosive, dumb giant robot fights. The show is primarily let down by its pacing, the middle third of the show was kind of a drag, but on the other hand the final quarter of the show was hype as gently caress. There's not too much more to it than a long series of excuses to get characters to strap themselves into giant robots and fight each other, and I loved the array of larger-than-life morons getting into action scenes with each other. There's a plot, but it's not hugely important, and the mysteries of the setting are explained but they aren't actually that important really and it really didn't matter much in the end except as a reason to get all the good guys together to fight the bad guys. Good use of CG as well, the show wasn't exactly gorgeous but the production people behind it definitely knew how to get a lot out of what they had and the chosen medium never got in the way of the action which is what you want in the show pretty much entirely about the action. Definitely pulling for this to be in Super Robot Wars someday. I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed out My Level: Another fun show. This was essentially just a lighthearted sitcom about a zany family in the garb of a fairly standard isekai show. It's about a big extended family living together and hanging out and getting into various gentle comedic situations. The show even found a way to include the demon characters as essentially the friend/next-door neighbor characters who don't actually live with the main cast but show up all the time anyways. Very much a feel-good show about found family, to the point that many (if not most) episodes make the fact of the protagonist being overpowered irrelevant to what actually goes on in the show. Weirdly kind of similar to a ONE series now that I think of it… If a second season comes I'll absolutely watch it as well. Vivy -Fluorite Eye's Song-: The OTHER Anime the Season and easy contender for Anime of the Year. This is the show I was the most engaged with week after week this season, the one show that I was looking forward to the most that hit me the hardest and did the most for me. Absolutely gorgeous, amazing direction, amazing action, amazing writing, amazing cast. I know some people didn't like the ending, I am not one of them. A week or so on and in reflection I still think it absolutely nailed it. One thing that stands out so well in hindsight is that it's a show about artificial intelligence from the perspective of the AI, so much of the show is about showing in detail the ways the AI are different from humans. The show gets across the ways that the protagonists are very similar to humans, but not the same as them and it's really fascinating in that regard. Considering how much stuff you can do with the concept of self-aware robots, I also laud the show for sticking to a couple of consistent threads and running with them. I think my only complaint with the whole show is the last 90 seconds, so on the whole I think it was goddamn incredible. 86: The OTHER OTHER AotS and easy AotY contender. This season was ridiculously stacked, wasn't it? I stand by the show as being one of the most explicitly, unabashedly, unreservedly anti-fascist shows I've ever seen. The show spends a very long time picking apart every single cherished myth that fascists like to tell about their systems, showing the fascist state as ignorant, complacent, inefficient, lazy, and ultimately disgusting. The progression of the protagonist being forced to take a good hard look at herself, being disillusioned with her country, but being reinvigorated to have real worthwhile ideals is extremely compelling, though maybe dragged out for a little bit too long? I'm aware that this first half of the anime is almost entirely just one volume of the LN's and I'm quite happy the show had all the room it needed to breathe, but it feels like it was maybe an episode and a half to long for this storyline. Also the jump to the final cast was jarring. On the other hand, that just made the payoff all the sweeter. Still, excellently written and directed and ESPECIALLY scored (though considering they got Sawano that's par for the course, the man is as amazing as ever). Definitely here for the second half. Shadow's House: There's technically one more episode of this, but I still think it's fine to treat it as finished because I suspect it's just going to end on a fairly standard "to be continued" and the final episode likely isn't going to radically change my opinion of the show. The short of it is I think it's a little bit disappointing. The show very obviously built itself around the mystery of the titular house, but when the show finally revealed what was going on it was actually kind of boring. There was one interesting plot turn with one of the characters and kind of surprising role reversal, but there wasn't quite enough to it. Maybe it was how the information was presented, maybe the manga was a better read, but it just wasn't very compelling. The pacing didn't help, I saw some people say they were absolutely rushing through the manga chapters, but the episodes about the debut felt very slow. They weren't necessarily boring and a lot of stuff happened objectively, but it didn't feel like the story moved. As I said, fairly disappointing. I may read the manga after it wraps out of curiosity, but if they make another season I think I'll sit it out. Don't Tease Me Nagatoro-san: I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, but the fact that the series very quickly confirmed it was actually a romcom surprised me a little bit. I thought the story was going to keep playing coy about Nagatoro actually having a thing for senpai or vice versa, but it very quickly made it clear that these two idiots actually had a thing going on between them. And the series got better for it, once it moved past just Nagatoro teasing him and got senpai to more consciously enjoy her company the show built a interesting dynamic between the two of them. Nagatoro isn't quite as in control and detached as she likes to act like she is and senpai isn't quite as lame as he first appears to be and the show is way more compelling once it gets all that out in the open. Also shout out to Nagatoro's friends for being less one-dimensional and less awful than they first appear to be, they're actually fun supporting characters once they started to be supportive of the other characters. Honestly it was pretty fun.
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Jun 29, 2021 06:36
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