|
maho will at least probably be more focused since it doesn't need to balance 8 main characters plus fairies lol.
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 23:50
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 23:35 |
|
|
BlitznBurst posted:maho will at least probably be more focused since it doesn't need to balance 8 main characters plus fairies lol. Considering they’re literally calling it “Maho 2” I imagine so at least but who knows, I’m also curious if they’ll turn the gang back into kids for this too or if they’ll actually give us some adult Precure in both forms
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 23:55
|
|
|
they specifically used the words 'direct sequel' for maho 2 so i assume it will pick up from the last episode with them as 19 year olds then again that last ep had them deaging also so who knows
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 00:41
|
|
|
I'm going to be honest, I was really hoping the big last minute turn would involve adult Cure forms, and it would be a thematic point of the series, but alas...
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 03:03
|
|
|
Glancing over the final episode of Protocol: Rain, as I'd checked out multiple episodes prior, it's honestly impressive just how much of a mess it was, and how much it squandered even the few potentially interesting threads and ideas it looked like it might have had. Brightest point of it was probably it causing me to find, in a roundabout way, a certain actually good e-sports drama/donghua.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 07:59
|
|
|
Lord Koth posted:Brightest point of it was probably it causing me to find, in a roundabout way, a certain actually good e-sports drama/donghua.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 08:59
|
|
|
my belief fell when even though he hasn't played for like 5+ years but still somehow is still as good and barely rusty because he 'played in his head' or something
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 09:06
|
|
|
What should I be looking forward to for the winter season? The only ones that immediately stand out to me are Sasaki and Peeps; TSUKIMICHI -Moonlit Fantasy- Season 2; and Urusei Yatsura.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 11:08
|
|
|
Lord Koth posted:Glancing over the final episode of Protocol: Rain, as I'd checked out multiple episodes prior, it's honestly impressive just how much of a mess it was, and how much it squandered even the few potentially interesting threads and ideas it looked like it might have had. Brightest point of it was probably it causing me to find, in a roundabout way, a certain actually good e-sports drama/donghua. So how did videogames kill his dad and cripple his sister
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 11:19
|
|
|
Nitrousoxide posted:What should I be looking forward to for the winter season? The only ones that immediately stand out to me are Sasaki and Peeps; TSUKIMICHI -Moonlit Fantasy- Season 2; and Urusei Yatsura. Sengoku Youko and Wrong Way To Use Healing Magic both have fun source material, even if Satoshi Mizukami has had less-than-stellar luck with his anime adaptations. Metallic Rouge is an anime-original with a solid staff pedigree, and as an anniversary celebration show, it will likely have better-than-average production values.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 11:31
|
|
|
And we have silhouettes of the Wonderful Precure crew: As proven when the toy listings went up, the initial leak was real after all (making this I believe the quickest we’ve ever seen a new Cure team) Since it’s real, here’s said leak again if anyone forgot: 
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 13:40
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqFMOYsOUcg Konosuba season 3 in April
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 13:56
|
|
|
The last three episodes of Zom100 are up
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 16:35
|
|
|
Terry van Feleday posted:Well don't leave me hanging, give me the title! (Rainy Protocol also disappointed me. This season was just full of disappointments) Well, this isn't (and I don't think there is one?) the donghua discussion thread after all.  In seriousness though, it was King's Avatar. You'll have to go hunting for the actual donghua - it has been translated but is not currently available anywhere officially, as far as I can tell - but the live action version is perfectly fine as well and is on Netflix. Wandering into this series has also led me down the rabbit hole of wuxia donghua, but that's another story. Fangz posted:So how did videogames kill his dad and cripple his sister They didn't, it was basically unrelated. He was just traumatized by the event and how much he'd been neglecting his sister, or something, and dropped them in order to focus on getting a high-paying job to take care of her. Yes, how the early episodes were framed in light of that was very poor.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 18:15
|
|
|
Nitrousoxide posted:What should I be looking forward to for the winter season? The only ones that immediately stand out to me are Sasaki and Peeps; TSUKIMICHI -Moonlit Fantasy- Season 2; and Urusei Yatsura. I feel like Dungeon Meshi is head and shoulders above everything else on offer. The manga was spectacular end to end and the PVs have looked great. I'll be mad as hell if they gently caress it up. Darth Walrus posted:Sengoku Youko and Wrong Way To Use Healing Magic both have fun source material, even if Satoshi Mizukami has had less-than-stellar luck with his anime adaptations. I know it was well received here, but I've always felt Sengoku Youko was the least of Mizukami's works. Long and flabby and kind of flat a lot of the time.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 18:27
|
|
|
they should hurry up and make the spirit circle adaptation, provided whoever makes it can be trusted to not gently caress it up
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 18:34
|
|
|
Lord Koth posted:Well, this isn't (and I don't think there is one?) the donghua discussion thread after all. Lord Koth posted:They didn't, it was basically unrelated. He was just traumatized by the event and how much he'd been neglecting his sister, or something, and dropped them in order to focus on getting a high-paying job to take care of her. Yes, how the early episodes were framed in light of that was very poor.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 18:45
|
|
|
Ibram Gaunt posted:I'm going to destroy all the YOSPOS style people who think AI is good. this is yospos slander
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 23:22
|
|
|
goblin week posted:this is yospos slander They hate anime and gently caress and cum in their computers. They're sick in the head!!!!
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 01:01
|
|
|
https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4050369 Winter 2024 thread is up
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 03:18
|
|
|
So for whatever reason I kept on watching Dead Mount Death Play, and I feel like barely anything got resolved. The show spent so much time setting up a bajillion subplots that barely went anywhere. I guess that sort of works if you see it as a advertisement for the manga, but its just frustrating to me as a viewer. The last episode really feels like the anime trying to feel like it has a conclusion (but not actually so people will read the manga).
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 03:22
|
|
|
Faraway Paladin's second season was really good even if I feel it was missing something compared to the first season
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 03:24
|
|
|
psilocybin laden posted:Faraway Paladin's second season was really good even if I feel it was missing something compared to the first season The visuals are still a step down from the manga, especially for the Valacircla fight.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 22:20
|
|
|
With the end of the Fall comes the usual assessment of what was watched and enjoyed, so here's mine: Bullbuster - Tried for one episode and just couldn't get past the art style, especially the monsters. Might go back if enough people tell me it's worth it. The Vexations of a Shut-In Vampire Princess and I'm in Love with the Villainess are both yuri shows that I watched for a while then got bored with because of weak animation, bland music, plots that took too long to get to the point, and characters I just couldn't get invested in. Not horrible shows, just average. And this season, average just isn't going to cut it. 16-Bit Sensation This was an interesting surprise. I'd read the manga, so I was curious just what this series was bringing to the original story. What I didn't expect was a shift in focus from the joys of eroge games to a discussion about what corporate abuse of AI and employees is doing to games (among other media) and it was the most surprising thing I watched this season. SPY X FAMILY - This has become my go-to for solid entertainment, and I enjoyed the emphasis on Yor during this cour. Looking forward to seeing the continued foibles of the Forger family. Shangri-La Frontier - Let's be fair. This series is junk food, but it's a gourmet cupcake with extra frosting and sprinkles. Having great fun with the antics of Sunraku & pals, especially the bunnies of Rabbituza. Can't wait to see the coming fight against Wezaemon, and and whatever comes afterwards. The Apothecary Diaries - I only heard about this series around August, but this has become my #3 series for the whole year, right behind the second half of MSG- Witch From Mercury. Aoi Yuki does it again with a masterful performance as Maomao, mixing humor, pathos, and curiosity. Not to mention a soupcon of smugness. Sousou no Frieren - But what else could be my #1 but this incredible series, which I had been waiting for since I started reading the manga in May '22. One of the best fantasy stories I've read in decades, and the team at Madhouse only add and never subtract from what was on the page. Everything about this production is pitch perfect, one of the best adaptations of a manga ever. There's insufficient superlatives for how excellent this series is, and the Mage Exam arc is going to be bonkers. All in all, it was a fantastic Fall season, and this Winter looks to be equally stacked.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 02:55
|
|
|
finished Stardust Telepath, glad i gave it a chance. nothing spectacular but was cute comfort food with some cool animation flourishes at points and handled treading the line between SoL and drama pretty well. solid 7/10
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 06:03
|
|
|
took a little anime break and only really kept up with apothecary diaries and frieren over the holidays. burned through my back catalog of 100 girlfriends and 16-bit sensation today. 100 gfs is often incredibly funny and occasionally heartwarming and gets away with a lot based on its commitment to the bit and actually having a likable protagonist, but it still descends into some lamer/grosser bits just enough that it felt kind of uneven and ended up turning me off a bit. 16-bit sensation finished today and it's one of my favorite shows of the year. i loved its bountiful joy for bishoujo games, which i'm only familiar with via cultural osmosis. i love how it shows the joy of the creative process and working with a tight team of people who like each other, and how it posits the bad ending of its plot is how that dynamic is being torn apart by ai and big business. i even loved its frankly loving weird time travel story with aliens and ai and poo poo. it was a blast every week and made me think about some of my old jobs, good and bad. probably going to finish off under ninja and zom 100 tomorrow. might catch up on slf too.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2023 05:17
|
|
|
Started Frieren. Okay, I'm on board with this.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2023 04:24
|
|
|
Great! You have one week to catch up, then join the series thread to enjoy the jocularity. And hamburgers.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2023 05:27
|
|
|
I have one week to catch up and I'm heading out again Saturday morning for second family Christmas. So basically I've got tomorrow evening to watch fourteen episodes if I'm gonna be up to speed. What days do new episodes usually air? Fridays? If I'm back in time I could split and watch the rest when I'm back home again.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2023 05:34
|
|
|
So last season I was astonished and actually touched to learn people seemed interested in my weird ramblings about the anime I watched, so here we are again for the Fall Season: Shows I Dropped: Helck: So I dropped the anime to just read the manga of this and it was extraordinarily good, and I'll be honest it was because the anime was not very good. And that is a pity, because if Helck had a Spy X Family or Frieren quality adaptation it would be explosive and instead we got a restrained, weak, tiringly mediocre adaptation that I do not trust to adapt the jaw-dropping art and action of the later period of the story. I freely acknowledge that part of this frustration is watching the weak adaptation during Helck's weaker early portion, but at the same time Helck was a very pretty manga and the anime was nowhere close. I have no idea how it looked when the chips started to come down, I jumped ship shortly after our leads ended up an island and had to find a way back to the mainland, but I really cannot imagine that the anime of Helck was going to look or feel as impressively as the source material. And that is a shame because when Helck started going it just kept ramping up harder and harder and harder right up until the ending. I will highly recommend the manga. I doubt I will remember the anime. 16bit Sensation: So I cut this off after episode three and this thread makes it sound like this series actually went somewhere not long after I parted ways with it, which I suppose is always the trouble with media. There's a joke about anime where people always say that the story gets good after X period of time, and opinions are going to vary a lot on how excusable this is (and also it's not remotely exclusive to anime) though speaking only for myself I'm usually willing to play ball having watched shows that are astonishingly great beyond a certain point and not so much before that. But that's a different discussion, and when it comes to the situation regarding 16Bit Sensation I dropped it because simply did not find myself enjoying it. The pacing felt too slow and while I didn't dislike the lead I didn't really like her at all that much and I didn't find her particularly compelling as protagonist. I guess what bothered me was that the show felt like it was serving two masters, if it had focused in on our heroine's love for Otome games and exploring that I would've been on board with it, similarly if it had been a show explaining how those games were made and what programming then versus now was like I would also have been on board with it. I'm told it would have eventually turned into a wild and thought-provoking story spanning across time and space from past to future, but I didn't watch that far. Sometimes when you hear people say "it gets good after X period of time" it isn't enough to keep you on board. Shows that are Ongoing! Frieren: This show is VERY good so far. If I can nominate one thing I really love about this series it would be that it genuinely gets across the vastness of time. On a basic thematic level Frieren is about the passage of memory, on the micro level of lived experience to the macro level of history and society. Frieren, unique among the main characters, she's gifted and burdened with a position where she is able to experience both of those things, one is the other for her. As a result Frieren is able to do things with history that I haven't seen since some of the LN stories of Kino's Journey. It's not just that she knows history, she was there for it. She remembers it. She felt it and still feels it. And through that lens the series is able to tell a lot of really fascinating stories and paint a number of really somber and compelling portraits. Frieren's world feels big because we can get a sense of both its past and its present. And related to that, Frieren is about the only show I can think of where the "really a thousand years old" character actually feels that old. That's also the reason why Kraft had so much punch as a character despite only being on the show for like 10 minutes tops. There's way more history in the world than we will ever know… Shangri-la Frontier: I would call this show a big stupid, action-fest except the show's secret weapon is that it isn't stupid. Heck, it's one of the few shows that not only understands how videogames and videogame players work, it actually applies itself and delivers a real pitch of what a genuinely great VRMMO game would look like and play like. Honestly that's one of the best parts of it, someone looked at a genre which is overflowing with lovely Aincrad-alikes that are supposed to be really great games and tried to pitch what a REAL "god-tier game" would be in that kind of world. It's almost meta if you think about it that way. Also it's really pretty and has lots of great action, so there's that. The Apothecary Diaries: Aoi Yuuki the drug cat makes  and solves mysteries! The show has been a blast, our heroine is amazing, the voice actor naturally gives a sublime performance, and the animation team has been knocking it out of the park week after week. I want to specifically call out the show for having a very strong and disciplined hold over its tone. It takes real skill in writing, direction, and overall composition to be able to weave in and out of comedic and serious scenes as well as The Apothecary Diaries can. This one is absolutely the show I look forward to the most every week and I cannot wait for more.Pokemon Horizons part 2: You know I've been seeing people bang on about the pacing of the show being too slow and I gotta say? I can comprehend where they're coming from but I fully disagree. This is a show that simultaneously knows it's got time to spend and episodes to burn, but also isn't wasting either of those and I really respect that. The series introduced itself, introduced its cast, introduced its world, and once the plot got going it kept moving. It's been 34 episodes and there are only a handful that aren't relevant character sketches, storyline milestones, or just straight on major serialized story events. There's also the fact that it's using all that time to run long, slow burn, purposefully plotted storylines and character arcs interwoven with impressively good action. And you know? It's kind of wild I can say all that about a Pokémon anime. If there is a Hot Take to come away from this with its that the linear eight badge progression structure of previous seasons of the Pokémon anime was its greatest enemy and I'm glad it's gone. Yu-Gi-Oh! Go Rush!!: This hasn't been as good as Sevens on the whole, and the second season hasn't quite matched the really big pop from the finale of the first, but this last arc that just wrapped up and the one before it were on the whole pretty good. I think the clever thing happening here is how the show is using its protagonist: Yuudias being a gormless, guileless, good-natured doofus is being treated as more of a negative then you'd think for a kids show. This entire last arc had the undercurrent that him being this goober made things way harder than they should have been, and while the show and the people in it largely agree that yeah, he is a good guy, it also is making the point that it's a good thing he's got a cadre of friends, allies, and supporting characters because my man could not handle all this on his own. Also someone still needs to kick Ryugu Phaser hard in the balls. gently caress that guy. Hirogaru Precure!: I'm holding back on this one since it's nearly over and I'm going to talk more next season when we get there, but in short it's fine, the back half of this show has not been as good as its front half, and I have a nasty suspicion why that might be... Completed Shows!: Precure 23: My aforementioned nasty suspicion is that this show might have been diverting resources away from Hirogaru Precure, and that could well be the reason why it started to slide. And if I'm right I suspect the split attention is probably an underlying issues in this show as well because it's... I'm gonna go with "flawed" I think. Precure 23 was show that just could not cash its checks. The show wavered between shooting really really really high with its messaging and pulling back and doing essentially Precure stories except the cast are adults now, and one of those succeeded. And no, it wasn't the bit where they were shooting really really really high and trying to have a moral about public apathy and climate anxiety. The show opened with the refrain of "what can we do about such big issues?" and closed on that same refrain and I can't help but notice it didn't really have an answer, probably because giving one require them to get political in a way the show was clearly unwilling to do. Unsurprisingly that leaves it feeling hollow and that is unfortunate because a lot of the middle monster of the week episodes were genuinely good. Hell, I'll put it another way, if the show's focus had kept to the "we got what we wanted when we were kids, now what?" I think I'd probably call it a really solid show because that was the part they could engage with and those were the stories they could actually tell well. Urara especially had a good episode where she struggles with an acting role and after reconnecting with a friend and taking a different approach she finally nails it after realizing she was pigeonholing herself. That's a good episode with a good message that landed, it worked all the way through. And I say again I wish this is what the show was about because it was what the show could do. Precure 23 had a really strong understanding of its characters and their dynamics and used them well, the way it built on all these established people was its strongest feature. There's another one of these Precure sequels coming up and I really do hope the production team leans in on what they can do and moves away from the stuff they clearly can't/aren't allowed to engage with properly. Oh and speaking of the cost of splitting up resources, woof do the CGI monsters look bad. Honestly the show on the whole is kind of shoddy looking, and I am also not super thrilled with not giving the cast grown-up forms. That honestly feels like a wasted opportunity. Bullbuster:Speaking of ugly CGI monsters and leaning into what you can actually do versus what you can't do, Bullbuster. This show honestly reminds me a lot of my frustrations watching SSSS.Gridman, all the pieces are there for a really compelling show but they were put together wrong. We have the right mix of cast members, an interesting juxtaposition of genres, a novel pitch for a plot, a lot of really clever ideas and a bunch of compelling grace notes, and ultimately it all just fell short of what it could have been. In fact, just like Gridman its adherence to genre conventions is one of the worst parts of it. The show was moving along pretty well but then we got to the ultimate reveal of what's going on and it was just plain boring in large part because it basically tossed out all of the interesting bits of the setting and most of the character dynamics in favor of a plot twist that had me yawning. Then we got the ending which had a big long action sequence with the aforementioned lack of resources to do a big long action sequence and then we got the sendoff bit which was just a slap in the face. Bullbuster: a portrait of what might have been. Stardust Telepath: I've started to realize that Kirara adaptations have a bizarrely solid track record, and this is no exception. This show presents as an unbelievably sugary series, but what sold me on this one was actually its restraint. After the initial pitch of the protagonist meeting a Manic Alien Dream Girl it quickly resolves itself into another entry into the venerable High School Girls with Hobbies genre, specifically being about model rockets. We still had the goofy alien girl with vague magic powers, but her relationship with the rest the characters turned out to be admirably grounded. And then after getting comfortable, the series turns into a extremely effective and affecting character drama digging deep into all of its protagonists and their issues. It is a surprisingly serious and emotionally very real show in its final third and I am really pulling for all of these girls to overcome the odds and themselves. It isn't exactly MyGO!!, but it is a shockingly solid show in the same genre. Wild. Shy: Ooh the pacing was off on this one. So the basic conceit of Shy is "What if My Hero Academia but it's a Magical Girl show". And I was really on board with it, and then they crammed a 4 episode arc into 7 and it just became a drag. I suspect some of this is just unfortunate construction in the source material, if they had paced themselves more reasonably the show would probably have ended in the middle of another major arc so they stretch the back half of the series until it frayed and tore. I don't envy them that decision at all… The cast was good, the story was strong, the setting conceit was interesting, their commitment to the bit was wholehearted, the animation was good and very stylish (loved the shots that looked like comic panels crossing), and when there is action it was good action. That's all the more reason why it shouldn't have bored me, because some of those last episodes did and that was not a good sign. There's another season coming down the pipeline I'm honestly not sure if I'm going to watch it... Tearmoon Empire Story: This is a show with basically one repeating central gag and that is everyone assuming that our time traveling self-reincarnated protagonist is some brilliant, charismatic, saintly master of strategy and politics when she's actually just a complete maroon who's trying her best to get out of trouble. And fair's fair it's a good gag. I got a lot of laughs out of the many times when Mia would do something and then the show would compare and contrast the internal monologue of everyone else reacting to what she's doing and then getting the internal monologue of Mia thinking of whatever stupid reason why she actually did whatever she just did. And occasionally the narrator would cut in to say basically "no, they are completely wrong this is not what she was thinking at all" which again, a good laugh. And then the show gets extra credit because in between this looping running gag it had a surprisingly strong cast of well-written characters. The long complicated internal monologues are used as jokes, yes, but they are also still long intricate internal monologues where the characters verbalize themselves and their opinions and their ideals and it turns out they're all pretty well-rounded and interesting characters in their own right and their internal thoughts match up with how they act marrying both show and tell. And it gets all that from a joke. A tip of the hat for that one. Dark Gathering: Season 2 please. I dearly want more of this cast of tremendously hosed up people fighting tremendously hosed up ghosts with other tremendously hosed up ghosts in a tremendously hosed up setting. I want to see these lunatics collect more horrible ghosts and then dump all the bad mojo in Kyoto on the creepy pedo god like you don't even know. To actually talk about the show it is essentially a vehicle for messed up situations and horrific visuals. Our characters go to a location, find a ghost, learn its deeply disturbing history and methodology, and then escape by the skin of their teeth often by catching said ghost like an unbelievably macabre version of Pokémon. And let me tell you a thing I have learned from watching Digimon Ghost Game these last two years is that it turns out I'm someone who really loves action horror shows with hosed up situations and nightmarish visuals. It's even better when our leads are a creepy little girl, a terror junkie nervous wreck who attracts ghosts, and his obsessive stalker/designated driver. This show is so far up my alley it's crashed into the back wall and I cannot wait for more. S-Rank Girl: My mandatory, one a season nothing of a show. This was a charming fluff piece that was probably undersold by its adaptation as it actually does have a good amount of meat on its bones. We have two protagonists who are both fun and compelling and cool in their own right each having different stories taking place with each other or in parallel and also having a relationship that is remarkably wholesome in a medium with the recurring problem of being icky. We have an actual underlying story with an ongoing mystery and a lot of interesting implications running around in it, and related to that a decent setting to build off of. So far the villains have been fairly uninteresting being generic spooky mystery dudes causing problems, but I wouldn't be surprised if it went somewhere good in the novels. I might have to check them out actually, the show was good enough to deserve that from me and that doesn't happen very often with my seasonal nothing show.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2023 07:13
|
|
|
Omnicrom posted:So last season I was astonished and actually touched to learn people seemed interested in my weird ramblings about the anime I watched, so here we are again for the Fall Season: Helck is easily one of my favorite fantasy manga of all time along with Faraway Paladin. Neither got even remotely close to the adaption they deserve. Just wait for Medalist to drop for MORE of that pain(and read the manga is amazing).
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2023 07:33
|
|
|
Omnicrom posted:So last season I was astonished and actually touched to learn people seemed interested in my weird ramblings about the anime I watched, so here we are again for the Fall Season: Yeah, the helck manga art starts off amateurish but grows into some of my favorite art from ANY manga. The artist is great at action scenes and also has a knack for clean, appealing character designs. I can confirm that the anime does not manage to capture this at all. It pretty much has the same level of quality all the way through and the farther it gets the more that's bitterly disappointing. I hope that if volundio ever gets an adaptation it gets better treatment.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2023 07:53
|
|
|
sharkmafia posted:Yeah, the helck manga art starts off amateurish but grows into some of my favorite art from ANY manga. The artist is great at action scenes and also has a knack for clean, appealing character designs. With the quality this got, I'm questionable if I wanna pick it up again and finish it much less have finish the rest of the series in a potential S2 let alone pick up Volundio.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2023 10:52
|
|
|
Yeah, that's understandable. As it stands, I wouldn't watch a season 2 of helck either. But ascendance of a bookworm is getting picked up for another season by a different studio that will probably have a less shoestring budget, so that could happen for this as well. volundio's very far from done and i'd say the jury's still out about whether it will end up being as good as helck, but I do appreciate its artwork. I would hope that any possible future adaptation respects that part of it. sharkmafia fucked around with this message at 12:22 on Dec 29, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2023 12:19
|
|
|
Feeling like this season was mostly kind of blah. Some thoughts, in no real order: Overtake!: Feel like they overscoped this one and had to severely cut it down in the back half. The first half has some promising material. All of our principle characters have clear flaws, be it surly and snappish or polite yet inauthentic. There's some neat scenes that stand out due to their dynamic lighting that help to sell the character drama. Most of it doesn't really go anywhere though, and our characters just become nicer people on their own. I really wish they committed more to some degree of consequence. At one point, the star driver of the rival team gets into an unlucky wreck and is hospitalized for some weeks, and there's some discussion on how this lost time could ruin his career forever. But we don't really see this happen. He gets out of the hospital, and while it's clearly a little tough on his body, it's framed as nothing more than a temporary hardship and no one is even remotely concerned about his future. Most of the runtime is spent on our outsider POV character's trauma, and while the Tohoku earthquake jumpscare is kinda funny for how out of left field it is, the subplot resolves a little too cleanly to be interesting and ultimately never shakes the feeling of being completely disconnected from the Formula 4 setting. There's one ep where they go over how to pick what tires to use by gambling on the rain clearing up during the race or not, but other than that, this show could've been about anything. In conclusion, horse boys still uncontested in best racing drama. Hypnosis Mic: Division Rap Battle - Rhyme Anima +: Hypmic is at its best doing stupid episodic adventures, and overall, I'd say S1's were stronger (nothing can top walking into your apartment one day to find a random dead body). The overarching plot is very whatever, but I like the dynamics of the new groups they added in, and it's neat how they shuffle everyone up for the performances. Kawagoe Boys Sing: Very strange show. Shoestring budget production values overall and not even done yet, but the writing picks up quite a bit in the back half. I'd also attribute to it one of the most interesting episode direction of the season, with a full 21 minutes of consistent claustrophobic camera angles really nailing the vibe of unease and discomfort. Man, I miss having weird one-off episodes like that. It's a shame we're seeing media becoming lost in real time though. The iDOLM@STER Million Live!: This is 30% some really underbaked drama with a few characters and 70% cameos for the established franchise fans. I am not an established franchise fan, but the songs are nice enough and the CG animation is passable even if the sum total feels rather substanceless. I can't get over how the producer in this is the most useless man in the world though. Between this and U149, they don't make im@s producers like they used to. Paradox Live the Animation: Eh, I dunno man. For an anime ostensibly about the music, they sure do have a lot of the performances happen off-screen. Our main protagonist is also the least compelling on offer; in a competition with ten billion yen on the line, they're the only ones who are already rich and don't really need the money lol. The emotional beats the show goes for could work if we actually spent the time to get to know the characters, but we have to juggle time between four different groups instead, so we end up getting the heavy eps on like the second ever focus episode we see for some characters. The extremely clunky exposition surrounding everything certainly doesn't help. Also for some reason they decided to go with instrumentality as the main villain plot even though they never even bother giving the villain a name? Akira Ishida was wasted on this. Uma Musume: Pretty Derby Season 3: I didn't really care for S2, because I felt like the focus switched too much between different characters to really get invested into any of the secondary arcs (and also the broken leg drama was dumb as hell). People say that's an issue with this season, and yeah I get it (who the gently caress is Cheval Grand), but I like Kitasan Black. It's cool to see a sports protagonist with a dream to be just like her hero and ultimately has to accept that she just doesn't have the raw talent to live up to that goal. Accepting being ordinary and making due; that's inspiring in its own right. 16bit Sensation: Another Layer: For all our protagonist claims to love visual novels, it doesn't seem like she knows very much about them when so much of the show feels like it's reading Wikipedia articles at you. Our protagonist is frustratingly stupid, but the rest of the cast is bland, bland, bland. Even by the time the show swings into goofy future dystopia it never escapes feeling hollow and empty. But hey! Look at this picture of Madoka Magica or Lycoris Recoil or Love Live Sunshine we have. You like those things, right? Right??? Atarashii Joushi wa Do Tennen: Cannot shake the feeling this is just low effort fujobait. The storyboarding is some braindead collage of cut-and-paste manga panels leading to very repetitive exposition within the same episode, and the comedy doesn't extend past a few one-joke syndrome characters. Also it's incredibly lame how it keeps doing the teenage revenge fantasy story of sticking it to your villains while onlookers literally clap. I like giggling over anime boyfriends as much as the next guy, but come on, they should at least approximate feeling like real people. Shadowverse Flame: Seven Shadows Arc: I love how they took the main antagonist from last season and immediately humbles his smug rear end at the start of this season and dedicates a good chunk of time having him learn how to get over himself and discover himself. Messy, drawn out, and with enough self-doubt to maybe even convince the audience: that's the kind of redemption arc I can't get enough of. But I also want to say:  They're boyfriends. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2024 03:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 23:35 |
|
|
Stop smiling Hiro, you'll ruin our cover.
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2024 03:42
|
|