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What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga)
What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.
If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!
I binged the entire season one of Classroom of the Elite. I saw it's getting a season two going on right now, so I thought I'd take a look, and I'm kind of blown away by how solid the storytelling is.
The thing about this anime is that it's got these eye-catching concepts that includes hyper-intelligent high school kids being put through crazy tests in a struggle for superiority, and then the way the story is told tends to kind of push those things into the background. What's left in the foreground are a series of interpersonal dramas that usually involve some sort of risk of loss, though you won't find major stakes like personal injury or death. Don't get me wrong, though; those gimmicks aren't wasted; they do add to my enjoyment. I particularly enjoy the mechanic of there being special tests that generally have to be done in group settings because there's usually some sort of puzzle to figure out, but even then I enjoy it largely because they provide motivations that shift the dynamic between characters.
There's a few things that I particularly like about the show. It's greatest strength is how well it hides it's hand; you are aware at all times that there are holes in how well you know any given character, and that even reaches to the main character. It's hinted that he's a supernaturally gifted child who is trying to pretend to be average, but you don't know anything about his past, his reasons for trying to hide in the background, or even the full extent of his motivations for his day-to-day actions. This technique is made even better when the teacher reveals that his class - Class D - is the 'defect' class - which implies that most of his classmates are hiding at least one sort of character flaw. And these character flaws are actually used fairly well, since it usually gives them a motivation to act a specific way, which cause a lot of dramatic friction.
I haven't read the manga, but the anime is very well paced and it appears to do a pretty good job of foreshadowing future reveals. It's extremely bingable because you'll always want to know what's going to happen next. Around halfway through the middle of the first season the main character is finally given a goal to strive for, and that's when all the gears really start moving. The only real problem I have with the show is that I'm pretty confident we'll never see a real ending.
Anime is based on finished ranobe.
And if I didnʼt mistake, the last season will be in the next year.
Edit. The ranobe itʼs still kinda ongoing but with other name as Classroom of the Elite of the 2nd-year. So, the 3rd anime season will finish all the 1st-year.
Light novels are just manga with fewer panels. (=^ェ^=)
Ploughed through Hajime no Ippo and finished all 75 episodes. By far one of the best anime shows I've watched.
Still undecided what my favorite fight was. It's somewhere between the second Sendo match and Ippo's fight against Volg.
Then I went on Crunchyroll and tried to watch Rising, discovering in shock that it was the third season and that there's no way to legally stream the second season.
I finished new series of LotH aka Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu: Die Neue These: 2018, 2019, 2022-1. And 2022-2 will be in this autumn.
If you watch Ao Ashi then know that the next episode wonʼt be in this week.