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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 caught up with One Piece! Enjoyed Wano more than I expected, not liking the current arc.
Watching Pluto, and the anime is cementing why I think the manga is one of the GOAT.
I've watched the first two episodes of Pluto. My only anime reference up until this point is Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli films. I was pleasantly surprised by its seriousness and slow pacing. The supernatural/futuristic elements are incorporated into a realistic world/story pretty smoothly and I really like that balance. One thing surprised me thought as I actually preferred the US dub to the original in Japanese which very rarely happens to me (I grew up on subtitles). I think it's the Western looks of the characters that just suits the English language better IMO. Although the dialog are sometimes really weird, obvious and cartoonish (I realize the irony here) maybe that could be attributed to the translation or more of a cultural thing.
I'm looking forward to watch more Pluto and if anyone have some recommendations I would love to hear them. I like it serious/realistic/authentic and not too "cartoonish" if that makes sense. Good dialog. I also like sci-fi elements but it's not a deal breaker
I haven't seen Pluto yet, but given your description, I'm gonna recommend my ol' reliable, Mushishi. It's about the least "anime" anime I've watched. It's calm, and all the characters feel real. It's fantasy rather than sci-fi, but I think it still fits the criteria of being serious/realistic/authentic and not too "cartoonish."
Also gonna throw ACCA and Planetes in there. ACCA: 13 Territory Inspection Department is a completely dialogue-driven political drama about a federal government auditor travelling to all the territories in the fictional country Dowa to audit their local government branches while there are rumors of a potential coup d'état floating around. It actively subverts any potential for action scenes by having characters act realistically.
Planetes is about a team of orbital debris collectors. It's the most cartoonish out of these recommendations, but it's also the hardest sci-fi out of any show I've seen yet, aside from a few points where my 2000 hours in KSP made me pause and say "you wouldn't send a ship from prograde orbit to pick up a piece of debris in retrograde orbit, that would take way too much ∆v," or something like that.
Thanks for the recommendations! I will look into them and hope it's on some of my streaming services. Planetes and Mushishi sounds intriguing in their own way but also the political aspects in ACCA could be interesting.
I finished the first season of Last Exile yesterday. Around the halfway point it got a bit confusing to me, like there were a couple episodes worth of exposition that they skipped, but all in all I really liked it. I'm a total sucker for late 90's/early 00's animation, the universe is full of character, the whole show is a vibe. The Silvana is making its way into my next D&D campaign as a spelljammer. I'm gonna give it a 9/10 because I overrate every show I watch.
I just started the second season. There are things I like about it, and things I don't. I can already tell I'm not gonna like it as much as the first season, even ignoring the opening 10 seconds being the main character stripping down to her skivvies in a sleepwalk. I know it's irrational, but the oldschool low res 3DCG ships looked cooler to me than the new high quality ones. It just doesn't have the same vibe, you know? The same je ne sais quoi, the same pizzazzy oomph. But I like all the characters, it isn't not fun to watch, and sky pirates are always rad, so after one episode I'm guessing it'll end up with a 7
Random notes and thoughts
I like Greg Ayres, but I hate him in his role in Fam, The Silver Wing. His character looks like he's aged forwards, but sounds like he's aged backwards.
I usually think "animes should have more interesting accents to differentiate people from different regions." I stand by that, and Baccano remains the best dub in anime history because of the accents, but... Idunno, maybe the faux British accents will grow on me. I hope so