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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!
Do Japanese dramas also count? I've been watching Fermat's Cuisine on Netflix and the amount of unintentional comedy is so extreme that I think that it has to be intentional. I mean, it does have the concept of "being good at math makes you into a cooking savant", after all. How are you supposed to react when a girl is crying and suddenly equations are coming out of her eyes?
What makes you say they are unintentional comedy? The premise is failed mathematician goes into a different industry and math comes out when cooking ..... Seems like a comedy to begin with?
It really isn’t supposed to be a comedy. The third episode actually succeeds at being drama for the most part and the crazy style and bizarre effects have been turned down.
Been sick with covid so been watching a few random anime series I just picked out of the backlog that don't require much thinking.
The Vexations of a Shut-In Vampire Princess (Overall 5.5/10)
It had potential as the MC is initially portrayed as a non-magical vampire that hates blood and is a shut-in that is forced to command an army in a forever war type scenario where its cut throat and your lieutenants will back stab you in a split second if you display any weakness. But the shut-in aspect didn't really affect the plot, she's just sometimes really sleepy. The back stabbing lieutenants aspect doesn't really last longer than a couple episodes as all her men love her (and all her women LOVE her). And it turns out she's the most magical person to exist and everyone except her knows how to trigger her abilities so they typically just wait until she's been beaten unconscious and then feed her blood (which she was hypnotized to hate so she wasn't a walking nuke all the time). It really felt like the studio was given 3-4 seasons of material and tasked with condensing it down to 1.Otaku Elf (Unfinished but so far 6.5/10)
Cozy slice of life about an elf that was isekai'd to our world hundreds of years in the past, she is revered as a goddess and lives in a temple. She is a shut-in nerd that likes collecting stuff and just enjoying the conveniences of the modern day Japan. The MC is a girl that recently took over the family business of taking care of the elf and the temple. It's cute and wholesome, nothing too deep as of yet.My Senpai is Annoying (Overall 6.5/10)
It's about a really small woman and her incredibly large senpai at the office. Pretty standard romcom story beats but was wholesome.I've been watching My New Boss is Goofy
It's such a refreshing palette cleanser. I'm picky with comedies, I find it there isn't a story to keep me hooked or if there's no sort of "grounding" I can get bored but so far this one keeps pulling me along and I've actually laughed out loud at some of the goofs. Highly recommend!
Spy x Family - We're playing catch up on this again. We watched the one with Becky visiting the Forger's and having a big crush on Loid, and doing silly kid stuff to get his attention, with funny reactions from the adults.
Psycho-Pass 3 - I got past the mid point of the season, it's building up to two of the central conflicts. I like how the politics and societal story points, like AI population mind control, are relevant to what's happening IRL
Boogiepop Phantom - It starts making more sense after ep5 lol. I keep trying to figure out what the phantoms and body doubles and identity swapping are metaphors for. In my mind I compare it with Serial Experiments Lain, because the art is the same for one thing, and Lain's story seemingly saying some of the same things with Lain's alter ego.
Jujutsu Kaisen - I started watching s1 given the hype about the animation. The animations is good, the story is okay and typical shonen. I see now why people talked about the female gaze, there is a lot of that, ripped and/or pretty men, while the women have been dressed more conservatively than other anime. I get why people feel less reserved about recommending this anime in public, lol
Zombie Land Saga - This is a background show for me, with the volume turned waaaay down because they're constantly yelling, but there are some genuinely funny episodes
Kaguya-Sama Love is War - This is another background show for me because it's pretty repetitive tbh, but I saw the Chika dance in ep3 or 4 which was an awesome surprise
First episode of Dungeon Meshi is extremely promising, at least from the perspective of someone who read the whole manga. I love everyone's voice, both sub and dub. I thought the TV-MA age rating was excessive, but I've been looking back through the manga, and it got a bit violent sometimes... I guess people being able to be rezzed kinda dulls the impact of someone getting shot in the head, or having their throat slit, but that's still blood and gore.
Would be interested to hear opinions from people who watched the first episode, but haven't read the manga. Does it capture your attention like the first few chapters captured mine? Because I was 100% hooked by the point where the first episode ends.
They called it Delicious in Dungeon, I liked it, it's funny. It's interesting to see more dead bodies in this comedy than regular action fantasy shows.
I just finished watching the Evangelion movies on Monday so now I have seen all of Evangelion. It was definitely a ride.
Martian Successor Nadesico which I'm enjoying a lot. It is from 1996 and combines an older animation style with a newer storytelling sensibility. How would I put it? It's a step on the postmodernization of the giant robot genre, particularly, by the time it came out it's clear that a giant robot pilot would have grown up watching giant robot anime and that would influence their point of view. (20 years later they made a Gundam show about people who build Gundam models!)
As such I am appreciating the intertextuality, for instance it turned out that Darling in the Franxx stole the name of some of the mechs in this series. Nadesico might be the first anime to use the word “moe”.