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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!
Finished S1 of Heavenly Delusion. It's good, but I think it's overhyped? The animation is great, the plot is interesting, but it's going to depend a lot on where it goes from here in my eyes (assuming it gets a second season).
Watching Frieren as it comes out, feel like the last episode was the first crack I was hoping I wouldn't see. A lot of stories in general start with really clever concepts that the storyteller can't deliver on, so they devolve into tropes we've all seen before. This was the first episode where I really felt like I saw that happening to the level it was a detriment and not just "eh ok we'll be tropey for a bit".
Started Stand Alone Complex a few days ago. Seeing how many movies, OVAs, and series there were made me hesitant to start it, but I finally decided to look up the watch order and it's actually pretty straightforward. I'm 10 episodes in, I already know it's gonna get a 10/10, and this time it isn't just me overrating it.
There's something I find so fascinating about turn-of-the-century media portraying the near future, seeing what they got right and what they got wrong. People using flip phones and CDs in a time where VR chat is a thing. Come to think of it, I haven't ever seen a pre-iPhone series accurately predict modern cell phones. Are modern cell phones that futuristic? Was VR more predictable than touchscreen slabs with cameras and flashlights?
Now that you mention it, it's interesting comparing Ghost in the Shell and Psycho-Pass, both by Production I.G. They're two completely different takes on sci-fi, one is a dingy crime-riddled cyberpunk city, the other an AI assisted utopia. I've been watching Psycho-Pass and it resonates, I mean it's a contemporary and still ongoing story, so it obviously has that going for it
Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner and those stories, must have reflected the times especially the 1980s where city crime, violence and drugs were a big problem. The authors could have imagined what would happen taking those problems and adding technology to it, what would that look like.
Psycho-Pass explores different issues of today, where so much has moved digital, and the nature of problems is more along the lines of control and influence, less so physical violence.
It was easy to overlook that flip phones still exist in Stand Alone Complex because our character all have cyberbrains they can communicate at distance with. Weirdly enough the Solid State Society movie from 2007 [which is essentially 3rd gig] flip phones are more prominently featured. Flip phones were more long-lived in Japan though.
Honestly, smart phones just aren't cool enough to be predicted before they arrive. That's my take on it at least. If you could tell people of the time about smart phones, I don't think they'd be too excited about it. At least not specifically the touch-screen type. Phones were already becoming computers with app stores before touch-screens became the norm. There were a lot of flip-phone games too.
Lots of Anime is for kids. But so is Bluey and I think I like that more than my own kid does. Besides, being targeted towards teens for publishing reasons doesn't mean the audience have to be teens.
In other words: let your teenage girl flag fly.
I've started watching Taiyou no Kiba Dagram very slowly. I've felt drawn to older animes lately, specifically real robot mecha/ space operas. I got through the first 40 episodes of Legends of the Galactic Heroes and put it down when my oldest was born and haven't felt like rewatching it since then.
I'm enjoying this so far and look forward to watching an episode every few days or so for the next while.
That might be my favorite '80s mecha series, I really like the approach it took in how it presented and examined the conflict.
Unfortunately there will probably never be a newer (or maybe international) release of the series as I believe there are licensing issues with some of the mecha designs.
Are there any others you'd recommend? I'm thinking of diving into the original Gundam after this.
I've watched through episode 9 now and I'm enjoying the pacing the story offers and its different views of the conflict so far. I especially enjoy Lertoff as I've never really considered what it would be like for a war reporter and having them interact with both sides of a conflict.
Following Lertoff was a great part of the series and a perspective rarely seen as you mentioned.
Gundam is rather sprawling and has its ups and downs even within the Universal Century timeline that started with the original 1979 anime, but one of the side stories that takes a look at a neutral civilian area during the war (0080: War in the Pocket) is particularly good. It's not necessary to watch the original show/film trilogy before that but it does help provide context and if you were considering it anyway might as well start from the beginning.
I think the original Macross was interesting to a point, though the Do You Remember Love? film is a better reinterpretation of the story and my favorite entries in the franchise are later (Plus and Frontier); any can be watched on their own but have references to earlier parts as the setting changes over time.
Patlabor has another look at how mecha are used in a modern society outside of a war context which I thought was nice as well.
All of those were on my list but I do appreciate the confirmation that I should watch them.
I'm enjoying going back and discovering these shows. There's something weirdly nostalgic seeing people smoking cigars while using corded phones then having a giant robot be in the background.