9
votes
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 remember when I was a kid watching Cartoon Network, I would see ads for Adult Swim shows and be so envious of the people who got to stay up late watching them. To me, the distilled embodiment of Adult Swim was Samurai Champloo.
12 year old me never got to see it, but 28 year old me just did. Samurai Champloo was great. The show is full of juxtapositions that highlight the qualities of everything in it. Not just the hip hop aesthetic and the Edo period setting, but also the differences between the main characters themselves—Jin is stuck in the past, a part of him having died with his master; Mugen is stuck in the present, having never been able to set down roots in the first place; Fuu has her eyes on the future, the only one with a clear goal in mind.
I'm not going to lie, it kind of bothers me that so many loose ends are left untied. So many characters seem like they're being set up to make a return later in the series, only to disappear forever. That being said, I do appreciate how the series ends with a resolution to all three of the main trio's backstories all in one arc.
Spoilers for the end of Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bebop
There's also something to be said about how stressful the ending is. Usually I can at least kind of anticipate how a story is going to end, but this show had me second-guessing what was going to happen the entire way through the last episode. This is due both to the way the series doesn't shy away from killing people, and the fact that it shares so much of its DNA with Cowboy Bebop, and if you know how that ends, you know why I was worried.
After their last fights, I was certain that Mugen and Jin died, especially given the parallel between Mugen's near-death experience in Misguided Miscreants and his experience after being blown up again.
I'm happy with the ending we got, though I may have shed a couple tears watching them walk away from each other during the credits.
I give it a 9/10. It's almost flawless, but it doesn't speak to my soul or give me a ton to think about outside of the show itself. And because I don't think I'm legally allowed to review the show without mentioning it, the music is the biggest reason the rating is so high. This show has put more songs on my playlist than any other anime.
For the next watch, the dice landed on Key the Metal Idol. Two episodes in, it's... Definitely a 90s anime. Don't love the nudity, but at least it's largely not sexualized. The concept is fun, if not very realistic. It's janky by modern standards, but this premiered before I was born, so I can't judge it too harshly for how it's aged. Who knows, this could be a 10/10. I do love a story about artificial personhood
So this may be a little too late for you (or just completely out of your area), but Shing02 (the vocalist of the opening theme) is currently touring. I went and saw him while he was in LA, and several Samurai Champloo tracks ended up on the set list of the show.
Man I haven't watched Samurai Champloo in what feels like decades. And what's worse is that statement is probably almost true at this point.
It's a really good piece of media. Well thought out, and it just oozes style.
Yeah the style is what really sticks with you. I love this show, but am always a little shocked on rewatch by how dark it gets - guess my brain forgets those parts but remembers the hip hop influences and overall style.
Our streaming rotation has been back on Netflix, so I rounded out a few anime series that I hadn't finished-
Cyberpunk Edgerunners has been talked about a lot, and it definitely hits a lot of the plot devices that I expected, and gave what I was looking for, a well animated violent cyberpunk world
Delicious in Dungeon is really good for hilarious character interactions and an intricately designed world. I get why people like it, the writers put in a ton of details every ep, asking and answering all sorts of questions like, "Why does this monster hang around this area? Why do some people turn into ghosts when they die and some don't? Why does this monster leave us alone, but attacked someone else?" Etc etc
Pluto was a neat mystery, but tbh not all the reveals landed great for me, like I didn't understand sometimes if a reveal was supposed to make me go Ohhhh, or if it was a partial reveal where more info would be released later. Same thing with the supposedly emotional parts, there were some touching moments, but I didn't care about some other moments or characters, like anything to do with that Bora kid. Ofc the manga came out twenty years ago, it must have completely blown people away at the time
Dorohedoro started out too weird, but it definitely grew on me halfway through, too bad it didn't wrap up the ending, it's a unique and fun anime though
As someone who finished the manga not too long ago and has been watching Delicious in Dungeon off and on with my roommate, I will say that the detail the mangaka put into her work is insane. The show actually cuts a fair bit of it, she really thought everything out. There is also a bunch of additional sketches and musings in the manga that show more of the world she built. Totally worth a read if you are interested in the show.
A few days ago I began my long awaited rewatch of Seirei no Moribito, and it has been as good as I remembered 3 episodes in. Maybe that's an uncommon opinion, but the stuff from the noughties looks good. Better than usual 2010's and later stuff because things aren't all coated in shiny, reflective vaseline. You can't take a fantasy show seriously if it looks like that.
Also, at the beginning, Balsa walks past a few children singing the same old Asian song that features in the parade of Ghost in the Shell: Innocence. I wonder what that is. Probably a famous cultural touchstone that I'm ignorant of.