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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!
Delicious in Dungeon
It has taken me a few months but I am around 20 episodes in.
I could not care less about the overarching story. I just can't bring myself to care about stakes in a world with high enough magic to have resurrection plot armor.
I adore the portrayal of various monsters though. There is at least some thought about how the monsters would fit into an ecosystem and how they would hunt rather than "and here is the next monster."
It isn't super serious and I appreciate it quite a bit. Looking forward to finishing the series.
I feel like they do a pretty good job of explaining why the stakes are different, and that there is plenty of danger and complications even within a system with resurrection.
Orb: On the Movements of the Earth
The series depicts the history behind the idea of heliocentrism in 15th-century Poland. However, you can't see here many Polish accents at all. The story could just as well have taken place in some imaginary medieval country. The story isn't very historically accurate as well. The scenes depicting the Church of that time are more in line with the feelings people have about it today - that it is backward and anti-scientific. However, the idea for the plot was quite interesting, and I would probably have a better opinion of the series if it weren't for a few flaws that I noticed. As for the plot itself, I don't have much to say, except that at times it was a little too obvious that it was the author who was speaking to us directly through the protagonist, conducting some kind of an amateurish philosophical monologue. It was a bit too on the nose. The whole series is very dialogue heavy btw. Other than that, in my opinion, the ending wasn't satisfying enough compared to the level the rest of the season had throughout the run. In addition to the historical inaccuracies, I was irritated by a couple of production aspects. Many scenes that took place at night were unnecessarily over-darkened. So much so that some episodes are impossible to watch in the daytime, as it's hard to see anything on the monitor. Although the night sky was beautifully painted in every scene that featured it, the other visual aspects were quite average. I also disliked the very average, very static cinematography. Some scenes felt out of place, even took me out of immersion in the depicted world. I guess, they were just taken straight out of the manga without much thought. Acting-wise, the series was fine. The standout character here is Nowak, played by Kenjirou Tsuda. He did a great job. I think it's going to be one of his more memorable roles. As a whole, it is a mix of good and bad qualities giving, in my opinion, a fairly average product. However, I am pleased that the series presents a fairly original story in a way that I haven't seen before. This alone made me not regret watching it. Ultimately, this is a 7/10 for me
BanG Dream! It's MyGO!!!!!
I started watching this series without any knowledge of the previous seasons of BanG Dream!, but their familiarity is completely unnecessary, as this season tells its own separate story. It's a story of several girls whose fates were brought together by the musical band they formed. In fact, the band here is mainly just a catalyst for interaction between the heroines. Of course, as befits a music series, we have many musical performances and pleasant to listen to songs, but mainly the series focuses on the dramas that take place in the lives of our heroines. This was the main advantage of the series for me, as the characters are diverse and interesting. Their story kept me curios throughout the whole season. As for the weaker sides, I'm certainly not a fan of the visual aspects. The series was mostly created with CGI. I'm not a CGI hater, but in this particular case I didn't like it. I don't speak Japanese, so maybe the translation is to blame, but I also got the impression that some of the dialogues were not very believable. Overall I think the series was pretty good, I think enjoyed it as much as I did with GBC. 7/10
7th Time Loop
This is one of those animes telling the story of reincarnation as a villainess, except that this time it is not about being isekaid into another world, but reliving one's life from a certain save point. As the title suggests, we meet the heroine as she relives her life for the seventh time. In each successive life, she draws on the experiences of the previous one. I found the first few episodes really good. It was interesting to watch the actions of the main character because of her competence, which was not some Mary Sue kind of crap, but it was acquired and justified by how the events of her life played out before. However, over time, this anime begins to fit into the familiar patterns of this type of shows and because of that the end of the season disappointed me. In terms of animation quality, this anime is a tad better than the typical representative of the genre. Overall, it was a very average show which in the beginning had potential to be something better but eventually failed - 6/10. I don't know if it was good enough for me to try watching the continuation, if that ever comes out.
For the fun of it I'll do a write-up about a bad anime that I really can't explain why I even bothered to watch. Probably inertia and a well-timed release date relative to my schedule.
https://myanimelist.net/anime/58437/Botsuraku_Yotei_no_Kizoku_dakedo_Hima_Datta_kara_Mahou_wo_Kiwametemita is just not good. In fact, it does nothing well at all. There's never any real conflict, every problem is solved with "I have a spell for that", and everyone is constantly going on and on about how the main character is just the absolute best boy. Everything in it has been done better before and it adds nothing new.
Let's start from the beginning. It's an isekai into nobility of a magical world. It being an isekai quite literally never comes into play. If you aren't going to have your character leverage that outside knowledge then there is no point! The nobility aspect is practically irrelevant as well because main character, of course, easily does some feats that get him acknowledged by the king and he starts an entirely separate lineage of nobility from his family's.
It continues on to make some very very questionable decisions regarding "familiar contracts", female characters, and them then becoming younger once they become bound to the main character. I'd say I'm pretty immune to anime tropes, but in an anime this poor there's nothing really worth defending here. It wasn't really in service of anything innovative or even good.
Main character also ends up doing the standard thing of absorbing some stronger entity that gives him power and talks to him. Because this show is allergic to conflict this basically happened when he walked up to the dragon and it just went "you seem cool, let me put my powers in you." And of course the dragon later turns into a little girl. Never change anime. Never change.
There's a lot more bog standard stuff like trying to build a nation, having princesses thrown at him, being given the ability to just invent new spells, everyone anyways being so impressed by basic things, making contracts with other races only for them to basically just turn into humans, and so much more.
If you want a show about an isekaied character befriending monsters and such and building a nation, just watch slime anime. If you want a show about a guy obsessed with magic that goes over the top with his obsession just watch 7th prince. If you want to watch a magic isekai full of problematic tropes and girls falling all over main character just watch Mushoku Tensei. I could go on for ages running through predecessors that are just better than this show at everything this show is trying to do, but this seems like enough for now.
Dororo
I just finished the English dubbed version of this series and had a blast watching it. It can be a little heavy handed and over-explain things that are better left for the viewer to figure out, but it's still a great show overall.
The art is great, the battle scenes are attention grabbing, and it's able to immerse you in the emotions of the story throughout the episodes. Quirkiness of the monsters aside, I loved it.
Usually I have a hard time getting words out, but today it seems I have a hard time keeping them in. No spoilers except where marked.
Orb: On the Movements of the Earth
https://myanimelist.net/anime/52215/Chi_Chikyuu_no_Undou_ni_Tsuite
It was really good. What seems at first to be a show about an astronomer studying heliocentrism in 15th century Poland is really about having hope for an uncertain future. Several prominent characters die throughout the show, and all of them face their deaths with serenity, despite not knowing whether what they've died for will succeed. So long as there's a sliver of a chance that someone else can pick up the torch, they're content with the fate they've made.
Spoiler for the last few episodes of Orb
In the end, it seems that the entire story has led up to one man mentioning the name of Oczy's book as famous historical figure Albert Brudzewksi passes by. The culmination of all of the characters' efforts ultimately leads to one question in Albert's mind: the earth doesn't move... right?
In reality, Albert was himself skeptical of the geocentric model of the universe, and he had an extremely relevant student on whom he undoubtedly made an impact: Nicolaus Copernicus.
Whether the events of the show are meant to have literally taken place (within the fiction of the show), or if they're meant to be one of infinite possible causes for that letter to have been delivered to that house at that time, is not made clear. In my opinion, the existence of Rafal both in the beginning of the anime's story and in Albert's backstory leads me to think it's not meant to be literal.
It is simply a story about the unknown and anonymous contributors to history. Potocki, Hubert, Rafal, Glass, Oczy, Badeni, Novak, Jolenta, Grabowski, Draka, Schmidt—people whose names and faces have been forgotten, but whose actions drove the course of history.
Virtually every character in this series never existed, but the people they represent did. The real human beings who contributed to evolving understandings of cosmology are more than just people from the 15th century, and famous figures like Albert Brudzewski and Nicolaus Copernicus couldn't have done the work they did without these anonymous predecessors.
Personally, I'm giving it a 10/10. I liked the animation, I liked the music, and most importantly, it's rare that a series drives me to write this much. Objectively, I have to give it a 9/10, for exactly one reason: the brightness is way off sometimes. It didn't affect me too much, because I watch my TV shows in a pitch black room anyway, but I can imagine it being hard to watch if you have so much as a lamp on in the same room. Also, it's not very pleasant getting flashbanged with a bright white screen after a solid minute of almost complete darkness.