What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga)

This season's anime

Bye bye, Earth (Season 2)

This is still one of the weirdest shows I've ever watched, but by the same token, I really dig how different its ideas are (compared to Isekai show #12416 with the same JRPG tropes).

The execution is clumsy, the animation is janky, the dialogue is often impenetrable and requires subtitles to explain terms even for Japanese viewers, and if you are expecting the show to get easier to understand with more exposition in this season... nope. Abandon hope all ye who enter.

Despite all of that, I feel like there's something that shines at its core beneath all that cruft and will keep watching.

Enen no Shouboutai (Season 3)

Season 3 of the fantasy / action show about firefighters living under a militarised theocracy while investigating spontaneous human combustion.

I remember seasons 1-2 being an enjoyable action show that didn't take itself too seriously. Season 3 has come years after I've forgotten most of the plot, but it's still basically that, despite the pace of the show now being seriously weighed down by the sheer number of characters.

Decent animation from David Production, although it doesn't come close to the love they poured into shows like the Urusei Yatsura remake.

Kidou Senshi Gundam GQuuuuuuX

This is the kind of all-star top heavy production featuring heavy hitters in every department that often results in disaster (see Bubble) but very occasionally results in something amazing (see Madoka Magica).

• I had thought that everyone responsible for the old elastic style of animation at Gainax had moved over to Trigger with Imaishi, but director Tsurumaki has brought back the feel of those old shows like Kare Kano. Character gestures and expressions are often exaggerated in an unabashedly "this is a cartoon" way which you would ordinarily never see in Gundam. It's a joy to watch.

• The mobile suit battles have the usual Sunrise chunky "real robot" feel of heavy equipment moving with inertia, but the Khara influence (or maybe just Tsurumaki's experience on FLCL and Gunbuster) is also there with the warped camera angles and deformations.

• The writing from Anno is clear and understandable, even for those who haven't watched the earlier UC Gundam series. It's unfathomable that this is the same guy who wrote Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Really loving what's been shown so far (and the twist on classic UC Gundam) and eagerly looking forward to seeing where they go with it.

Also, this must be one of the tiny handful of shows that has Kugimiya Rie playing a role with her natural, non-little girl / boy / tsundere voice. The only other one I can think of is Umineko no naku koro ni.

Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (Season 2)

Best show set in not-ancient China since Juunikokki.

The pace of the first episodes for this second half have been a bit slow, but that has happened from time to time with this show with all of its very slowly moving plot threads and intrigue.

Lush and colourful animation from OLM / Toei reminiscent of the excellent work on Summertime Rendering.

Lazarus

After Watanabe Shinichiro blew the doors off with Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, it feels like he's intentionally gone out of his way to make shows that are completely different:

• Sakamichi no Apollon (Absolutely loved this)

• Zankyou no Terror (Thought this was awful)

• Carole and Tuesday (Decent but longer than it should have been with an unsatisfying ending)

Amazon's execs have clearly told him to go back to his roots with Lazarus. It's basically Cowboy Bebop with a single bounty taking place across the whole show. Sharp animation, ensemble team of rogues, action pieces set to music and a meld of near-future tech with a decaying, lived-in world. I'm digging it.

Lycoris Recoil: Friends are thieves of time

It's Lycoris Recoil, but it's 2 minutes per episode.

Don't expect any story, but they still cram in some of the action and banter that made the original series great.

I was a big fan of Adachi Shingo's character design work on shows like Working!, and he's shown that he also has great director chops with this show, so I'm really keen to see what he does next.

Shoushimin (Season 2)

I'm one of those weird people who enjoyed the ultra low-stakes mystery show Hyouka from the same author, so this show was right up my alley (and in my view an even better show). The character designs and animation are excellent and evoke the same feel as Kyoto Animation's work, with great music and performances. Osanai in particular comes across as the perfect understated blend of likeable and psychopathic.

Season 2 continues from the cliffhanger in season 1 and has run with the same mystery throughout so far, as opposed to the episodic mysteries in most of season 1. I'm fine with how it's going, although this has meant the show is even more slow paced than usual. I think this is the kind of show you can only enjoy if you like watching what the characters do instead of the story moving forward.

Vigilante: Boku no Hero Academia ILLEGALS

The spin-off / prequel to Boku no Hero Academia.

Despite the title, the light hearted tone is basically identical to Boku no Hero Academia and there's none of the "do the ends justify the means?" themes often seen in fiction around vigilantes or anti-heroes. It's not Frank Miller's Hero Academia (despite the one dude who was clearly inspired by Batman).

Good animation that's still being done by BONES (or apparently some subdivision thereof) and lots of cameos from the main series.

Manga

Houkago Himitsu Club

Dumb gag comedy about a girl and boy duo who look for "mysteries" to solve after class. Very cute with a dry sense of humour.

The art is lovely and the old school character designs / free-form panel flow kind of remind me of the old Tezuka comedy series.

I'm just going to continue my trend of selecting one from the random stuff I've watched recently. This time it'll be what I call "Underground Healer": https://myanimelist.net/anime/58359/Isshun_de_Chiryou_shiteita_noni_Yakutatazu_to_Tsuihou_sareta_Tensai_Chiyushi_Yami_Healer_toshite_Tanoshiku_Ikiru.

This show is far better than I was expecting. Just from the title and description I was expecting something pretty bad and animated like a slideshow. It is fantasy tropey, but as someone that watches fantasy trope anime that doesn't really bug me. The main character isn't whiny or annoying, which goes a long way in this genre. He underestimates himself due to lacking a frame of reference, but he also doesn't act like he's worthless. This specific kind of story often has the main character having major self-esteem issues and it's oddly refreshing to see one where even though he thinks he's nothing special that doesn't mean he has to give up self-respect. It is also animated way better than I was expecting. The fights actually look good, unlike a certain other show that was supposed to give my my sakuga fix.

On tropes though, it does get pretty direct. Girls fall over him basically immediately. There's also this thing where most individuals of the demihuman races look definitively non-human, except the girls that are all over him. For example, most of the lizard people are very lizard-y, but not the girl that falls for him that looks basically like a regular human aside from a few patches of scales. He doesn't really seem into any of them though. He kind of just wants to vibe and run his underground clinic in the slums without trouble.

My slow watch through of Taiyou no Kiba Dagram hit warp speed! I've watched through episode 61 so far.

I had a long flight and got to sit down and watch uninterrupted, which was great. On the return flight, I'm planning to finally finish this series and then put together my thoughts for a review/recap of the show, which will be fun as I've never written one like that.

I'd been posting about each episode/couple of episodes, and since I watched a good chunk of them and don't want to go back and review each episode, I'll post a broad overview and focus in on one plot element that really shifted the series.

Donan Cashim, Crinn's (main character's) father, has been struggling with an illness throughout the series and is finally given a prognosis that he only has 6 months left to live. This has caused him to be more impatient and push for a resolution to the guerilla/resistance problem he's been facing. Because of this need for a faster resolution on his part to try and shore up his legacy and allow Earth to continue its domination of Deloyer and access to its resources, it actually sets in motion the happenstances that led to the guerilla's rapidly gaining momentum.

Since the Earth Federation rules Deloyer as a colonial power, though granted statehood in the federation but firmly under earth's rule as an early plot point, the federation forces are a majority Deloyeran population which caused a split and a rebellion to occur right at the moment the guerillas were forced from the mine where they had been hiding. This caused them to be able to link up and assist these rebelling soldiers and gain access to multiple military bases worth of armaments and supplies. If they had not been forced out, I think that they may have eventually exploited this division amongst the army, but it would have been in a much slower and methodical way with less momentum.

There has also been a focus on politics and posturing that has led to the situation they are in now. It's slow burn and exciting for me to follow, they also manage to throw in a couple of minutes of mech fighting in most episodes. There has also been larger scale conflicts now that Dagram isn't the only mech in their force.

Overall, it's been great. I'm excited to see how this show ends. I'd thought about watching something shorter, but I'm probably going to restart watching Legend of the Galactic Heroes after this and make way slowly through that, since I can sit down and watch the first movie on my long flight.