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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!
I started Cowboy Bebop! It’s been on my list for a long time. I’m only a few episodes in, but I love the art style and I’m absolutely floored by how good the music is. I’m also excited that it’s a pretty short anime, so it won’t take me very long to get through it.
If you want more after that: Samurai Champloo is the same creator, and it also leans hard into a unique art style and emphasis on music. It's hip hop samurai on a road trip instead of jazzy space cowboys.
Oh! I had no idea that was the same creator. Thanks for the recommendation!
Turns out Cyberpunk Edgerunners was insanely popular for a reason. The universe was already deeply fleshed out, and the writers at CD Projekt Red and Trigger did an incredible job telling one of infinitely many possible stories taking place in Night City.
It's virtually impossible to talk about the show without spoiling it, so collapsing the rest of the comment.
Cyberpunk Edgerunners spoilers
A cursory glance at other reviews for the show tells me that many people get a sense of hopelessness and despair from it. That the main takeaway is that David tried to rise above his station to escape the cycle of violence that took his mother's life, and the cruel, uncaring Night City ensured that he would fail. I disagree wholeheartedly.
To put it bluntly, David didn't try to rise above his station. He settled into life as a edgerunner, even after seeing firsthand how that life ends. You know who did escape the cycle of violence in Night City? Lucy. Hard to think of a better symbol for "rising above your station" than going to the literal moon.
Of course her ending isn't all that happy either. In the most naive sense, she achieved her dream of going to the moon. But to me, it seems obvious that that was never really her ultimate goal. The moon is just a stand-in for "not Night City," her dream to escape it because she had nothing to live for there. That is, until she met David.
Cyberpunk Edgerunners is a tragedy, but it no more captures the pointlessness of life than the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice captures the meaninglessness of love.
There is surely more to write about this show, but I leave that to writers better than I. Just wanted to give my two cents regarding the show's nihilistic themes.
I'm giving it a
9/1010/10. It's a really solid show.Out of curiosity, what would have needed to happen to make it a 10/10?
That's a good question. I honestly didn't really objectively think about it, 9 was just my gut feeling at the time. Ever since I saw Ghost in the Shell, I've been picky about what shows share a 10/10 rating with it. After giving it more thought, Edgerunners stands up to GitS. It's not as perfect, but between the animation, the story, the music, I don't really know what I was thinking giving it a 9. Thanks for making me think more about this, gonna update my score.
My one review per week continues with https://myanimelist.net/anime/59160/Wind_Breaker_Season_2.
On the surface the show seems to mostly be about a bunch of teenage boys punching each other, but it has a surprising amount of depth. It also discusses some social issues rarely brought up in anime, and double rarely in shows centered around fighting.
The premise is relatively straightforward. The main character is an outcast shipped off to an all boy delinquent school. The main character is very not used to people caring about him at all, and definitely isn't used to people liking him or wanting him around. But, in this town the students of this school, now including him, are praised almost as heroes. The reason this delinquent school is liked though is that the justice system is doing effectively nothing about rampant gang activity in the area so the students of this school took it upon themselves to direct their fighting toward protecting the town. This largely seems to have come from that the strongest, an therefore coolest and most respected, guy in the school is the kind of "lame" that hosts literal garden parties where he invites people to come see his plants while he hands out homemade soup and just wants people to be happy and support each other through a strong sense of community.
Under all the fighting the show is really about finding a place to belong. Somewhere that people don't judge you for who you are and want you to be yourself in spite of your flaws or how wider society would judge you. Probably the most on-the-nose application of this is the most recent episode is about the one trans person at the school. I'm not going to spoil what actually happens, but I'll say I was very surprised by how well that storyline is done from my outside perspective. I don't know how accurately it represents real experiences, but to anyone that is interested in that you can probably watch the episode (S2E6) in more-or-less isolation without needing additional context. I'd also be quite interested in hearing how someone that has similar experiences feels about that episode.
My slow watch through of Taiyou no Kiba Dagram has come to an end!
This show took me 14 months to watch according to My Anime List and it probably would have been a lot longer if I hadn't had two long flights where I watched the last 30 episodes.
I've enjoyed this show immensely, and plan to write up my thoughts on it in a longer post, while also linking to some excellent reviews of the series.
This show isn't without flaws, and it leans in at times to the dry political space opera in the later half of the show to the point that the mech actions appears to be thrown in as a obligatory part of each episode. I loved it, and often times found the political machinations more interesting than the action sequences. For a good portion of the show it felt more akin to Legend of the Galactic Heroes than Gundam (which is my only real robot comparison and I've admittedly only seen random episodes from different series with friends).
More of my thoughts in that later review hopefully soon!
I had actually planned to restart Legend of the Galactic Heroes after this, watching the appropriate movies first, but found the copies I had downloaded to my phone were corrupted during my flight.
Instead my slow watch through of Initial D First Stage has begun!
I've watched through episode 1 so far. I had this episode on my phone and felt like a change of pace would be appreciated. I've read through the first 80 chapters so I'm guessing that I'll have covered most of this season.
I've also been reading Ao Ashi, which is a high school football manga.
I'm not a huge football fan, but I remember being recommended this awhile ago and had some time on my flight and read a few chapters. They're quick reads so I was able to get through 150 chapters rather easily after getting home and having some time.
I enjoyed this series of writeups and find the old Sunrise mecha shows fascinating. The 4-cour runtime that most of them were pretty much guaranteed let them try all sorts of ambitious ideas and long plotlines which most shows today simply wouldn't have the room to do.
Other shows in the same vein I have enjoyed:
Kidou Senshi Gundam (obviously the most well known and influential of the lot)
Space Runaway Ideon (I confess I only watched this after seeing it in Shirobako, but it's an easy watch as it's action packed)
Armored Trooper VOTOMS / Armor Hunter Mellowlink (Even more grounded and 'real robot' than Gundam)
Aura Battler Dunbine (Really unusual fantasy / robot show with characters being sent to another world. Suffers a bit from Tomino going 'black Tomino' towards the end)
I'm glad my write-ups were enjoyable! This was my first time doing something like this and I enjoyed it. I think it would be fun doing more of an in-depth write-up on another series for each episode, but I'll see how I feel about it down the road when I start a series that I want to dive that deeply in to.
Thanks for sharing those other series. I had all of them but Space Runaway Ideon on my list to get to eventually. At the rate I watch anime these days, I've got enough anime on my to watch list to last me the next 30–40 years.
If I have the mecha itch after finishing Initial D I may dive back in to Armored Trooper VOTOMS, I loved the feel of Dagram and from what I've seen of VOTOMS (and someone mentioning it in a review of Dagram I watched) the smaller mechs would really fit the realistic "these are walking tanks" type feel that Dagram was leaning towards.
I also loved the ability they have to explore things in a longer run time. I don't watch much seasonal anime these days, but when I did it always felt like they would have to squish so much plot to fit things into a 13-26 episode framework.
I haven't started on my full review of Dagram yet, but I think I'll get a note going on my phone soon and start getting my rough ideas in order soon.
I ended up binge reading Tsutomu Nihei's Knights of Sidonia. I'm a huge fan of his earlier work BLAME! and have been keeping up with his new series Tower Dungeon, and I found it kinda odd that I hadn't already read what is his most popular work.
The general premise is that Earth was destroyed by an alien threat called the Gauna and the cast of the series reside on a colony ship called Sidonia whose mission is to escape the Gauna and find a new home for humanity. The plot takes place several thousand years after the Sidonia's initial departure, as the ship reencounters a Gauna fleet that is in between them and the solar system they were planning to colonize.
I think it has a very cool set up. In the setting, humanity is using a mix of pseudo naval tactics and mechs while the Gauna are a sort of hivemind flesh mass, and the series has a fun call and response where both sides advance their technology and tactics based off of the previous skirmishes that escalates as the Sidonia and the Gauna home ship approach contact with each other.
I think it is both a good series, but also a good companion piece to Nihei's works prior to it. I think BLAME! is super sick, but I think the most common responses to it online are that the character's look weird, and that people have no clue what the hell is going on in the plot. Knights of Sidonia really feels like an attempt to tackle those critiques by both having characters and having character. In BLAME! the protagonist Killy is essentially a Terminator. He is a (mostly) solitary figure who stumbles though massive action set pieces, shooting almost anything that moves. This blog post may have more words in it than what Killy speaks in the entirety of BLAME!'s run. I think Sidonia's protagonist Tanikaze is intentionally an antithesis to Killy, to maybe mixed results. Tanikaze is on par with Killy as someone who always comes out on top in the harsh meat grinder sci-fi battles of their respective settings, but while Killy is taciturn and 100% serious all the time, Tanikaze is goofy and maybe even dumb. Tanikaze gets into dumb tropey haram protagonist shenanigans, but I think those stock tropes get grounded by the setting still taking itself seriously. Tanikaze feels invincible most of the time, but the overall cast is demonstrated to not be. To me the slice of life grab ass stuff heightens the horror aspects that the military engagements take on, as a new fresh hell get introduced every fight, and humanity's odd of actually winning look really grim for the entirety of the series. The mortality of the side characters is really felt imo, and I think it makes Tanikaze a little more interesting because he feels more invested in the stakes than Killy ever did. I'll also say that I think the romance "winning" girl fairly cute. Not anything ground breaking, but overall I approve.
I also think the art really has a glow up as the series goes on. I think the first couple of volumes have a bunch of characters that look kinda similar, and the space fights look somewhat confusing. I think Nihei just gets a grasp of his process. He mentions that when he initially started making concept art for the series he tried rendering 3D models for all of the mechs, but he said that it was too hard for him, so instead he bought a bunch of models and kit bashed them together. So I think he just ironed out some problems with the new things that he had never tried before art wise, and it jumps from just looking okay to looking really cool.
This series had an anime which I have not watched. I know it uses 3D animation for the mechs, I don't know if it is bad in motion or not. I feel like it can't be that bad because I remember the series maintaining a level of popularity as it came out, but who knows.
It did have an anime and the entire thing was 3D. That being said it was probably one of the best attempts at the style I had seen at the time. It ends somewhat abruptly.
Just adding my recommendation for Tower Dungeon.
I bounced off BLAME completely for the reasons mentioned above, but I enjoyed Knights of Sidonia and I like Tower Dungeon even more.
The high level synopsis is that a princess has been kidnapped by a necromancer and held captive in a mysterious floating tower that descended from the sky, and the royal guard, the army, and a whole bunch of adventurers are now trying to climb the tower and get her back. It's the most generic fantasy setup you can imagine and I was honestly kind of shocked at first that Nihei would write something like this, but the fantasy elements and character interactions have his weird off-beat stamp all over them and the dungeon crawling is much more grounded than the typical 'straight out of a JRPG' fare, with the main characters having to consider rations and treatment of wounds, backtracking to establish shortcuts and having to deal with nobles, looters and other adventurers who often have competing agendas. The vibe is kind of like that of a tabletop RPG with multiple perspectives and plot threads.
Yeah, both Knights of Sidonia and Tower Dungeon feel like they got made because Nihei's editor pleaded with him to make something mainstream. It just works out because his own personal interests bring an extreme X factor into the equation that really spices up simple premises.