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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!
Ive been reading You Are a Four Leaf Clover.
Its about two childhood friends where the girl moves away when they are in grade school. Afterwards the guy's live goes really downhill until he is on the verge of committing suicide, but then the girl moves back into town all of a sudden and reuinites with him.
Ive enjoyed it a lot. The manga has just finished its second major arc. There is a supernatural element to the story and some mystery and intrigue beyond what I described.
I like both the MCs in this story. Oftentimes I will see anime where the male main character is some "everyman" type character with no particular interesting traits, but this story does actually provide a good reason for why the female main character is so devoted to him. And the female main character is a good protagonist. All her actions seem smart and well reasoned, she doesnt make dumb mistakes just for the sake of the plot so when things occasionally do go wrong it doesnt feel cheap.
I just started watching Irresponsible Captain Tyler. The humor is pretty dated but the animation is divine and I really love the 80s character designs. Even if I have no idea what is going on with Tylor’s tan jacket. The music is pretty great too. I’d rate it as 90% of a Macross 7.
I also caught up to the latest episodes of Kowloon Generic Romance. I’m just really vibing with it even with all the ways it falters; the middle episodes seem to meander a bit. I guess that 80s style character design is also giving this show some points, too, and it also has a fantastic soundtrack.
Still working my way through the One Piece manga to catch up to the anime so I can start watching it. Currently working my way through the Whole Cake Island arc and its been a pretty great one so far! I'm thinking so far its up there with one of my favorite ones. I'm quite glad I decided to finally pick it up and start it. It seemed daunting at first, but One Piece was my first manga I decided to try and I feel like I made a good choice! I cant seem to put it down sometimes. 😆
Other than that, I watched all of Sousou no Frieren and I'm picking up where it left off in the manga.
What are your thoughts on the increasing complexity of each arc in One Piece as the story develops?
One comment I've often seen (and have some sympathy for) is that the later arcs tend to be both:
more complex visually, with lots of panels each stuffed to the borders with details - the two page spread split into a bunch of tiny panels in particular comes up a lot; and
more complex storywise, usually with casts of dozens of characters (each with their own personalities, loyalties, motivations, abilities, backstories, connections to other characters and so on) and multiple plotlines being run at the same time (sometimes enclosing their own long flashbacks),
resulting in storytelling that can sometimes be hard to follow / moves at a very slow pace.
I've been a longtime reader of the manga and am genuinely enthused to see the overarching story begin to fold towards a conclusion and touch on the One Piece itself, although I suspect there's no way the fans haven't already deduced the answers after literal decades of speculation.
Oh, those are some neat questions. Mind you this is coming from someone completely new to manga!
So yeah, when it started out I noticed Oda didn't do a lot of that, specifically in regards to the art, or the smaller panels mixed in with the full page spread. To be honest, I kind of enjoyed it when I started seeing it, and its not something I really expected but when I do see things like that it does make me pause and take it all in more. I like when they introduce a new character and you can take in the nicely detailed depiction of them, or when a big scene is happening and its a large spread I get a bit excited to take a close look at everything.
In regards to your second point, I did feel that quite a bit in Dressrosa. While I appreciated the overall story of it now, and Doflamingo as a villain, there was A LOT to take in. I have to admit, that one was a little bit of a slog. I mean, we even had a strange (though a little bit gut wrenching) flash back from someone I never even expected in that arc with Senor Pink.
So far in Whole Cake island I'm not really feeling that. I'm enjoying the pacing quite a bit. I'm also enjoying to finally dig in to Sanji's backstory, and really start to feel the weight and menace of the Yonkos.
I finally got around to Lazarus. I know others have written about it, but I mostly skipped those comments because I was planning to watch it eventually and wanted to avoid spoilers. I'm going to try write this without spoilers.
I'm I think around 6 episodes in and am a bit underwhelmed. I think it looks pretty good most of the time. Good animation (the 2D, much of the 3D looks kind of bad) and fun choreography. It's real problem in my opinion is its narrative structure. Not necessarily the narrative itself, but the way it's presented.
It seems to be somewhat blending a longer arc in with something that resembles the "monster of the week" format. This isn't inherently a problem. Other shows get away with it. The problem is that it never feels like it's going anywhere in Lazarus. It lacks the shonen "well at least they're getting stronger" or the mystery "that's another piece of the puzzle". It is missing a sense of progress.
To build a comparison, imagine you built a 10 episode season of Scooby Do where the main arc is about one big bad and in their search they find a bunch of little guys along the way where each are each contained to their episode. Seems mostly fine, right? But what if every single time was a false lead/dead end and so every episode kind of ended on it being a waste of time with them being right back where they started? That's how I feel about Lazarus right now.
I think this is a totally valid viewpoint, particularly for the earlier episodes where they're frequently following entirely false leads. What I would say is that:
This season is structured around finding Skinner as the end objective, so the actual progress they can make towards that each week can really only be 1/13th of the way on average, assuming it's 13 episodes long. It has to be a bit of a wild goose chase in some episodes, particularly if there are others where they make substantial progress.
A lot of the episodes focus instead on developing the characters or the setting / Skinner's motives, both of which I think strengthen the show and feel more interesting than the actual question of where Skinner is hiding. This is the actual payoff for those episodes (the unmasking of the villain each week, if you want to go with the Scooby Doo analogy).
Maybe it is less of an issue in the later episodes, but at least in the early ones it is kind of tiring for everything to go nowhere. At the point I'm at, right after the fake conference, there's been effectively 0 progress. Even learning more about him and why he did this would be good, but so far the best information I have on why is from a random exposition dump about the UN ignoring his climate warnings that didn't require any work to uncover. There's also that he had a hidden camera in his grandma's home, but they didn't even try to turn tracking that signal into a lead because they're too busy with unrelated hackers.
Yeah, the search itself / state of the world as it heads towards the end feels like one of the weakest parts of the show. Almost everyone is about to die and there are only five people out there looking for Skinner? Everyone's still largely working and going about their daily life without partying / breaking the law / deploying every resource available in the world to find him? If it's intended as commentary about people being too absorbed in their daily routines, it's a bit too on the nose for me.
Bit weird to reply to myself, but I've now finished Lazarus. I personally found the ending so deeply unsatisfying that it poisoned the whole thing, knocking a mid show to a bad one. Too much contrived convenience. Ending without much of a real message, actually feeling like it undercut the message it was originally going for.
I kind of regret the time spent watching it.
The spring season is coming to an end. I've been watching 10 seasonals but I'll only mention the ones I think are actually worth mentioning.
The Apothecary Diaries S2 is also almost done but I think I'll hold off with my comment until it actually ends. All I can say right now is that I don't think this season maintains the quality we know from the first season. It's still a good watch, though.
Although I thought the whole series was great, the recent episode 11 in particular was a standout for me and one of the best episodes of anything I've seen recently. The use of visual storytelling over dialogue and callbacks to all of the earlier episodes were fantastic and just emblematic of the variety in this show week to week.
I also loved this show, but I felt the mysteries (which are relatively low stakes even in this season) were secondary to just watching the weird platonic relationship between Osanai and Kobato. I really liked how both arcs this season go to the core of why Kobato decided to become 'shoshimin' and how the differences between him and Osanai divide them but also make them kind of co-dependent. It feels like a real step up from the episodic season 1 (although that was fun too!)
Also completely agree on the direction and the OP (which looks like it came right out of a vintage SHAFT show) and ED being excellent. I particularly loved how they would often just cut off the end of each episode on a dry note or remark. All of it just fits the tone of the show so well.
I'm enjoying Apocalypse Hotel too, but I have to say that as much as I enjoy it I'm not loving it quite as much as you are. To be honest even though there's a lot of things I really like about it (the character designs especially, as well as the type of humour), I honestly kind of feel it's a bit forgettable.
I will admit that the wedding/funeral really got to me though. That, and the "I felt alive" line after the vacation.
I just watched the ending to Kowloon Generic Romance. It was worth every minute I spent watching and then some. I like that the conceit of the show is left fairly unexplained and at times seemingly contradictory because it does a fantastic job of making the viewer think about the important things; the themes and messages in the story.
I've brought it up a couple of times but I've only really talked about the art and music. But it's a show that's all about the ideas it wants to express. The major themes are existentialism ("becoming your authentic self"), memory, personal relationships, and regret, and I love that the story conceit allows them to explore those themes from different perspectives.
The only thing I really didn't like was that there was a certain character who the story was teasing might not survive the end of the show; the show resolves that question, but I think it would have been better not being said and left to personal interpretation. It was a world wrapped in metaphor and it didn't need to be collapsed into reality, and it actually contradicted one of the character's final resolutions in a way.
I also binged My Instant Death Ability is So Overpowered. It's trash anime in the best way possible. It's full of characters you cannot possibly identify with, a main character who has practically zero challenges to overcome, and practically hundreds of named characters (complete with surprisingly well thought-out visual designs) that just drop dead and don't matter to the greater plot whatsoever. There's a fricking gundam in the third episode or so (it lives, but we never see it again), and the main character doesn't have to be granted his cheat abilities because he's just always been like this.
It should have been absolutely terrible. And it kind of is, but in a way that is so insane that it actually becomes amazing in it's own very special way. It's trying to be subversive so hard, but it somehow isn't because isekai anime are just that ridiculous to begin with. I do love that the "real world" that the main characters come from isn't entirely like ours in that by the end we find out that there are at least three organizations dedicated to watching over main character because he just plain could have created the apocalypse at any given time. It's also supposed to be a comedy but it kind of just isn't really funny? The people instantly dying (literally as a reflex from the main character at times) seems like it's supposed to be a joke, but it isn't ever really funny... except you see it so much that by the end it actually loops around to being funny again. Somehow just about everything in this show does that. There's a character who shows up in many episodes who is just so incredibly annoying, but by the end he's strangely endearing. I give this show a solid |-7|/10.
I'm a fan of the manga (which is still running), so I didn't check out the anime. Glad to hear it turned out well!
As you said, the major theme that really leapt out at me throughout the series was definitely the one about identity. Aside from the primary Kujirai A/B plot, a lot of other characters also seem to have a real struggle with who they are on the inside vs who they're perceived to be by others, like
spoilers
Xiaohei's other identity / Miyuki's relationship with his father / Yaomay's pastI also enjoyed Mayuzuki Jun's earlier series Koi wa ameagari no you ni (which has its own anime adaptation, but I haven't seen it and can't vouch for it), but Kowloon Generic Romance is such a totally different vibe and definitely my favourite of the two.
Instant death is so absurd in so many fun dumb ways. Just when you think someone might have found a workaround, like an indirect attack so he has no idea who or where you are, it just unleashes more nonsense, like that he can just detect hostility toward him and just kill anyone with hostile intent instantly from anywhere.
Actually the most amazing thing is that the insane things that happen are so chaotic that you forget and forgive the more insane things that happen. Like how the main character can kill inanimate objects, or how he later survives a fall by murdering his inertia. And of course there’s still the implication that he can still become even more powerful!
Mirai Nikki was fun. A battle royale between a dozen people who can tell the future in different ways.
No spoilers, compressing text
It's on the same shelf in my brain as Elfen Lied. Like Elfen Lied, it suffers from frequent nudity, usually involving underage characters. Unlike Elfen Lied, I actually thought this show was worth watching despite that.
Yuno Gasai is an interesting character. I like her development. It's not really character development; she doesn't really change, so much as the audience's perception of her does. She goes from weird stalker to psychopath to advanced stalker.
Yuuki's character development is interesting, if a little undercooked. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, but he managed to throw away any sense of morality just for the idea of absolute power. I would have liked to see a better exploration of his coming to terms with his loss of morality.
I prefer the ending without the OVA. It answers too many questions that were more interesting unanswered.
I'm giving it a 6 out of 10. Edit out the nudity and it would get an 8.
I started reading Planetes, I like how it tries to be grounded to reality and the positive message about science and space, overall the chapters are good but the pacing is very irregular, with huge jumps and changes that are not well explained.