11
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!
Probably motivated by this guy's restoration series, I started watching Initial D, I have to say, the premise is very simple, and it's basically a sports anime with the twist of being about drifting, but I'm hooked up, I love how nerdy the characters are about the technical parts of the cars, I'm learning by googling anything they mention, and clearly people passionate about cars and drifting made a huge effort on the writing to keep it interesting.
The protagonist is a bit basic, some of the other cast has much more interesting personalities, and the music gets you pupped up.
In response to the announcement of the anime, I went and got caught up with Hiromu Arakawa's Yomi no Tsugai, or what will probably become the more popular name Daemon's of the Shadow Realm.
It is a fantasy action series about a separated pair of twins both blessed and cursed with magical powers. They lived in a secluded village that was blocked from the world by a magical barrier, so while they have to navigate a conspiracy to control them and their powers, they also have to navigate being thrust into a world with modern technology. It's a pretty good series, that unfortunately has to fight with the fact that it is made by the person who made Full Metal Alchemist. To put is bluntly, I think it has a less interesting setting and starts off slower than FMA. I do not think that is an actual knock on its quality, and is more of a reflection on the fact that FMA is both really good and something I have an extreme amount of nostalgia for. Arakawa's other work Silver Spoon completely dodged these comparisons from me because it was a different genre, and I was able to enjoy it for what it was. I imagine much of Daemon's run will be filled with discourse and comparison.
I have no clue how long it will actually run, but Deamon's feels like it is maybe a third of the way through it's story. Enough of the overarching plot has been fleshed out for the story to have come into its own, even if it felt slower than I would have liked. I think Arakawa's humor remains on point too. This may be exacerbated by my recent reading of Hunter X Hunter, but I was really struck by the simplicity of Arakawa's work. She is a master of of K.I.S.S. (Keep it simple stupid). She draws dynamic action scenes whilst using the least panels possible. It makes for very easy reading, and I think it is a really underrated skill for an artist to have. I'm very interested in seeing how the rest of the story unfolds.
I've been re-watching the Record of Lodoss War OVA.
Some early take-aways:
New anime season, new animes.
From previous I have:
As a new season or something like this:
Dan Da Dan
Dr. Stone
Grand Blue
Seishun Buta Yarō wa Santa Claus no Yume o Minai;
Just in case, movies between this and the previous season are must have to watch, unlike to many other franchises, itʼs nor compilation, nor fillers.
Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi o Suru
Yofukashi no Yuta
Now about new ones, where I liked the first episodes, and where a star emoji — itʼs kinda a top of this season for me.
Bad Girl
City the Animation ⭐️
While I marked itʼs as a top for me, I cannʼt recommend it to anyone, because this anime has a pretty specific stilistic & humor; even wilder than Nichijō whichʼs from the same author.
Clevatess
Dekin no Mogura
Food Court de, Mata Ashita
Only 6 episodes.
Hikaru ga Shinda Natsu ⭐️
Kaoru Hana wa Rin to Saku
Mattaku Saikin no Tantei to Kitara
Ruri no Houseki ⭐️
Silent Witch ⭐️
Takopii no Genzai ⭐️
Only 6 episodes. Again, I cannʼt recommend it to anyone, because, in this case, topics and how itʼs showed are pretty sensitive.
Turkey!
Original anime. Tbf, I cannʼt say that I liked in general, but for now itʼs interesting for me.
Watanare ⭐️
I loved Anne Shirley. But I had to stop after about 10 episodes because of something that is going to happen that I really don’t want to. 😭
Ah, well, I have addition motivation like to watch a whole story, even if Iʼd not like it (while for now itʼs fine for me) because I didnʼt nor read source, nor watch any addaptation.
I picked up Mattaku Saikin no Tantei to Kitara. It's a gag comedy about an aging private detective who takes on a schoolgirl assistant.
This isn't the sort of title I'd normally check out, but I have a soft spot for silly slapstick / gag comedies in the vein of Gintama / Saiki Kusuo no Sainan / Sket Dance and this show has a similar sense of humour, although the writing doesn't feel quite as sharp.
The animation is clean, smooth and honestly significantly better than it actually needs to be for a comedy like this. The running gag with characters suddenly turning into super detailed illustrations is also pretty funny.
Although this is technically a detective show, there's very little in the way of mystery solving, so don't go in expecting to see whodunnits every week.
Each episode is divided into 2~3 short stories and there's very little overarching plot to pay attention to, so it's a great show to just switch off your brain and chill out to.
I rewatched Violet Evergarden this week, after having watched only at lunch.
Oh wow, what an amazing anime.
If you've seen the movie, how do you feel about the new ending it adds to the series?
Spoilers for both the TV series and the movie
I thought the ending for the TV series was perfect - Violet finally reaches the maturity needed to understand how she feels about the Major, and at the same time, she's emotionally ready to move on in a world without him, as she makes clear in her farewell letter. It's a really powerful scene that represents the culmination of all of the themes in the show - accepting that loss is traumatic (that it 'burns' us even if we don't realise it), but it's within our power to acknowledge that pain and work through it.In contrast, it felt to me like the movie did a complete 180 and undoes all of that character development for Violet as an independent woman who already learned how to chart her own path in life / deal with loss.
I understand why you would feel that and I think it’s a perfectly valid opinion. But at the same time the movie is incredibly beautiful; using the extremely detailed characters they had established in the show in combination with excellent direction made it feel like one of the most impactful and “real” romantic dramas that I had ever experienced, and gave Violet the storybook ending I felt she deserved to have.
Beyond that it is my understanding that the light novels that the story is adapted from has similar things happening, so if anything the sense of closure from the end of the series isn’t quite “canon”.
I'm not sure who exactly the target audience for Sora No Manimani was, aside from Me Specifically. It's basically propaganda for your local high school's astronomy club.
I don't usually pay a lot of attention to the sky in TV shows, but they put a lot of effort into making sure the sky is the sky, and I had some fun pulling up Stellarium to compare it. I also really liked how realistically the telescopes were depicted. Planets look wavy and blurry, but the fact that you can see see details at all is what makes telescopes so cool.
The story is cute. Not a whole lot can happen in a 12 episode series that covers like a quarter of the manga. It is on my reading list now though. I'm giving it a 7/10. It's cute, I liked it, but in a year I'm probably not gonna remember it
I started using an app blocker to keep me off reddit and YouTube in the morning, and it's gotten me to read a lot more manga as of late, which is nice!
I started reading The Apothecary Diaries and could not put it down up to the current chapter. I didn't know what to expect coming into it, but I loved it. The main character, Maomao, is the highlight. She's strong, independent, unique, subversive and I really enjoy seeing how she navigates the setting she's in. I also really like how the story treats its setting in general. It doesn't shy away from showing the problems in Li's society but still presents everything from a measured in-world perspective that's not all dark. I did take issue with the arc about Maomao's dad, which changes how he's presented so fast and without the plot touching on it that I was genuinely wondering if I'd missed something before the flashback chapters, but overall, it was all pretty cool. Eagerly awaiting the next chapters.
I also, just this morning, read Galaxias up to its latest chapter. I had already started it a while ago but stopped about a third in or so. It's interesting! Good worldbuilding, the two leads have some fun chemistry, the art is great and the fights are cool, but I feel like it's missing something at the moment ; it's somewhat touched on in the latest arc, but the female lead is really not doing much right now, considering she doesn't fight at all. Hopefully the current arc changes that.
Finally, I've also been reading Gunnm/Battle Angel Alita. I had watched the movie a long time ago and liked it ; turns out I love the original! I can tell the influence it's had on a lot of what came after (it occurred to me that, funnily, the movie Elysium closely copies Gunnm's setting but worse). It's probably one of the oldest manga I've read and seeing the stylistic differences in storywriting with the more recent manga I usually read has been interesting. Alita herself is a very atypical character.