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

I started watching City: The Animation!!! @chocobean, you were so right about this wholesome show. It's like a big hug!

Happy last week of the season!

Reflections on this season's shows:

CITY
The humour is so offbeat that it's sometimes questionable whether it's humour at all, but the animation and music are a delight even when the jokes don't land.

I loved the theatre parts in particular - they're precisely the sort of scene where an anime adaptation can really outshine the original manga and they just nail it.

Ruri no Houseki
Textbook execution of the "4 girls hobby show".

Great animation and visual design (there's even a specifically credited mineral designer), educational in an easy to understand way and a broad variety of content throughout the season.

Everything is so well done on a technical level that I can't quite put my finger on why I don't feel more strongly about it. It's a good show, but it feels like it's missing the warm heart of something like Do It Yourself!!

Gachiakuta
Possibly the slowest paced shounen fighting anime in history. The protagonist spends next to no time advancing the main plot or actually fighting, and by the end of this first cour, we've still barely been introduced to the good guys, let alone the antagonists.

Osomatsu-san S4
Disappointing season. A few decent episodes here and there, but nothing like seasons 1-2 where you genuinely didn't know if it was going to be heartbreaking drama, some weird high-concept episode with a completely different animation style, a parody of an 80s American movie or baseball in space when you tuned in - it really felt like it could be anything. In this season, the protagonists are mostly just schlumping around town over the course of one summer and it's a lot less interesting.

There's also an unfortunate tendency for jokes to go on for much longer than they should and then repeat with only minor variations, which is just torturous to watch.

New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt
It feels like there's about a 3 in 4 chance of any given episode being bad, but occasionally it's genuinely good and I'm suddenly reminded that this show is made by people with actual talent who are just pretending to be clowns.

I loved

Mattaku Saikin no Tantei to Kitara
All of the main characters are total one-note jokes which does get old and makes the comedy a bit predictable after a while, but it's still a pretty entertaining show due to some absurd premises, funny one-shot characters and great comic performances.

Also watched Super Crooks, the Netflix-backed BONES adaptation of the Mark Millar / Leinil Francis Yu comic book about supervillains pulling heists.

It's pretty much what you'd expect. Millar brings his usual over the top violence and BONES the usual snappy superhero animation. None of it is particularly novel and some of the story developments don't make sense if you really think about them, but it's short and fine to watch just for the action.

Other minor gripes:

• Instead of one big heist, the story is broken up into a bunch of small arcs (presumably to match the original comics), which leaves it feeling a bit disjointed when the arcs only have tenuous connections or introduce elements which feels like they'll be developed later but never are - e.g.

• The power levels of characters fluctuate all over the place as the plot demands. The same guys who can pull off feats that affect a whole city block will occasionally just get handled by random goons or a dude without super powers.

• As much as I like Tsuda Kenjirou, his trademark deep, dour voice is not a good fit for the whimsical protagonist at all.

The obvious comparison is to the Netflix / WIT Studio conman heist anime The Great Pretender, which had its own share of issues but which I ultimately liked better.