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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 just started watching Sentenced to be a Hero. It’s really not that special from what I’ve seen so far in terms of story but the animation and art direction is glorious.
My husband asked me why I would watch it and not Jujutsu Kaisen. Frankly, something like 90% of it boils down to the simple fact that the main character is an adult.
Huh, that actually sounds quite interesting. I only managed a quick look at the trailer, but the art style is definitely my thing.
Since Thursdays are our anime night, I’m going to try pitching it this evening.
It really does feel like a shonen for older people. Before anyone asks, I specifically don't mean seinen either. It's your shonen battle anime without the teenage angst.
It has been pretty decent throughout and it has some interesting side characters too. Each with their own defined personality and flaws.
I read an interesting article the other day where a Kadokawa light novel editor-in-chief said that their main readership within Japan was in their 50s-60s, although he believed the overseas audience was younger.
This came as a bit of a shock to me as a lot of light novel content is very shounen coded with mostly young characters (putting aside the recent 'middle aged guy protagonist' boom). I wonder how much the character age is a factor in terms of sales.
Huh, I think yall have sold me on this. I'm gonna give it a try this weekend. The show's description on CR isn't that appealing, but adult protagonists are more interesting to me. I guess that comes with age and consuming a lot of stories. A lot of which have teenage MCs
Been reading Asano Inio's current serial, MUJINA INTO THE DEEP.
In a broad sense, it's a story about a dystopian near-future Japan in which the aging population has gotten out of control and everyone over 85 is stripped of their human rights and moved to a containment area to die off. This opens the door to a whole class of people (Mujinas, literally 'badgers') who have for one reason or another renounced their 'human rights card' and become objects. Crimes against Mujinas are not judiciable, and by the same token, neither are crimes committed by them, leading to many of them becoming assassins, mercenaries and so on, but at the same time, the freedom afforded to them has given rise to an admiration for their 'rooftop culture' (named after the rooftops where Mujinas hang out to avoid being tracked by the surveillance which is now everywhere) which has spread among the younger population.
In practice, it's a bit of a weird mix between full blown action katana fights on rooftops and human drama / society commentary. The latter is the more compelling element, with a focus on the dregs of this awful society and the humans that exploit them (a bit reminiscent of Yamikin Ushijima-kun at times), including a plotline about the political origins of the Mujina that is clearly inspired by modern day news stories like the Epstein files.
If you can stomach the abundant sex, violence and just overall bleakness of the story, there's some compelling writing here. I really liked in particular the juxtaposition of the Mujinas and the 'human' characters (who frequently lead just as if not more miserable lives) and the contemplation of whether it's better to live as a cog within a society that provides for its participants but also demands that they continuously consume and sustain the system or essentially as an animal outside it.
Wow, you are not kidding about the sex. I turned the page of the first chapter maybe three times before suddenly BJ.
My friend has convinced me to catch up with him on Hajime no Ippo.
I previously read it but dropped all manga in college so I could focus on graduating. Since it's been so long I'm starting from the beginning. Going to be a long time to get caught up with over 1500 chapters.
Still reading Tower of God before bed. I think I'm about halfway caught up. So still a lot to go through. It's at the point where everyone is super powerful. Finally met the final boss or the big bad as it were. Crazy that power-wise Bam is still far off. And Bam has gotten crazy powerful. I've finally starting to learn what his real power is, so I can see how he'll get stronger. There seems to be plenty of people between Bam and Jahad. Feels like I'm just starting to see the upper scale of power in this series