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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!
Been rewatching Dragon Ball from the beginning, just got to the Saiyan saga (watching Kai for the Z portion). I have to say, it's still such a fun watch. Something about the animation, even when it's sometimes simple or reused, is super compelling. This is my first time watching it in Japanese too, which is interesting.
Compared to modern anime, I feel like the simplicity in animation helps a lot. The clarity is a lot higher; half the time in high-budget modern scenes, I can hardly tell what the action is even supposed to be.
Been reading Junket Bank, a thriller about sharply-dressed men who gamble against each other in death games.
The premise is that the protagonist works for a bank which secretly operates an underground casino funded by the decadent 1%. These people show up to watch gamblers play against each other in increasingly deadly games as their winnings (essentially their 'power level') increase, while their agents (the employees of the bank who set up the matches) are also playing against fellow employees by staking their 'career time' on each match. Those who lose all of their money (or career time, in the case of employees) become seized as property of the bank.
Despite the dark premise, there's really no social commentary angle to it. It's purely dudes death gaming against each other, which I can hang with.
The series has been running for about 5 years now and there's an anime coming up for it later in October this year for anyone who'd prefer to watch that.
No real spoilers, just compressing text
Carole and Tuesday
Carole and Tuesday was fun. I like the music a lot. I like that the songs were mostly in English, which made watching the dub a lot easier. Plus it's Bones so you know it's pretty. That's most of my notes about the show. It clearly wanted to say something about politics, but it really didn't. A superficial "conservative political positions are generally harmful to minorities." It had even less to say about the role of AI in creative work. Which I won't hold against it considering it came out in 2019; at that point even I was still optimistic about AI. Were it released today, I expect it would have a much harsher view on AI.
8/10, I only wish it took stronger stances on these subjects
Rant ahead. I liked one of these shows better than the other, and I'm gonna write about it
Kino's Journey (2003 and 2017)
Kino's Journey was really good. It's slow, it's quiet, it has a lot to say about the world and uses just the right amount of words to say it. It's almost as good as Mushishi in these regards.
The 2017 series was ostensibly higher quality, but I think 2003 just did everything better. Two things stick out in my mind:
Colosseum episodes, 2003 vs 2017
The colosseum is better in 2003. Seeing Kino actually have to fight offers tension. There's no doubt that she'll win, but will she manage to avoid killing her opponents? Also, giving the story time two episodes makes it easier to follow. I'm not sure I would have connected the dots re: who the swordsman is and why he's determined to win the tournament if I'd only watched 2017. Also, not seeing the lower classes in the country makes Kino's decision to end the tournaments feel a bit less meaningful.
2003's colosseum episodes highlight my favorite aspect of Kino's characterization: the contrast between her outward aloofness and the attachment she feels towards the places she visits and the people she meets. She doesn't outwardly react when a person gets killed in front of her, but she clearly makes a decision regarding how to end the tournaments at that point.
Tl;dr Using two episodes offers 2003 an opportunity to tell a better story
Spoilers for a certain episode late in the series
I think 2003's depiction of Kino's panic and despair over what happened to that one country is much stronger than 2017's sort of "oh well" energy. '03 further highlights that contrast between her outward presentation and her actual feelings. Hermes trying to comfort her makes a better story than him just kind of agreeing with her that she couldn't have helped them.
Also, putting her origin story before this episode made it hit harder. You knew how much '03 Kino identified with that young girl, and you don't get that in '17.
There's a million other small things I liked better in '03, but I'll leave it at that. That said, I liked both series a lot. '03 gets an easy 10/10 from me, and '17 gets an 8. I only wish Kino acted more like her '03 self.
Definitely agree that the 2003 Kino anime had better composition. Just about the only things I liked better about the 2017 series were the improved animation and the stories which weren't featured in the 2003 version.
This is one of those series where I really wish they'd make more of the anime (although I can understand why it isn't exactly a blockbuster) or at least another show in the same vein. The only thing I've seen which has a remotely similar premise is Majo no Tabitabi which has a much more lighthearted tone.
Unless I'm misunderstanding what exact similarity you're looking for, there are a good number of shows similar to Kino in the travel-the-world-and-ruminate-on-the-circumstances-of-its-people vein. The only one that I've watched is Mushishi, but I've often seen Girls' Last Tour, Galaxy Express 999, Frieren, and Violet Evergarden recommended.
What I had in mind was a 'stranger visits a different country each week with a society that has its own unusual rules' show. Kind of like if it was The ones who walk away from Omelas but every week it was something different.
I've seen or read all of these, but probably the only one I'd say is close to that is Galaxy Express 999 (where most of the time, it's not an actual country but an alien planet with weird sci-fi stuff going down).
Read the Ajin manga. Enjoyed it, but don’t know how to feel about it.
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Kei loses at every stage. All of the plans of Satou succeed. While he is defeated in the end, he had already planned to leave by then. Ig one change that came off everything is that the public was made aware of the government’s atrocities, but even then no regulatory change came of it, the major characters just got their identities changed.
I feel like from about halfway (maybe earlier?) in this series, the author really just zeroed in on the central premise of 'characters who can come back in perfect health if they die' and everything else was just an afterthought to enable those scenes. The main story becomes an absolute mess towards the end, so anyone sticking around is only reading for the action and art.
I read this author's short THE POOL recently which is a much more coherent Aliens-esque (the James Cameron one) story.