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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!
Still watching cour 2 for LIAR GAME and Yomi no Tsugai. The former is growing on me. I expected it to be a story about how the naive protagonist becomes world-wise and crafty, but it's the complete opposite - it's a story about how her good natured and trusting personality is an asset in a game about deception. Kind of an interesting take that I haven't seen before in this genre.
On this season's shows:
Mushoku Tensei S3
All right so far, but it's mostly a side story that happens in parallel to S2.
Despite how disappointed I was with S2 as a whole, there are parts of the story which I do find compelling (Orsted and Nanahoshi's plotline in particular) and I hope the main story focuses on those rather than the whole wife harem thing.
Youjo Senki S2
In many ways, essentially a grittier Strike Witches (not a high bar).
Surprisingly decent animation. I remember S1 as being pretty inconsistent, so either this got a higher budget or these guys just got better at making anime in the last 9 years.
S1 was generally a WWI setting, but we're now well into a weird mix of WWI and WWII with figures like Churchill and Stalin showing up. I don't love the fact that the protagonists are either Imperial Germany or the Nazis (take your pick), but I suppose they're not really portrayed as the good guys per se.
Nijuuseiki Denki Mokuroku
Very interesting visual style that renders everything other than the characters with an oil painting aesthetic. This works particularly well with the steampunk setting where there's constantly just steam and smoke swirling everywhere.
Unfortunately, the actual story and characters don't grip me at all. If you compare it to Kyoto Animation's previous Netflix project Violet Evergarden, there's nothing like the incredible 'you're still burning' scene from the first episode which really sells the premise.
There's also something about the way they deform the facial expressions on this show that I really dislike. I suppose it's meant to be a call back to older, more cartoon-like animation, but it just looks weird when juxtaposed with the more realistic character and setting design.
THE GHOST IN THE SHELL
Absolutely incredible adaptation of the manga.
The pacing is fast and it can be easy to lose the flow of the plot, but that's unavoidable due to how dense the manga itself is and I had the same issue when reading it, often having to re-read the same page again when my attention lapsed. They even manage to include some of the margin footnotes!
Visually, it looks amazing and completely faithful to the original 90s look. It feels like this is what animators from the 90s would have made if you had given them modern computers.
Sakamoto Maaya is as good as you'd expect as the new Major. What a range on this actor! I couldn't believe my ears when I saw she also did Aerith in FF7R. The new Batou is also great.
The music is everything you could ask for from a GITS soundtrack without getting Kanno Youko back. Everything from the jazzy action pieces to the dreamy ED is right on point.
I can't remember the last time a series delivered so well on the promise of the trailers.
Thanks for the write-up on TGitS!
In your opinion, is it so faithful to the look and pacing of the source material that if one did not like the manga, they might not like this adaptation?
For people who just found the manga exhausting to read, I definitely think the anime is better in that respect and worth checking out. There's less effort required to follow it when you can visualise the action and hear the characters speak back and forth.
It's interesting to compare it to the 1995 film which is based on the same material. I think having a whole season to cover the story will likely make it much more digestible.
Excellent, thanks for sharing! I've been trying to keep myself in the dark with regards to reviews, but I just couldn't help but ask about that aspect, haha! Don't get me wrong; Shirow sets up some great action scenes, but he meanders so much in his storytelling. That's not exclusive to GitS though, but you know that. Still, I totally relate to your mention of rereading pages. Gosh, I think I had to reread MMI a few times before I really started to get it, hahaha!
And that is really funny that they manage to include the margin notes, given how prevalent and distinctive they are to his works.
I will say that I'm excited to hopefully see those classic Seburo designs in action! It's good to hear that the anime is handing things so well.
I watched Haikyuu's "The Dumpster Battle" last night. They did some really cool first person POV scenes during volleyball rallies that were different from the series. That was really cool. There were a lot of callbacks and mirrored moments that felt really satisfying. I thought it was really well done.
Super fun. It's hard to pack a whole arc's worth of manga content into a movie, but it was nice.
Started a few of this season's shows.
Youjo Senki Season 2 continues the story of the ruthlessly efficient office worker reincarnated as a female child soldier with a talent for magic in totally-not-WWI-Germany due to Christian God having a bone to pick with him in particular for being staunchly atheistic and also kind of an asshole. For the sake of simplicity we'll just refer to them by their reincarnation, Tanya. The quality has definitely been retained from the first season, as well as the other hallmarks of this series, such as our protagonist suffering the reward of doing good work (more, harder work), lots of violence, dramatic music, and some intentionally cringey moments when the protagonist tries to leverage their "cute little girl" aspect to some end.
Sparks of Tomorrow is an original story that's animated by Kyoto Animation, and naturally it's gorgeous, especially the character designs and the eyes. The premise itself seems interesting, with electricity not taking root as quickly as it did in our timeline, so we get to see a much more steam-oriented version of pre-WW2 Kyoto. The storytelling though, at least from the first 2 episodes, has been at a breakneck pace. Characters are constantly yelling, running, chasing, doing things, and basically never really slowing down to allow viewers to absorb what's going on or just admire the art for a bit. Maybe it'll slow down later and actually explain more of what's going on but for now it's kind of loud and overwhelming.
Yani Neko makes me really glad I don't have any close friends or family members that have a crippling addiction to some substance. This catgirl is a total disaster and it's funny to watch her fail at stuff but it's also painful to see her younger sister doing her best to still love and take care of her. It's good propaganda to scare people out of smoking or doing drugs while still being humorous about it. Also the opening is a straight banger.
Tenmaku no Jaadugar so far seems to be the sleeper hit of the season for me. I don't want to spoil any of the story here since I think it's something worth experiencing without any prior knowledge, but yeah I like the story a lot so far. The art style is also a far departure from typical anime, with more of a children's storybook look that seems simple and very clear, but also quite pleasant to the eyes. It's got some historical elements in it too, though I think the character and events aren't based on anything from real life. Out of all of the ones I've listed here, I would recommend this one first.
This is not technically an anime, but I have been watching My Adventures with Superman and its really good.
It captures the essence of the character which I thought was missing from last year's Superman movie.
The recent Cyborg Superman episode was excellent.
I like how they portrayed Kara as well, I always like the character type of an outsider who becomes enamored with the simple luxuries of modern society.