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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!
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - Stardust Crusaders. I'm at Episode 12, Season 1. I started watching it because of the memes and references my friends were making, but I'm not exactly blown away by it. I loved the Classic Rock references in Phantom Blood and Battle Tendencies, but the show itself is a bit slow and campy at times. It's good background noise and some of the scenes are worth giving my full attention. I'd rate it a 6.5-7/10.
What's great about the show is how it combines Japanese narration and codes with influences from the Occident. The way it melts different cultures together in terms of style, music, etc. is what makes it special. When an artist tries to interpret a different culture, it often comes off with a lot of clichés. In this instance, Hirohiko Araki gives his characters different nationalities and attitudes but they still feel very japanese in the way they intervene in the plot.
It's a divisive show, that's for sure. Not necessarily hate for it, but it's something that either grabs you or really doesn't. Undoubtedly brilliant, but that doesn't mean it's for everyone. :p
I will say that it does have the Doctor Who thing going on, in that the different chapters of the show have a very distinct feel to them. You might like some parts more than others, so I (cautiously) mention that skipping around might work for some people, so long as you don't care about spoilers.
I do appreciate the continuity + time skips between chapters and that every character has some "Jo-" name such that the title of the show works for every new season.
Stardust Crusaders can drag a lot. I wouldn't tell you to force yourself but it is universally recognized that it gets really good by Ep. 10 of the second season.
Thanks for the tip!
I love this show, but I can't force myself to watch Vento Aureo.
Just started Irozuku Sekai no Ashita kara. So far I'm only 4 episodes in and is easily one of the best I've seen in a good while.
The Rising of Shield Hero is starting to flag a bit after an excellent first four episodes, but not enough for me to really start worrying yet. I'm about two episodes behind on my other shows, but let's see... Boogiepop and Others eventually lost my interest, The Price of Smiles is all over the place but I'll give it a few more episodes, and The Promised Neverland is creepy as hell. I need to catch up on that one. Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka is both tropey and brutal, I'll keep watching it.
I also basically inhaled Chaika: The Coffin Princess. Found it while browsing at random and I quite liked it. Also just recently finished Dusk Maiden of Amnesia, which was great until that horribly-done last episode that both stretches things out for far too long, and totally negates everything it did right at the end. Agh. Meh.
Seen this week's episode yet? Of Shield Hero I mean.
No, I left off after episode 8: "Curse Shield", which felt rushed and more pandering to emotions than actually evoking them. Is episode 9 better?
Ah crap I didn't see that a message came in. Uh... unfortunately Episode 8 was also my last episode and I was going to ask you what your thoughts were. Production quality definitely dropped after Filo's introduction, but I think the easy-going adventures were a good break in the pacing. However, Episode 8 seriously dropped the ball in terms of both story-telling and production values - it was just very forced and unnatural. I watch most shows to the end so I hope it picks back up.
I'm going to wait for another episode or two to come out, binge episodes 9-latest, and then see if I want to keep watching it. I was going to do this tonight but some friends came in from out of town, so were going to get stoned as hell and play Nintendo Classic (of which my 2nd controller finally showed up in the mail today!).
The Time I got reincarnated as a Slime - it's sorta has lessened the charm it had in cour 1 (given they're rushing so much) but still is enjoyable. I don't worry too much about the omitted parts given cour 1 already sold me on reading the manga and LN after the season ends. I just hope they don't rush it in S2 like they did with cour 2 because cour 1 (as heard from source readers) was really well adapted and was really a breeze to watch through
I'll watch Mob Psycho 100 (was waiting for weekend, I usually watch Mob on weekends so no review of the current episode)
Samurai Champloo (currently @ ep 17 and it's a BLAST. It already made it's way in my favourite anime pool and has never let my expectations down even a bit (yet). I'm loving the animation style, the fight choreography, the fun interactions and (ofcourse) the hip hop music integration. Also the fictional references to real world stuff is amazing too (partly because I know the part of history they often references and the ones I don't know, it encourages me to quickly skim through that to understand the correlation)
It's just a fun anime to watch (and no, I'm not binge watching it, casually enjoying the most out of 1-2 episodes in one sitting)
I'm at episode 3 of A place further than the universe (I know, I often come late to some anime; also watching schedule is the same as Champloo) and it's amazing so far (especially the chase scene of ep 2). Ep 1 was okay but after Ep 2 I went down that introspection rabbit-hole (it was night time and stars were out too, so it turned out to a well ~2 hours session). It's really relatable of wanting to go out and do something fun with your life, explore and all given I'm going to uni this fall too and really haven't done anything/that many exceptional yet really. I also know that I still have 50+ years to live but still, going by the review of the past 18 years, I relate to the protag too.
I've currently held Monster at ~ep 27 (something happened and it broke the watching schedule, engaging in new season anime didn't help either. I'm considering watching it from start after I finish Slime and Champloo)
I'm also looking forward to watch Neverland, Love is war and Dororo once they finish (I can't watch everything right now at the same time) and maybe Two heroes, Flavour of youth after that
You know what OP, this thread is a really good way to sorta re-review your opinions/experiences of the anime you watched this week.
I binged all of the Kuragehime (Princess Jellyfish) anime last night, was a quick and fun one but ended far too early in some aspects like relationships. The various western movie references in the OP were entertaining, especially Tsukimi doing Singin' in the Rain. I know the manga is significantly longer and I guess I'll have to read it but I just don't enjoy manga as much as a medium.
I also finished up Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans as part of an episodic group discussion, and overall it takes the crown as my favorite Gundam series away from Turn A. Many flags were raised.
I haven't been watching anything since I've been a bit busy to really get into any anime. Would like to know of any anime that would spark my interest in it again
Mostly been keeping up with my seasonals.
I wanna talk about one in particular though. Magical Girl Spec. Ops. Asuka.
Boy, is this show something else.
I don't mean that in a good way. It's one of those dark action seinen series you see every now and again. It's fairly rare that they leave the manga format and the better ones are kind of a guilty pleasure of mine so I was hoping that this would fall in that camp too. Instead it's been, how should I put this, incoherent?
It's not really fair to judge it as a magical girl show cuz it doesn't really try to be one, so I'll not do that. As an action series, it's pretty mediocre. The animation is dumpy and very limited--to the point that I wonder if there're some problems going on production-side. Any time anything action-y needs to happen it'll suddenly turn into a festival of stills and splash screens, not even particularly pretty ones. There'll be the rare nice cut but they're few and far between.
The other thing it tries to be, a like, weird war drama? Phew. Maybe it's just been too long since I've seen something this shlocky but to me it is a special kind of bad. The tone is all over the place. It'll skip between tragic backstory to comedy to fanservice and back again without missing a beat. The weird part is that that seems to be intentional, and I guess it could work in a show that has a better command of itself than Asuka does but it just makes the show seem schizophrenic.
Also it likes to be, just, comically over-the-top edgy. There wasn't much of that in this past episode, but the prior one had one of the ostensible heroines torturing a captured villain for no particular reason and also a drunk middle-aged guy beating up his disabled daughter after failing to get her a job at a whorehouse (yes you read that correctly). It's all just a jumbled mess. I have no idea what the show is trying to be and I don't really think it does either.
It does occasionally produce some truly amazing out-of-context dialogue but not a whole lot else. At this point I'm kind of just watching it because it's interesting in the ways that it's fundamentally broken and I guess my inner critic finds that kind of thing fascinating in a weird way.
This week I read "Maiden Railways", which Denpa just released. It's a single volume collection of short romance stories which all involve trains. It's absolutely delightful and I'm probably going to loan it to like five people.
Finished Akame ga Kill! this weekend and by the end of I just felt like I was watching out of obligation to finish it. The formula became predictable and who was going to die became obvious after the first few times it happened. Really became Death Flags: The Anime by the end. First half was well done but it didn't feel like it had anything interesting to do or say by the second half.