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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 got sucked into Steins;Gate 0 in a way that rarely happens to me anymore, where I'm so invested in plot for plot's sake that I can't stop. Steins;Gate was one of anime's great thrillers, so I was glad to see 0 be just as good.
I have the same problems with the series as I did originally (mostly surrounding treatment of Ruka and Daru being played as a "lovable creep"), but it's brilliant for all the same reasons as well and I'm glad to have had a chance to revisit these characters. It felt like coming home.
Oh man before me and my friends could even start watching this we had to discuss where exactly in the world line we were. It can be very confusing. It's such a great anime though, brain teaser but great plot.
Good series, but I felt it could have been much shorter. Nothing really happens in the first third.
I think I may have talked about this last week, but after the fire at Kyoto Animation I decided to go through some of their work that I missed out on, and I've been slowly going through K-On. And the reason why I'm going through it slowly is because I really want it to last. I've got three or four more episodes until the end, and simply don't want it to!
And to be completely honest I'm taking this series way too personally. This is what I wish my childhood was like. So after their final festival concert, when Yui is talking about all of these activities she knows won't be happening next year, I really felt it. Even though I didn't have friends nearly as close as these characters are - heck, half of my high school career was terrible - I still can identify with wanting that one extra year.
It took me so long to finish K-On!! for the same reason. The ending is an incredibly beautiful thing, so I didn't regret it when I got there, but in the episodes leading up to it, I slowed down to a crawl because I didn't want to make it to the end and "grow up".
Getting a bit teary-eyed just thinking about it.
I can connect with that. I kind of get the same feeling with all types of high school anime/TV shows, but obviously some shows do them much better than others. I never went through K-On fully, but I remember that vibe from watching it. Although I know the warm feeling I get is probably just an effect from looking back with rose-tinted glasses. My high school was probably more miserable than I like to admit to myself. Even the 'friends' I made don't talk to me anymore.
Depressing comment aside, I would recommend Dr. Stone if you want another hit of that feeling. There is a lot of focus on characters in the series, and they are all lovable individually and together.
I'd rather not get into details, but my life basically slid into hell after I graduated, so an extra year of high school is just me wishing that that year didn't happen. But in all honesty, it would have just prolonged the bad environment from when I wasn't in school and added up to another year of depression and misery. In reality, what I truly desire is to have made these deep connections.
Well, anyways.... cough
In regards to Dr. Stone, are you recommending the anime or manga? I was watching the first few episodes of the anime but stopped after maybe 5 episodes because the pacing was so uneven. I'll take another look in any case.
I'm sorry, who gave you access to my heart? I feel the same way. I guess rose-tinted glasses wasn't appropriate, since that makes you think good things happened when they didn't. This feeling of knowing good things did not happen, but wanting them to happen in the past will need a new color. Lapis, maybe?
I only read the Dr. Stone manga, haven't watched the anime. Maybe read a few chapters. The pacing is a little odd though.
You mean I'm in? I've been trying to seduce you forever. Wanna have an affair, Woofie? ;)
In all seriousness, though, I find myself having thoughts like this far too often. I find myself getting upset when I hear people talking about their sheltered childhood with loving parents. And when I hear grown men and women saying the term "adulting" my hands ball up into fists. I've been an adult since I was 12. But then again, that line of thinking is part of why I didn't have many friends when I was a kid.
If you do want to trade shitty childhood stories with someone, though, I am always looking for more friends. Affairs, less so.
I can't imagine the anger you must feel when people mention 'adulting.' It's cringe-y enough as is, it must be so much worse from someone who had to be an adult since they were 12. I don't think the thinking was the problem. I think you just had to change much faster than other people your age.
I had a pretty sheltered childhood too. All of my problems were my own fault. I would still love to swap stories, though. You gotta leave my heart first.
I'm good; I've already got so many it's problematic. Special shout-out to Hanasaku Iroha, though.
After the Kyoto Animation fire, I decided to watch their movie A Silent Voice. It was a really amazing movie my heart was at the edge of losing it at a certain point. Truly recommend it.
Kaguya Love is War Initially I thought it was a dumb concept but I gave it a tried after I surprisingly saw it was ranked 1 in a weekly chart. The beginning was a bit slow for me but it turned out to be really good and funny. So good that I decided to read the mange in a single night, I was able to sympathize with one of the characters in the manga that I even cried, no lie. It's a romance/comedy that I believe was done really well.
Demon Slayer I want to assume everyone already knows about this one. But to be safe I just want to say that this anime is superb. The animation studio Ufotable who made Fate Stay Night UBW is behind this one and it's truly just quality animation. The story though is another great one that seems to be coming to an end soon too (in the manga) and not being milked out like other anime which eventually lead to the story losing quality.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind By far my favorite part of the series yet. It's set in Italy and the aesthetics of it is so god damn pleasing. If you haven't watched any of the JoJo animes it's honestly not needed (completely) to enjoy this one. You can get by just watching the 1st and 2nd part because there are some details of the over arching story of JoJo that is discussed as well as characters. The 3rd part is the longest of them all and part 4 really isn't even mentioned.
The story of this one is group of gangster trying to make their country better without the drug scene controlling the youth in it. But it definitely gets bizarre and exciting. Please do watch.
Last but not least The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. Oh my this has to be the funniest slice of life anime I've ever seen. A kid who has incredible psychic powers who just wants to live an average life. But is hopeless with his not so average friends nor his abnormal situations that find him. If you just want to watch an easy anime to laugh then this is definitely it.
I just watched Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone. A few additions were probably unnecessary, but overall it was all kinds of awesome. You could say I'm an old-school Evangelion fan, watched it on television in the nineties and knew the theme song by heart. But I'm not a purist. Yes, some of the melancholy is lost and not everything has the right rhythm, but I loved that Hideaki Anno got rid of the unnecessary obscurity of the original story. And Tokyo is now much more alive and populated, making it more visible how Shinji's actions can directly impact millions of people. There's a greater sense of urgency and epicness.
I'm not a fan of mixing CGI with traditional animation, though. It looks odd and out of place. Evangelion's hand-drawn machinery is one of the things I loved the most about the original.
Wait, are you saying the NGE movies actually... make sense? I really disliked how little the series explained about what was happening and why it was happening. I was going to start in on the moves when I finished the series but decided I hadn't enjoyed the series enough, in part thanks to this factor, to justify spending more hours of my life on the franchise.
I have only watched 1.0. It is still pretty obscure but so far it does make more sense.
I watch about one anime series per year. This year’s lucky winner is Attack on Titan, and I’m in season 3.
Other anime I'm watching:
Still watching and keeping up on Fruits Basket. This newest episode just hit me right in the feels! Man, I had re-read the manga a year or two ago, getting the special edition prints, and like... it's such a roller coaster. There's so much sweetness and bitterness and just everything. These past few episodes have been really delving into the backstories of some of the characters, and seeing them so faithfully animated is just such an incredible treat. Fruits Basket is a great manga and such a good anime. It's so heartfelt and so much deeper than a lot of stuff. There's nothing wrong with surface level things, I just think that Fruits Basket does it so well. Watching the anime just makes me love the series all the more!