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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've found out that season 2 of Morose Mononokean exists, and slowly watching that, but so far it seems blander than the first one.
I've also finished Kino No Tabi, and while I've enjoyed it's melancholy mood, I've had really hard time suspensing disbelief in this one. I get that it's supposed to be like a set of parables of sorts, but presented countries make so little sense that the moral value of the story is kind of lessened by that.
I'm currently following several manga, but I'll mention one of them here: Kingdom, by Hara Yasuhisa. The genre is [military] historical fiction. The setting is ancient China. Recent chapters haven't hit me quite the same, but the early parts of this manga were fantastic. It's the most excited and thrilled I've ever felt from just static text and pictures (as opposed to anime or mainstream TV and movies). Really gripping stuff. Highly recommended.
Anime-wise, I'm watching, among other things, Diamond no Ace ("Ace of [the] Diamond"), an anime that follows the story of a Japanese high school baseball team. A bit hyperdramatic, but should be entertaining for fans of the game of baseball.
Just finished reading the Dorohedoro series. It has incredible worldbuilding and an amazing comedic tone. The plot gets a little convoluted at the end, but I think it manages to wrap itself up well despite that. One thing I didn't like was I felt like the sense of scale of the world diminishes throughout the series. The main cast really doesn't change all that much after like 5-10 volumes, and
Ending spoilers
until he gets turned into a baby, Chidamaru occupies a weird space between "god" and cast member, which makes the world seem very small as you get to know him and the other devils.I had read some before, but I was inspired to finish the series because of the anime that started airing recently. I tried to watch the anime, but the use of CGI really ruined it for me, so I just decided to finish the manga. I think the art in the manga is exceptional, and the author has provided their own soundtrack for the manga. So I don't think I'm missing out on much, if anything. To be fair to the anime though, it had it's moments of good animation, and it has terrific background art. Other than the CGI, it's fine.
I recently saw Whisper of the Heart in a theater and it was wonderful. I haven’t seen much anime outside of Ghibli films so this wasn’t too far out of the normal for me, but I felt that this film dealt with the theme of escapism in a much more direct way than other Miyazaki films. I also really enjoyed the lack of fantastical/magical elements in this one. While I enjoy them in his other films, I really appreciated how this one was kind of grounded. I’m eager to watch more.
Just want to make a shout out to Ishuzoku Reviewers, this is possibly my favorite show this season. So much plot in every episode I can't help but enjoy it. Also recently started watching In/Spectre and really excited to see where that show goes. Onto the 2010 stuff, down to 3 actively watching shows now and enjoying it a bunch more.
Dance in the Vampire Bund Ep 5:
Feel like they are trying to set up an odd conflict between Akira and Princess, and I don’t really like it. Like she believed in him enough to trust him to dispose of the bomb and sleeps with him. Kinda surprising that he doubts what she is doing now after not much has happened. IDK, I’ll see where is goes from here.
Sound of the Sky Ep 5:
Bit more action this episode, still doesn’t answer any questions but more decent character building. I’m trying to figure out where the show is going at this point, because it just seems to be meandering. Without any real clear goals or reason for any of these people to be here.
Omamori Himari Ep 5:
Rather slow episode after the previous episode, with slower slice of life and random hijinks. Honestly nothing really happened at all in this episode. Though the characters still annoy me, specially the reaction MC had to Rinko exposing herself. It just felt odd and out of place that he would just laugh it off and continue messing around with the other two. IDK, just feels like he changed for no reason this episode. While still being a terrible character.
But hey at least we are now introduced to a new Demon Slayer so maybe they will add something new to the mix.
My Funimation trial ran out, and nothing is really keeping me on it. Magia Record, I can wait for and is a lot to follow compared to the tightness and character economy of the original show. Bofuri and Hanako-kun are on Hulu, and are more of a comfort show food for me. Bofuri is more fun as a cautionary tale about how not to develop a game, and Hanako-kun is mostly being followed because it's in my queue and hadn't put me off. The art style is neat though.
In other news, Pop Team Epic is on Netflix. Half of it anyway, they show only half the episode on Netflix because the original series ran the same 11 minutes twice with different voice actors every episode. I am not sure why Netflix decided to show it that way, if they were planning on doing alternate audio tracks or a "part 2 drop" at another date with the rest of the series, but it does work at 11 minutes and if you want the full episode, you can watch it literally any other anime service.