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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!
It's just not that great of an anime season right now. I'm watching about a dozen shows this season and the most entertaining ones are Re;Zero Director's Cut and the I stacked everything on defense show. One being an old reboot and the other having a very stupid premise with an over-powered main character. I think even next season is going to kind of suck too, There isn't a single show I'm hyped to watch at this point, a few I'm planning to check out but they'll probably all suck too.
I rewatched KonoSuba, but that was just to fill in some time before I actually fall asleep at night.
So I just watched the first episode of Beastars. The premise is interesting: a world populated by anthropomorphized animals that live in a constant conflict between carnivores (predators) and herbivores (prey). The high-school setting is a bit disappointing.
I would probably keep watching if this wasn't CG anime. I fucking hate CG anime. The action scenes greatly benefit from the technique, but character animation is, as always, atrocious. They feel programmed instead of drawn. Overall movement, especially mouths and facial expressions, is excessively smooth, with a lifeless result. While American studios adopted an entirely new style for CG animation, anime productions try to emulate manga/traditional animation and fail every time.
What is this, completely empty with no discussion at all. Come on people, if you are gonna be avoiding people to not get sick might as well watch some anime and read some manga.
Dance in the Vampire Bund Ep 10 :
Yeah, I don’t like this final development at all. It just feels like it doesn’t have much time to develop. And just came out of nowhere, with no build-up that any of this is going to be happening. Can really tell this is going to end with a go buy the manga to see anything more of what is going on.
This episode did give us some classic Shaft shots. If you showed me a clip of them walking along the waterfront, I would have assumed it came from one of the Monogatari shows. Black haired guy walking alongside a woman doing something strange, the head tilts, the lighting. And I kinda don’t like it, at this point it doesn’t feel interesting because I’ve seen it happen so many times.
Sound of the Sky Ep 10:
So, I understand this is supposed to be this super sad and emotion episode about Rio essentially giving everything up to make peace with this other empire. But I’ve never seen this other empire, hell I’ve never seen the empire they currently live in. I know nothing about the world, or what is going on. This isn’t emotional for me, just frustrating that so much more could have been done that just isn’t. Heck, I feel like a barely know Rio at this point. Honestly, I don’t think any of the cast has grown on me enough to really care about them.
And with now just 2 episodes left, I 100% know I am going to be severely disappointed in the conclusion to this show. In some ways I kinda just want to binge the last two episodes so I can get the disappointment with over already and write a review ranting about this show. This show that is another that seems to get a rather decent amount of praise, and I just don’t see any of it.
Omamori Himari Ep 10:
It is with this week that the issues I have with harems really shown, and I can’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation. It pans around the room and shows a dozen different girls all hanging out with the same guy, who just does nothing with any of them or really shows any emotion at all to 90% of them. So why bother having them, if it is obvious that one girl takes the lead, why not just make a show based around that one girl and ignore the rest completely. When it was doing the pan, I also realized how few of the girls I actually even know their names or what their role in the story is.
I also don’t have a clue where this story is going at all, it has 2 episodes left so I guess a relaxing episode leading up to the big battle can work. But it just feels like in this episode nothing got accomplished besides repairing the sword. No other progress to defeating the enemy was made, so I don’t know how this battle will happen.
I’m watching Castlevania, does that count?
I was tempted to post about Castlevania in here but I get why people wouldn't want it in an anime subreddit. There's some traits to it, both in style and storytelling, that are very, very different from Japanese anime and the parts where its similar/referential are a bit tacky. Like, what do you gain from drawing a nose like that, come up with your own style!
Generally love the show, though. We binged season 2 in preparation and it's one of the most entertaining animated TV ever made.
If you ask the r/anime subreddit, they would say of course not. Personally I feel like anime is less where it was made and who made it, and more what the visual style of the show is. Like you can't say Anime is just things made in Japan, when half or more of the show is technically produced in China or other countries. And even many big hits where 100% made and funded by a Chinese company.
So, personally I say why not. If it is in the style of an anime it can go vaguely under the same label, or at least get talked about in the same conversation. Same reason I feel Chinese Donghua are anime, and should be talked about in the same conversation.
Huh, didn't know that linking to subreddits actually worked. I just kinda wrote it figuring everyone knew what it meant. Interesting.