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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!
Another season, and once again I'm going to be watching both currently airing shows and stuff that came out 10 years ago during the 2010 Spring Season. Doing per episode write ups for each show, but this season I decided to also include write ups for my thoughts about the currently airing season. Which is going to make this post much, much longer.
Also got The Tatami Galaxy planned to watch, but decided to hold off on the first episode till next week. And Next Life as a Villainess releasing kinda early last week, but me not doing an episode review on it doubled up the review this week.
2020 Spring Week 1
Shironeko Project ZERO CHRONICLE Ep 1
Well, this was an absolutely terrible first episode. Like unbelievably bad. A village gets slaughtered, I guess to make us feel bad for the main character, Yami no Ouji, losing his family and friends. But we don’t know the village, or care about them, and they make stupid decisions. So, I’m just baffled that a group of people this stupid could have lived this long. None of the slaughter was any good and lasted too long for how pointless it was. Then this random dude shows up, fights Yami, and then randomly dies from old age. I hope that gets explained, because otherwise this dude was literally just going to die in the middle of nowhere if he didn’t meet Yami.
Speaking of Yami, this guy must be the most obvious main character of the season by far. Nothing in his character design matches the rest of the village. He looks like what happens if you create your own character in a JRPG. Hope this gets explained also, but probably not and we are just going to have to deal with this stupid character design.
This, I hope, is going to be the worst anime I watch this season. I really hope nothing falls below this or I will be incredibly disappointed.
My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! Ep 1
Pretty enjoyable start of the show for me, and kinda looking forward to the characters and how this develops. I would like more villainess stories get anime, they are always enjoyable to see this reversal of trope that is getting more popular recently when many of these shows and manga.
Hope in the next episode we see more of the various guys Katarina will be hanging out with. Because while I enjoyed this episode, this was definitely a set-up episode to why she will do the things she does. Doesn’t feel like a ton of progress was made in actually moving into this world. Haven’t read the manga, so maybe the beginning in that was also slow.
My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! Ep 2
I’m enjoying this more this episode than I was episode 1. Character interactions will be what holds this show and keeps it being interesting. On the character side, I love absolutely everyone who has appeared thus far. Katarina being an idiot and not realizing already that the story has changed, and she isn’t going to die. Gerald being rather interesting in Katarina and going the amused fiancé route, enjoying seeing what silly things she will do next. Keith just really wanting somebody to mess around with and enjoy being around. Mary really just needing a good friend in Katarina who will help support and encourage her.
The council of chibi Katarina’s is really adorable, and a brilliant way to showing her internal conflicts. Do wonder when she is thinking about this, if she is just kinda standing in one place zoned out or is she still holding a conversation.
I think this episode also cemented the fact that I need to read the manga or light novel and see more of this story.
Princess Connect! Re: Dive Ep 1
Man, Cygames never disappoints me at all. And Cygames Pictures keeps with that trend completely. They make some really amazing looking shows and just feel really comfortable and fun to watch and make me fall in love with the characters. The visuals I felt were rather stunning and wasn’t just a one-off thing that continued on for the whole episode.
The characters are obviously going to be the true heroes of this show, with some great comedy between the characters. The comedy and gags were frequent, but never felt overdone or cringy or tired and always felt right at home. I can’t wait to have the full group join together and just continue the hijinks of trying to make money, and more importantly, eat good food.
Side note, now that I’m enjoying the anime. Could you guys at Cygames perhaps release an English translation for the game so I could actually play it.
APPARE-RANMAN! Ep 1
Not really sure what I think of this first episode at all, didn’t really do much for me. I liked the first couple minutes, with everyone lined up and the race about to start. But then it just kinda got bogged down with running around this town and meeting new characters. Who while I liked, I kinda doubt we will ever see again till the last episode? Guess it at least set up the motivations for the characters to be working together, though I don’t know why Appare would want to return back home.
Appare has some rather, interesting, character design. I don’t have an issue with his hair, or his clothing, or even his personality. I do have an issue with that stupid red makeup besides his mouth, it looks so distracting to an otherwise good character. I don’t understand why it exists, and what purpose it is supposed to have.
Kaguya-sama: Love is War? Ep 1
Well we are back with these idiots, and as an avid manga reader of this series I’m rather excited. I don’t always enjoy every episode or chapter of Kaguya, but it is always a fun and enjoyable show. The opening of this episode made me feel really sad though given the current arc of the manga. I feel like the show has gotten much better animation for this second season. It just feels higher quality and crisper, but also the reaction faces are so much better than the first season.
2010 Spring Season Throwback
Kiss x Sis Ep 1
You know, for a stupid ecchi anime this wasn’t a terrible first episode. Some things just pissed me off because they are such stupid clichés, like the running into the girl and ending up between her legs somehow, but I didn’t find it to really be a terrible episode. If they keep it kinda lighthearted ecchi series with jokes about the sisters being overly attracted to him when he doesn’t feel that way at all. Keep a super deadpan reaction to their antics and just generally being over it all, I don’t think I would hate the show. Though the synopsis says that he becomes attracted to them, so I don’t think my wish will come true and I will come to absolutely hate the show by episode 4 and drop it at 5.
Night Raid 1931 Ep 1
Going into this I didn’t know what to expect really, but probably not this. Thus far I like the characters and their interactions, and really want to see more of Sonogi because she looks rather adorable and kinda out of place for the group. The powers I didn’t expect at all, I figured it would be 100% grounded spy stuff but seems they are going to add in that supernatural tone to it so going to expect an arc about how they got their abilities and more info about them. Also expecting at some point to deal with a group trying to figure out how they work and gain their own.
I hope the Chinese does get better, feel like a bunch of it this episode was rather terrible.
House of Five Leaves Ep 1
Another show I had no clue what it was about going into it. Starts off rather slow, no action set pieces in this show or epic camera angles of anything yet. Just slowly following this samurai trying to make some money in a pretty simple set up. Not super invested yet but will stick with it to see where it goes.
The visuals are a bit unique I have to say, can’t say I’ve really seen it done before. Pretty sure I have but couldn’t point to another show in the style.
I quite liked The House of Five Leaves. There are various times they do flashbacks and I didn't catch the filter that was denoting it, so I was needlessly confused until about episode 8. Might have just been me being thick, but have a friendly heads up.
My buddy got me onto Space Pirate Captain Harlock so I'm reading that. A classic manga about space pirates.
The 1978 anime tv series based on it is probably remarkably dated by now, but IMO it was pretty decent from what I remember of it. Granted it's been a few decades since I last watched it, I haven't ever read the manga and my opinion is based entirely on the anime, so take that recommendation for what little it's probably worth. ;)
I read the entire "Mother Keeper" manga, and started reading "Hero? I quit a long time ago", which I didn't particularly enjoy.
I restarted watching Serial Experiments Lain a couple days ago. I got halfway through it about three years ago but wasn't watching episodes regularly enough to really keep track of what was happening. I got up to episode five yesterday and I'm seeing a ton of stuff I didn't remember. My laptop charger gave out on me though so I have a few days' wait for a replacement before I can pick it back up. I think I kinda have an idea what's going on, but something tells me there'll be a fair bit left up to interpretation at the end.