Roughly related pre-face to this weeks various episode reviews. I will be continually complaining about Ghost in the Shell SAC_2045, which I only got to watch the first episode of due to time constraints, but right afterwards I ended up watching Star Wars The Clone Wars S7E10. And want to shout out what a good 3D animated show looks like if you watch SAC_2045 and also get disappointed. Has one of the best fight scenes I have seen in awhile. Warning though, you can't really just watch the fight scene alone. Given it is so late into the season things would get spoiler, so you might not actually be able to watch the great animation.

2020 Spring Week 3

Shironeko Project ZERO CHRONICLE Ep 3
Half this show is actually pretty decent, and the other half is just pure trash. The light side stuff I am actually enjoying, I like the characters and the story of them. But the dark side stuff is just terrible, really generic cliché story about a good guy becoming a king and changing the world for the better stuff. The dark side is just a completely boring and forgettable rather terrible story.

Also, the animation and visual quality has gotten better. In certain aspects that is. When they are sticking with the slow relaxing slice of life stuff it actually looks rather good. But when they get into the combat it just becomes terrible. Like they do not understand how to give the combat any weight so everyone just floats around the battlefield and nothing has any weight. I think I will keep sticking with it a little longer, it is not terrible enough yet that I’ll drop it.

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! Ep 4
Oh my, Katarina is such an adorable idiot. No matter how many times I see it, I just love “villain” characters try to be villains and failing completely because at their heart they are super good natured. And great job on her, for managing to also capture the heroine of game Maria without even trying. I cannot wait to see more of her and the antics she gets into. Also, I think I would love to see a side-story with mini-episodes of Gerald trying to get time alone with Katarina and Keith interrupting him and getting in the way.

Princess Connect! Re: Dive Ep 3
Man, it is so much fun watching this show. A lighthearted fun comedy is just what I needed this season. I have a feeling that there is an actual story somewhere in here, saw some glimpses of it with Karyl and her dark lord she serves it seems. But really this is a show I do not care about that story at all and would just want to watch slice of life adventures with these enjoyable characters.

Kaguya-sama: Love is War? Ep 3
Wow, I just loved this episode. Starting with the amazing moon watching experience and then into the after-school restaurant visit. Mostly just because of how many great moments we got with the characters just enjoying themselves and hanging out. No silly plots to get somebody to do something or to confess. Just hanging out in a group and enjoying themselves.

Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 Ep 1
Well this is finally out, and I cannot say very much about the story and plot at this point. Seems like they are going with more of an Arise plot from what I can see. Starting off with that action scene and then another action scene and ending the episode with yet another action scene. They do know that Ghost in the Shell is not just about action, well after Arise I really do not think so. The action itself was not particularly good sadly, I honestly got Borderlands vibes from the entire car shootout. From the strange floaty movement of the cars and the flips, to having 5 guys in a car but not doing anything but shooting into the air, and somehow not a single person died in those horrific accidents. All those poor mercenaries/thugs must have had some high-quality military prosthetics. Since they all walked off those accidents without any injuries or even blood.

But that is not what I will be complaining about mostly this episode. Instead, it is going to be the absolutely horrendous visuals of this show. I have to say it reminds me really strongly of the Borderlands series, in particular Borderlands 1 since that was the worst looking game. There is an insanely low texture quality, and no depth to any of the textures at all that I could see. And shadow direction is just non-sensical. I cannot look at the shadows and camera angles and figure out at all were the sun is supposed to be located at. You also have close ups of these palm trees, which looks like a flat texture with no depth at all to it. Or the steering wheel and buggy closeup when she is driving, that appears to not actually have any detail at all and just a tan color applied to the buggy and a stretched metal texture for the steering wheel.

Then you have the character models, which looks incredibly out of place. They look super round and soft, not matching the original 2d animated characters at all. They also appear to lack much detail or depth in the textures, and instead just have those silly black lines to try to sharpen the couple edges of the faces to try and give it more of a classic anime look. Overall I wouldn’t say they look right in a modern 3D animated show, and would instead expect to see it in early 3D show before computers were powerful enough to really get high quality models so they would just end up looking like plastic figures.

Also, I feel like I need to mention the NPC vender that Batou was talking to and buying that stuff from. I say she is an NPC because she repeats the same swatting fly’s thing a bunch of times while standing in the same spot. Why have her just stand in one spot swatting fly’s like a robot, instead of having her walk over and mess with the stand or something slightly less obvious.

APPARE-RANMAN! Ep 3
My worries for the show still are not lessened at all. We are a quarter into the show now, and we still have not started the actual race yet at all. It just feels like we are taking so long to get to the racing part, that it will not have the proper time to become something at all. I specially feel like it will not be satisfying watching people drop out over time during the race since they will not have much screen time. This is going to be a show that by end of it I will be saying it would be much better off as a 24-episode show.

2010 Spring Throwback Week 3

Kiss x Sis Ep 3
Yeah, this will be the last episode of this for me. I’m not really seeing anything at all that is amazing or promising in this show at all. I don’t like Keita and his super indecisiveness as to if he really likes the sisters or not, it is just a frustrating annoyance that isn’t enjoyable to watch at all. And the sisters aren’t enjoyable enough to carry this show at all. By this point I don’t see any reason at all to keep watching. Just another one of these ecchi shows that doesn’t go far enough to be enjoyable to watch but doesn’t have enough of a story and decent characters to convince me to keep watching.

Night Raid 1931 Ep 3
This show is surprisingly growing on me. I did not think very much of it at the beginning, but it is getting better. I feel like the characters are coming together much better than previously and their interactions are fairly good. The thin main plot that is going on in the background that is going to be the main final conflict is gathering steam really good and keeping me interested.

The one thing I would like to see explained is their powers and abilities. And what limitations they have or don’t. Some characters seem to have time limits, but others can kinda use their abilities for as long as they want it seems. So, I want to know what causes the difference between those two.

House of Five Leaves Ep 3
Seems like the actual main story of this show might start now. Still not really sure if I love it but will stick around to see where this goes and if develops into something interesting. Feel bad for the kid really the most this episode, seems like he is stuck in a really poor spot in life.

The Tatami Galaxy Ep 2
Hmmmm, still don’t know what to think of this show yet. Still don’t know where it is going at all, it must have a point that it is leading to. Like I figured after the start of the first episode it would be Watashi trying to date Akashi, but I don’t see that happening anymore. Instead it feels like it is more of a collection of roughly connected stories, covering different possible lives or way things could have happened? Not really sure at all. And how is this going to end anyhow?

This episode did feel better when it came to the speed of the dialogue, it was a fair bit slower so I could actually read everything this time. Still don’t really love the visual style though.