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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!
Not much really.
Just yesterday I watched Weathering with You by Makoto Shinkai. It's my favorite anime movie now, I love Shinkai's style and this movie uses it at it best, the animation is top tier and the story is pretty good.
Somehow I forgot to post this over the weekend, but hey I'm not that far off from my normal day. Anyways, still didn't get to anything new but will eventually.
2020 Spring Week 6
Shironeko Project ZERO CHRONICLE Ep 6
There is something about this show that can be pretty enjoyable. When it is just a calm relaxing episode without the terrible fighting, it all works pretty well. This episode felt super awkward with Groza trying to get Yami to notice her and failing of course because we already know how this future romance will end.
Overall, I feel like this was a worse episode than the previous. It was just too slow and awkward for me really. And I just wanted more to happen and progress more. Specially being 6 episodes in, and not really seeing where the show is going from here at all.
My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! Ep 7
So, the friends are actually the same person reincarnated. Real sad story to start with, but glad it kinda ended in a positive note. Though now I want to know how she ended up dying herself, is time strange and let her live a full life before dying, or did she die early herself. So many more questions I now have.
Love Katarina surviving just by pure luck/ stupidity. Bending over and doing silly things only she would do and avoiding certain doom. Will love to see where the story keeps going from here.
Princess Connect! Re: Dive Ep 6
Wow, it looks like the show is actually going to have some plot development here halfway through. I’m really excited to see where this goes from here. Also, the backgrounds this episode were just gorgeous, visually this has got to be one of the best-looking shows of the season.
Happy to see some new cast members showing up. Will enjoy seeing how they merge with the group.
Kaguya-sama: Love is War? Ep 6
Oh man, this is by far my favorite episode of the season thus far. I love the feeling of the group actually working together to achieve something and helping somebody else. Also love how far Ishigami will go to help somebody out, shows so much about his character really.
Glad to finally get Miko as a full-time character and part of the main cast. She adds such a different and unique style to the group that just wasn’t there originally. Will love seeing her and Ishigami’s antics later on.
Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 Ep 4
I keep expecting to have an episode where Major just has an old school discussion with somebody. Or somebody just stops and starts monologuing about the state of the world. Or talking about the philosophy of the events that are occurring. Something, anything to make it feel like GotS. But it just never happens ever, we just go straight from one action set-piece to the next without any break. It is so far divorced from the original GotS that it shouldn’t even still have the same name.
Mentioned before that the background characters are terrible, and they still are. I don’t understand how they screwed up their motions and routines so badly that they just look so fake. Don’t remember if I’ve mentioned it before, but the OP and ED songs. While I don’t think they match GotS at all, even remotely, but as just generic songs I kinda like them. But I don’t think I will hear them and think of this show like I do the old songs. They just don’t have that same feeling to them at all.
2010 Spring Throwback Week 6
Night Raid 1931 Ep 6
It looks like the story is moving forward again after those 2 super slow episodes without much happening. But I don’t really understand what the end game is for this show at all. This antagonist is working with this plan, but I don’t see where it is going to end up at all. I still also really want to learn more about these powers they have, they still haven’t really been explained at all and it annoys me I don’t know anything about them.
The voice acting this episode was one of the most mixed bags I’ve ever heard, I think. You have one that was really good and I’m fairly sure what just an English voice actor. But the rest were complete garbage and more frustrating to listen to than I would think possible. I understand wanting to have things make sense by having people speak languages they are meant to speak and all, but if you can’t get good voice actors to do so just don’t.
House of Five Leaves Ep 6
I get the feeling things are starting to move forward some here. With some story progress and developments occurring this episode to change things up. Still waiting to see where it actually goes because I don’t really know.
The Tatami Galaxy Ep 5
This almost felt like an incomplete episode for me, didn’t feel like it had a true ending like some of the other episodes. And instead just kinda ended roughly without much build up. All in all, this episode wasn’t my favorite. Just doesn’t feel like as much occurred this episode at all, from interacting to other characters to gaining insight into the main character.
I'm on Volume 3 of Ascendance of a Bookworm. (The light novel.) There is a whole new mess of complicated politics, along with the economics.
I understand there is an anime series and a manga, but I think the best adaptation might be a video game? Maybe an incremental game like Universal Paperclips?
Wait... you read light novels!? You continually surprise me, skybrian (in a good way). :)
I don't, normally. This is the first. A friend mentioned it as one he couldn't get into, and I was curious enough to check it out.
LOL, that's like the exact opposite of how most people find things to read. You have an interesting approach. :P How you liking it so far though?
He's more familiar than me with this kind of entertainment and was reacting to it apparently being very popular with other people, and I wondered why it was popular.
I'm enjoying it a lot and it seems inevitable that I'll read the whole series.
I think of a lot of science fiction and fantasy as being more or less well-disguised power trips. The classic hero's journey, etc. I'm not immune to the appeal, but I'm bored with the more stereotypical approaches to this. Magic is way too easy.
So I'm amused by how the protagonist turns unexpected and often trivial cultural knowledge from modern Japan, often of stereotypical girl things but also of modern business practices, into cultural and economic power, despite some extreme disadvantages. There's lots of detail about it's done, the ways things need to be adapted to local conditions and so on. In the end it's pretty pro-business, though in a harmonious Japanese sort of way.
There are still plenty of genre conventions (I assume) that you just have to accept. The protagonist's desperate drive to read books is unrealistic and unexplained (and I say that as someone who was an avid reader as a kid), but it seems essential to drive the plot.
Although it's very different, it reminds me a bit of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality in the sense that the protagonist's unconventional worldview often seems to be threatening to break the fantasy world.
I feel similar, hence why I tend toward reading morally ambiguous/grey "low" and "grimdark" fantasy, as opposed to traditional black & white/good vs evil, Tolkienesque, magic (and deus ex machina) heavy, "high" fantasy.
I am also generally more of a manga and anime than light novel fan, but I might have to pick up a copy of the first volume of Ascendance of a Bookworm so I can see for myself what it's all about, as your description of it has really piqued my curiosity. Thanks for sharing! :)
p.s. Never heard of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality before either, but that seems neat too!
That is a strange book. Essentially it's fan fiction of a sort, written by a "founder" of the rationalist "movement" for, I guess you could say philosophical purposes. You might not like this version of Harry Potter and might not want to read to the end since it goes on and on, but reading the first dozen chapters or so should be interesting to see his take on the Harry Potter universe.
Ah, hmmm... I suddenly find my interest in the Harry Potter one waning. That might be a bit too heady for me right now. LOL
Well, it has its amusing moments too. To say a bit more, one of the themes is that magic in the Harry Potter universe is way overpowered and way underused. In the hands of an intelligent protagonist with some Slytherin tendencies, it results in a lot of of weird exploits and bizarre ethical dilemmas.
Alright, that doesn't sound quite as bad as I had assumed. I downloaded it and will give the first few chapters a read as you suggested. Thanks again. :)
Beastars volume 1
I actually bought this book before I learned about the anime, but now I finally got around to reading it. It's the first manga I've read in years that's been able to hold my attention for long enough to finish a whole volume! I thought it was very good, and now I'm invested in the story and care about the characters, and I want to read more. Or maybe I should watch the anime instead. For those who have read the manga and watched the anime, which one did you like best? Is it worth doing both, or should I focus on one?
I do have a suspicion that the manga was heavily inspired by Zootopia, which came out earlier the same year the manga started, but I don't really mind. They're very different in most ways that matter.
The world seems well-built, the characters are interesting, and the murder mystery is intriguing. I'm really looking forward to reading (or watching) more.
One Punch Man season 1
Yeah, I'm late to the party, but I finally finished season 1. It was great! Strangely I've never been a fan of superhero comics, but I find myself enjoying many of these modern non-comic interpretations. The Marvel films, Watchmen (the HBO series (and the 2009 film for that matter, sue me)), The Boys, The Tick, and now I found myself enjoying a superhero anime, while having traditionally not been a fan of neither superheroes nor anime. Maybe I like it because it's a parody of both the superhero genre and anime as a whole. Is it a parody though? I'm not entirely sure. Still though, it's very funny, and has good action.
I binged all of Hunter x Hunter after someone mentioned it was similar to World Trigger, which I loved. Haven't found anything to replace it yet; anyone have suggestions?
If you haven't already heard of it; Yu Yu Hakusho makes a fantastic replacement if you want something very much like Hunter X Hunter. They're both by the same creator and Yu Yu Hakusho has some great characters that are pretty similar to the ones in Hunter X Hunter. It has 112 episodes so don't worry about running out of episodes to watch any time soon.
I just finished Parasyte: The Maxim. It's on Netflix, and has 24 episodes. It only has, and will have, one season, and AFAIK tells the entire story. I went to watch something else, accidentally started the trailer, and was sold. It's about parasites that take over people's heads, but one messes up and gets the main character's right arm. He then winds up fighting the rest of them as they maneuver into human society. The writing is great, the story development was solid, probably one of the best shows, ever, that I've watched.