What Current Anime Are You Watching Version v4.0

[Focslain]

29 minutes ago, RavenHawk said:

I thoroughly enjoyed Aldnoah.Zero, and kept it on my watch list on Netflix to rewatch it again (probably in a month or so).

First of all, I generally like these types of scifi shows. Second, I enjoy ones that are more "real" robot. What I really liked about it, though, is where the protagonist doesn't just have some special powers (arguably), but is a thinking person. The victories (whether realistic or not) or though thinking through the problem and trying to find design flaws or strategic advantages.

Same here, also the soundtrack is pretty good. Only time the protag gets an edge is in second season, but it's more of an augment then an out-right ability.

Wish they sell a collection of the series.

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

Rosario Vampire Season 2 might be one of the worst anime's I have ever seen in my life.      The first season was very bland,  and while not terrible the premise was stale by the beginning of the 2nd season.     The 2nd season took everything from the first and made it SUPER awkward.    The main protagonist is your typical vanilla clueless and gutless lead,  and this gets amplified when they start hinting at something bigger,  just to end the show when he starts to stop being gutless..      -5/10   yes I went negative

This is a shame as I have read most if not all of the manga series and it's actually not bad. 

 

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I watched the 1st episode of Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari and it was great just what I expected.  I am reading the light novels so I know what is going to happen mostly.

[AN/ALQ128]

Watched Dororo's first episode today. It seems pretty cool, never read the original manga or the older anime so I'm going in fresh.

[Seto Kaiba]

Finally found the time to sit down and finish watching Lupin III Part IV: the Italian Adventure today.

Lupin III doesn't normally do story arcs, and honestly I feel like this show could've done just as well without one.  They never really do much of anything with the whole Lupin-is-married thing even though they built at least two whole episodes around it.  The MI6 agent Nix is never really explained either despite being a recurring character.  What's his deal?  Why does he have at least two big superpowers?  The whole thing with Leonardo da Vinci and the Dream of Italy might as well have been another show entirely or a movie (it probably would have been better as a movie).

Still, tons of fun and the OP in particular is simply gorgeous.  

On to Conception, Kaguya-sama: Love is War, The Price of Smiles, and The Rising of the Shield Hero.  If I get stuck in the lab again I can probably do all four on Monday.

[JB0]

I watched the first episode of Kaguya, and it is everything I could've hoped for, random renaming aside(and renaming it for the english release and cramming honorifics into the new title is a whole new level of dumb anime localization)

[Focslain]

So I binged Lost Song over the weekend. It was pretty good though the twist after the half way point was not something I wanted to deal with at 4am. Stuck with it and the ending made sense and was cathartic. This show had some evil motherfrakkers in it.

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, JB0 said:

I watched the first episode of Kaguya, and it is everything I could've hoped for, random renaming aside(and renaming it for the english release and cramming honorifics into the new title is a whole new level of dumb anime localization)

It'll never be as dumb a renaming as when Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou was retitled Demon King Daimaou. 

(Another fine title from the department of redundancy department.)

[technoblue]

Got hooked on Rascal Does not Dream of Bunny Girl, and almost binged watched it in one sitting. I say almost because I stopped with three episodes left. I'll be watching those tonight. The plot twists related to adolescence are clever, and I really like the character interactions. Not sure I would describe this as a harem comedy, although it dresses itself up to look like one and then goes somewhere completely different. I like the genre play, and I know I'll be picking up the blu-ray whenever it arrives. 

Also finished Asobi Asobase over the weekend. Few anime have had me laughing out loud like this show. Definitely recommended. And although I would love a second season, the way the ended the last episode was almost too perfect. 

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

26 minutes ago, technoblue said:

Got hooked on Rascal Does not Dream of Bunny Girl, and almost binged watched it in one sitting. I say almost because I stopped with three episodes left. I'll be watching those tonight. The plot twists related to adolescence are clever, and I really like the character interactions. Not sure I would describe this as a harem comedy, although it dresses itself up to look like one and then goes somewhere completely different. I like the genre play, and I know I'll be picking up the blu-ray whenever it arrives. 

Also finished Asobi Asobase over the weekend. Few anime have had me laughing out loud like this show. Definitely recommended. And although I would love a second season, the way the ended the last episode was almost too perfect. 

Rascal Does not Dream of Bunny Girl, blah blah blah..   was the breakout of last season IMO.    Sad part is Aniplex has the rights to it,  so expect an overpriced blu-ray if you want it.

I was On Call this weekend so I was chained to the station which left me with lots of free time..   I finished World End.. Blah blah blah long title.    The series was interesting,  I think I will need to rewatch this title as I kept getting interrupted but it was refreshing coming off the drek that was Rosario Crapfest.     

I also got through most  of High Score Girl,   considering the main heroine says absolutely nothing the entire series I actually am enjoying it.   Feel kinda sorry for the blonde in this series.  The main heroine seems pretty 1 dimensional because she never says anything.

Edited January 14, 2019 by Stampeed Valkyrie

[technoblue]

27 minutes ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

Rascal Does not Dream of Bunny Girl, blah blah blah..   was the breakout of last season IMO. 

 Yeah, I am being repetitive. It's the result of being a season behind everyone else in the thread. I don't mean any harm by it. I haven't even looked at the winter anime list, and I have no idea what I'm going to watch next. Since my viewing pattern is to skip around until I find a groove, I'll probably go back to Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma and see if I can finish the third season. However, High Score Girl was also on my watch list too. I don't mind having a mute main character, if that's what you're getting at. That can work, if it is done well. 

47 minutes ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

Sad part is Aniplex has the rights to it,  so expect an overpriced blu-ray if you want it.

I like my Aniplex releases, so I'm not bothered by the price of entry too much. With luck, Bunny Girl will be more Madoka Magica in that regard and less like Garden of Sinners..

 

[Seto Kaiba]

I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting from The Price of Smiles... 

An original mecha anime by none other than Tatsunoko Production to commemorate their 55th anniversary provoked too much curiosity for me to give it a miss.  Unfortunately, if the first episode was meant to get the audience's attention then it failed miserably.  It's just... bland.  Nothing about it really stands out.  I literally just watched it and I can't even recall the names of the principal characters.  I'd like to call the first episode "world building" but it doesn't really do any of that either.  

Apart from establishing that it's future o'clock on a colonized planet where everything is powered by literal green rocks and which brought back the idea of nobility to get it through its early years of colonization for some reason, we don't really get much.  Giant robots are a thing, apparently.  The main character's a naive-as-hell 12 year old princess who "rules" a rich kingdom called Soliel in the wake of her parents accidental (haha... probably not) deaths, and who the episode seems to make pretty clear is the only one who doesn't realize that she's a figurehead being deliberately kept in the dark by the parliament and military.  Her knight and brother figure feels like a discount Edward Elric and has "decoy protagonist" written all over him, so he's probably not long for this series.  The only thing that really smacks of an actual plot is in the stinger, where it's made pretty obvious that all that talk about renewing non-aggression pacts with the neighboring Grandieger Empire was BS and they've probably been at war for a long time.

The character designs are pretty unremarkable, with the only standouts being ones that look like they're nicked from elsewhere.  The parliament's PM looks like a brunette version of Alto Saotome, the head of the military looks like Ozma Lee, and the princess's knight looks like Edward Elric.  Wardrobe by Tenchi Muyo!, or so it looks.  The princess's aide looks like her dress came from the same tailor as Ming the Merciless's usual robe tho.  The Kingdom of Soliel's architecture looks pretty heavily inspired by Yukikaze and Macross Delta.  The mechanical designs have that weird pseudo-skeletal look that the Seikijin from Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari had but applied to designs that otherwise looks right out of Full Metal Panic! or Iron-Blooded Orphans.  They don't walk, but instead hover everywhere on a flight rig that looks like the ref board skirts on Eureka Seven's SH-101 Spearheads, but which look (and seemingly work) like those super-expensive Dyson fans if someone converted them into propane burners.  The main one looks like someone grafted Kenshi's seikijin's head onto the Codarl's body.  One of the other ones looks like a barely modified version of the Rouei from IBO.  The enemy mecha on the website look like someone took the head off a Patlabor Helldiver and grafted it to the body of a Gjallarhorn EB-06 Graze from IBO.

The second episode at least promises a look into the war that apparently everyone except the princess knows is going on, so we'll see if it becomes less insipid as time goes on.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I am watching White Album 2 and it is so good.  I love Touma.  I am watching SukaSuka I loved it when Scarborough Fair started playing.

Edited January 14, 2019 by Hikaru Ichijo SL

[Seto Kaiba]

Two episodes into The Price of Smiles and it officially has my attention.

Really, episode two ought to have been episode one.  It does all the worldbuilding that the first episode didn't AND stiill manages to pack in a fair amount of action.  Apparently whatever planet this is set on in the far future isn't entirely compatible with the flora the colonists brought from Earth, so getting things to grow there is a bit of a chore and requires a lot of energy.  The Kingdom of Soliel is being invaded by the Grandieger Empire because the Empire is keen to annex the Kingdom's agriculturally viable land to feed its population.  

The battle scene feels oddly Macross-y much of the time.  Apparently something about the glowing rocks they use to power their giant robots (theurgears) either becomes unstable or just plain stops working above about 100m, so you get a lot of Macross-like high speed "aerial" maneuvers going on ten feet above the ground.

[Bolt]

Sounds cool..

[AN/ALQ128]

Second episode of Dororo down. So far so good. Gorgeous backgrounds courtesy of Studio Pablo, likeable main characters, a catchy OP and ED, and some nicely detailed fight sequences. I think I'll stick with this show.

[Seto Kaiba]

Had a go at Kaguya-sama: Love is War and The Rising of the Shield Hero.

Kaguya-sama: Love is War's first episode was so good I'm planning to rewatch it next.  It's like someone took out the supernatural bits and reimagined Death Note as a romance comedy.  Epic levels of overthinking, internal monologuing, and amateur dramatics.  It's even got an OP ("Love Dramatic") that is INCREDIBLY catchy.  While I'm not ready to count out The Price of Smiles or The Promised Neverland, I suspect Kaguya is about to become my favorite for the season.

The Rising of the Shield Hero... exists.  It's like the isekai fiction writers have stopped trying.  Being pulled into a fantasy world that inexplicably runs on video game logic with an overpowered gimmick has become a default setting to the extent that The Rising of the Shield Hero doesn't bother even having the four heroes pause for thought about it.  They take it completely in stride as though that were a perfectly normal occurrance.  It's also rather difficult to take the protagonist's supposed intimidation seriously when he's basically menacing the town toughs with an angry beach ball.

[JB0]

11 hours ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

I finished World End.. Blah blah blah long title. 

I just want you to know that this naming scheme is perfect, and I think I'm going to start referring to EVERY anime this way.

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

haha lmao..   seriously though these titles now are turning into full on sentences..

Full title is..

What Do You Do at the End of the World? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us?

[Seto Kaiba]

36 minutes ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

haha lmao..   seriously though these titles now are turning into full on sentences..

Full title is..

What Do You Do at the End of the World? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us?

I kinda wanna see how far they can take it.

Like, give us a Sengoku period drama with the title Let your rapidity be that of the wind, your gentleness that of the forest. In raiding and plundering be like fire, be immovable like a mountain. and sensibly abbreviate it Fuurinkazan.  

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

That title is rather long so I will just use SukaSuka.

[JB0]

4 hours ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

haha lmao..   seriously though these titles now are turning into full on sentences..

Full title is..

What Do You Do at the End of the World? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us?

You ain't lyin'. Somewhere along the line they went from "title" to "one-sentence summary" and then on into "back-cover paragraph."

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

A whimsical coming of age story that centers around the glory days of japanese arcades and video game consoles? Yeah, I think I'm hooked on Hi Score Girl. The second episode was a love letter to sick days and the PC-Engine/TurboGrafx-16 so I totally connected with it.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, JB0 said:

You ain't lyin'. Somewhere along the line they went from "title" to "one-sentence summary" and then on into "back-cover paragraph."

Next stop, the entire text of the light novel's first chapter!

[Focslain]

On 1/4/2019 at 12:22 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Anyone know if Domestic Girlfriend has been picked up for simulcast by anyone?

@Seto Kaiba Found that HiDive got this one if you haven't found out yet.

Edited January 16, 2019 by Focslain

[AN/ALQ128]

https://twitter.com/dororo_anime/status/1059414117872615424

A neat look at what goes into the background art for Dororo.

 

[kajnrig]

Apparently Satelight animated the anime adaptation of Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-Chan? Huh. I may have to check it out. It's been a while since I last jumped into the Haruhi clusterfrakk...

[BlackRose]

I'm planning to take a good look at Grimms Notes and The Quintessential Quintuplets over the weekend.  Maybe Meiji Tokyo Renka if I can find the time.

Shield Hero got off to a rough start but episode 2 was pretty good.  Naofumi got his morality pet so he's not sulking 24/7 at least.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I am just loving Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari it is just what I expected it to be.  I just love Raphtalia and just waiting on Filo.

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

I need to watch Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari,  I have it queued but haven't gotten to it yet.

Watching Girly Air Force...  and meh  still too soon to tell.

Date a live 3..   thank god this series seems to be panning out.. again too early to tell.   However with all the subpar PVs and artwork released I was worried.   I really enjoyed the first 2 and all the Haremy tropes.. lol.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

I've just finished the latest episode of The Price of Smiles.

The Price of Smiles is clearly aiming for both Macross's "both sides are good people" and Universal Century Gundam-style dark and depressing... and so far, they've got the Gundam side down pat.  A little too well, I think.  It's going to be really difficult to see any of the Empire of Grandiga's soldiers as sympathetic after this though.  Stella, who the OP makes out to be the new main character in the wake of Joshua's death, crosses a few lines that you generally don't get to come back from in a show like this.

Spoiler

The Grandiga Imperial Army sends Stella's unit to infiltrate a frontier town in the path of their advance into Soliel.  Part of the unit stands by outside town in their theurgears while the rest go undercover with assumed identities as employees of some drycleaning company.  They sneak into a warehouse for food supplies and discover the Soliel knights cleaned the place out the day before, and find some war orphan kids who were there to pilfer what they could to eat.  Stella gets a moment with a girl whose only remaining tie to her parents is a doll they got her before they died.  They leave the city and are told when the brass hears that the city has a hydroponic farm powered by one of the new chrars that they have to infiltrate it again, steal that new generator, and blow the place to kingdom come.

So... the entire rest of the episode is watching this Imperial Army unit basically murder their way through this town to steal that generator and bomb the plant.  They never really meet more than token resistance.  They rack up a large body count in terms of unsuspecting Soliel knights who mostly never get a chance to defend themselves.  The unit leader goes AWOL at the outset to try to rescue the war orphans, only for them to recognize him (in uniform) as an enemy soldier and naturally don't handle it well.  In order to get them in the truck, Stella literally threatens to start murdering defenseless children if they don't get in the van with a smile on her face.  They evac and the army blows the place up, and the unit leader reflects on the fact that Stella's as wrong as a three dollar bill.

So... the Imperial Army murders a bunch of dudes and our new leading lady has enough psychological problems to make Sousuke Sagara look like a model of mental health.  We're clearly meant to think of these enemy soldiers as sympathetic, but it's kinda hard to when they have very little problem with blowing up a town (implied to kill a bunch of civilians on top of the soldiers they murder to plant the bombs).  If I wasn't cheering for the Kingdom of Soliel before, I sure as hell am now.  They at least seem to fight with something resembling morals.

[Big s]

I actually kinda like rising of the shield hero. I think it the mix of absurdity and the darker animation. I’ve watched the first 2 episodes and kept thinking I would hate the show since it’s such a been there done that story, but the way it’s handled is sort of almost reversed from the usual or something. And I like the fact that he has to accept that he reluctantly has to be almost the bad guy to get anything done.

[Vifam7]

Watched the first 2 episodes of Girly Air Force. While it's too early to judge, I'm not getting a good vibe based on the 2 episodes. Looks like a generic "nice boy meets the Ayanami Rei girl and their relationship is key to saving the world" anime.  Plus another meh animation quality from Satelight.

 

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2019-01-20/dropkick-on-my-devil-comedy-tv-anime-gets-2nd-season/.142328

 

I am glad this is getting a 2nd season I loved the 1st.

[Petrov27]

Hinamatsuri - on episode 10. Not sure how I missed this one but wow its great