What Current Anime Are You Watching Version v4.0

[Focslain]

17 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

... yeah, that's just blatantly bad writing.

Thus far, there's been nothing in the story that would remotely justify Tatsuya arbitrarily deciding to make everyone underestimate his Mary Sue-tier powers even more than they'd be doing if he were passing himself off as a normal but capable Bloom.  

Agreed, but that is why missing his inner-dialog makes the anime a poor adaption. The LN is up front in the first volume that he screwed his entrance exam for his sister. He needed to pass enough to get into the same school, but fail enough to not out-shine her as he wants her to have a good high school experience. Plus there is his job as her Guardian, which yes I know there are times when that seems like his not doing it well in both version.

 

17 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Quite honestly, it's absolutely ridiculous that it'd take anywhere near that long for his classmates to notice.  

Oh no, some know almost off the bat. It's why Mari fights to have him on the Public Moral Committee and Mayumi helps in getting him to positions that generally Blooms are assigned to. Hell Mayumi uses him as a political tool a few times to show that the Bloom/Weed system is borked. 

Just that no-one calls him out because it takes that long for them to look past their biases. Even Hanzo (the guy he defeats in Ep2) doesn't fully respect Tatsuya until after the Nine Schools Competition. But that is kind of the point of the series, that the class system is bad and biases can blind.  To the world at large Tatsuya Shiba is a nobody, a low ranked bodyguard of a magic family's prize daughter. Hell even his dad holds him in contempt and he knows what the boy can do. 

The smart ones know Tatsuya is OP, just keeping that on the DL to tap into that power for their own means. In the end Tatsuya is a tool to those around him minus a few people, mostly supporting course 2 students and his sister.

It's not really shown in the anime, though the LN lays it pretty bare and that is a shame. Heck the anime is even skipping a good backstory arc that would cover a lot of history for the siblings if done. 

Spoiler

The school does change it's tune and shifts Tatsuya and some of the Course 2 students to Course 1 based on their actions during the first year. So it seems that society can learn. This is shown in the movie and I'm hoping the second season. I have yet to watch it but I haven't watched much anime personally this past year anyway.

In short, if you want to good version of [i]Irregular at Magic High School[/i] then read the LN, only thing you get out of the anime is visualization of the series world. The anime did it's job in it got me to buy and read the LN. 

Thinking on it I believe a good analogy to this would be if a newly hired janitor looked at a project you've been working on for months with no real progress, solves and improves it in a matter of minutes. Then goes back to sweeping floors. Said janitor has zero degrees in the project fields. 

How would you feel? How do you think your colleagues would feel? 

Edited February 25, 2021 by Focslain

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Working season 3, has been better than 2.  At least things seem to be progressing a bit.

[hachi]

10 hours ago, Focslain said:

Agreed, but that is why missing his inner-dialog makes the anime a poor adaption. The LN is up front in the first volume that he screwed his entrance exam for his sister. He needed to pass enough to get into the same school, but fail enough to not out-shine her as he wants her to have a good high school experience. Plus there is his job as her Guardian, which yes I know there are times when that seems like his not doing it well in both version.

 

Oh no, some know almost off the bat. It's why Mari fights to have him on the Public Moral Committee and Mayumi helps in getting him to positions that generally Blooms are assigned to. Hell Mayumi uses him as a political tool a few times to show that the Bloom/Weed system is borked. 

Just that no-one calls him out because it takes that long for them to look past their biases. Even Hanzo (the guy he defeats in Ep2) doesn't fully respect Tatsuya until after the Nine Schools Competition. But that is kind of the point of the series, that the class system is bad and biases can blind.  To the world at large Tatsuya Shiba is a nobody, a low ranked bodyguard of a magic family's prize daughter. Hell even his dad holds him in contempt and he knows what the boy can do. 

The smart ones know Tatsuya is OP, just keeping that on the DL to tap into that power for their own means. In the end Tatsuya is a tool to those around him minus a few people, mostly supporting course 2 students and his sister.

It's not really shown in the anime, though the LN lays it pretty bare and that is a shame. Heck the anime is even skipping a good backstory arc that would cover a lot of history for the siblings if done. 

  Hide contents

The school does change it's tune and shifts Tatsuya and some of the Course 2 students to Course 1 based on their actions during the first year. So it seems that society can learn. This is shown in the movie and I'm hoping the second season. I have yet to watch it but I haven't watched much anime personally this past year anyway.

In short, if you want to good version of [i]Irregular at Magic High School[/i] then read the LN, only thing you get out of the anime is visualization of the series world. The anime did it's job in it got me to buy and read the LN. 

Thinking on it I believe a good analogy to this would be if a newly hired janitor looked at a project you've been working on for months with no real progress, solves and improves it in a matter of minutes. Then goes back to sweeping floors. Said janitor has zero degrees in the project fields. 

How would you feel? How do you think your colleagues would feel? 

Only if you're Matt Damon...

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu is just so stupid.  The whole school is bunch of idiots.

[Seto Kaiba]

On 2/25/2021 at 9:15 AM, Focslain said:

Agreed, but that is why missing his inner-dialog makes the anime a poor adaption. The LN is up front in the first volume that he screwed his entrance exam for his sister. He needed to pass enough to get into the same school, but fail enough to not out-shine her as he wants her to have a good high school experience. Plus there is his job as her Guardian, which yes I know there are times when that seems like his not doing it well in both version.

TBH, even that doesn't pass the BS "sniff test".

Tatsuya deliberately flubs his entrance exam for First High to avoid outshining his prospective-heir-to-the-family sister... then takes every available opportunity to show off his skills while his sister loudly, obnoxiously, and almost literally sings his praises and gushes about how much more amazing than her he is to anyone and everyone who will listen?  It's just bad writing.  By the Nine Schools Competition his excuses have become so incredibly flimsy that it's completely unbelievable everyone's eyes aren't constantly rolling at his absurd attempts at false modesty.

 

On 2/25/2021 at 9:15 AM, Focslain said:

To the world at large Tatsuya Shiba is a nobody, a low ranked bodyguard of a magic family's prize daughter. Hell even his dad holds him in contempt and he knows what the boy can do. 

That's the premise... for sure.  But it's so unbelievable that it crosses the line twice from "actually pretty funny" to "cringe inducingly stupid".

That anyone believes Tatsuya is a nobody is ridiculous on the face of it.

For one, the girl he's bodyguarding is clearly an incredibly powerful magician whose abilities and status have already gotten her recognized as being more or less top in her year in First Year Course One.  On its own, that'd be enough to assume she was part of the country's magical elite and probably at least from a branch family of one of the Numbers.  That would mean she's a Living Weapon... and you don't send a powerless nobody to guard someone like that.  You send a Person of Mass Destruction who can paint the walls with any threat that could tangibly threaten someone like that.  For two, they're open about being siblings... meaning it's also obvious HE'S the scion of a powerful magical family, and since magical ability stems from a decades-long process of eugenics and genetic engineering that makes it the safest possible bet that he's similarly powerful.    Throw in his effortlessly beating up groups of more experienced battle mages and undefeated expert combatants, and the whole thing crosses the line into silliness.  

The fact that his own father bullies him despite knowing that he's a walking strategic weapon boasting the kind of firepower that can make a nuclear warhead look like a squeaky fart shows that everyone around him is too dumb to live.

 

 

 

On a quasi-related note, I've noticed that fantasy isekai anime seem unable to resist throwing in increasingly elaborate homages to Overlord.  Yojo Senki had advertisements for the light novel series in Tokyo in the opening.  Goblin Slayer has the side story Hero facing off against a lich who is very clearly a non-infringing Ainz Ooal Gown.  Now The Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter has its protagonist visiting an environment in the titular dungeon that is clearly a copy of the 6th Floor of the Great Tomb of Nazarick. 

[Macrossnalds Worker]

It's like I arrived from an alien planet when I read about the shows you are talking about. I couldn't have less of an idea of the shows or the content. I think I'm an alien from the year 1996  (the end of anime). 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2021-02-28/the-irregular-at-magic-high-school-franchise-reminiscence-arc-gets-anime/.170050

 

More Mahouka for all the fans.

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, Macrossnalds Worker said:

It's like I arrived from an alien planet when I read about the shows you are talking about. I couldn't have less of an idea of the shows or the content. I think I'm an alien from the year 1996  (the end of anime). 

Eh?  As the thread's topic indicates, we're mainly discussing anime that is currently airing... though when pickings are slim the topic also tends to be "What anime are you currently watching?" as well.

For instance, I've been watching (in parallel) the current-season offerings Jujutsu Kaisen, The Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter, So I'm a Spider, So What?, and Attack on Titan's final season.  I'm also backtracking to some of the stuff I've missed in previous seasons like my current marathon through The Irregular at Magic High School, the poor writing of which I have been expressing my frustration with.

There are a bunch of streaming services around these days that'll let you follow shows currently airing in Japan on as little as a few days delay like Crunchyroll, Funimation Now, VRV, and so on.  Several of those are kind of redundant since they carry each other's content, and Crunchyroll and Funimation Now are supposedly going to merge in the not-too-distant future.

[Seto Kaiba]

Jujutsu Kaisen continues to be my #1 for the season.

The animation quality remains excellent, and while things have bogged down a bit in the last few episodes with a protracted fight between the invading special-grade curses and the students from the two Jujutsu schools the actual fight sequences themselves are extremely well-choreographed.  The oddly anarchic sense of humor the story has definitely plays well with it too, like the two meatheads of the cast (main character Yuji and the rival school 3rd year Aoi Todo) having weirdly excellent chemistry for an extremely bizarre reason (namely, Todo wanted a friend who shared his taste in women and immediately decided to be besties thereafter), or the principal of Jujutsu Tech being an elderly man who fights curses with a Gibson Flying V and the power of rock.

The Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter has actually gotten less rubbish.  It's still a terrible show that never should have been animated, but at least for the near term it's stopped trying to titillate in favor of trying to develop its characters a bit.  Not that it does a very good job of that either, but at least I'm no longer cringing every thirty seconds and it's no longer has such a striking resemblance to the absolutely sh*t-awful mess that was Ulysses: Jeanne d'Arc and the Alchemist Knight.

So I'm a Spider, So What? continues to be pretty "meh".  It feels like the That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime general accountancy simulator phase of the story is nearing a close and that it might actually try telling a story soon instead of watching the nameless main character disinterestedly peruse massive lists of MMORPG skills.  The stuff going on with the other, human cast is mildly more interesting... if only because the story's actually bothering to explore what happens when you take someone who was already a self-entitled arrogant little sh*t and gives them immense power without a sense of responsibility.  You get someone who thinks the world belongs to them and that they can murder with impunity.  Kind of like a less-interesting, less well-developed, and less-justified version of watching Satoru Suzuki jump off the slippery slope in Overlord.

Attack on Titan's final season... well... what can I say?  This is Misery Porn.  Nationalistic Misery Porn.  Everything and everyone is awful always and forever.  There are no heroes, just the psychologically damaged and emotionally stunted Survey Corps members whose post-traumatic stress disorders have manifested as misanthropy or worse and the peoples on the continent including the nation of Marley who are dealing with the cultural, emotional, and psychological fallout of a history consisting largely of supernaturally-empowered genocidal pograms being enacted against them by the now-defunct Eldian Empire.  Quite honestly...

Spoiler

... if I didn't know that Eren was going to gain complete control over the Founding Titan without the restraint of the King's Will being imposed on him and immediately use its power to destroy the world outside the walls, I'd have assumed one side or the other would be Final Solution-ing the other sooner or later.  Both sides are Putting on the Reich pretty heavily, though the Eldians are doing it perhaps a shade more fanatically than the Marleyans.  It's quite disgusting, but then this series has always been all about misery and oppression as a state of being.

It's still going to be hilarious seeing the show try to play for drama the reactions of various characters to the sudden revelation that the guy who grew up talking of virtually nothing except his desire to commit a genocide would do something as out of character as committing a genocide. 

The world of Attack on Titan has child psychology problems beyond the dreams - or nightmares - of psychiatric analysts.  

 

  

1 hour ago, Hikaru Ichijo SL said:

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2021-02-28/the-irregular-at-magic-high-school-franchise-reminiscence-arc-gets-anime/.170050

 

More Mahouka for all the fans.

Hm... honestly, I can't say I see the appeal.  I'm having a lot more fun with the supporting cast than the Gary Stu at the heart of this series.

Especially Mikihiko and Mizuki.  The shipping going on in the background among the characters is more fun than the actual story.

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Attack on Titan's final season... well... what can I say?  This is Misery Porn.  Nationalistic Misery Porn.  Everything and everyone is awful always and forever.  There are no heroes, just the psychologically damaged and emotionally stunted Survey Corps members whose post-traumatic stress disorders have manifested as misanthropy or worse and the peoples on the continent including the nation of Marley who are dealing with the cultural, emotional, and psychological fallout of a history consisting largely of supernaturally-empowered genocidal pograms being enacted against them by the now-defunct Eldian Empire.  Quite honestly...

  Hide contents

... if I didn't know that Eren was going to gain complete control over the Founding Titan without the restraint of the King's Will being imposed on him and immediately use its power to destroy the world outside the walls, I'd have assumed one side or the other would be Final Solution-ing the other sooner or later.  Both sides are Putting on the Reich pretty heavily, though the Eldians are doing it perhaps a shade more fanatically than the Marleyans.  It's quite disgusting, but then this series has always been all about misery and oppression as a state of being.

It's still going to be hilarious seeing the show try to play for drama the reactions of various characters to the sudden revelation that the guy who grew up talking of virtually nothing except his desire to commit a genocide would do something as out of character as committing a genocide. 

The world of Attack on Titan has child psychology problems beyond the dreams - or nightmares - of psychiatric analysts.  

 

I tried watching AoT; I found it so disturbing that after a few episodes I gave up. They may as well call it Attack on Sanity.

[Sanity is Optional]

 

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Attack on Titan's final season... well... what can I say?  This is Misery Porn.  Nationalistic Misery Porn.  Everything and everyone is awful always and forever.  There are no heroes, just the psychologically damaged and emotionally stunted Survey Corps members whose post-traumatic stress disorders have manifested as misanthropy or worse and the peoples on the continent including the nation of Marley who are dealing with the cultural, emotional, and psychological fallout of a history consisting largely of supernaturally-empowered genocidal pograms being enacted against them by the now-defunct Eldian Empire.  Quite honestly...

 

Sounds about right. Also, it always irked me when the characters would suddenly go on long monologues that wouldn't feel out of place in an old philosophy book.

The show is decent, but I really do not see why so many people think it's the best thing ever. Seems very reminiscent of Lost, in that it's more the reveal of secrets that make people keep following the show.

 

As far as Spider, I'm having too much fun watching Yuuki Aoi ranting at the world and herself, when she's not doing the odd chuunibyou gag.

The animation/scene composition for the human parts of the show is pretty goddamn hideous, but the actual plot/conversations on that side are definitely more interesting in the anime than they were in the manga/LN.

I am very much looking forward to some of the upcoming stuff though.

Edited March 1, 2021 by Sanity is Optional

[Macrossnalds Worker]

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Eh?  As the thread's topic indicates, we're mainly discussing anime that is currently airing... though when pickings are slim the topic also tends to be "What anime are you currently watching?" as well.

Ah I just re read the title of this thread and note the position of "current"! Makes sense. Anyway I'm not criticising anyone or anything, just commenting that I am totally lost by most things in 2021 and feel like a dinosaur. I only have 20GB a month internet on my phone so streamings out for me. I feel like a time traveller from the past in this thread, and I really don't have a problem with that, it's just interesting. I'm pretty sure I don't want to live in the present with the way the world is going.

[Seto Kaiba]

Finished the first season of The Irregular at Magic High School last night while working on other things.

All I can say for it is that sh*t got real REAL fast.  I know this kind of school drama thing tends to revolve around an absurdly powerful student council and often an absurdly influential student body, and even though the series made no bones about the fact that magicians were seen as living weapons it was still very shocking to see so many of the characters who've been engaged in innocent school drama shenanigans only an episode or two earlier tearing through the Chinese invasion force with magic.  It was expected that Tatsuya wouldn't see any issue with killing via magic as a living strategic weapon, and Ichijou is literally famous for his gruesomely lethal method, but the rest of them?  Yikes.  They're so casual about their lethal techniques too.

Thinking my next series might be either the Bleach spinoff Burn the Witch, Dagashi Kashi, or maybe some of the re-released older stuff Crunchyroll has started making available like Voltres V, the original Mobile Suit Gundam, All-Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku, or Golden Boy.

 

[Focslain]

19 hours ago, Hikaru Ichijo SL said:

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2021-02-28/the-irregular-at-magic-high-school-franchise-reminiscence-arc-gets-anime/.170050

 

More Mahouka for all the fans.

Saw this over the weekend, glad to see they aren't skipping arcs whole sale. Was worried when season 2 was stated to be the Visitor arc.

Once I fix my funk mood I need to catch up on season 2. Going to try the dubbed version to see how well they did. 

Also heard they are adapting Honor Student as well. I'm hoping they do it in the bishounen style like Sailor Moon or Fruits Basket as it would fit the manga.

As part of the group watch:

Dr. Stone - was disappointed that the tank didn't look like the one in the opening. Still waiting to see if Tsukasa just one shots it or if one of his side-kicks do. Still neat how Senku is Macguyvering all this future tech. 

So I'm a Spider, So What - Seems that one mystery from the opening is close to being solved. Hugo seems ready to go full barbarian king (at least that's how he looks in the opening) last episode. There is a theory in my watch group that we have a time distortion as so far all the classroom seemed to have been born at the same time but the human ones are all in their teens and the spider has only been around for at best a month. I'm guessing this is a nurture vs nature allegory at least if the opening is any hint at what is to come and it seems spoilertastic.

Higurashi GOU- Well the torch got passed, just when we thought we were finally out of the loops someone brings us crashing in. At least now the lack of a closing animation made sense for the last few episodes as it spoils what happens in the most recent one. 

Log Horizon S3 - last two episodes were a side story of what happened to Crusty after the events of S2. It was weird but a little helpful that it was done in the form of a puppet show for the members of Log Horizon. 

Jobless Reincarnation - Story seems to be moving forward now. At least Rudeus is showing his smart enough to play politics once he has the information. His uncle is up to something, just doesn't want to pull the trigger until he has a fall guy. Eris is a full blown tsundere, but is warming up. While granted Rudeus was a leech in his past life, at least most have given his more uncouth behavior a passed based on genetics considering his parentage. 
Also, damn Ghislaine. You not only could bounce a quarter off her rear, you mint them.  

Time I was Reincarnated as a Slime - Been kind of meh, at least it looks like things are going to heat up as Tempest is gaining power and about to be a rival to a powerful human nation. Our group is a little behind, but I did see an image float on my feed that the human nation is not going to take a monster nation being better then them kindly. 

Also been going through What if a kid from the Last Dungeon moves to the Starter Town with a friend. Been a fun watch, if predictable. Favorite moment was  when one of the early baddies declared himself a demon lord just before his ready to beat the second most veteran of the heroes and said hero goes on a tirade about why he didn't say that early while they bolt to get Llyod. 

[Focslain]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Thinking my next series might be either the Bleach spinoff Burn the Witch, Dagashi Kashi, or maybe some of the re-released older stuff Crunchyroll has started making available like Voltres V, the original Mobile Suit Gundam, All-Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku, or Golden Boy.

Goldem Boy is short and bloody hilarious. Kintaro Oi was an inspiration. 

Edited March 1, 2021 by Focslain

[Seto Kaiba]

4 minutes ago, Focslain said:

So I'm a Spider, So What - Seems that one mystery from the opening is close to being solved. Hugo seems ready to go full barbarian king (at least that's how he looks in the opening) last episode. There is a theory in my watch group that we have a time distortion as so far all the classroom seemed to have been born at the same time but the human ones are all in their teens and the spider has only been around for at best a month. I'm guessing this is a nurture vs nature allegory at least if the opening is any hint at what is to come and it seems spoilertastic.

Hugo is... well... he's headed in the general direction of The Caligula about to ski jump off the slippery slope.

There are, admittedly, several very good reasons that he does the things he does... none of which make his actions any less abhorrent.

Spoiler

Natsume/Hugo is implied to have had some inadequacy issues that he covered with brash egotism even before he died and was reincarnated in the fantasy world governed by the System.  Growing up in the Renxandt Empire's royal family DID NOT HELP.  Renxandt is the nation closest to the Demon Realm and stands between the Demon Realm and a majority of the world's other nations.  It's halfway to being Cadia from WH40K in terms of being a heavily militarized nation on a perpetual war footing, and politically it's not a nice place either.  Natsume's post-reincarnation upbringing as Hugo was not a healthy environment and he was left both spoiled and socially isolated.  

Discovering that his school rival was now the center of attention when he finally met up with the other reincarnate-ees did nothing to help his mindset.

The abhorrent actions he takes are also motivated heavily by two other factors:

Spoiler

Natsume/Hugo sincerely believes that being reincarnated into a standard isekai fantasy world is shark-jumping bullsh*t and therefore everything (and everyone) is just a dream he's having.  His egotistic outlook means he's powerfully salty about what he sees as Shun/Schlain - his school rival - usurping his role as the "main character" in what he believes is HIS dream.

Spoiler

The reason he gets worse as quickly as he does is that the Ruler skills and a few other skills he picks up from the System later on are actively warping his soul because he doesn't have a high-enough level in Heresy Nullification to counter the side effects of those skills.  He's basically suffering from a System-induced personality disorder.

Spoiler

He isn't the only one who has this problem... Shun/Schlain also suffers from this, resulting in what can best be described as an alignment change from Lawful Good to Lawful Stupid.

 

 

 

 

 

As to the circumstances of the spider's reincarnation, it is absolutely incredibly spoileriffic...

Spoiler

Let's just say that you've already seen her original identity on screen in the episodes aired thus far... and no, it's not who you think.

 

[Focslain]

13 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

As to the circumstances of the spider's reincarnation, it is absolutely incredibly spoileriffic...

  Reveal hidden contents

Let's just say that you've already seen her original identity on screen in the episodes aired thus far... and no, it's not who you think.

 

Oh I know that already. Since Shield Hero I have a tendency to do a little bit of wiki research on series I have an interest in. I'm in a series for the journey, but if the destination is particularly bad then if after a few eps I'm not sold I get off the bus. (looking at you AoT). Found out the spider's fate rather quickly and I'm good. 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Horimiya is so strange and I like the characters.

Jaku Chara Tomozaki-kun has been good too.  Mimimi is my favorite character.  The characters design are obviously done by the same studio that did Irozuku.

Edited March 1, 2021 by Hikaru Ichijo SL

[Seto Kaiba]

So... since it's the only part of Isekai Quartet I haven't watched yet, I decided to start Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World today.

All in all, I know very little about it going into it except that Subaru is someone so pathetic even Kazuma from KonoSuba could mock him with impunity and both Ainz Ooal Gown and Tanya von Degurechaff thought he was pathetic... so my hopes for him are not high.  From the first couple minutes, I may still have to revise them downward further.

 

Very few isekai stories seem to have any real idea of how to get the story started... and Re:Zero is no exception.  Subaru is out buying cup ramen at a convenience store at night, blinks, and finds he's now in a public square in the middle of a medieval town full of demihumans.

He takes this way too f*cking well.  

I guess it's effective storytelling in its own way.  That he's so utterly unbothered, and even excited, by suddenly being pulled into an alternate world and losing everything and everyone he's ever known and immediately assumes this is the start of a new and better life as a Main Character says all that needs to be said about the kind of person he is.  After having to see that embarrassing spectacle, it's rather cathartic to see the usual isekai tropes defied when he discovers he's every bit as useless there as he was on Earth.  He keeps putting his faith in the standard isekai tropes, apparently blind to the fact that none of them have yet applied.

Nobody f*cks Subaru Natsuki but Life, and Life is using a cactus as a condom. 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

28 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

So... since it's the only part of Isekai Quartet I haven't watched yet, I decided to start Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World today.

All in all, I know very little about it going into it except that Subaru is someone so pathetic even Kazuma from KonoSuba could mock him with impunity and both Ainz Ooal Gown and Tanya von Degurechaff thought he was pathetic... so my hopes for him are not high.  From the first couple minutes, I may still have to revise them downward further.

 

Very few isekai stories seem to have any real idea of how to get the story started... and Re:Zero is no exception.  Subaru is out buying cup ramen at a convenience store at night, blinks, and finds he's now in a public square in the middle of a medieval town full of demihumans.

He takes this way too f*cking well.  

I guess it's effective storytelling in its own way.  That he's so utterly unbothered, and even excited, by suddenly being pulled into an alternate world and losing everything and everyone he's ever known and immediately assumes this is the start of a new and better life as a Main Character says all that needs to be said about the kind of person he is.  After having to see that embarrassing spectacle, it's rather cathartic to see the usual isekai tropes defied when he discovers he's every bit as useless there as he was on Earth.  He keeps putting his faith in the standard isekai tropes, apparently blind to the fact that none of them have yet applied.

Nobody f*cks Subaru Natsuki but Life, and Life is using a cactus as a condom. 

Wow, I never thought about ReZero this way and I am a huge fan of the series. 

[treatment]

I don't get it.

 

Not sure why anybody wants to bother with any "isekai" anime other than Konosuba, or should I say, after watching Konosuba...

 

EXPLOSION!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

Meh,  honestly if your already having an issue with ReZero and it hasn't even taken off I probably would just stop.       I did the same thing with AOT as the more I watched the more I had an utter disdain for it.    

These days there are way too many series to keep up with,  and when you start one and it's already behind the 8-ball I don't see the point.

 

Stand outs this season for me,  besides the already mentioned S2 of ReZero,  HoriMiya, Higurashi,  and Quintuplets S2.

Middle of the road right now is Log Horizon S3.. they seem to be out in the weeds again,  hopefully somthing happens to put it back on track

Stinker..  Last Dungeon..  

 

I still need to watch Slime S2 and the 2nd season of Promised Neverland.

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

29 minutes ago, Hikaru Ichijo SL said:

Wow, I never thought about ReZero this way and I am a huge fan of the series. 

It's enough that I'm actually curious to see where it's headed... I've not read the light novel, so I'm more or less in the dark except for what I know from Isekai Quartet.  If it keeps this level of subversion up, it may prove to be an actually-pretty-entertaining examination of the problems with most examples of its genre.  Very much like my favorite isekai series, Overlord, is an examination and heavy subversion of most of the standard western fantasy tropes.

 

1 minute ago, treatment said:

Not sure why anybody wants to bother with any "isekai" anime other than Konosuba, or should I say, after watching Konosuba...

KonoSuba was fun. 

Or, at least, the parts of KonoSuba that got animated were fun.

Once you get past that part in the light novel it gets really samey really fast.  Natsume Akatsuki seems to think character development is something that only happens to other stories, so Kazuma is stuck in a perpetual loop backsliding into being a NEET who has to be physically dragged out of the house between story arcs.

FWIW, the anime was excellent.

I guess you could say it's one of the few titles that stood at the apex of the genre over the last few years, alongside Overlord, Yojo Senki, Re:Zero, and Shield Hero.  I've seen and/or read all of those except Re:Zero so far, and they were all at least pretty good.  Overlord is still my favorite of the lot.

Most of the isekai titles I've seen are minimum-effort form letter garbage like Isekai Cheat Magician, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, and The Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter.

 

2 minutes ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

Meh,  honestly if your already having an issue with ReZero and it hasn't even taken off I probably would just stop.       I did the same thing with AOT as the more I watched the more I had an utter disdain for it.    

It's not that I'm having an issue with it.  I'm just sort of remarking on how and where it's subverting expectations.

Mind you, I am kind of a completionist... so even if a show is dreadful if it's not too long I'll usually stick with it to the end to see if it gets better so I can at least see the full scope of what the author intended, even if it's a pile of awful gibberish.

There are only a few shows I've failed to get all the way through.  Stratos4 and Strike Witches are on that short list, because the former was an excuse plot for yuri ecchi material and the latter just left me feeling like Chris Hansen was going to bust through my living room wall like the goddamn Kool-Aid Man.  I want to go back and give ALDNOAH.ZERO another go at some point, it had an interesting premise but was just badly paced so it got back-burnered in favor of other shows.

[JB0]

8 hours ago, Focslain said:

There is a theory in my watch group that we have a time distortion as so far all the classroom seemed to have been born at the same time but the human ones are all in their teens and the spider has only been around for at best a month.

The dual-threaded narrative was confusing as heck going as far back as the original web novel.

Spoiler

 

Not really a distortion, just a continuous time skip.

Everyone WAS reborn at pretty much the same time, and time DOES flows the same for all of them. The folks that didn't resurrect in a cave full of monsters are just introduced at a point in life where they have agency. Until the two story lines converge the dumb human segments are all set in the future, because almost no one wants to see teenagers trapped in baby bodies getting diaper changes.

 

 

[Petrov27]

Jujutsu Kaisen - liking this more than I thought I would though pacing is a bit strange

Slime S2 - meh, but I kinda knew that going in - finally some major events occurred in the latest 

Horimiya - like this quite a lot looks very nice

Quintups S2 - enjoying it. Nice visuals/animation

Wonder Egg Priority - interesting story and very curious as to where it goes

[pengbuzz]

I ran across an anime recently that I was considering watching: Sword Art Online (2012).

Anyone ever hear of this one, and is it worth the effort to watch?

[Seto Kaiba]

14 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

I ran across an anime recently that I was considering watching: Sword Art Online (2012).

Anyone ever hear of this one, and is it worth the effort to watch?

It's a low-rent version of .hack//SIGN for the younger generation with incredibly poor writing.

Both .hack//SIGN and Sword Art Online share the same basic premise of the protagonist being trapped in a fully-immersive VR MMORPG and unable to log out.  The .hack//SIGN series was more of a philosophical work with relatively little action, only a single player trapped in the game, and the motive being a well-intentioned and entirely benign part of the program that's been hijacked by a custodial AI that doesn't want to cease to exist the way it's programmed to when its task is complete.  Sword Art Online is more of an action series, where tens of thousands of players are deliberately trapped in the game by its one-man dev team who programmed it to kill them in real life by destroying their brains if they die in the game for asinine and largely arbitrary reasons that could best be described as "well, we need to have a villain".

[pengbuzz]

50 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It's a low-rent version of .hack//SIGN for the younger generation with incredibly poor writing.

Both .hack//SIGN and Sword Art Online share the same basic premise of the protagonist being trapped in a fully-immersive VR MMORPG and unable to log out.  The .hack//SIGN series was more of a philosophical work with relatively little action, only a single player trapped in the game, and the motive being a well-intentioned and entirely benign part of the program that's been hijacked by a custodial AI that doesn't want to cease to exist the way it's programmed to when its task is complete.  Sword Art Online is more of an action series, where tens of thousands of players are deliberately trapped in the game by its one-man dev team who programmed it to kill them in real life by destroying their brains if they die in the game for asinine and largely arbitrary reasons that could best be described as "well, we need to have a villain".

I thought I was getting a ".hack//SIGN" vibe from it; quite a bit from the little I know of it sounded familiar, but couldn't put my finger on it. Might still watch it, but glad I'm not going to invest too much other than maybe looking at the first few episodes and seeing how it hits me.

[Seto Kaiba]

Continuing in Re:Zero... I have to admit, as isekai protagonist superpowers go Subaru has what may be the weirdest I've ever heard of.

Beware Subaru Natsuki, a brain-dead hikikomori with the incredible power of real-world Save Scumming. 

Talk about losing the superpower lottery.  It'd be broken as all hell and ripe for abuse if only he could control it and activate it at will.  Instead, it only works if he dies... and because the world hates his guts, he never dies quickly or cleanly.

It's definitely an interesting subversion of the usual isekai tropes.  Instead of arriving in a new world in possession of awe-inspiring power (like Satoru Suzuki in Overlord), the potential to become stupidly powerful very quickly (like Naofumi Iwatani in Shield Hero), being Cursed with Awesome (like Tanya von Degurechaff in Yojo Senki), or bringing a powerful cheat at the start (like Kazuma Satou in KonoSuba, who brought a literal god with him), Subaru Natsuki got a superpower that might as well be fueled by post-traumatic stress disorder.

Truly, nobody screws Subaru Natsuki but Life.  It's like if Yamcha were the main character of Dragon Ball Z.  

EDIT: Jeez... he's been killed three times already and is only JUST starting to notice he's been repeating the same day over and over.  This boy's about as sharp as a sack of wet toilet paper.

Edited March 2, 2021 by Seto Kaiba

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

After finishing Working and enjoying it.  I am watching www.working!!

[Podtastic]

On 3/2/2021 at 5:29 AM, pengbuzz said:

I ran across an anime recently that I was considering watching: Sword Art Online (2012).

Anyone ever hear of this one, and is it worth the effort to watch?

I enjoyed it. Never felt the desire to watch .hack//SIGN.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Wow, Re Zero this week was so good as usual.

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

7 hours ago, Hikaru Ichijo SL said:

Wow, Re Zero this week was so good as usual.

I am in agreement.   The 2nd Season has proven to be as good if not at some points better then the 1st.

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

17 hours ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

I am in agreement.   The 2nd Season has proven to be as good if not at some points better then the 1st.

 

This weeks episode was a surprise for me too. I have been keeping up with the light novels, but this week was from 15 which i haven't even read yet.

[Seto Kaiba]

On 3/3/2021 at 5:27 AM, Podtastic said:

I enjoyed it. Never felt the desire to watch .hack//SIGN.

Sword Art Online is more of a standard shounen series, albeit on the darker side of the genre thanks to the whole "if you die in the game you die in real life" aspect.

.hack//SIGN is more of a philosophical character drama about the nature of escapism and mental illness.  It's definitely not as accessible to casual viewers, and it can be kind of abtruse at times.

 

Re:Zero... well... I'm a few episodes into it now and it feels like the previous couple episodes would have benefitted from more exposition.  I almost get the feeling the author's one of the rare and strange individuals who thought Haruhi's Endless Eight was a good idea, because that's kind of what the first three episodes started to feel like.  Does Subaru ever get... less stupid?  It's already pretty contextually clear he's some kind of Chosen One, but he's so wrong genre-savvy that he only ever seems to create more problems and piss people off.  I'm also getting the distinct feeling that this story is a lot darker than it's pretending to be.  Puck has made at least one leading remark suggesting he'll destroy the entire world if his master ever perishes, the King and royal family are missing and presumed dead or permanently incapacitated, and Subaru and Emilia are lodging at the home of Margrave Roswaal who might as well be wearing a sandwich board that says "I will die or turn out to be evil all along".