What Current Anime Are You Watching Version v4.0

[Seto Kaiba]

31 minutes ago, Hikaru Ichijo SL said:

I started The Saga of Tanya the evil.  I enjoyed the 1st episode.

It's an interesting title to say the least.  I'm quite fond of the alternate history it presents, a world where "sufficiently analyzed magic" became practical technology in the early 20th century and events are slowly building towards world war.  It's one of the top titles in its genre for good reason.

It's a shame that so little of the light novel has been adapted thus far.  A second season was announced back in 2021, but there's been radio silence about it from Studio NUT ever since, so all we have right now is the 12 episode first season and the "special episode" (plus a compilation movie).

If you take a liking to it, there is a passable English translation of the original light novel by Yen Press available in both realbook and ebook form.  Thirteen volumes out so far, with a fourteenth due out in June.

 

15 minutes ago, Big s said:

I watched the first season back when it first came out and before I was completely burned out on the whole dude gets resurrected as something else shows that became way overdone very quickly. I had fun with it. I even bought the figma. 

Success inspires copycats, and they did REALLY abuse the hell out of the premise.

IMO, the only ones in that genre really worth bothering with are the subversions of that "introvert fantasy" that drives most of the genre.  Not coincidentally, the major successes in the genre are almost all hard subversions of the formula where the protagonists either suffer a Reality Ensues, are Blessed with Suck, or end up in something approaching an ironic personal hell.

 

[Big s]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Success inspires copycats, and they did REALLY abuse the hell out of the premise.

 

They didn’t just abuse it, they tortured it relentlessly and then beat it into submission and then tortured it till it died , then resurrected it to torture it to death a few times too many and then abused it some more

[Seto Kaiba]

4 minutes ago, Big s said:

They didn’t just abuse it, they tortured it relentlessly and then beat it into submission and then tortured it till it died , then resurrected it to torture it to death a few times too many and then abused it some more

Yeah, that's a pretty normal trajectory for any genre that's trending.

You get some rough starts, a few key innovators who perfect the formula and make bank, and then a deluge of low-quality copycats trying to cash in on the trend before it goes out of fashion and the next thing comes along and leaves just the well-established and successful properties.  We saw this same thing happen in the 80's with mecha anime.

 

[Big s]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

We saw this same thing happen in the 80's with mecha anime.

Yeah, but in those, even the bad stuff was still good 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

19 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It's an interesting title to say the least.  I'm quite fond of the alternate history it presents, a world where "sufficiently analyzed magic" became practical technology in the early 20th century and events are slowly building towards world war.  It's one of the top titles in its genre for good reason.

It's a shame that so little of the light novel has been adapted thus far.  A second season was announced back in 2021, but there's been radio silence about it from Studio NUT ever since, so all we have right now is the 12 episode first season and the "special episode" (plus a compilation movie).

If you take a liking to it, there is a passable English translation of the original light novel by Yen Press available in both realbook and ebook form.  Thirteen volumes out so far, with a fourteenth due out in June.

 

Success inspires copycats, and they did REALLY abuse the hell out of the premise.

IMO, the only ones in that genre really worth bothering with are the subversions of that "introvert fantasy" that drives most of the genre.  Not coincidentally, the major successes in the genre are almost all hard subversions of the formula where the protagonists either suffer a Reality Ensues, are Blessed with Suck, or end up in something approaching an ironic personal hell.

 

Thanks, I will get the light novel when I can.

[Seto Kaiba]

13 hours ago, Big s said:

Yeah, but in those, even the bad stuff was still good 

There are those who would make the same defense of the many copycat isekai titles.

Also those who would point out that quite a bit of the bad stuff in those old mecha titles was genuinely just bad... in some cases so much so that it drove licensees and studios out of business when they gambled on copycat titles and lost.

[Big s]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

There are those who would make the same defense of the many copycat isekai titles.

Also those who would point out that quite a bit of the bad stuff in those old mecha titles was genuinely just bad... in some cases so much so that it drove licensees and studios out of business when they gambled on copycat titles and lost.

But I will say that most people of the past generation really didn’t badmouth most of those mecha shows, while I hear a lot of complaints from this generation about the copycat reincarnation shows. 
Either way I’ll definitely take another watching or two of Southern Cross over the majority of the modern anime 

[Seto Kaiba]

Well, I think I've finished up for this season except for Yakuza Fiance.  Pretty happy with it overall.

Definitely gonna grab a few of these titles on Blu-ray when they hit shelves.  Esp. Yakuza Fiance, MF Ghost, and Ron Kamonohashi's Forbidden Deductions.

 

6 hours ago, Big s said:

But I will say that most people of the past generation really didn’t badmouth most of those mecha shows, while I hear a lot of complaints from this generation about the copycat reincarnation shows. 

Looking at it logically, I think that has a lot more to do with the existence of the internet and social media.  It's easier for people to express their discontent in the modern era where in the 80's you'd have to pick up a pen and write a postcard to a hobby magazine if you wanted to make a visible complaint about the sameyness of the copycat shows and whether they'd even print it is another matter entirely.  There are some articles in those old magazines that talk about the problem, though with typically professional politeness.

A few titles, like Galaxy Drifter Vifam and Metal Armor Dragonar are noted to have underperformed commercially in part because they struggled to distinguish themselves from the titles they were imitating (Gundam) visually and narratively.  Southern Cross is probably the most extreme example.

Given that many of these isekai properties are, due to the nature of their stories, not likely to spawn sequels I wonder what the future of the genre will look like in ten or twenty years time.  Of the big four, KonoSuba's light novel ended a couple years ago with volume 17 and Overlord's is set to end in a year or two with volume 18.  Re:Zero and Tanya are still going.  A few of the other stars of the genre are over or on hiatus like Ascendance of a Bookworm (out at 33) and Rising of the Shield Hero (on hiatus at 22).

[Big s]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

A few titles, like Galaxy Drifter Vifam and Metal Armor Dragonar are noted to have underperformed commercially in part because they struggled to distinguish themselves from the titles they were imitating (Gundam) visually and narratively.  Southern Cross is probably the most extreme example.

I actually like all three of those and they seem to be getting new merch decades later

[Scyla]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Well, I think I've finished up for this season except for Yakuza Fiance.  Pretty happy with it overall.

Definitely gonna grab a few of these titles on Blu-ray when they hit shelves.  Esp. Yakuza Fiance, MF Ghost, and Ron Kamonohashi's Forbidden Deductions.

 

Looking at it logically, I think that has a lot more to do with the existence of the internet and social media.  It's easier for people to express their discontent in the modern era where in the 80's you'd have to pick up a pen and write a postcard to a hobby magazine if you wanted to make a visible complaint about the sameyness of the copycat shows and whether they'd even print it is another matter entirely.  There are some articles in those old magazines that talk about the problem, though with typically professional politeness.

A few titles, like Galaxy Drifter Vifam and Metal Armor Dragonar are noted to have underperformed commercially in part because they struggled to distinguish themselves from the titles they were imitating (Gundam) visually and narratively.  Southern Cross is probably the most extreme example.

Given that many of these isekai properties are, due to the nature of their stories, not likely to spawn sequels I wonder what the future of the genre will look like in ten or twenty years time.  Of the big four, KonoSuba's light novel ended a couple years ago with volume 17 and Overlord's is set to end in a year or two with volume 18.  Re:Zero and Tanya are still going.  A few of the other stars of the genre are over or on hiatus like Ascendance of a Bookworm (out at 33) and Rising of the Shield Hero (on hiatus at 22).

I think it is also an availability my thing. When I got into anime in the mid nineties, I was glad about every new release because there was so little of it (to me Bubblegum Crisis and Plastic Little were the best thing since sliced bread because there was nothing like it in western media).

Plus the companies licensing the titles in the West did already some curation for their customers, filtering out what was too derivative and focussing on the "classics" and titles already being successful in Japan (like Dragonball or Evangelion).

On the other hand some of the less stellar titles were probably chosen by the western licensees because of novelty and shock value (like M.D.Geist or Urotsukidoji)

Nowadays you can just watch everything of every season and filtering and curation is up to the viewer. Which is super tiring and not many people can do that.

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, Scyla said:

Plus the companies licensing the titles in the West did already some curation for their customers, filtering out what was too derivative and focussing on the "classics" and titles already being successful in Japan (like Dragonball or Evangelion).

Yeah, that's probably a big part of it right there... it was very rare for an underperforming title to be licensed at all outside of very specific circumstances (e.g. what happened with MOSPEADA and Southern Cross).

 

9 hours ago, Scyla said:

Nowadays you can just watch everything of every season and filtering and curation is up to the viewer. Which is super tiring and not many people can do that.

Not everything... but the selection is much broader both because the medium is more accepted and because the market model itself has changed.

Switching from direct-to-video releases to subs-only simulcast streaming cut out a lot of the upfront cost, so distributors could license more titles with less financial risk, so we get a broader cross-section of what the industry produces now.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

SAO alternative GGO season 2 ended.  I did not like as much as season 1.

[Seto Kaiba]

Caught the last episodes of the latest season of Blue Exorcist and The Healer Who Was Banished From His Party last night.

The Healer Who Was Banished From His Party was definitely a disappointment start to finish.  The animation is never better than "meh" quality, but the story is so disjointed and so full of random twists that I honestly found myself tuning out repeatedly during the final episode.

Blue Exorcist's season finale was actually pretty good, capitalizing on the tension that's been building all season long during the tedious exposition dumps and culminating in Samael sending Rin off into the past for another major exposition dump with an absolute nightmare face of a smile and the gleeful acknowledgement that he is a demon after all.  The only part that really doesn't land well is the incredibly derivative twist where...

Spoiler

Rin's sword gets broken, releasing his superpowered evil side.  It's Bleach's Hollow Ichigo all over again, but it's settled in like three minutes instead of stretched out into an entire episode, so the whole thing feels rather... inconsequential?  

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Arifureta made me laugh today. All those poor rabbits. Hajime is so ruthless.