What Current Anime Are You Watching Version v4.0

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

I started watching Domestic no Kanojo...   

Only 1 ep in at this point and it feels like a setup for an VN..

 

[JB0]

I've set a big Sword Art fan up with "Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online".

AKA "People can play video games without it becoming a big melodramatic life-and-death struggle, our hero isn't a ridiculous self-insert fanfic character, and sometimes folks JUST HAVE FUN WITH GAMES."  Truly a revolutionary premise in storytelling.

 

 

I think that sums up my attitude towards both the Sword Art franchise in general and the Gun Gale spinoff in specific.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I really am enjoying DATE A LIVE III the last episode was great.  I like Kurumi the most.

[AN/ALQ128]

 

I've set a big Sword Art fan up with "Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online".

AKA "People can play video games without it becoming a big melodramatic life-and-death struggle, our hero isn't a ridiculous self-insert fanfic character, and sometimes folks JUST HAVE FUN WITH GAMES."  Truly a revolutionary premise in storytelling.

 

 

I think that sums up my attitude towards both the Sword Art franchise in general and the Gun Gale spinoff in specific.

Gun Gale Online is the only SAO property I can stand. The author (Keichi Sigsawa) also wrote Kino no Tabi, which is quite good.

[RavenHawk]

 

Gun Gale Online is the only SAO property I can stand. The author (Keichi Sigsawa) also wrote Kino no Tabi, which is quite good.

I've avoided any and all of the SAO stuff, even when I'm in an anime rut, just because it is clearly (from the trailers) not at all my taste. That said, I finally started episode one of Gun Gale Online last night and am so far ok with it. Just ok. I think I'll watch it all the way through, but I feel no temptation to check out the rest of the franchise.

[JB0]

Gun Gale is everything Sword Art isn't.

Don't bother with Sword Art, it is a bad adaptation of a mediocre book series. Though credit where due, Kawahara Reki's gotten better.

[Seto Kaiba]

Once again trying to slog my way through Tatsunoko's original series The Price of Smiles.

It started pretty strong, but I gotta admit I can kinda see why it's been sarcastically nicknamed The Price of Gundam and Discount Code Geass... between the protracted attempt to play "Break the Cutie" with Princess Yuki and all the politics, it does feel a bit like it's trying to be both and neither at the same time.  First episode's got some pretty decent mecha combat though.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Wow Accel World got much better.  3d kanojo real girls is sure good, I am enjoying it.

[JB0]

 

Wow Accel World got much better.  

Whoo! 

I kinda love that franchise. I remain baffled that the same author responsible for it can also be behind Sword Art.

[Gerli]

Finished Houseki no Kuni... I was surprised that this anime flew under my radar... very nice story and CGI visuals.... very recommended.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

After finishing the latest episode of SAO Alicization, I realized I want to read the light novel.  Gundam X is really weird, but I like the Gundams.  I need my Misaka fix so I am watching Toaru Kagaku no Railgun, getting ready for season 3.

[Seto Kaiba]

It really is depressing how much promise The Price of Smiles showed early on that went unfulfilled in later episodes.

The battle scene against the Empire's scouting force at the start of the second episode has some excellent fight choreography with shades of Macross and Code Geass, does some good worldbuilding, and has a few excellent character moments.  The only thing to complain about animation-wise is that the theurgears never take visible damage, you just hear a "bullets-hitting-metal" sound and they fall over, with the exception of when Joshua makes his (ultimately) fatal charge to set off the explosives to seal off the Empire's route of advance.  The art quality was otherwise pretty excellent, even if several characters look like they were stolen directly from Macross Frontier.

On a second viewing, arguably the most interesting part of the worldbuilding.  Instead of relying on standard mecha anime plot drivers like a war being fought over political ideology, social dynamics, painful naivete, or simply for conquest's sake alone, the creators of The Price of Smiles attempted to build a surprisingly dark story around the premise of a war being fought over access to arable land and food production technology on a colonized planet where the terraforming process is slowly coming undone.  Escaping the planet to find a new world to live on isn't an option because their advanced technology is all based on chrarslapis, a mineral power source that stops working less than 100m above the planet's surface... which ultimately made powered flight into a lost technology.

 

[Focslain]

@Seto Kaiba -  Not sure if you got to the experiment scene yet, but that explains why the chrarslapis doesn't work at the higher altitudes. Not directly, but it's not hard to connect the dots.

On a side note, I almost joined Noafumi in his spit take in the recent ep of Shield Hero. The cause was not a reference I was expecting and it wasn't just for the dub either.

[Seto Kaiba]

 

@Seto Kaiba -  Not sure if you got to the experiment scene yet, but that explains why the chrarslapis doesn't work at the higher altitudes. Not directly, but it's not hard to connect the dots.

My first time thru I stopped watching at episode six because it was honestly impossible to like 99% of the characters.  I'm having another go at it since I've exhausted several of my other titles.

 

 

On a side note, I almost joined Noafumi in his spit take in the recent ep of Shield Hero. The cause was not a reference I was expecting and it wasn't just for the dub either.

Someone threw that one in for the anime (it's not in the light novel or manga), but damn if it didn't blindside me as well...

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I finally finished Accel World and it was good in the end.

[JB0]

 

I finally finished Accel World and it was good in the end.

And it will never get a second season.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

 

And it will never get a second season.

I will just read the Light Novel then.

[Seto Kaiba]

Ugh... carrying on with The Price of Smiles, and I'm being forcibly reminded why I stopped watching the first time.

It's a cliche storm presided over by a character who is basically a whinier, even more immature, spoiled, and arrogant version of the whiny pacifist girl archetype embodied by Relina Peacecraft and Marina Ismail.  She's so impulsively useless as a leader that she's arguably the best thing to happen to Grandiga's army.  She throws away her own troops in a failed bid to rescue a literally suicidal group of civilians, does everything in her power to hamper her own forces, and then tries to surrender.  By episode six she's made her own court so sick of it that they revolt against her order to surrender.

[chyll2]

I stopped watching at episode 8 or 9. I always kept telling myself that it has potential but it just sucked.

[RavenHawk]

Just finished Gun Gale Online. It was fine... but really didn't do anything for me. The last episode took some darker turns which I guess were supposed to be shocking or entertaining or whatever, after the more innocent (though still violent) previous 11, but... meh... just didn't do anything for me. I think I prefer a different style of storytelling.

[Seto Kaiba]

The Price of Smiles just WILL NOT give up on trying to force the audience to sympathize with the Imperial Army.  

Yeah, I get that some of them have had tough childhoods because Grandiga is an impoverished nation but that doesn't really go a long way when we're watching them loot the ruins of Soleil's capital city and herd its population into military transports that pretty clearly are destined for a prison camp somewhere and they've already told us they have no problems with killing children.

It's like Zeta Gundam... the show clearly wants you to feel bad for Jared, but he's kind of a prick and he's fighting on the side of the mass-murdering baddies.

[Focslain]

 

The Price of Smiles just WILL NOT give up on trying to force the audience to sympathize with the Imperial Army.  

Yeah, I get that some of them have had tough childhoods because Grandiga is an impoverished nation but that doesn't really go a long way when we're watching them loot the ruins of Soleil's capital city and herd its population into military transports that pretty clearly are destined for a prison camp somewhere and they've already told us they have no problems with killing children.

It's like Zeta Gundam... the show clearly wants you to feel bad for Jared, but he's kind of a prick and he's fighting on the side of the mass-murdering baddies.

Think we're entering hate watch territory here. Thankfully this is only a 12 ep run and the last one airs next week. So I'll binge finish it then. 

Seems like the series is going for not only, neither side is good, but this was on a trajectory of cautionary progress. 

[Seto Kaiba]

Playing catch-up with the week's offerings...

Gyakuten Saiban continues to be an entertaining series to follow as it plows headlong into the home stretch of adapting Gyakuten Saiban 3.  I doubt they'll be able to stretch the remaining part of the final trial for another five episodes, so I'm betting we'll wind up with either another flashback episode or another filler story.  As fun as the ham-to-ham courtroom combat has been, I'm hoping to see a third season adapting Gyakuten Saiban 4 and 5.  (Come to think of it, a second season finale setting a third season through showing Naruhodo getting disbarred for introducing forged evidence would be a good way to cap it instead of devoting an entire episode flashing back to it later.)

Kaguya-sama: Love and War is still absolutely crushing it.  Definitely the best show the season has to offer.  There hasn't been a single dull episode so far, and this week's is no exception.  The excessively dramatic narration only serves to make everything in the series even funnier.

That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime continued to be an exercise in boredom.  I have no idea how a light novel that's every bit as entertaining as the help documentation for Microsoft Excel got approved for a twenty-six episode series.  It's like listening to paint dry, and eighty percent of it is just random acquisition of skills and resources.  It's like the series was penned by an EVE Online fan or someone with a fetish for certified public accountancy, and remains a shining example of how to do an isekai story badly.

The Rising of the Shield Hero remains an occasionally entertaining series.  Less focus on the MMORPG aspects of the world has definitely improved it overall vs. the light novel which, like That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, was mostly an exercise in the protagonist's personal stat spreadsheet hell.  It's definitely shaping up like they intend to end the series with the Queen returning and deposing the king after Naofumi kills the pope of the Church of the Three Heroes.  That should make for a nice, tight ending regardless of whether it gets picked up for another season or not.  I kind of hope they leave it there, because there's only the one arc after that which is actually enjoyable and one after that is frankly tedious in the extreme.

The Price of Smiles, which showed so much promise at the beginning, has devolved into a dumpster fire.  As of its eighth episode, the series has yet to really evolve any sense of purpose or meaning.  Things just sort of happen with no sense that there's an end or reason behind it.  There are no likeable characters on either side of the conflict, and many of them are complete monsters like Stella "I'd kill children with a smile on my face" Shining.  With nobody to get invested in and no semblance of an actual plot, there really isn't anything to enjoy in the series.  The mecha combat devolved from exciting low altitude, almost jousting-like combat to static formation firing and all that's really changed is the Kingdom of Soleil's Lawful Stupid chivalric orders now have someone in charge whose grasp of strategy goes beyond "charge" and "hold your ground".  The Empire of Grandiga's troops are working more or less exclusively on Zerg Rush tactics, which makes for very boring viewing... especially since the Kingdom of Soleil still seems utterly unable to think of any way to cope with an enemy that outnumbers them.  Any time it looks like Soleil will gain any ground, they're IMMEDIATELY surprised by the Grandigan forces again and lose.  Episode eight goes so far as to accidentally lampshade that bad writing habit.  

If I have enough time, I'm going to get back to Lupin III Part V, The Morose Mononokean, Hajimete no Gyaru, and Conception.

[Big s]

This upcoming season looks intense. The teasers include Tanya the Evil, One punch man, Attack on Titan and others coming back along with a few new ones I know nothing about.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

http://moetron.net/post/183494122235/oregairu-s3-anime-announced

 

this make me happy I liked the 1st 2 seasons of Oregairu

[AN/ALQ128]

Kouya no Kotobuki Hikotai is quite enjoyable. Sorta reminiscent of Crimson Skies in that it follows a squad of mercenary pilots doing various odd jobs across a fragmented world of city-states. Excellent audio design and dogfight choreography too, although CG character animation is still pretty janky looking, especially during emotional moments like arguments between characters. The CG during those moments just can't be as naturally expressive as competent 2D animation, and it comes off as slightly stiff. Its not the worst I've seen though.

[Vifam7]

In preparation for the Super Robot Wars T game, I watched Expelled from Paradise.  It touches on familiar sci-fi tropes and topics but it was overall enjoyable.  Shame that it was only a 1hr40min movie. It could've easily been an OAV or TV series, but then it might've not had the brilliant CG animation quality. I had a feeling that Itano Ichiro was on the staff as there was a good amount of Itano circus going on.

 

[RavenHawk]

 

In preparation for the Super Robot Wars T game, I watched Expelled from Paradise.  It touches on familiar sci-fi tropes and topics but it was overall enjoyable.  Shame that it was only a 1hr40min movie. It could've easily been an OAV or TV series, but then it might've not had the brilliant CG animation quality. I had a feeling that Itano Ichiro was on the staff as there was a good amount of Itano circus going on.

 

I liked that one a lot. Not anything groundbreaking or super memorable, to be honest, but just enjoyable and well made.

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

I'm still watching Domestic X Kanojo..  I can't pull away from this series.  It's not particularly good or bad,  but watching things blow up in the main characters face is entertainment by itself.

 

As for the 3rd Season of Snafu...  that is great news..  I was resigned to having to read the LN if I wanted to see how it turned out.

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I started Joukamachi no Dandelion last night.  I really like the concept.

[Bolt]

Love ,Death, Robots.

Awsomeness

(..is it anime?)

be prepared

Edited March 24, 2019 by Bolt

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

11 hours ago, Bolt said:

Love ,Death, Robots.

Awsomeness

(..is it anime?)

be prepared

I've seen that pop up recently on Netflix..  was gonna give it a go at some point.

 

I just finished watching the Please Teacher Blu ray release by Rightstuf.     I haven't watched this title since 2003,  and it brought me back.    

 

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

What is it with all the sequels announced recently

Tensei Shitara Slime S2

Hataraku Saibou S2

ReZero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu S2

Oregairu S3

Kobayashi-san chi no Maid Dragon S2

 

I hope for an announcement of Hataraku Maou-sama S2 (wishful thinking)

Edited March 24, 2019 by Hikaru Ichijo SL

[chyll2]

Currently hyped for re:Zero and Danmachi announcement. Also hyped for the April stuff (even non anime like GOT), Titans and OnepunchMan

[Big s]

Love death and robots is kinda like liquid television for a new generation.