What Current Anime Are You Watching Version v4.0

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I can't believe that Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai.. is getting a second season in October.

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

17 hours ago, Hikaru Ichijo SL said:

I can't believe that Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai.. is getting a second season in October.

As I mentioned earlier,  the manga for this title is much better.    But the Anime was OK.    I'm not too surprised about this..  what does surpise me is the 2nd season announcement of Fairy Gone.. 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I started Yakusoku no Neverland and I was like, what the hell did I even watch.  I will definitely stick with it.

[Jaustin89]

10 hours ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

what does surpise me is the 2nd season announcement of Fairy Gone.. 

Unless I'm remembering wrong Fairy Gone was always supposed to be a split cour with 24 episodes.

[Seto Kaiba]

Well, I finished Jojo's Bizarre Adventure's "Battle Tendency" arc today.

So far, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure has been one hell of a wild ride, and it's one of the most consistently entertaining shows I've seen in recent years.  Joseph Jostar's epic troll behavior throughout Battle Tendency made watching him gradually wind his opponents up makes him an incredbily amusing protagonist to watch, and the whole premise is so outlandish with ancient mesoamerican super-vampire immortal shapeshifters, hammy nazi cyborgs, world-hopping adventure, and the gleeful abandonment of any pretense of taking itself seriously.

It's a shonen anime without all the baggage that makes shonen shows a pain in the arse to watch like the constant training arcs, the next villain being 3,000km away when the hero doesn't have change for bus fare, or using the word "nakama" like it's a damn punctuation mark.  Jojo just skips straight to the fun parts and rejoices in doing so.

I'm having enormous fun with Jojo, and I'm looking forward to what Stardust Crusaders will bring.

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

I finally saw Godzilla 3, the conclusion of the series.  Ghidorah and Mothra were nothing but a big tease. Not much giant monster action either, and it ends on a somber note.  Definitely not my cup of tea as far as Godzilla goes.

[kajnrig]

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Well, I finished Jojo's Bizarre Adventure's "Battle Tendency" arc today.

So far, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure has been one hell of a wild ride, and it's one of the most consistently entertaining shows I've seen in recent years.  Joseph Jostar's epic troll behavior throughout Battle Tendency made watching him gradually wind his opponents up makes him an incredbily amusing protagonist to watch, and the whole premise is so outlandish with ancient mesoamerican super-vampire immortal shapeshifters, hammy nazi cyborgs, world-hopping adventure, and the gleeful abandonment of any pretense of taking itself seriously.

It's a shonen anime without all the baggage that makes shonen shows a pain in the arse to watch like the constant training arcs, the next villain being 3,000km away when the hero doesn't have change for bus fare, or using the word "nakama" like it's a damn punctuation mark.  Jojo just skips straight to the fun parts and rejoices in doing so.

I'm having enormous fun with Jojo, and I'm looking forward to what Stardust Crusaders will bring.

I finished Battle Tendency myself yesterday (thanks to this discussion), and pretty much all of this is me. I find the constant "explaining" of every move (it's really more accurate to call it "justifying") to be tiring sometimes, but the characters are interesting enough and the goings-on zany and unpredictable enough that I just roll with it and have a good time.

The sudden shift to Stands in the next arc threw me for a loop. I thought the development of Stands would involve a story arc, but nope, just bam, first episode, ghost buddies helping you out. That plus the generational and geographical leap helps keep things interesting and the pace brisk. I can see why people like this show so much.

[Seto Kaiba]

Quote

The sudden shift to Stands in the next arc threw me for a loop. I thought the development of Stands would involve a story arc, but nope, just bam, first episode, ghost buddies helping you out. That plus the generational and geographical leap helps keep things interesting and the pace brisk. I can see why people like this show so much.

For my money, that's actually a point in its favor.  Stardust Crusaders jumps straight into the action instead of bogging down in the standard issue shonen anime expository/training arc.  We get maybe five minutes of exposition about Stands and their origin that gets spread across two episodes that occurs alongside the action instead of prior to it.  The best part, IMO, is how Jotaro receives the news that he's got a psychic superpower because his family's ancestral enemy, an incredibly flamboyant vampire, is on the loose again after a century, bodyjacked his great-grandfather's corpse.

He's not shocked, or panicking, or jumping at the call like a regular shonen anime hero.  He tells Joseph to his face that this doesn't make sense and almost immediately adopts the view that this crazy bullsh*t is just part of his life now with a weary "yare yare".  He just rolls with it and accepts that this is his new normal, so the plot can get underway immediately instead of wasting a dozen or so episodes pissing and moaning about his lot in life like other shonen heroes.

Edited June 30, 2019 by Seto Kaiba

[Seto Kaiba]

Decided to give Ao-chan Can't Study! a go over lunch today... and all in all I'd rate it as eminently skippable.

Long story short, Ao-chan Can't Study! is essentially a less interesting and less well-developed version of B Gata H Kei.  Ao is more or less the same character as Yamada (a teenage girl with an incredibly filthy mind) but the opposite motivation, and Kijima is the same character as Tsuda but less introverted and intimidated by her.  Since it's one of those shows that does 12 minute episodes only, there's no real character development and it's just one dirty joke setup after another.

Yamada in B Gata H Kei was just a curious teenager, but Ao in Ao-chan Can't Study! has a REASON for her filthy imagination that is played for laughs in the show but is horrifying if you stop to think about it.  Her dirty thoughts come from having been exposed to pornography by her own father (an erotic novelist), and the first thing we see of her home life is him sexually harassing her while someone from his publisher pleads with her to just put up with it so he'll meet his deadline.  He even swaps one of her textbooks for pornography at one point.

It's supposed to be a comedy, but it's intensely f*cking creepy if you stop to think about it.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Finished Senko and I am sad to see it go.  I loved it.

[JB0]

On 6/27/2019 at 9:03 AM, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

Kono Yo no Hate de Koi wo Utau Shoujo YU-NO...   on my list to watch probably will get to it after AX this year.   Apparently the VN it is based off of is getting a western release,  and has been recommended to me.

Thanks for reminding me this happened. I'm rather fond of the original game (and not alone), looking forward to the remake's english release, and... well, I was curious about the anime version.

Two episodes in and I quite like how they're handling it, though I really wish they had some better animation. 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I finished Yakusoku no Neverland and it was excellent.

[Seto Kaiba]

Since my work computer decided to crap out on me for a few hours today, I got to do a little extra discretionary viewing while I waited to fix it and started Magical Sempai and To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts.

Magical Sempai is another one of those 13 minute short shows, the type I'm increasingly convinced are the anime industry's way of disposing of ideas forced on it by flavor of the week manga publishers.  A high school freshman in a school where after-school club participation is mandatory is looking for a club to join and is dragooned into joining the magic club, the only other member of which is a buxom upperclassman girl who suffers from stage fright and seems to be desperately terrible at magic.  The series so far has one episode and exactly one joke: she sucks at magic so any attempt at a magic trick devolves into her screwing up while he plays the straight man.  The ED kind of leaves the feeling that it's going to lean on fanservice pretty heavily like Ao-chan Can't Study! did, but I'll give it a few more episodes before I pass judgement.

To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts, however, has my full attention.  On a continent called Patria war was beginning a civil war is raging between a heavily industrialized north and a man-labor intensive south, fought with approximately American Civil War levels of tech.  The South had the North on the run with its superior manpower until the North introduced a new breed of supersoldier called the Incarnates, who can morph into giant mythological beasts like werewolves, harpies, snakemen, and what have you.  The North's Incarnate unit quickly turns the tide and the South surrenders, and orders come down for the Incarnates to be exterminated because they pose too great a threat to the new peace.  Incarnate soldiers have started losing control over their powers and devolving into dangerous, violent beasts who kill indiscriminately.  The Incarnate unit's second in command, who was tapped to help the authorities put the Incarnates down, guns down the doctor responsible for the unit and sends the remaining Incarnate troops into hiding except for the unit's leader, Hank Henriette, who'd already been shot by the doctor.  Cue a timeskip, and the newly reunified Patrian government is dispatching Hank Henriette to deal with the now out-of-control Incarnates as they slowly devolve into beasthood with a personal goal of taking revenge on his former second in command Cain Madhouse (because Obvious McBadguy wasn't available?).  It's an odd premise, but I have to admit the first episode is extremely promising and has kind of a Fullmetal Alchemist vibe to it.  I'm looking forward to seeing where this one goes.

I've also shot through a few more episodes of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders.  These two-parters feel unnecessarily stretched out.  Especially Death 13's.  It's still a highly enjoyable show, but it feels like it's dragging a bit now that Jotaro and company are practically on Egypt's doorstep.  

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I started School Rumble and it was really funny.

[Seto Kaiba]

Mother nature decided to rain on our cookout, so @BlackRose and I started Domestic Girlfriend today.

I'm not sure I'm sold on it.  It definitely feels different from the usual fanservice-heavy step-sibling love story nonsense that's been done to death in the anime industry, but not by all that much.  Mostly it's a gender flip so the one doing the lusting-after is the step-brother rather than the step-sister and the cold, aloof one is the step-sister.

Spoiler

I can, at least, kind of feel bad for Natsuo since random crap keeps getting sprung on him at the last possible second and he has to roll with the punches... and they're some pretty hefty punches like "I'm getting remarried, your new mom will be here to visit in fifteen seconds" or "your teacher and that plainly disinterested girl you had meaningless sex with yesterday are your new step-siblings". 

If this were Punch Out!, this poor kid's up against Mr. Dream in round one and not doing so hot.

EDIT: Ok, yeah... pretty different.  This is starting to feel like an overlong setup for a tragic murder-suicide sort of love story.

Edited July 5, 2019 by Seto Kaiba

[BlackRose]

After 5 episodes I'm dropping Domestic Girlfriend.  I'm all for drama in romance but this show doesn't have drama it has relentless misery.  Natsuo is miserable because he's crushing on his teacher Hina who is in a relationship.  Hina is miserable because she's the other woman to an unfaithful husband.  Rui is miserable because Hina is miserable and she's socially awkward.  Their parents are miserable because they don't understand why their kids are miserable.  And now there's a suicidal girl too.  This is daily soaps levels of messed up but without the camp it's just depressing.

I have higher hopes for Magical Sempai.  It seems like a fun little comedy after the first episode.  Nobunaga Teacher's Young Bride and To The Abandoned Sacred Beasts sound like fun too.

I put Servant x Service back into the lunchtime lineup as a pick me up after that depressing mess Domestic Girlfriend.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I finally started Yamato 2202 and it has been good so far.

[kajnrig]

Finished the journey to Egypt arc of Stardust Crusaders. The formula got a bit boring by the end of the season - lots of monster of the week plots - but the developing camaraderie of the team helped get me through it. Episodes 10 and 22, though. BANG! right in the feels.

It would have been nice if more of the enemies had received similar longer-term stories. They were all interesting in their own ways, only to almost universally be dispatched within one or two episodes. Here's hoping some are secretly Hol Horses, though.

[Seto Kaiba]

14 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

It would have been nice if more of the enemies had received similar longer-term stories. They were all interesting in their own ways, only to almost universally be dispatched within one or two episodes. Here's hoping some are secretly Hol Horses, though.

Seems like almost every enemy in the second half of Stardust Crusaders gets a two-parter.

The Oingo Boingo brothers are, in their own way, bizarrely compelling as possibly the most incompetent, and therefore most sympathetic, antagonists in the story thus far... and they actually survive their two-parter.

[TangledThorns]

Finished Attack on Titan's 3rd season on HULU. Really made up for last season. Next season will be its last so I hope it ends well.

 

[Marzan]

Guys, check out Fire Force. Art, animation is all top notch and a premise that’s a bit different to what we’re used to.

[SuperHobo]

4 hours ago, Marzan said:

Guys, check out Fire Force. Art, animation is all top notch and a premise that’s a bit different to what we’re used to.

Pretty good first episode. I hope they can keep up that level of quality. MHA does nothing for me, but this show along with Demon Slayer full-fills my shounen anime viewing. 

[Marzan]

2 hours ago, SuperHobo said:

Pretty good first episode. I hope they can keep up that level of quality. MHA does nothing for me, but this show along with Demon Slayer full-fills my shounen anime viewing. 

I was really digging Demon slayer too

until Dumb and Dumber showed up. They completely changed the tone of the show for me.

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, Marzan said:

Guys, check out Fire Force. Art, animation is all top notch and a premise that’s a bit different to what we’re used to.

This season seems to have a number of atypically strong offerings.  

[Seto Kaiba]

Well, I've finished Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part III: Stardust Crusaders.

I'm kinda disappointed in the ending, TBH.  48 episodes and DIO only really shows up in the last four or so, and the Jotaro realizing that his Stand had more powers than just "punch all the things" felt weirdly late to the party.  Vanilla Ice got more buildup than DIO did and he was the entire objective of the plot.

I went in largely spoiler free, so I was kinda surprised at who all survived the end of the story.  Polnareff was the most developed of the supporting characters so I figured he was a cert to die as the dead best friend who motivates the hero's roaring rampage of revenge, like the Zeppeli family was.  Avdol's death came out of freaking nowhere, it was really shockingly unceremonious.  Iggy got more of a dignified exit than he did.  Even DIO's demise felt kind of rushed.  He only gets hurt a few times, and he just explodes like he'd been eating a box of live grenades when his Stand is broken.

The second D'Arby brother's fight was drawn out way too freaking long, but the ending was pretty satisfying at least.  Iggy's fight with Pet Shop was just tedious.

[JB0]

Honestly? I couldn't care about Avdol's death. After they brought him back, I couldn't get particularly invested in him. It was a joke.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Honestly? I couldn't care about Avdol's death. After they brought him back, I couldn't get particularly invested in him. It was a joke.

Granted, he's basically there for The Worf Effect anytime he actually fights but there are One Episode Wonder villains who go out with more fanfare than he did.  Even his own fake death got more attention.  Kakyoin went out with way more dignity and he was even less effective than Avdol, with his only wins being against a baby and an insect.

[JB0]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Even his own fake death got more attention.

That's what I mean. I was invested in his first death. It had WEIGHT.

I sorta felt cheated when he came back, and never really got over it. And bringing him back just to kill him again was narratively stupid.

[kajnrig]

Well crap, now I know he dies for real. Eh, it was a 30-years old spoiler, I guess I can live with it.

[Seto Kaiba]

52 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

Well crap, now I know he dies for real. Eh, it was a 30-years old spoiler, I guess I can live with it.

F*ck, my bad mate. 

 

I started Aldnoah.Zero today, since Crunchyroll is once again being slow to update.  I've heard relatively little about it, save for that it supposedly reverses Gundam's favorite schtick of having a single super-prototype swaggering invincibly through swarms of small fry by giving the nigh-invincible super prototypes to the baddies and having the heroes operate those swarms of cannon fodder that explode if someone farts too loudly.  The first episode's pretty insubstantial, what with [...]

Spoiler

[...] the episode being largely given over to introducing the characters and the general setting. 

I already have one or two nagging questions about the premise.  Namely, how did every astronomer on Earth fail to notice a football stadium-sized hyperspace gate ILLUMINATED BY HUGE TOWER-MOUNTED FLOODLIGHTS on the freaking Moon?!  Especially if it was within walking distance of a planned Apollo mission landing site!  Moreover, how the hell did 1970s technology transport hundreds of thousands of people to the Moon to use the hyperspace gate to get to Mars?  How the hell did 1970s technology create a colony on Mars so large and self-sustaining that it could declare independence from Earth?  How did they build 37 city-sized space stations in a matter of years?  Why in the nine hells are they acting like a different race or species from Earth's population when they're literally first generation space colonists?  How did all this sh*t go down in just 27 years?!

None of this makes a lick of sense if you think about it.

 

Edited July 8, 2019 by Seto Kaiba

[AN/ALQ128]

Picked up Cop Craft this season. So far so good, urban fantasy buddy cop shenanigans, decently catchy soundtrack, chara designs by Range Murata, based off of an LN series by Shoji Gatoh.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I started If It's for My Daughter, I'd Even Defeat a Demon Lord and might be cute enough to keep me with it.

[Focslain]

47 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I started Aldnoah.Zero today, since Crunchyroll is once again being slow to update.  I've heard relatively little about it, save for that it supposedly reverses Gundam's favorite schtick of having a single super-prototype swaggering invincibly through swarms of small fry by giving the nigh-invincible super prototypes to the baddies and having the heroes operate those swarms of cannon fodder that explode if someone farts too loudly.  The first episode's pretty insubstantial, what with [...]

  Reveal hidden contents

[...] the episode being largely given over to introducing the characters and the general setting. 

I already have one or two nagging questions about the premise.  Namely, how did every astronomer on Earth fail to notice a football stadium-sized hyperspace gate ILLUMINATED BY HUGE TOWER-MOUNTED FLOODLIGHTS on the freaking Moon?!  Especially if it was within walking distance of a planned Apollo mission landing site!  Moreover, how the hell did 1970s technology transport hundreds of thousands of people to the Moon to use the hyperspace gate to get to Mars?  How the hell did 1970s technology create a colony on Mars so large and self-sustaining that it could declare independence from Earth?  How did they build 37 city-sized space stations in a matter of years?  Why in the nine hells are they acting like a different race or species from Earth's population when they're literally first generation space colonists?  How did all this sh*t go down in just 27 years?!

None of this makes a lick of sense if you think about it.

 

Ok yeah the set up of this series is nuts considering the short time span. Just wait til the brief history is Vers shown. That makes even less sense.

On that though the series isn't too bad. Just make sure to watch the last episode of season 1 and first episode of season 2 back to back.

Also Inaho is massively OP. His like Tatsuya from Irregular but with mechs and without the sister complex.

[JB0]

5 hours ago, kajnrig said:

Well crap, now I know he dies for real. Eh, it was a 30-years old spoiler, I guess I can live with it.

Ooops. Sorry, man.

</Darth Vader is Luke's father>

[kajnrig]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

F*ck, my bad mate. 

20 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Ooops. Sorry, man.

</Darth Vader is Luke's father>

No worries, mates. Gonna restart the binge tonight, hopefully I make it through the entire season before tapping out for the night.