What Current Anime Are You Watching Version v4.0

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

16 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I'm not surprised... this one was cutesy and feel-good enough that it was at least inoffensive for an isekai series.

 

Now that I've finished the season, I definitely share your position on it.

First seven episodes?  Gorgeous.  Glamorous.  Tight, compelling storytelling with an unusual setup.

When you end your story's prologue with the protagonist repeatedly defeating a god - an actual, literal, cosmological deity rather than a powerful person with delusions of grandeur - anything they do afterwards is an anticlimax.  Come episode 7.5, Will has defeated the God of Undeath in single combat TWICE and he hasn't even left home yet to start on his hero's journey.  Going directly from that to spanking half-starved bandits and the odd wyvern?  

Not even close,  a back story that could have been shortened to 2 episodes tops.. not 6 or 7.     It held my interest,  but much like other titles this season nothing to rave about.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

4 minutes ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

Not even close,  a back story that could have been shortened to 2 episodes tops.. not 6 or 7.     It held my interest,  but much like other titles this season nothing to rave about.

IMO, the slow build-up in the prologue was a good call.

Unlike so many dead parent backstories, this one actually gave the audience enough time to get properly invested in Blood, Gus, and Mary as characters to give their demise more of an impact than your standard "here to die" dead parents whose death is the only way they're remotely significant to the story (e.g. Thomas and Martha Wayne Syndrome).

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

37 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I'm not surprised... this one was cutesy and feel-good enough that it was at least inoffensive for an isekai series.

 

Now that I've finished the season, I definitely share your position on it.

First seven episodes?  Gorgeous.  Glamorous.  Tight, compelling storytelling with an unusual setup.

When you end your story's prologue with the protagonist repeatedly defeating a god - an actual, literal, cosmological deity rather than a powerful person with delusions of grandeur - anything they do afterwards is an anticlimax.  Come episode 7.5, Will has defeated the God of Undeath in single combat TWICE and he hasn't even left home yet to start on his hero's journey.  Going directly from that to spanking half-starved bandits and the odd wyvern?  

I liked 300-slime it was fun.  But more Yuuki Aoi is never bad either.

[Seto Kaiba]

18 minutes ago, Hikaru Ichijo SL said:

I liked 300-slime it was fun.  But more Yuuki Aoi is never bad either.

I'm not saying it's a bad show... IMO, it just didn't do enough to stand out among the dozen or so other isekai shows with the very similar permutations on "overworked wage slave gets reincarnated to lead the slow life".

In hindsight, I'm not sure I'd even say that's a fault in that specific show so much as an issue with Isekai being massively overrepresented as a genre with an increasing number of low-effort copycat releases leaving everything feeling a bit samey.

 

Nothing on the Winter 2022 release schedule so far really catches my interest, so I'm going to have another go at Lost Universe.  The last two times I've tried to get through it, I just give up around episode 10 out of boredom.  Not Hajime Kanzaka's best work by a long way.

Crunchyroll's Winter 2022 offerings are pretty sad.  The same old shounen stuff (One Piece, Boruto), shoujo stuff (Pretty Cure), yet more Case Closed (which will run forever into eternity), an OVA for The Irregular at Magic High School, Blade Runner, a reverse harem thing featuring the shinsengumi, and that's about it.

All that really stands out from ANN's list is yet another Saiyuki Reload series, season two of Realist Hero, and the painful mess that is Attack on Titan final story arc limping to its long overdue end.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

4 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I'm not saying it's a bad show... IMO, it just didn't do enough to stand out among the dozen or so other isekai shows with the very similar permutations on "overworked wage slave gets reincarnated to lead the slow life".

In hindsight, I'm not sure I'd even say that's a fault in that specific show so much as an issue with Isekai being massively overrepresented as a genre with an increasing number of low-effort copycat releases leaving everything feeling a bit samey.

 

Nothing on the Winter 2022 release schedule so far really catches my interest, so I'm going to have another go at Lost Universe.  The last two times I've tried to get through it, I just give up around episode 10 out of boredom.  Not Hajime Kanzaka's best work by a long way.

Crunchyroll's Winter 2022 offerings are pretty sad.  The same old shounen stuff (One Piece, Boruto), shoujo stuff (Pretty Cure), yet more Case Closed (which will run forever into eternity), an OVA for The Irregular at Magic High School, Blade Runner, a reverse harem thing featuring the shinsengumi, and that's about it.

All that really stands out from ANN's list is yet another Saiyuki Reload series, season two of Realist Hero, and the painful mess that is Attack on Titan final story arc limping to its long overdue end.

I agree that 300-slime didn't stand out at all.  This next season is looking rather vacant.  Just Realist Hero and Arifureta season 2 for me.

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

19 hours ago, Hikaru Ichijo SL said:

I agree that 300-slime didn't stand out at all.  This next season is looking rather vacant.  Just Realist Hero and Arifureta season 2 for me.

 

There are a few titles on my radar for Winter 2022..

Arifureta is on it but on a short leash,  it could easily pull the other slime series on me in the 2nd season and get dropped and forgotten.

Realist Hero...  looks promising,  was into it enough to read some of the source material.

Shuumatsu no Harem..   TBH it was already pissing people off.  so it gets a watch by default.

Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru..   I am familiar with the manga and I liked it.    So on my list it goes.

Princess Connect! Re:Dive Season 2...   First season was entertaining,  so why not.

Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san 3..   A rare series that the Mrs.  enjoys.   She knows its coming as I keep getting asked about it. 

 

There are a few more on the list that my group wants to check out..  like every season the list starts big.. and then gets whittled down to a handful a few episodes in.

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2022-01-04/kancolle-anime-season-2-premieres-this-fall/.181227

 

finally a date.

2 hours ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

 

There are a few titles on my radar for Winter 2022..

Arifureta is on it but on a short leash,  it could easily pull the other slime series on me in the 2nd season and get dropped and forgotten.

Realist Hero...  looks promising,  was into it enough to read some of the source material.

Shuumatsu no Harem..   TBH it was already pissing people off.  so it gets a watch by default.

Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru..   I am familiar with the manga and I liked it.    So on my list it goes.

Princess Connect! Re:Dive Season 2...   First season was entertaining,  so why not.

Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san 3..   A rare series that the Mrs.  enjoys.   She knows its coming as I keep getting asked about it. 

 

There are a few more on the list that my group wants to check out..  like every season the list starts big.. and then gets whittled down to a handful a few episodes in.

That is usually what happens to me. I tend to drop a few, but when i start with so few to begin with i usually stick with it.  Arifureta will never be dropped for 2 reasons.  I love the story and my favorite voice actress Satou Rina is in it.

[Keith]

Wow, Kancolle is back? Maybe there is still hope for "Haruhi" & "Spice and Wolf".

[pengbuzz]

Left off the last anime I was watching; it just wasn't working for me. Gotta go look online to see what's worthwhile.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I started Nyan Koi and Yuuki Yuuna is a hero.  Both are good.  Nyan Koi episode 3 starts and here comes Mochizuki Chizuru,  Her voice is instantly identifiable as Satou Rina.

[Seto Kaiba]

Finished Lost Universe.

It's... eminently skippable.  It's tedious and has very little to offer besides cheap slapstick and borrowed lore from Slayers.  If you've ever wondered what Stroheim from Jojo would be like as a girl, it's Millie.  She insists she's number one in the universe at <BLANK> as often as he screams German science is number one in the world.  It seems to be about the only line she actually has besides excusing her repeated detonations of Swordbreaker's kitchen every time she attempts to so much as boil water.

I can definitely see why funding for the planned second season never materialized.

It's not quite Angel Links levels of unwanted sequel, but it gets up there at a few points.  Especially around the point when they take a job that involves visiting a planet where they end up caught in sectarian violence between a religious group whose holy symbol is a ridiculous horned headdress and one whose holy symbol is a chicken suit.

 

Loads more "I've been isakei'd into a MMORPG world" shows this season.  Skipping pretty much all of those.

 

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

Wow Lost Universe..  I remember seeing that popup on ADV films forced previews along with other titles like Gasaraki and Princess 9 or whatever other series they were trying to promote.      It was nothing to write home about,  I don't remember it being terrible, other then ADV voice acting.. if you watched it dub.    Was pretty much Slayers in Space..

 

Group picked up Kyuuketsuki Sugu Shinu from last season.    Did the unusual and binged the first 6 episodes last night.   It is a silly mostly stupid comedy,  with that said it is entertaining. 

 

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Yay, Genjitsu Shugi Yuusha is back. I love this show.  Julius Amidonia is such a jerk.  As a book reader, I just can't wait for what is coming.

[Seto Kaiba]

Getting started with this season's new offerings while I work on sprint planning in IBM Rational Jazz. 🤢

Attack on Titan: the Final Season remains a tedious exercise at best.  The original manga's awful art style aside, the novelty of its premise as a horror series wore off extremely quickly in the face of the story's unrelenting darkness and misery and the simple fact that the more you show a monster in a horror story the less scary it becomes.  The Titans no longer invoke a sense of horror because they've become mundane.  The final story arc feels like the author's love letter to antisemitism and fascism, and is also so tedious and unrelentingly grim it has no real impact as political commentary, horror entertainment, or anything else.  The only satisfaction in watching it limp to its long overdue ending is knowing that soon we won't have to hear about it anymore.

 

In the Land of Leadale is another minimum effort entry in the Isekai genre.  It seems like it's trying to be How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord without the fanservice, drawing a lot of its inspiration for the character's circumstances from Overlord instead.  The main character is a girl named Keina who was on life support for an extended duration after a car crash which killed her parents, and spent all her time playing a MMORPG called Leadale in which she became a stupidly overpowered competitive player due to her playing it constantly.  She dies when the hospital loses power, and finds she's been reincarnated as her character in the world of Leadale 200 years after the game's setting.  It follows all the same plot points as How Not to Summon a Demon Lord, just without the blatant fanservice.

[Seto Kaiba]

Miss Kuroitsu in the Monster Development Department... is... good lord, how do I explain this premise?

It's a tokusatsu superhero slice-of-life/office comedy about the titular Miss Kuroitsu's daily struggles as a punch-clock villain working the 9-5 as a lab assistant in Monster R&D for the obligatory villainous secret organization that's trying to take over the world.

... wow, that sentence was a rollercoaster from start to finish.

I have to admit, I'm curious to see where this one's going, if only because the premise is completely bonkers.  

The first episode has a terribly relatable moment where Kuroitsu has to give a presentation on her superior's half-arsed deadline-stretching mess of a design to a management review and gets grilled savagely, right down to the punny name chosen for it, before it gets rejected.  It's also surreal and surprisingly funny to see the intimidating tokusatsu main villain drop by the office as if he were a completely ordinary middle manager and starts lecturing them about how he could've covered for them if they'd let him know they were behind and then launches into a villainous monologue about avoiding burning out due to overwork and the need for skilled staff to take proper care of themselves.  (Say what you will, apparently the world of organized villainy understands good employee relations?)

 

 

EDIT:  Good lord, episode 2 is like a punch right in the soul to anyone who's worked in forward model development.  Too relatable.

Edited January 18, 2022 by Seto Kaiba

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru is my favorite new anime of the season.  Kitagawa Marin is my top girl of the year.  The 2nd episode was quite a watch.

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

34 minutes ago, Hikaru Ichijo SL said:

Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru is my favorite new anime of the season.  Kitagawa Marin is my top girl of the year.  The 2nd episode was quite a watch.

I am hoping it stays true to the manga,  I'm nowhere near current on it,  but I enjoyed what I have read so far.

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

10 minutes ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

I am hoping it stays true to the manga,  I'm nowhere near current on it,  but I enjoyed what I have read so far.

 

I would like to read the manga one of these days.

[Seto Kaiba]

The Strongest Sage with the Weakest Crest is a strong contender for this season's worst-written series.

It's not an Isekai series, but it indulges heavily in the same kind of over-the-top power fantasy that's the stock in trade of the very worst examples of that genre.  The story makes zero effort to disguise that Matthias is a boring invincible protagonist.  Everything he does in the first episode is treated as Beyond the Impossible in the story.  So much so that the magic school he enrolls in appoints him a teacher despite him being only twelve years old, and entrusts him with the revival and promulgation of a nearly-extinct branch of magic that he's already an expert in... and the episode's barely half over.  By the end of it, he's engaging in DIO levels of questionable time measurement, exposing a demon masquerading as a human under an assumed (and hilariously paper-thin) name at a higher-tier sister school, exposing an ancient conspiracy by demons to undermine all of humanity, and killing said demon infiltrator in one hit.

You can't have drama if there are no stakes... and you can't have reasonable stakes if your heroic protagonist is so overpowered that they are, for all practical intents and purposes, invincible and all-capable.

Spoiler

It's the Superman problem.  Superman will never, ever be able to create convincing dramatic tension with anything less than a literally apocalyptic threat because Superman is so overpowered that anything less comes off as a physical god bullying the normals.

(You can make it work with a villain protagonist, as in Overlord, but then a Bad End is effectively a foregone conclusion and the main source of drama has to either be wholly internal to the villain protagonist's side or the open-ended question of when, why, and how the more heroic characters are going to lose and die horribly when their abilities fall VERY short of the mark.)

[Podtastic]

10 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

ancient conspiracy by demons to undermine all of humanity

Damn Commies!

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Finally nearing the end of Nyan Koi! I look forward to anytime Mochizuki Chizuru appears.  Darn Satou Rina obsession again.

[no3Ljm]

It's not a series but this one looks interesting. May 2022 release.

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru episode 3 was just so great.  This show is just so much fun to watch.

[Podtastic]

Just finished Attack on Titan Season 3 and still thoroughly enjoying it.

Firmly on the Eldian side until I see something to change my mind. The Marleyan's use of collective guilt propaganda was a little too close to home for them not to earn my enmity.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Dragon Maid S OVA is out and it is hilarious as usual.

[pengbuzz]

Currently watching Redline (2009) dubbed version.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I started Vivy Fluorite and it is so good.  I really like the concept.

Edited January 30, 2022 by Hikaru Ichijo SL

[Seto Kaiba]

Started Ore Monogatari on a friend's recommendation... and I can't.  I just can't.  These people are TOO PURE.  Too innocent.  It tastes like diabetes!

Edited January 30, 2022 by Seto Kaiba

[pengbuzz]

1 minute ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Started Ore Monogatari on a friend's recommendation... and I can't.  I just can't.  These people are TOO PURE.  Too innocent.  It takes like diabetes!

ROFL!!!

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

ROFL!!!

You may laugh, but Rinko spends the better part of an entire episode crying and worrying that she's not the kind of pure maiden Takeo thinks she is... because she wants to hold hands.

That's right boys and girls, Rinko is worried she's become a lewd woman because she wants to have consensual UNPROTECTED HAND HOLDING with her boyfriend!  Fingers.  Locked.  *DUN DUN DUNNNN*

No, that is not a joke.  It is played absolutely laser-straight.  A scene like that feels like it belongs in a parody, but this isn't one.  That's just how ridiculously over-the-top pure and squeaky-clean this is.  Takeo and Rinko are so damned pure and innocent that I feel soiled just watching them.

[pengbuzz]

6 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

You may laugh, but Rinko spends the better part of an entire episode crying and worrying that she's not the kind of pure maiden Takeo thinks she is... because she wants to hold hands.

That's right boys and girls, Rinko is worried she's become a lewd woman because she wants to have consensual UNPROTECTED HAND HOLDING with her boyfriend!  Fingers.  Locked.  *DUN DUN DUNNNN*

No, that is not a joke.  It is played absolutely laser-straight.  A scene like that feels like it belongs in a parody, but this isn't one.  That's just how ridiculously over-the-top pure and squeaky-clean this is.  Takeo and Rinko are so damned pure and innocent that I feel soiled just watching them.

I was laughing about the "diabetes" comment. But yeah...you kind of expect angels to be singing in the background right about then from how you describe ti.

[JB0]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That's right boys and girls, Rinko is worried she's become a lewd woman because she wants to have consensual UNPROTECTED HAND HOLDING with her boyfriend!  Fingers.  Locked.  *DUN DUN DUNNNN*

Jesus! Can they really show that kind of explicit content on TV in Japan?

[pengbuzz]

22 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Can they really show that kind of explicit content on TV in Japan?

You never know...next anime, they may show skirts just below the knees in length!!!!

[Podtastic]

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That's right boys and girls, Rinko is worried she's become a lewd woman because she wants to have consensual UNPROTECTED HAND HOLDING with her boyfriend!  Fingers.  Locked.  *DUN DUN DUNNNN*

Well it is a major step.

And promiscuous hand holding is one of the ways diseases spread. 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

22 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Started Ore Monogatari on a friend's recommendation... and I can't.  I just can't.  These people are TOO PURE.  Too innocent.  It tastes like diabetes!

That is what I thought too.  Yamato is just too innocent.