What Current Anime Are You Watching Version v4.0

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I started Seitokai Yakuindomo and it is hilarious .

[Seto Kaiba]

On 5/11/2022 at 5:29 PM, Hikaru Ichijo SL said:

I started Seitokai Yakuindomo and it is hilarious .

Oh yes, that is a great one.  

Sadly, a few of the puns don't translate very well... especially the ones that set up

Spoiler

Suzu's interest in Tsuda.

Like when the student council goes hiking and, IIRC, Shino mentions that one should wear a bell to avoid bear encounters and Tsuda mentions he'd like a bell (鈴 suzu) which Suzu (スズ) takes a bit differently... 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

I've given in to temptation and got the Ascendance of a Bookworm light novel after enjoying the anime as much as I have.  

 

Later I'm gonna start Full Dive: This Ultimate Next-Gen Full Dive RPG is Even Shittier Than Real Life.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

5 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Oh yes, that is a great one.  

Sadly, a few of the puns don't translate very well... especially the ones that set up

  Hide contents

Suzu's interest in Tsuda.

Like when the student council goes hiking and, IIRC, Shino mentions that one should wear a bell to avoid bear encounters and Tsuda mentions he'd like a bell (鈴 suzu) which Suzu (スズ) takes a bit differently... 

 

I am watching the subbed version.  I haven't gotten up to that yet.  But the pun does make sense.  I remember that suzu is a bell from Hataraku Maou sama. 

[Seto Kaiba]

The Greatest Demon Lord is Reborn as a Typical Nobody should really retitle itself The Most Tedious Premise is Revisited as Another Series About a Demigod with No Social Skills.

Another bold entry in the broad and ever-growing category that is isekai shovelware shows.

This is basically just How Not to Summon a Demon Lord, G-rated edition... except the protagonist's social awkwardness comes from having been an unassailable ruler in his past life not a hikikomori.

[Scyla]

Still watching Spy x Family and it still good. This week’s episode gave an outlook into the next phases of operation Strix (while volume 8 of the manga is currently taking a break from that).

In the meantime I’m at episode 42 of „That time I got reincarnated as a Slime“

It has some of the overpowered Isekai hero tropes but most of the drama is resolved by keeping a clear head, discussing topics without leaving important things out, having boardroom meeting (the opposite of all the tropes that usually would lead to an escalation in other shows).

It is also hysterical that the protagonist is surrounded by various different flavors of anime simpletons.

It made me realize how difficult it is to actually write drama convincingly into any kind of media without relying on manufactured conflicts: usually you can solve things peacefully and fast by talking things out and being reasonable and compassionated.

Edited May 15, 2022 by Scyla

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Love after world domination had just the best episode on Friday.  Desumi at the beach.  Fudos' reaction to Desumi was priceless.  Everything bad that happen to Gelato is Desumis' doing even if she did nothing.

[Seto Kaiba]

Got caught up on Kaguya-sama: Love is War.

Shirogane trying to rap really is a horrorshow, combined with Hayasaka's having to combine various alter-egos she's assumed so that Kaguya's classmates won't realize that she's a Shuchiiin student herself.

It ends with a surprisingly well-produced music video for the closing credits.

Edited May 17, 2022 by Seto Kaiba

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Honzuki no Gekokujou has been good this season.  It is amazing how Myne can make so many adults panic.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Hikaru Ichijo SL said:

Honzuki no Gekokujou has been good this season.  It is amazing how Myne can make so many adults panic.

She's good at that.

It's even more pronounced in the light novel.  There are moments where you'd swear if Benno or Ferdinand ever suffered a papercut their blood pressure would make them a water jet cutter.

Spoiler

Like when she's trying to figure out what kind of ink the ink guild actually makes and decides to just start describing ink manufacturing methods to them until they tell her she guessed it.  Left an entire trade guild in a murderous fury for the better part of two volumes.

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

36 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

She's good at that.

It's even more pronounced in the light novel.  There are moments where you'd swear if Benno or Ferdinand ever suffered a papercut their blood pressure would make them a water jet cutter.

  Hide contents

Like when she's trying to figure out what kind of ink the ink guild actually makes and decides to just start describing ink manufacturing methods to them until they tell her she guessed it.  Left an entire trade guild in a murderous fury for the better part of two volumes.

 

I am planning to read the light novels eventually.

[Seto Kaiba]

Skeleton Knight in Another World is really making my hope that we'll soon be free of the tyranny of the isekai genre once and for all.

So much of that genre feels like mockbusters and shovelware that it's really worn out its welcome, IMO.  Skeleton Knight stands out a bit by at least not being offensively bad.  It's just incredibly derivative and makes only the most token effort to hide it.  The first few minutes are pretty Goblin Slayer with the attempted rape scene and such, but the remainder feels like it occupies the middle of a venn diagram between Overlord's first few volumes and KonoSuba.  Arc is basically just an actually-benevolent version of Momonga's knight alter ego Raven Black Momon (appropriately wearing white instead) who decides to engage in actual heroism instead of engineered heroics, but all with the same tone you'd find throughout KonoSuba.  

It's so OK it's average... which actually makes it upper-tier for the genre these days, which mostly has a few good titles and a LOT of trash.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

This weeks Love after world domination was great as always.

[Seto Kaiba]

Starting a series called RPG Real Estate now.

The premise sounded suitably odd... the trials and travails of an urban real estate agency operating in the capital of a standard JRPG fantasy kingdom.  On actually watching it, I've got a sneaking suspicion this is gonna be my first hard drop of the season.  It's aggressively cutesy, and the introduction to the main characters involved one of them (some kind of demihuman) not wanting to get dressed.

(Oddly, this is the first time I can recall a fantasy series establishing an exchange rate between yen and gold pieces... presumably for the sake of the cheap shots they're about to take at Tokyo's actual real estate market.)

Cutesyness aside, as a satire of Japan's real estate market it's pretty on the nose so far.  The thus-far unnamed (or did I forget her name?) witch moving into the city is looking for a house on a laughably small budget (equivalent to ¥36,000 / $283 US) and once the real estate agents are done feeling immense pity at her cluelessness they show her some pretty typical unpleasant cheap housing with a fantasy twist:

• The highrise apartment conveniently close to town that inconveniently has no elevators... in this case, being inside of a giant tree that is also a dungeon and full of slimes.
• The inexplicably windowless rental... in this case, a townhouse formerly owned by an elderly witch that had no windows "for black magic reasons".
• The one with no privacy AND the suspiciously nice one... in this case, a lovely flat in the city center that comes with the condition that adventurers are allowed to search your room for items at any time, JRPG style.
• The apartments catering to foreign expats... in this case, a tower in the city center used by the sentient monster population who can't or won't speak the local language.

That last one is a bit surprising as a nod to the subtle racism that so often occurs in housing, but that's the one the protagonist ends up going with.

And they end that little journey with the witch revealing she's the real estate agency's newest hire.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Love Live nijigasaki this week was so full of English.

Edited May 29, 2022 by Hikaru Ichijo SL

[Seto Kaiba]

RPG Real Estate defied my pessimism a bit.

It's not as aggressively cutesy as I had feared, though it does devolve from a sort of biting satire of the real estate market in Japan to just a regular sort of sitcom about fantasy world real estate sales and the perils associated therewith.  It's eminently watchable, but it's only so-so in my opinion.  It's also kind of weird that every character is drawn with gradient-fill eyes.  That's probably where a lot of the budget went.

[Seto Kaiba]

Ascendance of a Bookworm continues to be a well-executed and fairly faithful adaptation of the light novel.

It might actually be slightly better than the light novel in that it makes Myne a lot easier to sympathize with by cutting out a lot of the more selfish and manipulative moments in her internal monologue and the story in general.  It looks like this season's probably going to adapt at least to the end of Part II of the light novel, and thus is probably going to end on a rather low note since that story arc ends with...

Spoiler

... Myne being forced to cut ties with her family and friends in Ehrenfest's lower district and move to the noble quarter immediately...

Spoiler

... under the threat of equally-immediate summary execution of everyone she knows and loves in the lower district.  The alleged protective charm given to her by the there-and-gone-again "Brother" Sylvester that she activated when a foreign noble tried to kidnap her with the High Bishop's assistance having been a magic contract placing her as Archduke Sylvester's adopted daughter, making the attempted kidnapping an act of war on the foreign noble's behalf and treason for the High Bishop who conspired with him.

It's a pretty dark moment in the original story.  Myne loses basically everything she cares about except her ownership of the Myne Workshop and the products that it produces for the Gilberta Company, has to leave her family and can never speak to or associate with them as family again (on pain of their deaths), Delia dodges an execution for her part in the kidnapping by Myne having Sylvester commute the sentence to permanent imprisonment in the temple's orphanage (a fate worse than death to Delia), the High Bishop (who is Ferdinand's uncle) discovers noble society's secret method for losing eleven pounds instantly when he's beheaded for high treason, and Myne being thrown headfirst into a noble society where a near-majority hate her on principle for her adoptive family's alliegances and also have some personal stake in it due to their faction leader, the archduke's mother, being imprisoned for life for her role in the whole affair.

It gets less grim thereafter, but it's a depressing place to end.  What follows is a lot more upbeat, for the most part, and starts to get into the actual meat and potatoes of the light novel's overarching plot about why the world is in the dire state it's in, why the temple is so desperate for mana that they gave a commoner the blue robes reserved for nobility, how magic works and why, and introduces many of the actual villains of the piece going forward.

 

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

10 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Ascendance of a Bookworm continues to be a well-executed and fairly faithful adaptation of the light novel.

It might actually be slightly better than the light novel in that it makes Myne a lot easier to sympathize with by cutting out a lot of the more selfish and manipulative moments in her internal monologue and the story in general.  It looks like this season's probably going to adapt at least to the end of Part II of the light novel, and thus is probably going to end on a rather low note since that story arc ends with...

  Hide contents

... Myne being forced to cut ties with her family and friends in Ehrenfest's lower district and move to the noble quarter immediately...

  Hide contents

... under the threat of equally-immediate summary execution of everyone she knows and loves in the lower district.  The alleged protective charm given to her by the there-and-gone-again "Brother" Sylvester that she activated when a foreign noble tried to kidnap her with the High Bishop's assistance having been a magic contract placing her as Archduke Sylvester's adopted daughter, making the attempted kidnapping an act of war on the foreign noble's behalf and treason for the High Bishop who conspired with him.

It's a pretty dark moment in the original story.  Myne loses basically everything she cares about except her ownership of the Myne Workshop and the products that it produces for the Gilberta Company, has to leave her family and can never speak to or associate with them as family again (on pain of their deaths), Delia dodges an execution for her part in the kidnapping by Myne having Sylvester commute the sentence to permanent imprisonment in the temple's orphanage (a fate worse than death to Delia), the High Bishop (who is Ferdinand's uncle) discovers noble society's secret method for losing eleven pounds instantly when he's beheaded for high treason, and Myne being thrown headfirst into a noble society where a near-majority hate her on principle for her adoptive family's alliegances and also have some personal stake in it due to their faction leader, the archduke's mother, being imprisoned for life for her role in the whole affair.

It gets less grim thereafter, but it's a depressing place to end.  What follows is a lot more upbeat, for the most part, and starts to get into the actual meat and potatoes of the light novel's overarching plot about why the world is in the dire state it's in, why the temple is so desperate for mana that they gave a commoner the blue robes reserved for nobility, how magic works and why, and introduces many of the actual villains of the piece going forward.

 

 

This just continues to amaze me and I haven't read the light novels yet.

[Seto Kaiba]

11 minutes ago, Hikaru Ichijo SL said:

This just continues to amaze me and I haven't read the light novels yet.

Google Play Books was offering a bundle on the light novels a bit ago... not sure if it's on offer, but the discount's pretty good.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Google Play Books was offering a bundle on the light novels a bit ago... not sure if it's on offer, but the discount's pretty good.

I already bought a few, but I haven't had time to read them yet.

[Seto Kaiba]

Started Love After World Domination today...

It definitely has a lot of the same feel as Miss Kuroitsu of the Monster Development Department... except that it's aggressively, painfully cute. XD

EDIT: OK Red's approach to a confession is a bit creepy... he read through her social media accounts to learn all about her first.  That's a bit stalker-y.

Edited June 1, 2022 by Seto Kaiba

[Seto Kaiba]

OK, a couple episodes into Love After World Domination and I'm genuinely surprised by how much fun I'm having with this series.

Not just because Fudo and Desumi are painfully earnest people... but because, as a result, absolutely everyone else ends up entertainingly wrong about their motives and actions as they increasingly twist their respective day jobs into excuses to see each other and abscond for some alone time.

[Scyla]

34 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

OK, a couple episodes into Love After World Domination and I'm genuinely surprised by how much fun I'm having with this series.

Not just because Fudo and Desumi are painfully earnest people... but because, as a result, absolutely everyone else ends up entertainingly wrong about their motives and actions as they increasingly twist their respective day jobs into excuses to see each other and abscond for some alone time.

I want to give the show a watch. Sounds entertaining.

I‘ve started to watch „Ya boy Kongming“ which is about the Chinese tactician Kongming from the three Kingdoms period transported to/reincarnated in modern day Japan. 
His new goal is to help a struggling EDM artist to become famous by deploying various war tactics and stratagems he used in his past life.

It is good and refreshingly different to other Isekai style shows.However in the current story arc his involvement is almost negligible. I guess him pulling the strings in the background is a more convincing way to explain why two people meet instead of them running into each other by chance.

Still an enjoyable show but it removed the premise of the show to a certain extend, which where show draws most of the comedy from. Currently it is more about personal relationships and the drama that comes from that. Killer OP though! 

Edited June 1, 2022 by Scyla

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

16 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

OK, a couple episodes into Love After World Domination and I'm genuinely surprised by how much fun I'm having with this series.

Not just because Fudo and Desumi are painfully earnest people... but because, as a result, absolutely everyone else ends up entertainingly wrong about their motives and actions as they increasingly twist their respective day jobs into excuses to see each other and abscond for some alone time.

I am a huge fan of this show.  It is still my favorite this season.  Fudo and Desumi have their organizations wrapped about their fingers.

[pengbuzz]

On 6/1/2022 at 12:15 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

OK, a couple episodes into Love After World Domination and I'm genuinely surprised by how much fun I'm having with this series.

Not just because Fudo and Desumi are painfully earnest people... but because, as a result, absolutely everyone else ends up entertainingly wrong about their motives and actions as they increasingly twist their respective day jobs into excuses to see each other and abscond for some alone time.

Must be a nice change, as opposed to the brutality and pointlessness of say, Attack on Titan...

[Seto Kaiba]

44 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Must be a nice change, as opposed to the brutality and pointlessness of say, Attack on Titan...

I can only watch Attack on Titan's last few episodes in fits and starts... not just because it's ridiculously grimdark, but because it's so incredibly DUMB.  I'm still not caught up there because I can't stop cracking up at how everyone's horrified looks come off as DULL SURPRISE! and how insanely lame the plot is.

Thankfully, there is an overabundance of good stuff this season.  

I've got no less than eight main shows I'm following and a bunch more I've only just started.

Love After World Domination is rapidly becoming my contender for this season's #1 though.

[Seto Kaiba]

Episode 5 of Love After World Domination.

There's a scene where Fudo gets sick and collapses during a date with Desumi and ends up in the hospital with appendicitis.

I lost it when I read the note on the boquet of flowers in his hotel room.  It's a get-well letter from the head of the evil organization GEKKO wishing him a swift recovery, and expressing the hope that if he were to perish that it would be at his organization's hands.

I have Coke up my nose and my sides hurt.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Episode 5 of Love After World Domination.

There's a scene where Fudo gets sick and collapses during a date with Desumi and ends up in the hospital with appendicitis.

I lost it when I read the note on the boquet of flowers in his hotel room.  It's a get-well letter from the head of the evil organization GEKKO wishing him a swift recovery, and expressing the hope that if he were to perish that it would be at his organization's hands.

I have Coke up my nose and my sides hurt.

That really made me laugh and It was difficult because I was drinking hot tea at the time.

[Seto Kaiba]

OK yeah, Love After World Domination is my #1 for this season.

I lost track of time after I decided to watch one episode over lunch and ended up watching the rest of the available episodes.  Can't even recall the last time I was so engrossed in a series that I lost track of time!

I'm not sure what's better...

Spoiler

Fudo's mind locking up every thirty seconds because he thinks Gelato Pink is gonna narc on him for dating one of the enemy... or that Gelato Green was Dasumi's old karate instructor who has lifelong trauma because she effortlessly beat the stuffing out of him every time to the point of getting nausous and collapsing just from trying to talk to her.

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

9 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

OK yeah, Love After World Domination is my #1 for this season.

I lost track of time after I decided to watch one episode over lunch and ended up watching the rest of the available episodes.  Can't even recall the last time I was so engrossed in a series that I lost track of time!

I'm not sure what's better...

  Hide contents

Fudo's mind locking up every thirty seconds because he thinks Gelato Pink is gonna narc on him for dating one of the enemy... or that Gelato Green was Dasumi's old karate instructor who has lifelong trauma because she effortlessly beat the stuffing out of him every time to the point of getting nausous and collapsing just from trying to talk to her.

 

I agree 100% it is my favorite this season also.  It is strange because I had no intention of watching this show.  Glad i decided to.

[Seto Kaiba]

Don't Hurt Me, My Healer is finally attempting to cram some actual character development in in the last few episodes.  Feels too little, too late, and the reveal that Carla has feelings for Alvin definitely feels forced considering how absolutely toxic they are to each other.

Ascendance of a Bookworm is finally getting to the good bits, though that means the season is likely almost over.  Ferdinand's Big Damn Heroes moment was in the most recent episode, so now...

Spoiler

Bezewanst is headed to the chopping block, and Myne is going to be forced to be adopted by Sylvester Aub Ehrenfest under the cover story of her being Karstadt's daughter.

Skeleton Knight in Another World is still kinda copying Overlord's "Men of the Kingdom" arc... looks like they're headed to this setting's equivalent of the Slane Theocracy to recover some enslaved elves or something of that note.

Trapped in a Dating Sim is still kinda... existing.  Leon is mildly entertaining at times, but really his magnificent bastardy is the only reason to watch this otherwise fairly mediocre show.  It's kind of shocking how bad the animation in this one gets.  The robots, especially Leon's Arroganz, is off model so often that if it weren't for the higher quality animation work in the OP I wouldn't be entirely sure what it's supposed to look like.

RPG Real Estate is still rather cutesy but otherwise kind of a bland and inoffensive slice of life comedy.

Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove It is still managing to be funny, but it kind of feels like it lost sight of the actual plot.

[Scyla]

I started to watch Birdie Wing: Golf Girls’ Story.

It starts rather interesting with the mafia setting disputes via a 1 vs 1 golf match with those underground golfers. Losing one of these matches has severe consequences for the golfer…

Spoiler

…but by episode 9 the main protagonist seemingly managed to escape the mafia to Japan and is enrolled in a private golf academy and it suddenly turns into a Yuri anime (which I’m not opposed to)

I basically no nothing about golf (i.e. I had to look up what a birdie actually is) but the show is very enjoyable.

It also has a great opening song by Hirose Koumi.

Edited June 8, 2022 by Scyla

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Tate no Yuusha was good again this week.  Lots of Raphtalia.

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

18 hours ago, Hikaru Ichijo SL said:

Tate no Yuusha was good again this week.  Lots of Raphtalia.

I've largely tuned this series out,  but ep 10 was pretty good.  

 

I started watching My senpai is annoying,, and I am pleasantly surprised as its much better then I figured it would be.

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

5 hours ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

I've largely tuned this series out,  but ep 10 was pretty good.  

 

I started watching My senpai is annoying,, and I am pleasantly surprised as its much better then I figured it would be.

 

I saw my senpai is annoying and it was great.