What Current Anime Are You Watching Version v4.0

[DewPoint]

So I started watching Kaiju No.8 recently.  I'm liking it so far.  We'll see how it goes.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Mushoku Tensei is moving along with the story.  But it is a good ride.

[Seto Kaiba]

I'm starting to question if the people writing HIGHSPEED Etoile have a humiliation fetish.

How many episodes of a one cour series can you reasonably devote to a protagonist failing miserably at literally everything in a public setting?  Something like 1/3 of the latest episode is devoted to Rin trying and failing to drive a conventional gas-engine car with a manual transmission and her friends being impressed that she gets less sh*tty at it with practice. 

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Spice & Wolf was great again yesterday.  I have been watching Chihayafuru and it is getting good now.

[Seto Kaiba]

Spending some time getting caught up after I got distracted by the remaster of Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door...

At around 3/4 of the way through the Spring '24 season, many of the titles I had high hopes for have not lived up to their promise.

An Archdemon's Dilemma is still quite a lot of fun even if it kind of has bogged down in Family Dynamics.  

The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio continues to be excellent week after week, for which I am heartily grateful.  It's a strong contender for my "best of season".

Vampire Dormitory's started to drag a bit as its main plot kicks into gear... I'm actually kind of disappointed in how quickly it seems to be abandoning its initial premise.

Astro Note is unexpectedly stuck in a bit of "two lines, both waiting" involving Mira's plot and a love triangle that's more a series of one-sided infatuations with someone who's too oblivious to notice ala To Love-Ru.  

As a Reincarnated Aristocrat... is still doing OK, the story's turned towards the serious but it's not really clear if it'll be able to make any meaningful progress before the end of the season.

Tadaima, Okaeri is practically impossible to take seriously thanks to some unfortunate narrative decisions and terminology choices, and A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics jumped the shark HARD in the last few weeks... 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Dang Konosuba was so much fun today.  I love this show.

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

I started Seiyuu Radio no Uraomote,  and meh.     I am only 3 episodes in will go abit further but the line of no desire to keep pressing close.

So far the top for this season IMO,  in no particular order.    Dungeon Meshi, Shuumatsu Train Doko e Iku?, Kono Suba S3, Date Alive,  and Duke of Death and his Maid S3.

Honestly I never thought I would put Date Alive back on any list of relevant animes so color me abit shocked.

Spice and Wolf,  while good is the same.. exactly the same....  did I mention the same as the previous release. 

It took 1 episode in Astro Note to totally turn me off of the series,  kinda sad but such is life.

Lastly,  I am still trying to make heads or tails of Kaii to Otome to Kamikakushi.    The premise is kinda horror,  kinda supernatural.    Its held my interest so far.

 

 

Edited June 3 by Stampeed Valkyrie

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Chillin' in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers was so cute today.  I love Flio and Rys.

Edited June 3 by Hikaru Ichijo SL

[Seto Kaiba]

Spring '24 is limping into the home stretch...

I have to admit, I'm kind of upset with Bartender: Glass of God.  Its final story arc predictably decided to delve into the faux-philosophical advice-giving bartender's own trauma, and it decided to do so by trivializing depression and suicide.  

Spoiler

Ryu's hidden trauma is that one of his customers committed suicide a long time ago, and he believes it's his fault... with the implication being, and the rest of the cast stating outright, that he believes if he'd served a different drink he could have prevented that suicide.

Kinda wondering how many of the characters in this show are alcoholics... most people don't have a list of dozens of cocktails they want to try, or go bar-hopping multiple nights a week.

 

Oddly, The Irregular at Magic High School seems to have become one of the more interesting titles this season thanks to the latest story arc having a very different focus from the previous two.  Instead of focusing on Tatsuya being the most broken MFer around and curbstomping literally everyone who looks at him funny, they're focusing on worldbuilding and the larger setting.  There's some actually pretty good stuff coming out of it now related to the international balance of power based on strategic magic, the implications that magic's importance to the military has for education, the pitfalls of relying on conventional/standardized measures of academic/athletic ability to measure a person's worth and how those can miss exceptional talents, and even the ethical and practical concerns of autonomous unmanned weapons as a substitute for living soldiers.  Seasons one and two did not thrill me, but this has me about ready to start looking up the light novel.

 

At the very least, HIGHSPEED Etoile remains a completely irredeemable turd... there's something to be said for its consistency, if nothing else.

This latest episode confirms explicitly that Rin's useless and that they would actually do better to take her out of the car and let the car's AI drive.  After she gets in an accident and passes out during a qualifying round, the car's AI driving autonomously without her sets new lap records. 🤣

Edited June 8 by Seto Kaiba

[Beltane70]

Are you a masochist or something, Seto? I dropped High Speed Etoile after the third episode and this is coming from someone who rarely drops a series. 

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, Beltane70 said:

Are you a masochist or something, Seto? I dropped High Speed Etoile after the third episode and this is coming from someone who rarely drops a series. 

No, I'm more of a sadist. 😅

As to why I haven't dropped HIGHSPEED Etoile... well, I'm something of a completionist by nature and dropping a series partway through has never really felt right to me.  Those rare occasions where I have dropped a title partway were because the story did something so heinous, offensive, or stupid that I couldn't bear to look at it anymore.  Some of my favorite titles are shows that had a rough start but later hit their stride and became something amazing, the most recent example being Star Wars's Andor, so there's also an element of me hoping one of these scrubs will surprise me.  Even a badly written title can sometimes be so gloriously insane that it becomes entertaining in an entirely inappropriate way, like what happened to Birdie Wing.

The few anime titles I've dropped partway were mostly because they took their fanservice to genuinely creepy and questionable places (e.g. Strike Witches, Stratos4) or because the story became such a dumpster fire I simply couldn't pick it up without cringing.

The only title I've dropped this year so far is Tadaima, Okaeri... which I dropped mainly because the show's story comes off as an excuse plot wrapped around the author's fetish and because the series fumbles its own premise so hard chasing that fetish that it's actually kind of offensive and laughable at the same time.  I'm on the fence about Mushoku Tensei, since its otherwise capably-written isekai fantasy story has several truly revolting moments of sex offender behavior by its protagonist that've left me seriously thinking someone ought to call the cops on the light novel's author.

 

 

HIGHSPEED Etoile is unmistakably bad, for sure.  It's not So Bad It's Good or So Bad It's Awful... it's just kind of there doing a bad enough job to be bland and insipid and boring while not actually being offensive.  If I had to pick a word for it, it's misguided.  It could've been an interesting racing anime if the writers had any idea how to make racing interesting, but instead it's a story where racing happens and the protagonist isn't really engaged with it.  I'm watching a disaster unfold in slow motion, and the suspense is killing me... especially since the studio animating it is the same one that did the 3D animation for Initial D and Initial D Second Stage.  It's Studio A-CAT's first ever original work, and probably their last if this keeps up.

[JB0]

On 6/8/2024 at 12:59 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

This latest episode confirms explicitly that Rin's useless and that they would actually do better to take her out of the car and let the car's AI drive.  After she gets in an accident and passes out during a qualifying round, the car's AI driving autonomously without her sets new lap records. 🤣

So what I'm hearing is she's training the race AI by showing it what not to do?

[Raikkonen]

Finished rewatching one punch man for a third time... where are you season 3??? 

And doing the weekly Kaija 8, I like it a lot, bar at times certain over the top over powered characters. 

[Seto Kaiba]

22 hours ago, JB0 said:

So what I'm hearing is she's training the race AI by showing it what not to do?

They went with a "Yes, except no." answer... Team V-ZEN's AI system "Ami" is using both her driving and the driving of her competitors as training data. The story then comes up with an excuse for why it can't simply take her job, which basically boils down to the AI system being limited by its programming to avoid taking actions that would put human safety at risk. So they can absolutely crush it at time trials, but their safety first attitude towards strategic driving means they will lose the race every time.

[JB0]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

They went with a "Yes, except no." answer... Team V-ZEN's AI system "Ami" is using both her driving and the driving of her competitors as training data. The story then comes up with an excuse for why it can't simply take her job, which basically boils down to the AI system being limited by its programming to avoid taking actions that would put human safety at risk. So they can absolutely crush it at time trials, but their safety first attitude towards strategic driving means they will lose the race every time.

KITT instead of KARR. They've made the right choice.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Chillin' in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers is just so much fun.  I hate Kugumiya Rie but this show changed my mind.  Which is strange because I love Shakugan no Shana and Zero no Tsukaima.  The OP is just addictive.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, JB0 said:

KITT instead of KARR. They've made the right choice.

Let's be honest, there was no right choice there because either choice had terrible implications for the story as a whole.

HIGHSPEED Etoile's writers had to choose between:

• Revealing that V-ZEN's AI "Ami" no longer needed Rin Rindo and that AI drivers could be developed to the point of being competitive against top-tier living drivers, making the show's protagonist completely unnecessary.
• Revealing that V-ZEN's AI "Ami" was inherently limited in ways that mean it can never be a truly competitive driver outside of solo time trials, keeping Rin Rindo in the car and in the story by shooting several huge holes in other parts of the story.

They went with the latter because it's transparently obvious they're hoping to sell racy figures of the predominantly female cast.  By revealing that AIs are limited in ways that mean they can never truly be competitive against living drivers, it raises some awkward questions as to why several teams are relying on AI drivers that have no chance of winning.  That also kind of kills the idea that Rin isn't blindingly incompetent, since she has consistently placed below AI-driven cars throughout the series and an AI almost certainly wouldn't be racking up disqualifications for rules violations and failing to start/finish races (never mind totaling a car).

Basically, they established that AI drivers are incompetent... but that they still would've been a better choice than Rin Rindo.

Edited June 11 by Seto Kaiba

[Duke Togo]

Kaiju No. 8

I rather enjoy it.

[Seto Kaiba]

Caught the latest episodes of Re:Monster, Chillin' in Another World, and I was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince while I was picking up a car...

Chillin' in Another World is still cute but substance-less.

The other two are just unapologetic trashfires... it says a lot about I was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince that even the protagonist is bored with the direction the story has taken.

[JB0]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

They went with the latter because it's transparently obvious they're hoping to sell racy figures of the predominantly female cast.

And no lie, the only reason I was interested in the show was the character art, so I'm sad it's a trainwreck. 

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Basically, they established that AI drivers are incompetent... but that they still would've been a better choice than Rin Rindo.

At least we know she stands firmly in the "less than useless" category.

[Seto Kaiba]

20 minutes ago, JB0 said:

And no lie, the only reason I was interested in the show was the character art, so I'm sad it's a trainwreck. 

Well, you're likely to get some character figures out of it at the very least... Good Smile seems to be one of the sponsors.

(Also, we just sleeping on that pun I threw in there?  Racy figures for a racing series?)

 

20 minutes ago, JB0 said:

At least we know she stands firmly in the "less than useless" category.

That we do... though that was also never in any doubt considering her very first race saw her disqualified for a rules violation and something like 1/3 of her total career has been some form of disqualification.  Now that they've gone and said that the AIs that've been outperforming her all series are technically not even competent racers, the win that they'll hand Rin at the end of the series is going to feel extra unearned... like how her only prior decent placement was because she was blindly following the instructions of the AI.

[JB0]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

(Also, we just sleeping on that pun I threw in there?  Racy figures for a racing series?)

I honestly didn't catch it.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Grandpa and Grandma Turn Young Again has it moments.  I really liked the Initial D reference.

[Seto Kaiba]

An Archdemon's Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride has limped to its predictable but mildly enjoyable ending.  The last episode kind of feels tacked-on like an afterthought, since it doesn't really feel like part of the story arc in progress up to that point, but it's still fun.

The Banished Former Hero Lives as He Pleases managed to be so utterly generic and unremarkable as a fantasy series halfheartedly playing with isekai tropes that I've just finished watching it and I can barely remember anything that happened in it.  It's the narrative equivalent of white noise.

Mysterious Disappearances feels like the right title for the wrong reason.  Little to nothing actually disappears mysteriously in this series, except perhaps the money that must have been allocated for hiring a writer.  Perhaps Studio Zero-G should look into that.  This series is still basically unwatchable after ten episodes unless you are really creepily into large breasts because even the show's OP seems to think that's the only reason to watch.

BARTENDER: Glass of God decided to go for a tearjerker in the home stretch with Ryu's mentor being let out of hospital for a brief period before going to hospice care.  It tries real hard to be deep and emotional, but it's undermined by how incredibly pretentious it is about bartending.  Its obsession with making everything faux profound gets in the way of its efforts to evoke genuine emotion, and that's a shame because if you cut some of that out you'd have a fairly touching story about an unsure young man reuniting with his mentor one final time.

A Condition Called Love is one episode from its end and it never really stops being unintentionally creepy.  Hananoi is so incredibly eager - even desperate - to please that he goes to unsettling lengths to make Hotaru happy.  If he had an emotion besides dissonant serenity he'd feel like he should be full yandere... and this is supposed to be a romcom!

A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics just kind of completely lost the plot near the end when the cult leader became a recurring character obsessing over making lewd anime figures based on the homeless knight.  It's gone so far into the land of BS that the original and engaging premise has been all but lost.

I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince so I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability is drunkenly stumbling to a finish.  They've tried so hard to make the final fight of the series engaging and action-packed, but it's critically lacking in stakes because both participants are functionally invincible and even the characters fighting that fight are getting bored of it.  If anything, this is a magnificent case study on why an invincible protagonist is a bad idea in almost any context.  If the story's conflict never has any stakes, what's the point of fighting at all?  

Vampire Dormitory has gone to a very strange place... they've somehow cloned the protagonist AND given one of them the gender bender treatment.  Worse, that development is something that came out of left field with zero foreshadowing at the behest of a character who was just introduced and whose motivations are borderline nonsense.  It feels like the kind of thing you'd normally expect to be a character's fever dream, like that extended Alice in Wonderland reference in Ouran High School Host Club.

[Seto Kaiba]

This week's The Irregular at Magic High School is not quite as interesting as the previous episodes.  There's definitely more tension since Tatsuya isn't around for the fight in this one, so the former Course 2 students have to deal with professional assassins on their own.  (Though it begs the question why so many people seem to want to murder a group of high school students.)

HIGHSPEED Etoile's penultimate episode seems to have gotten a bit of an animation bump.  The crowd actually have faces now instead of being literally faceless masses.  Sadly, the quality of the writing has not improved.  Rin Rindo is still an unlikeable little stain on the upholstery with no personality beyond being an airhead.  I have to wonder if the writers understand that an underdog character has to be talented but underestimated... there's nothing satisfying about a loser getting an unearned win.  They're even changing the rules just to try and inject some unearned drama into this story which is already freighted with the prospect of the protagonist being fired for failing to win any races.

Spoiler

The writers really cranked the lazy plot contrivances up in this one.  Not only does someone literally devote the entire race to just blocking the King, but that lets everyone else pass him.  Rin is inexplicably driving like a top-tier driver instead of the miserable failure she's been all series, which definitely feels unearned since it comes out of nowhere.  Then to add some drama, the guy blocking the King breaks down during a pit stop so he effortlessly catches up to Rin in her unearned lead... leading to a two-parter for the series finale.  

 

[Seto Kaiba]

Astro Note's penultimate episode finally resolved the search for the macguffin at the heart of the going-nowhere romcom between the oblivious female lead and the hopeless guy who can't tell the difference between flirting and just being polite.  I knew it was going to be hidden somewhere obvious, but I have to admit the show's art team did an absolutely fantastic job of hiding it in plain sight.  It's been onscreen in every episode at least two or three times and I doubt anyone noticed.  The final episode seems set to change genres entirely as that macguffin has brought a massive Ideon-esque giant robot into the picture to fight the other species of aliens who've been chasing the macguffin all series.  I'm not sure I'd say that its quirky and retro aesthetic has entirely offset how irritating several of the characters are.  Feels like a solid 6/10 series at the end of the day.

Vampire Dormitory's 11th episode has that very odd gender bender plot twist - something that feels bizarre and out of place in a series where the main premise was already that the protagonist was pulling a bent-gender disguise routine - dragging on in a way that makes its polygon of one-sided infatuations start to feel uncomfortably like watching an abusive relationship.  (Ironically, this still makes it a more compelling LGBT+ storyline than Tadaima Okaeri.)  Possibly multiple abusive relationships, considering how things have turned out with one of the male leads having forced a gender change on the protagonist and the other being deceived into a relationship with an imposter.  (Also, does nobody notice this giant carriage in the sky?  Or the horses pulling it?  Someone is going to look up and catch a steaming pile of horsesh*t in the face at some point.)

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Dang, Mushoku Tensei was one of the best episode of the series. I am still sad about it. I knew what was coming and it still hurt.

[Big s]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

(Also, does nobody notice this giant carriage in the sky?  Or the horses pulling it?  Someone is going to look up and catch a steaming pile of horsesh*t in the face at some point.)

Imagine Newton’s confusion when a road apple falls from the sky to hit him on the head.

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

A few series wrapped.

Maou no Ore ga Dorei Elf wo Yome ni Shitanda ga, Dou Medereba Ii? -  Predictable ending.   Overall not bad,  the Manga goes off on a tournament arc which killed it for me but that is way after the events the anime covers.    I could see this getting a S2. 

Dungeon Meshi - Probably the best of this season IMO...  Happy to hear there is a S2 coming.    Looking forward to it.

One Room, Hiatari Futsuu, Tenshi-tsuki. -  I enjoyed this one,  it delivered what I expected from it.   Bonus is the Mrs. enjoyed it as well.

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

Eech... well, after about fifteen episodes I've decided I have to drop Mushoku Tensei.

It might be a capably-written isekai series, but no amount of worldbuilding can compensate for the series having a pedophile for a protagonist.  It'd be a dealbreaker even if were a one-time thing, but the story feels compelled to remind us fairly often that Rudeus is a mentally a 40+ year old man and that he doesn't see anything wrong with trying to coerce underage girls into having sex with him.  With that not-so-little detail hanging over everything, the series is just plain unwatchable if not downright repulsive.

A good protagonist should have flaws... but "sex offender" is a villains-only trait and an extreme one at that.  The kind of thing you only give to a villain who's meant to be so totally and irredeemably evil that the protagonist can slay them brutally (and cathartically) while still unassailably holding the moral high ground.

 

 

Chillin' in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers is ending on a two-part hot springs episode.  Unfortunately, they've decided to tar the finale to an enjoyable but formulaic series with a rape joke.  Thankfully the writer had the good sense to put the brakes on that one before it went anywhere, but it was still weird and out of place for what's otherwise been an almost squeaky-clean romcom.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Spice and Wolf was so good today.  I love the Holo changing into a Wolf.  It was great.

[Seto Kaiba]

Re:Monster ended today... and on a predictable cliffhanger.  This episode is almost a clipshow in terms of how often it changes focus to tidy up dangling plot threads.  As a series, it's not bad... but everything it did was done better by So I'm a Spider, So What? and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime.  It focuses way too much on the protagonist having an enormous harem to the extent that the rest of the plot feels a bit neglected.

I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince so I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability also ended today.  Its final trudge to a predictable conclusion felt halfhearted at best, as it never really bothered to provide any stakes for its protagonist to inject a little drama into the conflict.  Even the demon that was the final enemy of the series seemed to think that the way it ended was pretty much BS, and I'm inclined to agree. 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2024-06-18/seirei-gensouki-spirit-chronicles-season-2-anime-trailer-reveals-october-premiere-cast-staff/.212095

 

Finally a release date

[Seto Kaiba]

Watched a pair of episodes of The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio.  It remains my standout for the season.  There's some truly fine character drama there, and the depiction of the stress and toxic work conditions involved in the voice actor and idol industries is unflinching.

Also enjoying the new season of Demon Slayer.  I'm not sure what it is about this series, but it's really grown on me... possibly how it depends far more on the strength of its story and character development than on fanservice.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Wow. it is the first time was completely bored by a Reincarnated as a slime episode.  Nothing at all happened.