Seto Kaiba Posted August 25 Share Posted August 25 Wistoria: Wand and Sword is hitting levels of padded that rival Dragon Ball Z at its worst. Yet it manages to be more infuriating because there aren't a bunch of bystanders filling airtime reacting to every little thing, it's just the protagonist who seems to need to stop for five to ten minutes EVERY TIME he's attacked to gasp, panic, and wonder aloud about the magic he's being attacked with. If you cut out the padding, the fights in this series could be over in ten to fifteen seconds. Honestly, considering the protagonist's gimmick is being superhumanly strong, this is basically just "Mashle but worse in every way". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seto Kaiba Posted August 26 Share Posted August 26 Watched episodes seven and eight of Code Geass: Roze of the Recapture... and I'm wondering how someone got this show green-light for production in this state. It's a mess. It's not a little mess either. I was unsurprised to see the series director, Ohashi Yoshimitsu, is normally a storyboard artist and illustrator rather than being involved in any kind of production lead role. The writer, Kimura Noboru, is responsible for some of Bandai Namco's worst mecha titles including Gundam AGE... and it shows. This is a story filled with exploitative fanservice, lazy plot twists, and unlikeable axe crazy characters whose actions don't seem to be connected to any actual outcomes in the plot. It's not the worst recent mecha title I've seen - that dubious honor still belongs to Tatsunoko Production's 2019 series The Price of Smiles - but it's definitely the worst thing that's come out under the Code Geass name and rivals some of the worst installments of Gundam. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hikaru Ichijo SL Posted August 26 Share Posted August 26 Spice and Wolf was good again today. I never tire of that show. I am watching Dairugger XV but I am putting in hold for now. It is just getting too repetitive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stampeed Valkyrie Posted August 29 Share Posted August 29 Tokidoki Bosotto Russia-go de Dereru Tonari no Alya-san is still my choice for Best Summer Anime 2024. Spice and Wolf has finally departed content previously animated, and this allows me to say something positive and maybe recommend it. Maougun Saikyou no Majutsushi wa Ningen datta - Meh, its nothing that hasn't been done before. Its not a bad series, the CGI is painful at points but overall it OK. Not good, just OK. Shinmai Ossan Boukensha, Saikyou Party ni Shinu hodo Kitaerarete Muteki ni Naru. It looks like its gonna wrap with a tournament arc, I have at least read the Manga ahead abit so I know what is coming next. Another meh title. Its not bad, but its not really good either. I have Given Oshi no Ko Season 2 enough time to develop a good head start so I will start watching it. Hopefully its as good as the first season was. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Focslain Posted August 29 Share Posted August 29 1 hour ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said: I have Given Oshi no Ko Season 2 enough time to develop a good head start so I will start watching it. Hopefully its as good as the first season was. Oshi no Ko S2 seems to have been split into two arcs, the Aqua/Theater arc and the Ruby arc. It just got to the Ruby arc. First half focuses on Aqua and the theater group he is working with. So not as good as S1, but still interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hikaru Ichijo SL Posted August 29 Share Posted August 29 Ginmai Seikatsu if moving along. It is a slow show but well worth it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke Togo Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 (edited) Finished the first season of Delicious in Dungeon. It was good. Watching Beastars, which is really good. Also, I finally watched all of Space Battleshio Yamato 2199, which I thought was really good. Currently watching 2202. Edited August 30 by Duke Togo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big s Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 3 hours ago, Duke Togo said: Finished the first season of Delicious in Dungeon. My daughter loves the show and is trying really hard to convince me to finish it. I had watched the first episode and I thought it was really boring. It felt like watching a game tutorial crossed with cooking recipes for food that looks great, but doesn’t exist, so I ended up not only bored but extremely hungry. She tell me that most of the episodes are much better, but I don’t really know anyone else that’s seen it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hikaru Ichijo SL Posted August 30 Share Posted August 30 5 hours ago, Duke Togo said: Finished the first season of Delicious in Dungeon. It was good. Watching Beastars, which is really good. Also, I finally watched all of Space Battleshio Yamato 2199, which I thought was really good. Currently watching 2202. I am watching Delicious in Dungeon and I am half done and it is great. Yamato 2199 is one of my favorite animes period. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seto Kaiba Posted September 1 Share Posted September 1 Wistoria: Wand and Sword has finally managed to have an entertaining episode... what a pity it's basically unrelated to the actual plot. Apparently what this painfully half-arsed "Harry Potter if Harry were a muggle with super-strength" fantasy series needed to inject some entertainment value into the proceedings was... [checks notes]... Spoiler ... for the bespectacled protagonist's only two friends to make him the focus of an aggressively hostile and competitive bisexual love triangle. [checks notes again] No, I didn't see that one coming either. The series has been blatantly telegraphing that Will's one female friend (Colette, the blatant Hermione expy) is into him, but when she finally manages to get a not-officially-a-date outing with him in the latest episode the proceedings are hijacked by Will's roommate (and only other friend) Rosty. After a morning of frustration as Rosty derails every date-like thing she tries, Colette confronts Will about it and asks if they're really just roommates. Not an unreasonable question, mind you, given that Will points out that they bathe together and that he for some reason felt compelled to tell her that... Spoiler ... Rosty's "package" is bigger than his. Will is apparently completely clueless and thinks Rosty is "just big into skinship" and doesn't realize Rosty is carrying a torch for him. When Colette and Rosty decide to have it out, they send Will to the smithy to have his sword examined and end up LOUDLY comparing relationship notes on Will in public... with an audience. They're practically about to come to blows over which one of them will be topping this show's femboy protagonist. 🤣 It really is a shame that they pivot away from that amusing little fight to more of the incredibly lackluster protagonist Will and his dealings with the school's top students (despite being basically the lowest ranked student). (That "Harry Potter if Harry were a muggle with super-strength" seems to be an emergent genre of low-effort fantasy anime is distressing in and of itself. It was funny when Mashle did it but that kind of thing is only really funny once.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hikaru Ichijo SL Posted September 1 Share Posted September 1 Wow, I really enjoyed the last two episodes of Monogatari. I really liked Shinobu's backstory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stampeed Valkyrie Posted Thursday at 03:44 PM Share Posted Thursday at 03:44 PM Caught the 30th Anniversary Screening for Ninja Scroll last night. AX Cinema nights keeps bringing me back to theatres. Good stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hikaru Ichijo SL Posted Thursday at 10:56 PM Share Posted Thursday at 10:56 PM Ginmai Seikatsu is such a good show. I loved Akiko and her reaction when Yuuta called her mom. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seto Kaiba Posted 3 hours ago Share Posted 3 hours ago The Summer '24 simulcast season is in the home stretch... and it's been pretty darn uneventful. The Strongest Magician in the Demon Lord's Army Was a Human ended the other day and in a fashion as unremarkable as everything else about the series. Spoiler Ike's mixture of Human and Demon forces successfully break the siege and rescue his commander and in the process showcase his various strategic innovations like the use of gunpowder. The Demon Lord then shows up in person to congratulate them on their win, and it ends with Ike receiving a letter from the retreating Human commander basically saying "I'll get you next time, worthy opponent!". Calling this series "dull as dishwater" might honestly be doing a disservice to dishwater... My Wife Has No Emotion also ended recently... and quite honestly it never once stopped being massively, MASSIVELY cringeworthy in every single respect. It didn't quite cross the line into being so appalling that I dropped it, but there's no entertainment value to be had here. Pseudo Harem had its penultimate episode yesterday, and if I had to describe it I'd say all 11 episodes thus far have been the TV equivalent of eating cotton candy. It's sweet and light, but ultimately insubstantial. It has a lot of cute and funny moments but its story had little-to-no feeling of direction or progression. It's not so much a story as just a string of incidents. Failure Frame has actually developed into a watchable series over the last six episodes. It's nowhere near the high bar set by its genre's major players (Overlord, KonoSuba, Re:Zero, and Yojo Senki) but it's head and shoulders above the low-effort isekai and isekai-adjacent shovelware infesting most of the broadcast schedule. Spoiler Once the series all but stopped focusing on Touka's classmates, it became a lot more tolerable. They're all unapologetically sh*tty people and the Goddess they're working for is clearly Evil Incarnate to the point that they're seriously telegraphing the Demon Lord not actually being evil at all. The story finally started going in some interesting directions once Touka started digging into his own trauma and the reflections of it that he saw in the frankly kind of awful fantasy world he's ended up in. He becomes a great deal more interesting and likeable once he starts letting his desire to prevent other people from suffering the way he did guide his actions. No Longer Allowed in Another World was initially kind of funny and audacious, but it hasn't really gone anywhere interesting with its running joke and the seven "Fallen Angels" (isekai'd folks) who embody the seven deadly sins are pretty flat characters so far. So much so that the protagonist even lampshades how uninteresting Gluttony's one is, being just a bored rich kid looking for stimulation. Ossan Newbie Adventurer's 10th episode has more or less closed the door on the possibility of the season going anywhere interesting, since both of the competitors who'd been built up as Final Boss-type opponents for the season were knocked out of their fighting contest already. It's fun, but it's a pretty mediocre 5.5 or 6/10 sort of story. Wistoria: Wand and Sword is back to just kind of being a trashfire. It's one of the most visually distinctive titles in the season lineup but its story is so painfully by-the-numbers that the audience doesn't feel smart for spotting the thread ahead of time. Spoiler The most recent episode introduced what seems to be the story's Big Bad, sabotaging a practical exam in the dungeons below the town so that the protagonist's newly formed ultra-elite group of the school's best mages falls into the deeper levels that are basically Instant Death. Dahlia in Bloom: Crafting a Fresh Start with Magical Tools dropped its penultimate episode today. Honestly, I'm inclined to wonder if this is just a REALLY badly done adaptation of the light novel and not simply a bland story. There are times where it starts to remind me a lot of Ascendance of a Bookworm, particularly when the protagonist has to learn about the many euphemisms the nobility use as her business starts catering not to regular civilains but to low ranking nobility. Other times, I just have to wonder if there's actually any conflict in the story at all. Spoiler After Dahlia settles the dissolution of her engagement and disentangles her business affairs from her ex-fiance's, her story doesn't really contain any challenges or conflicts to drive the development of her character. Everything she does seems to go perfectly and everyone around her seemingly bends over backwards to ensure she succeeds in whatever she attempts... to the extent that one of the senior guild administrators quits to become her personal gofer. Its weakest point might be how indistinct the visual designs are. The sameface is strong with this one. There's one moment in the latest episode where Dahlia's love interest is sitting in a meeting with the other knights and the person sitting to his left is an Identical Stranger with the exact same character design and uniform who can only be told apart because his hair has a slight blue tint. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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