Seto Kaiba Posted October 6 Share Posted October 6 (edited) I'm glad to hear that they didn't attempt to modernize Ranma 1/2... some titles really need to be in their native timeframe to work as well as they do. Started the second season of As a Reincarnated Aristocrat today, and it picked up exactly where the previous season left off. It jumps right back into the civil war plot that started at the end of last season, with a war council of the region's nobles debating what to do about the opposing faction in the succession crisis kicked off by the assassination of the provincial governor. The art quality is just as good as last season's, and the writing continues to evade virtually all of the isekai genre's usual blatant wish fulfillment pitfalls. No superpowered protagonist, no harem nonsense. True to its title, Ars is making his way in the world as a capable of but average leader by finding talented subordinates using his appraisal skill and then trusting in the skills and expertise he hired them for. In a way, it's quite a refreshing change from the genre's staples. It's standing on the strength of the character writing. Gave Mecha-ude a whirl, and... well... it's pretty much a shounen anime form letter. If I had to use one word to describe it, it would be "nondescript". The story is just another one of those "generic Japanese youth finds a clingy macguffin and then has to join up with other users of clingy macguffins against the evil organization that wants the clingy macguffins for themselves". The art style is "every shounen anime of the last 10 years that isn't Jujutsu Kaisen, Bleach, or One Piece". The way the titular robot arms are integrated into people's clothes makes it feel like it wants to be family friendly Kill la Kill but has none of the personality. Edited October 6 by Seto Kaiba Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hikaru Ichijo SL Posted October 6 Share Posted October 6 Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? V started and I enjoyed it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big s Posted October 7 Share Posted October 7 1 hour ago, Hikaru Ichijo SL said: Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? V started and I enjoyed it. That’s one of those questions that if you ask you probably should already know the answer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seto Kaiba Posted October 7 Share Posted October 7 Started The Stories of Girls Who Couldn't Be Magicians today. The visual aesthetic of the series is very bright, but not offensively so and the art style is quite pleasant. Many of the backgrounds and objects in scenes are colored and textured like they were done with colored pencils rather than inks, which lends the whole thing an oddly pleasant storybook aesthetic. It's the story of a girl who, after meeting a mage one night when she was young, decided to study her entire life to become a mage herself and then failed to gain admittence into the magic program at the school she applied to. It's a little bit shoujo, a little bit slice of life... but weirdly charming for what it is. The only thing that bothers me is I'm not sure anyone in this series except the one mage girl at the start knows how hats work. (The uniform includes something styled like gakusei-bou, but only the girls seem to wear them and they're worn off to one side at like a 45 degree angle and with the brim pointed down... which just looks weird.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dangard Ace Posted October 7 Share Posted October 7 On 10/5/2024 at 5:33 PM, Duke Togo said: Dug the first episode of the new Ranma 1/2. Set in the 80s, so it's not been transposed into the 21st century. Saw it too. It was fun. Just missing the Yap Papa OP song to make it really nostalgic. New Stuff: NegiPosi Angler - something about fishing give it a shot Mecha-Ude - gotta have something mechanical in this show right? Dan da Dan - no idea poster was colorful Give it a shot Healer Banished is the strongest - do I? Don’t I? Seems I’ve seen this formula before You are Ms Servant - Assassin turned maid Give it a shot until Sakamoto Days shows up Goodbye Dragon Life - not sure but it’s got dragons Give it a shot Dragon Ball Daima - Toriyamas final DB? Hell yes Continuation stuff SAO GGO S2 - more SAO World stuff DanMqchi - Familial Fight! MF Ghost - I drift cool cars! Blue Lock - I’m an ego maniac that’ll take 30 mins to kick a ball! my Hero - eh I know how the manga ends Screw it I’m watching till the end! Bleach - gotta finish the story One Piece - my treasure! My precious! Plus it’s finally finishing Aristocrat Appraisal - I binged S1 last week Surprised I liked it since most isekai stuff doesn’t appeal to me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hikaru Ichijo SL Posted October 7 Share Posted October 7 Seirei Gensouki season 2 started. I enjoyed the 1st episode, I can't wait for more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke Togo Posted October 9 Share Posted October 9 I'm a little more than halfway through Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Solid show, but I think I was expecting a bit more from it given what I had read about it. I've also checked out the first episode of Dan Da Dan. Kinda bonkers in an interesting way. I'll keep watching. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seto Kaiba Posted October 9 Share Posted October 9 'bout eight minutes into Tying the Knot with an Amagami Sister and I have completely checked out. It's definitely giving a "minimum effort harem comedy" vibe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hikaru Ichijo SL Posted October 9 Share Posted October 9 REZero was great again today. Emilia is one tough lady. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seto Kaiba Posted October 11 Share Posted October 11 The Healer Who Was Banished From His Party Is, in Fact, the Strongest is j-fantasy at its most unremarkable. It's not unwatchable or even really bad... it's just generic. Really generic. There are times I swear I could see the barcodes. This season definitely has a lot more interesting titles than the previous one, though. I've added a bunch more today including Nina the Starry Bride, MF Ghost, Yakuza Fiance, Ron Kamonohashi's Forbidden Deductions, and Acro Trip. Gonna give a few of those a whirl this afternoon. 😁 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seto Kaiba Posted October 11 Share Posted October 11 Gave Let This Grieving Soul Retire a whirl... and it's pretty tedious. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hikaru Ichijo SL Posted October 11 Share Posted October 11 I am enjoying SAO GGO season 2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke Togo Posted Sunday at 12:01 AM Share Posted Sunday at 12:01 AM (edited) Most of the voice cast from the original Ranma 1/2 is back for the remake series. Dig it. Edited Sunday at 12:02 AM by Duke Togo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hikaru Ichijo SL Posted Sunday at 09:43 PM Share Posted Sunday at 09:43 PM (edited) Wow, If My Wife Becomes an Elementary School Student is so good. Edited Sunday at 09:43 PM by Hikaru Ichijo SL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seto Kaiba Posted Monday at 12:08 AM Share Posted Monday at 12:08 AM Started Ron Kamonohashi's Forbidden Deductions... and I'm really enjoying it. It's kind of a buddy cop sort of show, with two detectives working together to solve murders. One's a newbie on the verge of getting kicked out of the investigations department due to being kind of a clueless meatheat and the other's a shut-in genius detective who stepped away from crime-solving because his weird habits are quite off-putting. It's very clever and fun and it's very well animated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seto Kaiba Posted Monday at 04:25 PM Share Posted Monday at 04:25 PM Ended up binging the first half-dozen episodes of Ron Kamonohashi's Forbidden Deductions. It's really quite good. The titular detective reminds me a lot of the himbo Sherlock Holmes from Dai Gyakuten Saiban/The Great Ace Attorney, and the overall vibe is like if Holmes had resolved to stay out of the spotlight by steering John Watson to the answers and propping him up as the real Great Detective. Spoiler It is a bit weird that the reason for the subterfuge is that there's an absurdly powerful detective school that apparently has the power to extrajudicially execute detectives for sleuthing without a license. Isn't that just premeditated murder? Anyway... It takes a fair bit from Sherlock Holmes, albeit framed in a modern context, and manages to keep the course of each case pretty well obscured without violating Knox's ten commandments of detective fiction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seto Kaiba Posted Monday at 07:43 PM Share Posted Monday at 07:43 PM (edited) Mecha-ude might be a strong new contender for "Worst Shounen Anime". The first episode left me thinking the series was lazy, overly derivative, and profoundly lacking in anything resembling original thought or artistic merit. The second episode is, if anything, actually worse. This is what you'd get if you asked ChatGPT to write a painfully generic shounen anime. It's a collection of overused tropes and shallow stock characters woven into a woefully threadbare with no real sense of direction or purpose. This episode attempts to explain the central conflict of the story, but all that the writers could muster in terms of ideas was "Rise up against this litigation-safe stand-in for Amazon.com to defend these dangerous self-aware macguffins from being studied!" No, really. That's it. 365 Days to the Wedding is an interesting little romcom about a pair of travel agency employees who... actually, hold up. Does this kind of manual effort in-person travel agency even still exist in the real world? With desk jockeys actually calling hotels and airlines and such to reserve bookings for clients? I thought that kind of thing went the way of the dinosaur twenty years ago when online booking became the new normal. This seems like it'd be really wasteful, expensive, and time consuming compared to booking online. Anyway... 365 Days to the Wedding is the story of two seriously introverted 20-somethings who work for a Tokyo-based travel agency. When their company announces that it will reassign one unmarried staff member from their department to be the branch manager of a new branch office in Alaska in one year's time, they join forces to avoid the unwanted reassignment by faking an engagement. Their efforts to fake it 'til they make it are unwittingly helped by their manager totally shipping it. Edited Monday at 07:47 PM by Seto Kaiba Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hikaru Ichijo SL Posted Monday at 09:54 PM Share Posted Monday at 09:54 PM Arifureta is back. I enjoy this series. I love Hajime and his crazy inventions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seto Kaiba Posted Tuesday at 02:51 AM Share Posted Tuesday at 02:51 AM (edited) Acro Trip is... well... kind of a trip. It's the story of a young girl named Chizuko who is a positively rabid fangirl for her town's resident magical girl Berry Blossom. By coincidence, she encounters her idol's ineffectual villain Chrome in town one day and he attempts to persuade her to join his evil organization and provide some quality magical menace to keep Berry Blossom employed. It has a warped sense of humor to be sure. I'd say it's a bit like a non-ecchi version of Gushing Over Magical Girls, with a comedy emphasis instead. I'm having a lot of fun with it. Edited Tuesday at 02:54 AM by Seto Kaiba Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tekering Posted Tuesday at 05:05 AM Share Posted Tuesday at 05:05 AM 9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said: Does this kind of manual effort in-person travel agency even still exist in the real world? With desk jockeys actually calling hotels and airlines and such to reserve bookings for clients? I thought that kind of thing went the way of the dinosaur twenty years ago when online booking became the new normal. Ah, but you forget Japan is The Land That Time Forgot. Newspapers still sell, ATMs remain inaccessible on weekends and holidays, even fax machines are still manufactured here. A significant percentage of the population still won't use the Internet, either out of fear or a stubborn refusal to change... and some of those people still head corporations, or national government positions. 🙄 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big s Posted Tuesday at 05:51 AM Share Posted Tuesday at 05:51 AM 45 minutes ago, tekering said: Ah, but you forget Japan is The Land That Time Forgot. Newspapers still sell, ATMs remain inaccessible on weekends and holidays, even fax machines are still manufactured here. A significant percentage of the population still won't use the Internet, either out of fear or a stubborn refusal to change... and some of those people still head corporations, or national government positions. 🙄 I hear rumors of phone booths still existing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seto Kaiba Posted Tuesday at 07:50 PM Share Posted Tuesday at 07:50 PM 14 hours ago, tekering said: Ah, but you forget Japan is The Land That Time Forgot. Newspapers still sell, ATMs remain inaccessible on weekends and holidays, even fax machines are still manufactured here. A significant percentage of the population still won't use the Internet, either out of fear or a stubborn refusal to change... and some of those people still head corporations, or national government positions. 🙄 Ah, very true... I guess I forgot how old-fashioned much of Japan still is since the firms I work with over there use more modern solutions (probably for our sake). 🤔 My brief confusion aside, 365 Days to the Wedding is quite a cute little romance/romcom series. I've heard from a friend there's a live action version too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hikaru Ichijo SL Posted Tuesday at 10:19 PM Share Posted Tuesday at 10:19 PM I am really enjoying The Apothecary Diaries. It is so good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Focslain Posted Wednesday at 01:37 PM Share Posted Wednesday at 01:37 PM 15 hours ago, Hikaru Ichijo SL said: I am really enjoying The Apothecary Diaries. It is so good. MaoMao is a treat, if your watching the sub version there are several points where she channels Tanya. Cause same VA. Can't wait for the next season (been announced at least) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hikaru Ichijo SL Posted Wednesday at 09:19 PM Share Posted Wednesday at 09:19 PM 7 hours ago, Focslain said: MaoMao is a treat, if your watching the sub version there are several points where she channels Tanya. Cause same VA. Can't wait for the next season (been announced at least) I have never seen Tanya. But did know that Yuuki Aoi voiced both. I only watch subs. Her vocal range is just crazy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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