The Sphere

I knew Mary Poppins was gonna be shit when they whored her out to Nissan to sell fucking cars. Nothing beautiful and magical is ever sent to hock sweet rides so viciously unless production is aware they're dealing with a piece of crap and need to squeeze our every shekel possible. Oh, oh, are we dancing with cartoon animals again? The novelty on that's fucking gone, you know.

Nyaa.si is the most important source for torrented anime...it has no ads. As for groups I generally stick with HorribleSubs since they're timely and do a decent job (ads but not intrusive ones). I keep tabs on a few other groups in case I'm looking for older stuff or better quality of a series not being released here within a reasonable span of time if ever, but as you've noticed they're getting fewer and farther between given the state of Japanese crackdowns on raws and the existence of things like CrunchyRoll.

I'm here. Kinda.

The websites I usually go to watch anime at are either overrun with ads to an annoying degree or shut down. So I haven't really gone out of my way to watch much lately. Not that anything has really interested me. I've finally watched Hunter x Hunter (2011) since I can stream it all on Tubi. I know it was on Netflix once upon a time but I found myself hella bored with the first episode. Even now, I've already gotten to the end and I'm struggling to actually go back and watch the beginning due to how damn boring it is.

I do like this... sort of. Taking it as a whole, it's got some dynamic characters (as it should considering there's about, like, 500 of them) and catchy music. But it's also got this weird tonal problem. I don't know how else to describe it. Some of my gripes...

False Group:
I feel like the promo art and the opening credits try to sell this as an adventure with a quartet a la Yu Yu Hakusho (I know it's by the same guy). Only Gon and Killua have a true chemistry together. They are an adorable pair and play off of each other well. Kurapika and Leorio feel tacked on in a lot of their scenes with the other two and a lot of the time I found myself wondering why I was supposed to care about them or why they were even there.

Odd Sympathies:
It kept trying to make us feel sorry for assholes. Not the only example by any means but the Phantom Troupe are dicks and the story at times throws us too much into their perspective. This group is all "murder for lols" and "le steals for keks" and then we're supposed to experience story from their perspective and feel bad these murdering pricks lost two of their friends. Hisoka's a dick but at least he's a selfish troll and owns it. Even Illumi owns his weirdness. Meanwhile, we get a whole ep about these sadistic eyeball thieves protecting their junkyard. Gag me.

Pedolicious:
Like, why do this? And there's all these people defending Hisoka but he's looking at little boy asses. Come on. And the fuck was Palm's deal? It was weird. And the thing is it wouldn't have mattered half as much if the protags had been aged up. But, no, let's keep Gon 11/12 and have a 22 year old woman and a 28 year old man harass him. It's just an weird story choice.

Shit Dad:
I don't get how he could care so much about this crappy man and not have two shits to rub together for his mother. And the way the dad arranged shit for his son before-hand like Greed Island... It relied on too many variables to match up. And the story is trying to get us to root for Gon to find his dad when he should've cut his losses because it makes no difference.

Again, overall I liked it. But I don't feel like I could actually recommend it to anyone.

Flash is uniform, but not uniformly good. It's like I will go long periods between watches, and when I binge it it's always easier to take because it's familiar, but the sameyness has worn off. But until last season, everything really has been cookie cutter. I dropped Arrow a while back because it was mired in its own formula (and got tired of some of the editorial content). I just never got into Supergirl, although I always loved the character (probably due to OG Crisis and Helen Slater) and think the actress playing the role is fantastic. I haven't seen Black Lightning as it wasn't connected to the Arrowverse (at least originally, maybe that's changing with the upcoming crossover?).

However, Legends is unadulterated fun in any capacity.