What Anime are you watching?

[B E C K]

I'm sick with Covid or some Covid-like thing right now so I looked for something current I could marathon while resting. I pulled up I Parry Everything. I guess I'd give this like a B-.

Pros:
-It doesn't look completely visually terrible like Dahlia in Bloom. There's of course scenes with weird cheapo shortcuts like most shows these days. But the old people look like old people.

-MC's a nice guy who loves to help others. Visually, he's a good deviation of the generic MC design: he's stockier, has visible scars, and the design of his clothing fits the environment and his station in life. (Unlike, say, the "love interest" in Dahlia in Bloom.) He's also a hard-working guy, even in the face of failures. He jumps forward or rushes in instead of waiting for the story to happen to him, which I like.

-The female MC is okay. Her dad, brother, and guardian also appear to be decent characters.

-Oh, and this is not an isekai.

Cons:
-Generic anime fantasy world is le boring.

-He kicks a dragon in the face. "Parry!"  He hits sticks in the air.  "Parry!"  This looks less like parries and more like he attacks and shouts "parry."  I guess it can be funny at times but sometimes it just comes off as weird.  Also, why is he shouting the word "parry" everytime?

-The way class training is done in this world feels way too video-gamey. "I'm going to be a thief."  "I'm going to be a warrior."  "I'm going to be a hunter." And then he just went to the front door of wherever and they let him in.   

-The MC being a bit of a dunce ranged from mildly funny to just plain stupid. *sees Minotaur* "That cow's gone crazy!"

-The story does what I call Lost flashbacks where you meet a character and then we need their fucking backstory. Honestly, I forwarded most of these. These are boring. Juni Taisen was the only show that I feel did that type of thing well. Why? Because usually the subject of the flashback was going to die, like, immediately. So it was a nice reversal to have their flashback hyping them up and then to have them taken out in what was usually an unexpected way.
   Here, like, the MC fights the arrogant spear dude and then the arrogant spear dude tells his backstory of being an arrogant spear dude. We meet guardian knight lady and then need the guardian knight lady's flashback of how she became a guardian knight lady. We meet abused child slave and get the abused child slave flashback of being an abused child slave. This is all useless information because these flashbacks are shallow and we already have enough context in the present day story to understand these characters to the extent the flashbacks want us to do so.

-That MC energy. What I mean is that various characters in the story remember the MC from seeing him as a child over ten years ago despite not knowing him that long. I let it pass with the guild master but now this story wants to tell me various masters of the schools the MC flunked out of remember him, too? There's a shield dude in the knight lady's flashback that's all "I wish MC was here." What?  W-Why?  He flunked your school as a child over a decade ago. Excuse me?

[Rodent of Unusual Size]

Get well soon!

[B E C K]

Thanks!


Watched Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day. I know it's not current but I've been meaning to see this one. I kinda wanted to see this English dubbed but there's something about the lead actresses voice that gets to me so once I saw her name in the cast I didn't even bother trying. It's a decent show. A-, I guess. I know they're dealing with something traumatic but it sometimes felt too dramatic. The story also felt stretched to be longer than it needed to be.

I didn't take points off for this, but personally, I just don't like characters like the lead girl so that did hinder my enjoyment. I don't like her design and I didn't like her character. Look at me. I'm a saint. I'm lovvvvved by evvvvveryone and everything revolves around me ten years later. Bleh. Makes me puke in my mouth and not because I'm sick. She'd still child-like because she died when she was a child?  Fine. But then her body gets to be older? Frankly, it plays like someone's fetish. I concede the show's solid and this is all a "me" problem.

[B E C K]

Oh, and I've watched some of that Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in русский. I thought it had a really good first couple of episodes (even with the dumb panty shot) but as it progressed, I kinda found I liked it less. The dynamic between the girl trying to be a secret flirt and the guy understanding her was cute. I also liked the slacker lead with potential who's not into student council. But then, wait, he's not a slacker but a secret hard-worker from a rich familia and, wait, he actually will join the council. Now it's a student council drama introducing a bunch of dumb stock characters and that makes it rote. I don't give a shit. Imagine if My Dress-Up Darling became Marin and Gojo running for student council four episodes in. Fuck off, that's boring. And while Masha is an A+ sister, Yuki goes straight into the dumpster. Get that brocon bullshit away from me.

[B E C K]

First ep of Wistoria: Wand and Sword. Not sure how to rate this.

Pros:
Beautiful to look at and appears to have a budget of some sort. At least for the first episode. Had good action and I liked the general designs of the characters. Still generic in a way but had a quality that made them (and the setting) pleasant to look at it. Voice acting's good. Didn't notice the music tbh but I didn't notice it for the wrong reasons so I consider that a plus.

Cons:
-Boring magic school setting you've seen twenty dozen times before.
-This guy has no magic so why the fuck is he in magic school? Make it make sense.
-This guy has the eyes of the hawk, ears of the wolf superhuman strength, the body sturdiness of a dwarf (but not the beard) and some "eidetic fighting" bullshit but Discount Snape and the school bullies have NO idea? The whole fucking school should know about his OP shit. The teacher who knew practically bragged about it when given the first opportunity. Make it make sense.
-On that note, this dude is bullied. Are his skills useless against bullies?
-Also, tl;dr, fuck this guy. Long version below.**



**This dude is so fucking contrary to his own character:

So he's supposed to be a kind character. Fine, that's a lot of MCs. He goes to a dungeon to kill a monster for school credits he 1000% needs or he will be expelled. He sees this sentinel-thing attacking his main bully, he's all "10 credits!" Uh, okay. That's all you care about even though you're a kind character? I mean, I know he's a bully but he's gonna die and his two friends are already be dead. Um, all right. Well, you need the credits. I guess you could try killing it anyway.

Then he's all "But I don't want to save my bully" and implies he's gonna let the guy DIE. Wait, aren't you kind? And aren't you also focused on staying in school because you simp for that girl Elfie?  Also, because the main character's stated the issue is "not saving his bully" and not that the creature is too big and scary, I fully believe he CAN kill the sentinel even though his OP abilities have not been revealed to me yet in the episode.

"I'm not kind." Who cares? 10 credits. You just need the credits to stay in magic school, right? Fuck Red Draco, just go get your credits.

"Boo hoo, I'm not a kind person, Elfie." WHO CARES? You NEED the credits to stay in school FOR Elfie. You're gonna be expelled, you dingus.

Then he saves the bully with his OP abilities and is all smiling to the bully all "R U OK, MY NAKAMA?" Like, what the fuck? You were gonna let him die a minute ago and now the I'm supposed to believe you're actually a kind character just because you smiled and held out a hand? When you were going to sit there and LET HIM DIE? AND IT WAS SO EASY FOR YOU TO KILL THAT THING, TOO. FUCK OFF, YOU MAGICLESS SCRUB.

I hate this guy.


Canadian Tire Snape and Red Draco are not likeable either by any means but they're right: this dude doesn't belong in magic school and he should leave. Surely this world has a sword school he can join. What is this shit?

[jonhammstein]

Imagine if My Dress-Up Darling became Marin and Gojo running for student council four episodes in. Fuck off, that's boring.

[jonhammstein]

Apropos of nothing, whenever I'm perusing the site where I get all of my stuff, and I see there's a new Spice and Wolf, my brain automatically sticks an "Of" in front of it.

Of Spice and Wolf

And I don't know why. I've never even watched it once.

[B E C K]

I tried to watch the first series or whatever like years ago. Possibly when Netflix had DVDs of it. I don't remember a damn thing other than being kind of bored and not liking the wolf girl. But I couldn't tell you why.

Is the Of because of a show with a similar title? Or something you associate with the word 'spice' in particular?

[B E C K]

I forgot to comment on this thing but... but... LADY, WHAT ARE YOU WEARING? And why is this playing off like another Girl Boss flick? Why does it look like she's fighting and doing everything alone? Don't you have friends or allies to help you? ¿Dónde está su NAKAMA? My hype is dead.

[jonhammstein]

Old man incoming:

Remember back in the good old days, when there were all kinds of wildly different styles of animation out of Japan, typically so as to reflect the tone of whatever narrative content is being depicted? Now everything is just "ANIME" and it's all one big homogenous gray lump. Like the heroine here looks interchangeable with any of 10,000 waifus from just as many mobile gacha games. Ooh, so pretty with that deep crimson hair... is she Jean Grey? The fuck, man.

If someone were to say to you: LotR anime! What would immediately spring to mind? Maybe classic Berserk. Or hey let's be more modern -- Vinland Saga?

I poop on this.

[B E C K]

Record of Lodoss War came to mind, I guess, but I'd argue just your point: it didn't need a specific anime style. Visually, it just needed good artwork and animation.  You could insert Harley Queen from the SS Isekai into that trailer and she would not look out of place standing next to that chick. Gross.

Also, I think the massive leaks this month caused a big pirate crackdown and it murdered a bunch of streaming sites.

[jonhammstein]

Really! I hadn't heard that, but I suppose it stands to reason considering how flagrantly some of these piracy outfits operate.

[B E C K]

My plan today was to binge stream anime on my favorite streaming website since I'm on bedrest. I don't have Covid nor flu, just, er, *looks at paper* "viral illness." So I guess just a rando virus or rando flu or some shit no one cares about. Got a bunch of meds, got cozy, and found the site died.

When you think about, it's mindless flailing. Pirate sites just helped dispense the content. They didn't make it or host it. Netflix or whoever would be better served finding and throwing the book at the people who actually took and released content. But whatever, these things happen and these types of sites will all be replaced anyway.

[B E C K]

Watched an ep of Mission: Yozakura Family. MEH. I like the girl okay but the main guy's not that interesting. His family is dead but instead of doing anything special with that grief to make this story fresh and unique, the characters almost talk as if the his parents and sibling are still alive. Then the show has to turn around and make sure we're reminded that his family is dead. It's so jarring.

The big brother character would've been more likable if they dialed back the crazy. A bunch of the character designs are fucking awful. When the spy-family is all together, everyone clashes like they isekai'd from different animes or a different child designed each character. I hate that shit. If these people belong together, they need to show that visually somehow. Also, this show seems to both ask the viewer to take these people seriously as spies but to also go "lol, they're goofy spies with twitter and featured in magazines." Look, you need to pick one. You can't have both of those. You can't give me a creepy guy in suit drawing blood and then show me a twink in a cat costume and tell me both of those things are spies. I guess it gets a D. Nothing offensive but nothing to give a shit about either.



I also watched No Longer Allowed in Another World with the dude who tried to kill himself but Truck-kun sent him to another world. I liked the initial concept but the moment he leaves the chapel, the show went straight into the shitter. If this had been a short and ended there, it would've been great. But this is a series and he meanders to get caught by some tree thing that's having a tentacle party with a cat girl. And this show really goes in, showing her boobs being squeezed.

This thing was advertised like "Edgar Allen Shmoe gets Isekai'd" but is just some horny depressed dude's isekai titillation with the usual harem of sexy young things and no actual jokes or plot to be found. I've seen some reviews all "suicide isn't funny" and I think those people are confused. Of course it isn't funny in this show because this show doesn't tell jokes.  Him popping pills like smarties was funny once but little did I know that's the height of the humor this show is capable of.

When he was getting hung by the tree in the first episode, I expected a joke. Him being poisonous just because--when that cleric purified him, no less--is not a punchline to anything. It's just a thing that happens to him because the tree needs to not kill the guy for the show to go on. This type of character is incapable of moving any sort of story forward. He's dead weight, just not in the way he wants to be. It gets an F for "Fuck Off."

[jonhammstein]

That reminds me of something.

I've been watching The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to Be Archenemies, which I like for the most part. It's cute and it's funny, but every now and then it gets weirdly horny. There's one scene where she's being forcibly restrained and groped by a slime monster, which has her moaning all the while in agony (ecstasy?) and it's all played for laughs.

She's more of a prop than a character, is how it feels at times.

[Rodent of Unusual Size]

I'm watching it, but I couldn't tell you why as I don't really find it humorous.

I've caught myself enjoying Pseudo Harem despite the male lead senpai who comes across as incredibly dense (like that's never been a complaint in anime). Dude, it's painfully obvious that the main girl kohai is crushing on him. Then again, maybe he does realize it and is just keeping her at arm's length knowing he's about to graduate. In any case, contrary to the implications of "Harem" in the name it's a rather sweet show.

2.5 Dimensional Seduction is another show that's a bit deceptive. Sure, there's quite a lot of fan service, but the relationships therein are rather low-key. If anything it could afford to be a bit more romantic. It's really in the same vein as My Dress-up Darling, just not as good and without the MC closeness.

Talking about low-key reminds me of Days with My Step-Sister. The title is self-explanatory, with two classmates who suddenly become step siblings and are doing their best to set boundaries that you just know are going to come crashing down and hurt inside (like R3@1 Americans).  This has been done before, and time will tell how much better it's been done, but one thing for sure is that this show is sloooooooooooooow. Not a good late-night watch, I've found.

I've historically enjoyed the Reincarnated as a Slime show, but this season I haven't really delved into. And it apparently has finished jumping the shark and has become a boardroom simulator. Frankly, I have enough of that boardroom bullshit at work and don't need to find it in my trashy big-titty harem isekai anime thank you very much.

Speaking of big-titty harems, I've low-ball enjoyed the The Café Terrace and Its Goddesses show. Dude has sufficiently irritated 60% of the girls under his roof into marrying him, and of the other 40% one is just barely not underage and the other is completely uninterested (who I imagine long-term will wind up being the one). Not only that, but they instigated another restaurant full of afore-mentioned goddesses of the melon grande variety who'll probably want to fuck him next. But there's enough story between the guy walking in on ten tens in various states of undress to string me along.

The Alya show has been enjoyable. It boils down to the guy being able to do whatever he wants but doesn't want to because of family angst. Golden Boy he is not, but the statuesque white-haired Russian sure fills him with want-to! Unfortunately like many anime involving student councils we get stuck with the plot being driven by student council crap. I get that it's the raison d'etre for the core cast to be brought together, but it drives everything...I've read the LN, and five volumes in it's still student council this and student council that. They really need to get out of that rut, because the Russian sisters and the MC and his sister (sorry, Nuri, but Yuki and her relationship with Masachika is one of the main reasons to watch this show; that shit's hilarious) are awesome as are some of the peripheral family members like Masa's chill Russia-loving grandpa and the classroom neighbors.

I haven't started watching Too Many Losing Heroines yet, nor Sengoku Youko, which are supposed to be good to fair, respectively. I started pulling Failure Frame, but reading the manga made me remember that I don't care for gore and/or depressing anime (the latter being why I no-sold Anohana after downloading the whole season some time back).

As for War of the Rohirrim, I don't consider it so much as anime as it is a peculiar melding of east and west styles à la Castlevania (and, good Lord, the set shots look freaking amazing!). The Rohirrim were my favorite people group from Middle-Earth, and the tale of Helm Hammerhand is one of my favorite backstory elements from the legendarium. Consequently, I'm very much looking forward to it; granted, there will be significant poetic license taken as it features the unnamed daughter of Helm as the main character, but that gave them quite a bit of freedom. I'm not going to elevate this to the level of the LOTR movies, but I fully expect it to be superior to the Hobbit movies and for damn sure Rings of Powet (of which I will be watching the first of the second season episodes tonight...against my better judgment). I'm expecting Nausicaa in Rohan which fills me with unmitigated glee.

[B E C K]

I finally caught up on Yatagarasu and although I knew of the twist regarding the world it exists in, it's still funny that it's basically the same twist as The Planet of Apes.  No only was it Earth all along but the bones of our dead were being ground up into drugs. This is such an interesting show.  Yes, I did like it much better as a court drama. As a court drama, it was 10/10. This shit with the monkeys isn't really my jam but it's still has come into its own as a solid story in this universe. I'm glad we're seeing Hamayu again.

I'm expecting Nausicaa in Rohan which fills me with unmitigated glee.

I would actually be happy to get something like this. It wouldn't be exactly what I wanted but that sounds cool. I just don't have much faith in the final outcome, especially when a key aesthetic choice is killing my immersion.

[B E C K]

So last Saturday was finally the last episode of Yatagarasu... it was Pompoko all along! I hope the original novels get translated into English. I wasn't crazy for the monkeys as I was the court drama but ultimately this show still ends up a solid A, monkey warts and all. I hope we get another season.

[Rodent of Unusual Size]

Grand Blue Dreaming is returning. I'm frankly shocked at this news but also very glad...this show has the best extreme facial expressions since GTO. It never fails to make me laugh...I've been trying to follow the manga ever since first watching this show, and it never really fell away like a lot of them do.

[jonhammstein]

I've never heard of this. Must have come out during one of my dead zones. Grabbing the first season.

[jonhammstein]

Hmm. Nope. I was definitely an active anime viewer in 2018. I just managed to somehow miss this one completely.

[B E C K]

I've never heard of this show. At least I don't recall it. Maybe I'll give it a try.  I'm in a vacuum when it comes to things to watch. Although we're already rolling into new anime.

I watched Murai in Love. On one hand, it has funny moments and I like the characters for the most part. On the other, it's a story about a 17 year-old student in love with his 24 year-old teacher who herself is in love with a fictional husbando and it all comes off weird because the teacher is clearly conflicted about her student's feelings for her. There shouldn't be a difference because I was on-board the Yankumi (23)/Shin (18) train for Gokusen and it's not like the teacher characters actively encourage this shit but, meh, I dunno.  I will say I still enjoy the show but I wouldn't blame other people passing on it just for the premise alone. Also, "anime" is a loose term when this is like a glorified Power Point show. Literally, like, the budget's a packet of Cheese Nips.

[B E C K]

Tried watching that Ms. Maid anime and the dude got on my nerves in under a minute. Not sticking with this one.

Also checked out the Ranma 1/2 English dub. So far...
Girl Ranma - Sounds good.
Guy Ranma - Haven't heard enough of him. Wish his voice was a bit deeper, I guess.
Akane - Yawn. It's whatever. The most basic boring anime-girl voice.
Nabiki - Too nasally.
Kasumi - Great.
Soun - NO. J. Michael Tatum is super talented but he was miscast IMO.
Genma - Sounds good.

I also watched a bit of the DanDaDan dub and it seems pretty good.

I also tried Why Don't We Get Married? So far, the main characters are super weak. I want to like them more but they're kind of fuckin' boring. I think part of the problem is that they're both meek and "the straight man" in their duo without one of them being the wacky one or the super smart one or the fuckin' dumb one. The girl tries to take the lead but she's not standing out enough. Then the dude is just the typical herbivore guy when this story could have had him make up silly lies or do anything other than whine about how pathetic he is. Like his idea that he should've sang karaoke with the girl. Like, that would've been fun. But, no, he's boring. I might still tune in to this to see if they liven up any but I kind of have a feeling they won't.