Anime, Manga, VN, JRPG, Related Things Discussion Topic CII

grab some KFC, it's time to rewatch your favorite Christmas episodes. what's your most memorable Christmas memories?

mine are Toradora's and Baldr Sky's, which are both fairly depressing because that's how I roll

Lots of anime wrapping up this week and I suddenly have a rather long backlog of stuff to watch as a friend recently got me into Nisekoi, and I started watching For All Mankind due to a different recommendation.
At the same time I am debating playing Trains into Reverie, with the foreknowledge that the series is going downhill and it might break my heart going through that. I might put it off some.

nisekoi is something i've repeatedly tried to get into because the manga artist was exceptional at facial expressions

I should try again, it's been a while

I don't think I've actually seen a lot of Christmas anime episodes. But Mahoromatic is one of my favorite comfort series so I'll occasionally watch that episode this time of year.

Still need to finish Tora Dora. I think I left off just before it gets serious..

Now that the first season of "I'm in Love with the Villainess" is over, I can say that the one thing holding the anime back, as opposed to the light novels and manga, is how cartoonish some of the direction is. There is a moment in episode 12 I have been looking forward to since episode 7, and then it happened... with some of the intended potency of the moment traded for cartoony character repositioning.

It's ultimately fine, but the original novel, Claire's retelling novel, and manga all tell that moment so much better.

"Xenoblade 1 is one of the best examples that comes to mind"

That doesn't invalidate the journey. We still needed to accomplish the initial goal no matter what. I also feel like the revelation that the face mechon have homs inside them was handled terribly. They are already sentient enemies so what does their biology matter? Thats the point where I stopped caring about the story because it made me stop caring about shulk. The villains motivations are also a bit suspect

Although I feel the real issue with the story is the villain. He has multiple opportunities to win and has basically no reason for being a dick other than because he's just like that. He comes off as stupid and ineffectual losing only due to his own extreme james bond villain type arrogance.

"What would you do?"

Not use that as a plot element in a video game. And yeah, if I'm strong enough that the villain wants to send me away, I'm probably strong enough to beat him despite potential protests from confused townspeople. I feel a lot of rpgs don't really make sense in how power is treated in the world.

"You're choosing to play the role of a mostly static, pre-existing character."
That doesn't mean I'm choosing to play a story where the main character or story make poor decisions for me. The easy single path solution is to always make the right decision and have the agency of the player be losing the fights in the gameplay and getting a game over.

"you want them to be, go play D&D or another RPG that actually claims to offer that kind of freedom"
Find me some with jrpg gameplay and aesthetics and I will. Currently, there aren't any that I'm aware of. The closest is maybe like, undertale which does have a path where you overpower everything, a path where you save everyone and a "normal" path where some people die and some people don't. The path branches are also all gameplay and not cutscene. It doesn't really have the art style, world, or the gameplay I'd like though.

"Or it's a game because the author felt that worked better for pacing and audience investment purposes than another medium would have,"

Gaming literally has the worst possible pacing of all mediums. The player controls all of the pacing. Now, I'm sure it varies from game to game, but I'd imagine a lot of these stories aren't the initial starting point of development. They are specifically crafted to fit the game, but they just aren't making good choices about that IMO. They aren't thinking if it makes sense to be a game, they are just thinking about stories they like in general and copying them, regardless of the circumstance and usually without understanding the nuance. It's like so many isekai anime now that really have no reason for being isekai rather than straight fantasy and all the tropes they are copying from mushoku tensei they are doing without really understanding them so we get shallow amateur stories instead that manage to hit many of the same story beats but with the depth of a puddle.

"games absolutely don't have to be 100% solvable by definition; some games don't even have actual win or loss conditions"

This is more a semantics issue but I'd argue a game has to have at least a loss condition to actually be a game and not just an interactive experience (like a visual novel).

"the goal of a game is entertainment or fulfilment in a broad sense, and the form that takes can be as different as any other form of media."

I mean, it CAN be, but that doesn't mean it won't be terrible. I CAN draw a piece of artwork that is just a completely red square, but that doesn't mean thats good artwork. An anime that takes all the time to world build as a novel is going to be incredibly slow and dull in most cases. You should as a media creator be utilizing the advantages and avoiding the disadvantages of whatever medium you choose, especially if your goal is to sell it to other people (if it's just a purely personal project, do whatever I guess).

"linear narrative can be blended with variable gameplay just fine"
Yeah, I've detailed plenty of ways I'm fine with that. The dissonance of the player being dumber or weaker than the story wants is resolved by getting a game over but the dissonance of the player being smarter or stronger than the story isn't. I suppose they could actually just throw the player a bone that way if they wanted. Let you win an intended loss and just give you an immediate total game victory. "You beat the bad guy, the world is saved" and then let you reload from checkpoint. That requires no more effort than a game over screen and solves most of the issue.

agesboy posted...

grab some KFC, it's time to rewatch your favorite Christmas episodes. what's your most memorable Christmas memories?

For me it was when I was 5 and got pokemon yellow version. I didn't have a gameboy but I was still so excited to get it even if I couldn't play it. Then, later that xmas I got a gameboy from "santa" and I was like "this is the most amazing coincidence of my life" completely unaware that obviously no one is going to buy me the game without also making sure I get the system to play it on.

agesboy posted...

games absolutely don't have to be 100% solvable by definition; some games don't even have actual win or loss conditions

There's an argument to be made that JRPGs aren't even games at all, when viewed as a whole. By definition, games should have a failure state, but the only way to actually "fail" at a JRPG is to give up. Individual battles and whatnot can be called games because there's a win/loss condition, same with any puzzles that need solving, but the broader victory over the game as a whole is a product of multiple, smaller interactions that are actually games.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

That doesn't invalidate the journey. We still needed to accomplish the initial goal no matter what.

The initial goal was to wipe out all of the mechon to secure the safety of Bionis. That evolved into wiping out Egil once he was identified as being behind the mechon, then tempered into just wanting to stop them with the revelation that the Machina weren't actually any different from the people of Bionis and that Faces were piloted by brainwashed victims instead of just being super-robots. There's a very, very significant difference between wanting to genocide a population and wanting to make peace with them.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

the revelation that the face mechon have homs inside them was handled terribly. They are already sentient enemies so what does their biology matter?

The distinction between "we're fighting a bunch of mindless machines that have been given some communication ability" and "we're fighting our former friends that have been brainwashed" (Metal Face aside) is pretty huge. Similarly, shifting from thinking of Mechonis as just a source of some mindless evil to being the home of sentient people who are actually just fighting for their own survival is a big deal. It's very easy to dehumanize one's opponents in war, and that's exactly the position Shulk was in at the beginning of the game and especially after losing Fiora. Shulk's character arc was learning to step back from that dehumanization.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

The villains motivations are also a bit suspect

Zanza? He's Klaus' megalomaniac side (literally), seeking power at the expense of all else and being desperately afraid of the idea that the life he created might not need him, to the point of resetting Bionis periodically to keep that life so much weaker than him as to be dependent. Meyneth acts as the foil to this, being pleased with the idea that her "children" have grown to the point of independence, but with the downside of not being around to protect them when a power greater than they could handle attacked (the reason for which is left open, but it would be consistent if it were because Zanza was afraid that the Machina were influencing the Giants in a way that created the risk of them abandoning him).

It's the overall theme of "what if God, but with human personality disorders?" that Takahashi generally likes, exploring what might happen if any individual humans attained divinity like Klaus did. Xenoblade 2 does a similar thing by exploring what happens when mortals take divinity-adjacent power (the Aegises) from a God who's too passive to intervene, then 3 asks "what if God was everyone?" and explores that idea.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Although I feel the real issue with the story is the villain. He has multiple opportunities to win and has basically no reason for being a dick other than because he's just like that. He comes off as stupid and ineffectual losing only due to his own extreme james bond villain type arrogance.

The whole "need a vessel" thing really limited Zanza's ability to act before the Mechonis Core, as did being imprisoned in Prison Island. On top of that, as long as Egil lived, the Mechonis would be able to fight back, so waiting until Shulk killed him to reveal himself makes a lot of sense. Shulk then *didn't* kill him, but did disable him to the point where finishing him off was pretty easy and Zanza could then destroy Mechonis outright, so Zanza took that moment to pop out and finish the job because it was only going to get harder after that. Past that, he ultimately lost because Alvis had taken enough of a liking to Shulk that Shulk was able to become Ontos' driver, allowing Shulk to survive Zanza's revival and persist as a stronger opponent than Zanza was able to defeat. I wouldn't necessarily chalk that up to arrogance; Zanza was indeed very arrogant and didn't think that anyone would be able to stop the Bionis' revival, but he lost because Shulk turned out to be stronger and the High Entia's plan of diluting their bloodline to avoid the Telethia transformation worked, not simply because of his arrogance.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Not use that as a plot element in a video game.

That's boring. Plots where everything is entirely and predictably in the player's control are boring. Having meaningful stakes requires there to always be the possibility of something going wrong. A satisfying story should still ultimately end in victory, but the nuances of that victory and the road to get there should have some uncertainty.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

That doesn't mean I'm choosing to play a story where the main character or story make poor decisions for me.

That's exactly what it means. You're choosing to play as a character that cannot change to reflect your whims. Whatever that ends up meaning, that's the choice you've made.

Now, that's not to say that you're wrong for being frustrated by a character that routinely makes choices you wouldn't want to. That is frustrating, and in many cases that's what causes people to have issues with certain characters (Luke from Tales of the Abyss being a good example of this). Instead, I'm just saying that you need to temper your expectations. In a static story with static characters, you're mostly just along for the ride and should expect occasional deviations from what you want. Expecting more narrative than that in a JRPG - a genre of RPG that's defined by having more rigid stories - is only going to disappoint you.

YoukaiSlayer posted...
I suppose they could actually just throw the player a bone that way if they wanted. Let you win an intended loss and just give you an immediate total game victory. "You beat the bad guy, the world is saved" and then let you reload from checkpoint. That requires no more effort than a game over screen and solves most of the issue.

That sounds absolutely horrible. You would actually rather win a fight with no reward, get a game over screen with a smiley face (noting that "You win, the game is over now" is still a game over screen), and have to replay the whole fight while deliberately trying to lose, rather than remove the middleman and just have the boss' HP bar be hard-capped so you can't win? Nothing about that idea offers a better player experience. It just means people that have metagamed to the point of overpowering the intended loss have to backtrack and take longer to progress the story, or in some cases might even lead to people missing out on the entire rest of the game.

adjl posted...

That sounds absolutely horrible. You would actually rather win a fight with no reward, get a game over screen with a smiley face (noting that "You win, the game is over now" is still a game over screen), and have to replay the whole fight while deliberately trying to lose, rather than remove the middleman and just have the boss' HP bar be hard-capped so you can't win? Nothing about that idea offers a better player experience. It just means people that have metagamed to the point of overpowering the intended loss have to backtrack and take longer to progress the story, or in some cases might even lead to people missing out on the entire rest of the game.

Yeah, it'd be better than nothing. Obviously the more effort they put into that the better but I guess I'll take what I can get for now. Given that you rarely lose more than 2-3 times in these stories, they could probably afford to dedicate a brief cutscene to each one without much extra work. Maybe even just bring in the final boss straight after if it's sort of a mid game fight initially and have me fight that.

adjl posted...

The distinction between "we're fighting a bunch of mindless machines that have been given some communication ability" and "we're fighting our former friends that have been brainwashed"

Clearly the ones talking aren't mindless machines right from the beginning and you are at war. The dude in question specifically killed people you care about. Why should it matter what he is? Shulk's resolve at that point should have easily been strong enough to kill other homs if they were behind it. Instead they pull one of my least favorite things where the main character can't bring himself to kill the bad guy but instead of actual negative consequences, the bad guy somehow gets stopped/destroyed anyway, allowing the main characters terrible decision to go unpunished. Pretty sure at this point in the reveal he had no idea about brainwashing and the dude was a comic book villain douche bag as a hom anyway.

adjl posted...

On top of that, as long as Egil lived,

It has been genuinely a long time but I'm pretty sure after the Egil fight he ends up with 2 manados, and the main mechon weapon thing is broken and shulk is unconscious. Just kill the party then and there and be done with it.

adjl posted...

Zanza? He's Klaus' megalomaniac side (literally), seeking power at the expense of all else and being desperately afraid of the idea that the life he created might not need him, to the point of resetting Bionis periodically to keep that life so much weaker than him as to be dependent. Meyneth acts as the foil to this, being pleased with the idea that her "children" have grown to the point of independence, but with the downside of not being around to protect them when a power greater than they could handle attacked (the reason for which is left open, but it would be consistent if it were because Zanza was afraid that the Machina were influencing the Giants in a way that created the risk of them abandoning him).

Yeah, thats just a really uninteresting character IMO. A single very basic emotion personified makes for a very boring character. It almost necessitates they be 1 dimensional characters, because the other ones are stripped away. He sounds more like a whiny child than a being that's had 1000s of years to grow and evolve mentally and emotionally. Hell, he doesn't feel like he's had 5 years to grow and evolve.

Fiction as a whole seems to really like to portray immortals as immature for some reason even though it's not like they don't get the same life we do and then a ton on top of that to mature even further. I really like the anime of Freiren but it does this too with it's main character. Most current humans already live without usually considering our mortality anyway.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Yeah, it'd be better than nothing. Obviously the more effort they put into that the better but I guess I'll take what I can get for now. Given that you rarely lose more than 2-3 times in these stories, they could probably afford to dedicate a brief cutscene to each one without much extra work. Maybe even just bring in the final boss straight after if it's sort of a mid game fight initially and have me fight that.

See, you talk about not wanting to be "punished" for winning a fight, but then you go and suggest taking away the entire rest of the game if you win a fight you aren't supposed to. That is a punishment for winning the fight, which is just a ridiculous idea and very clearly worse than a bit of ludonarrative dissonance (again, experienced only by people that have already chosen to metagame, a decision that's inherently dissonant because it chooses to ignore the story in favour of focusing on optimizing the gameplay and which therefore kind of takes away their ability to complain about any further dissonance it causes).

If that's really what you want, just turn the game off when you realize it's a scripted loss. Maybe stick a piece of paper that ways "You're winner!" on the TV if you really want some kind of victory confirmation. That's functionally identical to what you've suggested.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Clearly the ones talking aren't mindless machines

Are chatbots sentient? Being able to hold a conversation doesn't mean a robot isn't a robot, it just means whoever made the robot gave it the ability to talk.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

The dude in question specifically killed people you care about. Why should it matter what he is? Shulk's resolve at that point should have easily been strong enough to kill other homs if they were behind it. Instead they pull one of my least favorite things where the main character can't bring himself to kill the bad guy but instead of actual negative consequences, the bad guy somehow gets stopped/destroyed anyway, allowing the main characters terrible decision to go unpunished. Pretty sure at this point in the reveal he had no idea about brainwashing and the dude was a comic book villain douche bag as a hom anyway.

Shulk isn't a violent person, intrinsically. He'd much rather be holed up in his lab tinkering with machines than fighting anything. Accordingly, he's a very level-headed, rational person. The decision to go kill the mechon after Fiora's death was decidedly uncharacteristic for him, which the game says outright in the conversation he has with Reyn about another voice in his head telling him to "make them pay." At the time it just seemed like part of his grief and anger that he couldn't cope with, but with later knowledge we can guess it was actually Zanza's influence, and much of Shulk's character arc revolves around him overcoming that influence while also learning when he does have to fight.

The last fight with Mumkhar comes at a pivotal point in that development. Shulk has realized that the blind hatred he felt toward all Mechon because of Metal Face's actions might not be applicable to Faces (by this point, he did know that at least Fiora had been brainwashed, and if you poke around NPC dialogue a bit one of Shulk's friends mentions that her dad's business was called Xord's Smithy, so he's likely figured that Xord was also a brainwashed homs), and he realizes he doesn't have an answer to whether or not it's right to kill them. Without that answer, he doesn't want to make a decision if he can avoid it. The rationale Shulk gives is not "we shouldn't kill him," it's "I have to know why we keep fighting." Is sparing Mumkhar naive? Probably, but that's the point: Shulk doesn't know what's going on and is hesitant to make a decision, so he tries not to until he gets a better understanding of the situation. They were able to move forward without killing him, so that's the path he chose to take.

Sparing Mumkhar was probably the wrong choice, but it's the choice Shulk had to make as he tried to understand how he actually wanted to feel about everything. If Mumkhar had survived and Shulk faced him again after reaching the Hidden Village and confirming that Mumkhar was just a dick acting outside of the conflict between Bionis and Mechonis (and therefore outside of the cycle of vengeance and violence he was starting to question), I'm reasonably comfortable guessing that Shulk would have cut him down freely. We don't see that because Mumkhar accidentally killed himself (a bit of a narrative cop-out, I agree, but also a fitting end for the character), but that's my guess.

And we'll just sidestep the uncomfortable question of the generic Faces that get slaughtered en masse in Agniratha.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

It has been genuinely a long time but I'm pretty sure after the Egil fight he ends up with 2 manados, and the main mechon weapon thing is broken and shulk is unconscious. Just kill the party then and there and be done with it.

From Zanza's perspective, there's really no reason to bother killing them. Shulk has been left for dead after stripping away (what Zanza thought was) all ability he had to fight back, the only reason Fiora could last more than a few seconds in the fight was because of Meyneth (who was now dead), and everyone else was nothing. As much as it's a cliche for an arrogant, all-powerful being to just leave people alive because they aren't a threat, it makes sense: He got the only thing of value the party had to offer when he claimed Meyneth's Monado, he's in a position where he can snuff them out at will if they get too annoying, and he's got a cycle of rebirth to start. You wouldn't take the time to go step on a few ants that were crawling around the site you were planning to nuke, and it's not that different here.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

He sounds more like a whiny child than a being that's had 1000s of years to grow and evolve mentally and emotionally.

Consider why we grow and evolve mentally and emotionally: We have varied experiences, interact with various people, and suffer consequences for the decisions we make. Now consider an all-powerful god who shuts himself away instead of experiencing life and the people of the world and is powerful enough to shut down any potential consequences for his actions (and, in particular, a god who was once human and whose mind hasn't changed at all since then). Is he going to grow/evolve? Or is he going to stagnate and hurt people instead of bettering himself? This, of course, contrasts with Meyneth, who *did* live among her people and grow into the god they needed instead of forcing herself upon them as she was.

Notably, this isn't uncommon for real people. The attitude of "if you don't want me, I'm going to make sure you need me" is a very common strategy for coping with feelings of inadequacy and other forms of low self-esteem, particularly among those with poor social skills (such as the kind of super-genius scientist that would try to make himself into a god in the first place). This is just that personality flaw transposed into somebody with ultimate power to engineer situations in which they're needed. Yes, it is petty and immature and not exactly a super-deep character, but at that point in the game the story was more broadly about figuring out the role a god should play in that world than about having a complex ultimate villain.

I am going to pretend that Netflix Yu Yu Hakusho does not exist and go back to the original anime.

One thing that does exist, that I did not expect to exist, is not one, but two collections of the old Valis games on the Switch. I never had the chance to play legit versions of those, back in the day, but these collections have the Turbo Duo versions, fully voiced with the good music. (Japanese with subtitles that English dub was straight '80s ass .) Now, granted, the games are still as hard as they were back then, and I got my ass kicked pretty handily by the final boss of Valis 1, but I still had fun. Yuko is one of the OGs. Great to see her again.

People need to learn that television is not for analysis.

Lycoris Recoil

I largely enjoyed it. A couple episodes felt like they sped through about three episodes worth of filler just to give us more time with those characters, which was fine, I guess. However, if I did have one complaint, it was the reveal about one character's leg being good all this time, and handwaving it as a warrior's deception tactic. Like, uh, no, he could have still been badass in that moment with a bad leg and told the other guy it hurts like hell, saying that the leg really was bad but not so bad he couldn't fight; I feel that would have been better. lol but hey, opinions.

I had a sudden desire to start reading My Wife Has no Emotion which overall has been good so far. Have not picked up any manga recently so that was quite the spontaneous decision.

reading more recent light novel parts of the potion isekai: lmao holy shit, it pushes the fact that kaoru is kind of a moron even harder

the anime OP event hints at what she's missing

LN spoilers: She's part of a 3-man squad and she's basically the vengeance arm of it. Kyouko is the actual intelligence of the operation, Kaoru's explictly a shortsighted dumbass. both of the others call her out on it

I just read "Bloom Into You." That was nice, albeit a slow burn.

Then I tried the anime. The dub is horrible, but not for a lack of trying. The sub was performed well, and the animation was largely good. However, the show ended just past the halfway mark of the manga, with no second season anywhere in sight, no real resolution to anything except the main character convincing her best friend to change the ending of the play they're getting ready to put on, and the final episode either kinda butchered the play's title or the sub team messed it up. So... As nice as the anime from over five years ago is, the manga is better.

Retro Crush has Magic Knight Rayearth , and I keep dipping back into it. Saves me the trouble of hooking up my VCR to watch my old (and admittedly gorgeous) VHS tapes.

I'd barely seen anything about Rayearth before Super Robot Wars 30 (which also has gorgeous 90's style animation for their attacks) and I was sorta interested for a bit, but it looks like it's mostly monster of the week style anime. Had to throw it in the pile with Gaogaigar and Card Captor Sakura where things I'm a fan of that I'll probably never watch lie

You can bet your ass I brought Flame God Rayearth to endgame in SRW though

agesboy posted...

I'd barely seen anything about Rayearth before Super Robot Wars 30 (which also has gorgeous 90's style animation for their attacks) and I was sorta interested for a bit, but it looks like it's mostly monster of the week style anime. Had to throw it in the pile with Gaogaigar and Card Captor Sakura where things I'm a fan of that I'll probably never watch lie

You can bet your ass I brought Flame God Rayearth to endgame in SRW though

It starts that way for the first 2/3 of the first season. The second season is better about it by far.

hey dragon504 you probably haven't touched granblue in a while but there's now a summon that does 26 million damage regardless of element on turn 1 lmfao

EX+ was 22m for reference, the best damage summon before this could only do about 9 million (Beelzebub)

there's a new granblue game coming relatively soon, isn't there?

re:link, yeah, it was the one partially developed by platinum games

the fighting game's sequel/expansion thing came out like a week ago as well

I've actually been doing draws on Granblue. Sparked Gabriel and managed to get Zeta in my draws, otherwise it was a shitty spark. Gonna be able to spark the dragon zodiac too. I'm a bit short on draws, but free draws should cover me just fine. Really hoping I get luckier with these draws and get Uriel, Payilla, and the new summon.

Finally get to see the BokuYaba ONA ahead of Season 2 this week.
As I said last year, this is one of the best romance manga I have seen and season 2 is going to be very good.

Mahou Shoujo ni Akogarete is an anime. I will leave it at that.

Damn; I didn't realize that got an anime. I should really stay on top of this stuff.

Holiday stuff finally over and new anime season has begun. Ishura was pretty brutal in it's first episode.

The fluffy isekai almost felt like it was made by the survive with potions guy at first but I don't think it is. Just a similar dead female office worker having an odd conversation with god before getting reincarnated.

I'm so excited for kingdom season 5 to start up in a few days.

Judgmenl posted...

Mahou Shoujo ni Akogarete is an anime. I will leave it at that.

Ugh... I will not condone a hentai with 14-year-old girls (plus a 9-year-old). Yes, that is precisely what it is.

Judgmenl posted...

Mahou Shoujo ni Akogarete is an anime. I will leave it at that.

Just watched it and wow. It was actually kinda funny but I imagine the gimmick can't be funny for long.

Dungeon Meashi's first episode was pretty good. I feel like I heard about this series ages ago. Anyway, aside from the cooking that you see in a few anime like these, they also go into the ecology of the monsters and dungeon which is pretty cool. A lot of world building. Also for the opening this show had, this is some super relaxed low stakes feel.

Entity13 posted...

Ugh... I will not condone a hentai with 14-year-old girls (plus a 9-year-old). Yes, that is precisely what it is.

I only read a couple chapters, but it didn't seem that bad to me. Just some light bondage and whipping.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Just watched it and wow. It was actually kinda funny but I imagine the gimmick can't be funny for long.

keyblader1985 posted...

I only read a couple chapters, but it didn't seem that bad to me. Just some light bondage and whipping.

It progresses. While the manga never shows nipples or genitals, the explicit levels of masturbation and groping progress while the cast of underage girls grows, as do the scope of their powers. A couple pairs also start having sex on the regular. Again, most of the girls are 14.

Judgmenl posted...

Mahou Shoujo ni Akogarete is an anime. I will leave it at that.

That'd be Gushing Over Magical Girls , I assume. The reaction to that has been ... something.

Theres a lot of new anime starting.

Chained soldier's premise is kind of annoying. If you voluntarily do a job and get paid, you aren't a slave. Aside from that the ecchi looks good and the fighting...not so much.

Instant Death isekai is ok. I feel like the first episode had several reaction gifs waiting to happen like the guy pulling out his switch for some gaming after seeing his dead classmates and a dragon. True gamer. Only motivated to leave the bus to find a way to charge his switch. Instant death is so overpowered that clearly they aren't looking for tense fights but the main guy being a borderline sociopath makes it somewhat fun.

Undead Adventurer seems like a series I will like and everyone else will complain nothing is happening, like harem labyrinth without the harem/ecchi. The production value seems pretty mediocre.

Sasaki and Peeps (I do not like that as a translation of "pi-chan" but whatever) was better than expected but I'm not really sure where it's going. It had a double length episode which was nice.

In the time I watched that frieren and 3 other anime I'm going to watch aired an episode.

Instant Death looks like it's gonna be a bad adaptation, tbh. It's already a pretty unorthodox story I figured that was gonna be a strong possibility, but damn, it was a fun LN

So through the first 15 episodes of Soaring Sky Precure and I have to ask myself - why am I doing this?
People should know my thing by now. Hate the generic "battle shounen" anime, so why would I like Magical Girl (more specifically the battle shojo) anime? I don't know, I just enjoy these episodes and the expectation that after 50 episodes I'm going to get a complete experience. Hopefully it ends up being worth my time.

On another note a part of me does wish that anime had an equivalent to a serial drama.
On another another note. BokuYaba S2 started today. Watch it so it can get a season 3.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Chained soldier's premise is kind of annoying. If you voluntarily do a job and get paid, you aren't a slave. Aside from that the ecchi looks good and the fighting...not so much.

I think it's just the name of the ability. It looks like a mediocre shonen.

Wrong way to use healing magic
Interesting premise. It looks like it's also going to be a mediocre shonen. But I'm interested in seeing the offensive ways to use healing.

Solo leveling finally aired it's first episode and it was pretty decent. Would have been cool to have like JJK level fight animation but it's still moderately high quality. No bad cgi monsters thus far. Was an interesting but understandable choice to start with the jeju island first attempt flashback to give us some action right off the bat. I do think airing a double episode would have served them well though. It probably won't matter cause solo leveling hype is always through the roof but things don't really begin until what'll happen next episode.

Tales of wedding rings was ok. Maybe slightly better than I expected but my expectations were very low. It is uncensored ecchi at least. In fact, we have quite a few ecchi this season and at least three are uncensored that aired so far.

Strongest tank is as generic as things get except the protag actually looks and sounds like a beefy tank guy instead of the normal kirito lookalike. Animation was very mid. It's amazing how many of these "kicked out of the hero's party but actually I was carrying the whole time and they didn't realize" stories there are. It's so specific.

JOExHIGASHI posted...

I think it's just the name of the ability. It looks like a mediocre shonen.

I mean, sort of, but it's clearly to play into the dommy mommy BDSM kink. It just doesn't actually fit whats happening so it annoys me slightly.

JOExHIGASHI posted...

Interesting premise. It looks like it's also going to be a mediocre shonen. But I'm interested in seeing the offensive ways to use healing.

*Giggles in "City of Heroes" and FFXIV player*

The one girl being overly excited about the isekai thing seemed like it could be fun for like three episodes. The actual main character, however, seems like the sort of whiny, dumb luck protagonist I tend not to like in stories. We'll see how it goes, I guess.

Entity13 posted...

The one girl being overly excited about the isekai thing seemed like it could be fun for like three episodes. The actual main character, however, seems like the sort of whiny, dumb luck protagonist I tend not to like in stories. We'll see how it goes, I guess.

Yeah she was interesting somewhat. The other guy acts how so many isekai non protags do and it always confuses me. How are you about to tell someone that used magic to transport you to another dimension and is surrounded by armed guards that he has to do anything. And he took zero time to be amazed about magic and other worlds existing.

7th loop turned out a lot better than I expected. I'm not super keen on villainess anime but I'll watch em if they're decent. One thing that surprised me was the swordfighting actually wasn't too bad most of the time. The people all had intent and MOSTLY fought in the correct range (which is way further than you see in most movies/tv shows, you generally want to hit the foe with the furthest third of the blade). I wouldn't be too surprised in a normal action show but for the fights in a shoujo, it caught me a bit off guard.

I like how they went through the past lives and framed the whole thing. The main character is actually competent as well, instead of just arrogant with nothing to back it up like in about half the similar villainess anime.

Still, a good setup will only take it so far. I'm interested to see how the show will actually play out. Hopefully it doesn't end up being mediocre.

Fuck, Tachiyomi has permanently dropped support for Mangadex. They were easily the best source, and now I'm gonna have to migrate a fuckton of series to different sources.

if you already have the extension, it'll still work

For now it does; it might be dropped in the future.

Watched first eps of foolish angle and 99 villainess and time for torture.

99 Villainess was fine. I liked that the girl was into the gameplay of the game and didn't care about the romance aspect. I think it spent a bit too long on the first half of the episode. I don't expect greatness from this anime but I do think it'll be an easy to watch junkfood kinda anime.

Foolish angel I did not like very much. The girl is annoying and in charge and I don't like that combination.

Time for torture was funny and enjoyable. No idea how they'll stretch this concept out for a whole season but the first episode at least was good. I think the funniest part is the demonlord's various excuses for why the information isn't enough. Being too scared to use the hidden weapon was probably the best of them.

There's a lot of really unsubtle S&M anime this season (chained soldier, gushing over magical girls, foolish angel, and kind of time for torture). Not sure what happened to have em all end up in the same season. Foolish angle is easily my least favorite.

the universal reception on the first half of 99 Villainess is pretty dividing lol. it'd have worked better if you already didn't know the name of the show

agesboy posted...

the universal reception on the first half of 99 Villainess is pretty dividing lol. it'd have worked better if you already didn't know the name of the show

I'd probably have just stopped watching before getting to the reveal although honestly it's SO generic that it just seems like it couldn't be true to begin with so I might have skipped ahead in the episode to see whats up. The OP especially feels like a fake visual novel OP. I'd never have believed that was a real anime OP.

A lot of stuff airs on wednesday this season.

Metallic rouge I'm uncertain on. It's actually kind of wild because it's a bones original but the weakest part of the show was the fight animation. The plot IS kinda tired to be honest. It's the typical should robots be considered people. Basically same deal as vivy or westworld but on mars. The bad guy was also a bit TOO jokery (literally refers to himself as the joker in the deck of cards). The aesthetic and characters aren't too bad. Will probably keep watching but I could see it going downhill fast.

Sengoku Youku is an inuyasha type anime. Ok not exactly but it has a similar artstyle and world and the main guy's powerup thing makes him look like inuyasha but with 4 fox tails. That's not a bad thing though, I have a lot of nostalgia for inuyasha. The dialogue was pretty interesting. I'm interested to see where it goes and it's nice that it's slated for 37 episodes. Fight animation had a few good moments and a few mediocre moments. Normally that'd be pretty good but for a longer running show I'm worried they blew their budget so to speak on the first episode and it's just going to be the mediocre stuff from now on but we shall see. Also funny that white fox studio has a main character that turns into a white fox.

Doctor Elise was fine I guess. I got a slight yuri vibe from some of the female character interactions but then she clearly was into a dude so idk what I was picking up. They really playing around with the looping for these reincarnation stories. We got loop 7 this season and then this one where their first life is fantasy, their second life is our world, then their 3rd life is the first one again back (starting from like age 15-18 or so).

And while this wasn't a first episode, Ishura continues to be insane with a shotgun+sword wielding wyvern (that also casts magic). They have a lot of interesting pieces in this show but I'm not confident in the authors ability to put them together satisfyingly. Instead we will get cool death battles and convoluted but also dumb plot, at least thats my prediction. Would love to be wrong.

Seeing episode 2 of gushing with magical girls makes me surprised this got an anime. Then again, the dog fucking manga got an anime a few seasons back so I guess anything is fair game.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Seeing episode 2 of gushing with magical girls makes me surprised this got an anime. Then again, the dog fucking manga got an anime a few seasons back so I guess anything is fair game.

I am watching it purely because of how absurd the premise is.

ragna and crimson

it was ok at first. i got to episode 4 and it didn't hook me. not a good sign if it's 12 episodes long. whelp i dropped it. now looking for another