Lurker > Robazoid

WhiteLens posted...

I actually feel that Season 2 has been doing better with group interactions, but it's less that all 10 of them interact and more that they interact in smaller groups.

That's good to hear!. I'm finally watching the third season of BanG Dream right now but I'll catch up in Niji S2 soon

And I probably shouldn't be so down on Ayumu, but she had multiple opportunities to let Yu speak and she refused every single one! That image of her telling Yohane to burn in hell is amazing, though.

If you'll permit me to post two of these in one day, I also finished season one of Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club. I enjoyed it, but in my opinion this was easily the worst LL anime (for reference, Sunshine is in my top 10 of all time and the original was solid too). Back when it released I tried the All Stars mobile game which introduced the Nijigasaki girls, but I didn't stick with it for very long. I was glad at first that the anime didn't simply copy that game's story. Sadly, the anime wound up having some problems of its own.

One of the problems was inherent to the concept, that these are nine solo idols rather than one group of nine idols. When I think back on LL or Sunshine, my fondest memories are of the group. Everyone acting like someone else in 's in the original LL was a golden scene! Nijigasaki rarely had these moments. Most of the episodes were character focused. I didn't dislike them, but it never felt like the overall group came together. The other problem was one that the original Love Live had too, a crappy drama bomb that dominated the last few episodes of the season. Ayumu sucks.

I still enjoyed it overall, though! Kasumi is probably my favorite Love Live character, beating out Honoka and even Yohane. Quite a few of the characters were also improved from their mobile game counterparts, at least from what I remembered (not Ayumu though). I also liked Yu, it was nice having a support character who didn't become an idol herself. As always, the songs were nice as well. Setsuna's 'Chase' was my favorite from the mobile game, and it remains amazing here.

I'll definitely continue with the currently-airing season two, I just hope the inevitable drama of that season is more natural and earned (like the drama in Sunshine always was) and less like this season's with Ayumu.

I finished Steins;Gate. I think I prefer the VN experience more, I liked the routes/alternate endings that the anime didn't cover. Still, it was definitely a good adaptation! My only complaints are ones that I had for the VN too (The Mr. Braun twist in particular always felt dumb to me, and Okabe takes a dumb amount of time to realize things sometimes, like that Ruka turned into a girl or the D-mails changed things). Okabe, Kurisu, and Mayuri are all amazing characters. I love the time travel plot.

I do want to say, though, that I think episode one of the anime was kind of bad. I'd played the VN so I understood everything it was setting up and could follow it because of that, but man it jumped around way more than I remember from the VN. It went from the lecture to the halls and back and forth again without giving anything enough room to breathe. Add in the fact that the first half of the anime is focused on build-up and I'm glad I played the VN first, it made me appreciate everything more than if I'd gone in blind. The latter half is where all the important parts are, though, and the anime certainly nailed those.

Now to maybe track down the OVAs, the movie, and eventually watch Steins;Gate 0

The end of CS2 kind of turned me off the series with Rean helping the bad guys with no resistance but it's good to see there's some consensus it's the worst in the series

1. Robazoid (Hollow Knight)
2. Robazoid (Subnautica)
3. Chrono007 (Super Metroid) a few changes
4. Reg (LTTP) yaml received
5. Reg (VVVVVV) default
6. Tom Bombadil (Rogue Legacy) yaml recieved
7. Mewtwo (Ocarina of Time) yaml recieved
8. MZero (Hollow Knight) default unless I hear otherwise
----
9. NFUN (VVVVVV) presumably default, I think deathlink only impacts other players with deathlink
10. Lolo_Guru (Rogue Legacy) yaml TBD
11. Sheep007 (LTTP) yaml TBD

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Executioner's Way definitely not going in the direction I predicted!

It didn't go as off the rails as I hoped it would, but that was still a neat episode. I'm glad it at least didn't go the full predictable route

On another note, I remember calling this a weak season a few weeks ago but I want to retract that now! I caught up on everything I'm watching today and it's all been quality. Birdie Wing is still my lowest ranked and even it's steadily climbing in my estimation. Episode four was great and got back to its underworld golfing strengths. Aharen-san also had a strong showing in its latest episode. I like that the little girl wasn't a one-shot character because she's a good side character. I also watched more of RPG Real Estate and it's really growing on me, the central theme of finding homes for people is a surprisingly effective at adding weight to the comedy and SoL aspects. Fa is still the best.

I remember in 2018 and 2019 there was usually a show or two I absolutely hated every season. Maybe I just managed to dodge them all this time.

I'm reading my old anime opinions on GMUN's archive website because frankly I don't remember some of the 200+ I've watched very well. Ah, the memories (at least when I can find them buried within dozens and dozens of save-my posts). Now I know why I hated Kino's Journey (2017). I liked goofy Team Russia in Marchen Madchen, that wouldn't fly in today's political climate! Remember that time we all fought about Darling in the FranXX? I didn't, but I do now! Fun.

I really need to track down my thoughts on Noragami. I watched two seasons of that show, I even liked it apparently given my MAL score, but if you put a gun to my head I couldn't tell you a single thing about it anymore. I couldn't describe a character, I couldn't explain a single plotline, nothing. Thank goodness the archive website is here to save me.

Trading for My Dress-Up Darling, auto

I finished the first season of Kaguya-sama: Love is War. I don't think this anime is for me. There were some cute moments and some funny situations. Ishigami in particular was always great. As for the two main characters, though, I feel like an old man saying this but my reaction was mostly 'why can't these dumb kids just say they like each other', which I know is a fundamental misunderstanding of the show's premise. I liked parts of it enough to want to continue but I don't know if I can handle two more seasons of these two dancing around each other without getting anywhere.

The last few episodes also turned what should've been a fun comedy premise into melodrama. I wanted more episodes of them playing a word game to decide who goes shopping, with everyone having their own humorous motivations for wanting to win or lose, and less (final episode spoilers) everyone being miserable all summer and Kaguya isn't allowed to go out because her dad is an abusive douche

I know this is one that a lot of people like so I hope I didn't offend anyone! As I said up top, it just wasn't for me.

I finished the second season of Laid-Back Camp. It was just as comfy as the first! It isn't something I should like as much as I do, I'm not a fan of food porn and I generally prefer SoL with more comedy. Still, LBC is like a warm blanket and it always leaves me feeling relaxed.

If a human ever makes it further than Mars I will be surprisingly impressed with us as a species

I think we'll be around until the Earth itself ceases to exist, I just don't think the remnants will have much of a civilization worth living in past 100 years or so

Yankees posted...

Kaguya

Auto for LotGH

For Dress-Up Darling

Dragon Ball Z

WarThaNemesis2 posted...

dbz

auto for dbz

For Dress-up Darling

Dress-up Darling

I rewatched the first season of Laid-Back Camp today. I missed a few new seasons in SoL shows over the last few years, and for ones Non Non Biyori or Is the Order a Rabbit, I didn't feel the need to rewatch the earlier seasons. It's not like there's some big plot to follow. LBC is in my top 10 anime of all time, however, so rewatching it was a pleasure rather than an obligation! It's still the comfiest anime of all time, and Nadeshiko and Rin were as great as I remembered. I'll probably watch season two tomorrow, and I hope it stands up to the first.

I've been gone a long time, hopefully there's no problem with me making the new topic.

For the poll, I just sorted Spring 2022 by score on MAL and picked what looked like the main girl from the first nine that weren't new seasons of old shows. I haven't seen all of those shows so maybe I missed a best girl somewhere

Oddtaxi

Today I watched The Price of Smiles. I definitely liked it, but I'm going to need some time to sort out how much I liked it. Reading the comments below each episode on Crunchyroll, I saw this poor show getting eviscerated for what were, in my opinion, some really dumb reasons. There were lots of armchair military geniuses who think they'd be able to turn around a war against a superior enemy, lots of hate for the story trying to get them to empathize with both sides, and quite a bit of hatred towards the princess for trying to hold onto her ideals despite everything. I wonder how much of this was just misplaced anger from people trying to find an explanation for their discomfort, because TPoS was really difficult to watch at times.

I'm sure it's no secret that I don't like crappy drama. More than one anime has fallen hard in my eyes because it went dark for no reason (Kumamiko, for an obscure example, I mean what the hell was that at the end, you were supposed to be a cute slice of life anime). However, that doesn't mean I hate dark things! I really enjoyed From the New World, for instance, and that show as bleak as hell at times. The difference is, it was bleak for a reason beyond mere shock value, FtNW crafted a setting where bleakness was simply a fact of life. The Price of Smiles gave me similar feelings. TPoS never shied away from the horrors of war, to the point of being super uncomfortable at times. I sympathized with everyone and hated everyone simultaneously. It did some neat things, like showing the same battles from completely different perspectives, which really stuck with me.

That doesn't mean TPoS was flawless. In a lot of cases, I appreciated more what it was trying to do than what it actually managed. The two sides weren't as equal in blame and sympathy as they should've been, and it fumbled what could've been some real highlight moments. Still, TPoS made me feel things, so I'm willing to forgive a lot of its flaws. It also had a neat sci-fi twist near the end that I'm a huge fan of, but I'll spoiler tag this part in case I've convinced anyone to watch this obscure and poorly rated anime!

I really liked the realization that their power source was draining the ancient terraforming nanobots and that was why the planet was dying. It's a clear climate change analogy, and of course a bunch of dummies in the Crunchyroll comments got angry about that too because how dare fiction be applicable to real life, but I liked it purely as a sci-fi idea. A world fighting over dwindling resources, but that very fighting is what's causing the resources to dwindle, that's a great concept.

So, yeah, I liked The Price of Smiles even though it made me sad.

Haruhi

My brother and I have been playing a few hours of a new Hollow Knight rando every so often, and we had a funny one tonight. He got basically every mobility power right away and all I got was crystal heart. It got me through Greenpath and a bit of Fungal Wastes but I was quickly out of stuff to check and nowhere my brother looked had my powerups.

We finally checked the spoiler page and all my stuff was in super late-game hard to reach areas. The randomization only needed me to get him a Mantis Claw and then I guess I was supposed to wait a few hours while he collected grubs to get me my third mask. Then I'd need to beat the final boss without even an upgraded nail. Curse you, HK rando!

https://archipelago.gg/dl_spoiler/RtmRtFsmSLyVWMZSX5LiUQ

I mean check out that optimal playthrough at the end (if you can decipher it). Razgriz aka me more or less disappears from the order of actions around section 22 out of 48. We've played quite a few of these now and I've never seen such an imbalance

I finished Majimoji Rurumo today, including the two-episode OVA conclusion. I actually started this back in 2019 and got seven episodes in before I stopped watching anime for a few years. I didn't rewatch those this time because I remembered the gist of it. Main dude was a pervert and Rurumo was a klutzy witch-in-training, not exactly the most complex plot! A lot of the horny humor wasn't to my tastes, but Rurumo was cute. The conclusion episodes in particular were also surprisingly good. It wasn't anywhere near a favorite, but it was a fine anime and I'm glad I finally finished it.

Beastars

Thanks for the opinions, everyone. However, the first on-hold anime from Winter 2019 that I finished was one I didn't need to ask about to know I wanted to watch it!

I finished The Magnificent Kotobuki and it was surprisingly good! It's set in a world with roughly WWII airplane tech, and the Kotobuki squadron are mercenaries who go around fighting air pirates. The story and characters were all serviceable, though they weren't anything special. I looked it up and I guess this was made to advertise a mobile gacha game (which apparently ceased operation after less than two years LOL) and it really felt like that at times. Unique characters showed up for a two second cameo like I was supposed to know who they were. It also felt like I should have already known stuff about the setting, later on it starts getting into weird parallel world stuff but it was all treated so matter-of-factly, not like it was a twist.

The real draw, for me, though, was the aerial combat. I'm an Ace Combat fan, and, while I wouldn't go so far as to call this Ace Combat: The Anime, it definitely made me think of AC quite often while I was watching it. There were even sequences where they were basically flying down long tunnels, there are a bunch of AC missions like that! Some of the larger battles reminded me of The Round Table (I hope I'm not the only one here who has played Ace Combat Zero), and a few of the background tracks were slightly reminiscent of the AC0 soundtrack. The dogfights were all visually impressive, but the best part was the sound design. Between bursts of wind, engine noises, and the sound of bullets impacting metal, it was all very well put-together. If only that quality was given to a story and characters that weren't from a failed gacha game, this could've been really special instead of something that was merely fine outside of the awesome dogfights. Still, I enjoyed it.

My Dress-Up Darling

Today I finished Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle. I don't have as much to say about it as I have about other recent shows I've watched. It was a cute comedy anime, and it managed to stretch a fairly basic premise to twelve episodes without ever getting too samey.

Today I finished a random anime on Hidive, Sunday Without God. Rolling the dice on a new show is always fun because sometimes it introduces me to a gem I might not have found otherwise.

It's set in a world where God abandoned the world fifteen years ago, meaning no one can be born or die. Instead the deceased shamble around slowly losing themselves unless they're buried by a Gravekeeper sent by God as a final mercy to the abandoned world. It's... kind of a nonsense premise, but I don't mind. I love fantastical ideas like this, especially when the story explores them from as many angles as SWG did. When one character was literally two halves of different people sewn together, which worked out because neither of the halves could die, that was such an interesting idea that I knew I was hooked. I enjoyed everything that delved into what this world would look like. The arcs often had a nice emotional payoff as well. SWG's only problem was one that a lot of anime has, that it felt like it was made to promote the source material more than to be a complete story itself. It didn't have the most definitive ending. Like, the final arc ended nicely but it clearly wasn't the end of the overall story. Ah well. I enjoyed what was there, and it's always nice when my biggest complaint is that I wanted more.

This is my ranking of what I've seen (which is kind of meaningless because I'm backing Dress-up Darling now). They're all at least above average for me, even if only barely in the case of Madoka.

A Place Further Than the Universe
Re:Zero Starting Life in Another World
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
My Hero Academia
My Dress-Up Darling
D4DJ
Monogatari
Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Today I watched D4DJ: First Mix. I tried the D4DJ mobile game back when it first released, but the DJ mechanics were too much for me to wrap my head around even as a BanG Dream: Girls Band Party player so I didn't last very long. Aside from recognizing a few characters by looks alone, I went in not knowing anything.

The anime was a lot of fun! I was worried after the first episode, Rinku was a bit much at the beginning and they had a full minute long flashback to something that happened earlier in the same episode, which made me concerned for the quality. Thankfully, those were just early growing pains because Rinku quickly got better while still remaining hyper, and the quality was strong throughout. I remember not being sure about this 3D animation style back when BanG Dream switched to it in the second season, but it really allows for some dynamic shows. The characters were all fun too, with Maho being my favorite, and the music was all good. Photon Maiden was my favorite music-wise, I'll see if I can find some of their original songs now.

D4DJ doesn't stand up to BanG Dream or any of the Love Lives, in my opinion, but it was still a good music anime.

I slept in super late so the round was over before I even woke up, and, I won't lie, I forgot to even check for a topic until right now. My apologies to WhiteLens and any other Revue Starlight fans for not being here to help it! It was a great anime and I hope to rewatch it soon.

I'm going to watch D4DJ today, so unless I don't like it I'll probably start backing that alongside Dress-up Darling.

I'm all caught up on these six anime this season. There are a few new seasons of old stuff I still need to get to, but am I missing anything good in terms of completely new stuff?

Ya Boy Kongming
Spy x Family
Love After World Domination
Aharen-san
Birdie Wing: Golf Girls' Story
Healer Girl

YBK is still the best. SxF is good but I'm waiting to see which direction it goes. LAWD (which is a great acronym) is cute and fun. Aharen-san is also fun but it's starting to get stale, they desperately need more side characters than the one they have so far. BW's second episode was much much better than the first, I'm glad they aren't going the harsh dramatic route like something like Hanebado and it's fun having a whole sleazy underworld for some reason centered around golf. HG is fine but isn't shaping up to be anything special, I wanted more musical moments but it looks like they're only going to sing during healing.

I hope no one is getting sick of these daily, lengthy posts about what I'm watching or rewatching because I'm going to be here for awhile.

Today I rewatched Engaged to the Unidentified, my second-favorite anime after Watamote. It was also one of the first ten anime I ever watched, so over the years I always wondered if it was actually great or if it was just lucky to be my first anime rom-com. Thankfully, EttU stood the test of time! If anything, it might've been better than I remembered it.

I saw an image on reddit a few months ago, a twitter post about how every anime has some amount of anime bullshit in it. Well, EttU certainly has some anime bullshit. The older sister Benio is often pedophilic towards Mashiro and incestuous towards Kobeni. However, as a fan of Wataten and Uzamaid, among other shows that go much further with these particular brands of anime bullshit, I guess I don't mind it enough for it to ruin anything.

Everything else about EttU is amazing. Kobeni reacts with realistic shock to her surprise betrothal, and there's little bits of drama along the way, but it never turns into the kind of shitty over-the-top drama that has ruined so many other rom-coms that I've seen. Mostly it's used to set up cute moments where clueless Hakuya doesn't even realize anything is happening, and his total devotion to Kobeni makes her blush. Some might call him a boring character, but I appreciate his presence.

My absolute favorite thing about EttU, though, is Mashiro. She tries so hard to act like a dignified sister-in-law, but the little girl in her always shines through in cute and hilarious ways. Her hatred and terror towards Benio, contrasting everyone else's adoration of her, is also a lot of fun even if a few moments between them go a tiny bit too far. Mashiro is great in every scene she's in, whether it's trying not to seem childish even though she's super excited about getting cake, or her buying a bunch of prize toys to complete her collection only to get a bunch of Nessies. She's one of my favorite anime characters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8MIAW2vYhc

My brother and I beat a Hollow Knight rando together today! We had to leave it on during a few breaks to avoid the save-load bug, but it worked out and it was fun.

I got most of my traversal abilities pretty early, it took awhile for him to get his. The three masks to face the final boss eluded us for a long time until we finally just hinted for them, then we both beat him pretty quickly.

I'd forgotten what a huge game Hollow Knight is, and how little I remember it. There were whole areas (Waterways, Hive) that I didn't even enter because I couldn't remember how. Good to get some practice in so that I'll perform better whenever we're able to have our async, I suppose.

Re-Kan isn't available on HiDIVE in Canada: boo
Re-Kan DVD is on sale for $3 on Sentai's website: ...yay?

I don't know if anyone here cares about physical media of anime, I certainly didn't since this is my first time purchasing any, but some stuff there is 95% off so maybe take a look if you're interested. I got DVDs of Re-kan, Kiniro Mosaic S2, and Girls und Panzer for three dollars each. I also got Celestial Method for eight dollars. I didn't love it, I mean it was fine I guess, but it also isn't available in Canada on HiDIVE so what the hell, I might want to rewatch it someday. It helped justify the shipping.

I finally got a HiDIVE subscription, and I started by watching the three available episodes of Ya Boy Kongming! I honestly think it might be one of the best things ever.

For starters, much like the owner of the bar where Zhuge Liang gets a job, I am a huge Three Kingdoms fanboy. It started with Dynasty Warriors, but I've actually read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and I appreciate the many references to that era. One of the bar employees wore an eyepatch for Halloween, then the next day the bar owner was sad he took it off because it made him look like Xiahou Dun. Oh my god that made me laugh so hard.

Speaking of Kongming, the master strategist himself, he doesn't disappoint! The next moment that made me laugh out loud was after he mastered the art of bartending in mere hours, to the point where he even started anticipating drink orders! A guy walked up and barely started saying his order before Kongming set it on the bar. Amazing. Another great moment was when Eiko started teaching him about smartphones and within a few hours ya boy Kongming was trying to unravel cryptocurrency blockchains.

Eiko is a lot of fun too. Voiced by Kaede Hondo, who I've been a fan of since Etou Kanami in Katana Maidens, her singing is just as good as Kongming thinks. She has realistic doubts that can get her down, but she's still out there trying her best to follow her dream. Now, with Kongming as her tactician, she can be the best.

All of that is great, but it isn't what puts this over the top for me. I mean, this is a music anime at its core, and it's hard to make a bad music anime. I even enjoyed a cheap production like Music Girls more than it probably deserved. Thankfully, so far Ya Boy Kongming has an emotional edge that helps it rise above the rest. It's about a man who revived after death, and there have been some little moments to really drive home what that means for him. There was a bit in the third episode where a regret from his past life came up, and it made it clear that Kongming isn't just out to crush rival singers, he's using this second chance at life to be a better person and enjoy himself.

I probably typed way too much about this anime. I just really love Ya Boy Kongming so far. Easy contender for my top 10 of all time if it keeps up this quality without devolving into any dumb drama

Aw, I was hoping all the Disney+ shows would suck because I'm not going to ever subscribe to it for like three anime a season and it has nothing else I care about

I just finished rewatching Konohana Kitan, which I had rated 9/10 when I first watched it years ago. It's about fox girls who run an inn. basically cute slice-of-life mixed with light supernatural elements. I feel like this must've been one of the first anime like that I'd ever seen, because it really stuck with me in the past and this time around it all felt kind of basic. Yuzu, the main fox girl, is a klutz who always tries her best, and Konohana Kitan often had those moments where the art style simplifies and she's just a one-colored shape with a ditzy triangle mouth looking confused. Now that I've watched dozens more SoL anime, I know that those moments, while still fun, are actually pretty common in SoL, so they didn't feel as fresh. The side characters all suffered from my increased anime knowledge, too, because they were just a bunch of standard archetypes. The stern one who becomes the main girl's best friend. The tomboy. The girly tsundere who likes the tomboy. The kid. The older one who drinks. I dunno, I remember Konohana Kitan being my jam back in the day, but a lot of it fell flat on a rewatch.

There were a few episodes where the supernatural was woven into the story in a neat way, and those ones still stood up. The ones where it was just the main characters going to a festival, though, those ones really didn't. Konohana Kitan has sadly become a casualty of my rewatching, falling from 9/10 to a 6/10.

DeepsPraw posted...

As I recall, it has a pretty heavy focus on reflexes and performing fast actions on a keyboard.

I haven't played CSD since the first one, but yeah each food product was basically its own minigame involving memorization and reflexes. I enjoy that kind of game because I start out struggling to handle one recipe and by the end I'm blitzing through half a dozen no problem

Revue Starlight

I'm always glad to have more people interested, but we're at a weird point right now where we might have one in eleven days or it might be almost a month. I'll @ you with a ping when we're closer to whatever time we do this, just to make sure that weekend works for you!

I actually didn't mind that one, it worked in the story to show Akebi that everyone can be weird, not just her. They chose toenail sniffing because, again, someone working on the show has a fetish, but it could have been anything weird and it would've worked just as well.

Trading for Revue Starlight, auto

The first few episodes of Akebi definitely had some pretty blatant foot stuff, which I wasn't super into. ASU's tvtropes page (yeah I still go to tvtropes after finishing something, I'm old now and set in my ways) says feet were symbolic of the girls' inner selves. I personally think someone on the production had a fetish, and I was thankful the foot shots disappeared after the first few episodes. They never really detracted from the show, I just wasn't into it

I'm glad you enjoyed Lightning Returns, andy! I found the revelation that Lumina was an aspect of Lightning to be really intriguing when I played. I'm a big fan of being able to see characters from different angles, and Lumina is like looking at a different version of Lightning in a way. She's a top 10 FF character for me.

I also didn't mind the ending where Lightning winds up on our Earth because canonically she went on to become a real-life fashion model for Louis Vuitton and that's amazing.

Still no movement on Hollow Knight reloading, as far as I can tell. This feels like a huge bug so I don't know why more people on their discord aren't talking about it and why none of the programmers seem to be fixing it, but ah well. I'm a leech on their community, they can do it at their own pace!

We'll see about the 23rd (sorry to Tom Bombadil, but the 16th is looking increasingly unlikely). Otherwise, I hope it's at least fixed by May 7th, which is when I think we should have the next async even if Hollow Knight can't be part of it.

In my never-ending quest to catch up on the seasons I missed over the last few years, I watched Akebi's Sailor Uniform today. I really enjoyed it! These school slice-of-life shows always have a lot of the same characteristics, and 'the main girl wears a different uniform than everyone else' isn't the most mind-bending distinctive feature. Luckily, ASU was such quality that it managed to rise high even if it never really broke new ground. The animation was beautiful, for starters, and I was glad the fanservice-y shots tapered off after the first few episodes. Akebi was a fun character, I liked that she was always upbeat and cheerful but also had moments of embarrassment or cluelessness like a normal person would. Early on I was worried the story would have more drama, like maybe she'd be bullied for her different uniform as she first feared, but thankfully it never went that direction. It was comfy and fun the whole way through.

ASU also handled its side characters better than most anime I've seen. Erika and Usagihara were a step above the others in terms of prominence, but not to the extent that they outshone the rest. With only one or two exceptions (the short white-haired classmate in particular was very underdeveloped), Akebi formed a meaningful bond with everyone. Final episode spoilers, the very final shot of the anime was another classmate arriving, and Akebi greeting them. I like that it didn't even show who it was, it didn't matter, it could have been any of them because she was now so close to all of them.

This was one of the anime Mac recommended when I came first returned to the topic, and I want to thank you for that. I likely would have skipped over it otherwise (at first glance I was like, how can you make a whole anime about sailor uniforms?), so thank you for vouching for it. It was very good.

I rewatched one of my old favorites this weekend, Sagrada Reset. Not sure if anyone else here has watched it, I don't think anyone commented at all when I posted about it a few years ago. Still, I loved it just as much as I remembered and I want to talk about it even if no one cares.

This definitely isn't an anime everyone would enjoy. Sagrada Reset has such a muted tone most of the time. The characters don't often show much emotion, and there aren't any crazy visuals or epic fight scenes. It's mostly just people talking to one another, often about philosophy or theoretical thought experiments. It's set in a town where some people have supernatural abilities, like the power to see the future or to send a message to another person no matter where they are. The main duo is a guy with a perfect memory and a girl who can reset time to certain saved points, erasing everything except for the main guy's memory of what happened. They go up against people with various abilities and try to solve the situations using their time resets and the abilities of their allies.

Supernatural problem-solving isn't a particularly unique premise in anime. There's Monogatari and Bunny Girl Senpai, just to name two. Still, I love Sagrada Reset for how it handles the various conflicts. It sets up situations where the main duo are up against an interesting ability, and you're left wondering how they're going to creatively use the abilities at their disposal to come out on top. Even knowing how they would end, since I've watched this before, it was still enthralling to watch their plans come together. I feel like a lot of people would be bored at the 'confrontations' where they mostly just talk to one another, but I always enjoyed the slow pace because it let me appreciate all the little pieces coming into focus.

I also love the characters, muted and philosophical though they are. Kei is great as the lead, but the real stars for me are two girls, Haruka and Soma. It would be spoilers to really explain why, but both of their arcs pack a lot of emotion for an anime where people rarely show their feelings.

I definitely wouldn't recommend it for everyone, but Sagrada Reset hits all the right notes for me and I'm glad I rewatched it.

I also have two Pop-up Parade figures. This is an old photo of my Kasumi collection (both BanG Dream and Love Live), the outside two are Pop-ups. They're good quality for the price. I almost got ones of Nadeshiko and Rin from Laid-Back Camp too but I ran out of room in my figure case.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/234091322498088961/946681664287952926/20220225_011306.jpg

The title of the video at the top of this page says it's fan-made