Lurker > Robazoid

This was another quick async everyone is done already. Thanks again for participating, everyone! Here's the spoiler log. Next month will likely be May 18th, but it could go a week in either direction if another day works better for more people.

https://archipelago.gg/dl_spoiler/htjX3nEKSeqfb1USi3zzUg

Here's the room link, have fun everyone!

https://archipelago.gg/room/bimvpQeHQyOo9gi2thrArg

The cutoff to join is a little less than 12 hours from now. Here's the list so far

1- Robazoid (Hollow Knight)
2- Chrono007 (Super Metroid)
3- Reg (Ocarina of Time)
4- Yuzu (Final Fantasy)
5- JeffRaze (A Short Hike)
6- MrSmartGuy (Super Mario 64)
7- Mewtwo (Ocarina of Time)
8- Koala (Super Mario 64)
9- Grapple (Super Mario World)

Another bump to keep the topic alive, still looking like April 20th for the next async

Keeping topic alive bump

Here's the list so far:

1- Robazoid (Hollow Knight)
2- JeffRaze (Hollow Knight)
3- Mewtwo (Pokemon Emerald)
4- Yuzu (Super Mario World)

Since we're all done now, here's the spoiler log:

https://archipelago.gg/dl_spoiler/eGN1uGe7TWiXJN3iJ8Q7-Q

I'm going to be busy in February, so Reg agreed to host the async this month. Check back again to see the date from him

The async is still going! Some of the Emerald players got blocked by badges, but I think we're making good progress.

https://archipelago.gg/room/HWaYbCw8RzmWr9A6GtvEtA

There's the room link, have fun everyone!

Current list for January 20th async

1- Robazoid (Hollow Knight)
2- Reg (Pokemon Emerald)
3- Yuzu (Pokemon Emerald)
4- Mewtwo (Pokemon Emerald)
5- MrSmartGuy (Pokemon Emerald)
6- MrSmartGuy (Muse Dash)
7- MrSmartGuy (Undertale)
8- Grapple (Stardew Valley)
9- MZero (Hollow Knight)

And now we're done. Thanks again for participating over the holidays everyone, it was fun. Here's the spoiler log, and the likely date for next month's async is January 20th.

https://archipelago.gg/dl_spoiler/enmh6V2rSYSL_AkyfxDiMg

The async is going well so far. Half of the slots are done already. I've mostly cleared my Hollow Knight of actual checks, just waiting on my dreamer masks to finally beat the game.

https://archipelago.gg/room/DOySlYo6QKCyYAgvxCI5TA

There's the room link, have fun everyone!

The cutoff to join is a little over 24 hours from now

1- Robazoid (Hollow Knight)
2- Koala (Super Mario 64)
3- Reg (A Link to the Past)
4- Aria (A Link to the Past)
5- JeffRaze (A Link to the Past)
6- Grapple (Pokemon Red/Blue)
7- MZero (Hollow Knight)

Here's the list so far for December 16th

1- Robazoid (Hollow Knight)
2- Koala (Super Mario 64)
3- Reg (A Link to the Past)
4- Aria (A Link to the Past)

Another bump, still looking like Dec 16 but I'll post again on Monday

I finished Why Raeliana Ended up at the Duke's Mansion. It's not a Villainess anime, but it had pretty much the same setup. Main girl dies and her soul transfers into a fantasy story she'd read. The twist is that she's in the body of a minor side character fated to die, so she has to radically change the story in order to survive. Using her meta knowledge, she strikes a deal with the titular duke to have a sham engagement in order to keep herself safe. It's only supposed to be temporary, but of course it isn't going to be quite that simple as their feelings for each other start to grow.

I really enjoyed this anime! Raeliana was a good character. She's very proactive and she had a fun personality. When the story's villainess tried to bully her, I liked how Raeliana refused to take any shit. Her relationship with the duke was handled well, too. It built up in believable ways and they had an enjoyable dynamic. Their verbal sparring sessions wound up being surprisingly cute. However, the thing I liked most about this anime was something that I haven't seen explored in any of the shows I've watched with a similar premise. It examined the implications of just how drastically Raeliana was changing the story, particularly the disruption to the romance the duke was originally going to have with the the story's actual main girl. I really hope this gets another season, because I want to see how one aspect plays out. From what was hinted, the story's original main girl isn't happy that Raeliana has stolen her fairytale romance...

I also only got a few episodes into AoT S3. Now that it's finally (finally) over, I do intend to go back at some point to rewatch it all and then finish it. I thought that S1 was way better than S2, though.

Today I watched Am I Actually the Strongest?, a random isekai from last season. Stop me if you've heard this one before, but it's about a shut-in loser who dies and then gets reincarnated in a fantasy world with an overpowered ability! What an original idea! Yes, there are dozens of isekai exactly like this and most of them suck. Still, I'm glad I gave this show a chance on a whim, because it was a lot better than it had any right to be. It still isn't good, mind you, but it also wasn't bad like I expected it to be. It was solidly average.

I liked the twist it had on the premise. The reincarnation goddess was like, you wasted your first life. I'm giving you a second chance with an incredible power so you can live your life to the fullest this time! But main dude actually enjoyed being a shut-in loser and he'd be perfectly happy just doing that again. His only goal is to build a life where he can laze around his room in peace. Unfortunately, that's easier said than done in a turbulent fantasy world, so he has to resolve a lot of problems while trying to call as little attention to himself as possible. Main dude was surprisingly hardcore, too. One of the earliest things he did was use his magic to immobilize a bunch of thieves, and then he burned them all alive. Eventually he built an alter-ego for himself that was a total ripoff of Zero from Code Geass. Watching that masked man going around solving problems in the most direct way possible was surprisingly fun. He used his barrier magic in some pretty creative ways.

I also liked most of the girls in the obligatory harem. Little sister had the same voice actress as Anya from Spy x Family, and she's always great in those roles. This show had the usual anime bullshit in a lot of scenes. Please main dude, don't get excited when your little sister sits on your lap, ugh. However, there were also times where the jokes went hilariously over-the-top in a way that made it absurd enough to be enjoyable.

Anyway, I think I've talked enough about an anime literally no one cares about. Bottom line, it was surprisingly not bad.

If you didn't like the S1 final arc, it's definitely good you didn't watch S2 because the big arcs in it were just two variations of that same final S1 arc. There were some fun standalone episodes in the season too, but the actual dramatic parts were really a letdown.

Continuing my recent Villainess trend, I finished both seasons of My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! I definitely enjoyed the first season. Catarina was a fun character, and watching her gather an ever-growing group of admirers was always good. I liked how a lot of the comedy came from them competing and undercutting each other so that none of the rivals could get close to her... and, meanwhile, Catarina is oblivious and just thinking about snacks or whatever. The second season wasn't nearly as good, though. A lot of the characters got really pushy with their romantic interest, to the point of it being uncomfortable rather than funny. The arcs in S2 were too dark for my tastes, too.

It was still a fine anime, but it's nowhere near my favorite Villainess anime. Of the four I've seen, my ranking goes Endo and Kobayashi > Last Boss Queen > Next Life Villainess > I'm in Love With the Villainess. There's a sizeable gap in the score between all four of those, too. It's honestly kind of impressive how distinct all four of those feel given that they're all part of a pretty narrow subgenre. I still have one more, the "I'm Taming the Final Boss" one... at least until next season! There will be two more Villainess anime in Winter 2024, "Villainess Level 99: I May Be the Hidden Boss but I'm Not the Demon Lord" and "7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life Married to Her Worst Enemy!". These shows always have such impressive titles. I'm enjoying this subgenre, so I'm looking forward to both of them!

I started watching two more airing anime today.

I got fully caught up on 16bit Sensation. It's about a girl who loves bishoujo games, and then she's randomly sent back in time to the 90s for a chance to help a bishoujo game company during the genre's heyday. It's basically cute girls make erotic visual novels, so I assumed I'd really like it. Sadly, my feelings are pretty mixed. There are definitely cute moments and the occasional good jokes. It's also interesting learning about bishoujo games, though I don't know enough about them to appreciate most of it. However, the biggest problem is that the main girl is incredibly annoying. She's always so loud. Her constant shrieking of every single line is so bad. I checked the voice actress and was shocked to see that she's actually pretty famous and usually skilled! I mean Koga Aoi also voiced Kaguya, among other big roles. I guess someone in production must've asked her to scream 100% of the time and I hate it. At least it's not a bad anime if I look past this one aspect.

I also started Ron Kamonohashi's Forbidden Deductions, though I'm only four episodes in. It's pretty good so far! An inept detective teams up with an ace detective who, for various reasons, is legally barred from solving crimes. They have to pretend the inept detective is doing all the work. It doesn't take itself too seriously. There are a lot of funny jokes or goofy moments. The actual mysteries have all been pretty good so far, though, so it isn't zany all the time. I'm enjoying it so far.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I finished all of S1 for DMDP and it's solid, but a couple episodes into S2 I decided to just drop it and read the manga instead at some point. Just didn't really feel like the anime was doing anything for the material compared to the other Narita shows.

I think, if nothing else, the antics of certain characters wouldn't stand out as much in manga format. I love scenes where characters are having a real conversation and meanwhile there's Misaki in the background spinning around in an office chair while giggling like an idiot. Or Sayo in the background rambling on about shark movies. Sound and animation is what makes those gags come alive!

I'm caught up on Dead Mount Death Play now. It's really good! Reverse-isekai necromancer is a great premise. I really like all the crazy characters and competing factions he's getting entangled with, too. There are times where it almost feels like there's too much going on to keep track of, but all of it is interesting. It's weaving an exciting plot and I'm always excited to see where it goes next. It does a good job mixing in some comedy moments too, particularly with Misaki. She's always doing something zany.

I didn't mention it here, but I also got caught up on Ragna Crimson recently. It's less good than DMDP, but still good! It's about dragon hunting in an incredibly dark fantasy world, but the premise also has a lot of spoilery twists.

Between Dead Mount Death Play, Ragna Crimson, and Helck, this is a great season for fantasy anime.

Bump to keep topic alive

Okay, now I have watched Kase-san and Morning Glories. I'm sad this was only single hour-long episode, because if it were a full series it would easily rank among my favorites. There was a good opening montage that caught me up on stuff that happened beforehand, but it would've been fun to actually see all those little moments firsthand.

Having said that, it was also kind of nice that Kase and Yamada were already dating when this started. I feel like 99% of anime romances end the instant the lovers get together, and that has always bothered me. There is still so much potential for character growth even without the whole question of will-they-or-won't-they. This anime is an excellent example of that, too. It explored things like how much attention they should pay towards each other now that their relationship has gone beyond friendship. Differing expectations on the pacing of physical intimacy. What might become of their relationship after they graduate high school. All of that stuff was amazing.

Seeing two characters learn about each other, and about themselves... this is the stuff I enjoy about romance stories! Not toxic drama or pushy love rivals or sustained misunderstandings. Kase-san and the Morning Glories had none of that, and it was still enthralling. It had all the heartwarming moments one would expect from two people exploring a new relationship. It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows either, though. It had little bits of drama, but all of it was natural. And, since Kase and Yamada were both good people trying to do their best, all of the drama was handled well.

Hopefully someday I'll find a full-length yuri anime romance that can follow this show's example!

I watched the first episode of Yuri is My Job and I've never been so instantly infuriated by an anime. A girl gets blackmailed into working at a yuri-themed cafe, but then they don't train her on any of the rules or... well, anything. Then they proceed to get angry at her when she doesn't know how to act in the little stage plays the other waitresses put on for customers. Like, the whole episode was just nonstop cringe moments and bad feelings. I've always given anime at least two to three episodes before dropping them, but I struggled just to finish one episode for this show so I think I'm done. What bugs me is that MAL lists one of the genres as "comedy", but I checked the episode's discussion topic on the anime board and someone there said "Ive read the manga and it is definitely not. It is heavy drama, not a comedy". I wouldn't have even started it if I knew that beforehand! Now it's going to sit there in my dropped list, bothering me forever.

Nuts to this, I'm going to start Dead Mount Death Play instead.

Continuing my journey to try and catch up on 2023 anime, I watched Too Cute Crisis. Aliens want to destroy Earth, but they decide to do some reconnaissance first just to check if there's anything valuable here. Then Liza, the head researcher, discovers that cats are the cutest animals in the universe!

In a lot of ways, this was a pretty one-note comedy. Aliens encounter animal, animal is dangerously cute, aliens freak out at the cuteness. It should have gotten old by the second episode. Somehow it didn't, though! I enjoyed this anime the whole way through. It helped that the show managed to portray the animals as legitimately cute, so usually I was going "omfg that's so cute" right there alongside them. It covered lots of different animals, but particular attention was paid to cats (for obvious reasons, cats are the best). As a cat lover myself, they did a really good job showcasing all their feline charms. Yozora the cat was always adorable, even when he was being needy, moody, or acting like a menace. Sometimes a cat sits on your face at night, other times they ignore you when you want to play. All of those things are part of what make cats great, and I had a lot of fun watching the aliens appreciate it too.

KamikazePotato posted...

The most frustrating stories are the ones where they turn out to be right, though. Like the world nonsensically adjusting itself to get back on track.

Man, that sounds like it would be really frustrating. Then again, I don't mind how it is in Tearmoon Empire where she fixes one problem but then a completely different problem leads to a similar end. I guess it depends on how it's handled.

Anyway, today I continued my "villainess" trend and watched The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen: From Villainess to Savior. I didn't like it as much as Endo and Kobayashi, but it was still a solid anime. The setting was decent with all the different magic abilities, and Pride was a good character trying to do her best. My biggest complaint was that she acted like it was inevitable that she would eventually turn into an evil queen and need to be killed. It'd be one thing if she was shown constantly struggling against her inherent evil nature or something, but she was fully in control of herself at all times with no sign of nefarious influence. She was also a total sweetheart who always tried to do the right thing. Why are you still assuming there will be a bad end? Other than that minor conceptual problem, I enjoyed this.

I'm always interested in top 10s (and anime rankings in general) so definitely post the list if you narrow it down! I've only seen fifteen of the contenders and they range from some that I hated to some that I loved. A Place Further than the Universe is my favorite from among them.

You shouldn't worry too much about recency bias, either. I've had two new anime enter my personal top 10 so far this year (Dark Gathering and Insomniacs After School). Sometimes that's just how it goes. While I've definitely cooled on some shows a little bit after watching them, it's never happened with one I truly loved. Something resonating hard enough to even be a top 10 contender usually isn't a feeling that goes away!

The people who have played Lightning Returns know Lumina all seemed to like her. I'm happy with that!

After it came up in a recent discussion here, I watched Otherside Picnic. It definitely wasn't the greatest adaptation. I don't know anything about the source material and even I could tell they were swapping events around for no reason (the item you girls are using disintegrated a few episodes ago how are you using it). The animation quality was often dubious, especially in distance shots. It also didn't scratch my yuri romance itch. There were definite signs, and maybe they'll get there someday, but sadly not in what the anime covered.

Other than those problems, though, I enjoyed it! I'm a sucker for a weird setting like this. At times it felt like a mix between an SCP article and the movie Annihilation. I would've preferred if they were a bit more methodical, covering stuff like gathering supplies and mapping the weird world out or something. As it was, they just kind of wandered in a few times and stumbled into spooky adventures. Still, that was fun in it's own way! Toriko and Sorawo were great partners in crime.

We're all more or less done now, so here's the link to the spoiler log. Thanks again for participating, everyone! I'm glad we finished before US Thanksgiving. Next month's async will most likely be December 16th. The 9th seems too early and the 23rd is too close to Christmas.

https://archipelago.gg/dl_spoiler/VkqWdGQvQNeePKYfiAxJhA

I thought 100 Girlfriends had my own personal "worst of the season" award locked up, but I'm in Love with the Villainess is giving it some unexpectedly strong competition after episode 8...

I finished Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte. I skipped it earlier this year because it seemed like it would be an examination of a typical villainess story. It's about two people in the real world commentating on a visual novel, after all, and then their voices magically start influencing people inside the game. I'd never really watched a villainess anime before despite how many there are now, so I was worried I wouldn't appreciate the subversive premise. Since I've been watching the currently airing "I'm in Love with the Villainess", though, I finally felt comfortable going back to this one.

I'm glad I watched this, too, because it was really good! All of the characters were great individually, each with a lot of depth and development. More importantly, it was also easy to get invested in their relationships with each other. Endo and Kobayashi were a lot of fun together, but so were Sieg and Lieselotte. The tsundere villainess herself managed to be endearing (rather than annoying, which is one of my big problems with the currently airing "I'm in Love with the Villainess"... like, I could actually see why people might actually like Lieselotte). The anime had a lot of cute moments between the various couples. It also managed to build a compelling story about the threat of a "Bad End" to the game that the commentators desperately wanted to avoid. I really loved all of those meta aspects to the story.

Overall, this was a great anime. It makes me want to go back and watch a few more of those other Villainess shows from the last few years. There are just so many choices! "My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!", "I'm the Villainess, So I'm Taming the Final Boss", "The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen: From Villainess to Savior"... I'm sure the list goes on.

Minecraft is in my top 5 and Subnautica is in my top 10 games of all time!

Brother is amazing and anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong

Minecraft is one of the greatest games ever

https://archipelago.gg/room/5g4KFB_lRN20E7ESbugrbA

There's the room link, have fun everyone!

That brings us to twelve slots. The cutoff is a little less than nine hours from now if there's anyone else!

MartinFF7 posted...

I've actually never participated in a Kill My before, wouldn't the winner just be the most mid out there, the most banal that doesn't stand out?

I think that would be the best part! With 248 characters, that's a pretty wide range for 'mid' characters to slip into the late-game. Popular characters who have haters, like Lightning, will die immediately. Legit hated characters like Palom will also die immediately. Then even popular characters without haters, like Vivi, will get picked off simply because they're popular... and that's where the fun begins! What crazy, forgettable nonsense is going to reach the end? I'm excited to find out.

I think one kill per day, plus one long round, would be the most interesting. It would allow a decent amount of strategizing, even early on. Do I waste my daily kill on a character a lot of people hate, or do I prioritize someone only I hate and hope the other character gets taken out by someone else? If the round went too fast, it'd be over too quickly for any of that. And, if there were multiple rounds, it would also start blurring together a bit. I don't want to have to kill Jecht fifty times.

In one long round, it could also be fun at certain points to increase the number of 'kills' needed to eliminate someone. It would add a lot to the strategy. For instance, I would need to take Jecht out early, because if he sticks around into the late-game there might not be enough other Jecht haters to take him out with me. I understand that programming something like that might be tough for GMUN, though, so I'd also be fine with just one kill to die the whole way through.

Anyway, as you can tell by how much I talked about it, I'm excited at the idea of a kill-my (and I really want to kill Jecht)

The cutoff to join is a little over 24 hours from now

1- Robazoid (Hollow Knight)
2- Reg (The Legend of Zelda)
3- Mewtwo (Ocarina of Time)
4- Neo (Super Metroid)
5- MZero (Hollow Knight)
6- MZero (Sonic Adventure 2 Battle)
7- Elina (Timespinner)
8- JeffRaze (Link to the Past)
9- AriaOfBolo (Pokemon Red/Blue)
10- MrSmartGuy (Pokemon Red/Blue)

XIII is my favorite FF and even I don't like Dysley! FFXIII desperately needed a good villain.

I only got a few episodes into Great Pretender before I lost access to Netflix earlier this year. I do plan to finish it whenever I get Netflix again for a month, but it didn't exactly grab me.

Akudama Drive

I will also second these:

Made in Abyss
Odd Taxi
A Place Further Than the Universe

Hidive kept crashing so I couldn't watch more Helck. Instead I finally finished Kaina of the Great Snow Sea. I was really impressed with it early on. It had a weird world that was buried under snow, there was a kind of canopy in the atmosphere held up by impossibly tall trees. The setting was neat. I loved the feel of the early episodes when Kaina, from the canopy, met someone from the surface and they set off on an adventure. Once the main conflict got going, though, the quality of the show really suffered. The pacing was slow and a lot of important things went unexplored, which made it difficult to care about anything. Even aspects of the story that I would usually love just kind of came and went without me feeling much. The last episode also had one of the most infuriatingly idiotic moments I've ever seen in fiction, ugh. And then, to top it all off, it ended on a cliffhanger without resolving anything. There's going to be a sequel movie to wrap everything up, but Crunchyroll doesn't usually get movies so this might be it... and I'm surprised at how little I care whether I see the movie or not. I'm not even curious to see the how the story ends. This whole anime was just really disappointing.

The CGI animation looked really good, though! It had that going for it at least.

November 18th async list so far

1- Robazoid (Hollow Knight)
2- Reg (The Legend of Zelda)
3- Mewtwo (Ocarina of Time)
4- Neo (Super Metroid)
5- MZero (Hollow Knight)
6- MZero (Sonic Adventure 2 Battle)

I started watching the Helck anime that's currently airing. I'm only ten episodes in, but I'm really loving it so far! It's a perfect mix of fantasy and comedy. It's about demons trying to decide who their next king will be, and the frontrunner is a human hero who wants to eliminate humanity for some reason. One of the strongest demons is convinced this is a scheme against them and is trying to figure out how to stop Helck before it's too late. There's a lot of goofy insanity, particularly from Helck who is super strong but seems like a good dude. It's also building a surprisingly compelling plot too, though. I'm excited to watch more tomorrow and see where this goes.

I finished Hyakko, a cute girls school comedy from 2008. I thought it was pretty good! Torako was an amazing main character. I liked how energetic she was, and how she could switch to hilarious anger in an instant. The girl who sat next to her could get such a rise out of Torako just by ignoring her, it was great. She had a funny dynamic with pretty much every character, and I loved the entire supporting cast too. The class was full of girls who were each complete weirdos in their own way, like the horny bisexual one or the haunted one. I liked the rich girl Tatsuki the best because she saw herself as the sane girl in the group but Torako always riled her up so easily and made her act crazy too.

The early episodes were so amazing that I began wondering if this might become my new favorite comedy anime. Torako was introduced in a hilarious moment where she jumped out of a second story window all majestically... and then seriously injured her ankle when she landed. Trust me, it's funnier than it sounds. I also loved the episode where they tried out various clubs, with Torako always taking it way too far and dragging Tatsuki along to get inevitably injured. I was disappointed that quite a few later episodes were either mediocre or bad, though. Torako's brother Kitsune was terrible, and the final episode was incredibly boring. I fell in love with the insane comedy early on, but then that aspect of it just kind of disappeared in later episodes. Oh well. Hyakko was still a solid 7/10 and I'm glad I watched it.