Lurker > Robazoid

The one I was most impressed with was Yuffie! I still need to play FFVII remake to see how she is in that DLC thing, but my desire to main her next SMFFFC is growing.

Man, after Auron dominated Cecil last round I thought he was a guaranteed finalist. Cecil's end of the bracket must've really been turbo-weak

And now I've finally finished The Fire Hunter from earlier this year. It had a few neat ideas. Like, the setting is one where regular fire started combusting people for some reason so now they need to hunt beasts for some kind of beast fire. It's weird, but it's at least neat. Sadly, this might be the jankiest anime I've ever seen, and that's saying something because I've seen Marchen Madchen! The animation in The Fire Hunter was hilariously terrible pretty much all the time. Then there were times where the animators seemingly just gave up and inserted still images of concept art. The concept art at least looked nice, but it was always so jarring and out of place compared to the crappy animation it normally had. There were a bunch of weird decisions in the directing of scenes too. This was a show where, visually, absolutely nothing worked.

Then there was the story, which I will charitably describe as confusing. Despite the characters frequently info-dumping about weird myths or gods or competing groups, I still have no idea what's going on. I have no idea what anyone is trying to accomplish anymore, including the two main characters. I actually groaned when the final episode ended with a season two announcement because that means I have to watch more of this nonsense next year just to try and figure out what the hell is going on.

Auron

I finished Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts. It wasn't bad, but I didn't love it either. Main girl Sariphi is the latest human girl sent as a sacrifice to the titular King of Beasts, but they wind up falling in love instead. The rest of the story is their struggle to have their romance accepted by the rest of the human-hating beast kingdom. There were some cute and heartwarming moments along the way, as well as some decent tension in a few of the arcs. For me, though, the big problem was the characters. Everyone felt incredibly flat. Sariphi was just a self-sacrificing idealistic good girl the whole way through. The King fell in love with her too quickly, in my opinion, and from then on a large part of his personality was just "loves Sariphi". Some of the side characters were fine, and I really liked the lizard and hyena royal guards. I hated the Anubis advisor, though, and he was by far the most important supporting character so that sucked.

I went into this hoping for another anime like Kakuriyo (which is fantasy/romance about a human girl who is kidnapped by an ogre god). Sadly, Sacrificial Princess was nowhere near as good as Kakuriyo. Like I said, I didn't hate it, but I definitely wouldn't recommend it to anyone else.

FFXIII still had an impressive run.

Cloud

Lightning is my favorite FF character and Yuna is my number two, so today's results hurt! I guess FFVII truly is the most popular game in the series.

Vanille
Auron

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Malevolent Spirits is the manga I want to read that's translation being behind hurts the most. Literally over a dozen volumes behind the Japanese release, much less where the anime has gotten.

Damn, I had made a mental note to look into this after finishing S2 of the anime the other day. Sad to hear it's so far behind in English.

Lightning
Yuna

My #1 and #2 are still in. Probably only for one more round, but still!

I finished the second season of Malevolent Spirits: Mononogatari. The first season was one of my favorites from earlier this year, and I'm happy so say that the continuation was also great! It takes the idea of tsukumogami, spirits that inhabit objects, and uses it to craft an interesting setting. Hyoma, a spirit hunter who hates tsukumogami, is forced to coexist with Botan, a girl with a cadre of loyal tsukumogami protectors. The two of them have such a fun and heartfelt relatonship. I really loved it. The entire supporting cast it good too, everyone from the tsukumogami crew to the other spirit hunters to various other villains... everyone fills their role well. It's also all tied together by some genuinely awesome fight scenes. Each character has a unique power and it's a lot of fun seeing the battles play out.

Not sure if anyone else stuck with this show, but if you have any interest in this kind of supernatural action series, I'd definitely recommend it. I hope they get another season or two in the future, but S2 ends on a fine note.

Auron
Cecil

I was enjoying the unexpected Yuffie run. RIP ninja thief.

Vanille is legit strong, though! XIII as a whole is doing a lot better than I ever would've guessed.

...You know what, you're right! I hadn't considered the cynical marketing angle.

Oh well. I'm legitimately enjoying the show so it doesn't matter much anyway. It just bugs me that isekai is the "standard" for fantasy stories even when it really doesn't need to be. Like, imagine if Frieren was actually a reincarnated Japanese girl but it didn't change anything because the show never did anything with it. Ugh.

Reg posted...

Isekai makes it much, much worse than it could be.

There are some isekai where the past life matters a lot (like Ascendance of a Bookworm or something similar). Then there are others where it's just a lazy way to info-dump the setting because the character doesn't know anything about the world. The Faraway Paladin is just an especially pointless case of making something an isekai. The guy is raised as from a baby and has to learn about the world just like anyone else anyway. And the people who raise him have out of date information, so when he goes out into the world he has to learn everything the normal way again! Plus he literally never does anything with his knowledge from another world. Nothing would be lost by just making him a regular person from that world.

I've been watching The Faraway Paladin. Today I finished season one and caught up on the currently airing season two. This is yet another anime that would be vastly improved by simply not being an isekai. Other than some incredibly thin motivation for him due to wasting his first life, the fact that he has memories from another world literally doesn't matter. Other than that, though, I'm enjoying it! It's a solid fantasy world with neat magic and good characters. I like the setting too, it's neat seeing a society still recovering from a cataclysmic demon war.

Squall
Yuffie

Yuna
Cloud

It hurts voting against Rikku

I finished Hell's Paradise. It was pretty good! I went in with high expectations, though, and sadly it didn't quite match up to that. The premise is amazing. A bunch of convicts with crazy powers, paired up with powerful samurai who are monitoring them, go on an expedition to a freaky island looking for the elixir of life. The setting was really interesting, full of weird monsters and impossibilities. I liked most of the characters too. Sagiri and Gabimaru had a great dynamic, but other characters like Yuzuriha and Shion were good too.

My complaints mostly come down to pacing. I feel like these thirteen episodes could've easily been expanded to twice that length just to give everything more time to breathe. I hated a sequence early on that was essentially "I know we set up a bunch of neat characters, but we don't have time for them all so let's kill half of them right away". A few of the duos had very little screentime and I wanted to see more about what they were up to. Quite often, too, they would have a bunch of flashbacks to flesh out a character... literally in the moment where they're dying. Maybe I would've cared more about their sad backstory if you established it earlier, Hell's Paradise, but showing it to me when I know they're going to die doesn't really work.

I dunno. For a show with such a great setting, premise, and characters, I guess I was just disappointed that the presentation of it all kind of fell flat for me. I'm still excited for the future second season, though! It was still a solid 7/10 anime.

Lightning
Tidus

This was mostly a bad day, bad job everyone

Excellent results today, good job everyone

Kuja
Auron
Balthier
Cid P

Against my better judgment, I started watching Butareba: The Story of a Man Who Turned into a Pig. And it's... surprisingly decent so far? I skipped it earlier in the season because I figured the premise of a pervy guy isekai-ing into a pig and hanging out with a cute mindreader would be nonstop ecchi. It certainly has had its fair share of raunchy jokes, but that hasn't really been the focus. There's only been one panty shot so far, even! It's actually about the mindreader girl and the pig embarking on a dangerous journey to an ominous royal capital where they can hopefully find someone to turn him back into a human. The fourth episode did a really good job at laying out the threats they can expect to encounter along the way. The dynamic between the pig and the mindreader has been a lot of fun too. I'm actually really enjoying this anime so far.

Squall
Vanille
Kefka
Yuffie

Tifa beating Vivi but Aerith losing to Rikku means I officially don't understand SMFFFC power levels I guess. My bracket is ruined!

I like Tifa more than Vivi though so that's fine.

Today I watched The Dangers in My Heart. Mac and I clearly have polar opposite opinions on romance anime! He ranked this one high but didn't like Insomniacs After School, whereas I loved Insomniacs but didn't like this anime at all.

I have absolutely no idea what either of the main characters saw in each other. Ichikawa started as an insufferably cringeworthy edgelord who wanted to murder everyone, but they dropped that aspect of his character almost immediately so I don't know why they even bothered. After that he was just the same old boring insecure dude this kind of romance anime always seems to have. Usually I would still like the girl, but Yamada was just a bundle of generic airhead and hungry girl traits. The entire supporting cast was lackluster at best or awful at worst (all those perv classmates loudly talking about jerking off to the girls, ugh). This anime just really wasn't for me, I disliked pretty much everything the whole way through. I could see where they tried to insert cute moments or emotional moments and it all just fell flat for me because I didn't like anyone at all.

Fiop posted...

Surprised that Lightning is the 1 seed in this. I know she won one of these, but she doesn't stick out as the strongest in my mind. I would've thought someone like Vivi would be top.

The seeding was based on SMFFFC stats over the twenty-five contests. Lightning got really good placements for a lot of years before she finally won, so her stats are still unassailable.

Tifa
Yuna
Cloud
Rikku

Yay for Lightning, sad about Terra

Truth is, I forgot to scroll down to check any shows that aren't listed under TV (New) on MAL. I guess I got lucky Pluto is technically a spinoff, but I probably missed something else from this year.

MacArrowny posted...

Most of the reception I've seen to Sweet Reincarnation is people complaining it doesn't focus enough on baking.

For me at least, I preferred the show it was over some other show where he bakes a different treat every episode. The worst parts were when he was like "here, try this candy apple" "wtf is an apple we call them bonkas"

Anyway, I finished Sweet Reincarnation. Anime, in its desperation to find an isekai premise that hasn't been used yet, decided to explore... what if a skilled pastry chef was reincarnated in a fantasy world??? That's a boring idea and I wasn't expecting much, but this anime beat my expectations by at least not being terrible. It helped that the pastry chef was born as a kid to a minor noble in a barren land where not much could grow. Instead of twelve episodes about him baking treats, it was twelve episodes of political intrigue as he struggled to survive in the cutthroat world of royal politics. Oh, and sometimes he baked treats. It wasn't the focus at all. Don't get me wrong, Sweet Reincarnation was still thoroughly mediocre. It just wasn't as bad as it could've been! I liked some of the comedic moments, and the characters were all fine. The political intrigue with royals of varying powers was handled surprisingly well. Large parts of the show were just him trying to forge the proper connections to get access to basic ingredients like sugar and honey, which was interesting. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.

I finished an anime and posting about it will fill the topic up, so I guess I'll just make a new topic and post about it there

I can't screenshot on Crunchyroll for some reason, but if I could I'd post a screenshot now of the shot where the guy and the pink-haired girl somehow managed to 69 each other while trying to kiss!

I know 100 Girlfriends is a comedy and I shouldn't hold that part of its premise against it. The whole time I was watching it, I just kept thinking of Romantic Killer. It was a hilarious anime in addition to doing a good job at thoughtfully exploring the whole "free will" thing with a similar premise.

I'm caught up on ten new shows from this season now. I may as well do a quick updated ranking from best to worst (I started watching that 100 Girlfriends one so I'm not counting Dark Gathering anymore)

1- The Family Circumstances of the Irregular Witch. This show is stupid fun and I love it. Every episode has at least a handful of amazingly dumb gags that make me laugh out loud.

2- Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. I don't like this as much as most people seem to, it's only a 7/10, but it's a solid anime. I preferred her more aimless wandering to the serious plot of the last few episodes, but I'm sure we'll get back to that soon enough.

3- Stardust Telepath. I really like the shy main girl and her weird alien friend. I feel like this year hasn't had many other good cute girls shows, so I'm really glad for this one.

4- Tearmoon Empire. It's fun watching the main girl stumble her way through various situations and have everyone think she's a compassionate genius. It's just a really fun premise that's being executed well.

5- Shy. Kind of a mediocre setting and overall conflict so far, but I like Shy and her best friend and I'm curious to see where the story goes.

6- I'm Giving the Disgraced Noble Lady I Rescued a Crash Course in Naughtiness. It's kind of a generic show overall, but the main two are cute together. Hayami Saori also voices the main girl and she's great in this kind of role. Her "awawa" flustered noise alone puts this above most of the rest of this season.

7- The Apothecary Diaries. This show is fine but nothing special. Maomao isn't growing on me at all like I thought she would. She's so passive most of the time, and her cute moments when it comes to apothecary duties don't make up for it. The problems she's solving have all been mediocre so far.

8- I'm in Love with the Villainess. This show honestly kind of sucks. Main girl is constantly a creep towards the villainess and I don't like how the show keeps making excuses for it. The villainess has a better relationship with the prince she has a crush on than she does with her creepy maid, which is not how I want to feel while watching a so-called "yuri" show.

9- The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, REALLY Love You. This show may have the occasional good joke or cute moment, but I don't think anything will ever overpower the profound discomfort I feel while watching one guy slowly build a triple-digit harem. I don't like how it isn't exploring the implication that these girls have had their free will stolen by a stupid love god. Main dude is completely taking advantage of all of them.

10- The Vexations of a Shut-In Vampire Princess. This show is awful. I don't know why MAL lists it as a comedy because funny is the last word I would use to describe it. It's bleak like an edgelord anime a lot of the time. The only time it even tries for a joke is with the creepy maid, but she's creepy and I hate her.

Kuja
-
Selphie
Auron
Zidane

Kefka
-
Yuffie
Zidane

In my ongoing quest to catch up on the last few seasons, I watched Insomniacs After School. I thought it was a 10/10 perfect anime. Every little thing was packed with so much emotion that I felt strangely nostalgic even though I was watching it for the first time. Nakami and Magari were both great and I loved every second they spent together. It had sweet moments without ever feeling saccharine and sad moments without ever feeling melodramatic. This didn't have any of the awful tropes that usually ruin romance anime for me. There were no idiotic misunderstandings or evil love rivals. This was just the story of two people who otherwise had little in common who realized they each suffered from insomnia. Then they began slowly getting to know each other, and it was beautiful. Some sequences were so magical that I didn't want them to end. Their little radio shows in episode seven might be one of my favorite anime moments ever.

This was a better astronomy anime than Asteroid in Love. A better photography anime than Tada Never Falls in Love. A better camping anime than Laid-Back Camp. A better insomniac anime than Call of the Night. And a better romance anime than any other that I've ever seen. I'm glad I finally watched it.

I like how I was the only one to not do a favorites bracket and now I'm going to get destroyed because I had Aeris going a lot further, lol

I'm honestly shocked that Rikku beat Aeris. I like Rikku a lot, but Aeris always felt like the far more popular character on B8.

Squall
Edward
Vincent
Vanille

Cloud
Ultros
Aerith
Celes

We're all finished, so here's the spoiler log. Thanks again for participating, everyone! The next one will likely be November 18th, but as always I can move it a week up or down depending on what works for most people.

https://archipelago.gg/dl_spoiler/GUV8mLPqRDCn_WYzB_UiWA