Board 8 > Anime & Manga Discussion Topic 293 - Beyond Topic's End

(+) Yeah! (+)

Got around to watching the latest Frieren, still firing on all cylinders for me. Slower paced episode with technically not that much happening, but the fleshing out of some past era/background stuff made it worth it.

JJK and Frieren had some great episodes this week, but JJK was especially awesome.

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.

I really love Hyakko. Super underrated anime.

Paved the way for me watching other anime of it's I'll like Yuru Yuri, Yuyushiki, and Minami-ke.

GANON1025 posted...

but JJK was especially awesome.

it just keeps coming!

The monopoly grows.

https://twitter.com/ChibiReviews/status/1724218065427067250?s=19

WOAH WOAH HOLD ON

where am I going to harassingly-direct people towards to watch Legend of the Galactic Heroes if HiDive's down!!!

Well I didn't get the email so it's still good for North America.

Still waiting for Sony to just bundle crunchyroll into ps+ premium

Damn. That sucks. Hidive is where i found two of my favorites

https://twitter.com/SupremeDreams_1/status/1724171755835777065

More Mappa staff publicly decrying the horrible production. Major animators implying they're quitting, too. This kind of thing is practically unheard of in Japan (publicly facing, I'm sure it happens plenty behind closed doors) and it's happening every week and coming from dozens of staff members.

Very interested to see how the remainder of this season turns out, and what happens to Mappa moving forward.

Looking at MAL, isn't Mappa only doing one show this season? That doesn't feel like it would be enough to burn everyone out. I don't know anything about the industry, though.

Mappa has been continuously doing the most high demand shows on the market nonstop for years now, and supposedly on mediocre salaries and absurd schedules.

They're working 100 hour work weeks and basically living in the office. These episodes are being worked on practically until they're aired.

No other studio is going what Mappa is doing and that's a good thing. I've been stanning for them longer than just about anyone, having ridden that Mappa pole since their claim to fame was Rage of Bahamut, but it's a total shitshow.

Let's put it this way. Pluto took 4 years to make 12 episodes and that studio barely puts out anything. Compare to how JJK is looking when they're expected to turn episodes around in a couple of months at best. Now consider this year Mappa also did Attack on Titan, Vinland Saga, and Hell's Paradise, coming immediately off of Chainsaw Man, and with other smaller projects mixed within.

A studio can't handle this many AAA productions simultaneously. It's going to fall.

https://twitter.com/mahadopower/status/1724546159677505549?s=19

Is that Michael Cera? His voice sounds way more fitting for Scott when it's not attached to his live action...well, acting.

KamikazePotato posted...

Is that Michael Cera? His voice sounds way more fitting for Scott when it's not attached to his live action...well, acting.

Yeah, he's absolutely doing a banger job because he's actually adjusting for the animated role.

Compared to Mary Elizabeth Winstead in the latest trailer who just sounds awful and is barely trying.

https://youtu.be/WAlPGYYyhUw?si=O5WzbiSQm4ho9YF2

We've yet to hear most of the cast, they're really not showing much. I don't have a lot of faith for most of them outside of Michael Cera though.

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.

This tweet making the rounds again, back when people were first talking about it I thought they were reading into it too much. Hindsight is 20/20 lol.

https://twitter.com/RussellLatshaw/status/1582466692961120258?s=19

They should be paid like they're professional athletes.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

This tweet making the rounds again, back when people were first talking about it I thought they were reading into it too much. Hindsight is 20/20 lol.

https://twitter.com/RussellLatshaw/status/1582466692961120258?s=19

Lmaoooo, never saw this before

Here's some great summary threads that spell it out in much more detail than I can.

https://twitter.com/epppyyy/status/1724836076198433177?s=19

https://i.ibb.co/2PCqpp6/20231115-180000.png

I finished My Love Story with Yamada Lv. 999. The gaming stuff is there, but about 25% and sort of an afterthought to the main romance, which I found got better as the show wore on. I didn't like Yamada at first. However, he grew on me, because there were quite a few times his very dry/boring way of speaking gave way to actual care for people and especially Akane. She was a bit boneheaded, but balanced out Yamada quite a bit. Endless enthusiasm without forgetting, "Hey, I'm kinda depressed some of the time." I'm glad the show ended right at 13 episodes. You just know this sort of thing would have been dragged out to 24-26 in the old days. Kinda glad it wasn't: just enough to get the point across without being insufferably slow.

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.

Both Boruto and DBSuper ready to set the internet aflame this month.

Woah, didn't expect this.

https://twitter.com/TheMediaBingus/status/1725348741966856203?s=19

Oh shit alright let's go

ew, Great Pretender was so bad

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.

It was a great show, very excited to see more of it! Really never thought it would happen, just figured it was a once and done.

WIT has mostly been on a hot streak, besides that....panty show from last year. Vivy in particular was excellent. I don't have a ton of faith in the Suicide Squad anime but maybe they'll surprise me.

New Studio Bones anime will be announced tomorrow at their panel. Very slight rumors (old rumors) that they may be doing Soul Eater Brotherhood, but wouldn't put a ton of stock into it.

I'm surprised Netflix never recommended that Great Pretender show to me.

I think i watched the first episode or two and fell off. Does it get better?

I'd say it falls off, but the quality's mostly consistent.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is definitely not what I expected lol.

Just don't go in expecting a direct adaptation.

Decided to rewatch what I'd already seen in English before moving forward, give it the benefit of the doubt.

No.

I'm a huge fucking Stan for the Scott Pilgrim movie. I saw it FIVE TIMES on theaters two of those were alone, and I've seen in at least 10 times overall. I adore it, and I think almost everyone in that movie did a fantastic job.

With only a few exceptions they're not doing a good job here.

The most generous I can possibly be is they're just not fitting the time of this shows aesthetic whatsoever, except for a few characters and Michael Cera, but he's got some not so good takes as well. You never believe any of these characters are actually in the same room, it's just them starring at a paper reading their lines in order with no sense of what the conversation actually is or who they're talking to, and in some case seems like it may have even been recorded from home (which hell, who knows!) It doesn't help that it's actually got a really good Japanese cast so far.

I just really want to stress that I don't think this is my bias against celebrity casting affecting my judgment. I think this is an unbalanced, mediocre dub. And obviously there's way more characters to introduce, maybe they'll be doing a better job, but one of the worst performances and the one that matches the look of the show the least by far is Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona, and she's apparently much more present in this than either the comic or the movie, so it's basically a moot point.

I'll most likely never watch the Scott Pilgrim anime (the movie wasn't bad but I don't like Scott as a character at all). However, I was curious why it wasnt being listed on MAL so I looked into it. I guess the people in charge of the database over there are ignoring their own criteria in order to exclude it, lol. Even though their main argument, that this wasn't being made with a Japanese audience in mind, would apply to anime like Cyberpunk Edgerunners too. I understand why a show like Castlevania isn't on there, but I think this Scott Pilgrim anime should be.

Yeah, it's pretty silly. I'd guess MAL will eventually relent and add it, but MAL has some silly criteria in general.

Hell fucking yeah.

https://twitter.com/animetv_jp/status/1725619972519432504?s=19

Just give me more Rak

In fact, make Rak the main character (I still do like the others but they aren't Rak)

Oh that's actually great. I read a good chunk of the source material and was never motivated to go back to check out the anime, but I've always been really curious how they would do these next 2 arcs.

I should really get back into the webtoon tbh. A bit of a slog at times but there's some really good stuff there, and I never found the motivation to continue after the author had gone on hiatus for like a year.

No D&D tonight, so I can catch up on some anime.

Goblins....

...Oh.

https://twitter.com/xDonutW/status/1725656523982991541?s=19

They probably shouldn't have like....

Hyped this up as a big announcement.....

That looks pretty dumb

Eh, it looks fine as a generic anime. Probably not worthy of a big announcement though.

I was actually browsing upcoming Winter 2024 shows the other day and saw one called Metallic Rouge. The description for it just says "Metallic Rouge is an original action sci-fi TV anime commemorating the 25th anniversary of studio Bones". You'd think they'd be hyping this up a bit more, maybe actually reveal a few plot details...

Metallic Rouge looks sick NGL.

https://twitter.com/aniplexusa/status/1725657621259018465

I suppose Adult Swim has to show something new on there.

Oh wow that's a good fucking get.

Hopefully it brings more eyes to the series. If it weren't for Edgerunners that would have been my #1 show of last year.

Ah, OK, so it seems the Bones anime announcement being a huge deal is because the writer passed away before she could finish the series and the anime will both adapt and complete the work.