Board 8 > Anime & Manga Discussion Topic 174: Giving thanks for anime

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LapisLazuli posted...

...I don't think I've even heard of Children of Whales. Not something that got picked up?

Netflix

LapisLazuli posted...

Ah, and Land of the Lustrous I haven't checked out. Not because of the CG, but....trailer made it seem like a shota bait show...

...wat
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tazzyboyishere posted...

Netflix

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tazzyboyishere posted...

...wat

I dunno, trailer was a bunch of little boys in short shorts, what am I supposed to think?
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They're technically genderless but pretty blatantly feminine.
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Oh, huh. Thought this was a very different kind of show then. Guess I have zero idea what it's actually about.
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Finished Tsurezure Children.

Overall a pretty good show. It's not something that's going to blow anyone's mind, but on the other hand I think it's pretty much exactly what you want to see when you watch a show like this. The format was a bit weird but ultimately I think it worked out pretty well. Focusing on many couples with different personalities instead of just one basically allows for a lot of different types of funny and heartwarming movements, which was pretty great. Obviously if you want a more story-driven romance than something like this wouldn't work, but as a skit-based romcom I thought it was good. Only complaint I have is the one couple breaks up after the guy drinks alcohol or whatever it was, which was kind of dumb, but it only amounted to like 30 seconds of screen time so whatever.

Best couple is Sugawara/quiet girl, but I'll also give shoutouts to KanaHana/whatever the guy's name was and his sister.

(Yes, a side effect of this format is that I remember almost literally nobody's name. Just in case you couldn't tell)
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Children of the whale was very well received in print form in france.

I think it should end up being pretty good as an anime.
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so I'm calling it now

Adventures of Elite NEET aka Recovery of an MMO Junkie is gonna be definitely in the running for best thing this season
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That show is good? If I remember the description right it sounded really stupid...

I'm enjoying it greatly after two episodes
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Sounds like the girl plays a hot guy in the MMO and meets a girl in it who is really nice. In the real world she meets a guy and he's probably the girl in the MMO. That's what I got from the description anyways. Since a lot of anime like to be so predictable that's probably accurate. Anichart doesn't list a genre for it, but I'd imagine rom/com at the very least

It's great. Really great.
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*watches the Claris Live concert vid*

*dies at the surprise Alice out of nowhere in Irony*
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I finished Made in Abyss. Very good show in pretty much every way. Music was fantastic, world building was top tier, characters were cool, and the progression was done pretty much perfectly. Fantastic art and animation all around. There were lots of excellent parts, but I almost feel like my favorite part might be the sense of expectation generated by the first couple episodes before they went down into the Abyss. Had me ridiculously excited to see more. And then, the Abyss itself delivers basically perfectly on that promise. The sense of adventure in this show was basically all around excellent. Really wish that there were more anime that focused on adventuring, since a lot of the ones that start out as adventures end up focusing more on other stuff instead as they go along.

If anything, I think the main weakness of the show might be the main two characters? They're both good, but their construction makes them feel a bit less real than they could? Mainly Riko. She just feels a little bit too weak. I mean, that's totally deliberate (Riko's the brain's and Reg's the brawn), but her being able to survive to the bottom of the Abyss is sort of an absurd idea. Was also a bit annoyed at the end of the show that it seems to be going in the direction of humans are the real monsters, though episode 13 pulled off that aspect pretty well at least, and it was quite emotional.

Also annoyed at all the people who went on and on about how dark the show is. Not really any darker than shounen series like Hunter x Hunter, really. Anime fans can be ridiculous sometimes.
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March Comes in Like a Lion starting off on a pretty bad note. The final third of season 1 made it feel like this show was losing focus, and this has done absolutely nothing to help matters.
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It's time for the first week anime rankings. (UQ Holder Starts the week)

1. The Magician's Bride
-I was very impressed by this. I thought the mood of the show was spot on. Like I think it really portrayed the point of view of Chise very well too. Really excited for this to continue.

2. Girls' Last Tour
-Oh my god those faces.

3. Children of the Whales
-In this case I think they built up decent intrigue for a potential future great. It's too bad netflix picked this one up.

4. Houseki no Kuni (TV)
-I think aesthetically this one has some stuff going for it. I also think out of all the shows that aired in the first week it established the main characters the best.

5. Kino's Journey -the Beautiful World-
-I was kind of on the fence at first, and despite the kind of obvious progression the packaged story was satisfying.

6. Netojuu no Susume
-I thought this started a good balance of like actual in game stuff and how the irl girl reacted to things and such. Good comedy too.

7. Food Wars S3
-A pretty good episode to start the third season. No cooking yet so like it's not up there yet.

8. Animegataris
-That rich girl puts me to shame.

9. Blend S
-You know, for something that exists in like real life... I'm surprise I don't know another show that has a similar premise.

10. UQ Holder!
-Almost didn't pick this up, but I liked the first episode. Is this going to be the fan service anime this season?

11. Konohana Kitan
-Man this show is cute. I also really liked this anime. In fact, I think all the titles from like 1 to 11 are relatively close to each other and the second episode is probably going to change a lot of spots.

12. The iDOLM@STER SideM
-Started kind of slow, but closer to the end I think it started to feel more like what I'd expect from idolmaster.

13. Just Because!
-Some of this seemed kind of pointless, but there was something about the baseball part that kept this up for me.

14. Juuni Taisen
-That animation at the very start was great. Hopefully this gets some more substance.

15. Black Clover (TV)
-Looks like a typical shounen although overall I thought this was good. However, the main characters screaming all the time was annoying, not really because of the screaming but because the actual voice sounds I dont know... almost fake?

DROP LINE
16. Two Car
-Just kind of boring. A soft drop as this was kind of borderline.

17. Code:Realize
-There was this show Amnesia... this reminds me of that somehow. I dropped Amnesia, and I heard that show was awful.

18. A Sister's All You Need
-You know, there's a point where even I get incredible annoyed at like the lamest budget savers in anime. If the show was that girl doing a lot of sex jokes it would be better (and also a different show).

19. Urahara
-Not really sure what was going on. At some points I thought the animation and such was pretty unique and in some spots almost good, but in a lot it's so bad.

20. Ousama Game
-Well this is a train wreck.

21. Sengoku Night Blood
-I was thinking "this is not that bad" but when the guy at the end of the episode said he was a vampire I was like "NOPE." like aren't we over this?

22. Dynamic Chord
-I thought the opening song was pretty good and was like, maybe this doesn't suck. But then it goes right into another song. It was like a series of bad anime music videos. Why.

23. Tsukipro The Animation
-To be honest, this probably is not as bad as Dynamic Chord, but this was dropped the fastest as it did that lame character sheet intro. Some of them before the character said more than 3 words.
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Shows not picked up

Osomatsu-san S2
Yuuki Yuna S2
Love Live S2
ClassicaLoid S2
Time Bokan S2
Himouto! Umaru-chan R
Kekkai Sensen & Beyond
Hoozuki no Reitetsu S2
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VN talk is still good here right?

So I finished Doki Doki Literature Club.

Uh wow, not sure what I can really say without giving away too much about the game. It's quite an experience all right. I really did enjoy playing it.

It's completely free to play on Steam, and it's pretty short too, only a few hours long. I think it really is best to go in completely blind.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/698780/Doki_Doki_Literature_Club/

All I can say is that the disclaimers and tags are NOT A JOKE. While it does things that are meant to creep out the player, most of it isn't THAT scary. It mainly just makes you go, "What the fuck?" There are only like 2 jump scare parts and odds are you'd have to deliberately know how to encounter them.

Oddly enough, this is how I even found out about it:

https://twitter.com/redditdota2/status/918382905927315456

Not the tweet itself, but just that one day I was on Twitch and some guy was streaming it and had like over 7000 viewers, which pushed it up on the Directory list.

I talked a bit a more about it in Raka's playthrough topic.
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Damn, who would've thought that Garo would be the show of the season early on?
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I'm finally gonna watch a bunch of shit tomorrow. From the meager scraps I've seen:

Magus
Zodiac
Garo

DROP:
King's Game

All 3 of those watches were great, though Zodiac is the only one I've seen episode 2 of.
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Finally made myself watch the Made in Abyss finale.

Fuck.
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Woah, Land of the Lustrous is gorgeous.

Character movement is very RWBY like.
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Well, I said I would keep March Comes in Like a Lion S2 on a short leash, and the leash just shortened even more. Opened up with one of the worst possible episodes it could have. Heavy focus on shogi players who aren't relevant to Rei's growth, as well as a heavy focus on comedy and Rei's bonding with bit characters, all as a means to show a small bit of development that could've been expressed in a much shorter and more satisfying way. Though I guess we actually did see character growth, which happened so little in the latter half of S1, so I guess it is showing some sign of reform.

I'll give it one more episode, but damn, it sucks to see what could've been a masterpiece devolve into such a sorry state.
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What an interesting show and premise.

Thanks for bringing it up taz, was gonna completely ignore this one.
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Also it's a fucking waifu "gold"mine, but that's besides the point.
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Anyway, here are my opening rankings:

Garo > Kino's Journey > Ancient Magus' Bride > Inuyashiki > Land of the Lustrous > Children of the Whales > Girls' Last Tour > Zodiac War > March S2

Top 3 are currently 10/10 material. Fantastic frontrunners to kick the season off. Down through Whales are all great. Bottom 3 could be drops. I like Last Tour alright, but every episode feels way longer than 24 minutes, which isn't a good sign for it's future. Zodiac War's second episode felt a lot less fun than the first. First episode was such a fantastic way of showing how ridiculous the show was going to be, and then we got a really dull episode that made it feel like I was watching Akame ga Kill. March, I already said my piece.

Also, I don't really ever do this, but I don't think anyone else is actually planning to watch Garo, so I just want to briefly talk about one of the most insignificant but awesome parts of it. So in episode 1, the main character shows this stupid mannerism of his, where he folds his hands and prays any time he sees big boobs, to thank God for letting him see big boobs. It's really dumb, but he plays it off in such a way that I smiled the first time it happened. Then he does it to another girl later in the episode, making you think that this will now become a regular event. Second time around it's not really funny at all, but you are expected to just sort of live with this (Or you're a huge fan of bad boob jokes and are lol'ing hardcore). It doesn't really effect the show at ll, but it'd be annoying to see a bad joke interrupting the flow of events every episode, right? Well, in comes episode 2, and you see one of the ladies who he prayed to God for. Instead of interrupting the flow of the story to show you her boobs, followed by a second or two of Sword (Oh yeah, MC's name is Sword. Not really selling this show too hard, I know) praying, it instead keeps the conversation between Sword and his ally going, all the while Sword is to the left part of the screen, giving thanks for the view. This isn't much, but the fact that they manage to maintain a character trait that is ultimately pointless to the story and entirely for brash comedy, in such a subtle way makes it more effective and less intrusive. Yes, I just wrote a paragraph on a really bad boob joke, and yes, this is the exact reason why everyone should watch Garo. It's an over-the-top, balls-to-the-wall action show that looks to provide style over substance, but it's written so fucking well.

DROPS:
Konohana Kitan
Code: Realize
ShoBitch

These sucked
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LapisLazuli posted...

Finally made myself watch the Made in Abyss finale.

Fuck.

why would you wait

how could you leave riko in a coma for so long
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tazzyboyishere posted...

but I don't think anyone else is actually planning to watch Garo

:/
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aww, not checking out MMO Junkie tazzy?
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Clearly he wanted my bashing to purge because my opinion is more important than anyone's and he couldn't accept that.
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Mac Arrowny posted...

LapisLazuli posted...

Finally made myself watch the Made in Abyss finale.

Fuck.

why would you wait

how could you leave riko in a coma for so long

I always have trouble saying goodbye to shows that I know I'm gonna be depressed are over.
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LapisLazuli posted...

tazzyboyishere posted...

but I don't think anyone else is actually planning to watch Garo

:/

Oh, didn't see your post. Good!

Mac Arrowny posted...

aww, not checking out MMO Junkie tazzy?

Absolutely does not sound appealing to me at all, sorry.
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If Made in Abyss doesn't get a season 2 I'll be confused and annoyed.
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tazzyboyishere posted...

If Made in Abyss doesn't get a season 2 I'll be confused and annoyed.

Wouldn't be the first time.

They went all out with the ending afterall.
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Hrrm, put Children of the Whales in drop danger as well. Not really sure where it's trying to go...

EDIT: Whoops, spoke too soon. Finally decided to start moving at the end. Didn't realize we had a two episode prologue going >_>
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Yeah, really hoping Abyss gets an S2. Wouldn't terribly mind just reading the manga eventually though.
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Hmmmm, what to watch next. Land of the Lustrous will probably rank high.
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Oh, the main character of MMO Junky is an adult?
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SSJBSSJ Catface Goku.

Hot guy creation complete.
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LapisLazuli posted...

Oh, the main character of MMO Junky is an adult?

Yes, which is part of why it's far better than it could've been
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Oh god I thought only MWC used the J in those Super Saiyan abbreviations

I do it for the opposite reason, because it looks stupid and sounds awful.

The idea of doing it because you think it should be that way is....adorable.
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tazzyboyishere posted...

Well, I said I would keep March Comes in Like a Lion S2 on a short leash, and the leash just shortened even more. Opened up with one of the worst possible episodes it could have. Heavy focus on shogi players who aren't relevant to Rei's growth, as well as a heavy focus on comedy and Rei's bonding with bit characters, all as a means to show a small bit of development that could've been expressed in a much shorter and more satisfying way. Though I guess we actually did see character growth, which happened so little in the latter half of S1, so I guess it is showing some sign of reform.

I'll give it one more episode, but damn, it sucks to see what could've been a masterpiece devolve into such a sorry state.

I didnt even pick it up. Like, I didnt even think the first season was that good. The show has almost no focus at all and when it does it does so in some of the most unsatisfying ways possible. Rei is not even the most interesting character in the show.
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Reg posted...

LapisLazuli posted...

Oh, the main character of MMO Junky is an adult?

Yes, which is part of why it's far better than it could've been

When I watched the OP a while ago, I thought that was her mom at the end, and she was gonna be an MMO addict because her mom was in the hospital or something.
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Lion is a wierd one because there was never a time where I thought the show wasn't good, but I also lost all drive to contonue about two thirds through S1.
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And to go into more detail on Garo, taz, what do you think of the "camera" work during the action? I thought it was hype as fuck, but roomate thought it made the action ugly and unwatcheable.
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Kino has a....talking motorcycle?

Guess that'd the 2nd one of those this season....
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Kino has always had a talking motorcycle
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I didn't know!
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I thought you watched an episode of the original!
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