Board 8 > Robazoid Ranks 275 Anime and Top 100 Anime Characters (recommend me stuff too)

(+) Yeah! (+)

yeah i'll throw my hat into the ring at 29:71

I'll definitely keep track of all the guesses people have made to those four questions! I'll also continue accepting guesses for them for quite awhile.

202. Nananas Buried Treasure
https://myanimelist.net/anime/21561/Ryuugajou_Nanana_no_Maizoukin
Spring 2014 (11 episodes)
My Score: 3/10, MAL Score: 7.14/10
Best Character: Ikkyuu Tensai

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AscrGuKtLY

Premise: High-schooler Yama Juugos new apartment is haunted by the ghost of Ryuugajou Nanana. He searches for treasures she hid when she was still alive, hoping to find clues that will solve her murder and help her spirit move on.

The Good: Nanana's Buried Treasure should have been one of my favorites. I love supernatural concepts like helping ghosts move on. The intense treasure hunting was an interesting idea too. Tensai was my favorite character, it was fun watching her try to back up her boasts about being a great detective.

The Bad: Nananas Buried Treasure simply doesnt get far enough into the story. Lots of anime only tell the first arc and hope the viewer will head over to the source material for more, but this is one of the worst examples I've seen. NBT doesnt have anything resembling an ending. It doesnt even feel like a good stopping point. For a story where I cared about the plot and characters it was unsatisfying, and it ruined the whole thing for me. I also felt that Nanana was a wasted character. She shouldve been great but she spent most of the story hanging around the apartment.

Overall: With another season or two, I think this couldve risen to be one of my favorites. As a single season of an anime, Nananas Buried Treasure is the worst example of an incomplete story that I can think of. There shouldve been at least one more episode to have something resembling a conclusion. As good as it was, by the end of the only season, I mostly felt like Id wasted my time.

Hmm, I never felt that it was ruined that badly by being incomplete and liked the show quite a bit overall, but maybe I'm just used to dealing with incomplete adaptations...

NBT was among the first few dozen anime I watched if I remember correctly, so maybe you're right and I just wasn't used to incomplete adaptations yet. I'll complain about the same thing in 201 and it was one of my first ten anime. I was just really enjoying the story and wanted to see where it would go and most anime have twelve episodes so I wasn't worried when 11 didn't wrap anything up... but there was no 12! The total lack of conclusion to anything really soured me on it right at the last moment.

I definitely wanted more out of Nanana's Buried Treasure, and it was a shame there wasn't, but I remember it reasonably fondly still. Anime Xiaolin Showdown with more backstabbing.

201. Red Data Girl
https://myanimelist.net/anime/14921/RDG__Red_Data_Girl
Spring 2013 (12 episodes)
My Score: 3/10, MAL Score: 6.57/10
Best Character: Suzuhara Izumiko

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bm1sth_dM0

Premise: Suzuhara Izumiko is called a goddess by her protectors, and being raised at a secluded shrine has left her incredibly shy. Now she must go to school for the first time alongside Sagara Miyuki, a bodyguard who cannot understand whats so special about her.

The Good: I like the art style in Red Data Girl, its warm and really brings life to the nature locations. Izumiko is great too. She was raised as a chosen one and it left her understandably warped in a lot of ways. Her power also comes with drawbacks, such as destroying any technology that she touches. I enjoyed her relationship with Miyuki as well. His whole life was uprooted to look after a girl he doesnt even like for reasons he doesnt believe. It makes sense hed be resentful. In a lot if ways he's a typical "dreamy guy who is mostly a jerk but sometimes he begrudgingly shows he cares" character, but I didn't mind it. The distance between them made the moments where they grew closer feel a lot sweeter than they otherwise would have.

The Bad: The first and only season of Red Data Girl doesnt really go anywhere, making this yet another anime with an unfinished story that only exists to point viewers to the source material. I enjoyed it a lot for what it was, but by the end of it I felt immensely unsatisfied. It doesnt even end on a particularly conclusive note.

Overall: I enjoyed Red Data Girl. It had believable characters and beautiful locations. I still cant recommend that anyone watch it because it ends without really delving into anything, which makes the whole thing feel like a waste of time. This was one of the first anime I ever watched, though. Maybe I'd feel different if I went back to it now after years of unfinished anime adaptations have left me bitter and jaded.

COMING UP TOMORROW:
200: This anime is going to have to work overnight and sleep in its underwear.
199: This anime has crappy voice actors.

The 3/10 Disappointing tier is done! We had some good times. We laughed and we cried. Now, as many mourn the beloved anime that have already made an unexpected exit, we move into the 4/10 Mediocre tier. There are some popular anime doomed to fall soon, but overall I'm expecting this tier to be much less controversial. Mostly they're anime in genres I usually like but for some reason these did nothing for me, or they're anime in genres I don't usually like that managed to win me over at least a little bit. Sadly, there will not be a top 100 character in the 4/10s. Death Parade is very special for having one while ranking so low.

Thanks again for following along, everyone!

Red Data Girl got me feeling nostalgic. I tracked down the first anime ranking I ever posted, at the end of 2017. I guess this is future ranking spoilers but I doubt anyone actually cares, and my MAL scores are way more spoiler-filled anyway. Also, while past me got the bottom two of these sixteen right, let's just say the rest isn't entirely accurate anymore. I've come a long way.

WATAMOTE
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Your Lie in April
Engaged to the Unidentified
Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid
Working!!
Plastic Memories
Little Witch Academia
Knights of Sidonia
DeathNote
Toradora!
Puella Magi Madoka Magica
New Game!
Sankarea
Red Data Girl
Recovery of an MMO Junkie

This bodes poorly for my future prospects in the list

And now we prove my old 2017 ranking wrong right away by eliminating New Game before Sankarea.

4/10 MEDIOCRE TIER

200. New Game!
https://myanimelist.net/anime/31953/New_Game
Summer 2016 (12 episodes), Summer 2017 (12 episodes)
My Score: 4/10, MAL Score: 7.58/10 S1, 7.71/10 S2
Best Character: Yagami Kou

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef_ZfhqN-ls

Premise: Suzukaze Aoba follows her dreams and begins working at her favorite video game company. However, the realities of game design arent always glamorous.

The Good: New Game reminds me of Shirobako, only it explores game design instead of anime production. I enjoyed a behind-the-scenes look at whats involved in game making. Some stuff, like the planning and execution of something as simple as a minigame, were things I enjoyed seeing. Unlike Shirobako, New Game also never descends into melodrama. It mostly remains a cute girls comedy anime throughout.

The Bad: None of the characters are very good, and a few of them are outright terrible. They all had lame gimmicks and meh jokes. It felt like a lot of them existed more to represent an aspect of game design than to be real characters. Aobas friend Nene was also the absolute worst and the focus she got in the second season dragged it down a lot for me.

Overall: Once the novelty of learning about game design wore off, all that New Game had was mediocre characters participating in mediocre gags. Its still a cute girls comedy show, so it isnt irredeemable, but its easily one of the most boring examples of the genre Ive ever seen.

I loved New Game and Nene. If anyone hurt season 2, it was the new girls

Kou rules. Nene's hilarious too. I thought S2 was a pretty big step up from the general okay-ness of S1, personally. The people in Aoba's group (Yun, Hajime, and Hifumi) were the show's main weakness to me, since all of them felt pretty flat and generic.

Nene, new girls, old group, we all dislike someone different from New Game! At least we all seem to agree that Kou was good.

I haven't watched Season 2 yet, but I've read the content it covered, and I would say that's when I really started to like New Game.

Nene really resonated with me, but probably because she's a QA tester and I did kind of work in the past.

199. Girlish Number
https://myanimelist.net/anime/32607/Giarlish_Number
Fall 2016 (12 episodes)
My Score: 4/10, MAL Score: 6.83/10
Best Character: Karasuma Chitose

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daha031sEkQ

Premise: Determined to get famous, Karasuma Chitose becomes a voice actress. A year of only minor roles leaves her bitter, but then shes chosen to voice the lead in a light novel adaptation.

The Good: I liked Girlish Number quite a bit early on, mostly because it didnt take itself too seriously. The anime everyone was working on was total garbage, and they all knew it, but they had to keep plugging away at it because thats their job and what else can you do. Chitose was a great character too. She had such a massive ego despite having zero talent, which made her a crummy person who was a lot of fun to watch.

The Bad: Sadly, Girlish Number eventually started taking itself seriously. The crappiness of the anime they were working started getting played for drama instead of jokes. While I enjoyed Chitose throughout the whole show, I didnt like how much of the second half was dedicated to breaking her down. I wanted more of her undeserved ego, not melodramatic character arcs!

Overall: Girlish Number was great in the beginning and then slowly fell apart towards the end. Im glad I watched it for Chitose alone, she was a fun character in a lot of ways. No one else stood out for me, though, and by the end my opinion on this anime had soured considerably.

COMING UP TOMORROW:
198: This anime couldnt make a good enough manga to get published.
197: This anime thought it was the best at lighthearted pranks, but eliminating it this early in the ranking is the ultimate joke.
196: This anime didn't discover anything new.

197 was tough to hint for without using any words from its title.

I do feel like the claim that New Game never descends into melodrama is not very accurate, maybe it was more in the manga but there was a decent amount of drama surrounding Aoba's various character artist rivals, and at least some of that should have been in S2.

Sceptilesolar posted...

I do feel like the claim that New Game never descends into melodrama is not very accurate, maybe it was more in the manga but there was a decent amount of drama surrounding Aoba's various character artist rivals, and at least some of that should have been in S2.

It was one of the first sixteen anime I watched, so my memory of it isn't the greatest. I can't recall any real dramatic arcs, though. Biggest moment from S2 I can remember is Kou leaving for, I think, France

198. Comic Girls
https://myanimelist.net/anime/35756/Comic_Girls
Spring 2018 (12 episodes)
My Score: 4/10, MAL Score: 7.38/10
Best Character: Fuura Suzu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvDrF43LZ80

Premise: Moeta Kaoruko is an awful manga artist, so she goes to live in a dormitory with other authors in the hopes that they can inspire each other. The series follows their daily lives.

The Good: This is a cute girls doing cute things comedy, and its impossible to screw that up entirely. Comic Girls is an awful CGDCT, but it still had cuteness and some fun gags. Even at its worst, this anime was inoffensive. I also liked the horror author, too bad she was barely in this.

The Bad: As I mentioned above, this is a terrible CGDCT. All the characters had one gimmick, usually related to the genre theyre making, and they kept getting used for the same jokes over and over. The main character, Kaos, failed at everything she tried. It quickly became tiring to watch. I know I shouldnt look for logic in a show like this, but I never understood how she had an editor in the first place. The whole point of her character is that she sucks at everything, how did she get far enough into the business to deserve a spot at this coveted manga artist dorm alongside people with actual talent?

Overall: The CGDCT genre is all about swapping in new elements, like being a manga artist, and having character dynamics in different combinations, so I can easily see other people liking Comic Girls more than I did. It just didnt appeal to me very much. I hated Kaos, most of the rest of the characters were boring, and as a result none of the humor worked for me.

I thought it might be Comic Girls, but I was hoping your taste wouldn't be so bad. Kaos is one of the most entertaining and adorable protagonists out there! The sounds she makes are amazing, and the scenes of her failing are usually hilarious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLPgP1PKNNw

That video was a distillation of everything I don't like about Kaos! I can see the appeal for other people but something about her rubs me the wrong way.

If a cute girl is going to fail at everything, I at least want her to be cheerful about it like Hanako from Anne-Happy

I think I liked the main character well enough but found the Comic Girls manga fairly dull, and my standards for Kirara 4koma slice of life nonsense are not high. Probably translated better to anime.

I feel like it wouldn't be as good in manga form? The voice acting is a good part of the charm. Could be wrong, tho I'm not a fan of 4koma in general.

Have you read Mitsuboshi Colors, Scep? It rules.

Mitsuboshi Colors was hilarious, especially Koto the actual psychopath.

Hell yeah Koto stepping on people. Though Yui bullying Koto was always funny when it happened too.

Another anime I haven't completely finished, my apologies.

197. Teasing Master Takagi-san
https://myanimelist.net/anime/35860/Karakai_Jouzu_no_Takagi-san
Winter 2018 (12 episodes), Summer 2019 (0/12 episodes, unfinished) Winter 2022 (0/12 episodes, unfinished)
My Score: 4/10, MAL Score: 7.72/10 S1, 8.08/10 S2, 8.48/10 S3
Best Character: Takagi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEvQJ4mUkoY

Premise: Nishikata often gets teased by his friend Takagi, and she knows him so well that she always comes out on top. Nishikata still tries his best to tease her back.

The Good: Ive only seen the first season of Teasing Master Takagi-san, but it was a cute anime. Nishikata and Takagi had a fun dynamic. Some of the teasing gags were legitimately great.

The Bad: This is another anime where I feared early on that the premise would become stale. Teasing Master Takagi-san at least held my interest until the end of the first season. However, I felt that the concept had run its course by then. Im still not sure if I want to watch Nishikata get teased for another two seasons.

Overall: The whole teasing gimmick isnt bad. For me at least, it just wasnt enough to carry full-length episodes on its own. Teasing Master Takagi-san started to feel old by the end of the first season and I have little desire to watch any more of it.

196. Asteroid in Love
https://myanimelist.net/anime/39388/Koisuru_Asteroid
Winter 2020 (12 episodes)
My Score: 4/10, MAL Score: 6.87/10
Best Character: Suzuya Moe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7S_FOPBe44

Premise: As children, Kinohata Mira and Manaka Ao promised to discover an asteroid together. Reunited in the high school Earth Sciences Club, they hope to finally make that dream a reality.

The Good: What I enjoy about the cute girls doing cute things genre is, while most of them have a lot of the same elements, they usually have something in the premise that makes it feel unique. Asteroid in Loves focus is right in the title, these cute girls are doing astronomy and geology. There's the usual hot spring episode, but they look at the moon during it. They find rocks on outings, and they prepare an interesting presentation about layers in the ground for the cultural festival. It was fun watching the girls learn about this stuff. I enjoyed the close relationship between Mira and Ao. Suzuya was always a fun character too.

The Bad: Asteroid in Love doesnt have any huge flaws I can point to. The whole thing just felt kind of generic, I guess. The astronomy and geology twists could only carry it so far. Without that, I felt like I've seen most of the scenes and scenarios in other, usually better anime.

Overall: There are just so many other CGDCT anime that have more unique concepts, better characters, and far better gags. Asteroid in Love wasnt bad, but it isnt a standout in the genre. The focus on astronomy and geology was unique, but ultimately this still felt generic.

COMING UP TOMORROW:
195. Three strikes, this anime is out!
194. This anime should've made up a more interesting sport.

I thought this might be Asteroid. Really cute. Really boring

Edit: So many baseball anime. The run on cute girls shows makes me wanna guess Tamayomi. I think the other is Chihayafuru

Takagi feels like something you wouldn't want to marathon. I like the manga better, since the anime feels too slow.

Asteroid in Love is terribly mediocre. Wish the cast/writing was better.

Taisho Baseball Girls is another baseball girl anime, but it's much better than Tamayomi.

Chihayafuru is a real thing, I assume it's a fictional sport like Keijo!!!!!!

I thought Takagi got a lot better as it went on. First season wasn't bad, but then the second was really good and the third was even better. I even went back to rewatch the first season recently and was really disappointed at how bad it was compared to the newer stuff. The manga does a better job at being funny, but the continuity and character development in the anime makes it great in its own way

I will be very, very concerned if the baseball anime is not also a cute girls anime

Xeybozn posted...

I thought Takagi got a lot better as it went on. First season wasn't bad, but then the second was really good and the third was even better. I even went back to rewatch the first season recently and was really disappointed at how bad it was compared to the newer stuff. The manga does a better job at being funny, but the continuity and character development in the anime makes it great in its own way

That's actually good to know, I saw the scores for later seasons were higher on MAL but I assumed it was because only people who liked the concept would continue watching. Whenever I get back to this, I won't feel obligated to rewatch the first season either

Chihayafuru is one of the best anime of all time so I'd be pretty upset to see it fall then.

Maybe ranking spoilers? I'm pretty sure Roba said in the anime topic they liked the show a lot though so I don't think it's that

(This is the only baseball anime I have seen.)

195. Cinderella Nine
https://myanimelist.net/anime/38091/Hachigatsu_no_Cinderella_Nine_TV
Spring 2019 (12 episodes)
My Score: 4/10, MAL Score: 6.12/10
Best Character: Arihara Tsubasa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RlTGSkm_N8

Premise: Aihara Tsubasa creates a girls baseball team at her high school, which offers no support aside from an overgrown field to play on. Now she needs to get to work building a team.

The Good: For all the flaws Cinderella Nine has, I enjoyed watching cute girls play baseball. Some of the characters had a fun gimmick, like the shy one or the chunibyo one. Theres also a sense of progression. I enjoyed scenes like them weeding the field so they have somewhere to play. I inherently like the trope of misfits coming together, both as teammates and as friends.

The Bad: The production quality in Cinderella Nine is weak, and the characters are shallow aside from their one-note gimmicks. A few episodes near the end were dedicated to some especially pointless drama. This also only exists to advertise a mobile game, so there isnt much depth in the story and it doesnt really go anywhere in the end.

Overall: Cinderella Nine isnt a very good anime. The animation is weak, the characters are gacha advertisements, and the baseball isnt exactly riveting. Despite all of that, though, I had fun while I was watching it. Seeing the girls decide their positions, practice, and overcome their own insecurities, all of that was great. Cinderella Nine had a lot of little moments that I liked. Sadly, they werent enough for it to overcome the mediocrity of its production and writing.

I meant to mention this and Princess Nine for girls baseball shows. I'll probably give this a shot. It can't be worse than Tamayomi looks wise.

194. Aokana: Four Rhythm Across the Blue
https://myanimelist.net/anime/28391/Ao_no_Kanata_no_Four_Rhythm
Winter 2016 (12 episodes)
My Score: 4/10, MAL Score: 6.65/10
Best Character: Kurashina Asuka

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-IRJBvhCUs

Premise: Thanks to newly developed grav-shoes, people are now able to fly. A sport known as Flying Circus has arisen from this, and Kurashina Asuka realizes she has a knack for it.

The Good: I like the idea of a whole new sport made possible thanks to sci-fi advancements. Watching the girls learn how to use the grav-shoes to fly was fun. I also liked how the sport was new enough that not everything had been figured out yet. In some ways that was a downside, as Ill cover below, but the characters figuring out little tricks was neat even if most of them were basic. I didnt mind Asuka as the main character, though none of them were great.

The Bad: The fictional sport, Flying Circus, is super lame. Players use the gravity boots to fly in a circle and they get points either by touching certain points or by touching other players on the back. The story struggles to find a way to make such boring rules interesting. I liked how the girls figured out tricks in this new sport, but they were all treated as genius breakthroughs when most of them were simplistic. Flying so high the opponent cant reach you, wow, what an idea! Flying Circus simply didn't have enough potential for player interaction, and as a result there weren't many interesting plays during the matches.

Overall: Aokana is a sports anime, and Ive learned that I dont need to like the sport itself in order to enjoy those. Teamwork, training, competition, all of that can be interesting no matter what its aimed at. However, Aokana had a big new sci-fi idea, a whole new sport made possible by gravity boots, and it thought that was enough. It put too much focus on a sport I found lame, and as a result it didnt have enough of anything else.

COMING UP TOMORROW:
193: This anime reads books because it doesnt have any friends.
192: This anime woke up in a bad future.

oh yeah aokana

i read some of the VN, dont have much to say though other than I only wanted to see Misaki's route (but I still didn't)

I was into VNs before I was into anime, so for a long time I tried to avoid VN adaptations in case I wanted to go through them someday. I don't think Aokana had a translation when I watched it. I do wonder how the VN is, but I somehow doubt Flying Circus would be any more appealing in that format.

I think I watched about 5 minutes of this. Glad to know I wasn't missing anything as far as the sport is concerned.

Guesses:
193 - Ascendence of a Bookworm
192 - World's End Harem not a chance

192: Worldend I like that there are two anime with this name and premise

Mobilezoid posted...

I was into VNs before I was into anime, so for a long time I tried to avoid VN adaptations in case I wanted to go through them someday. I don't think Aokana had a translation when I watched it. I do wonder how the VN is, but I somehow doubt Flying Circus would be any more appealing in that format.

It's translated now, and it's even on Switch! I bought it a while ago, and plan to play it at some point. The VN's way more liked, from what I've seen. I assume it focuses less on the sport.

I hope this MAL link works, I can't seem to paste the strange characters any other way.

193. Marchen Madchen
https://myanimelist.net/anime/35997/M%C3%A4rchen_M%C3%A4dchen
Winter 2018 (10 episodes) plus 2 OVAs
My Score: 4/10, MAL Score: 5.39/10
Best Character: Kagimura Hazuki

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk3esD5VsIo

Premise: Kagimura Hazuki is socially awkward and always found solace in reading books. Then one day she finds a mysterious book in her bag, and it takes her into a fantastical world.

The Good: Marchen Madchen had an impressively awful production. It started merely mediocre and then steadily fell apart the longer it went on. The last two episodes wound up being delayed a year, and they still didnt look good when finally released. Why am I saying all this in section on good stuff, you ask? Because watching this while it was airing really made me root for it. I got the sense that the people working on it were trying their absolute best to bring this story to life. They just couldnt do a very good job. Characters looked like they were literally melting as they awkwardly moved around it had a certain charm. Looking past the production snafus, this honestly wasnt a bad story. Its about girls of different nationalities taking on the power of famous stories and battling each other in a tournament. I really liked Hazuki. She was cute, and it was fun watching her make friends and explore a magical world.

The Bad: As much as I found the bad production charming, it was still a bad production. I mean, even the OP reused a few scenes, and I don't think it was an artistic choice!

Overall: Marchen Madchen tried its absolute best, and the results were bad. But I still respect that a hell of a lot more than, for example, The Junji Ito Collection from the same season. That anime felt like no one who was making it cared. Marchen Madchen felt like they cared, they just couldnt do a very good job. The only other thing I want to mention is that one of the teams in this was Russian. I dont think you could get away with having goofy yet good-hearted Russians in the modern political climate. Anyway, this was Marchen Madchen, the anime that fell apart.

https://i.imgur.com/1Hxhl29.png

192. RErideD: Derrida, who leaps through time
https://myanimelist.net/anime/35835/RErideD__Tokigoe_no_Derrida
Fall 2018 (12 episodes)
My Score: 4/10, MAL Score: 5.69/10
Best Character: Yuri Dietrich

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPycuwX39_Q

Premise: Derrida Yvain is the brilliant inventor of autonomous machines, but theres a flaw in their design. After getting cryogenically frozen for a decade, Derrida wakes in a dark future.

The Good: RErideD (which is just an awful title) isnt great, but it also isnt as bad as its score on MAL would indicate. It helps that a lot of things it did really appealed to me. I like time travel, and the idea of a guy getting frozen and waking up a decade later is interesting. The bad future allowed for fun action set-pieces where they fought robots. As for the characters, Yuri was the only one who was any good. Her story had a nice emotional crux that helped make up for everyone else being so bland or nonsensical.

The Bad: The bad future setting isnt always consistent. Depending on the needs of the scene, sometimes its an apocalyptic wasteland and sometimes everything is fine. The whole time travel plot also never really came together. There were times where I saw hints at what couldve been good ideas, but they were always drowned out by boatloads of nonsense. The production values for this are also insanely low, which I suspect is the biggest reason for its low score on MAL.

Overall: For me, a good time travel story is one that carefully reveals all the little pieces and its magical at the end when it all comes together. RErideD has some good ideas, but the story is mostly nonsense. It's missing that moment where it all comes together. I still enjoyed it for what it was, but I'm a sucker for time travel in all its forms.

COMING UP TOMORROW:
191: This anime got mugged by a goblin in London.
190: I had to aim slightly lower to shoot at this anime.
189: I blasted this anime with a supercharged coin.

(I've never seen either of those World End animes. I still appreciate the guesses though, even when they're wrong. It shows people are at least checking in on days like today where I might be the only one who has seen any of these.)

railgun huh

RErideD was that show that got hyped up for being Yoshitoshi ABe's return to anime, wasn't it? That's probably a factor in the super low MAL rating. A mediocre sci-fi anime is gonna seem much worse when people go in expecting something super artsy and philosophical.

I remember being really excited for RErideD before it aired, and then I saw the reactions and was like "well guess I'm not watching this".

Xeybozn posted...

RErideD was that show that got hyped up for being Yoshitoshi ABe's return to anime, wasn't it? That's probably a factor in the super low MAL rating. A mediocre sci-fi anime is gonna seem much worse when people go in expecting something super artsy and philosophical.

I don't track anime by staff (other than voice actors) but I looked this up and I haven't seen anything else Yoshitoshi ABe worked on. I only watched RErideD because I tried to watch everything in 2018, so maybe you're right about other people having high expectations.

I want to use my recommendation on The Tatami Galaxy, being as it's my favorite anime, but it's in the unfortunate category of stuck on Funimation and who knows when if ever Crunchy will get to porting it. Maybe call it a tentative recommendation.

At some point I'll use the Funimation free trial for Sakura Quest, so I could watch yours at the same time! It wouldn't be until November though, I'm saving Funi stuff for the very end so I can do them all at once without missing any later recs

I was actually really curious to see what Roba thought about Tatami Galaxy so good recommendation imo

191. Phantom in the Twilight
https://myanimelist.net/anime/37598/Phantom_in_the_Twilight
Summer 2018 (12 episodes)
My Score: 4/10, MAL Score: 6.41/10
Best Character: Ton Baileu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jhp0nWpL5X8

Premise: Ton Baileu and her friend Shinyao move to London for college. After theyre mugged by a goblin, Ton is helped by a vampire, a wolfman, and a jiangshi who work in a caf.

The Good: Phantom in the Twilight isnt the greatest anime ever, but its still better than it has any right to be. It feels like a reverse harem at times since Ton is always surrounded by hunky monster boys. It really isnt, though. Its mostly an action anime, and the battles are what it does best. The animation is solid, if nothing special, and the characters all have unique abilities that make the fights interesting to watch. The jiangshi can materialize firearms, Ton can pull weapons from shadows, and so on. I also like Ton quite a bit. I rewatched this hoping shed be in my top 100 characters, and she didnt quite make it, but shes still proactive and fun.

The Bad: The story in Phantom in the Twilight is easily its weakest aspect. Mostly it feels kind of generic. Theres only very few unique ideas, like Van Helsing being the CEO of a massive corporation. However, it falls apart by just how repetitive the arcs are. Over the course of twelve episodes, Shinyao gets kidnapped seven different times! The friendship between her and Ton is supposed to be the driving emotional force but theyre barely ever in the same place together.

Overall: Phantom in the Twilight managed to rise above the low expectations I had for it, but only barely. The characters and the fights were solid, but the overall story was boring and the individual arcs were laughably repetitive.

This is one of the anime I remember the least out of all that I've seen. This write-up isn't great as a result.

190. Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online
https://myanimelist.net/anime/36475/Sword_Art_Online_Alternative__Gun_Gale_Online
Spring 2018 (12 episodes)
My Score: 4/10, MAL Score: 7.00/10
Best Character: Shinohara Miyu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tULaW49codU

Premise: Kohiruimaki Karen is a shy college student in real life. In the Gun Gale Online virtual reality game, though, shes LLENN, and known as the Pink Devil for her skill at killing players.

The Good: I dont hate Sword Art Online like a lot of people do (though I do hate one arc). I like the setting quite a bit, so it was nice seeing GGO from a new perspective without any of the life-threatening drama the original series always had. LLENN is a fun character and there are decent action scenes. I also like the concept that most of the season follows a tournament.

The Bad: I hated how a few of the characters were written, particularly Pito. She sucked a lot of the joy out of the season for me. Otherwise, I just dont have a whole lot to say about this anime. I remember when it was airing that a lot of people thought it was much better than the original. I found large parts of it to be boring and pointless. Ill admit that I dont remember it very well anymore, though. I also have zero desire to rewatch it ever again.

Overall: SAO Alternative is much better than the fairy arc from the original Sword Art Online, but Id rank it below every other arc from the original without much thought. Its a fine way to kill a few hours watching fun gun battles, but for me it never reached greatness.