Board 8 > Anime & Manga Discussion Topic 290 - Isekill this genre please

(+) Yeah! (+)

Here's some choice pages from "Can I live with you"

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/6/2/AACp50AAEUdK.jpg https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/6/3/AACp50AAEUdL.jpg

Hes a man of many expressions

He looks like Geoff Keighley when Jeff Bezos tells him to pee in the water bottle back stage

Three more shows done:

Blue Lock - Now this is the good soccer shit. 100x better than Ao Ashi. The edgy background adds some good dramatic tension to all the soccer playing, and means that the show's always showcasing a different arc with different types of stakes. The soccer games themselves are fun too, due to the colorful cast of characters. Luckily, the best character of all is the protagonist, Isagi. The development he undergoes is awesome, and a few other characters go through great development too. The show does have some weaknesses - I think it could've stood to be edgier, since only the first episode really emphasizes that death game aspect, and the first main arc isn't that interesting in general, with the show getting much better after switching to the 3-man teams. Still, it's a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to S2.

Sugar Apple Fairy Tale is a fun shoujo fantasy with an enjoyable protagonist. I like how she's a good person, but is sometimes willing to do some bad things, particularly early on. I think the show dumps on her a bit too much though. She suffers a lot, and the people who cause her to suffer often get away with it, which can be unsatisfying. Will still watch S2 though (especially since S1 ended with a bit of a cliffhanger).

The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten is kinda iffy romance. I don't feel like the relationship between the main two is particularly interesting, and like 95% of the show focuses on the two of them, so that's all it's got. Romantic progress between the two feels glacial due to it being so focused, where they're practically a couple by the fourth episode but the show's not willing to acknowledge that. The animation is also very bad - it's too bad that this didn't have the Kubo team working on it, since this is much better material. It can be pretty sweet at times, has a nice finale, and the main two characters are likable enough, it just isn't that interesting.

1. Magirevo
2. Blue Lock
3. Onimai
4. Sugar Apple Fairy Tale
5. Danmachi S4P2
6. My Life as Inukai's Dog
7. The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten
8. Kubo Won't Let Me Be Invisible
9. Ice Guy
10. Eminence in Shadow

Finished up a couple of movies, not sure if I talked about them before

Heaven's Feel 1-3 was about as good as I remember from the VN. They showed more of the risque stuff than I remember UBW showing. Maybe because it's a movie so it's rated differently.

Code Geass recap 1-3 was a waste of time. Mostly a refresher to prep me for that Resurrection movie.

Weathering with You was ugh. It had very conflicting messaging. And some unintentionally hilarious deux ex machina stuff happening. First off the movie tell you to fuck the adults just live life your way and don't feel bad about how the adults fucked up the world but then in the end the main pair was like welp we gotta live with our choices of not fixing the problems for OUR future because it's NOT OUR fault. Like huh? And now for the unintentionally hilarious scene. The MC picks up a yakuza gun early in the movie and loses it halfway through the movie. He gets chased to the final scene in the movie, which happens to be an abandoned building, gets tackled to the ground, rolls away from the cops during his escape and MAGICALLY finds another gun on the ground so he can create pretension for the cops to have an excuse to shoot at him. I don't know how this shit even works.

GranzonEx posted...

Heaven's Feel 1-3 was about as good as I remember from the VN. They showed more of the risque stuff than I remember UBW showing. Maybe because it's a movie so it's rated differently.

Yeah I'm pretty sure they were able to show more because it was a theater release. I was a bit surprised though tbh even though the Heaven's Feel risque scenes are actually mostly plot relevant.

I've probably already commented on this but I still remember seeing the first movie in the theater and some dude was cheering as soon as the Rin dream sequence started and I just started laughing when I heard that.

Weekend is over and so are some Winter seasonals.

MacArrowny posted...

Sugar Apple Fairy Tale is a fun shoujo fantasy with an enjoyable protagonist. I like how she's a good person, but is sometimes willing to do some bad things, particularly early on. I think the show dumps on her a bit too much though. She suffers a lot, and the people who cause her to suffer often get away with it, which can be unsatisfying. Will still watch S2 though (especially since S1 ended with a bit of a cliffhanger).

Also finished this. "Bad things"?....oh, right. Yeah, this show has slavery in it, and despite despising it, the FeMC does partake in it. She has to, though, and she's super nice to her slave, and she's not buying him to have sex with him, like the guys in Redo of Healer or Slave Harem in the Labyrinth. Although he is the main love interest. So if you can get past that, it is a nice show.

Chillin' in My 30s after Getting Fired from the Demon King's Army is another "dude gets kicked out of his fantasy party because he's weak but he is actually OP and now lives a slow life" show. I didn't watch last season's Beast Tamer, but I did watch most of Banished from the Hero's Party that aired over a year ago, and I much preferred this. MC being OP is kind of annoying, but it works. I love the family stuff and the author clearly loves boobs. Honestly, I feel like I should like it more than I do, but I don't. It's just solid.

Season 2 of By the Grace of the Gods was...fine. Guy is isekai'd, becomes a slime master, and starts and runs a business. It's very low stakes and, truth be told, pretty boring. I don't hate it, but I preferred season 1

Lastly, Nijiyon Animation. It's just 3 minute shorts with the cast from Love Live Nijigasaki. They're cute but not very substantive.

I've still been slowly working my way through Monster and am about halfway through. The show improved a lot I think around episode 20 or so. The beginning of the show felt a bit scattershot, but it's a lot more engaging when it has a more continuous plotline that has several episodes to breathe. Braun might have been my favorite character in the series so far

I still don't know how I feel about Johan. He's proven his worth as a catalyst, but I still think the character himself is pretty boring, and I start to lose interest whenever it seems like the story is veering more heavily towards focusing on him.

I finished the second season of In/Spectre. I liked it more than S1, especially the fact that it dealt with several smaller mysteries rather than spending pretty much every episode on a big one like the first season did. Still, the drawback was that the mysteries were all very standalone and didn't build into the overall Rikka plot. I didn't mind that much, though. I mostly enjoyed this because Kotoko is a fun character. She has a cute smugness, and it's neat watching her do her thing. The way this series handles mysteries is also unique. I like how it usually isn't about finding the truth, it's about convincing people of a preferable lie. The last big mystery (not the final episode, but the arc before that) was also incredibly compelling. Hopefully there's a third season someday. I'd love to watch more, and it'd be nice if the hints at the overall Rikka plot finally started getting more focus (even though it isn't my favorite thing and I'm honestly kind of worried about where it might go).

On one hand I subscribe to "Shanks is the strongest" camp of things, but this also validates my feelings that the BM fight was a joke.

https://twitter.com/AIR_News01/status/1640376718467940353?s=19

Thank God, I really liked this and it was just getting started.

pjbasis posted...

On one hand I subscribe to "Shanks is the strongest" camp of things, but this also validates my feelings that the BM fight was a joke.

I mean it's not like Big Mom was going all out to start. And that was 2 on 1.

This was basically a surprise full power attack to start.

I think comparing it to the Kaido OHKO on Luffy early Wano is the best comparison.

Over the weekend, I took a break from catching up on airing shows to watch Kotoura-san. It's about a girl who can read minds and has trouble making friends because she creeps people out, at least until she transfers to a new school and meets a perverted classmate. I'd hoped this would be similar to Re-Kan, an anime I love which was also about an outcast girl with a supernatural power. Instead of being feel-good or funny, though, Kotoura-san wound up focusing way too much on perverted jokes and melodrama. Kotoura getting flustered by Manabe's ecchi fantasies wasn't very funny the first time, and it just kept happening over and over. There was also way too much bullying, and it was never handled in a satisfying way. I wouldnt say I hated Kotoura-san, but it had a ton of problems and they really dragged it down.

Ep 1 of Kotoura is awesome. The rest of the show isn't good.

The firsr episode probably was the best one. I'm not a fan of that kind of drama, but it was at least interesting to see how the ability to read minds could turn everyone in her life against her.

Finished two more airing shows, one good and one terrible.

Malevolent Spirits: Mononogatari was the good one! It was a great mixture of fun moments, compelling characters, action scenes, and interesting supernatural ideas. It wasn't perfect. I personally would've liked more opportunities to get to know Botan given how central she is to everything. Still, I liked the various tsukumogami, and Hyouma himself was a good dude. I'm glad this has already been confirmed for another season, because I'm excited to see more.

Reborn to Master the Blade: From Hero-King to Extraordinary Squire was absolute garbage. Inglis is one of the worst characters I've ever seen. The setting itself was trash, as was the political landscape. I mean, over-the-top evil people live on floating islands and regularly come down to abuse the surface dwellers, and yet the group fighting back against them are the bad guys?!? It was terrible, but Inglis herself made everything worse with her shitty attitude. She refused to engage with what little plot or setting there was. All she cared about was fighting people. Like, there were multiple points where people she was supposed to care about were in grave danger, and she was all "lol I don't care, I just want to fight strong opponents". I wanted to reach into the screen and slap her at multiple points, especially during the final episode which was pure cringe from beginning to end. This anime was by far the worst show of the season. The art style was also incredibly off-putting, especially the way they smiled. This show truly had nothing going for it.

Robazoid posted...

especially the way they smiled.

I quit 4 episodes in but this was the thing I liked the most lol.

That and the half capes.

Turns out I should've waited a bit before posting, because I also finally finished The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady. I didn't hate it, but I thought it was very meh. I never sensed much chemistry between the main two (which I know will be an unpopular opinion). That might just be because I didn't like them individually, though. Euphy in particular felt flat and boring to me. They made multiple references to her being an unparalleled genius, and I just never saw it? She mostly just moped around and followed Anis like a lost puppy with no will of her own. More than anything, though, I thought the plot dragged this show down. Algard was phenomenally terrible in pretty much every way, and the drama in that last arc felt super forced. Ah well. At least this was a better yuri anime than either Citrus or Adachi and Shimamura.

There are still plenty of other shows I need to catch up on and finish, but I'll finally post a tentative ranking.

SEASON RANKING SO FAR
1- Malevolent Spirits: Mononogatari
2- Farming Life in Another World
3- The Ice Guy and His Cool Female Colleague
4- In/Spectre S2
5- Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for My Retirement
6- The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady
7- Reborn to Master the Blade: From Hero-King to Extraordinary Squire

Finished watching a couple shows yesterday, though technically I stopped watching High Card a week ago, since I decided to pass on the final episode. I can't remember another show where the announcement of a second season/cour played a part in me dropping it, but spoilers of the last episode plus the idea that I'd have to watch even more of this show did the trick. It's not my most disliked show of the season, but it is my most disappointing. Similar to Akiba Maid War, I thought the first episode was really interesting, but the show just declines from there. A lot of the powers are boring/uninspired and so are the protagonists. Didn't hate it, though, and depending on what I hear about season 2, I could pick it back up.

For a show that I actually completed, The Vampire Dies in No Time S2 was slightly better than season 1. A lot of the comedy is still loud reactions, but since most of the cast is already established, there are more personalities to play with from the get-go, and the show was overall funnier. I would like to give special mention to the pile-bunker cop, though. He was easily the worst character from the show.

Robazoid posted...

They made multiple references to her being an unparalleled genius, and I just never saw it?

That was kind of a mistranslation. Her being a genius was in reference to her having a greater magic capacity than anyone else.

MacArrowny posted...

That was kind of a mistranslation. Her being a genius was in reference to her having a greater magic capacity than anyone else.

Ah, that makes more sense then. It's similar to (from what I read elsewhere) Reborn to Master the Blade being a mistranslation because the girl in that just punches everything and never uses a blade at all.

Yeah, that mistranslation is stranger. The one here makes sense, since it's the word for genius in Japanese, but the Japanese title of Reborn to Master the Blade doesn't say anything about blades...

Robazoid posted...

She mostly just moped around and followed Anis like a lost puppy with no will of her own.

I would like to point out that this is like....a plot point. It's part of her narrative.

So in English if you call someone a "genius" you could logically be saying that they're a genius of music or a sports genius or something, but I think without additional context it's strongly implied to be describing someone's intellect.

I don't speak Japanese but based on context it generally seems like when people use "tensai", either that same implication is not there or it's a common mistake for translators to not communicate the additional context effectively.

Please correct me if I'm way off base.

Here's an example - if you had a 7' player who could easily dunk, you could call them a basketball genius in Japanese, even if they didn't have any actual skills. Much like how Euphy uses powerful magic, but doesn't seem to have the sort of magic knowledge that Anis does.

Yeah genius means talent or innate ability in anime translations.

Speaking of "geniuses", I finished Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill last night. Office worker, Mukouda, in his mid-late 20s gets summoned to another world, but is dismissed once his unique skill is revealed to be Online Supermarket. From there, you figure his skill makes him OP somehow and he gets a harem, but not really. There's no harem to speak of, and his strength comes from the familiars that join him because he's a "genius" cook. My guy is just trying to live his best quiet life with his OP dog companion, and it is very funny and very cute. Biggest surprise of the season for me, and would probably be my AOTS if not for MagiRevo

Not liking this!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/8/2/6/AAXqMxAAET1i.jpg

GranzonEx posted...

Weathering with You was ugh

I really didn't enjoy it when i saw it in theaters a while back. The buddy i was with thought i was insane for not loving it.

I mean it's no Your Name but I still enjoyed Weathering With You

Season 1 of MIX rewatched. I don't think I liked it as much this time around, and I must have forgotten how male gaze-y so many of the shots were, but it was distractingly noticeable. At its heart, though, it's still a fun little baseball story, I really enjoyed it, and looking forward to season 2 starting tomorrow.

In/Spectre S2 was an improvement over the first season. I always liked the show because of Kotoko, and she still rules here, but most of the season being one big mystery was disappointing, so I was happy this season was made up of several smaller mysteries instead. I think all of those mysteries were quite good. Kinda surprised some people want more of the show's "overall plot," since that's one of the least compelling aspects of the series. I'd be happy for the show to go on forever, giving us more and more inconsequential mysteries and solutions.

Tomo Is a Girl is a bit of a weird one in that it's mostly better than the manga in terms of art, pacing, etc., but it also cuts out a lot of the comedy and Misuzu/Carol stuff, which was the best part of the manga. I mostly just kept up with it weekly because there wasn't much to watch this season, but it was enjoyable enough, and I don't regret it.

Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for My Retirement once more proves isekai is better when the MC is a girl. I liked that the show presented her as always having a plan and thinking everything through, but still being casually incompetent sometimes, like how poor a job she did with her general store idea. It used some aspects of Gate too, which is always fun, though this wasn't as good as Gate IMO. The characters other than Mitsuha weren't particularly good, but the show remained entertaining throughout, mainly due to Mitsuha herself being quite fun, and it's nice that she had a ruthless streak.

Winter rankings:

1. Magirevo
2. Blue Lock
3. In/Spectre 2
4. Saving 80,000 Gold
5. Onimai
6. Sugar Apple Fairy Tale
7. Danmachi S4P2
8. Tomo Is a Girl
9. My Life as Inukai's Dog
10. The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten
11. Kubo Won't Let Me Be Invisible
12. Ice Guy
13. Eminence in Shadow

Not too much more on the plan to watch docket for Winter. Might check Mononogatari out after S2 finishes.

Guess we'll find out tomorrow if Heavenly Delusion is going to get a western simulcast. Less than 24 hours to air and still no confirmation.

This is par for the course for Disney so far, though....and so far they've done both, so there's basically no guarantee either way.

Hmm? Global simulcast on Hulu/Disney+ was confirmed a few days ago.

Ah, you're right, looks like they just announced it for Hulu. Don't know why that never hit my feed.

I've been holding off on watching Bocchi, but having seen what the manga just dropped I may have to jump on that sooner rather than later <_<

And season 2 of MIX opens with Otomi in a bikini. At least the camera wasn't as horny when it came to that and Haruka in a leotard :/

I've been intentionally avoiding any information or promotion about Hell's Paradise, but I'm pretty excited for it.

Glad to see Mappa is still on their A-game for Ops.

https://youtu.be/RS94j08yIHs

Oh hey RWBY time.

"WARNING: This episode contains themes which might be distressing for some viewers"

Oh that's never foreboding.

At least they didn't follow it up with the suicide prevention hotline this time.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/9/9/AAeolZAAEVyH.jpg

I've been wondering since episode 1 when WBY would check on R. Looks like the answer is "they don't"

https://twitter.com/corvophobia/status/1642180571748024321?s=19

Not sure who that is on the right, but I wouldn't call anything Ruby did homophobic

It's Jinx from Arcane and yeah it's just a fandom meme lol.

Ruby going full Christian Bale on Yang and Blake.

If you don't join the orgy your friends are throwing that's kinda homophobic

UshiromiyaEva posted...

It's Jinx

Oh, duh

UshiromiyaEva posted...

from Arcane

Poor League

I've seen clips of those character in LoL proper, that shit ain't the same.

Heavenly Delusion launched everywhere else in the world except for the US where it's been delayed to an indeterminate date next week.

Great.

Oh a new season started? Guess I should do another seasonal write-up for @GranzonEx

The Kaguya movie is being released on Crunchyroll, it's split into 4 episodes but at least I can finally see it