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Summer has settled into a bit of a groove. So, here is where shows that I have been watching currently stand:
Really Enjoying
- Oshi no Ko - Been enjoying this arc, but it might not be for everybody.
- Alya - probably the biggest surprise of the season for me. It’s been a lot of fun.
- Love is Indivisible By Twins - Big guilty pleasure show full of drama, like a love triangle should be.
- Pseudo Harem - just a half hour of two people flirting.
It’s Been Good
- Tower of God - Second season has been quite a big change from the first, still adjusting.
- Dungeon People - After a strong open, this show has settled down into more of a SOL, but I am hoping that they keep some intensity.
- Nokotan - This show has tons of humor, but it doesn’t always land for me. Plenty still does though.
- Spice and Wolf - Continuing from last season, this show has been moving pretty slow, but still keeping up with it.
Let’s See Where This Goes
- Isekai Quality Assurance - Willing to give this one some more time to see what they do with the premise.
- Dahlia - First couple episodes have felt like a prologue, so willing to see what happens now that we are through that. The animation has been pretty poor though.
Probably Going to Drop
- My Wife Has No Emotion - Sometimes you win the adaptation roulette, and sometimes you don’t. This one didn’t for me, so I will probably just stick with the manga.
- Plus-Sized Elf - Yeah…they cranked the fan service dial to 11 when they adapted this, and I think it is probably just too far for me. There just isn’t enough there to keep me coming back each week.
Finished Frieren. I enjoyed it overall. It ended up being different than I expected. I went in knowing nothing about it and I expected it to be one season about learning to deal with loss, so once they went to the license exam, I knew it was going to be something else.
I’ll be looking forward to more time with Frieren, Fern, and Stark, but I hope it doesn’t get padded out too much with side quest stuff.
We went to look for something else to start after that. We watched the first Delicious in Dungeon, and it was interesting, but it didn’t have quite what we were looking for.
Next we checked out To Your Eternity. Very intriguing from the start, and we got through 6 episodes, but man, this one is a bit more brutal than we were initially prepared for. Good concept and story though, so I’m excited to see where the story goes.
I do want to check out Plus Sized Elf to see what they did with it, but it’s not something I can watch at work, and I somehow have a feeling it wouldn’t be enjoyed at home no matter how many potato puns there are. 😜
Not anime, but For all Mankind has been my first pick of what to watch this month. Nice alternative history of the space race. Just started season 4 and it has been good, ridiculous fun.
I always find peoples’ reactions to Frieren interesting. When I am reading the manga, my favorite parts are the really slow, side-questy portions of the story. But, when I watch the anime, the OST and stellar animation really elevates the action sequences and make them stand out. Overall, the story will continue to meander between slow, SOL sections and the dramatic and intense battle arcs.
I do feel everything in the show is very well done. I think I may have had a better experience if I had read some more about it first though.
I saw the first episode, and then didn’t have a chance to go back to the show until a few weeks later, so it had me primed for the vibe of that first episode with the intense emotional depth and the power of Fern’s abilities, and there was some humor, but it felt there to humanize Frieren a bit.
The variety of SOL and action is good, but I feel the action kicks in very quickly. Many of the battles come in suddenly without much buildup, and end very impressively, but typically within half an episode. That makes it feel more episodic to me instead of one cohesive overall story. The part I felt did things the way I most enjoyed was when they met the demon peace envoy in the walled city. It had more suspense and buildup as we figured out the who and why of the story and it fleshed things out more and gave more weight to the outcome of the battles. You had time to worry for the party and appreciate the power of the opponents, not just our MCs.
This is probably why I also enjoyed the bird hunt from the license exam. It wasn’t a self-contained single episode plot, had many POV, and gave time for a lot of back and forth which group was on top.
The story does leave me wanting more, and I think when it is complete, that will bump up my appreciation of the story as a whole. I just got my expectations set up for something that would be a one season, intense show, and it is not. Again, totally my own doing, and I would have benefited had I read more about it in advance.
They’ve got a ton of really great elements here though, from the animation, to the voice cast, to the storytelling, and I think this has potential to be something huge that gets recommended to people for years to come. I just haven’t gotten quite into the perfect groove for this yet, but I think I’ll be ready for the next season.
Yeah…they cranked the fan service dial to 11 when they adapted this, and I think it is probably just too far for me
Same. At least crank up the animation and art too if you’re gonna crank the source, like with Ishuzoku Reviewers
I considered starting “My Wife Has No Emotion” at the start of the season but I already had a lot in my Watching list and the description didn’t really convince me. Is the manga any good?
I really like the manga…up to a point. I can’t really look it up right now, but there is a certain point in the story where it starts to get weird. I still try to keep up with it, but I can’t really recommend it past the first couple volumes.
I’ve started watching the following:
- Wistoria: familiar plot and setting, but interesting with good animation and better music than expected. With fantasy school settings, I always struggle with the school’s disregard for their students’ safety. It’s often just a given like it’s supposed to be like that and not really expanded upon or explored why it’s like that, which feels like a copout or as a cheap way to create tension.
- SHOSHIMIN: pretty fun, but a bit vague right now. The 21:9 aspect ratio feels a bit pretentious. Curious to see where it’ll go.
- Alya: fun haremish romcom. MC is not a spineless husk, which is a surprise given the many other harem romcoms.
- Makeine: a fun twist on the love triangle romcom. Surprisingly another MC that’s not a spineless husk.
- QA in Another World: I kinda felt obligated to watch this due to my profession (software tester). It’s alright. Please don’t call testers debuggers though.
- Mayonaka Punch: really fun and engaging characters. Feels like good ol’ PA Works.
- Vtuber Legend: very fun. I used to be way into Vtubers during COVID (still am, but don’t have much time for it sadly), and this anime captures the feel of it very well.
- NieR Automata part 2: good shit. Good adaptation too. Quite a few changes and additions, but very welcome ones. They keep it interesting for people who played the game. It’s also a big step up production wise compared to the previous part.
- Senpai is an Otokonoko: heartfelt, though it feels like it’s moving a fair bit faster than the webcomic. VA casting is perfect. Bit too much reliance on chibi.
- Dahla in Bloom: decent. Feels like it only just started. This show doesn’t know how to do shadows and it bothers the hell out of me.
- Suicide Squad Isekai: it’s aight. It flows a bit weird and doesn’t really have an anime feel to it. This Harley Quinn is such good best girl material though.
- 2.5D Seduction: I prefer the manga, but it’s good. Some don’t like the reduced nudity, but I don’t really mind. That wasn’t what made me enjoy the manga anyway.
- Continuing Spice & Wolf from last season. Might wait until this arc’s over and start binging though. This is my least favourite arc. Not because it’s bad, but because of how it makes me feel.
Dropped:
- My Deer Friend Shikonoko: banger of an OP, but the actual anime gets old fast. Feels quite a bit ‘random equals funny’. The brainrot isn’t funny enough to justify it.
- Pseudo Harem: not doing it for me, especially in full 24 min episodes. Works better in manga form imo.
- Plus Sized Elf: exaggerates the source material while not doing it justice.
Want to watch:
- Monogatari: need rewatch first
- The Elusive Samurai
Maybe I’ll pick up some more along the way too.
The shadows in Dahlia are all over the place, lol. I saw speculation that the animation had to be hastily redone due to a portion of the contracted animation work suspected to have been done by North Korean artists in violation of sanctions.
That’s wild. I’m already not a fan of outsourcing, because they seem to not even pay their own animators properly, but to even outsource to a NK studio is a new low. How cheap can you be?
In fairness to them, they probably contracted the work to a Chinese studio who then further subcontracted to a NK one. I imagine it might be difficult to keep track of all the web of subcontractors if your primary contractors aren’t up front with you about it.
Yeah, that’d make sense
Completed a couple of shows
Mob Psycho 100 Season 3
Nice conclusion to the series. I especially liked the insert song Exist.
The story isn’t special or anything. It is well-executed though, enough for me to enjoy it.
Overall, I rate the entire series 8 / 10.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
I was drawn in by the corporate dystopian premise. Also, David is a likeable protagonist.
The similarities to Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans and Witch from Mercury makes this a non-Gundam Gundam series to me, which I usually like.
Unfortunately, it suffered from the poor communication trope (or whatever it is called), which reduced my enjoyment of it.
Tap for spoiler
If Lucy talked to David about the information she gleaned from Tanaka, things could have been different.
She deserved the ending she got.
Good enough to keep me entertained. 7 / 10
poor communication trope
One that bothers me a lot is closely related to this is the “suddenly no cell signal”, or “suddenly out of battery” trope in cases where one text or call would release all the drama.
Weekly ranking roundup:
- Anime Corner - Full Results - Weekly Winner: Days With My Stepsister
- Reddit Karma - Weekly Winner: Oshi no Ko
- Anime Trending - Weekly Winner: Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian
Credit to /u/Abysswatcherbel for making the chart for reddit karma and /u/Nooble5 for the Anime Trending chart.
Some big movers over at AC this week with Elusive Samurai and Monogatari both making big jumps up the chart. This week also saw a big drop off in reddit karma for Nokotan as the second episode only got ~1/3 as much karma as the premiere. I can’t remember the last time I saw such a huge change between episodes 1 and 2. Even the first season of Oshi no Ko, episode 2 was only about 1/2 of the episode 1, which was the biggest change that I remember off the top of my head.
I finally finished 86 a couple of days ago. I don’t think I’ve seen many military fantasy stories but I enjoyed it. I think the worldbuilding was done really well and the characters feel real. I also liked how it didn’t firmly establish how a character really is and kept some of that ambiguity where people don’t fully understand their own feelings and never really do. I’ll pick up the LNs sometime. Maybe in a few months because I wanna finish reading the new volume of MagiRevo and the rest of CotE.
I should start commenting here more often. I only really come to this sub when I want to discuss new episodes or find recommendations but it’s not like I have so little time I can’t even discuss the stuff I clear off my backlog.
I wish I had more time for LNs. I used to read much more of them as I used to spend a long time on the train each day commuting. However, with a change in role and post-pandemic I mostly work from home these days.
Confession time, I haven’t watched 86 despite having only heard excellent things about it. Someday…
I feel you. I set aside a couple of hours to read novels before sleeping but I used to read waaay more during the day. I miss the days where I could just read an entire novel series on a whim over the course of three days.
