The Anime / Manga Thread (MK2) | Beware Spoilers

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tcr

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Pretty much any of the music in Samurai Champloo is just godlike, and the ending is good as well

While an unpopular anime, I greatly enjoyed the openings and endings of Akame ga Kill, specifically Tsuki Akari

any of the music in katanagatari is top tier for me, Koto no Ha is god tier stuff, working!! ed is great too -
 

Martin

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Kamisama no Iutoori (The Tatami Galaxy), Daisy (Kyoukai no Kanata) and Hajimari no Sokudo (Kiznaiver) are some of my favorites. Speaking of the latter, 2016 has had quite a few really good EDs, including those for Kiznaiver, Boku no Hero Academia, AJIN, Boku Dake ga Inai Machi, Konosuba, Hai to Gensou no Grimgar, Kanojo to Kanojo no Neko: -Everything Flows- and Bungou Stray Dogs.
 
We need more Hip-Hop sounding animes like Samurai Champloo ;p

Anyways we got Suffaru back in this week's episode of Re:Zero, and (almost) none of the pain was physical. Tbh I had to pause the episode a few times while Subaru was making a giant ass of himself in front basically every relevant character. I'm really enjoying this show, and I'm glad Emilia got a little characterization in instead of just being perfect waifu material.

The only other new anime I've been keeping up with is Sousei no Onmyouji (Twin Stars Exorcists), and it's honestly pretty bad. The romance aspect of it isn't terrible so far especially for a Shounen but everything else is pretty boring and since it is a shounen the romance isn't played out all that much. It does have big implications in the plot though, so its there more than most shows like it. If the actions scenes are the most annoying and boring parts of an action/adventure shounen then you know there's a problem with it.

Edit: Favorite opening
Worst opening
Kantangatari's score is probably my favorite in any show. This one still gives me chills whenever I listen to it.
 
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end of season thoughts

Macross Delta: some nice goofy fun between solid characterization. idk if I'm on board with the greater plot but it's stayed consistently entertaining so it's all good

Hero Academia: slow start aside, this was a really solid shonen and I'm really glad it's getting a s2, could easily go for it being a long runner. also (spoilers for last ep):


Sansha Sanyou: decent and nice-looking but fairly forgettable Dogakobo SoL show

Re:zero: some incredibly strong cringe last episode. Honestly not 100% sure what to think but I'm hoping it'll use it as a springboard for character development and it's been a good show otherwise.

Bakuon: probably show of the season for me, it had some excellent comedy built off the generic premise of "cute girls and motorcycles"

Kabaneri: Had a solid start with a likable lead pair, then went steadily downhill with everyone getting really stupid. I think my favorite bit from the last episode was Ikoma injecting himself with a powerup that will probably kill him in short order when they're still on the beach which is presumably miles away from the actual city where stuff is happening

Sakamoto: some gags fall awkwardly flat but I still liked it

Assclass: I didn't like this as much as Hero or Souma as far as recent SJ anime go, but it's still solid and it's great that they dedicated to actually finishing the story instead of just leaving it halfway with a "go read the manga" ending like most end up doing.

Luluco: basically just Trigger jerking off, still a pretty decent experience

JJBA pt 4: really good, it's competing with part 2 for best Jojo and it's a whole lot better than 3.

Ace Attorney: nothing special but as someone who played the first game awhile back and doesn't remember it too well I've been enjoying this enough

Kiznaiver: I wanted to have some hope for this given Trigger and Mari Okada putting out something good recently in Gundam IBO but by the end (or episode 11 rather, I haven't and probably won't finish) I didn't care about or outright disliked most of the characters along with the plot.

Tanaka and Flying Witch: both really good SoL series. I think I liked Flying Witch a bit better of the two but I generally lean towards stuff with fantasy elements so that's probably just me.
 

RODAN

Banned deucer.
stuff of the season rated from best to worst (that i watched fully)

Tanaka - Best SoL/Comedy i've seen since nozaki-kun. Funny as shit in every episode but also has a really relaxing + good aesthetic.

Jojo - It's fuckin jojo bitch

AssClass S2 - Perfect ending to a great show, had a few roadbumps along the way but still managed to be great at what it did best. Which is making us feel for these characters and grow to love em.

Kiznaiver - Based trigger saves the day with the literal actual forced drama show. Its like breakfast club if it was written by sociopaths. Very fun, also very soul crushing. I need to digest this show more.

Re:Zero - Competent mostly. I really didn't think it was amazing until the latest episode which i thought was fucking genius. I'll cover this at the bottom of my post in spoiler tags for all u babies.

Boku No Hero - Its pretty much standard shounen fare, just really really good shounen fare. Amazing OP too.

Ace Attorney - Outside of the mostly really bad animation, this is a fun adaptation that covers the games relatively well. I forgot how gripping the Edgeworth/Von Karma case was.

Sakamoto Desu Ga? - Haven't you heard? I'm mediocre. Its literally the same joke 100000000000x but sometimes it really does land. Best OP of the season too.

Mayoiga - Hell yeah.

Haifuri - Started out really good, but then got really boring, and then simply bad.

Netoge - I was waiting for Ako to shoot up the school and it didn't happen so I can't recommend this.

Big Order - Don't watch this


--

Re zero had a rly good moment in the latest episode (12? i think) in which subaru becomes a fucking dickhead. This scene is genius, because to us the audience hes a little bitch. To Emilia, hes a fucking lunatic. But to himself, hes just devoted to Emilia. Because no one knows what he's been thru with his power it makes his actions seem confusing to the others. Whereas he is super attached to Emilia because of all the hardships he had to endure to get to this point i.e. dying like 7 times. She doesn't know this at all which makes her question whether subaru rly cares. When he finally snaps, its a culmination of sorts of all this stress + trauma hes been thru. i thought it was rly good
 

Martin

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Honestly I don't think that Haifuri got worse the further in it got but rather it was just really inconsistent on the whole. I think it started out strong, made the mistake of having the middle section as filler and then was at it's best towards the end when they started actually having battleship fights again. I think the equator festival filler episode was fucking terrible and hard to watch, but it was actually v. consistently good across the last five episodes in general because it remembered that it was a battleship show as opposed to "cute girls on a cruiser", and it easily has one of the most entertaining single episodes of everything I watched this season (being it's final episode). It's high points were all v. good while all of it's low-points barring the equator festival (which was just on a whole new level of bad) were about as bad as Mayoiga episodes 1-10 and 12 were (really bad but not painful to watch). Overall it was really average in general simply because of how inconsistent it was with regards to what it wanted to do with itself.
 
My opinions agree with p much everything above but...
Kiznaiver at a point got really far up its rear with the overly convoluted writing. Somewhere between "We want to share pain" and "you are inside of me" the immersion just broke for me because the writing was veering into 2 deep 4 you territory. I still like it but this is what kept being just good rather than being amazing for me.

Kabaneri is fucking retarded and I knew it was gonna be from the beginning. The only reason Ikoma seems cool is because all the other characters are morons so by contrast he looks competent. The plot has been incredibly predictable so far and will probably keep being as such. Half of the ideas feel copied from Attack on Titan and the main villian has almost no motive other then "fuck you." Also I dislike shows that have lots of dark edgy content for the sake of having it. This show is starting to feel like its doing that. At first it made sense within the context of the crappy world but now its almost as if its going out of its way to self assure itself that "see! we're dark and well written look a kid just died on screen with no discretion shot, PRAISE US!" if this show wasn't well animated it would've been treated as a slightly above mediocre action show but as Phantom world proved all you need to get praise is to be well animated and have a dumb gimmick. Works with any genre! Mumei is a complete dumbass and is the other half of the reason I hate this show.

Bakoun: got a bit boring for me so I dropped it midway through but I can now tick off "whore motorbike" as things I've seen in an anime so there is that

Pan De Peace: lol why was this made

SHOWS THIS SEASON I REALLY LIKED/WORTH CHECKING OUT
Assclass 2
Bungou stray dogs
Joker Game (not everyone will like this one)
Boku No hero Academia
Re: zero

Anything else is either not of note or I didn't watch
 
Kabaneri is fucking retarded and I knew it was gonna be from the beginning. The only reason Ikoma seems cool is because all the other characters are morons so by contrast he looks competent. The plot has been incredibly predictable so far and will probably keep being as such. Half of the ideas feel copied from Attack on Titan and the main villian has almost no motive other then "fuck you." Also I dislike shows that have lots of dark edgy content for the sake of having it. This show is starting to feel like its doing that. At first it made sense within the context of the crappy world but now its almost as if its going out of its way to self assure itself that "see! we're dark and well written look a kid just died on screen with no discretion shot, PRAISE US!" if this show wasn't well animated it would've been treated as a slightly above mediocre action show but as Phantom world proved all you need to get praise is to be well animated and have a dumb gimmick. Works with any genre! Mumei is a complete dumbass and is the other half of the reason I hate this show.
So here's my take with Kabaneri. It's one of the rare shows per anime season that doesn't get swallowed up by its own horrible anime tropes, and instead goes for the thriller route. There are a lot of interesting plot elements and two-dimensional characters sprinkled in that if you don't take it seriously to begin with (why would you?) it adds spice. Like I can look at a laser-shooting zombie or whatever the hell happened to Ikoma last episode and laugh it off as excuses to ramp up the drama because what I care about is the drama. Tetsuo Araki is a competent dramatic director and I eat this shit up. I mean, it's horribly flawed in other respects but I'm definitely glad I followed it.
 
I watched eps 2-12 of Tanaka in the last few days, and it was very fun to watch. The final ep of AssClass got me welling up a bit at certain points, and really got me to look back and think 'wow, what a journey'. In the beginning, i thought it was a silly premise, and wasn't sure how it would unfold, but i'm glad i went the whole way.
 
I disagree on Subaru,
the discrepancy between the experiences he/the audience have been through versus everyone else probably doesn't help, but he's still being a complete ass. If anything I'd say that he's treating things like a generic LN anime, where he's the chosen hero who can do no wrong and Emilia is his destined waifu and everyone else that isn't on his side is just a stepping stone, whereas in reality he's a pretty ordinary guy in an extraordinary world whose successes have mostly been making sure other people have been in the right places at the right times.

He also kind of threw out "nobody knows what I've been through" as any sort of defense when he judged the entire group of knights while knowing nothing about them


on a related note:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/int...aveling-to-an-alternate-world-fantasy/.103755
 

Martin

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On Subaru:
I really don't think that discrepancy between what we know he's been through that the other chars don't is anything particularly genius--it's not the first time this has been the case and it most certainly won't be the last--and honestly it doesn't justify him behaving like a complete ass in front of the entire cast. I understand he has good intentions, but the way he's going about it is fucking awful from the standpoint of the other characters. I agree with Fishin in that he seems to behaving like an typical LN protagonist in a world with expectations which are atypical of a typical L.N., and if there is any genius in this show it is precisely the fact that it is constantly breaking Subaru's expectations of the world he is in. I really like the how the world is set up to punish Subaru for fulfilling the generic L.N. N.E.E.T. role, and I think that the discrepancy lends itself to this aspect of the show incredibly well as opposed to being a genius standalone element.

I don't think Emilia would be putting him out of a job if it was just because of him being perceived as selfish--just based on her actions at all points throughout the series I don't think that she is the kind of person to use that kind of reasoning without anything else in the back to reject hospitality to someone--and in my opinion this is the reason that that last scene of this week's ep was really good. I think that it really showed that Emilia cares deeply for Subaru's well-being more than anything and, using her limited knowledge of his situation and a rational head, has realised that she is likely the reason he is being so stupid. Her character is intelligent, caring and very capable of understanding the mental state of characters who she interacts with, and this is why I have concluded this. It's not anything deep really but I just thought I'd say it.

Over the next few episodes I want to find out more about Satella, whatever it is that is causing Subaru's redo-by-death, howcome the man at the shop remembered that he saved his daughter despite it happening in a different dimension as dictated by multiverse theory (and, by extension, does this relate to the multiple Subarus that are used stylistically in the show's OP), what was that "I'm going to save you" thing in the first scene of ep 1A, why can't Subaru tell anyone about his redoing and how he is from another universe and, based on a personal theory in my head, is it a curse or is the lock caused by his own latent magic? There are lots of unanswered questions, and given how incredibly strong on the whole the series has been so far I am looking forward to the rest of the show. I guess the other thing is something which is definitely going to be explained in the next few episodes: how did Felt come about to be a potential queen?
 
As someone who's followed re:zero up to now just because it's popular, I'm glad you guys are into it, but it's definitely not my thing. I dug up some research and apparently it had a web release before being published as a LN, which kinda makes sense with how quirky the show is, trying to subvert otaku tropes in a really flat way. It feels like it would only be compelling for people who 'get' the tropes in the first place, which is pretty lame. Like, by acting smart and trying to subvert stuff, you REALLY fall on your face when the rest of the writing sucks ass. Take the knight scene from the last episode as an example, but, uh, no one's gonna remember that scene after the episode's ending... except for people who got taken out of the experience by it. Welp.
 
Lemme make a post for Kabaneri now that it's over. I had some things I tried saying when I responded to Rugi but couldn't put it to words. This post nails it. Here are some choice quotes:

As a whole, however, I just enjoyed the anime more than most people seemed to, and I think my coworker nails it: “Kabaneri doesn’t feel like the typical anime.” A lot of you reading this are gonna sit there and roll your eyes. “Are you kidding me? A lot of the show feels VERY anime.” But you guys have to realize that my coworker only casually watches a series or two a season. I also have another coworker following this show, and it’s the same for him. He’s only watching Kabaneri and Boku no Hero Academia. The point is that Kabaneri, for all its faults, has a sort of broad appeal that we can lose sight of, because we’re so immersed in the subculture.
Kabaneri is just a straightforward and simple action series with zombies, samurai, and some steampunk sprinkled in. It’s not a perfect show, but it’s a perfect B-series, in a sense. Ultimately, that’s what I appreciate about the show.
Why have we shied away from stories that anyone can easily jump into? Why aren’t there more Ghibli-like experiences or more Samurai Champloo-like series? “Ah, but Samurai Champloo is a one-of-a-kind! Watanabe is a one-of-a-kind! You can’t just mimic his genius!” But you could try. Instead, we’re mimicking the latest light novel fad, which is almost always about some manchild stuck in an MMORPG, fantasy world, or what have you. Hell, Okada just mimics herself and releases the latest iteration of Painful Past Trauma Cryfest ver. 8.2. Who knows? I guess it just comes down to what sells. But I think I’ve veered off topic enough. Kabaneri? Solid time-waster. I won’t remember it in a year or even six months from now, but I don’t regret watching it. And as simple as it can be at times, at least it doesn’t turn casual viewers away. Maybe that’s something the industry as a whole should be mindful of.
I knew what I was getting from Kabaneri before it aired. That it would transcend most other things that are airing by virtue of crafting its own story and making it serviceable at the same time. I'm usually gonna have a SOL show on the side each season, or a decent comedy, or whatever LN Madhouse, White Fox or A-1 decide to adapt. But sometimes you also get a Tetsuo Araki show. Like, I harp on this guy way too much, but the thing he does well is give his show this directorial flair that's tried and true around the world. Even if the show sucks, and boy did Guilty Crown and HOTD suck, you can talk about how it sucks over popcorn. It's not gonna let you down if you came for the spectacle.
 
Berserk: PS2 / 10.

ReLIFE: Good Adaptation /10.

No really ReLIFE is really good. OP and ED are great, soundtrack is on point, directing is decent, gags are funny and translated well, animation is alright. And they released all the episodes at the same time. I'll come back to you when I saw the remaining 12 episodes.
 

Acklow

I am always tired. Don't bother me.
I'll probably check out the first ep to see how good Re:LIFE matches up to the webcomic.
 
I've never read Berserk but I want to extend my condolences to those of you who have and subsequently got your hopes up for the anime
man you're giving this a really unfair rap with that picture, you can't judge it off of a static shot of some background characters with no movement in a cap from a stream that is obviously pretty shit quality. berserk is the kind of show where cg actually has a chance to work. this ep didn't look that bad when there was actual movement and dynamism in the shots, and it looks like the kind of story material they're going for in this version is going to be a lot more fighting than sections of golden age were. if it doesn't start to drop in visual quality this could be a pretty decent show. that CLANG sound that dragonslayer made was cool as heck, and the rest of the music in the ep was nice, even if it will almost certainly not be as good as hirasawa's soundtrack.

seriously, this looks pretty darn great
 
Akarin I didn't watch the episode and I haven't read the manga so I'm honestly just going off of first reactions, which are almost all universally along the lines of "Pacing was disappointing, animation was inconsistent, the cuts are jumpy and awkward, and the first episode tries to cover 440 pages of manga in 20 minutes". I'm sure it's not as bad as people are making it out to be, but I think the widespread disappointment comes from a combination of a few things, namely:
  • Berserk being such a universally beloved manga
  • High demand for a high-quality anime sequel or reboot since 1998
  • The studio hyping fans up by promising to be as faithful to the original as possible and making an adaptation that would honor the original series, especially its gorgeous art
I would love to be completely wrong, though, as a good Berserk adaptation would be beneficial for the anime industry and for the viewers.
 
ok sakamoto desuga's last episode had an unexpected moment
He covered his face with a cream pie so that people wouldn't see him crying. I don't know why but that hit me really hard.

Also The episode heavily implies that Sakamoto is lying about his excuse for leaving the school and the last few minutes have any extremely somber tone. Most of the theories people have made about that suggest that hes going to die or that hes an alien but either way, even the most repetitive shows can surprise me in ways that I would've never expected.
 
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