The Anime / Manga Thread (MK2) | Beware Spoilers

[Fishin]

post season thoughts

Re:zero: started out kinda generic, turned into a thoroughly engaging emotional roller coaster and one of the best LN adaptions, very much looking forward to any continuation it gets, 8/10

Danganronpa 3: in retrospect, this probably shouldn't have existed in the first place. Danganronpa's writing is pretty bonkers outside of the mystery-solving and focusing on the ridiculous backstory like Despair did just ended up making it look bad. That's not to say Future was any better since it likewise had very little focus on mysteries and was instead more of a (bad) action anime and the writing was a mess in both, the sort that relies on people being really really dumb. It still has characters I like and there were a couple decent bits so I can't completely hate it but I'm glad Danganronpa v3 (the new game) is starting fresh. 4/10

Amanchu: I feel sorry for this show, it's standing in the shadow of both Aria and a couple really good SoL shows from last season in Flying Witch/Tanaka and can't really compare. That's not to say it's bad, though it is really, really sappy. 6/10

Kono Bijutsubu ni wa Mondai ga aru: decent dumb comedy, 6/10

Mob Psycho 100: I was actually kind of iffy on this at the beginning but it turned out really solid. It's not the same as OPM but you can definitely tell it's from the same guy, and it has a lot of style going for it as well, Bones did a great job on the production. 8/10

Ace Attorney: stumbles a bit but the material is solid enough and voice acting adds a lot, 6.5/10

New Game!: Dogakobo doing what they do best, possibly my favorite show of theirs. 7/10

Soma s2: a bit worse than the first season but still really good, going to be disappointed if it doesn't get a s3. 8/10

Rewrite: I like the source material but ouch, this was a mess. It's getting a continuation which should be better but I can't blame anyone who wouldn't want to bother. 4/10

Love Live Sunshine: I'm honestly not sure if there was a single episode where nobody said anything about how great the characters in the original were. 5.5/10

QUALITY Code: Disappointed with this, it started out as a generic LN adaption sort of thing that showed signs of self-awareness, built some effective intrigue for awhile, and then ran out of budget hard and had a weak finale. 5/10

ReLife: I never finished this, it was okay for awhile but I got tired when it seemingly started a second arc about the same character making stupid decisions because of her inferiority complex.

Macross Delta: It has a strong start with a fun goofy sensibility (how many other shows have tactical idol units?), and while it doesn't make any huge mistakes, it doesn't really do anything amazing with the stuff it sets up either. Pretty much like the other Kawamori anime I've seen, though Frontier and Aquarion Evol both had better music. 6.5/10

 

[RODAN]

final thoughts on some shows

01 days blew me away, even if the animation was a bit iffy at points it sure as hell made up for it in storytelling. the final episode is the exact opposite of what I expected going into it. Easily a 10/10 for me.

mob psycho 100 is pretty much a perfect show from start to finish. The first episodes weren't weak at all in my opinion. The character of Mob has some incredible development and Reigen is just great. Some of the best animation i've seen in a VERY long time as well. Yuasa-esque

amanchu is adorable and relaxing, and the ending was so saccharine that u would need to cut off a foot after watching it. But goddamn if it wasnt effective.

orange got real bad by episode 9 or so. All the characters who were cool and i liked stopped being cool and likable and instead just became whiny bitches. Kakeru sucks ass

danganronpa 3 was clunky and bad, despair was slightly better than future. There were some really good visceral moments though for fans of the series.

handa-kun was funny, why are there so many shows abotu weirdly popular dudes in high school that everyone idolizes.

soma s2 was a lot worse than s1 and probably the worst show of this season, paced really poorly and just not enjoyable to watch. The stagiare stuff at the end was finally making it interesting again, but it ended too soon

 

[Tymano]

I really liked the ending of 12.5 days, while most people were hoping for some more concrete ending, leaving it up to the viewer is a nice little tribute to American mafia shows and movies, and it fits well with the general theme of the series. Outside of the ending though, the plot was very well structured, and you never really knew how it was going to end until it ended. Some people complain about the visuals, but the story more than makes up for it. It began solid and ended solid, which makes it a 9.5-10/10 for me.

Mob Psycho 100 is the better One show, just saying it right now. With that out of the way the visuals looked incredible, the general story was incredibly fun, both in the way it was directed, as well as nice little drops of humor that were sprinkled in. Most of the characters were very unique, and reigen and mob have incredible developments, and just great character in general. The beginning was a little slow, but other than that it was a solid 9/10 show.

Re;Zero was way overhyped than it should have been, it was a ln mystery with cute waifu's, but other than that it still has some merits. Subaru as a protagonist is pretty likeable past the first story arc, the action was choreographed pretty well. General 7/10 show.

I would talk about Orange but I dropped it at episode 9 and Rodan said everything I wanted to about it.

Now for a different topic, what are all of you guys watching next season, my current plan to watch for next season is 3-Gatsu no Lion, All Out, Bungou Stray Dogs s2, Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku, Nanbaka, Occultic-Nine, and www.working.

 

[dice]

soma s2 was about the worst anime i've seen since monster

 

[dice]

and i fucking hated monster and you should too

 

[RODAN]

izetta had a strong first episode, it could either become a great show or become comet lucifer.

check it out though for sure

 

[Mr.E]

Hope, ultimate despair and mom's name is Junko. Madoka shamelessly stole from Danganronpa smh

Maybe I just have a hard time suspending my disbelief when it comes to magic n shit but I liked Shirobako more, which was extremely grounded in reality except for the thing in Ep 23 (which I thoroughly enjoyed as a one-off break from the usual) and the literal displays of characters' thoughts on occasion, which I never found unbelievable so much as taking advantage of the medium (i.e. live action shows can't show you thoughts, only describe them in words). I can understand why some people would find it boring, especially people already in the know because I found it to be educational as well, but as a typical 20-something American (okay, I'm actually 30 now but close enough) the feelings and themes explored really resonated with me shit was life-affirming yo.

PMMM still entertained me throughout but I felt it peaked at Ep 3 and somewhat declined later as Kyubey's motives are revealed and, well, the convoluted mess that always results from Homura's *no spoilerino ahem* brand of power. Madoka should've come to the conclusion she did much sooner and Kyubey ultimately just seems like a bit of a fuckup, or short-sighted at any rate. Instead of working to maintain modest production in his factory of sadness, so to speak, he overproduced and ended up breaking everything. Reminds me of a subset of people who completely ignore environmental issues because "I'm not going to be alive 100 years from now anyway" and don't care about leaving a mess for future generations, except on a much grander scale and longer timeline.

Plus I still have some questions that went unanswered or at least underexplored. Music was total 10/10 though.

Now I'ma grab dinner and watch the third movie.

 

[Jebus McAzn]

Mr.E addressing your two questions:

madoka spoilers

- madoka's wish to erase witches can't be made earlier because she doesn't have enough power to do something that would change the universe on that fundamental of a level; it's because of homura's looping that enough "karmic power" or whatever they call it accumulates around madoka and allows her to do what she does in the finale. admittedly this entire concept is pretty poorly explained within the show and takes quite a bit of suspension of disbelief to follow in the first place.

also keep in mind that for a great deal of homura's time-traveling, she's unable to even stop madoka from becoming a magical girl in the first place meaning that her wish is often already used (usually on something trivial) well before walpurgisnacht shows up. homura's suffering and her succumbing to despair is the event that leads to madoka making her final wish to begin with (although this is also arguably quite an asspull).


- kyubey is one of many incubators that have been scouring the universe for sources of energy for an immense amount of time - keep in mind that their endgame is to halt the progress of entropy and prevent the heat death of the universe. he's not working alone to harvest sadness from the earth for shits and giggles; he's utilizing the obscene amount of energy found in the magical girl/witch system that he's helped create.

in that sense he really doesn't care about what happens to the Earth as long as the universe is okay, and that's actually why he allows Homura to continue doing what she does. as Madoka's potential increases, so does the amount of energy that the incubators can harvest from her.

hopefully that helped. madoka's not a perfect show by any means and definitely slacks on explaining a few vital details. if you have any more unanswered questions I can try to answer them to the best of my ability

 

[Mr.E]

I meant Madoka should have wished for what she did earlier in the show we got, like by the time Kyubey is done explaining shit to her at the start of Ep 6? 7? At worst, by the time she has her little chat with Homura, not waiting until exactly what she dreamt was going to happen in the first three minutes of the whole series. -_- As for Kyubey, I'll continue saying his goal seemed short-sighted. Instead of setting up a sustainable system, he went for a large-but-finite immediate payout... which someday is going to require a new solution. Basically, the way he went about his business wasn't solving the problem he was tasked to fix, just delaying it to some future date. And quite frankly, I don't think even Kyubey really knew what was going on after a certain point and he ended up going too far, though he was smart enough to figure shit out and still try to make things work in his favor. *shrug*

And no, those weren't questions. For one I'm thinking a sort of chicken-egg dealio, like where'd the first magical girl(s) and witch(es) come from? Who or what is Walpurgisnacht anyway? While the characters make it out to be a huge deal in-universe, it doesn't seem to be an actually important plot device or otherwise have any greater symbolic meaning. For the viewer, it's merely the de facto end of the storyline and nothing more. If Kyubey has all this amazing power to do all the shit that he ends up doing, why can't he use his power to just directly solve the problem he's trying to fix instead of involving humans at all?

Still processing my thoughts on the third movie, but initial impressions are mostly that the little shit fucked up again and otherwise I'm more than a little confused. (Edit: Okay I think I figured it out. Also it seemingly kinda-sorta-answers my last question above.) That, and...

...which I am 100% okay with.

 

[Jebus McAzn]

those questions are a lot harder to answer mainly because PMMM leaves basically all of the magical girl / kyubey / etc backstory out of the series, so there's really only a lot of speculation about it. same with walpurgisnacht, which is canonically just a really powerful witch or possibly a conglomerate of witches, with no other info aside from that.

now that I think about it more, the plot was really a very minor reason why I liked madoka so much, and you could definitely poke a ton of holes in it given some time

 

[Blue_Tornado]

Madoka is just a really memorable and tight package. I can see how it peaked at Episode 3 for you, but it stays dramatic all the way after that, and it's pretty engaging and entertaining. A lot of other ~12 episode shows tried and failed to be as compact as PMMM.

The third movie kind of ruins the nice ending the original series had, but otherwise it's just as engaging, if you delete the first half of the movie.

About Shirobako, it's cool you found it educational and not weird despite being new to anime. If mature shows are more your thing you should try Ping Pong or Mushishi eventually.

 

[Mr.E]

Mushishi I can get behind. Ping Pong's art makes me want to gouge my eyes out and I don't think I can sit through trying to watch it no matter how good everything else about it might be, since it seems to be so well-received.

After some reading and mulling over in my own head to actually wrap my mind around what the hell it was that I even watched, I think the movie did the series justice. I don't care for the series' Mary Sue ending, too convenient and antithetical to the setting given to us, but Rebellion gives us a look into what happened afterward and reassures us that, as usual, things didn't actually up so hunky-dory after all. The ultimate ending is still bittersweet in a sense, moved from the happy side of the fence to the sad side but not being outright despairing and hopeless once you get a grasp on everything. Which is tough and I'm not gonna claim I've totally got it myself, but I think I understand well enough overall. ;/

It also really helped to flesh out Mami as a character, as she simply didn't have enough screentime in the series to get much development, and personally redeemed Sayaka for me because I didn't like her character at all in the series. She's selfish, stubborn to a fault, and generally all-around incompetent. The only thing I like is her character design. By the time of the movie she actually shows an understanding of the situation at large and acts with purpose, while also becoming a capable combatant. Madoka, unfortunately, continued to be more of a personified McGuffin than an actual character and certain plot points are left unexplained, so it's not perfect.

also feels good to find my first anime meme in its natural habitat: "girls can't love girls" ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I found nothing "weird" about Shirobako as a newbie anime watcher unless you're the type of person totally turned off by stereotypical anime-style art (big eyes, small noses and whatnot), or who thinks cartoons are exclusively for kids (like my mother). It's largely a normal workplace drama, a breath of fresh air to anyone well familiar with Japan's obsession with setting every god damn thing in a high school while at the same time not turning off "normies" who would find an adolescent setting beneath them. All the standard office-work tropes apply and are easy to identify, while at the same time it sheds light into the unique peculiarities of the specific work being performed (television production, particularly animation) that felt rather educational as an outsider, and from what I've read is satisfyingly faithful for insiders. It uses animation to show us things that reality can't but never strays too far from it to maintain the suspension of disbelief. If you even notice them, there are a bajillion teeny details and references to take notice of and appreciate the dedication of the creators to portray accurately.

It's also a fantastic coming-of-age story. The characters are surprisingly grounded in reality, which only helps to make them very relatable to I imagine anybody in the rough 20-35 age range who are currently struggling, or recently have, with the thoughts and feelings of trying to find purpose and direction in one's career and personal life in the transition not into early adulthood, but through it with an eye toward middle age: the struggle of finding a job, of having a job but being unhappy in it, maintaining social plans as an adult, re-examining the dreams and aspirations of your younger self, hell even the old man stressing over staying useful in an ever-evolving world that is passing him by. The art is also rock solid and every possible plotline and side story is given a satisfying, uplifting resolution.

The only negatives I can offer is that the music is merely appropriate without being fantastic (love the second ED though, and the Andes Chucky ED), and the first couple episodes can be a bit overwhelming with the sheer number of characters showcased (and nobody is a throwaway!). I wouldn't have minded the characters cards showing up on-screen for the entirety of the series, instead of just the first 4-5 episodes, or exposition from the dolls in the first couple episodes to more proactively explain what everyone's actual jobs are instead of having to slowly develop an understanding for each person's role over time (like they did at the start of second season to explain the point of all the meetings). If you're going in with no prior knowledge and can avoid letting that frustrate you out of sticking with it, the show is stupidly well-executed otherwise.

 

[Martin]

Personal Summer Roundup

Listed in completion order
Dropped:

• DAYS (ep 1) - the first episode was just so sinfully bad that I just didn't want to continue. Apparently it gets better but I just don't have any drive to watch this.
• Hitori no Shita: the outcast (ep 3) - all of the first three episodes were offensively bad that I just couldn't keep watching this
  
• Fukigen na Mononokean (ep 2) - I got behind and wasn't really grabbed enough to be bothered to catch up.
• Taboo Tattoo (ep 9) - idk why I kept watching this for so long. I guess that I just felt like the concept had potential, but honestly aside from the strength of the concept itself (i.e. not its execution) the only thing this had going for it was it's pandering--which just doesn't draw me in at all.

Completed:

• Berserk - 5.8/10 - It has sold me on the manga, which is probably why I stuck with it. The writing was really good even if its adaptation was a load of really shitty CGI. The quality of the adaptation is what really holds this back though, and I can definitely see myself reducing my score when I read the manga in the future.
  
• Amaama to Inazuma - 3.8/10 - I'm really disappointed by what this show turned out to be. It started off being a really nice show, but by the end the only character which had recieved any proper character development at all was Tsumugi (the other two had recieved some, but it was minimal at best), and beyond her the characters were all boring (Kouhei, Kotori) or didn't recieve enough screen-time to really get to know them properly as characters (literally every other character). Kotori tries to turn every fucking scenario into something food-related and this just really broke any kind of potential she had as a character. Seriously, this girl talks about virtually nothing else. The episode structure was the same every episode (slice of life at the start followed by cooking followed by the exact same reaction in every fucking episode, with said reaction being hyped up by the shows soundtrack) and the cooking felt incredibly forced--with the most obvious example being in episode 7 where the episode was so good but then Kotori uses all of her brain power to determine that the only way to make the situation better was to make fucking food. Like, the episode didn't need any cooking at all; there was a scenario, a conflict and a resolution. Everything is there, and then they just plug it onto the end of the episode for literally no reason and it ruins an otherwise-near-perfect episode. Anyway, this was consistent across every episode and I just got bored a lot of the time.
  
• New Game - 7.3/10 - I've already talked about this, but yeah this is a good show.
• Re: Zero Kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu - 7.3/10 - This show was good for the most part. I imagine that this is what SAO would've looked like had it had integrated the darker side of itself better than it did. I don't think I ever felt sorry for Subaru once, although on the flipside it doesn't feel like we were meant to so I haven't penalised it that heavily for that.
• Amanchu - 8/10 - Relaxing, although it kinda slumped about two thirds of the way in and transitioned from relaxing to boring. That said it had good, likable characters in Pikari and Teko. Teko in particular was surprisingly complex and received pretty good development which I liked a lot. Definitely not as good as Flying Witch, but still regardless a good show. Also it's ending was perfect.
• Ace Attorney - 7.2/10 - Great source material adapted badly. That said, this shows that it's literally impossible to fuck it up, but it does beg the question of how good it would have been with a good studio behind it. Also I think it looking like a flash animation helped make the slapstick nature of the show entertaining, so I've not got many art criticisms simply on that basis.
• Shokugeki no Souma: Ni no Sara - 7.6/10 - Honestly this is probably the show I enjoyed watching the most this season on the basis that it is Shokugeki no Souma. Honestly when what you're watching is as entertaining as it is poor pacing can only set it back so much. Also I'm so glad about the last few episodes 'cause they were so fucking good and it basically embodies why Food Wars is as good as it is.
• Qualidea Code - 7/10 - Eps 1-3 were utter shit but I kept watching anyway, and boy I'm glad I did. While it is of A-1's typical no-fucks-given quality, it managed to actually get rather good once the first plot twist occurred. There were 2 or 3 in total throughout the 12-episode duration and that just kept me guessing how it would end all the way through. Asuha and Kasumi are honestly two of my favorite characters from this season, and while the ending wasn't very good I liked the way that they provided different viewpoints on the way that people can interact with Unknown with the antagonists and it just did a good job on the whole. Character ranking: Kasumi=Asuha>Maihime>Gutoku>Airi=Ichiya>Hotaru>Aoi>Canaria (Aoi and Canaria are the only genuinely bad characters out of that list, although Ichiya would've prolly ended up being bad if he didn't become tolerable later on)
• Rewrite - 6.2/10 - I can see why the source material is considered Key's best work, but I just don't think that this did it any justice at all. It started out being completely stupid SoL shit (I like SoL, just not this type of SoL) and then it shifted onto the better second half with all of the supernatural shit. I like the way that the original route for the adaptation ended up being
  spolier

  a bad ending, as opposed to what VN stuff usually does where they pick the good ending
  , but then this route ended up being very average on the whole. I'm disappointed 'cause I'd been looking forward to this for ages and even made a point of not reading it so that nothing could possibly be spoiled.
• Orange - 8.6/10 - Really good ending; I think it kinda helps that I didn't particularly dislike Kakeru and I also liked the rest of the cast, but yeah this show just did a lot of stuff right from it's wide range of symbolism to it's strong overall concept. It was really pretty for the most part (a few angles looked kinda fish-like, but all other angles were some of the prettiest things on this season) and all in all I just really enjoyed it.
• Mob Psycho 100 - 9.4/10 - This was so good: definitely OPM's superior. It looked really good, it was executed incredibly well, the manga was re-ordered to make it better for the platform and it just did p. much everything right. I think the to be continued could've done with a bit more oomph but I can kinda understand why it took the route that it did and will cut it more slack in that regard because it's a "to be continued" ending.
• Nejimaki Seirei Senki: Tenkyou no Alderamin - 7.9/10 - Definitely a strong show and I'm looking forward to s2. I have no complaints about the art aside from the overly shiny eyes which were just immensely out of place, and it was well written and engaging on the whole. I liked the constant use of chess as a comparison to actual warfare (the OP features Solork standing on chess piece on a giant chess board, and blindfolded chess is an analogy commonly used by said character, among other things). Just in general it is a really interesting take on the "genius commander" stereotype, and in particular the fact that he talks about being lazy in the right ways is just a further way to separate him from the other members of this stereotype across media. Also the second-to-last scene of the entire season caught me off-guard.
  
• 91 Days - 9.6/10 - This is the best show on this season and my current projection for AotY. This show does almost everything right, with my only complaint being art-based. The ending was perfect, the show was consistently good all the way through and managed to actively get better in it's last three episodes--which is what put it above Mob Psycho for me (which had the potential to out-rank this just based on the fact that I value a show that starts out good and gets better right the way through more than I value a show that starts out better but keeps the same quality all the way through).

 

[RODAN]

lord to jesus this season is not off to a great start. doing my usual every first episode thingy, ive only not dropped TWO shows. at this time last season i had like 8. Deeply worried

 

[newtonja]

The only show that I have watched the first episode of so far is that new magical girl show. It's definately grabbed my attention, not sure how good it's going to be but it kinda has a Madoka vibe. I'm hoping it will be good.

 

[Akarin]

Ping Pong The Animation: Sweaty Anime Boobs Edition is my pick for the best show of this season, it's got some of that C3-bu vibe and C3-bu was an awesome show.

 

[RODAN]

that shows entire budget went to sweaty shirts

 

[RODAN]

Double post

Yuri on ice is fucking amazing, everything about it is so good.

also euphonium 2 man, its good to have kumiko, my wife back on my screen

 

[Rugi]

This season has a bunch of really crappy shorts and a lot of show in it are just awful. I'm already calling that Yuri on ice will be the best show of the season and its only saving grace. Bungou and Hibike euph have both had pretty good s2 pilots but ehhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Also Brave witches is actually dropkick retarded

 

[Jebus McAzn]

Keijo episode 1 was certainly an episode of anime

 

[-Tsunami-]

lets post 3x3s again in honour of our boy digibro

clean 1 month late but i just made this and it feels dumb to not post it anywhere so like

from top left to right: Bakuman 3, Code Geass R2, Steins Gate, Clannad After Story, Aria The Origination, Anohana, Shigatsu, Sakurasou, Oregairu Zoku

Code Geass was one of the first anime I watched that was absolutely amazing to me; I watched Steins Gate like a month or so after that. Eventually, I watched Clannad and realized that Slice of Life / Romance were my favorite genres by far, and started watching a lot of those shows; the ones above ended up being my favorites, obviously. Season 3 of Aria is my favorite anime for sure, so I put it in the center; I absolutely love the story, the characters, and the very relaxing atmosphere. The rest is ordered from top left to right.

Hibike is actually my 10th favorite anime, and season 2 seems fire so far oml can't wait :]
Reina best girl
-

 

[Fishin]

Keijo!!!!!!! is unironically my favorite first episode so far

 

[Jebus McAzn]

It's got 8 exclamation points you heathen

 

[moonbound]

Ok, but will s2 be Keijo!!!!!!!!! or Keijo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ?

 

[RODAN]

Flip Flappers is the show to watch this season. It's directed by the director of one of the best Space Dandy episodes (the fish one), it looks like it was made by Late Gainax if they had a lovechild with Ghibli. It has some really awesome animation and very minimal dialogue, the tone is unsettling and strange despite being full of charm. the soundtrack is amazing

fuck dude