Media Anime and Manga Thread MK3 - Beware Spoilers

i still watch franxx to keep up with what the people are watching but yea shit is trash

had a spark when it started but now its just garbage
 
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the way the wedding was handled was poor but i'm still generally invested in the characters enough that i'm not turned off too much by franxx yet, and while the jist of the conclusion is starting to be a bit more obvious, I won't be surprised if the ending completely blows
 
tcr said:
Anyone else in here read Tower of God?

I've been following this manwha for a solid 2 years now. I don't really watch anime anymore and the only thing I read is One Piece (or at least I'm trying to, I'm at Fishman Island arc right now but its slow af so school and Criminal Minds has taken up a majority of my time), but I still make sure to read the Tower of God releases. It releases every Sunday / Monday at midnight EST, and is quite a ride. It can be a little confusing I guess, as since its a manwha it doesn't really follow much conventionally and some of the jokes and stuff go over the head of a normal reader. It's premise is that in some universe, there is a tower. This tower has 130+ floors to it, where people can climb to achieve their wildest dreams. As a result it attracts a ton of competition of people looking to climb to the top and become a "Ranker" (person who completed the tower). The catch is, only those born in the tower, called "Regulars," can climb it. The main character, Twenty-fifth Baam, is what is referred to as an "Irregular," that is someone who comes from outside the tower. He basically forced his way into the tower, a feat almost unheard of and to the residents of the tower speaks of ill omens, as every other Irregular that has climbed the tower has been immensely powerful and changed the tower in dangerous and intriguing ways. The worldbuilding that the author has is INCREDIBLE. I think maybe only like HxH or One Piece have built up a world as fantastic as this one, as I'm about 400 chapters in and still there are tons of proposed questions that need answered. The fighting system can be a little complicated but its just like manipulating chakra, or haki, or whatever, sometimes swordplay and sometimes a more magic based system.

Anyone else read this and want to discuss it at all?

Also I was wondering if someone could point me to when One Piece gets good again? the war arc was inSANE and i loved it but after the timeskip it REALLY slowed down. Does it get much better and if so what arcs are on par with that form of buildup?
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I haven't read tower of god in a minute. I got to like where there was some team fighting thing going on, and the op chick was watching them fight, and there I think was something about a train that took them there? it's been a while lol

Maybe I'll get back into it sometime though.
 
I STRONGLY recommend you guys pick it back up. if you were invested into it back when the art style and plot direction has amped up tenfold. There are some slow arcs, the Hell Train arc (which I think is what you are referencing, with the big enemy of that time being a Slayer candidate called White) is a slow one. Theyve technically been on the hell train for a solid 150+ chapters now I believe but man has it been a ride. I won’t give spoilers as to whats happening but I’ll say that Jahad’s face has finally been shown as well as his uhh capabilities. Again I STRONGLY recommend people pick it back up. This is one story that I hope the author finishes, his health has been failing it seems and he has had to take more and more breaks. In fact I sense a hiatus coming up soon which gives anyone the time to catch up to the 400+ chapters.

To newer users dont be put off by the crude art in the beginning. it gets wayyyyy better
 
tcr said:
I STRONGLY recommend you guys pick it back up. if you were invested into it back when the art style and plot direction has amped up tenfold. There are some slow arcs, the Hell Train arc (which I think is what you are referencing, with the big enemy of that time being a Slayer candidate called White) is a slow one. Theyve technically been on the hell train for a solid 150+ chapters now I believe but man has it been a ride. I won’t give spoilers as to whats happening but I’ll say that Jahad’s face has finally been shown as well as his uhh capabilities. Again I STRONGLY recommend people pick it back up. This is one story that I hope the author finishes, his health has been failing it seems and he has had to take more and more breaks. In fact I sense a hiatus coming up soon which gives anyone the time to catch up to the 400+ chapters.

To newer users dont be put off by the crude art in the beginning. it gets wayyyyy better
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I googled stuff and apparently I was like at part 2 of the dallar show, so that's like...120-130 chapters behind? That's a lot less than I thought.
 
Wanna start a little discussion here

What do you guys think are some of the better jobs in anime?

In wrestling, doing one's job is when a wrestler loses the match. I often see it applied to anime when a character loses to a villain in order to increase fear/hatred of the villain. A main character probably won't job, but the jobber can be a protagonist or rival. Most jobs will be in tournament arcs, but I don't think they have to be. I'll list some examples in hide tags, but I'm interested to hear some more good examples.

So I was inspired to talk about this when watching season 1 of this show for the first time. Near the end of the first season is one of the most drawn out and depressing jobs I've ever seen. Shimada actually jobs the main character earlier in the show, coming out of nowhere to destroy him and only really introduced after that point. But then in the final round, he gets jobbed over several episodes (to who I assume will be biggest challenge to the MC down the road). And only after it shows us how hopeless it is for him to win does the anime tell us what hopes and dreams of his are getting crushed and how much he struggled to make it this far. It's also a job within a job (having jobbed the MC earlier), so it's very well done.

The first part of the rookie tournament is in my opinion the high point of Hajime no Ippo. As a tournament arc, it is absolutely stellar. But it's also great in how it's set up, and just how jobbed Miyata gets. Miyata is established as a rival for Ippo very early on. In an early episode, Ippo values landing just one hit on Miyata. They have opposed values. Opposed goals. Diametrically opposite backgrounds. When they both enter the rookie tournament, and swear to settle it once and for all in the final match, you're like, it's on! And I did not see it coming at all when an absolute monster of a boxer took Miyata out. This was such a devastating job that, even though I think the writer still sees Ippo and Miyata as rivals, no one I've ever known took Miyata seriously again.

Chunin exams, just like the rookie tournament, the absolute high point of its respective show. And it had not one, but two amazing jobs that really show off the versatility of this story trope. First you got Rock Lee vs. Gaara, which has the added benefit of being probably the best fight the show has ever had. Seemingly introduced as a rival for Sasuke, Rock Lee loses to Gaara, but not before giving him such a run for money that at the end it's like, how the fuck are the heroes going to possibly top that? Then you have Hinata vs. Neji. Now, some jobs are great because the loser seemed so capable that their loss is stunning. Hinata stood no chance at all. And it's the sheer cruelty of this fight that makes this job work so well. You know that the MC screams at Neji that he's going to take him down (and what are the odds that those two fight next), that Hinata has done her job like a champ.
 
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Da Letter El said:
I googled stuff and apparently I was like at part 2 of the dallar show, so that's like...120-130 chapters behind? That's a lot less than I thought.
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hoooooly shit it is so worth it to catch up. the buildup of the last 3 chapters is crazy hype. I’ve never been this gripped for next week’s chapter.

im thinking i might start doing a reread of it to catch up on all the story, i encourage others to join me
 
Had some free time, so I finally binged the second half of Made in Abyss.

What an oddball. What it doesn't have in characterization, witty dialogue or inventive cinematography, Made in Abyss makes up for with a great base script, a bewitching adventure plot, beautiful artwork and a good accompanying soundtrack.

It's not my favorite, but I get why people liked it so much after it aired...
 
im here to shill lupin again. part 5 is really, truly fantastic so far with the extended look into lupins past for the first time.

do not watch it without at least a baseline knowledge of lupin though (any of castle of cagliostoro/part 1/part 4/the woman called fujiko mine)

i consider lupin pretty much the greatest anime franchise of all time. so please do yourself the favour of checking it out
 
3-Gatsu no Lion is the first "top" MAL show to validate the list. It is really very excellent. And usually in trying to watch stuff, starting at the beginning, I'm not even watching the "good" season. But this time, not even watching the good season takes a whole new meaning. I'm excited to watch season 2 if it's really so much better.

I wasn't impressed at first as the show switched between brooding scenes and spastic comedy scenes, but around episodes 5-10 it really picked its game up. I can safely say that it's a rare anime that gives me the things I enjoy from reading classic lit, but unlike LotGH, it's also very well animated. I'm not immediately impressed by the painterly backgrounds, but whenever there is exposition or dialogue, something creative is always happening on screen. A show about a child genius becoming a shogi professional in high school should not be real at all, let alone this real. It's an excellent discussion about how some people get consumed by the things they have expertise in. The only downside is that it doesn't really climax, probably as a result of adapting a long manga into a multi-cour format. Extremely high recommendation.


Bakemonogatari is a golden turd. It's very watchable and everything about it is very well done. The animation is top-notch. The soundtrack is fire. The dialogue is well written and very clever. Too clever, too often. The script is too busy Whedoning that no character actually has any personality. It likes to tell us every episode that one character is Tsundere, which would be a poor replacement for character development even if it was true (it's not). And because the first 15 episodes are all about "establishing characters", it feels like 15 fairly pointless episodes. Still, I'm curious where it will go once there's actually a plot. Also, I was really hoping the show would cross the line from perversion into eroticism, but instead what I got was jokes about sexually assaulting elementary schoolers.


Clannad is one of the strangest shows I've ever seen. I know most people just watch it to see After Story, but it's not bad, it's just so strange. I was expecting a pretty straightforward slice of life harem anime. But what I got was almost impossible to describe in terms of genre. Low-key gothic horror? I'm about 3/4 through and it's no clearer what the narrative goals of this show are.


I watched the first Gintama movie, so after almost 3 months I've ticked off 1 of the 75 shows in MAL's top 100 I had yet to see. I went into detail in the movie thread, but I didn't think much of it. And seeing more shows and some of Gintama's lauded story arcs now, I think it's safe to say that Gintama is just a bad show. Not dreadful, but much worse than I'd normally want to watch 400 episodes of.

So far (good to bad):
3-Gatsu no Lion
LotGH
Bakamonogatari
Clannad
Hunter X Hunter
Gintama

Next month:
Haikyuu
Mushishi
 
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vonFiedler said:
3-Gatsu no Lion is the first "top" MAL show to validate the list. It is really very excellent. And usually in trying to watch stuff, starting at the beginning, I'm not even watching the "good" season. But this time, not even watching the good season takes a whole new meaning. I'm excited to watch season 2 if it's really so much better.
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Not sure who told you season 2 is way better. It might be better. I dunno. It tells different stories. I for one was sad about a story arc from the first season that didn't appear in the second one. Basically what I'm saying is there's no reason to up your expectations, it's about the same level of quality, which is to say very high.

vonFiedler said:
Next month:
Haikyuu
Mushishi
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Mushishi is a treasure.
 
vonFiedler said:
3-Gatsu no Lion is the first "top" MAL show to validate the list. It is really very excellent. And usually in trying to watch stuff, starting at the beginning, I'm not even watching the "good" season. But this time, not even watching the good season takes a whole new meaning. I'm excited to watch season 2 if it's really so much better.

I wasn't impressed at first as the show switched between brooding scenes and spastic comedy scenes, but around episodes 5-10 it really picked its game up. I can safely say that it's a rare anime that gives me the things I enjoy from reading classic lit, but unlike LotGH, it's also very well animated. I'm not immediately impressed by the painterly backgrounds, but whenever there is exposition or dialogue, something creative is always happening on screen. A show about a child genius becoming a shogi professional in high school should not be real at all, let alone this real. It's an excellent discussion about how some people get consumed by the things they have expertise in. The only downside is that it doesn't really climax, probably as a result of adapting a long manga into a multi-cour format. Extremely high recommendation.


Bakemonogatari is a golden turd. It's very watchable and everything about it is very well done. The animation is top-notch. The soundtrack is fire. The dialogue is well written and very clever. Too clever, too often. The script is too busy Whedoning that no character actually has any personality. It likes to tell us every episode that one character is Tsundere, which would be a poor replacement for character development even if it was true (it's not). And because the first 15 episodes are all about "establishing characters", it feels like 15 fairly pointless episodes. Still, I'm curious where it will go once there's actually a plot. Also, I was really hoping the show would cross the line from perversion into eroticism, but instead what I got was jokes about sexually assaulting elementary schoolers.
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MAL (and probably similar sites) have a bias towards later season of things, since people who didn't like the first season will usually not continue on to the second season and so on. Pretty much everyone I've talked to likes the second season of Code Geass less than the first but it's rated higher there. On the other hand, Nisemonogatari is iirc actually rated significantly lower than Bakemonogatari, which really says something about it even if Kaiki is one of the best characters in anything ever. Second Season (by which I mean the season labelled second season, not the actual second season) is where the series really hits its stride and becomes something special, it does a very good job at building on characters and plots it's already established and creating stories that are outwardly very fantastical but always rooted in realistic issues.

KEY VNs like Clannad usually have 2-4 different subpar writers basically filling out the time with mostly irrelevant subplots for secondary characters before they get to the main plot, and Clannad After Story doesn't even do that until like...9 episodes in, I think? But once it finally gets there it's a solid coming of age story with Kyoani doing a fantastic job on animation and direction.
 
I stopped watching sangatsu no lion cause it just felt like a soap opera

As far as a soap opera goes it's pretty entertaining I guess but my enthusiasm fell off for it fast. It's well-made but I really wouldn't call it uniquely interesting.
 
can cosign the greatness of monogatari second season, thats when the plot really starts to move forward with arc climaxes and resolutions everywhere, one of my favorite seasons in all of anime, emotionally poignant and leaves a lot to think about. to get there though you gotta go through the borderline trash nisemonogatari and the redundant nekomonogatari black, but it'll be worth it if youre already at least somewhat invested in the characters through bakemonogatari

i just finished clannad+AS myself recently and i wasnt digging it that much, cryporn just doesnt really work on me i guess and all the girls other than kyou and tomoyo had personalities equivalent to a piece of cardboard, especially the main girl nagisa.

boutta start 3gatsu of the strength of some of the cosigns in this thread, its been one ive been meaning to get to anyways so i hope it delivers
 
Doubling down on the praise for Sangatsu; it's honestly incredible, one of the absolute best shows I've ever watched. Both seasons are incredibly good but IMO the second season is a bit better than the first on the whole mostly just because I prefer the story arcs that play out and I prefer a lot of the focal characters of the season to a some of the focal characters of the first. I do kinda wish that Kiriyama's sister didn't just drop off of the map though.

Nine weeks into the current season and Amanchu Advance is still AotS, sorta 9/10–10/10 quality on the whole. Not much else to say on that really, if you watched Amanchu and aren't watching it then start watching it; it still makes me supe bubbly whenever I watch it.

As for other stuff that I have more to say about:
The first episode was OK, it was then a bit crap for a few episodes but it got better
after Kamina dies in episode 8-ish
and the overall quality of the show just skyrockets as it continues its run from there on out. In general the character designs are pretty really strong all around (my favorite character design was Nia (mostly because of her eyes (pink floral pupils with sky blue irises), which give her a huge amount of visual personality and just look really, really good on the whole) but Kamina is also pretty spectacular), as are the mech designs. Tt handles the dumb hype and asspulling in a far more entertaining way than Jojo part 3 does and it made the insane power creep towards the end feel not-awful to watch (a big achievement, as usually battles won by creeping power end up being dull to watch), and the result is that it's just dumb, bombastic, well written fun which just oozes with everything that I love about pre-crash Gainax.
This show doesn't really know what it's doing with itself tbh. Like it's fine and all to spin your wheels and build up interest with a story like this (which is what it seems to be doing) but when it's still still kinda spinning them at 8 episodes in I can't help but wonder if it's actually going to go anywhere with it. I think that it might start going somewhere now just based on
the fact that we're getting time jumps and world line shifts again
so I've got my fingers crossed that we're going to see it doing… something… but if it spins its wheels with its concepts for any longer I'm not going to be happy at all.
Entertaining as all shit, just like it always has been/will be. Very well designed battles all throughout, good fanservice elements, decent writing, and fucking stunning food that makes me hungry every time I see it. This season seems to have fixed the issues with stakes that have always been prevalent in the series by
having major characters actually be expelled as a result of losses, both having the same impact as death in other shows (removes potential for character influence) and suggesting that there is a legitimate threat being posed rather than the kinda superficial "oh you can get kicked out technically but obviously you won't because you're a major character" thing that the show has had so far
and it's doing a lot more to make the most of the "identical opposites" character dynamic between Soma and Erina by helping to flesh Erina out and have her evolve as a character, which is honestly a good decision because if she'd stayed as what she was before for much longer she would've just been kinda boring.
"three-point-fifth watch" may be more accurate than "third watch" because I actually rewatched sorta four or five episodes 6 months ago and just never got around to finishing the rewatch back then, so I've actually seen the first few episodes a bunch of times lol.

Anyway, I'm rewatching this again and remembering why it's my all-time favorite anime; I could probably do an entire video series on it if I really wanted to, and I might do so at some point but atm I'm just focussing on absorbing the rewatch. It has my all-time favorite first scene, one of the best first episodes of any anime I've ever watched, superb sound design and sound direction, excellent mystery+thriller elements, stunning visual direction and visual design, great writing, and an incredible ability to build up its world, the societies and social structures within it, and its history. It's infinitely interesting and nuanced, with many interpretations that stem from the way that its society and the events of the show are designed, and I could honestly just go on for hours about everything about the show. It really sucks that there's no official translation of the novel though, so I'm gonna have to make do with reading a fan translation off of a screen if I wanna read the source material.

I also skimmed a few chapters of the manga yesterday and my god it was awful lmao; it undermines all of its mature themes by fucking around with the events of the story (compared to the anime, it
presents Reiko's death/disappearance at the very beginning with the tact of a dumb gag, to the point that you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a mostly insignificant thing if your only experience of the story was the Manga's version of events (when in reality it's one of the most important things to happen in the early episodes of the show)
and it replaces the mostly-well-handled themes of sex and homosexuality with an absurd number of incredibly forced fanservice (usually yuri of Saki and Maria) which just totally undermine any integrity that the story had before and not only ascends to being ecchi, but it actually goes beyond and panders to the point of bordering on straight-up hentai (and not good hentai pandering either). This is not good. At all.
That's about it really; I don't have much else to say about the other seasonals that I'm watching because it's mostly just a lot of the same stuff that I've been saying for a few weeks now. When Hinamatsuri hits its mark it really hits it (I laughed for 30 seconds straight in the last scene of this week's episode), but it often kinda misses too and when it does it's just plain boring; My Hero Academia is the same as always: immensely enjoyable but feels very padded or slow in places for no real reason; Megalo Box is still badass, having a lot of really cool ideas and an exquisite sense for presentation and imagery (a presentational sense that I hope shows take hints from in the future) but which never really ascends to a point where I think "damn, this show's something special"; SAO Alternative is SAO Alternative: cool when it's cool, not cool when it's not. The rest I'm either more than one episode behind on (Dragon Pilot) or is Cardcaptor Sakura, which doesn't really leave much to talk about in all honesty (as much as I wish it did because I LOVE Cardcaptor Sakura).

Things near the top of my to-watch list are Aria, K-On, Death Note, Hidamari Sketch, Sally the Witch, Shugo Chara and a few other rewatches (Madoka, Ping Pong, Tatami Galaxy, NHK, NGE etc.), and I'm probably also gonna get a long watch of either Maison Ikkoku, Sailor Moon or LotGH going soon too.
 
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alright so after a series of questionable bordering on shady practices by mal i have finally decided to move to anilist. and boy howdy is it 100000x better in every way, i highly recommend you jump off the mal dumpster fire and move to a site that actually like, cares about its users.

use this link to export your MAL

My profile

edit: to reword; im mostly referring to mal removing their API from the public and also the fact that the site has been 90% down for the past like, month
 
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