I finished
Mushishi and I don't have much more to say about it. Some episodes stuck with me but I think overall it wasn't the sort of show you should be binge-watching. But I also watched the three Mushishi specials and boy did they suck. It's like they took three regular episodes and stretched them out to double run-time, and to be honest, most episodes of Mushishi might work better at 12 minutes to begin with.
I feel like
Natsume's Book of Friends is getting better. There are more fleshed out supporting characters, higher stakes, and maybe even a villain in the future? But it's still pretty chill and sometimes just feels good. I'm not all about it yet but I'm optimistic.
I remember a lukewarm reception to
Blood-C but holy christ I did not expect it to be this bad. The characters look awful. They're all annoying. What does this have to do with the Blood franchise or vampires? Main character is really good at standing around while people get killed. Truman Show twist could be good in a different anime but it leads to a lot of fridge logic in this one. Very misplaced edginess. Commits greatest sin of anime, being unable to end without a movie tie-in. Speaking of,
The Last Dark is marginally better, but dragged down by association and dragged out by a lame subplot about hackers.
I actually binge watched the original
Haruhi season in a day because it had been 10 years since I'd seen it. Endless Eight isn't a good watch but I'd rather watch episodes of Endless Eight than Gintama. But even the movie making story arc isn't very good compared to the original series. We didn't need five episodes of backstory to what was once a perfectly obvious single episode (also the movie episode was the best one in the series imo).
Might as well talk about
The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya here, given it's the only reason I watched season 2. It's a strange anime movie, being almost three hours long. But it doesn't really stand on its own either. Why wasn't this just season 3? Is it because season 2 bombed so badly? Anyway, this is definitely the best part of Haruhi, and really what ties everything together and makes it worth watching at all. Though I'd have liked it more if it spent longer on the part where Kyon is in the alternate timeline.
This is probably also a better place to talk about the three
Kizumonogatari movies. The action is amazingly animated, but as the story is from "part one" of the series, it isn't up to par with "part two". And there really wasn't any reason to make three movies out of it, especially when the final movie has a 10 minute breast fondling sequence.
I'm now caught up
My Hero Academia. It's a really good show, probably one of the best things I've been watching. But even though it's mostly consistent it does have its minor ups and downs. Most shonen are really defined by massive story arcs (Chunin Exams, Enies Lobby, Namek, etc) and MHA doesn't have those. So a single season like 3 can flip flop between awesome stuff like the training camp and villain hideout arcs, but then have the pretty okay hero license arc. It's a show that only gets better, but I'm still waiting for it to reach Plus Ultra.
While I said the first season of
Rurouni Kenshin was like a weak version of Trigun, I was hopeful that in season 2 a more serialized story would really improve the show. I was disappointed. Instead the shows morphs into a much more typical and very outdated shonen. "How can Kenshin win?" I use my special attack! Followed by talk-no-jutsu. Rinse and repeat at a snail's pace. Damn.
Even the soundtrack blows ass. Would I have liked this show if I watched it when I was young? I don't know. But I do know I could have and never made the effort past a handful of episodes here and there.
Of course the real purpose of watching Rurouni Kenshin at all was to watch
Trust and Betrayal, which I didn't expect to be so vastly different. You'd barely figure they were in the same universe. Trust and Betrayal is dark and edgy, reminding me of a lot of ninja ovas from the 90s. It doesn't even feature much real backstory, with stuff like his master and the Shinsengumi being minor footnotes. On the other hand, it's probably more interesting a story as a result. I was surprised by the story twist and really this was better made in almost every way, which isn't saying a lot. It's very okay.
Damn man. Why did
Fate Prisma Illya actually have to get good? I guess it figures. The only reason I ever watched this show was because of Oath Under Snow and the last season is the only one to tie into it. And it's pretty good. We just abandon three seasons of fucking baggage and shove the main character into a new world with new enemies and only two previous superboss enemies to help her. That's pretty cool. If only there weren't a scene where two 12 year olds make out, but having only one of those in 12 episodes is holding back in comparison to previous seasons. It's still unresolved, there are still questions, and I want to see more. It's not an amazing show and it's too shitty for too long to recommend it, but I guess I think it's the third best Fate show yet.
After I had seen 100 episodes of
Gintama I didn't feel the need to say anything new about it. But then I got to season 3. Pretty much everything from episode 129 and on is just rancid garbage. And I feel it would be hard for even Gintama fans to disagree that some of these episodes just suck so much ass. But then we get to the story arc "Yoshiwara in Flames", which is said to be one of people's favorite story arcs. And for the show, it is a new level of trash. I actually liked the somewhat more serious story arcs up until now, but this goes straight past seriousness and into edginess. I mean, if you like almost 10 episodes of women getting violently murdered in your comedy anime, maybe you will disagree. Seems like some exploitation bullshit to me though, and really, it was the last kind of shitty storytelling that Gintama hadn't explored yet. I argued that I probably could never give a show on MAL a 1, because if I gave it a 1, why wouldn't I have dropped it? But this is a 1 right here. In other words, the worst anime show that I haven't dropped. And while I take a long break from it, and even though I'm halfway through it, I'm strongly considering just not coming back.
Finally, I watched
Haikyuu: Karasuno vs Shiratorizawa, aka How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Sports Anime: Oops All Good Parts. It's great. I'd like to see more. I'm not so worried about the copious amounts of sports anime I have left to watch now.