Welcome to another general discussion thread! Feel free to use this thread to talk about things you have watched recently, questions you have, or recommendations you want to give!
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Current:
Shiboyugi - even more symbolic than past episodes, to the degree that it’s not even entirely clear what happened, though some assumptions can relatively safely be made. And the mystery deepens around the agents - I assume they’re a key to the background and the hidden motive and meanings of the games, and likely to Yuki’s story.
MF Ghost - the formula is wearing a bit thin.
Roll Over and Die - I was especially impressed by this episode. This is shaping up to be interesting and satisfying.
Champignon Witch - I just caught up with this one last week. I’m still not sure about it - it’s promising, but sort of vague. And I hate Claude with the fire of a thousand suns, which makes it sort of difficult to enjoy. Still though… it could turn out pretty good, and I like the basic premise and the art style.
Trigun Stargaze - better than last week’s episode, but still unsatisfying.
Scum of the Brave - finally stated the obvious connection between Yashiro and Jougamine, and finally got some movement in their relationship, and not a moment too soon. This is a sort of turning point for this anime. It was starting to feel like it had lost its way, but it might’ve found it again.
You and I Are Polar Opposites - another excellent episode. This series is pure pleasure.
Journal with Witch - the end was a weird combination of awful and hopeful. It was so hard to see Asa like that, but it’s progress, and it pulled her out of that pointless and self-destructive rage. And I realized that there’s a sort of meta-moral in this series. Makio doesn’t have the foggiest idea what she’s doing - she’s entirely out of her element as a sort of surrogate parent - but she’s doing an overall fine job of it, and her secret is simple - she’s honest and respectful.
In the introduction to the novel Jailbird, Kurt Vonnegut wrote that a student had written him a letter and told him that he’d figured out the underlying message to Vonnegut’s novels - “Love may fail but courtesy will prevail.”
In Vonnegut’s own words:
This seems true to me — and complete. So I am now in the abashed condition, five days after my fifty-sixth birthday, of realizing that I needn’t have bothered to write several books. A seven-word telegram would have done the job.
Seriously
I have to wonder if the author of Ikoku Nikki read that and took it to heart, or independently discovered the same truth.
Anyway - along the way last week, I rewatched Tsuki ga Kirei(As the Moon, So Beautiful), as I’m prone to do with series that unexpectedly impress me that much, just to re-experience it and see if it holds up. And it did - it really is very good. The only fault I can find with it is that the animation is generally only mediocre (though I do quite like the character designs).
Then I finally found it in myself to watch Season V of Danmachi, which was broadly what I’ve come to expect.
longish Danmachi rant plus spoilerish season details
A season of Danmachi is such an exhausting experience. It follows the same pattern every time. First, it introduces the “villains” (quotation marks because some number of them are going to end up shifting allegiances to Bell and the Hestia familia at or slightly before the end), who are entirely vile and loathsome and utterly without redeeming qualities. And they all are, entirely, every time. They’re never brave or honorable or motivated by lofty ideals or anything like that - they’re exclusively arrogant and cruel and utterly foul, and fill me with rage every time. And Bell, at that point, is a frustratingly meek, whiney and entirely incompetent child. So the villains have free reign to create an ugly situation, which they do. Then Bell finally tries to stand up, and gets his ass handed to him, and away we go. From there on out, it’s just a whirlwind of hopelessness and failure, as the villains prove to be unstoppable, and while Bell is finally at least putting up a fight, he’s just getting pummeled, over and over. Then along about the second to the last episode of the season, through some miraculous combination of the power of friendship and a last-minute power-up, the tables finally turn and then Bell curbstomps whoever he needs to curbstomp in the middle of the last episode, so there’s some time left at the end for a happy and satisfied coda. And sure enough…
That said, there were, as always, some good moments. If nothing else, there are few things I enjoy more in the series than seeing Hestia turn badass, which she did very satisfyingly in this one. And Haruhime’s really coming into her own, as is Lili. And Welf got a good moment. And Ryu confessed, which I didn’t expect at all. And broadly, it was sort of nice to finally get a season built around Freya, since they’ve been dropping hints about her since the beginning.
The thing that most stood out to me though is that Freya has got to be the shittiest love goddess ever in the history of gods and goddesses.
And now I’m off to check out Love Through a Prism…
I finished Tamayura Hitotose. It’s a very nice iyashikei mainly about photography and loss. The pace is slow and the atmosphere is gentle. It has many elements that remind me of ARIA (same director). I like the setting: Japanese villages with lots of traditional architecture. My favorite episode was Maon’s flashback episode. It might be worth noting that it is one of those anime where the characters have realistic hair colours like K-ON!, giving it that extra down to earth vibe.
I completed Love Through A Prism over the past week. It is a very standard shoujo romance, following all the common tropes like:
mild spoiler for Love Through a Prism
- the MC is a “commoner”, but is extremely talented
- the MC enrol in a school far from her hometown
- the main love interest is of noble birth
- the main love interest has a fiance
- the fiance is a stereotypical “villainess” who bullies MC
- etc, etc (there are too many points; too lazy to list them all )
I usually don’t care for vanilla, but the meta has been villainess for so long that vanilla looped right back around to being refreshing.
What made it stood out from similar works is its production value. IMO it is on par with the top-tiers of this season.
So even though it’s “nothing special”, I enjoyed it quite a bit. If vanilla shoujo is your cup of tea, consider checking it out.
I’ve almost finished it too. My experience with this show is quite similar. I generally don’t like stereotypical romances so I was actually surprised when it turned out to be quite tolerable. As for its production value – the VAs performances were very good, the animation was above average for a show of this kind, but nothing impressive compared to some currently airing shounen series, so I wouldn’t say it’s on par with the best ones of this season when it comes to that. However, all the backgrounds were really impressive (apart from the sea in ep14 – that looked uncanny, like a real footage slapped with a filter) so if you’re a background art connoisseur, this show is definitely worth checking out.
I was already intrigued by this one after Endmaker’s post, since I appreciate vanilla shoujo romance, but impressive backgrounds too? That bumps it up to next on my list.
I watched Akira for the first time last night…
🤯
Tbh I’m looking for something with the vibe of BSD.
Or with characters similar to Dazai.
