Anime

This past week has been super busy for me. I have been hard at work to wrap up some year-end projects, working on the year-end awards for anime, manga, and light novels, and then I got sick to top it all off. So, I am sad to report that I haven't gotten to watch any anime from this past week; literally zero. The backlog grows ever larger...

I made a separate thread completely devoted to the year-end awards voting. Go check it out! I have always kind of had a soft rule to not have more than two threads pinned to the community at a time because I feel like it pushes the fresh content too far down the page. However, if there is any time I can break that rule, it is when there is an election going on.

Finally, to talk a little bit about actual anime, there was one piece of anime news that I really enjoyed this week, but I didn't end up making a whole post about it: Chained Soldier cast Kana Hanazawa to play Ren Yamashiro. I have been reading the manga a bit past where the first season of the show ended, and Ren's character will be an interesting one to see portrayed on the screen. Getting Kana Hanazawa to play Ren is just perfect. She's already warmed up for the role after her portrayal of Alexia Midgar in The Eminence in Shadow.

Since I'm not watching anything this season and instead browsing through the past:

First up last week was Ore wo Suki nano wa Omae dake ka yo (2019), which was... not good. At all. It was sort of promising at first - the initial setup was intriguing if a bit derivative - but it fell flat almost immediately and never recovered. The biggest problem - I don't know if it traces back to the LN or was just part of the adaptation - is that the writer(s) appear to have understood the idea that it's good to have characters who grow and change, but didn't get the bit about the changes having context and following a recognizable progression. So what we get are characters who are seemingly arbitrarily assigned traits, then at some later point, they're essentially arbitrarily assigned different traits.

Next was Nisemonogatari (2012), which was... kind of dull really. It's all the same gimmicks as Bakemonogatari, but at this point, they're wearing a bit thin for me. And try as I might, I just detest Senjougahara.

Then came a surprising gem - season 2 of KonoSuba (2017). I liked season 1 well enough, but it just didn't quite come together entirely for me. And season 2 didn't look promising, since the first thing I noticed was that it has just about the worst art I've ever seen. It looks like it was done cheap and fast by amateurs. But then I discovered (the surprising bit) that pretty much every other aspect of the season was stellar - great stories, great characterization (most notably, they took the edge off of Kazuma's assholery - in the first season there were too many times when it was unwarranted and too extreme, but in the second season, it was better timed and proportioned), and more genuine laugh out loud moments. And both the opening and closing themes are terrific.

And finally, after bouncing off of a few things, I ended up rewatching Akudama Drive (2020). The first time through I was initially intrigued but not particularly impressed, then slowly came to enjoy it more and more and was very impressed by the end. I wanted to see if it held up to a rewatch though, since I wasn't sure if it was genuinely that good or if I was just swayed by the contrast between my initial reaction and expectations and what it turned out to be. And I'd say it really is genuinely that good. It's not flawless by any means - it has some plot holes and some notably forced bits, but all in all, it just really is very good. And Swindler - the main character - is plain awesome.

Things I watched or tried to watch from this season:

• 365 Days to the Wedding: Good but not great. It sometimes went off in weird directions that didn't seem to serve a purpose proportionate to their screen time. Sometimes things also moved way more quickly than makes sense. It makes me wonder if things were sacrificed to get it to fit into a 12 episode season. Loved the ED though!
• Yakuza Fiance: Good but not great. The story was usually good, but the art and animation were sub-par. Still worth a watch if you want to see a really toxic relationship develop.
• Mecha-Ude: Mediocre. It didn't know what it was good at (charming, goofy moments) so it spent all its time on things it was bad at instead (serious, generic plot stuff).
• Blue Box: Good but not great. I don't love the style of the animation. It feels, I dunno, over-rendered? It looks like the anime staff tried their hardest to make every moment look as pretty as possible to the point of distraction. So many specular highlights! I'm up-to-date on the manga though, so I'm still really looking forward to watching the second half of the season develop!
• Dandadan: Obviously this is great. I still need to watch the last few episodes, but no complaints here. The mangaka wrote an great story with fun characters, and the anime staff executed that story more skillfully than I could have possibly imagined.
• Re:Zero Season 3: I watched about 5 minutes of this and decided I really needed to re-watch at least part of Season 2 first.
• Mobile Suit Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance: Mediocre. The animation was fine but the writing was straight-up bad. This is a situation where knowing the lore actually makes it worse, too.

I endeavor to watch exactly two seasonal anime at a time. I feel incredibly lucky that those are Dandadan (hyped and delivered) and Negative Positive Angler (underrated, sleeper hit).

Fall 2024 is probably one of the weakest seasons in recent times.

Here are my scores for series that I have completed:

• Dan Da Dan - 10 / 10
• Murai in Love - 10 / 10
• Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance - 9 / 10

With the exception of Re:Zero Season 3, I have dropped every other anime that I picked up this season.

This was a very weak season for me. Of the 13 shows I started off with:

• one of them was a leftover from previous season (2.5D Seduction).
• I dropped 6 of them
• put on hold 1 of them (re:zero)
• the ones I didn't drop are fine with only a few exceptions. I can only really call 2 of them very good (Dandadan and NegaPosi Angler).

I'm still planning to watch Orb and Magilumiere.

The ones I ended up watching in full were:

• 2.5D seduction: good fun, pretty wholesome despite the ecchi.
• Dandadan: probably best of season. Unfortunate ending.
• NegaPosi Angler: 2nd best of season and the surprise for me. Expected to dislike it because I don't care for fishing, but ended up being pulled in by the characters and their dynamics.
• Demon Lord 2099: also a bit of a surprise. Not without its flaws, but fun. Interesting combination of 2 different settings (fantasy and cyberpunk). After Dandadan, probably my favourite OP and ED.
• 365 Days Till Wedding: took a nosedive after the first half and kinda stayed there. Adult romance anime are usually fresh compared to school romance because the characters are more mature and assertive. Not here though. Too passive and too dependent on misunderstandings.
• Do-Over Damsel: there's something really intriguing here, but it's brought down so hard by its problematic main duo.

Now that I'm mostly caught up, time to issue this season's silly awards . . .

Best Dragon Award: The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor, but only for Rave and only because the competition was the lackluster Good-bye Dragon Life. I could have done without several other aspects of Do-Over Damsel, although it never quite tipped over the line into "drop this right now" territory for me.

Guilty Pleasure Award: Maou 2099. Not brilliant or deep, but there's enough there to make it excellent beer-and-popcorn entertainment.

Blandest of the Year Award: Ao no Miburo, by a narrow margin over Good-bye Dragon Life. Uninspired historical about a painfully earnest youth (worse than the lead from Mecha-Ude) who gets involved with the Shinsengumi during the lead-up to the Meiji Restoration. I don't know why they're making two cours of this. Looks especially bad with Orb, another plain historical that is quite brilliant, running at the same time.

They Only Told Us Half the Story Award: Nina the Starry Bride. Pretty much none of the main plot strands were tied up at the end of the season, and I haven't heard that there's going to be a second.

Nastiest Protagonist Award: Wajutsushi, hands down. That they managed to make this series work despite Noel's personality amazes me.

This is the first season where I have had no less than three series drop out in the middle—Delico's Nursery I expected to finish at that time, and Re Zero seems to have been planned (although I hadn't been paying enough attention to be aware of it), but I'm still not certain what happened with Haigakura.

Every year at around this time, I re-watch an older series that I thought was pretty good at the time I first saw it. Most of them have held up, although I occasionally draw a dud like .hack//sign. This year, I picked Concrete Revolutio (24 eps, made by BONES, aired 2015-2016), an odd little show that I've always considered the anti Boku no Hero Academia (which premiered around the same time), although damned if I could remember any details of the plot before this refresher.

The time is the late 1960s. The world is full of superheroes and supervillains of every possible origin: aliens, time travellers, legendary monsters, people from other dimensions, mutated humans, and cyborgs and robots created by various governments for their own purposes. Our protagonists work for a Japanese government bureau that's charged with protecting superhumans from forces that would oppress them, while most of the rest of the government is trying to do what you would expect the government to be trying to do when there are potential new military toys wandering around loose. Our main character longs to be a hero of justice, but against a background of corrupt institutions, violent protests, government coverups, and the general public acting in ways that aren't in their own best interests, what is justice, and what is a hero?

So why does no one remember this show anymore? First of all, the story jumps back and forth a lot in time (especially near the beginning), making it a bit difficult to follow. They do put up year/month labels during time skips, but that's less helpful than it could be because they're using Showa Era years with a made-up era name, not the standard Gregorian Calendar years, so it takes a while to pin down that their "year 20" is 1945.

Another reason is the visual aspect of the show. The background designs are best described as "quirky". Most of the shading is done in coloured polka-dot screen tone, not standard cel shading. The result is vibrant but peculiar, and can sometimes get a bit overwhelming.

(The third reason, if you need one, is that it isn't as straightforward a story as BnHA. Lots of shades of grey, lots of compromises, lots of Lawful Evil. People making horrible mistakes, or letting the end justify the means. It's difficult to find anyone in this mess that you can cheer for without reservation all the way to the end.)

I just realised there wasn't a single discussion thread for "Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online" - Season 2. Not anything exceptional but it's a lot of fun if you like guns.

Haven't watched a lot of shows this season, but by far my favourite (excluding carry-overs) was "Orb: On the Movements of the Earth". So glad it will continue seamlessly into the next season.

What I didn't quite get this season was the hype around "Dan Da Dan". I thought it was decent, but I kind of had to push through it. Certainly wasn't anticipating the new episodes like with Orb. Not sure I'll continue S2.

And last "It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?" - Season 5 is still on my will-definitly-watch list. Probably gonna wait for the season to finish and then binge it.

I watched Joshiraku and Ichigo Mashimaro. Joshiraku is decent. Not as sharp and artistic as its brother anime Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. The ED is very popular but the op is the real banger in my opinion. Ichigo Mashimaro is amazing. They don't make slice of life like that anymore. Wonderful art style. Effective humor, quite dry. The show feels very effortless. Only negative point is that Nobue is kinda sus.

Weekly ranking roundup:

1. Anime Corner - Full Results - Weekly Winner: Blue Lock
2. Reddit Karma - Weekly Winner: Dan Da Dan

Credit to /u/Abysswatcherbel for making the chart for reddit karma and /u/Nooble5 for the Anime Trending chart.

Last week I remarked on Blue Lock ascending to the #2 spot on AC's chart. This week, they completed the run up the table and actually managed to unseat Bleach to take #1.