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The Rising of the Shield Hero
I'm an enjoyer of isekai trash so when I saw Shield Hero at an 8 on MAL, and being generally well regarded, I expected it to be pretty solid. Instead it felt like every time something interesting was about to happen the author took the most boring route possible. Add to that the 'grade school' nature of some of the plot and I found it to be a miserable watch.
As a fellow isekai trash connoisseur, I had a similar experience with Shield Hero, but in the manga form. It has its moments that are good. Particularly when the story focuses on the friendships within the main party. However, most of the time Naofumi interacts with characters outside of his party, it's pretty stupid.
I read the LNs and honestly wish I hadn't
I don't remember what I hated about the series at this point but I hated a lot by the end of the last volume
High school of the dead. If I wanted hentai, I would have watched hentai.
Wonder Egg Priority, what a disappointment that show was. So much promise completely ruined. It's still a passable watch just for how good the beginning was, but whatever you do, do not watch the special, My Priority. Just pretend the show finished without a proper ending, you will be happier for it.
Get yer downdoots ready.
Demon Slayer Beautiful anime, classic Shonen main character. Decent stakes. But they just bail on some really interesting drama. Nez being hypnotised to see humans as friends was such a cop out. Man, that took so much out of the show. You can have an entire episode where she escapes into a city and Tanjiro has to hunt her down before she kills someone. But no, headpats.
And that yellow hunter. Dear sweet mother of Christ he is irredeemably irritating. Just get your lungs torn out and be done with it.
Baffling show.
We got pretty far into the show with a friend, the animation was just immaculate, and the cuteness of Nezuko worked on us.
The key was to fast forward whenever yellow annoying boy was on screen. I don't think we ever missed out on anything plot-relevant by doing that.
But we ditched it in the end, too.
Both sleepy yellow boy and boarman are honestly annoying as fuck
In another world with my smartphone
... He barely used the smartphone, he just scrolls with it in the credits and occasionally uses it and his OP protagonist powers to just melt things. I was really hoping it wasn't just a "I am a god" power trip anime but it was one of the worst ones I ever saw.
Honestly they only gave him a smartphone so that they could give it a unique title. Then they proceed to forget they gave it to him.
I haven't watched the anime version of this story, but am up to date with the manga. I 100% agree. It is such a painfully ordinary story that doesn't make use of its main, titular premise except as a deus ex machina to quickly end an arc. The main character is so bland that I literally cannot think of any defining personality traits he has.
At least other, silly premise isekai lean more into it and produce some actually original takes on the genre. I was fully prepared to joke about how Isekai Vending Machine from this past season was exceedingly generic, but was honestly quite surprised to see how well it was executed. It isn't one of the isekai greats, but I actually think it is pretty good.
Looking back on things, I can't believe I have read 84 chapters of isekai smartphone, but I don't always make good choices.
right?
I remember starting to read Isekai Vending Machine solely because I thought it was going to be garbage but they fully commit to "nah this guy is a vending machine". It was way better than anticipated. I hate it when the protagonist is never in danger and just has to sneeze to get out of things, but a protagonist that can't move and uses the only thing keeping him alive to upgrade and output a shield? That's how you make something interesting.
How it ever got an anime is beyond me.
This one shocked me because I lovvvvveee isekais, OP main characters and all that jazz. My top anime are most people's low 6s in MAL.
But I just couldn't get into smartphone, and I was shocked it got renewed for a second season >!yet I still don't get a second season of No Game No Life!<
The second season of darker than black. The first season was strikingly good which made the second season that much more jarring when it turned out to be complete trash
Akame ga Kill. They tried to do anime Game of Thrones and they failed. Half of the episodes play out like this. You meet a new character. You see their backstory and they get killed in their first episode. The worst one of this type of characters is Chelsea. You get hers backstory two minutes before she dies. The best thing from the show is Esdeath.
Akame ga Kill is a fantastic manga!
We do not talk about the anime.
In a nutshell, it tried to speedrun the plot of the manga, and halfway through decides it would be better for it to do its own thing. It then just goes completely off the rails compared to the plot of the manga. I honestly felt personally insulted as a fan and actively try to forget the anime exists.
Clannad. I watched the whole thing when a friend insisted it got good and was disappointed the entire time. Then I watched After Story when the same friend told me I needed to watch it all to really enjoy it.
I want my time back.
Agreed. I couldn't bring myself to sit through a whole season of unlikeable characters just to wait for when the story "got good".
"It gets better bro, trust me. You just gotta watch it bro. Now you need to watch the second season bro. I promise it's great bro."
Two spring to my mind:
You save yourself some heartache with Clannad and not watching After Story.
Elfen Lied. The heights of animation and horror achieved by the intro are truly a masterpiece.
It's too bad the actual plot is a bad slice of life with the occasional reminder that the girl has a deadly hidden personality and supernatural powers, which in the end never leads to anything whatsoever.
You keep expecting the shoe to drop, and the only twist you get is that it never does.
Tales from Earthsea. It seemed like it should have been good. Studio Ghibli? Check. Excellent source material? Check. Storytelling styles that should have complemented each other? CHECK.
Instead, we got something that was boring, slow, and took far too little inspiration from the stories it was supposed to be based on. A forgettable waste of time.
desperately checking comments to make sure my favorites aren't mentioned
Hanebado; I was expecting a cool sports anime and all I got was the most obnoxious and unlikeable protagonist in all of anime.
Probably Aldnoah.Zero. Very interesting premise and early episodes, but then it turns into a huge writing mess. And let's not talk about Season 2.
At least the action was decent?
It was Glasslip for me. It had an interesting premise (protag was able to see glimpses of the future by looking at special glass her family makes), but never really did anything interesting with it. All the show really had going for it was that it was really pretty.
Rascal Does not Dream of Bunny Girl.
I tried 3 episodes and….I don’t get it…
Also Chaos;Head
That's fair. I love Bunny Girl Senpai, but if it isn't clicking with you after Mai's opening arc, then it's not the show for you.
It’s about people who others can’t see because they’re….adolescents?… it just went beyond my head
The whole "Adolescence Syndrome" thing is essentially a narrative metaphor for maturing. Over different arcs of 2-3 episodes each in the series (Mai's being the first), different characters experience different supernatural phenomena that the protagonist helps them to process and resolve. The rest of my explanation I am going to put behind spoiler tags for people that haven't seen the opening arc of Bunny Girl Senpai. Also note, that this is just my take on things as an anime-only based on recollection of the show back when it first aired.
Bunny Girl Arc
The opening arc focuses on Mai, the child celebrity that is always in the spotlight. As she gets older and moves to a different school, she finds that it is tough to break into social groups after they have already formed. She feels like an outcast socially as well as professionally after she made the decision to leave her line of work and break off contact with her manager/mother. This feeling of being an outcast and alone manifests her version of Adolescence Syndrome in that others, in addition to simply not interacting with her socially, literally cannot see or recognize her existence. The condition spirals as Mai seemingly comes to terms with it and accepts that she isn't worth interacting with anymore. This is what Sakuta refers to as going with the flow of the atmosphere. It isn't until Sakuta forcibly breaks the flow of everybody around him by demanding their attention during an exam and causing Mai to reassess her own self-worth and giving others around her a reason to talk about her that her syndrome is healed.
As the show goes, different characters' syndromes manifest in different ways based on the particular problems they are facing at that point in their lives. It could be suffering an unrequited love, jealousy of others, dealing with bullying, or coming to terms with your changing appearance. Each of these manifests in a different way.
Also Chaos;Head
The VN is great, but I've heard some really bad things about the anime adaptation.
I watched Bunny Girl shortly after the Monogatari series and I didn't really enjoy it. I just observed too many parallels between the two and how much more enjoyable Monogatari was. Maybe my timing was just really bad.
I finished it anyway but admittedly I only stayed for the ED. :/
From first few episodes and OP, the anime had potential to become chaotic fun anime like FLCL and I had high hope for it. But it became stale in later half and didn't deliver much.
Tokyo Ghoul √A
Season 2 of To Your Eternity.
Season 1 is great. The theme, the narration aspect of it, the adventure, the protagonist's journey and development.
Season 2 changes the series into an absurd, excessively visually loud joke with obnoxious characters. Somehow I still rated it average - must be because the second half of it was ok again.
I checked and these are my notes on season 2:
In the first half of season two they went with joke characters and environment for cheap silly joke production. Really unfortunate. The second half of season two is able to recover for the most part, but even then it lost it's novelty, consistency, and it's explorative nature. It feels much more like going further for the sake of it, and having to make up reasons and follow past decisions. Really unfortunate for the series.
I lost all hope for Season 3 of my previously beloved series.
The most disappointing on a personal level must have been Charlotte.
I was a HUGE fan of Angel Beats, CLANNAD, Kanon, and Little Busters; I was GENUINELY excited for Charlotte's release.
First episode came out, I loved it. Halfway through the show, I think I remember liking it? And then the show just went balls to the wall running around like a chicken that had its head cut off, aimlessly wandering around. And then the show just sped ran its ending without any organic buildup and robbing the viewer of ANY satisfaction with the ending.
Was never the same since. After that, I dropped Rewrite halfway through the first episode because all the characters just felt so stupid and the episode did a horrible job with introducing me to the world or the characters and what not.
Since then, the most I've done regarding any sort of Jun Maeda or KEY work was host a Kanon rewatch for a Discord server a year or two ago. I liked Kanon, but I DEFINITELY don't place it anywhere NEAR the top of my AniList. And I dropped "The Day I Became A God" a few episodes in because it wasn't interesting to me and it smelled like the same Jun Maeda shit that I experienced with Charlotte (and from what I heard, I dodged a fucking artillery strike of shit). I still have plans on rewatching CLANNAD someday as well, but it's nowhere near my top priority when it comes to rewatches.