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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Been busy with work and traveling this past week, so I have fallen behind on a couple shows. From what I was able to watch:
- Too-Perfect Saint - I have been enjoying the anime more than I thought I would. I hope they keep it up. Bringing Mia’s storyline forward has helped a lot.
- Rock is a Lady’s Modesty - This show has been so much fun. Band Maid has really put their all into this show from doing the OP, mocap for the performances, and writing/performing songs for the jam sessions. This show has exceeded my expectations so far.
- Ninja and Assassin - No ninja is safe in this show. The effort put into this series really shows that this is a labor of love for the studio.
- Apocalypse Hotel - Another great episode. The mysteries of this world deepened just a little bit.
- Gundam GQuuuuuuX - Episode 2 was a love letter to the original gundam by Hideaki Anno…and it was gorgeous.
That GQux episode was truly incredible. Dropping in the classic music like that? Chefs kiss.
I watched ARIA the animation, and yea, it’s really good. I also finished NEW GAME!! Which is quite good, I like CGDCT in a workplace environment for a change (so not a school environment). Lastly I watched Yurumeitsu. Critics often say that nothing happens in CGDCT. The yuru mates really don’t do shit basically. They sleep a lot. So yea pretty good, but nothing special. I started watching slow loop. Which is very comfy, they cuddle a lot.
I love ARIA. To me, it’s the perfect iyashikei - it’s just beautiful snd calm, and Akari’s entire purpose in life is to share happiness. And Alicia is the archetype ara ara onee-san.
I watched Kick-Heart the other day. Masaaki Yuasa is incredible (and his work is incredibly horny). It’s a lot of fun.
Weekly ranking roundup:
- Anime Corner - Full Results - Weekly Winner: Witch Watch
- Reddit Karma - Weekly Winner: Apothecary Diaries
Credit to /u/Abysswatcherbel for making the chart for reddit karma and /u/Nooble5 for the Anime Trending chart.
Witch Watch continues to top the chart over on AC. Meanwhile, nothing is coming very close to The Apothecary Diaries on the reddit karma chart. I do find it kind of funny that a 2-minute long short for Lycoris Recoil was enough to win second place on the reddit chart. I also noticed that two of my favorites this season, Rock is a Lady’s Modesty and Apocalypse Hotel are both creeping up the reddit chart.
The only series I’m following so far this season is Apocalypse Hotel. Last week’s episode was fine all in all, but it did an odd thing. They showed the OP for the first time, and it was uncomfortably dissonant - both downbeat and off-key, and ultimately sort of dirge-like. But it was disconcerting enough that it has to have neen deliberate, and it sort of fits, because at the point we picked up the story, both the hotel and the MC have just about run their course, and have just at this late stage found a glimmer of hope. So I suspect that as their fortunes improve, the OP is going to evolve to reflect it. Or at least I hope so, since that would be awesome, and without something like that, the OP will just remain inexplicably awkward.
As far as day-to-day viewing goes, I started off the week with season 1 of Baka to Test. It was fine but sort of oddly dull. I’m not quite sure how it managed that, since all of the individual parts seem like they should add up to more than that. The setup’s interesting and the characters are relatively well developed and the art style is intriguing and it’s consistently funny, but it still somehow manages to be sort of drab all in all. The subs were sort of meta-amusing though - very much “localized,” and by era as well as place.
Then after a bit of wandering, I watched Saekano Or more precisely, I watched half of Saekano, then dropped it. It was strange - the “boring girlfriend” of the title was the only engaging character in the whole cast. She’s intriguing and distinctive and very much her own character, while all of the rest are just awkward conglomerations of tropes that aren’t even internally coherent. I never got a sense of any of them as distinct, recognizable individuals - they were just sort of blank ciphers assigned some combination of stereotypes - and their actions never seemed to spin off from their characters, but to just be whatever was necessary to move the plot along. And most notably, the qualities and actions assigned to the MMC tended to be tedious, insufferable and obnoxious, in addition to arbitrary, which is most of what led me to drop it.
Then I ended up on something only sort of anime-adjacent - Pantheon - which was excellent and highly recommended, but not technically anime, so I guess I’ll leave it at that.
