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Iaboo, Youaboo, Weallaboo for Anime!

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
Oh dang.

Trailer's positioning it more on the thriller side of Lupin, but it's an early tease so who knows. Also looks like Britain this time?
 
I've been watching Godzilla S.P. - we're now at episode 8. It's still real good, and things just keep getting better.
It’s 2:30am and I still can’t sleep because holy eff, this show is good. TFW episode 10 and the classic Godzilla ost kicks in and I got goosebumps. It’s already the best Godzilla thing in ages, now just to wait and see if it sticks the landing.
 

q 3

here to eat fish and erase the universe
(they/them)
The new season of Zombie Land Saga is on fire, y'all. Well not literally. Not yet. Yugiri duels the Battousai! Lily dabs on Light Yagami! The Legendary Yamada Tae goes grocery shopping!
 

ThornGhost

lofi posts to relax/study to
(he/him)
Was looking to see if there was info on when the Love is War OVA might be officially translated but, uh, it looks like it's been fabsubbed on YouTube and it's also baaaaasically hentai. At least the first part is anyway. I know OVA's get a little loosey goosey with tone but this is so far afield from what I was expecting. Hopefully it is not an indication of where season 3 is headed.
 

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
I went and looked that up out of some kind of masochistic curiosity, and yup, that's one of the worst cases of "it's still hentai even if you frame it as a parody of hentai" I've seen in quite some time.
 

Rosewood

The metal babble flees!
(she/her)
I skimmed through the last few pages to see if there was any mention of this one, but didn't find anything. Admittedly if the title wasn't in bold I likely missed it. Anyhow! Those Snow-White Notes. (on CR) It's similar to Descending Stories in being a slice-of-life drama featuring a traditional Japanese performing art. In this case, it's shamisen. The shamisen parts are more interesting than the characters, so far, but that can certainly change as things go along. It is written to be accessible to newbies to the form: for example, there's a shamisen/vocal duet in the 2nd episode, and before the characters start the song, there's a brief explanation of the common interpretation of the lyrics. For something we semi-randomly chose to watch, it's quite good and we intend to continue with it.

We also watched the first episode of Kono Oto Tomare on Funimation--this one about a high school koto appreciation club--and were nowhere near as impressed. Too much emphasis on bullying (imo) and they didn't even have any koto music in the ep!
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
Kono Oto Tomare and Those Snow White Notes, despite having very different leads... are kind of the same show. Snow White actually has the main instrument in the first opening ( but not the second strangely), the animation is a but sharper, it's slightly less clichéd. Buuuut despite being surface level pedestrian, Kono is the show I became more invested in. It's like a feel-good crowd pleaser, a bit more than Snow White. Both are good shows but I wasn't anticipating each episode like Kono, a deceptively engaging series.
 

Rosewood

The metal babble flees!
(she/her)
We only watched the first ep of Kono Oto Tomare so maybe we'll go back and give it a proper three-ep test! We aren't paying for Funi and if I thought YouTube was bad about ads... watching the exact same ad three times in a row, for multiple commercial breaks, all unskippable, has it beat by a significant margin.
 

JBear

Internet's foremost Bertolli cosplayer
(He/Him)
I'm watching Snow White Notes with Johnny, but at this point am mostly driven by inertia, I think. It's fine, but I too haven't really managed to get invested. Kono Oto Tomare, meanwhile, managed to snag me sufficiently that I plowed right in to the manga after the show was finished and am currently up to date on that. I can't really point at anything about it to recommend it over Snow White Notes, but it just managed to get me to really root for these dumb kids in a way that Snow White Notes hasn't to this point.
 

q 3

here to eat fish and erase the universe
(they/them)
I feel like Snow White's biggest problem is that the first two episodes teased something way more interesting than generic high school club shenanigans and a tournament arc, but the rest of it has been generic high school club shenanigans and a tournament arc. Good music tho
 

JBear

Internet's foremost Bertolli cosplayer
(He/Him)
Was looking to see if there was info on when the Love is War OVA might be officially translated but, uh, it looks like it's been fabsubbed on YouTube and it's also baaaaasically hentai. At least the first part is anyway. I know OVA's get a little loosey goosey with tone but this is so far afield from what I was expecting. Hopefully it is not an indication of where season 3 is headed.
I haven't watched it, but I'm caught up on the manga and don't recall anything of the sort, so I think I can safely say it was some anime-original content and not indicative of where the show is going.
 
Random thoughts on the shows I'm watching:

As others have mentioned, whenever So I'm a Spider, So What? goes to the humans, the story drags. I don't really care about them and their boring ass generic fantasy world problems. Especially when the previous episode left things hanging with Spidergirl. Oh well, if that's the price I have to pay for the insane ramblings of Spider, I'll pay it.

If you told me that I would still be watching Don't Tease Me Miss Nagatoro after the first episode, I wouldn't have believed you. But the second episode does a better job of establishing Nagatoro than the first episode's bullying, with subsequent episodes cementing that Nagatoro does have a crush on Naota. It still presents some very wrong lessons, so it's kind of a wash.

Zombie Land Saga Revenge answers some questions! And then casually drops a bombshell! Fuck, I still love it though.

I've Been Killing Slimes For 300 Years and Maxxed Out My Level has a title that is far too long and hasn't been mentioned on here before. Azusa Aisawa was a dedicated office worker. So dedicated she gave everything for the company and died at her desk. So God (or is it Goddess? It is a woman that appears to her) tells Azusa that she will be reincarnated in a fantasy and can ask for whatever she wants. So Azusa asks for eternal life and God throws in being eternally 19 as a bonus and a few other things. Then the title happens in a couple of minutes and the show gets underway. It's a not a bad harem show though, if also not spectacular. And there's only a couple instances of breasts going *boing* on the very well endowed elf girl so it has that going for it too. I liken it to anime comfort food.

Seven Knights Revolution takes far too damn long to go anywhere with it's fucking plot and then does an info dump in two episodes. Much like every other gatcha game to anime adaption, so I shouldn't be surprised.
 

John

(he/him)
I stopped watching anime about 15 years ago, but recently started exercising, and needed something short and entertaining to watch. I've been watching one anime episode a day while on the elliptical, picking stuff that was either recommended or that I can't remember/didn't finish back when I did watch stuff. I'm keeping The Slayers talk to its own thread, so here's just the other shows.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica - This was a patron exclusive topic for the Alzabo Soup podcast, and wouldn't have been on my list to watch if it wasn't. I thought it was okay, didn't blow my mind or anything with its twists and turns, but it was fine from a plot perspective. Even though it was light on fan service, it was still there, especially baked into some of the girls' character designs. That type of stuff really skeeves me out, even when it's not the focal point.

Serial Experiments Lain - I watched most of this back in high school on rented VHS copies, but never finished it. I'm up to Episode 6, and it's starting to get weird, like I remember. No fan service, but it does have creepy detail-free nude Lain in the credit scene, and at various times in the show. Maybe I should stop watching shows starring 14 year old girls?!

Next up, I'll be alternating between the OG Gundam and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, but I did also like the short self contained aspects of the two above titles. If anyone has recommendations of shorter/single season shows, let me know. I did re-buy Cowboy Bebop recently, so that would be a fun revisit, and once distribution comes back for the Macross shows I'd love to check out what I haven't seen there.
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
For something different, I recommend Ping Pong, a great little sports drama with out-there animation from Masaaki Yuasa.

Right now, Oddtaxi is a great little noir-lite show about a sardonic but caring taxi driver who ends up in the middle of a disparate set of circumstances headed into a collision course. But the taxi man might have his own set of secrets as he tries to maneuver the situation to his desires.

Erased is a pretty good time travel mystery tale.

The Promised Neverland: there's a disappointing second season but the first is kind of perfect and also leaves off in a perfect spot so you are good sticking with that.
 

YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
If you want something like Lain, Funimation recently re-released Paranoia Agent, which is a GOAT, but you might have already seen it.
 
As others have mentioned, whenever So I'm a Spider, So What? goes to the humans, the story drags.
I've been watching this show with a friend, and when we got to last week's episode titled, "I'm Not In This One, Am I?" we both immediately groaned, "Oh nooooooooooooo, this episode is all-babies, isn't it!? Ughhhhhhhhh" it was indeed, a babies-only episode.

I've Been Killing Slimes For 300 Years and Maxxed Out My Level has a title that is far too long and hasn't been mentioned on here before.
It's fine. It's a stress free show about an immortal isekai'd witch who builds a weird mildly gay psudo-harem/found-family of cute fantasy-girls around her. It's a good decompression show and has some laughs along the way but isn’t entirely guilt free.

Erased is a pretty good time travel mystery tale.
Haha, oh no. This show actually has a pretty good setup and initial mystery. But it becomes infuriating to watch as the characters do some really stupid, brain-dead stuff. The main character's relationships with underaged girls also borderline creepy. And the ending fails to stick the landing even harder than LOST. I have a very hard time recommending this show.

The currently airing Tokyo Revengers has a similar scenario of time traveling mystery-doos to prevent murders in the past. So far I’m liking it a lot, and it’s a decent amount less skeevy and annoying but the source material is also over 200 chapters at this point so I expect the show to either have a “go read the manga” ending or just continue on way too long.
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
The main character's relationships with underaged girls also borderline creepy.
Don't agree with everything but agree with this.

The currently airing Tokyo Revengers has a similar scenario of time traveling mystery-doos to prevent murders in the past. So far I’m liking it a lot, and it’s a decent amount less skeevy and annoying but the source material is also over 200 chapters at this point so I expect the show to either have a “go read the manga” ending or just continue on way too long.
I like it OK but I'd say the lead has definitely made some spectacularly bone-headed moves, particularly in the last couple episodes. And it also has the lead in a pretty questionable time travel relationship. Also, I'm not sure that the time travel stuff makes consistent sense. I mean, when does it ever but there are definitely causality stuff that I'm pointing to and going "uh, wait, why?" when the hero returns to the present.
 

JBear

Internet's foremost Bertolli cosplayer
(He/Him)
Erased is really good, while Tokyo Revengers is really mediocre. The main character sucks, the plot makes no sense, and it's obsessed with a giant cast of bullies and thugs who blend together and are all kind of terrible. To say nothing about how it's trying to romanticize high school gangs.
 

q 3

here to eat fish and erase the universe
(they/them)
Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun was dragging a bit near the end of its first season, but its second season has been excellent so far. In a lot of ways it feels like a classic series from the early '00s revamped for the current day. Or maybe a genderswapped My Next Life as a Villainess, seeing as it's about a Very Nice Boy who manages to accidentally form a pansexual harem through a combination of being very nice and very lucky (until he takes things even further in his "evil form" which is the personification of the meme "Don't you just want to go ape shitt").
 

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
To say nothing about how it's trying to romanticize high school gangs.
And I mean if you wanna do that you should just be watching Cromartie High. Or Durarara I guess. Or go oldschool with Kyo Kara Ore Wa, or really oldschool with Sakigake Otokojuku or Sukeban Deka....
 

Zef

Find Your Reason
(He/Him)
And I mean if you wanna do that you should just be watching Cromartie High.

But if you do that you will weep, because there will be no more high school delinquent gang shows worth watching.
 
Finished the first season of Jujutsu Kaisen. I was kind of indifferent of it going in, figuring it to be boilerplate or just mediocre in some fashion. Though it is just kind of the hippest anime of all time, and that's worth some consideration, it's more that I'm consistently shocked by the maturity and tact in the characters. I've started following the manga as well and gege writes with a sort of humility that's always engaging, and every ability is somewhat exacting in the conceptual and aesthetic qualities and manages to hit basically every time.
The visual flair of the manga and audio cues of the anime for Todo's claps are so brilliant.
, and there's not an ability that ever feels wasted or like it wasn't thought out to the nth degree. Wishing gege good health, and also excited for film and season 2. The only real problem with the manga are that the fight scenes get very muddy with a lot of like clothing and crowded areas. They will look so good in motion though.

Also have started Japan Sinks 2020. Yuasa is unassailable in making me feel invested. Watching it with my partner, and at the end of the second episode we were both marked silent in a way maybe no other anime has done (the last time i have been shocked like it was the mid-credit scene in titan, but in a different way). Ultimately we figured a mental break will be needed through most of it. Not much else to say, it's just emotionally draining in all the best and worst ways.
 
A few updates on things I'm watching:

Back Arrow is really dumb, but it's my kind of dumb and I love it. It's just complete nonsense in the vein of Code Geass, but is a lot more tasteful with a cast of characters that are a lot easier to root for. Definitely something the few of us mecha heads still out there ought to give the good ole college try. I have a very hard time believing that they'll be able to wrap it up well in the next two episodes though. It feels like we're finally leaving Midgard, versus descending into the Northern Crater.

My Hero Academia - Deku just learned Black Whip and the repercussions of that are secretly tremendous. I'm very excited for where the show is going next. The next arc should be a lot of fun. I just hope the 2nd Cour doesn't leave off at a shitty place in the middle of a fight or something.

To Your Eternity continues to be a gorgeous, emotionally draining, rollercoaster of a show. The philosophical themes the show discusses - not through direct dialog but through examining the lives of these characters - is honestly artful. We're halfway through and I just know that they're going to kill off Gugu in the most heart wrenching way (assumptions; I don't know where this show is going) and I'm still not emotionally prepared for it. Still a fantastic show, but sometimes I kinda just want to curl up, go to sleep, and pause my existence after watching it sometimes.

Mini Dragon is a series of 1.5 min Dragon Maid shorts, and each one is delightful and perfectly distills everything wonderful about this show. This format is honestly the perfect hype vehicle because I'm growing increasingly impatient and excited for when Season 2 of Dragon Maid comes back in July.

Slime Diaries is all of the best parts of the Slime-Isekai, with almost none of the bad stuff. (Mild fanservice aside.) If TenSura is like a poor man's Suikoden, then Slime Diaries is a show about hanging out with all your friends back at your Suiko-castle and it's lovely.

Tokyo Revengers is really mediocre. The main character sucks, the plot makes no sense, and it's obsessed with a giant cast of bullies and thugs who blend together and are all kind of terrible. To say nothing about how it's trying to romanticize high school gangs.
Big disagreement here. The main character is a whiny baby who is dumb and a loser, but I find it admirable and enjoyable that he keeps working past all his flaws despite the harrowing personal danger he is constantly in, in order to become a better person. Especially when it would just be so much easier for him to just run away. The plot is very straight forward: the main character can go back in time ten years because reasons. And he uses the opportunity to change his past and the past of people he cares about because he knows things don't end up well for them. It's literally just the same plot as Erased, but the main character has a lot more agency and personal investment. The bullies and thugs he finds himself surrounded by are bad people, but they're not irredeemable and most of the sympathetic ones are sympathetic because they have redeeming qualities that just need fostering and encouraging. And I don't particularly read the show as 'romanticizing high school gangs' when we're reminded at every turn that these people's involvement in gangs has ruined everyone's lives and gets most of them killed in the future. If anything, the show is about rehabilitating these thugs and getting them on the path where they can leave the gang-life behind. The only thing I find troubling about the show is the main character dealing with his high school girlfriend. But their relationship is innocent enough and basically platonic/puppy-love when they've never even kissed. And he's not fantasizing about her or doing anything skeevy, just doing his best to try and prevent her untimely death in the future as a casualty of the gang wars he's constantly trying to stop.

Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song - I had a lot of apprehension about this show in the beginning. But with two episodes left I'm mostly over it. It's been an enjoyable, if overly predictable ride, which is my biggest criticism. So far, there's been a lot of dramatic twists, but most of them have been obvious or even blatantly telegraphed which isn't as fun as when you can't see things coming. But the story itself is fairly solid and entertaining, the characters are mostly likable, and the plotting/story/setting have all been fun to explore. Who would have known that Hatsune-Terminator living the life of the Bicentennial Man would have been such a good ride.

If it makes any difference to JBear, yes there's a mecha in this, no it is not a mecha show. It is 100% a kaiju/tokusatsu show. The Jet Jaguar in this is the size of a truck and made in some crazy dude's garage. That boi is not going to stand a chance against kaiju the size of skyscrapers.
I said this three months ago. The final episode of this show will drop in a few days and I cannot wait to see Jet Jaguar - being the size of a truck - take on a kaiju the size of a skyscraper. This show makes me froth. Godzilla S.P. is the best show this season hands down. Can't wait until July when the rest of you guys get to watch it!
 

JBear

Internet's foremost Bertolli cosplayer
(He/Him)
Big disagreement here. The main character is a whiny baby who is dumb and a loser, but I find it admirable and enjoyable that he keeps working past all his flaws despite the harrowing personal danger he is constantly in, in order to become a better person.
He cries and gets punched a lot. His personal growth is getting used to crying and getting punched a lot. For stupid reasons.

Especially when it would just be so much easier for him to just run away.
And smarter, yes. Again, the plot makes no fucking sense. His grand goal is for someone to not get hit by a truck in 10 years. To accomplish this, instead of focusing on that person not being in one specific place in 10 years, he's trying to restructure the gang that killed her for some reason. To saying nothing of the complete lack of consistency in the time travel rules as already stated by Johnny.

It's literally just the same plot as Erased
Completely untrue. Erased is a mystery that the MC is trying to solve. This guy knows exactly what's happened and is just doing other shit instead.

the main character has a lot more agency and personal investment.
The Erased MCs lack of agency is part of the appeal. He has no control over his powers, and can't get anyone to listen to him in the past because he's a child, and can't get anyone to listen to him in the present because he's a wanted criminal. As for personal investment, you think that "that high school girl I used to date and almost forgot about got hit by a truck" gives our MC more personal investment than "my mother was stabbed to death almost in front of me and I was found at the scene of the crime with her blood on my hands"? Okay.

And I don't particularly read the show as 'romanticizing high school gangs'
We see the leader of the gang stare into the middle distance while talking about redeeming the idea of high school gangs while the music swells and everyone stares on in awe. He and his BFF are constantly represented as the "right" way to do things in contrast to the "bad" gang/s. And more recently, we see how deeply they both care about everyone under them.

we're reminded at every turn that these people's involvement in gangs has ruined everyone's lives and gets most of them killed in the future.
No, their involvement with the "bad" gang is doing that. The show is about keeping their pure/good gang uncorrupted so it can be about petty fist fights and cool tats and motorcycles and not betting rings and drug dealing.

If anything, the show is about rehabilitating these thugs and getting them on the path where they can leave the gang-life behind.
I see absolutely no sign of that. That's certainly not what our MC is trying to do. He's decided that he loves these guys who constantly disrespect, bully, and threaten him and wants to be a part of it but isn't good enough at punching people to feel valued.
 
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He cries and gets punched a lot. His personal growth is getting used to crying and getting punched a lot. For stupid reasons.
He sticks up for himself and his friends instead of backing down or running away like he'd done for over a decade. He works on repairing his relationships and maintaining them instead of abandoning them. He suffers through physical beatings because he realizes the emotional pain of living an empty and rudderless life devoid of interpersonal relationships is harder. He goes out of his way to offer emotional support and words of encouragement to the people around him who need it. He constantly pushes himself into scenarios that he would have originally ran away from in terror in order to accomplish goals he's set for himself. That all counts as personal growth to me, and I've enjoyed seeing that play out. You're welcome to this and the other uncharitable reads of the show - you don't gotta like anything you don't wanna. And I'm not here to try to convince you otherwise, just provide a differing perspective and to back up my initial endorsement of the show for other observers. Sorry you seem to hate the show so much JBear, maybe stop watching it if you're getting so much frustration and so little enjoyment out of it?
 

Bulgakov

Yes, that Russian author.
(He/Him)
He suffers through physical beatings because he realizes the emotional pain of living an empty and rudderless life devoid of interpersonal relationships is harder.
I'll say clearly that I have no experience with this anime whatsoever, so I have no context.

That said wow, "It's better to be beaten and connected than not beaten and a loner" sure seems pretty awful. I am not sure I'd want to watch a show that artificially sets up a forced choice between physical assault (along with emotional trauma because let's be real) and emotional trauma because you chose not to be physically assaulted. I hope there's some intelligent examination of why the character can only choose between those options.
 
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