Iaboo, Youaboo, Weallaboo for Anime!

Precure has finally attained the pinnacle of magical girl stock footage attacks:

Oops, I accidentally started rewatching Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

Bongo said:

Oops, I accidentally started rewatching Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

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We'll send a rescue expedition if you're not back in six months.

A couple more animes to talk about! And honestly, neither are phenomenal. But hey, they fill up 20 odd minutes of time and are mostly enjoyable.

First up is Miss Kuroitsu from the Monster Development Department. Like it says in the name, Miss Kuroitsu works for Agrastia to defeat Divine Swordsman Blader, a Kamen Rider-esque hero. Except she has to deal with budget restraints, her boss' procrastination, and the whims of the 12 year old leader who likes cute things. It's a decently funny show that reveals the love the creator has for tokusatsu shows. The side plots of Blader needing to get to his part time job and regular schmo Karen Mizuki doing gig work as a grunt highlight the inherent silliness of the genre without being mean spirited. It might be my favorite show this season, simply because of how much I'm just enjoying it.

Next is The Strongest Sage With the Weakest Crest get an thumbs up simply because it's not a isekai but a straight up fantasy. 12 year old Matthias is the reincarnation of Gaius, a sage who 5000 years ago decided he wanted the Fourth Crest so he suicided. Sorry, "forced his reincarnation." In that 5000 years though, the demons have rebounded after Gaius/Matthias almost wiped them all out and his crest is now considered the weakest. But he don't give AF! He's going to do what heroes like him have always done: Prove how overpowered he is compared to everyone else and get a mini harem going. To be fair, Matthias only has eyes for one of the girls and she has a crush on him as well. The whole thing is played innocently and for comedy as even in his past life, Matthias didn't have much contact with women.

I keep trying to give some thought to Sabikui Bisco, but the only image that comes into my head is the Oglaf dwarves: "You want a giant fucking crab, we got a giant crab! How about some hippos with guns or mafioso with pink rabbit mascot heads?!? Fuck yeah, we got it all!" It reminds me of Dorohedoro or No Guns Life, where the world building is third or fourth on the list of things to talk about and it just want to get to the action.

Almost caught up with Ranking of Kings. This and Oddtaxi earlier last year have been such wonderful surprises. So many great characters, Best Boy Bojji, Other Best Boy Kage, Best Mom Hilene, Best Teacher Despa. If this show pulls a Promised Neverland and goes off a cliff in the second half of the season, a part of me will die.

MarcAlan said:

I keep trying to give some thought to Sabikui Bisco, but the only image that comes into my head is the Oglaf dwarves: "You want a giant fucking crab, we got a giant crab! How about some hippos with guns or mafioso with pink rabbit mascot heads?!? Fuck yeah, we got it all!" It reminds me of Dorohedoro or No Guns Life, where the world building is third or fourth on the list of things to talk about and it just want to get to the action.

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I'm liking the show but I feel like it's non-linear story telling wasn't clear at first, to its detriment. But after a bit of a start with little investment, it has been working and it's probably one of the more interesting shows of the season.

We also started Orbital Children, a series with a lot of interesting ideas and worldbuilding but I feel like I'm waiting for things to click so I'm really invested after the first episode.

R.R. Bigman said:

So many great characters, Best Boy Bojji, Other Best Boy Kage, Best Mom Hilene, Best Teacher Despa.

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Best horse Whiteking.



I'm also going to say worst boy Domas went a long way to make me like him a little more after he says "Curse this sturdy body of mine!" And King Desha definitely earns his spot as #2 king after kicking Domas in the balls.

MarcAlan said:

A couple more animes to talk about! And honestly, neither are phenomenal. But hey, they fill up 20 odd minutes of time and are mostly enjoyable.

First up is Miss Kuroitsu from the Monster Development Department. Like it says in the name, Miss Kuroitsu works for Agrastia to defeat Divine Swordsman Blader, a Kamen Rider-esque hero. Except she has to deal with budget restraints, her boss' procrastination, and the whims of the 12 year old leader who likes cute things. It's a decently funny show that reveals the love the creator has for tokusatsu shows. The side plots of Blader needing to get to his part time job and regular schmo Karen Mizuki doing gig work as a grunt highlight the inherent silliness of the genre without being mean spirited. It might be my favorite show this season, simply because of how much I'm just enjoying it.

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I'm really kind of impressed at this series for the way it's been (so far) handling Wolf Bete. A monster that was designed to be male, but interference from higher turned it into a female body without time to adjust the brain's settings, resulting in a transmasc character that could have easily been handled so poorly. Like, I was expecting at best them to be treated as a "standard" male-to-female gender morph, and in general just to exist to be the butt of jokes.



But instead... they're actually kind of treated with a surprising amount of respect? And some shittiness from people around them, but in a way that feels like it's in service of a message.


Just. I'm fairly impressed at Wolf expressing some of the same thoughts I had, both before and during my own transition. Not knowing what is supposed to be normal. Not knowing what is "right" for me. Feeling like what I had was "fine" and acceptable, but that I'd feel more right if I could change it.

And in a very targeted one for me, asking about urination issues, which made me think about the days after my bottom surgery, where the nurses were very concerned about everyone's urination. For understandable reasons.

I hope the author kept this up. I'm expecting it to turn into trash, but for now I'm impressed that this show managed to come in as another trans mood show. Especially after She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wiseman's adaptation decided to utterly excise any and all references to transgender themes that the LN was honestly pretty good about.

One thing I'm noticing about the Legend of the Galactic Heroes OVA that I didn't appreciate the first time around is how quick the editing is during the battle scenes. In-universe, it takes hours to conduct these complex fleet maneuvers, with a lot of relaying of orders and fine adjustments and so forth. But they will frequently cut directly from one admiral giving the order to the enemy admiral seeing the result and ordering his response. It's edited like they're just having a conversation, even though hours elapsed between those two statements, and that really helps to strengthen the framing that it's more a battle of wits than a battle of ships.

This week's Miss Kuroitsu doubles down and adds a trans magical girl, so I don't think Wolf's representation is entirely a coincidence.

Bongo said:

One thing I'm noticing about the Legend of the Galactic Heroes OVA that I didn't appreciate the first time around is how quick the editing is during the battle scenes. In-universe, it takes hours to conduct these complex fleet maneuvers, with a lot of relaying of orders and fine adjustments and so forth. But they will frequently cut directly from one admiral giving the order to the enemy admiral seeing the result and ordering his response. It's edited like they're just having a conversation, even though hours elapsed between those two statements, and that really helps to strengthen the framing that it's more a battle of wits than a battle of ships.

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It's probably a reason, why I like the battles in this show so much, especially compared to other stuff. I mean, partly it's just that they are, when they happen, big and important. But also, the focus isn't really on the action, it is just used to frame the situation, when it's more about the tactical decisions made.

I should rewatch that show, someday.

I know it's kind of old news by this point, but we finished ODDTAXI last night, and that final episode was even better than I was expecting given how good the rest of the season yet. I'm glad there's a movie coming, but am hoping we get to see it before the end of the year!

FelixSH said:

I should rewatch that show, someday.

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Why not now?

After seeing how well Ranking of Kings emulates(?) the hand-drawn, watercolor aesthetic of old proto-Ghibli TV animation, it just makes me even more disappointed in how samey a lot of anime looks nowadays

Also this show rules

Speaking of RoK, everyone's been talking it up so much I'm thinking of making it my next exercise machine series. Which means I want to watch it on a decent player that isn't likely to break mid-stream, and without ads. Should I just buy the dang thing on Amazon, or is it worth mucking about with Funi/Chrunchy, neither of which I'm currently subscribed to?

Both I think you can watch with commercials, but both are sometimes glitchy as hell. Crunchyroll's interface on smart TVs is the better of the two, which still isn't saying much.

I just remembered that there is a Freakangels anime being done by Crunchyroll now. Let's check out the trailer:


...Well that looks like garbage compared to the original webcomic. And being written by Warren Ellis taints it a bit as well so I feel safe in skipping out on this entirely.

MarcAlan said:

Both I think you can watch with commercials, but both are sometimes glitchy as hell. Crunchyroll's interface on smart TVs is the better of the two, which still isn't saying much.

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I meant to say, for exercise machine purposes I'd be watching on an iPad (and one that's several years old at this point, so an inefficient player could definitely be a problem).

Weird to see any hype around the new Bastard!! anime. I found the manga to be dated and embarrassing beyond belief, just the lowest, absolute garbage

I don't think I can convey it any better than what poured out upon hearing of the announcement.

netflix bankrolling a bastard anime and it's so perfect for their ethos of what anime is and should be that i can't even begrudge them for digging through the trash like that
eternally stuck in not-your-daddy's-cartoons late-bubble manga entertainment juvenile bullshit mode
they got the goblin slayer anime's director to do it which figures

it's actually like almost too much of what it is to drag into the modern day. like the entire thing is just heavy metal album cover writhing: the comic and calling it "borderline" porn is underselling the aesthetic. they're not exactly doing a smutty ova with it so you just get like weird pretension of the series having any inherent worth as a narrative
the saga of dark schneider must be told

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Salaryman's Club is a show that snuck into this season and it's not super-amazing but it's a nice little sports show about a salaryman badminton team. I am curious how much of a thing this is: of course company own sports teams (professionally but also do little teams for their groups) but the teams in this series are at professional levels (and national levels), with media coverage and literally are just named after their companies with the catch of this particular show is that the main low level team needs to work and do sports. Catch aside, is this very much a thing and is it a thing in other countries?

I‘m all caught to Ranking of Kings, just in time for the latest episode. Bojji is so pure that even the main villain blurts out for him to be careful.

As someone with his finger perpetually on the throbbing pulse of modern anime, naturally I'm watching the hot new series everyone's talking about: Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion (2006).

I actually got a few episodes into this a while back but just wasn't feeling it. I'm not sure why; between CLAMP, giant robots and Death Note-like scheming, this is precisely the shit I should be into. And as it's represented in SRW30, I figured I ought to give it another chance. Anyway, I'm enjoying my second pass at it and plan to go the distance this time.

A few early observations:

- I like that Lelouch's powers didn't come with an instruction manual, and that he has to figure out the rules and limitations through careful experimentation. That sort of thing always entertains me.

- Am I basic if Lloyd is my favorite character so far?

- Lelouch's high school antics are relentlessly, aggressively boring. I get that he needs to have a civilian identity to protect and to balance with his other pursuits, but damn, man. Come on.

- I don't know how it's going to happen, but I feel like Lelouch's plans will at some point hit a brick wall when he realizes Nunnally is immune to the Geass because he can't make eye contact with her.

LELOUCH: Nunnally, I demand you tell me what you know! I order you! I command you!!
NUNNALY: ...
NUNNALY: ...
NUNNALY: Nunnaly ya business. X)
LELOUCH: !@#$%

I watched Geass as a teenager before I'd really developed any concrete tastes and preferences of my own simply because it was popular, and that kind of surrender to the majority flow I think fucked me up enormously with the medium and what kind of works I was habitually exposed to in that period. Death Note is a good parallel to draw because they are both so painfully emblematic of the mid-2000s zeitgeist, in the most pejorative way I can conjure up; utterly vapid surface pretense that's transparently engineered for mass market appeal and which builds its foundation of universal attraction with a deliberate and total absence of thematic depth beyond crass exploitation and shock value, serving up nothing of ideological substance except the revealing treatment of women during the course of these stories. Late-night misogyny hour timeslot darlings, the lot of them. Gorō Taniguchi's oeuvre speaks for itself--he has a voice and it is repellent.

I'll bear that in mind as I watch.

Vaeran said:

- Am I basic if Lloyd is my favorite character so far?

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They're a fun character.

Vaeran said:

Lelouch's high school antics are relentlessly, aggressively boring. I get that he needs to have a civilian identity to protect and to balance with his other pursuits, but damn, man. Come on.

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I actually like the school antics, but get why they'd feel like a drag. As much as it feels like filler, the school business grounds the setting and the characters so they can get a taste of harmony and peace so that both the threat of chaos has real consequences, and informs Lelouch's desperation and internal anguish later on in the show.

Peklo said:

Gorō Taniguchi's oeuvre speaks for itself--he has a voice and it is repellent.

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He makes fun shows, but they definitely require some compartmentalization to enjoy. Whether or not you wanna do that, that's always gonna be a personal decision. It's a little bit easier to do so on a show like Planetes. Little harder with shows like this or Back Arrow.

Something felt off about the way Gyakuza was portrayed. Every damn character in RoK is much is much more than they seem, but the Gyakuza people were cartoonishly evil, even when it actively hurt them. I was wondering if there would be more to their betrayal of the Houma, but if the reason is simply the author subconsciously or consciously writing “ungrateful Koreans”, then that’s really screwed up.

How is Imperial Japan taught in the country? Is this a common idea?

That postulated theory is certainly possible, but that's also way too vague to make any kind of declarative statements about. Definitely something worth keeping an eye on to see if there are other parallels that pop up down the line. But as it is, I'm not quite sold. Especially when the alleged metaphor crumbles pretty quick upon any further examination. (Houma in this instance get completely wiped out; King Bosse's revenge is characterized as being just as cruel and evil -- he's not the good guy in this story; backwater villages in Japan historically look very similar to the Korean example that article gives; who are the Gods in this whole metaphor? Etc.)

What I think is more likely is that the story/author is just falling back on standard, near universal, fairytale tropes about civilizing savages. Which is not good at all obviously, but not necessarily informed by malice and prejudice, just ignorance/naivety.

R.R. Bigman said:

How is Imperial Japan taught in the country? Is this a common idea?

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It's really just isn't taught. At least in regards to their colonization and war atrocities. I talked to several Japanese exchange students back in college, esp during my East Asian history seminars. The general populous knows and is taught the basics, but it's not explored with any depth and is frequently white washed in primary and secondary school. Not necessarily directly lying about what happened, but more like the common lies of omission that most nations tend to carry out about their history's less savory moments, and focusing more on domestic history versus what the country was generally doing on the world stage at any point in history. (Like how nobody in America talks about the disastrous American colonial experiments in the Philippines that you could easily argue was genocide, as bad or worse than what Japan was doing in Korea pre-WW2.)

At least, that's how it was like a decade plus ago. Things change

I hope there isn’t much too this. Ranking of Kings has been a delightful surprise, and I do not want it to go all Cerebus with terrible politics coming out of nowhere.

I’m gonna be real. Love Ranking of Kings dearly, but it’s had “terrible politics” from the beginning, just by merit of its entire premise. A modern fairytale about good kings is inherently bad on its own. Monarchies are bad! And this is essentially apologia for autocratic systems. If Bojji decides eventually let’s shift to a constitutional monarchy or to abolish the entire ranking system for kings, awesome. But I haven’t seen a hint of that being the case.