Iaboo, Youaboo, Weallaboo for Anime!

[Johnny Unusual]

There, I made the dumbest anime thread title. I feel proud.

A weird mix of shows getting delayed actually turned this into a pretty tight season.

Millionaire Detective - Balance: Unlimited is definitely the show I wanted it to be so far. The characters and stories are fun and while they keep the title character an ass, they definitely make him fun to be around. Episode four is a fun slice of life episode where we actually get to see the two characters really bond and I totally ship them now. I love after three episodes of Kambe kicking ass as a money genie, he is seperated from his wealth and is insanely inept. What's more, it turns out part of the reason for the seperation from his "powers", aside from an accident, is childishness. I feel like the show keeps promising to do more with the rest of the cast but largely not a lot is going on with them yet. Like, I would spend an entire series with Snack Girl. Also, looks like the show is heavily foreshadowing its going to kill off some sweet old man detective who is looking to get too close to the truth of some conspiracy.

Appare Ran-Man is also a return delight. Its got a lot of fun characters and the last arc made it even MORE like Wacky Races. I just wish the show wasn't so obvious about who a (if not the) major bad guy is. Like, its not dropping big clues but nature and dynamics of the cast kind of make it easy to figure out I'd love to be wrong, though. Its interesting that the title character, while fun, is not nearly as fun as his sidekick, a John Watson samurai who actually does some funny quick thinking in a recent episode and gets a pet.

The best returner might be Olympia Kyklos, a funny edutainment show. I love that whenever it seems the character learns something he can use, it turns out to be useless. Also, every episode has its own end theme. They are fantastic.

 

[Daikaiju]

It's weird how divergent the tone of Olympia Kyklos is from the original manga.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Deca-Dence continues to be a show that is going to some interesting place. Also, I just assumed the guys who possess the "Gears" were programs in cyberspace but I guess they are physical and just looked like they walked out of an old Japanese kids cartoon. Weird.

No Guns Life is... fine. Like last season. I love noir so I wish it was a little better but its fine. That said, I wish they hadn't dedicated an entire episode to a peeping creep, cause I'm done with that shit.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

Tite Kubo - of Bleach fame - is making a new comic/anime thing called BURN THE WITCH

Here's the first real trailer for it:

Everything I've read about the premise sounds like hot nonsense. So, Tite Kubo. I'm game to see where this goes for a bit.

 

[Mightyblue]

It is apparently set in the Bleach universe too from random mutterings I've heard?

 

[Erilex]

The Netflix Dragon's Dogma anime is looking like a rather bland adaptation of a wonderfully weird game. That they decided the protagonist needed a little extra motivation for going after the dragon, and then made that motivation the most boring, tiresome shit imaginable isn't exactly filling me with confidence towards the writing. We have enough sad revenge wife guys in media already, come on.

From a purely visual perspective it looks decent enough as far as CG animated shows go, but the dragon looks so smooth and textureless. I swear he looked scalier (and scarier) in the PS3 game.

Anyway, If by some bizarre twist of fate I found myself directing a TV adaptation of a videogame with a character creator, I would change the protagonist's appearance and gender every episode. This would never be addressed or explained in the show.

 

[q 3]

In another sign of impending end times, Pretty Cure is finally starting to get official releases in de-glitterized format on Crunchyroll. For whatever reason they've started with a series from a few years ago, Kira Kira Pretty Cure a la Mode, which isn't really my favorite and is definitely one of the less action-packed editions but is still a fun watch if you're in the mood for gay magical girls saving the world with the power of pastries.

 

[Rascally Badger]

I've been watching Inuyasha, though my only thoughts are 'do you remember being a freshman in college?'

 

[Egarwaen]

The first episode of The Great Pretender on Netflix was a wild ride, and gorgeous to boot. Hopefully the rest of it will hold up to the promise!

 

[JBear]

I can attest to all of the currently available episodes being aces. I've really enjoyed all four "cases" thus far.

 

[Egarwaen]

I can attest to all of the currently available episodes being aces. I've really enjoyed all four "cases" thus far.

Then I'm hype to watch more of it. What I really want is anime Leverage, but I'll take a good heist drama.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

I've been watching Inuyasha, though my only thoughts are 'do you remember being a freshman in college?'

I still think the first dozen or so episodes of Inuyasha are really really good stuff, before it becomes clear you're watching your stereotypical, formulaic, action shounen thing. The show also looks fan-friggin-tastic in HD too, but lord almighty, they really screwed the pooch on the first OP.

The first episode of The Great Pretender on Netflix was a wild ride, and gorgeous to boot. Hopefully the rest of it will hold up to the promise!

Yes, everybody should go out and watch it. The first 14 episodes, covering three separate arcs, are out on Netflix. It's probably my favorite show of the year so far. And every "Case" gets better than the last. I'm very excited for the final case, which will span the last 9 episodes. It should hit
Japanese Netflix pretty soon, so y'all will probably hear me singing its praises soon enough once it gets fansubs.

 

[Zef]

I still think the first dozen or so episodes of Inuyasha are really really good stuff, before it becomes clear you're watching your stereotypical, formulaic, action shounen thing. The show also looks fan-friggin-tastic in HD too, but lord almighty, they really screwed the pooch on the first OP.

I tend to put IY at the bottom of my Rumic World ranking, but even then, I postulate that everything up until Kikyo's real, final death is either great or at least good enough to put up with, and, from there, you can skip alllllllll the way to The Final Chapter. Because from the moment Kikyo kroaks, it just becomes an escalating war of the IY crew finding a way to get past Naraku's defenses, Naraku pulling a shonen villain power out of his spider butt, rinse, repeat. It got even worse when Takahashi introduced new antagonists, because they hardly, if at any time, had development of their own; they were usually just splinters of Naraku to pad the page. And there was at least one instance (but I'm sure there's plenty more) of the protags defeating a foe not through strategy, strength, or even the Power of Friendship, but simply because they wanted it real hard.

One of the reasons I like Rinne so much is that he has to pay for all his upgrades

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

I really liked Rinne a lot. And I experienced sorrow with that comic/show twice. The first time, when the big Tohoku Earthquake in 2011 stopped the simulpub release of the comic for free on Viz's website, cutting me off from reading the comic. And the second time when Rinne's anime didn't get renewed for a fourth season. I thought that anime took a while to find its voice, but it really started hitting a stride and nailing the delivery of its humor in the 2nd season.

 

[Torzelbaum]

Inuyasha - a shaggy demon dog story.

 

[Rosewood]

Fruits Basket season 2: oof. Covid hasn't been kind to the entertainment industry anywhere on earth, and I have to be understanding of that. Still, it's kind of sad seeing a series dip from "must watch" to "eh, maybe" between the end of the last season and the beginning of this one.

ETA: we watched the second episode yesterday and it was better. Between us we decided S2 ep1 flopped because it spotlighted an obnoxious tertiary character. The animation quality still seems to have dipped precipitously, though.

 

[Rosewood]

I tend to put IY at the bottom of my Rumic World ranking, but even then, I postulate that everything up until Kikyo's real, final death is either great or at least good enough to put up with, and, from there, you can skip alllllllll the way to The Final Chapter.

Can you tell me when the real death happens in the manga? I'm collecting the "big" editions in paper and if a bunch of the story is skippable, then I'd prefer to save myself some cash. (ETA spoiler it if you think that might be an issue.)

 

[JBear]

we watched the second episode yesterday and it was better. Between us we decided S2 ep1 flopped because it spotlighted an obnoxious tertiary character. The animation quality still seems to have dipped precipitously, though.

Ah, okay, I didn't realize that you'd just started season 2. I've been watching along and haven't really noticed much of an overall dip, TBH (in any respect), so I'll be curious to hear if you still feel that way at the end. I never watched the 2001 series or read the source material, so this is all new to me, and this season has been a lot more real and depressing. It sort of takes the familial abuse/missing stair subtext of season 1 and makes it the text. And maybe that was already the text before, but it's just much more obvious and there's much more of it now.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

I've been enjoying it. At this point, I feel like the "transform into animals" was mostly something to pitch to the editors to compare it to other contemporary popular series of the time because it only rarely enters the show anymore. Not that I mind.

 

[JBear]

I feel like it's instead perhaps an intentional bait and switch. "Here, come look at this cute shoujo with a love triangle and wacky hijinx and cute animals and oh, BTW, life is an unending pit of despair from which no light or hope can escape."

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

I'm in deep Fruits Basket, and I'm not noticing any dip or lag or whatever. It's still the same show, and still great. It is finally showing us the meat of the trauma that it only hinted at before and that's fine. But it's never framed in, "unending pit of despair from which no light or hope can escape" - it's very much played up as, here's all the darkness so that you can appreciate the light better. I still find the show very positive and uplifting and feelgood. The only thing I don't like? Is something that I don't actually dislike, it's pretty good stuff, but it makes me a little forelorn that they're obviously, blatantly telegraphing that Yuki is making new friends/doing student council stuff so that they can softly set him up as the loser for Tohru's romantic romantic interests. I haven't ever read the manga and don't know what's actually gonna happen, but I'll bet my life savings and then some that that's what's going to happen.

 

[Rosewood]

My lips are sealed!

I did read the manga (obvs?) so maybe I'm just kind of bracing myself for the part of it where it started exceeding my fantasy Dunbar number and everybody's backstory felt the same.

Spoiler: not really a spoiler

Also I hate Akito with a passion and the less I see of them the better

....

 

[Zef]

Can you tell me when the real death happens in the manga? I'm collecting the "big" editions in paper and if a bunch of the story is skippable, then I'd prefer to save myself some cash. (ETA spoiler it if you think that might be an issue.)

Sure, I'll just look up where it happ--

...well, Jesus Christ. All right, no prob, I can just look up the end of the Mt. Hakurei/Band of Seven arc--

WHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT WASN'T KIKYO'S DEATH AND SHE LIVED ANOTHER EIGHTEEN VOLUMES

Argh.

OK, well, my mistake. Sorry. Apparently, because I got fed up with Naraku's upgrade race and stopped reading, I SOMEHOW missed all of Kikyo's appearances between the Band of Seven arc in vol. 29 and her ACTUAL, for realsies, death in vol 49 (out of 56). I've spent the last decade-plus believing she really HAD been killed when she dissolved in miasma at the end of that arc. Gah. To add irony to injury, immediately after she dies, the Meido arc begins, and that's the one where I suggested picking it up again.

Nevermind, then!

Sorry for (my) confusion.

EDIT: No, wait, actually, it still kinda works. I had used that event to pinpoint where The Baby came into the picture, because that's when the worst of the upgrade race started happening. If you skip all the way from the start of the Band of Seven, to the story that leads to Kikyo's for real death, that's from the end of vol 24 to the first chapter of 46, or, more precisely, from chapter 236 to 449, a nice and large chunk of sliding goalposts and Inuyasha adding herbs and spices to his sword that you can safely skip. At worst, you'll be missing some Takahashi comedy, as well as character development of Kohaku, possibly some for Sesshoumaru, but the latter gets the biggest spotlight during the Meido arc so you should be fine there

 

[Rosewood]

I don't know whether to thank you or apologize. That's a lotta research for a question that took next to no effort to ask....

 

[Zef]

I don't know whether to thank you or apologize. That's a lotta research for a question that took next to no effort to ask....

Heh, it's fine, it was a 10~15 minute lookup that I overcomplicated in my post Hopefully the answer itself was helpful --I don't know how the 2-in-1s distribute the aforementioned chapters, but a 10~ volume savings sounds nice.

Now I wonder what my answer would be if someone asked me the same about Ranma. I KNOW there's absolutely filler manga chapters, but since the series is much more episodic, that filler is tightly interspersed with many of the really good story arcs. And even the anime has some--SOME, decent original stories lost in the sea of fanfic.

 

[Rosewood]

The VizBig editions are 3-in-1. That doesn't change anything except the specific number of volumes involved though.

Yeah, Ranma being episodic would make it tough to chop apart this way vs. a series like IY that has larger arcs. If they came up with a Happosai- and principal-free edition, that'd be great.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

I love Ranma. So much of how fun it is, is because every character in it is a dirtbag. (With the exception of Akane's older sister maybe.) So you don't feel bad when they get beat up because hey, remember two scenes ago when they were dirtbags? It's very equal opportunity in this respect too. It's like anime Married With Children. Where you can laugh at the dysfunction and people reaping the karma they've sown. But Happosai and the principal are in a league of their own though. They are both irredeemably bad people, to the point of being pure evil. And it's fun/guilt-free to hate them and watch them get their asses handed to them. They are never portrayed as in the right or sympathetic. And juuuust when you think maybe there's a hint of remorse or that they might be expressing some genuine human emotions, like there's a kernel of good inside all that evil... oops! They proceed to double down on how bad they are as people and make anyone in the vicinity pay for being duped by these clowns. In a comic/show where everyone would probably mellow out otherwise and become friends, those two stay in the mix to spice things up and provide tension. Because Dragonball would be boring if Goku and Vegeta became friends and that was the end, you've gotta give them a Freezer and a Cell to fight against to keep their rivalry tense.

 

[Zef]

TBF the Ranma cast has plenty of interpersonal conflicts already, and they were just fine before Happi came along. It's more like having Freezer or Cell pose a serious threat only every fifth appearance and then having them act like Roshi all the time.

Oh yeah, about Master Roshi...

(No, really, I'm all for inserting conflict and at least the Principal has his own brand of it, but I REALLY wish the Dirty Old Man character archetype disappeared forever)

 

[Johnny Unusual]

(No, really, I'm all for inserting conflict and at least the Principal has his own brand of it, but I REALLY wish the Dirty Old Man character archetype disappeared forever)

Seconded. Also, peeper teens. Ahiru no Sora is a show I wish didn't indulge in this from time to time, tainting an otherwise lovable oaf goofball character.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

It's bad when it's the only joke you have/if you dip into that well too much. But I don't personally mind too much. It's obviously very problematic if you romanticize the act and hold the perpetrators up as doing good. But when it's used to show a scumbag is a loser scumbag and there's proper derision being displayed as a result (like say, with Marty McFly and his dad) I'm generally fine with it.