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Iaboo, Youaboo, Weallaboo for Anime!
- Thread starter Johnny Unusual
- Start date
Hi, yo, just going to go ahead and fess up that it was I that told BEAT about Jack the Nipper, and it was because I recently watched Fate/Apocrypha on Netflix while writing this article on the so-not-horny-it's-horny FATE cooking videogame. So just letting everyone know they can watch ol' Shortie Jack in anime form on Netflix if they're interested.
Oh, huh. I was looking to see if Apocrypha had an anime and the stuff I was seeing said it was just a book. Must have been out of date. Or I totally missed it. Sorry, and thanks!
What i watched
Odd taxi
What I expected
2d Zootopia, lots of entertaining back and forth banter
What I got
what is effectively a really tall cake with lots of frosting: cute looking thing hiding multiple layers of goodness that I will likely consume again as soon as I recover from consuming all of it in one go. Also a pleasant surprise at the final layer.
The banter is not as entertaining as I would have liked probably because of how much more grounded everything is compared to what I am used to with anime conversations about nothing
What I enjoyed most
Calm, low stakes feeling throughout
Odd taxi
What I expected
2d Zootopia, lots of entertaining back and forth banter
What I got
what is effectively a really tall cake with lots of frosting: cute looking thing hiding multiple layers of goodness that I will likely consume again as soon as I recover from consuming all of it in one go. Also a pleasant surprise at the final layer.
The banter is not as entertaining as I would have liked probably because of how much more grounded everything is compared to what I am used to with anime conversations about nothing
What I enjoyed most
Calm, low stakes feeling throughout
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
I wouldn't agree but I get it. I think part of the brilliance is that it's a slow burn that you don't even notice the tension ratcheting up. The first few episodes are chill noir with no clear direction and characters interacting in a conversational manner. By the end, the seemingly chill series is an airtight thriller, albeit with a seemingly unflappable protagonist. OddTaxi was my favourite show the year it came out (assuming I'm not forgetting something. I feel there was some tight competition that year) and I'm always happy when more people discover it.
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
I should note that there's an Oddtaxi movie that more or less retells the series (I have no idea if they re-used animation but probably) but also elaborates on the ending and I kind of don't like that because that last beat was perfect.
What I watched
Ya Boy Kongming!
What I expected
Ya silly, Kongming!
What I got
Ya anime as f* and surrounded by three kingdoms geeks inside and outside your world, Kongming!
What I enjoyed most
Ya very existence's explanation was just handwaved away, Kongming!
Ya think your robes should be dry clean only, Kongming!
Ya Boy Kongming!
What I expected
Ya silly, Kongming!
What I got
Ya anime as f* and surrounded by three kingdoms geeks inside and outside your world, Kongming!
What I enjoyed most
Ya very existence's explanation was just handwaved away, Kongming!
Ya think your robes should be dry clean only, Kongming!
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
It was a pretty fun show overall and hopefully it will return with another season.
Killer theme song and OP, too.
Killer theme song and OP, too.
I wouldn't complain about a "using war tactics to promote an indie artist"-of the week show. Or whatever they do since they hit major goal in the first season.
I may do a rewatch in English when it's out. Will be fun if the clip is any indication.
What I watched
In/Spectre
What I expected
Come onnnnnn, anime bullshit! Let me hate this one!
What I got
Slender man but horny. So soo horny.
Has a similar feel to Monogatari series but not as much comedy, significantly fewer characters and also way less skeev.
On that note, the main girl probably surpasses Shinobu's thirst for blood and craving for donuts with her own thirst and cravings for (meowing) (panting) (barking) (howling) hubba hubba.
Dueling Shitposting and creepy pastas. Done the anime way (as if there is any other)
Soo much talking, but expected after finding out this is based on a novel. I'm pretty sure the characters are still jabbering on about something right now.
I didn't hate it.
What I enjoyed most
Love the ED. The style of clothing and the jazz makes for a good way to end each episode. Wasn't a fan of the song initially but it grew on me.
In/Spectre
What I expected
Come onnnnnn, anime bullshit! Let me hate this one!
What I got
Slender man but horny. So soo horny.
Has a similar feel to Monogatari series but not as much comedy, significantly fewer characters and also way less skeev.
On that note, the main girl probably surpasses Shinobu's thirst for blood and craving for donuts with her own thirst and cravings for (meowing) (panting) (barking) (howling) hubba hubba.
Dueling Shitposting and creepy pastas. Done the anime way (as if there is any other)
Soo much talking, but expected after finding out this is based on a novel. I'm pretty sure the characters are still jabbering on about something right now.
I didn't hate it.
What I enjoyed most
Love the ED. The style of clothing and the jazz makes for a good way to end each episode. Wasn't a fan of the song initially but it grew on me.
Sometimes I lay awake at night and think about Brain Powerd
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
Season is mostly over.
Lycoris Recoil is not without it's problems but overall it ended things mostly well. It's weird because it is a series that's basically about a former child secret police girl and the series tries to be "well, the system they are in does is bad" from the get go, yet while the show wants to commit to characters, most notably the villain, acknowledging this, it also wants to paint the protecting of the secret existence of urban child soldiers as a win so society doesn't explode. Which... less good. I still enjoyed it but that is a pretty questionable aspect. I suspect they are looking for a second season to explore it a bit more but I feel like it's going to keep sidestepping shit to have a status quo it doesn't want to explode.
The Yakuza's Guide to Babysitting is a show that is watchable but I wish I liked more. I always love "unconventional parent figure/kid" pairings, especially with a tough guy but it weirdly tries to shake off it's slice of life aspect in a way that never quite works (I guess I appreciate they aren't stuck in one mode) and it all felt very slight in a way that didn't work in it's favour and didn't really succeed in it's intended heart-string tugging. And the episode where characters become vtubers is very odd in a not good way.
When Will Ayumu Make His Move? was also a bit slight but I liked it a lot more. It felt like a lesser version of some of the other rom-coms of the year but I always enjoy this wholesome couple where they will definitely get together but it's a matter of when. I wouldn't mind if they did another season, though I'd probably slip out of my head if they never got around to it.
Shadows House season 2 wasn't quite as strong as one but it wasn't a disaster like The Promised Neverland second season was. I think the season ended pretty strong and promising and again, I appreciate while there's a precocious cute girl co-lead who makes it through being optimistic and unsinkable, it remembers to give her vulnerabilities and reminders how the characters will need each other to defeat the Shadow House.
Yurei Deco may be the most inessential of the Science Saru shows. It's good, mostly, though the ending is the kind I don't like, similar to season one of Loki, where they find the baddie and it's a pretty bloodless philosophy argument where the villain just wants to give the heroes a prize for making it to the last act. The show clearly has lots it wants to say about modern society with lots of Mark Twain allusions and references and it's nice to look at but it reminds me of Trigger's BNA; feels more like a decent Saturday morning cartoon that will be forgotten not long after it airs.
Shine On! Shinshengumi Bad Boys is a show I kept watching on momentum but it's so generic and mediocre every step of the way. I wish it were half as fun as it's OP and it's not even a great OP, just somewhat fun and energetic. And it has the gall to imply another season might happen.
Aoashi is a completely competent sports show but somehow just being that (well, and fairly well animated) was enough to make it one of the big series of the season that I look forward to. It never nearly reaches the emotional highs of the third episode but it remains engaging throughout.
Phantom of the Idol is sometimes cute but I like it least when it remembers it's an idol show and includes a song and dance number, which is all the finale is. It works best when the ghost and the lazy guy are bouncing off each other but the show seems to think it's equally as good when the fangirls are nerding out together and I wish it was but it really, really isn't.
Lycoris Recoil is not without it's problems but overall it ended things mostly well. It's weird because it is a series that's basically about a former child secret police girl and the series tries to be "well, the system they are in does is bad" from the get go, yet while the show wants to commit to characters, most notably the villain, acknowledging this, it also wants to paint the protecting of the secret existence of urban child soldiers as a win so society doesn't explode. Which... less good. I still enjoyed it but that is a pretty questionable aspect. I suspect they are looking for a second season to explore it a bit more but I feel like it's going to keep sidestepping shit to have a status quo it doesn't want to explode.
The Yakuza's Guide to Babysitting is a show that is watchable but I wish I liked more. I always love "unconventional parent figure/kid" pairings, especially with a tough guy but it weirdly tries to shake off it's slice of life aspect in a way that never quite works (I guess I appreciate they aren't stuck in one mode) and it all felt very slight in a way that didn't work in it's favour and didn't really succeed in it's intended heart-string tugging. And the episode where characters become vtubers is very odd in a not good way.
When Will Ayumu Make His Move? was also a bit slight but I liked it a lot more. It felt like a lesser version of some of the other rom-coms of the year but I always enjoy this wholesome couple where they will definitely get together but it's a matter of when. I wouldn't mind if they did another season, though I'd probably slip out of my head if they never got around to it.
Shadows House season 2 wasn't quite as strong as one but it wasn't a disaster like The Promised Neverland second season was. I think the season ended pretty strong and promising and again, I appreciate while there's a precocious cute girl co-lead who makes it through being optimistic and unsinkable, it remembers to give her vulnerabilities and reminders how the characters will need each other to defeat the Shadow House.
Yurei Deco may be the most inessential of the Science Saru shows. It's good, mostly, though the ending is the kind I don't like, similar to season one of Loki, where they find the baddie and it's a pretty bloodless philosophy argument where the villain just wants to give the heroes a prize for making it to the last act. The show clearly has lots it wants to say about modern society with lots of Mark Twain allusions and references and it's nice to look at but it reminds me of Trigger's BNA; feels more like a decent Saturday morning cartoon that will be forgotten not long after it airs.
Shine On! Shinshengumi Bad Boys is a show I kept watching on momentum but it's so generic and mediocre every step of the way. I wish it were half as fun as it's OP and it's not even a great OP, just somewhat fun and energetic. And it has the gall to imply another season might happen.
Aoashi is a completely competent sports show but somehow just being that (well, and fairly well animated) was enough to make it one of the big series of the season that I look forward to. It never nearly reaches the emotional highs of the third episode but it remains engaging throughout.
Phantom of the Idol is sometimes cute but I like it least when it remembers it's an idol show and includes a song and dance number, which is all the finale is. It works best when the ghost and the lazy guy are bouncing off each other but the show seems to think it's equally as good when the fangirls are nerding out together and I wish it was but it really, really isn't.
I'm indulging a friend by watching all of Overlord. They really enjoy the show. I can't stand it, and it's only getting worse. The only way a show of this kind could possibly redeem itself is if the main character gets a Death Note style ending. But that's not what kind of show this is.
There are some kernels of interesting ideas to explore that are novel in the larger isekai genre. But it's mostly moot when those ideas are never close to being fully explored, and in the meanwhile it's surrounded by so much disgusting garbage that it's very much not worth wading into. Nearly every character is irredeemably bad and completely unlikable. And the ones that aren't, exist only to be victimized by those who are.
Purple
(She/Her)
Is that the one that starts with a guy playing a skeleton in an MMO by way of someone who doesn't understand the difference between a player and a programmer and he edits the succubus NPC to be super horny for him and then gets all weirded out that the succubus is horny for him suddenly? And I guess Isekai-ness happens somewhere in there but the show does a terrible job of calling attention to when it actually happens?
Because yeah that one's pretty terrible.
Because yeah that one's pretty terrible.
I enjoyed Teppen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! which wasn't as laugh-out-loud as it promised but was surprisingly smart, occasionally very transgressive in mostly good ways, totally disinterested in commercial appeal in a way that I personally find quite appealing, and so powerful it broke the fourth wall and killed a world leader
conchobhar
What's Shenmue?
Yurei Deco was a bust. Not because the answer to the series-long mystery is anti-climactic and unsatisfying — I think it is, but that's not the point — but because the ending is incongruent with the rest of the show.
Anyway, congratulations to Science Saru for their first failure.
So, to elaborate on the finale: the show's big twist is that Phantom Zero and the whole Zero Phenomenon is not some glitch or anything, but an elaborate puzzle — created by the secret leader of the government in order to find their successor. Hack, our deuteragonist, takes them up on the offer, and becomes the new secret leader. Under Hack's directives, the government relaxes its moderation policies: instead of the moderators tightly controlling what people can see on social media, they now fact check claims but otherwise let everything go and allow people to come to their own conclusions. Happy ending!
Problem one: mass surveillance and content moderation was hardly the only problem in Yurei Deco's world. This was a full-blown techno-dystopia: being part of the VR/AR/social-media network is legally mandatory; in most cases, this is achieved with eye surgery; the social network was not just for surveillance, but was also the "circus" to distract the populace from the various problems around them; your social media standing literally determines your worth in life; there are secret police and show trials. None of this is addressed in the finale. Did they forget about their own world, or is the intended takeaway that that's all fine and dandy as long as you can freely tweet?
Problem two: while I agree, philosophically, that censorship is bad, the lightest touch should be used, and people should be trusted to think for themselves… but applying this argument to social media networks is horrifically out of touch. How can anyone possibly look at the last five years of Facebook and Twitter — when these platforms have been used to spread hate speech (and abet genocide), misinformation, disinformation, hoaxes and conspiracy theories, and spur a wave of radicalization — and think that these platforms are doing too much?
It's tempting to assume the writer and/or director are are alt-right dipshits, but I don't think this is actually intended as a political stance. The criticism is too broad, essentially portraying content moderators as Nineteen Eighty-Four's Minitrue; I'd expect a specifically conservative argument to portray "un-PC" views as unfairly silenced, and especially expect something about shadowbanning. Also, the alternative that Yurei Deco comes up with (replacing censors with fact checkers) is literally what the platforms are doing, today. So I think the most likely explanation is that the creators are simply clueless. It's not the only time the show whiffs a metaphor, it's just a shockingly bad whiff.
Problem one: mass surveillance and content moderation was hardly the only problem in Yurei Deco's world. This was a full-blown techno-dystopia: being part of the VR/AR/social-media network is legally mandatory; in most cases, this is achieved with eye surgery; the social network was not just for surveillance, but was also the "circus" to distract the populace from the various problems around them; your social media standing literally determines your worth in life; there are secret police and show trials. None of this is addressed in the finale. Did they forget about their own world, or is the intended takeaway that that's all fine and dandy as long as you can freely tweet?
Problem two: while I agree, philosophically, that censorship is bad, the lightest touch should be used, and people should be trusted to think for themselves… but applying this argument to social media networks is horrifically out of touch. How can anyone possibly look at the last five years of Facebook and Twitter — when these platforms have been used to spread hate speech (and abet genocide), misinformation, disinformation, hoaxes and conspiracy theories, and spur a wave of radicalization — and think that these platforms are doing too much?
It's tempting to assume the writer and/or director are are alt-right dipshits, but I don't think this is actually intended as a political stance. The criticism is too broad, essentially portraying content moderators as Nineteen Eighty-Four's Minitrue; I'd expect a specifically conservative argument to portray "un-PC" views as unfairly silenced, and especially expect something about shadowbanning. Also, the alternative that Yurei Deco comes up with (replacing censors with fact checkers) is literally what the platforms are doing, today. So I think the most likely explanation is that the creators are simply clueless. It's not the only time the show whiffs a metaphor, it's just a shockingly bad whiff.
Anyway, congratulations to Science Saru for their first failure.
Yakuza's Guide to Babysitting was pretty decent aside from the vtuber episode, which was just garbage. They needed to spend more time on Yaeka's second friend aside from the two minutes she got getting introduced and then becoming a friend. Actually, there a lot of "Here's a new character! Moving on..." happening. Thankfully it does a good job of slowly and semi-realistically establishing the relationship between Yaeka and Kirishima. Also, the kids are cute, but not annoyingly cute.
The only other show I've been watching is Devil is a Part-timer and it's like coming back home. It's not a phenomenal anime, but it's that comforting mix of slice of life comedy and adventure.
The only other show I've been watching is Devil is a Part-timer and it's like coming back home. It's not a phenomenal anime, but it's that comforting mix of slice of life comedy and adventure.
I've also been watching that. It's been very whatever. The animation on display is remarkably cheap and lesser quality versus the first show. Which is more than a little disappointing considering that show is now what, over 10 years old? The story is pretty hit and miss for me as well, but that might be because I've read spoilers on how the light novels end and I'm NOT a fan. In fact, how it ends is so bad that it makes everything along the way retroactively worse. Massive spoilers for how Devil is a Part-Timer ends, don't click on these: Maou hooks up with Chiho at the end. For those who don't understand why that would be a problem, she's like 16. Ick
She's 16 when they arrive, and multiple years pass between the time they arrive and the last volume. The first volume alone covers nearly a full year of their time on Earth. She's already nearly 18 by the point the second season ends.
It's actually suggested at a few points that Chiho is older then Emi.
If that's the case, it's not at all conveyed in the show that I can recall, and definitely not how the characters themselves are coded. It's here's the plucky high school teen/cashier at your part time job vs the jaded adult office worker/hero. Even if she ages into adulthood during the course of the show, it's still a borderline grooming fantasy. I wouldn't have any problem with Chiho ending up the romantic pairing if they were just an adult from the get go, despite finding her a very disinteresting/boring entity in the show. But as an educator, I'm extremely skeeved out by some of these shows/comics/LNs that have aspects that very often boil down to "live out your fantasy of dating an underaged teenager!"
How is it a grooming fantasy when it's explicitly written and shown that Maou knows and ignores it? He has actively said that he doesn't want to get involved with people on Earth in that way (though he's fine if Ashiya wants to). He treats her on the exact same level as all of his direct subordinates. You are implying activities on his end that simply do not happen. Chiho is the one who wants to go further, and I think it's disrespectful to both of them to say she has no ability to speak on the matter herself, and can only be seen as a "conquest" of a man.
By this logic, Love Hina isn't a harem. C'mon. Just because some plausible deniability is thrown in there, doesn't mean it isn't intentionally designed for horny guys to wish "boy I wish that were me."
Anyways, speaking of questionable harems, this show is actually looking pretty good:
Purple
(She/Her)
I still just can't get past the rim lighting hair in this. If it was JUST Lum I could maybe accept it as like, "oh yeah they're emphasizing the alienness by giving her weird jello hair" but then you see everyone else and it's just "oh, no, I guess they just don't understand lighting?"
I have to assume it's intentionally evocative of Rumiko Takahashi's art style
Looking forward to this a probably unhealthy amount. UY was one of my major gateways into anime back in the early 90s.
Hmm, wonder if there will be a low-hassle legit way to get this onto my TV or if I’ll need to fire back up the ol high seas pipeline for the first time in years...
Hmm, wonder if there will be a low-hassle legit way to get this onto my TV or if I’ll need to fire back up the ol high seas pipeline for the first time in years...
It's going to be streaming on HIDIVE. It's $5/mo.