Currently/just finished watching/reading anime/manga thread.

[Samus Aran]

Time for another update.

Gatchaman Crowds Insight: Naturally, I watched this right after the first season. In some ways, I like this more than the first season. In other ways, I don't. It evens out to being more or less just as good. Hajime continues to be a wonderful protagonist. This season once again places heavy emphasis on the power of groupthink and social media. It's very interesting. But this season also stresses the importance of disagreement, of having your own opinions, and of fighting for them. It's interesting how good the Crowds sub-series of Gatchaman is despite having so little in common with Gatchaman in general. There's not that much action, and when it is there it's usually pretty short-lived. It's character interactions and dialogue that drive this sub-series instead. Also, the Crowds sub-series has a very good non-gender conforming character in Rui Ninomiya.





Yona of the Dawn; Not very good. The only thing that saves this from being outright bad is its production values. It's often quite pretty to look at, and the ever-excellent Chiwa Saito's fantastic performance as the titular Yona helped me be interested enough to continue after the first couple episodes. But frankly, the series quickly becomes pretty boring. Princess Yona adventures around, surrounding herself with pretty boys to fight for her so she can reclaim the throne and avenge her father's death. Very quickly. The pacing is nuts. And then it just ends. With no continuation. No second season. It's been like 7 years since this aired so I'm pretty sure this adaptation has been canned lmao. Pretty generic anyway, wouldn't recommend. Obviously read the manga instead if you're at all interested in this franchise. I cant say that these types of mystical feudal Japan action-adventure series are really that interesting to begin with though. Hell, this is just a worse version of Inuyasha in a way, now that I think of it.





No.6: Also not very good. Actually has a super interesting premise, taking place in a pretty tried and true cool formula - a futuristic, seemingly "perfect" dystopian city with the dregs of society living outside the walls. And supposedly the source material (the novels) is a lot better. But this anime is just mediocre. Blasts through its story with terrible pacing. Lots of things left open or just left unexplained. Rather dumb plot contrivances. It's a pretty looking show, and I actually really like the opening theme a lot (most don't, apparently). But man, after like the first two episodes, this show just blasts through its story at lightspeed and the conclusion is extremely unsatisfactory. There's a community of wacko fujoshi on the internet that love this series just because the main two male characters display romantic affection for each other. Sure, great. Doesn't make the show good lol.





Poco's Udon World: An entry in the relatively niche yet definitely growing genre of "slice of life anime about parenting." Food is somewhat a theme here too, but not nearly on the level of a show like Sweetness & Lightning. Anyway, this is a cute, relaxing show but unlike S&L or Usagi Drop, this show doesn't much care about the trials of taking care of a small child. Mostly just the happy moments. Except Poco actually being a juvenile tanuki is obviously the kicker here, and there's plenty of antics as a result of Poco actually being a tanuki who sometimes struggles to maintain a human form. There's drama, sure, but it's pretty light. This is mostly just a fun, cute show without a ton going for it. Good visuals, banger OP "SOS" by Weaver. Solid show. Worse than similar shows, though.





Revue Starlight: This is an odd show. It's like, if you take Love Live and inject it with Utena elements. Its art style, general presentation, and characterization are reminiscent of properties like Love Live or Idolmaster, but it has an actual story and chooses to present events and character interactions with metaphorical stage play "duels," like Utena but in the context of play-acting and singing. It's a pretty fascinating mish-mash of ideas. Unfortunately, it's not exactly a truly great show, but it is very close, and I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. This show is definitely just a piece of an intended multimedia franchise that orbits a gacha game. But it's legitimately quite good, though it's definitely one of those shows that lives and dies by how much you like any of the characters, much like Love Live or any other really weeby shows with a gaggle of girls. I absolutely adore its take on the recurring transition/transformation scene, which naturally borrows a lot from Utena and Ikuhara in general. Very stylish. Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diOjDFA-4EQ

[Samus Aran]

Time for yet another update.


SK8 the Infinity

This is a bizarre and honestly dumb show, but it's incredibly fun and has a lot of heart. It's no wonder that this ended up being something of a sleeper hit. Granted, it's also somewhat fujoshi-baity, so that helped too I suppose.

This is pretty much a sports shounen about skateboarding, done with basically no realism whatsoever. It's entirely goofy and over-the-top. My favorite part is that the antagonist is basically Dio Brando if he was a blue-haired skateboarding matador. And even gayer. He's even voiced by Takehito Koyasu, the same guy who voiced Dio! There is nothing even remotely amazing about this show, but it's well-crafted and just a ton of fun. Check it out if you wanna turn your brain off and watch something that's just enjoyable and silly. But also earnest enough with characters you can care about.





The Promised Neverland

Phenomenal. For one season. See, here's the thing. The first season of this show is one of the most unique things that's aired in seasonal anime in...a long time. Because it's not just a very good adaptation of a very good manga. It's an adaptation that elevates the material and shows what can really be done with anime as a medium when adapting from another source. It's a fantastic story, it's incredibly tense and suspenseful, and it's got high production values. In addition to fantastic hand-drawn animation, it does some crazy things with CG to emulate cinematic camera movements, like a camera on a dolly following a character through turning hallways. The score is very high quality as well. CloverWorks really pulled out all the stops with this one. Also, this kind of story, taking place in just a singular small house and its surrounding yard, with characters struggling to outwit each other, underdogs fighting for survival against an unfair system - it's fascinating. I can't say too much without spoiling things.

And then season 2 just takes a massive shit on the fans of the first season by delivering one of the worst follow-ups I've ever seen in anime. The second season aims to cover the entire rest of the manga after the first season simply covered the first arc. It achieves this feat by simply speeding through it, cutting out entire arcs, and leaving plot holes and unfinished stories in its wake. So you get a completely butchered story. But trust me, they didn't stop there. It's also a lot worse in every other way! The animation quality took a noticeable dive, for one thing. It's still a "good looking" show, but it's nothing compared to the production values of the first season, and does nothing interesting at all with movement or really any type of shot at all. Hell, it even flat-out re-uses animation sometimes. Just about any tension is gone - this is partially just due to the fact that this does not take place at the house anymore, but it's also due to scenes simply speeding by one after another with no time to cook. But also a lot of things just being really over the top compared to the self-contained nature of the first season. I could just complain endlessly about this tbh. If the first season is a 9/10, the second is a 5. The first season is something genuinely special. The second is just a cookie cutter mediocre show, with every contrivance you can think of. Am I being harsh? Yes. But it's earned. What a letdown.

You would not be truly missing out on anything if you simply watched the first season and stopped there. Or maybe only read the manga after the first season, or something.






Natsume's Book of Friends

Note that this is a huge series with many seasons - at the moment I am only writing about the first season. This is a nice, cozy iyashikei slice-of-life anime. Iyashikei, or "healing-type," shows are ones depicting characters living happy, peaceful lives. They're also usually episodic, and if there is any drama, it's humanistic, grounded, and solved within the episode. Movies like My Neighbor Totoro, and shows like Aria the Animation, Flying Witch, and yes, Natsume's Book of Friends, are cornerstone shows of this style.

Aside from being flat-out comfy, Natsume's is also a franchise dependent on your interest in Japanese folklore and yokai. Personally, I love that shit. But, in the end, these thirteen episodes were not really enough to get me hooked on this franchise or anything. It's very solid, and apparently many, many people with taste that I trust enjoy it more than I did. But I found it difficult to care much about the main character, Natsume himself. Unfortunately, being voiced by the eternal master Kamiya Hiroshi (Koyomi Araragi, Izaya Orihara, SnK Levi) was not enough for me. And compared to shows like Aria, Natsume's Book doesn't present stories as interesting nor characters as lovable. Still, I recommend this show to anyone wanting something cozy, hopeful, and at least mildly thought-provoking.

[Hiro]

maybe I'll start doing write-ups of shows and other stuff too

[Samus Aran]

another update

Sakura Quest

This one...kinda means a lot to me, but I think people's mileage will vary. This is one of P.A. Works' "working adults" anime series, alongside Shirobako and Hanasaku Iroha. Whereas Shirobako is about the working lives of people at an anime studio, and Hanasaku Iroha is about maid service, Sakura Quest is about working for a tourism board that is struggling to revive a small town with a shrinking, aged population. It's about a lot of things that mean a lot to me. Like what it means to live in a rural place where everyone kinda helps everyone else. Or what it means to be stuck living in a small town of unchanging ideas and stubbornness. What it's like to live a life of unfulfillment and anxiety and settling on work, abandoning your dreams. Or coming to terms with your failures and re-evaluating those dreams. The sheer difficulty of navigating life in your late twenties and your thirties.

I loved it, and I highly recommend it. Most people seemed to like Shirobako more. Maybe it is a better show, I don't know, but I also don't think I care - I have to admit I love stories about towns like the one I grew up in.

Also the visual design is great. The main girl, Yoshino, is incredibly cute. The OPs and EDs are all really fucking good too.




Dororo

So, this is kind of a...modern re-imagining of the classic Dororo manga by Osamu Tezuka. Yes, that Tezuka. The story of Hyakkimaru, a young man with prosthetic limbs, skin, eyes, just about everything really, on a journey to get his body back, by slaying the demons that stole it. Piece by piece. Also Dororo is there - a scrappy small girl who sticks to Hyakkimaru's side because why not. This particular version of Dororo, while telling roughly the same story, is much more violent and much more about the moment-to-moment action and demon slaying. It's quite nice visually most of the time, although in some ways not anything too special either. I guess that's how I feel about Dororo as a whole, actually. There is not a lot here to set it apart from other action seinen other than the character of Hyakkimaru and his insistence on sticking to his goals no matter how selfish they may seem and how many people he may hurt along the way - he will take back the body that was wrongfully stolen from him, no matter what.

I think the whole reason they made this show was to capitalize on Demon Slayer's success. While not as stupid as DS in a writing sense, Dororo does meander a lot - that's the primary writing sin it commits. It just...meanders, quite a bit, but without most side-stops having much meaningful to say about anything, which just makes me wanna get to the climax. Which is...not great. So while the general writing style and character depth of this anime is on a level that DS will never reach, DS is also a lot more fun and much prettier to look at. As much as I fucking hate Zenitsu in DS, it's ultimately still an almost-great show, and I guess Dororo is too. They're ultimately on pretty equal footing - not great, but more than just solid.





House of Five Leaves

The manga, not the anime. I read manga too sometimes! Crazy! This is by Natsume Ono, who also created the wonderful Not Simple manga series. Ono's art is unusual - her characters are lanky, very simply drawn, with features underdrawn or even missing if they're not important to a particular panel's expression, and they have large, soulful eyes. The background art is also very simple, typically lacking in any detail that Ono deems unnecessary, but like her character designs, her background art is also shockingly expressive for how simple it is. The art style may be hard for many to get used to at first, but trust me when I say that Ono's art is a prime example of less being more.

This is a striking tale filled with well-crafted, multi-dimensional characters. None of the titular Five Leaves are who they appear to be on the surface, and each of these criminals have their own multitude of reasons for sticking to the life of crime they lead. Yes, this is a story about crime - a kidnapping ring in classical Edo. Though the manga is relatively short, spanning just 57 chapters, it is also a slow and methodical burn that explores its characters fully, and takes time to meditate on their actions as well as those actions' consequences. The protagonist, Masa, is undoubtedly the most fascinating, a samurai with extreme social anxiety who learns to stand up for himself and live as much in the present as he can...from a band of criminals he comes to associate with.

The pacing and the deafening quiet of this manga can be compared to the likes of Cowboy Bebop or Samurai Champloo - it is rather obsessed with ruminating as much as possible. And it's all the better for it. Many of the characters in this manga say more with their silence than with their words. And they do say quite a lot. This is a story about family, about found family, about revenge, and about fear. I highly recommend it.

There's an anime too, but I don't know much about it. They did try to capture the basic fundamentals of Ono's art style though, which is neat I guess.

[Samus Aran]

update time


Yozakura Quartet: Hana no Uta (and OVAs "Hoshi no Umi" and "Tsuki ni Naku")


This show isn't good. It's not like it's terrible, it's not unwatchable by any means. It has a lot of the makings of a great show. It's very pretty to look at it with great, colorful aesthetics and really cool (and cute) character designs. Generally above-average animation too. Sometimes the visuals dip, especially in the OVAs, but that's ok in the long run, right? It's also got great, and honestly very unique, sound design. The world and its premise are really cool too, with this mix of co-habiting humans and superpowered yokai, and most of the show revolving around simply trying to keep the delicate peace the city has maintained for so long. It's funny, cute, and often has great action. And all the opening themes by UNISON SQUARE GARDEN are really fun. So why is this show not good?

Because aside from all that, it's incredibly bare bones. There's barely a plot, and the plot that is there is never even resolved. A real "go read the manga, the anime is cancelled" moment. Things often feel like they just happen for no reason. Arcs that should feel important just...don't. The stakes are beyond unclear. It's honestly a complete mess of storytelling. Also, I was downplaying them earlier, but some of the animation dips are actually pretty damn egregious. And that sound design? Yeah, it's cool. When it's not bass-boosted and so chunky that all you're hearing is your speakers clipping. God, why does this show do that? Also, the show has so much annoying fanservice that I've heard people call this an ecchi show. Which...I don't think it is, not really. But there is a lot of fanservice. It's distracting and sometimes actually pretty fuckin skeevy.

Anyway, show is decent at best, and I don't really recommend it.




Princess Tutu

This is one of the most unique pieces of animation I've ever seen, full stop. A bizarre, mahou shoujo meta-story about...well, storytelling. And ballet! Lots and lots of ballet. The story mirrors both Swan Lake (both its story and its ballet interpretation) and fairy tales like The Ugly Duckling. A very large amount of the music in this show is all classical music, in particular pieces popular for ballet but also other bangers like Camille Saint-Saens' Aquarium movement. And basically all mahou shoujo battles are replaced by (sometimes aggressive) ballet dancing.

But what, other than the incredible uniqueness of the ballet angle, truly makes this show unique? Honestly, it's approach to meta storytelling. I don't want to spoil too much, but this show is very much about stories and fairy tales and such, to the point where the characters and their world are literally part of a story that an outside force (named Drosselmeyer) is telling us. And he really, really wants it to be a damn good story full of despair and unfairness, structured like a typical fairy tale. Duck is given magic to turn into girl, girl is given chance to save the prince that she loves by restoring parts of his fractured soul bit by bit. But the characters try their best to change the story from within and escape the apparent prison of fate that they've been locked into. It's really, really fucking cool.

Of course, the fact that it's a meta story about a story would not really sell me if it weren't for everything else. The visuals are gorgeous, the characters are three-dimensional and wonderful (despite what Drosselmeyer wants! and I was not expecting to end up loving Fakir so much!), and the application of classical music and ballet is handled delicately and adds incredibly to the unsettling, mysterious atmosphere of the show. Does the town seem foggy? Yeah? There's a reason. There's a reason for everything. This show rules.

Never expected to fall in love with a show about ballet but here I am. Highly recommended.





Isekai Shokudou

Yeah, I know. Isekai. The blight that is cursing the anime industry. I'd tell you to wait, say this isn't your typical isekai, don't worry. It's just in the title, trust me. But the thing is, while that's true, this show still isn't really very good so you won't really be missing anything by just passing it by.

But okay, yeah, sure. This isn't really a show about a protagonist transported to another world or anything. "Isekai" basically just means "another world," it's just that the genre typically refers to something more specific, and that's not really quite what this show is. Rather, this show is about a restaurant in our world...the door to which just sometimes appears in another, more fantastical world full of magic and demons and elves and fairies and dwarves and yeah you get the idea. It is entirely about beings from a fantasy world coming to our world to experience good-ass cooking made by a charismatic (I guess) dude.

And that's it. That's the entire show. It's just yet another entry in, ironically, a different genre that I don't like - food porn anime. It's just a comfy slice of life show about food. And the scenes inside the restaurant are mostly the best parts of the show - when this mess attempts to tell the backstories of these characters that find themselves in this restaurant, it falls completely flat with...very few exceptions. But I can also only take so much of "fantasy guy/girl/creature served human food and just can't believe how good it is!! Umai!!! Oishi!! Umai!!!!! Oishi!!!!!!!" To put it bluntly, it's very boring.

It's not like there's nothing here to like. It's cute, it's generally just wholesome..."fun" I guess. It's cozy. The art is generally nice. But that's really it. You want cozy, but you don't want interesting characters or settings? Sure. Watch this. Eat up. I've just learned there's a second season, so I hope you're hungry. Personally I'll stick with the first course. Not recommended.

[Samus Aran]

also these mini anime/manga reviews of mine are currently the best (and only) true OC on Boyah anymore so you'd better do yourself a favor and read, like, comment, and smash that subscribe button

[Hiro]

I do greatly enjoy and appreciate these posts

[Samus Aran]

no big update yet but yall should read Berserk. just made it past the Conviction Arc. amazing manga so far