Anime Discussion Thread

[Fabulously Olivier]

On 6/22/2022 at 5:13 AM, morgan85 said:

I am watching death note anime with subtitles and this is simply the greatest anime I’ve ever watched. When it comes to anime I usually don’t watch much. But some how Death note breaks every regular anime trope and creates suspense and exciting new twists and turns in pretty much every episode, it forces you to pay attention and grasp what’s going on all the time. You can download yify subtitles at subdl. The two main characters rivalry is so spectacularly portrayed as a one on one even when the two are surrounded by other people the show some how manages to single them out as two great minds fighting against each other.

Yeah... just stop watching at the end of season 1 and pretend that's the end of it.

[vanguard333]

On 6/22/2022 at 3:13 AM, morgan85 said:

I am watching death note anime with subtitles and this is simply the greatest anime I’ve ever watched. When it comes to anime I usually don’t watch much. But some how Death note breaks every regular anime trope and creates suspense and exciting new twists and turns in pretty much every episode, it forces you to pay attention and grasp what’s going on all the time. You can download yify subtitles at subdl. The two main characters rivalry is so spectacularly portrayed as a one on one even when the two are surrounded by other people the show some how manages to single them out as two great minds fighting against each other.

I tried Death Note a few years ago. I got through maybe the first half of the first episode before I decided, "Nope; this is not my cup of tea".

That's not to say that it's bad; I didn't watch enough of it to determine that. It's just to say that I knew I did not want to keep watching. The funny thing is that I'm fine with stories about villain protagonists; I enjoyed reading a certain Scottish play in high school, so that wasn't the reason.

[Fabulously Olivier]

I've been on a bit of a rom com bender lately with My Dress Up Darling and Kaguya-Sama: Love is War. Not normally my thing, but they are feel-good shows.

[ciphertul]

34 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I've been on a bit of a rom com bender lately with My Dress Up Darling and Kaguya-Sama: Love is War. Not normally my thing, but they are feel-good shows.

Sometimes they just hit the spot, I do wish we would get a few more Anime adaptations of more Rom-Coms. 

[AnonymousSpeed]

So. This Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood thing. I've heard it's pretty good. Should I watch it?

[Fabulously Olivier]

37 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

So. This Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood thing. I've heard it's pretty good. Should I watch it?

Absolutely. That's like asking if you'd like this Zelda thing as a gamer. It's highly rated for a reason.

[vanguard333]

55 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

So. This Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood thing. I've heard it's pretty good. Should I watch it?

Yes. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is a fantastic show; there's a reason it's very-highly recommended. I still have fond memories of watching the show for the first time; it was the second anime I watched, with the first being One-Punch Man, and the third one I watched was Violet Evergarden; all three of them are brilliant.

 

2 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I've been on a bit of a rom com bender lately with My Dress Up Darling and Kaguya-Sama: Love is War. Not normally my thing, but they are feel-good shows.

Same here, though I haven't watched either of those two shows. The rom-coms I've been watching have been ones about two people who are already in a relationship, such as Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie.

[Fabulously Olivier]

On 7/12/2022 at 9:28 PM, vanguard333 said:

Yes. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is a fantastic show; there's a reason it's very-highly recommended. I still have fond memories of watching the show for the first time; it was the second anime I watched, with the first being One-Punch Man, and the third one I watched was Violet Evergarden; all three of them are brilliant.

 

Same here, though I haven't watched either of those two shows. The rom-coms I've been watching have been ones about two people who are already in a relationship, such as Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie.

I tried Shikimori. I don't know if it's for me. Not enough tension or chemistry between them yet. Do you have other recommendations?

 

Currently watching Toradora.

[vanguard333]

9 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I tried Shikimori. I don't know if it's for me. Not enough tension or chemistry between them yet. Do you have other recommendations?

Not really; I guess Shikimori was the only rom-com I was watching recently. There is one I watched a few months ago called Love of Kill; that one was interesting. What intrigued me about it was its utterly bizarre premise and the fact that I couldn't tell if it was taking its bizarre premise seriously or not.

 

As far as shows I've been watching recently, I've mainly been rewatching Konosuba.

I did also try this new show called The Yakuza's Guide to Babysitting. Basically, a Yakuza enforcer is ordered to babysit his boss' seven-year-old daughter. My guess is that it's being made because someone thought, "Spy x Family was a huge success and the second half of its first season won't be released until October; is there something we could make that's about a little girl in a weird family?" and I'll admit that my main reason for trying it was because of that, but it does seem to have a decent story so far and some funny moments. It's a lot more drama and a lot less comedy than I expected. It's nothing amazing, but I did enjoy the first two episodes (which are the only episodes that have been released so far).

[ciphertul]

1 hour ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I tried Shikimori. I don't know if it's for me. Not enough tension or chemistry between them yet. Do you have other recommendations?

 

Currently watching Toradora.

I don't know if you would count it as Rom-Com but you could try Majikoi.

You could also try "Please don't tease me, Nagatora" however that might be a mixed bag.

[Fabulously Olivier]

Chainsaw Man is metal af and I love it.

[𝐍𝐲𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐥]

Planning on watching a pretty niche anime called JoJo's Bizarre Adventure after I'm finished watching the rest of SAO, anything I should know before I watch it? Looks pretty fun from what I've seen of it, and I love the music.

[vanguard333]

On 10/17/2022 at 7:54 PM, Fabulously Olivier said:

Chainsaw Man is metal af and I love it.

I watched it as well, mainly because my older brother really wanted to watch it.

I'm not really a fan of the sheer amount of gore or the dark comedy (and I will stress that those things aren't bad; they're just not something I personally like), but the action's really good so far and the characters have been fairly interesting.

 

October has been a good month for anime: part 2 of season 1 of Spy x Family, season 6 of My Hero Academia, Chainsaw Man, and season 4 of Golden Kamuy.

[Sidereal Wraith]

On 10/18/2022 at 12:54 AM, Fabulously Olivier said:

Chainsaw Man is metal af and I love it.

My good sir if you want something that is metal af may I point you in the direction of one Elric of Melnibone?

In terms of anime I’ve been thinking about perhaps watching Record of the Lodoss War.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Sidereal Wraith

[vanguard333]

On 10/23/2022 at 8:26 AM, Sidereal Wraith said:

In terms of anime I’ve been thinking about perhaps watching Record of the Lodoss War.

I haven't seen Lodoss War, but I've heard that it's really good.

I have seen its spiritual-successor: Record of Grancrest War, which was created by the same person who created Lodoss War, and it was pretty good overall. Since Lodoss War is by far the more well-known of the two, then it's probably good.

[ciphertul]

21 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

I haven't seen Lodoss War, but I've heard that it's really good.

I have seen its spiritual-successor: Record of Grancrest War, which was created by the same person who created Lodoss War, and it was pretty good overall. Since Lodoss War is by far the more well-known of the two, then it's probably good.

I was kinda curious towards it since Deedlit seems to be everywhere, but that isn’t confidence inspiring.

[vanguard333]

15 minutes ago, ciphertul said:

I was kinda curious towards it since Deedlit seems to be everywhere, but that isn’t confidence inspiring.

I should probably point out that, from what I know, Lodoss War and Grancrest War are very different; Grancrest War is a "spiritual successor" in the sense that it was created by the same person, it has "Record of ---- War" as its title, and it, like Lodoss War, was written for a role-playing game (but where Lodoss War was inspired by an existing role-playing game, Grancrest War was created alongside a tabletop RPG that is also called Grancrest War). Other than that, they're apparently rather different in terms of story, characters and setting.

[Hrothgar777]

Made in Abyss S2.

 

For the last year and a half maybe I've been in a weird phase of my life where the large bulk of the anime/manga I've seen (especially manga) have been romcoms. I was still in college when I saw S1 4 years ago, and I enjoyed it thoroughly then, and yet, when I got the chance to watch it recently, I've been reluctant because it wasn't what I tend to watch nowadays. It was with some hesitance that I decided to give Episode 1 a try earlier today.

I regret nothing. This is peak storytelling: breathtakingly beautiful and soul-crushingly dark all at once. It's like somebody set out to encapsulate the unique feel of (borderline its very own one-entry genre) Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky and create a spiritual sequel with a human(oid) cast.

It's obvious that the mangaka is a huge pedo who'll probably be in jail 10 years from now, but you know, separate the art from the artist and all that jazz. And if there was a positive moral virtue that I'd ascribe to the guy, it'd be this: it literally doesn't matter how disturbingly hideous a character in his work is. They're depicted sympathetically so long as they don't behave like a dick. Even big butt Wigglytuff turned out to not be so bad.

I'm just 4 episodes in so far but I plan to finish the rest ASAP.

Edited October 27, 2022 by Hrothgar777

[vanguard333]

I've mainly been watching Spy x Family, season 6 of My Hero Academia, and season 4 of Golden Kamuy. All three have been fantastic so far.

That said, for My Hero Academia, while's there's a lot that I'm looking forward to seeing animated, the show is also getting really close to the moment where the manga plummeted downhill for me and has yet to recover (spoilers ahead for the anime-only):

Spoiler

That moment being the moment the story brought All for One back and All for One hijacks the story, the League of Villains, and Shigaraki.

This whole time, the story has been building up to Deku vs Shigaraki: the two successors. The story had been building up Shigaraki as an interesting villain who has grown as a villain into someone worthy of being the story's main villain (as well as just an interesting villain overall), and it's been building up the League of Villains as a group of true friends (aside from Dabi) rather than the usual villain organization that is a group of minions led by a boss that doesn't care about them. Nope; suddenly, All for One comes back and now the league is a bunch of minions led by a cliche villain that doesn't care about them in the slightest. Yeah, let's watch Deku vs the ancient Narcisstic quirk thief who got beat twice already by All Might; that's definitely more interesting than Deku vs Shigaraki and a nuanced found family of villains (sarcasm).

It also doesn't help that, ever since All for One came back, he's just been boring. Originally in the show, what made him interesting was that he was the evil predecessor, the archenemy of All Might and the evil mentor to Shigaraki. Him actually deciding to leave everything to his successor was actually something unique and interesting for a villain, and he didn't have to lose an ounce of pure-evil villainy because of it as his reason for wanting a successor in the first place was that it was clear he could not keep being the main villain forever. Now, he's just a typical pure evil villain with nothing built on top of that. Even worse, he's a "I planned literally everything; everything in the story was all my doing the whole time" villain, which is just boring. Having it that the villain was behind literally everything in the story does not make the villain seem cool or scary; it makes them boring. Shigaraki was interesting because he had to learn.

 

[Etrurian emperor]

Apparently a Full Metal Alchemist mobile game released in Japan. I think FMA is above something as basic as a Gacha game but I got to say...that artwork is absolutely gorgeous. 

 

[vanguard333]

I've recently been watching Bleach for the first time. My first viewing of this series has been rather strange.

My brother began watching the show several months ago. I had no interest in watching the show, but, around the Hueco Mundo arc, he eventually got me to watch it with him, so I watched the Hueco Mundo arc with him, with him giving me just enough information to understand what was going on. He finished watching the show on his own, but, now that the final arc is finally being adapted, he convinced me to watch the show from the beginning. I'm currently on the second arc: the Soul Society arc.

As a result, I made a few assumptions about the worldbuilding that were only partially correct, which made these first two arcs a bit jarring. For instance, because the only people from Soul Society in the Hueco Mundo arc are the soul reapers, who are established as being born as Souls, age (though at a much slower rate than humans) and eventually die, I naturally assumed that Soul Society is not an afterlife; that the people of Soul Society aren't dead humans; they're just a non-corporeal species. Imagine my surprise when I saw the first story arc and found out that I was right about Souls as a species, but Soul Society is an afterlife, with some of its residents being dead humans. That left me rather confused for a while, and, because I only just got to the part of the Soul arc where Aizen fakes his death (that's not a spoiler, is it? The show's 20 years old and Aizen being a twist villain is easily the most famous thing about the show), I'm still confused by a lot of this stuff.

 

EDIT: I'm now on the Hueco Mundo arc. A lot of the things I found confusing now have clearer answers. I will say that I very much enjoyed the soul society arc overall. The standout moments were Ichigo vs Byakuya, Ishida vs Mayuri, and the Aizen reveal.

The Byakuya vs Ichigo fight was really creative not only thematically with what these two characters represent, but also with how it used these two characters' abilities. Ichigo's bankai becoming an ordinary-sized sword that condenses his power rather than releasing it, giving the blade absurd cutting power and giving him extreme speed almost bordering on teleportation is very simple, yet the fight is able to do a lot with it. And Byakuya's bankai creating billions of blade shards he can control for offensive and defensive purposes was really cool; I especially liked that his ultimate move was to reform the shards into swords.

Edited November 19, 2022 by vanguard333

[Etrurian emperor]

So goten and Trunks are allowed to be teenagers now, and are getting a small arc devoted to them going to school and being superheroes like Gohan once did. That's nice since they kind got ignored entirely when Dragonball Super started, and their super chibi designs always bugged me.

On the other hand they seem to be continuing one of the stranger Dragonball decisions. Pairing Trunks with Mai despite her being older than his mom.

[vanguard333]

I fully caught up to Bleach. I quite enjoyed it. I even enjoyed the fullbringer arc, mainly because of the character journey Ichigo goes through in that arc and because Tsukishima is a rather interesting villain.

 

I also recently watched Record of Lodoss War.

For a bit of background, the Record of Lodoss War franchise began as a series of transcripts of Dungeons & Dragons sessions written in the late 1980s. When those became popular, their author then turned them into novels, which quickly became popular enough to get an anime adaptation in 1990. Record of Lodoss War and the Dragon Quest games basically became the template for the sword-&-sorcery genre in Japan; basically every sword-&-sorcery story made in Japan can likely trace its origins back to at least one of these two stories.

Seriously; here is part of the main plot: a small group of heroes help good kingdoms fight an invading evil empire, the emperor is set up as the main only for there to actually be a conspiracy with the court mage plotting to awaken an ancient evil. Did I just describe Lodoss War, or most Fire Emblem games?

As a result, a lot of it can seem typical today; not generic; definitely not generic, but odds are that you'll probably be able to guess a lot of the character traits and plotlines beforehand because so many stories have come along afterward and copied a lot of what this story did. That's definitely not a point against the series; the story and characters are still well-written and interesting to watch.

There is one character that definitely stands out: the elf Deedlit. Most elven main characters are typically products of the typical elven culture on some level: a bit of aloofness, dry wit, feeling of superiority to humans, and generally either an archer or a fragile wizard. Deedlit is none of those things; she does have a couple characteristically elven traits like being a friend to all living things, but she's also outgoing, friendly, cheerful, enthusiastic, full of life, and generally a ball of fun. I believe the term TV Tropes uses for this is Genki Girl. She is not only the character that stands out the most, but she's probably also the best character in the series.

Another thing that I liked about the show is the artwork. This is a hand-drawn anime from 1990, so it generally doesn't have many animation frames and can't do as many tricks that anime can do today, but the artwork is still absolutely beautiful today; each individual frame is still extremely well-drawn.

Overall, I can see why it was such a popular and influential anime in its day, and I can definitely recommend it to audiences today.

One last thing I will say about it: before watching this series, I had previously watched Record of Grancrest War, which was written by the author of Lodoss War. It was interesting to see similarities between the two of them, but, overall, the two shows are very different. @ciphertul You'll be happy to hear that your main problem with Grancrest War: a certain plot event involving Marrine, has no equivalent in Lodoss War. Lodoss War doesn't do anything like that moment.

[Etrurian emperor]

So from a technical standpoint the new Nier Anime is looking pretty good. Still I'm a little bit skeptical. Not being able to play and commit the war cimes yourself ensures that a lot of Yoko Taro's strength are lost. I don't think the Nier story is meant to be viewed without player input. Also on a personal note 2B and Nines will lose something if not voiced by Kira Buckland and Kyle McCarley. 

 

Edited December 28, 2022 by Etrurian emperor

[vanguard333]

I recently started watching a romance anime called The Ice Guy and his Cool Female Colleague. Basically, a woman who doesn't show emotion often meets her new co-worker: a guy who is descended from a Yuki-Onna (a creature of Japanese Folklore that is basically a woman with snow magic), and, when the guy gets emotional, ice and snow form around him. For example, on his first day of work, his nervousness and ice powers causes him to literally have cold feet: his legs end up completed encased in a large icicle.

Normally, I only watch romance shows that are about two people who are already a couple at the start of the series, as that guarantees at least some level of creativity and that the show will avoid a lot of the cliches that I really dislike in romance stories. However, I saw some trailers for this show and thought it looked interesting, so I decided to try it.

Overall, the show's pretty good so far. The show has been fairly creative with the ways in which the guy's ice powers reflect his emotional state, I like that the guy is a romantic at heart and his need to keep his emotions in check to avoid giving his co-workers hypothermia just barely hides it, and I like how, even though both of them are quite shy, they do make real progress in the early episodes, so I'm glad that the story isn't just going to string along the audience with "They might make some progress soon; keep watching to find out! (300 episodes later) They might make some progress soon; keep watching to find out!"