Fuck it, anime thread

[buzby]

I went to see it in saturday too (£13 - ouch). It was great to see it on the big screen with a full Dolby Surround soundtrack at last, though I'm not sure it benefitted that much from being in 4K or IMAX (other than the field of view-enveloping aspect ratio). The photography has always looked washed-out, hazy or soft in places, and being baked into the original negative or interpositive they took the scan from there's probably not much that could be done about it. I did notice some compression noise/blockiness in the near-black backgrounds of a couple of scenes too.

[bgmnts]

Five minutes into the first episode of Baki Hanma and we're already knee deep in some silly bollocks.

Fucking love it.

[bgmnts]

Smashed the season, probably could have done the whole thing in half the time and set up

Spoiler alert

Pickle (?)

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in the second half but still fun.

[bgmnts]

Managed to get a 75 day free trial of Crunchyroll and I have no idea what anything is on it but they do have Cowboy Bebop yes!

[buzby]

Managed to get a 75 day free trial of Crunchyroll and I have no idea what anything is on it but they do have Cowboy Bebop yes!

They have recently merged with Funimation so you should have access to even more stuff.

I'm currently enjoying Taisho Otome Fairy Tale, a SoL/romance/drama set in 1920s Taishō period. Has elements of Fruits Basket to it. Also Komi-san Can't Communicate, the manga a lot of people said would be very difficult to bring to the screen due to it's reliance on writing and narration. They have done a pretty decent job, but it does require your thumb on the pause button to make sure you catch all the written text and notations.

A couple of other series I've watched recenty turned out to both be written by Mari Okada (i knew one of them was, but only found out about the other part way through, though in retrospect you can recognise her style in both of them),

The first was O Maidens In Your Savage Season, a coming of age comedy/drama about a group of girls in a high school literary club as they begin to discover their sexuality,. Written like that, it makes it sound like some ecchi trash (it does feature a famous scene in the first episode of one of the girls walking on her childhood friend as he's having a wank to a chikan porn video), but for the most part it's actually pretty free of fan service and actually approaches the subject somewhat maturely and realistically, covering topics through the various characters like sexual abuse/peadohpilia, inappropriate age gaps, online grooming/blackmail and the difference between sexual attraction and love. It does seem to rush towards an unrealistically high stakes final act (I'd read that the manga it was based on was cancelled early, which might have something to do with that), but it's well worth a watch, and it handles these subjects a lot more maturely than the set dressing to disguise a dodgy self-insert harem story they were treated as in Higehiro.

The other was Hanasaku Iroha, an anime original story about a Tokyo high school girl whose flaky mother has to skip town thanks to her boyfriend's debts and so she gets sent to stay/work in her estranged grandmother's traditional hot springs inn out in the countryside, This was ok, it's  quite charming and has a decent cast of characters, but at 26 episodes it felt a bit 'baggy' in the third quarter especially (so bascially the opposite problem to O Maidens). IT also plays up to the hot springs asepct to put in some uneccessary fanservice. It did get a spinoff film that is actually set somewhere in the middle of the series, rathe rthan a sequel to it, and also covers flashbacks on how the mother and grandmother became estranged., but I've not watched that (the mother/grandmother subplot involves the old favourite of an age inappropriate relationship, which I'm not interested in).

In 'coming attractions' news, two of my favourite shows have had new series announced for 2022. Teasing  Master Takagi-San is getting a third series AND a movie ,which was a bit of a surprise. The interesting thing about this is that by the end of the second series the relationship between Takagi and Nishikata had advanced past the stage the manga is even currently at, so I think there will be more anime-original content involved (both previous series have included episodes with anime original stories). Fans of the show are speculation that the movie might cover the start of the 'Moto' spinoff manga, where they are a married couple, but I'm not sure about that.

The second one is Tonikaku Kawaii is getting second series, having had an OVA special earlier this year. Back in this thread when Consignia and I discussed the first season, the subject of Tsukasa's backstory came up and how the first series basically didn't concentrate too much on it. Since then in the manga it has  become a bit of a recurring thing, with flashbacks to her past cropping up semi-regularly, and last year the main story even went on hiatus for a while, replaced by a historical battle drama with Tsukasa as the central character that got very dark and gruesome. It will be interesting to see if any of that appears amnngst the usual married life fluff of the main story.

[C_Larence]

Fuck it, bump thread.

After a couple of years hiatus from watching any anime (Hunter X Hunter was the last I saw in 2022, absolutely adored it) I've devoured 3 seasons of Attack On Titan over the course of the past few days. It's very good stuff indeed.

I'm at a point now where I'm barely following what's happening but I'm so attached to the characters that I dont care. I never talk when I'm watching shows, but there was a moment in one of the last episodes of season 3 that made me say "holy shit" out loud. It involved a lot of titans.

Funnily enough I had a quick skim through of this thread and saw mention back in 2020 of Dorehedoro, which I'd never heard of before so I googled it and found out that a second season was announced 22 hours ago! Maybe I'll watch the first season of that next.

[druss]

Pretty sure I know the exact episode run you mean if it's in the second half of season 3. I absolutely love the show, apparently some people weren't happy with the ending but I thought it was beautiful. Going to rewatch the whole thing again with my partner this year.

[buzby]

Seeing as you have bumped the thread, I'd just like to say that Madhouse's adaptation of Frieren At The Funeral (or Frieren: Beyond Journeys End to use the offical ehglish title - the actual Japanese title is an untranslatable pun that refers to Frieren attending the funeral of the leader of her party at the start of the story, and also her being an 'undertaker' of demons), which has just started it's second cour is a wonder to behold. It's one of those rare cases of where the adaptation takes a manga that is already fantastic and makes it even better. Some of the animation that was put in the first cour was motion picture level of quality (it is directed by Keiichirō Saitō, who directed Bocchi The Rock).

The second series of The Dangers In My Heart has also just started, and has received a big upgrade in art and animation quality, presumbly after the first series was so well-received.

[C_Larence]

Pretty sure I know the exact episode run you mean if it's in the second half of season 3. I absolutely love the show, apparently some people weren't happy with the ending but I thought it was beautiful. Going to rewatch the whole thing again with my partner this year.

The specific moment was

Spoiler alert

Erwin standing on top of Wall Maria wondering where all the titans are before a sudden fuck off massive chain of explosions in the distance behind him.

Levi vs the Beast Titan is also incredible. As is the moment when Armin's charred remains suddenly make a noise and you realise what's about to happen. Brutal show.

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[druss]

Spoiler alert

For me it was Erwin's suicide charge. And all the bits you mentioned. And another bit which I won't spoil in case you haven't got there. And that's just season 3! Great show indeed.

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[Consignia]

I'm watching all the new shows this season. So far it's been a bust, but I've been totally blown away by "A Sign Of Affection"'s first episode. It's a tough subject to do in animation protraying a deaf character, but I felt the protrayal was both respectful and touching.

[C_Larence]

Finished Attack On Titan last night. I thought Season 4 was a bit of a slog unfortunately, if I'd been watching it as it went out live with months long gaps between the episodes I probably wouldn't have finished it. It didn't help that the site I was watching on suddenly took a nosedive in terms of subtitle quality halfway through the season, character's names changed and everyone occasionally spoke in distractingly broken English. I signed up for a crunchyroll 2 week free trial for the final episode, I wish I'd done it earlier.

Spoilers for Season 4.

Spoiler alert

The whole time travel aspect was used badly and confusingly. Historia completely disappeared from the plot for some reason, no idea what happened there as it seemed like they were setting up her Husband to be someone. The first 3 seasons are all about one group of characters surrounding a main protagonist but the 4th spends soooo much time on these new people you don't know or care about.

Armin blaming himself for everything that happened because he told Eren about the outside world was ridiculous, as was the reveal that Eren guided the titan to eat his Mother. Levi was totally wasted and his killing of Zeke takes up about 2 seconds of screen time. I still don't understand what the whole Ackerman thing was about, why they couldn't be brainwashed. There are way too many Deus Ex Machina including a titan who suddenly remembers he can fly.

It's a shame because the first 3 seasons were so good, it just felt like they dropped the ball as soon as they took the focus of Eren. There were still moments of greatness but they were surrounded by mediocrity

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