General Anime/Manga Discussion 15: The Beach Episode

[The Fury]

One of the big things about Space Dandy that has to be remembered is that almost every episode ended with everyone dead. It was, at it's core, a series about "telling stories without minding the consequences". It was the initial pitch for Bebop until the show became a dramatic yakuza film in space. A show where you can watch basically any episode and have a good time enjoying something creative. The ultimate episodic series.

And that is what is going to stop it from being a classic because ultimately, no matter how good the episode where they rip Dandies from other universes is, with it's ideas of what it means to be you and how the Depressed Universe's speech basically kills everyone, no matter how good the zombie apocolypse episode is...they're just singular things that you enjoy for their pathos or comedy or drama, and then put on a shelf never to be seen or referred to again. Humans as a whole prefer sequential media to episodic, and Dandy's goal was to be the ultimate episodic series. So it will never get the recognition it probably deserves because it actively avoided it.

If I understand correctly, I agree on some points but disagree on others.

Spoiler: Should I use spoilers here? Better use them just to be safe.

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Indeed one of my misgivings about the series is the reveal on how warping replaces someone with an identical copy and how that ties into the ending, (the reveal that Dandy is some sort of multiversal constant and the perfect candidate to be God's successor,) which seemed overblown to the point of feeling pretentious. For me it seemed like an effort to inject a sort of continuity into a series that was doing fine without it.

Though I'd also disagree that people as a rule prefer sequential media over episodic. Though I will say the way fan communities conduct themselves with theory-crafting, speculation on future episodes and whatnot, sequential media is easier to discuss because it actually lends itself to that kind of discussion. Episodic media, when it's discussed at all, has to be done so on an episode to episode basis.

I will concede the point that with anime in particular, an episodic format is rare. I'll even admit that while it used to be super-common in western animation, truly episodic series are less common than they used to be. That said, I don't think an episodic format automatically makes a show less appealing.

For my own part, in the case of Space Dandy, I have a lot of fun revisiting some of my favorite episodes and the humor and the pathos largely holds up. Pretty subjective and flimsy as an appraisal of quality I know, but that's also the appeal of more bona-fide classics like FLCL for me as well.

Elfen Truthed: A western animation (like Justice League Unlimited animation) story/slice of life about a super hero elf named Elfen with superhuman strength who's weakness is that he must always tell the truth.

:D

So... would Elfen be allowed to give truthful but unhelpful answers?

"OK, Elfen! You are completely at our mercy, how do you get into the secret hideout?"

"Through the secret door."

"...Oh...Kay... Where's the secret door?"

"I'm not supposed to tell you. It's a secret."

Or...

"OK, Elfen! What's the password?"

"It's the word you use to gain access."

[Ossian77]

Patience mostly, or hunt down the original from the 70's if you just need to know roughly what happens (I have not seen the originals but aside from some tweaks and stuff I've heard the story is about the same?)

The remakes are being released first as movies, then get broken down into episodes for tv later. I dunno when they'll get into the next batch of episodes, but it looks like the last movie is due to come out in November, so it could be a while before you can really finish it regardless of when they start releasing more episodes.

Cheers!!! For the storyline, it is mostly the same, but some relationships (like Kodai and Yuko's ) are more complex, and the coreography of the ship to ship battle and the dog fights are just fantastic. Plus some of the science-babble (distances, warp jumps etc) while 100% fictional, is a bit more internally consistent and even advances the plot at times.

I guess I will have to wait then, too bad Voltron Legendary Defender season 7 is only too short, no way it will last me until November. Maybe Attack on Titan season 3 will come to the rescue.....

[gooddragon1]

So... would Elfen be allowed to give truthful but unhelpful answers?

"OK, Elfen! You are completely at our mercy, how do you get into the secret hideout?"

"Through the secret door."

"...Oh...Kay... Where's the secret door?"

"I'm not supposed to tell you. It's a secret."

Or...

"OK, Elfen! What's the password?"

"It's the word you use to gain access."

I was imagining more along the lines of "Did you do [embarrassing thing x]?", but your approach works too.

[Lethologica]

We can't say that Space Dandy isn't/won't be a classic because it's episodic. Watanabe isn't much for thick plots: Bebop and Champloo had pretty light continuities for most of their respective runs, and of course both are classics. Plenty of other classics primarily engage episodically - Mushishi, Natsume Yuujinchou, Gintama, Haruhi, Kino no Tabi, and more...I haven't even touched on episodic genres like slice-of-life, because I don't know the territory. There might be a tendency to tell season-long stories at present because of shifts in how the medium is produced and consumed, but that's an artifact - it doesn't say anything about what kind of storytelling is better at producing classics.

[The Fury]

I was imagining more along the lines of "Did you do [embarrassing thing x]?", but your approach works too.

I feel like having to admit embarrassing things is almost a given. I mean, if Elfen is compelled to tell the truth, there's pretty much only one way that some scenes can pan out.

Elfen is in a crowded elevator, one of his team mates looks over...

"Elfen, did you just fart?"

We can't say that Space Dandy isn't/won't be a classic because it's episodic. Watanabe isn't much for thick plots: Bebop and Champloo had pretty light continuities for most of their respective runs, and of course both are classics. Plenty of other classics primarily engage episodically - Mushishi, Natsume Yuujinchou, Gintama, Haruhi, Kino no Tabi, and more...I haven't even touched on episodic genres like slice-of-life, because I don't know the territory. There might be a tendency to tell season-long stories at present because of shifts in how the medium is produced and consumed, but that's an artifact - it doesn't say anything about what kind of storytelling is better at producing classics.

Something I've been turning over in my head is whether media with continuity that's largely inconsequential should be considered episodic? For the purposes of this discussion I've been erring on the side of "no," though like you mentioned, slice-of-life stories there isn't a lot of value placed on continuity and each individual episode can be watched on its own and order doesn't matter much. That said, I suppose there are shows with a debatable episodic status.

[Lethologica]

I see, er, episodicity, as a sliding scale. The extreme of completely self-contained stories is quite rare. Even stories where no consequences carry over between episodes, which therefore could be told in any order (plus perhaps a first/last episode), are uncommon. Shows like Friends and The Big Bang Theory are undeniably strongly episodic, and equally undeniably have overarching continuity.

Certainly Space Dandy is high enough on continuity that if we say it's too episodic to be a classic, many actual classics are caught in the dragnet of that argument.

[theMycon]

Hi folks

I just finished watching the Eng dub of Yamato / Star Blazer 2202, and it stops at episode 13 (ok, Earth + Gamilas Vs Gatlantians of the Comet just to be clear. SO many open plotlines.....). I think I might have been watching the short films, rather than the actual episodes, though the titles do match.

I'm fairly sure it's just on its mid-season break. It has been 2-3 weeks without an episode, so if I'm right it'll pick up again in a week or two.

But it's totally normal for an anime to take a month off after episode 12 or 13. Unfortunately, that means the next one will be a recap episode.

[gooddragon1]

Does anyone know if there's a video compilation of all the times Golden Frieza has referenced himself in Japanese?

A youtube search of "golden frieza compilation" wasn't productive.

Example of self referencing: http://www.infinitelooper.com/?v=70C...E&p=n#/100;106

[Kato]

So, after watching a lot less anime the last seasons because of reasons, I decided to catch up a bit by finally committing to the convenience of *popular anime streaming service *. Sadly, right out the gate I had to realize because Germany they can't provide half of the shows I wanted to watch. I mean, there's still a decent list of things for example only Naruto from any of the huge Shonen (and Boruto and Fairy Tail).
So I decided to catch up with Food Wars to begin with because despite the unnecessary fanservice it entertains me by making cooking look more action than fight scenes in other shows.
Also, I've queued up Franxx and apparently there is a new Gundam (in CYBER space!)

Okay, long story short, what else from the last year or so should I watch, preferably something humorous unless it's a must see for some reason.

[deuterio12]

apparently there is a new Gundam (in CYBER space!)

It's more Gundam: The VR MMORPG. With some top-tier VR tech because characters can even taste in-game food. Now with 50% more furries of all levels! No seriously, there's everything from "normal human with animal ears and tail" to "full animal body with no human traits besides wearing some clothing and talking".

Also this time they don't actually break their toy robots while playing with them unlike the previous Gundam Builders, which sounded kinda like Bandai's wet dream.

Spoiler

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Then turns out the first season's villain is an old-school gundam builder grognard that liked things better when he got to wreck other kid's toys.

[LaZodiac]

So, after watching a lot less anime the last seasons because of reasons, I decided to catch up a bit by finally committing to the convenience of *popular anime streaming service *. Sadly, right out the gate I had to realize because Germany they can't provide half of the shows I wanted to watch. I mean, there's still a decent list of things for example only Naruto from any of the huge Shonen (and Boruto and Fairy Tail).
So I decided to catch up with Food Wars to begin with because despite the unnecessary fanservice it entertains me by making cooking look more action than fight scenes in other shows.
Also, I've queued up Franxx and apparently there is a new Gundam (in CYBER space!)

Okay, long story short, what else from the last year or so should I watch, preferably something humorous unless it's a must see for some reason.

I mean it's super recent and still ongoing so it probably doesn't count as "last year" but I highly encourage you to watch Cells At Work/Hataraku Saibo. It's incredibly good.

[kamikasei]

Okay, long story short, what else from the last year or so should I watch, preferably something humorous unless it's a must see for some reason.

Good (complete) stuff from this year I've seen (don't remember what you might have seen already, or what availability is like in Germany):
Recovery of an MMO Junkie, Takagi-san, Yuru Camp, A Place Further than the Universe, Pop Team Epic, SAO Alternative, Megalo Box, Hinamatsuri, Uma Musume. The ones in bold are the comedies or must-sees.

Girls' Last Tour, The Ancient Magus' Bride, and Violet Evergarden are also supposed to be good, though I haven't seen them and only TAMB is on CR.

[Rysto]

So the live-action adaptation of Cells at Work is looking pretty good.

[BWR]

The Ancient Magus' Bride, and Violet Evergarden

These are both really, really good. Excellent and interesting worldbuilding in the former (the closest thing we've had to an Ars Magica anime) and great character development with plenty of onion ninjas in the second.

[Rysto]

Man, I hate it when things get light and fluffy in a dark and depressing anime. I spend the whole time with my heart in my chest, waiting for the shoe to drop.

(And yes, this was prompted by the latest episode of Happy Sugar Life)

[Kato]

*omits rant about stupid German copyright and limited choice of shows (at least most of the Gundam franchise is there, including some oldies) *
I'll see what I can get to (and how fast, considering I'm not really up to speed yet) but thanks for the suggestions!

I know I'm half a year late but my impression after the first few episodes of Franxx is that I'm not sure if there is more to it than the thinly veiled sex joke.. or more respectfully, the allegory for puberty and blooming sexuality. I mean, the fights look nice enough but something is missing that makes me feel like it's not truly Trigger.. The comedy maybe? I know I probably won't regret watching this to the end but...
Also, I care literally more for every person in the show than the two main characters.

[kamikasei]

Further to my earlier recommendations, I finally actually finished Violet Evergarden and it is, indeed, very good. I'd rate it behind A Place Further Than The Universe as far as "must see", but though I was iffy on the writing in the early episodes (hence why I stalled out during its original run) it improves a lot, and the animation is of course just ridiculously gorgeous.

I know I probably won't regret watching this to the end but...

The main comment I've seen about Franxx even from those who enjoyed it for most of its run is that the end falls apart, so...

[JCarter426]

Okay, long story short, what else from the last year or so should I watch, preferably something humorous unless it's a must see for some reason.

So, summer 2017 to now, excluding sequels and holding judgement on this season, in roughly chronological order.

First, those that are primarily comedies:

Gamers! - Love triangle turns into love Tetris. Got a bit of criticism for the characters being dumb and unable to properly communicate, which I understand, but it's a comedy of errors so the matter is whether you enjoy that or not.
Blend S - Café where all the waitresses are anime archetypes. The main character is meant to be sadistic and is very bad at this, except when she tries to be nice and is bad at that, coming across as sadistic. And now there might be no point in watching it because it's kind of a one-joke show. But I liked it enough to watch the whole thing.
Boku no Kanojo ga Majimesugiru Sho-bitch na Ken / My Girlfriend is Shobitch - Also kind of a one-joke show. Every female character interprets everything in a perverted way. Main character is the straight man. Keeps introducing more characters with different perverted shticks to keep things fresh. Again, if you like its one joke, you'll probably keep liking it; if not, not.
Net-juu no Susume / Recovery of an MMO Junkie - MMO romantic comedy. Probably helps if you play MMOs, but I don't and liked it all right.
Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii / Wotakoi: Love Is Hard for Otaku - Otaku date otaku with mixed success.
Hinamatsuri - Hard to describe seriously. Deadpan girl with psychic powers, yakuza, the homeless, middleschooler with too many illicit jobs. Watch this if you watch nothing else on this list.
Comic Girls - Moe flavor of the month: mangaka. Even if you don't go for cute girls doing cute things, it does have a lot to say about the manga-making process.

Those that aren't primarily comedies but I think were especially good:

Princess Principal - High school girls are spies in a Charles Dickens/H. G. Wells alternate history mash-up. Anime original. Got some sequel movies greenlit.
Golden Kamuy - Another alternate historical fiction, featuring a treasure hunt for gold and the Ainu language. Second season starts in a few weeks.

And thoughts on other stuff mentioned:

Sora yori mo Tooi Basho / A Place Further Than the Universe - I mostly liked it, but when it was over I thought "what, that's it?" Seemed like it played it safe with everything and ended up not having anything to say. It did make me kind of want to see Antarctica until I remembered Antarctica is **** cold.
Violet Evergarden - What it does well it does very well, but the quality is uneven and the ending was so bad that it prompted me to look it up online and confirm that Kyoto Animation totally changed it. Evidently, so they can do a sequel movie and make more money... which I suppose is a thing you gotta do when you actually pay your animators.
Mahoutsukai no Yome / The Ancient Magus' Bride - I wouldn't say I disliked it, but for some reason I wasn't into its mythology and thought Chise had the personality and agency of a doormat.

I know I'm half a year late but my impression after the first few episodes of Franxx is that I'm not sure if there is more to it than the thinly veiled sex joke..

There's more to it than that, but in this case I wouldn't say that's necessarily a good thing. It goes to crazy town like only Trigger anime can, and when it does, it does it hard. But I wouldn't describe in terms of lacking something as a Trigger anime, though. I'd liken it more to being an Evangelion clone and sticking to that (especially the going to crazy town part). As with all Evangelion clones, you have to ask if it has anything new to add. That's what I'd say was lacking.

[LaZodiac]

A new series has entered the fray in Shounen Jump this week!

Teenage Renaissance! David

A new series is now leaving the fray in Shounen Jump this week!

....jokes aside this is ****ing terrible and is going to be cancelled immediately.

[Kato]

A new series has entered the fray in Shounen Jump this week!

Teenage Renaissance! David

A new series is now leaving the fray in Shounen Jump this week!

....jokes aside this is ****ing terrible and is going to be cancelled immediately.

Actually, two new series... But yes, this wa the worse one. Not that what appears to be a manga-lized geography lesson seems great. But David definitely is worse. I guess if you're really into abstruse humor....

[LaZodiac]

Actually, two new series... But yes, this wa the worse one. Not that what appears to be a manga-lized geography lesson seems great. But David definitely is worse. I guess if you're really into abstruse humor....

I barely even registered I'M From Japan because it was just...not well all that well drawn or funny.

But oh my ****ing god the only positive part of David is that I have a friend called that and sharing scenes from it bothers him and I'm cruel sometimes.

[pendell]

Saw Golden Kamuy. As historical fiction it is really good but ... well ... I'd personally give it an M for mature rating.

See, the schtick of the series is that a convict thrown into prison tattooed a map to his treasure on 22 other convicts.

Spoiler

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While it can be copied, quite a few of the characters -- including the protaganists -- will skin the target in order to get their part of the map. It's never showed explicitly, but there isn't much left to the imagination.

I like it for its view of Ainu culture and historical Japan. It really is a rollicking good story, but i would suggest it's not a film for the entire family. Not unless they are , hah, taxidermists.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Rysto]

So, the summer season comes to an end today with Hanebado's late finale. What did people watch this season, and what did they think? For me:


Revue Starlight was easily my favourite from this season. It had an ambitious and cool story, awesome animation for the most part, I really liked the music, and overall was just a well put-together show. If you don't know anything about it, it's not the idol show that most people assumed at the start. I won't spoil what it's really all about -- watching the first episode will tell you enough about what it really is. It did run into production problems throughout its run -- the studio was apparently recruiting animators via twitter by Episode 4 or so -- but they did a fairly good job of papering over it. The show never degenerates into Jiggly Jiggly Heaven, but there are definitely scenes along the way where it becomes obvious that the lack of time meant that the visuals couldn't match the original ambition. It was still a great ride and I heartily recommend it. Unfortunately, the show is marred by subpar translations. A number of fansub groups did step up for the show, but I didn't find any that I was entirely happy with. The best was supposedly Chu-PAS, and while I'm sure they provided accurate translations I'm pretty sure that their treatment of the english language is going to attract attention from the International Criminal Court.

Cells at Work was a ton of fun. The formula is pretty simple: map biological processes in the human body onto crazy anime tropes and go to town with it. Early on I was worried that it was going to get stale and repetitive, but the back half of the show did a good job of diversifying things and keeping it fresh. I really enjoyed it, and it was educational as well. I'll probably wind up picking up the manga as there's an official translation and I want more.

Hanebad really frustrated me. It had some excellent elements: the animation is great, many of the badminton scenes had interesting strategy (rather than just focusing on heart/grit/hard work/insert your sporting cliche), and the basic idea for the main character's arc was pretty unique. Unfortunately, the show is marred by its addiction to melodrama. Most of the antagonists were off-the-wall caricatures that really didn't belong in a show that was trying for a serious tone (part of the problem, I gather, is that the source manga started off goofier before evolving a more serious tone. The anime seems to be more consistent by being serious from the start, but didn't adjust some of the characters to match the tone). As a result we're left with a number of characters who take badminton way too seriously -- and not in the way that actual people take sports too seriously. It kinda takes you out of the story when one character's backstory is that when she got a sick prior to an important match, she tracked down her opponent, jumped her and held her down, and then spit in her mouth to pass on the disease so they'd both be sick during the match and on an even footing (I'll admit that this particular event does set up a very satisfying moment later in the show, but they could have reworked the backstory to actually be in the area code of reality without losing that setup). The writing overall is very uneven and characters seem to act in service to the plot rather than the plot evolving in response to the actions of characters with coherent motivations. Finally, I found the finale somewhat unsatisfying. The whole thing should have been building up to a confrontation between two of the characters -- but the show in the end shied away from that, and showed a lot of sympathy for a character whose actions were absolutely reprehensible and whose motivations were infuriating. The only thing mitigating my anger here is that they telegraphed this ending for a long time, so I at least knew that it was coming. But the ending still doesn't sit well with me.

Planet With is one of those niche shows that some people just loved. I never got all that into it myself. In the end, I never really connected with the main characters and I found the overall plot to be too predictable. It was a serviceable show for me, but nothing special. It doesn't help that I'm really not a fan of mecha and this show just reinforced that for me. I didn't really get into most of the big fight scenes -- mecha tropes just don't interest me. If you like mecha, though, I guess there's a lot here for you.

I haven't yet finished Happy Sugar Life. I've enjoyed what I've seen so far, but it's been clear to me that this has been hurtling towards a tragic ending for a while. I just can't get up for seeing these characters come to ruin, even if they have (for the most part) fully earned it. There's just nobody here I can realistically root for (well, other than the small child who's going to get dragged down by the crazy all around her)

Chio's School Road was pretty good. Sometimes I found it hilarious, sometimes I was just outright offended (seriously, the gropey lesbian character is a trope that really, really needs to die in a fire). Fortunately, there's not a lot of continuity from skit to skit so I could just skip the ones I couldn't stand to get to something I liked. One thing that I'm really amused about is how the PV managed to give a completely accurate summary of what was to come in the series but presenting it in a way that meant I didn't understand what the PV was about at all until after I'd watched the series.

I wound up giving Island a try at the half-way point of the season after I saw a comment that the stupid fanservice scene that opened the series wasn't really representative of what the show was actually about. That was true, but the reality wasn't any more entertaining. It was clear to me that the show was racing from plot point to plot point from the original VN and the show just didn't have any goddamned time to breathe. There were multiple occasions where some plot point is established, only for five minutes later to hit us with the shocking revelation that the plot point was actually untrue. Meanwhile things like character development are left entirely by the wayside for a lack of time. I wound up dropping it around the eighth episode. It looked to me that maybe the plot had finally reached an interesting point and they might be able to at least come to an interesting conclusion, only for them to dump almost the entire main cast in favour of a pointless diversion.

[Silfir]

From all I'm hearing, it looks like my initial impression of Hanebado after the first episode turned out to be accurate. I'm deeply allergic to melodrama - made me drop Citrus about halfway (when a certain character showed up). In Hanebado, the character of the rival acting like a complete jackass from the word go and nobody possessing the werewithal to go "what the frick is wrong with you" at her - immediately - made all the alarm bells ring. There are tons of sports anime out there that feature peope who are extremely serious about their sport, and manage to do so without being dangerously unbalanced and sucking the fun out of the experience for everyone - your Chihayafurus, your Baby Stepses, or your Majors.

Speaking of, my sports anime of choice this time around was Major 2nd. It turned out to be as good of a sequel to the Major saga as anyone could possibly expect. The six seasons of Major rank among my all-time favorite things to binge-watch. Obviously the prerequisite is that you have to care at least a little bit about baseball. It's good introductory material, though.

I watched both Chio-chan and Cells at Work, and have very little to add. I didn't skip any of the skits in Chio-chan, but I definitely agree that the ones involving the Kabbadi captain strongly veered into unfunny territory.

For me, the true highlight of the season was Asobi Asobase. It's just delightfully anarchic - it takes the Cute Girls Doing Cute Things trope, drags it into a dark alley and does unspeakable things to it. At its best, it's channeling Monty Python. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but it's definitely worth a shot.

I also watched the third season of Boku no Hero, and it kind of dragged its heels for a while there. It suffers a bit from 1-A being this huge ensemble of characters; none of them really get the focus they need to truly catch my interest. Even when there's an arc that goes deep into their motivations, they fade back into also-ran status right quick; not even Bakugo or Izuku are immune to the effect. I get the feeling the show develops a bit too deliberately; major developments tend to be introduced with narration, or massively foreshadowed in advance (like, I get it, society is falling apart because All Might is gone, the villains are gearing up for something big and so on - you think you could get them to hurry it up?), to the point that the impact is pretty subdued. Say what you will about Toriyama's seat-by-the-pants writing in the Dragon Ball manga - it kept you on your toes. Oh well, it might simply be that the provisional pro hero exam just wasn't the series' strongest arc. (Not reading the manga over here, so no spoiling.)

[LaZodiac]

From all I'm hearing, it looks like my initial impression of Hanebado after the first episode turned out to be accurate. I'm deeply allergic to melodrama - made me drop Citrus about halfway (when a certain character showed up). In Hanebado, the character of the rival acting like a complete jackass from the word go and nobody possessing the werewithal to go "what the frick is wrong with you" at her - immediately - made all the alarm bells ring. There are tons of sports anime out there that feature peope who are extremely serious about their sport, and manage to do so without being dangerously unbalanced and sucking the fun out of the experience for everyone - your Chihayafurus, your Baby Stepses, or your Majors.

Speaking of, my sports anime of choice this time around was Major 2nd. It turned out to be as good of a sequel to the Major saga as anyone could possibly expect. The six seasons of Major rank among my all-time favorite things to binge-watch. Obviously the prerequisite is that you have to care at least a little bit about baseball. It's good introductory material, though.

I watched both Chio-chan and Cells at Work, and have very little to add. I didn't skip any of the skits in Chio-chan, but I definitely agree that the ones involving the Kabbadi captain strongly veered into unfunny territory.

For me, the true highlight of the season was Asobi Asobase. It's just delightfully anarchic - it takes the Cute Girls Doing Cute Things trope, drags it into a dark alley and does unspeakable things to it. At its best, it's channeling Monty Python. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but it's definitely worth a shot.

I also watched the third season of Boku no Hero, and it kind of dragged its heels for a while there. It suffers a bit from 1-A being this huge ensemble of characters; none of them really get the focus they need to truly catch my interest. Even when there's an arc that goes deep into their motivations, they fade back into also-ran status right quick; not even Bakugo or Izuku are immune to the effect. I get the feeling the show develops a bit too deliberately; major developments tend to be introduced with narration, or massively foreshadowed in advance (like, I get it, society is falling apart because All Might is gone, the villains are gearing up for something big and so on - you think you could get them to hurry it up?), to the point that the impact is pretty subdued. Say what you will about Toriyama's seat-by-the-pants writing in the Dragon Ball manga - it kept you on your toes. Oh well, it might simply be that the provisional pro hero exam just wasn't the series' strongest arc. (Not reading the manga over here, so no spoiling.)

All I'll say about My Hero is that a lot of people had the same complaints about the manga during this period too. So you're not wrong, it just translated to screen the same way it was on page. I personally don't mind it myself though.

Planet With ruled and Cells at Work was brilliant. Those two aside I didn't actually watch anything new...oops.

[BWR]

Shows I started watching but gave up on after more than one episode:
Planet With - I know some people rave about the author and raved about how good this was and I liked "Spirit circle", so I gave it another shot after initially dumping it after episode 2. It was still dull and predictable and uninspired up to episode 6 or 7 at which point I couldn't be arsed any more.

Angels of Death - despite the somewhat interesting set-up and dungeon, the completely bog-standard, one-dimensional exaggerated characters drove me away after a few episodes.

Island - I didn't get as far as Rysto, only ep. 4 or so. Sounds like I didn't miss anything.

Aguu: Genius dolls - an interesting enough concept and I may end up finishing it some day, but so far I've only gotten to ep 4.



The ones I actually ended up finishing were

Chio-chan's school road - not much to add here. A lot of fun, even with the unfortunate senpai.

Asobi Asobase - It was amusing enough to keep me watching, but not much more than that.

Yuragi.sou no Yuuna-san - as previously mentioned, this sort of thing is my guilty pleasure. Even taking this into account, I think most shows and manga of this sort are pretty crap, but this one did it well enough to be fun. Not much more to say. The manga is wrapping up (probably) with a suitably epic superpowered showdown, and while I've enjoyed it, it probably should not continue after this arc.

Lupin III part V - This was pretty much the perfect Lupin show. The humor, the drama, the intrigue, the darkness lurking underneath the bright exterior, the retro episodes, the art and animation, the characters, the update to modern times: it was nearly perfect. Until we come to the final episode. There was that one scene which almost entirely ruined it for me. Too "Green vs. Red" which I seriously dislike. That one scene casts a pall over everything else. I understand the meaning and all behind GvR and this reveal but I simply don't like it at all for several reasons.

[kamikasei]

I loved the melodrama in Hanebado, but the ending was unsatisfying. It didn't ruin the show, but it felt... incomplete. It had the potential to do something really unusual and interesting, but chose none of those options. It didn't feel like Ayano really grew much, and the over-the-top stuff didn't get tied back in properly. I'd guess this is a symptom of adapting a work that continued on well past that point (I don't know how quickly the show moved through the source material, but with thirteen volumes of manga I'm assuming they didn't get it all), where to make it really work as a one-cour show they needed to change things they weren't willing to.

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I'm with Rysto that Uchika was a god damned monster and it's just not adequately acknowledged. Ayano doesn't go with her in the end, but it's presented as if she's gotten over her childish resentment and doesn't need any kind of apology or atonement to be willing to resume a relationship with her abusive, neglectful mother. Poor Connie's still stuck with her. And in the end, Ayano's just... the same jerk with a mean streak who now sincerely enjoys badminton but still mostly seems to use it as a vehicle for dominating others, and while Nagisa's doing okay, Kaoruko and Connie are still messed up.

A more satisfying ending would have had Ayano call out and reject her mother, possibly quit badminton entirely, and show up how damaging the behaviour of all the people who invest their entire identities and self-worth in winning at sportsballcock really is. The pressure Uchika put on her daughter messed her up badly, and went on to damage the other girls who ran headfirst into the obstacle she represented, and none of that really... goes anywhere. There isn't any payoff commensurate with the extreme nonsense involved. Nozomi's arc is much more grounded and low-stakes, but resolves in a much more satisfying way.

Cells at Work was just fun, and highly screencappable. I want to poke a platelet's chubby cheeks.

Chio's School Road was moderately amusing, but not enough that I'd recommend it in spite of the unfunny or pervy stuff.

Planet With was good, but too short to be great. It didn't ever allow a status quo time to emerge, so constantly shaking things up didn't have the power it could have. Being too dense for one cour might be better than not having enough material for two, but I have to think they could have gotten more out of the character interactions and the stuff we timeskipped over, given the whole thing more time to breathe, and gotten a better work out of it.

Gundam Build Divers was fun. It wasn't amazing but it did a good job of telling the fairly simple story it wanted to tell. GBN is of course a nonsense game, but the final conflict made an admirable amount of sense and let us have characters we liked fighting each other for understandable reasons.

Steins;Gate 0 was a mixed bag. It has some good points (Majo; Daru's dating disasters; Okarin's surprisingly well-portrayed trauma and maturation), some bad points (in particular some things they did with Mayuri and Ruka), but in the end it just feels... unnecessary. The framing of the whole premise makes it hard to really care that much about any of what's happening.

It hasn't completed in this season but I've been enjoying FLCL Alternative so far. It's a lot better than Progressive was, that's for sure. A big part of that is having a main character who isn't a socially isolated loner stuck in her own head, but a pretty normal teenager with close and good friends all dealing with the same struggles of growing up and dealing with impending adulthood. I hope it doesn't go off the rails before the end, and if it manages to hold together, it should produce something very different from the original series, but really solid in its own right.

I'm told Revue Starlight is absolutely fantastic and Sirius the Jaeger is pretty good too. I'll probably binge the former on HiDive via free trial soon, and catch the latter once it's up on Netflix.

And unrelated to this season, I finally watched Kemono Friends and would heartily recommend it. It's hilariously badly animated and you can really tell how few resources the production had to work with, but it's cute and fun and heartfelt. Also it confirms that idols and video games will survive the collapse of civilization, and in the end isn't that all any of us really want?

[JCarter426]

Chio's School Road was pretty good. Sometimes I found it hilarious, sometimes I was just outright offended (seriously, the gropey lesbian character is a trope that really, really needs to die in a fire).

Chio's School Road was moderately amusing, but not enough that I'd recommend it in spite of the unfunny or pervy stuff.

...Yeah, that's fair. I thought the first bit with her was ok, or at the very least, funny enough to ignore the molestation, given how it was a serious part of Chio's winning strategy. That the gropey kabaddi lesbian didn't actually instigate anything that time and that Yuki was surprisingly into it also helped, I guess. But with most subsequent appearances she just came across as a child molester. There were also a few non-molestation bits that I didn't care fo. What I really did like about it, though, was that it took its time to carefully set things up for a strong finish rather than skip to an easy punchline, and when it did that well, it paid off. But I'd say it was both a strength and a weakness. Good examples would be the Assassin's Creed one and the newspaper delivery one. But when the payoff isn't as good or when the setup relies on molestation, the whole bit comes off all the worse for it.

I haven't yet finished Happy Sugar Life. I've enjoyed what I've seen so far, but it's been clear to me that this has been hurtling towards a tragic ending for a while. I just can't get up for seeing these characters come to ruin, even if they have (for the most part) fully earned it.

I did finish it. I still don't know how I feel about that.

Island
It was clear to me that the show was racing from plot point to plot point from the original VN and the show just didn't have any goddamned time to breathe. There were multiple occasions where some plot point is established, only for five minutes later to hit us with the shocking revelation that the plot point was actually untrue.

Typical pacing for a visual novel adaptation. Sara's story arc was probably the wort in that respect of what you did watch, but the part I thought was rushed the most actually happened some time after you quit.

It looked to me that maybe the plot had finally reached an interesting point and they might be able to at least come to an interesting conclusion, only for them to dump almost the entire main cast in favour of a pointless diversion.

It doesn't really do that, but I don't exactly disagree with your overall assessment. I liked some of its ideas but I didn't think it actually explored them enough to call it a conclusion. A somewhat interesting non-conclusion, perhaps.

Planet With - I know some people rave about the author and raved about how good this was and I liked "Spirit circle", so I gave it another shot after initially dumping it after episode 2. It was still dull and predictable and uninspired up to episode 6 or 7 at which point I couldn't be arsed any more.

I did the same except I haven't yet decided whether I will give it another shot.

Steins;Gate 0 was a mixed bag. It has some good points (Majo; Daru's dating disasters; Okarin's surprisingly well-portrayed trauma and maturation), some bad points (in particular some things they did with Mayuri and Ruka), but in the end it just feels... unnecessary. The framing of the whole premise makes it hard to really care that much about any of what's happening.

I really liked the beginning and I really liked the ending, but the middle not so much. It felt like it dragged to me because it relied on what I felt were pointless - and if you've seen any other ; series, obvious - plot twists. And the most interesting part of said plot twists it didn't even explore because it was pointless. But I was still entertained throughout. I went in knowing roughly how it fit into the grand scheme of things, and didn't mind that that it was "unnecessary". I was more interested to see how exactly it all fit together.

[deuterio12]

Gundam Build Divers was fun. It wasn't amazing but it did a good job of telling the fairly simple story it wanted to tell. GBN is of course a nonsense game, but the final conflict made an admirable amount of sense and let us have characters we liked fighting each other for understandable reasons.

That was the only anime I really followed this season because limited resources, but I would say the first season's conflict also made an admirable amount of sense since hackers are pretty common thing in online games.

Then the fact that it's a mmo and not a tournament means the protagonists can actually be defeated now and then instead of the previous Gundam Build tournaments where the protagonists just blazed with victory after victory.

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Also the first season's villain being an hardcore fan of the previous game that hated that everybody had moved on to the next big thing was pretty good too.

Plus Patrick every single episode.

[Kato]

Cells at Work was just fun, and highly screencappable. I want to poke a platelet's chubby cheeks.

Well, damn, that show is definitely way better than it has any right to be. The premise is straight forward enough - actually reminds me of a cartoon (Once upon a time... Life) but with everything turned up to 11 - but the execution, parts of biologic accuracy aside, is just way good. It takes a lot to make you symphathize with cancer......