Anime Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread [Week 30]
Anime Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread [Week 30]
New week, new thread. That's just the way things work around here. Like every week, feel free to use this thread for general questions, recommendations, updates, whatever you feel like.
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Summer has settled into a bit of a groove. So, here is where shows that I have been watching currently stand:
Really Enjoying
- Oshi no Ko - Been enjoying this arc, but it might not be for everybody.
- Alya - probably the biggest surprise of the season for me. It's been a lot of fun.
- Love is Indivisible By Twins - Big guilty pleasure show full of drama, like a love triangle should be.
- Pseudo Harem - just a half hour of two people flirting.
It's Been Good
- Tower of God - Second season has been quite a big change from the first, still adjusting.
- Dungeon People - After a strong open, this show has settled down into more of a SOL, but I am hoping that they keep some intensity.
- Nokotan - This show has tons of humor, but it doesn't always land for me. Plenty still does though.
- Spice and Wolf - Continuing from last season, this show has been moving pretty slow, but still keeping up with it.
Let's See Where This Goes
- Isekai Quality Assurance - Willing to give this one some more time to see what they do with the premise.
- Dahlia - First couple episodes have felt like a prologue, so willing to see what happens now that we are through that. The animation has been pretty poor though.
Probably Going to Drop
- My Wife Has No Emotion - Sometimes you win the adaptation roulette, and sometimes you don't. This one didn't for me, so I will probably just stick with the manga.
- Plus-Sized Elf - Yeah...they cranked the fan service dial to 11 when they adapted this, and I think it is probably just too far for me. There just isn't enough there to keep me coming back each week.
Yeah...they cranked the fan service dial to 11 when they adapted this, and I think it is probably just too far for me
Same. At least crank up the animation and art too if you're gonna crank the source, like with Ishuzoku Reviewers
Finished Frieren. I enjoyed it overall. It ended up being different than I expected. I went in knowing nothing about it and I expected it to be one season about learning to deal with loss, so once they went to the license exam, I knew it was going to be something else.
I'll be looking forward to more time with Frieren, Fern, and Stark, but I hope it doesn't get padded out too much with side quest stuff.
We went to look for something else to start after that. We watched the first Delicious in Dungeon, and it was interesting, but it didn't have quite what we were looking for.
Next we checked out To Your Eternity. Very intriguing from the start, and we got through 6 episodes, but man, this one is a bit more brutal than we were initially prepared for. Good concept and story though, so I'm excited to see where the story goes.
I do want to check out Plus Sized Elf to see what they did with it, but it's not something I can watch at work, and I somehow have a feeling it wouldn't be enjoyed at home no matter how many potato puns there are. 😜
Not anime, but For all Mankind has been my first pick of what to watch this month. Nice alternative history of the space race. Just started season 4 and it has been good, ridiculous fun.
I always find peoples' reactions to Frieren interesting. When I am reading the manga, my favorite parts are the really slow, side-questy portions of the story. But, when I watch the anime, the OST and stellar animation really elevates the action sequences and make them stand out. Overall, the story will continue to meander between slow, SOL sections and the dramatic and intense battle arcs.
I do feel everything in the show is very well done. I think I may have had a better experience if I had read some more about it first though.
I saw the first episode, and then didn't have a chance to go back to the show until a few weeks later, so it had me primed for the vibe of that first episode with the intense emotional depth and the power of Fern's abilities, and there was some humor, but it felt there to humanize Frieren a bit.
The variety of SOL and action is good, but I feel the action kicks in very quickly. Many of the battles come in suddenly without much buildup, and end very impressively, but typically within half an episode. That makes it feel more episodic to me instead of one cohesive overall story. The part I felt did things the way I most enjoyed was when they met the demon peace envoy in the walled city. It had more suspense and buildup as we figured out the who and why of the story and it fleshed things out more and gave more weight to the outcome of the battles. You had time to worry for the party and appreciate the power of the opponents, not just our MCs.
This is probably why I also enjoyed the bird hunt from the license exam. It wasn't a self-contained single episode plot, had many POV, and gave time for a lot of back and forth which group was on top.
The story does leave me wanting more, and I think when it is complete, that will bump up my appreciation of the story as a whole. I just got my expectations set up for something that would be a one season, intense show, and it is not. Again, totally my own doing, and I would have benefited had I read more about it in advance.
They've got a ton of really great elements here though, from the animation, to the voice cast, to the storytelling, and I think this has potential to be something huge that gets recommended to people for years to come. I just haven't gotten quite into the perfect groove for this yet, but I think I'll be ready for the next season.