Anime/Manga Anime Watch Challenge 2022!

[Ninetales]

I've watched Season 3 of Attack On Titan and have begun Season 4. (Yes, I'm quite behind.) I can genuinely say it's one of the most tremendous shows I've ever had the pleasure of watching. It's gut-wrenching, immensely suspenseful, with twists and turns at every corner. I find myself consistently facing at my television screen breathlessly, on the edge of my seat. The animation, the soundtrack, the character development is all indescribably phenomenal. There is a reason why this anime has amassed such popularity, because it is exceptional in every way. The lore runs so deep it's almost unfathomable. Hajime Isayama truly outdid himself with the creation of this media.

 

[Sonata]

I finished Yamada-kun and the seven witches fairly early on in the month. It was only 12 episodes so I actually binged it over a couple days off from work and just never got around to actually writing the review because i ended up watching through hxh again. It was definitely a better experience than I was expecting. I had seen it on my watchlist for a while beforehand and always felt a bit put off by the way the characters looked and thought it would just be some generic romcom. And up until about halfway through the series I still had that feeling that it was just another romcom with the tiniest bit of seasoning. Things definitely pick up in the second half though, owing in part apparently to the condensing of several more chapters of manga into only a few episodes. But not having read the source material myself, I enjoyed the quickened pace a bit more as it didn't feel terribly rushed to the point that I was asking myself 'what is going on' but still kept me from switching back and forth to discord and whatever else.

In the end I gave it a 7/10 overall. It had its cute moments and was interesting enough to set it apart just enough from the rest of the generic romcoms of years past. I would feel comfortable recommending it to certain people, but it's not something I'll be giving a shout in casual recommendations.

 

[gimmepie]

Since it's the "funny" month, April's theme will be Comedy.

 

[RadEmpoleon]

I'll be watching Konosuba this time around!

 

[gimmepie]

I think I'll just watch season 3 of Takagi.

 

[Mahian23]

Just finished the latest series "The Genius Prince's Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt".
It was a awesome story. The hero is genius indeed, but a slacking prince who wants to sell his poor country by making it rich. So he does many hilarious plannings to lose wars but end up winning them. He then ends up with more poor lands. It's a 12 episode short series and a easily bingeable story.
A 7/10 by me.

 

[Sonata]

Think I'm going to try and get through three seasons of Scissor Seven :) They're a bit shorter episodes but I've seen a number of clips from it over the last few years. Most of the other comedy things I really want to watch would result in binging 3 or 4 full seasons of something and that just sounds stressful right now lmao.

 

[gimmepie]

I finished s3 of Takagi. Actually I ended up starting from the beginning and going all the way through and honestly I don't regret it. It's weird though because there's not that much to say about a show like this? It's 99% SoL with mostly very subtle character progression through the various seasons (although the last two (four in s3) episodes usually contain a much more dramatic jump. Given the base premise, this can lead to the show feeling a bit repetitive at times - and I don't mean the intentional callbacks, I actually think that's quite clever. Rather, the general formula of most episodes is pretty much the same. So if a slow burn isn't up your alley and you want something more dynamic, I wouldn't recommend this.

The thing is though, those little bits of character growth that occur throughout the seasons and the subsequent bigger jumps at the end of each feel very earned by the characters as a result of this. So while it can be a little irritating at times to watch the same formula play out, those slight deviations end up making it worth while. Still, I wouldn't call it a masterpiece of a plot. It is technically a SoL comedy after all.

Instead the show excels in other areas. First and foremost amongst these is characterisation. While the development is slow, it never feels like it's too slow for the characters. More than that, while typical anime hyperbole is in effect, every character in the show feels extremely believable. It's difficult to watch this show and not at some point think back to your own time in school and go "I knew these people" or even "I was that person" in some cases. Because of that excellent and consistent character work, you end up not only rooting for everyone in the cast and eagerly awaiting those little steps forward, but you are constantly left with this pervading sense of comfortable nostalgia - and I am not someone who easily succumbs to nostalgia-bait.

The other area the show excels in is the voice acting - at least as far as the Japanese VAs. I haven't heard the dubbed version. But all of the cast consistently put out a fantastic performance that really sell their characters.

So... yeah. I really like this show. It's not groundbreaking, but if you can handle the repetitive formula, it's sure to make you happy. It's an example of how doing something simple very well is much more compelling than doing something complex with an average quality. Given how s3 ended though, I am curious about what's coming with the movie in June. The usual episodic format isn't going to work as well for a movie and s3 ended on a pretty major step for the protagonists. I'm hoping they do what Kyoto did with Tamako Market and Tamako Love Story (of which I have only seen the latter lol) and give the movie a more "dramatic" spin in the wake of the s3 finale. That shit would hit different after watching the cast grow bit by painstaking little bit.

 

[Sapphire Rose]

It's a new month again! That means time for a new genre!

The one we chose for this month is one that was quite popular in the last run. We are going be watching movies again!

 

[gimmepie]

I've been meaning to watch Josee, the Tiger and the Fish for a while now so I'll use this month for that.

 

[gimmepie]

I've been meaning to watch Josee, the Tiger and the Fish for a while now so I'll use this month for that.

I did this!

This was a really nice movie and I enjoyed it a lot. It might feel a bit slow, but I think it's pace very well and that the "slowness" is very much intentional. Stories that are character-focused like this work well when the characters have room to breathe and aren't just being thrown from plot point to plot point.

As a character focused story, I think the characters were handled really well. Josee/kumiko starts off as blatantly obnoxious, she's frustrated by her circumstances and takes it out on everyone around her. It doesn't make for a likable beginning, but it is extremely relatable. Honestly, a lot of her feelings and also many of Tsuneo's towards the end hit a little too close to home for comfort for me lmao. Still, because of how she starts, it's really satisfying seeing her slowly grow to be someone who is more compassionate and empathetic, and someone who is willing to face her fears. By the end of the movie, she's even capable of guiding Tsuneo through his own similar trials the same way he did for her at the beginning.

The movie is also gorgeously animated. I wonder if it was rotoscoped in places actually. There was something about the art style and movement that just felt very real - or at least realistic. It wasn't quite as mind blowing to look at as some other shows/movies, but there was something really pleasing about how down to earth it felt aesthetically too. The music complemented everything else really well too.

I do have two criticisms to make though, granted they're not huge ones. Firstly, the themes get kind of muddied in places because there's two concurrent themes of "dealing with adversity" and "overcoming fears" and they blend together really messily in places. Secondly, the chase scene at the end felt really weird and out of place - like the writers were trying to cram a mandatory trope in.

Other than those small issues though, it was a fantastic movie. I'd highly recommend it.

 

[gimmepie]

NEW MONTH NEW THEME! We're trying something a little different this time with New Releases. Essentially, you have to watch something with a release date somewhere from April 2022 to June 2022. It's fine if the series won't finish before the end of the month, you can even come back later and let us know if your opinion has changed since you dropped your initial thoughts if you want!

 

[Sonata]

Hmmm. Pretty much everything that's airing right now is either a sequel, or I'm currently keeping up with it. Pretty easy to narrow this one down haha. I'll be binging through Deaimon towards the end of the month when it finishes airing :)

 

[Sapphire Rose]

I will be watching the new Tokyo mew mew!

 

[gimmepie]

I'll go with s3 of Kaguya-sama.

 

[gimmepie]

I'll go with s3 of Kaguya-sama.

Finished this early this morning.

I already enjoyed the first two seasons quite a lot, but I liked this one even more honestly. It was like getting more of what I liked from the first two seasons, but refined and improved on. The already solid comedy hit even more consistently, the animation and art were both really pleasing to look at and the voice acting was always extremely good. On top of that though, this season included something that was lacking largely from the first two seasons - especially the first - legitimate progress. In season three, more than in either of the previous, you really get a sense for both the personal growth of the characters as well as the deepening and expanding on their relationships with each other.

The only thing that irked me a little was that, in order to keep the base premise going long enough for the stories of other characters to catch up, the show undercut a major development between the two leads at the very end.

Not much more to say on this one.

 

[gimmepie]

New month new theme! For July we're doing drama!

 

[gimmepie]

Going to watch Hello World this month.

 

[gimmepie]

Finished Hello World. It was weird but I liked it. That isn't to say it wasn't without faults though. Going to put spoilers on this one just in case.

Spoiler:

So, basic plot outline - Naomi Katagaki is a socially awkward, book-loving dork who's just going about his life when one day he runs into his future self. Except he's not his future self, Naomi actually lives in a simulated reality based on detailed records of the past. Anyway, Future Naomi explains that there's no point worrying about this because he's experiencing it as though it's real anyway and then gets onto the thing at hand. He tells Naomi that he's going to end up dating fellow bookworm Ruri Ichigyou but that shortly after that happens she's going to get struck by lightning and end up brain dead. He's there to make sure Naomi and Ruri get together and then prevent that from happening to ensure a reality where she exists and gets to be happy. He gives Naomi a tool to manipulate the virtual reality to help ensure this and starts training him in its use.

Mission is accomplished, but Future Naomi pulls a fast one on Young Naomi and uses the tool from before to take the virtual Ruri post-lightning near-miss and put her in the older versions comatose version. The system then goes fully batshit in an attempt to regain some sort of normalcy and starts sending these fox men to delete everything. Understandably, Naomi is rather freaked out by this. Then comes the plot twist though, sensing a duplication of Ruri (sort of) in the "real world" the fox men suddenly start coming for her there - Future Naomi realising that he is also in a simulation and that the other simulation is nested inside his own. A deus ex machina occurs and Young NAomi gets the tool back and uses it to go into Future Naomi's world to bring Ruri back safely to his own. He succeeds but is then stuck there with his older self as the world decides to target their duplication instead. Older Naomi sacrifices himself to allow the young version time to get back to his own world as the collapsing upper layer of the simulation is deleted. However, in a surprise turn of events, this allows the older version of Naomi to return to his actual body where he wakes up to an adult Ruri and her team of scientists on the moon because she was doing similar experiments to return his mind after he fell into a coma himself during his attempts to rescue her after she got hit by lightning (so I guess she later woke up). Weird and a little mindfucky, but a happy ending. Woo!

So, that's actually a pretty cool story and I like the twist on the now pretty stale trope of "your future self comes to help you change things in the past." There's a big problem in the execution of the story though that hurts how good it could have been: they didn't do enough to make us care about the characters. Rather than give us time to care about the Naomi's and Ruri and their relationship, the story pretty much rushes us through a montage to get to the mindfucky simulation theory plot. I get that they wanted to shorten the run time (budget yay) and get to what the story was really about, but they could have kept that in mind through the use of the tool while also giving us time to actually get to know the characters which would have made the stakes feel more important and made us care more about the characters. Future Naomi's sacrifice would have been given a lot more weight too as would his reunion with the real world's Ruri in the end. So yeah, the story was conceptually beautiful and it was an enjoyable watch, but the pacing hurt what honestly could have been up there with stuff like Your Name and a Silent Voice - which is definitely what the creators were aiming for. There's apparently a novelisation and I'm wondering if that might actually be a better way to experience the story since it'd allow more time to get to know the characters.

The animation was also solid and mostly did a really good job of blending traditional and cgi animation. There was a couple of places where the cgi was really stark in contrast - excluding where it was very much supposed to be - which was a bit irksome, but you'd have to be being very nitpicky to really hold that against it. The soundtrack and voice acting were both solid too, although neither was incredible either.

So yeah, solid movie but I suspect the novelisation might be a better way to enjoy the story. I'm going to watch the spin off ONA, Another World, at some point too because that shows Future Naomi's side of the story (how he developed his plan and stuff) which sounds like it might be cool.

 

[arthurslater]

Why not I am ready