Anime/Manga 2021 Anime watch

Put me in with Ancient Magus Bride for May.

Just the event I needed. I've been trying to get back to anime for a while, but never got the habit of sitting down and watching anything back. So, let's try again.

I let a random site recommend me random fantasy anime from the past few years and got: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!

My initial reaction after reading its summary was: Oh, it's one of those. I've been watching Isekai genre from safe distance. I feel there is way too many Isekai anime nowadays and most of them are unoriginal and plain bad. Hopefully this won't be the case.

Janp said:

Just the event I needed. I've been trying to get back to anime for a while, but never got the habit of sitting down and watching anything back. So, let's try again.

I let a random site recommend me random fantasy anime from the past few years and got: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!

My initial reaction after reading its summary was: Oh, it's one of those. I've been watching Isekai genre from safe distance. I feel there is way too many Isekai anime nowadays and most of them are unoriginal and plain bad. Hopefully this won't be the case.

Click to expand...

Oh! I Ironically loved that one! It's a very refreshing and enjoyable anime. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did c:

Actually critically reviewing an anime and stringing together coherent thoughts on it to share with others??? That's like actually something I'm awful at.

I'll enter with something fairly short that I've seen highly praised in numerous places in Mononoke, since it's been on my plan to watch radar for ages.

Put me down for Made In Abyss.

I am very much doubting my ability to finish Ancient Magus Bride before the end of the month. I am enjoying it a lot though.

Here's my review of My Next Life as a Villainess. I'm bad at writing reviews, so I hope this is at least readable. Also, beware of spoilers.

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!
I had almost no expentations for this show, since it's my first Isekai anime in a long time. But I was pleasantly surprised. It was more of harem than it was isekai, which is huge plus for me. Not only that, but it also has original premise - the main character is reincarnated as Catarina Cleas, a villain in an otome game, and is using her knowledge of this game to avoid her inevitable doom of being killed or exiled.

First few episodes take place during Catarina's childhood and serves as introduction to vast set of characters. Catarina knows her in-game equivalent was treating everyone very poorly, which led to her getting killed at the end of the game, so in an attempt to survive, she starts acting selfless and helps everyone around her. Her inner thinking about surviving was nice addination to each episode. It helped with making Catarina likeable character. She had a set goal and was constantly moving forward to acomplish it.

Sadly, the show loses its steam a little bit once it got past the childhood and into the events that take place in the otome game. All (now 15 years old) characters are placed on a magic academy, where they meet the game's main protagonist. Each character has barely any development at this point. Catarina is reduced to sweets-eating character, who basically forgets about avoiding her doom, for most of the episodes now. Other characters are also trimmed into one-dimensional characters and I kinda get it, because it's suppose to emulate otome game, but I'm also glad there were those first few episodes, where they were presented as multi-dimensional characters. It's still enjoyable to watch, since character's interactions and humor was great. And when it's about Catarina's plan to change the course of the game, it's extremely good. But some episodes were there just to fill all 12 episodes and had nothing to add, like the episode with sleepover. This resulted in some of interesting events of the main plot being only retrospectively retold by Catarina instead of them being directly shown. And the main villain was shoehorned in the last few episodes without much of a introduction because of that. His backstory and motive was mostly okay, but there wasn't really any reason to be afraid of him. And his actions have no effect on the story either. But it all still leads to kinda predictable, but still enjoyable, finale.

Since this was character-driven story, it can only be expected to have great and believable characters. Catarina herself carries the show most of the time, especially her inner thinking process. Other characters aren't that fleshed out, but like I said, they are supposed to be game characters, so I get that. It's a shame that some of them are reduced to "background" characters by the end, especially Sophia, who is shown to be reincarnation of Catarina's best friend from her previous life. The story doesn't really do anything with this information and Catarina doesn't even know about it.

Visuals and music goes well with the story and the setting. Some characters designs are a little bit generic, but they once again work, since they are supposed to be game characters. I think music could go more with the "it's a game" theme, but it was fine in the end helped make some scenes overall emotionally stronger. I also have to point out that magic, while having minimal role, had one of the best visual representation.

Overall, I enjoyed this series. It had original premise and when it actually did something with it, it was great. But once it didn't focus on Catarina's main goal, it got quickly bad and boring. The finale has a nice build up over the course of all 12 episodes and it delivers satisfying ending. It was fun to watch characters interact with each other, trying to cope with their feelings for Catarina, who was oblivious to everyone.

I'm not sure if we are supposed to give a final rating, but I'll go with the same rating-scale I use in my gaming journal, meaning this anime gets 8/10 from me.

So, I still have four episodes left of Ancient Magus Bride, so I'm not going to leave a full review. Here's some quick thoughts though.

Firstly, the animation and music are fucking gorgeous.

The story is well written for the most part too and I find that the characters are complex, compelling and/or likeable. The mythology tie-ins are really cool too and I like the worldbuilding a lot. I think it does suffer from periods where nothing is happening though which can be problematic. It gets a bit dull at those times because it's already a very slow-paced show. When the story arcs do really kick in though, they're excellent and exciting.

I'm dithering between a 7 and 8/10 right now, we'll see what happens to that when I get to the end.

I know most of you are still working on reviews or finishing your chosen anime for the month May

No worries! Keep on what you are doing while I announce the new theme for the month June!

The new theme will be.... DUN DUN DUN

Slice of Life

I will add the reviews to the OP in the next few days! Keep them coming in and good luck on your next anime adventure!

I speedran through Made in Abyss and the third movie yesterday and gave myself a little bit of time to digest everything I saw before making a review.

Firstly, I knew that this series was gonna be kinda dark before I went into it from everything I'd heard about it previously - but what the fuck. It's a really interesting world that's being built up and there's a lot of cool monsters and artifacts that drive their everyday life, but the way that it has affected the people of the world is most interesting of all. Especially going into that last movie and seeing some more of the things going on towards the bottom of the abyss... just, pain.

Music was pretty good, visuals are cute and beautifully depicts the world around the two main characters - and the character designs themselves are quite varied and interesting despite being rather simple.

I don't typically write reviews for the shows that I end up watching, so sorry if it's a little small, but I also don't want to spoil anything for anyone else that might want to still get into it. :)

7.5/10

I'm going to watch 2nd season of Wagnaria!! this month.

I guess I'll continue on and watch the second season of Fruits Basket then for this month. Still got a couple episodes left from the first season left, but shouldn't be a big deal ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'll be watching Horimiya this month then!

So... I finished Horimiya... all of it... tonight. That was not the plan.

Honestly, the first episode had me worried. The pacing was not good at all. It felt simultaneously like too much was crammed into the episode and like a bunch of stuff was left out. I remember liking what I saw of the old OVA a lot, so this had me kind of worried. By the time episode two had ended, my concerns were mostly gone as the pacing improved dramatically. Then every subsequent episode was just... good.

There were definitely a few characters that didn't click with me, but over all I found so much I could relate to across a pretty expansive cast and the majority of the characters were very likeable too. The story itself didn't have much to it plot-wise because of its SoL nature, but every significant character still had growth and a personal arc. It was actually a really good way to write it, it felt very natural to just see these characters being people, reacting not to external factors but to conflicts within themselves. A lot of SoL anime lean very heavily into zaniness or even absurdism, which is fine but it sometimes detracts from the stories being told. Horimiya has plenty of zaniness, but it never runs away with it and always brings things back around to a more grounded experience. It's a feature of the story but not its premise.

The animation/art was nice too. It was rarely breathtaking, but it felt very vibrant, alive and expressive. The one thing that felt weird to me was that the show really couldn't seem to decide if it wasn't to commit to the typical bright moe hair colours thing or more natural shades. Most characters, including 3/4 of the central cast, have normal hair. But then some have bright red, or purple or green. Commit damn you. Pick one!! Admittedly, this is a minor gripe and it doesn't really detract much but I just kept noticing it at times.

The music was really pleasant too and complimented scenes nicely. The OP was particularly good though.

I gave it an 8/10 overall, which is surprising to me since the first episode would be lucky to push into 5/10 territory.

All reviews and choices have been added to the OP! :)

The new month is almost over!! Anyone who has suggestions for the theme for next month? How did you like the animes you watched for this month's Slice of Life theme?

Suggestions for next month's challenge theme:
- Action
- Movies
- 2010's
- Shows you watched as a child.

I'm down for either 2010's or Movies for the coming month. I finished up Fruit's Basket S2 and caught up with S3 while I was at it - just waiting til next week to get the final episode before I write my review :)

2010s or even 2000s or 1990s would be cool.

As for Wagnaria, I finished 2nd season few days ago and will probably post my review on 30th.