A journey begins with a shove off of a train platform.
The series I started the most on a whim this season was Youjo Senki (or The Saga of Tanya the Evil for those who like clumsy official names). The chatter I was hearing about this show early on was that it was about a guy who became a fascist magician who upheld the ideals of the Nazis in an alternate universe. I was understandably a bit hesitant to subject myself to something that I would consider so socially abhorrent, but boredom and curiosity have a way of combining to make these things happen. Continue reading Youjo Senki and Free Will
You wouldn’t believe what happens in this magazine next
I’ve had an idea going around my head for a while. Let’s just say that by the title of this post that I’ve read something like 40 different manga this year that had Isekai in the title or were clearly that type of story.
For those who don’t know, the genre is basically about transporting a protagonist to a different world from the one they began with. It’s usually just a form of vicarious escapism for the viewer, reader, listener, player or whatever form of interaction the holder of the medium is having.
Since my view on things has been constrained to basically Twitter recently (okay not so recently), my take is that the most popular story of the genre this year was Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu. The anime aired this year and it’s about a NEET named Natsuki Subaru who is transported to another world filled with magic, cute girls and all sorts of things and people that want to kill him. The darkness of the series makes it much different from most in the genre as he has to experience death constantly to try to get what he wants.
On the other end of the spectrum is the light novel then accompanying manga Mushoku Tensei: Isekai Ittara Honki Dasu. In that story, a hopeless NEET dies in a traffic accident and finds himself reborn as Rudeus Greywolf, a young infant in a world filled with magic and uses the knowledge he retained to basically have a non-threatening series of adventures with friends he makes along the way. Or to make the worst of the story, a 34-year-old in a young boy’s body leering over the young girls he meets. Wish fulfillment people.
The point of using these two stories is really to illustrate that there is a large audience for these types of stories. Simply getting trapped in a game like .hack//Sign, Sword Art Online, or Log Horizon is simple compared to these stories. There isn’t a way back to the beginning, or if there is it isn’t pleasant. What is it about these stories that interests people?
These stories feel different from simple fantasy or action stores where an audience can escape for a brief instant before resuming their lives. In fact, it’s almost like there is a certain nihilism in enjoying them. “I want to live in that world,” or “I want to have the opportunity to start over like them,” and “If I could start over knowing everything I know now…” have to be common thoughts among the fans. Maybe there’s a simple desire to have more opportunities to do things in life. Rebirth means having another opportunity to make new friends, learn new skills that one never had the opportunity to learn, or even fall in love for the first time all over again.
Sorry, Rem might be great, but she’s kind of a problem with the genre.
I think opportunity is the key to understanding all of this. The modern world can feel like there are too many lost opportunities happening on a daily basis. It can feel like there are too many choices so it’s easier just to shut down and choose to do none of them. I certainly know that feeling and it’s really about being afraid to fail. That’s the great weakness of this genre. The protagonist cannot fail in the end because they are given every opportunity to avoid doing so.
Before I leave this particular post, there is one more story that I think really gets to the heart of this genre. Gun-ota ga Mahou Sekai ni Tensei Shitara, Gendai Heiki de Guntai Harem o Tsukucchaimashita!? is if you couldn’t tell by the inclusion of the word in the title a harem story. Hotta Youta is killed going home one day and is reincarnated in a magic world, but he can’t use magic. Fortunately, he knows a ton about guns and that’s all the story is, guns and girls
When I last left off I was bored watching the end of Mayoi.
Welcome back for the 2nd edition of the feature where I revisit shows that I dropped and see if my opinion of them changed. This time I go back to a season of a show I actually blogged episodically at one point (does anyone even do that anymore?) and hit up the Hitagi End arc of Monogatari Second Season.
Where I last left off on Shirobako. Exodus was leaving the screens forever.
It’s time for a new feature on this blog, and I have decided that I will go back periodically and revisit anime that I have dropped. I have no idea if there’s any interest in all of this, but I figure what the hell, I need to write something, correct? The inaugural entry for this feature is Shirobako.
I wish I could look that good after a car accident
From time to time, I like to use my blog to highlight some unconventional titles that I like watching. The back of your mind is now screaming “That’s all the time you fool!”, but for me it’s occasionally. In this case I want to talk about Super Lovers, a series that is halfway through its brief 10 episode run and why I am liking this show as opposed to my usual harem trash.
(If you are seeing this post, then I am celebrating Leicester City winning the Premier League. That dumb superstition is why there haven’t been any posts lately. Sorry.)
In this edition of 30 Things, I discuss an aspect of my 27th favorite series, High School DxD. This is a well-known harem anime produced by TNK, a studio that have done very little other than harem anime. The first season aired in the Winter of 2012. This was followed up by the 2nd season High School DxD New in the Summer of 2013 and a 3rd season High School DxD BorN in the Spring of 2015.
Osomatsu-san is a very serious show about medical ethics and the treatment of animals.
In this second half of this week’s 5th episode of Osomatsu-san, the story revolves around a cat that is able to understand human emotions. Four of the sextuplets mess around with the cat at Choromatsu while Ichimatsu sits in the corner. He has a soft spot for cats, but not so much ones that will spit out what a person is really feeling. It turned out that it would lead to a sort of touching insight into feelings I am very much familiar with:
Moe is exhausted after explaining the plot to the audience again.
Welcome back to another edition of the Fall Eliminator. Each week I am going through the anime series available to me and choosing to drop the worst performing show that week. Lance N’ Masques was eliminated for being boring. Hackadoll was eliminated for being putrid idol bullshit. Last week, the 35th Platoon bit the dust with its catastrophic writing. Which terrible show will hit my drop list this week and make my viewing much easier and much more bearable?
In this edition of TTILAMTFA (which looks like a terrible program responsible for building death machines), I discuss an aspect of my 28th favorite series, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. This is a series that I just came across by circumstance, and there is one particular character that made it memorable. Unfortunately, no one else in the whole wide world agrees with me on this. It’s my post, so I’m going to gush over them how I want. Got it?
Because Peyton is the right Manning for Bad QB League Play
Trust me, this isn’t really a post about American football or what not, but it’s tangentially related enough to put in the gif above. The origins of this post have to do with the whole process of trying to recommend a show to someone. Why does it have to be so hard?
This is not what this post is about nor is it actually true.
Rather than just spit out a list of shows to then be subject to ridicule, I have decided to just take one aspect of each show on my list and talk about what I like about it. This will be an eccentric list that caters to me and my ridiculous taste. Then again, it’s my list and I’m going to talk about what I want to on this blog.
Rather than just spit out a list of shows to then be subject to ridicule, I have decided to just take one aspect of each show on my list and talk about what I like about it. This may end up being a rather eccentric list that is more sad than anything open to ridicule. It’s my list damn it and I’m going to talk about what I want to on this blog.
Sorry, I never mention these characters by name in this post.
I haven’t done one of these posts on a currently airing show in a while. It’s been a strange time for me that I don’t really want to go into great detail about, but I think I’ve needed to write something, anything for a while. I haven’t watched a lot of shows this season, but since the majority of the season had shows I wouldn’t watch without pirating or funding one of the worst people in the world I could feel better from a moral standpoint. That’s enough about me though, so I will move on to the rest of the post.
Gate is a show that I was initially hesitant about. The potential political problems with the plot and the worldviews of certain characters that I had heard about made me think that it would be comparable to Mahouka. That would mean that it would involve supporting a protagonist who is a psychopath about killing people in cold blood while getting the attention of all of the women. Gate only has half of that.
I thought I would never come back to writing posts like these. They never turn out to work, I spend a ton of time and effort and no one really reads them anyway. However, I really needed something, anything to write about this season that wasn’t terribly meta or utterly depressing. So here I am back again to write about the upcoming season and not a single one of you will actually read this paragraph.
The obvious caveats that go with this are numerous. If you’ve listened to any of the recent Friday Anime Podcast season preview episodes, I’m the guy who knows fuck all about studios and who has a taste worse than Kelloggs, but no one bothers anymore about saying that because I’m beyond hope. So don’t expect to be informed by any of this.
Recently I’ve finally been able to put into words what I have felt about watching anime over the last 13 months. At first, the question after this season’s tremendous amounts of drops was Do I Even Like Anime Anymore? I can’t say I stopped liking it since I still watch some shows, but that would probably now put me in the filthy casual category. Instead, the question has now become, is White Album 2 going to end up being the last anime I will ever fall in love with?
This is the effort I get from my lone carryover series from the fall.
At this point in the season, there’s just Studio Arms (actually Arms Corporation if we are being completely accurate) series Isuca left to air. So for the most part we can consider that all of the good shows have already started to air. That’s mostly good news for the anime fans out there that aren’t me. What lies ahead is probably one of the most sad first impression posts of the current season that you will read, but that’s mainly because this season has been so meagre from my point of view.
Last year, the Definitive Best Girl ranking made its debut to critical fanfare. All arguments stopped over who was the best girl in each of those series after that since one cannot debate objective facts. In this second edition, a selection committee was formed that would take into account each girl’s record against their respective competition so that they could get a complete resume on each of them. There was a bit of controversy as in the final weeks the production committees of all of these shows advocated hard for a place in the final four playoff positions, but ultimately everyone came to the conclusion that this was the true Definitive Best Girl ranking. If the show you are looking for is not listed in this post, that’s because it is in the second-tier Best Girl Championship Subdivision.
There haven’t been many posts by me recently. The main reason for that comes down to the whole idea of having fun. If I’m not having fun with whatever I’m watching it will definitely come through like that on the post. I will be perfectly honest in saying that I’m not having very much fun recently. This particular blog, like almost all of the things I am involved with in my everyday life has always been a solo project. I think all of that has really started to take a toll on me recently. Work hasn’t been fun1 and everything else has sort of felt like work. I keep telling myself “just get to the end of November and everything will be fine,” but will it?
Rather than wasting more of your time on personal issues that none of you care about2, I’m going to go the anime contrarian/hipster3 route and talk about some of the shows this season that you are not watching. Continue reading On Fun After 6 Years
Seeing as I had no confidence in the summer season, I decided to invent a backlog of shows to watch from one of three different areas. The thirteenth and final anime on this list was Vividred Operation, which aired in the winter of 2013. I had previously watched the first and sixth episodes of this anime before in the course of dropping it twice. I watched the show over a period of a week, and these are my thoughts on it.
Seeing as I had no confidence in the summer season, I decided to invent a backlog of shows to watch from one of three different areas. The twelfth anime on this list was Meganebu!, which aired in the fall of 2013. I had previously watched the first two episodes of this anime before dropping it. I watched the show over a period of a two days, and these are my thoughts on it. Continue reading The Lost Backlog of Summer 2014 #12: Meganebu!
Seeing as I had no confidence in the summer season, I decided to invent a backlog of shows to watch from one of three different areas. The eleventh anime on this list was Mawaru Penguindrum, which aired in the summer of 2011. I had previously watched the only the last episode back in a strange period for this blog. I watched the show over a period of a few days, and these are my thoughts on it.
Seeing as I had no confidence in the summer season, I decided to invent a backlog of shows to watch from one of three different areas. The tenth anime on this list was Natsume Yuujinchou, which aired in the summer of 2008. I had previously watched the first episode during last year’s random show watch. I marathoned the first season of the show, and these are my thoughts on it.
Seeing as I had no confidence in the summer season, I decided to invent a backlog of shows to watch from one of three different areas. The ninth anime on this list was the second Patlabor movie, which premiered in August 1993. I sat down an watched it in a single sitting, and these are my thoughts on it.
Seeing as I had no confidence in the summer season, I decided to invent a backlog of shows to watch from one of three different areas. The eighth show on this list was Chihayafuru, a show that aired in the fall of 2011 and I dropped after viewing all of one episode of the series. I marathoned it, and these are my thoughts on the series.
Seeing as I had no confidence in the summer season, I decided to invent a backlog of shows to watch from one of three different areas. The seventh show on this list was Black Bullet a show that began airing this past spring and that I had never attempted to watch because I thought I would drop it. I marathoned it, and these are my thoughts on the series.
Lower Mid-Table 