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Feb 8, 2025

A-Rank Party wo Ridatsu shita Ore wa, Moto Oshiego-tachi to Meikyuu Shinbu wo Mezasu. (Anime) add

Recommended

Preliminary (5/24 eps)

Streaming dungeon dives and quests is a really fun twist on the fantasy adventure genre and pretty much the hook for this show. Sponsored streams and the cottage industries that are supported by adventure streaming give the MC and his pals a convenient excuse to bang out side quests and push the story along. "Stream sniping" between parties, with the guild monitoring streams as a mechanism to track and verify adventurer activity or send help in case of an emergency trades the what-happens-in-the-dungeon-stays-in-the-dungeon tradition for a "full information" concept. That gives the guild a good reason to exist in-universe, being twitch/youtube + DMV + SWAT ... rather than just being there because there is always a guild in shows like this one.

Depicting the raw entertainment value for the general public and strategic value to other adventurers in watching the best clips back to see how different parties strategize and approach specific encounters in the dungeons is also just a free force multiplier on the limited world building a show like this can accomplish. Unlocking the ability to set the stakes or the next story beat just by playing back a previous stream on a screen somewhere and having any character in the show react to it, or having a character express some streaming related goal, is a great device that lets you do the same thing you would do in a flashback with a bit more immersion and flexibility. I actually didn't know about this aspect of the show before I watched the show, and I like it a lot more than I thought I would. It sounds like it would be cheesy and stupid af, but it's great and it's also not the only thing I like about this Anime.

While the streaming in a fantasy world concept does a lot to mitigate the generally low production values on its own, the fights have a passable level of "hard" mechanics and strategy. Exploring dungeons between fights allocates screen time and exposition to the need to stop and eat, rest and recover, camp out in the dungeon and replenish mana. It helps that the animation and direction are tolerable, too. Show crutches hard on effects, character writing, and concept but all together it's very watchable through the firmly mid action sequences which helps the stronger aspects of the writing get a foothold and grow on you.

The well written personalities of the MC and his new party plus good dialogue contrasts so well with the gross narcissists in his former "A-rank" party. He ditches them because he was being overworked, underpaid, and completely unappreciated for all the bullshit he has to take on just to get them through their higher level quests unscathed. Peak catharsis watching this man walk out on a C-suite that are too busy smelling their own farts to know what their best people actually do in a day to keep the lights on. It looks like a step away from his long term goals at the time and he will definitely have to take on even greater responsibility at first to build up his new, less experienced party. But if he doesn't have to deal with insufferable pieces of shit talking out of their assholes and taking credit for his work every single god damn day, it is WORTH IT. This part of the show gets me unreasonably fired up. Every time they pan to his shitty old party watching his new party dunk on a boss on stream I get wet back there.

Going meta, it is always good to see an MC in an almost-harem-but-sorta-CGDCT show like this having proper, workplace appropriate rizz. He handles his smart hot female colleagues without blushing or bleeding from the nose at all most of the time. Double that, the smart hot female colleagues appreciate him as a mentor and take initiative to contribute wherever they can. They also aren't just there to glaze him. When he's being too risk-averse or corny, they let him know and they're usually not wrong. Dialogue will often convey how close the girls are with each other, but not with him just yet. Makes complete sense because they were a party way before he joined, they're all girls, he hasn't been a novice adventurer for years and he's new to being a party leader. There's even a redemption arc brewing with one of his former party members, who is figuring out they were total dickbags to the MC and may try to mend fences in earnest.

These little touches of realism in how the characters are written and the "idiots all the way up" workplace drama theme dime out just enough lube to get the poor production values past my drop defenses. Streaming Solo Leveling gate encounters back to the general public is also a great concept to spice things up in an overdone genre. Same studio made that golf Anime "Birdie Wing: Golf Girl's Story" by balancing Jojo golf stands, the systematic development of adolescent super-talents in sports, yuri-bait and crime family golf vendettas. Bandai Namco do be cookin' with these concepts.

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Feb 7, 2025

Guild no Uketsukejou desu ga, Zangyou wa Iya nanode Boss wo Solo Toubatsu Shiyou to Omoimasu (Anime) add

Mixed Feelings

Preliminary (5/12 eps)

OP is a banger of all time, but most aspects of this show are simply less than what you can find elsewhere. I would expect a lot of people to be turned off of it quickly, and yet I'm still watching it? I guess... if you've seen any of the other mid Anime with cute guild receptionists that are just there to glaze the MC, there is definitely some fun to be had here.

Main appeal for me is Alina the MC's delulu decision to give two shits about her low paying, annoying job that she absolutely cannot wait to clock out of but constantly has ... to work overtime to keep, a job that is just holding her back, all because she saw some bad stuff happen to adults that she wanted to be like when she was a kid and that caused her to choose the safe and secure career track... this part, is waaaaaay too real.

Also, the chip on her shoulder over all these chode cardboard cutout adventurers who make silly demands and increase her workload regularly because they're so comically weak that they can't kill like any of the fucking dungeon bosses, and she has to choose between working overtime to deal with the fallout of their failures or just sucking it up and doing their job herself anonymously... that part, is also waaaaay too real. The inner dialogue and cutesy expressions that pop up when she is speaking to one of these clowns, making clear what she really thinks of them when they pull some bullshit in the guild lobby or ask her to do something that will add so much more to her plate than this oblivious fucktard could even try to understand, is all giving strong "sir this is a Wendy's" energy. At times the dialogue is genuinely funny or endearing, and the fact that they introduce a widely respected among adventurers love interest whose talents she has NO respect for, meanwhile he is simping for her like mike jack at a make a wish foundation banquet, just makes it even better.

However, the action animation is just not it. If it was, the show would be a sleeper recommend for the season, but while the art can be appealing most of the stuff I felt drawn to was in the more casual indoor or general town settings. I'm not sure why I haven't dropped the show yet tbh, but if I had to guess I would say it is carried mostly by the concept, the writing, and the voice actors. Even when they reveal Alina's reasons for being the weird half-workaholic part-time vigilante overtime-masochist-in-denial that she is, it just is not in the sweet spot. Still, the writers do a good job working with the concept.

My main criticism is that instead of emphasizing Alina's history as an adventurer, doing flashbacks and slowly revealing more and more about how she ended up like she is, they vastly oversimplify it and reduce her BiS hammer and god tier skills to "I dunno they like awakened or something? w/e bro". WHO IS THAT IN THE OP THOUGH!?!?! It's really not that deep anyways, but I've been turning off subtitles to enjoy the shit out of that OP every single time and I'm usually a skipper. It really is the best part of the show and it seems like that was missed by the studio, unfort.

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Oct 25, 2024

Dandadan (Anime) add

Recommended

Funny

Preliminary (4/12 eps)

Peak. Based. Cursed. Insane pace, Turbo Granny and UAPs after our bananas... the dialogue is so entertaining, and the plot is wild. English VAs are doing OK but the Japanese VAs are really killing it for Okarun and Ayase. Storyboarding is out of the world. The ship crash when they bust the door open and my guy reveals himself as THE Ken Takakura as it explodes was just too good. The economy of the storytelling and character introductions to set the tone for the series in that entire first episode was some savant shit fr. So far the pace has kept up and like the ...

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Oct 23, 2024

Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu 3rd Season (Anime) add

Not Recommended

Funny

Preliminary (4/16 eps)

Spoiler

Re:Zero fell off. Strong S1, but they started the mid shit in the last half of S1 and then dipped hard into mid in S2 at times, and S3 isn't even mid. There were moments and ideas I liked in S2, but S3 so far feels like a nightmare about my childhood where I'm watching a Naruto filler arc but instead of Naruto it's Garfield who is just Boruto off of wish.com

Re:Zero is still and always will be one good checkpoint challenge from a great couple of episodes, but the first checkpoint challenge in season 3 was a 3-pump peter that ended in an SAO/CrossAnge-level ... cringe abduction, and Subaru's leg getting blown off, and bro AIN'T EVEN FINNA LOOP!? Sheeeeeeeeit... writers room has d/c'd. By the second episode like every character we've ever met has made a cameo to exchange hand-wovem BFF anklets bend the knee and throw a pity party with Subaru. It would be more interesting if they put him on a burnt out caregiver arc where like the audience he found it hard to gaf about anyone on screen and their constant whinging because there's just too fucking many of them. Instead he's being turned into Tanjiro-kun but with a lot more and a lot more sus demon loli little sisters in the backpack. In S2 there were so many characters, especially Garfield, that got introduced and added nothing to the story at all. But in S3 it's worse than that, because they came for all the previously interesting and well-written characters who provided structure and stakes to the story even (especially) at arms-length, engaged in a zero-sum game of thrones with Emilia and by extension Subaru. Having your strongest opps and rivals who you've slowly built respect for and with, all show up at the same time with their entourage only to start taking meetings and marching orders from you like they're shadow garden, reducing them to plot devices and infantilizing characters like Priscilla who now walks the streets like a common hooker taking artistic interests in street performers. AND we're still getting new uninteresting characters like Garfield's Mom, with uninteresting gimmicks like (you guessed it!) she has no memory of him. The jailbait busker, way too many furry sidekicks to keep track of, and that Reinhard guy's deadbeat Dad, I cannot even remember if these characters were in previous seasons of the show because they leave no impression at all I need Thanos to fix this shit right now there are too many mouths I don't want to hear from in this show.

What happened to Subaru's character writing and the world building accomplished so artfully through the looping dillemas in S1? I remember how hooked I was after the first few episodes of the first season of Re:Zero, how invested I was in Subaru assembling a team to hunt the white whale and loop-learning from failed negotiations with ruthless aristocrats like Priscilla that were willing to kill him for begging like a little bitch instead of coming in with a plan worth their while. Watching Subaru's mental state deteriorate with each traumatic death loop for a while there was good stuff, watching him throw hands only to be reinvigorated like the adolescent male he is by Rem's memeable cringe-cry emoteen 2-minute monologue, and all the goofy characters with their goofy designs but not TOO MANY OF THEM! There was weight to the narratives, stakes even with the looping mechanic, some good mystery bait, but season 2 just wasn't for me as much although it tried to hit those same notes and succeeded at times. It was too melodramatic, the super old spirit loli in a library I didn't buy it, the build-up with Echidna's tea parties inside Subaru's head was a wasted opportunity that had so much intrigue built up and didn't end in a satisfying way for me. Fuck Puck, simp. But in S3 there hasn't even been a good attempt at anything worthwhile, the team rocket threat level of the Sin Archbishops and witches' cult members when you know that Subaru can just loop on em' just isn't building any tension.

4 episodes into S3, we are knee deep in Sin Archibishops. We might have more archbishops than there are Sins by the end of this. Maybe sin is a spectrum. The witches shrouded in at least some myth and mystery just don't lend their intrigue to the witches cult, and the far more fascinating unknown link between Subaru's powers and the witch of Envy, and Echidna's little tea parties and ulterior motives, just interests me a lot more than all these sidequests and questionably smol sidechicks (they just can't stahhhhhp with the lolis bro!) and this SAO Asuna abduction storyline. I am curious about the witch's remains, but this whole flooding the city to kill her thing doesn't sound right because I'm pretty sure she can fly? This is like in the movie Her when ScarJo tells Joaquin that he's still her favorite book but now the spaces between words are so vast they might as well be infinite and there's so much to do in that empty space between words that she doesn't think she can finish their book anymore... we are in that space between words in this story right now. We are dancing to the latest K-Pop group the Sin Archbishops/Team Rocket, one is a dragon that speaks like a preteen girl, one is a mummy, one is a loli, one is a diddy, and all of this instead of building up some spooky mindfucky witchy shit which would be way more fun and is how the show got us interested in the first place.

And why the fuck is Garfield around? Tony the Tiger with PTSD from Kellog's going through bankruptcy cause frosted flakes just aren't that great... get this mommas boy outta here bro. His Mom lost her memory TOO!? How many times are we doin' this? I don't know if it's the source material or just the Anime adaptation at this point, but these mfers gettin' lazy ong.

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Jun 21, 2024

Yoru no Kurage wa Oyogenai (Anime) add

Recommended

Preliminary (11/12 eps)

Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night (Yoru no Kurage wa Oyogenai) has an interesting title. I read that Yoru means Night in Japanese, and you could therefore translate the title as "Yoru's Jellyfish Can't Swim". Light is also one of the only things a Jellyfish can sense at all, which is another reason I really like this Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night title. Apparently, the title was only supposed to be a working title. I'm glad they kept it.

When we begin in episode 1, Yoru's Jellyfish are definitely not swimming. She needs a spark, a guiding light, a sea with favorable currents. Her best ... piece to date - a mural on a concrete wall - was ridiculed by some classmates before she could tell them she painted it. She rejected her own art on the spot, standing in front of her signature so they wouldn't see, fearing that she would be rejected. Later, she even scratched out her signature on the mural and stopped drawing in general. There is probably a way to relate the "sting" of that unexpected criticism from people she was hoping to impress to Jellyfish biology, but I already explained about liking the title so lets not.

Back to that mural, Yoru still walks by it sometimes and ruminates. That is how she meets former idol Nonoka Tachibana, just "Kano" now. Kano absolutely fucking loves that fucking mural. She won't let people bad-mouth it, and she won't let Yoru let people bad mouth it! Then she has this crazy idea to sing anonymously online and have Yoru do artwork and OCs for this new joint venture they shall name "JELEE". See, Kano is like Water, but she needs Yoru to make the Jellyfish to swim in the water. They both need someone on the keys to compose these massive banger hits they will be making as JELEE, and they also need someone to do video editing and stuff like that. These additional requirements bring Mei and Kiui into the fold. Mei is on the keys, and Kiui is a fairly successful VTuber and really good at all things streaming so naturally she will be able to handle all digital duties with ease.

As you might guess, all four members of this JELEE quartet are going to have a come-to-Jellyfish "moe"ment resolving past traumas where they made some super relatable, but also super bad decisions. The catharsis comes from just how earnest and endearing the JELEE members can be when having each others backs or even when fighting and breaking up the band. It has that Oshi No Ko "industry insider" vibe but with a bunch of unrelated things that stitch together a more varied setting than "Jollywood" and nobody is above it all executing some masterplan. For example the motorcycle license test, getting a ticket for having two people on a motorcycle with just the license you get after that test, the girls meeting some random baddie with implants at the motorcycle test who offers to let the girls feel them up because she's pretty happy with the work I guess, Mei's piano recital, the yuri-bait scene, twitch chat, getting fired, everything about Yoru and her art, the old af idol mom pretending to be 21 who rebrands as a mukbangs-gross-shit youtuber eating disgusting amounts of food like deep fried butter balls to support her family and dream of being an attention whore simultaneously, and for some reason people watch that shit!? It's all just very savvy and on point.

Jellyfish reminds me a lot of many, many other shows that present a "4 girls against the world" premise like Bocchi the Rock, A Place Further Than The Universe, K-ON, Wonder Egg Priority before AIs started chucking hairdryers into bathtubs towards the end, and Girls Last Tour although that one was just the two girls. Like those shows, Jellyfish Can't Swim can be contrived. But being contrived is kinda the point - the themes are strongly based in what it takes to build an identity and how challenges to that identity will manifest before you know how to handle them. It also emphasizes how you might not be the one to fix it for you, it might be the friends we made along the way. It could also be following the selfish path, even if it upsets and darkens the path of the people that have brightened yours before. But finding a way to make it up to them, which Yoru does. Jellyfish is a fairly straightforward and unassuming allegory for navigating that whole part of growing up and getting gud, and how easy it is to fuck up by letting the lows keep you from keepin' on.

There are no facemelting action sequences here like in Wonder Egg Priority, it isn't my spirit animal like Bocchi, and there isn't a grand adventure like Place Further Than the Universe. Those shows all had their own special thing that made them awesome, but Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night has more yuri-bait.

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Jun 3, 2024

Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! 3 (Anime) add

Not Recommended

Preliminary (7/11 eps)

Nah bro, this shit fell off. I was going to pull some punches here because I am an old man full of regret and self-doubt. It could be that I'm just bitter, I don't know what's funny anymore and I should just shut up and go to the bingo on my 4-wheel scooter. Maybe that is all real and true but NAH BRO, THIS SHIT DONE FELL OFFFFFFFF!!!!!

Konosuba was amazing. It played with the isekai and fantasy genre so effortlessly. The gags were always funny despite themselves, the characters were endearing and consistently written and likeable and likeably animated. Everything about the production of this ... show in seasons 1 and 2 was complementary to the fun characters that on their default settings just interact with each other in such a way that they constantly spit roast the harem, fantasy, and isekai genres while being a pretty good entry in each category on merit. The animation style, the art style, the exaggerated expressions, the sound design, Megumin's random Sakuga explosions, the comedy, even the pervy stuff like when Kazuma assumes Darkness is part of the succubus dream service and acts all dominating and she was totally into it... konosuba has always been a harmonious ham sandwich of laughter and each episode a treasured bite. The world building always went kinda hard for me by revealing itself primarily through debacles and not really caring if you understand anything going on in the world overall as the viewer. Kazuma and the girls don't care either, they been chillin'.

The magic of the show was finding comedy in the gap between the potential, status, and random good fortune of the main cast who just cannot help but to turn it all to shit or a pyrrhic victory through narcissism, greed, perversion, and ego. Their faults always end up biting them in their collective asses time and time again, turning triumphs into catastrophes and making easy wins spastic fiascos. I was here for that shit. There was always this undertone in the show that everything was definitely going off the rails and getting ruined and you couldn't help but laugh because there is also this undertone that everything would just be so easy for them if they could somehow stop being a degenerate/crybabybimbo/masochist/egomaniac! That random URL of character traits I just listed clearly defines to anyone that has seen seasons 1 and 2 (and probably 3) Kazuma, Aqua, Darkness, and Megumin. These characters are fucking iconic and they were presented so well and interacted even better. The dialogue was always selling us on that core strength of the show. In season 3 it just really feels forced out. Because it feels forced and off-brand, that breaks immersion and makes me feel like these characters that have made me laugh so hard in their better moments, are being milked for their popularity. And that shit is corny as fuck and makes me frowny face.

The little sister lolibait premise? Corny as fuck.
The body swap artifact? Corny as fuck, used in a corny way for corny gags.
Darkness getting depressed and leaving the party or whatever? Corny as fuck.
Sneaking into the castle to steal the artifact? Corny as fuck.
Kazuma and Aqua at fine dining after getting all that money? Had its moments, but they overplayed that gag where they just freeze framed on each of their faces for like actually 10s, multiple times within a minute-ish? Corny as fuck!

I actively don't want to go back and remember what happened in season 3 because it just hit me as so damn corny and off-brand. It felt like someone was trying to capture the magic of the show and its characters on a much lower budget, with much less experience, and really didn't care if they did a good job. This season of konosuba has so far been way more in the spirit of that random Megumin spinoff, because like that show it doesn't seem to have a good grasp on what made konosuba great in the first place. Also, the production values on this show seem notably lower than previous seasons, the sound design is off and sticks out, the detail is lowered, the same expression is used for like 35% of the gags on multiple faces of characters within the gag which looks terrible. Best part of the season was the OP, and it is mid.

I could point out some moments that got a laugh out of me, but really I was expecting to hit the highs from previous seasons at least a handful of times. I wanted a hit of nostalgia, to feel like "konosuba is back, baby!" when I watched each episode the way I felt when I learned season 3 was coming out. None of that happened for me this time, my konosuba boner is at an all time low right now and that makes me sad.

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Feb 18, 2024

Vinland Saga Season 2 (Anime) add

Mixed Feelings

Spoiler

The main thrust of Vinland Saga S2 is Thorfinn becoming a farmer. I can appreciate that angle, despite all the off-model character animations and CGI/3D issues that were noticeable even to people like me who print nines, sevens, and fours so badly that the sharingan would be unable to distinguish them. The production values of Vinland Saga overall aren't great, but South Park needs almost no production values to be consistently hilarious because it is a satire on stupidity in the world and therefore looking stupid is actually a bonus. Demon Slayer, JJK, FLCL really do need the production values because they live and die ...

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Feb 2, 2024

Jujutsu Kaisen 2nd Season (Anime) add

Recommended

This is it, this is peak right now fam. If you like action in your Anime, it doesn't get better than this. It happened here in 2024, and it might even hapen again and again in the future from MAPPA and perhaps even their competitors on yet more projects. Which blows my mind and body, because comparing JJK S2 to what else has come before especially in the shounen genre (Naruto, Bleach, HunterxHunter, FMAB, pick anything)... watching JJK Season 2 is a peak experience as an Anime fan. Not only that, it peaks itself harder and harder and harder as the episodes roll in until ... all you can do is sit there taking it with your jaw agape saying there can't possibly be any more than this as JJK S2 just goes off anyways. I was entranced. Witnessing a one-off event of unprecedented awe-inspiring importance and value, a UFO shaped like a unicorn running astride a double rainbow across the northern lights during a full solar eclipse in the southern hemisphere. The kind of mesmerizing masterclass where you don't even stop to turn to each other with "can you believe this is happening right now!?" energy, the vibe is beyond that.

The ferocity, at such a velocity, the style and the range on display in the animation and the banger OST with its variety, leaning all the way into the mangaka's penchant for unbridled brutality, checking all the tropes at the door, an exaltation of motion and everything else my visual cortex values, infinite hype that pays off and builds again and pays off and builds again and again! JJK S2 is sublime, the animators who made this possible are goated, beautiful humans with brains so wrinkly they're basically wormholes to another dimension from which they draw upon unrivaled gigachad rizz that is channeled into their tablet pens and pencils. There is no reason not to watch JJK if you have ever been impressed with any animation of anything before. The dazzle itself of something so far beyond is a masterpiece on the merits of just the animation, sound design, art, choreography, and direction alone. Just the technicals, the production values, on their own qualify this Anime as I have described it, a unicorn and peak. It is INSANE that I am not exageratting for effect, that I am just stroking off my precious memories of having experienced JJK season 2 because it is just that far out in front right now and it would not surprise me to see it described as a turning point for the popularity and quality of Anime overall in a few years time.

Not that the story is without its flaws. While this is a masterpiece of delivery, of animating a narrative, accentuating characters, bringing out the maximal dose of cool factor from the source material with near flawless technique, there were aspects that did not suit my taste. While the art direction was masterful, the direction of the narrative elements made debatable choices on several levels as to how to deliver the story to the audience. JJK S2 made a decision to jump around between past and present events in different sub-arcs of the season. The timeline was not linear between the first episodes and later episodes, nor the movie (JJK 0). Like with Netflix's The Witcher season one, the decision to tell the story out of chronological order killed some of the hype here and there although I didn't dislike it. There was also a choice made to rely heavily on backstory in the movie JJK 0 that was released prior to JJK S2, for the Shibuya arc to have narrative weight with the audience - basically, the "why should I care?" of the Shibuya arc that takes up most of JJK Season 2 runtime is found in the movie JJK 0. To me this was especially strange because just by flipping those two, making the first few episodes a standalone movie and starting the season with a few episodes that contain the events of JJK 0, everything would be in chronological order. The movie felt a bit random because it focused more on a new character rather than Gojo, arguably the most popular character in the series, and from the perspective of the narrative elements in the show it might have been better to let the standalone movie contain Gojo's arc from the start of the season. With events presented in chronological order given how that would affect the perception of Geto's character, when we timeskip to the start of the Shibuya incident the hype would have been even more bananas.

There are also parts of this story and decisions made to emphasize elements of the story visually that I did not care to see. Even though the reception was overall positive, Gojo's Ayahuasca-I-am-the-honored-Purple-one scene was over the top for my tastes and Nanamin going zombie mode also seemed like they were taking liberties with the character. The rabbit scene with Mahito over-indulged, same with Nobara's episode, and a couple of the asspulls during certain fights or the "I'm mad" scenes had me half-rolling my eyes at the edge overload. I did not love the many times some annoying no-name straight bodied characters I liked, especially when I would have picked the bodied ones to have taken those fights, because clearly it was at MAPPA's discretion to make the fight seem more one sided and embellish the one-sidedness and that detracted fromt the free-for-all vibe of so many strong individuals and factions clashing and tagging in at intervals. I disagreed with a few of the choices to go into backstory for extended periods of time, especially because it felt like it was overdone and we were being hit over the head with the feels stick just to elicit yet more feels when they were already at a good level.

Speaking of and going meta for a second, it really sucked that MAPPA had been cracking whips on the animators because the animators did such a world-beating job animating JJK S2 that these issues I had with story, direction, character writing, minor pacing stuff, which are usually some of my favorite elements that really polish a show into a hidden gem or ruin an otherwise solid premise/production for me, I just don't care at all from a critical standpoint here. The broad strokes were still deft enough, and the execution of the direction within each episode was masterful. JJK S2 as a package is thicc and juicy and rare. They never forget JJK S2's straws, napkins, plastic cutlery or condiments. JJK S2 is HIM, and we have these animators who were apparently treated like dirt by MAPPA's executives from start to finish to thank. Animators who have built MAPPA's reputation as a goated S-tier studio. It is such a dissapointment, but I am hopeful that the irreproachable quality and impact of their work on JJK S2 will force MAPPA's hand to give them their due respect on future projects.

Whether it is your first Anime or your 400th, make no mistake that JJK Season 2 represents a highlight and a milestone to most people who have seen it. The work is seminal in its consistent technical artistry, the sheer volume of it, getting us there over and over again with an adaptation of source material that goes further beyond. Shounen's "best moments" which many of us have waded through hundreds of episodes including baseless filler to briefly perceive, to experience the possibilities of the narrative weight and that sense of wonder, the strong feels, can be expected in every episode of JJK S2. The show is an absolute monster, it has absolutely no chill and you cannot go wrong experiencing it for so many reasons. One of the coolest things to be done ever, and especially in Anime. What Anime and especially the shounen genre can induce in your brain that other mediums find hard to achieve, JJK S2 delivers in such a compact and powerful format that comparing it to other shounen right now is like comparing the iphone to two cups and a wire. You might think you could find some classic stories out there that are better, some goated bespoke Animes and other basically-Animes like Avatar or Castlevania that have higher highs, cooler worlds, more narrative weight, better character development or dialogue - but nah, JJK S2 would win.

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Sep 5, 2023

Zom 100: Zombie ni Naru made ni Shitai 100 no Koto (Anime) add

Recommended

Preliminary (7/12 eps)

Spoiler

Zom100 just gets it man, like all of it. As a slice of life, action, comedy, with brilliant animation, stellar art direction and dialogue, a cast of likeable and relatable characters with realistic, endearing backgrounds that are filled in for us as they become relevant... Zom succeeds at so much in just the first few episodes. Even without the production values of the gods to back it up, Zom100 is a great story. It is a grand adventure and a psychological drama, poignantly contrasting the zombie apocalypse setting with the everyday corporate world. Without saying it Zom makes the reasonable point that risking personal, financial, ... societal collapse even - you must get over and away from the sunk costs that people pleasing your way through life incurs. If you fail at this then eventually, you will become a greyscale zombie and all the colors you kept bottled up inside you that might have painted your life in vibrance will pass with you unseen. Worse yet you might infect others and consign them to the same tragic and common fate. So thematically, the use of color to replace any blood splatter in the show is such a great visual metaphor while also functionally framing the zombie threat as secondary to figuring out how to bring out your best self in the face of adversity - works on a few levels, and it looks great.

Zom is off brand and wild with punchy action sequences, an episodic format that gives each episode a standalone impact while still advancing the plot, and some of the most poignant art direction and use of color to back up the central theme that I can recall seeing ever - Zom100 is the chosen one this season and it is going hard for a place among all-time goated Anime right now. If you gave it a pass due to the crazy premise I would recommend giving the first episode a chance just to see what it has to offer. Also the MC detroit smashes a zombified land shark at some point and it was amazing, Zom100 really does do it all. Going to talk about other things I like about Zom below, so minor spoiler warning.

As the first episode begins, we see that the promising young man MC Akira Tendou is entering the working world with gusto. Unfortunately, we soon realize that he has been suckered into working for an exploitative corporation in an entry-level position. After a few years working here, with no time for anything but work and stressing about work, he is finally reaching a point of complete character implosion. His world is becoming dark and lifeless, he goes work he goes home he goes bed he goes work. His locomotion becomes more and more zombie like, and he can be heard grunting and groaning quite often now just moving around. His personality and dreams have been crushed, he is becoming a corporate zombie and he can’t even really remember what he wanted before or why he started working for this company. We don’t really hear from his inner voice much anymore, other than to complain or narrate scenes that depict the degeneracy and extensive dysfunction of the company he works for. So, so funny. Most people have probably had a job that was like this in some way and you will absolutely die with laughter. Various droning low-frequency sounds underscore that he is becoming an employee number with an address and his life has effectively flatlined. He can’t take it anymore but there is no fight left in him to make a change. But a stroke of luck at last! The Zombie Apocalypse has begun!

Chased by zombies on his way into work, it dawns on him as he is fleeing for his life that he doesn't have to go to work EVER AGAIN and suddenly the real soundtrack for Zom100 kicks in. The melody is tight and the bass is booming. A look of pure exuberance takes shape on his face in slow motion and color explodes back into the world. He is running for his life, the world is in shambles, planes are falling from the sky but finally he is free and alive again. Behind him is just a bunch of zombies with nothing to offer him. Once he escapes the horde using his college rugby powers, with a big smile on his face he sits down in his apartment and pens the beginnings of his bucket list - 100 things to do before I get turned into a zombie. The inaugural item is to confess to his office crush who he hopes is still okay, and was probably the only reason he stayed at the company so long although she was also banging the married CEO. However, in Akira Tendou’s defense he was in a rather pathetic state at the time and his bar for best girl just wasn’t very high. He finds her address on the emergency contact list, and heads over. urns out both she and the CEO are zombies now, but he did get to confess to her zombified corpse and cross “confess my feelings to the girl I like” off the bucket list! Especially in a zombie apocalypse, there is living and then there is just waiting to die…

Later, Akira goes on a beer run and meets Shizuka at the convenience store. Shizuka saves his life, pays him no mind, but a new and improved crush is established and in a later episode we are given a glimpse into Shizuka’s orderly apartment and three-monitor workstation and list of “100 ways to avoid turning into a zombie” to contrast with Akira’s bucket list. Two different approaches to the end of the world, two lives intertwining. Except Shizuka sees Akira as reckless for going out to the convenience store in a zombie apocalypse just to get beer, and due to the likelihood that contact with him will decrease her odds of survival she declines to provide her number. Oof.

Zom really transcends the genre of Anime. The story is just so relatable in a lot of stupid, fun ways. The show also makes such immaculate use of the medium of Anime and what the medium is best at - stuff that doesn't work well in mediums like live action, e.g. vibrant colors splashing out of the zombies and people onto the surrounding scene instead of drab red blood. Such a nice visual metaphor, where bleeding out and spreading your infection as a zombie is tinted with all the color that could have been on the outside of your life. There are also these great moments of emoting, with really well drawn facial expression and visual storytelling and mood setting and character moments because Zom isn't afraid to spend a lot of time getting it just right for each scene, or giving the sakuga treatment to ridiculous stuff like a person’s daily routine in the case of Shizuka’s apartment which does so much to establish her character. Also the absurdity of the zombie landshark human centipede fight scene was so satisfying and the amount of joy that production took from creating that scene is palpable as you watch it. It feels like they are watching it with you, like they want you to see it so that you can have a little piece of that joy. The zombie fodder doesn't even escape this attention to detail, and each zombie looks and feels purposefully designed to compliment the scene they appear in. Even morphing and disfiguring character designs that we previously saw the living version of in a way that emphasizes character flaws and says “there are 2 zombies inside me”. It gives meaning to each of these encounters even if they are over quickly and creates the feeling that we are really on a journey with the characters as they brave this wild environment, it keeps the scenes from feeling forced or the zombies from feeling like a plot device swiss army knife. Further, especially with the colorized blood splatter, it adds this cool factor to the scenes that does the opposite of suspending disbelief and gets us to engage with the action on a more exuberant level rather than looking at it like there is risk and tension that the characters must overcome.

The fun is just flowing out of this one in full spectrum multicolored blood splatter, but when the content goes deep it strikes at the true and real. The backstories of Akira, Shizuka, and Kencho are all immaculate and naturally fall into place in the story. Absurd as a Zombie Apocalypse setting may seem for what is partially a slice-of-life, the way the environment is used to emphasize themes and construct a grand adventure for the main characters is inspiring. The action is Trigger level fun but more polished and without the one-uppisms and complete disregard for physical law. When I saw that BUG FILMS also did Summertime Render, it made sense because I loved that too. Will have to look out for the next BUG FILMS banger, and it is my opinion that you would have to be a zombie to dislike Zom100 so put it on the bucket list homie.

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Jun 25, 2023

Tengoku Daimakyou (Anime) add

Mixed Feelings

Spoiler

*NO SPOILERS YET*
Vibes like The Last of Us with a compelling ruined world for the main duo Kiruko and Maru to explore, great action sequences, and great horror! A rare treat, really. The animation, fight choreography, dope old-school/new-school fusion character designs, and impressive artwork to emphasize OP special tactics of the super disgusting monsters known as “maneaters” made any conflict between the MCs and the maneaters just electrifying. Most of all, there’s about five layers of mysterious to this show and the homies puttin’ in that WORK just to get the lowest tier of clue to point them vaguely in the direction of someone who ... might not lie to them about an actual clue somewhere, if the place they’re trying to get to at the end of all this is even a thing!

Random survivor groups the MCs run into are scraping out a living in this ghetto ass post-apocalyptic Japanese economy and have super fascinating side-stories and hustles going that sometimes culminate in a seriously twisted or sad outcome, sometimes a happy or cathartic conclusion to a brief story arc, and sometimes just a good beat down. The folks that dip in and out of an episode or two have a lot of umami to their character designs, good lines, and concise backstories when we need that glimpse for their bits to land with the viewer.

Refreshingly, we are not told how the world fell to ruin. It has been a long time and people either don't really know themselves, or are too preoccupied trying to live in the wreckage scraping by and surviving to care anymore. The fact that everyone still alive is making a go of it, living together, organizing society to varying extents, and only coming into conflict or falling into the banditry business as the exception to the rule is also a refreshing take. It gives the world life and potential, and that accentuates the threat that bad things pose because they interrupt that hopeful aesthetic.

So why mixed feelings? It's clearly a banger of a show, right? Well… it was. Most of it was. Ugh, why do they have to do us like this every time man…

There is some objectionable content that was rather adeptly animated, taking place in the final episodes. It is hard not to recommend Heavenly Delusion anyways, so if you can stomach it I would tell you that no matter how you feel about the controversial events I will discuss below, the show is a bit of a gem. I think the step you could take to bypass “the controversy”, would be to skip the last couple minutes of episode 12. Basically, when it gets sus just go to 13 and you’ll probably like the show a lot better overall.

*SPOILERS NOW*
Randomly injecting the “theme” of an underage girl with body dismorphia who's actually mentally a guy getting bound and banged just felt like someone shoved a gay porn in the middle of my Anime, took a picture, and tagged me on insta. The reason for including that scene, I wonder? Well 99% it was intended to start a bum fight on twitter and generate buzz Oshi No Ko style. At a 0.9% chance, it was intended to awaken something in me I guess? Lastly, there is 0.1% chance the scene was included for plot reasons. Specifically to awaken something in Kiruko’s male-brained character like "hm, I guess my sister might still be alive in this body because after two days of getting r-worded by our father/older brother figure some of her memories are coming back in my head". The notion rings hollow and smells like burnt hair stuck in my sinuses. It would have made way more sense to at least not show the scene because it wasn't exactly horrific, it was just a decent start to a hentai that was ruined as so many are by some wild futa bullshit appearing.

All they had to do was play the freddie krueger music off with the shower scene and handcuffs, end there, clue us back in next episode the following morning - JUST THE ONE - where Maru can be all like "hmm.... Kiruko didn't come home tonight, something feels off I better go check on he/her". Not TWO NIGHTS LATER. One night is the TV and film industry standard for *wink wink* you know what must have happened, right!? WoooOOOOOooo so scandalous! Setting up a multi-day, multi-night it puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets hosed again situation in a show that is not a primetime crime drama or hollywood horror/thriller is just tasteless. Are we to believe Production I.G. had no discretion here? What are they trying to make space for by upping the debauch duration to 2 days, flashbacks? Christ.

I challenge you to find me an Anime that has tried harder to catfish its audience with a trap character than Heavenly Delusion. If the show had anything more substantial to say on the subject of body dismorphia than "guys would be attracted to guys if they had a biologically female body, WOULDN'T THEY GUYS!?!?" then sure, knock yourself out. Initially when they did the gender flip scene with Maru and Kiruko a couple eps in, it was mildly entertaining. In a get rekt kid, your crush is a dude! OOOOOOOHHH!!! Schoolyard drama kind of way. Then there were some decent gags that came from that reveal, the degen-o-meter was about a 7-8 out of 10 for most of those scenes and they got a laugh out of me. Even as a purely psychological plot device, it was great. A brutal situation, sibling absorbed by some freaky tardigrade and you almost got eaten too, made infinitely more than totally fucked up to navigate by the mind swap. Was it the tardigrade or that creepy doctor!? Also where tf are my homies? It just added to the depth of the mysterious and brutal post-apocalyptic setting, was a great origin story for the character and her sick design, plus a decent excuse to balance out the artwork with a female character in that special Anime way they do it. That was enough, that was the sweet spot. It would have sparked joy if they had stayed in the sweet spot.

So I’m left with something awakened in me - disappointment. The timing was pretty bad, because I spent most of episode 13 just wanting episode 12’s sour taste to dissipate, and a lot of the final episode was about episode 12’s “finale” too. But it also led to nothing, and the beat down was pointless as catharsis because pedo-Robin was just the instrument of some dumb shit production tried to gin up on social media. Further, the maneater in the closet that was right beside them, that he was trying to get into the room with, was just left as a cliffhanger which further erodes any semblance of consistency with the R scene. So instead of being super stoked on Heavenly Delusion, I have mixed feelings. I would definitely watch season 2, and feel like season 1 is worth watching anyways - but the ending is a miss and it’s a shame because the path to a banger ending was so wide open. Instead the last bit of the 2nd last episode and the fallout from that scene in the last episode broke that sense of immersion in the story because it didn’t add anything. With how much emphasis the direction placed on it, literally ending the second to last episode and devoting multiple scenes from multiple character perspectives to resolving it in the last episode and just begging the audience to “react” and reduce the show down to that one scene… it was a huge turn off. Out of step with the rest of the excellent work they did on this show, the part least worth watching, and if I could recommend anything to someone who hasn’t seen the show yet but does know about this ginned up “controversy” it would be when things get sus in episode 12, just skip to episode 13 and thank me later. I’m reminded of that meme with the Mom and her kid in the car, where she turns and says “Why can’t you just be normal!?” and the kid just screams “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!” in response. That’s what that scene and the final episode felt like, but the rest of Heavenly Delusion is bascially a masterpiece.

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