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woah...its been five years for me and i never revisited the Monogatari Series as of yet. Tbh i have no idea what happened anymore

Interesting...i did realise the lack of explanation in Girls Last Tour but to me it added to the experience. Perhaps it was because i knew it turns into a mystery type of story more and more and things will get slowly revealed piece by piece. It´s not looking like all of this will get anime adaptations though :( Therefore, it felt like a weird SoL to me, simply focusing on the two girls trying to pass the time in this world where there is hardly anything to do at all.

Do you mean my favorite character in 3-gatsu? In Season 2 its hard to go against Hinata since what she has to go through and how well it´s done. The bullying arc is really hard to watch and the portrayal of how the road to get through this situation is equally long, painful and realisticly done makes S2 so great. I always liked the character anyways and this definitely helps "forcing" addtional sympathy onto her. It´s interesting how in S1 Rei himself came across as rather depressed and while he seems to be in a better place as of S2, the people around him are certainly not. I like Rei as a main character too for being a very unusual character to go for. I don´t think there are any anime protagonists you can compare him too. He is rather unique.

Yes i can distinguish the pieces, otherwise it would be really hard to play lol
I think what helps a lot and what does not really come across in the anime is that the pieces are different in size. The pawns are smallest, and the king, bishop and rook are largest. So you only need to learn the signs to the middle sized pieces gold general, silver general, lance and knight. Gold and Silver is best memorized by imagining the gold wearing a large hat while the silver wears a small hat (on the left). Also luckily, 81dojo (the official page of the Japanese Shogi Assosiation where i also play online) offers the option to play with beginner pieces (which tell you with arrows what the piece can do) or westernized pieces similar to online chess pieces. Once you played enough games, the transition to the japanese pieces is rather smoothly and you can memorize what each piece is just from the starting position on the board alone. By now, i reached the first dan on 81dojo with a rating high of 1589.

I do not play a lot of Shogi anymore as my main focus is still on chess (where my blitz ELO is around 2200 and classical 1950) and i found playing too much Shogi effects my chess negatively bc it messes with my brain. Especially in blitz games i sometimes mix up the rule differences of the pieces that exist in both games. For example, the knight cannot move backwards in shogi and pawns take straight rather than diagonally. Also if you end up with two pawns on the same file in shogi, you lose immediately. However, a game of shogi or two a week doesn´t hurt!

hey man! how has your month been?

I just had a check what you completed since we last spoke and as most of the time, there were a few anime i have watched. I was kind of surprised you did not enjoy Girls Last Tour much. I thought you would like it for its unique mix of being a SoL in a postapocalyptic world. Do you mind to give your thoughts on where it went wrong in your opinion?

We both seem to enjoy Saekano on the other hand ;) Who is best girl so far? hehe

I cannot wait to hear your thoughts on 3-gatsu no Lion which you will maybe have completed once you read this, or at least you are about to.. It is one of my favorite anime of the past 5 years or so (S1 is a bit older than five years but whatever) It´s so artsy and i actually learned how to play Shogi after watching it. The balance between Shogi and Kiriyama´s life outside of his profession is so well done and the art is incredible!

that´s it for now :)

about Chupakabura: the idea of micronations to advertise regions for tourism in Japan was a real thing and actually a massive project back in the days. In Sakura Quest it serves to represent the decline of tourists coming in as the town was never able to move on from the Chupakabura kingdom at a point in time where it didn´t attract anyone anymore. In order to go with the times and refresh their minds they needed a young "queen" from elsewhere to work on the tourism board. The anime features many setbacks and disappointments along the way to finally making Manoyama attractive again, and i noticed the more some ideas revolved around the micronation, the less successful it turned out to be. It´s a symbol that it´s simply time to move on or at least reinvent the entire concept and i enjoyed it. I like the wordplay name as Manoyama is known for it´s turnips, called Kabura in local slang.
Micronations are actually a thing here in Austria too, one of the smallest in the world (Republik Kugelmugel) is located in the middle of my hometown Vienna lol so i was kinda biased. I never expected such a whacky idea to show up in anime.

As for the characters: yeah i extended the lists to 10 once i realised the layout change in MAL. Now that it´s shown left to right you can see all entries without clicking that down arrow button i disliked so much lol That´s why i took the chance to extend. I made the choices bc it´s not actually my 10 favorite characters but rather Top 5 female and Top 5 male (it´s even in order from 1 to 5so furthest left is in fact Nr. 1). I was surprised i added Tsukiko as well. I think she grew on me as a character once time passed and i could judge her completely separated from the overall quality of her anime which i thought was so-so. She is so cute and funny. I will never forget the kitchen dance. The female list needed some diversity so Shinobu just missed out, and so did many others. I did not want to feature the same show twice across both genders so that is the reason Shinobu didn´t make it, same story with Haruhi too.

On a sidenote, i´m happy my profile now features all of my anime 10s ever once more. I hated having to kick one out, which happened twice since joining MAL haha

Abby Jones is outstanding. She´s essentially a more petite version of Michiko. Michiko remains the number 1 dark skinned hottie in all of anime for eternity though. They are also both similar in personality in a way, both are complete hotheads lol Why did she defeat Michiko overall to make the list? Only watching Great Pretender will answer that question so i cannot wait until you get to it too ;) I am 100% certain you will love it. It is absolutely absurd, insane and ridiculous to what lengths all of these characters go to trick each other!

Kuzu no Honkai is sitting on my PTW since it released and since that list isn´t too long i will for sure get to it this year. I heard it is quite spicy and about two people who are basically just together for comfort as they like someone else. I had no idea it was too girls! This may even lead to me pushing that anime forward haha

I have checked other completions in your January history. Some outstanding ones are Uchuu Senkan Yamato 2202 and Fate/Apocrypha. I loved seeing Earthlings and Gamilas in an allicance but found Gatlantis somewhat uninteresting as new antagonists...definitely preferred 2199, especially because that also had a cool mystery factor to it as the Yamato basically journeyed into the unknown. It was still decent though it will continue to be a pretty epic space saga.

Where does Apocrypha rank amoung the grail wars? The team battle allows for fewer dynamics and betrayals i felt. However, the anime is sticking in many heads mainly for Astolfo being one of the best "traps" in recent memory haha

Meanwhile i realised i could use all three Heavans Feel movies for Quest A so i binged that one. Its one of the 5th Holy Grail war so one route of the main war (alongside UBW and the original Stay Night). All i can say without spoilers is that it really surprised me. Remember when we talked about Kizuomonogatari being edgier for the sake of it? Heavens Feel did not make the fighting more gorey but used their "additional movie rights" differently and i liked it and so will you haha

Since you are in 2017 you have to be getting close to watching Made in Abyss right? It won Yggdrasils Anime of the Decade tournament so it´s a big deal once you get to it ;)

looks like we get something slightly different or rather a new twist on something familiar for the AWC. The amount of time it takes to complete the quests vary too much at first sight but apart from that i think it´s interesting. Guess i go for Level 2 and then i see if i can take it further depending on my mood to watch anime once summer comes around...

yeah i really liked Hibike! a lot. It went on for a while too if you include the movies and stuff so it stuck around a good amount of time. At the end of the day it´s the kings of moe doing moe so what could possibly go wrong. KyoAni delivers on the subgenre without fail since 2007 basically when Clannad and Lucky Star arrived. Then there was Haruhi, K-On, Tamako Market...such good memories!

The Drama parts were well done because they were realistic and relateable with nothing over the top. They even set the tone quite early when some of the girls vote against joining competition and just wanted to play for fun. It went from there with normal issues like for the weaker members not making the band, including ensuing jealousy of the more talented people and so on.

I always loved the slight "yuri" implications between Kumiko and Reina for moe fan service purposes too.

Most importantly, there always will be that ONE scene i will never ever forget: you know how Shinsekai yori is one of my favorite anime ever made and how it left me with a void for a couple weeks so you can maybe imagine what it did to me when Reina was playing Dvorak´s From The New World on that hilltop. It was one of the most beautiful things i ever felt in anime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sZXUQqkSXE

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Tier system would be great. I enjoyed it muchly in the 2020 "Maloympics" and completed it all the way to Diamond Tier, stretching all the anime out over the entire year. I would not be surprised if i find my way back to watching as much anime as i used to via the AWC. I also would not mind a surprise if they maybe come up with something entirely new.

Yo!

A lot of stuff on your list i have watched and i agree with so many of your verdicts. I especially wanna second the opinion on violence/gore in the Kizu movies. Another scene apart from the one you mentioned would be Hanekawas guts spilling everywhere after she gets slit open. I recall that vividly even though it´s been over 4 years since i first saw it. Btw a hot topic on the movies at the time was also (of course it was...) Hanekawas boobas lol They made them even bigger (as if she´s not stacked enough already) and it made them even look saggy and unattractive. Dunno it felt to me Shaft made some changes just for the sake of it. Just bc you can go further in movies doesn´t mean you have to. It´s partially why the first two movies are the lowest rated Monogatari parts for me (still 6s though). I did rate the 3rd part an 8 because the story is just rounded out so well. I love how Shinobu ends up sort of kind of but not really give in voluntarily at the end.

Also yes, what an amazing time for movies it was with Your Name and Silent Voice, also a heavy but friendly debate which one is better. I ended up preferring Kimi no na wa but both are obviously very good. You know how much i´m a sucker for insane animation and yeah, Shinkais studio CoMix Waves is second to none. January 2020 i was able to watch his newest movie Tenki no Ko in the cinema. I cannot describe how much this quality of animation blew me away on the big canvas. It was a mindblowing experience.

Also yes, quality improvement in animation kinda came to a stop. I´m not necessarily surprised though since technological advances in general seems to go slower i feel. The 2000s were absurdly fast in every aspect. Just compare a 2000 flip phone with 2009 cellphones and then compare 2010 with the late 2010s for example. Same with laptops, we kinda hit a roadblock. As far as anime goes, production costs were rising but funding did not so we gotta live with what we have now. However i absolutely agree it´s absurd some mid 2010s shows look WORSE than anime from 5-6 years prior. That makes zero sense!

Guess it´s waiting time for the new AWC lol...may the system be a more fun one.

belated thanks for the birthday wishes and apologies for missing yours :(
I did send you the deatils of my hiatus via PM so hopefully you read that first.

As it is the end of 2021, i shall extend the question to my most noticeable watches of 2021. There have been super few in the second half of the year though.

HORIMIYA: a romance story involving a (for japanese standards) "bad boy" and delinquent. Obviously the guy is more misunderstood than bad but whatever, it was the best romance anime i saw all year.

WONDER EGG PRIORITY: Many called the ending a train wreck but i didn´t mind too much. It is a bit of a nonsensical brain bender with philosophical elements...combined with cute and interesting girls fighting lol so a good mix of mainstream and niche.

ODD TAXI: i find the conclusion unsatisfying and even illogical but its still one of the best anime of 2021. Since i am in the minority with my ending opinions i actually think it would win Anime of the Year in my awards should i choose to do them. It is such a convoluted story that stars out with separate puzzle pieces which slowly come together to form the big picture. Its a crime story with animal characters but still nothing like Beastars stylewise.

SUPER CUB: Girls riding motorbikes, but if you expect action you will be disappointed. Its one of the quietest SoLs i ever saw and focuses more on biking as a means of relaxation and self therapy. Underrated gem imo.

MASHIRO NO OTO: Hell yeah music anime of the year. I never knew i needed shamisen music in my life.

TO YOUR ETERNITY: Another AotY candidate. A fantastical and melancholic journey of a at the start meaning- and lifeless orb that finds a place in this world and a sense of self-awareness by interacting with multiple humans in all sorts of rather sad situations. I think it was the only anime this year that made me cry.

SONNY BOY: I think i loved this more than anything else i watched all year. Some school kids find themselves in their school but in a really weird different dimension. It is extremely whacky but still starts out as a type of trying to find your way back to your world anime. It soon becomes a deeply philosophical, strange as hell ride with so much symbolism and focus in the individual characters. I don´t even know how to properly describe this show. It might not even make sense to many people at all. I guess i just love weird stuff lol

AQUATOPE ON WHITE SAND: last but not least, i watched this two cour anime airing for the past half year. It´s P.A. Works doing what they are best at: workplace SoL with cute ladies. this time its at an aquarium and i really liked it as i usually do. Lots of heartsy character interactions are paired with highly interesting information about sea life. Also needless to say it looks stunning.


So how was your anime year 2021? anything that stuck in your head? ^^

30 episodes of one piece, each day for 3 days in a row! I'm hitting episode 100 today, on day 4 of my "Finish One Piece in 100 days" Challenge!

happy birthday my friend
last time i checked your list your were at 300 completed iirc
look at you now still going strong lol
good luck

Oh, hi! Ecchi wasn't my thing. Whenever I see the anime genre and has ecchi on it, I won't normally planning to watch it. 🙂

Yeah haha same here, i will only complete the easiest difficulty for the badge, just that i spread it out over the year. Basically i watch whatever i like and check once a month what completions i can use. After my last check i realised Emma will complete my first row so that's why i'm watching.

So i checked your completions from the past two weeks and what stood out to me are Gakkougurashi and Saekano S1. Looks like you enjoyed the latter quite a bit. Who's best girl? xD Also the cute girls horror show was not for you as much? (6 is not bad but still...)

Haha you are a quick thinker my friend, and you are right: i am watching it as part of the AWC (anime with non-japanese main character to be precise).

HOWEVER what i started is Season 2 and i watched S1 a few years back and gave it a 7 at the time. May have been a little generous since i did nit feel like watching S2 immediately but whatever, i did recall it suddenly when i saw the challenge item.

It is one if those anime you would never think you'd like unless you try but i find it surprisingly enjoyable. It's very mellow and while it is indeed a "forbidden romance" story set in old England which probably has more appeal for my grandma than myself, that's fine! Because the focus on Emmas daily life as a maid is given enough time too and it's quite interesting + i just enjoy the setting. Pompous victorian era mansions are cool lol

How's the AWC going for you so far? I think we both aren't a fan of the bingo system...i decided to make it a little more interesting for myself by including a rule i made up for myself that i cannot start a new row before finishing the current row so it's kind of a makeshift tier system.

uh!? I have absolutely no idea how that happened. I removed this Reiko person i never heard of again. Thanks for noticing! Weird things are happening on MAL sometimes 😑