The Darling in the Franxx conversation reminded me of this.




Tried Overlord 2 (up to date), A Place Further than the Universe (2 eps in)and Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody (5 eps and dropped) so far.

Overlord, I started a week or so ago on a whim and it's oddly fun and compelling. It's a cheesy powertrip but it does a lot of things right and the set up is done in a fresh way that makes it charming enough to roll with. The framing of this being an isekai story about a real MMO power gamer who has dumped countless hours into the game and found himself in his own OP character and self constructed guild to NPCs come to life that he has a certain attachment to, well, that's actually not a bad idea. It has a few dumb fanservice scenes but in general, those can be easily overlooked for the more fun side cast. The lizard stuff wasn't bad but it was the weakest arc so far. Still, fun show and I am going to keep watching it.

Death March is rather shit, tbh. It started out okay, the portrayal of a games programmer was pretty solid and the interface in general is pretty good but the rest...isn't. The anime doesn't take advantage of the programmer angle, at least so far and it's really putting me off that the main character is so blasé about fucking slavery and doesn't really bat an eye towards it and in fact, ends up owning like 4-5 slaves at the point where I stopped. Like, he is supposed to be a normal dude from our world and he kinda runs with the being a slave owner thing and makes no attempt at freeing them. Couple that with the harem bullshit, with every girl there falling for him and yeah, it's boring and cowardly and just pure pandering. Dropped.

A Place Further than the Universe am only two episodes in, but it's really fun so far. Going to keep with with. Also going to check out Laid-Back Camp and CCS one of these days.

 

Fate/Extra is disappointing as fuck. Perhaps more so than Apocrypha, because even with all the Umu-ing you could ever need, they still couldn't make a good show.

The animation is great and colorful, but the fights are all extremely meh, and even less in its favor, it has no heart. It's basically just servant battle of the week plus Shaft fanservice on top.

I miss the days when Fate was about the relationships between a master and servant, and when a servant's backstory actually contributed to their character. Hell, even most of the "antagonist" servants got touched by the character development brush in the Ufotable shows. Remember Gilles and Ryunosuke and their sick twisted bonding over the innate beauty of murder and blasphemy? Shit was great.

 

That's completely off, though. Zero in no way is representative of Fate/* at large as it was an adaptation of novels written by Urobuchi who isn't even associated with Type-Moon. Last Encore is written by Nasu (with Sakurai helping at converting it to anime format) who is the creator and main writer of the franchise and who always was weak at writing characters.

 

None of this is news to me. My point was they should go back to trying to emulate the winning formula of SN and the various spinoffs / alt routes.

 

But Extra has much better character writing than Stay Night had?

 

lolwut? Are we watching the same show? I mean... it's fine if you like it, but putting it on equal footing with even the worst of the FSN derivations is laughable.

 

Probably? Both SN and ELE have pretty interesting character ideas with a flat execution. But at least in ELE it's subtler and characters aren't annoying.

The thing is that all F/SN derivations that I know handle characters better than F/SN (Illya being a prime case with it's alternative version of SN presented).

EDIT: On an unrelated noted. Damn, late 2018 and 2019 may be 2007 tier in quality. And I'm ready to accept Twin Engine as my Lord and Saviour.

 

Press F for Futoshi.
Remember kids: Don't be fat.

 

So, I watched five episodes of A Place Further Than the Universe, six episode of Laid-Back Camp and finished Overlord season 2.

Laid-Back Camp is a lot of fun. It's very wholesome, pure and cute. If you just want to feel good and enjoy some cute antics about girls camping then this show does it. It even made me want to camp myself and it's always a good sign if an anime makes you want to do the whatever it is they are doing. There is no story or big plot and it's not really a must see or anything. It's just good fun if you are in the right mood or need something to cheer you up. Solid, harmless fun. 7/10

Overlord season 2 was pretty okay. It's more of a guiltly pleasure to me overall, since it is probably one of the best takes on the isekai thing I have seen in quite a while. The initial set up is pretty smart in that it really sold me this nostalgic hardcore MMO player thing and the justification as to why the protag is so overpowered in a way that doesn't bore me. The interaction with the NPCs are fun as they are fun characters and while I could do without the women of the guild kinda fight over him thing, it doesn't exactly come up that often, especially seeing that for the most part we weren't in Nazarick in this season and the story focused more than half of its time on characters other than the main character and the major Nazarick NPCs, allowing thus to flash out the world and its inhabitants in some way and giving some time to the no doubt most heroic and good person within Nazarick, as otherwise most of them are still evil psychos, albeit oddly likeable ones. They still do horrific shit and Momonga's loss of humanity in that he doesn't really care for any of that is kinda interesting.

So yeah, it's not a masterpiece by any means, but solid fun if you like that sort of thing. 7/10

A Place Further Than the Universe is probably the best show of this season and I haven't even finished it yet, mainly because I want to watch it with a mate, but the five episodes I have seen so far were outstanding and I would be very disappointed if the show turns bad over the second half. It's such a great show about adventure and friendship and it manages to convey both of these things very effectively on an emotional level. 5 episodes in and I got teary eyed twice. It is a very emotional show on that level, because when it wants, it makes you laugh and smile and in the same episode it can hit you hard at a sad and heartbreaking note.

This sense of actually going for an adventure in a relatively grounded way is just fantastic and the four characters coming together and becoming friends over their shared goal is just great. If that appeals to you in any way, check it out. 9/10 so far. Super psyched to finish it.

 

Well, I've (almost) finished the season some time ago, so I can post some of my opinions.

Completed:
YoriMoi - Interesting premise, good banter and comedic moments, but drama's execution fell flat and dragged series down. 6/10.
Pop Team Epic - I probably missed some jokes due to the references I didn't know, but many jokes were just bad. The series was carried by its moments of brilliance like AC-Club or Akashic Records. 5/10
Overlord II - Better than the first series, but still weak. I've heard that strong parts of the novel are showing how Nazarick is seen from outside perspective and Ains' paranoia in regards to his servants, but the anime failed to showcase either of those, instead giving us unexciting series of OP characters doing OP things. 4/10
KoiAme - Had potential, definitely suffered from not having enough episodes leading to jumpy chara development and unsatisfying ending. 6/10
DesuMachi - As my friend forced to read the first arc both in web novel and light novel form I must say that this is one of those cases where the adaptation is pretty faithful but utterly fails to execute things in an exciting manner. And the novel isn't good, to begin with. 3/10
Citrus - How to not write characters and their interactions 101. 2/10
Violet Evergarden - Badly written anime original material really ruined this series. On the other hand, the animation quality carried it. On yet another hand, can KyoAni please get their postprocessing people to learn that spamming filters on everything isn't the proper way?. 6/10
Devilman: Crybaby (Netflix) - Yuuasa doing modern Yuuasa things aka vastly improving on the source material by adding depth to characters. 8/10
AICO (Netflix) - It was ok. One idiotic plot thread aside it was pretty hard SF by anime standards. Unfortunately uninspired storyboarding made even well-animated action sequences rather unexciting. 6/10

Completed carryovers:
GARO: Vanishing Line - When it started I had some hopes, but it just got stupider and stupider while the production crashed and burned. 3/10
Mahoutsukai no Yome - Interesting premise, killed by repetitiveness (how many times can the protagonist be abducted?), bad pacing and direction. Still, I will probably read the manga once it ends. 5/10
Pingu in the City - Finally some production from Polygon that had decent-looking models and wasn't forcibly capped at lower FPS to give anime-feel. Unfortunately, while the first episodes were pretty funny it quickly dropped the original premise of "Pingu tries to find a job" and the quality of episodes fell. 4/10

Still watching:
Darlin in the FRANXX - All that's considered "Gainaxy" fused in one series. Quite a lot of good animation, some really good storyboarding, but the plot is mediocre and the sloooow pacing doesn't help.
Fate/Extra - Terrible photography and backgrounds really kill that show. Still, I like the direction (even if it is far from Miyamoto's best) and the plot is pretty interesting. Nasu still sucks at writing characters though.

Dropped:
Yuru Camp - Booring
Takunomi - Bad beer
Ryuuou no Oshigoto - That supposed pinnacle of LNs sure looked just like another generic harem, but with more lolis and shogi gimmick.
Ramen Daisuki Koizumi-san - The only place with ramen in my city is terrible, I couldn't stand watching that.
Marchen Madchen - I dropped it early because it was boring, missing probably the only amusing part of the series - effects of production completely falling apart.
Mitsuboshi Colors - boring
Kokkoku - Badly handled adaptation, will just read the manga.
Karakai Jouz no Takagi-san - Protagonist's stupidity annoyed me and jokes were too repetitive.
Hakumei to Mikochi - Boring and with guesslated subs courtesy of Sentai not caring enough to hire people who know Japanese (or even English).
Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens - Pure stupidity.
Gakuen Babysitters - Kids were annoying.
IDOLiSH7 - One fun character was unable to make up for the rest of the show being terrible.
Hakyuu Houshin Engi - That was probably a more compressed adaptation that Zetman was, and unlike Zetman there was no effort put to make it comprehensible to the viewer.
B: The Beginning (Netflix) - B: The Bullshit more like.

 

I give 9/10 to Devilman Crybaby simply because it made us care for the characters in a way the original couldn't. Was it depth? Certainly, but also something else. The only point taken was from the animation, that could have been better (maybe with a bigger budget).

I stand by my earlier statement of FranXX: an anime torn between being a piece of art and a cashgrab. You have moments of utter brilliance followed by the oldest and most battered troops in anime that manage to kill all tension and buildup. If I didn't know better I'd say A-1 wrote pieces of it then Trigger came in and did Trigger things.

Fate/Extra: I dropped it. I didn't like anything besides the heroine. Say anything you want about Shirou, but he's at the very least interesting to read/wtach.

Violet Evergarden: Dropped. It was simply boring. I still can't fathom the reason for that filter.

Mahoutsukai no Yome: Dropped. Reads like something wrote by a lonely forty-years-old woman with a daddy fetish, and I say that as someone who has a waifu, so the irony is not lost.

Devilman Crybaby is probably the anime of the year, if SnK doesn't manage to fix the Uprising pacing (or if Araki spends all the budget on Historia. Again.).

 

I really hope that you are joking.

 

Why would I? Do you have a better candidate? Let's hear it.

 

The less important part is even trying to put SnK into the same tier as Crybaby. The more important is tge budget part. It doesn't work like that, the animators are almost always paid a constant price per cut. And SnK's production fell apart not due to lack of money but because it was done in too short schedule by a team that was just torn out from a bigger studio.

 

I see what you mean. Still I wasn't displeased with earlier seasons, that delivered great moments like the armored and colossal titan reveal (despite cgi colossal). We shall see when the season arrives.

 

SnK 3 is two-cour, Wit has other projects despite the small size of the studio and Wanpack is dead. I'm sorry to say, @TheLazyReader but it's almost sure that the show will fall apart spectacularly.

 

I'll reserve my judgment for once I watch it. I'll remain hopeful for now. The trailer was good btw.

 

The trailer is preanimated so it's not indicative of production. It probably won't be as much of a mess as the first season, but I don't give it more than three episodes before things start falling down.

 

I must say Darling in the Franxx turned out to be a disappointment. The show's unwillingness to progress the plot is absolutely troubling. Do we really need to go over the 'couple lost their memories of each other' romance again?

 

I liked Darling in the Franxx. I only been watching the dubbed version so I only seen up to episode 16 and I have to say it kind of fell flat to me.

Hopefully it picks back up, I'm tempted to just finish watching it subbed but man do I hate them.