Shield hero is a fine isekai but the animation quality is pretty dogshit in the later episodes and nothing in it remotely touches the quality of the best episodes of Re:zero i.e. the 1 episode that's just Subaru breaking down in front of Rem.

More of Hymnsicality recommends "pretentious" anime: The Tatami Galaxy is fucking great. The build up is slow as shit but the ending comes together so well and with so much emotional resonance it's great. Also the story arc about the sex doll girlfriend is so fucking weird and brilliant.

 

Shield Hero is just one of the most popular of the "edgy isekai" stories. Protagonist gets screwed over while being completely blameless, so he can now do whatever he wants with moral "justification" and wreak humiliating vengeance on the characters standing in for the author's childhood bullies.

Best isekai is and will remain KonoSuba, anyway.

 

Okay, so that makes me want to know. Someone explain the appeal of KonoSuba to me. I tried to watch it, started forcing myself around episode 3 and got like 8-9 episodes in before I just couldn't take anymore. I do not understand, at all, what drives people to like it so much.

Everything I saw was just a bunch of fucking awful people being awful at each other. Every joke could be boiled down to "Look at this asshole, now let's laugh!", and I am continually baffled by people raving about it.

Presumably, it's just not for me, and that's fair enough, but I'd appreciate it if someone who does like it would explain what they like about it. I've always been curious just what I'm missing with it.

 

I really don't think you're missing much. Four episodes into KonoSuba and I haven't found a character I'm remotely interested in. They're genuinely either just complete assholes like you've mentioned, or they have weird quirks that are meant to be comedic relief but wind up just being really annoying because the humour just doesn't hit the right notes.

I don't know if I'll ever finish it, and I've finished every single thing I've started except Baccano!

 

I enjoyed it well enough, but I'm not exactly a raving fan. Still, I can try to explain.

1) Humor.

Konosuba is an isekai deconstruction (eyeroll is okay here) played for laughs. You send an ordinary guy like Kazuma to another world, and he proceeds to not be the slightest bit heroic. His abrasive (to put it mildly) personality is meant to contrast the expected heroics, but personally I thought it got old really fast.

Of course each of the three girls has some kind of gimmick that's meant to be funny, and these are really just hit and miss. Megumin's chuuni spell chanting never failed to make me laugh, and I thought Aqua's shtick was fine, but Darkness didn't do anything for me at all.

2) Character interactions.

"Awful people being awful at each other" doesn't quite match the feeling I had watching the show. I thought the main party felt like a group of friends that clicked and became comfortable laughing with and at each other. Over time, I think you can see genuine annoyance turn to fondness which is something I quite liked. I consider the dynamics between characters one of the main appeals of the show.

 

If y'all haven't watched it yet, I highly recommend Fruits Basket (2019). It's a remake of the original Fruits Basket anime that's more faithful to the manga than the original and with input from the mangaka as well. It's pretty much Eye Bleach the Anime. The story is basically a slice-of-life/romcom set in high school. The main character, Tohru Honda, slowly helps everyone around her work through their trauma simply by being herself. It's a very simple anime that doesn't try to do anything new but does what it intends to do very well. The first season is 25 episodes long with another season in the works. 8-9/10 imo

 

It's one of the ones I'm considering as a show to watch after finishing March comes in like a lion season 1. I'm debating between that, s2 of March, or something from KyoAni.

Would you say the story is sorta like oregairu in helping people or something more like monogatari/bunny girl?

 

I'd say it's more like Bunny Girl than Monogatari or Oregairu. Essentially, the story is about a girl who stumbles onto a well kept supernatural family secret of one of her classmate and helps said classmate, as well his extended family, work through the issues caused by the secret.

 

Over the weekend, I finally got around to watching Violet Evergarden. And I will not be ashamed to admit that I cried for most it, the story is so wonderfuly sad and beautiful.

While I do admit the first few episodes are not as good I still enjoyed them. But the animation from Kyoto Animation and score are fantastic stay at peak quality.

I would probably place it among one of the best animes I've seen, maybe ever.

 

I uh, watched the first episode. And then bought this (shitty camera quality):

 

People have been going gaga over 02 from Darling in the Franxx. I'm a sucker for a good love story, so I thought I'd check it out, but I'm having trouble getting past the extremely thin veil over being an NGE remake with heavy sex metaphors. Those who have seen it: Is it actually any good, barring the left-field turn in the last couple episodes?

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On-topic, and controversially, I'd recommend Ishuzoku Reviewers/Interspecies Reviewers. Yes, it's ecchi to the point of being basically well-censored hentai, but it actually has...I don't know, class? It's kind of an experience.

When you compare it to one of the other shows with extreme fanservice, the way that the other shows dance around 'as close to sex as we can get away with' makes it so unrealistic that it's cringey and immersion-breaking. Ishuzoku Reviewers on the other hand, knows that it is going to talk about sex, and therefore is very straightforward and frank. If ecchi anime is written by horny teenagers trying to get laid, IR is written from the perspective of grown men who are actively getting laid. Anime in general seem to treat sex as something taboo, so seeing IR just not giving a shit is a fresh of fresh air.

That being said, this is still very clearly borderline hentai. I'm not talking about the scenes themselves (though you should only watch this show by yourself in a dark room), but because of the content. It's clear that the people who made this show are intimately familiar with hentai culture, with way more substance than there should be for this kind of show. There is genuine thought put into the worldbuilding, like how different races have different tastes and standards of beauty. Cyclopses care most about eye size, elves love old human women because they're still younger than younger-looking elves... Or imagine the scenario: You have a room full of succubi, who will literally fuck you until you die. How do you deal with this? With a literal army of orcs/fat ugly bastards.

If any of this piques your interest, Gigguk reviews the show better than I ever could:

 

Having never seen evangelion, I can only say that I found DitF to be decent until they decided that the big reveal the show was building up to was aliens. I didn't particularly find 02 to be incredibly appealing though, so I'm probably just an oddball.

 

I've watched both. I preferred the art style of NGE, the music was good, but basically the useless, 'angsty' characters didn't really stop being useless, it wasn't funny at all, and the plot didn't really matter; it was basically a distraction from the meaning of the show. EoE is considered the canonical end of the series and they took like twenty steps backward with it, included this wacky sermon from the creator, and again the plot didn't matter; you didn't need to pay attention to most of what was going on to get the same meaning.
Darling is a substantially better love story because it is a love story. The writers seem to replace all the low hanging references to Christianity with low hanging references to sex, as well as birds that feel trapped and need each other to fly. I get why everyone compares the two, because it's existential children flying mechs that are ALivE? and bond with them. I would not, however, say that it's a remake because the message couldn't be more different and the ending is satisfying, and for the record, 02 is pretty but I just don't get the appeal to her personality.

 

TIL why a decent chunk of the Monogatari series fanbase loves Shinobu.

To be completely fair, Senjougahara is still best girl, but at least now I can rest comfortably knowing that there aren't that many lolicons interested in this series.

Wait...

 

So I watched Beastars on Netflix. I rather enjoyed it. They really nailed character interaction, but character motivation is all over the board. Animation quality is fine, the OP is amazing. Solid 3.5 rounding up if it fits your jam.

Jam:
If you like furries, you'll love it. If you liked Scott pilgrim vs. the world, you will find some strange similarities. If you want a show that treats high schoolers having sex as a given without being explicit, and not something to clutch pearls about, you would struggle to find better.

 

I really enjoyed Beastars. It was an incredibly pretty show, and the story was actually interesting, with everyone having storylines and plots moving around - it felt quite realistic in that everyone's doing different stuff.

 

At times it feels like the characters in Beastars are more fit to be in a college setting, though that might just be me too used to the level of emotional immaturity and trope typecasts the anime medium usually depicts high school age characters in.

 

After finishing the 3rd Euphonium movie, I must say that it would be an absolute crime if it didn't get a 3rd season. Here's to hoping that KyoAni still retains the staff and motivation to finish the series.

 

Kyoani did confirm they'd make a third season, but that was before the tragic fire...

 

The Monogatari toothbrush scene is quite possibly the most useless, but entertaining scene I've ever watched.

My friend and I died. Quite possibly literally.