Yeah, the ending was pretty brutal.

Both marvellously entertaining in its own right, and very typical of Hachiman - while driving home the point that his cynicism is a choice, not something forced upon him. He doesn't have to verbally destroy the chairman to persuade her to be responsible - in fact, that's obviously counterproductive. His behaviour (despite some in the fandom thinking it's cool and refreshing) is genuinely self-destructive, and self-perpetuating.

 

I'm hyped as hell for season 2, even though it's going to a different studio this time. Hopefully they won't mess it up, especially since they might have to create anime-exclusive content (there's not a nice neat ending in the LNs like season 1 had).

 

Volume 9 is a good place to end though, slightly happier compared to 10. They probably have to reduce the pacing a little, and not burn through content as fast as they did in s1.

Animation quality looks decent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6cmXXm89cI&feature=share

 

Definitely second what everyone has said about season 1. While in synopsis it does seem like every other harem anime in existence, it is done very differently with a focus on character development instead of love-comedy plots with cardboard cut outs. Fun character interaction too.

On season 2, two minds. I'm really looking forward to it, but at the same time the first season wrapped it up so well. Trying to continue from there may diminish it. Thought I imagine the second season will be more romance focused perhaps?

 

Okay, so I gave the show the three episode stress-test based on your, and others', recommendation. I can definitely say I'm not going to be watching anymore of it. It's not a bad show, but nothing really grabbed me. I can see where it could become a good show, but again nothing really stuck with me in the first three episodes.

That's the TL;DR version, now for the specifics.

So I was right about the long arc being about Fish-Eyed Boy learning to not be a shitbird, which going off your comment apparently doesn't happen. Nothing wrong with that, but I have to question the Staked Teacher's idea of forcing him to work with Long Haired Girl because she is equally broken. Perhaps not to the same degree as Fish Eyed Boy, but they both act virtually the same as far as I can tell. I'm going to hazard another guess and say that Stacked Teacher's objective was to force both of them to grow up by doing this, and decided to throw Red Haired Girl into the mix for reasons.

None of those three were in any way interesting either, but the guy is the worst. Mr. Fish Eyes is basically a twerp with no redeeming characteristics, who decided to become an ass because this girl he liked rejected him? Maybe it gets shown later on, but there doesn't seem to be any reason for him to be such a dick to everyone. Nothing that was shown in the first three episodes makes him sympathetic; the only time I laughed while watching this show was when he was getting his comeuppance.

As for the girls, Red Hair is probably the most interesting, but that is not saying much. Coming out of the first episode, she obviously Fish Eyes, probably has something to do with the accident that he mentioned in the third episode - which, for bonus drama points, Long Hair is somehow also involved in. Her leaving her social circle in the second episode was good, I liked that sequence, and going off the third episode I hope her old friends stick around as the generic antagonists to Team Friendship.

Long Haired Girl is just boring and worthless, except when she's putting Fish Eyes in his place.

I liked the show when it was being all High School Dramedy. The above mentioned sequence where Red Hair ditches her old friends for Long Hair and Fish Eyes was good, as was the conversation between Red Hair and Fish Eyes in episode three. If the show was mostly those sequences, I'd be willing to stick it out for longer. But the episodic elements kill that. The parts of episode two and three that dealt with the Otaku Writer and the Tennis Trap were lifeless and uninteresting. They made the episode drag on until I just started skipping ahead to try and find something worth watching. There's little flashes of entertainment here and there, but it doesn't pan out into something interesting.

None of this makes it a bad show, but it also doesn't make it a good one. It falls into this valley of mediocrity where it isn't particularly offensive or exciting.

The art is also unexciting. It works, but there's nothing to grab your attention. It's drab, plain, boring. Also, I don't know why, but the eyes on every character bothered me; something about those pupils, I think.

I also don't see the cynicism you were talking about. This show seems way more nihilistic than cynic.

The show also indulges in way too much narration from Fish Eyes. I hate that kind of crap. I always like it when a show acknowledges that its audience isn't a bunch of mouth-breathing idiots and lets them figure things out on their own.

I can see where this show could go and how it could be good, but nothing in these first three episodes is convincing me that it will actually go there. There's promise, but the show isn't willing to seize it.

 

Ah, that's unfortunate - then again, people do have different tastes, and I think Oregairu is probably more divisive than the usual anime.

Incidentally, for everyone who has watched Madoka - what are your thoughts on it? What it good/bad? What did you feel it was about? How was the story interesting? What made the characters compelling? How on earth did a story about prepubescent magical girls turn out so well?

 

You should make a new thread for that topic, Fire.

 

So, Bandai's put the first seven minutes of Gundam: The Origin I: Blue-Eyed Casval up on youtube. Dubbed in English, too.
To be honest, from what I know of Origins, the story is okay, but there seem to be a lot of people who got shitter shattered at the choice for CG. I can kind of see where they're coming from; it looks pretty video game-ish.

 

You know, we're terrible at using our anime threads properly. Recommendation thread became a "Discuss current season anime" thread running in parallel with the Animeeshon threads, and now we're using this thread to discuss upcoming anime.

Anyway, I hope Origin turns out alright.

I freaking love Gundam Wing. Watched it as a kid on Toonami, and then have rewatched it several times since them over the years. It had a lot wrong with it in execution (lazy animation and reuse of scenes, some cheesy dialogue at times) but on the whole, was a great story with interesting characters, plot and just generally a cool feel.

Gundam SEED was really cheesy and not technically good, but still managed to retain that epic feel of Gundam Wing, so really enjoyed it.

Every other Gundam I've tried has failed to pull that off for me. That includes SEED Destiny (which was shit), Gundam 00 (which tried very hard to be Wing, but had a shitty cast and then just went weird in season 2), 08th Mobile Suit Squadron (which was fun, but too short to really be epic and felt really dated in terms of characters/dialogue) and Gundam Unicorn (too short again, though looked to have potential). Though for the last two, I suppose my lack of familiarity with the earlier Universal Century works may have limited the impact it's meant to have.

Aldnoah Zero kind of goes that route, but still doesn't feel quite right.

 

I love the Origin manga, so I'm hoping the adaptation will be just as good.

Jarik: Why haven't you watched good things? Your list has a noticeable lack of the original movie trilogy, 0080, Zeta, Turn A, and, most importantly, G Gundam. What's up with that?

 

Completely forgot to reply to this. But yeah, been meaning to see Turn A for a while, but I did see 0080 and tried Zeta but couldn't really get into them. Just felt dated - not just in terms of animation, but in terms of characters and storytelling style. Should give it another go I suppose.

Anyway, wanted to rant about Parasyte.

For the first 17 episodes, this anime was absolutely fantastic. It was a thematically focused thriller that managed to remain addictive and really fun to watch (which many quality arthousey anime don't really pull off). Great characters, great music and animation - overall, a top notch execution.

But episode 18 came along and ruined all those themes, leaving you with only action left. Then episode 21 came out this week and I was blown away at how bad it was. It actually made me angry that such awesome potential was just thrown away, so need to rant a bit.

Spoiler

I mean, this whole character exploration on the protagonist - Izumi's struggle over his own lack of it, his interactions with Migi who remained creepy as fuck the whole anime were fantastic. There was a duality with Tamara Reiko, the parasite who nonetheless seems to be curiously discovering what humanity is, which just worked so well.

The scene where Tamara Reiko is shot protecting her baby in episode 18, along with Izumi filling that "hole in his heart" was good. But it should have been the last episode, the climatic ending, the scene which wrapped up the themes and the plot.

Instead the scene wasn't even end at the conclusion of the episode - it finished halfway through the episode, losing all that impact of it. After that, the plot is simplified to a basic action orientated "Let's kill all the monsters". Sure, they tried to explore the theme again with the whole special forces guys being just as ruthless and monstrous as the parasites, but it lacked any type of impact because the theme had already been wrapped up.

Even the quality of the fight scenes seemed to drop to the point of stupidity. What part of "Shoot everything on sight" don't they understand? They were happy enough to gun down humans easily enough. But apparently when an apparent monster starts monologuing, it's only polite to let him finish. And when one tells you to "Follow me, we'll have more room this way", it'd be rude to just shoot him right?

But now episode 22 has come along and gone to an even greater level of retardedness. The fight and the plan felt like it belonged in Naruto. Migi's death, selflessly protecting Izumi just felt forced and lacked impact. Shinichi meeting the old lady who takes care of him to eventually come to the conclusion that he needs to fight at the risk of his own life (having only just come to the conclusion of wanting to live in the previous episode) had me in disbelief. What is this, a shounen anime? Will the next episode see Migi being still alive? Is the power of friendship going to beat Gotou?

This episode was EXTREMELY jarring for me, how badly the quality dropped. The first 17 episodes had this potentially being in my top 20 anime. Not a chance now.

Anyway, I'd still recommend everyone watch it, if just for the first 18 episodes.