I really enjoy Drifters so far. It's silly at times, but I finish every episode extremely entertained. And I love that Nobunaga's voice actor is the same as Madara's/Tobi's in Naruto - which fits perfectly with the two moods Nobunaga shows most of the time. Perfect fit as far as I am concerned.

 

Anyone else watching "ViVid Strike!"? It's been phenomenal so far. I'll admit, I was cautious last season, when they moved from world ending calamities to MMA with magical girls, but this season has just been amazing. Episode 4 had probably one of the most gratifying bully revenge scenes I've ever scene. Absolutely brutal.

I'll say this to anyone interested in the Nanoha franchise - this is as good a place to jump in as any. They've slowly phased a lot of the older characters to a certain degree (the main heroines are pretty much gone, and their daughter is playing the role of a secondary character right now), and the main heroine is a new character altogether. You can probably pick up on things based simply on context alone.

I seriously could not recommend it enough.

 

Drifters is for me definitely very entertaining, its a bit hard to watch at times but it is good. Haikyuu is the best anime of the fall I watched the first episode of season 3 out of curiosity before binge watching the first two seasons.

 

I've found myself enjoying Yuri on Ice, of all things. I decided to check it out on a lark, but I've ended up liking it a lot. The animation during the actual skating scenes can be a bit wonky at times, but everything else is solid.

I can't say it's amazing, but in terms of pure enjoyment, it's been one of the better shows on this season.

 

I'm watching it purely for the gayness. I'm curious to see to which level they'll take it. Ah, and I cannot forget that Viktor is spoken by the voice actor for Archer from FSN. I really get a kick out of that bit of trivia.

Spoiler

Christopher: I came again!

 

So this anime season is nearly done. JoJo is about to finish and Magical Girl Rising Project ended a few days ago. If you’re not already watching JoJo, I don’t know what to say to you. Magical Girl Rising Project, while a strong start, became forgettable by the end. Cute designs, though.

But I’m here to talk about Yuri on Ice.

I wasn’t originally going to watch it. Even Eyeshield 21 couldn’t defeat my automatic apathy for sports anime and manga, but I was watching Yuri on Ice through tumblr GIFs anyways, so I bit the bullet. Almost everything goes right with this show: animation, characterization, pacing, music… This anime is dedicated to realism and that shows with the characters, especially Yuuri, who I empathized greatly with.

For most the series, I wouldn’t classify it as a yaoi or whatever Japanese term it is, just a sports anime where the two main male characters happen to be in love. While they’re never shown to be directly kissing, the show compensates by going the extra mile for everything else, which mostly worked.

So, what went wrong?

Two things, with one personal note.

The first is the ending. It felt incomplete with a hook for a second season that I’m somewhat convinced the team behind the series only got late into the season. It felt like the story could have been wrapped up, but instead the show backtracked on its themes and characterization. It didn’t destroy everything, but it leaves a bitter taste, and for someone who believes the ending is most important, it’s especially disappointing.

Second, the anime does a great balancing act of having a gay relationship without being particularly queerbaiting or falling into tropes some yaoi shows may have… Before the show trips into the ‘every male character is gay’ trope by pairing up secondary characters with male love interests. By the time it finished, of the six skaters who made it to the finals, two had male love interests and two others were looking in each other’s direction. It clashes against the realism of the series, and while it’s minor, it still bothered me.

Lastly, I’m not sure I had fun watching this show. Mostly, I watched through my fingers, cringing away from the screen whenever the protagonist made a jump and being relieved when his routine was over. Maybe I emphasized too heavily. If I could die from second-hand embarrassment, this show would have killed me so many times. Perhaps this show would be easier to watch a second time now that I know how it goes, but I don’t like that feeling.

I do think this is a great show, one of the best this year. I’m glad I watched it, but would I watch it again? Probably not.

8/10.

 

I actually ended up souring on Yuri on Ice a lot the more I watched of it. While it was fun for the first few episodes, its became extremely apparent as the show went on.

For one thing, aside from the homosexuality aspect, Yuri and Victor's relationship was completely boring. I'm not much of a romance fan as it is, but even I could tell that they weren't doing much there. The most interesting about Yuri and Victor is that they're gay, and that's not enough to carry a romance. As individual characters they're also incredibly boring.

The ice skating wasn't particularly good either. Not only was the animation wonky at several points, I didn't particularly get anything out of it. Good sports anime usually give off the impression that the creators actually know something about the sport they're writing about. In Haikyuu, for example, you can tell Haruichi Furudate actually likes volleyball, and has some knowledge related to it. Usually in sports anime, I end up learning something about the sport, or at the very least understanding why someone might have a passion for it.

In watching the skating routines on display, I did not learn any of this. I don't know how Yuri's skating conveyed his love for Victor, only that it did. Perhaps I went into YoI with the wrong expectations, but I was hoping for something a bit more substantive. I haven't watched the last episode quite yet, but it's a 4/10 from me, as I doubt it will change my opinion of the show.

 

Yuri on Ice was quite good. It lived up to a lot of its promise, though its final episode was a bit underwhelming. As others have said, Yuri and Victor weren't the most interesting. However, I really liked nearly all the side characters. From Yurio's rivalry to JJ's disastrous collapse in the penultimate episode, I felt they had quite a bit of depth to them. I felt they were what really carried the show. I found myself rooting for them instead of Yuri.