Noragami and Hamatora are pretty good so far.

 

The Pilot's Love Song is interesting so far. Steampunk but with a slightly different feel to Last Exile. My only worry is it'll become too focused on a particular female character and not actually develop much of a plot (but it seems to be doing alright so far - at least, because they have this whole plot for revenge back story going on underneath all the happy interactions).

Buddy Complex seems like it's trying to go for a very Gundam SEED like feel. A major issue so far has been the whole idea of the 'Coupling' system on the mecha which makes no sense except keep the yaoi fangirls happy and really irritates me. Sunrise didn't exactly inspire me with two of their last big mecha anime (Valverave and Guilty Crown). I dunno what happened to their writers after Geass season 1.

 

Been keeping up with tPLS and i have mixed feelings.

Just like my feelings, i feel like the show has mixed tones. It goes from a serious, mysterious, revenge show to a standard slice of life anime.

I feel like the latter is detracting from the mystery / intrigue / drama for me.

I had the same feelings when watching AoT. The characterisations didn't seem to match the severity of the world, though the contrast was much more jarring in AoT I'll admit.

I'm fucking loving Silver Spoon though.

 

I'll agree with you there. Especially in the first episode, the main character's emotions are all over the place.

I'm hoping that the slice of life aspect is just going to be the start and it's building up to be a turning point. But knowing most modern anime, it's very likely the slice of life will be the focus for the rest of the show.

Silver Spoon is on my list, but last season had so much great anime I don't think I can add anymore to my ongoing list and will have to go back and watch it later. Still watching Hajime no Ippo: Rising, YowaPedal, Diamond no Ace, Kill La Kill, Log Horizon, One Piece, Samurai Flamenco, Strike the Blood, Golden Time and now those two plus Nobunaga the Fool (only seen first episode though).

 

My only prerequisite these days for anime is that it has likeable characters.

Unfortunately that rules out a massive amount of them for me (i can't even watch naruto anymore).

silver spoon has that in spades.

It's about a genius kid (the kind whose old man pressures into being one while being a dick in the process) who, after finishing his high school placement (i think?) exams has no idea what he wants to do with his life.

A teacher from his school offers to enrol him in an agriculture school - supposedly it's worked on kids like him in the past?

So basically it's about a really smart city kid completely out of his depth and surrounded by - essentially - country bumpkins.

It's very much a fish out of water story.

While the plot is surprisingly moving (I'm very much a heavy meat eater - this show had me considering becoming a vegetarian), it shines in its character development.

Hachiken may be a fish out of water, but the kid works hard and can apply his smarts to more than just arithmetic.

I'm watching log horizon (POW. May i knee him in the face master? Lol), Kill la Kill and Nobunaga too.

The latter is hilarious simply by just trying to categorise it. Alternate universe/ timeline, action, feudal warring states, medieval, war, mecha, political drama romance? Did i miss anything? Lol

 

I just wish Nobunaga hadn't been included mecha. Nothing irritates me more than mecha waving around katanas. >_

 

Or mecha for the sake of mecha.

 

I started reading Silver Spoon a while back, but couldn't get into the manga, so I passed on the anime. Nobunagun is giving off a somewhat Kill la Kill vibe (similar visual style, ridiculously over-the-top fight scenes), which is entertaining. Not sure if it'll be able to keep it up though.

Noragami seems like it could be good - only got to the first episode so far.

 

I actually like a lot of animes this season. Another one I can recommend right now is Witch Craft Works. Pretty humorous with a nice plot.

 

(Click image for trailer)

Anybody seen this one? I caught it on youtube two days ago just before it was deleted.

Synopsis: Hana falls in love with a Wolf Man. After the Wolf Man's death, Hana decides to move to a rural town to continue raising her two wolf children Ame and Yuki.
Duration: 117 mins.

It's not action-packed, but it's very genuine and high on feels. Interesting concepts and questions that you don't often seen explored on the usual 'raising a nonhuman child' scenario, but that make complete sense in retrospect - both on the parents and the children's side.
They took a quiet and realistic approach to the concept, and it paid off in a big way in my opinion.

Also, it was written and directed by the same guy behind Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars, if the name dropping means anything to you. If you like those, you'll like this.

 

So it's about a woman who banged the beagle took the pitbull in her shithole conceived the retriever pounded the hound aaaaand cockhandled the cockerspaniel?

 

Essentially, yes!

It got a PG rating though, so, you know, no actual showing of those.

 

Just finished Attack on Titan last night. This was talked about pretty heavily a while back but I wanted to put my thoughts down anyway.

Pros:

- Main characters (that is, Eren, Mikasa and Armin). They've each got a distinct skill and they have a good dynamic, I thought. My favorite character in the show is Mikasa. But I hate Armin's goddamn haircut.

- Cool setting. I like the idea of the walls, the organization of the military (reminds me of the ASoIaF Night's Watch in a sense) and the sort of early-modern technology level.

- The music. I'm going to look for the soundtrack later.

- The fight scenes. Titan-Eren is badass, and the fights with him are fun to watch. The fights with the 3D gear are cool too, as long as they feature someone like Mikasa or Levi. Other people tend to get squashed.

- The art style. Besides Armin's haircut, the character designs are good and I like the style of the buildings, the uniforms, the lighting, etc.

Cons:

- The animation. While the style's good, the way things move can be atrocious. They frequently stick in still frames to pad things out. I guess they might have been conserving their resources for the fights, but it seems like they'd have the budget to do more than just still frames.

- The pacing. Things felt really disjointed. The first few episodes take place over five years, then the next seven or so are for a battle that lasts like a day or so. Then the next few take place over weeks, and then the whole expedition arc takes place over another day or so. I don't know, it felt weird.

- The Titans. Ok, they are creepy. They basically act like zombies. But the fact that they're giant naked people still seems silly. If they all looked like the Colossal Titan or something -- skinless, a little more demonic, I don't know -- they'd look more menacing.

- The character development. The amount of development characters get is really small. I kind of blame this on the size of the cast. I feel like the amount of characters should have remained smaller, and more time developing that core cast. Most of the other trainees could've been cut out I thought, save maybe Jean. He was okay, but that little bald guy was just useless. As it is, it's like what character development was there was too spaced out. The result is that when people get killed, they sort of just feel like cannon fodder.

- The whole second half of the show felt a lot more disjointed than the first. My favorite part was the battle for the Trost district, I think it was called. After that, while the expedition was kind of cool, it didn't feel as well put together. Though even the first part had its problems sometimes, mostly leading back to the previous complaint about characters.

- Not enough of the mysteries were revealed by the end. I get that this is just the first season and all, but still. What's up with Eren's powers, what the hell is up with his dad, what's with those walls, what's with the Titans, where are these walls anyway, is this even Earth, who's behind the Female Titan and possibly the other super-Titans? None of those were really answered. There's probably more questions I missed too.

---

Anyway, I think that's the gist of it. It's not my favorite anime, and I thought the concept was better than the execution overall. But I mostly thought well of it, and whenever they continue the show I'll watch it. I'm not sure if I want to read the manga. I might try it out, I don't know.

 

The humor is humorous, the characters are likable and it's all around a decent watch/read. It's not going to win any awards in subtlety but if you're looking for something to fill the time and get some good laughs it's definitively worth putting on your watchlist. If nothing else, watch episode 6, the airplane powered by the bicycle pedaling teddybear had me giggling, especially with the freaking dogfight music/sound effects.

It's absurd without being too over the top, stupid, and absolutely perfect for what it is, granted, the main character just accepts the situation offhand, but that just makes room for headcanon and hopefully, though doubtfully, a few decent comedic bits of fanfiction.

 

Keep in mind that this is very early going in the series overall. If I remember correctly, the manga is planned to go on for around 100 chapters, and the anime covered chapters 1-33ish, so it's roughly a third of the series. The series is still basically introducing concepts at this stage.

 

So I started Monster today, and six episodes in it's pretty fascinating.

Borrowing a summary from elsewhere

So far it's been amazing, it drags on for a few small parts before thrusting you into something major straight after the lull, it keeps you focused on the show. And the overlying theme is good vs evil etc; exploring matters like child abuse, mass murder, collective brainwashing, human experimentation, the value of life etc; as the show goes on.

So far I like it, has anyone else tried it?

Outside of monster, I'm looking for some anime to watch, any recommendations of something out now?

 

Really glad someone in this thread mentioned Yowapeda as a good one to watch. Having a great time watching it.

Is this how all sports anime go? Because I could get behind an entire new genre now if they are. It's simple, there's no romantic entanglements (or goddamn "misunderstandings"), no overly obnoxious characters. Seems like good stuff.

 

If you don't mind Soccer/Football, Giant Killing is the best by far.

 

For the most part yeah, I'd also recommend looking at Haikyuu!!, which just started airing yesterday.

 

Purple you beat me to it. Haikyuu does look interesting, looking forward to it.

Yowamush was good but the MC really fucking annoys me with his admiration for the other two guys, its always this guy kun, that guy -kun. Also I absolutely personally hated the second year story line especially the conclusion to it and now I can't watch the show without resenting the characters.