[TV] The What Anime Are You Watching Thread!

WasabiPoptart

WasabiPoptart

I just finished watching OniHei (2017). Found it on Amazon. It revolves around Heizo "The Oni" Hasegawa, chief of the Arson Theft Control Office, his family and the people who work for him. The episodes are separate stories, so there are no cliffhangers from one episode to the next. However, unlike other shows with this style, as you're introduced to characters they continue to appear in the series rather than being just part of one episode.
Samurai, sword fights, spies, theft/heists, and sprinkles of humor made this a series worth watching. It's well written. Plus the opening song is kind of cool.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Space Battleship Yamato 2199 (2012)
(AKA Star Blazers 2199, AKA Uchuu Senkan Yamato 2199)



Genre: Space Opera, Sci-Fi, Adventure
Fanservice: Mild to Moderate
Premise: A remake of the 70's classic. The Human race is in danger of going extinct as a hostile alien force called the "Gamilas" constantly bombards earth with WMD, turning the surface uninhabitable. After receiving a message of hope from another alien world called "Iscandar," Earth secretly builds and launches the Yamato with an experimental FTL drive, the plans for which were provided by the Iscandarians. The Yamato must make the unprecedented journey to another galaxy to retrieve the technology that can rejuvenate Earth and save the Human race, while fighting for its survival every step of the way against the Gamilas.

This. This is how you do a remake. It is SO GOOD. Just enough is changed and updated, but plenty of callbacks to the original, while blending the styles of the old and the new. Everything is much more fleshed out and there's so much more lore and backstory to everything. I wanted to just sit there and clap, by myself, when it was all over. While it did get a little tropey here and there, even going so far as to almost lean on the 4th wall (there's a face-turn-heel-turn-face that, of course, immediately turns into a redemption=death moment, and the person in question even lampshades it by his last words being "I guess that's what I get for playing against character! Urrgh..."). There's also a couple Deus Ex Machina moments near the end, but it's a minor gripe. I really do appreciate that it was a complete story with a beginning, middle, and conclusion (while still building a universe rich enough for sequels). The funimation dub is great quality, and the visuals and CGI are top notch.

Veridct: I heartily recommend this to anyone and everyone.
 
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GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Man, Overlord episodes are too short! It barely feels like things are ramping up just in time for the end credits to roll!
 
Dei

Dei

I still can't get my husband to watch Attack on Titan because he gets too weirded out by the Titans. I guess I am watching season 3 alone.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Bakuon!!



Genre: Comedy, High School, Slice of Life, Motorcycle fandom
Fanservice: Moderate to High
Premise: High School girls form a "Bike Club" because they all like motorcycles, and do motorcycle-related things.

This one... ehhhhh...

I'll say this much for it, the artwork is good and the motorcycles especially are lovingly detailed. The plot is kind of nonexistent, though, even for a slice-of-life anime. It just kind of meanders through the days with random bike-related mini-arcs. That would be forgiveable, really, if there was more depth to the show, but it feels like things are being kept deliberately simple/shallow to appeal to a much younger audience. And then, that, too, would be ok if not for the fanservice factor - on numerous occasions, the girls (who are REALLY well developed for 16 year old Japanese students) are depicted in skimpy or nonexistent clothing, with only strategically placed obstacles between the no-no-bits and the camera preventing this from going straight-up penthouse on them. There's also a slightly problematic scene where a teacher drunkenly tries to undress one of them while the victim is asleep. I'm not exactly opposed to fanservice, but the contradictions between the show's (lack of) complexity and the level of de facto nudity make me think this show can't find/doesn't have an intended audience.

If you ever got into a heated debate about what was a better motorcycle manufacturer among the big 4 Japanese manufacturers (Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki, or Yamaha), you probably would enjoy this. I can see why this one kinda stayed under the radar for the general viewer, though.
 
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chris

chris

Island

I get serious Higurashi vibes from this one. With all this foreshadowing I'm sure things will get dark very fast.
 
WasabiPoptart

WasabiPoptart

I started watching Monster. It's come up almost every time I've looked for recommendations based on other anime I've enjoyed. I'm only 3 episodes in. Definitely intrigued by it, but not hooked.
 
filmfanatic

filmfanatic

AshburnerX said:
I'm still waiting for them to finish the Cell Saga. Episode 60's almost done, but it's also been like a year in production.
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From what I've heard, episode 60 could be their last. There's been enough hassle from Toei that Team Four Star could just finish their run with the Cell Saga, so there basically putting everything they can into it.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

filmfanatic said:
From what I've heard, episode 60 could be their last. There's been enough hassle from Toei that Team Four Star could just finish their run with the Cell Saga, so there basically putting everything they can into it.
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This has been what I've heard too. Basically, Funimation has embraced the series whole heartedly to the point that they've had the Abridged Crew do voices in an actual episode... but Toei sees it as them losing control of the franchise's image in Japan. It was all fine when the series was just in the West, but then Japanese fans started fan subbing the series and the jokes hit critical meme in Japan. Once that happened, Toei had to step in.

HOWEVER... the popularity of the fan subs in Japan also clued Toei into the fact that there is still an audience for DBZ. That lead to DBZ Kai, the new movies, and Dragonball Super. It's unfortunate that the gag dub is probably going to be ending soon, but it's part of the reason we're getting new stuff so... *shrug*

At the very least, both Funimation and Toei have been pretty magnanimous about the entire thing. Team Four Star could have been sued to hell and back by now and there is NO WAY they could have afforded to fight the lawsuit. Hell, Funimation lets them sell merch. All things considered, things have gone super well for just about everyone involved.
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Your Summer 2018 sports anime in a nutshell Harukana Receive >>>>> Hanebado!

Harukana is just plain better. A lighter tone. The rivals aren't out to destroy the protagonist, and there just aren't any lingering mommy issues that drag the whole thing down. Sure, the badminton sequences are beautifully animated. It's just a shame that the players are so damned unlikable.
 
Yoshimickster

Yoshimickster

Afro Samurai and Afro Samurai Ressurection

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN that was amazing, great animation, great gore, and a classic tale of not being able to escape fate-ALSO-Samuel L Jackson, so THAT'S awesome!
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Seiren



Genre: Slice of Life, Visual Novel, Romance, High School
Fanservice: Moderate/PG-13
Premise: Guy discovers he likes various girls

This one's kind of an odd duck. You can tell the writers were used to writing VN computer games, and not necessarily a show. The show, in fact, almost feels like watching someone play a VN. The pacing is sedate, even contemplative. Only 12 episodes long, it even further shortens itself into three 4-episode "arcs," each of which is a different "playthrough" focusing on the dude and one girl in specific. It is a bit confusing if you aren't ready for it, when suddenly people are referencing things that didn't happen as if they did, or acting in a way as if things that happened didn't. It actually sort of robs it of a feeling of closure, because the fact that it has three "endings" makes none of them feel "canon."

The three girls in question are, in order of arc (and decreasing order of interesting-ness), the "popular" chick, the gamer chick, and the girl next door. The first is interestingly and unconventionally written, the second slightly less so, and the third is so stock standard the show practically coasts on the momentum of the previous two arcs alone, and I ended up failing to give even the tiniest craps how the third arc was going to end, and basically forced myself to finish the series just to have it finished. It's a pity, because the first 4-episode arc is actually very well written, and defies expectations routinely.

That said, if there were more episodes of it to watch, I don't know if I would or not. The first 4 episodes are worth spending an hour and a half watching all at once as if it were a movie, but the taken altogether, the series is strictly an "if you have absolutely nothing better to watch" type deal. It's not BAD per se (I'd rather watch this several times over than slog through the interminable and formulaic narutos and bleaches of the anime world), but the way it starts so strong and finishes so bland is just a shame.
 
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GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody



Genre: Stuck in a video game, Fantasy, Harem, Comedy
Fanservice: Frequent, questionable taste
Premise: MMO programmer falls asleep at his desk, wakes up inside the game he's debugging. Lolicon ensues.

Yes, yet ANOTHER "I'm stuck inside a video game!" gig. This one, however, is more of the "in another world with my smartphone" vein, in that the Main Character very quickly (through beta bugs/design glitches) reaches a stupidly unbeatable power level and thus is in no actual danger at any point for the rest of the series. However, to avoid complicated entanglements, he tries to keep his leeethax0red nature on the down low so that he can live peacefully and enjoy himself rather than being forced to undertake some PITA uberquest.

Despite the ominous sounding title, the mood in this series is light and cutesy. The "Death March" is the programming industry term for the "crunch time" part running up to a game's release, where coders are working 30 hour days to squash bugs and get the product ready for final shipment. This is how the MC ends up falling asleep at his desk in the first place - exhausted from overwork.

It doesn't take long for him to build a harem, first out of rescued slaves, and of course the first girl he runs into instantly falls completely head over heels for him. Early in the first episode (while still in the "real" world), he has a blatant "pet the dog" moment where he assists a lost child in finding her mother, and it ends with a completely anvilicious suspiciously-specific-denial of "thank goodness the mother didn't misunderstand, I'm no lolicon!" .... and then the entire rest of the series seems to stumble from one barely-obscured naked early-teen to the next in a constant cavalcade fit to make most non-pedos at the least a liiiittle uncomfortable with what's on screen. I know MY parents would have been very concerned to have walked in on me watching this, back in the day. The show attempts to handwave the most egregious case (an ostensibly-11-years-old girl who constantly tries to seduce the MC, but is, in reality, a reincarnated adult woman from the "real world" who died in an accident and was reborn here), but it didn't work for Nowi in Fire Emblem and it rings especially hollow here. Even "How not to summon a demon lord" feels less pervy than this, and that one is unabashedly Ecchi. It's especially funny-but-confusing that the MC DOES have more than one normal sexual encounter with adult women (and only adult women) in the series, but those parts are COMPLETELY skipped over via jump cut to him leaving the brothel/inn/whatever the next morning with absolutely no fanservice whatsoever, contrasted to the frequent played-for-laughs instances of a tween slave clad only in her long-and-strategically-placed hair constantly trying to seduce him but never getting anywhere because he's "not a lolicon." Well, MC might not be, but obviously the writers think the audience is.

So, my final summation is, there's lots of better and less pandering/problematic stuff to watch, especially in the now-suddenly-prolific "stuck in a video game" genre. But if you've run out of things to watch while you wait for new episodes of Overlord/Konosuba/HNTSADL/Log Horizon/IAWwmSP/etc, and don't care what other people think of you when they learn you're watching a show with naked 11 year old girls in it by choice, then this one is watchable.
 
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DarkAudit

DarkAudit

GasBandit said:
Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody

Genre: Stuck in a video game, Fantasy, Harem, Comedy
Fanservice: Frequent, questionable taste
Premise: MMO programmer falls asleep at his desk, wakes up inside the game he's debugging. Lolicon ensues.

Yes, yet ANOTHER "I'm stuck inside a video game!" gig. This one, however, is more of the "in another world with my smartphone" vein, in that the Main Character very quickly (through beta bugs/design glitches) reaches a stupidly unbeatable power level and thus is in no actual danger at any point for the rest of the series. However, to avoid complicated entanglements, he tries to keep his leeethax0red nature on the down low so that he can live peacefully and enjoy himself rather than being forced to undertake some PITA uberquest.

Despite the ominous sounding title, the mood in this series is light and cutesy. The "Death March" is the programming industry term for the "crunch time" part running up to a game's release, where coders are working 30 hour days to squash bugs and get the product ready for final shipment. This is how the MC ends up falling asleep at his desk in the first place - exhausted from overwork.

It doesn't take long for him to build a harem, first out of rescued slaves, and of course the first girl he runs into instantly falls completely head over heels for him. Early in the first episode (while still in the "real" world), he has a blatant "pet the dog" moment where he assists a lost child in finding her mother, and it ends with a completely anvilicious suspiciously-specific-denial of "thank goodness the mother didn't misunderstand, I'm no lolicon!" .... and then the entire rest of the series seems to stumble from one barely-obscured naked early-teen to the next in a constant cavalcade fit to make most non-pedos at the least a liiiittle uncomfortable with what's on screen. I know MY parents would have been very concerned to have walked in on me watching this, back in the day. The show attempts to handwave the most egregious case (an ostensibly-11-years-old girl who constantly tries to seduce the MC, but is, in reality, a reincarnated adult woman from the "real world" who died in an accident and was reborn here), but it didn't work for Nowi in Fire Emblem and it rings especially hollow here. Even "How not to summon a demon lord" feels less pervy than this, and that one is unabashedly Ecchi. It's especially funny-but-confusing that the MC DOES have more than one normal sexual encounter with adult women (and only adult women) in the series, but those parts are COMPLETELY skipped over via jump cut to him leaving the brothel/inn/whatever the next morning with absolutely no fanservice whatsoever, contrasted to the frequent played-for-laughs instances of a tween slave clad only in her long-and-strategically-placed hair constantly trying to seduce him but never getting anywhere because he's "not a lolicon." Well, MC might not be, but obviously the writers think the audience is.

So, my final summation is, there's lots of better and less pandering/problematic stuff to watch, especially in the now-suddenly-prolific "stuck in a video game" genre. But if you've run out of things to watch while you wait for new episodes of Overlord/Konosuba/HNTSADL/Log Horizon/IAWwmSP/etc, and don't care what other people think of you when they learn you're watching a show with naked 11 year old girls in it by choice, then this one is watchable.
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Nano desu!

ANN hated on this show all season, but I kinda enjoyed it.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

GasBandit said:
Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody

Genre: Stuck in a video game, Fantasy, Harem, Comedy
Fanservice: Frequent, questionable taste
Premise: MMO programmer falls asleep at his desk, wakes up inside the game he's debugging. Lolicon ensues.

Yes, yet ANOTHER "I'm stuck inside a video game!" gig. This one, however, is more of the "in another world with my smartphone" vein, in that the Main Character very quickly (through beta bugs/design glitches) reaches a stupidly unbeatable power level and thus is in no actual danger at any point for the rest of the series. However, to avoid complicated entanglements, he tries to keep his leeethax0red nature on the down low so that he can live peacefully and enjoy himself rather than being forced to undertake some PITA uberquest.

Despite the ominous sounding title, the mood in this series is light and cutesy. The "Death March" is the programming industry term for the "crunch time" part running up to a game's release, where coders are working 30 hour days to squash bugs and get the product ready for final shipment. This is how the MC ends up falling asleep at his desk in the first place - exhausted from overwork.

It doesn't take long for him to build a harem, first out of rescued slaves, and of course the first girl he runs into instantly falls completely head over heels for him. Early in the first episode (while still in the "real" world), he has a blatant "pet the dog" moment where he assists a lost child in finding her mother, and it ends with a completely anvilicious suspiciously-specific-denial of "thank goodness the mother didn't misunderstand, I'm no lolicon!" .... and then the entire rest of the series seems to stumble from one barely-obscured naked early-teen to the next in a constant cavalcade fit to make most non-pedos at the least a liiiittle uncomfortable with what's on screen. I know MY parents would have been very concerned to have walked in on me watching this, back in the day. The show attempts to handwave the most egregious case (an ostensibly-11-years-old girl who constantly tries to seduce the MC, but is, in reality, a reincarnated adult woman from the "real world" who died in an accident and was reborn here), but it didn't work for Nowi in Fire Emblem and it rings especially hollow here. Even "How not to summon a demon lord" feels less pervy than this, and that one is unabashedly Ecchi. It's especially funny-but-confusing that the MC DOES have more than one normal sexual encounter with adult women (and only adult women) in the series, but those parts are COMPLETELY skipped over via jump cut to him leaving the brothel/inn/whatever the next morning with absolutely no fanservice whatsoever, contrasted to the frequent played-for-laughs instances of a tween slave clad only in her long-and-strategically-placed hair constantly trying to seduce him but never getting anywhere because he's "not a lolicon." Well, MC might not be, but obviously the writers think the audience is.

So, my final summation is, there's lots of better and less pandering/problematic stuff to watch, especially in the now-suddenly-prolific "stuck in a video game" genre. But if you've run out of things to watch while you wait for new episodes of Overlord/Konosuba/HNTSADL/Log Horizon/IAWwmSP/etc, and don't care what other people think of you when they learn you're watching a show with naked 11 year old girls in it by choice, then this one is watchable.
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I know how to immediately fix the "I'm stuck inside a fantasy video game" genre as a whole.

Plot: During crunch for some big, upcoming expo event, a game developer of one of these MMO-style fully 3D worlds discovers an awful truth: the game they've been making isn't actually a game, it's just connecting to another world and players of the game are actually interacting with real people in this other world. Worse, the company higher ups know this and don't care; they plan to exploit this world and turn it into commercial entertainment of the "anything goes, no one talks about it" variety, with all the weird rape/slavery/other disturbing shit that this implies. It's not like they can be held legally culpable anyway and they can just go to another world if this one gets too... used.

Not being sadistic assholes looking to get their jollies off somewhere they won't be punished for it, it's now up to the game developer and his associates to tank the game project and destroy the 3D interface technology before the game goes LIVE and the world gets populated with the worst of humanity and is ruined forever, despite knowing that doing so could destroy their careers.

Throw in some romance (actual romance with some emotional depth, not this pg-13 "Senpai has a harem of lolicons he's not allowed to fuck on air because it sells in Japan" shit that's everywhere) with the dev team and some of the people on the other world and you've got a dark take on a genre that needs to wake up and realize how completely fucked up it really is.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
AshburnerX said:
I know how to immediately fix the "I'm stuck inside a fantasy video game" genre as a whole.
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Unfortunately it seems like nobody in Japan is interested in the whole "hold up a dark mirror" type stuff that's often been so good for stories (like Westworld), but everybody's fuckin' eating up the "omnipotent male power fantasy complete with enthusiastic harem" stuff.

I think that's what makes me like Konosuba so much. Kazuma's such a hopeless, emasculated screwup, and everybody is hilariously awful at everything. Even Overlord manages to dull the edge on the "invincible MC" trope by constantly stressing that Ainz Ooal Gown is faking everything as he goes and is actually balanced on a razor's edge, where he could lose everything at any given moment, especially given that he still doesn't know exactly what forces are arrayed against him. Of course, we know that will never actually happen, but at least it makes a token effort at building a believable possibility of catastrophic failure, unlike literally every other work in the genre.
 
chris

chris

One reason I don't usually watch this type of shows: The main character is always some kind of otaku but still good looking to be attractive for the main girls, has a harem of at least three girls and a power that makes him op. It's a power fantasy catering for the target audience and easy money for the studios.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

chris said:
One reason I don't usually watch this type of shows: The main character is always some kind of otaku but still good looking to be attractive for the main girls, has a harem of at least three girls and a power that makes him op. It's a power fantasy catering for the target audience and easy money for the studios.
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When it stops taking place in an RPG setting and starts taking place in a Battle Royale setting, that’s when we’ll know they’re pandering.

—Patrick
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

PatrThom said:
When it stops taking place in an RPG setting and starts taking place in a Battle Royale setting, that’s when we’ll know they’re pandering.

—Patrick
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There have been several Battle Royale style animes unfortunately, including one where everyone was armed with BOMBS.
 
Dei

Dei

I bought my daughter some skirts, and now she's trying to decide which one to wear with which MHA shirt she owns. *headdesk*
 
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