Anime

Fell behind on several series from last season, some I'll finish, some will just be in the queue forever. Starting this season behind as well...

Finished:

Apocalypse Hotel - 5/5 - My favorite new series for the season. Just a wonderful mix of creative situations, crazy, heartfelt, character development, etc. The show had range but never lost itself and ended well.

A Ninja and Assassin Under One Roof - 5/5 - My other favorite new series for the season. I put Apocalypse hotel just over it, but this is the one I want more of and will likely watch again in the future. One of the best opening episodes in a while. It hit a bit of a rough patch early but recovered (and those episodes work better with the later context.)

Apothecary Diaries - 5/5 - Remains excellent. This part fell a bit short of expectations compared to the novel, but may also have been the most challenging part to adopt (lots of political world building and interconnected plot threads all pulled together at once.)

The Unaware Atelier Meister - 3/5 - Seemed to have potential, enjoyable enough, but also rather forgettable.

I'm an Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire - 3/5 - Trash, but watchable, especially for the brief bits of mecha and space fleet battles.

Killing Slimes 300 Years - 3/5 - I remember really enjoying the first season. Watchable, but the slice of life bits aren't always my thing. I think what made the first season for me was the steady drip of new, interesting characters. This season, starting with an established cast, had less of that.

Gorilla God's Go-To Girl - 3/5 - First have was enjoyable. Interesting premise, avoided several harem tropes. But once the initial story bit was done and the love interests confessed, it sort of turned into filler and I lost interest.

Unfinished but plan to continue:

Once Upon a Witches Death - Seems like a good show overall. The serial nature and lack of focus on the overall plot made it less compelling to keep up with.

Aharen-san - I remember loving the first season, not sure why I started skipping this one, so will probably pick it back up.

Dropped:

Witch Watch - Watched a few episodes. It has its good moments, but too many annoyances. Might give it a second look.

Summer Pockets - Watched the first episode, was interested, but not hooked

Kowloon Generic Romance - Watched the first episode, was interested, but not hooked

Too-Perfect Saint - Watched a bit, read the first two light novels, they were fine. Don't feel the need to continue the anime.

Brilliant Healer's new Life - Read a few of the light novels. Too much of the stuff I didn't care for, not enough plot or character progression. First few episodes were fine, but I never planned to finish it.

The Beginning After the End - Watched a few episodes, picked up the light novels, got burned out on the plot escalation.

This Season, First Impressions

Secrets of the Silent Witch - Excellent start. Better than expected. Really looks like the people making the anime have read and care for the source. Hopefully it keeps up, especially once it gets into the actual story.

Reborn as a Vending Machine - Picks backup where it left off. Seems to be beyond the light novels now. I'm not sure about this demon load subplot, and I don't know that the novelty of the series can sustain the story. But maybe.

Plenty more in the queue, some I'm sure will be excellent.

Stuff from last season:

• Apothecary Diaries - A solid ending for a solid show. Glad to say I liked the final episode of the season more than the penultimate one.
• Apocalypse Hotel - This show started out good and then very quickly became great. I was worried there wasn't enough material to keep a team of robots running a hotel interesting but they certainly proved me wrong! Hard to say whether this or Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuux was anime of the season for me.

Stuff from this season:

• The Summer Hikaru Died - A highly-rated horror yaoi manga brought to animation by the same studio that gave us Bang Brave Bang Bravern and the aforementioned Apocalypse Hotel. The first episode was pretty solid. Overall it looks pretty good, which is no guarantee when it comes to horror manga. Definitely good enough to get me interested in episode 2.
• City: The Animation - Same mangaka and animation studio as Nichijou, and it shows in all the right ways. It seems a little calmer than Nichijou so far, but that could very easily be because it spent most of its runtime introducing a wide cast of characters. Excited to see where it goes from here.
• Witch Watch - Witch Watch continues. It's fun, but I'm not sure it holds up to the other shows I'm discussing here.
• Nyaight of the Living Cat - Haven't seen the first episode yet, but I'm putting this here just to say I've seen the trailer and I am very intrigued. Hopefully I can rope my wife into watching this with me tonight.

Other stuff:

• Yakitate Japan!! - I mentioned this earlier, but this is an anime about making bread that's better than another guy's bread. There are bread tournament arcs and everything, judged by a zany character who is voiced by my favorite voice actor. It's a wild time; I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a fun old relatively low-stress thing.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand-alone Complex - I don't know if I have much to say about this other than it's good sci-fi and those who like good sci-fi should consider watching it.
• Gintama - I got back on the Gintama train recently. I'm somewhere around episode 220 and it continues to be funny as hell.
• Princess Jellyfish - My wife has been watching this one, and I've watched about an episode and a half with her. Seems like a good show; I'll likely finish it at some point but I have no idea when.

Delving back into the past again, I watched Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song last week, and it was amazing - easily one of the best series I've ever seen.

In one way, it reminded me of Frieren - it's a completely different setting and characters and pretty much everything, but like Frieren, it has no real weaknesses. Everything about it is high quality. It's an engaging story that doesn't pull any punches, the characters are well-developed and believable and all of the material aspects of it - art, sound, voices, music - are top-notch.

The thing that really grabbed my attention though is that basically every single episode had a jaw-dropping finale. Starting with the first episode, it just went along, unfolding the story and adding details and introducing new things and building the tension and then BAM! In the last minute or so, it pulled it all together into an amazing, shocking, unexpected twist. Then in the next episode, it did it again And again in the next, and again in the next, and so on.

And each episode started off so simply and straightforwardly that even after I figured out that that was what the series was doing, I'd still get lulled into complacency. And then BAM! - it'd do it to me again, and leave me shaking my head and muttering, "Holy shit... This series...."

And none of them were deus ex machinas or just there for shock value. They were all vital plot points and bits of background information and they all made sense in retrospect- they were just so cunningly revealed.

The ending was terrific too. Like the individual episodes, it was dramatic snd unexpected and surprising, but slso like the individual episodes, it fit.

I don't know why I don't hear more about this series, because it really was great, from start to finish.

The Apothecary Diaries season 2 finally finished airing last week, so here are my final thoughts: it is still so good. Season 1 has mysteries that kept you on the edge of your seats, whereas season 2 goes in a somewhat different direction, becoming more political, ancient-Chinese drama-like. It has been dropping many hints in the show, such that I am quite confident that there would be even would ancient China drama in the coming seasons.

My prediction is that

Coincidentally, The Apothecary Diaries ended with episodes focused on a character named Tamamo just like my other top anime of the season, Umamusume: Cinderella Gray.

I also watched the Jujutsu Kaisen 0 movie over the weekend. I find that it's just ok.

Okkotsu Yuuta's story is a typical superhero / battle shounen's story. It's nothing special. Personally, I prefer the plot-twists-filled main story of JJK.

I still enjoyed it enough.

I couldn't find the time / energy / money in me to play the Umamusume mobile game, so I thought I'd show my support for the franchise by buying some merch.

Out of all the characters in the anime I have watched to date, I'd say Tokai Teio is the most inspiring to me, and has my utmost respect.

The only other one who can compete in this regard is Haru Urara. They should totally make an anime that features her, especially since she is so popular IRL. It need not be a full-season show; just an OVA would do.

Rock is a Lady’s Modesty wound up being our favorite show this season. Gosh, what a ridiculously fun watch. That finale was a blast and delivered exactly what I’d hoped for - awesome music and visuals to match, and a satisfying resolution to the arc. I sincerely hope we get more of this, though understandably it’s hard to predict; it’s like a more niche version of Bocchi the Rock, I think, and I don’t know just how strong of a fanbase there is. If nothing else I really hope we start seeing more manga chapters translated soon cause I need more of these crazy rock girls. I’d also love to see a little more merch being available.

I posted my Gqux thoughts over in the gundam community, but overall I enjoyed it a lot. I agree with the sentiments that the two main characters were underdeveloped. I think the show would have benefited from more episodes for sure. But I did find the finale fairly satisfying regardless. While watching the episode I commented to my spouse how much I appreciated that our girls went from fighting over the boy to fighting the boy. And honestly, as somehow who just in the last ~2 years started getting into UC gundam, I was primed to be very much into this from the word “minovsky”.

Now DanDaDan is back and I’m very excited for that. We actually went and saw the theatrical release of the first 3 episodes back in June and enjoyed it quite a bit - thought, I expect that the pacing will feel a bit better seeing them again in episode format. Was surprised to see Kinta in the EP, as I didn’t expect to make it that far in the story; Will our alien invasion sweetheart Vamola make an appearance??

Now, what’s next? I’m not too sure. I have Gachiakuta on my watch list to check out this season, but I’d like to pick out at least 2 or 3 more shows to follow. I’m kind of at a loss though. I skimmed the summer shows list a few weeks back and nothing immediately jumped out at me.

@[email protected] No? Gachiakuta discussion post?

Finished Gundam GQuuuux. Even though I read in many places that was no prior knowledge was needed, I felt lost a lot of times. I don't know the characters that were actually important in the end and I missed a looot of context. It felt more aimed at fans of the original. It assumed you know the world, the terms, power dynamics etc, but as someone that only watched Witch From Mercury, I did not know any of it.

The characters that were posed as the leads were heavily underdeveloped, including their relationships to each other. I think they had potential (a duo of rebellious rich girl together with a refugee is an interesting dynamic to explore), but were shafted in favour of what felt like nostalgia bait. As a result, some of their actions made no sense to me.

Animation was nice though.

Weekly ranking roundup:

1. Reddit Karma - Weekly Winner: Dan Da Dan

Credit to /u/Abysswatcherbel for making the chart for reddit karma and /u/Nooble5 for the Anime Trending chart.

No AC or AT charts this week with the change in season. I am a bit surprised that Dan Da Dan was able to top the Apothecary Diaries finale. Looks like Takopi has also had a great showing in the karma rankings.

I was on vacation this past week, but managed to catch up on a few things and catch the premiere of a couple others:

• Apothecary Diaries - Finished this season up and really liked it. I think I liked the first season better, but I would be hard pressed to point to a show that managed to pull off 48 episodes of as consistently good quality as this one. Looking forward to season 3 eventually.
• Slime 300 - I caught up on this one and powered through the end of the season. It's more of the same, just with some new moe characters. I had fun.
• Rock is a Lady's Modesty - I enjoyed the finale, but I kind of doubt this is getting another season. I will have to wait for the manga translations to catch the rest of the story.
• Vending Machine Isekai - Boxxo is back and it picks up right where things left off. I wasn't sure what to expect with a season two of this premise, but a three-story tall ice vending machine wasn't it. This show remains as creative as ever.
• Dan Da Dan - Speaking of picking up right where things left off... Good first episode back and remains as unhinged as ever. I never expected a Jennifer Lopez in Anaconda reference. I am pretty sure Dan Da Dan's primary audience was probably born after that movie came out.
• Silent Witch - Good first episode and better production quality than I was expecting (plus easily the best Villainess of the season). Looking forward to the change in setting from episode 2 onwards.
• New Saga - I read the manga for this one and I think I am going to drop the anime. If you watched the premiere and thought that you have seen this story before, it's likely that you have since the LNs came out over a decade ago when it might not have felt as derivative.