Comment on Summer Anime Season Wrap-up and Discussion Thread

This Season

Completed

Top Tier (>= 9 / 10)

The Summer Hikaru Died - This is easily my anime-of-the-season. This is the kind of suspense anime that I’m looking for, where bits and pieces of clues are presented to us so that we can play detective, but enough information is withheld to create the mystery. 10 / 10

There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless… - I enjoy entertaining cheap drama like these. The middle was kind of weak, but the start and end were strong and left a strong impression. I believe this is the second harem (read: polyamorous) anime that I would consider top-tier in entertainment value, the other one being 100 Girlfriends. The rest that I have tried are too braindead for me to even enjoy. 9 / 10

Great (8 / 10)

Rascal Does Not Dream of Santa Claus - The first half was honestly pretty weak; I was on the verge of dropping it. But when the second half starts, that’s when it drew me back in. I am glad I did not abandon it. It is definitely a drop from previous seasons and is not as strong a suspense anime as The Summer Hikaru Died.

Grand Blue Dreaming season 2 - This is good ol’ turn-your-brain-off dumb fun. Just like in season 1, despite acting “dumb” most of the time, the characters are not braindead. There is in fact character development and progress in relationships.

bâan: The Boundary of Adulthood - I enjoyed it quite a bit. I like the concept of cultural exchange with residents of a different world. I think the story / world has the potential be expanded upon and be turned into a full season of anime. I can’t help but think the setting is unrealistic though. If humans discover another world and is able to establish a reliable connection to it, I bet it won’t used for cultural exchange, but for an invasion to seize their resources - like in Avatar (the blue alien one).

Milky☆Subway: The Galactic Limited Express - It’s a fun watch. The way the characters speak made them feel so real. Just like bâan, I think it has the potential to be turned into a proper season of anime with full 24 minutes episodes.

Good Enough (7 / 10)

My Dress-Up Darling season 2 - It was pretty good until the very last part of the last episode. There was essentially no progress made in this season. However, I still enjoyed how educational the show was when it comes to cosplaying. Also, I suspect a significant number of the animators cosplay, or can at least relate to this show. I can see that this anime was produced with the utmost love.

Dropped

WIP

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wjs018@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
About Mushishi - I will preface this by saying that I love the heck out of the show. I actually agree with your point #2. I think Gingko feels like the average person wouldn’t understand mushi or would just be frightened of something they couldn’t see, even if they understood it better. However, I agree with you that he could have at least tried more.

Related to that, I think your fourth point is related to something that I found interesting in that the preventative measures in the setting of Mushishi often took the form of superstition or local myth. Things like don’t cross this mountain after dark or don’t store food in this building that are just common knowledge among the locals, but they don’t really understand why. Well, it turns out that the actual why is often because otherwise you will interact with mushi in a bad way. It reminds me of how religions basically created supernatural origins and explanations for physical phenomena that were not understood at the time.

I think your points 1 and 3 are intentional elements of the setting. I think the author just wanted to slowly wander around through this world and take it in. To a large degree, that is all that Gingko is doing through the story. There are some episodes where he is traveling to a place for a stated purpose, but more often than not, he just happens to be passing through for no particular reason that we know of.

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- Endmaker@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  
  the preventative measures in the setting of Mushishi often took the form of superstition or local myth. Things like don’t cross this mountain after dark or don’t store food in this building that are just common knowledge among the locals, but they don’t really understand why. Well, it turns out that the actual why is often because otherwise you will interact with mushi in a bad way. It reminds me of how religions basically created supernatural origins and explanations for physical phenomena that were not understood at the time.
  
  Exactly my thoughts, though I forgot to mention it in my original comment. Thanks for pointing it out / reminding me.
  
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ReluctantZen@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Yeah, you can definitely tell Shiro’s an early 2000s VN protagonist. Unfortunate to see it be a dealbreaker for you in the end, but fair. I think ufotable did what they could if you compare it to the Deen adaptation. If the world interested you, maybe Fate/Zero is a good one for you. That was my gateway into Fate.

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