Rottcodd

Me too. This trip they’re taking together implies at least that they might somehow be freed, and then the originals, as they’re doing, go back to living their own lives, while the replicas, as they’re doing, are free to go do as they wish.

Here’s hoping…

Another great episode.

I’m starting to suspect that in the long run, this is going to turn out to be my favorite series of the season. It has some strong competition in An Observation Diary of My Fiancee, which is just so immensely charming, but this one has sort of snuck up on me. It was entertainingly silly all along, and the goddess in particular is a great character, but lately it’s started to look as if it’s not just building toward some sort of truly epic ending, but that it has been all along, which is doubly impressive because for the first two thirds or so, I didn’t even realize it had an overarching plot at all.

Currently working my way through a bit of an oddity - Bodacious Space Pirates.

The concept is a good (at least for my own tastes) combination of intriguing and silly, but it almost immediately went south. But there was an odd thing there.

Okay - so we have this schoolgirl, Marika, who finds out that she’s the heir to a pirate ship captaincy, and what’s her reaction? Essentially, “Well gee, that’s great, but I have to go to my part-time job now.” And it didn’t seem to matter how much the crew tried to impress on her that this was a serious matter - she was just “Well I have a test tomorrow, so I need to study for that,” or “Sorry - I have to go to my club meeting now,” or “Well they need me to fill in at the maid cafe, so I’ll see you later.” It wasn’t that she wasn’t interested in the ship or the captaincy - she definitely was. She just couldn’t manage to keep her focus on that if any distraction came floating by. No matter how serious things got, she’d still spontaneously switch over into being a brainless schoolgirl. And that was really irritating, not least because she did show occasional flashes of intelligence and even brilliance, but inevitably went back to being a simpleton sooner or later.

But just about the time I was ready to drop it, they introduced another character, and in fact another schoolgirl who’s heir to a ship, and her role in large part turned out to be a sort of audience surrogate who tells Marika to knock it the hell off. Specifically, “When you act like a ditz, you put people in danger, and it makes me mad, so you need to stop doing it.” And though it does take a while, she does finally stop being such an annoying ditz and actually focuses on being a pirate captain, and turns out to be a very good one.

I thought that was odd though. Rather than make her competent from the start, the writer(s) made her shallow and bubbleheaded, but not really - she showed enough intelligence to make her sudden switches to airheadedness just that much more irritating. But apparently they knew enough to recognize that that was going to be irritating, so they included an audience surrogate to tell her just how irritating she was being and to knock it the hell off.

If I had thought that she was just going to keep being that way, I would’ve dropped it, but just about the time I was ready to do that, they introduced a character who called out the exact problem, which is the only thing that kept me watching it.

That’s kind of a neat trick really, but seems like a lot of trouble and risk to go to when it would’ve been easier to just not make her irritating in the first place. I can see writers inadvertently making a character so irritating that they lead to people dropping the series, but deliberately doing that, then saving it at the last minute by having someone in-universe call it out? At the least, I don’t see how that adds anything of value to the story.

Still though, now that that’s (apparently) a thing of the past, it’s settled down into just being a sort of stylized adventure story, and is pretty good all in all.

At this point, there seems to be a just about 50/50 chance that this is going to end happily and that it’s… not.

On the one hand, the originals are together now and overtly sharing their appreciation for the replicas.

On the other hand, I expect another gut punch.

Exactly. And meanwhile, the OP is on Reddit, where we’re not.

It’s sort of like going to a restaurant and being served a picture of some food from some other restaurant.

Binged this last night, and it is very good. Not perfect by any means, but very good.

And the ED’s still in my head.

Good riddance.

The whole idea of reposting Reddit content here has always been stupid and toxic. It’s never going to get any meaningful engagement, so it’s just a waste of server space at best.

Sort of thinking through my fingers here…

The first notable one I can think of is watching the entire run of Elfen Lied in a single sitting, so 12 episodes. I’ve done that a number of times since though, most recently with the first season of Zombieland Saga.

One curious one was Magic Knight Rayearth. I watched most of the first season - 20 episodes - in a single day, but not so much because I was so hooked on the story. What it was was that if I didn’t catch it in time at the end of one episode, the next episode would start, so the OP would start, and that was it. There was no way I could turn off what is, IMO, the best OP ever, so I’d end up just letting it go, which led into the episode, and so on. I’m not sure how many total episodes I watched that way though.

I can only think of one instance when I’m certain I watched more than a single season/cour in a single sitting, and that was The Apothecary Diaries. I watched the first half or so of the first cour of the first season one day, and it was certainly good, but it hadn’t yet fully hooked me. But then when everything started coming together in the second half of that cour, I couldn’t stop, and I watched the rest of it plus the entire 12 episode second cour in one long binge. I’m pretty sure that started from about the time that Maomao went home to visit her father, which was episode 7, so that’s 18 episodes or about 7 hours.

There’s nothing quite like it really.

The closest comparison I can think of is Drifting Classroom, but it never got an anime adaptation.

Bokurano is similar in some notable ways, but it’s an ensemble and set in (more or less) our world.

Casshern Sins is sort of oddly similar - broadly similar setting and tone and a lot of the same themes, though a much different story.

I guess Noein is sort of similar, insofar as it’s a cast centered on children, the stakes are much bigger than they initially seem and tragedy lurks around every corner, but it’s different in most details.

And Kaiba is actually sort of similar too - much different setting, artstyle and story, but a similar downbeat tone and broad subject of people, and mostly children, at the mercy of a screwed-up world.

And I can’t think of anything else even vaguely similar.

Fate/Stay Night - couldn’t say - it’s never interested me. Note that it’s not “forgotten” by any stretch of the imagination.

Mushishi - very, very good. And entirely the opposite of “forgotten” - hardly a week goes by that I don’t see it mentioned in some context.

xxxHOLiC - Clamp. I can sort of see what I guess the appeal must be, but have no interest in investing the necessary time and effort.

Negima reboot - important to stipulate “reboot,” since the first series was ridiculously awful - like they actually went out of their way to try to make it as bad as possible awful. The second series is okay. The manga’s better.

Witch Hunter Robin - I’ve bounced off of it three times now. It looks intriguing, but for some reason…

Hellsing Ultimate - I prefer the original.

Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles - Clamp^2

All in all, a pretty awful list. Here’s a better one, just off the top of my head:

• Scrapped Princess
• Casshern Sins
• Trinity Blood
• Now and Then, Here and There
• Ghost Hound
• Solty Rei
• Last Exile

Yeah - that was a good Jugemu.

And I’m tempted to drop this right here. I just have no hope that what’s going to come next is going to be satisfying.

They completely explained the mystery, and unless they have an unusual season of 11 episodes, there are two more episodes left. That’s quite a lot of time to spend after the mystery has been explained.

I was wondering about the same thing.

From what I can find on the database sites, it is indeed scheduled for 12 episodes. So obviously something has to happen, and something relatively momentous (or at least that will be seen as momentous by Bertia, which will in turn make it momentous for Cecil). I can’t imagine what though.

I hoped after last week’s episode, and sort of suspect really, that Heronia and Pii-chan will get some sort of happy ending. Maybe something that oddly fits in with the game canon?

Yeah - more broadly, as I think about it, this needs some sort of resolution that will satisfy Bertia as well as Cecil - something that’s close enough to game canon to lead to Bertia accepting that that’s the way it’s “supposed” to be, and that will still allow Cecil to get the ending he wants (and really the ending that Bertia wants too, though even she doesn’t yet realize that).

We’ll see, and I’m looking forward to it.

Ooh… I like this idea.

I really enjoyed this series. It was quite a bit more interesting than its subject matter would imply, and it looked and sounded great. But it wasn’t without flaws, and a compilation version might just be the best way to tell its story.

This is turning into a really impressive series, and I suspect it’s not even close to done surprising us.

It just seemed silly and pointless at first, but throughout the series, sort of in the background (undoubtedly not coincidentally like the growing collection of presents and mementoes in the goddess’s chambers), it’s been assembling a cast of characters and laying out an overarching plot. And over the last couple of episodes it’s started revealing it.

I can’t wait to see what it’s going to do next (and I’m especially keeping my eye on the giggling plant with the ridiculously long name - the goddess isn’t paying it that much attention for nothing).

Since I decided to drop all of the ongoing series that I thought would be better binged, I had some free time last week, and I’ve been exploring donghua lately, and decided to go back and watch the beginning of a series that’s currently on its seventh season - Quanzhi Fashi aka Full-time Magister aka Versatile Mage. And I liked it.

It’s pretty straightforward - magical academy and a student who’s derided as a loser but then reveals himself to actually be far and away the most powerful mage there. It’s sort of what Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei could’ve been if the MC was a genuinely nice guy instead of a tediously arrogant asshole. There weren’t any big surprises, but it was pleasant to watch him grow and improve, and there was enough background context to make it especially enjoyable when he inevitably curbstomped his unjustifiably arrogant rivals.

And there was a bit of a hint at some very dark background that I suspect is going to become much more important as the seasons go on.

Just caught back up with this, and wow. They did it again.

It’s been an odd series, because while the basic idea is strange, most of the story has been relatively straightforward. Not without drama, but the drama for the most part hasn’t been anything too far beyond the norm for school slice of life. But then suddenly they’ll drop in some huge gut punch of an event, and it’s like everything comes to a screeching halt, just left standing there, staring agape at what just happened.

I keep thinking, “I can’t believe they just did that.” But they did. And then it sort of slowly recovers, regains its feet, and starts moving again.

I’m really curious to see where it’s going next, because basically the whole school now has been clued in to the existence of the replicas.

I suspect that it’s going to be another gut punch.

The Ramparts of Ice

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the anime adaptation. And as I recently commented on the latest episode’s thread, I’ve realized it’s been doing something fascinating.

Not just the tone and feel of the story, but the actual depictions of the characters - their design and artstyle and movements and gestures and everything - have changed as the characters (mostly Koyun) have changed.

There was an early clue when an episode ended with a confrontation between Koyun and Minato that ended up with her blowing up at him, and seemingly entirely justifiably, and then the next episode opened with the exact same interaction from Minato’s point of view, and it wasn’t just different - it was almost as if it was an entirely different interaction. There was virtually no correspondence between what Koyun thought she was hearing and saying and what Minato thought he was hearing and saying.

But the really impressive thing is that that’s become a part of the series. As it’s gone along, the same people and things, either as seen from different viewpoints or even just from Koyun’s viewpoint at different times, have been constantly changing.

Like there might be a scene of a conversation between Koyun and Yota, and it will start from Koyun’s POV, then switch to Yota’s, then to Miki’s, then to Minato’s. And each version of the scene will actually be somewhat different - it’s all the same scene, but it’s not even just that the different versions will be interpreted differently - to us, the audience, they’re actually portrayed somewhat differently, as each version is filtered through the presumptions of the current POV character.

Similarly, when they first showed Igarashi, he actually looked dark and sinister. Everything about him - his posture, his build, the look on his face - everything - was threatening. He’d sort of loom up somewhere in Koyun’s peripheral vision, looking like a pure villain. But already, as it’s gone along, though Koyun hasn’t yet entirely revealed the story behind her reactions to him, he’s been changing. Every time he appears, he looks a little less villainous and and a little more just human. And in this most recent episode, as they’re moving toward Koyun finally telling the whole story, I was keeping an eye out for him to appear, and when he did, I barely even recognized him, since he looked… perfectly normal. His eyes and his hair were recognizable, but other than that, he just looked like any other guy, rather than the dark and evil weasel he looked like earlier in the story.

And that’s a really neat trick that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

And what you’ve said here about the manga seems to tie right in with that.

This series has reached a sort of odd stage. We finally got some details about Koyun’s history with Igarashi, which had been treated all along as if it was horrifying and awful, and specifically that he was some sort of villain, but what we’re getting finally is that that’s apparently not the case at all - that like so many other things, it had much more to do with Koyun’s failure to deal well with an awkward situation.

I say it’s gotten sort of odd because at this point, that surprise isn’t as surprising at it would’ve been earlier on.

It strikes me, thinking about that, that the basic arc of this series has been personal growth, but not just as seen from outside, as is common. Instead, the whole feel and tone of the series has changed as it’s gone along, because the protagonists - mostly but not entirely Koyun - have themselves changed. All the way through (as neatly illustrated the first time that Minato took the protagonist role), what we’ve seen has been the events as seen through the eyes of the current POV character, and that’s led to some notably different versions of the same events. But not only has the story changed as different people have been the focus, it’s changed even as seen and recollected by the same person (again, mostly Koyun) simply because she’s changed. She’s seeing things differently now than she did in the beginning, and as a result, so are we.

And that’s a pretty neat trick really.

I’m definitely going to have to rewatch this. I suspect it’s going to be even better the second time through, because I’ll know what to watch for and be better able to see how the characters and the story evolve together.

Now I find myself hoping that Pii-chan, and I guess Heronia too, get at least some sort of happy ending.

I’ve never gotten the impression that the reincarnation behind Heronia is a bad person really - she’s just sort of shallow and lazy, so she expected to just breeze through all of the checkpoints and raise all of the correct flags and essentially automatically get the good ending, and it confused and frustrated her (and understandably really) when nothing unfolded the way it was supposed to. How was she to know that the reincarnation behind Bertia was so adorable?

But anyway, we’re back on track for the alternate route good ending, and I’m looking forward to it.

Ah… I’d been waiting for the All You Need is Kill movie.

I read the manga first, so Edge of Tomorrow, generally entertaining as it was, was a disappointment in the long run.

All I hope really is that this movie has the courage to tell the same story the manga told.

Edit to add, after watching it:

First off, I had forgotten that this was Science SARU, though I was reminded about one second in - there’s no mistaking that art style.

All in all it was… pretty good.

Broadly of course it was the same story, but it differed in a number of details, some of which I think might have even been an improvement over the original. Others were definitely not an improvement though. Overall, I’d rate it at somewhat inferior to the original, but vastly superior to Edge of Tomorrow.

I’ve never done this before, but I’ve decided that right now - before the next episode airs - I’m going to read the original LN.

I just can’t escape the impression that this adaptation is giving us a poorly condensed version of the real story. It’s good all in all and I am enjoying it, but still… it just feels sort of cursory and shallow - as if there’s much more to the story and we’re only being afforded glimpses of it here and there.

Normally, I’d let it go and plan on maybe reading the LN afterwards. But I just feel like if I did that, I’d end up regretting it - that I’m going to be better off experiencing it the first time exactly the way Akatsuki Kana wrote it.

Well… I do agree with your second paragraph pretty much entirely. They did a great job of cranking up the drama surrounding her performance, and especially by making the introduction so simple and seemingly drab. That sets the stage for a very dramatic transition to… something, and I think it’s definitely going to be worth seeing. I’d enjoy it more without all of the ad hoc narrators telling me things that I could figure out on my own, but it’s shounen, so that’s the way it goes. It’ll still likely be worth seeing the rest of her performance.

But at this point, that’s the only thing keeping me going.

I appreciate what you’re saying, and you may well be right and I’m just too cynical. But I just don’t believe there’s any legitimate in-universe explanation for Issho’s transformation or the direction the story’s going. IMO, it has nothing to do with the art of storytelling, and everything to do with Jump’s business model. In order to turn the series into a cash cow they could milk as long as possible, it was necessary to dump Akane’s initial, concrete goal of getting far enough in rakugo to confront Issho and win some justice for her father and replace it with some more nebulous goal, and that’s exactly what they’re doing.

But I do still at least want to see the rest of her performance.

Aaaand… Issho’s retcon is not only continuing, but accelerating, and has gone from disappointing to revolting.

He’s already so grossly sweet that if he’d been up on stage instead of in the audience, I would’ve expected him to pat Kouragi on the head.

I’m sort of looking forward to seeing what Akane’s going to do with the rest of her performance (I would definitely be looking forward to it if I thought I was actually going to see it, but mostly what we’re going to see is other people providing droning commentary on what we’re not seeing because we’re stuck looking at them instead), but beyond that, I find I just don’t care. One way or another, they’re going to end up handwaving the entire thing about Akane striving to achieve rakugo success so that she can confront Issho and get justice for her father, so that it can instead settle down into an endless series of challenge arcs, with Akane actually becoming a top ranked rakugoka at about the same time that Luffy actually becomes the Pirate King.

Ah well…