Crank

I wonder if this is another of her lies, or this time this actually means something. And by her does she mean Lufas or the Goddess 🤔

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They really managed to make me feel confused about Dina. I totally don’t understand what game is she playing. And I thought I figured her out at the end of S1…

She was already on the island when he met her, though 🤔

This episode was a bit better than the previous one, but I still have no idea what kind of story the author is trying to tell here. I’m afraid that the creators might be unnecessarily dragging out scenes of psychological abuse inflicted upon the characters to mask shortcomings in the plot. After all, aside from the dramatic opening, not much has really happened so far. And I’m not seeing enough quality to believe that this might turn into a compelling story. So I think I’m out. I might come back if it turns around later, but I don’t have high hopes.

TBH the only thing that keeps me watching this is that Grid acts like an actual gamer in this scenario. This at least makes it somewhat funny. Take that out and it’s your typical gameworld slop

I’ll never get tired of Terui abusing Otori. And it seems Otori is kinda into it too 🤔

Just let it die already at this point

Unfortunately, this episode looks visibly worse. There’s some wonky movement, the faces of daemonkeys look all the same and practically don’t move. That said, I still enjoy the way the story unfolds. Pacing is good, they don’t rush things, and I like that we’re getting to know Romelia through the eyes of people around her, instead of listening to her inner monologue. That makes it much more interesting. Also, the soldier unit has some nice interactions going. Hopefully there will be some good chemistry between these characters.

This was a really good episode. Lufas going a little bit wild was dope. I also like how Heavenly Stars are noticing something is off, and Dina is not to be trusted. With how much they’re hinting at Dina being connected to the goddess, I’m starting to think again that this might be a red herring. Anyway, the story is getting interesting again, and I’m glad I didn’t drop it after season 1, which had a disappointing second part that was ruined by exposition, because this is fun.

Maomao singing the same lullaby that her Mother sang to Lakan was a nice little detail

Given how she treats him compared to the other men in her life, and how she cares for him when he is unwell, it is hard to say she dislikes him. Even if she does not view their relationship as romantic, she clearly cares about him to some extent and is somewhat aware of his feelings. Of course, the creators deliberately withhold her inner thoughts when she interacts with Jinshi. This ambiguity is intentional, and it makes the show more interesting.

At the same time, Maomao’s upbringing makes it difficult for her to form such connections with others. Even if she harbors romantic feelings for Jinshi, she refuses to give in to them, knowing that entering a relationship with a member of the royal family spells nothing but trouble. She saw it first-hand in the royal court, and in Loulan’s homeland. This is an attitude she has displayed from the very beginning. It’s her self-preservation instinct at play.

It’s gonna be weird if this becomes a typical romance. But when I don’t think about what it might turn into, this premiere wasn’t bad, and I actually like it. I expected something way more edgy and cringe, but it didn’t push that angle hard enough for me to make me uncomfortable. Hopefully it stays weird but balanced. Maybe I’m a little biased because I’m a sucker for this kind of character designs? Who knows

For some reason this was less enjoyable that the first episode. If the authors’ intention was to make us feel anxious throughout the whole episode, they succeeded. While I understand this might be the point, it made me uncomfortable, and if the next episode doesn’t capitalize on that feeling, watching this might start feeling like a chore. I hope that behind all this there’s more than just hey look, what a wonderful disaster.

I also feel bad for the father. First, gambling took his wife, now the same is happening to his daughter, and he might be in for a hard lesson why you don’t keep your money in a sock.

This was very cute and cozy. Despite a lot of exposition, and MC yapping a ton, it managed to land some good jokes. The visuals look good as well. I’m looking forward the next episode!

@rikka@ani.social
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When it comes to the visuals, yeah. But when it comes to writing it can be hit or miss. One of their last shows was Towa no Yuugure and it was a trainwreck. Hopefully this one will be different

This surprised me with its high production quality, especially considering it has the kind of trashy title typical of the worst isekai shows. I’m referring not just to the animation, but also to the big-name voice actors in the cast. On top of that, it’s actually quite funny. Although the protagonist comes across as a happy-go-lucky type who is unbearably loud, his interactions with the other characters turn that trait into genuinely amusing moments. I admit I only started watching it because it’s produced by studio P.A. Works, but it might just turn out to be the dark horse of the season.

Evan Call doing the music for this caught my attention

Last week, I watched Mononoke Movie III: The Curse of the Serpent. It is another part of the series that maintains the high standard of its predecessors. Although the pacing is rather fast and I felt a bit lost at the start, I managed to piece everything together as the story unfolded, so it didn’t spoil the viewing experience. In this regard, the first installment was actually the most confusing for me, whereas the second and third handle things much better. Even though the film follows a familiar structure – making the outcome fairly predictable – it successfully creates a suspenseful atmosphere. Visually, things remain unchanged: it looks fantastic. The highly original art style is one of the series’ standout features, and it looks great here too. Unfortunately, the version released on Netflix suffers from a low bitrate during action-heavy sequences, resulting in noticeable visual artifacts. If you want to watch the film for its visuals, you might be better off waiting for the Blu-ray release, which is expected in about two or three weeks. Overall, the movie was really good – 9/10.

Lmao, that’s insane. I mean, you could argue that in case of Blue Lock posting that GIF was like posting half of the frames used in the episode, but it’s still crazy

Well, it’s no surprise that they take down servers where people share torrents, etc. But pirated GIFs? Are you sure they’re not exaggerating here just to be safe? Anyway, ani.social’s chatroom is on Matrix, so I don’t think we need to worry (not that I encourage using it for sharing pirated content - that’s probably a bad idea)

BTW, it’s #space:ani.social if anyone’s curious

This was a 5 minutes episode. Scorpius being crazy yandere is just what our gang needed. She brings the energy I like. It’s really nice that the hero seems to be level-headed, and acts logical. Also, Lufas build is so broken – she literally leveled everyone up in the past, and can do it again

It’s pretty funny, and looks a bit deranged too. Might be a good candidate to fill a void Yani Neko left

This was a nice premiere. So far it feels like a prologue to the rest of the story, but that’s okay. The hero’s party was a little over the top, but the rest of the episode was surprisingly subdued, which I like. Romelia is actually quite likeable, despite being very stoic and expressionless. The production quality is pretty good too, especially the audio design. I hope it’s not one of these cases where they spend the entire budget on the first episode

I was hoping it’s going to be funny. So far it wasn’t. Gives much more CGDCT (killing zombie) instead of comedic. Also, it’s only been 13 years, and they already don’t know what a building is? Is their village under a rock or something?

I haven’t played the game, so I don’t know how well it adapts the source material, and I’m writing this as an anime-only. In my opinion, this was an abysmal premiere. The direction was very bland – they tried to insert some action scenes that suffer from “GoHands syndrome of flying camera” (even though this is not being handled by GoHands), but that couldn’t distract me from the bad writing. Yeah, because the writing here is not good either. It succeeds at conveying what the plot is about, but that’s the only positive thing I can say about it. Everything falls into place too conveniently; it shows us going from plot point A to plot point B, but it does nothing exciting with that. On top of that, the dialogues are bad too. We get to know almost every character by watching them introduce themselves – “Hello, my name is… blah blah… I do this and that, remember me viewer for future reference, mkay?” It’s paradocumentary level of writing; fanfic quality. As for the positives… I guess the animation wasn’t bad, but it’s nothing to be excited about either. I’ll watch one more episode, just to be sure, but as of now I think I’m gonna drop this.

I’m not sure if we needed to go back to Tani’s perspective. I thought we were past that, but oh well… Overall, it feels like an episode just to seal the deal. Nothing new, nothing exactly funny, just some reassurance that the folks didn’t drift away after the graduation, and that’s all. That said, I love this season just as much as the first one, and I can’t really complain about where it ended with the relationships and all. 9/10 from me

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I went into this blind, and thought it was going to be a comedy. I couldn’t be more wrong. Pretty dark first episode, but apart from questionable logic of Kurumi following her mother’s steps, this was a pretty solid start. We had a catgirl teaching us that smoking is bad in the last season, now Forex Madoka will teach us that gambling is bad too.

Just because it’s circulating social media, it doesn’t mean it’s not a spoiler. If you’re reposting reddit content without even looking at Reddit, it would make sense to build respecting spoilers and NSFW markers into the bot. Dunno how your bot operates, but Reddit does provide that information through its API. Since Lemmy does not support spoiler tags, it would be preferable to have a separate preview image link, because marking post as NSFW is not foolproof, as users can disable blur for NSFW posts in the account settings, and NSFW doesn’t indicate that the content is a spoiler. It rather suggests that it’s some +18 content.

That’s pretty spoilery visual. It would make sense to tag it and even mark it as NSFW for the blur

To elaborate a bit, this used to be a show about Subaru fighting himself, his insecurities, and imperfections. That was accompanied by some nice psychological horror which led to Subaru changing in significant ways. But ever since S2 ended, it feels like Subaru’s character development stalled, and now he’s this new man who faces external challenges and finds clever ways to overcome them with the power of RBD. It became repetitive.

Also I hate the archbishop they’re fighting in this season. Every time I see them on screen I roll my eyes, because not a single word that falls out of their mouth makes sense. (I’m exaggerating, but I really hate them)

And the questions keep pilling up. We’re getting very few answers but more and more questions, and I’m tired with this.

I know it makes sense how others see him, given that they only see the golden path that makes Subaru look like superhuman, but all that fawning over him from other characters makes for a poor relationship on screen. There’s also no chemistry between him and Emilia, and IMO never was. And generally I never watched this for the characters other than Subaru. They all didn’t appear convincing and authentic to me, but I watched it for the mystery. Now I stopped caring about the mystery too.

The Ghost in the Shell - 9/10 - My favorite take on GitS so far (that said, I haven’t seen SAC yet). I liked pretty much everything about it. My only complaint is the breakneck pacing, but it only bothered me in dialogue-heavy scenes
Mushoku Tensei S3 - 9/10 - an outstanding season. It looks like the production woes are gone (remember cafeteria scenes in S2 where no one in the background moves? Forget it. Nothing like that happens this time). It started on a high note and ended on even higher one. None other series excited me as much as this one in this season. Can’t wait so see S3P2
Goodbye, Lara - 9/10 - Wonderful story that surprised be both with the quality of writing and great production values. The ending was pretty abrupt, but I don’t think it makes it bad. The series would have benefited from another 10 minutes of runtime, though.
You and I Are Polar Opposites S2 - 9/10 - hands down the best romcom of the year. I don’t even know which season I like more, this or the first one
Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia - 8/10 - I had high expectations because of Naoko Yamada’s involvement, and while it wasn’t as good as I expected it to be (I didn’t like the time jumps), it was still a very interesting tale, with an original art style, that leaves you wanting more.
Draw This, Then Die! - 8/10 - probably my biggest surprise of the season. I expected some SoL CGDCT, but it turned out to be a very touching story of a former mangaka in disguise
Chainsmoker Cat - 8/10 - deranged story, foul comedy, mixed with a sad reflection on addiction. I absolutely love it. It had some ups and downs, but a lot of it was absolutely hilarious. Best anti-smoking ad I’ve seen in a while.
Dara-san of the Reiwa Era - 8/10 - another surprisingly good story. This one was solid throughout the whole runtime, mixing backstory of a yokai with modern day comedic shenanigans. Also great for big titty connoisseurs 😏
Though I Am an Inept Villainess - 7/10 - they said it’s like The Apothecary Diaries, but the only similarities I noticed are the character designs and that it’s a court drama. It’s less grounded and more magical, but that said, it’s also quite fun, even though the ending wasn’t very satisfying
Daemons of the Shadow Realm - 7/10 - it had a great start, well written characters, and an interesting premise, but at the end of the second cour it lost the initial momentum and it felt like the author didn’t know how to transition from one arc to another. Also it feels like we didn’t achieve any significant milestone, even after 24 episodes, which is quite disappointing, and there were a lot of unnecessary cliffhangers. You could shift the whole story 3 minutes forward, and none of them would be necessary.
Saga of Tanya the Evil S2 - 7/10 - more political than S1, apart from episode 1 3DCG did not improve, the last battle felt like it was missing some parts, and for me it feels like the show lost some charm. But it was still quite entertaining, despite all that
SHIBOYUGI: CLOUDY BEACH - 7/10 - more Shiboyugi. IMO maintains the level known from the series
The World Is Dancing - 6/10 - the first two or three episodes were amazing, with hypnotizing performances and incredible mood, but after that it starts meandering and never goes back to that magical atmosphere from the first part. Production quality is really good tho.
Grow Up Show - 6/10 - fun anime original. Some great reaction faces from Mizuka
Tensura S4 - 6/10 - the first cour could have been an e-mail. The second baited us with some actual stakes but ended with the usual nonsense. This show hasn’t been the same ever since Rimuru became so powerful that he can solve any issue.
RE:ZERO S4 - 5/10 - I’d have to write entire essay to justify this score, but the gist is that I can’t force myself to grow into liking these characters, and from psychological horror it turned into something that resembles your typical isekais too much. This season had some strong episodes that reminded me of S1 and S2, but there were just few and far between
I Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day - 5/10 - the story has an interesting premise, but it feels like the studio couldn’t bear the weight of the story, and the execution left me unimpressed
Sparks of Tomorrow - 4/10 - beautiful visuals, music, designs, absolute dogshit story. One of the worst shows by KyoAni I’ve seen. It made me laugh a few times, tho, I admit that
KAIJU GIRL CARAMELISE - 5/10 (dropped) - not enough com in this romcom for my liking
Clevatess S2 - 5/10 (dropped) - the exposition dumps killed it for me
Love Unseen Beneath the Clear Night Sky - 4/10 (dropped) - I didn’t even get to the interesting bits, I just couldn’t stand the never ending monologues in MCs head about every little action he had to perform
Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You - 4/10 (dropped) - just meh, and I couldn’t stand that MC is over 40 but acts like a teenager meeting a woman for the first time
Victoria of Many Faces - 4/10 (dropped) - subpar direction with meh story
The Exiled Heavy Knight Knows How to Game the System 3/10 - (dropped) - I was just morbidly curious what GoHands show looks like. It made me nauseous
Mebius Dust - 3/10 (dropped) - absolute slop