ReluctantlyZen

For some reason I read “storytelling advantage” as “brain damage”

that the marriage bomb was meant as a “soft reset” to step over the whole mess with misunderstandings and lack of communications.

Absolutely

Maybe author will go back to wrap it up eventually but I’m won’t be holding my breath on that.

I hope not tbh, that entire thing was a mess and I wasn’t very invested in it because of that.

I do hope the mangaka can get things going again though, not as convoluted this time.

Ending the entire thing would be better though, but I get that the mangaka might not want that now that’s probably a pretty stable source of income. That’s the both the up- and downside of serialization I suppose.

I’ve started reading Hitoner. It’s a really fun manga about a human being an alien on a planet where pretty much every animal has gone through a similar evolution as humans have

I’m sad Taizuma never became a thing, but sometimes it just works out like that. Glad to see they’re still close though. It can still happen…

On another note, did the manga get axed or something? The latter half of the anime had been feeling like it was rushing and as far as I understand, it didn’t deviate much from the manga. I wouldn’t mind having more… Many romance anime/manga get drawn out, so I’m happy that’s not the case here, but the pace compared to S1 was insanely fast.

It’s been a neat season. I’ve watched/still watching:

• Clevatess S2: a bit of a downgrade unfortunately. It was flashback and exposition galore which made the pace extremely slow. It was still overall enjoyable. 1 more ep to go though.
• You and I Are Polar Opposites S2: still adorable, but it felt like it was rushing and skipping so much, especially in the 2nd half. Also still 1 ep to go.
• Though I Am An Inept Villainess: really fun. Reirin’s positive attitude is infectious.
• Draw This Then Die: a good, heartfelt anime about creating things and the driving force behind it.
• Jaadugar: a great historical anime in a setting and with cultures you rarely see in anime (or western media for that matter). The artstyle was also very unique and very refreshing. I hope for a 2nd season, because there’s still so much more to see. I did struggle a bit with how nonchalant it was about slavery, at times even almost positive. I guess, in that time period it was normal, but still.
• Kaiju Girl Caramelise: I just binged this one yesterday. It was good, but ending it there was mean. So much that’s left unsaid.

Netflix is notoriously bad at this. CR gets a bad rep, but compared to Netflix they’re a godsend.

CR’s new player can actually do this, but Chainsmoker Cat is not done by CR. This is on Netflix

Unexpected progress!

I’m not a fan of proprietary apps and DRM

That’s fair. I use Kobo mainly because they’re easy to remove the DRM from.

I simply prefer reading physical

Mostly same, but space is becoming a thing for me. Digital is easier for travel too.

Nah they won’t stop

My question was meant to be rhetorical

Whoops haha.

I’m curious how well physical releases work for manhwa.

It works pretty well. Obviously, it’s not a scroll, so they restructure how and where panels are placed. Everything’s still there, but it’s much more like a manga (or more like a comic, since the read order is how western comics are read) and tbh, I really prefer that over the vertical format. The vertical format makes it too easy to quickly scroll through.

I’d like to check that out some day.

If you’d like a cheaper way to check it out, you could buy the e-book versions on Kobo or something. They’re the same as the phyiscal, except, well, digital. If you need a rec, check out Villains Are Destined To Die.

They are more expensive than manga, but that’s because they are fully coloured

So now there’s no legal way to read this stuff anymore?

You compete with a sea of trash machine translations, how can you lose to that?

Point systems suck. They obscure how much you’re actually spending, to make you not notice the next reason: Being pretty damn expensive. 1 chapter. typically costs 450 ink (or 405 ink if you enable 1-tap spending, but same difference tbh given how you purchase ink). Using the minimum purchase amount of 1600 ink for 2,19 euro, that translates to rougly 63 eurocents.

By itself that doesn’t sound too expensive. But it piles up really quick. Reading only 9 chapters of something already costs more than the MangaPlus Deluxe subscription of 5,49 euro. Say you only follow 3 series that you pay for. Most release weekly. So that’s about 12 chapters a month. And you don’t even own it despite “buying” it (of course, they’ll say you’re buying ink, not manhwa).

So 12 chapters is 5400 or 4860 ink. Let’s use the latter. For that, you’ll have to buy the 5,49 euro tier. That nets you 5000 ink. You can only read those 12 chapters. So if you want to read anything else, you’ll have to spend 10,99 euro for the next tier.

Let’s say you find a new series you want to catch up with, say Villains Are Destined to die. This has 226 chapters so far. 1st 3 are free, the rest are pay or wait until free (available for 3 days). If you don’t want to wait, you can shell out 90.315 ink, which you have to get the 109,99 euro tier for. And again, all you own is the ink, not the chapters.

Now, that’s still not too expensive compared to the physical volumes (though more expensive than the e-books), but again, you own nothing, they’re obscuring how much you spend and it is much more expensive than something like MangaPlus.

Anyway, that was very long 😅

Netflix makes Crunchyroll look like a good platform by comparison

Agreed. Anytime I open Netflix I want to close it again. The UX is soooooo annoying

Gonna keep it to 1 per composer, otherwise this list would be full of Kajiura Yuki and Kensuke Ushio.

• Garden of Sinners: Kajiura Yuki’s magnum opus in my opinion. Great themes, awesome atmospherics. It wouldn’t be Garden of Sinners without her music.
• Attack on Titan s1-3 : Sawano’s magnum opus imo. The definition of hype soundtracks for me. Never fails to get me fired up during the show. It’s a shame that he was replaced for the Final Seasons.
• Liz and the Blue Bird: I dearly love this style of Kensuke Ushio combined with the amazing orchestral piece that the band plays. Kensuke brings such a fragile sound that works really well with the themes of the anime and then the orchestral piece ties the entire thing together. I can’t help but cry during the oboe solo.
• NieR Automata ver 1.1a: cheating a bit because I love the game’s soundtrack so much and they pretty much straight up used it here.
• Ghost in the Shell (1995): I don’t think it needs much explanation.
• Violet Evergarden: Evan Call’s use of wind instruments is incredible in this soundtrack. It works so well.

Honorable mentions:

• Monogatari series: soooo many amazing themes
• Chainsaw man Reze Arc soundtrack: Kensuke Ushio again. Mostly because of the pool scene. The rest is really good too though
• A Silent Voice: another Kensuke Ushio one. That one scene… Fuck dude
• Apothecary Diaries
• Terror in Resonance:
• Madoka Magica: Kajiura Yuki
• Fate series (ufotable run): Heaven’s Feel in particular. Incredible work by Kajiura Yuki again. My main issue with Zero and UBW soundtracks is that the theming isn’t that strong.
• Fate/Stay Night (Deen version): for all its faults, the soundtrack is actually quite good and is kinda why F/Z and F/UBW have gone down in my ranking for soundtracks due to the themes.
• Frieren: Another good Evan Call one, but Violet edges this one out because it has stronger themes imo.
• Land of the Lustrous: great arrangements. Using different arrangements for different groups isn’t necessarily new, but it’s executed brilliantly here.
• Clannad: the dango theme never fails to make me cry
• Cowboy Bepop
• Your Name
• Yuru Camp: I love the simple and relaxing guitar soundtrack

I do get the impression that GitS and it’s original source material is more interested in showing us cool set pieces and presenting philosophical arguments

Having only watched the 1st movie, I get that.

However, I’d say Akira only has the setpieces.

Experiencing it in the late 80’s/early 90’s might have left a very different impression.

I mean, a lot of the animation is still impressive today. And I guess it’s probably been a big influence for the cyberpunk aesthetic in anime and manga (if we ignore Bladerunner). But in terms of story-telling? I’m not sure what unique thing it was doing at the time. I see many reviews still praising its story and its message.

I guess the mangaka hit the reset switch lol

I watched the Akira 4K remaster in the theater yesterday. Also the 1st time I ever saw Akira (I know…).

And tbh, I don’t get why it’s so highly regarded. Like, the animation was sick (especially for the time), but the rest felt so underdeveloped. It also didn’t help that I couldn’t stand Kaneda and Tetsuo.

That’s hilarious and braindead on the part of Viz and Remove Your Media

I think we can pretty safely say that the goddess is not a good one tbh.

I wonder how the goddess supposedly chooses the cupids or why they don’t interfere when cupids do fucked up things. Sae is clearly a massive fucking asshole and did indeed straight up murder Ena.

Tbh, at least in the western side of the anime fandom the words shounen, shoujo, seinen and josei function as pretty decent genre descriptors rather than demographics.

When we think shounen, we typically think action-focused anime with lots of screaming and younger protags (your Narutos, DBZs, MHAs etc). When we think shoujo, we think romance in high school settings. For seinen and josei pretty much the same, but with aged up characters and a bit more mature in general.

I think it’s fine for those words to mean something else here. After all, we don’t have the reference of the magazines where this is all based on

Shouldn’t you be the first one to step up and draw the bow?!

Right? Or let someone else do it.

now that I think about it, the maidens / princesses and the prince are half-siblings, aren’t they? Since they should all share a common father: the emperor

I don’t think so. The maidens are from the same clans as the consorts, but I don’t think they’re the consorts or the emperor’s children. Reirin is the empress’ niece, Seika is the Kin consort’s niece and Shu Keigetsu is not Gabi’s child for example

Premise reminds me of Musou Telepathy a bit

Also I want to apologize for probably coming across too brusquely before. I jumped to respond and then rushed to actually complete the response before I had to go to work. My bad.

No worries, I thought your response was fine!

how about Demon Slayer’s Mugen Train movie being the highest grossing movie of 2020 worldwide?

That’s fair and I didn’t know that, but like 70% of that came from Japan as far as I can tell. Don’t get me wrong though, 30% of 512 million is still huge, especially in COVID times.

Big companies like Sony and Disney have anime as part of their regular catalogue. It’s not some niche little thing that only scrappy companies like Tokyopop will touch anymore.

but to discount anime as a whole being some niche form of media only known to those in the hobby is, IMO, misguided at best.

Oh for sure. I wasn’t trying to say it’s this niche little thing. It’s definitely grown in popularity even in the last 10 years. It’s just that for being mainstream, I see it barely mentioned. But maybe it’s a mix of my own environment + having too narrow a view of what mainstream means.

I guess I thought of it as people needing to actively be anime fans specifically, rather than just occassionally watching some anime and having fun with it. I suppose it’s similar to movies in that sense, where there’s quite a difference between a cinephile and someone who likes to put on Netflix to unwind.

anime had been mainstream for years at that point (I’d argue close to two decades).

Is that a US and/or NA thing? What constitutes as mainstream? I hear all the time how anime is mainstream now, but I just don’t see it. Are there a lot of fans? Sure, especially in certain online spheres, but irl I rarely see it mentioned in any way. Most don’t even know what it is.

When I hear “mainstream” I think blockbuster cinema and pop music; most people like it. It gets widely talked about in everyday conversations and media. I just don’t see how that applies to anime.

Sorry yeah, I meant that she hasn’t limped for the entire show, only this episode

I don’t think we’ve seen her walk. But also, Shu hasn’t limped the entire show, has she?