nyan

Well, there was a theory going around at the time the original TV series ended that it was his chilldhood trauma that was being reflected and dealt with (or something like that—this was a long time ago and I wasn’t all that interested back then.)

In an anime? I won’t say it never happens, but it’s pretty rare even for minor side characters.

Is this the first time they’ve so extensively reused footage from the same episode, or was I just not paying attention?

I’d say there’s a fair chance. It’s the animated version of Leiji Matsumoto’s style, and every adaptation of his work that I’ve ever seen has used it.

Many, many years ago, when I was first getting into anime, the fourth Vampire Princess Miyu OAV managed to give me the cold creeping weirds while I was watching it at around 2AM. I don’t think any other anime has managed that since.

The portrayal of medieval Islam seemed pretty even-handed to me: the main character is as devout as her circumstances allow, but not fanatical, and at the same time some side characters complain about the too-rigid religious thinking of others. Mostly the characters take it for granted, as the characters in Orb take Christianity for granted. At that time, the Islamic world really was the center of science and learning in the West, and they seem to have handled that bit decently. I expect it isn’t perfect, and I’m not knowledgeable enough to point out the issues, but it looks to me like they at least tried to be respectful.

About Mongolian history, I know even less than I know about medieval Islam . . . but I expect that 99.999% of the people watching the anime don’t know anything about it either. According to Wikipedia, Mongolia has a total population less than that of Los Angeles, and I don’t think they have a very large diaspora abroad, either. Any controversy regarding the portrayal of medieval Mongolia here is probably being manufactured by people with no personal stakes or relevant knowledge, if said controversy exists at all. (I will withdraw this if anyone can point out a complaint or comment by an actual Mongolian.)

I’m happy to see people acknowledging it instead of finding him off-putting enough to consider dropping the show.

He would have been if they hadn’t been so quick about filling in his motivations, I think. Now we can at least feel a bit of sympathy for him while he’s chewing on the scenery.

Hmm. If they’re going to keep adapting shoujo of that era, I’d like to see someone do Seimaden. Or maybe take a second crack at Basara (there was a single-cours anime covering the first six tankoubon made in the 1990s, but I’d like to see the other ~20). Or just about any of Kaori Yuki’s extensive body of work.

Kingdoms of Ruin is so dark that it comes close to flipping over into parody (I mean, even before you hit the sex-bot episode). Nastiest thing I’ve seen since Magical Girl Raising Project. Don’t get attached to any of the side characters, because their survival rate is extremely low. Also, if I recall correctly, the female lead is pretty much a cardboard cutout of a saint. And the anime ends without completing the story, and I doubt that there’s going to be another season.

So I’d maybe put that one down at the end of your priority list. If you want something darkish and violent, maybe seek out Dorehedoro instead (second season just ended, third will probably be along in a year or two).

Counterfeit character goods? They might manage to get rid of that issue, since those can’t be created without an entire factory supply chain.

Online piracy? Get real. At most, they might be able to trace the ad payouts for sites whose owners are trying to make a quick buck. Stuff that’s being uploaded by actual fans without any hope of payback? That isn’t going away any time soon.

the worst part? the first 5 minutes of every episode is recap and intro. the last 5 minutes is credits and teaser. the middle has a 1-3 minute commercial break recap. so that leaves roughly 15 minutes of mediocre content.

This is how you extend what I suspect is only 18-20 episodes worth of story to fill 26. 🙄

It’s kind of hard to tell what the guild’s priorities in this are. I mean, most of the newbs taking the exam weren’t even ready for the expected low-level-zombie-killing fest. Maybe the guild feels the most efficient way to get rid of overconfident idiots is getting them killed (with appropriate “indemnify and hold harmless” clauses on the exam sign-up sheet). While that wouldn’t be very nice of them, it isn’t unusual for life in those types of fantasy worlds to be nasty, brutish, and short.

Any readers of the source material have any insight?

I’m pretty sure they’ve gotten worse over time. Or at least, I don’t remember K and Coppelion as being quite this bad (and I did make it to the end of both). Anyway, a fair chunk of their output has been for K, Mardock Scramble, or Seitokai Yakuindomo, so if you avoided those three, it isn’t too surprising you’ve never come across them before.

Okay, so . . . do the aliens want Japanese souvenir snacks that badly?

I’d say Gurren Lagann. I mean, it doesn’t evoke the same amount of raw emotion as Grave of the Fireflies (because I don’t think anything does), but . . . well. You’ve just gotten past the final fight, and everyone’s celebrating, and . . . then that wedding, and the closing part of the framing scene. It’s like a punch in the gut, and it absolutely makes sense in the context of the story. That was not easy to pull off.

I was right about this season being oversubscribed for me, although it’s mostly returning older series or moderately amusing trash. In addition to dropping Oni no Hanayome with violent dislike because it was sexist to the point of icky, I’ve dropped about a half-dozen others for boneheaded protagonists, being too comedic for my taste, or just not grabbing me.

If I drop another, it’ll probably be either Heavy Knight (due to motion-sickness and what felt like a third of the second episode being repeated footage from the first), or Red River (although given the age of the source material, I’m willing to give the main character another ep or two to find her brain and backbone and remove them from storage—being isekai’d is a lot more startling when it isn’t in every other manga/anime/light novel you come across).

I’m not sure which is the best of the season for me so far, because I’m torn between Jaadugar and World Is Dancing. They’re both excellent in their own ways. Sparks of Tomorrow is a distant third (after one episode).

Worst piece of trash that I’m still watching: probably Level 999 Villager. It’s actually worse than an isekai, because the world-building makes zero sense.

Not if you’re prone to motion sickness. 😵‍💫

A quick skim indicates that they’re talking about heavily-cut nonstandard localizations and some kids’ series that weren’t any good the first time around. None of these are classic or groundbreaking (there was kids’ anime on North American network TV before them), they’re just old.

This is something of a mixed bag so far.

They spend more than 75% of the first episode setting up the main character’s generic Japanese household and school, something which could (and should) have been done in less than half that time, since it seems like a lot of it isn’t going to be relevant.

Then right at the end, things start to get more interesting and it looks like we might end up with a human-resistance-fighting-aliens story, which was not quite what I expected from the teaser blurb, but could be entertaining. Or not. With the protagonists being so young, it’s hard to tell what age group they’re trying to pitch this to, and that may end up affecting how good this ends up being more than anything internal to the story.

None of the characters grabbed me, so given how oversubscribed this season is for me already, this is probably a drop.

Only about a dozen more premieres to cover before I’m caught up, tra-la-la . . .

See you guys in like 4 years!

Nah, the entire series is only around 500 hours of footage. Plus maybe another 50-60 for the movies and various spin-offs.

Sexist garbage. Worst thing I’ve seen so far this season. Apparently in this show’s universe, a woman has value only if she’s a man’s demon’s appendage. Hard drop.

It used to be more common to keep the source style. My guess is that it’s 25% what’s easiest to draw and 75% branding (that is, whether non-Japanese exec-suite types can tell that it’s anime).

According to livechart.me, this is supposed to start airing in October. Still being made by Studio Pierrot. Other sites might have more information.

Well, yeah, it’s supposed to run through to December. Two consecutive cours.

An interesting study in contrasts: the realistic aftermath of civil war, combined with some almost Warner Bros.-esque slapstick and a sketchily-drawn dance sequence meant (I assume) to emphasise the dancer’s movement over their appearance. Worth following just to see if they can continue pulling this off.

Okay, so. The artwork and animation aren’t tremendous—in fact, I’d go so far as to describe them as “simple” and “old-fashioned”. They could have aired this in the late 1990s and it would have fit right in. The visuals’ redeeming quality is the amount of effort they put into the expressions on the faces of the various non-human characters.

The story so far . . . is more fairytale-like than I was expecting, and also oddly touching. I’ll be continuing with this one for another couple of episodes, I think. At least it isn’t another isekai.

I essentially just marathoned the first season of Gaikotsu Kishi-sama, AKA Skeleton Knight in Another World, over the course of a week or so, to see if it was worth watching the second season (not really; it’s generic reincarnated-as-overpowered-game-character isekai except when they’re making sure we know how eeeeeeevil the bad guys are 'cause they rape, torture, and enslave underaged elven girls, which would explain why I didn’t remember it). I’ll probably do Youjo Senki next for the same reason, but hopefully a better result.

Prior to that, I watched Ayatsuri Sakon, which I’d only seen parts of before, while I was down with bronchitis in March. The fact that I liked both the OP and ED on that one made me feel kind of old, because that hardly ever happens with more recent shows.

And I think it was Suisei no Gargantia that I marathoned this past Christmas.

Ryuumon may value his country’s survival and stability over taking down the Tairas. He strikes me as the type who only dabbles in politics because he’s been promoted to the level where he’s forced to, and if he’s studied history at all, he’d know that civil war is a game where everyone loses, especially when you’ve got aggressive enemies just outside your borders.

Oddly enough they didn’t cover what happened to the Taira snot nosed brat.

My bet is that if they make another cours, he’s going to turn up again, but he was probably just recuperating during the timeframe of the epilogue (interlogue?) Hopefully he’ll have developed a habit of carrying a handkerchief if we do see him again.