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Comments
It had a really strong opening quarter, then a kind of good quarter, then a quarter where everything was recaps and very out there backstory, then a frankly quite unsalvageable final quarter.
Also it had this terrible habit of revealing all of the terrible things a character had done about ten minutes before killing them, which made it extremely easy to tell what was going to happen.
Reminds me of the Mahoiku anime putting someone's flashbacks right before they die.
In M3, it was done in service of making sure we could never directly blame Tsugumi for a named characters death. It was almost as if it was afraid of her actually directly causing permanent harm, which is weird because Akashi was allowed to spend the better part of the entire series thinking he'd doomed Emiru to a life of being a Mecha Brain for a very long while.
Then again, even Akashi is absolved of that at the very end of the series when they can finally reverse Emiru's Necrometitis. Which leads me to another thing; every named character who was ever killed by an Admonition was irrevocably terrible, and all of the good characters aside from a guy who was presumed dead at the very start of the series but wasn't end up alive at the end. This paired with Mayoiga makes me think Okada is a bit scared of killing off characters, even when it makes sense.
Anyways, look forward to my ridiculously detailed M3 notes thread, because I have a looooot of notes.
That honestly annoys me about the anime since it makes those flashbacks look like part of everyone's roles in Snow White's story rather than their own stories.
After all, LN anime are made to advertise the rest of the series and it's world, so the misconception is easily cleared if the viewer is interested enough.
also
https://www.deviantart.com/garivel/art/Audacious-527811126
also
https://www.deviantart.com/g-seed2010/art/4Kids-Date-A-Live-Edit-1-378337147
This is Miyabi Mamoru (雅マモル), Miyano Mamoru's personal stalker who has appeared more than once, apparently.
This is his video message from his 6th 31st birthday (It's Miyabi's 31st 16th birthday).
I have no idea what this actually is but it's great.
Here he is with actual R&B musician Miura Daichi (third from left in the bottom row):
He's also the akogare of cheerleaders everywhere:
oh there we go
in other news, I just put mayonnaise on rice
So next year we'll be treated to the first ever adaptation of a Madoka Magica side story. Unfortunately, it's an adaptation of the Magia Record mobage and not anything to actually look forward to.
someone made a crappy "poll" asking what races watched the most anime, and gave a really dumb list of choices consisting of "black", "white", "yellow", "brown", and "albino". so therefore, it invited mockery.
I can't believe this is happening already. Then again the Kancolle anime was less than two years after its game launched,
what I expected: boobs, boobs, boobs, swords, sorcery
what I got: An Short Military and Political History of the Life and Times of Count Tigrevurmud Vorn of Alsace; and a side order of boobs
summoning @Bluesy_Cowgirl because relevant to said user's interests
In the chapters that I read (61 and 62) Yugi receives an 8mm tape from Maximillion J. Pegasus, the creator of Duel Monsters and the owner of the company that distributes it. In the tape, Maxi challenges Yugi to duel the tape of him. As they duel, Yugi is surprised as Maxi reads his every move and he assumes that he's using some sort of as of yet unknown magic.
But really Maxi has just put subliminal messages in his tape that are manipulating his every move, which is really really cool but also really really insane. I wonder why I've never heard of this, because it was probably also in the anime.
I like the manga version of Yu-Gi-Oh! better because the duels don't seem like they'll last too long.
I also read more Im (Great Priest Imhotep). The first volume really caught me with it's daily adventures featuring Im and Hinome saving their local community from random Magai, but from the second volume on they introduce the Egyptian Priests organization that Im works for along with his dark backstory and best friend slash main villain.
It quickly went from "relaxing" to "very, very shounen" including Hinome being reduced to what was essentially a supporting character and the introduction of a bunch of shounen archetypes.
Also, the head priest guy who is obsessed with his own beauty is straight, which bothers me even though it would probably bother me a lot more if he were just a stereotypical gay character.
I just learned it ends with it's eleventh volume, which is reassuring because I'll probably be able to get to the end soon enough without having spent too much on manga I can only read on a single digital platform.
I've been reading a lot of manga lately, a lot of it thanks to digital manga, but I haven't gotten to the one series I've wanted to continue for a while; Makai Ouji -devils and realist-. Unfortunately, Yu-Gi-Oh! isn't available from either of the sources I use for digital manga (CDJapan and BOOK☆WALKER).
Well, this isn't good. It's deserved, but still not good.
Aikatsu Friends!: MEZASE! Tomodachi hyakumanin!
Oh my gosh, Aikatsu Friends!, there are no words for you. There was a series of missteps during the first ever competition of the series where the lessons weren't exactly good for anybody, but the characters never stopped being compelling.
As they truly settle into their roles now and everybody gets in a "groove", I can't help but be excited to see where these characters go.
High Score Girl: I have so much love for this series. So much. I can't even explain it.
This was a show that gave us a compelling, likeable imperfect main character whose passion for video games was unparalleled. Where you learned about video games and could find yourself laughing in agreement or recognition of some gaming concept (the sequence about Guile was particularly hilarious).
But it was also a show where the main character could leave the trappings of their premise and just truly be in the world around them, which I'd never expected. Taking the characters relationships out into nature was always a pleasant jaunt, and I always looked forward to it.
Not only was it a really heartwarming series, the comedy was always on point, and that's always hard to pull off. Each character, minor or major, played well against each other and that made them all memorable.
I'll really miss it (until 2019, at least).
Free! -Dive to the Future-: The third season of the Free! franchise was plagued with issues familiar to anybody who watches otome game anime, but are much less common in sports anime. Even so, I couldn't help but love it.
The series was divided in two arcs, and I enjoyed both independently of each other because each worked to the other's detriment. The characters who were allowed to grow in the first half were immediately dropped in favor of continuing the true narrative of the series, which is quite confusing.
Heavily concerned with plot points from the original novel, the first half surrounded Ikuya and his friend Hiyori, characters who for all intents and purposes were new to Free! TV anime canon (I'm purposefully leaving out the High Speed movie adaptation). This arc explored both characters to massive depths. Even the episodes that stepped away from them were related to them in some way. Rin's episode, for example, heavily features Ikuya's brother.
These characters regularly interact with our true main characters, but when it finally comes to a head it's like the book on their adventure is closed just because we need to move on. As if somebody forgot who the true main characters of the series were for eight episodes straight.
After this we return to focusing on Haru, Makoto and Rin, who are each on a new path in or out of the pool... Well, Haru and Makoto are. Rin is just kind of doing what he's always done because his character arc has well and truly been completed. The final four episodes detail some things that lead to the next season, because in a step of true overconfidence, the series has no ending.
That's unfair to everybody involved, and it makes the mostly self-contained third season weaker than it needs to be. Even so, I did enjoy this season and it's insistence of having the characters be apart (even if it led to overpopulation so each set of characters needed people to play off of). If Free! can cull it's cast to a manageable number and be able to really clip the wings of certain characters who were once important but are no longer relevant, 2020 should be a year to look forward to.
Planet With: I dropped this, and I'm not even sad.
You know why? Because it was too hippy-dippy.
It wasn't good hippy-dippy, it was bad hippy-dippy. Basically, it wasn't your best friend trying to get you to go all eco-friendly by buying a hemp shopping bag. It was your (soon to be ex) best friend trying to sell you healing crystals from Kim Kardashian's new perfume line.
As with all bad hippy dippy things, it saw a single solution for every one of it's problems and shoved it in there regardless of thematic relevance. Planet With is so obsessed with it's protagonist that it never sees past him, even as characters attempt to have (truncated 10 minute) arcs around him. In fact, it did it so hard it crushed it's own central themes in the process.
If humanity isn't meant to end up like Soya's race, then why can't they come out of their mass hypnosis by themselves in a compelling show of why they're worth literally anything? Why must an alien save them at every crossroad if they are worth saving?
Instead of answering that, it keeps building on Soya; having our alien main character constantly say humanity is strong and won't have it's hearts swayed by power, only to immediately go out save the world all by himself.
According to the literal creators of the systems current government, he's also the only person who can do what's necessary. The sheer individualism strikes against the purported united front he's supposed to be presenting alongside humanity. I don't discount his feelings, but when his feelings are the only ones that matter in a game where Sensei and Princess can just whisk him off to the next world it's a bit off.
It's even worse when he kills his first opponent and the thing he can't get over is how he's sure humans don't die like that. Then he's too focused on revenge not feeling right to realize that hey, Soya, you killed someone for real. The person charged with saving humanity (by the heavy handed fist of the narrative) doesn't even care when he kills humans, so that's a good start.
And that's not it; I regularly found myself... distant, during the everyday scenes. They are somewhat appealing, but what the characters did often just didn't matter (MC has an interest in unidentified mysterious animals, yet this comes up for about 20 seconds of the whole show). They wrote out the occult club president and I honestly didn't notice until I started writing my last sentence.
I won't lie, this show had it's moments, mostly in terms of the character designs, but at some point the themes being as clear as mud yet being shoved in your face killed my interest.
This is like, the most inevitable crossover, surely.
It does feel very much like "EVERYBODY... and Tanya".
There was also live reports of Okamoto Nobuhiko, Nanjo Yoshino and Aoi Shouta with lots of cool pictures of everything and even the set lists of the shows, which was nice. Sugita also has a monthly column about... something or other.
Mostly, it reminded me how you will never ever run out of seiyuu pictures because seiyuu love being in pictures.
Sadly there was no Miyano and I don't think there will be any in other issues (there was a brief Nana photo-shoot though, because of course).
I also noticed when I was reading through the FAQ on CDJapan's site that the example reader features the first volume of Ousama Game (second in the bottom row).
NateWantsToBattle performed the English dub version of the new Beyblade Burst opening and it's pretty cool.
This year I have run into three magical girl things where this happens.
Something's off about Jeanne here.
I wonder what it could be.
I think I have to watch this now that I know what Boogiepop sounds like.
Symphogear XV was delayed~
I don't mind though. There's nothing weirder than non-Summer Symphogear.