Winter 2019 anime

I don't know, maybe they've not entirely disappeared? I mean, it would probably take millenia and some massive climate change for such massive bodies of water to evaporate completely…

So just as I was thinking Manaria Friends was just a cute, quiet and relaxing iyashikei, I watch episode 5 and BOOM, Darkest Hour. Although it was just a simulation in the end. Everyone telling Anne to stay the fuck away from any action was pretty funny − and justified.

Okay, so we're past the halfway point of the season by now, what is the overall judgement of the series you all have managed to follow to this point?

Considering that this is essentially the "PNR" of anime seasons (Point of No Return) this is the time series tend to be either followed through or dropped completely despite best efforts.

So let's hear it.

Personal opinion:

Series still holding my interest.

Dororo: Yes. Just yes. Loving all of it. Especially the MC and Dororo. A glimmer of light in the week.

Endro~: Much deeper than it appears on the surface, characters and story good so far, will stick with it.

Domestic Girlfriend: The painful reminder that, if single, the desire for a girlfriend. Despite that, very real show and with the magnetic force of a black hole. Worth it.

Love is War: So much cringe, so much shame, so much fun. Regrets nothing about watching it so far.

Girly Air Force: Actually a lot better than it appeared to be. Engages me every week in the mystery and chemistry between the characters. Besides, an actual swede as main female MC!!!

The Magnificent Kotobuki: Intriguing world-building, great fights in the air, but the 3d might get distracting from time to time, but not enough to lower the score.

The Rising of the Shield Hero: Punch yourself in the face if you stayed away from this great series due to the critics of the first episode. Great show.

Kakegurui XX: Let's see where this rabbit hole goes, entertaining at least in its insanity.

Q2: Neat when needing a trip back memory lane and when you yourself went to school...and then get a reminder that one should have asked for help with the studies for the sake of socializing with the classmates. Regretful bittersweets.

My Roommate Is A Cat: National Treasure Status! Haru-Chan for best girl or riot!

Katakuri Circus: Bizarre and "say what now?", but great character designs.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind: It's Jojo, what else is there to say?

Magical Girl Asuka: Looking past the character designs, the story and setting is worth the stay.

Grimms Notes: Meh, it's not bad. Not good, but not bad.

Kemurikusa: Great, engaging, worth the time. Interesting art-style and setting.

The Promised Neverland: Still watching it for the thriller.

W'z: Curious on where it's going, better handled than the first part.

Ace Attorney: Second Season: Let's get this over with.

Series dropped:

Circlet Princess= So. Unimaginably. Dull.

Bermuda triangle = Nope. Feeling nothing.

So far, so good.

Edited by TitanJump on Feb 22nd 2019 at 6:42:08 PM

You mean the one with the girl saying "if you were a good person, you'd own a slave too!"?

No thanks.

I'm keeping up with four, possibly three in the near future.

Quintessential Quintuplets has been a fun romcom, following the standard tropes of it's kind but executing better than any other recent example I've seen;

Promised Neverland has been pretty good, with spectacular direction and a team that knows how to properly make an adaptation;

Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka is decent-ish, but has been giving me doubts, particularly due to it's messy tone and uninteresting story. It brings up some interesting ideas and actually bothers to explore some of them, but there are a lot of cons to it as well;

And Kaguya-Sama: Love Is War, which has been the best thing this season.

I''m finding it a fine, but not particularly great season thus far. Other than Kaguya-Sama, I doubt I'll remember much about it later in the year.

That's like praising a person for learning how to breathe.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Feb 22nd 2019 at 2:59:31 PM

you forgot to mention Mob Psycho 100, which has been top tier from day 1

i highly recommend people to check out Kemurikusa, Tatsuki really knows how to direct

You too would praise a mannequin if it figured out how to breathe by itself.

The fact that it didn't get worse considering the first part is worth at least a slow clap from me, that much is certain.

Hey, different world, different system. In the context of the setting, it works just fine.

Some people react strongly to positive depictions of slavery.

I'm not gonna touch the part where Malty's final moments were portrayed.    That thing can go straight to hell despite Malty is evil and needs a punishment   

Edited by ElfenLiedFan90 on Feb 23rd 2019 at 1:17:44 AM

"Be a slave for a decent owner that treat me like a actual human being or be free and legally hunted down for fun like an animal by racists."

(Weighing with the hands)

It's pretty obvious what the preferable choice is here.

Edited by TitanJump on Feb 22nd 2019 at 7:18:30 PM

The actual choice here is "write a story where slavery looks like a moral option because of contrived circumstances and also the slave-race really appreciates it, and needs the direction too."

In which case you are literally writing Confederate propaganda. Grats.

Edited by Clarste on Feb 22nd 2019 at 10:20:10 AM

Sounds a little too close to "Be a slave for the plantation owner that doesn't hit me as much as some of the others would, or be strung up on the hanging tree" for my comfort.

Edited by dragonfire5000 on Feb 22nd 2019 at 10:26:43 AM

Anyway, my understanding is that the show has decent production values, and if you turn your brain off completely you could theoretically enjoy it on that level. But it's disgusting at the very core if you apply even the slightest examination to its ideas.

I mean, it's an isekai power-fantasy. Why shouldn't slavery be the impossible, undefeatable evil that the hero steamrolls over with his apparently crappy but secretly broken abilities? Going 'when in Rome' doesn't play so well in a genre where the entire appeal is in shaping a world to your whim.

So far:

• Boogiepop wa Warawanai: Not outstanding, but enjoyable once you understand how the story works. As Gigguk put it though, this is the kind of show that's better watched several episodes at a time.
• Domestic Girlfriend: I haven't caught up after eisode 4, and I don't know if I want to… there are things to enjoy, but also some pretty irritating stuff. Still love the opening song though.
• Kaguya-sama: A laughing riot, and only getting better with each episode. This might be my Hinamatsuri of this year!
• The Magnificent Kotobuki: I was very afraid it would end in a magnificent plane crash after episode 3, but it managed to find a balance in its formula, somewhat. The visuals are still very hit-and-miss though.
• Manaria Friends: There's really no plot to speak of, just a very warm and soothing show with beautiful visuals.
• The Promised Neverland: Solid adaptation with great direction and sound design so far, but some of the cuts in the characters' thoughts and reasonings hurt the experience a little bit − kinda the same issue the Death Note anime had. And I'm not sure I like what they did with Sister Krone…
• The Quintessential Quintuplets: The adaptation is good, but I've jumped to the manga and will stick with it. At any rate, I love the characters.
• Radiant: …Well, the show ends tomorrow. An extremely hit-and-miss adaptation, with some great episodes but also some godawful ones (especially in the first half). It's already a small miracle that a French manga got an anime, but I wish it was handled a little better overall. It feels like they aseptisized the manga to appeal to Japanese kids, often to the detriment of the dialogue and characters. It was also weirdly paced − 5 episodes to adapt volume 1, 5 largely pointless filler episodes covering a little bit of volume 2, and then 10 episodes to adapt volume 2, 3 and 4 even though the Rumble Town arc could have used some fleshing out.
• Spec-Ops Asuka: Good story and characters, but brought down by bland production value. And my god, please someone kill this cat…

On another note… Is it me or the traditional J-Rock opening has been less prevalent lately? Just in the ones I listed there are two jazzy songs (Kaguya and Kotobuki), one EDM-ish song (Boogiepop), and two electro-rock-ish… something songs (Asuka and Neverland). And some bubblegum pop with QQ, but that's par for the course in this genre.

There's only like two shows I'm watching this season. Kakegurui, and Date A Live. Watching them since I saw the previous seasons, and figured I should at least see the shows through.

Was watching the Quintuplets but also dumped that for the manga.

Was also watching Asuka and Promised Neverland, but I didn't find the characters engaging enough for the latter, and Asuka was kind of a mess in tone and aesthetics.

Also tried Dororo, but stopped once I realized the show was doing this character of a week thing. I'm here to watch a guy kill demons and get his humanity back. I'm not going to sit there and watch entire episodes about some side characters. Especially when I only tried the show due to the hype around it.

I’m pretty sure Dororo does both.

The implications of that statement is that Hyakkimaru & his plight is Out of Focus which is completely false.

In last week’s episode he went on a berserk rampage killing a bunch of soldiers after the woman he loved was murdered proving he could possibly go insane.

Even then of course he’s gonna be interacting with people. You can’t get your humanity back if you don’t actually interact with fucking humans.

Edited by slimcoder on Feb 22nd 2019 at 12:49:46 PM

Way to miss the point of Dororo. It may do character of the week stuff, but it enhances the main story by enriching the world Hyakkimaru lives in.

What I meant by character of the week is that it switches focus between characters. Like episode 3 is about the guy who gave the MC his limbs backstory.

Except instead of keeping the focus on the MC and learning it through whatever adventure happens, we instead get the guy's entire backstory as the entire episode. And previous episodes didn't really set this guy up that well other than he was the guy who made the fake limbs. So to go from the MC and Dororo traveling and killing demons, to seeing in some flashback the life story of some side character, that didn't sit well with me, as my interest was still with the MC.

Then I realized the episodes each had there own focus character. Ep 1's was arguably Dororo, though opening scenes were the circumstances behind the MC's birth, and Ep.2 was arguably focused on the MC himself, as a sort of glimpse into what his daily life was as he couldn't really speak or hear, and thus had to rely on Dororo to interact with others. Not he was even all that concerned on interacting with other to begin with.

At this point, I figured the show was going for some sort of anthology style, where each episode has the focus on a different character, instead of keeping the focus on the MC and having that character play a part in his story.

In short, I had more an issue with how they were presenting the story, instead of the story itself. And as I was only watching the show out of curiosity, I didn't really felt like sticking with it.

Edited by RedRob on Feb 22nd 2019 at 4:20:44 AM

I really don’t much problems at all in what your saying.

Jukai’s (old man) backstory adds depth to his helping of Hyakkimaru & made the scene when they said their goodbyes very touching.

Even then the various misadventures have some effect on Hayakkimaru. Such as how he gets a sense back, it usually comes with a horrible experience as a result of the people around him.

Just say you don’t feel the spark to the show. Keep it simple, any attempt at more complex reasoning falls flat.

Edited by slimcoder on Feb 22nd 2019 at 1:28:31 AM

"Anthology" is not the word that comes to mind when I think if the Dororo anime series.

On the subject of Dororo, I think the only episode that isn't an adaptation of a manga chapter is the episode with the Jorougumo. I really liked the episode regardless; I don't think I've seen many stories that end well for both the Jorougumo and the human she interacts with.

Edited by dragonfire5000 on Feb 22nd 2019 at 2:12:50 AM

It's not an anthology since there's a definite plotline and every arc serves to develop Hyakkimaru in some way… but obviously, it's hard to keep the focus exclusively on a character who can barely communicate.

I was using anthology because I couldn't think of a better word.

I did drop the show around the beginning of episode 3, so I don't know what kind of direction it took afterwards, but I'm just saying what kind of direction I thought it was going to take, and why I dropped it as a result.

You didn't even watch all of episode 3?

......Then you completely missed how it ties to Hyakkimaru's story, then.

The Price of Smiles/Egao no Daika episode 8

Izana plays the role of hostage to the maximum potential. we're no doubt gonna get some big bombs dropped about the Empire of Verde and Chrars in the next episode

also, can i just praise this series for how varied it made the male character design is? usually it's the female characters that gets the greatest variation, so the fact that it is so varied for males too is a treat

Edited by MABfan11 on Feb 22nd 2019 at 12:19:11 PM