Spring 2019 anime

I'm only planning on picking up Carole and Tuesday this season.

Which is nice really, I like a light season, since it means I'm more likely to pick up some old stuff I've been meaning to watch for a while.

As usual, I may pick up another show or two if I hear really good stuff about them via word of mouth.

Senryuu Shoujo - Sad to say, but I found it a bit disappointing. In thinking about it, it's not exactly an easy premise to translate into an anime, but I feel it's comedic timing also falls flat quite frequently. The show does look cute, and it's got better animation than I'd expect from a 10-minute anime, but still, I think it focuses too much on the romance and too litle on the comedy, which kinda harms it a bit.

Or maybe that's my bias from having read and liked the manga that's making me judge this a little bit too harshly. Who knows. Still, it's only ten minutes and it's on a saturday, might as well keep watching.

I'm just letting you know that I made Fairy Gone thread. Feel free to participate in that thread if you guys want

I'll watch Bokuben soon enough.

Edited by ElfenLiedFan90 on Apr 6th 2019 at 5:34:42 PM

i'm pretty interested in Fairy Gone too, but i'm not sure if i'm gonna follow it this season. still, it's directed by the guy who directed Drifters and Jo Jo part 1, 2 and 3 and written by the guy who wrote Grimgar, so that makes me quite interested

Yeah, that is the utter reason why I want to watch Fairy Gone in the first place. That and I do have a history for PA Works first action show (CMIIW), Tenrou Sirius the Jaeger, which made me urge to watch this show and hoping that Fairy Gone will be a vast improvement compared to Sirius.

Edited by ElfenLiedFan90 on Apr 6th 2019 at 5:52:33 PM

@Lovcraftian

Same here. I think the loss of the 4-koma format messes with the comedic timing, since instead of jumping from joke to joke, you actually have to watch like a few seconds of nothing for the characters to physically move into position.

Or to sum it up, the pages went at their own pace, while the anime has to fill up a certain amount of screentime.

Also, is it me, or is everything really shiny in that show? It's like there's a constant glow in every scene.

Edited by RedRob on Apr 6th 2019 at 8:33:02 AM

Yeah, it's exactly what you're saying: the manga, as a product of what it is, has better pacing than the anime, especially since so much of this anime relies on the Senryu, which just doesn't translate well on this format. It's a pity.

Last one for me today is Kono oto Tomare, and the most immediate thing I have to say is that it's opening should com with a seizure warning.

Anyhow, the show is sadly not very good, first and foremost because, despite advertising itself as a story about people playing the Koto, it's more a story about some pretty-looking boys whose lives and personal dramas are tangentially related to Koto. At least, that's what the first episode is about. The Koto itself is never played. Which, I dunno, sounds like a missed oportunity to me.

Other than that, the drama is weak and cliche, the animation and the music don't really stand out, and in the end, the first episode does little to call attention to itself. I'm not quite sure who's the audience for this one, but I'm pretty sure it's not me. A pity, because the Koto actually sounds interesting as an instrument. I'dh ave liked to see an anime about people learning to play it.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Apr 6th 2019 at 9:41:26 AM

Having finally actually watched Hitoribocchi no OO Seikatsu, it's just as adorably precious as I was expecting it to be. Bocchi is such an upbeat cinnamon roll despite being a walking social disaster zone, and seeing her bumble about, take small steps and actually succeed is actually kind of inspiring. Although Bocchi's social anxiety is a source of the show's comedy, it never feels like the show is laughing at her.

Kibetsu no Yaiba certainly looks nice, as expected of Ufotable just flexing on every other anime studio (complete with Lisa OP), but I feel like the show could've done with less talking and internal monologue. I think that some of the scenes would be more impactful if some things were left unsaid yet obvious, but it feels like the writers are worried that we won't understand certain implied things.

Joshikausei and Hitoribocchi will undoubtedly get less comments on their r/anime episode discussions, so i think i might be able to follow Fairy Gone as it airs

I finished Ultraman yesterday. Seeing as my only other exposure to the franchise was the Fox Box dub of Ultraman Tiga, I was quite open to this show being different from the rest. The only part I thought was weird was when it looked like the show was going to have multiple seasons, only to end on an self-contained note. I don't mind that of course, it looks like the type of anime that might not get a second season for reasons.

Hitoribocchi already seems to have developed a Fandom Rivalry with Watamote, for obvious reasons; practically everyone complaining about the former praises the latter in the same comment. Have to count myself in the Hitori team, though. Watamote is more "brutally honest," I guess, but the humor was so focused on Cringe Comedy that it felt like the show was trying to induce self-hatred in its audience. Hitori mostly does a great job accurately showing what social anxiety is like, while also making it sufficiently cute and/or ridiculous that it's funny—every introvert has likely fantasized about having a class all to themselves, but she goes the extra mile and tries to trick her entire class into thinking it's been cancelled. She thinks she's a hopelessly awkward disaster, but the story treats her as a good person who's just a bit quirky, so it never feels like the humor is at her expense.

I was honestly really worried about that - I couldn't stand more than three minutes or so of Watamote for the exact reason that it's just such painful cringe material that I couldn't physically watch it. If Hitori Bocchi's any better, it could help fill out an otherwise dead season.

Kuroki does start to gain friends in Watamote. unfortunately, that development happens after where the anime stopped

okay, it is decided, Hitoribocchi and Senryuu Shoujo will be my sugar dose this season

and it seems like the r/anime episode discussions doesn't have as much comments as in the winter season, even Fruits Basket's first episode only has around 700+ comments, so that means i will have time to watch stuff on my backlog. though Attack on Titan hasn't started airing yet, which will no doubt get 1000+ comments at minimum. thankfully, i have never followed Attack on Titan as it aired

Just a late reply but I just recently watched the first Episode of Bokuben. I should note that I didn't watch Go Tobun No Hanayome so expect that I didn't get several of comparisons for the show with Go Tobun.

That being said, I quite like it. The highlight of the show is definitely Fumino a.k.a. Fooooooooooom and I'm also interested with the plot on fixing the girl's grade or the subject where both girls bad at. Plots like this intrigues me just like Slime's plot on building a country (Which sadly we don't get in the anime version due to horrific rushed production).

Anyways, I might need to read the manga. Is it good?

Edited by ElfenLiedFan90 on Apr 8th 2019 at 12:50:19 AM

Jesus, I'm 10 minutes in with Demon Slayer, and I just want the kid to shut up. His dialouge doesn't even feel natural to me. It feels less like a reaction, and more somebody documeting everything that happens in his life for some sort of report.

His voice doesn't help either, Lyn was right about his VA being a bit off in some places. Like when he learns about demons from the old man, his voice just came off too monotone to me.

Speaking of, how did he come to the conclusion his sister's a demon the moment she attacked him? Like, obviously there's something severely wrong with her, but it's weird that's the first thing he thinks of to me.

"My sister is trying to bit me. Is she a mythical man-eating monster?"

That said, I'm going to read the manga to see if it's just a bad adaptation or translation.

The manga is pretty enjoyable for the most part. I actually have trouble looking at the anime because of how verbose the color palette is.

Like I read the manga first, so it looks like everyone just has black hair and such, but nope. The meganeko has reddish-brown hair despite her hair being white enough in the manga pages to look like Mash from F/GO, and the sporty one has hair a bit more redder than hers, but has it colored black, the opposite of white, on the regular pages.

@Red Rob Yea... I'm not even surprised if characters in manga had truly different hairstyle color in anime. Feel like a stylistic choice which I don't blame them for that and I'm cool with Fumino with blue hair after all

Although I won't gonna lie it would be nice if Reina Ueda or Kana Hanazawa are the ones who voice Fumino, Haruka Shiraishi did a great job on her which is a thumbs up

Might be a case of the anime not trimming enough fat in the text. It was also a problem with the Children of the Whales anime, where they kept all the inner narration and it just killed the mood: in the manga it's not an issue because the text is just part of the page, but when read out loud by a voice actor it becomes distracting. I think that's exactly why they got rid of it in The Promised Neverland's anime.

It wasn't enough to deter from my enjoyment in KNY's case, but I can see how it could for some people.

As for how Tanjirô guessed his sister became a demon… I don't know, maybe the fangs, Tainted Veins and Hellish Pupils gave it away? >.>

edit: Yeah, after rereading the first chap, they clearly should have removed at least half of the internal monologues.

Edited by Lyendith on Apr 7th 2019 at 8:48:07 PM

Fairy Gone - This is one I wasn't particularly interested in, but I heard so many people talking about it that I thought to check it out. Me being bored out of my mind this evening had nothing to do with that decision. Anyhow, the anime is an interesting one. It's aesthetically gorgeous and clearly has a lot of work put into it, even if the characters are a bit bland, design and personality-wise. Ultimately, I'm unsure of how I feel about it. The episode didn't elicit many reactions out of me other than "Wow, that's some good fighting animation", but it does have some promise. I can see it becoming really good and emotional in the future, so I'll give it a couple more episodes to get to that point.

Watched the first episode of Amazing Stranger on Crunchyroll. It's about an otaku who hates on actual women, but lusts after anime and game girls. His newly-purchased action figure comes to life and believes it's the actual character. (Whether she is or not is obviously one of the series mysteries.) Our hero decides to lie his ass off in order not to reveal she's a fictional character, and also to get her to stay with him.

There's a lot of focus on T & A, and the plot elements were just creepy enough that I had a nightmare involving the show shortly thereafter.

Sounds like a series version of ME!ME!ME!… is it that creepy?

@ Lynedith

I actually enjoyed Children of the Whales, though part of it might be how fantasical the setting is, so I'm drawn by wanting to know more about the setting.

Anyway, I got through like most of the manga's first chapter, and I'm still having most of the same issues.

The anime's visual direction does improve some scenes though, like when the sister wakes up an an demon, when Tanjiro finds his dead family, and when he falls off the cliff. Being able to use color really helps. And some of the faces in the manga gives some scenes a weird comedic tone to me, so utofable's artstyle help keep a more serious tone.

Maybe this is just me, but this face, especially the beady eyes, really reminds me of scenes where somebody's absurd strength is used as a joke, and the punchline is everybodies's surprised faces. The anime is much better.

As for the demon sister scene, I think my problem is the delivery of the conclusion. Tanjiro only heard of demons the day before, and it was just that they're man eating-monsters who go out at night. Nothing about how they look. But when his sister attacks him, his literal first on-screen thought is "An oni!" or "She's a demon!"

Note how none of his internal dialouge in that scene mentions any of those visual aspects you pointed out, and how there's not even a question mark in the above quotes.

As a result, it comes off as if he recognizes what a demon is, despite the fact he shouldn't, and I'm left wondering how he came to that conclusion in the first place, since the only thing known about demons before then is that they eat people.

In short, the conclusion comes way too fast, and ends up framed in a way that suggests Tanjiro knows what a demon is, when he shouldn't.

I saw a promotional image for that. The most notable thing was the guy's face, and how it just fell into the Uncanny Valley for me. Like he has a rectangle for a head, red eyes, and then there's that hairstyle. I think it says something when in-universe fictional character has a more natural looking face than his.

Edited by RedRob on Apr 7th 2019 at 3:36:23 PM

Shoumetsu Toshi / AFTERLOST - Well, you can't fault this one for not being ambitious. You can fault it for taking some weird risks with it's direction that don't pay off because they're also using some very cheap shortcuts to hide subpar or outright bad animation. You can fault it for it's over-reliance on bad CG. You can fault it for having bad animation and shot composition (at one point, a car looks to be as tall as a girl's waist). You can fault it for having six minutes of action without explaining barely anything. You can fault them for doing a giant infodump of jargon right afterwards while still not really explaining all that much. You can fault it for having bland characters and some really contrived first-episode drama.You can fault it for having a blue-haired protagonist wear a bright orange bow on her head. And you can fault it for being really pretentious and stuffy about itself. But at least it's ambitious, and it's trying really hard to live up to it's own ambition.

Not a whole lot that's really appealing to me this season, but I did watch the first episode of Hitoribocchi. Was pretty good, from the PV it looked like a goldmine of extremely relatable moments and it delivered.

The other show that got my interest is Carole and Tuesday...but it's streaming on Netflix so I'm probably gonna be waiting a while for that one.

Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine - This is a mobile game adaptation, isn't it? It would at the very least surprise me if it wasn't, since all the signs are there.

Also, there's a wonderful game of "Spot The Main Characters" to be had in this episode: The tiny one with the bright orange cat hood, the one Japanese girl with green eyes in a sea of brown-eyed people, the girl with purple eyes, the only girl with long, flowing brown hair and blue eyes, the blonde-haired, green-eyed girl (who's not a foreigner!), the one with blue hair who looks inexplicably cross all the time, and a few more in the opening, including one that seems to have white hair. And they all seem to be wearing heavy amounts of makeup all the time. There is such a thing as making your characters too distinct from the crowd of extras.

Anyhow, the episode itself is boring, if pretty to look at. Nothing particularly special here.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Apr 7th 2019 at 5:15:11 AM