Winter 2020 anime

Re:Zero Director's Cut

there have only been small changes so far, but the cut content was mostly from Arc 2 and Arc 3, so we'll get new content soon

…Uh, what's that about? Recap movies?

Its a recut of the original anime from 25 half hour episodes to 12 hour length episodes, with additional footage they couldn't fit in the TV release. Its on crunchyroll, and is airing in anticipation for Season 2 this upcoming spring.

Edited by Demongodofchaos2 on Jan 12th 2020 at 8:45:47 AM

That's… the exact same length.

But yeah, I guess there was missing stuff in the first season… I only follow the series through the manga, so I was surprised to learn that the anime went as far as the end of arc 3, which is volume 16 in the manga.

Not exactly. The first episode (which was 45 minutes) excluded, each of those 24 episodes were only 20 minutes long, not counting OP and ED. Even if the director's cut episodes are only like 45 minutes long, that's still a runtime gain of almost half an hour.

What makes it funnier is that they have all this money and expensive looking establishments and yet they still stuck Sakura in that shack of a building with no AC in her Youtube videos.

I was interested in ID:invaded because the main guy looked cute. I will continue to watch it cause it seems intriguing.

Also because the main guy is cute (in his brilliant detective persona)

I think I need not even state that Eizouken is starting out really strong. I love how the premise of the show is like a mission statement for how they're going to be making it. The setting is just so visually appealing and well designed. The teachers lounge could have been a simple room, but they made it an old swimming pool or something, filled with desks and furnishings.

Edited by GabrieltheThird on Jan 13th 2020 at 12:14:51 PM

Yeah, it's really cool. And I love how Kanamori is basically the Token Evil Teammate - sometimes a producer's gotta be sharp! Shirobako taught me that.

I heard the show that the protagonist in Eizouken watches was Future Boy Conan so I started watching that. Seems to be very nice.

Huh! I had no idea it was a real show. It looked very much like it was supposed to be a Bland-Name Product for Castle in the Sky.

Edited by RedSavant on Jan 13th 2020 at 10:36:19 AM

Yeah that show is a classic and for a reason. Looking at it on paper it seemed pretty route, but the show is a true joy. I remember loving the details they gushed about in Eizouken episode 1 back when I watched Conan myself. Such a nostalgia trip.

Edited by GabrieltheThird on Jan 13th 2020 at 6:08:27 PM

Fun fact, apparently Eizouken takes place in the 50s. Like 2050s. So the show is especially old in-universe.

Just started Hanako-kun, and wow, this is already like a love letter to the old mid-2000s Studio SHAFT classics like Bakemonogatari and Zetsubou-sensei. I dig it.

Edit: Also getting strong trans masc vibes from Hanako himself.

Edited by RedSavant on Jan 13th 2020 at 12:42:22 PM

nope, hanako's a guy and that's not his real name. Its Amane Yugi. His evil twin brother, Tsukasa Yugi is also the main villain

Edited by jun_kagami on Jan 14th 2020 at 2:39:25 AM

I didn't say he wasn't a guy.

Ishuzoku Reviewers is written by one of my favourite raunchy comedy/mood whiplash writers Amahara, the guys who knows how to 100% fluster a girl and stab readers in the feels when they don't expect it.

Yeah the narrative of the whole thing is unabashedly about finding cute monster girls to bed and stuff, but it's still tame from what you'd expect from a guy that did a timestop doujin when Ramza applies Stop to Agrias for naughty fun as well as one where Aeris, Yuffie, and Tifa rent adjacent rooms at the inn and Aeris brings Cloud over for some fun, which somehow ends up with all three of them playing loud porn on the TV sets in their rooms (because Aeris is too loud with the inn's thin walls, lol) and Aeris ends up utterly mortified as she believes the other two are mocking her. (He's also the guy who did an eromanga about a girl who develops unrealistic fantasies after she starts reading eromanga, only for her first time to be utterly disappointing and her tastes changed immediately after that, as well as another one about a princess and her two bodyguards who have to deal with their careers while their desires for men/pleasure war with their professional lives, and the knight has to remind her princess not to cause another international incident with her next marriage)

The main character human Stunk actually originates in another fantasy comedy manga he wrote, where he was the token guy in another adventurer's party when they visited a town with a most embarassing curse that displays a number over your head that indicates the number of times you've had A Date With Rosie Palms. The Heroine and her mage companion were utterly mortified, Stunk was pretty chill about the whole thing (the relatively low number over his head is no doubt due to having already been well satisfied by getting actually laid by all sorts of monster girls already), and they teamed up with a pure cleric who had actually only done it once (but the number shows 2 for a reason, and she freaks out in panic when the Heroine tries to discuss it), while the demon queen they confront has had nothing to do for hundreds of years while sealed away and had been doing it constantly and had a number in the tens of thousands over her head.

Compared to his other words this manga is actually really tame, and the raunchiness isn't just a porn without plot deal. Sexy? Sure, those succu-girls need to get their customers. Having some reasonably realistic consequences? Well yeah, men of different races/species will have different tastes in women. Stunk has vanilla yet kinky human tastes, Zel prefers them under a hundred (the filthy cradle robber), Kanchal isn't willing to be with anyone too much older than him, and their kobold buddy likes his ladies to smell good. Oh, and poor Meidri is nothing but exasperated whenever they start talking loudly about their latest conquests over a beer or ale, and extra mortified when they went out to get laid with a girl of the same species as her and start discussing the finer points of her race.

Also there are naturally dangers to trying to get with some of the monster girls. The Scylla-like Dagons can be overwhelming to the unprepared, the Snek ladies probably will crush your ribs in her throes of ecstasy, the Lilim are deadly insatiable and have no special skills whatsoever (apart from their limitless appetites, which Stunk and Zel try to mitigate by actually using defensive buff spells to shore up their stamina), Fairies have to take into account size differences, and Salamander girls are out of the question without fire immunity. There's a lot of thought put into this element, and Amahara has absolutely no fear to discuss the sensitive and the hazardous points of trying to get a cute human-adjacent girl into bed. Heck, even the Halfling ladies are willing to do forbidden fantasy dressup service due to their small size, as long as you have the money.

By being so upfront and frank about the inevitable sexuality of a fantasy world where the many human-adjacent races can live together without too much trouble, Amahara paints the picture of a world where they decide it was better to make love, not war, and practiced it literally. It's a world, where in a Pratchett-like way, the demon lords are a lot less dangerous because they no longer need to resort to military conquest because they can just run for government during election season, although the Orc political party has been winning lately due to their competence at making sure daily life runs smoothly, and traditional Hero adventurers find work as government contractors and tax collectors.

Edited by AceOfScarabs on Jan 17th 2020 at 10:23:50 PM

BOFURI: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense is a fun series, and the sunset and night sky stages were beautifully animated. As someone who likes defensive and status effect tactics, I enjoy Maple doing her thing as well.

I agree, Bofuri looks quite good.

Ep 3 of Reviewers, more than any other, is basically just hentai. To the point I think in the censored version, judging by the subtitles I saw in the uncensored one, its pretty much 13min of NICE BOAT.

I don't really know why I expected a series like that to handle LGBT issues with any kind of grace, but I'm still kind of impressed by how badly it handled basically everything.

Okay, now I'm curious. What actually happens?

The episode centers around a brothel where patrons can take short-lived sex change potions (for obvious reasons), which is one thing... except it immediately follows that up with the rule that patrons aren't allowed to leave the house afterward, because too many men were using it to sneak into women's baths and/or predate on men, who would then be traumatized the morning after. There's also all the main characters being disturbed/grossed out by the idea of sleeping with a man-turned-female via potion, and a subplot about three of them being squicked by the implication that one of their friends might be bisexual.

I don't necessarily have anything against raunchy comedy, and I like monster girl series, but this one feels like it's trying to be skeevy.

Edited by RedSavant on Jan 26th 2020 at 6:46:08 AM

Watching Eizouken just puts me in a good mood. It's quite something.

Eizouken is porn. There is almost no plot (and who is afraid about anything?) but it is so pleasant to watch.