Winter 2021 anime

luckily, i am only watching 3 shows this season, so i don't have to drop anything due to time. the 3 shows that i am watching are:

• Re:Zero season 2 part 2
• Quintessential Quintuplets season 2
• That Time i Got Reincarnated as a Slime season 2

I've settled on watching two shows weekly.

With those being Mushoku Tensei and Higurashi Gou.

I'm also going to watch Re:Zero, Wonder Egg Priority and Log Horizon. But I'm going to start those around episode 11/12 so I can watch them mostly all at once.

I've also decided to not watch Otherside Picnic because of discussion here that made me decide to just read the Light Novels instead.

I've got four weekly shows:

- Kemono Jihen

- Yuru Camp S2

- Horimiya

- Back Arrow

Also watches Mushoku Tensei, but usually fast forward some parts, especially ones that concerned Rudeus' questionable behavior.

Edited by jun_kagami on Feb 21st 2021 at 5:56:49 PM

As much as people hate it, Rudeus's questionable behavior is part of the point of who he is, and how he grows above it over time. Not get rid of it entirely, but does so more healthily.

It could also be massively, *massively* toned down and the same point would get across. Rudy's antics are just egregious at this point, and even when Rudy's acting almost normal, some other rando just picks up the slack and feels up girls or just heavily promotes sex to him.

Yeah, I agree.

It's just so glaring that almost every issue with the show is centered around "the sin of lust" as another post put it in one of the threads.

You could literally draw a line around it all and chop out 90% of it and the show would only be improved.

I mean, that's literally what the English translations of the light novels did.

Oh thats what that controversy is about.

Also, just because there's a reason for a character to be creepy doesn't make them not creepy.

I agree with the above posters, yeah. You could achieve the same effect even if you removed 90% of the egregious salivating over the gross thing Rudy is doing this week.

Especially since a lot of the gross stuff seem to have little bearing on either plot or character development. You can't tell me Rudeus trying to take the underwear off a sleeping lass is in any way significant to the story, nor does it develop Rudy's character aside from reinforcing what we already know. It's just a fetish being put on display.

I'm watching 21 shows, this cour has been real good. Especially on the anime originals front.

Edited by fillerdude on Feb 21st 2021 at 6:56:58 AM

So, with this week's Urasekai Picnic adapting "Attack of the Ninja Cats", it seems... plausible, question mark, that they're planning to zoom ahead and wrap up with "Sannuki-san" next episode, introducing Migiwa and the Dark Science Lab in episode 10, and then doing "The Whispered Voice" as a two-parter. The other option would be, essentially, just filler.

I dropped most of the shows I was watching this season (no regrets over the promised neverland after what I've seen of the adaptation, it's like tokyo ghoul :re but with better animation!). The ones I still watch are:

-Mushoku tensei (characters needing to calm the hell down with the horniness aside, I love almost every other thing with the show)

-wonder egg priority (I have some reservations with how it's been, but I'm also bored enough that I'm willing to just sit and watch for now. At least it's pretty)

-jujutsu kaisen (been watching it since last season)

-AOT final season (kind of on hold since I've only been watching the episodes with my sister)

So, kind of in spite of myself, I've been watching Azur Lane: Slow Ahead!. It's... actually pretty good? It's kind of like cotton candy; it's not really substantial but it's light and sweet. It's more mildly amusing with a few laugh-out-loud moments like Rodney's take on the "smashing watermelon" thing. It's also surprisingly accessible to people who haven't played the game (z.B. me) or don't know too much about naval history. It probably helps that the episodes are only about nine minutes long, so it doesn't have a chance to overstay its welcome each episode. And... it's Azur Lane. You need a certain tolerance for fanservice.

I just hope there isn't going to be an episode about Ark Royal...

Edited by MisterTambourineMan on Feb 25th 2021 at 4:28:31 AM

High-Rise Invasion:

The action, the horror, the suspense... It was so much to bear...
Favorite Character: Sniper Mask.
Favorite Interactions: Yuri/Mayuko, Sniper/Kuon, Sniper/Rika.
Most Shocking Scene: 1st Episode, police officer killed one of his own...
One Thing I Don't Like About This Anime: Turns out the main villain and the main hero won't face each other yet, and we have to wait another season. Also, RIKA... No...

Dang, I didn’t even realize the anime for that was already out.

The action scenes in High-Rise Invasion don't really work for me. They feel like a turn-based rpg combat, with characters standing still while their opponent moves.

Edited by gropcbf on Feb 25th 2021 at 8:53:28 PM

It was on Netflix, so they released the whole season at once.

Manga is finished, but I doubt it will be fully adapted even with one more season.

I'm not interested in watching yet. Will wait for more impressions.

Edited by Nachtwandler on Feb 26th 2021 at 11:59:56 AM

Well if the action scenes aren’t very good, I suppose I’m fine with the manga.

High Rise Invasion was surprisingly fun to watch. Was kind of expecting pure shlock, but putting aside very... strange leaps of logic (Yuri, you just watched the girl murder a defenceless guy, but you figure she's nice because she didn't immediately stab you afterward?), the cast was pretty decent, action was over the top silly at points, would certainly like to see more.

Also, came across something called Soulmate Adventure, a donghua that I guess started a few years ago, but became a weekly show last month. It's a neat wuxia thing with fun MC's and damn good fight scenes. Ling and Yuxiu complement each other well.

Final Impressions

Skate-Leading Stars demonstrates how hard it is to cram a good sports series into 12 episodes. The main character himself is an obnoxious brat who only succeeds because the narrative dictates so. The other protagonists, save for one cranky fox, are undercooked, so you can only imagine how shallow the rival teams are. Then the sport itself is poorly explained, so poorly that they literally have an AI give out the scores so they don’t have to explain the reasoning behind the points. We also skip like 90% of the tournament arc, which is like the lifeblood of these kind of shows! We only get to see the beginning and the end.

The figure skating sequences are decently animated; there’s some recycled footage here and there but it’s negligible. I’d even venture to say some of the routines are indeed enchanting, especially the one where the lead skater brandishes a sword and flips into the air in between swivels.

There are some neat plot points, like how a member of the main team actually transfers to another team because he didn’t like the MC, and becomes a formidable opponent. But that’s the kind of minutiae you only notice when you’ve watched a lot of sports or a lot of anime. To casual viewers, it’s probably just a sorta pretty timewaster with pretty boys.

I did see someone (probably Mother's Basement) point out the AI judging was probably a handwave so the writers didn't actually have to learn anything about figure skating judging.

Yeah that was Mother’s Basement.

Man that’s lazy.

Pretty much. If you know how figure skating or similar sports (like gymnastics) work, you’d probably raise an eyebrow at the scoring system in Skate-Leading Stars. This makes the MC even more obnoxious because he gets away with his self-centered plays in team-based performances.

In other news. Ex-Arm manga get cancelled. Probably due to the anime poor reception.