#Seasonal anime

[stardustlobster]

and they were girlfriends

[sachiko-cd]

Zenshuu. transformation sequence, key animation by Keisuke Toyoda

[yu2ki]

maomao icons >_<

[mimikyuno]

ANGEL/DEVIL YURI SAVE ME….. SAVE ME ANGEL/DEVIL YURI……. ANGEL/DEVIL YURI…….

[nijigasakilove]

Speechless. Best episode of the series by far. All the little seemingly disjointed episodes and case of the week stuff has been building up to this and it paid off wonderfully. We ate so good today.

Episode didn’t start off too different from other recent ones. Some nice Maomao banter, comedic moments and a new case. But at this point it’s become apparent these “random” incidents aren’t so random after all. Everything seems to circle back to ceremonies. Tools, people in charge of them, etc. Someone’s planning something. Good thing we got detective Maomao on the case 😂

I want someone to look at me like Maomao looks at Jinshi when he offers her Ox gallbladders for her experiments lmao. Even Jinshi was shocked by how much her personality changed in that moment. You offer her stuff like that and Maomao will turn into Sherlock Holmes’s real quick.

Ok but the second half of this episode is where stuff started entering WTF territory for me. First of all smart of Maomao to rush over to the temple to try and stop the ceremony before disaster struck. She unfortunately didn’t think thru the fact that she is a simple servant, albeit a highly respected one, but still unlikely that anyone would stop a ceremony because she says so.

I like how you see her kinda try several different methods to get the guard to let her in. Begging, appealing rationally and then of course baiting him into a reaction but did he seriously need to hit her with a weapon?? I’m glad I skipped the preview for this week episode because seeing Maomao’s face swollen and bloodied was wild.

Even wilder that Lakan was there the whole time and could’ve spoke up before his presumable daughter got struck like that.. but I can’t lie he did come in clutch at the end with helping her get into the ceremony and ultimately save Jinshi

Speaking of which, wtf! Why is Jinshi there? Again kinda already could tell because of all the hints and foreshadowing, but this basically confirms that he’s related to the emperor, likely his brother. Which was hinted at back in the first cour with the whole baby fiasco. Think Lakan reaction was all of our reaction in that moment, sheer utter disbelief.

Don’t think I’ve ever seen that look on Jinshi face either. He looked like he was about to cry when he saw Maomao face and leg.. the ending scene of him carrying her leaving a bloody path in their wake with that OST playing.. immaculate. I also liked the imagery of him carrying Maomao the opposite direction of Lakan.

I NEED THE NEXT EPISODE

[taruolentow]

my tribute to the best anime main character of last (and this) year <3

[zefile]

[raglanphd]

[raihanstrapinch]

Hi I'm Fly and I'm trying to use tumblr more often (instead of just abandoning it for a year) so uhhh idk how common these types of posts here, but I see them all the time on twitter, so anyways....

I'm looking for accounts to follow!!

Stuff I like is listed under the more (I don't wanna clog up tags so if you like anything here too interact with this post pls!!)

Pokemon

Precure (I've seen most seasons)

Hirano to Kagiura/Sasaki to Miyano

Idolish7 (Re:vale oshi)

Sanrio

Love Live

Buddy Daddies

Tokyo Mew Mew

Boueibu

Spy x Family

Urusei Yataura

Seasonal animes

Animal Crossing

Ghosts (CBS)

Youtube

Baking

Cute stuff

2000's stuff

And a bunch of other stuff I can't think of rn off the top of my head!! Idk how to end these sooooo interact if you like any of these!!

[tamaki-ako]

the magical revolution of the reincarnated princess and the genius young lady | episode 12

[lrandconkdors]

Why does Netflix seem to be silently devolving the way audio and subtitle settings work? Years ago, I could simultaneously watch an anime with the official sub whilst listening to its dub. But then newer titles made it so that if you switch the audio, it changes the options for the subtitles. You may see an ‘English’ option on both, but the meaning changes from “English translation” to “English audio’s captions.”

And just recently, the service suddenly doesn’t save separate language settings for each anime you follow? If I choose to watch Dandadan dubbed and Ranma 1/2 in Japanese, I have to open up the audio settings at the start of every new episode? And toggle the subs?! Okay I swear changing to English audio used to automatically turn CC off! What the heck!

[cherry-valentine]

Winter 2024 Anime Season

I didn’t do write ups for the Fall 2023 season because I was only watching two shows and they were just new seasons of shows I’ve written about multiple times before (Dr. Stone and Spy x Family) so I didn’t feel the need. Both were great. I’ll just leave it at that.

Mr. Villain’s Day Off is one of my favorites this season. Following a stereotypical Tokusatsu villain on his not so typical days off from villain work, the show is a tender hearted comedy without a single mean bone in its body. The humor here is more subtle and situational than the usual fast paced slapstick we often see in anime. As a result, the story actually has a heart. The main character, usually just called Shogun (reflecting his status in the villainous organization), spends his days at “work” fighting a team of Power Ranger-like heroes (each of whom actually get some decent characterization and cute moments, especially the perpetually lost Red) and plotting the destruction of humanity so that his race of aliens can take over the planet. But he spends his days off visiting the zoo to see the animals he’s come to adore: pandas. The charm of this extremely charming show is primarily in the contrast between the violent villain who wants to wipe out humanity and the quiet, good natured man who loves pandas and is genuinely enjoying learning about earth and human customs. The art is very nice, nothing too fancy but it serves the story well. The music is soothing. Overall it’s a very sweet and comforting series that wisely avoids going over the top with the comedy and never really drains its primary joke (villain who loves pandas) too much. Recommended (though you’ll definitely get more enjoyment out of this show if you’re at least vaguely familiar with Tokusatsu tropes).

A Sign of Affection is an incredibly sweet and gentle shoujo romance about a young deaf woman named Yuki and the relationship she forms with Itsuomi, a handsome guy from her college who knows several languages and decides to learn sign language after meeting her. There’s been a bit of a trend lately that I’m totally here for: shoujo romances that are wholesome and healthy. Though I definitely enjoy the drama of more spicy shows, it’s also very nice to relax and watch something that’s not going to piss me off. A Sign of Affection is very careful with its romance. Characters behave in more natural, mature ways. There are fewer misunderstandings and the ones we get are completely understandable. It’s just nice to see healthy, equal, consensual relationships. Because those are the ones I want to root for. Yuki’s disability is handled with delicacy and tact. We see her limitations and struggles but we also see her living a full and happy life. The art style is very typical for high quality shoujo. Lots of pastels and gentle, natural designs. The animation is fluid enough for a show like this, and the music fits it well. Recommended if you like romance.

Cherry Magic is a BL (Boys Love) series that continues the fairly recent trend of non toxic BL anime (that started with shows like Given and Sasaki and Miyano). Cherry Magic centers on Adachi, a shy man who discovers he has magical powers after hitting age 30 while still being a virgin. The power? To read the mind of anyone he touches. Out of curiosity he touches his handsome, popular coworker Kurosawa and finds out Kurosawa is in love with him. Once upon a time, nearly every BL anime that came out was full of toxic relationships and, I’ll call it a “strained relationship with consent”. There’s been a lot of discussion over the years about why that was and how people felt about it, but I for one (a straight cis woman, so take my opinion with a grain of salt) always found those aspects to be uncomfortable. Thankfully, like with shoujo romance, modern series have been moving away from abusive relationships with (very) dubious consent. Cherry Magic is refreshing, mainly in that the two leads are 30 and they actually form a very sweet and equal relationship. It’s a very slow burn romance, but it works well here. The art isn’t anything amazing. The character designs are rather generic and the animation quality dips noticeably after the first episode. But the music is nice and the writing is strong enough to carry the show. Recommended.

High Card season two is, so far, a bit of a letdown. Following a group of people using magic playing cards to give them special powers as they try to gather all the cards, the first season was a blast. The characters were fun and the plot, while occasionally getting a little dark, was overall upbeat and energetic. Season two is fine. I’m enjoying it and it’s had a few great episodes, but the pacing just feels off. Some episodes feel disjointed, and just when it seems like the plot is getting tense and urgent, things come to a screeching halt to have backstory or even side story episodes. To be clear, it’s still a very good anime, but so far the second season is failing to live up to the first. The art and animation are still great and the music is too (though the opening and ending themes just don’t compare to the absolute bangers of season one). Definitely still worth watching for the colorful, lively characters alone.

The Demon Prince of Momochi House is a very pretty supernatural shoujo series about an orphaned girl named Himari inheriting a house from a family she never knew, only to find it already occupied by a trio of handsome young men, two of whom are not actually human. It turns out Himari’s new house sits on the border between worlds, and one of the young men, Aoi, is tasked with guarding that border. The plot is fairly episodic, and the show’s main weakness is that it feels very familiar and predictable. The basic setup of “bright cheerful girl with no family moves in with supernatural hot guys” is not new. But it’s a common setup for a reason: it’s charming and fun. The art and design are very pretty. The music is a high point, with my favorite opening theme of the season. It’s a cute show. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s still a fun ride.

Sengoku Youko is a fantasy action series focusing a pair of traveling “siblings” (not related by blood) consisting of Tama (a fox spirit) and Jinka (a human who hates other humans and wants to become a spirit creature). Traveling with them is a young human man named Shinsuke who wants to be a swordsman. The plot is fairly episodic, with the siblings mostly wandering into dangerous situations involving spirit creatures. There’s an overarching plot about a human religious sect that’s been doing experiments to combine humans with spirit creatures, but that’s usually in the background of the other adventures and serves to provide villains. The characters are overall interesting and fun, and a few of them even avoid falling into the usual fantasy anime tropes, or flip those tropes around enough to be interesting. The fights are exciting, even if the powers and abilities aren’t always made clear. It’s nice that there are plenty of powerful lady characters as well. The art and animation are nice, and the music is great. The ending theme is hauntingly beautiful, and my favorite of the season by far.

[kyatapiragifs]

SHY, episode 7

[canmom]

animes 2023

i didn't watch a ton of seasonals but i watched more than usual so... looking back? very somewhat brief comments! obviously inspired by @kbnet doing the same.

Tengoku Daimakyou

fave anime this year was probably Tengoku Daimakyou. easily the one that stood out the most from an animation perspective, the wonky brain transplant gender thing was a lot of fun, and for better or worse i seem to have now trained a pretty high tolerance for an impactful but questionably necessary sexual assault subplot in the finale.

I kinda get it, it'd been telegraphing a fascination with what makes gender, with power and exploitation, and in general the difficult experience of sexuality from pretty early on. there's a lot of ways that Robin could turn out to have clay feet when we meet him. they went for about the nastiest possible; that episode becomes a bit of a rape-revenge plot. the real question will be how they handle the aftermath.

and honestly? I am really looking forward to where it goes. I'm intrigued by what will happen to the psychic kids, I'm enjoying the main pair's meandering journey. it can deliver an impactful episode plot that hits hard, but it also definitely feels like it has narrative momentum towards something.

technically it stayed insanely strong throughout: the characters are distinctive and expressive, the animation is super lively, the backgrounds gorgeous. love to see Production I.G. firing on all cylinders like this.

Oshi no Ko

Oshi no Ko from the same season was also very solid, like it definitely dangles a pretty wacky premise, but it turns into this very earnest thing about acting and the many tensions and violences of the entertainment industry. Since watching that I've read all the manga that's available in scanlation, and it's a pretty direct beat for beat adaptation, but it's interesting how pacing that felt kinda laboured in the anime felt a lot snappier in the manga.

Probably the most interesting challenge for the animators was how to take a story that really hinges on the question of what makes for good and bad acting and make it convincing in animation. In the end, they still rely a lot on framing and symbolic elements like the star eyes to get it across, but there's still some really key moments where the animated acting shines.

I was curious enough to start reading Kaguya-sama: Love Is War by the same author and it didn't do a lot. I wanna check out the anime though bc it seems to be really highly respected.

16-Bit Sensation: Another Layer

16Bit Sensation has a lot of endearing aspects. The mc is endearing for her big himejoshi energy even if they're blatantly angling to push her together with the guy. The wilder turns taken at the end are fun (a lot to be dug into with the 'what if moe evolved in the states' thing) although it kind of quickly falls into a pretty conventional hero-villain save the day thing. I liked the yuri-lite subplot with the girl who the protag helps to buy some eroge who then becomes a gamedev herself. The concept can be read as a fascinating kind of CCRU thing with the concept of moe reaching back in time to create itself. That could be fun if you delved into it more.

If there's one thing it's kind of lacking it's like... any actual details on PC98 game dev, which mostly happens in offscreen montages. I was watching it with a friend who's a real big nerd for old computers so it was fun to share that with her, but ultimately the most it has to say about the actual games is that the girls are cute (one of them says uguu) and also dithering is a thing. The finale involves this escalating gag about strapping PC98s together in parallel to make increasingly unlikely compute stacks, which is fun but also it's kind of just using the PC98 as a symbol at that point as you get further and further from the actual capabilities of the machine.

What is that symbol? There's an odd kind of quiet nationalism in it. The significance of the PC98 is that it was the last successful home computer to be made domestically in Japan; likewise the stakes of the finale are the culture of Akihabara as an otaku space, with the alternative being gentrified blocks of flats and American cultural domination. I haven't had a chance to see the finale yet so I'm wondering how they're gonna resolve it. I feel you could do a lot more with the ideas they raise in this alternate timeline, but it's playing pretty loose at this point with a very protagonist centric story, so it can't really get into them.

Trigun Stampede

Can't say too much about this one because I only saw half and I was watching it unsubbed for immersion practice, and it was a bit beyond my level. It's interesting from a character design trends perspective. Orange are undoubtedly the kings of 3DCG anime, but I didn't like the lighting style here as much as I did Houseki. Need to watch this again at some point subbed.

NieR Automata ver 1.1a

Hard to know what to say here. This was one of several big production collapses of 2023 - a two cour anime that went on a long hiatus before finishing even one. I kind of fell off at that point, so I still need to finish it.

I went in with a sense of trepidation. I didn't like what I'd seen of the designs and photography, and the first episode seemed to confirm my worst fears, with some incredibly shoddy CGI and weak action. Thankfully, the later episodes all improve on matters a great deal.

This would be a terrible substitute for the game, but as a companion piece, it's pretty cool - it jumps between the main beats and fleshes out some of the side characters, or focuses on some odd poignant little stories. I was honestly surprised how many notes it could hit. Of course, Keiichi Okabe's music does a lot of heavy lifting - the animation is sometimes strong (if a bit melty) but I don't love the designs and photography style in general. Still this anime grew on me a lot and I do mean to finish it - it's NieR after all, practically a religious obligation at this point.

Attack on Titan: The Final Season: The Final Chapters: Part 1: Dream Drop Distance

lol

So like a year ago I watched through Attack on Titan with mogs, came to a somewhat questionable redemptive reading of it as not being the fashiest anime ever but charting a rather muddled break from a nationalist worldview into more of a Gundam type story of enemies putting aside their differences, the futility of military sacrifice, etc etc. (we later watched Tanya the Evil, continually waiting for the other shoe to drop with it being straight up a nazi propaganda power fantasy - it never did, that anime is straight up irredeemable lmao). anyway I said at the time that the finale would confirm or deny my interpretation of what it's about, determined by the question of how it addresses Eren's ideological turn. I think I was maybe out waaaaay on a limb with all this shit lmao. ngl mostly I watched this cartoon because the story is so deranged and I want to see for myself what insane turns the guy will pull next.

Anyway MAPPA spent a lot of animators on this, bc they're MAPPA, so it naturally had some very impressive scenes. Any sort of thematic resolution was still deferred and I'm 99% sure it's gonna be some sort of pathetic copout... oh apparently they released the finale like two months ago lmao, guess I'll finally get to find out. What a weird franchise to have driven the 2010s anime boom honestly.

Magical Destroyers

I really wanted to like this one more than I did. A lot of anime these days feels very sanded down and predictable, and whatever it is, Magical Destroyers definitely isn't that. It has a great OP that writes a lot of cheques that the show itself sadly isn't really up to paying...

...and there's a lot that's interestingly odd about it; it's got this cheerfully enthusiastic attitude towards explicit sexuality, it's got a very online weeb sense of humour, it honestly kind of feels like of if the people who do 'Otaku Vs.' on youtube got to make a series.

Anyway at some point I saw a 20 minute summary of the rest:

The explanation behind all this turns out to be: the creator is a 24 year old Japanese-American guy who's spent half his life in California, skating and drawing for clothing brands and DJing and stuff like that after he didn't make it as a mangaka at first, and somehow his connections turned into an anime deal. Ostensibly Undertale was an inspiration although it's not entirely clear how. The result is something incredibly disjointed that doesn't go anywhere, with incomprehensible meta turns and barely existent characterisation, but it certainly stands as something different.

Zom100

I watched this because Sakugablog covered it. It's very nicely animated for sure, with great use of saturated colour, but I dropped it after three or four episodes because I couldn't connect to the power fantasy, the only girl was way too overdetermined by being the obvious love interest, and it really didn't seem to be going anywhere. Also the flight attendant episode just felt mean-spirited, especially how little impact it seems to leave on our protagonists. I get that the whole point is the MC's sunny attitude being completely at odds with the apocalyptic setting, but I ended up finding him grating.

There's also some unfortunate irony in the fact that after the pointed jabs at the animators' former studio OLM in the first ep, they apparently ended up crunching pretty hard by the end.

and...

Damn is that really all I watched this year? Still haven't seen a few much-hyped ones like the Scott Pilgrim anime or Frieren. I guess mostly I watch stuff through Animation Night still...

As far as movies: Boy and the Heron/How Do You Live only just came out in the UK, gonna see it in a week. Haven't seen Suzume yet, or the whiskey one, or The Concierge. I wrote my comments on Kaina of the Great Snow Sea (disappointing), Tunnel to Summer: The Exit of Goodbyes (decent summer movie), Lonely Castle in the Mirror (solid and affecting) and The First Slam Dunk (actually incredible, made me understand sports) during Annecy - technically most of those came out last year anyway lol. Apparently there's a new Psycho-Pass movie too! When Psycho-Pass is good it's great, so I'll give that a shot.

Outside of anime - been meaning to check out some TV donghua like Link Click; also very excited to dig into Scavenger's Reign. I'll certainly report back when I do.

Animation Night's kinda fallen apart in the last few months - it would happen sooner or later, the project has kinda run its course and achieved "social connection" and "speedrunning an education in animation history" lol. but I'm glad I've kept it going as long as I have. I'm gonna try and bring it back in the new year, it would be nice to reach that big 200 before I wrap it up for good.

Thanks for reading my blog, nerds!! Let's see if I can make 2024 the year I go from just talking about animation to making my own short films.

[mimikyuno]

yoru no kurage wa oyogenai | jellyfish can’t swim in the night op 🪼