#someone update the english wiki it is kinda sad

[cloudytian]

Yatadera Narumi’s hat

A lot of people use “天空” (sky/heavens) for the center text on Narumi’s hat because that's what’s most intuitive, especially given that a) the title of th16 is 天空璋 and b) the bulk of fanart was immediately after release and people hadn’t found all the references yet, but that has of course now been rectified (The Chinese Touhou wiki generally has a lot of information, and even the Google translated page is surprisingly readable at times).

The text reads「迷故三界城　悟故十方空　本來無東西　何處有南北 」,  which makes the visible parts "南北," "方空," and "西無." 

...But I wasn’t satisfied with just that, so I did some more digging!

First, Jizo statues are often adorned in red bibs (like the one Narumi wears) and knitted hats for a variety of reasons: to help ward off disease and evil, to represent generosity and goodwill towards pilgrims and travelers, to convey gratitude for the protection of children, and to help the souls of deceased children in the afterlife. 

However, as we see in this picture here, some of them are wearing distinctly out-of-place straw hats instead of warm winter hats!

This is because of the popular Japanese folktale of the Hatted Jizo, wherein a poor man goes to sell some cloth on New Year’s Eve but ends up exchanging his cloth for five straw hats after taking pity on a man trying to sell them out of season. On his way home, he spots six Jizo statues out in the cold and covers five of them with the straw hats, giving his own hat to the sixth. He goes home empty-handed but his wife isn’t upset because she takes it as proof of his generosity, and the six Jizo come to reward the kindly couple the next evening. Narumi’s straw hat covered in snow is probably an allusion to this legend. 

The hat, text and all, is also part of the traditional uniform for pilgrims undergoing the Shikoku Pilgrimage, a 1000 km route of 88 temples associated with the Buddhist monk Kōbō-Daishi. Pilgrims embarked on the journey knowing fully well that it could kill them, and wore white clothing to serve as their burial shroud should they die on their journey. According to these articles, the inscription on their hats (called sugegasa) were traditionally written on priests’ coffins. By writing the same phrases on their hats, pilgrims could use them as makeshift caskets in case they died on their journey. This practice was common enough for the inscription to be included in a pilgrimage guidebook published in 1690.

If the “Narumi was brought to life by Marisa/Alice messing around and putting the hat on her head in IN” theory turns out to be true, this ends up serving as an extra bit of irony as an item sending off the dead would end up bringing something to life, but either way it ties into Jizo’s role as a boddhisattva who works to ease the suffering of the dead and help their passage into the afterlife.

Anyhow, the actual text itself is a poem, and so you can’t translate it directly and have to interpret it, and I wasn’t feeling too confident about that. Luckily for us, this lecture here seems to know what it’s talking about!

迷故三界城 - “Bewilderment [is akin to being lost] in the City of Three Realms.”

This refers to the three realms of existence categorized by Buddhist cosmology. 迷 and 悟 are central concepts in Buddhism, referring to the states of being lost and enlightened respectively. The former is the state of living beings, and the latter is what they strive for. This line uses being lost in a city as a metaphor the standard state of all those not on the path to enlightenment meandering through the cycle of reincarnation across the three realms.

悟故十方空 - “Enlightenment [is as if there] is emptiness ten directions.”

“Ten directions“ is a poetic turn of phrase that means “everywhere,“ as it encompasses the four cardinal directions, the four intermediate directions and the vertical directions of above and below in our physical world. As Buddhist enlightenment asserts that suffering is borne from attachment to the material world, this line describes the state of enlightenment as “emptiness in all directions“ because nothing in our physical realm holds meaning, placing it in contrast to the material city of the previous line.

本來無東西 , 何處有南北 - “Originally there was no East or West, so where do South and North exist?”

This further separates the state of enlightenment from the physical realm, renouncing the divisions of direction altogether. As directions are defined by the positioning of the “self” in relation to the material world, it imposes an attachment to the physical form through the perception of worldly creatures that does not exist in the intrinsic nature of reality, but is rather a worldly preconception that must be abandoned to achieve enlightenment. This again ties back to the metaphor of the city, as it eliminates the physical directions necessary for the conception of being lost.

(Yes, all of this is conveyed by 20 characters. English really is inefficient.)

So basically, it describes abandoning worldly attachments to attain enlightenment, which pretty much is the gist of all Buddhist poetry.

...The poem itself really has nothing in particular to do with Narumi, it’s just for the aesthetics of the Jizo motif. ZUN probably went “There are Jizo statues in straw hats, and there’s a special straw hat that’s extra Buddhist, and has connotations of giving someone a peaceful death! I’ll combine the two and frustrate fans by covering the text in snow and wait for them to figure it out.” But the hat is a staple of henro clothing and yet I couldn’t find any record of the poem in English, so I thought I might as well put it here.

[xtremedespair3d]

Anime Fall 2019 Final Impressions + Plans for Winter 2020 [FINAL]

Before I start reviewing every anime I watched this season, I want to address this first: As the title suggest, this is gonna be my last post, but not my last post overall (as I’m still working on my 2019 review with a little bit of my history from the last 10 years to celebrate the end of 2010 and the start of 2020), this is the last post of the seasonal anime review series.

This may be a one-time thing since it’s the last post, but I’m gonna keep my opinions as short as possible because, here’s a story: right after I published my previous Summer 2019 anime review post, I started by sharing my post on a Discord server, someone pinged me about reading my post I just shared as well as my retirement post (finally, someone who reads my stuff), I later started talking about my issues with making these posts, such as inconsistent formatting, don’t really have much opinion on what I saw or looking forward to, and my least favorite: post-publish editing, about the part of not having much thought on the shows I watch or gonna watch next, this guy from the Karoshi Discord server who atually read my previous Summer anime review post responded with this:

Well, I’ll gladly try not to write lengthy paragraphs when in reality I don’t really have much to comment, but at the same time, it’s going to be rather weird how there’s one entry with little to no comments and another with lengthy paragraphs whenever I actually feel like commenting. I’ve always been forcing myself to make lengthy paragraphs because I needed to make these posts look even as much as possible. (And I still ended up having a little bit of forced opinions, but at the same time, there are some small things that I needed to get it out of my heart, and there are other lengthy things for the same reason)

However, there are some things that I do really feel like making lengthy reviews, so I’ll point them out with a * representing “Lengthy review written by heart.”

The only things I ended up having no commentary at all were three anticipated anime in contrast to literally everything else which I still ended up making lengthy posts, though I guarantee some of these were from heart.

(Let me know if I should change my ShareX image quality settings to .png or .jpg because I’ve been using .jpg for a while and now I started to notice that the quality is absolute crap. I should have pasted it when I cropped it for sure, but I just wanted to formally upload this, so I can make this post look “formal”, even though there’s a little bit of informal writing, sometimes.)

(Also, check the end of the post for my birthday thanks)

Ranking every anime I watched this season from best to worst

I should also address why I do these posts from top to bottom even though it should be the other way around, it’s because I like keeping track of what’s my highest and what’s my lowest, although now that I think about it, I should have made outlines of these lists and the moment I start making these posts, I could go from the lowest to the highest like many sites do, but whatever. Also, if that wasn’t enough, the thumbnails already spoil what’s my #1 AOTS.

Let’s get right to the rankings!

1.- Azur Lane: The Animation*: I’m super addicted to Azur Lane, I even play it a lot more than FGO, and when the anime was announced, I defintely was absolutely hyped for it! And now, it’s finally here and boy, it absolutely didn’t disappoint! So let’s get right to it! (Also, expect me to draw comparisons with Kancolle a lot. inb4 y’all gonna tell me “Try to bring Warship Girls for better comparison” and all that jazz and honestly, I don’t even care about lesser known shipfus properties as much as I do with Kancolle and Azur Lane)

For starters, the anime uses the “Azur Lane vs Red Axis” storyline which is a reference to the guild menu.

(Screenshot from the Azur Lane Wiki with the old UI)

(My screenshot of the guild menu with the new UI, for comparison)

As someone who always plays Azur Lane a lot, this is one thing I overlooked for the most part and I feel kinda stupid for it.

There’s just like a ton of easter eggs I understood, I could make posts after posts from each episode or just make like a compilation post about every single easter egg from the game in every episode, I was literally geeking out on all of them.

The animation wasn’t the greatest, sadly, and even Kancolle looked better than Azur Lane does, but I’m not really mad about it nor I care! Even so, there were still some interesting sakuga moments! However, for the last time about the visuals, Kancolle has a uniformal character designs (calling them same faces would be a stretch), but Azur Lane does a pretty good job on capturing the different art styles the characters have, at least from their facial structures. It’s still no Chain Chronicle-tier (nor there will be anything with the same animation and character designs as the Chain Chronicle OVAs EVER!), but I’m impressed!

Speaking of the animation, episodes 11 and 12 will be delayed UNTIL MARCH while the entire series will be rebroadcast in January so we could lead up to the finale episodes in March. Well that’s certainly going to be quite a while to wait but they’re doing this to deliver the best animated finale episodes as possible, so I’m totally down for it!

Perhaps my big problem with the story is that the subplot focused more on trying to befriend Ayanami and there wasn’t much of Z23, but I think it’s more like they’re pulling from the JP server’s starter ship roster with Javelin, Laffey and Ayanami while Z23 is an unlockable. But it doesn’t matter, we do not point out issues or think of what I didn’t like which I had no problems, it always leave me a sour taste in what I’ve always been hyped for, so forget what I said.

Not to mention there are a little bit of elements that are completely new in the series and I wish they added them in the game, like Kaga’s giant fox ship and Unicorn’s flying U-chan (I didn’t know U-chan lives, I thought it was a simple lifeless stuffed animal), Hornet and Laffey in swimsuits (Come on, Manjuu, give them these swimsuits), etc.

The anime is also making me like some characters more, I kinda like Sheffield more because she’s badass (and doesn’t wear panties), but I’m liking Belfast a lot more than I have before, her chemistry with Enterprise is just amazing, I really love seeing these two together.

To top it all off, the first volume of the Blu-Ray has a really awesome unlockable of a new Enterprise costume! Which I’ll probably never get of course because I don’t think I could ever buy the BD.

I also didn’t know I needed and find it strange to hear English dub in the anime when the game has 100% Japanese voices, and I really wonder how much of the VAs know about this game and if they play it themselves (I’m sure they might not). This is a common thing with mobage adaptations (and even Kancolle), and Azur Lane is no exception.

Azur Lane The Animation is truly a love letter to the people who play the game, especially me because boy, I couldn’t stop pointing out references galore! It’s sad that the series only has 12 episodes, but I really hope it gets second seasons and even a movie like Kancolle did... Alright, what I’m saying is that I want Azur Lane The Animation to straight-up copy Kancolle The Animation. (Speaking of which, season 2 of Kancolle The Animation is coming and it’s an absolute joke that it’s happening) I want more storylines, I want more ships, I want more Azur Lane anime to exist!

But if this is really gonna be a one-off series, I’ll be forever sad because I won’t get more animated Azur Lane related stuff, I want to see everything being brought to life. Since it’s a big franchise right now, I hope it could get the Fate/Grand Order treatment where there should be different anime by different studios, that’s what I’d love to see!

UPDATE - December 24th: It seems like my dream of more Azur Lane anime is finally becoming true, as they announced an adaptation of the 4koma series!

10/10 - 100% - Rank: S++, I don’t give a shit about what anyone might say about the series’ story or even the animation, I just loved it!

(I’m glad I don’t visit 4chan and I have seen nothing but praise towards Aur Lane The Animation (mostly from Japanese people to see negative comments everywhere so my mind becomes broken and giving me the idea that the general consensus being the series is absolutely terrible, inb4 I share this and tell me otherwise.)

2.- Girls’ Frontline Healing Chapter (JP)*: Yes, I know I already talked about it on my last post, but it’s the Japanese dub we’re talking about and it’s relatively solid. However, there are quite some big changes, starting with the first episode where there’s more sound effects to the battlefield scene where it made the CN version feel poor in comparison, future episodes were having slight changes to the camera as well. Although there are things in the Japanese dub’s acting and scripting that I’m not really satisfied with, but it was still good regardless. Also, forget about “English sub vs dub”, now it’s “Chinese dub vs Japanese dub” now. Though the last few episodes didn’t have much of big changes, other than Chinese text written to Japanese.

The most important thing I have to talk about are these weird post-credits scenes, I have no idea what do these scenes even mean, maybe they just made these scenes as fillers to fill the maximum 4-5 minute run on Japanese TV.

Also, I have to go back to the CN version because, at the time when the first episode of the JP dub aired, the CN dub premiered its final episode and my god, I’m really sad this is over. And now we’re moving on to the other series, Madness Chapter (which you’ll find out as you scroll down this). Man, I really want more of this, I love the art style, but I wish some characters had more screentime and let RO shine!

Goodbye Healing Chapter, it was nice knowing you! ;_;7

Supposedly ShouKin (one of the uploaders for the two Girls’ Frontline anime series, the other being Berizou) found that season 2 for Healing Chapter was confirmed. Sounds awesome but I think I’ll have to wait for more and reliable information about it. Not that ShouKin is not a reliable source, but I really hope we get to hear more of it.

10/10 - 100% - Rank: S++ (Even with the JP dub, you continue to be great)

3.- High Score Girl II*: Supposedly I’ve always been following Moetron’s news about its release and I thought the first 3 episodes were gonna come out on my birthday, it indeed happened in Japan but there has never been any torrent of them and I was seriously disappointed about it! It came out like late October and I was like “What took you so long for this to come out or something?”, there might have been stuff I may have missed that explain these weird releases.

Anyways, moving on talking about the series and all I can think of is that the series continues to give me a big smile, seriously, every time I watch High Score Girl, I always smile for 24 minutes, that’s how powerful this show must be. (Even though everything shown is from the 90s and I was born in 1999, so I’m a 2000s kid, so I probably won’t have any idea of its historical accuracies and references).

Seriously, out of everything JC Staff they made this year, including the absolute garbage that was One Punch Man season 2, High Score Girl is obviously the winner for their best looking anime of the year!

100/100 - 100% - Rank: S++

4.- Fate/Grand Order Babylonia: For the last time, Fate anime adaptations have become quite a hot sensitive topic for me since 2017′s Fate/Apocrypha and 2018′s Fate/Extra Last Encore (And I enjoyed them both), but with Fate/Grand Order Babylonia, I’m qutie impressed, especially with the animation. This is probably the only two-cour series consisting of 21 episodes, it’s a weird number but it’s decent enough, and it’s a very long chapter of the game.

The Type-Moon community seems pretty hateful on other Fate series adaptations, but they’re very chill with Ufotable’s Stay Night adaptations, and nobody really seems to complaint with the New Year’s content and I’m glad for it. (Which by the way, the New Year’s stuff continue to be great! I definitely want it to be a tradition forever.)

5.- Tokunana: This was a relatively fun cop drama with stellar performances, and perhaps it was definitely the most underrated show of the season. The art style reminds me of Shirow Miwa in a way as well.

8/10 - 84% - Rank: A

6.- Beastars: I don’t know much about the story, but my big focus is the animation. Orage continues to deliver great CG animation post-Houseki no Kuni but it suffers the same problems as Sanzigen with the hand-drawn background characters and that shit is seriously annoying.

8/10 - 82% - Rank: A-

Between Beastars and High Score Girl II, I wanted HSGII to be the better looking CG series without blatant hand drawn parts, but I guess it even includes hand drawn parts at times, so having to find which CG anime look better is a hard stretch, perhaps I’m asking too much on what kind of CG anime do I want. Also, I hate to admit, I have to give props to Studio Polygon because they definitely make everything 100% CG. (Or do they? Gah! I don’t know anymore!)

7.- My Hero Academia season 4: Well, I read the manga, it’s no surprising about what even happened with these arcs. (even though when I’m at the current chapters, I forget what happened the previous volumes).

7.5/10 - 75% - Rank: B+

8.- Psycho-Pass 3*: If Tokunana wasn’t enough of a cop drama, then here comes Psycho-Pass 3 which it’s the true definition of a cop drama with the 40 minute runtime.

As someone who wasn’t really offended on Psycho-Pass 2, I’ll have to assume that Psycho-Pass 3 is definitely a breath of fresh air for the series after the movies, perhaps even more.

I’m glad that most of the familiar faces have returned, although it was probably always expected, but there’s just something about Akane, Ginoza and Kogami’s returns from the first few episodes that made me fanboy a little bit, not gonna lie. It’s just that I was really stuck to the marketing and promotional images of the series.

If Psycho-Pass 3 is still somewhat received negatively like Psycho-Pass 2, I don’t know what do you really want from this franchise at this point. At this point you’re definitely thinking that Psycho-Pass should have been a one-off series, but no, most of the fans begged for a second season and so on, they delivered. Don’t try to mess with the creators’ efforts and stuff.

Though my only problem with this season is that I wish the original characters had some more screentime, and then episode 8 didn’t really feel conclusive but I guess that helped to lead up to the upcoming film--which turned out to be a compilation film which gives me a sour taste in my mouth. However, it does confirm that it will indeed conclude the story, for a “compilation film” I don’t know how that might work, but if it’s indeed gonna conclude the story, that’s the main thing I wanted to hear.

7.5/10 - 75% - Rank: B+

First there are anime with 40 minute premieres, movies are a different thing, but a full-fledged TV anime series with a 40 minute runtime? That sure kinda sounds revolutionary but at the same time it’s a total overkill for animators. Besides, I never have the energy to watch anything in 40 minutes, so let’s keep things the way they are with usually having to watch anime series in 20 minutes.

9.- Phantasy Star Online 2 Episode Oracle*: You think that a PSO2 anime that’s actually set in the game’s universe and it’s more serialized could be better than PSO2: The Animation? Well, part of it yeah. But for me, honestly, this was WAY WORSE than PSO2: The Animation for one major reason: This was absolutely rather dark and I wasn’t too comfortable with it.

The animation is kind of alright, it’s not very great but at least Gonzo has definitely improved since the maximum garbage that was 18if.

Is the actual game this dark? Even if I haven’t really seen any story mode (?) cutscenes, from what I’ve seen, I just don’t see it in that light. I haven’t played the JP version (I’d like to but I have difficulties with the download) but I am gonna try to play the English version next year (Can’t believe it’s finally happening).

I just read on MAL that it does adapt these episodes from the actual game but they have anime original content in the process, since I’m not a PSO2 player, I really can’t say for sure if it is indeed faithful but with the anime original stuff, but if it is, well shit.

Surprisingly I haven’t seen some friends I know who play PSO2 talk about Episode Oracle. They have talked about PSO2: The Animation when it came out and they certainly hate it but I can defintely tell they don’t watch Episode Oracle at all (I think it’s for the best).

Anyways, I want to forget this garbage and I want to go back to PSO2: The Animation, it wasn’t that offensively bad after all.

(As of the writing in November 11th, Firefox crashed and I wrote parts of this review a little differently, so I had to rewrite it and it might be different from what I remember, but it’s still decent)

5.5/10 - 53% - Rank: C-

10.- Girls’ Frontline Madness Chapter: Now that Healing Chapter is over, it was time to move on to Madness Chapter, and with the first episode alone... I wasn’t feeling it at all, I’m not super impressed.

Quick info drop, this series is an adaptation of Girls’ Frontline’s in-game 4koma which can be found in the Cafe, though I only play the English version and I assume that the Chinese and Korean servers must have the 4komas like on volume 10 or so.

With that being said about that Madness Chapter adapts the 4koma, there’s just something really off about the animation, it’s just that it’s way too quirky and over the top. It looks more like it’s the true definition of a Chinese anime or something, not for the dub, but for the talent.

Though I have to say, the last few episodes have been really growing on me, but my first impressions will probably remain.

Once Healing Chapter in Japanese ends, I’m definitely expecting Madness Chapter to have Japanese dub as well.

4.5/10 - 45% - Rank: C--

11.- Granblue Fantasy season 2*: A second season with an absolute stepback on animation and decent storyline, everything else is rather forgettable. The Vira episodes were interesting but I couldn’t get myself to care for everything else.

I seriously don't like the new animation at all. A-1 did a very good job on how it looks, but even so, people seem to hate the first season, so the animation in S2 is an absolute downgrade and won't do any favors for me. As for the story so far, I can't really tell if this is from the actual game's campaign (like I said, I stopped at Chapter 17), but I guess it's alright. The most absurd thing about this is that armored characters like the Empire solders and even Apollo are all CG and they look terrible. (Were they CG in the first season too? I can't remember already).

I'm not really one who should be like those "These people shouldn't make cashgrab adaptations doing the story from the very start and instead spend all their money on making OVAs or whatever on their most popular events, like What Makes the Sky Blue?" nazis and I don't give much of a crap about it, but I do really feel like GBF shouldn't really need to be adapted from zero and instead just do any of their popular events or something. I mean, just look at FGO where they only did about one adaptation of the prologue and later they're adapting Babylonia and Camelot, the most popular chapters.

On October 26th, I made a small TwitLonger post detailing my complicated history with GBF and why I’m feeling like I want to walk away from it. (It’s kind of dumb really. And yes, the first paragraphs of this where I gave my first impressions with GBF S2 were straight-up copied from the post).

The most heartbreaking thing that happened in this series is that they showed a Halloween special on November 8th WITH THE FIRST SEASON’S ANIMATION, my god, look how better it was before they went to this crap! This is One-Punch Man season 2 all over again! (But certainly doesn’t top it)

3/10 - 31% - Rank: D

Overall:

Honorable mentions

BLACKFOX*: I barely had time to watch it exactly on my birthday, but when I saw it the next day, it was a relatively solid and entertaining comic book-like narrated film. Although it may not be the greatest film like I wanted, but it may be for the best because at the time, my brain was absolutely burned from seeing Joker last night to even care for everything else, it’s a masterpiece.

One problem I do have is Melissa, at the end of the film, we see Rikka, Mia and... surprisingly Melissa with a costume and everything. What’s the origin behind it? What about her character development?

I really hope there’s more Blackfox because the teaser at the end seems too good to pass to make a full-fledged series of it.

(Mia best girl.)

8/10 - 85% - Rank: B+

Fire Force: My opinion on the animation, at least in non-action moments, probably remain, but I really like these arcs more, not that I didn’t like the beginning arcs but I’m really liking this direction.

(I don’t know how to define “better” anymore without using “I like X better just because. It tops, it exceeds, etc.”)

7/10 - 72% - Rank: B

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Re;surrection*: This one’s a little funny because it’s a movie that came out about months ago, but it came out in Mexican theaters on October 11th, since it’s October and it falls into the Fall category (”Falls to Fall” lmao), I’ll have to include it.

Anyways, having watched the compilation films as a road to get into the Code Geass series, Lelouch of the Re;surrection was good, but it did get me confused at times, I have a lot of questions about what was going on, but the post-credits scene got me the most confused, I don’t know if it was meant to be a teaser, but the way this scene happened is kind of ambiguous.

Even though watching the compilation films may or may not be the best method to get into Code Geass, I had to do it so I could have saved time, if I were to watch the series, it would have taken me forever. Besides, Lelouch of the Re;surrection is from the compilation films’ canon, so it’s something, I guess.

Moving on, the most baffling thing I have to talk about are the technical issues in my cinema. Like around the beginning of the film, the part where Lelouch blows up Shesthaal, the audio cuts off, they had to pause the run of the film a couple of minutes and rewinded some. People in my cinema, while thankfully not very loud with whistles and all, were definitely complaining about the issue, while my older sister and I were just laughing silently and smh’ing.

8.5/10 - 85% - Rank: A-

Lupin the 3rd Prison of the Past: I genuinely didn’t expect there would be another Lupin the 3rd OVA. It’s been months since I saw Goodbye Partner.

It’s probably unintentional but something tells me that releasing this OVA now is like a lead-up to the Lupin the 3rd CG movie in December in Japan.

There’s one thing I’m not happy about is that there wasn’t a memorial for Monkey Punch or anything (but does that “Monkey” branded chewing gum count? Sounds a little insulting), or this might have been made a while before Monkey Punch passed away, but they should have included something like that.

8/10 - 80% - Rank: A

Anticipated

This is the last anime season of the decade and now we’re gonna reach the first lineup of new anime in the new decade. I of course wouldn’t watch literally every single anime in existence, like I always do with every season, but here are some of the very first anime of the 2020 decade I want to watch!

(I’m surprised no one is hyping up how we’re getting our first anime of the 2020 decade)

I should also try to keep track on everything I want to watch because I think I may forget when they’re gonna come out.

Quintessential Quintuplets season 2 - January ???: A few months ago I binged the series and I seriously can’t believe I slept on this, it was hilarious and pure at times, so I can’t wait to watch more. Though I haven’t read the manga (but I’d like to some day) but it’s enough for me to go blind and enjoy the series.

Speaking of the manga, the series will end on its 14th volume next year and we’re so close on that happening because volume 13 will be released in January 17th 2020. I’ll be sad to see this series go but I’m interested to see what the creator will make next and if the anime keeps getting new seasons, we might actually see the series finale get adapted.

[UPDATE - January 4th 2020: As of now, there hasn’t been any news about Quintessential Quintuplets S2 lately, no promos or anything. I think at this point it’s probably delayed until Spring.]

Heya Camp - January 6th: It may not be season 2 of Yuru Camp (yet) but I’m glad there’s going to be more coziness with the short series lifted from the previews from the base series.

Isekai Quartet season 2 - January 14th: I’m definitely hype for more Isekai Quartet and that teaser with the new classmates at the end of the first season finale is not to be wasted, and those new classmates happened to be Naofumi, Raphtalia and Filo from Rising of Shield Hero. As of the writing this in December 1st, I’m planning to binge Shield Hero, I have pretty much watched every isekai series featured in Isekai Quartet, so I don’t want to be left out with Shield Hero. Regardless of what I heard about the series, I’m still gonna watch it anyways. (Finished watching on December 5th and... DAMN, I REALLY LIKED IT. FUCK THEM SJWs!)

Bang Dream season 3 - January 23rd: It would have been amazing if Sangizen were to do the Bubuki Buranki thing with the first season in Winter and the second season in Fall, but they deserve to take their time.

Madoka Magica Magia Record - January 4th: Fall 2019 was quite stuffed with anime based on gacha, Fate/Grand Order Babylonia, Azur Lane The Animation and Granblue Fantasy The Animation, but Madoka Magica Magia Record is the one show based on the mobile game that decided to not to join the party and it’s kinda funny.

Nekopara - January 9th: That’s right, there’s going to be a full fledged Nekopara TV series now. This is the most unnecessary anime to exist since there already was a plethora of OVAs, there’s no need to make a TV series of the VN now. I don’t have time to rush through the VN if I want to buy it (Most likely from Steam and buy the adult patch too) but I don’t have the money to do it, well, it may depend from my interest and time to try to play it because I’m a bit behind with Saya no Uta.

Speaking of adult content, I’m expecting a bit of fan service somewhere because they wouldn’t do the full blown hentai scenes. Pretty standard VN adapation rules.

Dorohedoro - January 12th.

Danmachi OVA - January 29th.

ID:Invaded - January 5th.

Ishizoku Reviewers - January 11th: I seriously haven’t watched any ecchi series in a long time, and reading the synopsis alone, I’m really intrigued in checking this one out.

There’s quite of anime to look forward to in 2020 but I haven’t been keeping track on what do I want to watch, though I know some that may come in that year, but I’m not gonna get into that since this is just for Winter 2020, I’ll address that in my “10 year journey” post.

The future of the seasonal anime review series

Since this is my last seasonal anime review post in Tumblr, I’ll probably continue making lists either by tweeting them out or will have to make a Discord channel in my private server, but it’s probably more about anticipated shows, for seasonal reviews, I’ll have to do Tier Maker images, probably for the best because I’ve been making a bit of a weird inconsistencies with ranking shows with scores and ranks, so I’ll probably have to stick to only ranks with Tier Maker from now on.

Although to be honest, I’m not sure if anyone would really care about what am I gonna watch, did I like a show or not, but at the same time, I forget people do really care as they’re quite the show-offs and ofcourse discussions galore. So I think I’ll keep doing what I’m doing but in a more simple way.

And that’s it, we’re done here. This is the end of the seasonal anime review Tumblr post series, though nobody had really read these posts before, but I finally got my first audition with the Karoshi Discord server from the beginning of this post. I’ve had fun making these posts, even if lately I’ve been getting burnt out but I still enjoyed writing these.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, thank you for the birthday wishes, a day early and even on the very same day.

With a day early, particularly from my Japanese friends, especially you @hinosuna0720/@hinosuna3D21 (NSFW content, viewer discretion is advised) for giving me sweet images with my Custom Maid 3D2 OCs, and you even gifted me VA-11 HALL-A and I’m seriously grateful. I also want to congratulate @ryuuunnji for giving me a picture too.

And on the actual day, I want to thank for @SALthePAL95 making me drawings of my new OCs! And speaking of drawings, my older sister made me one too (but I won’t show it, sorry), it’s been a long time since she made me one... ;-;

And I, of course, want to thank everyone else who has given me birthday wishes!

This 20th birthday was definitely the best I’ve ever had in my life, I’ve had some really sweet surprises that I’ve always been looking for, and I wish my future birthdays continue to be this good, especially in the next decade.

(Not you @kirishima_ss. Thankfully it was a day after my birthday but, come on... (he blocked me)) 🖕🔪 (Although that did teach me a valuable lession: I’m not gonna promote my birthday literally every day ever again, because I was seriously getting pretentious)

Anyways, it’s time for making these Tumblr posts to stop, but alas, there’s one more Tumblr post to make, it’s a whole different topic but it’s extremely important, it’s super long but I hope you’ll understand. See you there. Also, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in advance.

Check out my Carrd.

My retirement announcement for one last reminder. (And just fixed it to make it more readable)

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Katsugeki 11 - 12 | Reflection 8 - 9 | Saiyuki Blast 11 | BnHA 36 | PriPri 11

Katsugeki 11

(about Yagen’s comment about former masters) What about Higekiri and Hizamaru, who’ve had so many masters they can’t remember their brothers’ names?

Apparently (reading spoilers, LOL) Tetsunosuke was assigned the voice of Junya Enoki. LOL, I can see why now.

“Embroiled” is probably the wrong word, Izuminokami. (LOL, now I’ve got the habit of calling Kane-san by first name…dangit, Mutsu. You did this to me!)

Geez, these Hijikata swords make saving history such a trainwreck…

Hmph, now that I realise it, I was planning something similar to this plot thread (the one where Kane-san and Horikawa go against each other) for one of my stories. It would be a spoiler to say which one it is, so I’ll keep mum about it.

I only just realised what the cloth was when Horikawa handed it to Kane-san – it’s Kane-san’s cape cloth.

No! Kane-san, I love you! Please don’t wreck Horikawa!

Odoroitaka?! (“Are you surprised?!”, Tsurumaru’s entry line) comes to mind when he mentions surprises.

My streaming service has decided to call Hakodate “Hokodate” (sic). Geez, people. Get stuff right.

Katsugeki 12

I still find it interesting that the swords can’t figure out when a friend is being transmitted or a foe.

Where’s Honebami and Mikazuki? I guess because the limit is six, Saniwa couldn’t use all of them, but still…Honebami is a precious boy.

I find it interesting that Yamanbagiri and co. still hold on to their identity as the first unit as one of power, rather than acknowledging the fact the first and second units are a hybrid now.

Reflection 8

The ending of the last ep was pretty sad, but not enough to evoke tears from me.

There’s some nice symbolic use of colour here.

I still have no idea why Eleanor is so devoted to X-On. Just…why?

Er…secret agent lady? It’s probably too late to make a move when Steel Ruler’s warped the streetlights.

So, to put it bluntly, Eleanor’s just a pawn in people’s games. (clearly sarcastic->) Great.Just what I wanted from a superhero story’s leading lady. (end sarcasm) Can we please get a leading lady with some better proactivity here?

“Notel” (sic). Someone get an editor in here too.

I still have no idea what “beef or fish” is meant to symbolically mean, since I suppose I’m missing some symbolic meaning here. Maybe it’s the fact the 9Nine girls are going to get plonked into the middle of the fray, not knowing who to trust?

Reflection 9

Can we please just hurry up and get the magical girls???

Did the staff just use about 15 – 30 seconds of recycled footage in the middle of the episode??? That’s just terrible, y’know?

Uh, bashing through the ceiling is one way to get there, Vy…I guess…?

Yikes, when X-On moved his head while being held by Big Wheel, it really showed how Deen was skimping on the animation in this show.

No wonder Eleanor is gasping, she’s facing Stan Lee!

Saiyuki Blast 11

The shaky camera really puts me off.

It’s interesting how CR sometimes only applies titles to episodes after they’re done waiting for the one week between paid and free to elapse. This ep’s called “Raid”, if you can’t see it.

Is it just me, or is Hakkai’s linework thicker, like Detective Conan in more recent days?

I guess the one with the most sense here is Hakuryuu, eh? LOL. Update: Dangit, Goku. You stole my line.

Why isn’t Goku-oh wait. The Seiten Taisei isn’t meant to be human or demon, that’s why.

That was a really pretty UraSai title, even if only because of the sakura.

I-I’m vaguely disturbed by how those guys (the rest of the Sanzo Ikkou) tried to eat Gojyo…

BnHA 36

Hmph. I was talking with some Boueibu-fan friends on Skype and apparently I’m pretty snarky…? Oh well, these are spur of the moment notes. (Seriously though, I should raid these notes for analysis “ammunition” more.)

Aw, it was so disappointing to learn the other students can’t hear what the examinees are talking about. That Deku/Uraraka moment would’ve been sweet.

(at Nedzu’s smashing) Oh, I get it. Kinda like a Rube Goldberg machine, with chain reaction effects and stuff. The Butterfly Effect, I believe its name is.

Oh hey. Nedzu experimentation, eh? Sounds like a bunch of characters I’ve written, but which ones have been experimented on are spoilers.

This is going to be interesting. I’ve never really seen much about Kouda, but he must be in class A for a reason. I know what his Quirk is due to the wiki, but…well, surprises are surprises.

According to the kanji that popped up on the screen, the pun is on the word mori (forest). I didn’t have the volume on so I don’t know what it is, but the English pun was actually a really good match! (It’s a specialised meaning of the word “arbour”, but it’s still one that works.)

“Aoyama likes himself.” – LOL, that boy is way too narcisstic. But by the by, 168 cm is kinda short, isn’t it? It should be short compared to Mezo Shouji, at least.

(when Mineta is cornered) Ah, now you can really see why Midnight is the R-Rated Hero…

“…save the boobs for another day.” - What the heck, Mineta. You actually made me laugh at your perviness.

When the Midoriya and Bakugo story comes to the fore, it reminds me why I write the underdog stories I do – One Wish and Future is Crimson are both based on the same story, of giving the hero something that they never previously got and showing them what they could do with it. Yeah, Midoriya! Fight, fight, fight!

Princess Principal 11

I have a feeling that Ange will pretend to be the princess and stage an assassination. After all, she actually is the princess.

Scott mentioned this exact sort of trope not too long ago – that trope where you break up the band, only to bring it back together again. I never realised how pervasive in media it was until this ep…

I just realised Gazelle’s contact is wearing an army cross of some variety. Probably something similar to a Victoria Cross.