It totally does that. At least the first season was very much worth powering through it.
It’s not full of action, but it’s not meant to be. It’s like a slice of life anime with ghosts and often-friendly monsters and things.
We watch it before sleeping, but we never fell into sleep watching it (unlike some obnoxiously loud stuff, ironically).
It is relaxing, but it is anything but boring.
Just passing by to say that I watched episode 3 of Violet Evergarden (which came out today) and I thought it was beautiful - in more ways than one.
So finished Knights of Sindodia and… well the second season has the problem Lost did. Too many moving parts and mysteries, too few paid off (or even remembered at the end). The whole Kunato thing, in particular, felt pointless.
It was solidly average, and short enough that if you are into mechs fighting monsters it’s worth a shot, but it feels like a rather unfinished story.
Land of the Lustrous - When I think of the shows that I’ve watched recently, I think I could come up with a pretty good elevator pitch for each of them to sell people on the show. However, when I try to think up one for this show, I get something like:
“A group of immortal girls that are actually genderless gemstones of varying hardness repel attacks from beings from the moon. Also, it’s CG.”
Yeah, that’s a tough sell and it took me awhile to get to watching it despite it being near or at the top of many best of lists of 2017. Glad I gave it a chance though, because it ended up being pretty great. The CG is used wonderfully and there is a real sense of kinetic energy in the action scenes. Some of the later episodes I was on the edge of my seat at times. For some reason I thought this was just a one season story, but it’s not and I’ll be looking forward to the next season, though I’m not sure if one has been announced yet. The first season has some really interesting plot bits, but it’s mostly character driven overall and I’m curious where it will all go. All in all it’s CG done right with a really unique concept and it’s free to watch if you have Amazon Prime.
Because it’s unfinished. Luckily, after seemingly canceled, season 3 has finally been confirmed.
Ah that makes sense. I’m guessing it’s based on a manga that has a more definite ending point, also a reason for some of the random stuff?
Still, as far as recent shows go, My Hero Academia was a better two seasons IMO, despite also being an unfinished story so far.
I agree on both counts. Season 1 of Syndonia was better in this regard, but Season 2 did feel more incomplete and all over the place. And Season 2 of Hero Academia was better, though I was surprised that they also left that one so incomplete. I was also surprised at Season 2 of Food Wars feeling more incomplete too. Maybe this is a pattern I’m just picking up on that’s more common than I thought.
My nephew recently told me there was a TV show he was watching that he loved, but that he had waited years for Season 2 and he finally just watched Season 2 and it was really really good. So I asked him (I didn’t know that he even watched anime, but his description rang a bell) “Were you watching Attack on Titan?” He was surprised and excited that I’d heard of it. :) We bonded over that for a bit, and then walked in to the theater and watched The Last Jedi. And then walked out of that movie bonding once again at how much we loved it.
I will say this about Hero Academia, it felt they had a much clearer idea of what is going on, and what was coming, and were able to convey that. Yes things left incomplete, but that’s often the case with serialized TV, but it told a complete story arc of Deku’s learning control.
Nothing they introduced felt anywhere as pointless and confusing as the nematode parts.
Steven Universe?
That’s exactly what I thought he was describing lol
Watched the first 2 eps of devilman crybaby as well as Darling in the Franxx. I’d be perfectly happy to never see either again.
OTOH, Iron-Blooded Orphans is phenomenal so far (18 eps in). Perfect for the treadmill too
Devilman Crybaby is really quite good, but due to the nature of the sex and violence along with the animation style, is not for everyone. Does justice to the original manga while modernizing it.
My Anime of the Year 2017 list
Anime TV Series
- Descending Stories: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju - AOTY twice in a row! Great series with a novel concept, excellent characterizations, very carefully done production and powerful direction.
- Land of the Lustrous - Surprise of the year! The manga is good, but the anime takes it to the next level, combining a very well done CG with great 2d and veteran staff that really exploit the greatness of the story. Intriguing setting, fun characters, surprising twists, and a direction to the story that you can’t predict.
- Attack on Titan Season 2 - It shuts up to the naysayers with a second season with all the good parts of the first season, with great action, thrilling suspense and interesting war drama, adding better characterizations and a more notable direction.
- Scum’s Wish - A notable entry in the high school romance category, as it really is different from other series, melding a very delicate style of characterization (and visual art) with a more mature tone full of lust and conflicting feelings.
- KONOSUBA - God’s blessing on this wonderful world! 2 - I didn’t thought the first series was that funny, but there is marked improvement in the second season. .
- The Eccentric Family Season 2 - A bit of a disappointment with respect the first season, with a repeat of the main beats of the story and confusing characterizations, more a feeling of being a bit rushed. Still, it’s a fun series to watch with a cool use of magic realism-y setting and I wish Benten would step on me.
- The Girl’s Last Tour - I would have preferred this series to be even shorter, as I feel the good parts of it, the bleak setting mixed with the calm comfiness, the quietness, the solitude, didn’t really need more than a pair of OVAs.
- Made in Abyss - The overrated series of the season. Although that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It has an interesting setting with a good sense of peril and danger, and the production values are excellent. It just fail with the main characters, and with the hilariously tragic melodrama.
- Welcome to the Ballroom - A disappointment in comparison with the source manga, but still it has good parts, even more once a good dynamic between Tatara and Chinatsu forms.
Anime Movie/OVA Series
- In This Corner of the World - Excellent film all around. Tender SoL with a curious protagonist offering a novel perspective on WW2, with little and big dramas that will move you to tears.
- The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl - A bit empty of content and some themes are on repeat, but terribly entertaining and visually engaging so I will forgive them.
- Your Name - Great film that fails in perhaps one of the most important aspects of a romance story, that makes it drop to 3rd position.
- Lulu over the wall - The sakuga movie of the year, a more kid-friendly story that is a pleasure to the senses.
- Kizumonogatari III - A great way to finish the Kizumonogatari saga, with even more action, even more character introspection, even more tender vampire monders and even more lewd than usual.
Honourable Mention
x. BLAME! - A decent romp through the world of Blame! but the manga visual appeal is still very superior.
x. The Red Turtle - It looks great on BD!
What bothered me wasn’t the sex or the violence, but the lack of anything else. No plot, unlikable characters, etc.
@TurinTur I haven’t seen many of those, but our tastes must be quite different. Nice to see Ballroom on the list, though.
If that was your problem I’d say stick with it, because that’s certainly not the case across the show run. You don’t get the amount of fanart this show is getting without those. The original story is also one of the more influential influencing a lot of works.
Uhh… there is a clear plot in Devilman Crybaby. You may not like it, but it’s there.
only seen the first couple of episodes, I should have made that clear. There’s very little effort to tell any kind of story in those first two eps. It comes across as solely any excuse for the sex and violence. At that point, I’m no longer interested. I understand there is more later.
Kokkoku 04
This continues to be an interesting anime, which somehow ignores all anime-ism.
- It’s all a continuous story, the opposite of episodic. The episode divisions are arbitrary, even if sometimes they put dumb cliffhangers on them, it’s all a single story, like a long movie. In fact there hasn’t been any important time skips since it started in episode 1. In four episodes only a handful of hours (5-9?) have occurred in total.
- The pace is slow but steady, it feels as it advances at the rhythm it wants.
- No fanservice, if we ignore the ending.
- No moe, no cgdct, no mechas, no jpop in the opening or ending, no bright colors in the palette, no concessions. it has a decent adult looking style, more or less competent but unexciting in a calculated way.
- Characters are missing information, groups are stuck in a unexpected situation in getting nervous, and no one is sure of what the opponent is going to do or how the rules of the world work. Uncertainty is paramount.
Darling in the Franxx 03
I will leave the obvious jokes (NTR, cuck!) to others.
The series is being a bit disappointing in the sense that it has several pilots, so I expected more interesting group dynamics, but for now the series is purely 002 + Hiro, the rest are just extras used to direct the main couple relation in one direction or another and enhance the heroicness and badassitude of the protagonists by contrast with their mediocrity. In this episode all the other pilots couldn’t defeat a small enemy that didn’t supposed a problem to the special for 002, and the episode only served to show that only Darling can handle the Rodeo that is piloting with 002.
I fear that, given how the episode ended, next one will introduce new doubts to Hiro about piloting with her and he will need even more time to find his lost leadership, so they won’t really work as a real couple until episode 7 or 8.
After the Rain 3
Yeah, this is still good, so the previous two episodes weren’t a fluke. I would say for now it’s AOTS. It had very good moments from a direction standpoint, like the voiceless sequence, with the rain and the piano doing the BGM and the flashback, and the use of rain pouring down in the moment of the confession for maximum effect.
Plot wise, it’s good the real confession has been done already, and they haven’t delay it for 3 or 4 more episodes. That would have been tiring and pointless. Also, it’s starting to give clues of how her maybe is focusing on her love crush as a way to forget her injury and what she has lost, as she decides to confess again just as she was depressed after the flashback. Finally, near the end Kondo refers to himself as ‘I’m an empty middle-aged boy’ and she thinks he is funny and laughs, calling himself a boy. That’s an indicator of their problem, the age gap and she doesn’t even know it was an indicator, she still doesn’t know what is being an adult, and how sometimes adults reflect of themselves, thinking on we still are boys/girls very inside us, who happens to have adult obligations like jobs.