5085

Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun, is really good. It’s an old-school comedy anime about a kid who ends up attending a school for demons, and is, frankly, far better than it has any right to be. It’s almost finished its first season, so now’s the perfect time to binge it.

5086

It would have to be…

I will give it a look.

5087

First, latest Eizouken was awesome, are you watching it yet?

Anyhow, Crunchyroll must have been feeling some pressure with Netflix originals, as now they are producing some shows as well.


5088

Stuff has been in development for at least 18 months (when the new Ellation studios were announced).

5089

Wow, I saw God of High School, Tower of God, & Noblesse in that trailer - I hope they do them justice.

5090

Huh, I sort of assumed that those would be default to being Korean in the original but everything is Japanese. Makes sense given the animation studio but I’m a bit surprised.

5091

I’ve been quite enjoying Dorohedoro, not to be confused with Dororo. I started reading the manga early last year and was pretty hyped that they were doing an anime adaptation of it. It has been pretty faithful from what I’ve seen.

It’s a pretty weird, violent, and funny show.

5092

Holy shit, Tower of God and Noblesse are getting an anime? Thank god that there’s more Korean stuff now as the Japanese manga scene has been weak for a while now.

5093

Netflix has added loads of stuff recently. Carole and Tuesday season 2 is out. I watched a whole bunch of the Fate/ series but can’t really remember anything about them other than fights looking good. My wife is able to enjoy some of Studio Ghibli films for the first time, which is nice. One of the more interesting films I saw was In This Corner of the World, following a civilian girl living near Hiroshima in World War Two. Ive barely seen or read any fiction or media about life in Japan for civilians and it was fascinating.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is finally available. I know this was recommended to me upthread. I tried watching some of it on youtube, but it was a bit odd and I couldn’t quite get over the simply horrendous dress sense everyone seems to have. Its like little kids dressing up from a theatre wardrobe. Now I am able to watch it from Episode 1 and I know I’m going to have to knuckle through the first few episodes to get to the action, but its all a bit clunky and dumb so far.

I glad i persevered with Kengan Ashura, its lead me to read the entire manga and now eagerly await the next volume of Kengan Omega. I hope they hurry up with the anime as some of the best Ashura fights are yet to come.

5094

So I just finished watching the Babylon anime series on Amazon Prime, and my immediate reaction is that it’s some weird shit. First it’s a political corruption investigation, then it shifts to suicide legalization, then there’s this whole philosophical discussion of good and evil, and through the whole thing there’s this person who may or may not be the devil incarnate. At about halfway through the last episode I thought it was on track to end fairly well, then the last 15 minutes just kinda crashed. Apparently this was a manga, which I know nothing about, so maybe they left important stuff out or it’s incomplete? Anyway, I can’t really recommend it because it goes all over the place with the plot and deals with some pretty gruesome stuff in a very incomplete manner. But it was certainly interesting.

5095

FYI, Eizouken continues to be amazing.

5096

Babylon is disturbingly alike Seikaisuru Kado (Kado: The Right Answer), which is from the same author, in that it starts pretty strong and then completely fumbles the ball in the final third. Since I’d already seen Kado, it was easy to predict that Babylon would likely follow in the same footsteps, but I naively plowed ahead to see it through anyway. Oops.

And yes, Eizouken is definitely still wonderful.

5097

Yeah, I’ve seen Kado, which felt very much like they had this cool idea, and put all this effort into the start of it, then suddenly realized they had no idea where the story was going.

5098

I’m getting prepped to work from home, and part of this is finding ways of entertaining myself. I have more games than I’d be able to finish in a lifetime, but I also enjoy watching stuff and never got around to any of the Gundam series despite my affinity for big robots blowing things up.

After noticing the hundreds of series without any useful monikers, I started looking up guides on watch orders. These led to “chronological” and “production order” arguments (with stand-alone series set on the side). All the while, each referenced series which were no longer legally available for streaming in the US, and I’m wondering if I should just give up on the notion of ever giving Gundam a try.

Any thoughts?

5099

Iron Bloodex Orphans gets recommend for that

5100

I agree +1

5101

Much appreciated, @forgeforsaken and @geewhiz

5102

Ok… there we go…

Perhaps the single best Gundam full series to recommend is Iron Blooded Orphans . It’s modern, it’s snappy, and it has all the requisite stuff.

But…

It belongs to it’s own timeline, and I believe to properly appreciate Gundam it would be good to watch stuff from the main Timeline, the UC, or Universal Century. It’s also the best series to recommend because it’s modern, but it’s not the best overall, imho, unless you can’t really stand older stuff.

The problem with the UC is that by far the best works are not the main series (the original, Z and ZZ), but OVA’s and more limited series (in particular, War in the Pocket, the 8th MS Team and Stardust Memory) which you will enjoy more if you know a little about the One Year War (the original series narrative). You can watch them on their own and they will hold up. War in the Pocket is specially interesting, I think.

There’s also the pretty amazing OVA Gundam: the Origin, but it’s only amazing if you have seen the original series and Z Gundam. It’s sort of an origin story for the bad guy and it’s great if you know the mythos. Otherwise it will feel slow.

The original series I enjoyed, but it’s really, really old and sort of hard to watch unless you put rose tinted glasses on. You can sort of watch it on the background while doing other stuff. It does lay down a lot of stuff that is used in other series, though. Z Gundam is also old, but much, much better than the original (it’s really good for when it aired) and much more watchable. However, it does not finish it’s story. It finishes in ZZ Gundam and that one is a little worse.

Also UC but so far removed than it can be watched on it’s own is Gundam Unicorn. It’s pretty good, quite modern, and has great mecha design, but it felt too much like a rehash of a lot of stuff to me. But it might land better on somebody less familiar with the previous works. But for a straight up series I would still go with Iron Blooded Orphans first.

So:

  • If you want to see a single series: Iron blooded Orphans. You should watch this anyway.

  • If you want a more fulsome classic Gundam experience perhaps War in the Pocket and the 8th MS team, and if you really enjoy those then the original series, followed by Stardust Memories and then Z & ZZ Gundam. After that either Char’s counterattack and Unicorn or Gundam: the Origin, depending if you want to see how things evolve (Unicorn) or you want even more insight in how the One Year War and Char came to be (Gundam: the Origin).

Yeah, it’s a mess. I did do the chronological thing at first.

5103

+2345

5104

I just think Char is such a good character he deserves to be appreciated.

If only they had continued Origin and remade the original series. It remains the hardest to watch, yet key. Everything else holds up relatively well.