Thanks for the warning @Otagan. I won’t read your spoiler, but I will think about whether I want to watch a fifth season, if it means potentially ruining a decent ending. In the end I’ll probably end up watching it, just because it’s not like I have a big heavy emotional investment in Food Wars or anything, it’s just a fun/funny/embarrassing show to watch. So maybe I will watch Season 5 once it’s done, just out of curiosity.
Other Anime updates, since I still have my free month of VRV Premium going.
I looked up a whole bunch of shows which feature students learning stuff together, and got mixed results.
Re-Life: This was a pleasant show. A guy who’s unemployed and a slacker gets a second chance at life when a corporation presents him with the chance to take a pill and look like a high school student again. He takes them up on it and does the last year of high school. I enjoyed it overall, though it was nothing too special, I’ll probably forget about it soon. But it was pleasant to watch. Major kudos to include math that can be genuinely tricky in high school/college written on the notebooks. I can just imagine if this anime had been made in the U.S., they would have written really simple math problems on the notebook, and I’d be facepalming about why on earth an adult in high school would find those problems hard. Bonus: This anime is finished. It’s not on-going. There’s 17 episodes or so, and the story is finished.
Silver Spoon: I’m only 3 episodes in but I’m really enjoying this one. When I first tried this upthread a few years ago on Kotaku’s recommendation, I wasn’t able to view the screen all the time, and since it’s a subtitled anime, I didn’t really understand what was going on. Well, I thought I did, but now that I’ve seen the same episodes with subtitles, there’s a lot more character interaction and dialog there that is making me genuinely like all these characters. I’m looking forward to watching this all the way through.
Toradora!: So this is a weird one. Even though it’s about students, there’s not much learning going on. Basically it’s about a guy with a menacing face and a fierce short girl who are neighbors and helping each other try to get the attention of their crushes. I like the two main characters well enough, but I certainly don’t have any desire to see them get romantically involved, or even to successfully get the attention of their crushes. That would be weird. It has the tone of a comedy most of the time and it’s pleasant enough, but I don’t see any potential emotional payoffs to these stories, except maybe a genuine friendship between all parties. And I suppose that would be pleasant enough to keep watching. I haven’t decided yet.
Re:Zero - I honestly didn’t think the dub of this could be as good as the Japanese, but I think it is. They really did a great job with the dub and captured the comedy and the earnestness and the horror just right. I’ve re-watched the first 7 episodes again, this time in English, and this show is so good you guys, even a second time, I’m just amazed at how much better it is than most anime I’ve seen because of the way they shift the tone using great art, music and voice acting.
It’s not anime, but since I’m watching it on VRV, I’ll make a brief mention that I’m kind of enjoying Harmonquest as well, though it’s weird. It makes me wish I’d played D&D with a DM like this who is so intent on keeping his party of adventurers alive that he’ll have them land on feathers and pillows when they’re jumping out a tall building. When I played D&D in real life, I always died before I hit level 3 or 4 at most, despite the DM’s best efforts to keep the party alive. I had some foolhardy party members, in my opinion, but on the other hand, the party in Harmonquest also seems to be just as quick to attack people instead of trying a diplomatic track, so maybe it was the DM’s faults in all those cases that we always died.
