Hey Debbie Downer here! I’m not as positive as you guys with Spy x Family. I guess it’s in a genre that isn’t my thing.
The first word it comes to mind to describe it is ‘inoffensive’. Not good, not bad, just inoffensive. It seems a very light action/comedy/sol series, the type of series that yeah, it’s decent enough to be watchable and fill 20 minutes of your time, and that’s it.
In general this season seems weak to me, I haven’t found anything that holds my attention.
I finished Season 2 of Re:Zero, a great season. My only complaint is that when he’s going for a final loop, he tells us it’s the final loop and that he’s going to do everything right this time. I kind of liked the sense of the unknown better in time loop stories where you never know if something is going to go wrong, and if it will force him to start over in a new loop. Declaring before-hand that it was the final loop kind of deflated the last few episodes for me a bit. I knew things were going to work out because I already knew it was the final loop. In Season 1 they played around with this really well, where after the battle with the white whale, you think you’re in the loop where everything’s going right, and so when everything goes to hell, it’s a bit of a shock.
I’ve started re-watching Shield Hero in Japanese this time, so that I can get used to the Japanese voice acting so that I can watch Season 2 in Japanese, since I don’t want to wait for the English Dub.
It’s only been 3 years, but I’d forgotten most of Season 1’s details. Oh right, there was an episode where he fought plants with herbicide. Oh right, there was an episode in which they defend slavery, etc.
Netflix’s Orbital Children is a disaster survival story in space, with a bunch of kids working their way through the damaged space station to escape. It has some interesting backstory that is revealed piecemeal as the story unfolds - moon and Mars colonization, medical issues with space-born humans, resource extraction from space, fear of artificial intelligence while simultaneously relying on it. The kids’ personalities are super generic…the ditzy one (social media star in this case), the responsible one, the smart outsider, and so on. This is mostly cute, but I can see how it would be annoying if you have a low tolerance for such things. Toward the end, the survival narrative turns to a much weirder fate-of-the-world story…how much you like the show probably depends on whether you’re on board with that turn. I mostly enjoyed it, a bit more than Turin did from what he posted, though I agree the beginning was better than the end. I’m glad it was only six episodes…think of it more as a slightly-long movie than a series, and set your expectations of how much detail and depth you get accordingly.
Netflix’s 7Seeds is a fairly decent post-apocalyptic survival story, but I’ll warn you right up front, they didn’t finish it. There’s two seasons but it ends with lots of dangling story threads, so there was clearly supposed to be more. I suppose Netflix might revive it but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Having said that, if you like the genre then it could still be worth watching, if you’re in it for the journey more than the destination.
Several different groups roam around a destroyed Japan, trying to understand what’s happened to the world, finding caches left from the destroyed civilization, and coming to grips with their new circumstances. And of course, finding out that all is not as it seems. The first half has a lot of interaction as the groups discover one another (and drama ensues), while the second half largely follows one group’s explorations leading to some nasty old-world danger. Some of the characters have some pretty hefty emotional damage from their pre-apocalypse lives, leading to some bad situations. It’s not terribly innovative but seems largely well-executed, though there are definitely some cheesy bits. I laughed at the ex-baseball stars using bat and ball to fight off wild animals, for instance. They manage to build rafts and such awfully easily even before finding cached supplies, and the star-crossed lovers part of the storyline gets old fast. Still, if you like this genre, you’ll likely be able to overlook the sillier parts and enjoy the journey.
Teiman
5954
The experts have told me is a adaptation of a classic, so maybe you have seen the stories that copied the classic.
M.T. is really well done, it may be worth the price the very cringe parts.
Currently watching SPY x Family, I don’t think is good, or very well done… I enjoy more the internet enjoying it, than the show itself. But it does not scare me too much with fan service or other annoying stuff. I hope this anime season has something for me. I am a huge fan of sci-fi, there has to be something good in there, in the list of shows.
Just finished a rewatch of season one along with my daughter (who hadn’t seen it) and the first ep of the new season. Season 1 was one of my favorite anime in a long time. Didn’t love Rishia getting a slave crest but looking forward to seeing where they are going with the show.
Also watched first ep of orbital children
Bubble on Netflix is a post-apocalyptic fairy tale movie that is very pretty, but doesn’t do much particularly exciting beyond that. If you like watching people fling themselves through the air from one floating rock to another, there are some pretty cool scenes in this for you. The characters and plot, though, are nothing exciting, very much in the mold of the fairy tales that are referenced multiple times. If that’s cool with you then you’ll likely enjoy this one, cause the visuals are really well done. But if you need more innovations in the plot or characters, probably skip it.
Netflix has a few anime films that i haven’t watched, like
but I never heard any buzz about them. Bubble seems potentially the same, by your description!
I watched the first 40 minutes and had to stop. That was bad. Totally senseless premise (parkour battles in a gravity anomaly? ) that seems to exist because animators thought it would be cool to draw people doing parkour, not because it made a good story. Protagonist with badass skills that is the silent lone wolf type. Magical pixie girl with mysterious powers. Clunky exposition dialogue. Ridiculous ‘evil team’. Etc
Maybe I’m starting to be too old for anime lol.
Bubble had some buzz because the Director also directed a bunch of Attack on Titan. I was excited about it because the explanation of the motivation for writing it was uniquely incoherent. (The quote I saw was something like “You know how in the little mermaid, she falls in love and then turns into bubbles*? What if it was the other way around?”)
A Whisker Away seems like a weird Asylum-level Transmorphers copycat of a Ghibli film (Whisper of the Heart or The Cat Returns), and I read a handful of dismissive reviews.
* referring I believe, to her turning into sea foam in the original telling
I tried this and didn’t make it past episode 2. Maybe there’s a good story in there someplace, but I just can’t watch “dude grunts and shouts and miraculously wins the unwinnable battle through the power of his heart” shows any more.
Anime artists certainly do love their mountain landscapes.
Anime artists certainly do love their mountain landscapes.
On that note, how did everyone find Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru (My Dress Up Darling)?
Did you find the fan-servicey parts too distracting? Was the main character too much of a manic pixie dream girl?
I thought the Japanese cast knocked it out of the park - especially the actor who voiced Marin Kitagawa. Totes adorable! I enjoyed the relationship between the main characters, the growth of Gojo and the development of Marin’s character. Their relationship was wholesome, despite the sexual tension.
I finally got around to watching Violet Evergarden on Netflix. It’s a slow and beautifully illustrated story about an emotionally stunted child soldier growing up, helping many other folks along the way, and it is one thousand percent my jam. I loved it, despite the weird steampunkish world that somehow makes super-advanced prosthetic arms but still needs girls to travel around typing for people, and has very early-20th-century concepts of female roles yet somehow accepts a super-soldier little girl. Don’t think too hard about that stuff, focus on the emotional character development, and its a great short series. The two follow-up movies are in much the same vein, if you like the series you’ll like them too.
ShivaX
5963
Wait there were follow up movies?
< Lover of Violet Evergarden
I love Violet Evergarden. I nearly got dehydrated watching it because I cried so much. And I love it. ;)
Have been seeing Violet Evergarden popping up on Netflix for a long time, but wrote it off as just another generic Netflix production. I’ll check it out!
Make certain to watch the series before watching the last movie.
From this list, I was not familiar at all with Ya Boy Kongming! and it sounds pretty cool. It also sounds like it’s still airing. So it might be time to get HiDive (VRV) once the season is finished.
HiDive isn’t on VRV anymore AFAIK.
Wow, VRV has really decayed since I decided to drop it over most of the services I actually used leaving. I just looked and now it’s literally just Crunchyroll and whatever Mondo is. Plus I assume a few random miscellanities under the VRV Select banner. Pity. It was a good idea.
