Lurker > YoukaiSlayer

Dang, two more anime ended today.

Executioner was pretty good, but it lacked anything to really blow me away. Everything was either just good or ok. Like a solid 7-8/10. Cool concept and world. I was glad to see the rating shot up at the end. There's a lot of mysteries I'd like to see unraveled but I'll be surprised if it gets a season 2. Then again, sometimes awful shows get season 2s so who knows.

Aharen-san was one of my most pleasant surprises this season. I thought it'd be kind of knock off komi that I already didn't like, but it ended up being so much better for me. Raidou's overreactions are hilarious and his willingness to support aharen in the stuff he thinks up is super heartwarming. Plus the show has some yuri hidden in there with the teachers and also oshiro. Nothing came of the yuri yet, but it's still nice. I'm fairly hopeful about it getting a second season. To my knowledge theres plenty of source material for it and I think it's been received fairly well.

I did check and the new anime season starts on the 2nd so still about 2 weeks to go. I hope it has as many pleasant surprises as this season but I highly doubt it.

Man, summertime render is interesting. I feel like I can't truly call it good until the mysteries are resolved satisfactorily, but I am so damn curious about so much. The setup is fantastic. I wish I could binge the whole series, but theres at least something to be gained from having time to think between each episode. Still love the OP as well.

I haven't watched it but I kinda wondered the same thing.

Also ya boy kongming is over now. Good finale and good show in general. I thought the gimmick would wear off, and I guess it did slightly, but they managed to build up characters and conflicts while the gimmick was still fresh so it worked out well.

It also just kinda dawned on me how much japanese music throws in english words. A lot of these songs are like 30% english even if there probably isn't a complete english sentence in the whole thing. It makes me wonder what that'd be like in reverse, to hear english singers just throw in a bunch of japanese phrases in every line. I guess Calli's music does that but it's also rap so I feel like it's kinda different.

Tomorrow aharen ends and then next weak most shows end. Sad to see it go. I should see when the next season actually beings. I assume around the 1st of next month.

keyblader1985 posted...

Anybody know if any of the abridged anime series are decent besides Yu-Gi-Oh and DBZ? Just curious.

SAO abridged is the best one IMO. Significantly better than actual SAO. Takes an episode or 2 before they start to hit their stride though.

Alright, I finished up that show and hit a few anime watching milestones, at least on MAL, I probably missed a few series when looking back recently. Yesterday with bookworm I completed my 500th series and today with ichigo 100% I've now seen at least 1 anime from every season this century. I wonder how many shows I'd have left to watch one from every season that I've been alive for? Also just ticked over 11,000 episodes a few weeks ago. 186.0 days of anime, which is about 6 days per year.

I'm caught up on everything I'm watching this season except the previous episode of love is war. Only 2 episodes left in ichigo 100% as well and honestly it's kind of grown on me. Gotta give props to nishino for being the only harem character I can think of that was just like, I'ma head out, once she realized main guy liked more girls, without like getting super mad at him or anything. Still a pretty garbage show.

Judgmenl posted...

I really hope that Nagi ends up with Hiro, but is that even possible?

The rule (first girl shown wins) states he ends up with the switched at birth girl. Very few romance anime violate the rule. Although I guess if Sachi becomes an actual target I think she was shown first technically, but I feel like it won't count due to being a sister and thus having to be shown at home.

agesboy posted...

I haven't actually caught up on the anime but I'm assuming they stopped at the end of part 2 with the pace they were going at.

From reading comments, they did end it there, and thats the best guess I can have, but it's still a poor move IMO. Clearly a lot of people in comments took that to mean this was the final season and there won't be anymore so they are only shooting themselves in the foot.

Bookworm ending marks the beginning of the end of this season. They hit us with the mixed messages at the end. First we get a "the story told is over" end card, but then we get a post credits scene with another end card that says "to be continued". Wtf, which one is it? I still feel like everyone is a little too unthinking about Myne's power level. Like, if they teach her magic, which they are going to do, she could just kill everybody. Hell she probably already can. If the people in charge had any brains, they'd be restricting her access to anything that could make her more powerful or independent.

dragon504 posted...

Me either, never heard the type thing.

It was in response to the video posted. The person broke down (poorly) romance anime into 3 types. Type 1 being pure innocent romance (basically all shoujo), type 2 being rom coms, and type 3 being ecchi romance.

Chika has some pretty funny episodes, particularly when teaching shirogane something or being a menace in general. Kaguya feels like an almost entirely different character in the current season, although she's still one of the weaker characters IMO. Hayasaka and Ishigami end up being the best for me. It's always great when they are involved. And Maki really grew on me in the last few episodes. Iino is probably my least favorite character, but shes gotten a fair bit better and is at least used for good comedic effect.

Judgmenl posted...

And I purposefully omitted Kaguya-sama. I wasn't a huge fan of it.

How much did you see of it? I personally found season 1 pretty weak and didn't even finish it when I was first watching it, but I feel like season two and three had the series really hit it's stride and they stopped hyper focusing on the love is war aspect of things and more just on being funny and fleshing out the other characters. Kinda crazy how much my opinion shifted from dropped at episode 10 to beating out spyxfamily and kingdom (admittedly a weaker kingdom season). Granted, we do seem to have pretty different tastes in general.

I think that's part of why I don't like pure romance. I feel like the characters don't have anything else to them except the romance, cause if they did, the show would also be about that, and not be pure romance.

I like the type 2 quite a lot. Love is war S3 is the best anime this season IMO, and it's got stiff competition. Aharen is also great and has gotten progressively more romantic.

I guess I also feel like it's hard to really translate romantic feelings to a 3rd party (like a viewer). I mean, I'm not romantically in love with the characters, and a lot of the emotionally good parts of a relationship aren't really on display very often in romance anime. That level of deep closeness and security doesn't really happen until you start dating generally.

And then as I initially complained about, a lot of the times the character development that completes a romance is the same. Which is learning how to put yourself out there and take a risk instead of being scared and running away from the fear of being rejected. Like, those are solid themes and I can relate to them as well, but like, I've already seen that through to it's conclusion a few dozen times at this point so now I just wanna yell at the screen for them to just fuckin say how you feel and stop dragging it out, even if I, in the same situation, might not do any better. It's kinda like Shinji not getting in the robot.

I feel like I dislike that video for the same reason I dislike "romance type 1" anime. I can only watch someone struggle with the same problem so many times before they drive me insane. For me, romance in anime is like a spice. Having it by itself is awful, but in small doses can be a great compliment to a good main dish.

There's also the real problem that there just isn't 12 episodes worth of romantic development you can have before dating without incredibly frustrating melodrama that makes no sense and ruins every character.

Omg, one of raidou's insane fantasies was correct. What an incredible twist. I'm so sad this show is almost over. Actually I feel that way about the whole season. I'd like to be wrong, but next season looks much weaker overall. I'm really only looking forward to devil is a part timer, made in abyss, and dan machi. I guess overlord S4 as well, but I'm kind of meh on overlord as a whole. At least summertime render and presumably kingdom will still be on going. Oh and cuckoos is 2 cour so that as well.

I been watching ichigo 100% to finish off watching 1 anime per season for this century and man it's been a while since I've seen something this terrible. It actually kind of comes back around to being so bad it's good at times. The main character is trying his damn hardest to get school days-ed. The (female) teacher goes back and forth between sexually assaulting the students and yelling at them for being too rowdy and noisy. Like, it's the least human a character has ever come off as far as I can remember. Main guy has chronic can't fucking say anything syndrome like the guy from cuckoos this season which is also frustrating. Some girl will say something important and he will just repeat her name back to her and make those generic anime grunt noises while staring blankly at them until they run away pissed.

There is some extreme irony that the main character is supposed to be super into film making and yet this show is written and directed like absolute garbage. Theres a bunch of hilariously bad animation moments, like last episode when a blue swimsuit just spawned into existence out of a pile of swimsuits or some really goofy running animations through a window that were like wrong angle and way too far away and the perspective was wrong and the motion was really janky.

Modern trash anime has really come a long way.

I disagree, I think summertime render has the best OP. It's the only one I don't skip. Although skeleton knights is kinda funny, I watched that one twice.

Revelation34 posted...

I can't do TRPGs anymore. The battles take way too long.

I somewhat agree. I think thats why fire emblem does so well. It's the fastest of all the tactics games. Starts on movement, auto selects character, defaults to attack, defaults to target of attack, no facing, auto end character turn. Even with that it can still feel slow.

I'm kind of surprised theres no gambit system tactics game. One where you just create the priority of your units actions and they act on their own. You could probably mesh it with the story as you giving orders to your soldiers.

I'd play that if it were any good.

In the anime front we had some big episodes yesterday and today. Bookworm is kinda dumb when it comes to action. Like, a lot of problems could be solved by murder now, that is just going to require murder later anyway. There's no world where they don't eventually kill the high priest guy. In this episode blue hair noble captures him and says it will just cause him problems later if he kills him. Bullshit, theres no way letting him live doesn't come back to bite him, the guy actively undermined the good of the country, is plainly cruel and evil, and clearly is incapable of learning his lesson. Hell, all this shit now is only happening because blue hair noble let him live this long, something that should be a crime in itself.

However, the real issue is not understanding the value of myne. She is borderline a strategic weapon. So little thought has been put into whether she goes to the academy to learn magic or not. If she learns magic, she could clearly wipe out their whole country and on one could possibly stop her. Hell thats probably true even without magic. To get that on his side, he should be willing to do a lot more than he has. He acts line Myne is some side project, not literally the most important person in the entire world they live in, capable of overthrowing society and advancing civilzation thousands of years into the future.

The kidnappers were also beyond stupid. Duh, lets steal the two girls when her armed guards are like 2 inches away and just run for it, I'm sure they won't chase us down or anything. A classic "what was your plan" kind of move. And then Myne's random use of her crushing is infuriating. Half the time she can bring everyone to their knees with AoE CC that kills if left unchecked. The other of the time, she just doesn't use it and is helpless and crying and must be saved.

And then oh man blue hair noble is a fucking bastard. He pretended to leave to lure out the evil actions of the high priest, but didn't intervene until Myne was going to be guilty and her family and attendants killed because of a crime she had to commit in self defense. What the fuck?!? You piece of absolute shit. They just gloss right over that because Myne very fortunately happens to have a way out blue hair guy didn't know. Additionally, Myne would have been totally fine if they just killed the high priest and foreign lord and their goons and came up with literally any other explanation. The only person that could hold Myne accountable was blue hair guy. The show isn't going to acknowledge any of that though, it's just going to continue on as if blue hair guy is still Myne's ally. This show is better when the stakes are low.

The other show going crazy is quit hero. They already set it up last week but getting to see it play out this week was pretty cool. A lot more payoff than I expected from this series early on. Both it and otome game ended up exceeding my expectations, while still not being well written.

I have less nitpicks with quit hero, because it never had high quality and is half comedy but I do feel like anti-leo spell is way too slow. Dude can teleport and go faster than the eye can see. Like yeah, he's just gonna let it hit him like everything else, but the people developing this spell were dumb. Then again, none of em ever used it and it's considered a gamble, but I don't think they meant that because it moves at like 1% his max speed. Probably should have been an an unavoidable aura instead of a line projectile. Oh well.

It's kind of interesting now that I think back. I've played 3 tactics games in the last year or so. Dark Deity, SRW 30, and Triangle Strategy. SRW and Triangle Strategy especially exemplify both extremes of the issue. In SRW, units become way too strong with investment into the rpg aspects of the game. One unit can solo the game and in fact thats optimal, but they become so overpowered, it ruins any sort of strategy or fun for me.

Triangle Strategy is the exact opposite. The rpg aspects barely affects the game at all. In that game, you get massive xp when down in levels and virtually zero xp when even 1 level ahead so the game railroads you pretty hard to a certain power level. On hard though, your units will almost never 1 to 1 matchup with even enemy grunts statistically and that just ruins the fantasy of it for me. I feel very little incentive to play because I can't really power up a unit to a noticeable degree.

Of course, by funneling the player into a certain level of strength, they can ensure every mission is extremely well balanced and while the characters won't match up stat for stat, clever use of their abilities can get you through levels. I'd argue the strategy portion of triangle strategy is the best in all of tactics games, it's just at the complete cost of the rpg elements. Pairing that with such a narritive focus on decisions and shaping your main character, it creates a lot of dissonance for me.

Dark Diety probably ended up being the most fun of the 3 for me, and it had a pretty solid balance of rpg to strategy, but it was at the cost of freedom. There's no grinding or optional maps in dark diety at all and the plot is pretty linear. However, my strong units felt strong but not 1v100 strong and my weak units needed help but didn't feel worthless.

I will at least credit SRW 30 with having a narrative style that suits being overpowered and unstrategic. It does feel very satisfying to overcome problems from series we are familiar with by leveraging strength the characters simply didn't have in the actual show.

agesboy posted...

yeah, 30 in particular is insanely easy. there are so many absolutely busted characters and mechs (ernie, amuro, gilliam, suzaku...). i'm pretty sure my ernie could solo every map now by just throwing him into the center of the map, and i'm playing on hard. and suzaku can reach 99% damage reduction because of a bug or oversight lmao

I didn't finish the game but on hard most of my units could solo every map. My main with all the parts could one player turn solo most maps because of the EX skills and spirits and it wasn't hard to hit 30k damage twice per turn with their strongest weapon. I also reached enough kills that every new unit was joining as a super ace.

Adam_Savage posted...

i didn't know the robot game was a tactics game

It's pretty damn weak as a tactics game unless you giga handicap yourself on the highest difficulty. It's more about the fantasy of watching your favorite mechs blast through everything with ease with 60 second long attack animations and the visual novel esqe crossover plot.

Actually man, love is war might just be too far ahead to compare. 3rd season of love is war is maybe my favorite season of a comedy anime. At least up there with konosuba and nichibros. Granted I haven't seen nichibros or nichijou for that matter in quite a while.

I too cannot draw to save my life.

Also finally, the new topic. Aharen this week went crazy. Did not expect that to happen and the post credits scene was yuri goodness and hilarious. This show is mad underrated, it's nearly as good as love is war or spyxfamily IMO.

Summertime render is also still doing great. I'm happy it's got enough episodes to presumably finish it's story.

Also have no idea why executioner is rated so low. That show is great and the magic has a programmer kinda vibe to it. I'm unhappy that it clearly does not have enough episodes to wrap up it's story and it's probably not doing well enough to get a second season.

Did they only release the NA version on steam? That's kinda lame of them.

Watched shin ikkitousen since it finally aired. Not entirely sure what the point of that was. Like, nothing is remotely resolved. It feels like the first 3 eps of a 12 episode series, but it's only 3 eps long. I don't understand why they would do this. The new main character was only in the first episode. The only fights we saw were against illusions and skeletons. I seriously don't understand why a studio would produce this. It's not even bad really, just completely unfinished.

Damn, quit hero really popping off. It's too bad theres no way they are gonna kill the main character in episode 10 out of 12 of what presmuably wouldn't even wrap up in 12 episodes. It'd be pretty sick if they did kill him though. Granted the plot is kind of dumb. Leo could probably just make another engine and supposedly his protect humanity issues are tied to the engine so he'd be fine. He could also presumably hold the portal open forever. Despite all that though, the ending to this latest episode was pretty fire.

Count_Drachma posted...

A lot of the later stuff in Shield Hero makes me not want to follow Shield Hero despite loving the first season.

I was too quick to be having fun. This latest episode was fine at first but then became awful. Really all they did was repeat the part of the first season that was good, just in a new place now, but then they went back to their shitty villains who make elaborate stupid plans all just to see the look of frustration on our main characters face. How incredibly boring and lame.

Cuckoo went and had another long section where main guy was trying to say something but couldn't. Why do writers do this? It makes the character so annoying to watch. Wasn't quite as bad as the first time but still.

Aharen has become better and better IMO. Every character is gimmicky, but they've really managed to land all of em so far. It's not just aharen does something weird, raidou overreacts, raidou realizes the truth with some statement ending in "da ne?". It's also hilarious how the teacher is so enthralled by the "enchantment" of raidou and aharen while completely not reacting to the romantic situations she ends up in with the other female teacher that is always there for her and takes care of her. She could give delusional warrior kanakoe a run for her money with the bloodloss from fantasizing.

Caught up on everything but love is war. I again seem to have saved that for last.

I've been thinking a bit more about summertime render and it's pretty odd. I really expecting the main guy to take a long time before figuring out even half the stuff he has and instead they are pulling new strange directions with the plot. I really can't predict how good it'll end up being and wouldn't be surprised with a train wreck or masterpiece.

Been a long time since I've seen to love ru. I think I stopped like halfway through darkness.

Jesus christ this is pissing me off. So after bringing it up, I decided to actually watch odd taxi, which was amazing...except the very last scene. They pull some code geass cart scene level of bullshit on me for no reason.

If that was all there was, then damn that sucks but oh well, but it's not, theres a movie that released in japan a month and a half ago that is 90% recap with 5 minutes of new footage that extends the final scene so we get closure but I cannot find out what the fuck happens anywhere on the internet. The movie was only shown in theaters so far so I can't find any video of it, and everyone who watched it (which seem slike fucking nobody) won't spoil it. I went through youtube comments on reviews, the full reddit, anywhere I can on google and nothing. I just want to know what the fuck happens, why did they make it this way, it has really heavily soured what was an amazing experience for no damn reason. Fuck!

EDIT: I couldn't let it go and googled the jp version of the movie name so it'd give me all the japanese results and browsed reviews for like 2 hours. i think I finally know what happened and wtf they could have just put that in the anime. In case anyone else wonders Otogawa has a "luck battle" with watagaki (the killer) and wins. No fuckin clue what a luck battle is but he survives and watagaki is arrested. He then goes on a zoo date with shirakawa.

Shield hero this week was a bit of an uptrend for me. The season before now had been bad and disappointing but this episode gives me a bit of hope. Not even really sure what I liked better about this episode. Apparently they made a huge change compared to the manga and LNs and readers of that have no idea how future plot events can possibly work out but from my anime only perspective it was a fun episode.

Finally caught up on the weekly anime with love is war. I keep saving that for last when the weekend chunk of anime hits. The latest episode has me thinking about the big weakness of school anime compared to other similar types of anime in different settings. Highschool is only 3 years long (in japan). If you want to make use of the setting and have different events for the characters to interact with, you can't help but progressing the timetable of the show.

You can never have 4 xmas episodes of a highschool anime. You put the same type of cast in a workplace setting and it could go forever and fantasy can fit 50 festivals in one year if they want to since it's all made up anyway.

I always end up feeling kind of sad whenever these seasonal events come up in the shows, knowing that the end of these characters fun times together are coming to a close, and probably sooner than later.

It actually makes me think of the end of welcome to the nhk. The most down to earth ending that show could have possibly had, but that also made it really depressing. I should rewatch that at some point. That show could have been about me if I'd been healthier.

Judgmenl posted...

Those people must have never read the manga because Bisque Doll was 100% the same between the manga and the anime. Like, absolutely flawless adaptation. People always fall for SoL / Rom Coms thinking they are "sexual", when they never are.

I have no idea what you are saying here. Nothing I'm saying has to do with sexuality. Bisque doll is entertaining and funny with some touching moments. Shikimori is a slice of show where virtually nothing happens. Basically shikimori was never going to be a contender against the quality of bisque doll cause it just isn't amazing.

Judgmenl posted...

Spy X Family.

Because it's really funny and adorable. Honestly kinda thought it would be in your wheelhouse.

Judgmenl posted...

Odd Tax

I need to watch this but there was zero hype going into it. People thought it was a very well put together mystery thriller. Assuming thats true, why wouldn't people praise it?

I think the anime got some false praise in the community before airing that got people that wouldn't have been interested to watch and end up disappointed, like me. A lot of people had been comparing it to last seasons dress up darling when apparently, it never tried to be anything like that and is just a relatively simple SOL romance.

My big complaint is that the gimmick of main guy being essentially cursed to have objects fly at his head is not funny and isn't explored in any kind of interesting way. Every scene practically is some object falling or flying towards main guy and then shikimori blocks it asks if he is ok in a "cool" way. That's it. The show is that one gimmick on repeat and it's never spiced up unlike, say, sakamoto. The writer needs to be creating new and interesting ways for shikomori to look cool, but he just wasn't able to come up with even one that was interesting in the first few episodes. I kept hoping the next scene wouldn't be the same thing again but it always was.

I personally didn't feel like it was TOO bad in the first episode, cause it was introducing stuff, and I expected them to just use that as a base to establish the characters before moving into a more normal highschool comedy, but they didn't.

keyblader1985 posted...

Shikimori-san

Was a huge disappointment for me. I hope you enjoy it more than I did but it's one of the few shows I dropped. You can see it's rating on MAL has nosedived as well from nearly 8 after the first episode to 7.04 and still dropping.

keyblader1985 posted...

I also started Grimgar recently

I wish there was more of that in anime form.

Only OP i'm not skipping this season is summertime render's. With the visuals at the end of it and the song itself, one of the most memorable OPs for me. Oddly fitting for what is basically higurashi:re:zero edition.

While genshin is shallow, thats only because they stretch what they have way too thin. There is legimtately 50+ hours of solid game in there if they removed the bullshit and I'm positive people would pay for it. Of course, it's not going to make nearly as much money as exploiting peoples poor self control with gacha so they'd never do it. Quite frustrating.

Wow, cuckoos pleasantly surprised me. I was really about to drop it after episode 2 and 3 wasn't much better, but this one was a lot better. Main guy actually talked and was even downright assertive, the girl main guy likes is actually really endearing and I don't feel like we see the super competitive archetype play out this way often. We also got to see main girl show an interest in being slightly less of a spoiled brat.

It's not to say that the show is amazing or anything, it just seemed really crappy with occasionally great art and now has moved up to not so bad.

Everything else is good. I still have summertime render and love is war to watch. This is one of the better overall seasons of anime even if there aren't a ton of new standouts. I'm actually watching 15 currently airing shows, I don't think I've ever had that many to watch.

agesboy posted...

How do audiobooks affect you? Tons of LN's these days have been getting them

I presume they would be relatively fine, but it's kind of tough to go at the pace of an audiobook. I know I started an audiobook of wheel of time but got too bored after a couple hours to continue. I should check it out for some though, I haven't really looked into light novels as a whole.

Was actually talking to my mom about this earlier. It's kind of like how it's really hard to play pokemon for me now if it's not an emulator with speedup because vba just got me too used to the speed up. I know some people who only watch videos at 1.5 or 2x speed and I worry I'd not be able to switch back if I ever tried that for a week or two.

I did at one point find a youtube video of a guy reading tower of god where the person just has the webtoon on screen and reads it out loud but that triggered my issues as well IIRC.

Also for anime just as a test I've watched it muted, and also listened to it without watching it, and they both triggered the same response as just watching it normally.

It really seems like activating certain sections of my brain or nervous system also activate some nearby system because playing different video games, or watching anime, or reading, or doing puzzles all cause consistent but different symptoms. Kind of like synethesia I guess. I have visual snow which is also the same type of symptom where one thing also activates a nearby section of the brain it shouldn't. You'd think all this shit was specific and rare enough that it'd be perfect clues for doctors to pinpoint exactly whats wrong but you'd be overestimating what doctors actually do.

Not my day unless they animate their work. Still, glory to anyone advancing yuri. Speaking of yuri, I'm legitmately confused as to why executioner has such a low score this season. That show is pretty decent but it's well under 7 for some reason. I expected last week at least to up it's score since it had some huge reveals and action but nothing happened.

I was trying to catch up on a webtoon I started back in the hospital called omniscient reader. It's complete trash but somehow entertaining (every single problem is solved by the main character pulling some ability or item out of his ass because he has future knowledge and we don't). After like 3 chapters it became a lot harder to breath. I hate my health condition, it feels so arbitrary. Like, I read forum posts plenty, I watch youtube videos with no issue, but somehow scrolling a webtoon just obliterates my nervous system. Been doing worse for a few days now because of that.

Man, demon girl next door is such a pleasant happy experience. Yuko and Momo light yuri moments are the best. Although it kinda feels like it's just gonna be strong yuribait forever because japanese publishers are too afraid to commit to canon yuri for lame reasons. Funny that the first time in like 10 years that I've been excited to see a characters new transformation is for a comedy series.

Shield hero is kinda crap this season. So far it had been meh but this episode was just bad.

Anime still been chugging along.

It makes complete and perfect sense how Myne acts in bookworm but man I wish she would just kill some people and threaten the rest. If she just obliterates the nobles and makes books it'd be a huge net positive for the world.

Quit hero is fine. It's not high quality but it's perfectly watchable and holds my attention. It is a bit better than I initially thought.

I won't talk much about tomodachi game but I'll be fair, I did not see the last part of that episode coming. Was pretty funny.

Wow. So this is just the week of anime rap. Last week aharen had a hilarious rap part. This week ya boy and love is war both had rap battles (and chika called miyuki a motherfucker, twice). The animators went all out this week for love is war and they even had a full version of the song with an animated music video replacing the ED which was pretty great.

The battle between spyxfamily and love is war for best comedy this season is fierce. I feel like this is the best season of love is war yet, like they have everything established and the author feels comfortable going ham.

agesboy posted...

there's something about aharen's communication failure mixing with raidou's leaps of imagination + unconditional support that just stays entertaining

It's kind of funny how between the two of them, Raidou is probably the more strange one. He is willing to leap to any conclusion at the drop of a hat.

Well, anime has been great the last couple of days. Summertime render just gets more and more interesting. I suspect that main guy is a defective shadow this entire time but honestly theres so many twists already and we aren't even 1/4th of the way through so I don't have much confidence in that.

Ya boy kongming had it's best episode yet complete with a 7 or so minute long rap battle. That show is wild. I still worry it's concept will run out of room but at least for now it's great.

And then executioner finally had an intense episode and damn they gave us so much information that it's kind of hard to process. Thus far the show had a cool setting and ok characters but nothing to really use those things but they finally did this time. I do wonder why akari doesn't just keep her future memories. Seems like you could have a much more pleasant end. Even can share em with menou and maybe stop flare. In fact, I suspect this will end up making me upset at the end as everything with time travel does.

Demon girl next door hit us a bunch of plot and it's great as always. Honestly didn't expect they would encounter sakura anytime soon.

Still have kaguya and aharen to watch from today.

keyblader1985 posted...

Because otherwise why would anyone ever play the game at all? Don't most sadistic games like this have potential ways to come out ahead (as opposed to simply reducing your debt and going home with a net zero)?

They are already locked in at this point and I'm going by the reasoning the show itself used, that they wanted it to be entertaining for the gods by giving the people a way to win so there is tension.

keyblader1985 posted...

Yes, but that doesn't mean they'd all get along without turning on one another after that person is dealt with, or even before. That malice and selfishness would not end with just one person.

I just don't see that happening. I mean, looking at it from a meta perspective, the author wrote it in the way that would be most exciting, which happens to be revealing the traitor at the end. It's very thrilling to wonder if someone is going to get caught or not. Regardless, gambling that they don't pick that secret to expose is the only way the traitor could have gotten away with it. Not going for that ensures getting caught, like what happened. Which should mean to Yuuichi that it wasn't enough to clear Shibe 100%.

keyblader1985 posted...

Nobody has done that. Neither Yuichi nor anyone else has made claims of him being a genius. Actually later on they make a point of saying that he's not a perfect tactician.

It's not specifically what they say about the character (although the observers gush pretty obnoxiously), but how they present his plans. As if he isn't actually taking risks or getting lucky. Show me the tension when he gambles on Shibe not being the traitor or that the people running the game will allow the lie to count even though it was already ruled on and to handle that movement before processing the current round that had already been done or that Shiho wouldn't end up trusting Tenji and sharing the papers with him. Yuuichi is never shown to be tense or worried or perhaps excited at any uncertainty. It's presented as though it was completely certain and every possibility was accounted for.

keyblader1985 posted...

Seeing people whining nonstop about shows they keep watching is why I left the Arrowverse discussion boards.

Well to be fair I was going to drop it until you said it's great and convinced me to keep watching after I'd complained about the first episode. I also just don't have anything better to do. I'm too sick to do much of anything and I just went through 22 years of anime on MAL and found only one show to watch that I'm not in the mood for.

keyblader1985 posted...

If you keep expecting this perfect standard out of works of fiction then you're gonna keep being disappointed

Well, you aren't wrong, but theres not really anything I can do about it. I don't want these things to bother me and some genres definitely allow me to suspend my disbelief a lot more. Like I've just taken to avoiding everything with time travel because it will annoy me too much to enjoy when they do it wrong and everyone does it wrong. With the logic game genre though I've had better success. Kaiji season 1 was great, I enjoyed akagi, I enjoyed about half of liar game, one of the few manga I've read very much of. I'm not trying to upset you, I'm just expressing my opinion on the show but I can stop if you want.

keyblader1985 posted...

A d the point of the positive spaces is obvious; to make money.

Why would they let the players make money though? The anime at least explains it as making the show interesting by giving the players a way to win.

keyblader1985 posted...

It's true that knowing the traitor's identity might give the rest of them a common enemy, but that's no guarantee and if people always showed such solidarity then the Tomodachi Game would have gone under long ago

It doesn't require solidarity. People frequently want to pin everything on one person or join in the hate mob. It would work even with strangers.

And Shibe especially shouldn't really care about the debt. His father has tons of money and the game was kind enough to provide him blackmail to use on his father. Had he been the traitor, he could easily make plays that increase his debt with little worry.

keyblader1985 posted...

I'm looking at that very same chapter, and I do not see him ever saying that he always intended to go on alone.

He doesn't explicitly state it but he lied earlier on purpose for this very play. He says it's the best method. It was clearly planned in advance that he would solo advance to the next round and specifically that he didn't want only one or two of the friends to lose. So lets look at what happens if shiho was 2 spaces before where she actually was (3 spaces from the end).

Yuuichi does everything he does in the anime and reveals his lie and ends up one space ahead of shiho. Then both of them move forward one spot because the turn progresses. He is now 1 space from the goal and shiho is 2 spaces from the goal. The traitor decides shiho still must pay and writes something horrible about her in the next round. She goes more than 1 space and Yuuichi goes 1 space forward and they both hit the goal, an outcome that Yuuichi doesn't want.

keyblader1985 posted...

I just don't get how this series is giving you so much trouble. I've seen a lot of discussion on various sites, and practically none of the points you've brought up were mentioned elsewhere, even among negative comments.

And I don't get how it isn't giving other people more trouble. Then again I often have problems with shows that other people don't so nothing new for me here. I had the same issue with kaguya sama early on. It irritates me greatly when a show presents a character as a genius when they aren't actually that smart (because they author isn't a genius). A logic game with genius protagonists needs to be airtight in it's logic and believable in it's psychology. A character can get lucky or take risks, but the show needs to present them as luck and risks respectively instead of presenting as a genius foolproof plan. Kaiji for instance was great at this. Kaiji is not a manipulative mastermind so when he misses something crucial, it feels plausible and when he takes a logical leap, we know it's a gamble. Whereas the sister series, akagi has a genius protagonist and akagi misses nothing and will find every loophole in every game and exploit it to win. If he were to miss something I'd be just as annoyed as I am at tomodachi game. I can count on him to always take the optimal path and when watching I never found a time where he didn't (granted it's been quite a while since I've seen it).

keyblader1985 posted...

This is where you're just overthinking it. This final showdown could have gone down when Sawaragi reached any of the final few spaces. It just happened to be the very last one.

The whole point was that by revealing a lie he would instantly end the game. If she had been 1 space earlier, then she could have tied with him the next round and they both would have hit the end space. Actually, now that I think about it, shiho actually still should have ended with him. He revealed his lie after all the things were tallied. At the very least it was extremely lucky that they didn't also finish that turn since he had no way of knowing if they would or wouldn't.

keyblader1985 posted...

What? I'm pretty sure Yuichi said he originally wanted everyone to go on except for the traitor.

I mean, I just read the chapter where it ends and he said he intended to solo end because he was hiding an even worse secret from them all.

keyblader1985 posted...

No it doesn't. Once the friendships had seemingly fallen apart and people were taking the game seriously, they'd have no reason to keep that information to themselves. Even if their common enemy were revealed, it wouldn't change the situation they're currently in. They'd have nothing to gain or lose by revealing their identity, but as long as there was even the slightest chance of that happening then the traitor would never volunteer to have their secret told.

Then there's also no reason for the board to have positive spaces. The whole logic there is that the good guys and bad guys need a chance to win to increase excitement for the audience. If the traitor is revealed earlier, the rest of the game will be considerably less exciting. It would be a gamble but theres no way to play risk free. It's a gamble that initially seems bad but is actually very in favor of the traitor. It's also a very necessary risk to take because you need to false clear yourself in order to remain undetected.

This is especially true if Shibe was secretly a mastermind because he would need to fool tenji who is known to be very smart and logical. If shibe had paid more attention and been smarter than tenji actually was, he would know that someone was holding both the girls nametags at that point and was likely clearing the suspects one by one. At that point he would have to assume that either tenji or yuuichi is both smart and also clearing people one by one. This would be Shibe's best possible shot and really the only possible way he could stay undetected.

keyblader1985 posted...

Seeing how they didn't have any solid strategy to defeat them, the next best thing was to keep them in a false sense of security,

The strategy is easy though because he always intended to solo lose. All he needed to do was lie every round about himself with really insane lies and it'd be impossible for him to do anything except win no matter what anyone else did. You could also force the traitor to lose if you felt like it by just having everyone badmouth him every round after revealing who it was or convince everyone to lie to have everyone clear the game. Controlling 4/5s of the players is an unbeatable amount of power in that game. You can essentially do anything you want at that point.

He's also kind of dumb directly challenging the administrators. Like, they could easily just shoot him, and probably should honestly.
keyblader1985 posted...

you gotta feel bad for Shibe

Clearing him was also pretty flimsy. It stands to reason that the adminstrators would never choose to reveal that his secret was getting the money for the game. It would have ruined the game the same way that having all negative spaces would have ruined the game. It's almost certain that even if tenji had volunteered, they would have chosen a different secret. In the event that shibe had been a secret mastermind only playing dumb, he could have easily gotten away with it.

Then, something I'm kind of bummed wasn't shown was how he got shiho onto the last space. Without controlling the traitor, you'd never be able to truly guarantee that she ends up on that spot. It'd be effectively a 1 in 5 chance. It's not beyond the realm of possibility to try and force her (or anyone) to end up on that square, but it's kind of a shame that they never show us what he did to accomplish that.

It's pretty surprising to me that the mistranslation made it through. It's not like it's a random rule, the correct interpretation is clearly pivotal to the conclusion of this arc so anyone that read the source would presumably know immediately that it was wrong.

In fact, I got impatient and read the next part in the manga to see if it's worth my time. A little bit of BS in the solution and a fair amount of luck in how the rule was interpreted that lie had already been ruled true and theres no reason to be certain that it could be overturned. Basically a double jeapordy issue could have arisen and caused shiho to lose. His logic for not exposing the traitor earlier makes no sense. He just as easily could say anything destructive outside of the game, it's not as if the papers were the only way to reveal a secret. Also his "extra layer of security" with the nametags was pointless. Yes, there is no upper limit on papers, but there is a lower limit, and it only ever went above the lower limit (one per person) after he had figured out the traitor. The traitor not being motivated by money could have also just given up the nametag and lied anyway not caring that they might incur more debt. We even find out the traitor isn't motivated by debt. He also got lucky on other people writing secrets when he was checking and the real traitor knew things about shiho that "should" have been impossible. If they'd had the same level of bullshit information on Yuuchi, he would have been out of luck. I did notice the two girls not having nametags in episode 5 but I didn't think about using the papers to write notes, so I guess they got that over me. Their rhetoric that this line of thinking is "evil" is a bit of a stretch though.