Lurker > pyresword

pyresword posted...

Ha, that's amusing. I was turned off by this show because of the personalities of its characters but in basically the opposite way as you since I hated Ohana. Been a while since I watched it but my memory is that I hated her unearned sense of entitlement and refusal to compromise about anything.

I should also say actually that there was one point around episode 2 or 3 where I did think people were being mean to Ohana with little justification. I don't really remember any specific events that happened in the show and I was mainly upset with Ohana overall, but there were specific points in the show where it went the other way.

Just a show that gave me a lot of negative emotions over specific events despite broadly being a well-put-together anime, if that makes sense. I don't know.

Ha, that's amusing. I was turned off by this show because of the personalities of its characters but in basically the opposite way as you since I hated Ohana. Been a while since I watched it but my memory is that I hated her unearned sense of entitlement and refusal to compromise about anything.

I've said this before but SAO is a series of high highs and low lows for me. Mother's Rosario is actually high to top tier anime content imo, and I also quite liked (most of) the Aincrad arc and (most of) the first half of Alicization. The bad parts of the show can get...uh...very bad, however.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
Beauty and the Beast

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 - Memories of the City
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aJ6v40BZCQ

Octopath Traveler - Flamesgrace, Guiding Light
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvKiZzyaMK8

Pokemon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire - Littleroot Town
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3arGB7aET0

The Legend of Heroes: Trails From Zero - Arc-en-ciel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0To8SJiRUKw

Disgaea: Hour of Darkness - Welcome to the Devil's Castle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erM9GhH1WnU

Here's what I've got for now

Oh oops I see it was also in the original post that I definitely read carefully and didn't skim

Thought while on the bus--do theme songs of abandoned/ruined/ancient cities count, or does there still need to be people actively living there?

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A Silent Voice

Tag for later.

Town music best music.

I liked Yona of the Dawn a lot but yeah the lack of a second season is a fair point.

resurrectedreplayer

Pretty ok winner all things considered. Probably in the bottom half of winners but I do think it's a pretty good song. And given the set of songs that retired which I wasn't big on, it definitely could have been worse.

Passing Through the Forest

Not sure how to feel about Ancient Magus Bride S2. That was one of those shows that I liked a lot at the beginning and then substantially less as it went on. The show's style was very good throughout so I'll probably still enjoy it somewhat but idk.

Yeah I almost voted Wolf Children which probably would have been my vote even if I'd seen both. Wolf Children pretty great. I'm only voting though if I've seen both, really REALLY love one of the movies, or have some reason to reasonably expect I wouldn't like the opponent despite not seeing it.

Watched Josee, the Tiger, and the Fish.

This was a movie that had been on my radar for a while, but as a result of the pandemic I either lost track of it or wasn't willing to go to a theater when/if it released, or something. In any case I decided to watch it now that it's available on Crunchyroll.

In typical fashion for a romance/drama, I really liked the 2 leads and their dynamic, but lots of the drama felt either rushed or just kind of dumb. Which I guess averages out to "this was decently good". Feels a bit like "A Silent Voice at home" in a lot of ways, but even an inferior version of that movie is still reasonably good.

Yeah I'm having a lot of fun with this format. Probably my favorite since Strixhaven. Though I was on hiatus during Neon Dynasty which I think a lot of people liked?

Domain aggro feels like the strongest deck to me. Lots of good ways to push damage like Meria's Outider and Nishoba Brawler. It scales decently into the late-game, and it comes with the bonus of letting you use every single off-color Kicker effect.

The Lost City

Nice, actually managed to get a 7 win draft deck. (The last one I mentioned ended 6-3.)

Turns out when you're passed both Herd Migration and Archangel of Wrath you can usually figure out something.

Edit: Only loss was to the absolute nuts Defender deck and I'm pretty sure it is real. Curved turn 2 Coral Colony into turn 3 Waking Bulwark into turn 4 Shield Wall Sentinel into turn 5 Wingmantle Chaplain and it looked like he had many copies of all of the above.

Argon Refinery

Hercules
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Have done most of 3 drafts so far.

3-3 with a Grixis Control deck. This deck was ok but I didn't really have enough quality removal to support this strategy. Think the archetype has potential though.

3-3 with Jund...stuff. This deck was awful and I'm honestly amazed I got lucky enough to scrape together 3 wins. The top end was ok with big Tramplers, but it didn't go quite as big as the dedicated ramp/Domain decks and it was very easy to get run over early.

Currently 6-1 with a domain deck, which is really more like an aggressive RG (U splash) deck with a top end of Herd Migration and the guy who burns the opponent based on your Domain count (this one feels low-key busted in the right deck). It's also got dual lands including off-colors, but only for domain count or triggering the occasional kicker ability like the 3/3 that gives things Menace. This deck actually feels quite good, despite the U splash coming back to bite me a bit.

General thoughts are that right now the tendency is for people to be a bit too greedy trying to work Domain into their strategies. It's good if it works, but there's also just a lot of nice streamlined 2-color decks in the format that ignore that entirely. UR, WB, and WU all seem quite good.

Also if you want to go the Domain route, I think the way to do it is to pick the dual lands early and then commit if you can pick up a few of the Domain payoffs as well.

Tachi

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Mulan

Girl Who Leapt Through Time also easily my favorite of the Hosoda films I've seen, though notably I have not seen Summer Wars.

Argon Refinery

I think people's opinions of Konosuba pretty much live and die by how much the humor clicks with them, and I wouldn't expect that to change further in.

I thought the show was all right.

I never liked Reigen much for whatever that's worth. I thought season 2 overall was a bit of a mess though which I suppose is probably where the comment is coming from, and I may have just been checked out of the series as a whole already by that point.

Secret of the Forest

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a clear distinction, but I definitely think of pretty different things if I hear "depressing" as opposed to "sad". My first thought for a sad anime is something like a KEY show, whereas for depressing I'd envision something like Welcome to the NHK. I don't think those anime are especially comparable--I'm sure one could construct examples where the distinction is a bit murkier, but I just meant this is where my mind goes first.

Xenoblade 2 chapter 3 beated.

Really liked this chapter. I'm still not sure how I feel about what I guess I'll call the big overarching story, but the character stories have so far proven to be quite good. Which, even if the overarching story ends up bad that still tends to be a net positive for me as long as the character storytelling also remains in focus (which...is not a guarantee in jrpg's, but I remain hopeful here). Love the intrigue around Pyra and her self-hatred because of her own powers, and if that continues to be a main feature of the games plot then I am probably going to love it. Stories of healing are pretty easily one of my favorite types of stories.

Sure is a shame that Pyra waited to have her power-up until after Vandham's definitely useful sacrifice, but I guess I can accept it given the nature of her powers

The area in this chapter was also gorgeous.

Theme of D4
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The Nightmare Before Christmas

I never got the Index hate though I wouldn't actually say I like her either. She's just kind of there for me.

I also really hated the Railgun filler arcs and think they're the worst part of the series, despite liking the Railgun series more than the Index series overall. Idk, of the seasons I've seen I'd rank something like Railgun S2 > Index S2 > Railgun S1 > Index S1 >>>>>>>>> Index S3

Haven't season season 3 of Railgun or the Accelerator anime.

Robazoid posted...

One of my favorite things from Index was Toumas power-nullifying ability and seeing how hed use it to solve conflicts. Mikasas railgun is far more powerful but also more limited in what it can do.

This is probably the thing I disagree with the most in this thread, which is weird because I'm not super high on Raildex either. (Some parts are great--it's one of those series with high high's and low low's for me...)

I mean I guess the series as a whole doesn't utilize it's powers particularly well (exception to the awesome teleporter duel from Index S2), so in some sense I agree Mikasa doesn't use her powers creatively. But comparing it to Index (the series) in this regard is just weird to me because one of the biggest problems with Index is that no matter what's going on or what powers and strategies the enemy has, Touma just solves things by running up and punching it.

I've heard of most of them but there's definitely a lot I haven't seen, which I think is inevitable when you're doing a ranking with over 200 shows.

Also some I just haven't commented on because like yes I technically watched Girlish Number but I do not care at all about it, remember nothing about it other than it not being very good, and don't have anything of value to say about it.

Argon Refinery
Breath of Forest

I was actually really curious to see what Roba thought about Tatami Galaxy so good recommendation imo

Wolf Children and Boy and the Beast are both by Mamoru Hosoda who is a pretty well regarded anime movie director. Wolf Children is probably his most praised work and I thought it was quite good. I didn't like Boy and the Beast a whole lot but I think it was received somewhat well also.

I remember being really excited for RErideD before it aired, and then I saw the reactions and was like "well guess I'm not watching this".

Forest
Forest

I want to say anime but the last 2-3 years I've been spending way more time on card games (which I've also enjoyed for most of my life but it's ramped up since COVID happened).

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Princess Mononoke

Finally another match I can confidently vote on and it's between two of my favorites RIP.

Really sad how we went from "Really like the pool of songs this year overall" to what might be the worst set or retirees ever. I don't know if I outright dislike any of the songs which I suppose in some sense is an improvement, but many of the songs I just feel nothing from. Guess I will tier the retirees though:

Great
Secret of the Forest
Theme of D4
Argon Refinery

Good
Breath of Forest
Tachi
Passing Through the Forest
THEMEX

Solid, I Guess
An Endless Desert
The Lost City
Mor Ardain
Different World 1

Whatever
Aquatic Ambiance
Chapter 6: Dark Pit
Sky Tower
Prophecy

Bad
Move Me

Actually looking at them all as a list it's actually a slightly better set of songs than I was thinking, though still not one of the better retiree sets by any stretch.

I'm hoping I can just play through Xenoblade 2 more or less ignoring the gacha. I have been successful so far other than just spamming common crystals to get [literally anything with Wind Mastery] or what have you

Chihayafuru is one of the best anime of all time so I'd be pretty upset to see it fall then.

Maybe ranking spoilers? I'm pretty sure Roba said in the anime topic they liked the show a lot though so I don't think it's that

Tachi
Theme of D4

Kill Command
The Wind Calls to Shevat in the Blue Sky

This bodes poorly for my future prospects in the list