Board 8 > Anime & Manga Discussion Topic 297: A Dream of Spring

(+) Yeah! (+)

Started watching RWBY. That first season was super rough, i'm not sure i would have been able to persist with it if it hadn't been so short and auto played to season 2. Even now the animation is an eyesore but it's not as bad as season 1 which it feels like I could have put together on a laptop in my spare tine (I assume that's how it was made).

It has enough hooks to keep me invested for now though and I assume quality must pick up for it to have as many seasons as it does

Edit: I'm midway through season 3

Oh and the music is exceptional which is how I originally found it after Spotify played some of the soundtrack for me

Seasons 1 through 3 use the same Poser engine, but the amount of work they put it though continues to improve and they do some amazing stuff in Season 3. They fully switch to Maya after season 3, and the models vastly improve but the choreography takes a sharp hit, especially in season 5 which is rough in terms of action quality. It's all comes together from season 6 onwards, though.

Season 1 of RWBY is rough. I even skip some chunks of it when I rewatch (Jaune I love you but you sure started out....not good). Season 2 I like quite a bit though, despite some oddities, and season 3 is just straight up very good (not the best one, as much as a lot of stubborn ex-fans would try and tell you to believe)

And yes, the soundtrack is incredible and only gets better and better as Casey Lee Williams improves her vocals.

I unironically like the stupid dumb comedy show turning into serious shit and showing teeth in Seasons 3-5...

Very much agreed..I just wish season 5 wasn't clearly suffering from production constraints. It's not like it looks horrible minute to minute or anything (there's an argument I be made that the lighting in season 5 is the best she show has ever looked, from a screenshot standpoint), but those fights.....oof.

Thankfully it's IMMEDIATELY clear at the start of S6 that they've gotten their shit together.

Shattered posted...

Oh and the music is exceptional which is how I originally found it after Spotify played some of the soundtrack for me

The main theme singer is like 14 or something crazy at the start.

No real reason to talk about Mushoku Tensei since this isn't actually a new season, and nothing about the episode pretends to be. Totally fine lighthearted episode, but also a reminder that I want this are over with. It may not be bad, but it's still not the show I fell in love with.

Grandpa and Grandma....uh...I don't think this one is gonna work for me. I called salty Oshi no Ko manga fans cowards just a few weeks ago for this same content, but this feels like a very different kind of squeamish. Shame, because this show sounded fun on paper! At least I knew what was coming from the PVs.

Aristocrat Isekai............OK. So I had low expectations due to prior comments, and at first those weren't low enough. The opening few minutes chunk of this series are abysmal. Hilarious pointless rushed Isekai setup that may as well not even be here, boring loredump narration from the MC, fucking STAT SCREENS. Basically everything that I consider wrong with this genre hyperfocused into 5 minutes of hell.

But....it really picks up a lot? Once it gets the crap out of the way, the show actually has a solid visual structure, detailed background characters which is always a big play for me, solid animation, a surprisingly good soundtrack, a good hook....I dunno, I feel like my gut instinct from when I first watched the PV was right, at least for now! It could just be a case of the anime doing a much better job adapting the LN than the previously mentioned manga, we had a noteable case of that last year with MagiRevo.

I will say though, a fantasy series or Isekai attempting to tackle racism is hardly new, but "black people who are treated as literally lesser humans who were brought over from across the sea as slaves and don't have rights", is, uh.....on the nose!

More first episode impressions:

-Grandma and Grandpa Turn Young Again was absolute trash. After reading the premise, I had hoped that it would be a heartfelt story about a loving couple who get to do things together again. The very beginning teased them finally going on the honeymoon they never got to have back in the day, and I can imagine lots of comedic possibilities from something like that! Imagine them at some trendy beach surrounded by hip young people, only their sensibilities are 70 years outdated so they don't really fit in. That could be funny, and them still being very much in love would be cute too. Instead of doing anything like that, though, this is a comedy about how everyone wants to fuck them. Literally over half the segments in the first episode boiled down to "they're hot now". The granddaughter really, really wants to fuck her grandfather. The daughter-in-law wants to fuck her father-in-law. All the old geezers in town want to fuck young grandma. Ugh, it was awful. Even the few segments that weren't about their hotness weren't funny. Let's watch five minutes of them winning at various sports, that's hilarious right? What if we have an old guy, in front of his grandkids, badmouthing his dead wife because he always wanted to fuck young grandma instead? Ugh ugh ugh. I also hated how they kept their exaggerated old people voices even now that they're young again. I didn't think anything would be worse than Highspeed Etoile this season, but here we are.

-As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World was fine. It's still an isekai and has all the baggage that comes with that like stat screens and awkward infodumping. Did I really need to hear all seven of the former kingdoms if the bottom line is "they're all one empire now"? Still, the premise is interesting and unique enough that I'm still interested in it. The main guy's power to see people's potential is cool. The setting, a corrupt empire doomed to fracture, reminds me of the Three Kingdoms era in China. If this is going to be about the main dude being a Liu Bei-type figure, gathering people of talent to conquer the turbulent times, then I'm excited for it. The first episode definitely gave me some hope.

-Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night was surprisingly great! I really liked the story it told with the one girl's mural and how it brought the two of them together. More than the story, though, was the way it was told. Lots of creative uses of flashbacks, lots of dynamic angles, and really high production values all around. If it can keep up this quality the whole way through, this could easily rise in my ranking and become the best show of the season! I wasn't planning to check this out at all initially, but I'm glad I did.

Spring 2024 Ranking so far
-Laid-Back Camp S3
-A Condition Called Love
-Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night
-Tonari no Yokai-san
-Gods' Games We Play
-Train to the End of the World
-As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World
-Astro Note
-A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics
-Studio Apartment, Good Lighting, Angel Included
-Highspeed Etoile
-Grandma and Grandpa Turn Young Again

There really is nothing worse than seeing a show that should easily be good but does literally everything wrong.

The show could still have a bunch of frisky content in it as a running joke between Grandma and Grandpa and that would be fine, funny even! But literally the whole world is like "ohhh I wanna fuck these old people", including underage family members. Like, why. It doesn't even vibe with the aesthetic of the show, why did you do it like this??

Against my better judgement, I watched Ep 1 of Highspeed Etoile

The most entertaining aspect was seeing a Wixoss logo on the guy's helmet

That's a series that I both miss and would not check out a new season of if one were made.

Oh God please don't let Etoile get popular for being bad, it doesn't deserve it lol.

Wixoss S1 was pretty fun....then they kept making it.

Etoile is too boring to even be "so bad it's good", I don't think it'll get any kind of traction like that.

https://twitter.com/BlueFlame_MK/status/1777009368510160984?t=KwMzMhcvV2sqO-vWPI_U4g&s=19

Just put it on a loop for an hour k thx

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Wixoss S1 was pretty fun....then they kept making it.

selector (S1 and S2) were brilliant
lostorage (S3 and S4) were above average, but nowhere near the first series, not worth going and watching unless you really want more./
DivaALive (S5) was fucking trash and has permanently soured me on something I loved.

Oh, right, I forgot the second part of Selector was actually another season and not a cour split.

Not watching Blue Protocol, but

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/8/86e1598a.jpg

lolol the MTL nightmare gets another one.

I think those are just the Muse Asia subs and Crunchy's are good, but I could be wrong.

Crunchy doesn't seem to have the show, unless it's licensed in a other region with English subs?

And to be clear I did realize I was calling it the wrong name before I searched lol

alright i guess i started on a few of the shows i said i would now

highspeed etoile managed to make even the events of the race dull as sin, how do you even fuck up a racing anime that badly?

the fable was... eh. without having read the source material, i get the feeling that half of the appeal of the series is for its gag reactions, and it makes me think that they've made the tone a little too hostile in this adaptation because of it.

the jellyfish band anime is a def contender for show of the season off that premiere. or perhaps it's the low bar set by the others i checked that got to me

lastly i went and watched the new bartender and uh.... so comments i've generally been seeing are saying this is a BETTER anime than the original? like seriously i even went over the first episode of the original straight after (for the benefit of my flatmate) and i cannot believe anyone would say this, let alone for it to be the consensus (it has better ratings too...)

will be getting to others probably in the next few days now that i've gotten the ones my flatmate agreed to so far out of the way (well, he did also agree to spice and wolf but it didn't come up on the couple of sites i checked and i was too lazy to download or check elsewhere for it)

The Fable's from a pretty awful studio unfortunately.

I finally watched one of the anime I downloaded awhile ago, a random horror/supernatural one I found while looking for stuff unavailable on streaming.

Ghost Hound was pretty good! It's about a group of teens in a rural town who start having out-of-body experiences, and it got really spooky and weird. It had lots of spirituality and pseudoscience to explain everything that was going on, which I enjoyed because it helped anchor the strangeness in the reality of the setting. I liked all the characters too. There was a main group of three who were each troubled in different ways. All of that was explored really well, especially the main guy Taro who had major trauma from a childhood kidnapping that killed his sister. There were lots of great side characters too, like the doctor lady or the psychiatrist. Everyone got a lot of development and contributed in interesting ways.

Still, the absolute best part about this anime was the sound design. I watch anime with headphones, which probably enhanced the directional noises. The first few minutes of the first episode featured a fly buzzing around a room. I could follow the noise moving between ears and all around the room. I've never seen that effect done so well, and that's just one example. There were lots of really harsh droning noises or an otherworldly grinding or a thumping heartbeat drowning everything else out. This anime used sound to set the mood of a scene better than anything else I can think of off the top of my head.

I got super invested early on and it held on all the way to the end... but, sadly, I thought the end was a bit of a letdown. I still have a few unanswered questions, and the answer for a couple of the big mysteries couldn't help but feel underwhelming. Still, this was a good anime overall. There was a moment in the fourth episode that was one of the spookiest moments I've ever seen in an anime. This show was worth watching for that alone!

On another note, Ghost Hound was my 400th anime! In honor of that milestone, I want to share some fun stats I compiled while I was bored at work. This is a list of the 400 shows I've completed at least one season of sorted by their debut year. I feel like I've watched a decent amount, but the anime from 2010 and earlier only adds up to 31 shows, or less than 10%. Clearly I need to diversify a little and watch more older anime.

1995 - 1
1998 - 1
2002 - 1
2003 - 2
2004 - 1
2005 - 2
2006 - 3
2007 - 4
2008 - 5
2009 - 4
2010 - 7
2011 - 9
2012 - 13
2013 - 17
2014 - 16
2015 - 20
2016 - 22
2017 - 33
2018 - 73
2019 - 16
2020 - 15
2021 - 17
2022 - 41
2023 - 62
2024 - 15

Oh God, that Shirow anime, completely forgot that existed. I watched a couple episodes when it aired...looking at the chart, I definitely got caught up in other shows. That's the Kaiji season, Minami-ke...Blue Drop, man, back when Gonzo actually made anime.

Robazoid posted...

Clearly I need to diversify a little and watch more older anime.

It's time!!!

https://i.imgur.com/Ps5QZAt.gif

https://streamable.com/lh61s6

"oh Martin 110 episodes are too many-"

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/e3a52d21.jpg

Every time I tell myself I wanna rewatch an old anime and sort my watchlist by year, I just end up watching Tenchi again.

....The early 90s is definitely old at this point.

MartinFF7 posted...

It's time!!!

I looked up LotGH on Hidive, but man this website sucks now. I can't even scroll over further than 20 episodes on the series page, it just stops loading new ones there. I also can't figure out why it has two seasons listed. Maybe it's just split arbitrarily in half or something, but the first episode of S2 is "The Hero of El Facil" and that doesn't appear to be an episode title in the series according to Wikipedia. They've made it impossible to tell if they have the full series or what that second season even is.

Tell you what Martin, I'll watch LotGH right away if Hidive ever gets its act together and becomes easier to navigate! I should've watched it earlier before they ruined themselves. If only I'd known.

UF8 posted...

lastly i went and watched the new bartender and uh.... so comments i've generally been seeing are saying this is a BETTER anime than the original? like seriously i even went over the first episode of the original straight after (for the benefit of my flatmate) and i cannot believe anyone would say this, let alone for it to be the consensus (it has better ratings too...)

I haven't seen the original Bartender, but I thought that the first episode of the new one was pretty good. It's probably not going to blow anybody's minds or be talked about as best of the season/year, but unless the first episode is the best by a lot I strongly doubt I'll regret watching it.

Or is this a commentary that the original is fantastic, rather than the new one being bad?

Konosuba S3 starts today right? Man I still havent watched season 2 or the movie yet, March flew right by, damn... so much for spacing things out, probably in store for a binge this weekend.

Robazoid posted...

Tell you what Martin, I'll watch LotGH right away if Hidive ever gets its act together and becomes easier to navigate! I should've watched it earlier before they ruined themselves. If only I'd known.

Ah, if you only had acquired the series from your acquaintance (that you were visiting?) back when you were seeking recommendations... maybe next time!

Konosuba is Wednesday.

excellent, two more days for me to do nothing lol

For those going to see the eclipse today... please leave immediately if you find any weird egg shaped red stones or see a fully bandaged paraplegic man in a wheelchair

After episode two of Gods' Games We Play, I sadly have to admit that I was giving it too much credit after the first episode. The first actual game was super mediocre. This is going to fall in my seasonal ranking quite a bit.

I only had time for one episode this morning, I should've watched the Train one instead!

Train show episode was a blast. Like 8 minutes of what feels like improve in animation form and then PEDAL TO THE METAL.

I'm in my "rewatch phase," where I watch stuff I've liked before running back into new shows. First on my docket is Shadows House. While a bit too comedic at times, I find the show's visuals, tone, and style very unique. The first half shows quite a bit of Emilico and the inner workings of how Shadows and Living Dolls work, but I prefer the later episodes focusing on Mistress Kate and solving a mystery. I've always preferred Kate over Emilico, so that's probably why I like Season 2 more.

Hoping for more anime from this someday. Season 1's ED Nai Nai also slaps hard.

I do need to check out that series again, if in manga form. I stopped watching when I had it confirmed that Clowerworks had started cutting out volumes of content, as they often did for all their adaptations at that time.

The ED was soooooo good.

Was hoping the MPreg show was gonna be something to meme on, but it's just a wholesome if fairly bland gay romance and child raising show outside of the backdrop, so that is a bust. At least the people who were looking forward to it legitimately are probably getting what they want!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/0/0009bce6.jpg

The duality of Gojo.

GranzonEx posted...

For those going to see the eclipse today... please leave immediately if you find any weird egg shaped red stones or see a fully bandaged paraplegic man in a wheelchair

instructions unclear, heading towards big hand that appeared out of the ground

Spice and Wolf still very good. Holo is an amazing character, though legions of fans have known that for over a decade.

So far I have verified bangers to watch every day of the week. Nothing in Wednesday yet, but Konosuba is hitting so that's on lock.

The only show tomorrow I have any interest in at all is Unnamed Memories, so everything is on it's shoulders to see if I get a full week simulcast sweep for the first time....ever??

I watched Spice and Wolf ep1. It was passable I suppose as an introduction, but it's done nothing to draw me in. I'll probably watch it all the way through and then watch the original when this is done. Like Roba, the original has been in my sights to watch forever, but just never got around to it for whatever reason.

If anything, I'm curious how watching a remake first vs the original will skew my opinions. I always find myself comparing these remakes like HxH or Trigun and find the new versions completely lacking in execution compared to the originals - but is that just bias? Maybe I'll feel the opposite here.

That TaktOP game ended service today, less than a year after launching.

Maybe the biggest gulf in promotion and budget for a multimedia Gacha project versus actual impact and relevance ever?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/be5d9107.jpg

I hate how paranoid I am getting about manga translations from either end.

Just got to the end of Heroes and Monsters (S3 Ep11) in RWBY. Well that is certainly a stakes raising episode

Oh, this is not going to end well for Pyrrha. With a name like that and she just gave herself a massive death flag by kissing Jaune

You've certainly reached an extremely singnificant turning point in this franchise!

Oh shit. That was so unnecessarily ruthless. I somehow do not think there is any coming back from being disintegrated? That's a shame as I liked her but I did expect her to die or suffer some grim consequences of her actions because she totally could have fled there but I guess that would have been against her character.

Now just to keep watching and see what the fuck Ruby just did that was crazy enough to shock Cinder

Gash Bell, which is currently unlicensed and owned by Raiku's own company, has just opened itself up to licensing and adaptation. He says they have already received several offers on both the distribution front and adaptation front for both the original series and ongoing sequel.

Gash Bell Brotherhood LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I would also love to buy a box set of the original manga.

@MartinFF7 I started watching Legend of the Galactic Heroes after all. I figured out how to view more episodes on Hidive (with the jankiest workaround imaginable, god that website sucks now) and I confirmed they have the whole series. I'm pretty sure the second season they have listed there are the two Gaiden seasons, whatever those are.

Still, I started with the first movie, Legend of the Galactic Heroes: My Conquest is the Sea of Stars. It was conveniently uploaded to Youtube, as is the second movie which I'll watch tomorrow. My understanding is that the second movie is an extended remake of the first two episodes of the show. Everywhere I've looked said to watch the two movies, then go straight to episode 3 and continue from there.

The first movie was fine. I definitely like sci-fi space battles, and it had lots of nice looking shots of the fleets. The two main dudes are cool too, though at the moment Reinhard is significantly cooler. Yang is held back by his side's leadership being absolute morons. Yang kept going "hey do this really obvious smart thing or everyone dies" and then his dumbass commanders go "nah, we're doing the stupid thing instead". I hope that dynamic doesn't last very long into the actual series because I'm tired of it already. Reinhard's commanders are morons too, but he's at least mostly in charge of his own forces unlike poor Yang. I have absolutely no idea what these two sides are fighting for, but right now I'm Team Empire! Let's crush that lousy Alliance.

Anyway, I'm not sure how long this behemoth of a show will take me to finish or how often I'll post updates as I go. I just wanted to let Martin know that I have finally begun watching it.

Nice, another item on the Roba peer pressure checklist:
-play Final Fantasy 7
-start watching LotGH

lol

I mean I am worried about the janky HiDive setup, iirc every episode includes the episode summary with the thumbnail so I am definitely concerned about that, lots of great unexpected moments that I'd rather you not be spoiled on before watching the episode. I remember recommending to another user that rather than click through to each episode, to instead change the episode number in the URL and hit enter so I'd probably recommend that with you too... I think that's what I did when I watched the Gaiden series during my free trial with them. And also don't watch the "next episode" previews at the episode's end, not worth it ever and REALLY not worth it in a few situations. Some episodes don't have ending song so gotta be more prompt in the episode skip, lol.

....also a lot of the earlier episodes in the series are panned so I gotta give the obligatory "just hang in there" in case it's not your cup of tea. Though I liked them all, at least it's world (universe)-building. And it probably was for the best to watch the movies because yeah, the first two episodes throw so much at you it leaves you in a tailspin.

Unnamed Memory, despite it's extremely mediocre OP, has me very interested in continuing. A show like this is gonna live or die on whether you like the leads or not, and with the introduction we've had so far they've left a solid first impression. Of course. There was never a chance I wasn't going to watch the fantasy show starting a girl with a blue underdye, but at least it gave be other reasons too.

The PVs were pretty action heavy, which weren't hinted at here at all, so we'll have to see how the production handles that. Having completely hand drawn horse in an anime in 2024 is a very good sign though, lol.

Robazoid posted...

Yang kept going "hey do this really obvious smart thing or everyone dies" and then his dumbass commanders go "nah, we're doing the stupid thing instead". I hope that dynamic doesn't last very long into the actual series because I'm tired of it already.

It definitely lasts a while!