Board 8 > Anime & Manga Topic 207: Cute Users Posting Cute Things

(+) Yeah! (+)

Yes, I understand why some of them don't. Lily is the main one it was problematic for, and several others would probably have still-living families as well.

I was hoping there'd be some sort of supernatural twist at the end, like they're all in heaven/purgatory and this is a chance to work out their regrets or something, since that would explain why they can't go back, but alas, 'twas not to be.
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All questions answered in season 2.

At the end, aliens will invade. They'll have to fight them in space.
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Congrats to Land of the Lustrous and Girls Last Tour for making the 2018 Top 20 Tokyo fan rankings in the year they didn't come out in, lol.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2018-12-20/a-place-further-than-the-universe-leads-tokyo-anime-awards-fan-vote/.141104
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Oh shit. Non Non Biyori Vacation subs where?
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I finished Zombie Land Saga too so I may as well post an idol fan's perspective! I thought this was an excellent anime! I never weighed in on the 'it's not just an idol anime' conversation, but mostly because I'm not sure I understand what that was arguing in the first place. It's a hilarious anime (Tae was the standout but everyone was great), a heartfelt anime when it wants to be, and it's an awesome anime... but none of that is incompatible with it also being an idol anime. Idol super-haters probably shouldn't watch ZLS because it likely won't change your opinion on the genre, but anyone who feels a bit more neutral should check it out.

Anyway, I enjoyed ZLS a lot. The characters who needed it were fleshed out over the course of the story (and the ones who weren't were always great regardless). The musical aspect was a lot of fun. The CGI dancing may not have been the best but it was nowhere near the worst I've seen either. Almost every single joke landed, but it was also capable of making me feel heartfelt emotions when it wanted to. Overall ZLS was just a solid anime.

Lastly, while I would be excited for a potential second season, I'm not seeing why there's a real need for one. It wasn't like there was some big plot thread that needs to be wrapped up, this stands perfectly fine on its own imho
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Incidentally, as far as I can tell, there was no S2 announcement? I'm not sure what LtM was talking about there. The staff implied we'll get something, which could be an OVA/S2/Movie, or it could be something else entirely.
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I still haven't watched the episode, the chat was going on about confirmed. Definitely could be wrong.
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In retrospect, Zombieland Saga peaked hard at Ep 5 and was all downhill from there.

Like that might be the greatest single episode of anything in the past few years, and it absolutely elevated the rest of the series.

Pretty clearly not AotY though.

But episode 8 was the best one of the show
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I gotta give the highest props to episode 8, personally.
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Ok you're right, saying it was all downhill when that one exists is a lie

I thought ZLS was mostly consistent throughout.
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The only time anime made me cry this year!
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Finished Overlord Season 3. I love this show so much. Season 4 when?
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LapisLazuli posted...

The only time anime made me cry this year!

Counting only stuff from this year (and not counting tears from eye strain due to watching too much anime) I think Antarctica was the only one that managed to get my tears flowing.
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2>8>5 imo for top 3 ZLS episodes.
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Oh shit I cried during Antarctica too, totally forgot.
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Aggretsuko Christmas Special watched

My boy Haida, he got so much. That opening! He frustrated me a little with how he was acting BUT this is an in-between thing so it's fine, I have faith in Season 2

Gori and Washimi were the true MVP's, with Fenneko right behind with her sleuthing skills
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Wow they actually committed and made Retsuko's Instagram page from the Aggretsuko Christmas special

https://instagram.com/retsuko1106
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There's a whole bunch of free anime seasons on the Microsoft store. Keep an eye on this thread.

https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1075995598988271617?s=19
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Yeah, grabbed em all up last night. I'm starting to get quite the anime library on Xbox with all the free anime they give away.
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Of course, these are almost all first cours with very overpriced later cours so nabbing these with consideration for completing a future collection isn't that valuable. Always the possibility they'll screw up and offer the rest free later, though.
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Two more anime finished today.

Uzamaid was great, which is a lot better than its premise makes it sound! There are a lot of ways the pedophile maid aspect could have been sickening instead of hilarious, but I felt they managed to keep from going too far. Tsubame never felt like an actual threat to Misha, merely an annoyance, and that meant I could just enjoy the funny antics without worry. I liked the dynamic between those two a lot, and side characters like Yasuhiro and Misha's school friends were great (Morikawa was the best, I loved that she had her own theme song whenever she showed up). I wasn't a huge fan of Midori though, and especially not the prominence she received. Several episodes made her seem like the secondary main character, pushing Tsubame into third, and while her masochism sometimes resulted in funny jokes at times it felt like it was just the same joke over and over again. I also wasn't a fan of the drama certain episodes revolved around, I wanted cute fun! Still, UzaMaid was solid most of the time so I don't want to complain about it too much.

Ms. vampire who lives in my neighborhood was a cute show. Akari and Sophie were great, with Sophie being an otaku vampire and Akari having so many quirks (doll obsession, Sophie obsession...) that she sometimes freaked out even her vampire roommate. I didn't mind Hinata either, though her character trait of having a crush on Akari was a little one-note. Ellie... she would have worked better as a side character on the level of Hinata but once she arrived she practically became the third main character. I mostly felt that she disrupted the fun dynamic between Akari and Sophie, I swear so many fun scenes were interrupted in the middle by Ellie walking in and being like 'Hey I'm here too!' and then she'd proceed to add very little. Still, that's a fairly minor complaint. The show was always fun, exploring the daily pitfalls of vampire life in cute and hilarious ways.
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https://www.crunchyroll.com/animeawards/index.html
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMRQ0NZdwps" data-time="

Even with just that trailer you can tell how different it looks from season 1 still hope it will be good though
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It's a shame. It doesn't look inherently bad, but even just from the sparse animation we see here you can tell it ain't no season 1. If this was just another show from J.C Staff there wouldn't even be an issue.
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I'm ready for One Piece Man
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Watched Liz and the Blue Bird. I, uh, didn't really get it? It was pretty slow, and not that entertaining, and I didn't understand the themes it was trying to push. Lacked a lot of the entertainment value the series had. I didn't even really get the ending. It'd be nice if Kyoani could make an actual lesbian romance for once rather than weird teasey stuff...
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It was really moving to me, but it's not the show. Strikes a very different tone.

I can actually very easily understand how someone could find it lacking in entertainment value.
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But did you understand what the themes were? What is it trying to present?
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Mac Arrowny posted...

But did you understand what the themes were? What is it trying to present?

Don't become reliant on/just follow someone else, be yourself, move on from people when you have to and don't hold yourself back to please others. Honestly fairly generic themes. I think it was great for the directing alone (as per usual for Kyoani) and some of the more arthousey touches. It was also a nice small-scale conflict which is pretty rare in most media. Although that does make it a bit of a struggle to get into and I'd agree it's less entertaining than Hibike itself. Plus the necks were wrong.
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I really liked the second half of this most recent episode of Bloom Into You.

I'm not quite going to call this the best romance anime, but I do think this is probably the best depiction of romance in an anime that I can recall, if that makes sense?

In any case I'm going to be reading the manga after this season is over, though I might wait for all of it to get released since I think it's close-ish to finishing?
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Finished Baki. Not really a "season", it just ends at a completely random point halfway (I assume) through the arc, with a bunch of stuff actively happening. Still, what's there so far is rad as hell if you're interested in action anime at all. Only one fight is gonna make the top 3 (the other major "fight" is actually like 5 fights one after the other with the same dude fighting a bunch of different people, none in particular as standout), but that fight is EASILY #1.

"Are you done yet?"

"Are you done yet?"

"Are you done yet?"
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guessing it's going the Sword Gai route and getting another season in a few months
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I can say without a doubt that I'm absolutely going to start Baki as soon as that second season is out. Probably one of the easiest sells to go seek out a manga from an anime I've seen in a while.
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Did the Haikyuu S4 announcement never reach this topic btw

because it's a thing

coming in September.

Technically they didn't say it was 4.

But God I hope it's 4.

Also a crowdfund for a new Yuru Yuri OVA just opened up.
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I mean, what else would it be?

There's enough manga content for it too.

Release the Spyce completed. This had a lot of potential early on but it fell apart hard as it went on. I like Princess Principal a lot, and I'd describe that as a serious spy anime. Spyce had the potential to be a great cute girls spy show, kind of the opposite end of the spectrum, and for awhile it was a lot of fun and felt like it would be exactly that. Sadly, they tried to do too many things at once, occasionally getting super serious. There are anime that can pull off divergent tones and still be good. Spyce, however, only had the fun and serious tones clash, to the detriment of both. It didn't help that a lot of the serious aspects were steeped in obvious cliches, and both awful execution and writing. The last few episodes were particularly terrible. What a disappointment.
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Beated two more series.

Uzamaid stayed good throughout, but the first couple episodes were the best ones I think. The animation definitely got much worse (it was never bad, but there was only one other extraordinary episode), and the jokes weren't quite as funny either. I enjoyed both of the new main characters, so they did keep being creative at least. Midorin had plenty of great jokes, like with the dog in the last episode. And the main cast was always great. Misha was a fun, intelligent protagonist, and Tsubame was all sorts of unique greatness. Might have to check out the manga sometime.

Also finished Ms. vampire who lives in my neighborhood.. This was thoroughly mediocre. It nailed the basics, having a likable main cast and a fun premise, but the writing was utterly blah. The jokes it makes are almost always the most obvious ones possible, and they're rarely funny. A lot of the cast interactions are pretty bland too. The last girl added to the main cast, Ellie, was especially lame. Her one interesting gimmick is that she wants to suck everyone's blood, but she never actually does it, despite it being fairly harmless in this world, so she's just boring. Wish this had been better.
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The animation on that first Uzamaid episode was nuts at times.
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Kaguya PV2 https://twitter.com/anime_kaguya/status/1076679034791112705
Having read the manga this looks great. Getting hyped now

My struggle with my eternal backlog continues with Frankenstein Family, another list filler anime from earlier this year. The best way I can describe this is shockingly incompetent. Like, everything they could have possibly done wrong, they got wrong, yet never in a way that it became 'so bad it's good'. It wasn't offensively bad or anything, just... nothing. Poor animation, poor writing, and the themes kept changing every other episode (humans will never accept monsters, or maybe they will! Total conformity is the only way to live, but also be yourself!). In the very first episode the monster family went to a restaurant in full monster form and made a huge spectacle of themselves. Then later episodes had a bunch of drama about how they absolutely couldn't let anyone know they were monsters. All the characters were boring. The season ended on a gigantic cliffhanger, which is bad, but I care so little that I don't even want to see it resolved, which is worse.

One nice thing I'll say is that, with a minute-long 'previously on' segment (because this crappy slice-of-life monster anime apparently had such a deep plot that I needed to get caught up on it every episode), a minute and a half on the opening, and half of each episode consisting of real life segments with the voice actors talking to each other about nothing, there was only ten minutes of actual content in each episode. By skipping all the junk, this at least didn't take very long to suffer through.
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SAO Alicization going in a bit of a weird direction with the two most recent episodes. It's not really that it's done anything bad yet, but more like it's raising a ton of red flags. Don't think I'm totally on board as of now.

In particular, I don't think that an insane AI who has given themself admin privileges makes for a particularly compelling villain, at least as a kneejerk reaction. Seems like we're moving a bit too far into the sci-fi aspects and away from the fantasy ones. I'm also not sure this totally works with the themes of AI's refusing to break the rules or whatever, but we'll see I guess. Also the fact that they introduced this crazy AI in nearly the same episode as they introduced robotic bodies to house AI's in the real world is a bit...suggestive that the plot is going in a direction I won't care for. Hopefully I'm either wrong or the execution is better than I'm anticipating though.

Also on a (hopefully) unrelated note, I already know I'm going to hate whoever those shady looking guys are that Asuna ran into.

Also I'm really going to miss the two cute kouhai who have most likely been written out of the story :(

Edit: Though, I guess SAO has never had really compelling villains and has still sometimes been good anyway. Maybe I'm overreacting here.
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Need to catch up on SAO.

...can't believe I'm saying that.
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https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2018-12-23/celestial-method-anime-gets-new-episode/.141234

Oh...that's, uh...that's the anime you wanna revisit, Studio 3Hz?

It's fine, I'll just sit here in the corner with my copy of Flip Flappers...alone...
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Anima Yell finished today. It didn't really break any new ground as a cute girl anime (in fact, in a lot of ways this was just an idol anime except without the singing). Still, I found it competent and enjoyable. Kohane was a fun high-energy, cheerful character who played off the others well, and the other characters had their own quirks that made them good too. The cheerleading was always energetic and uplifting. There were also a lot of great comedy moments. Overall, just a solid cute girls doing cute things anime.
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Can we add a category for best disc art?


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https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2018-12-23/isekai-quartet-tv-anime-2nd-relay-promo-video-previews-re-zero-konosuba-characters/.141241

Bring on Spring.
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