Board 8 > Anime & Manga Discussion Topic 299: Girls Love Music

(+) Yeah! (+)

I decided not to go strictly in order for my seasonal watch project, mostly because a lot of the earlier ones are super long. It's nice sometimes to knock out an anime in one night. Today I finished the one for Winter 2007. 2/110 complete!

Manabi Straight... well, it started okay. I was loving it for almost the entire first half, and I figured it'd easily sail into my top 100. The girls were all super cute, their antics were hilarious, and the story was simultaneously fun and profound. Basically it's about an energetic girl named Manabi who transfers into a declining school. Then she takes over as student council president with the goal of rejuvenating everyone's love for the place. It did a great job with all the main characters, they had their quirks as well as some good development and relationships with each other. I was really enjoying watching Manabi bring everyone together... for the first half.

Then the second half plunged into the depths of sadness. I wound up hating it. I readily accept that this might be my fault. I feel like I can't rate this anime objectively just because of the mood it put me in. The sudden swerve into depression wasn't what I wanted today. There was a reason why I chose an anime which MAL tagged with "comedy" and "CGDCT" and not one with "drama" or, I dunno, "heartbreaking" (which isn't a tag but if it was you could apply it to this). The main characters were still good, but they were trapped in a futile struggle against some dark tides.

Almost every single side character turned into a shitbag for pretty flimsy reasons. It turned out that Manabi hadn't actually accomplished anything in the first half. No one cared. The biggest betrayal, in my opinion, was Manabi's brother who she was living with. At one point someone even asked him "hey, does it bother you that your sister's heart is being torn apart?" and he essentially replied "nah, I have a hot girlfriend, I'm too busy getting laid". There were also some writing decisions that were, frankly, baffling. One event had a lot of buildup and then they more or less skipped it. I'm exaggerating a bit to avoid outright spoilers, but basically Manabi was stuck in an empty room talking about how sad she was to miss the event and everyone else told her to get over it. What a letdown that was.

I'm sad because Manabi Straight made me sad, but I'm also sad because I thought I'd really like it, for awhile I really did, then in the end I really didn't.

Damn, that's too bad. Personally, I love when shows get sad and make me cry. The darkness is the good part. Of course, it doesn't always work for me, but it did with Manabi Straight.

Girls Band Cryday

Gotta leave Twitter for the next 7 hours (how tragic) since it's airing now and my algorithm is now pushing literally every GBC media post to the top of my timeline.

Robazoid posted...

Then the second half plunged into the depths of sadness.

It does? Sounds interesting, maybe I'll finally get around to watching it.

John "Dio" Cena

https://x.com/AniNewsAndFacts/status/1796484022098612268?t=xiTRHd5BsJOpiEYImQpb0w&s=19

Xeybozn posted...

It does? Sounds interesting, maybe I'll finally get around to watching it.

I guess I should clarify, I'm not talking the level of sadness and betrayal that anime like Kumamiko or Fluffy Paradise reached. Everyone in Manabi Straight just became really callous and dismissive in ways I personally didn't enjoy. I knew going in that it was one of Mac's favorites, though, so it works for other people! (As opposed to something like, again, Kumamiko, which I think is pretty universally hated)

And now for the thrilling continuation of me looking ahead at next season's anime

Sword of the Demon Hunter - this one has a kind of confusing MAL description, but it talks about a time traveling demon warrior and that's all I really needed to see. I'm sold. When they're done right, I love time travel stories.

The Strongest Magician in the Demon Lord's Army Was a Human - an isekai guy needs to hide the fact that he's human from the demon army he works for. This sounds like the Iruma-kun anime only he's in an army instead of going to school. I guess I'll check it out, could have some funny hijinks if it's done right. Not super excited, though.

Too Many Losing Heroines - this is a comedy about girls who are losers in different ways. The MAL description is even written like a comedy routine, which makes it difficult to tell what it'll really be about. I'll still check it out, I mean it's about cute girls doing things even if they are losers. Not super excited about this either, though.

Failure Frame: I Became the Strongest and Annihilated Everything With Low-Level Spells - this is another isekai where main dude is weak and gets banished but omg he's actually the super strongest. This might honestly be my least favorite isekai subgenre. Definitely skipping this.

Koi wa Futago de Wari Kirenai - a romance between a guy and two sisters. The description reminded me of the Kyou/Ryou route in Clannad because it sounds like one sister is trying to step aside for the other. I enjoyed that Clannad route. Still, I'm going to wait and see what people think of this one. Romance anime are such a minefield. I need to know the drama levels and whether or not the main dude has a personality.

The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to be Archenemies - evil invaders vs magical girl, leaders start to fall in love. This could be cute, I mean I enjoyed Love After World Domination which had a similar premise. I hope this leans more into cuteness, though, and that they aren't just both tsundere for each other and refusing to admit their feelings.

My Deer Friend Nokotan - aw yeah, anime of the freaking year right here. Calling it now! An over-the-top comedy about an animal girl makes me think of Etotama or Dropkick on my Devil, and those are two of my favorite anime! The teasers for Nokotan make it look hilarious.

Wistoria's Wand and Sword - a guy at a magic academy can't cast magic so he gets by with sword skills. Hey, it's just Mashle except with a sword instead of punching. I guess I'll check it out, though. My biggest problem with Mashle was that he solved everything the same way and wasn't creative at all. Maybe sword dude will be a bit more interesting.

Why Nobody Remember's My World? - humanity won a five-way battle for the planet, but then the timeline was overwritten and their greatest hero never existed. Main dude is the only one who remains for some reason, so now he has to try and replace the great hero. Kind of a clumsy premise, but I'm still interested in it! I enjoy alternate timelines and whatnot.

Stuff I'll Check Out (in order of excitement)
-My Deer Friend Nokotan
-Sword of the Demon Hunter
-Why Nobody Remember's My World?
-Dungeon People
-Na Nare Hana Nare
-Dahliya in Bloom
-The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to be Archenemies
-My Wife Has No Emotion
-The Elusive Samurai
-A Journey Through Another World: Raising Kids While Adventuring
-Too Many Losing Heroines
-The Strongest Magician in the Demon Lord's Army Was a Human
-Wistoria's Wand and Sword

Summer's starting to look good! There's a pretty large gap in my excitement for Nokotan vs everything else, though. I'll be back for the last nine anime on Monday.

Apparently the production for Whisper Me a Love Song isn't going great. I'll link the post on the anime board where I read about it because I don't have a twitter account and can't read the twitter thread (the link is in there though)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/2000121-anime-and-manga-other-titles/80780461

I've been enjoying Whisper despite this, so I'm sad to hear its production is so rough. I guess its impressive that I wouldn't even call it the worst adaptation of the season. Animation-wise, the latest episode of A Condition Called Love was pretty ugly too (though, like with Whisper, I love the story and forgive its flaws). Writing-wise, the clear loser of the season is still Unnamed Memory lol.

Amazing GBC episode this week, the dynamics between these characters is excellent. Also some of the funniest stuff in the show so far.

Mobilezoid posted...

Apparently the production for Whisper Me a Love Song isn't going great. I'll link the post on the anime board where I read about it because I don't have a twitter account and can't read the twitter thread (the link is in there though)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/2000121-anime-and-manga-other-titles/80780461

I've been enjoying Whisper despite this, so I'm sad to hear its production is so rough. I guess its impressive that I wouldn't even call it the worst adaptation of the season. Animation-wise, the latest episode of A Condition Called Love was pretty ugly too (though, like with Whisper, I love the story and forgive its flaws). Writing-wise, the clear loser of the season is still Unnamed Memory lol.

It's really tragic. The week to week production pipeline just isn't tenable even under GOOD conditions, much less this nightmare. The worst part is that you can see what it would have been from episode 1, but that show and team simply doesn't exist anymore, it may as well have been an OVA special.

I hate modern anime names.

Not everything can be "What Do You Do at the End of the World? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us?"

Uh oh

https://x.com/violetheart08/status/1796689777561042999?t=runbxeBKuvUH-lWDVm6jTQ&s=19

It just says illustrator, is there a separate writer and artist?

Yeah, someone else is the writer.

And it's an LN before it's a manga of course.

Yuji naka'd

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Yeah, someone else is the writer.

And it's an LN before it's a manga of course.

I did not know that.

Makes me feel better about the fate of the anime at least.

Oh yeah this would have literally zero impact on the even if she goes to jail (which she probably won't anyways). The manga is very popular and is my primary source, but it's not the main material.

Love Live 2 shuts down today only 3 months after it's western launch. Other than the Nijigasaki movie this year, I think we've probably seen the end of Love Live, right? Hasunosora doesn't seem like it's anything. Maybe I should finally watch Nijigasaki.

There's a third season of Superstar coming in Fall.

I just started Nijigasaki today. Promising start.

Ahhh didn't realize it wasn't listing new seasons as new entries.

GBC spoilers.

https://i.ibb.co/ZNvKpBM/Screenshot-20240531-185114-MX-Player-Pro-imageonline-co-merged-jpg.png

Incredible.

wait yuji naka was for insider trading right

Yeah this seems like something that may even have been an accident from what ai am hearing. Yuki Naka was, like, in it.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/9/9f939850.jpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/d/db29c8a2.jpg

Mobilezoid posted...

Too Many Losing Heroines - this is a comedy about girls who are losers in different ways. The MAL description is even written like a comedy routine, which makes it difficult to tell what it'll really be about. I'll still check it out, I mean it's about cute girls doing things even if they are losers. Not super excited about this either, though.

Hmm, I'm pretty sure it's a harem about a guy surrounded by girls who got rejected by other guys.

It's another one where the visuals are selling it for me.

https://youtu.be/GH50B-M7ZSI?si=D03vG03N-Ga98GAX

Also not a harem from the comments I am seeing from LN readers, despite the premise.

I wouldn't mind a harem. At least then I'd understand what the anime even is. I mean look at the MAL description, what is this. If this is a joke, then I don't get it.

"Nukumizu-kun. There are two types of girls: childhood friends or cheating cats."
"I see. Well, that's a bold statement."

The animation in that video is pretty good, though. Definitely looking forward to seeing what the show is about.

It's just poorly translated. A thieving cat is slang for a girl who steals a guy from someone else. Assumably, she's the childhood friend and another girl stole her guy.

Ah, that does make more sense! I tried googling "cheating cat" and all that came up was outdoor cats going to different houses in the neighborhood to get more food lol. I'd never heard of thieving cat either. I'm glad you could explain it because it was bugging me. Thanks!

I only know about stray cats.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/1/1efc0a82.jpg

Christ

https://x.com/MangaMoguraRE/status/1796953333845934534?t=Bz1ZF6Ti6X8IRHNfPi5SnQ&s=19

Well....maybe they can make something work?

Gonna be a fascinating Bluray release to follow.

New Jellyfish episode finished I wanna jump in a pool

https://x.com/AIR_News01/status/1796913587954614444?t=FP1N2SNEBxtrpdPEWRQ-Ow&s=19

....It's a short? OK....

I don't think I've watched a short since the one about the skeleton who worked at a bookstore (which was good!).

Damn, that strikes it from my list then. I don't like shorts.

Unless they're short shorts

Man, what is with the anime this season pretty much all steadily getting worse over time. The only ones that haven't slid precipitously in my opinion of them are Tonbo, Yatagarasu, and A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics. First A Condition Called Love's animation quality goes to shit to the point where even I can't look past it. Now Jellyfish just goes to shit in general.

I guess Tonbo is my anime of the season solely because it has stayed consistently good. Winner by default!

This episode of Jellyfish was incredible. You just really don't like drama!

Literally was tearing up during the ending credits.

I don't like this kind of drama, no. The best drama is when everyone is doing their best but the situation is irreconcilable and someone is going to end up sad. Jellyfish is just drama for drama's sake. It's reversing character development and turning them into terrible people in order to force it.

That is....just 100% not true at all! Something from the past that's been built up through the series causing an emotional outburst and trauma to bubble up to the surface due to a characters not being on the same page isn't reversing character development, it's advancing it.

I don't even know who you're calling a terrible person here??

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I don't even know who you're calling a terrible person here??

Jellyfish spoilers, sorry for the wall of spoiler tags everyone

The Kano flashback stuff was fine. Probably shouldn't have punched the girl, but I get it. Everything was her abusive mother's fault anyway. The only thing Kano has done wrong is not yelling at Yoru even more. Worst part of the episode was when Kano felt bad for what she said to Yoru at the end. She deserved it! Don't feel bad!

Yoru, though... man, what an awful way for her character to go. After the end of last episode, I was hopeful that she would care enough about Kano to handle the offer delicately. This is her good friend (maybe more, though now I hope not). Even if Yoru doesn't have all the details, she knows Kano has a complicated relationship with her mother and hang-ups about the Sundolls. That should've been enough for her to tread lightly. When she finally got around to mentioning it to Kano, Yoru said "I don't want to hear about it on the phone, but you can tell me about your past in person if you want". Then, the very next time they meet in person, she's already accepted the deal without even giving Kano a chance. Strike one against Yoru for choosing the abusive mother over her friend.

The even worse part was how she said it to Kano, though. This is where I feel like her character development reversed and she became a terrible person. Earlier parts of the season showed that Yoru was beginning to love her art because of Kano. Now she wants to take this big project so she can find a way love her art? Fuck Kano, I guess. So much for drawing for her sake. Strike two for Yoru. Then she framed the offer as the big stage where she can really challenge herself and grow... as opposed to JELEE, which I guess is small-time unchallenging grunt work where she'll never grow at all? That was an awful thing to say, especially to someone like Kano who is living her dream through JELEE. Yoru threw all of her friends and everything they've accomplished together under the bus. Strike three against Yoru. She's out.

I honestly don't care anymore what BS they pull later in the season to overcome this drama. Yoru doesn't deserve forgiveness, so any method they use will feel forced and unsatisfying.

It is my assumption you are talking about Mahiru, so I spent my 15 minutes work break typing up a thing lol.

Yoru, since being brought back to her passion by Kano and especially since the release of their first video, has been pushing harder and harder to advance her skills as an artist both for her own personal sake and for Jelee, especially for Kano herself. There's also the slowly unraveling drive to avoid feeling shame about her goals and her work, obviously touched on since episode 1 but brought back to the forefront with the flashback opening of this episode from school.

At the beginning of this episode we see two key moments outside of that, supported by the way the shots are cut and angled in said scenes, that it's going to take more than her work with Jelee to help her achieve this: Kano's stated lack of having a clear goal anymore, and Kano stating that art Yoru KNEW was faulty was completely fine. When Kano's mother both provided her with a large skill demanding offer to improve her abilities, as well showing she understood that that exact same drawing Kano blindly accepted was in fact not up to the quality she was capable of, Yoru saw this as a clear way to reach her own personal goals as well as improve for Jelee.

Yoru doesn't know just how deep Kano's pain towards her mother goes because Kano hasn't told her, even though she's asked multiple times (the same Kano who has let a kiss go unfollowed up on for almost a YEAR in the show, so clearly she is no stranger to hiding how she feels). If she had, maybe she would have been hesitant to take this offer. Kano also became aggravated before even really trying to talk to Yoru about it. Kano is not in the wrong for taking the job given what she knows and what she needs, Yoru is also not in the wrong for being upset but she is in the wrong for how she handled it, and I expect it's going to be an extremely emotional lack of episodes moving forward for this series repairing the damage.

Look like I was right to do that!

I don't expect that to be the way these events go at all. Even if they give her motivation, Yukine is clearly a villainous presence in this series and I don't expect Yoru to let that go in the slightest once she knows the full truth. Really can't state enough how off putting it is that when Yoru was asked about her daughter by her real name, she instead refered to her by her stage name, like she doesn't even recognize Kano as her daughter in the first place. That's not even getting into the extremely brief but off putting presence of Kano's father which they haven't event touched on yet.

This episode was the one that really helped bring Jellyfish back to the forefront as a contendor for anime of the season after slipping further behind GBC last week, and I'm so happy it's staying in the fight. My only big worry is, unlike GBC, I think it will be very difficult for Jellyfish to have a fully satisfying conclusion if it isn't planning on a season 2 with the amount of stuff it has set up, of which we likely wouldn't get confirmation of until the last episode airs at the earliest anyways (to be clear, I can easily see the path for another season of GBC as well, but I can actually see a viable path to an ending with the cour if it came to that).

Of course we could get a scenario where the show ends but continues in the novels, which....would be a shame....

Finished up Shy. It wasn't the greatest show. The main character left me sometimes wanting anytime she went pure, "OMG I"M SO SHY WHAT DO I DO!?" mode. There was also some pretty slow spots or characters that weren't exactly fun to watch (the clown girl for instance). But the ending stretch had some heart to it. Whenever the show wanted to get serious, it still had some energy and focus that kept it afloat for me. I'm cool with watching more of it next season.

Seeing lots of Revue Starlight for some reason.

Maybe In should finally tackle that. Feels like it's definitely the best time mood wise.

Beat & Motion is so good.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/9/9d11f284.jpg

https://twitter.com/silh0uettedance/status/1796713727729021300

Huh, how about that. Though I do keep hearing that MyGO ended up being pretty popular in China.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Love Live 2 shuts down today only 3 months after it's western launch. Other than the Nijigasaki movie this year, I think we've probably seen the end of Love Live, right? Hasunosora doesn't seem like it's anything. Maybe I should finally watch Nijigasaki.

It depends where you're looking. Outside of Japan, it may eventually die out with no game to keep interest going.....but there are still upcoming anime like Season 3 of Superstar (a first for the franchise) and a trilogy of movies for Nijigasaki (also a first for the franchise). And it's not like it's the games that attract the casual fans. It's always been the anime.

In Japan, it still has a lot of events going on and it regularly hits the Oricon charts whenever there's a new song release.
So it does fine in the areas that really matter. At least in the eyes of Bandai Namco anyways.

And I would not be so quick to dismiss Hasunosora.

For one thing, they're literally part of a Vtuber performance happening during Anime Expo.
https://twitter.com/AnimeExpo/status/1796345873057636686

Next, the game they're from brings in pretty good money.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/5/5b3c6a57.png

This is what it brought in last month, which was a year after release. It's way more than what School Idol Festival 2 ever brought in down the line. I believe only the first month of SIF2 brought in numbers close to that. Then it was all downhill from there.

Man, the Wiki really just didn't not mention any of that at all besides 1 Nijigasaki movie. It doesn't even mention Hasunosora exists, I only knew that from seeing it on Twitter and reading a couple chapters of the manga.

Also apparently Wuthering Waves has even more MyGO refs that that lol. I saw a chart that implies the profits of Bang Dream more than doubled in China when it added the MyGO. Even on AO3, a primarily English website, 208 of the current 387 fics as of right now are in Chinese.

Started Your Lie in April

The first episode was...fine? The drama and tone were fine, though the spastic comedy bits felt out of place. I didn't think much of the main characters yet, nor did anyone except the main and his neighbor have any chemistry...so of COURSE they probably won't get together (the first episode makes this patently obvious). I'll give it another couple episodes. I've been DOA on dramatic romances before. A Lull in the Sea ended up a top 10 all-time show when I watched it last year. Never hurts to give anything a couple more episodes to get better.