Category: Currently Watching:

Mid-Season Check-In Fall 2024

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Monthly Summaries, State of the Season

Wooper: Happy November, everyone! With schools across the country having recently concluded their first quarters, it seemed appropriate for us to issue our own report card, as it were, for the fall anime season. You won’t find any letter grades in this post, however – just Lenlo and I giving our thoughts on a bunch of currently airing shows. We’ve got surprise hits, mediocre manga adaptations, sequels of varying strength, and a potential AOTY candidate lined up for you here, so read on to see which is which!

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II – 2-5

Lenlo: Little girls with guns go pew pew. Seriously though, much like Shangri-La Frontier, Gun Gale Online actually communicates a lot of the fun of playing these sorts of MMOs. Hanging out with your friends, doing stupid stuff with stupid builds, competing, random insane PKers and people making stupid calls. It’s everything that Sword Art Online wishes it could be. And the fact that there’s no world-saving, life-ending threat, means there’s always some tension because our leads are actually allowed to lose. Again, much like Shangri-La, defeat doesn’t mean the end in Gun Gale Online. What I’m trying to say is, Gun Gale Online is a fun, chill action series about a bunch of people running around shooting each other and having fun, knowing that no one is in any actual danger and the only thing at stake is pride inside of a video game. The battle-royale scenario, the closing ring, the CoD style maps, it’s all just… fun. And for me, that makes it worth continuing.

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Summer 2024 Mid-Season Check In

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, State of the Season

Welcome all, to a mid-season check in post! I’m stuck in the middle of a writeup on My Hero Academia that’s taking longer than I thought, so I figured why not talk about how this season is going and what, if anything, interests me. Make sure to let me know how you’re enjoying it in the comments down below! Always a chance I missed something after all. Also these are in no particular order, so don’t read into that, I just added them as I thought of them.

Isekai Shikkaku

First is my surprise favorite of the season, Isekai Shikkaku. To be honest, I really wasn’t expecting to stick with this. The first episode was a pleasant surprise, but I didn’t think it would be able to keep it up for the entire season. Yet here we are, seven episodes in, and I’m still enjoying it just as much as I did the pilot. Something about Hiroshi Kamiya’s deadpan performance as Osamu Dazai, the way he simultaneously enables and dampens all of the usual Isekai bullshit, really appeals to me. His power is still situational OP bullshit that does whatever the plot demands, and they still always win, but he also never involves himself in a conflict until the very end to clean it all up. Instead he walks around making morbid quips and trying to kill himself, all the while those around him expect Dazai to be the standard Isekai protagonist man-child.  It’s… I wouldn’t exactly call it novel, because Isekai Shikkaku still follows a lot of the standard Isekai tropes, but it’s definitely more entertaining than 90% of Isekai and there’s a degree of heart to it I don’t get from most. Something about a suicidal Osamu Dazai giving life lessons and wisdom to people that he himself will never take to heart works for me.

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The 4 (8?) Forms of Ancient Greek Love, Using Anime

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Special Articles

Relationships are complicated. From learning how to communicate and respecting each others boundaries to how they are established, grow and change, there’s a lot that goes into them. And this is true for all relationships, not just the romantic! Friends can grow apart without proper communication, or grow into a romance with it. Family can be pushed away when you don’t respect each other properly, or you could pick up a whole new one from those around you. In my eyes it’s these complications, these ugly details that each of us interpret differently and draw our own lines with, that make relationships so difficult to portray and discuss in media. Why some may love and believe one character dynamic but push back and scoff at another, why some may see a romance where others see a deep friendship. And the best part? When approached in good faith and earnestly thought about, no one is wrong, because each of us are looking for something different.

So to help figure out what relationships mean to me, and hopefully you as you read this, lets took a look at the various form a relationship can take as defined by the Greeks, using examples from anime to illustrate them. Sound fun? Good, because I’ve been looking forward to this for a while. So without further ado, let’s dive into the 4 (8?) forms of Ancient Greek love, and my first big post since retirement!

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Wind Breaker Anime Review – 69/100

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Wind Breaker

Delinquents are a pretty common sight in anime. From classic Shounen like Yu Yu Hakusho to more modern series like Tokyo Revengers, we get plenty of them every year. So standing out amongst the crowd can be pretty difficult for a show like this. Do you get weird with it like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Season 4? Or more heartfelt and personal, like Great Teacher Onizuka? Regrettably, most shows never really figure that out. Whatever they try, most fall short and aren’t able to separate themselves from the pack. Well today I’m here to talk about one that manages to do just that, though only barely. A delinquent battle shounen that tries its best to fly and, by the end, is able to fly on its own. Originally created by Satoru Nii, animated and adapted by Cloverworks, directed by Toshifumi Akai, and with music by Ryou Takahashi and produced by Shinji Yamauchi, I give you… Wind Breaker.

Be warned, this review contains minor unmarked spoilers for Wind Breaker. It also contains major spoilers in some sections however these will be heavily marked to avoid accidents. Continue reading “Wind Breaker Anime Review – 69/100” →

Ranger Reject – 7 [The Zigzag Road to the Final Exam!]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Ranger Reject

Welcome all, to another episode of Ranger Reject! This week continues the exam, revealing the true secret behind it and driving our cast to conflict, meanwhile in the background a greater threat is beginning to arise. Pretty ominous right? Well lets dive in and talk about it!

Starting with the test itself, the reveal that this wasn’t actually designed to test pairs of two but full teams of five was really interesting. Suddenly a seemingly impossible test designed to fail everyone instead becomes a measure of leadership, team work, and judgement on who you team up with. I still wouldn’t call it perfect, the way Ranger Reject presented it last episode was still very flawed, but this episode was a valiant recovery and may end up saving the arc for me. Shion’s betrayal despite everything Fighter D did for him yesterday, the way Fighter D is slowly building up his team of rejects to steal back the keys they need, as well as everything else going on in the background, was all around pretty good. It still suffers a bit from pacing, but not nearly as badly as the previous episode.

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Kimetsu no Yaiba S4 – 3 [Fully Recovered Tanjiro Joins the Hashira Training!!]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Kimetsu no Yaiba

Welcome all, to another week of Kimetsu no Yaiba! For how simple the premise is, how little promise the arc seems to have, I’m enjoying myself a shocking amount. It’s nice coming back and seeing these characters again, spending time understanding who they are and what they think of the current situation. It’s what the series needed! I just can’t believe we actually got it. What do I mean? Well lets dive into the episode and find out.

All things considered, this was a pretty straight forward training episode. Tanjiro returned, we caught back up with Uzui and saw what he was putting the Demon Slayers through, had a motivational speech, then moved on to the next Hashira. Nothing big happened, no fights or major revelations, just Tanjiro getting to show off how far he’s come and how great the difference is between him and a regular Demon Slayer. So why am I so happy with it? Well that’s simple, Yaiba executed a basic premise very well. Rather than being about empowering our lead, making him stronger, it was about how our lead can empower and raise up those around him. It showed us the nameless, faceless mooks and made it clear that, even if we don’t see them at the final battle, they will be there. Doing their part.

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Spring 2024 What-I’m-Watching Summary – Week 7

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Weekly Summary

Hey all, quick note at the top here, apologies for all these delays. Wrote it in the Nana post but I’ve been pretty sick since Wednesday and have been catching up these past few days. That’s all.

Dungeon Meshi – 21 [Egg/The Golden County]

This was an interesting episode of Dungeon Meshi, as we start to expand our scope beyond the dungeon and into the wider world and its history, as well as all the consequences that brings. On the surface, this means we get to meet the Fantasy Cops AKA, the Elves. This squad is… interesting. Every single one of them looks like a sociopath, from Mr. “Covered in magical tattoos” to “I had a stroke and I’m still better than you”. Honestly it’s a pretty cool looking cast, I like how varied their designs are and I’m looking forward to their role in the story. They are obviously gonna be bad guys, we were warned about how the Elves react to Ancient/Dark Magic back when Marcille was doing her thing. So there’s not a doubt in my mind they are going to end up fighting our main party. The question is just whether or not we inevitably team up with them to take down the Mad Mage, or if we fight them after the Mad Mage goes down to secure Marcille/the loot/Dungeon Lordship. Should be interesting! Meanwhile underground we get some history, meeting some more of the ghosts, learning about their Curse Of Immortality, and the source of his power, the Winged Lion, kept further down. We have a goal, a weakness, and a prophecy now! Things are ramping up! All in all a lot of fun, I’m enjoying the slow escalation of the story, it feels like a fantastic home game of D&D with just the right mix of action and comedy. The fact that Dungeon Meshi is a complete story gives me a lot of hope too, I wasn’t aware of that before now.

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Nana – 7/8 [Yasu Appears! Room No. 707/Strawberry Glass and Ren-Lotus Flower] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Nana, Throwback Thursday

Welcome all, to a late post on Nana! Sorry about that, I’ve been rather sick since Wednesday and have only just recovered. Doesn’t help that this was a rather dull week, giving me little motivation to write about it. Nana has some interesting characters, interesting ideas, but it feels like it isn’t doing a lot with it just yet and we’re about 15% through. Friends keep telling me it’s great, so maybe it’s just taking its time to set everything up and kick off. I don’t know. Whatever Nana is doing though, I hope it starts to liven up a bit soon. Anyways, feeling better, able to write, now onto the episodes!

First up is episode 7, “Yasu Appears! Room No. 707”. All about introducing Nana and Ozaki to each others friend groups, as well as some Nana insecurities, this was easily the more disappointing of the two we’re going to cover this week. The core idea is fine, Ozaki and Nana get to meat each others friends, they start to intermingle and our cast slowly comes together. And when that’s happening it’s good! I enjoyed seeing Jun and Shoji’s reactions to Ozaki and Yasu, seeing who Yasu has become in the past two years and finally progressing things a bit. The issue though is that basically the entire episode was either Nana making up her own issues with Shoji or them standing in the doorway of Nana’s new apartment and then leaving. It was like a first-impressions mixer, where neither side really engaged with each other beyond the surface level. A real missed opportunity if you ask me.

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