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Currently watching A Couple of Cuckoos. Had gotten both sets of the series back in January hearing it was among the most decent entries of the harem genre to recently come out. So far, kind of meh on it. The characters have a bit of dimension more than you'd typically find out of many harems, but can't say I'm as attached to them as say Fuutarou and the quints from Quintessential Quintuplets as the series has a fair bit of the typical trappings of the harem genre without doing anything to make things more engaging. Up to episode 12 of the series currently.

^^^^^^^

Yeah, unimpressive.

I actually never finished it even though I only have like 3 episodes to go. At some point I probably will. It's not like it's aggressively bad, I think I basically forgot to finish it and didn't notice it languishing in my queue. I do think I had an annoying feeling that all paths couldn't be adequately finished, so why bother?

Made in Abyss: The Golden City of the Scorching Sun (2022) I rewatched this even though it wasn't 2 years since I first watched it. But I wanted to evaluate if I love the 2nd season of Made in Abyss enough to rate it as a 10/10 or a 9.5/10. What makes Made in Abyss great is that it plays horrific situations with cute kawaii anime characters. It is very similar to PMMM in that regard, although PMMM is more focused on the plot twists while Made in Abyss flows in a rather natural fashion, not depending too much on its plot but its more about the pure atmosphere. This might be perhaps the reason why Made in Abyss season 2 is still as great as season 1, while the offshoots of Madoka were all terribly uninspired stuff: Made in Abyss has a natural gravitas that is extremely rare, among recent shows, I can only compare it to Frieren and Vinland Saga. Also, Made in Abyss is a modern classic IMO partly because the characters are so memorable: Nanachi, Riko, Reg and now Faputa, are all larger than life already iconic character despite it being a rather recent franchise. After rewatching it, this second season is indeed a 10/10 despite it being just one encounter by the trio of girl, boy and rabbit that introduced one new spoiler[(surviving)] character. Razz

Metallic Rouge (2024) I liked the first few episodes of this show a lot, it felt like something like the new Trigun of this generation, but like the recent Trigun remake, it fell apart during its season. And this one fell apart much harder than that Trigun remake. The collapse of the show was so dramatic that by the beginning of the last episode I was thinking "how bad this can get" and in the end it got so bad, so bad, it was kinda good. Laughing

Still, the art and animation were very good. Overall, 5/10: 8/10 for the early episodes but 2/10 for the later ones.

I was all set to just watch the new season stuff, but, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I was personally shaken by the early death of a person who was very important to me, a friend, someone I had a huge crush on in my earlier days.

So, a rewatch of Cross Game was in order. I can mourn my friend while the cast deal with losing Wakaba.
They're only dead when they're forgotten.

So far, the only stuff I've watched of the new season is disposable stuff I can watch on my phone during lunch. The Banished/Reincarnated So-n-Sos.

I was supposed to move onto other winter 2024 anime after watching Dangers in My Heart season 2 but instead I rewatched season 1 and then just watched season 2 again despite watching it only a few days ago. I think I've only ever rewatched a show right after finishing it like once in my life (twice now, I guess). It's pretty good.

Far as yesterday goes...

First up was the Quintessential Quintuplets movie. The series itself has been one of my favorite harems in recent years since there's an effort made at exploring the characters and their relationships with one another in regards to Futaro and the quints. The movie felt like it dragged a bit, but one thing I did like out of it was exploring events from each of the perspectives of the Nakano sisters during their school culture festival going in the buildup of whom Futaro chooses among them. Wish there were more harems like it.

Next up, started up Lady Georgie. Will admit I'm not sure what expectations to have for it as before Discotek's release announcement for it, I was completely unfamiliar with the series. Judging from what I've seen of the first episode and what the story is like, it looks set to be your typical 80s shoujo title of the era.

Last is the next anime to be part of my Spring season list in the form of Sound Euphonium's third season. Enjoyed seeing the series years ago and this first episode does a solid job with setting things up for its new season with Kumiko now leading the school's band club as a third year student and introducing several of the new first year students that will likely be focused on. At the rate things are looking, my viewing schedule for the Spring's looking to be as crammed as it was from last year as I already have 6 titles I plan to stick with and still have another week of new premieres that could potentially draw my interest.

Last edited by Jose Cruz on Fri Apr 12, 2024 9:37 pm; edited 1 time in total

Nana (2006)

A classic indeed. Despite the animation and art style not being of my liking (the characters look too thin), the story was excellent. The characters are very flawed, but that makes it more realistic. Its also nice to see an anime with characters who have sex all the time, instead of being the mostly platonic relationships like in the typical school romance, its a show about promiscuous adults who act as such. The main character even gets accidentally pregnant, a plot twist that I haven't seem in many other animes. 9/10.

The Apothecary Diaries (2023)

Watched the first 5-6 episodes of this. Looks pretty average IMO, not very interesting and so far I am a bit disappointed with it given the extremely high ratings it has. The art is also pretty meh, since it looks super generic: that pseudo-KyoAni art style that dominates contemporary anime. I hope its plot gets more interesting in later episodes. So far its a 5/10 or maybe 6/10.

Simoun (2006)

If 2006 was the best year of anime (as many people think, which is perhaps because it still remains the year the Japanese animation industry produced the most minutes of TV animation, 136,000 minutes, compared to a more recent record of 130,000 minutes in 2018, and more stuff means more great stuff), then Simoun was likely the best of the best vintage. This is good stuff, really good.

I would say Simoun is likely to be among the most underrated anime of all time, given its rather average ratings in anime rating sites despite the fact it is one of the greatest masterpieces of the medium of animation. I guess the yuri genre causes people to reflexively undervalue the quality of the titles of the genre, because Simoun is pretty much THE anime. It has most tropes of anime compressed into its 26 episodes without losing balance. Its like Evangelion but if Evangelion didn't have any serious flaws and had better pacing and a more well structured story. The only flaw I noticed watching Simoun is that the animation is not often the best and most polished and characters are often off model, but those flaws are tiny compared to the qualities of this masterpiece. I loved its the art style, which is something I would call "shoujo for otaku" style, its quite unique at least compared to the other 900+ anime I watched. 10/10, one of the best anime ever.

Last edited by Blood- on Sat Apr 13, 2024 6:33 am; edited 1 time in total

Jose Cruz wrote:

The Apothecary Diaries (2023)

Watched the first 5-6 episodes of this. Looks pretty average IMO, not very interesting and does not justify the extremely high ratings it has.

I'm going to be charitable and assume you simply worded the part I bolded awkwardly. When you say it looks pretty average and it's not very interesting you are merely expressing your opinion. An opinion I disagree with but there's no foul in expressing your own opinion. But when you say the extremely high ratings the show has received are "unjustified" than you are judging and commenting on the opinions of others. Again, there is nothing wrong with disagreeing with an opinion but calling it "unjustified" is insulting.

edited to make message less harsh.

I just meant that I am not enjoying it as much as I was expecting from it's ratings. Which is normal, since nobody has tastes that are exactly like the popular average.

I edited the post to correct for this misunderstanding.

Thank you, Jose Cruz, I appreciate the clarification. In turn I have edited my original message to reflect a more reasonable tone.

I know I've been vocal about this, but everyone else seems to use HiDive without complaint, so I decided to give it a 5th try, this time with that Jellyfish Can't Swim anime.

How do you people do this? I gave up after 5 minutes. the subtitles being so close to the middle is DAMAGING me. I'm not being mean here, I'm serious. For a service that's being paid for, this is unacceptable. Has no one complained to them before?

Curse you, louis6578 - I always forget about the subtitling placement until you remind me about it! And sorry, I'm not the official complainer type. I prefer to ineffectively whine on a message board. If I had any heft with HiDive I would make it a priority to get rid of that annoying icon on the bottom left of the screen and those stupid preview panes.

Blood- wrote:

Curse you, louis6578 - I always forget about the subtitling placement until you remind me about it! And sorry, I'm not the official complainer type. I prefer to ineffectively whine on a message board. If I had any heft with HiDive I would make it a priority to get rid of that annoying icon on the bottom left of the screen and those stupid preview panes.

I think it's a special kind of bad when Netflix is doing better subtitles than an anime specific streaming service run by what's left of ADV.

Jose Cruz wrote:

Simoun (2006)

If 2006 was the best year of anime (as many people think, which is perhaps because it still remains the year the Japanese animation industry produced the most minutes of TV animation, 136,000 minutes, compared to a more recent record of 130,000 minutes in 2018, and more stuff means more great stuff), then Simoun was likely the best of the best vintage. This is good stuff, really good.

I would say Simoun is likely to be among the most underrated anime of all time, given its rather average ratings in anime rating sites despite the fact it is one of the greatest masterpieces of the medium of animation. I guess the yuri genre causes people to reflexively undervalue the quality of the titles of the genre, because Simoun is pretty much THE anime. It has most tropes of anime compressed into its 26 episodes without losing balance. Its like Evangelion but if Evangelion didn't have any serious flaws and had better pacing and a more well structured story. The only flaw I noticed watching Simoun is that the animation is not often the best and most polished and characters are often off model, but those flaws are tiny compared to the qualities of this masterpiece. I loved its the art style, which is something I would call "shoujo for otaku" style, its quite unique at least compared to the other 900+ anime I watched. 10/10, one of the best anime ever.

Totally agree - I initially rated it at the high end of excellent but later upgraded it to masterpiece after I'd re-watched it a couple of times. I wrote a review here.

Theron Martin's official ANN reviews are also very positive.

Many people disliked the artwork.

I don't see anywhere to talk about or rate Grimm Variations past the first ep, so I guess I'll do it here.

The second episode is a take on "Little Red Riding Hood," and you might not be surprised that it's a gore-fest in an unexpected setting, very different from the first ep. It's also pretty predictable.

The third ep reworks "Hansel and Gretel," and again it's very different from the previous two. I liked it the most so far. It strongly reminds me of a very popular title which would give away the main twist if I cited it. I have some issues with how the secondary twist was handled - some blink-and-miss-it clues in the visuals if you go back and look, but I don't think it's as consistently dealt with compared to other movies and series episodes that have done something similar. Again, I'm not going to cite those here so as not to ruin it even for people who want spoilers. Message me if you're dying to know and are adamantly opposed to or unable to watch it yourself. Wink

I don't care for the soundtrack at all. Whether it's jazz or classical, the chosen pieces have been generally ill-suited to both the Grimm time period and the variations of their respective fairy tales, and the dissonance really annoys me.

That's all the farther I've gotten, but I'll update this when I've seen more, unless a discussion thread appears in the meantime.

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