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Hah, our spring overlap is virtually nonexistent for now. I bailed out of Yuru Camp after the first season, and am leaning towards skipping Tensura. I really liked the first half-ish of Tensura's first season, but my enjoyment of the series has been on a steady decline since. I wouldn’t say I’m a hard no on the other three, but they haven’t stood out to me much either. With so much anime being released these days, I tend to handle non-sequels by just keeping an ear out for impressions of the first episode or two (unless there’s some particular staff or studio that interests me). So, to that point, most of my definitives for spring are sequels/remakes: KonoSuba, Demon Slayer, Mushoku Tensei, HeroAca, Spice & Wolf, Euphonium. Kaiju No. 8 will probably get a try too.

I did want to recommend one series you apparently skipped from winter: Bravern! Something about it makes me think you’ll have some fun with it, perhaps the fact that much of the show feels like a callback to classic mecha.

Sorry to hear about 16bit. That jibes with the general impressions I’d heard elsewhere, but always sucks when a promising start is squandered.

“I hope you're enjoying the FF7 remake!”
Finished Rebirth just this weekend, and I definitely am, though perhaps not to the extent of your friends. I feel the FF7 remake project is struggling with meaningfully stretching a 40 hour game into a 200 hour trilogy, even accounting for the fact that they’re adding and changing things in an Evangelion Rebuild-esque fashion. Regardless, I’ve enjoyed what I’ve played and am looking forward to the third game.

“Are there any films from the last 10 years you would recommend”
Ooh, interesting question, assuming we’re discounting anything from Ghibli (although as I say that, it occurs to me that Boy and the Heron is their only worthwhile film of the past decade lol).

The anime film landscape has skewed hard towards franchises, especially since the success of Demon Slayer. There’s been some good Lupin films, but as far as truly standalone works… I would say Maquia, Inu-oh, In This Corner of the World, A Silent Voice and Promare have been my anime film highlights of the past decade, in no particular order. The Kizumonogatari trilogy is also absolutely stellar, and can be watched without any other Monogatari experience. I know you despised Bakemonogatari, but Kizu could still be worth considering, as it takes a very different adaptational approach than all the TV Monogataris.

You’re alive! I was starting to wonder if maybe you’d left MAL behind.

Yep, we’ve had similar phone-in-theater situations, as well as stuff along the lines of people blatantly scrolling social media (completely with obnoxiously bright screen) for most of the movie. My wife, who can be a little more confrontational than myself, has actually called people out on it a couple times haha.

“Were you expecting me to pick up Gekkan Mousou Kagaku?”
Heh, in a manner of speaking. I guess what I meant is that it feels like you tend to pick up pretty unique combinations of both well-known and extremely obscure seasonals. But I don’t mean that as a bad thing whatsoever.

My earlier thoughts on 100 Girlfriends are still basically accurate. It’s not the kind of show that I think would appeal to everybody, but it hit this certain over-the-top and fanservice-y yet heartfelt and good-natured tone that really worked for me.

One of the 16bit screenshots I saw passed around was actually that exact line of dialogue, about it being a milf hypnosis game lol. I’m afraid I did hear similar diminishing enthusiasm for the series from the couple other people I know who watched it, but hopefully it manages to finish decently for you.

“But I'm glad you enjoyed the ending of AoT!”
Interestingly, the ending seemed to land a lot better amongst the anime community than the manga community at the time of the source ending. I suppose I’d chalk it up to a combination of dialogue and pacing tweaks in the anime, despite the overall concept being unchanged.

“And just as I was about to ask if you're still going through Dezaki's works…”
It’d be a fair question, because I’ve admittedly been pretty slow working through more Dezaki, but I could say the same of any backlog anime viewing as of late. Outside of my Ghibli marathon and Versailles, I hardly watched any non-seasonal anime in 2023. That wasn’t intentional per se, but it was just a very heavy game year for me (between Zelda, Baldur’s Gate, Pikmin 4, FF16, Alan Wake 2, and a few others). 2024 looks like it might be calmer on that front, at least in a month or two after I get through the triple whammy of Persona 3 Reload, FF7 Rebirth and Unicorn Overlord.

But, looping back around to Dezaki, at a minimum I plan to get around to Space Cobra this year. Only time will tell beyond that. I've already accepted that it'll take me literal years to work through his filmography at this rate. (And speaking of Ghibli, what made you watch My Neighbors the Yamadas of all films?)

“That's quite a vote of confidence from the other players.”
Heh, I don’t know if it was a vote of confidence so much as none of us really knew what we were doing anyway, so we all learned collectively. I was the natural pick to be the DM because I was the most organized of the group and at least had a strong theoretical grasp of the rules thanks to hundreds of hours of Critical Role, while everyone else was a total novice. But I guess something managed to click considering we still play regularly to this day.

For me, it depends. The way I tend to feel is that theaters have higher variability but in turn higher potential. As in, an ideal theater experience is better than watching the film at home, but the opposite is also true (especially lately, as my wife and I both feel that phone etiquette in theaters has gotten noticeably worse since the pandemic.) But another big motivator for me is the limited availability of seeing something in theaters at all. For instance, I saw Blue Giant a couple weekends back. Chances are if I’d missed that I’d never have the opportunity to see it in theaters ever again, whereas a home viewing can happen anytime.

As always, it’s intriguing to see what you pick up in a season. I’d agree about Fern actually, but I’m having faith in the show to grow, especially considering how many episodes there are to work with. A couple people I follow are very into 16bit Sensation. I’ve enjoyed seeing some of the screenshots and stuff, but I’m fine with that being the extent of my experience since I’m not as much a VN person.

The two mildly unexpected standouts for me this fall have been 100 Girlfriends and Undead Unluck. UU is narratively a pretty typical shonen, but elevated by former Shaft staff and in turn a near-Shaft aesthetic (which is one of my favorite studios on a visual level). Very much reminiscent of Fire Force in that regard. 100 Girlfriends I almost dismissed based on the title alone, but it approaches the harem genre with a knowingly ridiculous tone and seemingly polyamorous leanings. Not a show to take seriously whatsoever but a fairly funny watch. While I wouldn’t say either are more than “good” (yet), I’ve enjoyed both more than anticipated.

It hurts… it hurts for some of my favorite series to be used as a punching bag (although AoT’s writing in particular I don’t think becomes truly exceptional until the embarrassingly named Final Season.)

Anne is one of those shows that’s always been on my radar to watch “sometime” but is hard to find the time or motivation for. I’d still like to get around to trying more Precure too eventually, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that takes literal years.

“Did you get interested in games like that because of Critical Role?”
Yes and no. Narrative-driven, choice-focused RPGs (such as Mass Effect or The Witcher) have always been amongst my favorite types of games, so based on that alone, BG3 was already right in my wheelhouse. However, my interest was amplified by the fact that I’ve been playing actual D&D for some years now (and that is a direct result of Critical Role). Specifically, I was very excited for the chance to be a “player”; I’ve been part of many tabletop D&D sessions by now, but always as the Dungeon Master. And BG3 gave me exactly what I was looking for! It recreates the D&D ruleset so well that most of my knowledge of the tabletop game was directly compatible.

I noticed this interview and then instantly thought of you:
https://fullfrontal.moe/goro-taniguchi-interview/

Well, at least you picked a reason that won't be disappearing from Symphogear anytime soon haha.

Pretty much every anime movie that comes to theaters I'll see, as long as it's something I have at least mild interest in. I'm fortunate enough that my standard theater, a close drive away, usually screens them. Although, it also appears my baseline enjoyment of Ghibli flicks is a bit higher than yours based on a score comparison anyway.

"Barren" is a great word to describe this season. There have been shows I've greatly enjoyed (Jujutsu Kaisen, Bungou Stray Dogs, and Undead Girl Murder Farce, to name three), but the number of notable series seems far lower than usual, especially when discounting sequels/spin-offs (and then you have the delay fest of Zom 100). I can imagine the situation being even more dire for you, considering I don't think you'd like any of the three I listed!

As for fall... looking through the charts, I'd say it appears slightly better than summer, but still rather unremarkable. Frieren and Pluto will probably be the best of the batch for me. Both are adapting acclaimed manga and seem to have the visual chops to match. Attack on Titan will also finally end in November, though that's really stretching the definition of a seasonal anime at this point.

All that being said, I don't mind the chance to turn my attention to the backlog, or to non-anime media. Much of my free time at present has been going to Baldur's Gate 3, for example.

Well, I’m as shocked as anyone to report that I did indeed have a much better time with Uma Musume's second season! Superficially not much changed, but the execution feels less haphazard, with narrower focus and more emotionally resonant character arcs. It can’t fully eliminate some issues I have with the franchise’s core concept, but it does try its best to.

Funny enough, I almost dropped Season 2 midway through its second episode, but decided to finish out at least that episode — and then the end of the episode gave me enough of a hook that I was interested in continuing, then completing.

lol, I'd agree, but it was a combination of a few factors. The series had been somewhat on my radar because I'm always down to try popular shows, and I'd say Uma Musume qualifies (although not so much in the West). Then, I'd heard from friends that Season 1 is mediocre, but Season 2 is a shocking improvement. Last, the push to try it out now was the third season airing in October; if I end up liking the series, this felt like a perfect time to hop in. So far, the first season is indeed a banal watch. Not awful per se, but thoroughly unremarkable. I'd probably considering dropping it in isolation, but I'm pushing through to give that second season a shot.

It's not as obvious on my list updates due to the number of rewatches involved, but I'm also working through Ghibli's entire filmography prior to the release of Miyazaki's last film. (Technically though, I haven't actually hit Ghibli proper yet, because I was checking out some pre-Ghibli works and just did Nausicaa this weekend.)

It was! They were playing the movie at my theater and I was curious to check it out.

Dialogue in it felt a lot more naturalistic than I expected coming from a film directed and co-written by Lucas; maybe the other two writers helped him with that. Nice time, a better execution on that vignette style than Fast Times at Richmond High would do a decade later with how all the stories converge. It was kind of funny seeing the floating heads with the text of what happened to them when the credits roll, but it makes sense when you see it was intentionally a "last days of our real lives" type beat with the Vietnam War.

If Żubr is not bad then I truly do not know the pain of being a beer enjoyer in America is all I'm saying.

Awesome! I still love Rings of Saturn, it sits comfortably next to my bed and gives me some quality dreams I think, haha.

Żubr is one of the cheaper, low quality beers over here, so don't expect it to taste very good unfortunately. I had it a bunch when I was only beginning to drink and had to resort to buying a lot of alcohol for any given any meetup. Nowadays it just reminds me of a lot of times when I drank too much. Who knows, maybe the import air helped it somewhat.

Well, if you're looking for "actual warfare", perhaps the finale left you more hopeful for the show's future direction. For me, I'd call most of the cast "functional" in that I neither particularly like nor dislike them, with my favorites probably being Suletta, her mother and Guel. Elan I find interesting more for the plot around him than his actual personality (or lack thereof).

Glad to hear! Haha, I don't think there's any Ergo Proxy character I'd "want to hang out with", but they are almost universally well-detailed and none feel superfluous to the show's story or messages.

Thank you! I'm grateful to be where I am in life; I feel like I lucked out in a lot of ways.

Maybe I'm following the same path as you... I'll likely try out Maison Ikkoku at some point, but might bow out of more Takahashi if it doesn't click for me either.

Well, HanaKana is always a plus, at least. Yeah, I never really found Cid likable or entertaining either. I think the general idea of a liar's lies unknowingly being true has some inherent comedic potential, but his demeanor and the things he lies about kills it for me.

More or less agreed on DIY, but I'm actually having a fairly good time with Witch from Mercury. I do find the behind-the-scenes political machinations more engaging than the actual school life, but it seems likely the former will only becomes more important as time goes on.

On some level, I can usually enjoy watching a historically important series for its own sake, and started Urusei Yatsura fully intending to finish it, but it just got to be too much. I don't hate the show -- it was honestly probably angling for a 6 if I sat through it to the end -- but I distinctly remember finishing one episode in the mid-80s, realizing I wasn't even halfway done, and deciding that I had likely seen all the show had to offer. Purely episodic comedies aren't exactly my favored genre in the first place, and I rarely found UY to be any more than moderately funny. At least with something like Naruto or Dragon Ball, even when it's stupid or boring, the simple fact that there is a plot helps to keep me engaged on at least a superficial level. Shows like UY, divorced of any real chronology, practically require that you enjoy both the characters and the comedy... and I didn't derive consistent enough entertainment out of either.

Beautiful Dreamer, I would say I like in spite of being connected to the franchise rather than because of it. While I was watching the series, I saw more Urusei Yatsura conversation than usual around the internet, in large part due to the remake. At least a couple people identified themselves as fans of Beautiful Dreamer and little else. I guess I would count myself among them.

Which character? I tried hard to go into Eminence with an open mind, especially being cognizant of the fact that the series is allegedly a comedy, but it didn't work for me at all. I've seen a few complain about the adaptation ruining the tone, but I'll take their word for it.

Glad to see you appear to be having a decent time with Bocchi. It's currently sitting as my second-favorite of the season, behind Mob.

Any reason why you're inspecting public housing? Seems like a pretty specific thing.

Yup, sure was. At least there was one season during which there was less people in the group, the pacing wasn't as hectic but instead it was just kinda boring this time around. Eeeeh, Love Live at this point I guess. I think the isekai anime they're doing could be funnier... maybe?

I've been fine! Just sort of getting back into the groove of things, seeing people, traveling around the country a tad bit when I have the chance, met an internet friend for the first time irl last week. It's been nice. How about you?