Fall 2017 Seasonal Sampler: Show #32 [Prequel to 3-gatsu no Lion 2nd Season]

This was used to complete Challenge #78 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch a short anime with 70 episodes or more"

This was used to complete Challenge #1 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an ONA"

This was used to complete Challenge #39 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an anime by the director of one of your Favorite Anime" (Director of FMA Brotherhood)

This was used to complete Challenge #55 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch a completed anime scored by less than 50 users"

This was used to complete Challenge #79 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an Alternative Version, Alternative Setting or Spin-Off of something you've previously watched"

It was nice to revisit AssClass since I really enjoyed the full show and it's been a while since I watched it. That being said this is kind of weird as a stand-alone episode and I'm not sure I would have been able to enjoy without already being a fan of the show and knowing the characters well.

This was used to complete Challenge #25 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an anime tagged as Demons, Horror and/or Vampire"

This was used to complete Challenge #81 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an anime which began airing the same day you joined MAL"

Definitely one of the worst "short gag bits" extras I've seen so far. Many of the gags were only like 10-20 seconds long so they didn't have enough setup to really have a chance at being funny. Sometimes I wasn't even sure what the joke was.

Watched weekly for about 6 episodes, dropped off, and caught up later

This was used to complete Challenge #70 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch a completed anime with a synopsis by MAL Rewrite"

Pretty ding-darn good shounen battle series. Top-tier character designs and cool superpowers. My main complaint is the pacing; way too much recap and flashbacks to previous episodes. Looking forward to learning about the side characters as they all seem pretty interesting and fun, expecting to know and like all of them by the end a la AssClass. Well, except the short purple guy with the sticky balls, he sucks dick and every time he's on screen I want to die.

This was used to complete Challenge #9 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an Anime that aired only during 2017"

This was used to complete Challenge #22 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch a Superhero or GAR themed anime"

It's pretty aight. BNHA is always at least "good" and this was no exception. The action scenes were on-point as usual. It's a little hard to get all that excited about such a typical shounen movie plot though, as you can pretty much predict exactly what's going to happen.

This was used to complete Challenge #93 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch a completed anime with a popularity of or lower than #5,001"

Given the half-decent score I expected something a little better.

The animation is incredibly basic and roughly on-par with what was being made on Newgrounds at the time, if not a little below that. The dialogue moves so slowly and every pause and reaction is so drawn-out that it kills just about every joke's chance at being funny. The jokes themselves don't really do a good job of being funny in the first place, and sometimes I wasn't even sure there was a joke. Many times instead of coming across as funny the show is just sad. The main character is so unbelievably pathetic and yet nothing is really done to make me sympathize with him.

Watched up to Episode 16 with Marrow and then the rest by myself.

Really good overall. Starts off as a cute low-key story about a couple of girls making some songs and goes completely off the rails in the last third or so when the political drama and Angela's arc start to really ramp up.

Pros:
- Really good drama, especially in the last 8 episodes or so
- Pointed and current political commentary against the rise of xenophobic populism
- Pretty good and varied original music with singers that actually seem to speak English
- Good characters designs
- Good backgrounds and setting designs
- Good use of the setting; the main story about C&T could easily be done on Earth but the Mars-future setting factored into the other stories such that something would be lost if it wasn't there
- Pleasing color palette
- Good animation especially considering they almost never use CG for dance/instrument-playing animations.

Cons:
- A few episodes in the mid-section feel kind of pointless and unrelated to the story; they're not bad episodes just don't really need to be there
- Kind of disappointed in how unrealistically quickly the main duo explodes in popularity and stardom; was hoping this would be a bit more of a down-to-earth music story
- Some extremely positive reactions some characters have to some songs feels awkward if you don't personally think the song is that great
- Never been a fan of the thing where you spoil the end of the show at the very start and then say "this is the story of how we got here"; it removes some of the interest in where the story might go

Those cons are pretty minor complaints in comparison to the pros though. Really good show, I recommend it.

This was used to complete Challenge #69 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an anime that was recently reviewed"

It's kind of interesting to watch to an extent but I have no fucking idea what's going on. There seems to be a lot of thought put into the direction but I have no fucking idea what it's trying to convey. The episodes don't feel like they need to be 36 minutes considering like half of each episode is just side characters running around doing fuck-all. The art is okay most of the time but I don't think the main character is shown at a not-completely-unflattering angle even once.

I would actually like to see a thorough analysis of this some day since it seems like there's probably a lot going on but personally I can't follow any of this shit and most of the time it's just boring.

This was used to complete Challenge #24 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an anime tagged as Military, Police, and/or Space"

Watched the first 6 episodes with Marrow, then the rest by myself over several months. Watched around 5 or 6 episodes dubbed because I heard the dub was good (it's better than average but nothing special IMO) and the rest subbed because it was way more convenient.

While I liked the show overall and think it's quite good, I never came to love it as intensely as most anime fans seem to. Much of the series felt kind of hit-or-miss to me, with many really enjoyable episodes as well as many that just never really grabbed me and felt like they dragged on. In general I much moreso enjoyed the more light-hearted or more action-oriented episodes, and found myself bored with a lot of the slower more dramatic ones.

The episodes I particularly enjoyed are: 2, 4, 7, 9, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 22. If this was a 1-cour show with only those 11 episodes, it very well have been an 8/10 or maybe even a 9/10 for me. But alas the remaining 15 episodes hovered more in the 5/10 or 6/10 zone, so on average I will put the show at a 7/10. I'm starting to think that slow-burn atmospheric drama just really isn't something I can get into most of the time.

Absolutely gorgeous show with some really fun characters and good action. Main thing holding it back IMO is that the two main characters were the blandest of the whole crew and I really didn't understand David's motives in the second half. It was hard to sympathize with his drive to keep going no matter what when it kinda seemed like he could have stopped at any time with minimal consequences.

Love the manga, the anime kinda sucks

Edit 2023: The anime is fine actually, the dub is just garbage

This was used to complete Challenge #48 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an anime adapted from a Game"

Pretty disappointed with this show. I don't have a whole lot of good things to say about it. The rest of this will probably mostly consist of complaints.

- It's way too fucking dark. I don't mean the themes or the plot or anything, I mean literally the visuals are too dark. I can barely even see anything in a lot of scenes and the majority of the show is practically in shades of gray.

- The characters basically all suck:
- Hibiki is a Mary Sue. He's the strongest out of the gate, he's the magical chosen one, etc. He's also a perfect little goodie two-shoes who doesn't want anything even remotely morally gray to ever happen to anyone. He survives everything without issue even though he's practically throwing his life away in a lot of instances. He also spends an obnoxious amount of time just standing around being upset that people are dying or in danger. Overall he's just completely boring and generic and I don't give a shit about him.
- Daichi is completely pointless. All of his demons are worthless until Episode 11, yet he's present for just about every fight. In every single fight he does the same thing: He looks at his phone and goes "aww geez I wish I could help", he summons a low-level demon, they get spooked and run away, then he goes into exaggerated anime "funny scene" mode and screams "MY DEMONS ARE WEEEEAK". Was this supposed to be a joke? It wasn't funny the first time and it was copy-pasted like 3 times throughout the show. Other than that he doesn't really do anything. He tries to be the "comic relief" but never really makes any jokes, and the few times he tries to interject in the narrative he's immediately shut down and swept aside with no effect. You could write him out of the show entirely and almost nothing would change until the last couple of episodes.
- Nitta is annoying. She spends the early episodes basically just being a generic weak whiny female character who has to be protected from the scary monsters. She eventually gets a strong demon and is established as being close to Hibiki's level, which gave me hope that she would develop some, but the show (and she) keeps insisting that she's weak and needs protecting even when she's stronger than a number of the other "main party" characters. Also her tits are comically huge and are held perpetually sticking straight off of her chest, which looks so ridiculous it's kind of distracting.
- Yamato is extremely one-note. He has a more concretely developed personality than the rest of the main characters but it never changes at all and he basically responds to everything the same way. He's not really that bothersome himself so much as I was bothered by the rest of the main characters somehow still being shocked the 17th time he decided to sacrifice some of his team to defeat an enemy.
- Alcor was definitely the most likeable character. He had an episode or two where he seemed quirky and fun and interesting as he tried to interact with normal humans. Ultimately though this seemed to be a momentary distraction from his otherwise generically mysterious edgy persona. Also he made an appearance in just about every episode despite not doing literally anything until about episode 7, which was getting pretty annoying in the early parts of the show. Also the thing with the area around his eyes being constantly lighter than everything else was weird and ugly.
- Most of the other characters I don't have much bad to say about but they didn't really do anything to endear me to them. Airi and Jungo are cute but they also felt completely pointless and like they might as well not have been there. Hinako started out kinda fun but got sidelined hard after a few episodes. Makoto was pretty flat and uninteresting. Fumi is okay but gets almost no screen time, and her tits have the same issue as Nitta's.

- There are some points when it becomes obvious that this was adapted from a long game and things are being shortened to save time. For example in Episode 12 Alcor and Yamato threaten each other for a bit and then after the OP plays they're suddenly on the other side of the city in the middle of a fight. As another example the entire thing about Nitta being possessed and "killed" feels like it wanted to be a whole arc with a huge emotional conclusion but it's crammed into a single episode so the big flourishes at the resolution feel forced.

- The big fights against the Septentrions are short, static, and boring. They all end up feeling like they're not that threatening since they're usually defeated in like 10 minutes with one or two real attacks. Very little actually happens in these fights despite a lot of characters running around yelling. Characters are killed by the Septs but it's always minor characters that I don't give a shit about and usually don't even remember the name of, and it's very clear that the real main characters are never in actual danger. For a couple of them Yamato has a plan ready in advance and then they literally just do that plan and it works flawlessly and no one is hurt. This really kills any tension regarding the appearance of the Septs.

- Basically everyone on Earth besides the main characters is killed very early on in the show. However this isn't really made very clear because no one seems to be that upset about it and they seem to act like they're protecting the cities and people in them, despite there being seemingly no one left to worry about protecting. It isn't made clear that the world is being literally erased until fairly late into the show so it seems like there's little reason for the party to be worried about the Septs in the first place. It isn't until Nitta starts talking about her dead parents that I realized that everyone else is dead, and then I instead wondered why Nitta is seemingly the only one who's upset about all of her family and friends being killed.

- The way the powers ramp up near the end is really poorly explained. There's apparently some magical dragon thing that is the embodiment of the spirit of Tokyo or something. JP's harnesses it through Nitta to fight one of the Septs and they say this is difficult and risky to do. Then later it seems to just decide it's going to give Hibiki all of its powers with no downsides for basically no reason other than he's the protagonist. Okay, fine whatever. But then Yamato just... also has its powers? All the time? For some reason? And him and Hibiki have these powers simultaneously and even fight using them. I don't really understand how Yamato got these powers.

- Near the end when they start killing off more important characters (particularly Fumi, Hinako, and Makoto) it kind of just happens and then gets brushed aside. Like, Hibiki is upset about it for like a second and then no one ever mentions it again. These characters' deaths get less attention and importance place upon them than unimportant side characters I couldn't even name.

- The whole "Dead Face" thing never seems to actually matter. It shows them that someone is about to die but most of the time it's really fucking obvious that they're going to die anyway. They avoid it a couple of times (when the Dead Face is on of the main 3 characters, because of course) which makes it seem like what's even the point of showing the clips anymore. Now it no longer means "this person will die" but "this person may or may not die" which is completely unhelpful. Once the party realizes the Dead Faces aren't set in stone they basically just start ignoring them, but they keep showing up and taking up screen time unnecessarily. Also it's never explained at all why this thing exists or how it works.

- The way that Hibiki's ideological opposition to Yamato is framed is stupid. Yamato keeps saying he wants to create a meritocracy, and everyone else uses that word to describe what he wants to. But just saying "oh no, we can't have a meritocracy" sounds really stupid because with no context or explanation a meritocracy sounds like a perfectly good thing. The party's concern with Yamato's vision doesn't even seem to have much to do with what he actually wants or how it could be corrupted or tyrannical, they just keep saying over and over that "if it's forced on people then it's bad." There are such easy arguments that can be made against a meritocracy (mainly, who determines what "merit" is and how can that be objective) and while these are briefly mentioned once or twice the main focus is that Yamato would be "forcing" his new world on everyone. This makes it seem like Hibiki and the party don't know or care what Yamato is actually planning they just don't want anything to be changed from how the world originally was in any way whatsoever.

- The ending didn't really make any sense. Hibiki gets his wish to God and everything resets to how it was before the Septs appeared except the Dead Face app is fake now and no one dies. But apparently Hibiki wished for just "a second chance?" He says that if he does nothing the same things will happen and everyone will die again. First of all, this is a fucking stupid wish to make when he seemingly could have just wished for everything to be fixed straight-up. Secondly, it doesn't even seem to actually be what happened since events are clearly different from how they happened in episode 1 and the apocalypse doesn't trigger and the Dead Face app isn't real. So it's almost like God decided that Hibiki's wish was fucking stupid and just did what he should have asked for instead.

Overall I didn't like this show much at all. I struggle to think of anything in particular that I enjoyed about it. I'm giving it a 4 rather than a lower score just because I realize that a lot of my issues are relatively minor and I was moreso bored than annoyed and bothered for most of the show. I thought this show was bad but if someone told me they liked it I wouldn't judge them super hard.

This was used to complete Challenge #6 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an anime by a studio you don't know" (Science SARU)

Some of the most baffling soundtracking I've ever seen in an anime. Intense emotional moments or flashy fight scenes would play to either complete silence or aimless bluegrass guitar. Music would cut in and out abruptly and sound effects and dialogue were often too loud or inaudible.

No attempt was ever made to explain why these Japanese schoolchildren were hitch-hiking across America by themselves.

The American geography was completely fucked, doing things like having the characters pass through Montana on the way from New York to Denver, and apparently a lot of that trip was through midwest desert.

Not a terrible movie, but way too long and the above issues all caused us to yell at the screen throughout.

This was used to complete Challenge #59 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an anime with at least two human children as main characters"

This was used to complete Challenge #98 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an anime that combines one of your favorite and least-favorite genres by weighted score on Anime+"

Winter 2019 Seasonal Sampler: Show #5

This was used to complete Challenge #15 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch a Completed Anime with a score of or below 6.00"

It's uhhhhhhhhh not good. The animation is lacking and often not even there; much of the show is just panning still shots and characters talking. The still art is not even that great-looking. The voice acting ranges from passable to grating; in particular the two main female characters have pretty obnoxious voices. The pacing is horrifically slow and takes forever to get to the point. Plot threads are brought up and then completely abandoned. It kind of feels like this was supposed to be the first episodes of a full TV show that never happened, considering the Big Bad Evil Guy is introduced and kills some guy and then never even shows up again. Not worth watching for basically any reason.

This was used to complete Challenge #14 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch a completed anime adapted from a 4-koma Manga"

I mean... it's really not worth watching. It's basically nothing. The only reason I'm here is because I saw the first two episodes on YouTube in shitpost format and I have a weird thing about completing things... I can afford to sate that urge with shows that are only a minute and a half per episode.

Kinda disappointed that they changed the story at certain points (particularly the reason for Makimura going insane on the bird-people island) and being an old anime it's paced WAY the fuck slower than the manga. To an extent this helps build tension and make it feel less like things are just happening with no build-up, but at some points it feels like it's just wasting my time.

Still love this part of Phoenix though just for how fucking insane it is and how it refuses to have anything resembling a happy ending.

Comments: Fall 2017 Seasonal Sampler: Show #45 [Prequel to Hoozuki no Reitetsu 2nd Season]

As much as I liked this show, I did feel like it was getting old by the end of season 2 cour 1. I was right.

Fall 2017 Seasonal Sampler: Show #36

Fall 2017 Seasonal Sampler: Show #31

No one told me this was an insane fever dream of a movie. I thought it would be a slower more grounded thing like The Wind Rises or whatever. I probably would've watched it sooner if I knew how crazy it was.

Not really worth watching for the most part, even as an obsessive KH fan. Most of the interactions between the Foretellers feel pretty flaccid and uninteresting, and almost nothing here is new information compared to what's in the KHUx game that it's supposed to be expanding on. That would be fine if this was a reasonable substitute for the game, but it isn't at all, and it would probably make very little sense to someone who doesn't have a passing knowledge of the game's story. So it isn't meaningful as a supplementary piece, and it isn't helpful as a substitute for the game, so it's basically completely pointless.

This episode was actually significantly better than I expected. Bonus-episode OVAs/Specials are usually pretty vapid and pointless and just throw around some fanservice and act out the recurring gags from the main series. While this episode did somewhat suffer from feeling like it just wanted to do "the thing" for each character (e.g. Elma gets excited about sweets, Riko gets flustered around Kanna, etc.), particularly in the first half of the episode, the second half at the hot spring area really pulled it together, and it ended with what felt like a proper epilogue for the series. In this way it feels less like the KonoSuba OVAs and more like the Kill La Kill bonus episode; it makes sense canonically after the main series and even directly acknowledges that the events at the end of the main series really happened, and tries to progress the story from there, if only by a tiny amount. Obviously, it also helps that I absolutely love the main TV series and am enamored with all of its characters.

Also as far as I can tell I'm the first person on MAL to list this entry, so that's pretty cool.

The shorts were slightly better than I expected, with a decent joke or two per episode. That said, I didn't expect much of anything. They're ultimately pretty pointless and I only watched them because of MAL fuckery with the way this and the Bonus Episode special were listed.

This was used to complete Challenge #77 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch a Movie with a duration of 120 minutes or more"

Way trashier and way more fanservice-heavy than the main show, which is already pretty trashy. Not super into it.

Fall 2017 Seasonal Sampler: Show #18

This was used to complete Challenge #82 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an anime which began airing between 1917 and 1959"

I didn't think this would have any dialogue when I started watching. Turned out there were no subs on the video I was watching but figured I'd watch anyway since I was already like 3 minutes into an 9-minute short. Wasn't that hard to follow anyway.

I feel like I don't know how to fairly rate anime that's this old. I don't want to hold it to modern standards too much but I also feel the need to acknowledge that it's by and large pretty boring and slow and not great-looking. I think 4/10 is a decent compromise.

This was used to complete Challenge #105 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch a completed anime that doesn't have forum discussion threads."

It's pretty good as far as music videos go. I couldn't really follow the plot (or really tell if there was anything to follow) but the art is nice and the song is fun. I like the designs of the characters and the style they're drawn in.

Fun as shit and beautiful to look at. Some episodes in the latter half started to drag, getting bogged down by exposition and plot nonsense. Episode 21 (the one with the big tree with poisonous polled) is a good example.

This was used to complete Challenge #56 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch a completed anime which 0 members have favorited"

I liked a lot of the characters (La Pucelle, Swim Swim, Winterprison, Top Speed, Ripple, Alice) but found the story pretty hard to stay interested in. The show deliberately makes it obvious from the beginning that it's a Death Game so it's not surprising at all when the number that need to be killed off keeps increasing until only one person is left. This really undercuts the scenes of magical girls being shocked by the rules of the game. Other than that most major story beats either felt really predictable or really out-of-nowhere.

The show does wayyy too much of randomly throwing backstory flashbacks in the middle of other scenes. It's not too bothersome when the backstory is interesting or gives insight into the character, as in the case of Ripple or Ruler or Magicaloid or Alice, but when it's not interesting it does nothing but annoy and distract from what else is happening. The worst example of this is the twins' backstory, which tells us nothing other than "they are twins above highschool age who are very close", all of which the viewer already knows by episode 10 when it is shown. There's also a consistent decision to not tell us much of anything about a character until they die, which IMO is the wrong way to do things as it means I don't feel any attachment to the character when they're killed off.

Many of the emotional, tear-jerk-attempt moments came across as kinda forced. For example the reveal that Top Speed was pregnant is way overplayed with shaky-blur cam and all, and after Winterprison died there was one too many cuts of Sister Nana crying, to the point where it stopped feeling meaningful.

Cranberry is a pretty shit villain. After she finally becomes a real character around 5 or 6 episodes in most of her dialog is either back-and-forths with Fav about how evil they both are or gloating during battles. "Oh Fav make sure the higher ups don't know how evil we are" "Yes of course I'll be sure to lie to them" "Make sure to do it as evilly as possible"

Many of the magic powers are poorly explained.
- Snow White can "hear the thoughts of people in danger." Within what range? Why can she hear the dying Alice while untransformed?
- Swim Swim can "swim through anything as though it were water." But apparently this also means she can make her body water-like to become invincible? And how does her swimming work anyway? Where does she go when she goes into the ground? How can she find anyone once disappearing like that? Can she see down there? How?
- Cranberry can "manipulate sound at will." Is there a limit to that? Why can't she just shatter her opponents' eardrums? Why does this also give her super-hearing? When fighting Swim Swim she creates some big explosion and then talks about "light and sound." What's up with that? You can't knock people back and obliterate trees with just light and sound. And since when can she do anything with light anyway?
- Calamity Mary can "enhance any weapon she wields." What the fuck does that mean? It certainly doesn't affect her accuracy considering she misses constantly. She explodes cars with a sniper but it's hard to tell if that's her magic at work or just Action Cars and their tendency to explode.
- Sister Nana can "enhance the abilities of her beloved (i.e. Winterprison.)" This is never elaborated on at all.

Beyond that, many other worldbuilding aspects seem inconsistent or at least confusing. What do the girls need to do to transform? It's never established to be any sort of complicated process so when Alice gets attacked in human form it made me wonder why she didn't just transform immediately to survive, or at least after getting hit once and running away. They need the magic phone to transform, but why wouldn't she have it with her? She says while dying "no good, I can't focus" but it's unclear if this is related to trying to transform or just trying to talk to Snow White while dying. Do they need to "focus" to transform? Is it some sort of process? Snow White seems to do it instantly, even in this same scene. This whole situation felt a bit too much like the writers realized Alice being unkillable was overpowered and hastily came up with a way to kill her.

What's the deal with them interacting with/hurting normal people? In the beginning of the show they're set up to be basically cryptids; people only retain extremely vague memories of being helped by them and can't record them properly. But what about when Calamity Mary starts blowing up cars and shooting people at random? Or when her and Top Speed and Ripple collectively destroy a huge building? No amount of "faint memory" is gonna keep people from noticing that. Why isn't there any real reaction from the city or government to such a huge terrorist attack? Or when Swim Swim attacks Alice, and all the kids present seem to be fully aware of when just happened in front of them. How is anyone going to explain that? How much do they remember? What are the rules here?

Tama is a really wasted character. She's in 11/12 episodes, being one of the last ones killed off, but other than being cute and shy we know virtually nothing about her until she dies. I really wanted to like her but felt like I didn't have anything to go on until it was too late for me to care. Magicaloid-44 felt the same way; though she was one of the only characters to get backstory before her death, she did not have nearly enough screentime to become an interesting character despite her somewhat unique origin of being a super-casual who never really cared for magical girls or the phone game in the first place. Magicaloid's power could have been consistently interesting too, with different gadgets all the time, but it saw very little use before her death, and the only "useful" tool she ever got wasn't even very futuristic.

Despite all this, the show was really carried on the strength of its characters. I appreciate the diversity of the cast, with magical girls of a wide range of ages and backgrounds. Swim Swim is probably the most interesting character to me: a grade school-age girl without much context with which to fully understand and appreciate what's going on in the game, who is taken in and mentored by a misanthropic self-centered salarywoman and therefore learns to be ruthless and unfeeling. La Pucelle was great too: a highschool-age boy who has always loved magical girls but has become more ashamed of it as he grew older, now transformed into a magical girl himself. These two were definitely my favorites, though Ripple, Top Speed, Ruler, Alice, and Magicaloid were really enjoyable characters as well, if only for being cool and fun to watch.

Overall I enjoyed the show despite my problems with it. The ending was fine too.

This was used to complete Challenge #44 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an anime that began airing the same month you joined MAL"

This was used to complete Challenge #45 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an anime which began airing between 1980 and 1989"

This was used to complete Challenge #43 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an anime with a voice actor that worked on 5 or fewer anime"

I can see why Marimo's VA has only worked on one other anime, she's not good. Most of the other voices are pretty bad too. The storyline here is painfully generic which is disappointing for something that's only one episode long; you'd think they would want to show more of what this manga (presumably) has that's unique. The animation seemed surprisingly kind of good, though it was hard to tell since I could only find this in like 144p on a site I've never heard of.

This was used to complete Challenge #10 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an Anime with 20 episodes or more"

This was used to complete Challenge #40 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an anime with no Producer, Lincensor, nor Studio listed"

This was used to complete Challenge #46 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an anime which began airing between 1990 and 1999"

This was used to complete Challenge #5 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch a noitaminA anime"

Pretty good overall. The art style is incredibly interesting though I wouldn't say it's really my style. It does lend itself to the horror atmosphere of the show though. The stories and mysteries are interesting and well put-together although I felt at times like the amount of abstraction and metaphor made it hard to follow what was actually happening.

My biggest complaint is with the first arc (episodes 1 and 2.) The first episode of this show takes "painfully slow" to an entirely new level, with minutes of the total runtime consisting of static shots with absolutely nothing happening. I get that this was probably intended to set the tone and make the audience uneasy, but in my opinion it went way overboard and just made it seem like a weird boring show where nothing happens. The most obvious example is the dialogue in the first episode; the Medicine Vendor will often put a 1-2 second pause in between every single word of a sentence. This episode is also not helped by the incredibly obnoxious racist depiction of a black man as a primary supporting character. The second episode has a lot more going on but still has similar pacing for the most part, so it's only marginally better.

From episode 3 onwards it seemed they were able to find a middle ground where the pacing is still slow and tone-heavy but the show can progress at faster than a snail's pace. If I were to recommend this show to a friend I would suggest they skip episodes 1 and 2 entirely and just start from the second arc (which in my opinion was one of the best.)

This was used to complete Challenge #11 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an Original anime"

Fall 2017 Seasonal Sampler: Show #33

God was this show disappointing. The first 4 or 5 episode are fantastic; they're adorable and wholesome and sweet. They did an extremely good job of capturing the adorably awkward beginning stages of a relationship between two dorks, and stoked fond memories of the early stages of my own relationship. The main character was exactly the right amount of trash-gremlin: not mean or insane like WataMote and not over-the-top dependent and useless like Umaru-chan, but also actually an unhygienic slobby NEET unlike Eromanga-sensei. Overall she's just a very believable and enjoyable character. Then the second half of the show happens.

Starting about halfway through the show enters an accelerating decline that becomes a nosedive. The actual MMO interactions become less and less prominent in favor of real-life trite anime romance bullshit. Coincidences begin piling up and the main characters' IRL interactions start to become grating. The main guy figures out the main girl's IRL identity and then proceeds to spend like 4 entire episodes fucking moping around about it avoiding her and just sitting around whining. Then the ultimate in bullshit unbelievable coincidences gets dropped: The other guy that the main girl played an MMO with as a kid is ACTUALLY the SAME GUY as the MAIN GUY that she MET in the NEW MMO WOOOOOWWWWWWWWIIIEEEEEEEE HOOO BOYYYY

Then after she realizes this and tells him about it he somehow gets even whinier and mopier and starts insisting that he's gonna quit playing MMOs with her??? Like dude what the fuck???? And then they start de facto dating but insist that they're not dating and the show doesn't even have the balls to have a confession between them let alone a kiss.

Overall the beginning was great but the second half is trash and it kind of ruins the whole show. 4/10 not recommended.

This is a hard show to rate. On the one hand the production quality is incredibly high and there are several episodes that are extremely good, but on the other hand the lows are *really* low and a few scenes/episodes were hard to sit through. I feel like 7/10 is a decent compromise score.

This was used to complete Challenge #19 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch a completed anime scored 10 or 9 from someone on your sign-up page"

This was used to complete Challenge #76 of the 2018 Anime Watching Challenge: "Watch an anime with 4 or more main characters with natural hair color"

A solid re-telling of the arc and great for someone familiar with the series. Unfortunately as I'm always looking for ways to get people into One Piece I was a bit let down that it seems primarily geared towards existing fans.

I was slightly hoping that this could be a great bit of isolated story to show to someone by itself to show why OP is so good, but unfortunately the East Blue recap at the start and a handful of callbacks to previous arcs makes that slightly awkward. I was also hoping this could be used as a substitute for watching the 14 episodes of the anime, but the Fish-man Island tease at the end spoils things like additional crew members, the new ship, and post-timeskip designs. In addition, the scene at the start of Nami crying when hoping that she'll see the crew again kind of spoils any chance of a new viewer believing she might actually be a bad person, and iirc that scene wasnt in the original.

In addition, Nami's and Nojiko's bodily proportions are much more exaggerated and ridiculous in line with post-timeskip One Piece, as opposed to the much more toned-down look of Nami's design in the early days when this arc takes place.

Overall, it's a good movie and a good re-telling of the arc. Watching this is the closest I've gotten to actually crying during the "Please help" scene. It just unfortunately wasn't trying to be the things I wanted from it in some ways, and frankly that's on me for expecting something weirdly specific and outside of the point of movies like this. They're just meant to be nostalgia-bombs for longtime fans, and they're good at being that.

I don't expect greatness from One Piece recap movies, but frankly this one feels *way* more rushed than the previous ones I've watched (East Blue, Arlong Park, and Alabasta). Despite covering fewer chapters than the East Blue recap movie, it somehow feels like it skips over and rearranges even more content, resulting in a boring experience that does absolutely no justice to the source material.

A nice short story with some great Straw Hat interactions that are somewhat lacking from the current OP storyline. Watching all the crewmates just fuck around and have fun is really refreshing, and watching them beat the shit out of arrogant marines who are way beneath them never gets old.

This special also had a surprisingly high number of genuinely really funny moments, including Luffy suddenly appearing next to the bad guy mid-monologue, Robin throwing a guy off the crow's nest without even looking at him, and "POV Luffy smashes through your roof to beat the shit out of you". Also more specifically, I really appreciated seeing Robin get to just chill out and have fun like she very rarely gets to do in the canon events of the story.

Overall, nothing groundbreaking, but it exceeded my expectations for a one-off non-canon special. I would recommend it to anyone who's into One Piece and just wants to see more of the crew hanging out.