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Hello, Happy New Year 2025!

I highly recommend watching Sand Land. I can't guarantee you'll like it, of course. But personally, I really enjoyed it. The manga was already fun to read, and the movie adaptation was very good, but the episodic series elevated both to even a higher level.

Sand Land is an adventurous story filled with funny gags, wholesome moments, and cool-looking action scenes. All of this is beautifully presented with stunning CGI animation and art - some of the best I've ever seen. When you combine this with the excellent direction, Sand Land becomes something definitely worth checking out.

And if you're a fan of Akira Toriyama's work, it's definitely a must-watch!

Let me know when you give it a try! :D

I had lots of fun watching it even though, objectively speaking, it can be considered an Attack n°1 knockoff and the melodrama was a bit dumb sometimes. It does have a couple of explicit scenes, the kind of stuff that was normal to see in older anime.

Not sure how I'd rank the matches in One Outs, but I can guarantee that the second half of the manga that wasn't adapted in the anime is still amazing.

In terms of looks and wits absolutely, but their personalities are quite different (one more serious, the other more outgoing as you can see in the screenshots).

The most important difference compared to the first time is that I read the manga instead of rewatching the low quality s1, which helped me realize it was so good right from the start. HxH might have higher highs but also lower lows, I've gotta admit that some of the crtiicisms made by "Huntrash x Garbage" spammers on the forums are justified, even if of course I see them as minor issues. WT relies on a solid foundation more than on "hype moments" and it is the absolute king of strategic battles, which is the decisive aspect for me. The manga might be the best way to experience it due to a mediocre s1 and I'd also say it benefits from spending more time on some panels to notice every detail, but s2-s3 are well done and the penultimate episode of s3 in particular is one of the best animated episodes in a battle shounen.

I reread the first part of the manga before watching AnJ 2 and I enjoyed it even more than I remembered: you can really feel it's a sports manga written when the genre with all its tropes wasn't a thing yet. The anime felt like the same thing as the manga but worse, I definitely prefer Oniisama e... as a work of animation (also because a girls drama is more suited for the limited Japanese animation than most sports).

I mean, I already explained why realism is necessary for this particular work and in this particular area; it's trying to make statements about human nature and morality, both of which are innately rooted in reality. You can't have a moral statement about "evil" or "who is the real monster" without referring to reality. The show also sells itself as realistic with its entire style and setting.

As for originality, it's hard to be original, so I don't mind if something isn't totally original. But as I said before, talking about who did what first is besides my main point that the ideas at play here are rudimentary and not fleshed out, IMO. The idea that a villain was highly motivated by some form of abuse/betrayal from his parental figures is not that interesting or edifying of an idea by itself. If the show actually did the work to flesh out his thought process in a way that makes sense and doesn't require us to fill in the gaps, that would be like writing the actual essay instead of writing the prompt for the essay. It's like we could be having a conversation about a topic and we just make some superficial, broad statements, and leaving it at that, instead of going into more detail. And this is all within the context of my stance that Johan just doesn't seem to be that great of a villain because his extremity, combined with the lack of detail/explanation around him makes him seem one dimensionally evil, because his brand of evil isn't something specific. Other villains will do a lot of killing but they have a specific, understandable rationale for it, wherein they're not just killing for the sake of killing but killing as a means to an ends. I suppose you could argue Johan kills as part of his plan too but there are a bunch of cases where it wasn't necessary AND he is almost always killing it as if the killing itself is enjoyable to him, without the show telling us why he would find it enjoyable. It's part of his supposed philosophy that life has no value but that in itself doesn't give him a reason to kill people. It's like saying rocks have no value and then going out of your way to destroy rocks. Even if Johan's rationale was fully explained, that would only meet the baseline for character writing. Only then can I evaluate whether or not he's the best villain or whatever.

Btw I was always wondering about this, since you have listed your top 250 in order on your profile, do you go and change every single number when you find a new favourite?

Like Imagine a show went into your 47th place tomorrow, do you change every number from 48-250 to match it, or have you set up some sort of algorithm or something along those lines that somehow that does it for you?

Yeah I pretty much agree with everything you said here. I just find the fact that they actually showed the dialogue and made it work impressive. Even monster left it to the imagination. Which isn't bad, It's just that Id:invaded is the only case of them actually pulling off showing something like this. At least it's the only one that I know of.

If It says unavailable it's probably a region thing since the video is posted on my end, in which case the raw link would probably not help, but I'll post it just in case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq2G9Lt4Ag4

If the link doesn't work, It's the scene from episode 3, 18:00-22:10

Question, how do you feel about this scene in Id:invaded in comparison to the wine scene in monster:



Before seeing Id:invaded I was convinced you couldn't be able to show something like this convincingly, so it's not like I think monster is lesser for it. But I was always impressed by how they actually showed the entire dialogue here in a way that felt like it actually pulled it off well.

For sure the first 39 eps are subbed, then I had a quick look on a streaming site at one of the episodes towards the end and it was subbed too.

Sub. I'm liking it more than I expected, I'd define it as a "slice of life iyashikei in which things are happening".

The pacing seemed fine but I haven't read the manga so I can't compare. In terms of animation it is better than s2, but don't expect top tier animation (animating thousands of soldiers isn't easy).

Kingdom s1 was dragged down by the animation, storywise I liked it (especially the last arc) more than s2, s4 and s5. s3 is the best season, but I feel like it's going to be an exception and not the rule.