Rate the last anime you watched out of 10

Ancient Magus Bride

Really enjoyed this one. It has this Ghibli style whimsy to it mixing the mundane with the fantastical, but then also has a sombre layer permeating throughout. The show looks into grief, loss, isolation but also how friendship and family can help overcome hardship and how those bonds makes us human. The characters are interesting, with few being wholly good or evil.

The animation is great with a lot of movement and vibrancy and uses darkness particularly well.

I really enjoyed the English dub too. Chise starts off so broken and hopeless and her voice similarly starts very flat and the progression to expressiveness is well handled.

9/10
 
Hanasaku Iroha

Really charming series this. Teen goes from living the Tokyo life to working in her grandmothers country inn. The early episodes have her go through a bit of a marvel character arc (self absorbed to team player) and the show does a great job of balancing comedy with the more dramatic beats.

The animation is solid but this show is really about the character interactions of those working at the inn. How they get along and how they dont.
8/10
 
Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters

So so so so BORING.

It was never actively bad. The animation is OK, the voice work is fine and the story is never stupid or senseless. It's just all so tedious, charmless and dull.

Godzilla is completely forgotten about for big chunks of the movie, while people in space suits spout endless technobabble and drone on in detail about plants.

The last 10 minutes were pretty cool though. Shame about the rest of it - 3/10
 
Darling in the FranXX

It's been a long time since I've watched a show I was so up and down on, but overall, the show was pretty much what I'd expected. There are definitely parts of it I like (the action is good, it has a flair for melodrama), and there were even moments in the parts I didn't like that I thought still worked, but I found the second half a real chore to get through and the ending left me rather indifferent.

Might post some more thoughts in the streaming thread, but mainly what I'm left wondering is what the show would have looked like if they'd been told to make it one cour, instead of two.
 
Professor Irony said:
I'm left wondering is what the show would have looked like if they'd been told to make it one cour, instead of two.
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Oh god, no. I can't imagine that. 😬
One of the many things I like about FRANXX is that the longer run gives more room for everything to breathe, and avoids it being your typical single-cour anime series with too many different ideas crushed into too little time and not managing to do a decent job of resolving them all come the end of it. And then making a second season that repeats all those same mistakes.

I'd look forward to hearing more of your thoughts on the series, though. 🙂
 
SSSS Gridman

While it never blew me away, I think Gridman, particularly in its second half, gradually got more and more impressive, in its own quiet way. The ending lost me a little bit (I get the feeling it was leaning more on knowledge of the original Gridman series than what came before it), but there were some clever ideas going on in the show, that it managed to get to the table in a way that felt fresh and interesting.

And was that a cheeky poster for Promare on the wall at the very end?
 
Professor Irony said:
The ending lost me a little bit (I get the feeling it was leaning more on knowledge of the original Gridman series than what came before it
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This actually is the original Gridman series. The only only other incarnation of it is a 10-minute pilot version that was part of Khara's online Japan Animator Expo project. Gridman certainly seems to owe its debt to Ultraman and its long lineage, though.

I coped with the ending okay when I watched SSSS. Gridman, I thought, but the setting is definitely quite convoluted in places. It requires an extra bit of suspension of disbelief with some elements.

Professor Irony said:
And was that a cheeky poster for Promare on the wall at the very end?
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Is there? I didn't even notice that (though I wouldn't actually have heard of it at the time). That's clever. 😀
Reminds me of something similar that Satoshi Kon did in Paprika.
 
Well, when I say original, I mean the live-action one from the 90s. The anime even plays its op theme towards the end. Didn't know they'd done a short for the Animator Expo though.


Also screencapped that poster.
promare.jpg

Interestingly, I couldn't see it at all on my computer monitor when I went to take the screengrab - the brightness on my ipad must be a lot higher.
 
I watched all the available episodes (6/12 so far) of Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya (the Netflix series) recently - and I absolutely loved it.

After seeing a few CGI anime stinkers on Netflix recently, this was a very welcome change. It looked really nice - very similar to the cutscenes of Dragon Quest XI, which I also love.

I've seen a lot of overwhelming negativity about the series, but I really enjoyed it. Then again, I've never been a big Saint Seiya fan (outside of playing a few of the video games and reading the first few volumes of the manga), so SS doesn't really have a place in my heart.

The story was interesting and exciting, there were a lot of cool characters, it looked great and both the OP/EP (by The Struts) were awesome. It's really good shonen stuff.

I'm really looking forward to the second half of the series. If it's even a quarter as good as the first six episodes, I'll be happy - 9/10
 
Violet Evergarden - A show i needed to revisit in my own time and without any hype. Madmans BD allowed me to (Please fix the subs AL missing titles and just copied from Netflix lazy bad typesetting too). I now get the point of the show its the show the transition from war and a cease fire to peace, its not instant as life changes for people does she the right to be happy, to write letters for me and she learns to accept peace and live in a peaceful world. Thank god the major is dead as he isn't in the books because that event allows her to accept peace and move on to her new phase of life. Episode 10 is a masterpiece but episode 11 was the surprise because it was forgotten its got as a powerful message about how hard peace is and even the war stopped for Violet it hasn't for everyone and you cant save everybody and the guilt of just saving their memories and love on paper brings. It is a very good show, I don't think its as especially beautiful as every acted because its what you expect with KyoAni its not surprising but then again last year I cant see any shows bar say Tsurune that came close. Its a powerful story of that time people forget the transition of war to peace and how not everyone accepts it. 9/10
 
Haikyu! Season 1-3

So I had no interest in watching this and only bought it because it was the most cost effective anime I could find on Amazon Spain. OMG it blew me away. It is so so good. The characters are interesting and varied. The action is brilliantly animated and engaging. The show is fun, funny, tense and exciting all at once!

Matches then to span multiple episodes (in fact season 3 is one 10 episode match! You get so invested in what's happening and the nature of volleyball means the lead is always changing! Honestly right up to the very end of season 3 I had no idea who was going to win. That's the great thing about this show. They dont always win. But you see the team improve and their desire to not let down the teams mates. Its insanely emotional. There were times I couldn't sit and had to pace around my room while watching!

10/10
 
Aaron said:
I finished Oreimo. It's a very sweet series, with a likeable cast of characters. The story is nice - there's plenty going on and it never gets boring. I prefer watching shows dubbed where possible, but I still loved this even though it was sub-only.

I'll watch something else next, but I've got season 2 to look forward to!

9/10
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Tad late to this one but, if you haven't watched S2 yet, don't. What is sweet and endearing in a bitchsis X doormat kinda way becomes dirty in a very ANIME kinda way. Kuroneko's sequel OVA thingy aside, **** OreImo. It drew me in with its OP and waifus, then had me despairing over a fight to wash lead dullard's boxers with lots of crying and screaming.

...just fyi. Like in the case of life itself, I fear there is little for you to look forward to unless you are an incest loving masochist.
 
Neil.T said:
All of the things you described there are all the very same things I like so much about the show. ✌

How'd you get on watching it in Spanish?
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Surprisingly well actually. To begin with I was having to pause a bit and check translations for the volleyball specific language but once I understood the terminolgy I was fine and didnt even need subtitles!

The dub seemed well handled and everyone had a pretty distinctive voice. The one big criticism was that the Spanish voice actors didnt commit to the yells of passion in the same way Americans do so some if the big moments fell a little flat for me for a few characters.

Luckily Hinata and Kageyama were both very well done. Hinatas voice actor made him so earnest you immediately found him endearing and Kageyama got his icy sterness down pat.
 
AironicallyHuman said:
Tad late to this one but, if you haven't watched S2 yet, don't. What is sweet and endearing in a bitchsis X doormat kinda way becomes dirty in a very ANIME kinda way. Kuroneko's sequel OVA thingy aside, **** OreImo. It drew me in with its OP and waifus, then had me despairing over a fight to wash lead dullard's boxers with lots of crying and screaming.

...just fyi. Like in the case of life itself, I fear there is little for you to look forward to unless you are an incest loving masochist.
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This is so true it hurts.
 
WMD said:
Hinatas voice actor made him so earnest you immediately found him endearing
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You've just got to root for him, haven't you? 😀

In fact, when even the (initially) bored and indifferent Kei Tsukishima becomes a character who earns your support as a viewer, well... that's just quality writing, isn't it?

Such a shame we only got season 1 on home release here.
 
Neil.T said:
You've just got to root for him, haven't you? 😀
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Absolutely! And it's really nice to have an anime with so many male characters where by and large they are all earnest and hard working and enjoy what they do. It's like the boy version of something like K-on (which I obviously also love!) Therea not a whiny one in the bunch, in fact Kageyamas early story arc is to direct him away from being the whiny one into one of the most focused in the whole team.

Neil.T said:
In fact, when even the (initially) bored and indifferent Kei Tsukishima becomes a character who earns your support as a viewer, well... that's just quality writing, isn't it?
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His story arc is so well done. The way hes introduced almost as a villain and rival to the main two and slowly becomes integrated is so well done. And his background, when we learn it, adds so much to him. The writing really is great.

Neil.T said:
Such a shame we only got season 1 on home release here
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Didnt realise it was only season 1 here. That is a shame. Unfortunately Manga/Animatsu have a habit of badly handling releases. The shoddy 2nd seasons for index and railgun come to mind! At least they exist I guess.
 
It sold terribly so I don’t blame them for stopping them especially as the next release was a re release of S1 with Sentai’s new dub. That wouldn’t have been a easy sell anyway.
 
thedoctor2016 said:
It sold terribly so I don’t blame them for stopping them especially as the next release was a re release of S1 with Sentai’s new dub. That wouldn’t have been a easy sell anyway.
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I'm not especially surprised it sold badly really. Boys volleyball sports anime sounds painfully niche as a concept.
 
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