Rate the last anime you watched out of 10

Girls wIth Guns said:
Gonna have to get jealous-er, hedgy! ;)
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You're so mean dude...... Just kidding! I quite enjoy admiring others' collections, and also helps decide if I want to get the CEs over the SEs, so carry on sharing.
Girls wIth Guns said:
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Speaking of the Fate Series, would it be advantageous at all to watch the original Dean Fate/Stay night series first, before starting in on Zero, or should I not bother?
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And that is a very nice collection! I was planning exactly that order when we get the final movie released in UK, by starting with the first stay night. For me it's certainly worth a watch, as long as you keep expectations of the animation low and hey the quality only goes up thereafter. It probably also has the kindest fate for the second most tragic character in the series, Ilya, and does a good job on focusing on Saber's story (stating the obvious here, given that it's based on her route from the VN).
 
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Season 2

I always have a bit of a soft spot for this anime, it's enjoyable and stupid, but it does have some flaws in it's coherence. I wanted to give this an 8 like I felt Season 1 deserved, but there were some issues for me in Season 2, which I will outline as a spoiler:

Youm falling for Myulan in such a short space of time? felt off to me. Rimuru forgiving Myulan just because he didn't want to upset Youm, who had admitted to betraying them? Shion dying but I knew she'd not actually die somehow. I think it may have had more impact if they actually killed her off. I wish the show embraced the darker aspects more, because we get loads of shows where the hero always wins already.

The end of the season was improving though, I really want to see where it goes next.

7.5/10
 
Heroic Legend of Arslan (Season 1) - 8/10 (Rewatch)

When I first watched this I watched it with my wife and we both got bored. I think on reflection, she got bored and I was desperate for something to happen to stop her boredom because on my 2nd watch (by myself) I really enjoyed it and finished it this time. I loved the tactical prowess of Narsus (my fave character) and the fighting ability of Daryun.

Have to say on the animation side this is by far and away the best I’ve seen of blending of 2D & 3D animation. The horses looked so good in 3D and I wasn’t sat there thinking how jarring it looked which was very nice… gives me hope for more of this type of anime in future.. I do realise this had Universals money behind it though.

I’ll be watching season 2 shortly, although I am aware we’re not getting anymore. It does seem this genre isn’t popular enough to keep getting more seasons of though which is a shame.
 
Agent Aika (OVA, 1997)

A nice looking and watchable enough caper series about a deep-sea salvager tangling with a pair of evil siblings over an energy source macguffin, Aika is one of those shows that constantly seems to be on the verge of doing something interesting or entertaining, but rarely quite manages it.

It’s certainly a very odd proposition; billed as a saucy comedy with vast amounts of fanservice, the series mostly takes itself so seriously that the much repeated sight of the characters’ underwear barely registered with me after the second episode. Setting that aside, what we appear to be left with is a kind of attempt to mash up Cutey Honey with Lupin, which really ought to work, but the writing is so loose it’s nigh on unbearable at times. It’s like a callback to the kind of ‘made it up in the morning, animated it in the afternoon’ school of OVA making you might have expected about ten years earlier, when the cash flowed much more freely. I hardly even realised how convoluted it all was until I tried to describe the plot to someone:

”She salvages stuff from a sunken Tokyo? That’s really cool”
”Oh, no, she barely does any salvaging. Uh, she flies a vintage warplane for some reason and goes looking for treasure though”
”Right, so it’s about her hunting for treasure”
”Actually she spends more time stuck on an evil submarine than anything else”
”In sexy peril?”
”Not really, no”
”...”

And this is kind of the pattern all the way through. The show is absolutely not short of ideas, but it’s disappointingly uninterested in doing anything much with them. It does pick up a little in the second half, with a bit more variety once Aika is finally off that blasted submarine, but the show has written out the main villains by this point, and their amorphous, interchangeable underlings just can’t project the same sense of malice on their own. This actually makes it feel like the show is the wrong way round, with the establishing episodes at the back, and the climax at the front.

I was invested enough to see the show through to the end, but I think there’s little reason to recommend Aika over livelier, bawdier fare of the same period, such as Shin Cutey Honey, Burn-Up or even Gunsmith Cats, at least unless it’s as a very cheap pickup.
 
Dan said:
When I first watched this I watched it with my wife and we both got bored. I think on reflection, she got bored and I was desperate for something to happen to stop her boredom because on my 2nd watch (by myself) I really enjoyed it and finished it this time. I loved the tactical prowess of Narsus (my fave character) and the fighting ability of Daryun.
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Heh this is why I've stopped trying to watch anime with my wife, it just kills your own appreciation for the work when you're constantly anxious about your partner getting bored.

The other day she was quite sweet and insisted on watching whatever I was, which happened to Black Lagoon. I was on the deep sea diving episode so I thought at least I won't have to bother explaining fan service around Revy's usual outfit whilst Revy was in a full wetsuit, but hilariously she asked why the camera kept focusing on her butt and boobs, that my desensitised self hadn't even picked up on heh. Suffice to say she got bored after three episodes meaning I could enjoy the rest thereafter heh.

Black lagoon was great by the way, great mix of ultra violence, humour (some bits genuinely had me cracking up) & introspection. I'd score it 8/10, would be higher were the animation better. Now to save up to import a copy of the SE collection given how expensive the currently unavailable Kaze UK versions are on CEX...
 
This might be controversial but I've just tried to watch High Score Girl and it might just be the worst anime I've attempted to watch yet. I can't even really comment on the story or anything because the CGI is so bad, that I can't bear to watch it.

I don't mind CGI in anime, Land of the Lustrous, Dorohedoro, Beastars etc all do it well, but this felt low effort to me.

I grew up playing games like SF so it's a bit of a shame that this isn't better, because the nostalgia would probably work on me.
 
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One Week Friends
I was intrigued by the premise of this show. A boy's attempts to befriend a girl are complicated by the fact that she loses her memories at the end of every week, so he's a stranger to her again every Monday. We're firmly in the realm of plot device amnesia rather than early onset dementia here though, since it's only memories of her friends that she loses. In once sense that lets the story focus on that one issue, but it also makes things less interesting in general by letting her function normally in every other aspect of her life. The other disappointment was that the story doesn't get nearly as much mileage out of the premise as I expected. I anticipated the MC having to deal with trying to make friends again under different sets of circumstances every week. Instead, though the characters keep telling us that she's still losing her memories over and over, it really doesn't feel that way after the first few episodes. A dramatic spanner does get thrown into the works during the last few episodes, but it all follows a more predictable trajectory than I hoped.

That said, I did enjoy the series once I accepted that it was aiming for fluffy light romance rather than any real drama. Most of the characters are likeable, the artwork is pleasant, the story does work, and there are some moments that are appropriately hard on the MC.

The story felt typically inconclusive for a one-cour manga adaptation, so I bought the last three volumes of the manga to see how it pans out. To my surprise, while the anime mostly just adapts up to the beginning of volume 5, is also weaves in most of the major plot developments from the rest of the manga, including parts that hadn't been published at that point. In fact, while the location and context are different, the last scene of the anime and manga are almost the same. There's just one key difference, and it's the one that makes the anime ending less satisfying: in the manga she gets all her memories back once she finds out why she lost them, but in the anime she doesn't.

It's a nice little show, but could have done a lot more with its premise.

7/10
 
Jormungand

This is taking both seasons into account, so Jormungand and Jormungand: Perfect Order, which is 24 episodes in total.

This show for me really excelled at two things, the characters, and the moral choices it presented. It felt a little like Lord of War, dealing arms is a dangerous game indeed.

The geo-political stuff got a little boring in the second half, I think it was more entertaining when it was more about people causing havoc and blowing stuff up!

First 12 episodes 8/10, second 12 episodes 7/10, average of 7.5/10.
 
The way of the Househusband - 7.5/10

I wasn't expecting the animation style, it was done more in a way that brings manga panels to life. But it doesn't try to be anything it isn't and you quickly get used to it. Plus it's genuinely funny, especially the lone cat stories at the end.

It's just been added to Netflix, worth a little watch if you have a short amount of time to kill
 
Dr Stone

I dropped this two episodes in, the characters were annoying the hell out of me! Especially Taiju who literally referred to himself as simple, and whose VA seemed to have the direction to be as obnoxious and stupid as possible. Senkuu seemed pretty arrogant to me as well, 10 billion percent.

It's a deal breaker if I don't think any of the characters have any redeeming personality at all.

I loved the premise/idea of the show, it felt like a wasted opportunity to me, but I'd far rather see a more serious version of it. I was expecting something a little more Robinson Crusoe-esque, possibly a bit of Castaway thrown in, and then morphing to a survival story in an unknown landscape.

4/10
 
The main group of likeable Dr Stone cast members first appear in episode 7 I believe and Taiju is quickly relegated to a supporting character. It gets a lot better after that.

Sound like it might not be your thing anyway though.
 
Azar said:
The main group of likeable Dr Stone cast members first appear in episode 7 I believe and Taiju is quickly relegated to a supporting character. It gets a lot better after that.

Sound like it might not be your thing anyway though.
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I think so, I'd really love to see the idea explorer in a seinen or something instead, because the concept is very interesting, to me anyway. Robinson Crusoe meets Lost or similar!
 
Dr Stone would definitely not be a series for me then, but I could tell even without watching any of it... So, Lost, huh?. Lol, I was in the Battlestar Galactica fan camp back when both of those TV shows were airing at the same time. I had zero interest in Lost, whereas Battlestar Galactica still remains to this day as my favorite television series of all time!
 
Lordhippos said:
seinen
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Dr. Stone appeared in Shounen Jump so it probably wasn't going to be what you wanted from the start. I do agree that the start was a bit poor, but it gets better. Senku with his scientific knowledge is literally a God in the stone age they find themselves (typical OP Shounen protag, but with his brain rather than brawn, which is a fun twist) and whilst he can be a bit annoying when one of his projects comes together it's great.
 
D1tchd1gger said:
Dr. Stone appeared in Shounen Jump so it probably wasn't going to be what you wanted from the start. I do agree that the start was a bit poor, but it gets better. Senku with his scientific knowledge is literally a God in the stone age they find themselves (typical OP Shounen protag, but with his brain rather than brawn, which is a fun twist) and whilst he can be a bit annoying when one of his projects comes together it's great.
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I don't usually mind some of the better shonens so was worth a try I think, didn't really go in with any particular pre-conceptions but I think me of 20 years ago probably would have loved it.
 
The Way of the Househusband

I recently suffered through Back Street Girls ~GOKUDOLS~ (I should have given up, but I naively thought things would improve, but really, when does anything ever improve in this miserable existence?) and for the first five minutes or so, it really seemed like J.C. Staff were back to rub salt, pepper, vinegar and other assorted condiments into the still-fresh wound.

Thankfully, it's nowhere near as bad as it first seems.

The premise of Househusband is interesting and ripe for humour - a tough yakuza man becomes a stay-at-home husband and goes out shopping for cabbages and anime blu-rays and stuff. It's part of why the Yakuza games are so appealing - the juxtaposition (what a word) of a macho man (not Randy Savage) doing stuff he "shouldn't" do (like working for a chat line, disco dancing and playing Scalextric with kids) is funny and kinda cute TBH.

But then again, the premise for Gokudols (tough yakuza men are forced to become idol singers!) seemed interesting and ripe for humour and it was the absolute pits. Gokudols was so bad. Don't watch it.

Happily, Househusband is a lot better than Gokudols (but to be fair, very few things in this world are as abysmal as Gokudols).

It's got the same "animation" as Gokudols, which is a similar level to a PSP visual novel from around 2006. It's a load of static pictures and sometimes people's mouths move when they talk, but sometimes it's not even that fancy. It doesn't look as repulsive as Gokudols, but again...that's not much of an achievement.

The OP and ED are pretty awful too (visually and aurally) - I think they're meant to be funny, but they're just bad. The OP drags on for a minute and a half (the episodes are only 16-18 minutes overall) and the ED is akin to hyenas in a state of intense distress.

Bad presentation aside, Househusband is an amusing show - the concept is simple, but it works well and it has a lot of funny moments. The lead character is likeable and he gets into plenty of awkward situations. The stories aren't hilarious, but they should get a few chuckles (or at least smiles) - there's a lot of deadpan humour and down-to-earth scenarios which are pretty relatable in a way (except for the organised crime references, but I won't judge you if you relate to them.

There are a couple of side stories about a cat, which just fell flat for me, but the main parts are good enough to make up for it.

It's a bit of a shame. The concept is amusing and there are some actual funny parts. The problem is, it comes in such an ugly and cheap package. Househusband is amusing, but it's not enjoyable to watch - reading the manga would probably be a better experience.

With better animation, this would be a really decent show. The writing is good and the lead character is fantastic - everything is just dragged down by the pitiful visuals.

+Entertaining and endearing lead character
+Believable comedy situations, which are generally funny

-"Animation" is almost nonexistent and art is realllllly ugly in parts
-For such a short series (in episode count and length), the long OP/ED and cat sections take up too much time

6/10
 
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