Rate the Last Anime You Watched Out of 10

Aggretsuko Season 4

Definitely my favourite season so far. The karaoke gimmick has almost completely faded away and the episodes gave more focus to characters other than Retsuko (mostly Ton and Haida).

The main storyline of corporate fraud is very different to the Jpop idol stuff of the last season and it's a nice change of pace. There are some very amusing scenes (and the Retsuko/Haida awkward romance is still hanging around), but I think it's probably the most serious season yet.

It was nice to see some secondary characters from previous seasons make appearances too.

It's absolutely not worth watching if you haven't seen/didn't like the earlier seasons, but I did - 9/10
 
Monogatari Second Season

If you've seen any of the previous Monogatari stuff, you'll know what to expect here (and if you haven't, this will make absolutely no sense to you).

It's a lot of talking, weird camera angles and lingering shots of pillars and street signs and stuff. Loads of words flash on the screen really quickly and the whole thing just made me feel a bit uneasy.

I enjoyed it very much - 8/10
 
Konosuba

I've not watched many isekais (off the top of my head, only SAO, Space Jam and Jumanji), so I don't really know how this matches up with others in the genre, but I really liked it. The others presumably haven't got Aqua (not the bald guy who sang about Barbie) in them, so they're probably not as good as Konosuba is.

It was easy to follow. It looks nice. The episodes were varied. The music is really cool. I like Aqua.

It's a fun series. Nothing too taxing or mindblowing, but there's still plenty going on so it never got boring. The main characters are all idiots, but they're all amusing in different ways.

I only paid £5 for it in the AL Christmas sale and it's easily one of the best fivers I've ever spent. 11 episodes (including the OVA) is a nice length for a series too - 8/10

(I just looked in my AL account and realised I still haven't watched stuff I got in their 2016 Christmas sale, so Konosuba really jumped the queue!)
 
Hanamonogatari

I don't know if this was the weakest part of Monogatari yet or if I'm just starting to get a bit tired of it all, but this was...eh.

It struggled to hold my interest. Even the OP and ED songs (which are almost always excellent in Monogatari) are boring.

The series isn't awful, but there's nothing especially positive worth mentioning. It looks as nice as usual, but story- and character-wise, there's nothing very exciting or amusing or intriguing or...anything here.

You'll probably have a better opinion of the show if you're a Kanbaru fan, but I don't really care about her or her arm and these five episodes did nothing to change my feelings - 6/10
 
@awadama fever - I think Hanamonogatari was probably the weakest arc out of them all including the arcs you've not seen yet.

Owari and co get back on form though after the really good 2nd season.

Surprised you haven't tried more isekai perhaps! It's one of my fav genres, but admittedly a lot of trash isekai gets made.

If interested in trying more, for good ones I enjoy: Overlord, Saga of Tanya the Evil, Shield Hero, That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime, RE:Zero, My Next Life as a Villainess.

Some that are worth trying if you want more: Grimgar puts a more realistic spin on the genre, and Mushoku Tensei looks amazing and has great animation, but a heavy "content warning" from me as some of what it shows may be a little distasteful. Cautious Hero was a lot of fun, and Bofuri was easy going (though not technically an isekai it also kind of feels like it is). You may also enjoy Ascendance of a Bookworm.
 
Kodocha (season 1)
This series about a hyperactive child actor and her conflicts both in class and at home was super-popular 20 years ago, but rarely gets mentioned these days. That's a shame because it holds up well. Admittedly Sana can take some getting used to, since her arrogance and perpetual sugar-rush state can be aggravating at times, but she becomes easy to warm to as the series progresses.

The comedy side of Kodocha is often hilarious, and gets more so as its sense of humour grows increasingly surreal over time. Its drama side also presents some compelling arcs that cover some unusually heavy themes for a story about primary-school-age children. Where it falters is in how it combines the two. There's a definite conflict of interests here, with the author trying to tell serious stories at times, but someone keeps throwing gags in at the worst moments to break the tension. I haven't read the manga, so I don't know if this was the author's editor or if this issue is exclusive to the anime, but it can be jarring at times. Like a Marvel movie cranked up to 11 there's this constant self-sabotage of dramatic moments, as if they're afraid to let the audience feel anything.

Consequently, this is a show to enjoy for its comedy and lively characters first, and its drama second. If it had managed to create some appropriate separation between the two it would have been an easy 9/10, but as it stands it's still a strong 8/10.
 
Lordhippos said:
@awadama fever - I think Hanamonogatari was probably the weakest arc out of them all including the arcs you've not seen yet.
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Ahhh, that's good to know! I've started on Tsukimonogatari and that's already more lively and interesting than Hana, so I think I'll just write Hana off as an anomaly 😅

Lordhippos said:
Surprised you haven't tried more isekai perhaps! It's one of my fav genres, but admittedly a lot of trash isekai gets made.

If interested in trying more, for good ones I enjoy: Overlord, Saga of Tanya the Evil, Shield Hero, That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime, RE:Zero, My Next Life as a Villainess.

Some that are worth trying if you want more: Grimgar puts a more realistic spin on the genre, and Mushoku Tensei looks amazing and has great animation, but a heavy "content warning" from me as some of what it shows may be a little distasteful. Cautious Hero was a lot of fun, and Bofuri was easy going (though not technically an isekai it also kind of feels like it is). You may also enjoy Ascendance of a Bookworm.
Click to expand...
I don't know why I haven't watched more isekai TBH - I got absolutely obsessed with SAO after I watched the first season (the second didn't do much for me though), so I'm not sure why I never really jumped onto anything else in the genre

Thanks for the recommendations! I've picked up a few of those in various sales over the past couple of years, so I think I'll probably start watching one of them tonight - Cautious Hero seems to have a similar kinda vibe to Konosuba, so I think I'll get on that one first 😄
 
SAO Season 2 is kind of a different feel to Season 1 for sure, but the movie (Ordinal Scale - assumes some knowledge of Season 2 but comes immediately after it) and Seasons 3 and 4 are again kind of different.

They definitely got a much higher budget for the movie and Seasons 3/4, so if you liked Season 1 you could possibly just do the movie and then check out 3 and 4 sometime.

Season 3 opening, you can see the change in art style is quite drastic.

 
Lordhippos said:
They definitely got a much higher budget for the movie and Seasons 3/4, so if you liked Season 1 you could possibly just do the movie and then check out 3 and 4 sometime.
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It's often mistaken for a higher budget but the reality is simply a change in compositing directors. Kentaro Waki took over from the season 1 and 2 duo Mutsumi Usuda and Takeshi Hirooka. He's worked on other projects like God Eater, Gundam Hathaway, Gundam Thunderbolt and the OP for Girls Frontline. Definitely one of the best compositing directors in the business.

Recommend checking his Twitter. He's posted a lot of before/after shots of his work. The difference is incredible.
https://twitter.com/x/status/1333031392096047104
 
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Boogiepop Phantom
Several years usually go by between each time I feel like watching this show. Despite my high opinion of it, Boogiepop Phantom is (by design) not a pleasant experience. When anime tackles the horror genre the result is usually pretty blunt, either leaning on tedious gore to get a reaction from the viewer or finding its attempts to build atmosphere being undone by adhering to standard TV anime aesthetics. This show dodges both those bullets, creating one of the few truly unsettling horror anime out there. It does this in two ways.

First, there's the audio-visual presentation. It's practically monochrome throughout, washed in a dirty sepia tone. The frame is encircled by a shadowy ring that creates a claustraphobic tunnel-vision effect. There's also some use made of focus effects that blur parts of the image at times, again increasing the oppressive, dream-like atmosphere. This is coupled with sound design that's full of queasy high-pitched sounds and grinding electronic rhythms that can frankly be quite nauseating at times. All of this combines to build an aesthetic unlike any other anime, with the only close approximation being Serial Experiments Lain. It's a night and day difference to the more conventional (and far less creepy) look of the recent Boogiepop & Others series.

The other bold decision is its narrative structure. There are a group of characters and an overarching plot that wouldn't be too unusual for a supernatural thriller, but those characters and plot elements are sidelined. Instead each episode is told from the perspective of different characters who would normally be bit parts in a story like this. Consequently, none of these characters have plot armour, and can meet a horrific end at any moment. Most episodes follow a downward arc for the perspective character as we watch them start at an often mundane beginning and eventually spiral into despair, madness, or death. The 'heroes' of the story are usually distracted elsewhere, and can't be counted on to save anyone, and even then some of their ideas of what saving someone means are ambiguous and unsettling.

Above all that, the power of this show's horror reaches for something deeper and more relatable than monsters or gore. It's the horror of normal people watching their lives fall apart.

8/10
 
Super Dimension Century Orguss
There's a strong feeling of early Gundam to the structure of this show. Most of it involves a group of misfits travelling through enemy territory in their ship, getting embroiled in local conflicts for an episode or two, and fending off attacks with their mechs. Where Gundam added variety with a new mech design almost every episode, Orguss instead shows us new species and cultures that have been mashed together in a cross-dimensional apocalypse.

The broad strokes of the plot in Orguss are great, presenting some tough moral dilemmas for the characters to overcome. The scene-by-scene execution of those ideas often fall short, however, mostly due to clunky dialogue and a habit of telegraphing upcoming twists. The characters are likewise an entertaining bunch, from the playboy pilot to the grumpy old combat robot, but many aren't given enough screen time to develop. It remains a good watch throughout its 35-episode run though, and only really falls down in the final minute with a confusing and frustrating ending.

7/10
 
The Heike Story
Anyone who has been watching anime for a while probably has a rough idea of Japan's Edo period. So many shows have been based around its beginning circa 1600, when the Tokugawa Shogunate was established, and its end in the 1860s when the Meiji Restoration reinstated the imperial line. The Heike Story takes place long before this, however, during the last years of the Heian period in the late 12th Century when two powerful clans vied for control of Japan. Far fewer anime tackle this era, making this a difficult show for a gaijin like me to assess. My only prior knowledge of the Heike clan comes from the film Kwaidan, which features a monk who recounts the end of The Tale of Heike. So I knew where this story was going, but not how it gets there.

I expect any Japanese middle-schooler would have some knowledge of these events and the major historical figures involved, and the show does seem to assume some knowledge here because it throws the viewer into the deep end. There's a lot of political machination and many, many names are thrown around. Since the people being discussed often aren't present, it's difficult to keep track of who is being referred to and how they all relate to each other. This is compounded by some very similar names for several characters, some who look similar, and a confusing situation where up to four different people are being referred to as emperor all at the same time.

If all this sounds a bit overwhelming, it is. Honestly there were a few places in the middle where I couldn't keep track of the flow of events. Despite that, I kept watching to the end, and intend to watch it again. That's because this isn't just a dry recounting of historical events; it's about the people who drove those events. The Heike Story brings together the creative dream team of director Naoko Yamada, writer Reiko Yoshida, and composer Kensuke Ushio. The result is a visually and musically striking series that humanises the historical figures it presents. It neither pardons them for the terrible acts they committed, nor vilifies them for the mistakes they made, and instead looks at them as flawed people, but ultimately still people.

Most of this is viewed through the eyes of Biwa, an orphan taken in by the Taira clan, who experiences their daily lives together as a family as much as the history-shaping events they were responsible for. Biwa also brings with her the story's one fantasy element, as she is able to glimpse visions of the future. She suffers the classic Cassandra Complex though, being able to foresee the future, but not change it. Through these visions, even a viewer with no knowledge of this period is left in no doubt early on that this isn't a heroic adventure, but rather a classical tragedy.

The Heike Story demands a lot of the uninitiated non-Japanese viewer, but is absolutely worth the effort.

9/10
 
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The Tatami Galaxy

Would my precious university days not have been the rose coloured kind I imagined they should have been, would I not have found the true love I tirelessly pursued to the complete exclusion of all academic work, if I only had just joined that other cooler looking society? Would I not have been saved from flailing and failing through the years, etching rejections onto my bedpost and slurping infamy down with every overpriced flat white until I became a quasi hikikimori, until my life was essentially ruined and all chance of happiness lost? These are real questions I have pondered on a nearly daily basis, and I suspect I'm not alone in this morbid grass is greener-itus. These are also questions the protagonist of TTG also asks himself, but unlike us, thanks to unwittingly being able to time travel, or at least traverse parallel realities, he can really put the theory to the test and discover if there's really a life which doesn't end in infamy but rather in happiness. Thus every episode we see our hero trying out every alternative combination of social clubs trying to find one reality which his Yokai visaged friend/enemy, Ozu, doesn't corrupt and burn to a crisp.

The structure of the show is simple but unusual, each episode is somewhat formulaic but somehow also keeps us guessing as to just what the heck is going on, and we see the constellation of campus misfits that orbit the main character slightly tweaked every time but their personalities and fundamental roles never changed as they get up to all manner of hijinks. It's a quirky show to say the least, and I found it very funny, every episode building the ridiculous absurdity to a new crescendo. And yet I never stopped caring about the main character's plight and only warmed more with every episode to the eccentrics around him.

The final episode almost reaches a final episode of Evangelion-esque level of introspection, but less obtusely and more humorously, as we come to appreciate the complex hearts of the the people around us, who make our lives what it is, even Ozu stops being a 2D yokai and finally is seen as a human. The show takes us all the way out to the edge of the universe, to the brink, in order set us down lightly and warmly and bring everything together effortlessly.

And in the end TTG answers our burning question, no there's no reality where we don't end up being infamous failures of some kind, but it's all part of the ride and we might still find happiness despite that or even because of it. Savour all those preciously wasted minutes. 10/10

Notes: I loved the kind of weird mix of animation style, and boy keeping up with the subtitles was a challenge.
 
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Police in a Pod
Equal parts workplace comedy and straight police procedural, this show has a ring of authenticity that some other police anime lack, thanks to the author having worked in law enforcement for a decade. The show's comedy and drama elements both work well, but it has an unfortunate habit of placing them too close together at times. Each episode typically adapts two or three standalone stories, bolted together with no particular theme, so it can be focused on lighthearted workplace drudgery one minute and the minutiae of examining a corpse the next.

I don't normally comment on a show's OP and ED, but it's worth mentioning that they are misleading, throwing fan service shots into what is otherwise a generally reserved series that would feel more at home alongside live-action cop shows than other workplace anime. It's only the jarring tonal ping-pong that drops this show from an 8.

7/10
 
Arte
Yet another show that has been misattributed as Slice of Life on MAL. At this point I'm convinced that label gets slapped on any anime that doesn't revolve around fight scenes. Be in no doubt though, while Arte's tale of a young noble girl who runs away from home to become an artist doesn't involve overt fisticuffs, the story has more in common with sports anime like Hajime no Ippo than it does with SoL shows like Yurucamp. The trademark SoL genre traits of minimal conflict and loose plot structure are nowhere to be found here.

Set in renaissance Florence, Arte's quest to become a professional artist is met with constant roadblocks due to the overwhelming sexism of the time. Armed with borderline genki girl tenacity, Arte bull rushes her way through each obstacle, often becoming literally bruised and bloodied in the process. This results in a classic battle anime fight-then-bond cycle where Arte's unwavering drive and spirit turns today's opponents into tomorrow's friends. The first episode even follows the classic sports anime trope of the grumpy master setting the cocky young whelp a seemingly impossible test because he thinks she's underestimated the hard work and guts required.

If the show does have one problem, it's in setting the bar too low for itself at times. By setting the story in a time and place even more sexist than modern Japan, we end up with a cast of characters who spend the first several episodes being baffled that a girl would attempt to do anything other than bat her eyelashes at potential suitors, which can get repetitive. While this does present strong conflicts for Arte to overcome, the story can come across as being a little too pleased with itself for having her accomplish... well, basically anything. It's not too much of a blemish on an otherwise engaging story, however, especially when this is one where the protagonist views even falling in love as just another obstacle getting in the way of her career.

8/10
 
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