Rate the Last Anime You Watched Out of 10

Senpai is an Otokonoko
In a season filled with romance anime, this was easily the best. In lesser hands, Makoto's titular cross-dressing could have been treated as a cheap gimmick, but fortunately this gentle romantic drama respects its characters and has a strong story to tell. Makoto dresses as a girl at school, but hides it from his mother, fearing how she will react. He hasn't reconciled how he perceives himself or how he wants to live his life, and this causes tension with those around him. Saki develops an obsessive crush on Makoto, which brings her into conflict with his fiercely protective best friend Ryuiji. The early setup is something that could have been spun out for surface-level romcom antics ad infinitum, but instead serves as a diving board for a deeper exploration of these three characters, their individual struggles to understand and accept themselves, the lengths they go to in attempts to avoid hurting each other, and the pressures they face from their families and friends.

With the exception of one late standalone episode that throws in another character, the show avoids the frequent single-cour anime pitfall of going off on tangents, instead remaining focused on its central trio. It covers a surprising amount of ground in developing these characters. While it doesn't resolve every plot thread in its 12 episodes, it picks its battles and has a mostly satisfying, self-contained arc. Fortunately a sequel movie has already been announced, which will presumably tie up the remaining elements that the TV series leaves hanging.

8/10
 
Dai said:
Senpai is an Otokonoko
In a season filled with romance anime, this was easily the best. In lesser hands, Makoto's titular cross-dressing could have been treated as a cheap gimmick, but fortunately this gentle romantic drama respects its characters and has a strong story to tell. Makoto dresses as a girl at school, but hides it from his mother, fearing how she will react. He hasn't reconciled how he perceives himself or how he wants to live his life, and this causes tension with those around him. Saki develops an obsessive crush on Makoto, which brings her into conflict with his fiercely protective best friend Ryuiji. The early setup is something that could have been spun out for surface-level romcom antics ad infinitum, but instead serves as a diving board for a deeper exploration of these three characters, their individual struggles to understand and accept themselves, the lengths they go to in attempts to avoid hurting each other, and the pressures they face from their families and friends.

With the exception of one late standalone episode that throws in another character, the show avoids the frequent single-cour anime pitfall of going off on tangents, instead remaining focused on its central trio. It covers a surprising amount of ground in developing these characters. While it doesn't resolve every plot thread in its 12 episodes, it picks its battles and has a mostly satisfying, self-contained arc. Fortunately a sequel movie has already been announced, which will presumably tie up the remaining elements that the TV series leaves hanging.

8/10
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You've convinced me to check this one out, great review, thanks! :)
 
Makeine: Too Many Losing Heriones
This had a strong start, thanks to an interesting premise, strong animation, and exceptionally good direction and editing. The early episodes were also solid 8/10 material with a good combination of comedy and romantic drama. The problem is when it started giving multi-episode story arcs to each girl, which is when it becomes apparent that each is more tedious than the last. When it reached an entire episode about a stuttering girl's attempts to read out a few sentences in front of a dozen people, I found myself wondering, "Why is this the story?" As the series goes on, it leans ever more heavily on its strong production values to carry it, with some scenes carrying a strong visual impact, only to end with no indication of why that scene even needed to exist.

The other main problem with the show is how often it pushes the trope of all the girls insulting and belittling the cardboard male protagonist who does nothing but help them. Frankly I finished this series understanding why these girls were kicked to the curb. With the possible exception of Lemon, their personalities are lousy. That's successfully played for laughs in Anna's case, but equally often just leaves a poor impression of them as people.

6/10

2.5D Seduction (dropped after 10 episodes)
If you're hoping for a cosplay show that lives up to My Dress Up Darling, you will be disappointed. In many ways they are opposites, with MDUD invariably taking the more interesting fork in every road. 2.5D Seduction spends no time on the process of making a costume or improving the related skills, since Ririsa pops up in episode 1 having already made the perfect costume that will capture the heart of anyone who sees it. That's lucky for her because she has no interest in cosplaying as any other characters, so she trots out this costume again and again, while wowing people with it again and again. We're occassionally told that she's wearing different costumes for the same character, but they're so close to identical that I couldn't spot any differences. These costumes just pop up fully completed anyway, so it doesn't tell us anything new about Ririsa or her skills. Another major aspect of the show is cardboard protagonist Masamune photographing her, which he does with an expensive camera that Ririsa just happens to already own, so again there's no development arc and no learning. Stuff just happens.

So what does the show spend time on? Mostly it's cosplayers hanging around at cosplay events, silently monologuing to themselves about how they feel about cosplay (including flashbacks to their past cosplay-related traumas, of course). When the show reached a point where an entire episode was just two side characters standing next to each other in a crowd of photographers, silently monologuing to themselves about their cosplay backstories, my eyes glazed over and I dropped the show.

The only reason I'm not rating this show lower is because the early episodes do get some mileage out of the faltering romance aspect of Ririsa cosplaying Masamune's favourite waifu, but that runs out of steam after a while.

5/10
 
500,000,000 Years Button
This isn't a horror series, but it hit me with a greater sense of existential dread than anything I've seen before, anime or otherwise. It all comes down to the execution of the main premise. Three siblings are offered the chance to earn a million yen simply by pressing a button. The catch? The instant someone pushes it, that person will be transported to an empty, infinite space where they will be trapped for 500-million years, unable to sleep or die. Once the time is up, their memory of those years will be erased and they're returned to the instant they pressed the button, so subjectively it will be as if they never left. The series explores how each of the siblings perceives that deal and its implications, what happens when they push the button, and some variations on the deal that raise other interesting philosophical questions.

If that sounds rather dry, it isn't, since it's mixed in with some goofy comedy sketches. Most episodes hit you with deep questions in the first half and then decompress with the VAs playing weird improv comedy games in the latter half. The first half of each episode it usually the highlight, while the latter half ranges from hilarious to boring from one episode to the next.

It's also worth noting that this is the cheapest, jankiest-looking CG anime ever made. Ex-Arm looking like Avatar by comparison. A lot of it is clearly shot in real-time using VTuber software. It seems to be rendering on a potato, so there is frequent slowdown and models clipping through objects. It's literally the kind of thing that would be more at home on Youtube than Prime Video, and is obviously a one-person show aside from the VAs. The cheapness also doesn't really matter, since it's able to convey the situations clearly, and the surreal style of much of it means the jank just enhances the show's creepiness.

Overall, it's an experience completely unlike any other show.

7/10
 
Uzumaki
To paraphrase Jurassic Park, the people making this show were so concerned with if they could adapt the entire Uzumaki manga in four episodes, they didn't stop to think if they should. A typical 25-minute TV episode will follow a single plotline, two at most. The 42-minute US drama format traditionally opts for two plotlines, the A/B story format as it's known. Uzumaki's 25-minute episodes have A, B, C, D, and E plotlines, each originally a separate chapter in the manga, and now spliced together with seemingly no thought given to pacing or structure.

It's a baffling choice. Horror isn't just about the money shots. They only work when time is taken to establish the characters and scenario, make us care about the stakes, crank up the tension, and then finally drop the hammer. With only a few minutes dedicated to each story, it frequently rushes through the setup, leaves out important information, and sometimes cuts the payoff short too.

I can only assume the priority was to cram in every single memorable image from the manga, but with so little runtime available it ends up feeling like a handful of poorly-edited recap episodes chopped down from a 12-episode series. The structural problems at least settle down in the final episode, but only because the last few chapters of the manga are one ongoing story, which made that easier to achieve.

It's heartbreaking to see Junji Ito's masterpiece reduced to this, and even more so considering the obvious passion that was poured into the anime version. Ultimately it falls at the same hurdle as the second TV adaptation of Berserk, focusing so much effort on replicating the iconic look of the manga that the whole project collapses under its own weight. Despite all that, the strength of the underlying source material does bleed through at times, and the anime does at least achieve what seems to have been its core objective: bringing motion to some of the eeriest images ever to curse the printed page.

6/10
 
Finished re-watching Shiki the other week. 9/10

Phenomenal show and has perhaps the best ever anime soundtrack like it's academy award winning good!


I just love how the shows does a 180 on who you root for. In the end you can't help feel sorry for the Shiki, especially when Sunoko does her speech about how she isn't inherently evil she just did to survive, When the villagers killed Monk's mom who wasn't a shiki that was the moment it solidified who to root for in the end, Even when the doctor was experimenting on his wife it was then you begin to think is what he is doing right? I can absolutely see why at that moment the monk decided his path.
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Gurren Lagann

If Gurren Lagann was a real person, it'd probably be Donald Trump. That's a pretty damning thing to say, I know, but I really think it sums up a lot of what I dislike about TTGL. Like the American president, TTGL is bold, brash and colourful, it's ambitious too. But it's also ugly, mean spirited, joyless, and severely lacking in depth and humanity, and despite all it's proclamations there's a kind of nihilism to it.

TTGL says that to exist is to endlessly be in combat, to never stop fighting, and macho fighting spirit and virility is the only thing worth a damn. And there isn't much in the show apart from ever escalating battles and willy (drilly?) waving. There are no characters in this show, there are just totems. No one has any real personality or backstory, everyone is just a name defined by one or if they're lucky two traits. Simon is strong and good at drilling. Kamiya is the embodiment of idealised masculinity. Yoko has big breasts and a big gun (and is an object of lust). Leeron is clever and gay. That's all there really is to them, and these are the more well developed characters! So of course there are no real relationships between any of them, characters just perform their appointed functions, they don't talk to one another they make empty statements.

But even still I was surprised by the general coldness and meanness of them, the lack of compassion they all display. One of the motifs of the show seems to be that you shouldn't rely on anyone to help you out when you're down, and nor should you try to help someone when they're down either. Tough love is only the kind of love the show endorses. The kind of love where if someone is on the precipice of absolute despair, you simply leave them to get on with it without even trying to help, or at absolute best you punch them in their face as hard as you can. When Simon punches Rossiu after he tries to kill himself and Simon says something like "you never need to beat yourself up, because someone else will always do that for you". I mean wtf, this is peak macho shonen nonsense, it should be parody, but it's genuine. Apparently Nia was even only trying to destroy the world to teach humanity to toughen up, according to Simon anyway. No doubt the authoritarian government they establish after defeating the Spiral King guy doesn't have a welfare state! Indeed the residents of Kamiya City are only portrayed as disloyal ingrates who moan about petty things (like their houses being destroyed!). Again, I hate to say it, but it's very Donald Trump

There is just no space for any decent character interaction in the show's relentless progression of its plot through a never ending procession of phallis filled battles. But because there's no restraint, no down time, and no character depth giving the fighting gravitas, I could feel my eyes and brain cloud over during the action. The action isn't creative and fun and clever in the way Jojo is for example. Every battle pretty much boilt down to Simon pulling out an even bigger drill.

TTGL also has the dubious honour of joining Weathering With You on the list of anime I could believe were funded as propaganda by the fossil fuel industry. But while WWY was more of an apathetic shoulder shrug at climate change, TTGL is more aggressive, almost more expansionist. Obviously there's the fact it chooses the drill as its symbol of human hope and strength. But the entire set up of the story seems to be a emphatic rebuke to the idea of living within our means as a species. The big baddies are the anti-spiral, who were once human-like creatures who, in managing to overcome their rapacious greed and exercise self control, are portrayed as faceless formless blobs having lost their essential humanity. Unfortunately, looking at the real world around us, it's impossible not to think that maybe the anti-spiral were on to something in recognising and trying to curtail the inexorably self destructive impulses of human kind. TTGL disagrees and says we can have everything we want, we can get it by might, and in fact it's our insatiable appetite for ever more things that makes us truly great and human. Why worry about a tomorrow that may never come when we can do whatever we want today, and drill holes in space time in pursuit of it.

TTGL successfully identifies why we're so screwed as a species, and also so many of the crumbier traits of humanity along the way. And it makes a virtue out of all of them. Hopeful stories of attempting to make the impossible possible usual resonate with me, I don't think we should limit our efforts and horizons to the realm of only what we're told is possible. But something really rung hollow about Gurren Lagann for me, it was really missing something, as if all of that drilling left a hole somewhere in the show's heart.
 
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Vashdaman said:
Gurren Lagann

If Gurren Lagann was a real person, it'd probably be Donald Trump. That's a pretty damning thing to say, I know, but I really think it sums up a lot of what I dislike about TTGL. Like the American president, TTGL is bold, brash and colourful, it's ambitious too. But it's also ugly, mean spirited, joyless, and severely lacking in depth and humanity, and despite all it's proclamations there's a kind of nihilism to it.

TTGL says that to exist is to endlessly be in combat, to never stop fighting, and macho fighting spirit and virility is the only thing worth a damn. And there isn't much in the show apart from ever escalating battles and willy (drilly?) waving. There are no characters in this show, there are just totems. No one has any real personality or backstory, everyone is just a name defined by one or if they're lucky two traits. Simon is strong and good at drilling. Kamiya is the embodiment of idealised masculinity. Yoko has big breasts and a big gun (and is an object of lust). Leeron is clever and gay. That's all there really is to them, and these are the more well developed characters! So of course there are no real relationships between any of them, characters just perform their appointed functions, they don't talk to one another they make empty statements.

But even still I was surprised by the general coldness and meanness of them, the lack of compassion they all display. One of the motifs of the show seems to be that you shouldn't rely on anyone to help you out when you're down, and nor should you try to help someone when they're down either. Tough love is only the kind of love the show endorses. The kind of love where if someone is on the precipice of absolute despair, you simply leave them to get on with it without even trying to help, or at absolute best you punch them in their face as hard as you can. When Simon punches Rossiu after he tries to kill himself and Simon says something like "you never need to beat yourself up, because someone else will always do that for you". I mean wtf, this is peak macho shonen nonsense, it should be parody, but it's genuine. Apparently Nia was even only trying to destroy the world to teach humanity to toughen up, according to Simon anyway. No doubt the authoritarian government they establish after defeating the Spiral King guy doesn't have a welfare state! Indeed the residents of Kamiya City are only portrayed as disloyal ingrates who moan about petty things (like their houses being destroyed!). Again, I hate to say it, but it's very Donald Trump

There is just no space for any decent character interaction in the show's relentless progression of its plot through a never ending procession of phallis filled battles. But because there's no restraint, no down time, and no character depth giving the fighting gravitas, I could feel my eyes and brain cloud over during the action. The action isn't creative and fun and clever in the way Jojo is for example. Every battle pretty much boilt down to Simon pulling out an even bigger drill.

TTGL also has the dubious honour of joining Weathering With You on the list of anime I could believe were funded as propaganda by the fossil fuel industry. But while WWY was more of an apathetic shoulder shrug at climate change, TTGL is more aggressive, almost more expansionist. Obviously there's the fact it chooses the drill as its symbol of human hope and strength. But the entire set up of the story seems to be a emphatic rebuke to the idea of living within our means as a species. The big baddies are the anti-spiral, who were once human-like creatures who, in managing to overcome their rapacious greed and exercise self control, are portrayed as faceless formless blobs having lost their essential humanity. Unfortunately, looking at the real world around us, it's impossible not to think that maybe the anti-spiral were on to something in recognising and trying to curtail the inexorably self destructive impulses of human kind. TTGL disagrees and says we can have everything we want, we can get it by might, and in fact it's our insatiable appetite for ever more things that makes us truly great and human. Why worry about a tomorrow that may never come when we can do whatever we want today, and drill holes in space time in pursuit of it.

TTGL successfully identifies why we're so screwed as a species, and also so many of the crumbier traits of humanity along the way. And it makes a virtue out of all of them. Hopeful stories of attempting to make the impossible possible usual resonate with me, I don't think we should limit our efforts and horizons to the realm of only what we're told is possible. But something really rung hollow about Gurren Lagann for me, it was really missing something, as if all of that drilling left a hole somewhere in the show's heart.
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I'll defend WWY, which I think was perhaps more making a point about the importance of not sacrificing one person to save others and seemed a bit more... balanced? But I didn't massively care for Gurren Lagann, for pretty much the reasons you stated. I liked Kill la Kill more shrug Like tbh I am kind of a maximalist and buy way too much stuff (I'm neither proud nor ashamed of that, it is what it is, though I am trying to find ways of addressing some of those psychological wounds/trauma/mental health issues that aren't Temu), but I still found GL distasteful (and sexist) 😅
 
Yeah absolutely, we're all living in and shaped by capitalism, to some extent, and I don't think there's many out there who don't struggle with some sort of compulsion to consume a bit too much. Maybe it is also something in human nature too, as Gurren Lagann suggests. It doesn't mean you can't still be critical of those things. It's good to know you felt similarly about Gurren Lagann! I agree about the sexism too! I'll have to watch Kill la Kill sometime!
 
Gurren Lagann is a show whose appeal has always been a bit lost on me too, but it probably doesn’t help that I came into the show around the middle, at what is probably the least favourite part of it. My overriding memory is that there was just something annoyingly smug and self-congratulatory about it, and that I was not having nearly as much fun watching it as the people who were making it. The music was nice though.

Kill La Kill, I also enjoyed more - I think its characters were just more likeable - although I suspect some of the same criticisms also apply. Ryuko’s fighting style never seemed to evolve much during the course of the story, for example. It felt like just about every fight you’d care to mention comes down to her swinging repeatedly until the baddie goes down, rinse and repeat. It’s clearly alluding to classic battle anime, but surely you can reference the thing without also repeating the same mistakes?

But yeah, as ‘this one goes up to 11’ style mecha anime goes, I had more fun with Mazinkaiser SKL, but it kinda ends just as it was hitting its stride.
 
Dai said:
Macross Frontier: Movie II - The Wings of Farewell
When I finished watching the Macross Frontier TV series, I felt it succeeded at most of the things it tried to achieve, but could have benefited from giving a couple of them more attention during the climax. I came to this movie expecting it to be mostly reused animation from the last several TV episodes with some new scenes that would enhance certain parts of the story. That's not what this is.

Wings of Farewell not only has all-new animation, it's a significant reworking of the events of the series. I don't think it's even a case where you could watch the series up to a certain point and then decide to cap things off with either the TV or movie ending, since some earlier events from the TV series have already been retconned by the time this second movie starts.

The good news is that it improves the weak areas of the TV series, making Alto a more proactive and capable protagonist and giving a more satisfying arc to his story. It pays off the romance arc in a more definitive way. It also adds some memorable new action and performance scenes that all have excellent animation.

The bad news is that this comes at the expense of the things the TV series did well. The war and conspiracy story arcs aren't handled nearly as well in this movie. Upcoming developments are telegraphed and too much is bluntly stated in expository dialogue, robbing it of the tension and build-up that were strengths of the TV version. Also the most memorable scenes from the TV climax are missing entirely, since events are playing out differently by that point.

Wings of Farewell is another great ending to Frontier, but just like the TV version it feels like neither is the definitive ending. So much is changed that I doubt it would be possible to splice together a fan edit of all the best parts from the TV and movies versions to reach something that pays off every story arc in the way it deserves. So I'm left feeling that the only way to have the ultimate Macross Frontier experience is to watch both versions and then blend them together inside you head.

8/10

Macross Frontier: Labyrinth of Time
This short OAV acts as an epilogue to the movie continuity. It won't make sense if you have only watched the TV series. Primarily an extended musical number, it sets the expectation that it will tie up the one loose thread left at the end of Wings of Farewell, but it ends on a frustratingly inconclusive note. While it does enough to hint how things will play out, that was probably cold comfort for viewers who had a ten-year wait between the movie and this OAV. It ends up being a flashy piece of eye candy with one last reminder about the importance of cultivating healthy gut bacteria.

6/10
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What I can say about Macross Frontier is that it's my favorite Macross series by far. I have no use for any series older than Zero. I own all of Frontier on bluray except Labyrinth Of Time and have done my own releases of the series proper and both movies plus I made a bunch of amvs using footage from the Macross Frontier Uta phone rhyme game and various songs from Frontier cds that match the footage so I guess you could say I'm a true Frontier fan person.
 
ayase said:
Oof. I can't summon much of a response to that right now, but I do have 23 pages of light reading for ya if you find yourself missing my posts, Vash.
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Good thread that, thanks I'd hadn't read any of it before! I'm kind of glad I didn't participate in it and bring the enthusiastic tone of it down with my more negative views, but it's great to read some very different perspectives and analysis of the show from my own!
 
I pushed through as far as episode 7 of Gurren Lagan and then dropped it, it is just not an anime that I would ever want to watch. Gurran Lagann has pretty much been my least favorite anime of all time since I watched it over 10 years ago. Kill la Kill is another anime I did not care for, although I did make it through to the end of that series. Haha, here is a link to a post I made on another anime forum way back in 2014 about both series... 😝

Blu-ray Forum - View Single Post - Anime Haul - Post New Pictures!
 
Girls with Guns said:
I pushed through as far as episode 7 of Gurren Lagan and then dropped it, it is just not an anime that I would ever want to watch. Gurran Lagann has pretty much been my least favorite anime of all time since I watched it over 10 years ago. Kill la Kill is another anime I did not care for, although I did make it through to the end of that series. Haha, here is a link to a post I made on another anime forum way back in 2014 about both series... 😝

Blu-ray Forum - View Single Post - Anime Haul - Post New Pictures!
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It's a pity no one told you about the recap episode in advance. You could have reduced your viewing by two thirds.
 
Girls with Guns said:
Recap episode? For GL? Was episode 7 the recap episode? I don't remember watching any recap episode, but then I really don't ever need to watch it now anymore, lol... 😅
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Don't quote me because I haven't checked.
Episode 16 was a recap episode but really it was a fast talking 90 seconds summing up the whole series so far.
Then the real episode started. If you'd started there...
I loved Kill La Kill but got bored with GL after 4/5 episodes.
 
Vashdaman said:
Good thread that, thanks I'd hadn't read any of it before! I'm kind of glad I didn't participate in it and bring the enthusiastic tone of it down with my more negative views, but it's great to read some very different perspectives and analysis of the show from my own!
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I'm glad you got something out of it (and that it means I don't have to write a 2000 word essay response) but I actually think it's a shame you weren't involved. It's good to hear different perspectives and it doesn't bring me down in the slightest, for my money it's all more fodder for discussion and understanding, though I'm aware not everybody feels the same. It's unfortunate when people with dissenting opinions stop expressing themselves because they feel like they're going against the grain, which I think probably did happen to some extent in that thread, but there's not a whole lot I can do about that.

Anyone is absolutely entitled to not enjoy things I do or vice versa, but I do wonder if perhaps your reaction to GL's GAR-ness has been coloured by a certain kind of negative attitude prevalent in the present cultural/political landscape. I don't really make that same connection. For one, I think what's despicable about Trump is not that he's loud and brash and uncompromising, but that he's a liar and a hypocrite without any actual beliefs or principles, something I don't think could be levelled at GL's characters or world-view. Bernie Sanders is pretty loud and brash and uncompromising too and I would pay to see him giga drill break Donny (that would certainly be more satisfying to me than watching our PM fluffing his ego with a nervous smile like a Disney villain's toady). In general I'm wary of reading political allegory into anything where it's not made pretty explicit that was the author's intention, but would it not be just as easy to see the anti-spiral as a kind of cosmic Enoch Powell, terrified of what will happen if people they've deemed to be "lesser" gain the upper hand? Is punching your oppressors who confine you to ghettos on pain of death in the face good? I tend to be of the opinion that yeah, it probably is.
 
From having read a bit of the simulwatch thread, my impression is that the answer would be ‘no’, but would you get a reasonable impression of what TTGL is like from watching the first three episodes? I’ve seen two or three from the middle, including the recap episode (so I know about The Thing Which Happens) and I doubt somehow that seeing it from the start would change my opinion of the show, but I do always feel a bit like I haven’t given it a fair crack of the whip. At the very least, maybe I could better pin down what exactly about it just doesn’t work for me.
 
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