Your anime viewing journal

Spark_Heal said:
The main character has a few scenes where she invokes Brandon Heat from Gungrave, which isn’t a bad thing for a gunslinger in a rotting city where violence rules.

Terror in Resonance Episodes 1-5: it be reductive to say the show is an excuse for another Yoko Kano soundtrack but the audio design for the series is very striking.

Its reputation hides how funny Re:Zero. he immediately gets beaten up for being a stupid coward who needs to get over himself because people have better things to do than entertain his jobless ego. But at least there’s a very clear sense the mystery girl has her own identity and stuff going on that this clueless dipstick isn’t picking up on or entitled to know yet.
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A Gungrave reference, and four paragraphs... on AUKN!? I like you already, and may be willing to accept you as a randomly rambling disciple. That aside, this reminds me: next month Gungrave will be returning on blu-ray, much like Brandon Heat: (from) Beyond za Grave. Let us pray the transfer is better than the presumably wank 1080i Funimation upscale... Either way, 'tis an excuse to rewatch the one top tier/actual gangster anime in existence. Even if it does have zombies/monster men. Ep14 and its car ride/elevator scenes will always be a fav cartoon episode of mine. Here comes the rain~

Terror Res: jus wait until you get to the ferris wheel/disarming sequence, for the full Yoko Kanno experience. Never has directionXmusic made a thrilling sequence feel so... intimate. Shame the rest of the show was rather forgettable, for me. A bit too milquetoast for a story about terrorists. Watanabe is at his best with fun/cool. The heavier/more complicated it gets, the less fun/cool it gets. I miss Bebop/Champloo.

ReZero: ah, despite being amused by the comedy, I sense you are not too fond of Subaru ("jobless ego" I approve of~), much like my friend that loathed him. I warmed to him and his clownish persona once... well, I'll let you find that out, when you get to arc 3 'suffering' (where its well earned reputation stems from), and ep 15/18.
I hate the isekai genre and its unimaginative, derivative wish fulfillment; complete with needlessly long title jibberish and aforementioned basic game nonsense. ReZero S1 having a Groundhog Day time loop aspect, with each arc and solution unique, and KonoSuba which parodies the genre by having the a rs ehole protag surrounded by beautiful yet hopelessly idiotic girls are however worth watching. Maybelline.

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...oh, I'm meant to type about what I've watched. Well, I've mostly retired from newer anime until isekais die a death, and animation isn't soulless/horribly cheap looking. But I do watch some. Chainsaw Man/Frieren may yet save anime.

Recently I've been watching Dandadan, and rewatching Welcome to the NHK.

Dandadan (ep-1-9): I became interested for 2-3 reasons: its high budget trailer reminded me of Chainsaw Man. The series is also named after me, which I took as a sign from the anime Gods. And it has Ushio's ambient, immersive music. 3/3

A lot of it feels like it's aimed at the modern ADHD audience that need constant dopamine hits, but it has won me over. Momo and her rom-comedy with Okarun is better than most actual romance anime, and it has some surprising highs mixed in with the frenzied/batshit action. Namely, ep7 out of nowhere had a traumatic show-no-tell 5min flashback about a dead mother/daughter. Twas quite heavy for series about recovering the cawck 'n balls of the lead. Then, of course, the next ep had some of the most amusing love triangle misunderstanding shenanigans I've seen in eons. 'Tis therefore a pity ep9 was ugly with yellow/green filters and... shounen dumb. At times it feels juvenile compared to Chainsaw, which has a more raw, genuinely crazy seinen-esque edge.

The amusing thing for me is, it has A LOT of what Naruto/Bleach had. It even has a Kon 'plushie-holding-an-evil/now-comedically-useless-spirit'. And I'm sure the mantis 🦐 🥊 from ep9 is going to become nakama, as is the shounen way: beat baddy, and either get a sob story or it becomes an ally, logic be damned. The thing with this new generation of shounen though is they aren't dirt cheap, 100+ep stop-start talk no justu things: they're short, sharp, and flashy 12-13 eppers. And that I like.

Welcome to the NHK (ep1-6): it's shocking how hard this still hits, after all these years. I'm rewatching (in spirit form) with my friend (he's more Yamazaki, I'm more Satou), and we end up going over our shared life experiences that relate to NHK, after each ep. Never will a series be as lulzy in such a grounded way, yet relatably crushing. Ep6 had Misaki - the supposed cure for reclusion - explain the solution to feeling you're being looked down on: to look down on others first. Yet, instead of the ep being mean-spirited or depressing, by the end Satou comes to realise by stalking/following his bff Yamazaki to check if he has a gf (puk uuu if finds out he does, when he an unrepentant otaku with figurines) that he was kinda already doing that, and course corrected.

I wish there was more of NHK, which hits home by not providing farcical escapism to other worlds, and far less isekai nonsense. Maybe I'm just getting too old for this shittu. My problem is, what is already dead can never die~
 
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