Your viewing journal

Tonight five of us - me, the neighbor couple, my mom, and my friend - started watching Record of Grancrest War up on the big screen in my theater. Turns out the neighbors were so totally into it we marathoned the entire first cour, episodes 1-12, finishing up at 2 am, lol. And, they said they'll be coming back over much earlier tomorrow night, sounds like they want to finish the series off in two sittings! 😲

Also, my mom and I finished off the last 3 episodes of Snow White with the Red Hair earlier this afternoon, so that makes 15 episodes of anime viewing for the two of us today!
 
Ikigami Death Notice
What a wonderful piece of tragic storytelling. The dystopia masquerading as a utopia is very well realised and the ensemble cast are all excellent. Highly reccomend it.

Ride Your Wave rewatch
Great film.

Arifureta: From Commonplace to the World's Strongest
Enjoyed this isekei. I liked that it wasnt easy for the MC to become strong.

Cautious Hero
Hilarious and amazing. Like Konosuba this is a full blown comedy but this one plays with a funny premise rather than being a deconstruction of the genre. Last 2 eps became tragic and made me cry!

Is it wrong to try to pick up girls in a dungeon?
Season 1 rewatch and the movie and season 2
A fun and entertaining show though its main character is its worst element. Bell really can be an end. The second season season was really good, better than the first I thought.

Flowers of Evil ep1-5
Man this show is hard to watch. I realise it's by design but everything about it is so unpleasant, from the animation and designs to the story and characters. I certainly cant binge watch it like other shows. I may slowly dip in out of it to finish it but not sure yet.
 
Durarara X2

Episodes 31 - 36 (complete)

Nice ending to tidy up some of the plotlines whilst leaving it open for more. A show which takes up all your attention and memory when it jumps between characters & timeline, overall a great series.

The Big O

Episodes 1 - 6

Now for an older series from my backlog, very much "monster of the week" with some character development
 
Girls wIth Guns said:
Lol, Sawa is waifu material, for sure!
Click to expand...
Hahaha, yeah just like Seiko from Blood on the Tracks is best mom material - I do wonder about the women in the mangaka's life...
Dai said:
I thought the rotoscoping was a perfect fit for the tone and themes in Flowers of Evil. It's a painfully raw depiction of adolescence with none of the rough edges and ugliness sanded down.
Click to expand...
A very good point and in that regard I rate the director even more for that as a brave choice to frame the story in, as I'm guessing given the limited use of rotoscoping (I only recall seeing it in some anime openings and some Linklater movies) it is either expensive to use (wouldn't have thought that to be the case) or generally not appreciated by mainstream audiences (which would include me!)
 
The Promised Neverland
What an astonishing series. The animation was great, the designs were great, the story was so well told and the constant cliff hangers kept the tension up throughout. It was one of those shows where I was never quite sure what the next twist or turn would be.

Geriatric hedgehog said:
Yeah I found the rotoscoping not aesthetically pleasing personally. Great show otherwise in regards to the themes, direction & music.
Click to expand...

Girls wIth Guns said:
Lol, Sawa is waifu material, for sure!
Click to expand...

Dai said:
I thought the rotoscoping was a perfect fit for the tone and themes in Flowers of Evil. It's a painfully raw depiction of adolescence with none of the rough edges and ugliness sanded down.
Click to expand...
It's certainly a very interesting series and it all seems very deliberate in how it's made. But my god they really have filled it with as much unpleasantness as possible. Not just the rotoscoping. But the characters are entirely unlikable and the pace is so slow. I'm sure I'll finish it eventually as a part of me wants to see how it plays out but after an epsiode I just cant stomach any more that day.
 
WMD said:
I'm sure I'll finish it eventually as a part of me wants to see how it plays out but after an epsiode I just cant stomach any more that day.
Click to expand...
I'd second that, as much as I was hooked, I could only manage to watch an episode or two at a time. It is definitely masterfully constructed to manage to instill the discomfort the characters are experiencing into the audience.
 
Geriatric hedgehog said:
I'd second that, as much as I was hooked, I could only manage to watch an episode or two at a time. It is definitely masterfully constructed to manage to instill the discomfort the characters are experiencing into the audience.
Click to expand...

I binged watched The Flowers of Evil anime in one intense, unsettling, tears-and-regret filled evening and it was a wild ride. I loved the manga too! I hope another one of Shuzo Oshimi's works gets adapted into an anime one day. (the only other one I have read is Happiness which was amazing as well!)
 
Patlabor: The New Files (Rewatch) OVAs 11-16 (Complete. The stories here tended to lean on the more eccentric side and offered some fun scenarios. This was a great franchise overall to revisit.) 3.5/5

Peace Maker Kurogane episodes 1-18
 
RadFemHedonist said:
I binged watched The Flowers of Evil anime in one intense, unsettling, tears-and-regret filled evening and it was a wild ride.
Click to expand...
Very brave, you must have needed a pick-me-up after that! I haven't worked up the courage to read the manga yet but have read some of his other work and got the happiness set (given his other work that title alone is unsettling heh) as part of the humble bundle recently, so on my list to get to. His current one is blood on the tracks/trail of blood and is very good but is ongoing and probably best to read in one fell swoop once completed. He is certainly very adept at psychological drama/horror.
 
Geriatric hedgehog said:
Very brave, you must have needed a pick-me-up after that! I haven't worked up the courage to read the manga yet but have read some of his other work and got the happiness set (given his other work that title alone is unsettling heh) as part of the humble bundle recently, so on my list to get to. His current one is blood on the tracks/trail of blood and is very good but is ongoing and probably best to read in one fell swoop once completed. He is certainly very adept at psychological drama/horror.
Click to expand...

Yeah I'm interested in reading that one and Inside Mari as well :) I really like his stuff for a number of reasons and one of those is that it doesn't take me long at all to read a single volume of his manga yet they feel substantial :)
 
Eps 12 - 16 of Baccano! (rewatch - complete)
Eps 1-4 of Starmyu...this is incredibly cheesy, they burst into song with music videos at a drop of a hat but it is entertaining.
 
Professor Irony said:
Shirobako

That aside, it also caught my attention that the original Japanese for 'Girlmada', in the translated title of the series Musani is producing, sounds like 'Shoujo Tai', also the name of an '80s Jpop group. Just made me wonder if it would literally translate as something like "Girls' Army".
Click to expand...
Yuss, you're spot-on, Prof. For what it's worth, Google Translate gives tai 隊 as "corps".

(Your post's from 5 December; can you tell I've fallen behind with reading this thread? 😅)
 
Great Pretender eps 6-10 (case 2)(dub)
Not quite as fun as the first case. They also suddenly invent a Batman-esque back story for Abi and I don't think it gets resolved that satisfactorily either. She doesn't seem the type of character to except a sorry and his wife saying he came back changed. She said she wanted to die and then nearly killed the bloke for revenge. I might get it if she saw him as a pitiful man who lost everything, but then lets him fly which seems so important to him.

Ghost in the Shell (sub)
I think this is the first time I've watched the sub and the film itself for the first time in ages, couldn't find it posted in this thread and I've been back on these forums for 3 and a half years! Noticed a mistake in the subs when Ishikawa is talking about the programmer the subs say she when the picture is clearly a male, looking up Mizuho it seems it's a unisex name and maybe, for some reason, they translated the script without actually watching the film! I checked the dub and it was correct. They also used he for the Puppet Master when the both Sections 6 & 9 confirm that they are unsure of their gender and whilst they used a male voice the Puppet Master built themselves (as far as I understood it) a female body, so I'd say they, etc should have been used, but I guess the discussion about gender wasn't as bigger thing back then.
Apart from the cg (mainly used for stuff like the electronic displays) looking a bit dated, the animation is still excellent.
It was a lot shorter than I remembered so straight onto:

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (sub)
I know Batou is a changed man after the events of the first film, but when did he ever spout the philosophical quotes he did here, just seemed a bit out of character.
The anime-ised cg on the characters still stands up (apart from the kids at the end, they just looked creepy) and although a little dated so does the cg on the more realistic things backgrounds, vehicles, etc, but the blending of the 2 was just distracting a lot of the time.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top