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I'm 9 episodes into watching Patlabor the TV series and loving it. The story telling chops of this 35 year old show have not aged one bit. As a lover of cel animation, what anime viewers brought up on CGI would no doubt consider a "retro" look is also very appealing to me. You do get reminded of the age of the show when they, for example, have a storyline about a Soviet defector. I watched the original Patlabor OVAs years ago and have a memory of liking them, but not really remembering what happened. I suspect after watching the TV series, the New Files, rewatching movies 1 & 2 and watching 3 for the first time, I'll probably go back and "rewatch" the original OVAs. I notice that the first three episodes have directory commentaries from Mamoru Oshii which I may not have listened to the first time around. Will definitely check those out.
 
Princess Jellyfish complete series: In two minds about this show. The characters were interesting, but the depiction of attractive people being rapacious amoral monsters, while the unattractive ones can be bought off with meat and sweets, got a bit wearing. Of course, this only applied to the women, as most of the male characters could do, wear, and act however they wished without much criticism. But I'm probably overthinking it again.
 
Leokomi said:
I'm 9 episodes into watching Patlabor the TV series and loving it. The story telling chops of this 35 year old show have not aged one bit. As a lover of cel animation, what anime viewers brought up on CGI would no doubt consider a "retro" look is also very appealing to me. You do get reminded of the age of the show when they, for example, have a storyline about a Soviet defector. I watched the original Patlabor OVAs years ago and have a memory of liking them, but not really remembering what happened. I suspect after watching the TV series, the New Files, rewatching movies 1 & 2 and watching 3 for the first time, I'll probably go back and "rewatch" the original OVAs. I notice that the first three episodes have directory commentaries from Mamoru Oshii which I may not have listened to the first time around. Will definitely check those out.
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I'll be honest, I found Patlabor TV overly dull and dry and dropped it partway through - FWIW I loved the first two movies (the Manga UK dubs are fab), I enjoyed the first OVA series, and I also really enjoyed some of the other vintage anime classic TV series from the 80s and thereabouts (Touch, SDF Macross, Future Boy Conan, The Rose of Versailles, Maison Ikkoku), and plenty of 90s series too, so I'm not averse to older TV anime. I like the vintage look, but with Patlabor I got quite bored (and I watched it subbed, so it wasn't to do with the lackluster English dub). I'm genuinely glad you enjoyed it though, we all have different tastes! :)

RonJB said:
Princess Jellyfish complete series: In two minds about this show. The characters were interesting, but the depiction of attractive people being rapacious amoral monsters, while the unattractive ones can be bought off with meat and sweets, got a bit wearing. Of course, this only applied to the women, as most of the male characters could do, wear, and act however they wished without much criticism. But I'm probably overthinking it again.
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I'm curious to read the manga for this at some point as I thought the TV anime was decent, but the manga is 18 volumes so I'm gonna tentatively guess they only covered a small portion in those 11 episodes! IIRC I purchased the whole manga in a Humble Bundle a few years ago, so should really try to get on that someday! :)

EDIT: Realised I'd typed Macross Plus when I meant to type SDF Macross XP
 
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Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feeling's in Russian Episode 12 (Complete... for now. An enjoyable first outing for this series for which I'll definitely be watching the second season) 3.5/5

BOFURI: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense Season 1 (rewatch)

Days with My Stepsister Episode 12 Confession and confide. (Complete. For a romance series, this overall was rather disappointing and lacklustre.) 1/5

Failure Frame: I Became the Strongest and Annihilated Everything with Low-Level Spells Episode 11 Lure.

I Parry Everything Episode 12 Aftermath. (Complete. A fantasy series with it's own unique take on the whole "overpowered protagonist" concept.) 3/5

The Café Terrace and It's Goddesses Season 2 Episode 24 Leaving. (Complete. Just like with the first season, this continuation was also an enjoyable watch with its expanded character cast.) 3.5/5
 
Dungeon People episode 11 A matter of experience.

Quality Assurance in Another World episode 12 Collateral.

That Time I Got Reincarnated As a Slime Season 3 episode 71 Dignified.

Toriko episodes 93-98, 100-111, Toriko the Movie: Bishokushin's Special Menu (Film), 114-117
 
Children Who Chase Lost Voices (REWATCH, English dubbed) - With Friend A who hadn't seen it before, still a lovely movie we both enjoyed it greatly 🥰

Kimi ni Todoke 2023 Live-Action J-Drama Episodes 1-12 COMPLETE (English subbed) - With my mum while I was staying with her for a couple of weeks, this was absolutely delightful and we both loved it, the OST was sooo beautiful too 🥰

Lupin the 3rd Part V/5/Misadventures in France Episodes 16-24 COMPLETE (English dubbed) - Watched the rest of this mostly on my own (I'm still friends with Friend D though!), and I thought it was pretty darn spiffy, I look forward to eventually seeing Part 6 when the standard edition is on sale at some point :)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 2 Episodes 11-22 (REWATCH) - With Friend C, we've also started Season 3 we've watched Eps 1-4 of it :)

Currently watching Dororo 2019 English dubbed, and Mob Psycho 100 Season 3 English subbed, I think from here on out I mostly won't bother putting partial watches and just say when I finished something or tried it and decisively dropped it :)
 
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Time Bokan Series - Gyakuten Ippatsuman eps 31-35
Nijuushi no Hitomi-Twenty-Four Eyes(tv special)-I would also highly recommend the 1954 live action movie adaption,directed by Keisuke Kinoshita and the 1952 novel by Sakae Tsuboi on which the movie and anime are adapted from.
 
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Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Complete (rewatch)

goofy-ass-higurashi.gif

Many years ago, a troubled young man with a worryingly regular desire to beat people to death with a baseball bat finds himself in a new, small, tight-knit community where he makes good friends, gets into fights and generally has a laugh, never imagining that he will still be stuck in this same routine decades into the future. But enough about my time spent on AUKN since I first watched Higurashi back in 2008.

The show holds up, certain things were more clever than I remembered them being chiefly the whole Mion/Shion plot and the way it's revealed in stages, as well as "folder 34" being presented as the real, plausible explanation for everything when in fact it's only one of many cuh-razy theories. It's definitely not a show to stick on in the background with all the important things to remember from one arc to the next. Satoko is still best daughteru whose smile needs to be protected, Rika is still fascinatingly enigmatic and I think I have more of an appreciation for Mion this time around. And Ōishi. Poor detective Ōishi, he might not suffer quite so badly as the other characters but having to repeat an investigation he can never solve over and over is truly a kind of hell. The other thing I really appreciated was the music, I don't think I ever realised that Kenji Kawai did the incidental music for Higurashi, but it shows. The sound design is excellent, as are both the OP and ED which fit the show's creepy atmosphere perfectly.

Where it doesn't really hold up so well (if indeed it ever did) is in the animation department. This really is cheap as chips stuff. Higurashi's distorted creepy faces are the stuff of memetic legend (see above) and are thus forgiven, but that doesn't really excuse the characters' heights and eye sizes changing drastically between shots (there was a particularly moe looking Ōishi-san at one point I wish I had screencapped) nor the constant inability to understand how boobs work in a sweater. Most shows you would expect to hold on to some budget to use on the climactic action scene in the final episode, but it seems the well had already run dry by that point and it's kind of laughable how bad it is.

After checking out some blu-ray rips to see if it was worth upgrading my original Geneon DVDs, the answer was a resounding no. Higurashi is of the SD digital era that just looks like a waxy mess upscaled that actually seems to blur out detail rather than enhance it (the reason I never upgraded my DVDs of Haibane Renmei and Niea_7 either, even though I love those shows). Sorry MVM. It's not your fault that despite having the good taste to license some excellent shows their upscaling jobs are horrid. I will be taking you up on the offer of those clearance DVDs of Kai and Rei though, which weren't even licensed last time I (apparently) watched them.

Watching Higurashi again after such a long time doesn't only make me nostalgic for my early 20s when I thought I might have a future, but also for a world I've never known of rural Japan in the 1980s. There's a word for that, isn't there? Probably a stupid one. Still, it manages to evoke an atmosphere that does rather make me want to move into a cheap rural akiya no-one has lived in for 30 years and just leave everything the way it is, CRT TVs, rotary phones, family photographs, dusty windows and mouldy tatami alike and live like a ghost of the 1980s. Maybe if I actually pretended to be a ghost the immigration authorities might leave me alone, perhaps my goth years were not wasted. And like Rena, I did also enjoy scrapyards as a child. The proper ones where they just piled up cars on a patch of wasteland, let all the oil soak into the ground and let customers climb up on them to get the parts they needed without a second thought to health and/or safety. Those were the days.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Nekogoroshi-hen

Not a lot to say about this one-shot OVA really, other than that it perhaps does itself a bit of a disservice by trying to cram both the creepiest and the most light-hearted elements of the show into another short episode. Seeing Mion narrate a story of childhood disappearance and death while outfitted in a cow-print two-piece did spoil the atmosphere a tad. All in all though, I was in absolutely the right mood to revisit this series. I don't know if there's anything else quite like Higurashi, but if anyone else has any recommendations I think I'll probably still be in the mood for creepy mystery gore after I'm done. The more sinister the atmosphere, the better.
 
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^Brilliant review ayase! Having never really known a thing about Higurashi other than just being sort of familiar with the name, you've made me now put it near the top of my to-watch list! Sounds like just what I'm in the mood for! I'm also definitely with you on wanting to move into an old abandoned house untouched since the 80s in rural Japan and live like a ghost!
 
I will warn you @Vashdaman I’m not entirely sure how high your tolerance will be for the more cutesy/moe elements of the show but if you do watch it, please stick it out because I think the (intentional) tonal whiplash is worth it. Also please do post here after each arc, I would very much look forward to hearing your reaction.
 
Red Cliff Part 1
The John Woo historical film with Tony Leung.

Sasaki & Peeps
Episodes 1-7
At the start, I didn't think I'd want to binge a bit.

Reacher S2
As long as Reacher has a fight, I'm happy.
It does amuse me that streaming services set themselves up as different to normal television but release DVDs, have adverts and don't always drop whole series at once.

Villainess Level 99
Episodes 4-8
Can this be my greatest ever show (since the last time I said that).
 

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