What Current Anime Are You Watching Version v4.0

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

1 hour ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

so I caught up on Accelerator for now.    It's kinda showing the same cracks that Index and the other spinoffs have been showing for awhile.      Apparently there are even more factions with nonsense names and you hear about them for 1 or 2 episodes.... sigh. 

However... at this point I am enjoying Accelerator.    Much more then say Index 3.. which was a bust.

 

Sometimes it seems like they're to many factions in Gakuen Toshi.  It is the same way in the Index light novels so I am not surprised,

[505thAirborne]

Just finished this one, hopefully a season 2 is on the way. 

Edited August 23, 2019 by 505thAirborne

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I finished Symphogear AXZ at this point I will wait for XV to finish airing and then marathon it.  I am finally going to finish Digimon Adventure.  I wonder if I even like the show or just want to hear Brave Heart.

[Mazinger]

I know this isn't the "What live-action series are you currently watching thread", but I'm not sure there is a better spot for this and didn't want to kick another thread off just for that.

Anyways, I'd like to recommend the Netflix series Dark to you all.  It's a German production, though you can watch it dubbed into English.  I didn't find the dub particularly good so decided to watch it in Deutsch. 

There's currently 2 seasons up, season 3 is currently filming.  Unsure if there'll be a 4rth.

The show is a sci-fi mystery that unfolds slowly.  Took me a bit of effort to get through the first episodes, but then you find you can't stop watching because you need to know more.

I'd been without a series to watch since the end of JoJo Golden Wind.  This has filled in nicely.  One of the better speculative fiction shows I've ever watched.

This will have to hold me over until the next Jojo's series and Westworld arrive.

[Seto Kaiba]

Just finished Isekai Cheat Magician's 7th episode, and I have to say it's far and away the laziest show I've seen in YEARS.

Nothing about it stands out except for how incredibly generic it all is.  They killed off a character in this episode, and it was almost literally random.  It came out of nowhere, it made no sense, and there was no reason for the protagonist to be broken up about it since he barely knew the person and she'd been trying to kill him previously.

If it weren't so obviously trying to take itself seriously, I'd suspect it was a stealth parody.

[technoblue]

2 hours ago, Mazinger said:

I know this isn't the "What live-action series are you currently watching thread", but I'm not sure there is a better spot for this and didn't want to kick another thread off just for that.

Anyways, I'd like to recommend the Netflix series Dark to you all.  It's a German production, though you can watch it dubbed into English.  I didn't find the dub particularly good so decided to watch it in Deutsch. 

There's currently 2 seasons up, season 3 is currently filming.  Unsure if there'll be a 4rth.

The show is a sci-fi mystery that unfolds slowly.  Took me a bit of effort to get through the first episodes, but then you find you can't stop watching because you need to know more.

Yeah, Dark has been in my Netflix top 5 for the last two years and I watch it subbed. @TangledThorns was promoting it in the Stranger Things thread.

Unless someone wants to create a new Netflix: Dark thread, I guess we can talk some more about it over in General TV...

(BTW, I hope they can get to four seasons, but three would be fitting given the themes in the show)

 

[Seto Kaiba]

Gave Do You Love Your Mom and her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks a go... and dear sweet machine god this might actually be as bad as Isekai Cheat Magician.

This feels less like an isekai series and more like a cheesy PornHub original setup for a hentai version of a stepmom movie.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I have been watching Do You Love Your Mom and her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks and Isekai Cheat Magician.  I realized that I love Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni so much more.  Maybe I am a bit biased because I am buying all the Smartphone print volumes.

[Focslain]

18 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Gave Do You Love Your Mom and her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks a go... and dear sweet machine god this might actually be as bad as Isekai Cheat Magician.

This feels less like an isekai series and more like a cheesy PornHub original setup for a hentai version of a stepmom movie.

The next few eps that will get worse before it gets better. The more recent ones they tone down the hot-mom angle.

Episode 2 and 3 are going to double down, my guess is to get it out of their system.

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

I still haven't changed my original statement about this season being Dull for the most part.

Again Dumbells, Danmachi 2, are the standouts for me.

Arfureta has gone down hill fast

Accelerator so far seems to be good as well.

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

5 hours ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

I still haven't changed my original statement about this season being Dull for the most part.

Again Dumbells, Danmachi 2, are the standouts for me.

Arfureta has gone down hill fast

Accelerator so far seems to be good as well.

 

I agree it being dull I am only truly enjoying Accelerator.

[Seto Kaiba]

On 8/26/2019 at 8:40 AM, Focslain said:

The next few eps that will get worse before it gets better. The more recent ones they tone down the hot-mom angle.

Episode 2 and 3 are going to double down, my guess is to get it out of their system.

Really, it's a bad sign when I sit down to watch a series and after about ten minutes have to ask myself why I haven't turned it off yet.

I'd like to think I've got a pretty open mind when it comes to entertainment, but this season seems to have some of the most spectacularly lazy, stupid, and shameless garbage on the air.  It's to the point where I'm honestly left wondering how some of these shows got approved at all.  It's like the industry just collectively stopped trying this year.

Isekai Cheat Magician might as well retitle itself Form Letter Isekai Series, given that every aspect of the series from its story and setting down to its design works and animation is so incredibly generic that you can practically feel the staff's boredom leaking through the TV.  I'd call it half-assed, but really that makes it sound like they might've been trying at some point... even quarter-assed is generous.  It's so phoned-in the OP should've just been ninety seconds of fax machine noises.

Do You Love Your Mother and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks is about the most shamelessly stupid thing I've seen this year.  Its TVTropes page claims that the series is actually meant to be a parody/satire of the overused Not-Blood-Related-Familial-Love-Interest trope, but if it IS satire it's so badly done that there's no obvious difference between mocking the trope and embracing it wholeheartedly.  About the only thing that prevented my eyes from rolling clean out of my head in the first episode was a "hey, it's that voice!" moment when I found that Shirase is voiced by Satomi Arai, in precisely the same style she used when she was voicing Hata-san in Seitokai Yakuindomo (a MUCH funnier show).  I put on episode 2 today and found that, if anything, episode 2 is slightly worse than episode 1, including standard fanservice fantasy crap like clothes-eating slimes and a lot of accidental innuendo.

Started Saiyuki Reload: Blast to wash the bad taste out of my mouth and found the first episode of THAT pretty good.  After Tokuyama Hidenori's OPs for the original Gensomaden Saiyuki anime and BUZZLIP's "Wild Rock" for Saiyuki Reload, GRANRODEO feels a bit out of place among the franchise's OPs.  Not a bad tune, but it just feels odd, in kind of the same way Star Trek: Enterprise did when they went with a pop ballad instead of an orchestral OP.  Couldn't help noticing Sanzo's gun now uses the sound effect of an actual gun, rather than the downmixed pew pew magical sound it used in previous titles.

 

[Focslain]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Do You Love Your Mother and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks is about the most shamelessly stupid thing I've seen this year.  -snip-

Yeah and my viewing group has been keeping up with this series. It's still flying low at the current arc. These other mamas are so one-dimensional it hurts. This isn't the smartest season this year, or decade... 

For my Daughter I'd Fight a Demonlord is a little better, but the animation is sub-par. The world is a little interesting, a little. 

Dr. Stone is the other series we are watching and it's like Cells at Work mixed with the Civilization game series. 

Edited August 30, 2019 by Focslain

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I am finally getting through Log Horizon and it is good.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Focslain said:

Yeah and my viewing group has been keeping up with this series. It's still flying low at the current arc. These other mamas are so one-dimensional it hurts. This isn't the smartest season this year, or decade... 

For my Daughter I'd Fight a Demonlord is a little better, but the animation is sub-par. The world is a little interesting, a little. 

All told, I think this specific brand of (MMO)RPG-themed Isekai storytelling has worn out its welcome.

We got a few really good, innovative titles out of it like Overlord... but it was swiftly overwhelmed by cut-rate imitators with increasingly convoluted titles like Kono Subarashii Sekai Ni Shukufuku O! or The Rising of the Shield Hero that were initially interesting but quickly revealed themselves as one-trick ponies, leading to crap like That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime and Isekai Cheat Magician.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari is getting a 2nd and 3rd season

 

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Hikaru Ichijo SL said:

Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari is getting a 2nd and 3rd season

... ugh, they should've quit while they were ahead.

The Rising of the Shield Hero anime had exhausted all the actually-interesting parts of the light novel in its first season.  What made the story interesting was that Naofumi was more or less the polar opposite of the typical Isekai protagonist: underpowered to the point of uselessness and a horrible misanthrope to boot.

After having his name cleared by the queen of Melromarc and taking off for Cal Mira, Naofumi wasn't a misanthrope anymore and was rapidly becoming the standard overpowered Isekai protagonist... and the spirit tortoise arc just drags on and on and on.

[DewPoint]

I rarely read the source material, but I agree.  Almost everything unique and interesting about the show is largely gone by the end of the 1st season. Whether or not the 2nd season is interesting enough to continue watching we will see.  A 3rd season seem a real stretch, but again, we'll see.

[anime52k8]

eh, at least there will be more Racoon Waifu.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

16 hours ago, anime52k8 said:

eh, at least there will be more Racoon Waifu.

That is so true more Raphtalia is never a bad thing.

 

I am a Light novel reader and there is a lot of good stuff to air.

[Seto Kaiba]

17 hours ago, anime52k8 said:

eh, at least there will be more Racoon Waifu.

Seems a safe bet they're counting on Raphtalia's popularity with the kind of people who say "waifu" unironically to keep the show afloat.  She was basically the breakout star of the TV anime, thanks to the show's more even focus on the supporting cast.  The light novel put a lot of effort into trying to make Rishia Ivyred (the girl Itsuki kicks out of his party under false pretenses) into the Designated Best Girl via massive amounts of pity before finally giving up.

Unless they tweak the story a bit, Raphtalia's kind of out of focus for the next couple story arcs because she's become Naofumi's hyper-competent sidekick and it's Rishia getting all his attention because she's depressed to the point of attempting suicide over Itsuki kicking her out (kinda glad season one toned that the f*ck down, TBH.) and then the spirit tortoise girl who steals all the attention by being vague as hell.

[Seto Kaiba]

Still soldiering on through Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?, and it does actually get a little better... but just a little.

The whole story arc with Wise's mom kind of takes this story from being The Alleged Satire to being kind of quietly unsettling.  The game already felt a little odd as a premise, since the goal seems less like improving parent-child relations and more like squashing any sign of independence or rebellion out of the kids who enter it.  Masato's not wanting to be constantly smothered by his overly clingy mother (who acts more like his girlfriend) is treated like a bad thing.  It crossed the line into really eyebrow-raising stuff with Wise's story arc though.  It's less a story of a mother trying to repair relations with her estranged daughter and more a clear-cut case of a parent who lost custody of her child in a divorce abducting said child (very much against her will) and going on the run, then abandoning said child at earliest opportunity to troll for dick in a consequence-free environment.  It's a shame that Wise never really landed a good hit on her, as it would have been fodder for an excellent BEGONE THOT meme.

Mamako's incessant, girlfriend-like clinginess WRT her son is unhealthy enough, but holy cr*p are the other mothers in the game toxic as f*ck.

[DewPoint]

I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the next mom arc.  Its definitely not a shoe I'd recommend.  As for myself, I'm currently about halfway through Gundam X and I started Cyborg 009 (2001) to fill in the time between shows during the current season.

[Seto Kaiba]

4 minutes ago, DewPoint said:

As for myself, I'm currently about halfway through Gundam X and I started Cyborg 009 (2001) to fill in the time between shows during the current season.

After War Gundam X is something of an acquired taste, but I remember finding it rather enjoyable.

Cyborg 009: the Cyborg Soldier was a pretty good show too.  I think I watched the dub of that one many a year ago on cable in college.

[Mazinger]

Breezing through Attack on Titan Season 3.  Pretty good.  Perhaps better than Season 2.

[Keith]

18 minutes ago, Mazinger said:

Breezing through Attack on Titan Season 3.  Pretty good.  Perhaps better than Season 2.

Yes, because things actually happen.

[Seto Kaiba]

27 minutes ago, Mazinger said:

Breezing through Attack on Titan Season 3.  Pretty good.  Perhaps better than Season 2.

As someone who's not been following the anime, how far did that season actually advance the story?

[DewPoint]

They finally make it to the basement and find out how screwed they really are.

[Graham]

Just watching Gundam Build Fighters for the first time. 

Yes, I know it's several years old now and a kiddie anime, but I'm actually quite enjoying it. Nice easy watching.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, DewPoint said:

They finally make it to the basement and find out how screwed they really are.

But has it...

Spoiler

... reached the point of flashing back to show that the rest of the world is much more advanced and the reason they have a titan problem is that they're living on a prison island?

 

I've found much of the recent stuff in the manga objectionable, as heavily nationalistic as it's become.  It's quite a turn for the protagonists to essentially suddenly become Nazis.

[DewPoint]

Spoiler

Yes, Season 3 ends when they finally make it to the ocean.

The show seems to be headed that way as well.  I'm not sure how they intend to resolve everything.

Spoiler

Since they basically went with everybody is taking turns treating the other badly plot device.

 

[Mazinger]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

As someone who's not been following the anime, how far did that season actually advance the story?

Quite a bit actually.  We start to get backstory and answers to questions that have been wide open since the first episode.  Thankfully it doesn't like random tacked on stuff, but rather payoff to things shown all the way back in season 1.  I haven't read the manga, so now sure how much farther back the show is from that, but I think this season has been good so far.

[Seto Kaiba]

Just now, Mazinger said:

Quite a bit actually.  We start to get backstory and answers to questions that have been wide open since the first episode.  Thankfully it doesn't like random tacked on stuff, but rather payoff to things shown all the way back in season 1.  I haven't read the manga, so now sure how much farther back the show is from that, but I think this season has been good so far.

Quite a ways, from the sound of it... if Season 3 is set to end with them discovering the sea.

Unfortunately, when they finally start to properly build on the revelations from the basement that's where the story becomes a seething morass of human ugliness and everything that might've once been heroic about the characters is lost.

[Focslain]

10 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Quite a ways, from the sound of it... if Season 3 is set to end with them discovering the sea.

Unfortunately, when they finally start to properly build on the revelations from the basement that's where the story becomes a seething morass of human ugliness and everything that might've once been heroic about the characters is lost.

Well they did announce that Season 4 is the final season, so maybe they are condensing all that to avoid it?

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Focslain said:

Well they did announce that Season 4 is the final season, so maybe they are condensing all that to avoid it?

Really, unless Season 4 is a long one a gecko ending is probably a good thing.

That way we won't have to watch the people who've been the protagonists thus far start putting on the reich, and having Eren try to out-Hitler the setting's Nazi equivalent.