The Anime Thread

[jimmy olsen]

The author of Berserk died on the 20th 

I hope he left notes on how to finish his story 

Say a series like One Piece has been ongoing for more than 20 years.  I think responsible editors and authors should make leaving notes behind a mandatory requirement.  Manga authors have a troubling tendency to die early 

That's because they work insane 80 hour work weeks for 20-30 years without stopping. It's no wonder most die in their 50s. At least Kentaro Miura was doing real art.

[Josquius]

I had no idea one piece was still going. Always shocked me how mega popular that is in Japan.

Been some good anime lately.

Re zero crawled up its arse and was a huge dissappointment.

Mushoku Tensei was unexpectedly brilliant despite being yet another isekai.

The spider isekai was also fun. Didn't expect to watch beyond a curiosity episode but I have been.

Slime series 2- not up to 1s standards but good. The spin off is unwatchable of course.

Jujutsu kaisen, unexpectedly is brilliant. Absolutely peak shonen. You get the impression it's master crafted via study of the genre and gets the right balance between comedy and seriousness. I like the after credits scenes a lot.

Boku no hero series 5 feels like it's treading water but it's fun anyway.

As covered elsewhere attack on titan continues to be excellent. Really big middle finger to the far right.

Plenty more good looking shows I've yet to watch too. I hear good things of Wonder Egg. And Odd Taxi.

[Monoriu]

Last season was crazy.  So many sequels and big budget productions.  I watched 20+ shows at the same time.  Crazy.  I enjoyed most of them, including Attack on Titan, Re Zero, Dr Stone, My Hero Academia, Slime 2, 5 toubun no Hanayome, Cells at Work, Yuru Camp, Log Horizon, Non Non Biyori 3, etc. 

Re Zero is probably a bit too complicated and convoluted, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.  I particularly liked Emilia's backstory. 

The really huge disappointment for me is The Promised Neverland 2.  First season was a masterpiece.  Second second is beyond rushed.  It is as if they disregarded all storytelling rules, all good things in life just to finish everything in one season. 

Jobless Reincarnation was excellent and clearly had the potential to be a masterpiece.  It was considered one of the best isekai novels and standard setter.  Most isekai stories nowadays could trace some of their origins and ideas to Jobless Reincarnation.  It was unfortunate that it didn't get an anime until now, but the product is really well done.  The production values are sky high.  Most isekai stories barely mention the "growing up" part of the story but Jobless Reincarnation does a great job in showing us the goods. But the, hmm, nature of the protagonist may drive some people away. 

So far I like Vivy fluorite eyes song.  The story is penned by Re Zero's author.  Wit Studio did the animation and the quality is superb. 

I am also glad that Higurashi got a sequel and this time, it is a proper sequel with an interesting twist, instead of more OVAs with fanservice. 

Kingdom 3 is as good as ever. 

[Josquius]

Ah yes, I forgot about Promised Neverland.
The fan rage for it has been amazing.
Really after the perfection of S1 then S2 couldn't not be a disappointment.
The very fact it turned into a fairly standard fantasy world adventure rather than the grim near future on our world piece it seemed to be was upsetting. But even if that had gone a different way even that would have been dissapointing. Mysteries suck when unveiled.
The way they did it though.... I thought i'd missed something.

And then there was the cancellation after an episode or two and the mad rush... this is what seems to upset people the most and to be honest I don't mind it so much. Yes, obviously a properly paced and coherent ending would be better. But at least it had an ending. So many series I've enjoyed just finished right as they were getting interesting as they weren't renewed.

Mushoku's protagonist- I dunno, I think they have the balance right. So often somebody is either a complete pervert or absolutely pure and chaste. Here they seem to have a good balance of him being a perv but nonetheless actually a decent guy who won't really act on his fantasies given the chance.


I forgot Dr Stone too. Again not as good as s1 but decent. Sad it was so short.

[Valmy]

That's because they work insane 80 hour work weeks for 20-30 years without stopping. It's no wonder most die in their 50s. At least Kentaro Miura was doing real art.

But why though? Why do they work those kinds of crazy hours?

[Josquius]

That's because they work insane 80 hour work weeks for 20-30 years without stopping. It's no wonder most die in their 50s. At least Kentaro Miura was doing real art.

But why though? Why do they work those kinds of crazy hours?

Its complicated.
I've read with animators in a way its like the games industry in that its seen as a dream job so people will put up with far inferior working conditions and pay to get into it.
But at the same time there's a shortage of people with the actual skills needed. And the general 30 year stagnation of Japanese wages means they don't notice they're hugely underpaid.
Probably doesn't help that they're usually of pretty shy and undemanding personality types.

With mangaka....take away the shortage of people with skills point. Loads of people want to make comics for a living. Few get the chance. And once you have your foot in the door you have to keep the public's attention span going, fight for top billing in the major weekly comics, tight deadlines, little ability to hand off series to other writers as with western comics, etc....

[Monoriu]

That's because they work insane 80 hour work weeks for 20-30 years without stopping. It's no wonder most die in their 50s. At least Kentaro Miura was doing real art.

But why though? Why do they work those kinds of crazy hours?

First of all it is the format of the Japanese publishing industry.  You have to publish one chapter per week.  The cycles are that short. 

Competition is very keen.  There are lots of up and coming authors, and consumers have lots of stories to choose from.  If you can't keep up or if your quality drops, your audience disappears.

Third is the peer pressure.  Say you are a successful manga author like One Piece.  Thousands of jobs will be at stake if you can't keep up.  There is the publishing staff, the animators, the toy makers, retailers, the youtubers...there is an entire One Piece industry out there.  Authors who cannot keep up are widely ridiculed and shamed, even if they are hugely successful.  I mean if you were the One Piece author, you can probably get away with 40 chapters per year instead of 52, but that's still a lot of work.  Especially during those 12 weeks of rest, a lot of time is spent writing stories on the movie side stories etc. 

[Syt]

I had a hankering for weird, uncomplicated stories, something I could read before going to sleep and not hurt my brain too much.

So I had a look if there's any good digital manga subscriptions. There's of course tons of apps and sites where you can tap into vast libraries for free but I like being a good boy now  and don't want to deal with having to figure out what to do if e.g. a collection is pulled from the net etc. (had that before for a while, and when you don't use it for a few months and want to download something new ... ugh).

So I looked at online options, and once again, Europe sucks a bit. The obvious first stop was Comixology. They have their Unlimited model where you subscribe and for a monthly fee get access to a large library ... oops, sorry, not available in EU. There's some stuff I get free because of Amazon Prime, and I bought some Star Wars comics for Kindle on Amazon (Dr Aphra, really need to get back int that series ...), which I now realize were Comixology purchases all along. Old man me is surprised. Anyways, they have a decent range of series, but you buy them by the book, or - if you're lucky - a bundle.

Beyond that there's not much. There's some lists online, but a bunch of them either don't offer subs anymore, or not in Europe. Some publishers sell some of their manga on their site, and link for others to the usual book retailers. It's all a bit of a mess. Crunchyroll has a manga section, but it's not as easily navigable (or big) as their anime section, and for some series they offer, say, the first 12 chapters, and then continue from chapter 65, with a big gap in the middle. Gee, thanks.

The only reasonable option I found was Mangamo. A very barebones app on Android that has a selection of series both current and classic. The price per month is around EUR 5 (tolerable). The selection is ... fine? I like that they have some classics like Crying Freeman, Lone Wolf and Cub, or Masamune Shirow's manga like Appleseed or Orion (which I used to own in print about a lifetime ago).



First series I started is an ongoing one "Deathdeus". It's set 100 after a zombie(?) apocalypse, though they call the undead "Reversers". Also, famous figures from history rise as powerful undead Grave Knights and Death Knights. The story starts in rural France where a village is attacked by zombies reversers led by undead Gilles de Rais and undead (and beheaded) Marie Antoinette. A boy survives the carnage but of course catches the attention of Gilles de Rais.

The boy is saved by the arrival of a Japanese high school girl who (as it is revealed in an early chapter) is the daughter of one of the scientists who caused the apocalypse and was put in stasis for 100 years. She's accompanied by Hanzo (presumably one of the Hattori Hanzos of yore), and Miyamoto Musashi. Together they bring the mini bosses Marie Antoinette and Gilles de Rais to the brink of defeat who then proceed to summon undead Louis XIV as the final boss of this encounter. All the bosses obviously have themed attacks etc. The Sun King uses his "I am the State" skill to use masses of reversers as limbs etc. Of course the heroes win, but only after the high school girl transformed into her fighting form, fan service included.

The group then try to get to Rome (for some reason) but are struggling to find a way, because miasmatic walls from the meteor impacts 100 years ago block the paths?

Meanwhile, in evil HQ "Ghoulzom" which seems to be in Stonehenge, the antagonists prepare a new attack and raise a new undead to fight the heroes: Isaac Newton and his power of Gravity!

... and that's where I stopped reading.




I've since started Knights of Sidonia (not to be mistaken with the song by Muse). I know there's also an anime, but since the manga has actually concluded (and anime have a habit of only covering part of a manga's story) I started that one instead. It's set on a colony/generation(?) ship sent from a dying Earth. The survivors are beset by strange and bizarre alien entities that threaten to annihilate them. Deals with topics of genetic manipulation, cloning and more and is decidedly more mature. I like these kinds of sci-fi manga and anime. We don't get enough of those these days.







I love the art, which is no surprise, because it's Tsutomu Nihei who also created the amazing Blame! and Biomega.

[The Larch]

If you want to watch another anime with historical figures in an absolutely ridiculous situation in it, take a look at "Record of Ragnarok" (Sumatsu no Valkyrie in Japanese), in which the gods, in their once a millenium council, have decided that enough is enough and mankind should be eliminated, but after a plea from the valkyrie Brunhilde they organize a cosmic tournament between 13 human champions and 13 gods, to decide the fate of humanity.

This is an image of the 1st match:



The one on the left is Thor, the one on the right is Lu Bu. 

The human champions (half of them are Japanese and Chinese, of course) go from King Leonidas of Sparta to Simo Hayha. 

[Syt]

I might watch that after catching up on that anime where a high school student travels back to the warring states period and all major characters of the time are now young females. Well, actually there's two shows like that, one with a female student going back and one with a male student going back.

[Syt]

I just saw that One Piece which has been running since 1999 stands at 1,004 episodes (of ca. 24 minutes) and is still running. WTF?

[Josquius]

I can't get past chapter 1.
The art is off putting.
But ja. It's crazy popular.

[The Larch]

I just saw that One Piece which has been running since 1999 stands at 1,004 episodes (of ca. 24 minutes) and is still running. WTF?

And the manga in which it is based, which started in 1997, has more than 100 volumes published.

Apparently the creator has the whole thing planned out since the beginning and plans to finish around 2025.

[Syt]

Coming soon to Netflix, for our classicist friends here.

Thermae Romae Novae

The story follows an ancient Roman architect named Lucius, who is having trouble coming up with ideas. One day, he discovers a hidden tunnel underneath a spa that leads him to a modern Japanese bath house. Inspired by the innovations found there, he creates his own spa, Roma Thermae, bringing in the modern ideas to his time.

Each subsequent chapter follows Lucius facing some sort of a problem, just to be swept to Japan once again. He visits modern bath houses, personal baths, waterparks, fertility festivals, and even zoos. There, he always happens to find the inspiration to solve the exact problem he has been tasked with.

[Josquius]

I quite liked the movie version.
The original anime.... I don't remember too much. The 5 minute vignette format doesn't do it for me generally. Saiki K is the only one I like.