What are you reading/watching? AKA Anime/Manga General

[Skull]

Yugioh R also has Duwang-style scans if you prefer that to Viz, but those only cover half the manga iirc.

Nah, I powered through and finished the whole thing so I'm good.

Something else I forgot to mention was that I like how Konami have been going back and putting some of the cards from this spin-off into the TCG in recent years. I did not realise that one of my favourite Machine archetypes - the "Machina" monsters were actually from this manga. I would really like to see Gekko's "Elf" archetype be made into real cards as well...partially because they're cool but also because I wanna see how the ENG card text would handle the iconic "Elf Swordsman" having been translated into "Celtic Guardian" for decades.

[Rafflesiac]

This Chainsaw Man chapter my fucking sides.

- - - Updated - - -

Just perfect. Can't wait for the next chapter.

[LegalLoliLover]

TFW, in the Seraph of the End manga, the badass threat, "for every human that disobeys, I'll kill 1000", isn't really viable because you kind of need them for food.

[Laserman]

Tiger & Bunny Season 2 Part 2 Episode 22:

Spoiler:

So Ouroboros had a guy on the inside of the prison kill everyone and give Gregory access to prisoners. By putting them to sleep, he was able to use his power on them and make them rampage.

The prison is cut off from the city by a bridge, and the police were having trouble keep them back until the heroes arrived with Hero TV back as well. But of course, instead of listening to them about Gregory, they stupidly try to attack the heroes too.

A bunch of familiar criminals have gone crazy including the crystal guy, the one that can switch places with people from the first movie, the one that can shrink thing, the one with magnetism powers and the old man from the second movie, and Edward, Origami's friend, who almost made it to the city before they stopped him.

Blue Rose and Golden Ryan managed to make it inside the prison where they found Gregory, but he wasn't alone.

He had L.L Auden, the rogue hero who's been mentioned plenty of times throughout this season, by his side.

At the end, it's revealed the lady from Ouroboros has taken control of the mayor's body and is planning on killing Little Aurora.

They planned on all the chaos brining Little Aurora to Sternbild in the first place, but what they do gain from her death?

[R.Lock]

I'm not sure how Shine Post could go ham with animation one moment, then go super cheapo mode the very next second.

3.5/5, obligatory fuck Konami.

[bassgs435]

Vandread done.
Lots of fun. I love how they did the premise of men and women learning to coexist after living in different planets, pretty good fights despite the CGI, and the cast are pretty fun (Meia and BC best girls). Lots of good development too. Robots were also cool

[Rafflesiac]

I finally got around to watching Cyberpunk Edgerunners. Good stuff. Trigger really killed it with the vibes, whether that's the over-the-top gore, the grungy despair and poverty, the callousness of capitalism, the crass humor, or the surprisingly horny and often unguarded nudity. It's nice to see some of their hallmarks too, with the sunglasses and the faceoff in episode 10.

Spoiler:

[As you'd expect, it ends in horrific misery. Lucy makes it to the moon at the low, low cost of literally everything in her life. Yeah! It was awful watching David carve himself into pieces, even losing his arms and legs, just to get a place in life. He deserved better, but he wasn't able to envision it. David couldn't do it.

Well, if you look at him as just another legend, then he got Lucy out of there, so I guess he did.]

[bassgs435]

Last Exile done
Pretty good show. Loved the world building and the look of the setting and tech. Pretty great characters all around (My favourites being Dio and Alex. Delphine was an effective and threatening villain too). Pretty good air combat sequences despite the CG, as well

[Skull]

Opening Narration: Once upon a time, there was a man who died. The last story he was working on was about a brave and handsome prince who vanquishes a crafty raven. But now, it seems their battle will go on for eternity.
“I’m sick and tired of this!” cried the raven. “I’m sick and tired of this!” cried the prince as well.
The raven escaped from the pages of the story, and the prince pursued the fell creature. In the end, the prince took out his own heart and sealed the raven away by using a forbidden power. Just then, a murmur came from somewhere - “This is great!” said the old man who was supposed to have died...

So yeah, finished binge watching the anime "Princess Tutu", the brain child of Ikuko Itoh - famous for her work on the Sailor Moon anime and while it might seem on the surface to be yet another Magical Girl anime, the fact that several key episodes were written by Chiaki J Konaka should tell you that there's a lot more going on than first glance.

Long winded spoiler ramble

I was a little wary at how well combining Ballet with the Magical Girl genre would work, but you can tell the passion for both ballet and fairy tales that oozes out of the production. For instance, the episode titles are double layered with the German being either a ballet, fairy tale or a piece of classical music that thematically corresponds to the episode, whereas the Japanese "translation" is often a more literal description of what happens in the episode so like the fifth episode is "On the Eve of the Fire Festival -

Pictures at an Exhibition

Bilder einer Ausstellung

:

The Catacombs

Die Katakomben

". Similarly the OST is caked with classical music to the point where subtracting the OP and ED, I think there's only two or three non-classical tracks on a list of about forty songs which really gives the show a different feel then if they had just occasionally thrown in a few classical pieces which might have come across as pretentious.

People say that this show is a deconstruction of the Sailor Moon aesthetic, but I'm not sure I would agree with that as it's honestly only marginally a Magical Girl show, instead I'd say it's more accurate to call it a deconstruction of the idea of fairy tales, what given the characters becoming blatantly aware of the fact that they're in a story and them rebelling against the "roles" assigned to them by the author Drosselmeyer. Speaking of the man, his snarky Greek Chorus from outside the story reminded me of something like the Meta-Characters from Umineko and how they would have their own parallel plot to the characters on the game board. The "deconstruction" aspect comes in from stuff like how despite the protagonist Duck being a reference to the Ugly Duckling, the message of the anime is to be true to yourself and she ultimately gives up being Princess Tutu (the Swan Princess) and goes back to being Duck.

Something I have to bring up is how this anime really nailed the episode structure. At first it seems like a typical "enemy of the week" format where Tutu meets a person being afflicted by a shard of the Prince's heart that got stuck in their body and retrieves it for Mytho. But as things progress and you start to realize some incredible foreshadowing was sprinkled in for later events, which combined with the gradual character growth as the heroes interact with each other, makes you realize that not a single episode can be removed without drastically affecting the story. It's this kind of super tight script writing that makes me lament other shows like "Digimon: Ghost Game" that I'm also currently watching that has 60+ episodes and most of them are pointless filler.

So yeah, a criminally underrated anime that I would implore more people to check out, whether they care for the Magical Girl genre or not.

[LegalLoliLover]

Comparatively watching the older Guyver II OVA and the newer Guyver series, and I noticed something annoying, back in the old days, where it was harder to get anime, dubbing companies often cut out scenes deemed "inappropriate". Nowadays, when anime can easily be accessed online, a remake of that same anime has those scenes censored even in the JP version. Of course, I understand that the original was an OVA, and the series was on TV. But unlike Bastard, where the slime nuclei actually make things kinkier where it makes the slime looks more like a living thing, in Guyver, we go from complete nudity to mildly showing underwear. And before you tell me to just "go watch hentai", for some reason, to me, nonsexual nudity is hotter than straight up sex. And yes, I know that the writer probably put nudity in to arouse the viewer, so when I say "nonsexual", I am more referring to the feelings of the in-story characters.

[Magical Biche]

Okay what the hell was Adolescence of Utena even about? I like symbolism to tell stories, but that was way too much. I finished the series maybe two weeks ago, and I didn't get anything. I was under the impression it was kind of a sequel, and it seems many people also thought that. Like, a different world sequel where Anthy would have kept some developpment from the series or something. Either way, it was just not entertaining nor thought provoking, the only real draw is that it was animated better than the series. I enjoyed many parts of Utena, but the movie was just too obscure.

It was so weird that I kept looking for symbolism for a good half of the episode of Non Non Biyori I watched right after...

[RoydGolden]

Based Ikuhara: "I just want to write a girl turning into a car."

[Magical Biche]

Based Ikuhara: "I just want to write a girl turning into a car."

There's clearly a weird metaphor here, but I don't like rewatching anime, so the rewatch will have to wait. And I like it even less when I didn't like the anime. Now I just have to finish Non Non Biyori and I can start watching something on my drop list so I can clear it one day (there's only like 10 animes there, but one of them is Fairy Tail...)

[Mattias]

Based Ikuhara: "I just want to write a girl turning into a car."

I'm 90% sure it's only in there because he had a friend tell him "You got to treat your car like you treat your woman", and he just made a Car=Woman connection.

[Rafflesiac]

Fantastic chapter. I can't wait for the next one. Read Ranger Reject, kids.

[Laserman]

Tiger & Bunny Season 2 Part 2 Episode 23:

Spoiler:

10 years into his prison sentence made L.L. Auden go crazy and think he actually was a superhero. Using that, Gregory has him attacking the heroes, and stole a police robot for himself. First Golden Ryan and Blue Rose, and then Fire Emblem and Sky High, only then to go after Dragon Kid and Magical Cat. That's when it's revealed that unlike Kotetsu and Barnaby's Hundred Power, he only needs a minute to recover before he can use his again. I don't know how they're supposed to beat him now.

While that's going on, Ouroboros is going on with their plan to kill Little Aurora. Mattia realized that the mayor was being controlled by the fact that he was using his left hand, rather than his right, and by seeing that the mayor's eyes glowed yellow.
With that warning Kotetsu rushed over to the meeting area to stop the assassination, leaving Barnaby and Subaru to deal with L.L Auden who beat Origami Cyclone and Rock Bison earlier.

Right as she about to be shot, Lunatic appeared with Kotetsu right behind him. In the chaos, that woman managed to take control of Lunatic and use his body to chase after the fleeing Little Aurora.

I like how Saito said that Kotetsu's improved with how he moves since he has to compensate for only being able to use his power for a minute.

And now once again, he's getting blasted by Lunatic's flames, with Barnaby rushing to help him.

I just knew there was no way that Thomas was just going to sit out of this fight. He couldn't just not see the man that he admired so much.

This was such a great episode, but there's only two left. I wonder if they'll even find out that Ouroboros is behind all of this?

[Maedhros]

I'm 90% sure it's only in there because he had a friend tell him "You got to treat your car like you treat your woman", and he just made a Car=Woman connection.

I always figured he was just taking the "Utena is a vehicle for Anthy to escape" thing super literally.

[Mattias]

That works too.

Knowing Japan the pun is probably the way to go.

[Magical Biche]

Opening Narration: Once upon a time, there was a man who died. The last story he was working on was about a brave and handsome prince who vanquishes a crafty raven. But now, it seems their battle will go on for eternity.
“I’m sick and tired of this!” cried the raven. “I’m sick and tired of this!” cried the prince as well.
The raven escaped from the pages of the story, and the prince pursued the fell creature. In the end, the prince took out his own heart and sealed the raven away by using a forbidden power. Just then, a murmur came from somewhere - “This is great!” said the old man who was supposed to have died...

So yeah, finished binge watching the anime "Princess Tutu", the brain child of Ikuko Itoh - famous for her work on the Sailor Moon anime and while it might seem on the surface to be yet another Magical Girl anime, the fact that several key episodes were written by Chiaki J Konaka should tell you that there's a lot more going on than first glance.

Long winded spoiler ramble

I was a little wary at how well combining Ballet with the Magical Girl genre would work, but you can tell the passion for both ballet and fairy tales that oozes out of the production. For instance, the episode titles are double layered with the German being either a ballet, fairy tale or a piece of classical music that thematically corresponds to the episode, whereas the Japanese "translation" is often a more literal description of what happens in the episode so like the fifth episode is "On the Eve of the Fire Festival -

Pictures at an Exhibition

Bilder einer Ausstellung

:

The Catacombs

Die Katakomben

". Similarly the OST is caked with classical music to the point where subtracting the OP and ED, I think there's only two or three non-classical tracks on a list of about forty songs which really gives the show a different feel then if they had just occasionally thrown in a few classical pieces which might have come across as pretentious.

People say that this show is a deconstruction of the Sailor Moon aesthetic, but I'm not sure I would agree with that as it's honestly only marginally a Magical Girl show, instead I'd say it's more accurate to call it a deconstruction of the idea of fairy tales, what given the characters becoming blatantly aware of the fact that they're in a story and them rebelling against the "roles" assigned to them by the author Drosselmeyer. Speaking of the man, his snarky Greek Chorus from outside the story reminded me of something like the Meta-Characters from Umineko and how they would have their own parallel plot to the characters on the game board. The "deconstruction" aspect comes in from stuff like how despite the protagonist Duck being a reference to the Ugly Duckling, the message of the anime is to be true to yourself and she ultimately gives up being Princess Tutu (the Swan Princess) and goes back to being Duck.

Something I have to bring up is how this anime really nailed the episode structure. At first it seems like a typical "enemy of the week" format where Tutu meets a person being afflicted by a shard of the Prince's heart that got stuck in their body and retrieves it for Mytho. But as things progress and you start to realize some incredible foreshadowing was sprinkled in for later events, which combined with the gradual character growth as the heroes interact with each other, makes you realize that not a single episode can be removed without drastically affecting the story. It's this kind of super tight script writing that makes me lament other shows like "Digimon: Ghost Game" that I'm also currently watching that has 60+ episodes and most of them are pointless filler.

So yeah, a criminally underrated anime that I would implore more people to check out, whether they care for the Magical Girl genre or not.

Oh yes, more Princess Tutu love! The ending was freaking heartwrenching, but satisfying. I do agree with your rant in spoilers.

Spoiler:

It really is a fairy tale more than it is a magical girl. The real magical girl deconstruction came with Madoka, I would say. There definitely are magical girl elements, but they're not as important as they are in Madoka.

[Laserman]

Tiger & Bunny Season 2 Part 2 Episode 24:

Spoiler:

Not him... Anyone but him... That evil bastard.