/a/ - anime/random

This episode was fucking gold.

The face of a future rapist.

That being said, this has surprisingly many quite pinpointed moments in terms of characterization, relationship dynamics, and … well, lust, of course. Definitely the best romance anime for this season. Not that there is much competition.

Caught up a week ago, but only now posting.
So basically it is a post-apocalyptic wasteland with no seas (and rivers? do they get their water from underground or what, didn't get it) or alternatively just some random dimension with primitive people. Dimension holes open up and not-Japan brings technology and planes.
Years later someone wants to bring the formed city-states under a centralized government and take away your planes, so he can monopolise the dimensional holes.
In many ways it is great, but it many it feels sort of lacking. While there is something going on in the world step by step progressing and it leads to the big confrontations in the end, the main characters' positioning in all of it feels underwhelming. It does also get annoying when almost every character is a big mouthed machine-gun.

Yeah. I suppose I have to thank Iwanami for the 10th episode of Spec Ops Asuka. This guy is probably the best in the industry. The scene with the track with the We Will Rock You motif was 10/10. Heck, the whole episode was fucking great, mainly because of the soundtrack.

>>27304
>The scene with the track with the We Will Rock You motif was 10/10
When?

>>27306
When one of the school friends starts dragging the other after she sprains her ankle. Not anything special as a scene, but I was so thrown off to hear We Will Rock You that I laughed for several minutes.

>>27307
I am pretty sure that track has been all over the anime and really it is nothing like WWRY in any way.

>>27308
Well, that's just not true. Not sure why you'd say it.

I can't believe it's over.
This was a nice little show.

>>27291
>not-Japan
I stand corrected.

Tensei Shitara Slime Datta* ended on two side stories: for Shizu and for Veldora. Kind of anticlimatic. Overall, it was a high-paced romp of fun. If it suffered from something, it's that the high pace did not allow for serious buildups or character development, but who cares. It was still the easiest to watch series for the last half an year. Unassuming, light, and always enjoyable.

*good that I reread this before posting; I had fucking written "Tensei Shitara Ken Deshita". That probably says something.

>>27340
They announced there'd be a second season before cour one had finished, it was already pretty much guaranteed based on the popularity of the source material.

Really liked Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru. Sure it had its bumps, especially in the early episode, but by the end there is no character to not love and the story and all else is just great. It doesn't often feel this fulfilling to finish a story.

Finally got around to watching Egao no Daika's last episode. I didn't hate it as I was expecting this ostensibly idealistic (There is supposedly suffering due to the chrars being disabled.) outcome. I just wish the series was longer so we could better understand the countries, peoples, and motivations involved as to make every choice and consequence more meaningful–especially the deaths–and give us perspectives of the plebeians.
The OP is still awesome thanks to the violin. Gives me goosebumps every time.

This is like a different anime whatsoever. What's more, final episode will be Shaft again!

>>27352
I did hate it. It was one thing for it go for this retarded pacifistic environmentalist mess of an ending, with the latter part being an ass pull from a few episodes before the end, but they didn't even do that well. Stella is provided with literally no reason to actually help Yuuki and just decides to commit high treason for kicks, then gets off with a slap on the wrist because Yuuki said not to be mean to her. The chrars are stopped and the war immediately ends not just with a ceasefire but with the Empire completely giving up all of the land they took from the Kingdom for no reason whatsoever, when they could've just continued and wrapped up the war since it had been established that the only thing keeping the Kingdom holding on was their tech advantage which was now gone. And then despite the whole issue of disabling the chrars being that all their tech is based on it and they'll be taking a blow like as if we all lost electricity tomorrow, everything is fine after a few months and the world appears little worse for wear while the crops are all immediately growing and healthy again.
Egao no Daika is one of the worst shows I've seen in years. It's one thing that it didn't go in the direction I wanted it to (pic related), but it's another that the direction it did go in didn't even make any fucking sense and was as shallow as could possibly be.

The "it's fine for OLs to self-insert as a cat too" anime is over. It was okay. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody except a starved for affection OL, but it was worth it as a time waster.

>>27356
For me, a show is only awful if I feel my time spent watching it is wasted. This was not the case with Egao no Daika despite the shows glaring issues. Perhaps it was curiosity; perhaps I enjoy watching anything with mecha in it. I found it fitting the anime ended with such an optimistic and happy ending. My expectations for any kind of realism were dead.
> It was one thing for it go for this retarded pacifistic environmentalist mess of an ending, with the latter part being an ass pull from a few episodes before the end, but they didn't even do that well.
I think it comes down to only having twelve episodes. They could've used their time more wisely–certainly structuring a better story would've done wonders–but there's only so much you can do with the episode allotment.
>Stella is provided with literally no reason to actually help Yuuki and just decides to commit high treason for kicks
To me, it didn't feel that odd or disjointed. Throughout the show, it was shown she was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the current affairs. Hell, it was weird for her not to commit treason earlier along with the rest of her team.
>because Yuuki said not to be mean to her.
This, however, is something I am in agreement–along with the ceasefire and the precipitous placation. With that said, little was shown of the emperor, and his motives were not sufficiently elucidated. So I could (somewhat) reasonably believe a peaceful resolution and outcome considering the obfuscation of his motives and being.
>And then despite the whole issue of disabling the chrars being that all their tech is based on it and they'll be taking a blow like as if we all lost electricity tomorrow
Assuming the power distribution network isn't an ad-hoc system for chrars, they could've had a backup power generation apparatuses using more traditional energy sources. I think they touched upon that in the last episode.
I'd like some sort of prequel to Egao no Daika.

>>27358
I enjoyed the human interactions and the personal strife more than the cat fussing, and this takes in consideration of the hackneyed characters. The anthropomorphism segments were largely uninteresting, and the last episode was as emotionally engaging as this post.

>>27365
>To me, it didn't feel that odd or disjointed. Throughout the show, it was shown she was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the current affairs. Hell, it was weird for her not to commit treason earlier along with the rest of her team.
She has absolutely no idea why Yuuki is shutting down the chrars beyond Yuuki saying she wants to stop the war. She has no guarantee that Yuuki doesn't have anything else planned, or that the device is even going to do what she says. They made no attempt to tell Stella about the environmental damage the Chrars are causing, and Stella makes no attempt to talk to her squadmates (who could well have fallen into the water and drowned the second their mecha shut down). Stella deciding to just trust Yuuki when they'd never even met before was incredibly contrived.
> they could've had a backup power generation apparatuses using more traditional energy sources. I think they touched upon that in the last episode.
They could've had something like that but they made no attempt to show it in the entire show.

A few of the problems with the show could've been resolved with more episodes and more time to explore the world, but I think the story is just so full of problems from the outset that it doesn't matter how much time they had. Getting more detail on the Empire of Verde would be nice, but I don't think they could come up with any satisfactory explanation for why their doomsday device was left ready to go and unprotected to be hijacked by any three people who know what to do with it.
Hell, Stella's squad is pretty much completely pointless to the actual story here, you could remove them entirely and not a single thing would actually change about the war and the ending. They just exist to sometimes die and for Stella to be sad and then become BFFs with Yuuki for no reason.

>>27356
>Stella is provided with literally no reason to actually help Yuuki
Did you miss the half of the show dedicated to explaining her reasons? By the end it was obvious to her that the imperial government could be blamed for her miserable life and dead friends. She saw how much better off Soleil was and how unnecessary fighting was. Imperial victory wouldn't help her much personally and would lead to her and her friends being mired in an Iraq-like occupation scenario.

She had to choose between endangering the people she wanted to help (such as squadmates and the children) so the government that fucked her over could continue fucking people over, or rolling the dice with an unpredictable foreign plan. Only one option gave her any hope.

>giving up all of the land they took from the Kingdom for no reason whatsoever,
Except for the disarmament of their army (which became vulnerable to guerrillas with small arms), internal revolts putting the government at risk, and the loss of logistic and economic chrars use when they already had supply shortages.

The emperor had to fall back and secure his own territory. The rational thing to do was use protection for Stella as a bargaining chip. It would've been much better if they showed that happening, but what we saw suggests it.

>>27367
The mechs were designed to keep pilots alive after being disabled in battle. Even if it had been a trick to shut down just Imperial chrars, Stella would be OK on a personal level if Yuki would grant amnesty to her and her friends. Trusting Yuki that much was a gamble, but not such an unreasonable one given Yuki's publicly known history and charisma.

Not telling her about the environment was a glaring mistake on Yuki's part. On a narrative level it ensured Stella's decision was for personal reasons, not to save the world, so I think the writer kept her in the dark for that purpose.

>why their doomsday device was left ready to go and unprotected
The empire wanted to weaponize it in the future, but believed it was impossible for current technology to do anything with it. Stella's squad was the protection for that general region.

>Stella's squad is pretty much completely pointless to the actual story
The actual story was about Stella's personal development. Whatever story you were watching wasn't the one they wrote.

>>27370
>Did you miss the half of the show dedicated to explaining her reasons?
Stella being unhappy with the empire does not equate to her being willing to activate a magical doomsday device that her enemy nation's leader is about to use. That's an incredible leap in logic.
>Except for the disarmament of their army (which became vulnerable to guerrillas with small arms)
Just like the Kingdom's army, and as had been noted, the Kingdom's only advantage was a technological one. Without their mecha they were helpless. A cease-fire of some sort makes sense, but returning all the territory and entering a super happy peace time for everyone doesn't. As you say, none of those hypothetical justifications are actually shown.
>The mechs were designed to keep pilots alive after being disabled in battle.
The only evidence at all to suggest this is that we see one's hatch open after it shuts down. What if it landed hatch against the ground? I guess they're just fucked.
> Trusting Yuki that much was a gamble, but not such an unreasonable one given Yuki's publicly known history and charisma.
Sure, if Stella had been on the Kingdom side. But she wasn't, she was on the Empire side, where the propaganda machine was running and painting the Kingdom as their enemy and Yuuki as a selfish ruler who abandoned her countrymen to run away by herself when Harold didn't let her surrender.
>Stella's squad was the protection for that general region.
Stella's squad was assigned there out of the blue for no real reason, despite having been doing various actual important jobs until then. Even if you could argue it was because their leader died, it's still incredibly contrived, even if that is the case.
>The actual story was about Stella's personal development. Whatever story you were watching wasn't the one they wrote.
I was watching a story about Yuuki having a few small hints of personal development but ultimately being an incredibly boring character. Stella's own development was a joke.

The second Imoimo special was the same shit as the first. Somehow when it's not an anime with bad hentai-like production value, but actual bad hentai, the joke factor is lost.


>>27366
>I enjoyed the human interactions and the personal strife more than the cat fussing, and this takes in consideration of the hackneyed characters.
Me too. To be precise, I enjoyed some of the secondary characters more than the cat fussing. The childhood friend and the sister and brother duo.
But the personal strife was overdone. The show would have been really well served by pushing the drama to the subtext and focusing on SoL. But then it wouldn't sell so well with OLs, maybe. Guess niche appeal trumps overall quality in this case.

>>27371
I'm not the anon you're responding to.
>Stella being unhappy with the empire does not equate to her being willing to activate a magical doomsday device that her enemy nation's leader is about to use. That's an incredible leap in logic.
The Kingdom, at that point in Stella's development, is more than a mere antagonist.
>What if it landed hatch against the ground? I guess they're just fucked
Perhaps. There is no such thing as a perfect solution.
>Sure, if Stella had been on the Kingdom side. But she wasn't, she was on the Empire side, where the propaganda machine was running and painting the Kingdom as their enemy and Yuuki as a selfish ruler who abandoned her countrymen to run away by herself when Harold didn't let her surrender.
You're ignoring Stella as an individual. She was disillusioned with the Empire at this point, and she wasn't the only one.
>I was watching a story about Yuuki having a few small hints of personal development but ultimately being an incredibly boring character. Stella's own development was a joke.
It all comes back to there not being enough episodes for this shit. Obviously, every scene cut is a loss of information–especially for this story.

>>27352
>The OP is still awesome thanks to the violin
But the ED is the awesome one. "Waratta watshi suteki desho" gives me goosebumps.
Too bad people didn't want to argue about it in its own thread.

>>27384
It's pretty good, and I too enjoy the spoken parts. I just really like violin flourishes.

That is to say that the spoken words are what the violin is to the OP.

On the topic of Egao no Daika, I disagree that it needed more episodes. Before you ask for more time, you should make the most of what you have, and Egao no Daika didn't. It felt to me like the writers reached the 'kill important people to cause Yuuki's character to grow' item in the checklist and got stuck in it for 10 episodes.

With a cast of this size, you don't need a lot of episodes - in fact the main character's motives and views were largely established, as has been discussed. The loose ends and missing explanations that have been brought up wouldn't require, I think, a lot of time either.

Say, for example, that you drop a short scene somewhere where Stella notices something fishy about the barren fields affair - maybe an old record that shows that fields used to be plenty fertile. Then Yuuki says something about it in their big scene, and it all clicks in Stella's mind. There you go, Stella's motivations just got all that much clearer, and it cost you a minute.

Just to be clear, I'm not shooting down this anime. I do think it had the potential for greatness in it, and am baffled that it fell short of it by so much. An anon elsewhere said that it felt as if the staff had chickened out; I could agree with that.

Kemurikusa was fantastic, I'm very disappointed that nobody here watched it. Basically took the mystery/post-apocalyptic adventure elements from Kemono Friends and repurposed them for an IP where the director had more freedom.
The art direction, framing, and cinematography are brilliant. The battle animation is surprisingly competent as well. Soundtrack is top tier and everything else only gets better as the series goes on. The atmosphere is an A+, and the setting is intriguing and well developed.
The only problems I had were that a handful of scenes feel rushed, and the budget is clearly very low (though they do a great job with what they have).
It is a crime how many people watched the first episode and didn't even bother giving the rest a chance. It's the same prejudice that people had for Kemono Friends except this time even less people like it because there aren't as many waifus.
Overall, I think it's better than KF.

>>27389
Forgot to include an image. Did I mention how this show only gets better?

>>27390
Meanwhile a bunch of you wasted 5 hours on watching Egao no Daika. This is why I always wait for an anime to end before watching it these days.

>>27389
No amount of supposed quality content would get me to sit through another minute of that atrocious CGI.

>>27389
The male character is the most annoying shit ever since Hyouka. Does he get better? I gave it two episodes, but couldn't stand him anymore.

>>27394
I would say that he was easily the most off-putting thing in the early episodes, but I got used to him by some point in the first half of the show.
I think that probably not everyone would like this show even if they stuck with it, but it's very rewarding to people who enjoy a slow burn.

>>27387
You're not wrong. But I'd still like more episodes for lore and the world.

>>27371
>That's an incredible leap in logic.
Similar leaps happen in real history often enough.
>but returning all the territory and entering a super happy peace time for everyone doesn't
To keep the territory, the empire would need to be able to hold it. The "only advantage is technological" assessment relied on the fact that mechs were almost immune to anything less than a formal military unit. Without mechs, militias and terrorists would be effective and reverse the numerical balance. Granted, they didn't show this and they should've shown it.

The hatch issue is another one for the "it's not hard to imagine a solution but a sci-fi/military series should show the details" pile.

>where the propaganda machine was running and painting the Kingdom as their enemy and Yuuki as a selfish ruler
The empire's military was well aware of Yuki's warnings, sportsmanship, and reluctance. She was a celebrity before the war, too. They had seen Soleil from the inside and talked to civilians. Abandoning Harold would just feed into the idea that Yuki had split from her staff and planned something the Soleil military wouldn't like. So would the fact that she was so lightly guarded.

>Even if you could argue it was because their leader died, it's still incredibly contrived
I'll give you that. Owens dying explains going to the rear, but being right at the critical spot was contrived. If the story was written backwards and they focused on Stella's unit just because they were the ones that happened to be there, the writer needed to provide that setup to avoid making it look fake.

>>27389
It did end up being quite good. The latter parts were massively better than the start. What's really impressive is how the director showed he can do it on demand in adverse circumstances. I'd like to see him with proper resources to work with.

The characters ended up growing on me as they developed, especially the ones I was skeptical of to begin with. Ritsu and Rina were great the whole time.

>>27394
Yes, but he goes from "what the fuck were they thinking?" to "he was an OK guy after all, I can live with him." I can't guarantee whether you'll be able to live with him too.

>>27400
>Yes, but he goes from "what the fuck were they thinking?" to "he was an OK guy after all, I can live with him." I can't guarantee whether you'll be able to live with him too.
Frankly, I was half-afraid he was only going to be more and more annoying. I've been wondering for the past month whether I should continue watching it anyway, so I guess I'll give it a couple more episodes.

>>27400
>I'd like to see him with proper resources to work with.
Shinbo with proper resources is actually less fun than Shinbo with money enough only for a .ptt, so I dunno.

>>27401
Luckily I don't think there's anything that got worse over the course of the series.
>>27402
Agreed but I think that Kemurikusa might have an even lower budget than old Shaft and a much smaller staff to boot. They could use some help. The raw talent of Tatsuki and his art/animation directors pretty much save the series.

In retrospect, I should have expected the end of Bermuda Triangle. I guess the screenwriter was told they must end up as idols, and did the minimal possible work for it. It's not like it's a badly written development, either - it's actually quite fine, considering Kanon's overall development. It just sows the seeds for further conflicts, and we will never see the resolution of these conflicts. Definitely not the happy end I expected.

That being said, I still quite love the series. It nailed atmosphere and worldbuilding for me. Exactly the right amount of weird and nonsensical - intrigueing enough, but falling short of annoying. I'm just salty that I won't get a SoL S2. Though, on second thought, timeskip S2 of the five's daily life after they eventually come back to Pastrale would be a 10/10 idea. As long as they give some acknowledgement to the above-mentioned conflicts in flashbacks.

Endro ended with a literal concept eater old god saving the day. AND it was quite decently foreshadowed before that. I don't even. I'm in fucking awe. First the "Let's be fair, not equal" shaftism, then this… I haven't enjoyed anime ends so fucking much in a while. I can't even remember which was the previous such title.

So, Mob Psycho has ended. How did you like it, anon?

>>27419
Definitely changed some things and skipped some things. It is a good anime, but I can't say all changes were for the better. Catching up the manga now. Almost finished. I had stopped back in the days right near the end of this arc. Chapters were very irregular at that point.

>>27418
Endro was a bit odd, a third of the episodes nearly bored me to sleep, a third of them were alright, and a third of them were great. I guess I'd say it felt a bit lacking in direction as to whether it wanted to be a comedy or just simple slice of life. The last episode was definitely a strong finish though.

>>27421
That's exactly why I enjoyed the end so much. I did not expect it to be so good.

What's weirder is that Grimms Notes ALSO ended with an old god saving the day. All aroung "fuck you go play the game" end, but it was an enjoyable series overall.

P.S. Mao-chan-sensei is a miracle of the universe.

>>27422
>P.S. Mao-chan-sensei is a miracle of the universe.
She carried the show.

>>27422
>>27430
I'm still unsure if seeing Mao-chan was worth experiencing Fai, Yuusha, and the princess.

>>27435
I stopped minding Yuusha after a couple of episodes, actually. The problem with pink-haired protagonists is that they are too blunt and in-the-face in the narrative purpose that they fulfill. Yuusha didn't really fulfill any narrative purpose. Which I actually count as good and a subversion.

Also Princess didn't have enough screentime to dampen my overall enjoyment.

Decided to watch Endro, and it was about as good as I expected it to be.
I liked how they subverted the concepts of hero and demon lord but they didn't really do anything else interesting.