I couldn't watch Mai-hime... I explained why in this same thread long ago, but basically, I wasn't expecting the guy who shows up at the start considering this was one of those legendary animes for the yuri community back in the day (or at least, it was hyped a lot and the talk of many forums)...so the shock with reality and the contrast with what I expected was too much for me hahaha

ANYWAY, guess who's getting a new anime? WIXOSS!

https://twitter.com/wixoss_TCG/status/1308242702513782784
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHUikaoEwNU

Kinda sad to see that WIXOSS got an idol anime because idol animes are what works best in the industry. The first two seasons were very refreshing, the plot twist about the whole eternal girl and Mayu was very interesting. The characters were all captivating and they had some cool development. The third and the fourth seasons are the emo and melodramatic versions of season 1 and 2. Then we get an idol version where we get to see some small girls fighting in a concert (?)

But yeah, maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised when the anime is going to come out.

last edited at Sep 22, 2020 1:40PM

Ensel posted:

Oh yeah, the end was very disappointing ! They pulled the worst deus ex machina that ruined all the build up. But I heard that in the blu-ray version, there was an alternative ending.

Meh. I agree Mai-hime was much better than I expected, so that ending felt really out of place with how sunshine and rainbows and power of friendship it was, but then it was kinda explained. iirc the reward for winning the ritual was being given power to recreate world as one desire, so it's not really that far-fetched that Mai would ask for everything to be undone and create happy future for herself. That being said, especially considering the fact that both love interest and younger brother, 2 character you'd normally think would have plot armor, actually died, ending does feel pretty cheap.

Kinda sad to see that WIXOSS got an idol anime because idol animes are what works best in the industry.

The thing about idols is that the public isn't really all that super-hungry for them, but they keep getting pushed because the profit margins for music are absurd. If you see a franchise pivot towards idols it's generally because it's dying and they want to pump more money from the remaining fans

Mai-hime

I remember liking it when I watched it, but that was a while ago. In retrospect, it's one that would have benefited from having come out more recently, since it's flaws are largely things the industry has since moved past

last edited at Sep 22, 2020 8:14PM

We have a new trailer of Adachi to Shimamura centered on Adachi's gay side https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9K7_5xOpT4

I watched the first episode of AdaShima and my cheeks hurt from smiling so much ! But the atmosphere is kinda different from the ln and the manga, it surprised me :0

So I watched first episode of Adachi and Shimamura and I'm liking it so far. Question to people reading mango/light novel. How much first episode covered? Are we going to barely go anywhere in first season? Also wtf is up with astronaut loli?

Also I watched anime adaptation of first arc of Burn The Witch. New manga from author of Bleach. I was surprised that it actually has lesbian character in main cast and it seems like the 2 OTP parings are het and yuri. Kubo did include yuri in Bleach, but it boiled either to comic relief (Chizuru) or was completely unresolved (Sui Feng), so the fact this time it seems to be taken more seriously was really nice. Character introduction was poking fun at her for being a bit yandere-ish, but it never stretched out to her being in love with another girl and in fact the MC she is in love with never rejected her or said she's not into girls and in fact it's clear she cares about her as a friend, so there's clear potential for her to eventually warm up to her. Also for people who did read/watch Bleach, while there's a lot of new concepts, there's also a lot of stuff that's clearly taken from Bleach, which isn't surprising as Kubo did tied it to Bleach making it a spin off, rather than completely new series (how much it makes sense in-universe is another matter).

So I watched first episode of Adachi and Shimamura and I'm liking it so far. Question to people reading mango/light novel. How much first episode covered?

Funnily enough, it was mostly Ch.1 of the LN, only their first meeting isn't part of Ch.1 but was later in the LN but it's not really a big deal since it's go perfectly in this episode.

Are we going to barely go anywhere in first season?

Not so spoilish but spoiler tags anyway I highly doubt we will cover till they go out since they only does so in Vol.5/6 and there is only 12 episodes.

Also wtf is up with astronaut loli?

Spicy surprise.

Right, I forgot. I also watched first episode of Hanyou no Yashahime, the Inuyasha spin-off. It started off interesting by introducing 1 from 3 girls from new main cast, but then spend almost entire episode on the original main cast fighting some generic demon. It was really boring and felt pointless, but I guess the point was to reintroduce/remind them to new/old viewers. Also I'm not sure if I missed it or it'll be relevant later, but I feel like demon itself was entirely irrelevant to the story. Also we're 1 episode in and show already gave me some hardcore Naraku PTSD flashbacks. Some ancient demon that Kikyou sealed just before she sealed Inuyasha was released, they find it and kill it immediately, but turns out fragment of it survived and regained strength somewhere else. So they later found it again and killed it again, only to it escape again. Later suddenly there's many of those demons spawning all over the place and they keep killing them and only then it's explained they're just parts of it and the main body is hidden somewhere. So they force demon to reveal its true form and then they kill it and even purify the land around it. You'd think now it's dead for sure? Nope. Small fragment survived and went to some tree (that I didn't quite understand how important is and I don't remember if it's some reference to original series) and hid there? I'm not sure. So yea, they definitely know what they're doing, since they manage to brought back the worst parts of Inuyasha. Oh and episode ends with other 2 girls from new main cast showing up I guess. I do like Inuyasha's and Kagome's daughter and can't wait when episode will actually focus on them.

last edited at Oct 9, 2020 10:36AM

So I watched first episode of Adachi and Shimamura and I'm liking it so far. Question to people reading mango/light novel. How much first episode covered? Are we going to barely go anywhere in first season? Also wtf is up with astronaut loli?

The first episode covered the first chapter of the manga (moke vers.) and as for the ln, I think it only covered the first and the second chapters.

Also I watched anime adaptation of first arc of Burn The Witch. New manga from author of Bleach. I was surprised that it actually has lesbian character in main cast and it seems like the 2 OTP parings are het and yuri. Kubo did include yuri in Bleach, but it boiled either to comic relief (Chizuru) or was completely unresolved (Sui Feng), so the fact this time it seems to be taken more seriously was really nice. Character introduction was poking fun at her for being a bit yandere-ish, but it never stretched out to her being in love with another girl and in fact the MC she is in love with never rejected her or said she's not into girls and in fact it's clear she cares about her as a friend, so there's clear potential for her to eventually warm up to her. Also for people who did read/watch Bleach, while there's a lot of new concepts, there's also a lot of stuff that's clearly taken from Bleach, which isn't surprising as Kubo did tied it to Bleach making it a spin off, rather than completely new series (how much it makes sense in-universe is another matter).

Oh yeah, the lesbian yandere character (I forgot her name) was quite surprising. When they introduced her first, I was scared they'll portray her as the lesbian typical "don't-touch-my-oneesama" side character but she turned out fine and her relationship with the mc was cute tbh ! I mean I hope it won't be as frustrating as the Sui Feng and Yoruichi pairing (still mad they aren't canon).

Honestly I didn't see the connection between Bleach and Burn the Witch, beside the mention of soul society and I feel like the soul society in BTW doesn't have the same concept than the soul society in Bleach.

Ensel posted:

Honestly I didn't see the connection between Bleach and Burn the Witch, beside the mention of soul society and I feel like the soul society in BTW doesn't have the same concept than the soul society in Bleach.

I suppose Front London and Reverse London is quite different than original Soul Society, but I was thinking mostly of magic that's clearly based on Kidou with saying the general name (idk if there's offensive and defensive separation like with Kidou) and then spell's number. Also higher ups being different powerful characters that clearly each one represents some kind of different faction was very reminiscence of divisions captains. I mean, IMO tying it to Bleach is more disadvantage than advantage and worked more as a funny gag in one-shot rather than something you want to include into your new series, if you want to go crazy and not care about canon and continuity (which to be fair, seems like Kubo never really care that much about anyway, be it Bleach itself or how Western Branch existence makes sense in Bleach universe as a whole). So while you can see some clear influences and concepts borrowed from Bleach, I agree it still has many new ideas.

last edited at Oct 9, 2020 10:55AM

So episode 2 of Yashahime was good. They really should have just started anime there.

last edited at Oct 10, 2020 5:10PM

Okay, this season in yuri:

Adachi and Shimamura is a slice-of-life yuri romance. Mostly pretty solid as an anime; well-directed, maintains much of the feel of the novels. Leans more to the surreal side in order to facilitate the story's introspective nature, but that actually kinda helps when Yashiro is running around. Budget could be higher, but it doesn't exactly need a huge one. The big sticking point I've seen is that the camera work (at least in the first episode) is pretty horny. I feel like the manga adaptations desexualized the series, but this is going a bit far in the other direction. Not going to stop me from watching it, though

Assault Lily Bouquet is a mildly trashy fighting girls series that's decided to pander to yuri otaku. It's actually pretty well-made? Feels like the staff was given a really generic story and set of characters to work with, but decided that they were going to make the best damn generic trash that they could. I've been enjoying it

Dropout Idol Fruit Tart is a Kirara series. It's okay. No signs of yuri yet, but the OP does slightly hint at Blue x Pink

GochiUsa is back. Probably more worth your time than the other Kirara series

Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear is boring. Might have yuri later on, but why would you want to watch it that far? Similar comments apply to Maesetsu

Nijigasaki is a bit weaker than the other Love Live seasons, but that still leaves it at 'good'. Seems pretty gay so far, though I'm not sure if it'll be romantic the way Sunshine was

Wandering Witch had some eyebrow-raising moments in episode 2, but who knows if the relevant character will ever show up again. The show itself is objectively very well-made, but I personally haven't been able to really click with it

Warlords Of Sigrdrifa had one of the episode previews say that one of the girls loves one of the others, but this isn't apparent in the story itself. Which is kind of representative of the show's big problem? None of the characters have any real dynamics with the others. It's pretty good when it's not trying to do cute girl antics, but it spends a lot of time on cute girl antics

Yashahime is okay, now that it's on the main story. Very much in the style of late 90s shounen. No yuri apparent at the moment, but I expect we'll be seeing twincest shipping. Towa is explicitly gender-nonconforming, which is interesting

I can't speak to Iwa-Kakeru or Strike Witches

Outside of yuri stuff, the big new shows this season look to be Akudama Drive, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle

^Pretty good summary, overall.

I was pretty surprised by how little I liked the yuri in Assault Lily Bouquet, despite the fact that the show is explicitly bursting at the seams with it. I think it might be because the characters are so incredibly generic and tropey that at this point, they don't feel like women so much as anime archetypes with boobs and thighs stapled on.

I personally gravitated to yuri works because I found the characterization and exploration of feelings in wlw works much more profound and engaging than in het stuff (on average), so it's rather disappointing to see shows that explicitly use yuri to bait horny otaku rather than focusing on the characters themselves. Assault Lily is particularly bad with this, because the show's reason for being yuri seems to be primarily 'girl on girl sex is hot'. It feels pandering in a way that I haven't ever seen before, and I think this is because the show is basically your standard, Classroom of the Elite style harem battle academy show, but with a female protagonist.

At this point, it just feels like the same people who produced thousands and thousands of soulless harem shows with cardboard protagonists and mindless waifubait harem-ettes have realized that they can appeal to otaku even more if they replace the self-insert protagonist with yet another generic girl that they can also fap to. It reminds me of a panel from a series I saw some time ago, which basically stated that yuri is the final step in the evolution of the harem show, because every obstacle to the gratification of the straight male has been erased. At this point, despite there being an all-female cast, it feels like this show couldn't care less about the women in it as individuals, and is more invested in marketing them as products for a gacha game (and considering that the franchise was originally a toy line, this makes sense).

I get that a lot of people will still love ALB because it's gay, and I think it's fine to appreciate that, but it honestly makes me feel cheated in terms of just how much it panders to a very specific brand of otaku. Again, I'm not saying that fanservicey yuri written by men is universally bad (Gunbured Sisters, for instance, is a great example of this kind of series done right). I just feel like the combination of bad writing, extreme waifubait and gacha-game tier character objectification creates an unbearable level of trashiness.

Adachi and Shimamura anime seems to be moving fast. Seems to be catching up to the manga by episode 3? Anyway it sure was nice to see Adachi blushing and flustered like the useless lesbian that she is.

Adachi and Shimamura anime seems to be moving fast. Seems to be catching up to the manga by episode 3?

No? The anime is about 2/3rds of the way through the 1st volume of the LNs, and will presumably finish it next episode. The manga is about a third of the way through 3rd volume

Wow, episode 2 of Adachi and Shimamura was so gay. Also damn Adachi is such gay mess, I love it. I relate to her so much.

Also episode 3 of Yashahime was a bit slow, but so far it's pretty nice.

Wow Munou na Nana (Talentless Nana) is amazing. Bait and switch in first episode is easily of Madoka proportions. There's no yuri, but anyone who wants to watch something fresh (and don't mind dark show) should definitely give it a shot. I'm enjoying it a lot so far.

I was so shocked after Majo no Tabitabi third episode, I wasn't expecting the anime to have such dark undertones. I was kinda depressed after the episode :(

I was so shocked after Majo no Tabitabi third episode, I wasn't expecting the anime to have such dark undertones. I was kinda depressed after the episode :(

I heard great things about Majo no Tabitabi and read the LN before the anime started airing, but it was honestly kinda disappointing. The LN is undeniably inspired by Kino's Journey and takes a lot from it in terms of structure, pacing and themes, but at times, it feels like it has no identity of its own? For one, Kino's Journey talks about societal issues and uses allegory brilliantly, while Majo no Tabitabi just uses each 'land' as a stage for a story about random, one-off characters who don't have any depth or charisma and basically just exposit about stuff for a couple of pages before Elaina moves on.

The wholesome parts are just vaguely boring because you have no reason to care about the characters, and the edgy parts are hilariously off-key, predictably written, tonally dissonant and generally just so tryhard and melodramatic that you wonder if Gen Urobutchi was called in to help with them. Elaina's character is incredibly inconsistent, and bounces from 'offbrand Kino' to 'offbrand Marisa' to literally someone who stands by and wearily muses about man's inhumanity to man instead of using her powers to help the folks getting butchered before her eyes.

Kino's journey got neutrality right because Kino was fundamentally unable to change anything in the societies they encountered, and focused much more on just surviving the general insanity. Elaina is apparently super-powerful, but still does nothing, which makes her come off as a hypocrite for being critical of these issues in the first place. You can tell that the author just really wanted to write some extremely edgy bullshit and made up silly reasons for his superpowered protagonist to not intervene. And this isn't a one-off issue- the entire novel seems to be putting forth some kind of ideology that justifies being neutral and not interfering in local affairs, but the whole thing just makes Elaina look like a person who's privelieged enough to warp reality, but refuses to do so because it would require her to get off her ass.

Some people say that these issues get ironed out in further volumes, others say that they get worse, but considering how immensely the novel was hyped up as some kind of masterpiece, I ended up disappointed regardless.

I gave up Elaina after the third episode but kinda for the opposite reason. I'm going to need more than Kino's preachy allegory-of-the-week. If she really turns out to be a bit of a jerk, ie. they wrote her like that and it'll become a plot point and it's not just an illusion rising out of overinterpreting a torrent of plotholes and dialogue off-tones, that might be the ticket that gets me to undrop the series.

Right now it's just AdaShima for this season.

last edited at Oct 24, 2020 10:30AM

The wholesome parts are just vaguely boring because you have no reason to care about the characters, and the edgy parts are hilariously off-key, predictably written, tonally dissonant and generally just so tryhard and melodramatic that you wonder if Gen Urobutchi was called in to help with them.

1) This was me watching Violet Evergarden. I'm so curious about this Tabi show now, I might have to check it out when it's finished!

2) Don't hate on the butcher :v

last edited at Oct 24, 2020 5:24PM

2) Don't hate on the butcher :v

This is a segment from Fate Zero that perfectly encapsulates Urobuchi's approach to writing:

Emiya Kiritsugu’s right hand continued its work of writing while his left hand mechanically shoveled his nutrition – hamburgers from a fast food restaurant he bought while investigating – into his mouth. For nine years, Emiya Kiritsugu had eaten at the table of the Einzberns, who were merely a hair removed from royalty themselves. He had grown tired of the cuisine. This fast food, filled with the sense of slaughter, was more suited to his tastes. Being able to eat without interrupting one’s words or thoughts was better than anything, no matter how you looked at it.

I will say nothing more.

This is a segment from Fate Zero that perfectly encapsulates Urobuchi's approach to writing:

Emiya Kiritsugu’s right hand continued its work of writing while his left hand mechanically shoveled his nutrition – hamburgers from a fast food restaurant he bought while investigating – into his mouth. For nine years, Emiya Kiritsugu had eaten at the table of the Einzberns, who were merely a hair removed from royalty themselves. He had grown tired of the cuisine. This fast food, filled with the sense of slaughter, was more suited to his tastes. Being able to eat without interrupting one’s words or thoughts was better than anything, no matter how you looked at it.

I will say nothing more.

It's actually amazing how searchable this text is.

Oh well, I'm really enjoying Majo no Tabitabi. I find Elaina to be a really fascinating character, she only helps people if either a) she likes them or b) she get's something out of it. And the criteria for her liking someone is really messed up if we look at her bias towards witches. Like how she puts up with the way Flan treats her for so long before calling her out. Or the fact that she goes out of her way to help Saya train to become a witch despite having more important matters to worry about.

If you take these factors into account it becomes understandable why she wouldn't help Nino in episode 3 (with the flower field there really was nothing she could do). Helping Nino would require carrying her around for hours, possibly days, looking for an orphanage or shelter that'll take her in. And she's just not willing to spend that much effort on someone who isn't a witch.

Ochikobore Fruit Tart is currently anime of the season and it'll be hard for anything to top it.

Elaina and Adashima get really gay until much after the anime is over for both, and the Assault Lily birthday hug in episode 5 was marvelous but they're gonna need something much stronger if they want to surpass the tarts.