Fall 2018 Anime Season
September 9, 2018 12:26 PM - Subscribe

Time for another season of new shows for the upcoming Fall season.

New anichart is up with some interesting series.
posted by chrono_rabbit (54 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
My pickups for the season:

DOUBLE DECKER! Doug & Kirill
Hora, Mimi ga Mieteru yo!
Tsurune: Kazemai Koukou Kyuudou-bu
Jingai-san no Yome

I just love cats.
posted by chrono_rabbit at 12:29 PM on September 9, 2018 [2 favorites]


I was very disappointed in the Summer season.

But! A new season of Thunderbolt Fantasy is coming! Insane costumes! Characters with personality disorders! Ridiculous fighting! Non-moving lips! Names like Screaming Phoenix Killer! Tons of style and lovely dry humor.

Hope it winds up on a service that I subscribe to, which would be Crunchy or Amazon.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 11:56 AM on September 17, 2018


Wow I've never heard of Thunderbolt Fantasy and it looks really wild. What an interesting style.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:43 PM on September 17, 2018


I can't recommend Thunderbolt Fantasy highly enough. There's a 12-episode TV series and a feature length movie. Watch the first season series before anything else, because the movie presumes familiarity with characters from the series.
posted by ardgedee at 5:29 PM on September 17, 2018


The summer season had a few high points. Cells At Work was really out there. Isekai Izekaya was a well-produced good food-oriented series. There were a lot of shows my eyes just glazed over, but that's normal; I don't have a lot of patience for most standard anime settings involving high school romances or other-world power fantasies.
posted by ardgedee at 5:33 PM on September 17, 2018


Cells at Work has been a lot of fun, and Banana Fish has already ripped my heart out and stomped on it multiple times. Other than that, most of what's been good this summer for me--I mean, I'm still watching Harukana Receive, but I will not try to argue anything about it being GOOD--has been continuing stuff, so My Hero Academia and Working Buddies.

Getting into fall, I feel like I've got a lot of things I want to look at provisionally but I'm not sure what I expect of them? Two boys' sports shows--I'm skipping the sumo--and a few shows about cute girls that I don't actually expect to be good but apparently I am trash for anything with lesbian implications, and Bloom Into You which is actual yuri and looks super sweet so we'll see how it goes. But it won't surprise me if I drop 3/4 of this stuff after a few episodes? It's hard to believe Banana Fish still has another cour to go, so I'm sure that's going to be amazing and miserable. I don't think on the whole that I'm going to be bored or anything.
posted by Sequence at 9:46 AM on September 18, 2018


I'm very excited for Double Decker. The cat joke in the first episode won me over--I knew what they were going to do, and then they did it and I laughed.
posted by betweenthebars at 12:56 PM on September 18, 2018


Did anyone see the most recent episode of Cells at Work (Hemorrhagic Shock)? We were all sitting in stunned silence as the credits rolled.
posted by mogget at 11:55 AM on September 24, 2018


The second part just came out, so no spoilers. The first part was pretty dark, even for an anime that manages to be pretty easy-going about horrible things going on in the body.
posted by ardgedee at 6:05 PM on September 24, 2018


Wow. I just watched the first episode of Zombieland Saga, and it's... not what you'd think. It's not even what you'd think from watching the first four or five minutes of it. If you don't like zombies, or horror, or shows about 'idols'--as I don't--you might like this show. As I do. Just as Madoka Magica gave rise to the 'give it three episodes before you make up your mind' rule, viewers of this show are encouraged to give it ten minutes.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 12:18 PM on October 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


Zombieland Saga is a gift. Mamoru Miyano's entire career has been leading up to this moment, and he is chewing the scenery hard, but... well, a little biting never hurt anybody?

I am also absolutely thrilled by Run with the Wind, which is looking a lot like the best parts of Haikyuu transplanted into a college track team.

If these were the only two things I got to see this season, I would still think this season's looking damn good.
posted by Sequence at 9:46 PM on October 4, 2018


There's also a short-format show called Jingai-san no Yome, which is about a high school kid who is called out of class and notified that he's been... placed in an arranged marriage.. with... a Whatsit? A youkai? A cryptid? A creature that looks like a yeti, or a skinny Totoro with a bonnet, or Cousin It... or something? His reaction seems to be mild surprise. The blurb suggests that he decides he's okay with it because the creature is fluffy. It looks like there's a girl who makes a big show of not being interested and looking out the window when this kid comes to class, so I assume she's got a crush on him and is gonna be pissed when he ends up in a successful romantic relationship with a... something. Anyway, the episodes are only three minutes long, they spent two minutes on the opening and closing music, and there's almost nothing to go on, but I found it terribly intriguing. It's like they decided to do a gender-reversed Bride Of The Ancient Magus, only he's a Bride Of The Ancient Whatsit. I don't even know whether I can recommend it yet, but if it turns out to be terrible, it can only be a waste of so much of your time...
posted by Sing Or Swim at 8:51 AM on October 6, 2018


>a little biting never hurt anybody?

"Are you stupid?"

It's worth noting that the Master Of Ceremonies is the voice actor who does the lead character, Okabe, in Steins;Gate. He's doing his Hououin Kyouma voice here, and it really adds something. I hate to oversell anything, because it's easier to enjoy these things with modest expectations; that said, this show is utterly glorious and objectively the best thing that has ever happened.

Edit: yeah, Mamoru Miyano, like you said. Sorry, little slow on the uptake...
posted by Sing Or Swim at 8:53 AM on October 6, 2018


Also--at the risk of monopolizing the conversation--there's apparently a thing coming out this season called "Skull Face Bookseller Honda-san." All I know about it is that that's the title, and it looks like this. I am cautiously optimistic.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 10:02 AM on October 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


Jingai-san no Yome: I have to say it's a good reason for marriage as any and it does look fluffy as heck.
posted by chrono_rabbit at 1:59 PM on October 6, 2018


I enjoyed every moment of the first episode of Release the Spyce.
posted by RobotHero at 2:49 PM on October 6, 2018


Sooo....

anti recommendations time.

Goblin Slayer is about a guy who slays goblins and is introduced by saving the last remaining member of a party that was a bit too confident in their abilities to kill goblins. There's one other survivor, but she's raped by the goblins (not shown though the buildup to it is lingered over lovingly). In general, the goblins are portrayed with the worst kind of stereotypes about "savages" and our hero isn't too bothered with even killing the children.

Uchi no Maid ga Uzasugiru! is offensive in a more simpler matter: a pedo maid gets to care for a cute little blonde girl because sexual assault is hilarious.

Dakaretai Otoko 1 I Ni Odosarete Imasu: yaoi show which in itself is not a problem, but it has the obligatory near rape in its first episode, so I noped out quickly.

Not offensive, just dull:

Gakuen Basara: take all the people you know from the Warring States period and let them fight over a student council election, introduce everybody in episode 1 without explenation and try to be funny be letting them shout at each other.

Bakumatsu: the MAL synopsis is a lie. Set in the period just after Commodore Perry opened up Japan, you got your fictionalised actually existed historical figures looking much hotter than they did in reality, though strangely nippleless, as they get transported to an alternate steampunk Japan. Sounds good, but the execution fell completely flat to me.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:21 PM on October 6, 2018


So what did you enjoy so far Martin?

Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken: guy gets stabbed to death, reincarnates as a slime in a fantasy world, befriends a tsundere dragon. I've read the manga version of this which was decent for a trapped in fantasyland story and the first episode was done rather nicely.

Double Decker! Doug & Kirill is a Tiger & Bunny spinoff (but you don't need to know anything about that) about a group of very gay cops fighting people with artificial drug induced super powers.

Kaze Ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru: Production I.G show about a group of college students tricked into running the Hakone relay marathon.

Hinomaru Sumo: a boy too short for sumo really wants to be a sumo wrestler. Looks a bit like a certain series about a boy too short for volleyball...

Tonari No Kyuuketsuki San: girl who's really into dolls befriends a vampire who really looks like a living doll

Yagate Kimi Ni Naru/Bloom into You: a slow burn romance story about a possibly asexual girl who may develop feelings for her cool senpai on the student council who herself has proclaimed not to be interested in romance.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Vento Aureo: it's JOJO! What more do you want?

A Certain Magical Index III: why has nobody licensed this yet?
posted by MartinWisse at 4:34 PM on October 6, 2018


>Goblin Slayer is about a guy who slays goblins

...not to be confused with Ninja Slayer. I'll see myself out.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 5:12 PM on October 6, 2018


"Former soldier who becomes a maid" is such an appealing character concept to me that I'm outright angry that someone ruined it.

I've been reading reviews here: https://www.animefeminist.com/fall-2018-premiere-reviews/

Stuff I've seen and enjoyed: Run with the Wind, Release the Spice, very different tones but I enjoyed both. Zombieland Saga.

The vampire girl might stick around as a workout show, which just needs to be good enough to keep me entertained while I'm working out.

I watched the one about space fishing because the premise was space fishing but won't bother with a second episode.
posted by RobotHero at 6:55 PM on October 6, 2018


So I just watched Dragon Pilot, which I guess is technically a winter 2018 series but just came out on Netflix a few weeks ago, and I have thoughts.

If you haven't heard of it, this is a dragon vore anime. Turns out dragons have been Japan's secret weapon for centuries, and exclusively female attractive pilots control them by striking suggestive poses in their dragon tummy after being swallowed whole.

But the art is super cute! It's all done with a cartoony style, which balances the fact that nearly all the characters are part of the Japanese military (the fact the pilots aren't highschoolers is a nice plus). I appreciated the fact that despite being centered on the military there's really no fighting or death. The dragons are, for whatever reason, disguised as military jets but never go into combat.

You may also be unsurprised to learn that the sexual politics of this dragon vore anime are questionable. There's the standard sort of patriarchal misogynistic stuff you can find in Anime, there's a few "Sexual harassment!" jokes played off as "Boys will be boys." But then it's explained that the bond between dragon and pilot can be broken if the pilot has a human relationship, so at one point the higher ups at Dragon Command arrange for the pilots to have traumatic romatic experiences with their male collegues to encourage them to swear off love entirely. This is especially weird given that apart from an event that happens every 80 years or so they really don't need the dragons to have a pilot. One of the pilots resents her dragon because she wanted to be an actual fighter pilot and the best she could do was dragon pilot. This seemed weird to me until I looked it up and apparently the first Japanese female fighter pilot started flying this year.

But there's no dumb rival dragon squad that they fight, it's not a shonen anime, it's really just a show that explores the perils of finding one's way in young adulthood. One review I read online said that allowing yourself to be eaten by a big scary thing that everyone insists is your destiny is an apt metaphor for adulthood. It just happens to also really lovingly depict women being devoured whole by dragons, to the point where I'm looking at my kids watching it with me wondering if it's going to imprint on their sexuality.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 8:43 PM on October 6, 2018


Dakaretai Otoko 1 I Ni Odosarete Imasu: yaoi show which in itself is not a problem, but it has the obligatory near rape in its first episode, so I noped out quickly.

Consent in women's fantasies--and yaoi is made for women--is heavily tied up with the ways the world is, well, really terrible for women, but I really wish they would come with... basically disclaimer stickers? AO3 is far better about warning people about content that might be a problem for them than the actual media that people write fanfic about, and it bugs me a lot that people have to get surprised by this kind of thing. Ugh.

introduce everybody in episode 1 without explenation

I find all of these things full of Japanese historical figures to be slightly weird, but on the other hand, I look at things like those and, for example, Ikemen Sengoku, the game where you can date many of said historical figures, and I realize... well, the Japanese public does in fact seem to know a lot more about these people than we do, and maybe these kinds of ridiculous shows are part of why? But it still strikes me as weird.

At any rate, if you're going to make them into hot guys, you can't just go giving them nipples willy-nilly. There's a serious nipple shortage out there and you have to requisition them well in advance. This is why nobody has them in Free, because there simply weren't enough available to deal with the whole cast being regularly shirtless. Yes, I am more bothered by the lack of nipples in Free than I am by the fact that Rin inexplicably has shark teeth.
posted by Sequence at 8:57 PM on October 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


It took the Anime Feminist review of Gakuen Basara to learn it's actually a spinoff of the Sengoku Basara games & anime series so it makes even less sense if you hadn't followed those.

The new Sword Art Online series kicked off last night and started with a double episode which had all the flaws everybody always drags SAO for: somewhat incoherent, lots of exposition.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:53 AM on October 7, 2018


Trigger fanboys take note: SSSS.Gridman has gorgeous art, snappy-enough writing, and will give you that Sunday Morning Gamera Movie feeling from childhood.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 6:01 AM on October 7, 2018


I am feeling a bit underwhelmed with the first episodes I've seen so far, with the exceptions of Thunderbolt Fantasy and Kaze Ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru (Run with the Wind).

Kaze Ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru had a fantastic first episode - I got a clear sense of all the main characters just from that episode, and I can't wait to see how the character interactions develop. This contrasts starkly with shows like 100 Sleeping Princes or 1000 Musketeers (or last season's Free!), where new characters keep being introduced in each episode with none of them being memorable. Let's see how Million Arthur fares in this regard.

There was also a small part of me that was happy imagining in my head that the track team were descendants of the characters in Joker Game, from the same director. One thing I'm noticing - Production I.G. has a very cinematic house style, notable in Legend of Galactic Heroes and also in more slice-of-life fare such as Kaze Ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru.

Thunderbolt Fantasy is ... Thunderbolt Fantasy. Visuals are gorgeous, characters continue being entertaining assholes or entertainingly put-upon, and it's all over the top.

SSSS.Gridman: I felt ep. 1 of Gridman was trying too hard with the fan service for original Gridman / Tsuburaya fans to actually create a good first episode.

Dakaretai Otoko 1 I Ni Odosarete Imasu entertained me mostly by making me imagine Narumi from Wotakoi watching it.

Zombieland Saga seems to be going for a particular flavor of moe that is not pushing my buttons. For those who liked Mamoru Miyano's performance here, I highly recommend Gatchman Crowds - Berg Katze is peak Memory Miyano in my opinion. (He's also entertaining as Shuu Tsukiyama in Tokyo Ghoul).
posted by needled at 8:48 AM on October 8, 2018


I've read the Goblin Slayer manga (both the manga and anime derive from a visual novel, and there is at least one spinoff that I'm aware of) and that's been sufficient, I'm not interested in the anime. Basically the setting is meant to be heavy grimdark: Some very bad shit happened in the backstory to the title character, in a world where the same bad shit happens on a regular basis, and the story is about the his more-or-less singlehanded crusade because of it. You can kind of think of him as a medieval Batman without the Bruce Wayne part, and instead of superheroes there are high-level adventurers. The grimdark is well-used at least in portraying dungeon adventuring as something closer to what the experience would really be like: An exhausting deathmarch through disgusting environments and constant murder. Although the story still has the usual isekai/JRPG tropes of adventurer guilds and skill leveling, so they're being highly selective with their realism. Which makes the already-unnecessary selective victimization of women even more pointless. The remainder of this paragraph has spoilers. The rape scene is more or less the low point of the series, both in terms of artistic judgement and narrative development, as the story arc becomes one about bringing the title character out of his mindset of unceasing vengeance. Although since the goblins in this particular story universe are in fact irredeemably horrible (I never got a sense of goblins as a racial metaphor in the manga, but I won't argue anybody who does), the atmosphere never really lightens up much. The secondary character will not be the only victim of sexual assault (in the manga at least the incidents are less gratuitously portrayed, or only mentioned rather than described) and when the title character predicts the worst is going to happen, he's never wrong.

Anyway.

This season of Thunderbolt Fantasy starts out much stronger than the first one did. It's the best show to watch with friends and some favorite adult beverages.

Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken starts out as if it's going to be another tits'n'ass harem anime because (at least in Crunchyroll's translation) the mc keeps obsessing about dying a virgin. But fortunately it develops in a totally different direction, so I'm on board at least for the first three eps

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: fight-theme anime and manga usually bore me. A while ago I tried reading the Jojo manga and... it eventually got boring. But at least it entertain me for longer than most fighting manga. I could never make it through a whole anime series, so let's see whether this one manages. The first episode managed a pretty entertaining buildup from merely-odd to completely off the hinges, so let's see if it can continue in that vein.

Jingai-san no Yome is so slight there's almost nothing there. That's not bad though; it can be a good cooldown after an episode of Thunderbolt Fantasy.
posted by ardgedee at 9:42 AM on October 8, 2018


Double Decker turned out to be delightful and I think is going to help with my My Hero Academia withdrawal, and Skullface Bookseller Honda is... well, the first episode is a surprisingly good take on how yaoi fandom is silly without actually coming off as mean. Granted, the people I was watching with who're into such things were already self-aware about it, but like, it didn't seem judgmental about it, and I'm looking forward to where it goes from here. (Speaking of which, Dakaichi was pretty bad but was entertaining after a couple drinks, which is most of what I expect of yaoi. Getting this season's actual queer feelings elsewhere.)
posted by Sequence at 8:45 AM on October 10, 2018


Full list of animefeminist summaries is up. So far this season holds a lot more promise than the last, between gay vampire fanatics, gay spies, possibly-gay-but-possibly-aromantic nondescript girls, aaaaand zombies.
posted by one for the books at 10:43 AM on October 13, 2018


Fluffy supernatural comedy about a teenage vampire and the human girl in love with her; no fanservice.

I'm not sure it'll remain quite as fanservice-free because it's giving me a similar vibe to Comic Girls and that did occasionally go there, but I'm sold. It felt like wall-to-wall fanservice if the fan in question is me, because this is definitely an Awkward Teenage Lesbians show and look it's not like teenage me had a problem with vampires what.

I agree with them that I like the design of the Release the Spyce bad guys (bad ladies?) so far way more than the actual characters, which provided at least the good reminder to me that while I am absolutely trash for Awkward Teenage Lesbians, if they would give me Awkward Thirtysomething Lesbians with character designs like that, I would buy goddamn body pillows. Going to give it at least a couple episodes but not sure how I feel right now.
posted by Sequence at 3:43 PM on October 13, 2018


(Noms on a basil leaf)
posted by RobotHero at 4:31 PM on October 13, 2018


For starters, I'm sticking with Banana Fish for its second cour. Like Sequence said, it's pretty much misery city from here till the end of the series. It's also the most compelling thing I've watched in a long time. I have Issues with many of the plot elements — I think a lot of it can be attributed to the fact that it was written in the '80s, it's a seminal text from an era, tropes that were acceptable then are not acceptable now, that kind of thing — but on the other hand, it's moody, naturalistic, grounded in very good characterisation, often beautiful, etc.

Run with the Wind's first two episodes really impressed me. My interest was piqued because it's based on a novel by the same guy who wrote The Great Passage, which turned into one of the most thoughtful anime series I've ever watched, but I'm liking it on its own merits. There's a wonderful, nuanced sense of atmosphere/mood, which I wasn't expecting it from yet another sports anime, and I thought it'd fall down on characterization — since there are ten main characters — but it's done a great job so far and I'm charmed.
posted by fire, water, earth, air at 7:57 PM on October 13, 2018


I was skeptical about Zombieland Saga, but ep. 2 sold me on it. Watch it along with You Don't Know Gunma Yet, from earlier in the year, for further entertainment. Although so far Zombieland Saga hasn't told us as much about Saga as You Don't Know Gunma Yet did about Gunma in each 3 minute episode.

> the same guy who wrote The Great Passage

Pedantic note, Shion Miura is a woman. It's interesting that both novels adapted into anime were adapted to films first.
posted by needled at 6:26 AM on October 14, 2018


Skullface Bookseller Honda's second episode is better than the first. At this point I'd call the authorial tone "cranky yet good-natured" rather than mean. Working in a bookstore seems a lot like any other profession: Dealing wityh weird coworkers, bizarre customers, and your vendors' quirks are not necessarily representative of most of your daily activities but they're going to be the ones you remember. So basing a series around them isn't really putting anybody on blast, and there hasn't really been anything along the lines of "ugh, I remember That Guy" yet.
posted by ardgedee at 1:09 PM on October 15, 2018


I really loved The Great Passage. Had no idea it had been made into anime. thanks for the heads up.
posted by OHenryPacey at 2:30 PM on October 15, 2018


I highly recommend Gatchman Crowds

Seconded, for anybody who likes anime.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:38 PM on October 15, 2018


So, they are paying Sailor Moon's voice actress to moan a lot on Zombieland Saga, apparently, and this is amazing. Tae might be my favorite character this season so far.
posted by Sequence at 9:47 PM on October 19, 2018


> So, they are paying Sailor Moon's voice actress to moan a lot on Zombieland Saga

Is that true? I hope that's true. Tae hasn't been present much in the latest couple episodes (she disappears completely during some scenes and reappears as if nothing had happened), so I hope she's being saved for a big moment sometime soon. One of the things that amazes me most about this show is the attention to detail. For example, in the performance scenes, the troupe dance out of sync or not-quite-in-sync and without exactly duplicating each other's motions. This means that instead of all seven characters moving based on the same motion script, they're creating seven distinct motion scripts. That costs a lot of extra effort.

In other anime, "Reincarnated as a Slime"... well, tl;dr: It was very good and then suddenly very disappointing. They managed to ruin three-plus episodes worth of earned goodwill in the final five minutes of the fourth episode with a barrage of really weird and misplaced fanservice. I don't usually feel prudish about fanservice because, basically, that's one of the minefields in anime that every fan either likes or learns to have to build some kind of tolerance for because it's ubiquitous. But this show was heartwarming and fun and all about how an absurdly OP character keeps actual use of their powers to a minimum in favor of earning friendships and building coalitions, and then BLAMMO a total change in the atmosphere, like watching Sesame Street and suddenly Big Bird's teaching you how to pack a bongload. It just didn't fit; the animators broke into the story to let themselves get their rocks off. Bleh.
posted by ardgedee at 6:56 PM on October 25, 2018


Notes on what I've watched this season. Grumpy notes.

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. Another in the endless number of shows about a guy who finds himself inside an online game. Normally, I can't stand these, but this one is a cut above average. I'll try one more episode. Maybe I just like slimes.

Zombie Land Saga. Dead girl comes back as a zombie. Annoying Svengali guy turns her and other zombie girls into a zombie idol group. Lots of yelling. Watched two episodes, but this show is not doing it for me.

Run with the Wind. Damnedest setup for a sports anime I've seen. Ten random guys get tricked into being a college running team. Seems to be a dramady. Sports anime is a hard sell for me, and I'm not sure this one will win me over.

Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san. 11 min episodes. Comedy. Still frames with minimal animation. A skeleton works in a bookstore. I couldn't take it even for 11 minutes.

HIMOTE HOUSE: A share house of super psychic girls. 11 minute episodes. Ultra-cheesy CG animation. Moe moe moe moe moe with heroic amounts of fan service. Skipping this one.

Between the Sky and Sea. Fishing girls in underwater robots in spaaaace. Huh? Moe blob show, maybe a bit better than most of its type, but not enough to make me watch it.

Anima Yell!. Another moe blob, sports anime for the sport of cheer-leading. Again my low expectations were exceeded, but not by enough to make me watch the show.

SSSS.Gridman. Trigger saves anime. Again.

IRODUKU: The World in Colors. A teen mage from the future loses her ability to see color, and is sent back in time by her grandmother. To fix her problem? She doesn't know. Despite fillips of magic, this is a school drama with many familiar tropes of that genre. Gorgeous CG backgrounds. Animation solid but undistinguished. Placid pace. Worth trying.

Karakuri Circus. Acrobats vs. evil marionettes. Sounds promising, but sub-par production values damage the show too badly. Skipping this one.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 4:06 PM on October 28, 2018


Oops, forgot Goblin Slayer. Uh. Pluses: it actually seems to have interesting ideas about the fraught ethics of a D&D universe. Minuses: Rapey. Gratuitous violence. Extruded Europeanoid fantasy setting. Average animation. Net: I'm curious about where it goes with its ethical ideas, but the rest of show is so awful that I refuse to suffer through it.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 4:16 PM on October 28, 2018


Yeah, Mitsuishi's actually credited now, ardgedee. My crackpot theory is that Tae will turn out to have been awake the entire time but disinterested in anything but napping, eating, and learning just enough of the choreography to get people to leave her alone.

Fishing girls in underwater robots in spaaaace. Huh?

Fishing girls in underwater robots controlled by cell phones in spaaaace! This show makes more sense, insofar as it can ever make any sense, if you know that it is based on and probably basically marketing for a mobile game that was clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel of possible concepts for mobile games. I couldn't get far enough in to notice if the characters would actually get good because I was unreasonably disappointed that I had been told there would be fishing and what I got was mobile game combat against kaiju crabs, and lord was I not prepared for that.
posted by Sequence at 5:48 PM on October 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


Yes, I was super disappointed the space fishing wasn't more like Earth fishing. Like, if they had been in space hauling in nets, that would also be ridiculous, but ridiculous in a way that's more connected to reality.
posted by RobotHero at 7:45 AM on October 29, 2018


Sequence: I didn't know that Between the Sky and Sea was based on a game. I need to train myself to check for that. I don't think I have ever found a game-based anime that was worth watching. Most of the best TV anime are original concepts (Evangelion, Puella Magi Madoka Magica) with occasional good ones based on manga (Utena, though that was heavily modified by Ikuhara).
posted by Slithy_Tove at 11:22 AM on October 30, 2018


> My crackpot theory is that Tae will turn out to have been awake the entire time but disinterested in anything but napping, eating, and learning just enough of the choreography to get people to leave her alone.

That sounds far less crackpot than most of what's happened in the series. Tae definitely seems less wild-eyed than she was in the first two eps; it could be significant (since her actress is also credited now) or only mean the animators are slacking.

Thunderbolt Fantasy is still a hell of a lot of fun. In some ways I'm enjoying it more than the original series; despite only reusing two characters there hasn't been the torrent of character introductions every week the way there was in season 1, which on the one hand means less eye candy, but on the other hand makes it a little easier to follow the plot, even when the plot can mostly be summarized as "earth-shaking battles, looking fabulous".
posted by ardgedee at 1:26 PM on October 30, 2018 [1 favorite]


From the latest episode of Thunderbolt Fantasy I learned that even fire-breathing dragons must bow down before the combined power of Hiroyuki Sawano and Visual Kei.
posted by needled at 6:55 PM on October 30, 2018


After the most recent Zombieland Saga episode involved a real restaurant with its real CEO and even their real commercial, I'm curious now whether some of businesses in previous episodes are riffs on real companies. For example, the previous episode leaned heavily on the fact that the outing at the hot springs was put on by a pain relief patch company, and it didn't take much digging to find that Salonpas is based in Saga. Which makes me wonder whether they had been negotiating with Salonpas to use them in the episode but talks failed too late to cancel the story, so they just changed the branding instead.
posted by ardgedee at 7:01 AM on November 3, 2018


I guess it should go without saying that the mud olympics are a real thing in Saga too.
posted by ardgedee at 7:20 AM on November 3, 2018


Tsurune is pretty standard boys' sports fare but I'm really liking it so far, there's something calming about it even though it's basically a story about somebody else's performance anxiety issues?

Man, there are so few duds this season for my personal tastes that it's getting kind of hard to keep up. My friends and I have a pretty detailed spreadsheet going, and usually by now we've dropped like at least half of the shows we started, and this time there really hasn't been much. We aren't necessarily keeping up week-by-week on everything, but there's a lot of "okay we'll at least come back to Girl in Twilight in a couple weeks and catch up" kind of stuff.
posted by Sequence at 12:51 PM on November 6, 2018


Which makes me wonder whether they had been negotiating with Salonpas to use them in the episode

Maybe there are legal restrictions on naming medical products that weren't a problem for the others?

The voice of the restaurant's CEO definitely had a "not an actual actor" vibe to it.
posted by RobotHero at 11:33 AM on November 7, 2018


I can't tell you how disappointed I am that the studio producing Zombieland Saga didn't go that extra mile and put up a real-world website for Franchouchou on Geocities. Especially since somebody went through the effort of designing one. (Geocities.com is dead as a doornail, but geocities.jp continues to thrive.)
posted by ardgedee at 4:16 AM on November 9, 2018


Though I'm getting kind of tired of "their manager is verbally abusive" being played for a joke and will be very disappointed if he does not get some kind of comeuppance.

Also maybe something is lost in translation but the one girl's reaction in this episode regarding the "getting photos with the fans" came across as more a trauma trigger than mere dislike. Like, if they didn't promptly give us the "died in a plane crash" background I would think she'd been murdered by a deranged fan. And then when the same episode gives us the other girl is scared of lightning because she was struck by lightning, I wonder if an earlier version of the script was trying to draw a parallel.
posted by RobotHero at 4:43 PM on November 11, 2018


Double Decker has, I swear, just been getting better and better. And queerer and queerer. Like usually I would couch this kind of thing in a lot of disclaimers, but... my wholly-LGBT watch group seems to all agree it's handling stuff reasonably well and the actual messaging feels aggressively inclusive even by Western standards. Often stuff where I'd definitely do some tweaking to how it's presented, but I find myself in a position of feeling I can identify with the characters in this the way I usually can't, and having that feeling like oh, if these fictional people knew me, they wouldn't think I was weird and gross. (Well, maybe weird, but everybody seems pro-weirdo.)

Or, you know, I could just say that I want to date all the girls. Maybe not Deana. All the other girls. And there are so many of them. It's so novel.
posted by Sequence at 11:14 PM on November 12, 2018


> Though I'm getting kind of tired of "their manager is verbally abusive" being played for a joke and will be very disappointed if he does not get some kind of comeuppance.

He gets punched up after his tirades in nearly every episode. Unless you mean "comeuppance" in the sense of the punishment he deserves for graverobbing.

I think the his tirades are mostly written in to give the voice actor room to be as far out in as many ways as possible. They're cringe-inducing but also kind of amazing in their range.
posted by ardgedee at 3:13 AM on November 13, 2018


"He gets punched up after his tirades in nearly every episode."

I suppose? It somehow feels insufficient, to me.
posted by RobotHero at 7:36 AM on November 13, 2018


On the blue: "Leave it to a zombie show to take deadnames seriously."

And I'll grant they've given the manager a couple redeeming moments in the last couple episodes and whatever was bothering me about that dynamic hasn't been bothering me as much.
posted by RobotHero at 9:15 AM on December 8, 2018


« Older The Flash TV - Inhumane prison...   |  Series Posts vs Individual Epi... Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments