Current watches

[thepanda]

Watched three episodes of 'Suppose a Kid from the Last Dungeon Boonies moved to a starter town?' and it is not good. I don't remember the manga well but I'm certain it wasn't this bad. I swear it feels like they decided to play down the absurdity of the concept for generic fantasy shlock. The main character doesn't even feel like the main character of the story.

I think they omitted a bunch of stuff, too. They mention he failed both the written and martial parts of the exam, but they never show how he failed the martial part. I think he broke the weapons in the manga? Doesn't matter. This has been disappointing so far.

Edit: Episode 2 of Hidden Dungeon took a serious animation hit. Just ouch.

Episode 2 of Spider isekai still good stuff.

[Merc]

I've started watching Dragon Quest: Dai's Adventure. As a manga, it was one of my favorite series as a teenager, and I'd been really excited about it getting a reboot anime, and I picked up Hulu recently, so hey, perfect timing.

It's pretty faithful to the manga storyline so far, and the animation/music has been fantastic (I prefer the original anime opening song admittedly. The new one has wonderful instrumentals but I'm not a fan of the singer's voice for some reason), but that faithfulness has a bit of a downside as the starting arcs are incredibly slow, and I basically have only been watching 2 episodes at a time.

It's been picking up thankfully, as it starts to cover more parts I remember fondly, so maybe it'll get to the point where I feel like binging on more than 2 eps at a time soon or being annoyed that I'm caught up.

Mostly, I hope the series does well enough to get a full adaptation, and not just like 26 episodes before it gets canceled.

[Anastasia]

I've started watching Dragon Quest: Dai's Adventure. As a manga, it was one of my favorite series as a teenager, and I'd been really excited about it getting a reboot anime, and I picked up Hulu recently, so hey, perfect timing.

It's pretty faithful to the manga storyline so far, and the animation/music has been fantastic (I prefer the original anime opening song admittedly. The new one has wonderful instrumentals but I'm not a fan of the singer's voice for some reason), but that faithfulness has a bit of a downside as the starting arcs are incredibly slow, and I basically have only been watching 2 episodes at a time.

It's been picking up thankfully, as it starts to cover more parts I remember fondly, so maybe it'll get to the point where I feel like binging on more than 2 eps at a time soon or being annoyed that I'm caught up.

Mostly, I hope the series does well enough to get a full adaptation, and not just like 26 episodes before it gets canceled.

I'm a Dragon Quest fan and I happen to have a Hulu subscription this month (go freebies). It's based on the Dragon Quest games, right?

[Merc]

I'm a Dragon Quest fan and I happen to have a Hulu subscription this month (go freebies). It's based on the Dragon Quest games, right?

It's not based on any particular DQ game, it's its own spin-off. But it uses spells and mechanics from the game, including classes and a lot of the designs are toriyama-esque (naturally). When they announced the anime reboot, Square actually announce that they'd make a video game based on the story too, making it all come full circle: "Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai: Infinity Strash"

If you want to check out the manga as well, one place to read it is here, it has reasonably hq scans. Hulu right now has the anime up through chapter 50 or so of the manga?

[Dracos]

Watched a bit of Dai, but yeah it's Super Budget to my eyes.  Lots of 'they're not even bothering to anime this character' moments with the hordes of mooks they do.  I also adore the manga and hope they go long.

Been enjoying Spider and Slime a bit.  Think Season 2 of Slime has a better motion of it.

Some of the reordering of Spider is a bit odd to my eyes, but functional.

[thepanda]

How did you first experience spider? I'm finding people are having very different takes depending on which version they've seen first. And slime is moving into a busy point in the storyline. I can seen another full season and then some before it slows down again.

[Dracos]

I read the manga first, which yeah I'd expect manga only folks to find the anime's more inclusive of the Past and Present storytelling of the light novel to be weird and confusing.

Then the light novel, which the anime is clearly trying to be more founded on.  I have not read the webnovella take.

Honestly, there's some fun scenes in spider but they're leaning heavily into the 4-koma version and silly anime bits...  I honestly find they're just trying to compact too much info.  The most recent episode was kind of atrocious in how much it was trying to get across, aside from the heavy metal solo groaning.  Mostly, they seem to be unwilling to give up comedy scenes when they're struggling for clarity.  Some of the skipped sections I could get the choices and certainly it's clear what they're going for as a finale from their prince arc choices, but seeing it skipping right from 'I can't really do magic' to 'I am casting Hell's gate' while sort of skipping setup with the Queen Spider is wonky.

In general, I find the anime builds less Weight to the relationships with her antagonists and ramps up her silliness a bit.  Which is a bit disappointing.

[thepanda]

Slime goes into the break on a high note. See you in July, Rimuru-sama.

Wait, there is that 4-koma series getting animated. Never mind. See you next week, Rimuru.

[Dracos]

I look at the coming season and just struggle a bit to care.  Bleeeh.

[thepanda]

Same.

[thepanda]

Slime Dairies was good.

New season of Slime started today.

Spider's quality tanked hard in the second half. I keep seeing they outsourced a lot of the animation to another studio who botched it even worse than what we got. Still hopeful there will eventually be another season, and that they'll have learned some lessons from this one.

Finished Yura Camp both seasons. Good stuff.

The Saint's Magic Power is Omnipotent was decent enough, I guess.

Can't decide between Super Cub and Amanchu! as the series I want to watch that I've read a bunch of the manga for already.

[Dracos]

I disagree...

Spider really had a lot of problems throughout.  There were obviously crummy budget moments at the early parts too.

The manga carried much better.

[Arakawa]

Hmm. Made in Abyss captivated me even though I hated every step of what was happening past a certain point.

I must analyze this phenomenon.

Spoiler: ShowHide

Structurally, it's a pretty straightforward story. Repeat 'descend to next layer of Abyss, meet mentor/antagonist/all-of-of-the-above', ramp up the pain levels slightly over the previous layer, main characters overcome obstacle. Pain levels compound exponentially. Apply Ghibli background artist and cute furry creatures where necessary to offset audience torture.

Even if you know (as I did from the sheer reputation of the show; or even just foreshadowing in the introduction based on a couple of fairly evil things everyone is being nonchalantly casual about) that the depths of Abyss are going to be 'Uncle Lovecraft's Happy Fun Time Murder Pit', you still want to go down there based on the adventure story that's telegraphed in the prologue part.

[Arakawa]

Anyone else watching Made In Abyss? I'm three episodes in and its pretty solid. It looks like they didn't skimp on the budget, either. At least no this early into the show.

Hmm thepanda posted about this in 2017... didn't realize it started that long ago.

My interest in it is kind of timely since there'll be a season in 2022? Maybe?

[thepanda]

Spoiler: ShowHide

 Apply Ghibli background artist and cute furry creatures where necessary to offset audience torture.

Spoiler: ShowHide

I found that accentuates the horror of it all. It honestly reminds me of Now and Then, Here and There in that aspect. The gut punches just keep coming, and you can't tell when your supposed to relax. Even when something awful isn't happening the anticipation becomes a constant stressor overshadowing everything. Its almost a relief when shit does happen.