Discuss the Series You Just Finished

Solo Levelling (2024) - this was the hyped shounen of the season, and... turned out to be another generic power fantasy, but set in Korea rather than Japan. Unfortunately the whole premise is about our MC, Jin-Woo levelling up, there are very few secondary characters and Jin-Woo was boring as hell. So was the world, even the dungeons were boring, too much reliance on RPG and game mechanics. Some of the fights were pretty hype and looked ok, but not good enough to carry the show. Won't be picking up S2. Strong 6/10 (6.8). The only manwa adaption that has lived up to the hype so far imo has been Tower of God, can't wait for S2 of that show to land later this year, all the other manwa adaptions I've seen (Noblesse, God of Highschool, Solo Levelling) have been mediocre.

@SuperAdventure whenever I read about which anime people most wanted to get adapted, I'd heard the same few manwa mentioned; Tower of God, God of Highschool and Solo Levelling. So once they finally came to the screen thought I'd check them out. Solo Levlling isn't the worst show, but given we get so many power fantasies, usually isekai, they need to do something special to get my attention. The MC was just bland. I don't have anything to say about him good or bad, just meh, he made no impression. To be fair, this first season (as with many shows) felt like one long prologue and maybe the real action and storylines will begin in S2.

Legend of Crystania: The Motion Picture (1995) - a fantasy tale involving a couple of characters from Record of Lodoss War, Pirotesse and Ashram. They somehow made it to a different world inhabited by animal gods and got mixed up in a power battle between different gods. Honestly the story didn't make much sense and was pretty chaotic. Character designs looked a bit off. OST was quite good. Mid 5/10 (5.5).

@23feanor
Where did you find Legend of Crystania? I remember seeing the cover art of it so many years ago, maybe it was on VHS being sold on eBay. Is it streaming somewhere? 1995 was the bottom of the barrel with anime character styles imo. Personally consider the mid-90s to be the absolute worst period for anime, with no equal. My college roommate watched Tenchi and I couldn't believe how terrible it looked. Even Outlaw Star looked cack 90% of the time. How long is it?

@OrlahEhontas That was the same site I use on the high seas, but wasn't sure if we're allowed to mention it (at least you're not on main discussion pages iirc). It has all the old OVA's, only one I haven't found so far is Weather Report Girl, which is technically a hentai, everything else can be found there, quite impressive really. And yeah, the Tenchi series does get confusing with all it's branches and spin offs, last one I saw was Tenchi In Tokyo, which introduced yet another slight variation on the back stories for Ryouko and the Jurai royal family. We're watching Kobato in the daily group watch atm and that has a lot of crossover and easter eggs for other Clamp works, especially Chobits (Kobato's apartment is a replica of the one from Chobits, even the same room, plus the twins in Kobato are based on Chi's char design).

Zero no Tsukaima: Princesses no Rondo

I still have the final season to go, but overall, the first three have been enjoyable enough. Nothing special, though, and when I finish the final season/series, I doubt I'll ever re-watch it. I've seen similar forms of the genre multiple times, both the Isekai element and harem rom-coms element. Zero no Tsukaima hasn't really put enough of a spin on the formula to make itself standout. It's been a nice way to unwind after work, though.

Tbh, it's been one of those series I've seen referenced quite a bit over the years (whether people talking about it, or people using characters as avis/sigs), and kind of disappointing it's been average.

@pludel2 - Don't feel bad about being somewhat disappointed with Zero. I was rather underwhelmed with it as well, along with the Toradora and Haruhi Suzumiya "families" as well as a number of others over the years. And Haruhi didn't even offer a nice way to unwind after work.

The Tatami Galaxy (2010)

I wasn't sure what to expect going into this one. It had been touted as a strong comedy, so at the least, I expected to get some laughs out of it and see it in a package that merits the attention this series has received over the years.

While I can't say the comedy worked for me or that I consistently enjoyed each episode... I kind of loved it anyway. I put that down to two reasons.

First, the overall package is far greater than the sum of its parts. It's a time loop story, and like so many of its kind, it builds iteratively. What is particularly interesting is how it builds and pays off that iteration. Our lead, Watashi, isn't aware he's going through this... well, not fully anyway. He experiences déjà vu and, at random moments, seems to recognize that certain things have either played out before or played out differently. There's a fortune teller who keeps raising her prices every time she meets him in a new loop. The vast majority of the other characters don't give us any reason to believe they know what's going on, though there is the occasional comedic moment that suggests more. And if that's where this stopped, I'd say it's passable, but nothing special.

Where it becomes great is in how it builds on the story. Elements in each of the loops, especially early in the story, often go unexplained for a while. Who's that random beautiful girl sitting behind a curtain in Watashi's apartment and why does she look familiar? Why does he have a little stuffed doll from his friend hanging from a light switch? What's with this pen pal he keeps mentioning? What is the deal with all the castella? And who was that random guy that appeared out of the wall in his apartment that one episode? This show is absolutely willing to let you stew in perplexed silence over its various mysteries for a while only to reveal everything in an off-handed manner later like it's not even important. I got a sort of giddy excitement out of spotting them all.

Second, the visuals were just captivating. This is a series that didn't go all-in on the animation budget, but instead engages in the surreal by transitioning back and forth from animation to live action and somewhere in between. Particularly as it gets later in the season and in one episode in particular, it gives this feeling that you're somehow a part of that space in which the characters reside. For all the ridiculous stuff that goes on in this series, it really grounded the experience and made it feel personal.

So, yeah, I really dug this series. Not everything worked for me - the rapid-fire speaking made it difficult to keep up with at times and didn't really add to the experience, some of the loops were way more interesting than others and did more to flesh out the world and characters, some of the characters were a bit one-note, and its method of storytelling did make it more difficult to get on-board in those first few episodes - but it certainly did more than enough to reel me in and keep me invested. 8.4/10.

The Tatami Galaxy Specials (2010)

These specials are a strange, strange ride on a submarine that turns solid surroundings into liquid.

I was genuinely pretty flummoxed watching these specials. They're only 6 minutes apiece, so it's not like I was expecting anything amazing, though I can't say I was expecting three largely disconnected stories that function based on a kind of nonsense logic that I can't really get onboard with. They're interesting in that they give us some chances to see the odd character interaction that didn't appear in the main series, but honestly, the only scenes I really connected with narratively were the ones at the end where whoever was telling the story was chided for shoddy storytelling in some way, shape or form. That's kind of what these were: just an opportunity to try something zany and string it together with the throughline of involving a submarine that defies physics, a harpoon, and our cast of... heroes? Hard to say at times.

Really, what you come here to watch these for is the animation. It's definitely rougher than the series is known for, but that's kind of got its own appeal to it. The color palette is pared down, often to very basic extremes, and they definitely don't always go for fluid movement. I still dig it, even if I can't say this was reason enough to go through these episodes by itself. 5.5/10.

Night is Short, Walk on Girl (2017)

I had a really good time with this movie. It's certainly got a lot of visual flair, often displaying moments and scenes in unique styles to do a lot of the storytelling visually. It can be a little blunt at times in the dialogue, sometimes to the point of hitting you over the head with its themes, but that honestly fits in well for me, especially as this is a movie where its two central leads need to be hit over the head. The Black-Haired Girl spends much of the movie charting a path forward and excelling at pretty much everything she does, but can't perceive anything beyond that path, including her own feelings or those of the people who stumble into it. By contrast, Senpai has trouble moving along his path, stumbling the entire way as he endlessly pursues his goal of having the Black-Haired Girl see him. Even then, he stumbles, not knowing what he wants out of being seen and arguing endlessly with an army of inner selves about whether he should even put himself out there. At least for me, it's a relatable inner struggle made manifest in some of the most absurdly over-the-top scenes in the movie.

It's nice to get to spend more time with side-characters in this one. It's not necessarily that they get a lot of depth, but they're interesting insofar as how they facilitate the plot and the MCs. Higuchi and Hanuki are back and it's nice to see that they've fallen into a very chaotic lifestyle together as they impart various pieces of wisdom while engaging in just about every zany thing they can manage within a short time. There's a whole subplot involving a traveling group of performers working in defiance of the powers that be led by the Underpants Leader, a man defined by his love of someone else who got hit in the head with the same item as him at the same time. It's with characters like this that the movie occasionally managed to get a laugh out of me, so a little better than the series did. Ri Haku and the Used Book Market God also managed to direct some fantastical portions of the plot, making for some of the more absurd scenes. Still, not as captivated by the comedy as I was by just seeing the crazy ways its plot unwound and trying to guess how it would come together.

It's not episodic like the series, it's one complete narrative with a linear (albeit winding) plot. That makes it easier to follow and keep up with, but I'll admit, I kind of missed the way Tatami Galaxy told its story. Still, there are a lot of interesting visual flourishes in this one and things come back around quite readily from early in its run, and even though it was quite as visually innovative (it didn't jump back and forth between live action and animation), it certainly went hard in the animation department. I had a great time with this one, even if it wasn't mind-blowing. 8.2/10.

The Tatami Time Machine Blues (2022)

I had a really good time with this one.

I was more continuously invested than with Tatami Galaxy, though this series doesn't wrap up as expertly as that did. The time machine itself is quite the vehicle for telling the story, leaving me grasping for hints from previous episodes - I think this might work even better upon repeat watch. It's more the ride than the destination on this one, though it's also nice to see some closure on some of the central plots of the series as a whole. Much to its credit, this also improved on the amount of attention various side characters got, something I felt was distinctly lacking in Tatami Galaxy. The animation is also on point, providing some of what that series gave in a sharper package.

Really, my only issues with this one are that the episodes were too short to give me everything I wanted out of a 6-episode run (it crams in a lot, but we often get side-tracked - not that I'm complaining, since I love the side-tracks), the humor of the series still doesn't quite hit for me, and, even after they dedicate a whole episode to him, I'm still kind of baffled by Ozu. He's a great plot vehicle, but such a strange character. 8.6/10.

The Grimm Variations (2022)

I was looking forward to this with some trepidation. Anthology series are usually pretty hit or miss for me, often with more of the latter and less of the former. I like fairy tale-based stories, but I wasn't sure how these would be translated into anime. Given how distinct these stories were from the originals, it also meant that these stories couldn't lean on nostalgia for these stories as much. They have to stand largely by themselves.

So, how well do they stand? In general... not so well. These stories are self-contained, so if the plots are complex, then these stories had the unenviable task of making things clear for the audience while wrapping up their narratives. I don't think many of these accomplished that, particularly as so many of these were either full of plot holes or just refused to provide necessary information. The series has visual flair, and the interludes between stories are serviceable, but the stories themselves are pretty hit-or-miss. I provide specifics as to why in my review here, but the summary is that overall, it's a bunch of interesting ideas that mostly didn't get the space to breathe. Even some of the better stories like episodes 1 and 2 missed opportunities to really make their stories come together or pop, while many of the others floundered in their attempts to tell a cohesive narrative or make sense of some of their more outlandish concepts. The best one in the bunch, episode 5, is simple enough to be effective without more time. The ride's interesting enough that it was worth sitting through, but it's hard to recommend outright for the strange turns it took. 6.5/10.