The positive of a meritocratic media industry: lots to watch
The negatives: viewing it all on release...
There will be stuff I miss it's a given, but been another good season and thankfully no production delays, so without futher adou:
Actually I read the Manga
The Banished Former Hero lives as he pleases: tried reading this a while back....dropped it after 2 chapters because it was bland. The anime ain't different in fact only thing good about it was Outro by AIMI
Chillin in Another World with level 2 super cheat powers: in comparison to the above, THIS is a lot better, lot more light hearted and fun tone (though the MC has a 'rage of quiet man moment) fun op, I realise between this and Eminence in shadow, I may have a thing for voluptuous wolf girls....
As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll use my appraisal skill to Rise in the world: before you go 'another Isakai', I'd give this a shot especially if you loved Realist Hero or recruiting in Slime. The MC isn't powerful but can see the talents of others and recruits those talented to improve his domain. Can't praise it enough and one of the best father's in Anime too.
Grandpa and Grandma turn young again: This is concentrated wholesomeness, as couple been together for 70 years thanks to a golden apple on their orchard gain the ability to turn young again, but still retain their grandparent way of living. It's just sweet to watch and makes you happy.
The heavy hitters
Mushoku Tensei jobless reincarnation S2 cour 2: shits hitting the fan again, we had another 'Turning point' episode. It's just the king of Isakai, excellent animation, story and va work like this scene REALLY showing how a person trapped in another world might react thinking there's no way back.
Konosuba, God's blessing on this wonderful world S3: the patron saint of gender equality is back and it's just fun with the gang back together.
Kaiju No. 8: This one you can tell is getting HEAVY investment to be a longer franchise, from the great animation and music, op and ed the story has the right mix of humour, action and character moments to watch
Bartender Glass of Gods: This is apparently one of two old shows coming back this season, they REALLY put their all in the animation quality for this show and it's a perfect nightcap anime, something after a long day at work to turn on and watch
Spice and Wolf: Merchant meets the Wise Wolf: the other returner and making my 'wolf girl' problem worse. They focused hard on animation, va work, music from the op alone it's fantastic to see this return in a proper way
Demon Slayer Kimetsu no Yaiba Hashira Training Arc: the quality is still top tier, all that needs to be said on this series.
That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime S3: warning the first episodes are mainly talking and meetings to provide set up, THEN you get the payoff and realise 'Rimaru's side is OP as fuck!', good to see it back and hopefully regularly but sane quality as I want to eventually get to see our boy Zegion in his prime...
****Aquired taste ****
Tsukimichi Moonlit fantasy S2 cour 2: I WISH I could put this at the same level as Slime (especially since the manga came out before) but it hasn't been given the same time to establish itself so still aquired taste. Does the same as slime as slow build up but when the MC realises 'oh the goddess isn't looking', shit kicks off FAST lol
Viral Hit: Korea really portraying their schools having a bullying epidemic lol, but in this one a bullying victim learns how to fight thanks to a mysterious YouTube channel and streams his own fights with bullies to earn money.
Re:Monster: this is very early slime in the way the MC is Isakai'd as a monster and gains powers by consuming others but in this one, well...
The Irregular at Magic School S3: The return of the op MC with a sister who's favourite song is 'Sweet home Alabama'. It's enjoyable if you like an OP MC and the this series always have great op and ed
Not seen enough of so first impressions
Wind Breaker: The fight scene in episode one was fantastic alone so I'll try to watch more of it later
I didn't see Black Butler or Train to the End of the World as well as others as didn't have time, but I'd like to DISHONOURABLELY mention The Misfit if Demon King Academy as wtf are they doing with the CGI!?! I stopped watching after the production issues last time but holy crap I have no intention of picking it back up if they go Seven deadly Sins level of bad in animation!
I dunno, I feel the premise is not utilized well, you would need to have more of griffon and his bonfire to consume the goals of the others to do something interesting with it. To sum it up, it requires more oration and persuasion in it's script to be the main conflict drivers. Also the ambition number really is something I don't think should be in the system since it almost could be to some extent seen as loyalty
It is great to see this back again, one of the few Ln i got the whole series for. Hopefully they keep up the quality.
Yea, the bullying must be out of control only the lack of guns and knifes makes it different then the worst in USA, haha
Dungeon Meshi (Delicious in Dungeon) seems to be out of the list, although perhaps it is due to it being started in the winter season, but it is still going on in this season to my understanding. I like it fun char, interesting eco system of an dungeon with still keeping it mystical and yet not dungeon keeper.
Think that's on my ever growing back burner list, I need hard copies of them all so I can watch them in my 'cabin in the woods' arc of my life lol.
Definitely prioritize Delicious in Dungeon, it's extremely good.
It’s really good, just wish the faggots weren’t constantly pushing lesbian shit and pushing the idea that the main character is super autistic or something.
It's definitely in the Frieren Zone where the wrong people are watching it for the wrong reasons because of how good it is.
Looking forward to these:
Mushoku Tensei
Konosuba
Spice and Wolf
But probably won't get to them anytime soon. Just finished enjoying Frieren Beyond Journey's End from fall. (https://communities.win/c/KotakuInAction2/p/17rmXbsgZM/fall-2023-anime-review/c)
Konosuba is absolutely hilarious. My only issue with it is whoever did the subs sticks at least one reddit-tier reference in each episode. They make no sense and don't fit at all.
Hopefully fansubs will pick up the slack for a second viewing(which with Konosuba is a given for me).
Mushoku Tensei is elite. I need to catch up on the anime, but ever since I read LN15 one of my missions in life is to survive until it gets animated in season 3.
Haven't had much time for stuff this season. Definitely overjoyed at Spice and Wolf being back. I sincerely hope this adaptation can go the distance.
Other than that I've only watched the first 5 episodes of Lv2 yuusha or whatever it's called. Very generic isekai but the voice leads are the same as Louise and Saito from Zero no Tsukaima as well as the leads from Shakugan no Shana so it is taking me back down memory lane. I love Rie Kugimiya's voice.
I like Mushoku Tensei but the main character has rather nonsensical reactions presented as sensical and free of bad consequences through the magic of Scenarium. ( If you care about that, spoiler ahead. )
Such as : getting in a fight with his father because his rosy re-teling of his journey back to human continent got his father mad at him for ''having fun'' while he had no idea if his own mother and siblings were dying after the great catastrophe... ( that was unfair ).
So he felt guilty for that. Reaction : While his mother is still missing and likely in atrocious conditions or dead, go chillax at some magic university collecting a harem and having some pet projects with all his free time. Chase some pussy from his childhood because he's obsessed with getting his dick to work, and buy a mansion for the two of them.
But it's totally okay, because his tutor's death has been postponed at a convinient time for him to prevent 2 seconds before the death blow after 2 years working on his dick and leisure tenure without significant workload at magic university.
Oh and 5 minutes away from his new pregnant wife he's taking engagements for dungeon-crawling with another woman who is dropping so many visual and physical contact cues of sexual desire it's becoming a public embarassment in the party.
I expect full-blown Scenarium ''mom's still alive and planing to ditch your wife and future kid for hobby dungeon-crawling is cool''. Will my expectations be subverted? I actually want to find out. The show's still enjoyable.
To each their own I guess, but seeing as literal years have passed since the teleportation incident, it's not irrational for Rudeus to go off and do his own thing once he completed the journey home. He felt guilty about being too absorbed in his own predicament to think to ask around and search for clues about her whereabouts.
But this is primarily for actions he didn't take in the first several months to a year after the incident. By the time he gets into it with his father, the trail is cold. There's not much point in continuing to search without any leads.
Not to mention the whole fiasco with Orsted, and then all the shit that went down with Eris. Volumes 6 and 7 were very well done in my opinion and to me his actions felt very believable; it was easy to sympathize. Haven't watched past season one as far as the anime adaptation is concerned, but I've heard they picked up where it left off as far as quality is concerned.
I won't make any references to what you can expect going forward; just strap in and enjoy the ride. And pray for season 3 where the best volumes will be adapted.
The flawed character following what he felt like doing instead of what seemed like the moral duty, I don't have much of a problem with the author for that. How other characters react to that however, seems a bit weird. Especially Paul.
Main Characters don't have to be perfect. They very rarely should be perfect. So we can complain about it on an Internet forum. Cheers.
The dodging all consequences with Scenarium as if it was a ''fake timed'' videogame quest but it's actually a trigger event no matter how long you take ( common in fiction but usually less jarring, felt like Roxy and the dungeon spent weeks in suspended animation untill Main Character triggered the ''rescue from the jaw of death'' event ), I roll my eyes... and keep watching because I like the show.
I admittedly forget what the anime included and what it didn't, but in the novels it goes a lot into Paul's thoughts on the whole thing. He had a burst of anger that he regretted after the fact. Basically in his mind Rudeus is this genius prodigy and he should have been able to take care of himself while looking for his mother. But then he realizes that it's expecting way too much of a little kid especially given the kind of land he was teleported to.
Regarding the rescue from the jaws of death thing, you really make me want to get into [insert spoilers here]. All I'll say is that there is a bit more to that than meets the eye. Now whether you find the explanation to be swallowable or not is another thing entirely. Personally, I liked it as it was woven very well into the overarching main conflict of the story. Season 3 cannot come soon enough...
Oh this is fun and I want to play guessing now :
And I'd still keep watching it anyway. I would very much enjoy it if Main Character ''pulled a Chrono Trigger'' tied to the Teleportation Catastrophe to save his mom.
You're tickling my balls so much here man haha.
This show is basically Redo of Healer if you replaced the parts where Keyaru is constantly committing graphic sex crimes with parts where he constantly gets himself beat up by increasingly powerful bullies for absolutely no reason. It's fantastic.
This looked really good and it's animated well but it's kind of boring and pointless, I dropped it after three episodes.
One that nobody's mentioned yet is Mysterious Disappearances, which is a monster mystery show featuring a bookstore clerk and two siblings from another world (one of the siblings works with her at the bookstore). The main appeal is that the bookstore clerk main character is canonically a 28 year old virgin with absolutely ludicrous M cup tits that are the focus of 2-3 scenes per episode. The OP is also very good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkcXtORCwYg
Any good scifi anime released in the last few years? There's only so much logh, star blazers, crest of the Stars etc one can watch.
Dr Stone might count.
A summary: The entire world is petrified. I mean all the humans none of the animals. A couple thousand years in the future they start waking up. A teen science genius is the first (or one of the first) so he uses his knowledge to rebuild civilization. I've only seen half of the first season so it might change.
An older one I'm also casually watching is Starship Operators. A bunch of teens rebel and seize a space battleship when their "country" surrenders.
Dr. Stone gets even better and more science-fictiony in the second and third seasons, it's really good.
Not sure these are to your taste since not much of space opera, but there is psycho pass (which recently got a new movie, not yet seen it), and there is the series of NieR:Automata Ver1.1a (although if you played the game they do not provided much more lore) and finally there is 86, although none of them are masterpieces such as logh.
It depends since do you mean Scfi in tech or does it also have to be space too as only one I can think of off the top of my head was Mobile suit Gundam witch from Mercury.
They've been remaking logh in the past few years, if you haven't already seen the new ones. Supposedly, this adaptation is closer to the novels than the old series was, but I haven't seen the new one yet so don't know what they changed.
Ranger Reject / Go! Go! Loser Ranger!: I know people are probably sick of deconstructions but watching a fed-up jobber minion try to navigate and take down an organization of super sentai psychopaths is a good time.
And that ED.
Train to the End of the World: Go into the first episode blind. You will know very quickly if you're interested. And you thought 5G was bad...
Now there's a quality recommendation if ever I've heard one.
I can see how you'd read it that way. What I mean is it's a insanely weird premise and hits the ground running. How you feel about the first couple minutes is a good indicator of how you'll feel about the rest of it.
The setting is like a series of acid trips so it's difficult to summarize.
Train to the End of the World is worth a two episode test and if you're not into it, then you're not going to get into it, but if you are into it then you'll be totally hooked a couple minutes into episode 2.
What do you mean, It's just a roadside picnic, haha
I just started and WTF hahaha.
I almost never watch new anime as it airs, instead typically lagging a few years or decades behind the hype, but on a friend's recommendation I started watching The Fable and it's pretty enjoyable so far. A legendary but spergy hitman has to lay low and pretend to be a civilian for a while, using yakuza connections to do so, but his presence causes ripples in the local yakuza power structure. Nice grounded, gritty but not ostentatiously edgy setting.
Also caught up on Odd Taxi, it was all right. Occasionally spinning an ep of Ace of Diamond, it's also all right (better than Odd Taxi). Neither's really very fresh though.
I actually did encounter for the manga for this first back when it made its way onto Comixology. It's a fun little adventure even if it is more isekai junk food. I'll agree that the quiet man's rage is a particularly indulgent fantasy when done well and I quite enjoy the glimpses of it we get in this show.
Kaiju number 8 is probably the strongest show I've seen this season. It's a fresh premise and some interesting lore with a very relatable protagonist who's just some poor soul stuck in a 9 to 5 with his childhood dreams slipping and further and further out of reach. Really good animation and fight sequences make for a fun watch.
I feel like I should warn people even though yes Mushoku Tensei and Irregular at magic school aren't terrible at all however for some reason I feel like even by anime standards there's been a huge degree of cringey angst that's inserted in there for the sake of drama. I know especially in the school one where they're actually teenagers that's to be expected but it got pretty grating after awhile. It's made me appreciated even the extremely average isekai trash type anime because at least that's more light hearted. I think those anime definitely changed the overall tone in their latest seasons for some odd reason when they didn't need to.
For Irregular, the fact that the sister OPENLY wants her brother means you know what to expect.
For Mushoku Tensei, I don't get that 'angst' as much as they've actually BEEN through shit. Most of the cast basically got teleported away from home with one literally teleported miles into the sky and another two underwater. The video I linked, she was from our world and was effectively kidnapped and trapped into this world, she wasn't reincarnated. They HAVE PTSD not the social media 'I'm triggered' crap.
Oh yeah for the record I've already watched it up to a certain point, they've got legitimate reasons I guess for being the way they are. Sylphie for example with what she's been through makes total sense, however there are times when I roll my eyes at it because the behaviour and it's a case of christ stop taking out your issues on other people. Then again, you can argue that's exactly how people deal with trauma and often end up lashing out at others.
Maybe I just don't feel like watching something to get depressed and that's all it is myself especially with what's going on this year and I'm projecting LOL. I've really enjoyed slime and other anime way more.
Fair enough you need more light heated stuff for a while, best not to watch certain things if you're not in the right head space to enjoy it.
Irregular's problem is it doesn't know when to leave the high school setting behind. The premise and setting are getting stale. They just reused "conspiracy targets school sports day" plot line except this time Tatsuya deals with it solo in one episode after 2-3 eps of build up. It was a strictly worse version than the last time. One of the things I liked about the early season was the characters with familial responsibilities knew when to stop being high schoolers and act professionally. Having the other characters have a chance to serious up against the terrorists worked so much better.
Half that list is LN adapted isekai shit for retards.
Fuck it all into a bonfire and add more gasoline, that shit trend of generic faggot japanese schoolkid inserted into fantasy land with shitty videogame mechanics needs to die.
It is better then the offerings of the west, but yes it is junk food at best, and indeed it is a shame that the world building is disjointed mess in which the system built and their interaction in between does not make sense. Wasted opportunity of fantasy and mythology.
Got any good old classic to recommend?
I did like the classic Monster Series, although that is not fantasy. The Faraway Paladin and the Ascendance of a bookworm are less junk food on the isekai genre.
I'd actually rather watch some western television over isekai shit. It is that bad It is beyond junk food, it is pure shit that poisons the whole medium through infection. Better shows aren't made because people buy this trash and idiots copy what sells.
If you want good fantasy anime, look for older stuff. They have a lot more good scifi output than oldschool fantasy, but Sengoku Youko is decent japanese fantasy, though the anime adaptation will likely be bad. From the same author, Spirit Circle is a good read, and Biscuit Hammer is much better in print than the disgraceful anime adaptation it got.
Have you seen Dungeon Meshi at all? There are people who are pushing a nonexistent lesbian angle which is really obnoxious, but ignoring the faggots, the characters are pretty good.
That I think is on my watch later list, honestly I have few problems with same sex relationships in anime not just for their rarity but because they are characters first, sexuality second, even the obvious Yoai bait.
There isn’t actually a lesbian relationship in the anime/manga, it’s just some viewers who are imagining it.
So it's shippers being annoying again..
Yep
I'm probably not going to bother with 99% of isekai from now on because they are so hellbent on showing off how absurdly OP the MC is that they fail to provide actually good conflict and the side characters are boring as shit.
Mushoku Tensei still has my interest because even though the MC is strong, he doesn't steamroll everything he comes across and it feels like he could get squashed like a bug if he's not careful.
I started reading Dorohedoro and it’s pretty good so far. It’s like splatterpunk but oddly wholesome at the same time.
I had missed a few of those that might be my jam, thanks for the list.
Has been a pretty weak season compared to the ones before, except for mushoku tensei. Demon slayer and Konsuba episodes are rather weak compared to earlier stuff. Slime Season 3 is stretching its run time with way too many meeting talk episodes. And except for that there isnt really anything wortwhile this season.
I am really enjoying Konosuba 3. It hit the ground running, right where it left off, and if anything, is more hilarious than the previous seasons!
I also am really enjoying Mushoku Tensei. The animation is fantastic, first and foremost, but the story is what really gets me. Watching Rudeus grow and change and become a real man, etc etc. It's very refreshing to see an anime with adult themes that takes them seriously, but is also very entertaining.