Late getting this out as busy but still a good season. Isakai came back in force and a few good heavy hitters, as always disclaimer, I am human so haven't watched everything and not fully caught up with every one of the shows listed but at least past 3 episodes on each. Without futher a do:
The Heavy hitters:
Solo Levelling S2: They went HARD this season, spectacular fights nearly every episode, the MC already at the 'I'm him' stage plus him collecting bodies, literally, for his army.
Shangri-la Frontier S2 Cour 2: Just the start of this season with the showcase of the move armageddon to now we in the pro leagues, it's still a fun ride especially for gamer weebs.
Re Zero S3: It's back and still brutal as fuck in deaths only now some of the bad guys get to die horribly too.
Zenshu I put this new one here as it feels like a passion project for anime artists, an animation artist dies at work and wakes up in a fictional world she once saw as a kid, only she has the power to draw scenes from OTHER work to help her like Valley of the Wind. It's nice just seeing childhood anime scenes be displayed in this work.
Dr Stone: Science Future: Senku returns only he's travelling to America so you know what that means...guns in the stone world! lol.
Isakai zone
Headhunted to another world: from Salaryman to big four!: A looked over but highly skilled salaryman is summoned by the Demon Lord to be his new General. What I like about this is he's summoned BECAUSE of his skills in our world showing the most powerful skill in any world, understanding logistics!
I'm a Noble on the Brink of Ruin, so I might as well try mastering magic: Nothing spectacular, guy wakes up in a fantasy world in the body of a young noble, learns he can use magic and makes ut his focus. It's just average and good filler anime.
The Daily life of a middle aged online shopper in another world: The title speaks for itself but what I like about this is: A: inventive use of his shopping ability like using a magic tool in this world to make biofuel for his vehicles and generators B: He fucks the catgirl.
Possibly the Greatest Alchemist of all time: Our MC gets caught in the path of an illegal summoning so unable to return home, the goddess gives him a new body and the powers to create using magic. What stands out is that the goddess was smart and planning in that she gave the MC a blessing effectively giving him a tutorial mode to reduce danger for a while and plants him a year BEFORE the guys who were summonded.
The Red Ranger becomes an adventurer in another world Title speaks for itself only this ranger runs of the power of relationships so lots of marriage and friendship jokes in his moves plus main girl has very big plot..
Aquired taste
I may be a guild receptionist, but I'll solo any biss to clock out on time: Channeling the feeling of every support and healer main,her nice job is being ruined by adventurers unable to take down a boss resulting in overtime for her so she gets a disguise and onshots the bosses the weaklings can't cope with so she can clock out!
100 girlfriends season 2 After the baby feeding scene I saw, I'm just going to say it's still 'cultured' and move on...
I left my A-Rank party to help my former students reach the dungeon depths: This one gets a higher rating than average as the guy LEAVES himself knowing his worth and the BRUTAL retaliation he does against those that wrong him later on.
Bogus Skill <<fruitmaster>>: This one is weird, it's not particularly good but it's not bad, its a weird middle ground where you can enjoy watching it but know it's lacking
Even given the worthless Appraisal class I'm actually the strongest This does a Goblin Slayer bait and switch in that the first episode is brutal but it doesn't go to that level again really. Not bad, but be aware of that.
And that's what I can talk about, feel free to add in the stuff I couldn't catch up with as there's still A LOT to chose from.
I can't tell if I'm just getting bored of anime or if it's been in a slump the past few years. Isekai doesn't interest me at all, which doesn't help I'm sure. But most these don't either. When's the next great shounen coming? Or great anything? It all seems so mediocre to me. And I don't like how feminized it's become, seems like there's very few masculine animes/manga anymore. I don't follow like I used to though, maybe my perception is wrong idk
Shounen has lost of of its appeal-to-boys-only style (allegedly because it is profitable) in contrast to shoujo. I guess that mirrors changes in western media. I don't know how up-to-date you might be but some recent ones I have watched are Fire Force (fighting fire with fire), early parts of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (punching vampires with the power of sunlight), Food Wars (extreme cooking), and Demon Slayer (slice demons with a katana). I avoid some of them because the fanbases are annoying like Jujutsu Kaisen. Some I just have not seen yet like Baki.
I don't think we are going to have any more shows that run weekly for years like One Piece, Dragon Ball, or Naruto.
I have to gush every time Fire Force gets mentioned. Cool animation, interesting and unique world and, most memorable, the OP and ED are epic, actually top tier.
As for Food Wars, I like things that over overcome their premise. Food Wars is bizarre lewd cooking...which sounds like it's going to be awful and embarrassing, but it's actually pretty wholesome, and the fan service is hilarious and more the cherry on top than the actual focus. And, similar to Fire Force, the S1 ending is awesome. The tone change around halfway through is epic, too, and the animation there is super cute.
One thing I really appreciate about anime is the attention to detail. If it's about a specific subculture, it tries to get it right. If it's about a sport or activity, it often goes into extreme detail. While exaggerated, Food Wars does cooking well.
Fire Force was cool but the animation budget plunged off a cliff after like 2 episodes. It was actually shocking how much they were struggling with basic fights. Maybe it got better later, idk.
I'm thinking of the episode with the mascots holding the balloons specifically.
Yeah the animation usually got kind of cheap in the lulls between story beats, lots of moving stills and reused frames. But they usually pulled the good stuff back out for the big fights.
Spoilery minor rant on Food Wars: XXXXXXX The series was great right up until they decided the main villain wasn't villainous anymore. There's nothing wrong with a villain temporarily joining a hero to defeat a bigger villain, or a villain turning good, it can be a decent plot device, but she's a karma houdini! She suffers NO concequences for her actions, and not even in-universe, (all her losses are self-inflicted) but out-of-universe the audience is written as expected to suddenly like her just because she's hot. Her meat-minion showcases a GOOD heel/face turn: Beaten in battle, humiliated by the good guys, she returns and is humiliated by the bad guys, and the good guys, initially, are annoyed at her, and she explains she was Just Following Orders, a bad excuse, but it IS an excuse, and she must contribute in major ways before being accepted, and even then, often gets the side-eye. The main villain? Shows up on their doorstep, the doorstep I must remind she TRIED TO DESTROY, says "well, I'm a good guy now", and everyone just... forgets that she was the primary open AND mastermind antagonist.
I know that's not a big thing to many people, but despite the premise, Food Wars isn't a comedy! You can't just have major narrative shifts with no rationale. "The tone change halfway through is epic"... Maybe? But the writing really isn't up to par to justify it. Psycho dictator chef guy is cool, but the way he was placed into the narrative isn't. If the primary antagonist was a fat ugly dude instead of a hot big-breasted blonde, and they still kept the minute-long segments of "his" tongue swirling about the open air, you'd argue the writing was bad switching him to good suddenly and arbitrarily, too.
Firstly, massive clarification. I can see it being unclear, but I was talking about the tone shift in the song.
Frustrating, since I thought of phrasing it a few different ways, and apparently went with the most misunderstandable phrasing...oops. I thought about mentioning the timestamp, I thought about saying rhythm or similar instead of tone. But I didn't, and now here we are.
Yeah, there were some issues with the story, no argument. I didn't hate it, but I certainly didn't like S3 (I believe) as much as 1 and 2. I don't think it's quite as bad as you paint it but, yeah, could have been handled a lot better...or not at all.
I don't recall that ED. Did I see a censored version?
Not sure. I looked it up, it looks like it changes half way through S1, so what I linked is for episodes 1-14 only, according to a wiki. So maybe you just remember the other ending song more, I don't know. But a cursory search didn't show me any mention of that song being censored or replaced.
It's sad because anime's unabashed appeal to men/masculinity at a time when western media had been feminized was one of it's biggest appeals.
All of those are old except for demon slayer and even it's been over for a while and didn't appeal to me in the first place. I don't interact with anime fandoms online anymore so I don't bother with that stuff, I haven't gone back to JJKK in a while but I do like it and think it's the closest thing we have to what I asked about. Baki is ancient but I enjoyed some of the netflix stuff for sure.
I just don't get why not, battle mangas/anime have a massive ceiling and have proven to be cashcows. The right one with interesting characters and powers can go on forever and be huge hits.
Might be looking in wrong direction then as Solo Levelling is doing good, we have the other Korean series Omniscient Reader in the works and there's A LOT of good fighting Manhwa and manga to recommend.
Maybe you just need a break from anime and read some Manga/Manwha?
Solo Levelling is OK as entertainment, but it doesn't have much of a soul to it. Korean stories in general have that issue.
Korean adaptations that get animated seem to have exactly two possible stories: either "Monsters are appearing in Seoul and I'm going to level up so much and never really leave Seoul" or "I am going to be bullied in ways that would have made Reinhard Heydrich say 'alright, that's a little excessive'".
Man, I was going to say that in my reply to OP but just ended up saying "they've never really captured me like anime/manga has. I just prefer the vibe the Japanese give, the aesthetics etc."
But you nailed it. That's what I was thinking, they do feel more soulless to me. I've read more than a couple really good ones, but there's usually something missing compared to a great manga/anime for me. They feel like more of a product then a labor of love like great anime/manga. Though I guess I feel a lot of modern stuff coming out of Japan is going the same way, hence my original post. But at it's best manga/anime is hard to beat.
Yeah idk, I've read some really good manwhas before but they've never really captured me like anime/manga has. I just prefer the vibe the Japanese give, the aesthetics etc. I do see solo levelling a lot though, it seems like maybe the biggest property right now with JJK.
It seems this generation's big shounen was Demon Slayer and Chainsawman. If those didn't appeal to you (and they didn't to me, at least after part 1 in CSM) then I think you just grew out of them.
Because I do think they were better than the Naruto/Bleach generation, but they are still just shounen series doing roughly the same things with the same cliche archetypes.
Maybe I'm biased cause I grew up with them but chainsaw man and demon slayer didn't look like could lay a glove on Naruto/Bleach. Both series had their flaws, but were way more interesting and cool. I thought I'd like chainsaw man but got bored quick and demon slayer didn't interest me at all, feel like that's a chick show idk. I still haven't finished the second season or kept up with the manga, but JJKK feels like the closest thing to me. But I keep expecting to hear about some new big battle anime and it hasn't happened for a while.
Demon Slayer is very popular with women so it might be more chick oriented, but it was the biggest seller in the world for a while during its run. So I think that means both of us are just out of touch with what kids like these days.
CSM was really good and had a solid definitive end with part 1, which makes it leagues ahead of all the shounen zombies. I have ignored the entire second half and felt no worse for it. Though I'll admit it takes like 50 of the 100 chapters of part 1 to really make you be hooked. Not that its bad early on, but its a lot of setup.
Unfortunately for most series, they have to compete with the big battle anime in Dragon Ball outshining them constantly right now. Even if Super is shit and Daima is just okay, its still fucking massive and makes it hard for anyone to compete against it. If they even want to, because you also don't want to try and beat your own childhood nostalgia that most of Japan probably has for it too.
The late 90s until the early 2010s had that huge gap without any Dragon Ball being made (besides the joke movie with Vegeta's brother), and that's when all the other big battle shows we can think of were happening. Once it came back with BoG, you can almost hear them all rushing to isekai instead.
Yeah probably lol, it didn't appeal to me but I know it was massive. Feels like it came and went fast though. For someone who grew up with DB, then the big 3 when I was in highschool, it's weird to see a manga come and go so fast. I want another epic 600+ chapter, multi arc battle manga.
Interesting, I love DB but I didn't realize it was still so big. You'd think people would be tired of it and want some fresh blood in the genre. Probably doesn't help that OP is still going strong too. But I would love to see a new one pop up in the next year or two, I feel like anime needs it, it feels stale to me. Isekai needs to die ASAP too, fucking bored and played out, don't get the appeal.