Anime of summer, fall, and 2024
Jan. 6th, 2025 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petrea_mitchellI wound up just watching two continuations in the summer cour, and then dealing with the household health crisis meant I didn't have the energy to keep up with a continuing storyline for most of fall.
I finished watching Yatagarasu in the summer, and while the last arc wasn't quite up to the same standard as the main one, it was still the best thing I watched this year, and I am about to become very tiresome by recommending it absolutely anywhere someone implies that they might be interested in Hugo recommendations.
I also watched season 2 of Oshi no Ko, which is mostly about Aqua acting in the stage play adaptation of a shōnen manga. It was good, it left me wanting more of the story, but on a week-to-week basis it felt like it had absorbed a little too much of the shōnen aesthetic. The run of episodes covering opening night probably took longer in total than the actual play would have, much like shōnen battles that can take five episodes to cover 5 minutes.
I also watched 3 or 4 episodes of Bye Bye Earth before losing interest.
In the fall, I caught the beginning of the latest season of Re:Zero, and it seemed fine, and I believe I'll go back and watch the rest of it sometime soon. And in late December, I tried Dan Da Dan before noping out after episode 2.
Dan Da Dan makes an interesting contrast with Undead Unluck. They're both shōnen manga adaptations which both came with a reputation of getting good after a rough start, they both start with a male and female hero being thrown together in immediate peril and forced to work out how to make their powers work together while shouting a lot and enduring a bit of forced intimacy. But one of the reasons I stuck with Undead Unluck was that I was immediately ready to root for Fūko, whereas I don't like either of the leads in Dan Da Dan at all. Also, while some awkwardness between the characters in Undead Unluck is a side effect of Fūko's power working best with direct skin contact, Dan Da Dan is just obsessed with naughty bits and with subjecting its female lead to creep-o-vision camera angles. So no thank you.
My overall top pick for the year is Yatagarasu, as I said, and if I had to round it out to a top 5, I'd add Undead Unluck, Astro Note (shout-out to this review at The Glorio Blog which pointed out there was more going on than met the eye, without which I might not have gone back for episode 2), Oshi no Ko S2, and Train to the End of the World.
I finished watching Yatagarasu in the summer, and while the last arc wasn't quite up to the same standard as the main one, it was still the best thing I watched this year, and I am about to become very tiresome by recommending it absolutely anywhere someone implies that they might be interested in Hugo recommendations.
I also watched season 2 of Oshi no Ko, which is mostly about Aqua acting in the stage play adaptation of a shōnen manga. It was good, it left me wanting more of the story, but on a week-to-week basis it felt like it had absorbed a little too much of the shōnen aesthetic. The run of episodes covering opening night probably took longer in total than the actual play would have, much like shōnen battles that can take five episodes to cover 5 minutes.
I also watched 3 or 4 episodes of Bye Bye Earth before losing interest.
In the fall, I caught the beginning of the latest season of Re:Zero, and it seemed fine, and I believe I'll go back and watch the rest of it sometime soon. And in late December, I tried Dan Da Dan before noping out after episode 2.
Dan Da Dan makes an interesting contrast with Undead Unluck. They're both shōnen manga adaptations which both came with a reputation of getting good after a rough start, they both start with a male and female hero being thrown together in immediate peril and forced to work out how to make their powers work together while shouting a lot and enduring a bit of forced intimacy. But one of the reasons I stuck with Undead Unluck was that I was immediately ready to root for Fūko, whereas I don't like either of the leads in Dan Da Dan at all. Also, while some awkwardness between the characters in Undead Unluck is a side effect of Fūko's power working best with direct skin contact, Dan Da Dan is just obsessed with naughty bits and with subjecting its female lead to creep-o-vision camera angles. So no thank you.
My overall top pick for the year is Yatagarasu, as I said, and if I had to round it out to a top 5, I'd add Undead Unluck, Astro Note (shout-out to this review at The Glorio Blog which pointed out there was more going on than met the eye, without which I might not have gone back for episode 2), Oshi no Ko S2, and Train to the End of the World.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-23 03:21 am (UTC)Sorry to hear about the household health crisis.
Agreed that Yatagarasu was great, and that the main arc was best.
I just binged on Oshi no Ko and enjoyed it.
I liked Dan Da Dan a lot, but I have a higher tolerance for some of that nonsense, plus I enjoy some committed wackiness (loved loved loved the first season of FLCL). For example, I enjoyed Mysterious Disappearances, but did tire of its obsession with creepy angles. At one point, I was watching another series and thought, wait, why is THIS one doing the creepy angles, I thought that was Mysterious's domain? And it turned out I had clicked on Mysterious after all.
I recently signed up for a special deal for Hulu so that I could watch Undead Unluck and quite enjoyed it. (I watched the first episode last year in Taiwan, pausing super frequently to Google Translate the Mandarin subtitles to English. That was enough for me to know I wanted to watch more, but subbed in English. Google Translate on foreign subs was too painful.)
Not sure what I'll watch this season. I'm still mulling over what I enjoyed most last year.
Hope this year is better for you.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-29 01:41 am (UTC)