Recommended Anime/Manga?

[RiMaDe]

Has anyone watched Love Hina? This anime was rated very highly by one person, which was unexpected for me. Is it worth watching?

[Udderdude]

Has anyone watched Love Hina? This anime was rated very highly by one person, which was unexpected for me. Is it worth watching?

Love Hina is the originator for most of the obnoxious harem trends we still see today. Of course, I hate it just for that alone.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Goblin Slayer is legitimately one of the worst looking anime I've ever seen. Purely visually I mean. The show itself is fine, good even.

[Steven]

I have never seen the Love Hina anime, but someone once gave me the entire English manga for free. I read a few volumes and gave up.

[RiMaDe]

Love Hina is the originator for most of the obnoxious harem trends we still see today. Of course, I hate it just for that alone.

Thanks for your reply.

[BryanM]

Goblin Slayer is legitimately one of the worst looking anime I've ever seen. Purely visually I mean. The show itself is fine, good even.

I do recommend the manga of this one, or even the webnovel or light novel. The pacing and way they rearranged things to make them less impactful and to make less sense... My review of the anime adaption has always been "It feels like they're rushing through things like they don't have enough time, while at the same time pacing everything very slowly."

And of course the art in the manga is often quite good. It was very meme-worthy when it came out.

To Be A Power In The Shadows had some adaption decay, especially in the first episode, but it wasn't remotely this bad. It was about 85% faithful.

Though I guess nothing compares to Demon King Daimao compressing about six years worth of content down into two episodes. It was the weirdest fuckin' thing I ever saw, just every two seconds "Who the fuck is this? Did he just give an entire story arcs' worth of exposition in two sentences?! Did he just die???? ... who the fuck is this new guy?" (Said new characters often appeared by randomly bursting in through a wall.)

Argh, and now I'm reminded of the climatic battle at the end of the Brynhildr in the Darkness anime. In the manga, it's this epic battle (after most of the story being rather calm/focusing on the author's melting-girl fetish. So it was actually quite an important scene, not just another pokemon battle like in a shonen battle anime) between psychic monsters where an entire city gets ripped to shreds around them as collateral damage. Black holes get tossed back and forth constantly, all very epic.

And in the anime, the scene was changed to a girl flying about 4 feet off the ground and disappearing in a shiny light. .... Yeah.

There's this scene in Aku no Hana where the heorine asks the MC to write down an essay of his feelings during the uh "incident". The MC, being a lackadaisical turd, decides not to write the essay and just hands her a book saying "this is my essay". The girl's face collapses from pure delight to utter disappointment. Just begins to beat the shit out of the MC, screaming about how much she was looking forward to reading his crazy ramblings.

Sometimes I do feel like that, yeah.

If only everyone could be as faithful to the source material as The Princess Bride was.... First season of One Punch Man cut corners here and there, but they put everything in.

[null1024]

Started watching Bang Brave Bang Bravern.

Obari is directing, so I decided to try and keep up with it while it's airing. It's on episode 2 right now.
Good fun so far. A liiiiitle bit more tongue in cheek than I'd like, but I'm enjoying it. I really wish the mechs weren't CG. Bravern himself is stunningly goofy, but takes himself seriously at least.

[professor ganson]

I'm really enjoying Classroom of the Elite on Crunchyroll. I mean, the big-breast stuff is whatever, but I really like the strategy focus of the main storyline within the high school setting. Really fun so far!

Is there anything similar that y'all would recommend?

[BryanM]

Gunbuster getting a dub after forty years really makes you think anything's possible, eh. I seriously thought someone would do it with AI before someone'd pay money to have it made.

Lots of things getting follow-ups small lifetimes after they last had anything come out for them. Madoka being one of them. Speaking of which

I mean, the big-breast stuff is whatever

It's ok, you can admit that it's great and an objective improvement on base reality.

Stuff with a pecking-order competition, light game elements, and the MC uses their brain a little bit.... I can think of several king's game style series, but most of them are a death game of one kind or another.

The only thing that readily comes to mind is that gambling school anime.

[professor ganson]

Thanks, Bryan. I think I know what you mean by the gambling school anime. That one didn’t have such an appealing aesthetic, iirc. But I had hopes because of the theme.

As for the breast issue, it took me many years to realize that bigger isn’t necessarily better. In any case they toned that down a bit in the second season so far.

[Udderdude]

I liked Kakegurui. Wish there was more of it.

[vol.2]

I'm watching Record of Lodoss War. The TV series, not the older OAV series with the wrong ending. It's pretty damn fun if you like DnD stuff! Animation isn't like the best thing I've ever seen, but it's VG- or so. It looks like a combination of hand drawn and CGI, which would make sense for 1999ish. Some of the characters are better than others; Parn is pretty one dimensional and uninteresting, but they give more life to some of the supporting cast. Still though, I think it would be more compelling if Parn had a bit more depth, even though I get that is played kind of as a joke (as personified by the superdeformed shorts after each episode).

I would recommend it with the caveat that if you can't really get into the idea of a DnD game (or book) set to an anime, you won't like it. That's what it is and what it feels like in a nutshell.

[BryanM]

It's a little bit surprising how rare DnD style systems show up in things with game-element themes in Japanese webnovels. Where the powers aren't just about adjusting the numbers in combat, and where even a lv.1 goblin can hurt or kill a hero. Goblin Slayer is the biggest one of course.

But I can count on like two fingers others, and they are obscure. (It's easy to tell when something will get an animated adaption one day. I'm The Evil Lord Of An Interstellar Empire!, gets an adoption. Tabletop Wizard, does not.) In one of them, the guy mentions how few damage-dealing spells there are in tabletop games. There's only one magic missile, one fireball, one lightning bolt, one cone of cold, one cloudkill, one meteor shower, etc. Everything else is stuff like an invisible hand to carry your luggage or a sentinel that sounds an alarm if a door is opened.

As exciting as making numbers bigger is, Dragon Ball/Dragon Quest style, it really disempowers the hell out of everyone else in the world. Xianxia novels always have this contrivance where the MC is somehow constantly running into manageable threats, instead of the realistic outcome of immediately being turned into meat paste the second he leaves the sect. Because his numbers were a little too small.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Watched a bunch since my last visit here. Including a rewatch of the original Berserk since hey why not, might as well watch the US BD release that finally happened. Man that's the good shit.

Less good shit: Overlord. But I mean, it's easy to turn my brain off and watch so it has that going for it. I've seen worse. Sometimes it's amusing.

Plenty not really worth mentioning.

Love Ru though, that might be my new favorite in the stupid harem genre.

[BryanM]

Less good shit: Overlord. But I mean, it's easy to turn my brain off and watch so it has that going for it. I've seen worse. Sometimes it's amusing.

If you're only on the first season, that's the worst season. The bumbling around beating stuff up stuff, a horrible overly long MMO 1v1 combat scene. The MC becomes more of a background character and it tells stories from other POV's after this.

Overlord kind of has the reverse quality arc you expect of isekai: where they typically start with a little gimmick and some sense of adventure, then absolutely collapse and have nothing else to say after the initial arc. (This is largely a function of having extremely weak imaginary friends. Plots aren't what make a show good, the characters you spend time with in all the day to day moments, are.)

The vast bulk of Overlord is settler colonialism and politics. A typical feeling I'd have going into one of the later episodes is something like "Ah, this lizardman arc looks boring as shit. But I've come this far so I might as well watch it anyway..." And then afterward I'd be surprisingly invested in all the dumb problems of these lizards. Their food shortage problems. Their infighting. Putting things in their personal lives in order before going off to die in battle against the horrible skeleton man's minion.

Having reasonable expectations matters a lot. I almost always go into Overlord not very enthusiastically, and being surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Over and over again. My brain says it can't possibly be a fluke by this point; I intellectually know the guy's a DnD nerd who started writing when his group broke up and actually cares. That he has world-building documents describing nations and their significant figures in his project folder. Unlike the cookie-cutter guys just copying other shit, cynically hoping to win the lottery. But my heart always screams "don't waste your time on this shit!"




... and this comment section reminded me of certain facts. I was almost a colonialist apologist there, for a minute: "Sure sure, there might have been some unethically-sourced vellum. And the whole... y'know... BUT! Ainz did a lot of good things, too!"

Love Ru though, that might be my new favorite in the stupid harem genre.

It does understand you can't clump absolutely everyone into every scene at all times. (Something I've seen far too often. I call it "waifu cancer", where they grow like tumors and all start to blend together. Date-a-Live is an example of a real offender. You have to keep the core group small like Konosuba if that's a thing you want to do in your writing. I think this generalizes to all friend collectors like Dragon Ball or Index. Where characters get added and never removed and have nothing to do.) You have to put characters offscreen sometimes and let them cool off.

I watched this one video essay where the lady really hated the little perverted dude in My Hero Academia, but I was like "but perverted characters are important! They act creepy so that others don't have to!"

What I found funny is she hated the fan service in My Hero, but loved Pantsu+Vampire. It's a bit odd how many girls I've seen online that love Pantsu+Vampire.

I guess it helps that the writer understands the characters need to entertain the viewer and have this thing called a personality. Even the dad has a bit of character, though he spends most of his time in the background nodding. Approving of the fucked up shit that is currently happening. Potato salad characters are my personal nemesis!

Heaven's Lost Property is one you might enjoy. The main character is basically a sex offender. And the supporting nerd guy acts way more like an actual protagonist. Which is something I really love. Really hate MC's that have the entire world revolve around them.

HLP's extremely stupid and perverted.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Currently in the middle of season 3 of Overlord. Less good may be harsh, I still felt it was worth mentioning and there was so much I didn't mention. And I'm still watching it with no intention to drop it.

Date A Live is another I did watch, now that you mention it. I've heard it gets better but...idk. Second season was rough. I have it on the back burner now.

God...Index. I don't often hate shows with fervor but that one got there for me. It just hits on all the awful tropes that make for boring anime.

I've already watched HLP. But a good mention for sure.

[BryanM]

I've heard it gets better but...idk. Second season was rough. I have it on the back burner now.

It doesn't. It dials up the plot nonsense and begins to tumorize like I mentioned. There's still vestiges of the core hanging out stuff in season three, but by four it's almost all plot.

And not the good euphemistic kind of "plot".

The fixed choice game element gimmick is one I haven't seen much of. Leisure Suit Larry-knockoff adventure game Ore no Genjitsu Wa Renai Game has little bits of that. But my favorite (out of like... five things. The bar isn't very high, here) example was the webnovel Absolute Choice. Which had nothing to do with the other thing named Absolute Choice, except using the same multiple choice gimmick.

Some chuuni kid winds up in a soft sci-fi modern setting with cultivation. His movement technique requires him to crabwalk.

These are important facts.