Forum - View topicThe Spring 2022 Preview Guide
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11475 |
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Time travel time!
I was kinda skeptical of 21st Century Ya Boys, but so far I'm eating it up. Love the splashy colors, the music, the premise, and the eccentric characters we've met so far. Kongming's whirlwind tour of the present was hilarous. Oh btw, Eiko and Kongming?  This is what that is. 
I think I liked Hot Bath Time Machine better when it was a short. The first episode left me fairly unimpressed, but the second was just funny enough to probably keep going with it. I really enjoy the travelogues at the end though. Maybe one of the main things drawing me to stick with it is the hope that all of the little border items in the OP will eventually be explained. I can identify most of them, but there were a couple that left me baffled. 
Judging from these two series, apparently it's smooth glass, whether in mirrors, panes or bottles, that is the most amazing thing about modern life. |
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Florete
Posts: 370 |
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Have you seen the first episode? Are you saying this with context or without? Because if the context of this really "raises suspicions," I think the problem lies within the self rather than the work. |
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wolf10
 Posts: 909 |
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You're a lesbian. You don't care about men. I respect that, dammit. I'm gay. I'll stan a queen, but trying to sell me a series that has precisely one male character who exists solely to be disposed of in such a highly suspect manner probably isn't going to happen. (Yes, I'm going to question the intent, because in my mind that's really not much different from a one-guy-only harem series that only exists to sell the kind of sex I'm not personally into.) It is what it is. Last edited by wolf10 on Sat Apr 02, 2022 10:24 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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thadec
Posts: 45 |
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About:
Take the United States film industry. As tired as everyone is of superhero movies, the truth is that Hollywood would be toast without them. No other genre has reliably made money for years, and now even remakes and animation are running out of gas. People scapegoat superhero movies for this but the truth is that westerns, comedies, historical epics, police dramas, romances, family movies, action and adventure etc. were in decline or dead long before Tony Stark said "Avengers Assemble." It has gotten so bad that the industry is now staking a huge part of its future on video game adaptations. Well isekai is the same. Knock it all you want, but what other genre is bringing in consistent revenue - not just in anime but in light novels and manga - right now? Just like banning Batman from cinema won't bring back "Forrest Gump", "Apollo 13" and "The Sixth Sense", ditching isekai won't bring the 90s and 2000s anime scene would somehow come back. Even before the isekai glut a lot of the genres that were popular back then were either in serious decline (mecha, space, school pure comedies) or had practically ceased to exist (visual novel adaptations, magical girl shows that aren't parodies or deconstructions). And the era where simple cel animation could cheaply and quickly produce series with hundreds of episodes that dominated Japanese TV ratings? Whether it was Dragon Ball and Rumiko Takakashi romcoms in the 1980s, Pokemon and Detective Conan in the 1990s or the Big 3, those days aren't coming back either. It was neat back then: the industry was able to produce 3 seasons of Slayers - plus a pair of OVAs and 3 movies - in 4 years without spending much money. You were even able to do a 100 episode MIDDLE SCHOOL AUDIENCE SHOUJO series back then in Kodocha. If content like that still worked today then the anime industry would absolutely produce it. The problem is that it doesn't. Even if you were to try to remake it, well a lot of the content in Slayers and Kodocha wouldn't fly with modern audiences and production quality to meet modern standards would be just as time-consuming and expensive as anything else. Isekai didn't kill all that stuff off. Instead isekai is pretty much the only thing that consistently works right now given the environment that the modern anime industry has to survive in. Until that changes the best that you can hope for is "better isekai." And even there, most of it will still have to deliver what its primary audience, which is the shonen and seinen demographic, wants to see. Because of this, even the hypothetical "better isekai" still won't be what the genre's critics are going to enjoy much. Example: everyone who would like isekai better if the bland self-insert protagonists were replaced with (15 year old) 80s action hero or 90s action antihero archetypes raise your hands. Yeah, exactly. |
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Nev999
Posts: 140 |
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Nobody needs to sell you on it, though, because it's not like you're being underserved when it comes to action series that have a lot of dudes, you can watch most of them for that (and even find a TON where women are disposable!) The reason people responded to you was you fixated on the representation of men in one episode of something you didn't watch and seemed to have an incorrect read on. (And having just watched the ep, yeah,you did, she does straight up say "I'm the villain for having murdered you and you're the victim" and a girl is killed just as brutally). and people had counterpoints to that. Nobody insulted you that I can see, it was just an honest response to a statement that was pretty muddled and used a word with a contentious origin. And honestly, if you don't care about us, you don't have to bring it up? I wouldn't bring up fetishization of gay guys just so I could talk about how women are the real victims of it. I know that's not my beef to have. I'd expect an argumentative response if I was coming on here when, for instance, the first episode of Sasaki and Miyano first came out to express my discomfort were no prominent female characters in the main cast and tried to talk about how this might speak to the author's hatred of women, how there needs to be women to balance out gay stuff, and tried to make how that wounds me as a woman a central issue too, tbh. I don't need a quota of women in a story about queer men, and I can enjoy them just fine, so yeah, I don't get it, I guess. That's fine though. Different strokes. I'll bow outta this. Last edited by Nev999 on Sat Apr 02, 2022 11:34 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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thadec
Posts: 45 |
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I have not seen "The Executioner" so I will take your word for it. As for Naofumi, well consider Diablo/Takuma of "How Not To Summon a Demon Lord." Or actual title: "The Other World Demon Lord and the Summoning Girl's Slave Magic." The two series had their initial runs within 6 months of each other. Season 2 of Demon Lord aired less than a year ago to no controversy whatsoever. In Shield Hero the slavery issue was initially treated seriously where in Demon Lord it was comedic ecchi fanservice from beginning to end. So were slavery the real issue, Demon Lord would have been the more controversial show. Instead, ANN treated Demon Lord favorably. animenewsnetwork.com/this-week-in-anime/2018-08-21/.135700 and animenewsnetwork.com/review/how-not-to-summon-a-demon-lord/episode-12/.137103 animenewsnetwork.com/preview-guide/2018/summer/how-not-to-summon-a-demon-lord/.133839 All the complaints were over quality, ecchi fanservice and genre tropes, not slavery. Which means the reason why Naofumi was controversial was 0% Rapthalia and Filo. Instead it was 100% Melty. |
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lossthief
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 1426 |
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Alright then, can I just make a quick request that anybody else who feels it necessary to talk about Executioner actually watch the first episode? This is the third or fourth time now that somebody's come in with a take about something they haven't actually seen. As you can imagine, it gets pretty frustrating. |
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thadec
Posts: 45 |
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Wolf101 was referring to a "by creepy male otaku for creepy male otaku" detestable subgenre that does actually exist and things like "brutally killing off all the male characters" does happen. Wolf101 erred by referring to that subgenre as misandrist - when it actually is and caters to misogynists - and that mistake caused the conversation to go off the rails.
First off people love FEMALE characters that fit this bill even more. Killing Eve (Villanelle). Talentless Nana. Junko (Danganropa). Himiko Toga (by far the most popular villain in My Hero Academia). Esdeath (the only Akame Ga Kill character that anyone remembers). Lucy etc. (Elfen Lied). Tanya the Evil. Shiro (Deadman Wonderland). Yuno ( Future Diary). Raygo and Nu (Kill la Kill). So many others. Also you are overlooking something. I never said that such characters aren't popular. Joker is more popular than Batman. Of DC females only Wonder Woman is more popular than Catwoman, Poison Ivy or Harley Quinn. Baroness and Storm Shadow are the few G.I. Joe characters that most people can name off the top of their heads. Only Bumblebee is more popular than Megatron and Starscream. So sure they are popular but they aren't considered heroes. Yeah, Light Yagami's many fans defend his basically killing his father. Lelouch Lamperouge's justify his killing Euphemia (the most sympathetic character in the show). But they don't claim that either was being a hero in doing so. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11475 |
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The return of Dr. Stone Fell in Love was ok I guess? While I enjoyed the first season, I was never really hyped about it, and this season's premier didn't even really reach the previous standard. In other words, my oxytocin level did not rise. But I did get a kick out of all the sounds Yuuki Kaji was making in the background while being molested by Suiu.
 I'll probably still watch for the Science!.
The spin cycle of your washer is a centrifuge. Dryers are simple evaporation, only turning at low speed to fluff the clothes to create more surface area for evaporation. Tumbling ≠ centrifuging. 
 I was unaware that Ted Danson is a famous scientist!
It's weird to get back to back badminton series, but here we are. I'm afraid Ace of Badminton doesn't hold a candle to Ryman's Club in either characterization, plot, or badminton animation. It starts with the Sawamura Dilemma of whether to accept an invite from the prestigious high school or follow his middle school friends, then proceeds to meeting Ryou's new peers from Futsal Boys, including the gung-ho natural athlete, the genki twins, and the morose, black-haired stick-in-the-mud Matsuda (not Sakaki this time, who is the gung-ho athlete here), as well as the famous player Kento, who looks like he's going to be a right bastard. But hey, it's a sports anime, so I'm in unless they do something offensively awful. As for Pretty Boys Derby, I have to wonder if they've ever seen a thoroughbred, since all but one depicted in this have the entirely white muzzle typical of donkeys and mules, and that lone exception was an all-white horse. It just looks so weird to me. And then there's all the other bullshit that went on in this episode, and the instructor band-leader uniforms which still somehow look bland, and... :sigh: I know this is a sports anime, and I know it has Takahiro Sakurai in it, so on both counts I'm duty-bound to watch it, but man, they are making it hard! |
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SaneSavantElla
 Posts: 236 |
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For all the discussion it generates, I still find Executioner and Her Way of Life meh after watching its 1st episode. Thought an attempt at "deconstruction" of some aspect of isekai would be interesting, but so far it's displaying a lot of the things that makes many isekai unwatchable for me (isekai'd characters singled out for their importance in an alternate world setting, arbitrary world-building and magic system, ridiculous character designs/outfits, edginess coupled with tragic flashbacks, animation often focusing on glorifying its overpowered protagonists - though in this case it's the executioner/her master, etc.) I'm already looking at my watch halfway through the episode, and to top it all off, there's the predatory lesbian character... so yeah, really not for me... hard pass.
On Aharen-san, I'm sure there's an audience for this that would find it endearing, but for me I just find it difficult to suspend my disbelief towards the characters' behaviors (both Aharen and Raido) and thus for the most part I just find it silly instead of funny. The most surprising premiere for me so far is definitely Kongming, even though admittedly I wasn't enamored with the premise. Though I only have a passing knowledge of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, for some reason I'm willing to believe that this dude Kongming is the real deal. That said, some jokes did overstay their welcome (enumerated one too many modern conveniences for example). But it's thoroughly enjoyable and so far all the characters are fun to watch! |
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MCAL
Posts: 182 |
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Another comparison Executioner seems to have with Talentless Nana is people who never watched it acting like it condones things its doesn't even remotely condone.
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space cadet
Posts: 3 |
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I'm super excited for Executioner to get its own review column so those who don't want to watch it no longer feel obligated to explain what they think its failings are. It's explicitly a yuri, marketed as one, so the "predatory lesbian" recurring complaint seems a little genre-blind. Momo is functionally a tamer version of Urara from Sabagebu!, and I don't recall anyone on this site having nearly as much of an issue with that show, perhaps because people who weren't in its target demographic understood it wasn't for them (and maybe because of the more egregious issues in that show's text).
Unfortunately, it's not too surprising that a show about lesbians who fight has taken up half the air in the room in this thread, since traditionally very few things make people as upset as violent or queer women. I came here expecting to find people discussing the shows they enjoyed the most, hoping to uncontroversially say "I think JC Staff did a job! I was especially worried after Strongest Sage's quality last cour. As a lesbian I'm excited a yuri set outside of high school is getting a major release, because the genre's been exploring more mainstream (read: isekai) concepts lately!", and it was really jarring to see how many people (who presumably liked the other offerings available, or know they don't like yuri) can't let go of this one. If a studio ever adapts I'm in Love with the Villainess or Roll Over and Die, two other yuri with violent themes, be forewarned to steer clear unless you intend to hate-watch. |
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Stretch2424
 Posts: 167 |
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What annoyed me about the second half of episode one of The Executioner and Her Way of Life was not Momo but rather the all too common 'I-can-beat-five-guys-with-swords-even-though-I-only-have-a-knife' scene.
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2885 |
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the reviewer not getting the meta of mobuseka was funny, i guess the pre.ise made they turn off their attention..the mc specifically said that the game was made by a company that normally makes games for men and this is their first female aimed game . now you can assume that it is just an excuse for the writer to be lazy,.or there is a more interesting later underneath, it's actually the later, but feel free to assume it's the former and drop the anime.
but again, the work did this to itself by having otome in the title and this attracting a specific demographic who will be against the whole concept just in principle. |
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Leviathonlx1
Posts: 204 |
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You know I figured if there was going to be drama around a show this season it'd be Aharen.
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