Topic: Anime & Manga (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

Just as I had lost all hope for the fall anime season, I found Gugure! Kokkuri-san.
This has seriously saved the season for me. It's so funny and adorable I might just cry. And it's not just five minutes long like Orenchi no Furo Jijou.
This show has made me so happy.

There's a reason it's the only comedy this season (year?) I fully intend to watch.

Well if that isn't the cutest thing ever.

@Konata:

Log Horizon S2 is pretty good in the comedy department and Hitsugi no Chaika: Avenging Battle should be nice if you liked the first season.

There's also the insane action and romantic comedy anime called Ore, Twintails ni Narimasu. that's currently airing this season. It features a guy that transforms into a girl to fight monsters in a battle suit to prevent them from stealing the twintails from the world.

Ore, Twintails ni Narimasu. is pretty straightforward with the humor and its ridiculously fun and hilarious to watch. I had to see the first episode again and noticed that the action scenes were pretty well animated. As far as fanservice is concerned, it's present in small amounts but at least I didn't have the impression that they were forcing it (like Rail Wars! for example).

Watched the first episode of Rage of Bahamut: Genesis, and I liked it a lot. Maybe a bit cliche, but overall it seems like a very cool first episode, and I'm hoping it keeps things up. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Also, Funimation's website has not crapped out on me since I've checked it for the past week, and the episode I watched played fine. Might watch GARO tonight if I can.

EDIT:

Can't watch GARO until Friday, so I watched the first episode of Laughing Under The Clouds and hoooo boy, I haven't seen a first episode this rushed in a long time. Perhaps the beginning was way too slow in the source material, though - absolutely nothing of interesting happened until the last third of the episode, so I guess they had no choice but to rush things. Still, it was a terrible first impression all around...I'll try to give it two more episodes to see if it gets better, though. I never expected it to be perfect, but my gut told me it'd be watchable at least. Hoping it's right...

Saw the first two episodes of Mobile Suit Gundam: Reconguista in G, and will be watching the third episode in the morning. The pacing wasn't perfect and there were some basic questions left unanswered, which hopefully more details in later episodes will clear up

But other than that, it was a pretty fun set of episodes and I look forward to seeing where it goes. Also, the battles feel like they've learned a lot from Gundam Unicorn. A lot less reused animations and one-hit explosions like you'd see in previous series, much more battle damage with a variety of attack methods, and everyone seemed to have a certain level of competance expected from their level of training (except the main hero, though he has actually been trained to use a mobile suit, including some emergency fighting techniques. He's still way too good at this, though).

Oh, and I like the main hero's chipperness. Gundam heroes can be a bit broody and/or serious, so it's nice to see someone who keeps generally upbeat, even when he makes a mistake.

@Astraea thanks for the suggestions! I'm gonna check out all of them. I missed out on the first season of Log Horizon because I hadn't heard anything about it, but now that the second season is out I've been hearing more on how good it is.

Log Horizon was very good, but just be aware going into it that it's not really an action series. The characters spend more time sitting around talking about strategy and politics than participating in any actual warfare. There are action-orientated episodes, but they're few and far between. If that's your thing, you should have a good time.

@SpookyMeths Thanks for letting me know! Action isn't totally my thing, but I don't mind it. So this show sounds perfect for me.

Oh, so it's like someone figured out what made .Hack//Sign good and ran with it? I might have to check that out, then.

I'm getting Hanasaku Iroha on dvd

Why does the recap of Reconguista always basically beg the viewer to watch the next episode? Actually, I don't think it was even begging this time. "Even if you don't want to watch it, Watch it!" XD

Anyways, episode 3 was cool, and some details are finally clearing things up. The Captial whatsit is basically OPAC, so I guess they've never actually had to deal with problems before, since they just hold the whole world hostage any time anybody does something they don't like, under the pretense of keeping the world safe and preventing people from repeating the mistakes of the past.

Which explains why their military is so explicitly incompetant. Like, they let the Pirate girl go back to her Gundam, and in the process she stole it and kidnapped 3 people, including the Hero who keeps helping her because he's all tsudere for her or something, and apparently he has parents in high places (which might explain why he's so stupidly trusting?).

With all that said, at least this show doesn't take itself seriously enough for all the stupidity to get annoying. This show reminds me a lot of Xabungle so far, actually, where it's a lot of cartoony silliness mixed with some surprising realism here and there, and some serious undertones and story elements.

Yeah, more or less. I was going to say that it was like SAO, except instead of 80% of the plot being about Kirito solving all problems single-handedly through his massive OPness and cool sword skills, it's more utilizing the entire cast of characters to explore an actual plot. Coming up with actual plans, like "we need to initiate diplomacy," instead of "why don't I just hit it with swords until it goes away while you all watch and then all the women can join my harem."

That said, I like SAO, but it's the guiltiest of guilty pleasures.

So I finally got around to reading the infamous "other half" of Usagi Drop.

Hmm... though I'm not as repulsed by the ending as some were, I do think it was rushed and addressed the wrong issue. The mangaka should have taken a few more chapters to give an appropriate amount of drama to the developments. The two-year time jump in the final chapter really did it no favours at all. Daikichi's development in that 2 years was a huge narrative piece to just glaze over and it feels incredibly lazy. The two year time skip in the final chapter was worse than the 10 year time skip after Ch. 24.

As for the wrong issue being addressed,
Rin and Daikichi not being blood related is pretty irrelevant. The issue is that they shared a father-daughter relationship for 10 years, and while it may be normal and even healthy for Rin to develop such feelings in her adolescence given the circumstances, Daikichi absolutely thought of her as just his daughter for all those years. This is also just glazed over in about 3 or 4 pages, and then we get the revelation that they're not actually related and it's suddenly OK for them to be romantically involved. Again though, this may not have been as much of an issue of there wasn't the lazy 2 year time skip at the end.

Overall, I would definitely agree with anyone who said that it's best to stop after Ch. 24, or just watch the anime instead.

EDIT: Anime ranked #61 on MAL. Manga ranked #1342. This doesn't surprise me at all...

Saw first episode of Celestial method yesterday. Here is what I tought:
First episode was okay, to be a beging. First it was this flying dish (saucer?) over the city. I think the blu haired girl is a alien. At least it seems like her emotions controlls the wearher) that was weird. And I was not realy happy about the blu haired girl, and miss main character was so, meh. They spendt moste of the episode bulding up that appologie at the end. First half okay, second half meh. I realy hope they give ussomeone funny, like Sayo from Love Lab

Watched the first episode of World Trigger, and it was pretty good. Dunno what TysonOfTime meannt by "poor Pacing and animation", everything seemed pretty spot on to me. Not the greatest first episode, but it introduced the characters and the action well, had some fun moments, and set things up for the story to start in the next episode. I suppose they skipped some details, but I didn't feel lost or anything, nor was I ever bored or felt like they were wasting time. There were some frustrating character traits (which I guess could grow on me) and weird dialogue (is that one two-tone-haired guy admiring him or being sarcastic?), but for the most part I really enjoyed it and look forward to watching more.

Yeah, about that...I don't think you're gonna see a ton of outright silliness from the Konan and Sola guy...

Well, I was mostly bothered by how almost every background character was completely motionless. I only started to notice by the end, but it still started to bother me. The frames with absolutely no motion in them happened far more frequently than I'm used to, and the scene with the teacher and the scene with the siren going off made me legitimately dissapointed. It just doesn't seem very fluid animtion wise.
I'm probably only feeling this way because I set my expectations soley off the manga... It just seems to me that overall its production quaity is kinda sub-par.

I sorta noticed that, but it didn't bother me because I'm used to studios cutting corners and I could argue it was to keep your eye from getting distracted.

Shrug
I'm excited for when the action starts, because I love where the manga goes. I'm just slightly dissapointed that so far it's not being given the quality I think it deserves. Oh well.

Yeah, I guess episode 2 is where the story starts, so we'll see.

Well it is Toei, they seem to have a talent for cutting corners with anime. Just look at how much they messed up Toriko. Well, I think I'll be content to read the manga of World Trigger, because it seems like a good series, but considering the first episode and Toei, not sure if it's for me.

Speaking of Toei, anyone here read the latest One Piece chapter? It was really really good! The reveal at the end was fantastic too. As we're reaching the conclusion of Dressrosa, things are just getting more and more intense. This arc has easily been the best New World Arc so far, for me at least.
Traflgar D Water Law and more of Doffy's past!