Topic: Anime & Manga (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

@CanisWolfred, @Heavyarms55, I love the idea of Dragon Ball Super (especially using threats/fighters from other universes), but the execution has a lot to be desired.

• As Canis said, the first two arcs are just worse animated retreads of the two newest "Z" movies, with failed attempts to expand on them in any meaningful way. The new Frieza arc is especially bad at this, by adding a scene where Krillen was terrified of fighting even basic Frieza soldiers (even while freaking Master Roshi was kicking their butts right below him), bringing back Ginyu only to throw him away in the most anti-climactic way possible, and bringing in Gotenks (who wasn't in the film) only to have him de-fuse the moment he shows up, prompting me to say "what's the point?".
• I honestly don't have many problems with the Universe 6 arc. I would have reworked Hit's backstory a bit (so that instead of a 1,000 year old prodigy, he would have been as strong as he was BECAUSE he had 1,000 years to hone his craft, and Goku would have rekindled his love of fighting after a few centuries of being unmatched), but that's about it. Oh, and I thought Magetta's design was asinine.
• I liked the idea of the Goku Black arc, but I thought narratively it was a clustertruck, largely because of all the timeline stuff. Also they retconned their superhuman invulnerability to regular weaponry, which was most pravelent here. The villains were once driven away by a canister of tear gas, which is extra hilarious considering they have the power of gods now. Interestingly, the arc has some similarity to the doujin Dragon Ball AF (in which an evil Supreme Kai threatens the world with an evil Goku), which was written by Toriyama's protege before being hired on as the official artist for the Super manga, so I wonder if he had any input on this arc.
• I like the basic concept of the Tournament of Power arc, but I think the creation of 65 new fighters for it was way too much of a creative drain, as 95% of them come off looking like the kind of mooks that get knocked out in the preliminaries of Dragon Ball's tournament arcs (and to be fair, most of them ARE mooks that get knocked out early). Even the Universe 11 fighters (the main "antagonists" of the arc) have phoned in designs like "Cyborg G.I. Joe" & "Beerus hastily photoshopped into a rabbit". I don't dislike Jiren, but even he is just a muscled up varient of the "Grey" alien archetype at the end of the day.

Then there's the overall problem of them completely giving Buu the shaft, writing him out of every arc after the Battle of Gods arc (even the two tournament arcs with out of bounds rules where his healing factor wouldn't be a huge advantage).

I still watch it because it's Dragon Ball though, and absolutely LOVED the new Broly movie for what that's worth.

@RR529 I've heard from several people how much better it gets after the first two arcs - but it was how bad I found those two arc that causes me to abandon it. Maybe I should give it another chance?

@Tsurii I need to try Fire Force. I brush over it when I saw the description and cover but since I am dropping Demon Slayer almost certainly I might have to try FF.

I'm glad I'm not alone on this, though to Ufotable's credit, they did the best that could with honestly amatuer-ish source material. I greatly enjoyed Fate/Zero, at least, but I've also enjoyed most of Gen Urobuchi's body of work that I can find, so I'd argue they had more to work with. Shrug

I am watching Miss Kobayashi's (is that how you spell it?) Dragon Maid. Never seen it before and so far it's pretty good

Vinland Saga is the type of anime I was sure would not be for me. Serious, realistic historical fiction, that's a real cure for insomnia. So the fact that I think the series is great so far says a lot.

So, I'm still trying to follow some shows this season, even though I fell behind due to things coming up, and I still have two I need to get caught up with. With that out of the way:

Dr. Stone is just as fun as I'd hoped it would be so far, I'm really digging the survival trivia and the dicotomy between the two lead characters. They're still setting up the story, but I think I'm in for a good ride.

Astra: Lost in Space is also priving to be interesting. Nothing groundbreaking, but it's keeping me invested. The plot keeps thickening, but it doesn't detract from its main focus on team-building and surviving in the space-boonies.

Fire Force had me worried for a second when I thought it was going to have a tournamebt arc right out of the gate, but instead it used it more as a backdrop to introduce the rest of its main premise. I'm really looking forward to seeing where this all is headed, but I'm enjoying the journey, too. I really like all the main characters so far, and I'm a sucker for Gambit knock-offs, so naturally I'm enjoying the villain, too.

Granbelm is Fate/Madoka Gundam, and I'm okay with that. It seems like it needs another episode to get the story going, though. I think. They're still introducing new characters, at least, and it seems to have Fate's tendency to introduce characters in a slapdash manner while expecting the audience to pickup the pieces along the way even as the plot rockets forward at an increasing velocity. So, you know, maybe it'll just be easier to follow along when there's not as many new faces to keep up with.

And hey, at least I don't immediately hate every character they introduce, except maybe the rabid dog disguised as a teenage girl, and then I think we're supposed to hate her, so we don't feel so sorry for her when she finally gets put down.

Hopefully I'll get to To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts later. I would've watched it around dinner tonight, but I changed my mind around the time someone got both of their legs blown off by a cannonball....both on watching it, and on eating dinner...yeesh...

Dropped Demon Slayer for the utter trash it has become.

Finally tried Fire Force and I can see why people like it so much!

Dr. Stone continues to be a heck of a lot of fun!

And finally Danmachi 2 was outstanding this week! "All you property is confiscated, and you're exiled! Get out!"

To my utter bewilderment I actually managed to win an Evangelion figure on Toreba this morning with my free plays.

Let's see if they actually get it to me.

Total Noob question: Is crunchyroll free? I tried to watch a show called KonoSuba this morning but at one point I got stuck with endless adverts (I watched through 20 ads before giving up) Do you have to make an account and is it free? Do you have to pay premium? Also, is the show good? It seemed interesting from what I saw

Just made my first physical anime purchase, as I bought both collections of Captain Earth. I had some Amazon credit, so they didn't cost me full price, I've been wanting to check it out for some time and since it's been out for a couple years I don't think Netflix or Toonami are going to get it at this point (I figured they wouldn't since it's subs only).

@Let'sGoSwitch, it's been a few years since I last tried Crunchyroll, but I believe it has free & paid account tiers.

Free accounts can watch most things, but with ads (and I believe sub-HD resolution), while paid accounts don't have ads & are in HD (I believe they get new episodes a week earlier as well). Take this with a grain of salt however, as again it's been awhile since I tried them.

Endless ads should not be a thing, that has to be a glitch or something (and I think has happened to me once or twice in the past).

@kkslider5552000 Okay so it's free? Is Premium a no ad version?

@LetsGoSwitch Yes, Premium is no ads + access to apps on various platforms. You don't even need a free account unless you want to keep track of what you've watched, though. 20 ads was indeed a glitch. You normally only have to sit through 3-5...

Revisions (Netflix) - Mecha anime that sees modern day Shibuya teleported centuries into a post-apocolyptic future where humanity is nearly extinct and they come under attack from monsters known as the revisions. Their only chance of survival rests with the "String Puppets", mecha designed by what remains of humanity in the future, but strangely enough are only able to be piloted by a small group of modern Shibuya's high schoolers.

Violence - Mid: There's not many gory scenes, but a couple of the few it does have are brutal, such as a person's body literally popping when being crushed by a revision, and a character being shot in the head. There's a couple other bloody scenes but nothing like those mentioned above, and a lot of mechanical violence.

Sex - Mild: There is one bathing scene with a few of the female characters (they briefly discuss jealously over one character's bust size during this segment), however nothing more explicit than cleavage is ever shown.

Language - Mild: Typical PG-13 type stuff.

How'd I like it? - I thought it was a pretty decent watch, mostly for fans of mecha or sci-fi anime. It had a pretty interesting story, some decent action, and I really liked how this one looked, even though it was mostly CGI animation. My biggest issue is the 12 episode running time, as it feels like just as soon as they're done setting everything up they start setting it up for the climax (it actually handles this better than a lot of similarly lengthed series with a pretty satisfying ending, though they then unnecessarily set up for a sequel it may never get). Also, even I found the main character to be a bit grating and that's not something that usually bothers me.

@LetsGoSwitch The free mode has adds and shows are updated a week after they air in Japan. The paid mode has no ads and the shows are updated the same day as they air in Japan.

@RR529 12-13 episode lengh anime has become such an ingrained standard in Japan. I've watched copious amounts of anime over the years and I am really sick of the system. So many series are forced to either bum rush to completion or leave off on a cliff hangar and no way of knowing if there will be another season. It used to be based on how well the DVDs and merchandise sell in Japan, but some studios in Japan thankfully are finally waking up to the importance of the international market, in part due to the success of anime on Crunchyroll and Netflix.

I mean you say that, but I've been paying enough attention to notice people really angry at how many series Netflix has cancelled lately.

@kkslider5552000 What's going on with that? I haven't used Netflix for a few months because I heard Disney was pulling everything from them and the Marvel content was like, 75% of what I watched on Netflix.

Well that's part of it, but they've also been pulling a lot of series with niche but passionate fanbases. And I don't even use Netflix or watch nearly any live action series, so the fact that I even noticed says something.

Compared to anime where any stupid idea can become a hit and get a sequel, it makes me think anime has the advantage in this regard.