Topic: Anime & Manga (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

I just finished Konosuba and I absolutely loved it. One of the best english dub voice casts I've heard! Hopefully there will be a season 3!

I've heard great things.

sigh There's no way for a normal person who has hobbies other than anime to watch all the cool anime coming out. There's been at least half a dozen all time great anime to come out already this year it seems like...and that doesn't even include any of the sequel seasons, of which there were many. It's actually impossible, the quality is so overwhelming. Some of them just look like big budget anime movies at this rate, I don't know how they were made by humans.

If I had to make a top 5 best manga list for myself, it would be:
1.Dragon Ball/One Piece
2.Fullmetal Alchemist
3.Yu Yu Hakusho
4.Death note
5.One Punch Man

Cutie Honey Universe (HiDive via VRV) - Reboot of a classic Go Nagai (Mazinger Z, Devilman) property, that follows Honey Kusaragi, a seemingly average high school student who is really the magical girl superhero Cutie Honey (and can take on other forms as well, such as the biker persona Hurricane Honey), who battles a terror group of female beast people called Panther Claw.

It was okay, but I wasn't terribly enthralled by it. Though it did have some cool action scenes, in general it had a feeling of cheapness about it, I didn't care for the general enemy design, and most of it's attempts at humour didn't click for me. That, and you'd have to have a unique taste in fanservice (the standard transformation & bathing scenes are one thing, but it also has a bit of a masochistic bent with female characters often getting their clothes torn off by whip, including leaving marks, if not by that episode's villain, than by the surprisingly harsh teachers at the school).

the Sacred Blacksmith (Funimation) - Medieval fantasy series that focuses on young knight Cecily Campbell & how she gets mixed up in the affairs of the blacksmith Luke, the only one in town who can forge Katanas (blades much superior to what people usually carry around). However he has a chip on his shoulder & refuses to make any more, and Cecily gets dragged into a decades long struggle involving demons, magical demon swords, & more.

I remember watching this a long time ago back when I was still watching anime via unofficial means and really liking it, and I still really enjoyed it. It's generally animated quite well with a few fantastic action sequences, I liked the character design overall, and it has the right mix of light hearted humor, surprisingly dark moments, and light fanservice that I think would go over well with fans of shows like Is it Wrong to try & Pick up Girls in a Dungeon? Unfortunately it clearly didn't hit it's mark back when it aired & it only has one season, with plenty of plot threads left dangling.

Just finished the first season of Jujutsu Kaisen. Enjoyed it thoroughly. I'm curious to find out if Yuji Itadori's bubbly personality will eventually bleed into Sukuna's surly attitude and they'll form a bond as a result, a la Naruto and Kurama. So I'm looking forward to the second season, although it'll probably be a while before it airs.

I recently finished watching Hunter X Hunter (2011 edition) and I cannot recommend it enough to anyone who enjoys anime, it's not your everyday shonen. How the characters and plot are written is fantastic.

It's funny how Uzumaki got another delay because its super difficult to actually adapt the art style, and the very next anime to come out is Record of Ragnarok, which trended on Twitter because the anime utterly failed to adapt the difficult to adapt art style.

@DomGC Absolutely excited for this, the manga is awesome and it looks like Mappa is doing an outstanding job. The soundtrack at the end perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the source material. Can’t wait to see it!

I just finished Odd Taxi. You should probably watch it.

It is really good. Like exceptionally good. There's anime I like more that are out there, but this is dangerously close to Madoka or Steins;Gate levels of a perfectly put together series, from beginning to end. Also worth recommending if you like anime that aren't necessarily like other anime.

@kkslider5552000 It's certainly on my radar! It looks amazing and I've heard a bunch of positive reception from it.

Anime (TV):

• Sword Oratoria: Is it Wrong to Try & Pick up Girls in a Dungeon!? On the Side (HiDive via VRV) - Spinoff of the main "Is it Wrong" anime that takes place concurrently with it's first season. Nothing groundbreaking, but if you like the main series this offers more of the same.
• SSSS.Gridman (Funimation) - Really fun take on the "Super Robot/Ultraman" type formula, though it's another case where the 12 episode runtime is criminally low. It really could have been stretched out a bit to better explain things when it starts to get meta (that, and it'd have been nice to devote more time to the romance between Yuta & Rikka, which was mostly dropped after the first few episodes).

Anime (Film):

• Captain Harlock (Prime Video) - This CGI film was my first experience with this franchise, and it was a pretty good time. Worth a look for sci-fi fans.
• InuYasha the Movie 2: Castle Beyond the Looking Glass (Prime Video) - Part of my yearly rewatch of all the series' movies. Probably not much to say about it that I haven't already. Worth a look for fans of the series.

Manga:

• InuYasha (Kindle) - I've read through this a few times before (as I'm sure you're all aware by now), but this is my first time reading through it via legitimate means. Closing in on the end of Volume 9 (through those 3 Volumes in 1 packages), and it's great to see how much better the image/art quality seems to be compared to the fan scans (some of which are several years old) on pirate sites.
• Triage X (Kindle) - Just finished up Volume 9 of this one, which just happens to be where the anime adaptation ends things, and it really makes me appreciate how closely the anime stuck to it. It's a shame the anime never got a second season, but hey that's what the manga's here for and now I'm entering into completely new territory. Nice action series if you don't mind a good amount of very gratuitous fanservice.

I can't believe I waited years to watch the new Full Metal Panic season only to find out it ends on a cliffhanger.

...oh well...guess I can wait another decade :V

Kandagawa Jet Girls (HiDive via VRV) - A sickly sweet, and extremely fanservicy, anime about groups of high school girls who race in slightly sci-fi jet ski races.

A tie in to the game of the same name (or vice versa), and created by the Senran Kagura guy, so you can kinda guess what to expect. Pure fluff, but can be fun in a very guilty pleasure kind of way.

@mantarobuster300 I never finished it, given I just had it on as background noise, and only watched it while it was interesting. The dub wasn't really complete, since it had a lack of interest around the time that it originally was being made, so half the series is only subbed, and it really doesn't make for good background noise.

I like the original series though, with the manga being my favorite out of the entirety of Yu-Gi-Oh.

Just catching up with season five of the MHA anime.

Deku will be learning several quirks from previous OFA users?

This series is going to last twenty years, isn't it?

Just watched the new/last Evangelion film, I enjoyed it and it does close things off well but meh. There’s a few clever ideas injected into the Eva mythos that do improve it over the 90s version and on many technical levels it’s better than the End Of Evangelion film but it didn't engross me nearly as much. Or maybe I’m just too cynical now compared to when I watched the original Eva?

Ultimately though it’s failed to do what the rebuild movies set out to do which is make Eva for today’s kids (which was about two decades ago lol) as it still feels like it needs the show as a crutch despite going off in its own direction.

A few years ago I watched and enjoyed the first two Rebuild movies. But otherwise, at this point I feel like Eva's kinda just passed me by. Like I've considered properly watching the original series in full, and everything after it if I like it now, but I just look at all the other things I want to do and just lose interest immediately.

Momokyun Sword (HiDive via VRV) - A twist on the classic Japanese fable of Momotaro, with the hero being gender swapped into Momoko (a well endowed heroine, because anime). It's pretty much fluff & doesn't take itself too seriously (the heroes & villains are just as likely to put their differences aside for a beach day as they are to try & kill each other), but worth a look if you don't mind a fanservicy guilty pleasure (though, while it is very fanservicy it does stop short of actual nudity).

@kkslider5552000 Yeah but you''re a hipster though, I'd be shocked to see you watch something that popular. ;p