Tag: Anime

Dance Dance Danseur (Merry Days of Anime 2022)

~ Kapodaco ~ 1 Comment

In my years of watching anime, sometimes you can just sense quality from a cover. You should not judge a book by its cover, generally, though this isn’t an absolute rule. If your series has a cover that conveys everything that it embodies, complete with “a soul,” that’s a good very early sign. Dance Dance Danseur was the latest new(-ish) series that intrigued me from appearance alone.

After three straight re-watches, this is the first new series I’ve seen this December. And after watching (almost) four series in roughly eleven days, my desire to ingest is starting to slow. As such, my posting quantity will be a tad less frequent from this point. (In fact, I could have finished this series and written this post on Sunday.) I’ll continue to put the same sort of fun energy I always do in my posts, regardless!

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Umi Monogatari: Anata ga Ite Kureta Koto (Partial Re-Watch) (Merry Days of Anime 2022)

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In early 2016, I stumbled upon a series by the name of Umi Monogatari. For the record, it has nothing to do with the Monogatari series by Nisio Isin. This series has an abysmally low average rating on MyAnimeList, which intrigued me more than anything. After viewing it the first time, I left with a shockingly positive outcome. “This anime is severely underrated! How can people not understand that this is actually a pretty good series?” I thought to myself often.

Try as I may to keep things positive, a lingering doubt permeated in my mind as the years continued onward. Why is this so low in score? What is it that makes people find this so easy to despise? For this year’s festivities, I wanted to once again travel back to my younger twenties and see if things still held up, particularly a series that has seen its fair share of malignment. After three and a half episodes, I return with one question:

Why… did I think this was good?

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Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata + ♭ (Re-Watch) (Merry Days of Anime 2022)

~ Kapodaco ~ 1 Comment

For those unaware, I do actually have posts on both seasons of Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata (or SaeKano), as well as its movie finale. This is why I marked this as a “re-watch” in the title and didn’t for Sakurasou before this.

This is a series I remember being rather fond of. The way it played with the tropes of its genre and the spirit of its character roster were a cut above the rest upon first viewing. My younger mind was impressed by the self-awareness of the script and how it seemed to poke fun at itself with most situations, even if it was also heavily indulging in sexual fan service all the while.

I am no longer a “noob” with anime. I’ve seen close to 500 series at this point in my life. Plus, I’m no longer as cynical (I hope?). If anything, the expectation would be that I can appreciate the series all the more upon re-watch, right? …Right?

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Sakura-sou no Pet na Kanojo (Merry Days of Anime 2022)

~ Kapodaco ~ 1 Comment

A decade ago (yeesh), I was very fond of J.C. Staff. They had created my favorite anime at the time in Toradora! and had a distinct style to their visual approach that I was fond of. Even if not all of their series were to my taste (Hidan no Aria and Zero no Tsukaima come to mind), I would still heavily indulge in whatever they would choose to release with each passing season. Even now, per the data of my MALGraph profile, J.C. Staff is the studio I have seen the most works from.

Around this time ten years ago (yeesh), I followed along with today’s subject, Sakura-sou no Pet na Kanojo, as it was airing. Seemingly without any effort, it checked all the boxes from what I wanted in a series: romance, drama, and a strange cast of characters. T’was Toradora! all over again. I happily gave it a very high grade and moved on, satisfied with how it ended.

Time marched onward, and as my taste in things began to shift with my developing ego and experience with the medium, I began to wonder. An 8/10 for Sakura-sou seemed… high. For years I’ve been meaning to go back and re-watch it at some point. Turns out, it would only take nearly ten years! The 2022 Merry Days of Anime shall begin with a long-delayed revisit.

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Entries From the Dead: Urusei Yatsura (2022)

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I’ve seen my fair share of anime series in the last ten years. In fact, it’s been just over ten years since I began to consume anime at a severely unhealthy pace (previously referred to as my “Anime Renaissance”). In that time, all sorts of characters have flashed before my eyes (“flash” being a deliberate term), but one that always stuck out to me by virtue of its absurdity was Lum from Urusei Yatsura, what with her tiger-striped bikini and boots combo, shiny blue-green hair, and horns.

Then, about a year ago, I got wind that Urusei Yatsura would be getting a modern-day anime adaptation, just over thirty years after the original series began airing. “Okay,” I thought to myself. “This would be a good chance to see just what the series is all about with a nicer sheen to its presentation.” Granted, I had some hesitation about a reboot of a cult classic, though with no real affection for the first series, I went into this with basically no expectations. May as well try it out.

I lasted one episode.

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Thoughts on Spy x Family

~ Kapodaco ~ 1 Comment

Anime’s latest talk of the town! Spy x Family has assumed its position upon the top of the medium’s most beloved properties in the last several years. Everywhere I went, particularly on Twitter, it was Spy x Family this, Spy x Family that. At one point, it was within the top 5 highest-rated anime on MyAnimeList (#27 now, as of writing). With all of this hullabaloo, my own curiosity grew too large to ignore, so I took the plunge to see if this family was all that they were hyped up to be.

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Aharen-san wa Hakarenai Series Review – Episode 12 + Overall Thoughts

~ Kapodaco ~ 3 Comments

Adieu, adieu; parting is such sweet sorrow. Aharen-san‘s anime adaptation has come to an end, and I no longer need to keep up with weekly reviews for the blog. As such, I can now be completely open with my full thoughts and feelings without any measure of future content adjusting my course:

It was pretty dull.

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Aharen-san wa Hakarenai Series Review – Episode 11

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Influenced by the events of the last near-month, I am not going to take any chances. I’m going to watch and write on these episodes at a relatively quick pace from now on… even though there’s only a single episode left after this one.

After an incredibly emotional (and ambiguous) end to the prior episode, episode eleven of Aharen-san returns the viewer to the semi-absurd monotony that the series has followed since the beginning. To its credit, some return to normalcy (relative term) could be good after the high-drama detour taken. Still, there’s a strange effect from the result of the main duo’s deepening relationship that imbues this episode (and likely the next) with a coat of alienation.

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Aharen-san wa Hakarenai Series Review – Episodes 8-10

~ Kapodaco ~ 2 Comments

What an eventful last couple weeks it has been. My sincere apologies for the delay in reviewing these episodes. It seems to have been ordained by some higher power that I am not deserving of gaining access to a workable laptop computer. Nevertheless, I will spare you the details and simply get on to what you’re more likely here for.

Seeing as I have three episodes here to review, I will split these up into groups and review them individually (but won’t go into too much detail). As will become obvious when the reviews begin, the relevancy of these episodes will heavily depend on their recency.

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