The tone in Overlord II’s final episode is pretty amusing, and I wish the rest of the series had felt the same. There’s even some Gilgamesh shenanigans right at the very end, but that’s all I’ll say about that. I’d really rather move onto newer and better shows! Um… like these series that simply build upon… older… existing series. Whoops.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes – Die Neue These
I don’t think I can do a weekly post on this anime, because there’s simply no way I can spend any decent amount of time talking about battle strategies. When there’s character development, sure, that’s right up my alley. But when it’s Reinhardt schooling a bunch of chump admirals on the finer art of war, what can I say? Nice spindle formation there, ol’ chap! You got them good! But don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed this opening episode. It just doesn’t exactly play to my blog’s strengths. Sometimes, I’ll click on another blog’s post, and all I’ll get is like a tiny paragraph. If that’s all you have to say, then why even bother? Sure, it’s their blog and they can run it however they want, but I can’t do that. It just feels… wrong. But I digress. And if I may, allow me to nitpick this first episode for just a moment.
I always find it odd how military geniuses like Reinhardt and Yang Wen-li are portrayed. It’s fine for them to be geniuses, but it doesn’t stop there. Not only are they impressive on the battlefield, they’re surrounded by abject idiots. What do I mean? Well, the Free Alliance has decided to attack the Galactic Empire with a three-pronged attack. Not only will they surround Reinhardt’s fleet, they have twice as many ships! Man, our military genius has his work cut out for him! Eh, not so fast. Ignoring his admirals’ advice, Reinhardt charges forth to engage the enemy’s 4th fleet right away. This prevents the 2nd and 6th fleet from being able to maneuver in time and have him surrounded. Not only that, he jams their communications, so the 4th fleet can’t request for backup. Now, why would you opt for a three-pronged attack if your foe can counter you so easily?
Afterwards, we see the vice admiral of the 6th fleet leisurely enjoying his meal when his lieutenant commander suddenly shows up to urgently warn him about the precarious state of the battle. The former thinks the 4th fleet is still engaged in battle with the Galactic Empire. His subordinate, however, believes that their allies have already been defeated. As a result, they must join up with the 2nd fleet before they are picked off one-by-one! But before these two can even settle their debate, Reinhardt has already flanked them for a pre-emptive attack. How can these chucklefucks be so blind? It’s not like you can’t see a giant mass of ships coming your way. How can you miss tens of thousands of giant ass spaceships? Again, the problem isn’t that Reinhardt’s too smart. The problem is that his foes are too dumb… until Yang Wen-li shows up! Anyways, the first episode ends here.
This opening episode has great animation and a pretty decent soundtrack. Not only that, I can never really be unhappy with a show about adults doing adult stuff when you consider how anime is just saturated with juvenile nonsense. But if I have to be honest, some of the characters are made to be too stupid for me to swallow.
Tokyo Ghoul:re
I enjoyed the first anime adaptation, but only because it had a heavy dose of Rize. Every time she appeared, she imbued the story with a decent amount of psychological depth. I especially loved the final episode of the original Tokyo Ghoul. Then Tokyo Ghoul √A happened. All of a sudden, the show devolved into shounen schlock except it had that cringeworthy edginess to it. Or maybe Tokyo Ghoul was always shounen schlock, and I had just been fooled by the Rize dream sequences. Either way, it doesn’t look like Tokyo Ghoul:re is going to give me what I crave.
The first episode doesn’t feel as stupendously mind-numbing as what I got from the early goings of Tokyo Ghoul √A, but it isn’t particularly interesting either. For some reason, Ken is now calling himself Sasaki Haise. Not only that, he currently works for CCG, the guys who hunt ghouls. He serves as the mentor for the Quinx Squad, a team of investigators who all appear to have ghoul-like powers of their own. Hm. Eh, whatever. I never finished Tokyo Ghoul √A myself, but I heard that the series ended with Ken standing before a badass CCG dude. I can only imagine that he lost and somehow got his memories erased. Whatever the truth happens to be, I don’t find the prospect of him slowly regaining his memories and returning to his ol’ Anteiku buddies (remember Touka?!) all that compelling.
I was, however, slightly amused by the homage to The Silence of the Lambs in this opening episode. Torso, a rather notorious ghoul, has been on the prowl, and he only targets women. True to his namesake, he likes to steal their torsos. If you don’t recall, the serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs liked to skin his female victims. Unable to track the ghoul down, Ke-… I mean, Haise goes to visit a deranged doctor slash ghoul. First, the doctor scares Haise’s partner by threatening to eat the kid, then they go about psychologically profiling Torso. But yeah, other than this short scene, Tokyo Ghoul:re’s first episode doesn’t do much for me.
Gundam Build Divers
Right off the bat, I know this show isn’t for me. Why? Well…
Homework? We talkin’ about homework? Just do it right before class starts! Anyways, I’d totally play a mecha-themed MMO. The idea sounds a whole lot more fun than actually watching this anime. After all, it feels like I’m watching one long, extended ad for Gunpla nonsense, because that’s what it is. Our hero goes up against a smurfing jackass, but manages to prevail because his Gunpla hasn’t given up. Groan. I know, I know, this is a show for kids.
Anyways, it’s just too bad that Japan is so big on mobile gaming, and as a result, a big budget mecha-themed MMO from a Japanese developer is unlikely to come to fruition. Hell, don’t count on seeing any big budget MMO from Japan period, which is remarkable considering how much anime loves MMO-related stories. Of course, Final Fantasy XIV is the big exception. Also, Bandai Namco apparently made a free-to-play Gundam MMO, but that’s exactly what I mean. F2P MMOs are terrible.
That about wraps it up for tonight. I couldn’t even get around to Lupin III. There’s just not enough time in a day to watch every single thing that comes out.
Moe Sucks 
I also wasn’t overly impressed by this return to Tokyo Ghoul. I didn’t hate it but I didn’t like it either. Despite that, curiosity will probably keep me watching this for awhile and I’ll just keep hoping we return to some of the better aspects of season 1 of this show rather than a rehash of the second season.
Seaon 1 of tokyo ghoul was held together by a really talented director on board who had a vision to craft a psychologically engaging tale. Unfortunately, he was always being stifled by higher management who wanted the two seasons of tokyo ghoul to be advertisements for the manga. Every time the director wanted to veer off the course of the manga and adapt the material in a way he felt played to the thematic strengths of the source material, he was essentially course corrected to stay within the confines of the manga. This got especially bad in the root A season, resulting in a product that felt like a shitty adaptation of the manga because it was stuck between trying to pander to manga fans yet be its own thing, ultimately shitting the bed on both of those aspects. Ep 1 &12 of season 1 and ep 12 of season 2 were glimpses of the heights the anime could reach had the director been given the opportunity to do what he wanted as those eps ones personally directed, storyboarded, and written by him. Whenever he didn’t have this much control, he was managing other scriptwriters and directors who were all taking orders from the big wigs (and he himself); it’s a damn shame really because there was a chance for a truly memorable anime under the man’s directorial tutelage.
Now once again we’ve got a new season of tokyo ghoul, except this time we’ve got rid of the talented director, kept the mediocre series composition, and have made the visuals even less interesting to look at. As for the tokyo ghoul manga, it has always kind of danced the fine line between psychological horror and battle shounen antics. The first part of the manga was more in line with the psychological horror aspects and was better for it. Ever since the story shifted into re; the characterizations have become less meticulously structured, the writing is more hit or miss, and the shounen antics have been emphasized a lot more. It’s mostly the anime adaptation’s fault for selling TG under the guise of a psuedo-battle shounen but i’m not going to sit here and pretend like the manga doesn’t perpetuate that image from time to time (especially re:). Shhhh but don’t say that to the rabid tg fans; they’ll tear you a new one for telling them that their “adult” manga isn’t as adult as they think it is. There’s nothing wrong with being a battle shounen, but TG isn’t at its strongest doing battle shounen because it tends to not execute those elements with the same competency a battle shounen manga would, i.e. it’s not that good at it.
Evil wins again.
“The tone in Overlord II’s final episode is pretty amusing, and I wish the rest of the series had felt the same.”
My “friend” said that Overlord got third season, so you can give this terrible animu another chance. Mad House has got to be happy, They get money for doing a sloppy work on a shitty animu. Seriously, what is so good about this animu?
Legend of the Galactic Heroes – Just like a lot of action movie heroes, it’s easy to be a badass/genius if everyone around you is an idiot. The two great men fighting each other while surrounded by idiots reminded me a little too much of Aldnoah Zero, but at least, those two aren’t teenager and no one seems to be a Gary Stu for now. So, I’ll give this one a chance for now.
Tokyo Ghoul:re – Yeah, you aren’t going to like this one. The story of this one is going to become more and more battle shonen-esque and the pacing is also going to become more and more rushed. I personally think that the mangaka felt forced to speed up the story to appease the fans who are pissed that Ken lost his power and badassness.
I think the mangaka wants Haise to be a new character and not Ken. So, Ken is reborn into Haise and he lost all of his power as Ken. It isn’t a bad idea and I have no problem with it, but if someone tell me that the mangaka go too far in depowering him, I wouldn’t disagree. He is indeed too weak for someone who is supposedly be one of the squad leaders and a mentor. I mean if he doesn’t have his old power as Ken, he should have a new one as Haise, but he doesn’t and thus, fans just think of him as a weaker Ken and not as a new character.
The fact that I’m speaking about power level about this story shows how bad the battle shonen stuff is going to be later. The characterization becomes a mess. Haise is unable to stand on his own as fans keep clamoring for him to become the old Ken back. The mangaka rushed the story, so the story can reach the point where Haise becomes a badass on his own ASAP, but at the expense of all the other characters, especially the new ones. Not to mention I think it’s useless, The damage has been done. I don’t think the fans would accept Haise.
I’ve stopped reading this for a long time, so who knows? Maybe things have changed now. Not counting on it, though.
The show is kinda novel whenever the music swells up dramatically, the humans start act like stereotypical characters in a fantasy anime, then you cut to the Nazarick people just chilling out in the background, just chilling out. It subverts the traditional isekai storytelling. Unfortunately, the second season does this maybe 10% of the time. The other 90% of the time, the focus is on boring ass side characters.
Fear not for Ainz will summon some adorable lambs, in the upcoming “foundation”.
I don’t think that is a good enough reason to watch and endure the two seasons of this animu. Not to mention, it’s just 10%, according to you and I think subversion on its own without a purpose is meaningless. It’s just not good enough to make me ignore all the things that this animu done wrong. And as someone who have read the source, it’s going to become much worse.
Your reasons are yours alone. I have an anime blog, so I’ll cover more than just what I like.
Oh, I don’t mean to imply that you shouldn’t watch it or anything. I should clarify that reason is for me personally. Sorry for not being clear enough on that. If anyone want to watch it, they are free to do so. Not to mention, it isn’t the worst anime of this season as bad as it is. It’ll become that bad, though.