Another season, more slop to ignore and a couple of shows to watch.
Manga:
Shibuya Near Family continues being good - it's the only ongoing manga I look forward to and seek out. Koji Kumeta's found his style a long time ago: social commentary + a hint of absurdism. Be it 1999 or 2025, it works well. A
Ariadne in the Blue Sky by Norihiro Yagi (known for Angel Densetsu & Claymore) is a real throwback in storytelling style. An old school fantasy adventure with sci-fi elements that does not care for RPG elements, immediate worldbuilding dumps or isekais. However, it is not as interesting as Claymore and definitely not as amusing as Angel Densetsu. Thus far at least. B- so far
I've also been reading the Evangelion manga and the fun but very slow to update Lies of the Sheriff Evans: Dead or Love - both good.
Anime:
The Twelve Kingdoms and Vision of Escaflowne are two shows that are very similar to each other in the beginning of the show, and I'm too early into them to judge, so I'll leave it at "I like them"
Tokimeki Tonight is a 80s shojo romcom with vampires that doesn't take itself too seriously and has delightful stylized backgrounds. I've only just started it, but it's fun so far.
Ranma 1/2, the 80s version. Having read some of the manga in the past, but dropping it because I lost track of what chapter I was on, the show is just as fun as I remember it being - and features the legendary VA Megumi Hayashibara. A
Dragon Ball Z - If I had 1 € for every legendary 150+ episode show from the Spring 1989 season I'm watching, and is actually holding up to the reputation it has... I'd have 2 €. A- (because it hasn't reached the peak of the original Dragon Ball imo... yet)
Katte ni Kaizou - Re-watched this adaptation of Koji Kumeta's early 2000s manga, and actually read what is available of it. It's fun... definitely a Shaft Adaptation for good and bad, and it's interesting to see the transition from the haha penis humor of the early part of the manga, into the more SZS style stuff later on. Shame it's a fairly short OVA for such a long and quality work, to the point where I feel like it kinda misrepresents the manga somewhat. B+
Western Animation:
Gravity Falls: I just started this, and is it just me, or does this show remind anyone of Spongebob in its humor? Either way, I like it so far.
I think I saw like one episode of that, I should get back to it. I've been wanting to watch more anime with vampires and werewolves and stuff.
It's a good 'un! How far did I get? 11 episodes into Nettôhen plus the first 18 episodes is... 29 episodes, yeah. But it's a LONG 'un isn't it! So I haven't watched '80s Ranma in yeeeaaars.
I think I rewatched the first few episodes of Gravity Falls a few months ago, and it honestly wasn't as good as I remembered. The style of humor just wasn't quite as much my style as it apparently used to be, and since I want to try Spongebob eventually, that perhaps doesn't bode well for that show...?
But at the same time, even though a lot of the jokes didn't really land, some of the jokes do still hold up. I think it's a matter of just how much GF (or at least the first few episodes) pelt you with joke after joke, that a lot of them are basically bound not to land. And the ones that do land? They make for a LOT of iconic and quotable moments — I cannot tell you how many times I've said "BUTTER AIM IS GETTIN' BETTER!!!" with that exaggerated arm-crossing gesture.
Gravity Falls generally just kicked fucking ass when I was in my early teens. I can tell you right now, the plot is gonna advance and it's gonna go places. The ending I remember thinking was spectacular, and the show was notable at the time for just how rarely new episodes came out, and how few episodes there were.
Honestly, on the topic of 2010s cartoons from Seppoland... I wonder how Over the Garden Wall and Star vs the Forces of Evil hold up. I remember adoring both of those as a teenager, too, although SVTFOE I was already falling out of love with by the last season.
But anyways, as for the stuff I've been reading and watching:
Manga:
Not much for manga, but I've been reading Yotsuba& in Japanese and Sailor Moon in Esperanto again. God Yotsuba& is so good.
With mom:
In terms of anime, mom and I finished Is The Order a Rabbit?? Dear My Sister and The Miyakawa Family's Hunger, and we finally finished the Ranma 1/2 reboot the other day, which I feel had honestly kind of an abrupt and underwhelming ending, but hey they're making a season 2 anyways.
We finally started watching Do It Yourself, which has been on my planning list literally since it came out in 2022. DIY is indeed as good and unique (by SOL standards) as it looks! We're even blessed with two characters raised outside of Japan, Kouki Kokoro (AKA "Shii") who is from Nonspecific Country in Southeast Asia, and Juliet Queen Elizabeth VIII who is from... Seppoland, surprisingly. People call her Jobko 'cause she always says "good job", and she uses a lot of gratuitous English to signal her background. Don't we all.
Otherwise we've been slowly continuing stuff: Ojamajo Doremi, Nadia: the Secret of Blue Water, Ameku MD: Doctor Detective, Cells at Work: Code Black, The Boondocks, and we've continued to stall on Samurai Champloo and The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan. We're now just three episodes away from finishing Nadia — one of the episodes we watched in the past month was actually a shitty clipshow with image songs, just skip episode 34, legitimately — and Ameku I have to note had just a ridiculous scene taking place in a burning building.
But hey, sometimes that just happens, right? Making anime is hard.
The last Boondocks episode we watched was "The Fundraiser", which features that character Cindy McPhearson voiced by none other than the Shinigami-green Zionist freakazoid herself Tara Strong. So it was kind of interesting hearing the voice I associate most with Twilight Sparkle talking in this "white girl feigning AAVE she learned through gangsta rap music" way.
Alone:
By myself I started Angelic Layer, and it hasn't super caught me in the first four episodes, but I'm gonna give it an extended try. I watched the OP on a whim and was struck by the sheer Aesthetic of it — it looks like a sci-fi Cardcaptor, and indeed it is actually based on a Clamp manga! However it's really a sports anime, based on a fictional game wherein you use your mind to control these little robot dolls to fight one another, and I guess that premise just isn't the most interesting thing in the world to me. That character "Icchan" is kind of a creepy weirdo, too. I do like the main character Misaki, though, she's a good kid.
I also paused Tokyo Mew Mew after the twelfth episode and started watching Sailor Moon again. Last time I watched Sailor Moon was around two years ago, so it's good to finally be back. I decided to keep watching SM dubbed just because it's funnier that way, but it's the Viz dub rather than the original dub where Luna's English. I'm also noticing in SM that pink tint thing that people were talking about, that it was an artifact of digitizing the show? I don't remember what the deal with that was.
Blorptube:
We finished Nyoron: Churuya-san and even created a separate channel for it. We also finished Kill la Kill and the ending was just as HYPE as I remembered it, I literally wrote in the chat that I couldn't stop myself from making weird noises at like 3 AM due to my excitement, to which Sulv remarked something like "lol Erika's pogging" and yeah I kinda was, how can you not pog at that?
So anyways after Kill la Kill we've now started JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean, which certainly has an interesting premise, taking place in a Florida prison. However the first night we were watching the first episode I suddenly developed like a mouth ulcer so I couldn't really pay attention cause I was just like "Why's it hurt when I eat bread?", and now it's basically too far into the series for my exhausted ass to get much out of it. But I never really was into JJBA anyways.
And I guess I can now mention that I've been holding My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic rewatch parties every Saturday before the Blorptube Anime Night's "main feature". Twilight Sparkle being voiced by a racist freak is apro-fucking-pos in hindsight, since rewatching MLP:FiM now — certainly its first season — the like implicit (or explicit) racism towards non-pony sapients, and sometimes between different types of ponies, is just fucking everywhere. And sometimes racism towards real groups of people, too! Zecora, the zebra character, is clearly based on these stereotypes of African witch doctors.
So my analysis of Equestria as being a settler-colony, and the three main pony "tribes" as being roughly analogous to English, French, and Spanish-speaking settler groups in Turtle Island (or other internal divisions within settlerdom elsewhere), I feel does add a lot to the experience. Like on the one hand the show isn't nearly as innocent as it used to feel, but on the other hand it's a lot more interesting, to put it that way.
But even putting all that aside, there's still some sweet moments and some funny moments, some catchy songs... And there's also a few moments where the characters are just like jerks for no reason. But all in all it's still a blast to rewatch, especially with friends who either haven't watched it in a long time or who have never watched it before.