Manga
I've been reading Full Metal Panic: Sigma, while watching The Second Raid alongside it. It's interesting, considering it has some differences from the anime. Some for good, others for worse. I prefer the Anime, but the Manga is good too.
The other two manga I've been following, The Lies of Sheriff Evans: Dead or Love and Shibuya Near Family are both still fun.
Anime:
I've recently watched Gundam 00 - I wrote more about that here.
Tokimeki Tonight is still a fun show when it comes to the wacky comedy and artsy backgrounds.
Ranma 1/2 (1989) - Rumiko Takahashi's writing is consistently entertaining, and over a dozen episodes in, it keeps delivering. Will the show be able to keep up? I hope so!
Another entertaining show is You're Under Arrest!. Is it copaganda? Yes. Has a certain aspect of the show aged poorly? Also yes. What the show excels in, are the villains of the week. Strike Man will be living in my head rent free for a bit, I suppose.
Dragon Ball Z is peak, over 60 episodes in.
**Western Animation & Live Action **
I'm still watching Gravity Falls, and it's good, if formulaic. Apparently people dislike Mabel and like Dipper? Because so far it's the exact opposite for me lol.
Also, I started Andor. I like it so far, but it's clearly still cooking at this stage.
-Kinnikuman Perfect Origin Arc:
spoiler
It's alright, I stopped watching it because I found other stuff that hit me harder, but for whatever reason this was the anime that started by recent interest, so credit where it's due. My favorite wrestler is Robin Mask, since he's clearly the Bret Hart of the main crew (as far as being the technical wizard, he's British and not Canadian -- that would be Canadianman). My favorite episode / match was Atlantis vs Marlinman.-Yawara!:
spoiler
I fucking love this shit. I'm very slowly pacing myself through the 120+ episodes (not even halfway), and it's probably my favorite show that I'm watching right now. It's a romantic-comedy sports anime about a judo prodigy named Yawara Inokuma, whose domineering judo-master grandfather pressures and tricks into competing against her wishes so that she will eventually have to compete in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, get the Gold Medal in women's Judo, then the Japanese National Achievement Award ... basically he has her whole life planned out for her, but she doesn't like judo and just wants to have a really traditionally feminine life.So, the main conflict is her grandfather's desire to see her conquer the judo world, vs her desire to assert her autonomy / femininity.
The show is problematic, largely owing to it's age, and I admit I'm nervous that it's going to shit the bed at some point -- we'll se how they ... uh ... handle the dissolution of the USSR, for example (they already set up the scary Soviet girl who broke Yawara's friend's leg). If this show doesn't totally fuck itself up at some point, I'll probably do a detailed review.
- Megalo Box & NOMAD: Megalo Box 2:
spoiler
I've finished Megalo Box and I'm taking a break after episode 4 of NOMAD because it pissed me off so much. Megalo Box was a solid sports anime overall, and they really seemed to grasp that the best rivalries are basically just extremely gay, as in homosexual. The gay subtext of the whole thing was honestly glorious. The motherfucker literally gives the "when you meet your future wife / that really special girl" talk about another man he wants to ~~fuck~~ fight. Rival's name is Yuri? More like Yaoi, motherfucker. Taking the gear off is such a metaphor for taking the condom off and hitting it raw for the first time in a new relationship, it's so fucking gay. They become a gay dog couple at the end and have a bunch of adopted little vagrant kids, holy fuck, yes. They don't explicitly have them declare their gay love for each other though, so maybe that's a disappointment, but still.And I'm still going to finish NOMAD as well but I didn't like what they did in episode 4, so I'm letting it sit for now.
- SSSS Gridman & SSSS Dynazenon & GRIDMAN UNIVERSE:
spoiler
Gridman was the best of this lot in my opinion, and it wasn't really for the Gridman stuff. The premise is that giant monsters attack this city, Gridman fights them (in floaty-looking cg-anime battles), the city gets horribly fucked up and people die, but the next day the city is rebuilt and everybody's memories (except the heroes) have been tweaked to erase the people who died. So, you have psychological thriller / intrigue stuff, but also Gridman just kinda shows up at the end and beats the fuck out of whatever monster shows up. The final battle switching to 2D also felt like the team conceding that 2D is better than 3D and they did it mostly as a budget / convenience thing. That OG Gridman theme is the fucking shit though, poor choice to cut out the opening horn section (or whatever instrument that is, I don't know music).Dynazenon had better fight choreography, but it felt way more power-rangers in a way I wasn't into. Still watched the whole thing, and it definitely got better when Grid-Knight showed up (Grid-Knight was arguably the best character from Gridman). I think honestly the main thing that made it hard to like was how "toys" it was.
Like, I'm looking at action-figures mashing together into different bullshit, and also the main characters literally have to carry little toys of their mega-zords to transform, so they just have to have these lame-ass little McDonalds toys on their person at all times, jabbing them in the hip when they have to sit down or whatever, losing their fucking toys constantly ... I just thought it was doofy.
Gridman Universe was I suppose the worst, because it really only offered to get the two main casts from the shows to interact in a mostly bland movie.
DragonBall Daima: It was fun, not much interesting to say. But I liked it, felt like a decent blend of original DB adventure stuff with the meat-headed power-level bullshit from DBZ.
Gundam Thunderbolt: December Sky & Bandit Flower:
spoiler
After figuring out that the movies are just compilations of the seasons of the show, and then figuring out that the compilations are apparently the more complete versions, I watched December Sky and thought it was great. It immediately became one of my favorite pieces of Gundam media. Bandit Flower was considerably less good, and even ended on a cliffhanger that apparently has yet to be resolved except in the manga, which I don't read.Agree with you for the most part on Gridman. I liked the cast a lot more in SSSS Gridman, not entirely sure why. The movie worked more for me, but I think I'm a bit more forgiving for mid when it's a movie or short OVA.
Didn't realize the film versions of Thunderbolt were more complete, but that's not too surprising. I plan on reading the comic eventually, so I'll probably watch them after that. S1/December Sky is definitely stronger IMO.