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Anime Summer Fall 2021

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Seinen is RIGHT
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12:51 pm, Oct 2 2021
Posts: 2402


The schedule. This season is very interesting so let's get to it after I finish off last season´s late arrival. I stopped with Kaizoku Oujo after ep 2 but those were ok. 6?/10 I won´t go on and expect that I already saw the best the show had to offer. Middle-of-the-road stuff like this is what I expected when Crunchyroll Originals were announced and not the absolute wasteland that came.

Blade Runner: Black Lotus The CG miniseries can´t look like Black Out 2022 for one basic reason. Black Out was bathed in money due to being part of the promo campaign for BR 2049 which turned out to be one of the biggest bombs of all time. I liked the admittedly random trailer just fine and the directors and studio are well chosen for the IP. The question is if a story worth telling will be told as the writer is still unannounced. The new comics by Titan Comics fully failed in that regard so let´s see what Japan has to offer.

Blue Period. will easily be the show of the season. The anime looks a bit different from the manga and the VAs are doing different performances than I expected but they fit. The acting doesn´t sound like an anime if that makes sense and is quite naturalistic. The transgender girl that gets Yatora into art is one of the like 5 fully rounded and believable LGBT+ characters in all of anime and the clear secondary lead but she won´t appear much after the high school arc. That arc should last for most to all of the anime. Prepare for a noticeably different show if we ever get S2. 8.5/10

Bright: Samurai Soul I am not necessarily expecting anything but the CG-ish anime spin-off is so wild that I have to try it out. The original film was a perfectly fine direct-to-video "adaptation" of Shadow Run if you ask me. Nothing special but way over-hated. Poor David Ayer. #ReleaseTheAyerCut

Heike Monogatari´s pilot was very competent but also boring and I don´t remember a single thing from ep 2 so this is where we part. Watch Ghibli´s mega-flop Kaguya-hime no Monogatari instead. Someone has to after all. 6/10

Lupin III: Part 6 Part 5 was well-produced bollocks but a new team is doing this one so we´ll see how the latest iteration turns out. I don´t know if him fighting Sherlock Holmes is a good setup for an ongoing story. Sounds like a much better one-and-done movie. This isn´t the first time a take on Homes was used in the IP of course.

Ousama Ranking I can´t say that I like this quirky children’s manga but it’s kind of interesting that WIT decided to adapt it. If something this off the rails niche can be adapted then who knows what else can?

Platinum End I like the last 2 collaborations of the Jump dream team as much as the next guy but Nr 3 falls apart hard after about 2 volumes. I quit the manga after what ended up becoming the start of act 2 but returned for the last volume. It is one of the worst endings I ever saw. Offensively bad but there is no way to talk about it without spoilers. The female lead also is the worst one yet so have fun with her. I wonder why Tsugumi Ohba has proven incapable of writing women. The assigned studio lastly sucks and the 14 vol manga will be speed though in only 24 eps (maybe a blessing in disguise) so prepare for one of the most hated "high profile" anime in quite some time after the story gets going for real. The seemingly aborted Death Note by Netflix is better. Much better.

Star Wars: Visions aired all 9 of its eps on September 22. We´ll see what this anthology will lead to down the line outside of the tie-in novel but I’ll eat a brick if The 9th Jedi (ep 5) doesn´t become a full show. T0-B1 (ep 6) needs to be pointed out for how astonishing it looked. Science SARU put most big-budget animated films to shame with how fluid and emotive all of this looked. That team needs to win a technical award for their short. I was lastly kinda shocked that the bunny girl ep (8) was one of the grittier entries. 8/10

Saihate no Paladin I am still not fully sure what to think about the source material (I read the manga adaptation of the source LN) and the anime´s studio was cause to worry but so far so good. The near nonexistent issekai element should have never been part of the story. Much better fantasy manga exist but good fantasy anime got rare nowadays. A good enough one is good enough. 7/10

Let's clean up the home media & streaming movie latecomers from last season first. Evangelion: 3.0+1.01 is pointless and tedious but is a marginal improvement on the train wreck 3rd entry. No more Evangelion. 5/10 Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop is also mediocre from both a writing and direction standpoint. So it’s a true Netflix Anime. Lol. 5/10

Now to the movies from this season. I don´t understand the point of the summary film Koukaku Kidoutai: SAC_2045 - Jizoku Kanou Sensou but look forward to S2. Uchuu Senkan Yamato 2205: Aratanaru Tabidachi - Zenshou: Take Off will finally release and Uchuu no Hou: Erohim-hen (part 3 of ?) will likely turn out to be the most insane animated film of the year. No one makes science-fantasy like Happy Science. Not even Scientology.

Last edited by residentgrigo at 9:05 am, Dec 25 2021

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Seinen is RIGHT
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9:26 am, Dec 25 2021
Posts: 2402


I decided to wait till all the shows come out and ended up having a more conclusive take on this season as most shows were far into their runs by then. I also can´t believe how badly the mech genre is doing right now. Interesting how genres rise and fall. The current isekai menace too shall pass, no that it is a new sub-genre.

Blade Runner: Black Lotus The already niche IP is drained of any possible money due to the flop of BR 2049 and you can really feel this here. Compare the show to Ghost in the Shell SAC 2045 by the same team, the drenched in budget BR 2049 tie-in Black Out 2022 and of course Arcane by Netflix to truly see the visual gap. The locations and the way the character´s bodies are done is perfectly fine but the smaller stuff like facial animations and the character models themselves look at least 15 years out of time. The thankfully rare well-lit scenes are even downright ugly and the character designs are all sadly all exchangeable. Exchangeable and Blade Runner don't mix! The plot itself has no hook either and the amnesiac on the run plot rarely works outside of videogames. A politically-charged mystery didn´t come together after 4 eps so I am sadly done with the show. This has a slight tie-in to BR 2049 btw. The current comics by Titan are equally pointless so sticking to the novel, the 2 films and the adventure game continues to be the only choice. 5/10.

Blue Period. Adapting 6 volumes with only 12 eps is too much and the order of some events was changed so that things happen more sequentially for the adaptation to divide itself into more singular installments. The artstyle was also got a bit simplified but nothing too crazy. It’s the way too bright colors that stand out more but I grew used to it. The anime works quite well given its limitations. Not the slam dunk it could have been but a highlight of the anime year regardless. 8/10

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean Part 6 is a drop in quality after the last 2 parts but still a solid read. The uneven pacing of the manga is of course present and the fast pacing of all the adaptations besides Part 3 made the story even more hectic. Ep 12 stops in the middle of Vol 6. The plot so far is easy to follow but soon won´t be. Let’s see if some of the unintended confusion will be cleaned up a bit as a few of the fights in the middle are outright incomprehensible. I was never crazy about our first and last female JoJo and cutting some of her quitter scenes and even bits of backstory aren´t helping. The manga states early on that she was in a biker gang so it makes sense why she an actual hooligan unlike the delinquents with a heart of gold in Parts 2 to 5. At least she is unique when it comes to leading women in anime? The all over the place protagonist isn´t the manga´s strongest point and she will dip in and out focus soon. Characters as Anasui (only a cameo so far), the sadly underused F.F. and most importantly Pucci stand among the all-time greats in the whole IP though. A 7/10 now, a 7.5/10 later.

Lupin III: Part 6 The opening bonus ep that was made to “celebrate” the old Jigen actor is pretty shoddy but the actual opening ep isn´t much better. Another part of Lupin I will skip as there is nothing here and production values noticeably dropped after Part 4. This take on Sherlock Holmes is also way too uninteresting for him to be a selling point. 5/10

Platinum End It’s funny to see the anime getting a lukewarm reception right out of the gate. The adaptation is of course rushed AF, cobbled together and somewhat ugly but manga´s opening stretch is the “good” part. You all wait till this unintentional Death Note parody goes full Go Nagai. Not that I will stick this out but the last 2 or so episodes will receive very loud and open hatred. Too edgy 4 me. Can we get an Akumetsu anime instead? If anything try the manga but don´t. 4/10 now, a 3/10 later?

Saihate no Paladin The pacing felt a bit fast but rechecking the manga adaptation of the LN reminded me that this is how the story flows. The visuals are somewhat awkward too but I expected worse from this studio. Good enough but the show better get a 2nd season as most of this section is character setup. 6.5/10

Super Crooks Mark Millar is a scumbag but he can write if he wants to. The 4 issue source comic is pretty forgettable. As is most of his output these days. The 120 professional-looking pages can only be described as a Hollywood pitch and all Millar got out of it was an anime miniseries that extends an already canceled live-action show. Lol. Eps 1 to 9 are 98% original prequel material and the last 4 mostly adapt the comic. The plot is too repetitive as you end up watching the same/similar characters going through the same motions about 3 times by the end. Logic and a sense of danger are equally missing. The animation and style are top-notch so I stuck with it despite a clunky beginning. This is rule of cool the show. English is the original voice track so I went with it. Millar adaptations have outshined the source material more than once and so does Super Crooks even if the light is a bit dim. 6.5/10

takt op. The in-media-res pilot was a bit too confusing but looked great, the character had characters and the people who made this understand what jokes are and how to do them. The show going back in time out of nowhere with ep 2 onwards confused me more than it should have, the animation dropped down from to top of the like to above average at best and the plot & cast ended up having little to say for themselves so I stop after ep 5. I looked up the ending. It´s terrible so I dropped my score down by one to a 5/10.

Belle was misassembled nonsense and the only thing of note was the 2D side of the animation. The 3D on the other hand looked as if came from the mid-00s. Why is the way Mamoru Hosoda represents technology stuck in the sci-fi fever dreams of the early 90s? I wonder what he thinks about The Lawnmower Man and why are nearly all original anime films today paper-thin teen dramas? Hosoda´s worst film. I regret watching it in full. 4/10 Bright: Samurai Soul was pointless and the animation flip-flopped between artful and awkward-looking but I somehow didn´t mind finishing the film. I can´t recommend it but eh, I had an ok time as it had adult viewers in mind. 6?/10 The French animated film based on The Summit of the Gods (first a book, then a manga) is good but too much ground is covered in just a bit over 90 minutes. It works better as a supplementary to the manga than as a standalone release. 7/10

Last edited by residentgrigo at 9:46 am, Dec 25 2021

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Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb
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