The schedule. Tokyo Babylon by GoHands was canceled and seemingly handed over to another studio. Good. The postponed Kingdom S3 will air for real this year and Yuukoku no Moriarty 2nd Season is also ok for what it is.

Cestvs: The Roman Fighter is one of the best martial arts manga on the market and there is nothing wrong with choosing CG to make the action-heavy show but not like this. It’s also the first production by studio LOGIC&MAGIC. I wonder if the anime will be both ugly and rushed? Sigh.

EDEN will consist of only 4 episodes. Looks interesting enough but Netflix should simply release this as a movie. Coming May 27th.

Godzilla: S.P I have no idea what happened in the pilot but it felt like filler and episode 2 was as uneventful. I am done watching people watch TV or have radio conversations that focus on technobabble. Gareth Edwards at least showed his titular monster by the 40-minute mark. The anime´s promise of the premise is fully unfulfilled so far. 5?/10

Mashiro no Oto is now on volumes 27. I wonder how the studio will pace this adaptation as they went through 120 pages (the 2 opening chapters are long) in the pilot. Yet it works as some of the story was also a bit changed. We mind end up with a remix rather than a traditional adaptation, even the art style is a bit different compared to the manga, and it will take a long while for Yuna to return to the story if the anime follows the manga. This source material is Shounen btw. For some reason. I lastly expected this down-to-earth manga to be adapted into a J-Drama but this is better of course. 8.5/10

The World Ends With You the Animation Gaming anime are almost as cursed as gaming films. The story of the 2007 DS game (the remaster is inferior) wasn´t even that great and mostly served as an alibi to generate battles and fetch quests so I don´t expect anything despite liking the source material.

Yasuke I would have preferred a more traditional take on the historic black samurai but here is hoping. MAPPA is doing the 6 part mini-series but not much about the staff is known. The Flying Lotus score is destined for greatness.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway's Flash releases in May. What a delay. "Uchū Senkan Yamato" to Iu Jidai: Seireki 2202-nen no Sentaku is a compilation of both seasons for some reason so I´ll wait on the actual sequel later this year.
Spring is shaping up to be the season of mediocre adaptations so far but one winner has already been found. Netflix? Your move.

Last edited by residentgrigo at 4:58 am, Jun 29 2021

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I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

EDEN airs May 27th. I am not waiting that long.

Cestvs: The Roman Fighter The show barely looks like anything and is way too bright but I will admit that I expected worse visuals. Berserk 2016/17 still haunts my memories. What it excels at is being the fastest-paced anime of all time. The pilot blunders through a truncated Vol 1 and the 2nd ep then pile drives into Vol 11. A few years and 10 volumes worth of character development just gone. Poof. What is the point of keeping Cestvs a slave if none of the darkness of the source material will make it in? What purpose does a badly animated clip show of later coliseum fights serve? Who wants to watch a highlight reel with no highlights? How many broken and rushed as all hell adaptations or remakes of 80s to mid-00s manga and anime does this market need? 4/10, 0/10? I refuse to find out. Read the manga.

Mashiro no Oto continues being fast-paced and it’s a bit convenient how things fall in place or connect. It might be this crazy pace that makes it apparent how the storytelling gears work but the adaptation isn´t showing signs of collapsing. Ep 3 displayed sighs of the budged leveling out but the directors know where to put it so it’s fine. 8/10

The World Ends With You the Animation The CG is much better intercut with the 2D assets than I expected, the action scenes are solid and the first half of the pilot comes off like a real show but it all then immediately accelerates into cliff notes version of the game. Ep 2 and 3 fully confirm this notion. The game´s writing is nothing special and you can easily feel that the music wasn’t done with a TV show in mind as it is directly from the game. A manga adaptation might have been a better idea but the end result is one of the better gaming anime. 6/10

Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song The first 2 episodes could have been rewritten to be just one. Ep 3 and 4 also feel like one overlong ep and the production values of course dropped by ep 3 but the show still looks good. The anime is certainly worthier of your time than the co-creators Re:ZERO and the premise has more originality than your average sci-fi anime these days. Ice Queen automatons aren´t usually the protagonist either. Outside of maybe videogames. A rare anime original I will likely stick with. 7/10

Yasuke is best viewed as an Onimusha or Afro Samurai reboot so a real retelling of Yasuke´s story continues to elude us. He even feels like a side character in his own show and don´t ask me why this wasn´t produced as a 2-part movie. The plot is a bit all over, almost like a videogame as villains come and go at random. The miniseries most importantly would have been better off without the badly explained sciences fantasy elements (why is The Force in this?) but the overall picture is better than its assorted elements and the anime works well enough as a one and done pulp adventure. The music is what I will remember the most and a lot of the animation is well done for a TV production. Another “Good Enough” production by MAPPA and reminiscent of the ultra-random OVAs we used to get till the late 00s. 6.5/10

One legitimately good if very fast-paced adaptation, 2 good enough originals and the possibility of Eden being good next month. Not bad and certainly better than what next season is shaping up to be.

Last edited by residentgrigo at 6:59 am, May 18 2021

________________
I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb