The schedule. Before we begin. The well-produced Great Pretender that began last month and will finish early into this season failed to keep me around but ep 1-3 were solid. I may return. 6/10
April´s Ghost in the Shell SAC_2045 is one of the best TV anime in years and is the best-looking TV budget CG show after Clone Wars. Minus some scenes. 2nd GiG is the peak of GitS anime but this, all of Arise and the 1995 film come soon thereafter. But beware. You need to have seen all of SAC to properly follow along and this season only tells half a story. Please do more than just 2 1-cour-seasons IG! 8,5/10

Deca-Dence has a solid director and a solid writer but Hiroshi Seko is known for adapting well and this is an original show. NUT is also a fairly new studio with no major accomplishments to their name. We have a wild card.

Nihon Chinbotsu I have never cared about the previous takes on Japan Sinks but Science SARU at least knows how to animate. I´ll give this a shot.

The Dorohedoro OVA was alright but is cheap AF. I wonder if S1 was it.
Lupin III: The First is nothing special as expected but it looked almost as good as the Tintin film. Respect. Shingeki no Kyojin: Chronicle isn´t a summary of S03 but instead a summary of ALL the 59 eps (minus the OVAs) WIT did! The Fang of the Sun Dougram film summed up 75 eps in 80 minutes but this is almost as bad. Lol. Umibe no Étranger is based on an ok Yaoi manga which automatically makes it one of the better LGBT+ stories out of Japan. Shika no Ou by IG will take till September if no delays come so I won´t see it till next year. Looks interesting.
Eva 4.0 is lastly delayed till ? due to Covid-19. For the better I say.

This and the last season took a clear pandemic ding. And likely the next. I hope that my meager selection will work out. The season is already stretched mega thin but that´s TV/films in 2020 for you.

Last edited by residentgrigo at 10:56 pm, Sep 20 2020

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

The current season both sucks and is riddled by delays that will go into next season. So far so bad but a "miracle" still occurred. I further returned to ep 4 of Great Pretender and it was still just ok.
I am done. 6?/10

Deca-Dence The pilot was ok but already a bit bland. Ep 2 was unwatchable purple monkey dishwasher nonsense. Going from a 6/10 to 3/10 ep makes this a hard pass/10.

Dragon's Dogma is late addicted to this season and will be dumped on Netflix on September 17th. The game had a bad story and the world itself was just the usual bland fantasy with knights and dragons. I don´t understand what is being adapted here outside of the fact that the IP is currently "resting". The show´s CG further looks unimpressive, no one interesting is attached and game-based anime have a history of low stands. Can´t wait...

Nihon Chinbotsu (2020) has an ok pilot and I´ll admit that ep 1, 2 and 10 (of 10) feature perfectly fine animation. Not great, fine. The rest looks embarrassing. The in itself competent soundtrack fails to match what is happening on-screen way too often. The cast has a combined IQ of 10 and even the VAs come off as bland as it´s impossible to deliver the lines given to them. This goes for both the Japanese and English dub. Perfect I say as this makes it a delight to watch them suffer and die. The only ones who will take the gold home in these misery Olympics are the viewers.
The show is best described as Tommy Wiseau: The Anime and the frankly middling and immediately forgotten Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 from 2009 suddenly looks like a slam dunk.
I have no interest in reading the 1973 Japan Sinks novel but I am familiar with its many adaptations. They are all mediocre to bad. The fact that Roger Corman got to Americanize the 1973 film adaptation says it all. Not that any of this matters as this latest adaptation manages to even stretch the definition of what a reinterpretation is. It´s not even sci-fi!
Masaaki Yuasa´s all over the place career is nothing new but the severely overworked auteur finally produced what is destined to be the worst work of his career. The real culprit is still Pyeon-Gang Ho. That woman is bad news bears and has no comprehension of concepts like tone and pacing. Her worst and latest anime even failed to debut around the Tokyo Olympics which is a plot point. You can´t make this up. This anime will go down in legend, this is bad even by the low anime stands of Netflix, and we finally have our first So Bad It´s Good anime since 2014´s Pupa by the "legendary" Studio Deen. Misery tourism at it´s finest! A 3/10 earned in blood and of perfect length to watch in one 3,5 hour sitting. Preferably with friends and alcohol.


Ultraman S2 might drop at the end of this season or by next at the latest. Fans of the superior GitS: SAC_2045 should check it out as both directors also run this manga adaptation.

Last edited by residentgrigo at 3:01 am, Oct 18 2020

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

Danmachi and Fire Force all the way!