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Old 09-20-2020, 08:35 AM   #7976
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I looked at Deca-Dence but it looks like Dead Leaves to me and I have a blanket dislike of any Imiashi-style Trigger anime. It began with my unhappiness at how Gurren-Lagann ended but I can't help but barf at something that looks like that.

I refuse to watch stuff like Panty & Stocking, KLK or Franxx.

I don't think you missed a ton with Re:Zero. It has plusses and minuses and isn't as easily AOTY material like the first series.

First, the entire 26 episodes is devoted to one loop compared to three distinct arcs in the first show. 13 of the episodes are being shown now, and there will be a 3 month break before it resumes in January. This is bad.

The episodes themselves are also...a bit punishing and too unnecessarily sadistic. The side characters have been sloughed off in favour of focus on Subaru, to the series detriment. Emilia, the 'heroine' is barely a character.

...

Also, the real AOTY 2020 is Ishuzoku Reviewers.

I'm only half joking. Did you hear that FUNimation has now vowed to censor BDs in the United States now, starting with Azur Lane? It seems IR triggered this as it was the first title FUNimation actually dropped midseason due to explicit content.
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Old 09-20-2020, 12:11 PM   #7977
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I don't think I've ever fully dropped a show purely on visual style and design. Usually there's other things that ruin it for me, possibly in conjunction with poor style. Like if the story is also bad or if the cinematography is horrible. Hideous artwork can still tell a good story.

I'm not super surprised that there's an overreaction to the backlash. America is horribly prudish when it comes to sexual content, yet we hyper love violence despite violence always being considered bad in society and consensual sex is not.

It's really weird how we can praise shows like Game of Thrones (before the last seasons) that contains incest, rape, prostitution, and a lot of violence, but a jokey sex anime can't be tolerated.
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Old 09-23-2020, 03:55 PM   #7978
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Deca-Dence final episode was kind of a bit dragged out. Compared to the first 11 episodes, the final episode retreaded some earlier stuff, so it felt like they had to do 12 episodes but kind of ran out of gas and just filled a whole episode. There wasn't even like any opposition for the characters.

This doesn't ruin the show as a whole. But considering how hype the end of episode 11 was compared to what actually happens in episode 12, it was a bit underwhelming. I actually have a friend that believed episode 11 was the last episode and the cliffhanger was for a second season like Big O.

I'm still calling it my personal Anime of 2020! Eleven great episodes and 1 mediocre episode is still great!

Also started watching Rent-A-Girlfriend. It's fairly cringey but oddly compelling. Very romantic drama, but nowhere as bad as Domestic Girlfriend. I'm also curious if renting a girlfriend is real in Japan. I know that Conan O'Brien did a skit where he rented a whole family.

Also, this is fucking brilliant: https://twitter.com/i/status/1290286616297103360
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Old 09-23-2020, 06:25 PM   #7979
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It is a real thing called "enjou kousai", but what makes Rent-a-Girlfriend a bit unique is both parties are college-aged. So like Shield Hero it's the "PG-13" version of enjou kousai.

Also with enjou kousai, the girl is typically middle school/high school while the man is some middle aged salarybro. There are exceptions, like the recent scandal with Act-Age author Tatsuya Matsuki who is likely headed to jail for sexual assault.

He's age 29.
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Old 09-26-2020, 11:53 PM   #7980
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Human Ranch

I wish this was about human ranch dressing, but nope. It's an isekai about elves who abduct humans to become delicious steaks to serve in their canopy fortresses.

The level of intelligence is lower than Chainsaw Man and it follows the similar Parallel Paradise manga, in that the meatpacking plant is treated like a prison where the cows police other cows just to stay alive a day longer.

It's stupid to me because aside from the main character Akira, everyone is laughably painful.

1. The main guy's girlfriend, upon seeing her 'flower arrangement' buddies get assimilated into a pervert's harem, willingly joins and gets raped/mindbroken into a breeding sow.

What?

2. Main guy, upon being put through his first communal shower, pops a wood one and runs outisde...to jizz on the grass. He doesn't shower that day and smells of crust and uncut smegma.

Why?

3. Akira, in an effort to keep his buddies cover from being blown, kisses the main girl (name irrelevant). She immediately falls in love with him.

How?

I'm legit cheering for the eleves at this point. No way Japanese high school kids are this stupid. Nevermind how it's bizarre a meatpacking plant is being policed by its living meat, the Japanese kids in this are just remarkably slow witted and sexually charged.

Perhaps their brains liquefied into ranch dressing when they transmigrated across the worlds. Yeesh.
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Old 09-27-2020, 10:06 AM   #7981
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There's a lot of convoluted and contrived premises in modern stories. It is surprising that so many get to become printed, but when we think about how Western book series like Insurgent are also extremely dumb and somehow were made into films just because it was similar to Hunger Games, it's not far fetched, even if it is awful.

Someone will see a successful story and kind of rip it off, but they're not as smart as the original premise and have worse world building or less logic. The publisher/editor is also chasing the trend and just wants to have something to compete with the successful story and we all end up with hot garbo.

And it's not entirely unimaginable that prisoners would collaborate with their jailers if they believe they'll be spared if they help them. It sadly happened even during the Holocaust.
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Old 09-27-2020, 10:08 PM   #7982
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Rent-A-Girlfriend

The main protagonist is Kazuya, a college freshmen who gets dumped by the trash bin ex-Mami. He decides to rent a girlfriend to cheer himself up and we're introduced to the perfect girl Chizuru. By happenstance, during his 2nd date with her, Kazuya's grandmother falls ill and is taken to the hospita. Kazuya ends up bringing Chizuru and he introduces her to his grandmother and she feels proud that her idiot grandson found such a perfect girl. Grandma turns out to be friends with Chizuru's grandmother. So they both keep up the charade since she doesn't want to reveal to her own grandmother she has this job. The show basically revolves around Kazuya continuously digging a deeper and deeper lie.

Decent show. I enjoyed it in a weird, cringe-inducing way. Like his stupidity makes me feel better that I'm not that stupid, but it's not farfetched enough that I don't think no one would follow his choices. I mean, Peter Molyneux exists. It kind of reminded me a bit of Watamote in terms of humor. I don't think everyone would enjoy it.
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Old 09-30-2020, 01:24 AM   #7983
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Quote:
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I mean, Peter Molyneux exists.
I don't get this reference.

Also I'm surprised you didn't totally hate Rent-a-Girlfriend, but you have high tolerance for stuff that would kill me in 10 minutes. My cursory evaluation was it wasn't even worth complaining about.

...

Also, Fall 2020's anime season is nearly upon us. There's not a lot interesting because of corona-chan, as expected, but we do have

Golden Kamuy - season 3!
Hanyo no Yashahime - the InuYasha sequel

Stupidly, Re:Zero is taking a break for this season, giving us a more star-studded Winter 2021 that kicks off with Re:Zero and Mushoku Tensei.

I think there's a new Shield Hero season too but who cares about that?
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Old 09-30-2020, 10:15 AM   #7984
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Rock Paper Shotgun accuses Molyneux of being a pathological liar after the failure of his Kickstarter game- Godus, which went on to be pretty much abandoned by his company.

There's definitely a lot of stuff I hate in anime. I think a big thing that let's me watch something like Rent-a-Girlfriend is that it's fairly different from most other anime.

There's no bombastic action scenes. There's no power fantasy. We have a big loser protagonist who deals with issues like depression after a breakup and while I think the scenario of renting a girlfriend isn't broad for the western audience, I'm sure many of us have felt heartache from a breakup. It also has our main character jerking off (off-screen of coarse) and joke about it with friends, which isn't that different from my own college experience. His actions are dumb, but not inconceivable. As an Asian myself, I understand the desire to gain approval from your family, unfortunately it's a sham in this case.

TLDR, I find Rent-A-Girlfriend different from other anime and relatable as a human.

I only vaguely look forward to Dan-Machi S3 next season.
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Old 09-30-2020, 04:07 PM   #7985
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Re:Zero S2
5/10

I forgot what I gave the last series. I think it was a 10/10. It managed to tell two satisfying arcs for Rem and Subaru and also spawn a lot of meme material, like the infamous

"I love Emilia".

It also had the most memorably cringey scene when Subaru challenged Julius to a duel. A series with both incredible highs and horrifying lows.

S2 is far weaker. Instead of 3 arcs, it only focuses on a single one that's taken 12 episodes and will likely take 12 more. There's been no development to speak of here, except putting Subaru through more misery porn.

The plot is less exciting and since Subaru doesn't have to go through introductions again, there's less emotional weight. Having Subaru meet all the dead witches makes it feel like it's endgame when it's not even close.

Some stuff doesn't make sense and isn't explained, despite 2 minutes of extra runtime the series takes by shaving off the OP and ED as necessary.

Art/animation is less consistent than S1 due to corona-chan.

Ultimately, it feels like Haruhi S2 - an uninspired sequel to a legendary maiden voyage, that while technically competent fails to recapture the magic that made the original so venerated.

And, this isn't even the whole. It's half of the whole. From what people are saying the belated second cour will be a single loop, which is lame.

When you have a series where the main character can basically eradicate "arsepulls" by experiencing everything ahead of time, why unload a bunch of them all at once? That feels rushed and sloppy regardless of how much time you spent building it up.
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Old 10-01-2020, 03:41 PM   #7986
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I'm just gonna say this: if you're really unhappy with a single arc taking up the entire 24-episode season, then you' probably want to drop the series. Arc 4 is taking up the entire season because it is actually long enough to do, and arcs 5 and 6 are even longer than that, so they can't get away with doing multi-arc seasons anymore without making so many more sacrifices than they already are that the show becomes an incomprehensible and unrecognizable mess. The closest we're going to get to a multi-arc season if they decide to animate all of the "If" alternate stories (aside from Lust, which was actually an April Fools shitpost that was never intended to be archived and made accessible outside of that one day, and Sloth, because that's long enough to get a whole season to itself).
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Old 10-01-2020, 03:54 PM   #7987
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Having read ahead a summary of what is to come in cour 2, there is definitely enough content there, single loop or not.

The reasoning for it being a single loop is also laid out fairly early.
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Old 10-01-2020, 04:05 PM   #7988
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That doesn't change the fact that it's awful in anime form. Perhaps its a poor adaptation but it's not fun to watch, especially following up a 10/10 enshrinement.

I can tl;dr the entire season 2 into what was spilled in the final episode:

Spoiler: show
-Roswaal wants Subaru to do inhuman things in the name of making Emilia King, even if he has to corrupt Emilia in the process.
-Inhumanity = abusing Return by Death + sacrificing people
-Roswaal thinks this because he's been doing the same thing for (I presume) Echidna.
-Satella doesn't want Subaru to become inhuman, she wants him to treasure his life + win with the help of his friends.


Did the series really need 12 episodes to get this point across, when it was so succinctly explained in the finale? The tone was set with the first episode and Rem's coma, which neatly ties in to Subaru's "save everyone" mentality and why he's being tempted by Echidna's Greed.

The stuff with Garfiel, Ryuzu, all feels like fluff at this point since they don't tie into anything. They're disjointed jigsaw puzzle pieces to a puzzle that you don't have a clear picture of. Such puzzles give you a picture ahead of time so you know what the final outcome looks like.
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Old 10-02-2020, 12:57 PM   #7989
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Shitsugyou Kenja no Narigari

Not an isekai. But it sure feels like one. It also takes a bunch of ideas from other stuff, as is the norm.

Basically, Negi Springfield-like shota MC turns 13 and after undergoing the human's Enlightenment ceremony (where they receive a blessing from the heavens), he's granted the ability of "Necromancy". His ability looks something like Wraithverge. He's recruited by the Hero, whose party has two girls that look like the raped girls from Goblin Slayer (the paladin and martial artist). Shota is kicked out of this party because those girl adventurers can't contribute at all in the face of Shota's powerful Necromancy.

Shota wanders around and is eventually recruited by a Demon Lord who looks and acts something like Chiyo and apparently has shota and human fetishes. Well, despite being a "Goddess of Lust" nothing's happened so far.

I don't really get what's happening but it's okay I guess? It's very a very typical power wank to this point. There's some bare nipple nudity out of nowhere. I'm really struggling to find words of praise here, but I can't condemn it either.

6/10? No masterpiece but no blasphemy either.
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Old 10-02-2020, 11:24 PM   #7990
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I may check out Rent-A-Girlfriend after-all, but not because I'm interested in the plot. Rather, I noticed the studio who animated it:



Who? I didn't recognize this studio. I thought it was a newbie group.

But I looked further and...



Oh snap!

For those who don't know, Tokyo Movie Shinsa is the studio that handled most of the outsourced animation for Amblin Entertainment, Hanna-Barbera, and later, Cartoon Network Studios animation.

Animaniacs, Swat Katz, Pirates of Dark Water, Scooby Doo on Zombie Island were all done by TMS. They're an unusual Japanese studio that does more overseas work than domestic anime, but when they do, they're at the top.

Why on earth would they opt to animate Rent-A-Girlfriend of all series?! But whatever, I guess it's worth at least a cursory look.
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Old 10-04-2020, 08:16 AM   #7991
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tiem to splurge

picked the f up:

365 Days to the Wedding

This is from the author of TWGOK. That fella proved he has genuine artistic and writing chops, so seeing a more seinen-aimed story was a pleasant surprise.

The basic premise: two loners who barely know one another, a male and female, come up with a scheme that they're faking getting married so their company doesn't send them to Siberia. They very quickly fall for one another but due to their lack of social skills don't know the other is in love for real.

It's cute, it's adult. It's like TWGOK grew up. Me gusta.

...

Yuujin Character wa Taihen desu ka?

Kobayashi Ichiro loves being the ultimate support character. He firmly believes his role in life is to groom the alpha males of the future - an NPB ace pitcher, Japan's head banchou, the someday Prime Minister - but he longs for a pupil who will be the protagonist of a story involving the entire world.

He meets that protagonist, Ryuuga, in high school. Ryuuga is a mysterious hot guy with a hidden secret and a harem of girls straight out of shounen manga - the busty samurai girl, the red-headed foreigner transfer student, and the bookish Student Council rep - and Ichiro decides to play the perverted, idiot sidekick to who he thinks is the MC.

Unfortunately, Ichiro doesn't realize he's the MC of this manga and things don't quite work out for him.

I gotta talk about the spoiler.

Spoiler: show
Ryuuga is obviously a girl, and the twist is that Ryuuga never saw him as a buddy, but as a love interest, so once Ryuuga reveals herself as female the floodgates cascade. They have a "love training" session where it's clear Ryuuga is thirstier than a fish in a desert, and she's spread her legs if Ichiro showed even the remotest interest.

Ichiro is in a tight spot, because Ryuuga fell in love with his act. So he drops the act and starts to behave as his real self...and he ends up immediately seducing Ryuuga's harem girls.


The manga is hilarious, a textbook case of 0 to 11, but not a lot is out yet. I think the premise has blown its load already but there's still some room for optimism.

...

GunOta

This is basically like a worse version of Mushoku Tensei. I don't care much for it, I skipped chapters. I'm looking to see if maybe there's some banging. This isn't really 'picked up' per se as I'm not all that invested in it.
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Old 10-12-2020, 08:35 PM   #7992
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The Hero who Returned Remains the Strongest in the Modern World

This is like isekai Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai, and was absolutely NOT what I imagined when I started out.

Basic synop...main guy gets isekai'd in the middle of being bullied, then spends several years training in a fantasy world and eventually defeats the Demon King. He opts to return home, not a second before he left, with all of his OP powers.

His goal...to find a girlfriend, since he wasn't able to live out his youth fighting the Demon King.

MC ends up stumbling upon Sempai, a shrine maiden, who also has supernatural powers. Her main issue is aside from these powers, she has no social skills and is obsessive compulsive. So when MC tries to hit on her...introducing her to the most basic of socialization...she latches onto him and goes yandere.

The two of them spend a lot of time trying to psychologize the other before making the next move in the relationship. Sempai seems unaware he's trying to court her, and he's unaware that she knows he has powers and that she sees him as a natural disaster to be contained.

It's cute and funny. I was expecting something more...conventional, given "OP MC".

...

Oh snap, Sempai's real name is apparently "Kaguya". rofl
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Old 10-17-2020, 12:36 AM   #7993
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Giri Giri Saegiru Katagirisan

Something like Yabai Yatsu Yamada, this is a cute love story where someone starts out with a 'perverted' tendency and the story quickly evolves into adolescent romance.

I like the art and, whodda thunk, Katagiri is the best girl.
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Old 10-17-2020, 04:51 PM   #7994
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Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba

I know I'm late on watching it. Everyone talked about how great and it won 2019 2020 Anime of the Year, but I personally don't rate it that highly.
EDIT: It was the 2020 awards, but it was for shows from 2019. Very confusing.

Good Stuff:
-Animation (Sakuga) is fantastic and really hype. Seriously, the show is great almost entirely on this! The battles with the artistic water blade style is stunning!

Bad Stuff:
-Some oddly placed bad CGI. It's usually very short bursts of this, but it would stand out to me. And not for like battle scenes, but like randomly the character walking is CGI. And it's only for a few seconds. Is it really that much of money/time saver to just throw in a jarring CGI moment?
-The world is a bit hard to believe. There's demons and immensely powerful humans, but seemingly the world is ignorant of it in general. The government doesn't acknowledge the Demon Slayer Corps. and yet they own large swaths of land to hold a prison for demons to test children for joining. Like if they can capture demons, can't they also show government officials that demons are real and a big threat to Japanese society? Wouldn't this be a big issue for the country?
-Nezuko generally doesn't do anything most of the series. She feels more like a prop than an actual character.
-Zenitsu and Inosuke are super loud and annoying. They don't really have much use in the story (thus far at least). Both kill the occasional demon, but Tanjiro always kills the main demon, so if their portions of the story were erased, most of the plot would be the same. They're never around when Tanjiro needs help or anything so they feel fairly pointless.
-There are pacing issues in the 2nd half and the ending isn't really an ending, but a transition into another season or in actuality the sequel film. I get that many shows are expected to go another season, but they also tend to end on big climatic moment. Instead we get the climatic moment, then like 4 episodes of recovery and training montage. It's really weird way to end a show.

Overall it was pretty good, but nowhere near Anime of the Year. I guess I really need a show to end well to really feel great about it and Demon Slayer really didn't for me. I know it's got a long list of bad compared to the good, but the show overall is still pretty good.

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Old 10-17-2020, 05:05 PM   #7995
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You forgot to mention the worst part of KnY - the title.

"Demon Slayer" is such a horrible, generic name that Viz had to affix the Japanese title to it. The demons are called oni, but are functionally vampires. They're nothing like the Western concept of demons.

Trying to convince someone an anime called "Demon Slayer" is AoY is priming them to be disappointed and frustrated.
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Old 10-17-2020, 05:33 PM   #7996
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And yet it did win Anime of the Year.

I don't think Demon is the wrong term. Demon is a fairly nebulous term like germ or vegetable that covers a large swath of monstrous creatures. And they're not vampires either in any functional way. While two characters say they only drink blood, all the others very clearly consume humans. They don't have vampire fangs and don't have the usual powers associated with vampires. They only have sunlight weakness.

Demon being a generic term works. This is fiction and we're given a description of a fictional creature. We can give them any set of powers because demon is such an broad term. If we're given vampire, we expect blood drinking and association with bats and such. Whereas demons can be a two headed baboon with snake tails for arms or a fat blob made of a bunch of arms or whatever we want.
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Old 10-17-2020, 06:27 PM   #7997
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Originally Posted by Loki View Post
And yet it did win Anime of the Year.

I don't think Demon is the wrong term. Demon is a fairly nebulous term like germ or vegetable that covers a large swath of monstrous creatures. And they're not vampires either in any functional way. While two characters say they only drink blood, all the others very clearly consume humans. They don't have vampire fangs and don't have the usual powers associated with vampires. They only have sunlight weakness.

Demon being a generic term works. This is fiction and we're given a description of a fictional creature. We can give them any set of powers because demon is such an broad term. If we're given vampire, we expect blood drinking and association with bats and such. Whereas demons can be a two headed baboon with snake tails for arms or a fat blob made of a bunch of arms or whatever we want.
They do have vampire fangs, do transform (Muzan shapeshifts into a woman and a child, the spider family can all become spiders), they're weak to sunlight and have a specific weakness on their body (the neck) like vampires (the heart). Also, in this context wisteria = wolfsbane or garlic as a plant that wards off the demons.

In the Western world, demons are commonly thought of in the Judeo-Christian context. English doesn't have a catch-all term for malevolent supernatural beings, unlike Japan which can use anything with the 鬼 or 魔 to indicate magic and/or malevolence and youkai for virtually everything else. In Inu-Yasha the 'demons' are youkai, for example, which is why you have youkai emerge from innocuous things like a burial comb or a centipede that feasts off the shallow buried.

So Gotouge's use of oni to refer to vampire-like beings comes across as much more unique and distinctive in Japanese than it is in English. Compare this to Goblin Slayer which in both English and Japanese comes across as almost mundane or intentionally vainglorious, because of the shared cultural awareness that that goblins are low-ranked, vermin-like monsters.

As an aside...in the first episode there's a Japanese-specific dark joke, I guess? Tanjiro asks his neighbour about whether or not demons can enter homes. I think Japanese convention is that youkai cannot enter homes without being invited first.

So when the neighbour says that demons can break into homes, the nuance to a Japanese viewer is these creatures are not youkai and are more fearsome than the supernatural beings they're probably familiar with. That would suggest these demons are not native to Japan but are monsters out of Western folklore.
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Old 10-17-2020, 09:35 PM   #7998
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This whole discussion is pointless. It's called Demon Slayer, they fight demons. They only have traits of vampires even non-vampiric beings have. And ultimately it's fiction, so a writer's creative license can say they have any trait and call it a demon or a devil or monster and it doesn't matter.

The review says the same. Good but not fantastic.
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Old 10-17-2020, 10:14 PM   #7999
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It isn't pointless, but it's relatively unimprtant to the greater issue: You were wondering why KnY received Anime of the Year, and I attempted to try and explain away some of the lost nuance that most English speakers can't into.

This title resonates with Japanese audiences in a way that goes beyond tropes and animation. Did you know that the sequel movie has been out for 2 days and it's on pace to be one of the best selling Japanese box office draws of all-time?

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Originally Posted by Crunchy
It is estimated that from the Friday showings alone, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba THE MOVIE Mugen Train brought in over 1.2 billion yen at the Japanese box office on its first day of release. To compare to some other major films, the current opening weekend holder Frozen 2 made 1.88 billion yen (US$17.8 million) over three days, Weathering with You (which opened higher than Your Name, but trailed off in later weeks) opened to 1.5 billion yen (US$15.22 million), and Spirited Away, the highest-grossing anime film in Japan, opened to 1.05 billion (US$9.9 million) over Saturday and Sunday. Demon Slayer: Mugen Train is currently on track to gross more than 3 billion yen (US$28.4 million) in its opening weekend, safely taking the record.
It broke 2 billion Saturday afternoon, so it's likely to meet that projection.

Infinity Train is definitely a much better arc than the spiders, but better than Spirited Away?! That's nutty.
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Old 10-21-2020, 04:03 PM   #8000
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I started Majo no Tabitabi (The Journey of Elaina) and I don't think it's that great. I thought it might be a new fantasy world exploring type show and it totally is, but in the worst kind of way.

I had thought the anime would be about our main character Elaina travel around the fantasy world she's in and help with problems here and there, but it's more like a Mother Goose tales type show, where she travels around and witnesses the world, but hardly makes any effort to affect the world. It's kind of weird in that way because it makes Elaina lack agency and makes her seem cruel and cold-hearted.

Episode 1, she passes her exam and finishes her apprenticeship to become a witch. Episode 2 she loses her badge and gets tricked into helping a girl pass her witch apprenticeship test. This is kind of the first hint that she's a secret asshole. She states that her trick to passing her test of using a wind spell to cut an apple down from a tree was to not just cut her apple, but also deflect other people's wind spell. Like why did she have to cockblock other people? It didn't seem like only one person passed per test, so why block other people?

Then Episode 3 happened and this is the start of the Mother Goose tales. She finds a woman handing out flowers and brings them into town. There a guard grills her about the flowers and believes his missing sister is now at the flower field Elaina passed. It's revealed the flowers are actually magical man eating flowers and their flowers draws their victims, but doesn't affect witches. The next day she flies back to the flower field and sees the guard get entangled and slowly consumed.... and she just leaves. Like... she just didn't care. She watched a fellow human slowly get eaten by an evil plant monster and she did nothing to help him. She didn't even say sorry or anything. And that's only half the episode!

The second half she finds a young boy mage bottling happiness with magic. He traveled around town and found people with happy memories to put into a bottle to show a girl whom he finds is depressed all the time. He invites Elaina to his house and she finds out the girl is his father's slave. The girl is seemingly being abused by the father (not in a sexual way, more like he punishes her) and the boy wants to cheer her up with the bottle. He opens the bottle and shows her a world of happiness outside the house. This causes her to break down crying. The boy thinks he's done good but Elaina mentions how this probably made her even sadder. Then Elaina just leaves. BYEEEEEEEE~~!!!

Like she witnesses bad things happens and doesn't do anything to affect their lives or help them. It's really weird to watch a show there just has a character watching terrible things happen and do nothing. Is this what it's like to live outside the USA now?

And the worst part is that the whole third episode didn't really give us a moral lesson like we would get with Mother Goose tales. The Boy Who Cried Wolf teaches us to not lie. The Golden Goose teaches us to not be so greedy. Elaina's Journey just shows us how dark and cruel the world can be and does nothing to better nor offers any solution. Just accept that the world sucks and walk away from those problems apparently. They're not your problems, so who cares.

The first episode was pretty promising and the second episode was decent, but the third was just so jarring. If the series continues like this, I don't think I could keep watching.

EDIT: After a bit of research, it seems I cited Aesop's Fables and Grimm Fairy Tales rather than Mother Goose. Whatever. They're all relatively similar in teaching morals.
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