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Anime |OT| Fall 2018 - Puppets Ain't Ever Going Off Model
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Run with the Wind 2
Nipples.
I'm not quite sure what is not working for me. I can't really seem to care much about the main character (The Kageyama-looking dude, not Haji), or really care at all about all these characters whose names I can't memorize? I understand It's a 23 episodes shows, but I feel like the show's foundations are seriously lacking.
Nipples.
I'm not quite sure what is not working for me. I can't really seem to care much about the main character (The Kageyama-looking dude, not Haji), or really care at all about all these characters whose names I can't memorize? I understand It's a 23 episodes shows, but I feel like the show's foundations are seriously lacking.
Run with the Wind has officially landed in the 'great' bracket. Love captain enthusiastic's manipulative streak. The other characters are all growing on me too, except the twins. Cigarette-chan sharing the spotlight with captain enthusiastic in this episode. Slime has not disappointed, either. OP slime is a nice subversion.
Indeed!
Run with the Wind 2
Probably my biggest surprise so far. I didn't really great any buzz about it before the season began and I'm not typically a huge sports anime guy (but that really seems to be changing lately) but I've really liked this, especially the dorm dynamic. Although it is a bummer that Kageyama didn't stick with volleyball in uni.
Probably my biggest surprise so far. I didn't really great any buzz about it before the season began and I'm not typically a huge sports anime guy (but that really seems to be changing lately) but I've really liked this, especially the dorm dynamic. Although it is a bummer that Kageyama didn't stick with volleyball in uni.
Himote House 01 (HARD DROP)- Shit, just hire someone to write your jokes. Is that too hard?
Show isn't funny and that's all it was riding on.
Zombie Land Saga 01 (DROP)- I gave it a shot because folks in the thread liked it.
It was kind of funny, but so little actually happened that I just don't believe in the creators to turn this into anything interesting. It feels like they didn't want to overinvest into making a good first impression.
Almost like the show itself is a prank on someone either wanting an idol anime or a zombie horror anime.
Just wasn't feeing it I guess.
Reincarnated as a Slime 02 (Reluctant pass)- Yeah, episode 1 is pretty much the show. They moved a little more in this one, but pretty much it's just the slime voice talking in its head, occasional computer voice stating ability names, and the slime absorbing things.
Not my cup of tea, though I did find it funny at times. And I liked the dragon.
I just don't see this going a way I like, and they've already gone through 2 episodes.
My time ain't infinite. Be good, and be good quickly.
Jingai-san no Yome 02 - This is so weird that I gotta keep watching.
More happened this time, but I'm still confused as hell as to how the protagonist is adjusting so quickly to this all.
Is becoming an alien's wife normal in this world?
Being 3 minutes long really makes it hard not to keep watching each week.
Run With The Wind 01- Like it so far, though the asynchronous stuff threw me off for a second.
Stuff moves fast and there's so many characters that I'm really not sure how they actually feel about running or even why they were recruited.
I'm interested, and think the characters on surface level are likable.
Hopefully this isn't Hanebado again.
Skull faced Boookseller Honda-San 01-Based on my experience shopping at Tokyo BookOff's, this show is 100% real.
I am ashamed of both my words and my deeds.
I'm not into BL manga, but I definitely had the phone pose.
This is one of my favorites so far this season.
Bunny Girl Senpai 01- Seems to be another "don't read the premise" shows because the show is nothing like what it sounds like.
Reminds me a lot of the plot of a Persona game or Paranoia Agent or Serial Experiment Lain.
I'm guessing the Bunny Suit was just there to get attention and draw more people into what seems to be a very thoughtful show:
Don't skip it.
Show isn't funny and that's all it was riding on.
Zombie Land Saga 01 (DROP)- I gave it a shot because folks in the thread liked it.
It was kind of funny, but so little actually happened that I just don't believe in the creators to turn this into anything interesting. It feels like they didn't want to overinvest into making a good first impression.
Almost like the show itself is a prank on someone either wanting an idol anime or a zombie horror anime.
Just wasn't feeing it I guess.
Reincarnated as a Slime 02 (Reluctant pass)- Yeah, episode 1 is pretty much the show. They moved a little more in this one, but pretty much it's just the slime voice talking in its head, occasional computer voice stating ability names, and the slime absorbing things.
Not my cup of tea, though I did find it funny at times. And I liked the dragon.
I just don't see this going a way I like, and they've already gone through 2 episodes.
My time ain't infinite. Be good, and be good quickly.
Jingai-san no Yome 02 - This is so weird that I gotta keep watching.
More happened this time, but I'm still confused as hell as to how the protagonist is adjusting so quickly to this all.
Is becoming an alien's wife normal in this world?
Being 3 minutes long really makes it hard not to keep watching each week.
Run With The Wind 01- Like it so far, though the asynchronous stuff threw me off for a second.
Stuff moves fast and there's so many characters that I'm really not sure how they actually feel about running or even why they were recruited.
I'm interested, and think the characters on surface level are likable.
Hopefully this isn't Hanebado again.
Skull faced Boookseller Honda-San 01-Based on my experience shopping at Tokyo BookOff's, this show is 100% real.
I am ashamed of both my words and my deeds.
I'm not into BL manga, but I definitely had the phone pose.
This is one of my favorites so far this season.
Bunny Girl Senpai 01- Seems to be another "don't read the premise" shows because the show is nothing like what it sounds like.
Reminds me a lot of the plot of a Persona game or Paranoia Agent or Serial Experiment Lain.
I'm guessing the Bunny Suit was just there to get attention and draw more people into what seems to be a very thoughtful show:
Don't skip it.
Last edited:
Spider-Slime 2
Pretty nice to see the build up and use of abilities to make our Slime OP instead of him being that right out of the gate. I still think Veldora is the absolute best character in this whole show and it sucks he's pretty much out of it until some undetermined point in the future.
Pretty nice to see the build up and use of abilities to make our Slime OP instead of him being that right out of the gate. I still think Veldora is the absolute best character in this whole show and it sucks he's pretty much out of it until some undetermined point in the future.
I hope this makes people mad like when they put in that gamergate dig in prison school.
Good to know. Hopefully it gets explained in the anime as well.
TG:re s2 01
*teleports behind you*
I'll grant them that: they sort of fixed the manga nonsense of CCG allowing Takatsuki to host a press conference after being arrested and Kaneki & Ayato making the move on Cochlea uncoordinated, but somehow at the very same time.
I'm not sure what they're even going to do in next ep when they erased any trace of Kaneki's internal struggle and reasoning,( even that glorious double monologue for Hinami scene) but that ship already sailed in previous season I guess ?
Run with the Wind 02
I'm in love with the evil Ogre
Also, I really want to read Takashi, the fake Akira Manga that we have now seen twice
Jingai-San no Yome 02
No further comment
Dakaichi- I'm being harassed by the sexiest man of the year 01
Boy, usually when you have one of these bad BL shows, you have to wait a few episodes before the first sexual assault and/or rape happens. Nope, they have already boned by the end of episode 1! Nobody (except me) should be watching this show
I'm in love with the evil Ogre
Also, I really want to read Takashi, the fake Akira Manga that we have now seen twice
Jingai-San no Yome 02
No further comment
Dakaichi- I'm being harassed by the sexiest man of the year 01
Boy, usually when you have one of these bad BL shows, you have to wait a few episodes before the first sexual assault and/or rape happens. Nope, they have already boned by the end of episode 1! Nobody (except me) should be watching this show
Run with the Wind 02:
I didn't hate this, but this still feels a bit heatless. I enjoy the humor of trying to blackmail every single tenent into running in the race but any time the show tries to get dramatic at all, it sort of falls flat for me.
I didn't hate this, but this still feels a bit heatless. I enjoy the humor of trying to blackmail every single tenent into running in the race but any time the show tries to get dramatic at all, it sort of falls flat for me.
Encouragement of Climb S3 Ep 10
Damn, this episode had some great animation. The art style had a slight change too but I really liked it. Very expressive and fluid.
Also, I just noticed but when did CR start using hard subs for their videos? I liked being able to shut off subs to make gifs before. This is so annoying.
Damn, this episode had some great animation. The art style had a slight change too but I really liked it. Very expressive and fluid.
Also, I just noticed but when did CR start using hard subs for their videos? I liked being able to shut off subs to make gifs before. This is so annoying.
Patema Inverted
After finishing this, I spent like 15 minutes staring at various paint explanations of the ending and I still don't get how the bloody sun is supposed to work in that configuration.
Anyhow, fun premise and fun twist, regardless of how much sense it makes but I cannot say story and character wise it does anything particularly exciting. The cackling, evil villain doesn't help either.
After finishing this, I spent like 15 minutes staring at various paint explanations of the ending and I still don't get how the bloody sun is supposed to work in that configuration.
Anyhow, fun premise and fun twist, regardless of how much sense it makes but I cannot say story and character wise it does anything particularly exciting. The cackling, evil villain doesn't help either.
Leeds International Film Festival 2018
Penguin Highway - Sunday 4th November 2018, 11:30
https://www.leedsfilmcity.com/film-year-round/penguin-highway/
Mirai - Sunday 4th November 2018, 14:30
https://www.leedsfilmcity.com/film-year-round/mirai/
www.miraifilm.co.uk
Penguin Highway - Sunday 4th November 2018, 11:30
https://www.leedsfilmcity.com/film-year-round/penguin-highway/
Mirai - Sunday 4th November 2018, 14:30
https://www.leedsfilmcity.com/film-year-round/mirai/
www.miraifilm.co.uk
It is not. It eventually gets into a more political slant as Rimuru has to start dealing with other groups of people and nations. Not saying you'll like it, because it's definitely still got a lot of superpowered slime, but it ends up going a lot further than just that.
I concur. The show will get really good. It isn't typical isekai.
Bunny Girl Senpai 2
Another great episode. Straight to the hand holding lol. Sakuto and Mai play off each other really well and their is some damn good drama with her disappearing from everybody's memories. The scene with the mom when she realized she couldn't see her anymore was sad. I feel like the title of the anime kind of does the series a disservice.
Another great episode. Straight to the hand holding lol. Sakuto and Mai play off each other really well and their is some damn good drama with her disappearing from everybody's memories. The scene with the mom when she realized she couldn't see her anymore was sad. I feel like the title of the anime kind of does the series a disservice.
encouragement of climb has seriously been a masterclass in subtle animation this last season for reals. also a big fan of the simplified style they lapse into for midground/far shots which still manages to be supremely fluid and expressive
It's not as bad as most typical isekai but it doesn't do anything to elevate itself beyond just being decent.
hope so. the opening, while well animated looks mad generic.
My sister my writer.
no one watch this please.
SSSS.Gridman 1 - PASSED... FOR NOW
Hmm... I still don't know exactly how I feel about this one. Gridman was always the one of Trigger's three projects announced last year that left me the most puzzled as to exactly how it would turn out, but it seems the previews didn't fully prepare me for what we got. This pilot seemed less like a pitch for the rest of the season and more like an attempt to establish a giant list of questions that probably will get answered eventually, eve if that's not likely to happen anytime soon. It leaves me with little to take away from the pilot impressions wise other than the direction and animation quality, both of which have issues. The animation quality was there when it counted, and generally the main characters look good enough most of the time, but the whole show has this kind of stilted approach that feels very unlike Trigger. From that one classroom still shot that's on screen for at least 15 seconds to the oddly-paced jump cuts when Rikka grills Yuta for the first time just make this pilot look shoddier than I would've expected, especially knowing how much Trigger sacrificed of their Darling in the FranXX offerings to work on SSSS.Gridman. The direction itself doesn't feel like its working quite as well as an in medias res starring an amnesiac should: for how weird things are about the unexplained elements of the world, the show doesn't quite frame the protagonist's experience through earlier parts of the episode as frightening as it could to play up the stranger elements of the world and narrative. As such, the show kind of feels like it lacks some kind of lens to focus around, which makes how its tied together feel a bit aimless.
Now, for as negative as I've been, I think there is a nugget of potential here so I'm giving it to episode three to see if the show stops beating around the bush and comes into its own by then. If it hasn't, then I'll likely drop it for all the problems I've listed above. I do hope Gridman turns itself around once its done trying to outsmart the audience, but I'm not currently convinced it will even if I'm going to give it two more episodes to do so.
Release the Spyce 1 - PASSED
What a nice little surprise! I had my eye on Release the Spyce for a while now, partially because of the combination of the creative team (the original character designer is of course the designer of Yuru Yuri, but more interestingly the series composition is being handled by one of the main writers for Yuki Yuna), but I didn't know how well it would all come together in the end. To my surprise, this was one of the best pilot episodes I've seen this season, brimming with confidence and a lot of polish. Lay-duce has been on my radar ever since Fate/Grand Order: First Order, but they haven't really done much since that which made me wonder if they were just a one-hit wonder of a studio. Thankfully, Release the Spyce has some nicely animated fight sequences, and a lot of good comedic facial animation that reminds me a lot of Doga Kobo's work (or even Studio Gokumi's work on Yuki Yuna's more light-hearted content). And while I'm still not entirely convinced that the show won't be a bit all over the place style-wise or that the show isn't perhaps a little too conventional in some respects for its own good, I do appreciate solid direction and quality animation, both of which were in abundance in this debut episode. It may be a bit old fashioned, but Release the Spyce looks to be one of the more interesting shows to watch this season.
GeGeGe no Kitaro 27
Wow, what a drastic change in tone from the previous two cours! This feels like a really ambitious crossover into territory I'm not certain GeGeGe no Kitaro has ever touched on before, but the idea of Kitaro and friends fighting for their very existence against the most well-known elements of Western folklore (which essentially amounts to the rogues gallery of your average Castllevania title) is at least interesting after two cours of modern Japanese social and cultural examination. Not that GeGeGe no Kitaro doesn't continue to go out of its way to touch on hot-button or difficult to express issues like the refugee crisis, the difficulties of accepting the cultural traditions of outsiders, and the pain of living with not being able to make good on difficult situations when the life takes a sudden and tragic turn. It's not all handled quite as gracefully as I would've liked, simply because it felt like they were putting way too much into this single episode, but as a pitch for what will dominate the next handful of episodes at least, I'm really excited for the direction the show has taken. Bring on the Great Youkai War!
Attack on Titan 48
Damn, I think this is the best episode to come out of the third season so far! In comparison to Kenny's flashback last time, they found a way to combine the amount of information with a narrative ebb and flow that felt natural and purposeful, with lots of great character visuals to accent the feelings of the core cast members in certain situations without needing any expository dialogue to convey exactly what they're thinking. When both the direction of the show and the material itself comes together in harmony, it comes together to create really captivating moments, and this if filled with them, even if they're admittedly quiet ones rather than the more explosive notes the series is known for. It also helps that unlike Kenny's flashback, there's a lot of fairly pertinent information about clearing up some plot holes and getting a grasp on where things are heading, both plot and character-wise, for our core cast. All in all, I've been waiting for an episode this good all season long and we finally got it here. Hopefully, that's an indication that we're on to better material soon, though with the decision to split the cours, perhaps its best if Wit manages to make the most out of what is likely to be the more memorable part of Season 3.
Hmm... I still don't know exactly how I feel about this one. Gridman was always the one of Trigger's three projects announced last year that left me the most puzzled as to exactly how it would turn out, but it seems the previews didn't fully prepare me for what we got. This pilot seemed less like a pitch for the rest of the season and more like an attempt to establish a giant list of questions that probably will get answered eventually, eve if that's not likely to happen anytime soon. It leaves me with little to take away from the pilot impressions wise other than the direction and animation quality, both of which have issues. The animation quality was there when it counted, and generally the main characters look good enough most of the time, but the whole show has this kind of stilted approach that feels very unlike Trigger. From that one classroom still shot that's on screen for at least 15 seconds to the oddly-paced jump cuts when Rikka grills Yuta for the first time just make this pilot look shoddier than I would've expected, especially knowing how much Trigger sacrificed of their Darling in the FranXX offerings to work on SSSS.Gridman. The direction itself doesn't feel like its working quite as well as an in medias res starring an amnesiac should: for how weird things are about the unexplained elements of the world, the show doesn't quite frame the protagonist's experience through earlier parts of the episode as frightening as it could to play up the stranger elements of the world and narrative. As such, the show kind of feels like it lacks some kind of lens to focus around, which makes how its tied together feel a bit aimless.
Now, for as negative as I've been, I think there is a nugget of potential here so I'm giving it to episode three to see if the show stops beating around the bush and comes into its own by then. If it hasn't, then I'll likely drop it for all the problems I've listed above. I do hope Gridman turns itself around once its done trying to outsmart the audience, but I'm not currently convinced it will even if I'm going to give it two more episodes to do so.
Release the Spyce 1 - PASSED
What a nice little surprise! I had my eye on Release the Spyce for a while now, partially because of the combination of the creative team (the original character designer is of course the designer of Yuru Yuri, but more interestingly the series composition is being handled by one of the main writers for Yuki Yuna), but I didn't know how well it would all come together in the end. To my surprise, this was one of the best pilot episodes I've seen this season, brimming with confidence and a lot of polish. Lay-duce has been on my radar ever since Fate/Grand Order: First Order, but they haven't really done much since that which made me wonder if they were just a one-hit wonder of a studio. Thankfully, Release the Spyce has some nicely animated fight sequences, and a lot of good comedic facial animation that reminds me a lot of Doga Kobo's work (or even Studio Gokumi's work on Yuki Yuna's more light-hearted content). And while I'm still not entirely convinced that the show won't be a bit all over the place style-wise or that the show isn't perhaps a little too conventional in some respects for its own good, I do appreciate solid direction and quality animation, both of which were in abundance in this debut episode. It may be a bit old fashioned, but Release the Spyce looks to be one of the more interesting shows to watch this season.
GeGeGe no Kitaro 27
Wow, what a drastic change in tone from the previous two cours! This feels like a really ambitious crossover into territory I'm not certain GeGeGe no Kitaro has ever touched on before, but the idea of Kitaro and friends fighting for their very existence against the most well-known elements of Western folklore (which essentially amounts to the rogues gallery of your average Castllevania title) is at least interesting after two cours of modern Japanese social and cultural examination. Not that GeGeGe no Kitaro doesn't continue to go out of its way to touch on hot-button or difficult to express issues like the refugee crisis, the difficulties of accepting the cultural traditions of outsiders, and the pain of living with not being able to make good on difficult situations when the life takes a sudden and tragic turn. It's not all handled quite as gracefully as I would've liked, simply because it felt like they were putting way too much into this single episode, but as a pitch for what will dominate the next handful of episodes at least, I'm really excited for the direction the show has taken. Bring on the Great Youkai War!
Attack on Titan 48
Damn, I think this is the best episode to come out of the third season so far! In comparison to Kenny's flashback last time, they found a way to combine the amount of information with a narrative ebb and flow that felt natural and purposeful, with lots of great character visuals to accent the feelings of the core cast members in certain situations without needing any expository dialogue to convey exactly what they're thinking. When both the direction of the show and the material itself comes together in harmony, it comes together to create really captivating moments, and this if filled with them, even if they're admittedly quiet ones rather than the more explosive notes the series is known for. It also helps that unlike Kenny's flashback, there's a lot of fairly pertinent information about clearing up some plot holes and getting a grasp on where things are heading, both plot and character-wise, for our core cast. All in all, I've been waiting for an episode this good all season long and we finally got it here. Hopefully, that's an indication that we're on to better material soon, though with the decision to split the cours, perhaps its best if Wit manages to make the most out of what is likely to be the more memorable part of Season 3.
PriPara 30
Oh, so Falulu is literally some sort of abomination of nature and science working together to create the ultimate idol, who probably had to be sealed away because she was too much of a threat to the world. Not even Unicorn understands what she's using. Literally born from a Pri-ticket and doing all this while being 6 months old. Unicorn may be the great evil for now, but Falulu is the existential threat to PriPara itself that Lala is going to have to figure out how to contain fast.
Copying all those Making Dramas has got to cost her eventually right? Like, if not some sort of physical toll, then fan support when people realize she's just stealing the majority of her content. Even in the cutthroat idol business that just seems not kosher.
Oh, so Falulu is literally some sort of abomination of nature and science working together to create the ultimate idol, who probably had to be sealed away because she was too much of a threat to the world. Not even Unicorn understands what she's using. Literally born from a Pri-ticket and doing all this while being 6 months old. Unicorn may be the great evil for now, but Falulu is the existential threat to PriPara itself that Lala is going to have to figure out how to contain fast.
Copying all those Making Dramas has got to cost her eventually right? Like, if not some sort of physical toll, then fan support when people realize she's just stealing the majority of her content. Even in the cutthroat idol business that just seems not kosher.
Goblin Slayer 1 - DROPPED
Ugh, it's late and I really want to go to sleep, but I suppose I have to talk about this now, don't I? Oh, where to start...
Goblin Slayer has always been something of a mystery to me; an interesting concept I wanted to explore but never did and I couldn't really tell you why that was. The idea of someone being so psychotically driven to dedicate their entire existence to the destruction of any and all goblins is at least somewhat novel as a concept, but it's hard to know exactly what you could wrap around that kind of character for a larger ongoing narrative. I was hoping, more than anything else, that this pilot episode would help elaborate on what the larger scope of that story was, and perhaps frame the world in a way that made his existence make sense. The trouble isn't just that the episode has some issues with content and direction, but that I don't feel like I have any better understanding of the Goblin Slayer property than when I went in.
Consider for a minute that the monologue at the end of the episode frames the events herein are incredibly common, so much so that they neither shock the Goblin Slayer as they are happening or so much so that the guild attendant more or less expects to never see any of them again, even if she may have been responsible for sending him after the party to begin with. The thing is, at no point in the episode itself did I get the sense that this world in particular was a place where these kinds of stories are commonplace. What is it about the structure of the world that would leave smaller villages open to goblin attacks of such frequency that their numbers continue to proliferate at such a number that countless inexperienced adventurers have fallen trying to stem the tide of the problem? I assume the show will get into that at some point, but I could see no indication of that in the establishing elements of the story before the party sets off. And I don't think I'm asking a great deal of the director of Girls' Last Tour to be able to communicate elements of the world building through visual cues, discrepancies between the script and what you're seeing, or a general sense of unease that hangs over the world that's oblivious to the sheltered Priestess but obvious to us. As such, you'd be very understandably mistaken for thinking everything is perfectly normal with the world because up until things start going wrong for the party nothing really suggests that they'll get as bad as they do.
On that topic, let's talk about framing. The tricky thing I find with this entire episode from a conceptual level is that it doesn't feel like it takes advantage of being from the Priestess' perspective. Here's this naive fifteen year-old girl who's just begun her career as an adventurer: as far as we know, she's never seen combat, has spent most of her life at an academy/church learning her craft, and has never been in danger that we're aware of. Given the events of the episode, Goblin Slayer doesn't go far enough with portraying her emotional state through its direction the way it could have. Considering what she goes through, seeing her lose all sense of reality and using her imagination to fill in the gaps as she begins losing her mind as a mask for the most brutal elements of the episode might've been more effective than what we got (after all, leaving things to the audience's imagination is always more horrifying than showing everything). There's also the chance to have her see the Goblin Slayer himself as some kind of savior figure, but contrast that against his psychopathic behavior and incredibly cruel methodology for killing goblins. As it is... the Goblin Slayer comes off as incredibly dull here. He's too calm, too clinical, and too detached from what he's doing to get invested in what he does to the goblins after he shows up. Imagine a scenario where the Priestess, psychologically broken from her encounter and watching her party be annihilated, idolizes a sadistic and somewhat unhinged maniac who specializes in killing goblins. It might not have made the show much better, but that kind of framing would have been far more interesting to watch that what we got here, because once the "shock" wore off, the episode was just frankly quite boring.
And that's kind of my takeaway here: there's some interesting potential in the concept here, and maybe the show does eventually get around to doing something with that. But honestly, this was a very poor first impression that strangely felt too safe in its approach. For all the rape and butchery depicted on screen, there were no really interesting or brave decisions made either in the adaptation of the material or its presentation that felt inspired in the way I've come to expect from White Fox and certainly from director Takaharu Ozaki, who has shown he's capable of so much better with Girls' Last Tour. Such a shame for such a decent concept to go to waste in such an uninteresting way.
Ugh, it's late and I really want to go to sleep, but I suppose I have to talk about this now, don't I? Oh, where to start...
Goblin Slayer has always been something of a mystery to me; an interesting concept I wanted to explore but never did and I couldn't really tell you why that was. The idea of someone being so psychotically driven to dedicate their entire existence to the destruction of any and all goblins is at least somewhat novel as a concept, but it's hard to know exactly what you could wrap around that kind of character for a larger ongoing narrative. I was hoping, more than anything else, that this pilot episode would help elaborate on what the larger scope of that story was, and perhaps frame the world in a way that made his existence make sense. The trouble isn't just that the episode has some issues with content and direction, but that I don't feel like I have any better understanding of the Goblin Slayer property than when I went in.
Consider for a minute that the monologue at the end of the episode frames the events herein are incredibly common, so much so that they neither shock the Goblin Slayer as they are happening or so much so that the guild attendant more or less expects to never see any of them again, even if she may have been responsible for sending him after the party to begin with. The thing is, at no point in the episode itself did I get the sense that this world in particular was a place where these kinds of stories are commonplace. What is it about the structure of the world that would leave smaller villages open to goblin attacks of such frequency that their numbers continue to proliferate at such a number that countless inexperienced adventurers have fallen trying to stem the tide of the problem? I assume the show will get into that at some point, but I could see no indication of that in the establishing elements of the story before the party sets off. And I don't think I'm asking a great deal of the director of Girls' Last Tour to be able to communicate elements of the world building through visual cues, discrepancies between the script and what you're seeing, or a general sense of unease that hangs over the world that's oblivious to the sheltered Priestess but obvious to us. As such, you'd be very understandably mistaken for thinking everything is perfectly normal with the world because up until things start going wrong for the party nothing really suggests that they'll get as bad as they do.
On that topic, let's talk about framing. The tricky thing I find with this entire episode from a conceptual level is that it doesn't feel like it takes advantage of being from the Priestess' perspective. Here's this naive fifteen year-old girl who's just begun her career as an adventurer: as far as we know, she's never seen combat, has spent most of her life at an academy/church learning her craft, and has never been in danger that we're aware of. Given the events of the episode, Goblin Slayer doesn't go far enough with portraying her emotional state through its direction the way it could have. Considering what she goes through, seeing her lose all sense of reality and using her imagination to fill in the gaps as she begins losing her mind as a mask for the most brutal elements of the episode might've been more effective than what we got (after all, leaving things to the audience's imagination is always more horrifying than showing everything). There's also the chance to have her see the Goblin Slayer himself as some kind of savior figure, but contrast that against his psychopathic behavior and incredibly cruel methodology for killing goblins. As it is... the Goblin Slayer comes off as incredibly dull here. He's too calm, too clinical, and too detached from what he's doing to get invested in what he does to the goblins after he shows up. Imagine a scenario where the Priestess, psychologically broken from her encounter and watching her party be annihilated, idolizes a sadistic and somewhat unhinged maniac who specializes in killing goblins. It might not have made the show much better, but that kind of framing would have been far more interesting to watch that what we got here, because once the "shock" wore off, the episode was just frankly quite boring.
And that's kind of my takeaway here: there's some interesting potential in the concept here, and maybe the show does eventually get around to doing something with that. But honestly, this was a very poor first impression that strangely felt too safe in its approach. For all the rape and butchery depicted on screen, there were no really interesting or brave decisions made either in the adaptation of the material or its presentation that felt inspired in the way I've come to expect from White Fox and certainly from director Takaharu Ozaki, who has shown he's capable of so much better with Girls' Last Tour. Such a shame for such a decent concept to go to waste in such an uninteresting way.
It's incredible how that episode legitimately ended with her merrily teaming up with Goblin Slayer. The last shot is her smiling at the prospect of all this...
And then it tries to be light fantasy and then tossing in the edge
I am bewildered, but kind of happy that the Priestess gets over it that fast honestly. XD
I don't know if I will get around to the show, but I have been reading more of the manga, and might look at the novels (I should check out a few light novels sometime).
I don't know if I will get around to the show, but I have been reading more of the manga, and might look at the novels (I should check out a few light novels sometime).
Yar, at the end of the day it's still pretty much about "the main character cleaning up everyone else's messes using convenient skillset," which I really dislike in most isekai.
15 seconds, I lasted 15 seconds.
I can't believe it beat my record with A Sister Is All You Need.
Irodoku: 1
The protagonist's grandma is such an asshole, sending her back in time out of nowhere. This protagonist, by the way, is a boring anime trope, so meh.
So, I think the show would have worked way better if it would have stayed monochromatic most of it. Basically, after the initial color fades away to grayscale in the firework scene, it should have stayed that way until the burst of color at the end. That way, we would have been way more immersed in her point of view, it would have been way more impactful and the monochrome doesn't feel like an occasional afterthought.
The protagonist's grandma is such an asshole, sending her back in time out of nowhere. This protagonist, by the way, is a boring anime trope, so meh.
So, I think the show would have worked way better if it would have stayed monochromatic most of it. Basically, after the initial color fades away to grayscale in the firework scene, it should have stayed that way until the burst of color at the end. That way, we would have been way more immersed in her point of view, it would have been way more impactful and the monochrome doesn't feel like an occasional afterthought.
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