I Can’t Speak Isekai-Go!

Or, the blog post otherwise known as the Isekai Anime Progress Report, April 2021.

What I’m Watching from the 2021 Spring Anime

A new anime season is here once again, and believe it or not I got the urge to blog! 😀

Yakunara Mug Cup mo – For some reason the title reminds me of noodles, however it’s about pottery! I’m kind of interested since it is supposed to be slice of life. I’m looking forward to a relaxing series. 🙂
Sentouin, Hakenshimasu! – From the guy who gave us Konosuba and Kemonomichi, comes this new comedy series. I of course liked the 2 older ones, so I am looking forward to watching this!
Sayonara Watashi no Cramer – I’m not really a football fan, but this is from the guy who gave us Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso, so I have high expectations. (Though I still have to finish Shigatsu…)
Tensura Nikki: Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken – I need more Slime stories…
Seijo no Maryoku wa Bannou Desu – And here we have the 2nd isekai title in the list, which I am actually not familiar with. Looks promising though, so I’ll give it a shot.
Super Cub – Slice of life! Will Watch!
Slime Taoshite 300-nen, Shiranai Uchi ni Level Max ni Nattemashita – Isekai series #3! I have read at least the first 2 volumes of the light novel this anime is based on. It actually starts out ok, but then I got bored and dropped it. I’m not sure how the quality is going to be, but I’ll check out the first few episodes and decide after that if I’m finishing it.
86–EIGHTY_SIX – ‘Tragic’ has been one word described for this series, so I had stayed away from the LN. But! Sawano Hiroyuki is doing the soundtrack. So, I’ll be checking it out then.
Ijiranaide, Nagatoro-san – Comedy! I need more fuunnnnnnnnnnyyyyyyyyyy shows!
Bishounen Tanteidan – NisioIsin’s? I’ve actually ignored the rest of the Monogatari series as I got fed up with the fanservice, but I guess it’s time to try again with another NisioIsin work. (Yeah I loved Bakemonogatari.)

And below are 3 shows I already watched. These were not in my to-watch list initially, so they’re sort of on ‘probation’.

Mashiro no Oto – I wasn’t going to check this out since I thought a series about shamisen could be dull, but I was bored and watched it. I was kind of surprised since it seemed to have interesting characters, will watch a few more episodes then.

Godzilla Singular Point – The first episode was a nice introduction, with the mystery really luring me in. I think it was a nice first episode.

SSSS.Dynazenon – Managed to hold my attention for a bit, I made it to the last scene. I wasn’t fond of Gridman, let’s see if the next few episodes still get my attention, or it gets dropped.

Shakunetsu Kabbadi – I almost finished it, but eventually decided I was not into it. Sure it was funny, but not funny enough.

And that ends my watch list for Spring 2021. To be honest, it doesn’t look as loaded as Spring usually seems to me. Winter 2021 was way better with the big titles. Hoping the new shows surprise me, then.

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(I based my list on previews from Randomc.)

Revisiting Natsuyuki Rendezvous

It’s Valentine’s so let’s talk about romance! (Obviously I don’t have a date if I am posting! Spoilers ahead so you have been warned.)

So I got the itch late last year to watch some lovey dovey anime. I
managed to watch Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo.

State of the Proxy December 2019

So I’m trying to find the patience to go through the rest of fall 2019 anime. Sometimes I watch older anime (with some that I haven’t seen yet), and that tends to take time from the new ones and thus the backlog piles up.

I rewatched Last Exile, Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu, Crest of the Stars, Banner of the Stars, and random episodes of random anime. The Crest/Banner of Stars rewatch was spurred on by the release of the official English translations (ebook) by J-Novel Club. If you liked Crest/Banner too please support the official English translations, so that it could continue after the material covered by the anime. I bought mine via Amazon, but it is available on other platforms too if you don’t want to buy from Amazon.

Anime I saw that was not from 2019:
Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken (2018)
Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun (2014)
Uchuu Patrol Luluco (2016)
Kill La Kill (2013)
Amagi Brilliant Park (2014)
New Game! (2016)
Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii (2018)
Kono Subarashii Sekai Ni Shukufuku Wo (2016)

Best one of the bunch has to be Kill La Kill. I don’t know why I missed it then, I must have confused it with some other anime. Or, maybe I saw it already and dismissed it outright? I lost out on the fun but I have rectified it now, I guess.

As you can see above I have been avoiding depressing anime. To be honest, I have been beset by real-life happenings that not only gave me a lot of stress but took a toll on finances and my time, for 2 years in a row. This year has been worse than last year, and I am still trying to adapt to the new circumstances in my life. So I have been actively seeking out light-hearted anime, and my consumption has increased as a result. Thank God for anime, I wouldn’t be able to de-stress as much without it.

I have other post topics in mind, but I haven’t really been able to gather my thoughts as quickly thus they have been in the planning stage forever. Hopefully I’ll get to them, and until then, ja! 🙂

Ending the year with Yuru Camp

What a nice anime to end the year for me. It feels like a reward for diving back into active anime watching. Of course I had to sift through season lists over and over, browsing forums and reviews to find possible shows to watch. I’m happy that I found shows that I liked and a lot of them were fun and/or inspiring. With that, expect a year-end list! But there are still some shows I haven’t finished watching, so it’ll be a while haha.

Again, Happy New Year! 😀

Back to the anime life, for now

Hello there! I’m back!

…for a while at least.

Unbelievable, it’s been 2 years since I posted anything! So what have I been up to? Mostly real life activities, delving into other hobbies. Though what I mostly have to show for it are a backlog of kits, undisplayed figures, scarcely used drawing materials, and loads of books.

But why did I stop blogging?

Mostly because a lot of the anime showing in 2016 was uninteresting to me. Macross Delta was a bit of a letdown. On the the other hand, Yuri!!! on Ice and March Comes in like a Lion were both good, but not enough for me to blog about it. I think I finished only 8 shows from 2016 and there really was nothing for me to write about…(The indicator that it was a really bad year–as I used to watch more than 10 shows a year). So I forgot about catching up with the new anime. With my interests turning toward physical/RL things I was also very close to shutting down this blog.

Fortunately in the 2nd half of 2018 I started exploring new anime again. I think this was due to a stressful stretch in RL (which started in June). I noticed Piano no Mori had gotten a series, so I decided to give it a watch. I liked the movie so the TV series must be good, right? However the CG of the anime was such a disappointment, and over-all the execution felt average. I had to wash the bad taste off with a rewatch of the live-action Nodame Cantabile–still very good after all these years. Along the way I researched on what anime was popular, which led me to Boku no Hero Academia and Golden Kamuy. I also tried looking for ‘light’ anime fare, and finding Hinamatsuri opened the floodgates to more anime.

So will this mean more blogging? I don’t think so, I’m trying to develop skills that can enrich my life (if it adds to my income the better). But this ‘anime-watching’ revival proves that stress drives me back to anime lol. I will probably be able to post some more before the year ends, or early next year. For now, I’m back to the anime life! 😀

Brief impressions: Summer Anime 2015

Summarized:  Where’s my silly gattai sequence??!!!  T_T

Hi there!  As usual I’ve been busy with RL stuff so I haven’t posted, or even watched much anime!  Most offerings this year have been meh.  Unfortunately the trend seems set to continue with the summer crop of anime.

• Aquarion Logos – The disappointment was foreboding while I watched the OP.  I was always looking forward to the OP because in a certain series May’n + Yoko Kanno + Mecha = Awesome!  Unfortunately I felt the song wasn’t up to the standards of previous OPs from Akino et al.  Then I waited…and waited…and waited for the mecha to show up.  Come on this is Aquarion!  Where’s my silly gattai sequence??!!  After the OP it went downhill as the rest of the episode was boring.  I’m not sure how long my patience with this show will last.
• Akagami no Shirayuki-hime – I like this one.   I’m very interested.
• Classroom Crisis – Meh.
• Gangsta – Me not like depressing stuff.
• Aoharu x Kinkanjuu – Will continue watching for the laughs.  This could salvage the summer season for me.

You know, after this I was thinking Aquarion EVOL was a great sequel after all…Now I’m feeling the resurgence of that dreaded ‘R’ word (or not word)…Till next, ja!

Anime Progress Report – October 2014

The amount of tolerance I can muster for harem/brocon/siscon/moe is directly proportional to the amount of stress suffered at work.  So after some months of stress from work, I am now back in the arms of anime lol.

And lately I have been feeling some urge to post something, so while the iron is hot I’ll strike!  Some shows I’ve seen recently…

Anime Progress Report: Playing Catch-up

I was able to finish Love Lab this year.  Thoughts of “Why did I stop watching this again?” were running through my mind while having fits of laughter.  Ah, how many shows in 2013 made me laugh?  Not much (because I did not watch much hahaha).  After finishing I rewatched the episodes with Maki Makio in it.  Such fun!  😀

I have also finished Maoyuu Maou Yuusha.  Actually, it was more like a case of “it’s only about 12 episodes and it’s not annoying so why not finish it?” thing.  Although some foreshadowing of things to come in the ending episode was interesting, more often than not I found the show boring.  I don’t think the economics thingie was well handled–innovation blah3x now there’s progress–but it didn’t feel interesting.  Maybe it didn’t blend well for me, like the way management principles from Peter Drucker did with Moshidora.

For the backlog, there’s still To Aru Kagaku no Railgun S, and Yondemasu Yo! Azazel-san Z.  I don’t know if I will finish them this month though.  And who knows when I’ll able to start on the 2014 winter anime hahaha.

On the manga side, I’ve been trying to read through the Chihayafuru raws.  But the surprising blocking points are the small fonts.  @_@  I have been trying recently to do more reading of raws and it’s really annoying to be faced with small fonts.  Either I can’t make out the kanji, or I can’t make out the furigana (if I don’t know the kanji).  I know I’m whining but yeah it’s my blog, help me vent my frustration.  Onegaishimasu.  😛

I also read (whenever I remember to check) Space Brothers.  I suppose my Japanese-language level is not good enough when encountering complex or technical terms, but I do still get the gist of most of the other dialogue.  As a consequence I have stopped watching the anime.  One could call that a surprising side effect.

Actually I was going to write a post about anime dropped because of the manga, but yeah, laziness set in.  Maybe I will be able to write it in the future, but for now, ja!  🙂

The bored and the impatient

I thought I could keep up the one-post-a-month momentum.  Alas, it was not to be.  The stress from work is ramping up, though it’s nowhere near the level when I first started blogging.  Still, stress is stress.

Anyway, once Chihayafuru 2 finished, my interest in the spring season anime waned.  I then went on a time-wasting, mind-numbing anime marathon:

Honey & Clover
Honey & Clover II
Ergo Proxy
Claymore

My excuse?  I thought it was good to get better versions of old series.  And what better way to do quality assurance than to watch ’em all episodes?  Let this post be proof of where my time went lol.

I also started rewatching Monster and Moshidora.  Unfortunately these two depress me so I couldn’t get past 5 episodes.  I’m sure I’ll finish the rewatch.  Someday.

I have also been on a manga-reading binge lately.  Aside from Chihayafuru, I have read several chapters of Silver Spoon, Space Brothers , ahead of the anime.  I also read ahead of Claymore back then, but now I have caught up.  It’s an even more excruciating wait than Chihayafuru.  ^_^;

I think that’s it for now with the updates.  There’s actually more I want to say, especially about the summer anime but it will be bedtime soon.  Till next, ja!  🙂