Hello there! Writing mostly for myself, but would like to share my overall thoughts with whoever'll read this :). Been on MAL for a while with a lifestyle of lurking.
Started watching anime 'seriously' i think somewhat in 2007-08 and now have quite the list (at least i think so). But that's not what i want to write about or it will be in another way.
I think i will write about whatever i want and whatever i remember, but the main topic would be my preferences (it's not exactly that, but i don't know hot to name it otherwise so i'll go with that).
It's kinda easy to start because the fall season just ended. So with that i'll go straight to OPM with my biased score 10/10. I'm reading manga whenever it got updated and i obv agree that manga is better, but you can't deny that madhouse did a great job with the adaptation - the graphics are just great. The graphics are one of the main reasons for considering to watch anime so i'll just go to the next show of this season - rakudai kishi no cavalry. I started with the manga (because it was way before anime) and it was great. Loved heroes, loved artstyle and quite interesting story. Then due to popularity obv the anime was announced. After watching whole thing i don't know if it's only me, but i think that the graphics or artstyle in manga is much better and that's why its quite sad. I don't want this to be my topic about the fall 2015 anime season but lastly i'll write some words about owarimonogatari. I was so hyped about the new monogatari season, but i just can't think about of great or super good. I just don't have any feelings to the character Oikura Sodachi in the first arc, and the appearance of Ougi whom do we not know nothing about is rather strange. About the 2nd arc i can just say it just happened. The overall feeling about this monogatari season is emptiness.
So i'll give my AOTY to OPM, but if not for it i'll probably choose Hibike! Euphonium. I'm not gonna lie that i'm a fan of Kyoto Animation works. But remembering their recent works i just don't know what they were doing. The easiest examples are Hyouka, Tamako market, Kyoukai no kanata, Amagi brilliant park. This shows are mediocre at the very least. And i'm not mentiong free cause i just can't. I liked Chuunibyou series quite a lot but not for the point to say it's so great. And about now quite old now K-on series. When it came out i loved it so much. And i think we all know that it's about girls eating cakes and playing music - nothing more. But i don't - i just liked it so much. But when i started watching Hibike! Euphonium (i don't want to name it new "K-ON") i was so much satisfied and thought it's so good. My main difference between these two is that in Hibike! Euphonium the characters are like alive yet the K-ON characters are like dolls - maybe it sounded strange but thats how i fell it. Maybe it was my 1st impression but i still think that this anime is great and if should choose between K-ON and Hibike! Euphonium i will obv choose the latter.
The last block was about Kyoto Animation cause of their latest work so now i'll try not to move in one direction. Most of the Kyoto works are comedies ... most of the anime works are comedies and shounen, but for now about comedies. Not a long time was airing 3rd season of Working. When i was starting with Working i found it quite entertaining and funny, but now it's just i don't want to say it but bad. Maybe i've changed, but i'm now watching yuru yuri and coincidentally it's also 3rd season and i like you quite a lot. Someone can say that they are completely different and that Working has romance in int, i would just say they are both simple comedies and about romance - just don't lie yourself, there are no romance ...
Now that i used the romance category there was a Shaft work for a very popular manga Nisekoi. Like with the most my anime-findings it started with manga."Surprisingly" it was comedy-harem-romance manga with good artstyle and quite interesting story. With good start it transformed into 200+ chapter of nothing happening, not to mention some characters are just annoying. Oh wait, [spoiler-secret]he dumped in 10 chapters 2 or 3 girls i think (don't know the truth but maybe the sales went down)[/spoiler]. So after 100+ chapters i started to just going through whole chapter for obvious reasons and that was with reading through all text-bubbles before. And then there was an anime and even more with couple of seasons i think. And what was more surprising for me it was Shaft. I love Shaft because their Monogatari series, but the first thought when i saw the announcement that it was not their type of anime. So here is my best decision not to watch this show and here i want to ask people, whoever went through all this 200+ chapter hell - who really watched it after reading? :) The romance is most likely a harem. There are so many manga and anime with harem plot that it's just not funny at all. I'm not saying i don't like romance, it's the opposite. My example will be KNIM and not anime because the adaptation as always is kinda not good.
It's the romance-harem-comedy manga with a lot of chapters. The most selling point was good graphics and plot twists in love relations. Even when all the plot ended and it came down to some spin-off like chapters i still was really enjoying it which can't be applied to nisekoi. Small addition: i just can't stand shojou - the artstyle is killing me, that's it.
I think it's time to bring the shounen category. It's kinda obvious that it is the most popular due to the simplicity and nature i guess. So i'll just start with SAO to feel all the hate. I really liked it, mostly the first part - it was kinda the "new" approach to shounen-harem-like anime but after it was degrading more and more. I tried for myself to defend 2nd season but i think it just can't be defended at all. Now when i touched SAO it just should be Lost horizon. With love to SAO and its characters i simply can't comprehend LH. Maybe i'm just biased and hate on LH, but i just don't understand the core of the show. And maybe the LN showes you much more with the super-thick tomes (thast what i heard) but my opinion that the story is just mediocre and there are so many characters that some are just annoying or just useless. Yet the SAO story is quite simple but heartwarming at least for me. So here opened one of the most salt-debate category - difference between LN, manga and anime. Obv the one who read LN said that i'm right and you just probably couldn't give him a proper counter, but that's not what's important here. Most of us here for animation - so the adaptions are what we care about. Remembering recent works - the most hyped (and now you can easily say overhyped) anime is Danmachi. It was already known that the LN was super popular and then there was the manga adaptation. Like with the aforementioned situations i started with manga. Not gonna lie it was very good and on some sites there are the function tsukkomi (basically small comments on the picture) that made the reading expirience so much better (forgot to metion this on nisekoi part, and can add this to a lot of manga that i read). I don't mention LN simply cause i didn't read it but like i said the Danmachi manga was good. And then as always came an anime. The graphics are good, but the whole thing felt like it was so rushed and that's why the ending was just a strange battle with no explanation at all. I think now that the anime adaptation kinda killed the hype of manga :(.
Before my last block i will touch a topic about big shounens. We all know what are those, but i still will mention them - bleach, naruto, one piece, fairy tail, beelzebub, reborn, berserk, fma, d.gray man, breaker, code breaker, magi, tokyo ghoul, shaman king, eva and that's enough. A lot of those are with 200+ chapters. So my main point here is that at some point author is turning on "full-retard mode" (it's kinda not right to say that and if i should change it - i will). There are my simple examples : one of the best work like bleach - the current arc is so bad - kubo didn't stop at some point or he was planning it since the beginning but now the plot is just totally ludicrous; naruto finally ended and it was not even bad but one piece seems like will never end and here what i think that the arcs are just repeating itself - maybe it is everywhere so but here it's just ridiculous how similar it its; earlier it was big 3 aforementioned but FT suddenly came out of nowhere and here now the same thing happened to the series. The pot is all about friend's power and it was for the first 100+ chapters quite good, but now it's in every chapter and it shows how bad it is; i don't want to list all of the mentioned titles, but with quick review - magi started strong with interesting characters and story, but after 100+ i think chapters author started giving random characters powers and there were useless dialogues and i just don't want to talk about it; so here is my first manhua breaker - typical korean fighting manhua with great art and interesting story. It was progressing well but the useless dialogues were starting killing me and what do you think it was suddenly axed. I don't know why and just don't want to talk about it; about shaman king - it was when i was quite young (i'm not that old i think btw) but i watched it on tv and liked it despite it being kinda childish. I head somewhere that manga version differs from the anime ending and wanted to read how it originally should've ended. Most of times due to limited amount of episodes the anime version felt rushed or the ending is just not following manga and is bad - but here i was just disgustingly surprised how in manga the ending is much worse. Just if anyone knows what i mean - he just started killing characters and reviving them without explanation and reason;
ok the last one will be the breaker - it wasn't even so good, but not bad at all, the arcs and characters are ok. And in the end author went "full" and gave us the worst possible ending. But it's not all - after he made alternative ending with what all we wanted - but 1st of all it wasn't what we wanted and 2nd it felt even shittier after the 1st ending. The last thing that i didn't mention is the adaptation of those big anime. If you don't want read manga you will be "pleasantly" surprised with tons of fillers that are just some stupid plot from the animation studio. And note that the manga is ahead of anime for a lot of steps. The last here in this part will be about FT anime adaptation. I already mentioned about how much FtT manga is now, but the anime version is just the worst. When the artstyle in manga is better than in the anime i don't even know what to say.
Ok now my last block will be about my favourites. I think i remembered a lot much more that i can write but i think for the what mentioned before it's enough.
So now about index, railgun and my love to Mikoto. I think it's kinda useless to mention but i'm a Misaka fan and i'm a bit biased to to aru universe overall.
I gave 9/10 for To aru kagaku railgun S, but it would have been true 9 for me if they would have gone with manga route because the next arc after Sister arc is great (obv the Sister arc itself is great). And i was so happy to see the vision from Mikoto in the Sister arc. It kinda differs from the LN and Index anime, but i think it was just better. Some can say that Index is canon for the universe, maybe it is, but i think that Railgun with the manga development is now a huge of a part for the universe. Lastly to mention Index is the only LN that i read, not completely - i read all from the moment the anime stopped and currently reading OT 9 (obv i read 1-8). It's quite interesting to see the differences between LN, anime and Railgun point of view.
Well i think i will end my first blog here. I'm myself not a fan about writing essays, but because it was 1st time it was kinda like exception. And if you don't want to read it, i'm not forcing you. But if you do feel free to ask me anything or just talk to me. + if you want add me to friends , since i was a lurker - not muh activity, so no connections. The next my entry will be probably after the winter season with my small summary and it will not be 5 pages :)
Fairy Tail is one of those popular titles which gets either a lot of praise or a lot of hate. It is considered mainstream so there are people who say that this is one of the reason why it is criticized so much. On the other hand it is said that the Anime has a boring plot and boring characters and that it is a waste of time by a bunch of people. I'm on my journey to find out whether that is true or if there is more to this show.
The Anime plays in a big fantasy world where superpowers and magic do exist. The story evolves around Lucy Heartfilia who is a wizard girl. She is a huge fan of the Fairy Tail guild and is dreaming to be a member of that guild. One day, by chance, she meets Natsu Dragneel who helped her out after she got into trouble and she learned that he is a member of the Fairy Tail guild. She gets invited to the guild and thus the adventures of the Fairy Tail guild begin for her.
It is a really good premisse. Setting is great and the plot doesn't sound all too bad either. But very soon you will realize that the plot is very cheesy and that it is loaded with a lot of shounen cliches. Must not be a bad thing, but it gets really repetitive. As in, there is always a problem which needs to be solved or an enemy who needs to be defeated and at the end it is done with the help of the bond all the members share and because of that they can get stronger and move forward. There are a lot of flashbacks before and during fights looking back at the past of either one of the protagonists or the antagonist they are fighting against. It can be really dragging from time to time but I think it is more a good thing that you actually get to know about the antagonists they are fighting against and that they aren't randomly generated characters which get discarded without any reason for their existence. Despite being cheesy, the fights are entertaining and the battles aren't bad either mainly because sometimes they get really intense. Sometimes the Anime likes to use a bit of fanservice but it is kept moderate so it doesn't bother at all.
The characters are mostly good, especially the members of the Fairy Tail guild we get to know more about. There are still many members who make an appearance here and there but there isn't anything revealed yet, but there might be in the later episodes who knows. It is funny and light-hearted to watch the interactions between the characters, they are like a big family. The antagonists usually have a good backstory but I said that already above.
Animations are decent but could be better here and there. The character designs fit the shounen genre and they look fine. Special focus on the battle scenes which look well done.
The opening and ending songs are fine, didn't encounter a song yet which I didn't like. The OST is godlike, and whenever it plays in intense moments you immediately get fired up while watching. Good use of the OST.
Overall, despite being cheesy it is entertaining and enjoyable. I didn't encounter any filler arc yet so I can't say anything about that specifically. But for now I am satisfied with what I am seeing. Rating: 8/10
