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The Summer 2021 Preview Guide


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Saeryen



Joined: 26 Aug 2020
Posts: 850
PostPosted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 11:50 am Reply with quote
I am SO happy that Katarina is back! First episode of My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! X was wonderful.

I’m gonna watch Kageki Shoujo!! later today too. And I’m continuing with Tropical-Rouge! Pretty Cure which just has that special magic for me. It’s gonna be a summer of pretty and sweet girls for yours truly!


Last edited by Saeryen on Sat Jul 03, 2021 3:06 pm; edited 1 time in total
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ThrowMeOut



Joined: 10 Oct 2018
Posts: 256
PostPosted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 12:28 pm Reply with quote
Woof, Girlfriend, Girlfriend physically hurt to watch. I'm down for a poly-romantic comedy but I'd like it much more if everyone involved was happy about it instead of the two girls being manipulated into it by their dimwitted, unpleasant boyfriend.

Peach Boy Riverside was slightly better but still felt like a hot mess of poor pacing and awful animation. The lead girl's breasts looked like they were going to pop off at several points, and bunny girl's hammer kept magically appearing and disappearing from scene to scene. (Guess it went into Hammer Space! Har har har!) Then apparently they're airing it out of order too? That's probably a bad idea. Haruhi this is not. I do love the bunny girl's design though.
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Tanteikingdomkey



Joined: 03 Sep 2008
Posts: 2345
PostPosted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 12:44 pm Reply with quote
musouka wrote:
NezumiVA wrote:
Not that it excuses what she's doing now, of course, but implying that Satoshi was afraid of her or that she was secretly evil the whole time really, really rubs me the wrong way.


There will always be people that have affinity for what Ryukishi is exploring and people that don't. Yes, I also find it odd that someone would take comic relief violence that seriously--do you also want Rena charged on attempted kidnapping?--but in the end, the person I feel the most sorry for is Ryukishi himself, not the people that just can't get it.. How many times has he tried to lead these horses to the spring of empathy again?

Ok look I totally get where you are coming from...But this time I am putting this on ryukishi and saying he probably knew this would happen.
LONG ESSAY COMING TLDR satako was the least developed in the original series, and expanding her out and changing the tone around her leads to complications.

Ok so first off Satako has a history in the original series of "false accusations of child abuse" that lead to problems when she was actually being abused, this is expressly a major part of the problem in her arc. this may have been caused by H. Syndrome and was likely the reason she probably killed one of her parents but this is part of the original series. Then you have the sequel arc(s) where she is actively a bully and abusive until rika quite literally puts her chair down on the matter.

The series is very clear these are not perfect people from the start, but get warped and exaggerated by H. Syndrome or extreme situations. This (originally) rarely happens a MAJORITY of the time with satoko, and we have one very consistent view of her.

Satoko is an abused preteen girl, has a mischievous side is responsible, taking care of her friend rika, who she lives alone with. Normally that is way more then 90% of anime characters, but this is higurashi where having a close to a one sentence explanation of a character is really hard. The original series almost exclusively outside of side material and occasional exposition dumps that don't affect the story at hand, has either a sitcom style tone for her. where she "pranks people" but no one ever actually gets hurt or upset by it. or (the rightful response of) wait why does she live with no parents and everyone is ok with that...OH NO...yay lets have the good doctor adopt her or at least keep the status quo. because it makes no sense to blame the pre teen for the situation she has fallen into or not help her.

That internal logic though is actively challenged though in the new series. Now satako is no longer in a sitcom where no one gets hurt or gets mad at her for her "pranks". Now she is actively sending people to the hospital, and everyone is not ok with her antics, and has no idea what her problem is. No one gets that she previously went legally insane, and lost her parents. No one gets that she can no longer deal with the new situation she is in, and actively needs help.

So now we are getting access to the other side of her that was only barely hinted at previously. We are now seeing she is not at all independent but very much co-dependent on rika, and without that support network is basically drowning. We are seeing that mischievous behavior becoming more prominent and taking over more. Leading to a more attention seeking and vindictive side that we only previously heard passing references to. there are arguments to be made about the transition and how it was done. but I am inclined to say it was always there, just kept in check previously unlike now.

So I am totally understanding of people saying, I have always had a small problem with her pranks previously, but now it is a huge problem, because that is basically the "reboot" in a nut shell. The whole point has become lets look at and examine satoko and rika's relationship, and this is where it has lead us.

I do not think that the point of this season though is "satoko is evil and always has been" I think that it is much more in line with the original series major point. We are all very messed up people and only by trusting each other, and supporting each other can we all be our best selves.
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 1:10 pm Reply with quote
Remake our life sounds... weird. Why have the main character start as a video game director (a job with pretty heavy artistic need) and then go on to join an art school? Wouldn't it have made way more sense for him to have started with something completely unrelated to artistic endeavour like an accountant or something? I'm guessing there's gonna be some sort of "gotcha" ending where he'll end up in the exact same position at the end. Also if his big reason to redo his life in another setting is that he lost his job... hum I got really bad news about his prospect after art school (I'm reminded of honey and clover were the character start as an art student and then struggle to get a job, ending up more or less as a basic construction worker in the end). More than that it sounds like he literally doesn't use his future knowledge, how about pursuing a direction you know will become big in the future, like machine learning or something (Oh and buy apple stock).

This seems like a worse re-life, or maybe the time travelling aspect isn't supposed to be important and this was just a college art student story that later become about time travelling in an attempt to spice it up.
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bacalhauvoador



Joined: 22 Dec 2020
Posts: 6
PostPosted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 1:22 pm Reply with quote
meiam wrote:
Sonny boy was hard to take seriously when one of the first line is "is this heaven or hell" when they're in a situation where they'll run out of food soon and will seriously have to consider cannibalism at that point. I get it's supposed to be about "higher" concept, but when the character act so un-human none of the higher concept can work.
The food aspect will 100% be acknowledged. We already seen that by just a small conversation in the episode, where nagara asks for food for 2 people, but only receives a small amount. There is also the fact that cat girl apparently has the power of amazon cat edition, so she will 100% play into the food/resource aspect.
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09jcg



Joined: 19 Sep 2006
Posts: 522
PostPosted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 1:23 pm Reply with quote
I'm sort of surprised by the dislike for Remake our Life. I really enjoyed it, in that it felt like an aged up cross between Re-Life and Saekano. I can see where people wouldn't like the hour long episode but I don't think it would work well as two separate episodes. They need to get his adult life stuff out of the way to then introduce the main part of the story. I'm interested to see where the story goes. As this is only the first episode, I think it's to early to assume that the time travel stuff WONT be a factor.
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ThatGuyWhoLikesThings



Joined: 04 Jul 2013
Posts: 1000
PostPosted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 1:27 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
The first episode of the The Case Study of Vanitas suffers heavily from a problem I've come to call “proper noun-itis.” Proper nouns are thrown around with no real explanation or context.


Perhaps this wasn't a problem for me since I'm an avid reader of the manga, but even when I first read the first chapter, I didn't have any problem following it. Even if not everything receives a clear-cut explanation, the conflict and what things generally mean is easy to follow along.
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 1:43 pm Reply with quote
bacalhauvoador wrote:
meiam wrote:
Sonny boy was hard to take seriously when one of the first line is "is this heaven or hell" when they're in a situation where they'll run out of food soon and will seriously have to consider cannibalism at that point. I get it's supposed to be about "higher" concept, but when the character act so un-human none of the higher concept can work.
The food aspect will 100% be acknowledged. We already seen that by just a small conversation in the episode, where nagara asks for food for 2 people, but only receives a small amount. There is also the fact that cat girl apparently has the power of amazon cat edition, so she will 100% play into the food/resource aspect.

The problem wasn't that it wasn't acknowledge, the problem was that no one seem to realize it was a problem, making them feel like weird alien rather than relatable human. They seem more interested in keeping the school clean than figuring out the food situation and didn't seem to realize that they could easily use food to push people toward doing what they want (do X or no food for you) rather than use the penalty thing.
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Tanteikingdomkey



Joined: 03 Sep 2008
Posts: 2345
PostPosted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 2:37 pm Reply with quote
09jcg wrote:
I'm sort of surprised by the dislike for Remake our Life. I really enjoyed it, in that it felt like an aged up cross between Re-Life and Saekano. I can see where people wouldn't like the hour long episode but I don't think it would work well as two separate episodes. They need to get his adult life stuff out of the way to then introduce the main part of the story. I'm interested to see where the story goes. As this is only the first episode, I think it's to early to assume that the time travel stuff WONT be a factor.


Man people are being really hard on it. Maybe it's just because it actually is honest about the lives of artist and just how Terrible /hard it is ?

Or do people hate that one fanservice minute of the anime that much


Last edited by Tanteikingdomkey on Sat Jul 03, 2021 2:47 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Hal14



Joined: 01 Apr 2018
Posts: 653
Location: Heart of africa
PostPosted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 2:41 pm Reply with quote
I thought Remake's first episode was decent but something that stuck out to me, especially because I've yet to see someone bring it up, is that it wasn't funny. At all. And when I check on various sites I see that this is meant to be a comedy. And I don't just mean that it made jokes that weren't funny but that there are only two scenes that I think were even trying to be jokes (the dream sequence and the shared sleeping incident) and I found neither funny.
I'd be less concerned if this were a drama, which is what it felt like.
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Tanteikingdomkey



Joined: 03 Sep 2008
Posts: 2345
PostPosted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 2:48 pm Reply with quote
HAL14 wrote:
I thought Remake's first episode was decent but....
I'd be less concerned if this were a drama, which is what it felt like.

Wait it's supposed to be a comedy and not a drama? Did it just get mistaged?
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09jcg



Joined: 19 Sep 2006
Posts: 522
PostPosted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 2:55 pm Reply with quote
Tanteikingdomkey wrote:
HAL14 wrote:
I thought Remake's first episode was decent but....
I'd be less concerned if this were a drama, which is what it felt like.

Wait it's supposed to be a comedy and not a drama? Did it just get mistaged?
So I checked a fansubbing site for the Light novel and its tagged as a drama, comedy romance SoL. I certainly got drama vibes from the first episode and the romance angle looks pretty clear. I did notice that tags for the anime have it labeled solely as a comedy. I think this might be a case of the tags being wrong on those sites.
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Sven Viking



Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 1035
PostPosted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 2:59 pm Reply with quote
Tanteikingdomkey wrote:
HAL14 wrote:
I thought Remake's first episode was decent but....
I'd be less concerned if this were a drama, which is what it felt like.

Wait it's supposed to be a comedy and not a drama? Did it just get mistagged?

That would seem like the simpler explanation. Alternately maybe it has some comedy later on but is in drama mode currently.

Nice Higurashi post, by the way.
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Saeryen



Joined: 26 Aug 2020
Posts: 850
PostPosted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 3:05 pm Reply with quote
I just watched Kageki Shoujo!! Episode 1. It was amazing.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 3:07 pm Reply with quote
Sven Viking wrote:
Alternately maybe it has some comedy later on but is in drama mode currently.

Well that would be something different. While comedies taking a hard turn into dramas abound, I'm hard-pressed to think of anything that started out as a drama and (intentionally) ended up as a comedy.
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