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The Best (and worst) Anime of Winter 2019

P.S. The whole "controversy" involving this series is hyper exaggerated nonsense and reflects badly on how tyrannical the victim culture proposed in some circles has become. It's like Get Out or the Socialist rally in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man becoming the norm (I do highly recommend Get Out, it shows just how horrific the dichotomy used in victim culture can become). Like Aristotle said, "Any virtue taken to the extreme can become a vice."

One of the charms of anime and Japanese culture is the general relaxed approach to most issues .....and the degree that they have kept them OUT of anime until recently.

The term 'slave' in anime = Everybody loses their shit, thus the anime with 'slave' in it is automatically bad (albeit gets bad reviews).

For some reason, 'slave' is taboo in anime nowadays.

Gotta love it, you people...

The Rising of the Shield Hero- One of the better Isekai series (certainly better than SAO II), that shows that going to a fantasy world isn't always a dream come true. While parts of it are reminiscent of SAO, Franz Kafka's The Trial, and the works of Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, there are traces of influences from Log Horizon, Spice and Wolf, and Steinbeck's Travels With Charley in the more on-the-road segments.

Manaria Friends was another sad joke. I was excited in the first episode to see what looked to be an unusual and beautifully made new series but quickly it became apparent that it was but a way for the writer/director and publisher to push another Yurki story wrapped up in a nice package. Over and over and over the sweet Dragon Girl is attacked and made to accept that creep princess. It got old very quickly.

I didn't see one critic that showed that they saw that Love is War is one of the most remarkable and outstanding shows maybe in decades.

AryaFan22 wrote:

The Rising of the Shield Hero- One of the better Isekai series (certainly better than SAO II), that shows that going to a fantasy world isn't always a dream come true. While parts of it are reminiscent of SAO, Franz Kafka's The Trial, and the works of Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, there are traces of influences from Log Horizon, Spice and Wolf, and Steinbeck's Travels With Charley in the more on-the-road segments.

SAO II isn't isekai by any stretch. (You could argue a case for the first arc of SAO and Alicization being very isekai-like, but not the middle arcs.) I'm also really curious where you're seeing anything Lovecraftian about it. For Spice and Wolf, I'm assuming you're referring to Raphtalia being an animal person paired with a human male and traveling around in a wagon, but I think you're really stretching to draw a comparison there since the dynamic, personalities, and situations are utterly different.

CrisGer A.A. wrote:

Manaria Friends was another sad joke. I was excited in the first episode to see what looked to be an unusual and beautifully made new series but quickly it became apparent that it was but a way for the writer/director and publisher to push another Yurki story wrapped up in a nice package. Over and over and over the sweet Dragon Girl is attacked and made to accept that creep princess. It got old very quickly.

Wait, what? If you didn't like the series, that's fine, but at least use criticisms that actually apply to the series.

Quote:

I didn't see one critic that showed that they saw that Love is War is one of the most remarkable and outstanding shows maybe in decades.

Two of them (Paul and Amy) had it as runner-ups, with one saying it was already a contender for best comedy of the year. So you're not satisfied if they're calling it anything less than "GREATEST EVAH"? You realize that makes it sound like you're just looking for reasons to bash critics for not being 100% in line with your tastes, right?

Honestly, I am so sick of this toxic idea that every protagonist must be a paragon of virtue. That every story must be a one dimensional morality play that beats you over the head with it's message. Everything must be boring, sanitized garbage. Because grown adults, apparently, can't be trusted to know that slavery is bad.

I'll admit that I'm probably more sensitive to moralizing tendencies than the average person. I was around for the moral panic over video games and rap music.

I quickly got a good impression of Rising of the Shield Hero, and early on it reminded me of Goblin Slayer from last season. It was my favorite show for the first four or five weeks of the season. But after that it drifted off course. The focus was no longer 'will this guy manage to save this world in spite of the fact that he's operating without any other superheroes, and has a major disadvantage?'. Instead, the show became more and more a goofy comedy (with things like the ridiculous giant talking bird) when what I wanted was for it to stay serious. Why are these people screwing around trying to make some money when the next cataclysmic 'wave' is coming? And what's the deal with these times when the protagonist freaks out and almost loses his mind (I have only seen episodes 1-9 so far)? And why did he allow the girl to be re-enslaved after she was set free? It takes more than a good premise to make a good show.

^The question of why Rapthalia was re-enslaved is not primarily a question for Naofumi, but rather for the author. To put more of a point on the question: Why did she have to be re-enslaved over his (albeit mild) objections? Surely, she could demonstrate loyalty without magically subjugating herself to him, which by your own admission he did not ask for. Where were this objections when he applied the slave seal on Filo?

I'm also completely against the reapplication of the slave seal as I feel like it goes against what true loyalty really means as mentioned in an earlier post of mine. I was merely pointing out a misunderstanding people seem to have regarding Rapthalia and her beloved slave seal.