Forum - View topicThe Summer 2022 Preview Guide
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Vanadise
 Posts: 494 |
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For what it's worth, as an absolutely massive fan of everything Utawarerumono, my opinion on the Mask of Truth anime so far is... it's not bad. It's very rushed and isn't doing a great job of transitioning between scenes -- the first episode covers a few hours of the game and also omits some scenes right at the beginning that I feel are very important for setting the mood -- but if you watched and enjoyed the previous seasons of Utawarerumono, this one looks like it will be enjoyable for both fans of the games and anime-onlies. If the quality of the direction improves in the future, this has the potential to be a good adaptation, but so far it's on track to be ok. On the other hand, I would absolutely not recommend anybody who's not familiar with Utawarerumono come in here as their starting point, you'll be very lost and it will also spoil major events for the first two entries. The games are still definitely the best way to experience the story, although the 2006 series based on the first game is also very good. (the 2015 series based on Mask of Deception has... problems) |
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Yttrbio
 Posts: 3652 |
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Yeah, it looks like Utawarerumono is going to prioritize plot over character, which is a perfectly reasonable approach, but I think will end up avoiding some of that story's best content. At this point of the story, Nekone is probably in the most interesting head space, and she barely gets a nod in the anime.
The opening montage of Lycoris looks like the sarcastically-positive introduction to a dystopian thriller, but the show ends up treating the idea of extrajudicial killings with the same gloves as a different show might treat two idols with different approaches to their performances. At this point, it feels more like an intro to a setting that will serve as a backdrop to a cute girls doing cute things anime rather than anything to be investigated or thought about. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18188 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Some of that is retained, as on a couple of occasions in later episodes DS makes comments about how things are done in shonen manga. As for Saturday's many debuts: •Utawarerumono Mask of Truth: Looks great, and should satisfy franchise fans, but you have to be familiar with the previous two series for it to make any sense. • Totally agree with Caitlin about the OP of Teppen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's worth checking out even if you don't bother to watch the rest of the episode. (And I also got at least a couple of good laughs out of the episode content despite myself, though I thought the funniest joke for me was the ultimate fate of the trophy.) • Lycoris Recoil impressed me enough that I'll probably follow it. Might be the best-looking debut of the season, and there's enough which could be explored about the whole world set-up that I'm interested to see how far the series pursues it. This is from a first-time head director, though the guy helming it was also the character designer and animation director for most of the SAO franchise, and that experience shows. Fun fact: the very GiTS:SAC-like hacker emblem is using a quote from the short story "Grace" from James Joyce's 1914 short story collection Dubliners. The following line in the book is "He had an eye like a hawk," so I assume the reference is meant to indicate that the hacker is (was?) watching, but there might be deeper implied meanings here. • Shoot!: Meh, soccer anime, and over-angsty soccer anime at that. •Engage Kiss: Not grabbing me so far (especially since Shu just doesn't seem worth the female attention he's getting), but I might give it one more episode. |
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Vanadise
Posts: 494 |
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It's a real shame because she's one of the best-developed characters in the entire series, but I have a sinking feeling that most or all of her character development is going to get cut. Mask of Deception & Truth spoilers: spoiler[Keep in mind that The False Faces made some significant changes to the ending, including that Nekone wasn't responsible for Oshtor's death. I've been wondering if the MoT anime would handle that by retconning it or just sweeping it under the rug, but I have a feeling that it might just not address it entirely; Vurai and Entua's entire arc could be cut without impacting the overarching plot at all, which would save them a lot of time in the adaptation but also lose most of Nekone's character development.] It'll probably be one of the many casualties that comes along with adapting a >50 hour visual novel into a ~10.5 hour anime series... |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18188 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Lycoris is a distinctive type of red flower commonly called a spider lily in the States. They carry a lot of symbolic meaning in Asia and are sometimes used for that purpose in anime (86 used them quite prominently on a couple of occasions, for instance), though whether any of that symbolic meaning applies here remains to be seen. Would be far from the first time that an organization of teen girl warriors has been named after a type of flower, though. |
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Snomaster1
 SubscriberPosts: 2796 |
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Thanks a lot,Key. I appreciate it a lot.
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2245 |
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I dunno about that; I think my preconceived ideas of RWBY are doing an awful lot of heavy lifting to fill in a lot of narrative gaps, and even as I was watching it, I couldn’t help but feel like at least the first two episodes felt like the animated equivalent of old 90’s fantasy novels that basically dumped their world-building creation myths and exposition into the prologue and expected the reader to keep up. And really, early RWBY is veeeeery tropey, often to its detriment, I thought, because it often held its cards too close to its chest in wanting to subvert those tropes later on without sufficiently hinting that significant growth was in the works unless you really stuck it out (which is admittedly less of a problem now since you can binge everything in one go now.) That said, I think Ice Queendom made the smart call dumping all the recap stuff out of the way at once instead of making viewers sit through three weeks of drip feed teases. I’m tentatively hopeful that once we move into anime original stuff, SHAFT will be better able to flex their own creative muscles and come out from the web series’ shadow a little. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11354 |
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Have only seen the first episode of SpOOPArts Raider, but so far I liked what I saw. Yu is the right degree of cocky and decent, and I didn't really mind that the plot was transparent since I liked the characters and the animation looked fine to me. I'll definitely watch the rest as time permits after sorting through the newcomers.
Twisted Mister!! - well, it is what it is. I kinda like D. Schneider when he comes out and all the references are fun. The rest is just corn. As with Spriggan, I've only watched a couple of the new eps, but will likely continue down the line. Idol☆Possession I'm in for, just for the stunning shade of blue of Yoshino's eyes. So pretty, I want clothes that color! Other than that, it was pretty meh, but it still has potential I think, and Niyodo's fans were funny, so we'll see. Spyder Lily Recoil was more than I expected. I have a feeling our young yuri flowers will discover that their utopia isn't, but I think even if they do turn out to be saying this police state is fine, it won't bother me so much. Or maybe it will if they do, but I'm not worried right now that they will? I'm still processing Walnut's logo. Beneath the overt skunk/badger image, I can't tell if it's supposed to be invoking boobs, butts or truck nuts. Anyway, I'm in for a few more episodes at least. Shucks! More Slide-Show Soccer might be decent (for certain values of decent), except for that slide-show part, but Ace of Diamond got me mostly inured to that, so otherwise, I think I can handle two football series in one season as the better Ao Ashi continues. And I do love me some over the top angst, which this has an endless supply of. Despite the wonky animation, one thing I did really like was how the photos of the old winning team looked like they were from that team's era of anime/manga, which I thought was a nice touch. I also kinda liked Tsuji's mom, who is probably weird from dealing with her extra emo son.
I thought it was funny that both this and Ao Ashi seem to have crows as their totem bird or something. But then seeing Yatagarasu the three-legged crow on the Japanese Football Association flag explained that, so yay. Also Yatagarasu is a symbol of rebirth, known for cleaning up after battles and tragedies. I have a feeling he's got his work cut out for him here... Btw, Richard, the MC is named Hideto Tsuji, not Yoshiharu Kubo, who is a different player I don't think we've met yet, and not to be confused with Tsuji's Scotty Pippin, Kōhei Kokubo. I only say that as someone who gets lost when all the characters' names just start with the same letter, so this one is definitely going to cause me problems. Finally, I also watched Bastard!!. The real one, with the scumbag protagonist giving stringy power-up kisses to his teen demon sugar mama (rather than the reverse in that other Bastard!! with Metal InuYasha in it). All I can say is that these characters all deserve each other, except maybe for the minions who had to just stand by and shrug while the girls had their jealous catfight. I think this one's a pass. |
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Covnam
 Posts: 3650 |
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Teppen was pretty funny, so I think I'll be keeping up with that. I'm curious to see how the trio works vs the duo if we ever get to see a proper performance.
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Daerian
 Posts: 165 |
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What? Could you elaborate please? This sounds like a VERY bad teacher. |
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tintor2
 Posts: 1820 |
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I only watched Bastard so far but it seems I'm not the only one who thinks it is an adult version of Inuyasha. I don't know the studio but some parts of the animation feel really weird. They are trying to be as metal as heck with the amount of nudity and gore not only in the episodes but also the opening and ending vids.
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 2607 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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Yeah, she was - she'd never heard of Tom Sawyer Abroad and thought I was making fun of her or trying to embarrass her in front of the other kids. A couple of them made fun of me, and she slammed me with detention. I freaked out because I knew I hadn't done anything wrong, so I just went home after school...at which point she called my mother, enraged, and gave me more detention. My mom informed her that I wouldn't be going to any detentions, the principal got involved, and a week later my parents switched me to another school. It was the final straw - when my parents talked to the principal, they found out a bunch of other awful stuff that had happened to me at school that I hadn't told them for reasons that I'm sure made sense to twelve-year-old me. |
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Yuvelir
 Posts: 1558 |
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Wait, is this actually a S3 and I missed something? Not like I even remember half of S1 to be honest, it was so long ago.
I thought the same at the beginning, but then the MC started to actually care for lives and being non-lethal and, huh, that's way more potential depth than I expected. A protagonist being a "goody-two-shoes" is most usual, but all the setup worked to the opposite and despite that, that she goes against that philosophy without it being a source of direct open conflict with her "bosses" is quite unexpected. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18188 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Would be more accurate to say that Inuyasha is a family-friendly version of Dark Schneider. The source manga for Bastard!! preceded the source manga for Inuyasha by several years, so if there's any rip-off, it goes the other way. (Fun fact: Dark Schneider is named after the lead singer of the German heavy metal band which is the namesake for the spell that releases him.)
Only a 25-episode 2015-16 series subtitled "The False Faces." You'll need to see it first for this new series to make any real sense. |
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Richard Eisenbeis
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 88 |
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Oops. Sorry about that. I wrote this on an international flight and in-flight wifi wasn't able to handle for video streaming... so I was trying to match memories with pictures and names and seem to have totally failed. Thanks for the correction. |
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