[QuickTidal]

Maark Abbott, on 14 January 2026 - 08:45 AM, said:

Abyss, on 12 January 2026 - 11:13 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 12 January 2026 - 09:43 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 12 January 2026 - 08:08 PM, said:

Jujutsu Kaisen has something of a wild up and down sort of vibe.

When it's about punching demons in the face really hard, it's really good.

When it tries to do story, it's really bad.

That's a fair way to view it actually.

agreed, the action was fine, great even, but everything put fwd as 'story' was just meh.

i'm in a weird spot for this tho, coming off an extended run of DEMON SLAYER which manages to be beautiful to look at and move fast enough that even by the numbers plots and archetype characters keep my interest.

Demon Slayer is pure spectacle, the story is throwaway and it never overextends on it. JJK could learn from it tbh.

Oh and also go watch Umamusume Cinderella Gray. If the slightly weird idol stuff doesn't hit, CinGray focuses much less on that (it plays it a couple times for comedy). It's almost entirely a hype moments and aura sports anime; and holy shit the last race of season 1 was INSANE. Absolute CinUma.

Listen man, you're not going to get anyone to watch your weird horse girl anime...

j/k

I've heard it's pretty awesome actually, and I've put it on my list to try after I finish TOARU. I'll let you know what I think.

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 14 January 2026 - 12:15 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 14 January 2026 - 08:45 AM, said:

Abyss, on 12 January 2026 - 11:13 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 12 January 2026 - 09:43 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 12 January 2026 - 08:08 PM, said:

Jujutsu Kaisen has something of a wild up and down sort of vibe.

When it's about punching demons in the face really hard, it's really good.

When it tries to do story, it's really bad.

That's a fair way to view it actually.

agreed, the action was fine, great even, but everything put fwd as 'story' was just meh.

i'm in a weird spot for this tho, coming off an extended run of DEMON SLAYER which manages to be beautiful to look at and move fast enough that even by the numbers plots and archetype characters keep my interest.

Demon Slayer is pure spectacle, the story is throwaway and it never overextends on it. JJK could learn from it tbh.

Oh and also go watch Umamusume Cinderella Gray. If the slightly weird idol stuff doesn't hit, CinGray focuses much less on that (it plays it a couple times for comedy). It's almost entirely a hype moments and aura sports anime; and holy shit the last race of season 1 was INSANE. Absolute CinUma.

Listen man, you're not going to get anyone to watch your weird horse girl anime...

j/k

I've heard it's pretty awesome actually, and I've put it on my list to try after I finish TOARU. I'll let you know what I think.

*googles* it's about horse racing only the... horses... are... teenage... girls... okayyyyyyy

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 14 January 2026 - 04:06 PM, said:

*googles* it's about horse racing only the... horses... are... teenage... girls... okayyyyyyy

Every now and again, Japanese Mangaka come up with batshit weird ideas and they take off with audiences. And to be fair, Americans did this first. Haha!

[Maark Abbott]

QuickTidal, on 14 January 2026 - 12:15 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 14 January 2026 - 08:45 AM, said:

Abyss, on 12 January 2026 - 11:13 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 12 January 2026 - 09:43 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 12 January 2026 - 08:08 PM, said:

Jujutsu Kaisen has something of a wild up and down sort of vibe.

When it's about punching demons in the face really hard, it's really good.

When it tries to do story, it's really bad.

That's a fair way to view it actually.

agreed, the action was fine, great even, but everything put fwd as 'story' was just meh.

i'm in a weird spot for this tho, coming off an extended run of DEMON SLAYER which manages to be beautiful to look at and move fast enough that even by the numbers plots and archetype characters keep my interest.

Demon Slayer is pure spectacle, the story is throwaway and it never overextends on it. JJK could learn from it tbh.

Oh and also go watch Umamusume Cinderella Gray. If the slightly weird idol stuff doesn't hit, CinGray focuses much less on that (it plays it a couple times for comedy). It's almost entirely a hype moments and aura sports anime; and holy shit the last race of season 1 was INSANE. Absolute CinUma.

Listen man, you're not going to get anyone to watch your weird horse girl anime...

j/k

I've heard it's pretty awesome actually, and I've put it on my list to try after I finish TOARU. I'll let you know what I think.

The weird stuff is mostly in Pretty Derby but that's more of a comedy with some serious bits. CinGray is mostly serious with occasional comedy (most of which is drawn from Oguri being clueless) but when it locks in, holy shit. Hype moments and aura.

Oh, it's worth noting that the age of the horses is variable. Some are obviously kids, others (like Maruzensky) are 40+ at LEAST. She gets depressed when kids don't know what cassette tapes are. It's more in the sense of the Japanese anthropomorphisation of Stuff - 'what if horses were cute girls', 'what if guns were cute girls', 'what if King Arthur was cute girls' and so on and so forth.

[QuickTidal]

Is this thread okay for Light Novel talk? It's anime adjacent, so...

So we had a snow day in southern Ontario yesterday (kids and adults, it was WAY too dangerous to drive anywhere) so I binged the entire first book of GRIMGAR FANTASY & ASH. It was solidly good. Ranta is more annoying than he is in the show (which I admit, is a feat), but everyone else gets so much more depth than they got in the show...which was maybe not ruched, but crammed and skips lots of nuance. There's a whole pointless "Ranta leads the guys to the bathhouse to listen in on the women scene"...which the other guys all try to stop him from doing....the only purpose of which I could see is to continue to showcase how reckless and assholish Ranta is as a team member which felt like overkill (we know he's a dick), but nothing else like that occurs in the whole rest of the book. I think Merry is supposed to come off as this series Tsundere and she kind of does, but they give her a LOT of backstory to show how she was pushed there, and she pulls out of that by the end. I enjoyed it, and I like that these are like bite-sized 200-300 page books that are easy as hell to digest.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 16 January 2026 - 12:48 PM

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 16 January 2026 - 12:46 PM, said:

So we had a snow day in southern Ontario yesterday ...

Wimps.

Eastern Ontario / Western Quebec represent! (just assume i'm standing outside with ten centimeters of snow on my toque as i scream this over the sound of snowblowers and cars skidding wildly across intersections)

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 16 January 2026 - 04:11 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 16 January 2026 - 12:46 PM, said:

So we had a snow day in southern Ontario yesterday ...

Wimps.

Eastern Ontario / Western Quebec represent! (just assume i'm standing outside with ten centimeters of snow on my toque as i scream this over the sound of snowblowers and cars skidding wildly across intersections)

I'll be honest, maybe it's 20 years of living in the vortex that is Toronto proper, but it's been more than a decade since I've seen this much snow all at once. I have winter tires and a hybrid, and I was still quite afraid to drive anywhere yesterday (I went to the Timmies and grocery store cause I had to, but that's 5 min from home).

[Maark Abbott]

FRIEREN IS BACK WE ARE SO BACK PEAK HAS RETURNED

[QuickTidal]

Anime:

I'm up to Episode 14 of GACHIAKUTA and it's still fire. The stylistic animation had to grow on me as I found it dirty at first, but once it settled into a vibe, I got on board. The Soundtrack is PEAK. Amo's backstory as tragic and hard to watch...the fight scenes are still some of the best in any series. Kei Urana has made a REALLY compelling story about trash and stratified society, of all things. Evey time they intro a new character I'm like "Yep, that's fire". I know I'm going to be really upset when I finish the existing 24 eps and have nothing more to consume...I'm tempted to save a few eps for plane travel on vacation in February, but I dunno if I can wait.

Tried to watch 86...but man, I dunno if it's the sort of European, almost 19th century Russian aristocracy look to the cities, and uniforms or what, but I DO NOT like the setting or the animation. It just feels derivative of something els without being interesting.

Like GOLDEN KAMUY (which also has a sort of 19th century military vibe to it) avoids this tropeyness by being constantly interesting...I can't find it in me to get in 86.

I watched the first 3 episodes of CLASSROOM OF THE ELITE (as I finished the first Light Novel which covers that section) and it's not that the anime is extra bad..but they cram so much into those episodes. The first LN is like 360pages, and I think you could use it as fodder for like 6-8 episodes at least...so they skip out on SO much nuance and arrange the placement of things to rush the production, and that's its biggest problem really. Like there is a shoe drop in the LN about halfway through

Spoiler

We find out that sweet, pretty, popular, kind, wants-to-be-friends-with-everyone Kushida, is hiding the fact that she's a narcissistic evil POS social climber who will lie and connive to get what she wants, up to and including threatening Ayanokoji when he finds that out, but saying she'll accuse him of SA if he tells anyone about her...it tailors EVERY conversation they have after that and every interaction is fraught with the fact that Ayanokoji knows she's terrible, but can't say anything. It adds so much to the narrative after that.

Well that revelation comes AFTER the 3 episodes (which in the LN would have meant it came at the end) and would have made it so much less impactful...so I can see why people don't care for the anime. Rushed is not even accurate, skipped moments and rearranged moments make it simply not as good. I do however, love the story so far in the LN's as it's super cutthroat and interesting and I know a bunch of back stories are bubbling underneath the surface. I'm in for the rest of the LN's (and will probably watch the anime after to see what they miss or change), but the Year 1 novels are hard to find after Vol 2. as SevenSeasEntertainment has not reprinted many of them and the Year 2's are the ones that the market is flush with, so I may have to eBook some of them and catch up on the physical release as I find them.

I also started DANMACHI Vol. 1 light novel and I really like it so far. Just getting a grasp on Familia's and the gods and goddesses and the adventurers and all the little concepts, but it seems like there a deep world brimming with detail, so I think I'll keep enjoying it.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: Today, 03:43 PM

[Abyss]

Maark Abbott, on 16 January 2026 - 08:52 PM, said:

FRIEREN IS BACK WE ARE SO BACK PEAK HAS RETURNED

so let me ask you Maark... ive watched the first few eps of S1, it's all very chill, low action, low energy drama, F wanders around staring at her dying mortal friends and reminiscing at getting stuck in mimics... it's cute, it's well done, but doesn't grab me because bluntly no one is fighting anything. Does this pick up the pace or is the tone consistent throughout?

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 19 January 2026 - 04:19 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 16 January 2026 - 08:52 PM, said:

FRIEREN IS BACK WE ARE SO BACK PEAK HAS RETURNED

so let me ask you Maark... ive watched the first few eps of S1, it's all very chill, low action, low energy drama, F wanders around staring at her dying mortal friends and reminiscing at getting stuck in mimics... it's cute, it's well done, but doesn't grab me because bluntly no one is fighting anything. Does this pick up the pace or is the tone consistent throughout?

It's a slowly paced drama, with emotional weight, and introspective storytelling. It's got adventuring in it, but the slow pace does not go away. What sucks people in is the story and the characters and the emotion.