D, on 15 September 2014 - 01:44 AM, said:
Silencer, on 15 September 2014 - 01:22 AM, said:
Wait, you didn't like Shin Sekai Yori? O.o what is wrong with you, you monster?! XD
But don't worry, Sakurasou is completely different. I wouldn't classify SSY as slice of life, or consider it to have much comedy. XD different tone completely.
I like both slice-of-life and non-SoL animes. I like comedic and non-comedic animes. I just didn't like SSY.
Hentai...
Anyway, we're back to 'Silencer's weekly watch update'! (Next season my to-watch list is going to be quite long, what with probably more SAOII, Fate/Stay Night, Psycho-Pass 2, Log Horizon 2, and a couple of new ones I'm hoping are good...sheesh...)
SAOII - continues to deliver as it starts to wind up this arc. The final post-BoB stuff should be some of the best, though. The 'climactic' battle in this episode wasn't super-riveting (given we know who the protagonists are), but I guess it's less so for me given I know the outcome...I was always kind of disappointed Kirito seemed to stop using his pistol when push comes to shove, but I guess at the end of the day being able to cut bullets out of midair with a lightsaber is the better tactic to follow in any given situation, when he doesn't need suppressing fire to stop auto weapons chewing him to bits. XD
(Also; Kirito > Jedi, at this point. Jedi can deflect Highly Visible (and slow moving) Lasers - Kirito can deflect
fucking bullets. Even with 'prediction lines' that is literally physically impossible. XD I know he's in a computer game and all, but come ON.)
Mahouka - this episode, while being relatively action-heavy, was really empty. Like, almost nothing of worth happened. Even Tatsuya's super flying mobility suit was kind of...pointless? (Never mind the repetition of OMG look at that! Tatsuya comes and saves everybody...again...by applying yet more facets of his uberpowers which were never alluded to before...) This is the penultimate episode....I don't know what they can possibly do in 20 minutes that will be a satisfying resolution to the series in any way (and the bar for "satisfying" is fairly low, here...). Like, sure, there was plenty of 'bad guys' dying (who thought it was a good idea to attack a convention filled with people who are, even not counting the trained soldiers, walking weapons platforms? And persistently send tanks in twos and threes even when they were demonstrably useless. And use superforbiddenmagicaplifyingstuffs to...summon a few elemental creatures? Seriously, I don't know how places like First High continue to exist when clearly there are at least two dozen students who are not only willing and able to commit small-scale military actions, including killing enemy soldiers, but who are variously shown to have no fear of any consequences and no adult leadership whatsoever...I mean, thank God Tatsuya is so dutiful and obedient...if he went nuts, he could level a fucking city in minutes!) but all those bad guys were just sort of mooks...who die repeatedly in similar fashions.
I mean..."go Japan!" I guess, but it's a positive slaughter out there! Being conducted by high school students! But it in no way advances the plot? We still don't know what the bad guys are really after, we don't even see them as being a serious threat. There are zero people on the opposing side who are even worth remembering, and probably the most important plot point to resolve right now is the will-they-or-won't-they tensions between our protagonist and his sister. And that's kind of demoralizing.
Considering how much potential the *concept* has, I'm nothing but repeatedly disappointed with the quality of the writing - despite my low expectations - at failing to capitalize on the interesting bits, and at constantly having terribad pacing for the 20-min anime format. So much could have been done with this. Hell, even more could have been done with the bro-con "sub"text to make it far more reasonable, convincing, and plot-relevant given it currently sits front and center of nearly every episode. O.o
I just don't even...XD
Anyway, Zankyou: Probably the best episode of the latter half so far. It held up pretty well in terms of twists and leaves things wide open for the finale. My main issue with the show is how sidetracked I feel the whole thing was by a certain character's introduction and plotline. Not sure if it's just because that character was really weakly written, or whether it was an overall issue with the plot - it's a bit of a chicken-or-egg scenario, I think - but it really feels like after the first four or five episodes being really strong, the rest has just dropped off in terms of quality. It's not bad, it just feels too much like it was trying to be too many things at once - if they'd just stuck with the original premise and made things nice and gray, fairly complicated cat-and-mouse, it could have been brilliant.
Compared to Psycho-Pass, which really held onto that level of complication, and "wtf"-ness throughout, this feels like a mere shell of intrigue. And it has none of the brilliance of Death Note's ever-increasingly-implausible move/countermove escalation stuff, so it's not like it really managed to achieve a refuge in audacity, either (and while Sphinx are great characters, and Shibazaki was really interesting, the rest of the cast...not so much - nowhere near the ability to shift your allegiances around like we had with Kira and L).
It's sad. I like the show. I feel like I really want to think its great. But it's just falling short of really getting the meat on the bones that it needed to keep going so well. Does anyone else have a particularly strong opinion on this one, either way?
I'm hoping that, at least, based on this episode it has a really solid finish, though.
Help
