Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Notes -
I enjoyed Andor once it got going--I enjoyed Mandalorian, but did not much care for Boba Fett or Obi-Wan, so I guess I remain cautiously Jedi-curious. I watched Moon Knight and promptly forgot about it.
After finding Wheel of Time simply excruciating, I skipped both Rings and House of the Dragon and have yet to hear a compelling reason to binge them after the fact. I also skipped Sandman and I am currently skipping Willow, to my sorrow, for much the same reason.
Season 3 of The Boys surprised me a bit, and finally stopped apologizing for its departure from the comics. Guess I'm in for Season 4. I also watched Season 4 of Westworld, which was not terrible but was nothing particularly special, either. The dude from Breaking Bad did a good job playing a pointless character. I watched Season 5 of Rick and Morty which was neither the worst season, nor the best.
From Japan, I watched:
New:
Chainsaw Man: Beautifully-animated gore-fest
Spy X Family: Hilarious, plus you can enjoy it as not-so-subtle pro-natal propaganda
Lycoris Recoil: CGDCT genre mashup, plus you can enjoy it as not-so-subtle lesbian propaganda
Shokei Shoujo no Virgin Road: Moderately clever isekai deconstruction, plus you can enjoy it as blatantly overt lesbian propaganda
Isekai Ojisan: Exceptionally clever isekai deconstruction, and hilarious, too
Isekai Meikyuu de Harem wo: Unapologetically pornographic isekai deconstruction about a guy who just wants a wife, a house, and a job. Also, the wife is his slave. Maybe there will be more wives and/or slaves? The first one is literally a dog-person y'all, I'm honestly not sure how to talk about a show where the central message appears to be "work hard and grow a garden, but aspire to no further greatness, and you, too, can spend your evenings hot-tubbing with your submissive furry waifus."
Isekai Yakkyoku: Enjoyable isekai and the protagonist does real medical chemistry--sort of a Cells at Work or Dr. Stone meets Ascension of a Bookworm.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners: It was recognizably cyberpunk!
Ya Boy Kongming!: I loved everything about this show
Continuing:
Ascension of a Bookworm: Probably the most endearing isekai out there, about a girl who just wants to read books (also: not-so-subtle pro-natal propaganda!)
My Hero Academia: Ameriboo superhero anime, wish it had more romance but this one is mandatory watching to keep my knowledge relevant to my students' interests
Overlord: I keep waiting for the MC to do something really overtly evil but I guess it's not that kind of show
Made in Abyss: Weird, boundary-pushing, occasionally graphic coming-of-age-but-also-metaphorically-aging-and-dying show, I don't know how this one got made actually, never mind imported
DanMachi: This dungeon crawler is not bad, but it's getting a bit tiresome I think
Mob Psycho: Weird coming-of-age kinda-battle-shonen-I-guess, but enjoyable
To Your Eternity: This one is conceptually interesting, it's about an immortal who can mimic its friends after they die, but the first season was a lot stronger I think
Rising of the Shield Hero: Season 2 was actually quite bad, which is a shame because Season 1 was quite compelling
I did not watch Attack on Titan because I have fallen hopelessly behind. I am also sorry to have not yet found time for Better Call Saul, or a bevy of others on a backlist that I doubt will ever be completed. The best things I watched this year were all movies. If you enjoy musicals at all, I highly recommend Netflix's recent adaptation of Tim Minchin's adaptation of Roald Dahl's Matilda.
Sandman was fine, speaking as someone who has never read the comics and also found WoT terrible. Willow never appealed to me, and I also skipped Dragon and Rings. It could have been better, and my biggest complaint is that the actor they cast as the vortex cannot act at all. She's stiff as a board for every excruciating minute she's on screen.
I'm sorry to hear Shield Hero was bad. I'd been looking forward to season 2 and I thoroughly enjoyed season 1 when I caught it years ago.
I did, however, watch all of Yu Yu Hakusho last year, and it is exactly as good as I remembered it being (very, if you don't mind fighting tournaments).
I'll have to check out Matilda.
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Uh...are we watching the same show? IIRC, he personally slaughtered tens of thousands of people. He had captured prisoners slowly raped and tortured to death. How much more overtly evil does he need to get?
In what way? I actually enjoyed season 2 more than season 1.
With the baby goats, right? In that big war? The morality of winning a battle is tricky, I guess.
...really? That was not clear to me. I assumed he was feeding those people to carnivores who subsist on human flesh. The fact that humans aren't at the top of the food chain is unfortunate, but it's hard for me to perceive predators as overtly evil by that fact alone. I did catch some allusions to torture (albeit arguably justified, IIRC, as an enhanced interrogation technique) but I missed the rape entirely.
I haven't read the manga so it's possible I'm missing some details, but so far my impression of Momonga is that he feels mostly swept along by everyone else's natures and desires. He seems pretty sure that if his underlings rebelled as a group, they could defeat him, so he needs to maintain their loyalty simply to survive. He wants to build a peaceful, advanced civilization, but his underlings will only go along with that aspiration insofar as their natures are fulfilled. So he's conducting this massive utilitarian balancing act that keeps bringing him into inevitable conflict which he must win for the greater good. It reminds me of HPMoR:
In short, Momonga is only shown killing when there is good reason to kill, and he never personally eats or rapes or tortures anyone, while showing generosity, charity, and mercy at seemingly every opportunity. The show seems to hint that he no longer feels empathy for humans, as a result of his new physiology, but his actions often suggest otherwise. I do enjoy the show, but Momonga doesn't ever seem very evil to me. Which is fine, I just find it interesting how often I see others recommend the show as being about an evil overlord.
That said, maybe this says more about my own moral compass, comparatively, than it does about the show...
The plot just seemed... random, I guess. Stuff happens but doesn't go anywhere. The Shield Hero was interesting when everyone hated him. Now it just seems to be a few irrelevant nobodies. Again--perhaps the source material would give me greater insight as to what is happening and why, but I'm not usually the kind of viewer who keeps a wiki open while watching a show.
There's a difference between winning a battle and slaughtering a routed army. He could easily have won the battle with far fewer casualties, even with his additional goal of intimidation. He intentionally chose the slaughter.
It's been a while, so maybe I'm misremembering. I thought that was implied for at least some of the treasure seekers who "invaded" the tomb.
I thought this was the entire point of the show? Momonga is "evil" in the sense that he is responsible for some horrific outcomes, which he had the ability to both predict and avoid while still achieving his goals if he so desired. While the show portrays him sympathetically, it does not attempt to explicitly make him the "good guy", leaving it up to the audience to judge.
I thought season 1 was a bit too fast-paced, jumping from action sequence to action sequence without spending a lot of time building up the setting, so I found season 2's slower world-building more enjoyable. I'm also a bit biased in that one of my favorite characters got a lot more development in season 2, including a scene that resonated with me quite a bit (~13:20 in Episode 12).
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