I found Arpeggio and Kancolle to be wholly mediocre and mostly just tried them out of my interest in naval history.
While I only have a passing interest in naval history myself,
wholly mediocre is a pretty much how I would describe both anime adaptations, though Kancolle still qualified as "most japanese show I've seen" for quite a while. Arpeggio is especially disappointing, as I have some fondness for the source material
- though it's not without flaws, I don't think it deserved being stripped of the qualities it does have to create a bland generic 12-ish episode anime.
I already ranted about this elsewhere in this thread IIRC.
the next on the list is Death Note. I've heard good things, so we'll see.
Death Note's alright, though I'm curious as to how well it stood the test of time.
sg sg1 and Atlantis for the first time
I've probably got a bit of nostalgia filter, but I think both series hold up rather well, although IIRC, Atlantis takes about two seasons to find its mojo.
Anyone here watch FairyTail?
Watched it a bit when I saw it was on Netflix, after dropping the manga some 6 years ago. I feel like it's very much focus targeted at a young audience, which I think was one of the reasons I dropped the manga in the first place. Still, it was pretty funny to see Happy being blue, something I was always forgetting since colored pages were pretty rare.
Moving on, I'm still steadily shifting away from 40+ minutes series. I don't think I ever finished the second or third episode of Altered Carbon, so I still don't know what it's worth. The I started up DC's Legends of Tomorrow, dropped it after about ten minutes after I realized it was probably tied into several other DC shows, and I didn't feel like picking up characters halfway into their stories. Maybe my attention span just suck.
That being said, I also dropped Disenchanted, after being reminded why I dropped the Simpsons & Futurama, while picking up 3-4 other 20 minutes series, with a noticeable shift towards more family-friendly western works following my positive experience with Steven Universe :
-
Knights of Sidonia : A space-mecha about a generation ship & lovecraftian-ish aliens
(+ fanservice since this is anime and that's the law). I thought the first season was really good, then the second kinda dropped the aliens in favor of a harem-style plot (in addition to the fanservice already present), which I already get enough of from elsewhere so I put the series on ice for the time being.
Still, I kinda liked it, despite being somewhat predictable it's got some good ideas & decent animation -
would recommend though one should be aware that seasons 1 & 2 have some noticeable difference in the kind of story they want to tell.
-
Dragon Prince : A fairly standard friendly fantasy tale, short
(12 episodes for the first season) but quite enjoyable, with a good balance between drama, action & humor. The animation is rather janky at times (I blame bad CGI), but the drawing itself is rather clean -
would recommend.
Funny story : I watched both it &
Sidonia at around the same time, found both rather predictable with some questionable CG animation, but enjoyed both nonetheless
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Miraculous Ladybug : Probably the oddest choice I made over the past couple month, it's a full CGI Franco-Japano-Korean magical-girl-ish show set in Paris. The poster caught my eye ever since I arrived on Netflix early this year, though I'd always been wary of it being to kid-oriented for my tastes
(which it admittedly it kind of is). I decided to give it a shot after finishing Dragon Prince & putting Sidonia on hold, and to watch it in French, which kind of freaked me out a bit since I've been staying the hell away from French dubs & translations as much as I could for the past 8 years or so.
Well, it's definitely an odd show, very anime-inspired while being very western at the same time. Plot-wise it's fairly unremarkable and formulaic, however the characters themselves are pretty fun overall, the comedy works, the action is solid, the animation is gorgeous - though Paris is entirely too empty) and it makes copious use of stock shots for the transformation sequences & special abilities.
Overall, a pretty fun ride -
would recommend (too bad season 2 isn't available for on Netflix for some reason).
-
Wakfu : That one's been a looong time coming, it was recommended to me by some of my high-school-era friends back when it first came out, but I never got around to giving it a shot
(I was too busy playing Freespace & DotA back then). It's a wacky fantasy tale with elements inspired from classic RPG games - as was popular in France at the time. Turns out it's a surpringly solid show : It's gorgeous, it's funny
(though I don't know how much gets lost in translation), the character stuff works so far, the action works, it's got some non-intrusive nods to RPGs (computer or otherwise).
Very good so far -
strongly recommended.