Things start to feel more intriguing around episodes 8 or 9, and by episode 12/13 the tone shifts dramatically.

Yeah, it’s a real slowburn, so I understand why you gave up on it the 1st time.

Yes - it’s “the dark magical girl show”, but it doesn’t even feel as dark as I was personally bracing for.

I think there are two reasons for that:

1. You went into it knowing it was going to be dark. At the time, no one knew until the famous Mamiko scene. Everyone thought it was going to be a standard magical girl anime. It was a proper twist.
2. Edgy/dark magical girl shows have kinda become normal and yeah, have really pushed the edge further. Madoka popularized dark magical girl shows.

If this song is too close to YOSHIKI’s style, then they need to worry about most of the power metal scene. This is pretty standard power metal, good power metal, but pretty standard.

I mean, cheaper than a new film sure, but not as cheap as 4K upscales

Not sure I’d call it a minor touch up. Restoration doesn’t necessarily require the original to be actually damaged. Film/cells fade over time. Digitally restoring that can be pretty intensive, depending on how faded it is.

Restoration for projects like these is a pretty common term AFAIK.

I’d say it’s worth it. I’ve played the game too and loved the adaptation. It changes things up here and there (Yoko Taro was involved after all) in a good way and also adapts parts of the Pearl Harbour Descent manga, and I really liked that. The 1st season was a bit troubled due to COVID stuff (still good), but the 2nd season was incredible.

That’s a solid starting point. Some other suggestions:

• Monogatari series: Off and Monster Season (if you’ve seen the previous seasons of course)
• NieR Automata anime adaptation (1st season is good, but 2nd season is amazing)
• Attack On Titan finished
• Makeine
• SHOSHIMIN

I’m finally catching up this season. I’m now up to date on Dr Stone, Gachiakuta, Dandadan, With You And The Rain and My Dress-up Darling. There are others I want to watch still, but oh well.

Some banger OPs this season. Gachiakuta’s OP is fire and With You And The Rain’s OP is delightfully chill

I probably shouldn’t take it so serious, but 50,000 calories? How? At first I thought it was a translation error, but the manga has the same number. Then I thought it was small calories, but that’d be 50kcal, which is nowhere near enough to even live. Are both the translated manga and CR wrong? Or is it just exaggerated for comedic effect? (I’m guessing the latter)

Edit: the 50,000 itself is the joke. That didn’t come across to me in the anime, but that manga does make it clear

I’m so out of the loop this season. I’ve only just caught up with Dandadan S2 and My Dress-Up Darling S2 and started with Dr Stone.

Probably CLANNAD, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was SAO S1, god forbid.

Hell yeah, the manga is so fun.

I love the supportiveness of everone

I enjoyed it, but not more than the original. From what I remember, which is not as much as I thought, it became a bit of a slog for me either midway through or towards the end, which didn’t really have a pay off like the first eps of the original did.

Yeah, that actually surprised me the most here. The fact that all of it can leak at once seems like a good sign

Finished Gundam GQuuuux. Even though I read in many places that was no prior knowledge was needed, I felt lost a lot of times. I don’t know the characters that were actually important in the end and I missed a looot of context. It felt more aimed at fans of the original. It assumed you know the world, the terms, power dynamics etc, but as someone that only watched Witch From Mercury, I did not know any of it.

The characters that were posed as the leads were heavily underdeveloped, including their relationships to each other. I think they had potential (a duo of rebellious rich girl together with a refugee is an interesting dynamic to explore), but were shafted in favour of what felt like nostalgia bait. As a result, some of their actions made no sense to me.

Animation was nice though.

The exposure scenes feel more like a fan-service scene than what it was in the first season.

I recently rewatched S1 and was surprised how much fan service it had. I didn’t remember it at all. Definitely not less than what this episode displayed.

Filler? I skipped forward during the Uron Mirage thing, thinking CR mistakenly uploaded to the wrong anime. Then I saw they didn’t but I didn’t go back to watch it. Seems like I didn’t need to either. 9 minutes was way unnecessary

Gross, Netflix jail

Hmm, it didn’t bore me at all. Just hard to keep up with. It’s kind of the main theme of the anime. Season 1 was full of it as well, but not connected (or at least, it didn’t seem like it. Now we know it was).

But yeah, it seems like the new arc will be quite different, but it’s probably not just Maomao being Maomao

Not surprised. I’ve seen some subs that felt off lately