What Are You Watching?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Did anyone else check out the new Fruits Basket series? Very nostalgic, and likely another anime I will be keeping up with. In all honesty, I've consumed far less anime in the last few years than I used to, in part due to a busy schedule but also due to diverging interests. In a way it's very telling that I'm only keeping up with this and KnY this season, two series that I was already familiar with from beforehand.

[Dr. Insomniac]

It was fun to hear Laura Bailey and Eric Vale talk again.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I haven't had a chance to check out the dub. Is Justin Cook still in it as well?

Also, it's weird to think of Laura Bailey in an anime dub again. I mean, I don't know if she's regularly done them in the past decade or not since I haven't watched a ton of dubs, but I'm just more used to hearing her in video games like Batman Arkham and Spider-Man now.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I haven't had a chance to check out the dub. Is Justin Cook still in it as well?

Yeah, he's on board.

[VLordGTZ]

The Kimetsu no Yaiba premiere did not disappoint, with good direction and perfect pacing. And if that OP is any indication, the fight animation is going to he gorgeous with unique ways of representing each fighting style from the manga.

I almost teared up while watching it.  Ufotable absolutely nailed it, and this looks like it'll easily be one of the best WSJ adaptions in recent years.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm also liking how positive the reception has been to this series for the most part even from non-manga readers. I mean, it's Ufotable, which people tend to like regardless, but I was still a bit worried since this is a Weekly Shonen Jump series and a battle manga at that, which a lot of the community has an (IMO, undeserved) bias against, but it also is a bit of a slow burn in the beginning until Zenitsu and Inosuke join the plot, but people seem to be pretty on board as of the premiere thanks to the brilliant direction and overall execution. There's a good chance that this will be yet another hit for a WSJ manga which really deserves it.

[Painted Outlaw]

Started getting into Boruto from seeing it on Toonami and I'm enjoying it but I'm also just waiting for them to rename it "Sarada: Next Generations" because its actual protagonist is rather bland. Like, I'm 35 episodes in and I just don't get what their goal is with him. He doesn't want to be Hokage but he hates his dad because he thinks his dad is a loser and so he wants to uh... that's where it loses me. I know protags can sometimes be good without straightforward, defined goals (Goku, for one) but in a title about growing and aiming for a future, it sticks out rather weirdly to me.

On the flip side, Sarada has actual stuff going on with her father not being around and so it's forced her to pick up more of the slack around the house. It's also neat that she has a goal of being Hokage when she's older. I'd like for it to actually happen - It could! Tsunade got the gig once! - but I fear Japan would be their usual selves and end up sticking her in a usual "Girl in a shounen title" gig instead. Please no.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I think that's a lot of people's problem with Boruto. When you're series' main character is so bland that he can't even pass for a carbon copy of his predecessor, it doesn't give the narrative a strong driving force. It feels like they were too scared to write a completely different protagonist, but also didn't want to be called out on being unoriginal, so they gave Boruto all of Naruto's personality traits without any of the actual goals or contexts to go along with it. I was never really a fan of Naruto as a character, but at least he had a clearly defined role in his own story. Boruto has this vague (and irritatingly cliche) "chosen one" vibe for some vague future threat that was clearly never really planned out at the beginning to make him seem important. However, it feels so unearned and lazily written. It worked alright for the movie which should have just been the first arc, but seeing it happen after that point in the manga or over multiple (needless) prequel episodes in the anime just makes it feel redundant.

I would have honestly given them props if they had the balls to make another character's kid the main protagonist of this series with Boruto just being a supporting character to show that greatness doesn't have to be centered around one lineage.

[Mustang]

Been watching One Piece, or rather one specific fight from One Piece (Luffy vs Katakuri. What a fight) trying to decide if I want to get back into it or not. I am reading it bit by bit as well. No doubt I'm lost since I haven't read OP since the crew got back together after the time skip, but at the moment I don't know how I feel about some of these current chapters.

The reason I couldn't get back into One Piece is because I felt since the Whitebeard war, Oda (his name is Oda right? Omg I'm so sorry, I used to know this stuff so well lol) seemed to have lost a bit of whatever it was he once had before the time skip. Then again this could be due to me not deciding to read from the beginning instead of just jumping right in in some random spot.

I guess what I'm asking is where One Piece is at right now, does it feel like it's back at that point where it made it so good to begin with? Like, lets say, I can't remember the name of the arc but it was during the CP9 fights. Every arc afterwards was probably not as good, but were great nevertheless. Since the time jump do it ever feel like got back to that point of greatness? I'm currently buying these on dvd.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I know how you feel. I was legit bored with One Piece after the time-skip and it felt like a slog to keep up with for a few years. Personally, I feel like the story really picked up again when Luffy and Crew got to Whole Cake Island and had to take on Big Mom and her crew, and that leads all the way up to the current Wano arc which has been fantastic so far. So yeah, I do think that One Piece gets better again, but it takes pretty long to get there, IMO.

[Painted Outlaw]

Good to know Attack on Kyojin is still itself:

[Dr. Insomniac]

Why is the one on the right pretending to be Superman? And the one on the left is pretending to be Fonzie from Happy Days?

[Avaitor]

I've mentioned before that I've been watching anime on my breaks at work lately via VRV. I usually pause whatever I'm watching for the newest Jojo on the weekends, but I recently got to finally watch Ashita no Joe 2 in full, which absolutely lives up to the hype. I'm glad that I read the manga first, so I wasn't lost by missing the first series (which will hopefully make its way here somehow in the near future), but there are enough flashbacks to the main events from the first series to work for newbies anyway.

And I also just finished Made in Abyss. I think my biggest fault with the series is that Reg is a fucking moron, and keeps making the worst possible decisions through most of the series. I generally prefer Riko as a protagonist (when she isn't in awkward nude scenes, anyway), but of course she's hardly in the last couple of episodes.

But I really like the world-building in the series, which feels big and exciting, and I especially like the last couple of episodes, which introduce Nanachi and Mitty, as tragic as it is. I'm glad that I caught up well in advance for the sequel movie coming out next year.

I think I'll get to Kaiji next

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've mentioned before that I've been watching anime on my breaks at work lately via VRV. I usually pause whatever I'm watching for the newest Jojo on the weekends, but I recently got to finally watch Ashita no Joe 2 in full, which absolutely lives up to the hype. I'm glad that I read the manga first, so I wasn't lost by missing the first series (which will hopefully make its way here somehow in the near future), but there are enough flashbacks to the main events from the first series to work for newbies anyway.

Glad you liked it! It's still among my favorite anime thanks to the excellent direction which I would argue makes an already amazing manga just that much better. I kind of miss having anime adaptations take more artistic liberties when adapting the source material to try and achieve the best version of a particular story. We do still get that to an extent sometimes, especially with series that kind of have to like Mob Psycho 100, but I do feel we have an overwhelming amount of adaptations these days that, while very good, play ot a bit too safe in sticking to the source material to the point of never outright surpassing what inspired it.

I think I'll get to Kaiji next

For your sake, I hope you have a lot of free time on your hands, because Kaiji is the type of series that's so addicting that it's nearly impossible to put down until you finish a complete arc. Sort of like how Kaiji's gambling addiction just won't let him stop, even when he's ahead, the show itself keeps you the viewer coming back for more, even if you have a major exam the next morning (I watched this series back when I was in college).

Fun Fact: I watched all of season two in one single day, from morning to evening. Yes, I'm dead serious.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Here's a good video on why you should all be watching/reading Kimetsu no Yaiba: https://youtu.be/e1p36CRZcLA