The last anime you saw?

[Sigma999]

Spy x Family : Code White 

 

 

 

[Redgrave]

 

91 Days has the premise of it taking place in the Prohibition Era of the US which is interesting to see an anime cover that. It's basically about how the main character Angelo wants to get revenge for his murdered family by taking out the mafia hitmen that comitted it after escaping as a kid. It's a pretty good premise with a good mafia story to go with it and I like how Angelo goes about infiltrating the group and manipulating them. It's only 12 episodes though so it feels shortlived and I feel like it could have benefited from being longer, maybe another 12 episodes but I still think it's worth a watch if you like that kind of stuff. It has a short side-story thing where it's the same length as a regular episode but it's three different short stories that mostly just give some extra background on the characters.

[Redgrave]

 

A short but nice story about a girl named Shiva that meets a monster guy that she calls Teacher (at least going by the description, the subtitles have her call him Doctor) in a world where there is some kind of curse that turns living creatures into demonic things if they touch them. It's not fully explored at least in the anime, I assume there is more given in the manga but it's more about Teacher's inner conflict since despite being cursed he takes care of Shiva. It's got really nice animation that resembles something of a storybook in terms of artstyle and I like that when animating Teacher they make sure to show that he does what he can to not directly touch Shiva. There is also another monster that talks to Teacher and it's implied he's supposed to curse her but he doesn't want to.

 

But yeah, it's a nice story about a monster creature being nice to an innocent girl that will surely tug the heart strings especially by the end of it. There is also a ten minute short that is for some reason listed as a prequel but it's a wordless bit where it shows the two go throughout a day.

 

 

I was prepared to talk about how cool this was but unfortunately despite the premise it winds up being pretty disappointing by the end because it basically goes nowhere which sucks because the first 9 of 12 episodes are promising but then the last three just feels like they ran out of steam and gave up.

 

It takes place on a modern Earth where some alien race called Peddlers will trade mech suits called Exoframe's for limestone for whatever reason. The Peddlers are never really explored beyond that or what their motives are which is what I would have hoped it would but it doesn't, so their only purpose is to explain why there are mechs but you don't really need them to explain that when just having them be made by humans would have been perfectly fine.

 

Where Obsolete gets interesting is how it explores the idea of countries around the world gaining Exoframes which changes how war is fought. This is shown by showing the different settings from India to Africa and how the Exoframes are used. The first episode even shows the main characters do a spec-ops kind of mission in them which is funny because I'm pretty sure one of them has a suppressor on their gun so the idea of a mech having a suppressed weapon and stealthing around is funny.

 

There is something of an overarching plot involving some Big Boss kind of character that uses the Exoframes to train child soldiers and I believe other groups because there is a tease where whenever the main characters encounter rival Exoframes they all have the logo the Big Boss character uses.

 

This stays interesting for the first nine episodes but then the final three? The plot basically just stops at episode 9 and the last three episodes are just filler episodes that do nothing. There's no further exploration on how other world militaries use the Exoframes, the Peddlers are just forgotten about, and the Big Boss character gets to just do whatever it was he was doing. The final episode plays off like a high school anime where two girls use Exoframes to fight each other but then it's revealed it actually is just some anime the main characters are watching by the credits. If I didn't know any better I would have thought Rian Johnson made this series.

 

So yeah, cool buildup, no payoff. Maybe it was too ambitious for more episodes or the manga abruptly ends so they had to just make up three episodes but I would have rather they ended it on a cliffhanger to at least gain interest than just have nothing episodes. This would also probably make for a cool game with the right dev team and I'm sure the obvious answer would be FromSoft considering Armored Core.

[Sigma999]

Finished Sasaki and Peeps (2024) 

 

[Redgrave]

Blue Literature Series

 

An anthology series that is based on certain stories that I guess are considered "blue literature". It's six different stories with twelve episodes total and they are pretty dark or depressing. The stories are in the following order:

 

No Longer Human - This started sounding familiar as I kept watching and it turns out I watched a video on it a while back. I'm fairly sure it was this one specifically. But yeah, it's a pretty painful story especially since there is some truth to it when you know about the author's backstory.

 

In the Forest, Under Cherries in Full Bloom - The way this one is played out kind of makes me think of how old creepypastas go when they involve lost episode type things because of the way this starts off like it will be a normal and comedic anime but then does a sudden tonal shift halfway through. In a way it was kind of funny but at the same time I was caught off guard because of one scene where it actually does go the way you expect it to.

 

Kokoro - Probably my favorite one in the list. It involves someone taking in his friend named K into a home he pays rent in and he starts getting jealous over the girl that lives there. This winds up being a "two different sides" kind of story thing where you are shown the same story but they play out a bit differently and it's not really clear which is the true version. Regardless of which one is true I felt like K was just misunderstood.

 

Run Melos! - This one is the least dark one of the bunch and has something of a nice ending. It's about a writer that feels bitter feelings towards a friend from high school that he feels like abandoned him and some of it is reflected in what looks like a Greek tragedy kind of play in-between scenes.

 

The Spider's Thread & Hell Screen - Both are listed as separate episodes but they take place after another. The Spider's Thread is about a criminal who acts like an edge lord that mercilessly kills people and steals things as he pleases. However at one point he lets a spider live and so when he is sent to Hell he is ironically given a chance to redeem himself by climbing a spider web. I'm sure you can guess how well this goes but I liked how trippy and weird the Hell sequence was.

 

Hell Screen is about a painter for the king in the nation the setting takes place. He is asked to paint something in his tomb that looks flattering but the painter instead paints the atrocities committed by the king. The ending sequence is also pretty cool with the way it's animated.

 

It's a short lived series but I get what it was going for. It would be cool to see more anthology series like this and I liked the live action openings by the guy that talks about the stories and the authors before the episode starts.

 

 

Now for something less depressing. It's about a documentary filmmaker wanting to find out why an actress apparently vanished and quit acting. It does a pretty interesting depiction of her life and showing the filmmaker and his cameraman interacting with her past. It's not meant to be them literally doing so but it was still a unique way to present them learning about her past and how she spent most her life trying to chase a stranger she saved.

 

It also wasn't until after watching it I found out it was directed by the same guy that did Perfect Blue but this has a nicer ending.

[Slava]

@Redgrave I'm bothered by the fact that there's too few hours in a day 😅. Because both of these have sat in my watchlist for a long time, and I still haven't seen them. I heard about Aoi Bungaku in an episode of an old podcast that Gigguk and Arkada AKA Glass Reflection used to be co-hosts of. And Satoshi Kon's filmography is patiently awaiting me as well. There's too much stuff.