Anime recs and requests, a new beginning

[ECSNorway]

For those who prefer hardcopy, the first volume of The Apothecary Diaries light novel is now on bookstore shelves. And in my hands.

Been following a new manhua, "Is It Normal To Raise A Yandere Heroine As a Villainess?".
Jiang Yang, video-game designer, got reincarnated into a xianixa/cultivation world. This story is not set there. She did the Xianxia Protagonist thing and was set to Ascend and try to return to her home dimension... but instead ended up in the world of an otome game she'd worked on early in her career. There, taking on the role of an arrogant and wealthy foreign noble, she sets out to protect the game's heroine, Stardew. But Stardew has secrets of her own....

No official translation yet, but fanslations are available in the usual places.

[classicdrogn]

And now, courtesy of my internet going out for several days and leaving me with way too much time to watch some of my huge anime backlog, it's time for another recap report! Lots of Gundam to start this time.



Turn-A Gundam (1999) - a good stand-alone anime that starts off feeling generically pre-WW1 western (if unexpectedly racially integrated,) but has some references to the Gundam franchise here and there once mecha start showing up. It's set thusands of years after a plot-relevant apocalypse, so aside from the word "Gundam" and a couple of legacy mobile suit designs thrown in (ten thousand years later, and there are still mooks in goddamn Zakus! AND that's an actual plot point, given a line of dialogue to mention!) any connections to other seasons of the franchise can best be counted as eggs in the Easter basket episode where the setting history is explored. The soundtrack is pretty good, too.

Character designs can be really strange looking for what is supposedly a "realistic" art style and definitely conform to the "anime characters are actually cats" head outline, but the writing is engaging and internal consistency in where science is real-ish and where it's rubbery is decent, and they do both acceleration aboard a ship with the decks aligned front to back and zero-G right, at least mostly. There is a lot of casual nudity if that's something that will bother you - not sexualized per se but there's boobies and butts abounding even if there's always a convenient floatie, splash, shadow, or camera angle to obscure full frontal. There's also a field hospital scene that may qualify as body horror, with the volunteer nurse helping prep tools for an amputation while the wounded soldier begs them not to, but she passes out before it actually begins. The only explicitly shown blood is on linens and as a spreading stain in the water, though.

Turn-A also has one of the wildest heel-face turns I can remember seeing, in a way that's so unexpected I don't ant to spoil it even decades later for anyone who decides to give it a try. (Mot for the Harley Quinn expy, though.) Just to round out the weirdness, they somehow found the derpiest sounding guy in all of Japan to announce the title at the beginning of every episode. My strongest of recommendations if you like mecha, but don't expect a typical Gundam experience beyond the standard "War is bad, mm'kay?" overall theme, and it doesn't pound on that too aggressively until the last arc (eps 44-49.) While left considerably more subtle, it actually seems to go much deeper on the theme of a persona's real self versus who they show to the world, with with an extended game of who is who between two look-alike characters where even they end up saying the other did a better job of being them at times. Also, most of the mechanical designs are made by Syd Mead, and on the main suit especially his signature elegant geometric lines give it the class of an art deco statue. This one is going in my "top tier" list for permanent archive in multiple locations despite the lame MacGuffin for the final arc, to watch again (until Ep43 and then stop) over the years.



Gundam AGE (2015) - take everything good I sad about Turn-A and reverse it. This was a goddamn slog from episode one, and I am never, ever watching any of it again, no matter how cool the antagonist mecha are. Female characters only exist to produce the next generation and/or become drama fodder, the rest of the cast are at best stock archetypes with zero depth of their own, the protagonist mecha designs are bland remixes of the same RX-78 lineage they've shat out since 1978, and the science is so head-bangingly inconsistent that at one point they have a guy cleaning the floor with a mop and bucket while another character floats up and hovers beside him because they are supposedly in zero-G... despite being on a ship underway with the decks aligned front to back, and everyone apparently being able to just fly around or stop at will whether they're on a ship, a spinning O'Neill colony cylinder as long as they're not at "ground level," or the moon (Luna. that is) at the time. Further, the plot as a whole is bonkers cuckoo in the "How do people this stupid remember to breathe!?" way rather than any of the fun variants. Stand-alone or mid-future timeline, no franchise lore necessary. The enemy mobile suits ARE very cool looking, but you're better off just buying the model kits and imagining your own story to go with them. The animation seemed really damn janky for a major franchise production, too, like it might have been animated on threes (8-10 fps) instead of on twos (12-15 fps). Most of the music seems to be five to at most thirty second loops that repeat endlessly until a scene change, which is utterly maddening. It somehow manages to be more gratuitous in its gore than Turn-A too, despite the latter's previously mentioned hospital scene, with injured characters having streaks of it across their face and/or from the corner of their mouth, and drops floating around in the ever inconsistent free-fall. In the strongest possible terms, avoid ever watching this show.



MS Gundam: The Witch from Mercury (AKA G-Witch) (2022) - and we're back to the good stuff, thankfully. Beautifully animated, strong characterization, and a story that makes you want to keep watching. MS visual designs are less to my liking than Turn-A or AGE's Vagan, but still distinctive and good enough. The first Gundam franchise entry to have a female lead, and mostly feminine mecha designs regardless of the pilot.



MS Gundam GQuuuuuuX, or as I like to call it, G-Quacks. The new Mobile Duck leans a little further into evangelion lankiness and bayformer over-gribbled "we're gonna do it all with rendered 3D anyway, no need to simplify anything" mechanical design, but at least the titular suit foes that in an interesting way, even if the rest of the ones shown so far are literally the Zaku and RX-78 piped through that filter since this is explicitly an alternate fork of the original Gundam continuity, as the second episode goes into great depth to explain yet somehow still only manages to deliver glimpses that require a good working knowledge of the original series up through Char's Counterattack to actually understand. I wouldn't quite say skip ep2 if you aren't already a huge Gundam nerd, because there is some material there that either gets enough context from other episodes to be meaningful or gives it them, but don't worry about having missed where all of it suddenly came from, because the show's MC is herself a newbie and needs the important bits explained as they come up anyway. This is the currently airing show, with only four episodes released as of when my internet went out, probably another by the time I'll actually get to post this. You will get more out of it if you're familiar with the original, of course.



I'm Just a Guild Receptionist, but I'll Solo Any Boss to Clock Out on Time! (or something like that, abbreviations vary) - typical generic pseudo-medieval fantasy by way of MMOs, delivers what it says on the tin, thoroughly mid. I watched half a dozen episodes and ditched it because it wasn't doing anything new with the genre, and it's not a genre I like enough to desperately consume every scrap I can find. Probably not a waste of viewing time if that's your jam, so call it a weak recommendation.



Shangri-La Frontier season 2/3 - generic pseudo-medieval fantasy VRMMO that isn't a death game, sometimes dips into other games the characters play, and also features bits of their IRL life. Still awesome, just watch it. Strong recommend, and again that's as someone who'd very hard to impress when it comes to the genre.



Sentai Red's Adventures in Another World - standard pseudo-medieval fantasy issekai... except the protagonist is the hot-blooded leader of a Super Sentai/power ranger team, imported just after using a self-sacrifice play to defeat the final boss of their nominal "season," with all the toyriffic gimmicks, attack voice overs, music, and explosions from nowhere, and hamming it up that implies. Does a surprisingly good job of blending the two genres, so it's worth checking out just for the unique mix that results. I can't say it's high art, but it sure is fun. moderately strong recommendation.



Sweet Reincarnation - generic pseudo-medieval issekai fantasy meets generic cooking anime with generic music and a generic cast of archetypes, no twist and using all the tricks to need as little unique footage per episode as possible. The noble politics side of the plot is generally ham-handed at best, and the cooking side is very much the lesser partner. All in all, Dungeon Meshi did it better (not even counting the manga) without the "scion of a broke minor noble" cliche reincarnator. I tried watching it dubbed, because bad eyesight, but ewww. Went back to leaning in to be a foot away from my big screen TV-as-1040p-monitor and pausing or using a magnifying glass when needed, because the eyestrain was less painful. It's not actively bad per se, but I can only recommend it for major fans of one or both genres. Dropped it after four episodes as neither is particularly my jar of preserves.

[MilkmanConspiracy]

Been having a good time with GQuuuuuuX myself. It’s interesting spin on the original for sure.

[classicdrogn]

I'm just disappointed that all the visually interesting Zeon designs are being replaced by the same tired old RX-78 lineage, this time after being fed to an AI told to greeble them up like a bayformer, while the only thing that's actually new (if mostly borroeing its color cheme) is the titular Mobile Duck itself. I mean, I guess the three-legged Doms were okay, but that particular branch of the visual deign tree didn't interest me until the Asshimar fruited from cross-pollinating with it, and with only a two or three slots still unrevealed in the gunpla line, I doubt they're going to jump from ... ahem, "reimagined" OG MS to late-Zeta. Psyyccommu are also already fitted in the original stolen RX-78 and it's the ride Char was still using as of the events of Char's Counterattack, so probably no Pstco Gundam, Moon Gundam, or Sazabi to represent developmental stages. If they mess with the Z'gok like that it's just going to piss me off, but maybe the amphibious line was far enough removed to be safe? There's certainly some intersting things that can be done with the "mono-eye angry egg with part-tentacle limbs" concept at high greeble settings, if you go into it without too many more starting assumptions.

Anyway, feel free to chip in with your impressions of anything you've been watching lately, everyone, good or bad, whether I've covered it or especially if not. 'S the whole point of this thing.