The anime moment of 2015 - the opening credits of "Death Parade". For such a dark anime, the opening theme is just so joyous -

 

The anime moment of 2015 - the opening credits of "Death Parade". For such a dark anime, the opening theme is just so joyous -

 

 

:lol:

 

It's most probably my favourite anime of 2015.

Just when I think that I can no longer be shocked or surprised by an anime series, along comes "Sekko Boys", which started this week, which is about a former art student who is asked to manage a brand new pop idol group.

 

The idol group in question are all statue busts of famous characters.

 

Seriously, this is the closing song, in which the idols all "sing".

 

I still haven't watched a lot of anime series lately.

 

One Punch Man: I'm halfway through this and it's good so far.

Blood-C and its movie: contrary to popular opinion I actually really liked them, particularly the gore and the characters.

Digimon Tri: Pretty good, I'm more looking forward to the next one which is apparently Mimi & Jou -centered and we get new evolutions!

Gurren lagann: I REALLY tried to like this but I dropped it after episode five or six. I might watch the summary films one day, but I really didn't like the characters and style, even though I've watched Kill la Kill and LOVED it.

 

I've watched a few more films: Asura which was freaking weird, but I loved it, Little Witch Academia 2 which was great, Aura and Magical Sisters Yoyo & Nene which were both meh. According to MAL I've seen 79 anime films which is impressive, I think.

 

On my Plan to Watch list:

The Dog of Flanders, Psycho-Pass Movie, Angel's Egg, The Tibetan Dog: a few films I've been wanting to watch for some time now.

Noragami Aragoto: I've seen a lot of positive reviews about this and I liked the first season.

Rainbow: I need to give this a go as I've heard it's great.

 

On my CAN'T F*CKING WAIT list:

Digimon Tri. 2: obviously.

Evangelion 3.0+1.0: I hope it's finally released this year, because we'll have to wait another year to watch it :(

Kuroko no Basket Movie: New Kuroko is always welcome.

Shingeki no Kyojin 2nd Season: NEED THIS NOW.

Steins;Gate 0: SEE ABOVE.

Yu☆Gi☆Oh!: The Dark Side of Dimensions: New Yugioh film with Yugi and Kaiba. I don't expect to love this, but I'll still watch it for old times' sake.

Oh I just checked MAL and I actually watched a few more films than I said:

 

Giovanni's Island: Really good war film, you should watch it.

Saint Young Men: Hilarious, I absolutely loved it and in the end it left me wanting more! I hope they make a second film.

Mushishi: The Next Chapter - Drops of Bells: The last Mushishi story ever, it wasn't very good, but I'm still sad it's ended.

I've spent much of the first quarter catching up with animes, mostly from the last few years like Parasyte, Fate/Stay Night (UBW), currently working at Cowboy Bebop. Anime education/transformation into otaku continuing to go very well I think.

 

But I've actually finally gotten around to watching an anime that aired very recently and that would be what seems to be one of the biggest from the winter season, Boke dake ga Inai Machi (ERASED). I'm currently just over halfway through it and it is intense and scary and very very gripping. Would recommend anyone it to anyone is a fan of thrillers in the slightest.

I've spent much of the first quarter catching up with animes, mostly from the last few years like Parasyte, Fate/Stay Night (UBW), currently working at Cowboy Bebop. Anime education/transformation into otaku continuing to go very well I think.

 

But I've actually finally gotten around to watching an anime that aired very recently and that would be what seems to be one of the biggest from the winter season, Boke dake ga Inai Machi (ERASED). I'm currently just over halfway through it and it is intense and scary and very very gripping. Would recommend anyone it to anyone is a fan of thrillers in the slightest.

 

Just came to post the same thing! Loving it so far, about at the half way mark.

 

I've been watching a lot of more recent anime recently, although my catch up/to watch list is quite big and keeps getting bigger(Got around 40-50 different anime on my list).

 

I'd also reccomend Ajin - it just finished a few days or so ago and there'll be two OVAs this year which I'm hoping will continue the story! Was really good.

 

The second series of Gate also finished which I'll have to watch - the first series which aired last year was good.

 

Quite a lot of good anime in this years winter season. A lot of the spring season anime has started and quite a lot of that is on my to watch list. So much anime so little time. :lol:

 

 

Oh tell me about it. I'm two episodes into Erased, hopefully will be able to get through the rest of the series as soon as possible.

 

Some of the other series I've watched recently are -

 

Dagashi Kashi - a pretty weird one, but can be rather funny. It's a story of a boy whose father runs a small candy shop in a small town when the daughter of a major candy chain comes by to recruit him. He refuses to do so until his son, who has no intention of taking over the shop, agrees to do so. Most of the episodes then focus around her attempts to spur on the same love of candy that she has to him, with hilarious results.

 

Konosuba - another in that well trodden genre of "people from the real world transported to the gaming world". After dying under embarrassing circumstances, a young man is mercilessly mocked by a goddess, who then offers him a chance to be transported to a game-like fantasy world to defeat the Demon King. He agrees, and as revenge, he pulls her along as well, and the two begin their quest, and realise the fantasy world isn't as cracked up as it's meant to be.

 

Haikyu! - A sports anime about a high-school volleyball team. There's been 48 episodes so far so it's a lot to get through, but it can be rather funny and uplifting.

 

One Punch Man - Has been one of the biggest break-out anime hits of the last few months. A satirical series about a man who through sheer willpower alone manages to become a superhero, only to get extremely bored by it after realising he can defeat all his enemies with just one punch. Downright hilarious in places.

 

Young Black Jack - a prequel to one of the most famous manga series of all time, Black Jack, which counts the early days of a famed surgeon who can perform miraculous surgeries...for a sky-high fee. It got a lot of flack from critics for its perceived conservative bias (the first episode sees striking doctors portrayed as villainous, for example), but it's still a great series. The final episode almost brought me to tears, which outside of Grave of The Fireflies very rarely happens with me and anime.

 

Snow White With The Red Hair - Shirayuki (which means Snow White in Japanese) escapes from her home town to a new kingdom after a local Lord tries to make her his concubine because of her red hair. In this new kingdom, she saves a local prince from poisoning, and ends up joining the court as a herbalist, whilst growing ever closer to the prince. A diverting little shojo title.

 

There's a few I'm currently watching in this season, but will update that in a few weeks once it gets fully going. I am continuing to watch the second series of Assassination Classroom (which everyone should watch), and Rin-Ne. Will probably watch the anime adaptation of Ace Attorney as well.

Hell at Your Lie In April, I had been enjoying it for the music and was thinking I might like to try my hand at piano again because of it, and then the last episode goes and sends me to tears, perhaps one of the most I can remember from a TV show. Add that to what happened in Game Of Thrones last night and I had a rather emotional evening.

 

Since I last posted I've gotten more obsessed with the Fate universe and Fate/Zero in particular, that's definitely become one of my favourite animes so far just because of the amount of good historical figures and a feeling that, even though I'd watched UBW before, I still didn't have much idea how it was all going to turn out until very late on, making it very exciting.

 

And, as my avatar might indicate, Brett, you should be pleased to know I just raced through the first season of Assassination Classroom and LOVED it, almost exactly the right kind of humour, it doesn't miss a beat and so many characters to keep track of (which I tend to count as a good thing). And I kind of love Nagisa, he's in that rare position of being the protagonist as well as my favourite character (well, him and Koro Sensei naturally) so that's endearing me to it. Will be starting the second season shortly.

 

And yeah, I'm still a year or so behind everything. Nothing this season has yet jumped out at me as being necessary to watch.

Yay, glad you've enjoyed Assassination Classroom. The 2nd season is almost over in a few weeks time, and is just as good as the first season, if not better, as you get to see the backstories of a lot of the characters, including most importantly of all, Koro-Sensei. It's also going to provide a definitive ending to the series, which is something that many anime series don't do (as they tend to finish whilst the manga that they're adapting still continue). Your Lie In April is in my Netflix queue, but I haven't got around to watching it yet, but I think the ending's already been spoiled for me (through my fault, through my most grievous fault).

 

In terms of what I'm watching this season, my list is:

 

Rin-Ne Series 2 - as above, the continuing adventures of a downtrodden shinigami (one who guides souls to the afterlife) and a human girl who can see spirits.

 

Ace Attorney - An adaptation of the popular Nintendo DS game about a rookie lawyer, Phoenix Wright/Naruhodo. I'm not too sure if it will be as enjoyable if you haven't played the games like I have, as the story might seem a bit basic and the courtroom action might seem a bit weird, but I do enjoy it.

 

Bakuon - A slice-of-life series about a club formed by several schoolgirl motorcycle enthusiasts and their adventures. A lot of it seems like thinly-veiled advertising for Yamaha, Honda, and other motorcycles, but it's a fun little title, which can be downright hilarious at times.

 

Flying Witch - perhaps the most laid back anime comedy I've watched in a long time. At age 16, it is custom that witches move away from home for a year in order to develop their skills, so a city-dwelling witch by the Makoto moves to the countryside to live with her cousins. A lot of the humor derrives from just how mundane being a witch actually is, and how matter-of-factly the subject of Makoto being a witch is treated.

In anime related news, there's a few popular ones that are receiving American, live action adaptations. One of the most beloved anime films of all-time, "Ghost In The Shell", is receiving a remake next year, with Scarlet Johannson playing the lead role. I was never as enamored with GITS than with other classic anime films, but I'm glad to see such a well respected property getting a remake, which hopefully will open the doors to another mainstream appreciation of anime in the West.

 

Even more surprising is the news that "Sword Art Online", which spawned two series between 2012 & 2014, is receiving a live-action remake in the United States for television. It's still in the planning stages, but the production company that's making it has also made some high-profile series for Netflix, which bodes well for its chances of success.

 

In recent anime watching news, how wonderful was the finale of Assassination Classroom? Tied all the loose ends up wonderfully, and found the right way to end the series in the best possible way. Despite the finality of the ending, there are plans to make a spin-off of the series in the near future, which will be interesting. Also finally got around to finishing off ERASED. It feels like they tried to fit 24 episodes of material into 12 episodes, making it feel rushed and somewhat unexplained in places, but a really dark and rewarding series.

I need to see the original Ghost In The Shell at some point but yes, like you say, more appreciation of anime stories would be amazing. And Sword Art Online as an adaptation could be pretty good if they make the right changes, I've noticed SAO tends to get ragged on by the anime community and it definitely falls into the area of a show that has some flaws but has a great premise that could be potentially made better by an adaptation.

 

Will also be interesting to see if both of those manage to avoid the trap that many anime-to-live-action adaptations fall into, I've heard horrible things about the live-action version of Attack On Titan.

 

Completely agree with the finale of Assassination Classroom, in fact the whole second season was an improvement on the first for me, nothing was left unturned and it was a great way to say goodbye to all of the characters. I think my favourite bit in the last few episodes had to be the group chat scene between all of the students as it showed how close they'd all come together but the whole thing was an excellent finish to an excellent series.

 

Erased, yeah, ending wasn't quite as good as it could have been but still a great series for the dark thriller aspects. In fact I've just recently watched Angel Beats! and while I loved all of the emotions in that that also suffers from the syndrome of should have been 26/24 instead of 13/12.

 

In what I've been watching recently, the main one, and this is the first time I've been fully hooked on an anime series pretty much as it airs itself out, is Re:Zero - Starting Life In Another World. I started watching it almost immediately after my last post in this thread. It's doing the same thing as Konosuba (also a great show) in that it is a self-aware show exploring the tropes of the game fantasy worlds that shows like SAO have made popular but instead of irreverent comedy it's the dark reality of what happens when a common game mechanic, respawning, is a thing. I'm watching each episode as it becomes free on Crunchyroll and it is so INTENSE.

 

Also other things I've watched or am watching recently:

ReLife - all the Re's this season, this one so far is a slice-of-life (haven't watched many of those recently so it's a nice quiet change) about a 27-year old man who gets an experimental drug making him look like a teenager again and puts him back in high school. Quite pleasant so far although I'm not ruling out a sudden genre shift.

 

Shokugeki No Soma - (hi Cody if you're reading this) I'm not making much progress with this not because it's not good but because I know each episode will make me desperately hungry. It's hilariously over-the-top in its shonen ways of making cooking sound like the most exciting sport in the world and it's kind of inspiring me to become better at cooking myself.

 

Bakemonogatari - I kept seeing the Monogatari name thrown around so I started this... not what I was expecting, it's really artsy for anime and full of long conversations that do admittedly keep my interest.

 

Konosuba - Hilarious. Really good comedy and riffing on the fantasy tropes as I said above throughout.

 

Angel Beats! - I cried. A lot. Very accessible anime as well with all sorts of action, comedy and plenty of good characters.

 

Oh, and with all the recent Pokemon Go hype I've started casually watching Pokemon through after only seeing bits and pieces as a kid :kink: It's fun.

omg i spent the entire day yesterday watching season 1 of Pokémon myself. SO GOOD.

After a long anime break I've watched a couple this week: Boku Dake ga Inai Michi (Erased) and the films Kurage no Shokudou (Jellyfish Diner), Wasurenagumo (Li'l Spider Girl) and Fuse: Teppou Musume no Torimonochou (Fuse: Memoirs of a Huntress). I only really loved Erased.

To update from last week, in terms of what I'm watching, what I've recently finished watching -

 

RE:Life - This is an interesting one, given that although it's being shown weekly in Japan, the entire series was dumped onto Crunchyroll in July, so I marathoned it in 3 days. Really enjoyed it, full of humour, pathos, and it felt really special to me, given that I'm about the same age as the protagonist.

And the plot twist in the final episode really took me by surprise, I really didn't see it coming.

 

 

Little Witch Academia - these are two short films that were put on Netflix after the studio behind them (who were also responsible for Kill La Kill & Space Patrol Luluco) got them funded through fan-funding. The shorts centre around a group of witches who study in a modern-day school for witchcraft, and the hijinks they get up to. In the first short, they accidentally release a dragon during a training exercise, and in the second they are made to organize a parade for the city about the history of witches, which then turns into a major incident. They're adapting it into a full series soon, and I imagine it'll become a real favourite when that happens.

 

Love Live! Sunshine - This is a sequel/spin-off to the original Love Live! series, which centres on a different group of girls. A girl called Chika, from a rural town in Japan, is a fan of µ's, the girl group founded in the original series, and is inspired by them to start her own group called Aqours in the hope that they can eventually take part in and win the annual Love Live competition for best school idol group in Japan. Whether you like this or not really depends on whether you enjoyed the original Love Live! series (like I did), although I doubt you'll warm to these characters as much as I did to Honoka, Umi, Nico et al.

 

Sweetness & Lightning - The series most likely to have you saying "aww" this cour. Kohei is a teacher who is looking after is young daughter alone after his wife passes away. Finding himself unable to cook satisfying meals for his daughter, he strikes up a friendship with a student whose mother owns a restaurant, as she teaches him how to cook for his daughter. A really sweet slice of life.

 

New Game - A workplace comedy about a group of young women who work for a games company, and the various hijinks they get up to.

 

The Morose Mononokean - a supernatural comedy about a shinigami who guides yokai back to the underworld, and the high school student who inadvertently gets wrapped up in his world after becoming accidentally possessed. It's not as good as I had hoped when I first watched it, and I'm more watching it out duty at this point, but it's mildly diverting if you like that sort of show.

 

And I've started to go back and watch old episodes of Pokemon for nostalgic purposes.

Just finished watching the first season of Boku No Hero Academia - it was so good! Reminds me a lot of Hunter x Hunter and cannot wait for the second season. It has huge potential.

Well, Sweetness & Lightning has provided the cutest moment in anime this year. Anyone who doesn't think that The Shark Song is just adorable is just wrong.

Finished Assassination Classroom season 2. It was even better than the first season :snif:

I've just finished Shigatsu wa kimi no uso (Your Lie in April). What a beautiful anime. So well drawn, so poetic and lyrical, it exceeded all my expectations. 10/10.

 

I'm also slowly watching Monster. I'm at episode 12 (out of 74) after over a month and it's still not making me want to binge it, but it's good.

 

Up next on my list is probably the Monogatari series (watched the first few seconds and it's a shot of a girl's knickers wtf) as well as the new Digimon film that's coming out next week (I'm hoping this one is amazing. The previous two only had a few good moments).

I've just finished Shigatsu wa kimi no uso (Your Lie in April). What a beautiful anime. So well drawn, so poetic and lyrical, it exceeded all my expectations. 10/10.

 

Up next on my list is probably the Monogatari series (watched the first few seconds and it's a shot of a girl's knickers wtf)

 

YES at Shigatsu, so beautiful and classy. It should also be shown to anyone with a slight interest in classical music - if they're okay with little bits of anime comedy. It made me really interested in picking out the subtle beauty of classical music - in the same way, Shokugeki is currently making me more interested in the art of cooking.

 

Haha, I just recently finished Bakemonogatari. It's... weird and very self-referential and there are quite a few 'erm' moments in that sort of department but because it's an anime where mostly what they do is talk against abstract backgrounds for 20 minutes the characters are some of the best realised (if each of a certain cliche) in anime that I've come across.