Rottcodd

There's nothing quite like it really.

The closest comparison I can think of is Drifting Classroom, but it never got an anime adaptation.

Bokurano is similar in some notable ways, but it's an ensemble and set in (more or less) our world.

Casshern Sins is sort of oddly similar - broadly similar setting and tone and a lot of the same themes, though a much different story.

I guess Noein is sort of similar, insofar as it's a cast centered on children, the stakes are much bigger than they initially seem and tragedy lurks around every corner, but it's different in most details.

And Kaiba is actually sort of very broadly similar too - much different setting, artstyle and story, but a similar downbeat tone and broad subject of people, and mostly children, at the mercy of a screwed-up world.

And I can't think of anything else even vaguely similar.

Yeah - that was a good Jugemu.

And I'm tempted to drop this right here. I just have no hope that what's going to come next is going to be satisfying.

They completely explained the mystery, and unless they have an unusual season of 11 episodes, there are two more episodes left. That’s quite a lot of time to spend after the mystery has been explained.

I was wondering about the same thing.

From what I can find on the database sites, it is indeed scheduled for 12 episodes. So obviously something has to happen, and something relatively momentous (or at least that will be seen as momentous by Bertia, which will in turn make it momentous for Cecil). I can't imagine what though.

I hoped after last week's episode, and sort of suspect really, that Heronia and Pii-chan will get some sort of happy ending. Maybe something that oddly fits in with the game canon?

Yeah - more broadly, as I think about it, this needs some sort of resolution that will satisfy Bertia as well as Cecil - something that's close enough to game canon to lead to Bertia accepting that that's the way it's "supposed" to be, and that will still allow Cecil to get the ending he wants (and really the ending that Bertia wants too, though even she doesn't yet realize that).

We'll see, and I'm looking forward to it.

Since I decided to drop all of the ongoing series that I thought would be better binged, I had some free time last week, and I've been exploring donghua lately, and decided to go back and watch the beginning of a series that's currently on its seventh season - Quanzhi Fashi aka Full-time Magister aka Versatile Mage. And I liked it.

It's pretty straightforward - magical academy and a student who's derided as a loser but then reveals himself to actually be far and away the most powerful mage there. It's sort of what Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei could've been if the MC was a genuinely nice guy instead of a tediously arrogant asshole. There weren't any big surprises, but it was pleasant to watch him grow and improve, and there was enough background context to make it especially enjoyable when he inevitably curbstomped his unjustifiably arrogant rivals.

And there was a bit of a hint at some very dark background that I suspect is going to become much more important as the seasons go on.

Just caught back up with this, and wow. They did it again.

It's been an odd series, because while the basic idea is strange, most of the story has been relatively straightforward. Not without drama, but the drama for the most part hasn't been anything too far beyond the norm for school slice of life. But then suddenly they'll drop in some huge gut punch of an event, and it's like everything comes to a screeching halt, just left standing there, staring agape at what just happened.

I keep thinking, "I can't believe they just did that." But they did. And then it sort of slowly recovers, regains its feet, and starts moving again.

I'm really curious to see where it's going next, because basically the whole school now has been clued in to the existence of the replicas.

I suspect that it's going to be another gut punch.

The Ramparts of Ice

I've been thoroughly enjoying the anime adaptation. And as I recently commented on the latest episode's thread, I've realized it's been doing something fascinating.

Not just the tone and feel of the story, but the actual depictions of the characters - their design and artstyle and movements and gestures and everything - have changed as the characters (mostly Koyun) have changed.

There was an early clue when an episode ended with a confrontation between Koyun and Minato that ended up with her blowing up at him, and seemingly entirely justifiably, and then the next episode opened with the exact same interaction from Minato's point of view, and it wasn't just different - it was almost as if it was an entirely different interaction. There was virtually no correspondence between what Koyun thought she was hearing and saying and what Minato thought he was hearing and saying.

But the really impressive thing is that that's become a part of the series. As it's gone along, the same people and things, either as seen from different viewpoints or even just from Koyun's viewpoint at different times, have been constantly changing.

Like there might be a scene of a conversation between Koyun and Yota, and it will start from Koyun's POV, then switch to Yota's, then to Miki's, then to Minato's. And each version of the scene will actually be somewhat different - it's all the same scene, but it's not even just that the different versions will be interpreted differently - to us, the audience, they're actually portrayed somewhat differently, as each version is filtered through the presumptions of the current POV character.

Similarly, when they first showed Igarashi, he actually looked dark and sinister. Everything about him - his posture, his build, the look on his face - everything - was threatening. He'd sort of loom up somewhere in Koyun's peripheral vision, looking like a pure villain. But already, as it's gone along, though Koyun hasn't yet entirely revealed the story behind her reactions to him, he's been changing. Every time he appears, he looks a little less villainous and and a little more just human. And in this most recent episode, as they're moving toward Koyun finally telling the whole story, I was keeping an eye out for him to appear, and when he did, I barely even recognized him, since he looked... perfectly normal. His eyes and his hair were recognizable, but other than that, he just looked like any other guy, rather than the dark and evil weasel he looked like earlier in the story.

And that's a really neat trick that I don't think I've ever seen before.

And what you've said here about the manga seems to tie right in with that.

Now I find myself hoping that Pii-chan, and I guess Heronia too, get at least some sort of happy ending.

I've never gotten the impression that the reincarnation behind Heronia is a bad person really - she's just sort of shallow and lazy, so she expected to just breeze through all of the checkpoints and raise all of the correct flags and essentially automatically get the good ending, and it confused and frustrated her (and understandably really) when nothing unfolded the way it was supposed to. How was she to know that the reincarnation behind Bertia was so adorable?

But anyway, we're back on track for the alternate route good ending, and I'm looking forward to it.

Ah... I'd been waiting for the All You Need is Kill movie.

I read the manga first, so Edge of Tomorrow, generally entertaining as it was, was a disappointment in the long run.

All I hope really is that this movie has the courage to tell the same story the manga told.

Edit to add, after watching it:

First off, I had forgotten that this was Science SARU, though I was reminded about one second in - there's no mistaking that art style.

All in all it was... pretty good.

Broadly of course it was the same story, but it differed in a number of details, some of which I think might have even been an improvement over the original. Others were definitely not an improvement though. Overall, I'd rate it at somewhat inferior to the original, but vastly superior to Edge of Tomorrow.

Will do.

<Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table> vol 4 - bit on the aftermath of Cloudy Beach, then a fair amount of time spent following Yuki in the real world, which is a new thing. Then a particularly disturbing game called Halloween Night and the introduction of a new villain.

Started Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table vol 5, but had only made it part way through when I watched the latest episode of Agents of the Four Seasons, which was sort of simultaneously interesting and disappointing. I've been suspecting this for a while, and this episode really drove home the feeling that the adaptation is breezing past details and failing to tell the full story as it was originally told. I was pretty certain the original was an LN, so I looked it up, and sure enough it is (and by Akatsuki Kana, the author of Violet Evergarden, which is a detail I remember learning before the season started, but had since forgotten), so I switched immediately to that - <Agents of the Four Seasons> Vol 1: Dance of Spring Part I. About a quarter of the way through, and already it has gone into more detail, but nothing really significant yet.

I've never done this before, but I've decided that right now - before the next episode airs - I'm going to read the original LN.

I just can't escape the impression that this adaptation is giving us a poorly condensed version of the real story. It's good all in all and I am enjoying it, but still... it just feels sort of cursory and shallow - as if there's much more to the story and we're only being afforded glimpses of it here and there.

Normally, I'd let it go and plan on maybe reading the LN afterwards. But I just feel like if I did that, I'd end up regretting it - that I'm going to be better off experiencing it the first time exactly the way Akatsuki Kana wrote it.

Well... I do agree with your second paragraph pretty much entirely. They did a great job of cranking up the drama surrounding her performance, and especially by making the introduction so simple and seemingly drab. That sets the stage for a very dramatic transition to... something, and I think it's definitely going to be worth seeing. I'd enjoy it more without all of the ad hoc narrators telling me things that I could figure out on my own, but it's shounen, so that's the way it goes. It'll still likely be worth seeing the rest of her performance.

But at this point, that's the only thing keeping me going.

I appreciate what you're saying, and you may well be right and I'm just too cynical. But I just don't believe there's any legitimate in-universe explanation for Issho's transformation or the direction the story's going. IMO, it has nothing to do with the art of storytelling, and everything to do with Jump's business model. In order to turn the series into a cash cow they could milk as long as possible, it was necessary to dump Akane's initial, concrete goal of getting far enough in rakugo to confront Issho and win some justice for her father and replace it with some more nebulous goal, and that's exactly what they're doing.

But I do still at least want to see the rest of her performance.