The Anime Thread

Hrmm.

So one new show for the winter season that had some interest for me (at least to see what it was about after hearing about the source material so much) was The Rising of the Shield Hero. Crunchyroll did an early preview, and after reading the preview article on ANN I'm finding myself a little hesitant.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/preview-guide/2019/winter/the-rising-of-the-shield-hero/.141699

Some of the elements that are mentioned by the reviewers as coming off as pretty tone deaf are a part of why I'm hesitant. One reviewer's score being "burn it and salt the earth" doesn't help matters much either. LOL But if the show is going to spend a lot of time kicking the protagonist when he's down over and over and over and over again, that might be a bit much to ask of this particular viewer at this moment in time.

I Love this part

Oh man! English dub of season 1 of Konosuba?!?!

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/ne...-dubbed-in-english-spanish-portuguese/.141729

If done right an English dub of Konosuba is going to be hilarious, but that's the key: if it's done right. No cast announcement in the article, so I'm probably going to go into the dub with a bit of caution.

A little anime-related story about being a bit more attentive about what you order.

During the holidays I came across a box set of the Rosario+Vampire manga series in my online shopping. Special collector box, both "seasons" of the manga (that's what it says on the box) in the set. There were some photos in reviews so I knew it was going to be a sizable set. But I liked the anime and wanted to see what the source material was like (and maybe see why some fans got themselves bent out of shape about parts of the anime), so I splurged a bit and ordered it.

Now, with that out of the way, let me introduce you all to my Bumble.

Got this guy around Christmas one year (even though he scared the living daylights out of me as a kid lol) and use him for holiday and winter decoration. He's not small, either; he stands about sixteen inches tall and about seven to eight inches wide at the belly.

So anyway, I got the box set, and it was BIG!! How big?

It just about completely blocks the Bumble.

So yeah, it never hurts to be attentive about the size of items you order. LOL On the plus side, I've got a good amount of reading material ahead of me.

Yay, more teasing!

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/ne...r-takagi-san-gets-2nd-tv-anime-season/.141847

That was such an adorable series, so I'm glad to see more on the way.

Okay, what I've checked out so far for the winter season:

The Quintessential Quintuplets-Solid harem show. Good animation, the first episode is a great setup for the series, and even though it's been one episode the girls don't seem like they'll just be caricatures but actual characters.

Domestic Girlfriend-Definite drama show (or just plain melodrama) of the season. Could be interesting to watch unfold.

Real Girl-Second season of this series, so I was gonna watch to see how that story played out anyway. LOL I like that they aren't dancing around some of the events of the previous series and are picking up right where they left off.

Kaguya-sama: Love is War-This could be a fun one. A back-and-forth series of "battles" taking place between two highly intelligent student council members who view love as warfare and a power play. Therefore they're constantly trying to make the other one confess, propose a date or other such romantic activities in order to "win." The visuals can be REALLY busy, but watching how their plans play out or get thrown off-track by the oblivious student council secretary was fun.

As for others? Date A Live season three is going to wait until the dub starts (gotten too used to the dub cast by this point), while I'm still on the fence about Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka (interesting premise but it might depend on how grim-dark it gets). The Magnificent KOTOBUKI and Girly Air Force might be ones I check later, dunno yet.

Huh, seems to be more than a few female-centric military themed shows this season.

One I can't really recommend, though, is How Clumsy you are, Miss Ueno. The premise sounds adorable (super genius girl can't find a way to confess her affection to a member of the science club) but I couldn't make it through the first episode, and they're only 15 minutes long. I don't mind toilet humor or anything like that, but their attempt at it had me going "ugh" really fast and turning it off.

Thank you for the updates

Okay, so this morning I remembered that the English dub of Konosuba was supposed to start hitting Crunchyroll about the middle of the month, so I checked it out.

First off, it's not a slow rollout. We don't get one dubbed episode per week, the entire first season has an English dub available right now!

Secondly, the dub cast is good. I've only watched the first three episodes where they introduce the core group, and the voice actors were solid choices for their respective characters. They don't go quite as over-the-top as they could have, but they get the humor right and their delivery is solid. For example, Darkness defending the other adventurers from the cabbage swarm played out just as well as it did in the original Japanese, so my fears about a bad/lackluster dub were unfounded.

Here's hoping the rest of the season plays out just as well.

More Konosuba stuff. There's a figure of Kazuma coming out to tie in with the upcoming Konosuba movie, and if it wasn't for the price I consider getting it. Lots of accessories (including a flash for his right hand as he's using his Steal skill) as well as...

...multiple faces/heads as well.

Picture from this site.

https://toynewsi.com/368-32631

Grrr, the image keeps coming and going, so let's try it like this.

Well Dragon Ball fans, here are some of the best DB parodies in other anime

This weekend i started 3 new animes. 1. Rising of the shield hero 2. The price of smiles 3. Wataten, an angel flew down to me. So far I am loving Rising of the shield hero. The other two i only watch the 1st episode and i am going to have to wait to see. Any thought anyone on these. Please let me know

Haven't checked out the first two. The third one's premise seemed a little sketchy even though it's supposed to be a comedy so I didn't check it out.

Interesting casting on the Quintessential Quintuplets dub.

With each girl having distinct personalities I wouldn't have been surprised if they had gone with a wide variety of voice actors for the sisters. But instead they gathered together a bunch of actresses who either sound similar to one another or can sound similar. It's a good way to show their similarities (especially being quintuplets) while still giving some distinctive voices to the characters.

It's gonna bug me until I see a cast list, though. I think I've identified four of the voices playing the sisters, but number 5 is eluding me.

The Rising of the Shield Hero and The price of Smiles are excellent so far. I am really enjoying them

Okay, so Funimation is apparently going all out with a limited edition version of their release of High School DxD Hero.

With the limited edition you get:

• The series on Blu-Ray and DVD
• A fabric poster featuring custom artwork
• A 60 page art book
• A translated light novel from the Japanese release
• Four art cards described as "titillating"

All in a special rigid collector box.

I don't even wanna know how much THAT will cost. LOL

Also, the dub for season three of Date A Live has started, and while the cast is back in full something just seems a little....off. I think it's a new studio doing the animation (thought I saw an article saying the original studio went out of business) so that may be it. Also a decent chunk of the first episode is "hey, let's introduce/re-introduce the characters to start things off" territory, so that might be it too. Hopefully it's just a one episode kind of thing.

Kaguya-sama: Love is War continues to entertain me.

First off, there's this end theme they threw in on the third episode.

Fits the character perfectly and it's just freaking adorable.

Secondly they threw in a fun little Easter egg/shout-out to another show. In the latest episode they were planning a welcoming party for some exchange students from France and Chika (the girl in the video) had suggested cosplay. After panning across some of the costume stuff they gathered, there stands Kaguya herself holding a very familiar orange-colored hamster-themed hoodie.

Finally, the "battles" themselves have remained entertaining and watching Kaguya and Shirogane try to get the upper hand when they're obviously stupid for one another continues to entertain. Although it mystifies me that Funimation isn't doing a dub for this show, they'd have a blast with it.

Aww, bummer, the video for the end theme from episode 3 got taken down.

Ah well, it's worth checking out that clip if you can find it.

Managed to see it while it was up, and it looked fun, and cute
Probably won't see it unless it gets released on DVD as don't have a streaming service (and barely understand languages that are not English)

Hey Everyone
So it appears a special super deformed crossover anime project will combine Konosuba, Overlord, Re:Zero, and Tanya the Evil this spring