Thought I'd update this thread with all the anime I've currently watched and finished over the past few weeks. I don't know if you guys know, but at university I'm the president of the anime and manga society. Long story, but I took the job for a friend in 2016 so that the committee would have three staff members and not be disbanded, the other two members didn't do a thing to keep the society running and then we dwindled to around 8 members including myself (we had around 20+ before) and so in 2017 I decided to take the role of President, and have two friends take the other two roles and in doing so we've pushed the society back up to around 20+ members every week.
Since I never cared much for anime until I came to uni, I had seen around 20+ shows and read around 10+ manga's and even by last year I had only seen around 50+ and 30+ manga's so even then I was lacking, so talking to people about anime was difficult since I watched shows no one knew, and they watched really mainstream stuff I would avoid or not watch, so I decided that this summer I would try and watch as much anime I could so that I would have a much larger repertoire for the newer members, and with that I started with Diebuster and Gunbuster.
I watched Gunbuster on the 18th, and Diebuster on the 19th. Both were 6 episode, 30 minute shows and I was happy to scratch those off my MAL since I put them on there. I actually wanted to watch Diebuster due to it's AMAZING opening.
But I found out that it's a sequel to something called Gunbuster, so with that I put Gunsbuter on my plan to watch on MAL and left it at that. When I finally got around to watching all six episodes in one day, I absolutely loved it. The main premise is that the main character is the daughter of a space navy captain who died in a battle back in 2015, and it's 2021 and she wants to basically follow in his footsteps and find out about him. It starts off on Earth, but as time goes on we see a lot more. The show has a few mecha battles, but is mostly about the characters and their struggles, especially the main character's.
My favourite aspect of the show was how some battles took place light years away and they would have to travel there in time. In other words a 10 minute battle to the main characters would be
six months on their spaceship. This is expanded on in incredibly sad ways as well. One of my favourite moments was where
Spoiler:the main character comes back home to Earth after being on the Space ship for a few months to finish off her graduation (since she's 17) and then talks to her other friend about how it's been 11 years on Earth and it'd be weird running into some of her old friends and just as she says that she walks into her old friend who is now a mother of a small child
The ending was a real tearjerker and I loved watching it.
Spoiler:The final battle transported the heroes 12,000 years into the future due to light speed jargon, but in the process saved the lives of humanity as they know it. The two heroes talk to each other in the mechs about how they've saved humanity, but are unsure if humanity even exists anymore. They're both so far into the future they're probably wiped out and as they look towards earth they see a huge sign made out of lights that say "WELCOME BACK" proving humanity survived and after all these years they never forgot about them
Spoilers for the ending:
Diebuster on the other hand was a lot more comedy based. I actually can't remember most of it, but it was about a girl who was more of a robot than a human who also wanted to be part of the fighting fleet in space. Of course she's clumsy and doesn't really work well with them, but over time she adapts and is helps humanity win the wars. The main character also idolizes a person they named Nonoriri who isn't really known to the audience (unless they work it out).
It was a much more lighthearted anime, and had it's comedy moments. It was fun and pretty good as well, but I just say much about Diebuster, I've truly forgotten a lot of it. It was surprisingly not as good as Gunbuster, which is funny because I really wanted to watch DIEBUSTER over Gunbuster, but whatever the ending to Diebuster was great as well and nearly had me in tears with how perfect it was because
Spoiler:throughout the whole anime there are few references to Gunbuster, mostly phrases people say and how the Gunbuster tech has been lost, you don't really know where in the timeline this is until the final episode where the main character looks up from Earth and you see two red spinning orbs showing that THEY were witnessing the return of the ORIGINAL GUNBUSTER's FROM GUNBUSTER.
It was honestly such a perfect ending it made the whole thing worth it. I recommend both Gunbuster and Diebuster to everyone, it was so good.
After that I watched something called
Terror in Resonance and man this started off really well and then ended pretty badly.
The main story is that two teenagers are setting up bombs around Tokyo and are giving the local police riddles to solve to discover the whereabouts of the bombs. The first one goes off without any problems as the police didn't know about it, but as time goes on they begin to make more riddles and bombs and the location is solved by a retired police officer who eventually comes back to find the third bomb and disarm it before it's given a chance to blow. They also save a teenage girl
who sticks with them throughout and is quite a burden to the group.
It's actually quite good at this point, we've got two intelligent kids with a secret motive and an old disheveled police officer wanting to find these two kids and solving riddles, it was giving off a Death Note vibe at this point, both sides had to out smart the other and was honestly really good and the next part was even more interesting.
By the 4th or 5th episode, the FBI get involved and bring in another agent who knows exactly what the two teenagers are planning, and is able to outsmart them into bringing themselves out into the open at a crowded airport. This is where we learn two things, one is that the teenagers do not want to set off the bomb in a crowded area and kill people, and the other is that this agent is of a similar breed to the teenagers. All three of them were raised in an orphanage that was trying to create intelligent beings that would surpass the average human, and only those three survived.
The airport scene was really good, pretty much every side was trying to outsmart one another and getting one up'd everytime. It was the best part of the anime and was really interesting, but sadly I just lost interest by the end. By the end from what I can remember,
Spoiler:the agent was in love with one of the teenagers and as she has the chance to kill him and end all of this, she just kisses him on the lips and kills herself due to a previous event when they were kids where the teenager was saved her life and she was returning the favour. Along with this, the nuclear device has been placed in the stratosphere and was set to go off by 10pm which would wipe out all the electronics in Japan, causing a dark age for Japan. This was their plan all along, and the motive as to why? They wanted for people to know of them and the experimental orphanage, they wanted the world to be asking "Who are these teenagers, why can they do all of this, where did they come from?" and other questions, but the final episode was just that the FBI assassinates one of them, and the other dies of complications and all we learn is that the disheveled police officer "knows" about their past, and so does the teenage girl. Both of them basically carry on their lives and I believe it's hinted that they do tell the world about the orphanage, but that's about it.
It's a shame, it was very good to start with and then just had a useless ending. Although my crappy description about misses out on a lot of plot aspects, it was worth a watch I'd say for the first 9 episodes, but after that it just drops off in quality.
After Terror in Resonance, I began to watch
Toradora!. This one was on my list before I even had a MAL, but I could never get around to watching it. I finished it in four days as well.
It's 10 years old at this point, but I guess I'll say the premise. It's about a small girl named Taiga and a tall delinquent looking dude named Ryuiji although is a very kind hearted person. Both of them are in love with other students (who surprisingly are friends with the other person) and decided that they will help each other go out with the other one.
It's actually a sweet little slice of life story. It had all you could ask for in an anime really, Romance, Comedy, Slice of Life, School, Drama, Action. I really enjoyed it for what it was. It starts off quite slow as they're still introducing characters and such, but over the course of the episodes you really see some great dramatic and heart wrenching moments. The show is full of things like that as well as light hearted moments. It's quite similar to angel beats in that regard, it has the lighthearted comedy and the heart wrenching drama.
The OST is killer as well, I loved the OP and ED as well as the general OST of the show. Very upbeat and carefree like a school life. I won't really talk about the ending here as I couldn't do it justice, but I'd recommend watching this one as it's really cute and fun.
After finishing Toradora, I went onto
Mayoiga and boy was it meh. I don't really want to talk about this one much so I won't. Main premise is that a bunch of people go on a trip to escape their lives but eventually find themselves in Silent Hill without the fog (literally) and that's about it.
The episodes don't really go anywhere and overall it wasn't worth the watch. The ending was what you would expect from something like this, and overall nothing was worth it. I did get a few laughs out of
this image though, the entire reason I watched Mayoiga.
Finally, over the last two days I watched
Violet Evergarden. since this is becoming a long post, I'll keep this short.
Violent Evergarden is about a girl, named Violet. Who loses her commanding officer in the great war (implied to be WW1) and doesn't know what to do with herself. In this world letters are written by Auto Memoir Dolls, who basically put your feelings onto paper and she wanted to become one as she doesn't understand emotions as she was never raised with them. The final worlds her CO said to her was that he loved her, and she wanted to understand what that meant. The sum it in the smallest words possible, it's about a Terminator learning the meaning of emotions.
The show takes you to many locations around the world with Violet as she goes to fulfill requests given by the client. Some being letters, and some being plays. You get to see some really lovely moments as well as terribly sad ones too. It's very much worth the watch for the emotional aspects alone, it's also a beautiful anime to look at and watch. It's also very new (came out last season), so give it a watch if you can.
Thanks for reading this far down, I was a bit lazy with a few of these but I don't mind with them. I'll probably update again in the future, going to watch something called Inuyashiki next.
), I've finished Made in Abyss and Mob Pyscho 100. Didn't care much for Mob Psycho but it had a decent ending so I just gave it a 7/10. If you enjoyed something like One Punch Man this show is basically for you.