HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - 10/10
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - 10/10
HIGH RECOMMEND - 9/10
HIGH RECOMMEND - 8.5/10
RECOMMENDED - 7/10
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - 9/10
I know the article is late and it's almost time to do the Winter roundup, but here we go with the Fall 2023 one and we had a banger of a season with some great shows, two of them showing why they're at the peaks of the shonen and isekai genre (Jujutsu Kaisen and Eminence In Shadow respectively). A great season, a great bunch of shows, I suggest giving all of them a shot. Also since Crunchyroll is changing everything, I watch everything in Japanese with subtitles so change the audio track to see the peak voice acting I catch. Basically, if you catch the clips and they are pretty dull because the English VA isn't putting their best into the scene my bad, if I watched it in English I'd find good clips for this instead, because I know they do exist but who knows with the clips right ?? Let's take a look at what I watched and some things I have to say about them all. JUJUTSU KAISEN - S2 - THE SHIBUYA INCIDENT ARC This was the arc I knew everyone who didn't read the manga and only watched the show was not ready for; when they did the Hidden Inventory/Premature Death mini-arc last "season" I was like okay there's a few moments before anime only fans are stuck with the horrors of the Shibuya Incident Arc. That's what this arc is, pure horror, if you have favourite characters that is; one thing I can say through the entirety of the Jujutsu Kaisen manga is to never get attached to people. Gege Akutami takes pages out of the George R.R. Martin playbook constantly in their series and this arc is our first evidence of that. Basically the Shibuya Incident is the culmination of the plan we see “Geto” and the other talking curses make during the entirety of the first part of the story; seal away Gojo Satoru in the Prison Realm and usher in an age of curses. This season is incredibly packed with fights which is one of my favourite parts you have: Gojo vs Hanami/Jogo/Mahito/Choso, Kugisaki then Nanami vs Haruta, Maki/Nanami/Megumi/Naobito vs Dagon, Toji vs Dagon, Toji vs Megumi, Yuji vs Choso, Sukuna vs Jogo, Sukuna vs Mahoraga, Kugisaki vs Mahito, Yuji vs Mahito, then Yuji/Todo vs Mahito. Basically an action packed season, all of which were incredibly intense battles, and it’s honestly hard to explain the season because it was mostly action other than Gojo being sealed and Yuji now having 15 of 20 Sukuna fingers in him, with Sukuna being able to take control for longer now. Everything else is just a watch and see the crazy fights. Though the one shitty thing is MAPPA was so hard and demanding on the Jujutsu Kaisen animators that they all decided to leave and form their own studio to continue the show going forward. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - 10/10 THE EMINENCE IN SHADOW - SEASON 2 This has to be one of my favourite not only isekai's but honestly one of my favourite anime just because of how cool yet ridiculous it is. This season we again have our main boy, Cid Kagenou aka Shadow, once again placing himself into several situations that he doesn't even realize how serious they are or what is actually going on. Instead, he just is simply "pretending" to be this side character in other peoples stories while trying to be "the Eminence In Shadow" this delusional personality he has and act super cool doing it. This season has 3 parts to the way it has been told: the Lawless City, John Smith & the market crash, and finally the Orianna Kingdom. Like the last season each one of these small segments make up an interesting story overall in the continuing saga of Cid/Shadow and Shadow Garden. The problem I have with winding down this in a roundup is since these parts are relatively small to make up the whole, if I summarize them there’s a good chance I say & spoil everything that happens within them. Eminence In Shadow is just too damn good for me to spoil anything, the animation is amazing, the characters are super creative, the plot is great, the voice acting is fantastic, it is amongst the top isekai anime ever to me and that is incredibly lofty praise. I will say the season has set up to not have a “3rd season” but they are doing the next part of the story in a movie format before moving on again. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - 10/10 RISING OF THE SHIELD HERO - S3 We return to Naofumi, the Shield Hero’s, story and where we left off was the party returning from the other world and then destroying the Spirit Tortoise; with their next goal being locating the other 3 Cardinal Heroes to train to fight the Phoenix. First thing that happens is several of the demi-humans living in Naofumi's land are stolen away from their homes as slaves so the Shield Hero, Raphtalia, and Filo head to a colossieum to get them back. There they meet Sadeena, a whale demi-human, who we find is actually Raphtaliia's "older sister", basically the lady who protected her when she grew up; they also meet a Clown assassin named S'yne that we learn more about as the season progresses. This season also shows us more about what happened to the other Cardinal Heroes and how Ren, Itsuki, and Motoyasu were treated after falling to the Tortoise. How the people treated them as failures, how things turned terrible for them, how Myne corrupted Ren & Itsuki, and how all three of them gained their cursed weapons similar to Naofumi’s rage shield (which is also when he realized that each hero has one of the seven deadly sins). With the party’s help all three of them overcome their issues and join with Naofumi on his land to train and become better to fight the Phoenix. With Ren falling in love with Éclair, the knight Naofumi leaves in charge of his village when he is away, Itsuki learning how to understand life thanks to Rishia, and Moyatasu treating Filo as some kind of muse. During the colosseum we also meet Fohl and Atla, white tiger children who become incredibly strong and important to Naofumi’s party; Atla calling herself “Naofumi’s shield”. I personally looked up future stuff about the two because they’re such interesting characters and found crazy cool info we’ll learn about them in the future. We also see the return of the big elder dragon which became a zombie that Naofumi fought, the “father” to one of his villagers, which they fight again and destroy with the dragon reminding the Shield Hero that his rage will always be a part of Naofumi’s soul. We end on the cliffhanger that involves Raphtalia's family lineage and something desperate they as a party now need to take care of quickly before the Phoenix awakens. HIGH RECOMMEND - 9/10 GIRLFRIEND, GIRLFRIEND - S2 The continuing story of the Naoya and his girlfriend Saki and his other girlfriend Nagisa. Oh, and also the girl that is love with him that he ignores, Mirika, and finally the girl who loves him but can never show it since she's Saki's best friend, Shino. The boy with two girlfriends and two more girls that want him; every guy’s dream, to be the ultimate gigachad all the ladies want. The girls want to do so many things with Naoya, he just wants to do his best to please both his girlfriends. Before anything can happen though, Shino says to all the group she refuses to let this two-timing go on anymore, so she’s moving in with them to stop it (though she has the ulterior motive of trying to get over Naoya by making him just into Saki and not other girls too, she’ll think she has no chance and give up if he’s 100% into one girl). There is a lot of typical romance stuff, going to a festival to see fireworks together, going camping, going to the beach, etc. Each one of these has different romantic tropes and by the end, everyone finds out about Shino and Mirika is on a “test basis” where she has 6 months to try and convince Naoya to date her as well. It's a hilarious harem rom-com that is just something that I find is meant for guys to just sit braindead and watch, which I love; I think it's a funny show to watch and really enjoy it. HIGH RECOMMEND - 8.5/10 BERSERK OF GLUTTONY In a world of knights and magic, where every person is given a “skill” by God at birth, Fate Graphite is stuck being a lowly “guard” for a rich family of Holy Knights that bullies him; the reason being Fate’s skill is not important in the world at large. Gluttony serves no purpose whatsoever in terms of finding job, but the girl he loves and loves him, the Holy Knight Roxy Hart gets him a job at her estate to save him from bullies. To “protect” Roxy he buys a sword, that he finds out can talk to him named Greed, which is also when he discovers Gluttony isn’t just any skill but one of the Seven Deadly Sins that go against the will of God. Once Fate starts to gain stats with Gluttony using Greed, he must constantly devour more and more souls to stay sated, so he doesn’t go berserk and attack everyone. He does his best to contain Gluttony’s hunger, to grow stronger, and protect his beloved Roxy. With the help of another Seven Deadly Sin user, Myne, he learns to truly harness his abilities better to become the best version of himself, defeating another Sin along the way. Roxy does eventually find out about her "Faye's" ability when he does indeed save her from a deadly super dragon; but he knows he could hurt her if he loses control so they part ways sadly while he learns to control himself. RECOMMENDED - 7/10 SPY X FAMILY - S2 Spy X Family is another one of those shows that is just absolutely fantastic, you get some episodes which are nice and simple slice of life episodes and moments but you also get awesome action & mystery thanks to Yor's assassin background & Loid's spy background. This season moreso than the first season had WAY more action even from the first episode where we think Yor gets gravely injured, except she just gets shot in the ass and it becomes a hilarious episode when Loid tries to cheer her up on a date. But like I said, this season has a lot of spy and assassin things in the later episodes that I don't want to illuminate on what exactly happens as it dilutes the episodes themselves. There's still the fun episodes of Anya's school adventures with Becky and trying to become "friends" with Donovon Desmond's son Damian (basically the entire reason this show exists in the first place). Loid knows for sure that Anya is absolutely too dumb to get enough Stella's to become an Imperial Scholar so befriending Damian is basically his only hope; while it might seem like that is impossible Damian has a crush on Anya that he'd never admit. That is how I think it will play out, that he'll have some kind of awkward moment that way that gets the Forgers and Desmonds to meet (but that's jumping wayyyyy too far ahead). This was just another funny season of Spy X Family and that's all I like, this season I did appreciate the amping up the spy/assassin action, it's a show I suggest everyone watch from start to finish. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - 9/10
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AuthorThere's not much to say about me other than I'm an avid gamer, comic reader, sports fan, etc. just passionate about things I love. Archives
October 2022
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