Tag: sousou no frieren

Anime I’ve Watched

Tiberius2 Comments

Equally a lot and not enough

Getting back to the end of year wrap up of content, I’ve definitely watched more anime this year in between my regular duties in the Army. A lot of what I’ve been watching this year has been stuff I’ve written about on this blog yonks ago, but also some new stuff that can (and probably should get) their own posts, but this being a speedrun like before I shipped out to Fort Lost in the Woods for training is gonna be a brief overview of some stuff I got a look at this year, but didn’t necessarily finish. I may add more to the watch times of these respectively and give them the reviews that they deserve, but I’m probably gonna do what I normally do and play it by ear. Here’s the anime lineup:

  1. Texhnolyze
  2. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
  3. Clevatess
  4. Frieren
  5. Neon Genesis Evangelion

With a bonus. If you were to ask me if it was anime, it falls under “Yesn’t.” It’s based off a manga and has an anime adaptation that is currently four seasons in, but it’s doing something different.

Normally, this doesn’t always work even with a Japanese cast, but the short version of my upcoming opinion is, “Yes, please.”

Now to the list, starting off with:

Story time: in the first half of advanced individual training to be a 25H commo troop, we had a student leadership, selected by the drill sergeants based on the presentation that the trainees gave during a Soldier of the Month board. For those who don’t know, these boards are a series of questions given to the soldier (or servicemember since every branch does this) to test their knowledge and proficiency on a given subject. They mainly boil down to memorization. The student leads we had at the time seem to have convinced the cadre to use Discord of all platforms to mass communicate important information. But the logic behind it is solid. Wish I were a fly on the wall to see how it unfolded.

I’ve long since left the Discord server, but I recall one of the chats had an anime recommendation chat and one of them had a link to a series called Texhnolyze. I saved it thinking I would get to it immediately and only recently did I start watching it. With a name like that (certainly a tough one to pronounce out loud since X and H don’t normally meet in English), coupled wit the fact that the YouTube channel associated with it is still up, it belongs to the shortlist of things I can search up and still find on YT intact, but with some series falling victim to this Death Note of a blog when I bring them up, sometimes it’s a matter of time or whether bad luck notifies the YT copyright system and takes it down. Thankfully, Taiho Shichauzo is still up, so I still have access to my buddy cop fun times.

Calling Texhnolyze unique is only gently rubbing the surface, never mind a scratch. The description Google gives me reminds me of the Blade Runner: Black Lotus anime produced by Crunchyroll and distributed for weekly airing on Toonami in late 2021.

And now that I think about it, it makes me think of a bunch of other sci-fi, cyberpunk anime we’ve been getting over the years

There isn’t much to glean from just the first two episodes, but from what I recall, the society within features the protagonist, Ichise, a downtrodden prize fighter past his prime, losing his limbs and getting rebuilt $60 million man style. The setting is an underground city known as Lux, a crumbling city-state under which three main factions vie for power over what remains. Something, something, undesirable soldiers fighting for least desirable piece of real estate, only it’s not a base in the middle of a box canyon no one cares about.

I promise I’m not trying to be harsh here

Running from April 17 to September 25, 2003 for 22 episodes, I don’t wanna critique it based on originality considering a lot of my favorite things aren’t the most original or necessarily universally loved things in the world, but more with what came before, concurrently and after. Ghost in the Shell for instance debuted its manga in 1989 and has become a franchise ever since, with a 1995 movie (and 2008 redo with touchups); Neon Genesis Evangelion debuted in 1994 and has also spawned a franchise, spearheaded by Hideaki Anno who still leads the project to this day; and I had already mentioned Cyberpunk in this blog, so I’ll beat that horse when I have more to say.

On its own merits, Texhnolyze seems to have a few things going for it, but merely falling into obscure reference, cult classic status. As a result, it’s up my alley. Let’s describe it a little: a future dystopia where humans have cybernetic enhancements to answer for physical shortfalls, battling between wide corruption and complicated power struggles. That’s vague enough to describe Texhnolyze and 2018’s Megalo Box, which interestingly looks like it was animated in 1997 and due to a bevy of legal hoops and hurdles wasn’t able to air until over 20 years later.

This series is said to pay homage to Ashita no Joe and Hajime no Ippo, but I suspect the animation team had at least one Texhnolyze fan onboard

The 22 episodes are still up for viewing as of this writing and I had saved the playlist in 2024 so I know where to go without having to close a pop-up ad every three seconds and so do you.

Channel: Parham

If the channel disappears, you know what I’m gonna say. And since I mentioned Ghost in the Shell earlier:

  • Major Kusanagi looks different from the 1995 movie here

This might be a bit harsher than I intend it to, given I’ve seen the movie at least three times and have had to retreat to Google-sama to get an understanding of what the hell it’s about. But in general, a cybernetic officer in a futuristic Tokyo is tasked with apprehending an entity who goes by the name of the Puppet Master, an advanced AI with the power to Worm and Trojan Horse itself into nearly any vulnerable computerized device to include humans with mechanical enhancements and this description alone may not do it justice.

The manga debuted in 1989, the movie in ’95, and Stand Alone Complex in 2002. It does raise a lot of biting, complicated questions over AI and technology’s advancement over time, though with my limited viewing of the series (four episodes on Tubi before Toonami snatched it back up after many years pimping it out to streaming services), while it scratches the itch I didn’t know I needed scratched, like Texhnolyze before it I’m only just getting started, but unlike Texhnolyze, it’s had decades to cook and it isn’t as straightforward as most other series of its caliber. The mangaka Masamune Shirow may not have realized what he’d unleash when he first put pen to manga panel, but with what it’s become ever since the movie, anyone getting into the franchise has a hell of a lot homework to do.

I’m going to be light on spoilers as I have a more in-depth review scheduled to be drafted and published in February, so until then I have more of it to watch. Take this as a light recommendation until then. Also, the content of this series and Serial Experiments Lain may reinforce Trunks’ biases against androids.

Channel: ImmaVegeta

Better get the boy an iPhone for Christmas

  • Fantasy world but the monster and the protagonist become an impromptu family

An interesting one that Crunchyroll was promoting at the time by letting you binge it in one sitting. I loathe binge-watching and forever hold the practice over Netflix’s shoulders, but I think for 2026, I’ll have to loosen that up a little. The series starts off with the protagonist’s party setting out to destroy a beast known as Clevatess, not knowing how royally f[clashing]ked they are until they all drop dead. Clevatess, the monster happens across a baby of noble birth that belonged to a royal family under threat from a rival kingdom and adopts the baby while also reviving one of the heroes to forever live as a zombie of sorts, but using many of the same principles that affected Bucciarati in the second half of Vento Aureo, sans the slow deterioration and lack of pain receptors.

If you’re curious what would drive a bloodthirsty beast to take on the role of a step-parent to an orphaned infant, well, the situation is equally a bet from the baby’s mother, and a test of humanity. Clevatess isn’t the only beast in the world; others like him are also out and about. The zombie female MC was among a group of 13 heroes sent to dispose of Clevatess and the rest, but ultimately struggled at the first hurdle. Following their demise, Clevatess was approached by the mortally wounded mother of the royal baby who had requested he spare humanity starting with the infant. If Clevatess could successfully raise the infant then humanity would be spared, but if not, then mass extinction imminent.

Some may draw unfavorable comparisons to Overlord, and I dispute that so heavily because the comparison is false. Yes, Clevatess and Momonga/Ainz adventure and aid with strict conditions, but Ainz is basically fantasy RPG Genghis Khan. Clevatess is a dark being hellbent on destruction. Even if the source material shows Clevatess leaning Overlord-like down the line, I’m not so certain I wanna give it the copycat flag just yet. Not for nothing, it flips a few tropes on their head where the bad guy becomes the caretaker, though I wonder just how old that trope is. These days, you can find it if you search hard enough, but looking for older examples is a struggle.

The manga debuted online in Japan on the LINE platform in the summer of 2020, so the anime was the only way I ever knew about it. Having said that though, for what it has going for it, it needs more episodes because 12 isn’t enough to give it the leg room it needs.

  • Elves don’t change like humans do

It kicked off in 2023 and had been memed all over the internet even to this day. The most prominent memes being, Ubel being a morally ambiguous mage with… lickable armpits… (ಠ_ಠ), Fern and Stark f[explosion!]k so much that Frieren could leave and come back to greet a litter of their children, and Frieren herself is a god-tier racist, on par with LowTierGod.

Demons beware

Admittedly the memes are far as hell in the animanga and I’m only a couple of episodes in. Aside from these three jokes, the plot is an after story. It’s a DnD campaign that wrapped and the heroes are getting used to peace after the evil entity had been defeated once and for all. Frieren the mage, Himmel the hero, Heiter, and others among the party all go on their separate ways while remaining friends. The one thing that gets to Frieren herself is her elven lifespan compared to that of humans. 50 years pass and Himmel is a frail old man while Frieren, due to her elven species, hasn’t aged a day.

This doesn’t bear on Frieren’s shoulders until Himmel passes away from old age and the elven mage regrets not having gotten to connect with him better. Over the course of the series, the characters, even in their new chapters in their lives, remember Himmel the hero by what he did and how he lived. Each person who remembers him has a lot to say and all of them are positive and uplifting. Of course, the heroes, having known him personally, have more personally ridiculous and intimate stories with him. This goes on throughout the series and Netflix currently has it in its line up so give it a watch if you don’t feel like pirating it. I’d talk more about what I’d observe, but in this instance, I think it’s better when you watch it for yourself.

  • Don’t make me ask twice! !GET IN THE ROBOT, SHINJI!

A staple in the mecha/gundam genre, NGE very much alludes to Christian mythos with the angels harkening to their biblically accurate appearances. There’s a lot to say about Evangelion, it’s movies, and the Rebuild sequel movie series, but this is another one I have slated for a 2026 review.

The main crux of the series is not “Wow, cool robot,” like most of its contemporaries. It’s a combination of peace of mind through acceptance of oneself and clever critique of the military use of children for dangerous experiments. Also the theme of personal loss in juxtaposition with self-acceptance. Roughly every character is fundamentally broken and the fact that much of the cast consists of 14-year-old mech suit pilots, Anno is a weird guy, alright, if this is the proof in the pudding.

What has people continuously talking about it for 30 years strong is the memes, of which there are many. You can have some of your favorites (my personal ones involving Asuka in some capacity), but the one thing to note is that unlike a lot of fandoms, I think the Eva fandom I’ve seen is one of the few to actually read its source material and understand it without issue. This puts it above some of the other series to air concurrently and down the line where the bombastic, earth-position-influencing combat is the sole or central focus of a series. It technically disguises itself as an allegory for depression through Christian mythology, but Hideaki Anno won’t admit that.

Like Frieren, it’s also on Netflix and so is the movie, End of Evanglion. I so far am wrapping up the anime, but I haven’t touched the movie yet. And speaking of movies:

  • Even more Ainu cooking, but for real

So Satoru Noda began writing the manga in 2014 and the anime adaptation followed four years later. After that came this live action movie in 2024 and a continuation in a second season … Hmmm… The live action version of Golden Kamuy does well to capture the humorous elements of the manga while staying true to the practical elements. It isn’t 1:1 for obvious reasons but this was completely unexpected. A surprise to be sure but a welcome one. I had talked about Golden Kamuy before, so a run down of the salient points are everyone knows of the legend of the Ainu gold, the map to the treasure is tattooed on a group of eccentric Abashiri prisoners, and death is the only thing stopping everyone from using the gold for their own purposes. A race to near-infinite wealth of sorts…

Yeah, I went there.

I only give it high marks because I love the series so much, so as much as I recommend the movie and live-action series, consider that this part of the blog is a bit more subjective than normal since I consider myself part of the target audience for something like this.

Anime I Haven’t Seen (Will I?)

Tiberius3 Comments

Onto something somewhat related

This blog is dedicated to various forms of entertainment. The default is the Japanese medium known as animanga — a portmanteau of anime and manga, or Japanese animation and comics/graphic novels — joined together with movies, video games, and more. Since I’ve begun this blog two years ago, it hasn’t deviated very much from this promise and so far I’ve given my opinions and recaps on all the series I’ve seen, games I’ve played, etc. But for something slightly different, there’s the subject of anime I have heard of through the grapevine (read: dedicated subreddits) but have yet to watch myself.

Not anime I have in the pipeline, mind you; anime I haven’t seen and don’t have concrete plans to do so. Now this isn’t an exhaustive list of animanga series. There’s always gonna be series being produced and adapted. Even as I type this, some madlad in Japan is hard at work crafting peak fiction. Whether that series becomes a hit, I cannot say. I’m not Shueisha, or Kadokawa, or Dark Horse Comics. So here, I’ll talk about series I’ve heard of and whether or not I may view them based on a variety of factors. If your favorite happens to be on here, forgive me if I’m not immediately convinced to give the viewing it deserves. Also, expect a few jabs here and there; it won’t color my opinions on the series in question. Keep in mind, the factors that play a part — fanbases included.

1. My Dress-Up Darling (2022-)

      Between The Saga of Yukana Yame and So, Like, Tokyo Ain’t the Only Place to Find a Gal, Ya Know?, I’m far from immune to the gyaru aesthetic and on my radar and my Reddit feed came The Gyaru That’s into Cosplays by none other than Shinichi Fukuda. To be fair, I checked out the more recent chapters on a whim after randomly delving into the dedicated subreddit. I was desperately curious to learn if there was more to the opening scene than just “introvert origin story” and sure enough there was. Not gonna spoil that, just read the manga or check it out on MangaDex if you’re impatient like moi.

      The basic gist is a young Wakana Gojo takes up hina doll sewing; a girl who thinks he’s cute discovers this and tells him he’s cringe and he learns to never share his passions again. A moment of silence for our star lead. Fast-forward to high school and a gyaru cosplay queen (who may or may not bare a striking resemblance to Sydney Manetapho (née Poniewaz)) named Marin Kitagawa discovers Wakana’s passion for sewing and requests his expertise to craft perfect cosplays. Over time, they fall into the “gradual lovers” trope from their own perspective, but slight spoilers from recent chapters, it evolves into the “everyone knows but them” trope. As in, they hang out so much that the surprise was that they weren’t dating prior to Kitagawa’s announcement of love, and it was inevitable that Kitagawa would let that cat out of the bag, as Gojo would be too embarrassed to tell the truth about how he feels. Not that he doesn’t want to be seen with a pretty girl like Kitagawa, more like if he’d confess, immediately slam his mouth shut, then pray to what he calls God to change the subject in .5 milliseconds.

      Channel: Crunchyroll

      It’s sweet, romantic, and one that I’m not too certain if I’ll ever get around to viewing. What kept me away was the hype. Audiences tend to be fickle and malleable and only those dedicated to a medium are gonna stick around long after the final episode of “Season 1” airs. The rest will move on because they can’t read. Now that the hype is at rest, I’m at a better position than I was to view it after clearing my current list (that perpetually expands like a f[bricks falling]king brick in the wall). Giving Light-footed Hojo a rewatch dubbed and watching Cute Girls Playing Music Cutely, whichever one I finish first (the former), I’ll have to replace it with Dress-Up My Gyaru Bestie.

      2. Fullmetal Alchemist (2003-04; 2009-10)

      The darling of anime with all the awards to prove it, like Gigguk I have yet to see this masterpiece for myself, but unlike Gigguk, I’m not waiting on an arbitrary moment in the far-flung future before I sit down and watch Halfplastic Wizardry. It lives on through the same tired-old memes about a girl and her dog, but more to the point, I would have nothing of value to contribute to the consensus. It’s like yet another European Theater WWII game. It’s not gonna stand out unless it does something extraordinarily unique and I doubt I’m the man to deliver. People love it, people hate it, people aren’t the most enthusiastic about it. That’s a lazy man’s consensus and much like my eventual venture into Pokémon decades later, I’m gonna find stuff I like and don’t like but otherwise not have strong opinions on Hiromu Arakawa’s masterpiece.

      Aside from praise for Winry, of course.

      3. Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (2023-)

      Outside of living like an emperor on anime forums and subreddits, The Tale of the Racist Elf is known for doing a few things differently as hinted by it’s subtitle. Beyond Journey’s End as in, the story didn’t end after the DM declared the evil king dead. Acknowledging the after-story with engaging characters, Frieren runs with the concept and builds on as a sequel to a nonexistent story. Anyone can start a DnD campaign and see it through to the end, but I haven’t heard of anyone continuing long after the story has finished.

      Will I ever watch such a phenomenal show? If I was writing this before the adaptation was announced two years ago, probably yes. Now that it’s lived up to its promise, there’s no reason for me to put it off. Maybe I’ll do it by the Spring or Summer. Who knows?

      4. Redo of Healer (2021)

      Its reputation precedes it. It gained notoriety for various scenes involving emotional abuse and sexual deviancy, things I’m not opposed to in fiction, but the shark that keeps me away from the water comes from the fanbase. Outnumbered by the majority female fanbase, if what I’ve heard about the corrosiveness of the fujoshi community is to be believed, then in a nonsexual way, any man who wanders into territory where women are the majority (not necessarily target) demographic will be eaten alive.

      Contrary to the blog’s name, I avoid rocking the boat because it’s a damn good boat and as I said, there’s f[nom]king sharks in the water. Let me enjoy my limbs before I get tired of them. Now, there’s probably gonna be a few who recall the horny trio post from October and wonder why I’m drawing the line at Revenge of the Cock Slap. Well, between Rias’ boobs (where miracles happen), Anna Nishikinomiya’s legs (where Niagara Falls can be found) and Monster Musume (where slime girls exist), all of those have fun with the concept. White Mage Do-Over takes itself more seriously with the subject matter and while I’m not a kink-shamer, for once I have to put this image of Our Lord and Savior to address the fanbase.

      I’ll still keep my mind open if someone can convince me that How Dare You Boot Me from the Party is more than just a ginormous Lady Boner.

      5. Oshi no Ko (2023-)

      Another series with an interesting reputation online, I’m the furthest thing from the target audience for this. I barely keep tabs on western celebrities (except for some legacy names), I clearly have no business attempting to break into East Asian idol culture. And from what I know, I’ve seen enough of the business side. Oversimplifying the business of idols, they’re held to impossible ideals under sweatshop conditions to present a falsified image of themselves manufactured by their higher-ups for a worldwide audience. What makes this dangerous (apart from Oshi no Ko’s first episode) is that a select few deranged fans have learned the truth and, sucked in by the parasocial activity, took matters into their own hands; homicide, suicide, damn near terroristic threats when they learn that the idol in question was hiding children or a family or was probably a victim of sexual assault. I’d say, “what were they expecting,” but to add onto this, this can happen to anyone. You’ve definitely listened to a podcast and vibed so much with the hosts that you imagined they were beyond the screen or headphones. But they’re not.

      The insistence on perfection in idol culture and the “rug pull” at the lack of perfection keeps me looking in from the outside with disbelief and disappointment, and that’s just at the content. As for the fanbase, well, incest jokes are king in that corner, but unlike The Twisted Graves Siblings, there’s nothing close to dark comedy here. Again, I make known my normie status and I highly doubt I’ll check it out for myself, unless someone Saul Goodman’s an argument for this courtroom judge.

      Without malice or enthusiasm, I want to be convinced.

      Once again, there are other series that cross my path that I’m either on the fence about or fully committed to avoiding or not depending on multiple factors. I entrust fans of X to persuade me to join their creed, perhaps by presentation or whatever else works. They’re clearly convinced that their series of choice has merit, as am I so inclined to watch Lady Rias in action after so long, and I want to see what the hype is or was about. Maybe I can decide then if the series speaks to me with certainty.