PokeNirvash

Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer 16 Rizelmine 3

If it has, it's not taking effect this year. Also, I heard it was that they were trying to get rid of standard time and make it DST year-round.

Hey, remember that time the Simpsons comics parodied Death Note, only Bart was in the position of Light, Lisa was L, and Misa's role was just written out? At least "Krusty = Ryuk" is consistent.

Oh wow, I wasn't expecting my thread to get this popular, let alone become the official "Made in Abyss S2 coming to Toonami" thread... Guess I'd better change the title accordingly.

Hot dog, we have a wiener! Can't say I'm too surprised that they're skipping Dawn of the Deep Soul and going straight to Season 2. Or that they're relying on MHA reruns for the premiere slot. Really, I guess I'm just glad we got something instead of nothing.

Okay, time for a more substantial collection of final thoughts. I went into Housing Complex C not having very high hopes. When you're an original anime with a bunch of no-names attributed to the core staff, you're announced the same day as not one but two more FLCL sequels, and it's only a month or two from your premiere broadcast that your episode count turns out to be four... it's not difficult to temper expectations, especially with [as]'s prior track record on in-house anime productions. (And I'm not talking about the obvious Western parodies like Perfect Hair Forever or Gemusetto.) So it was a pleasant surprise to see the people involved actually pull off what, at least according to ANN, were for many of them a first attempt at an anime. I think amphibian actually being a visual novel screenwriter helped with that, he had enough experience to know how to make something work, unlike the complete novice who lucked her way into being Fena's head writer without a single credit to her name. I found little issue with the technical aspects. The animation wasn't anything remarkable, but it was functional with an art style that looked good enough in a consistent fashion that any QUALITY didn't feel too out-of-place. The music, though unmemorable, was also fitting across the respective scenes in which various pieces were used. And as always, Bang Zoom put in a great effort on the voice acting. It's hard to place a specific favorite - Doug Stone remains one of my favorite "old guy" voices so I'm biased towards Koba, though Jake Eberle did a great job making his voice memorable in Taka, and Sean Chiplock's off-the-rails portrayal of Mr. Koshide in the finale was absolute aces - but they were all good. (Assorted thought: "Kimi sounds exactly like Fina from Kuma 3 Bear, but without the lisp.") And then there's the writing, which provided plenty of intrigue that set up several mysteries that were all answered by the end in manners ranging from satisfying to satisfactory. Sure, a lot of them were answered in a posthumous narration of lore done in the same vein as Collar6's infamous Infodump Saga, but I'm not the kind of person who watches things in a straight shot on my own time, pausing for reasons that aren't just secondhand cringe, so I was able to handle them well. (Besides, they weren't Hakyu Hoshin Engi levels of rushed, which is the best any anime can hope for in its pacing.) Of course, Housing Complex C has plenty of flaws as well. While I can appreciate the attention to detail in making it part of the Lovecraft mythos (and not the absolute farce Nyaruko-san turned it into), down to tackling his regularly employed themes of xenophobia head-on and making something positive out of it... I can't help but feel that, being an American production, the decision to use the Cthulhu mythos as the basis for the overarching lore and mystery was a lazy one. Predictable, even. Though not nearly as lazy, even with the subtlest bits of foreshadowing sprinkled throughout the show itself and staring us straight in the face during the opening animation, as making the Koshide family the villains this entire time. Not once are we shown a single hint as to their psychotic mass-murderer sides, not until Taka realizes they're at the ultimate fault for the mysterious happenings. And even then, it comes so out of left field that it feels as if a completely different person wrote them than the one who wrote them for the first three episodes. (And last I checked, amphibian wrote all four, no outsourcing needed.) To cap it all off, making Yuri complicit in their irredeemable actions, even having a budding murder fetish of her own, is just insultingly edgy. I literally uttered "this is edgier than Akame ga KILL!" at one point. And I meant it. That said, the Koshides' gloriously guroge-worthy deaths were all cathartic and deserved, but at the cost of Kimi almost using her God powers to chuck a "rocks fall, humanity dies" ending on us. I'm so sick and tired of those kinds of endings, especially when they come straight the fuck outta nowhere and happen for next to no damn good reason. Newsflash, Iyoyoloki Soyohosu: the tiny town in Japan you've holed yourself up in for 20,000 years is not the microcosm of Earth as a whole that you think it is, so don't you fucking dare think the forced insanity of a nuclear family is enough reason to conclude "all humans are bastards" and just end everything! [sigh] Though for what it's worth, Kimi did give Kan her emergency shutdown code in the event that she came to such an impulsive decision, and he used it effectively, so it balances out. Speaking of Kan, he's a good man despite initial appearances, and I'm glad he managed to survive the series, scathed but more importantly alive. I bet Rubel was the one who messaged him on his phone at the end, and the two of them meet back up and start living their best lives now that their "horror movie chapters" are finally over. (I've already got a cameo planned for them in one of my Kunoichi season 2 chapters. I should get back on that...) All in all, it's not hard to place Housing Complex C on the ranking board of [as] original anime as in the upper half, but nowhere close to the top. It was a solid piece of animation, but one with too many warts for me to consider a favorite. If you've ever visited my MAL account, you'll have noticed that I gave this show an 8, but that's because my scoring system is like IGN; it needs a massive overhaul that I'm too lazy to do piece-by-piece in the single sitting it deserves. But I'm slowly working my way towards something more reasonable, and my actual score proves it. Though not a major deviation, I give Housing Complex C a 7/10. Stronger than expected first impressions plus the ending being on my mind frequently enough to keep me from falling asleep at the usual paces can do wonders in adding that extra half-to-whole point I initially settled on.

Black Lotus is all about breaking the law. Makes sense that [as] would flat-out ignore the rules of the write-off, even if it was most likely an accident.

Eh, at least it was properly foreshadowed, unlike the entire Koshide family - even Yuri, the fucking ten-year old - being psychotic fuck-os. Damn straight!

Shinobi no Ittoki 4 Housing Complex C 4

Mm, them and characters in more niche properties. Japan doesn't give nearly as much of a shit about smoking in fiction as the U.S. feels they themselves should.

You may also wanna color your spoiler text black, that way I can actually read it.

And here TV Tropes was making me think that killing off that guy after having him come out as bisexual was the only issue with his, y'know, being killed off. As for the clarification, Zaslav's just begging for someone to beat the shit out of him in broad daylight at this point.

There is, and even they hate season 2.

The way this reads, it's not so much "we're writing off another $2.5 bil worth of shows" as it is "all the shows we've written off thus far total $2.5 bil". At least, that's what I'm hoping is the case, but knowing the Ass Master in Chief...

Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer 15

One Piece 592-593 So, uh... I assume the characters who swapped bodies are speaking in the voices of the bodies they're in, and we're only hearing their own voices so the young'ns don't get confused about who everyone is? Kinda makes me want a dub where the voices aren't swapped, come to think of it...

Naruto Shippuden 414 Pop Team Epic 18

The Rising of the Shield Hero 6 Ultraman 19

Right, so if Yuri's dad is supposed to be the final boss, what was the point of making Kan out to be the bad guy in the episode 1 flash-forward? Just another reason this series deserved more than the four episodes meant for Uzumaki. 12:00 - Housing Complex C #4 - The End of the Line - TV-MAV 12:30 - Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon #36 - A Place (Not) For Towa - TV-14 1:00 - One Piece #592 - To Annihilate the Straw Hats! Legendary Assassins Descend! - TV-PG 1:30 - One Piece #593 - Save Nami! Luffy's Fight on the Snow-Capped Mountains! - TV-PG 2:00 - Naruto Shippuden #415 - The Two Mangekyo - TV-PGV 2:30 - Naruto Shippuden #416 - The Formation of Team Minato - TV-PGV 3:00 - Made in Abyss #13 - The Challengers - TV-MA On a lighter note, have some extra Nanachi.

Violence Jack 1 It wasn't unwatchable, but holy shit the audio mixing for the lesbian sexual assault scene (dubbed) was atrocious.

There's probably already a thread like this out there already, but whatever. We're a little over two weeks away from November 5th, the first Saturday after the most recent Toonami schedule. With Lupin Part 6 having ended and Housing Complex C coming really close to ending, it's natural to assume that they'll be replaced by new acquisitions, ones I've dubbed the "November Replacements". Naturally, I've prepared for the possibility of there being zero replacements made, a rehash of last year's exhausting buy for time. But if there were replacements to be made, what would they be? What could they be? After much thought I've come up with five "Potential Replacements" (yes, I proper-nouned that) that I could see Toonami picking up for a broadcast starting next month at the earliest. (I wrote the below paragraphs up last night in a sort of journalistic essay style, with a couple tweaks made for public viewing, so bear with me.) Potential Replacement #1 is Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War. This one’s a no-brainer. The original Bleach was an [adult swim] mainstay for the better and worse parts of its eight-year run, even serving as Toonami’s anchor for the first few years of its revival. Nowadays, with no reliable anchors in stock between our only Dragon Balls being reruns, Zaslav writing off every original that’s less than commercially stellar, and the surefire hits being under lock and key by a streaming service that doesn’t realize that Netflix is already the Netflix of anime… even a split-cour version of Bleach would be acceptable midnight slot material. With VIZ holding the U.S. master license, and no word of Disney+ having their mitts on it stateside, plus its dub having a scheduled premiere of the Friday after this year’s Halloween marathon (featuring the first four episodes of only the second worst anime to ever air on the supposedly Better Cartoon Show), Bleach being the first, if not only November Replacement will be one that’s as unsurprising as it is welcome. Potential Replacement #2 is My Hero Academia season 6. On the other hand, this one has a much slimmer shot of getting on. Two words: Crunchyroll Monopoly. FUNimation held the rights to My Hero since the beginning, but now that it’s been absorbed into Crunchyroll, their “no TV broadcast for you” policy may affect it as well. There’s a single workaround to that, though, and that’s the Japanese licensor. Demarco admitted that certain shows under the Crunchyroll umbrella can be acquired through the Japanese side of production. It was through Sunrise that they got all those Gundams; it was through TMS that they got all those Lupins; and it was through Toei that we managed to regain One Piece. And that’s without getting into how they used their partnership with Production I.G to reverse IGPX’s write-off… So yeah, Toonami could go through TOHO Animation, who wants My Hero on TV in America, to get My Hero back on American TV, but we don’t know how much sway Crunchyroll has over that decision, so we can’t hold too much confidence. After all, if they can’t go through the Japanese side to get season 2 of Mob or SPYxFAMILY on the block, what hope does My Hero Academia have? Of course, there’s always other U.S. licensors besides Crunchyroll to get your shit from. VIZ being one of them, like I said. The other being Sentai, who we’ve seen greater amounts of content from lately, between Made in Abyss and Lupin Part 6. In fact, the second season of Made in Abyss is Potential Replacement #3. But there’s a problem with airing The Golden City of the Scorching Sun on November 5th. You see, there’s a movie in-between the two seasons of Abyss that’s kind of required watching. They leave Layer 4 in the season 1 finale, they arrive in Layer 6 in the season 2 premiere, and Dawn of the Deep Soul is where everything having to do with Layer 5 goes down. (More than necessary, I might add.) Now, the movie airing on Toonami also is just as possible, but only in the timeline where Black Lotus was cut short in reruns for low ratings and not in an attempt by Zaslav to memory-hole it. (Idiot doesn’t know how seriously animation fans take preservationism.) Between that disappointing reality, the ongoing movie embargo outside of special events, and S&P’s own brand of stinginess, Dawn of the Deep Soul may wind up being an outside-Toonami watch on my part, and only if The Golden City of the Scorching Sun is the only one to make it on the block. Potential Replacement #4, meanwhile, is a Sentai title that doesn’t require any special movies for broadcast, but is even less likely than Abyss season 2 on account of its obscurity. The Kaiji anime has been a favorite of mine since I watched the first season all throughout the month of March 2011, balanced daily with two chapters of Nana to Kaoru. It wasn’t until the Tonegawa spin-off that the franchise would experience the thrills of having an English dub, and this year, three after Sentai licensed both seasons, Kaiji himself will follow suit. Announcements were made earlier this year that season 1 of Kaiji, subtitled “Ultimate Survivor”, will premiere on the HIDIVE streaming service in "Q4", or this autumn. But to date, no word has been given on exactly when the dub is premiering, let alone who’s going to be in it. (Calling it now, Blake Shepard as Kaiji, and everyone who was already in Tonegawa’s dub reprises their roles.) So it’s possible they may be trying for a parallel premiere setup, where the Toonami broadcast and HIDIVE release are done in close proximity to one another. A more than fitting follow-up for Lupin Part 6’s dub, a fellow practitioner of the parallel premiere. (At least, until the marathons and movie nights started trickling in.) It’s a real stretch, but it’s not an improbable guess, let alone an impossible one. What’s really improbable, though, is, the final Potential Replacement, #5: Magic Knight Rayearth. I know. There’s a lot to it, and I mean a lot, working against it. It’s as old as me. The dub is early Bang Zoom and therefore super-stilted. It’s not the kind of thing you’d imagine airing on a block normally watched by teenage boys and adult men, being one of those shounen-shoujo fusion manga titles. And I've already seen season 1, so personally, it would be more than a little redundant. But there’s some stuff going for it too. Demarco said he was hoping to air older anime as a substitute for the shows they want that are being gatekept by Crunchyroll, and Rayearth fits that bill. Toonami has licensed shows directly from TMS, TMS produced Rayearth, so it’s fair game in that sense too. While it is being streamed by Crunchyroll, the U.S. license is being held by Discotek – whose regular practice of not picking up broadcast rights is another reason to go through TMS – so no worry of being frozen out on that front. And let’s not forget Toonami wanting to air Rayearth back when it was new and fresh, and missing out on that chance because Fox Kids snapped it up and sat on the rights, just to keep it from being made big by the superior block. Lastly… there’s gotta be a reason behind that Rayearth poster that showed up in Housing Complex C’s first episode, especially when the only overlap in staff and cast are Wada and Koba voicing Alcyone and Geo Metro respectively in both dubs, and Toonami having the rights to air Rayearth would be a good reason to include it, even if it is a bit silly. Still, we can’t be certain that the November Replacements are Bleach, My Hero, Abyss, Kaiji or Rayearth. As I said earlier, it could be none of the above. But like all announcements, we can’t be certain of anything until the moment the announcement is made. Except for the time gen:LOCK got on Toonami, but that was a lucky conjecture. (Word of advice, Toonami? Keep season 2 of that shit the hell away from your block, unless you wanna make season 2 of Promised Neverland look like a “Top 5 Shows Ever Broadcast” contender.) So, your thoughts? Anything I might have missed, or have I gotten all the reasonables covered?

One Piece 589, 591 Cuz Toriko is teh s uck.

Chiller's issue wasn't that it had numbers that low - as if you'd expect anything more from a specialty cable network that isn't even in the most basic of packages - but that the numbers dropped 89% from week 1 to week 2. But for as much of a failure as it was, it got me to actually watch (and like!) Is This a Zombie, and for that, I'm at the very least grateful.

Hareluya II BOY 1

Shinobi no Ittoki 3