Top Gun

And yet Beastars and BNA went huge. (Goddammit I blame Oda for turning me into this.)

Ballmastrz was FAR better than either Black Clover or Shippuden last night. Mutant Totoros riding Akira cycles followed by a straight-up Spirited Away falling scene, and the second episode was one big Vampire Hunter D homage. And the main character transforms into Mazinger Z every episode. Give me more please.

"Which one of you is a Replicant?" *Spider-Man.jpg*

Give me middle-click or give me death!

To each their own I guess, but I would absolutely put a bullet through my head if I were forced to browse like that.

For the love of God get yourself an external mouse.

If you think that's the worst dub, you haven't heard actual bad dubs. A lot of the cast is pretty stilted and awkward throughout much of Crest, but they improve significantly by Banner. I'm not going to say it was a particularly good dub, but it hit my threshold for "listenable." And what do you mean? FUNi released it a year or two ago.

Crest/Banner was a fucking masterpiece. The late 90s and early 00s had so much great sci-fi shit being produced.

That one's definitely on my radar. And no, I haven't looked into GITS. The look of it is going to be...something of a hurdle.

Someone wake me up when "well-written sci-fi" comes back in vogue.

I'm not saying that every single solitary entry in this genre is worthless or anything, but I do genuinely believe that it lends itself to incredibly lazy storytelling and bad writing. "Hey, let's take this sad-sack nobody, introduce him to Truck-kun, and have him reincarnate in *INSERT GENERIC JRPG SETTING* where he has *INSERT X RANDOM QUIRKY PREMISE* happen to him!" At the end of the day it all feels like wish fulfillment for pathetic lonely otaku. And I'm not just saying it out of pure ignorance: I've read enough season previews and reviews and general premises of these series to the point where they all legitimately blend together in my mind. And they just. keep. pumping. them. out. This whole isekai wave is just the latest in a long string of overplayed anime fads, right up there with moeblobs, cute-girls-doing-cute-things, harems, and every other flavor-of-the-week. Like those others, it does next to nothing for me. I'll grant that Overlord looks at least somewhat more interesting than most, but I can't say the same for Konosuba, which reads like it's trying to have its cake and eat it too by parodying a genre while indulging in all of its tropes at the same time. The thing that really sets those older in-another-world series apart is, first and foremost, the writing. Instead of just lifting generic RPG mechanics, they spent time and effort making their alternate worlds into living, breathing places, with their own rules and histories and politics. The protagonists taken to them didn't fall ass-first into an idealized new fantasy life, but had to deal with serious issues, and very often wanted nothing more than to go back home. And said homes weren't just ignored after the first chapter, but remained part of the story, with people there missing the protagonists and wishing they'd return. Hell, even Inuyasha of all things handled a lot of these elements better than your average generic isekai does today. And if you want to look at the trapped-in-a-game variety, .hack//SIGN told a far more compelling story than anything SAO has managed to crap out, and it did so without its protagonist having an entire harem fawning over them. At the end of the day, what I want out of a series above all else is good writing and story development, and at this point in my life I'm pretty confident in my ability to seek out entertainment that provides that opportunity. All of that being said, there is one modern isekai that I'm genuinely interested in checking out, and that's Ascendance of a Bookworm. But the reason for that is how different its approach seems when compared to the vast majority of what else is out there.

Fucking hell people.

I have zero interest in any that aren't so old that they predate the term "isekai" in the first place. Twelve Kingdoms, Escaflowne, Rayearth, that's the good shit.

I am 100 percent in favor of Demarco continuing to avoid fucking isekai shit. It's the laziest goddamn premise for a series, and I hope the fad dies in a fire.

In which Shippuden wasn't satisfied with sending us to hell metaphorically so it decided to do so literally.

Ballmastrz is legitimately more entertaining than whatever the hell Shippuden and Black Clover are doing at the moment.

Fucking hell.

I don't really watch new stuff but Deca-Dence looks pretty cool.

Toriyama draws the most fundamentally unappealing faces.

You mean Mikasa?

Monster was the very first series that our group of AD misfits watched together as a discussion on AIM back in 2006, and we've kept things going ever since, so it holds a very special place in my heart.

This show was one of the most enjoyable anime experiences I've ever had. Super stoked for season 2.

...do you not understand that people are capable of working remotely?

Sales issues for most of these games you mentioned have almost nothing to do with "getting woke" or whatever the fuck and everything to do with them having legitimate issues. Like just as one single example, Yooka-Laylee received a decidedly lukewarm critical response due to its basic level design. Angry mouth-breathing YouTubers like to pretend their opinions represent the popular consensus, but shock of shocks, they usually don't. How many of the people that jump on the "OMG Sony is censoring boobies!!1!1" bandwagon had even heard of some of the games in question before they became a news story?