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What are you watching/reading?

So far, this season I'm watching:

Re:Creators
Eromanga-Sensei
Attack on Titan 2
Little Witch Academia (continuation from previous season)
Boku no Hero Academia 2
Renai Boukun
Rokudenashi Majutsu Koushi to Akashic Records
Busou Shoujo Machiavellianism
Hinako Note
Clockwork Planet

Not yet, but I also plan on watching:
DanMachi 2
Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata ♭
Zero kara Hajimeru Mahou no Sho
Anime statistic on MyAnimeList:
400 animes completed ✓
6000 episodes completed ✓
100 Days completed ✓
... what even am I doing with my life?
Omigod Shingeki No Bahamut: Virgin Soul is just amazing! Captures the same spirit of adventurous energy as the first season, plus Nina makes for an absolutely loveable protagonist with her infectious cheerfulness, myriad of hilarious facial expressions and habit of crushing over any remotely good-looking man she bumps into. She's basically Amira's genkiness with Favoro's playful scamp tendencies mixed in to one adorably pink-haired package. Though her reticence around guys is kind of understandable when you consider that she apparently turns into a giant freaking dragon when sufficiently aroused/embarrassed. That's gotta' make dating at least a little awkward...

Apart from Nina (and she really does carry the show all on her own; easily one of the best anime protags I've ever seen along with the likes of Ryuko from Kill La Kill), the overall plot also seems quite interesting. There's a nice sense of moral ambiguity with the demons becoming enslaved after the events of the first season, particularly since we know that demons aren't the card-carrying evildoers that humans believe them to be.

And from the first few minutes, it appears that a rebellion of the human world against the heavens is going to play into this somehow (it's unclear if the opening was depicting something that already happened or a flash-forward to later on). Since angels in this setting are from morally pure either, it's not even obvious that they're the good guys in all this.

King Charioce is also giving me hella' suspicious vibes. Now only is he silver-haired (never a good sign in anime), but he looks on at a brutal gladiator fight without showing any expression (well to be fair, Kaiser sort of did too but he at least had the decency to look somewhat disturbed) and with how he's hyped up as some kind of savior figure, it's just begging for a sinister reveal somewhere down the line. At this point, I'd be more of a surprising twist if he actually turned out to be the wholesome monarch everyone thinks he is.
Evil flower of Pure Illusion... we're going to pluck you out!
Been reading Smokin' Parade, a shonen/horror manga by the author of Deadman Wonderland.

Basically, the plot is that super prosthetic limbs invented by the shady bioengineering firm Ame No Tori occasionally go haywire and turn their owners into berserking fleshy abominations with cutesy stuffed animal heads (and I promise this part is way more disturbing then it sounds). An equally shady group called the Jackalopes consisting of people with steampunk animatronic limbs (as opposed to Ame No Tori's more organic creations) that transform into weapons make it their job to fight off these monsters (called "Spiders" because of how they often walk on all fours). After the protagonist Youkou Kakujou finds his older sister turning into one such abomination (and losing both arms and one leg in the process- on his 15th birthday no less) he ends up being saved and summarily recruited by the Jackalopes in their war against the Ame No Tori corporation.

As you can imagine, it's a fairly dark and "edgy" work with a fair amount of gore (while most of it is not too detailed or offensive IMO, the opening scene with the protag's sister turning monstrous is pretty messed up). However, the slick art, stylish characters (if you don't mind that basically everybody gets depicted with a slasher smile half the time) and rather entertainingly morbid sense of humor in parts were enough to draw me in.

If you like steam/biopunk stuff with a horror tint and black comedy, I'd recommend checking this out if you have the time. (Just finished chapter 2 today, BTW)
Evil flower of Pure Illusion... we're going to pluck you out!
I started Hunter x Hunter (manga) recently and wow, I can see why everyone likes it so much! Super good so far! Killua and Hisoka are definitely the best characters right now (just finished the Celestial Tower arc).
Checked out the dubbed first episode of 18if today. Though the episode itself was fairly decent, all I could think of while watching was that the whole premise of "travelling through whimsical dream environments to resolve people's emotional problems" was done way better in Flip Flappers. Seriously, that show just blows this out of the water, both in the characters and the presentation of the dream-world itself.

18if's dream-world feels too self-consciously "wacky" to come off as an authentic dream, IMO. It's like the directors simply took every "surreal" element they could think of and crammed them all together into a disjointed mass. Again, contrast with Flip Flappers' first delve into Pure Illusion, which was actually pretty tame in terms of raw visuals (basically a snowy wonderland), but sold the whimsical atmosphere far more effectively.

Then again, the whole point of the Witch of Thunder was that she created a dream-world to shove together every "cool" thing she could think to hide her fundamental emptiness, so maybe the carnivalesque atmosphere was just for her particular dream-world and later ones will have a more individual aesthetic. I hope so, because ~wackiness for the sake of itself~ for 12 episodes straight is going to get real boring, real fast.

There's also other weird issues that I hope will be explained later on, like how cat-guy says that dying in the dream world equals dying in real life only for Haruto (whatever the MC's name was) to get his literal head chopped off and revive to no ill effect. Or how Haruto "wakes up" into the same dream-world he started off in rather then the real world. (I guess it's like the dream-hub from Yume Nikki?)

Overall, it's a decent show with an interesting premise, but not nearly as good as it could potentially be.
Evil flower of Pure Illusion... we're going to pluck you out!
Watched the first episode of Princess Principle this morning. Really cool, with a well-done gothic atmosphere (as opposed to just slapping gears everywhere without rhyme or reason like a certain other clock-based anime from the past season). Ange's saying that she from the 'Black Lizard Planet' was totally a reference to the phantom thief from Edogawa Ranpo's work, right? Since they're mystery-type stories with a similarly gothic atmosphere...
Evil flower of Pure Illusion... we're going to pluck you out!
Been watching some monster girl stuff with the family recently.

Demi-chan wa Kataritai (aka, Interviews With Monster Girls) was pretty good. The teacher does some things that in reality probably should have gotten him fired if not arrested, but our audience perspective lets us know his intentions are pure and we can excuse some things as comedy shenanigans. Nice look at discrimination in a school setting, if a bit unrealistically optimistic (especially that bullying episode).

Conversely, we started watching Centaur no Nayami (Centaur's Worries) and the first episode had some startlingly uncomfortable messages. It seems to be wanting to say that anti-discrimination laws are somehow bad. Now I haven't read the manga, but my wife has and she was rather upset that the anime apparently deviated heavily from the manga's original message. The manga apparently showed a world where anti-discrimination laws are a bit heavy handed and overreaching, but the world overall was still better than our own, which keeps the message a bit more grounded and realistic. The anime does not have any such balance or subtlety, and just wants to say anti-discrimination is bad. We'll probably watch another episode or two and if it continues with right wing messages, we'll stop.
Checked out first ep of Made In Abyss this afternoon. The whimsical yet subtly creepy setting with those beautifully depicted environments reminds me a lot of Flip Flappers. Just from the premise alone, this is already setting itself up to be one of the most interesting anime series in the summer line-up, even if the art-style is a bit more overtly cartoony then I'm used to.
Evil flower of Pure Illusion... we're going to pluck you out!
So, I just checked out the first episode for Kakegurui on a whim tonight and holy crap, it's freaking awesome. The amount of raw sex-appeal and insane emotion you can infuse into a scene of two characters standing across from each other playing rock, paper, scissors is absolutely unbelievable. Plus the yuri-rific opening theme and... let's just say this is definitely a show I'm going to be keeping an eye on. *drools*
Evil flower of Pure Illusion... we're going to pluck you out!
Started watching the English dub of Owari No Seraph on a whim today. It's pretty slick and well-done, though that scene of
Yuu's fellow orphans getting massacred by Ferid
(tagged on the off-chance someone hasn't been spoiled about this already) probably would have had a lot more punch if it hadn't been part of the series' initial plot summary. Pretty badass how Yuu managed to turn the tables and headshot Ferid (with his own pistol no less), though there's no fricking way the dude's actually dead.
Evil flower of Pure Illusion... we're going to pluck you out!
Watched the first episode of UQ Holder today. Wow, they're really milking that Eva/Yukihime fanservice for all it's worth. And I totally called that
teacher-guy was going to be evil
from the moment he offered to teach Tota and the kids magic. Something about his voice and overly earnest looking face just seemed off. Overall this seems like a pretty typical Shonen series of the "cool & edgy" variety (i.e with cranked up gore and sex-appeal), sort of like Taboo Tattoo but done way better. Tota is your standard hot-blooded protag but his enthusiasm is pretty endearing and it's nice for once to come across a character who becomes immortal without angsting over it or considering it a curse.

I only have the most basic knowledge of Negima (basically from skimming TV Tropes) so I'll have to see how much that becomes relevant later on. As is, it seems like a fairly self-contained adventure at least.
Evil flower of Pure Illusion... we're going to pluck you out!
So I watched the first ep of Black Clover tonight. It's pretty standard shonen for sure, but sometimes it's nice to see a show that's genuinely simple and upbeat without trying to be overly complex or "edgy". That said, the protag's voice is incredibly annoying. Dude literally shouts out every other line, to the point where he almost came off as a parody of your standard shonen protagonist at times.
Evil flower of Pure Illusion... we're going to pluck you out!
Well, I watched episode zero of Dies Irae this morning. It wasn't... bad? The characters and themes were at least interesting, and there were awesome parts like Reynhard's giant flying golden skull fortress, but the lack of budget for action scenes was painfully obvious (particularly the last montage of the LDO rampaging through Berlin, which started out as limited animation and degenerated into a series of cool-looking still shots).

Other parts just came off as weird or nonsensical for someone not familiar with the VN or light novels. Like the two silver-haired maniacs (Bey and Schreiber) fighting each other for seemingly no reason, or how Reynhard is sent to put down the fighting but instead just hangs out in a random field staring at tanks(?) and having a philosophical conversation with Karl. And the transition from Reynhard's realization of his true self to the battle at Berlin was abrupt as all hell, to the point where it basically assures someone unfamiliar with the VN is going to have absolutely no idea what the fuck is going on or where these new random characters are coming from.

All I can do is second what a bunch of others elsewhere have already said. An interesting start, but I really hope the show has kept its budget in store for the main plot to come. Dies Irae has some absolutely amazing and jaw-dropping scenes, and I'd hate to see the show unable to do justice to them.
Evil flower of Pure Illusion... we're going to pluck you out!
Just watched episode 1 of Code:Realize. An Otome game adaptation that isn't complete garbage? Praise the lord, it's a miracle! Seriously though, this was a quite fun and energetic first episode. It's snappily paced, the male leads aren't complete douchebags who treat the heroine like dirt and the underlying setting and mystery of Cardia's past is actually intriguing beyond just being a means to ship her with various cute boys (it helps that I'm a sucker for steampunk-type series). Cardia is still a pretty standard "blank slate" Otome protagonist, but at least her backstory offers a sensible reason why she acts that way and a possibility she might grow out of it later on.

Also, did anyone else get a chuckle out of the main villain group in a supernatural romance series being named 'Twilight'?#tb{:p}
Evil flower of Pure Illusion... we're going to pluck you out!
Huh, A Sister's All You Need is actually... pretty good? I was expecting a silly harem comedy, and it obviously is that, but it has a surprisingly strong emotional backbone as well (Itsuki's monologue at the end about people never getting what they want was especially nice). Not gonna lie though, I totally decided to check out this series after seeing screencaps of the Nayuta x Miyako groping fanservice in episode 2.

...My god was Itsuki an absolute asshole in college, though. One of the few times the stock anime scene of the girl slapping the guy for saying/doing something perverted has come off as genuinely justifiable, rather then just the girl getting flustered and overreacting.
Evil flower of Pure Illusion... we're going to pluck you out!
Just watched the dubbed first ep of Zodiac Wars. The fact that everyone agreed to the battle to the death makes it really hard to sympathize with any of the characters, except Monkey who apparently hopes on resolving everything non-lethally (unless that's a front and she's secretly a total psycho too, which honestly I wouldn't be surprised from a show like this). Kind of confused how the Boar recognizes participants from previous iterations though. If it's really a tournament to the death, shouldn't they all have died? I don't really see how repeat entries are possible...

Also,
Boar really had a pathetic end. Given the whole scene where she riddled Rabbit with holes was just in her imagination, it means she died without being able to fire even a single shot
...
Evil flower of Pure Illusion... we're going to pluck you out!
Decided to check out the first ep of King's Game to see if it really was as terrible as everybody was saying.

...I have so many questions. Why would Nobuaki switch instantly from wanting to let Natsuko die to being desperate to save his whole class? Why does the jock get punished for seemingly no reason when he attacks Nobuaki? How does a guy manage to hang himself and die when his legs are still touching the ground? How come the authorities haven't taken any notice of everybody in Nobuaki's class dying mysteriously?

While the premise itself is rather interesting, almost nothing about the execution (if you'll pardon the pun) makes any sense whatsoever. Along with how blatantly edgy it is, I doubt I'll be watching this any further.
Evil flower of Pure Illusion... we're going to pluck you out!
So I watched the first two dubbed episodes of Fate/Apocrypha recently. Finally been exposed to the wonder that is Astolfo. His voice and mannerisms are just so infectiously cheerful it's amazing. Also, it was hilarious how nonchalant he was during Celenike's attempt to "torture" him. My favorite character so far is probably Mordred, though. I'm a sucker for those "carefree yet hot-blooded tomboy" type characters, and reminding me of Kill La Kill's Ryuko (one of my favorite anime heroines) doesn't hurt either. Seeing her savagely rip apart those golems during the 2nd episode's climactic fight scene was amazing. It really shows how inhumanly powerful Servants are.
Evil flower of Pure Illusion... we're going to pluck you out!