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Join us in the [Anime] thread to end all [Anime] threads

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Posts

  • DanHibikiDanHibiki Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    PiptheFair wrote: »
    GR_Zombie wrote: »
    Monsters are cooler than guns, it’s that simple.

    monsters are not cooler than tanks or boats, sorry nerd

    Ok, but what about
    jevmi8g31m49.png

    Anzekay on
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] regular
    edited April 13
    The user and all related content has been deleted.

    Anzekay on
  • PLAPLA The process.Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    PiptheFair wrote: »
    GR_Zombie wrote: »
    Monsters are cooler than guns, it’s that simple.

    monsters are not cooler than tanks or boats, sorry nerd
    Metal-Max-Xeno-2.jpg

    Anzekay on
  • MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    PLA wrote: »
    PiptheFair wrote: »
    GR_Zombie wrote: »
    Monsters are cooler than guns, it’s that simple.

    monsters are not cooler than tanks or boats, sorry nerd
    Metal-Max-Xeno-2.jpg

    Need game name.

    Anzekay on
    (PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
  • arthurinscalesarthurinscales Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    PiptheFair wrote: »
    GR_Zombie wrote: »
    Monsters are cooler than guns, it’s that simple.

    monsters are not cooler than tanks or boats, sorry nerd

    what about dragons that turn into fighter jets
    r77sfcjhh3od.jpg

    Anzekay on
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] regular
    edited April 13
    The user and all related content has been deleted.

    Anzekay on
  • Centipede DamascusCentipede Damascus Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    That's more of a robot that turns into a dragon, I think

    Anzekay on
  • ReynoldsReynolds Gone Fishin'Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    Kreutz wrote: »
    All this talk about guns and anime is making me want to watch some Black Lagoon.

    Easy enough to sum it all up.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKwaPSkjXp0

    Anzekay on
    uyvfOQy.png
  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    edited April 13
    Preview for next cour of Frieren:

    i2wivefsldkj.jpg

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEOyEtArBI8

    It's really hard to make this call in a season with the Shibuya Incident and the, uh, Cruise Incident(SxF), but Frieren might be the anime of the year, at least in terms of consistent quality.

    Anzekay on
    z48g7weaopj2.png
  • MadicanMadican No face Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    Can't wait for upcoming Frieren arc. Probably my favorite overall so far

    Anzekay on
  • manwiththemachinegunmanwiththemachinegun METAL GEAR?! Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    Polaritie wrote: »
    Madican wrote: »
    The thing about Alucard's gun is that it's still a toy to him. By using it he's restricting himself, he doesn't actually need it to rack up a body count

    When he finally goes all out it's just incredible and recontextualizes just how much he was screwing with everything else the whole time.

    I still don't think I've seen a more cathartic scene than Seras sending the Last Battalion to the gates of hell with the Vladomir Harkonnen.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OstS0Slz8yc

    Anzekay on
  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    edited April 13
    FYI, we began a poll for the top anime(s) of 2023 in the Holiday thread, but if anyone missed it, we'll let some latecomers chime in too until, say, a week from now.

    Anzekay on
    z48g7weaopj2.png
  • KayuraKayura Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    I love the Gunbuster-pose Seras is doing in that clip. Soooo good.

    Anzekay on
    Gridman! Baby DAN DAN! Baby DAN DAN!
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] regular
    edited April 13
    The user and all related content has been deleted.

    Anzekay on
  • edited April 13
    This content has been removed.

  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] regular
    edited April 13
    The user and all related content has been deleted.

    Anzekay on
  • Centipede DamascusCentipede Damascus Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    cj iwakura wrote: »
    FYI, we began a poll for the top anime(s) of 2023 in the Holiday thread, but if anyone missed it, we'll let some latecomers chime in too until, say, a week from now.

    In which thread now?

    Anzekay on
  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    edited April 13
    cj iwakura wrote: »
    FYI, we began a poll for the top anime(s) of 2023 in the Holiday thread, but if anyone missed it, we'll let some latecomers chime in too until, say, a week from now.

    In which thread now?

    The Holiday anime thread.

    https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/249351/santas-bringing-anime-may-they-have-mercy-on-our-souls#latest

    I kept a list in case it got shut down, but it appears to still be open.

    Anzekay on
    z48g7weaopj2.png
  • CantideCantide Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    Jragghen wrote: »
    Quoting from the holiday board so I don't lose it, and also updating because I'm up to date on official translations now.

    I'm going to be spinning a bit further off my normal manhwa tangent and discuss a web novel which a manhwa I've mentioned is based off of (and also another webnovel I've read in full).

    So I've talked about Surviving the Game as a Barbarian manhwa in my muscle-man posts, and it is absolutely that, but I think I've hit upon what makes this one work so much better than other isekai of the same type for me.

    Isekai, by their nature, is largely a power fantasy. Normal person gets transported to another world where they get abnormal powers and due to their better knowledge (ie, they're "smarter" than everyone else) or better powers (they actually get gifted something) they live an easy life traveling around and having fun in the manner that we do in video games, yaddah yaddah. These powers are typically expressed via "status window" full with video game stats and bullshit, as well as (more frequently in manhwa) "towers" of some sort where there's a series of floors to work through (100 seems to be the most common I've seen) and/or dungeons of various levels and blah blah blah.

    There's basically only three stories which have gotten me hooked enough to read the webnovel - Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint (which falls into all of the above, but plays with the tropes in ways which has something to say about the medium - it's extremely well written which elevates it), The Second Coming of Gluttony, and now this one, Surviving the Game as a Barbarian.

    Gonna throw one tier of spoilers here because this goes long, but no actual spoilers for series, more discussion of genre tropes here.
    Gluttony is honestly a bit more of the well-worn path too. It has the special power thing, it has the status windows, but what it also has is two things which I think work well for the genre, and are also rarely utilized: first off, the world is really fucking dangerous. There's a legit body count in this series, so despite having his powers, the main character doesn't feel absent of danger, and there are sacrifices, etc, which need to be made. (It also has a message of atonement for previous bad behavior because the main character is a former gambling addict who spends the entire series attempting to make atonement to his family who threw him out because of how he kept trying to rip off and grift his own family to get more money to spend at the casinos, so there's some personal growth in that sense to deal with....oh yeah, this is the rare isekai that allows transfer between the worlds). Secondly, and more importantly from the perspective of tropes of the genre, is that characters only go to level 10 (there's no "tower" in this one). This makes each tier hold gravitas and meaning, instead of having a bunch of crap in the middle no one cares about. And more to the point, levels are not granted simply by experience, but are explicit blessings granted by Goddesses of the world, so it's more dictated by accomplishments which permit them to grant you those levels. It abstracts and gives meaning to the whole "system" of levels, and also makes the goal less about "let's kill lots of enemies" and more "let's do things advancing towards the end goal."

    Which brings us to Barbarian. First off, while the leveling system technically exists, it's nothing that the denizens of the world have real concept of beyond feeling their "spirit power" has improved - they feel stronger, but there's no "stats" in the sense we think of as a game. The status window concept exists, but it's nothing that anyone - including the main character - gets access to. It's literally just an abstraction for ease of understanding of the reader (which shows how deeply ingrained this shit is at this point). And with the second item, this also only has 10 floors to the tower, and also of character levels (I think, it's not been discussed). But, as previous, that makes each level hold meaning, particularly because the primary benefit of each level is being able to absorb an additional "essence" of monsters that can be dropped, which is the primary means of getting stronger.

    Anyway, base premise: character is generally sickly in real life, spends a lot of time in and out of the hospital. Ends up finding and getting obsessed with a roguelike American game which is horrifically difficult. Five races to pick (Human, Elf, Dwarf, Beastman, and Barbarian, which I'm assuming was originally supposed to be Orc but they decided to keep it as like....half-giant humanish barbarian for reasons?). Game world premise is that there's a city which is the last remaining place on the planet which is habitable after a witch's curse. The royal family had made a barrier that keeps out the curse, but because everyone is living in districts of this city, there's nowhere to make food/etc. There's a tower in the center that opens once a month, where magical stones are dropped by the creatures inside, and those can be taken out of the tower and there are alchemists who can convert them to food, resources, etc. Individuals who cannot make a certain amount of money each year in taxes are executed. So right off the bat this is more well thought out than most of these worlds - extreme motivation from the start, "economy" of the tower kinda makes sense (and reacts to changes in the environment), etc. The game is extremely difficult, and a roguelike, and didn't have much community around it so it took him around 10 years grinding away with his obsession to finally reach the final floor. Each month, the portal to the labyrinth opens, people enter, and then 8 hours later (or 12? or one day? I can't remember exactly) they're spat out, and have the remainder of the month in town. The number of days that pass in the tower depends on the floor you get to, but everyone gets spat out at the same time. At the entrance to the final boss, he got transported immediately into the body of a race which was the same one he beat the game with.

    And here's where things start going sideways - he woke up in the coming of age ceremony of a barbarian, without knowing his own name, in a situation where they need to know their names so they can step forward. The person next to him starts saying things, including the name of the game, and the village chief immediately beheads him - so the concept of players is known in this world, referred to as "evil spirits" - people who possess the bodies of others, and treat those around them as "NPCs" - using them because they don't view them as actual people. So right off the bat, he's tossed into a scenario where he's constantly on-edge, needing to utilize his knowledge but not necessarily able to reveal that he has it, surviving in a dangerous world.

    First tier spoilers: stuff in manhwa so far
    So he ends up going exploring. Bad shit happens, good shit happens, he ends up getting more money than is typical for a beginner, so that throws him into some suspicion in the offset, but he's able to get out of it while still under more scrutiny. Additionally, the time period of the story is 150 years after that of the game so while a lot of the stuff is the same, there's absolutely some current events stuff that throws him for a loop. Up through where the manhwa has covered I'd say it's a good, if somewhat regular, isekai, except that it's definitely not an overpowered fantasy in the traditional sense but that he's having to claw and scrape for every advantage and even the good stuff that happens usually throws a wrench into future plans so he's constantly having to adapt. The arc the manhwa is currently in is probably the second of the "Jesus Fuck" arcs where things go COMPLETELY sideways in a very interesting way, and I won't get into a whole lot of details here. There both is and is not a harem in the typical sense - the manhwa has at this point introduced five girls who are potential "girls" - an elf that he saved on the first trip into the dungeon, another barbarian who he went in with the second time, a human assassin who spared his life on that trip for unknown reasons, a human wizard who they partied up with in a rift (think sub-dungeon within the dungeon that's a rare occurrence), and a beastwoman in his current party which is current events. However, due to the evil spirit thing, he's obviously not interested/keeping things at arms length (and really at the point of the manhwa only one of the five has really expressed interest towards him, and she thinks he's dead).

    Going hard into genera plot spoilers for the web novel here, but this is where things REALLY open up and become some additional shit and make this story so much more interesting for me.
    Okay, so I'm still not caught up on official translated chapters yet, and the official translations are still behind the MTL ones, so we'll see if I dive into those, but the story basically gets put into a new tier of paranoia, which is what really makes this thing work. Where the manhwa is now, there's "okay, so we have the main character, he's an evil spirit, he'll be killed if they find out about that, and other evil spirits exist."

    Current arc ends up having shit happen with the current party where, what he ends up having to do to survive results in a floor boss (field boss) getting spat out (due to what some OTHER people did too - not just because of him), and literally thousands of explorers die because of it. He manages to survive along with some clan people, ends up making a name for himself, but really gets scrutiny from two groups - an actual secret police working to find evil spirits, and an organization of evil spirits themselves allowing them an anonymous way to communicate with one another.

    And even more of a mindfuck, it's actually going back to the real world now where it's revealed that his body (or lack thereof) was found (rather, his clothes as if he was still wearing them), and the computer monitor, even when unplugged, was continuing to list the "game" events that the reader sees on the screen. And that this is happening elsewhere in the world. There's something with the game's creator mentioned which I don't fully get, and we haven't revisited this yet but it seems like there's something going on there.

    He manages to convince the first group otherwise (of course), and the second one he doesn't immediately contact because he wants to maintain TRUE anonymity even among that group because he's a paranoid fuck (and it was a good thing because the head of that group was so suspicious of him he was the only guy invited that time). This method ALSO has a time dilation type thing where they have 12 hours in that space, 12 seconds in real time. Then, in addition to all of the above, it's revealed that there's a second city below ground predominantly of criminals, but also with a larger number of evil spirits who were found out and escaped before they could be executed.

    Skipping over a TON of details, he ends up in a fight with one of the elites of the underground city, manages to escape and also greatly hurt the guy (although absolutely not unscathed) but in the process frees an archbishop of one of the religions, gets them their shit back, etc. The knowledge of one of the bishops having been used the way he had been causes the royal family to declare war on the underground city, which is where shit goes REAL sideways. They have their own way into the labyrinth, start attacking explorers, things get worse, and then the comparatively peaceful time in the city ends up also being stressful.

    Meanwhile, he's ended up in the evil spirit thing and it's revealed that there was an online community around the game where he'd posted a guide at one point, then stopped going to because it wasn't really of use to him, but someone else re-released the game with a hacked version after he stopped going where the difficulty was "reduced" by increasing the drop rates of XP and essences (easiest is x100, most people use x80, best we've heard of is x10) - so that's why there's other evil spirits who know stuff, but not necessarily as much as him, and more importantly most of them don't have to have "proper" builds, which is where the character's main advantage stems from - he's obsessed with getting proper combos of essences, etc, while most other people aren't, so he's "better" than he otherwise should be. Furthermore, within this group, there's a sub-group he's invited to where everyone is masked and they do an information exchange where everyone in the circle has to reveal something that more than half of the others in the group don't know, which has to be true (magic artifact determines all of the above).

    So NOW, we've got "can't let normal people in the world know he's an evil spirit. Can't let other evil spirits know he's an evil spirit and/or link his account name to the character. Can't let the anonymous mask persona get linked to either one of the two. Can't attract too much attention from the under-city (which already has some people who have a reason to hate him), while ALSO trying to figure out which other people are evil spirits so he can use that for leverage and ALSO trying to figure out which people are mask people." Just so much fucking paranoia, needing to watch stuff, while still trying to progress ostensibly with the idea of reaching floor 10 and (theoretically) getting home.

    And now for more recent novel stuff which is actually world-changing above all of the above
    Undercity pulls off one of the most ridiculously well-written xanatos gambits I've ever seen, end up wiping out close to 70% of the explorers in city. This whole arc is just fucking amazing and nothing felt safe. Royal army retaliates, ends up conquering the undercity afterwards, except something, someone, somehow teleports them out and....the world outside isn't cursed. They then use the evil spirit communication thing to start spreading that rumor in the city and undermine the authority of the royal government. That's right, we're apparently fucking Attack on Titan now or something.

    In the midst of all of this, main character has started going native, actually reciprocates one of the girls who....in the process of his reciprocation figures out that he's an evil spirit. But doesn't tell him or reveal it because she doesn't want him to die, but also doesn't reciprocate because she doesn't know what to do with the fact that she figured it out (so thus far, no harem, just one relationship which ends up getting turned down).

    AND HERE'S THE UPDATE FROM THE PREVIOUS ONE

    So with that new status quo, the new clan goes in again, and shit happens, and....WE GOT TIME TRAVEL NOW. BUT NOT LIKE USUAL MANHWA TIME TRAVEL.

    Go back 20 years in the past with one character due to plot reasons, it's a single-line timeline so attempts to subvert the past only ends up causing the things they were trying to avoid (kinda), but....time moves in parallel. When they make it back, the same amount of time has passed, everyone thinks he's dead, shit got announced about him, his former companions have gone emo, and furthermore he ends up even further in the future than the other person since he got a new essence.

    So NOW, he's got to hide all the above shit and have a new identity because it's kinda-sorta known/suspected that he was an evil spirit, and that includes not using all the same essences publicly.

    So anyway, yeah. The novel is better paced/has better writing than the manhwa (there's some odd choices on when to reveal some info in the comic at this point), but the manhwa is still really good and is about to hit its second "oh god oh fuck" sequence, after which the world really seems to open up and become something truly unique. I didn't even touch on all the inter-personal areas of stress in the above, both among players and characters. I'm really, really enjoying this one right now.


    So yeah. Just trying to hit the MAJOR stuff while leaving lots of details for folks who might get interested to find out about, but....gotta be honest, I really, really like this one. Pity it's almost certainly going the harem route, though.




    I've been reading this thanks to your holiday post! It's been very good so far (about 150 chapters into the novel), but I am amused at how it's pretty much the exact philosophical opposite of SSS-Class Suicide Hunter, my favorite Korean webnovel. Bjorn isn't quite as vicious as say Flame Emperor, but the two of them could practically be siblings.

    Anzekay on
  • edited April 13
    This content has been removed.

  • LasbrookLasbrook It takes a lot to make a stew When it comes to me and youRegistered User regular
    edited April 13
    If we're doing just 2023 anime:

    G-Witch
    Birdie Wing
    Spy x Family
    Pluto

    After that I ran out of series I actually care about so uh,

    Tomo-chan is a girl

    I guess.

    Anzekay on
  • BahamutZEROBahamutZERO Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    was birdie wing all 2023?
    ah no it started spring 2022, but if you saw it this last year it counts :P

    Anzekay on
    BahamutZERO.gif
  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    edited April 13
    JJK Manga, uh, #225 or thereabouts(late game)
    I like how Sukuna still can't find one of the fingers, and I like to think it's the one he was too arrogant to accept in Shibuya. :D

    Anzekay on
    z48g7weaopj2.png
  • LasbrookLasbrook It takes a lot to make a stew When it comes to me and youRegistered User regular
    edited April 13
    was birdie wing all 2023?
    ah no it started spring 2022, but if you saw it this last year it counts :P

    Season 2 was 2023. If that doesn't count then take Spy x Family off my list too.

    Anzekay on
  • BahamutZEROBahamutZERO Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    you're right, I just forgot it took till next year for the second season

    Anzekay on
    BahamutZERO.gif
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] regular
    edited April 13
    The user and all related content has been deleted.

    Anzekay on
  • CantideCantide Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    Jragghen wrote: »
    Cantide wrote: »
    Jragghen wrote: »
    Quoting from the holiday board so I don't lose it, and also updating because I'm up to date on official translations now.

    I'm going to be spinning a bit further off my normal manhwa tangent and discuss a web novel which a manhwa I've mentioned is based off of (and also another webnovel I've read in full).

    So I've talked about Surviving the Game as a Barbarian manhwa in my muscle-man posts, and it is absolutely that, but I think I've hit upon what makes this one work so much better than other isekai of the same type for me.

    Isekai, by their nature, is largely a power fantasy. Normal person gets transported to another world where they get abnormal powers and due to their better knowledge (ie, they're "smarter" than everyone else) or better powers (they actually get gifted something) they live an easy life traveling around and having fun in the manner that we do in video games, yaddah yaddah. These powers are typically expressed via "status window" full with video game stats and bullshit, as well as (more frequently in manhwa) "towers" of some sort where there's a series of floors to work through (100 seems to be the most common I've seen) and/or dungeons of various levels and blah blah blah.

    There's basically only three stories which have gotten me hooked enough to read the webnovel - Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint (which falls into all of the above, but plays with the tropes in ways which has something to say about the medium - it's extremely well written which elevates it), The Second Coming of Gluttony, and now this one, Surviving the Game as a Barbarian.

    Gonna throw one tier of spoilers here because this goes long, but no actual spoilers for series, more discussion of genre tropes here.
    Gluttony is honestly a bit more of the well-worn path too. It has the special power thing, it has the status windows, but what it also has is two things which I think work well for the genre, and are also rarely utilized: first off, the world is really fucking dangerous. There's a legit body count in this series, so despite having his powers, the main character doesn't feel absent of danger, and there are sacrifices, etc, which need to be made. (It also has a message of atonement for previous bad behavior because the main character is a former gambling addict who spends the entire series attempting to make atonement to his family who threw him out because of how he kept trying to rip off and grift his own family to get more money to spend at the casinos, so there's some personal growth in that sense to deal with....oh yeah, this is the rare isekai that allows transfer between the worlds). Secondly, and more importantly from the perspective of tropes of the genre, is that characters only go to level 10 (there's no "tower" in this one). This makes each tier hold gravitas and meaning, instead of having a bunch of crap in the middle no one cares about. And more to the point, levels are not granted simply by experience, but are explicit blessings granted by Goddesses of the world, so it's more dictated by accomplishments which permit them to grant you those levels. It abstracts and gives meaning to the whole "system" of levels, and also makes the goal less about "let's kill lots of enemies" and more "let's do things advancing towards the end goal."

    Which brings us to Barbarian. First off, while the leveling system technically exists, it's nothing that the denizens of the world have real concept of beyond feeling their "spirit power" has improved - they feel stronger, but there's no "stats" in the sense we think of as a game. The status window concept exists, but it's nothing that anyone - including the main character - gets access to. It's literally just an abstraction for ease of understanding of the reader (which shows how deeply ingrained this shit is at this point). And with the second item, this also only has 10 floors to the tower, and also of character levels (I think, it's not been discussed). But, as previous, that makes each level hold meaning, particularly because the primary benefit of each level is being able to absorb an additional "essence" of monsters that can be dropped, which is the primary means of getting stronger.

    Anyway, base premise: character is generally sickly in real life, spends a lot of time in and out of the hospital. Ends up finding and getting obsessed with a roguelike American game which is horrifically difficult. Five races to pick (Human, Elf, Dwarf, Beastman, and Barbarian, which I'm assuming was originally supposed to be Orc but they decided to keep it as like....half-giant humanish barbarian for reasons?). Game world premise is that there's a city which is the last remaining place on the planet which is habitable after a witch's curse. The royal family had made a barrier that keeps out the curse, but because everyone is living in districts of this city, there's nowhere to make food/etc. There's a tower in the center that opens once a month, where magical stones are dropped by the creatures inside, and those can be taken out of the tower and there are alchemists who can convert them to food, resources, etc. Individuals who cannot make a certain amount of money each year in taxes are executed. So right off the bat this is more well thought out than most of these worlds - extreme motivation from the start, "economy" of the tower kinda makes sense (and reacts to changes in the environment), etc. The game is extremely difficult, and a roguelike, and didn't have much community around it so it took him around 10 years grinding away with his obsession to finally reach the final floor. Each month, the portal to the labyrinth opens, people enter, and then 8 hours later (or 12? or one day? I can't remember exactly) they're spat out, and have the remainder of the month in town. The number of days that pass in the tower depends on the floor you get to, but everyone gets spat out at the same time. At the entrance to the final boss, he got transported immediately into the body of a race which was the same one he beat the game with.

    And here's where things start going sideways - he woke up in the coming of age ceremony of a barbarian, without knowing his own name, in a situation where they need to know their names so they can step forward. The person next to him starts saying things, including the name of the game, and the village chief immediately beheads him - so the concept of players is known in this world, referred to as "evil spirits" - people who possess the bodies of others, and treat those around them as "NPCs" - using them because they don't view them as actual people. So right off the bat, he's tossed into a scenario where he's constantly on-edge, needing to utilize his knowledge but not necessarily able to reveal that he has it, surviving in a dangerous world.

    First tier spoilers: stuff in manhwa so far
    So he ends up going exploring. Bad shit happens, good shit happens, he ends up getting more money than is typical for a beginner, so that throws him into some suspicion in the offset, but he's able to get out of it while still under more scrutiny. Additionally, the time period of the story is 150 years after that of the game so while a lot of the stuff is the same, there's absolutely some current events stuff that throws him for a loop. Up through where the manhwa has covered I'd say it's a good, if somewhat regular, isekai, except that it's definitely not an overpowered fantasy in the traditional sense but that he's having to claw and scrape for every advantage and even the good stuff that happens usually throws a wrench into future plans so he's constantly having to adapt. The arc the manhwa is currently in is probably the second of the "Jesus Fuck" arcs where things go COMPLETELY sideways in a very interesting way, and I won't get into a whole lot of details here. There both is and is not a harem in the typical sense - the manhwa has at this point introduced five girls who are potential "girls" - an elf that he saved on the first trip into the dungeon, another barbarian who he went in with the second time, a human assassin who spared his life on that trip for unknown reasons, a human wizard who they partied up with in a rift (think sub-dungeon within the dungeon that's a rare occurrence), and a beastwoman in his current party which is current events. However, due to the evil spirit thing, he's obviously not interested/keeping things at arms length (and really at the point of the manhwa only one of the five has really expressed interest towards him, and she thinks he's dead).

    Going hard into genera plot spoilers for the web novel here, but this is where things REALLY open up and become some additional shit and make this story so much more interesting for me.
    Okay, so I'm still not caught up on official translated chapters yet, and the official translations are still behind the MTL ones, so we'll see if I dive into those, but the story basically gets put into a new tier of paranoia, which is what really makes this thing work. Where the manhwa is now, there's "okay, so we have the main character, he's an evil spirit, he'll be killed if they find out about that, and other evil spirits exist."

    Current arc ends up having shit happen with the current party where, what he ends up having to do to survive results in a floor boss (field boss) getting spat out (due to what some OTHER people did too - not just because of him), and literally thousands of explorers die because of it. He manages to survive along with some clan people, ends up making a name for himself, but really gets scrutiny from two groups - an actual secret police working to find evil spirits, and an organization of evil spirits themselves allowing them an anonymous way to communicate with one another.

    And even more of a mindfuck, it's actually going back to the real world now where it's revealed that his body (or lack thereof) was found (rather, his clothes as if he was still wearing them), and the computer monitor, even when unplugged, was continuing to list the "game" events that the reader sees on the screen. And that this is happening elsewhere in the world. There's something with the game's creator mentioned which I don't fully get, and we haven't revisited this yet but it seems like there's something going on there.

    He manages to convince the first group otherwise (of course), and the second one he doesn't immediately contact because he wants to maintain TRUE anonymity even among that group because he's a paranoid fuck (and it was a good thing because the head of that group was so suspicious of him he was the only guy invited that time). This method ALSO has a time dilation type thing where they have 12 hours in that space, 12 seconds in real time. Then, in addition to all of the above, it's revealed that there's a second city below ground predominantly of criminals, but also with a larger number of evil spirits who were found out and escaped before they could be executed.

    Skipping over a TON of details, he ends up in a fight with one of the elites of the underground city, manages to escape and also greatly hurt the guy (although absolutely not unscathed) but in the process frees an archbishop of one of the religions, gets them their shit back, etc. The knowledge of one of the bishops having been used the way he had been causes the royal family to declare war on the underground city, which is where shit goes REAL sideways. They have their own way into the labyrinth, start attacking explorers, things get worse, and then the comparatively peaceful time in the city ends up also being stressful.

    Meanwhile, he's ended up in the evil spirit thing and it's revealed that there was an online community around the game where he'd posted a guide at one point, then stopped going to because it wasn't really of use to him, but someone else re-released the game with a hacked version after he stopped going where the difficulty was "reduced" by increasing the drop rates of XP and essences (easiest is x100, most people use x80, best we've heard of is x10) - so that's why there's other evil spirits who know stuff, but not necessarily as much as him, and more importantly most of them don't have to have "proper" builds, which is where the character's main advantage stems from - he's obsessed with getting proper combos of essences, etc, while most other people aren't, so he's "better" than he otherwise should be. Furthermore, within this group, there's a sub-group he's invited to where everyone is masked and they do an information exchange where everyone in the circle has to reveal something that more than half of the others in the group don't know, which has to be true (magic artifact determines all of the above).

    So NOW, we've got "can't let normal people in the world know he's an evil spirit. Can't let other evil spirits know he's an evil spirit and/or link his account name to the character. Can't let the anonymous mask persona get linked to either one of the two. Can't attract too much attention from the under-city (which already has some people who have a reason to hate him), while ALSO trying to figure out which other people are evil spirits so he can use that for leverage and ALSO trying to figure out which people are mask people." Just so much fucking paranoia, needing to watch stuff, while still trying to progress ostensibly with the idea of reaching floor 10 and (theoretically) getting home.

    And now for more recent novel stuff which is actually world-changing above all of the above
    Undercity pulls off one of the most ridiculously well-written xanatos gambits I've ever seen, end up wiping out close to 70% of the explorers in city. This whole arc is just fucking amazing and nothing felt safe. Royal army retaliates, ends up conquering the undercity afterwards, except something, someone, somehow teleports them out and....the world outside isn't cursed. They then use the evil spirit communication thing to start spreading that rumor in the city and undermine the authority of the royal government. That's right, we're apparently fucking Attack on Titan now or something.

    In the midst of all of this, main character has started going native, actually reciprocates one of the girls who....in the process of his reciprocation figures out that he's an evil spirit. But doesn't tell him or reveal it because she doesn't want him to die, but also doesn't reciprocate because she doesn't know what to do with the fact that she figured it out (so thus far, no harem, just one relationship which ends up getting turned down).

    AND HERE'S THE UPDATE FROM THE PREVIOUS ONE

    So with that new status quo, the new clan goes in again, and shit happens, and....WE GOT TIME TRAVEL NOW. BUT NOT LIKE USUAL MANHWA TIME TRAVEL.

    Go back 20 years in the past with one character due to plot reasons, it's a single-line timeline so attempts to subvert the past only ends up causing the things they were trying to avoid (kinda), but....time moves in parallel. When they make it back, the same amount of time has passed, everyone thinks he's dead, shit got announced about him, his former companions have gone emo, and furthermore he ends up even further in the future than the other person since he got a new essence.

    So NOW, he's got to hide all the above shit and have a new identity because it's kinda-sorta known/suspected that he was an evil spirit, and that includes not using all the same essences publicly.

    So anyway, yeah. The novel is better paced/has better writing than the manhwa (there's some odd choices on when to reveal some info in the comic at this point), but the manhwa is still really good and is about to hit its second "oh god oh fuck" sequence, after which the world really seems to open up and become something truly unique. I didn't even touch on all the inter-personal areas of stress in the above, both among players and characters. I'm really, really enjoying this one right now.


    So yeah. Just trying to hit the MAJOR stuff while leaving lots of details for folks who might get interested to find out about, but....gotta be honest, I really, really like this one. Pity it's almost certainly going the harem route, though.




    I've been reading this thanks to your holiday post! It's been very good so far (about 150 chapters into the novel), but I am amused at how it's pretty much the exact philosophical opposite of SSS-Class Suicide Hunter, my favorite Korean webnovel. Bjorn isn't quite as vicious as say Flame Emperor, but the two of them could practically be siblings.

    Yeah, his sociopathy mellows, thankfully. It was a bit much at first.

    But you'd agree how the
    Dual things of the undercity vs the overcity, crossed with the player chatroom thing

    Just like....explodes the whole situation, right?
    Yeah, I’ve liked the developments with the under-city so far. It’s good to have an important place like that where he’s got no special game knowledge, and has opponents more complex than mobs. I’ve only read the first two player chat room meetings so far, where they’ve only teased the undercity stuff there in the latest one, but I’m looking forward to that getting more development; thematically, it feels like the Ghost Busters in general should end up being antagonists. The default player attitude of “everyone else are just NPCs so it’s okay to murder them” is practically identical to the way barbarians get treated by the world at large, so I’ll be disappointed in Bjorn if he’s willing to overlook that just because he’s not in the demographic being targeted.

    Anzekay on
  • djmdjm Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    For some reason I'm still reading "Fuufu Ijou, Koibito Miman", even though it is an amazingly generic romcom and it's blindingly obvious where it's going to end up. It's just, as usual for this sort of thing, taking its own sweet time to get there, with the usual dumb-as-heck reasons for things to not progress.

    Anyway, in the latest chapter, I think this is the most that a character has said exactly what I (and everyone else reading it) is thinking (edit: spoiler tags just in case anyone else has somehow stuck with it this far):
    bdqhmxvvl9si.png

    Anzekay on
  • MNC DoverMNC Dover Full-time Voice Actor Kirkland, WARegistered User regular
    edited April 13
    Just finished watching the 4th episode of Spy X Family. I must say...
    such elegance!

    Also, the animal's backing off after Yor's pressure point attack on the cow made me laugh.

    Anzekay on
    Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
    Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
    Steam ID
  • BahamutZEROBahamutZERO Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    @Zonugal tell me about what grabbed you with fist of the north star, what made you like it a lot?

    Anzekay on
    BahamutZERO.gif
  • ReynoldsReynolds Gone Fishin'Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    Zonugal tell me about what grabbed you with fist of the north star, what made you like it a lot?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc5iPDvmEpE

    Anzekay on
    uyvfOQy.png
  • ZonugalZonugal (He/Him) The Holiday Armadillo I'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User, Transition Team regular
    edited April 13
    @Zonugal tell me about what grabbed you with fist of the north star, what made you like it a lot?

    Oh, you know...

    My love for the busiest character designs for the least important minions in a storyline, accompanied by bonkers voice acting?
    My adoration for an anime that recognizes its an episodic cartoon, so, it leaps past trying to establish & maintain any sense of tension and instead prioritizes tone above everything else.
    My hunger for ROCK MUSIC
    My thirst for a villain voiced in the exact same style as Tom from Toonami?

    Ultimately its a cartoon that, due to the time period of its production, has old school sensibilities. It isn't trying to establish & evoke grand emotions or instill any real sense of fear for Kenshiro. He's kung-fu Jesus, he's wasteland Superman, you know he'll immediately triumph over his challenges so the show becomes a story not so much of how will Kenshiro overcome this opposition, but rather what's the COOLEST, RADEST, DOPEST way that Kenshiro can overcome this opposition cause we know it's gonna happen.

    The show is a tone poem by way of an electric guitar.

    It rules.

    Anzekay on
    Ross-Geller-Prime-Sig-A.jpg
  • PeewiPeewi Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    Delicious in Dungeon ep1 is out.

    That means we've got the anime version of the Marcille reaction image.
    7qf48d2j95b0.png

    Anzekay on
  • BahamutZEROBahamutZERO Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    Reynolds wrote: »
    Zonugal tell me about what grabbed you with fist of the north star, what made you like it a lot?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc5iPDvmEpE

    No idea what this has to do with it but I do love some drum and bass so I will accept this gratefully

    Anzekay on
    BahamutZERO.gif
  • ReynoldsReynolds Gone Fishin'Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    For some reason, the old English dub replaces the original Japanese soundtrack with 90s drum and bass. Which rules.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLuW2NXygBg

    Anzekay on
    uyvfOQy.png
  • BahamutZEROBahamutZERO Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    Oh my god

    Anzekay on
    BahamutZERO.gif
  • edited April 13
    This content has been removed.

  • IronKnuckleIronKnuckle This is also my fault Registered User regular
    edited April 13
    You wa shock.

    Anzekay on
  • NaphtaliNaphtali Hazy + Flow SeaRegistered User regular
    edited April 13
    you know what, this masterful cat show is alright

    it helps that the giant cat is hozuki of course

    Anzekay on
    Steam | Nintendo ID: Naphtali | Wish List
  • LasbrookLasbrook It takes a lot to make a stew When it comes to me and youRegistered User regular
    edited April 13
    Oh my god

    You think that is good, wait until you get to the somber drum n bass during the sad parts.

    Anzekay on
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