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theplanetofeurick
Reviews
Trigun (1998)
Nicknamed The Humanoid Typhoon, and Justifiably So!
This is one of the best series of any genre that I have ever watched.
Pros:
*The setting designs are aesthetically pleasing. The definitely have a "'90s Anime" style to them, if you are into that sort of thing.
*Vash the Stampede provides comic relief in the first half of the series.
*The gunplay and action throughout the series are balls-to-the-wall without being gratuitously gory.
*A must-watch if you are a fan of space westerns, or just a fan of gun-on-gun action in general.
*Meryll and Millie, the two insurance girls who follow Vash the Stampede, provide a foil to Vash's personality, and the bring good chemistry into the character development.
*In the latter half of the series, the plot and emotion get surprisingly deep and dark. These blindsided me when I was watching this series for the very first time.
Cons:
*I really can't think of anything with which I have a quarrel in respects to this series. It really is that good!
Mahô shôjo Madoka magika: Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011)
This was actually better than I realized.
I was watching this anime with a group of friends.
I am typically not a fan of magical girl shows, but I have to make an exception for this one. This show subverts all of your expectations about what a magical girl show can be. It makes being a magical girl look dark, dreary, and utterly hopeless. The magical girls, instead of carrying wands, staffs, or moon sticks, carry conventional weapons.
Mami Tomoe carries matchlock-style arquebuses. Homura wields a medieval round shield in conjunction with modern, assault-style weapons. Another girl (forgot her name) carries a spear. Sakaki wields a sword. Madoka has a bow and arrows.
Pros:
*Yuki Kajiura sings like an angel through the epic soundtrack.
*The animation and design style are very eye-popping and appealing.
*The characters are cutely drawn.
Con:
*It is dark - very, very dark. Brace yourself to cry or to weep.
*It is set in a high school setting (which is very cliched by anime standards).
Girls und Panzer (2012)
Panzer Vor!
There is only one reason why you should watch this anime: To watch girls blow the living crap out of each other in tanks!
On the outside it looks adorable, but on the inside, past the surface, they are metal A. F.! (Word-play intended!)
Pros:
*This is a must-watch if you are infatuated with tanks or World War II.
*Minimal (if any) fanservice at all.
*The characters' designs are aesthetically pleasing.
*If you are looking for something to watch while exercising on the treadmill, then this would be an appropriate pick. It does not require much cerebral thought or mental involvement, yet it has just enough action in it to get you pumped!
Cons:
*There isn't that much of a narrative. They do not really explore anything other than "what would happen if we put high school girls in a tank and have them fight other tanks?"
*There is some back story, but not necessarily quite as much as one might hope. The main back story comes in the form of flashbacks.
*The realism goes in and out in places. This anime has particularly become notorious as a meme across the internet community for following "anime logic" with respects to its tank battles. This might be a pro or a con, depending on whichever perspective you view it from.
The Simpsons (1989)
I used to LOVE this show, but now it is not as stimulating anymore
All right, I am hardly the first person to think this, but I used to be a huge, huge fan of this show. As a person who came of age in high school in the early to mid-2000's, I was exposed to the Simpsons episodes that were coming out during that time. I especially loved the 1990s seasons. I also loved the Simpsons Movie when it came out in 2007.
I went for a few years without watching the Simpsons as much, eventually getting back into the show around 2016ish, upon discovering FXX. For some time thereafter, up until mid-2020ish, I quit watching the new episodes, because I felt like I was wasting my time. The new episodes did not make me laugh, they were not coherent, and they looked like they had been tailor-made for people who had the attention-spans of goldfish. It felt more like a cookie-cutter copy of Family Guy, essentially.
In the old episodes that I used to watch, the episodes were funny, memorable, and coherent. They used to tackle issues in a mature, intelligible manner. Now, though, in the latest seasons, what I have noticed is that the episodes are increasingly reliant on using (1) celebrity guest voices, and (2) random Family-Guy-style singing-and-dancing numbers to catch and maintain a watcher's attention. Granted, they had some singing and dancing in the older seasons, but those musical numbers were short, to-the-point, and specifically tailored to the plot of the episode, whereas the musical numbers in the new seasons are random and are put in there just for the sake of being in there.
Also, the jokes in the new seasons are based around either random memes or are re-treads of old plot devices that they had done before ten years before.
I currently have seasons 1-14 in my video collection, but I don't have any intention of buying any more seasons. Seasons 1-4 are decent plot-wise, but their art style is clearly crude (6-7 out of 10). Seasons 5-10 are the height of the Simpsons, no if's, and's, or but's (8-9 out of 10). Seasons 11-14 are hit-or-miss (5-7 out of 10).