#manga is still ongoing so it'll be interesting

[redbuddi]

Hey I was watching the vod for Ruff Trigger and you mentioned reading a whole bunch of 'Person Dies and is Reincarnated into the World of a Book Series They Already Read' books and so I was wondering if you've read 'I Favor The Villainess'? Because I may be a little biased because gay women but that one is really good.

Also do you have any specific recommendations for books/manga/etc in that genre?

I have! I tried it once a while back but for whatever reason it didn't hold my attention. I read a few chapters again after getting this and I dunno what I was thinking before, I like it a lot.

As for the many Reincarnation Manhua I am reading, and I am reading a LOT so do not question my knowledge, I have a data sheet and everything, here are my top five in no particular order. Note that these are specifically "Reincarnated into a Pre-Existing Story" Manhuas and not just "Reincarnated" ones, if they were the list would probably look a little different haha. Don't even get me started on the "Rebirth" category.

#1: Not-Sew-Wicked Stepmom

Status: Ongoing. Currently on season hiatus.

Synopsis: An overworked korean seamstress dies and finds herself reincarnated into the body of the evil step-mother from Snow White. Luckily she wakes up before the story proper begins, while the princess is still a small child, and so she decides to bow out of her bid for the throne and spend her days spoiling her adorable step-child. However, she soon realizes that her former self wasn't the only person trying to exploit the system for power, and that the world of royalty hosts beneath-the-surface a cycle of cruelty and abuse that could destroy the future of any child. Thus, she must do whatever it takes to ensure that the lovable little girl grows up as happily and healthily as possible.

Story Quality: 4/5 A well-paced and expertly woven narrative that keeps the story moving at all times without burning out the reader with too many rapid developments or twists. The only reason it isn't a 5/5 is because I don't know how it'll end.

Art Quality: 5/5 A sweet and expressive art style that does a good job blending in the typical CSP assets while still standing on it's own.

The Drip: 5/5 Every outfit the characters wear is stunning and suits them perfectly, which is to be expected given the series' fashion theme but still greatly appreciated in execution.

The Love Interest: 3/5 While he's a good character and I like him, I don't particularly care if he and the main character hook up. This could change as the series goes on, however.

Spiciness: 3/5 Occasionally suggestive, but overall fairly tame and normal.

Is it worth paying for? Absolutely.

#2: Beware the Villainess!

Status: Complete

Synopsis: A college student is reincarnated into the body of the nasty villainess of a romance story she had read shortly before dying. Determined to not suffer the same fate, she does everything she can to completely sequence-break the narrative and do things her own way, up to and including befriending the main character, rejecting her princely fiancee, and recruiting a derelict side-character as her right-hand man. But little does she realize that this world won't take her changes lightly, and the characters she knows are not as one-dimensional as they first appear....

Story Quality: 4/5 Clearly thought out and well-executed, the story does an excellent job conveying the ideas it presents. Currently my gold-standard for the "Villainess Sequence-Break" subcategory.

Art Quality: 4/5 Well-executed and expressive, but a little too generic for my liking. It does what's expected of it well, but rarely goes above and beyond.

The Drip: 4/5 Good outfits, including some that make me very gay, but nothing spectacular.

The Love Interest: 4/5 I wasn't with it in the beginning but ngl, by the end of the series I was really rooting for these two.

Spiciness: 4/5 Generally a 3/5, but occasional moments of sexuality do occur, although it doesn't really hit until the special episodes.

Is it Worth Paying For? Debatable. I don't regret paying for the whole thing but if you have better restraint than me you can tough out the wait-until-free episodes and save yourself some coin.

#3: Surviving Romance

Status: Ongoing. Currently on it's second season.

Synopsis: Chaerin Eun has been trapped in a romance novel for a while now, and today is the day her love interest will finally confess to her and the two can live happily-ever-after!

Things do not go as planned.

Story Quality: 5/5 While I am being careful to not reveal too much, the quality of the story doesn't just hinge on how surprising it's twists and turns are. It has something to say and so far it is doing an extremely good job saying it.

Art Quality: 3/5 I get what it's going for but I do still feel like it could be better.

The Drip: 5/5 This series doesn't let the fact that everyone is in school uniforms stop it from having some striking and downright iconic looks.

The Love Interest: ???/5 : )

Spiciness: 2/5 Good lord, could you imagine?

Is it Worth Paying For? I say yes, but only because it's a currently running webtoon and therefore the only episodes you need to pay for are the most recent ones. I don't know if my answer would be the same if this was a completed webtoon or a series on Tapas.

#4: Villainesses Have More Fun

Status: Ongoing

Synopsis: A bad-bitch korean business woman is reincarnated into the body of Reilynn Candimon, the villainess of the novel she had been reading, and a character that had greatly frustrated her. Using nothing but her powerful personality, she decides to make the best of this life and peace out from the main story to enjoy her riches. So why does the main character keep picking fights with her?

Story Quality: 3/5 A fun read that doesn't take itself too seriously. You wont be enraptured in a deep and complex narrative, but you'll have a good time and enjoy some genuinely engaging characters.

Art Quality: 3/5 Exactly what you expect from this kind of series and nothing more.

The Drip: 3/5 Some outfits are nice, but some of the ensembles the main character walks around in are downright tragic.

The Love Interest: 1/5 I deadass keep forgetting who it's supposed to be, and then I remember he's a cop.

Spiciness: 2/5 Pretty mild.

Is it worth Paying For? Only if the scanlation is really bad.

#5: The Villainess' Stationary Shop

Status: Ongoing. Currently on Season Hiatus.

Synopsis: A korean woman wakes up in the body of Meldenique Bebelloa, the villainess of a romance novel. In the original story, her character dies after trying to stop a romance between her fiance and her half-sister. Determined to not end up like that (and not too interested in the prince anyway,) Mel ditches her terrible family in order to live out her life's dream of running a stationary shop! (Essentially a store for school supplies that typically also sells toys and candy.)

Story Quality: 4/5 A kind of generic story is elevated by a cute and likeable characters, a lighthearted tone, and highly satisfying moments of catharsis. Be warned, this manhua is kind of addictive.

Art Quality: 3/5 Passable quality but nothing noteworthy.

The Drip: 4/5 With the extravagance and glitter of most other manhua, this series offers a delightful palette cleanser of cute and modest outfits that greatly demonstrate the character's personalities.

The Love Interest: 4/5 I'm not terribly invested in the romance, but the love interest is a stoic bad boy who is extremely easily flustered by the idea of kissing or even... holding hands?????? It's a fun change-of-pace and makes scenes that would typically be eye-rolling a little more enjoyable as the coolguy is the blushy one.

Spiciness: 2/5 The love interest would probably die if he saw a boob.

Is it Worth Paying For? I had fun with it but again, be warned, it is highly addictive.

#ask #asks #i am the reincarnation manhua master #i know all

[rinoaskyes]

Skip and Loafer

It's rare that a manga makes me wish I could revisit my high school years but I feel such a yearning for those days past when I read Skip and Loafer. The plot revolves around Mitsumi Iwakura, a girl from inaka (countryside) who moves to Tokyo for high school. There meets her classmates who you get to know and discover their hopes, fears and insecurities. Fairly standard stuff on the surface but the characters change everything.

I do think this genre is usually a pretty hard sell as describing the plot makes it sound pretty rudimentary. However, what sets Skip and Loafer apart from most of your high school slice-of-life manga is Mitsumi herself. She's the perfect blend of wholesome and intuitive yet charmingly dense. It's clear she doesn't 100% understand all of her friends' struggles, but somehow is still able to sense when something is off. This allows her to respond in surprising and meaningful ways. Mitsumi truly gives me hope and makes me think the world would be a million times a better place if more people were like her.

The other characters are interesting as well. Each of them mirror a high school student archetype such as the popular guy, the bookish nerd and so on, but as their stories unfold, you'll see real depth to them. It'll also probably remind you of how tough those school days can be, especially when you're trying to make friends, fall in love all before really knowing who you are.

The manga is still ongoing but I'm hopeful that it'll keep getting better. At the time of writing this I'm 53 chapters in and it's still great. You can really feel the characters grow up with each chapter, giving it a real sense of the passing of time.

Skip and Loafer is manga author, Misaki Takamatsu's third title. It was first serialised in Kodansha's Monthly Afternoon in August 2018. As of January 2023, the manga has over 1 million copies in circulation. Skip and Loaf also won the 47th Kodansha Manga Award in the general category.

#iwakura mitsumi #skip and loafer #manga

[zabiume]

I saw your post about sports anime and I can see you’re a fan of Kuroko no basket. I haven’t watched it or read it but from what I’ve seen it does look good. Are there any other sport animes/mangas you like apart from KNK ?

i am OBSESSED with kuroko (the series and the character), i watched half of it for the first time when i was around 14 but i never got around to finishing it, and then last year i decided to give it another go and my life has never been the same since.

i always say this about knb, but it's one of those shows that's extremely hit or miss. the people that love it REALLY love it, but it doesn't work for everyone! for me, personally, the strong characterizations and character arcs are what pulled me in and i loved the themes the show was trying to touch on, even if it doesn't always execute them perfectly! it's so fun and flawed and since it's only 3 seasons long, i rewatch it frequently 😅 it helps that the VAs seemed to have a lot of fun doing it and the OSTs are phenomenal – genuinely some of the best i've ever heard! i also think it's the perfect example of a series that has a protagonist and deuteragonist and actually knows what to do with that duo throughout the show. the story is kagami's just as much as it is kuroko's and their individual arcs really tie the whole thing together in a way that is just so fun! the partnership carries the series. it also has amazing antagonist redemption arcs in the first half of the series...god i just love a lot of the characters' arcs and resolutions so much!

i liked the anime better than the manga, though i've heard some fans say some of the characters are more one-dimensional in the anime (i disagree, but i'm not going to bore you with the details!)

ANYWAY. other than that, i have – extremely slowly – been reading the manga 'real' by takehiko inoue and it is just an absolute masterpiece about a bunch of boys with disabilities playing basketball! if knb is a silly show that is extremely flawed but you love it anyway, real is a classic. it has amazing characters, a really grounded story, and the art is so BREATHTAKINGLY beautiful, you will not believe it! inoue is so good at drawing people! as someone who used to love barbara gordon from the batman comics, it's really refreshing to read about disabled characters written thoughtfully again! after i'm done i'm going to try slam dunk, obviously, but it'll probably take me a while to finish it since the 'real' manga is still ongoing.

i tried giving haikyuu a go a few years ago but couldn't get into it (same with yuri on ice). nothing against either of the two, they just didn't grab me. i've been wanting to read a girls-centric sports manga too, but i've only done limited research on that so far and haven't seen anything that interested me all that much.

[side note: this is not an anime but a tv show but i really enjoyed yellowjackets, which is a showtime drama about an all-girls soccer team that gets stranded in the woods for 19 months. the actresses are all fantastic and i'm really looking forward to season 3, even if season 2 was a bit of a dud].

#you should really NOT ask me about knb it is one of my favorite things to talk about and i will not stop :D #asks #BTW grimmjow's VA bazz b's VA and loid forger's VA are all in it. that's something fun to think about 😂 #OH AND ALSO RUKIA'S VA!!! i always forget about that because satsuki sounds nothing like rukia

[animehouse-moe]

D-Frag! : Near Limitless Fun

Yes, this is an old series. Yes, it can be hard to find physically because of that. And yes, it is fun as all hell. I recently managed to get my hands on all but 3 volumes of the series so I've done a re-read from scratch on it, and it really is just incredibly hilarious. It can be a little formulaic with the whole straight man routine, but it gets both incredibly meta and off the rails with it. I mean, the sheer amount of jokes that they break out in relation to it always keeps it fresh. Getting tired of Kazama making comebacks? There's probably a joke or a remix on the horizon for it. And personally speaking it always gets me, whether it's one volume in or 16 volumes in.

Anyways, let me backtrack a little. What is D-Frag! ? Well. Well.... It's a high school comedy taken the max of what can be weird, with lots of other little bits mixed in. Kazama is a young delinquent who comes to Fujou high believing he'll be able to take it over and make a name for himself. Too bad he gets suckered in by the curious ongoings of a video game club and gets tortured into joining them. From there, his high school career of insanity and infamy as the king of comebacks (and second fiddle to the most fearsome people around) begins as they galivant and explore and in general cause mayhem and headaches.

Oh yeah, and there's 17 volumes and it's still not been a full year in real time in D-Frag! Yeah, that's right, this thing is stretched out, but you don't even think about it. One could only imagine how experiencing all of these moments one after the next would affect a young high schooler. Moving on, some art to break up my monotonous explanations of what D-Frag! is!

I don't think words could really explain what's so appealing to this manga. It's got such a classic feel to it and is so incredibly true to itself. No matter what trope it brings up, it'll subvert expectations and find a way to turn it silly and diffuse any and all tension. It builds things up and up and up, and just as it's about to place the final piece on top to complete it, Tomoya Haruno (the author) comes swooping in to topple it in the most satisfying way possible.

Not to mention, it's running jokes are absolutely top notch. There's definitely some that are rather cliched, but also more than a few that are fresh and enjoyable within the overall approach of the series. Like the constant jokes about the envy and fear that Takao's (one of the characters) chest instills in fellow women and girls.

It's really hard to talk about how D-Frag! is so much fun and such a great read without spoiling because I could talk on end about how refreshing, unique, and interesting redacted was. Or how the entire redacted arc was a wild card that was incredibly fun. Maybe this. Parents exist in D-Frag!, they really do. We see both Kazama's mother and father, we see Roka's mother, Takao's mother, Chitose's older sister, and a handful of others. Oh yeah, and just for effect, Sean Connery is a teacher at Fujou High.

And who totally could would forget the unique side characters of D-Frag! ? There's , and there there's , and of course you can't forget about . Jokes aside, the side characters have a real thing for being bald and weird in general and I'm all for it. It's so out of left field and random that it feels like two series collided to form this single one.

I swear, at least one chapter every volume has these ridiculous battle shounen introductions and interactions, and no matter what they get me every time. And they're so detailed? Haruno sensei absolutely put a good amount of effort into designing them and adding random throwaway details just to make them seem more absurd.

I don't know, I fully admit that D-Frag! isn't some foundational, groundbreaking series that has incredibly well timed or apt and effective humor, nor is it something super relatable or anything that really stands out by critical metrics. But to me, it's just plain dumb fun. One stupid thing after the next, one ridiculous escapade followed by another, guided by Haruno sensei's incredibly odd sense of interest and direction. It's something I don't know I'll ever grow tired of because Haruno sensei has stumbled upon a golden formula for D-Frag!. We're going to hit 15 years of publication this year, so here's to many more. (Also, check out the anime, it's loads of fun for what it adapts from the manga).

#d frag #D-Frag! #DFrag! #DFrag #manga #manga review #manga recommendation #manga reccs #harem manga #comedy manga #anime and manga

[ahxiang]

tea love why do i feel like you've read all the bl manga/manhwa out there akgssjksks every time an adaptation is announced you've already read the original

i would also feel v iffy about coin laundry if i only read the summary but one actor is 27 and the other is 23 and they're playing a middle-aged man and a highschooler so i'm more confused than anything else. what were their ages in the manga? do you think they're changing the plot a bit to make it less questionable?

btw do you maybe have some bl/gl manhwa recs?👀 i feel like i've read quite a few but you probably know a lot more. for reference some of my favs are soulmate, their story, pond snail robber. and i'm currently reading straight girl trap and honyak/two souls and both have pleasantly surprised me like the first one has a v questionable premise and i was expecting a fucked up power dynamic in the second but no both are really nice and enjoyable and almost unproblematic (esp comparing to some other stuff i've read😬) oh! but i don't read b&w mangas bc for some reason it's hard for me to process it :(

- @ahxu-laowen

sofia, my love! sorry it took me so long to respond, i had a busy day yesterday, but i'm back! this is gonna be longggg, so i put it under a cut!!

absjsjk, i do read a lot of queer comics, but lemme let you in on my secret. when i first started to get into manga/manhwa/manhua, i just started reading what sounded interesting or was well reviewed, but i kept coming across really bad ones that just grossed me out. then i think it was when cherry blossoms after winter premiered that i was wayyyy too impatient to wait for the next ep, so when i saw on mdl that ppl really liked the manhwa, i decided to read it and ended up binging the whole thing that night. i ended up noticing that unlike thai shows that are based on sometimes v shitty novels, j-bls and k-bls are usually adaptations of pretty good manga/manhwa. so from then on, i kept my ear to the ground and the moment an adaptation of a manga/manhwa got announced, i'd read it. and lemme tell you, this has worked much better than looking for things to read on my own. much less icky stuff.

so yeah, blupdate2020 announced back in, like, may that minato shoji koinrandori was gonna get a live action adaptation and i immediately read the manga. it is b&w, still ongoing, and honestly i don't recommend it unless you have nothing else to read, it's probably the worst one of the adapted mangas i've read, but it's also not bad. shin is 17 at the start of the manga and they never specify akira's exact age as far as i can remember, but if i do the math he's 27-28, so the ages are def super iffy. luckily akira's not predatory, in fact it could be argued that shin's the predatory one with the way he pursues him. but if you put the weird teenage thoughts of sex aside, their friendship is quite cute and sweet. all of the manga adaptations that i've seen so far have been very faithful to the original source, with just a few changes here and there (usually elimination of sexual language/scenes), so i doubt minato's laundromat will be too different from the manga, but would probably be much more wholesome, which def helps with the iffiness. i watched the first ep and they aged up shin to be a senior rather than a junior, so that helps? a bit? but minus points bc akira objectifies shin upon meeting him more than he did in the manga. ngl, it was weird. besides that, it's exactly the same but more wholesome. shin is much smilier and just less..... weird, absjsj. so yeah, i think it'll be a cute watch with an iffy premise that i trust them to handle well.

as for recs, i def have plenty, most of which are shows you've probably seen. i've only ever read b&w manga, so all these recs are manhwa/manhua.

it's no secret that i'm a huuuuge fan of who can define popularity?, the source material of blueming. i hiiiiighly recommend it, especially if you enjoyed blueming. it's actually quite different from the adaptation, but both have their pros and cons that make it impossible for me to say which is better. da un's whole deal is expanded upon much more, the sapphics get more development, and do ba woo gets a whole storyline and love interest. i also highly recommend cherry blossoms after winter. i'd say the drama is better, but the manhwa is more in depth and practically the same, so it's a good read! it is explicit though and like always the sex scenes are heteronormative and sometimes kinda uncomfy, but if you skip them like i do, it doesn't ruin it. the same goes for love tractor, which is getting an adaptation supposedly later this year. also a little iffy with ages, but v sweet and has a fun dynamic of v buff and manly country boy with a heart of gold and a damaged city boy musician. outside of adapted source material, there's a manhua i enjoyed called 30 sui nanzi wuyu or the secret tales of a 30 year old gay bachelor. honestly, i don't remember much about this one besides the main character and his brother being rich ceo kinda guys, but i know i enjoyed it. and i'm currently reading the ongoing translation of yeouleul guhaejwo or fall for me!, which is so far v unproblematic and is fun bc it's fantasy! the main character is possessed by a gumiho and gets close to the only guy not attracted to him in an effort to get rid of it.

for gl stuff, i do have to look on my own, but so far i haven't found any bad ones, so that's good! my absolute favorite is a manhua called jintian de ta yeshi ruci keai or my darling is the cutest. it breaks down a bunch of stereotypes and tropes, tackles some hard issues like child abuse, has a fantastic ensemble of queer characters, and is just v v sweet. it's ongoing at 122 chapters. the rest of the gl comics i’ve read so far are actually just webcomics and not manga/manhwa/manhua, but they’re still v good! kiss it goodbye is a very cute slice of life set in japan (but actually in english and made by an italian artist) that is complete and ends very well. i’m only five chapters in, but i’m really enjoying the girlfriend project, which is a fake dating story! and the ongoing mermaid x witch comic the sweetness of salt is beautiful and very sweet. i keep making the mistake of reading comics that end up being ongoing and then forgetting about them while i wait for updates, so idk much about these, but i’m also reading rainbow!, she’s a keeper, and waiting for the release of zhui lan or falling blue.

hope this helps and that you enjoy reading!! thank you for the ask 💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖

#tea answers #sofia #mutuals

[eyefocusing]

speaking of animal man, his runs and the swamp thing runs outside of their most famous writer is also something I've been meaning to read; there's just a TON of comics that I've wanted to read

basically what I've been doing currently is finishing a comic run(s) (in case there was crossovers - that's why I finished blue devil- he had a crossover with firestorm*) , and then catching up on a manga I've either heard good things about or read a bit of it before... I don't think I can fit detective conan into that duality though. I can squeeze in something that's 100 chapters, maybe even 200, but 1000? I think that'll also be in bursts...

*firestorm is one of the 80s comics my brother recommended; it crosses over with a bunch of the 80s DC government comics, but I'm still currently on the Gerry Conway run, so it'll take a while to get to the big crossover

also decided to start watching the post-og yugioh animes because it's like comics - in that there's so much missed potential... (plus i wanted to after reading all of the mangas, outside of the 2 current ongoing ones)

animal man is. interesting. i wasnt super into the morrison issues when i read them, but i like them a lot more in hindsight. the vertigo issues are Very vertigo, for better or worse. ive found that im just not that into the vertigo Vibe, so it wasnt really my favorite era, but its def influenced how hes been used as a character since.

the comic-manga-comic thing is a fun idea tho! it would probably encourage me to read more manga ive put off over the years

[ella390-the-potato]

I had no idea this was being made into an anime. I wonder how well something from the late 90's will do onscreen though.

#Cestvs: The Roman Fighter #Cestvs The Roman Fighter #CTRF #Cestvs #Sesutasu Za Roman Faita #Wazarai Shizuya #Bandai Namco Pictures #New Anime #Spring Anime 2021 #Anime Opening #Dragon Ash #Anime Ending #Kadowaki Sarasa #Sports Anime #older manga adaptations are either a big hit #or a big miss #dunno how this will fare #manga is still ongoing so it'll be interesting

[skyhopedango]

State of the Season pt 1

So, so many shows! :O I don't remember the last time I watched so many ongoing shows. Alas, quantity doesn't translate into quality, but still, there are some pretty nice shows that I enjoy a lot.

Not these, though.

Dragon, ie wo kau

Yeah, this was crap. I expected something fun and fantasy-spoofy, I got a badly animated, badly produced, badly acted (from the main character) video-game-referencing show that takes one joke that is already not incredibly funny, and runs it into the ground until there's nothing left but dust. Pity.

.

Mars Red

Oh, this show. The first episode was stilted and vaguely pretentious*, but I thought eh, let's see a bit more of it. So I watched episode two and three, and bam, the usual vampire-hunter-vampires shenanigans with some half-hearted attempts at ~Historical Relevance~ but still pretentious. Perhaps it could've been better with more interesting/charming characters, but they weren't interesting at all... OK, that's not quite true, I liked that young vampire (supposedly the most powerful one?) who was always doing the "hey enemy vampire, you can join us or you can die" speech, that was cute.

*I mean... yes, you've read Salome. Yay. So how is it related to what happens in the episode? Does she kill the one she loved to possess him or something? No. Does she do anything even vaguely related to the story of Salome? No. So... what's the significance of the references? And from episode 2 it was downhill. EP 2 has Romeo and Juliet for "tragic lovers" which is about the most clichéd thing ever and the lovers' story had nothing in common with Romeo and Juliet other than them dying in the end. And in episode 3 the characters are literally standing around reciting Relevant Poetry. I suppose this works for people who are satisfied with understanding a reference and who want to feel smart for knowing some classical literature, but other than that...

I've been putting off watching episode 4 since Monday, and frankly at this rate likely I'll never watch it.

.

Fumetsu no anata he

3 episodes in, and oh yes, I remember why I didn't keep up with the manga. Look, I'm not saying it's a bad show. As most people I was very impressed with the first episode. Good stuff, emotionally powerful. But what happens after that is just totally not my cup of tea. Nonhuman entity learning to understand humans and gaining sympathy for humanity would be totally up my street - but not really when it happens via a generic adventure story, tryhard epicness tipping into unintentional hilarity every now and then, overwrought music, precocious kids mugging for the camera, and the threat of misery porn looming just over the horizon... and that's not even mentioning the obvious production issues apparent from episode 2 that further undermine the epic tone the show is going for.

I think I'll give it one more episode, although I have a feeling I'm not going to last longer. I'm sure the story will eventually have some profound things to say, but I'm also sure it'll be nothing I haven't heard before in ways that resonated better with me.

.

86 -Eighty-Six-

aka "Liberal Circlejerk - The Anime". (And while it can't be "white liberal" for obvious reasons, it has the attitude down pat.)

This show. This is what you get from a LN for horny teen boys fantasizing about being badass soldiers and naive girls in sexy uniforms, that also wants to say Serious Important Woke Stuff. You get a show about Super Special Teenagers that is hilariously dumbed down, preachy, self-congratulatory, and also cynical about how it treats its female characters. (And that's not even saying how stupid the setting is... I'm sure there'll be some twist but seriously, it still wants us to just handwave away stuff like "even if the enemy's weapons will expire in 2 years, how come nobody asks 'what if they built new ones' or 'what if they have other stuff up their sleeve'" etc...)

Really, I'd like to say that at least the show has its heart in the right place, but I can't, because for every preachy and dumbed down but decent message it delivers it does shit like ogling the main female character (whose uniform has a garterbelt apparently because the LN writer is into that), having her make cute pouty or blushing faces, pointing out how she's a virgin, having a "boys ogle bathing girls" scene* where the girls of course talk about boys and romance because girls, eh? etc. Hell, in episode 4 it even manages to undermine the single best thing that happened in the show so far by basically tone policing the oppressed character who told the MC to fuck off and not treat them as her morality pets. Clearly even if your friend was just killed in action and this random person who is also your oppressor and is wallowing in privilege, is crying in your ear making it all about her, you shouldn't be rude to her because aw shucks she meant well. And of course all it takes is a "sorry, I'll treat you like humans from now on, I swear" for everyone to start respecting her. Like, wow, she's committed to the bare minimum, where's the champagne?!

*Yes, the girls were dressed, but you just know that at one point in production (or perhaps in the source material) they were were naked. The entire scene is set up as a usual ogling-bathing-girls scene, so I'd bet money that what happened was someone in production vetoed it in the very last moment so they didn't have time to rewrite everything, only to give the girls clothes.

I'm still getting some entertainment value out of 86 (those spider tanks are pretty nice...) but oh boy, the cringe.

#86 #86 eighty six #mars red #fumetsu no anata e #to your eternity #dragon goes house hunting #anime review

[tigerlover16-uk]

Do you think that Dragon Ball Super is going to hold up better than Dragon Ball GT did long term? Or do you think it'll eventually fade into the background for most of the fandom as well and become a niche thing?

Part of that I think is going to depend on how the movie and the inevitable follow up series(s) are received… but most likely, yes.

Here’s where Super has the advantage over GT in that regard… it’s canon.

Or at least, it’s being treated as canon and is being used as the foundation from which modern Dragon Ball stories and products are going to be built off of for the foreseeable future. We can get into debates about semantics and this fandom’s rather annoying “There is no canon except maybe the manga!” mantra that I’ve never been in favour of, but Toei is treating it as the current canon for the moment and so does Toriyama, it seems.

The upcoming movie is going to be a follow up on Super. FighterZ, the recent fighting game that blew up and became a huge success recently to the point of bringing in a lot of new fans, has it’s story take place sometime during the events of Super, has beerus and Whis show up in the story, and includes characters like Hit and Goku Black on the base roster while Merged Zamasu and Vegito Blue are DLC, while no GT character has been added yet. 

Even the Xenoverse games treated the events of Battle of Gods and Resurrection F as canon events, while GT was an afterthought in both, having DLC packs for the first game and it’s characters only appearing in side quests in the sequel, and it’s timeline treated as an alternate future on par with the old movies.

Even the upcoming PR anime for Dragon Ball Heroes is adapting an arc that’s more or less a follow up to the Future Trunks saga in Super. And when a ongoing “Canon” Dragon Ball show does get made (And it will. Toei aren’t going to keep it off the air for too long, Dragon Ball’s gotten too big and profitable again since Super started for them to want to let the franchise go dormant again for too long), it will inevitably be a sequel to Super.

Unless Toriyama changes his mind and decides to scrap everything from the last few years and start over with another new continuation of the manga (Which is unlikely considering how involved he’s been in Super’s production as well as the upcoming movie, and he’s shown no signs of wanting to stop putting out new stories), then it’s likely that for the foreseeable future, all future Dragon Ball series, movies and spin-offs are going to be made with the idea that Super and it’s follow ups are “Canon” events.

And that’s going to inevitably influence how hardcore fans, casuals, and the portion of general audiences who consume Dragon Ball content view things.

Whatever people’s perception of the Prequel Trilogy was initially, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that more people have watched those, and new fans getting into Star Wars for the first time are ENCOURAGED to watch them, than have watched, say, the Star Wars Holiday Special or the Ewoks cartoons and specials.

Why? 

Because love or hate them, the Prequel Trilogy is, now and forever, a crucial part of the Star Wars saga and the foundation for a large, important era of the franchise that has spawned a large number of spin off works, from comics to at least two cartoons, one of which is basically the predecessor to the most current Star Wars animated series, Rebels, and a number of it’s events and characters are followed up on in that show.

The Prequel Trilogy is an essential cornerstone of the Star Wars franchise, and even casual fans who aren’t interested in all the expanded universe stuff are going to watch them, because they’re episodes of the main film series that are the backbone of the entire franchise and whom millions and millions of people watched in theatres when they came out. For all the controversy and handwringing about “MY CHILDHOOD IS DEEEEEAAAAAAD!”, there’s no getting around the fact that the Prequel Trilogy will continue to have an overarching presence over the rest of the Star Wars franchise going forward. And over time, the movies have also been increasingly vindicated with more and more supporters feeling safe to express their support of it publicly.

As for the Holiday Special and Ewoks cartoon and movies? They’re not canon, never had as big a presence and impact in the first place, and the former is especially reviled among the fandom and is treated as a laughingstock that people only watch ironically, and considering it’s reputation for being terrible, not a HUGE amount of people are going to be inclined to watch it these days or in the next few decades because of that. I’ve never watched it, for example, and I never intend to.

No one is going to tell you that you have to, or even should, watch those products if you’re getting into the franchise. The general public who only care about the most mainstream installments of the Star Wars franchise, I.E the films, doesn’t even realize the Ewoks HAD their own cartoon and made for TV films. I’ll bet there are going to be people reading this post shocked about it.

This goes for the rest of the Star Wars expanded universe too, the old one and the new. If you ask people on the street or people who are generally casual Star Wars fans for the most part, they’ll probably be able to tell you who Darth Maul and Captain Phasma are… but significantly less people will know what you’re talking about if you bring up Thrawn, Asajj Ventress or Savage Opress. 

Not because they aren’t good characters who are memorable and interesting in their own right, heck they’re more developed and interesting than Phasma ever was. But because they’re not mainstream, and in Thrawn’s case he wasn’t even canon to the current EU anymore until Rebels introduced their own take on him (I haven’t seen the 4th season, so I can’t discuss how that worked out).

I think GT has, and is going to have a similar issue to a lot of those expanded universe and non-canon Star Wars works going forward.

Let’s not kid ourselves, while it might have had some support when it was first airing, GT came out at a bad time both in Japan and in the West, and here in the West especially didn’t leave a good lasting impression.

In Japan, franchise fatigue for Dragon Ball as a whole was starting to set in around the time of the Buu Saga. While the saga was well received there and is looked back on fondly, Z’s ratings were continuously declining after the Cell Saga, and they declined more sharply during GT’s early run because the majority of people found the Black Star Dragon Balls saga boring.

While GT did pick up momentum again with the Baby saga which restored some interest, it didn’t actually do a thing to help the gradually increasing sense of fatigue. Ratings still steadily declined later on in the shows run (Admittedly not much more than they were during the Buu Saga, to be fair), but merchandise and revenue for Dragon Ball was going down really fast, which caused Toei to hastily pull the plug on the series, recognizing the fatigue and that Dragon Ball needed a bit of a break. (This is likely why the ending felt so rushed and sudden, BTW).

 So while it wasn’t viewed as a disaster or anything and a lot of elements from the series are still well regarded and promoted in merchandise and video games like Heroes (Super Saiyan 4, some of the villains, etc), it’s never been as well regarded as the rest of the series and certainly wasn’t as successful in terms of profit and renewed interest in the franchise as Super has brought forth.

In the West, it’s case is even worse. The Buu Saga was much more controversial when it aired in America to the point that for years a significant segment of the franchise ragged on it as being the worst thing to come out of Z. Buu was supposedly the worst villain, Babidi stinks, “THEY RUINED GOHAN!”, etc. (I personally always thought that was nonsense and I love the Buu Saga, and in recent years the general consensus has improved, but these reactions were common and a lot of people still resent the saga to this day or at least hold it in less regard than the previous ones).

Dragon Ball Z’s popularity and the initial hype the show had gained after finally catching on in America (And here in the UK) had started to wane by this point, and a large portion of viewers who had been watching jumped ship by that point. While GT enjoyed some acceptance by the fanbase at first, by the time it finished and in the years that followed, it became regarded as the black sheep of the entire franchise (Until Evolution came along, anyway), with loud and vocal hate thrown at it for years. 

People were quick and eager to declare it non-canon and shoot down the possibility of it being so, to the point that even before the franchise itself started gradually downplaying it’s significance in favour of the newer works, pretty much the majority of people were in agreement over it’s non-canon status. 

And the fact that it came out at a time where Dragon Ball Z was starting to slowly lose it’s hype among casual fans and the general public (And then became an internet laughing stock until roughly the start of the current decade when Kai’s dub came out and starting a gradual renaissance where the series regained a lot of respect in the West), means that GT, while a lot of people do know about it, has never had as much of a mainstream presence in the West (Kind of like the Original Dragon Ball, sadly), being mostly something the hardcore fandom was invested in enough to watch and discuss… and again, for years the consensus was that most people hated it.

It’s true that GT hate has calmed down in more recent times among the fandom, and while it’s still not well regarded it’s defenders are more vocal and comfortable about supporting the show than before. And there is a common consensus that the show had a lot of good ideas, even if most of them weren’t executed as well as they could have been. 

There are definitely people who have revisited the series and appreciated it more nowadays… and people like me who used to defend it but immediately started hating it after re-watching it :P.

But here’s the thing a lot of those defenders might be surprised or try to smugly lecture me about how wrong I am over… GT these days is, like you suggested anon… a NICHE.

GT’s fans may be vocal in a lot of places online, but in the grand scheme of things… people generally don’t care much about it either way. And the fact that it’s non-canon and has officially been replaced as the “Official” Dragon Ball follow up means that in the years to come, it’s only going to become less and less relevant.

Regardless of how much of a broken base there might be over the series in the fandom, you can’t argue that Super isn’t a big success for Toei and the Dragon Ball brand in terms of promotion and profits.

Here’s one of several graphs I can find online demonstrating the revenue the Dragon Ball franchise as a whole has been bringing in for Toei over the last decade.

Notice how when Kai first aired, it barely made a blip in merchandise sales and overall income for the franchise, and by the time it ended it’s initial run in Japan revenue kept falling until the year after Battle of Gods came out, and then in 2015 after Super was announced suddenly everything started to explode and it’s become super profitable, peaking this year even with Super’s conclusion?

Heck, it’s Toei’s most profitable franchise again nowadays, bringing in slightly more than twice as much as One piece even in Japan, which is a longtime juggernaut franchise. And general enthusiasm from both the public and fandom is at a high not seen in years.

It’s certainly not to the level of when it first aired. Super is also significantly less of a mainstream hit in Western Countries that aren’t Latin America than Z was aswell, certainly (Probably doesn’t help that the Toonami Block it now airs in is a late night slot that only fanboys stay up to watch).

But it’s still popular and watched by a lot of people, and the fandom is especially deep into it.

Heck, bringing up Latin American countries again where Dragon Ball has historically been extremely popular and a staple of pop culture, Super and the movies it spawned from are huge hits, to the point that across various countries including Mexico, huge public events were held in many cities and community centres where large crowds of people, many numbering in the THOUSANDS, gathered to watch the streams for the last two episodes of DBS. Which were huge hits, of course.

All things considered, Battle of Gods, Resurrection F and Super left more of a positive impact for the franchise starting out since, regardless of Super’s… very bumpy start and production, these works have been big hits that caused a franchise renaissance that generally brought Dragon ball back to a level of prominence and success it hasn’t seen in a long time.

A far cry from GT which pretty much signalled Dragon Ball’s leave of absence from the mainstream, during which time interest in the series waned for years even with Kai helping to restore it’s rep a fair bit (At least in America, said series was met with more of a meh reaction in Japan).

The results of this can’t be understated. Worldwide, Super has brought in a number of new fans. For many children and teenage fans, it’s going to be their introduction to Dragon Ball, or at least a cornerstone of their formative experiences with the franchise. 

Many casual fans who had long drifted off from Dragon Ball were drawn back into the fold when Super came out, many people becoming bigger fans of Dragon Ball than ever as a result of that. I’ve talked with a number of people on this site who have admitted that Super actually helped them to appreciate Dragon ball in general a lot more whereas they only had a casual interest in the franchise before.

And a lot of those people are probably going to stick around rather than drift off again in favour of other series, considering we have the movie coming up, potential new shows in the near future, and other high profile Dragon Ball products like FighterZ to keep them occupied.

For every fan who complains about Super or is put off by it, I’ve seen as many, actually more, express a lot of thanks to it. Right before my recent break I remember reading a post from someone who admitted to never liking the Dragon ball franchise, being a Naruto fan before that started to disappoint them later on to the point they felt nothing when it ended (A feeling I find tragically relatable).

Said person said they started watching Super at some point as a joke… and by the time of watching the last episode, they had become a big converted fanboy, loved the majority of characters, had watched the previous series (I think, I might be remembering that part wrong), and even cried at the last episode due to being so emotionally invested.

For as many fans as there are who like to pick apart Super (And to be fair it is a flawed series and I do think it’s fair to criticise it’s missteps, I have issues like anyone else despite overall loving it), it IS generally a well liked series.

It’s true that a lot of that could fade with time. Heck, I’m sure a lot of people will like it somewhat less with hindsight and the hype wearing down.

On that note, I think some people might also like it more after a while.

Did you know that earlier on in Super’s run, people actually complained A LOT about the Slice of Life episodes, finding them a waste of time and no different to DBZ filler? Even by the end of the Champa saga that opinion started to soften and everyone started realizing how fun the slice of life episodes were, to the point that everything between the Future Trunks and Universe Survival Sagas is some of the most beloved content from the show now.

Even the potaufeu arc, widely despised when it first aired, has a bit of a better reception now. it’s not considered particularly GOOD, mind you, but people generally regard it as okay and at worst harmless now, compared to the hate it got earlier on. Helps that Brian Drummond was cast as Copy Vegeta for the dub, I guess.

A lot of other elements of the show have been viewed more fondly over time too, in addition to the stuff that gets more flak.

So it’s highly possible that, if the upcoming movie and any Dragon Ball series that follow up on Super in the near future are generally well received, opinions on Super from people who are critical of it now might gradually soften over time, at least to the point that a lot of people complaining about how the franchise is supposedly being “Ruined” might stop and realize they might have overreacted a little.

The opposite could also be true, we could have another series that’s a complete trainwreck and that could sour the fandoms opinions over modern Dragon ball as a whole, lead to a great decline in public interest and probably put us back on a franchise hiatus.

Which would stink a lot, let me tell you, and Super probably wouldn’t be remembered THAT fondly in that case… but to be honest, I have faith things will turn out at least reasonably well. Everything I’ve heard about the recent movie and it’s production suggests that Toei have put a ton of care and effort into making it right, and giving us the best product possible for a milestone movie like this.

And that suggests to me that they’ve learned from their missteps.

The big issue with Super, both in terms of it’s production values and writing, was ALWAYS down to it’s rushed production. The show was rushed to be aired, and that had a catastrophic effect that the show never completely recovered from, even when it did mostly stabilise later on.

But between the big increase in it’s production quality later on, the care that seems to be going into the movie, and the fact that behind the scenes Toei and Shueisha seem to be restructuring a lot of stuff to better focus on producing Dragon ball content and planning out new directions for the franchise… it feels like Toei are making all the right moves to keep Dragon ball relevant, and more importantly, GOOD into the foreseeable future.

They seem to have learned from their mistakes. And considering Super DID have a number of talented animators and writers working on it who did do a lot of good even though they were in far from suitable conditions… I for one feel confident that Toei could produce a much better follow up to Super down the line.

And if that’s the case, and Super does continue to be the launching pad for future stories in the Dragon Ball franchise for years to come… that’ll help it’s image to an extent. 

Because even if the series itself is continuously acknowledged as having problems, if Dragon Ball is still relevant two or three decades from now and still producing moderately well received series… fans are going to encourage newcomers and casuals to watch Super to “Get the full story”. Just like Star Wars fans these days unanimously agree that, whatever the quality, you should watch the Prequels and yes, they do count (Even if begrudgingly to a lot of people).

GT… will never have that.

See, as much as it’s fanboy’s like to pretend the support for GT these days is bigger than it is… most people who watch Dragon Ball either haven’t watched it, haven’t watched it in years, and probably aren’t going to watch it anytime soon.

Heck, half the people watching Super these last few years haven’t watched Dragon Ball Z since it was initially airing. I have a mutual who’s a BIG Dragon Ball fangirl, who writes fanfiction (Usually Vegebul related) and is one of the most passionate and positive people you’ll see on this site when it comes to Dragon Ball… she also regularly admits that while she needs to get around to it, she hasn’t actually watched Dragon Ball of Z since she was a kid, just clips of it and I think Kai. (On that note she didn’t watch GT because she couldn’t get into it, she did watch the first two episodes recently but seemingly hasn’t found the time to get further into it).

This is actually surprisingly common among the fandom. I remember when the first episodes of the Super dub were airing someone who had clearly only watched the dub of Kai before was confused while watching Super and Kai: The Final Chapters back to back, wondering if Elder Kai as seen in Super was the same character as Shin The Supreme Kai. There’s a ton of people out there who’s only experience with Dragon Ball was watching Kai’s dub years ago and getting back into it now because the franchise is putting out new major installments.

FYI, this is also one of the big reason that memes, particularly TFS related, have taken over the fandom and warped the perception of the series and the characters so much over the years. A majority of people who call themselves Dragon ball fans are actually casuals who don’t re-watch the series often and look to the fandom side of things to refresh their memories and base their opinions off of since they probably never thought too hard about the series other than “This show is fun, and these characters are my favourite!” before.

And no, that doesn’t make those people less of a fan than people who re-watch/read the series yearly and are obsessive about it, because screw that elitist noise. I’m just pointing out that… well… many people’s interest in Dragon Ball, as with many mainstream franchises, is very much in the “Here and now” variety. Especially in the age of Crunchyroll, Netflix and online streaming, where anime fans are constantly binging and hopping around from one series to the next.

Hardcore fanboys and people who have nostalgia for it are the only people who actually care about GT more than enough to casually acknowledge it’s existence from time to time. And while you might get the impression by browsing the internet, fansites, forums, comments sections, etc that the hardcore fandom is most of the people that watch and talk about Dragon Ball… they’re really not, in the grand scheme of things.

Going by Star Wars comparisons again, this video by Moviebob should explain what I’m talking about better than I can. 

To sum everything up nicely though… GT is non-canon and hasn’t actually been relevant for two decades. It has long had a reputation as one of the worst things in the franchise, and while there are certainly things the fandom likes about it and plenty of people willing to go back and watch and then defend it (And people like me who re-watch it and end up hating it where we used to defend it, too), it’s status as non-canon and the fact that it has officially been replaced by a new ongoing continuity means that it’s only going to become more and more niche over time as the fandom grows and changes.

And about two or three decades from now, new fans aren’t likely to be encouraged to watch it when there are various other sequels to Z starting with Super to get through, even before you take supplementary material like the movies and video games into consideration than only people looking to go hardcore will want to look up.

However Super is viewed in the future, it seems highly likely to me that it’s going to be held in at least higher regard by a significant portion of the people who are really into Dragon Ball over the next few decades if only because it was the necessary flint that sparked the era of new content more ambitious than the occasional OVA we’d been getting every few years before Battle of Gods came out.

Heck, even in terms of content, I think people in the fandom are going to look back on Super more fondly than GT because it gives people more stuff that appeals to them.

Think about it, Super has given us a plethora of popular characters. Beerus and Whis and Jaco are holdovers from the movies sure, but the former two are easily more popular than literally any character to come out of GT.

And in Super itself? We have huge fan favourites like Hit, Caulifla, Vados, and various characters from the universe Survival Saga. Super arguably has introduced a lot more popular characters than GT did, which included… uh… Baby, Nuova Shenron and maybe Omega Shenron to those who don’t find him unremarkable.

And be honest… unless you intentionally go looking for it, when was the last time you really saw fanart or anything about Baby or Nuova Shenron floating around here? Now when was the last time you saw stuff for Frieza, Cell, Beerus or Broly?

There’s probably a big gap there. Sure is for me.

And Super did a lot more for the supporting cast too. Krillin and Gohan got their own character arcs, Android 18 was a highlight in the Tournament of Power and saw the most action she’s seen in any series (Plus a ton of extra insight into her and Krillin’s relationship and great shipping moments, plus new interactions with her brother and other characters). Frieza may have hit a rough spot with the RF saga, but the Universe Survival Saga showed him at his very best and made the fandom fall in love with his character all over again.

And Android 17? He went from being the least appreciated of the trio of him, 18 and Android 16 to being a huge fandom darling and is regularly agreed to be the MVP of the universe survival saga, if not Super PERIOD. 

I could go on too, because for all it’s missteps, Super actually did go out of it’s way to do things with the characters and expand the universe in various ways, leaving tons of potential for new stories for years to come in it’s wake…

GT though? Let’s be honest, the most popular thing to come out of that was super Saiyan 4. And while I love that form… in the grand scheme of things, transformations are actually one of the least important things about the Dragon ball series, so that right there is a sign that somethings off there.

GT really is designed to be a series that appeals to certain subgroups of fans, and feels alienating to many others. It starts off with an arc that jettisons the majority of the cast in favour of a trio featuring Goku reduced to a kid again, a grown up Trunks, and Pan… who’s portrayed as an annoying brat who’s more of a detriment to the group than anything. Plus a cute robot sidekick to boot, and they all go on boring space adventures for a while.

It has all of one arc that’s all around good (…mostly…), followed up by what’s almost unanimously considered a trainwreck of a mini-arc that, as I’ve said before, looks worse than ever in light of Super due to it’s mishandling of Android 17′s character and the past villains, in comparison to how 17 and Frieza were handled in Super’s last arc. And then we get a final arc that had an awesome premise that devolved into a huge mess due to poor writing and most of the villains being annoying, underwhelming monsters of the week and the final boss being very unsatisfying, capped off by an ending that’s always been wildly divisive.

I’m not going to say that GT, as a what-if spin-off like it currently is, was a complete flop. But it’s definitely a series that I think takes a certain kind of fan to appreciate, whereas I think that Super, for all it’s own faults, in general is a show that captures a lot more of what gave the previous series their wider appeal and generally gives more people what they want.

Not everyone of course… but unlike GT, which really isn’t going to have any continuations anytime soon to do any course corrections or make up for any lost potential, a lot of Super’s missed opportunities can easily be made up by whatever series and movies come after it.

In general I just think that Super has more stuff that a wider group of people are going to be inclined to want to come back to.

Heck, on that note, a lot of people only like GT because it’s pretty much their only resource for Next Gen, post EoZ official Dragon Ball content. People starved for content about Uub, Pan, Bulla, Marron etc especially still use their GT designs as a basis for aged up fan art, and a lot of people who are fans of said character look to GT because outside of a few video games, they don’t have a lot of content for them.

I guarantee you though the minute a new series is made someday set past EoZ again which does more with those characters or otherwise portrays them better than GT did, those holdovers will gladly jump ship, because who in their right mind is going to buy bread crumbs from a shady street vendor when that new bakery across the street is giving away whole loafs?

I could really go on and on talking about this subject, because I actually find this interesting to discuss and speculate on, but it’s getting late and this is getting ridiculously long, so I’m just going to leave it here for now and give you my conclusion.

Yes. I think for most people, Super will be remembered more fondly than GT in the long run. Whether Super will be viewed particularly well in of itself years from now is another matter entirely, it’s probably always going to be a big base breaker at the very least. But on the whole… regardless of how you feel about the two series, I think it’s safe to say it has the advantage.

#dragon ball super #dbs #dragon ball gt #dragon ball #dragon ball z #dbz #dbgt