Anime

Log Time General Podcast #11 | End of Fall 2017 — The Gems of the Season

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This podcast, we crawl out of the Fall 2017 season battered and bruised from the year behind us, but come up with some heavy-hitters and anime of the year contenders! We go deep into (read as: gush for what seems like hours) Just Because! and its incredible subtleties in storytelling, finally talk about a genuinely good 3DCG show a la Land of the Lustrous, check out a few other solid picks for the season, and we almost kill Matt and end the podcast over an almost-pun.

Audio Links: iTunes | SoundCloud

This podcast was recorded on January 6th, 2018.

December 2017 / January 2018 Monthly Content Round-up

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Hi, all! For our last round-up post, we kind of switched things up a bit, focusing on posts of our own from the blog that we really enjoyed from 2017. However, there was a lot of great content that came out in December, so we felt that it would be a huge shame if we just passed over the month altogether. To fix that, we decided to do a combined post for December 2017 and January 2018, and man were there some solid picks for this one. Get ‘em while they’re hot (from the last two months but hey they’re still warm in our hearts)!

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Violet Evergarden 1+2 – Great Promise, Great Worry

generaltofu 6 Comments

[Disclaimer from the team: While this anime is not out in the United States, currently, a large amount of our followers and fellow Anibloggers are not from the United States and we felt it would be good to share our own thoughts on the series along with them. This is also a bit of a statement for the US branch of Netflix. While we are happy that Netflix is helping to fund and support the anime industry and we fully support legal means for watching anime, their practices in timed region-locking content are not something we agree with, particularly in the case of this show which is available in every country except our own with no explanation as to why. Therefore, given the show in nature is the most anticipated of the past year and we have no available legal means of joining the international discussion, we felt we should write about it regardless.]

Violet Evergarden is finally here. To say that it has been one of the most-hyped anime series to come by in the last few years would be a pretty massive understatement. Whether it’s been through talks about Netflix’s choice of streaming with regards to other countries, discussion from those who have read the source material, or just sheer hype over the potential of the show shown through interviews and PVs, it seems like Violet Evergarden has seeped into conversations for a very, very long time. Does it stand up to the raging hype machine that’s been set up alongside it?

Well, yes…but I’m also a tad concerned.

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Just Because! Episodes 11 + 12 – The Pitch and The Home Run

Selie 1 Comment

Quick note for any Just Because! viewers outside of America:  Lucky for you, HiDive got ahold of this one because still at the point of this writing, Amazon has not translated the signs and text for this show along with the official subs.  So if you’re watching this show, might want to head over to HiDive for those translated signs on the last episode given the incredibly important use of text messaging in this show.  Us Americans will just be over here crying and raising a defiant fist against our Amazon overlords who will still not turn over the full rights to HiDive.

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Well here we are, the end is near, we face the final curtain, and my friends, I’ll say it clear.  I’ll state my case of which I’m certain…  This was such a good anime.  Since the first episode, I’ve been impressed with this show and I’m so happy that Just Because! never let me down.  Of the shows that we’ve written about thus far as a group on this site, this one was probably my favorite to watch.  And now we’re at the end.  I guess if the previous episodes were the wind up, this would be the pitch… and then the aftermath.  Though, to be less haughty for a sec, it’d probably be better just to call this the exam arc ‘cause hot damn is there a lot riding on these college entrance tests.

We initially pick up from where episode ten leaves off, with Komiya readmitting her feelings. However, we see that she tells Izumi not to give her an answer until he passes his test, stating it with the assurance that he will.  He promises her he will with the same earnest and serious face I’ve come to love on this deadpan boy.

[HorribleSubs] Just Because! - 11 [1080p].mkv_snapshot_00.56_[2018.01.18_03.31.12]

Hmm, yes, the “I’m very tired but I appreciate you as a person” look.  Vintage.

The next day, Izumi fills in Souma about what’s going on with him and his exams while Souma in turn explains his relationship with Morikawa and his plans for the future.  The standout moment here, however has to be when Izumi tells Souma to stay in touch with Morikawa, as it’ll get harder to message her if he waits too long.  It’s thrown out so nonchalant but the meaning is easily picked up by Souma as Izumi alluding to how they fell out of touch, bringing us back to the beginning of the series and the lost friendship they thankfully were able to rekindle.  It’s a nice touch to one of the last major bonding moments these two have with each other as we head towards the end.  With a promise to stay in touch with Morikawa that also seems to be an affirmation to be there for Izumi as well, Souma then throws it back to Izumi, telling him to stay in touch with Natsume to which Izumi promises Souma that he’ll tell her everything when he passes his test.  A lot riding on these exams, huh?

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The Backloggers 3rd Anniversary – Continuing the Rocky Journey

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With 2017 finally coming to an end, I hope everyone is enjoying the start of a year, ready to put last year behind us. We’re already in the midst of the Winter 2018 season, and I can already tell that 2018 is gonna be a blast! Here at the Backloggers, we have some things we want to celebrate, some things to apologize for, and some things we want to announce, and what better time to do all of those things than on the 3rd year anniversary?

Yep, our blog is still alive and we’re glad to say that!

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Just Because! Episodes 9 + 10 – The Windup

generaltofu 4 Comments

In looking back on episodes seven and eight of Just Because!, it genuinely feels as though those episodes were in a way a fairly bubbly (by comparison) reprieve from some of the existential and romantic angst that has come from the show in previous aspects. The focus on Eita’s dedication to Natsume, the admittedly fun date that Komiya dragged Eita into, and Souma’s optimism over his possible future prospects with Morikawa all really gave the last two episodes an easy sense of genuinely not having to worry too entirely much about what the future holds. It is, of course, a naive sort of reprieve, one which comes with some of the youthful and childish kind of optimism that is so easy for us to hold on to. I guess it’s only appropriate, then, that with the episodes nine and ten, “Answers” and “Childhood’s End”, we are brought fully back into the show’s dealings with difficult questions, and some genuinely painful, adult answers.

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December 2017 Post Round-up: A Self-Reflection of 2017

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Hey all. General Tofu here, and I’m back from the dead! For our December monthly round-up, we decided to do things a bit differently. 2017 has been a bit of a dumpster fire in some respects, and we really wanted to take the opportunity to celebrate some of the great things that came out of this year, including both shows we enjoyed, as well as posts we wrote and are pretty proud of. For brevity’s sake, we each have selected three shows each that aired this year (and one that didn’t) that we highly recommend, as well as three posts from our blog this year that we want to signal boost a bit, so help us ring in the new year with some good anime recommendations and some sweet Aniblogger content!

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Just Because! Episodes 7 + 8 – The Things We Do For Love

generaltofu 4 Comments

When I talked about some of the previous episodes of Just Because! serving as the climax for a first act of the show, I feel as though I inadvertently hit the nail on the head with regards to the shifts that episodes seven and eight set in place for what might be the last (or at least most central) major arc for the rest of the show’s season. There’s always been a focus on Eita in the show (and rightly so, considering he is set as the central character of the series from the outset), but for about the first half of the season, I felt as though Eita was mainly just playing a support role, and didn’t seem to have quite as active a role in the major plotlines. We knew, for instance, that Eita was quietly doing his best to pursue Natsume and support her, but we didn’t see anything quite as in-your-face as some of the antics surrounding Souma. The central focuses for the first six or so episodes largely gravitated towards Souma and the sort of love-parallelogram that encompassed him, Natsume, and Morikawa. Now that these threads have been resolved at least to a point, it feels like the stage has been set for us to see Eita’s own tangled web of infatuation sprawl out before us.

And boy, does it ever.

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Just Because! Episodes 5 + 6 – Starting from Scratch

generaltofu 1 Comment

As Just Because! has continued its chug through to the midway point of the season, I had honestly expected it to stumble in some way that would break the spell that the first two episodes cast over me initially. Thankfully, this has not been the case, as it has actually kept a steady pace with regards to its plot pacing and genuinely interesting character interactions. I’m definitely still deeply enjoying the show’s depiction of the existential trepidation that comes with, essentially, every aspect of high school life, and feeling for the characters as they wrestle with issues that, frankly, many of us struggle with today. Episode four, as Mythos said, brought the relationships between Eita and Natsume, as well as Souma and Morikawa, to a very early sense of heavy drama for the show – the climax of the first act, if you will. Coming right on the heels of that, episodes five and six have a lot of weight on their shoulders – the climax is important, flashy, and heavy, but the resolution of the events that transpired is just as important, if not more so.

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12 Days of Anime 2017 [Day 12]: Anime-gataris — How A Sense of Community Creates A Closer Relationship to Art

Owningmatt93 5 Comments

It seems appropriate to cap off this set of 12 Days of Anime posts with Anime-gataris, as I think it’s something that both readers and other content creators can appreciate to end the year on a more uplifting note than perhaps some of us may have experienced over the last several months. Anime-gataris itself may not seem to have a lot going for it at first, as many of its jokes start off as being solely referential or just about wacky club dynamics that you can get from plenty of other anime as well.

At first, there may not seem to be enough appeal for a sort of show that runs on those concepts alone though, and perhaps if the show had just left it at that, it would have never really become something that would have been worth talking about in of itself.

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