Submit Nominations Here
Hey everybody! A couple days ago, @NineSwords@ani.social reached out to me with an idea. Why don’t we try to set up some year-end awards for the communities we moderate? Well, a bit of back and forth, and today, I am glad to announce that we have opened nominations for the 2024 Lemmy Anime Awards. The nomination round will remain open until I post next week’s general discussion thread (usually late Sunday/early Monday US time). Note that there are partner awards for the manga and light novel communities as well.
Like normal, feel free to also use this thread just like you would a normal discussion thread.
As always, remember to be mindful of spoilers. If you want to know more about how to handle spoilers in this community, check the guide here (also linked in the sidebar).
I love the idea of awards, but with only a few notable exceptions, I don’t watch currently airing anime, so…
And on that note, the first thing I watched this past week was the rest of Katanagatari, which I started last week. And I loved almost everything about it. The artstyle and character design particularly stood out, but it was all notably high quality. Though I still have to say I loved almost everything about it, because there was one part I really did not like at all:
spoiler
I hate the fact that they killed Togame. Partly I just hate it from a personal standpoint, because I adored her, but that’s not really the problem. There was another I watched recently (I won’t specify since nested spoilers would be sort of dumb if they work at all) in which they killed off the adorable FMC late in the series and I should’ve hated it, except that her death was glorious and noble and ultimately a vital part of the story. Togame’s death is mostly just stupid and pointless. She could have and should have been redeemed. All the way through the story, we watched as she grew and changed and opened up and started to overcome her obsessiveness and dishonesty and self-centeredness, and then at the 11th hour, they just threw it all away. And it still pisses me off.
…
So… I needed to decompress a bit from that, and I already had an obvious choice lined up - a series that I knew I wanted to watch, but hadn’t gotten around to because I hadn’t quite been in the mood for the particular sort of stupidity I knew it was going to offer - KonoSuba. And it was pretty much just what I expected - shallow, goofy, egregiously ecchi mindless fun. The only thing I didn’t like about it is that Kazuma is, not to put too fine a point on it, a petulant, bitchy, self-absorbed asshole, and I really wanted to punch him in the face. Repeatedly.
And now I’m in the middle of something completely different - Boogiepop wa Warawanai. I watched the original version - Boogiepop Phantom - years ago and mostly enjoyed it, though I also mostly had no clue what was going on. The story is strange and complex and mysterious, and it’s told non-linearly through multiple viewpoints, so it’s opaque at best. The biggest problem with the original though is that it came in the wake of the success of things like Evangelion and Serial Experiments Lain, so it took what was already a complex and mysterious story and buried it in surreal symbolism. This one is still complex and non-linear, but at least it sheds a bit of the surreal symbolism in favor of more straightforward storytelling, and to its benefit. I have a lot of episodes left, but it’s shaping up well.
Yeah, pretty much. Konosuba is one of those shows that I can’t binge because it is just too much of this. The only reason this works in the show is because of how absurd and ridiculous all the characters are around him. If you put him in a cast of pretty normal people, he would be way, way more insufferable. I have the same issue with Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I love the show, but the whole cast are huge assholes, by design, but that means I can only watch 1-2 episodes at a time.
Konosuba S3 would be eligible for the awards btw if you make it that far.
Yeah - the rest of the cast is definitely what makes it watchable.
I was sort of surprised by how much I ended up liking Darkness. She seems like she’d just be a tedious one-note character, and she does get that way sometimes, but the way her masochism syncs with the expected self-sacrifice of a knight actually gives it some flavor and context. I like those moments when she just shines - when she really is a noble and chivalrous knight, even though, as we’ll soon be reminded, it’s for all the wrong reasons.
Aqua is sort of odd. I get what they were trying to do with her, with that combination of helplessness and hyper-competence, but it just somehow doesn’t quite work - the parts just don’t quite mesh. Though part of it is just that I find myself comparing her to Hestia from Danmachi, who’s pretty much better in every possible way. Still though, Aqua does have her moments.
Megumin is plain awesome, and easily my favorite character.
Yeah, he is, and the anime knows it, and that’s what I like in this case. His assholeness is what makes the complete cast work for me. You kinda need to be a self-absorbed asshole in order to even be able to deal with someone like Aqua. Without a character like him, I don’t think it would’ve been as funny as it is for me. He’s like the mega tsukomi to everyone else’s mega boke (most of the time anyway).
I can understand why others might not like that though.
That’s undoubtedly true - at the very least, Aqua needs a dose of him just because it takes a sort of verbal two-by-four across the forehead to get through to her at all, and Darkness needs a dose of him because… reasons.
Still though, I just regularly want to reach into the screen and punch him in the face, and that’s sort of unpleasant and exhausting.