Found Crunchyroll, naturally this has led to watching a lot more anime given the supply is now far greater. Most of it is pretty excellent stuff too. Probably going to go over them in chronological order.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica: fancy title, fancy animation. Never really figured I'd be watching magical girl stuff, but it's as much mystery and horror as it is magical girl, and it has an interesting premise. Start off with a deal where you get a wish granted and gain potent magical powers, and in exchange you have to fight evil creatures that regular people are helpless against. But, the series smartly never makes the fight against the monsters the main story. It's all about the conflicts between the cast, and between the wishes they make, the wishes they thought they were making, and reality. Lots of fun, and the twists mean that it's a good rewatch as well as you can catch all the hints that were dropped.
Kancolle Collection: Tried it out because the theme song sounded nice, didn't make it past the first episode. It's kinda up there in the "What the Fuck, Japan" category of anime. Basic idea is humanity is at war with... something. It's nautical. I think it's some kind of future where nations exist, but actual ships can't do squat, so they need high school girls who possess the spirit of WWII Japanese Warships to fight the enemy. Naturally, in a war this pressing, things will look dire and bleak, like Tokyo-3 near the end of Eva. Except, no, looks like an affluent modern town. Ok, well let's meet the rest of the cast. Huh, seems that our main character is a shy person without much self-confidence but has a special power (the others call her a special destroyer), and everyone else seems to have a single character trait which they need to be blasting out at all times. I know it's the first episode, but other shows manage to show their characters have some depth in the first episode too (in fact, I'll be getting to that later). This was the thing that finally killed it for me, when the pop idol did her act one too many times, but there's one last thing I need to rant about.
So, you know that, despite being shy and out of their element the protagonist is going to fight. It's a cliche, it's going to happen because it has to happen (or... not. Madoka actually managed to make a question out of it. When is she going to fight, is she even going to fight?). Of course, she's never worked with her squad before but it's her first day. She's never practised on the open water before and can barely stay on her feet. Ok, there's a whole thing about falling into the cockpit, and while I kinda hate it, I am well trained in overlooking it. But when you use this characterisation, the situations where you can get her into a fight are strictly limited. Mostly, it needs to be a desperate situation, or she needs to be breaking orders and then do well enough to get away with it. This is neither, this is an offensive action, where she's ordered out while she's not only incapable of looking after herself, but she's also messing up and screwing up her squadron's actions. Fortunately, this is the first episode so we're looking at war porn instead of an actual fight, so the carrier chicks show up, and the battle is won through the OPness of the glorious fleet without a single casualty so there is no penalty at all for sending someone with no training at all to a fight where they'd have done better without her. Rargh.
Is it Okay to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon: You know, given the title, I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, but I had heard good things and the ad looks good, so I gave it a shot. Sadly, it hit a premature end, so I haven't seen the last two episodes yet (I'm kinda happy where I left off). Regardless, I was expecting it to just be an adventuring themed harem anime, and while the main character Bel does get a fair amount of female attention, the show manages to somehow avoid that. Mostly because it settles pretty quickly into a love triangle. Hestia loves Bel who loves Aiz, who seems to have feelings for Bel. That said, Bel and Aiz are on completely different levels, and Bel doesn't want to make a move until he feels he's her equal. In addition, Hestia's part of an interesting social setting of gods who form houses and grant blessings to adventurers, but her's is poor and weak, having only a single Lv. 1 adventurer, Bel. So Bel is trying to both increase the strength and prestige of House Hestia while also train himself up to be worthy of asking out the woman he's infatuated with, and those two conflicts drive a lot of the show. Sadly, the divine politics felt a bit off, and it also felt a bit like they lost their way after the first arc ended. So, my hopes for a second season are not high, despite the fact that it was fun, if mindless, to watch.
Flowers of the Six Braves: This makes me want to play Mafia so much. Seriously, every three centuries or so the demon lord revives and six braves are chosen to defeat him, but we don't care about him because we all know THAT story. Of course the braves are going to, after hardship and sacrifice, win. No, the story here is that this time, the Demon Lord decided to try and defeat the braves by having them defeat themselves. Namely, there's a false, seventh, brave. This series is short, and it's all about trying to find out who's the impostor. They do a great job with setup, and I found it a lot of fun to go through it. And when it came time for the reveal they did it right. You've got two climaxes, the first is the end of the eleventh when the secondary plotline wraps up and it hammers home the question "Who is the seventh" with a chance to not start the last episode to try and figure it out yourself. There are a few things brought up in the start of the last episode that focus that question a bit before the answer is revealed, but it's mostly to show that the answer is a fair one, that you had the information all along. That you could have, theoretically, answered the riddle of the series at the end of the eleventh episode. The one thing about the series that I'm going to complain about is the sequel bait slapped on at the end. Seriously, you already had enough plot hooks, did you need to stick on a new seventh brave in order to keep that going?
Silver Spoon: Done by the same author as Full Metal Alchemist? That's Good. Set in a high school? That's bad. Set in an agricultural high school? That's... good?
Turns out, that is good. Silver spoon is a simple slice of life anime about a city boy who broke down in the stress of the standard Japanese educational system while dealing with his father, best described as a less cuddly, if far more caring, Gendo Ikari. However, pretty much the entire focus is on agricultural life, the growth of the main, Hachiken, and various other actual life lessons as he grows out of his shell and becomes friends with his classmates. There's also plenty of looking at Hokkaido agricultural life, and a special love for horses and equestrian clubs. Some of the episodes focus a bit on school hijinks (like the mystery episode), but it's telling that one of the big conflicts for the first season is Hachiken grappling with naming and then identifying with one of the pigs they were raising for meat, and what he was going to do after that pig was sent to the processing plant. Another thing this anime does that feels fresh and interesting is that while it does have a strong focus on goals and dreams, it also takes a realistic view at them. Just because you have the goal and the desire and means to accomplish it, doesn't mean you necessarily will. One of the main cast is aspiring to be a farm veterinarian but who has issues with blood, and his struggle with that is one of the plotlines that is running here.
Also, this show has some really freaking impressive
opening and
ending music. I'd say the best of the lot in spite of really liking Madoka's music, except... except...
Your Lie in April: This
blows it out of the
water musically. Which, makes sense on two points. One of the best pieces is the opening, Hikaru Nara, which is by the same folks who did the ending I linked to for Silver Spoon. The other being that outside of two of the protagonists and one child, every named character is a musician. And even then, all of them but two are pianists specifically. The anime is from the view of Koumei, who is a 14 piano prodigy who is a legend in the field, but hasn't played since shortly after his mother died. He's been supported by his two friends, who do care a lot for him, one being the standard childhood neighbour/friend, the other being the soccer star/flirt. Things kick off when the childhood friend drags him along because someone asked her for an introduction to the flirt, and they need a fourth for the double date, which introduces the fourth main character, Kaori who is a violinist. Soon she needs a new pianist, and with the support of Koumei's friends, she effectively bullies him into starting to play the piano again. This starts us into Koumei actually starting to deal with the trauma of his mother's passing, and the abuse she dealt him. Of course, this isn't the whole of it, but this is a drama where everyone has their own problems and everyone is connected. And this is where I come back to that point about Kancolle Collection that I brought up earlier. This anime manages to give the Kousei not just one, but two anime rivals, but in five minutes it manages to make them both feel like real people with their own styles, and with real reasons to have a beef with Kousei. And their interactions with him as the series progresses is incredibly heartwarming to watch.
Hmm... oh, right. At some point here I tried to watch Attack on Titan. It suffered from a combination of lack of compelling conflict (I was going to say compelling antagonists, but Silver Spoon and Your Lie in April have no antagonists so clearly that isn't the issue) as the titans as thus far super boring and the main characters are boringly super competent. Perhaps this might change, and maybe I'll watch more, but for now I'm not caught.
