Getting a bit of a late start, most shows are already up to 4 episodes out.
First up: Majo no Tabitabi. As a little girl, Elaina read a story book about a witch who traveled the world and had adventures. She was so inspired, she decided to become a witch and do the same, and at 14, had passed the exam to become an apprentice. Yet none of the local witches would take her on. Eventually she found a strange foreign witch in the woods who would, although it was quite discouraging at first. But she passed her apprenticeship after a year, and then began her travels. By the second episode, we join her three years into her journeys. At least in the beginning, they tend to be episodic stories, often with a dark twist. Will a longer plot emerge towards the end? I don't know.
A lot of the ideas may be standard tropes, but they are told very well, and the animation is lush.
Kami-tachi ni Hirowareta Otoko (Gonna take a flyer on this one). Our Hero is Isekai'ed in the most humiliating manner possible. The gods tell him he died sneezing in his sleep, dislodging his pillow, and hitting his head hard enough to cause a brain bleed. But just as well, as he was living alone and working for a hellish black company. But this is a kid show. Like, imagine Pokemon without Team Rocket. There is no identifiable bad guy. Also, the gods transplanted him in easy mode, unlocking all types of magic for him (The only consequence is that if one becomes a jack of all trades, you become a master of none). And he gets a fresh 8 year old body. He lives in the woods for 3 years, developing absolute mastery over slimes (And in fact, evolving 2 new breeds never before seen.). Eventually he runs across some of the Duke's guardsmen in the woods, and one is injured. He saves him with medicinal potions he's been whipping up on the side, and eventually they save him from his hermitage by introducing him to the Duke and his cute daughter. Then he checks in with the adventurer's guild and gets really easy, but high-paying jobs that are perfectly suited for his new slimes. (One eats trash, and the other cleans and sterilizes). Four episodes in and everything is still going his way, and everyone is amazed by him. I only watched it because the OP promised a cat-girl, and there is (And a dog-girl and a tiger-girl) but no, this show is WAY below my age range.
Gebäude Bäude (Last season of Fireball, no episodes out yet, and I dislike the design on the image they have up).
Munou na Nana (Late add) Take My Hero Academia and turn it on its head. Make it Sinister. Kids with superpowers are a danger to the world. Send them off to an island to give them "training" to fight for humanity, and then send some agent with no powers there to pick them off, one by one. But by the third episode, it's clear there is competition....
I'm stunned. I was looking through an old email file, and saw that back in 2009 a friend (perhaps former, he hasn't talked to me in ages) e-mailed me the torrent file for Rideback. On a whim, I double clicked it and uTorrent not only opened it, but damned if it didn't start downloading! And it was done in no time. Back in 2009 I think I was still on dial-up, and it took DAYS to complete the torrent, and the machine I had at the time couldn't really handle even playing 720p. I did burn the series to DVD (As Data, not rendered). And my next machine was able to play it.
How's the series? I need to re-watch it, I guess (add that to my immense To Watch list....) Generally the plot is our Heroine is a ballet dancer with a promising future until she wrecks her ankle in her debut lead performance. And she needs to learn something else in college. At school, she eventually runs across the riding club for these machines called "Ridebacks" which are transforming motorcycles. They go from a two-wheel traditional motorcycle form, to an upright, side-by-side wheel form. Oh, and they have arms. So it looks like the rider is riding piggyback on the machine. Hence the name.
At the same time, some rebel group somehow managed to take over the world, and is being really fash about it. The secret to their success was the use of military grade Ridebacks. So civilian use is eventually targeted for being counterrevolutionary.
Our heroine, because of her highly developed sense of balance, is a natural rider. (So natural that the balancing circuits on the machine are actually a hindrance.) And she manages to get caught up in the counterrevolution. Bad things happen and at one point the den Beste rule is violated. But I forget how it actually ends.
I have a 0 share ratio on this right now... :-( But having actual files is one advantage over my switch to using magnet links. Drop me a line if interested.
So in the last week, I watched all the episodes of Martian Successor Nadesico on Youtube. I was curious after someone mentioned it was free, but also because I have a Dojinshi about it I picked up decades ago by Dan Kanemitsu, who turns out to have been the translator for the anime.
At the end of it, YouTube presented me with other shows on the "Nozomient" channel. And since a certain Duck is very enamored of Aria, I figured I'd try that next.
It's funny when you watch something that old and realize the tropes you thought were old hat were new back then, and what was groundbreaking then is a well-plowed field. Like the MC who is against war but really good at it. (Actually, he seems to be only okay at it).
The MC has a bunch of girls who like him, but it's not really a harem.
Mostly it's a Farce, that varies between mild and over the top.
Nothing really stood out about it to me.
Posted by: Mauser at October 09, 2020 04:53 PM (Ix1l6)
I want to strangle circles who do this!
So this group releases a series I want to see, and I dutifully torrent new episodes every week, But then when the last episode comes out, instead of releasing it, they make it part of a batch.
Yes, I know I can tell BitTorrent to not download the other 11 episodes, and my system is littered with fractional files, and when I've had to rebuild the index, it insists some files are incomplete because the blocks span the file ends. It's a PITA.
Nadia
I've slowly been working my way through Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, a series that made quite a splash (sorry) in the anime community when it came out. I actually scored a copy Raw on VHS ages ago. Being Raw, I rarely made it more than a few episodes in. There was a commercial release, I think I have one or two tapes of that. And I found a torrent last year. I'm finally working my way through it. I'm not quite halfway through, and all I can think is "You know, Nadia's kind of a little bitch." Other than being a McGuffin for the first part, she doesn't contribute much other than scowling at everyone.
1
I forget precisely where I left off in my original attempt to watch the series, but these days, all I have left are painful flashbacks of that damn song. Note that due to production issues, there's a lengthy stretch of filler episodes that many people skip to get back to the main story.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at September 05, 2020 07:11 PM (ZlYZd)
Juden-chan
Steven den Beste's rotating picture gizmo had a lot of images from an Anime called Juden-chan (Which has nothing to do with Nazis.) But since it was from 2009, there was no way to see the show.
Was.
Found it: https://tubitv.com/series/1963/juden_chan Thanks to someone telling me where I could find Aika, which apparently is a touchstone I missed. The site seems to have a lot of classics.
1
Dropped after 4 episodes. The ecchi was dumb, violence was stupid and annoying. The writing seemed like a bash fanfic against Arresta, who was formulated as a dumb broad for no reason.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at August 21, 2020 03:17 PM (LZ7Bg)
2
I finally got a chance to start, but the English voices pretty much kicked me out, and there was no option to go Japanese with subs.
Posted by: Mauser at August 23, 2020 11:02 AM (Ix1l6)
Peter Grill
No, it's not a feminist fantasy for what to do with the leftovers from all the men they want to castrate. It's a half-length, explicit-ish Harem comedy that isn't terribly funny, and really badly censored (But there ARE uncensored feeds out there, not that I care.)
So the Aforementioned Peter Grill lives in a fantasy world full of all manner of humanoid critters, and he's just won the Ultimate Warrior Gladiator Fight that prove he's the bestest in the world. And he's all Ataru-like "Now I can get married!" His fiancee, the daughter of the human warrior guild leader (Who doesn't like him one bit) is naive to the extreme - She thinks babies come from a couple praying together and the stork drops off a kid.
There are plenty of OTHER women though who know exactly where babies come from, and a little something about genetics, and winning the Strongest Warrior in the World tournament has painted a gigantic bull's eye right around his wing-wang.
So unlike a lot of other Harem comedies, at least there's an explanation for why the haremettes all want the lead. And also unlike a lot of Harem comedies, they all get what they're after too. So if getting laid thanks to blackmail, magical priapism curses, main force, etc. is your kind of thing, I suppose you might like this.
But find an uncensored feed, because the white glowy shit all over the screen is NOT our hero's seed.
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