Mezmero

I'm mainly talking about the "game mechanics" for lack of a better term. As far as I could tell spells are being prepared or "Draw"n into those stupid devices these kids use. Also the fact that they're training wizards and sorcerers in high school for the sake of militarization. Despite having seen it I did not like that show and the only bits I could enjoy in the slightest were the parallels in magic mechanics to FF8.

JoJo is off to a great start. It's funny, even though he's dressed all in white I still can't tell where Jotaro's hat ends and his hair begins. Just know that every year JoJo is airing it'll probably be in my top five for that year.

You should watch The Irregular at the Magical High School since it's basically Final Fantasy VIII, or at least the parts that aren't fucking unbearable. Still pretty bad though...

Curious if they'll get any Canadian talent coming in for the cruiserweight tournament considering that company kind of has a monopoly on the best Canadian workers as of right now. A shame Mike Bailey can't be brought in due to whatever reason he's banned from entering the U.S. for. They could always get Candice LeRae, she's technically below the weight limit. lol

JoJo starts tomorrow. Soon you'll all know just how not crash diamonds can be. This seems like a good time to listen to all 17 minutes of a certain Pink Floyd song. I've been trying like crazy to eternal sunshine as much stuff from the manga from my brain as possible so I can relive the magic again for the first time. Unfortunately that series is so good it's hard to forget a lot of things...

I feel fairly confident in saying yet another Jericho/ Styles rubber match won't even come close to surpassing the match AJ had at G1 with Minoru Suzuki, a guy who is two years older than Jericho yet is still a better wrestler character today. That's a match that I'll not forget anytime soon. In my eyes Jericho is barely a character at this point, he's basically a celebrity being brought in for an angle. It's nice that ya'll still have nostalgia for him but that doesn't change the lack of significance his presence has on actual story lines in that promotion. I have no plans to watch WM so ultimately it's no skin off my back.

I don't understand what the big deal is about the Styles/Jericho match on the pre show. Haven't they wrestled a million times already for your pleasure? It's not suddenly special making them wrestle yet again at Rest Hold Mania. If they wanted AJ to get a big WM worthy moment they would have booked him in a program with someone else. Anyone else. Samoa Joe would have been my pick.

@instantryan: Haikyuu benefits a lot from a) being uncharted anime territory for the sport in question and b) having a really slick production. I think similarly to Hajime no Ippo, it finds the right balance of charm, intensity, and action. A lot of these kinds of shows get one or two of these things right but rarely all three in my experience. Just trust me when I say I've been planning on watching AoD eventually. I can put up with slow pacing, it's not an issue for me after some of the shit I've sat through. I honestly think I'll like it as long as it gets as intense as I assume it gets later on based on the very little I've seen. And unlike going from Prince of Tennis to Baby Steps it will likely be a step up in terms of melodramatic ridiculousness coming from other baseball series like Major, Cross Game, and One Outs, though I actually like these shows.

@edgaras1103: I feel you on PoT. It's pretty bad but also super silly. Sometimes the silly can override a lot of bad.

@ikramit: Also it seemed like it leans a bit more into the romance genre than I would like. Not my kind of thing but you know personal taste and all that. I'm not above liking the more grounded stuff. It must be a bit more scientific with regards to legit tennis technique if you like it for the reasons you say you do. But you know, I've watched Prince of Tennis...boy oh boy... I don't think I can transition back down to a realistic take on tennis after watching something so stupid yet so oddly enjoyable. Though I fully admit that show was sort of terrible for a couple of reasons. Like animation quality for example...

@ikramit: I saw like the first 6 or 7 episodes of Baby Steps when it first started. I've posted about it before, I just don't like that main character. I find the idea of this guy becoming an athletic savant by virtue of his insane OCD ritual pretty lame. Ironically enough I don't like sports at all (except maybe prize fighting). I view most sports anime as almost satire on people who take sports waaaaaaay too seriously which is why I really like it when the action goes over the top, even if the series is not very good overall. If a sports series can't thrive as an anime I think it is ultimately a failure because sports are inherently all about kinetic energy. I think the point I was making is that I'm becoming far more selective of the sports shows I watch to completion because I know my own tastes very well.

@edgaras1103: Yeah the stuff with Tanto was brutal to watch just from the stand point of that being a concept destined to go nowhere. It felt almost like a parable to Toriyama's early career in a weird way. Toriyama was writing Dr. Slump for a stretch which is a wonderful, whimsical series that people like but it never became the smash hit that it needed to be for him to become a prolific mangaka. Then he ended that and came back with Dragon Ball which blew up into a huge mainstream success. Ultimately it was those parallels that made that arc interesting to watch but it also felt like a holding pattern in the overall plot of Bakuman.

@recspec:I definitely had that moment with a couple of the sports shows airing during the time Haikyuu!! started where stuff like Yowamushi Pedal, Baby Steps, and Kuroko's Basketball to a lesser extent I would watch and think "Do I just not like sports anime anymore?" Then I would watch Haikyuu!! and think "Nope, I still like em', they just can't all be as good as this."

Ace of Diamond is a show I've really been meaning to get back to but the first couple of episodes were rough so I dropped it prematurely. I'm sure some stuff gets great later on I just didn't have the patience to watch it week to week. I also didn't find the humor all that funny. Maybe now that it's over I should try and binge through it. Lupin III is one I really meant to get to but never did, I'll probably need to make time for that as well.