Sampled a few shows from this season with my buds yesterday:
JoJo
In which a group of misfit dudes travel through Egypt to kill the ultimate evil vampire with their 'Stands', supernatural beings that are tied to them and serve as their protectors and weapons, fighting their way through said vampire's legion of evil Stand users.
Still great. Deeply in love with the universe and mechanics of the series and this season is definitely an improvement from the last one, which was basically just 'monster of the week' with extremely formulaic episodes and very little overall plot development other than "we're getting closer to Egypt". Like,
-episode starts
-something is amiss
-could this be the work of an enemy stand?
-yes it is
-stand is really powerful
-YARE YARE DAZE
-star platinum is powerfuller and faster
-stand defeated and gone forever
-episode ends
The diversity of the stands is a plus and I thought it was really cool how they were all based on different tarot cards, but after how much I loved Battle Tendency and its arcing storyline that kept drawing you on, the new format seemed really offputting.
But this season seems a lot better in that sense, and it has the hyped as fuck Dio fight so I'm down for that. Also I'm reading the manga and am just about to reach that part.
Yuri Kuma
One day a comet exploded over Earth and all of the bears in the world stood up and started eating people. So a big wall was built to keep them away. The story follows a plain girl at an all girls school who is the target of two girl bears disguised as transfer students at said school who want to eat her and all of her (girl) friends. They are all lesbians.
Fucking weird and we didn't know what was happening but I thought it was hilarious at the same time. Were the bears eating girls or were they, you know. Eating them? Why did they take the bears to Bear Court before they could eat someone? What was even going on with all of the lily imagery and the bears licking honey off of one that sprouted from the main characters' body? It seemed really dumb but I couldn't take it even slightly seriously and thoroughly enjoyed it because of that. Also I happen to like gay girls so that was a plus???
Kantai Collection
Reminiscent of Girls und Panzer for me. Except instead of cute girls driving war machines, they WERE the war machines, specifically warships; destroyers, aircraft carriers etc. And they're doing battle with these ominous bad guys who suddenly appeared one day. The story follows this brand new destroyer who wants to ganbatte at boat academy and fight the bad guys.
The girls kind of surf on the water and fire torpedoes and stuff at the enemy ships. Also the aircraft carrier ones have these bows, the arrows of which turn into little planes that are piloted by pixies. That's pretty neat I guess.
I am aware of the HUUUGE following Kancolle has as a phone game with all of the ship waifus and stuff. I think that if someone was into that then they'd love the anime, but it didn't grasp me at all. Also some actual naval military history knowledge would make it more interesting too, because although I do not have the slightest fucking clue as to which ships are which and what they did in WW2, I was told that the personalities and mannerisms of each character were attributable to what ship they represent. COOL!
One thing that I did find out was that the voice actress for Karen Kujo (Kiniro Mosaic, Season 2 hoyp!) also played an English-built vessel (and a number of others) in the anime and did all of those broken engrish exclamations that I am a sucker for. Apparently she has