❚ Spring 2025
Catching up
DAN DA DAN(ダンダダン)
Not a bad show to watch at all.
From science saru, a story of a ufo nerd (japan romanticizing the alternative thinking dudes that we tend to see on social media) and a strong willed girl with a crush on a old-school actor.
Through the first 3 eps I was truly entertained, enough I could ignore the teen humor with the balls/dick/sex innuendos (if they pull that shit of teens are growing up and becoming hormonal to which acquiring superpowers it's an allegory I wouldn't be surprised, and would think less of this show), visually it was putting everything on the grill, the fish-eye lenses, the chasing scenes, horror lighting, etc
Once they established the main characters and their wants/needs it settled down, kept on watch while skipping the romance bits.
The highlight (somewhat) of the show later was the inclusion of this "childhood friend/crush" of the heroine who was voiced by Ishikawa Kaito, happy for the guy but nothing to add for it's character.
Gilgamesh (ギルガメッシュ)
This could have been a mediocre ps1 game instead of an anime
Two teens (brothers, kinda) run away from debt collectors, stumble upon a group of other teens who have superpowers and their cryptic adult who oversees them, nothing makes sense up until the end, and even so. Turns out their dad was a renowned scientist who studied and tried to revive the technologies found in the old tomb of gilgamesh, as a backup plan for him and their colleagues, they created clones of themselves which were exposed to some weird ass waves from the tomb, these clones ended up being the aforementioned teens with superpowers, but also the original version were pretty much alive, just not in the scene at the moment. When the time came to fight for the fate of the world, the clones fought their original selves, lost and the world resseted (I guess), ending the story on a sour note.
I joke about the ps1 game as the themes of society at the edge of collapse, teens and superpowers are a common theme through end of the 90's and early 2000's video game stories, SMT, gallerians, etc.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica (魔法少女まどか★マギカ)
Including the movies, yeah, it's a story about magical girls suffering
On the announcement of an upcoming movie that continues from where the story left off I decided to catch up to the entire plot beforehand, it's a show that probably in it's time I would have found more compelling and memorable, but listening and watching a decade's worth of memes and people analyzing it's themes it ended up being a nice visual treat without much to ponder of itself.
Doesn't mean it's bad, I just can't be arsed to root for the characters, people paying the price of their wishes in what I would describe dante's inferno fashion sounds a little sad but that's about it.