Y'know I was getting kinda sad that nothing that managed to catch and hold my interest came out in the past year or so. I've started so many shows that had a promising start and premise and would then go and waste that shit on the tired old tropes and lazy writing.
Also stuff that was apparently hyped up as good like Solo Leveling which turned out so disappointing and off-putting that I'm kinda worried at how popular the thing is. The protag is such a cookie cutter edgelord bordering on sociopath that it's not even funny. The side characters and their arcs are a bloody joke. It feels like they took something on the level of jeff the killer or other such 13 year old edgelord tier writing and decided to adapt it. Is this what passes for good isekai these days?
Luckily I learned that Konosuba had a 3rd season and that shit much more my speed. Poking fun at the genre is always preferable to lazily painting within the lines.
And regarding the whole anime is there to sell the manga/LN discussion, I'll never get over Grimgar having only a single season. That thing was such a damn nice take on isekai as well as being a feast for the eyes in terms of the visual style it's a damn shame it never got renewed for more seasons.
imo the reason why solo levelling doesn't work, isn't because it's formulaic, but because the MC is just... Odd? He's like in that uncanny valley of main characters
Too powerful to be an underdog; he literally overpowers and outshines everyone the same chapter they're introduced. When he meets the S+ ranks he's already stronger than them. When he meets the national level heroes he's already stronger than them.
He doesn't "develop" as a character, instead having an instant personality switch. Before gaining OP cheat powers, he's a weak guy who everyone bullies, but nonetheless is smart and clever, kind and moral. Someone who will sacrifice himself to save others. Then he gets cheat powers, his hair changes, he gets a six pack, grows 2ft taller, never smiles or cries ever again, stops trying to solve things by thinking or working with other people but instead just overpowers everything. There isn't really a period where he adjusts to having power or think about what it means that he has this power
Motivation wise: he's weak and has low attachment to all the characters around him. His motivations are primarily external: "Don't die to the system + save mumsy"
I nearly fucking died when he saved his mum and the moment she comes out of his coma they have one conversation and then he leaves and never talks to her again LOL
Or you get stuff where the guy is making monologues about how everyone looked down on him and picked on him for being weak, so he vowed never to be weak again. But he's saying this after he just dumped his girlfriend, who always supported him (even when he was weak), and he left her behind because... He considered her too weak.
Blud is straight up the antagonist of someone else's YA novel
It makes more sense when you read the original because the original is full of South Korean patriotism appealing to how patriotic and South Korean the MC is. That's why there are loads of scenes hyping up Japanese, Chinese and American heroes only for the MC to immediately surpass them in the same scene the foreign heroes are introduced. But when they adapted it to anime they made the MC Japanese, which pissed off both Korean and Japanese audiences since the former discovered the change and the latter discovered the source material is very unflattering to Japanese
For what's it worth, it did manage to reverse engineer the whole shonen formula of ending everything with the illusion of progress towards something greater alongside cliffhangers that leave you... Hanging. But I remember reading the source material and having this feeling of "oh boy it's going to get good any moment now" but when I was way in too deep, I felt actually tired. The MC was standing behind a big door feeling that whatever was beyond it was stronger, and vowed to get stronger to overcome the stronger thing. I kept wondering when the mystery would unfold, when the MC would get challenged, when the side characters would do something (like there is a demon princess the MC discovers. When he discovers he can share XP with her, he immediately abandons her from his party to stop her from splitting his XP gains. He leaves behind one of his clones, foreshadowing that he could teleport back to her at any moment. She never reappears in the story ever again despite being the only other character with an independent will capable of levelling. They don't call it solo levelling for nothing?). I skipped another hundred chapters ahead not caring if I got spoiled, just to see if the story went anywhere. And the MC was standing in front of a bigger, different coloured door vowing to get stronger to beat whatever was behind the door
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Topic: I like anime, do you like anime? (Read 3212549 times)