Every week, I visit almost 260 anime sites looking for posts that celebrate amazing moments in anime or otherwise blow me away with their wit and charm. These are my five favorite posts for the week. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!
You can see a list of the sites I check here: Massive List of Sites!
Kvasir369
Go Go Loser Ranger! (Sentai Daishikkaku)[Season 1 Review]
I’ve wondered what other reviewers thought of Go! Go! Loser Ranger!, and this week, I found out! I was excited to find this review by KVASIR369 on the site Kvasir369 because I really like how KVASIR369 approaches reviews. There’s a level of thoughtfulness that appeals to me. That applies in particular when KVASIR369 reviews an anime series after having read the manga — the comparisons are awesome! This review was exactly what I was looking for! In particularly, I enjoyed reader KVASIR369’s description of Fighter XX.
Mechanical Anime Reviews
FLAG – ONE PICTURE CHANGES EVERYTHING
I appreciate it when a blogger finds a “hidden gem” that’s really hidden — in other words, something I haven’t even heard of. Scott, on the site Mechanical Anime Reviews, just pulled it off! It’s partly a surprise because the mech genre is one of my favorites; it’s partly no surprise at all, because Scott’s the expert on all things mecha. So of course he’d know about mecha hidden gems! In this post, Scott talks about Flag, and the review passed my ultimate test: the show is now on my backlist.
Merlin’s Musings
The Beautiful Happiness of Grandpa and Grandma Turn Young Again
Grandpa and Grandma Turn Young Again is a perfect example of the kind of anime that appeals to me more and more as my hair gets whiter. I can better understand the perspective of a character looking back over their life. And in the case of this anime, the characters can look back from within the younger version of their own bodies. I’ve always intellectually understood that perspective; shows like this help me feel it. Merlin’s review on Merlin’s Musings made the series and its impact even more real to me. How real a review makes the series feel is another measure I use to gauge a review’s effectiveness!
Mistakes Cheerio for Chesto
Hidden Gems: Beelzebub
Like I mentioned earlier, I like reviews that point out a “hidden gem” that I missed. For the second time this week, a blogger found a series I’d never seen or heard of. This time, the series is Beelzebub, the blogger is Mistakes Cheerio for Chesto, and the site is Mistakes Cheerio for Chesto. Mistakes Cheerio for Chesto’s description of some of the scenes, especially the “clotheslining” scene, make the series sound very appealing — despite the one thing Mistakes Cheerio for Chesto mentioned as a very unfortunately development.
Shallow Dives in Anime
The Summer of Love VI with Attack on Titan: Return to Shiganshina Arc!
Dewbond’s no-nonsense approach to reviews on Shallow Dives in Anime has always appealed to me. I’m to the point in my life where I don’t want to read what people think I want to read; I don’t want to read a “popular” opinion, either. I want to read an individual blogger’s opinion. Reading different perspectives helps me better understand the world, because if I engage differing opinions honestly, I have to question my own opinions. So, it’s no exaggeration to say that reading Dewbond’s reviews like this one about Attack on Titan Season 3 improves my understanding of the world. Not that I disagree with his opinion in this case — quiet the contrary! It’s the exchange of honest ideas that I find so refreshing.
Want to Read More of My Favorite Anime Post Lists?
Want to explore more amazing anime blog posts? Check out the previous editions of My Favorite Anime Community Posts!
Want to Read Favorite Posts from Other Sites?
- Anime Feminist: Weekly Round-Up, 17-23 July 2024: Nonbinary Chiitan, Crunchyroll Comments, and QUEEN BEE
- Lesley’s Anime and Manga Corner: Anime Blog Posts That Caught My Eye This Week (July 26, 2024)
260 anime sites?! Oh boy that’s a lot of researching. I bet it was fun to explore.
It really was — and is! I try to add new sites as they become available, and I’m still finding older sites that have eluded me. There’s a lot of talent out there!
I like that idea. Bring in the veteran bloggers and give attention to the new writers out there. Everyone deserves the spotlight. This is how we build a community 🙂
Maybe you already know this, TCrow, but the anime, Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s song, was based on a prototype story Tappei had thought up. I believe that Vivy’s story might give hints at the future direction of Re:zero’s story despite Vivy’s story being a lot less grand and expansive in scope.
Some sci-fi fans online raged about Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s song since they were expecting Matsumoto to be evil ’cause of its red eyes when I had correctly identified that Matsumoto’s eyes only turned red when it was using its powers, clearly distinguishing it from Terminator, so it was clearly not meant to be a very high stakes looping battle. Some sci-fans trolled themselves by misinterpreting the story heavily, and their expectations of it ruined their enjoyment of the series.
I had identified from Episode 5 that Vivy was a story about the uniqueness of individual experience and that Vivy’s mission to sing from the heart would involve drawing from its own experiences. What was commonly depicted in Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song is that no two individuals have the same experience. For example, a pair of autonomous AIs were created to test whether copying one AI’s accumulated experience data would produce an identical clone even if one of the pair was immobile for 6 months from activation, and the experiment was a failure. In a later episode, a backup of the experience data of one of those autonomous AIs was used to load another AI of the same series, who pointedly said that she is not her.
Where I’m going with this is that Re:zero will likely pointedly make the case that Subaru is not the same as the Subaru from 400 years ago, who clearly existed since Episodes 18, 25, and 38 show that Subaru has dormant memories of Satella and that Satella herself knew Subaru from that time period (Episode 38), which shows that they existed at the same time during that time period with the bulk of the mystery coming from that point in time.
Even if Subaru’s dormant memories were no longer dormant, Subaru will have lived a life with many experiences separate from his previous experience 400 years ago, and he will not be the same person as his body (different from 400 years ago since characters such as Puck, Beatrice, and Petelgeuse do not recognize him) and lived experience up until the present day will have markedly impacted his development so that he developed differently than his previous self.
I believe Subaru’s current life experience with his weak body (relative to people in Re:zero’s world) is probably the main reason present-day Subaru is the hero of the story rather than Subaru of the past because he needed to be grounded and humble, and it will be plenty satisfying for Tappei to explore this when the time comes during the penultimate or final arc.
I didn’t know that Tappei wrote a predecessor to Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song. It would make sense that some of the themes he explored there would carry over to re:ZERO.
I like your theory about Subaru being different age to age. Is he looking at Subaru’s experience as an example of reincarnation? And the effects reincarnation has on a soul/body pairing? I’ve often wondered about that. It’s not part of my belief system, but I’ve wondered about the theology/philosophy about reincarnation. It’d be cool if Re:ZERO explores that.
Tappei didn’t write a predecessor to Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song. It’s that he already formed a prototype story in mind that he hadn’t written yet, and he decided to adapt that story, or at least some form of it, into anime form when Wit Studio approached him for an original anime, which is why I clarified it was based on a story he thought up.
Tappei does a lot of thought on what he wants in his stories judging from Re:zero. Apparently, Tappei told a friend a synopsis of all his planned arcs for Re:zero and what he wanted accomplished in each arc before writing Re:zero. That is why Re:zero has so much internal consistency with the very liberal use foreshadowing ’cause Tappei had already planned out most of his story rather than the write-as-I-go approach most authors have.
I don’t know whether he wants us to make the connection that it is reincarnation given reincarnation is supposed to involve the physical death of one’s body, and as I’ve stated before, I’m not confident that Subaru even experienced true physical death. As I’ve speculated before in my theories, I think the past iteration of Subaru’s soul was cut off from his body with either a magical sword or magical shears and saved for a rainy day to be the basis of current Subaru’s soul to be the hero of the story.
I didn’t go into why I believed that to be the case during those times, so I will do so now. We know that Subaru was feeling despondent with how he had never really formed a real relationship with anybody, and with his high school debut being a disaster, he eventually started to skip school occasionally until he got into the habit of doing it more and more often and then stopped going to school entirely. In the premiere of Re:zero, we saw Subaru look longingly at a high school couple and then sigh (in frustration) that it’s something he wouldn’t experience.
We know in Seasons 1 and 2 that Satella can read Subaru’s thoughts due to a connection with his soul since Subaru’s entire body resets, making the soul the seat of memories rather than the brian in Re:zero, so if she was able to read Subaru’s thoughts even before he was summoned, that would explain how she knew when to summon him if she were following future knowledge. If I am right regarding this, Satella likely summoned Subaru when he had gotten so despondent that he despaired at how much he hated himself and his life. If this is how the scenario really is, Subaru likely didn’t experience true physical death since had he experienced true death, Satella’s soul connection to Subaru probably would have broken since he would have become someone else and had a different mind, which suggests that the manner in which Subaru came to exist in present-day Re:zero involved something other than true death. That’s how I came up with my soul-cutting theory.
I just realized I had not completed my thought yet. Obviously, if Subaru’s body soul was split from his body under normal circumstances, his body would immediately die. That is why I believe there may be something more at play. I had always found it suspicious that the construct of Subaru’s father, Kenichi, in the 1st Sanctuary trial, immediately came to the conclusion that Subaru had found a girl he liked, as it seemed to be a weird conclusion to come to that Subaru had found a girl he liked compared to the day before based on his face apparently looking better.
That incident makes me believe that Kenichi might’ve KNOWN that Subaru would find a girl he likes. This would explain why Subaru’s body didn’t die right away if Subaru once shared the same body as his father as a split personality, and his dad only cut off the Subaru portion of the soul and stored it away somehow. If Kenichi’s father was originally living out part of his life in Re:zero’s fantasy world, that could explain why he would have the future knowledge to KNOW that the reason Subaru was feeling better is ’cause he found a girl he likes as it was knowledge he had accumulated in the past.
As for how Kenichi could still be relatively young, perhaps time moves a lot faster in Re:zero’s fantasy world compared to Earth. Let’s say, for example, that time moves 80x faster in Re:zero’s fantasy world. If that were the case, Kenichi could spend 2 Earth years in the fantasy world and come to back Earth with fewer than 10 days having passed on Earth, which could lead to him explaining away his absence as taking part of an impromptu camping trip. No one would have a clue what happened.
There was one more thing I forgot, TCrow, regarding something I had posted on your blog before. As we have seen in the anime, Flugel is the name of the person who planted what was known as Flugel’s tree, and the White Whale subjugation force burned part of the tree off to defeat the White Whale by trapping it underneath the tree’s trunk.
Subaru notably described Flugel as being a wise man who existed centuries ago. Guess what Kenichi’s name means? Kenichi means wise man. If this were most other series, this would probably mean nothing, but since it’s Re:zero, it almost certainly has a purpose.
Flugel itself means wing and can also be a nickname for someone with conspicuous sleeves at a time of dress regulations.
So what this points to is that Flugel is a person not from Re:zero’s fantasy world who somehow came to be there given the nickname is for someone who dresses strangely, and this suggests that Flugel is from Earth. Perhaps Kenichi literally is Flugel.
Satella most likely summoned Subaru to Re:zero’s fantasy world, but how did Kenichi get there if he is Flugel? Well, wings are symbolic of power, speed, and limitless freedom of motion, and maybe that is how Kenichi, if he is indeed Flugel, managed to make his way back to Earth after being in Re:zero’s fantasy world. Perhaps Kenichi has the power to freely travel between the two worlds because he has a limitless freedom of motion, and that would be how he ended up in Re:zero’s fantasy world in the first place. Kenichi likely gave himself the name Flugel when he arrived in Re:zero’s fantasy world to help himself fit into that world.
As for Kenichi having a power that lets him freely travel between worlds, maybe that is also the power of an Authority born from a Witch Factor. I posted on your blog once, TCrow, about there possibly being 11 Witches or 11 Witch Factors, and I’ll rehash that now.
Subaru’s name is a major part of the lore of the series regarding the Witches. Aside from the car logo, Subaru is what the Japanese use to refer to the Pleiades star cluster. Six of the stars in that cluster are visible to the naked eye, and there are six dead Witches of Sin. The Pleiades star cluster is also referred to as the Seven Sisters, and there are seven witches bearing the name of the seven deadly sins in Re:zero. Pandora and Hector are a Witch and a Warlock/Devil (I guess the translators thought that the term “witch” denotes evil, so they went with “devil” to denote an evil male) based on historical sins, making there being 2 more different Witch Factors.
Interestingly enough, there are eleven stars in the Pleiades star cluster with nine of them having names, making it fitting that there might be 9 Witches of Sin. Two of the stars have yet to be named, and as such, I propose there might be two secret witches/Witch Factors that have some other concept applied to them instead of sins. Perhaps Kenichi has such a Witch Factor that granted him an Authority that allows him to freely travel between worlds.
Given Flugel’s tree was planted in the right spot for Subaru to defeat the White Whale, Flugel is quite possibly in on the plan I believe Satella, Echidna, and Pandora are working towards for a future in which the world is saved with Subaru being their great hope. If Kenichi is Flugel, Kenichi would know a lot more than fans expect, and it could explain why the construct of Kenichi in the first Sanctuary Trial immediately jumped to whether Subaru had found a girl he liked, and that would be ’cause Echidna had already met Kenichi in the past, and the trial was not solely based on Subaru’s memories but also Kenichi’s memories.