Welcome to my favorite anime community posts from 2021 week 08!
Every week I look for posts that celebrate amazing moments in anime or otherwise blow me away with their wit and charm. I check hundreds of sites, and I can tell you that the ani-blogging community constantly produces a ton of amazing posts. I hope this list helps you find some of them!
Here’s the list of the sites I check!
My Favorite Anime Community Posts from 2021 Week 08
Harper Anime Reviews
Battle School Romance, No Harem Required – Chivalry of a Failed Knight Spoiler Review.
Have you seen Chivalry of a Failed Knight? I liked it enough to do a throw-back review of it. Heck, I even liked it enough to write a collaboration review of it with Dewbond from Shallow Dives in Anime. There’s just a lot to like about this series. I could go on about the details, like Ikki’s relationship with Stella. Or the battles, like Ikki’s fight against Sword Eater. I could even talk about how Ikki was such a good teacher to Ayase.
Those details and others would capture the individual pieces I enjoyed, but just talking about them would miss the bigger picture. That’s what I liked about this post by Austin Harper from Harper Anime Reviews. It captures a lot of the interesting details, but it also talks about over-arcing considerations that made the series so enjoyable. By the time I’d finished reading, I was ready to watch the series again! See what you think!
I Drink and Watch Anime
Problem Children Are Coming From Another World, Aren’t They? – They Are…
What do you get when you mix ordinary animation, an ordinary story, and several over-powered characters? Sounds like a yawner, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. At least not in the case of Problem Children and Coming from Another World, Aren’t They? What makes this show so engrossing? For me at least, it may or may not have anything to do with…
You know what? I’m not even going to joke about it. For me, it had a lot to do with Kurousagi, the Black Rabbit. Yes, she’s a rabbit, complete with bunny ears. She not only looked stupidly adorable with those ears, but she deeply cared about her friends. So much that she… Since I haven’t put out the spoiler warning, I’ll stop there. Instead, please let me direct your attention to Irina’s post on I Drink and Watch Anime. She directly confronts the question of how an anime with ordinary animation and story can be something that leaves a strong emotional impression. And I gotta say — after reading her post, I really want to watch the show again!
The Otaku Author
Harukana Receive (Episode 11) – At This Point, We’re Basically Playing Head-to-Head
I generally don’t get into sports anime. I don’t have anything against it. Maybe it’s because my high school athletic experience was so dismal that I prefer not to think about it. Come to think of it, that not only explains it, it might explain the handful of sports anime I have enjoyed. Most recently, there was Iwa Kakeru!: Sport Climbing Girls and Harukana Receive.
Both of those series shared something in common: They featured sports I did not have in high school. Both also had something else in common: they featured primarily female casts, and both took their sports seriously. I really didn’t expect that in Harukana Receive. I mean, given that beach volleyball offers endless chances for fanservice, I expected a light-hearted but ultimately frivolous show. That’s not what I got. Instead, the show treated us to episodes like the one Lynn Sheridan reviewed on The Otaku Author. The review does a fantastic job of conveying what I found so compelling about the series in general and this episode in particular. See if it’s something that resonated with you!
Otaku Post
Oreimo
You don’t often see me comment on controversies within the anime community. I could give you all sorts of wordy explanations, but they all come down to this: They’re not very interesting. I’m a Veteran of a Thousand Psychic Wars — well, the USENET version from the 1980s and 1990s. After going through hundreds or even thousands of flame wars and insult binges, it finally hit me: It was an astounding waste of time.
So, instead, I spend my effort trying to understand perspectives — of an author, of a blogger, or even of people posting Tweets or other kinds of posts. That’s the approach I took into Oreimo. I didn’t feel the need to express moral outage at Kirino’s feelings for her brother Kyousuke. Instead, I tried to enjoy the strong characters and interesting plot developments. In turn, this series gave me some memorable, powerful, and emotional scenes. Johnathan, in his article on Otaku Post, dives into what exactly made this series worth watching. And worth rewatching, too — because guess what? Now I want to rewatch it! These reviews are killing my backlog!
Sakura Sunrise
Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress is Probably Better Than We Give It Credit For
Yes. Yes, Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress is probably better than we give it credit for. But I should probably explain myself a bit more, shouldn’t I? I watched and reviewed the series when it first aired, and frankly, between the action, the animation, and the soundtrack, it pulled me deeply into the world overrun by Kabane. I looked forward to each episode so I could see what would happen to Ikoma, Mumei, and the whole crew of the Koutetsujou. But when I looked for other fans to talk about it with, I found a a lot of criticism instead. Some folks even tried to make the case that it was an Attack on Titan rip off.
Having seen both shows, that made no sense to me. But remember what I said about Oreimo? It didn’t really affect my enjoyment. I do have to admit I gave up trying to understand the people pushing the “rip off” theory. It really never made sense to me. But to each their own! I do have to admit to a not insignificant feeling of satisfaction when I came across this post by THESAKURASUNRISE on Sakura Sunrise. It’s not that I’m looking for people to agree with my opinion of Kabaneri. It’s that I’m looking for other people who celebrate it, for whatever reason. This post blends solid research and analysis with that celebration, and that made the post even more fun to read.
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!
