Witch Hat Atelierpeak
This is something I reread a while back (I read it in digital, the physical manga is just for collecting purpouses), and honestly I want to re-read as it been climbing in my mind, I rated it a 9/10 when I initially read it but honestly there is a chance that when I reread it I give it a 10. Also, if I were to reread this, this would be my second ever reread, the only other one being shimeji simulation, my favourite manga of all time
In my personal opinion, witch hat atelier is one of the greatest fantasy stories of all time. It's a VERY ambitious manga but I think it pulls it off. The story orbit around education, this is a topic that has been covered in many other animes, but never to the extent of witch hat atelier
In most animes, the education is just a stepping ground to the main story, in which the characters prove to be really cool and smart and they pass it after some complications, like the initial arc of hunter x hunter or kaiju nº 8, here, not so much. Here, that's not the case, coco isn't really that special, it's just that the system is corrupt, while magic is available to everyone, that is not something that is known, in fact, most people are lead to believe that they cant use magic
All of the knowledge about magic is highly controlled, in many ways it's like a propaganda machine, they control who learns about magic, what type of magic they learn, the public perception on magic, how they use that magic, and in order to do this, they use magic.
The story, instead of focusing entirerily in coco, it's more about the world that she lives and what is kept secret from her, it's about the institutions and the people running those institutions.
Online i've seen a lot of discussions about magic systems, in most animes, magic is supposed to be complex and hard, the magic system in this manga is kinda the complete opposite, it's extremely simplistic, in fact, it's very similar to the system that the cartoon "The Owl House" follows, which again, both are based on the idea of magic circles and glyphs that many old religions followed. The magic system doesn't need to be difficult, the characters don't need to be OP, what makes a magic system good or interesting isn't the system, but the context where it exists
Witch Hat Atelier isn't about the actual magic itself, but about the implications said magic have on the world, in, fact, the fact it's so simple only supports the story, anyone can do it, but you're lead to believe you cant.
I feel whenever the internet gets into conversations about these specific topics in world-building and overall writing a lot of the time they tunnel-vision really hard, powerscaling is a real thing that is taken into consideration when writing, but what makes something work and something fail isn't that single element by itself, but how that combines with the rest of the world.
Now, the art in this manga is fucking amazing, specially the paneling, but this is something i've talked at length in my girls last tour analysis, (yes, I talked about witch hat atelier in there)
so yeah, easy S tier
also I really need to read that cooking spin-off
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Tragones Y Mazmorras (this is the true title but if you want to use the objectively inferior version you can call it dungeon meshi)
This is also another fantasy story that popped up recently that got very popular, I've read it didn't think too much about it, then the anime came out, I ignored it, my IRL friends got into it, I gave it a watch, and I ended up enjoying it more than the manga
Tragones y Mazmorras is a very typcal, dragon quest/JRPG inspired fantasy story, except that it's about cooking.
This anime does as few interesting things, first of all, you may be quick to criticize that the general setting of this anime is kind of generic, you got all your typical jrpg monsters, you have dungeons where the laws of the universe applies in different ways, all of the cast members have skillsets and specializations that you've probably seen before, but, this is a good thing. The focus of dungeon meshi isn't it's worldbuilding, it's about cooking, so, by reusing all of those elements you're already more than familar with, dungeon meshi can skip explaining a lot of things. They don't need to explain what a slime is, you've already seen and slayed thousands of them, however, what they may explain is the biology of a slime and how you can cook it
Like yuru camp, it's not only about the food, but also about how people react and eat food, and how your cultural background takes a part in that. Cooking for other people is by nature a social activity, a lot of the character developement is showcased during the eating scenes.
This anime is not for everyone, this anime goes really in-depth about biology, cooking, and many random things, however, if you for example had an hyperfixation on those topics, this anime is heaven
dungeon meshi also has a plot but like honestly I didn't really give that much of a shit about it I just liked the cooking
Having said that, this anime isn't really ambicious, it isn't trying to do anything too crazy, in many ways it's just the most pure and refined version of the recently formed genre of mangas about cooking (like this is a real thing, it's been popping of as of recent, I should probably read more of them tbh), as I said, it does have a plot but I feel it has it more to fit into the societal norms and to bait people into this anime rather than anything else, this genre is still not as widely accepted as something like the slice of life genre is so they need to have that hook in order for it to become a mainstream hit like it did
Now, something that isn't discussed about dungeon meshi, mainly because of the language barrier, is the spanish dub, it's a really, really, really good dub. There is a lot of elitism in discussions about dub vs sub, a lot of people claim that subs are objectively superior due to it being closer to the original artists vision and whatever the fuck, I don't agree with this. Yes, the dubbing industry here is weaker than the voice acting industry in japan, but, they offer something that japan cant, and that is, to use extremely colloquial and local expressions that makes you go "no fucking way they said "la han palmao" in this anime"
The dub just improves the watching experience, it's more fun. I feel that for the longest times dub were afraid to get too crazy, they tried being as accurate as possible to the source material and the original interpretation and context of the words. In recent times, this has changed. In machikado mazoku season 2, in the english dub, mikan says "that's sus", this may be seen as unprofessional dubbing and localizing, but they couldn't be further from the truth, it's in character, and while what she originally said wasn't literally that, it still conveys the same energy and it makes more sense she talks a little bit of brainrot instead of talking like straight up taken from a noir detective novel
so yeah, I stan dubs and dungeon meshi has a really good one and it's also fun so A rank
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Frierenpeople are not going to like what I have to say about frieren
it's not peak (note i've only read the manga)
frieren is something that I discovered and read like a year before the anime came out and fucking exploded, and I remember being very disappointed on it. The synopsis of the manga is that there is this girl called frieren, who is an elf and has a really long lifespan, she went in an adventure once, but many years have passed since then and the original members of that adventure are old/dead now. Frieren then takes a apprentice and just shares their wisdom with them
The synopsis of frieren sold me, I expected it to be closer to something like yomawari-sensei or even girls last tour and that whole happy post-apocalypse genre, what I expected was a very slow manga, very soft and melancholic, where frieren kinda just sits there and reminiscences, maybe having regrets or wishing they could have done anything different, and then her passing that to her apprentice, who maybe doesn't really quite understand frieren due to them not having lived the same experiences and having a great generational gap
this is not what I got, in fact, that whole reminiscence thing is not really explored that much, what happens is that she just goes in a new adventure, she ends up forming and group and retracing the adventure she took back in the day, without heavy stakes like the real adventure she went through
this isn't a bad concept either, but it's not that unique, it doesn't feel like it's really trying to do anything that interesting, it just doesn't feel like their past adventure really had that much weight, she isn't really facing the consequences of her actions in the past
as an example there is a scene where frieren just turns out to owe a lot of money to a certain group of people, then they arrest frieren and force her to work in the mines to recover the money she owns, this is actually a pretty intersting plot point. You're in a state where you're reflecting on your own life, and this was a mistake, but you now also have responsabilities, it's interesting to see how she would traverse that situation, see if they were to accept their punishement, try to fix things in a different way that still allows them to teach their group, or just run away like a coward and double down on a regret you had, leaving a bad impression on the group
This is resolved half a manga chapter later when she user her super cool magic powers to basically blow the mine up and find a super valuable ore that pays for her entire debt and she goes back like nothing had ever happened (her partners don't even really notice it), it's even worse when you consider that the government would rather pay 20 miners than have 1 single mage go to the mine because as it was clarified at the start frieren's power aren't really that special it's just that the education system and magic theory advanced rapidly and those are things any proficient spellcaster can do nowadays
I just see frieren as a big pot of missed potential, what is there isn't bad but I'm just dissapointed on how little it actually explores the themes that it tackles and how lazy it feels sometimes, placed in B
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Armitage III This is a cyberpunk 4 chapter anime OVA that released during the OVA boom back in the 90's. This anime has a cyberpunk setting which was fairly new back in the day, I don't really have much to say about this anime
It's just kinda generic, everything it does, blade runner, akira, and ghost in the shell has done it better, it was a little bit boring to watch
placed in D tier
