Rat Baby's Anime Analysis

     This is a Roulette Review, an explanation of what that means can be found  here . This recommendation comes from Brokeboi55.     This was, if nothing else, a very interesting experience. Without being specifically pointed to it, I never would have expected to find an explicit adaptation of Lovecraft's work in the anime space, and especially not a claymation one from 2007. And, to Brokeboi's credit, I am something of a fan of cosmic horror, even if I find Lovecraft's works themselves to be pretty hit and miss.     The show adapts three stories, The Picture in the House, The Dunwich Horror, and The Festival. I wasn't familiar with the original stories that any of these were based on. As previously mentioned, all of these are presented here in the form of claymation. Here, unfortunately, is where we start to hit the first snag. Creating quality claymation is a difficult, time consuming, and expensive process; with the sculpting and stop-motion a...

      I've been in the Discord server for the Baka Banter Podcast for a good while now. I highly recommend their podcast; they've got some good, thoughtful discussion going on. You can find them  here .  Recently, a group of people has started up a recommendation roulette. Every handful of months, everyone participating gets put into a pool, and assigned a person to receive recommendations from and to give recommendations to. For the sake of sharing my thoughts on the things I'm assigned, I'll be putting them here.     There will be a couple key differences from the way I normally would do things. Mainly, roulette reviews are most likely going to be shorter. I most likely wouldn't have time to do a full analysis of every show I'm recommended, even if I had the material for it. Secondly, some of them may be more lax about my usual standards. One of the biggest is I wouldn't otherwise commit a review or score to a show I didn't finish, but with these it ...

       So, Frieren. If you've been paying attention to seasonal shows at all in the past few months, you'll know that Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End has made quite the splash. At time of writing, it's the highest rated show on MyAnimeList, and by a significant margin. And unlike others that have touched that spot, it's stayed there for nearly its entire 28 episode run. And it's not particularly hard to see why, it's gorgeously animated, it's got a strong emotional theme, and the action is first rate.        The premise is also fresh, and helps it stand out, despite its apparent generic fantasy basis. The show opens with the legendary party of heroes, Himmel the swordsman, Heiter the priest, Eisen the warrior, and the titular Frieren the mage, returning to the capital city to celebrate their defeat of the Demon King. They spend some time together celebrating their victory, but Frieren is somewhat standoffish, in her elven eyes their ten-year adventu...