[Ended] Bungo Stray Dogs 2 - More Greatness

Small Stories of My Life.

Pros: Still Amazing Characters
-Dazai was a mysterious character last season, he was fleshed out this time, along with Akutagawa some more, and it didn't damage them in the slightest
-There is now a Grand Plot, and the story still moves forward wonderfully
-Lovecraft shows up.

Cons: Few.
-Once again, the beginning is a bit jarring. They don't resume where the first season stopped, they jump backwards in time to fill in Dazai and by extension Akutagawa. It gets back into it, and it is important that we saw Dazai's past, but still. They could have had a little bit of a lead in to that.
-I am emotionally displeased with how weak Cthulu ended up being.

My Opinion: I had no idea the characters and powers in this show, were each individually based on famous authors and books. Not until bloody H.P. LOVECRAFT HIMSELF, steps on screen and is introduced in the shows usual artsy lettered manner! Of course, his power has to be 'The Great Old One' which promised just the best things to me. They were just as good as promised, but I had too much emotional investment, and how things turned out with his main scene let me down. Personal Problem.

After that, things kind of clicked into place. I'd actually read The Scarlet Letter in high school, apparently Gone With the Wind was a book before it was a movie that my Mother has. Who could miss Edgar Allen Poe? Or Mark Twain? It blew my mind. Of course, that also means every other character is a famous author and book as well. Which means that this show could unintentionally(or very probably intentionally) be a source of future reading suggestions. Certainly, I'd never have so much as heard of, let alone been interested in, what I'm sure is a bevy of Japanese authors. Having seen the Movie Gone With the Wind, and read the book Scarlet Letter, and recently being obsessed with consuming Lovecraftian Mythos literature, I can report:
The Powers are in fact strongly based on the core essence of the books they pull from, or at the minimum, those are. Lovecraft's is basically a straight pull, while the other two are more along the lines of a logical extrapolation, and an interpretation of the impression given. No, I'm not going to be more specific than that, this blog is suppose to be spoiler free and I've been pushing the bounds since I started this post.

Impartial Opinion: Go watch the first season. The second doesn't fill you in at all to allow for skipping it, so you will need both. Other than that, this is a superbly made show. The unique art style they use with it, and the way they introduce all the characters all makes an almost magical level of sense now.

What's more, the second season successfully resolves the story, giving us a tasteful and fulfilling ending, but leaves the plot open to continue, with a foreshadowing that more trouble yet lays on the horizon for the characters. Given that we got a second season already, I have no reasons at the moment to doubt that we'll get a third. Take some time and catch up if any of you passed on this one, it only got better, and probably will continue to do so.

Handling Sequels

So!
Today's post shall be a bit unusual. More and more, I'm conflicted about how I handle posting here on Evil Cat's blog. Specifically, the lack of posting. On the one hand, I have a job now, and that has made what time I do get to myself all the more valuable, it's easier to pick out what games I'm really enjoying, rather than just killing time on. On the other hand, I also am theoretically running a youtube channel (if one video a week counts as "running"). Finally, I have the posts I make here about anime that particularly catch my interest from new releases/ongoing shows.

A while back, when Evil Cat stopped in for a bit, I asked him briefly if he cared if I put up posts on sequel seasons that hadn't been featured here for their first seasons. He gave the okay, but I never really used the new allowance. Mostly, because there wasn't really a good way to make a post that didn't sound like, "Hey! Here's a show I've been watching for a long while, you should love it because I do!"
Yeah, no.

So instead, I've opted to come up with a one-size-fits-all blanket solution. When new seasons roll in, I'll make a single post pointing out the shows that are having second or greater count seasons. As always though, I'll only be pointing out ones that have caught my interest, are remarkable in some way, or have had a previous season posted about on the blog. My hope is that this will give me a quick and simple method to generate additional, but still useful, content on the blog. For instance, I don't think anyone needs a week by week update that One Piece is still running.
*quietly giggles to self*
*Ahem*
Anyway, on with the show:

Bungo Stray Dogs 2: The second season takes an interesting spin, by turning back the clock. Dazai's history was something of an in-joke bet amongst the detective agency he worked at. Even though we as the audience are given to know the what of it, the details were never explained. The shows second season begins where Dazai's time with his previous employer ends, and it is every bit as gloriously gloomy and full of humanity as the first season was. The one thing Bungo Stray Dogs constantly had going for it, and continues to have in my opinion, is a perfect hairline balance between comedy and tragedy/drama. I recommend this series, it's a wonderful balance of story and action, characters and powers. The presentation is also noteworthy, I like the artistic style.

Natsume Yuujinchou 5/go(u): The Fifth season of Natsume Yuujinchou, of course. A couple places phrased it as 'gou', more often as 'go', honestly it doesn't matter, it's the fifth season anyway so 5 is fine. Given that the previous tags on the blog used the romanji, I'll stick with it. When I saw this pop up on crunchyroll, I was immediately elated. Just absolutely out of my mind happy. I love this show so much. But then...I was suspicious. It had been so long...could it really meet expectations? I had actually forgotten about the show for a long while...after so much time had passed, could it really start back up where it left off? Continue to make me love all of its characters?
Clearly it wouldn't be on this list if this wasn't the case. Everything is as it should be, and one episode had me falling in love all over again. This show is golden. Go watch everything Natsume Yuujinchou has to offer you if you haven't already.