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[Frumple]

Reincarnated as a spider manages to do something like that in a fairly fun way. 99% of the show is literally just the MC levelling up as a spider and trying to overcome status effects... But it's strangely compelling, especially as they switch between the MC's self perspective (as a cute spider) and the perspective of random adventurers (seeing giant monstrous spider)

Kumo desu ga was one of my earlier exposures to litrpg (though I think moonlight sculptor was the earliest), well before it had an anime, heh... nearly a decade ago, at this point, checking the dates. There's several other stories around now (mostly over on royal road, The Snake Report is one off the top of my head) that have that sort of airheaded red in tooth and claw vibe that characterizes the early parts of the story, if you're interested in more and willing to read it.

Reincarnated as a spider - no harem. No plot. MC is a spider. That's all you get, that's all you need.

It's worth noting/warning that vis a vis the originating written material, a plot does end up showing up eventually, sorta' -- after a point it transitions from MC is a spider to... something else. It honestly gets kinda' weird, there's like ancient mecha and all sorts of things. The earlier bits are absolutely ace, though, very distinct and wonderful style going on.

Interesting point regarding DQ and orcs, though -- Dragon Quest is largely the primary reason you actually see Porcs more in japanese fantasy. Between it and Zelda's Moblin-line, you still have a genuine pig-orc line in fantasy sticking around as opposed to just the green stuff.

[Loud Whispers]

And then with Western games copying DQ inspired media we've finally come full circle

Also yeah the spider plot is one of those things where I think the writer has gone "oh shit I need a plot now I've actually developed the chars too much" which is a good problem to have. Though I haven't read the source material, I heard the MC isn't even a spider anymore? I'm not a big fan of shows throwing off their central conceit. Like that one slime one where the guy stops being a slime

[Frumple]

Spoiler: i really should like spoil this, huh, re later spider stuff (click to show/hide)

Not just a spider -- there's multi-body shenanigans and godhood involved. There's definitely much less of a focus on spider shenanigans around the time she becomes, y'know, a potential continent destroying megabeast, though.

Like I said, it gets kinda' weird, and at the point it accelerates down that line it accelerates real fast and real hard, heh.

[jipehog]

Is anime just a cartoon style where characters have big eyes? and if so why there is such a huge following for it, is the subject matter is different from other cartoons or .. ?

[JoshuaFH]

Anime is just the colloquial term for animation that came from Japan, or anything that has a similar style. Anime's tend to have deeper and longer plots than most western animation, with some of the better ones emphasizing the "Sakuga" or high animation quality to really WOW the audience. There's also a much larger variety of Anime than there are western animations. There's anime about cooking, fishing, mountain climbing, gambling, bicycling, boxing, sumo, being a yakuza househusband, or any number of other things. Western animations are often relegated to being comedies or super power fantasies, which are also found in Anime, but in thousands of times more abundance.

And also anime characters have big, cute eyes; like you said. It's really great.

[Loud Whispers]

Though not all have big cute eyes, some try go for more realistic art styles whilst others go for crazy stylised ones. Also some draw noses, others do not draw noses

Spoiler: i really should like spoil this, huh, re later spider stuff (click to show/hide)

Not just a spider -- there's multi-body shenanigans and godhood involved. There's definitely much less of a focus on spider shenanigans around the time she becomes, y'know, a potential continent destroying megabeast, though.

Like I said, it gets kinda' weird, and at the point it accelerates down that line it accelerates real fast and real hard, heh.

I knew something like that would happen given the way the show was going but I didn't clock it would get that scaled up. I imagine it's a bit like someone trying to run a 5e campaign from 1 to 20 where their wizard player starts off making camp fires with abracadabra and ends off killing God by weaponising atheism

[Frumple]

Parts of it are actually pretty telegraphed -- that the MC could probably get huge at some point is something implied just about straight out the gate, ferex, 'cause mama was hella' big -- but yeah, it's pretty close to xianxia tier (first you punch goblins, then you punch mountains, then you punch planets!) in how far things go once it really takes off.

[voliol]

The saddest thing about spider imho, is that

Spoiler: manga spoiler, dunno if the anime is caught up (click to show/hide)

at the point she becomes an arachne, the "camera" starts focusing on her human face instead of her spider face (she still has one, mind you). I figure it's not much of a difference in the novel since her internal voice is still the same; very crazed and dubious. But I miss that voice coming from a cartoony spider with more varied expressions/poses. You should be really careful when giving your characters that major makeovers.

Still a series I highly enjoy though.

In regards to what anime is, that is one of the questions that is heavily debated, yet will never get a concise answer. In addition to being Japanese animation or a style, anime is also a universe of tropes, and (in the anglosphere) a broader term for multiple kinds of related media primarily exported from Japan. That's why I feel safe to talk about manga (Japanese comics) here, despite it being the "anime" thread.

[scriver]

It's getting to the point where even ones which aren't isekais are pretending to be ones, complete with characters talking about class levels & adventurers guilds and ranks -_-

I'm not very much into anime, but every year or so I get an urge to watch some fantasy cartoon and do a quick googling to see if there's any new ones that look like they fit my narrow, increasingly nostalgia-based tastes... and they all seem to be that thing you said now. You have no idea how many times I've started writing a post for this thread in my head asking if there really are no decent modern fantasy animes that doesn't involve levels or guilds or other mmorpg tropes, especially even if they aren't mmorpg related! But then I don't write it because it always makes me feel old and negative, so I restrain myself.

It also makes me really hate the word "adventurers guild" and I don't want to hate either of those words.

[Rose]

Gods.

I've read through a lot of the spider isekai light novels, and I've found it pretty enjoyable, riiiight up until I got to what was at the time the latest book, and it seemed like each chapter was just repeatedly describing different parts of the same battle, without really anything actually happening, and I sort of stopped reading there.

[heydude6]

It's getting to the point where even ones which aren't isekais are pretending to be ones, complete with characters talking about class levels & adventurers guilds and ranks -_-

I'm not very much into anime, but every year or so I get an urge to watch some fantasy cartoon and do a quick googling to see if there's any new ones that look like they fit my narrow, increasingly nostalgia-based tastes... and they all seem to be that thing you said now. You have no idea how many times I've started writing a post for this thread in my head asking if there really are no decent modern fantasy animes that doesn't involve levels or guilds or other mmorpg tropes, especially even if they aren't mmorpg related! But then I don't write it because it always makes me feel old and negative, so I restrain myself.

It also makes me really hate the word "adventurers guild" and I don't want to hate either of those words.

Made in abyss could be considered a fantasy anime if you squint. Maquia is an anime movie, but it’s as pure fantasy as you can get.

[Frumple]

Made in Abyss is... I still don't know if the anime's quite as troublesome as the manga, but if you don't have tolerance for loli/shota stuff (i.e. sexualization of minors), you might want to avoid it. There's a lot of neat stuff going on with it, but in the originating material they also shove a ruler up a preteen robot boy's ass, among other things. The creator's predilections on that front are pretty noticeable.

It's legit kinda' unfortunate, because everything else about it is pretty untroublingly impressive, heh.

[Folly]

I honestly don't understand why people get so hung up on the sexual aspect of Made in Abyss. From the entire series together, there's maybe 10 non-consecutive seconds of content that doesn't even explicitly show anything but just implies that it's happening. There is really so much other stuff going on that it just doesn't make sense to zero in on these very brief parts.

Made is Abyss is absolutely an incredible fantasy setting. However, the series is also unbelievably traumatizing. Every single story arc is focused around youths being tortured and killed in horrific ways. It's not a story for the faint of heart, and that should really be the warning given out to prospective viewers.

[Frumple]

It's mostly a warning I give out from reading the manga; from what I understand it's toned down pretty heavily for the anime, but it's still something that can stand the heads up for folks walking into the series unaware, especially if they end up looking into anything related to it (like some of the creator's other work).

Folks can get troubled when they get hit with underage stuff, pretty often moreso than the rest of it, so it's not exactly surprising it gets brought up, heh.

[Loud Whispers]

It's also something that once you notice it, you can't unnotice it and it ruins the show for a lot of people. For some people it's like knowing Quentin Tarantino's thing for feet and then noticing how many shots are just of feet or a moral thing like not wanting to watch a Weinstein production