What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

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Re: What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now B/

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Postby Alaska Slim » Fri Feb 01, 2019 4:41 am

Price of Smiles

Ahh... I'm sensing that this is a game of "break the cutie", combined with the sitzkrieg of, "when does the REAL enemy show up; the one that both of these trusting, exploited souls get to throw off together?"

Question: How likely is it that Joshua shows up later as twisted-cyborg servant of said evil-doer?

Stella: Ah, Saori Hayami confirmed. Completion is certain now.
Last edited by Alaska Slim on Sat Feb 09, 2019 1:12 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

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Postby Dartz » Fri Feb 01, 2019 4:28 pm

Spec Ops Asuka is enjoyable..

On a sort of make Madoka jealous by traumatising the living fuck out of it's teenaged cast while getting you partyvanned sort of way.

It's not shy. About anything.
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Re: What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

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Postby Dr. Nick » Fri Feb 01, 2019 9:53 pm

Galactic Cyclone Bryger:
So, yes, it's one of those shows that are famous for their villain, and I must admit that even though the anime as a whole is a depressingly low-rent affair, Khamen Khamen is an intensely cool villain who deserved a better series. As an Egyptian mafia princeling, he's all about gold, kush and oiled slaves. He has a cool theme song and a legendary-scale villain plot, and most amazingly, he totally succeeds! Our so-called heroes are only able to prevent the worst of the collateral damage, but that's all; they're just a speed bump on Khamen's solar system altering wild ride. That's not something you see often.

And to give credit where credit is due, Omachi does get a decently good short storyline to herself. While Bryger definitely fails at being Space Lupin, this particular two-parter gives out almost like some very mild proto Cowboy Bebop vibes; think of protoplasm puddle version of Ganymede Elegy. It also comes with one of the earliest anime sex scenes I've ever seen, so unlike in Lupin, at least somebody scored in this show.

Armed Girl's Machiavellism:
I guess it's not "bad" for what it is, a combat harem series with some admittedly pretty attractive character designs, but I just can't get over the inherent weirdness of these H-adaptation mimics. The last time I had a reaction like this was with Maburaho which came out in 2003, so I'd like to think I'm not some prude scoffing at all low-brow tiddy shows, but it really feels like AGM should be based on something with porn in it, and the fact that it isn't feels like I'm staring at a blood-slick rip in natural law. Considering the girl-collecting aspect of it and the distinct lack of anything else really, it's just like, why? I mean, obviously the cool guy MC with a literal pheronome punch isn't just getting everyone's stamps in the original, but there's no such original. Remember that one episode in Ufotable's Unlimited Blade Works that was dedicated to having belly laughs at the expense of mana transfers and jackhammers? This show is like a mutant version of that, referencing back to something that only exists in the void.

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Re: What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

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Postby Mr. Tines » Mon Feb 18, 2019 5:21 pm

So Crunchy added a batch more shows for the season, meaning I'm now trying to catch up on The Magnificent KOTOBUKI, where the CG works for the planes but not quite so well for the characters, who look rather uncanny valley doll-like in motion (looking more like RWBY than Toji no Miko or Long Riders); and also this season's guilty pleasure show, Pastel Memories. The latter is full of otaku fanservice, inasmuch as each episode after the set-up gets set in a different manga or animé (Gochiusa, Rozen Maiden, Ro-Kyu-Bu, ...) with their serial numbers filed off -- but also of the T&A kind, with many gratuitous framings during the story, plus an "in lieu of a beach episode" ED sequence, which is remarkable for all the girls having hips, which animé girls never used to.

To make room, KemoFure2 has been backlogged, and I completed ClassicaLoid S2. That latter -- a generally unassuming sit-com -- is a series that I think has been unfairly ignored, for all it's not in my top few must-see animé of the 2010s list, probably because most of the characters are male, and such girls as there are are not particularly cute (and some of them are in fact embodiments of male classical composers).

Of the ones in flight, top three of the season, in terms of most looked forwards to the next episode of, are MGSO Asuka, He and his Cat, and, of all things, Endro~! (another Studio 5kumi animé with a pink Yusha MC, though this one has the more traditional blue eyes), even if I'm spoiling myself ahead of what looks like another pretty bleak spring season (Chihayafuru 3 being the only given, with just a couple of sci-fi titles and the new Ikuhara series in the suck-it-and-see bucket).
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Re: What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

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Postby Gus Hanson » Tue Feb 19, 2019 6:59 pm

Today, I finally gave the dub of Your Name a view and I was exhilarated beyond words. The visuals can get to breathtaking heights, and really watching the ending I hadn't noticed the couple of seconds of a grown up Yotsuha in high school until that particular watch. It was in the collage of short scenes of the teenagers from Itomori and Tokyo showing their current status in life. You always pick up something you hadn't seen whenever you see a film you hadn't seen since it came out years ago all over again.
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Re: What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

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Postby Alaska Slim » Wed Feb 27, 2019 6:19 pm

View Original PostMr. Tines wrote:To make room, KemoFure2 has been backlogged, and I completed ClassicaLoid S2.

That name so trolls me. I see it and I think ZOIDS! Or zoid-like.

... And I'm always disappointed. :sniffle:

There's an ongoing Zoid series right now. I applaud it for trying something different with the formula, but it's just too Pokemon for me to get into.

The Rising of the Shield Hero ep. 8

Image

HA! Miasma Theory. Points for being contextual.

... Still not getting how Georgian era Redcoats, complete with muskets, can exist alongside armored knights though. Are we just hanging a lantern on how Game writers are intentionally bad historians? :headscratch:
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Re: What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

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Postby chazthesilencer » Mon Mar 11, 2019 1:57 pm

I bought the Rokka DVD specifically to hear the dub, now Crunchyroll is streaming it for free. <sigh>

Currently watching:
Rising of the Shield Hero – Entertaining enough to keep watching. This isekai MC is actually having to work/struggle a bit to get by, which is a welcome approach. Not as good as Overlord, better than Slime.

Dororo – Wow, what a mean show. They killed the orphans! The title character’s design- the big, Tezuka hands- looks a bit odd on modern screens.

Kaguya-sama: Love is War – It’s a comedy, I’m getting at least one chuckle per episode, so success! Plus- it has a pinky. I like pinkies: https://youtu.be/6xKAsZZgskg

The Quintessential Quintuplets – My guilty pleasure of the season. An almost wholesome harem show. +1 for a pinky.
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Re: What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

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Postby ErgoProxy » Mon Mar 11, 2019 2:36 pm

Alaska Slim wrote:... Still not getting how Georgian era Redcoats, complete with muskets, can exist alongside armored knights though. Are we just hanging a lantern on how Game writers are intentionally bad historians?

This question hanged my wetware up for a long while, as I've never heard of any musketeer formation originating from Caucasian Georgia or vicinity. :D

Anyway. If those muskets are not threaded and those knights are true desperados fighting for fame and glory, there is a slight chance that someone somewhere heard something about the battle of Kircholm, where 2.6k of armoured knights (but not full-plate knights) charged and utterly defeated about 10.9k of musketeers, pikemen and reiters altogether, while losing about 0.1k KIA. A funny formation, those winged hussars.
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Re: What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

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Postby Mr. Tines » Mon Mar 11, 2019 5:27 pm

View Original Postchazthesilencer wrote:Plus- it has a pinky. I like pinkies:
This has been quite the season for pinkies -- Pastel Memories, Girly AirForce,and Endro~! too (main girl in the latter two cases).

Nothing picked up or dropped since last time; just everything chugging along nicely. At the 3/4 mark, I don't know how they're going to manage to stick the landing for the anime originals, Kotobuki, and especially, Price of Smiles. Neither do I know how come PasuMemo has a lower MAL ranking than the obnoxious SoraUmi ever did, when the worst you can say of it is that it mixes gratuitous fanservice in amongst all the meta, and is otherwise just harmless fluff.
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Re: What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

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Postby Alaska Slim » Sun Mar 17, 2019 3:17 pm

View Original PostErgoProxy wrote:This question hanged my wetware up for a long while, as I've never heard of any musketeer formation originating from Caucasian Georgia or vicinity. :D

Oh, not a fan of Horrible Histories, are we? :tongue:

Anyway. If those muskets are not threaded and those knights are true desperados fighting for fame and glory, there is a slight chance that someone somewhere heard something about the battle of Kircholm, where 2.6k of armoured knights (but not full-plate knights) charged and utterly defeated about 10.9k of musketeers, pikemen and reiters altogether, while losing about 0.1k KIA. A funny formation, those winged hussars.

From what I've gathered, they managed to feint a retreat and catch the Swedes out of formation. The firearms they had were largely arabesques (lower powered, lower range, more prone to misfire). What [matchlock] muskets they may have had were still the kind you had to balance in place with a stick.

By the Georgian era over a century later, [Flintlock] muskets were a mainstay, easily wielded by men on the go. They made plate armor obsolete for anyone but scouts.

View Original PostMr. Tines wrote:Nothing picked up or dropped since last time; just everything chugging along nicely. At the 3/4 mark, I don't know how they're going to manage to stick the landing for the anime originals, Kotobuki, and especially, Price of Smiles.

It feels like Price of Smiles keeps getting more and more grotesque animation wise.

In a mecha anime where you'd think the bots and their supporting equipment would be much of the eye candy, they're not only low detailed, they're consistently out of scale.

Equally, it seems they don't quite know how to draw the princess' hands when they're by her side or to her front. They tend to put her in something of a creeper pose.
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Re: What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

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Postby Gendo'sPapa » Sat Mar 23, 2019 10:07 am

Watching EBICHU.
Honest question: How much blood is in this hamster? Seems like A LOT

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Re: What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

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Postby Alaska Slim » Mon Apr 01, 2019 9:46 pm

Price of Smiles Finale

Meh. Feels pretty rushed, the conclusion is telegraphed well in advanced, I don't really buy that the war would end with mechs shutting down when its likely their guns and artillery didn't run on techno-magic to start with.

I think it's implied that the Empire was invading to get their hands on Kingdom-tech for growing more food. But if this was the lynch-pin that could end the war on amicable terms, it should have received more focus.
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Re: What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

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Postby Justacrazyguy » Thu Apr 04, 2019 6:43 am

Season over, lets go:


Watashi ni Tenshi ga Maiorita: Didn’t I see a very similar show last season? Yes, it’s another loli show where the protagonist is female. Compared to the anime that aired last season, this one is even tamer when it comes to fanservice. Most of the episodes are just: “characters interact with each other in funny ways and little else”. It’s kind of a SoL show.
Aside from the last episode and a couple of other moments the show didn’t really it me at all, it isn’t bad, but it doesn’t do anything particularly well either.
6/10

Mob Psycho 100 Season 2: More of the same. I did find this season to be better than the first do to the increased focus on Reigen and Mob, the only interesting characters in the show. When the show deals with other characters it becomes unbearably dull, and no amount of pretty animation can save that. I also still really dislike the character designs.
Also, is it just me or a lot of the fight animation is just simple forms and flashing lights?
8/10

Rinshi Ekoda Chan: A series of very short episodes all with different directors. Not all the episodes are good, but all are at least interesting. A bizarre decision in this show is to have a lengthy interview with the director and VA after the end of the episode, witch, in nearly every case consists of:
Director: I did a thing
VA: Uhm
Director: And the I did this
VA: Uhm
Might as well have the interview with a robot if your going to be this uninvested.
Still, interesting anime, I recommend it.
8/10

Domestic na Kanojo: A portuguese telenovela in animated form. I kid, a telenovela is far, far worse.
The show is mostly romance and dramatic twists, so if you don’t like either of those things it would be wise to keep away. I was personally quite happy. It helps that the show has an abundance of mostly silent moments where you can really focus on the super pretty characters. Also, the OP is the best in the season.
Apparently the manga later enters absolutely insane territory with completely mad plot twists and stuff but the anime doesn’t get even close to those points.
8/10

Mahou Shoujo Tokushusen Asuka: American action movies meet anime tropes. To put in another way, the author clearly likes 80’s action movies, he also really likes pretty girls with big tits. The two combined created this thing. And it works, it’s silly, it’s dramatic, it’s erotic and it combines all these into a coherent whole. It reminds a bit of Killing Bites, but they’re still quite different shows.
Some people would call this anime “trashy” or a “guilty pleasure” but those people can piss off.
8/10

Special mention to Boogiepop for being the disappointment of the season, it wasn't bad, just not nearly as good as Boogiepop Phantom.

Continuing till next season is the very good Dororo, the surprisingly okay new season of SAO, the kind of disappointing season 5 of JoJo and the awful Shield hero.

---

It was a consistent? season, I guess. I didn’t watch anything too terrible, but aside from Dororo there weren’t any very good anime either. I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than an uneven season.
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Re: What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

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Postby Mr. Tines » Sun Apr 07, 2019 12:08 pm

Since last report, I finished Hoozuki no Reitetsu S2, which delivers the same deadpan humour as before, only this time with more Evangelion references.

in fact it was the season for Evangelion references, in Virtual-san Looking, for which I watched only sufficient to ascertain that yes, there were more than the school uniforms from the PV video; and in the concluding 2-parter of Pastel Memories, rounding out a set of loving pastiches in what was obviously going to be a truly genre-referential show (some of the pastiches being a bit too close for the rights holders' comfort, as the second episode has been memory-holed). And as well as the otaku fan-service of well known series and tropes, there was also the outstanding ED of the season, which made up for the lack of onsen or beach episodes. Otherwise it was just fluff, as was Grimm's Notes, which has to be praised for letting all the gender-bending henshin pass without remark.

The most disappointing title of the season was The Price of Smiles, which started off with a couple of strong episodes before making a controlled descent into terrain with its stupidly naive pacifistic punchline. It was with wry amusement that in the epilogue, I saw that the protestors against what had been done were shown as Yellow-Jackets -- how very contemporary!

Surprises of the season were Girly Air Force, which delivered some jet-fighter action with only a minimum of harem antics (he says, damning with faint praise) albeit with an open "read the LNs" ending; and Endro~!, a "cute girls do JRPG adventuring" series with a great deal of heart, some RPG cliché gags that actually made me chuckle, and a surprisingly well done ending after the Hero's party have their fated final confrontation with the Demon Lord.

Top of the season were He and His Cat, which delivered the appropriate cute cat moments, even if Haru was far too solicitous of her servant-ape to be truly credible, MGSO Asuka, which not only was an 80s action flick, but also a self-aware one (War Nurse casually remarks about watching Red Scorpion during one of the interrogation sessions she undertakes), but with the appropriate magical girl spin on things -- like having the mascot critter show up with a flack-jacket, dual-wielding pistols like John Woo.

Image
That moment when you realise that a dodo cannot fly


And top of the season, The Magnificent KOTOBUKI, which sounded like a Pony Express sort of Western, but in the air. Indeed it was, in the end, a hommage to the Western (several episode titles being references), but more a sheep or railroads vs cattle one. And, as you might expect from the director of GaruPan, plenty of urban warfare, including the final episode's nearly non-stop dogfight in, around and even under a city.


 § 


Mon Apr 15, 2019 18:36 BST

Index III ended with a whimper not a bang, like it should have had just had a black screen with つづく leading into next week's episode.

The new season looking pretty dead, it's backlog time. Kemikurusa is a more serious attempt to bottle the KemoFure lightning, but it's being very stodgy, even if there's just enough "WTF is going on?" to keep some interest. The overall low light levels don't help visually, and Kaban's Wakaba's constant "ooh!"ing and "ahh!"-ing get old very quickly.


 § 


Tue Apr 16, 2019 20:12 BST

Kemikurusa was mostly harmless, dragged down by bloody annoying Wakaba and a ham-fisted reveal near the end, before they arrive at what could be Japari Park. It's sad when the best of the follow-ups to KemoFure is a series of doujin strips that are doing the real KF2.
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Re: What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

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Postby ::KL7:: » Wed May 22, 2019 11:08 pm

I finished ReLife a while back, but just recently noticed the OVA's were on VRV. I'm glad I found them, I don't know why I have a habit of Rewatching old animes, when I get close to finishing one or when i am about to start a new one, God knows my watch list is steadily filling up. While I wish these 4 ova episodes should have been a second season instead, I think it got to the point and tied up most of the loose ends leading up to the last episode
Where I kept checking how much time was left to see if the main issue would be resolved, and on a good note it did and had me smiling and crying with joy.
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Re: What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

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Postby Dr. Nick » Thu May 23, 2019 9:34 am

Dancouga: Blazing Epilogue

Not the abject horror show I was led to expect, considering how this four-episode shortie was for the longest time avoided by classic mecha fansubbers; it's just this completely unneeded thing. Shapiro is back, and gets to do very, very little. Not the correct way to use Norio Wakamoto. Shinobu just randomly has PTSD, and then he gets over it. The funniest thing has to do with the new plant-based antagonists. Sure, Dancouga takes place in a chummy globalist near-future where a unified Earth military exists, so I guess national governments are not that important, but it's still pretty hilarious that when the baddies turn the US president into a literal corn cob, it happens off-screen and is barely remarked upon. Anyway, if you want a blazing epilogue, watch God Bless Dancouga. It's pretty fantastic. This is more like a faintly blinking epilogue.

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Postby Mr. Tines » Fri May 24, 2019 11:57 am

A bit more backlog watching in this dead season; as well as Chemlixa (as noted above), I've watched Beatless -- or at least the first and last half dozen episodes of same, and Fune wo Amu.

Beatless fuses magical girlfriend and magical girl, in a mix of Chobits without the sexuality meets Nanoha with the intelligent devices being the humanoids. In a world where humanoid AI assistants are common, MC becomes the owner of Lacia, one of five special super-intelligent AI girls. when he encounters her in a dark alleyway, and has to take responsibility. Stuff happens like Lacia becoming a renowned fashion model, and a bunch of anti-AI fanatics (backed by a couple of the other special gynoids) taking down an experimental AI politician, then trying to kidnap Lacia (excuses for some Zap! Pow! fight scenes). More stuff happens, which I skipped, and it all turns into a race to get down into the bunker where one of the real super-AIs is housed, and we find out quite how super-intelligent they aren't when the bunker contains warehouses full of different models of household appliances that it needs to examine in order to be able to instruct the everyday household robo-servants in how to use them. Big fight scene, all the special AI girls are terminated, and the bunkered super-AI is rebooted. Life returns to normal.

If only the series had actually bothered to use its premise as more than a fig-leaf for magical-girl fights it might have had some potential. As it was. not only was it more than usually economically illiterate in all the character speechifying, it was clear that nobody involved even understood the premise. The ara-ara onee-san household assistant was cute though, and I'd like to place an order for one.

Fune wo Amu made a pleasant change as a series with adult characters facing mundane challenges in the world of work, and a romance that consists of one episode, the couple meet, the next they ride a Ferris wheel together, and then the episode after, they are married. Apart from that, if the series is indeed true to the level of office automation in 21st century Japan, it's a bit of an eye-opener.
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Re: What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

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Postby Dr. Nick » Tue May 28, 2019 3:14 am

Coyote Ragtime Show

SPOILER: Show
The name may be evocative of Cowboy Bebop, but this series is more like a Chinese bootleg of Outlaw Star. In a distant future humans have colonized the galaxy and powerful mafia families rule the roost, which is probably for the best, considering how both inept and psychotic this universe's Federation is. When a brushfire insurgency breaks out on a hick planet that looks like rural Australia, the Federation immediately orders Exterminatus and starts very slowly towing a scaled-down black hole bomb to its solar system. Mind you, the insurgents are not shown to have a space fleet of their own and their rebellion appears to be entirely localized on this one world, so blowing up a perfectly good Earth-like planet to quell their threat is hideous overkill.

But whatever, a planet's about to explode, so there's your ticking clock established, as on this same doomed planet lies the buried treasure of pirate king Blues. I'm not sure why he's called a pirate king, since he's actually more of a gentleman thief who specializes in robberies by way of long-term deep infiltration instead of anything typically piratey. His MO is literally the corporate ladder gag from Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood. A flashback episode shows how his final big score took like a year of him pretending to be an exemplary bank employee in order to get everything set up for the heist. It paid off handsomely, and he basically walked away with an unimaginable loot of ten billion space dollars in cash, but his luck ran out soon afterwards and he was killed by Marciano, an ambitious female mobster who commands a super-anime death squad of 12 gothic lolita androids. She didn't get the location of the money out of Blues, but he left his young daughter Franca with a classic McGuffin trinket that might hold a clue to the treasure's whereabouts on the Australia-planet. So now it's up to old crime buddies of Blues to break out of jail, find Franca and the treasure map and extract the booty from the guerilla-ridden warzone planet before the Federation atomizes it, all the while dodging Marciano's cute Terminators. And female Zenigata is after them as well.

It's a workable setup for a 12-episode treasure hunt, with clear if contrived stakes, but as I just got done complaining about underwhelming villains bringing down the finale of Tokyo ESP, here the whole thing is brought down by frankly badly written protagonists. The leader of the good guy crew and Franca's new adoptive dad-figure who goes by the bandit name Mister is a legendary pirate in his own right, but he's always used vastly different methods than Blues. Instead of being a suave and calculating infiltrator, he's this brick shithouse of a man who relies on explosives, stolen construction equipment and big fucking guns. He's not a total meathead, but he prefers things big and loud and quick, and he's really good at what he does, almost to the point of being goofily overpowered. Now, watching a beefy dude be overpowered can be fun for a while, especially if there are good side caracters to take care of the dramatic heavy lifting, but it initially seems like the show is about to do the more interesting thing where Mister is forced out of his comfort zone, as he has to retrace Blues's steps and take care of his daughter. We've all seen this before: a tough guy has to find his soft side as he's thrust into the role of a surrogate father, and as a result he slowly develops into a more well-rounded person who can still be a badass when the situation calls for it. Except that doesn't happen here: at the end of the series Mister is still as smug and unflappable and plot-armored as ever, having not really had to grow as a character. Franca is not much of a foil to him, because after one action scene's worth of convincing she just becomes this obedient hanger-on kid. I probably would've preferred if she was properly anime-angsty and prone to lashing out against Mister and his men because that would've given their situation some interpersonal tension. After all, her being angsty would have been understandable, considering what a hugely neglectful parent her dad was. That year he spent masquerading as a bank employee was also a year he spent totally sequestered away from his family.

Mister's two prison buddies and crew members Bishop and Katana are basically personality-free yes men who can be summarized as Nerd Guy and Thinks-he's-cool Guy. The crew's final addition, Swamp, should be a more interesting character, since he's a minister in a black church with a very active congregation. However, as much as he seems to enjoy being a man of the cloth, it's just an act and he has no moral qualms about getting back into piracy business. So non-existent character arcs all around. Angelica, the Zenigata-expy chasing Mister, has fun banter with her freshly-picked dorky sidekick Chelsea, but again, the obvious opportunity for character conflict goes unutilized. Chelsea quits her backwater police force and becomes Angelica's assistant because she's disillusioned with the corruption in the local department, but Angelica is very much a rotten cop herself, only chasing after Mister because she has lingering feelings towards her old crush. She wastes huge amounts of police resources just to be able to have a one more chat with a man who once made her moist, and then she just lets him go, and Chelsea doesn't object at all. Look, I've seen some newer Lupin titles that lean heavily on Zenigata being driven by an obvious homoerotic obsession towards Lupin, but it works there because it's a suppressed obsession, and Zenigata would never admit to himself he's doing anything else but his job as a cop. It's the forcible self-delusion that makes it funny, but there's no such subtlety here.

The baddies fare much better as compelling characters. Marciano's "mistreated woman gone crazy" background is generically skeevy, but hey, this time it's an older femme fatale who gets to become the big boss by purging all the competition. Her killer androids are brutal bastards in battle, but when they're spending their downtime between the slaughters, they're actually shown to have a pretty charming little family unit going on. And I was genuinely astonished to see that the mad scientist in charge of them seemed to be a genuinely caring person, and also treated by Marciano as her equal and confidant. That's pretty rare for a villain organization tech person. Sure, these ladies are violent towards outsiders, but it just seems par for the course since they are a high-level mafia family. They're able to survive and thrive because they have trust and respect for one another, even though Marciano's "sisters" are just androids that might get looked down on elsewhere. Perhaps I'm just projecting my own readings on to them since they get far less screen time than the nominal good guy team, but I ended up empathising more with the villains, which seems like the writing not working as intended. And no, it's never really a thematic point that the main conflict is between two surrogate families of misfits working outside of the normal society.
So, while the villains are fun, it's not a satisfying watch, and if you must have an anime with a burly middle-aged protagonist, go with Zone of the Enders: Dolores, I.

Justacrazyguy
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Re: What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

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Postby Justacrazyguy » Sat Jun 01, 2019 11:40 am

Beck: An anime about a kid meeting a bunch of cool and weird people and making a band and all the challenges that come with that. It was directed by that infamous director that did episode 4 of Gurren Lagan. I haven't seen that episode but I have seen the episode he did for Dororo and the episode he did for Ekoda. He's weird. But I like his style. He clearly loves music and this feels like a passion project.

The animation ranges from gorgeous to awkward but there is some charm to even the wonkiest of animation. The animation when they play is a combination of rotoscope and CG, said CG looks about as bad as today's CG. Take that statement as you will.
The music is thankfully good rock music, since naturally there is a lot of music and they repeat some tracks dozens of times. You will occasionally hear other styles but it mostly sticks to rock.

It's a very down to earth experience in general although there are some odd moments and wild coincidences sprinkled throughout along with some serious moments later on. That said, it's mostly about the protagonist growing up and making music.

I'm surely biased because I play bass and I was in a band for a couple of months(now I'm on he lookout for another band) but I really loved Beck. Hell I'd say it's now one of my favourite anime along with Yamato 2199 and Texhnolyze among others.

Also, be ready for tons of engrish, although, surprisingly, they did actually get a couple of people that could speak proper English!

Yeah 11/10 really good, go watch it. Seriously, now I'm depressed there are almost no anime about making music.

I'll write it again: really, really good.

Edit: There's also a manga that continues the story. The anime was made before the manga finished. I have to read it, everybody on the internet seems to like it.
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Re: What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

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Postby pwhodges » Sat Jun 01, 2019 12:51 pm

Well, there are a few other anime series about music around.

Currently running is Carole & Tuesday, which is about two musical girls from very different backgrounds who meet up by chance and are trying to make a success of playing guitar and keyboard together. For no particular reason, the story takes place on Mars, which has clearly been terraformed to be just like Earth; and AIs are a thing, and currently dominate music writing in particular. There is nothing deep about the story - it's just very pleasant, nicely produced, and a good watch. I recommend it. I think it's going to be on Netflix only when finished (it's currently at episode 9 out of 24), so you'll need to be patient unless you are content to find it by other means.

Also running currently is Kono oto tomare!, which is about a school Koto Club (the koto is a traditional Japanese instrument). In this story the delinquent son of a recently-deceased koto maker decides he wants to understand his father's work. Alongside him is the heir of one of the long-standing koto performing families, who has been thrown out for disrespecting their tradition. Together they persuade enough others to join so that they can persuade the school to let the club continue, and they are working incredibly hard with the aim of performing in the national school koto championship. There are also some disruptive elements, and two awkward love affairs look likely. There is an on-going manga, so it's not clear to me just how far they'll take the story in this season. There's less music than might be hoped for, but the story has more tension and angst by far than Carole & Tuesday. Also recommended.

Last season also saw the second half of Piano no mori. This completed the story (the manga is finished); again, it's Netflix, so you'll have to wait a little longer before they release it (the first half has been out for a while). The story is about the rivalry of two boys, one the son of a famous pianist, the other the son of a prostitute, and how they end up competing together in the Chopin Competition in Warsaw. The series (from Gaina) is frustrating. There is the usual asset stripping to make the story fit a series (presumably they reckoned that classical piano couldn't go beyond two cours, though Nodame Cantabile did), so the main character's girlfriend, and the story of how they met and nearly failed to get together, is completely written out, for instance (though she is recognisable in a couple of crowd scenes). The style is pleasant, and in the first cour they did a lot of rotoscoping and CGI to show the piano playing. This was OK, but not brilliant (actually, Kai's hair is beyond awful when he's playing), and got a lot a criticism, so for the second cour they left it out and reverted to panning stills and lots of stars and bubbles floating around the auditorium (to be fair those are in the manga!). Or maybe they were saving money, if the series was not getting good viewing figures. Still, it's not that bad a series so long as you like Chopin's piano music! There is a lot about how competitions are judged, and what is the right or wrong way to go about it (the manga goes deeper, though). So, a qualified recommendation for this.

There is also an older film, The Perfect World of Kai, covering the first arc of the story, which is actually quite good. The manga is being translated into English (as Forest of Piano), but only published electronically; it's about 60% through, but has stalled - I just hope they will be pushed into finishing it when Netflix release the rest of the story too.

PS:

The Perfect World of Kai used recordings of Chopin played by Vladimir Ashkenazy. However, the Piano no mori anime used lots of pianists; each performer in the competition had a young pianist of the same gender and nationality performing their role, and the young pianists in the early parts were performed by teens. There are half a dozen CDs of recitals by the main pianists concerned.
Last edited by pwhodges on Sat Jun 01, 2019 1:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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