What anime are you watching right now? 2H15 to 1H16

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Postby Mr. Tines » Fri Aug 28, 2015 2:38 am

View Original Postchazthesilencer wrote:Charlotte
You didn't spot that it was another Maeda Jun title, and let that fact guide you?

---

Five episodes in, and Arpeggio of Blue Steel has dropped the initial worrying harem drift, and more players are entering the game, so there's a bit more to it than just eye-candy. Symphogear GX is taking no prisoners on the "what went before" front, but after a couple of episodes is looking like it'll be turning into its own wild ride soon enough.

And in the background, I've been rewatching Simoun reaching about the 1/3 mark, and it is just as wonderful as it was at the time.
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Postby Final Messenger » Fri Aug 28, 2015 8:18 pm

Symphogear GX episode 9
SPOILER: Show
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he's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack, symphogear never disappoints with its cliffhangers
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Postby Monk Ed » Fri Aug 28, 2015 10:24 pm

I've been watching anime for months without saying a word about any of it!

Attack on Titan - Waaay back in May my friends and I got the jump on the summer fun by finally getting around to one of those popular series I never seem to watch until years after I first heard of it and how awesome it is. The first time I attempted to write about watching it, I wrote this joke in the ultimately abandoned post: "Seid Ihr das Essen? Nein, wir sind die Jaeger!, as we all know, translates to 'What the fuck is this? This show is amazing!'" The awesomeness I perceived at the time never let up but in fact got only better. It might also be one of the few cases in my anime-watching history where a spoiler actually enhanced my viewing experience instead of detracting from it, by preparing me for a certain change in the status quo that didn't seem at all implied by the premise but which I loved so much when it happened.

When we ran out of episodes I desperately yearned for more.

Kill la Kill - After Attack on Titan, we moved on to Kill la Kill, and funny story: Back when I made the decision to watch AoT first I had done so worrying that I was watching things in the opposite order of what I should be because I expected to like KlK less, given its lineage from and similarity to Gurren Lagann. I'm not sure I could have been more wrong -- I frickin' loved this series from beginning to end. Unlike AoT however, when it ended, I was not yearning for more, because it had ended where it should have. The story was complete, and may never a sequel be made, unless it's just sweet fluff. Speaking of sweet fluff...

Place to Place - We started this series at a time that was very bad for me, because it's so cute I couldn't take it at the time and literally had to pause it and walk out for some fresh air. (That is not a joke.) Luckily I came out of that funk and was able to enjoy the rest. There's nothing emotionally challenging here -- it's a lighthearted 4koma comedy. I just have a cutepacitor that gets overwhelmed sometimes. Those Place to Place Preschool segments give heart attacks.

K-ON! - Every now and then, a series comes along that seems early on like it's going to be a chore for me to get through, and then wins me over the hard way. This is one of those series. By the end of the first episode I had been so bored I said of the ED (and meant it) "That was cooler than the entire episode before it". By the end of the fifth episode (the last we saw in the day's viewing session) I had fallen in love with the characters.
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Postby chazthesilencer » Sat Aug 29, 2015 5:07 am

View Original PostMr. Tines wrote:You didn't spot that it was another Maeda Jun title?
That I didn’t spot, actually.
Despite my uncontrollable penchant for watching VNAs, you may be surprised to hear that I still haven’t got round to watching the Key big 3...

Teekyu is on its fifth season now. I hope this never ends.
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Postby Fireball » Sat Aug 29, 2015 11:53 am

Gate/ stay night 9

Something is wrong to let people from another world just walk freely around like that but then I remembered they are in Japan and someone like Rory wouldn't even stick out in Akihabara.



View Original PostMonk Ed wrote:Kill la Kill - After Attack on Titan, we moved on to Kill la Kill, and funny story: Back when I made the decision to watch AoT first I had done so worrying that I was watching things in the opposite order of what I should be because I expected to like KlK less, given its lineage from and similarity to Gurren Lagann. I'm not sure I could have been more wrong -- I frickin' loved this series from beginning to end. Unlike AoT however, when it ended, I was not yearning for more, because it had ended where it should have. The story was complete, and may never a sequel be made, unless it's just sweet fluff. Speaking of sweet fluff...

:klkmako:

nice
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Postby Dr. Nick » Sun Aug 30, 2015 1:54 pm

View Original Postrobersora wrote:What's UNDERSTANDING, though? Google didn't really help me either, at least all the queries I tried. (like UNDERSTANDING trope).


The concept is a little nebulous, and it's one of those "you know it when you see it" type of things, but UNDERSTANDING is usually invoked when non-violent conflict resolution and empathy as an absolute necessity are heavily pushed to the forefront in a genre that lives off constant, explosion-laden fights. The expression gained traction when a lot of the mid-to-late oughties mecha series featured utterly alien swarm-type antagonists that couldn't be dealt with brute force, and it became critical to find and slam their empathy button before humans would be overrun.

It's my understanding that the term is mostly value-neutral, but it's often used derisively because during its heyday it probably became an overused trope, and because things get kind of silly when the same empathy button victory condition is applied to conflicts between humans. Mainline UC Gundam shows have usually skirted the line with their Newtype ESP, and even Unicorn with its glowing rainbow trippiness mostly just trumpets humanity's potential for future empathy voodoo. Some AUs like Gundam 00 go straight to space magic moving mountains, but UNDERSTANDING in its most reviled form happens when the aforementioned things are paired with idiot pacifism. The symptoms often include absurd speechifying (Gundam Wing) or even absurd speechifying while your allies are being stabbed (Gundam AGE).

******

Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko TV:

SPOILER: Show
Two things that go hand in hand: Firstly, worldbuilding matters. Perhaps this is an outlier opinion, but I would say the most memorable Girls und Panzer OVA episode isn't the one where the girls prance around in swimsuits but the one in which they explore the weird and wonderful Ooarai school ship. Secondly, fun things are fun, and a fun series should have some fun things in it.

I brought up GuP for a reason because Yohko's basic setup is similar, albeit a lot more outlandish. In short, the titular Yamamoto Yohko and her three best friends are recruited by time travelers from the year 3000 to represent one of humanity's two power blocks in a team-based shoot-em-up sport fought with actual spaceships. Thanks to emergency teleporters, the game is totally safe, and it's used as an alternative to warfare for divvying up resource and land rights. And apparently it's a smart move to use schoolgirls from the past as your pilots because in the future humanity has declined so much they can no longer git gud at video games.

This is all big idea stuff that could easily make for a fantastically entertaining show. But it doesn't take long to realize that the fun is simply missing. When the girls are transported away a thousand years into the future and hundreds of light years away from Earth, they are so nonplussed about it that they might as well be playing handball back at home. In comparison, the OVA was mostly about Yohko being a smug Mary Sue, but at least it had some sense of fun in it, especially in the space billiards episode.

At no point do any of the 20th century girls get any naughty ideas about exploiting future information for their benefit by buying a sports almanac or even become curious about their own descendants or something. They don't have a shred of curiosity in them, even though their movements are not restricted in the least bit. They actually do the Futurama thing a couple of times and visit a random planet simply to buy some snacks, but it's simply mentioned in passing and nothing fun comes out of it. They don't meet any interesting people unrelated to their actually pretty dreary sport, and they don't interact with any bizarre future tech. There's simply no culture shock aspect at play, which to me is pretty amazing because how can you have a time travel story without including some of that even accidentally? (Futurama I mentioned, but consider also a great anime example of this done right in Cowboy Bebop's episode 15, when the recently unfrozen Faye struggles with future home appliances.) And most damningly of all, Yohko and her crew don't have any ego issues despite becoming insanely massive hyper-celebrities known throughout inhabited universe. You'd think a teenager might go a little crazy from all the wealth and glory, but no, this is not even hinted at. They just play their real-life video game and go home after their battles without thinking twice about it. It makes me think of a thread I saw on 4chan that touched on Japan's relentless salaryman culture, where a poster claiming to be Lord Gepelnich reminisced that he almost starved once after having "drained the spiritia of a Jap". It was a crudely funny anecdote, but surely it didn't need to become an anime.

Image
This doesn't happen.

The show is not worth watching for the space battles either, as it looks very cheap and utilizes every desperate limited animation trick in the book of 1990s sports anime. In terms of action, only the very final battle is anything to write home about, and that's mostly because the spaceships are largely ditched in favor of what I can only describe as a samurai schoolgirl kaiju battle. It doesn't last long, but it was so awesome that it did make me not regret watching this thing.

The visuals fare better in the trippy scenes; they are so numerous that they probably serve a slight filler purpose, but it's usually only during these that the show momentarily awakens from its dull stupor. I was somewhat shocked to find out that this was in fact an early directorial effort by Akiyuki Shinbo, A.K.A. Mr. Shaft's House Style. In retrospect, the abstract trippiness was a clear hint, but I didn't make the mental connection because there was practically no T&A and because there wasn't any of that creative dynamism I've come to associate with him. After all, just a few years later he directed another space outing, Tenamonya Voyagers, which is just outright hyperactive. It crams into its four short episodes all the fun and worldbuilding that was missing from Yohko TV, and it gets a definite recommendation from me despite being a typical OVA that's cut short right in the middle. Or just watch any of the dozens upon dozens of sports shows that manage to turn some mundane activity (mahjong, go, decantering, driving a rice rocket) into an engaging competition sport with all the human drama that entails.

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Postby Mr. Tines » Mon Aug 31, 2015 5:16 pm

Well, the expected weather for the holiday weekend meant that I got a chance to marathon the first half of Mawaru Penguindrum. It's watchable, and there's enough "WTF is going on here?" to flow through in a binge watch; the test will be in how strongly the urge to pick it up again is. Also a couple of episodes each of a much-overdue rewatch of Utena and Mononoke. The jump back to 1990s styles and production values jarred a bit in the former case; and I'd forgotten just how creepy the latter really was.
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Postby Bagheera » Mon Aug 31, 2015 5:18 pm

View Original PostDr. Nick wrote:Ryvius is apparently one of those shows that won awards and is generally liked by people who have seen it, but it also doesn't appear to have made any sort of splash amongst the larger anime-watching public, which really is a towering testament to how we don't deserve good anime.


Yes. This show is astonishingly good. As I said to Paul in another venue:

Bagheera wrote:One thing I'm struck by here, and this is probably due to the kids' ages, is the fact that, even though the situation is easily as messed up as Eva ever was, people cope with it in very different ways. And yet, those ways are still perfectly plausible! There is no Hedgehog's Dilemma here; when people are hurt it's because the situation is terrible, or because people they thought were their friends betray them. But even in that case, they turn to others -- at this point in Eva Shinji and Asuka were losing their support networks and completely self-destructing, but by contrast Kouji and Aoi have turned to one another and are holding on for deal life. The same is true with Ikumi and Kozue. None of them know what to do, and yet instead of becoming isolated or running away they cling to one another and try desperately to survive. It's as human as Eva is, but in a completely different way -- it's an amazing response to that show.


Bagheera wrote:Just finished it. It is so goddamn refreshing to watch an anime with a proper (and satisfying!) ending, made by people who understand the concept of denouement. The entire last episode is devoted to wrapping up loose ends, and it does a mighty fine job of doing so. It (obliquely) addresses some lingering questions as well, the most pressing of which is "if they wanted the ship back so badly, why didn't they just rescue the kids and be done with it? Why are these bozos bent on attacking it ?" Yes, that is addressed.


If you can find it, watch this show. It is one of the best time investments you'll ever make when it comes to anime.
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Postby pwhodges » Mon Aug 31, 2015 7:08 pm

I have also just finished Ryvius, so here are my first thoughts:

Well, maybe Infinite Ryvius has similarities to Lord of the Flies, but that doesn't really give you much of a picture of where it goes. The closest comparison is in fact probably Evangelion. In the end both shows are about facing your past and moving forward. Of course, the protagonists have different pasts, and thus different responses to them and different solutions, but there are common elements as well. Ryvius has more protagonists, and so some are not studied in as much depth; but on the other hand the actual construction of the series is almost flawless - no running out of time or budget, no arguments over unclear endings, there's even a clipshow that's not filler but an integral part of the show. If you are someone who cares about Evangelion, you owe it to yourself to also watch Infinite Ryvius.

Huge thanks to Dr Nick for bringing this to our attention!
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Postby Dream » Mon Aug 31, 2015 11:17 pm

I've been rewatching Madoka lately, and while unfortunately i can't say it quite held up to scrutiny in a second watch so far, conclusion of episode 3 still hits as hard as i expected (and dreaded). I actually got a bit traumatized from it!

I've also been watching Sakura-sou (not the full title but fuck me if i'm writing that entire mouthful) which is kinda funny because looking back on my old FML posts i once saw a former EGF member said some of my life anguishes at the time reminded him of that series, having gotten to about 2/3s i guess i can see why, although admittedly i never really got the whole "being painfully jealous/dissuaded from art by someone's far greater skill" thing. The anime itself is essentially a mediocre romance/slice-of-life thingie with surprising amount of hidden gems (specially in the characters). Honestly though, i ultimately don't care how mediocre it is because it never fails to move me or put a smile on my face, which makes it watching-time well spent in my book. Should probably write something more elaborate when i finish it.
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Postby Ray » Tue Sep 01, 2015 1:56 pm

Lupin III: A Woman Named Fujiko Mine (First Impressions)

Image

Hm. . . I've always wanted to get into the Lupin III franchise, but I don't know where to start. Hm (reads up about it) it's an origin story showing how Fujiko met Lupin? Hm, this looks like it might be interesting. I'm sure there's nothing all that bad in -

HOLY SH()T!
SPOILER: Show

Within the first 20 seconds, nipples, vagina, phallic and womb imagery. woman tied up and being flogged with said nipples being tugged on. "DEAR GOD WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO?!?!?"


I don't know how to feel about this. . . am I supposed to be tittilated?

Don't get me wrong. The art direction and animation are definitely beautiful. It's like a sexy stylish mash up of Red Line and Bebop, which makes sense since Lupin did inspire Bebop.

But. . . . WHY!? The fanservice in this makes Kill la Kill look sensible by Comparison!

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Postby Fireball » Tue Sep 01, 2015 2:29 pm

You could have picked any Lupin anime but Fujiko Mine. Tits & Ass is really the least problem it has.

Go watch Castle of Cagliostro and Jigen's Graveston (same lavish style except not being shit) or wait for the the new series next season.
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Postby Mr. Tines » Tue Sep 01, 2015 2:37 pm

View Original PostRay wrote:DEAR GOD WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO?!?!?
Two words -- Mari Okada.

I mean the first writing credits of hers I am aware of included incestuous lesbian rape.
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Postby Rosenakahara » Tue Sep 01, 2015 2:39 pm

View Original PostFireball wrote:Go watch Castle of Cagliostro

Uh........
I wouldn't exactly call Castle of Cagliostro a lupin movie since 90% of the characters are changed drastically (ESPECIALLY Fujiko herself) and honestly it just doesn't fit with the tone of the other lupin material at all.

I still love Castle of Cagliostro but it works better if you think of it as an AU rather than fitting into lupin in any way and to be fair considering it was ghibli that made this im not surprised it was changed as much as it was.
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Postby Fireball » Tue Sep 01, 2015 2:49 pm

I have no idea what you mean. Cagliostro Lupin is Lupin :uhh:


and it's a great movie to get into the frenchise. Especially for someone like Ray who isn't into fanservice.
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Postby Ray » Tue Sep 01, 2015 2:54 pm

Considering Lupin's been around for almost fifty years at this point I don't think continuity is something you need to be worried about when it comes to this franchise.

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Postby Rosenakahara » Tue Sep 01, 2015 3:07 pm

Well to start off lupin in this movie is kind of more a heroic figure which......lupin never was, at all, remotely.
He was still a loveable rogue but he didn't ever steal for any good reasons, the stealing was always just to knock people worse than him down a peg or two and i dont really remember him helping anyone in need unless there was something in it for him.
In cagliostro there is no benefit to him doing this, he has no reason to do it yet he does it anyway, its not really in his way to getting what he wants here and lupin was NEVER as sweet to women as he is in this movie.

Fujiko is more an action girl here which while showing off more how ghibli likes to do their female characters it is NOTHING like the standard Fujiko, Fujiko is near always naked, near always seducing someone and betraying people whenever its convenient, she has even less of a reason to help in this movie than lupin does because at least lupin can have his more "nice" moments at times (i like Fujiko but man she is not a good person at all).


Basically the whole movie is sort of like howls moving castle, its a terrible adaptation but taken as a story on its own? its a lot of fun and i recommend it.
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Postby Fireball » Tue Sep 01, 2015 3:37 pm

Image

Tone changes depending on what you watch. Jingen's Graveston is much darker for example however the recurring traits always remain the same. Castle of Cagliostro has undoubtably Miyzaki's handwriting, I would never go so far as to call it drastically different though.
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Postby Dream » Wed Sep 02, 2015 4:53 pm

View Original PostRay wrote:Lupin III: A Woman Named Fujiko Mine (First Impressions)


lol, you couldn't have gotten a worse entry to the franchise if you tried.

Haven't seen Cagliostro yet so i can't recommend it, but my own introduction to Lupin has been the First Series (Green jacket) and every episode so far has been an absolute diamond. Don't let the fanservice of the first few episodes bother you too much as i heard it goes away when Miyazaki/Takahata duo enter production at episode 7. And frankly, the episodes are so amazing it's more than worth it to put up with a few seconds of fanservice if it's not your thing.
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Postby unz » Fri Sep 04, 2015 1:53 am

I can't believe I ignored Spice and Wolf for years.
Going to read the novels too and I'm not that much of an anime/light novel person.


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