What anime are you watching right now? Jan 2013

[Alaska Slim]

I dislike this fuckface so much. When people angst about dark and twerpy teenage anime protagonists ruining animu they shouldn't think about Shinji, they should think about this guy.

I will never forgive him for not killing Relena and saving us from her constant whining and heel-face-suck. Dude had one character trait for half the series, cold-blooded killer, and he failed to kill a girl where he had succeeded in killing 1,000s of trained military personnel... And his own Gundam, in what turned out to be one of the crowning-moments-of-dumb in the series. Seriously, all you had to do to make this guy stop fighting is shout out "We have you surrounded, give up."

[Dr. Nick]

The first season of Darker than Black was a whole bunch of chriscartered plot topped with Mass Effect 3's ending. Mind you, it wasn't bad chriscartering; I thought the show had lots of spectacularly good episodes, although they probably peaked just before the "you have three options" ending.

Season 2, starting from the in-between OVA, is Darker the Black suffering from depression (Hey, the series is true to its name!). It's easily one of the most consistently downeriffic and vicious anime series I've watched, and unfortunately that makes it a whole lot less engaging than the first season. Season 1 was engaging and exciting because although there were a lot of bleak, gory things going on, the individual arcs had various different outcomes, both good and bad. The end result was often a pile of corpses, but sometimes life and optimism prevailed. Now that I think of it, it was quite a lot like Monster in this respect. Season 2 is just one downer ending after another. It stops punishing every good deed just once, when the designated and plot-shielded comedic reliefs Gai and Pink make their obligatory one-episode appearance. And the ending is really a sampler platter of all the fail things anime endings are so very often guilty of; pretentious obfuscation with deep ideas that aren't probably that deep; asspulls and silly reveals; frustrating lack of closure for likable characters; bodycount = drama; select bits of reset ending, select bits of sequel/spin-off baiting; actually awesome things happening OFF-SCREEN, et cetera.

Some of the more baffling elements included things that I'm not sure if they were unintentional self-parody or some sort of trolling by Madhouse. The most notable of these were

SPOILER: Show

- Oh, hello there, Anti-Spiral Nia
- Random villainous Americans out of nowhere
- A super-lame traitor reveal
- Madam Oreille's Jetsons-themed fashion statement
- "Where we're going, we don't need roads."
- Toast
- SALARYMAN RAMBO

[CJD]

topped with Mass Effect 3's ending.

No... dear god it makes too much sense...

Some of the more baffling elements included things that I'm not sure if they were unintentional self-parody or some sort of trolling by Madhouse.

Was Madhouse involved in the show? I thought it was Bones?

[Monk Ed]

So with all this Gundam talk, guess what I started watching today with my usual two anime-watching buddies?

Mobile Suit Gundam. (Did you think I was gonna say Gundam Wing?)

And it was completely unrelated -- one of these buddies had mentioned a desire to see the original Gundam series every time we got together for the past month or so. It was only just today that I finally said "Sure". For some reason, I'm the one they both give the final say about what we watch and do.

We watched the first six episodes, and oh how entertained I was. I watched the Cartoon Network run, but I jumped into it partway through, so I had never actually seen these episodes before and it was a real treat to get something all-new when for some reason I had expected I'd be sitting there bored having seen most of this already. Even if I had seen it before, though, the action and weapons rekindled in me fascinations I haven't thought about or focused on since public school -- a time when I entertained myself during boring classes by imagining battles (usually DBZ but sometimes Gundam) taking place on the blackboard or wallpaper or furniture.

That, combined with the classic music and sound effects, made me want to give Journey to Jaburo and Federation vs Zeon each yet another go, although I don't actually own either of them -- which come to think of it is surprising given how thoroughly I've clobbered them both.

[Oz]

OKADA KAWAMORI WHAT IS THIS SORCERY

Fixed it for you.

[soul.assassin]

Fixed it for you.

Yeah, Kawamori must've gotten some really hard-hitting weed right there.

And later this afternoon... what a cosmic coincidence.

SPOILER: Show

[Xard]

You guys are silly, the psilocybin mushrooms episode was last week. This was plot and hair cut CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT week.


AKB0048 ep 20


good CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT in anime? What is this I don't even

Man, each payoff episode of second cour has been great and this is no exception. If I were a vermin I'd say the episode inspired so many feels but since I'm not I'm going to say it got touching in places and I love all the DRAMA amping up in all fronts.

and holy shit that post-credits scene. Shit is getting real and two cliffhangers in a row is mean. Damnit Kawamori.


Okaeri, Noriko ;__;7

If they keep this pace up 0048 probably confirmed for Kawamori's best tv series after Macross Frontier - though given the others are Arjuna and Aqua Lions I guess the competition isn't that hard (well Arjuna is hard to say, I don't think 0048 has matched its moments of greatest brilliance but on the other hand it's never got as derpy as Arjuna at its worst).

Looks like Tom Cruise?

I guess there's bit of a resemblance to young 90s Cruise.

[Fireball]

Season 2

Hahaha, stop with the joking. I'm still waiting for it to come out.

[Dr. Nick]

Was Madhouse involved in the show? I thought it was Bones?

You're right, my bad. I was very tired when I wrote that.

[InstrumentalityOne]

good CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT in anime? What is this I don't even

Not really sure what to think about this as well, gotta wait for the next episode, I guess.

Also do you think that 0048 is going to end after this cour?
Imagine if they made a new 0048 show entirely featuring a bunch of new understudies trying to succeed our current understudies all matured in the meantime and whatnot.

...
But it looks like Cherrydad/Kawamori has something planned so let's just wait and see.


Isn't Satou Sumire her voice actor? lol

[A.T. Fish]

Whoever labeled TTGL as the antithesis to eva was spot on. What a thrill ride of hammy phrases, ridiculous combat and emotional catharsis.

I tried it, and by tried I mean watched the final battle on youtube just to see what the show was like (I had no expectations so spoilers didn't bother me), it looked so much like Diebuster that I just couldn't bother getting into it, especially considering it's like four times longer too.

[pwhodges]

It's four times longer because it's got ten times as much story. Seriously, what you did is not the way to judge it (though it's a damn fine conclusion when you've watched the whole show).

[Mr. Tines]

looked so much like Diebuster

It's Gainax post-Fooly Cooly, so with the same team at the helm of course it will look much the same. But that's about where the similarities end. For one thing, Gurren Lagann was actually good fun to watch and indulge one's inner 12 year old with.

[The Killer of Heroes]

Honestly, TTGL is closer to being like GunBuster than DieBuster ever was.

A lot of people say its just a show to watch and have fun with, but there's an actual story with points being made there, despite the hyperactive nature of the show. It touches on many similar themes that NGE had I would say even, albeit in a different way, while also lighter in tone generally. It complements it and GunBuster very well.

[robersora]

It's four times longer because it's got ten times as much story. Seriously, what you did is not the way to judge it (though it's a damn fine conclusion when you've watched the whole show).

Meh, ihmo this was the worst part of the show. Even if throwing galaxies around might sound cool, it was boring because predictable.
But when I say WORST, of course it was still good.
TTGL is lovely.

[soul.assassin]

Isn't Satou Sumire her voice actor? lol

Yep. Hell of a good joke. I was expecting Mimori to be the next Kasai throughout the whole show, but...

[moonwolf2024]

Started watching Muv Luv Alternative - Total Eclipse. So far I've muscled through 11 episodes. It's not too bad. Your basic aliens taking over the earth scenario. IMO it's like a mix of Full Metal Panic and Blue Gender with the nice mech designs and ugly creatures. Oh man...those are some nasty looking monsters.

It's started out pretty strong, but i think the love triangle is gonna ruin it. Well, i've still got 13 more episodes to go. I'll wait till the end before i give my full opinion.

[pwhodges]

Meh, ihmo this was the worst part of the show. Even if throwing galaxies around might sound cool, it was boring because predictable.
But when I say WORST, of course it was still good.

And of course this is exactly why it was not the actual end of the show.

[Kutta]

I watched Kemonozume. My mind has a considerable amount of fuck now. This is a show filled with pure unadulterated trash; cheesy dialogues, stupid characterization, obnoxiously primitive love stories and some incredible nonsense shenanigans around the end. Was it intentional? Well, I can detect here traces of what is bad in the second half of Kaiba, namely sloppy writing and stupid romance, and no one can deny that Kaiba is serious and takes itself seriously. This above argument is against the thesis that Kemonozume is some kind of ironic piece. But the sheer magnitude of trashiness and nonsense points in the "intentional trollfest" direction. I mean, I can't imagine that Yuasa would write the script for the last two episodes with a straight face, or even the Yuka-Toshihiko romance in the beginning.

So is it good? It's definitely amusing to watch, but by any sane standard of "good" it's just no good; maybe I could try to conjure up some postmodern sophismatic vantage point from which Kemonozume would seem admirable, but let's skip that. I think it would've been better if Kemonozume either tried to keep up the full insanity for the entire runtime or made a more sincere attempt at an actual story. In the first case the length should've been halved though, because more than six episodes would be mind-numbing.

[Monk Ed]

TTGL just plain rubbed me the wrong way. Kamina and his attitude grated my nerves, and I kept waiting for reality to bitchsmack him in the face for his idiocy, only to find that reality kept bending to his whim at every turn.

The breaking point was probably when Kamina literally shoved his and Simon's mechs together according to the idiotic logic that it would make them combine... and it worked. After that, I completely checked out of the show (by which I mean I was no longer enjoying it for its own sake, not that I stopped watching it). I could not enjoy a show that actively rewarded and celebrated such blatantly idiotic logic -- and I should emphasize that the problem is that it did both: rewarded, and celebrated. If Kamina's idiocy had been punished such as by the mechs getting destroyed by the "combining" like they should've, or if it had worked but the show acknowledged (consistently) that Kamina's attitude would likely get you killed in the real world, I would probably not have been half as mad. It was because the show let it work and actually went out of its way to preach that same attitude that I became irretrievably pissed at the show. You can't show something working in an environment built specifically to make it work but would likely get you killed in real life and then act like it's a good general rule for behavior in the real world as well!

And yet to this day, I see nothing but praise for TTGL. At the very least, I have never seen anyone who has gotten as mad as me at this series, and certainly not for the same reasons, so like a good sheep I'm starting to conclude that I must be "wrong". It's too late for any chance at me and TTGL to have a happy life together, but maybe it's because of this incongruity between my feelings about TTGL and that of every other single person I've seen talk about it that, as a result of that feeling of disconnection from humanity that comes with hating something literally every other person but you who has an opinion about it seems to love or at least not hate, I've made a big effort to not only forgive but embrace things like "Rule of Cool", rubber physics, series-specific logic/morality, and other such "unjustified" breaches of realism and common sense that are common to most fiction.