The funny thing is that ARMS, the studio that made Elfen Lied usually makes hentai titles. They made Kite and Mezzo Forte, among others.

Ryo wrote:

The Eva Monkey wrote:Elfen Lied

Very seconded. Nice review, by the way.

Thirded... Or something like that.

Although I am more of a rabid Kouta/Yuka Shipper. =p Well, I was in the begining but it is really hard to make any couples in that show because everyone is in love with Kouta and it is not clear who Kouta has intrest in.

Hellsing

Okay, let's get this out of the way: Compared to the manga, the Hellsing anime sucks. But on it's own, it's a damn good watch.

The plot is alright, but certain aspects aren't really explained well (I guess it's in more depth in the manga, but I'm only on volume 3). Regardless, the action moves along at a respectable pace.

And the action is great. The fight scenes are absolutely top-notch, with some eye-achingly stylish moments. The second Anderson v Alucard fight is one of my favourites out of all anime.

The soundtrack is awesome as well, Shine has never left my mp3 player since about may.

And, surprisingly, the dub is one of the better ones I've heard. There's no real difference in the dialouge, and the VAs seem to know their roles (I heard the dude who did Alucard cosplayed as him once, which was funny) but the times when they try to emulate a british accent range from cringe-worthy to hilarious.

All in all, Hellsing is definately worth your time and money.

TsubasaNoKoikokoro wrote:Although I am more of a rabid Kouta/Yuka Shipper. =p Well, I was in the begining but it is really hard to make any couples in that show because everyone is in love with Kouta and it is not clear who Kouta has intrest in.

What's wrong with Lucy / Kouta? I mean, it's even got angst!

And Lucy rocks. Completely, that is.

Ryo wrote:

TsubasaNoKoikokoro wrote:Although I am more of a rabid Kouta/Yuka Shipper. =p Well, I was in the begining but it is really hard to make any couples in that show because everyone is in love with Kouta and it is not clear who Kouta has intrest in.

What's wrong with Lucy / Kouta? I mean, it's even got angst!

And Lucy rocks. Completely, that is.

No, I agree. I love Kouta/Lucy and Kouta/Yuka. Lucy does rock although I like Nyu more.

Nyu is so cute! =p Especially in the bonus episode. She is adorable beyond belief.



By the way, for any Elfen Lied fans, I have the episode "10.5" bonus episode on my compy for any Elfen Lied fans yet to see it. Send me an IM and I will send you a copy of the episode. It is very good and basically about Nana trying to fit in with Kouta, Yuka, Mayu and Lucy as a family after episode 10. You find out a bit more about Lucy's past after the er... "incident" with Kouta aswell.

Errm, there are many different good series to choose from. But I guess I'm going to go with comedy for this pick. I suggest Those Who Hunt Elves
I hope I got the size right. Ok, first off the animation is not very well done. Not much detail, pretty old animation. The anime itself is pretty stupid and doesn't run all that smoothly. But the plot is what gives this anime my pick. The basic idea is that there are two seperate worlds, the normal, modern day world, and a magical more primitive world that contains elves & humans. One of the head honcho elves of the magical world is in a fight and performs a really powerful spell to try and defeat her opponent. In the process, she accidentaly summons 3 peopls, an muscle-head idiot Junpei, and military high-school girl Ritsuko, and an award-winning actress Airi, along with a tank. While the elf does another spell to send them back to their world, Junpei distracts her and the spell fragment splits into 5 fragments and lands on 5 female elves around the world. Now Celcia, the elf elder, Junpei, Airi, Ritsuko, and the tank must go around the world stripping elves looking for the spell fragments. The dialogue can be pretty funny, and just the sake that the story line is to strip random elves is enough to watch it. Plus it's really cheap. Somehow between the stripping, and the curse words every other sentence this anime pulled off a PG rating. Anyways, I would recommend checking it out since it's only $50 for the thinpack of 24 episodes, and that's at Suncoast.[/b]

TsubasaNoKoikokoro wrote:

ZOMG. AVATARED.

Yeah, so as all yall suckers see, Elfen Lied is a show you should see.

no way, I've heard it is too agressive, I want what lies in my stomach :P

Hmm, since this seems to have become the Elfen Lied discussion thread

Six Winged Angel wrote:no way, I've heard it is too agressive, I want what lies in my stomach :P

While it is a show that goes out of its way to demonstrate this law of anime physics:

#18- Law of Hemoglobin Capacity- the human body contains over 12 gallons of blood,
sometimes more, under high pressure.

it doesn't really get significantly worse than this



and after a while one gets desensitised to all the dismemberment and gore.

I thought it was an OK enough title to watch all 13+1 episodes, but it is really Chobits trainwrecked with Scanners in the Hinata Inn; and I'm surprised that the title hasn't acquired the colloquial nickname of "Love Lucy"

Mr. Tines wrote:"(we should) Love Lucy (or she'll rip our sorry heads off)"

Fixed. :P

Ryo wrote:

Mr. Tines wrote:"(we should) Love Lucy (or she'll rip our [arms and legs] off)"

Fixed. :P

Double fixed.

The Eva Monkey wrote:

Ryo wrote:

Mr. Tines wrote:"(we abosulotly must) Love Lucy (or she'll rip us rim from rim and stuff...)"

Fixed. :P

Double fixed.

Triple Fixed.

TsubasaNoKoikokoro wrote:

The Eva Monkey wrote:

Ryo wrote:

Mr. Tines wrote:"(we absulotely must) Love Lucy (or she'll break our legs and force us to eat them. Then she'll rip our sorry heads off)"

Fixed. :P

Double fixed.

Triple Fixed.

Quad-something Fixed.

The Eva Monkey wrote:Pick a show that is recommended, and after that, say if you liked it or not, and if the recommendation was helpful or not, and then you may post another recommendation.

I've done the former for Elfen Lied; the latter - well I'd already watched the series based on your enthusiastic recommendation some weeks ago, but I thought it was a good review. Personally I would make the connection more to the generational anxiety in Japan (as expressed previously in Gundam), as opposed to the metaphor for race that the Merry Marvel Mutants represent.

So, having paid my debt to society, as it were, I'm going to have to seriously think which title to recommend next.

Having pondered taking on a number of more modern 12 or 13 episode titles, generally philosophical, weird or ruminative, I think I'll go for something with a more superfically normal story on the second go-round. So my next recommendation is:

Revolutionary Girl Utena

It is a title that I'd heard mention of roughly from the time I started getting into anime, as a classic title, one of the "you should have seen this" ones. But beyond mention of duelling, no-one ever talked much about what it was about. When you get to watch it, you find out that this is because it doesn't lend itself to being neatly summarized.

What marked the series for me is that, in my admittedly limited viewing to date, it is the most like NGE that I have come across. I don't mean that in the superficial sense that RahXephon is often accused of being where you can map one NGE character to one or two RahX characters (e.g. Misato ➔ Haruka+Elvy); I mean it in the sense of having a cast of psychologically thoroughly fucked up characters in warped relationships being manipulated by another self-centred screwball so that he can achieve some world-changing transformation, only this time all within what would be a standard set of tropes for shoujo; with the monster-of-the-week being replaced by the duel-of-the-week, as the eponymous Utena manages to come to terms with growing up.

On the downside, the title includes a couple of weak humorous filler episodes, and a liberal re-use of an extended "transformation scene" for each duel.

Like NGE, there was also an alternate version movie; and also like NGE it had a Thumbnail Theatre (never completed and only covering the first 17 of 39 episodes). And as further demonstration of similarity, the fanfic Neon Revolution Evangelion manages to braid the two stories together in a fairly seamless fashion (Warning: contains many spoilers for both titles).

Mr. Tines wrote:What marked the series for me is that, in my admittedly limited viewing to date, it is the most like NGE that I have come across. I don't mean that in the superficial sense that RahXephon is often accused of being where you can map one NGE character to one or two RahX characters (e.g. Misato ➔ Haruka+Elvy); I mean it in the sense of having a cast of psychologically thoroughly fucked up characters in warped relationships being manipulated by another self-centred screwball so that he can achieve some world-changing transformation, only this time all within what would be a standard set of tropes for shoujo; with the monster-of-the-week being replaced by the duel-of-the-week, as the eponymous Utena manages to come to terms with growing up.

I've only seen the Utena movie and I can agree with this. Utena makes Evangelion look normal. Definitely on my list to come back to -- but can someone explain the carwash scene? Is it even possible?

Mr. Tines wrote:Hmm, since this seems to have become the Elfen Lied discussion thread

Six Winged Angel wrote:no way, I've heard it is too agressive, I want what lies in my stomach :P

While it is a show that goes out of its way to demonstrate this law of anime physics:

#18- Law of Hemoglobin Capacity- the human body contains over 12 gallons of blood,
sometimes more, under high pressure.

it doesn't really get significantly worse than this



and after a while one gets desensitised to all the dismemberment and gore.

I thought it was an OK enough title to watch all 13+1 episodes, but it is really Chobits trainwrecked with Scanners in the Hinata Inn; and I'm surprised that the title hasn't acquired the colloquial nickname of “Love Lucy”

umm........I'll have a paladin cast on me an aura of courage and go see it
:braveshinji:


I just finished seeing the epic Full Metal Alchmist show, AMAZING!! :shock: everyone, an' I mean everyone should see this masterpiece

drinian wrote:but can someone explain the carwash scene? Is it even possible?

I believe it is well established that the answer is that while he was doing the movie, Ikuhara thought that adding in the Utena car was a cool idea.

In the series the only car is the red sports job that Akio drives; and the surreal bits burst out in different directions.

Six Winged Angel wrote:umm........I'll have a paladin cast on me an aura of courage and go see it
:braveshinji:

If you make it through the first half of the first episode, you should be OK. You don't get the same level of sustained violence again until the climax.

Utena is one of my favourites. The black rose arc and the 2 or three episodes of Wakaba and Saiyonji are just masterpieces. And I also loved the fillers, the cowbell and Nanami's egg ones. The movie just ended up boring me, didn't like the ending that much.

Elfen Lied gets my vote too. If you like Evangelion you'll love Elfen Lied!! They both show human emotion and anger at it's best. but with hot ladies to boot! lol. I still havent' seen the last three episodes because I don't have volume 4 yet. but i'm so excited to see how it all ends. everything is leading up to a nice finish i'm thinking.