Monk Ed wrote:Let me get this straight, you recommend the English dub over the original Japanese for Slayers? I can't remember the last time I heard someone say something like that.

Cowboy Bebop's got a pretty good dub, as does FLCL.

r1cepurin wrote:I just saw the English dub for Doraemon and all I gotta say is....what.

So, I've been a fan of doraemon since I was about 12, and enjoyed the older series. I haven't watched too many of the movies, but I still recommend both the old and the new generation of Doraemon, especially for those who like a good sci-fi fantasy consisting of whimsical inventions. But please, please don't see the english dub unless if you've already seen the original Japanese, and you wanna see it for 'so bad it's good' purposes, like me.

Okay here's what's wrong with it, and this is a main trend with most dubbed anime for kids: They change the names of main characters and Japanese foods


Nobita is Nobi, Shizuka is now Sue, Giant is now "Big G" (even though giant is an English word already?!?), and Suneo is now Sneech. I just...I dunno what possessed them to make these changes other than trying to be 4kids or something. Oh oh, here's the kicker: Doraemon's number 1 snack, dorayaki, is now called a YUMMY BUN. I mean, the voices themselves actually aren't that bad except for Nobita's (note that Nobita's personality is basically Shinji xs10 so he's gotta have a whiny voice), and Doraemon's English voice is pretty close to the JP, but it doesn't make it a quality dub due to its other offenses.

Please, Doraemon is a wonderful show with a great premise, it didn't do anything to deserve this..

Oh gods that sounds awful.

Shinoyami65 wrote:Cowboy Bebop's got a pretty good dub.

Hell the director himself actually says you SHOULD watch the dub over the sub because he thinks thats just the superior version.

Anyway i finished arc 2 of slayers season 1 and man.......as i have said many times before arc 2 just improves on near everything arc 1 does, the jokes are better, timing especially so and the action while still being very obviously low budget looks like it had a lot more time allowed to be put into it, without going into spoilers the last few battles of the series look pretty damn good considering that nobody really expected this to get as popular as it did and i actually got somewhat pumped in the last few moments of the battle (this sounds bad but its just a thing where i have a hard time getting into something more than once and i have watched this series a LOT), problems with sound-work not withstanding.



Now since im trying to avoid spoilers (something i wont be doing in NEXT or TRY as that will just have a spoilers section but im being lazy here) i will just preface this by saying i will be calling out the names of certain characters but will avoid their relation to the plot.
Some complaints i had about arc 2 to start:
Certain characters (Eris, Vrumugun) are the blandest of the bland, their acting in both versions feels kinda forced and the characters themselves just don't feel like they were needed at all, ironically the anime original character feels like he has more to do with the plot than either of these two.

Also lets talk about villains shall we?
Slayers had a problem early on with a very Grey vs Black (much lighter than your standard story of this type but you get the idea) mentality when it came to villains and as a result some came off kinda.......boring in comparison to our "heroes" who will never stop being fun to watch, that's not to say some deliciously evil villains cant be in the show because im thinking of two right now who are great but season 1 all throughout is something you more watch for Lina+her companions than anything because the villains are just not that great.

Onto more positives:
The dub REALLY started to get into its stride around this point, arc 1 was rocky sure but arc 2 was great at it bar amelias short lived introductory voice which was meh luckily she got her "miss Lina" voice like 3 episodes after she showed up so its fine, zel also got a new voice actor which is great for him as his previous voice didn't work for reasons i stated before, a certain villains voice worked way better for him earlier than it does in this context and phil's voice while being cheesy as all hell works BECAUSE it's so cheesy, it just fits him so well.

Also more Sailor moon references (you'll know when you see it) is always a plus.

I would say more about character relations and all but:

Watched the first 3 eps of Sailor Moon R. I'm enjoying every moment of it. There's just something so goddamn fun about it.

Anyone here watching Prison School?

I am kind of disappointed in the whole erotic part of it, I think they came on too strong and then the whole excessive body fluid thing is just ... there you know, there's just no subtlety to it, which is stylish in a way but yeah it's not very engaging as a viewer

I mean yeah at first you're like whoah look at those tits but after a while it's just lines on a screen

I tried reading both the manga and watching the anime and i was put off right away when i realized i was reading/watching porn except desperately trying to hide the fact that its porn so it can get to more audiences.

Kinda like highschool dxd honestly.

^
Just seeing manga pages posted on /a/ way before the adaptation was more than enough to say that this was not for me.

On the subject of porn desperately trying to hide the fact that it's porn, Prisma Illya 2wei Herz started off heavy on the loli, with shopping for beachwear and prana transfer occupying all but a few seconds of the first episode. And then I find there's anime original filler episodes coming up... Where are my magical girls wrecking shit?

Oh, that would be over in Symphogear GX which started off promisingly enough, even if I am coming aboard on the 3rd season, with just what I've read on /a/ as background.

^Prisma Ilya seems to suffer from the same identity crisis that the original F/SN had, in that it's torn between attempting to present erotic/cutesy material while apocalyptic, serious events are going on in the background. It's very weird.

Rosenakahara wrote:I tried reading both the manga and watching the anime and i was put off right away when i realized i was reading/watching porn except desperately trying to hide the fact that its porn so it can get to more audiences.

That's an overblown statement based on assumptions, the erotic content actually factors into the plot of the show which is actually pretty engrossing and entertaining to follow.

Saying that people watch it solely because it is sexy is a gross underestimation of people who seek out porn. Porn is ridiculously easily available and outside people would probably judge people who watch porn less harshly than the kind that watches Prison School.

If people wanted to watch porn, they'd simply watch porn.

I just wanted to simply remark that its style is very overbearing and sometimes works against its own sexiness.

In 2wei's case (I was on/off involved in the translation of the manga), the reason why it exists is because it is loosely based on a popular character in the very very popular Fate franchise. If you had the same kind of plot and setup for all original characters, people would be less inclined to give a shit.

Am i not allowed a personal opinion?
Also please don't put words into my mouth, i was judging the show not the people who watch/read it.

IO, cool it. She wasn't judging anyone, so that kind of reaction is unwarranted.

Episode 7 of Aquarion Logos, things really escalated here and for a little while it was assumed that a major player would die. Not that i wouldn't mind seeing the group get scattered after that and work out a way through strong character development to rejoin the battle. But instead, we get a savior Ex Machina with the writers really hammering down the main protagonist's savior obsession down our throats. Honestly, i haven't really seen the prior two Aquarion series yet but i keep feeling like Apollo and Amata had more personality combined than Akira who is dull faced/voiced and won't give his savior spiel a rest already!

InstrumentalityOne wrote:In 2wei's case (I was on/off involved in the translation of the manga), the reason why it exists is because it is loosely based on a popular character in the very very popular Fate franchise.

I'm aware of the origins of the series -- it's hard to hang around /a/ for a decade without picking up at least Nasuverse 101; and it's clear the source VNs make no bones about being porn-with-plot (molluscs and jackhammers and all).

I'm finally watching the Bakemonogatari franchise. I'll say that it's a lot better then I expected. I do feel it's far too overwritten but the word play is where most of the fun comes from so it's not something I'd want them to change. The cheesecake factor sure is overdone though & the further on it goes the more prevalent it's becoming which is a bummer. But it's fun. Flawed but stylistically unique & has a personality all it's own.

The whole thing is like early 90s era Oliver Stone made an anime.

Gendo'sPapa wrote:The cheesecake factor sure is overdone though & the further on it goes the more prevalent it's becoming which is a bummer.

The peak of that is the second part of Nisemonogatari, which admittedly put many people off altogether; after that it dials back a bit. I love the whole series just as it is though, so glad to hear that you're enjoying it too.

Infinite Ryvius: Sometimes I wonder how much of Evangelion's monster success was due to its arc structure which was heavily frontloaded with typical otaku flypaper elements. Released in late 1999 when the mecha genre was in the middle of its dark, weird post-Eva phase, Infinite Ryvius opts for a comparatively simpler arc structure: the whole thing is simply one big, very deliberately escalating descent arc, which is fitting since the show is about a large group of teenagers stuck on a space submarine with no friendly port to go to. They try their best to cope with the situation, but the more and more time they spend entombed inside their fancy gravity-shielded metal coffin, the more their adultless ersatz society starts developing into a spontaneous Stanford prison experiment.

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. According to people who were there to witness the excesses of the American anime bubble, the series went very much unnoticed. Apparently there was supposed to be an R1 license rescue by Sentai, but I'm not sure if it's been shelved or something. The series definitely deserves to be re-released, if for no other reason than to show that Sunrise once has its shit together creatively. Ryvius actually clears some of the genre's modern stumbling blocks (some of which are like Sunrise trade marks at this point) rather nicely. A massive named cast and Hiraiface sounds like a deadly combination, but the character designs are actually quite diverse, and while you might not remember everybody's name, the cast is dictinctly grouped so that you will always know a person's position on the totem pole. UNDERSTANDING is present, but it's handled more understatedly and without any in-your-face space flowers. The last third of Ryvius even dares to follow the "I was a teenage Hitler" route which you might remember later exploded Guilty Crown, but even though it's still pretty outrageous, it actually mostly works here because the groundwork has been laid by the slow pressure cooker build-up. And the ending needs to be noted as well. BIG SPOILERS:



So yeah, it's a very good original series and a tight, self-contained package. Highly recommended.

^
Heh, as all your ryvius (ha ha, best pun ever), this was once again a very informative and entertaining write-up. Thank you for adding yet another show on my endless pile.
What's UNDERSTANDING, though? Google didn't really help me either, at least all the queries I tried. (like UNDERSTANDING trope).

So, just because I was out and about didn't mean I didn't get my fair share of Chinese cartoons, so here goes nothing, for anybody who cares.
Punch Line was the Rolling Girls of Spring season. A boring, yet beautiful mess.
Dropped.
I refuse to believe that this staff didn't manage to make it work.
Then again, the premise alone is a wreck to work with.
Then again, look what they did with Kure-nai.

Blood Blockade Battlefront
might not yet be finished, but it's safe to say, that Rie Matsumoto worked hard to salvage the botched source material. Which is a kinda strange sentiment, cause the premise alone promised an awesome ride in the veins of Baccano!. Sadly though, Nightow just couldn't hide the fact that he conceived BBB as a one-off, and only later made it into a series.
Sadly he also transformed into a directionless Shonen-Manga.
But thankfully directress-san almost succeeded in turning this ship around. Unfortunately, I still felt the vapidness lurking beneath the grandeur, but at least Matsumoto made it entertaining enough to let me be able indulge in it. She turned it into a fun romp, which I enjoyed even more with an English dub, since I then could turn off my head completely. But, going into this show expecting it would be another Baccano!/Cowboy Bebop, I feel a little bit let down. But that's on me. In the end it's just kinda sad to see her stuck with this material, knowing to what she's capable of (Kyousogiga). Then again at the same time, it's awesome to see what she is capable of. I heard the complaint, that she's forcefully trying to recreate the clever randomness of FLCL without being capable of doing so, but I think if she learns restraining her affinity for bombast little bit she has the makings of a great anime-directress.

I've started watching Akame Ga Kill. I'm two episodes in, and so far as I can tell it's either going to be really awesome or really crappy.

I really wouldn't bother, its a shit adaptation of the manga and i only enjoy the manga in a "this is trashy fun" way

Well, that's encouraging.