What anime are you watching right now? Sep2011-May2012

[Final Messenger]

Funny thing is I thought so too (about CG) when I first watched Zero but as time has passed on and I've rewatched bits of it (plus MADs and such) I've reversed my opinion about that and think it's really superb for all VF and combat material. Some of the other CG is a bit undertextured but mecha CG is superb.

Yeah I see what you mean I just watched the second episode and when the VF’s where fighting the CG did seem to improve. The CG which seemed dated to me was the air plane CG and since there was not all that much VF action in the first episode it made it seem like the plane CG was what the Mecha CG was going to be, but episode 2 had more VFs and they looked pretty good in action not as good as frontier but still pretty good (but It’s not really fair to compare Zero’s CG to Frontier’s)

Speaking of the second episode it was pretty good there was a little more action than the last one but not all that much more but at least the action in this episode was VF orientated instead of being just planes fighting each other. Also lol whut Goose survived (I forget his name so I’ll call him goose till I remember) I was not really expecting to see him living but it was a somewhat pleasant surprise. Also gotta say Shin probably has the best pilot helmet I’ve seen in a while (Hikaru’s helmet is still my favourite from Macross though).

Well so far I like Zero but it has not impressed me as much as frontier did that is probley due to the lack of Jpop so far and perhaps that I don’t care for the characters yet. I just hope that in the final battle they win with the power of song.

[Ornette]

Keep in mind the first ep was sort of a "Pilot" and further episodes wasn't immediately in the works before the 6 month/ep release schedule continued for the next 4 episodes. Dunno if that has anything to do with the CG.

[Fireball]

Daily Lives of High School Boys 男子高校生の日常 - Slice-of-life of high school boys?? I don't really find the manga too interesting, but the anime is actually quite funny. A lot of credit have to go to the seiyuu -- amazingly they got quite many well known seiyuu to take part: Miyu Irino, Tomokazu Sugita, Daisuke Namikawa, Yuuki Ono; even the female characters (which as the title suggests are all lesser characters) use well-known seiyuu: Ayahi Takagaki, Yoko Hikasa, Yuuki Aoi, Chiwa Saitoh, Yuu Kobayashi.... The teacher is Misato of Eva (Kotono Mitsuishi)... Most of the girls are not in ep.1 but I look forward to seeing/hearing them. It even has the self-deprecating sense of humor to admit they failed to meet the deadline of making a proper ED animation....

Anyway, some interesting moments:

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This show has everything. Was laughing 20 minutes straight plus the additional hour of reading the shared high school gaystories on /a/ that followed.

[child of Lilith]

I'm not surprised, given that this was from the same author as Baccano!, a series I dropped like a brick during episode 3 for much the same reasons.

*Takes Baccano off of list of shows to watch* Thank's for the save, Mr. Tines.

Man, you do need to work on that OCD. Saying "NOPE!" early feels even better, man.

Yeah, it really is something I should look into doing something about one of these days. A pity my follow-through where personal problems are concerned isn't all that great.
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*Reads todays crop of new posts*

Damn. It seems like there's quite a few new shows I should try, but unfortunately I don't have the time to get to them today. Perhaps tomorrow, or the day after.

[symbv]

I also Durarara and Baccano a bit hard-going. I watched Baccano after Durarara and even without knowing both were adapted from the light novels of Ryohgo Narita, I got the feeling that I was watching Durarara set in the 1930s America. Both have a large cast of characters, many of them pretty violent, rude or mean, and magic things just happen. Relationships are complex enough (but in Baccano's case it is harder to follow as stories jump over time and space). Interestingly both, and particularly Durarara, can claim to have many female fans. This has to be counted as a credit to them.

[child of Lilith]

I'm not surprised they both have a large female following. Durarara doesn't push the yaoi angle that hard, but it's definitely there.

[symbv]

What I found interesting is that it seems to show that girls find violent, mean and rude (but strong and handsome) guys attractive. Not all female anime fans are for yaoi you know. In fact I read that most of the female anime watchers are not yaoi and they feel quite annoyed when they are bundled together with yaoi fujoshi. From what I observe, most of the female fans of those shows are not the yaoi type.

[child of Lilith]

Really? Well, if they say so. Not like I can prove otherwise.

[Fireball]

You watch Baccano! for 2 reasons.

Isaac

and

Miria

[symbv]

At least from the blogs I read, the female fans talked about which guy is "kakko-ii" (look and sound cool) and should be "mai waifu", not which guy should be paired with which guy (there are talks of which guy/girl couple is good though). Anyway, yaoi is quite big but I think it is still a relative minority within the group of female anime/manga fans.

[Azathoth]

I believe "hasubando" is the technical term

[User-iel]

I'm sorry to see a bit of under-appreciation here for Durarara. The ploy of unexplained 'magical reality' I took to be well integrated, and written with an intent to uphold otherwise coherent settings. Is it very arbitrary? Yes, but Gundam is based on very arbitrary events as well.
The gigantic cast is a risky technique. Baccano was not a winning attempt at it, as I saw a difficulty with creating a story in the viewer's perspective, as symbv said. Durarara manages the large cast with a corrected 'television drama' style. Music overall was fine, and the OP/ED had high quality. As a further credit, the interaction and composition of multiple characters has complexity and contradiction, but to some this might become the point of distaste. In direct answer to child of Lilith, are there not a good number of middle school / high school age children who really don't know or care about their fellow man? The overall portrayal I take away is that the 'soul' of the city is our main character here, but it's uniformly not Heroic with the capital letter. These characters are often not tailor-made for 'identification', so viewers who wish to primarily enjoy the script this way are not given much to work with. Is this the problem?

Might as well go for the the other stuff too ...

"Another" is definitely going into classic ghost story territory, the OP theme is a slightly restrained Ali Project number, and visual metaphor is thick. Think "Black darkness, Red skies" and throw in some broken dolls.

"Kill Me Baby" - No thinking allowed! Just laugh! It's fairly straight physical gag humor, with a minimum of animation. Paradoxically, I'm going to say "It gets to do everything that Nichijou couldn't" on the sales charts.

[symbv]

^ @User-iel, Actually I also think Durarara is better made than Baccano, and I like the OP/ED of Durarara too. The idea of magic realism is quite successfully incorporated. But then to be honest I also found it a bit hard to pick up the interest to find out what exactly happened among the characters. Some of the characters are really intriguing, like the headless motorbike-riding girl, but their screen time is always limited. I think both anime have gathered quite a bit of positive press over time - I just wish I could enjoy as much as the fans did.

I believe "hasubando" is the technical term

Not sure how you are so sure, as I was talking about Japanese blogs and female anime fans in Japan (perhaps I should have made it clear in my posts) since they are the fans that really count to the makes of anime like Durarara or Baccano... The original Japanese for "Mai Waifu" is 俺の嫁 (ore no yome) which literally translates as "My Wife" with the "My" (Ore) being very masculine form. Female anime fans in Japan use the same term for their favorite male anime character too. So I decided to use "Mai Waifu" in my post, having considered "hasubando" and rejected it. While both "mai waifu" and "hasubando" may all be 4chan pseudo-Japanese-slang concoction, at least "mai waifu" has an equivalent in the actual Japanese slang whiile "hasubando" seems to exist only in the west.


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OT

Rewatched Amagami SS and I think "Amagami SS+" is clever to build on the old series and develop it as a sequel to individual arc. I think this is what most fans are after. And making it a one-cour show with 2 episodes per heroine makes it possible to focus on one major event that further develops the relationship of the couple.

And we know what kind of people are most keen on the sequel, as shown by this pic posted in 2ch
(WARNING: Open only if you have seen Amagami SS or you are not going to check it anyway)

SPOILER: Show

Oh, RIHOKO !!!

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Like "Ano hana", "Ano natsu" (which has the same director Tatsuyuki Nagai anyway) is keen on highlighting one specific countryside town as the locale. This time it is Kamogawa at the eastern seashore of Chiba prefecture (which is a neighbor to Tokyo). As can be seen here the local scenery is heavily adopted in the anime.

Also check:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamogawa,_Chiba

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EDIT: Bumped into preview comments by some critics in ANN. Not as extreme as I thought, but can still get quite extreme. Anyway, find myself most agree with Theron Martin (although I am not sure I would give full mark to Daily Lives of High School Boys, very funny as it is, but he is fair on fan service anime "Highschool DxD" or comedy anime "Kill Me Baby" can be enjoyed - not every critic can be this fair and inclusive)
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature ... terpreview

[Final Messenger]

Watched some G gundam today. Ahh the crazy desings some are good and some are just terrible one that always makes me laugh is the wacky waving arm flaing tube man gundam.

[Alastor]

Got back to Macross 7. I find it to be fun as hell- yeah, it's episodic. Yeah, Basara's a jackass. But I still find this to be insanely fun.

Planet Dance got tiring though.

[Azathoth]

The dregs:

Mouretsu Pirates 01: Kyoukai Senjou no Assholes Describing Landing Procedures. Decent base concept made bad by poor and cliche-ridden writing, direction, now who was expecting that. Apart from the Story So Far sequence before the OP there ain't much to look at here. I had high hopes for there being bodacious space pirates in this show, but there aren't any, and that's the most depressing thing I've ever seen. I guess the butch 80s-looking mom could be pretty bodacious but it doesn't look like she's going to be the main focus here, which is too bad. I'd probably watch another few episodes of this show if she was the one who inherited the captaincy and not her spawn Generiko, shit. As it is, I foresee Useless Female Teenage Fetish Objects No. 1-16 (and I do mean 16, the cast of this shit looks bafflingly huge even for an adaptation) getting trotted out once a week and if you're lucky, some actual privateering getting done in between the presumable Useless Female Teenage Fetish Objects doing Useless Female Teenage Fetish Object things. Although no piracy. What a joke. I mean, it's not a difficult premise to deliver on, exactly. Almost dropped before the eyecatch, but then the eyecatch showed up and it was pretty cool, so I kept watching. Then the second half sucked too and made mock of my good faith. Really, how do you name a show "Bodacious Space Pirates" and contrive to include no pantyshots? Actually there was one, but if I didn't notice the pantyshots in an anime about bodacious space pirates until it was pointed out to me, I'm sorry, I can't consider it worth my time. Dropped since there's already at least one anime this season which did in fact fulfill the promises of its title.

Daily Lives of High School Boys 01: Figured I'd give this a look to see if my problem with boring little girls anime is the girls bit. Turns out it's the boring bit. Dropped, although extra points may be given for restraining its title to something it can actually deliver on.

Senki Zesshou Symphogear 01: Well, that was pretty painful to watch. What drives men, I wonder, to try and make big spectacular anime when they have neither a budget with which to make it anything other than bad, nor the ability to disguise that fact? I guess we know where Satelight's focus is, at least. Dropped before I even got to the eyecatch. Even homolust can't save this crap; I don't know if it delivers on its title because I didn't watch long enough to find out.

Nisemonogatari 01: As expected, doesn't merit my taking the time to write up another huge post that nobody else will get anyway -- OP is good though

[symbv]

^ so daily lives are boring to you? Sorry to hear that.

As for "Senki Zesshou Symphogear", the studio said it is a new attempt to mix "live concert" "battle" and "anime". 2ch converted it to a mix of Macross, Blood-C and PreCure. They also seem to think that it is good for real-time group watching, so that all can gasp at the sudden developments and laugh at the bits of subpar animation.

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Papa no iu koto wo kikinasai - More lolicon than Rokyubu it seems. Also good as material for Haruhi doujin. Seems the light novel is just like that, but anime does not even bother adapting the background before the three girls moved in (at last the light novel covers that, no matter how inadequate). Oh well.

And watched Nisemonogatari AGAIN (actually 3rd time)

[robersora]

so daily lives are boring to you? Sorry to hear that.

Who can actually feel entertained by daily lives without any some things you wouldn't encounter in... well, your own daily life? I mean, if I want daily life, I life my life...
I don't want to say, that slice of life is always bad, but most of the time anime forgets, that simply showing what transpires in an ordinary life... is worth nothing. Yet, it seems to entertain so many people. I just don't get it.

[symbv]

I don't want to say, that slice of life is always bad, but most of the time anime forgets, that simply showing what transpires in an ordinary life... is worth nothing. Yet, it seems to entertain so many people. I just don't get it.

Because there are fun and magical moments even in ordinary daily life. Slice-of-life condenses and distills the moments. Watching "Ordinary Lives of High School Boys" reminded some of the silly jokes I used to make with my male friends back in high school. It was a lot of fun. Not as crazy as the anime, but it served as a good reminder.

[InstrumentalityOne]

And watched Nisemonogatari AGAIN (actually 3rd time)

Curses.
I´ve only watched it 2 times.