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

[Alaska Slim]

Rokka no Yuusha ep. 10



So genki bunny girl who he met first is not OTP? Count me as surprised.

Also that the lead admits this, when just two episodes before he denied it. It is refreshing though that they're getting this out of the way, when the series is not even half over.


Anyway, who the Seventh could be is now down to just three people. Princess Bunny, her lackey, and the Mountain Saint.

Personally, I've been thinking it was Mountain Saint since the time she asked Cat-guy (Hans) to look at his own seal to see if Flamie was still alive, instead of inspecting her own.

Also, because she's quite a bit older than everyone else. She's harshing the Saint of the 6-flower's clear youth-fetish.


However, while I thought Bunny's actions this episode were steadily clearing her of being the seventh, it seems others are saying the opposite. Maybe they know something I don't.

[unz]

:0 Rokka is cool, evangelion characters split into a pack of heroes with trust issues. I just finished the unofficial translation of the novel and this first anime season is the core of the whole thing to expand on betrayal tropes. Best anime from this last summer imho. Not all characters end up interesting (chamo matures little in the novel for example) but it's burning slow just like the original evangelion did.
Ep 10 was an emotion bucket featuring plans crashing each other really:p Fremy is adorable

[Dr. Nick]

Tactical Roar:

SPOILER: Show

File this under "pretty cool premises": Imagine a naval academy K-On, with three cute cadet girls doing cute military things. Except that one of them is a bit of a political extremist who subsequently turns into a supervillain, raises a modern pirate army and unleashes a wave of maritime terror all over Southwest Pacific. Flabbergasted and obviously feeling betrayed, the remaining two leave the military, acquire a used destroyer, staff it with an all-female crew and set up a PMC business in order to more freely fight against their former friend, who's now started tinkering with comic book level superweapons.


Dr. Doom on the right.

Sounds pretty badass and different, doesn't it? There's lots and lots of space opera anime, but legit seafaring adventures appear to be a rarer breed, this current craze of anthropomorphized shipgirls notwithstanding. Some odd examples exist with more genre-correct action, such as the absolutely gripping Zipang. Of course, Zipang was probably the most manly-ass sausagefest this side of Akagi, so in Roar's case I was willing to treat its "all-female, all-cute crew of X" trope with less eye-rolls than usual simply because it was balancing things out for me.

Unfortunately, what I outlined above is the backstory. The series proper begins with the arrival of - tell me if you've heard this before - a bland everyman male protagonists, which immediately leads to a lot saucy hijinks. His reason for being on this ship full of women is quite literally to upgrade their RAM, which is only one step above pizza delivery in terms of cliched set-ups for a porno. However, he's not an entirely typical bland male protagonist because instead of the usual zero, he does have one distinguishing quality: he wants to bang the captain, who's also his stepsister.

Now, I'm not saying that slamming a futuristic naval adventure together with a pseudo-incest romance is an inherently bad idea for an anime. I'm a big proponent of absurd genre mixes, but considering this is a short 13-episode show, you can probably already guess that neither of these plotlines gets satisfactorily resolved. And it doesn't help that the bland IT guy is pointless deadweight as a character. He only exists to be a love interest, and he contributes nothing when there's fighing going on. I know these bland assholes are meant to be self-inserts, but they should have at least a token bit of personality. For comparison, let's consider a far better military/romance mashup anime, 801 T.T.S. Airbats. It often gets referred to as Tenchi Muyo at an airbase, so you can be pretty sure the MC is meant to be a massive self-insert, but he still has some memorable traits: he's a gushing plane otaku, and he has a very overactive imagination. It's certainly not deep character writing, and I'm not saying we should have more chuuni otaku archetypes populating the leading man roles, but I am saying it does beat the leading man being a blank slate pizza delivery guy.

So, besides the baffling mashup angle, are there any other reasons to watch Tactical Roar? The action parts, I'd say, are passable at best; some of the setpieces are inventive, with one of the highlights being a drone boat battle in the middle of a hugely congested shipping lane (think of the Strait of Malacca on steroids), but the execution rarely matches the raw potential of these ideas. Electronic warfare is a big deal on near-future warships, but Roar's take on it is to have a creepy upskirt subreddit remotely hijack the ship for one episode. It's not time well spent. My recommendation would be to simply watch some better naval anime and then get your incest fix elsewhere.

******

Jungle de Ikou: I don't think this depiction of New Guinean animist religious practices is ethnographically accurate.

[Bagheera]

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

I don't get your beef with it, and AFAICT most others don't either. It's widely regarded as one of the best anime shows of 2012, got some awards, sold like gangbusters when it came out on BD, and deftly handles some meta-as-fuck storytelling re: women and queer characters. Add in a crazy cool soundtrack and some tight writing and the end result is a story that has me saying "hey, I'm glad I blew my weekend watching that."

And the T&A is just an adult female who doesn't have hangups about her sexuality. It's shocking for about a minute, and then you go into grownup mode and say "meh, whatever" and get on with the plot -- because, well, there's some really fuckin' solid plot there, to the point where past the first ep I was like "meh, that's just Fujiko being Fujiko, who gives a fuck, what else is going on?"

Two words -- Mari Okada.

I mean the first writing credits of hers I am aware of included incestuous lesbian rape.

Oh please. She also did Rozen Maiden, Fate/Stay Night, AnoHana, Nagi no Asukara, Hanasaku Iroha, Black Rock Shooter, and tons of other perfectly tame stuff.

[Rosenakahara]

Unfortunately, what I outlined above is the backstory. The series proper begins with the arrival of - tell me if you've heard this before - a bland everyman male protagonists.

Oh boy bland self insert male protag, my favourite.

[Ray]

Imma rant about Harem Anime for a bit.

Friggin self insert characters are the freaking bane of good storytelling. I don't WANT to relate to a blank slate with little to no defining characteristics whatsoever. Which is why I tend to be hostile towards Harem anime and Moe.

It's laziness on the part of the audience, that's what it is. A disease that's poisoning all media and storytelling as a whole. Cracked.Com did a video talking about this. Albeit with American action movies, not Japanese Harem Anime. But the same logic applies.

The Horrifying Secret 'The Matrix' (Ray: and Harem Anime) Reveals About Humanity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrbKuOaVF3k

Basically, the more boring vanilla you make the main character. The more the audience can supposedly relate to him. Which is true, considering the popularity of crappy Harem shows, and trashy low budget action movies

Take. . . Tenchi Muyo for example. right in the title. Useless Tenchi. The Main character is pointless, and only serves to give the audience member a suit to fill. To imagine himself, as Tenchi in the situation surrounded by girls and the object of female affection. The majority of the antics and quotable moments happen because of the other more important characters. They make the more interesting characters sidekicks in the boring dull vanilla characters story. Because instead of taking a risk, they want to make their profits back by catering to the demographic that basically want to be told that they're important and special. That a character that represents them is the center of the universe. So basically, instead of media giving us a story about the more interesting characters as told through those interesting characters. We the audience are given an expy to witness those actions through.

It's like if you gave James bond an annoying kid sidekick because you believe the audience can't relate to a spy who kills for a living.

Storytellers shouldn't bend over backwards to make an everyman a member of the story for the sake of appealing to the audience. I want a story to make the interesting people relatable and understandable to the Everyman in the audience. In a Story about pirates, I want the pirates to be the main character. In a story about giant robot pilots, I want the pilot of the robot to be the main character. and so on and so forth.

It's pandering to the lowest common denominator at it's finest.

[Rosenakahara]

^ hit the nail on the fucking head, but as explained here these things are going to stay because that niche infests a sizeable portion of anime community's and thus is most marketable.

Essentially unless all otakus (TRUE otakus not the western definition) that idolise and perpetuate the shitty culture that anime reflects right now either die off or realize they are wasting their lives and decide to change all at once nothing will change.

[Gob Hobblin]

If this thing with Under the Dog pans out, it might provide an alternate means for animators to make money and put quality animation out.

I mean, hell, look at RWBY: that's a Rooster Teeth project, and they're doing very well, considering that they started outside of the normal studio community.

[Mr. Tines]

Except that one of them is a bit of a political extremist who subsequently turns into a supervillain

Good anime have come about with that as a sub-plot. But the one I have in mind was entirely male character free. Come back Kokubou Kamen, all is forgiven!

Imma rant about Harem Anime for a bit.

Friggin self insert characters are the freaking bane of good storytelling. I don't WANT to relate to a blank slate with little to no defining characteristics whatsoever. Which is why I tend to be hostile towards Harem anime and Moe.

By moe, what exactly do you mean? "Cute girls doing cute things" series tend to be covered by the moe umbrella, and where those have male characters at all, they are peripheral, and even the butt of all the jokes.

tons of other perfectly tame stuff.

The lady still has a certain reputation, however. As it turns out, her work on Rozen Maiden actually preceded the incident that I had in mind.

[Bagheera]

Eh. He's right about how we need to throw money at anime we like if we want to see more like them made, but at the same time he's telling a very one-sided narrative that ignores a lot of really innovative and awesome anime that have come out in the past few years. Shows like Penguindrum, Fujiko Mine, Michiko and Hatchin, Kill la Kill, Knights of Sidonia, Mushishi, Bakemonogatari, Yuri Kuma Arashi, and many others have continued to deliver quality work in the past few years. None of these are niche works, and I don't think we're really seeing more of those lately; instead I think it's just more obvious that Sturgeon's Law is in effect, just as it always has been. The crap was always there (hell, Tenchi Muyo goes back how far?), it's just a lot more easier to spot it now given how connected we are with the studios that make it.

Studio Ghibli's a good example of why the narrative he's pitching doesn't really work. The studio isn't closing up shop because it turn a profit (hell, it's not really closing up shop to begin with). It's more accurate to say it's no longer making movies because all of its major talent has either aged out or moved on. Yes, they had some flops, but that's not a huge issue for them because they're still raking in the cash from merchandising and such. But money alone won't result in new anime if you don't have people there to actually do the work of making it (we can also see this with Gainax; it didn't die because people weren't buying its anime, it died because its talent became Khara and Trigger, both of which are doing extraordinarily well atm)

In short I don't think what he's saying is wrong, necessarily, just that there's a lot more going on that he doesn't even begin to address. Anime is not dying because of trashy niche titles. It's not dying at all, in fact. It's just going through some tough times because it's a punishing field for animators, because we're in a global recession that makes things that much worse, and because the reach of a lot of young studios is exceeding their grasp. Quality work will continue to come, but studios are gonna have to be smarter about when and how it's made if they want to keep up. And plenty will, make no mistake about that.

[Fireball]

I don't get your beef with it, and AFAICT most others don't either. It's widely regarded as one of the best anime shows of 2012, got some awards, sold like gangbusters when it came out on BD, and deftly handles some meta-as-fuck storytelling re: women and queer characters. Add in a crazy cool soundtrack and some tight writing and the end result is a story that has me saying "hey, I'm glad I blew my weekend watching that."

Looking at the sales that's nothing to write home about.

Personally from what I remember, if they had just made Fujiko a cool seductive femme fatale that always acted like she did in ep 1 when she faced Lupin for the first time, that would have been completely fine, but the show forced the childhood trauma shit a lot so they could pull a condescending bait-and-switch at the end. Ironically in their attempt to make a point about her being a STRONG EMPOWERED WOMAN they actually made her weak and boring. For a show that was supposed to be about Fujiko I only found myself enjoying the ones that didn't focus on her.

My memory is fuzzy though, I forgot about it already and it's not something I want to watch again. If you liked it more power to you.

Oh yeah,

OWLS OWLS OWLS

[Bagheera]

The lady still has a certain reputation, however. As it turns out, her work on Rozen Maiden actually preceded the incident that I had in mind.

Yeah, and that rep is stupid. Anyone who's delivered the diversity and sheer volume of work she has deserves a bit more consideration than that.

Personally from what I remember, if they had just made Fujiko a cool seductive femme fatale that always acted like she did in ep 1 when she faced Lupin for the first time, that would have been completely fine, but the show forced the childhood trauma shit a lot so they could pull a condescending bait-and-switch at the end. Ironically in their attempt to make a point about her being a STRONG EMPOWERED WOMAN they actually made her weak and boring. For a show that was supposed to be about Fujiko I only found myself enjoying the ones that didn't focus on her.

I'm reading through this guy's series of articles on the show and, suffice it to say, I disagree.

OWLS OWLS OWLS

I'm with you here, though. Those fucking owls!

[unz]

Imma rant about Harem Anime for a bit.

Friggin self insert characters are the freaking bane of good storytelling. I don't WANT to relate to a blank slate with little to no defining characteristics whatsoever. Which is why I tend to be hostile towards Harem anime and Moe.

It's laziness on the part of the audience, that's what it is. A disease that's poisoning all media and storytelling as a whole. Cracked.Com did a video talking about this. Albeit with American action movies, not Japanese Harem Anime. But the same logic applies.

The Horrifying Secret 'The Matrix' (Ray: and Harem Anime) Reveals About Humanity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrbKuOaVF3k

Basically, the more boring vanilla you make the main character. The more the audience can supposedly relate to him. Which is true, considering the popularity of crappy Harem shows, and trashy low budget action movies

Take. . . Tenchi Muyo for example. right in the title. Useless Tenchi. The Main character is pointless, and only serves to give the audience member a suit to fill. To imagine himself, as Tenchi in the situation surrounded by girls and the object of female affection. The majority of the antics and quotable moments happen because of the other more important characters. They make the more interesting characters sidekicks in the boring dull vanilla characters story. Because instead of taking a risk, they want to make their profits back by catering to the demographic that basically want to be told that they're important and special. That a character that represents them is the center of the universe. So basically, instead of media giving us a story about the more interesting characters as told through those interesting characters. We the audience are given an expy to witness those actions through.

It's like if you gave James bond an annoying kid sidekick because you believe the audience can't relate to a spy who kills for a living.

Storytellers shouldn't bend over backwards to make an everyman a member of the story for the sake of appealing to the audience. I want a story to make the interesting people relatable and understandable to the Everyman in the audience. In a Story about pirates, I want the pirates to be the main character. In a story about giant robot pilots, I want the pilot of the robot to be the main character. and so on and so forth.

It's pandering to the lowest common denominator at it's finest.

I remember about that vid but the insert character is designed to fit in as company to the audience, not as "immersion". It's something to laugh at or to laugh with if it's comedy. Think half life or shadow of the colossus for action instead. Or any fps with talking dudes - those ones are not different from sitcoms playing laughs in the background as if you were there among the audience except insert characters are not inherently bad.

As far as romance goes most of the time the main character can be a decent guy but everything else might still suck. This is because all love interests are cut according to archetypes who do not behave as people at some point and require steps and key lines to fall in love like in some shitty visual novel, Idk what a genki girl is but for example genki girls will always require the same situations and the same lines to magically fall in love and that's it.
I guess that moe and trendy stuff were results of evangelion's popularity (and the ghost in the shell movie ending before that outside of Japan)....still a lot of dark stuff I follow turns into romance at some point for some reason and it's good too as proof you don't need mainstream crap.
End of evangelion was one with a disturbing love story ending for example.
Spice and wolf is super shmalz and romance takes over but otherwise it's this lawless world and the main couple is basically doing all kinds of frauds/gamblings/whathaveyou and it's cool (go for the light novels). The characters are not original but the wit and charm is great.
Dorohedoro still has to end but the romance in it is adorable despite being very gory urban fantasy stuff.
Maybe people would like karekano more but I bet it has been mentioned to death.





@bagheera I second Knights of Sidonia but only as a giant adv to Nihei mad manga skillz:

https://mercurialblonde.wordpress.com/2 ... f-sidonia/

[Compiling_Autumn]

So, um, I'm actually watching Tenchi Muyo Universe for the first time. All on VHS, English dubbing. The hammy voice acting and dumb plotlines are glorious in their own way. I like to think that the English VAs were having as much fun doing these stupid voices as I am making fun of them.

Tenchi sounds like if David Lynch and Kermit the Frog had a love child. Wasshu sounds like someone doing a bad impression of Roseanne Barr. Ryoko's VA sounds bored, or drunk, or both.

I couldn't imagine watching the show any other way.

[Ray]

I have a real love hate relationship with tenchi muyo. . .

[unz]

Apparently the first One Punch Man episode is out? brb download

[Compiling_Autumn]

I have a real love hate relationship with tenchi muyo. . .

how so?

[Alaska Slim]

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?

Sounds like the first Lupin III film, The Mystery of Mamo.

I'd call it flanderization, but the film predates most of what I'd seen of the character.

Out of it, I came to see Castle Caligistro intended as a palate cleanser/ rehabilitation of the franchise image.

[Defectron]

Apparently the first One Punch Man episode is out? brb download

This did not dissapoint, if these beginning fights are this awesome I can only imagine how crazy the fight with Boros will be. But the subs were kinda halfassed, they didnt sub that part in the middle of the episode with the car monster, what was up with that?

[unz]

Idk, I forgot to watch.
The commercial manga has cooler art if that's your bag. The web comic by ONE does.not.:l.