Forum - View topicWhat are you watching right now? Why? (please read 1st post)
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Tris8
 Posts: 2114 Location: Where the rain is. |
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TheTheory
 Posts: 1029 Location: Central PA |
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Finished:
Trigun I really don't want to admit how long I've owned the Trigun DVDs without watching them. It's been at least 2 years, probably bordering on 3. Yikes. Well, I finally knocked this series off my backlog list. The bad news first: it didn't really meet any of my expectations. The good news is that what it does do is much better than what I was expecting and oh-so different in all the best ways. Highly recommend, does I. Up next? Who knows? |
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Amano Ginji
 Posts: 38 |
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I'm on a bit of a nostalgia kick right now. Just finished S-Cryed. Going to move on to either Bebop followed by Outlaw or vice versa. Probably watch some Trigun as well. The newest series I've watched lately was Gosick which I just finished. Otherwise, it's been proven series for the last 6 months or so. Been thinking about checking out something from the current season but have no clue which to go with.
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PetrifiedJello
Posts: 3782 |
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For my current entry, I will need some assistance from your imagination.
Picture a little girl, about 7 years of age. She's wearing a blue dress, white sandals, and her long, blonde hair's pulled back into a ponytail. She's standing in a field of wild flowers... ...screaming at the top of her lungs you won't give her a piggy back ride. That sound you're imagining is what's ripping through my eardrums as I'm watching the dubbed version of Squid Girl. Now, don't take this the wrong way. It's not a bad dub, but it's what I like to refer to as "Sub Shock", where you've grown so accustomed to the seiyuu's voice anything else seems like an ear-splitting insult. I just check to see if my suspicions were correct I was listening to Louise (Familiar of Zero), and another shock is that it's a completely different actress. 
Well, back to the dubbed version of Squid Girl, episode 3. FYI: Yes, they also included the "squidding" terminology in the dub. Here I thought reading it was uncomfortable. |
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Song_Bird
 Posts: 27 Location: Bouncing between DC & Maryland |
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Still working on my anime goal for the year: to have half of my seen all list viewed through *clears throat* legal means. Currently on the watching block:
Samurai 7 Always kind of like this show & it's about time to get it off my seen some list. As I watch it, I find the majority of this series I saw back when IFC use to show it. So it won't take very long for me to finish. Black Cat This title came to my attention through several recomendation years earlier. I even tested out a few volumes of the manga. So when given the chance to watch it earlier this year I jumped on it. Although, I have to say it's not quite living up to the hype. That's probably the reason why I'm just getting back around to it. 009-1 To me it's never a good move to wait until the almost the end of a series to start telling the character's back story. I'll just have to wait to see how it ends. I do like the style of this show. It has a sort of a 70's spy (bond-ish) thing working. Could have done without some of the fan service. The Wallflower Not sure why I'm watching this. I think some fangirl tricked me into wanting to watch. It's a run of the mill mindless reverse harem comedy. The comedy does seem to be picking up a bit. I really don't like the way the characters are drawn (kind of freaky looking). I definitely don't get why Sunako is consider ugly (she looks like the rest of them), or why she's contantly in chibi form. |
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Sailor S
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Well, I finally got around to watching an older title that I picked up a couple years back, I think when I was at Otakon, when I saw it recommended at the AWO panel of anime you should watch. At least I think it was a panel run by them. It's called They Were Eleven and it was a pretty good watch. Then again, you can hardly go wrong when you have the voice of Norio Wakamoto in any anime.
Also, I thought it was neat that apparently Justin Sevakis worked on that title. I'm sure I've watched anime that he's been involved with before, but this is the first one that I'm actually aware of. I believe he was credited with subtitling it. Anyways, that's mainly why I wanted to share 
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Unicorn_Blade
 Posts: 1153 Location: UK |
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Finished Hanasaku Iroha. Awwww. I would have never thought that I would give a masterpiece rating to a slice of life, a genre I usually avoid. I loved it and here was not even one thing that I would have changed in it.
For a change, and since I am only following two shows from this season, allowing time for catch-up, I started watching Casshern Sins. Not much to say after the first episode, but looks decent so far. |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 24154 |
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Caught Redline in a theatre yesterday as part of Toronto's After Dark Film Festival. It was every bit the fun, trippy, hyper-kinetic rush I assumed it would be. I was irresistibly attracted to the very front row due to its unlimited leg room and the screen didn't look that big so I thought I'd be okay, but it turned out I was actually a bit too close for visual comfort. And the Underground Cinema's sound system is for shit ... very muddy-sounding and believe me I am far from being an audiophile. Nonetheless, despite the less than ideal conditions, I still enjoyed it. It was also great seeing a movie like this with an enthusiastic audience. I'll be picking it up on BD at some point in the future, for sure.
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The King of Harts
 Posts: 6712 Location: Mount Crawford, Virginia |
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So the 6'6" guy sat in the front row so he could have leg room? How selfish of you. I hope a short person wasn't blocked from the movie because they had to sit behind you. I didn't plan on watching what I'm watching, it just kind of happened. I was looking through my backlog of stuff to watch, but I couldn't decide, so I thought I'd pop in my Trust and Betrayal BD to see what that looked like, and it is, indeed, gorgeous. Then I decided to pop in my Yu Yu Hakusho BDs to see what those looked like, and apparently I'm now watching Yu Yu Hakusho since I'm 4 episodes in. I think this has to be a record for earliest time crying since I went off in the first episode during Yuske's wake, mostly, though, because I had similar feelings to Yuske in the past and it struck a chord with me. After that I just kept going and I really like it. I didn't plan on starting 112 episode show when I have a gigantic backlog, but, hey, I have to watch it sometime, right? By the way, the show looks great on BD. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24154 |
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 You'll be happy to know that no short person's view was blocked due to my quest for lower body comfort. The Underground is an older theatre so it doesn't have the stepped-level seating that makes view-blocking pretty much a thing of the past in newer multi-plexes but I was very careful not to sit in front of anybody. The theatre was probably 80-90 per cent full but that still left empty seats and nobody was dumb enough to sit right behind me after I was already in place.
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Sanosuke_Inara
 Posts: 1662 |
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URRRRGH!!! 
You've got no idea how badly I've been wanting to see that damn Redline. I want that thing so badly that I'm fully intending to import the Collector's Edition of the Blu-ray for +$100(will have to wait until late Nov./early Dec.) despite the fact that the approx. $20 American blu-ray(which I will still buy) is coming out in January, and there will be an American theatre release(which I will still go see) before then. 
I haven't been this pumped for a purchase(of something I've never seen) in a long time, if ever. Feels good, man. 
Last edited by Sanosuke_Inara on Sun Oct 23, 2011 10:03 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Errinundra
Moderator
 Posts: 6584 Location: Melbourne, Oz |
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Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been re-watching Neon Genesis Evangelion at the rate of a couple of episodes a night. I enjoyed it thoroughly and, given that I’ve been highly critical in the past, this post will be something of a recanting on my part.
First time around I loathed it. What has changed in me over the five or six years since then to enable me to see it so differently? I think there are three reasons. But, before I go into that I want emphasise that NGE was one of the first anime I saw in this latter part of my life. Although I watched Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion and Gigantor as a child (way back in the 60s!) I had little further exposure to anime until many years later. On a whim I went to see Legend of the Overfiend at the cinema when it had a run here in Melbourne circa 1990. Then nothing, until I saw Howl’s Moving Castle at the cinema with my nephew (a long time anime fan) and his mother (my sister). This would have been around 2005-6. Encouraged by our reaction, my nephew shortly afterwards showed us the first two episodes of NGE (his favourite show). It was embarrassing. My sister and I were two old farts who didn’t have a clue about what we were watching. All I remember from that evening was the daggy Japanese pop music that introduced the show and the moment when Shinji gets startled by the penguin and runs naked to Misato. The beer can in front of his genitals gag had me cringing. 1. The language of anime. New art forms can bewilder me until I encounter an example that speaks to me directly at some level thereby opening the door to the medium. This happened for anime when a friend took me to see Paprika at the 2007 Melbourne International Film Festival. Satoshi Kon’s masterpiece had me converted before the opening credits had even finished. I went straight back to my nephew who, despite the earlier debacle, kindly lent me several of his fansubs. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and, in particular, Noir, prised the anime door open even wider. Miyazaki films such as Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke did their bit as well. I also sat through the remaining 24 episodes of NGE and still thought it sucked. Never Mind. Trigun was even worse. I can remember being, at the time, intrigued by the narrative structure of anime. Much of western narrative is based on the moral development of the hero – he / she faces a challenge and becomes a better person as a result. Japanese narrative seems to me to be less concerned with moral development than with transformation. A Japanese hero faces a challenge and becomes something different as result - a fundamental change in state. The difference between the two approaches may seem slight but, for me, it has a huge impact on the logic of the narrative. Hamstrung by my Judeo-Christian worldview, I found that anime plots would develop in unexpected ways (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in itself). Of course, this notion of transformation is central to NGE and I suppose I just wasn’t getting it. 2. Anime peculiarities. This is sort of related to the previous point. Initially, I found elements of anime off-putting: the pointy, concave noses; the animation short cuts; the fanservice (be it panty shots or giant robots being launched); the face faults and other deformations. After five or six years of watching anime, I’ve become… well, desensitised to it all. It’s kinda like pornography. It’s shocking at first. Then it loses the ability to shock. Some people even get addicted to it. With NGE I didn’t like the giant robots and I didn’t like the fanservice. This time around I hardly batted an eyelid. (Shameful secret: when I saw Evangelion 2.0 at the cinema last year I thought Asuka was quite sexy – see, I’ve been corrupted.) I suppose you can say I approached my recent viewing of NGE with fewer prejudices. 3. The plot As I see it now, the central plot in the whole Evangelion franchise is the human instrumentality project, ie the transformation of the human existence to another realm of being. But you wouldn’t know it from a first viewing of the 26 episodes of the TV series. Since watching it I’ve seen Death and Rebirth, End of Evangelion and the two most recent movies and I have a much better handle on what’s going on, even if I’m still of the opinion that the basic plot too often veers between contradictory to incoherent. The last two episodes can only be understood properly after watching End of Evangelion (even if, first time around, I enjoyed the surprise they afforded. “What mankind has lost the human instrumentality project progresses. However, there’s too little time to describe the entire process. Therefore, we will discuss the complementation of the mind of one single boy named Shinji Ikari.” cracks me up whenever I see it on the screen.) If NGE were to be viewed as simply a giant robot show then those last two episodes would be totally incomprehensible. Mind you, for 24 episodes NGE was a pretty good imitation of a giant robot show. Hindsight is indeed useful for the series in general. Rei’s true nature, Ikari senior’s ambitions, the back stories of most of the characters now make sense in light of my improved understanding. *** My response to the individual characters was very different this time around. I didn’t find the children annoying at all: Shinji didn’t seem so whiny; Rei was interesting (I think the emotionless girl has become an acquired taste) and Asuka was thoroughly entertaining. Of the older characters, Misato is Kotono Mitsuishi, something I didn’t appreciate way back when, and Ikari senior seems less of a caricature of the evil parent. One thing I find intriguing is that the only character I liked on first viewing – Ritsuko Akagi – left me cold this time around. I’m still no fan of giant robots and monsters of the week. I guess I need some more desensitising therapy. Over the last 12 months or so I’ve been watching a bit of 1990s anime; as well as a sprinkling of anime from even earlier. I sort of understand better how NGE fits into the history of anime. It seems to me to at the pinnacle of a genre – giant robot – that had its heyday in decade or two before its release. A kind of last hurrah you might say. Its influence since seems to lie in the narrow fan-based marketing of anime; the explosion of fanservice in the medium and in the rise of the moe girl. Rating: good Irony - my nephew, almost thirty years younger than me is a traditionalist who thinks the medium peaked in the 1990's and has been going downhill ever since. I much prefer more recent stuff. Life is strange. Perhaps I should re-watch Trigun. I've got my nephew's fansubs. |
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Surrender Artist
 Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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I want to watch Neon Genesis Evangelion again. The first and sole time that I've seen it was at least eight years ago and had an uncertain opinion of it. I liked some of the concepts and characterization, but I also found it sometimes unbearably adolescent with really wasted, annoying philosophical content.
Last Sunday I watched The Weathering Continent, which had been sitting on my shelf for at least a month and a half. It was very fitting timing as I'd watched and been disappointed by Avenger, which was also directed by Kōichi Mashimo, the week before. Whereas Avenger felt like the Kōichi Mashimo that so many people don't like, The Weathering Continent was the Kōichi Mashimo that I find so appealing. The Weathering Continent has a very fine sense of atmosphere. A bleak, unearthly and slightly dreamlike feel permeates it. I think that this is abetted by it being hand-drawn cel animation, which gives it a human roughness, grittiness and imperfection that accentuates the decayed, ruined setting and menacing supernatural in the story. The mood of the things that surround the characters defines the film almost as much as the characters themselves. The Weathering Continent is rich with slow, longing tracking shots, but unlike in Avenger, here the things that the camera lingers over fully deserve it. Not long into the film is a long, gradual series of shots of the ruined city where most of the action happens. It begins with a pile of murky, jagged ruins worn down and broken by untold ages of decay and inattention, then slowly penetrates deeper into the abandoned place, showing us shattered remnants of structures that grab one's sight like claws, but ultimately closes on a mysterious inner-chamber where something of obvious important resides, bathed in red light and pulsating tones that make it seem like the beating heart of the place. Sometimes this sense of mood is broken with informality or levity that I didn't always find welcome. One knock that I must make against it, however, is that the music was mostly unimpressive and ill-used. I liked some of the music heard early on that I thought faintly evoked the famous theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and one neat, if out-of-place, jazzy tune that was used for an action sequence, but most of it is fairly generic fantasy instrumental music, which wouldn't merit complaint otherwise if not for the fact that it seems to never shut off. I know that sometimes does, but otherwise it has the unpleasant combination of dull and persistent. Avenger had this problem too, albeit with a very different kind of music. The story of The Weathering Continent is compact and fairly clear, but quite meaningful to the characters. It feels like a highlight of an anthology of short stories. All of it happens in a short span of time and mostly within the confines of the ruined city. It stays intimate with its setting and characters. I like this sort of story a lot. It doesn't definitively resolve anything, indeed the ending is very much in the spirit of, "the journey goes on," but the events ultimately feel as though they resolved something within Lakushi, the sole female among the leads, who despite being a bit impetuous and oddly clumsy, feels very much at the heart of things. She is the only character whom we get to know anywhere near well. Her companions, the stoic Boise and aloof Tieh, are likeable enough and there are hints of an interesting dynamic among them, but I don't think we really got to know them very well. There is a villain in Arun Harad, but he just does his job of being a threat and little more. The best parts come after the obvious threat is dispensed with as Boise, Tieh and Lakushi contend with the inscrutable, mysterious spiritual forces within the city. It is a threat that plays by rules rather different from the straightforward human villains; whatever dictates its actions are too alien to easily discern and all hidden behind expressionless masks that pose some peculiar dangers. It also present Lakushi with a way to confront her past that ultimately does much to sow things up. Curiously, even though most everybody involved has a sword, The Weathering Continent isn't an action piece. What decisions people make and what signs they ignore determine far more than any slashing and stabbing, of which there isn't very much. I really enjoyed it. It had a peculiar quality of feeling, at least to me, as though it moved at a fair clip, yet did so without feeling hurried and somehow feeling longer than it is. |
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jl07045
 Posts: 1527 Location: Riga, Latvia |
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I think the best way to view Eva is to assume that it does not have any significant philosophical content. There are some musings about humans and technology that is hardly new in anime and you can say that Anno has his own views of the Self that come forth in the TV ending, but I don't really recall any serious cases of philosophical inquiry. The world itself is given and what the characters need to do is to learn to deal with it. The introspection that comes with it may be filled with some obtuse wordings and truisms, but I don't think they try to establish some objective truths and are simply a part of the process of self-examination. |
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TheTheory
Posts: 1029 Location: Central PA |
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Yu Yu Hakusho
Was in the mood for a shonen show that didn't go on forever (see: Bleach, Naruto) and is generally highly regarded. Got through the first 32 episodes over the weekend. The beginning is somewhat slow, but once it gets going it's fairly entertaining. Battle pacing never quite feels right--but they're just as ridiculous as they should be. |
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I'd heard it was offensive and crazy but still didn't expect this level of blatant racist and homophobic jokes. I thought it'd be similar to Excel Saga, but it's its own thing, and the only thing similar that I've seen is South Park. 
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