Forum - View topicWhat are you watching right now? Why? (please read 1st post)
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kaydub
 Posts: 318 Location: Cincinnati, OH |
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I watched the K-ON! movie the other night. I'm a fan of the franchise, so I had high hopes going into it. I knew the art and animation was going to be great and the music was going to be fun, but I was a little apprehensive about how good the movie was going to be as a whole.
I'm happy to say that I was quite pleased with the movie. K-ON! is not exactly a plot-centric show, but the movie offers what is probably the closest thing to a plot that this franchise has seen. Rather than 26 episodes of cute girls doing cute things, we actually get a two-part story. The first part involves the Light Music Club planning a graduation trip as a last hurrah of their high school years. This isn't so much an actual plot in itself as it is a catalyst for the actual meat of the story covered by the second part of the plot. The second part involves the seniors' desire to do something special for Azusa before they graduate, as their junior will be the only remaining member of the Light Music Club after the older girls depart for college. The fact that there is actually a plot this time around is pleasing, and ensures that the movie doesn't end up as "more of the same". It also helps reinforce the bonds between the characters as they face the looming specter of separation, growing up, and taking on the responsibilities of life. That isn't to say that the K-ON! movie has suddenly become a profoundly deep and serious experience; it retains every lighthearted and carefree quality that made the TV series what it is. It's just that you don't feel like you're just watching cute girls do cute things, because they're actually acting with a purpose this time around. The movie format is nice as well because due to time constraints, we get more focus on the characters and less of the cutesy moe fluff. Perhaps the best moment in the entire movie came at the end, when the girls gather in the club room after the graduation ceremony. It is the culmination of their entire experience together as high school students, and is every bit as cheerful as it is depressing. For a franchise that catches a lot of flak for lacking substance, the final moments of the movie are just as emotionally moving as some other great shows. Overall, I enjoyed the movie a lot and felt that it was every bit as good as the second season of the TV series, which I had rated as Excellent. It's a great addition to the series and a great way to end the girls' high school career (well, except for poor Azu-nyan... she has to stay). --- In other news, I started watching Working!! last night after coming across this most excellent remix of one of the background songs, which piqued my interest enough to look into the show. It's entertaining so far, and the cast is full of nutjobs and their amusing hijinks, but it's rather underwhelming after having recently watched Nichijou which did a far better job at the whole nutjob slice of life thing. I'm only 4 episodes in and some of the jokes have already overstayed their welcome. I'll keep watching it because it's not bad, but at this point my expectations for the show are about average at best. I'm also in the middle of rewatching Toradora!, as I got the urge to revisit it after errinundra's review a few pages back. Ami is still somewhat perplexing to me, but I feel like I understand her more now the second time around. I was always confused about spoiler[how she always went back and forth between total bi*** and lovey-dovey nice girl, but now I'm realizing that her facade is more than just a facade, and that she seems to genuinely want to shed her prissy supermodel attitude and enjoy her newfound friendship.] I also never noticed until now that Taiga spoiler[is already conflicted between her feelings for Kitamura and Ryuuji while the group is at Ami's vacation house. For whatever reason, I thought that it didn't happen until later in the story. I guess I didn't pay enough attention the first time, because it seemed quite obvious the second time through]. |
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Errinundra
Moderator
 Posts: 6525 Location: Melbourne, Oz |
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Patema Inverted – The Beginning of the Day (ONA)
Synopsis: Patema is a princess in what is apparently a large underground community, living in a constricted world built from masonry and steel. Bored with her claustrophobic life she explores forbidden zones where creatures called Batmen are supposed to haunt. One day she discovers a huge shaft that disappears into the darkness above and below. After a terrifying encounter there with one of the Batmen, Patema finds herself in a topsy-turvy world unlike anything she has seen before and forced to come to grips with a solitary boy – Age - who has, from her point of view, a very surprising outlook upon things. 
Age and Patema contemplate the gravity of their situation. Can their budding friendship endure the forces trying to pull them apart? In his previous works, director Yasuhiro Yoshiura (Time of Eve, Pale Cocoon, Aquatic Language) displayed a penchant for situations where characters find their beliefs up-ended. In this 4-part ONA prelude to the forthcoming movie Patema Inverted he presents the notion more literally than anything he has done to date. The four episodes combined are a little longer than 25 minutes but, especially in the third and fourth segments, they dangle before us the promise that the movie may well be every bit as fascinating as Time of Eve. Indeed, the third episode contains the most startling anime footage I have ever seen. If you have a fear of heights or fear of falling this may not be the anime for you. There are a couple of moments – losing her grip on the wire mesh fence and shortly afterwards dropping her backpack – when the absolute terror of Patema’s predicament was conveyed to me in an almost visceral way. Having a plucky girl subject to such an incomprehensible terror created a sympathy I have rarely felt for an anime character. And, yet, I spent most of the short episode chuckling at how singular and audacious Yoshiura’s imagination could be. The central conceit is startling and original, belying the frequent complaint that contemporary anime is avoiding risks. My astonishment matched that of Patema and Age when they first clap eyes on each other. The final episode provides some background on Age whose world is tightly regulated, uniform and emotionally austere. Both Patema’s and Age’s worlds are blinkered, one by its claustrophobic environment, the other by its deadening moral attitudes. The ineffable paradox the protagonists present to each other could be seen as an allegory for our own unease at the “other” in our world, be it refugees or economic immigrants or people with lifestyles alien to our own. An odd thing happens in the soundtrack in the last episode. As Age commutes to school I swear it quotes a few bars from the Cat Stevens song Wide World, then promptly segues into a short segment from Rick Wakeman’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Maybe its my age or my overactive imagination but their aptness to the story and that their placement together convince me that the quotes are deliberate. How well the movie develops the themes raised in the ONA remains to be seen but, for now, the Beginning of the Day gets an excellent rating. It is disappointing that the release of the movie has been put back till next year. And, yes, it ends in a cliff-hanger, so to speak. Humanity Has Declined Synopsis: In a depopulated world where humans have regressed to a state of bemused indolence and where fairies hatch all manner of schemes for reasons unfathomable an unnamed young woman takes on the role of UN mediator between the two populations. The job doesn’t appear to have many duties involved but she sets about it with a method that doesn’t always seem logical but which quickly gains the confidence of the fairies. 
The Mediator: off with the fairies The mediator is an anime Candide, an innocent in a world that is ever so slightly crazy, corrupt and dangerous. She is ditzy yet strangely wise as she uncovers the surreal activities of the fairies, never grasping quite what’s going on but revealing to the viewer the absurdities of their and, by analogy, our own behaviour. Humanity Has Declined gently mocks our modern foibles: from business to finance to patriotism to social proprieties to the manga subculture. The fairies themselves are both helpless and slightly sinister. They have a bluntness that is alarming and disarming, while their plans are menacing even if they seem to bear no ill will towards humans. Having said that, it must be pointed out that the school girls of the last two episodes prove themselves to be far more threatening than their tiny counterparts. The major problem is that Humanity Has Declined doesn’t have a real lot to say, and it takes its time in saying it. Two episodes may be spent making one small point, sort of like a shaggy dog story. The effect is rarely less than charming in a leisurely sort of way but only occasionally manages to be truly memorable. The seven story arcs unfold in roughly reverse chronological order, which seems to serve no other purpose than to follow the eccentric internal logic of the individual stories. The colour palette is unusual for anime, with lots of oranges, greens and pale space. It’s also simultaneously luminous and washed-out, if that makes sense. Scenes often had a distracting series of faint rectangular haloes overlayed upon them that it could have done without. Nevertheless I liked the overall appearance. The best that can be said for Humanity Has Declined is that it is diverting. Rating: so-so. Last edited by Errinundra on Wed Nov 08, 2017 10:29 pm; edited 9 times in total |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Eh, it does have a bit to say, but it's pretty clichéd (corporations bad, technology bad, people bad) and the writing is just not that successful in getting those themes across. The final arc spoiler[(the school) had a very rushed and unfulfilling ending and lacked much of the show's trademark brand of black humour. It wasn't really the right arc to end on. The arc with the assistant would have been a great final arc, so why it was placed fourth instead of last I do not know. The final four episodes didn't feature the assistant at all,] which was undesirable. I think the biggest problem the show had is that it started out with a bang - a fantastic first arc that had me both agape and in stitches - and then finished with a whimper with the school arc. Reading various blogs of it, a lot of people had the same or similar experience, whereby they got their hopes and expectations up only to find that the show had used up most of its powder with the first shot.  
How could the rest of the series top those? |
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rheiders
 Posts: 1137 Location: Colorful Colorado :) |
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You're forgetting one of the best parts of those first two episodes! The Assistant's picture book was pure gold! 
Charming! I thought the second arc was also pretty amusing (spoiler["Manga artists have no other marketable skills! Too late to become a civil servant!" ]), but it pittered out pretty quickly after that. The shock value wore off and they ran out of interesting jokes to make, the two aspects that made the series interesting in the first place. I didn't really mind the cliche "Corporations are bad! Processed foods are bad!" message of the first two episodes because it was conveyed in such a clever and funny way, but by the time the third arc rolled around, the novelty had worn off.
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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He was such an under-used character, wish there'd been more of him.
I found the second arc to be okay but nowhere near as funny as the first, although the crazy schemes to increase rankings were good for a chuckle. I admit I didn't like the arc at first but came around after I adjusted my expectations. I initially thought that satire about Manga was pretty lame for a show set post-civilisation, but changed my mind after seeing how limited my initial assumptions were about the show. I thought the third arc was fairly bland. Just didn't have the oomph of the first two arcs and I was a bit disappointed. Plus the ending of the arc was a bit clunky I guess, trying to force an emotional scene that just didn't click with me. It wasn't built up properly and I just didn't care. While the novelty had worn off a bit by the third arc, the primary problem was that the jokes were fewer in number and weren't as outrageously clever and appealing as before. The series just lost its way. Then it found (or should that be "cooked up"?) an entirely new path with an utterly bizarre and surreal fourth arc, but that's another story (quite literally; heh). |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23771 |
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I liked Humanity Has Declined, but I agree it lost some juice as it went on. I liked the look of it a lot - the background art had a wispy, water-colour painting quality that appealed to me and I generally found the Fairies hilarious. I also liked MC's sardonic outlook on life; it played nicely against her somewhat cutesy character design and the seiyuu's soft delivery.
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zawa113
 Posts: 7358 |
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After watching Digmon, I wanted more fantasy stuff. Somehow Tower of Druaga came to my attention, and while not a thing like Digimon, it's quite fun so far. I'm 8 eps in and saw the "Side B" episode for ep 1. So there's really not much in the way of character development, but the anime is having way too much fun being a parody of fantasy RPGs. Episode 1 took this to the extremes, but was still damn funny. The rest isn't being as over the top but is still enjoying itself. It's hard to describe exactly why I like it, as I don't normally enjoy comedy much, and I could certainly see it not being a show for people who don't like fantasy RPGs to begin with, but it's a solid parody. I like it much more than Last Exile, which shares the same director. But I didn't find the character in Last Exile as interesting to watch, and despite having a story, I don't recall LE doing much with it. The only thing I really remember about Last Exile was Alex's badass scene at the end. I also didn't find the plot that pressing, but it's not exactly pressing here either, but it also doesn't care. I thought it was pretty cool that the original game designer did a "next ep" cameo, as what would appear to be the original game itself. Hearing some of the stuff on that spoiler[like circling the outside wall, killing one enemy type but not another, and being given a freakin' poison potion in a treasure chest] made me see why the game wasn't very popular in the US. And is one of those things that makes me wonder "how the hell did anyone figure this stuff out? And why would they program it this way?" but yeah, I thought that was cool to see.
So yes, I do look forward to more, I'm not exactly expecting the first half to end in any sort of way seeing how they only sorta started a plot point in ep 8. I'd have been annoyed in Japan if I had to wait half a year for another season. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Watched the first episode of Bartender. I thought I was going to hate it; I am after all a teetotal, and this is a show aimed squarely at cocktail fans. But I actually liked it, because the focus was on the characters as much as the alcohol. I wasn't blown away by the episode, but I think there's enough here for me to watch the rest of the show.
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Mylene
 Posts: 2792 Location: Indiana |
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I spent the weekend crashing through Giant Killing after learning it was going to be removed from Crunchyroll later this week. My biggest regret is that I had to move through it so quickly that I couldn't really sit back and savor any particularly good moments or episodes. Instead, it was just get to the next episode as quickly as possible (although for the first 15 episodes or so, I never skipped the OP or ED because I liked them so much).
I go into a lot more detail over on my blog, but I really enjoyed the show. It's always fun to have a fairly realistic sports anime. No outrageous moves or crazy physics--just some football and everything that comes with it: players, press, coaches, management, and fans. I think it really did a good job of working within that realm. Overall, a solid, good anime--too bad it hasn't been seen by all that many folks. Now to get caught back up on all of the simulcasts I had to skip over the weekend to try to get through all of GK! |
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NegativeGate
 Posts: 48 Location: Maryland |
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I'm just finishing up Mitsudomoe and I am watching it because I like laughing at comedy. I can say without contest episode 2 was my favorite.It made me laugh the hardest, during the spoiler[snot scene for the first sketch all the from being yelled at about maintaining her strong girl image by her sister to the very extreme snot lasso that ropes her teacher and injures that same sister for the second time in a weaponized snot related accident.]
It is somewhat unfortunate that I can relate to this personally spoiler[ as I experienced many of same situations that arouse including injuring my sister though only once and hitting my 5th grade teacher although the end results were a bit different. But It certainly feels as though your hands are bound quite tightly when this happens and you dare not move so as few people see as possible.] Also a question: did i require spoilers in the second paragraph? I put them there but I wasn't sure if I needed to. Last edited by NegativeGate on Tue Nov 06, 2012 4:45 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Pixelationist
 Posts: 111 Location: London, UK |
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Saw Only Yesterday only yesterday, it may well be my new favourite Ghibli. Some of the most believable characters I have ever seen in animation period.
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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I agree, and I put it down to the voice acting, which ranks amongst the very best I have ever heard. |
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Botan24
 Posts: 684 Location: Northern Michigan |
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Finally watched Redline. Just as visually impressive as I expected. What else would it be, really? It's obvious that a lot of time and effort was put into making this movie look terrific. However, the story isn't anything to write home about. Supposedly this tale takes place in a not-too-distant-future. So, while there are humans running around, there's aliens, and space travel, and stuff. That's it too, there's no background on any of these things. It is what it is, so to speak.
Redline is the "most dangerous race". So, crazy people like JP (our protagonist) and others enter to win. Not sure exactly what they win...money, right? I'm not sure why the powers that be decided to have this Redline race take place on the Roboworld planet. The Robo government people were pissed because they have secret technology they don't want broadcast all over the galaxy. So, when the race begins, the Roboworld troops attack the racers, in like every way possible (There's even a biological weapon/monster thrown in for good measure). That could have been easily left out. I guess it was thrown in to make the movie feel more exciting, but I just felt like I was stuck in a bad video game mash up. Also, I didn't care for the fact that spoiler[JP and Sonoshee already knew each other. That's like a big crutch so the writers didn't have to develop a relationship between them. Because, they always had feelings for one another. They just never got the chance to confess them.] That's what I took away from that bit. Still, Redline looked great and was a fun watch. I'm giving it a Very Good rating, only because fans of animation should really watch it (on blu-ray, if possible). |
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Wooga
 Posts: 916 Location: Tucson |
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I just finished Neo Ranga, a very strange and ambitious anime with strange and sort of ugly character design. It's a slice-of-life series disguised as a giant robot show (from the cover art it looks like some harem show...) about three sisters who discover an island god/giant robot thing that only listens to them. So they decide to dress it up as Santa Claus...and stuff. And Ranga is somehow related to their long-lost brother. The last 8 episodes have such a dramatic tonal shift it's almost a different series, and the animation suddenly gets more fluid.
I'm not sure if I could recommend this series, but I think it's pretty under-rated, and has a certain vibe to it no other anime has given me...it has such a great sense of place. |
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Keonyn
 Subscriber Posts: 5567 Location: Coon Rapids, MN |
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And how far are you? How are you liking it? Why did you pick it? Please provide a little more than just a title or list of titles as that really does nothing to promote discussion. |
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