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Last edited by Ammonite on Thu Aug 04, 2016 8:46 am; edited 1 time in total

[Post deleted.]

nobahn wrote:

Of course, opinions and entertainment go hand-in-hand; but I, personally, thought that that the death was a stupid one -- even it if was necessary for the development of the story.

It is interesting that you would say that. Save for the earlier spoiler[capturing of a pheasant], there was certainly little foreshadowing to his demise. What helped the scene overcome its suddenness was the absence of music or dialogue, keeping the sense of shock and solemnity free from any contrivance.

spoiler[On reflection, did I even need to mention the fact that someone kills a pheasant within spoiler tags?]

So this week:

-Blood-C: The Last Dark: The first half had a lot of unnecessary talking to it, but the action was good and it gave resolution to the TV series with a conspiracy theory twist complete with not being able to bear responsibility based morals. So yeah, excellent movie.

-Please Talk! Galko-chan: The meme series is finally over! It was terrible and without a doubt one of the worst anime I have ever seen with a fitting ending to its coming of fail.

-Katanagatari: Ah yes, that one 12 episode series with 50 minute episodes /a/ thinks is among the great masterpieces ever. Only got three episodes in and I can safely say that this is unimpressive. "swordsman that cannot use swords because of his anatomy/balance/whatever" oh this is an oxymoron if I ever saw one. Other questionable bits include:

-The female MC unable to determine if her left eye is normal or a purple button with a cross in it
-Really dumb slapstick
-The male MC's sister being so dumb she cannot tell the difference between a shuriken and a kunai
-Rather stock music
-Melting down a bunch of swords into a single sword somehow makes it more powerful without the aid of the supernatural (not a spoiler, it was explained in the first episode)
-Perfect shapeshifting without supernatural/alien elements
-Recruiting the son of a freaking enemy leader to get these twelve super swords
-Very questionable animation quality
-Slooooooow pacing
-WHAT IS UP WITH YOUR EYES?
-Too
-Much
-Dialogue
-Every
-Freaking
-Minute
-No
-Seriously
-Stop

Is it necessarily bad? Too early to tell, the art style is at least pretty. Real shame the dialogue pollutes so many moments, you can tell this should have been a 35 minute per episode series with huge chunks of dialogue incredibly unnecessary. You thought that was the worst I am going to mention here?

-The Eternal Family: A short about a family unknowingly on TV while they get into antics. Lets start the entire first half with constant toilet flushes every thirty seconds! The animation is really horrid on purpose, you can tell they clearly had a budget and not just one or two animators on staff like a lot of better shorts. The art style tries too hard to mimic mid-90s Nick Toons and fails kind of badly. The second half is basically the family running around outside their home until the dad tries negotiating for them to be released because he was the one that was okay with them being brainwashed in the first place. Top that off with the TV staff dancing in dog costumes around a campfire (yes, seriously) and a whiplash ending and you get this mess. So here we have what is supposed to be a psychological anime without psychological parts that acts more of a dementia, but due to having a plot in the second half fails at that. The comedy is too irritating to be called such. You know what? I'm revoking my rule on being lenient with total runtimes under 30 minutes. Due to simply not sticking to its genre, not just being dumb, unstructured, or obnoxious, it has to be given the ultimate low score.

1/10

And to think I was going to give Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans the same thing if season 2 wasn't announced. Laughing

I just finished Your Lie in April on Crunchyroll. Honestly? I could rate it anywhere between Good and Masterpiece (7 out of 10 to 10 out of 10). On the minus side, it felt a little padded out towards the middle and a lot of these characters, while having satisfying arcs, felt pointless, especially the rival's sister. Also the comedy was always god awful, and while I'm not usually the guy to notice this, the animation was always total garbage whenever it was trying to be comedic. For example, when a character is banging on the door and we see the effects from the inside, all we see are clip-arted on sound effects and colored "wham" effects instead of the door shaking. Also, while the show gets... comparatively better at this as it goes, the comedy really feels out of place. A show like this needs the right kind of comedy, and I don't think that cartoonish effects was it.

On the plus side? The concert scenes, the character writing (when it wasn't trying to be funny), Kaori herself (again, when in serious/drama/emotionally impacting mode), the latter end of the first half, and of course, that freaking ending. This anime has some masterpiece level stuff and some irritating garbage, but it doesn't balance out to okay. It depends on how much the flaws effect you. With that said, the comedy ruined a lot of the earlier show for me, and as it went on I felt less compelled to keep watching until around episode 16 (wherever the Kaori twist was). I rate it... an Excellent (9/10).

^
Me, I'm always affected by how something ends; so, for me, it was a no-brainer: Masterpiece (11/11).

^

Don't misunderstand. I loved the ending. It was perfect in my mind. Beautiful, emotional, and I like how it's ambiguous as to whether that's spoiler[Kaori's ghost, or if it was just Kousei's imagination].

The middle parts were what I was kind of iffy about. Particularly between the performance with Kousei coming to terms with his mother and Kaori's... reveal.

You know, I knew that she kicked it in the end, but I expected her to finish surgery and unrealistically rush to the performance to help in person before collapsing at the end. I like this way more, as it's more realistic.

Right now I'm watching;
G Gundam- girlfriend recommended it so I'm watching with her and aside from some narrative disconnect it's pretty good.
Dummy Cashew with his crazy mood swings. Giant robots fighting. Strange political agreements and backstories out the wazoo.
Plus a horse has it's own Gundam; that will never not be awesome.

Assassination Classroom- and I am absolutely in love with this series. I usually go for the sub but the vo work on the dub is just too good not to acknowledge. Sonny Strait as Korosensei makes this anime for me. He is so delightfully off the wall.
The premise is just too unique as well. The character arcs are very well done and blending the main plot with the underdog tale of Class E. Assassination Classroom is just anime genius, pure and simple.

Genshiken- This is my fourth time through the Genshiken series. I cannot get enough of the Society and the characters within. I know it's not for everyone but this show really speaks to me. I wish I had had an Otaku club like this when I was in high school let alone college.
The japanese VO is the best but the English cast does some pretty good things with it too. However, I think with something this inherently integrated with Japanese otaku culture the Japanese actors have a real leg up on the American versions for sure.

It may be dry to some but for me I just love seeing parts of myself and my friends in these characters. Sasahara's journey from embarrassment to acceptance. Madarame's staunch resistance to change at any cost, Ohno's sweetness as she becomes confident in herself. Her blossoming relationship with Tanaka. Kasukabe's change of heart from hating Otaku to her best friend being one. Oguie and all the greatness that is her.

Kosuke and Kuga-pi fill out the cast. The less said about Kuchiki the better.

Rounding it out is One-Punch Man. Holy shitake mushrooms! This anime is the greatest thing since... I can't even compare. A truly hilarious action comedy where they get both the action and the comedy right.

The premise has been done before but nowhere near as good as this. Saitama is such an interesting hero in his own right but he shines brighter by the lush world that One created and Madhouse so exquisitely brought to life around him.
The actors bring such vibrancy to their characters that it's near impossible not to begin rooting for them all. The villains are interesting.

The setup for each encounter is well crafted. We all know the ending (he's called One Punch Man after all) but seeing how the confrontation builds up to that moment is handled perfectly. Like a well written joke. The set-up is crafted in such a way that the punch-line (hey I didn't make up that pun) can't help but slay.

One Punch Man, crazy popular and deserving to be so.

Over Easter I have been clearing my backlog. Here is most of what I have been through.

Sound of the Sky, a story of an all-female military unit guarding a picturesque Mediterranean village, failed to resonate much beyond the virtues its concept affords. Yes, cute girls do cute things—a show of this type can only play with the cards it is dealt. Yes, the looming threat of war is a constant theme, but with soldiers and guns, why wouldn’t it be? The trumpet rendition of Amazing Grace, a rather stale leitmotif that forms the show’s spiritual backbone, is pleasant enough however. So too is the undemanding story, its clichés and trappings aside. There is nothing memorable here, but nor is there anything worthy of oblivion.

Robot Carnival is a film I never thought I would ever legally watch. As one might expect, the sheer splendour of the 1980s OVA boom is so very easy to relish, even when nothing arises from the sumptuous ink and paint but robots in motion. One can expect from this compilation everything that gave this era its reputation: it includes nonchalant art-house experimentation, charming mechanical madness, and gilded but worthless scrap, though there is one contribution that deserves special attention here; Yasuomi Umetsu’s Presence.
The subject of humans being romantically involved with inanimate beings is as familiar to anime as it was to Ovid, but this particular variation on the theme proved more poignant than many. A feeble, frustrated man creates a robotic enchantress through dissatisfaction with his love life, but is unable to maintain his composure when confronted by the robot’s artificial advances. spoiler[His response to her supposedly amorous approaches is not that of love or lust but of sudden and harsh violence, and in a bout of angered insecurity he destroys her.] What follows is novel. Our aging antihero is then shown later in life, supposedly happy with the family from whom he tried to craft a means of emotional escape. spoiler[Yet the robot suddenly appears before him temptingly, either as an apparition or as an addict’s hallucination, as if her physical destruction failed to seal the void in his life she was designed to occupy. The man revisits her final resting place in an attempt to come to terms with her, but evidently to little avail. In the final scene, the elderly man is once again visited by this ghost. Upon accepting her offer to join him, he disappears before his real wife, succumbing, perhaps in death, to the embodiment of the basic desires he previously lashed out against.]
For an investigation into what robots reveal about the humans they serve, there is nearly as much to read into Presence as there is into the more recent Time of Eve. The dated electric piano score dulls its capacity to arrest, and doubtlessly there are issues with this film’s portrayal of gender roles—albeit not as many as regards the compilation’s lesser works—though Presence outshines its fellow constituents to quite a degree. Indeed I am left wishing that Robot Carnival’s running order gave it greater prominence.

Continuing the theme of all things hand-drawn but mechanistic, I also found time to watch Katsuhiro Otomo’s Roujin Z. It starts as quirky parody of modern healthcare solutions for the elderly, in which a withered old man is used as the guinea pig for a state-of-the-art life support system. Quite predictably, the machine turns rogue, and true to Otomo’s directorial style, we are soon treated to a lavish fantasia of cybernetic brawn, frenetic chase sequences and oh-so-collateral damage. Roujin Z is what Akira would become if it was re-imagined as a study in physical comedy.

Last but not least, I finally finished Martian Successor Nadesico after a long hiatus. If I could select any title as a litmus test for someone’s tolerance of the comedic and dramatic quirks of mainstream anime, it would be this. Despite its novel use of a show-within-a-show to parody the melodrama of mecha series, Nadesico itself unashamedly relishes in the very same thing. Vapid monologues masquerade poorly as moments of insight, incongruous romances are forged and strained, and hot-blooded caprices routinely veto any semblance of discipline. Because of this, it is perhaps fortunate that the show seldom takes itself seriously, even after major plot revelations when it arguably should. Though this flippancy leads to pacing problems, it also helps endear to the viewer the series’ large and distinctive cast. Half the crew are ditzy and childish; the other half are hopeless otaku. No matter how dire the story’s circumstances, it seems there is always time for characters to exhibit their myriad light-hearted traits. Nadesico relinquishes any claim to excel beyond the peers of its genre, but what it loses in maturity it wins back through the sheer merriment its assortment of oddballs provide. It is a litmus test, but a lovable one.

Guess who just saw Millennium Actress and thought it was pretentious! Not even an April Fool's joke, seriously what went wrong? Basically two news guys go to interview some former famous actress and apparently someone has time travel capabilities since during said interview they interact with her memories. The actress in question has some key that belongs to some rebellious painter and all her life she went completely mental trying to return it, so much so she can't distinguish real life memories from acting roles which results in atrocious editing. The moral? "I'm glad I was crazy because chasing things gives you a high!" Once the plot was revealed in the first quarter a good chunk of this movie feels like eating up runtime with these roles.

I snark, but there is no explanation as to why the news duo can time travel even though spoiler[the older guy was a former acquaintance of said actress] and it tries too hard to be mental with an otherwise uninteresting cast. Top that off with a Godzilla replacement that looks more like a cross between Gomess and Seagoras from the Ultraman franchise and you get whatever this is. The art style, animation, music, and pacing are all well done though so I thought it was great overall. Supposedly this was made by the same guy that made Tokyo Godfathers and Paranoia Agent, all three of which have.... Really nothing in common. I don't know, if PA's storyboards mention tap dancing angels on the lunar surface maybe the story was about how manticores enslaved mermaids to annoy the dark elves of Neptune until Taco Bell gives them free popcorn because Zeus was really hung over and burned down Mount Everest.

Wow- It's hard to miss the point harder than you just did.

ALL of Satoshi Kon's stories have to do with the way people perceive the world (Tokyo Godfathers is the only one where it's a more minor aspect) and ALL of his stories largely come to the same conclusion. It doesn't matter what's real and what's "unreal" If something affects you, if it's a part of who you are, it's your life.

From an in-universe stand point it is always important, it determines structure of the setting and shows how much effort a writer puts into a story; better yet it allows a story to make sense and last I checked making sense is something both audiences and critics want.

I'm a little more than halfway through Haiyore! Nyaruko-san

CHAOS CHAOS I WANNA CHAOS

I absolutely love this show. I'm sorry I didn't get into it sooner. Its anime references are just hysterical and its characters are really fun. Man, but looks are deceiving. I thought it was gonna be your typical harem show with Lovecraft themes. But it's so much more than that.
For one thing, Mahiro doesn't get a harem. He gets:
spoiler[ A crazy alien girl, a lesbian alien girl who wants the first girl, and a shota trap who wants Mahiro, himself]

I really wasn't expecting something like that at all. This already sets Nyaruko-san miles apart from other love comedies.

Tsundere Mahiro seems to get a lot of hate for treating Nyaruko the way he does...but I love the way he actually speaks his mind and doesn't let the girl control his life. More male MCs like this, please.

Nyaruko herself is delightfully nonsensical and fun-loving. You can't help but root for her. ...though she is a little too overbearing at times. Episode 07 showed a more serious side to her; she actually CAN calm down and act like a normal person and that made me respect her more.

DuelGundam2099 wrote:

Guess who just saw Millennium Actress and thought it was pretentious! Not even an April Fool's joke, seriously what went wrong?

Romances such as Millennium Actress can really fall wide of the mark if the audience doesn't latch on to the central character's plight. A fair share of liberties, to say the least, were taken with the internal accuracy of the narrative, so it is natural to feel bewildered. When I first saw this film, the final lines didn't resonate—I simply failed to engender enough sympathy for Chiyoko's views on her own life. It took me two viewings to appreciate how the film's flights of fancy were not in conflict with its simple, heartfelt core, but were instead in a curious harmony with it.

@Chiibi

I like the part where he asks Nyaruko if she has another form and she points out that she could show him but he would lose serious sanity points.

Who cares about Satoshi Kon?

I am talking about the real stuff here: Genocyber. I am watching this amazing masterpiece of animation, a true classic. Thing is that I might be biased because I watched Genocyber on Brazilian TV when I was 8 years old and now researching it it feels like I am so nostalgic. Bit it had a lot of atmosphere (and some violence) indeed which creates a strong spiritual bonds with the viewer. I like that apocalyptic atmosphere and sense of nilism it emanates. I have the impression that it might be a masterpiece. Why?

It is not exceptional in its quality: its not exceptionally directed or written, instead it's animation is fairly standard OVA level (better than most TV anime). Still I am finding myself deeply impressed by it, only Gunbuster and Legend of Galactic Heroes come to my mind out as superior OVAs versus this one, but they lack the sheer visceral power of Genocyber, which reminds me quite much of heavy metal music in its intensity and brutality.

So far, no other animation I know matches Genocyber in that category, not even stuff like Shadow Star or other violent OVA look quite tame by comparison. Hence, its special and so might deserve a place in history sincr it is perhaps the most violent animation of all time.

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