Forum - View topicWhat are you watching right now? Why? (please read 1st post)
|
Goto page Previous |
| Author | Message | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Piglet the Grate
 Posts: 932 Location: North America |
|
|||||
While I liked the show, I am in the Bocchi the Rock is overrated camp. Both Girls Band Cry (I rated Masterpiece) and BanG Dream! It's MyGO!!!! (I rated Excellent) had more and better character development, higher stakes, more intensity, more chaos, more emotional trauma (think of Anon coming to school looking like she has been up crying all night after she thinks Tomori and Soyorin will dump her for a CRYCHIC reunion), and (IMO since this is subjective) better music.
I certainly understand why people love K-On! (and K-On!!), but also think comparing iyashikei to drama is a fool's errand. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Errinundra
Moderator
 Posts: 6603 Location: Melbourne, Oz |
|
|||||
|
I've spent the last 9 days watching 1990s fanservice titles.
Yuri & Kei (Dirty Pair Flash) & Honey (New Cutie Honey) Dirty Pair Flash OAVS. After a 4 year absence (Affair on Nolandia came out in 1990; the first Flash OAV was released in 1994), Yuri and Kei return with plots as silly as ever, the action more consistent than previously, the Trouble Consultants officially known as the Lovely Angels (but better known as the Dirty Pair) destroying things as comprehensively as always, their ragging of each other variable in its effectiveness, and with character designs that are... well, different. I get why the producers would change them - the designs I'd come to know so well were 1980s anachronisms. So, instead, we get 1990s anachronisms. I've never been a fan of the 1990s comic character style but, after a couple of episodes I wasn't bothered by it - their behaviour was pretty much in character anyway. The are 3 Flash OAVs. Only the first (at 6 episodes) has a coherent connecting plot. It's also has the weakest writing - their banter isn't witty, so comes across as simple nagging - along with the poorest reproduction onto DVD of the three. Yuri and Kei must stop a powerful businessman with an end-of-days fixation, all the while fending off a former Trouble Consultant with a chip on her shoulder. Rating: so-so. The second (at 5 episodes) gives us 5 different tales, but all set within a theme park reproduction of mid-1990s Tokyo. Given the franchise is normally set some 200 years in the future, this scenario explores the thought bubble - what if the Dirty Pair got up to their antics in the current day. We even get a high school episode where Kei and Yuri go undercover. Have they no shame? Well... no actually. That's part of their appeal. We have a new director in Tomomi Mochizuki and writers who give us wittier railing between the two leads. Rating: decent. The third gives us 5 more unrelated episodes but without any connecting premise. Tomomi Mochizuki continues as director and the higher writing standard of the second OAV also continues. It also takes advantage of its OAV format to provide regular exposure of of the Lovely Angels' nipples, whatever you might think of that. Rating; decent. Overall for the Flash OAVs: decent. I've now seen all of the Dirty Pair franchise, so here's my rankings. Very good : Project Eden - the wittiest, the best paced and with the best visuals and animation. Good: Dirty Pair OAV - follows the lead of Project Eden with clever ideas and fun execution but with somewhat lower production values and a little less success. It's slightly ahead of Flight 005 Conspiracy OAV, the most fun of the stand alone OAVs. Any of these 1st 3 titles make a good representative entry into the franchise. Decent: the Dirty Pair TV has a small number of screamingly funny episodes but most are fairly dull. The series was cut short with 2 episodes still in production. From Lovely Angels with Love OAV contains those last 2 episodes and can be seen as a continuation. Dirty Pair Flash OAV series is better than its reputation suggests but nor is it a stand out. So-so: Affair on Nolandia OAV is dull, whichever lens you see it through. ***** 1994's New Cutie Honey is more of a sequel than a remake of the original 1973 magical girl TV series. While the newer version is very faithful to the premise, the tropes and character designs of the original, the plot is new. One of the most interesting things about the original is how indebted Sailor Moon is to it, copying its villains, magical weapons, and the trope of calling out the attack names (which Go Nagai had adapted from his giant robot series of the time, such as Mazinger Z). Both franchises were produced by Toei, so they weren't about to sue themselves for plagiarism. Given the enormous success of Sailor Moon, I'm not surprised Toei and Go Nagai resurrected the franchise. Tonally, they are quite different. Don't watch Cutie Honey to get a Sailor Moon fix. Cutie Honey was always intended to be an ecchi shonen anime. New Cutie Honey takes this a step further with more nudity and more nipples (the trope of the week for me, it seems*). Japanese prudery dictates that genitals mustn't be displayed, so the frequent full-frontal shots are disturbingly strange and hardly titillating. The production levels are much higher than the original, the eight episodes have better pacing, and aren't quite as formulaic. On the other side of the ledger, by 1994 in-your-face anime was par for the course, so NCH lacks the astonishing impact of the original, even it's otherwise slightly better. In relation to Sailor Moon, according to Wikipedia:
I think the influence of Cutie Honey is also a factor. Rating: so-so. I'm not an ecchi fan and the characters and plot are still boring. And, appropriately, I'm about to start watching Sailor Moon Super S. At 39 episodes, it may be 2-3 weeks until my next update. ***** *I initially typed, "tit seems". What's going on? |
||||||
|
||||||
Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 24453 |
|
|||||
|
As part of my effort to watch more of my physical collection, I've started to watch my Melody of Oblivion volumes. I've watched the first seven episodes so far. It's batshit crazy. If I tried to summarize any given episode, I'd have to start off by saying, "I had the weirdest dream last night..." because each episode seems like the weirdest dream you've ever had. I'm liking it in all its bizarre narrative glory. I don't know if it's all going to come together in some kind of cogent way but for now it's a pretty trippy ride.
|
||||||
|
||||||
Yttrbio
 Posts: 3707 |
|
|||||
|
I still laugh thinking about Melody of Oblivion. Please report on it when you're done, and pick a most batshit crazy scene.
The funny thing is that the manga actually has the monsters transform into hideous monsters. I like the anime approach so much better, but I'm also fairly confident it was done for budgeting reasons. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24453 |
|
|||||
|
Oooo, most batshit crazy scene... that's gonna be some pretty stiff competition and I still have 16 episodes to go. In terms of batshit crazy arcs, the one I just watched that involved a dam holding back the tears of sadness from children from around the world collected by mechanical mice and which is being prevented from bursting because a robot boy is plugging a hole in it with his hand is gonna be tough to top, especially given that it also involves a Monster Union agent who receives orders from a parrot and offered our hero Bocca a $5.2 million bribe as well as an intention to seduce him with her beauty. So yeah.
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Kastilio
Posts: 1 |
|
|||||
|
So today I completed Btooom in one go like 12/12 episode, first of all MC was so much look alike of Light Yagami from death note and he also got the blonde gf like her, as per the story, I see it kind a squid games vibe, but the ending tho wasn't satisfying and there is no season 2 which make it worse situation, I'm planning to read Manga and know how the story ends
Rating - 8.5/10 |
||||||
|
||||||
|
epicT
Posts: 1 |
|
|||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
nobahn
 Subscriber Posts: 5171 |
|
|||||
By the goddesses, I so despise anime that are nothing more than commercials for the manga! |
||||||
|
||||||
Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 10071 Location: Virginia |
|
|||||
|
@nobahn
If you include those that are advertisements for the light novel, that is pretty much everything. Those anime that are based on existing IP usually do not stray far from the source material as the biggest investor is usually the publisher of the manga or light novel. Shows that come to an original end when the manga is ongoing are now seldom seen as it creates problems with the possibility of a new season. Frankly most of the anime I watch now is base on source material I have already read. Now that I know the story I want to see it animated with movement, color and sound. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
nobahn
Subscriber Posts: 5171 |
|
|||||
|
Alan--
I guess that I should clarify; I do not mind it when a series ends at the end of an arc. It just drives me bonkers whenever it ends mid-arc! To go off on a slight tangent, when I was reading Seirei Gensouki, I just happened to finish my purchase with the omnibus that concluded the first major arc. That was a fortuitous happenstance because I was singularly unimpressed with it (read my comment). |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Errinundra
Moderator
Posts: 6603 Location: Melbourne, Oz |
|
|||||
|
Like Blood-, I'm working my way through my unwatched physical collection, so spent my last couple of weeks watching Super S, the fourth season of Sailor Moon.
With Kunihiko Ikuhara directing again, after taking the reins from Junichi Sato ⅓ of the way through the second season, the emphasis moves away from Usagi to her future daughter, Chibi-Usa (yeah, it's complicated), who now joins the Sailor Guardians as a fully contributing team member known as Sailor Chibi Moon. Toei's business rationale behind it makes sense. Usagi has aged appropriately since the first season from 3 years earlier, so Toei is targeting both the original audience who've grown up with show and the same age demographic coming to the franchise for the first time. 
The problem is, Chibi-Usa is unlikeable. Worse yet, as part of the series dynamic, she and Usagi constantly fight for the attention of Mamoru Chiba / Tuxedo Mask, their future father and spouse, respectively. (Like I said, it's complicated.) Chibi-Usa was already horrible so it doesn't matter much with her, but both Usagi and Mamoru are seriously diminished by their antics. The fighting also spoils another dynamic of the series - the developing maternal / filial feelings between Usagi and Chibi-Usa. The, by now, established structure of an SM series also works against itself. Typically, there's a rarely seen boss villain who's ambition is simple: world domination so they can inflict misery on the human race. They have a similarly vicious assistant who, each episode, uses a team of lackeys to undertake some evil task to facilitate the big bad's evil plans. The Sailor Guardians are, always fortuitously, on hand to intervene. Things go poorly for them until Tuxedo Mask appears out of the blue to tip the scales in the Guardians' favour. Rinse and repeat. For dozens of episodes. Until the final handful of episodes, that is, when the boss villain finally reveals themselves and the earth (or moon) is facing total catastrophe. You know how it ends: the dreams of cute girls will always prevail. Super S uses the formula more tediously than any of the 3 previous seasons. Even the boss villain is just a rehash of the first season's Queen Beryl. Funnily enough, Ikuhara would use the formula yet again in Revolutionary Girl Utena, though far more inventively and subversively. It isn't all dire. Ikuhara's droll humour makes a break-out from time to time. He loves to set up tropes within the repetitions then unexpectedly twist or avert them. His bottom level villains are always quirky and the second major arc of the series gives us my favourites so far in the franchise: the Amazoness Quartet in their costume-failure defying outfits. They're cute, funny, rebellious and turn out to be the real heroes in defeating the ultimate evil, Nehellenia. I hope I get to see them in Sailor Moon Stars (the fifth and final season until the remake). 
The Amazoness Quartet. I was perpetually mystified by VesVes's logic defying bikini top (far right). Rating: so-so (the TV series); not very good (the Specials included in the blu-ray package). Stop at Sailor Moon S and go straight to Revolutionary Girl Utena. Or watch Saint Tail or Nurse Angel Ririka SOS. Like Super S, they hit the air waves in 1995 but they're much better magical girl shows. Kunihiko Ikuhara has never been a prolific director. Here's my ranking of all his shows. 1. Revolutionary Girl Utena TV series 2. Mawaru Penguindrum 3. Yurikuma Arashi 4. Revolutionary Girl Utena the Movie 5. Sailor Moon S 6. Episodes 14-43 of Sailor Moon R (Junichi Sato directed 1-13 along with the entire 1st season) 7. Saranzanmai 8. Sailor Moon R the movie 9. Sailor Moon Super S And while I'm at, my top 9 Junichi Sato anime (of 14 watched) 1. Princess Tutu 2. Aria the Origination 3. Junkers Come Here 4. Aria the Natural 5. Episodes 1-26 of Kaleido Star (Yoshimasa Hiraike directed 27-51) 6. Aria the Animation 7. Aria the OVA ~Arietta~ 8. Aria the Avvenire 9. Looking for Magical DoReMi So, yeah, his contributions to Sailor Moon don't rank amongst his best anime.) I had planned to watch the second season of Magic Knight Rayearth (also from 1995!) but I've had enough of magical girls for the moment, so I've started Love, Chunibyo and Other Delusions. |
||||||
|
||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group