Anime, the eternal Jettokōsutā

[Bartimaeus]

The first season of Ranma 1/2 also ended with a clip show in between some other stuff, so that's weird. Thought that was strange at the time unless they knew they were being cancelled (since they had planned a bunch more episodes) and needed to do just one last episode and fill it up with like half of stuff they'd already done.

(e): Man, Nanami is so terribly mentally ill, .

Spoiler

Drowning kittens out of jealousy...big yikes. Still the best, though.

 

Edited July 16, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

...Also, I just realized that my favorite character in a show like this is YET AGAIN the crazy obsessive one - bonus points that they're legitimately sick in the head this time around. I'm starting to think that I'm the crazy one.

Your Name (2016). It was fine. Plot was kind of pants and needed a lot of of really arbitrary ridiculous stuff for anything to really work, and dialogue could be a little...wacky in modern anime dialogue fashion, but it was mostly cute. There was even a scene like 2/3rds of the way through that got me to tear up and made me remember some lost feelings from many years ago. It was fine, .

Edited July 16, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

Your Name is something I debated watching with myself on and off, I'll take that as the most glowing recommendation considering it's from 2016.

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

...Also, I just realized that my favorite character in a show like this is YET AGAIN the crazy obsessive one - bonus points that they're legitimately sick in the head this time around. I'm starting to think that I'm the crazy one.

No, I'm sure it's fine that you like the schoolyard bully who slaps everyone, lusts after her brother and drowns kittens in her spare time. Fine. This is... fine.

Not sure "sick in the head" is a proper distinction in Revolutionary Girl Utena. Which one of them doesn't have more than a handful of lose screws? Drawing a blank, the most normal one is Wakabe, and she's a little nutty just as well.

[Bartimaeus]

54 minutes ago, majestic said:

Not sure "sick in the head" is a proper distinction in Revolutionary Girl Utena. Which one of them doesn't have more than a handful of lose screws? Drawing a blank, the most normal one is Wakabe, and she's a little nutty just as well.

Which one of them literally drowns kittens because they get in the way of her voracious love for and obsession with her own freaking brother? I'm not talking "kind of crazy" or "a bit neurotic", I'm talking "this person is legitimately mentally disturbed and should not be in or around the general populace", .

54 minutes ago, majestic said:

No, I'm sure it's fine that you like the schoolyard bully who slaps everyone, lusts after her brother and drowns kittens in her spare time. Fine. This is... fine.

I think part of the reason she's more likeable to me than she should be is that up until THAT episode, all the episodes she had a major part in were absolute silly nonsense, so even though she's being terrible in them, it came across as more fun and ridiculous than it perhaps should have.

Your Name: I actually had like 4 specific complaints about it that I came up within the first five minutes that annoyed me and nearly made me turn it off...buuut one, they're things I've already complained about in other movies, and two, a couple of them weren't really problems beyond those first five minutes. It's...fine. Other people that aren't as particular as me would probably love it. Really, it's fine. There were some ideas and implementations of those ideas that I rather liked even given how ridiculous they were. It's fine.

Spoiler

Although if they had made the error of making characters look like reptile aliens like so much other 2010s anime, I almost definitely WOULD have exited out within those first five minutes...but they didn't, so I stuck it out a little longer, .

 

Edited July 16, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

WARNING to non-@majestic people of this thread: the following post is a love-letter to one show in particular.

It's difficult to envision a show in Cardcaptor Sakura's vein (a combination of cute, sweet, simple, heartfelt, girly in all the right ways) somehow ever being better than it - as much as I love Sailor Moon, it's impossible to deny just how positively sublime this show is in everything it chooses to do...and it's especially powerful when you're so strictly rationing out episodes like I've been doing: every half hour episode of this show feels like it's own wonderful little movie. The sheer attention to detail and the always appropriate callbacks, consistently being completely overloaded with cuteness that somehow never gets repetitive or tired, the intelligent but perfectly age-appropriate dialogue and character writing, all the different yet sincere and meaningful or funny ways our characters somehow manage to interact with each other, and never wasting your time with anything that ever feels unnecessary... Even the art style: I sometimes wonder why I like the art so much, especially because whenever I pause the show on an individual frame, it somehow doesn't appeal to me quite nearly so much...and yet when I unpause it and see it all in motion, it somehow looks so perfect for what the show is, and everything feels framed just exactly as it should be. No, it's not Ghibli level of detail, but it still feels perfect for it in just the same way I feel Sailor Moon's art style is perfect for what that show is.

The individual parts are great, but somehow the sum of them are even more so: if the show had ended right here, right now on this Sakura-has-the-flu episode, I think it would be difficult to deny Cardcaptor Sakura as being a perfect show, something I've never, ever said about any show or movie ever. @majestic says the final arc of the show, which I have not quite reached but am getting close to starting, is a little weaker than the first two arcs, so perhaps I will have to downgrade this evaluation by the end of it...or maybe not, if I keep watching it slowly and take time to appreciate each and every episode, .

Spoiler

Sakura using Mirror to clone herself in order to try to fool Toya in of itself was a very clever and appropriate usage of that card, especially because it had done that exact thing against her will when the card had been first introduced...but the show taking it one step further and having Toya realize that the card was not his sister and yet still being kind and affectionate towards her was just...*chef's kiss*. And it all makes perfect sense because of the special connection Toya and Mirror have as a result of them sharing a moment way back when she regretfully tried to hurt him. Never in a million years would I have expected the show to then make use of that particular detail to not only show that affection between Toya and Mirror again, but also to doubly serve as the lynch-pin for Toya knowing Sakura's secret. It's almost like all of this was explicitly planned out to the very last freaking detail!

 

Edited July 16, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

19 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

It's difficult to envision a show in Cardcaptor Sakura's vein (a combination of cute, sweet, simple, heartfelt, girly in all the right ways) somehow ever being better than it - as much as I love Sailor Moon, it's impossible to deny just how positively sublime this show is in everything it chooses to do...and it's especially powerful when you're so strictly rationing out episodes like I've been doing: every half hour episode of this show feels like it's own wonderful little movie.

Cardcaptor Sakura is definitely better made than Sailor Moon. You could argue that it's better made than most other TV shows ever created, both animated and live action. There are only a handful of episodes that don't measure up, and even they are good - not great, but still good, like the one where she was debating leaving the dash card with the one-off track & field character. Actually that might just have been the lowest point in the show in the entire run (let's not count Clear Card).

Sailor Moon's average episode quality is certainly lower, also brought down by confusing and unplanned story arc episodes where the writers had to work hard to make sense of the source material. Cardcaptor Sakura, on the other hand, was by far and large (51 out of the initial 70 episodes) written by the same writer that wrote the manga. CLAMP are four people, and Nanase Ōkawa is their writer. Which in part makes the fall of Clear Card all the more baffling, and also the reason why I'm willing to give xxxHolic the benefit of the doubt. I'll just let that disappoint me.  

There's obviously a but coming (or "demo" as Sakura would say in the original ), and I've posted that before, Sailor Moon has a slightly different target demographic and could do (and did) different things with their episodes when it comes to character interactions. There are three brief moments when they're almost equal, the aforementioned episodes 43, 60 and 66. For 43 you get the distinct impression that both Sakura and Meiling have a five minute age up, but you'll see that when you get to it.

Then there's 54, but it stands a little apart, because it's a sequel to episode 16 and might just be the best episode in the show. Or at least, it's Sakura at her very best.

54 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

The sheer attention to detail and the always appropriate callbacks, consistently being completely overloaded with cuteness that somehow never gets repetitive or tired, the intelligent but perfectly age-appropriate dialogue and character writing, all the different yet sincere and meaningful or funny ways our characters somehow manage to interact with each other, and never wasting your time with anything that ever feels unnecessary...

Yes, absolutely. To be honest I already loved Cardcaptor Sakura after the first few episodes, however, the one after which I was sure that the writers struck gold was the one where she uses the Shadow card to capture Silence at the museum. As simple as the contept is, it was pretty stunning to see it combined like that.

There's also the ingenious way that the running gags are never used enough to become annoying, but frequently enough to be ever funnier. Toya showing up everywhere Sakura goes for instance.

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Even the art style: I sometimes wonder why I like the art so much, especially because whenever I pause the show on an individual frame, it somehow doesn't appeal to me quite nearly so much...and yet when I unpause it and see it all in motion, it somehow looks so perfect for what the show is, and everything feels framed just exactly as it should be. No, it's not Ghibli level of detail, but it still feels perfect for it in just the same way I feel Sailor Moon's art style is perfect for what that show is.

True. Cardcaptor Sakura - the original - is, to use the otherwise hackneyed phrase, quite frankly poetry in motion. It's fairly simplistic, but so was Sailor Moon (I'd say Sailor Moon has more sophisticated backgrounds), but it works perfectly when animated. It's a simple beauty, and something that's so completely lost with Clear Card. It also fits perfeclty with the voice acting and the sound design and soundtrack.

Especially for Tomoyo and Sakura, but also true for everyone else.

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

The individual parts are great, but somehow the sum of them are even more so: if the show had ended right here, right now on this Sakura-has-the-flu episode, I think it would be difficult to deny Cardcaptor Sakura as being a perfect show, something I've never, ever said about any show or movie ever.

Heh. To think that you initially didn't want to watch it at all because the original English dub was so terribad. If Netflix* never does anything else, giving you the CCS recommendation in addition to the constant posting about it by me has done at least that. Wish I could take the credit for finding the show, but that goes to this particularily supernerdy anime nerd:

Time coded to his recommendations, the part before that is quite frankly him getting misty eyed about Sailor Moon. Understandable, but unnecessary.

I wonder what you'll say to the direction certain character interactions go somewhat soon. How much you will like the second movie massively depends on that.

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

@majestic says the final arc of the show, which I have not quite reached but am getting close to starting, is a little weaker than the first two arcs, so perhaps I will have to downgrade this evaluation by the end of it...or maybe not, if I keep watching it slowly and take time to appreciate each and every episode, .

I did, and I stand by that. The premise is different, which isn't bad, because I think the original concept has run its course at the time it ended, but the seemless and easy way it integrated into Sakura's world is also gone with it. That's fine, mostly.

Tomoyo gets to do certain things, so that might just keep you from re-evaluating. She starts the second arc as a bit of a flanderization, but once the arc finds its footing she's just great.

Not really a spoiler but for effect:

Spoiler

And she and Meiling totally kill it in the second movie.

 

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Spoiler

Sakura using Mirror to clone herself in order to try to fool Toya in of itself was a very clever and appropriate usage of that card, especially because it had done that exact thing against her will when the card had been first introduced...but the show taking it one step further and having Toya realize that the card was not his sister and yet still being kind and affectionate towards her was just...*chef's kiss*. And it all makes perfect sense because of the special connection Toya and Mirror have as a result of them sharing a moment way back when she regretfully tried to hurt him. Never in a million years would I have expected the show to then make use of that particular detail to not only show that affection between Toya and Mirror again, but also to doubly serve as the lynch-pin for Toya knowing Sakura's secret. It's almost like all of this was explicitly planned out to the very last freaking detail!

 

 

Spoiler

Toya just taking the medication with him and Mirror trying her best to do what she was called on to do was pretty much a perfect moment. I don't know how much Mirror can remember from the last time she saw Toya, but we as an audience already knew that he can see through her. Toya's magical abilities seem to be pretty strong, if completely passive.

"Don't tell Sakura that I know, she seems to want to keep it a secret."

Not really spoilery question but potentially maybe (not bad even):

Spoiler

Kero should have mentioned Yue once or twice by now. Have you figured out already who that is?

 

*Technically we could potentially mention that forcing yourself through Madoka on Japanese made switching from English to Japanese MAYBE easier on CCS. Still grasphing at straws here. Do you get the impression that I feel terrible about this fiasko?

 

[majestic]

Oh, and also, because I forgot, you should perhaps make an exception to your slow enjoyment and get the next episode done soon(tm). It's... a rather important one.

 

[majestic]

I said that I expect Revolutionary Girl Utena's nature to change now that the Black Rose Saga has started. If you thought this was a weird surrealist fever dream, wait until you get to to episode 14 where it goes into HAMON OVERDRIVE, and adds an extra deep layer of squick on top.

Spoiler

The Black Rose are apparently some sort of Illuminati style secret society. There are two new characters that are members and also part of the Mikage Seminar, a student counceling body (or not) - or the entire society, who knows at this point.

Utena and Himemiya visit her brother and his fiancee. Her brother has his own private planetarium projector and is seen kissing his fiancee, Utena wants to leave, but they start talking. 

His fiancee runs afoul of the Mikage Seminar and is roped into an assassination attempt on Anthy (whom she intensely dislikes because she's creeped out by her). It's weird and begins with Mikage stabbing the fiancee with a black rose and giving her a black rose seal. Sure, uhm, why not.

Separate spoiler for the squicky part:

Spoiler

There's a very, very, very, very, VERY heavy implication that Anthy and her brother are close in ways not natural or legal. You know, in the way Nanami wants Toga, just for real.

late edit just to not make more posts by my lonesome:

Nanami really is a nutjob.

Spoiler

She's just received a cowbell designed by Sebastian Dior (lol) and she's... wearing it all the time. Everyone thinks she's nuts for wearing a cowbell, but she's kinda thinking it's the best thing ever.

Nanami calls Utena a boy-girl and then they start insulting each other.

Okay, we're back to having an utterly weird episode. I wonder how that will tie in with the Black Rose story that's been going on, if at all.

Nanami's shadow turned into that of a cow, and Toga appears to feed her hay, telling her to be a good girl because this will be her last meal. She's then carted off, and in the next scene he's having a steak.

Sure, this is a dream, but hey... what the hell.

Nanami starts talking with lots of mooos in her sentences (or any Japanese words with m and o in them, drawn out really long), she... wears cow apparel and wears hair clips in the shape of small cow ears.

Sure, why not. She also keeps eating and sleeping and is really slow. She's now at the park eating grass... or flowers, or something. Well, why not.

She turned into a real cow now. Yep, this is happening. Utena cuts off the cowbell with a pitchfork. Similar to her duels. Nanami turns back into a human.

Turns out the cowbell was for Anthy's cow, also called Nanami, and at the end of the episode the delivery for a new nose ring is mixed up too. While we can't see Nanami wearing it, she definitely has it on.

Nobody bats an eyelash. I guess they're used to the weird stuff happening all the time. I mean, nobody ever bats an eyelash at the upside down castle or the endless spiral staircase either, or asks how all of that fits into the duelling forest that definitely is smaller on the outside than on the inside.

Utena and whoever else is around the shadowplays have started to talk to them when the shadows are doing their, uhm, shadowplay.

Edited July 16, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Beastars. Holy **** this show went places. God damn, @Bartimaeus avoid like the plague, @majestic @InsaneCommander jump on in.

[Sarex]

Random fan art I came across. Made me think of you guys.

[majestic]

Look at that, now we're officially the Sailor Moon brigade, huh?

[majestic]

13 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Beastars. Holy **** this show went places. God damn, @Bartimaeus avoid like the plague, @majestic @InsaneCommander jump on in.

You know that makes me curious, you devil you. Anyway, what's going on, based on your reaction I'll be expecting something supremely weird. Does it dip into Devilman Crybaby territory?

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 minutes ago, majestic said:

Does it dip into Devilman Crybaby territory?

It's a different kind of weird, especially once season 2 starts. I don't know how to describe it without spoilers, but it's more funny than depressing.

[majestic]

44 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

It's a different kind of weird, especially once season 2 starts. I don't know how to describe it without spoilers, but it's more funny than depressing.

Any tumors that grow into weird JoJo punching stands?

To answer your question from a couple of posts ago, yeah, I did get to see the Empress. This just keeps getting weirder.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

13 minutes ago, majestic said:

Any tumors that grow into weird JoJo punching stands?

No, but there is an anthromorphized okapi stripper who almost gets eaten in the strip club before a gang of lions beat up a tiger.

13 minutes ago, majestic said:

To answer your question from a couple of posts ago, yeah, I did get to see the Empress. This just keeps getting weirder.

When the stand punching tumor isn't even the weirdest thing in the episode, you know things are weird. Just wait until you get to the second half of the series and Iggy shows up.

[Amentep]

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