Anime - Do you Understannnnnnndu?

[Sarex]

1 hour ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Evangelion 1.11

Pretty much the first few episodes before Asuka shows up, of all of the rebuild films this one is probably the easiest to skip without missing anything.

Watching 2.22 shortly, maybe I'll just binge Evangelion today and come out with my sanity shattered. Tuxedo Kamen on the plane.

[majestic]

Jesus Christ can we leave Sam Witwicky out of this thread please?

Or Indiana Jones' son, depending on which particular trainweck with him you prefer.

[majestic]

Quick post for anyone who wondered why the "Western" Shinma and ally/servant of Miyu is called Larva*, because that's a really fun and somewhat obscure cross cultural reference - presuming for a moment that was actually intentional.

He wears a traditional Nō theater kamen (mask, also known as nō-men). Larva is latin for specter or ghost (larvae and lemures are similar, spirits of the dead), but neither are demons, let alone Western demons so where does that come from?

Well, this is a Central European Larve, German for both the larval stage of instects and, well, masks, derived from Latin larva:

They are also called Perchta (pl. Perchten) and are part of many Pre-Christian traditions meant to banish the evil demons and spirits of winter - later also the Christian devil.

Could also be a crazy random happenstance.

Curious that Penny likes frozen yogurt and Billy has "accidentially" gotten two helpings instead of the "one" he ordered. Yeah, random happenstance.

*I think it's fairly obvious that this isn't a reference to the larval stage of many insects.

edit:

Hey, DEATH PHANTOM voices a random Shinma hunting, old, somewhat corpulent martial / secret arts (?) master in Miyu.

edit 2:

Oh NOES, it turns out that the old man was already consumed by a demon. Well, that's what you get for sounding like DEATH PHANTOM. That guy was creepy too.

Edited August 15, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

I'm not gonna let my dreams be dreams anymore!

24 minutes ago, majestic said:

Hey, DEATH PHANTOM voices a random Shinma hunting, old, somewhat corpulent martial / secret arts (?) master in Miyu.

Does he turn her into BRACK MIYU?

[majestic]

36 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Does he turn her into BRACK MIYU?

No, where would be the point in that, Miyu no longer has a father she can abduct and, uhm, have "fun" with.

edit:

It's so terribly depressing to be introduced to any new random one-off character in Miyu, because their survival chance is pretty much like zilch. Not quite fully zero, but it's not looking good. And it's worse if they're voiced by Sakura's father. Well, hopefully he just showed up in that one scene and will never come back.

edit 2:

I guess technically becoming an eternally happy baby beats dying, but not by much, does it?

Edited August 15, 2021 by majestic

[majestic]

4 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

It's...mostly exploration and world-based puzzles/investigation with a helping of "don't get murdered"? ...I don't know if "world-based puzzles/investigation" is the best descriptor, but it's not usually like...I don't know, Myst-like puzzles where you're trying to figure out arbitrary solutions to arbitrary problems or anything like that, it's more "...so I was exploring and found and did some stuff, this opens up new places to go and things to do and maybe even new interactions with some of the other characters"? I think that's a fair description of it. To be honest, I myself was looking at the Steam store page and thinking "this doesn't...really properly convey what the game is about, not really".

Well that does sound kind of interesting, I'll keep it in mind for later, I guess. Already got enough to finish without adding a game to the list.

4 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Cellphones: I actually meant to write smartphones, not cellphones, RIP me. Yeah, cellphones were obviously around in the 90s, but...cellphones are a lot easier to wave away than smartphones, since all cellphones did back then was make calls and you can just say "lol no service for whatever reason" to fix that problem...or just have your characters be too young to have them, or too rural or poor to have them, or some other kind of arbitrary reason. In contrast to now, where smartphones are so incredibly ubiquitous and advanced with so many different functions and service is available most everywhere except truly remote areas...it's just, yeah, it's different.

Heh. I actually spent some time looking for the cell phone statistics. I knew it was close to 100% in 2000, just not how close. Although not having any service would have taken some doing too. We had a 99.8% coverage back then, and that included vast stretches of alpine mountains. Always been some kind of test market for mobiles for some reason. At the time all the companies were practically throwing free phones at you just to enter their shops.

Stopped a while back after the regulatory agency keeping an eye on the communication services deemed it would not lead to a problematic oligopoly when the fourth largest mobile services provider buys the third largest one, but what do you know, all of a sudden there were three huge ones and a whole bunch of smaller ones, and prices started rising. More wonderful proof of how the invisible hand of the free market manages to make everything better.

But yes, smartphones are much worse for storytelling purposes. Another reason why it was a pretty bad idea to move Cardcaptor Sakura to a contemporary setting. Sure Kero gets to do video calls with (uuuh, spoiler, sort of)

Spoiler

Yue

every now and then, and Sakura regularily chats with Meiling and all that, but... nah, just nah. The only fun thing that came out of that was Tomoyo's insane stalker drone, and maybe Kero's ridiculous suction cup attached GoPro camera.

However, nobody manages to even capture a quick picture of Sakura? Yeah, no.

4 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Inherent qualities and different styles of communicating and coding themes, characters, plots, and the world-building play a huge part in how stuff actually comes across...a much bigger part, I'd say, than the fact that two shows share a similar horror setting, or a similar group of superheroes, or a similar coming-of-age theme, or...anything else.

For Love Live! that's mostly the feeling that Honoka, Umi and Kotori are really similar to early Sailor Moon Usagi, Rei and Ami. Kind of, it's not a perfect match, but it feels similar. Honoka is a real dummy too, she's not stupid, just really, well, Usagi. It even has an episode where Kotori almost leaves Japan to study abroad but Honoka gets her back. Honoka actually goes to pick her up, and doesn't just send her the new gear (well they don't transform, anyway), but... you know. Honoka pointing to a ceiling fan and calling it "the thing you often see in rich people's homes" could really come straight from Usagi.

It's everything else that's in the way of properly enjoying it, and that includes the music, most of the time.

Seriously, what...

 

Somehow that song is worse than the animation of the show. Ugh.

[majestic]

Currently watching a Vampire Princess Miyu episode that feels about as disjointed as the OVA. Things happen that seem completely unconnected, there's no clear distinction between ongoing plotlines, scenes randomly freeze with zero animation, time passes, sometimes characters talk to each other and everything looks warped and weird, and in the middle of it the girls go shopping for shoes.

And now the older guy that the episode's been following doing some job that barely makes sense (sculpting a 500 foot statute in the middle of a construction site that seems to have nothing to do with the ongoing plot but isn't really "real" either because it looks like its in a parallel world). His wife might be the shinma, and he's just imagining things. Maybe.

But now he randomly attacked a priest that recognized him and is running through a subway or railway station (or the mall attached, this is really, really, REALLY unclear) and music is playing that sounds like Bonnie Tyler's Holding Out For A Hero*.

If it wouldn't look like the regular series and had the characters that weren't in the OVA I'd assume this was cobbled together from unused 80ies OVA footage. How utterly bizarre.

Doesn't help that it is the, uhm, probably worst episode so far.

Well if the guy's really holding out for a hero he's not really in luck. Miyu won't take the job anytime soon.

*That was probably some sort of Miyu opening theme reprise or remix. Not really sure.

edit:

Spoiler

Of course the giant 500 foot Buddha statue is actually alive and starts killing the guards chasing after the old guy, and it's underground somewhere. Sure episode, sure, you do you. I don't need to like it, do I?

Oy, the old guy isn't working on the statue, he's excavating the rock behind some randomly built doors in the subway to create a model city. The 500 foot Buddha statue meanwhile proves very bullet-resistant. I wonder why. Gee guys, you think that's a good idea to keep shooting at it?

I should perhaps mention that this has seemingly nothing to do with buildings randomly turning to sand and disappearing in the real world, which was teased as the actual plot for the episode. There's also a scene with ten million spiders crawling out of the sand. 

Congratulations!

edit 2:

Now it's snowing inside the mall where Chisato wants to buy shoes that are too big for her. Well girl, you'll probably still grow a bit, but eh, bad idea, I think. Oh, and it snows, did I mention that already? Oh so that was Reiha, and she disposed of the statue. Begs the question, what's with the dissolving buildings. Not much time left here...

edit 3:

Ah, Miyu has randomly and for no reason figured out that the actual shinma is old guy's wife and she eats a fistful of fire, then turns into a spider thing.

edit 4:

The only quesiton that remanins now is will the girls ever talk about the time when a 500 foot Buddha statue chased them through the mall? Time will tell, time will tell.

 

Edited August 15, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

Lmao, yeah, my reaction to that episode was basically "¿que?". I'm not usually in favor of having a different protagonist for an episode, and especially not when it makes for such a weird and inexplicable episode. Didn't Miyu actually meet him relatively early in the strange sub-reality and basically go "huh, this is weird...oh well, see ya later!". Nice job, Miyu. Eight episodes left...

6 hours ago, majestic said:

Somehow that song is worse than the animation of the show. Ugh.

Clearly, you can't do make it baby, .

(e): Yeah, so one episode later, the originally light-hearted tone of Nadia is officially and permanently over from this point. Don't know what I expected, but thanks, Hideaki Anno.

Spoiler

It was about the time a little girl's family, including her dog, was shot to death by these simultaneously Nazi and Ku Klux Klan-looking scumbags and our protagonists had to dig up graves for them all that I realized this is probably not going to go back to "normal". Still another 30 episodes to go...

 

Edited August 16, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Rebuild of Evangelion 2.22 and 3.33

Well that was different and yet the same. I'm going to sleep on it and probably watch 3.0 + 1.01 tomorrow. 

[majestic]

8 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Lmao, yeah, my reaction to that episode was basically "¿que?". I'm not usually in favor of having a different protagonist for an episode, and especially not when it makes for such a weird and inexplicable episode. Didn't Miyu actually meet him relatively early in the strange sub-reality and basically go "huh, this is weird...oh well, see ya later!". Nice job, Miyu.

When Miyu was in the parallel reality thing, it was not a model scale city with an oversized Buddha statue, but a regular sized warped looking city with a giant massive Godzilla style Buddha statue.

The writers really dropped the ball on this one, or perhaps they struggled with meeting the deadlines, because there's also a lot of freeze frames with sound effects (and one that even repeats). Either way, the result was the first ungood episode, to use some newspeak. Here's to hoping it will stay the only one.

The past two episodes also had somewhat uncharacteristic decisions by Miyu. The Shinma that accompanied the writer didn't really do anything, and that his wife died was an accident, and Miyu has often enough by now decided that she can let demons go as long as they're not harmful. Then there's the old guy from the weird episode, he's like the prime candidate for her "Eternal Happiness" kiss of death, instead he's now homeless and still implied to be working on his model city for no reason.

8 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Eight episodes left...

Indeed, it's been going a little faster. The past few episodes felt a little less draining. By no means less tragic, but people inexplicably started surviving their ordeals much more often.

8 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

(e): Yeah, so one episode later, the originally light-hearted tone of Nadia is officially and permanently over from this point. Don't know what I expected, but thanks, Hideaki Anno.

I'm just imagining how this airs on TV and some random family catches the first two episodes with their kids and then gets treated to war, death, tragedy and destruction. Maybe you should counter that by watching more Cardcaptor Sakura. It gets occassionally sad, but everything will always definitely be all right, just like Sakura told herself in Dream's reality/foreshadowing.

8 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Clearly, you can't do make it baby, .

Clearly I can't. I can't decide what's worse, the horrible auto-tuned singing, the production quality problems of the song, the lyrics* (provided the translation is accurate) or the fact that this group won the first Love Live! because µ's didn't participate. That can't have been the only entry, right?

*The content of the Japanese ones, not how funny the English parts are. The other song on the show by A-RISE has "non-stop my dancing" as English lyrics, which is somehow even worse (but I linked that as example of fanservice a while back).

Then there's the fact that some people enjoy this enough to make color-coded music videos showing who's singing. Don't get me wrong, I have seen worse animes than Love Live! and every now and then it was really enjoyable, but... nothing of it is outstandingly good, and it's also not a case of where the sum is greater than its individual parts.

3 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Rebuild of Evangelion 2.22 and 3.33

Well that was different and yet the same. I'm going to sleep on it and probably watch 3.0 + 1.01 tomorrow. 

I have successfully pretended these films don't exist so far. I feel the cracks in this belief forming already. Sigh.

Edited August 16, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

The Shinma that accompanied the writer didn't really do anything, and that his wife died was an accident, and Miyu has often enough by now decided that she can let demons go as long as they're not harmful.

I wondered about this at the time, and my only theory was that it was specifically because she and the guy were unable to be separated - when Miyu spares (or intends to spare, Reiha overruling her notwithstanding) shinma, it seems to have always been either shinma who kept only to themselves or just to other shinma - perhaps I'm wrong, but I can't remember an instance of her sparing a shinma who was personally involved with any kind of human. It seems as though she wishes shinma to have little to no contact with humans (...and for good reason). If that's the case though, it's not communicated clearly enough through her own words, however. As for the crazy guy, I wonder if it was because she never really properly met or interacted with him basically at all, and so the structure of the episode (which seemed to already be troubled enough) didn't really allow for it. She generally drains those she has spent at least a little time getting to know and whom she takes pity upon.

@KP the meanie zucchini Would you recommend those Evangelion movies? ...Hold on, let me rephrase: would you recommend those Evangelion movies to majestic?

2 hours ago, majestic said:

Cardcaptor Sakura

Yeah, I figure it's just about a 50/50 chance that I ever watch Cardcaptor Sakura again - either it happens or it doesn't, . It's very difficult to know for sure which side of the coin I'll land on, impossible really! (...I'll get to those last two episodes of the arc soon-ish.)

Edited August 16, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

41 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I wondered about this at the time, and my only theory was that it was specifically because she and the guy were unable to be separated - when Miyu spares (or intends to spare, Reiha overruling her notwithstanding) shinma, it seems to have always been either shinma who kept only to themselves or just to other shinma - perhaps I'm wrong, but I can't remember an instance of her sparing a shinma who was personally involved with any kind of human.

She wanted to spare the prostitute who used her job to feed off human energy. I  thought about that reason too, but it makes no sense letting her go (well, Reiha finished them off anyway) and not the other. Both had human contact. Sure, the other woman lived with the writer, but he knew what he was getting into. Unlike the other one's customers. That leaves only the dead wife, and that seems like a super weak reason though.

46 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

If that's the case though, it's not communicated clearly enough through her own words, however.

It really isn't, but that's fine. There's enough to go on to accept the human contact theory having an arbitrary limit of human contact. Miyu also mentioned a destiny, so maybe she is aware when shinma become problematic later on. It's just a minor wrinkle anyway.

48 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

As for the crazy guy, I wonder if it was because she never really properly met or interacted with him basically at all, and so the structure of the episode (which seemed to already be troubled enough) didn't really allow for it. She generally drains those she has spent at least a little time getting to know and whom she takes pity upon.

She talked to him once, which was apparently enough to figure out his wife was the shinma, and all of that off-screen. It was more than troubled enough, yes, but that little bit wouldn't have made it any more chaotic, just a little less cruel. He's also a clearly disturbed, already aged man who would make a much better victim than children who lost someone and don't know it any better. Eh.

49 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

 

@KP the meanie zucchini Would you recommend those Evangelion movies? ...Hold on, let me rephrase: would you recommend those Evangelion movies to majestic?

Eh, why what how, what did I ever do to you?

50 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Yeah, I figure it's just about a 50/50 chance that I ever watch Cardcaptor Sakura again - either it happens or it doesn't, . It's very difficult to know for sure which side of the coin I'll land on, impossible really! (...I'll get to those last two episodes of the arc soon-ish.)

I'm a bit torn about the ending of the arc. On the one hand, the resolution and dangers it offers are really perfectly fitting in the realm of Cardcaptor Sakura, but on the other hand it's... a bit strangely perhaps too understated after all that buildup. I'm really curious what your opinion will be, especially when it comes to pretty Yue. Honestly, Yue might be the most ridiculous pretty character archetype in an anime to ever have been drawn.

Oh, right, sorry, expectation spoilers.

Also, funny voice acting spoiler:

Spoiler

Keep in mind when Sakura unlocks Kero's full power as the Beast of the Seal, he switches voice actors to the guy who voiced JADEITE in Sailor Moon (and don't worry, it's not permament, good god!). That was *so* weird.

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Would you recommend those Evangelion movies? ...Hold on, let me rephrase: would you recommend those Evangelion movies to majestic?

Honestly that depends on 3.0+1.01. Starting with 2.22 they diverge heavily from the anime and End of Evangelion. If it turns out to be awful then I wouldn't want to subject majestic to 8 hours of it, if it's good then yeah I'd recommend it. 

3 hours ago, majestic said:

I have successfully pretended these films don't exist so far. I feel the cracks in this belief forming already. Sigh.

[majestic]

Yelp, the next Miyu episode is about dolls. And a woman who loves one of her dolls. Really, really loves him. Like. Yikes.

edit:

And of course nobody talks about being chased by a 500 ft. Gozilla-like Buddha statue. Figures, but still a little disappointing. You'd think that would leave more of an impression on three young girls.

Edited August 16, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

She wanted to spare the prostitute who used her job to feed off human energy. I  thought about that reason too, but it makes no sense letting her go (well, Reiha finished them off anyway) and not the other.

I think the key difference is that the girl could not let go of him, and he could not let go of her - their lives were indelibly intertwined, Miyu visited her multiple times and saw this. In contrast to the prostitute, who was just seemingly impersonally using her job as a means to an end and was perfectly willing to immediately drop everything and get out of dodge in order to avoid Miyu - obviously no attachments to any of her clients if she was willing to let go of them that quickly, which is not how the shinma that Miyu typically targets usually operate. The fact that the two of them ended up helping Miyu no doubt had a part in it as well.

Mild spoiler:

Spoiler

I'm 99% certain that I am right based on the last handful or so of episodes of the show, but I would not disagree that Miyu has not really clearly communicated her feelings towards...certain things up to this point. However, that might actually be because...

Spoiler

...she is not even fully cognizant of the rules she is supposed to follow as a Guardian or why they are rules she's supposed to follow to begin with, and yet she nevertheless is more or less compelled to unconsciously and unquestioningly follow them as part of her duty and her "destiny", accursed as it is. Her own personal feelings thankfully - for the sake of making the show more interesting and her more likeable and sympathetic - get in the way for what she believes to be the most harmless of cases, .

 

 

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Eh, why what how, what did I ever do to you?

It was actually because I feared his answer would be "I'm not gonna recommend anything to [me]" because of past discussions we've had on recommendations recently, not anything to do with personally you, .

1 hour ago, majestic said:

She talked to him once, which was apparently enough to figure out his wife was the shinma, and all of that off-screen. It was more than troubled enough, yes, but that little bit wouldn't have made it any more chaotic, just a little less cruel. He's also a clearly disturbed, already aged man who would make a much better victim than children who lost someone and don't know it any better. Eh.

Eh indeed. I think the only episode I liked less was the one where the guy gets transmogrified and possessed, and then also subsequently murdered by his girlfriend, and it's not at all a coincidence that that episode also featured a random guy as a protagonist, . And oh boy, does that lady sure love her dolls. Dolls, dolls, dolls!

Edited August 16, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

7 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

It was actually because I feared his answer would be "I'm not gonna recommend anything to [me]" because of past discussions we've had on recommendations recently, not anything to do with personally you, .

Well so far if you managed to watch Evangelion TOS and End of Evangelion I don't think you'd have any trouble with the content. Like there is some stuff that can be read as more explicitly sexual/romantic but with few exceptions it's not stuff that wasn't already there and the main antagonist of the series is less ambiguous than in the anime, but if you've already seen the anime you know he is the bad guy. At the end of the day it's still about depressed teenagers fighting monsters in robots while some absolutely weird **** goes down. If anything would turn you off it's the cgi, which isn't great at all but I was able to get through it so far.

3.0+1.01 (which is 2.5 hours) could completely change this though, so if I come back even crazier than before you can rest assured Rebuild will drive you to madness. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

[Bartimaeus]

My worry is that since it has come out twenty years later, it will feel very stylistically different from the original show and I won't be able to hack it. That's something I'll probably be able to tell within the first ten minutes of watching whatever the first part is called, though.

[majestic]

41 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Eh indeed. I think the only episode I liked less was the one where the guy gets murdered by his girlfriend, and it's not at all a coincidence that that episode also featured a random guy as a protagonist, . And oh boy, does that lady sure love her dolls. Dolls, dolls, dolls!

Not as much as Tomoyo loved her father in the next one. Not that she sounded like Tomoyo, more like Mima, but disturbing nonetheless.

41 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

It was actually because I feared his answer would be "I'm not gonna recommend anything to [me]" because of past discussions we've had on recommendations recently, not anything to do with personally you, .

Oh, okay. Heh. Sorry I thought it was a joke based on me saying that I so far refused to acknowledge the films as real so I don't have to watch them.

41 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I think the key difference is that the girl could not let go of him, and he could not let go of her - their lives were indelibly intertwined, Miyu visited her multiple times and saw this. In contrast to the prostitute, who was just seemingly impersonally using her job as a means to an end and was perfectly willing to immediately drop everything and get out of dodge in order to avoid Miyu - obviously no attachments to any of her clients if she was willing to let go of them that quickly, which is not how shinma usually operate. The fact that the two of them ended up helping Miyu no doubt had a part in it as well.

I'm pretty sure that interpretation is correct. It still feels like making something up for the sake of making sense. It's an instance where some exposition would be warranted, and how much it bothers someone depends on how much they enjoy what they're watching (but that is also true reading).

Or let's say, if that happened in Madoka, you would not be thinking about it and coming up with a possible scenario, but rather complain about it, in the same way where the the question of "Where does Luna keep the transformation pens?" doesn't matter at all in the original Sailor Moon, while "Why did she put them into the arcade game?" is a perfectly valid complaint for the manga and Crystal.

Yeah, not exactly a perfect example, but it's good enough, I think. But... I'm not through with all episodes yet anyway.

41 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Eh indeed. I think the only episode I liked less was the one where the guy gets murdered by his girlfriend, and it's not at all a coincidence that that episode also featured a random guy as a protagonist, . And oh boy, does that lady sure love her dolls. Dolls, dolls, dolls!

Yes, that episode wasn't the best either, but at least it was coherent. And, yikes, dolls. I wonder if that episode is somehow related to something that happens in the manga, because the OVA had a creepy doll episode too, but there the shinma was turning people into dolls, not creeping into dolls.

 

One other thing that I've noticed in Vampire Princess Miyu is using anata as affectionate word for any random woman or girl's beloved/boyfriend/husband. Japanese has what feels like two million separate pronouns that all have one thing in common: They're used as little as possible, and most of them like never at all in real life. That's partially because Japanese has no grammatical requirement for using pronouns as long as its clear who or what is talked about, and partially because most of them go back to times where formal address was handled through pronouns, rather than keigo (= polite Japanese, like ohayo gozaimasu for a polite "good morning" where as "ohayo" means good morning all the same, but is casual like "mornin'", not something you'd throw at your superior at work). With that out of the way, spoken Japanese leaves most speakers addressing each other by names, and using "you" for instance (ie. anata) only for those situations where you don't know the name of the person you're talking to and for some reason need a pronoun.

In entertainment, they're all often used because constantly repeating names would make for awkward reading, and that then translates into animation too.

Where was I? Right, uhm, I wonder how common using anata as affectionate word like "darling" really is - if at all.

Edited August 16, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

6 minutes ago, majestic said:

I'm pretty sure that interpretation is correct. It still feels like making something up for the sake of making sense. It's an instance where some exposition would be warranted, and how much it bothers someone depends on how much they enjoy what they're watching (but that is also true reading).

Or let's say, if that happened in Madoka, you would not be thinking about it and coming up with a possible scenario, but rather complain about it, in the same way where the the question of "Where does Luna keep the transformation pens?" doesn't matter at all in the original Sailor Moon, while "Why did she put them into the arcade game?" is a perfectly valid complaint for the manga and Crystal.

Yeah, not exactly a perfect example, but it's good enough, I think. But... I'm not through with all episodes yet anyway.

One hundred percent true, which is why I would not disagree it's not communicated well enough (especially when it could've been easily by Miyu herself perfectly sensibly in-universe), . Also, yes, my interpretation is indeed informed by having watched the entire show, which I think clears up a few different things in this regard, at least indirectly, .

8 minutes ago, majestic said:

In entertainment, they're all often used because constantly repeating names would make for awkward reading, and that then translates into animation too.

Where was I? Right, uhm, I wonder how common using anata as affectionate word like "darling" really is - if at all.

That's really strange - you'd think that would make Japanese entertainment sound kind of unnatural to actual Japanese watchers. I'd definitely think it'd sound unnatural if your typical American film suddenly did the opposite and only used names and no pronouns.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

29 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

My worry is that since it has come out twenty years later, it will feel very stylistically different from the original show and I won't be able to hack it. That's something I'll probably be able to tell within the first ten minutes of watching whatever the first part is called, though.

So far it's very recognizably Evangelion both in terms of style and tone. I'll have to sit through a long ass movie before I can give a final verdict, because if there is one thing quintessentially Evangelion, it is having a very bizarre and polarizing ending.

[Sarex]

1 hour ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Well so far if you managed to watch Evangelion TOS and End of Evangelion I don't think you'd have any trouble with the content. Like there is some stuff that can be read as more explicitly sexual/romantic but with few exceptions it's not stuff that wasn't already there and the main antagonist of the series is less ambiguous than in the anime, but if you've already seen the anime you know he is the bad guy. At the end of the day it's still about depressed teenagers fighting monsters in robots while some absolutely weird **** goes down. If anything would turn you off it's the cgi, which isn't great at all but I was able to get through it so far.

3.0+1.01 (which is 2.5 hours) could completely change this though, so if I come back even crazier than before you can rest assured Rebuild will drive you to madness. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

 

1 hour ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

So far it's very recognizably Evangelion both in terms of style and tone. I'll have to sit through a long ass movie before I can give a final verdict, because if there is one thing quintessentially Evangelion, it is having a very bizarre and polarizing ending.

Can't wait for you to watch it and hear what you thought of it. I'm trying very hard to hold off on saying anything.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

10 minutes ago, Sarex said:

 

Can't wait for you to watch it and hear what you thought of it. I'm trying very hard to hold off on saying anything.

I'm going to watch it tonight. I almost watched it this morning but when I saw it was 2.5 hours long and the time was 1230, I decided sleep was necessary.

[Bartimaeus]

Are you ever watching a show or a movie where you're absolutely blindsided by a twist...that was so incredibly obvious and which there were almost literally legion amount of hints throughout the entire thing (so much so that you had actually literally guessed the twist from the very start but then somehow forgot that you guessed it somewhere along the way because you got distracted with other stuff going on) and then you feel like an absolute babbling baboon when you get sucker-punched in the back of the head as it finally happens? That's me with Eriko right now. Boy do I feel like the big dumb for not putting two and two together. Anyways, I'm going to take the advice of Ronaldo now.

 

[majestic]

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

That's really strange - you'd think that would make Japanese entertainment sound kind of unnatural to actual Japanese watchers. I'd definitely think it'd sound unnatural if your typical American film suddenly did the opposite and only used names and no pronouns.

I don't know if that is only the case for animation, or if that also affects live action films and TV. I guess I could watch more Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon to find out, but that is based on a manga/anime too, no idea how original content works.

Guess it's not that strange when you're used to it. What it does make is spotting people who learned Japanese by watching anime pretty easy.

I suspect it's one of the cases where the development of the spoken language outpaces the written one, and when you use written Japanese as your basis for film and TV, then there being a certain insonstistency is to be expected. I also have a feeling that it's not as easy to reform written Japanese or adapt it to more modern parlance. For us that's no big deal, just issue a correction and yep, suddenly a common misspelling is accepted and correct. For kanji, yeah, probably not so much.

Yare yare.

Heh.

Fun Cardcaptor Sakura fact: Shaoran never really calls Sakura by name and just says "you", in the form of omae*, which when used to address someone you're not friends with can be and is seen as confrontational or impolite due to its informality, which pretty much reflects his initially somewhat hostile and rocky relationship with her.

Then there are a whole bunch of ways to say you that nobody uses in real life, like kisama or temee, both of which are often translated as "bastard" or worse, but actually just mean "you" - only, well, a very impolite, aggresive you.

Not really necessary but knowing how these things work can give you a better understanding when watching subbed anime, similar things exist for saying "I" like ore which is a somewhat base way for men to refer to themselves, a word you'd not use in polite conversation, or in the presence of women. In Miyu it was used by the Chinese dock workers amongst themselves, or the criminal who got stabbed by his girlfriend, i.e. immediately expressing that he's part of the lower class when he actually uses it in front of her.

It's also kind of interesting to note how things are different from our perspective. There's a polite form of you, sochira (sometimes used with honorific, i.e. sochira-sama) which literally means something like "in front of the speaker", and while not adressing someone in direct conversation by refering to that person as "over there" or something could be easily seen as impolite, it isn't in Japanese, because there the idea was that someone of lower standing had no right to directly address their betters.

Temee used to be polite and means something similar, but is rude nowadays.

Once you get the hang of it you can also hear, in words, not just tone, how excessively polite Tomoyo is all the time (saying arigatou gozaimashi-**ta or addressing her mother as okasama).

*omae is also the male version of anata when it comes to affectionately addressing your lover. Yes, it's... confusing, really.

**just imagine that hyphen not being there. The word is too polite for the filter.

edit:

  

25 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Are you ever watching a show or a movie where you're absolutely blindsided by a twist...that was so incredibly obvious and which there were almost literally legion amount of hints throughout the entire thing (so much so that you had actually literally guessed the twist from the very start but then somehow forgot that you guessed it somewhere along the way because you got distracted with other stuff going on) and then you feel like an absolute babbling baboon when you get sucker-punched in the back of the head as it finally happens? That's me with Eriko right now. Boy do I feel like the big dumb for not putting two and two together. Anyways, I'm going to take the advice of Ronaldo now.

No, not in films or TV yet, but Bioware sure fooled me with Yoshimo. He was such an obvious case that it really surprised me when he turned out to really be a traitor. One forced to be, but a traitor regardless. I first thought he was too obvious to really be played straight, then totally forgot about it and then woah... what? Heh.

Edited August 16, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

22 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Are you ever watching a show or a movie where you're absolutely blindsided by a twist...that was so incredibly obvious and which there were almost literally legion amount of hints throughout the entire thing (so much so that you had actually literally guessed the twist from the very start but then somehow forgot that you guessed it somewhere along the way because you got distracted with other stuff going on) and then you feel like an absolute babbling baboon when you get sucker-punched in the back of the head as it finally happens? That's me with Eriko right now. Boy do I feel like the big dumb for not putting two and two together. Anyways, I'm going to take the advice of Ronaldo now.

 

Nah, most incredibly obvious twists I pick up on right away and they live in my head until I'm done with the show.