Anime - Oh No! Oh My God!

[Bartimaeus]

27 minutes ago, majestic said:

Did you find something watchable without a red tinge?

PMed.

35 minutes ago, majestic said:

I'd say drop the film, unless you've watched it by now and give the series a chance instead with the time dropping the film frees up

Yeah, I did drop it, just wasn't really working at all.

35 minutes ago, majestic said:

it really looks like Cardcaptor Sakura was a once in a lifetime creation by CLAMP.

I've tried a couple of other things by CLAMP myself in the past couple of months, and I had to abort within an episode or two in both cases: CLAMP School Detectives and Kidou Tenshi Angelic Layer. I knew right away they were all wrong for me, but I tried to give them at least a tiny chance, and yeah, I don't think so. Rayearth, RG Veda, and Clover were the other ones I had a passing interest in (but none too confident). I must have gone right over X because it looks a hundred percent like edgy, angsty teen shonen. How would you say it compares to Miyu, speaking of?

[Sarex]

Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles and xxxHolic were ok, the manga at least. Convoluted as ****, but the story was interesting.

[majestic]

56 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I must have gone right over X because it looks a hundred percent like edgy, angsty teen shonen.

I don't blame you for that, I mean just look the main character. Not going to lie, Kamui doesn't just look the part, but at least he's not a whiny brat about it. He just has no interest in this prophecy business and wants to be left alone so far. He does care about Kotori, in his own way, otherwise he wouldn't have gone to the basketball game I mentioned after her asking for it.

I'm having a hard time describing the series. The character's looks are much milder compared to the movie (especially Kanoe), except for the prostitute, she looks the same. And yeah, she really is a prostitute, and a devout catholic, quite a contradictory character. In the short time she was on screen so far, at least. I'm kind of expecting a focus episode with her and a background in an abusive family, because that's a) it would fit thematically into the anime and b) would fit perfectly for a character like that.

The best way to describe it, I guess, is like... yeah, no idea. It really features some common shonen anime elements (Ashari summons a freaking katana from her hands to fight) except its populated with shojo characters and their interactions. For the first two or three episodes, I was wondering how that manga was printed in a shojo magazine, but then it gradually became clearer.

Aaaaaaaaaaand I know that says preciously little, but I really cannot place it. Hell, I couldn't even begin to guess if you'd like it or just drop it like hot coals, or something in between. If you do end up trying, the only thing I can say is wait until the first two or three episode are over (unless you instantly dislike it). I'm guessing the manga changed after that because it becomes a bit different afterwards (much less action, more character interactions) and the adaptational team just took everything as it was. But that's just a guess.

56 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

How would you say it compares to Miyu, speaking of?

Miyu is much more understated and focused on only a handful of characters. X on the other hand, is much larger in scope, both in terms of storyline (it is about armageddon, after all) and in terms and amount of characters. Where Miyu herself exudes a certain sadness and melancholy, in X, the melancholy spans across the overarching setup. You don't have episodes with individual victims running across a stray demon that most often end in tragedy, the tragic elements are still there, but in the form of characters knowing what is to come, and what will be asked of them.

Where Miyu is juxtaposed with her friends who have a normal social life and she's sort of tagging along for it, without ever truly being a part of it, some of the characters in X have regular lives (there's an editor, Kanoe is a secretary, the prostitute is, well, yeah, and one of the Dragons of the Earth works at a civil registry office), it's much more about them facing their destiny than it is about them living unaware of what's going on.

If you want, it's probably the difference between an Obsidian and a Bioware game, if both had characters written for teenage girls. However, that's with only being halfway through X.

56 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I've tried a couple of other things by CLAMP myself in the past couple of months, and I had to abort within an episode or two in both cases: CLAMP School Detectives and Kidou Tenshi Angelic Layer. I knew right away they were all wrong for me, but I tried to give them at least a tiny chance, and yeah, I don't think so. Rayearth, RG Veda, and Clover were the other ones I had a passing interest in (but none too confident).

I haven't looked up anything by CLAMP other than Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, but that doesn't sound too promising.

Edited August 25, 2021 by majestic

[InsaneCommander]

On 8/24/2021 at 6:03 AM, Bartimaeus said:

The original show from the 90s is Neon Genesis Evangelion, and it is good albeit it has its quirks. There is a four movie remake/continuation of it called Rebuild of Evangelion that we all watched recently that majestic and I despised, .

I watched the original. And a movie, I think. I will check these new ones eventually.

 

For now,  I started Steins;Gate. Only 2 episodes so far, so not much happens. Or maybe a lot. Who knows, it's about time travel...

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Since @majestic mentioning Ekkusu got me wanting to rewatch Devilman, I went through the other anime that I watched on Netflix. I thought I'd mention a few I haven't seen talked about here yet.

Cagaster of an Insect Cage: CGI abomination, do not watch.

BNA: Absolutely insane, in a pretty good way. Not too much, if any, CGI from what I remember. Main characters are a confused half-animal girl and an edgy Wolfman. DIO is also a snake.

Baki: Martial Arts Gym Gods. Pretty ugly and really stupid.

Dorohedoro: All CGI and real uncanny valley hours. A shame, because the manga is great. If you can get past the CGI worth it, if not just give up.

Hi Score Girl: CGI love story between two socially challenged kids who play Street Fighter 2.

B the Beginning: Some weird **** I half remember about conspiracies and genetic engineering. I haven't seen season 2, but season 1 didn't make me want to kill myself.

I've already recommended Beastars, Great Pretender, and Carole & Tuesday, but I'll do it again. Devilman Crybaby is an eternal recommendation.

Anyways I guess it's season 2 of B. Let's see if I lose my mind.

[Sarex]

6 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

For now,  I started Steins;Gate. Only 2 episodes so far, so not much happens. Or maybe a lot. Who knows, it's about time travel...

Cult anime. I found it to be very good.

 

[majestic]

11 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

I watched the original. And a movie, I think. I will check these new ones eventually.

7 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Dorohedoro: All CGI and real uncanny valley hours. A shame, because the manga is great. If you can get past the CGI worth it, if not just give up.

I was confused for a moment when looking that up, then I realized I mixed the titles up with Toradora! which is a repeat Netflix suggestion to me that I've avoided getting into based purely on it having been published by Dengeki Daioh. Netflix can tell me that it's 95% likely to be interesting to me all they want, and tag it as slice of life comedy until they're blue in the face, but Dengeki Daioh has covers like this:

Yeah, I think I'll pass. Who knows, maybe I'm missing out on something lighthearted and silly that's only borderline offensive and occasionally fun like Love Live!, but there's a difference between taking a leap or making a shot in the dark, as it were, and walking into a minefield with eyes open and "Danger: Mines!" signs all over the place.

Speaking of Netflix suggestions, this greeted me today after logging in:

Because I'm feeling super adventurous right now, I'll let you guys vote on whether or not I should hit that play button.

Small spoiler about the vote:

Spoiler

I do reserve the right to ignore any "Yea" votes.

 

Edited August 26, 2021 by majestic

[Sarex]

59 minutes ago, majestic said:

Because I'm feeling super adventurous right now, I'll let you guys vote on whether or not I should hit that play button.

Small spoiler about the vote:

  Reveal hidden contents

I do reserve the right to ignore any "Yea" votes.

 

It's a One Piece wannabe and I don't even like OP. Hard skip.

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Because I'm feeling super adventurous right now, I'll let you guys vote on whether or not I should hit that play button.

Hell no.

...But let's look at the genres real quick to confirm: "adventure, comedy, drama, ecchi, scifi, shounen, action"

Hell no.

8 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

BNA

Only one I've tried out of the ones you listed - big surprise, it wasn't for me, .

Edited August 26, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

50 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Only one I've tried out of the ones you listed - big surprise, it wasn't for me, .

[majestic]

There's no way in hell I'm going to even try that. I thought that was clear with the spoiler, or let's put this another way, I'll certainly try Toradora! before Edens Zero, and even that's really unlikely.

Watched some more of X, do you guys remember when I said Emo McEdgelord was at least not a whiny brat about it? Oh, he just had a Shinji moment. Unlike Shinji he didn't say much during it, because he was just lying around being catatonic before one of the other characters had a telepathic heart to heart showing him (in an admittedly nice sequence where Emo McEdgelord reverted back to a small boy in the telepathic dreamspace to escape from his life) that he's not the only one suffering from tragedy and pain, and that he can't do anything about it without facing it.

Wait, actually, no, the episode depicting that wasn't bad, it just had the problem of being the result of some setup that didn't work for me. Well, it's the first real misstep after half the series' run, so that's okay, assuming it recovers.

Spoilers:

Spoiler

As expected - just like in the film, Kotori dies at the hands of her brother (here she is stabbed on the cross, not giving birth to the sacred sword, the series has different characters for that), who, in opposition to Kamui, joined the Dragons of the Earth. The show messed the transition up, it had a few moments here and there, but there would have been enough time, as it is like now it makes the same mistake as the film. Kamui decides, and like a quantum entangled photon that's being measured, Fuma just readily snaps into the role as his counterpart, replacing Fuma's entire former personality and turning him into an EVUL character that kills off his sister willy nilly for the sake of being dark and edgy and making things suitably tragic.

It's not that it couldn't have worked, with some more setup it could represent his break with his former life and all that.

By the way, @KP the meanie zucchini the spoiler contains part of the reason why the writer of the manga said it was inspired by DEBIRUMAN.  

I'm also being a bit unfair here. I already knew it was coming from the film, and probably expected it to be handled better in the series, and it was - slightly. Just not nearly as much as I hoped. The film skipping the Shinji moment actually worked out much better, huh. Well, at least it's only the middle two parter. It's just going to be more tragedy and death from now on, but at least it'll be properly set up tragedy and death. I think.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

50 minutes ago, majestic said:

By the way, @KP the meanie zucchini the spoiler contains part of the reason why the writer of the manga said it was inspired by DEBIRUMAN.  

So B is back and I have no idea what is going on lmao. Kidnapping, blackmail, genetically engineered birdman, and moar conspiracy abound.

Edited August 26, 2021 by KP the meanie zucchini

[majestic]

Sometimes complaining helps. Princess Tutu went and suddenly turned away from a victim of the week setup to finding another heart shard for Mytho, the episode was much better than the ones before, and there's some bit of meta fun at the end when:

Spoiler

Drosselmeyer complains that all of this characters in the story are totally useless, and he laments no longer having Edel to fix things when they don't go the way they should.

Ahiru also had a really racist and ableist moment. The drama club is preparing for a play, and a snake wants to go and do some shopping in town, and she's like: "If you want I can go, I'll be much faster." and the snake is like: "Yeah, that would be awesome, thanks!"

What's that supposed to be Ahiru, do you think you're better than the snake just because you've got legs?

I still have no idea why some characters are animals, or what Neko-sensei's deal is. I'm beginning to fear that'll never really be revealed.

[Bartimaeus]

Luckily, that's speciesist, not racist. Phew, close one there, .

Rather than experiment with something I know I won't like as much, it's time to finish this Sakura arc, .

Spoiler

This space intentionally left blank.

Spoiler

Okay, now that we (i.e. myself and you, majestic, since nobody else read past me mentioning Sakura) have all collectively thrown up into our mouths, let's watch Sakura's Final Judgement. Also, I have no idea exactly what I said for the name of that fictious manga, hopefully it wasn't offensive.

Well, that was really confusing. I somehow accidentally opened up episode 1 instead of episode 11 and was treated to Sakura having her dream again and I was like "but...we were literally right in the middle of her about to do this, why are we getting this flashback yet again?"...and then I got the episode title screen, and, well, whoops.

Okay, this starts with another short flashback to the previous episode, but at least that's a lot more relevant and understandable (...especially because if you had actually missed the previous episode, you would have no clue at all what's going on now).

"Yukitoad" ...is this spelled like this in the subtitles deliberately or

"If [Kero's candidate] cannot win against [Yue], then [every person that had contact with the Clow Cards] will forget their love for the person they care about the most." The hell? I don't even understand Kero's explanation for how/why this arbitrary bullcrap works, even after re-winding and re-reading what he said. Well, regardless, there's no way Sakura's losing, that's practically harsher than death and badly affects literally just about every major character here, including people she knew and loved before she ever even became Cardcaptor.

If nothing else, this should hella motivate her to win. What impetus could be stronger than this to such a sweet and generous person like Sakura short of threatening to straight-up kill all of her friends and family?

"The only one who can defeat me is Clow Reed." Wait a freaking second: so no-one besides Clow Reed has ever beaten Yue? How many other candidates has Kero put up and just utterly ruined the lives of? You inducted Sakura into this contract with her not even understanding what she was saying way back in episode one...you were willing to likely demolish her entire life because you couldn't wake up from a nap to guard the cards, you dirty rat bastard? ...Though Ms. Mizuki suggested this was all planned in advance to specifically target Sakura in regards to Yukito just happening to be around, the cards just happening to be in her basement and such...so maybe it's not totally (or potentially even at all) his fault. Too many coincidences, as she said.

...She lost? This has to be a dream or a vision of what were to happen if she were to lose or something  Thank goodness Yukito was the closest person to her and not Tomoyo. ...Tomoyo doesn't care about her now, though.

Even Takashi and Chihara are cold to each other now. This stinks! What a cold, depressing, and loveless world this is.

Wake up and bash Yukito's brains in, Sakura!

...Saying that now feels a little inappropriate after now seeing and hearing Voice's sweet song. ...And also seeing Sakura summarily "defeat" Yukito with love more or less. What silly, cheesy nonsense that bordered on deux ex machina: you should've seen my big giddy grin I had the entire while it was happening.

Yeah, really close to that, Tomoyo. Pretty dope montage at the end, too...and thank god Kero is back to normal, YEESH!

 

 

Edited August 28, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

27 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

since nobody else read past me mentioning Sakura

I did.

Edited August 26, 2021 by KP the meanie zucchini

[Bartimaeus]

Just now, KP the meanie zucchini said:

I did. Don't make me repost Madoka with KILLA KYUBEY.

Oops. Uh...that part of the post was only meant for majestic, .

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

6 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Oops. Uh...that part of the post was only meant for majestic, .

KP has already seen the spoiler.

[Bartimaeus]

Madoka kinda weirds and grosses me out even more now that I can see how clearly it owes its lineage to Sakura...

Edited August 26, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

4 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Madoka kinda weirds and grosses me out even more now that I can see how clearly it owes its lineage to Sakura...

I fail to see what is weird or gross about a magical animal making contracts with emotionally unstable teenage girls.

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

What silly, cheesy nonsense that bordered on deus ex machina: you should've seen my big giddy grin I had the entire while it was happening.

And now imagine any other anime, TV show, movie or what have you trying to pull off an ending like that. We'd all be here ripping that a new one, instead of grinning like idiots.

"I want to be friends, not like masters and stuff!"

Indeed Sakura, not like stuff. Heh.

Spoiler

The punishment for failure was pretty awful. That's why Kero said depending on the one he selected, the punishment for not passing the judgement could be worse than the end of the world. Can you imagine anything worse for Sakura than that?

For some reason, Chiharu greeting Takahashi with "Takahashi-san" was one of the most depressing things ever. That's just wrong, and that her mother's picture was gone.

As is posting images of a crying Sakura, that's just mean. Don't do that. I can do that to!

Sakura doesn't cry often (like that, leaving the hyper-expressive anime crying whenever Toya is mean to her out for the time being), but it's heartbreaking every time.

Yukito's name gets some malign treatment in all of the subtitles apparently. Kero every now and then calls him Yuki-Usagi which means snowbunny. Sometimes the subtitles then read "Is the snowhare around?" or "Did you see the snow bunny?" - good job translators. I have no idea where toad could come from.

edit:

Oh, right, and Yue and Jadeite!Kero conly come out when they're needed. No need to worry about that. Well, I do like Yue though. At least he doesn't change voice actors in the transformation. How can you have Kero go from sounding like Ami to talking like Jadeite, holy hell, did you guys not watch Sailor Moon before picking the voice cast?

Evangelion manga talk:

Spoiler

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Yes, we'll be reading the Shin Evangelion Gekijouban Sakura Suzahara Zenshuu Settei Shiryou Visual Story-ban manga, which will help fill in the gaps between 2.22 and 3.33 by providing a new and inspiring coming-of-age and point of view narrative from the lovely Sakura Suzahara's perspective.

You jest, but Anno has already hinted at that someone could expand on the 14 year time skip, only it would not be him. The Evangelion manga was already made without his involvement, so careful what you're joking about. It might really come to be.

Did you google translate that or just randomly strings words together that you picked up somewhere?

I'm guessing the latter because that literally means Heart Evangelion Movie Version Sakura Suzahara Complete Works Configuration Document Visual Story edition. Erm, unless you took the Shin from Shin Godzilla, because there it's just Shin, as in the English... shin. Unless writing the title in katakana was a joke. Wouldn't put it past Anno to do that, the entire title was written in katakana... also myoji before namae, we're talking Japanese here. Shin Evangelion Gekijouban Suzahara Sakura Zenshuu Settei Shiryou Visual Story-ban.

It's not offensive though. At least... not to anyone normal. The NGE fandumb on the other hand is notoriously problematic.

 

Edited August 26, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

18 minutes ago, majestic said:

For some reason, Chiharu greeting Takahashi with "Takahashi-san" was one of the most depressing things ever. That's just wrong, and that her mother's picture was gone.

The implication here is that it was her dad's most cared for person, and that Sakura and Toya just got caught in the crossfire? I think?

18 minutes ago, majestic said:

Did you google translate that or just randomly strings words together that you picked up somewhere?

I'm guessing the latter because that literally means Heart Evangelion Movie Version Sakura Suzahara Complete Works Configuration Document Visual Story edition

Lmao...but no, it's not really even either of those - I just took the name of an actual Evangelion book and inserted "Sakura Suzahara" more or less randomly. "Evangelion Shin Gekijouban Jozen Kiroku Zenshuu Visual Story-ban Settei Shiryou-ban"...this is apparently a real book title. My version actually took a few of those out, but hey, maybe the extra ones actually make it make sense. Also, I thought "shin" meant "new", not "heart", but what do I know: just about nothing, really.

18 minutes ago, majestic said:

Yukito's name gets some malign treatment in all of the subtitles apparently. Kero every now and then calls him Yuki-Usagi which means snowbunny. Sometimes the subtitles then read "Is the snowhare around?" or "Did you see the snow bunny?" - good job translators. I have no idea where toad could come from.

Kero always calls Meiling (RIP) "Missy" and Xiaolang "brat", but that seems fine to me. Yukitoad...not as sure about, .

18 minutes ago, majestic said:

And now imagine any other anime, TV show, movie or what have you trying to pull off an ending like that. We'd all be here ripping that a new one, instead of grinning like idiots.

Yeah...and it helps that it earned it by this point, .

@Anno: Man, he really is pretty much George Lucas at this point.

Edited August 26, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

20 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

@Anno: Man, he really is pretty much George Lucas at this point.

So Disney is going to buy up the IP and release something worse?

Edited August 26, 2021 by KP the meanie zucchini

[majestic]

44 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

The implication here is that it was her dad's most cared for person, and that Sakura and Toya just got caught in the crossfire? I think?

I don't really know, to be honest. She certainly was at some point, but you'd think that change after she's been dead for a while. Although, I guess, it's just a visual representation. Her entire family's feelings will be wiped out anyway.

44 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Lmao...but no, it's not really even either of those - I just took the name of an actual Evangelion book and inserted "Sakura Suzahara" more or less randomly. "Evangelion Shin Gekijouban Jozen Kiroku Zenshuu Visual Story-ban Settei Shiryou-ban"...this is apparently a real book title. My version actually took a few of those out, but hey, maybe the extra ones actually make it make sense. Also, I thought "shin" meant "new", not "heart", but what do I know: just about nothing, really.

Configuration Document edition makes a bit more sense being at the end there. Also, you're not wrong with the shin part. Shin also means new, should have looked that up before posting (see, it's not like I know what I'm talking about... I mean, erm, you know... *runs*) - atarashii is "new" too and apparently the more common way to say new. It's not like I know much beyond random words. Have you ever tried looking at Japanese conjugation? That'll make your brain melt, and I'm saying that, being intimately familiar with German conjugation.  

Whether or not that title makes sense in Japanese is something else, but since it's an official one I guess it does. It's probably a complete collection of something, why else would it be called complete works visual story edition.

44 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Kero always calls Meiling (RIP) "Missy" and Xiaolang "brat", but that seems fine to me. Yukitoad...not as sure about, .

Yeah, no, it's bunny whenever he does that. Maybe some creative license, because it's originally brat for Meiling and "kid" for Shaoran, I think. It's been a while, but toad seems oddly negative for Yukito.

44 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Yeah...and it helps that it earned it by this point, .

That it did, also, besides, how else would she solve that. It's Sakura. Compared to her Usagi is a regular vicious murderdeathkill character. I mean, 90ies anime Sailor Moon. Crystal and Manga Usagi would straight up obliterate you for looking at her friends the wrong way and not bat an eyelash.

Like in the Black Moon arc where she tries out her newly found power and just blasts one of the Specter Sisters out of existence and is like "Woha, not bad!" afterwards. Kinda weird.

  

24 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

So Disney is going to buy up the IP and release something worse?

Not that long ago I would have said "It can't get any worse!" but apparently it always can. There's no such thing as rock bottom.

Edited August 26, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

31 minutes ago, majestic said:

Not that long ago I would have said "It can't get any worse!" but apparently it always can. There's no such thing as rock bottom.

Wisdom that comes from harsh lessons. Imagine sitting in theaters back in 1999 watching the Phantom Menace and thinking "this actually isn't in the bottom half of Star Wars movies". Better to not even contemplate just how bad it could get.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Finished season 2 of B: The Beginning.

So it's been at least two years since I watched season 1 and I'm a little fuzzy on that, but this doesn't hold up to my memory. It feels like a quarter of a season (it has half the episode of the first season, and is paced where each episode feels like half an episode), has really janky animation, and isn't particularly interesting. Right now I'd tentatively recommend the first season and just drop it after that.

Well, I guess it's MAN HUMAN time.