Anime - Oh No! Oh My God!

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

6 minutes ago, majestic said:

I watched the first couple of minutes of Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop.

If I weren't me, I'd probably never go back, no matter how much I might end up liking the story, or the characters, because watching the film isn't just like:

But more like:

And then:

Plus some very serious uncanny valley flashes in the attempt to give the animation depth, especially in the opening shots.

Yikes. It burns my precious, it burnsssssss. Nasty elven rope animation.

That said, I'll now make an effort to finish Princess Tutu to cross an item off my list and free up some space. I'd much rather contnue K-On!! at this point, which should not be seen as a comment on Princess Tutu's quality (even if the second season isn't as good as the first), but it's much more what I would like to watch right now, based on my mood and frame of mind.

On the other hand, I'm halfway through K-On!! and I kind of don't want it to end so quickly.

You should finish up Stardust Crusaders so I can start joking about DIO's STANDO POWAH!

[majestic]

36 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

You should finish up Stardust Crusaders so I can start joking about DIO's STANDO POWAH!

I will, I will. I'm quite looking forward to seeing DIO in action, I'm expecting great things here.

edit: Just haven't really been in the mood for JoJo's, 's hard to explain properly. Well, but school has started, so I can have the TV back, that should help.

Obligatory Princess Tutu picture:

Somehow Princess Tutu does everything better than Revolutionary Girl Utena.

That's the demonic Raven, by the way, just in case the imagery is too obscure.

Spoiler

Not very surprisingly, Krähe isn't actually the Raven's actual daugther, just a child he kidnapped, and he already threatend to consume her heart because she keeps failing to bring him one. His use for her is rapidly dwindling with her failures and the fact that she already infected Mytho's heart with Raven's blood.

Everything's moving along a fairly predictable path at the moment, I wonder, the ending of the first season managed to surprise me, will this too?

It would have been more interesting if Krähe would really have been a crow born into a human body, as a contrast to Ahiru who is a duck that turned into a girl. However, both Ahiru and the story have been hard at work with Krähe's redemption arc, and that would not quite be possible if she really wasn't just a girl who mistakenly believes herself to be a crow.

I'm pretty sure Drosselmeyer plans her death, and I have a hard time believing this sentence, but I'm really hoping the story doesn't go as he wrote it, but I'm pretty sure either Ahiru/Tutu or Rue/Krähe will not survive the ending. Whether that means actual death, or a permanent change back to a duck (or more ironically, a change into an actual crow) is something else entirely. It's also still possible that Ahiru will confess her love to Mytho and just vanish from the story.

It's kind of silly, but maybe there's another deus ex machina waiting to fix everything. If nothing else, making me want one to appear and magically fix everyone in the story is a remarkable achievement, so well done show. Well done, indeed.

 

Edited September 8, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

7 minutes ago, majestic said:

I will, I will. I'm quite looking forward to seeing DIO in action, I'm expecting great things here.

I doubt you'll be disappointed, DIO's 4 episodes really do deliver the world.

[Sarex]

@KP the meanie zucchini Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn..... The theory was true for Berserk and you were right... If it ends like this it will be so fitting for this series.

Damn dude, you really hit the nail on the head. Props for the prediction.

Edited September 8, 2021 by Sarex

[majestic]

Well...

That's pretty neat as far as depictions of eldritch horrors go. Simple, yet really effective. Much like the rest of the animation in Princess Tutu.

Spoiler

Well, there we go. Princess Tutu's pendant, the very power that turns Ahiru the duck into Ahiru the girl, is the last shard of Mytho's heart. Looks like she's really bound towards going back to her true self, unless some magic saves her from that fate. Sigh.

 

 

[Bartimaeus]

"Final" episode of Nadia (23/39, 23rd was the original intended ending):

...Or, if you prefer:

...And a quick, "slight" tweak I just made for no reason:

Hm, yeah,.

3 hours ago, majestic said:

Plus some very serious uncanny valley flashes in the attempt to give the animation depth, especially in the opening shots.

Yikes. It burns my precious, it burnsssssss. Nasty elven rope animation.

I alllmost stopped watching the first couple of minutes, and then again during one particular scene towards the beginning, but I didn't. Your mileage may vary, .

Edited September 8, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

8 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

"Final" episode of Nadia (23/39, 23rd was the original intended ending):

So did any other stuff show up? Like, I don't know, giant naked depictions of mythological figures? Any Liliths, Adams, Eves or something?

8 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I alllmost stopped watching the first couple of minutes, and then again during one particular scene towards the beginning, but I didn't. Your mileage may vary, .

My milage would vary, but it can't.

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

So did any other stuff show up? Like, I don't know, giant naked depictions of mythological figures? Any Liliths, Adams, Eves or something?

Not really to the level of Evangelion, but...some random wacky spoilers ahead:

Spoiler

Had an absolutely enormous immortal whale that could stop time and communicated via telepathy, dinosaurs showed up very briefly, a 12,000-year-old space satellite that shot down what were effectively nuclear blasts on command, a melted city at the bottom of the ocean, an insane magnet that could pull ships and submarines right out of the ocean and straight up into the sky, uh...nothing too crazy, I suppose. Not like Evangelion, anyways.

Oh yeah, and this thing, whatever this is supposed to be:

Spoiler

Just kidding, I'm actually familiar with this - it's the classic Saturn Devouring His Own Son, of course.

I think there might be some insane things yet to come, though.

Biggest problem with this series is funnily the exact same one I had with Evangelion: the main character. Let's just say that Anno seems to have specific traits in mind that I do not find particularly enjoyable for his protagonists, .

Edited September 9, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

nothing too crazy, I suppose. Not like Evangelion, anyways.

That says a lot about the studio if that list is "nothing too crazy" compared to other stuff.

Sounds interesting, let's see how big of a nosedive the show really takes, but 39 episodes aren't that long. Sure sounds better than Utena.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Biggest problem with this series is funnily the exact same one I had with Evangelion: the main character. Let's just say that Anno seems to have specific traits in mind that I do not find particularly enjoyable for his protagonists, .

So the main character is Anno himself, again? Is that true for all the other characters too?

[Bartimaeus]

59 minutes ago, majestic said:

Sounds interesting, let's see how big of a nosedive the show really takes, but 39 episodes aren't that long. Sure sounds better than Utena.

Actually already watched the next two episodes already, it was...uh, a minor disaster.

Spoiler

The constant running theme with Nadia, the character, has been her preference to do nothing rather than anything she finds immoral, no matter how necessary it may be. Sound like someone you know? Yeah, except she also tries to apply this standard not onto just herself, but also literally everybody else, and it makes her behave and treat other people in an outrageously self-righteous and stupid manner at various times as you might expect in a series like this. Anyways, right off the bat, these first two episodes have been that turned up to 11 and literally berating her fellow main cast repeatedly in just a completely unreasonably harsh manner when they're in do-or-die circumstances. She would literally prefer for them to all just die rather than do anything - she's making Shinji look downright mature and reasonable in comparison. At least he wasn't applying his own standards for self-hatred onto everyone else!

It was probably around 5-7 episodes into the series that I said out-loud that Nadia's a bit...lacking in the brains department. My show-watching partner has made all sorts of excuses for her throughout the series, but these two first episodes finally broke them: you should've heard the language they directed at her throughout those two episodes, essentially culminating in a "okay, if they could like just kill off this stupid **** right now, it would make this so much more enjoyable"...to which all I had to say was "I told you so!", . I mean, it got a bit more extreme here, but it was there all along and I pointed it out very early on!

Praying that the show doesn't keep doing this, because ye' gods that was literally all those first two episodes were driven by and it was not enjoyable.

Also, as for the other characters...if so, they're not the same types of characters as from Evangelion. They may be manifestations of other parts of Anno that weren't covered by Evangelion, though. Character spoilers:

Spoiler

Probably the biggest driving force for Jean, the boy, is learning what it means to be a man and doing things on his own for himself (...but eventually, also learning that it's okay to be reliant on others, and that it's foolish to think you can do everything by yourself, especially when everyone has different areas of knowledge and talent - a running theme with the show is that a person cannot be or do things alone, they need company to be happy and accomplish things). ...So yes, I guess a bit like Anno, . Well, he feels like a more rounded and complete person than Nadia anyways, that's for sure. Marie, the little girl, is like the personification of innocent and childish whimsy, and trying to find simple and silly joy throughout all of their terrible circumstances while trying to cope with it all in a healthy manner. As far as I've been able to tell, nothing too deep is going on with her...and for that, I am grateful, because she's probably the most fun out of everyone. RIP her voice actress, who died a handful of years back from breast cancer at the too young age of 51, .

 

Edited September 9, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

Finished Princess Tutu now.

Most of the planned tragedy of the ending was averted, however...

Spoiler

Ahiru is a duck now, and that ducking sucks. For me, at least, she's okay with it. It's what she is, after all.

Krähe finished her face turn and married Mytho, Princess Tutu really did vanish in a speck of light when she gave up her pendant to save Mytho - something that was supposedly be cause by a confession of love, but that was Krähe's part. Fakir used his limited powers to make sure everyone got through it alive at least.

It's... okay. Not what I wanted, but it's okay.

The final handful of episodes were much like reading a fairy tale, a lot of narration by both Fakir and Drosselmeyer, which wasn't bad because it fit the setting and intent. A little useless tension added at the end with no explanation for one of the Jawas, but thankfully they otherwise more or less stopped being in the series until the very end.

Some unsettling scenes were there too.

Took a book out of Disney's page, huh? Wait, no, that's the other way around...

All in all, it was okay. More than that, I guess, there were parts of this, especially both season endings, that were absolutely wonderful. Still... even though there are lighthearted moments and Ahiru is a riot every now and then, it's not really a fun adventure or a silly romp. Much better paced than Utena, even if the second season occasionally feels like running on a treadmill in the middle. Pretty good music, overall, provided one likes classical music. As expected, it has a whole lot of classical compositions, from ballet music to waltzes.

Pretty much recommended if one likes fairy tales with a twang of tragedy. The anime called its ending happy, but it's not entirely.

Edited September 9, 2021 by majestic

[InsaneCommander]

Steins;Gate 0, 23 Beta and episodes 1-4:

 

So, basically this starts with an alternate version of the first series’ episode 23. The only difference is at the end.

This looks very different from the other series. Apparently no time travel, but AIs and a bunch of new characters.

Spoiler

Oh, now he is worried about sexual harassment!? He’s done a lot worse than gifting a dress.

 

[majestic]

13 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Actually already watched the next two episodes already, it was...uh, a minor disaster.

That kind of... sucks. Apparently, it'll also get really racist soon. Or has, already, I don't know when those episodes happen. I just know that from a Rebuild review I watched.

Watched two more episodes of K-On!! that I now wish I hadn't seen. Not because they were bad. They girls have summer holidays, visit a music festival, go to a public pool and a summer festival and generally have fun. Which is really depressing to see.

Where can I sign up to have two or three months of summer vacation again? Instead I'm looking forward to *best Warcraft peon voice* work, work. Which tomorrow will once again bring me joy in form of this fun little project that feels like banging my head against a wall. Never thought I'd be the one to say that, but TGIF, really.

K-On!! continues to be pretty strong. It's not as well written as Cardcaptor Sakura is, mostly because this season really is only having a faint overall storyline (more of a hint and half a theme, actually) insofar as the junior member is worrying about how life will go on without the seniors once they've graduated, but otherwise it's going from one episode to the next, which leaves a lot of room for fun stuff to happen, but sort of puts a damper on an overall development of something. For all its other flaws, that wasn't one in the first season. They always had their school festival to work towards, and obstalcles to overcome along the way.

Unlike in Sailor Moon, where most of the filler only had a cursory relation to the mostly useless overall story arc of the season (although there really are people who watched Sailor Moon for the story bits, I have no idea why people would do this, but there are those who did, and they make videos and podcasts on it, what a world we're living in...) and it still worked simply because the characters, including some of the villains - especially in Sailor Moon S, or Nephrite in the first season - were strong enough, K-On!(!)'s girls are, while fun, not quite there. There sure are times when a red line connecting the episodes would help move the characters along a bit.

That's me doing what we call jammern auf hohem Niveau (lit. "whinging on a high level"), being unreasonably picky and complaining because something that's really good could be a bit better yet.

I mean, maybe there's a magical anime* out there that combines the strength of Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura into something unimaginably perfect with none of either's flaws - of which the one's of Cardcaptor Sakura are more academic and thematic for me than actual flaws, mind - but that's probably only a theoretical possibility. Like being able to quantum tunnel through a wall. It's not impossible, just near enough to make no difference on any given timeframe that is not infinite. 

*I'd also take a TV show or western animation, as long as it doesn't look like the Power Puff Girls or Phineas and Ferb.

Edited September 9, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

10 hours ago, majestic said:

All in all, it was okay. More than that, I guess, there were parts of this, especially both season endings, that were absolutely wonderful. Still... even though there are lighthearted moments and Ahiru is a riot every now and then, it's not really a fun adventure or a silly romp. Much better paced than Utena, even if the second season occasionally feels like running on a treadmill in the middle. Pretty good music, overall, provided one likes classical music. As expected, it has a whole lot of classical compositions, from ballet music to waltzes.

Pretty much recommended if one likes fairy tales with a twang of tragedy. The anime called its ending happy, but it's not entirely.

"Not nearly as bad as Utena" is what I'm hearing, which sounds like a resounding recommendation even if it does sound a little tempered by some disappointment, .

1 hour ago, majestic said:

That kind of... sucks. Apparently, it'll also get really racist soon. Or has, already, I don't know when those episodes happen. I just know that from a Rebuild review I watched.

Yeah, I actually wasn't sure whether I should interpret the events of those two episodes as being racist (on the part of the show's creators) or not, because it's starting to kind of feel that way with the way it's all tying into Nadia's core beliefs and upbringing while insistently making her look as stupid and mean as possible. I don't know what they were thinking. I guess it'll depend on where we go from here.

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Where can I sign up to have two or three months of summer vacation again? Instead I'm looking forward to *best Warcraft peon voice* work, work. Which tomorrow will once again bring me joy in form of this fun little project that feels like banging my head against a wall. Never thought I'd be the one to say that, but TGIF, really.

Good thing I played Warcraft III for many years so I can still remember that exact line in my head perfectly, .

1 hour ago, majestic said:

That's me doing what we call jammern auf hohem Niveau (lit. "whinging on a high level"), being unreasonably picky and complaining because something that's really good could be a bit better yet.

Couldn't be me, I would never do that, especially not about literally everything, .

1 hour ago, majestic said:

*I'd also take a TV show or western animation, as long as it doesn't look like the Power Puff Girls or Phineas and Ferb.

Are kidding me? How could you put the Power Puff Girls in even the same category as Phineas and Ferb?

Powerpuff Girls is a totally classic cartoon aesthetic. Phineas and Ferb looks like it was by professional baby-killing assassins who never learned to draw good but decided to make a children's cartoon instead of continuing to kill babies anyways. How are they even remotely on the same level?!

Spoiler

These are really on the same level to you? I could understand not caring for TPPG's aesthetic, but on the same level? Monster!

 

1 hour ago, majestic said:

I mean, maybe there's a magical anime* out there that combines the strength of Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura into something unimaginably perfect with none of either's flaws - of which the one's of Cardcaptor Sakura are more academic and thematic for me than actual flaws, mind - but that's probably only a theoretical possibility. Like being able to quantum tunnel through a wall. It's not impossible, just near enough to make no difference on any given timeframe that is not infinite. 

I have like literally about 20 different magical/shoujo shows from the ~90s bookmarked because I once sent out a feeler with a Cardcaptor Sakura community about other older shows like it from around the same time period (late 80s to early 2000s) and got swamped with a number of at least promising-looking suggestions...but I'm not gonna get to them anytime soon with everything else I have to get to first. Undoubtedly, none of them will match up to Sakura (and almost definitely not even Sailor Moon), but hey, at least there's a possibility!

Edited September 10, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Utena 28 the new old guy returns.

Some guy comes in and marries Juri's unrequited love, only to end up getting a divorce. What a whirlwind romance.

So umm... how has Utena not noticed something is up with Akio? I mean, the car(s) that are delivering her duel opponents to her have "Ohtori" written on them. I guess she failed English.

Overall I think I'm enjoying this more because it stepped up the villains. I did not give a single **** about Professor Black Rose but the Incest Kings have a magnificent bastard energy to them that makes me enjoy their scenes instead of being bored.

On another note, what is probably the last chapter of Berserk has dropped and it is magnificent.

[Bartimaeus]

6 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

So umm... how has Utena not noticed something is up with Akio?

I'm pretty sure she's incapable of noticing anything at all, really.

I watched an episode of a show called Mob Psycho 100, which is about psychics and wacky demons/spirits. Eh...a bit too crazy for me - that, and it's difficult for me to ever really get into the more hyperactive and irreverent style of a show like this. But if you're into that sort of thing, it didn't seem too bad otherwise...maybe something more up KP's alley.

...

I watched about half of an episode of a show called Bloom Into You, which is something someone else recommended to me for who the heck knows why. I didn't have a good feeling about it going into it, and then it was immediately that kind of "permanently over-dramatic for no good reason" show that I instantly notice and want to turn off because that's literally never going to be any fun, and that's more or less what I did after suffering through half of that episode and then starting to skip through it to see if it ever changes. Some kind of girly romance show, but it doesn't matter because the style of it is miles away from anything I'd ever like. As far as anyone else will ever know, I never tried this show, and I never will.

...

I watched about ten seconds of an episode of a show called Death Note that someone else also recommended to me, which had the most horrendously awful opening song and animation that I turned it off immediately. Someone who's already watched this please tell me that the rest of the show is better than the intro so I can gather up the courage to at least watch the first episode.

Edited September 10, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Utena 29-31

Jury duels, Akio puts the moves on Utena, and Nanami runs away.

So Jury's part was nice, we learn that Akio has at least tried to **** every female character except for Jury and (maybe) Nanami, and Nanami is less interested in her onii-sama when she finds out they're (probably) not related. Okie dokie, 8 episodes to go.

6 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I'm pretty sure she's incapable of noticing anything at all, really.

Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious that she encountered Touga and Saionji when they were kids and that her prince is actually Akio. Given how those characters all have black silhouettes instead of features, I think there is something about the academy that causes people to forget their lives outside of it.

[majestic]

On 9/10/2021 at 2:00 AM, Bartimaeus said:

"Not nearly as bad as Utena" is what I'm hearing, which sounds like a resounding recommendation even if it does sound a little tempered by some disappointment, .

The more accurate statement would be Princess Tutu is actually good, unlike Revolutionary Girl Utena. The disappointment, in a way, stems from my expectations based on the people involved, and that it is, in the end, a fusion of the Ugly Duckling and Swan Lake, with a gender flip (in Swan Lake it's of course the princess that needs to be saved, not the prince, even though - minor spoiler - at the end there's a princess that is saved too).

Unlike Utena, it doesn't drown in thematic exploration. It's there, but in the end, it is a fairy tale. I've said that before after the Sailor Moon SuperS movie, while I like fairly tales, I've seen enough adaptations, read enough and listened to enough recordings as a child. Enough to not need Japanese reinterpretations of them. That's not something that says anything about the quality of the anime.

It has a streak of mildly boring filler episodes in the second season that I don't know why they're in there, unless the studio asked for another thirteen episodes. They're not moving the plot along, they're not making any statements, and they're not really used for character development. Or, better put, perhaps not used enough for character development. Ahiru is pretty funny at times, and she's often put in embarrassing situations that are funny, but like I said, it's not really comedic outside of that. That's okay, there's nothing funny about Swan Lake, after all.

What it isn't, just in case that hasn't become entirely clear from my previous posts, is a powerhouse of character interactions. What's there is pretty good, all things considered, but it certainly wasn't a focus in developing it. Ahiru and to a certain part Rue (Rue is exactly the sort of tragic figure that I really like, so hey... take that with a grain of salt and some bias) pretty much carry it on their own. I also rarely ever came across a voice actress that was better cast than Nanae Katō. She's perfect as Ahiru. There are voice actors I like more, of course, but she fits the character like a glove. If gloves had voices, and all.

On 9/10/2021 at 2:00 AM, Bartimaeus said:

Yeah, I actually wasn't sure whether I should interpret the events of those two episodes as being racist (on the part of the show's creators) or not, because it's starting to kind of feel that way with the way it's all tying into Nadia's core beliefs and upbringing while insistently making her look as stupid and mean as possible. I don't know what they were thinking. I guess it'll depend on where we go from here.

Nowhere, if the guy on YouTube is correct, until the ending. But we'll see. I mean, you will. On the other hand, he also thought Rebuild was pretty good, so what does he know, really.

On 9/10/2021 at 2:00 AM, Bartimaeus said:

Powerpuff Girls is a totally classic cartoon aesthetic. Phineas and Ferb looks like it was by professional baby-killing assassins who never learned to draw good but decided to make a children's cartoon instead of continuing to kill babies anyways. How are they even remotely on the same level?!

I apologize profusely for being offensive. Gomenasai! You're right that PPP looks a good deal better and had much more effort applied to it than Phineas and Ferb. Still not... not my thing, you know. I'll try to appreciate effort more in the future, really.

On 9/10/2021 at 2:00 AM, Bartimaeus said:

I have like literally about 20 different magical/shoujo shows from the ~90s bookmarked because I once sent out a feeler with a Cardcaptor Sakura community about other older shows like it from around the same time period (late 80s to early 2000s) and got swamped with a number of at least promising-looking suggestions...but I'm not gonna get to them anytime soon with everything else I have to get to first. Undoubtedly, none of them will match up to Sakura (and almost definitely not even Sailor Moon), but hey, at least there's a possibility!

That approach looks better than following the creative team behind Sailor Moon. Well, and Cardcaptor Sakura. That clearly didn't work out. Was Eriko on the list? What is on the list, actually?

On 9/10/2021 at 9:11 AM, Bartimaeus said:

Bloom Into You

An adaptation of a yuri shonen manga published in Dengeki Daioh. Yeah, pass. I got interested for a moment, I don't mind the overdramatic dramatic drama after all, and the writer also worked on K-On!. By the way, I think that also explains why Love Live! feels like a carbon copy fanservice'd up version of K-On!. Jukki Hanada worked on K-On! and Love Live!... well, and on Bloom Into You.

On 9/10/2021 at 9:11 AM, Bartimaeus said:

I watched about ten seconds of an episode of a show called Death Note that someone else also recommended to me, which had the most horrendously awful opening song and animation that I turned it off immediately. Someone who's already watched this please tell me that the rest of the show is better than the intro so I can gather up the courage to at least watch the first episode.

I almost watched Death Note once, but then I noticed it would be gone from Netflix before I could finish it, and didn't start. I watched the intro on YouTube and it looks like an era typical Madhouse show (and look at that, it really is animated by Madhouse). Really not sure based on what exactly you're getting these recommendations, that doesn't read at all like something that would be interesting to you. Mystery, supernatural thriller, shonen. Yeah... uhm...

 

 

Edited September 11, 2021 by majestic

[majestic]

6 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious that she encountered Touga and Saionji when they were kids and that her prince is actually Akio. Given how those characters all have black silhouettes instead of features, I think there is something about the academy that causes people to forget their lives outside of it.

Yes on the first few accounts, kind of on the last one. Memory is a fickle thing in the academy. People disappear without anyone noticing or remembering, after all. They do remember some of their lives before coming there, though. Utena came because of her memory of the prince. Touga knows he's adopted, along with Nanami, and just refuses to tell her. Miki and Kozue have their family life they remember. Nanami remembers drowning a kitten.

All very specific events, though, nothing much about the rest of their lives. Curious. Touga will drop a pretty big hint soon, if he hasn't already.

Jury's Akio Ohtori arc duel is probably one of the highlights of the entire show, and a pretty important episode as well, in hindisight...  

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Utena 32 Nanami gets slapped

Lmao, this is all karma for the cat.

[Bartimaeus]

7 hours ago, majestic said:

I almost watched Death Note once, but then I noticed it would be gone from Netflix before I could finish it, and didn't start. I watched the intro on YouTube and it looks like an era typical Madhouse show (and look at that, it really is animated by Madhouse). Really not sure based on what exactly you're getting these recommendations, that doesn't read at all like something that would be interesting to you. Mystery, supernatural thriller, shonen. Yeah... uhm...

Yes, exactly why I was trying it to get it out of the way as soon as possible (and have similarly eliminated a handful of other shows that were clearly bad fits for me in a series of mass "let's try this out for like ten minute"s). The way I was told that it wasn't like normal shonen and that it doesn't stay within its boundaries like so many other shows, so I should be okay. And speaking of...

Man, what the heck is it with shonen protagonists being so incredibly unlikable, unrelatable, and just...so shonen? Managed to finish the first episode, and it's difficult to imagine a more self-conceited, power-hungry piece of megalomaniac garbage than this main character. Insists that he's the best student in all of Japan, says he wants everyone to know that it's him killing people, that he wants to become God, that everyone besides him sucks anyways, that he's the one that is fit to pass judgement (life or death) on others...and that he's doing it all because he's bored, and no, he can't understand what the big scary demon means when he says that he's one messed up human. The show just started and you've already become a complete psychopath with the power you've had for like literally just a day? What? ...I really hate the shonen "range" of protagonists. It's almost always either just being the biggest moron in the room at all times or unlikably obsessed/focused on strength/power (a major villain trait, duh...but in shonen it's always presented as completely normal!), and it seems like almost every shonen protagonist is always either one or both of those two. Don't get it. Ranma 1/2's first season was like the one exception to this rule, where I actually sympathized with Ranma and thought he was being treated pretty unfairly on top of acting pretty sensibly most of the time (...it probably helped that the first season was more or less focused on mainly character stuff and him trying to come to grips with his condition and how he fits into other people's lives as a result).

7 hours ago, majestic said:

What it isn't, just in case that hasn't become entirely clear from my previous posts, is a powerhouse of character interactions. What's there is pretty good, all things considered, but it certainly wasn't a focus in developing it. Ahiru and to a certain part Rue (Rue is exactly the sort of tragic figure that I really like, so hey... take that with a grain of salt and some bias) pretty much carry it on their own. I also rarely ever came across a voice actress that was better cast than Nanae Katō. She's perfect as Ahiru. There are voice actors I like more, of course, but she fits the character like a glove. If gloves had voices, and all.

Which would be why you've been watching K-On to get your fix instead!

7 hours ago, majestic said:

Was Eriko on the list? What is on the list, actually?

No, I haven't tried anything from that list I compiled yet. Eriko and Miyu (and a few others I tried like Flower Witch Mary Bell...which was actually not bad at all but if you think Sakura is aimed at too young of an age group, Flower Witch Mary Bell is like literally for five year olds and nobody older, so I abandoned it after a couple of episodes, ) were my own discoveries from doing a cursory search of shoujo shows released from between like 1980-1999.

I make no guarantees of their quality or anything of the sort, they're simply shows that I have at least a passing interest in investigating more. Shoujo shows that are currently on THE LIST (in mostly romanji because that's what they're listed as in my bookmarks and I don't feel like finding each of their individual English names even though romanji is utterly ridiculous if you actually have proper English translations): Kaitou Saint Tail, Mahou Kishi Rayearth, Tenkuu no Escaflowne, Ojamajo Doremi, Gokinjo Monogatari, Kodomo no Omocha, Hime-chan no Ribbon, Marmalade Boy, Fruits Basket, Full Moon no Sagashite(?), Onii-sama E, Rose of Versailles, Haikara-san ga Tooru, Mahou no Tenshi Creamy Mami (...probably the same case as Flower Witch Mary Bell for this one in regards to the target demographics, though, but supposedly it was influential).

A few others that actual human beings also recommended to me but which looked immediately not up my alley even at the quickest of glances were Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, Tokyo Mew Mew (catgirls...), Mermaid Melody, Daa! Daa! Daa!, Onegai My Melody, and Wedding Peach. I'm not likely to ever even try any of those, .

(e): Fixed one of the titles that was needlessly censored, .

7 hours ago, majestic said:

I apologize profusely for being offensive. Gomenasai! You're right that PPP looks a good deal better and had much more effort applied to it than Phineas and Ferb. Still not... not my thing, you know. I'll try to appreciate effort more in the future, really.

Apology...mostly accepted, . You could so much worse stylistically than The Powerpuff Girls! I may be slightly biased as a result of watching it as a kid...

 

Edited September 11, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

17 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Man, what the heck is it with shonen protagonists being so incredibly unlikable, unrelatable, and just...so shonen?

I think Death Note is kinda dumb and that Kira is probably among the worst edgy protagonists.

[Tel Aviv]

Late to the party, but Dorohedoro is wonderful. For such a violent anime, it's so good natured and charming. All the characters are genuinely endearing - even Jonson - and I'm really enjoying the central mystery (what the hell happened to Kaiman?). Great art style too.

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

I think Death Note is kinda dumb and that Kira is probably among the worst edgy protagonists.

I said the same things in here as I did to the person that recommended it to me and they were like:

1. "He was killing just bad guys so I actually didn't have a problem and agreed with him."

I guess the maniacal rant at the end of the first episode where he laid out all his completely awful character motivations and clearly spelled himself out as a villain didn't matter? As if indiscriminately killing piles of people based off of instant judgements wasn't bad enough, he literally said all of the things I said that he did in my previous post in just like the last 5 minutes of the episode - he hates everyone and wants to be god! Like, what?

2. "The story's not really about just him so it's not really that big of a deal anyways."

The protagonist of the show doesn't matter, guys. It's perfectly okay and totally ignorable if your protagonist has the disposition of Donald Trump and you already want him to die within the first episode, .

44 minutes ago, Tel Aviv said:

Late to the party, but Dorohedoro is wonderful. For such a violent anime, it's so good natured and charming. All the characters are genuinely endearing - even Jonson - and I'm really enjoying the central mystery (what the hell happened to Kaiman?). Great art style too.

I think KP really likes and has recommended that show?

Edited September 11, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I guess the maniacal rant at the end of the first episode where he laid out all his completely awful character motivations and clearly spelled himself out as a villain didn't matter? As if indiscriminately killing piles of people based of instant judgements wasn't bad enough, he literally said all of the things I said that he did in my previous post in just like the last 5 minutes of the episode - he hates everyone and wants to be god! Like, what?

I watched the whole show. Kira is a power hungry freak that goes beyond just killing bad people very early on. Pretty much an irredeemable bastard.

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

The protagonist of the show doesn't matter, guys. It's perfectly okay and totally ignorable if your protagonist has the disposition of Donald Trump and you already want him to die within the first episode, .

Basically it ends up being a battle of wits between two socially maladjusted teenagers, one of whom has an imaginary friend. You probably won't like anyone and won't like the plot, so just drop it. 

 

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I think KP really likes and has recommended that show?

Just liked. If it wasn't cgi it'd be really good, but too much uncanny valley.

Speaking of uncanny.....

Utena 33 the return of the clip show.

Utena gets Akio'd. More importantly the shadow girls have a radio show.

Edit: Utena 34-39 The End of Utena (and the World).

Well that was not as weird as I thought, but still very much out there. Maybe I'll get around to writing something longer, but right now my opinion is that it is ok. Parts of it are good, but the middle arc drags it down way too much.

Next is bubbles up like soda pop when I feel like watching a movie, then rewatching JoJo to get ready for Stone Ocean dropping in December.

Edited September 11, 2021 by KP the meanie zucchini