Anime - Kono Dio Da!

[Bartimaeus]

4 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

YOU WILL SUFFER. YOU WILL ALL SUFFER. 

Yeah, Irenicus can just go ahead and have my soul.

[Sarex]

6 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

YOU WILL SUFFER. YOU WILL ALL SUFFER. 

Where can I watch this?

[majestic]

8 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

With Pathfinder 1e you've got some builds that will absolutely wreck the balance with a handful of levels (like vivisectionist/Scaled fist/paladin/sword saint) but be an absolutely insane concept and others that will be meh to very good but flavorful. Owlcat balanced the game around the former and built companions like the latter. And it shows, like you could drop Cthullu (one of the CR 30 monsters in PnP) into CRPG WotR and he would get stomped by a mid game encounter.

Eh, he'd probably die to a random Ferocious Smilodon somewhere.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

7 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Yeah, Irenicus can just go ahead and have my soul.

Consider that his phantasmal killer.

5 hours ago, Sarex said:

Where can I watch this?

In hell.

4 hours ago, majestic said:

Eh, he'd probably die to a random Ferocious Smilodon somewhere.

That pounce shouldn't be underestimated.

Edited September 28, 2021 by KP the meanie zucchini

[InsaneCommander]

How long until the moderators complain about Pathfinder WotR and Anime references crossing over threads?

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

3 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

How long until the moderators complain about Pathfinder WotR and Anime references crossing over threads?

Never.

[Sarex]

1 hour ago, InsaneCommander said:

How long until the moderators complain about Pathfinder WotR and Anime references crossing over threads?

You assume they read half of what is written here.

[Bartimaeus]

I think Amentep skims through this thread, but also I don't think he cares what people post as long as what's posted doesn't go strongly against the spirit of the rules.

Edited September 28, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

2 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

How long until the moderators complain about Pathfinder WotR and Anime references crossing over threads?

They didn't complain about three pages of autobiographical posts as long as they were mixed with Sailor Moon postings, so eh...

2 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I think Amentep skims through this thread, but also I don't think he cares what people post as long as what's posted doesn't go strongly against the spirit of the rules.

Like any good moderator should. I always hated it when mods locked threads or warned people for going off topic, there's a reason why you can split and merge threads. It's called doing your job.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

6 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I think Amentep skims through this thread, but also I don't think he cares what people post as long as what's posted doesn't go strongly against the spirit of the rules.

Well he reads enough to reference JoJo memes in the titles.

[majestic]

Didn't get any chance to watch yesterday.

I might be able to finish Love Live! except for the movie tonight though. That depends on how the last two episodes are, if the second to last one is terrible I'll probably do something else afterwards.

Anyway, season two, episode eleven has this gem:

Just in case that's not obvious, that's Nicocchi running into Nozomi's ample bosom during  their cardio training.

It's kind of funny (the "what the hell is wrong with you" kind of funny) that Honoka and Hanayo were the ones on a diet a couple of episodes back while nobody once complained about the weight and body type of Nozomi the boob grabber girl*. She's the only one of them not drawn with nigh-perfect body proportions in an attempt to appeal to watchers who like their girls more buxom. That I can say this about the anime is actually the most damning thing of it all, isn't it?

The animation, yeah, that's not good, the music ranges from barely tolerable to downright terrible, but this... this is what makes this really bad. Plus the boob grabbing assaults. On the bright side,  nobody would ever tell Nozomi to exercise more and eat less for fear of being assaulted to hell and back. That counts for, uhm, something. Not sure what though.

Back to that scene. It ruins an episode where they talk about the future of µ's after the seniors graduate. Otherwise the episode was fine. There's no singing, and no dancing, they all decide to have a day of fun and are off the the amusement park, an arcade and a zoo. Even though there's too many characters, each of them picks something they want to do with the others, and everything is kind of in character, even though outside of the core group and Nozomi/Ericchi the characterization is a little bare-bones.

The way these past few episodes since the weight loss and KISS nonsense went, if you'd knock the idol thing down a notch to something less outrageous, remove the fanservice and the borderline sexual assault nonsense and focus a little more on character stuff over music or practice for live performances you'd actually get a fine series out of it. But then it would no longer be Love Live! but K-On!...

*Please don't misunderstand, I don't care about Nozomi's body type, really. She'd be a genuinely nice character if it weren't for her fondling. I just feel like further highlighting how ridiculous that entire episode really was, and how all of the setup is really just to look at whatever animated girls you like. Instead of a token minority, she's the token buxom big breast girl. Just like Rin's entire spiel is to say "nyan" (meow) after every other sentence and make cat-like faces.

Edited September 29, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Steins;Gate 5 and 6

Well now, things are getting really weird but it's picking up nicely. Too-too-roo.

[majestic]

Well, that's it for Love Live!, at least the original. The amount of spin-off series this anime has actually went up by one since I started to watch, and the spin-off before that is set to receive another season, apparently. 

There's not much to say than what I've said before. Ultimately, the final episode of the second season (and first series) didn't do what series endings do when I enjoyed a show: There's no sense of loss, no sadness, nothing. I'm not going to miss watching Love Live!, but that was pretty much a given right from the start. I just started to watch this because the name came up and it looked terrible, because... yeah, who knows at this point why I did that. As a dare?

Much to the show's detriment, it did not turn out to be wholly terrible. It has decent moments strewn in between, and sometimes it was actually good enough to make me laugh and feel something for the characters, and while that sounds like praise, it's not, embedded in the otherwise - outrageous at times - mediocrity of the rest, sprinkled with way too much fanservice and yes, let's mention it one last time, Nozomi assaulting the other girls.

As such, all the good moments do for me is not make me appreciate it more, but less. They're an infrequent reminder that you could be watching something better. They're an infrequent reminder that the series could be something a lot better, and lastly, these infrequent moments all too frequently feel like they were taken from better shows. That is something I did not realize before watching K-On!, but it's painfully obvious now.

I've said that before, something being utterly terrible is better than being average, and on the average, averaged out over everything, so as to say, on the averge, Love Live! is perfectly forgettable with a helping of bad character design meant to entice boys, young men and probably old creeps, and music made to please the average music taste of the average j-pop listener who likes average j-pop. I'm sure the other spin-offs are similar. As bad as Sailor Moon Crystal is, at least it's really god damned awful. We had a lot to talk about and make fun of, and I'm sure I'll never forget watching it. This here? Not so much.

It bears repeating: I do not understand its popularity. Other films or TV shows that are hugely popular that I don't care for, at least I can understand on some level. Say, like NCIS, or Friends, Seinfeld and a whole bunch of romantic films or comedies. Not so much here: There's better fanservice in other animes, there's better characterization and character fun in other animes, and there's better music in other animes. The sum of its parts is also not greater than the whole.

Perhaps there's an answer to be found in the spin-off series. I'm sure I'll eventually wind up watching them, but for now there's the movie left, and other things to finish.

Final verdict: Watch K-On! instead for something much better overall. Watch some 80ies schlock for better fanservice with scantly clad women. Watch Sailor Moon for a much better mixture of comedy and character drama. Really. There's nothing in this that's remarkable. Hell, Magic User's Club is more entertaining, and I've only seen two episodes of the OVA so far.

 

Edited September 29, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

Nadia, episode 31. It was pretty good and feels the most like the original show - characters felt like they made sense, they were properly motivated, the stuff that happened felt like it mattered, animation was good again. So a good continuation for episode 30 which had actually finally been a decent episode.

...Okay, with that said, episodes 32 and 33 were top-tier disasters of the highest sort. I can't even...holy crap. SuperS is probably the closest thing to what this feels like, but somehow it feels even worse than that, because for as much as SuperS made me discontent with the show and sometimes even mad at even my favorite characters (like that singing episode where Minako was a huge dink to Makoto), never did I want the characters to just die. I thought those other six episodes were bad, but this was truly next-level awful. It was bad enough I actually left in the middle of the episode to go get some headphones so I could play some music over the episode and just read the subtitles only. Worst thing is, what happens in these episodes is...it's really difficult to encapsulate why it feels so wrong and awful. It's like none of the characters are themselves but instead were replaced by some really strange and flanderized caricatures that feels like some really gosh-awful fanfiction, combined with episode plots that are totally and utterly irrelevant to and disconnected from anything and everything, bad animation that would be forgivable if it was just a scene or two but just keeps up the entire episode. And why is everyone always constantly yelling at each other in these episodes? Filler episodes have never been a problem with me in shows, often just the contrary, but the filler episodes in the second half of this show have felt like they occur in an entirely different universe from the non-filler episodes.

Spoiler

If it tells you anything, even my show partner, who is many times more forgiving on...well, most everything than I am, said it was an absolute embarrassment and they're officially ready for the show to be over. Six more episodes...

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

33 minutes ago, majestic said:

Final verdict: Watch K-On! instead for something much better overall. Watch some 80ies schlock for better fanservice with scantly clad women. Watch Sailor Moon for a much better mixture of comedy and character drama. Really. There's nothing in this that's remarkable. Hell, Magic User's Club is more entertaining, and I've only seen two episodes of the OVA so far.

Well I wasn't even on the fence before, so I can say that I won't touch Love Live! or spin-offs.

Kakyonin and D'Arby the Younger playing F-Mega.

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

yeah, who knows at this point why I did that. As a dare?

Yes, it was the example of "embarrassing shows for embarrassing people" that I could come up with off the top of my head. Now, I didn't really know too much about it at the time, but my prognostication for determining what shows are about had a pretty good feeling, and I think that's mostly but not entirely borne out. If nothing else, something a little more positive came out of it in K-On, .

1 hour ago, majestic said:

I've said that before, something being utterly terrible is better than being average, and on the average, averaged out over everything, so as to say, on the averge

Though I think it really depends on how you get to "average". Love Live! seems to be a mix of "hey, some actually genuinely good parts...aaaaand some actually genuinely bad parts, but mostly just kind of average/mediocre". There are other shows that are very good for the most part but do a few certain important things so horribly wrong that it brings the entire show down to sort of just an average "meh" by souring you on the whole thing...and then there are other shows that are below that but still not exactly bad but do a few certain things just right that make you like them more than you perhaps should but still are kind of average on the whole. Lots of different ways to get to an average score, and being consistently mediocre is probably the worst thing you can do because you can't tell if it's ever going to get better while you're watching it but it's not bad enough you necessarily want to pre-emptively drop it.

As for the show as a whole...what a shame, but not really, because I never wanted to see their horrifying faces anyways and this just 100% confirms I won't if you can't even come up with a small recommendation. Seriously, their faces are frightening, .

[majestic]

12 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

SuperS is probably the closest thing to what this feels like

What a wonderful endorsement. 

13 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Worst thing is, what happens in these episodes is...it's really difficult to encapsulate why it feels so wrong and awful. It's like none of the characters are themselves but instead were replaced by some really strange and flanderized caricatures that feels like some really gosh-awful fanfiction, combined with episode plots that are totally and utterly irrelevant to and disconnected from anything and everything, bad animation that would be forgivable if it was just a scene or two but just keeps up the entire episode.

You know, you already said that when you said it was like SuperS.  

12 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Yes, it was the example of "embarrassing shows for embarrassing people" that I could come up with off the top of my head. Now, I didn't really know too much about it at the time, but my prognostication for determining what shows are about had a pretty good feeling, and I think that's mostly but not entirely borne out. If nothing else, something a little more positive came out of it in K-On, .

To be honest, Love Live! isn't nearly as embarrassing as I thought it would be. Which is a "positive" surprise I guess, but lessend how bad it is, and made it worse.  It's really hard to explain, but everything about his is neither here nor there. 

By the way, should your alter ego really give K-On! a try, I youtubed some scenes of the early episodes and it's really... wow, the difference to the end of the first season and the second season is immense. 

12 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Though I think it really depends on how you get to "average". Love Live! seems to be a mix of "hey, some actually genuinely good parts...aaaaand some actually genuinely bad parts, but mostly just kind of average/mediocre".

Yes, that's pretty much it. The bad parts are either jokes that don't work or whenever the show thinks it's sexy. Which just doesn't work. It wouldn't work for me either way because I don't really care about that, however even if I did, the looks of the characters aren't good enough to be interesting in any way. There's how the show looks and sounds, and that's just there to seal the deal. Considering all the downsides, the upsides must be pretty good at times to average it out. Huh. 

Well, I'm probably overrating it because some of the character interactions reminded me of much better animes. 

12 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

There are other shows that are very good for the most part but do a few certain important things so horribly wrong that it brings the entire show down to sort of just an average "meh" by souring you on the whole thing...

Many classic bad endings among those here. What comes to mind immediately is the new Devilman, although you generally didn't like it.  

Outside of anime, well... Mass Effect 3?  

12 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

and then there are other shows that are below that but still not exactly bad but do a few certain things just right that make you like them more than you perhaps should but still are kind of average on the whole.

That would be X for me. Although if my subjective enjoyment is higher than the average it actually is, then, well, I'd probably rate it higher. For myself, at least. 

13 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

and being consistently mediocre is probably the worst thing you can do because you can't tell if it's ever going to get better while you're watching it but it's not bad enough you necessarily want to pre-emptively drop it.

...and that's Lady Asuka. There's nothing wrong with it. Yep. Nothing really good either. 

13 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

As for the show as a whole...what a shame, but not really, because I never wanted to see their horrifying faces anyways and this just 100% confirms I won't if you can't even come up with a small recommendation. Seriously, their faces are frightening, .

Yeah, we could make an entire huge post about how the show looks. Sometimes Honoka looks like a baby. I mean, one of these stylized babies that you'd find in emojis. Any closeups are horrible. Then there's the CGI.  <-- Honoka, at times.

When I watched K-On! I complained about the looks of the character, but the animation is leaps and bounds ahead of what Love Live! is. 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Steins;Gate 7 and 8.

It got even weirder, and for some reason they ripped the door off the microwave. No more gel-bananas or chicken tenders for Mayushii.

[InsaneCommander]

22 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Steins;Gate 5 and 6

Well now, things are getting really weird but it's picking up nicely. Too-too-roo.

Great. Now I can't find the tuturu gif. So I'll leave you all with this:

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

24 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

Great. Now I can't find the tuturu gif. So I'll leave you all with this:

 

I went looking for an image of Daru asking Mayushii to repeat that, but all I could find was a tiny image.

[majestic]

The Love Live! movie begins with a dazzling display of a very young Honoka running towards an equally young (well, duh) Kotori through a golden park with incredibly uncanny CGI camera movement and motion sickness inducing attempts to create depth in the shot. CGI depth of field effects look fake, but CGI moving backgrounds with different speeds relative to each other without blurring effect is even worse.

One terrible closeup of Honoka later, you kind of realize that these childhood flashbacks aren't so bad. The character designs of the girls work better as little children.

Anyway, I hope the rest doesn't turn out to be such a CGI fest. I'm also very unlikely to finish the film now, it's close to midnight. Eh.

[InsaneCommander]

7 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

I went looking for an image of Daru asking Mayushii to repeat that, but all I could find was a tiny image.

You mean this one?

 

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

14 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

You mean this one?

 

 

No, but that one makes it even more indecent!

[InsaneCommander]

9 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

No, but that one makes it even more indecent!

Now we can flood this thread with Steins;Gate gifs and  @majestic and @Bartimaeuswill have no other choice but to watch it.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

5 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

Now we can flood this thread with Steins;Gate gifs and  @majestic and @Bartimaeuswill have no other choice but to watch it.