Anime - Kono Dio Da!

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

43 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

All the times they called Christina a tsundere were hilarious.

And when they catch her posting in @channel

40 minutes ago, majestic said:

Wha...t. Wat? Nah.

 

41 minutes ago, majestic said:

@Bartimaeus' evil alter ego might like K-On! assuming the first few episodes don't scare him off, but that's just going to be a statistical outlier, not a trend.

They'll feel a kinship towards the other mad scientist.

41 minutes ago, majestic said:

Also... what? Since when did Bruno get a last name? Did I miss something?

About an hour ago.

42 minutes ago, majestic said:

Skoop's been pretty annoying lately though.

More than usual?

[majestic]

20 mintus left on the Love Live! movie. I never needed as long as this to get through a 90 minute film. Seriously.

Ever since the flight back from New York there's been a dramatic increase in lesbian subtext, something that was understated and by far and large only concerned Nozomi and Eri in the regular show. Things like Honoka leaning meaningfully over Kotori and talking about the "memories" made in New York while looking out of the airplane's window. Now one of the A-RISE girls (Anju) talks to Kotori about having high-maintenance partners.

Then Tsubasa (left) is... composing a song with Maki. Yes. That's... composing. I don't really have the energy to make more pictures, but it ends with Maki blushing. I guess the song's really emotional, eh?

Just in case it's not obvious from the picture, they're composing a new song here. "TsubaMaki" has an entry on the shipping wiki. Please, for the love of god, make it end. Please.

Eh, can we go back to Nozomi fondling boobs now? Please? Anything, really. Anything is better than this, constantly interrupted by horrenduous musical interludes.

edit:

Movie just copied the "mama" running gag from K-On!. In K-On!, Mio always calls her mother mama, which usually is limited to very little children. Whenever Mio talks about her mother, everyone else is kind of amused by her saying mama. Maki says mama, the others are like "mama?". Yeah, how original.

Really, ugh. 17 minutes left.

edit 2:

Honoka told everyone that Muse will disband after their final show. Next scene the girls talk about that they're glad they "came out" and never expected Honoka to "come out like that" - now that might just be the "humor" of the translator, but really, go to hell film.

edit 3:

It's over! OVER! *dances*

Edited October 3, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

7 hours ago, majestic said:

It's over! OVER! *dances*

 

[majestic]

Today's fun YouTube suggestion would probably also be appropriate for the music thread, because it's a music video. A new song by Beast in Black, a metal/80ies synth pop group that redefines what cheesy music is (can I have heavy metal eurodance please, this is pretty close but not quite it). However, it's not the music this is about, but look for yourself:

Scantly clad wimmins aside, anyone else ready for pixel art anime?

Edited October 3, 2021 by majestic

[Sarex]

7 minutes ago, majestic said:

Scantly clad wimmins aside, anyone else ready for pixel art anime?

Not really?

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

anyone else ready for pixel art anime?

Absolutely: I've seen a lot of good-looking anime pixel art styles over the years between a number of games and random artists, but I'm struggling to think of something off the top of my head. I don't think I'd place the style in that particular video too highly, but it's not bad either. Probably won't ever happen for a real show, though, if I had to guess.

(e): I like a lot of VA-11 HALL-A's style:

Edited October 3, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

29 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Absolutely: I've seen a lot of good-looking anime pixel art styles over the years between a number of games and random artists, but I'm struggling to think of something off the top of my head. I don't think I'd place the style in that particular video too highly, but it's not bad either.

The video just made me think of applying it to something animated that isn't interactive. I've played pixel art games, if course, but the idea of using a style like that for a music video was something novel for me. The animation and art style in the video could be better (not to mention the fanservice), but what else would you expect from Beast in Black. Heh.

31 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Probably won't ever happen for a real show, though, if I had to guess.

A pity, I'd take it over the CGI abominations that are all too common any day.

37 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

(e): I like a lot of VA-11 HALL-A's style:

I think I actually have that game, I just didn't get around to playing it yet. It sure looks nice.

Speaking of CGI abominations, that was one of the worst things about the Love Live! movie, they wasted their budget not on improved character animation, but on CGI making the all too frequent musical numbers sparkle with vomit-inducing uncanny computer generated visual effects, and as a result the animation as a whole turned out to be incredibly choppy. Sometimes the dancing looked like it was strung together key frames with no in-betweens.

In-universe, this is what they flew to New York for. Seriously. That's... that is all the came up with. In K-On!, the girls went on a graduation trip. That's something I did, too. Not to London, but to Bodrum in Turkey.

It also focused way too much on what it had as a story. The best part was the girls in New York, but that was really short and ended with a terrible sequence that was their concert - the clip they went to shoot in New York because why not shoot it back home for a lot less money. Never mind. It even reduced the amount of fanservice by only focussing a bit on Eri's behind during the running sequence, and a meeting between A-RISE and Honoka in A-RISE's luxury limousine, but then just liberally sprinkled the silly subtext and flirting scenes in there for no reason other than creepy obsessed shippers fantasizing about hot girl on girl action, and to increase body pillow sales. I'm sure there are Love Live! body pillows.

Or at least that's what I imagine subtext like this is for in a film like that. It's ridiculous that this was handled a lot better in the show proper, where it really was Nozomi and Eri (well, technically Eli, but Eri looks a lot better, and a lot less stupid than "Eli", and she's always called Eri in the show anyway). There are no canon relationships in this but... wait, why am I even still takling about this. Right, because this film was one of the most unpleasant watching experiences I've had, and it makes the show look good in retrospect (not the actual looks, but the general "quality" of everything relative to the film).

I've also watched two more episode of Steins;Gate. I have to keep pausing to read the subtitles. Not because they're too fast or anything, but because they're excessively hard to read over the bright whites in the anime on Netflix and the show just keeps name dropping ten thousand things per minute and I can't shake the feeling that it's mostly going to be important later, and I can't for the life of me remember any of the character names besides Okarin, and that's not even his real name. Tuturu!

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

3 hours ago, majestic said:

Scantly clad wimmins aside, anyone else ready for pixel art anime?

No.

22 minutes ago, majestic said:

I've also watched two more episode of Steins;Gate. I have to keep pausing to read the subtitles. Not because they're too fast or anything, but because they're excessively hard to read over the bright whites in the anime on Netflix and the show just keeps name dropping ten thousand things per minute and I can't shake the feeling that it's mostly going to be important later, and I can't for the life of me remember any of the character names besides Okarin, and that's not even his real name. Tuturu!

Okarin (well Okabe) is his real name, Hououin Kyouma is a pseudonym.

[Bartimaeus]

47 minutes ago, majestic said:

as a result the animation as a whole turned out to be incredibly choppy

1. Looks gosh-awful, as per usual.
2. That choppiness is really bad, especially when so much of it is CGI.

47 minutes ago, majestic said:

A pity, I'd take it over the CGI abominations that are all too common any day.

Hell yeah...but doesn't really seem like something a show, much less shows, would ever go for. I also wonder how expensive it would be to produce a full-length pixel-art show compared to CGI.

47 minutes ago, majestic said:

I think I actually have that game, I just didn't get around to playing it yet. It sure looks nice.

It looks pretty good, though some of the characters and their designs are a little out there. As for the gameplay, it's pretty much just a pleasant, atmospheric story game, .

47 minutes ago, majestic said:

Right, because this film was one of the most unpleasant watching experiences I've had, and it makes the show look good in retrospect (not the actual looks, but the general "quality" of everything relative to the film).

I suppose if there was something I'd hate more than the Nadia filler, it'd probably be something like the worst parts of Love Live...

Edited October 3, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

9 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Okarin (well Okabe) is his real name, Hououin Kyouma is a pseudonym.

Ah, okay, then it's the other way around.

Just watched episode four, and here's a quick prediction before I'm off to bed:

Spoiler

Suzuha is John Titor. The real John Titor claimed to be a soldier, and she just... spent an entire dialogue calling herself a soldier.

 

[majestic]

13 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I suppose if there was something I'd hate more than the Nadia filler, it'd probably be something like the worst parts of Love Live...

Well, perhaps after your evil alter ego tried K-On! you could just jump right in and enjoy Love Live! for the ten or seconds it takes to turn it off and delete everything. Heh.

I'll most likely focus on Steins;Gate now, with the occasional detour to finish Stardust Crusaders.

13 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

It looks pretty good, though some of the characters and their designs are a little out there. As for the gameplay, it's pretty much just a pleasant, atmospheric story game, .

Well, I'll find the time... eventually. I hope.

13 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Hell yeah...but doesn't really seem like something a show, much less shows, would ever go for. I also wonder how expensive it would be to produce a full-length pixel-art show compared to CGI.

That I have no idea. I don't even know what modern CGI animation costs compared to regular 2D animation, or the most commonly employed hybrid models (i.e. digital coloring of hand drawn outlines). I wonder sometimes, because CGI-heavy shows and films have like ten shousand people in the credits. Is it really that much cheaper, or is exploitable labour just much more readily found?

edit: That NY scene is one of the better ones, you should see the final one the closed the movie with. Or better, don't... only madness and terror that way lies.

Edited October 4, 2021 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

21 minutes ago, majestic said:

I wonder sometimes, because CGI-heavy shows and films have like ten shousand people in the credits. Is it really that much cheaper, or is exploitable labour just much more readily found?

I think I said more or less exactly this when I was contemplating The End of Evangelion and how incredibly quickly it was produced vs. the insanity that was Rebuild... I think one thing Sarex(?) said was that CGI tends to give way more creative control over exactly what appears on screen as opposed to hand-drawn stuff where...you know, a lot of what you get is what you get and you have to make do with it, and it's not easy to make adjustments after the fact as opposed to George Lucas/Hideaki Anno-ing it up however you please even years after the fact. But yeah, I would've loved to have seen how expensive it was to make the Rebuild movies. I suppose that particular factor must appeal a lot to many of these hack fraud directors, .

Edited October 4, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Ah, okay, then it's the other way around.

It depends on the world line.

1 hour ago, majestic said:

I'll most likely focus on Steins;Gate now, with the occasional detour to finish Stardust Crusaders.

When you get to the end of Stardust Crusaders , I'd recommend watching the last four episodes all at once if possible.

1 hour ago, majestic said:

I wonder sometimes, because CGI-heavy shows and films have like ten shousand people in the credits. Is it really that much cheaper, or is exploitable labour just much more readily found?

I can't speak for animation (but I know that animators are poorly compensated and overworked almost everywhere), but for Hollywood I've heard it explained that the shift towards cgi instead of practical effects or makeup was driven in part to get around union labor and outsource to what is close to a sweatshop.

[Bartimaeus]

In a fit of insomnia, I finally finished Legendary Idol Eriko by binge-watching the rest of it. The main story and everything motivating the series kind of concluded episode 40, which left about ten extra episodes, which is precisely where I stopped watching like...a month-plus or so ago - whatever was the last time I talked about Eriko. I just couldn't find the motivation to watch anymore when it seemed like the rest would be a little more on the "silly" and "nonsense" side. However, I was pleasantly surprised a couple of episodes in when the show suddenly introduced a small new arc that was more low-key and simple about Eriko simply trying to connect not with just her closest friends and family in light of growing as a person over the course of the show, but also with classmates she'd never really gotten to know because of her way too busy life. It was nice to have something a little less serious and crazy while still feeling like a worthwhile story to end the series. Eriko even manages to make frenemies with a super tsundere* girl that's hated her guts since the moment she appeared in the show like 30 episodes earlier! Happy times!

*Tsundere might be the wrong word to use here, because I don't THINK she has a crush on Eriko, although it was a little odd because she took some time to watch her shows and listen to her songs and would deliberately create situations that would force them to interact with each other, so who knows, maybe it is accurate, but if so, mild subtext at best.

...And it's nice to have a couple of shows out of the way - plus, the NGE re-watch is almost finished, too, . The feeling of having a much greater appreciation for (and understanding of) NGE on a second watch has only continued, and, well, let's just say it's a very different experience from the first watch, and it definitely feels to have been worth the time. Six episodes left, guess I'll figure out how I really feel about the original ending soon...

8 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

I can't speak for animation (but I know that animators are poorly compensated and overworked almost everywhere), but for Hollywood I've heard it explained that the shift towards cgi instead of practical effects or makeup was driven in part to get around union labor and outsource to what is close to a sweatshop.

Oh, that makes sense too, especially because any CGI work you outsource should be relatively easily modifiable, whereas with traditional methods...well, yeah, either it's going to look horridly out of place or you'll have to re-draw it.

Edited October 4, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

8 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I think I said more or less exactly this when I was contemplating The End of Evangelion and how incredibly quickly it was produced vs. the insanity that was Rebuild... I think one thing Sarex(?) said was that CGI tends to give way more creative control over exactly what appears on screen as opposed to hand-drawn stuff where...you know, a lot of what you get is what you get and you have to make do with it, and it's not easy to make adjustments after the fact as opposed to George Lucas/Hideaki Anno-ing it up however you please even years after the fact. But yeah, I would've loved to have seen how expensive it was to make the Rebuild movies. I suppose that particular factor must appeal a lot to many of these hack fraud directors, .

I guess. It allows their imagination to come to "life" in full, no matter how terrible that may look, and there's a major component missing, a forced reality check in terms of what you can and cannot do. Therefore we're saddled with enormous CGI battles that are unfollowable, or Transformers movies where every frame is so dense you simply can't remember what happened because it overloads even my capacity to retain things.

Well... it is what it is, and it's not really going to go away. At least in this day and age it's no longer as bad as Lost in Space was. Ugh. that was terrible. 

54 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

In a fit of insomnia, I finally finished Legendary Idol Eriko by binge-watching the rest of it. The main story and everything motivating the series kind of concluded episode 40, which left about ten extra episodes, which is precisely where I stopped watching like...a month-plus or so ago - whatever was the last time I talked about Eriko. I just couldn't find the motivation to watch anymore when it seemed like the rest would be a little more on the "silly" and "nonsense" side. However, I was pleasantly surprised a couple of episodes in when the show suddenly introduced a small new arc that was more low-key and simple about Eriko simply trying to connect not with just her closest friends and family in light of growing as a person over the course of the show, but also with classmates she'd never really gotten to know because of her way too busy life. It was nice to have something a little less serious and crazy while still feeling like a worthwhile story to end the series.

Sounds like "skip the first 40 episodes, watch the mini-arc", alas, can't really do that.  

54 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

...And it's nice to have a couple of shows out of the way - plus, the NGE re-watch is almost finished, too, . The feeling of having a much greater appreciation for (and understanding of) NGE on a second watch has only continued, and, well, let's just say it's a very different experience from the first watch, and it definitely feels to have been worth the time. Six episodes left, guess I'll figure out how I really feel about the original ending soon...

Nice. I thought about the ending a bit on and off in between, and while I like the episode and the thematic ending, I'm still not ever going to like the way there's no narrative closure.

 

Anyway, what's up for the next watch project? Going for some ballet action now?  

[Bartimaeus]

14 minutes ago, majestic said:

It allows their imagination to come to "life" in full, no matter how terrible that may look

I remember reading that Anno was pleased that Rebuild wouldn't face the same creative restraints that the original NGE did. My reaction to remembering that he said that after now having actually seen Rebuild:

Spoiler

Oops, wait, that wasn't the right reaction, this one was:

Spoiler

At a glance, these two images are actually pretty close to each other, so I'm sure you can see how I got them confused.

 

 

19 minutes ago, majestic said:

it's not really going to go away

Yeah, but if I don't watch anything post-2000, then it's not a problem to begin with! I mean, sure, I keep breaking that rule to try out random stuff, but the key figure is that I have repeatedly regretted it roughly 9/10 times, .

21 minutes ago, majestic said:

Sounds like "skip the first 40 episodes, watch the mini-arc", alas, can't really do that.

I presume this was a joke, because no, I wasn't saying that at all, . Also, I edited in a few more sentences to that section while you weren't looking, .

23 minutes ago, majestic said:

Nice. I thought about the ending a bit on and off in between, and while I like the episode and the thematic ending, I'm still not ever going to like the way there's no narrative closure.

I've discovered that I have way less memory of the latter half of the show - some of the stuff more towards the ending here I've basically been like "whoa, what the hell is that, I don't remember that". That probably makes sense, since you're probably more likely to remember the first hour of a 10 hour marathon of watching a new show more than the eighth, ninth, or tenth hour of the 10 hour marathon. And this is why I never watch shows like that...except for NGE, which I inexplicably did for reasons still unknown to even me!

26 minutes ago, majestic said:

Anyway, what's up for the next watch project? Going for some ballet action now?

For myself, it should be purely Cardcaptor Sakura and Devil Lady at this time...and maybe Stein;Sgate if I want to test out to see whether I hate the show before y'all finish before I ever try it, . As for Princess Tutu, that was originally slated to be watched, but for the month of October, I think there will be a little bit of a hiatus for anime in general on that particular front. To be re-visited at some point in the future, .

[majestic]

  

48 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I remember reading that Anno was pleased that Rebuild wouldn't face the same creative restraints that the original NGE did. My reaction to remembering that he said that after now having actually seen Rebuild:

  Reveal hidden contents

They both work. Frightening.  

49 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I presume this was a joke, because no, I wasn't saying that at all, . Also, I edited in a few more sentences to that section while you weren't looking, .

Yes, and no. It really sounds like the best part of the show, that doesn't mean the first part isn't good. Also gotta read that edited part.  

51 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I've discovered that I have way less memory of the latter half of the show - some of the stuff more towards the ending here I've basically been like "whoa, what the hell is that, I don't remember that". That probably makes sense, since you're probably more likely to remember the first hour of a 10 hour marathon of watching a new show more than the eighth, ninth, or tenth hour of the 10 hour marathon. And this is why I never watch shows like that...except for NGE, which I inexplicably did for reasons still unknown to even me!

It's a combination of dropping concentration during binge watching and the fact that the show's structure and plotting got a little, uhm, jumbled near the end there. So that's a doubly whammy.

56 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

For myself, it should be purely Cardcaptor Sakura and Devil Lady at this time...and maybe Stein;Sgate if I want to test out to see whether I hate the show before y'all finish before I ever try it, . As for Princess Tutu, that was originally slated to be watched, but for the month of October, I think there will be a little bit of a hiatus for anime in general on that particular front. To be re-visited at some point in the future, .

Ah, a pity. I was looking forward to hearing about Princess Tutu. Ah, well, I can wait. Also, Steins;Gate: 2011 animation, super strange color selection and saturation, super bright at times, all the characters speak like aliens (at least in the original Japanese), highly annoying male lead that really needs to be slapped silly in a many worlds time travel story...

And then there's Faris NyanNyan:

You should love this!  

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

53 minutes ago, majestic said:

You should love this!

You should, Faris is great.

She sends a d-mail that changes Akibara by

[InsaneCommander]

6 hours ago, majestic said:

And then there's Faris NyanNyan:

You should love this!  

5 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

You should, Faris is great.

[Bartimaeus]

On second thought, let's not watch Steins;Gate, 'tis a silly show.

[InsaneCommander]

Faris would like to have a word with you.

[majestic]

45 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

On second thought, let's not watch Steins;Gate, 'tis a silly show.

It comes with a good deal of self-deprecating otaku humor, but I'm not sure if that isn't meant as an excuse. Like lampshading something that's a clutch or bad writing to "justify" it, rather than making fun of it. Point in case, Tuturu-Girl and Okabe's assistant (who told him she felt sexually assaulted by him but follows him around anyway) - oh, and both have names I can't retain for some reason, which really bothers me - just spent 2 minutes talking to each other and Daru, Okabe's otaku hacker friend just openly fantasized about them being Yuri material.

What was that idiom, you can make an anime out of a visual novel, but you can't take the visual novel out of the anime... no, wait, that's not right. Nyan?

edit:

Please, someone who has already seen all of this, please tell me that someone smacks Okabe silly at some point. He seriously needs some blunt force trauma in the head region.

Edited October 4, 2021 by majestic

[InsaneCommander]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Point in case, Tuturu-Girl and Okabe's assistant (who told him she felt sexually assaulted by him but follows him around anyway) - oh, and both have names I can't retain for some reason

How can you forget Christina's name?I took quite some time to remember Kurisu too. Specially with all the "Christina!" coming from Okarin.

1 hour ago, majestic said:

- just spent 2 minutes talking to each other and Daru, Okabe's otaku hacker friend just openly fantasized about them being Yuri material.

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Please, someone who has already seen all of this, please tell me that someone smacks Okabe silly at some point. He seriously needs some blunt force trauma in the head region.

Obviously we can't answer that. But we can have a discussion once you've watch the whole series (before Steins;Gate 0). Plenty to talk then.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Please, someone who has already seen all of this, please tell me that someone smacks Okabe silly at some point.

Someone smacks Okabe silly at some point.

1 hour ago, majestic said:

It comes with a good deal of self-deprecating otaku humor, but I'm not sure if that isn't meant as an excuse. Like lampshading something that's a clutch or bad writing to "justify" it, rather than making fun of it. Point in case, Tuturu-Girl and Okabe's assistant (who told him she felt sexually assaulted by him but follows him around anyway) - oh, and both have names I can't retain for some reason, which really bothers me - just spent 2 minutes talking to each other and Daru, Okabe's otaku hacker friend just openly fantasized about them being Yuri material.

I mean, Daru prides himself on being a "perverted gentleman" so I'm not sure what else you'd expect him to do.

11 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

How can you forget Christina's name?

It seems to be pretty easy.

12 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

Obviously we can't answer that.

I just did.

[InsaneCommander]

4 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

I just did.