Anime - Kono Dio Da!

[Sarex]

Watched the first (it's weekly go figure) episode of Komi-san can't communicate and I have to say they did a pretty good job.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

20 minutes ago, majestic said:

If being a passenger on this spaceship is free, how do you make money?

I'm not sure, I would have to watch LoGH. But if it mirrored real life politics, most of them were already rich and can live a better life off residuals than most people could working full time. We could also see class stratification in space (which seems to be pretty common in sci-fi) where some people have to work to keep the ship running while others "work" like the space equivalent of a financial dip**** who makes 250k a year as a senior manager at a hedge fund his dad runs.

11 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Watched the first (it's weekly go figure) episode of Komi-san can't communicate and I have to say they did a pretty good job.

God damn it Netflix, let me binge my slice of life anime.

[Sarex]

3 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

God damn it Netflix, let me binge my slice of life anime.

I went in to it hoping to sink the evening watching it. Plans ruined...

[majestic]

3 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

I'm not sure, I would have to watch LoGH. But if it mirrored real life politics, most of them were already rich and can live a better life off residuals than most people could working full time. We could also see class stratification in space (which seems to be pretty common in sci-fi) where some people have to work to keep the ship running while others "work" like the space equivalent of a financial dip**** who makes 250k a year as a senior manager at a hedge fund his dad runs.

Heh, I... uhm, was trying to make a joke about the tech unsavvy politicians asking Zuckerberg how Facebook makes mone if their service is free, but that works too.

5 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

God damn it Netflix, let me binge my slice of life anime.

I suddenly got more interested in watching it, to be honest. I can deal with 25 added minutes per week even if it turns out to be another Lady Asuka. Humm...

[Sarex]

Decided to punish my self by watching Your Lie in April. It's no longer on netflix...Guess I'll go and sleep.

[majestic]

Uhm. Okay.

I watched the first episode of Komi Can't Communicate. Immediately after it was over, Netflix suggested I continue with...

Back Street Girls: Gokudols.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say:

Quote

After an unspecified major failure, Yakuza underlings Kentaro, Ryo and Kazuhiko are forced by their boss, Inugane, to either commit seppuku and sell their organs or go to Thailand to undergo sex reassignment surgery, and train to become idols. They choose the latter and debut as Airi, Mari and Chika, the Gokudols. They suffer abuse from Inugane as he trains them to become idols. Still, their hearts are Yakuza, and their brotherhood is strong.

I'm uncertain what is more offensive, the fact that this is a thing that apparently exists, or the fact that Netflix thinks I would like to watch this, let alone perhaps enjoy it. Well, there's one nice thing, I no longer feel so bad about liking Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha even though I'm not sure what's that worth, lolicon still frames aren't a lot better than suggesting sepukku and sex reassignment are a similar level of punishment for a real Japanese yakuza (or men, in general). I don't think I need to say it, but I'm not liking Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha for its lolicon content, and it thankfully was short and hopefully will never come back again.

The really disgusting part about this is that it sounds like the classic racist defense, hey, I'm not racist, but... sigh. Ah, well, we all have our moments like these, right?

Also, in case you don't know what lolicon anime is, then, uhm, don't look it up. Let's just say that it would put Pedosus to shame, or rather, make him really hor... erm, happy.

As always with first episodes of a new anime, this post will contain somewhat unmarked spoilers and a general outline of the first episode (unless something imporant and twisty happens in the first episode, which it doesn't in this case).

Komi Can't Communicate, Episode 1: The beginning of a beautiful friendship (if you can stand the animation, voice acting and direction of this, which is a tough sell, really)

This pretty accurately portraits my face while watching the episode, for the most part.

Not sure where to start. This... doesn't look good, but thankfully I sat through 39 episodes and two movies of Sailor Moon Crystal and now have a different perspective on what bad looking animation is, so I no longer mind animes like this. Or rather, it's no longer enough to dismiss it out of hand. Alas, I'm not entirely certain that's entirely a good thing, but it was in the case of K-On!, and that was good enough to stay a net positive for a while though.

With that out of the way, we can proceed to the direction and it's adaptational quality. Or lack thereof. This has a very similar problem as Sailor Moon Crystal insofar as that it feels like a manga with animated frames, not an animated show that makes good use of the change in medium. It's filled to the brim with frames that would work as stills in a manga, but don't in an anime, and to make matters worse, a narrator lady and Hitohito take turns narrating what we can see anyway.

Please don't run away, Erica edition. The show can't know that I won't run even though I would like to. Curiously enough the best scene in the episode, because there is absolutely no talking.

Our two protagonists are Shouko Komi, who managed to get into an elite private high school in spite of not being able to talk to anyone at all, and Hitohito Tadano, a very literal average boy who by all means doesn't even have the grades to be accepted. He even narrates this himself. In good anime tradition, the character name are puns, or at least meaningful. Tada no hito really means "just a guy", as in - well - average dude. If you write Shouko's name in its correct Japanese myoji, then namae form, Komi Shouko, it turns into punny spelling of Komyushou-ko. Communication disorder girl (as mentioned earlier in this thread, "ko" means girl).

Hitohito wants nothing more than to not be noticed and average, and Shouko... wants to find friends. Clearly, fate decrees that the join forces to overcome their problems. Being a coward for Hitohito which is an unbearbale trait for any shounen protagonist to have, and Komi really suffers under her crippling shyness.

Every now and then Komi grows cat ears for no reason. Maybe she tries to hear the narrator lady.

Hitohito brutally overacts his narration, by the way. Shouko says a handful of words, but only when she's alone in the classroom with him while he's asleep.

In spite of her not being able to talk, she immediately becomes the most popular girl in the class - maybe even the entire school. Mr. Average Guy is the only person on the planet to notice that Komi is cripplingly shy and comes up with the idea of writing to communicate with her, instead of talking, in a scene which is, not going to lie, absolutely stunning in its brilliance.

For a moment, the framing and direction no longer matter, and nobody talks at all, and all of the dialogue plays out by Komi and Tadano writing a heap of kanji at each other on the classroom's chalkboard.

It's hard to describe how great this scene really is, and I mean that.

Sadly it also leads to Komi eventually running off, and it ends, and the anime goes back to being animated manga frames with a supremely weird outro and a bonus scene after the credits (literally called bonus scene).

Tadano asks Komi what her dream is, and she writes down having a hundred friends. He replies that he's going to help her find another 99 then. Yes, by all means, go ahead and help the girl find more friends. Don't bother suggesting she might go to a specialist with her disability. Well, we wouldn't have something to watch then.

At this point it goes back to being weird, because the narration suddenly kicks in and tells everyone that this private elite high school only accepts eccentric weirdos, so Tadano is going to have to work really hard to find 99 friends for Komi, who - as I mentioned already - has an enitre school full of people who want to be friends with her, because she's mysterious and beautiful. She doesn't even get yelled at by a teacher when asked to read a page of a book, because that teacher thinks it's a statment that reading is meant to be a quiet and contemplative activity, not a loud one.

You might wonder why this post is more chaotic than usual - that's because it's a reflection of the episode. It's total chaos, most of the time the framing and direction doesn't work, the voice actors overact to the point where you could take the dialogue and transplant it to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure without it being weird and the artstyle takes some getting used to. However, at least I didn't totally  hate it*, and if the nice scene about the two finding a common ground to start from is any indication, it might get better in the future. It also just might stay that way. We'll see.

Assuming it stops trying to be funny, because it really wasn't. I can't explain why this falls flat while something like K-On! works for me. Probably because K-On! made sure that I liked the characters before it made them do funny things or end up in embarrassing situations. I really hope they're going to drop the cat ears thing. Really. It's... it was bordeline not funny in K-On! when Azusa was forced to wear a headband with cat ears (although it made for an immensely funny scene much, much later in the anime), but it's really, uhm, dumb here. 

*I almost made a post after the first five minutes stating: "I hate this already!", just so you get an idea how much that one scene salvaged this. Things work like that for me sometimes, you can take a sea of terrible and give it one brilliant moment, and that'll be enough. It is, in this case, but it remains a big if for future episodes.

Edited October 23, 2021 by majestic

[InsaneCommander]

21 minutes ago, majestic said:

Back Street Girls: Gokudols.

[Bartimaeus]

Konomi Can't Speak, episode 1. ...What can I say? I guess I just want to get shows I know I'll hate out of the way as quickly as possible before I have you rubes telling me I should watch it because it's so great.

Hitting me with the DRAMA MODE SOFT PIANO MUSIC within literally the first 30 seconds.

This is one of the very few shows where I might actually like the exaggerated emotions style (which I usually despise) more than the regular style:

Maybe because it almost looks 80s anime-ish, like Ranma kind of. If all the characters looked like this all the time, I would almost be tempted to keep watching for the novelty. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I got about 5 and a half minutes in and that was all she wrote. Bye!

Now I will read majestic's post.

42 minutes ago, majestic said:

Every now and then Komi grows cat ears for no reason. Maybe she tries to hear the narrator lady.

The first 30 seconds seemed to imply something between her and cats, that maybe she likes or identifies with them; it's probably there for a reason but not spelled out quite yet. Beyond that, I ain't got much to say, it clearly wasn't going to work for me, the direction on every level was...you know, very not me, .

Edited October 23, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

5 hours ago, majestic said:

Heh, I... uhm, was trying to make a joke about the tech unsavvy politicians asking Zuckerberg how Facebook makes mone if their service is free, but that works too.

I now feel like the big dumb that I am. Or US politics are so consistently dumb it's hard to keep up with. I'll go with that to feel better about myself.

4 hours ago, Sarex said:

Decided to punish my self by watching Your Lie in April. It's no longer on netflix...Guess I'll go and sleep.

It's still there for me. Maybe I'll go Hellraiser and watch it.

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Back Street Girls: Gokudols.

1 hour ago, majestic said:

the voice actors overact to the point where you could take the dialogue and transplant it to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure without it being weird

This makes me want to watch it more.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

I guess I just want to get shows I know I'll hate out of the way as quickly as possible before I have you rubes telling me I should watch it because it's so great.

Don't make me bust out the Ludovico.

[majestic]

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Konomi Can't Speak, episode 1. ...What can I say? I guess I just want to get shows I know I'll hate out of the way as quickly as possible before I have you rubes telling me I should watch it because it's so great.

I was going to post: "What about my post looked like a suggestion to watch this?"

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Now I will read majestic's post.

Ah, I see. Well, don't blame me then...  I did no such thing as stated above, and never would have.

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

The first 30 seconds seemed to imply something between her and cats, that maybe she likes or identifies with them; it's probably there for a reason but not spelled out quite yet. Beyond that, I ain't got much to say, it clearly wasn't going to work for me, the direction on every level was...you know, very not me, .

The cat ears come out while she is listening to something intently, so their meaning is, eh, I think pretty much that. She's just perking up her ears, and she likes cats, however there could be something more behind it.

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I got about 5 and a half minutes in and that was all she wrote. Bye!

So, about the time when I was tempted to post that I hate this. Heh.

 

Anyway, Back Street Girls, Episode 1:

No, just kidding, not going to watch that dumpster fire.

[majestic]

4 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

I now feel like the big dumb that I am. Or US politics are so consistently dumb it's hard to keep up with. I'll go with that to feel better about myself.

Yeah, probably the latter, although at the moment I can't really laugh, because our politics are barely better right now. It's all a farce.

4 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

This makes me want to watch it more.

Of course it would.

[Sarex]

7 hours ago, majestic said:

This pretty accurately portraits my face while watching the episode, for the most part.

7 hours ago, majestic said:

Every now and then Komi grows cat ears for no reason. Maybe she tries to hear the narrator lady.

7 hours ago, majestic said:

Assuming it stops trying to be funny, because it really wasn't.

7 hours ago, majestic said:

that's because it's a reflection of the episode. It's total chaos

 

@Bartimaeus

[majestic]

Yeah, you know, I'm pretty sure Komi Can't Communicate works much better as a manga than the current anime adaptation works as an anime. It's the same with the Sailor Moon manga (although that one isn't really good in my opinion) and the old vs. the new anime adaptation. Crystal is far too literal and almost everything is taken straight from the panels instead of spending one iota of creative energy on planning something ahead or thinking it through. That's the real baffling thing about Crystal, they were sitting on a manga 20 years finished and adapted it as if going on the fly through the material. The original anime had outlines to go with and a manga issue here and there to serve as drafts, but that comes across as less disjointed and messy. 

The narration of the episode is a good thing to demonstrate this by, both this and Sailor Moon Crystal have scenes where you can see what is going on, while the narrator tells you the same. Of course you need narration without motion in comics whenever a frame might not be perfectly clear, but there's no real need for that when you can see what's going on.

There's a scene in the third season of Crystal that perfectly exemplifies that when Sailor Neptune narrates a sequence where you can see a stormy and and stirred up ocean with "The sea is restless" - yeah no kidding there, Michiru. I would not have known without you telling me that, watching the waves and the wind and the, pardon, restless ebbing and flowing of the ocean. One could argue that the animation of Crystal is so terrible it needs explaining, but that's not the case. It looks bad, but it still shows what's going on accurately enough.

It's not that I mind narration as a whole actually, you can look at the opening of Fellowship of the Ring where Galadriel tells you a whole lot of things, and the narration enhances what's on the screen, and vice versa. That opening scene is an adaptational necessity, and it works, just imagine if that entire sequence was made by way of Gandalf telling Frodo about the rings. Works in a book, doesn't work so much in a movie, right?

Back when everyone complained about Roz the Exposition Whore in Game of Thrones, I just accepted that as necessity. Leaving her out of the show would have been a detriment to understanding what's going on. You can of course create your entire universe entirely without exposition and expect the reader or watcher to follow along without being able to put the elements together right from the start, like Steven Erikson did with Malazan Book of the Fallen, but that has a whole host of other issues (that not even the author was able to resolve without on the fly retconning), the biggest of which is asking your audience to become engaged in something based on a whole lot of things you don't - and can't - understand. That's a though sell, even for me, and Malazan Book of the Fallen asks a bit too much, and I am a quick reader with an uncanny ability to retain information. I don't even want to know how reading the books is for a regular person.

That said I understand why an avid reader of the manga would like such an adaptation. I'm not, however, and with only the anime to judge things by, well, it was a nice try, it had one absolutely brilliant scene (that by no coincidence dropped the entire voice acting for a few minutes), but I'm not too hopeful for the other episodes. See, that scene alone makes me think this works much better as a manga, because by dropping everything but the sound of Komi and Tadano writing on the chalkboard, the anime went and not just adapted, but became its source material: A slightly more animated manga. It worked. It was great, really, but unlike the still movies of yore, why would I watch what could be more easily read?

TL;DR: No matter how good the source material might or might not be, that was a bad episode in terms of being an anime. That's the fault of the direction, the disjointed nature is the fault of the writing team (assuming there was one, and this isn't 1:1 just the first issue) and the terrible voice acting delivery is the fault of the voice direction.

*sigh* I already feel like I do whenever I get out of a theater with my friends. Except they get an essay like that in talking form. Which is probably even less interesting or endearing. It's a wonder they still drag me along all the time. I mean, when we're not in lockdown, that is.

[Sarex]

You very well could be right. I am certainly looking at it subjectively as someone who has read the manga for years.

7 minutes ago, majestic said:

Malazan Book of the Fallen

I like it. But it could be for the simple reason that at the point in my life I was over saturated by the Fantasy genre and this was simply something fresh and new. Book one leaves you dizzy and confused as you are simply dropped in the universe and left to figure stuff out for yourself, but by the end of the book you start to get your bearings and connect some of the dots. I personally had issues with the tail end of the series and the harsh plot shifts that some books had.

 

One of these days I will create a manga thread.

[majestic]

1 minute ago, Sarex said:

You very well could be right. I am certainly looking at it subjectively as someone who has read the manga for years.

To be honest, I sometimes fall into that trap myself, although more often the inverse of it: My initial reaction to watching Fellowship was "Thanks, but I hate all the changes" and I said so directly to an audience of otherwise enraptured watchers. Taking a step back and realizing that some changes were necessary to make a good movie wasn't easy, and I still don't like Arwen's expanded role. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, except it smells of token romantic interest and token female protagonist, and the book already has one of the latter in the form of Eowyn, although arguably the idea of a token woman role in books and films didn't exist when Tolkien wrote it, so this is a modern interpretation of a more classic work. One might want to argue that Lord of the Rings is not old enough to be a true classic yet, but it's steadily creeping towards being a hundred years old now and it was written with that as the intent - to be the mythology Tolkien thought the UK was sorely lacking.

Part of that might also just be bias against Liv Tyler, but I don't want to turn this thread into a debate about the Lord of the Rings movies.

There's also something else, and it bears repeating: Comedy very, very rarely works for me. As such, finding the original Sailor Moon supremely funny or liking K-On! is an outlier for me. It's not that I prefer serious drama over comedy as a matter of course, because I really enjoy the rare comedy that I can heartily laugh to, it's just extremely easy to lose me, or never get me in the first place. I didn't get a single smile (never mind laughing) out of the first episode, to be perfecly honest - and they tried.

It's like that Seinfeld clip that Bruno and Guard Dog talked about a couple of days back. I watched that after the two talked about how epicly funny the scene is, and my only reaction to it was: Please make it stop, this is so painfully unfunny. I despise Seinfeld. Well, that's unfair to the show, I more often than not despise sitcoms, and when I don't, it's usually for the episodes and seasons that everyone else hates.

We'll see how the other episodes go. For the time being, it seems like an adaptation made primarily for fans of the manga, and that's fine, and I certainly don't begrudge you enjoying the episode. Hell, I like Dark Star and Masters of the Universe, who am I to judge people?

12 minutes ago, Sarex said:

I like it. But it could be for the simple reason that at the point in my life I was over saturated by the Fantasy genre and this was simply something fresh and new. Book one leaves you dizzy and confused as you are simply dropped in the universe and left to figure stuff out for yourself, but by the end of the book you start to get your bearings and connect some of the dots. I personally had issues with the tail end of the series and the harsh plot shifts that some books had.

Yeah, timing I guess matters too. When I started reading it, it didn't feel so fresh any more, and it just asked me to be entertained based on a whole lot of nothing. I'm still not done reading the series beause the second book managed to break my interest and need to fill out progress bars so hard I actually stopped for a long while, but I'm reading bits and pieces here and there - and that doesn't help much.

I pretty much dropped out of my intensive reading phase with rewatching Sailor Moon. It'll be back at some point though.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Komi Can't Communicate

I'm not sure yet, but so far I'm cautiously optimistic about the show. It was much sillier than I expected. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It does feel like they tried to transfer the manga rather than adapt it in some scenes.

6 hours ago, majestic said:

Of course it would.

JoJo's Shatner tier overacting would benefit most anime.

[Bartimaeus]

7 hours ago, majestic said:

Part of that might also just be bias against Liv Tyler, but I don't want to turn this thread into a debate about the Lord of the Rings movies.

Yeah, I would've preferred that Arwyn got cut out entirely rather than let her have Glorfindel's part. Not that I particularly like Glorfindel or anything, but Arwyn is the worst character in the entire movie series.

[Sarex]

Decided to watch all the Miyazaki movies I haven't seen. My Neighbor Totoro being the first of them. Time well spent. Maybe...maybe I'll muster up my courage and watch Grave of the Fireflies after that.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Maybe...maybe I'll muster up my courage and watch Grave of the Fireflies after that.

Aura of Courage makes you immune to fear, go forth Crusader!

[majestic]

1 minute ago, Sarex said:

Decided to watch all the Miyazaki movies I haven't seen. My Neighbor Totoro being the first of them. Time well spent. Maybe...maybe I'll muster up my courage and watch Grave of the Fireflies after that.

I'm not sure if I'm reading this right, but Grave of the Fireflies is from Takahata. Have you not seen it yet?

[Sarex]

4 minutes ago, majestic said:

I'm not sure if I'm reading this right, but Grave of the Fireflies is from Takahata. Have you not seen it yet?

I know, I meant after I finished Miyazaki's stuff and fill up on the good vibes I give it a go. It's been on my to watch list for a long time, but I know the story is gonna leave me a wreck so I haven't seen it yet.

Edited October 23, 2021 by Sarex

[majestic]

21 minutes ago, Sarex said:

I know, I meant after I finished Miyazaki's stuff and fill up on the good vibes I give it a go. It's been on my to watch list for a long time, but I know the story is gonna leave me a wreck so I haven't seen it yet.

After I have watched Grave of the Fireflies I called it the best movie I never want to see again. It's really good, and you really never want to see it again.

Recently though both Violet Evergarden (the series, not the films or the OVA) and Whisper of the Heart proved to be much worse for me. That's by far and large personal, and in the case of Whisper of the Heart not entirely logical. There was just something about the protagonist that threw me into a nostalgic and melancholic reverie that was really hard to get out of.

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Well I took a break from Samurai Champloo and started rewatching JoJo.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood episode 1 Dio the Invader.

KONO DIO DA!

[majestic]

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha just invented a power scale for technomages. Nanoha sits at a comfortable 1.23 million MANA, while Fate has 1.46 million MANA, and both can in the short term triple their power output in a crisis. That's apparently enough to be classified triple A magi by the Space-Time Police, whatever that means. Space Cop Mercury wants to handle the Jewel Seed situation from now on, and Nanoha finds out that her pet ferret is actually a boy her age, and just like with Artemis in Sailor Moon Eternal, nobody thinks its weird.

Nanoha ends up joining the space cops, and in the first really surprising twist (not counting the 20 seconds of lolicon content as a surprise twist, that was more like a surprise cause for projectile vomit) actually tells her mother about it (except the part where Yuuno is a real boy that watched their entire family bathing nude at the hot springs, they thankfully leave that part out!), then leaves home.

Hm, should I rewatch Space Cop now?

Just in case someone doesn't know what Space Cop is... but why wouldn't you know:

 

[Bartimaeus]

52 minutes ago, majestic said:

After I have watched Grave of the Fireflies I called it the best movie I never want to see again. It's really good, and you really never want to see it again.

Recently though both Violet Evergarden (the series, not the films or the OVA) and Whisper of the Heart proved to be much worse for me. That's by far and large personal, and in the case of Whisper of the Heart not entirely logical. There was just something about the protagonist that threw me into a nostalgic and melancholic reverie that was really hard to get out of.

Whisper of the Heart is depressing in an unexpected way - at least it was for me. It's a film driven by the protagonist's desperation to find out who she is in the world, and what exactly she should be doing to give her life meaning while the rest of her peers still have that child's mindset of simply living in the moment and just skirting by...and the film does it in such a perfect way that it makes you really feel like you are literally her - but as an adult version that still hasn't figured it out, and probably never will. What a sickening feeling it is when she's able to work her butt off and find some - not all of, but some - of her own personal meaning and some concrete goals to go fulfill, while you the viewer are still listlessly wandering around in the metaphorical dark sometimes questioning why you're even alive to begin with.

...At least, that was my experience with Whisper of the Heart. But unlike you, I've seen it twice, and I loved it even more than the first time I watched it, . Perfect Blue is at the top of my list for films that I loved but don't really want to watch again, at least not for a very long while...especially because you can't ever really re-create the circumstances in which I watched it to begin with.