Anime - Magical Girl Anime Thread, hajimarimasu!

[Sarex]

Then I must be tone deaf, I never connect voice actors between characters, let alone know them by name.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

6 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Then I must be tone deaf, I never connect voice actors between characters, let alone know them by name.

Well you do like the music in Bleach so.....

[LadyCrimson]

I don't watch enough anime to recognize tons of voices...that said, I am pretty good at recognizing voices (if the VA does not ever change it up, or if they're not super vanilla VA's...) but even if I recognize a voice, it does not imprint a character onto another character. A character remains a separate entity for me if there is no facial imprinting.

Hearing James Earl Jones does not make me unable to view an animated chr as anything but Darth Vader.

Seeing a live-actor's face after 2 or 3 movie roles ... he later then never becomes Neo, Bill, or John Wick - he's always Keanu. I love Tom Hanks, but yeah...he is always just Tom Hanks and what I'm doing while watching the movie is loving Tom Hanks performance, not a character.

[InsaneCommander]

7 hours ago, Gorth said:

So... I finished Claymore. Sort of a mixed bag of feelings about it. The story was interesting, but the characters?... just no. The only character in the series I felt any connection to and sympathy with was Theresa (of the faint smile). And she was dead after a few episodes. Too overly dramatic and ridiculously stylized. Not talking about the art style, but the character personalities. I'm fine with demons who eats entrails, I'm fine with shady organisations, I'm fine with orphans looking for something to connect to in life. But the "fighters"? Jeebus, what a bunch of failures as human beings in like 95% of the cases. Shakespeare would have pissed himself laughing if he was writing some of that dialogue while drunk

Maybe something got lost in translation, but it feels like someone tried to squeeze a bunch of kids into doing the work of adults.

Didn't comment before on your phrase about "who needs enemies..." because of spoilers, but

Spoiler

It was perfectly accurate, as after some time there weren't even any of the regular monsters around anymore. Although the organization is probably the real bad guys, most of the fighting was against the former Claymores.

6 hours ago, Sarex said:

The story is not the same as in the original. The anime ended before the manga so they made up their own ending. In the manga it's kind of explained why everyone is like that.

It didn't bother me since

Spoiler

they were not exactly mentally healthy people.

...

Too much work this week, as I am finally not on home office anymore, so no more JoJo yet.

 

[Sarex]

Grave of the Fireflies... This was nothing like I expected it to be. It hits you in the face right of the bat with what the tone of the movie is going to be, but the main character was nothing at all like what I thought. I don't know... I started writing that Seita was immature and that he refused to take responsibility for his sister, but who am I to judge. I would like to think that I would have shared the food even at that age and that I would have begged the aunt to at least take the sister back, but everyone likes to believe the best of themselves... In the end he refused to accept the reality of the situation and that he was not capable to deal with it.

This was a torturous experience that I can't say I'm glad I had.

 

1 hour ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Well you do like the music in Bleach so.....

I like those two I linked, the rest not so much...but fair enough.

4 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

It didn't bother me since

  Hide contents

they were not exactly mentally healthy people.

They were not in a position to be...

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 minutes ago, Sarex said:

I like those two I linked, the rest not so much...but fair enough.

Who am I to judge, I like Giorno's theme.

 

[Sarex]

5 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Who am I to judge, I like Giorno's theme.

It's not bad. Not too sure about the vocals, but the music is great.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

19 minutes ago, Sarex said:

It's not bad. Not too sure about the vocals, but the music is great.

Character themes in JoJo are usually great imo.

[majestic]

  

3 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

I should clarify it's not specifically "female" but more the way writers write "female."  Especially ensemble female. 
Character traits for ensembles tend to have similar patterns regardless of gender - there's the comic relief/maybe a little stupid one, the strong silent one, the "average/normal" one, the heart of gold one, the "fanservice so at the least we can make fanservice jokes" one, etc.  Doesn't matter if they're male or female, those tropes will still be there.

Indeed, and I would heartily recommend Dark Matter as a live action sci-fi show that goes balls to the wall with these tropes. I would, if it had not been cancelled. It was totally awesome in the way they played everything straight.

3 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

But I mean more ... writers go "we're trying to specifically appeal to a female audience with this show/film, what conflicts/drama/plots and concerns will do that."  And apparently most of the time, what most writers (yes even female writers) think will appeal to female audiences, is not what appeals to me. I don't care at all about the characters "concerns" and get bored.  No different than me getting bored whenever the drawn out "parents-in-law" subplots come on in some c or k drama drama and I FFWD through those segments. Just total disinterest.

That's just most writers writing uninteresting things, female, male or otherwise, and you won't get any argument from me. 50 Shades of Grey was writen by a woman, for women, after all. It was widely successful for a reason I won't ever be able to fathom. Part of what I liked about Sailor Moon so much is that the character concerns are easily relatable. Not for all, but like someone once said, there's a Guardian for everyone.

I guess people will eventually get bored of me talking about it, but even though it's almost thirty years old it does so many thing so much better than even the "wokest" of current entertainment that it's beginning to be slightly ridiculous, and it never stops being relatable in certain ways, even though its characters are teenagers and the target audience were girls roughly the same age. Every now and then something that's so wildely successful deserved to be it.

Not that it's without issues, the storyline is... eh, enough about that now.

3 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

I do like equal gender mixing, where the interaction/relationship conflicts between differing male and female perspective (no it doesn't have to be romantic) can be interesting/amusing etc. if done well. And of course there are individual female chrs. I've liked a lot. It's just not all that common for me and I sorta gave up trying/avoid most "aimed more towards female audience" stuff.

I found more sucess in finding interesting interactions and relationships - in anime, at least - in shoujo anime. Shoujo specifically, because josei looks like it's an insane mess that puts most seinen to shame, but that's only a general rule of thumb. For every CCS or Sailor Moon, there's also a, uhm, X or Rose of Versailles. I liked X, but that's me liking bastard hybrids that should never have seen the light of day.

3 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Live action vs. animation is just too different of a medium. It's not completely impossible that it could work, but they'd have to change a lot as well as do everything just right, and...yeah, it'd be an impossible task, it always is, that's why everything that's remade is almost always, always terrible. Heck, most of the things remade in the same medium are terrible, never mind crossing mediums, never mind whoever's doing it deciding to change style or direction and all that rot...

Remakes make a certain amount of sense when something in any given medium changed in a significant manner that would allow expansion of core concepts. I think that's also partially why some 80ies and earlier remakes are really good, especially for earlier sci-fi and horror works. The The Fly remake with Jeff Golblum beats the original, but a lot improved in the time in between. Technology got a lot better, budgets were different, acting changed - but such improvements in films have been minute in the past thirty or so years, except CGI, which is a tool that in theory is a great addition, and in practice almost always terrible.

Not counting 3D here because that's been showing up every 20 years only to fade away eventually. Sure, polarized filter glasses 3D beats out the red/blue filter from the past, but even that is a slightly improved version of a 60ies technology, and I don't see shutter tech improving to the point where it's not annoying to use, so current 3D tech is the best it'll be, and yeah, that can go take a hike. Sure, Avatar showed what would be possible if used properly, but Avatar wasn't a great movie, it was a great three hour tech demo that took ages to make, just not really feasible.

On medium switches:

3 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Live action vs. animation is just too different of a medium.

 

3 hours ago, Amentep said:

...

...

Didn't Cardcaptor Sakura already cross mediums (manga came out in 1996, first anime in 1998)?

Don't get me wrong, a lot of adaptions are crappy, but I don't think it has to do with crossing mediums, per se.

"Travel distance" matters a good deal, as I've mentioned before, just in a different context - like why Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card feels so much worse than it probably is from a more objective point of view. Going from manga to animation is much less of a step than from animation to live action. Arguably, it's also a larger step to go from comic to live action adaptation, but it's a gap that got smaller in recent years, mostly due to CGI. As much as I prefer practical effects, for superhero comic adaptations it was a way to make them happen in a better manner than in the past, albeit at the loss of grounding an already silly medium in a more realistic context - what happens at its worst is seen in Avengers: Endgame, one of the movies everyone I know loved but I didn't like.

Particularily not when compared to the first part, which was not only much better but also really good, and ranks very high on my list of Marvel films. It's like Mike and Jay said in their Half in the Bag, Infinity War is better than it has any right to be.

3 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Man, I'm tempted to say that I think comics/manga are closer, as a medium, to animation than live action television is, but I guess that's a pretty difficult determination to make, even for just my own personal opinion...but regardless, you're right - so what're the chances that a one out of a million chance will happen again? This reminds me that I need to check out the Sakura manga at some point.

I just did, so feel free to agree. I don't find that determination difficult to make at all.

I won't, however, touch the subject of book adaptations. The biggest criticism I often hear is that the adaptation doesn't look like what the reader imagined, which is a complete non-factor for me. I wish it wasn't, but there's nothing to be done about that.

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

For sure. I always love it when I watch a great new movie with nobody I recognize - they are forever their characters for me, that's how I remember them. Furthermore, I am oddly way more attached to specific voice actors than I am to actors - it is so incredibly rare that I would ever go "yay" at the thought of a specific actor being in something, whereas literally just that happens all the time in animation with voice actors. While I am ludicrously picky about art and animation styles, the entire medium is just much more my thing than live action for a lot of reasons, so live action remakes will always be...a very difficult translation for me.

I often annoy people when I do that while talking about films and actors. I don't even do that on purpose, but I tend to call Malcom McDowell just Admiral Tolwyn and Mark Hamill is Colonel Blair, which is kind of funny, seeing how often I've seen Star Wars (and at the very least I watched Star Wars movies with Mark Hamill more often than I played Wing Commander 3 to 5 by a factor of a hundred). It's not the first role, just my favorite one, I guess.

Depends a bit on the mood, there are times when Malcom McDowell is His Divine Shadow. Heh. Never is Alex for me though (in spite of it probably being his best film).

I don't think I could come up with a single transition from animation to live action that I really liked. I mean, not counting Masters of the Universe, because that film was, is and always will be absolutely fantastic, but... I don't think that counts, objectively speaking.

Or am I missing something obvious? There are the terrible Transformer movies, the terrible new Disney live action films, there are the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles dumpster fires, uhm, that epic Fullmetal Alchemist film... yeah.

28 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Grave of the Fireflies... This was nothing like I expected it to be.

It wasn't for me either. When I saw it, I did not go in blind because I already knew how it would end. That probably proved to be a slight detriment to the film experience, but not the the overall atmosphere of the film.

29 minutes ago, Sarex said:

This was a torturous experience that I can't say I'm glad I had.

Well, sort of, yeah. Now imagine Takahata made children's TV earlier in his carreer.

 

[InsaneCommander]

34 minutes ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

Who am I to judge, I like Giorno's theme.

Roundabout is still stuck in my head.

 

Some comments are gold:

"I set my alarm to this so that every dream feels like a cliff hanger episode."

Spoiler

"Everybody is gangsta until a Nazi Cyborg starts fighting a Aztec Vampire."

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

7 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

Roundabout is still stuck in my head.

 

Some comments are gold:

"I set my alarm to this so that every dream feels like a cliff hanger episode."

  Reveal hidden contents

"Everybody is gangsta until a Nazi Cyborg starts fighting a Aztec Vampire."

 

I started the video and expected to see the <TO BE CONTINUED].

Music in JoJo is strong all around. Since there's so many music references in JoJo, everytime you look at a video on youtube a good amount of the comments will be JoJo references. Like Savage Garden's I want you will be filled with people remembering the bizarre summer of 1999.

[majestic]

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, episode 10:

Uhm, wow.

Spoiler

Turns out Tuxedo Mark x2 isn't Chrono's lost father in a dual version, but the cat girls under a magical illusion that just looked and awful lot like Chrono's father with a mask on. Good job show, I really thought the two were just there for the fanservice.

Figured it would be a bit of a damper for the theory when two of the showed up at the same time, but I expected some magical hijinks or another, not something like that.

 

[Sarex]

20 minutes ago, majestic said:

It wasn't for me either. When I saw it, I did not go in blind because I already knew how it would end. That probably proved to be a slight detriment to the film experience, but not the the overall atmosphere of the film.

I didn't either, I knew the girl was going to die. Although that just lessened the impact of the into, the rest was still... What's even worse is that it's based on a true story, only the boy lived and felt very guilty thorough his whole life, so he wrote Grave of the Fireflies as an apology.

20 minutes ago, majestic said:

Well, sort of, yeah. Now imagine Takahata made children's TV earlier in his carreer.

No.

[majestic]

Well, the Book of Darkness is complete and transforms Hotaru into Mistress 9 Hayate into Sailor Saturn, who immediately proceeds to bring about The Silence, just with a book, not a glaive.

I'm more emo than Hotaru ever was, and that's quite a mean feat, huh?

She, uhm, also absorbs Fate into the book. That went to hell in a hanbasket really quickly. Guess it's time for Nanoha to activate the Super Pursuit mode of her magical device. I mean, Excelion mode, I think, is what they called it. Plus a nice warning to not ever try to use it because Raising Heart's frame isn't build to withstand the unleashed power.

Arisa and Suzuka were trapped with Fate and Nanoha, so they kind of find out that they're magical girls. Assuming Fate isn't entirely dead at this point, that'll make for a fun final wrap up character episode. I'm kind of hoping A's will have one, it was more or less the highlight of last season.

Edited November 4, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Komi Can't Communicate 3. Dogs, Komi gets a phone, and they play some weird games.

So far my least favorite episode. Not outright bad but not particularly interesting.

[Bartimaeus]

13 hours ago, Sarex said:

Grave of the Fireflies... This was nothing like I expected it to be. It hits you in the face right of the bat with what the tone of the movie is going to be, but the main character was nothing at all like what I thought. I don't know... I started writing that Seita was immature and that he refused to take responsibility for his sister, but who am I to judge. I would like to think that I would have shared the food even at that age and that I would have begged the aunt to at least take the sister back, but everyone likes to believe the best of themselves... In the end he refused to accept the reality of the situation and that he was not capable to deal with it.

This was a torturous experience that I can't say I'm glad I had.

As you said, the reality of the story was that he actually lived and essentially wrote the story as an apology...and maybe confession? His childish pride combined with the heavy guilt no doubt creates the unusual characters and story.

Quote

Isao Takahata said that he was compelled to film the short story after seeing how the main character, Seita, "was a unique wartime ninth grader". Takahata explained that any wartime story, whether animated or not animated, "tends to be moving and tear-jerking", and that young people develop an "inferiority complex" where they perceive people in wartime eras as being more noble and more able than they are, and therefore the audience believes that the story has nothing to do with them. Takahata argued that he wanted to dispel this mindset. When Nosaka asked if the film characters were "having fun", Takahata answered that he clearly depicted Seita and Setsuko had "substantial" days and that they were "enjoying their days".

Interesting that Takahata specifically stated that he wanted to "dispel" the idea that characters like Seita and Setsuko were somehow "more noble" than normal people of the modern age. Even in desperate times, people still make plenty of stupid and life-altering/ending errors of their own making.

13 hours ago, majestic said:

I just did, so feel free to agree. I don't find that determination difficult to make at all.

I had thought about it more, and more came to the conclusion that animation is a wildly varied medium in of itself - some animation would definitely be closer to comics/manga, but other animation would be closer to live action, so it kinda just depends. Regardless, between all the different moving parts involved (changing medium, direction, actors, music, style, what you to decide to keep or cut, all of it - adaptations/remakes of all kinds (books, comics/manga, movies, television, games, it doesn't matter) are inherently unlikely to satisfy those that loved the original. Those that do that are also attract new fans are unicorns.

As for live action that successfully made a good adaptation from animated... Uh, I have absolutely nothing.

12 hours ago, majestic said:

I'm more emo than Hotaru ever was, and that's quite a mean feat, huh?

Yeah, but what about being angrier than [the character known as] Black Lady?

Edited November 5, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

  Carol and Tuesday ep.1. It didn't really grab me, it all seems kind of generic so far. I'll give this a couple of more episodes and see where it goes.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Interesting that Takahata specifically stated that he wanted to "dispel" the idea that characters like Seita and Setsuko were somehow "more noble" than normal people of the modern age. Even in desperate times, people still make plenty of stupid and life-altering/ending errors of their own making.

Yeah I was expecting a story where he made the "right" choices but still didn't make the odds, but what I got was certainly more realistic and soul crushing.

[majestic]

9 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I had thought about it more, and more came to the conclusion that animation is a wildly varied medium in of itself - some animation would definitely be closer to comics/manga, but other animation would be closer to live action, so it kinda just depends. Regardless, between all the different moving parts involved (changing medium, direction, actors, music, style, what you to decide to keep or cut, all of it - adaptations/remakes of all kinds (books, comics/manga, movies, television, games, it doesn't matter) are inherently unlikely to satisfy those that loved the original. Those that do that are also attract new fans are unicorns.

That's certainly true for the act of adapting the source material, but while animation has its own set of logistical challenges, I was also thinking of actor casting, contract management, budgetary concerns, logicists, set design, location scouting, all that stuff. Animation itslef is created, by far and large, by readily exploited office workers. Live action sets, even ridiculously cheap ones, have a lot more moving parts that need to function, and the more intricate the setting of your comic/managa is to adapt, the more the live action version would suffer from increased difficulty with these issues than giving your animators and artists more time to draw, more or less. Unless you do your entire live action film in front of a greenscreen, in which case you end with the Star Wars prequels.

I also pretty much agree, there's no magical recipe to make everyone happy, and as far as the unicorns go, what really is there? Harry Potter and Fellowship of the Ring, and the former is a case where having an adaptational writing pass improved the source material. Hey, like with Sailor Moon. And Lord of the Rings sort of ends being an adaptational unicorn with The Two Towers and doesn't really make up with Return of the King.

Although, what do I really know, I'm one of them weirdos who enjoyed the Silmarillion and like it more than Lord of the Rings.

9 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Yeah, but what about being angrier than [the character known as] Black Lady?

Don't give them any ideas, now I'm afraid some magic will turn Nanoha into a super hot 20 year old trying to seduce her father in a scene that's crappily graphic and even more sexualized than BRACK RADY ever was. Ugh.

Edited November 5, 2021 by majestic

[majestic]

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, Episode 11:

The beginning of this drives home the difference between other magical girl shows (except subversions like Puella Magi Madoka Magica). Fate, who has been absorbed by the Book of Darkness, has a dream where her every wish was granted - a happy family, a loving mother, a good life. While other shows put the protagonists into terrible situations to make them fight to keep the good life they have (particularily true for Sakura, but also for Sailor Moon, even with some of the girls' problems), this just gives Fate everything she wants, and she has to try and break through the illusion to go back to having a miserable past, no family and one situation of having to fight just to survive after the other.

Meanwhile, Nanoha deploys Raising Heart in Excelion Mode. It... really just adds fins to Raising Heart's Glaive-like appearance, making it look more like a spear. Talk about underwhelming.

The Book of Darkness copies one of Fate's attacks and enhances it by adding "Genocide" as extension. PHOTON LANCER GENOCIDE. Whoever came up with that magic system wasn't entirely right in the head, and if you think Sailor Moon's called attacks are ridiculous, this one's worse... Sailor Moon's attacks were at least colorful and ridiculous, here you get emo stuff like SCHWARZE WIRKUNG (translated as Black Impact).

Oy, Fate now has rid herself of the dream, and activates Bardiche's variant of the Excelion Mode - Zander form. Which turns it into one giant anime style two handed sword with a laser blade. Yeah, if this wasn't based on a short visual novel, it could just come out of any JRPG, but at least it delivered, unlike Nanoha's spear.

Edited November 6, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

15 minutes ago, majestic said:

PHOTON LANCER GENOCIDE

No named attack will ever top SPACE RIPPER STINGY EYES. 

[LadyCrimson]

I need more anime with adult* male megane characters.  Because I'm feeling shallow like that lately. Maybe I'll just rewatch Ajin: Demi-Human.  The supporting chr. of Tosaki and the main antagonist were my fave things of that anime/why I kept watching.  I haven't been able to see the films that came before the series, wonder if they're available anywhere. Never read the manga. Maybe I should start buying manga novels and line a wall in the new house with a giant collection.

*by adult I mean at least supposed to be over 21-25/not in highschool.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

10 minutes ago, LadyCrimson said:

I need more anime with adult* male megane characters.  Because I'm feeling shallow like that lately. Maybe I'll just rewatch Ajin: Demi-Human.  The supporting chr. of Tosaki and the main antagonist were my fave things of that anime/why I kept watching.  I haven't been able to see the films that came before the series, wonder if they're available anywhere. Never read the manga. Maybe I should start buying manga novels and line a wall in the new house with a giant collection.

*by adult I mean at least supposed to be over 21-25/not in highschool.

The first part of JoJo has a protagonist in his 20s. Give that a shot.

[majestic]

8 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

The first part of JoJo has a protagonist in his 20s. Give that a shot.

But... none of the JoJo gym gods wears glasses.

[LadyCrimson]

6 hours ago, majestic said:

But... none of the JoJo gym gods wears glasses.

I realize it was probably a joke suggestion, but I tried skimming 3-4 episodes of it when it popped up on recommended. Kinda like that other one with a similar style, Baki (I think?), I found zero characters likeable/don't really like the animation style and turned them off. Not for me.

Anyway, glasses and the myriad of personality traits/tropes that tend to come with them ... yeah, that's my anime thing. Although glasses aren't 100% required - mostly it's the personality traits/tropes they often indicate.  Frankenstein in Noblesse over Rai any day.   Or Spock over Kirk. Technically I married a sorta-Spock type, so, yea.  haha

Edited November 6, 2021 by LadyCrimson

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

6 hours ago, majestic said:

But... none of the JoJo gym gods wears glasses.