Anime and Manga - < To Be Continued I \ I /

[Bartimaeus]

"The dumb girls make the dumb laugh" was the start and end of my analysis of the show. Yeah, we're pretty much on the same level of depth of thought here, .

[majestic]

8 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

"The dumb girls make the dumb laugh" was the start and end of my analysis of the show. Yeah, we're pretty much on the same level of depth of thought here, .

Obviously.

Caught a nice, reddish pink eye. Looks like I'm not going to watch a whole lot of stuff either for the time being.

[Amentep]

Supēsu Kobura aka Space Cobra aka Space Adventure Cobra 

Episode X: "Irezumi no Himitsu"  aka "The Tattoo's Secret"

When last we left Cobra, he and Dominique were being attacked by the Snow Gorilla all-girl gang and their Piragators.

Spoiler

After a brief fight, Cobra and Dominique run for it.  They get skis and are chased by the gang and their leader Sandra.  Cobra drives himself and Dominque into a crevasse where Lady has the Turtle waiting for an escape, to Sandra's frustration since she thought he'd dove to his death rather than face her. Awkward.  Cobra does a bit of clever color theory and figures out how to match the tattoos to find Captain Nelson's* secret treasure.

With the map revealed, we get the set up for the next episode:

Spoiler

Nelson's Treasure is the Ultimate Weapon!  The Pirate Guild are chasing Cobra, and it seems a showdown looms on the desert planet that the Ultimate Weapon is left on.

*I've been watching the old Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea series, and typed "Admiral Nelson" originally.  Most likely not the same Nelson.  Then again, Terasawa could have been a fan for all I know.

[Bartimaeus]

13 minutes ago, Amentep said:

Snow Gorilla all-girl gang

...Snow Gorilla, or Snow Guerrilla? I feel like the latter would make more sense...but then again, this is the 80s.

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Obviously.

Caught a nice, reddish pink eye. Looks like I'm not going to watch a whole lot of stuff either for the time being.

First KP's eye, now yours, who's next?

Edited January 25, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Amentep]

17 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

...Snow Gorilla, or Snow Guerrilla? I feel like the latter would make more sense...but then again, this is the 80s.

Gorilla (the Japanese word used in the last episode title is Gorira/ゴリラ/Gorilla not Gerira/ゲリラ/Guerrilla)

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

10 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

First KP's eye, now yours, who's next?

You.

But I do have news about my eye, taking advantage of a negative rona test I got an appointment for an eye exam. Both eyes are healthy so yay there. My right eye sees fine, but it looks like the left has an astigmatism which needs correction (+1.25×-3.25 I think, idk much about glasses). The glasses are ordered and will be in about 2 weeks from now. I hope they work because I need to pass that damn vision test to renew my license, which I need for my current job and because Houston was bulldozed to make having a car essential.

[majestic]

Very well, so instead of finishing anything and probably to the detriment of my eye, I followed @Sarex recommendation and watched...

プラスチックリトル - Plastic Little (1994, OVA)
50 minute runtime

DVD Cover:

From left to right, Mei, the ship's doctor, Tita and Elysse, who cares about the guys on the crew, right?

First the really weird thing, this was supposed to be a 13 episode series and about limited lifespan androids, but it's about a ship captain called Tita, her crew and a blonde girl called Elysse that her father saved at the expense of his own life in absolutely dramatic, if somewhat hackneyed opening. As you can probably guess just by looking at that DVD cover, there's some mild fanservice in this OVA. The first thing Tita does after picking up Elysse is going to a bathing area with her where we find out that the now nude girls are 17 and 16, and Tita is impressed by Elysse's bust size, and I'm pretty impressed by the smooth jiggling animation. So are two of the male crewmembers who put on diving gear to take a peek... or two... resulting in the most impressive underwater nosebleed ever.

Well, who said anime was better in the 90ies? Anyone? Hello, guys? *Crickets Chirping*

Tita notices the two peeking at them and employs a defense system that was apparently only made to give peekers an electric shock. No, really, I'm serious. It's a button with a skull on it and it zaps the two, exactly where they are, and only that area.

Hilariously placed button that apparently is really DANGARous to use!

Can't argue with the result of this particular contrivance, huh?

Anyway, once the crew figures out what's going on with the military and the evil commander (TM), they're off on an insane mission to stop him before he finds the password to a superweapon hidden in Elysse's DNA.

The animation is fantastic, but the image quality is hampered by this being a terrible DVD transfer from a Never The Same Colors (TM) Laserdisc source, the analog color television standard that Satan (hopefully!) still tortures Walter Ransom Gail Baker for. At any rate, Tita picks up Elysse after she runs into her and a group of absolutely inconspicuous soldiers in purplish-black combat armor that doesn't at all scream evil goons tries to pick her up.

The voice acting is, as it is wont for the time it was made, fairly good in terms of direction, and somewhat bad in terms of audio quality. Himemia Anthy from Utena supplies the lead's voice, so that is someone we all know.

The fan-service is... not nearly as offensive as I thought it would be (it still has plenty of jiggling breasts, make no mistake), but thanks to this being an OVA much more explicit than usual. I guess there's a censored version of this for broadcast too. The storyline waffles from implausible (a civilian group of hunters is taking on the military for a girl they don't even know) to hackneyed (hiding passwords to superweapons in a girl's DNA, how 90ies can you get? ) and is fairly run-off-the-mill 90ies sci-fi schlock with an absolutely fantastic trash ending that will most likely leave you dumbfounded by its ludicrousness:

Spoiler

Tita survives a bullet barrage by a plattoon of soldiers because she's wearing super strong bullet proof armor that Mr. Evil Commander mentioned was even better than military gear halfway through the OVA, then proceeds to blow off the walkways the soldiers are standing on and shoots Evil Commander in his face, then proceed to fly through an underwater blockade with over three thousand torpedoes and a thousand "homing lasers" trained on them while the enemy is shooting their own ships, enter an underwater whirlpool and fire their ship's main cannon which instantly wipes out the enemy fleet, because f*ck beginning the battle with that, right?

The character models are great, the music is a little on the bland side but not terrible, and the sound effects are pretty good, even if the audio quality leaves a lot to be desired.

Overall this isn't at all what I expected it would be. Very much recommended for any fan of 90ies sci-fi schlock and lovers of perfectly animated, perfectly jiggly and perfectly perky boobies.

As a special bonus for @Bartimaeus, in the English dub, Tita is voiced by Amanda Winn. I'm sure that'll tide you over any misgivings regarding the absolutely pants storyline, the silly contrivances and the, uhm, questionable content there is.

This isn't a spoiler:

Spoiler

In case you've made it this far, this post is by far and large a joke, because Plastic Memories and Plastic Little both start with Plastic. Get it? I've actually watched this OVA like 25 years ago*, but didn't find my bootlegged copy so I made a couple of screencaps from a quickly found alternative that doesn't look at all better than the bootleg and made this post. It was made based on the works and animation by Satoshi Urushihara, the Japanese "Master of Breasts" - no, not kidding.

*Yeah, well, it was cool to have, or rather... it probably wasn't, but like with Legend of Lemnear, Legend of the Overfiend and La Blue Girl, it took having some, uhm, questionable stuff to get in with the anime crowd way back when, you know. Although Plastic Little isn't even in the same ballpark as Legend of the Overfiend or La Blue Girl, because those two are actual hentai films.

 

Edited January 25, 2022 by majestic

[majestic]

40 minutes ago, KP on top of ZA WARUDO said:

But I do have news about my eye, taking advantage of a negative rona test I got an appointment for an eye exam. Both eyes are healthy so yay there. My right eye sees fine, but it looks like the left has an astigmatism which needs correction (+1.25×-3.25 I think, idk much about glasses). The glasses are ordered and will be in about 2 weeks from now. I hope they work because I need to pass that damn vision test to renew my license, which I need for my current job and because Houston was bulldozed to make having a car essential.

Welcome to the club, one value is the cylindrical (shape of your cornea, the larger this this the more it looks like ovoid than a sphere and therefore shifts the focal point of the light entering your eye to some point behind the retina, causing blurry vision) and the other the spherical diopters, the measurement used to describe astigmatism. My spherical diopters on both eyes currently sit at a very nice -8.0, which pretty much means that without glasses, I'm half-blind.

Guess you could use a contact lense for that, although really... that depends on whether you can actually put some foreign object on your eyes or not (I can't). They also have the nasty habit of scratching your cornea, although that's pretty secondary. No way I'm putting a lens on my eyes. Ugh.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

16 minutes ago, majestic said:

Welcome to the club, one value is the cylindrical (shape of your cornea, the larger this this the more it looks like ovoid than a sphere and therefore shifts the focal point of the light entering your eye to some point behind the retina, causing blurry vision) and the other the spherical diopters, the measurement used to describe astigmatism. My spherical diopters on both eyes currently sit at a very nice -8.0, which pretty much means that without glasses, I'm half-blind.

Guess you could use a contact lense for that, although really... that depends on whether you can actually put some foreign object on your eyes or not (I can't). They also have the nasty habit of scratching your cornea, although that's pretty secondary. No way I'm putting a lens on my eyes. Ugh.

Looking at my paperwork, Sphere is +1.25 and Cylinder is -3.25. I'm still trying to make heads or tails of that, I know I have been diagnosed with astigmatism and hyperopia, but putting the numbers to it is another thing for me. All I know is that my left eye sees things blurry and struggles to read text even when it's close.

You neglected to mention the other option I have, which is the monocle.  [insert pompous aristocratic laugh]

[majestic]

Makes sense, you’d need to put the text close to fix the cylindrical issue and further away for the spherical one, so focusing doesn’t work, right?

I‘m pretty myopic, and I’d have to actually look up my cylindrical value… it’s pretty insignificant in comparison though.

As for options there’s also surgery but that depends on your insurance and all, so guess that’s out. 
 

As for the numbers, starting at an absolute value of 1.5 you need glasses (roughly), and I think at -15 for myopia at least you’re legally blind here, not 100% sure on that though. 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

19 minutes ago, majestic said:

Makes sense, you’d need to put the text close to fix the cylindrical issue and further away for the spherical one, so focusing doesn’t work, right?

Bringing it close does help, but it's still harder than using my right eye. I'd say when using my left eye only reading is difficult at best.

It's been frustrating for me because my vision itself is fine to the point I didn't notice there was an issue until I failed the test with my left eye. Especially because I need that ****ing license and Texas has made it's bureaucracy absolutely painful to deal with so those pesky minorities won't vote because of freedom.

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

As a special bonus for @Bartimaeus, in the English dub, Tita is voiced by Amanda Winn. I'm sure that'll tide you over any misgivings regarding the absolutely pants storyline, the silly contrivances and the, uhm, questionable content there is.

I've taken a look at this one before, actually, but I was not listening to the English dub. I remember the terrible underwater spying scene, but I think that was about as far as I got before I didn't foresee it getting any better and called it quits and swore to myself to never speak of it. If I had seen that poster, I strongly doubt I would have even gotten that far - this was one of first handful of non-Ghibli anime films I tried. Speaking of being underwater, your copy of the film looks like it's underwater the entire time - I do not remember the film looking near this bad fidelity-wise...but most likely, I had a better source than you were able to find. Ah, yes, I now just read your spoiler, .

However, unlike you, I did not like the particular aesthetic of this film. I am sure the animation quality, as you said, is good, but whomever the primary artist is, I remember looking him up and seeing a couple other examples of his work, and something about the way his characters look is...very strange and uncomfortable to me, and rather unlike most other 90s anime aesthetics I've seen, so I doubt I'll ever revisit anything he was a major part of. It's probably just as well given what you wrote in the spoiler...though admittedly, I now wish I had listened to the English dub for a moment just to hear English!Rei in a different role.

@KP on top of ZA WARUDO Really hope the glasses work out, considering it's your livelihood and all, .

Edited January 26, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Really hope the glasses work out, considering it's your livelihood and all, .

I think they will, I'm just nervous because it will take so long.

[Gorth]

7 hours ago, majestic said:

 

From left to right, Mei, the ship's doctor, Tita and Elysse, who cares about the guys on the crew, right?

Sorry, what were you saying? Wasn't really listening...

 

Edit: Still trying to make up my mind, what to look out for next

[majestic]

8 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I've taken a look at this one before, actually, but I was not listening to the English dub. I remember the terrible underwater spying scene, but I think that was about as far as I got before I didn't foresee it getting any better and called it quits and swore to myself to never speak of it. If I had seen that poster, I strongly doubt I would have even gotten that far - this was one of first handful of non-Ghibli anime films I tried. Speaking of being underwater, your copy of the film looks like it's underwater the entire time - I do not remember the film looking near this bad fidelity-wise...but most likely, I had a better source than you were able to find. Ah, yes, I now just read your spoiler, .

Maybe there are better sources, I was just looking for a quick way to make screencaps because strangely enough, there aren't many to find. Well, usable ones, at least. I thought the button was hilarious, and the caption with the spelling mistake is just gold. As for looking underwater, two of them are, and one is in a steamy bathing area, so it's not entirely wrong, but clicking through the rest of this, it looks like a VHS transfer blown up to 480p. It supposedly comes from a DVD though. Who knows. Maybe there's a Laserdisc original somewhere.

Reading the first line I was a little surprised, but hey, you clarified that. Lack of experience and foreknowledge explains that. Way back when, i.e. the mid nineties after this came out, Plastic Little was one of the OVAs "to have" because it was cool, actiony anime with perky breasts. Why? Well, because we were all fifteen or sixteen and not supposed to have that stuff in the first place. Plus, exhibit A:

3 hours ago, Gorth said:

Sorry, what were you saying? Wasn't really listening...

Although admittedly, the fanservice in Plastic Little isn't as problematic as in some other animes, but that is also a little weird. For one, when looking at Satoshi Urushihara's work one does know what to expect (unless you're new to this stuff and stumble into it by accident like you did), and then there's the matter of the really weird framing. The nudity in this isn't carrying any comedic undertones, not even the silly nosebleed, and the scenes with the perky jiggles (infamously there are subtitle tracks by ADV that carry a boob jiggle counter for Plastic Little and two other of their works - not kidding, that thing is real) aren't giving off the usual creepy vibe of sexualized playfulness.

Not entirely sure what to make of that. I think the scene with the peeking, the shock and the nosebleed were supposed to be funny, but that was so tone deaf it wasn't even properly offensive, while everything else was framed in a strange way. Dunno, maybe that's just me, but it helps that everything else is framed as properly "adult" entertainment, not in the sexual sense but in the sense that the target audience for this was actual adults, not 12-year-olds in adult bodies, if that makes any sense?

Or else I'm just a hypocrite who wants to defend liking this more than he should, which is probably also due to a large portion of nostalgia (edit - clarification: Liking this for being 90ies trash sci-fi, not because it has animated boobs, that I really couldn't care less about). That works too.  

8 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

However, unlike you, I did not like the particular aesthetic of this film. I am sure the animation quality, as you said, is good, but whomever the primary artist is, I remember looking him up and seeing a couple other examples of his work, and something about the way his characters look is...very strange and uncomfortable to me, and rather unlike most other 90s anime aesthetics I've seen, so I doubt I'll ever revisit anything he was a major part of. It's probably just as well given what you wrote in the spoiler...though admittedly, I now wish I had listened to the English dub for a moment just to hear English!Rei in a different role.

His character designs are fairly unique, and they look more like a hybrid between 60ies and an 80ies style than what was usually seen in the 90ies. Also very distinct from the angular 70ies aesthetic. I don't get any strange or uncanny vibes from the designs, but that's pretty subjective anyway. Supposedly there were people who liked the 70ies character designs too, and I rather prefer the others. I grew up with 60ies and 80ies anime on TV (and some 70ies children's anime mixed in, but those have their own distinct looks) so maybe it's just a matter of being used to them from early on.  

Edited January 26, 2022 by majestic
80ies, 90ies, what's the difference, ey?

[Lexx]

Damn, I really like the visual style of My Dress-Up Darling, but everything else about it is so cringe.

[majestic]

Wrapping up Carried by the Wind:

Episode 12: Myao self-inserts into a scene without knowing what is going on, and as honorable as her intentions were, as per usual, she and by extension Ran are now stuck in a silly adventure where all isn't exactly as it seems and Myao ends up smuggling stolen goods... also, damn Myao is retarded and lacks any ability to read the room. Well, or the wind, as the Japanese would say. And, as per usual, leave it to her to not learn anything from it either.

Episode 13: Myao and Ran fight. Over what? Doesn't matter, and therefore isn't shown - Ran realizes that she can't get smashed without money. Money Myao supplies from somewhere. It's quite baffling.

By the way, did you know that making Sake probably started out by shinto monks chewing rice and spitting it out? The enzymes in their saliva started fermentation, the result was a slightly alcoholic pulp. I find that disgusting, really. Sake is, by the way, the reading for two Kanji: 酒 and 鮭. One means alcohol, the other salmon, I'll leave you to figure out which is which, and the same readings are why sake sushi has nothing to do with alcohol. Since 酒 just means alcohol, if your context makes it hard to distinguish one from the other, it's probably better to use 日本酒 when it is about the ricewine from Japan, although adding the word beautification prefex o- is also often used: お酒 (o-sake).

Syllable stress is supposed ot be different between the two words, stress on the sa means salmon, and on the ke... well, you get the idea, and guess what the reason is why salmon is by far and large called sāmon (サーモン ) in Japan nowadays?

Back to the episode... Ran is trying to buy cheap sake while Myao suddenly shows up being somewhat rich after helping a jeweler, being carried by four identical slaves, or servants, or whatever, and suddenly Ran wants to make up. Strange how that goes. Myao even realizes that she's so retarded that it's going to work, and lo, it does. Ran also meets someone from her past, and it gets really confusing for a bit when the owner of a dojo buys out a geisha who is in love with Mr. Someone from Ran's past (mentor, fellow drunk and probably romantic interest) and... it ends up being Ran's finest moment, I think.

Fantastic final episode, by the way. The anime is well worth the time investment of 13 episodes, there are a few ups and downs along the way, but overall this was pretty enjoyable.

2 hours ago, Lexx said:

Damn, I really like the visual style of My Dress-Up Darling, but everything else about it is so cringe.

I, uhm, while I'm no longer have as negative an outlook on how modern animation looks as I had one year ago, this still looks pretty bad to me, in addition to being excessively cringeworthy by the nature of its, uhm, content.

[Lexx]

Well, I don't like the old anime style, tbh. I just can't get into it. I like stuff that is like My Name and such. Modern, fine lines, detailed. Your Lie in April and Erased looks also kinda nice to me. And of course the new JoJo, which also looks great. Sadly animes of that quality seem to not happening all that often.

 

[Bartimaeus]

8 hours ago, Lexx said:

Well, I don't like the old anime style, tbh. I just can't get into it. I like stuff that is like My Name and such. Modern, fine lines, detailed. Your Lie in April and Erased looks also kinda nice to me. And of course the new JoJo, which also looks great. Sadly animes of that quality seem to not happening all that often.

It's amazing how differently people can feel about art styles. I've looked at My Dress-Up Darling a few different times now, because you've kept mentioning how much you like the visual style...and this is a modern type that actually evokes disgust out of me purely from the art style of its characters - it's not an issue of content or framing, or from seeing the animation in motion...but purely the art style while looking at screenshots.

Messy lines everywhere that give an illusion of detail but really just seem like visually exhausting noise to me, faces that are somehow creepy and unclean (extreme over-expression, terrifying Cthulhu mouths, huge intense demon eyes, the lizard-skin shine spots that seem to be endemic to modern anime, the seemingly randomly and crudely applied blush gradients...), and of course, since it's a modern show, we get very modern hairstyles and clothing draped across modern skull and skeletal structures that are also noticeably unpleasant to behold...and never mind the use of shapes and colors (why is modern anime always so intensely unnatural looking - stuff from earlier eras of animation generally have much more softer and more natural color palettes, at the very least). I don't know what the intended impression of a character like this is, but the effect I get is that of a crazed and unpleasant demon, which is probably not what's intended for the viewers who enjoy this show.

...Meanwhile, you look at the older stuff that I personally like and are immediately like "nope, can't do it" for a variety of your own reasons, I'm sure. It's especially strange to me, because growing up in my teens, I was exposed only to mid-2000s to early 2010s anime styles, which I immediately hated so much that I wrote off anime entirely...and it was only later that I saw older 90s and 80s styles that I was like "okay, maybe I shouldn't write off the entire medium just because the current era we're in is despicably awful". Why this has happened, why certain styles appeal more and less to all of us, is probably impossible to say.

Majestic: I'll respond more later.

Edited January 26, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

9 hours ago, Gorth said:

Still trying to make up my mind, what to look out for next

[majestic]

53 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

(why is modern anime always so intensely unnatural looking - stuff from earlier eras of animation generally have much more softer and more natural color palettes, at the very least)

I blame digital coloring, and to a lesser degree scanning the animations, i.e. the outlines drawn on paper, scanned and animated digitally by stringing the frames together instead of using cels - at least for Japanese anime. Western cartoons didn't suffer as much from this, like, when you look at Infinity Train it looks fine, but it too was animated on paper and colored digitally. There are some physical properties you'll just never get from digitally coloring scanned outlines, no matter how hard you try.

Like having an actual coat of paint with not always evenly distributed amounts of color (perhaps intentional, to boot), colors on top of each other and colors according to what we can observe in reality (where else would go get colors from). I don't want to say digital coloring feels so soulless, but it's pretty much like the difference between the original Star Wars and Attack of the Clones. Star Wars, for all its being sci-fi, looks like the real world because it was shot in the real world, Attack of the Clones wasn't. Everything is shiny, bright and just feels wrong*.

That's why you have modern anime where the backgrounds look fantastic and the character models don't, because the backgrounds were painted and then scanned, not vice versa - but they're also by far and large static, so the extra work pays off by making them look better and not causing a whole lot more effort. I'm guessing you could apply some digital trickery to simulate color thickness and layering and whatnot, but looking at the screenshots, that's just not done, and even then... that's never going to be the same.

This is a lot like this stock picture here:

Now, this has someone with a ball, a broken window, and someone angry. I think this is supposed to mean that the guy believes the other guy damaged the window, but my reaction to that is, given the perspective on this, there's no way that ball could have made that small a hole. Whatever the ball is, it sure wasn't used to break the window.

*edit: At the end of the day, a painting has a structure and an actual uneven surface that breaks light differently than the inherently flat surface of a digital plane of color. That's why painting and scanning the background beats digitally created backgrounds every time, even if a little bit is lost without cel transfers. At least, I think that's what is bothering me, but I might be wrong, I'm by no means an expert on the subject of animation.

Edited January 26, 2022 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

31 minutes ago, majestic said:

I blame digital coloring, and to a lesser degree scanning the animations, i.e. the outlines drawn on paper, scanned and animated digitally by stringing the frames together instead of using cells - at least for Japanese anime. Western cartoons didn't suffer as much from this, like, when you look at Infinity Train it looks fine, but it too was animated on paper and colored digitally. There are some physical properties you'll just never get from digitally coloring scanned outlines, no matter how hard you try.

Like having an actual coat of paint with not always evenly distributed amounts of color (perhaps intentional, to boot), colors on top of each other and colors according to what we can observe in reality (where else would go get colors from). I don't want to say digital coloring feels so soulless, but it's pretty much like the difference between the original Star Wars and Attack of the Clones. Star Wars, for all its being sci-fi, looks like the real world because it was shot in the real world, Attack of the Clones wasn't. Everything is shiny, bright and just feels wrong.

That's why you have modern anime where the backgrounds look fantastic and the character models don't, because the backgrounds were painted and then scanned, not vice versa - but they're also by far and large static, so the extra work pays off by making them look better and not causing a whole lot more effort. I'm guessing you could apply some digital trickery to simulate color thickness and layering and whatnot, but looking at the screenshots, that's just not done, and even then... that's never going to be the same.

This is a lot like this stock picture here:

Now, this has someone with a ball, a broken window, and someone angry. I think this is supposed to mean that the guy believes the other guy damaged the window, but my reaction to that is, given the perspective on this, there's no way that ball could have made that small a hole. Whatever the ball is, it sure wasn't used to break the window.

 

All that definitely makes sense. And of course, I personally love film grain for animation (and don't really mind the subtle frame jitter that you see in traditionally-animated work...although there was one show, I'm forgetting which, where the last 10 or so frames of a scene went like an 15 entire degrees off of what it was supposed to be which was startling and clearly unintentional and yet somehow they didn't bother to fix it even though it was super obvious what had happened), which is another thing digitally made stuff just doesn't have. The art of animation is...I wanted to say dead, but "undead" is probably more accurate, .

The Magnificent Myao and the Rambunctious Ran: Myao's "disguise" in episode 12 is quite possibly one of the worst things I've ever seen. When I originally watched that episode, I immediately created a screenshot and intended to post it for you...but then I remembered that you said you would probably watch the show, so I decided to withhold so you could experience it for yourself. Although it is one of the worst things I've ever seen, Myao was wearing it, and that broke my brain and put me in a laughing fit for most of the rest of the episode. Her being crucified with her yelling and screaming and crying and praying was also incredible. As for episode 13...Goddess Myao (or whatever the hell that was supposed to be, with what she was wearing and being carried around by slaves) is the best Myao. Yes, a great final episode for a semi-straight, semi-wacked out parody of a samurai show, .

On 12/17/2021 at 4:59 AM, Bartimaeus said:

Episode 12, the episode in which Myao accidentally becomes a wanted criminal as a result of trying to help out some people who were getting murdered for their dishware...and also learns to use her "womanly wiles" to get out of deadly situations in which she can't solve with her claws...er, fists.

  Hide contents

The specific womanly wiles I'm talking about, of course, being "screaming and hiding", .

Edited January 26, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[uuuhhii]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

It's amazing how differently people can feel about art styles. I've looked at My Dress-Up Darling a few different times now, because you've kept mentioning how much you like the visual style...and this is a modern type that actually evokes disgust out of me purely from the art style of its characters - it's not an issue of content or framing, or from seeing the animation in motion...but purely the art style while looking at screenshots.

Messy lines everywhere that give an illusion of detail but really just seem like visually exhausting noise to me, faces that are somehow creepy and unclean (extreme over-expression, terrifying Cthulhu mouths, huge intense demon eyes, the lizard-skin shine spots that seem to be endemic to modern anime, the seemingly randomly and crudely applied blush gradients...), and of course, since it's a modern show, we get very modern hairstyles and clothing draped across modern skull and skeletal structures that are also noticeably unpleasant to look at...and never mind the use of shapes and colors (why is modern anime always so intensely unnatural looking - stuff from earlier eras of animation generally have much more softer and more natural color palettes, at the very least). I don't know what the intended impression of a character like this is, but the effect I get is that of a crazed and unpleasant demon, which is probably not what's intended for the viewers who enjoy this show.

...Meanwhile, you look at the older stuff that I personally like and are immediately like "nope, can't do it" for a variety of your own reasons, I'm sure. It's especially strange to me, because growing up in my teens, I was exposed only to mid-2000s to early 2010s anime styles, which I immediately hated so much that I wrote off anime entirely...and it was only later that I saw older 90s and 80s styles that I was like "okay, maybe I shouldn't write off the entire medium just because the current era we're is despicably awful". Why this has happened, why certain styles appeal more and less to all of us, is probably impossible to say.

Majestic: I'll respond more later.

use to have problem with western cartoon style

take maybe 6 years to slowly get into it

last air bender and korra helped a lot

as for early anime style someone mentioned

how early is that

the first episode of conan doesn't look good for decade now

Edited January 26, 2022 by uuuhhii

[Bartimaeus]

1 minute ago, uuuhhii said:

use to have problem with western cartoon style

take maybe 6 years to slowly get into it

last air bender and korra helped a lot

as for early anime style someone mentioned

how early is that

the first episode of conan doesn't look good for decades now

Everyone has their own preferences. Amentep apparently loves the 70s and early 80s (e.g. Conan...which I like the backgrounds of, but am merely "okay" with the character designs - I certainly prefer it over 99.9% of modern stuff!), I personally prefer a number of styles between the late 80s and late 90s*, Lexx likes very modern stuff, majestic is probably all over the place at this point... I watched Airbender as a kid on live TV - great show, hard to believe it came out 16 years ago, hope majestic one day tries it out. Didn't care quite as much for the sequel series, but it has its fans. Its art style is obviously meant to be anime-esque, though...even if it isn't exactly quite like any anime in particular.

*Although I'm finicky enough that there are still plenty of styles even within that time period that I do not care for - the original Sailor Moon, early Ranma 1/2, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Perfect Blue/Millennium Actress, various 70s-90s Ghibli movies are all some examples of my favorite anime styles...and I have my eye on a number of other things that I haven't yet watched like Gall Force, Cowboy Bebop, Gunsmith Cats, Bubblegum Crisis, Gunbuster, and number of other smaller series I can't recall off the top of my head on the basis of looking appealing to me.

[uuuhhii]

7 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Everyone has their own preferences. Amentep apparently loves the 70s and early 80s (e.g. Conan...which I like the backgrounds of, but am merely "okay" with the character designs - I certainly prefer it over 99.9% of modern stuff!), I personally prefer a number of styles between the late 80s and late 90s*, Lexx likes very modern stuff, majestic is probably all over the place at this point... I watched Airbender as a kid on live TV - great show, hard to believe it came out 16 years ago, hope majestic one day tries it out. Didn't care quite as much for the sequel series, but it has its fans. Its art style is obviously meant to be anime-esque, though...even if it isn't exactly quite like any anime in particular.

*Although I'm finicky enough that there are still plenty of styles even within that time period that I do not care for - the original Sailor Moon, early Ranma 1/2, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Perfect Blue/Millennium Actress, various 70s-90s Ghibli movies are all some examples of my favorite anime styles...and I have my eye on a number of other things that I haven't yet watched like Gall Force, Cowboy Bebop, Gunsmith Cats, Bubblegum Crisis, Gunbuster, and number of other smaller series I can't recall off the top of my head on the basis of looking appealing to me.

how old was ranma

did rurouni kenshin came out near that time

maybe try that blood c movie

couldn't remember much about those early stuff