Anime and Manga - ゴゴゴゴ

[Lexx]

Finished s1 of Sword Art Online. Generally it was ok, but the whole mom and dad thing was super cringe. Especially considering those kids are supposed to be 16 and 17. Also that "I love my brother"-part is yikes. Wouldn't have hurt to not have this stuff.

[majestic]

38 minutes ago, Lexx said:

Also that "I love my brother"-part is yikes.

Is this more like the Nanami loves Touga sort of "I love my brother" part, or more like Anthy and Akio sort? Do I even want to know?

In case you don't know what I'm talking about:

Spoiler

Nanami really, really loves her brother, but she freaks out when she sees Akio really, really, REALLY, uhm, love his sister.

 

[InsaneCommander]

[Amentep]

Dang it, i see I misspelled Rug Ball as "Rub Ball" again... 

[majestic]

2 minutes ago, Amentep said:

Dang it, i see I misspelled Rug Ball as "Rub Ball" again... 

Psst, you could fix every post and quote with it and not leave a trace. Well, any trace seen by us mortals, at least.

[Amentep]

1 minute ago, majestic said:

Psst, you could fix every post and quote with it and not leave a trace. Well, any trace seen by us mortals, at least.

Yeah, I know but given that I keep misspelling it, I figured I'd go with  blanket notice that I keep typing Rub Ball, so if you see it know I meant Rug Ball rather be doomed to an eternity of editing...

[InsaneCommander]

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, InsaneCommander said:

 

[Bartimaeus]

Escaflowne, episode 1. The aesthetic of this show is a bit strange - feels very in between eras to me. Parts of it look almost Evangelion-esque, but others...not so much. Some weird combination of the early 2000s/very late 90s and Utena that confuses my brain. The most recent remastered BDs are quite fine looking in terms of detail, and I went to go check Amazon for a comparison, since I'm pretty sure majestic mentioned that he started watching it on Amazon, but it's not available here in the states on Amazon.

The dragon was one of the more odd looking things I've seen crawl out of an anime - not that it looked bad, not at all, but more like a different team of animators animated it in its own distinct style from the rest of the show. Outside of the aesthetic, the animation is also fairly impressive...well, suffice to say, I certainly can't really complain about how the show looks. The music also works better than I expected given that I listened to that soundtrack of it when we were previously talking about the music. Well, except for the outro music, . I'll take Utena's "Truth", Evangelion's "Fly Me to the Moon", or literally any of Sailor Moon's outros compared to that, thanks.

But enough about all that - how's the actual show? Well, the same moron that recommended Lady Asuka also recommended this, so you know, it went about as expected. Wait...no, it seems like somebody got something mixed up here, because that was a pretty great first episode in most every respect I can think of. I had to go back and check to see who exactly recommended this to me (context for people that aren't majestic: I went and asked some people who I thought might have good ideas on pre-2000s shoujo recommendations in the context of finishing Cardcaptor, and Escaflowne was one of them along with a pile of other stuff, hence why it was something we were vaguely aware of before majestic actually tried it), and it turns out, I made an error. The person that recommended Escaflowne was a different person entirely - they recommended just Escaflowne, Sailor Moon, Ojamajo Doremi, Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, and Gokinjo Monogatari. They overlooked that I had already said I'd watched Sailor Moon, but I'll forgive them for seemingly getting at least one of their other recommendations right. Also, I'm pretty curious to see what my impression of the catgirl will be - the initial look at her in the intro, where she appears for just a moment, shows her solemnly contemplating the stars from the window of a room, and okay, wow, I'm already on board with the catgirl because of that little piece of framing. Guess we'll see when she appears proper.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Lexx]

6 hours ago, majestic said:

Is this more like the Nanami loves Touga sort of "I love my brother" part, or more like Anthy and Akio sort? Do I even want to know?

In case you don't know what I'm talking about:

  Hide contents

Nanami really, really loves her brother, but she freaks out when she sees Akio really, really, REALLY, uhm, love his sister.

 

She really loves her brother. But later it turns out they actually aren't really brother and sister, so it's alright, amirite?

[Bartimaeus]

21 minutes ago, Lexx said:

She really loves her brother. But later it turns out they actually aren't really brother and sister, so it's alright, amirite?

Nanami is probably the most disturbed character in Revolutionary Girl (and that's saying something, because there are a whole lot of very disturbed people in that show), with a whole "I will literally drown kittens to monopolize my brother's love" complex (no really, that happened)...and even she eventually took a step back before she went over the precipice and adjusted her behavior before it truly went critical. Thing is, the framing of the show makes it pretty clear she's a messed up fruit basket of a person from the very beginning, which is why the show remains watchable even with that going on. If, on the other hand, a show were to have such elements and not make it clear that it's super weird/gross/wrong, well...that'd be a much more difficult sell, that's for sure.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Escaflowne, episode 1. The aesthetic of this show is a bit strange - feels very in between eras to me. Parts of it look almost Evangelion-esque, but others...not so much. Some weird combination of the early 2000s/very late 90s and Utena that confuses my brain. The most recent remastered BDs are quite fine looking in terms of detail, and I went to go check Amazon for a comparison, since I'm pretty sure majestic mentioned that he started watching it on Amazon, but it's not available here in the states on Amazon.

The dragon was one of the more odd looking things I've seen crawl out of an anime - not that it looked bad, not at all, but more like a different team of animators animated it in its own distinct style from the rest of the show. Outside of the aesthetic, the animation is also fairly impressive...well, suffice to say, I certainly can't really complain about how the show looks. The music also works better than I expected given that I listened to that soundtrack of it when we were previously talking about the music. Well, except for the outro music, . I'll take Utena's "Truth", Evangelion's "Fly Me to the Moon", or literally any of Sailor Moon's outros compared to that, thanks.

I see, so I'm not the only one who got that impression. Allen in particular, whom you've only seen in the intro so far, looks like he stepped directly out of Revolutionary Girl Utena. The strange Evangelion-esque feeling will get a bit stronger still when Escaflowne is activated for the first time, although the mech designs are of course pretty different - and the mechs in this are pretty much regular mechs, not vat grown aliens infused with human souls.  

Or maybe they are and I just haven't gotten to the point yet, but if it turns out like that I'll deduct points for lack of creativity and blatant stealing of ideas.

Are you watching the English dub or the original?

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

But enough about all that - how's the actual show? Well, the same moron that recommended Lady Asuka also recommended this, so you know, it went about as expected. Wait...no, it seems like somebody got something mixed up here, because that was a pretty great first episode in most every respect I can think of.

Minor caveat: The first episode is the first episode, but you've already been subjected to a fight with a dragon and Van and didn't hate either right from the start, so that's a relief of a sort, because I didn't either, and I feel a bit better about this particular aspect at least. One of the nicer things about it is that the show often uses Hitomi's point of view on Gaia to introduce elements and have the audience make sense of them without it being problematic exposition for exposition's sake. Mr. Plinkett said as much in his Phantom Menace review, a fish out of water really makes it easy to justify and properly frame exposition instead of having characters randomly tell people things they already know. It's maybe a minor thing, but it helps with immersion.

Like a while back when I watched StrikerS and talked about Fate giving her students a lecture and a pop quiz in history - that brought the audience up to speed and was believable, because two 12-year-olds from backwards places in the universe aren't going to know too much of galactic history.

Wonder how well the second episode will do, now that they're off Earth. Hmm.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

I had to go back and check to see who exactly recommended this to me (context for people that aren't majestic: I went and asked some people who I thought might have good ideas on pre-2000s shoujo recommendations in the context of finishing Cardcaptor, and Escaflowne was one of them along with a pile of other stuff, hence why it was something we were vaguely aware of before majestic actually tried it), and it turns out, I made an error. The person that recommended Escaflowne was a different person entirely - they recommended just Escaflowne, Sailor Moon, Ojamajo Doremi, Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, and Gokinjo Monogatari. They overlooked that I had already said I'd watched Sailor Moon, but I'll forgive them for seemingly getting at least one of their other recommendations right.

Well, that makes a whole lot more sense then, at least.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Also, I'm pretty curious to see what my impression of the catgirl will be - the initial look at her in the intro, where she appears for just a moment, shows her solemnly contemplating the stars from the window of a room, and okay, wow, I'm already on board with the catgirl because of that little piece of framing. Guess we'll see when she appears proper.

The first scene with her is a little strange, but she's appropriately catty. Not in the derogative meaning, just because she's a cat girl. Overall most of the elements that would annoy me in another anime are balanced enough to not make me hate them, or framed properly to... maybe even... actually enjoy them. Merle is a cat, so of course she jumps on Van whenever she feels like it, gets annoyed when she thinks he and Hitomi are getting too close and wedges herself into situations to say HEY I'M HERE TOO.

Because that's what cats do. All the time.

[Bartimaeus]

"Merle" is indeed pronounced "Earl" with an M in both of the English dubs, which I had to hear. I've otherwise been listening to the Japanese dub. Also, did this general dude really just say...that even if the dragon were to rip off the prince's [redacted], he wouldn't run away? Didn't think I'd ever hear something like that in a shoujo(?), that's for sure, . Although, I guess by the time I saw about the third or fourth guy bleed out of his eyes when the demons attacked, I probably should've realized that it would be difficult to qualify this show as simply being a "shoujo". Poor dude was crowned king and literally minutes later, his entire city was destroyed - rough first day of his reign, I'd say. Catgirl was okay in the first episode, which is good enough for now...there's room to grow, certainly. Indeed, the second episode as a whole wasn't as much fun as the first, but it was still solid enough, and that's fine. Guess I'm watching Escaflowne.

The thing about action is that...you need something more than just itself to entice me with it. Whether it's our characters learning to work together, one of the characters involved being emotionally motivated to fight for a good reason, or the fight being actually plot-important to some degree beyond just rote "fight happens here because the script says it does"...you know, it just has to be something. I will even accept action if just the way it looks is cool, because yeah, looking cool is a form of mental engagement...of course, what kind of action looks cool to me is evidently very different from what looks cool to other people, particularly because I especially value the weight of action, which is very difficult to capture. Anyways, if you can hit at least one or preferably multiple areas of properly framing and motivating action, action will usually sit pretty good in my eyes - something like Asuka's fight with the Mass Production Evas hits pretty much every single box I can even vaguely imagine, which is probably why that sequence literally brings tears to my eyes. I'll try not to make comparisons to Evangelion over the course of the show, .

32 minutes ago, majestic said:

The first scene with her is a little strange, but she's appropriately catty. Not in the derogative meaning, just because she's a cat girl. Overall most of the elements that would annoy me in another anime are balanced enough to not make me hate them, or framed properly to... maybe even... actually enjoy them. Merle is a cat, so of course she jumps on Van whenever she feels like it, gets annoyed when she thinks he and Hitomi are getting too close and wedges herself into situations to say HEY I'M HERE TOO.

My old lady cat is probably in the final stages of her life, and up until recently, she's always been kind of the opposite of that. Standoffish, flighty from any kind of movement or contact, and very solitary. Now in her old age, she's suddenly become super clingy, she constantly wants to lay on and be pet by people, and she whines a ton for no particular reason when used to not ever. Yes, I've been feeling the "HEY I'M HERE TOO" factor of the cat owner life lately, .

[majestic]

40 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

"Merle" is indeed pronounced "Earl" with an M in both of the English dubs, which I had to hear. I've otherwise been listening to the Japanese dub.

Let me know what you think of Dilando/Dilandau's voice acting when he appears. I think it's a he, regardless of being voiced by a woman. Everyone keeps referring to him as him anyway. Also, yeah, guess it was too tempting to make it M-earl, right?  

43 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Also, did this general dude really just say...that even if the dragon were to rip off the prince's [redacted], he wouldn't run away? Didn't think I'd ever hear something like that in a shoujo(?), that's for sure, . Although, I guess by the time I saw about the third or fourth guy bleed out of his eyes when the demons attacked, I probably should've realized that it would be difficult to qualify this show as simply being a "shoujo".

I guess that makes sense, the anime spawned two mangas after all, one shoujo and one shounen. The shounen manga began its run before the anime aired, but was based off of the pre-production stuff and is a retelling of the anime story. Considering how the anime looks, I'm not surprised that it took a while to make it. There are movies with worse animation and less detailed art.

Have I mentioned yet how much of a downgrade it is to go from this to Love Live!, animated by the same studio? Wait, yes, I did!

And yes, this is definitely bloodier and more violent than I expected it to be after the first episode. Sure, the dragon gets stabbed in the eye, but that's a dragon and attacking weak points is par for the course. Didn't really expect soldiers to bleed out in an attack on a city in the next 20 minutes. 

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Poor dude was crowned king and literally minutes later, his entire city was destroyed - rough first day of his reign, I'd say. Catgirl was okay in the first episode, which is good enough for now...there's room to grow, certainly. Indeed, the second episode as a whole wasn't as much fun as the first, but it was still solid enough, and that's fine. 

Karmic justice for telling Hitomi that he doesn't need help from girls. A bit extreme, mayhaps.  

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Guess I'm watching Escaflowne.

Good, good, at least that means I need to keep up, unless you get bored with it.

3 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

The thing about action is that...you need something more than just itself to entice me with it. Whether it's our characters learning to work together, one of the characters involved being emotionally motivated to fight for a good reason, or the fight being actually plot-important to some degree beyond just rote "fight happens here because the script says it does"...you know, it just has to be something. I will even accept action if just the way it looks is cool, because yeah, looking cool is a form of mental engagement...of course, what kind of action looks cool to me is evidently very different from what looks cool to other people, particularly because I especially value the weight of action, which is very difficult to capture. Anyways, if you can hit at least one or preferably multiple areas of properly framing and motivating action, action will usually sit pretty good in my eyes - something like Asuka's fight with the Mass Production Evas hits pretty much every single box I can even vaguely imagine, which is probably why that sequence literally brings tears to my eyes. I'll try not to make comparisons to Evangelion over the course of the show, .

That's why the action in StrikerS worked for me as well as it did. It wasn't the most riveting or interesting to watch and certainly a bit more than I wanted, but at least there was usually a point to it. Looking good is something that works for a while, but eventually stops, as I've noticed over the course of the MCU releases. The first Iron Man to the first Avengers film, the action was flashy and fun (and occassionally more than that) and that was enough, but after that each one got more and more "great, another 40 minute CGI spectacle fight" and I was all but bored by it when Endgame rolled around.

Regarding the Evangelion comparisons, I somehow doubt that the characters and their fate in Escaflowne will have the same impact as Asuka and the others in NGE. I like Hitomi, and even the cat girl (and some of the others too, even though Allen remains a bit of a bore for me), but they're not really on the same level - then again, NGE was a character and depression exploration in a sci-fi mech setting, so that is something completely different, but The Vision of Escaflowne kind of invites the comparisons with the look and feel. What an outright bizarre thing to say about a fantasy isekai anime.

3 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

My old lady cat is probably in the final stages of her life, and up until recently, she's always been kind of the opposite of that. Standoffish, flighty from any kind of movement or contact, and very solitary. Now in her old age, she's suddenly become super clingy, she constantly wants to lay on and be pet by people, and she whines a ton for no particular reason when used to not ever. Yes, I've been feeling the "HEY I'M HERE TOO" factor of the cat owner life lately, .

Our cat is something in between, if she feels like it she can be clingy and follows us around constantly, and then she doesn't and just runs off and wants to be left alone. She also talks (well, meow and whine) a lot especially when she's been alone at home for half a day for a change. She's used to the company and then complains about not having any servants around. The most hilarious part is the dog, though, because we got him when he was really young, only a couple of weeks old, and the cat kind of adopted him. 

The dog exhibits a whole lot of cat mannerisms, the funniest of which is trying to sneak up and pounce on birds. With absolutely no success, he's neither stealthy nor fast enough. Also need to always take care with the two, I once left some fried chicken takeout on the table because I thought it would be out of reach for the dog anyway, and it was... then we watched the cat jump on the table and just throw the chicken on the floor. Ah, yeah, they're also getting kinda old now... hmm.

 

[Oner]

More Escaflowne watchers, eeeeexcellent!

[HoonDing]

 

[majestic]

Mini-spoiler for episode 7 of The Vision of Escaflowne:

Spoiler

 

Merle doing more cat things. Sleeping on Hitomi is new though. She's not too happy about Merle sleeping on her... she's kind of heavy for a cat.

 

Hitomi is also slightly hung over in the scene after doing an Usagi and drinking too much juice at a banquet.

Found out what was going on with the scenes that have no dub on Amazon - that's because the available version on Prime Video is from the German Director's Cut Blu Rays. Which also explains why they're not available for streaming in the US. So indeed, the scenes where the show just defaults to Japanese with apparently hardcoded subtitles were added after the initial dubbing and simply have no dub.

Edited March 30, 2022 by majestic

[Lexx]

Watched first 2 episodes of Sword Art Online s2 and ... god, it gets so cringe. First season worked, because they were trapped in the virtual world, but now they aren't anymore, yet the people act as if what they are doing is serious business and a matter of life and death. It feels very far-fetched. At this point I'm not sure if I will keep watching it.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Lexx

[Bartimaeus]

On 3/30/2022 at 6:20 AM, majestic said:

Karmic justice for telling Hitomi that he doesn't need help from girls. A bit extreme, mayhaps.

I noticed his mentor thanking Hitomi for saving him without her having ever said anything to him, which would imply Van talked her up in private at least, .

On a side-note, I'm refusing to consider this to be isekai until completely proven otherwise. Just because the Gaea is an inexplicably existing planet in the shadow of the moon or whatever (all of which is horribly out of scale in the same way it is in Outer Wilds) doesn't mean this is an isekai anime, okay?

On 3/30/2022 at 6:20 AM, majestic said:

Our cat is something in between, if she feels like it she can be clingy and follows us around constantly, and then she doesn't and just runs off and wants to be left alone. She also talks (well, meow and whine) a lot especially when she's been alone at home for half a day for a change. She's used to the company and then complains about not having any servants around. The most hilarious part is the dog, though, because we got him when he was really young, only a couple of weeks old, and the cat kind of adopted him. 

The dog exhibits a whole lot of cat mannerisms, the funniest of which is trying to sneak up and pounce on birds. With absolutely no success, he's neither stealthy nor fast enough. Also need to always take care with the two, I once left some fried chicken takeout on the table because I thought it would be out of reach for the dog anyway, and it was... then we watched the cat jump on the table and just throw the chicken on the floor. Ah, yeah, they're also getting kinda old now... hmm.

Yeah, animals learning weird behaviors from not having their parents around or other unfortunate circumstances can be an experience - having had two rescue dogs, a rescue cat, and finally a cat that was taken away from her mother within like the first few days of her life (this is the last one still around, and no, that was certainly not my decision!) has been proof enough of that.

Edited March 31, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Maxxx17]

Finished watching Attack of the Titans. I got upset when Levi got so... Did anyone watch the ending?

[majestic]

32 minutes ago, Maxxx17 said:

Finished watching Attack of the Titans. I got upset when Levi got so... Did anyone watch the ending?

@InsaneCommander and @KP wants Blue Velvet were watching Attack on Titan a while back, not sure if they finished watching it.

Edited March 31, 2022 by majestic

[Lexx]

Next week the last episode airs with german subs. Waiting for that to happen, then I'll binge the ending.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

33 minutes ago, majestic said:

@InsaneCommander and @KP wants Blue Velvet were watching Attack on Titan a while back, not sure if they finished watching it.

The last episode drops this Sunday I think. I'm caught up until there.

Anyways, I'm at the last four episodes of Ergo Proxy. What a god damn ride this has been.

[majestic]

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I noticed his mentor thanking Hitomi for saving him without her having ever said anything to him, which would imply Van talked her up in private at least, .

Yeah, so slight other spoiler for episode 7:

Spoiler

Van rushes off to save Hitomi when she's kidnapped in episode 7, running - predictably - straight into a trap, but his heart was in the right place, saying he can save her for a change.

Seems like he learns from experiences, at least. Slowly, but more than the usual character like that would.

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

On a side-note, I'm refusing to consider this to be isekai until completely proven otherwise. Just because the Gaea is an inexplicably existing planet in the shadow of the moon or whatever (all of which is horribly out of scale in the same way it is in Outer Wilds) doesn't mean this is an isekai anime, okay?

That's fine, I'm assuming - what with the planet name and the bad guys mentioning [mystic place talked about by Plato] once - that Gaea/Gaia is something related to Earth anyway. A projection (why else would the talk about a moon of illusions / phantom moon, whatever it is called in the English subs) or a successor location, or something like that, at least.

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Yeah, animals learning weird behaviors from not having their parents around or other unfortunate circumstances can be an experience - having had two rescue dogs, a rescue cat, and finally a cat that was taken away from her mother within like the first few days of her life (this is the last one still around, and no, that was certainly not my decision!) has been proof enough of that.

We discussed getting our dog for a bit before actually doing it - he was all alone in a pet store, and evidently was separated from his mother too early simply to sell the cute puppy, but nobody else wanted him, he's a pure breed West Highland White Terrier and had a floppy ear (all puppies do, but he had one that didn't straighten out in time), so he was unfit for breeding or competitions. We weren't too happy about reinforcing that sort of business practice, but on the other hand... it's no the puppy's fault and they probably would have dumped him somewhere, quite literally perhaps.

So he's a catty dog now. It's fine, even kind of funny, but he's completely untrainable (another sign of being taken away from his mother too early) and does nothing of the things dogs are supposed to do. Throw him a stick, he just chews it up. He runs after balls, then comes back - without them. He even does the cat thing where he lays on his back to say "I like you!", the only problems that arise come when he's playing with other dogs and they don't quite understand what he's doing, or when he's bothering other cats who don't understand that he's not like regular dogs.

[majestic]

Episodes 8 and 9 of The Vision of Escaflowne. Episode 9 was a bit of an exposition dump, necessary in a way and used sensibly, but it was a rather extended flashback, all in all. Not a bad episode by any means, but compared to 8 which was pretty... great, it wasn't as strong.

Spoiler

I'm sitting here saying that the 8th episode was pretty great even though it had a whole fleet of Zaibach flying fortresses move through Pallas, the capital of Astoria. However, the framing of the scene and complete silence it happened in was just, dare I say it, perfect? There's some gravitas to these scenes that make them better than they should be, somehow. 

Not sure about the reveal that Van and his brother (probably?) have...

Spoiler

actual wings

but that was shown in the intro already, and I think in a flashback right at the start somewhere with Falken, so yeah, it's fine. It's not like it makes much of a difference in between cat girls, wolf people, mole people and dragons.