Anime and Manga - I respect the first human to have eaten a mushroom

[Sarex]

New Berserk chapter out. The pacing is out of control.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

54 minutes ago, Sarex said:

New Berserk chapter out. The pacing is out of control.

It's like a good year of chapters in less than a month!

Anyways 

So Griffith "rescues" (kidnaps?) Casca and a big hole opens in the earth? Are the apostles going to invade the island now to knock off Danan like they did Flora's teacher? Where did the Skull Knight run off to? There's just so much going on here I'm having trouble keeping up.

[Sarex]

1 hour ago, KP wants Blue Velvet said:

It's like a good year of chapters in less than a month!

Anyways 

 

  Hide contents

 

So Griffith "rescues" (kidnaps?) Casca and a big hole opens in the earth? Are the apostles going to invade the island now to knock off Danan like they did Flora's teacher? Where did the Skull Knight run off to? There's just so much going on here I'm having trouble keeping up.

 

Spoiler

I would guess he kidnaps Casca because the kid is drawn to her and that puts his body at risk. No clue why the ground erupted. Maybe the island is rejecting Griffith. The next chapter is here pretty soon, so I guess we will see.

 

[NovaOnce]

I don't know what are you referring to, but you don't need to eat it first to know if it's poisonous or deadly. You get the juice of possible food and apply it to your skin. If there was no reaction you can try a small amount of it or observe it be eaten by some animals. Then you eat more and see if it tastes good. I'm sure it was better known in older times. No risk in trying new things this way. But yeah, the phrase "I respect the first human to be eaten a mushroom" sounds profound as if it was referring to the courage and toughness of life. But eeh... To eat an unknown mushroom is not a biggie if you know how to do it. 

Edited July 7, 2022 by NovaOnce

[Amentep]

9 minutes ago, NovaOnce said:

I don't know what are you referring to, but you don't need to eat it first to know if it's poisonous or deadly. You get the juice of possible food and apply it to your skin. If there was no reaction you can try a small amount of it or observe it be eaten by some animals. Then you eat more and see if it tastes good. I'm sure it was better known in older times. No risk in trying new things this way. But yeah, the phrase "I respect the first human to be eaten a mushroom" sounds profound as if it was referring to the courage and toughness of life. But eeh...

Its a quote from a character in one of the Jo-Jo's Bizarre Adventures, hence its use on the anime thread.  

[Sarex]

Ruri Dragon already on a break, does not bode well for the series. Could just be bad luck.

[HoonDing]

He'll never kill Griffith lmao

[majestic]

8 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I once tried to watch The Last Unicorn, think I only got about halfway through. I remember hating the titular unicorn, but I don't remember for sure why.

Because she's a 'bit' of a non-character, I'd guess.  

The Last Unicorn and Valhalla (a film that for some reason features Christopher Lee as Thor in the German dub, but not in the English one) were animated movies I had on VHS a long, long time ago. It's entirely possible that they're not nearly as good as nostalgia makes them out to be. I rewatched The Last Unicorn at some point and still enjoyed it, I think it was on Netflix for a while. Both films are examples of what I mean when I say I sometimes enjoy films based entirely on their atmosphere.

8 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Similarly, it's been two years since I watched Tales from Earthsea, and mostly what I remember is a cast of characters that called into question the wisdom of the current legal status of abortion in the U.S. (particularly with regards to the protagonist), a world that felt like it was only a couple of Baldur's Gate 1 wilderness areas large, a pathetically generic and one-notey soundtrack, wondering what the heck the movie was trying to accomplish throughout its run time given that it's clearly supposed to be a crappy shonen adventure film, and it having an ending so bad that I wanted to turn off the universe.

My biggest problem is quite frankly the plot and how what should be major points aren't, and what becomes a major point at the end is quite... stupid.

Spoiler

I am uncertain how nobody noticed that Therru being a dragon makes no sense. She sits idly by while her surrogate mother is taken, she runs to the castle to deliver the sword (and doesn't know the way), almost comes too late, has to go around the closed gate, talks to Shadow!Arren and doesn't understand what he is at first. All of the things that would make sense if she wasn't a mythical and stupidly powerful creature captable of flight and incinerating the villain in an instant.

Well, and the character development of Arren is unfocused, waffles around and eventually ends with him becoming a generic fantasy hero.

Spoiler

Things that would have been so easily changed. Remove the dragons, make Therru 'defeat' the villain after Arren overcomes his fear or, eh, for all I care, make him really be able to draw the sword, and for all that's good and holy, leave out this true name nonsense. There's just too many fantasy concepts and none of them are developed enough to be interesting. Life/light vs. darkness/death is fairly rote already, so at least make it good if you want it to be the focus, there's no need to bring in an unresolved patricide, true names giving power, a travel adventure with Gandalf and Bilbo (or Frodo) and dragons.

There, I just fixed the film. It would still have pacing issues and be a bit on the generic fantasy side, but it could lose half an hour of runtime that way and keep everything much more focused. Eh. Hayao Miyazaki was right, this is a matter of experience, although... he himself doesn't come up with the best endings either, but they're not as... well, dumb as this one. So, what's next?

[NovaOnce]

13 hours ago, Amentep said:

Its a quote from a character in one of the Jo-Jo's Bizarre Adventures, hence its use on the anime thread.  

Anime? I love anime! My favorite one is "Avatar: The last air hander". It's a very good anime.

Edited July 8, 2022 by NovaOnce

[InsaneCommander]

 

Wait... who is that Giorno wannabe at 0:58?

[Bartimaeus]

Tales from Earthsea (2006). Hey, maybe it's not as bad as I thought it was when I watched it, time to go into it with a clean slate once again. ...Or maybe I just wanted to watch Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind last out of these lot, so I could end on a high note, .

"I sense the Light dimming, Your Majesty."
"The Light?"
"The Light of the Balance that sustains the world."

Four and a half minutes in, and I already know this isn't going to go well because of these lines. It's not just because of how dumb it sounds, but the context of it as well: this is the wise king talking to his loyal archmage, and "The Light" and "The Balance" sure sound like important concepts in this world...that apparently the king has never even heard of. There are ways to introduce these concepts (even as boilerplate as they are) to the viewer, and using the king and his archmage just ain't it. Once again, at least I'm watching in Japanese so I don't have to actually hear this stuff out loud. The Byzantine-ish fashion of the royalty looks nice, though...not that they stick around for long, what with Prince Patricide running the show.

Spoiler

I'm ten minutes in: must...resist...hating...shonen. Guide me, o Lucifer, to some new road...

"Wizards! No girlfriend, eh?"

Lmao, the thought of wizards being the medieval equivalent of a nerd is pretty funny. Actually, the character stuff in the town is pretty effective - the talk of the background/setting/plot stuff, not so much, but it's something.

"Won't fetch much with that face..."

What, are you kidding? She has like a perfect ying-yang burn pattern, that has to be worth something. Have you seen Prince Zuko's? Now there's an ugly face burn...

...I was watching this movie, but then thinking of Airbender made me watch two episodes of that instead. Maybe I'll finish this up tomorrow...dang it, I only got 30 minutes in...

 

[Bartimaeus]

Tales from Earthsea, part 2:

Spoiler

Sparrowhawk comes in like Gandalf the White...to save only Arren? I guess he unbound the rest, but it's not clear what happened to the guards or why Sparrowhawk wasn't like "yo, you guys should probably get going while you can" - a little moment to help out other people who have had it worse than Arren woulda been nice. Edit from later: Yeah, see, the film has the captain explicitly tell us that the rest of the slaves didn't get away, .

The setting/plot stuff of this film feel so danged clumsy. You're right that the simpler character stuff isn't half bad (although characters behaving the way they do, whether it's Sparrowhawk randomly becoming attached to Arren, Arren being nuts, and Therru being...you know, Therru, is all left unjustified for too long - really, we get just about an hour into the film before Tenar even mentions why Therru is with her), but the rest of the film otherwise being being a big dumb fantasy movie with all of its usual trappings makes it a pretty hard sell overall. Maybe I will upgrade this to a 3/10 after all...

Ergh, I forgot about...Lord Corn Cob, . Sparrowhawk: "Don't worry, Arren is with me. You have nothing to fear. Sometimes his eyes are wild [and he murders animals and/or people], but he has a good heart." Yep. Therru's stated reason for not liking him is that she doesn't like people who don't value life... The minions storm into Tenar's farm and wreck the place, then ask Tenar where Sparrowhawk is, she says "he's not here", and then they just go "ok.jpeg" and leave... Therru only breaks into song in front of Arren once he calls out her name multiple times... It all feels so incredibly clumsy when small changes to how scenes start or play out would make them work instead of...not. Like, Arren could come across Therru when she's already in the middle of singing to herself instead of her only starting when he calls out and approaches her. Rather than the minions charging in and wrecking the place like cartoon caricatures (who only got the information from similarly cartoonish gossipy farmer women), they could surveil the farm for like 15 seconds (of run time, not in-universe time...it could be a couple of short scenes over the span of a day), determine Sparrowhawk isn't there, then go report back to Lord Corn Cob. Easy solutions for making those scenes not come across as being nearly so silly and inexplicable, and I'm sure somebody who can actually write scenes could come up with even better ways of doing it. This film feels chock-full of scenes that don't quite work but could've with just a little modification...on top of all of the other problems with the movie (the amount of stuff that is either not setup properly, does not get a proper payoff, or is just mentioned and never explained further or even brought up again at all is too much).

And then Arren is kidnapped by Corn Cob. Now we're into the end-game of the film where nothing much works because although the movie hasn't exactly done an exemplary job of making the characters work so far, the world-building and plot stuff is much worse. Amusingly, the vast majority of this film takes place at either Tenar's farm or Corn Cob's castle...or on a vague wilderness path in between the two (heck, Therru walks on foot in between the two pretty quickly and apparently there was only one bend in the road along the way). I'm usually in favor of small scale, but the film certainly feels a bit at odds with itself here when it seems to want to be epic fantasy. I guess at least my senses weren't assaulted with piles of more useless information, so there is that. Anyways, while I was writing this, most of the rest of the final act mercifully happened, which is just as well since I didn't have anything good to say about any of it. Yeah, a 3, maybe even a 3.5 is probably more appropriate, but I still hate this film, .

 

Edited July 9, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[InsaneCommander]

Samurai Champloo 15

After getting more money than they are used to have, Jin and Mugen decide to spend the night in a place Fuu can’t go. They end up getting more than they paid for.

 

Samurai Champloo 16-17

The three part ways again after another attempt at discussing the sunflower samurai. Fuu meets with a mysterious guy, while Jin and Mugen get busy with other people in the area, all of which seem to want somebody dead.

[Amentep]

Sorry, but works got me heavily tied up, so I'm not able to do a longer post.  When I have free time, I haven't been up to screen shots and all that.

Episode XXVII: "The Evil Overlord! Salamander" aka "Aku no Teiō! Saramandā" 
Episode XXVIII: "Cobra's Angry Revenge" aka "Kobura Ikari no Hōfuku e" 
Episode XXIX: "The Man From The Arctic And Their Fiery Blood" aka "Kyokuhoku no Otoko Atsuki Chi Yo" 

Spoiler

The final arc starts with Salamander totally dismantly everything Cobra has; it seems the Pirate Commander has decided that the time is night for Cobra's elimination.  He seemingly kills Dominique (leaving her back tattoo in her hotel room, before blowing up the hotel room in an attempt to kill Cobra), and severely damages Lady.  Even Cobra's ship is taken out of the equation.  Cobra manages to escape and vows revenge on Salamander.

Cobra recruits his old pal in crime, Doug Savalas, a shape shifter, to help him break out the super-strong Pumpkin from an inescapable prison.  Once there, they find the prison full of Pirate Guild spies, but manage to escape.

In the last of the three, Cobra, Doug and Pumpkin go to recruit Bud, a former partner with superior senses and the ability to fly.  They free him from imprisonment at the hands of the Pirate Guild, but he refuses to join them, having found love and a home.  That last until, predictably, the Pirate's guild destroys it all and Bud joins the group.

Doug Savalas, the shapeshifter

Pumpkin, the strongman

Bud, the flying man with supersenses.

With his team assembled, Cobra now has what he needs to focus his wrath onto Salamander.

Other than the bit with Bud which was so predictable even HE should have seen it coming, a fun trio of episodes to set up the final showdown in the last two.

Also got through BERSERK through the first story of The Golden Age (so the first 9 chapters, I think).  It'll probably be a bit before I get to the next part.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

3 minutes ago, Amentep said:

Sorry, but works got me heavily tied up, so I'm not able to do a longer post.  When I have free time, I haven't been up to screen shots and all that.

Episode XXVII: "The Evil Overlord! Salamander" aka "Aku no Teiō! Saramandā" 
Episode XXVIII: "Cobra's Angry Revenge" aka "Kobura Ikari no Hōfuku e" 
Episode XXIX: "The Man From The Arctic And Their Fiery Blood" aka "Kyokuhoku no Otoko Atsuki Chi Yo" 

  Reveal hidden contents

The final arc starts with Salamander totally dismantly everything Cobra has; it seems the Pirate Commander has decided that the time is night for Cobra's elimination.  He seemingly kills Dominique (leaving her back tattoo in her hotel room, before blowing up the hotel room in an attempt to kill Cobra), and severely damages Lady.  Even Cobra's ship is taken out of the equation.  Cobra manages to escape and vows revenge on Salamander.

Cobra recruits his old pal in crime, Doug Savalas, a shape shifter, to help him break out the super-strong Pumpkin from an inescapable prison.  Once there, they find the prison full of Pirate Guild spies, but manage to escape.

In the last of the three, Cobra, Doug and Pumpkin go to recruit Bud, a former partner with superior senses and the ability to fly.  They free him from imprisonment at the hands of the Pirate Guild, but he refuses to join them, having found love and a home.  That last until, predictably, the Pirate's guild destroys it all and Bud joins the group.

Doug Savalas, the shapeshifter

Pumpkin, the strongman

Bud, the flying man with supersenses.

With his team assembled, Cobra now has what he needs to focus his wrath onto Salamander.

Other than the bit with Bud which was so predictable even HE should have seen it coming, a fun trio of episodes to set up the final showdown in the last two.

Also got through BERSERK through the first story of The Golden Age (so the first 9 chapters, I think).  It'll probably be a bit before I get to the next part.

There's a bit before The Golden Age, you wouldn't want to miss out on the Slug Count.

[InsaneCommander]

Samurai Champloo 18

Mugen goes to school. Fuu and Jin help two brothers settle their differences.

 

Samurai Champloo 19

Jin and Mugen crash a wedding and we finally get some concrete information about the Sunflower Samurai.

 

Spoiler

It was a little predictable who the sunflower samurai (supposedly?) is. After losing her mother Fuu would want to go after her father, since she never mentioned him, what seemed to be an indication he was not around (or dead).

 

Samurai Champloo 20-21

Travelling with a blind musician, Fuu is forced to consider the reality of her journey, while Mugen and Jin find a worthy opponent.

 

Spoiler

Best fighter we’ve seen in this series. And she would’ve won if she wanted.

 

[Amentep]

2 hours ago, KP wants Blue Velvet said:

There's a bit before The Golden Age, you wouldn't want to miss out on the Slug Count.

This is what I read -

"The Black Swordsman" 

"The Brand" 

"The Guardians of Desire (pt 1-6)"

"The Golden Age (pt 1)

Which is the first big volume of the dark horse English language volumes.

[Sarex]

Araki Hirohiko (creator of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure) appeared in a video presentation at Anime Expo 2022 on July 3rd and showed a new Jolyne illustration.

[Gorth]

Watched the first 4 episodes of Slime Diaries (the "side stories" with things happening in parallel to Tensura Nikki season 1 and first part of season 2, not to be confused with the OAD's). Nice change of pace, as it's mostly about fleshing out the setting. "Innocent" stuff like planning the farming work, characters getting fleshed out and nothing so far that interferes with the main plot, just adding a bit more depth to the setting so to speak.

 

Since I liked season 1 a lot, I figured maybe I should give other Animes in the "Isekai" genre a go and tried 4 different ones (those ridiculous long and convoluted names that nobody remember in their next life), watching episode 1 of each. Argh.... it was bad

I guess I just got lucky in the first try, finding one that hooked me completely.

[Sarex]

Chainsaw Man part 2 started. So far more of the same, which is good.

[LadyCrimson]

On 7/11/2022 at 9:57 AM, InsaneCommander said:

Samurai Champloo 20-21

Travelling with a blind musician,

Yeah, those are a couple of my favorite episodes.
It does take a while, but I loved how that anime slowly built up their chrs and their relationship, the small humor moments then the dramatics....in that action-anime story telling way, ofc.

It's also one of those where the Eng. dub is overall very good. I've watched both dubbed and subbed and I don't really have a big preference, except to my ears I might slightly prefer the Eng. VA's tonal/inflection, slightly more OTP interpretation of Mugen better.

 

Edited July 12, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Komi Can't Communicate episodes I don't know. So I forgot about this show and dived back in.

So I've been avoiding this, but sometimes I catch @majestic's madness and need to finish something once I've started it even if it's trash. I fear this may be one of those cases. This show would be hugely improved if Najimi became a serial killer and wiped out at least half the supporting cast.

[InsaneCommander]

On 7/11/2022 at 10:20 PM, Gorth said:

I guess I just got lucky in the first try, finding one that hooked me completely.

It could be worse. I've watched many Isekais and some didn't go in a good direction. Skeleton Knight in Another World starts with some girls about to be raped. Not even Goblin Slayer went there that fast. Arifureta had an interesting story, with an entire classroom (including their teacher) taken to another world. But eventually it revealed itself as a harem ecchi and the first girl that appears is a "legal loli" as Haru would say.

Maybe you will like So I'm a Spider, So What? It does get a little repetitive with the spider fighting against monsters every single episode, but the story seems to be pretty complex, which intrigued me.

There is also Mushoku Tensei (Jobless Pervert Reincarnation), which is great in many ways, but the protagonist is a pervert reborn as a child and there are way too many scenes about that, like his maid and his teacher discovering he steals their panties. So watch at your own risk.

 

20 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

Yeah, those are a couple of my favorite episodes.
It does take a while, but I loved how that anime slowly built up their chrs and their relationship, the small humor moments then the dramatics....in that action-anime story telling way, ofc.

It's also one of those where the Eng. dub is overall very good. I've watched both dubbed and subbed and I don't really have a big preference, except to my ears I might slightly prefer the Eng. VA's tonal/inflection, slightly more OTP interpretation of Mugen better.

Yes, their relationship is evolving and it is getting more interesting.

Spoiler

A good example is the subtle reaction of Jin and Mugen when they discover that Fuu wants to get revenge on the Sunflower Samurai, her father. You can see they are much more invested by now.

 

Edited July 13, 2022 by InsaneCommander

[Sarex]

1 minute ago, InsaneCommander said:

Maybe you will like So I'm a Spider, So What?

After the first arc the whole show shifts in another direction. Many people, including me, lost interest in it after that.

[InsaneCommander]

26 minutes ago, Sarex said:

After the first arc the whole show shifts in another direction. Many people, including me, lost interest in it after that.

That doesn't surprise me.

Spoiler

The spider part is over, so they will probably focus on the other plots.