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

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

4 hours ago, Sarex said:

Uncle from another world episode 1. First let me start this off by saying that I'm pretty sure this show will only appeal to massive weebs, as it plays off of all the standard tropes of manga/anime. As the title says it's mostly focused on the isekai genre, but there is plenty of room for other tropes. I made it through ep1 without any fast forwarding which is rare for me.

As for the story

  Reveal hidden contents

A guy is hit by a truck when he was a teen and he ended up in a coma. He woke up 17 years later to meet his nephew. Straight off the bat he claims that for all those years he was living in another world, which he then confirms by using magic. This wins his nephew over who sees an opportunity to make money of him. How do they do that? By making youtube videos...

The uncle is a turbo nerd.

So far an interesting story and concept. This could go very bad very quickly, but I'm cautiously optimistic.

I saw that and think I'll give it a shot. Especially because the uncle is DIO.

4 hours ago, majestic said:

Eh, she also gave Komi another chocolate, one shaped like her naked body and yelled "LICK YOUR FAVORITE PART OF ME!" at Komi for everyone to hear. If anyone doesn't know by now, they're willfully obtuse.

It's a shonen anime, they're all obtuse.

To defend the panty dash, I think it worked better as a gag that gets what the creepy stalker is more than the chocolates or sausage scene. If they cut all scenes of stalker girl but that, I think it'd work better for the anime than the episodic sexual harassment. When I think about it, after Najimi (who drives 90% of the action), Stalker Girl is the second most recurring character. Not a good thought.

[InsaneCommander]

Samurai Champloo 24-26

These were very satisfying episodes, despite any shortcomes.

 

Spoiler

The battles were among the best in the series, especially Mugen’s. Those guys who were after him must have trained really hard to get so good. They didn’t seem that efficient in the boat flashback. Mugen made a brilliant move to defeat the chain guy. But the one on the wheelchair was well prepared.

I expected more of the sunflower samurai, but having him die so quickly helped give importance to the hand of Gods. Btw, if he was such a master, shouldn’t he have noticed Jin had survived? Jin’s move to kill him was great, but nothing original, so it didn’t look as nice as Mugen’s.

Also, Fuu fooled them in the beginning with the coin toss. Who doesn't check the result of a coin toss? Those fools!

 

Overall quite an enjoyable series. Some episodes weren't that interesting, but the characters were.

Edited July 21, 2022 by InsaneCommander

[Bartimaeus]

Episode 1 of Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl (1989).

A frustrating first episode, since it was like half pretty decent and half pretty bad. Yawara, the main character, is a seventeen year old girl being raised by her grandfather who was a judo master; he is insistent that she devote all her time and energy to training to judo and preparing to qualify for the Olympics in three years. Yawara has others ideas: she has a crush on a local boy idol from her school, and would rather concern herself with normal girl stuff like that and fashion than judo. So there's your overarching conflict for the show, at least for the time being.

The issue? Well...Yawara herself is O.K., but her grandfather is a complete meme of a character (and not in a good way) that feels straight out of some comedic shonen show like Dragon Ball. Constant over-the-top old-man-yells-at-clouds style interjection about anything and everything in addition to caustic obliviousness to his granddaughter's need for a shred of space and independence: we're talking searches and re-arrangements of her room when she's not at home, following her around at school, completely ignoring everything she asks for and says while pretending not to hear or understand her, trying to ruin the crush she has...all this in the first episode! It's really extreme and didn't feel like a good balance of elements, particularly because way too much of the episode's run time was seeing things exclusively from his preposterous perspective. If he was a little more reasonable and grounded while genuinely trying to push Yawara forward to achieve something great, it would feel so much better...but right now, he's like an antagonist that belongs to a different and much more stupid show than this should rightly be. Damned stupid 80s wasting all the good animation on bad writing and characters.

There was more to like in that first episode than say...I don't know, that lousy Maison Ikkoku show, but will it be enough to keep my interest? Yeah, probably not.

[Bartimaeus]

On 7/21/2022 at 6:32 PM, InsaneCommander said:

Overall quite an enjoyable series. Some episodes weren't that interesting, but the characters were.

Yeah, I thought the show having a strong focus on the characters and them being pretty good together was the key to making the show worth watching for me, particularly as someone who pretty adamantly refused to enjoy any anime show from that time period or beyond.

A few more episodes of Yawara: A Fashionable Judo Girl. This show sort of reminds me of my experience in watching the first season of Ranma in a way - it's got stuff that's stupid and which I don't necessarily like but which I'm forgiving/accepting because I do seem to be overall enjoying the show regardless...for the moment. Like Ranma, that could be subject to change at any time, particularly given that this show has 124 episodes. Yawara received a "rival" in the form of another girl who has become dead-set on defeating her, but Yawara seems to be generally unaware of their rivalry and instead tries to treat her nicely and help her out for the most part. There was a televised local judo contest that the rival went to and dominated, and Yawara neither attended nor watched it because she was more concerned with trying to figure out how to cook a specific dish. It's silly, but that's certainly better than doing the opposite and going full "I HAVE TO BECOME STRONG AND DEFEAT HER!" or anything like that. There's also an older (i.e. early 20s) reporter guy that the show has had a focus on since the first episode that's been following around Yawara in an attempt to document her judo skills because of an incident that he was a firsthand witness to where she skilfully incapacitated someone, and...the way his character has been framed so far, you would think that the show was eventually going to try to set them up romantically, but the thought of this annoyed me so much that I looked it up and found out that's not the case - they just eventually become friends. Okay, I can accept that.

Edited July 23, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Uncle From Another World 1

It reminds me of Komi Can't Communicate in terms of the vignette format, but I find myself enjoying it more. It's low stakes fun.

[Bartimaeus]

I've really never understood...I was going to say the third in particular, but really, the second and fourth as well.

On 7/24/2022 at 8:17 PM, KP wants Blue Velvet said:

Uncle From Another World 1

It reminds me of Komi Can't Communicate in terms of the vignette format, but I find myself enjoying it more. It's low stakes fun.

Looks like @majestic has a new show to watch, .

[majestic]

4 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I've really never understood...I was going to say the third in particular, but really, the second and fourth as well.

The second one bothers me the most for some reason. It's just wrong. The others, uh, not so much. Where are the shiny spots on the faces?

4 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Looks like @majestic has a new show to watch, .

[InsaneCommander]

Uncle From Another World 1

I liked how there was a lot more info about his time in the other world than I expected.
 

Spoiler

His version of the events was totally deconstructed as his nephew watched his memories.

Can't wait for that elf girl to come to the main world. Things will get wild.

 

12 hours ago, majestic said:

Oh, come on! Stop pretending you are not interested.

[majestic]

1 hour ago, InsaneCommander said:

Oh, come on! Stop pretending you are not interested.

I once watched anime on behest of another, to serve the people of this thread in person. I found only chaos and insane stalker girls. Dead whispers. For twenty-four episodes I was confused. No more. I have gathered the will to watch under no name but my own. To champion the withered trhead and correct this blighted world. Beg that I succeed. For I have seen the future of anime, and it was empty!

That said, inorder to stop myself from trying whatever kooky Isekai you guys want to watch, I instead watched:

ストライクウィッチーズ (Strike Witches), episode 1

So, basically, this is an alternate reality magical girl show where instead of World War 2, an alien invasion happened in 1939, and the militaries of the world came together to create the 501st Joint Fighter Wing, colloquially known as Strike Witches, to fight the alien invaders. It is set apart from other sci-fi magical girl shows (read that as Nanoha, mostly, because there aren't that many of them, far as I know) by not having transformation sequences with nudity, instead the girls grow cat ears and a tail when using magic.

That said, there's... very weird fanservice. Well, some is fairly regular, like girls in swimwear in the first episode (always a good sign, I guess), but uniforms of any sort apparently have neither skirts nor pants. The girls are basically wearing a shirt and some underwear, and as logically follows, there's a heavy focus on awkward crotch shots. Most of the time, I at least 'get' the fanservice. I don't particularily enjoy it, and it's often embarrassing, but at least I understand why it is there.

This here? No idea how that's supposed to be appealing. So, for no reason what-so-ever, three quarters of the cast aren't wearing pants or skirts. I have no idea why. At least it doesn't have an super stupid slapstick to accompany it. Yet.

Yeah, I basically have no excuse for this. There's any number of things I could have continued to watch but didn't. Not particularily in the mood or able to watch Texhnolyze at the moment. That's going way over my head right now, what with everything being a buzz. Currently alone at the office, my sleeping has been spotty and my weekend was filled with one giant social gathering, i.e. my wife and I invited friends and family to finally celebrate our wedding. That was, funnily enough, three years ago, but with the lockdowns it was more or less impossible until now.

It's not all bad, because outside of the silly fanservice stuff this looks like it's the sort of goofy, mindless action shlock I can watch while being brain-afk.

[InsaneCommander]

10 minutes ago, majestic said:

That said, inorder to stop myself from trying whatever kooky Isekai you guys want to watch, I instead watched:

A very good idea, since I was about to suggest what I hope is the weirdest it can get: Reborn as a Vending Machine, Now I Wander the Dungeon.

Edited July 26, 2022 by InsaneCommander

[Bartimaeus]

5 hours ago, majestic said:

ストライクウィッチーズ (Strike Witches), episode 1

Alright, let's see what screenshots the fans have uploaded in order to sell the series to us. Ah, yes, exquisitely framed zoom-ins of our characters' crotches and butts while they're in their underwear/swimsuits, how delightful and totally unexpected. We also see a bathing scene where our characters are all nude and one of them looks to be sexually assaulted by the others as a result of some kind of humorous "misunderstanding", a truly classic sequence required for any and all anime of a principled nature. Glad to see said characters also look like they're somewhere between 13-16 years old. Generally speaking, I tend to believe the fans on what a show is about based on the screenshots they like to upload for the show in question, and boy, this one sure looks good, .

Glad to hear the wedding stuff is finally over, hope you recover soon.

Edited July 27, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[uuuhhii]

that one with plane engine leg and swimsuit

that was weird even by fanservice anime standard

fullmetal alchemist would be the a great recommendation for anyone trying to get into anime

[Bartimaeus]

5 hours ago, uuuhhii said:

that one with plane engine leg and swimsuit

that was weird even by fanservice anime standard

fullmetal alchemist would be the a great recommendation for anyone trying to get into anime

My sister tried to get me to watch FMA when I was like eleven or twelve. I lasted a handful of minutes before I noped out, but even for ten year old me, that's a pretty predictable result with regards to shonen (as hard as it may be to believe for you fine people, I'm actually less opinionated and more accepting of most entertainment now than I was as a kid - there's a pretty decent gap of time from like when I was 10 to 17-ish where I followed and watched almost nothing because I didn't like anything...back then, I really only read books regularly!). I wonder how different my perception of anime would've been growing up if instead of being exposed to the worst and most popular shonen crap like Naruto, it had been something like Sailor Moon or company. Of course, due to being somewhat the wrong (i.e. too young) age, even if my reaction to such anime would've been less viscerally negative, I would've had no option but to suffer through mostly lousy English dubs and cheap/ugly digital animation, which would have been inhibiting indeed...

Edited July 27, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

15 hours ago, majestic said:

I once watched anime on behest of another, to serve the people of this thread in person. I found only chaos and insane stalker girls. Dead whispers. For twenty-four episodes I was confused. No more. I have gathered the will to watch under no name but my own. To champion the withered trhead and correct this blighted world. Beg that I succeed. For I have seen the future of anime, and it was empty!

That said, inorder to stop myself from trying whatever kooky Isekai you guys want to watch, I instead watched:

ストライクウィッチーズ (Strike Witches), episode 1

So, basically, this is an alternate reality magical girl show where instead of World War 2, an alien invasion happened in 1939, and the militaries of the world came together to create the 501st Joint Fighter Wing, colloquially known as Strike Witches, to fight the alien invaders. It is set apart from other sci-fi magical girl shows (read that as Nanoha, mostly, because there aren't that many of them, far as I know) by not having transformation sequences with nudity, instead the girls grow cat ears and a tail when using magic.

That said, there's... very weird fanservice. Well, some is fairly regular, like girls in swimwear in the first episode (always a good sign, I guess), but uniforms of any sort apparently have neither skirts nor pants. The girls are basically wearing a shirt and some underwear, and as logically follows, there's a heavy focus on awkward crotch shots. Most of the time, I at least 'get' the fanservice. I don't particularily enjoy it, and it's often embarrassing, but at least I understand why it is there.

This here? No idea how that's supposed to be appealing. So, for no reason what-so-ever, three quarters of the cast aren't wearing pants or skirts. I have no idea why. At least it doesn't have an super stupid slapstick to accompany it. Yet.

Yeah, I basically have no excuse for this. There's any number of things I could have continued to watch but didn't. Not particularily in the mood or able to watch Texhnolyze at the moment. That's going way over my head right now, what with everything being a buzz. Currently alone at the office, my sleeping has been spotty and my weekend was filled with one giant social gathering, i.e. my wife and I invited friends and family to finally celebrate our wedding. That was, funnily enough, three years ago, but with the lockdowns it was more or less impossible until now.

It's not all bad, because outside of the silly fanservice stuff this looks like it's the sort of goofy, mindless action shlock I can watch while being brain-afk.

 

15 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

A very good idea, since I was about to suggest what I hope is the weirdest it can get: Reborn as a Vending Machine, Now I Wander the Dungeon.

 

15 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

My sister tried to get me to watch FMA when I was like eleven or twelve. I lasted a handful of minutes before I noped out, but even for ten year old me, that's a pretty predictable result with regards to shonen (as hard as it may be to believe for you fine people, I'm actually less opinionated and more accepting of most entertainment now than I was as a kid - there's a pretty decent gap of time from like when I was 10 to 17-ish where I followed and watched almost nothing because I didn't like anything...back then, I really only read books regularly!). I wonder how different my perception of anime would've been growing up if instead of being exposed to the worst and most popular shonen crap like Naruto, it had been something like Sailor Moon or company. Of course, due to being somewhat the wrong (i.e. too young) age, even if my reaction to such anime would've been less viscerally negative, I would've had no option but to suffer through mostly lousy English dubs and cheap/ugly digital animation, which would have been inhibiting indeed...

I remember FMA was a thing when I was 12 or 13. I didn't keep up with it because I didn't have cable. Somewhat recently (Covid has destroyed my sense of time) I watched FMA: Brotherhood which was ok, but requires getting past some of the more annoying Shonen-isms that almost made me quit out of embarrassment. I think a lot of these Shonen shows would be stronger if they dropped it, but what the **** do I know?

The 90's Berserk series is a good start for someone looking for something more serious and can deal with heavy violence.

[uuuhhii]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

My sister tried to get me to watch FMA when I was like eleven or twelve. I lasted a handful of minutes before I noped out, but even for ten year old me, that's a pretty predictable result with regards to shonen (as hard as it may be to believe for you fine people, I'm actually less opinionated and more accepting of most entertainment now than I was as a kid - there's a pretty decent gap of time from like when I was 10 to 17-ish where I followed and watched almost nothing because I didn't like anything...back then, I really only read books regularly!). I wonder how different my perception of anime would've been growing up if instead of being exposed to the worst and most popular shonen crap like Naruto, it had been something like Sailor Moon or company. Of course, due to being somewhat the wrong (i.e. too young) age, even if my reaction to such anime would've been less viscerally negative, I would've had no option but to suffer through mostly lousy English dubs and cheap/ugly digital animation, which would have been inhibiting indeed...

a few hundred episode of conan would make dub unnecessary

sub was pretty good even 2 decade ago

problem would be the amount of new content one can get their hands on back then

someplace seems to have a videotape and dvd network

but most people are stuck with rental store with very little selection

[Amentep]

Space Cobra

Episode XXX "How to Defeat Salamander" aka "Saramandā o Taosu Hō" and Episode XXXI "So Long! My Cobra!" aka "Abayo! Ore no Kobura"

Spoiler

Episode 30 - Cobra, Doug Savalas, Pumpkin and Bud break into an ex-cop's house who is now on the payroll of the Pirate's Guild.  The ex-cop, El Rodez, is now creating drug slaves with the drug Rodo.

Jokes on Cobra, turns out they were architects who fell afoul of drugs.  DON'T DO DRUGS KIDS!

They sweat out the information of where Salamander's big Pirate's Guild celebration is happing and using Doug Savalas powers, infiltrate it in cunning disguises.  Except Pumpkin, who is left to guard the car.

Doug as El Rodez, Cobra as the Invisible Man and Bud as...Bud.

There they find that Salamander is surrounded by robots who project a force field that keeps him in constant protection. 

Salamander and his squad

Cobra discovers that they are preparing a wrestling match between the current wrestling champion and the current underground champion.  Since the current champ is masked, Cobra beats him up and takes his mask.  At the match, he enrages his opponent to cause him to go off script, leading to a real fight.

Cobra regretting his life choices.

Salamander, enraptured by the real fight, forgets his shields and leans out of it, giving Cobra a clean shot, which he takes, shooting Salamander in the head.  Salamander falls from his balcony, and Cobra and company celebrate their defeat of Salamander

"I believe I can fly!"

Episode 31 - Bud, back on his planet in the icy wastes is attacked by a giant Salamander and killed.  Pumpkin is also killed.  Cobra and Doug, traveling by train, split up.  Cobra meets the leader of a church, Miral, who looks like Dominique. Miral invites him to visit the church after clearing up that she's not Dominique.  Meanwhile Doug is hit on by a woman, and they retire for the evening, but there the woman turns into Salamander and sets Doug on fire.  Doug manages to escape his room and dies, but not before telling Cobra that Salamander isn't dead. 

My biscuits are burning!

Cobra decides to pay a visit to Salamander's home planet via the aforementioned church which is also located there.  Once there, Cobra discovers:

• The church is actually run by Salamander. 
• Miral is Dominique; they were coincidentally similar enough in looks that when Miral died unexpectedly, the church brainwashed her so that they could use her as a figure-head to continue building their goddess statues and complete their plan.
• The Goddess Statues are actually weapons he's putting in orbit around all of the major planets.  Once active, the Pirate's Guild will take over all of the world governments and become the supreme ruler of all of the galaxy.

Cobra is unable to stop the launch of the Goddess statues, but manages to defend from Salamanders attacks long enough to send a program (which he writes on the fly) to each of them that causes them to become both self aware and to realize that the existence of the other statues is a threat to its own programming, thus setting off a battle between the statues that destroys them.  

This sets up the final revelation as Salamander's psychic force is disipated when Cobra shoots where he is hiding -

• Salamander doesn't really exist, physically.  He's a psychic manifestation of the hatred of Hitler, and the Pirate's Guild has secretly been a long game of the Nazi's to resurrect the Third Reich.

"It was the mummified corpse of Hitler all along!"

The fight manages to dislodge the Miral personality overlay, leaving Dominique's memory intact, but when Cobra mentions Miral, she gets jealous.  Our end coda has Lady restored and Cobra and her head off to a new adventure.

Fun series, if you like pulpy 70s-80s anime sci-fi.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Uncle From Another World 2

Ok, this had me laughing several times. Uncle DIO watched Evangelion back in the day and gets mad over the ranking of his favorite Sega game.

[kirottu]

I re-watched first season of Made in Abyss and I had apparently purged my memory of the emotional gut punch named "Mitty" just so it could hit me again at full power. Then I watched Made in Abyss movie Dawn of the Deep Soul. Even not having seen it before I was ready for the gut wrenching moments since I ****ing knew there is bigger bastard than Bondrewd.

Now I'm watching the second season of Made in Abyss. 

I truly love this series.  

[InsaneCommander]

Uncle From Another World 2

I forgot to mention when I talked about the first episode:

 

Spoiler

I loved how they tried to kill him when he brought some progress to the village. This sounds much more realistic for somebody traveling to a medieval world than what we usually see in animes. Him being ugly and scaring people was funny, especially when compounded with his behaviour towards the girls.

 

Episode 2:

We meet with another character, with hilarious interactions.

 

16 minutes ago, KP wants Blue Velvet said:

Uncle From Another World 2

Ok, this had me laughing several times. Uncle DIO watched Evangelion back in the day and gets mad over the ranking of his favorite Sega game.

It could have been worse. What if he was a fan of Star Trek or The Wheel of Time?

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

8 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

It could have been worse. What if he was a fan of Star Trek or The Wheel of Time?

It takes place in 2017, so he'd find out with the rest of the fans.

[InsaneCommander]

Overlord 4.4

Ainz fights in the colosseum and the complexity of his plans is revealed.

 

Spoiler

Ainz fights against the strongest warrior of the empire in the colosseum. Even barely using magic he wins easily. The emperor, thinking Ainz is aware of all of his plans, asks for the Baharuth empire to become a vassal state of the Sorcerer Kingdom. Ainz doesn’t even know what a vassal state is.

Ainz says such things must be discussed in writing, just an excuse to gain time I learn what is going on. But the emperor thinks the offer is being rejected because it goes against Ainz’ plans. The best part is one of the emperor’s bodyguards suggesting what is actually the truth, maybe Ainz wasn’t planning anything, just to be dismissed right away by the emperor.

“Don’t worry, there are several types of vassal states. I’ll do everything I can to retain some level of autonomy.” Well done, emperor Jircniv! He also thinks he may be the most unfortunate person in the world, while he actually is one of the most fortunate since he Ainz truly respects him.

Ainz also explains why he is going along with the world domination plan: they still don’t know who mind controlled Shalltear so there is a strong enemy they haven’t met yet.

So, unlike what looked like in the previous episode, Ainz didn’t have even the slightest idea that the Emperor was conspiring with the Theocracy. Ainz simply wanted to appear unannounced because otherwise he would have been welcomed in a formal ceremony and everyone would see that he has no political manners. Now he looks like a genius mastermind and the alliance between the Empire and the Theocracy is almost impossible to happen.

What makes it even funnier is that Ainz considers the emperor a friend and can’t understand why he is so desperately cheering for Ainz’ opponent in the colosseum.

 

[Sarex]

Uncle ep 2. I spoiled my self a little with the manga, but have since decided to follow the anime. Ep 2 is more of the same which is very good. Can't wait for more characters to be introduced.

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, kirottu said:

I re-watched first season of Made in Abyss and I had apparently purged my memory of the emotional gut punch named "Mitty" just so it could hit me again at full power.

One moment, let me do a Google image search...uh, what the hell am I looking at? Looks like a cross between the Rabbit of Caerbannog and Cthulhu.

3 hours ago, Amentep said:

Fun series, if you like pulpy 70s-80s anime sci-fi.

Yeah, I'm quite sure that I've enjoyed your descriptions of episodes many times more than I would've ever enjoyed the show itself, .

3 hours ago, Amentep said:

which he writes on the fly

I have to tell you though, Cobra just doesn't really seem like the "savant programmer" type to me...or really even an idiot programmer. Immersion ruined, . Although the sudden appearance of a certain mustached villain as the ultimate evil in the show, uh, probably would've done it as well, .

Edited July 27, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

9 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

uh, what the hell am I looking at?

It's really good, but it's really really really strange to watch as all the characters look like children and not good things happen to them. It certainly gives Berserk a run for it's money.

Edited July 27, 2022 by Sarex

[Amentep]

41 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Yeah, I'm quite sure that I've enjoyed your descriptions of episodes many times more than I would've ever enjoyed the show itself, .

Haha, that may well be true!

41 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I have to tell you though, Cobra just doesn't really seem like the "savant programmer" type to me...or really even an idiot programmer. Immersion ruined, . Although the sudden appearance of a certain mustached villain as the ultimate evil in the show, uh, probably would've done it as well, .

Yeah, I admit he didn't seem to me to be a super programmer either (and actually what he did appeared to be no more than submitting "Cogito ergo sum" through a wonky keyboard).