Anime and Manga - I won’t allow your bones to stay on this planet. I will banish your evil soul.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

52 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

Wow, you suggested this over a month ago. That is how slowly I go through my watch list.

This is indeed very good. I also found it funny when I recognized some voice actors and checked the others I didn't. Natsume has the same voice as Raphtalia from Rising of the Shield Hero and they have similar personalities. Reina's is the same as Hestia's from Is It Dangerous to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon and I recognized it as soon as the character started shouting at someone. One of the guys has the same voice as Narancia from JoJo and another one of the boys, Kosuke, has the same actor as... Ermes Costello's from Stone Ocean.

 

[Sarex]

35 minutes ago, Lexx said:

Should I really watch it? Saw a few seconds of it but then it felt so much like this bubble anime, which was to me just such a huge amount of wasted time.

That was my fear too initially, but it turned out to be great.

[InsaneCommander]

40 minutes ago, Lexx said:

Should I really watch it? Saw a few seconds of it but then it felt so much like this bubble anime, which was to me just such a huge amount of wasted time.

Things get better and more interesting after some time. Don't judge it based on the early part.

[majestic]

Joyful day: more reminders of how everyone else's tastes suck.

[InsaneCommander]

Just now, majestic said:

Joyful day: more reminders of how everyone else's tastes suck.

[majestic]

That was meant for the people here not liking Bubble, of course.

[Lexx]

I just thought it was really predictable and boring.

[uuuhhii]

didn't find any new anime interesting this season

even give up chainsaw man manga halfway through

only fun character was power

[Bartimaeus]

Opus (1995).

Well, it's the last of four mangas that I've tried by Satoshi Kon, and while I couldn't stick with the other three, I guess I saved best for last. It's a...meta manga, which it makes itself clear pretty much right off the bat by opening the story up about a manga artist struggling to make deadlines. I don't usually care for meta-narratives, but the degree to which this is meta is...uh, kind of to an existentialist level. Big spoilers (even though I'm not going to write more than a paragraph about it):

Spoiler

The manga artist decides to go off the rails by ending his series with killing off one of the two main characters, the angry shonen boy, in some big battle against the villain, giving the series a sad ending while allowing the girl to survive. Editor complains it's not really properly setup, and...well, things start to go off the rails when the artist is drawn into his story and starts seeing his characters as real people and experiences the hurt he's putting them through in the chase of making an "entertaining" story that will sell. Deliberately writing characters into being sad, injured, traumatized, or even straight up killed...just for entertainment? Why do we do this, and what about this appeals to our senses? And why would the artist want to do this to his beloved characters, characters whose heads he has to get in and act out in order to properly write them? They deserve their happy endings after all they've gone through! But it gets more meta than this, as it turns out the manga artist is, of course, being drawn by another manga artist above him, who in turn is being drawn by the man himself, Satoshi Kon, who has his story get cancelled before its conclusion because the real life magazine running Opus, Comic Guys, failed in 1996. Even as the manga and its multiple universe levels are unravelling before our very eyes, I guess ultimately it's okay, because he's already super busy making Perfect Blue and wouldn't have time to finish Opus even if it hadn't been cancelled.

What the hell? Well, at least it was interesting thematically.

 

Edited October 27, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

Appleseed (1988).

Yeah, I don't know about this keyboard layout. Why do we need 5 "A"s, exactly? Anyways, kind of boring but competent (and overly serious) buddy cop action movie in a pseudo cyberpunk setting, don't really recommend unless that's your thing. Pausing and looking at this silly keyboard was probably the most interesting thing to happen for me. I mainly checked it out because of Discotek, which is probably the best U.S. distributor around for BDs of old crap.

(...Also, kind of funny to compare against Gunsmith Cats, which is...not totally dissimilar except for the "cyberpunk" stuff, but just so much better in every possible conceivable way. Yes, I'm probably going to be comparing all old action stuff I see against this as a kind of gold standard from now on.)

Edited October 29, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[uuuhhii]

been so long since last seen anyone mention appleseed

pretty it have some sequel in recent years

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, uuuhhii said:

been so long since last seen anyone mention appleseed

pretty it have some sequel in recent years

Yeah, I saw that there was a 2004 film when I tried to do a Wikipedia search. Apparently also a 2007 film, a 2011 eleven episode OVA, a 2011 movie, a 2014 movie...and there is a mathematically impossible yet totally true less than zero chance of me ever checking them out, .

[majestic]

Time to remove Appleseed from the maybe pile…

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Time to remove Appleseed from the maybe pile…

Was it actually in there? I super do not recommend it to you of all people, it's not driven by what I would consider to be interesting or fun character or even any decent theme stuff at all. And now...for something I've been meaning to get back to for a long while.

Devil Lady is the weirdest show. The constant switching between gentle friendship and lighthearted romance stuff to literal evisceration and disembowelling is...I mean, they just don't really go to together in theory, but they kind of keep each other in check and it's enjoyable (albeit horrific), somehow? Oh, Jun's meeting up with a girl who had a crush on her in high school but whose feelings she couldn't reciprocate, they're having a nice time seeing each other for the first time in ages, they're talking about how their careers are going and how everything that happened is all water under the shed...and now, Jun is decapitating her because according to Asuka, devils are attracted to devils (and also have their "devil" sides activated when they're around other active devils), so it seems pretty much anyone and everyone that would like Jun (or that she would like) must therefore necessarily be a devil. Well, I gotta say, it sure freaking sucks to be you, Jun, especially since it seems like Asuka is deliberately setting you up to activate and kill people that you like.

Spoiler

The latest was a crazy cat lady model that invited Jun over for tea. As it turns out, she was an obsessed stalker that was both jealous of and in love with Jun, and she drugged her with the tea, then tied her up and ripped off her clothes so that she could rape her (this was a pretty shocking new extreme thus far, but it was thankfully fairly restrained in how it was depicted...I think: I was doing the Ami "eyes through hands" thing again), and then she started cutting Jun up and drinking her blood. It ended with Jun waking up and turning into a devil and hugging her so hard that her spine broke and she died, and they showed her literally being zipped up and taken away in a bodybag. Like, um...what?

Would you please chill out, show? It's really weird stylistically and atmospherically too, because in a lot of ways, this show feels quite a lot like Miyu...which makes a kind of sense, because it is helmed by the same guy that made the Miyu show, one Toshiki Hirano. I guess KP wasn't totally wrong about Devil Lady being pretty horrific, although I would say it must still be pretty toned down compared to the manga, which is, yeah, fine by me, because this is already a bit too extreme.

Fancy cat cross necklace thing:

[majestic]

28 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Was it actually in there?

Not really, but I thought it would make for a fun post to strike it from the maybe pile due to having a hundred spinoffs.

Edited October 29, 2022 by majestic

[InsaneCommander]

Spy x Family 17

Anya is back at school in another hilarious episode. One of the teachers is sick so Mr. elegance takes his place. No Franky!

 

Spoiler

Anya and Damian end up working together for the class. I wish I could find a gif with his reaction.

Anya’s colleague falls in love with Loid and outsmart Mr. elegance.

 

Damian’s griffin sculpture wins despite being garbage. Who would want to defy his family, right? His father is not necessarily Hitler, but the country is at least a little facist, so better be on the guy’s good side.

The judges even thought the bad quality was due to the griffin rising again after the war. And Anya’s even worse sculpture of Bond was mistaken for a baby griffin.

This is supposed to be the dog:

Anya was in shock so many times this episode that I’m wondering if eventually that will be all the series is about.

Oh, and now we have Jesus Anya too:

Edited October 29, 2022 by InsaneCommander

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, InsaneCommander said:

Anya was in shock so many times this episode that I’m wondering if eventually that will be all the series is about.

Oh no, flanderization has never happened to a show before, it's not like there's a term for it or anything.

[Gorth]

Anya's original design (from another one off work). A character named 'Ashe'

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Spy X Family 17: Anya Pink OVERDRIVE

After the Yor episode we have an Anya at school episode, complete with Mr Elegant and many Anya faces. And best of all NO FRANKY!

For being such a fancy school they need to hire more teachers, it seems that Mr. Elegant teaches everything.

[Bartimaeus]

17 hours ago, Gorth said:

Anya's original design (from another one off work). A character named 'Ashe'

My initial inclination was to say "...uh, are you sure this isn't just some random fanart?", but doing a search on it, it does appear you are correct: creator of SpyxFamily created this character for their Rengoku no Ashe thingy first.

3 hours ago, KP From Another World said:

For being such a fancy school they need to hire more teachers, it seems that Mr. Elegant teaches everything.

This is something that often bewilders and amuses me with shows/movies: having a character do something or fill a role that should really realistically be filled by someone that has not hitherto appeared, but instead they come up with some excuse for a character that we already know to do it instead because...reasons. The reasons probably vary from show to show and situation to situation (don't want to take the time to design and/or setup a new character, don't want to find an actor that can fill the role when we could just write someone we already know and like to do it instead, want to give an existing character the role because it might be funny or interesting or make them seem like they have more depth or something), but there are still times where it kind of breaks my suspension of disbelief in the way that it happens.

Edited October 30, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

Finally moving on from the slice of life story chapters.

Spoiler

Seems like someone was really annoyed with her expression.

The more I think on it, maybe it's not that there are too many slice of life chapters, but that there are so few chapters a month. This used to be a weekly manga as far as I remember.

Edited October 30, 2022 by Sarex
Talking about Spy X Family

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

26 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

This is something that often bewilders and amuses me with shows/movies: having a character do something or fill a role that should really realistically be filled by someone that has not hitherto appeared, but instead they come up with some excuse for a character that we already know to do it instead because...reasons. The reasons probably vary from show to show and situation to situation (don't want to take the time to design and/or setup a new character, don't want to find an actor that can fill the role when we could just write someone we already know and like to do it instead, want to give an existing character the role because it might be funny or interesting or make them seem like they have more depth or something), but there are still times where it kind of breaks my suspension of disbelief in the way that it happens.

In this case I think it's funny as a running gag.

5 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Finally moving on from the slice of life story chapters.

  Reveal hidden contents

Seem like someone was really annoyed with her expression.

The more I think on it, maybe it's not that there are too many slice of life chapters, but that there are so few chapters a month. This used to be a weekly manga as far as I remember.

Well that's foreboding news.

[InsaneCommander]

2 hours ago, KP From Another World said:

Anya Pink OVERDRIVE

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

This is something that often bewilders and amuses me with shows/movies: having a character do something or fill a role that should really realistically be filled by someone that has not hitherto appeared, but instead they come up with some excuse for a character that we already know to do it instead because...reasons. The reasons probably vary from show to show and situation to situation (don't want to take the time to design and/or setup a new character, don't want to find an actor that can fill the role when we could just write someone we already know and like to do it instead, want to give an existing character the role because it might be funny or interesting or make them seem like they have more depth or something), but there are still times where it kind of breaks my suspension of disbelief in the way that it happens.

They clearly wanted Mr. Elegant there to remind Damian to be a gentleman and to learn from Becky that humans are animals too.

[Sarex]

1 hour ago, KP From Another World said:

Well that's foreboding news.

The spoiler, or the sporadic chapters? If it's the latter, I wouldn't be too concerned... I think the mangaka fully took advantage of the fact that the he is very popular and that being in digital/online format means there are no scheduling issues, so he can dump a new chapter whenever he wants.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

5 minutes ago, Sarex said:

The spoiler, or the sporadic chapters? If it's the latter, I wouldn't be too concerned... I think the mangaka fully took advantage of the fact that the he is very popular and that being in digital/online format means there are no scheduling issues, so he can dump a new chapter whenever he wants.

The spoiler.