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

[majestic]

Random Narutaru image of the day:

Your guess is as good as mine, really.

[Bartimaeus]

Poor Shinji just keeps getting gobbled up by those angels...

Edited November 5, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[InsaneCommander]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

Random Narutaru image of the day:

Your guess is as good as mine, really.

Is this 13 episodes only?

[Bartimaeus]

7 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

Is this 13 episodes only?

Yep: the only other media for it is a manga.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

16 hours ago, majestic said:

Random Narutaru image of the day:

Your guess is as good as mine, really.

It's like a doll. It's just like a doll. It's just kinda like you know a doll...in a dream. Ok? Fantastic.

[LadyCrimson]

Romantic Killer, on Netflix. Based on a manga, as usual unread by me. A kind of satirical otome flavor, turning a few tropes upside down, with magic fairies, silly premise, winking nods at many tropes, and an "anti-romance" female lead. That sort of thing. It sounds stupid and it sorta is, and yet...

First episode isn't all that impressive or feels too over the top, and may initially make you think about turning it off. I'd give it three episodes before deciding tho. It gets better as it actually goes into chrs/motivations a bit more and goes slightly deeper/darker towards the end then one might expect. I found it a decent short binge.

I'd give it a solid 3.5/5 and it made me want a 2nd season (the first has an ending but doesn't resolve the larger plot aspect).

[Lexx]

I turned it off after the first episode.

[uuuhhii]

always recommend nozaki kun when someone mention anything otome

[InsaneCommander]

Chainsaw Man 5

Denji learns that the journey is more important than the destination. Until someone offers him a better destination.

A new Devil becomes the target of the division 4.

Spoiler

The beginning of the episode was entering hentai territory. Denji finally fondles Power's breasts, just to feel that it was not as good as he expected, but Makima offers him anything he wants if he kills the Gun Devil.

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

Chainsaw Man 5

Denji learns that the journey is more important than the destination. Until someone offers him a better destination.

A new Devil becomes the target of the division 4.

  Reveal hidden contents

The beginning of the episode was entering hentai territory. Denji finally fondles Power's breasts, just to feel that it was not as good as he expected, but Makima offers him anything he wants if he kills the Gun Devil.

 

Yeah, so I have to say this felt like half an episode in a lot of ways.

COMMENCE THE FONDLING

I thought that the Power fondling would be the most horny thing, but the Makima scene was horny on another level. The horny on this show is on another level.

I still think Makima is a yandere, possibly Camellia tier.

[Sarex]

Random Chainsaw Man fan art...

[InsaneCommander]

15 hours ago, KP From Another World said:

COMMENCE THE FONDLING

 

Spoiler

 

15 hours ago, KP From Another World said:

SPOILER

Edited November 9, 2022 by InsaneCommander

[LadyCrimson]

On 11/7/2022 at 11:20 PM, Lexx said:

I turned it off after the first episode.

Hehe.
Yeah it's not anime of the year or even decade or anything. It just gets decently more chr engaging after a few vs. all otp comedy. I ended up liking the female lead a lot.

[majestic]

サイバーパンク エッジランナーズ

Okay, so where do I start with this one. First would be to internally debate how to properly measure the success of any given entertainment product. Is it the simple matter of saying how much I was entertained by it, or should we apply different metrics as well? In the former, then, well, I did neither like nor hate watching Edgerunners. If it is the latter, then I just finished watching a modern anime with a shōnen scumbag protagonist that did not make me want to kill myself, and that would be a job well done.

Alas, when I look at what it tried to do, then I can just say it did not work for me.

Spoiler

I don't think the feelings they were going for when almost the entire cast of characters dies at the end were ennui and impatience for the series to finally be over. The only thing that saves this from being a complete wash is that the shōnen scumbag protagonist got everyone killed by not listening to the girls in the team. Good job, David. On the other hand, the series for some reason repeated that plot point, because at the halfway point of the series, David's shōnen scumbag mentor gets much of his team killed by not listening to the girls in the team.

Visuals

Quote

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was acclaimed by critics and fans. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of 13 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.80/10. The website's consensus reads, "Booting up Night City with frenetic action and awe-inspiring visual flair, Edgerunners is an exceptionally stylish anime adaptation of the world Cyberpunk established."

I guess by, this point, I don't need to repeat the same old part of this song like a broken record. There's a whole lot of nudity in this one, on the other hand, it barely ever bothered me. That is most likely because of the immense disconnect the art style causes. Awe-inspiring visual flair is not how I would describe the assault on my eyes that the color scheme and character art was. It looks like someone took 80ies martial art anime character design and mangled it through the eye popping color filter of Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop, except the filter setting was tuned for dystopian cyberpunk world, not feelgood slice of life romantic comedy.

MD Geist fighting... no, wait. Toto, I have a feeling we're not in the 80ies any more.

Anyone looking for their haiku dictionary?

Guess that's enough. The animation quality is fine, actually, but I would not expect anything less from Studio Trigger. There are some scenes that look really uncanny, but such is part for the modern anime course.

Scumbags

Quote

Jonathon Wilson wrote for Ready Steady Cut that in "many ways, this is the Cyberpunk story the Cyberpunk game wanted to tell and couldn’t."

I'm just copying quotes from wikipedia here, but Jonathon Wilson, whoever he is, certainly has not played Cyberpunk 2077 - or if he did, he did not finish the game. The basic plot elements are similar, except the game is much better in making one care for the characters involved than the show is, particularily with the mentor characters. Jackie is a much better character than Maine ever could be, and we see less of Jackie in the game than we do of Maine in the series.

Maine is the guy in the image that looks like an illegal gene splicing experiment between Street Fighter's Guile and Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star.

Spoiler

In the hands of better writers, the characters and the story could have been salvaged. Maine ignores the advice of everyone else and turns into a cyberpsycho. Having too many implants and using them too often causes a stacking debuff in the game rules that eventually causes the loss of humanity, usually ending with the character going on a rampage of death and destruction. Or something like that, at least, I have admittedly no idea of the tabletop game rules. It works like that in the series, at least.

David follows him as leader of the Edgerunners and turns himself into an illegal gene splicing experiment too, ended up as a muscle dude with too many implants. He thinks himself special for having higher saving throws (or however that mechanic functions), and he sure isn't shy about dismissing everyone else's fears by telling them in no uncertain terms how SPECIAL he is, and that he needs to fulfill his mother's and Maine's dreams for him.

Because heaven forbid one shōnen scumbag could learn the lesson from another one. The only thing that stops him from becoming a cyberpsycho is being shot in the head by Adam Smasher right before it happens. 

The inclusion of Adam Smasher was unfortunate because there is no tension in a fight when the winner is already clear. Not only was it rather forseeable that David would not survive the series (the series is nothing if not very obvious in its telegraphing of what is going to happen, down to one character telling the other directly to not trust anyone before betraying that character), but using a character that's still alive by the game that plays after Edgerunners is just more prequel forgone conclusion nonsense.

See, that is the point where a better writer would have come up with a way to make David listen, but have external circumstances deny him the ability to chose. The writers attempted to do that by putting Lucy (third character from the left, next to David) into a situation that David wants to save her from in spite of her telling him not to - the problem is that it is a simple justification, because David has never shown any sort of sense that would have prevented him from not just installing that ludicrous mech apparatus anyway, even without his girlfriend becoming a damsel in distress.

As such the series begins with a cyberpsycho on a rampage, ends the middle part with a cyberpsycho on a rampage, and finishes out with a cyberpsycho going on a rampage. If the point of the series was to show that the legends of Night City's underground always become legends by dying in a spectacular fashion then that would have been fine, but it was mentioned just once. David dies to save a damsel in distress, not to make a point about the state of the world or to loop back into any thematic exploration.

It's not all terrible. The second episode was mostly good, and some situations in between showed what this could have been. In some ways it was much less frustrating than Noir. Noir promised more than it could deliver, but Edgerunners mostly delivers what it promises, with a couple of moments that go beyond that. Having ten episodes while repeating plot points with this little screen time, without fleshing out themes or characters enough for them to matter in the long run, well, what was the point?

Flashy entertainment and action was certainly more important than... well, anything else. Congratulations. One would think that people who worked on the original NGE know how to turn action into an addition that can underscore the exploration of existential dread that living in a dystopian cyberpunk world would provide the perfect basis for, but alas, this falls squarely into Rebuild territory. Just with being less obnoxious because it can't ruin anything that preceeded it.

Spoiler

Also, for the closing statement, my personal ability to like the most broken character on the cast has one again worked flawlessly. The only one I really liked was Lucy, and - surprise! - does she have a messed up background. Kek.

 

[InsaneCommander]

Spy x Family 19

One of the worst episodes so far. A student plots revenge against Damian. Anya oversleeps.

Spoiler

Yor notices that Anya forgot her gym uniform and hurry to take it to her in time. She ends up creating rumors about a spider woman. With all the acrobatics she does in this episode, I have to say that if she could launch webs, she would be a better hero than Peter Parker.

 

[Bartimaeus]

Edgerunners: Yeah, I watched one episode and was like "this protagonist is the absolute worst and I hope he dies in a fire but I'm never going to find out because I can't keep watching". I'm guessing that I wouldn't have been particularly pleased watching the rest.

[Amentep]

 

[uuuhhii]

edgerunner feels like a western story

but the style of both cyberpunk 2077 and trigger are fully expressed

so it doesn't matter that content side are a little lacking

[Bartimaeus]

3 hours ago, Amentep said:

Scappy Doo was just an awful joke character that was constantly getting in the way and being annoying for comic relief...but Chibi-Usa becomes a protagonist where much of the story is told exclusively from her perspective with a big focus on the way she feels. If you hate Chibi-Usa, this is probably much worse than just being the joke character, .

[Lexx]

Edgerunners was cool, ya'll just generic haters on a internet forum.

[majestic]

6 hours ago, Amentep said:

First of all, the obligatory and necessary nitpick: Sailor Moon R begins with the Doom Tree filler arc, not with Chibi-Usa appearing. I hope this doesn't mean that this Erica Henderson character is following some episode guide that recommends dropping the filler episodes. Such things are great for animes like Bleach where there's filler arcs in the filler arcs to pad out filler seasons that are generally of much lower quality than episodes based on the manga because the manga writer is better than the show's writers. For Sailor Moon, that is not the case: not watching the Doom Tree arc will make you miss out on some of the funniest episodes in the series, not to mention some of the most heartwarming scenes.

Worse yet: skipping the Sailor Stars filler arc would make one miss out on the only well written story arc of the entire anime. It's not a coincidence that both filler arcs are significantly better in terms of storytelling than the rest of the anime for the simple reason of not being shackled to the confused mess the source material is, which by all accounts has become popular in spite of being a mess (and the reprints of the mangas contain a quasi-apology by the writer for the mess that it is, so this isn't just some generic internet hate). However that has happened will remain an eternal mystery to me.

Now, as for Chibi-Usa: I can say from personal experience that one's reaction to Chibi-Usa is also colored by life experiences and maturity. The first time I watched the anime, which was way back when it first aired, I hated Chibi-Usa with a passion, at least while she was around in R, which is to say, well, the entire time after she shows up. When she eventually comes back in the next season, she is a character that gets enough agency to be interesting even if you didn't like her initially.

The second time around I wondered why I reacted as badly to her presence. She's a child, and her interactions with Usagi show how much of a child Usagi still is too - which makes sense, with her being 14 at the time. Chibi-Usa acts in a (often incredibly) stupid manner all the time, but that is because she's a child running from a traumatic experience. More specifically, she's Usagi's child, after all, and it only makes sense for her to take after her mother. She eventually becomes the foil used to highlight Usagi's own character development, but she's a disruptive and foreign element that can feel out of place, and if it does, then that is quite bad for one's enjoyment of the series, especially when her actions threaten the characters you've come to love simply because she does not trust them, even though they clearly can be trusted (and it is obvious to literally everyone, even children, that Chibi-Usa is the child of Mamoru and Usagi, so stop being stupid Chibi-Usa and understand that, why don't you?).

Chibi-Usa is fine, outside of everything that happens in Sailor Moon SuperS, and the less is said about that, the better. Arguably it is an inverse case of her appearance in R, the greater one's life experience and maturity are, the creepier the contents of Sailor Moon SuperS become. Superficially, her romance with a horse can be seen as, well, romantic, and going by YouTube comments from clips, it often is. One can also see the Amazon Trio's acts of looking at the dreams of their victims as exactly that.

Or, well, one can see it for what it is. A season long metaphor for sexual assault and pedophilia, because that horse 'befriends' Chibi-Usa in much the same way a pedophile would groom a little girl, and the less is said about the Amazon Trio's actions the better. SuperS is basically what one gets as a studio when you ask your writers to revert the natural changes to your characters that happen over time back to their more or less super childish season one predispositions even when they don't want to and it makes no sense to do so. Since there are more people aware of Harry Potter these days, I suppose, one can use Harry as an example, imagine what would have happened if Warner Brothers had asked the filmmakers to go back to making films similar to the first Harry Potter movie - after HP & the Goblet of Fire. Granted, the result could not have been much worse than Order of the Phoenix, but let's not let that ruin the metaphor.

Little wonder that almost the entire creative team was replaced for the final season.

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Scappy Doo was just an awful joke character that was constantly getting in the way and being annoying for comic relief...but Chibi-Usa becomes a protagonist where much of the story is told exclusively from her perspective with a big focus on the way she feels. If you hate Chibi-Usa, this is probably much worse than just being the joke character, .

I still remember groaning so hard when Chibi-Usa shows up out of the blue after only a few episodes in S, but the way she integrates into the team and the series is much better in the third season. Like 25 years later it was so much easier to see this as intentional and making sense than it was back then. It's obvious for the viewers who Chibi-Usa is and that she should just tell everything to her parents, but it's not that obvious to her. Eh.

Edited November 13, 2022 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

5 hours ago, Lexx said:

Edgerunners was cool, ya'll just generic haters on a internet forum.

I'm sure it's a fine show. Except for the fact that it made me want to decapitate the main character within the first minute of watching it, and seeing the rest of the episode only made me want to slowly draw and quarter him instead. Could be the greatest show or movie of all time, if I hate the main character and can't connect with them when I'm supposed to, it's not going to be enjoyable. Call it an issue of appeal more than anything else, since they clearly weren't trying to appeal to me with that bozo.

@majestic I was wondering if you were going to give Amentep an earful for daring to post that, particularly without the context of having seen the show himself. Although I should admit that I almost nitpicked the same thing about the first ten or so episodes not even having Chibi-Usa...but the thing is, I did restrain myself. Luckily, I had you to pick up the slack, .

Personally, I saw the show as an adult first and didn't have an issue with Chibi-Usa and liked her outside of SuperS, but most everyone and everything is wrong in SuperS, so I'm not going to hold it against her personally even though she and her pegasus problem are definitely the absolute worst part of that season. So unless Scrappy Doo is actually magically much better as an adult (and that would be very difficult to believe), the comparison really just doesn't fit for me.

Edited November 13, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Lexx]

IMO the first episode of an anime is almost always terrible. In my experience, I have to watch at least the first 3 episodes to see where things are going.

[majestic]

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

@majestic I was wondering if you were going to give Amentep an earful for daring to post that, particularly without the context of having seen the show himself.

Not giving Amentep an earful, but I'm not going to take to Twatter to twatter out a reply, so he gets it here.

Actually that semi cohesive pseudo-essay began as a one liner nitpicking about R not beginning with Chibi-Usa falling from the sky until I realized that she could potentially be watching the series with an episode guide that leaves out the filler, and everthing else just followed from there. Might as well just go and watch Crystal to have your brain melted like that.

I said it before, I can see getting a head start with the series by just watching episodes 1, 8, 10 and 13, but even that is questionable. Sure, it drops Usagi's most annoying early moments, but it also removes a few episodes that were just plain fun (like those completely mad furry glowy-eyed pet things).

But dropping all the good episodes in favor of getting to BRACK RADY early? Yeah, count me out. I'd rather watch Makoto tidy up Motoki's room and cook for Ali.

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Personally, I saw the show as an adult first and didn't have an issue with Chibi-Usa and liked her outside of SuperS, but most everyone and everything is wrong in SuperS, so I'm not going to hold it against her personally even though she and her pegasus problem are definitely the absolute worst part of that season. So unless Scrappy Doo is actually magically much better as an adult (and that would be very difficult to believe), the comparison really just doesn't fit for me.

Luckily, I am only aware of Scrappy Doo by pop-cultural osmosis. Scooby Doo did air every now and then, but never the episodes with Scrappy, and I am certainly not going to subject myself to them just to figure out just how wrong the comparison really is. I'll take your word for it.

It sure is a curious position to be in, understanding both sides of an argument by personal experience. Chibi-Usa occupies a Schrödinger's space in my brain as I remember loathing her inclusion in the series (never mind hating her character), and actually enjoying her presence.

 

[majestic]

The classic. The moon's full, Shiina is out on her creepy ass Patrick flying around, when a witch shows up and says hi. Can't have a full moon without witches or werewolves, right?

I'm not even going to try to comment on the imagery here.