Anime and Manga - It's time for you to finish what you've started and watch JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders

[Bartimaeus]

Gunbuster, episodes 2 and 3. So as it turns out, mech combat in the middle of empty space is, contrary to what you might expect, kind of confusing and scary. Honestly, space being an incomprehensible nightmare and certainly an affront against all earthly nature (no gravity, no sense of direction, practically empty yet infinite and endless!) is really something that should be focused on more a little more in sci-fi. I don't think I'd be able to handle space, pretty sure the lack of constraints and absolutes would crush my little brain.

Spoiler

I made an error: I thought Noriko had a crush on a girl, but she doesn't, it was really more...strong admiration that read like it was a crush in the first episode? Whoops. Anyways, this show has a really oddball outro: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/2ylo5bnjvtcnqas/mpc-hc64_von0ZZyZec.mp4 I think I'd like to watch the show that this outro is portraying/hinting at more than the actual show...and the actual show is pretty good all things considered (...even with the just a little too indulgent fan service), it's just that this outro looks like it'd be really great to me.

Oh, also, Noriko is getting people literally killed because there just doesn't really seem to be much of a fighter in her - she still can't get the movements down quite right and she's prone to panic and freezing up. Whoops. I'm assuming that this will eventually turn around and she'll become some kind of hero sooner or later, but outside of her little fight against one of her fellow students in the first episode, there really hasn't been much hint of it. I'm halfway through the show and she's still an incompetent klutz! Seriously, put Usagi (but not Sailor Moon) in Noriko's shoes and I really don't think much about this show would have changed so far. All the other girls in this show are near full-on shonen characters who like to fight and are driven to be the best, so I'm curious as to what ultimate thematic message this is going to have what with Noriko being by far the most weak, distracted, and sensitive out of everyone.

Edited December 2, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[InsaneCommander]

Narutaru 12-13

Now I need to watch something happy. I think I’ll go back to Violet Evergarden and Madoka Dolls.

Wow. Things just kept getting worse. But I confess I’m curious about how the story goes after this. There is definitely more than enough character development.

 

19 hours ago, Make a contract with KP said:

JoJo Stone Ocean 25-26: Bohemian Rhapsody

Weather Report and Anasui fight Pinnochio, Snow White, and Vincent van Gogh.

So JoJo is back? Right on time.

 

And Isekai Uncle is back too, at least in Japan.

Edited December 2, 2022 by InsaneCommander

[majestic]

20 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

Now I need to watch something happy. I think I’ll go back to Violet Evergarden and Madoka Dolls.

Violet gets to a dark place, but I the ending of the series was rather uplifting in my opinion.

Spoiler

Violet telling Dietfried that she does not need orders any more is up there with the best series endings of all time.

Then the movie goes and takes a dump on it.

Edit: Wow, Rei not only looks like a psychotic killer in the live action series, she's also channeling her inner Kreia something fierce. She refuses to help Usagi with her school work and chides Makoto for wanting to help her out, giving her the ol' Kreia speech about cheapening the struggle.

  

21 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Still makes me laugh how they characterized her in season 1 as like the epitome of responsibility and leadership...and then just rapidly transformed her into her off-the-walls wacky Sailor V self for season 2 and I somehow didn't notice the change. Wonder what version the TV adaptation gets.

That's going to be interesting. In the TV adaptation, Minako is already a successful idol, so who knows. I think I read somewhere that TV show Minako has terminal cancer or something, which makes little sense, but hey, one step at a time...

Edited December 2, 2022 by majestic

[majestic]

Is it just my anime-broken imagination, or was Queen Beryl really close to a wardrobe malfunction in this shot?

Edit: Usagi's brother is spying on her while she's studying, then goes back to mom and they're both surprised Usagi is hard at work. Shingo mentions that people can go crazy from pushing themselves to hard, and her mother goes to check up on her. She enters the room and sees Usagi in a... Unicorn costume (she wants to go to a Minako hosted costume contest) making weird sounds in front of the mirror.

There's something charming about these totally obvious setups. They should not be hilarious, but somehow they just are.

PIKA? Well, she's more like KUPII! KUPII!

Edited December 2, 2022 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

JoJo Stone Ocean 27: Sky High

A man dressed like a cow uses rod-shaped cryptids to attack two lesbians and a child. And that's not even the weirdest thing in the episode.

Edited December 3, 2022 by Make a contract with KP

[InsaneCommander]

Spy x Family 22

Senpai notices Nightfall! But so does Yor.

In order to prevent a new war, Nightfall and Twilight infiltrate an underground tennis tournament.

Probably one of the most forced anime episodes I’ve ever seen, however still quite funny. Incredible Hulk level of doping, jet-powered rackets, Nightfall and Twilight being the best tennis players ever (despite having barely any experience) and they even call themselves “Phony” in their disguised identities, without anybody suspecting a thing.

Anya appears for only 54s (yes, I actually counted) and as we learned in the previous episode, she needs 30s on average to have a shock reaction, so no surprise when she keeps up with that and is shocked twice (if you count the normal/not exaggerated reactions). Make it three times if you count the preview for the next episode. Twilight, who appeared for almost the entire episode, is also shocked twice. What an amateur!

[Sarex]

[Bartimaeus]

Yeah, so I think I'm going to call up Joe and let him know that he can turn off the internet now. I just don't think it's good for us as a species at this point. You guys need anything you need passed along?

[Lexx]

Just finished Stone Ocean. Was good again. Better than Golden Wind, imo. Still sad there was so little Jotaro.

Edited December 4, 2022 by Lexx

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

JoJo Stone Ocean 28-32: Underworld and Heavy Weather

It's good. No way to talk about it without spoiling though.

[Sarex]

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

JoJo Stone Ocean 33-38

They brought Roundabout back for the ending. Ummm......yeah there is no way I can talk about this without spoilers. DIO has a very interesting idea of heaven.

[Lexx]

Was this really Dio's idea tho?

to be honest, I'm a bit bummed out by the ending since this is pretty much a soft reboot of the franchise. It doesn't really feel as if anything up to this point matters now, since everyone is different now anyways.

Still, hope they will continue with Steel Ball Run now, even though it's probably going to have no connections to anything at all(?).

[Amentep]

Speed Racer "The Most Dangerous Race Pt. 2"

Speed catches up with the other racers while his flashback catches us up with the story so far.  We are also introduced to the idea that Speed realizes something is wrong with his breaks.  Sparky also realizes this and he and Spritle and Chim Chim drive to help.  Trixie is with Pops (recovering in the hospital) and Mom Racer, when Pops reveals the problem with the breaks and Trixie take to the helicopter knowing Speed's breaks won't last in the mountains.

Trixie has to rescue a broken down Sparky, Chim-Chim and Spritle while Speed's breaks give way and we're treated to the longest slide down a mountain helplessly pumping breaks from Speed ever committed to anime.  Trixie arrives and Sparky lasso's the Mach 5 just in time to use the helicopter to keep it from going over a cliff.

Speed and Sparky make up over their pointless argument in episode 1, Spritle tries to eat the box lunch Trixie brought for Speed leading to a lengthy argument between the pair.  Speed and Sparky fix the breaks and Speed catches up with the group which has been delayed due to the weather destroying part of the track.

The racers draw lots on the order for jumping the destroyed path and Speed gets last place.  Of the five racers ahead of Speed, only Snake Oiler and Racer X make it across.  Naturally Speed's run seems to fail for the cliffhanger and we end on the good luck charm Spritle gave Speed in the snow.

Fun episode, lots of wacky animation bits and a nice cliffhanger.

Spritle blames Sparky for their predicament

Trixie hears Speed is in trouble!

Trixie rushes to help!

Trixie smugly to the rescue!

Repairs will take awhile,  so Trixie gets Speed all to herself...

Trixie vs Spritle begins when Spritle tries to steal the box lunch Trixie brought Speed

Trixie gets the upper-hand!

Trixie resorts to violence!

Spritle returns violence in kind!

Body blow!

The chase is on!

Trixie tries to rope Speed into it!

Speed puts Spritle and Trixie both in time-out.

 

 

[Bartimaeus]

Lmao, I feel like I should remember Spritle gut-punching Trixie, but somehow I don't. I'm also starting to become convinced that I need to get a Trixie avatar...or 30, there's so many different 'unique' Trixie faces to choose from, and this is just one episode!

Edited December 5, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

9 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Lmao, I feel like I should remember Spritle gut-punching Trixie, but somehow I don't. I'm also starting to become convinced that I need to get a Trixie avatar...or 30, there's so many different 'unique' Trixie faces to choose from, and this is just one episode!

[Amentep]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Lmao, I feel like I should remember Spritle gut-punching Trixie, but somehow I don't. I'm also starting to become convinced that I need to get a Trixie avatar...or 30, there's so many different 'unique' Trixie faces to choose from, and this is just one episode!

She was in rare form this episode, admittedly.

[Bartimaeus]

The End of Gunbuster. As far as Gainax goes, it probably slots in above Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, but I would say I enjoyed Royal Space Force a bit more, and never mind Neon Genesis Evangelion. It's also a lot shorter than Nadia, which is a good thing, because Nadia should've been half as long as it was (...actually, that legitimately would've massively improved Nadia if all the hours of "yelling at clouds" fluff had been cut, but that's neither here nor there). The mark of a show or movie that I really like is that it's able to make me care and be invested in the action, and that just...didn't really happen here with Gunbuster: for the most part, I wanted the space battles that started to dominate the last few episodes to end so that stuff like Noriko and her best friend Kimiko hanging out could happen more, and there was too much of the former and not enough of the latter. Still, it could've been a lot worse.

Spoiler

Kimiko got old by the end of the show thanks to the effects of relativity and time dilation, by the way. If anyone's ever read Ender's Game, that's basically Gunbuster in a nutshell...but anime, with worse writing, themes, and characterization.

Edited December 5, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[InsaneCommander]

Chainsaw Man 9

Can't say much without spoilers, but the insanity from the previous episode goes on.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Chainsaw Man 9. It's good.

17 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

Chainsaw Man 9

Can't say much without spoilers, but the insanity from the previous episode goes on.

Spoiler

I'm convinced that Makima is something similar to Denji and the sword guy. They pretty much screamed it when the guy said the non-humans were pretty much the only survivors because guns wouldn't really hurt them.

 

[InsaneCommander]

Stone Ocean 25-26

It's story time.

Also,

Spoiler

Everyone is a Joestar now.

 

[Sarex]

New chapter of Berserk is out, might as well not be. Felt like a third of a chapter.

[majestic]

PGSM can't have funny moments like turning Usagi into a giant tennis ball, and they know that, instead they work with their limited budget to come up with silliness. Whether it is Usagi cosplaying as unicorn, her mother wrestling her down so Ami can get a coffee she doesn't even want or, as it just now happened, Usagi imagining several different Tuxedo Masks, one looking sillier than the other. In terms of storyline it is playing it rather loose with the manga, but still keeps major plot points. Thankfully, the girls are much less into MURDERDEATHKILL'ing everyone. On the other hand, that could mean the series picks up on that alternate semi-canon idea that everyone was in love with everyone that Crystal ran with. I'm of half a mind to go and spoil myself just to be prepared if that happens.

That was, bar none, the best scene in Crystal to illustrate everything that is wrong with the anime. Beryl's four henchmen are staring down the Sailor Guardians while Usagi thinks Mamoru is dead and tries to run a sword through her stomach (Usagi being Usagi, she can't even do that properly). Minako (I think, I repressed some of the memories of that series) is all like 'REMEMBER YOUR PAST GUYS, WE YOU!' and they're all like 'well, we'll be damned, them gurls are right, we them', and then out of Nowhere, Off-Screen Beryl is like 'you useless twits, DIE ' and that was the end of the four generals, just like that.

Edit: Ami is pretending to be Rei in order to check if a weird older guy who is excessively polite and refers to her as 'Master Rei' has the Silver Crystal. Since Ami was absent from the last episodes, it makes sense to give her a larger role for a change, but it does not make sense for her to not use her transformation mobile to actually change into Rei. I mean... she so clearly isn't Rei that the guy can't possibly think she is.

Edit2: An entire police detachment is guarding the appraisal. Naturally, as the show has zero budget to do anything with, it looks like the super cheap glass bauble it is.

Edited December 7, 2022 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

5 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

Stone Ocean 25-26

It's story time.

Also,

  Reveal hidden contents

Everyone is a Joestar now.

 

I just realized that Jolyne's VA also voices Power in Chainsaw Man. That's cool. I do laugh at Pucci sometimes because he voiced Daru in Steins;Gate and I half expect him to start....doing Daru stuff.

[majestic]

2 minutes ago, Make a contract with KP said:

doing Daru stuff.

Having a time travelling daughter?