Codicier

I think you are probably right about that, its a great episode though I liked how they took everything about the gloomy trope and dialled it up to 11, especially how pathologically afraid of light he was.

Was the wallflower manga around before Oran existed? I seem to remember a episode which almost seemed to be a parody of it but with a gender reversed character Just watched this episode

One thing about Princess Jellyfish and The Wallflower (and to a lot lesser extent Ouran) that occasionally bothers me is they seem to add a "but when she dresses/cleans up, she is conventionally beautiful" disclaimer to the situation they present. Is it really necessary to show that as a dramatic element so the (mostly male) supporting cast can make fools of themselves and then repent/realise the errors of their ways. I mean obviously they are comedies and so need to be absurd, but do we really ever need to know how someone "could look" as long as we know how they want to look?

Guess it depends what you got out of the show, for me what I liked about Ouran was its high energy, optimistic, and fundamentally very generous sense of humour. What was it exactly about Ouran's tone/humour that you specifically fell for?

I'm not a big fan of Madoka (finding it a bit empty once you get passed the admittedly flash visuals), but Princess Tutu is pretty damn great, managing to pack in good characters, nice comic moments, and interesting meta commentry without getting overly pretentious.

All in all Ouran's one of the most genuinely funny series i've ever watched, it has a great sense of comic timing which is missing in a lot of shows that try to satirise anime tropes. Speaking of which watched episode 7 of Space Dandy and laughed for the first time!

At times it feels like the whole of Europe just got completely screwed over when I comes to licensing deals for a huge amount of the best output from places like Cartoon Network. At best we seem to get 1-2 series of things before everything disappears into some sort of distribution black hole. Then there's genuine classics like Samurai Jack or Batman the animated series which are available to some extent but only as terrible reproductions (I mean barely VHS quality). /sigh I mean every time I hear something decent mentioned here I try and search for somewhere it's being streamed and just hit a brick wall.

Watched Rumble in the Bronx for the first time in a age & it was actually kinda awesome. Honestly how Jackie Chan nailed the Everyman doing superhuman stunts thing quite so well I'll never know.

It's a shame to see this happening to anyone but at least they will all have what was a critically well received game on their cv's, & who knows maybe we will see a couple of new studios spring up in addition to Levine's slimmed down venture. On a side note how many "Big AAA" studio's are there left out there these days anyway?

Send in the wombats

Wouldn't making owning the game a precondition towards tagging it be a fairly simple and effective fix to most of the problems this system has?

Don't get me wrong I'm enjoying it, it's just I doubt I'll remember a thing about it in a year or two.

Voices of a Distant Star was one of the few one man things i could think of immediately as a example of a original work rather than a adaptation. Your absolutely right to call out Berserk as a good example of something with a ultra low budget in the early episodes, in some ways it and a few other early anime seem to have been the early ancestors of the modern "motion comics" which get put out for many western superhero comics these days. However Berserk isn't quite what I'm after in some ways since it had the benefit of a successful manga behind it (same goes for Teekyuu i guess), so it could at least count on having a fanbase to pull it along. Also it's more that it ignored it's limitations rather than worked within them. Almost like it was just trying to get away with as much as it could. But i do take your point that it managed to pack quite a impact despite its early budget limitations.

It seems there's always a lot of high budget, zero imagination series about.I wonder if anyone can think of some good examples of anime which are the polar opposite of that, by which I mean good well written series with zero budget behind them. It's hard for me to think of many series that have done great things with very low production values, &/or without a famous director/author/studio behind them. I've been watching Log Horizon which Twig recommend a few weeks back and although it's nothing special it feels like it's doing well with its small budget. But equally it feels like it's the sort of story which is perfectly fitted to that sort of low budget, entertaining rather than outstanding in any way. Is anime just a medium where money talks in a way it doesn't in many others?

I'm not sure whether I want a separate Manga thread or not. I mean atm I'm re-reading Nausicca and reeeealy want to have a long chat about some of the way the art work is constructed, and that sort of conversation needs room to breath. Still splitting away from the main comic thread would mean maybe less opportunity for people to find stuff they considered reading before. In the end, I think on balance I'm just about in favour of it. But I'll go along with whatever people feel works.

It's a solid series overall even if it does tread some familiar ground at times. I quite like the relatively constrained colour pallet which contrasts nicely with what is some very characterful and distinctive creature design. Worth spending some time with overall.

That box in Jake's vine looked a lot smaller than I imagined, for some reason I expected a big raiders of the lost ark style crate. Still once again GJ Subbes and the rest of the committee you guys have done something awesome. Also, just watched Chris's 1st run with Blambo's custom Spelunker was awesome to see him take his mini me all the way to the end of the game.

Honestlty (so far at least) It's almost like his competance is inversely proportional to what it should typically be at all times. On a different note I think that episode & to a lesser extent the series in general has alot of similaritys with Michiko to Hatchin (which shouldn't be surprising considering overlap of staff). Michiko's competence certainly fluctuates a lot and she certainly ticks the same overconfidence and apathy boxes as Dandy. But that series always had the central quest dragging it forward. Whereas dandy has obviously purposely gone for a very purposeless hero, one who has utterly abandoned any desire to go off on the archetypal hero's journey.

If you have either a wacom style tablet or a programable keyboard (or anything like a razor nostrumo) of any sort it might be worth unplugging them and seeing what happens. Almost all the issues I've run into in the past have either come from my wacom or my nostromo being picked up as the first choice non keyboard (think it calls them HID's)input by a game. Can't guarantee this info will help but at least it's one avenue of enquiry for you to check.

Is it a wireless 360 controller Tegan? If so I had the same issue a while back with SR3 and can have a quick check to see if I can find the link to the fix that worked for me.

That's just bonkers Can the skins be used to replace the damsel? Because watching himself get rescued would be a perfect way for lord Remo to find out about this.

Somethings a disgusting art style is the correct choice. Producing revulsion isn't necessarily a failure if that's what the director intends. Rotoscoping when done like this hits the same "human but not human" uncanny valley vibe that CG can do (but for different reasons). If you consider what the story was saying about its characters, I'd argue its actually a stronger visual style because it actually manages to make so genuinely creepy moments in a way the manga never does. Now is that good for sale? Well evidently not. I'm fairly certain it would have been a easier series to watch is the original art style had been kept.

lunchtime Kill La Kill ep17 watching done:

The art style on Ping Pong looks interesting, very expressive, kinda like going back to Kemonozume art style (which grated a bit during the initial couple of episodes but which I ended up liking). Sidenote: that series had a awesome opening theme tune.

You know I really hope next Season has some really straight/sincere non-trope stuff, because by the time Kill La Kill & Space Dandy are over I think we are going to be burned out trying to decide when they hit or miss with their various trope deconstructions. Although that's probably wishful thinking, works in any medium which try to be genuinely tell a story and are very serious about their own characters are rare as hell let alone in as self referential medium as anime.