Blambo

I think that's great, and might be an interesting watch. Thing is I'm still constantly bugged by surface level things. I had some complaints about the presentational layer of the show in my original post that I extracted here instead of editing: The manga Oyasumi Punpun has a kind of structure where the male main character is more or less defined and developed by the female presence in his life, but each character has emotional layers and aren't just weakly written side characters, and in this case I think it works, but I feel that this is a function of the piece not preferring any specific character or showing any of them to be totally sympathetic or central. Punpun doesn't have to be deconstructed as a hero because he never was one to begin with. His design and the designs of the people around him reflect that, and I'm not sure you would get the same effect if you made him look like the main character of Bakemonogatari. Everyone around punpun literally looks more real than he does, in the same way that the main character in Bakemonogatari looks infinitely more real that all the moe cute anime girls around him. (Punpun is the bird cartoon by the way) The design choice to doll up all the girls while keeping Araragi a regular dude may conflict with the intention of making the main character unsympathetic, is what I'm saying. This is another reason why I think that the way anime girls are designed hampers their perception as characters. It's a hard left turn to consider any of the characters rendered this way to be real (to me at least) and requires my watching hours of the show and other shows for it to sink in. Anyway maybe this design trope is totally central to Bakemonogatari's overall effect. If so then it could more or less be completely honest about its sexualizing and infantalizing the characters which is actually really awesome. I guess I have to watch it to figure that out.

Yeah it's specifically that room for error that makes this really weak to me. If it's trying to communicate something, it's doing so with enough leeway to rope in someone who doesn't care about its message, in a way that it functions as a sexy fantasy anyway. This isn't a new thing though. If it turns out that the girls of the week exist only to point out something or other about the main character so that he develops, implicitly or explicitly, I'll definitely stop watching. I'm not sure how this kind of balance would even hold up in any circumstance if none of the female characters have emotional depth or are beyond stereotype. I haven't watched Mad Men, so maybe it's possible in some form/medium.

After being amused by the Platinum Spice Old Spice Nisemonogatari mashup then being subsequently hypnotized by the Platinum Disco opening I decided to start watching Bakemonogatari. I hate it. It's visually impressive and has cool presentation but it's wasted on fauning over sexy high school girls while knowlingly winking at the audience, saying "pointing out these specific aspects of a male experience and wrapping it up in a cool looking package makes this gross experience subversive and ok". The end. Anime sucks. Why do I force myself to do this.

I'm still confounded by the idea that a plantain economy with strict social roles, little room for free soilers, and literal slave labor constitutes a "non-ideological, economic form of democracy". He's not even the resident Hitler apologist in the class, he's the kid who exclaims "why isn't there a white history month" when he deems the 6th grade Martin Luther King day assignment not worth his time. What is wrong with people.

What the fuck is wrong with people.I'm not surprised that a group of people who worship memes also consider mindless GOP platitudes to be upholding the spirit of the enlightenment. But wow. WOW. I've never seen a better example of how one-dimensional video game styled writing is just straight up demolishing a person's worldview. This person's logic of reality might as well be written in a World of Warcraft lore manual.

Valve's VR api was released recently so you don't even have to wait for the actual device to come out to experience this new wave of immersive pornography. Didn't think this would be so easy to find.

Man I can't wait for Batmax: Arkham Road.

I'll stick to Tob Licks, thanks.

Twig what do you actually think about Mushishi Zoku-Shou? It's one of those things where I oscillate between letting the ambiance wash over me and obsessively nerd analyzing stuff, so I don't have a coherent opinion.

Just finished Mushishi and the first season of Mushishi Zoku-Shou. I'm super happy with how the first series ended, and how it was overall consistent and meaningful, and how each episode was layered and had lots of potential for interpretation. Unfortunately this half of Zoku-Shou feels a little weaker, and seems to have a lot of contrived scenarios that exist either to make Ginko look cool while ghostbustin or to push some pretty weak melodrama. Overall it has a much less chatoic and negative view of a mushi filled world than the original, which I suspect is because the first series got pretty damn grim, but I liked that about it. It made Ginko feel fallable and gave the world an incredible weight to it. Zoku-Shou is a lot more watery, and Ginko seems to have way more control over every situation than he used to and as a result a lot of the opportunities to look into Ginko's character go untaken, which was an interesting part of series one. Right now the episode format is: 1) I'm sick with gimmick fever 2) Ginko has an easy solution 3) Sad music plays as I make a gray moral choice. Granted it's a hard formula to pull off, but it's formulaic nonetheless. Still, when it works, it's friggin great. I have individual thoughts about each episode, but I think I'll wait to finish the second season to share them. It's much easier to digest and unpack this time around, which feels less fun than the original series, but it has a certain flavor. Also I'll never get sick of weird semi-sentient bug gods as a concept.

I get that y'all are mostly designer/writer/programmer types, but I need another venue to selfishly indulge in weird internet validation. I'm not sure if there already exists a thread for this, but if not let's post art of all kinds in this one! I guess it could be for critique, compliments, or simply something to look at in between coding stints. Right now I'm weening myself off of specialized brushes and fancy layer settings, and so far I'm developing arthritis:

I had a dream recently where I kept repeatedly hearing Chris' voice snidely say "chugga chug chug Hans Zimmer" while watching a movie about a concert. I think it's from an episode but I might also be making it up. Anyone have recollection of that weird line? From anywhere?

Hey guys what's the haps on gremlingate? I tuned out for a few months.

Man I'm really starting to notice how mocapped everything in asscreed is.

Lawnmowers make me irrationally angry, as do cicadas.

Again I feel like I'm not communicating enough that analysis isn't impossible and that it is worthwhile, especially since I can't imagine that every sigle aspect of Japanese art is incomprehensible to anyone else. If you have eyes and ears, you can appreciate and analyze any anime to the fullest extent that you can and in your specific way.Things are getting kind of muddy since I kind of just popped in the middle of the conversation after reading CLWheeljack's post, and it feels like it's turning into me attacking the art status of anime or making fun of people who enjoy it/analyze it, which I'm not or at least trying not to do.

I don't think we're disagreeing in any meaningful way. Anime or any exported art can be enjoyed to the fullest extent by any individual in their own cultural context because there's no platonic ideal of how or how much a thing should be enjoyed, but that's separate from criticizing and enjoying it in its intended cultural context, which has value on its own.I'm not saying that it's impossible to enjoy foreign art just because you're not a PhD in Japanese Media Studies, I'm saying that there are specific instances where it's impossible to understand it 100% in every way it was intended, especially in media as targeted and niche marketed as anime is. Sure the author dies with the birth of a piece but the farther you are from its intended audience the more likely you are to miss bits and pieces of authored things specific to a culture, whether it's as crass as a pop culture reference or as subtle as a cultural ideology. There's a limit in breadth and depth of how you interpret something foreign as a result, and I'm not saying that this fact should stop anyone from watching something foreign to their own cultural background, since the whole point is to broaden your cultural boundaries and redefine your identity and thought process. These limits don't mean that you can't sit down and enjoy anime as a westerner, since people obviously do, but like you seemed to indicate, the qualities that you're likely to enjoy it for on at first glance are universal. You won't get the benefit of getting a prereflective reptile brain enjoyment of elements not specific to your culture. Doing research may improve your enjoyment of the piece retroactively and also help you enjoy future pieces but that effort alone should indicate that there's a boundary, or at least a gradient. I'm saying that not being aware of this or ignoring this borders on appropriative because you're potentially misrepresenting a culture by stating an interpretation meant to be internally consistent within the context of this culture that isn't your own. I'm not saying that interpreting foreign media is per se appropriative, I'm saying it depends on your frame of mind. The answer to your Dream of the Red Chamber question is "no but that's not the issue here". Paranoia agent is a good example. At best you can infer its cultural context but you can't feel it on first glance when images flash on the screen, and even when you do a reflective analysis on the work and attempt to assess its coherence with your analysis, you have no barometer for whether or not this foreign cultural thing is effective to you. Also I didn't mean to indicate that anime is universally incoherent or that attributing coherence to it is a western invention or whatever. Though, cynically, it's pretty obvious that depending on marketing factors or economics, choices in a lot of media will be made despite coherency or moral goal simply because it must pander to every inch of its audience to survive. The economics of the anime industry seem specifically susceptible to this, too. I think that this must be something that people are aware of. I think it's OK for some things to be treated as products if there's no valid arrangement of a piece where it's considered coherent.

Honestly I agree with this, though I don't think that reflects the absolute depth of the medium. There are universal aspects to anime that anyone can enjoy but unless you're Japanese or have been immersed in or studied the culture for a long time, I don't think that you can 100% enjoy or even criticize anime from the intended perspective, or at least that aspect severely hampers serious interpretation. There's value in experiencing something while being an outsider (that story about the dark souls guy Miyazaki having a very specific experience while reading Lord of the Rings with limited english capabilities is an example) but forgetting that position is like saying "this element of some other culture is what I think it is", which borders on appropriative. Also I'm willing to bet that any random /a/ browsing westerner who says they enjoy Lucky Star or Joshiraku for anything other than the moe is probably not being entirely honest with themselves. I certainly wasn't.

uh guys https://youtu.be/QMgB0gGCgaA?t=5m20s

Haha it's okay. Never forget that anime sucks.

Mushishi definitely doesn't have a non-nebulous overarching theme, but each episode has a lot of content to dig into. I still have yet to watch the last five episodes though.

To be clear I'm trying to never prescriptively say that anything with moe is bad. The reason why I always talk about it is because it has very specific, strongly evocative qualities, positive or negative, that shouldn't be ignored and can't be ignored by people who don't really watch that much anime, and because relegating it to a personal preference feels like pushing a valid criticism under the carpet. I don't hate all moe, so my not liking it in one instance isn't my being generally uncomfortable with the trope, it's usually due to its composition with the rest of the show. I like potato chips and will on occasion sit down and eat a whole bag, but I don't want to have it with all of my meals.

Chris secretly has a Vagabond omnibus and Ghost in the Shell figurines under his bed, and forgot to hide his most prized possession.

Haha the ending was awesome. I had the pleasure of having the podcast in a song queue that included various rap/trap songs, so when it ended my sleepless brain thought the wizard slash jam game dash wizard slam jam kept going for over two hours.