anime

[Gormongous]

After falling head-over-heels for the third season of Working!!, I bought the bundle of the first two seasons. In terms of video and translation quality, they're both very good, but NISA's production choices and packaging are a bit... off. They use surnames to refer to the male characters and first names to refer to the female characters (which is especially confusing for Yamada, because only Popura calls her Aoi) and replaces the word "episode" with "recipe" even in situations where the meaning would be ambiguous. I know that NISA's actually celebrated for going all-out with their licensed products, but in this case, a lighter touch would maybe have been better.

 

But hey, Yamada's still great!

 

 

Also, cool end-series facts about Satou and Yachiyo from Wikipedia:

"In the crossover drama CD bundled with the Servant x Service limited edition Blu-ray/DVDs, she and Jun go together to enter their names into the family register, and instead of babbling about Kyoko to others, she now boasts about her husband, Jun."

[dium]

Way to have a really horrible predatory gay dude stereotype, One Punch Man.

 

Goddamnit. I hate how many blind eyes I have to turn in order to enjoy any damn anime show.

[Blambo]

Kissanime got bopped recently, which means I'll probably never watch a Japanese cartoon forever. My pirating ass probably deserves it.

I got to watch One Punch Man though, and it is really pretty. I feel like though it's riding the same joke every arc and just shuffling up the context and throwing in some slapstick. The whole "drama builds up then is made completely trivial by an overpowered protagonist" gag is really funny but I think it would feel more credible if everything else wasn't so bland. After a while I don't want to watch through a boring story to get to a gag I already heard, even if that's the humor in it.

Like Mumen Rider's comedy potential feels totally wasted since he doesn't really do anything in any of his appearances besides his introducing joke (but I guess he's only appeared like twice so far). A more thorough characterization would make the world and its risks more credible (and thus funnier when Saitama comes in and bluntly punches the problem in the face) than characters vomiting back story and explanation or Being Dramatic at the screen, which is what I think makes the same kind of jokes work well in Gintama.

Overall it's really great though. What I'm really watching it for is the animation.

[Twig]

License-less Rider is probably the only character in the show besides Saitama and Genos that's not just a one-note gag, though he does appear to be nothing but.

[Twig]

MY BACKLOG! IT SHRINKS!!!

• Space Brothers (on episode 33 (66 left!), this is the one I'm currently watching in earnest)
• Ronin Warriors (watched the first episode to confirm I could tolerate it (38 left!) - I can, will get to it next, basically watching for childhood nostalgia)
• Dragon Ball Z Kai (currently in the Buu Saga (32 left!), watching a few episodes every weekend or so with my friend - so doesn't really count for backlog, since it's a social activity??)
• Dragon Ball GT (see above (64 left!))
• Lupin III (Red (128 left!) and Pink (50 left!) jacket (and soon Blue, once that's all up and subbed good-like))
• Gintama (on episode 74 (currently 226 left!), been watching bit by bit - besides Space Brothers, definitely the best thing on this list, but I've just not been in the mood for relentless gag comedy lately)
• Case Closed (800 or whatever, this is never happening, why is it on my list anyway??????)

All these long series. O:

 

Ignoring Case Closed (for obvious reasons) and Dragon Ball (for stated reasons), that leaves... 508 episodes of Japanese cartoons.

 

(I'm counting my backlog cleared as soon as I finish Space Brothers and Ronin Warriors. Then I can watch new things!)

[Mangela Lansbury]

I'm sorry, but I don't understand why Case Closed isn't first priority on your backlog?????

[Twig]

WE ALREADY BEEN THROUGH THIS LANSBURY 

[Gormongous]

WE ALREADY BEEN THROUGH THIS LANSBURY 

 

I agree, if you've seen any season of Detective Conan, you've seen them all.

[Mangela Lansbury]

I agree, if you've seen any season of Detective Conan, you've seen them all.

 

This is like saying that every season of Murder, She Wrote is the same: Probably true, but not really the point! It's just silly fun and solving mysteries!

 

Except the movies, which are about explosions.

[Gormongous]

This is like saying that every season of Murder, She Wrote is the same: Probably true, but not really the point! It's just silly fun and solving mysteries!

 

Except the movies, which are about explosions.

 

I don't disagree, having kept up with several shounen juggernauts in my life, but Twig's a member of an anime podcast. It would be hilarious but sad for him to get bogged down with literally three hundred hours of a single series, almost as sad as being into DBZ...

[juv3nal]

I'm late to the party apparently but I've been enjoying Darker than Black

It's a spy story with superpowers.

[Mangela Lansbury]

I don't disagree, having kept up with several shounen juggernauts in my life, but Twig's a member of an anime podcast. It would be hilarious but sad for him to get bogged down with literally three hundred hours of a single series, almost as sad as being into DBZ...

 

More than 300 hours if you include the 20 movies! Don't sell it short!

 

Also, he won't watch Cyborg 009 or Sabu and Ichi's Detective Tales, so he deserves that fate.

[Twig]

i'm being bullied

[N1njaSquirrel]

I'm late to the party apparently but I've been enjoying Darker than Black

It's a spy story with superpowers.

 

I might be the only person who thought the second season was better than the first. I really couldn't get on board with the first season, as I generally didn't care about anyone. The second season fixed that though.

[Gormongous]

I finished the second "season" of My Teenage Romantic Comedy SNAFU last night.

 

Honestly, most of my comments about the first "season" stand. It's honestly a strange show to watch, because the Volunteer Club that comprises the main characters is very good at solving problems, so that's never in doubt. Instead, the tension of the show comes from those characters' differing philosophies and their failure to respect them. Sometimes it comes off as subtle, but sometimes it's just inscrutable. It took me half the fucking season to comprehend that Yukino's been putting on an act with Yui and Hachiman and that her mounting diffidence towards them is a hesitance to get any closer and endanger that act. I know I complimented the low-key presentation of the love triangle, but the second season takes that same approach with virtually every other emotional arc and I was just losing the thread of the plot way too often. It sucks, but I can't recommend a show like that, when I'm constantly asking, "Wait, what is she mad about?" or "Wait, why don't they like his plan?"

 

I will say, the character of Hikigaya Hachiman is excellent and everything that was advertised. He starts out a bitter and closed-off loner who is forced to perform public service in a club, but his cynicism turns out to be good for solving problems and he gradually makes friends thereby, without changing his fundamentally negative personality. It's slow and subtle, but deeply effective, rather than the usual anime trope of a loner otaku finding love and acceptance and suddenly becoming this happy dork with no commonalities to his previous self. I just wish he were in a different show, because his arc clashes with those of Yui (friendly but awkward girl trying to figure out how to voice intimate feelings), Yukino (girl putting on a perfectionist front to protect herself from others' judgment), Hayama (popular jock who wants to be friends with everyone, even the girls who're competing for him), and others, so it's easy to miss it and how well it works on its own.

[matthew]

I've read 850 chapters of Detective Conan (I play catch up every year or 2 since maybe 2008 - sometime pre mangafox scanlation dominance, but post download only scanlations), and I'd say if you havent started, dont bother, but it is pretty good comfort food. There are dozens of cast members and rote plot structures that are just infrequent enough to be fun when they return. Teaming up with the Osaka kid, plotty action arcs, Kaito Kid arcs, Haibara focused arcs, all the kids working together, the two detectives that are dating. I kinda love it in a way that I cant with most 300+ chapter shonen. The problem with those is they're too dense, I forget stuff. When youre with a series for that long you sort of get Stockholm Syndromed to its flow, and the slow burn plot means I can drop it for 2 years and pick it right back up, without having lost too much critical information.

 

Anyways, read the manga, is what I'm saying - it'll reduce it to weeks instead of months.

[Gormongous]

I feel like I'm only ever proud of what I post on my blog when I'm talking about Neon Genesis Evangelion.

 

I was inspired after being pointed to a trio of videos comparing the original series and End of Evangelion to the Rebuild movies. They come down a bit harsher on the latter than I'd like — especially You Can (Not) Advance, which is not quite the betrayal of the original series' characters that the author of the videos makes it out to be — but they're an excellent primer for what's interesting about those works (especially the original series) simply by being relatively short and listenable, which is more than I can say for virtually any other video series about Eva. Quick hint: if the person making a video says "EE-von-GHELL-eon" I just close the browser window.

 

[Blambo]

Just watched Ouran Host Club. It was good! 

 

Also watching House of Five Leaves. It is unbearable!

[Codicier]

Just watched Ouran Host Club. It was good! 

 

Also watching House of Five Leaves. It is unbearable!

 

That Ouran is good this is one of the fundamental truths of anime, but what's so bad about House of Five Leaves? my memory has it filed down as visually interesting but not particularity compelling. 

[Blambo]

That Ouran is good this is one of the fundamental truths of anime, but what's so bad about House of Five Leaves? my memory has it filed down as visually interesting but not particularity compelling. 

 

I don't even find it visually interesting. The art style is kind of original (aka not the art style anime usually is) and I could see why it might work really well on a better animation budget, but because the animation and direction is so stiff the art style comes off as kind of uneappealing and way less expressive than any one still would suggest. I can see the limited production budget seeping through the 15 second long zooms on a still image.

 

I dropped it a week ago on episode 4 so I don't even know what happens in the story, but 4 episodes of exposition feels like way too much. Characters go on and on about how everyone has a hidden past and how the white haired dude doesn't like to talk about his past, and it's all to build up this sense of mystery surrounding the people in the organization. But if it's just shoved in my face consistently, it's hard for me to to feel intrigued. Also it's all expressed very verbally and dryly, and doesn't seem to take advantage of its setting to tell its stories.

 

Maybe I should finish it since it's only 11 episodes but really I was totally bored by what I've seen.

[Gormongous]

Only Yesterday, one of Takahata Isao's masterpieces with Studio Ghibli, is finally getting an American theatrical release and a dub, which may probably pave the way for its first R1 DVD/Blu-ray release.

 

This is huge news. Only Yesterday is beautiful and charming and a truly excellent film.

[Blambo]

Only Yesterday, one of Takahata Isao's masterpieces with Studio Ghibli, is finally getting an American theatrical release and a dub, which may probably pave the way for its first R1 DVD/Blu-ray release.

This is huge news. Only Yesterday is beautiful and charming and a truly excellent film.

Yesss

[Codicier]

I don't even find it visually interesting. The art style is kind of original (aka not the art style anime usually is) and I could see why it might work really well on a better animation budget, but because the animation and direction is so stiff the art style comes off as kind of uneappealing and way less expressive than any one still would suggest. I can see the limited production budget seeping through the 15 second long zooms on a still image.

 

I dropped it a week ago on episode 4 so I don't even know what happens in the story, but 4 episodes of exposition feels like way too much. Characters go on and on about how everyone has a hidden past and how the white haired dude doesn't like to talk about his past, and it's all to build up this sense of mystery surrounding the people in the organization. But if it's just shoved in my face consistently, it's hard for me to to feel intrigued. Also it's all expressed very verbally and dryly, and doesn't seem to take advantage of its setting to tell its stories.

 

Maybe I should finish it since it's only 11 episodes but really I was totally bored by what I've seen.

 

 Animation wise i think some of the things you say could easily be aimed at something like mushishi at times but i think i'm far more willing to forgive them in that case because it knew how to put together a compelling self contained story in a single episode, where as there wasn't really any real narrative flow driving HoFL's forward moment to moment.

 

I do like the idea of the art style consisting of these very unevenly drawn ink lines and shadows as a sorta metaphor for the type of story/person they are depicting but they really don't do enough to make up for the fact that these vague characters dont do much intresting

[Blambo]

I finished the second "season" of My Teenage Romantic Comedy SNAFU last night.

Honestly, most of my comments about the first "season" stand. It's honestly a strange show to watch, because the Volunteer Club that comprises the main characters is very good at solving problems, so that's never in doubt. Instead, the tension of the show comes from those characters' differing philosophies and their failure to respect them. Sometimes it comes off as subtle, but sometimes it's just inscrutable. It took me half the fucking season to comprehend that Yukino's been putting on an act with Yui and Hachiman and that her mounting diffidence towards them is a hesitance to get any closer and endanger that act. I know I complimented the low-key presentation of the love triangle, but the second season takes that same approach with virtually every other emotional arc and I was just losing the thread of the plot way too often. It sucks, but I can't recommend a show like that, when I'm constantly asking, "Wait, what is she mad about?" or "Wait, why don't they like his plan?"

I will say, the character of Hikigaya Hachiman is excellent and everything that was advertised. He starts out a bitter and closed-off loner who is forced to perform public service in a club, but his cynicism turns out to be good for solving problems and he gradually makes friends thereby, without changing his fundamentally negative personality. It's slow and subtle, but deeply effective, rather than the usual anime trope of a loner otaku finding love and acceptance and suddenly becoming this happy dork with no commonalities to his previous self. I just wish he were in a different show, because his arc clashes with those of Yui (friendly but awkward girl trying to figure out how to voice intimate feelings), Yukino (girl putting on a perfectionist front to protect herself from others' judgment), Hayama (popular jock who wants to be friends with everyone, even the girls who're competing for him), and others, so it's easy to miss it and how well it works on its own.

As much as your criticisms (and the art style) of the show turn me off of it, I'm pretty pleased/surprised to hear that the show didn't stop the narrative at "love conquers all" and throw its hands in the air with a 20 minute shot of a sunset.

When you say it's inscrutable, are you referring to the developments in the drama or the general motivations of the characters? I guess one follows the other, but I mostly want to know if the characters are built to be defined by clear motivations contrived to move a convoluted plot forward, or if the plot is convoluted by a natural consequence of complicated characters with evolving motivations and thought processes.

--

I finished Mawaru Penguindrum. I don't really know what I should be feeling about it since my immediate reaction was negative, but I also get the sense that I don't fully understand it. There's a lot of symbolism and repetition that don't seem to serve the theme that I took away from it, and I can't really effectively separate the stuff I should be looking at and the stuff that's just there to be evocative and motivate the viewer (or to manufacture Poignancy).

It just seems kind of all over the place while heavily suggesting that it's cohesive.

I really like the reading that it's about the collective feeling of rejection in a generation born into a competitive capitalist society, with the whole children broiler thing, over half the characters harboring abandonment/inferiority issues and even the amazingly heavy handed Aum Shinrikyo nerve gas attack references. The whole cast of character's obsession with fate points to their feeling of reduced agency and empowerment in their own lives.

But then what does it try to say about this? There's a magical little girl who represents the power of unconditional love but also belief in fate is still a thing? Aren't we still fucked by an unfruitful obsession with chasing love and acceptance through fulfilling fate? Why are the only people who reject this idea cartoonishly misguided terrorists? Isn't this a massively convoluted way to say "all you need is love" and I guess "you don't have to destroy the world to make a difference"?

I can't say I had a totally negative experience while watching it but in retrospect there's so much fluff and navelgazing that I felt was totally unnecessary to its thesis (or at least the one that I read). I dunno, it's probably a style thing.

There's also the possibility that it's specifically about the nerve gas attacks and I don't have the cultural understanding to fully appreciate the work, but that just makes it feel even more indulgent.

[Gormongous]

As much as your criticisms (and the art style) of the show turn me off of it, I'm pretty pleased/surprised to hear that the show didn't stop the narrative at "love conquers all" and throw its hands in the air with a 20 minute shot of a sunset.

When you say it's inscrutable, are you referring to the developments in the drama or the general motivations of the characters? I guess one follows the other, but I mostly want to know if the characters are built to be defined by clear motivations contrived to move a convoluted plot forward, or if the plot is convoluted by a natural consequence of complicated characters with evolving motivations and thought processes.

 

Yeah, that's the funny thing about SNAFU. It's not good, not really, but it's subtly different in the way it structures its interpersonal relationships and emotional arcs that makes it weirdly intriguing to anyone steeped in the rom-com genre of anime.

 

As to what exactly is "inscrutable" about SNAFU, it's not really the characters' general motivations, which are obvious and largely essential in their depiction. It's more their specific motivations in a given scenario and how those motivations affect their subsequent behavior. For example, a freshman girl comes to the Volunteer Club for help getting out of a "prank" that her friends have played on her by nominating her in a no-contest race for student council president. Hikigaya, who is self-hating after years of social isolation and sees acceptance of his own self-hate as a superpower, immediately volunteers to give a terrible endorsement speech that'll turn everyone off of the unwilling candidate without the embarrassment of her having to reject her own nomination. Yukino and Yui dislike this, because they are each nurturing a quiet love for Hikigaya and are tired of seeing him hurt and humiliate himself, so Yukino rejects Hikigaya's plan and proposes that she run for president against the freshman. Since Yukino is an intelligent and respected girl who has been looking for ways to "perfect" herself in the image of her talented older sister, in order to please her family, this also makes sense, but Yui freaks out, thinking that Yukino becoming president will mean the end of the club and her own return to social isolation... so Yui decides to run for president, too? Neither of them seem particularly happy about their candidacy, but maintain that each are the best solution to the problem. And then Hikigaya, looking for a way to make everyone happy, forges a petition that convinces the freshman that she has widespread support in the school and tells her a bundle of lies to make her believe that being president will be fun and easy. She decides to take the job, Hikigaya informs Yukino and Yui, and everyone's just kinda... disappointed, maybe even a little angry at him? Not for tricking their erstwhile client (they seem to regard Hikigaya's actions as the "ideal" solution) but for preempting their own plans with his tricks. Yukino makes a little sense. Other characters talk about Hikigaya robbing her of a purpose by acting how he did, but surely Yukino doesn't need some flimsy pretext to run for president if she actually wants it. Still, she becomes almost catatonic in later episodes as she wrestles with this "lack of purpose" and dealing with it turns out to be the final arc of the second season's plot. Meanwhile, Yui is also estranged from him for... reasons? I don't know. And Hikigaya won't apologize because... reasons? I don't know. He's never been slow to apologize before, albeit in an impressively grudging way, but now suddenly he's troubled enough to ask his little sister for advice about women and yet not troubled enough to take direct action. I guess taking indirect action is more his character, but...

 

You get the idea. The general motivations and dramatic situations are presented in fairly plain fashion, but it's way too easy to lose the thread of the specifics, not least because the characters by design are unforthcoming about why they feel and act the way they do. That's actually what makes the end feel weirdly unsatisfying, even though I like its refusal to play into "love conquers all," because the group's decision is to trust each other to try and become friends with who they all really are, as opposed to who they want to be or who they think others want them to be, and that seemed like... what they had already been doing, the whole show? That's a general problem with anime, though — characters who act like friends often insist they aren't friends until some plot point gives them the opportunity for a formal declaration of friendship. Maybe it's a thing with Japanese social mores? I don't know.

 

 

I finished Mawaru Penguindrum. I don't really know what I should be feeling about it since my immediate reaction was negative, but I also get the sense that I don't fully understand it. There's a lot of symbolism and repetition that don't seem to serve the theme that I took away from it, and I can't really effectively separate the stuff I should be looking at and the stuff that's just there to be evocative and motivate the viewer (or to manufacture Poignancy).

It just seems kind of all over the place while heavily suggesting that it's cohesive.

I really like the reading that it's about the collective feeling of rejection in a generation born into a competitive capitalist society, with the whole children broiler thing, over half the characters harboring abandonment/inferiority issues and even the amazingly heavy handed Aum Shinrikyo nerve gas attack references. The whole cast of character's obsession with fate points to their feeling of reduced agency and empowerment in their own lives.

But then what does it try to say about this? There's a magical little girl who represents the power of unconditional love but also belief in fate is still a thing? Aren't we still fucked by an unfruitful obsession with chasing love and acceptance through fulfilling fate? Why are the only people who reject this idea cartoonishly misguided terrorists? Isn't this a massively convoluted way to say "all you need is love" and I guess "you don't have to destroy the world to make a difference"?

I can't say I had a totally negative experience while watching it but in retrospect there's so much fluff and navelgazing that I felt was totally unnecessary to its thesis (or at least the one that I read). I dunno, it's probably a style thing.

There's also the possibility that it's specifically about the nerve gas attacks and I don't have the cultural understanding to fully appreciate the work, but that just makes it feel even more indulgent.

 

Penguindrum is such an odd bird. I agree, with you, that there are a bunch of strong and interesting elements that don't seem to cohere at all, as if there are too many ingredients in the stew throwing off the taste. My conclusion was that Ikuhara had way too many leftover ideas lying around from Utena and lacked the confidence to pare the list down into something more consonant with itself. Still, when I was researching the anime for my OP project, I came across a series for critical posts (for instance, on the symbology of fate and on the historical outlook) that suggested to me a deeper meaning. Maybe one is there, but Yuri Kuma Arashi reaffirms me in my belief that Ikuhara's juice is just less than it has been before.