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I love 70s hairdos. While we're on the subject, I thought Towards the Terra was a pretty good anime (and a fun manga too, To Terra, btw!). It's one of the first shojo sci fi stories, from the 70s, and pretty influential.

Okay, Summer Wars is great and I am especially awful enough that I also realized it was the successor to the Digimon movie. I have the Digimon Movie on DVD. Yeah, it's pretty bad, but I love it and it has a special Angela Anaconda cartoon about Digimon at the start. Don't judge me.

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I love 70s hairdos. While we're on the subject, I thought Towards the Terra was a pretty good anime (and a fun manga too, To Terra, btw!). It's one of the first shojo sci fi stories, from the 70s, and pretty influential.

The shoujo-ness (and the heavy yaoi undertones) of Toward the Terra really turned me off, though I had a good time watching the series overall. I like space a lot, as with many here.

But I should probably go back and edit my comments about Space Battleship Yamato 2199, because I've watched half the series now, and only because that's all that's available right now. It's pure melodrama, where the good guys face obstacles but triumph through their goodness in the end, but it's really, really fun at the same time. It's the same way I feel about the art in this series: generations of artists and writers have polished this script and these designs to a mirror sheen. There's nothing left not to like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8QWBiPfDSM

I mean, never has an OP captured the spirit of an anime more perfectly. The lyrics even explain the premise so there're no surprises.

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The thing is, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya wants you to think it's just another Lucky Star, but it's actually about God falling in love, which is why themes of disappointment and disillusionment, compulsion and free will appear in every episode. Each character in the SOS Brigade is such a pointed caricature of high school slice-of-life anime archetypes after the mid-2000s moe boom (the Rei expy, the moe blob, the tsundere, the wonder boy, the potato-kun) that, if people really think it's the flagship for all that, they're not far removed from those arguing (not without cause) that Fight Club endorses fascism. I don't know, the "Endless Eight" arc in the second season and the subsequent movie really drove home to me that The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is fine with you thinking it's just slice-of-life with an omnipotent asshole at the reins, but there is more to it if you're willing to look (especially if you watch the episodes in broadcast order rather than DVD order, the latter being Kyon's POV but the former Haruhi's).

I did watch it in broadcast order, though I only watched the first season.

Incidentally, although I wasn't watching the show at that point, "Endless Eight" is probably the most masterful trolling ever perpetuated.

So even though I've got this big anime itch right now, I can't figure out what's airing right now that's actually good. I might end watching an old series instead or something. Any suggestions?

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Wasn't Space Brother a big hit in these parts?

Yeah, it was, but it's forty-two episodes and still going strong. I've heard rumors of a sixty-four- or sixty-five-episode run? Maybe you'd be better off watching Planetes instead pending Space Brothers ending. They're both about basically the same thing, but Planetes has some really good hard sci-fi going on once you get past the obligatory early-2000s goofy opening half-season (see: Trigun).

I'm also going to add my voice to those recommending Mushishi, which is this great episodic series of Japanese-flavored fables about how people interact with each other and their environment, and maybe submit Oh! Edo Rocket as well. It's the studio that did the first Fullmetal Alchemist, but the writer of Tenga Toppa Gurren Lagann, and it preserves the sensibilities of the latter, but in the guise of a magical-realism comedy skit. I don't know, I was thrilled to see they'd released the complete series for twenty-five dollars on Amazon, so it's at the front of my mind right now.

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I hate that Trigun bullshit. Just tell the damn story, thank you. Don't go with inane bait-'n-switches halfway through. It ain't original, it's just annoying.

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I think it must have been a high-level marketing decision that was considered common knowledge among anime creators from about 1997 to 2005. Almost every seinen series I've watched from that time period starts out with five or six episodes of pure comedy that introduce the protagonist as a wacky goofball, before gradually introducing thematic elements that culminate in an actual dramatic plot through the teens and twenties. I guess they thought that people wouldn't watch a series that was dark and serious from square one, but it's baffling anyway, because no one likes it. I mean, I liked it in Trigun until I realized it wasn't their stylistic choice but rather following the crowd.

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If anybody loves some good dystopic sci-fi, let me recommend this currently ongoing series.

The first few episodes are pretty rough, but it gets better, and i think it starts absolutely kicking ass at its tenth episode.

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I think it must have been a high-level marketing decision that was considered common knowledge among anime creators from about 1997 to 2005. Almost every seinen series I've watched from that time period starts out with five or six episodes of pure comedy that introduce the protagonist as a wacky goofball, before gradually introducing thematic elements that culminate in an actual dramatic plot through the teens and twenties. I guess they thought that people wouldn't watch a series that was dark and serious from square one, but it's baffling anyway, because no one likes it. I mean, I liked it in Trigun until I realized it wasn't their stylistic choice but rather following the crowd.

I actually like it, at least I like when a show starts with episodes that don't have to do with what the main plat ends up being about. In most of the things I think of, it's always a show that starts off with self contained episodes and then later in the season it does the multi-episode plot arc stuff. When that happens I don't mind it.

I've been watching Sakamichi no Apollon/Kids on the Slope and so far I like it a lot, but I also really like jazz

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So I have a friend who likes anime, but doesn't watch anything unless he's introduced to it by someone else and can sit and watch it with them. I'm thinking of showing him Evangelion, since I think he would really like it. The only thing is, I'm not sure what version is best for a first-timer at this point. Rebuild is arguably the best version of the series*; but I feel like at least some of its impact is dependent on having seen the original series and/or End of Evangelion first, and hell if I want to sit and watch 16+ hours of Evangelion in as few sittings as possible again. Who feels that Rebuild stands/does not stand on its own merit and could be enjoyed by someone who's never seen the show before? Would watching Death and Rebirth or Revival of Evangelion in advance be an acceptable compromise?

I can never tell what the general consensus on D&R is since nobody ever talks about it. I can't even remember what makes it different from the series now.

All this despite the best way of enjoying the show clearly being living vicariously through its increasingly bizarre and tacky merchandise.

*the best animated version, anyway. The manga is probably the best version of the series proper, although with the caveat that it's been running for 18 years and is still only up to its thirteenth volume.

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So I have a friend who likes anime, but doesn't watch anything unless he's introduced to it by someone else and can sit and watch it with them. I'm thinking of showing him Evangelion, since I think he would really like it. The only thing is, I'm not sure what version is best for a first-timer at this point. Rebuild is arguably the best version of the series*; but I feel like at least some of its impact is dependent on having seen the original series and/or End of Evangelion first, and hell if I want to sit and watch 16+ hours of Evangelion in as few sittings as possible again. Who feels that Rebuild stands/does not stand on its own merit and could be enjoyed by someone who's never seen the show before? Would watching Death and Rebirth or Revival of Evangelion in advance be an acceptable compromise?

I can never tell what the general consensus on D&R is since nobody ever talks about it. I can't even remember what makes it different from the series now.

All this despite the best way of enjoying the show clearly being living vicariously through its increasingly bizarre and tacky merchandise.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, ever since I soured my college roommate on anime recommendations from me after he found Neon Genesis Evangelion too old (4:3 aspect ratio, hand-animated, hand-colored) and too annoying (Shinji is disempowered, Asuka is overassertive).

The thing is, the Rebuild movies do work fine on their own. They're good stories based on a well-considered precedent. I've shown them on their own to a couple people who I knew were never going to sit through a seventeen-year-old anime series about loneliness, depression, and the apocalypse. But if you haven't seen the TV show in its entirety, a lot of the "oh shit" moments are missing or invisible. Shinji's SDAT player, Rei cooking dinner, and Asuka testing EVA-03 are all just plot points, rather than earth-shattering deviations. Especially in Eva 2.22, where

Shinji rescues Rei, breaking the chain of events that lead to the Third Impact, but causing the Third Impact himself in the process

seems like more of a standard end to a love story without the events of End of Evangelion in mind. On the other hand, a couple of the changes I'm still not sold on (pretty much just this Mari Makinami Illustrious bullshit) maybe aren't as jarring.

So I don't know. I don't think there's any good compromise between watching all or watching nothing. I'm actually quite the apologist for Evangelion: Death and Rebirth, mostly because of how Anno plays with his growing interest in theatricality, scripts, and roles as an analogue to the intersection between personality and society, but I don't know if it's a functional replacement for the series as a whole. I mean, it's pretty complete in its summary of events, mostly due to Anno's love of stark and cryptic title cards, but so much of Evangelion's meaning is in the silence and stillness between events (a good article here on that here) that I don't know if Death & Rebirth works without some foreknowledge.

I'd say just go with the movies, it's your call. If he loves them, you can always reward him with the pleasant surprise that is the existence of the series.

All this despite the best way of enjoying the show clearly being living vicariously through its increasingly bizarre and tacky merchandise.

Have you seen the Schick ads for Eva 3.0 that involved Gendo shaving off his beard and shaking his depression? Best (worst).

1204177.jpg

*the best animated version, anyway. The manga is probably the best version of the series proper, although with the caveat that it's been running for 18 years and is still only up to its thirteenth volume.

I've read the manga up to volume six, but it's kinda left me cold. I don't like how Shinji's passive-aggressive instead of just passive or how his increased closeness to Rei overdoes the Freudian undertones. But I'll keep reading and probably regret my words here sooner or later.

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You know, I think Evangelion is a great introduction if you're, you know, in your late teens or early twenties. Later than that and I fear it might be off-putting rather than enticing. You know, for reasons of subtlety. I'm actually more of a manga reader than an anime watcher, but I think things like Saturn Apartments or Dorohedoro might appeal more to the mature reader/viewer.

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Have you seen the Schick ads for Eva 3.0 that involved Gendo shaving off his beard and shaking his depression? Best (worst).

I am well aware. At one point I started doing writeups of Eva merchandise as a joke and it blossomed into the discovery of an amazing series of escalatingly bewildering items.

Highlights:

  • narratively-appropriate Ayanami Rei Matryoshka dolls
  • like five different models of air humidifier, but only one dehumidifier
  • AT Field umbrella
  • SEELE monolith calculator
  • bottled water where the bottles are shaped like Rei and Asuka's limbless torsos
  • NERV bucket. Absolutely nothing special about it besides having the NERV logo on it.
  • Evangelion canned bread
  • T2DIi.jpg

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Oh man, I'd forgotten the canned bread and the NERV bucket. Actually, most of those sound familiar, maybe I followed that thread in a different life.

What's really great is the Evangelion hotel room. The ad copy said something about spending a night in Rei's room and I got excited, imagining something like this:

028.jpg

Instead, we get something like this:

eva_hoteL_fujikyu_1-thumb-640x463-42637.jpg

What the what. That's not Rei's room. That's like the Thumbs' joke about a Jurassic Park built to commemorate the events of Jurassic Park.

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That makes me so sad, the mass production EVA toilet suddenly looks like a Damian Hirst creation.

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Tekkon Kinkreet is stellar. The manga is really good, too.

So I started watching Dennou Coil.

I'm really liking this so far. I've always loved science fiction and fantasy set in modern urban environments and I've had a recent fascination with augmented reality tech, so this is right up my alley. I'm eight episodes in so far and the highlight has been the war in the classrooms. Also, I totally called the illegals being nonagressive.

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Dennou Coil is lovely and, surprising for an anime show, actually has a well thought-out structure and proper ending.

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I think my first real exposure to anime was with 2001's Metropolis. My dad had a big newspaper clipping from the New York Times and was really stoked to see it (I don't know if he did since it was a very limited release). When the DVD came out I was absolutely captivated. It wasn't long before he started buying the Miyazaki films and Akira.

I have this weird childhood memory that I can't place. It was of a cartoon, I think an anime, that took place either on an island or at least along the coast somewhere, and there was (I think) a young child who met or was friends with some weird dinosaur that looked like a Pokemon or the Loch Ness monster, and I think the ostensible antagonist was a bearded sailor in a tug boat. This ring any bells?

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Heck yeah, I listen to it whenever I go running.

I don't know if it's just a different cultural aesthetic preference (since I don't know much anime or Japanese media overall) but I love that it's extremely retrofuturistic without just being straight-up dieselpunk or decopunk derivative. Maybe the original source material lends itself to that really well, but it's cool that it takes all the scale and pomposity of early 20th century diplomats and still puts them in a crazy futuristic world without just coming across as a kitsch novelty. I think it makes a difference that they didn't insist that everything in the world is steam or diesel powered.

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Dennou Coil is lovely and, surprising for an anime show, actually has a well thought-out structure and proper ending.

Yeah, I had a really weird reaction when I finished Dennou Coil this summer. It took me a while to realize it was satisfaction. There were no loose ends or questions marks, just a show that explored its premise to the fullest and then tied everything up in a bow. Shame it'll never get a full release.

I have this weird childhood memory that I can't place. It was of a cartoon, I think an anime, that took place either on an island or at least along the coast somewhere, and there was (I think) a young child who met or was friends with some weird dinosaur that looked like a Pokemon or the Loch Ness monster, and I think the ostensible antagonist was a bearded sailor in a tug boat. This ring any bells?

I'm usually really good about guessing people's half-remembered childhood anime, but I have no freakin' clue here. Sorry, man.

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Oh well, it might not even have been anime at all, I just have these weird obscure scraps of memory. It was almost definitely a kids cartoon anyway.

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The best thing about Metropolis is that it's basically a love letter to Osamu Tezuka. It doesn't resemble the original manga very closely, but it fully embraces Tezuka's "Star System" concept of reusing characters in key roles and playing with the expectations created by their repeated appearances. I notice something new every time I watch it. Off the top of my head:

  • Shunsaku Ban names the robot detective "Pero" after a dog he had. In an early Astro Boy story, Shunsaku Ban's dog, Pero, had its brain removed and placed in the same robot body that the detective has.
  • The President's secretary, Acetylene Lamp, has a candle appear on his head for a split-second in one scene. This is based on a recurring joke that started more than fifty years before the movie was made.
  • Fifi the robot appears to be Robita, a major robot character from Tezuka's magnum opus Phoenix. The weird patched-up gourd thing that Robita picks up at one point is Hyoutan-tsugi, a character based on a doodle that Tezuka's sister drew as a kid that he would insert in scenes whenever the action was getting too serious.
  • The anti-robot revolutionary leader is, ironically, a human version of the second iteration of the robot Atlas, Astro Boy's evil counterpart.
  • the movie effectively serves as an end to the sad story of Rock Holmes, a major character who had a personal story arc across thirty years of manga series detailing his fall from grace.

Basically it's a good movie that becomes increasingly amazing the more time you invest into it.

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