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I haven't seen Time of Eve yet, but its Kickstarter is blowing up. I'm really happy that there can be another way besides Funimation eating up everything and shitting out Crunchyroll streams.

 

 

EDIT: Oh, I've been watching tons of stuff too. Little Witch Academia, which I think Tegan linked a couple pages ago, is amazing and restores my faith in the "new" GAINAX, as if Medaka Box Abnormal didn't already. Excel Saga holds up completely and is also amazing, even just for what a risk ADV Films was willing to take licensing and importing such an avant-garde anime. The "sequel" OVA Puni Puni Poemy is pretty good too, despite being obviously a studio in-joke they somehow got money to make into two whole episodes.

 

Now I'm finishing up my rewatch of Rurouni Kenshin. I knew that Studio Deen took over after the Kyoto arc and the series gradually lost its quality, but watching it now, a little more jaded than a decade ago, the drop-off is shocking. Right after an incredible battle between two political ideologies personified, we have A) old swordsman's lost love, B) foreign prince's body double, C) plot foiled by thieving dog, and D) fake engagement ring hijinks. I haven't watched shounen anime this bad since that one Bleach filler episode where there was a ghost chef whose cake they had to finish before he went berserk, which I consider the worst twenty-two and a half minutes to which I have ever been subjected.

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Note to self: do not watch any more anime that has ever been mentioned in the same breath as "harem". They just make you frustrated.

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Note to self: do not watch any more anime that has ever been mentioned in the same breath as "harem". They just make you frustrated.

 

There are so many way this could be happily misconstrued :D

 

But I'll interpret it in the spirit that I think it's intended and say generally I fully agree that harem anime are a scourge that are best wiped from the face of the earth asap, although I do believe Tegan pointed out a notable example of a very enjoyable reverse harem a few pages back with Ouran.

 

May I ask which series particularly earned you ire?

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May I ask which series particularly earned you ire?

 

I just watched all of Kannagi: Crazy Shrine Maidens this week. I loved the art and design of the whole series, plus the premise was really great. What does a goddess do to earn followers in this day and age? But it totally derailed into everyone drooling over Potato-kun by the fourth or fifth episode, never even realizing the implications of goddess-turned-media-idol implied in the opening credits.

 

Kannagi's not that bad, to be honest. The humor is keen and aware of the fact that it's operating in a very tired subgenre. I've just had the bad luck of watching more than a few "good" shows in the past month, all of which were trumped in the end by the requisite "Potato-kun gets in a fight with the first girl he'd met, they don't talk for an episode, then they realize how much they love each other." My irritation is getting to the level of shounen jive, which has kept me from enjoying Rurouni Kenshin as much as I ought.

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I've been watching the original series of Sailor Moon, uncut with subtitles.

 

1) that theme song is awesome.

2) Usagi is the Clark Kent of anime. There is absolutely no reason anyone would not immediately realize that she is Sailor Moon, and yet her own brother doesn't recognize her. Made all the more bewildering by one of her powers being a magic pen that can disguise her to look like anyone.

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Most heroes look the same when they change to their alter ego, but that reminds me... wasn't there some 80's-90's anime about a girl who transforms into man, it's really just a hologram ... That could be any show from that era, now that I think of it.

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But Sailor Moon even dresses nearly identically to Usagi! It's crazy!

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Finally watched all of Tatami Galaxy. I imported the region 2 DVD a month or so ago when I still had a job and monies. The show was pretty overwhelming for the first three episodes for a couple of reasons.

 

First the fucking text goes way too fast. I'm not a fan of dubs but this is definitely a show that needs one, since it's meant to work with the spew of dialogue working over with the fast images that go with the monologues. At the same time though, most dubs tend to be shit, especially on shows that aren't so popular, so that could be a curse. I swear the original Japanese language is sped up for the voice overs though. I had to constantly pause and rewind to keep track of what was being said. I figured out what to do around episode 3 though when I realized all monologues, the subs will be in italics and that's when I should pause, but when the normal font appears I can watch it as I would any normal subtitled show. Also the monologues start slowing down and becoming less frequent as the show goes on so that's refreshing.

 

The second issue for the first few episodes is that a lot of the parts of the show seem very random or confusing with either symbolism or situations and objects that come out of no where and are unexplained. It turns out everything is eventually explained and while the show is formulaic in the premise, it is not one where it wraps up all the loose ends per episode like most shows of that type. Instead it should still be treated as a miniseries where everything is important to the final plot. This ended up being incredibly endearing actually.

 

I just loved this show in the end. It's definitely one of my all time favorites and once again Masaaki Yuasa does not disappoint. I felt for the main character in a very honest way that maybe only males can understand (?). He's submissive not in the anime harem show way, but in the way that he wants love, has the idea of what a girlfriend should be, but is ultimately an unnoticed loser and has to fight his libido (which seems to be hilariously portrayed by Woody form Toy Story). But that is not his only dimension because he also can be evil, selfish, horny, and not able to see what he has in front of him and is instead too picky on the female front. It's just greatly rounded without giving too much away.

 

Anyway, there's a few elements I don't understand if anyone else here has seen it.

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I agree with pretty much everything you said! Except that I kind of liked how fast he talked. Added to the surreality of it all for me. Granted, I read pretty fast in general, so that probably helped, heh.

 

Man I fucking love Tatami Galaxy. And Masaaki Yuasa. MAN.

 

High five!

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Ugh, I've been meaning to watch Tatami Galaxy, but I promised to watch it with a friend who is getting married and going on a honeymoon. Glad to hear it getting good buzz from people I know (kinda).

And I like fast-talking anime, too! Mitsuishi Kotono's delivery as Excel in Excel Saga bothered me for maybe a couple episodes before I lapsed into awe and then appreciation.

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After reading the first four volumes of Wandering Son aka Horou Musukou and realizing that there was an anime based on it, I decided to give it a quick look. It looks like the first episode starts right where I left off in the manga, though, with the kids going to middle school. Is that just like a cold open thing so that they can flash back to the beginning, or does it actually start from there? I don't want to spoil anything for myself.

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After reading the first four volumes of Wandering Son aka Horou Musukou and realizing that there was an anime based on it, I decided to give it a quick look. It looks like the first episode starts right where I left off in the manga, though, with the kids going to middle school. Is that just like a cold open thing so that they can flash back to the beginning, or does it actually start from there? I don't want to spoil anything for myself.

 

I didn't mind spoiling anything for myself, so I looked it up. Yeah, they just adapt twelve episodes out of the book starting from junior high, with little or no reference to earlier events. I wonder why.

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Been watching Planetes after seeing someone recommend it in this thread.  I'm really enjoying it and am already regretting when I'll be finished all the episodes.  I'm studying aerospace engineering so all the sci-fi behind it is real interesting and semi-inspiring.

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I'm still not sure how I feel about the new Berserk movies, most of all the third one that just hit the internet. They're all stunning movies, full of incredible art, but I'm constantly being blindsided by the occasional seams that the computer-generated animation process lets slip because of the fast turnaround. There'll be a gorgeous treeline, then a drab marionette will traipse through it. There'll be an epic duel, then it'll pull back to reveal them surrounded by PS2-era CG dudes. At the very least, there's been marked improvement between each movie, so now that they're almost all the way there and through the material covered by the 1997 anime, the fourth movie will be the one to watch.

 

By the way, http://animebytes.tv/ is currently holding a week-long freeleech for all the new invites they've gotten. If anyone needs an invite themselves, I've got ten in my quiver that I'd be happy to send over PM. It's a great site for anime as well as manga, art books, J-pop, and visual novels. Nothing else I've found online has been larger or more complete, plus every two weeks they pick an anime that's free to download. This fortnight it's Nyanpire the Animation, which I downloaded as readily as I downloaded Chi's Sweet Home despite an equal unlikeliness to watch it. This was just too good to pass up:

 

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Been watching Planetes after seeing someone recommend it in this thread.  I'm really enjoying it and am already regretting when I'll be finished all the episodes.  I'm studying aerospace engineering so all the sci-fi behind it is real interesting and semi-inspiring.

 

Fascinating thing about my experience watching Planetes (spoilered if you're early in it):

 

From everything that I had seen of it and the first opening scenes, I expected Planetes to be a very minimal, cerebral take on the hard science fiction genre. I was surprised and slightly put off when the first like 10 episodes are one-offs about the wacky adventures of this dysfunctional debris crew. Eventually I got used to it, but THEN THE CRAZY SHIT STARTS HAPPENING, there were really well done character-centric episodes, then the one where Hachimaki gets that space phobia, and then he chooses to pursue the Jupiter mission and everything gets really depressing. It was exactly what I pictured the show to be like before I had begun watching, but now I was already used to the goofy shit so I was also put off by the sudden change. 

 

It succeeds extremely well on both ends of the spectrum, though, and I don't favor one part over the other. But hell, that show is dark some times.

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In a fit of nostalgia I've recently re-watched the still awesome Planetes, as well as Yoshitoshi Abe's amazing Haibane Renmei. This was a supplement to my current diet of Spring 2013 shows like Attack on Titan, Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, and the increasingly hard to watch Majestic Prince. All of which I've been following thanks to my swanky new CrunchyRoll subscription.

 

None of these new shows are going on my must-recomend list, but here goes anyhow...

The theme of this season so far seems to be story/characters falling short of the bar set by the amazing production quality.

 

Attack on Titan has been okay so far... in a shonen kind of way. The best way to describe Titan would be comparing it to a medieval zombie show... Giant 10-12 meter tall mindless Titans (zombies) of unknown origin have forced humanity (as we know it in the show) into a giant walled city. The show opens with the breaching of the outer most wall. Chaos insues. The lead characters enlist into the spider-man-like defense force that protects the giant walled citystate with the help of their very cool, very steampunky, 3D maneuvering gear. The lead character Eren is the usual unskilled try-hard who is determined to make it. His adopted-sister/love interest Mikasa, is a quiet killing machine of un-equalled skill, and their friend Armin is a book smart wimp who lacks self confidence. I'm 13 episodes in, and  have lots of questions which is fun. Saddly a friend who has read up on the manga tells me to not expect any answers any time soon, which is a bit of a bummer.

 

Here is the 2nd Official Trailer for Attack on Titan.

Warning this is almost entirely made of the best animated action sequences of the first 10 episodes. Some spoilers from those episodes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aIlbGiM8lk

 

After 13 episodes Gargantia ended with a weird bang. For the most part Gargantia was a slice-of-life story of mech pilot who gets sucked into a worm hole and ends up stranded on an unknown planet covered with a bright green ocean. The story follows his attempts at finding meaning, understading, as well as his struggles at finding his place in this strange new society aboard Gargantia a giant flotila of ships moored together.

 

Here is the first Official Trailer. Doesn't really do a good job selling the show, but it's short.

 

Third new series is Ginga Kikoutai Majestic Prince. From the creative minds behind Gundam SEED, and Heroic Age, comes yet another children piloting giant mechs show. The story follows Team Rabbit, the lowest scoring team in their class. Even if they are woefully underskilled, they each have a quality that is perfetly suited to pilot the next generation of mechs running on a mysterious new emotion system called the JULIA system. That's the set-up for this misfits in space series, which tries to bring a healthy dose of comedy to the usually bland and self serous mech show formula. Saddly instead of making the characters funny, they made them stupid. Which makes them shockingly bad candidates for the mech pilot program, and the whole thing just becomes a farce. How a show with such high production values ended up with such poor story/characters it is a real mystery. Why is it failing horribly in the Japanese ratings isn't.

 

Trailer

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Huh. So that's what Attack on Titan is. I'd been skimming over all of you talking about it.

 

Kinda wanna watch it now. And Gargantia. U:

 

Wooo something to watch.

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The funny thing about Attack On Titan is that once you get the gist of what's going on, it goes from a pretty normal show to straight up complete shounen, ramping up really fast.

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We are coming to the end of the current season of anime so now is probably as good a time as any to have a chat about some of the shows.

 

Attack on Titian is so earnestly shouhen that at times I feel like I'm watching a parody of the genre. I don't know perhaps i'm just too old and to cynical to take something like it seriously. I still think its one of the most gratuitously violent shows for a while which perhaps adds to my feeling this really is a show just for boys.

 

My feeling on Gargantia have ended up decidedly mixed, it creates a interesting world then populates it with uninteresting and unsympathetic people. 

 

My interest in Aku No Hana  initially came from the animation style it employed,  its been a long time since I've seen rotoscoping used but now I've seen the story they chose to tell with it i think it was a good choice. The series also bucks the tendency in anime to romanticise small town rural life, i think because of that (& my own small town upbringing) i sympathised more with the central character than i expected.

In many way hes not that different to the way Syntehicgerbil describes the protagonist of Tatami Galaxy, however instead of going through a typical character development arc, he spent most of the series not learning from him mistakes and instead just making things worse for himself. 

I'm also kinda interested in the way the show treats its protagonist (& therefore its own) earnestness, It tells the whole story seriously while at the same time mocking its lead characters tendency to see his own troubles in a melodramatic way.

 

Finally we have A Certain Scientific Railgun,  which although not without its faults is probably my favorite show this season just dude to its sheer enthusiastic entertainment value. My only gripe with it is the occasional appearance of Toma (The hero of railgun's parent series A Certain Magical Index), who remains as annoying and blatant peice of shouhen wish fulfillment (the whole world must follow a certain set of rules apart from him, and all the heroines adore him) as i have ever had the misfortune to encounter.

 

Overall not a bad season with a few enjoyable shows but not sure there was anything truly outstanding

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We are coming to the end of the current season of anime so now is probably as good a time as any to have a chat about some of the shows.

 

Attack on Titian is so earnestly shouhen that at times I feel like I'm watching a parody of the genre. I don't know perhaps i'm just too old and to cynical to take something like it seriously. I still think its one of the most gratuitously violent shows for a while which perhaps adds to my feeling this really is a show just for boys.

 

My feeling on Gargantia have ended up decidedly mixed, it creates a interesting world then populates it with uninteresting and unsympathetic people. 

 

My interest in Aku No Hana  initially came from the animation style it employed,  its been a long time since I've seen rotoscoping used but now I've seen the story they chose to tell with it i think it was a good choice. The series also bucks the tendency in anime to romanticise small town rural life, i think because of that (& my own small town upbringing) i sympathised more with the central character than i expected.

In many way hes not that different to the way Syntehicgerbil describes the protagonist of Tatami Galaxy, however instead of going through a typical character development arc, he spent most of the series not learning from him mistakes and instead just making things worse for himself. 

I'm also kinda interested in the way the show treats its protagonist (& therefore its own) earnestness, It tells the whole story seriously while at the same time mocking its lead characters tendency to see his own troubles in a melodramatic way.

 

Finally we have A Certain Scientific Railgun,  which although not without its faults is probably my favorite show this season just dude to its sheer enthusiastic entertainment value. My only gripe with it is the occasional appearance of Toma (The hero of railgun's parent series A Certain Magical Index), who remains as annoying and blatant peice of shouhen wish fulfillment (the whole world must follow a certain set of rules apart from him, and all the heroines adore him) as i have ever had the misfortune to encounter.

 

Overall not a bad season with a few enjoyable shows but not sure there was anything truly outstanding

 

I've collected all the shows this season for later viewing, but haven't watched any of them. Your judgment is pretty much what I expected. I kept hearing good buzz for Attack on Titan, but maybe it's all from people who aren't sick to death of shounen like me. If I find myself sitting through another "super power fight to protect my friends level up boss battle and do my best," I'll put my eyes out. At least The Flowers of Evil seems to have lived up to its potential.

 

And god, fuck Toma and Index and everyone else to hell. I have never been more peeved than watching A Certain Magical Index. The entire first run spent all its time jerking it to their stupid moeblob relationship, in between unnecessary and fetishistic world-building, and then they did it all over again a second time. Railgun is great because it cuts all the bullshit out of the Certain universe, so I don't see why they have to have Toma poke in his dumb head every so often so that Misaka can blush at and flirt with the audience cipher.

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I just had a knock-down drag-out fight with my only other anime-watching friend in town about Another. She loathed the characters for being empty, I insisted the class as a whole and the curse afflicting it were the characters, not the various individuals. It actually ended in tears, believe it or not. Ugh, worst.

 

Oh, and Tegan, thanks for giving me that last little push to watch Ouran High School Host Club after all these years. I'm over the moon about it. It reminds me of everything I love about The Wallflower, née Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge, even though there are literally no points of contact between the two except the reverse-harem bishounen comedy genre.

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I just had a knock-down drag-out fight with my only other anime-watching friend in town about Another. She loathed the characters for being empty, I insisted the class as a whole and the curse afflicting it were the characters, not the various individuals. It actually ended in tears, believe it or not. Ugh, worst.

 

The anime itself I didn't find horrifying or tense in any way. Watching Another was just kind of depressing to me. Especially the trainwreck of a finale. 

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