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Wow, thanks for suggestion The Wallflower, I'm loving it! I've just reached the Halloween episode and I can't wait to watch it...

 

I like Sunako character, even though the main goal of the anime is for her to change... I kinda hope she doesn't change that much and they reach a happy medium?

 

I've only seen a few episodes, but so far I agree with Gormongous, she was never ugly, she's just so obsessed with darkness I don't think she wants to "look pretty".

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Wow, thanks for suggestion The Wallflower, I'm loving it! I've just reached the Halloween episode and I can't wait to watch it...

I like Sunako character, even though the main goal of the anime is for her to change... I kinda hope she doesn't change that much and they reach a happy medium?

I've only seen a few episodes, but so far I agree with Gormongous, she was never ugly, she's just so obsessed with darkness I don't think she wants to "look pretty".

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

):

Nah I can understand that feeling but I still really enjoy it. By far the best "we're all in a video game" anime I think I've ever seen. I say that as someone who LOVED .hack as a teenager but pretty confident that I'd decidedly not love .hack now.

They did just basically pull a

"let's exploit the pretty princess' prettiness", though, and while I can see where they were going with it I doubt she'll change out of her sexy warrior outfit in the future when she finally grows out just being a pretty princess and that disappoints me. Especially because she's my favorite character otherwise. Or was. Hmm I dunno. Whatever!

Just watched this episode

I guess the "lazy aristocrat becomes motivated" story has been done before but I liked how they followed the princess NPC trying to take her first step outside her prescribed role and it having a positive outcome, and then contrasting it with the (possible) death of the young Mage NPC character who had tried to do the same

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You mean the Dark Arts episode? He was a minor character before that episode, which seemed to focus on the "big brother" trope more than anything else, at least to me.

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Just watched this episode

I guess the "lazy aristocrat becomes motivated" story has been done before but I liked the story followed the princess NPC trying to take her first step outside her prescribed role, and was then contrasted with the (possible) death of the young Mage NPC character who had tried to do the same

Yeah it's definitely one of those Great Clichés! I really like her character. And his.

 

spoilers for future eps (up to 21 i guess):

Also I'm glad my fears did not come to fruition. Also Rudy is rad and it's interesting that they've made him an adventurer officially for reals now. I'm curious to see if there are any... side effects. Also seems like things are coming to a head. Clearly there's going to be a second (or, well, I guess third) season (or at least a big cliffhanger). Hummm.

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You mean the Dark Arts episode? He was a minor character before that episode, which seemed to focus on the "big brother" trope more than anything else, at least to me.

 

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.

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Kill la Kill

 

WELL THAT'S NOW HOW I EXPECTED THIS TO GO DOWN.

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I just rewatched Paranoia Agent for the first time in years, and this is the only place that I could imagine talking about such a thing in the way that I am about to talk about it.

 

Is anyone else aware of how good this show is?!?!

 

As a trend, the "moe" craze encapsulates a lot of aesthetic choices in current shows (ill take a shot in the dark and say it was around the time of haruhi season 1 that it happened), but I think beyond that, it also is the cause for a general shift in the type of stories being told in anime. I can't say that high-school-slice-of-life's are awful, but there's definitely more of them now.

 

Fittingly enough, some of my favorite shows are actually in the late 90s, first half of 2000s range, and the trend continues with Paranoia Agent. It's just incredibly refreshing to watch a nice 13-episode series that deviates from what I perceived in my head to be "the norm". The episodic, Twilight Zone-esque nature of it all is not inherently good or impressive but so unique and well executed that I couldn't help but enjoy some of the more extraneous episodes in the middle. Above all, I'm super blown away by the restraint shown, a quality that I never see anymore.It tackles basically one idea and one idea in many derivations; the scope is narrow but the exploration of that chosen scope is thorough.

 

It's not perfect, but my positive feelings toward it are results of my own boredom with cliches, and the fact that it doesn't majorly forfeit itself to like, hot springs episodes or something. I'm just gonna gush in these spoilers for a bit.

 

- i really like the fact that they took the time to explicitly define one of the suicide club members as gay. its nice to see the effort put in for such a thing, and not have it be played for laughs like it sometimes is.

- fantastic OP and ED

- running with the idea of not forfeiting its own merit, i really like how in the end, the chief's wife does indeed die, the other detective is still crazy and many of the ensemble characters continue existing in a fashion that is not all that different from before. to really cement the idea of "facing reality" is to show that it indeed is not a happy resolution, but it is the only true resolution that could exist.

- in general i just like the early animated style of characters that aren't actually "pretty". its cool having main characters that are written to be adults and look like adults in a non-kawaii way.

- i can see this as divisive, but i enjoy how the later episodes are all crazy and ridiculous in order to mirror miromi/slugger's increasing chokehold on the psyche of the world.

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I can't speak to Paranoia Agent because I've found it to be ridiculously boring whenever I've actually tried to watch it, but I really hate this idea that today's anime is somehow worse than yesterday's. There's a ton of really fantastic stuff out there, provided you're willing to look past the surface. The surface of everything and everything is almost always guaranteed to be boring popular garbage. U:

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I just rewatched Paranoia Agent for the first time in years, and this is the only place that I could imagine talking about such a thing in the way that I am about to talk about it.

 

Is anyone else aware of how good this show is?!?!

 

As a trend, the "moe" craze encapsulates a lot of aesthetic choices in current shows (ill take a shot in the dark and say it was around the time of haruhi season 1 that it happened), but I think beyond that, it also is the cause for a general shift in the type of stories being told in anime. I can't say that high-school-slice-of-life's are awful, but there's definitely more of them now.

 

Fittingly enough, some of my favorite shows are actually in the late 90s, first half of 2000s range, and the trend continues with Paranoia Agent. It's just incredibly refreshing to watch a nice 13-episode series that deviates from what I perceived in my head to be "the norm". The episodic, Twilight Zone-esque nature of it all is not inherently good or impressive but so unique and well executed that I couldn't help but enjoy some of the more extraneous episodes in the middle. Above all, I'm super blown away by the restraint shown, a quality that I never see anymore.It tackles basically one idea and one idea in many derivations; the scope is narrow but the exploration of that chosen scope is thorough.

 

It's not perfect, but my positive feelings toward it are results of my own boredom with cliches, and the fact that it doesn't majorly forfeit itself to like, hot springs episodes or something. I'm just gonna gush in these spoilers for a bit.

 

- i really like the fact that they took the time to explicitly define one of the suicide club members as gay. its nice to see the effort put in for such a thing, and not have it be played for laughs like it sometimes is.

- fantastic OP and ED

- running with the idea of not forfeiting its own merit, i really like how in the end, the chief's wife does indeed die, the other detective is still crazy and many of the ensemble characters continue existing in a fashion that is not all that different from before. to really cement the idea of "facing reality" is to show that it indeed is not a happy resolution, but it is the only true resolution that could exist.

- in general i just like the early animated style of characters that aren't actually "pretty". its cool having main characters that are written to be adults and look like adults in a non-kawaii way.

- i can see this as divisive, but i enjoy how the later episodes are all crazy and ridiculous in order to mirror miromi/slugger's increasing chokehold on the psyche of the world.

 

I really don't have the time to spin out my incredibly mixed feelings about Paranoia Agent. On the one hand, I feel like it's borrowing a lot of its ideas from Ghost in the Shell (both the movie and show), Serial Experiments LainBoogiepop Phantom, and (oddly enough) End of Evangelion, but is only really unique in how it fits them all together, sometimes unsuccessfully, rather than in the ideas themselves. Then again, that list is five of my favorite shows, so maybe I'm just being hard to please. The four-episode burn that opens the show is unbelievable, but then it loses steam when it starts experimenting with its format and tone, so I just wasn't on board with the ending, no matter how much I wanted to like it. Fucking great OP though, agreed.

 

 

Why hasn't FUNi snapped up this Geneon license along with its other rescues? There's a dozen used box sets, almost a decade old, rotting on Amazon for a hundred bucks minimum, plus Kon died not too long ago. It seems like the right time to ride the wave.

 

I can't speak to Paranoia Agent because I've found it to be ridiculously boring whenever I've actually tried to watch it, but I really hate this idea that today's anime is somehow worse than yesterday's. There's a ton of really fantastic stuff out there, provided you're willing to look past the surface. The surface of everything and everything is almost always guaranteed to be boring popular garbage. U:

 

Well, I'm a big defender of post-Golden Age anime myself. Even in the past few years, Girls und PanzerMawaru Penguindrum, and Medaka Box are just three random box sets on my bookshelf that have all managed to be shockingly clever shows from studios that aren't from among the anime royalty. But I have to agree with him, there's no chance that really experimental stuff like Excel Saga or Lain or Haibane Renmei would get made in its current form. The moe boom is still strong after a decade, even though everyone hates it and predicts its downfall, and studios have to cater to stuff that'll work in such a climate, which means everything's a thirteen-episode adaptation of something already successful with the vague promise of another season if the Blu-ray sales are high (and in the case of Medaka Box: Abnormal, not even then).

 

There's just less money floating around, so there's a lot less innovative stuff and none that's not shot through with fan service and compromises like KILL la KILL, which I love but goddamn. Of course, we all hope that someday the internet will free us from all cost-effectiveness bullshit, but ONAs have so far proven only good for promoting preexisting franchises, so that "someday" might be a while.

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Really, you think Excel Sage wouldn't get made today? I think it would. I mean, I'll admit it's been a long time since I watched it, but I absolutely believe it could be made today and totally be successful. Maybe I'll finally give it a second watch through and see if I still think that way.

 

I don't know about the other two that you listed except that I also very much disliked Lain. Ain't I just the contrarian today!

 

Anyway, my point was more that people shouldn't be so dismissive of the way things are right now. There's more than enough good stuff. Maybe not the best, but blrghrghhh. (Granted, until I signed up for Crunchyroll, I've never been the type to follow anime season by season, so it's entirely possible that's why I have an easier time recognizing the good stuff?)

 

Speaking of the exact opposite of what I just argued for in my previous post, my friend linked me the first episode of this: My Mental Choices are Completely Interfering with my School Romantic Comedy.

 

I can't remember if I've seen it mentioned here before. I'd seen it on Crunchyroll and avoided it for probably obvious reasons (the title doesn't inspire much hope). Well, the first scene gave me a lot of hope. The OP brought me back down to reality, but I perservered. The rest of the episode was fantastic! And then the last scene featured an incredibly stupid, but also incredibly sexy and incredibly scantily clad girl falling from the sky to land on the main character. And then the second episode was almost nothing but the interactions between the main character and the sky girl and yep she keeps being really stupid and wearing almost nothing, and also he compares her to a dog because she's so dumb and single-minded, and every time she goes to give him something she reaches between her large breasts and pulls it (a box of chocolates, a banana, whatever) out of her top and hands it to him, and isn't it just so adorable how stupid she is also let's watch her sexily eat a banana.

 

Well, let's just say it was a good run, that first episode. It had to end sometime. (The near-end of the second episode was sort of good again, until the very very end when it turned into typical high school romance bullshit as I'd originally feared.)

 

Goddamnit though I laughed so hard at the first episode. I'm so disappointed. ):

 

EDIT: I started episode three and besides a classic slipped-on-a-banana gag (WHICH I ALWAYS UNAPOLOGETICALLY LOVE!) nothing good happened for the first third of the episode and now I'm giving up.

 

The entire premise of the show (which I just now realized I didn't explain, so I'll do that now) is that the main character is cursed with occasionally having to choose between two options. Some voice in his head demands that he chooses and if he doesn't he experiences a lot of pain. Almost every choice he's forced to make results in something hilarious happen. I almost wish the show had been entirely a gag show, like Azumangah Daioh or Nichijou or maybe even something like Cromartie High School. This is just blargh. And my almost wish I mean absolutely wish because even if it got sorta tiresome in that format, at least it wouldn't be burdened with the bad shit bringing it down.

 

...

 

In happier news, Hozuki no Reitetsu continues to be really fun and funny! Best comedic depiction of hell I've seen in a while!

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I just rewatched Paranoia Agent for the first time in years, and this is the only place that I could imagine talking about such a thing in the way that I am about to talk about it.

 

Is anyone else aware of how good this show is?!?!

 

As a trend, the "moe" craze encapsulates a lot of aesthetic choices in current shows (ill take a shot in the dark and say it was around the time of haruhi season 1 that it happened), but I think beyond that, it also is the cause for a general shift in the type of stories being told in anime. I can't say that high-school-slice-of-life's are awful, but there's definitely more of them now.

 

Fittingly enough, some of my favorite shows are actually in the late 90s, first half of 2000s range, and the trend continues with Paranoia Agent. It's just incredibly refreshing to watch a nice 13-episode series that deviates from what I perceived in my head to be "the norm". The episodic, Twilight Zone-esque nature of it all is not inherently good or impressive but so unique and well executed that I couldn't help but enjoy some of the more extraneous episodes in the middle. Above all, I'm super blown away by the restraint shown, a quality that I never see anymore.It tackles basically one idea and one idea in many derivations; the scope is narrow but the exploration of that chosen scope is thorough.

 

It's not perfect, but my positive feelings toward it are results of my own boredom with cliches, and the fact that it doesn't majorly forfeit itself to like, hot springs episodes or something. I'm just gonna gush in these spoilers for a bit.

 

- i really like the fact that they took the time to explicitly define one of the suicide club members as gay. its nice to see the effort put in for such a thing, and not have it be played for laughs like it sometimes is.

- fantastic OP and ED

- running with the idea of not forfeiting its own merit, i really like how in the end, the chief's wife does indeed die, the other detective is still crazy and many of the ensemble characters continue existing in a fashion that is not all that different from before. to really cement the idea of "facing reality" is to show that it indeed is not a happy resolution, but it is the only true resolution that could exist.

- in general i just like the early animated style of characters that aren't actually "pretty". its cool having main characters that are written to be adults and look like adults in a non-kawaii way.

- i can see this as divisive, but i enjoy how the later episodes are all crazy and ridiculous in order to mirror miromi/slugger's increasing chokehold on the psyche of the world.

 

 

I really don't have the time to spin out my incredibly mixed feelings about Paranoia Agent. On the one hand, I feel like it's borrowing a lot of its ideas from Ghost in the Shell (both the movie and show), Serial Experiments LainBoogiepop Phantom, and (oddly enough) End of Evangelion, but is only really unique in how it fits them all together, sometimes unsuccessfully, rather than in the ideas themselves. Then again, that list is five of my favorite shows, so maybe I'm just being hard to please. The four-episode burn that opens the show is unbelievable, but then it loses steam when it starts experimenting with its format and tone, so I just wasn't on board with the ending, no matter how much I wanted to like it. Fucking great OP though, agreed.

 

 

Why hasn't FUNi snapped up this Geneon license along with its other rescues? There's a dozen used box sets, almost a decade old, rotting on Amazon for a hundred bucks minimum, plus Kon died not too long ago. It seems like the right time to ride the wave.

 

 

Well, I'm a big defender of post-Golden Age anime myself. Even in the past few years, Girls und PanzerMawaru Penguindrum, and Medaka Box are just three random box sets on my bookshelf that have all managed to be shockingly clever shows from studios that aren't from among the anime royalty. But I have to agree with him, there's no chance that really experimental stuff like Excel Saga or Lain or Haibane Renmei would get made in its current form. The moe boom is still strong after a decade, even though everyone hates it and predicts its downfall, and studios have to cater to stuff that'll work in such a climate, which means everything's a thirteen-episode adaptation of something already successful with the vague promise of another season if the Blu-ray sales are high (and in the case of Medaka Box: Abnormal, not even then).

 

There's just less money floating around, so there's a lot less innovative stuff and none that's not shot through with fan service and compromises like KILL la KILL, which I love but goddamn. Of course, we all hope that someday the internet will free us from all cost-effectiveness bullshit, but ONAs have so far proven only good for promoting preexisting franchises, so that "someday" might be a while.

 

Although I love Paranoia Agent (my favourite of Kon's work is however Tokyo Godfathers) I'm not sure I can go along with the idea that there was a "Golden Age" where somehow artistic and storytelling styles were both more mature. I think partially at least some of this feeling comes simply from the fading of bad shows from memory, i'm sure there were hundreds of bad shows made for every "great" anime we can remember. 

 

But you do have a point, I think most mediums go through stages where people are either working at pushing the form's boundaries or exploring what they can do within them, and anime has been stuck in inward looking cycle for a while now and it only been rarely that directors like Kon break out from that, because of how tough it is to get something that doesn't appeal to a core demographic greenlit in any art form.

 

I suppose in some ways that's why I've been so disappointed with Space Dandy, it feels like Watanabe could have had pretty much carte blanche to produce whatever sort of script he wanted, and someone would have agreed just to have his name on a dvd box, and yet what he picked was a very underwhelming show i keep watching in hope of the one great episode.

 

I think one of the big things that has been missing since Kon passed away is anyone really willing to risk producing a show that actually had a mixed an varied cast of adult characters. 

There has (as deleric pointed out) been a period of deep nostalgia for youth and escapism, which is not entirely surprising in a post recession world where many people have found their expectations of adulthood completely out of step with reality.

So we get show after show of self aware young protagonists, all drawn in a nice smooth non-threatening styles.

 

But we do increasingly get people doing very smart thing within these constraints or just on the margins of the mainstream.

 

I mean The Eccentric Family was out last year and possibley my favourite show since the days of Mushishi, and Planetes, and it was relatively unheralded show, with a rambling (even occasional non linear) story, based on exploring what it means to be part of a family. The art style was not flashy but it was hugely impressive in the way it captured movement and the little gestures that make a character believable.

 

I'm not sure about the example of Excel Saga as something that couldn't get produced today, i think it's just simply a case that genuinely funny shows are very very tough to do. Since Excel, the only two show's which have made me laugh in quite the same hysterical way have been Cromartie High School, and Detroit Metal City. (& there was a 4 year gap between each of those).

 

Anyway later this year however we are getting a new Mushishi series and a Masaaki Yuasa directed version of Ping Pong so this year looks interesting in terms of big non moe shows

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I can't speak to Paranoia Agent because I've found it to be ridiculously boring whenever I've actually tried to watch it, but I really hate this idea that today's anime is somehow worse than yesterday's. There's a ton of really fantastic stuff out there, provided you're willing to look past the surface. The surface of everything and everything is almost always guaranteed to be boring popular garbage. U:

 

I can't say that the overall quality has declined, I just meant to say that I feel the range of things presented in anime has narrowed a bit. There's still great stuff coming out every year. Codicier basically summed it up; at the core there are still really fascinating ideas and worlds being made in anime, but my frustration is with this surface layer anyway. I don't like how these cool ideas and worlds and themes have to be explored through some sort of overused vocabulary of wacky stuff and fanservice. Although it didn't occur to me that this was the product of less money, which moderates my perspective a bit.

 

I'm generalizing a bunch, sure, but the difference is noticeable to me anyway. IN CONCLUSION, I should suck it up and just watch Kill la Kill, because I hear it's good.

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Really, you think Excel Sage wouldn't get made today? I think it would. I mean, I'll admit it's been a long time since I watched it, but I absolutely believe it could be made today and totally be successful. Maybe I'll finally give it a second watch through and see if I still think that way.

 

I don't know about the other two that you listed except that I also very much disliked Lain. Ain't I just the contrarian today!

 

Maybe I didn't phrase it right. I mean to say that Excel Saga in its 1999 form, with an aggressive genre-switching format, heavy otaku references, and obnoxious female lead who is never cute or sexy, would never be made today. Excel would be flashing her panties a lot more, at the very least, and I suspect it would be a single genre-savvy format, which is much more in vogue today. One-off episodes with explicitly no metaplot discourage viewer engagement and are not nearly as popular, especially in more "experimental" anime.

 

Although I love Paranoia Agent (my favourite of Kon's work is however Tokyo Godfathers) I'm not sure I can go along with the idea that there was a "Golden Age" where somehow artistic and storytelling styles were both more mature. I think partially at least some of this feeling comes simply from the fading of bad shows from memory, i'm sure there were hundreds of bad shows made for every "great" anime we can remember. 

 

But you do have a point, I think most mediums go through stages where people are either working at pushing the form's boundaries or exploring what they can do within them, and anime has been stuck in inward looking cycle for a while now and it only been rarely that directors like Kon break out from that, because of how tough it is to get something that doesn't appeal to a core demographic greenlit in any art form.

 

I suppose in some ways that's why I've been so disappointed with Space Dandy, it feels like Watanabe could have had pretty much carte blanche to produce whatever sort of script he wanted, and someone would have agreed just to have his name on a dvd box, and yet what he picked was a very underwhelming show i keep watching in hope of the one great episode.

 

I think one of the big things that has been missing since Kon passed away is anyone really willing to risk producing a show that actually had a mixed an varied cast of adult characters.

 

Yeah, that's kind of what I'm saying. It's not that there's less creativity, it's that there's less money floating around and less willingness for risk, which means that what good anime is being made has to do so under tighter restraints and usually under the auspices of some kind of fan service. KILL la KILL flashes them titties a lot and sometimes says something about it, in the midst of its shounen genre deconstruction, but I doubt the latter would exist without the former, if only because there'd be so much less of a market.

 

I really wonder, though. No one I know likes fan service, but it's commercial suicide to make a show without any service. Who are these people? Why do they watch anime and not just porn?

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Yeah, that's kind of what I'm saying. It's not that there's less creativity, it's that there's less money floating around and less willingness for risk, which means that what good anime is being made has to do so under tighter restraints and usually under the auspices of some kind of fan service. KILL la KILL flashes them titties a lot and sometimes says something about it, in the midst of its shounen genre deconstruction, but I doubt the latter would exist without the former, if only because there'd be so much less of a market.

 

I really wonder, though. No one I know likes fan service, but it's commercial suicide to make a show without any service. Who are these people? Why do they watch anime and not just porn?

 

Yeah, I'm not sure who those people are either. I almost stopped watching KLK at first, but stuck with it, and I'm glad I did, it's great, but I could certainly have done without quite that degree of fanservice, though it does play into the themes of the show, I suppose.

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Well... these things are made in Japan for Japanese people, so one would presume that Japanese people love the fanservice.

 

And... I've made the mistake of clicking on a Crunchyroll discussion thread or two and let's just say most people are not us.

 

On KLK: I think almost all of us almost stopped watching it at first, but stuck with it. To be perfectly honest, I appreciate it all the more because of the contrast between the fanservice and the rest of the show. I don't think it would have worked nearly as well as it does if it had no fanservice. But only because of the context of the current state of anime. I mean... you know what I mean. It's all been discussed to death in this thread! KLK is so great. :3

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Fine, I will not hate Hiroyuki Imaishi and will watch Kill La Kill when it comes on an affordable Blu-ray set in a decade (fucking Aniplex).

 

Also I tried starting Kaiba and I felt really disappointed in the first episode. The animation is very low frame rate for such simple drawings and the mock Tezuka characters tend to look super ugly. I guess Masaaki Yuasa needs at least one thing that disappoints me, they can't all be winners.

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The best part of Shinryaku! Ika Musume is definitely the three nerds from MIT and their terrible American accents. It's funny, because I don't like the archetypes they embody in any other comedy anime I've seen, that is, the Greek chorus of idiots, who come in with an idea or invention that promptly blows up in their face, usually and mostly to cover for tone shifts in the main skit.

 

But seriously, I love how they say everything DESU. Kind of like how the excessive "fan service" of the homeroom teacher in KILL la KILL is hilarious because it's unwelcome and runs counter to genre expectations, the crass caricature of Americans just works in Squid Girl.

 

 

Now I'm watching JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and finding it really frustrating, which means I can't stop watching it as if I'm in love with it. It's an uncomfortable place to be.

 

Fine, I will not hate Hiroyuki Imaishi and will watch Kill La Kill when it comes on an affordable Blu-ray set in a decade (fucking Aniplex).

 

Fuck, it's Aniplex? They have made exactly one good Blu-ray, the limited-edition Baccano! set, and I own nothing else from them, because they do shit like charge five hundred bucks for Gurren Lagann and Durarara!!

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I finally finished watching The Wallflower and I almost loved it as much as Ouran High School Host Club, although it's a bit of a double standard to have the men fawned over in such a ridiculous manner for humorous reason and not meant to be creepy.

 

The main male protagonist is so pretty that men and women constantly harass him to a point where he can't get even get a job anymore because of this. The story wants us to feel pity for him and laugh when there are a million people outside his home trying to get into his pants... In a way this much creepier than they try to portray Sunako as.

 

I'm glad Sunako didn't change much and the finale didn't really resolve anything except some family issues, which is strangely satisfying... SunakoXHiroshi are my OTP! :P

 

Anyway, I should start watching Princess Jellyfish now.

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Pff I don't know what world you live in where the homeroom teacher's behavior is unwelcome! I actually like it because it is hilarious in its presentation, and not just as a contrast to the typical fanservice bullshit. I like it for the same reason I liked the series of increasingly ridiculous slapstick in episode four. Gimme that all the time, please.

 

switching topic

 

The other day I got into a conversation with my friend about how terrible the fanservice is in My Mental Choices Are Completely Interfering with My High School Romantic Comedy (he thinks it's okay and I think it ruins it (especially because the fanservice is largely delivered by one of the most annoying characters I've personally seen in anime in a while (ymmv))). He then offered up High School of the Dead as an example of fanservice gone wrong. On this we agreed, even though we still strongly disagree about Mental Choices. And then we agreed to marathon HSotD with a couple other friends and turn the gratuitous fanservice into a drinking game. We all stopped drinking after like episode six, I wanna say? Out of twelve.

 

Man that anime has no redeeming qualities.

 

Okay it had maybe one, when the guy is driving on a motorcycle, and the sword chick grabs his extended arm, and he throws her into the air, and she spins like crazy chopping a bunch of zombies into pieces. That was pretty cool.

 

There's also a weird tonal shift in the middle of the series where the fanservice almost comes to a halt (well, relative to the previous two episodes, one of which featured a bath scene that went lesbian fantasy fast and then lasted almost that whole episode). All of a sudden it's about how society can't handle this change and oh also the high schoolers are fucking badass and the adults need to stop acting like assholes.

 

And that's more than I ever thought I'd write about High School of the Dead. It is awful. Don't watch it. Don't even look in its general direction. Man. Gross.

 

But it was fun to laugh at! ...For a while.

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Pff I don't know what world you live in where the homeroom teacher's behavior is unwelcome! I actually like it because it is hilarious in its presentation, and not just as a contrast to the typical fanservice bullshit. I like it for the same reason I liked the series of increasingly ridiculous slapstick in episode four. Gimme that all the time, please.

 

I meant "unwelcome" more that i) the imagined dude who loves fan service is not going to love the teacher's pink nova crotch, and ii) all of the other characters are grossed out and pissed off when he tries to flash them his panties. The reaction of "no one wants to see that shit" by both the audience and the characters is great, because it feels like a more genuine reaction to something that we've otherwise been socialized to accept and even expect.

 

I ought to go to bed and not respond to the rest of your post, Twig, but I do feel really confused about High School of the Dead. It always looks so glamorous and fun in AMV Hell clips, even though even my most douchey "friends" say it's a piece of shit. I'm glad you liked The Wallflower at least, Tanu!

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I've already mentioned that I find High School of the Dead hilarious for all the wrong reasons... The girls have giant breasts and they still have to shoehorn a girl with EVEN BIGGER BREASTS for fanservice sake, I've said it before, it's Love Hina with Zombies, which is why it's so terrible and why it's the best thing ever.

 

I have no idea what "My Mental Choices Are Completely Interfering with My High School Romantic Comedy", but with a name so ridiculous I HAVE to check it out.

 

If you found High School of the Dead gross, try watching Eiken, it has little a girl with blimp sized breasts... the fanservice levels are so ridiculous it's just hilarious...

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I've already mentioned that I find High School of the Dead hilarious for all the wrong reasons... The girls have giant breasts and they still have to shoehorn a girl with EVEN BIGGER BREASTS for fanservice sake, I've said it before, it's Love Hina with Zombies, which is why it's so terrible and why it's the best thing ever.

 

I read this and was going to bring up Eiken, but then you did! Full points for today.

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I meant "unwelcome" more that i) the imagined dude who loves fan service is not going to love the teacher's pink nova crotch, and ii) all of the other characters are grossed out and pissed off when he tries to flash them his panties. The reaction of "no one wants to see that shit" by both the audience and the characters is great, because it feels like a more genuine reaction to something that we've otherwise been socialized to accept and even expect.

 

I ought to go to bed and not respond to the rest of your post, Twig, but I do feel really confused about High School of the Dead. It always looks so glamorous and fun in AMV Hell clips, even though even my most douchey "friends" say it's a piece of shit. I'm glad you liked The Wallflower at least, Tanu!

Yeah I figured that's what you meant. I just wanted to express my love for it all over again. Because I love it.

 

I can understand the desire to watch HSotD. I ended up watching it for the same reasons. I was just like "this has gotta be fun". It's... not. Not unless you're watching with a group of people, of like mind, willing to wallow in the filth and mock it to the nth degree.

 

Also this is the second time I've watched the whole series. The first time was when it just came out. Back then I was way more tolerant of this shit, and even so I still hated it.

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Speaking of which, I wonder if this Queen's Blade I've heard about is Eiken bad... it's has "goo bunny girl" that looks so silly, is it as stupid as Eiken or High School of the Dead? 

 

OH GOD! She's called "Melona"? I think it just might be stupid enough.

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