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Someone earlier asked why there's so much fan service. It's pretty simple imo - Sex sells. And the sales are good. It's pretty much a guaranteed money maker, especially the 'mysterious bars of light' that appears, as you know it's going to be uncensored in the DVD/Blu-ray. As for why they don't watch hentai? Well, they probably do too. 

 

I haven't watched Queen's Blade, but if Sankaku Complex has anything to go by, it's pretty bad. I think it's just generic fantasy with busty women.

 

I remember Manyuu hikenchou (I probably spelt that wrong) has ridiculous fanservice, including a women who hypnotises people with her boobs. And the show's about the main lass with big boobs cutting other women with big boobs, making her boobs bigger and theirs smaller. She also has a scroll with ancient teachings on how to get big boobs. Yup.

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Ok I'm going to go back on a earlier statement.

Although many of the golden age shows and films could get made today I've just finished rewatching one I think fundamentally could not, which is a shame since all the talk about fan service in anime means it's probably needed now more than ever.

What I'm trying to say is I guess, goddamn Perfect Blue is good.

Btw does anyone know if the Blue Ray version is worth investing in? In terms of image quality and/or extras?

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Well, Princess Jellyfish was pretty awesome too! It's a shame it practically ignored the secondary characters. I barely noticed Jiji's presence at all!

 

Tsukimi is bloody adorable, and pretty similar to Sunako in their tolerance to "radiant" people. This show also had open ending, but it's pretty much implied what would happen later, so it's still pretty satisfying.

 

I expected it to be more dramatic...

the blackmailer and "blackmailee" fall in love? I expected something more.


Also, I didn't like who the show tricked us by setting up a construction site by mistake... It was probably meant to be funny, but didn't work out well.

 

And what about Shu and Tsukimi? It's over just like that? Weird.

 

Have you noticed how both this and The Wallflower have resolving family issues as the main priority of the plot, if not the main character? Both Tsukimi and Kurako just wanted to make their dead parent's proud. Sunako and her auntie just wanted to know they appreciate each other. 

 

I should really want some dumb fanservice-y anime to laugh at it's stupidness, because I'm starting to get spoiled rotten when it comes to anime lately. :P

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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!!

Now that you say that, it's maybe not for sure they will be the ones doing the disc release. I'm just going by the fact that they have a page for Kill la Kill on their site.

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Huh, you'd think Manyū Hiken-chō, the anime Ninja Squirrel recommended because of the stupid "magical breast sword techniques" would be more "terribad-funny"? It's just O.K. 

 

Yeah, so the main girl has the power of stealing people's breasts and taking them as her own and the world considers breasts such a symbol status that you will simply not succeed at anything if you don't have breasts... and yet... it's still not as dumb as High School of the Dead.

 

Manyu "Ninja Boobs" wasn't meant to taken seriously, it's an action comedy... High School Of The Dead is hilarious because it refuses to admit it's Love Hina with zombies and take itself way too seriously, which is why it's funnier to me. *shrugs*.

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Minor non plot Spoiler for Ep21 of kill La Kill

 

Doorhandle

Seriously, best slapstick, timing, evah!

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I haven't seen it yet, assuming that's the latest one. Stupid crunchyroll delay. I did finish Shin Sekai Yori last weekend though. I really liked that. Good story, well told, and all serious which is rare. I guess because it isn't shounen.

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I watched Redline last night with Tegan.  What a weird, fun movie.  A lot of the character designs remind me of Marvel characters, like Captain America, Galactus, and Beast.  The vehicles were rather imaginative and there's some pretty hilarious music and lines of dialogue.  Lots of cool subtle things too.  Good times overall.

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Redline is pretty good!

 

The last two episodes of Log Horizon have featured an uninteresting and possibly annoying romance subplot,

but it looks like something big is about to happen soon. Which, on the one hand, awesome, but, on the other, that means we'll come back to this love square (is that what it's called when three girls like one guy?) later when the interesting stuff stops happening.

 

But maybe the romance stuff isn't as bad as I think? Except one of the girls is a young'un, so it's weird. Blargh Japan blargh.

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 I did finish Shin Sekai Yori last weekend though. I really liked that. Good story, well told, and all serious which is rare. I guess because it isn't shounen.

 

Which is weird because the premise "kids with psychic powers, in a post apocalyptic society" is the sort of thing you'd expect to be shouhen.

What I think separated from most shows is that it didn't just lift 20th centurary morals and tropes and drop them in "the future" it built a timeline about how a society would evolve and tried to keep it's characters true to the sort of person who would live in that world.

 

 

I watched Redline last night with Tegan.  What a weird, fun movie.  A lot of the character designs remind me of Marvel characters, like Captain America, Galactus, and Beast.  The vehicles were rather imaginative and there's some pretty hilarious music and lines of dialogue.  Lots of cool subtle things too.  Good times overall.

 

Redline has really grown on me over time. Think I over analysed it at first before just accepting it for the high paced, excellently animated fun that it is.

 

 

The last two episodes of Log Horizon have featured an uninteresting and possibly annoying romance subplot,

but it looks like something big is about to happen soon. Which, on the one hand, awesome, but, on the other, that means we'll come back to this love square (is that what it's called when three girls like one guy?) later when the interesting stuff stops happening.

 

But maybe the romance stuff isn't as bad as I think? Except one of the girls is a young'un, so it's weird. Blargh Japan blargh.

 

I haven't hit those episodes yet, but I think I can guess who might be involved.

Noticed something on crunchyroll today though, as i understand it on thier popular anime section stuff is ranked, which means Log horrizon with its low budget animation and plot based around negotiation has overtook sword art online which has a much bigger budget behind it. This is encouraging!

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I finally caught up with Kill la Kill and....

 

I somehow convinced me since episode one than they'd kill Mako at some point, just to have Ryuko react to it...

 

I was positive she died in the door handle scene.... can Junketsu bleed now? What?

 

Either way, I hope the show ends soon, I feel like it's been teasing the finale for several episodes and yet... when an anime show doesn't end around episode 13 in ends around episode 25-26, I don't think my heart can take that many episodes if they keep ramping it up with each episode.

 

I'm guessing Nui will finally be dealt with in the next episodes, and then the scissors will be complete to fight against Ragyo?

 

 

Also, is it me or is this show all about a mom trying to control what her teenage daughters wear? :P

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I watched Redline last night with Tegan.  What a weird, fun movie.  A lot of the character designs remind me of Marvel characters, like Captain America, Galactus, and Beast.  The vehicles were rather imaginative and there's some pretty hilarious music and lines of dialogue.  Lots of cool subtle things too.  Good times overall.

 

I've raved about Redline before on this thread. I love this film. Favourite anime film for me, closely followed by EVA 2.2 and Paprika. I first watched this film in the Leeds Town hall as part of the Leeds film Festival Anime Marathon (which is amazing if you love anime and live in the UK, as there are loads of anime films that are released early on that marathon. Mardok Scramble, for example), and they had to take the chandelier down from the ceiling because it shook too much in the preview screenings, and nearly destroyed it. Flippin awesome.

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Man, I can't remember the last time I watched an anime film/OVA, do they have them on Crunchyroll or Hulu?

 

I kinda rewatched Fruits Basket and by kinda I mean I'm not sure if I ever finished the manga or anime when it originally came out. It's still pretty charming, although I really didn't like the overly dramatic ending that came out of nowhere...

 

I guess the cat is a demon now, oh well.... And Tohru who didn't flinch at snakes or by being bitten by a tiger or anything at all is so traumatized by demon cat boy she... vomits? That seems out of character for her... Specially since in the end she accept the kid anyway.

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Which is weird because the premise "kids with psychic powers, in a post apocalyptic society" is the sort of thing you'd expect to be shouhen.

What I think separated from most shows is that it didn't just lift 20th centurary morals and tropes and drop them in "the future" it built a timeline about how a society would evolve and tried to keep it's characters true to the sort of person who would live in that world.

 

Yup, the story it tells and the way it tells it are not at all what I would have expected from that premise, in a good way.

 

Also, I love Redline. It just looks so good and is fun to watch. And it looks really really good.

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Oftentimes I'm fascinated by the name of a show, rather than the premise. My "user title" to the left there is one that's stuck with me forever, but recently it's been The World God Only Knows and now Unbreakable Machine Doll. They both sound like awesome highbrow speculative fiction, rather than softcore sex harem adventure/comedies. There's a couple that use the word "horizon", I think one's been talked about a lot here, that also intrigues me only if I stick with just the title.

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Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere perchance? The first episode was fan-service crap. I couldn't care enough to watch a second episode.

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Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere perchance? The first episode was fan-service crap. I couldn't care enough to watch a second episode.

 

Right? Why do all the worst shows have cool, intriguing names?

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I had the same reaction to horizon in the middle of nowhere. Beyond the boundary has a cool name though and I liked it.

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As far as titles go I've always loved the sound of (and the imagery invoked by) "Now and Then, Here and There"

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Proposition: Gankutsuou is the most successful anime adaptation of a literary work, if not one of the most successful adaptations period.

  • Its changes to The Count of Monte Cristo are thoughtful and insightful, most especially changing who is the protagonist in order to give a more interesting perspective on the Count's revenge. Though Dumas certainly makes the reader aware of the human cost in the book, the anime makes that its centerpiece.
  • The garish Baroque art style works perfectly with the early 2000s CGI binge that has dated every other show from that time horribly. The use of static patterns for texture fill is entrancing and beautiful. Gonzo's always been known for kind of just adequate art, but here they make their weaknesses a strength.
  • The anime revels in the Frenchness of the book, even when scaling it up to work on the scale of space opera. Paris is an entire planet and there are Arc de Triomphes everywhere, but even better is that the show's recap is delivered in immaculate French by some Japanese guy who's never done another gig in the industry.
  • The sci-fi setting is not gratuitous like Samurai 7 and Romeo x Juliet, both of which Gonzo makes immediately after Gankutsuou to much less success. Space opera is used to give the modern viewer the same sense of madness, chaos, and impossibility that the Hundred Days, the Second Republic, and the Second Empire represented for Dumas' contemporaries.

On a less impartial-seeming note, I also just enjoy how it's clearly a labor of love by Maeda Mahiro, who was the director for Evangelion 3.0 but before then hadn't really done anything other than key animation. He did the character design, the key animation, and the storyboards all himself. It's nice to have a glimpse at someone who's not always an auteur except in this one case.

 

I just finished rewatching it with a friend who loved the book, a year after a different friend talked me into seeing it after a decade of excuses, and it's been enthralling both times. I'm truly sorry I waited that long, because I think it's the best-case scenario of how an adaptation can turn out, so that it critiques but also enhances the original work.

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I've been watching it recently, too. Well, I watched the first two episodes and then stopped. It seems good. I'm annoyed by the lack of a hi-def version on Crunchyroll.

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Proposition: Gankutsuou is the most successful anime adaptation of a literary work, if not one of the most successful adaptations period.

  • Its changes to The Count of Monte Cristo are thoughtful and insightful, most especially changing who is the protagonist in order to give a more interesting perspective on the Count's revenge. Though Dumas certainly makes the reader aware of the human cost in the book, the anime makes that its centerpiece.
  • The garish Baroque art style works perfectly with the early 2000s CGI binge that has dated every other show from that time horribly. The use of static patterns for texture fill is entrancing and beautiful. Gonzo's always been known for kind of just adequate art, but here they make their weaknesses a strength.
  • The anime revels in the Frenchness of the book, even when scaling it up to work on the scale of space opera. Paris is an entire planet and there are Arc de Triomphes everywhere, but even better is that the show's recap is delivered in immaculate French by some Japanese guy who's never done another gig in the industry.
  • The sci-fi setting is not gratuitous like Samurai 7 and Romeo x Juliet, both of which Gonzo makes immediately after Gankutsuou to much less success. Space opera is used to give the modern viewer the same sense of madness, chaos, and impossibility that the Hundred Days, the Second Republic, and the Second Empire represented for Dumas' contemporaries.

On a less impartial-seeming note, I also just enjoy how it's clearly a labor of love by Maeda Mahiro, who was the director for Evangelion 3.0 but before then hadn't really done anything other than key animation. He did the character design, the key animation, and the storyboards all himself. It's nice to have a glimpse at someone who's not always an auteur except in this one case.

 

I just finished rewatching it with a friend who loved the book, a year after a different friend talked me into seeing it after a decade of excuses, and it's been enthralling both times. I'm truly sorry I waited that long, because I think it's the best-case scenario of how an adaptation can turn out, so that it critiques but also enhances the original work.

 

I've been thinking of re-watching that series since one of my favourite books of all time is The Stars My Destination (itself a Sci-Fi re imagining of Monte Cristo).

 

What classes as a "Literary Work" for this purpose btw?

If plays like Romeo & Juliet count, does ballet/opera also qualify(in which case I'd suggest Princess Tutu/Swan Lake as a great adaptation)?

 

In terms of plain (non literary) adaptations there's also a ton of stuff from more modern novels which could be thrown into the mix.

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If plays like Romeo & Juliet count, does ballet/opera also qualify(in which case I'd suggest Princess Tutu/Swan Lake as a great adaptation)?

 

Princess Tutu is goddamn brilliant.

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