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Okay, continuing my mission to watch the best of 2012's anime offering (because Kokoro Connect was really good, guys), I started watching Stella Jogakuin Koutou-ka C³-bu. This show kind of got lost in the whole "new GAINAX vs. old GAINAX" kerfuffle that also buried Medaka Box a while back, but with four episodes down, I'm incredibly impressed. It starts out very reminiscent of Girls UND Panzer, in that it's cute girls doing violent/dangerous things cutely, in this case airsoft tournaments, but it rapidly becomes a whole different show. I mean, in the third episode, she basically has the identity crisis that every clumsy/useless/boring protagonist of K-On! type shows only has toward the end of a season as a climax. And then, in the very next episode...

 

It's revealed that her fantasies, the typical overdone interludes any anime does to build drama, are actually real to her, and then she meets a deified samurai at his shrine and he teaches her how to shoot in exchange for using her fantasies to save his life back in the Genpei War.

 

Basically, if they're going for the typical GAINAX ending, they're starting really early in the show. I'm a little sad it's going off the rails so soon, but between good art and a really unpredictable plot, it's got me for the long haul.

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Hunter x Hunter: Oh man, that was a nice finale for that arc. Very non-typical for a shonen anime. I mean, let's be honest, it was still super cliche, but at least it was refreshing! And nice. I like this anime.

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Picked up Witch Craft Works on the suggestion of a friend and finished it in two days. Was rather impressed with the entire thing, even if it ended up explaining nothing at at all.

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Picked up Witch Craft Works on the suggestion of a friend and finished it in two days. Was rather impressed with the entire thing, even if it ended up explaining nothing at at all.

 

I heard it was surprisingly good from two blogs and a friend, but I haven't gotten around to watching it. I despite JC Staff fantasy stuff, see A Certain Magical Index, but the art for this one is attractive and I have high hopes. Good to know!

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Bah, both Ping Pong & Mushishi are over after only 11 episodes!  (yet pretty much every other series wants at least 2 more)

 

surprised not to see more talk about either of those two & in particular about Ping Pong on here, as I thought it pulled off a astoundingly well crafted combination directorial ability, framing, art, and soundtrack. Perhaps its because it's plot wasn't particularly complex and there was no controversy around it there's not much to say apart from that was really REALLLY good.

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Mushishi's getting a second season though! At least I think I read that somewhere. Coming fall I believe?

 

Ping Pong isn't on Crunchyroll so I haven't watched it yet.

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Is that new Mushishi? I swear I saw a 26 ep series on Netflix a couple years ago.

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Is that new Mushishi? I swear I saw a 26 ep series on Netflix a couple years ago.

Yeah that was prob the original series, there was a new feature length episode at Christmas and 11new episodes this season with a promise with another 11 in winter

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Yeah that was prob the original series, there was a new feature length episode at Christmas and 11new episodes this season with a promise with another 11 in winter

 

And one more hour-long special bundled with the DVDs in August!

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I finished Stella Jogakuin Koutou-ka C³-bu a few days ago. What a weird one, eh? I wrote to a few friends about how it took the whole "girl discovers a hobby, makes a lot of friends, and becomes a better person" framework of most female-ensemble anime and turned it on its head, but couldn't resist a happy ending. Good, but not great, overall.

 

And yeah, the reality-altering fantasies went nowhere and were just a goof for that episode. I'm not even remotely sorry for spoiling that snipe hunt.

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Guys. Free broke crunchyroll. gg internet.

 

Wait, do you mean Crunchyroll changed its for-pay status, or do you mean they got that swimming anime with all the gay subtext?

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I'm pretty sure it's the swimming anime, people are really into it now.

 

Did anybody catch the simulcast of Sailor Moon Crystal? It was basically the same, but with some nice foreshadowing... and Usagi was almost expresionless. :|

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Yeah, Free! is the swimming anime.

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Wait, do you mean Crunchyroll changed its for-pay status, or do you mean they got that swimming anime with all the gay subtext?

 

Yeah, the latter one. The live stream of the first episode of the new season was so popular that it crashed CR for a bit, and they then released the episode about an hour or 2 later.

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I am once again annoyed at Funimation for not signing a deal with Crunchyroll because this season I want to watch Barakamon: http://re-jinx.me/2014/07/06/first-impressions-on-barakamon/

 

I mean of course Funimation wants everyone to pay for their service to watch it in HD but I hate their website and I like CR's website why can't they just get together and be best buds already. I mean CR is already streaming most of Funimation's grabs in some regions, just not... English-speaking regions.

 

Also is Funimation's licensing model as good as CR's? I've heard CR money actually finds its way back to the animators, which is pretty rad.

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Good call on Barakamon Twig. That show was great. Totally heartwarming and charming. When I'm old I want to live in some washed-up backwater farming village in Japan, doing fuck all and wondering how I'm still paying for shit.

 

I really hate Funimation mainly because they lock ALL their shows to the US only. And then they do fucking shit like never release One Piece DVD's in England, despite just sitting on the rights for no-one else to get. They then had a twitter 'campaign' asking people to retweet something if they were interested. They of course posted this at like 2AM, so nobody saw it, and then went 'welp no one in England wants this show. Here's the proof...' Seriously fuck those guys.

 

It wouldn't surprise me if more money finds it's way back to the animators. They only sub, and don't dub like Fanimation does.

 

Also I'm pretty sure Barakamon is streamed by CR, as the torrent was in 1080p, and I know Fani only streams up to 720p.

 

It wouldn't surprise me if it was US only or some shit like that.

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Barakamon actually is on CR but only in "Europe (excluding UK and Ireland), the Middle East, and North Africa."

 

Funimation has it locked down for English-speaking regions, as usual.

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What the heck? That's really bizarre. I worry that this will just worsen over time, as more companies muscle in on the streaming buisness. I know that Aniplex? Ani-something in the UK has a streaming service on some shows. Of course you have to pay premium on them to watch them too. It all seems really counter-intuitive to piracy, as people would surely just torrent the shows that they can't get on their preferred site. They should all just hug it out and let shows be on other sites. 

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I think the same thing happened for Ping Pong (which is why I also haven't watched that, yet, even though I really want to). But yeah, I mean "traditional television" suffers the same thing, right. Netflix vs Hulu vs HBO GO. Though Netflix is a bit different in that it only licenses complete seasons after DVDs are released, but still. It's super shitty for us consumers because who wants to pay for three different services, especially when two of them only have one or two things you actually want to watch?

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It's super shitty for us consumers because who wants to pay for three different services, especially when two of them only have one or two things you actually want to watch?

 

It's not as bad as buying cable packages, at least.

 

Also, "a bloo bloo bloo I have too many on-demand video services" is probably the first-worldiest of first world problems. All we have in Canada is an extremely limited version of Netflix and Crunchyroll.

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YOU'RE A FIRST WORLD PROBLEM ):

Yes you're right it is better than cable packages, though.

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I mean, any complaint that's likely to occur in this forum would be a first world problem, right? I'm not such a big fan of that meme, as surely it's all relative to your own experiences, and it just serves to make me feel bad for even complaining in the first place.

 

I'll luckily never have to worry about cable packages though, as I'm British. Instead we just get no decent telly at all, hence I don't have a TV license. I haven't watched telly in so long that adverts surprise me when I go to a mates house who does have telly.

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Also, "a bloo bloo bloo I have too many on-demand video services" is probably the first-worldiest of first world problems. All we have in Canada is an extremely limited version of Netflix and Crunchyroll.

 

Netflix is reportedly 'launching in Australia' soon, except it's widely believed that it's going to be shitttttt. In America, Netflix licensing movies is a win for Netflix and a win for the content owners. In Australia, Netflix licensing movies cuts the distributors out of the loop, which is bad for the studios if they care about their distributors, and Village Roadshow have clout.

 

Although apparently Madman have launched a streaming service, clearly patterned after Crunchyroll.

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Let me preface this post by saying this: I do not have very discerning tastes when it comes to anime and the only series I have watched are DragonballZ, Trigun, Pokemon, and Tenchi Muyo, all of which I really enjoyed.

 

With that out of the way, I just finished watching Attack on Titan and I found it absolutely fantastic. The theme and setting resonated very strongly with me and I'm kind of depressed knowing that I will have to wait forever for the next season. Naturally, I decided to search through this thread to see what the venerable Thumbs thought of the show and was happy to see that a lot of you guys thought it was just so-so and were much less impressed by it than I was. The reason this makes me happy is because it most likely means that many of you have been blown away by much better shows and that this show just doesn't stack up in comparison. I am honestly completely blind to the criticisms about the show that I read here and am such an anime noob that I pretty much ate up everything I saw and accepted it as pure awesomeness. This was also the first HD anime I've seen so the artwork and visuals were very impressive compared to the very limited stuff I've seen in the past.

 

So please, lords of anime, recommend me something good. There is just so much stuff out there and I'm kind of lost. I would prefer something that has a tone similar to AOT, but I would be happy to watch pretty much anything that comes with a strong recommendation. Also, it would be ideal for it to be available on Netflix or Hulu since those are the only services I currently have and I'm not sure of any other easy way to watch anime on my TV without going and buying a bunch of DVDs or Blu Rays.

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