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ugh you are literally the worst human

 

(in my experience, Howl's Moving Castle is among the lowest rated of the Miyazaki films among all the people i talk to about anime, so i was sort of surprised to see it brought up in that thread at all??)

 

(i also have no strong opinions beside knowing i enjoy it)

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Howl's Moving Castle is a piece of shit. Fantastic animation, imaginatively crafted world, all wasted on an infuriatingly dumb and uneven story, and the blandest fucking characters. I'm not even kidding, I enjoyed Tales From Earthsea more because at least that didn't piss me off with its utterly misused potential.

 

Howl's Moving Castle is a mess in terms of story, pacing, and stakes, but I found its art to be gorgeous, its characters to be broad but entertaining, and its themes to be a pleasantly uneven stew of everywhere in Miyazaki's career, some even darker than usually attempted. It's not a genius film, for sure, but it has a spark in it that's totally missing from Tales of Earthsea, which is an entirely unwatchable mix of annoying characters, uninspired setting, and bland plot. If you disagree on that latter count, ask yourself which of the two you'd rather be stuck watching for all of eternity. I don't know anyone who'd pick Tales of Earthsea.

 

Also, while searching for something related I found this list, which is really really good and sums up a lot of my misgivings with some well-loved Ghiblis (I would've put Nausicaa higher, though).

 

http://filmschoolrejects.com/features/studio-ghibli-movies-ranked.php

 

That list is not bad, but it certainly is... odd. I'll just confine myself to my major critiques

  • Nausicaa is ranked way too low, with the list's author counting its rawness and naivete as flaws rather than strengths that elevate it above Princess Mononoke, in my opinion.
  • Pom Poko being above Spirited AwayOnly Yesterday, and Porco Rosso must be a joke. I love tanuki as a metaphor for the protean demands of living between past and present, but seriously...
  • Castle in the Sky is very good, but it features one of Ghibli's most motivation-free and unsympathetic villains, and the rest of the storytelling is a bit too frictionless for my taste, one thing leading to another too readily.
  • Kiki's Delivery Service and Whisper of the Heart being ranked so high explains to me why the list's author ranks Spirited Away and Only Yesterday lower, because they are very much independence-affirming coming-of-age stories rather than family- or community-affirming ones. He likes the former more than the latter, I guess!
  • Princess Mononoke is not the best movie from Studio Ghibli. It's a legitimately great movie, for sure, and among the best, but I have no idea where the list's author is getting some of his arguments for it being the best, hands-down. The other characters that Ashitaka meets are treated sympathetically, but he is relentlessly vindicated in his worldview like they never are. Both he and San are also just so grim, lacking the wonder at a dying world that makes the apocalyptic visions of Nausicaa so heartening. Mononoke is just less complex of a world, for all of its historical roots in the death of Emishi culture in medieval Japan, and it's not as willing to invite you in as many of Miyazaki's earlier works, either.

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I'm with the others that Howl is not generally put at the top of most peoples Ghibli lists,

But if its time to slaughter the sacred cows of anime then lets do this properly! I wonder what Anime News Network says are the top 10 shows.............

 

Top 10 Best Rated (bayesian estimate) (Top 50) # title rating nb. votes 1 Steins;Gate (TV) 9.11 4149 2 Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (TV) 9.10 5307 3 Clannad After Story (TV) 9.08 4987 4 Rurouni Kenshin: Trust & Betrayal (OAV) 8.97 6541 5 Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 (TV) 8.95 7571 6 Mushishi: The Next Chapter (TV) 8.95 355 7 Spirited Away (movie) 8.92 10219 8 Cowboy Bebop (TV) 8.90 11805 9 (The) Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (movie) 8.89 2628 10 Princess Mononoke (movie) 8.87 9560

 

Ohhhhh kaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

 

Really Anime News Network?

 

Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeealy?

 

Steins Gate = no1 anime of all time? Jesey H Titty Feckin Chresy WHAT ARE YOU THINKING!

 

If your wondering what my reasoning is for my hatred of this series I'm honestly not sure I remember any more, I just remember watching the whole damn series & waiting and waiting for the moment i would start giving a damn about even one of its cast, but that moment never coming.

 

Clannad = No3? A more than fine example of a show knowing its genre and working strongly within the confines of that genre, sure. but number 3!?!!  (Ninja squirrel will strongly disagree here i have no doubt :D)

 

Code Geass = No5!!!! Ok if some of you might think my outrage towards the other two was a perhaps a bit was undeserved surely here is something we can agree on? this is what happens when a teenager reads Preacher and decides mechs and royals would somehow make the whole central concept better :P

 

& thats not to forget you have Ruroni Kenshin sitting there at no4 i mean its a good OVA sure, but man is it old. So old infact youd probably make a really interesting podcast episode about talking about it (Coming Soon TM)

 

Oh well I'm just glad Ghost in the Shell isn't there 

 

Edit: dammit i even forgot to rant about how Brotherhood is more long winded, packs less punch, and is just generally worse than the original FMA adaptation

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Edit: dammit i even forgot to rant about how Brotherhood is more long winded, packs less punch, and is just generally worse than the original FMA adaptation

 

It's been too long since you've watched the original if you really mean "long-winded." I love Fullmetal Alchemist, but its willingness to lose entire minutes to different characters' emotional reactions added maybe a dozen episodes onto its possible runtime.

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why in the flying goddamn shit fuck is mushishi zoku shou

 

HIGHER RANKED THAN THE ORIGINAL

 

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME????

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why in the flying goddamn shit fuck is mushishi zoku shou

 

HIGHER RANKED THAN THE ORIGINAL

 

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME????

 

Because anime fandom on the internet is always obsessed with newer being better. Remember that flowchart I posted a while back and how arbitrary its cutoff on date of production was for a lot of anime? Half the reason I want to talk about anime more myself is that the internet is so interested in chasing the hotness of a given season and has almost no self-awareness or historical memory of the genre...

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My anger was mostly faked, but yeah, I get that. It's true for a lot of fandoms, not just anime. It's kinda dumb, eh.

 

The flipside of the coin is the people who lament the loss of the golden age of anime and insist everything today is utter shit.

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It's been too long since you've watched the original if you really mean "long-winded." I love Fullmetal Alchemist, but its willingness to lose entire minutes to different characters' emotional reactions added maybe a dozen episodes onto its possible runtime.

My foggy but stubborn memory would still argue that the time theoriginal FMA spent building nuanced and flawed characters is time well spent, compared to time FMA BRO spent weaving a convoluted conspiracy plot and acres of painful lore exposition.

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"90s were the best, all the new stuff is for posers"

 

"2010? move over grandpa"

 

I like BRO more because I think original FMA anime kinda ended really weak/awkward.

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why in the flying goddamn shit fuck is mushishi zoku shou

 

HIGHER RANKED THAN THE ORIGINAL

 

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME????

One of the things I've heard said about the 2nd series is that it feels like it sometimes repeats some of the broad strokes of the plot of the first series.

I think I'd broadly agree with that but i feel any show that touches on folk lore is probably going to have at least some recurrent themes.

I think a case could be made that someone who had never seen either series would probably find the second series just as compelling as the first, with the added bonus of better production values. It wouldn't be a view I'd agree with personally because i did see the first series but i think maybe someone coming fresh could feel different to me.

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I've just realised I'm probably going to rewatch FMA because of the whole conversation, bang goes a big chunk of my life on rewatching something i may not even still like and may whole be remembering through rose tinted glasses

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It's been too long since I watched it (MONTHS, I SAY, MONTHS, OH MY!!!) so it's hard for me to argue at depth about this.

 

I'll just copy what I wrote in my spreadsheet.

 

 

YA GOOD: almost as good as old mushish - weird fiction, slow and deliberate pacing - but it kind of fails a lot of times (esp in the second half of this season) at showing ginko as someone who sympathises with the mushi... instead, it's just a very formulaic show a problem -> ginko shows up -> ginko helps temporarily -> problem grows worse -> ginko helps permanently, and sometimes doesn't succeed in the best way but sometimes does --- also something i realized as i finished it up: the animation in mushishi is very super duper slow, like the way humans move, and i think i like that aspect of it a lot, even though it might annoy me in a differently-toned series

 

The latter half of that poorly constructed text is just a thought about Mushishi in general that occurred to me and is not specific to Zoku-Shou.

 

It ain't bad, but reading this I'm definitely remembering this. The first season was also formulaic, but I also feel like the first season was just made up of all The Good Shit from the manga. Like they picked the best stories and put 'em in there. The second season is kinda... the junk that's left. Not BAD, but definitely not as good.

 

Haven't read the manga, so maybe I'm wrong about that.

 

The point about Ginko sympathizing with the mushi, though, that's on point. That was bothering me almost the whole time. Not to say there weren't some episodes that showed that side of his character, but they were much fewer in number than the first season.

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I've just realised I'm probably going to rewatch FMA because of the whole conversation, bang goes a big chunk of my life on rewatching something i may not even still like and may whole be remembering through rose tinted glasses

 

FMA is something I've often considered rewatching and have always decided not to, because I have such fond high school memories of it and yet I'm pretty sure I'd find it boring if I watched it now. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I'm not brave enough to find out!

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I actually rewatched FMA last year, the first time since it aired. It held up really well, although I wasn't as fond of the ending this time around. I remember most people didn't like the divergence from the manga at the end, but back in the day I was totally cool with it.

 

Still need to watch Brotherhood though.

 

As for the Ghibli stuff, Whisper of the Heart is my top, in my top three favourite movies ever, anime or non-anime.

I would rather stare at a wall than watch Howl's Moving Castle. The animation is good, but only okay by Ghibli standards. The writing, both plot and dialogue, are garbage. I've found it to be a pretty common favorite among girls though.

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This been mentioned a million timesin this thread but to me most, if not all, Ghibli films feel disjointed and oddly paced. Some of them just less so than others, and others are just totally balanced out by sense of place or a really specific, gooey sentiment they evoke.

It's a weird thing to say about multimillion dollar animated productions but most feel like they're made with a sense of intuition and tone rather than with cerebral intention or like a kind of literary cohesion. I'd feel more comfortable ranking them along this metric rather than their being literary masterpieces.

The films that feel closest to being super intentional are like the nega-Miyazaki films directed by Takahata, and I guess like Spirited Away.

Howls is still pretty garbage, even considering that.

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See!

 

Everyone hate's Howl's.

 

Even though it's great.

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I'm actually having an easier time than expected making my way through Space Runaway Ideon, which I'm trying to finish before the end of 2015 (Year of the Third Impact), but the biggest obstacle is really the fact that the antagonists are named the Buff Clan. Every time someone talks about being attacked by the Buff Clan or about the pride of the Buff Clan not being able to bear something, I am ejected out of the (admittedly fragile) world of Ideon at lightspeed.

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My only exposure to Ideon has been through Super Robot War F Final, where I used its special move (beam of light coming out of both fists with infinite range) with really awkward activation trigger to one shot the Guest army's boss with one of the most BS stats in Super Robot Wars history.

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Pretty dull One Punch episode. It kinda seems like they got all the funny crazy shit out of the way early and now they're trying to build a story around it? I like where it's going with building up Saitama as this huge unknown threat though, should lead to some quality comedy.

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Continuing my long-running pattern of coming to shows maybe two years after the height of their buzz, Your Lie in April is so good. The transitions between drama and humor are natural and effortless, motifs in the dialogue like the dichotomy between "sparkling" and "dull" are upheld consistently in the art rather than just being bullshit flung between characters, and those characters generally seem to feel their feelings deeply without wallowing or anything. I especially like the arc in the fifth and sixth episode that views the male and female protagonists falling for each other through the eyes of the guy's childhood friend. The bittersweetness of her waning crush, the desire to see him happy slowly winning out over her desire to be the one who's happy with him, reminds me of everything that was good about the Yamada/Mayama parts of Honey & Clover without anything about it that made that show contrived and tedious.

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Continuing my long-running pattern of coming to shows maybe two years after the height of their buzz, Your Lie in April is so good. The transitions between drama and humor are natural and effortless, motifs in the dialogue like the dichotomy between "sparkling" and "dull" are upheld consistently in the art rather than just being bullshit flung between characters, and those characters generally seem to feel their feelings deeply without wallowing or anything. I especially like the arc in the fifth and sixth episode that views the male and female protagonists falling for each other through the eyes of the guy's childhood friend. The bittersweetness of her waning crush, the desire to see him happy slowly winning out over her desire to be the one who's happy with him, reminds me of everything that was good about the Yamada/Mayama parts of Honey & Clover without anything about it that made that show contrived and tedious.

 

looks like this is another series im going to have to try again with, i bounced off it pretty hard only a couple of episodes in but the praise of it seems so universal i should at least try to understand why i didnt like it

 

Also i was ill all this week and so spent alot of time in bet watching anime!!

 

Turns out the 2nd season of Aldonoah Zero is hugely better than the first because it has a really strong courtly intrigue subplot going on which means i coukd basically ignore all the kids in special mechs bits and still get something out of the show. I would have never have watched this if I wasn't ill, but im sort of glad i did

 

Also i watched the first 12 episodes of season two of mushishi and remain as impressed as ever, i think i also feel the shows formula for me is quite different from the one that Twig sketched out, will have to try and see if i can spend the time to write something about it

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As of this weekend I've watched 13 episodes of Shirobako.

 

It's pretty good!

 

I have similar complaints that I remember Blambo having, where all the women have the same basic faces (with minor deviations in head shape or eye color), while all the dudes are allowed to look super different.

 

Especially ironic since the anime the studio is making is moe moe moe. You'd think they'd be more self aware. \:

 

But that aside, really enjoying it so far. Am I correct in thinking people said the second season wasn't as strong? Guess I'll find out soon enough.

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