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to is the Japanese word for and

 

pronounced toe

 

So, Michiko to Hatchin -> Michiko and Hatchin

 

Anyway yeah it's one of my favorites.

I was thinking the "to" was supposed to be a more conceptual thing where they find each other. Haha, well that explains that! Thanks!

 

I think the problem with FUNi is not so much its location in Texas as the factory-dub system it's perfected. With the demise of pretty much every other old-school anime licensor that poured money into good dubs, especially Geneon, they believe (rightly or wrongly) that using the same small stable of voice actors for the same roles in every anime is the way to remain profitable. Actually, they're probably right, although you're right that it produces shit dubs with shit tone and pacing. I'm beginning to prefer Sentai and NISA, who just release subtitles-only, but I know that they're giving up the vast majority of their market with such a choice.

Yeah I guess in my nerd rage, I kind of just assumed that all good voice actors did not stay in Texas. That doesn't really mean it's true. I have heard good dubs before, but it always seems to be a factor of money, like Ghibli dubs or the relatively good ones Sony did for Paprika and Tekkon Kinkreet. Also what is up with Funimation turning all the voices up so high in the mix? It makes all of the shows I've seen from them seem like they originally had bad sound design. I just get this unnerving feeling that all of it can be chalked up to self serving need to get a weird celebrity status for subpar voice actors.

 

Oh yeah, for those of you who have watched it, I've just spent two hours searching for what clues may help identify the intentional ambiguity of whether or not

Michiko is really Hatchin's mother. What is your verdict? It does kind of hinder the theme that your family is sometimes not your biological family, if indeed that does exist as a theme of importance, but the show seems to hint at it in a few ways. First the tattoo is never truly explained. I don't know what "L.B.D.D." stands for or why it would be tattooed on a baby other than an identifier. I always figured it had to do with Hiroshi's gang, but it's never identified as being named anything except "Monstro." I read on some random forums that Michiko can't possibly be the mother because she was in prison when Hatchin was born, but Michiko could have very well been less than one month pregnant before her arrest, delivered, and the baby put up for adoption. Also Atsuko showed the photo of Hatchin to Michiko in episode one. Still not sure what that was about, I'll probably need to rewatch it. Also someone brought up that Hatchin couldn't be hers because she comments in episode 2 that she has Hiroshi's eyes and nose (or something like that) but does not like the rest of her features. I'm not sure that conversation went like that, but either way doesn't seem to be proof enough. Hatchin's baby in the last episode seemed like the biggest reveal to me, because a comment was made on it's rambunctious behavior, which if we were to assume it's in the genetics, then it would have to be passed down by Michiko. However, it could just as well be the man who left Hatchin anyway.

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I'd just like to point out that Japanese voice acting has tons of stars that have hundreds of shows to their name. Re-using voice actors is not a strictly Funimation thing, though I think the voice acting scene in Japan is taken a lot more seriously in general than it is in the US.

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The United States has many revered voice actors that are used all the time in multiple forms of media because of range and skill. But they are all unionized and therefore Funimation uses none of them. Pricier. The skill difference is shown when you check the imdb page of people who have voice acted in 10-20 different animes but have never broken out in to voice work beyond that. However it's not like a good voice actor is above dubbing a foreign cartoon, but it's always going to be dependent on the company being able to pay for their quality.

 

Michiko and Hatchin both were played by women who had starred in major motion pictures and had done voice work before hand. It's not to say celebrities make better voice actors, as that is not always true, but it's not fair to a well produced in show in another country to get the same old low paid unskilled voice actresses that the garbage voice actors in the pantyshot cartoons have.

 

Video games from Japan tend to be dubbed with more professional voice actors than animation from Japan.

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I just rewatched Nausicaä for the first time in ages. I forgot how beautiful it is and how much it makes me cry my eyes out every damn time.

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Which reminds me that I really wanted to get around to reading the manga.

 

Whaaat, like Rurouni Kenshin or Haibane Renmei?

 

Um, excuse me but I think you meant to say Samurai X.

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Um, excuse me but I think you meant to say Samurai X.

 

I have the old Samurai X-branded OVAs, which I shelve under Rurouni Kenshin because Samurai X is a stupid title and I forget it all the time. It always confuses everyone to see an immaculately alphabetized shelf, except for one box set.

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Samurai X, even though it makes sense considering his scar, is a horrible Pepsi Generation X name. Let's just call it by its official title: Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story.

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Ladies and gentlemen do you have any good recommendations for football/soccer Anime (or even manga)?

Any and all recommendations are appreciated but what I'm really interested in seeing good examples of how the movements of people playing sports are portrayed in animation (or just as static visuals).

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I have the old Samurai X-branded OVAs, which I shelve under Rurouni Kenshin because Samurai X is a stupid title and I forget it all the time. It always confuses everyone to see an immaculately alphabetized shelf, except for one box set.

 

I'd forgotten too until I unearthed my VHS of the first volume of the OVA a couple of weeks ago.

 

Speaking of old things, I watched Wicked City to satisfy some left-over curiosity from seeing it in a video store when I was 14 and thinking it looked super edgy or whatever. Boy is that a bad movie. Maybe I'll do myself a favour and skip Urotsukidoji.

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I finally watched Attack on Titan, moved onto Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet (worst title), and finished with The Eccentric Family.

 

The first is incredibly overrated but still pretty interesting, the second is pretty fun and I love that robot, and the third is my favorite of the bunch and I'd love to see more but I'm also okay with it ending where it ended.

 

Crunchyroll is amazing!

 

Then I started watching Hunter x Hunter 'cause I needed some stupid-ass brainless entertainment. I'll probably drop it soon.

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I finally watched Attack on Titan, moved onto Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet (worst title), and finished with The Eccentric Family.

 

The first is incredibly overrated but still pretty interesting, the second is pretty fun and I love that robot, and the third is my favorite of the bunch and I'd love to see more but I'm also okay with it ending where it ended.

 

Crunchyroll is amazing!

 

Then I started watching Hunter x Hunter 'cause I needed some stupid-ass brainless entertainment. I'll probably drop it soon.

I was pretty happy with the way Eccentric Family ended too, everything being nice and neatly tied up would have felt wrong anyway. Have heard a little bit of QQ about it in various places though.

Not that as you say seeing more of those characters wouldn't be great but so much of their interrelation was tied up in that one event in the past it gives the writer some issues. Either they just accept that the characters won't have one unifying moment tying them together or invent something new to fill that roll(which would feel pretty contrived).

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I love that there's someone out there who was captivated by the idea of watching Urotsukidoji in his youth, never got around to it and now is convinced he's missed some hidden pearl. BadHat, please locate and watch it, then report back. Prepare for... embafflement.

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Well, thanks to Proxmate Crunchyroll finally thinks I'm American and is no longer region locked.... WOW! You are missing out on so many show because of region locking! I finally get to watch Kill la Kill and Attack on Titan!

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Hey man, that 18+ sticker does weird things to the adolescent imagination.

Think I remember seeing that one & Ninja Scroll sitting on the back shelf of my local comic shop when I was 16-17 & they certainly did have a certain illicit draw.

Never seen either of them though, when I was a penniless student my net connection was to crappy, and now I'm old & the same things that made me curious as a teenage now mean I have almost no interest.

All I can say is, go Badhat go!! Live out our teenage regrets for us.

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I finally watched Attack on Titan, moved onto Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet (worst title), and finished with The Eccentric Family.

 

The first is incredibly overrated but still pretty interesting, the second is pretty fun and I love that robot, and the third is my favorite of the bunch and I'd love to see more but I'm also okay with it ending where it ended.

 

Crunchyroll is amazing!

 

Then I started watching Hunter x Hunter 'cause I needed some stupid-ass brainless entertainment. I'll probably drop it soon.

You'd be pleased to know that there's a second season of Gargantia announced then :)

 

Also hunter x hunter (assuming it's the 2011 remake, as it's on crunchy) is really awesome. The animation is top notch and rarely falters, which is really impressive for an ongoing series. I implore you not to drop it, as although the hunter exam drags on a bit, it picks up a lot afterwards. The Spider arc is awesome, and whilst Greed Island is a tad lame by today's standards, it was the first time I'd seen something like it. Of course it's been copied a million times now, but when I first watched that arc in the original run I felt it was really original. the Chimera Ant arc afterwards starts slow, but right now is really gripping stuff. And it's catching up to the manga really quickly. I think there's one more arc left before it's caught up to where the manga is now. Maybe one day the mangaka will write another chapter before that happens though. Doubtful though.

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Ladies and gentlemen do you have any good recommendations for football/soccer Anime (or even manga)?

Any and all recommendations are appreciated but what I'm really interested in seeing good examples of how the movements of people playing sports are portrayed in animation (or just as static visuals).

 

This isn't Soccer, but Kuroko's Basketball (Or 'The Basketball Which Koroko Plays') Is a) insanely well animated and B) flippin' great. check out the opening for the second season, especially 0:58 onwards. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoVTIjYkWHM

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This isn't Soccer, but Kuroko's Basketball (Or 'The Basketball Which Koroko Plays') Is a) insanely well animated and B) flippin' great. check out the opening for the second season, especially 0:58 onwards. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoVTIjYkWHM

The animation there is quite slick, personally not too fond of that sort of highly muscled stylisation but I guess with sports anime that's gonna be par for the course. Will check out a regular episode and see how stuff actually is 'in episode' the budgets expended on the openings often hide the amount of huge shortcuts a series will take in production.

Kinda surprised that Gargantia gets a re-commissioned, seemed like a supremely average series first time round. I mean it had solid enough art design in places, and quite a nice central conceit, but there never were any characters that really felt they stood out as likeable or interesting.

Also have Tried out a episode of The Knight in The Arena and wasn't that impressed with what was on show, too many freeze frames with speed lines, and footballs getting distorted out off shape and other shortcuts :P

Guess I'm a fussy 30 year old watching stuff meant for unpicky teenagers though so probably not going to be that impressed. Considering just going straight to the season finale episodes where they have probably blown 3/4 of the budget.

It does feel though that if done right you could take those visual tropes and do something interesting with them, but going highly stylised doesn't seem like a route that would be that commercially viable for the genre.

Guess Kill La Kill is weirdly gonna be the closest thing to that I'm likely to see (fighting is kinda a sport right!?).

Speaking of which I'm still enjoying it, mainly due to Ryuko, Mako (and even Satsuki) being such overwhelmingly likeable characters, and having a decent interplay with the supporting cast.

That all said though it still hasn't done anything to justify/excuse the inclusion of its worst cheesecake moments.

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I know i said that it was 'insanely well animated', And for most of it it is, but it's quality does drop from time to time. But that's kinda to be expected. I remember last weeks episode was awesome (ep 34 on crunchy) and well animated.

 

After talking with my other half, she also pointed out 'Whistle' and 'Inazuma Eleven' are both soccer animes. Whistle is old though, and Inazuma Eleven is a kids anime. I think there are some games released on the 3DS too? There's animated parts in that.

 

There's also 'Eyeshield 21', but that's american football.

 

And there was also a weird short at the begginning of a One Piece film where the gang plays football. Which was... Odd. But awesome if you like One Piece.

 

As for Gargantia, I think that Amy is quite popular. I'd be more interested to know where they go next, as the ending of the first season felt pretty conclusive.

 

I'm loving Kill La Kill as well. It's awesome. If you like it, you should check out Little Witch Academia, which is done by the same studio. It's an awesome OVA. Not original, but it's beautifully animated and tells a simple story in a lovely way.

 

Right now I'm also watching: Hunter x Hunter, Space Bros, Yowamushi Pedal (which is suprisingly gripping considering it's about bikes), Outbreak company (which is alright) and Samurai Flamenco, which is looking to be a contender with Kill La Kill as best of the season.

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Kinda surprised that Gargantia gets a re-commissioned, seemed like a supremely average series first time round. I mean it had solid enough art design in places, and quite a nice central conceit, but there never were any characters that really felt they stood out as likeable or interesting.

WHAT ABOUT CHAMBER?!

 

The very last thing he says in the last episode was so goddamn cheesy but also I totally loved it.

 

(Seriously, Chamber's pretty much the best robot.)

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Every week, I watch KILL la KILL, go on AniDB, and find out once again that Nonon, the girl deva, is voiced by the same seiyuu as Haruhara Haruko from FLCL. She's criminally underused.

 

Also, I am watching the Valkyria Chronicles anime and it is not very good. I think Girls und Panzer has spoiled me for gunji anime. Mostly, I watch the female protagonist and think about why I like tsundere in theory, but never in practice.

 

Guess Kill La Kill is weirdly gonna be the closest thing to that I'm likely to see (fighting is kinda a sport right!?).
Speaking of which I'm still enjoying it, mainly due to Ryuko, Mako (and even Satsuki) being such overwhelmingly likeable characters, and having a decent interplay with the supporting cast.
That all said though it still hasn't done anything to justify/excuse the inclusion of its worst cheesecake moments.

 

The funny thing is, the other transformation sequences are either free from cheesecake or subvert cheesecake in interesting ways. The three male devas are especially good for how they use little "magical girl" flourishes in masculine ways. It's only Ryuuko where it's played straight (or at least the so-straight-it's-ironic way that the show loves).

 

I feel like anime suffers from this "just one flaw" thing a lot, though. I was rewatching Wings of Honneamise recently, which is pitch-perfect except for the rape scene, which the director really liked and defended. I don't doubt that there's a producer or animator at Trigger who fought tooth and nail to have that shot where the uniform tightens over Ryuuko's crotch, even though the rest of the show had moved toward the less facile.

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It's only Ryuuko where it's played straight

 

that shot where the uniform tightens over Ryuuko's crotch

I feel like those two lines are at odds. If it was playing it straight, it'd just be like Sailor Moon, right? Still naked chicks gettin' covered by magic clothes or whatever. But that whole tightening bit intentionally goes completely bonkers with it, beyond what's normal even for the magical girl transformations. At least in my opinion.

 

It still makes me uncomfortable, but I really do think that was their goal.

 

On the other hand I never stop laughing every time the dudes do weird sexy shit so hurray for double standards.

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I feel like those two lines are at odds. If it was playing it straight, it'd just be like Sailor Moon, right? Still naked chicks gettin' covered by magic clothes or whatever. But that whole tightening bit intentionally goes completely bonkers with it, beyond what's normal even for the magical girl transformations. At least in my opinion.

 

It still makes me uncomfortable, but I really do think that was their goal.

 

On the other hand I never stop laughing every time the dudes do weird sexy shit so hurray for double standards.

 

I guess I meant more that it "plays it straight" in just going for blatant titillation, rather than it "plays it straight" in just copying magical girl imagery. I would really really really like to believe that they're trying to make me so titillated that I become uncomfortable and am prompted to reflect on what titillation even really means to me, but I'm not sure that's how titillation works. Surely they have to know that and/or worry about that?

 

And no worries, it's society that has the double standard, not you. No one's expected to be getting hot and bothered over the over-the-top male nakedness. It's played purely for laughs. Female nakedness is never played purely for laughs. It can't be. Any time you show any woman-flesh above the ankles and below the neck, there are always going to be at least several thousand dudes getting their rocks on. It can't be ignored the way the consequences of male nakedness can be. It's probably a power thing, too. I don't know.

 

Thinking more about KILL la KILL's gender tropes, the weird predatorial teacher is great, but only because we know Ryuuko's strong and independent enough to put him in his place, though him always being more interested in himself than in her doesn't hurt. Even so, they waited three or four episodes before revealing that side of him, both for comic effect and to make sure all the characters were established enough to prevent misinterpretation. There are some smart people in charge of the show, it just feels like they're out to lunch during Ryuuko's transformation, which only operates on the level of sexual titillation. I've mostly resigned myself to ignoring it, starting from the episode where it was revealed that you need to abandon all shame to tap the full power of the Godrobe.

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Yeah basically I guess what I'm getting at is that I think they really were trying to do something with it but didn't succeed.

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Yeah basically I guess what I'm getting at is that I think they really were trying to do something with it but didn't succeed.

 

I can get behind that. I just wish I knew what it was, so I could try and think about it that way than just dwell on my own reaction of discomfort.

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