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I'm with Codicier, though. It's strange he'd feel a need to. I think his other work is great, too. Kids on the Slope in particular. (Although I did feel the ending was too... I dunno, rushed? It didn't feel right.)

I have to confess, I did not know anything about the show when I started watching it, so took it at face value instead of comparing it to his previous works. It's not as good as Kids on the Slope.

 

I felt the ending (of KotS) was weird too. I felt the resolution of it all was very frank, and a change in narrative. Also it was pretty rushed in like the last 5 mins.

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RE DBZ:

 

I've mentioned this before but my biggest beef with the series (besides how agonizingly slow it is) is that it's basically the Goku show.  The guy does everything.  You have all these characters who have risen to levels of power that were previously unimaginable, but it's still one guy who saves the day every time.  The exception to this is Gohan in the Cell saga, which is what makes it the best part.

 

As for the movies, I liked part of the 13th movie, Wrath of the Dragon.  It provides a pseudo explanation of Future Trunk's sword (Future Trunks being my favorite character).  What I like about this is that it's ambiguous about whether or not this actually is his sword since it logically can't be but is nonetheless implied to be. 

 

I also liked the 12th movie, Fusion Reborn, because of how goofy it is.  It features several past villains (including a cartoonish Hitler) that are dispatched with ridiculous ease, a fat failed fusion of Goku and Vegeta, the dragonball wish granting dragon being summoned and yet no wish is actually made, a Pokémon like main villain who only says his own name, a completely serious fighter who tries to free people trapped within crystal jellybeans by swearing at them, and the final finishing move used on the villain is a rainbow.

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I haven't watched Kids on the Slope yet, despite the Watanabe (and Yoko Kanno) involvement. I think I'm automatically put off by anime set in a high school setting, for several reasons. There's the weirdness of it feeling like drama for children, for one thing. More to the point, Japanese animation is saturated with stories set in high school, most of them bad or mediocre, and almost all of them teeming with annoying (to me) anime tropes. One of the biggest reasons I loved Bebop and Champloo are that, obvious visual details aside, they absolutely DID NOT feel like anime TV shows. Especially in terms of tone and pacing.

 

This is also the first I've heard anyone recommend it, too. It's on my to-watch list now.

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I also liked the 12th movie, Fusion Reborn, because of how goofy it is.  It features several past villains (including a cartoonish Hitler) that are dispatched with ridiculous ease, a fat failed fusion of Goku and Vegeta, the dragonball wish granting dragon being summoned and yet no wish is actually made, a Pokémon like main villain who only says his own name, a completely serious fighter who tries to free people trapped within crystal jellybeans by swearing at them, and the final finishing move used on the villain is a rainbow.

This sounds more like Dragonball proper than Dragonball Z and now I want to watch it.

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It is a pretty great DBZ movie. A good mix of silliness mixed with some badassery here and there.

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It feels like there's more in common between those two than just the pompadour.

But I totally lack the knowledge to know which early anime's are candidates for common ancestors with that over the top weaponry and alien design.

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I don't think there's a common ancestor here. Space Dandy is Cowboy Bebop taken in an over-the-top direction. Redline is future space racing taken in an over-the-top direction. The pompadour thing is just... that's how a lot of over-the-top characters in anime look. The ones full of attitude and bravado often enough have pompadours. I dunno.

 

MORE SICK POMPADOURS

Kuwabara.Kazuma.full.984558.jpg

Hunter%2Bx%2BHunter%2B86%2B5.JPG
Franky_Anime_Pre_Timeskip_Infobox.png

 

Haha holy shit Franky has changed a lot.

 

Franky_Anime_Post_Timeskip_Infobox.png

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JP is drawn a lot differently during intense moments than he is during quiet ones, so you can see more similarity here:

 

dif2822.jpg

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You haven't even seen franky's final form. Check out this bad boy:

Franky_Gun_Hair.png

Out of all the strawhats, Franky looks the weirdest after the two years.

 

 

I would have thought that the pompadour originated from like you said, people with attitude and bravado, and I guess that equates to motorcycle gangs in japan. Maybe it was really fashionable to wear pompadours if you were in a bike gang. And the longer the better, obviously.

 

 

 

I haven't watched Kids on the Slope yet, despite the Watanabe (and Yoko Kanno) involvement. I think I'm automatically put off by anime set in a high school setting, for several reasons. There's the weirdness of it feeling like drama for children, for one thing. More to the point, Japanese animation is saturated with stories set in high school, most of them bad or mediocre, and almost all of them teeming with annoying (to me) anime tropes. One of the biggest reasons I loved Bebop and Champloo are that, obvious visual details aside, they absolutely DID NOT feel like anime TV shows. Especially in terms of tone and pacing.

 

This is also the first I've heard anyone recommend it, too. It's on my to-watch list now.

 

I can see what you mean, but it's so far removed from tropey high-school anime, when I watched it it felt more like a history re-enactment, instead of your Clannad-based affairs (which is tear-jerkingly good in it's own right). It's set just after world war 2, and there are weird themes like Christianity in it. Just like Samurai Champloo, it does not feel like a 'normal' tropey high-school anime, as it felt very grounded in reality and history, and the characters aren't over-the-top or tropey, either.

 

ANYWAYS - MOAR POMPADOARS

danganronpa-4-9-oowada-mondo.jpgccb8e1a671ac00_full.jpg

 

EDIT: I can't spoiler tag T_T

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(Add a / to the second half of the spoiler tag to fix it. like [ spoiler ] stuff [ / spoiler ] without the spaces.)

 

Yeah Franky's definitely gone the weirdest out of all the Strawhat crew. I love it. I do keep up with the manga. Easily my favorite long-running shounen of all time. DAAAANG. I kinda wanna read it all over again, but it's so long.

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I need to finish catching up to the manga.

I made it past... I think I had just gotten away from the crazy undead zombie island place where there shadows were stolen (I think that's what happened? It's been like a year since I read it) and I think thats where they met up with... whats-his-name, the skeleton musician guy... Brooke? Bruce? Something like that...

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Brooke, yeah. Brooke is rad. They're all rad. Dang. That's before... a lot of things! Hah.

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Yeah lol that is a way away. I really love where one piece is at the moment. This ark is really good. I love it when Oda splits up the party.

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I can see what you mean, but it's so far removed from tropey high-school anime, when I watched it it felt more like a history re-enactment, instead of your Clannad-based affairs (which is tear-jerkingly good in it's own right). It's set just after world war 2, and there are weird themes like Christianity in it. Just like Samurai Champloo, it does not feel like a 'normal' tropey high-school anime, as it felt very grounded in reality and history, and the characters aren't over-the-top or tropey, either.

That's a pretty good summary, a big part of what makes Kids on the Slope work is that it nails it's sense of place/time.

You probably should look to some of Ghilbi's historic stuff like Up on Poppy Hill for its closest contemporary rather than any of the many more trope laden High School works. Outside that probably the closest show would be Nodame Cantabile.

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JP is drawn a lot differently during intense moments than he is during quiet ones, so you can see more similarity here:

 

dif2822.jpg

Redline really was a very very pretty piece of work.

A quick search does seem to back up seems to say the hairstyle is pretty much strongly associated with youth gangs (in particular biker gangs), so perhaps in anime it's just become a visual shorthand for 'rebel/non-conformity'.

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A common good-guy pompadour trope is that the dude puts on this huge act of badassery but then has a super soft side to him, like having a weakness for cute animals or something.

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(Add a / to the second half of the spoiler tag to fix it. like [ spoiler ] stuff [ / spoiler ] without the spaces.)

 

Thanks - I always forget XD

 

That's a pretty good summary, a big part of what makes Kids on the Slope work is that it nails it's sense of place/time.

You probably should look to some of Ghilbi's historic stuff like Up on Poppy Hill for its closest contemporary rather than any of the many more trope laden High School works. Outside that probably the closest show would be Nodame Cantabile.

 

Yeah, Up On Poppy Hill is great. I liked it a lot, but I feel like most Ghibli movies, they excel at world building, and characters, but not plot. I nearly always walk away from a ghibli movie feeling unsatisfied. Apart from Ponyo. That film is the bomb.

 

Also I forgot to mention the best thing about Kids on the Slope - it's about jazz. That show got me more into Jazz than anything else ever did. Moanin' will always have a soft spot in my heart now because of it. And the animation of them playing the instruments is amazing. Especially the drums. Seeing Sentaro's drumming match the music all on the right beat as well as getting that feeling of kinetic-ism of real drumming impressed me the most. Apparently they recorded the people jamming in the soundtrack and then rotor-scoped it. And good rotor-scoping too, not this Aku no Hana bullshit. The less about that show the better. (Aside: I do find it funny that they only had double-digit DVD pre-order sales, and then delayed the release because of it)

 

To show what I mean:

 

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I know I'm the only person here who's actually watching Log Horizon BUT DAMN IS IT GOOD. There've been a few blehs but for the most part everything manages to be tense without relying entirely on combat. It's all about planning and negotiating. Kind of AMAZING. GEEZ.

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I know I'm the only person here who's actually watching Log Horizon BUT DAMN IS IT GOOD. There've been a few blehs but for the most part everything manages to be tense without relying entirely on combat. It's all about planning and negotiating. Kind of AMAZING. GEEZ.

Ok Twig, come on sell me on this.

What I'm hoping for is something a bit like Spice and Wolf, but my perception of any anime based on a characters inside video game is that it will reference quasi western medieval fantasy, there will be some near future virtual reality system involved, and that they will be more concerned with referencing video game tropes (be it loot, raids, whatever) than characters development.

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There's no virtual reality. It's more, uh... Basically the way it sells it is that the world of the MMO has always existed for real (though everyone who played the game naturally assumed it was all made by some game developer), and they've just been controlling these avatars in the world. One day the "Apocalypse" (as they call it) happens and thousands of people are transported inside this world. They still have a lot of the abilities of an MMO (like communicating telepathically, also known as direct messaging or whatever), and they can't die permanently (although they do some interesting things with that). And there are the NPCs, called the People of the Land, who are actually real people indirectly (and sometimes directly) affected by the Adventurers. The MMO tropes exist, but they aren't core to what the show is actually about. The show is ACTUALLY about these people trying to survive in these weird circumstances.

 

So, that's the basic setup, and I don't want to dance around it, because it is, at its core, about a bunch of normal dudes suddenly becoming their in-game avatars. But the things they do with it are interesting, I think. Like I said, a good majority of what happens isn't the actual direct conflict - though there is some of that - it's about communicating with other adventurers and with the People of the Land. It's about negotiating treaties and alliances. It's about strategy and planning. All of which is why I initially compared it to Spice and Wolf. On the surface, Spice and Wolf looks like some trash anime about a dude and a wolf girl and oh I bet they'll fall in love BLARGH - but when you actually watch it, it's about the ins and outs of trading and economics in a feudal setting.

 

I'd say Log Horizon definitely has a higher trope-to-interesting ratio than Spice and Wolf does, but it's still really interesting to me. The past few episodes have really established this huge tension between the adventurers and the People of the Land and I dig it a lot.

 

U:

 

Also my favorite character is a princess.

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Ok gonna give it a shot, just hope I don't see any variation of the phrase "if you die in the game, you die for real!"

Edit: Dear me that title sequence was painful. Oh well in Twig we trust! onwards!

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