anime

[Gaizokubanou]

Just want to say Twig, I love you <3 all of that has been from place of love

 

Damn the 480p.

[Twig]

U;

[Codicier]

Reposting this here from the "plug your shit" thread since i thought others might be interested in Rodi explaining the Shinsengumi

 

Last week I held a lecture at Dutch anime convention Tsunacon about the history of the shinsengumi, the shogun's secret police in Tokugawa Japan. I put it online, with English subtitles, so if anyone feels like a 20 minute history lesson with tons of pictures, this is the YouTube Video to watch!

 

[Zeusthecat]

I finished Cowboy Bebop and it was really good. Not my favorite anime but still really enjoyable to watch.

 

Last weekend I started Samurai Champloo and have 5 or 6 episodes left as of today. I'm not sure how I feel about this one. The soundtrack is pretty good and I really enjoy the fight scenes but I haven't found the story terribly compelling. Mugen and Jin are pretty "interesting characters with mysterious pasts" but I really don't understand what possible motivation they would have for going after the Sunflower Samurai with Fuu. Maybe they just have nothing better to do?

 

The other thing that kind of bothers me about the show is how a lot of the female characters are handled. Maybe there is some deeper thing I am missing but it seems like most of the female characters are portrayed as helpless and weak and constantly being sexually abused. It just seems like there is a bit too much of that. Although, I was happy to see 

when they joined up with the blind female assassin and were both nearly killed by her once she revealed who she really was. I appreciate that it was pretty cut and dry that she was unquestionably better than them and could have killed them both. But then she just collapsed and died after holding herself back from killing Mugen.

 

So yeah, I like how stylish this show is and a lot of the action sequences but it's not terribly compelling beyond that. 

[Blambo]

I enjoyed Samurai Champloo a lot more when I viewed Mugen and Jin as incredibly stupid and unlikeable.

Really hard to respond to a lot of your thoughts without spoilers for future episodes, but they are intresting ones anyway so keep em comming!

The best I can say is that my personal take on ep 12 is that it's needed to put emphasis on how knowledge doesn't make things less painful sometimes it can even make pain worse

.

The loss of his true mother seems too much for such a young child to process and he recovered relatively fast, it's a death by a landslide a 'act of God' if you will a force utterly incomprehensible to him.

But the loss of his second 'mother' comes with his fill understanding of what's happening, not only his knowledge of Mushishi but because he's evidently become more empathic with her than perhaps he was even with his real mother, so the grief and desperate attempts he makes to not loose her reflect that .

To survive the consequences of his grief of he if forced to looses the memories of the very human connection that drove him to act rashly, not only that all the worldly and otherworld knowledge he has built up is taken and he is returned to a blank state

'The Ginko' eats darkness and produces light which slowly in turn produces more darkness it portrayed as a blameless force just trying to survive in its own way, the newly self named Ginko's journey for knowledge and the pain the knowledge he gains sometimes inflicts regardless of his intent could be seen as a mirror of that. He's rebuilding himself, sometimes at a cost to himself sometime inadvertently at a cost to other in ways he's not quite able to understand.

Yeah it seems that Ginko's role in all of this does seem, in hindsight, kind of disruptive. He's ostensibly trying to restore this balance in nature, but he can't really help other human beings if he truly left it to the whims of the universe. It kind of betrays his actual priorities, in that he can't overcome his overwhelming sense of human empathy even with his deep connection with Mushi. His connection is totally intellectual, and doesn't reflect this tree hugging hippie image I had of him in the beginning.

I'm up to episode 20, which seemed to reveal that one of the reasons why he travels is to collect stories so that the girl (forgot her name) can walk again and exorcize the Mushi from her family line. It showed how the girl could have this tolerant, balanced attitude toward the mushi while striving to rid it from her body, in contrast to the tales of Mushishi who kill and exterminate mushi. I don't know what to make of this because in the end it's saying that sometimes man uas to exert power over nature, but justifying it by saying that man is part of nature and seeking survival doesn't tip the equilibrium.

I guess the obvious metaphor in the episode is using knowledge and understanding to coexist with nature (trapping the cursed mushi in the letters of books in the library) rather than forcing it into submission, because the former creates a lasting benefit where the latter creates eventual, recurring destruction (the cursed mushi reappears every few generations if you just ignore it). Seems to be the whole message of the series so far, and each standalone story documents the drama of trying to live with a great unknown force that you can't fathom, destroy, or avoid without inevitable destruction, and the solution is either self sacrifice or negotiation and compromise, whether it's the past or other people or big flying centipede bamboo tree monsters.

I have no idea what a lot of these episodes are trying to say or if what I'm getting from them is valid or consistent. Still love this series though.

[dium]

That's a pretty omnipresent criticism of Samurai Champloo: that it's all style and little substance. That used to be a criticism of Cowboy Bebop too, but I think the passage of time has reflected well on Bebop and most people now recognize is as more nuanced than that.
 
But Champloo, though... I tend to agree, there's not an awful lot beneath the impeccable sense of style. The sense of style IS the show, in a way, and your personal enjoyment hangs mostly on how far that style can take you on it's own. 
 
Myself, I really dig it. I think your reaction to the final episodes might crystalize your opinions of the show in general:

If you're hoping for some sort of narrative closure or a meaningful revelation of any kind, you'll be disappointed, as none is provided. But if you want the coolest, most tone-perfect example of the show's Kurosawa/UndergroundHipHop pastiche, like I did, then you'll be quite satisfied.

[Zeusthecat]

To clarify, the sense of style goes a really long way for me. There are a decent number of episodes that I thought were really fantastic thanks to how well the action scenes came together. And the music complements everything pretty well too. The only part of the story that I really enjoy is just how shitty Mugen and Jin are. They make for some pretty entertaining characters and I'm glad that they never seem to try to paint them as 'good'. They are just really violent shitheads.

[Roderick]

Thanks for the repost, Codicier! Hadn't occurred to me that this was a good fit for the anime thread.

[Twig]

Man when I first watched Bakemonogatari years ago, I was not who I am today, and the fact that almost every female character, with the exception of Araragi's little sisters, whom you barely meet, is a damsel in distress, I mean I was aware of it, but it didn't bother me. At least Senjogahara has a strong personality (TSUNDERE OH BOY) to sort of give herself agency, and I guess Kanbaru's damsel-hood is a nice twist in that she needs help because she's trying to kill Araragi, buuuut then you get to Sengoku who's just in trouble because of a romance gone wrong and she's a younger girl and when they try to help her she keeps moaning in "pain" except it's clearly sexual and she's wearing a swimsuit. And she's obviously got a big ol' crush on Araragi so that just makes it worse.

 

Welp.

 

Buuuut on the other hand that's kind of the whole theme I guess is they're all like trying to figure out their sexual urges. Senjogahara's maybe learning to deal with a traumatic situation, I guess? (I'm not really sure about her, actually.) Kanbaru wants Araragi out of the way so she can have Senjogahara to herself. Sengoku is... pretty obvious. And I'm pretty sure I remember exactly what Tsubasa's deal is (although I haven't watched it yet) and it's along the same lines.

 

Buuuuuuuut it's still a little awkward. Well, really awkward. She's like 13 or whatever eurgh. This stuff bothered me back then, too, but maybe not nearly as much.

[Coods]

It's been a while since I've seen I've seen the first season, but all that sounds about right to me. This shit is kind of there basically throughout all of the show I think, but Monogatari season 2 (after nise, after neko) is refreshingly less of that stuff. Amazingly, there are whole 6 episode arcs of that season where ararararagi doesn't even show up, and it really is awesome.

 

The really noticeable structure of the first part of the show is obviously all about introducing these girls in the context of how they were "saved" by the dude. Then they start fleshing out most of these characters in a really cool way, I thought.

 

edit: honestly, now that i think about the only thing I like about araragi is how he just gets shit on by the female characters.

 

Also, after noticing somebody talk about it a few pages ago I sat down and rewatched FLCL in one sitting. The first three episodes were exactly the incredible, stylish and tonally perfect FLCL that I remember. The last half not so much, but still good. This happens with me a lot concerning these old classics, where the small non-plot focused character pieces are the episodes that I really stick with.

[Gormongous]

Man when I first watched Bakemonogatari years ago, I was not who I am today, and the fact that almost every female character, with the exception of Araragi's little sisters, whom you barely meet, is a damsel in distress, I mean I was aware of it, but it didn't bother me. At least Senjogahara has a strong personality (TSUNDERE OH BOY) to sort of give herself agency, and I guess Kanbaru's damsel-hood is a nice twist in that she needs help because she's trying to kill Araragi, buuuut then you get to Sengoku who's just in trouble because of a romance gone wrong and she's a younger girl and when they try to help her she keeps moaning in "pain" except it's clearly sexual and she's wearing a swimsuit. And she's obviously got a big ol' crush on Araragi so that just makes it worse.

 

Welp.

 

Buuuut on the other hand that's kind of the whole theme I guess is they're all like trying to figure out their sexual urges. Senjogahara's maybe learning to deal with a traumatic situation, I guess? (I'm not really sure about her, actually.) Kanbaru wants Araragi out of the way so she can have Senjogahara to herself. Sengoku is... pretty obvious. And I'm pretty sure I remember exactly what Tsubasa's deal is (although I haven't watched it yet) and it's along the same lines.

 

Buuuuuuuut it's still a little awkward. Well, really awkward. She's like 13 or whatever eurgh. This stuff bothered me back then, too, but maybe not nearly as much.

 

Yeah, I had a fairly strong dislike of Bakemonogatari when I watched it for those exact reasons, Twig. It felt like it was just a show about some dude building a harem of girls who are damsels to forces both supernatural and sexual. I found no reason to like it except the Shinbou/Shaft direction, so I just considered the other anime in the series a regrettable waste.

 

But really, I think the show turns it around in Nisemonogatari with the introduction of Kaiki Deishu. He's not exactly Araragi's opposite, but he is a malevolent force that keeps the show from being Araragi just saving girls from themselves and their need to be fucked. From a few episodes into Nisemonogatari, and all throughout the second season, it's about the relationships that Araragi has built with the girls that he's saved and the consequences stemming from them. Even Sengoku, who gets two Bill 156 jokes (the ordinance forbidding sexual depiction of minors in media) in her penultimate arc, actually has a story-based and character-building payoff in how pornographically devoted she is to Araragi. As far as I'm concerned, it's an anime that's quite good, but takes a while to get going, and because of that, it leaves you in the dark too long as to whether there's any point to the panty shots and innuendo.

 

And actually, Coods (Deleric?), I thought that maybe the anime would be improved by the removal of Araragi, but he functions really well as a hub through which more interesting characters can interact. Sure, if it's just him one-on-one with a girl, like in most of the Bakemonogatari and all of Nekomonogatari, it's not great, but when he's not there, like in most of Hanamonogatari, the show drags even worse. The rest of the characters are relatively sane women who like each other, so there's no frisson. Obviously, the actual answer is to replace Araragi with a different protagonist who has less boring motives, like Kaiki Deishu in certain arcs of the second season, but that version of the anime wouldn't sell as well, of course.

 

Keep at it, is what I'm saying, Twig. The first season is the worst (season).

[Twig]

That's good to hear. I have a friend who really loves the series(es), but honestly his tastes run a little... counter to might, fairly often. So I was worried. Like I said, I liked it years ago, but this time it's rough. I still like the setting and the direction, and, heck, on their own I even like the individual stories of each character (barring extremely weird junk like swimsuited underage girl sexy pain moans...). It's just the whole package is sorta off-putting.

 

I'll definitely keep at it, though.

[Patrick R]

So, I have long held the assumption that Cowboy Bebop is the anime for people (like myself) who "don't like anime". Which is to say, it's very inspired by western culture (jazz, westerns, noir) and it's mainly episodic, not serially driven the way most animes are. Also it lacks most "mythic, fantasy, chosen one, power gemstone magic dumb humor magic" kind of mythology that turns me off most anime. It's more palatable to mainstream audiences than most anime, because it's much more familiar.

 

But I've often wondered: how is Cowboy Bebop received among people who like anime? Is it considered "the best anime ever" or "pretty good" or "overrated" or what? 

 

Also, is there any anime that captures the feeling Cowboy Bebop did? I am a massive fan of the anime aesthetic but have been burned too many times by stories that fly up their own butt with mythology magic chosen one power gemstone chosen one magic BS. Any suggestions of anime that captures that Cowboy Bebop feeling?

 

I was also super into Blue Gender until they got off Earth and every became "chosen one power magic power hero's journey Magic" BS.

 

Also, I realize I am being a dick and generalizing an entire culture of fiction in an unfavorable way. It's not how I mean to come across, it's just what it feels like to me, as a person who generally doesn't understand anime but is really into Cowboy Bebop.

[Twig]

To be honest I'm not even sure what you mean by "power gemstone magic chosen one BS dumb humor magic BS power gem".

 

Do you hate super powers?

 

Do you hate gemstones?

 

Do you hate magic?

Do you hate humor?

Do you hate chosen ones?

Or is it just the combination of all of those things?

 

I have never even heard of Blue Gender, I don't think, so I can't even meet you there. U:

[BobbyBesar]

Cowboy Bebop is generally considered one of the all-time classics, probably top 10, at least in the US. I think that it wasn't as well liked in Japan though.

 

There are sort of 2 different categories of anime: limited-series (either OAVs that are explicitly limited, or things that only run for a couple of seasons) and forever series (Dragon Ball, Naruto, One Piece, Detective Conan). It sounds like you don't like the go-forever series, which is fair, it's not too hard to avoid. Given that, anime spans pretty much every genre you can think of.

 

So, you should treat it like you would any other medium: look for creators that you like. Cowboy Bebop is by Shinichiro Watanabe, so you can start there (his recent Space Dandy is sort of a comedy version of Cowboy Bebop). He's done some other stuff that's also been pretty well received, like Samurai Champloo, which has samurai, but also has a distinct hip hop influence.

 

Trigun was a contemporary of Cowboy Bebop, and is kind of a space-western, so you might like that.

 

All of the Miyazaki / Ghibli stuff, if you haven't seen it, is worth investigating. It avoids some of what you're talking about, but does have fantasy elements. Miyazaki's protagonists tend to be young girls, but they're more like fairly tales than saturday morning cartoons.

 

All of Satoshi Kon's films might be of interest. Paprika is my favorite of those.

 

We've been talking about FLCL. Do not watch that. It's very well regarded, but it's pretty impenetrable to a newcomer.

 

Alternately, just skim this and see if anything appeals to you:

http://www.fanboy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/list-of-worthwhile-anime.jpg

 

There's a lot on that list I haven't seen, but you might possibly like Big O, or maybe Kino's Journey.

[Gormongous]

I was also super into Blue Gender until they got off Earth and every became "chosen one power magic power hero's journey Magic" BS.

I have never even heard of Blue Gender, I don't think, so I can't even meet you there. U:

 

Blue Gender was terrible, I thought. They were trying to go for a bleak, post-apocalyptic sci-fi world destroyed by massive bug monsters, but they conveyed it mostly through the protagonist being constantly and relentlessly horrified at everything he saw, to the point of ineffectuality. Two dozen episodes in, they still hadn't really turned the corner on that. I don't know how I made it through.

 

But I've often wondered: how is Cowboy Bebop received among people who like anime? Is it considered "the best anime ever" or "pretty good" or "overrated" or what?

 

Among most people I know who are into anime, Cowboy Bebop's held to be pretty darn good. I don't know anyone who's watched a lot of other shows and still thinks of Cowboy Bebop as the greatest anime of all time, though. Its general aesthetic style, especially the soundtrack, hold up marvelously, but the incredibly light touch on its characters and story keep it from being an anime to which I return again and again out of fondness rather than just forgetfulness. It's part of a crop of turn-of-the-millennium anime, like Trigun and Outlaw Star, that traded on a newer kind of seinen cool and only really found their audience on home media and overseas, so its influence is strong but slow to diffuse and a little played out by now. I don't know, it's fine work. I bought the collector's edition of the Blu-ray, but would honestly give away the artbook after one read.

 

Also, is there any anime that captures the feeling Cowboy Bebop did? I am a massive fan of the anime aesthetic but have been burned too many times by stories that fly up their own butt with mythology magic chosen one power gemstone chosen one magic BS. Any suggestions of anime that captures that Cowboy Bebop feeling?

 

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. If you conceive of the "Cowboy Bebop feeling" as extremely episodic and aesthetically Western, you're probably headed for some disappointment. The Western aesthetic is not unique to Cowboy Bebop, but where it's used in other anime, it's often used for much different purposes, and I don't think that it's a particularly good bellwether of whether someone unfamiliar with anime will enjoy a given show. The episodic structure is also tricky, since it's generally the structure for gag anime and Cowboy Bebop used it in part just because it ran half of its episodes on cable TV and released the rest straight to home media. There are serious shows that focus on one- or two-episode plots, but generally as part of a larger story with a definite end, because that's really why most people watch anime, to get away from the episodic format of most Western television (although Western television is also headed away from that, too, thanks to the rise of Netflix and the HBO/AMC-style serial drama).

 

If I were to recommend mostly episodic (but serious) anime that aren't slaves to their own mythology, I'd recommend Mushishi (of course), Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (cyberpunk police procedural, rather than the philosophical noodling of the movies), Samurai Champloo and Space Dandy (subsequent shows directed by Shinichiro Watanabe, although not as good as Bebop in my opinion), and... I'll have to think of some others. I want to recommend something like Planetes, a hard sci-fi anime about near-future spaceflight, but it definitely qualifies more as "serial" despite having a highly episodic beginning. I'll get back to you, really.

 

Also, to echo Twig a bit, what anime are you thinking of when you say "mythology magic chosen one power gemstone chosen one magic BS" and "mythic fantasy chosen one power gemstone magic dumb humor magic"? Do you mean you don't like the Hero's Journey, "chosen one" plotlines, or fantasy elements in general? Knowing what you've tried and not liked would be another good data point in all of this.

[Codicier]

So, I have long held the assumption that Cowboy Bebop is the anime for people (like myself) who "don't like anime". Which is to say, it's very inspired by western culture (jazz, westerns, noir) and it's mainly episodic, not serially driven the way most animes are. Also it lacks most "mythic, fantasy, chosen one, power gemstone magic dumb humor magic" kind of mythology that turns me off most anime. It's more palatable to mainstream audiences than most anime, because it's much more familiar.

 

But I've often wondered: how is Cowboy Bebop received among people who like anime? Is it considered "the best anime ever" or "pretty good" or "overrated" or what? 

 

Also, is there any anime that captures the feeling Cowboy Bebop did? I am a massive fan of the anime aesthetic but have been burned too many times by stories that fly up their own butt with mythology magic chosen one power gemstone chosen one magic BS. Any suggestions of anime that captures that Cowboy Bebop feeling?

 

I was also super into Blue Gender until they got off Earth and every became "chosen one power magic power hero's journey Magic" BS.

 

Also, I realize I am being a dick and generalizing an entire culture of fiction in an unfavorable way. It's not how I mean to come across, it's just what it feels like to me, as a person who generally doesn't understand anime but is really into Cowboy Bebop.

 

It generally get labelled "timeless classic" but also it's revered in the same way a bands debut album might do if its also considered their definitive work. 

 

Maybe take a look at Michiko to Hatchin as a kinda inferior but still enjoyable modern equivalent?

[Twig]

Maybe take a look at Michiko to Hatchin as a kinda inferior but still enjoyable modern equivalent?

I was gonna suggest this actually, it definitely evoked a lot of the feelings I got from Cowboy Bebop. I guess it's inferior in some ways but it's also good for some different reasons. I really liked it a lot.

 

I'm not sure I'd recommend Trigun, though. I feel like it'd fall into the magical gemstone power chosen one BS category???

[Gormongous]

I'm not sure I'd recommend Trigun, though. I feel like it'd fall into the magical gemstone power chosen one BS category???

 

I mean, it might be good to wait for Patrick to clarify there. If he's saying that any show featuring any kind of exceptionally powerful being is right out, then my list is going to look very different.

 

Also, I find Michiko to Hatchin so uneven and aimless that I can't really recommend it to anyone, but it's cool that other people had a more positive reaction to it.

[BobbyBesar]

Screw it, let's all tell him to watch Azumanga Daioh.

[Twig]

Its aimlessness is why it felt so much like Cowboy Bebop to me, hah.

[Gormongous]

Its aimlessness is why it felt so much like Cowboy Bebop to me, hah.

 

I guess I mean more the show's aimlessness than the characters. Cowboy Bebop's characters were certainly aimless, but the show itself had a sense of direction. Whatever the characters did or didn't do, they all had pasts waiting for them (or coming for them) and that gave the show something that Michiko to Hatchin lacks, despite it explicitly being about its characters running from something. I distinctly remember a dry spell in the teens that made me seriously question if the show had the gas to make it twenty-two episodes.

[Codicier]

I mean, it might be good to wait for Patrick to clarify there. If he's saying that any show featuring any kind of exceptionally powerful being is right out, then my list is going to look very different.

 

Also, I find Michiko to Hatchin so uneven and aimless that I can't really recommend it to anyone, but it's cool that other people had a more positive reaction to it.

I agree it's uneven I just think it's best bits are worth it, and I never found it dull.

Otherwise Tekkonkinkreet? Maybe?

If he want non fantasty

Ping Pong and Kids on A Slope are both excellent combinations of music, charcter, and animation if he's ok with them siting squarely within their particular genres (sports, & high school drama)

[Twig]

I don't know if I agree that Cowboy Bebop as a show really has a strong sense of direction, either, barring the few episodes that actually delved into character background. Even the introduction of Vicious isn't really all that... big? To start? I dunno. I always felt it was pretty haphazard storytelling, and that's a big reason why I like it so much. It's a sort of meandering direction, is the word I think I usually use. You know it's going somewhere, but until you get there it's not really clear. Michiko to Hatchin felt similar.

[N1njaSquirrel]

We've been talking about FLCL. Do not watch that. It's very well regarded, but it's pretty impenetrable to a newcomer.

 

FLCL was my second anime I ever watched. It was amazing, because it was completely mind-bending, and amazed me to the creativity of it all. Now I've come back to it numerous times, and every time I understand something new or get some subplot that's subtly layered into this 6 episode tour-de-force. I fucking love FLCL.

 

I feel Bacanno! Hits the feeling of Cowboy Bebop quite well, if that hasn't been brought up yet (I've yet to read all the posts).

 

Also maybe Tiger and Bunny? I really liked that show, and sometimes I completely forget that it was a thing that was good.