anime

[syntheticgerbil]

Oh shit, new Studio 4C film upcoming:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=47&v=WngjMUpBalQ

I know nothing about the original comic it's based on, the art for that is often ugly, but the redesigns for the movie look great. Hope it's good. Hope it gets a U.S. release.

[Twig]

oh boooooooooo

 

I read that an anime this season was "directed by Takeo Takahashi, best known for his work on other popular anime series such as Spice and Wolf and Maoyu", both anime that I think are quite good (with Spice and Wolf being particularly excellent).

 

But then I looked at the promotional image and those outfits.

 

 

I'll probably still watch it. ):

[Gormongous]

Last night, I finally sat down and watched The Sky Crawlers, one of the first anime I downloaded to my external hard drive when I first bought it in 2008.

 

As a follow-up, I also finally sat down and watched Steamboy, another of the first anime I downloaded. Man, what a pile of garbage! A lot of bad stuff came out of the furor over Spirited Away in 2003, but Steamboy is the biggest mess of sub-Miyazaki influences that I think I've ever seen. It has this incredibly detailed setting of the 1866 Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London, but then it throws all of that away in this ridiculous steampunk "science is bad unless used for good" nonsense. Major failures include:

• A shrill and unsympathetic boy for a protagonist, named James Ray Steam of all things, who violently beats one of his bullies early in the movie but later risks his life defending absolutist pacifism.
• A shameless Asuka expy who mostly just calls the protagonist stupid for no good reason and occasionally needs saving. Her name is, of course, Scarlett O'Hara-St. Jones, because Steamboy cares deeply about historical accuracy except when naming characters and designing machines.
• Three scientists, the protagonist's father, his grandfather, and his grandfather's rival, who substitute for each other in turn to form some sort of antagonistic force in the movie. Basically, each of them wants to use science to help the people, the nation, or the world. These are presented as though they are in opposition. The movie is mostly uninterested in giving us the materials to decide for ourselves which is right.
• Constant, boring, meaningless action in which the protagonist was never in plausible danger, further compounded by flat yet somehow still overdesigned art.
• The best way for a multinational arms corporation to sell its merchandise is obviously to declare war on a country during its world expo as a "demonstration." This falls apart almost immediately and with absolutely no self-awareness whatsoever.
• Super-cooled and super-compressed steam as a MacGuffin that basically is exactly as powerful as the script needs it to be to impress the audience.
• A giant walking city as a final "boss" that flies around using steam jets and destroys much of London. It's revealed that the major dispute between the protagonist's father and grandfather was whether to make it a superweapon or an amusement park.

Really, when you're making a fantastical movie about unrestrained technological growth threatening to cause untold human casualties and destruction, you probably shouldn't set it in real history, half a century before the Great War actually did use technology to kill hundreds of thousands, especially if the protagonist's main argument is that destroying a certain technology will somehow avert such a disaster. Man, I really did lose two hours of my life to such trash...

[Twig]

how does one piece have more episodes of anime (~900) than it has chapters of manga (~800) wtf

 

not to mention the movies

 

Also apparently Crunchyroll is getting the live-action version of Death Note, which I'm somewhat curious about, because live-action Japanese stuff is always really weird to me. Dunno if I have it in me to go through the whole story again, though.

[Bolegium]

I'm slowly making my way through Steins;Gate, it's not really holding my interest at the moment and I don't understand why it's so highly praised, I think i'm around 5 episodes in, it's been a fortnight since I last watched any. Not to put anyone on the spot, but a Twig stamp of approval might push me into finishing it if you've seen it? ^ω^

(((sorry to Zeus and everyone else saying how great the show is, I need the opinion of someone who hates anime) sorry Twig) ...I don't know what i'm even saying).

 

 

Gormongous just made me realise I don't think I ever finished watching The Sky Crawlers. Unless it was so slow and boring that I've actually forgotten ALL of the movie. I think every time I started watching the movie I ended up stopping and doing something else which is a shame.

[Twig]

Hahaha what how do I have a reputation for hating anime at all...

 

I've never seen Steins;Gate.

[Bolegium]

So what you're saying is that you've never seen it cos it's terrible right?

msg recieved loud and clear.

 

(i dunno, i guess i feel like you're more likely to outright call something crap than be wishy washy about it if you dont like it? not specifically anime)

[Twig]

That's probably true! Although I think significantly less so with anime.

[Coods]

For what it's worth, I didn't really like Steins;Gate (which is as close to hating as I can get  ), and it's still pretty worth watching.

[Twig]

Also for what it's worth, I've historically been disinterested in it in part because of its origin as a visual novel.

 

Not that that should mean much because I really enjoyed Rage of Bahamut, an anime based on a free to play card game...

[WickedCestus]

Steins;Gate definitely starts slow, and then ramps up in the back half. As far as I remember, the first 5-6 episodes are just introducing the characters and setting up the main ideas of the plot. After that, things actually start happening and I found it pretty exciting. 

[Zeusthecat]

Yeah, Steins;Gate didn't do much for me until around episode 12 or so. Then it proceeded to become possibly my favorite anime. With the caveat that I've still only seen less than 20 anime.

I've watched the whole thing about 4 times now. Just don't watch in English, it's terrible.

[BadHat]

Yeah, what everyone else said about Steins semicolon Gate.

 

Also apparently Crunchyroll is getting the live-action version of Death Note, which I'm somewhat curious about, because live-action Japanese stuff is always really weird to me. Dunno if I have it in me to go through the whole story again, though.

 

I watched the first movie and thought it was very bad. It was definitely weird though, in that jarring real-people-trying-to-be-all-anime kind of way!

[Coods]

Yeah, Steins;Gate didn't do much for me until around episode 12 or so. Then it proceeded to become possibly my favorite anime. With the caveat that I've still only seen less than 20 anime.

I've watched the whole thing about 4 times now. Just don't watch in English, it's terrible.

 

I unfortunately watched Steins;Gate and Madoka Magica back to back, and I think that might have made the whole time traveling stuff less impressive to me for both shows.

[syntheticgerbil]

• A giant walking city as a final "boss" that flies around using steam jets and destroys much of London. It's revealed that the major dispute between the protagonist's father and grandfather was whether to make it a superweapon or an amusement park.

Haha, that's probably my favorite part in the whole movie.

 

Other than being very pretty in many parts, it's not very endearing and doesn't make a lot of sense. I could not care about Scarlet after she hit her dog. I am unsure if that was a hilarious joke only funny to Japanese sensibilities or what, but it was played off as a slapstick scene ender.

[Twig]

I watched the, uh, first episode of Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE! last night.

 

Holy shit I laughed a lot.

 

It's a parody of the magical girl genre with magical boys instead. I dunno if it'll keep up the momentum of the first episode, but that was beautiful.

[Reyturner]

Listening to the There's No Such Thing as a Fish podcast, they mention the fact that "power poses" (ie: standing like Superman) and posture in general boost confidence and projects an air of authority and strength that feeds back into itself. 

 

This reenforces my belief that JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is, indeed, a documentary.

[Twig]

I have now watched every Dragon Ball Z movie (barring the very newest one, Fukkatsu no F/Revival of F/Resurrection of F), as well as all the OVAs.

 

I DO NOT RECOMMEND EVER DOING THIS

 

There were a few movies that were fun, I'll admit, but by and large it's really bad. The one shining quality was that the people making these movies must've had like a long-running joke to stick in these things: Piccolo coming out of nowhere to save Gohan from getting beaten down, Krillin getting knocked away and saying something along the lines of "Why is it always me?!", and Vegeta coming out of nowhere to save Goku before muttering "I didn't do this to save YOU!" and/or "If anyone's going to kill Kakarott, it's going to be ME!"

 

Also my friend says, although I didn't catch it myself, that there was a recurring stock "what is that crazy thing flying through the sky" lady wearing sunglasses in at least two of the movies.

 

---

 

In other news, I finished Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!, and here's what I wrote on my big ol' anime spreadsheet as far as impressions go: "at first a ridiculous parody of the magical girl genre, humorous and pandering to the male-love gaze (??), turned into a pretty good, if still silly, story of friendship and, well, LOVE". I think that sums up my feelings pretty well. 

 

---

 

Last season ended.

 

Punch Line was I don't know. Middling? More story than I expected. Less humor than I expected. Fanservice throughout, although, I dunno, it didn't feel pandering? Even though it obviously was. Not worth watching, IMO. Maybe someone can convince me to hate it. (Or love it???)

 

Sound! Euphonium was great. Oh man oh geez. I will fight you, NS! I got right emotional for that last episode! (Although, admittedly, although I liked the character arcs, it's mostly because of the concert band angle.) Kumiko is me, except she realized she loved playing her instrument far before I did, and I realized far too late. ):

 

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders we already talked about on the podcast we do, but it was good. Good ending. Hope they keep doing it.

 

---

 

New season has started.

 

Rokka is fucking beautiful. Still skeptical of the shitty sexy costumes on all the ladies, but goddamn if that wasn't an amazing first episode. It's clearly drawing from Aztec and other cultures in that region/time as far as aesthetics go.

 

Durarara continues to follow way too many characters in exactly the right way. I'm into it.

 

GATE was dumb, I watched it on a whim. But I think I'll keep watching it. It'll be my fallback shitty anime for the season. You always gotta have one, right?

 

Dragon Ball Super!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !

[BobbyBesar]

I have now watched every Dragon Ball Z movie (barring the very newest one, Fukkatsu no F/Revival of F/Resurrection of F), as well as all the OVAs.

 

Does it include Dragonball: Evolution?

[Twig]

Okay except that one I'm not watching that one.

[JonCole]

Cowboy Bebop Blu-Ray is $24 on Amazon (it's backordered, check out the right bar for it) - http://www.amazon.com/Cowboy-Bebop-The-Complete-Series-Blu-ray/dp/B00NP06DJE/

 

I will now finally watch this highly acclaimed series!

[Coods]

Okay except that one I'm not watching that one.

 

It was pretty bad.

[Twig]

Also it's technically not a Dragon Ball Z movie, so my original claim that I've watched every DBZ movie except the latest one was actually correct!

 

Also maybe not even a Dragon Ball movie, since it's two words and that movie has it as one. Tsk tsk tsk.

[BobbyBesar]

Sure, Justify it however you want. But deep down, you know it's going to be nagging at you. Sitting in the back of your mind. This knowledge that your sense of completion, of conquest, is false. Slowly driving you mad. A deep, disquieting feeling that you have something left undone. No matter the successes in your life, the joys you experience, you will always feel that gnawing emptiness inside you.

 

You'll see something out of the corner of your eye, but when turn your head, it won't be there. On your deathbed, you'll realize that it was Chow Yun Fat as Master Roshi, and with your last, dying breath, you will scream.

[Twig]

Nah!