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What are you watching right now? Why? (please read 1st post)


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Ignatz





PostPosted: Fri Dec 20, 2013 3:10 am Reply with quote
Knoepfchen wrote:
It seems Masashi Ishihama does not have that many director's credits yet. Masashi Sogo wrote for Gantz, Full Metal Panic, and Bleach before, which is rather intresting to see, I think.

I think the main reason why this anime is so good is because of Yusuke Kishi who wrote the novel this anime is based on. I've seen many people praising the book as a masterpiece.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15434
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Fri Dec 20, 2013 7:52 am Reply with quote
So I just watched Wolf Children, I got it on DVD and decided to watch the English track. I am a big fan of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars, so I had expectations for this. And I did enjoy it.

As a rule watching young kids grow tends to be something I really enjoy, and indeed it was here. Yuki especially was a joy to watch as she was so hyperactive I found myself just smiling at her antics, and it was a hilarious prospect spoiler[as we saw her decide to change and become more girly]. Ame also had some adorable moments, well spoiler[until become the whole distant type that some swoon for]. And of course have a huge respect for Hana who would beg respect if a real person did half of what she did.

I laughed during many of the parts, and also got very close to crying at some others, the only reason I did not as I was trying to act tough. And the artwork was also great, a lot of character, and I remember an interestingly repeated theme of flowers, snow, and then rain, which I think was following the character names. Overall I will rate the series as Excellent, it was a delightful watch, and I recommend it. Hosoda is definitely my preferred watch over Ghibli.
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danilo07



Joined: 25 Dec 2011
Posts: 1580
PostPosted: Fri Dec 20, 2013 8:17 am Reply with quote
Ignatz wrote:
Knoepfchen wrote:
It seems Masashi Ishihama does not have that many director's credits yet. Masashi Sogo wrote for Gantz, Full Metal Panic, and Bleach before, which is rather intresting to see, I think.

I think the main reason why this anime is so good is because of Yusuke Kishi who wrote the novel this anime is based on. I've seen many people praising the book as a masterpiece.

I dont disagree that the novel was major reason why FtNW was good,but it is also important to remember that the series was beautifully shot(even when it was running short on budget),used those color filters very effectively and for most of time used visual language to communicate the story ,without resorting to dialogue(which is very rare for anime that are adaptations of novels).
Masashi Ishihama is also an experienced and excellent animator.
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kyocrisis



Joined: 22 Nov 2013
Posts: 6
PostPosted: Fri Dec 20, 2013 9:58 pm Reply with quote
Watching:
Kyoukai no Kanata- Just a few episodes left so no spoilers please! This is one of my favorite anime this season

Arpeggio of Blue Steel- My other favorite. A few more cliches in this one like the obvious harem building, but overall a very solid show

Strike the Blood- Generic but somehow keeping my interest. I think the character interactions are quite good despite the rest of the shows flaws.

Outbreak Company- This one's ok for me. I've heard very good things but I don't think it's that funny, just some parts.

Log Horizon- Slowly watching this show when I have nothing else to watch. It's different enough from the likes of SAO and dot//hack, but different doesn't always mean better.

Golden Time- Like it so far, but it's at the bottom of my list like Log Horizon.

Monogatari Second Season- Just started this up after finishing Nise a few days ago. Brilliant, as expected.
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CrowLia



Joined: 24 Feb 2012
Posts: 5500
Location: Mexico
PostPosted: Sat Dec 21, 2013 1:03 am Reply with quote
I marathones a handful of stuff yesterday so I'm gonna make a rundown of it while the ANNCast player stops being a bitch

I finished the first season of Nurarihyon no Mago. It definitely isn't groundbreaking, but it's insanely fun and just my kind of show with pretty character designs, a wide cast of superpowered heroes and shonen styled passionate battles. I rated it Good, though because I wanted to punch my screen everytime the human characters appeared. I realize the series tries to show the balance between Rikuo's yokai and human sides and lives, but the human characters are so mind-bogglingly BORING, and they serve no purpose other than getting in trouble so that Rikuo in his cool yokai form will save them. The love interest, Kana is particularly obnoxious with her absurd mooning over Rikuo that just conveniently puts her in stupidly dangerous situations (i.e. "I think Rikuo may be with Tsurara/Yuki-Onna so I'll go out in the middle of the night in an abandoned forest all by myself").

Another absolutely annoying character is the leader of Rikuo's yokai research club. There are a number of running gags around him, mostly, that he's the most passionate about yokais but never gets to see them, and that he always loses at yokai-poke (whatever that is) because he always gets Natto-Kozo. I really just wanted him to die, all he does is be a complete idiot and [expletive] scream all the time. Every time he was on scene I wanted to kill bunnies.

But in contrast, everything about Rikuo's yokai life is very cool and exciting, there's a great variety of yokais with different powers and personalities and it's really great seeing the scaredy cat Rikuo from the initial episodes coming to accept and embrace his dual self (as opposed to previously hating the yokai side of his life) and strive to become a proper leader for the clan. I'm looking forward to watching season 2

I watched the King of Thorn movie. It has an amazing start, like, the first 20 minutes are fantastic. And then it just sort of collapses over itself whilst becoming Resident Evil + terrible CGI monsters. It's essentialy a convoluted mess with a plot that's way too complicated for 100 minutes and barely gives you time to process what's going on before dumping another big reveal over your head. The action scenes aren't particularly engaging and the fact that human characters turn into horrible CGI walking blobs in the midst of them doesn't help one bit. There are though, a handful of things this movie does right. The metaphor between the story on screen and the classic Sleeping Beauty narrative has a very neat execution. When it's not using horrible CGI, the movie looks pretty nice and the final plot twist was actually unexpected yet made a lot of sense within the movie itself. It was pretty frustrating that the main conflict (the supposed conspiracy of Venus Gate and the cure for the Medusa illness) was never resolved. Rated it So-so, it wasn't really bad per se, but it was really confusing

I'm also through 15 episodes of Blue Gender. It's [expletive] stupid and I was on the verge of dropping it like six times (although, to its credit, I haven't slept through any episode, as opposed to Ryvius), and I know this will sound idiotic but I just can't get past the "Why are these monsters called BLUE when there's not a [expletive] blue thing about them?". Beyond that, Yuji is a complete idiot, Marlene is just... there and everyone else spoiler[dies in most stupid ways] so who cares. I'd originally thought to drop it by episode 13 if it didn't get better, but I was somehow hooked to know what the people in Second Earth wanted to do with the Sleepers -which they promptly explained in episode 14 (and really, if they just had explained that since the beginning, we would've saved ourselves 5 episodes of Marlene being completely idiotic), which made things just slightly better, at least enough for me to keep watching. I don't really know what to say about the show. It's just really dumb and boring, and I don't give a shit about the characters, but there's something about its sheer stupidity that makes me laugh a lot. Like I don't even know why I'm still watching it, but might as well finish since I've gotten this far
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WhiteHairGirls



Joined: 27 Apr 2011
Posts: 4713
Location: New York City
PostPosted: Sat Dec 21, 2013 1:41 am Reply with quote
CrowLia wrote:


I finished the first season of Nurarihyon no Mago.


I also just finished the first season. I don't understand how Raftina can say Yuki Onna is more like the Orihime of this show than Kana. Yuki Onna was helluva lot more useful than Kana. Yuki Onna saved Rikou and everyone else from death by outsmarting and defeating that shadow guy that blinded everyone. Meanwhile Kana gets kidnapped for no reason. Thank God the only main characters in season 2 are Rikou, Yuki, and Yura.
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CrowLia



Joined: 24 Feb 2012
Posts: 5500
Location: Mexico
PostPosted: Sat Dec 21, 2013 1:55 am Reply with quote
We're definitely on the same page on that one. Yuki Onna was amazing fighting shadow-guy, she literally saved the whole clan. Something that bothers me immensely about Kana is how she gets most idiotically jealous every time she sees Rikuo and Yuki Onna together. I don't know how to explain it, but her reactions every time are so ridiculous and exaggerated it pisses me off. I was rooting for the Mirror Yokai to eat her and be done with it.
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Mr. Oshawott



Joined: 12 Mar 2012
Posts: 6773
PostPosted: Wed Dec 25, 2013 1:18 pm Reply with quote
I just finished watching Love Hina X-mas Special - Silent Eve. Christmas is drawing near, and [nearly] everyone is celebrating that special day, while Keitarō, Mutsumi, and, Naru pass their time by preparing for their preliminary tests. As a result of being overwhelmed by Christmas rumors, Keitarō yells out his confession, which in turn caused to flee. As Christmas nears itself, Keitarō is left wondering if his love for Naru was only "a one-sided expression."

I found this OVA of Love Hina really enjoyable. Keitarō's courageous attempt to reveal Naru how he loves her before midnight was quite a special moment.

My Rating: 4/5 stars.

Merry Christmas! Smile
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Mesonoxian Eve



Joined: 10 Jan 2012
Posts: 1858
PostPosted: Wed Dec 25, 2013 4:24 pm Reply with quote
The holidays. Perfect time for catching up on some series.

First up is Nichijou and all I can say about this is: what in the world did I just watch?

Some of the episode's "gags" really started to get irritating, especially with all the screaming. I didn't mind the constant art style change, but the screaming was beyond annoying.

Helvetica Standard, I suppose. If this should get an R1 release, I'll most likely pick it up despite the screaming. It was a cute show.

Girls und Panzer is, by far, the worst concept of an anime I think I've ever seen. A gaggle, and we're talking literally here, using emotions to win tank battles is enough to induce serious psychosis to anyone who doesn't take this show as nothing short of good old fashioned fun.

If you remove the high expectations, the 12 episodes (and two introduction shows) is enough to pass the time while not feeling bad about it.

The cheery goodness is enough to give one diabetes, because there's no way such emotion would win battles (and is obvious given the tremendous amount of luck the girls have), but it's one of those shows where the underdog is cheered for.

Unfortunately, the computer animation gets to be distracting at times. The high-contrast colors used, especially one the characters, required me to turn down the contrast a bit to prevent eye-strain. The bright colors were used in order to make the show's computer generated artillery blend better.

It's really odd to see such detail thrown onto the tanks but none of the characters went beyond anything a "How to draw manga" book would deliver. Disappointing, but not enough I wouldn't recommend a viewing.

And that's all she wrote.
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Spastic Minnow
Bargain Hunter
Exempt from Grammar Rules


Joined: 02 May 2006
Posts: 4595
Location: Gainesville, FL
PostPosted: Wed Dec 25, 2013 10:03 pm Reply with quote
Some Christmas stay-cation watching...

Oh Edo Rocket

I was looking forward to this one, as it's gotten such a reputation as an under-rated gem. It was Good, it gets kudos for playing around with story telling habits and some artistic originality, but it really wasn't really as good as I expected. The serious bits clashed with the comedy, Akai's character twist was unproportionally severe but it seemed like the story still tried to sympathize with him. Motivations got confused (Sora seemed to constantly forget she was supposed to be capturing the other one) and loyalties were always confusing. But still the core of the story was interesting and the humor often worked tremendously well.
I can cross it off of my "thinking about blind-buying" list though.

Wanting something more predictable and tame I decided to look up a harem comedy I haven't watched yet... I've pretty much exhausted the decently rated ones though. But I hadn't seen Nyan Koi yet.
Also "Good," and nothing too special but harem comedies are my anime comfort food and I could see myself revisiting this one and might search out some of the manga to continue the story. After so much time and what seems to be a tepid reputation I doubt it will be getting any anime sequels, but I'd check one out if it were released.

Thanks to some high year-end praise, I also relented and watched a show I had dropped earlier this year, The Devil is a Part-Timer. I dropped it at the first episode because I just don't like the scenario of a literal genocidal overlord being the show's simple-minded, good-natured, goofball. As I had heard from others this isn't quite the case... but it's still not completely inaccurate. And it's certainly a bit culturally tone-deaf to name the characters "Satan" and "Lucifer" and expect them to be justifiable as a warred upon class of beings who are just defending themselves against humans and "angels" who are proved to be just as bad or worse. If you can treat them as the characters they are instead of the figures they are named for, it does prove to be a fun show with good characters and a plot that progresses well.


With a week and a half still to go on my Christmas stay-cation I decided I should look for something with a little more length so I've started on the Familiar of Zero series. I just recently finished up the first one. The first few episodes were a bit of a chore to get through, as they made sure to introduce everyone in the school, especially Louise, by making them as obnoxious as possible (well, except for normal girl Siesta and Rei-clone Tabitha). I'm glad I stuck with it though. Louise's tsundere behavior evens out a little and they progress the story well. My pet-peeve of generic villainy is definitely present but the motives actually make some sense to me and they never linger too long on the laughing, monologuing, wine-sipping type of characters.


Back a couple weeks ago I also got around to watching something else I meant to mention here. The movie Fuse: Memoirs of a Hunter Girl, streaming freely on Hulu but not otherwise domestically available in the U.S.
Nice art, good characters, a good take/ tie-in on the Hakkenden epic novels (it both features the dogs of the story and the real author of the novels). What I really liked about it was the mild form of moral ambiguity of the story. The girl is an expert hunter but has a tremendous amount of empathy, the monsters aren't really monsters, but they aren't blameless either. It's a hard thing to do. Heck, both Edo Rocket and Devil above try to do this to an extent but struggle to get this across, but this movie does it effortlessly in under two hours.
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WhiteHairGirls



Joined: 27 Apr 2011
Posts: 4713
Location: New York City
PostPosted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 7:40 pm Reply with quote
Well I just watched Madoka Magica the Movie Part III: Rebellion in theaters. It was an amazing experience and it was worthy of getting a Masterpiece rating here. I don't have much to say about the movie, as it would be full of spoilers but it was well worth the wait. Although I would like to point out there was probably more fan service in this movie than in the series + 2 movies combined. Not like that it was a bad thing though.

This is the autographed sign board most of my friends and I got - .
One lucky friend got the Goddess Madoka one Sad.
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Ignatz





PostPosted: Sat Dec 28, 2013 10:14 am Reply with quote
WhiteHairGirls wrote:
Although I would like to point out there was probably more fan service in this movie than in the series + 2 movies combined. Not like that it was a bad thing though.

The series had fan service? Never noticed anything like that. Confused
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Polycell



Joined: 16 Jan 2012
Posts: 4623
PostPosted: Sat Dec 28, 2013 2:46 pm Reply with quote
What (very)little ecchi stuff was in the whole series is very borderline; the only real fanservice in the entire animated part of the franchise is by the other definition(not that I could identify anything in the series that fits that, either).



As for what I'm watching, that would be Heartcatch Precure for the simple reason I managed to kill off Fresh in 11 days, mostly because of the number(and length) of arcs I felt the strong need to binge. I'd forgotten how quickly I could go through these series during the dripfeeding that was waiting for Yes! 5 and then GoGo to be completely subbed.

Well, that and trying to catch up on my Crunchyroll backlog with my new smartphone. Being able to get my anime fix during lunch proved surprisingly helpful today.
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Chagen46



Joined: 27 Jun 2010
Posts: 4377
PostPosted: Mon Dec 30, 2013 12:35 am Reply with quote
Currently watching Boku No Pico right now.

You read the above correctly. It's a great shotacon/otokonoko work and I'm really liking it so far...and no, I'm not at the H as of now so I'm not liking it that way yet.

God dammit why is Pico so cute. He's so frickin' adorable even in the non-H stuff. His voice is so kyaaaaaa~
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EmbraceMe



Joined: 17 Dec 2010
Posts: 2013
Location: Growing old and jaded.
PostPosted: Mon Dec 30, 2013 12:40 am Reply with quote
@Chagen46

Once you get to the H scenes, I expect some great YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO's from you. But yes, Lucifer's pr0nz collection can be quite amusing.
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