Forum

dirkusbirkus wrote:

Hows about addressing the 'Why?' aspect of the OP? Garnish us with opinions of the shows you're watching. We crave your opinions. We need your opinions Wink

I will do so AFTER i eat. Wink

another: I'm really digging it. I'm getting a "final destination-ish feeling from it. I have high hopes for this show & I don't mind the slow pace.

phi brain: It's freaking ridiculous. a show about solving puzzles, KILLER puzzles no less. put me down for that. I like it since its a change of pace (at least i think so) & im looking forward to the 2nd season.

bakuman s2: so far its been an awesome season, miura not withstanding. I'm really looking forward to see what season 3 has in store for ashirogi. OH & nizuma is freaking hilarious as usual.

ano natsu de matteru: nothing new under the sun here. another boy meets girl and girl's an alien. I really want to know what that green drink that lemon hands out to everyone is. ill keep watching it though, it's keeping me interested.

daily lives of high school boys: i love comedy, this show's got it. even if you see the punchline coming from a mile away.

mouretsu pirates: i haven't watched past episode 4 i think. i think im spreading myself too thin. Will come back with a better "opinion".

rinne no lagrange: the robot designs are kind of bland to me. the production quality is awesome & the main character's freaking funny! lan is growing on me. Very Happy

nisemonogatari: sometimes a little hard to follow with those weird cut screens in between the animation. I felt a little lost at first since It's been a while since I watched the first season.

mirai nikki: twisted & suspenseful enough to keep me entertained on a weekly basis. gasai is BEYOND bat-shit crazy. yukki is a little annoying at times but we'll see how the season ends.

To aru Majutsu No Index: another series with characters that have magic. alright. im not getting my hopes up.

black rock shooter: i've been looking forward to this since the OVA. Im not going to lie, without the action scenes the show can drag at times but im hoping it picks up as the show goes on.

kill me baby: its silly! plain and simple. its a little laborious to watch at times so i keep it to one episode a day. i like the interactions between all three characters. ESPECIALLY the one that's always going on & on with her "ninja" techniques.

bemused Bohemian wrote:

Currently viewing Night Raid 1931 on Netflix. It's pleasant, mildly entertaining; sort of reminds me of an adventure story written for Boy's Life with an Eastern slant. Reason for warching: good question, I'm wondering that myself.

I was drawn in in the beginning but as the series went on watching the show felt more like a chore.

Gyo spoiler[Attack of the murder zombie fishes from the outer sp... pardon bottom of the sea].

Meh, animation certainly isn't the best medium for horror, unless you mean stylised ghost stories like Ayakashi or Mononoke. Gyo- cliché by cliché even for person not familiar with horrors. I usually avoid that genre- no matter in books or films- because after that I must spend whole night with all lights on. After Gyo I went sleep after eating delicious baked trout for a dinner. (If it were to disgust me- OK, no fictional stories can do that)

Books scare us with our own imaginations, films with characters we can identify with. Gyo failed on this two fields- characters are unsympathetic, and 3D fishes were terrible- they looked so different from the rest of the animation that I couldn't help thinking about characters as actors playing in bluebox, just pretending they are there, before special effects were added.

In both anime and manga I don't get circus motif. In anime I don't like ending, but I liked change of the Kaori's character. Having two people carrying for each other make reaching hands scenes more touching and believable. I really wanted them to be together, while in manga I just felt sorry for Tadashi.

Maybe worth watching but not for me.

I'm really rewatching MI and watching Sugar Sugar Rune, but I've started peeping at my new Cat's Eye. Very fine.

As some may know, I have a love of the phenomenon of randomly chosen English text used as a graphic element in anime, and the first Cat's Eye opening has very fine examples. The text all seems to be taken from a piece of writing about the American Shaker furniture industry, and contains gems like, "All commercial Shaker chairs came in eight standard sizes, numbered 0 to 7, in order of increasing size. These size numbers, pressed into the back of the top slat, are still visible on these chairs today..."

Picture that interspersed with sexy girls in leotards.

Just watched Macross Plus OVA's; great story, great art, but I gotta say that the dubbing at some moments was laughably bad Sad

Other than that, It was great.

ALSO Just got done watching summer wars, and I could tell that mad house was at least part of the movie. The animations were amazing, and the story itself was sooooooo VIVID, and just down right refreshing! I might have to put this right in line with redline :3

Finished Occult Academy and liked it despite its monster of the week approach. The first episode was really good, and the last few eps were also good, but most of the middle struggled to maintain my interest. And wow, the heroine Maya has major anger management problems Anime hyper

Poor Bunmei, he really gets beaten up by her. He really should have appeared in the Gia's List a while ago about the Most Abused Male Protagonists. But it was a fun watch, I'm a sucker for the time-travel theme.

And now for the first time ever I'm going to start following currently airing shows! =D There are quite a few I want to follow, the main two being Natsume Yujin-cho Shi and Another, but I'm also interested in Bodacious Space Pirates, Familiar of Zero F, and Nisemonogatari. I hope that's not putting too much on my plate. I've really been looking forward to more Natsume, so that's what I'll tackle first.

Edit: Just finished watching ep 6 of Natsume Yujin-cho Shi and wow it's hilarious Anime hyper

. I love this show.

The Story of Saiunkoku I have had this set of 39 episodes, for awhile and finally got around to cracking the seal and watching.
Overall it is s delightful story filled with delightful characters.
While watching, most viewers can guess what is going to happen, and how the latest problem will be resolved, but the heroine is so likable that I did not mind as I consumed the 39 episodes at the rate of 3 to 4 a day.
If the 2nd season is released I could watch it, though I am sure Shuurei's pluckiness will win the day against any obstacles. If no more makes it way over here, that is fine as well.

Just checking on Amazon, is the complete collection really worth that much? I am glad I picked up most of the Geneon sets when distribution switched to Funimation, even if it has taken me 3 years to get around to watching them.

@ Gewürtztraminer - I also am watching The Story of Saiunkoku, well rewatching it anyway. There is not one main character that I do not like, even Ryuren (sp?) Ran has his moments which are endearing to me. It's a nicely paced, fluid show. A great wind down to a hectic day. Wink

I am trudging thru Princess Tutu - I can't seem to put the disc back into my player. For some reason, it's not holding my attention. But I have yet to give up on any show; I must see this through to the end!

Well, I've seen almost all of Hakugei: The Legend of Moby Dick, which I got for dirt cheap from DD's way back when Black Friday sale. Well it starts off strong enough with establishing a crew of misfits like many sci-fi series with crews (Captain Tylor, Outlaw Star, Bebop, etc) but then about 11 eps in, they make planetfall and the story wants to turn serious, but the crew decides they want to stand in the background and insert annoying and pointless humor at every opportunity, it's quite literally ruining the damn show. I'll probably be selling this once I'm done, if anyone wants it for cheap or to trade for it, message me.

So then I took a break (to house/cat sit for my sister, which made it easy to bring just a few things of anime) and one of them was Tekkaman Blade. Now, I'd made an attempt at this series before via Teknoman, which is somehow 6 episodes shorter then Tekkaman Blade. But I was put off by things like shouting puns during serious combat sequences and extreme Americanization (which I don't have a problem with by default, I freakin' loved Robotech, I actually prefer Robotech: New Generation over Genesis Climber Mospeada), including changing the gay guy into a woman (which I honestly didn't detect in Teknoman on the basis that Levin is the girliest looking character there and the only one wearing lipstick, but I guess it's better then cutting his entire character). But yeah, while Teknoman made it hard to look past the dialogue issues to the meaty story, I'm having no such problems with Tekkaman Blade, I watched the first 6 episodes and loved every minute of it. And oh man, you just know Teknoman replaced the soundtrack, I wouldn't have just forgotten a sweeping epic orchestral score like Tekkaman's easily (and unlike music changes for Southern Cross to Masters, it wasn't for the best at all, it wasn't even neutral, they changed one of the better soundtracks I've heard in a while to junk), I'm absolutely in love with the soundtrack here in case you didn't get the idea. So yeah, it was a bit of a risk to jump in and get the bundle for $29 off TRSI when I had some problems with Teknoman, granted they were the types of problems that I thought would be fixed by not messing with the original, and it seems I might be right here, why oh why did I only bring one set with me for a 3 day house sitting adventure?
Oh, except for the fact that the series is supposed to take place in Australia, but almost every single word of English on screen is Engrish, that kinda breaks the serious (Air Rock anyone?), just occasionally, just breaks it for a moment for me. I'm wondering if anyone has brought a single one of those Bargain Bundles since I did in January, the numbers seem exactly the same as when I bought mine, why, WHY?

Started in on Broken Blade. It's been sitting on the pile for a bit and I figured it was time. I'm digging it so far.

Rosario+Vampire Capu 2: reason: cause I really liked the first seasoning, and this looks even more fun!

Allison & Lillia Generation 2 (borrowed from library): reason: saw the first part, so I got the second as soon as I saw it (this was bought due to my suggestion, since they had the first part).

Cyberteam in Akihabara: via Netflix DVD: reason: looked interesting enough to check out. Might increase the DVD count soon, since cable is going away in April.

Kaze no Stigma: reason: looked cool from the one episode I watched on Netflix.

The Secret World of Arrietty: rrason: its a Studio Ghibli film, what other reason do you need to see it on the big screen?!

Since seeing The Secret World of Arrietty, I've decided I must catch up with my Studio Ghibli viewing. And with that, I've just finished watching Kiki's Delivery Service. It's a very sweet story. I think the best part is Kiki's struggle to fly her broom properly. I'd start feeling apprehensive every time she went for the thing. The whole spoiler[losing her magic] part felt kinda forced. Then after she comes to terms with the situation, Kiki spoiler[goes off with the artist chick for some kind of spirit quest. She comes back and there's a disaster unfolding. Suddenly she re-discovers her magic and saves the day]. Easy, cheesy. But, it is a children's story after all. I'm sure if I saw it when I was younger that plot twist would go over better. I think this one is a good Ghibli to show to my ten year old nieces. Gotta get 'em hooked while they're young.

I've been watching Black Rock Shooter week-to-week. This franchise has never really made sense to me, but that somehow makes it more intriguing. I've been savoring some of the schoolgirl melodrama and there is something moodily alluring about the apparent relationship between events in the normal world and the 'other' world. I'm not quite satisfied with it. Brevity is an admirable trait, but I think with so few episodes to use, it's all a bit pressed together, which sometimes makes emotional turns seem unearned or abrupt. I'm also ambivalent on the 'other' world scenes. The designs and atmosphere are compellingly strange, but it often seems inadequately animated. The action can be very choppy; the first few times I saw any of it, I looked to see if the stream needed buffering.

I also watched the eight available episodes of Lagrange -The Flower of Rin-ne. I'll just outsource commentary on that to me from the past (the only way we can compete with Chinese labor costs!) It's a rather technically impressive series with striking visuals for its ending and closing sequences, but I don't find the characters very engaging and I'm just not particularly attracted to robot series. I might watch more just because of cruel infection of unhealthful curiosity.

I've been watching Bodacious Space Pirates too and really enjoying it, but I've ineptly spewed organized sequences of morphemes about that in many elsewheres.

More conventionally, this week I watched two things that involved a comfortable chair and a television rather than an uncomfortable chair and a computer screen.

The first was Lupin III: The Secret of Mamo, which I watched in its English dub on Hulu. I was pleased to find that it was the fourth English dub of that film, which was produced by Geneon and thus has the same principle cast as the Lupin III television series that was shown, to my considerable pleasures, on Adult Swim when I still had some affection for that block. I really like that cast, especially Richard Epcar, who I thought made an impeccable Jigen. I thought that Jake Martin sounded slightly off as Inspector Zenigata, but he wasn't bad and all else was right with the world.

It fulfilled exactly the desire I have for something with Lupin III in its title: it was unpretentious, satisfying entertainment. I don't think that it was really extraordinary, except perhaps for when it danced into the supernatural, but it supplied characters who were fun to watch moving through a fairly engaging plot at a good clip. The story begins with what seems like a familiar caper premise, but grows stranger, more twisted and even outright crazy until spoiler[a giant brain in a glass dome is launched into the sun on a rocket]. It's a more bizarre and conceptually abstract kind of story than I would have expected from a Lupin III story, but , but the film keeps to a familiar tone of light adventure that makes it work. What drug it down, I think, was a degree of narrative carelessness. The very first scene is used to introduce a plot point that is delivered with ample emphasis, but ultimately proves mostly just a curiosity. It also rather cavalierly dispenses with one character two thirds of the way through for what I thought was rather obvious narrative convenience and later summons another back abruptly at the end for just some hijinks. They were very appropriate to the franchise, mind you, but there's a lack of building-up and follow through to some of the things that happen.

It also doesn't quite have the budget for some of its ambitions. One rather conceptually exciting chase scene looks very choppy at times and there are occasional lapses in animation quality. It actually looks just slightly better than the television series, which I thought was tolerably animated for its medium, but for a film its slightly disappointing, but not tot he extent that it impairs enjoyment of the work. The flair and quality of the artwork often compensates for the inadequacies of the animation; many of the backgrounds are quite good-looking and some are rather interesting. The character designs are mostly in line with the series, which is satisfactory in my book, and the villain has a fittingly strange, ugly design.

The only design that I fault is Fujiko, who looks distressingly thin. This isn't some moan over her not being as pleasingly voluptuous as in other places, but against her appear to be made of sticks; almost every part of her looks perilously narrow and liable to crack. This applies to her characterization too; she seemed less capable and confident than I expected her to be. The Secret of Mamo puts considerable emphasis upon the relationship between Lupin and Fujiko and puts Lupin very much in the lead, which is appropriate being as its his damned show, but at what I thought was needless cost to Fujiko. The film also tries to pump more from tensions among Lupin, Jigen and Goemon than it can credible get from them, then goes imprudently back to that well again later on.

It was nonetheless a very fitting way to brutally rend the lift from some hours of an afternoon.

I also just watched the old Appleseed OVA a few hours ago. That was far less satisfying. I knew that it wasn't really an adaptation of the manga, but I didn't quite understand just how much less than that it was. Appleseed wasn't offensively bad, just very unimpressive and drug even further down by some dumb things.

Despite its title, it doesn't have all that much to do with the Appleseed manga by Masamune Shirow. It uses many of the same characters, some designs, some ideas and even some pieces of story, but cobbles it together into a pretty unremarkable work. Indeed, for the most part, I didn't particularly care about it. It has very little personality in style or characters. Masamune Shirow is not a great character writer, but the Deunan Knute and Briareos of the manga were more entertaining characters than Dunan Nat and Bularios. His stories also have a strange tone and style that can be very confounding, but at least is interesting. Well, maybe delightfully bewildering.

In this OVA, there just isn't much thought. Masamune Shirow could be crazy for all I know, but it's a kind of crazy that can be fun to play along with. Whoever made this elected to flense the franchise of most intellectual enterprise in favor of a conventional action film style and some moral banalities about the true nature of man that give the antagonist a rational for his actions, but aren't talked about or resolved in any thoughtful or conclusive way. There's another antagonist, but he's just a plot device, despite appearing superficially interesting at first, that the OVA never really gives much in the way of motivation or character.

There are also at least two very stupid things that happen to keep the story going. One is just a dumb, standard-issue dramatic hiccup that implies some dramatic tension, but doesn't follow up on it. The second involves a character, who gets barely any development through the OVA, just being very dumb. There's also something of a 'Chekhov's Gun' bit that seems to be foreshadowing something that doesn't really happen, at least not in a way that I gave a damn about.

It looks pretty good, but just late-eighties OVA par-for-the-course. The action sequences are pretty dull, despite some theoretically cool stuff happening.

I watched it in the English dub because... f**k it, why not? It was made by Manga Video in the nineties, so it's not very well acted and has been 'fifteened' with the addition of some naughty word saying. It seems a waste; it's a very tame OVA otherwise. There's no nudity, despite the source material infamously including a weird combination of naked bathing scene with a philosophical discussion, and no gore, despite one of the antagonists having a big cyborg claw that he squeezes people's heads with.

It's pretty lame.

Finally got around to watching Air the movie. It had much tighter and focused storytelling than the tv series, which I thought was the tv series' biggest weakness. The movie however had much less of an effect on me than the series. I think it was a combination of knowing what would happen from watching the series, and the reduced time for development between Misuzu, Yukito and Haruko. The end of the series was sad, but when I watched spoiler[Yukito/Sora flying away promising not to give up his journey] it gave me the feeling that not all was lost, and maybe they'd meet again someday. In the ending to the movie spoiler[Yukito leaves and it gives me the feeling that all that was for nothing.] Also, the scene on the beach where spoiler[Misuzu is using the last of her strength to walk to Haruko was less heart-rending in the movie than in the series. Probably because the scenes of Haruko agonizing over whether to truly commit to being Misuzu's mother were reduced, so the ending moment between them carried less weight.]

I really like how the movie expanded on the story between spoiler[Kanna and Ryuya though.] And keeping the same ending song for the movie was a good move; I absolutely love that song. Overall, I still prefer the series but the movie was good.

@Botan24
I agree that the climax of Kiki is contrived, but that doesn't spoil the narrative for me at all. We have seen Kiki coming to find her way and building up her community in her new home, so the happy ending doesn't seem unearned to me --- just a bit arbitrarily precipitated!

I once read somewhere someone opining that Kiki would have made a great TV series, and that if Miyazaki had returned to TV to make it, it could have been his best thing. And I think I agree with that. Kiki needed to be longer to convey the development of the character, and her world is definitely delightful enough to have sustained a series. Add to that the fact that (for my money) Kiki was Miyazaki's last really great film, and I shed a tear for an opportunity missed.

Forum - View topic
What are you watching right now? Why? (please read 1st post)

This Week in Anime - How The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio Captures the Reality of Gig Work

Shaman King Flowers Anime Series Review

Dahlia in Bloom Staff, Ekachi Epilka Studio Respond to Report Claiming N. Korean Animators Worked on Anime

The Grimm Variations Anime Series Review

Anime to Watch if You Liked Shogun

The Quintessential Quintuplets Manga Gets New Honeymoon Anime

BLUELOCK THE MOVIE -EPISODE NAGI- Anime Film Review

Interview: Author Akihiro Nishino on Bottle George, His New Stop-Motion Animated Film

The Spring 2024 Light Novel Guide

	Anime News Network Forum Index -> General -> Anime	All times are GMT - 5 Hours Goto page Previous Next
Page 659 of 1062

Forum - View topicWhat are you watching right now? Why? (please read 1st post)

Forum

Forum - View topic
What are you watching right now? Why? (please read 1st post)