Forum - View topicWhat are you watching right now? Why? (please read 1st post)
|
Goto page Previous Next |
| Author | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
|
Napsack
Posts: 31 |
|
||
|
Well you lot aren't much help. Thanks for nothing.
|
|||
|
|||
SecretAgent94
 Posts: 204 |
|
||
|
@ Napsack, that's correct except watch the "Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya" movie last.
|
|||
|
|||
|
simmeh
|
|
||
|
I just blew through the first 64 episodes of Bleach over the past two weeks, and I have to ask: when exactly does the decline in quality start to really become noticeable? I've heard from a lot of people that the show just becomes pretty bad at a certain point, so I'd kind of like to know when a good stopping point is - preferably one that has a some sort of closure. I don't really plan on slogging all the way through to the most current episode, so if there's a good place to just stop watching and feel like I'm not really missing anything, I'd love to hear it.
As for the series itself, it's not too bad. I feel like it kinda went overboard on the characters once the real meat of the Soul Society arc started, and the filler/flashback episodes were kind of annoying when all I wanted to know was what happened next, but it wasn't awful. I guess the first episode wasn't a really great indication of what was to come. Other than that, I'm still picking at Kimagure Orange Road. At episode 23 now, but it's still slow going. It's beginning to feel formulaic, and the sub I'm watching is pretty bad - sometimes three or four lines in a row will be untranslated. I'll finish it eventually, but I keep getting distracted by flashy action anime. |
|||
swienke
 Posts: 245 |
|
||
You're actually already at the best point to stop watching. Somewhat unfortunately, the quality drop in Bleach is more of a gradual thing than a lot of people admit to, and the series does manage to have a few fantastic sets of episodes later on amidst all the sub-par ones. However, the Soul Society arc is definitely the pinnacle of the series, and Bleach never manages to become as consistently good as it is there. However, if you really enjoy the series you could just skip episodes 65-109, 168-189, 230-265, and everything after 310 so far. Those are the major filler arcs, and although they're actually not as horrible as a lot of people claim, they are a bit of a waste of time. |
|||
|
|||
wandering-dreamer
 Posts: 1733 |
|
||
I liked both series quite a bit and, now that you mention getting a recommendation for one since you liked the other, they are similar in a few ways (such as both being a bit surreal, okay a LOT surreal in Utena's case, and ending up being deconstructions) so I hope you like Tutu. Much like Utena the show does take a little while to get going, the second half feels really different from the first, but it's 26 episodes instead of 39 so the build-up isn't even as long. Finally caved and got a three month CR membership and I love being able to see the latest Natsume Yuujinchou and Steins;Gate episodes a week early. For Natsume, the third season is just like the other two which is perfect for me, I know what I want and I know the show will do just that, sad yet happy stories about growing up, meeting people and seeing the world from a little bit of a point of view. As for S;G, I still can't believe how amazing this show has gotten and I'm so glad I tried it this past spring. Little sad that there isn't as much humor any more (this show is insanely quotable) but right now it has a great mixture of plot and humor so I'm more than content. |
|||
|
|||
EricDent
 Posts: 997 Location: Georgetown, TX |
|
||
|
Currently watching a few things.
Black Cat: reason just got it recently, and have never seen it before. For some odd reason it kind of reminds me of Trigun in a weird way. Maybe it is the similarity of the Twelve Apostles and The Gung-Ho Guns. Utawarerumono (what a long name): Also bought recently, and never seen it before. Not really sure where this is going, but it seems that the main guy is getting evil as the show goes on. Eden of the East: renting via Netflix, heard really good things about this, and wanted to see if it lived up. So far it has. |
|||
|
|||
Sengura
 Posts: 19 |
|
||
|
Just finished watching Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Boku-tachi wa Mada Shiranai. It is the second anime to have ever made me cry at the end. And I've watched over 200 animes.
Hats off to this great anime. You make me cry, you're automatically rated a Masterpiece in my book. |
|||
|
|||
Aeriven
 Posts: 55 Location: Alabama |
|
||
|
I'm picking at a few things right now, but the "big" one, I guess you could say, for me at the moment is Koi Kaze. I started watching it this past weekend, and just now knocked out the second Geneon DVD. I think this is the first time I've felt uncomfortable watching a series, but am still compelled to keep watching because I want to know what happens.
|
|||
|
|||
Guren Alchemist4
 Posts: 347 |
|
||
|
A question for any Hulu Plus subscriber. Do you get less ads than the regular service or is it the same amount?
|
|||
|
|||
Surrender Artist
 Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
|
||
|
It's been a while; ages in internet time and much has passed, but there's something that I feel obliged to present, even if just for the benefit of my own psyche, even moreso than everything else that I've written here.
I have gushed over Galaxy Express 999 elsewhere with embarrassing frequency and intensity, so let me put an end to that by gushing here more or less definitively. Besides, in this thread it probably won't be largely washed away by a tsunami of acrimony over Dance in the Vampire Bund To recite, chapter and verse, this is one of the first anime that I knowingly watched as it was part of The Sci-Fi Channel’s modest catalogue of titles and was thus frequently shown on Saturday mornings back in the nineties. All of those have a certain peculiar significance to me, although some, like Gall Force Eternal Story and Odin: Photon Space Sailer Starlight, lost their luster as anime become less scarce and thus discrimination among titles more feasible, a few, like Project A-Ko, also my first, were more fortunate; Galaxy Express 999 is very emphatically in the latter category. I enjoyed the Hell out of watching this film. Then it waited five days and enjoyed the Hell out of it again. Though I had not seen it in at least thirteen years, much of it felt warmly familiar. The mood, style and many scenes had persisted in my memory, unaided, for longer than a decade despite the decay of memory and host of new things to remember introduced by the vicissitudes of time. It is very rare that something can make me it effortless for me to suppress my instinctive cynicism and profound self-loathing for its whole duration and this was one of them. I’m going a little moon-faced and dewy-eyed, aren’t I? Galaxy Express 999 is about a journey on what appears to be an antique steam engine whose windows may be opened to no ill effect as it travels through space. Some rationales are supplied involving antimatter and giving people something of home to hold on to, but they make as much sense as they matter, because the train is really meant to serve a sense of mythic and operatic wonder. Galaxy Express 999 is about things bigger and more spectacular than just reality. The story of Galaxy Express 999 is classically straightforward. Tetsuro wants revenge against Count Mecha, who murdered the boy’s mother in front of him as part of a trophy hunt. To fulfill this wish, he seeks both a machine body and the location of Count Mecha’s time castle. A curious feature is that there are none of the usual homilies against revenge. If anything, most characters seem to encourage Tetsuro. There are also no speeches claiming that Tetsuro will become as bad as those whom he fights if he should kill them. Both of these, especially the latter, are curiously refreshing. What’s more, the story ultimately goes past Tetsuro’s desire for revenge into some wiser themes that lead him to a mission of purpose rather than misguided anger. The logic of Galaxy Express 999’s story is often that of enthusiastic boyish fantasy. Important, useful gifts are freely given and heroes appear to save the day in grand fashion at the handiest moments, such that one can almost hear an excited ten-year old saying, “and then…” It might seem contrary to best practices to build a story upon fortune and coincidence, but in this case it seems fitting that the storytelling should prefer grandeur and feeling over realism as strongly as the design does. If Queen Emeraldas tools around space in what appears to be ship of the line strapped to a dirigible, why shouldn’t she show up to claim right of way, which is presumably necessary in the tight confines of outer space, just when Tetsuro needs an answer that only she can give? Despite that grandeur, the film keeps close to Tetsuro and Maetel, seldom distracting itself with other characters or events. Leiji Matsumoto’s best known heroes pass through, carrying substantial narrative weight with them and a few other ancillary characters make marks upon the tale, but the story keeps its leads clear. I wouldn’t’ve minded if the film had given a few of the supporting characters, particularly those unique to the Galaxy Express 999 story like Claire, more attention, but it hardly suffers for its dedication to Tetsuro and Maetel. Indeed, by viewing both the vast events and a very few characters through the same magnifying lens; they become all the more memorable and endearing. That frugality in cast also abets the sense of melancholy that pervades Galaxy Express 999. For all of its spirit of youthful adventure, a pall of sadness, though one that curiously and vitally affirms the worth living on, hangs over many of its characters and events. Tetsuro is an angry, confused boy whose grief over the murder of his mother has been sublimated into a consuming hatred toward her killer and the misguided obsession with attaining a machine body, both as a means to take his revenge and, I think, to fulfill the comforting fantasy of warm immortality that he shared with her in her last moments. Maetel, meanwhile, seems burdened by her past, a sense of duty and the sense that she is desperately deeply felt things just below her beguiling surface. This feeling is strengthened by the loneliness that Tetsuro and Maetel seem to exist in on the Galaxy Express. Other passengers appear in some passing shots, but Tetsuro and Maetel seem to be all alone in the first car, aside from when the conductor passes through, and none of the other passengers are ever seen to speak to or even appear in the background with the principals. It adds subtly, but immensely to the loneliness and sadness of the film. This spirit surrounds them in the supporting cast too, who bear myriad senses of loss and unfulfilled dreams. The Galaxy Express makes only a few stops in this film and one of them want for regrets. The most memorable among these, to me, is Shadow, the machine-woman who tends the cemetery on Pluto where the original bodies of those who have become machines are kept. The scene itself, a vast field of ice with orderly rows of bodies placid below it, is bleakly beautiful and Shadow, who took a machine body without a face, because she thought her original one too beautiful for any she might be given to equal, matches it in tone while also giving voice to the coldness of body and soul that the place represents. My memories of those scenes were surprisingly accurate and vivid. I must concede that although Tetsuro is quite clearly the protagonist of the film, so far as I am concerned, the draw of it is and always was Maetel. I have a habit of becoming more interested in secondary or supporting characters than the lead and this seems to be an instance of that. Maetel is prominent enough that she is more a secondary protagonist than mere supporting character, but my attention is nevertheless probably deviating from the film’s intent. She’s the epitome of Leiji Matsumoto’s idiosyncratic and repetitive, but damned distinctive way of drawing women; a long weeping willow branch with vast, evocative eyes, draped in a black fur coat and hat. It isn’t merely because she’s beautiful, or that her design is so distinctive and striking, anime supplies a genuinely embarrassing wealth of lovely women, but her deep, mysterious sadness and quiet aura of wisdom. She always fascinated me and although Tetsuro pushes the story onward, Maetel defines its mood and subtly guides it on its way. I must also give due credit to the English version, which is how I watched when I was younger and how I had to watch it now. I dreaded the chance that it might prove to be disappointing, if not awful, but to the contrary, I thought that it was excellent. Saffron Henderson very convincingly executes a boy’s voice, a method that North American actresses seem to have poor luck with, and portrays the range of emotion that Tetsuro experiences well. My fondest praise, predictably, goes to Kathleen Barr for giving Maetel a voice that is gently authoritative and wizened that at the appropriate times seems laden with the sorrow that seems perpetually in the character’s heart. The supporting cast is well played as well. Leiji Matsumoto’s three heroes are given fine portrayals too. Nicole Oliver plays a commanding, slightly wry Queen Emeraldas, John Payne gives Tochiro a weary, but defiant tone that fits his appearance well and Scott McNeil is just plain badass as Leiji Matsumoto’s signature hero. How many voice casting choices in history have been more fitting than Dinobot as Captain Harlock? I tend to reflexively associate The Ocean Group with inferior English dubs, but I think that they must just be particularly sensitive to budget and whether or not they’ve rolled the number seven, because work like this, among others, clearly show that they can do excellent work. Suffice it to say that I loved Galaxy Express 999; I have great nostalgia for it, which certainly enhanced my delight, but I really do think that it can hold its own without that benefit. Galaxy Express 999 (and its sequel) are as of the writing of this sentence on sale for $12.99 from RightStuf. There are services that cost more for two hours time, yet offer less satisfaction. As for its sequel, Adieu, Galaxy Express 999, I thought that it was a respectable effort, but not exceptional. It's very much like its predecessor, telling a story very similar to that of the first, but slightly harsher in tone and sometimes seeming to try to outdo the first film, which leads to a feeling of excess. In this case I should have expected to think that more of the same is just the right thing, but somehow, I was dissatisfied. It often looks spectacular and It's by no means bad, but I simply didn't adore is nearly the way that i do its predecessor. That was 'round about fifteen hundred words, but this time I don't feel quite so bad about it.
I really liked Monster, but you should be duly alerted that it is a series that demands and rewards patience. Naoki Urasawa builds a rather elaborate narrative with a quite large cast, all of whom are given due attention in numerous episodes and story arcs that might seem at the time like distractions, but that ultimately flow satisfyingly into the central narrative. It does sometimes build intense tension, but it often aims for a calmer sense of intrigue. I recommend watching just a very few episodes at a time, but that might just be because I enjoyed it that way when I watched it on the Sci-Fi Channel's dearly departed Anime Monday block. Last edited by Surrender Artist on Wed Aug 17, 2011 10:49 pm; edited 2 times in total |
|||
|
|||
|
jdotaku
Posts: 32 |
|
||
|
[EDIT: Reasons. -TK]
|
|||
|
|||
Diseasedfoe
 Posts: 13 |
|
||
|
[EDIT: Reasons. -TK]
|
|||
|
|||
richter3456
 Posts: 41 |
|
||
|
I just currently started watching XXXHolic, and I'm enjoying it quite a lot. I just love the urban myths, legends, and the supernatural.
|
|||
|
|||
The King of Harts
 Posts: 6712 Location: Mount Crawford, Virginia |
|
||
|
I finished Baka and Test not too long ago, and I greatly enjoyed it. I didn't absolutely love it like I thought I would from the trailers I watched and from the general positive buzz it has, but it was still really, really funny and even gut busting on several occasions; it's hard not to get side pains from watching the greatest Evangelion parody ever half a dozen times.
For a show that has so many fall back jokes and is only one cour, it uses them really well. So well that they never got stale and were always used refreshingly, especially Hideyoshi. With Hideyoshi it got pretty creative by making him a not-trap trap, which is new to me, so that helped keep it alive. They also get mad props for that great "Hideyoshi is her own gender" joke they had, despite it being used the exact same way twice in the same episode. Honestly, though, I'm actually surprised it's as funny as it is. All it is is a bunch tropes and cliches we've seen hundreds of times thrown together with a very odd premise (ST Wars), but they pulled it off somehow and managed to make it really funny. I know I'm now eagerly awaiting the second season to be put up for sale, which may actually be a while since it just started airing this season 
|
|||
|
|||
|
Kelly
Posts: 868 Location: New York City |
|
||
The only bad thing is it looks like Season 2 isn't going to be licensed 
You might also like Ghost Hunt, which has a similar vibe in some ways and happens to be a great supernatural series for this month, as the climax takes place in July. |
|||
|
|||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group