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ANNCast (Video) - Scum As You Are


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Sloppy_Jimbo



Joined: 01 Oct 2015
Posts: 98
PostPosted: Sat Feb 18, 2017 12:22 am Reply with quote
Strange the discussion is trending towards Top Three as just this morning I was seriously contemplating my GOAT's for the 1st time in ages. The top two were easy but #3 baffled and eluded me to the point where I was literally late for work!

3. I was debating between Dokes, Fate Zero, and Aquarion. I choose Aquarion, lol. Shout out to Aoi Hana which SHOULD be #3, but doesn't qualify because the full series wasn't adapted.
2. Noir. Like whack a mole with guns and lesbians.
1. You get three guesses.

The REAL reason for this post is my "shoulda, woulda, coulda GOAT." If only K----- had *bleeped* R---- as god intended. No, Zac I'm never coming back. I want that series discussion...I need it so bad...
Crying or Very sad
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AsuraTheDestructor



Joined: 24 Dec 2013
Posts: 466
PostPosted: Sat Feb 18, 2017 1:03 am Reply with quote
My Top 3 are Evangleion, Asura's Wrath, (Yes, I consider it to be an interactive anime, for all its worth) and Re:Zero
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zrnzle500



Joined: 04 Oct 2014
Posts: 3767
PostPosted: Sat Feb 18, 2017 1:20 am Reply with quote
While Eva is one of my top three, Utena and Wolf's Rain aren't. Utena's a great show, but not one of my all time favorites. Wolf's Rain I actually haven't seen, though it is on my list (I missed my chance when it was on Hulu Embarassed )

For the other two, I haven't really thought much about my all time favorites recently so it was tough narrowing it down, especially the third one. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex was the easier of the two. I think I will go with Space Brothers, but there are a number of others I could put in there. I haven't seen some of them in years, which gives me another reason to rewatch some of them, on top of the question "Are they still that good to me?"

On the question of KyoAni's originals, Tamako Market and Free are the only ones (or at least the most original if one wants to argue Free is not totally so).

While we're on the subject of KyoAni, It's unfortunate that you aren't going to do a series discussion on Sound Euphonium, but having Nick (or someone else amenable to the show failling that) on for that would probably be best. Though I admit when you first said you didn't have a series discussion lined up, I was a bit heart broken though after you explained why I wasn't too broken up about it.

It's nice to know I can vote for hatewatches (where it is warranted) with a clear conscience, since James asked for them. And here I thought it was bad luck or him being stuck with the short stick as the newest reviewer at the time. Not that he doesn't have my sympathies for wading into to those quagmires, intentionally done though it may be.
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dtm42



Joined: 05 Feb 2008
Posts: 14084
Location: currently stalking my waifu
PostPosted: Sat Feb 18, 2017 2:23 am Reply with quote
While Neon Genesis Evangelion is super influential, it's nowhere near the best anime ever made. And I could fill an essay on how Revolutionary Girl Utena fails, especially with regards to its characters (and how they are used).

Anyway, my top three, which should surprise no-one who knows me:

1): RahXephon
2): Puella Magi Madoka Magica
3): Hyouge Mono

All three are outstanding. And although they've been ranked, they're basically neck and neck with one another.

Honourable mentions go to Koi Kaze, Kino's Journey, and season one of Chihayafuru.

Of course, if we were talking about our favourite anime then Dragonball Z would be my number one. No joke. I wouldn't be an anime fan today if it wasn't for that show.
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vonPeterhof



Joined: 10 Nov 2014
Posts: 729
PostPosted: Sat Feb 18, 2017 6:51 am Reply with quote
On the subject of Kemono Friends, one aspect of its popularity that hasn't been brought up here is all the speculation fuel and the surrounding fan discussions. With each episode the show drops more and more ominous hints as to what the park and its denizens actually are and what must have happened to their world in the past. Here's a good post on this subject.

As for the Problematic Episode of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, pretty sure that the question from the chat was referencing the bit near the end of the scene where spoiler[Kanna drops Saikawa on her back, climbs on top of her and their dialogue suggests that something sexual is about to happen; a conclusion also supported by the "drowning out" of the revelation of what exactly Kanna was about to do.] Even though it can be interpreted in a more innocent light, the intent was clearly to hint at something more than a simple romantic awakening. At least the camera angles weren't particularly voyeuristic. Of course, this isn't even getting into the truly Problematic parts of the episode, namely the whole spoiler[little boy sexually harassed by a big-breasted adult woman] thing. Not a dealbreaker for me, but I'd really appreciate it if the show kept references to this subplot to a minimum going forward.

BodaciousSpacePirate wrote:
It always surprises me how many anime fans have an immutable "top three" that consists of "Evangelion, Utena, and _____", where "_____" is some deeply emotional show that speaks to them as a person.
[...]
What strikes me most about people with "Evangelion, Utena, and ____" top threes is how often they disagree about the quality of "____" despite completely agreeing on the merits of the other two shows.
Interesting. Granted, I've only been keeping up with anime discourse since about 2010, but for most of that time it seemed to me that the "broad consensus" on Eva was closer to what KitKat1721 and dtm42 wrote here: a show whose innovation and influence you respect without necessarily liking it all that much. I think it was only in the past couple of years or so that I've started encountering anime fans (and critics) who actually name Eva as one of their all-time favourites. Personally, I think I've come to appreciate it a lot more in retrospect than I did back when I first watched it, but I'm never really in the mood to give it a rewatch, so I can't be certain about my current opinion on it. Can't comment on Utena either, since I've yet to watch that one.

Edit: Also, it took me forever to realize there's a pun in the title of this ANNCast episode. Well played Smile
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Bluuumeee



Joined: 23 Feb 2009
Posts: 41
PostPosted: Sat Feb 18, 2017 8:33 am Reply with quote
While we're on the topic of series that really speak to us as people, my list of three wouldn't have either Evangelion or Utena in it. Here goes:

1. ReLIFE
2. Blast of Tempest
3. Nagi Asu: A Lull in the Sea
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Chiibi



Joined: 19 Dec 2011
Posts: 4828
PostPosted: Sat Feb 18, 2017 11:43 am Reply with quote
1. Full Moon Wo Sagashite
2. Air Tv+Movie
3. Princess Tutu

This is emotional attachment.
The first two are not from an objective standpoint; I do know there are small flaws in them but I love them dearly. The third, I consider a practically flawless masterpiece though.



dtm42 wrote:
And I could fill an essay on how Revolutionary Girl Utena fails, especially with regards to its characters (and how they are used).


.......Oh My God.

WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN!?

Twisted Evil
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kotomikun



Joined: 06 May 2013
Posts: 1205
PostPosted: Sat Feb 18, 2017 8:30 pm Reply with quote
The closest thing I have to a top three is:

1. Anthem of the Heart (that movie by the AnoHana team, that like ten people saw)
2. Madoka Magica
3. Endless indecision. Currently: Flip Flappers. That one may have some staying power, but it's still pretty recent. Other possibilities include: From The New World, Haruhi Suzumiya, Kokoro Connect, Sora no Woto, and that new Shinkai movie with the awkwardly-formatted title.

Madoka is the only one I would recommend to anyone, including non-anime-fans. Not only is it just that good, the many philosophical themes involved are important and rarely addressed in modern media. And that includes Rebellion, although (or because) "getting" that one is not straightforward.

My #1 is not groundbreaking deconstructive cinema (Eva, Utena, and, well, Madoka make a lot of top threes partly because putting them there makes you look smart), but it's the only time I've ever felt like an entire piece of media was designed by reading my mind, so it kinda has to take that spot.

Evangelion is good, but it has too much weird masculine/otaku baggage for me to consider it a favorite. (I don't even like mecha shows, in general.) I still haven't seen Utena, mainly because the art style is so off-putting.
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invalidname
Contributor



Joined: 11 Aug 2004
Posts: 2434
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
PostPosted: Sat Feb 18, 2017 10:52 pm Reply with quote
Oh all right, since all the cool kids are doing it

  1. The Castle of Cagliostro
  2. Madoka Magica
  3. Angel Beats!

Runners-up: FMA 2003, Rumbling Hearts, Royal Space Force. No deep meaning among my tops, not that they all speak to me the same way or share a theme; each is just powerful in its own way.

Anyways, my point (and I do have one) is about Crunchyroll. First, in that they went from pirate site to legit… Zac interviewed Fakku like two years back right as they were beginning a similar transition, from scanlation upload site to legitimate licensor/distributor, but for porn. I'd be interested to know how that's doing.

As for Crunchy hitting one million as a reminder of how tiny anime is… OK, we need humility, but let's remember we live in an age of niches. Anime is a niche, but so are second-tier sports like professional soccer or hockey (Mike Toole will be pissed at me, but I like hockey, so I think I'm playing fair by dissing both of them). The total attendance for NHL games last season - combining all 1,230 games - was about 21 million people, with an average of 17,000 per game. But that includes a lot of repeat attendance, from season ticket holders and the like. To consider another metric, the Stanley Cup Finals deciding game had a TV viewing audience of 5.4 million. Now compare this to the fact that in addition to 1 million Crunchyroll subscribers, there are 20 million registered Crunchyroll accounts, meaning people who can watch the shows on Crunchyroll with ads. We don't know how active they are, and surely some of those accounts are abandoned, but we could also say there are anime fans who don't watch Crunchy at all, and maybe just watch Toonami or their own DVD collections.

The point I'm circling around, obviously, is that anime fandom is probably similar in size to professional hockey fandom… maybe in the ballpark of 5-10 million in the US… and yet, we think of following one of the "Big Four" sports as normal and mainstream, while liking anime is nichey and weird, and maybe neither of those things is entirely true. In this crazy age of plenty, there are very few things that are in any way universal, and we all self-select a number of smaller things that appeal to us. IMO, everything's a niche now, so anime fans should be both humble and proud.
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dtm42



Joined: 05 Feb 2008
Posts: 14084
Location: currently stalking my waifu
PostPosted: Sun Feb 19, 2017 12:44 am Reply with quote
Chiibi wrote:
.......Oh My God.

WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN!?

Twisted Evil


Working till my feet fall off, and in my scant spare time I've been watching anime in a futile attempt to slaughter my backlog. I've downed one-hundred and seventy-two episodes so far in February alone, which I admit sounds amazing. That is, until I remember I have over eighteen hundred episodes worth of viewing left to go. And each week, before I can even start to tackle the backlog, I've got to first deal with the twenty-one currently-airing shows that I'm following (twenty-four including shorts).

It's enough to make a man want to bury his head in sand and pretend that anime doesn't exist. I soldier on however, because . . .

. . . THE BACKLOG MUST FALL.
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Zin5ki



Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 6680
Location: London, UK
PostPosted: Sun Feb 19, 2017 12:49 pm Reply with quote
Indefatigable as ever, dtm42! I can but wish you luck in your schedule.

Regarding invalidname's mentioning of the fact that hockey is a second-tier sport in the US, I admit this comes as some surprise to me. The international presentation of American sporting habits led me to believe it could rival basketball and its ilk in patronage.
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BodaciousSpacePirate
Subscriber



Joined: 17 Apr 2015
Posts: 3017
PostPosted: Sun Feb 19, 2017 12:51 pm Reply with quote
dtm42 wrote:
It's enough to make a man want to bury his head in sand and pretend that anime doesn't exist.


...but then what do you find underneath the sand? More anime! We should not have built this beach on top of an old abandoned Suncoast.
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invalidname
Contributor



Joined: 11 Aug 2004
Posts: 2434
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
PostPosted: Sun Feb 19, 2017 4:14 pm Reply with quote
Zin5ki wrote:
Regarding invalidname's mentioning of the fact that hockey is a second-tier sport in the US, I admit this comes as some surprise to me. The international presentation of American sporting habits led me to believe it could rival basketball and its ilk in patronage.

Well, I did sort of cherry-pick my example to find something that seems more popular than it actually is, to make anime worth being in the conversation of things with US fanbases in the single-digit millions. But hockey trends white and northern, which is against the demographic trends in the US - in some parts of the country, soccer (MLS or international) or stock car racing (NASCAR) would clearly be more popular. And still well behind the big three: American football (pro and college), basketball (pro and college), and baseball.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23667
PostPosted: Sun Feb 19, 2017 5:56 pm Reply with quote
I bet anime would increase in popularity if it had more bench-clearing brawls...
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ParaChomp



Joined: 10 Dec 2010
Posts: 1018
PostPosted: Sun Feb 19, 2017 9:45 pm Reply with quote
The problem people are talking about with Dragon Maid is NOT that it's a homosexual relationship between children. No, by all means, this is perfectly fine. The problem is that it's objectifying a child's body.
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