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This Week in Anime - Is Netflix's Dota Show Worth Watching?


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Sven Viking



Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 1033
PostPosted: Tue Mar 30, 2021 10:15 am Reply with quote
I’m not a DOTA fan but when this was announced I though Valve’s involvement could mean it would be interesting, and in the worst case, at least DOTA’s large cast of ridiculous characters (plus Lina Inverse the Slayer) would have to keep it from being boring. ...
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wolf10



Joined: 23 Jan 2016
Posts: 898
PostPosted: Tue Mar 30, 2021 11:07 am Reply with quote
Sven Viking wrote:
Wait, what? If I had coffee, it would be all over the screen right now. Good lordy.

"With Aghanim's shard, Laguna Blade always..." Okay, make that two narrowly avoided spit-takes.


So, I take it this is stupid like fun Castlevania stupid, and not nihilistic Dragon's Dogma stupid, at least? The former was at least watchable, even if the third season got away from itself.
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Sven Viking



Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 1033
PostPosted: Tue Mar 30, 2021 12:36 pm Reply with quote
I didn’t watch too far, but as far as I saw it was like Castlevania with most of the interesting bits removed.
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dmanatunga



Joined: 12 Jan 2015
Posts: 51
PostPosted: Tue Mar 30, 2021 12:52 pm Reply with quote
If you haven't played DOTA (like me), they pretty much hit the nail on the head that the story/lore is convoluted and confusing. Castlevania (another game I've never played, but loved the show), has the benefit of telling a really focused "stop someone's revenge" story while building the lore around that. DOTA, on the other hand, throws everything at you in huge blocks. For example, the first episode starts with this huge exposition on the formations of the universe, that as far as I could tell, didn't even apply to a huge chunk of the story.
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Sven Viking



Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 1033
PostPosted: Tue Mar 30, 2021 1:19 pm Reply with quote
I know very little about DOTA lore, but I would have been interested to see a Son Goku vs. squirrel-fox-thing vs. ogre-with-chemist-on-its-back fight scene for example. Maybe they get to that later, but I got the impression Dragon’s Blood was distinctly lacking in that area.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Tue Mar 30, 2021 2:48 pm Reply with quote
I'd never heard of this before, but since I'm not a gamer it's been ages since I've heard Troy Baker and Yuri Lowenthal in anything besides Naruto, so I had to watch it. I enjoyed it. I like Mir's character designs (yes that was definitely a palette-swapped Korra, and the cat mounts are obviously Naga retooled) and animation, so it was entertaining for me. I'll watch the rest when it comes along.

Quote:
You can see this with the elf rebel leader that Luna imprisons. She's captured, locked in prison, escapes and... that's all she wrote?

Well, no, she showed up spoiler[at the peace meeting, said "Oh hell no, screw that" and came out slaughtering.] So she had a pivotal role in the series not ending there.
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Ruddor



Joined: 20 Apr 2016
Posts: 50
PostPosted: Tue Mar 30, 2021 2:57 pm Reply with quote
For the record, Studio Mir did not make Avatar: The Last Airbender. It was founded 2 years after the show ended by one of the animation directors.
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Sven Viking



Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 1033
PostPosted: Tue Mar 30, 2021 3:25 pm Reply with quote
Kind of off-topic, but Invincible (2021) is about as anime as Dragon’s Blood imho, and I’m finding it way more engrossing so far (two episodes in) despite usually being more interested in fantasy than superheroes.
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Covnam



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 3627
PostPosted: Tue Mar 30, 2021 10:08 pm Reply with quote
Might still give this a go because of Studio Mir, but right now it's just another for the netflix backlog pile
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fuuma_monou



Joined: 26 Dec 2005
Posts: 1816
Location: Quezon City, Philippines
PostPosted: Wed Mar 31, 2021 3:08 am Reply with quote
There's a Filipino dub for this, but not Filipino subtitles for some reason.
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SkerllyFC07



Joined: 08 Jul 2017
Posts: 108
PostPosted: Wed Mar 31, 2021 8:16 am Reply with quote
With this series getting better reviews from other websites and even receiving good praises from some people in reddit and other online forums (some even pointing out that the series did a good job standing on its own despite being based off a lore-heavy videogame), this column really makes everyone think the series is pure garbage, so to me it read as a big insult. It´s perfectly understandable that Netflix´s way of marketing anime reeks of "trying too hard to be hip with anime fans" but many of their american "anime" at least try something new, while most anime series nowadays try too hard to copy other otaku manga/anime material, cliches, etc, to the point of shallowness.

Now that doesn´t mean that I think this column is bad. I like it a lot, especially when these guys review garbage anime series that nobody would otherwise watch on their own, but almost everytime that a Netflix anime is covered in this column, it feels like the writers just watch them to find something bad on those series to validate their opinions about how "true anime comes from japan, japanese are the only ones allowed to make cool anime". I felt just as bad when Pacific Rim: The Black (another series with good reception outside of anime circles) was featured in this column, it just read like the writers wanted to support other anime fans that found the series to be a bad anime-inspired series, not a fair and earnest attempt to review the show based on unbiased judgement.

And that´s what I would like to see from the columnists when reviewing a Netflix anime or "anime" inspired show: that they at least give these shows a more inspired and unbiased review other than "this is not true anime because it´s not done by people that love anime, so it´s garbage".
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LastPage 3



Joined: 13 Jun 2010
Posts: 190
PostPosted: Wed Mar 31, 2021 9:19 am Reply with quote
SkerllyFC07 wrote:
With this series getting better reviews from other websites and even receiving good praises from some people in reddit and other online forums (some even pointing out that the series did a good job standing on its own despite being based off a lore-heavy videogame), this column really makes everyone think the series is pure garbage,


That's literally what this column is here for, to insult stuff.

I just binged this myself, and I was pleasantly surprised. It's by the numbers, but it really wasn't bad at all. It could have some more fleshing out, but with all the flack Netflix has gotten over giving stuff 12-13 episodes when it doesn't really need them, I can't blame them for deciding to keep it brief.
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Todd_Harry08



Joined: 24 Sep 2019
Posts: 167
PostPosted: Wed Mar 31, 2021 9:27 am Reply with quote
Ruddor wrote:
For the record, Studio Mir did not make Avatar: The Last Airbender. It was founded 2 years after the show ended by one of the animation directors.


ye they make only Korra and Voltron

the last airbender had JM Animation which the important animators of that moved to Mir afterwards.
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Sven Viking



Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 1033
PostPosted: Wed Mar 31, 2021 9:33 am Reply with quote
SkerllyFC07: I don’t think it’s because it’s not from Japan, since they often give similar treatment to shows that are from Japan. I agree that the column could give the impression that this show was complete garbage when in fact most people seem to like it, though.
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Hal14



Joined: 01 Apr 2018
Posts: 652
Location: Heart of africa
PostPosted: Wed Mar 31, 2021 9:53 am Reply with quote
Compared to some of the recent Netflix animesque shows, I thought this was good. I've never played DOTA and a lot of terms flew over my head but I liked it a lot more than Blood of Zeus even though I could better understand/follow the latter. My main criticism, though, is that the two subplots (dragon stuff and moon goddess stuff) barely felt connected and could even be their own separate shows.
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