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Anime in America: The Best (and Worst) of 2013


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SouthPacific



Joined: 24 Oct 2013
Posts: 689
PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 3:57 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Best DVD/Blu-Ray Feature or Extra


A Sentai release? SENTAI FILMWORKS?

How much did they pay you to choose that Laughing?

I understand the NISA choice with their gorgeous packaging, but really, a Sentai release? Pretty much the only company still doing the dullest of dull barebones releases 100%?

Bricks were s$#t.
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JackCox



Joined: 22 Jun 2006
Posts: 386
PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 3:59 pm Reply with quote
You said this was an unmemorable year for male dub performances well I have a couple you definitely missed, Josh Grelle and Richard Epcar in Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, I think Patrick Poole in Garden of Words as well as Scott McNeil in One Piece: Strong World as well as Robert McCollum in Blood C, I think you missed the mark major in this category.

Oh and how can you overlook Michiko and Hatchin let alone Monica Rials amazing performance?.

[EDIT: Use the Edit button instead of double-posting. -TK]
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Dop.L



Joined: 23 Mar 2007
Posts: 713
Location: London
PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 4:02 pm Reply with quote
Great to see more love for Flowers of Evil.
As far as I'm concerned that was one of the real stand-out shows of the last year. Partly for the directorial vision, partly for its atmosphere, and partly because it captured a sense of teenage alienation that no other anime can match.
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Tenchi



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 4462
Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer.
PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 4:03 pm Reply with quote
Both of my favourite 2013 North American physical media releases were Sentai Filmworks, K-On! the Movie and Mysterious Girlfriend X, though they're my favourite for being anime I like rather than having copious amounts of extras (although the K-On! movie release did have some decent behind-the-scenes stuff).

Not that I bought much else this year due to lack of money. I did get Baka and Test season 2 and the OVAs way back at the beginning of the year and the My Neighbor Totoro Blu-Ray and that's it other than some used DVDs I got from Value Village thrift stores.


Last edited by Tenchi on Mon Jan 06, 2014 4:06 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Agent355



Joined: 12 Dec 2008
Posts: 5113
Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready...
PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 4:05 pm Reply with quote
Guilty Pleasures: Art, which includes but isn't solely defined by entertainment, is like food. Some stuff is "good for you" (educational, makes you appreciate an aspect of life in a new way) but isn't all that fun. Like genocide documentaries, biopics, arthouse indy films-makes you think even as they get you down or just plain bore you. The broccoli of art. Some stuff is junk-entertaining with no lasting value or even damaging by reinforcing negative social norms. Soap operas come to mind. Candy and chips. Most stuff fall somewhere in between-both entertaining and somehow uplifting, informative or thought provoking. The fruit of the art world.
Some good apples this year

5. Attack on Titan: Like the little girl with the curl, when it was good it was very, very good, and when it was bad it was just plain boring and poorly paced. With annoying "give your life to the cause" speeches.

4. Watamote: Tomoko Kuroki is the new standard for moe.

3.Kyousougiga: Visually inventive and heartfelt story about family within a fairytale.

2. Eccentric Family: Family and fairytales describes this one nicely, too, with a modern Kyoto as a gorgeous setting and Benihime as an enigmatic foil.

1. Silver Spoon: How did this get overlooked on the list? The classic tale of a boy and his pet spoiler[I read a description on another site that says it hilariously best "Pork Bowl is the best Clannad". *sniff*. But really, Hachiken is a badass who sticks to his guns and makes no excuses, and Hiromu Arakawa could probably write about paint drying on a barn wall and make it funny, emotional and human. This show is a gem.]
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Key
Moderator


Joined: 03 Nov 2003
Posts: 18135
Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 4:45 pm Reply with quote
JackCox wrote:
You said this was an unmemorable year for male dub performances well I have a couple you definitely missed, Josh Grelle and Richard Epcar in Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, I think Patrick Poole in Garden of Words as well as Scott McNeil in One Piece: Strong World as well as Robert McCollum in Blood C, I think you missed the mark major in this category.

Think you're missing the comment about how I don't watch everything. Of those and the one you put in the other post, the only dub performance I actually heard was Patrick Poole's, and while it was good, it did not stand out. But actually I'm glad to hear that there were a few good male performances but I just didn't hear them.

I will still put Luci Christian's Mirai up against any other female English performance you want to name, though.

SouthPacific wrote:
I understand the NISA choice with their gorgeous packaging, but really, a Sentai release? Pretty much the only company still doing the dullest of dull barebones releases 100%?

Pretty sure we've had this discussion before, but this statement is patently and empirically false. You're certainly welcome to carry some irrational mad-on grudge against Sentai, but I won't tolerate you using blatant lies to support it.
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KiraMustDie



Joined: 12 Jul 2012
Posts: 8
PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 4:45 pm Reply with quote
"Excessively long series titles"

THANK. YOU. GOD.

That has become one of my new pet peeves. Just give it a f*cking title, not a full sentence. All that says to me is "Look at me, I made an nontraditional anime title, aren't I so goddamn cleaver?"

In fact, that should actually be a title for one of these. At least I'll know they're full of shit.
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insert name here



Joined: 27 Jul 2011
Posts: 84
PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 5:14 pm Reply with quote
I'm glad to see all of the accolades for Flowers of Evil here. I've noticed that it tends to be one of those things where people love it and hate it for the same reasons. Like some have complained that its glacially paced, but that's actually what I liked about it. I've never felt that everything needs to move at a swift clip, and some works are better served by taking their time and allowing things to slowly unfold. It's about the journey not the destination. I've heard people say that they hated the rotoscope (too Ralph Bakshian) but I thought it raised some interesting issues about what is being represented in front of us, and also served to suggest a kind of instability in the character's mindsets. This was certainly one of the strongest years that I've seen for anime, and I hope that more aesthetically adventurous stuff like FoE and the Tatami Galaxy continues to get made.
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normajean19



Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 81
PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 5:31 pm Reply with quote
Not sure if I misinterpreted the standards for this list, but is Psycho-pass ineligible since it started in 2012? It was a rather intriguing cyberpunk show even if didn't bring much new to the genre, and there were a couple of really well done death scenes.

My favorite this year was Attack on Titan, even though it had glaring pacing issues I've never watched an anime that made me so excited for the next episode. Silver Spoon, Kyousougiga, Eccentric family, and Valvrave were the rest of my favorites this year.
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EighteenSky





PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 5:35 pm Reply with quote
Gustave Archamp wrote:
Eighteen, think of it this way.

I really liked "Dude, Where's my Car?" I know it is a horrible movie, and anyone who watches it can agree with me that it is horrendous. Yet, I found myself terribly amused by it. I might feel markedly less intelligent every time that I watch it, and I get dirty looks whenever I tell people that I enjoy the movie. As a result, I take it as my guilty pleasure. I usually like series/movies that are more thought-provoking, better written, and consistent in quality. I appreciate how terrible this movie is, but I enjoy it nonetheless.

You said the movie was horrible, you say you know this but contradict yourself by saying you liked it. Horrible is by definition something unpleasant, appalling. That I don't understand. If you were amused by it then it's done something right, if you liked certain aspects but hated others then fine. But to say you liked it means it had more good points than bad.

Gustave Archamp wrote:
I see your point, but I see liking something and its' quality to be two separate entities. If we could say that my favourite piece of media of all time happens to be a flip book animation of a bird flying as an example, I could honestly say that it is "good" in the sense that I enjoy it a lot. From a purely technical aspect, it is rudimentary. From a story telling aspect, it offers nothing. As such, we can say that there is nothing good from a more universally acceptable standard about what I think is good.

That's quite a different example as opposed to say a film or an anime series though. You can't really compare that as a guilty pleasure.

Quote:
I think that is what we try to say by guilty pleasures. We enjoy the pieces themselves, but if you take a step back from the actual piece and take apart its' merits, be they story or visuals, we can see that there are some serious issues with the piece itself and it is not something that could be looked at as amazing.

But if there were serious issues then that should lessen your enjoyment. If you were to rewatch it again after seeing those supposed flaws then surely your view would change and it would no longer be a guilty pleasure?

Quote:
Enjoying something personally and the quality of the piece's execution are two different things. By no means mutually exclusive, but still different thing.

Thing is the quality of something is determined by the person viewing it. Something may be of high quality to one and not to another. That goes for everything, a soundtrack for example you cannot say is objectively good or bad, only your thoughts on it. Same goes for writing, art plot and even animation.

angelmcazares wrote:
This "if you watch something, and you like it, it has to be good" is probably what causes amazingly well crafted series like Utena (tv series) to receive very negative (ANN) ratings. This voting with you heart (instead of with your brain) business also rewards pieces of shit like Freezing in the form of positive ratings.

Have yet to see Utena (watched the movie, was confused) but Freezing is by no means a 'piece of shit'. The anime adaptions were not perfect (Vibration altering the timeline) but they were both pretty darn good as the amazing (especially source material shone through.


Last edited by EighteenSky on Mon Jan 06, 2014 5:53 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Stall_19



Joined: 07 Mar 2013
Posts: 78
PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 5:48 pm Reply with quote
I always interpreted guilty pleasure as something you know objectively isn't very good but greatly enjoyed nevertheless.
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MetalUpa1014



Joined: 24 Aug 2013
Posts: 283
Location: USA
PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 6:56 pm Reply with quote
Loved Watamote (except for the half-assed ending) so it's great to see it getting the recognition it deserves.

I wish that the Steins;Gate film was included here, because that's my anime movie of the year. I actually even included it as part of my Top 10 Films of 2013 while writing for the Punk Effect.
http://thepunkeffect.com/?p=13817

I guess it doesn't count though since there's really no legal way to watch it unless you import the Blu-ray or torrent it like I did. No doubt that Funimation's going to release it this year with the same great English cast. I hope it's included in the 2014 awards.
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Leebo



Joined: 14 Nov 2005
Posts: 660
Location: Somerville, MA
PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 6:58 pm Reply with quote
EighteenSky wrote:
But to say you liked it means it had more good points than bad.


Not according to him. End of discussion.

Okay... I won't be that blunt about it.

The way I described this is with an analogy to a sports team. You like a sports team because you are a fan, and it typically isn't dependent on their actual qualities. Most people love their sports team regardless of its flaws. You can say you like them even if they are bad.

It's an irrational, emotional attachment that doesn't need justification.

Liking a guilty pleasure is like that.
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Rahxephon91



Joined: 08 Jun 2003
Posts: 1859
Location: Park Forest IL.
PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 7:16 pm Reply with quote
Hopefully the anime that deserves the praise -Kill La Kill- gets it's due in 2014.

Other then that, don't have much to say about these shows. Hardly watched any of them and have no plans to. This anime dosen't really speak to me.

I did watch Penguindrum and that was solid if a bit confusing towards the end.

I couldn't even say Valvrave was a guilty pleasure. Something like Code Geass is a guilty pleasure. I mean I get it, it's so dumb that it's entertaining, but Valvrave was way too crappy. None of the characters were even engaging. They were so stereotypical you could see the strings. I had to drop the show, there was nothing to laugh at.
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Enternal



Joined: 05 Feb 2005
Posts: 14
PostPosted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 7:39 pm Reply with quote
I find the Worst Series Concept very odd. Have you actually watched through those series to make judgement of whether it's bad or not? Because I clearly don't see it. You rated The Severing Crime Edge as horrible but you only watched one episode. Sure that show had a lot of problems but I think you are not being fair to it either. Judge it for what it is rather than judge for what you assume it to be.

The biggest shock would be your view of The Pet Girl of Sakurasou. Although your statement of "voluptuous and talented infant" is very true, it's clearly not a romantic comedy because that very fact about the main girl is gone into depth and how it caused her social problems and inability to understand and solve problems that are indirectly caused because of her. Basically the series has a lot more depth to it than what you believed it to be from merely watching a few episodes and then brand it as one of the worst.
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