Forum - View topicWhat are you watching right now? Why? (please read 1st post)
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Tony K.
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 11295 Location: Frisco, TX |
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Maybe. The OVA has a much darker tone than the TV series (and also different production companies), which ties into the way the story itself was written and presented in the manga. The TV series is very much a campy one till the 2nd season (the Kyoto Arc), and while it's not as dark as Tsuioku-hen (aka "Trust and Betrayal," which is not even the correct translation, by the way; supposed to be "Remembrance Story"), the storytelling and symbolism is pretty damn epic and is still regarded as my favorite story arc in any shounen title to date. The problem I see most people make with Kenshin is that they watch the OVA, first. And while it, technically, "tells you the story of how he became who he is," the difference in tone between it and the series is so great, that I find most people become disappointed by the series because of said campiness. It's silly at times, light on the violence, almost cookie-cutter in the characterizations, and takes a while to get to the good stuff (same voice actors, though, if you're watching in Japanese). The impact of the OVA is that it's so dark and contrasting in comparison, that it makes the story feel that much more engrossing. You see Kenshin be the happy-go-lucky and cheery guy that he is throughout the TV series, and then BAM, the OVA's emotional and literary gravity hits you like a freakin' asteroid! The 1st season (Tokyo Arc, eps. 1-27) introduces Kenshin, the supporting characters, and reveals bits and pieces of his past. About a third of the season is filler in comparison to the manga, but watching at least some of it helps build an overall mood for what to expect from the characters. The 2nd season (Kyoto Arc, eps. 28-62) is the real meat of the story, where parts of Kenshin's past as Hitokiri Battousai come back to haunt him. You learn even more about his past, it does get darker, and there's an epic battle between him and his friends against the main villain and his crew. The Tsuioku-hen OVA is supposed to take place as a flashback between Kyoto and the final arc, Jinchuu. Unfortunately, the 3rd season of the anime is complete filler and does not address the actual arc from the manga at all. The series caught up with the manga so quickly, that they tried to kill time till the story was finished. But the filler was so ill-received that it led to the series' cancellation. They tried making a second OVA called Seisou-hen (or "Time Story," aka "Reflection" in the mangled English translation), which looks and sounds as great from a production standpoint as Tsuioku-hen, but the story is absolute melodramatic bullshit that's a total disservice to the original plot. If I were to recommend a "grand tour" of the entire Kenshin franchise via anime and manga, this is what I'd suggest: - Season 1 (pretty much covers the manga, although the manga tells some parts of it better and a little bit differently, minus the filler; I recommend you read it after episode 11, volumes 5 and 6, which will save you at least a dozen episodes of fluff/filler) - Season 2 (an exact coverage of everything from the manga; enjoy the anime, as the voice acting, in Japanese, anyway, and music are fantastic) - Tsuioku-hen OVA (only slightly different in the manga, but the production value of the anime is so [expletive] gorgeous, there's absolutely no reason not to watch it again  )
- Read the manga for the final arc, volumes 21-28 (skip Season 3, completely, as it's all filler; also avoid the Seisou-hen/"Reflections" OVA, maybe save it for last just to see how shitty it is in comparison to the actual story) EDIT: Fixing grammar and content goofs. Last edited by Tony K. on Sat Mar 22, 2014 8:44 pm; edited 5 times in total |
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Kelly
Posts: 868 Location: New York City |
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Trust & Betrayal is the pinnacle of the Kenshin franchise, so no, the series won't be quite as good. It's somewhat lighter in tone and deals with Kenshin trying to atone for his past with help from a group of sidekicks and, eventually, his old nemesis Saito. There's some wacky humor, but things get more dramatic in season 2 - although it does not match the raw realism of Trust & Betrayal and has a few "out there" elements. Many fans consider the third season a disaster, and as far as I know it hasn't even aired here in the U.S. It was in part a casualty of the anime having overtaken the manga, and general consensus is that the filler didn't rise to the challenge of holding things together until the manga caught up again. |
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Cam0
 Posts: 4888 |
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Unfortunately no. The TV series is VERY different from the OVA. It's very shounen so it's similar to likes of One Piece. The TV series is good in its own way, but it's going to be harsh to go from the OVA to the TV series. |
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Unicorn_Blade
 Posts: 1153 Location: UK |
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I get that, I still find it was too extreme.spoiler[ Running of and playing dead for 8 years] was stretching the 'I can't deal with the situation' a bit too far. I think it was more of a cop out way to end the series where it was and not resolve anything. The final point was also a bit spoiled for me by the spoiler['surprise reunion' of three characters who never bothered to contact each other for years, although they could have easily done so (Kaouru and Reiko could have kept in touch, Sentarou might have written to either)]. I know spoiler[the heart warming reunion was] the purpose of the ending, I just personally did not find it convincing or fulfilling. |
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Knoepfchen
 Posts: 698 |
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Thanks very much, guys, especially to Tony K. for taking the time to provide me with such a detailed battle plan. I was already suspecting I might not have done myself a favor by starting with the OVA (at least if I plan to watch the whole show one day), but now it's done, and I feel that, with the appropriate expectations, I might still enjoy the show, especially when I know what might be OK to be left out. Thanks a lot, I really appreciate it.
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zawa113
 Posts: 7357 |
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Best line in an anime ever? I might have discovered it. I don't normally need to pause a video to laugh at a line, but wow, Genma Wars, wow. I've heard "Now get going, before I throw you down on the ground and rape you" (Orguss 02) and "You wouldn't know a vampire if it came up and bit you on the end of your *expletive*" (Cyber City). I've seen Garzey's Wing, just pick a line ("Oh my god, I felt like I was having a dream"). But the winner has got to be spoiler[When I get back, I'm gonna beat that baby out of you] and it's funny out of context, but even funnier in context. I feel like I might've heard that line before once long ago, but forgot about it and didn't know where it came from. Anyway, I wanted to put it in spoiler quotes because you should experience this anime and not know when that line is coming. But damn if you can't avoid laughing when you hear it, you'll know it when it comes.
But yeah, I've finished Genma Wars! And wow, what an amazing anime! The enjoyment level I got from this series is just through the Roof (ha!) Every aspect of it is just pure comedic genius. This clearly stems from the series taking itself way too seriously. I had a tendency to lose track of the plot, especially after the bs time travel thing (hooray!), where I was pretty sure the anime had lost track of its plot too. The animation was sub-par as all hell, the action scenes in particular were just wretched and often confusing messes. To clearly save on budget, their version of psychic things happening was to just change eye colors and add a glow. I think all the fire was CGI. Logic wasn't maintain between shots, one shot, character A would be to the left of B, then it'd reverse in a close up the next second. And this wasn't even counting when they're just move as little as possible and all the artwork would be terrible in general. Did no one check this? I can only name two anime with worse animation: Gundoh Musashi (obviously) and Legend of Duo (that thing with the vampire in the absurdly spacious sewer, another classic so bad it's good anime). I liked the music though. It sounded like it was stolen from a terrible PS1 RPG or something, but it just so fit the series and it wasn't ear bleedingly bad or anything, just cheesy. But boy, that dub. Despite having good voice actors (and some people who haven't done anything since), it's like everyone conspired to not give a damn and the dub only added to the enjoyment. The only thing better than that line in the spoiler above is how Garzey's Wing style it was delivered. Everyone was just chewing the dub like they were channeling the spirit of Nicolas Cage. Jin in particular just did not care, all of his dialogue was delivered just awful. On the plus side, the plot (if you can call it that) always seemed to be moving forward, there was always another terrible scene just around the corner with no fluff. No fluff is of course why all the characters sucked. They were also all dumb as bricks. The two mains want to kill this baby because it's obviously evil. They're living with this nice woman who took them in and every time she's there, the one tries to kill the baby. So what does she do? She leaves frequently and says "don't kill the baby". Are you kidding? They also come to realize plot related things (such as "no way, the bad guy's identity is ____?!") and get all surprised, then two scenes later, they seem to re-reveal this new stunning fact and get all shocked again, like they didn't mention it give minutes ago. And it's not that someone else mentioned it, the twins have discussions on this fact, then forget like an MIB flash thing is jsut off screen. They must've done it for this one thing like 5 times, I'm not even kidding. And what kind of terrible anime doesn't have an evil fetus? That's pretty awesome. The series also has this weird thing about every girl who gets a spot in the light as a main ends up having sex with someone, half of the time it's rape, then it's like Life of Brain when Brian asks "You were raped?!" then the mother says "Well at first, yes". It makes noooo sense. It seems like both brothers get brainwashed at least once only for it to wear of near instantly without even so much as an "I know you're in there!" speech, it's like the timer went off on the microwave instead. The amount of not caring is just astounding. This is either the best or second best "so bad it's good" I've ever seen (Garzey's Wing is the close second or first, whatever, and Apocalypse Zero takes third). This was just a rare treat to see. It was fun as all hell, funny as all Gehenna, and do not even try to think while watching it. The inconsistencies everywhere are just funny. Some anime are bad an painful, this is bad and enjoyable. You can get this on Right Stuf for cheap and I suggest doing so, it's a real treat. It's absolutely the sort of terribleness that deserves a cult following like it's Birdemic or the Room or whatnot. It's like a nine out of ten on the terrible anime scale, it's really damn good at it. [EDIT: Added paragraph breaks to make your most legible. -TK] |
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15462 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Showing my 12 year old brother Girls & Panzer (Girls und Panzer), watching in the dub and up to the finals. I really remember it so much slower during the original run, like being able to focus on the individual characters or the small touches. It is sad that they removed the singing of Katyusha song, leaving only a small instrumental.
So far I would say that the English dub is okay, but I thought the Japanese dub was much better at expressing the emotion of certain scenes. I was a little afraid early on that some of it was too dry or technical for him, but he seems to be enjoying it. It can be pretty loud when the canons go off, and one of the few times I have thought it would have been better to watch a BD instead of DVD with some scenes. EDIT: Just had to see my brother getting into the final showdown to see how it was successful at the nail-biting matches. He tends to skip OP and ED after watching so many episodes, but he enjoyed the ED here. |
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Mr. Oshawott
 Posts: 6773 |
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Today I finished watching El Cazador de la Bruja. A girl with mysterious powers named Ellis has been plagued with amnesia and troubled by a dark past. She and Nadie, an energetic bounty hunter, fatefully travel south in search of answers to Ellis' past.
I thought the show was a really fun and, in some cases, tragic watch. I found it a bit interesting that a bounty hunter would go so far as to looking after her bounty as if she were her sister. It was beautiful seeing Nadie and Ellis getting closer with one another as they went deeper within their adventure through the south.
My Rating: 4.5/5 stars. |
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 11295 Location: Frisco, TX |
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My review for the Ranma 1/2 season 1 BD box.
I wrote and formatted this specifically for Amazon and Blu-ray.com, so the assumption was for non-anime fans and anime fans alike to be reading it, so forgive its broadness. I would think the video, audio, and extras are probably more important to you guys, anyway, since a show or movie's content will just about always be subjective by default. Ratings are on a 5-point scale. Hope it proves useful. |
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shamisen the great
 Posts: 658 Location: Oregon, USA |
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Just finished Mahoramatic (both seasons). It was a decent, but mostly predictable '90's fan service anime. I bumped the second season rating up one just for the good ending. I had heard about the divisive anime ending before, but I though it was quite interesting. I suppose the change in tone could be considered jarring; however, it didn't seem unnatural considering some of what had come before. Besides, it can be nice to shake things up every once in a while.
Tony K- I have the Viz DVD Ranma box sets. Do you think the blu-rays are worth an upgrade? |
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 11295 Location: Frisco, TX |
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It really depends on your own personal knowledge and love of the technical side. If you can appreciate proper remastering techniques for film, don't mind original aspect ratios, and understand that you're not gonna' get crazy-awesome technical quality like Pacific Rim or something, then hell yeah. It's definitely worth the upgrade. |
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shamisen the great
Posts: 658 Location: Oregon, USA |
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Thanks. I've been on the fence.
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phia_one
Posts: 1657 Location: Pennsylvania |
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Been making my way through Patlabor. I already finished the OVA, now I'm on the TV series. I really enjoy the characters, particularly Goto.
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Chagen46
 Posts: 4377 |
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Got my anime club through episodes 9 and 10 of Madoka (the Prez wasn't there, we were supposed to watch episode 9 of Madoka and episode 2 of Symphogear, but I snuck episode 10 of the former behind him and hyped up everyone to watch it).
...Yeah. Even rewatching it, that is some powerful shit. spoiler[The scene in which Madoka asks Homura to shoot her soul gem still makes me want to cry like a little bitch]. Prez is gonna kill me now though. |
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Mr. Oshawott
Posts: 6773 |
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I've started watching Princess Nine not too long ago. A schoolgirl named Ryō Hayakawa has a knack for playing baseball. Unfortunately, she never gets a chance to demonstrate her potential, as baseball is "a male-only sport." It isn't until Kisuragi High Chairman Keiko Himuro decides to open up a Girls' Baseball Team, in which she instantly designates Ryō as Team Captain. Her goal: to prove that girls are just as capable as boys at playing baseball.
I'm having a real blast watching Princess Nine. I enjoyed seeing how the girls overcome their pressing issues, both inside the baseball field and out. With their awesome skills and determination, I'm certain that the Kisaragi Girls' Baseball Team will fare well at the National League tier.
My Rating: 5/5 stars. |
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