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What are you watching right now? Why? (please read 1st post)


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Spastic Minnow
Bargain Hunter
Exempt from Grammar Rules


Joined: 02 May 2006
Posts: 4595
Location: Gainesville, FL
PostPosted: Sat Oct 28, 2017 10:49 am Reply with quote
I got around to watching my copy of Ocean Waves. I bought it and the Red Turtle for good Sale prices on Amazon some time ago when I was actually there to buy a new copy of Up on Poppy Hill.

I had considered not buying it, because I had seen it once before, like ten years ago, and couldn't remember liking it much... or at all.
Sure enough, it really isn't good. No emotional resonance whatsoever and a very blah artistic effort. A book or manga series shoved into an adaptation barely over an hour. They must have cut so much out that they don't even touch upon what significance the title has. The revelation at the end about the character's feelings makes no sense as you never got a real hint of them in the film.
Largely unpleasant and forgettable.
"The Ghiblies 2" had some charming bits, but mostly I'd say you should only pick this up to complete a Ghibli film collection,
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23669
PostPosted: Sat Oct 28, 2017 3:20 pm Reply with quote
I saw Ocean Waves in a theatre a few years ago as part of a Ghibli retrospective. I didn't mind it. It was slight, to be sure, but if I'm not mistaken it was created as something to be shown on television as opposed to a theatrical release. I bought the UK release a while back (more for completist reasons than a burning desire to rewatch).

Watched the first 6 episodes of Bokurano and it's pretty God-tier stuff. There are many things about it I like, but I really admire the way it goes in directions I don't expect. I am deliberately not saying anything too specific about it because I think it's best experienced with as little information about it as possible. Well worth checking out, imo, as long as you are not completely adverse to experiencing material that is sad.
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Spawn29



Joined: 14 Jan 2008
Posts: 550
PostPosted: Sun Oct 29, 2017 3:39 pm Reply with quote
Perfect Blue (1998) - Since we are close to Halloween, I re-watch Perfect Blue for the first time since 2008. I had not seen Perfect Blue since I was 17 in High School. I remember when the movie came out on VHS in 1999, but I never saw it as a kid at the time. So nearly a decade later, I still love the movie and I think it's a masterpiece. Probably one of the very few Giallo anime titles out there in my opinion.

The animation holds up really well with the large amount of detail and use of colors in the film. For a title came out in 1998, it still looks really good today. The animation really captures the tone of the movie. The best thing that I love about the animation is that the movement in the characters. The characters movements seem so life-like, it seems like reality. I really miss when we used to have animation like this in anime.

The story is what I love about the movie the most. You really have a great cast of characters and every moment keeps you by surprise. Without spoiling anything, the movie will have you on the edge of your seat by from start to finish.

I do think the dub is pretty good and the Japanese voice acting is solid. I think the movie can go either way with sub or dub, but I do think the sub is a bit better in my opinion. Kevin Seymour did a good job on the director on the voice acting.

I think the biggest thing that will turn off newer viewers of this movie is that the movie is dated on how technology is used in the movie since the main character has no idea on how to use the Internet. The movie came out when the Internet was becoming a more mainstream thing compare to what it was in 1990 or 1992. Other than, I feel like there is nothing else wrong with this movie.

Overall, Perfect Blue is still amazing and is still my #1 favorite anime movie of all time. Everything about this movie is fantastic (I didn't want to create a pun on using the word "Perfect"). I would also recommend this movie to fans of Hitchcock, Argento, Fulci and Lynch.

It does bother me that this movie has no Blu-Ray release in the United States. It's a major classic and I feel like someone like Discotek Media or Sentai Filmworks would have pick it up by now. Heck, I feel like the movie is worth being pick up by Criterion. Sadly the old DVD release from Manga Entertainment is pretty old and it looks bad on newer TV's.

I guess I would recommend importing the UK Blu-Ray release at the moment.


Last edited by Spawn29 on Sun Oct 29, 2017 7:33 pm; edited 2 times in total
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killjoy_the



Joined: 30 May 2015
Posts: 2457
PostPosted: Sun Oct 29, 2017 6:14 pm Reply with quote
killjoy_the wrote:
Watching Little Busters Refrain, somehow managed to watch episode 4 before episode 3. Didn't even notice, which shows how much attention I'm paying to all this drama.

Can't I just have more celebrations like the Pancake Party from the first episode? That was great.


I finished it without skipping any episodes!

I liked the fun parts and the sad parts were fun when they weren't repeating themselves for three episodes. Guess this is going on the "Key anime I liked" list instead of the "Key anime I dropped" one.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Mon Oct 30, 2017 7:04 am Reply with quote
I'm still watching Dynamic Chord, but only because I hope they'll let Takahiro Sakurai sing. However he's barely even gotten a line of dialog yet, so I'm still waiting. In the meantime, this is just so godawful and I feel sad for him that he's in it.

I haven't seen animation this clunky since Weiß Kreuz, as if half the inbetween frames are missing. It has virtually no plot at all, and what little there is, is strung together with thrilling scenes of the boys buying snacks and commenting in turn about what they got and how good it is, or having breakfast and commenting in turn about what they're eating and how good it is, or trying on new outfits and commenting in turn about what they're wearing and how cool it is. Sometimes we get dramatic scenes of the camera panning slowly across a closeup of a character's eyes (which has been reused no less than a dozen times in 4 episodes, just for one character), or concert footage consisting of recycled animation of instrument playing that doesn't match the music. The music isn't bad though. It's at least getting me through until Apple Polisher finally gets an episode.
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jdotaku



Joined: 22 Jul 2011
Posts: 32
PostPosted: Tue Oct 31, 2017 1:12 am Reply with quote
rewatched bio hunter recently good stuff

watching-
kino's journey new season
inoyashiki
and some other fall season stuff

wife has me watching tokyo ghoul finally on netflix
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Spawn29



Joined: 14 Jan 2008
Posts: 550
PostPosted: Wed Nov 01, 2017 12:07 pm Reply with quote
Bio Hunter is a fun anime. It's a shame that it is only a short OVA and not a full series because I love the concept of the anime. It's like Resident Evil meets Devilman. If it was a 6 episode OVA series, you could freshen out the characters and story more.
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Cam0



Joined: 13 Dec 2009
Posts: 4884
PostPosted: Thu Nov 02, 2017 3:21 pm Reply with quote
I finally decided to watch Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale. It being an original anime thingy my interest in it was relatively low, but as a self-proclaimed fan of SAO I felt like had a some kind of responsibility to watch the movie. My only real interest in it was to see some of the cast again. All in all it was decent. I got to see the cast again. The insert songs were pretty nice. Getting to see desperate Kirito kicking ass again was nice. The action scenes were pretty. But I felt like the movie dragged on. It was a bit too long, I think.
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Spawn29



Joined: 14 Jan 2008
Posts: 550
PostPosted: Fri Nov 03, 2017 3:43 pm Reply with quote
My friend and I decided to watch the first four episodes of Gamers!. I thought it was okay and nothing too special. I wonder if the show gets better because it feels like another typical Slice of Life anime that is based on around school clubs? I gave it a chance. Can't say I didn't.
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Galap
Moderator


Joined: 07 Apr 2012
Posts: 2354
PostPosted: Fri Nov 03, 2017 11:21 pm Reply with quote
I just started watching Martian Successor Nadesico.

I've known of its existence for quite a while now, almost as long as I've been into anime, but I've never gotten around to watching it until now.

I had some pretty strong reactions to the first three episodes, and they were as follows:

1: I can see why this was something that was very intensely liked and well-regarded back when it came out.

2: I can also see why people today probably either think it doesn't hold up or don't care about it in the first place.

3: I disagree with the view in number 2.

Then I saw episode four and my mind was blown. This hits pretty much all my buttons, being really funny and unusual and weird, but also very serious and kind of distressing underneath.

Really looking forward to the rest of this!
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Alan45
Village Elder



Joined: 25 Aug 2010
Posts: 9812
Location: Virginia
PostPosted: Sat Nov 04, 2017 9:37 pm Reply with quote
I got the Flying Witch Bluray in the mail yesterday and last night I watched a couple of episodes. Today I finished the show before supper. I can always tell when I'm really enjoying a show when the episodes finish before I expect them to and I want to just move on to the next episode. This was so quiet and pleasant that I cheered me up immensely. Tonight I started on Alderamin on the Sky. It is obviously a lot more violent but so far it is also moving very nicely.
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Zin5ki



Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 6680
Location: London, UK
PostPosted: Sun Nov 05, 2017 5:54 pm Reply with quote
Galap wrote:
Then I saw episode four and my mind was blown. This hits pretty much all my buttons, being really funny and unusual and weird, but also very serious and kind of distressing underneath.

That little twist was a real eye-opener for many. The next few episodes will suffice for you to judge how well the show benefits from that upswing in its writing. Nevertheless, if the general tone and visual style are still to your liking, your attention will be continually rewarded hereon.
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Akane the Catgirl



Joined: 09 Oct 2013
Posts: 1091
Location: LA, Baby!
PostPosted: Sun Nov 05, 2017 9:46 pm Reply with quote
Progress Report:

Still a slow born. My anxiety meds have managed to help my mental health, but I still have a long way to go. Meanwhile, I'm working on two posts:

1. Code Geass Episode Nine Recap.

2. Paranoia Agent and the Creative Sterilization of Anime

It may be a while, but I'm doing my best to bring all of you quality content.
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Zin5ki



Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 6680
Location: London, UK
PostPosted: Mon Nov 06, 2017 3:34 am Reply with quote
Akane the Catgirl wrote:
It may be a while, but I'm doing my best to bring all of you quality content.

Slow and steady will win the race! Don't worry if you feel things are going slowly—many of the best creators in this community have had to limit their workrate for similar reasons.
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Galap
Moderator


Joined: 07 Apr 2012
Posts: 2354
PostPosted: Wed Nov 08, 2017 5:05 am Reply with quote
Zin5ki wrote:
Galap wrote:
Then I saw episode four and my mind was blown. This hits pretty much all my buttons, being really funny and unusual and weird, but also very serious and kind of distressing underneath.

That little twist was a real eye-opener for many. The next few episodes will suffice for you to judge how well the show benefits from that upswing in its writing. Nevertheless, if the general tone and visual style are still to your liking, your attention will be continually rewarded hereon.


8 eps in now. Still going strong all the way! Ultimately one of the biggest indicators for how good a show is for me is how much it makes me write about it, and the fact that I have this much to say when I'm only a third of the way through really says something.

I should mention that a lot of this is REALLY funny. I'm not going to talk about that at length though, because even though that aspect is almost as important as everything else, there's a lot less to really say about it, and what there is is harder. I mean, a lot of it would take the form of "I rofl'd at the part where they take Akito's Gekiganger model and use it in a demo, and he has to go looking for the little arm piece that shoots off." which doesn't really go much of anywhere, because comedy is more of an in the moment kind of thing.

So, I think it's interesting that (doing a little light reading on this, light to avoid spoilers) what people consider the big twist of this (that you allude to) is spoiler[Gai's death]. That definitely was a big deal for me, probably the biggest thing that happened in that episode, and I'll talk about it at length, but there were a lot of other important things I'll also discuss later.

spoiler[So what gets me the most about Gai's death isn't just that the show killed off what seemed to be a main character (and even at that the type of character that you wouldn't expect them to kill), but the way in which it happened and the way everyone reacted to it. Everyone portrayed his death as a noble sacrifice for the sake of the Nadesico, but that's not really quite what happened. He did put himself out there to fight off the earth forces, and showed truly commendable bravery in that engagement, but what did him in was getting shot before he could even react by the earth forces tying to escape the ship, just for being there, at the wrong place at the wrong time. That's kind of even more tragic than a noble sacrifice because what actually happened was completely meaningless. I also really liked Akito's reaction to it of playing Joe's death from Gekiganger on repeat, because watching Gekiganger was his main connection to Gai, and the content of the scene was the only way he could really process what had happened. It also shows the role media, art, and storytelling has beyond just escapism, in allowing people to contextualize their expieriences, or process and purge negative emotions.]

There were a lot of other things in this episode and those immediately following it though:

First, I loved the conversation between Megumi and the L2 station operater. A little bit of flirty banter, and then the channel just cuts. No screams or fanfare, it just cuts, and the station blows up. To me that's much more disturbing than the other ways it could have been depicted, because it shows that the universe doesn't care about bad things happening. Sure, the sun should darken and the heavens cry out when so many of us are lost and extinguished, but in reality those kind of things just happen, just like everything else.

So coming from that, I really like Akito's connection with Megumi, how they both recognize each other as more sensitive about those kind of things (spoiler[ The station's destruction and Gai's death]), and that connection creates its own kind of love,[spoiler] which they actually follow through on with a kiss (a rarity this early on in a series)!

This plays into what happens later between Yurika, Akito, and Megumi, where Yurika wisely realizes that every pair of people's relationship is different, and each connection between two people draws on different facets of each of them; a relationship between two people you know may not involve the facets you yourself see in your relationship with each of them. People can love each other for different reasons, and that creates different kinds of love.

SO, what was the deal with the eternal funerals following everyone's different traditions? When I was watching that I got a strong impression of 'people aren't going to like this', but I think those scenes are about something really important. In other stories, you might have a station blow up, and that will be the end of it, kind of ignoring the fact that tons of people just died. Or a more aware story might take time to mourn the dead. But here we really get a sense of the scale. The funerals are so numerous and diverse that they become an aspect of the crew's everyday lives, and they keep going on long past the point where those performing them can handle the monotony of it all. That really drives home a sense of how many people died, that this thing was so horrible that it actually exceeds a person's mental capability for caring about it. You might call Yurika callous or insensitive for getting tired and flippant about it, but I really don't think that's fair; it really is too much to put on one person. We might complain about scope insensitivity but at the end of the day there's another place a person reaches, after hearing about all the horrors of the world, all the causes one could go to battle for, there comes the dawning realization that you can't possibly do enough about any of these things to affect them to the extent you care about, and you're probably best off trying to make a difference in the ways you originally would.

I also really like how dispite many of the characters being wacky and kind of unhinged, they all have a kind of integrity as well. I think it manifests most with Yurika. I really like her as the captian. While she often acts ditzy and is really weird about Tenkawa, when it's time to command the ship, she displays tactical savy and good decision making. When she's called upon to make the hard decisions, she makes them. And she really thinks about those decisions. She doesn't let her emotions get in the way, but she's not uncaring or dispassionate either. The best part was when she spoiler[decided to turn on the shields to protect the ship from attack, crushing all the surviving martian colonists in the process.] To me it's really ballsy for the show to present that moral dilemma, and then resolve it, the hard way, and without resorting to chickening out and finding some cheap solution or deus ex machina. Plus, that whole thing happened under time pressure. There was no hand-wringing deliberation about it: thigs just happened fast, like they do in real life, and the captian had to keep up with it, because that's her responsibility.

All in all, this show is pretty special. It really deals with the raw difficulties of conflict: the odds aren't always stacked in your favor and sometimes you'll lose a friend to an unlucky blow, but you'll have to carry on regardless.

Sometimes you can make a noble sacrifice, like spoiler[the admiral blocking the tulip entrance with the derelict, or Joe in Gekiganger] but sometimes it really is just meaningless, like spoiler[Gai].

So far if I were to try to get one main theme or thesis out of Nadesico, I think it would be "Medidtations on how to still try to find happiness in a world that's terrible, dangerous, uncaring, and deeply distressing."
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