Forum - View topicThe List - The Top 5 Gen Urobuchi Anime
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5825 Location: Virginia, United States |
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Thunderbolt Fantasy and Puella Magi Madoka Magica are my two best favorites from Gen.
Classics with plenty of rewatchability. |
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kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
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Madoka is one of my all-time favorites and probably always will be, but honestly, besides that I haven't been a big fan of Urobuchi.
Fate/Zero was... watchable, which is more than I can say for the rest of that franchise, but also extremely grimdark. Psycho-pass was even worse in that regard. Expelled from Paradise was largely unmemorable, in the sense that I literally can't remember anything about it besides the sci-fi genre and the random fanservice right at the beginning. Thunderbolt Fantasy is visually impressive--how the hell do they do all that with puppets?--but writing-wise, kinda cliche. The other good efforts I've seen from him were bait-and-switch affairs, where he did a few episodes and then passed the buck to a worse writer. Gargantia turned out well in spite of this; Aldnoah Zero, uh, not so much, that one fell off a cliff as soon as he left. Apparently the second season of Psycho-Pass was also a trainwreck, but I didn't make it that far. |
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2862 |
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How can the article mention Kamen Rider Zero but ignore Fate/Gaim ? sacrilege.
Apparently, the butcher also wrote the current lost belt for fate grand order. My personal favorite would be madoka magica, with psycho pass a second and thunderbolt fantasy a third. There are a lot of fine details un urobuchi's writing that woosh over the average anime fan so it's pretty unsurprising to see a lot of people who won't apreciate his works. |
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Gemnist
Posts: 1757 |
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Urobuchi might just be my favorite anime screenwriter. His writing sensibilities - using multiple genres and tones to create overarching themes that affect each of the characters differently - is pretty much the exact kind of style I would like to do. Maybe not always as dark, but on a more substantial level, definitely.
That said, I wouldn't consider myself the all-time expert on the Urobutcher. I've mainly seen the Big Three works (F/Z, Madoka, and PP), and a few of the things he was tangentially involved with. Of the ones I've seen, I gotta rank Fate/Zero as my number one choice. In fact, it's tied with FMA Brotherhood as my personal best anime I've ever seen (though not my favorite). Everything about it - the animation, the score, the themes, the story, the characters - are pitch perfect. It's a slight shame it was my entry into the Nasuverse because nothing has compared since. Madoka was also pretty great. I'm not a big fan of magical girl shows, and a lot of the plot points (*cough* Ep 3 *cough*) had been spoiled for me well in advance of me watching it. It's a pretty pessimistic deconstruction, but I feel it works because of that. It's also got all the Akiyuki Shinbo sensibilities that will no doubt appeal to his fanbase. I wouldn't compare it to Fate/Zero though, as I find it needed to establish the character relations (primarily Kyoko and Sayaka - though anything Homura is outstanding) and the world a bit better. Also, Rebellion was way too confusing for me, and while I'm not TOO upset about the ending, I do prefer the anime's conclusion. For Psycho-Pass, I've seen all of the stuff Funimation has licensed (basically, no Season 3 or SS movies, though I plan to see them eventually). Psycho-Pass Season 1 is pretty solid. It's got a familiar premise, but it does take a unique approach for them, even though the second half is definitely better than the first. The movie's pretty fine; I wouldn't consider it great like Season 1 but it's nice it exists. As for Season 2, I don't particularly hate it, but it's a definite downgrade, with poorer animation and going way too grimdark without any thematic motivation. As for his tangential works none are as good as his main shows but each have their merits. Gargantia is a quaint show, nothing spectacular but it's nice to have a more slice-of-life feeling mecha show, even though it needs a second season. Aldnoah.Zero is kinda underwhelming, the characters are pretty bad (especially Slaine), and the overall premise feels very cliché, but I don't feel particular hatred towards it. |
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killjoy_the
 Posts: 2459 |
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Yeah I don't see why Concrete Revolutio is in the poll, given his work was likely just one episode.
Still, I voted for it because it's the best series in there ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ |
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cookiemanstah
 Posts: 546 |
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with creativity and determination, it would be doable. There's lots of PG-13 to mere R H-VN to anime adaptations even if they're no good. |
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SheRrIs
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Slaine was the highlight of the show... Literally, the only character A.Z is worth watching for. I don't know what happened with A.Z, but it's the most drastic anime example of a quality rift between S1 and S2 for me. S1 was genuinely enjoyable, with a gripping story. S2 ruined it all... I don't know how this could happen, with the same staff on board for both seasons.
What was questionable about it? I enjoyed it a lot. |
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Actar
 Posts: 1074 Location: Singapore |
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Not anime, but my absolute favorite work by Urobuchi is Saya no Uta. And oh yeah... KAMEN RIDER GAIM. He took a series that had become entrenched in children's entertainment tropes and elevated it to a next level. But in terms of anime? Yeah, pretty much what everyone has already said. Still have to watch a ton of his stuff like Aldnoah, Gargantia, etc...
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cookiemanstah
Posts: 546 |
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the later tone shift. I get the themes/idea behind it but the way it was handled was plain awful with its incredibly jarringly tone for a show that was so dark and sleek before. One look at the two openings should instantly tip anyone off. Also, the ending. The VN had a particularly badass and fulfilling one they could have gone through with instead. |
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2862 |
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Well, the biggest "flaw" in fate zero is tha urobuchi changed arotria's characters and made her too noble to contrast her with kiritsugu, VN readers tell me that VN artoria (camelot flashbacks) is about as cruel and practical and kiritsugu.
Kamen Rider Gaim is great , but if you have watched enough urobuchi shows you can see a lot of plot points coming a mile away. |
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dragon695
 Posts: 1377 Location: Clemson, SC |
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Same reason that iterations of PP fall off after he loses interest. I think his narrative concepts are difficult to translate by others. The problem was he should have stuck to his commitments and worked on both Kamen Rider and AZ. Aoki put a lot on the line to be left hanging like that. We’ll never know for sure, since Japanese are very secretive about this kind of thing, but I think that is what happened. He should take responsibility for how it turned out. Though I did appreciate that Eggs and Slaine were denied the princess and ended up stuck with each other on some remote island. Couldn’t have asked for a better ending for that trainwreck. |
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Yuki_Kun45
Exempt from Grammar Rules
 Posts: 725 Location: U.S.A. |
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What's up with the poll and only one pick? Pretty annoying because there's a few shows on this list that I do like and want to vote for.
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ThatMoonGuy
Posts: 364 |
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Artoria is the main case but a lot more changed. Tokiomi in FZ is extremely serious and dry while the first action we see by Tokiomi in Fate is him trolling Rin from beyond the grave. The whole show loves to delve into darkness and edge without ever letting itself be silly like all other Fate does. And from a philosophical standpoint, Fate/Zero mostly just apes Fate/Stay Night without really building any interesting idea. Fate/Zero is pretty much the Equilibrium of Fate properties. Honestly, I don't find Urobuchi all that good of a writer. He loves to wax philosophical and quote books but doesn't really do much with what he quotes. His Godzilla is honestly awful and that's even discounting how much of a kaiju movie it's not. His writing veers very closely to mysoginistic and he can hardly write interesting characters unless when he's getting heavy supervision from another writer. Psycho-pass is his style unadultered and is the most Urobuchi show that's ever Urobeen and it suffers from many of these problems. Honestly, Madoka is more of a miracle than anything and I can't see Urobuchi as much more than a worse Chiaki J. Konaka. |
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yuusha
Posts: 16 |
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If you include Thunderbolt Fantasy then you have to include Kamen Rider GAIM as well.
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Calico
Posts: 383 |
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Other people have already pointed it out, but the timeline at the beginning of this article gets things wrong. Urobutchi's first big hit was Madoka Magica in early 2011, before that he'd written the Fate/Zero novels and the visual novels. He wrote Kamen Rider Gaim (not Kamen Rider Zero) in 2014, which was after his rise to fame.
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