Forum - View topicShelf Life - Beck to the Future
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GrdAdmiral
 Posts: 101 Location: Tokyo, Japan |
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The series has it's low moments, but over all its not a bad series. Especially when it starts to pick up midway, and the ending is really good. Lots of Drama and comedy in this show. For those of you who are not sure, Shuffle got its root from a Hentai game. The game its self was a little lacking. Mostly lots of dry dialog and flashy pictures. But the character development is pretty solid. The show does the series a lot more justice then the game did. There is a lot of fan service with in the show, but that is to be expected from a show that gets its roots from a Hentai game. For those of you willing to stick it out, I think you will be very impressed with the ending. I know I got attached to the characters while I was watching the show. Also the soundtrack is very good. I personally will watch an entire show, before formulating an overall opinion of the show. Sometimes this is hard, but I usually try to stick it out. And in this case, I was not disappointed. Hopefully you wont be either! Oh yea, I'd also like to wish the OP a Happy Birthday as well. At least you got lower car insurance to look forward too at 25! 
Last edited by GrdAdmiral on Mon Feb 18, 2008 12:28 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Leebo
 Posts: 660 Location: Somerville, MA |
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GrdAdmiral, when I say that nothing else in the show is worth sticking around for, I mean that if you want a comedy, there are better comedies; if you want a drama, there are better dramas; if you want romance, there are better romance series. The only thing that makes it worthwhile is the "weeding out" process of picking one girl from the harem. That's a pretty specific thing to focus on, and I don't think people who aren't interested in that will enjoy it on any level.
I disagree. The characters and situations are all pretty ridiculous, like Bamboo pointed out, and they only get more ridiculous as the show goes on.
I was disappointed by the ending, not because of Rin's choice, but because of spoiler[the way he decided he had to attempt suicide in order to save Asa. It was the height of eye-rolling melodrama to me.] |
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Richard J.
 Posts: 3367 Location: Sic Semper Tyrannis. |
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Happy Birthday Bamboo! Here's hoping you have an awesome one filled with friends, family, and copious amounts of useless but desirable stuff. May you be blessed with presents and praise!
Best wishes from your sempai in life! |
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bci110
 Posts: 391 |
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First off, happy birthday Bamboo! Hope you have a great day and thank you for writing this great column every week. I thoroughly enjoy reading it, and it's one of the few columns on the Internet that I read on a regular basis. keep up the good work!
Shuffle!: I'm not surprised that Shuffle! Vol. #1 was classified as perishable, but as others mentioned it you take it for what it is you can find some enjoyment out of it. To me harem series are mainly hit-and-miss, and all of them revolves around the character relations throughout the course of the series, and how much interection they have with the viewer, and how the viewer connects to them. As someone who uses character connections as the #1 criteria to watching anime, I felt a strong connection to the characters when I first saw this show a couple of years ago. Very rarely do I watch an anime series where I like all of the characters involved, and so far Shuffle is a series in which I enjoy watching and caring about all of them. And I disagee with the poster that said that the Shuffle girls are stupid. Sia-chan might be a little bit on the dumb side, but the others show some signs of intelligence. 
EDIT: OK, I'm going to take back that last comment a little bit here. I'll admit that Kareha (the blonde girl that hangs around Asa Shigure) is pretty stupid. But outside of her and to some degree Sia-chan, the others are pretty fairly intelligent. BECK: I'm going to marathon the series next month (I only saw the first 10 episodes) so I'm looking forward to finishing this series in the future. I know that they had a lot of issues with the production and eventual release of the series (especially involving the rights to the music); however I will say that despite the issues and based on the episodes that I watched, FUNimation Studios did a great job with the English dub of the anime, and the performances of the voice acters were tremendous (most especially from Gerg Ayers and Brina Palencia). Last edited by bci110 on Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:52 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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GrdAdmiral
Posts: 101 Location: Tokyo, Japan |
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Nice Sia-chan avatar.  I still stand by the fact that I believe that Naval did a better job with the Anime over the game. However, if Funimation picks up Soul Link too, I think I'd be in heaven! How ever, I never could understand why spoiler[ the gods allowed polygamy but the demons did not. Somehow I always figured it would be the other way around. ]
I think we better start sending over half the Generation X back to kindergarten. I'd say there are a lot of them that do not know how to cook. Both Men and Women. I kinda found that part of the show realistic. Seems most anime, the women all know how to cook.
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Unholy_Nny
 Posts: 622 |
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I'm glad to see the first DVD of Shuffle! in the perishable bin, I hated it. Normally I enjoy harem series (Da Capo? Loved it.), but I gave up on Shuffle after 4 episodes.
But it got tons and tons of praise from the parts of the intarwebs I hang out in, and they all hated me for hating it, but they can kiss my ass. (Only posting this knowing a majority don't read ANN reviews because they give [well deserved] negative reviews to crap like this.) And a lot of defense was that, apparently, the second half is better. But from some people, I've heard that it was worse. I'm willing to take the advice from the minority that the ending was also trash =) Personally, I don't think the review was negative enough. |
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LydiaDianne
 Posts: 5633 Location: Southern California |
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Happy Birthday Bamboo! May you enjoy it to the fullest!
************** Thanks for the warning about Shuffle. I was sort of considering to get it. Now I won't. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6867 Location: Kazune City |
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As much as I liked Shuffle!, I have to agree with this volume's Perishable fate. And things probably won't look up until Vol. 3, either, so I can't entirely advocate the "stick with it, it gets better!" line. Heck, after I heard the concept, I didn't even start watching the fansubs until I read this thread from darkchibi midway through its airing. It's certainly not a good outing when it comes to positive portrayals of female characters, and the harem antics in the early episodes were pretty annoying, even to me. But either way, I'll be buying Shuffle!, and I think its intended audience will see its virtues. And yes, this is all what I honestly believe, despite what I've said about other series from the genre; Shuffle! just isn't as defensible as the Kanons and Airs of the world. |
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Iron Chef
 Posts: 487 Location: Seattle, WA |
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I suppose that the audience for Shuffle! wouldn't be so polarized if the show itself weren't so polarized. It was either stereotypical harem anime antics (shopping, cooking lessons, awkward dates) or brooding psychological melodrama. Having to slog through episodes of fluff and panty shots just to get some real substance was tiring. At the end of it all, I wasn't sure whether I liked the show or not, though if they'd just aired the "darker" episodes, it might have been entertaining in a School Days sort of way.
And as for Beck, here's a lengthy spoiler: spoiler[ I'm from Seattle, so it was super cool to see them play a show at The Crocodile Cafe, a venue about ten minutes from my house. I even sent them a video CD of the final episode and got some free tickets out of the deal! Sadly, the Croc closed up shop at the end of December after 17 years in biz. Dammit.] |
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james039
Posts: 103 |
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To Heart was great! I am a big fan of slice-of-life type stories, but I can't stand excessive fanservice as it seems to derail the entire show. There were a lot of things in just the first two episodes of shuffle which really got on my nerves, but it was mildly entertaining the rest of the time. |
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eely225
 Posts: 96 Location: West Lafayette, IN |
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Great reviews as usual. Kidd Grade really does look like s teal in its new boxset. It's worth investigating, so thanks for the reminder.
I had mixed feelings about the end of Beck as well. Bamboo summarized it well, it did come across as a bit forced, but still fulfilling, but made you feel empty... All sorts of contradictory emotions rose to the surface from Beck v6. Also, on the collection. I'm almost more impressed by the massive size of his video game collection. I mean, having that many ($50) Wii games just a year(-ish) after the system's release is amazing. Still the DBZ tapes were probably the most extraordinary thing about the collection. That takes dedication. Also noted: Is that Noah and the Ark behind the video games? If it is... well... awesome |
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Ojamajo LimePie
 Posts: 765 |
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Thanks for writing a Shuffle! review that doesn't contain any insults against people who do happen to like the show. It seems like every other review I see goes out of its way to call fans of the show "sick" or pedophiles. I'm glad to find someone who gives their opinion of the show and leaves it at that.
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jel123
Posts: 108 |
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Happy Birthday Bamboo!
I would have preferred that they didn't include the montage. It really did look out of place compared to the rest of the series and it was like watching major spoilers for the (so far non existent) second season. Oh well, I will be picking up the box set when it's released. |
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aluria
 Posts: 367 Location: New Westminster, B.C., Canada |
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I was weary of wathing FMA because of the Hype Machine as well, but I finally went and rented the first 2 DVDs from Rogers Video and sat down to have a nice marathon. I however, did not last into the second DVD, the series couldn't hold my attention so I returned the DVDs never watching the second volume.
I don't mind the Viridian Collections, I mean my M*A*S*H boxset is like that and it's fine. I think it looks nicer than the Bandai Anime Legends boxsets. |
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Alestal
 Posts: 605 Location: Dallas, Texas |
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Oh god, I totally agree with the review on Shuffle I saw it quite a while ago but I remember it was quite terrible. I think I could've written the story in kindergarten.
spoiler[Those King of Gods/Demons Dad's were SO annoying, getting drunk and making asses of themselves. It was funny at all, it was an eyesore and it was annoying.] Happy Birthday Bamboo! |
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