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Shelf Life - Magi: The Kingdom of Magic




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invalidname
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Joined: 11 Aug 2004
Posts: 2434
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
PostPosted: Mon Jul 17, 2017 10:20 am Reply with quote
Would love to see that Record of Lodoss War box get a proper review at some point soon.

It looks like Valerian and Laureline has the same source material as the big movie opening this week? Had not heard of the anime prior to this.
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SkerllyFC07



Joined: 08 Jul 2017
Posts: 108
PostPosted: Mon Jul 17, 2017 10:47 am Reply with quote
invalidname wrote:
Would love to see that Record of Lodoss War box get a proper review at some point soon.

It looks like Valerian and Laureline has the same source material as the big movie opening this week? Had not heard of the anime prior to this.


Can that Valerian and Laureline prject get a review please? Or can someone say if it´s worth watching?
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Dark Mac



Joined: 17 May 2008
Posts: 309
PostPosted: Mon Jul 17, 2017 11:18 am Reply with quote
Huh, haven't heard many people ranking the first season of Magi above the second before. I thought the Magnostadt stuff was way better than anything else on the show.
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belvadeer





PostPosted: Mon Jul 17, 2017 2:08 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
The English dub continues to be perfectly listenable, even if it does seem to have trouble deciding on exactly how many syllables are in “Magnoshutatt.”


Do they say it Mag-no-shu-tatt or Mag-no-shtatt?
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ChibiKangaroo



Joined: 01 Feb 2010
Posts: 2941
PostPosted: Mon Jul 17, 2017 4:44 pm Reply with quote
The Magnostadt story was excellent and I think it was better than the story from the first season of Magi. However, Titus was a weak link. The emotional aspects of his story were built up massively and then betrayed by the end. Also, I don't think enough was done to properly establish him as an individual. He just went straight from bullying golden boy to victim, and the time he spent with the little girl that was supposed to humanize him felt a little too contrived and fake. Even the villain comments on how dishonest it is. I sort of feel like the whole second season could have happened without Titus and it wouldn't have had any negative impact to remove him. It would have allowed for more development of Aladdin which is actually what we should have received.
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CountZeroOR
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Joined: 01 Nov 2005
Posts: 73
Location: Oregon
PostPosted: Mon Jul 17, 2017 9:05 pm Reply with quote
invalidname wrote:
Would love to see that Record of Lodoss War box get a proper review at some point soon.

Yep. I'm looking at the Blu-Ray right now, and the visual quality between the CPM Release and the Funimation Blu-Ray is like night and day.

It looks like Valerian and Laureline has the same source material as the big movie opening this week? Had not heard of the anime prior to this.[/quote]

Yep - they are based on the French comic, and it looks like the show is a French-Japanese co-production (like Mysterious Cities of Gold).
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Peter Hunt



Joined: 20 Feb 2011
Posts: 85
PostPosted: Tue Jul 18, 2017 2:17 am Reply with quote
Desperate times.
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Spike Terra
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Joined: 21 Mar 2016
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Location: Maryland
PostPosted: Tue Jul 18, 2017 9:53 am Reply with quote
@ChibiKangeroo I would argue that Titus was actually a good character to follow. He had developed his own motivations for living and through out his arc, (baring his introduction as the lame rival rival character) I found him to be very sympathetic. He is also a major component to the arc as Leam has no reason to invade without him.

On the whole, I feel like season 2 was leaps and bounds better than the first season. I liked that the story was closer to the manga this time, it had better animation, the character interactions were stronger, and the villains were better.
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ChibiKangaroo



Joined: 01 Feb 2010
Posts: 2941
PostPosted: Tue Jul 18, 2017 10:19 am Reply with quote
I think the idea of the Titus character was not necessarily terrible. However, for me he reflects the usual strategy in a lot of anime to go way over the top with sentimentality and huge shifts in character personas that occur too quickly for plot convenience. This is most evident in rival characters, such as how Titus was set up. At the beginning he is a total jerk popular boy with the cliche entourage of flunkies. Then quickly he becomes one of the good guys and by the end spoiler[is the Sacrificial Lamb who has a Jesus-like resurrection. (Why sacrifice him in the first place if they are just going to resurrect him immediately - and even give him fabulous hair and a new outfit as well! His death was an upgrade!)]

I just couldn't buy it. I'm not saying it was a bad concept and there was some emotional weight to his story, but it was cliche and cheapened by the end for me. I would have much preferred Aladdin's story being fleshed out more because he still hasn't gotten sufficient development.
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Nodz



Joined: 29 Dec 2013
Posts: 522
PostPosted: Tue Jul 18, 2017 10:24 am Reply with quote
ChibiKangaroo wrote:
I just couldn't buy it. I'm not saying it was a bad concept and there was some emotional weight to his story, but it was cliche and cheapened by the end for me. I would have much preferred Aladdin's story being fleshed out more because he still hasn't gotten sufficient development.


Of course, but this is a manga adaptation, and they were adapting chapters in which Aladdin's story wasn't developped. Maybe with a 3rd season you/we would have what you/we wanted.
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crosswithyou



Joined: 15 Dec 2007
Posts: 2892
Location: California
PostPosted: Tue Jul 18, 2017 10:30 pm Reply with quote
I'm not caught up on the Magi manga (it's currently on my backlog) but personally I enjoy Sinbad no Bouken more than the main Magi story. Sinbad is a more interesting protagonist than Aladdin or Alibaba, imo.
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Crystalblade13



Joined: 16 Aug 2016
Posts: 90
PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 6:51 am Reply with quote
I have literally never heard someone say they liked season 1 more than season 2. And I have talked to a ton of people about this series. I can not fathom that opinion. 2 >>>>>>>>> 1 easily.
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BodaciousSpacePirate
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Joined: 17 Apr 2015
Posts: 3016
PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 2:00 pm Reply with quote
invalidname wrote:
It looks like Valerian and Laureline has the same source material as the big movie opening this week? Had not heard of the anime prior to this.


It's a much bigger deal in Europe than the US, but the comic is incredibly influential. It also has a somewhat controversial reputation among science fiction fans, as there are several visual elements from the Star Wars movies - including the Millennium Falcon, the "Slave Leia" costume, and Watto from The Phantom Menace - that were arguably copied from 60s and 70s Valerian comics:

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ChibiKangaroo



Joined: 01 Feb 2010
Posts: 2941
PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 2:17 pm Reply with quote
I agree that Sinbad's story has been told better in the Sinbad spin off. However, I still think Aladdin is a better and more interesting character than Sin bad and it's weird to me that the anime has not done all that much with fleshing him out thus far.
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Elves



Joined: 23 Mar 2005
Posts: 269
Location: USA
PostPosted: Thu Jul 20, 2017 9:24 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
The only trouble is that the writing has trouble juggling all of the different countries and factions. By the time things start to wrap up, we have the Kou Empire, the Leam Empire, Magnoshutatt, Sindria, and the Al-Tharmen organization all competing for screen time. This leads to too many conveniently-timed “here comes the cavalry” moments, along with a lot of last-minute revelations that seem to come out of nowhere.


I FINALLY got to read the manga up to volume 24 and wow do I feel like I owe the anime an apology...because this is EXACTLY what happens in the manga too. (I'm not even kidding.) All these years I thought the anime was just throwing Alibaba and Morg's new powers in because it was canon, but the anime ran out of time...right? NO. How things play out in the anime is pretty much how they do in the manga. I'm seriously dissapointed with Magi for its storytelling. You can really tell where the manga-ka wasn't quite sure what to do so they just "skipped" to the next juicy bit.

Titus is actually a better portrayed character in the anime than the manga if you ask me. (Disclaimer: it has been a long while since I last saw the anime, but this is how I feel right now after having read the manga just last month.)
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