General Anime Discussion: Area 11

[Terraoblivion]

Honestly, EoE just makes it confusing in a new and different manner. Sure it's not barely coherent ramblings, but instead it's weird technicolor events based on poorly explained metaphysics. Also, it seems to contradict what the ramblings at the end of the show seems to end up concluding.

[banthesun]

EoE is just as confusing as the series, but it has a few more realworld scenes. The characters don't get as deep an exploration, but there's lots of freaky robot battles, pointless religious symbolism, people yelling things dramatically, and Shinji angsting. So if you enjoyed the series, there's sure to be something you like in it!

[Nerd-o-rama]

Hoo boy... I finally finished Evangelion. It was going great until, oh, maybe episode 23 or so, and then everything just seemed to fall apart into a bunch of philosophical rambling. For anyone who's seen it, does End of Evangelion do any better of a job concluding it, or is this just a series that I'm never going to understand?

Not really. Watch it anyway.

[Tengu_temp]

I'm in the camp that says EoE and the series ending are the same thing, just the latter happens sometime during the former, inside Shinji's head during Instrumentality. In any case, if there's one word to describe End of Eva, it's catharsis - as understood in the original, Greek tragedy way, not the modern "blowing off steam to feel better" way. And it provides some sort of closure to the series.

[Matthias2207]

This is probably the right place to ask this:
I have little to no experience with anime, the occasional episode of The Last Airbender probably the only anime I've ever seen (I'm just ignoring stuff like Pokémon/Beyblade/other toy-promoting series (or is it series-promoting toys?))
But well, it's supposed to be good, so I want to give it a try. Only problem: What is a good anime to start with? I would prefer one that focuses more on character development and less on screaming kids fighting each other with freaky monsters/powers/cards/spinners/robots. Preferably no combat at all. No gore. No annoying supposedly-awesomeness. I don't know if something like that even exists and I may be asking a lot, but if someone could recommend a nice (tame) anime I would be very grateful.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Azumanga Daioh is exactly what you're looking for. As are any number of other slice-of-life shows, AzuDai is just the best.

Also by the normal definition Avatar:TLA and LoK aren't anime as they are produced by an American company for initial broadcast on an American network. They just took some stylistic hints since both Avatar and a lot of action anime take fight choreography and ideas from wuxia films.

[Matthias2207]

... I'll give it a try. It's not exactly what I had in mind, though.
I just saw a few fragments of Laputa: Castle in the Sky and I think I might like it. Maybe more in that style?

[Terraoblivion]

This looks like one of the few situations where I think it might actually be reasonable to recommend one of my favorite shows, Maria-Sama ga Miteru. It's kind of a low-key slice of life drama about the students at a Catholic girls' school in Tokyo and the various friendships and bonds between the students, some sisterly others more vaguely romantic though never explicitly so. Character development is pretty much the main focus and things are quite down to earth despite how unrealistic some setting elements really are.

And if you liked Laputa you might want to look into other movies by Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. My Neighbor Totoro is about as low-key and lacking in fighting as you can get, though you should probably get someone who can actually remember the movie to elaborate. Spirited Away is also an absolutely gorgeous, magical movie about a girl trapped in the spirit world trying to save her parents from the price of their own stupidity.

[Fri]

Asking for 'an anime without combat' is pretty broad though. It's like asking 'a tv series without combat.' But I'll give you some that pass my mind right now.

As others said, usually you can't go wrong with ghibli. And for something in that line but not actually ghibli, 'The Girl Who Leapt Through Time' is a nice down to earth movie with enough fantastic element to not making it boring.

If you're into realistic down-to-earth sci-fi you might like planetes. It's a character driven show about garbagemen in space. And by realistic, I mean real and down to earth. You won't find space battles here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ-OyT4ivkM

If you're interested in some romance, Nodame Cantabile is a good one. It's a... maybe you can call it rom-com? Set in a musical college. Definitely not boring romance. Got good classical music soundtrack. It's definitely better than it sounds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0OTapF5dZQ

If you're interested in some rather surreal fantasy... Kino's Journey.

It's about a traveller who travel in a fantastic landscape with her sentient, talking motorcycle, visiting town by town with one rule, to never stop in one town more than three days. And the towns are more like island in time, one might be medieval town, another a futuristic town, another an abandoned one, and so on. Somewhat rather lacking in action, that bore some people, but that might actually interest you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TABmuUHIRzs

[Matthias2207]

I didn't mean 'without combat', more like 'not focused on combat'. I don't like the yell-loud-enough-and-kill-everything sort of combat often seen in anime. (Or at least, that's what I often see in anime.)

[Nerd-o-rama]

I didn't mean 'without combat', more like 'not focused on combat'. I don't like the yell-loud-enough-and-kill-everything sort of combat often seen in anime. (Or at least, that's what I often see in anime.)

There are some actiony sort of robot shows that keep the combat semi-tactical and mix it heavily with soap opera, like some instances of Gundam and Macross. They're fundamentally war stories/dramas set during a war, but.

[Terraoblivion]

Ah, okay, so not never-ending, no-budget shounen action. That makes it a whole lot easier. Those shows are both relatively rare and generally kinda awful, so you probably wouldn't have gotten many recommendations anyway. So here we go, my top ten or so recommendations.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya: One of the classic recommendations. A sort of eccentric urban fantasy'ish part comedy, part coming of age story about a girl who wants to find aliens, espers, time travelers and assorted other mysterious phenomenons to make her life more interesting and the people hanging out with her, especially the main character who insists on being disinterested yet keeps getting involved. Turns out that the things she's looking for are real and things are far weirder than they seem. The real highlights are the character development of the title character and Kyon, the main character, along with the general wit of his snark. The author's fondness for both science fiction and actual science also shows in a lot of the jokes, just like the animators obsession with details shows in the animation. The second season has some problems that essentially means episode 3-8 of it shouldn't be watched, though. The movie on the other hand is purely amazing. Can also be found legally and for free on Crunchyroll.

Puella Magi Madoka Magika: A dark and rather surprising take on the classic magical girl genre with a whole lot of emotional impact, along with some surreal and stylized visuals at times. There's also a tendency towards really good and often rather creepy music. It neither rushes nor wastes a second of its twelve episodes and stands as one of the best paced shows I've ever seen. Also, Homura is the greatest badass ever as well as the source of some of the most emotional scenes I've seen. I'd say more, the show is awesome enough to gush about, but doing so would involve telling spoilers and while I loved it despite being heavily spoiled myself, the ban on spoilers is generally considered even more strict here than usual, for fairly good reasons too. For Americans it can be found on Crunchyroll as well, but I guess you'll have no such luck and dvds won't be out here until late October.

R.O.D. the TV: The sequel to the Read or Die ova, which is honestly quite fun in its own right but almost exclusively action, unlike the series that followed. I would still consider it if you're interested in the tv show because it does set up some plot.

The show itself is about three sisters from Hong Kong with superpowers to control and strengthen paper who get employed as bodyguards for a young, depressed writer after an attempted murder at a book signing. The first half largely focused on developing these four characters and their relationships and does so extremely well, while also foreshadowing the main plot of the second half. The second half on the other hand has lots of plot and tension, along with a fair bit of fast-paced, well-choreographed action with a minimum of shouting and nothing resembling powering up, while still keeping character development going. Generally highly recommended and just got a cheap European dvd release.

Bodacious Space Pirates: A show that is roughly a couple hundred times more serious than its title, Bodacious Space Pirates is the story of how a teenage girl grows from kind of an inexperienced, but talented ditz into a supremely confident captain of a space pirate ship. The premise seems kinda silly, but the science is relatively hardish, though more so in the beginning than later on, and while lighthearted the plot is by no means a silly comedy. It also features a bare minimum of action, far less than most people expected from the title. Instead the show is mostly about the characters and has a remarkably good cast, with especially the main character, her mother and the first president of the space yacht club at her school as highlights. It also makes a real effort to capture the majesty and vastness of space, only rarely treating it as just a place to stick ships moving around for other reasons. Like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya it is on Crunchyroll.

I have more shows I love, but these are my three absolute favorites and the show I most recently watched and came to love, so I'll stick to these for now.

[Tengu_temp]

Cowboy Bebop is the go-to gateway drug to show people that there's way more to anime than Dragonball and Sailor Moon. Watch that.

[Fri]

Cowboy Bebop is the go-to gateway drug to show people that there's way more to anime than Dragonball and Sailor Moon. Watch that.

What he says.

[MLai]

Steins;Gate
Spent the first 7-8 episodes being quite bored. So bored I couldn't watch more than 1 episode every other day. I started to get the impression that all anime involving time travel must be slow.

By episode 10, I couldn't stop. Glad I had a day off... I binged through the rest of the series in one sitting. Wow. After a certain point in the story, it's just impossible not to continue.

(1) The main protag carries an idiot ball thiiiiiiis biiiiiiiiig.
(2) Why did some ppl find Fate/Zero misogynistic, but this show is a-ok?

[Tengu_temp]

I found Steins;Gate to be pretty excellent from the get-go. The start is slow, yeah, but that's not a bad thing - the atmosphere of a sci-fi mystery and the humour make up for that.

Need to finish that show. I still have several episodes to go.

Steins;Gate
(1) The main protag carries an idiot ball thiiiiiiis biiiiiiiiig.
(2) Why did some ppl find Fate/Zero misogynistic, but this show is a-ok?

1. That's on purpose. Like a lot of science nerds (and I say that as a science nerd) Okarin is both really smart and really dumb at the same time. Especially when it comes to other people.
2. Because Steins;Gate has competent female characters with their own agencies who are more than just accessories to the male characters. In fact, I'm not sure what's misogynistic about this show - a few times Okarin goes way too far in being a jerk to Kurisu, but the show treats that as definitely not-okay.

(Try to mark spoilers as spoilers, last episode I've seen was 17 so far.)

[Matthias2207]

Ah, okay, so not never-ending, no-budget shounen action. That makes it a whole lot easier. Those shows are both relatively rare and generally kinda awful, so you probably wouldn't have gotten many recommendations anyway. So here we go, my top ten or so recommendations.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Puella Magi Madoka Magika:

R.O.D. the TV:


Bodacious Space Pirates:

I have more shows I love, but these are my three absolute favorites and the show I most recently watched and came to love, so I'll stick to these for now.

Yeah, Crunchyroll doesn't work in my area, so either I'll have to get one of those fancy proxy-things so it looks like I'm watching from somewhere else or I'll just torrent it.

Melancholy sounds great, definitely going to watch it.
Thank you all for these recommendations.

[Prime32]

Melancholy sounds great, definitely going to watch it.

Make sure you figure out what order you're going to watch the episodes in though. They were broadcast achronologicially, put into chronological order in some formats, and semi-chronological order in others. Season 2 was a re-broadcasting of s1 in chronological order, with new eps in-between.
Basically, episode numbers could mean anything, so try to get them all from the same source.

Also, ep1 in broadcast order is a (bizarre) movie made by the cast, which doesn't reflect the tone of the rest of the series.

[Terraoblivion]

Doh, I totally forgot about that part. Probably because I'm so used to the show that I forget most people aren't.

Yeah, broadcast order is kinda funky, but it also not only presents a much better dramatic curve than chronological order, it also underscores the character development by contrasting episodes in spring with episodes in autumn. It's quite an interesting effect and it works rather well, even if some people find it confusing. I quite recommend watching the first season in that order.

[Raistlin1040]

So, my appendix threatened to rupture on Monday morning, and after a brief hospital stay, I'm mostly bedridden and can't work this week, meaning I have more free-time than usual. I'm using a lot of this time to work on school stuff, but I'm also using it to watch some more anime. I watched both seasons of Code Geass in the last week or so and am looking for something else now that I finished. Good English dub is basically the only qualifier for me watching something, I'll try any genre. My favorites in general are Haruhi Suzumiya, Death Note, Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis, TTGL, FLCL, FMA (original) and now Code Geass. I guess just drop a top 3/5/10/whatever list of your favorites and a few sentences about each and I'll watch some pilots tonight and decide on stuff tomorrow? Thanks for helping me fight off the boredom, guys.

[Terraoblivion]

Read or Die is really good and is one of those shows known for having a good dub. I can't comment firsthand, I really only watch things subbed, but it's one of those things that come up in all reviews of it. Going from the ova to the series will be a bit odd, though, since one of the voice actors switches characters in-between.

In any case, the ova is a fun, not terribly serious action show with a spy/superhero theme and lots of incredibly pulpy villains. The action is inventive, fast paced and well-choreographed while the plot doesn't really matter all that much. The tv show, on the other hand tones down on the action a lot in favor of plot and character development and does so really well. And while there is less action, what there is is still generally quite good.

I'd give more recommendations, but I honestly really don't know much about dubs so I generally don't know what to recommend with that requirement in place. Maybe Baccano! with its surprisingly funny take on ultraviolence and immortal gangsters in the 1930s.

[Prime32]

If you're looking for dubs... Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

[A Rainy Knight]

I'd give more recommendations, but I honestly really don't know much about dubs so I generally don't know what to recommend with that requirement in place. Maybe Baccano! with its surprisingly funny take on ultraviolence and immortal gangsters in the 1930s.

I'll second this one. It's a pretty awesome show with a very solid dub.

I'll recommend Ouran High School Host Club for its good dub and my general love of it, but I have no idea if you'll like its genre or not. Basically, an ordinary girl who got into a school for the ludicrously wealthy by her grades breaks a vase belonging to a club of handsome boys who entertain the school's girls, so she disguises herself as a boy and joins the club to repay her debt. Lots of genre-aware comedy ensues along with a few genuinely touching moments.

[MLai]

1. That's on purpose. Like a lot of science nerds (and I say that as a science nerd) Okarin is both really smart and really dumb at the same time. Especially when it comes to other people.
2. Because Steins;Gate has competent female characters with their own agencies who are more than just accessories to the male characters. In fact, I'm not sure what's misogynistic about this show - a few times Okarin goes way too far in being a jerk to Kurisu, but the show treats that as definitely not-okay.
(Try to mark spoilers as spoilers, last episode I've seen was 17 so far.)

You have better self-control than me. By eps 17 there was no way I could stop (if the show is good). Glad I had the day off. I'm the same with novels, which is why I only read them during vacations.

(1) I'm ok if he's awkward in social situations. But as a self-proclaimed mad scientist I would've liked him to be capable of being more detached when need be. I guess (as you said you are) I'm also just projecting my own interpretation of myself on him. But I just don't feel like there's enough protags with clinical self-control in anime. I can see why that is, though. (For the sake of the general audience.) Hei from Darker Than Black is a good example of a seemingly detached protag, but someone like that who is not an assassin/ secret agent would have been refreshing.

(2) Really? As I was watching the anime I was thinking I can't keep track of all the sexist elements if I don't write them down LOL. Then I saw that Nitroplus also wrote the story (same studio as the writer of F/Z I believe?) and I thought oh ofc.
Not that it lessened my enjoyment of the anime, since it's relatively mild and I don't think it's mean-spirited. But even though I don't agree that the F/Z writing is sexist, I do watch animes currently with a passive "heightened awareness" of possible sexist elements and S;G seemed full of them.

[banthesun]

I just finished watching Steins;Gate myself, and I loved it from the start. The characters were interesting, and the drama built up in a really good arc for me.

Tiny tiny spoilers:

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As far as Okarin's character was concerned, my understanding was that he faked being detached to avoid messy social situations, like how he pretends to make phonecalls when he's being confronted directly. I've seen a few people in my life who act like that (I even used to do something similar myself ), so that's how I interpreted his character.

As far as sexism is concerned, the only things I could consider as being sexist is Kurisu being so damn tsundere all the time, and half the female cast falling for Okarin. I didn't really find either of these elements as detracting from the plot or characterisation though.

[Closet_Skeleton]

I don't like sexism in fiction1, but if you try to write your female characters to escape allegations of sexism then you just end up writing a emotionless cardboard cutout who isn't allowed to do anything interesting except win all the time because otherwise someone might be offended2. The only real way to avoid sexist characterization is to have multiple female cast members who are all individuals with their own personalities. If you do that then you could even (but I still wouldn't recommend it) make one of them the most extreme misogynist stereotype you can imagine and it wouldn't be sexist at all because that character wouldn't be representing women in general.

1 That is sexism in narrative, eg the female cast members always getting captured and never doing anything important plot wise (not that a damsel in distress story can't be done well and in a way that's respectful to women). Assuming you're writing about humans sexist characters and societies are fine in theory. But in practice they annoy me too, especially when bad guys are made sexist just to show how evil they are, which falls into a ton of other problems with 'stock kick the dog moments'. Especially when all the male misogynists are evil thugs but all the female misandrists are justified by being traumatized victims.

2 Well basically, you just end up with a really boring male action hero, just female, funnily enough

[MLai]

I'm gonna try to keep this topic about Steins;Gate from getting too involved, so I'll just elaborate on 1 example: Mayuri, aka Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

1. She's a double offender in that she's not only a MPDG, she's also the Asian cinema stereotype of the young woman who acts like an 8 y/o. Asian cinema loves to portray adolescents or teenagers as 5+ years (8+ years if female) more immature than their actual ages, even when the character isn't meant to be a moe quota.

2. And what about "her arc"?

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LOL not only is it a "woman in fridge" arc, it's one in an infinite time loop! I also found it hilarious that Okarin never once tried to involve the victim in her own self-protection, despite the fact that she's a full-time "lab member" and knows all about the time-travel experiments.

Honestly just replace her character with a cute little puppy for the entirety of that arc, and you'll have the exact same story.

The only thing that's non-stereotypical to her is the fact that

Spoiler

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she ends up not being the protag's love interest. Though it does make me wonder what their exact relationship is, in that case. It makes me think that they basically share an adolescent love (which is fine) that is frozen in time (which is strange).

[kamikasei]

Steins;Gate does have a lot of sexist elements and problematic aspects, and very likely would be better for having them addressed. Despite that, if you look at the criticisms directed at Fate/Zero earlier in the thread I'd say it's fairly clear why they don't apply to Steins;Gate. A single male protagonist surrounded by women with a thing for him isn't great, but it's better than a large cast with hardly any women. Kurisu is well established as smarter than Okabe. Indeed, its failings are mostly generic failings that come with the genre: the pseudo-harem I expect is a legacy of its VN origins, the dodgy side of tsundere characters is endemic to modern anime - worth discussing, but nothing that this show more than any other would be likely to spark discussion of.

Spoilers for after episode 17:

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The biggest criticism I'd make of the entire show, in fact, is the one it has most in common with those made towards Fate/Zero: Okabe's assault of Moeka is creepily sexualized, and I'm not sure I want to know how it played out in the original VN...

[Terraoblivion]

I don't think you know what manic pixie dream girl means, since it actually has a real definition. She doesn't suddenly drop into his life, she's been there for like ten years, just like she hardly drags him away from the doldrums of ordinary, boring life, especially given that he's substantially farther removed from it than her. For that matter, she's more stupid than wacky or random. So, really, she doesn't seem to fit any of the criteria.

[MLai]

Actually I did look it up just before typing the last post, to double-check. Here's what Wiki says:

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) is a stock character in films. Film critic Nathan Rabin, who coined the term after seeing Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown (2005), describes the MPDG as "that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures."
--Bubbly, check.
--Shallow, check.
--Cinematic, check.
--Doesn't exist IRL, check.
--Exists for male protag's emotions, check.

MPDGs are said to help their men without pursuing their own happiness, and such characters never grow up, thus their men never grow up.
--Check, check, check.

MPDGs are usually static characters who have eccentric personality quirks and are unabashedly girlish. They invariably serve as the romantic interest for a (often brooding or depressed) male protagonist.
--Check, check.
--Not romantic interest in the anime. I mentioned that.
--Well, Okarin ain't a brooder. But that's Okarin.