General Anime/Manga Discussion 13.5: Recap Episode

[HMS Invincible]

Psycho Pass S2-4
Sigh, why are your women so stupid? If you have a cellphone, why don't you use it to call for backup? On top of that, it was incredibly frustrating watching 4 enforcers and an inspector make up increasingly tortured excuses as why they shouldn't help/move in as the minutes ticked by.

[Ibrinar]

I only tried it for the sake of completeness but I kinda like Ore Twintail Ni Narimasu. It's just so silly.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Spoiler: Fate UBW Episode 5

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Good episode, built a lot of stuff. I continue to love Fuji-nee. And I think some of the foreshadowing this episode reminded me that I've been spoiled on Archer's identity, I just didn't put it together until now. Assuming that he is who I think I remember he is. Assuming they were talking about Unlimited Blade Works. Or, to clear things up--I remembered something very particular about the identity of a Servant that strongly deviated from the norm for Servants, but don't know if it was from this iteration of Fate. The foreshadowing is making me think so, however.

Gotta love the continued dramatic irony. Shirou fibbing that Saber was coming to visit Kiritsugu.

Cryptic introduction of Caster...does every Caster just build up a lair or something? I mean, I guess that's what the appropriate Caster tactic would be...

Fight next episode! Fight next episode! That's what the previews seem to indicate, anyhow.

[Prime32]

Spoiler: Fate UBW Episode 5

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Cryptic introduction of Caster...does every Caster just build up a lair or something? I mean, I guess that's what the appropriate Caster tactic would be...

Spoiler

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Caster's class skills are Item Construction and Territory Creation, the latter of which is... basically "build a lair", yeah.

Saber's are Magic Resistance (works on everything that D&D spell resistance would work on) and Riding
Rider's are Riding and Magic Resistance
Lancer's are Battle Continuation (reduce penalties from wounds) and Magic Resistance
Berserker's is Mad Enhancement (increase stats at the cost of sanity)
Assassin's is Presence Concealment
Archer's is Independent Action (increase the amount of time they can survive without mana)

Exactly how strong the skill is varies from Servant to Servant, and it's possible for members of other classes to have these skills as personal skills, so in theory you could have a Caster who doesn't create lairs because their benefits are too minor, or alternatively a Lancer who can create lairs due to some aspect of their legend.

[Pronounceable]

UBW continues to be not bad. But it's not exactly like how I'd have done it therefore I'm gonna mark them down for not reading my mind: ufotable sucks, worst episode ever, 8.8

New Ilya scene could've used a different setting, that was unnecessary at best. Then again, unfortunately Prisma Ilya exists and even more unfortunately, so does its fans. I do enjoy the apparent whiplash they suffered from seeing real Ilya in last episode though, that doesn't get old.
They finally cleared something that's been unclear since the beginning, so good job Nasu.

While we didn't really need even more explanations of the war, Shirou did. And they're doing a generally stellar job of trimming unnecessary bloat and the dumber scenes, I could let them get away with more exposition. Except they cut Rin's best line, which is unforgivable and ufotable sucks: 8.8

Side characters are being done really well. And we finally got ourselves some actual Unlimited Food Porn. They also threw in a whole bunch of foreshadowing that seems overkill to me, while it's probably barely even noticable for newcomers.

Unexpected mooks were unexpected but not unwelcome. This bodes well for future action scenes. CG effects aren't flawless though, presumably they'll fix it on boxes.
..
Good episode overall, they're going slow and steady, letting the narrative (and more likely their budget) breathe. Next one should have at least two battles though, unless they massively bloat the first one to push second into a cliffhanger.

vvv Well it's more of a general state of surprisedness than a teary soul rending whiplash. I saw similar comments on a bunch of random blogs I looked at and projected a whiplash on general Prisma Ilya audience because I like to imagine their distress (because screw em).

[deuterio12]

New Ilya scene could've used a different setting, that was unnecessary at best. Then again, unfortunately Prisma Ilya exists and even more unfortunately, so does its fans. I do enjoy the apparent whiplash they suffered from seeing real Ilya in last episode though, that doesn't get old.

Could you point me to where you saw such "whiplash" from Prism Ilya fans?

Mind you, the "real" Ilya only shows her true face on the original game's bad ends. Aka the Ilya that orders Berseker to chop Shirou into pieces while casting a spell to make him unable to die/traps his soul in a plush toy/etc.

Shame the anime can't really show those up (or all the other bad ends for the matter). All the different ways Shirou could die/worst in each route was actually quite entertaining.

Also food porn without lengthy smell/taste narrations just isn't the same thing.

But overall nice episode, Caster seems to also have received an upgrade with her new summons.

[Sallera]

Except they cut Rin's best line, which is unforgivable

I'm a bit behind, and it's been a while since I read the VN; which line is that?

[Pronounceable]

I'm a bit behind, and it's been a while since I read the VN; which line is that?

[Mando Knight]

I only tried it for the sake of completeness but I kinda like Ore Twintail Ni Narimasu. It's just so silly.

I watched the first episode last night. "Silly" is the most accurate word for it, I think. The premise is utterly stupid (on par with "clothes were invented by aliens to shape humanity into something that they could feed on"), but they just take it and run with it. The execution is highly energetic and tongue-in-cheek, and I don't really fault it for being entertaining nonsense.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Oh, and RE: UBW...I now understand what was so fundamentally weird about Prisma Ilya, of which I saw the first episode. They basically ran all the character relationships through a blender and added strangeness.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Aw dangit. I hit a feels bomb in Magi.

Spoiler: The Balbadd Arc

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Literally started tearing up at that last scene in Episode 17. It was just sad and wonderful and after all that intense pain coming out from Cassim's past, it...yeah. Wow. I was enjoying the show, and then that happened. If they can do that consistently in the show, I'm gonna be hooked.

[Sith_Happens]

That awkward moment when you suddenly realize that

Spoiler: Madoka Magica

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Mami might have had a half-decent chance of surviving if her soul gem was literally anything other than a hairpin.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

That awkward moment when you suddenly realize that

Spoiler: Madoka Magica

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Mami might have had a half-decent chance of surviving if her soul gem was literally anything other than a hairpin.

Eyup. Them's the breaks.

[HMS Invincible]

That awkward moment when you suddenly realize that

Spoiler: Madoka Magica

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Mami might have had a half-decent chance of surviving if her soul gem was literally anything other than a hairpin.

Spoiler: Rebellion Spoiler

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You have some precedent for this(Homura took her gun and blew her own brains out), but it's not the best strategy. IIRC, she took several seconds to heal. You would too if you just splattered half your brain. In that similar space of time, Mami was decapitated, and then consumed.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Spoiler: Madoka

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Presumably witches like soul gems as much as Mahou Shoujo like Grief Seeds and know to aim for those.

[Pronounceable]

Today I've discovered a miraculous thing on the internet it's certainly the best thing ever, namely a set of Umineko fanart videos. They have slain me and I am now dead. There are major spoilers for episodes 3, 4, 6 and 7 but only if you can see past the crushing kawaii and not die of acute poisoning. This is the first time Japan's obsession with cuteness is remotely understandable and justifiable to me because damn.

[mallorean_thug]

Hmm, with how old those are, I'm amazed I've never seen them before. The Erica one was perfect. Thanks for the link!

[Hazzardevil]

I haven't [verb]ed the VNs, are they worth [verb]ing?
I don't know what's the word for experiencing them.

And has anyone watched Berserk? Because I've finished and I can't really describe it other than I don't think I've ever felt sick after watching something.

[Pronounceable]

I haven't [verb]ed the VNs, are they worth [verb]ing?
I don't know what's the word for experiencing them.

Which ones? A vast majority of all VNs suck, exactly like every other kind of art, but there's some great stuff. They're exactly as verbable as books and just as variably qualitified.

And Japan produces a lot of sick ****, sometimes even with artistic merit. It's by no means a rare phenomenon to be disturbed, horrified and/or disgusted with some anime or manga.

edit: In case you were asking about Umineko specifically, it's the best thing I've ever read and I've read a moderate number of things.

[Prime32]

And has anyone watched Berserk? Because I've finished and I can't really describe it other than I don't think I've ever felt sick after watching something.

Berserk is an extremely dark story, and the anime ends at the single darkest, most <beep>ed-up part of the entire narrative. That is, your reaction is perfectly normal. Things do get better after the Eclipse (it even starts to shift from Low Fantasy to Heroic Fantasy), but Guts is severely traumatised by the experience and never really gets over it.
The manga plotline goes much further if you're interested, though I'd recommend starting from the beginning since the anime leaves out some important characters and plot points.

[Terraoblivion]

VNs tend towards absolutely awful, clunky prose though, so be warned.

To be perfectly honest, the best VNs I've read haven't even been Japanese, they're Katawa Shoujo which is a product of 4chan of all places and also free and the pair of Analogue: A Hate Story and its sequel Hate Plus.

Katawa Shoujo follows a more classic format with dateable girls who each get a route where you also learn more about them. However, despite that it is neither porn, nor allowing the player to put himself in the shoes of the guy who picks his favorite girl. Instead the choice is made depending on the player portraying the kind of character who'd end up hanging out with that girl and in one case, it even makes some meta-commentary of what that kind of person is. Mostly, though, it's a carefully written story that's clearly a product of passion and truly tries to present all the characters as well-rounded people, with complex, realistic problems and in all the routes the dating is clearly secondary to the character exploration. Also, everyone is physically disabled in some way and the story neither ignores that or defines the characters by it. And it has the best price which is free, just download it from the website. The promotional line pretty much sums up the primary theme: "You are not alone and you're not broken. You are you and everyone has damage. Be the better person."

On a more personal level, it speaks greatly to me. I'm not disabled, but I do belong to a minority that has to live life closely tied to the medical system and who others have a horrible time truly understanding or relating to even when they're well-meaning, so the portrayal of physical disability hit close to home and saw my own experiences mirrored in them. I don't want to elaborate on what exactly, I'm simply bringing this up to say that it is truly respectful and empathetic towards its characters. Doing my first route of it, I couldn't concentrate on anything else for a week after and just thinking about the feelings it created makes me tear up. It's not a conventional story, especially not for VNs, and it does have some rough spots where the art or the exact phrasing could be better, but the core of the story is amazing as a collection of character studies.

Analogue: A Hate Story and Hate Plus have you take the role of a salvager investigating a derelict colony ship to find out why it never reached its destiny and how its people died. From that cheery start, it moves on to a somewhat unusual format where you don't talk to characters to advance a plot as much as reading through the old documents of the crew while it was still alive and discuss the meaning of them with the ship's two AIs. Both have agendas, both are likely to end up liking you and both are very likable despite major flaws as people, one is in your face about those flaws, the other isn't. And the story that unfolds is grim, made all the more grimmer by being based on actual, real world scholarship giving it weight, the VN even lists its sources. I don't want to spoil too much, but it's a very powerful and surprisingly complex story that I can't recommend enough. Just keep in mind that you'll have to cheat to get the best ending of the first game and an entire route of the second. And, no, I'm not going to explain how.

[mallorean_thug]

I haven't [verb]ed the VNs, are they worth [verb]ing?
I don't know what's the word for experiencing them.

I guess I'm the only one who thought he was specifically responding to the two posts immediately before his talking about Umineko no naku koro ni and thus read his post as a question about that specific VN?

To answer that question, I would say that Umineko is my absolute favorite piece of media in any medium. I think that it is absolutely worth reading (the verb I would use, though "play" is fine too), but totally understand anybody not being able to get into it. Its long (Reading through it will probably take you ~80 hours at least), it has a pretty boring introduction, the original art was offputting, and it plainly isn't trying to appeal to a broad audience. But if you can get past all that, I honestly think that its the most fun and fulfilling experience I've ever had. Some people seem to think that it goes entirely downhill in the second half, and you might even join them, but I enjoyed it the entire way through and stand by the ending as perfect.

VNs tend towards absolutely awful, clunky prose though, so be warned.

I don't think that this statement is true. I think the better statement would be "Fan translations tend towards awful, clunky prose, especially when they attempt to be literal instead of localizing" This is especially true if the translator is an inexperienced non-native English speaker, like takajun was when he penned the Fate/Stay Night translation. Profession translations of pieces in that medium, like say Aksys's translations of 999 and Virtue's Last Reward or Capcom's translations for Phoenix Wright, are no more clunky then any other medium.

[Hazzardevil]

I guess I'm the only one who thought he was specifically responding to the two posts immediately before his talking about Umineko no naku koro ni and thus read his post as a question about that specific VN?

To answer that question, I would say that Umineko is my absolute favorite piece of media in any medium. I think that it is absolutely worth reading (the verb I would use, though "play" is fine too), but totally understand anybody not being able to get into it. Its long (Reading through it will probably take you ~80 hours at least), it has a pretty boring introduction, the original art was offputting, and it plainly isn't trying to appeal to a broad audience. But if you can get past all that, I honestly think that its the most fun and fulfilling experience I've ever had. Some people seem to think that it goes entirely downhill in the second half, and you might even join them, but I enjoyed it the entire way through and stand by the ending as perfect.

I was asking about that one in paticular, but it prompted an interesting discussion. I have read two visual novels and haven't finished either. These were Katawa Shoujo and Cross Channel. For some reason I don't like the reading. I enjoy reading books, but there's something about just reading the text off the screen that doesn't work for me.
I will probably get back to Katawa Shoujo, not so sure about Cross Channel.
Cross Channel is, according to a friend, about an academy where people are in various levels of sociopathy.
I just saw you play as a character who is either a kind friend or a filthy pervert depending on options, with decisions like "Help her clean" or "grab her chest."

I don't think that this statement is true. I think the better statement would be "Fan translations tend towards awful, clunky prose, especially when they attempt to be literal instead of localizing" This is especially true if the translator is an inexperienced non-native English speaker, like takajun was when he penned the Fate/Stay Night translation. Profession translations of pieces in that medium, like say Aksys's translations of 999 and Virtue's Last Reward or Capcom's translations for Phoenix Wright, are no more clunky then any other medium.

I think we are getting into problems of bad writing getting translations as well. A comparison I can think of is giving Twilight translated into a non-germanic or romance language and then having them read it. You can't make trash good with a simple translation. We're on the end where we don't know if the person translated it badly or the writing was awful to begin with.

Berserk is an extremely dark story, and the anime ends at the single darkest, most <beep>ed-up part of the entire narrative. That is, your reaction is perfectly normal. Things do get better after the Eclipse (it even starts to shift from Low Fantasy to Heroic Fantasy), but Guts is severely traumatised by the experience and never really gets over it.
The manga plotline goes much further if you're interested, though I'd recommend starting from the beginning since the anime leaves out some important characters and plot points.

Also, not so sure it was Berserk that made me ill, I'm not feeling better today either.
I made a start on the manga part way through me watching the series and on about Chapter 14. Also, are the films they made recently worth watching or should I avoid them?

[Terraoblivion]

I think we are getting into problems of bad writing getting translations as well. A comparison I can think of is giving Twilight translated into a non-germanic or romance language and then having them read it. You can't make trash good with a simple translation. We're on the end where we don't know if the person translated it badly or the writing was awful to begin with.

Some forms of awful get transmitted. Like endless repetition or exposition by way of a lecture about things that never end up mattering. Not to mention the cardinal sin of VNs...Showing an expression and then wasting time having the narrator tell us what it is. For some reason VN writers thinks that's a good idea. Don't ask me why. Writing is more than just the skill with which independent sentences are put together, it's also how the sentences are put together in relation and VNs have a tendency to overexplain that frequently drags the genre down. Fate/Stay Night is a particularly grave offender, which is probably the source of much of Shirou's sheer obnoxiousness, the overexplaining is often in his mouth after all.

[Prime32]

Some forms of awful get transmitted. Like endless repetition or exposition by way of a lecture about things that never end up mattering. Not to mention the cardinal sin of VNs...Showing an expression and then wasting time having the narrator tell us what it is. For some reason VN writers thinks that's a good idea. Don't ask me why. Writing is more than just the skill with which independent sentences are put together, it's also how the sentences are put together in relation and VNs have a tendency to overexplain that frequently drags the genre down. Fate/Stay Night is a particularly grave offender, which is probably the source of much of Shirou's sheer obnoxiousness, the overexplaining is often in his mouth after all.

That's hardly limited to VNs; just about every (fan-translated) light novel I've read does that. And then of course there's the infamous "side characters comment on which attacks the shonen hero is using" trope.

For the specific case of showing an expression and then describing it, part of that is due to limited art assets - there might be a lot of subtle differences in expression or body language between scenes which the writers want to capture, but creating CGs for all of them would be incredibly expensive, particularly if movement is required, so the same sprite gets used in multiple situations.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

As another data point, the Steins;Gate anime is making me very impatient with the Visual Novel, because the story moves much slower. In exchange, you get a lot of substance (including more fun pseudoscience and more characterization, especially for Faris NyanNyan, who actually gets to wax a bit philosophical)...but the run time is much slower, correspondingly.

But maybe that's just having previously seen the same story in another, shorter format.

[Super Evil User]

Kaisar Lidford from Rage of Bahamut reminds us all, once again, why it sucks to be Lawful Good.

Spoiler: Spoilers until Episode 4

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Kaisar falls from nobility after his father is executed for failing to protect the king from bandits. Out of honor, he is forced to take on the life of a bounty hunter and pursue the bandit leader's son - his best friend since childhood.

On his adventure to regain his honor, he falls into the clutches of a necromancer. She puts him under a powerful illusion and, when the illusion is broken, tries to kill him. This backfires when she gets caught in an accident and is brought to the brink of death. Rather than take revenge (or simply walk away), Kaisar is compelled by his Good alignment to save her from her fate. So he has to take revenge for his dad, but can't take revenge for himself?

And the worst part is that now she follows him around like a lost puppy. So as a direct result of his Good deed, he's cursed with a barnacle on his side!

It truly does suck to be Lawful Good, huh?

[HMS Invincible]

I was surprised they didn't explain why the girl who was zombified got "better" and follows him around as a convenient plot tool. What evidence shows he saved her? I thought he was unwilling to kill her? It even shows in the post credit scene him wondering why she can talk. Or did you not see any of the ending scenes?

[Super Evil User]

She's still a zombie, but is sentient for some reason.

[Terraoblivion]

Five episodes in, Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru continues to be very interesting and very good at keeping you guessing without coming off inconsistent or half-assed. I have some guesses at where it is going, but it seems way too clever about setting up expectations and then taking them in different directions while making it all make sense for me to truly say where it is going. I don't think it'll live up to my fears when I first started watching it, but I can't say for certain that it won't. It has also been quite good at getting me invested in the girls and what's going on with them and it's clearly saving something big for the second half of the series given what was in the latest episode.

Really, I'd probably say that it is the most interesting show of the season or possibly. It does some new and unusual things, mostly centering on Togo, and it is genuinely unpredictable where it is going. It can still snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, but so far it is really good and keeps me engaged by trying to guess what is going to happen as well, which is very rare for me.