General Anime/Manga Discussion 14: Second Cour

[Fri]

Tankery is female-oriented sport in the setting for some reason. Dunno what the male equivalent is, aerial dogfighting?(never really shown in the series I mean).

[GloatingSwine]

Tankery is female-oriented sport in the setting for some reason. Dunno what the male equivalent is, aerial dogfighting?(never really shown in the series I mean).

Presumably all the boys are in the kitchen where they belong ;)

[kamikasei]

Is that actually any good? It sort of interests me but if it goes into history or weirdly all female casts then I suspect it might start to annoy me.

I like it a lot. The premise is that it's set in the modern-ish day at a girls' high school, where historical tank battle reenactment is the most feminine of pastimes, for... some reason. It's a weird kind of AU setting and worrying about the details is probably a bad idea. It doesn't get into the real-world politics of or apologia for WWII, if that's what you're worried about. It's an underdog sports story in the vein of Cool Runnings or The Mighty Ducks, where a poorly-equipped team of newbies have to get in shape to compete in a tournament.

[Lethologica]

I like it a lot. The premise is that it's set in the modern-ish day at a girls' high school, where historical tank battle reenactment is the most feminine of pastimes, for... some reason. It's a weird kind of AU setting and worrying about the details is probably a bad idea. It doesn't get into the real-world politics of or apologia for WWII, if that's what you're worried about. It's an underdog sports story in the vein of Cool Runnings or The Mighty Ducks, where a poorly-equipped team of newbies have to get in shape to compete in a tournament.

There is one way in which worrying about the details in GuP is a great idea: nerding out over details that fit with the historical tanks/battles being portrayed/referenced.

Other than that, yeah, just sit back and enjoy the wacky ride.

[cobaltstarfire]

I thought that a decent amount of research went into the actual tanks and stuff in that one( accuracy seems to be the case with "sports anime" as a general rule too). Though I'm certainly not much of a judge of anything like that, I guess someone super hardcore about tank minutiae might find something to be bothered about.

It was definitely an overall fun and enjoyable watch. It's pretty light and fluffy.

[Lethologica]

( accuracy seems to be the case with "sports anime" as a general rule too)

Well, it's that or Shounen Superpower Sports, a la Kuroko no Basuke and Prince of Tennis.

[Spacewolf]

I like it a lot. The premise is that it's set in the modern-ish day at a girls' high school, where historical tank battle reenactment is the most feminine of pastimes, for... some reason. It's a weird kind of AU setting and worrying about the details is probably a bad idea. It doesn't get into the real-world politics of or apologia for WWII, if that's what you're worried about. It's an underdog sports story in the vein of Cool Runnings or The Mighty Ducks, where a poorly-equipped team of newbies have to get in shape to compete in a tournament.

Hmm I'll probably give it a watch then.

[Spacewolf]

Right got to Episode 6 then gave up, complaints are:
Why are these people the underdogs- the first fight was against Matildas and a Churchill, so a tank that was crap at the beginning of the war except for it's good armour and an average tank from the mid to end. Meanwhile our heroes have a Panzer 4 one of the best tanks of the war, a Stug one of the best tank destroyers and a M3 which while not the best could be very effective if used correctly.

Is it because they are new? Well if that's the case why is everyone else such garbage, the people they face don't show any more tactical ability or skill. The best shot so far is the tank nerd girl who they sack from the job after as far as I can tell she never misses a shot. Everyone else seems to hit or miss completely at random, which while possibly more accurate ruins the stakes and pacing. So it doesn't feel like the Heroes deserve to win they just happen to get lucky that the other team either misses every shot or comes down with a terminal case of stupidity. (O yea it also annoyed me that they seemed to be upset that the other team was tapping their comms, which is obviously far more insidious than sneaking into the enemy HQ and stealing their battle plans ahead of time.)

So yea not my thing.

[GloatingSwine]

Right got to Episode 6 then gave up, complaints are:
Why are these people the underdogs- the first fight was against Matildas and a Churchill, so a tank that was crap at the beginning of the war except for it's good armour and an average tank from the mid to end. Meanwhile our heroes have a Panzer 4 one of the best tanks of the war, a Stug one of the best tank destroyers and a M3 which while not the best could be very effective if used correctly.

At that point the Pz.4 still had the low velocity 75mm, and the M3's main point of reccommendation was "has a high velocity 75mm gun" at the point in the war most others didn't (because nobody had yet built a turret ring capable of supporting it).

[Eldariel]

Tankery is female-oriented sport in the setting for some reason. Dunno what the male equivalent is, aerial dogfighting?(never really shown in the series I mean).

I doubt that - one of the point of the settings is that men aren't allowed to participate because instead of sports, they'd start wars and destroy the world instead.

[gooddragon1]

This seems like the appropriate place for this:

I've made a Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 class called the Anime Animus Swordsman. I've included 6 techniques that are stereotypical of anime fighters (Blade Beam, Geppo, Iaijutsu, Shunpo, Superb Parrying, Zanzoken). Some of the names were taken from anime, but they don't do identically what they do in the anime. What I'd like to ask for here is for ideas of stereotypical anime swordsman/combat abilities that I haven't already used.

Blade Beam: Project a beam of energy with your sword attack.
Geppo: Double jump and jump high.
Iaijutsu: Draw sword from sheathe to do a stronger attack.
Shunpo: Two fighters charge (except not exactly), the screen flashes, they appear on opposite sides and one falls (the attack happened in the flash). Hitotsume: Nadegiri
Superb Parrying: How people with swords block bullets (and other things)
Zanzoken: Yoruichi from Bleach Anime (for some reason I can't remember the name) used this to take out an entire squadron of assassination corps shinigami. We saw afterimages of the attacks, but they seemed to take place in an instant.

What other things are stereotypical? Or perhaps not?

[Rodin]

Sword-specific would be a power cut that slices whatever it hits in half with a clean cut.

The barehanded blade catch is also pretty common, with varying degrees of injury depending on the character.

More general anime-fighting would be the ability to hit your opponent hard enough that they get slammed across the room hard enough to leave a crater on whatever they hit.

[Fri]

This seems like the appropriate place for this:

I've made a Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 class called the Anime Animus Swordsman. I've included 6 techniques that are stereotypical of anime fighters (Blade Beam, Geppo, Iaijutsu, Shunpo, Superb Parrying, Zanzoken). Some of the names were taken from anime, but they don't do identically what they do in the anime. What I'd like to ask for here is for ideas of stereotypical anime swordsman/combat abilities that I haven't already used.

Blade Beam: Project a beam of energy with your sword attack.
Geppo: Double jump and jump high.
Iaijutsu: Draw sword from sheathe to do a stronger attack.
Shunpo: Two fighters charge (except not exactly), the screen flashes, they appear on opposite sides and one falls (the attack happened in the flash). Hitotsume: Nadegiri
Superb Parrying: How people with swords block bullets (and other things)
Zanzoken: Yoruichi from Bleach Anime (for some reason I can't remember the name) used this to take out an entire squadron of assassination corps shinigami. We saw afterimages of the attacks, but they seemed to take place in an instant.

What other things are stereotypical? Or perhaps not?

General toughness of not dying or even passing out after losing half of your blood volume (looking at you, zoro).

Ability to use sword to cut uncuttable things (steels, spirits) or not cut things and use them as non-lethal weapons somehow (I'm not actually talking about kenshin himura here, I'm talking about how if it's not specifically an anime about lethal swordfights, usually people are still alive after all-out sword battles).

[tensai_oni]

Replies to old posts about tanks.

Right got to Episode 6 then gave up, complaints are:
<things>

It sounds like you're complaining that the series doesn't show all tactics onscreen and people lining up every single shot with an explanation of why it hit or missed. Frankly I could argue more but it seems like you already approached it from a stance that you won't like it, a self fulfilling prophecy.

Tankery is female-oriented sport in the setting for some reason. Dunno what the male equivalent is, aerial dogfighting?(never really shown in the series I mean).

I heard something like that actually. Not sure how accurate it is but it makes sense.

I doubt that - one of the point of the settings is that men aren't allowed to participate because instead of sports, they'd start wars and destroy the world instead.

This on the other hand I never saw before and frankly sounds dumber than where we are in GuP on average. So I'm sceptical.

[gooddragon1]

Sword-specific would be a power cut that slices whatever it hits in half with a clean cut.

The barehanded blade catch is also pretty common, with varying degrees of injury depending on the character.

More general anime-fighting would be the ability to hit your opponent hard enough that they get slammed across the room hard enough to leave a crater on whatever they hit.

Technically that can happen if you hit hard enough with shunpo. Don't want them parrying melee though (they can already dodge it with gemelos sonido). Took the last one though: Meteor Barrett (Zell used dex instead of str, and his movement was impeded so he used geppo to help out)

General toughness of not dying or even passing out after losing half of your blood volume (looking at you, zoro).

Ability to use sword to cut uncuttable things (steels, spirits) or not cut things and use them as non-lethal weapons somehow (I'm not actually talking about kenshin himura here, I'm talking about how if it's not specifically an anime about lethal swordfights, usually people are still alive after all-out sword battles).

Got the toughness one by way of Steadfast Resolve.

By making some of these abilities supernatural the animus swordsman can cut spirits. Not sure about non-lethal though. 3.5 lets you do that if you take a -4 penalty. So far I'm drawing inspiration from Hokuto No Ken, Bleach, Final Fantasy, One Piece, and DragonballZ.

I think I need at least one more for 10 even (they get 7 options by 20th).

Got the 10th (though any other cool ones would be good): Crane Wing Slice

[Kato]

I hope you have "I am not left-handed ", the ancient art of luring your opponent in a false sense of safety only to then crush him by using your proper hand. Not sure how that would play in game, though.

Also, something to credit the extraordinary senses of anime warriors? Ki-awareness or such? Could help with surprise attacks.

Or maybe some after image technique to hide your presence.

[gooddragon1]

I hope you have "I am not left-handed ", the ancient art of luring your opponent in a false sense of safety only to then crush him by using your proper hand. Not sure how that would play in game, though.

Also, something to credit the extraordinary senses of anime warriors? Ki-awareness or such? Could help with surprise attacks.

Or maybe some after image technique to hide your presence.

That's pretty much the feint option in 3.5. As for the rest, he's not a subtle fighter. It's the overt swordsman with flashy techniques*. So what I'm looking for is the flashy techniques like meteor barrett mentioned above or like when two swordsmen charge at each other, the screen flashes, and one of them falls down injured/dead.

EDIT: Musou insatsu allows you to counter unconsciously (ki-awareness ish stuff). There is an afterimage technique that allows dodging (Gemelos Sonido), but not hiding.

*Zoro (One Piece), Raiden (MGR:R), Sephiroth/Cloud (FF7/KH2), etc...

[endoperez]

I hope you have "I am not left-handed ", the ancient art of luring your opponent in a false sense of safety only to then crush him by using your proper hand. Not sure how that would play in game, though.

Also, something to credit the extraordinary senses of anime warriors? Ki-awareness or such? Could help with surprise attacks.

Or maybe some after image technique to hide your presence.

Seems doable. An ability that can turn the tables but that you don't use all the time? Give it limited uses, and it will see little use outside of important fights.

Many Paladin spells work very well for a shonen protagonist swordsman. Maybe an ability to spontaneously (and very very few times per day) cast a Paladin spell. It could be keyed to unleashing a unique combat buff similar to Barbarian's Rage, so that when they "release their real power" they get a Rage-like buff and spontaneously cast a Paladin spell and start glowing. It would enable all sorts of typical shonen protagonist tropes.

For example:
- Hug a bleeding ally at -5 hp, start glowing, spontaneously cast Cure Light to stabilize them, rise up enraged and ready to rumble
- A ghost is giving you trouble, but your weapon is unable to hurt it. Start glowing, spontaneously Magic Weapon, etc
- The whole party of anime swordsmen are beating down the big bad, but it's not going well. Suddenly everyone but The Protagonist starts glowing and casts Shield Other on him, making him temporarily unkillable, etc.

There are some random weird spells on the Paladin list that would be a bit weird, and also, some spells on the list have long casting times, so it doesn't work perfectly. It might be worth considering, though. (Also, automatic Eschew Materials would probably be required).

[Rodin]

Some sort of Heroic Second Wind would seem appropriate - a massive power boost when on critical HP, to simulate going Super Saiyan/Hollowfied/Bijuu Mode.

On the Ki sensing thing, something like Nobunaga from Hunter X Hunter seems like it would work. Extend your aura to a specific radius (say, 20 feet, able to extend distance with additional feats) and enter a state of preparation where you make an immediate Attack of Opportunity on any opponent that enters that radius, with some bonus damage attached.

[Lemmy]

Konosuba is back!!! And it is glorious!!!

[DoctorFaust]

It somehow looks worse than S1, but it's just as damn funny.

[gooddragon1]

Spoiler

Show

Also, I'll look into those other abilities, but really I just wanted more of the flashy techniques swordsmen use in anime more than the general shoujo theme stuff.

[JCarter426]

The Anime d20 System has a samurai class, but it doesn't have a lot of flashy sword tricks. The abilities it gets are stuff like awareness and leadership bonuses, personal gear, two-weapon fighting, and rerolling dice as divine intervention. There are two I do think are pretty fitting, though. The first is Judge Opponent - you can roughly tell someone's base attack bonus, weapon skill, and hit points just by being aware of them - seeing them fight or even seeing them at all not necessarily required. The other is Blind-Fight - ignoring any penalties due to light conditions or invisibility.

As for other ability ideas, I'd second the cutting of uncutable things, like souls or space itself or however Kara no Kyoukai works. It would be nice to get the cutting something several times at once attack in there, but I'm not sure if it would be mechanically different from a flurry. Also it wouldn't be anime without the outcome of the battle depending on whoever wanted to win more.

And in other news, KonoSuba is off to a great start. There have also been a few that were better than I expected - Maid Dragon, Demi-chan, Gabriel DropOut. This season's theme is weird fantasy slice of life.

[Prime32]

What I'd like to ask for here is for ideas of stereotypical anime swordsman/combat abilities that I haven't already used.

Debuffing enemies (or even knocking out weak ones) by projecting killing intent? Sensing the killing intent of others in order to avoid surprise attacks and tell when people are angry/bloodthirsty? Delaying the effects of your attacks so that you hit someone, they laugh and say "That didn't do anyth-" then explode? Attacking so fast that low-level enemies can't tell you did anything?

[kamikasei]

So far this season I'm watching Rakugo Shinjuu S2 (likely to be good in the same way as the first season), Miss Kobayashi's Maid Dragon (slightly trashy amusement, based on the manga it should be solidly entertaining for most of the season unless they get to the worst arc quickly and don't change it), Konosuba S2 (excellent start), and Interviews with Monster Girls (surprisingly solid, will have to see how it holds up). Little Witch Academia seems like it won't be out on Netflix until it's all aired, Gabriel Dropout doesn't sound like my cup of tea, and apparently Hand Shakers is legendarily, fascinatingly awful. Anything else of note people want to recommend? Any surprise breakouts?

Also: I went back to last season and watched Girlish Number. It's entertaining! Less cynical than I expected from how it was pitched to me. Chitose is best worst girl.

[endoperez]

I gave Konosuba another chance, and I found (again) that it just doesn't work for me. The pacing is iffy. There's so much "tell don't show" - he did this, he did that, they did this, they did that, etc. Part of that is to recap the earlier stuff, but still - it's told, not shown. I don't think referencing something that was dirty/ecchi to be fun on its own, and that's quite a few of the jokes right there. And so much time is wasted on just wallowing on things endlessly. These episodes could be cut down drastically without changing the content of the episodes.

There are some parts that are funny, like the naïve optimistic stupidity of Aqua (& co) and the protagonist's "whatever" attitude, but it's not worth watching the show for them. It's a pity, because the premise works and the characters could work, but the focus is off, timing is off, etc.

It's such a pity, because I wanted to like the series and I think it wouldn't have had to be that different for me to like the series. Oh well. :(

[Fri]

Shame about that, because I just want to post here about how first 5 minutes of konosuba s2 is already worth the wait. Also yeah, the artstyle seems to be a lot more cartoony than first season.

[HMS Invincible]

I thought they ran out of money for production, and are just skimping.

[BWR]

Konosuba 2 is off to an OK start. It didn't grab me quite the same way s1 did but it's still entertaining. Gabriel Dropout seems like it will be entertaining in a braindead sort of way. I'm already reading Interviews with Monster Girls and Kobayashi's Maid Dragon so those are automatically in the 'like and watch' box. I'm probably going to watch Little Witch Academia, though I haven't watched anything but the teaser that originally aired way back when. The most undecided one I've tried so far is Seiren, which seems to be a slice of lifey romance, possibly with a harem somewhere down the line (we can only hope). I'll give it another couple of episodes.

[Fri]

I thought they ran out of money for production, and are just skimping.

Aqua~! Stop with your bar tabs *shakes fist*