Something tells me I'm gonna love AnoHana when (not if) I watch it this coming summer.
Closing comments on spring stuff I've been following:
- Dog Days just ended, I've just finished watching the finale, and I already want a second season. The final episode went more or less as I expected, which is good because it leaves things wide open for a return. All in all, it was fun, sweet, well done (except some quality drops in animation from time to time), the VAs had tons of fun with their roles and so did I with their performances, the setting deserves a more thorough exploration, and I just plain want more of it. I'd be happy with a Vivid-style spin-off/sequel manga, too.
- A Channel was a bit of a guilty pleasure I guess. Mostly because throughout the series I couldn't help but think that I was just re-watching something I had already seen. Slice of life wacky hijinxs of high school girls, yep, completely unoriginal, as were most of the characters (Yuuko is so much an Akiyama Mio clone) and technically it was decent, but not exactly groundbreaking. So Okay It's Average never seemed to fit a series better than here. And yet... it had something that kept me watching. I guess I'm just a sucker for this kind of shows. Oh, and Tooru and most of the secondary characters were great, with special mention to Miporin and that Hosaka-wannabe nurse. That helped, too. Also wide open for a second season, provided the original 4-koma keeps going. I mean, which self-respecting high school series ends at the start of the third year?
No really I'm all sad and stuff my fave new series (well okay only new series) is over. I really want to see more of this setting and have it get a longer treatment. Such a rich mine of material to explore.
No unlike a certain other series featuring a red jewel and heroic protagonist in white.
Dog Days isn't mind blowingly good but its cute and sweet and entertaining. Its nice to see something be mature about itself without having to go be very serious either. I dare say this series is the most roundabout slice of life show I've ever seen.
No. 6 : Its Noitamina, Sci-Fi, and Bones. Do I need to say more?
Usagi Drop: Its Noitamina, and its based on an award winning manga. Sounds like stuff I've enjoyed before.
Dantalian no Shoka: At first glance, this looks like Gosick, but with more supernatural elements, and directed by Gainax instead of Bones. Will definitely give it a chance. Maybe I'll also go back and give Gosick annother chance now that its done as well.
And continuing from last season, I might pick up Tiger and Bunny and Steins;Gate, since I enjoyed the first couple episodes of both, but just didn't have enough time to watch more than two series last season.
And I'll be keeping an eye on Blood-C and Blade, in case they turn out better than I think they will.
And continuing from last season, I might pick up Tiger and Bunny and Steins;Gate, since I enjoyed the first couple episodes of both, but just didn't have enough time to watch more than two series last season.
I can really recommend these two. Didn't watch that much last season but they were definitely worth it most of the time.
So, X-Men and Dog Days are over.
X-Men... wasn't terrible but far from impressive. The fights were decent, os most of them and I enjoyed Wolverine much more than in the few episodes of his own anime I saw. I guess I might have a look at Blade next season but I don't expect it to hold my interest.
Dog Days was highly enjoyable even if the story wasn't that enthralling it had lots of great little bits. My only complaint is not enough NORIO. *sigh*
Not much for me in this summer's lineup. Carnival Phantasm is a given, and I'll keep an eye on Nº 6 for all the reasons mallorean_thug listed, but little else. So instead I'll focus on doing some serious backlog work (and hopefully finally return the School Rumble DVDs a friend lent me something like 6 months ago ), plus good stuff from the spring season I haven't seen yet (Tiger & Bunny, AnoHana, Steins;Gate, maybe Hanasaku Iroha), plus Nichijou.
Add to that Umineko (taking a short break in the middle of EP3, should go back to it soon), the fact that I've just got into Touhou (feeling stupidly proud of my first 1cc in IN with Reimu/Yukari on Easy right now), writing stuff (if the Football Manager forums ever come back, that is ), a new job and some short summer trips, and this is going to be quite a busy season after all .
Hello likable if generic main characters with potential for dramatic past and some cool one-liners. "What denomination would we be, then?" "Rock n'roll." Really sold me on the writing and the characters right then, even if the English dub actress didn't quite use the line to its full potential. She said it either not flippantly enough, or not seriously enough. You have to go one or the other with a line that cool, and she didn't quite pull it off.
Awesome, they did the cool teamwork thing to do a really neat trick, and I like the obvious sexual tension between the two obvious leads, and then HOLY **** WHAT JUST HAPPENED!
Then comes episode two, and I'm not sure I like the voice actress for the villain in the dub version. It's not her relative cheerfulness I dislike, because I do like that, but the actress doesn't really convey quite enough emotion during her conversations with her presumed former partner. She just doesn't sound crazy enough.
Otherwise, very fun stuff, very brutal, OMG did the second cast of characters take another pruning, WTF, etc.
Episode three, we enter the needed flashback which is obviously the meat of the story. And I'm suddenly less interested in the politics of Japanese spiritual clans than I am with the intrigue of Japanese government agencies. Maybe because GitS:SAC was something I liked, so I'm more used to that. Still, the Yomi character is performed well, but the Kagura character doesn't really have enough.
My next complaint is more based on the writing than the rest. The plot slowed down, yes, and I anticipated that, but in episode three the younger girl is just less interesting. I'm also spoiled, having seen Madoka recently and thus seen a much more effective "little girl grieving" scenario. Yes, the actual moment is fine, but the stuff leading up to it, while clearly heading there, just didn't move me very much.
However, Yomi is an interesting character in the episode, I like her spirit, and it's a great contrast from this to the older Yomi calling Kagura a tramp at swordpoint. She's obviously the protagonist of this show, and I think that's fun. I can't wait to see how she becomes the incredibly pissed off person she becomes.
So... yeah. That's where I'm at, so far.
Furthermore, the second episode reminds me in ways of scenes from the comic Irredeemable. Which is not a bad thing, either.
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Oh god, thats a hole you're not getting out of anytime soon. I'm currently trying to clear Subterranean Animism on normal, but I can't get past that damned cat Orin. I don't even want to think about what Okuu is going to do to me once I can get to her. Subterranean Animism just give you so few effective bombs, and during certain fights, any bombing outside deathbombing is probably just going to make you lose faster.
Normally I advise people to skip easy entirely, because it teaches you really bad habits, but hey, if you were already focused enough to 1cc it, you should be able to get out of those habits fast enough.
Dog Days was highly enjoyable even if the story wasn't that enthralling it had lots of great little bits. My only complaint is not enough NORIO. *sigh*
Ever notice how General Godwin could pass for a young Emperor WakomotoChuck?
Just finished Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Easily the best anime I have ever watched. Highly recommend everyone here who hasn't seen it do so, despite the somewhat daunting length of 110 episodes.
Ever notice how General Godwin could pass for a young Emperor WakomotoChuck?
Well, thing is, whenever I hear Wakamoto I expect him to either say 'All hHail Britannia' or 'AME~EN!' no matter how the character looks... but yeah, GODwin (my, I love that name) really could have passed for a young emperor indeed. Too bad he had only such small a role.
Another anime came to a hold (but I feel he will definitely be continued) KamiNomi (I forgot the rest, The World God Only Knows). Definitely very entertaining through most of it's run and an excellent final episode if I dare say.
Spoiler
Especially the little Gundam fanboy inside me rejoiced towards the end
Oh god, thats a hole you're not getting out of anytime soon. I'm currently trying to clear Subterranean Animism on normal, but I can't get past that damned cat Orin. I don't even want to think about what Okuu is going to do to me once I can get to her. Subterranean Animism just give you so few effective bombs, and during certain fights, any bombing outside deathbombing is probably just going to make you lose faster.
Normally I advise people to skip easy entirely, because it teaches you really bad habits, but hey, if you were already focused enough to 1cc it, you should be able to get out of those habits fast enough.
A deep hole indeed . I'm about ready to switch to normal now, I just used easy to get to know the games and the mechanics. In fact I haven't played that much, I've only got relatively serious with Imperishable Night (damn you, Reimu), and a bit with Mountain of Faith (damn you, Kanako). The 1cc came almost by accident: I only spent one continue in my first "win", so I thought "hey, why not". And a few tries later, it was done. The best part of playing with Reimu in IN is not having to fight against her!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kato
Another anime came to a hold (but I feel he will definitely be continued) KamiNomi (I forgot the rest, The World God Only Knows). Definitely very entertaining through most of it's run and an excellent final episode if I dare say.
My subs of choice are still two chapters behind, and that's after switching subs because the old ones were even further behind. Sigh. Still, yeah, unless something went very radically wrong in the last two chapters, this second season was at least on par with the first, i.e., quite good.
And yeah, it will continue. There's an OVA confirmed for October, I think. No idea what part of the story will be in it, though, since I'm still keeping myself from reading the manga and it hasn't been announced or even hinted at yet, afaik.
Yeah erm, I've finished The World God Only Knows. Still enjoy that series.
For reasons I cannot explain I ended up finishing Sengoku Otome. You know how Koihime Musou at least had gratuitous amounts of fanservice to keep people watching? This show has a surprisingly minimal amount of Fanservice save for intense Les Yay all over the place. I don't know why, but I stuck with it. Maybe it's my weird attraction to certain Average-ish shows to see something spectacularly good/bad happen. None of that happened. It remained amazingly average throughout. That or the fact that I watch stuff like this with an internal MST.
Speaking of which I might need to get back to Aria of the Scarlet Ammo eventually.
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In real life that is.
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Vivid 22 is out, in case anyone's still following it. Seriously, I need to find/make a character sheet and print it for reference, I recall about 1/4th of all the characters' names at this point, maybe less.
...oh, and there's a new Negima out, too, number three hundred and thirty. My reaction to it can be summed up as "is it next week already?".
Spoiler
A certain Dark Evangel about to go into a no-frills, no-holds-barred asskicking rampage? Yep, I kind of want to see that, thank you very much. Seeing the face of not-really-the-MotB would be a welcome bonus, too. I'm betting on the Gravekeeper.
I would be a little bit worried about Negi becoming masterless at some point in the following 2 or 3 chapters, but hey, it's Eva, she's too awesome for that. Right?
And if she isn't, she'll at least make sure it happens in an awesome way. Still, it makes sense that the main character would need to lose their mentor characters to truly stand on their own legs. There is a reason why mentor is the most dangerous job to have in fiction.
Also, give the girls something cool to do again soon! They're much better and more interesting characters than Negi and Fate anyway.
I gotta admit, it does get annoying that while Negi is busy fighting, all the girls (except for Setsuna and Mana, who fight almost completely offscreen) are just standing at the side and worrying, even the ones with useful combat abilities. I guess there are some shonen cliches Negima just can't escape. Oh well, at least the plot development makes up for that.
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I think its pretty well established that they have helped in the recent past, but are currently so completely out of their weight class a little standing around is justified.
Case in point of the most recent chapter. By looking at the crowd the only major fighter not participating or downed at the moment is Ku Fei who's got to shield important people like our medic. (And sadly is almost as out of her league as the rest of the Mahora girls)
Given the y'know size of the supporting cast I don't know if that would be better storytelling. And yes I like how Negima has more characters then you can shake a staff at and balances its cast pretty damn well. It would be completely like the story for them to pick up the awesome ball again in a few chapters and be the true heroes of the day. Then again it would be completely like the story for the risk to them making Negi go ape**** on the bad guys in a few chapters.
Still, the worst parts of the manga, barring the early harem stuff and pure fanservice chapters, are when Negi is being a shounen hero with all tropes in effect. He's a lot more interesting when he's being thoughtful and nerdy than he is when he's being determined and heroic and he also overshadows the girls less when he's the way he was during the festival, for example.
I don't mind Negi being a determined shonen hero, as long as the fights are cool and over the top. I do mind when they take too long, though, which happened a few times, and when the story focuses on him to such extent that everyone else is reduced to combat commentators.
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Okay, I've never actually posted in this thread before (epic lurker), but do I see a request for a Negi that stays nerdy and doesn't overshadow the rest of Ala Alba? For the girls to contribute more? Fr more evenness in the power levels of Ala Alba? Well, that's exactly what I'm trying to acheive with Mahou Sensei Anya, now with (an admittedly sparse) TVTropes page. (Sorry about the shameless self prommotion.) Also, Terraoblivion, you may like the fact that Chisame is the lead member of class A and the first to get a pactio.
Taking bets here. Is this just messing with Negi and the girls' heads or is this the scene where all the old guys show how badass they are, then die leaving things to the new heroes the world needs?
Damn you Akamatsu and your terribly timed holidays research breaks! *shakes fist*.
Somehow, I didn't think that a possible solution to the "Negi overshadowing everyone else" problem was bringing all the old timers back to the battlefield to overshadow him in turn, heh. This is gonna rock, whatever the final outcome. I don't expect deaths, but I fully expect a "well, we finally fixed the problems we created/couldn't fix in the past, from here on the world's all yours" speech from the veterans towards the Ala Alba at the end of it all.
Oh, and Al is fine, but Konoemon finally showing off a bit overshadows everything else, IMO. Go gramps!
Well... it's not that bad but yeah... I don't think that's something I'll keep watching...
The other stuff I've looked into yet was neat, though.
Sacred Seven (?) seems rather average but I really like the look of the power armor...
Yuru Yuri is... delicious school girl comedy with delicious shoujo ai hints. I just wish they were older.
Some.... lengthy title... about two magical girls which kind of spoofs magical girls... also, fun enough.
And something about weird robots, Kamisama Dolls? Something with dolls in the title. It's probably my least favorite but not bad yet... need to look at more, though... seems like there's lots of good stuff.
edit:
Wow, ist it just me or is this season full of fanservice and ecchi? More than average, that is. Yuru Yuri hast become pretty more mature after episode 1, Kaimsama Dolls has apart from lots of blood also a female lead with big breasts, Manyou Hikenchou I won't even start talking about (wow, just wow), R-15's premise might have promised more than the first episode held but it was still far from innocent, Baka to Test is... well, fanservicey as ever and Nana to Kaorou is going to be PG-13 I'm willing to eat stop watching anime forever.
So, the new season is underway and after the weekend ended I had a chance to check out some of the shows I was planning on looking at.
Kamisama Dolls: I really liked the OP, some of the design aethetics, and what we've seen of the music direction so far, but the plot, characters, and actual animation seemed quite a bit more wobbly. The dynamic between the MC, his imuoto, and that other girl seems like its going to be cliche and uninteresting, and thus far the robots have only provided WTF. My inclination now is to drop it but I have to give it at least 3 episodes to see where it goes.
Blood-C : Oh god, CLAMP noodle people everywhere. That said, this episode didn't really do anything to endear me to its characters, but the possibility of well choreographed fight scenes done by Production IG's animation team is still as tempting as it was when I was looking at the shows for this season. Might just follow as a guilty pleasure for that, might drop if no real plot shows up.
No. 6 Ok, now this got me to sit up and pay attention. I'm a sucker for dystopic settings, and unlike Fractale, this one has likable characters that I already want to care about. The next episode preview revealing that this first episode was apparently a kind of prologue with a 6 year time jump between it and the second episode already addresses my concerns about the main characters being too young for the plot to be appropriately mature and about it knowing that it only has 11 episodes to work with. I'll just be watching this the entire time repeating to myself, "Don't turn out like Fractale, don't turn out like Fractale."
Usagi Drop And as I was expected, here is what appears to be our winner for the season so far. The first episode has already made me laugh, cry, and d'aww, sometimes all three at the same time. I've been told that the manga continues this trend, and the way this has been lovingly animated to match the manga's art style gives me complete confidence that Production IG will manage to keep everything that has apparently made the manga great. The only unfortunate thing is that the anime will have to choose a spot to cut off, and then probably won't ever get another season to adapt the rest of the manga, much like my beloved Hourou Musuko from Winter Season. Oh well, I'll just make sure to enjoy the anime while its airing and then add the manga to my feeds.
Blood-C : Oh god, CLAMP noodle people everywhere. That said, this episode didn't really do anything to endear me to its characters, but the possibility of well choreographed fight scenes done by Production IG's animation team is still as tempting as it was when I was looking at the shows for this season. Might just follow as a guilty pleasure for that, might drop if no real plot shows up.
It was better than Blade at least. The enemy actually put up a fight and was interesting, rather than getting literally Mario-stomped to death by the dozen (Twilight vampires may be lame but at least they don't burst into flame if you flick silver dust at them).
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When a man decides another's future behind his back, it is a conspiracy. When a god does it, it's destiny.
Hmm. I really need to watch more good anime, but I just never know where to look. Therefore, this thread will probably be helpful.
Things I've Seen And Will Never Go Back To
Bleach
One Piece
Naruto
Things I Have Finished And Loved
Death Note
Full Metal Alchemist (The Original)
Things I Am In The Process Of Watching
Ikki Tousen/Battle Vixens
The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya
I like things from the entire spectrum of "happy funtimes" to "quite dark", but I lean a little more to the dark side, though never GRIMDARK. Things on the more gothic side are very much my thing, but as far as genres go, I'm into anything (But I would say that I prefer Death Note over FMA and Haruhi over Ikki Tousen) as long as the quality is high and the series is engaging. English dub is an absolute must. I don't like subtitles very much, and as much rage as a lot of dubs get, I really really like a lot of English voice actors (like Crispin Freeman omg).
I probably won't get back to any follow up questions until early evening tomorrow, though you're free to ask any. I've decided that this summer should be spent moderately productively, and watching high quality anime on my computer is what I've decidedly constitutes "productive". Thanks for your recommendations!
Well, I was about to ask why you disliked One Piece but given you only watch dubs... from what I heard I get your point.
Okay, so, good/decent dubs... Gurren Lagann... very wide spectrum, mechas, manliness, BEYOND THE IMPOSSIBLE-ness. Higly etnertaining by most people's judgement.
Cowboy Bebop, classic, futuristic... what's the word... jazzy? Many many people like it (I'd say everyone but there are exceptions to all rules)
Are there dubs for Hellsing Ultimate allready? I think so... It's pretty dark but then it suddenly mood swaps to funny for a few seconds. Don't go for the normal series, though.
Uhm.... there are many more but I don't really know what is subbed or how well it is.
Also, on the current season... it's fedding on my life! I'm glad I didn't start everything but it's already eating away so much of my time I will need to drop the mediocre/good stuff for the good/very good...
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Re: General Anime Discussion: Area 11
), plus good stuff from the spring season I haven't seen yet (Tiger & Bunny, AnoHana, Steins;Gate, maybe Hanasaku Iroha), plus Nichijou.
), a new job and some short summer trips, and this is going to be quite a busy season after all 
.
