Winter 2012 Anime Thread of Roundcats Up in This

Status
Not open for further replies.
Bodacious Space Pirates 01: Those were the most derivative twenty-four minutes of animu I've watched since the first twenty minutes of Ben-To. It was a great exercise in how to take an rambunctious concept like pirates... in space! and make it as dull as possible. Things like CGI ships, CGI cars, CGI lamps, and CGI water are only a small part of a long and slow showcase of laziness, laziness, laziness.

sounds like Bravestarr, Silverhawks or other "... in space" cartoons from the 80s.

but now with CG and more fanservice
 
CG rotoscope is actually really common these days. Ufotable uses it all the time. For this scene in Kara no Kyoukai, for example, all the animation was done with CG models and then they had the artists draw over the models so that it would look 2D.

They also used it constantly in the God Eater OP and in BRS The Game's OP. To be fair, calling it "rotoscope" isn't accurate, as they are actually doing animation from scratch using CG models... they're just "drawing over CG animation so that it looks 2D".
 
[Nisemonogatari 1]

nisegrin1.jpg


It's back, for better or for worse. Maybe both. They've really crossed lines that perhaps should not be crossed. Like, ever.

The only thing I can confirm is that Senjougahara is the best and this OP is terrible. SHAFT have truly forgotten how to make good OP's.

In terms of plot specifics:
In the present, Araragi is confined and kept tied up for some unknown reason. In the past he wanders around talking to various members of this (ever growing) harem for no apparent reason. That sure was creepy as hell, Araragi.

The dialogue is very Bakemonogatari and the visuals are very Shinbo. The animation is, of course, SHAFT which means it runs the gamete from moments of great animation to still shots. It's all the same!
 
I didn't really get a sense of internal strife that would lead me to believe the author is developing the characters beyond the surface level. And I didn't feel like there was a lot of change in characters between the beginning and end of the show, and most events seemed to leave the characters nonplussed, with very little emotional response to the things going on around them.

I can totally understand you getting this feeling from the anime, but really, you have to read the manga. While it obviously doesn't have the depth of exploration of the topic that it would if its characters were adults and came at their situations as adults, I still think it's a very powerful series.


There is a distinct lack of conflict to the show, which I consider an essential component to any story. Maybe this absence of conflict is the reason I don't feel the author has a particularly strong grasp of masculinity, or what it means to stray from or towards it.

Well, but I think the fact of the matter is this: Nitorin isn't masculine. He has no idea how to be so, and that's where part of his struggle comes from. The topic of masculinity comes from Takatsuki, the main female character, and that's exactly how it makes sense. She didn't get as much of the spotlight in the anime as Nitorin did, but her story is that of not totally understanding what it means to be feminine, because all of her feelings tell her that that's not who she really is.


I'll probably try it out, but ultimately the anime has to stand on its own as an entity separate from other works.

I absolutely agree, and as much as it pains me to say so, I think the anime was a failure in that regard. But, really, I can see almost no way it could have been done well while (a) retaining the spirit of the manga, and (b) hitting on enough points from it to satisfy fans without making it some completely different side-story. Unfortuantely, I think it was one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenarios.

I think it ended up having two successes: making Hourou Musuko fans happy to get to see any part of the story animated, and hopefully encouraging people not familiar with the series to go read the manga. It seems to have failed you in that second point, and I'm really sorry that it did.
 
Nisemonogatari 01 Dropped: I lasted fifteen minutes. But the animation is good (and it looks like Citizen Kane when compared to Bodacious Space Pirates).
 
Bodacious Space Pirates 01: Those were the most derivative twenty-four minutes of animu I've watched since the first twenty minutes of Ben-To. It was a great exercise in how to take an rambunctious concept like pirates... in space! and make it as dull as possible. Things like CGI ships, CGI cars, CGI lamps, and CGI water are only a small part of a long and slow showcase of laziness, laziness, laziness.

Well, I never thought it would be worth watching but people were hoping for amusing trash. I guess that was too much to ask for.
 
Nisemonogatari - 01


How the fuck did they expect us to go through all that without getting bored? I could barely follow the latter quarter's conversation because I stopped paying attention.


89hEP.png


And Araragi's lolicon level went to a different dimension. Jesus christ.

Oh, and as usual Shaft has mastered the art form of using 10,000 lines of dialogue as an excuse to show a slideshow rather than an animation.
 
Wandering Son

I can totally understand you getting this feeling from the anime, but really, you have to read the manga. While it obviously doesn't have the depth of exploration of the topic that it would if its characters were adults and came at their situations as adults, I still think it's a very powerful series.
I'm curious - I'm tremendously frustrated with how this manga and Aoi Hana have developed over the last year or so - are you? It's not that it's meandering, it's both texts have moved from their original premises to becoming "yetanotherhighschoolromance". Nitorin's crossdressing has become more AKB49-like than anything else.

I absolutely agree, and as much as it pains me to say so, I think the anime was a failure in that regard. But, really, I can see almost no way it could have been done well while (a) retaining the spirit of the manga, and (b) hitting on enough points from it to satisfy fans without making it some completely different side-story. Unfortuantely, I think it was one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenarios.
At least there's the new episode 10 and 11!
 
I absolutely agree, and as much as it pains me to say so, I think the anime was a failure in that regard. But, really, I can see almost no way it could have been done well while (a) retaining the spirit of the manga, and (b) hitting on enough points from it to satisfy fans without making it some completely different side-story. Unfortuantely, I think it was one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenarios.

I think it ended up having two successes: making Hourou Musuko fans happy to get to see any part of the story animated, and hopefully encouraging people not familiar with the series to go read the manga. It seems to have failed you in that second point, and I'm really sorry that it did.

I don't agree on either point here: I was very satisfied with the anime as a stand-alone work, and it did not make me interested in reading any of the manga.
 
Nisemonogatari - 1

Shaft with the courage to craft yet another masterpiece.

The courage to pander without shame.

The courage to cross lines.

The courage to be :firehawk.

Show of the season. Show of the all years.
 
Nisemonogatari - 01


How the fuck did they expect us to go through all that without getting bored? I could barely follow the latter quarter's conversation because I stopped paying attention.

I had no problem keeping up with the conversation. However there was literally no structure to the episode, or at least that's what it felt like. Stuff just 'happened'.
 
Nisemonogatari:
Words fail me. I cannot adequately capture how much I missed this.

And now every week for the next 11 or so weeks.

2012 is off to a great start.
If I weren't being forced by peer pressure to watch terrible garbage all the time, sure.
Speaking of peer pressure and terrible garbage, are you going to watch Nise or will you wait until it's complete?
 
I had no problem keeping up with the conversation. However there was literally no structure to the episode, or at least that's what it felt like. Stuff just 'happened'.

Yeah, that's exactly why I just let the words fly over my head waiting for something to happen. Well, it's my fault for having expectations in the first place I guess. Because.

Elaborate witty lines as an excuse to see a loli's panties isn't what I was expecting.


How are you guys handling Senjou's hair? Apparently well?

The murder of her hair hasn't happened yet.
 
So it's basically what everyone expected!
Yeah, that's exactly why I just let the words fly over my head waiting for something to happen. Well, it's my fault for having expectations in the first place I guess. Because.

Elaborate witty lines as an excuse to see a loli's panties isn't what I was expecting.
I can see that this is going to be one of those shows!
 
Yeah, that's exactly why I just let the words fly over my head waiting for something to happen. Well, it's my fault for having expectations in the first place I guess. Because.

Elaborate witty lines as an excuse to see a loli's panties isn't what I was expecting.
But that's what Bakemonogatari was.
 
[Aoi Hana / Hôrô Musuko]
It's not that it's meandering, it's both texts have moved from their original premises to becoming "yetanotherhighschoolromance".
I believe we've already talked about that some time ago, but I don't think we agree about what the original premises (or intents) were in the first place.
 
[Aoi Hana / Hôrô Musuko]
I believe we've already talked about that some time ago, but I don't think we agree about what the original premises (or intents) were in the first place.
Did we?

The first chapters of Aoi Hana has Fumi telling "us" through monologue that she was having sex with her cousin before she went off and got married before moving on to the whole dating a "fake" lesbian thing. In fact, Fumi basically craps all over the girl she likes for basically playing around at being a lesbian and using her.

I don't really remember the first volume of Wandering Son, but they were always building up to Nitorin coming out - first, being forcibly outed and then second, choosing to out himself.
 
Nisemonogatari - 01

Senjougahara was awesome at the start,and the ponytail lives for now, the wrong loli got too much screentime at the end, but boy did I miss those Shaft head tilts.
 
Sailor Moon 33

GrZ4Ml.jpg


Finally
Sailor Venus
has arrived. This was a pretty jam packed episode in regards to content.

Zoisite is in some deep, deep shit. I can’t help but think that
his lover Kunzite is merely using him for his own self benefit. It’s just a hunch.

Really liked how that scene involving the
window cleaning guys
was used as a catalyst for a couple things including Mamoru starting to doubt
Sailor Moon, thinking she’s some glory hound.
and then the second long cameo introduction to that girl and her
cat
when the two girls were crying after they found theres an
imposter Sailor Moon
on the loose. A nice little form of foreshadowing.

PLj5Rl.jpg


You and me both were trapped Tuxedo. You and me both.
Jadeite being that good looking as a woman is wrong. Just wrong. I should have seen this coming and yet I didn’t :(

That introduction was fierce.
I’m not sure how exactly they are going to tone down Sailor Venus’ power levels and not make it look dumb as crap. The other 4 girls got destroyed by Kunzite, and Sailor Venus manages to stop both Kunzite and Zoisite by herself.
 
Hey, hey. It's been a while since i've watched Bakemono, but Araragi goes
literal pedophile
in Nise 01.
You'd think he would never be as shameless as to kiss a little girl's chest area. Nope.

He molests the same girl in bakemono, remember when he chased her down and groped her (not just once, at that)? He's always been pretty pedo. Now it's just been cranked up a bit but the seeds have always been there.
 
Senki Zesshou Symphogear 1

Is it just me or is the henshin sequence near mirror of the one in mai otome o_O?

And boobs.

Glad those aren't irrelevant in 2012.
 
I don't agree on either point here: I was very satisfied with the anime as a stand-alone work, and it did not make me interested in reading any of the manga.

I'm interested in reading the manga some day, but I agree that I feel the anime stands on its own just fine. Obviously there is a lot of stuff it wasn't able to get into, but I feel like it told a great story and communicated interesting characters to me. I would recommend it to just about anyone even if I knew they would have no interest in reading the manga afterwards.
 
Besides this is nowhere near as pedo as the show can get, imagine what's going to happen once he actually reaches
snakeloli's house.

It's like someone dropped a rock into a well but heard nothing but silence in return. We're still waiting for the bottom.
 
He molests the same girl in bakemono, remember when he chased her down and groped her (not just once, at that)? He's always been pretty pedo. Now it's just been cranked up a bit but the seeds have always been there.

Araragi is truly a terrible human being.
 
He molests the same girl in bakemono, remember when he chased her down and groped her (not just once, at that)? He's always been pretty pedo. Now it's just been cranked up a bit but the seeds have always been there.

Yeah, I remember that, I just don't remember it being this bad.

Anyway, even though the first episode was slow, I think it'll pick up just like bakemono.
 
Nisemonogatari 1

It's beautiful... well, except for the terrible OP but i'm sure it's the typical SHAFT place-holder. Senjougahara owns just as much as I remembered, i'll be savouring the ponytail for as long as it lasts.

Hopefully thats the last we'll see of the snail loli in Nise.
 
Dear lord, Evangelion Anima has gotten EVEN worse than when I last glanced over it. It's like, the most amazing piece of terrible fan fiction that's somehow being produced by GAINAX.

It features:
mutliple simultaneous Rei's, including loli variants.

Their are various pictures of the main female cast as children, including Maya and megane-girl. Classy.

All the kids are grown up which means Shinji is now Kaiji and Asuka gets big breasts, of course.

The events of the 2nd impact happened, and now everyone is horrible fanservice bait on a level that would make SHAFT blush.

Did I mention the new plugsuits are open at various places to show lots of skin?


This needs to be animated and made canon. It's like Gainax is purpusefully trolling all those nerds that think that NGE is deep and philosofical.
 
I'm curious - I'm tremendously frustrated with how this manga and Aoi Hana have developed over the last year or so - are you? It's not that it's meandering, it's both texts have moved from their original premises to becoming "yetanotherhighschoolromance". Nitorin's crossdressing has become more AKB49-like than anything else.

I absolutely have frustrations over the manga.

For like three volumes, it felt like it was nothing but "let's put on a wacky gender play/event!" The first time that happened, it felt like something really daring that the students were proposing. And then, it felt like it just kept happening and happening, almost like the creator wasn't sure what to do next. I think, as part of this, you had the students going through their school years without and huge development happening amongst them, and now they've gotten separated. I would like to have seen the dymanics in the relationships grow more than they did before that separation happened.

I also get really frustrated because it seems sometimes like she lets Nitorin and Takatsuki fall into these "oh, my gender issues don't matter anymore" periods. That can absolutely happen—you tell yourself that maybe your inner feelings are wrong, and that you need to "try harder" at being who you're "supposed to be"—but I haven't always liked how these moments were handled. Offhand, I remember one period where Nitorin seems to be totally back in "I'm just a normal boy" mode, and we weren't really given any look at him struggling with making the decision to try that, or the huge emotional toll doing so may have taken on him.

For as much as I think Shimura understands many of the factors to the struggle with gender identity, she also shows times when she either doesn't understand other factors, or doesn't appreciate how much they matter. So, because of this, the story can occasionally slip into points where the reader might feel like these are more of fetish-level choices for Nitorin or Takatsuki, versus deeply emotional identity issues.

And yeah, sometimes the story just feels like it's moving along and absolutely nothing is happening. Unfortuantely, I think that's part of the downside of manga when you're looking at something that needs to have a longer run but doesn't want to advance the characters too far from where people have become fans of them.
 
Nisemonogatari 1

It's beautiful... well, except for the terrible OP but i'm sure it's the typical SHAFT place-holder. Senjougahara owns just as much as I remembered, i'll be savouring the ponytail for as long as it lasts.

Hopefully thats the last we'll see of the snail loli in Nise.

I don't know, people said that about Maria and Holic Season 2. Also, Bakemonogatari started off with a good OP!

Ah well, times have changed.
 
By "pick up" you mean "drop off in quality dramatically" ?

It's trying to imitate the LN too hard. They should have dropped all the unnecessary dialogue and gotten to the thick of things. The arc hasn't even begun yet, basically. That's why I say it'll pick up.

Now, about the drop off in quality, I wouldn't possibly know but i'm hoping for the best.
 
It's amazing, all you haters are crazy.

(Or you're pizzaroll)
 
I don't know, people said that about Maria and Holic Season 2. Also, Bakemonogatari started off with a good OP!

Ah well, times have changed.
Whoa, I completely forgot they did a second season of Maria Holic. I haven't even bothered to watch the first one yet. Also let us not forget about the original SZS OP.
 
Bodacious Space Pirates 1
tumblr_lxfzy68BG61qbxqfpo1_500.png

Well that was good. Much better than I expected. All of the major characters are interesting, Ririka-san is an epic pirate whom better stay throughout the series, I hope, Kane McDougal brings me all the laughs, and Chiaki Kurihara is pretty cool.
banana parfait scene was awesome
. Graphics and animation were nice, and the theme song, though seemingly like a glorious mess was quite catchy. I loved it.
 
Nisemonogatari 1

Checks all the Shaft/Nisioisin boxes you'd expect. Some random thoughts:

Senjougahara is as awesome as ever and makes the show worth watching. The opening was quite the arresting shock.

The OP has a couple interesting ideas, but is too sparse to be good.

The architecture of Araragi's house is insane.

There's not nearly as much text thrown up on the screen as there was in Bakemono. The direction in general felt toned down, for better or worse.

It's easy to see why people considered this to be aimless, considering that there were no "events" besides the typically meandering dialogue. There was a constant theme running through the post-OP section though - Araragi's concern for his sisters and desire to keep them from getting involved in his supernatural problems. Hopefully the next episode will make both that and
the confinement sequence
pay off.

It's back, for better or for worse. Maybe both. They've really crossed lines that perhaps should not be crossed. Like, ever.

There was nothing here as bad as episodes 9-10 of Bakemono. Of course there's still plenty of time for that.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom