-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Fall 2012 Anime |OT| Meet the new world, same as the old world
- Thread starter Dresden
- Start date
- Status
I've read that Panda's much less of an arsehole in the manga then he's made out to be in the anime adaptation.
I agree, I like my sci-fi's to make a solid foundation instead of pulling stuff out it's ass, being riddled with plot wholes and lack of answers as weird stuff just happens with no explanations.
thumbs ups to you
Still it's dumb how it's like she was born yesterday in the world of psycho pass, it felt like a none episode were they set up the world but that didn't bother me much as the world was at least interesting.
Good news, it looks like she's already gone, lol.
darkside31337
Tomodachi wa Mahou
Man I thought Brandy was spoiling the ep (havent watched it yet) but it was just a Saya joke. Took me a few minutes to get it 
Jex
Member
[Wolf Children]
I suppose I should write this post up before I forget some of this films salient details.
As anyone whose been following this movie knows, Wolf Children is a work which is far closer in tone to his earlier The Girl Who Leapt Through Time than his more block-buster style effort Summer Wars. Summer Wars was a big, loud and proud summer adventure movie which I found to be well constructed but ultimately lacking. It didn't have TGWLTT's focus, it's tone or it's really well developed central characters. Wolf Children is, in many ways, a far more radical movie than Summer Wars in terms of how many risks it takes - it's not a summer flick, or an action movie, or a romance or any of the safe demographics that are assumed to play well to the big crowds.
It has a refreshingly basic story - the tale of a mother struggling to raise her children over the course of the movie. Of course, these children are clearly unusual in that they're, y'know, also wolves but that element doesn't actually dilute the story to any noticeable degree. Normally, with a story of this sort, you'd have questions of where to these wolf-people come from, whether or not they can be "cured", you might have a big confrontation where the children are exposed or hunted or some such. Hosoda largely side steps these clichés and focuses on developing the story and characters as he sees fit which is a decision that I respect greatly.
The way that Hosoda approaches this material is refreshing as well. Large swatches of the film pass with very little or zero spoken lines of dialogue. This works very well, for the most part, because the story that's being told is not something that requires dialogue - we read it in the characters actions, in their mannerisms, in their faces. We understand what's going on well enough, which makes the few times they spell it out a little bit annoying - just leave it unsaid. We get it! I think the only real downside of this is that I don't get much of a feeling for
The film does a great job of showing this passing of time without making things feel rushed or unnatural. It all unfolds extremely naturally and the manner in which the story progresses is so smooth that you barely notice it happening. Sure, in some scenes they overtly point out that time is passing but even that's done very effectively.
The movies strongest feature is clearly it's core central trio of characters - the family unit. Ame, Yuki and their mother all have distinct, powerful characteristics that develop splendidly over the course of the movie. By keeping the number of developed side-characters down to a minimum Hosoda really has the chance to revel in even small family matters. I suppose, in this way it's far closer to Totoro, and Miyazaki, than anything that he's done before.
Hosoda's strong suit as a director is how powerfully and painfully he can capture emotions.
A family story such as this one gives him free reign to hit the audience with a wide variety of these feelings. It's not a sensless battery, however, he really understands when and how to deploy his scenes to greatest effect. It never feels cheap or 'manipulative', instead it feels genuine.
I do have a few quibbles though. Firstly, the score. Perhaps the sound balance on our showing was wack (which wouldn't surprise me) it seemed to be too loud and too on the nose in many scenes. I felt this to be especially problematic in scenes where the direction and writing were very restrained only to have the music come over and hit you while shouting "CRY NOW". Perhaps they felt the need to have so many musical tracks in the movie because of all the scenes without dialogue? It's hard to speculate.
Secondly - that scene. You know the one.
If you have the option to see it when it's out in your territory - go see it. I only hope your projectionist wont be as lousy as mine.
I suppose I should write this post up before I forget some of this films salient details.
As anyone whose been following this movie knows, Wolf Children is a work which is far closer in tone to his earlier The Girl Who Leapt Through Time than his more block-buster style effort Summer Wars. Summer Wars was a big, loud and proud summer adventure movie which I found to be well constructed but ultimately lacking. It didn't have TGWLTT's focus, it's tone or it's really well developed central characters. Wolf Children is, in many ways, a far more radical movie than Summer Wars in terms of how many risks it takes - it's not a summer flick, or an action movie, or a romance or any of the safe demographics that are assumed to play well to the big crowds.
It has a refreshingly basic story - the tale of a mother struggling to raise her children over the course of the movie. Of course, these children are clearly unusual in that they're, y'know, also wolves but that element doesn't actually dilute the story to any noticeable degree. Normally, with a story of this sort, you'd have questions of where to these wolf-people come from, whether or not they can be "cured", you might have a big confrontation where the children are exposed or hunted or some such. Hosoda largely side steps these clichés and focuses on developing the story and characters as he sees fit which is a decision that I respect greatly.
The way that Hosoda approaches this material is refreshing as well. Large swatches of the film pass with very little or zero spoken lines of dialogue. This works very well, for the most part, because the story that's being told is not something that requires dialogue - we read it in the characters actions, in their mannerisms, in their faces. We understand what's going on well enough, which makes the few times they spell it out a little bit annoying - just leave it unsaid. We get it! I think the only real downside of this is that I don't get much of a feeling for
the father figure. I get that he's a nice guy who likes kids but we never, er, really learn much about his personality. I don't feel like I know him very well by the time he dies. I just thought I'd point out that when the scene cut to his body one girl sitting behind me literally screamed. The way he was disposed of was brutally effective as well.
The film does a great job of showing this passing of time without making things feel rushed or unnatural. It all unfolds extremely naturally and the manner in which the story progresses is so smooth that you barely notice it happening. Sure, in some scenes they overtly point out that time is passing but even that's done very effectively.
The movies strongest feature is clearly it's core central trio of characters - the family unit. Ame, Yuki and their mother all have distinct, powerful characteristics that develop splendidly over the course of the movie. By keeping the number of developed side-characters down to a minimum Hosoda really has the chance to revel in even small family matters. I suppose, in this way it's far closer to Totoro, and Miyazaki, than anything that he's done before.
Hosoda's strong suit as a director is how powerfully and painfully he can capture emotions.
A family story such as this one gives him free reign to hit the audience with a wide variety of these feelings. It's not a sensless battery, however, he really understands when and how to deploy his scenes to greatest effect. It never feels cheap or 'manipulative', instead it feels genuine.
I do have a few quibbles though. Firstly, the score. Perhaps the sound balance on our showing was wack (which wouldn't surprise me) it seemed to be too loud and too on the nose in many scenes. I felt this to be especially problematic in scenes where the direction and writing were very restrained only to have the music come over and hit you while shouting "CRY NOW". Perhaps they felt the need to have so many musical tracks in the movie because of all the scenes without dialogue? It's hard to speculate.
Secondly - that scene. You know the one.
Where Yuki's mother sleeps with the wolf man while he's in his wolf form. What the fuck was that, Hosoda? I understand that the idea behind this is that she 'accepts him for who he is' but in reality it's comes across very awkwardly and I felt like I was watching some kind of bestiality hentai. Some people in the audience actually laughed out loud. It really didn't work at all.
If you have the option to see it when it's out in your territory - go see it. I only hope your projectionist wont be as lousy as mine.
dakkumauji
Member
Zetsuen no Tempest 02
Not a bad episode. Besides the script being pretty bad at points, what can you really do?
Action was really nice. Music was awesome. Really liked all the changes they did from the manga which made the whole episode more fluid and more exciting. Taking the fight to the school was a much better idea than what happened in the manga.
Covered almost all of chapter two.
Not a bad episode. Besides the script being pretty bad at points, what can you really do?
Action was really nice. Music was awesome. Really liked all the changes they did from the manga which made the whole episode more fluid and more exciting. Taking the fight to the school was a much better idea than what happened in the manga.
Covered almost all of chapter two.
Mawaru Penguindrum 4
Funny episode, with the funniest part of it probably being the whole imagination part of it. The end though turned the whole thing on a pretty dark path. I wonder who it was that
.
One thing I really like about Penguindrum so far though is Himari's forehead.
Btw, every time I see the opening and a couple characters pop up, I think about Utena.
Funny episode, with the funniest part of it probably being the whole imagination part of it. The end though turned the whole thing on a pretty dark path. I wonder who it was that
pushed that girl down the stairs
One thing I really like about Penguindrum so far though is Himari's forehead.
Btw, every time I see the opening and a couple characters pop up, I think about Utena.
It is a frustrating situation, yes.
can't have characters sympathetic for rape victims in my matoore grimdark anime. what is this, kyoanus?!??!!?!!!!!!??
Ouch, looks like someone is very, very mad.
I rather enjoy people getting butthurt and failing to read and comprehend my posts, please, go on.
To be fair it's always difficult to comprehend posts which are referencing a broken image.
you could say he is kyo anushurt
RurouniZel
Asks questions so Ezalc doesn't have to
I got a couple BluRays from Amazon today!
Dedication Through Light
Member
K ep 2
Ignoring the naked girl (Neko)
it was a really fun and hilarious episode. Yata Misaki is probably my second favorite character attack and personality wise
.
I love Yatogami's and Isana's interactions and
Oh and Kusanagi is really great even if all he does it, well just sit and look cool.
Every song is great even the one in english "he got roasted garlic bread breath" and other odd lines.
Ignoring the naked girl (Neko)
and her mischevious genjutsus, I guess only people with powers can see her, Yatogami could, but the normal person, the person she bumped into that Isano helped with the oranges, couldnt
I love Yatogami's and Isana's interactions and
budding friendship I bet. The whole chase scene to then back in Isano's room and then the cooking was actually good and my favorite part outside of the fight
Oh and Kusanagi is really great even if all he does it, well just sit and look cool.
Every song is great even the one in english "he got roasted garlic bread breath" and other odd lines.
I dont think Isana really did it.
Welcome to Gen Urobuchi.
-Minsc-
Member
Since I'm earning some extra money at the moment (and my birthday is coming up) I say it'll be time to make my first anime purchase in two to three years. I'm due for this.
Dedication Through Light
Member
I got a couple BluRays from Amazon today!
Im so glad they confirmed Steins Gate pt 2 for December release, might just hold off on rewatching the first 12 episodes and wait and do the whole anime in a one day runthrough.
Not much of a punch, he lets his wrist fall limp before it connects.
She wrote a theory on how criminality spreads, not on how to conduct an operation.
Psycho-Pass 1 - Pretty much everything I expected based on the combination of staff + premise. Everything felt very standard urobuchi for better or worse, the dialogue was expository as fuck, the setting and tone is grim-dark and self-serious, but I very much enjoyed it despite how standard it felt, because it's been so long since we got a science-fiction series like this, I'm looking forward to the moment when things start getting crazy in traditional urobuchi fashion etc.
The sentences are actually switched but yeah, she pretty much acts like she's completely clueless about everything.
Yeah but the guy was still explaining the entire "Psycho-Hazard" process while in the elevator. It's like he's talking to himself. There were definitely some silliness in the dialogue with Akane throughout ep1. They really took the "rookie n00b's first day on the job" to the extreme. It makes her seem incapable and weak, despite her being presented as someone who is apparently super-elite.
I don't really care too much though, since COOL GUYS + COOL GUNS + JACKETS AND SUITS + RAIN + VIOLENCE = KICKASS.
I don't think Akane ever actually asks for anything to be explained to her. She says she wrote a thesis, and she says she's covered the Dominators in training. At no point does she ever ASK Masaoka or the other characters to infodump on her. It highlights the artificial nature of the exposition, because although the actual dialogue isn't saying she knows nothing, the rest of the show treats her as if that's the case.
The exposition is dumb, and it's unfortunate that I've been following the show for weeks and thus know all this shit already, but I guess that's my problem rather than Butch's.
The most unbelievable thing is that she would be surprised by
the victim having a stronger crime coefficient.
I think it's just one thing you gotta tolerate for now, esp with how bad the exposition was at the start of fate/zero, once we get past it, we can expect things to get really crazy and entertaining.
Psycho-Pass
Well just for the fact that this is a cyberpunk anime which seem to be very rare nowadays means that I like this a lot so far. However, as an opening episode I didn't feel that it was that great. While it was nice that the show gets right into the "action" by going straight into a criminal case, I don't feel that it left a good impression on the characters introduced so far especially Akane. I'm sure that each one will get fleshed out as the story progresses but things felt very... by the books for lack of a better term. I'm glad they're at least getting a lot of the technicalities and expositionary terms out of the way so they'll (hopefully) focus on some more interesting cases in the future.
I like the setting very much. I've always been a fan of these types of sci-fi settings and the concept seems pretty interesting. There's already bound to be conflict within the team based on Akane's actions this episode and I'm sure the show will explore a bunch of themes regarding morality and corruption. I like most of what Urobuchi has done so far so I have faith that he'll have some interesting events in store over the course of this show.
Well just for the fact that this is a cyberpunk anime which seem to be very rare nowadays means that I like this a lot so far. However, as an opening episode I didn't feel that it was that great. While it was nice that the show gets right into the "action" by going straight into a criminal case, I don't feel that it left a good impression on the characters introduced so far especially Akane. I'm sure that each one will get fleshed out as the story progresses but things felt very... by the books for lack of a better term. I'm glad they're at least getting a lot of the technicalities and expositionary terms out of the way so they'll (hopefully) focus on some more interesting cases in the future.
I like the setting very much. I've always been a fan of these types of sci-fi settings and the concept seems pretty interesting. There's already bound to be conflict within the team based on Akane's actions this episode and I'm sure the show will explore a bunch of themes regarding morality and corruption. I like most of what Urobuchi has done so far so I have faith that he'll have some interesting events in store over the course of this show.
I think it's just one thing you gotta tolerate for now, esp with how bad the exposition was at the start of fate/zero, once we get past it, we can expect things to get really crazy and entertaining.
This is starting to seem like a running theme with Urobuchi, though. He just doesn't know how to start stories without infodumps.
She might not have been surprised by it but rather discontent/unhappy about it. I mean most people in that situation would have balked and we really don't know her background.
That's a fair enough summary of it. The characters are really just talking to her rather than the reverse.
Madoka really didn't start out with any infodumps.
Madoka's infodump happened half way through the series! Lol.... lol.
It's very much a bullshit system right up there with 1984. You could have literally one bad day and your life is fucked even if you didn't do anything. Atleast with Minority Report, there was the future prediction bit. Here you don't even get that.
it was more of a play of your terrible 4chan style posting but w/e
People who have bad days are too dangerous to keep around.
I knew working with Nasu wasn't going to be profitable on the long run.
Did Saya no Uta have so much exposition? I don't remember a thing about that novel.
Psycho-Pass 1
I think the exposition criticisms mentioned earlier make sense, but I still enjoyed this episode a lot. Like the first episode of Fate/Zero, it established the setting very clearly, and made me excited to see how it would be used. Unlike Fate/Zero, the moment-to-moment action was pretty fun to watch. I'm also a sucker for cyberpunk, so I love how the setting is realized. The background animators definitely watched their share of Blade Runner.
The worst bit of "exposition that nobody asked for" would be when the other inspector says, "I can't treat you like a newbie," and then goes on to describe the basic concept of Enforcers while the paddy wagon rolls in. I understand that there's a lot Akane might not know about ground operations even after training, but who Enforcers are could probably have been established without stating it in that way.
I don't think she was surprised by it. She just doesn't think it means the same thing as the rest of the characters. For all we know, her thesis was about
I also think that given the events of the episode, she has a pretty good explanation she can put in her report.
I think the exposition criticisms mentioned earlier make sense, but I still enjoyed this episode a lot. Like the first episode of Fate/Zero, it established the setting very clearly, and made me excited to see how it would be used. Unlike Fate/Zero, the moment-to-moment action was pretty fun to watch. I'm also a sucker for cyberpunk, so I love how the setting is realized. The background animators definitely watched their share of Blade Runner.
The worst bit of "exposition that nobody asked for" would be when the other inspector says, "I can't treat you like a newbie," and then goes on to describe the basic concept of Enforcers while the paddy wagon rolls in. I understand that there's a lot Akane might not know about ground operations even after training, but who Enforcers are could probably have been established without stating it in that way.
I don't think she was surprised by it. She just doesn't think it means the same thing as the rest of the characters. For all we know, her thesis was about
dealing with victims of Psycho Hazard in a different way from the rest of the system, or something like that.
I also think that given the events of the episode, she has a pretty good explanation she can put in her report.
Her actions lowered the victim's Psycho-Pass down to non-lethal levels.
Crash Station
Member
Saya no Uta didn't. In fact, it was pretty confusing until it was explained a little later.
I think he was trying to steal his nose.
Dedication Through Light
Member
Psycho Pass 1
The beginning portion of the episode was to me, better than the rest of the episode when Akane took the stage. We really need to get the Shogo and Shinya plot going as that was actually really compelling and intense. Such intense stares and that smirk.
Anyway, at this point only criticism is that Akane is really boring and I started to get so agitated by her.
Anyway I can only hope that she goes up from here.
Everyone else was solid, especially Shuusei, the voice of Sybil or whatever, if she could get some personality in her system she may give Eden of the East's Juiz some solid competition. And I liked the HUD
Good anime.
The beginning portion of the episode was to me, better than the rest of the episode when Akane took the stage. We really need to get the Shogo and Shinya plot going as that was actually really compelling and intense. Such intense stares and that smirk.
Anyway, at this point only criticism is that Akane is really boring and I started to get so agitated by her.
Why couldnt she just do the enforcing job and what not instead of doubting the entire system she already committed herself too. She wrote a thesis, if she was that concerned about things why not stay in academia instead of going to the front lines?
Everyone else was solid, especially Shuusei, the voice of Sybil or whatever, if she could get some personality in her system she may give Eden of the East's Juiz some solid competition. And I liked the HUD
Good anime.
It's supposed to be.
- Status