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Spring Anime 2012 | Welcome Home, Space Cowboy

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cajunator

Banned
Well, it's closer to Chihayafuru insomuch as the main motivating factor is a girl who transfers away to another school after playing the game with the main characters. You even have the time jump so that helps too. :p

This sounds more and more interesting to me. Was it ever licensed?

aI5Gp.jpg

Hansode is still god-tier. what a fantastic character.
She is really the only reason I'm sticking around for Medaka Box.
 
This sounds more and more interesting to me. Was it ever licensed?

Saki Achiga-hen there is currently airing. The first Saki series, though... it was streamed, but I'm not sure offhand if it has a US disc release. If it doesn't it should!

Well, it's closer to Chihayafuru insomuch as the main motivating factor is a girl who transfers away to another school after playing the game with the main characters. You even have the time jump so that helps too. :p
True, but as I said, it is also sort of like Saki's setup (wanting to meet Teru again).

As for the timeskips, you are right that they are in both, but Achiga has more of them... ep. 2 has some more timeskips (summer to winter to spring, all in one episode!), and while it should slow down now, they won't entirely go away until we reach the national tournament... all the skipped stuff is a casualty of having only a small number of episodes to cover a lot of material.
 

Calcaneus

Member
I might have asked this in the past, but is there an anime podcast that would be more akin to the stuff written over at Anipages by Ben.

Then again, that might be asking for too much. How about just a good anime podcast?
Anime World Order is the only one I listen to anymore. They only update like once every few months, but they have a long archive.

I guess you could try ANNCast, but I don't know, I don't really enjoy it. The hosts aren't really entertaining to listen to.

There probably are others, but I've stopped looking for new podcasts a while ago.
 

Jex

Member
[Birdy The Mighty Decode – 24]

This is the first episode of the second half of Birdy/Season 2 that really disappointed me. It feels like something from season one – which doesn’t sound particularly damming because the first season was pretty good, but I feel like they had really moved past some of these problems.

For those of you who haven’t seen the show in a while this is the episode where:
the school festival takes place, Nataru attacks colonel and the cat lady, the cat lady kills the colonel for the moustached dude, Birdy finds Nataru and heals in her special pod, Valic hand’s himself in to Birdy, Nakasugi comes back and Nataru goes back to attack the cat girl.

If that sounds like a lot of events for one episode then you’d be correct. Now, there’s nothing wrong with covering having a really jam packed episode, but if the material is rushed through too quickly it doesn’t have any weight which is partly why this episode doesn’t really work.

It isn’t simply the case that a major event is happening every four minutes this episode because a sizeable chunk of the running time is devoted to the school festival. I find this heavy allotment of time bizarre because it doesn’t really accomplish any forward movement on the key plot points and it feels like something that the show wisely stopped caring about for this whole season. Yes, Senekawa goes to school and has friends and they do stuff on their own accord and have relationships with each other but honestly, who cares? They aren’t fully realised enough characters to bother spending any time with and even if they were this isn’t the time to be focusing on their antics – this whole season has focused on the far more interesting side of the show, namely, Birdy. Her origins and her relationships have really been the driving force behind the story, along with the consequences of the event that happened in the last season. Therefore it seems odd to suddently switch back to the school stuff.

I guess the only reason that Birdy was there was so that she could run into Munto – but they could have done that at any time and saved themselves several minutes by not including that whole sequence. I guess I should have known that episode was going to have troubles from the pre-credits animation which features a bunch of disjoined scenes.

It’s not just the major story beats which fired a little poorly, many scenes seemed to be either too long or too short. This is pretty unfortunate considering how focused and tight the show had been up until this episode. For example, everything involving
Birdy finding Nataru and taking him back to her ship seemed to be over really quickly and none of the important revelations for Birdy had any impact because we didn’t witness them, such as the fact that Nataru is just like her. Birdy also told him that he’s been asleep for a day which is completely wrong because when we cut back to the school we see that it’s the very same day!

Also, hey look, it's that guy! His role will never be explained at this rate which really sucks because he's making important characters do things and we, as the audience, have no understanding of why.

snapshot_dvd_012101_20120416_214352.jpg


Don't even get me started over the ending of the episode - I have no idea why they chose to end right there. It wasn't suspenseful, or exciting, it just seemed like someone shouted 'CUT' in the middle of a scene.
 

SDBurton

World's #1 Cosmonaut Enthusiast
I'm TRYING to work on MAL but its kind of a boring thing in general.
The format and the way you have to add new information is just tedious.
It is kind of useful though when you have started like twenty shows at once, like I have (many more than that actually)

It may be a pain in the ass at first when you're adding all the shows you've watched so far, but it's really helpful if by chance you take a break from a show and wanted to continue where you left off at a later time.

I personally love MAL.
 

madp

The Light of El Cantare
It's not like it forces you to rate things.

A couple of years ago I actually removed all of the ratings from my MAL after I realized that I was constantly thinking about what my final rating would be whenever I would watch something. It's still a valuable tool to help me remember what I've seen.

Of course, if you are going to use MAL ratings, be sure to rate everything either a 10 or a 1 so that your opinion has more weight than that of the average voter.
 

cajunator

Banned
It may be a pain in the ass at first when you're adding all the shows you've watched so far, but it's really helpful if by chance you take a break from a show and wanted to continue where you left off at a later time.

I personally love MAL.

I often find by that point that I actually forget where I was, it's best to just start over because I have also forgotten what was going on.
 

survivor

Banned
come to think of it, I don't think I have ever sat through an entire podcast of any sort. So boring.

I used to listen to like 4 gaming podcasts on the way to work last summer. I stopped after a month when I realized I don't really agree with most of their opinions.
 

SDBurton

World's #1 Cosmonaut Enthusiast
I often find by that point that I actually forget where I was, it's best to just start over because I have also forgotten what was going on.

Usually in that situation I re-watch the previous episode or two. Only in certain cases am I willing to re-watch the entire show, the latest being Lovely Complex.
 
I definitely can't do this. My work is really strenuous and usually fast paced.
I might have a couple of minutes of spare time every few hours if I'm lucky.

Yeah, would depend on what kind of work it is.

Haiyore! Nyaruko-san 02
But, why can't we do One Piece adventures?
Pretty fun episode. I never knew beard tentacles were a thing or that you would want to auction the role of a BL drama off or that's a thing. Those two points kinda overtook all the yuri.
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
This sounds more and more interesting to me. Was it ever licensed?
Naw. I'm surprised though, since it's moe as fuck. It seems perfect for a Sentai release... but the actual MJ might kill it. :p

Saki Achiga-hen there is currently airing. The first Saki series, though... it was streamed, but I'm not sure offhand if it has a US disc release. If it doesn't it should!

True, but as I said, it is also sort of like Saki's setup (wanting to meet Teru again).

As for the timeskips, you are right that they are in both, but Achiga has more of them... ep. 2 has some more timeskips (summer to winter to spring, all in one episode!), and while it should slow down now, they won't entirely go away until we reach the national tournament... all the skipped stuff is a casualty of having only a small number of episodes to cover a lot of material.
I don't mind those quick timeskips. I mean, they jump from being elementary/middle school kids to being high school kids, much like what happens in Chihayafuru. The first episode is basically a "prequel" for the rest of the series.

Anime World Order is the only one I listen to anymore. They only update like once every few months, but they have a long archive.

I guess you could try ANNCast, but I don't know, I don't really enjoy it. The hosts aren't really entertaining to listen to.

There probably are others, but I've stopped looking for new podcasts a while ago.
The problem with (English) anime podcasts is that it becomes strictly reviews. The ANNCast has an "advantage" in that they are big enough to get people who work in the English side of the industry to come on and talk about things, but other than that, what else can you do?

Anime3k or whatever it's called recently ripped off the TAL format in an interview, so at least people are "experimenting" (by cribbing :p), but ultimately you're kind of stuck. You can never get any of the talent on, because unless you find animators who are a) willing to speak to the media and b) fluent in English, you're kind of stuck. Even reporting on stuff that happens in Japan requires someone who is fluent in Japanese to be able to suffer through 2ch and the like to get news... but at that point, you might as well be reading the front page of ANN.
 

cajunator

Banned
Naw. I'm surprised though, since it's moe as fuck. It seems perfect for a Sentai release... but the actual MJ might kill it. :p


I don't mind those quick timeskips. I mean, they jump from being elementary/middle school kids to being high school kids, much like what happens in Chihayafuru. The first episode is basically a "prequel" for the rest of the series.


The problem with (English) anime podcasts is that it becomes strictly reviews. The ANNCast has an "advantage" in that they are big enough to get people who work in the English side of the industry to come on and talk about things, but other than that, what else can you do?

Anime3k or whatever it's called recently ripped off the TAL format in an interview, so at least people are "experimenting" (by cribbing :p), but ultimately you're kind of stuck. You can never get any of the talent on, because unless you find animators who are a) willing to speak to the media and b) fluent in English, you're kind of stuck. Even reporting on stuff that happens in Japan requires someone who is fluent in Japanese to be able to suffer through 2ch and the like to get news... but at that point, you might as well be reading the front page of ANN.

that Mahjong show does sound like exactly the kind of cheap release Sentai would do.
I would totally buy it based on you guys descriptions here.

Also, my work involves dispatching and near-constant phone usage. Usually Im making a lot of decisions that require concentration lest they end up as multi-thousand dollar fuckups.
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
that Mahjong show does sound like exactly the kind of cheap release Sentai would do.
I would totally buy it based on you guys descriptions here.

Welp, you could import it. lol
Or just watch it on CR! Come see one of the largest moe faux-yuri casts in recent anime history!
 

frostbyte

Member
I don't mind those quick timeskips. I mean, they jump from being elementary/middle school kids to being high school kids, much like what happens in Chihayafuru. The first episode is basically a "prequel" for the rest of the series.

I don't mind time skips either but Saki Achiga-hen just handled the first episode confusingly. Maybe it was a lack of attention but I was seriously befuddled about which girl went to which middle school, then which middle to high school.

This doesn't diminish my love for Saki though. cajun, you should watch it. and there's a lot of potential [REDACTED] and yuri subtext!
 

Steroyd

Member
Yami to Boushi - 09

My word, the abuse this show has for flashbacks, it wouldn't hurt to chain these events in chronological order.
 

cajunator

Banned
I have a lot of data entry in my job, but it also involves solving allocation issues, assigning fuel amounts to driver dispatches, routing drivers, customer communication, managing dropped loads, misloads, answering the safety emergency line, answering customer emails, setting up new deliveries and finding supply points, oftentimes many of these things at once. Unfortunately no time at all whatsoever for even a portion of a podcast. And that's when everything is going NORMALLY. when a loading rack goes down, a driver misdelivers, or a store runs out everything just goes completely to shit and then I REALLY don't have any spare time until its solved. Unfortunately this sort of thing happens every night and sometimes all night.
 

/XX/

Member
TRIGGER Inc., has a twitter account (http://twitter.com/#!/trigger_inc)! Now is easier to keep track of things like collaborations on products branded by the studio (something mentioned here http://neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=36974440&postcount=30) or other like their upcoming BULLET1 (http://ameblo.jp/inugger/entry-11222891445.html) 'dōjin' circle's (& friends) work.

Regarding Birth and Yoshinori Kanada. The OVA is one of those weird things you stumble onto and it just stuck with me. You also mentioned Down Load and its LaserDisc release; I've only ever heard of the Down Load - Namiamidabutsu wa Ai no Uta LaserDisc, though I have seen it for sale on VHS (>$100). It's been on my "must watch" list for a while now. Especially after seeing some of a MAG documentary on him ( スペシャル「アニメの革命児 金田伊功」).
The LaserDisc of DOWN LOAD (LD Product Code: NALN-10003) is fairly rare, as I've only seen entries for old auctions and at considerably high prices. The thing is that it is known the existence of a pretty good quality archive from which we have seen extracts used on 'MAD' videos and such, and a Japanese YouTube user that went by the name of suteaka (also suteakaOP, or similar names) had it. People like busterbeam (even with the help of others like raito-kun) have tried to contact him wanting to know more about this exceptional rip, unsuccessfully. And that is the more exasperating thing about this situation...
 
Ah My Goddess TV 26
Go figure, that an episode about Skuld being an adult was actually pretty good. She spent time with Keiichi, almost got raped, etc. regular adult stuff. But, it was pretty nice with her actually liking Keiichi and that she got to live as an adult for once.
Done with season 1! Onward to season 2!
 

Koroviev

Member
I have a lot of data entry in my job, but it also involves solving allocation issues, assigning fuel amounts to driver dispatches, routing drivers, customer communication, managing dropped loads, misloads, answering the safety emergency line, answering customer emails, setting up new deliveries and finding supply points, oftentimes many of these things at once. Unfortunately no time at all whatsoever for even a portion of a podcast. And that's when everything is going NORMALLY. when a loading rack goes down, a driver misdelivers, or a store runs out everything just goes completely to shit and then I REALLY don't have any spare time until its solved. Unfortunately this sort of thing happens every night and sometimes all night.
They really keep you on your toes haha
 

cajunator

Banned
Ah My Goddess TV 26

Go figure, that an episode about Skuld being an adult was actually pretty good. She spent time with Keiichi, almost got raped, etc. regular adult stuff. But, it was pretty nice with her actually liking Keiichi and that she got to live as an adult for once.
Done with season 1! Onward to season 2!

I find it hilarious that this is is so prevalent that it's considered a mundane activity in anime these days.
 

trejo

Member
Saintcatch Seiyacure 3

The
bear guy
used to go on adventures with the original cast? When the fuck did that ever happen?

Man, saints in training have it so much easier nowadays. Palaestra looks like a thousand times more civilized a place than Sanctuary. They're given uniforms instead of rags, they get vacations, they have a cafeteria and they're even treated with at least some semblance of human dignity. Back in my day they were always trying to kill each other and were lucky to have a roof over their heads to recover after getting a limb chopped off or something.

The episode had some really pretty backgrounds and one decent fight scene. Aquila is a nice addition to the cast, even if her cloth is just straight up a Precure outfit. Are those puffy sleeves supposed to be armor too?

Next week: Babby Shiryu. I expect disappointment.
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
I don't mind time skips either but Saki Achiga-hen just handled the first episode confusingly. Maybe it was a lack of attention but I was seriously befuddled about which girl went to which middle school, then which middle to high school.

This doesn't diminish my love for Saki though. cajun, you should watch it. and there's a lot of potential [REDACTED] and yuri subtext!
I dunno... they split up, and then two of them decided to get back together again. Which actually is also a lot like Chihayafuru. :p
 

dimb

Bjergsen is the greatest midlane in the world
The problem with (English) anime podcasts is that it becomes strictly reviews. The ANNCast has an "advantage" in that they are big enough to get people who work in the English side of the industry to come on and talk about things, but other than that, what else can you do?
ANN hardly ever does reviews though, especially of anything recent. I don't listen to many anime podcasts, but it doesn't seem like they focus on current stuff too much. Though I noticed your podcast talked about some newer stuff...
I'm addicted to this. I can't stop listening to it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHkcCxWWUpk
One hour...why? This is what you listen to instead of podcasts?
 

cajunator

Banned
ANN hardly ever does reviews though, especially of anything recent. I don't listen to many anime podcasts, but it doesn't seem like they focus on current stuff too much. Though I noticed your podcast talked about some newer stuff...

One hour...why? This is what you listen to instead of podcasts?

Similar things.

It's cuter than a podcast for one thing.
Usually thougH Im listening to various OP's and OST's while browsing.

Come to think of it,. I have listened to ONE podcast, and it was a lengthy one about the fall of Geneon. I wanted to learn about the reasons why my favorite anime company bit the bullet. I was grieving. It's a process.
 
Nyaruko-san 2
I think Manhiro is a pretty cool guy. Eh rejects all the gratuitous fanservice and doesn't afraid of anything.

This episode wasn't as funny as the first one, but the above-and-beyond mythos desecration helped make up for it.
 

Soma

Member
Haiyore! Nyaruku-san 02


this show is so dumb

but enough dumb to keep me amused and wanting to stick with it. this wasn't as good as the first episode but the little references were pretty great though.
 

Brazil

Living in the shadow of Amaz
Haiyore! Nyaruko-san 2


It's like Nyaruko is the anime industry, trying to drown us in fanservice, and Mahiro is our sanity, pushing back, screaming "No!",
but eventually kneeling down before his new overlords.
 

cajunator

Banned
Haiyore! Nyaruko-san 2



It's like Nyaruko is the anime industry, trying to drown us in fanservice, and Mahiro is our sanity, pushing back, screaming "No!",
but eventually kneeling down before his new overlords.

It's inevitable. People fight it but all will eventually succumb.
 
Welp, you could import it. lol
Or just watch it on CR! Come see one of the largest moe faux-yuri casts in recent anime history!
CR aired the first series, and is airing the second one.

And yes, you can still find the first series subbed on CR, so you can still watch the series legit. You just can't buy it on discs, sadly; I also would love for there to be a disc release... I'd quite likely get a US release.

So yeah, just watch them on CR, cajun.

The one thing I don't think you can get from CR, sadly, are the seven Picture Drama pieces included on the discs of the original series... they don't have animation, but do have some nice stories, so it is a loss. But all of the episodes are there.

Naw. I'm surprised though, since it's moe as fuck. It seems perfect for a Sentai release... but the actual MJ might kill it. :p
Eh, you don't really need ot know mahjong to like the series. It might help, but it isn't necessary.

I don't mind those quick timeskips. I mean, they jump from being elementary/middle school kids to being high school kids, much like what happens in Chihayafuru. The first episode is basically a "prequel" for the rest of the series.
Yeah, the longer timeskips were in ep. 1, but as I said, ep. 2 covers something like 6-9 months... I agree that it works reasonably well -- they want to quickly get from the time when they were accepted into high school to the time when the school year starts -- but it does skip a bunch.
 
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