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Spring Anime 2017 |OT| Don't be a SukaSuka for Gacha

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Not open for further replies.
V

Valdfellgar

Banned
hosannainexcelsis said:
I agree that episode 0's point was to characterize Shindo, but I don't think it did a good job of it. He's a bland guy who works really hard and has powers of discernment beyond mortal men or something. Not compelling.
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That's fair. Episode 0 was a decent base, I think, but nothing's been built upon it. It's sort of treated as if those 23 minutes were enough to build a character for the 12 episode run.

Jarmel said:
There's a lot of emphasis on how they treat space combat and just physics as a whole. Things like the Adama Maneuver are oriented around real life physics.
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Yeah it's not particularly overt or overly in your face, but it was there and was a big appeal for a lot of viewers.
 
D

Dedication Through Light

Member
Love Rice Episode 9
DBMIWiTXUAAoSeI.jpg:small


Todays ooked good and one Id be interested in making if only I could know the name of the dish, lol.

Good singing for the anime folks anyway, though I think they could have easily made the dance sequence a bit more lively.
 
C

Clov

Member
GoldCrusader said:
The Most Tweeted Spring 2017 TV Anime Top 10
(April 16 - May 23, 2017)



1. "Attack on Titan Season 2" - 582,350 times

2. "Eromanga Sensei" - 337,813

3. "My Hero Academia Season 2" - 230,902

4. "Idol Time PriPara" - 177,419

5. "Frame Arms Girl" - 143,079

6. "Star-Mu 2nd Season" - 129,620

7. "Saekano -How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend- ♭" - 119,101

8. "Hinako Note" - 103,301

9. "Natsume Yujin-cho 6" - 100,954

10. "Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor" - 99,433

Some of these are unexpected.
Click to expand...

Let's go, PriPara!

Too bad that most of the main cast from the previous seasons are just supporting characters in this one. I'm really in no rush to get to that one because of that.
 
S

sonicmj1

Member
I'm caught up on Kado at this point, and while I'm still interested, I agree with a lot of the criticisms. The show wants to show something very sweeping, but it really loses sight of all the smaller elements of what it presents.

Jarmel touched on it, but it reminds me a lot of Childhood's End, a book that attempts to portray the development and evolution of the human race into a starfaring species in about two hundred pages. Given how influential the book is in Japan (for instance, it's referenced in a certain recent Japanese sci-fi video game), I don't think that's coincidental.

Jexhius said:
In terms of geopolitics, I see that some of you are suggesting that the show presents a 'realpolitik' perspective where nation states act in their best interests, but I can't really agree. Leaving aside the question of whether the appearance of the Wam in Japan is an issue for the UN Security Council alone to deliberate on, I find both the speed and unity of response from the other major nations a little surprising. Moreover, I find their threatened 'sanctions' against Japan unconvincing. Leaving aside the question of economic sanctions (which would surely lead to problems for both sides as the world requires many of the goods that Japan exports), the notion of using military force against Japan is completely ridiculous. It's existence in the series, even as a veiled threat, is patently ridiculous. Under what grounds would the people of the world accept a UN invasion of the nation of Japan, an undertaking which if actually enacted, would cost the lives of potentially hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians. A completely bonkers proposal.

Even ignoring the complicated reality of geopolitics, taken on it's most basic terms, the show ends up depicting the world as the UN vs Japan. The UN are cast as greedy hoarders who want to take and control the alien technology, while Japan is an enlightened nation that merely wishes to spread and the aliens gifts throughout mankind. This isn't even subtext - the show literally says that the Japanese people are the most selfless in the world. It's not the normal kind or nationalism of exceptionalism that some of us may be familiar with - instead its a kind of undeniably smug nationalism about how the Japanese are the chosen people.
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What struck me the most openly about the geopolitics was, as you said, how much it flattens the entire picture to boil everything down to Japan alone against the UN. Japan is a settled actor on the world stage, with friends and enemies. You're telling me the US, Japan's closest ally, one with actual military bases on the island, isn't even attempting private bilateral talks? Nobody's thinking about a Japan/US/EU allied bloc that would control the world's energy future and blunt the ambitions of China and Russia (likely at the expense of developing nations)?

It's particularly bizarre that they went the UN route instead of emphasizing the individuality of nations. The UN is an organization with a humanitarian mission that is often hamstrung by the influences of its individual members. In a world where it functioned as its charter envisions, it would be exactly the group you'd want to distribute something like this. The problem that zaShunina emphasizes is that nations are more concerned with their own interests as governing entities than they are with the well-being of humanity as a whole. Showing the problem of national self-interest directly doesn't change the outcome, or even take much more time. But they sidestep it anyway.

I can't decide if they went the way they did to avoid any sort of contemporary geopolitical commentary, or if they picked the route that most emphasized Japanese exceptionalism as a great, selfless nation. But either way I don't think it was the right path to take.
 
G

GoldCrusader

Member
Boruto 9
ofaDXOs.jpg
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Man the animation in this series continues to be pretty amazing. That gentle fist battle with Hanabi was dang impressive. And man the whole conversation between Naruto and Boruto's grandpa/ Hanabi and Boruto made me smile the whole way through. Naruto truting Boruto since of the way he fought was really good. This family is just too good. The Hyugas make the best family.
 
I

ibyea

Banned
Jexhius said:
To put it as broadly as Kado - nearly every topic is the show examines is represented by maybe one or two fairly shallow characters who stand in as 'representatives' for an entire field. The show paints with such a ridiculously broad brush that I cannot fathom why it even bothers to touch on as many topics as it pretends to have an opinion on.

In terms of the representation of the media, the series decided to focus its energy on focusing on one particular reporter, but still fails to sketch his character in any depth. He is Mr Scoops, a man who chases the Truth by Being There First. Is that his only skill - swiftness? In 2017, is there any particular merit in the reporting carried our My Scoops, who has such piercing revaluations as "It's a really, really, big cube. You won't believe how big it is!". In a world where everyone with a phone (or a drone) has the potential to capture the exact same images as him I'm not sure why we're even following his "story". It seems to be such an outdated, and simplistic, depiction of what gathering and disseminating information to the public actually entails.

In terms of geopolitics, I see that some of you are suggesting that the show presents a 'realpolitik' perspective where nation states act in their best interests, but I can't really agree. Leaving aside the question of whether the appearance of the Wam in Japan is an issue for the UN Security Council alone to deliberate on, I find both the speed and unity of response from the other major nations a little surprising. Moreover, I find their threatened 'sanctions' against Japan unconvincing. Leaving aside the question of economic sanctions (which would surely lead to problems for both sides as the world requires many of the goods that Japan exports), the notion of using military force against Japan is completely ridiculous. It's existence in the series, even as a veiled threat, is patently ridiculous. Under what grounds would the people of the world accept a UN invasion of the nation of Japan, an undertaking which if actually enacted, would cost the lives of potentially hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians. A completely bonkers proposal.

Even ignoring the complicated reality of geopolitics, taken on it's most basic terms, the show ends up depicting the world as the UN vs Japan. The UN are cast as greedy hoarders who want to take and control the alien technology, while Japan is an enlightened nation that merely wishes to spread and the aliens gifts throughout mankind. This isn't even subtext - the show literally says that the Japanese people are the most selfless in the world. It's not the normal kind or nationalism of exceptionalism that some of us may be familiar with - instead its a kind of undeniably smug nationalism about how the Japanese are the chosen people.

With regards to science, I feel like ibyea has already explained this pretty thoroughly, but I'd still like to weigh in on this. The pursuit of knowledge through the scientific method is a lengthy, arduous and rigorous process. It is an ongoing venture that is the combined result of millions of people working for thousands of years to better humanities understanding about the universe. In Kado, this gargantuan undertaking is exemplified by the work of one 'quirky' genius who rolls around with some spheres for a while before having a revelation. This Hollywoodification of science would be merely tiresome in any other work but in a serious that clearly fancies itself as having a 'hard' science fiction leaning, such a shallow depiction of science is completely insulting.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your explanations. I had a really hard time putting my thoughts together on this.

firehawk12 said:
So Kado turned out to be terrible?
Click to expand...

I concur with people who says it's not a terrible show, it's just mediocre. It's just that I personally really hated the ideas this show brought to the table.
 
S

SapphiCine

Member
Jexhius said:
I don't disagree with anything here. I was going to write something similar after the last episode, but never got around to it. My biggest gripe with the show is that it's got a simplistic view of everything: people, work, science, the media, geopolitics - but it wraps itself up in the clothes of a 'serious' work.

It's a truly pretentious series.
Click to expand...
Damn. I remember the early impressions and hoped it turned out well.
 
K

KraytarJ

Member
The Eccentric Family 2-8
Pretty rough episode emotionally. Yajiro's leaving Kaisei is having a bad time, but at least Nidaime is still spectacular.
 
D

duckroll

Member
Murata's approach to serious themes and interesting what-if scenarios in scifi has always been somewhat.... lacking. I think we have seen it in FMA Milos and Gargantia too. The difference was that those stories could be carried by the action and the "fun" parts of it without dwelling on the weak handling of the serious material. Kado doubles down on everything Murata is poor at, while not giving him much room to flex his actual talents.

That said I still enjoy the intrigue in the show simply because there isn't much attempts like this in anime. Lowered expectations, etc.
 
H

hosannainexcelsis

Member
duckroll said:
Murata's approach to serious themes and interesting what-if scenarios in scifi has always been somewhat.... lacking. I think we have seen it in FMA Milos and Gargantia too. The difference was that those stories could be carried by the action and the "fun" parts of it without dwelling on the weak handling of the serious material. Kado doubles down on everything Murata is poor at, while not giving him much room to flex his actual talents.

That said I still enjoy the intrigue in the show simply because there isn't much attempts like this in anime. Lowered expectations, etc.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Murata's works have a habit of posing interesting scenarios and then shying away from totally engaging them. Gargantia is perhaps the best at actually starting to approach serious thematic engagement, though only in parts. Fortunately I don't have to only watch anime, so I don't feel like watching Kado just because it's unusual subject matter for the medium, just like I didn't feel like watching Joker Game for its unusual subject matter for anime. Anyway, even if I wanted to watch science fiction anime which engages with serious themes there's Fafner Exodus, or ID-0, or older works such as Planetes, not to mention Patlabor.
 
D

duckroll

Member
Yes, but anime is 20 mins long per episode, and other things take more effort. Which is why I haven't started on American Gods yet. Please understand.
 
Cornbread78

Cornbread78

Member
Tokyo Ravens ep.1
flhu7p5.png
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That was umm, different? I mean, they threw a bunch names and ideas out there, but didn't explain anything.... However, that can be excused because they had a blond, drill haired psycho perform felacio on a chocolate covered bananna, then totally NTR the fuck out of the girl whe really like the MC... whelp, that was an interesting intro episode....
 
S

SliceSabre

Banned
GoldCrusader said:
The Most Tweeted Spring 2017 TV Anime Top 10
(April 16 - May 23, 2017)



1. "Attack on Titan Season 2" - 582,350 times

2. "Eromanga Sensei" - 337,813

3. "My Hero Academia Season 2" - 230,902

4. "Idol Time PriPara" - 177,419

5. "Frame Arms Girl" - 143,079

6. "Star-Mu 2nd Season" - 129,620

7. "Saekano -How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend- ♭" - 119,101

8. "Hinako Note" - 103,301

9. "Natsume Yujin-cho 6" - 100,954

10. "Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor" - 99,433

Some of these are unexpected.
Click to expand...
I have no idea how Idol Time PriPara has passed me by considering the people I follow on twitter.
 
Cornbread78

Cornbread78

Member
Tokyo Ravens ep.2
8IDEkae.png
Click to expand...
Crazy drill hair is back, but at least they provided some perspective on what she's up to. The fight wasn't too bad, but holy CG Batman... I usually don't give it a second thought, but they use it a lot! The coloring they use is bold and really nice, so I'm surprised they suppliment it with so much CG..

Anyhow, I want to know what exactly the role of familiar means in this world, so they better get to it after what just happened...
 
A

anarchycupcake

Member
Roku de Nashi Majutsu Koushi to Akashic Records Episode 9
Is this just going to be Glenn rescuing the princess over and over? Because that's getting old real fast.

Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Episode 8
Obviously they're going to sidestep the he-feels-uncomfortable-dating-Ctholly thing by making the red-haired spirit inside her someone he knew back on Earth.


There's a lot of Kado hate going on right now. I still really enjoy Kado, it's one of my non-sequel favorites of the season. I feel like it's getting treated the same as Re:Creators, which is my other non-sequel favorite of the season. And it's almost painful to see, because those are both really solidly written shows.
 
D

duckroll

Member
Jarmel said:
I was supposed to see it in March but never made it to the screening. You've really been lucky with those movie screenings. I'm stuck waiting for the Genocidal Organ BDs.
Click to expand...

Atsushi Takahashi's Doraemon movie opens here in 2 weeks!

Meanwhile, still no sign of This Corner of the World. >_<
 
dickroach

dickroach

Member
Attack on Titan 17-25
If Levi can kill 3 titans in one second.... if Levi and Mikasa can completely disarm/disable the female titan, one of those giga titans, by slashing it in a few places (but not kill it for some reason).... then why are the titans such a threat? I don't get it.
Why do they need walls all around them for the maneuver gear to be effective when there's been plenty of kills when they just sling right up to the titans' necks? I don't get it.
Also the identity of the female titan was pretty damn easy to figure out, but they tried to make the reveal a big ol thing. meh.
That backend of S1 was less interesting than the first two arcs, but the "we're gonna round up all the titans within these walls" tease at the end got me excited enough for S2 tho.
 
L

LotusHD

Banned
dickroach said:
Attack on Titan 17-25
If Levi can kill 3 titans in one second.... if Levi and Mikasa can completely disarm/disable the female titan, one of those giga titans, by slashing it in a few places (but not kill it for some reason).... then why are the titans such a threat? I don't get it.
Why do they need walls all around them for the maneuver gear to be effective when there's been plenty of kills when they just sling right up to the titans' necks? I don't get it.
Also the identity of the female titan was pretty damn easy to figure out, but they tried to make the reveal a big ol thing. meh.
That backend of S1 was less interesting than the first two arcs, but the "we're gonna round up all the titans within these walls" tease at the end got me excited enough for S2 tho.
Click to expand...

They don't have enough gas to deal with a innumerable amount of titans from their point of view, they're not always in a location that allows them to easily kill titans, and though they may easily kill them, no one, not even them, would want to tackle a bunch of titans head-on out in the open if they can't help it. Lastly, abnormal titans, as well as ones like the Female Titan, are not to be trifled with, because ya never know what to expect from them.

Also Mikasa doesn't give a shit, she has an Eren to protect lol
 
H

hosannainexcelsis

Member
Eccentric Family S2 8

When you realize that the family and support structures you've come to rely upon are changing and shifting around you, that can be a scary thing. Seeing Yasaburo shocked out of his complacency brought out a side to his character I haven't seen before. I wonder where the story is going to end up going with his relationship with Kaisei.
 
Jex

Jex

Member
Jarmel said:
This isn't pretentious. I think the show just doesn't have the time it needs to go into the complexity it wants at certain junctions. I don't think it would be a better work if the UN spent two or three additional episodes fleshing out the politics of Wam. I'm again thinking of Arrival that largely just brushes off international depictions because nobody wants to watch a committee argue about long term effects or ramifications of a technology. So it's better to just speed through that stuff even if the complexity isn't all there.

It's a single cour trying to tell a Childhood's End sort of story so I feel it's acceptable to breeze through certain elements to tell the story they want.
Click to expand...

I'll agree with you that the scope of the story appears to outrstrip the runtime of the series, but the way that the series handles it story nevertheless remains very poor.

If time is the resource which Kado uses to tell it's ambitious story, then the way the series spends this resource is baffling. For example, we spend about half of episode 6 simply observing the cube move from one position to another. An event which passes entirely without incident or interest. It's a pretty bizarre choice, because the only mildly interesting part of the scenario was to see what solution they would come with in order to allow the cube to change locations. Once that problem had been resolved, there was no need to dedicate a huge amount of time to simply observing the execution of an already solved problem. The only reason for doing so would be to see something unexpected happen - some unforeseen challenge or problem that might arise. But that never happens. This precious time was therefore wasted, when it could have been spent on more important matters.

Indeed, I will agree that a story with this scope is free to brush over certain topics or simplify certain things in order to fit everything into a series. However, what it is not free to do is simplify literally everything. You can't have simplistic depictions of society and politics and couple that with incredibly shallow and underdeveloped characters. As you rightly point out, Arrival is a movie with problems, but at least that film had a strong emotional core in it's lead character. If Kado had great characters, this wouldn't be as big of a problem as it is. If Kado had a very nuanced and engaging depiction of the world, this wouldn't be a problem. But all it has are some sci-fi concepts, but it lacks either the characters or the world to explore them in a way that is interesting.
Jarmel said:
The show however repeatedly points out that Japan would be just like the UN if the shoe was on the other foot. The UN depiction is probably fairly accurate. The problem has more to do with the Japanese depiction but again media is generally favorable to the host country and the anime does depict that not everybody, inside Japan, is happy with the current scenario.

It's not the type of show though to have those sort of interesting moments. We're not going to get any type of Cuban Missile Crisis scenarios. Yaha by all accounts is seemingly a friendly alien and is doing his best to have humanity adjust to the technology.
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It's not a problem for a series to be without drama if it has something else going for it. But as I've said above, the series doesn't really have anything going for it. All we have is a serious of problems for Shindo to use his unrivalled genius in solving. Which he does, pretty easily, all the time. There's no real challenge to these problems, and despite their apparent complexity, they are often solved remarkably cleanly with no further incident, challenge or struggle. It's very dull.
 
Q

Quasar

Member
Cornbread78 said:
Tokyo Ravens ep.2

Crazy drill hair is back, but at least they provided some perspective on what she's up to. The fight wasn't too bad, but holy CG Batman... I usually don't give it a second thought, but they use it a lot! The coloring they use is bold and really nice, so I'm surprised they suppliment it with so much CG..

Anyhow, I want to know what exactly the role of familiar means in this world, so they better get to it after what just happened...
Click to expand...

They get to it, but I'm not sure I'm completely clear on the finer points of it in terms of humans being familiars for other humans. Beyond being a disciple of the other.
 
Z

zulux21

Member
ready for some fun lists.

Top Selling Light Novels of the first half of 2017.

1 707,300 Sword Art Online
2 578,811 KonoSuba &#8211; God's blessing on this wonderful world!!
3 540,806 Re:Zero
4 412,086 Novel your name.
5 344,286 The Saga of Evil Tanya
6 299,957 The irregular at magic high school
7 275,579 Akashic Records of the Bastard Magical Instructor
8 239,132 Eromanga Sensei
9 231,214 Regarding Reincarnated to Slime
10 168,725 KonoSuba &#8211; God's blessing on this wonderful world!! Spinoff
11 155,631 Overlord
12 155,625 Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend
13 151,679 Monogatari Series
14 140,639 Kokuhaku Yok&#333; Rensh&#363;
15 137,160 No Game, No Life
16 123,136 Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Side Story
17 117,210 Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?
18 108,564 Goblin Slayer
19 104,018 Aria the Scarlet Ammo
20 96,624 FATE/STRANGE FAKE
21 96,200 Novel Bungo Stray Dogs
22 94,469 No Game, No Life Short Story Collection
23 93,118 Accel World
24 88,653 Haikyu!! Novel Edition!!
25 87,316 Im&#333;to Sae Ireba Ii.
26 85,505 Gamers!
27 84,372 Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekaisaikyou
28 80,553 Tokyo Ghoul:re Novelization
29 79,133 Shinyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index (New Testament: A Certain Magical Index)
30 76,801 Ry&#363;&#333; no Oshigoto!

source

top selling manga for the first half of 2017. (by series)
if you are curious about by volume you can look here



1 5,969,851 One Piece
2 3,974,437 Attack on Titan
3 3,244,618 Kingdom
4 3,086,097 Haikyu!!
5 2,154,752 Tokyo Ghoul:re
6 2,097,088 My Hero Academia
7 1,982,356 One-Punch Man
8 1,881,062 The Seven Deadly Sins
9 1,653,403 Detective Conan
10 1,469,092 Food Wars: Shokugeki no S&#333;ma
11 1,366,004 Blue Exorcist
12 1,357,012 Magi
13 1,204,705 Fairy Tail
14 1,090,487 March comes in like a lion
15 1,000,886 P to JK
16 960,590 The Full-Time Wife Escapist
17 936,645 Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card
18 927,125 Terra Formars
19 888,546 Ace of Diamond Act II
20 879,495 World Trigger
21 847,561 Tokyo Tarareba Girls
22 833,135 Black Butler
23 826,564 DAYS
24 795,445 Gintama
25 794,612 Otaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii
26 794,342 Yowamushi Pedal (Yowapeda)
27 791,393 Regarding Reincarnated to Slime Manga Adaptation
28 790,032 Black Clover
29 757,375 Boruto -Naruto the Movie- Manga Adaptation
30 752,854 Major 2nd

source
 
J

Jarmel

Banned
This is going to be kind of weird describing it as such due to the fact that it was made in the 90's but Stardust Memory feels like a very good attempt at making an 80's OVA anime. Things such as ideology being pushed to the forefront, the character designs, and tone are more reminiscent of something like Megazone 23.
 
D

duckroll

Member
Jarmel said:
I was thinking about that due to the production time lol. Do you know how long the production time was for OVAs and stuff like that back then? Things are so truncated nowadays.
Click to expand...

I don't think it was really all that different. They started production in 1990 after the success of 0080's sales (that was released in 1989). Gundam OVA schedules were actually amazing quick back then compared to Sunrise shit today. Nowadays an episode of Unicorn or Origin takes a year or more between releases. Let's not even talk about Akito. Lol.
 
J

Jarmel

Banned
duckroll said:
I don't think it was really all that different. They started production in 1990 after the success of 0080's sales (that was released in 1989). Gundam OVA schedules were actually amazing quick back then compared to Sunrise shit today. Nowadays an episode of Unicorn or Origin takes a year or more between releases. Let's not even talk about Akito. Lol.
Click to expand...

I guess the talent pool for mecha animators is just a lot smaller nowadays so a smaller group have to do all the work resulting in longer times.
 
D

duckroll

Member
Jarmel said:
I guess the talent pool for mecha animators is just a lot smaller nowadays so a smaller group have to do all the work resulting in longer times.
Click to expand...

Well I dunno if it's really that.

https://www18.atwiki.jp/sakuga/pages/439.html

Look at those KA credits. Today you'll need 3x or 4x that amount of animators, and it still wouldn't look as consistent. My theory is that great animators were young and dumb back then and were willing to kill themselves. Then they got older and said "fuck that shit".
 
I

ibyea

Banned
The Tatami Galaxy: 9-11
I finally finished the rest of it. Quiet odd final two episodes (well, odder than usual), but I think they were creative ways of having the protagonist contemplate on his priorities in life.
 
C

CrimsonN0

Member
SliceSabre said:
I expect an anime announcement in the next 2-3 years.
Click to expand...
At the rate F/SF is going I don't think the LN will even be finished in 3 years, though, I have liked what I've read of it so far.
And, hey, maybe when an anime for it comes out and turns out popular the studios will wonder what else has this author done that also has the supernatural, guns, and Amercians in it, leading to more Baccano anime.
 
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