That's what I said in the original post! The setting for the show taps well into the demographic here. Some people might not want to admit that though!
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Summer 2012 Anime |OT3| Where All the Waifus Are Made Up and the Points Don't Matter
- Thread starter Branduil
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That's what I said in the original post! The setting for the show taps well into the demographic here. Some people might not want to admit that though!
R_thanatos
Member
KO Traveling Hobo
Member
Woah woah woah, I was talking about the snippet from the novels that Dresden posted yesterday.
Get your mind out of the gutter!
Crash Station
Member
So why isn't there an SAO thread again?
KO Traveling Hobo
Member
Because laziness.
It really feels like I'm alone in feeling both SAO and AW to be really bland and uninspiring, although since I have never played an MMO (or many online games at all in fact) I guess it sort of makes sense. I'm not really bothered by the discussion though. What else would we write about?
Not really surprised that Psycho-Pass seems to be the most hyped. Urobuchi is probably one of the bigger anime writers now along with the staff would get people pretty hyped. Not to mention the setting is something you can talk to your friends IRL and not look like a total nerd(or moreso anyway). If Psycho-Pass turns out good, then I have no doubt it's going to be absolutely huge here. I mean Adult Swim/Toonami has to be drooling about getting a show like that on air.
Exactly, this is why 2001 or The Godfather is such a great adaptation. The work needs to be able to stand on its own two legs. Also sticking to the source material just for purity's sake is a horrible mantra and instead the adaptation should reflect the limitations of the medium(whether it's television or a movie).
I fully agree with duckroll on this one.
That's a horrible stance to take.
No one cared enough to make one and I don't think anyone thought it'd capture attention like it has.
Ah, haha, alrighty, looks like it was just a Layne's Law thing then.
I think the distinction between those two things is somewhat arbitrary but I get what you're saying now.
In that case, I guess the only meaningful part of my post was the latter bit hinting that the audiences much of TV anime is aimed at may not be demanding actual adaptations.
Chet Rippo
Member
The way you worded it sounded like you meant otaku as a whole rather than just here.
Dedication Through Light
Member
La Storia Della Arcana Famiglia 12 (end)
Ah the Duello had so many good parts and exceeded my expectations greatly. They really did the action well and flashy too and I even got the match up I wanted. Only disappointing aspect to me was the winner of the Duello
.
-----
For a Shoujo Romance with some Action moments, I loved it and think it was really well done. So many awesome characters like the best Liberta (the young sailor king of the sea) and Nova, then Jolly, Debito, Pace, Luca, Dante, even Sumire
, and Mondo. Character backstories were well done even emotional at times, and the Arcana focus felt fresh and unique. Im satisfied and hope theres more someday. 9 / 10.
Pieces of Treasure one of the best ending themes this year.
Ah the Duello had so many good parts and exceeded my expectations greatly. They really did the action well and flashy too and I even got the match up I wanted. Only disappointing aspect to me was the winner of the Duello
Guess I should have expected it, but I did like how it went down and even thankful that neither Liberta nor Nova defeated each other as I would have been sad either way, both are so cool. The heart made it seem like she needed to pick one, but I liked how it was like it is the power of one who loves all.
-----
For a Shoujo Romance with some Action moments, I loved it and think it was really well done. So many awesome characters like the best Liberta (the young sailor king of the sea) and Nova, then Jolly, Debito, Pace, Luca, Dante, even Sumire
surprised she participated
Pieces of Treasure one of the best ending themes this year.
Jex
Member
Right, as I said yesterday, which might as well be a hundred pages back, SAO is a work which caters to a huge, largely untapped audience: people who play videogames. There are extremely few works which deliberately and accurately deal with what videogames are actually like and how people react to them. If you post on NeoGAF you are, presumably, a gamer, and a fairly serious one at that considering that you want to spend time and energy discussing videogames on the internet. As such it shouldn't be surprising that a work that deals so heavily with videogames attracts a lot of attention.
Which isn't to say that you couldn't tell far more interesting stories about videogames, but rather that no-one else has really bothered doing it right.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Oh, I agree with that point of yours, which is why I didn't specifically reply to it. I acknowledged earlier that from a fan's point of view, such a distinction absolutely does not matter as long as they enjoy it personally. There are things I'm rather fanboyish about myself, and I too consume things which might break such "rules" of adaptation if I'm just a big fan of that franchise. But I wouldn't begin to think they are actually good adaptations, and if someone asked, I would definitely try to let them know what to expect.
Jex
Member
It was surprisingly...refreshing? It's been a while since I've seen classic, Spare Opera (in the Dune sense) in any form and it was nice to revisit a genre that's kind of been left on the shelf by anime as a whole. I'd like to know more about the creation of the work, how long it took to create, how well it did etc but Wikipedia is (unsurprisingly) useless when it comes to these things.
I've played a bunch of MMOs but I still don't care for either of these shows.
I kinda liked AW at the beginning but got bored by episode 6 or so.
SAO I dropped after 3 eps because it felt like a digest backstory rather than something intended to actually be entertaining. (I then got lured into watching episode 4 due to certain screenshots but I didn't like that one either.)
I'm baffled at SAO's popularity. Usually I can understand what people see in shows even if I don't like them myself (e.g. Bakemonogatari) but this time I'm stumped. The four episodes of SAO I watched didn't contain anything remarkable at all.
I see people give generic explanations like "wish fulfillment for nerds" but that's a dime a dozen, not something unique to SAO.
I can potentially understand the popularity in Japan if it's being driven more by popularity of the novels than the show being impressive. (I don't know that that's the case, but it would make sense.)
EDIT:
This may be far more significant than I realize.
It seems to be a two way thing. The LNs were apparently already somewhat popular on their own, but the anime itself is not only enjoying a huge popularity on its own, but boosting the popularity of the LN sales as well during the run. This seems to indicate that the anime itself is popular on its own and is serving to introduce a large audience to read the LNs as well.
This also seems to apply outside of Japan, with the show being one of the most watched/commented on shows in the season.
Jex
Member
I really don't approve of throwing plausibility to the wind when you're creating a scenario. Rather, I'd say that it's essential that events in a work abide by the rules of the world, even if those rules are wholly invented. If you don't have any sense of cause-and-effect, or continuity, or logic than everything falls apart and things can happen for no reason at all. This can leave the audience feeling cheated.
This is all part of world-building.
I agree with the general assessment, but I think there's definitely more to how it uses the formula than just being a show about a MMO. Because otherwise, how do we explain the huge gulf between the popular of SAO and .hack?
http://dvdbd.wiki.fc2.com/wiki/.hack
We'll make one for season 2.
La Storia Della Arcana Famiglia 12 (end)
Ah the Duello had so many good parts and exceeded my expectations greatly. They really did the action well and flashy too and I even got the match up I wanted. Only disappointing aspect to me was the winner of the Duello.Guess I should have expected it, but I did like how it went down and even thankful that neither Liberta nor Nova defeated each other as I would have been sad either way, both are so cool. The heart made it seem like she needed to pick one, but I liked how it was like it is the power of one who loves all.
-----
For a Shoujo Romance with some Action moments, I loved it and think it was really well done. So many awesome characters like the best Liberta (the young sailor king of the sea) and Nova, then Jolly, Debito, Pace, Luca, Dante, even Sumire, and Mondo. Character backstories were well done even emotional at times, and the Arcana focus felt fresh and unique. Im satisfied and hope theres more someday. 9 / 10.surprised she participated
Pieces of Treasure one of the best ending themes this year.
I'd never have known how it ended without this post, so thank you, DTL.
Jex
Member
I can't speak for .hack, I haven't seen it, I don't know how well it portrays a videogame. I can say that .hack aired way before even WoW launched and before MMO's were really at their peak in terms of popularity, appeal and public awareness. .hack is from like, the Everquest era. We've come a long, long way since then.
Also, SAO is a real wish fulfilment piece designed to appeal to otaku: it involves being the baddest dude in the game and having all the women fall in love with you.
Chet Rippo
Member
Binbougami ga! 7
Ranmaru is pretty awesome. She reminds me of Kujira from Penguin Musume, they even have the same hair color and overbearing sexist father. I wish they'd quit teasing with Tittyko actually learning anything in the end, only to revert her back in a cheap joke. Still, I hope the show can keep it up, this episode was great.
A personal fetish of mine.
The magic of boob binding.
That's pretty common in anime. Perhaps not the 'game' part, but if that's all it took, then the success of SAO wouldn't be so surprising.
We even have a show from the same author with a similar setup (Accel World) do well, but not near the numbers that SAO will pull. There is something compelling about the scenario, isolated from all the harem junk.
Jex
Member
[Cross Game] - 1
This show is far, far uglier than Touch. I've never heard of the production company, SyngerySP, before and I can't say anything particularly pleasant about their work here. Everything is horribly clean and style, the backgrounds are awfully cheap looking and they have the gall to blend CG animation operating at one framerate with 2D animation operating at a far slower framerate. The end result is incredibly distracting.
All that aside, I enjoyed this opening episode. Well, if enjoyed is the right word for it. Which it probably isn't.
This show is far, far uglier than Touch. I've never heard of the production company, SyngerySP, before and I can't say anything particularly pleasant about their work here. Everything is horribly clean and style, the backgrounds are awfully cheap looking and they have the gall to blend CG animation operating at one framerate with 2D animation operating at a far slower framerate. The end result is incredibly distracting.
All that aside, I enjoyed this opening episode. Well, if enjoyed is the right word for it. Which it probably isn't.
Chet Rippo
Member
That can be attributed to the main characters.
Jex
Member
As I've said above, I don't think SAO's success is down to one particular factor or another - it's a combination of factors that come together to make the whole thing work. Accel World is different for two crucial reasons:
A) The protagonist of Accel World is a big loser. Kirito is a badass. He's far, far blander and less interesting than Haru, but apparently that doesn't matter when it comes to popularity.
B) The scenario of SAO is far stronger, the characters are motivated by the most powerful of goals: their struggle to stay alive. Accel World feels quite frivolous by comparison.
Which isn't to say that I think you can just take A+B+C and = a successful anime property. Sure, that's basically what Madoka was and it worked out extremely well, but it's not an easy equation. If it was that easy to work out how to appeal to a particular demographic with a particular product than we'd all be rich.
Could it be that there simply isn't much good fantasy anime around in the last decade or so? The production values and designs of SAO seems to be unusual for the sort of setting it portrays in animation these days. Due to the "generic" MMO setting, the characters actually look like knights, warriors, wanderers, etc, and everyone carries swords. There are dungeons and fields, as well as towns and castles, etc. The bosses are relatively cool looking monsters, and I think there's a lot of nostalgia in terms of "hey we used to have shows like this when Lodoss War, Slayers, and Rune Soldier Louie were around!"
SynergySP isn't amazing. Other than Cross Game, I know them from Hayate no Gotoku S1 and Zettai Karen Children, and they didn't do an amazing job with those either. From what I remember, though, they aren't horribly inconsistent like Toei. I don't remember stopping to notice how bad animation was too often watching Cross Game.
Jex
Member
Can you please stop taking my posts before I finish composing them?
Darker than Black 1-25 [End]
It's been awhile since I've watched something quite like this. Darker than Black is an anime that is propelled not by it's story and it's intricacies, but by the meaningful interactions and developments of the characters. Huang, Yin, Hei and Mao are a cast of characters with a dynamic that is criminally unseen in anime: A group of intelligent, unique personalities that deviate from the typical one-quirk, one-dimension characterization seen in the majority of anime. Huang, for instance, seemed pretty cut and dry after episode two. An old, traditionalist who plays the straight man for the rest of the group. There's no lack of scenes involving Huang openly confronting his group about his distaste for them and, in some scenes, outwardly threatening them
. But as events unfold and we get our "Huang episode" we learn about his past with a contractor and, ultimately, his bad past involving an old friend's
. It's nothing groundbreaking or even profound, but the execution is decidedly smart and even stylish.
In the end, I didn't really care about the mysteries of the city or the contractors. It was a bold, neo-noir canvas for a cast of likable misfits and their exploits. Which is really too bad, because a lot of the episodes got caught up in themselves spending too much time on a lackluster story. Darker than Black is another show about the journey and not the destination, and because of this (and it's overall polish) I could see myself suggesting it to others.
It's been awhile since I've watched something quite like this. Darker than Black is an anime that is propelled not by it's story and it's intricacies, but by the meaningful interactions and developments of the characters. Huang, Yin, Hei and Mao are a cast of characters with a dynamic that is criminally unseen in anime: A group of intelligent, unique personalities that deviate from the typical one-quirk, one-dimension characterization seen in the majority of anime. Huang, for instance, seemed pretty cut and dry after episode two. An old, traditionalist who plays the straight man for the rest of the group. There's no lack of scenes involving Huang openly confronting his group about his distaste for them and, in some scenes, outwardly threatening them
or even fighting them
contractor wife who killed him and began to seduce Huang
In the end, I didn't really care about the mysteries of the city or the contractors. It was a bold, neo-noir canvas for a cast of likable misfits and their exploits. Which is really too bad, because a lot of the episodes got caught up in themselves spending too much time on a lackluster story. Darker than Black is another show about the journey and not the destination, and because of this (and it's overall polish) I could see myself suggesting it to others.
Jex
Member
I think it's pretty funny that Kirito is known as The Black Swordsmen, which is the same title that Gut's from Berserk shoulders. There's even a Kirito/Asuna and Guts/Causca thing going on, except that the characters in Bersek are far more interesting. It's certainly an unfavourable comparison. At least SAO has 2D armour.
Boy-howdy will you enjoy the second season!
Boy-howdy will you enjoy the second season!
I think that's what grabbed me initially. MMO setting is fun but it scratches that fantasy genre itch well too.
Jex
Member
It isn't bad at all, really, apart from the aforementioned CG. It's just that the art itself, especially the background art, looks quite bad for the reasons mentioned above.
That's quite the understatement
And unfortunately for me, with the nostalgia SAO invokes, along comes the feeling that it could have been so much more.
It's hard to explain this without sounding... well, wrong, but .hack isn't about MMOs or video games. At least not to the same caliber SAO is. While the setting for .hack is an MMO, that's really all it is. A setting. The stories generally gravitate towards something entirely different. They don't really try to be a gamer's power fantasy or anything.
This sarcasm seems too obvious-- it must be a trap...
Okay, since I haven't seen anyone complaint and cry about this yet, and there's no article on ANN, I shall have to make this post. I'm sorry.
http://www.oreshura.net/
The official site for the Ore no Kanojo to Osananajimi ga Shuraba Sugiru anime has been updated. As the title suggests, this is an adaptation of one of the 50,000 different Ore<something> Light Novel variants flooding the Japanese otaku market. This time it is about how the guy's girlfriend and his childhood friend fight all the time, or something.
The update states that the A-1 Pictures adaptation will start broadcasting in the upcoming Winter season, in January. The staff have also been announced:
Director: Kanta Kamei (Bunny Drop)
Series Composition: Tatsuhiko Urahata (Natsuiro Kiseki)
Character Design: Mai Otsuka (Astarotte's Toy)
Music: Masatomo Ota
Production: A-1 Pictures
Yup, the director of Bunny Drop is doing this next:
http://www.oreshura.net/
The official site for the Ore no Kanojo to Osananajimi ga Shuraba Sugiru anime has been updated. As the title suggests, this is an adaptation of one of the 50,000 different Ore<something> Light Novel variants flooding the Japanese otaku market. This time it is about how the guy's girlfriend and his childhood friend fight all the time, or something.
The update states that the A-1 Pictures adaptation will start broadcasting in the upcoming Winter season, in January. The staff have also been announced:
Director: Kanta Kamei (Bunny Drop)
Series Composition: Tatsuhiko Urahata (Natsuiro Kiseki)
Character Design: Mai Otsuka (Astarotte's Toy)
Music: Masatomo Ota
Production: A-1 Pictures
Yup, the director of Bunny Drop is doing this next:
Oh, wait, is this not a sister anime? I'm confusing myself.
Crash Station
Member
Looks fitting.
Dedication Through Light
Member
Saint Seiya Omega 24
Really awesome episode, everyone getting in action, Ryuho even tangled in stuff yet again, Haruto, Souma, and Kouga being all cool. Kouga/Eden was a good match up and I hope we get another one
.
Ending moment so mind blowing, kind of speechless at it
Really awesome episode, everyone getting in action, Ryuho even tangled in stuff yet again, Haruto, Souma, and Kouga being all cool. Kouga/Eden was a good match up and I hope we get another one
I was hoping Kouga and Aria would convince him to get on the right side and go against his father, but I guess he needs to be talked to even more to go to the right path.
Ending moment so mind blowing, kind of speechless at it
The darkness stuff and everyone sucked. I cant think of what could happen next
I don't think that's jelly.
Jex
Member
I've complained on IRC. Does that count? I think it counts.
Jex
Member
That's weird. I would think something like that would stay in people's memories. If you may remember, it's a little bit different from the first season of Darker than Black because they changed the protagonist to:
Remember? It's pretty kawaii.
Does she end up being his little sister?
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