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Summer 2014 Anime |OT2| Or, where Jexhius finally watches more Doremi for Hito.

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C

CheapJuice

Member
Hey guys, been lurking these threads for close to six months and finally got approved!
I'm pretty big on webms, so I hope it wont be too much of an annoyance

Nozaki-kun - 09

First half of this had me laughing out loud, the rest was okay. I'm very interested in hearing Chiyo in other works.
Overall Nozaki-kun is so far my AOTS, with Barakamon in second place.
 
E

e_i

Member
Sailor Moon getting released in 13 volumes at 2 episodes a disc. Yikes. I hope it sells well.
Of course it will.
 
V

victreeb3l

Member
Blue Spring Ride 9

Its been 9 episodes, wheres the damn cat already!? Its featured in the intro, the commercial break thing, and in the ending but its gotten a total of 30 seconds of screen time! Adopt him already, Kou or Futaba...

Poor Makita :(
 
M

Midonin

Member
Ikkitousen Xtreme Xecutor 10-12 + Final Thoughts

This is hardly the "worst anime ever," and at the end of this season, my ranking of the four TV series would go something like this. DD > GG=XX > S1. Beyond the first season's uneven tone and focus on the guys leering on the fights rather than the girls fighting (though there's always a bit of the audience in there, and I admit that), everything shaped up into a better product. The fourth season got a little ridiculous with what everyone could do with their powers, but I found Bachou's storyline to be a much better throughline for the season than Chubo's in GG.

The ending with
Shibai not dying - because Hakufu showed mercy
feels like a cliffhanger, one that I have no idea if the OVAs will follow up on. Her being told to calm her anger by the
very same person who killed her brother
was an alright end to her arc of redemption. My complaints mostly center around the fact that the remembrance of Hakufu in episode 10 went on for a little too long. Almost as bad as the five minute recap at the start of the season.

The fanservice is no doubt present, but the storyline of fighting against destiny underneath it, while a bit boilerplate, is (pun intended) serviceable. Koihime is still the superior all girls Three Kingdoms work - and I feel like I'm the only one who even remembers Ryofuko-chan - but I find Ikkitousen to have some things going for it. Most of which have to do with the Seito cast, love them even more than the main characters. Which may be the main reason why everything from DD onwards is better.
 
S

sonicmj1

Member
MikeXXIeaf said:
Do people genuinely feel like Aldnoah.Zero is a good show?
Click to expand...

I genuinely feel it's okay. Even in the context of a world that discovered superpowered alien technology on Mars, I wish they'd built a more believable setting, in the sense of establishing some level of competence on both sides outside of Inaho and Saazbaum. The writing has problems, and a tendency to rely a lot on convenient coincidence and timing. But robots blow up good and it's unpredictable sometimes, so I'm usually entertained enough from week to week that I want to keep watching.
 
H

Hexadecimal

Banned
I swear, I'm about ready to give up with MAL completely. They STILL haven't gotten their database fixed up from their hack, and with this being a yearly thing, it's been so frustrating to put up with.

At least Hummingbird just works, period.
 
M

MikeXXIeaf

Banned
Ah, okay.

I stopped watching around the time the princess revealed herself. The show just felt dull and generic, but it sounds like it's picked up since then.
 
J

Jarmel

Banned
sonicmj1 said:
I genuinely feel it's okay. Even in the context of a world that discovered superpowered alien technology on Mars, I wish they'd built a more believable setting, in the sense of establishing some level of competence on both sides outside of Inaho and Saazbaum. The writing has problems, and a tendency to rely a lot on convenient coincidence and timing. But robots blow up good and it's unpredictable sometimes, so I'm usually entertained enough from week to week that I want to keep watching.
Click to expand...

That's the best way I would describe it. It does seem to have gotten better in the past couple of episodes compared to the earlier episodic stuff but I don't know if that is a temporary increase in quality.
 
U

ultimatemegax

Member
firehawk12 said:
"Solid for what it is" feels like goalpost moving to me though.

Oh, I understand that Fuji actually makes money from their block unlike a lot of other late night anime. But if we live in a world where people have convinced themselves that the only way to sell an anime is to charge up the ass for it and sell it to three thousand people? Maybe it's time to rethink the business model.
Click to expand...
When we say "solid for what it is" we know there's additional revenue coming in through other methods and know to judge any disc sales accordingly. Conversely, we judge something that would bring in about the same yen, but have a video publisher fronting a lot of costs.

This method is more consistent than trying to sell cheap to a lot of people (as the R1 market found out). Disc proceeds stabilized during the recession in Japan allowing the market to stay stable/expand later. In NA, the only way the publishers remained solvent was to buy licenses for cheaper since the amount of money coming in dropped once they moved to cour sets and people bought less.

People go "maybe you need to re-think the business model" but the other models fail to pay for producing shows (or even OVAs).
 
Jex

Jex

Member
I wouldn't rush out to go pick the show up again. With stories like this I'd recommend waiting till the show is finished, or at the very least, until there's several weeks worth of good episodes out.
 
Jex

Jex

Member
duckroll said:
Mushishi S2 - Episode 11-12

I've been trying to think of something interesting to say about this since I watched it yesterday. Still can't. It was a pretty decent Mushishi story. Not among the best, not among the worst. It's sort of interesting to get more insight into the world of the mushishi themselves, but other than that it wasn't awfully compelling as a personal tale. It also tries to have some action and drama, which generally doesn't work well on a show like this which is really just about letting the atmosphere of the story take over in a slow relaxed pace. The animation was really good though. Lots of cool mushi scenes.
Click to expand...

Hmm I don't know. It seemed to have the same level of 'drama' as any other Mushishi story e.g. some drama presented in a fairly low key manner.

As for the story itself, I thought it was fine. Unlike other Mushishi stories the 'incident involving the Mushi' element really happened in the past, what we're witnessing now is the consequences of that incident. There is nothing for Ginko to 'fix'. On one hand I appreciate that we're simply presented with an 'unsolvable' problem but on the other hand there isn't a very satisfying or interesting resolution to the story.
 
M

Midonin

Member
Momo Kyun Sword 09

I didn't think it'd be so soon before one of my yuri ships turns out to have both parties in it
be siblings and neither of them knew it. Momoko and Onihime are half-Celestial Maiden, half-Oni, and it's clear who inherited more of which. Momo's okay with it, the princess not so much.
Kaguya hadn't really done a lot until now, but her mythological reasons for becoming a turncoat aren't that surprising. Not a bad episode. Still waiting for Momo to do that final fusion of hers.
 
F

FelixOrion

Poet Centuriate
Hexadecimal said:
I swear, I'm about ready to give up with MAL completely. They STILL haven't gotten their database fixed up from their hack, and with this being a yearly thing, it's been so frustrating to put up with.

At least Hummingbird just works, period.
Click to expand...

The only thing MAL has over HB is MALGraph.
 
A

Admiral Woofington

Member
MikeXXIeaf said:
Do people genuinely feel like Aldnoah.Zero is a good show?
Click to expand...

If you read reviews on a week to week basis you'd see most in here are highly critical of the show. While it hasn't reached dropping level for many, it still is largely an ok show. Personally depending on where they take the decision of the last episode I will see whether I drop it or not.
 
D

duckroll

Member
Jexhius said:
Hmm I don't know. It seemed to have the same level of 'drama' as any other Mushishi story e.g. some drama presented in a fairly low key manner.

As for the story itself, I thought it was fine. Unlike other Mushishi stories the 'incident involving the Mushi' element really happened in the past, what we're witnessing now is the consequences of that incident. There is nothing for Ginko to 'fix'. On one hand I appreciate that we're simply presented with an 'unsolvable' problem but on the other hand there isn't a very satisfying or interesting resolution to the story.
Click to expand...

Well, the extra "drama" here is that it's a story where Ginko encounters another person who knows who he is and also knows Tanyu, creating a sense of a more personal tale, and on top of that they attempt a bit more tension than usual with regards to Ginko's safety being threatened, and there was even an actual action scene where two giant mushi duked it out. That's a lot more active than Mushishi usually is, but in the end it was still handled in a really low key and passive way, so it just seemed like a story trying stuff which really had no real impact in the end.
 
S

Sketchbag

Banned
Paranoia Agent Episodes 1-13

OK. I in general liked the first 6 episodes.

Episodes 1 through 6 created a great atmosphere and blurred the lines and it was great.

7-13 went a little awry and I can see how it was bits and pieces of Satoshi's other work.

The OP is probably the greatest anime opening that I have ever seen. I think that was the saving grace for this piece.
 
D

Disgaeamad

Member
firehawk12 said:
"Solid for what it is" feels like goalpost moving to me though.
Click to expand...

a) 3.5k (should be about 4k next week/final) means that out of noitaminA's last 15 shows only 2 have sold better, and despite being a box it wasn't any cheaper than those.
b) It's an adaptation made years after the manga finished and the live action film was done, so there was no ongoing material to crosspromote the anime and yet it attracted quite a few viewers.
c) It was greenlit last winter and a very small team of people made it so the project was as cheap as it could possibly get.
 
M

Midonin

Member
And I just found out the Nozomi/Manga Entertainment versions of Marimite I've been using exclude the ending video for a simple scroll of text in order to credit both the English and Japanese versions. I never noticed until now because the songs were (mostly) instrumental, and I was able to find the closing videos, but that's disappointing. There were some pretty images in there that I may have missed out on altogether.
 
T

TUSR

Banned
Hyouka 21

X6oQanN.png
Click to expand...

One episode to go... I really do not what this to end.

Picture accurate to how I feel right now.
 
T

Turin Turambar

Member
duckroll said:
Well, the extra "drama" here is that it's a story where Ginko encounters another person who knows who he is and also knows Tanyu, creating a sense of a more personal tale, and on top of that they attempt a bit more tension than usual with regards to Ginko's safety being threatened, and there was even an actual action scene where two giant mushi duked it out. That's a lot more active than Mushishi usually is, but in the end it was still handled in a really low key and passive way, so it just seemed like a story trying stuff which really had no real impact in the end.
Click to expand...

I think the episode(s) felt a bit weird because the lack of resolution. Usually in Mushishi episodes there is a problem, and at the end is solved, normally in a good way but a few times it had a "bad end". But it has an end, good, bad or intermediate.
Here there isn't a proper end, this time the episodes were a window that opened temporally to look to the Mushishi's world and the tragic story of the servant clan, then the window is closed and everything continues as it started: he didn't get back his soul, he didn't win emotions, he didn't die, the relationship between the three characters is the same at the end, etc. Nothing really happened, you could say.
 
C

cajunator

Banned
Clov said:
Wow, cute! Would love to see Mako and Nui drawn like that. Even though I wasn't a huge fan of Kill la Kill, I did like some of the characters.
Click to expand...

I would probably die of happiness or something.

Articalys said:
http://www.someanithing.com/2041

New series
Black Butler Book of Circus v1: 7,522 BD+DVD
Bakamatsu Rock v1: 1,283 DVD, BD under cutoff
Ping Pong: BD-box 2,756, DVD-box 788
Wixoss BD-box v1: 3,169

Ending
Strike the Blood series average 5,831 (8 vols)
Witch Craft Works series average 4,171 (BD-only, 6 vols)
Log Horizon series average 3,812 (8 vols)
Nagi no Asukara series average 3,717 (9 vols)
Hamatora series average 1,867 (4 vols)
Gundam Build Fighters series average 8,940 (2 BD-boxes + 9 DVD singles)

More updates for ongoing shows at the link as usual
Also from now on Oricon will give a guaranteed top 20 animation sales list on Tuesdays

disclaimer: not all shows have their success solely decided by disc sales, though it certainly helps in most cases.
Click to expand...

Hmm. Average sales all around. Nothing really standing out. At least GBF is selling decently.

MikeHattsu said:
SAO 04



Kirito manages to beat a bunch of killers by standing around.

He also helps two people at once and it seems letting somebody see your virtual panties is as embarrassing as the real deal.
Click to expand...

No worries. It gets worse!

CheapJuice said:
Hey guys, been lurking these threads for close to six months and finally got approved!
I'm pretty big on webms, so I hope it wont be too much of an annoyance

Nozaki-kun - 09

First half of this had me laughing out loud, the rest was okay. I'm very interested in hearing Chiyo in other works.
Overall Nozaki-kun is so far my AOTS, with Barakamon in second place.
Click to expand...

Welcome! Starting off with Nozaki-kun webm's is a perfectly acceptable action.

Jexhius said:
webm's would only be annoying if they played automatically.
Click to expand...

I dunno. they play automatically on my browser.
Looks just like someone posted a gif at first.

Sketchbag said:
Paranoia Agent Episodes 1-13

OK. I in general liked the first 6 episodes.

Episodes 1 through 6 created a great atmosphere and blurred the lines and it was great.

7-13 went a little awry and I can see how it was bits and pieces of Satoshi's other work.

The OP is probably the greatest anime opening that I have ever seen. I think that was the saving grace for this piece.
Click to expand...

Paranoia Agent was notable in that it was Satoshi Kon's first and last foray into directing an anime series. His ideas and directing style seem to work better in movie format however. Or at the very least Paranoia Agent was uneven but a great try and had he lived longer I would hope that he could try again. He was able to further refine his ideas with Paprika of course but I still think Millennium Actress was the best overall use of his direction.
 
M

MetroidPrimeRib

Banned
Hunter x Hunter 145

Still not really sure how to feel about the wrap up of
Gon's healing.

But this was a really good episodes, lots of great moments. Next episode is gonna be good,
the Ging and Gon reuniting should be amazing
 
M

MetroidPrimeRib

Banned
Turin Turambar said:
Personally, I never liked it.
It's one of the two, maybe three things in all HxH that never convinced me how it got solved.
Though MANGA SPOILERS
it's partially fixed later.
Click to expand...

I think it's my only point of contention against the series, besides the meta of LOL HIATUS

It always felt like Alluka was just put in for the Gon healing and Togashi had little idea how to fix the Gon-san thing. I feel like Killua's hidden rule kind of cheapens Gon-san and pretty much everything non election in the Election Arc. I understand why he had to hide it, but still.
And yeah, it's partially fixed later. We also still don't know if he can use Nen but whatever
 
F

firehawk12

Subete no aware
ultimatemegax said:
When we say "solid for what it is" we know there's additional revenue coming in through other methods and know to judge any disc sales accordingly. Conversely, we judge something that would bring in about the same yen, but have a video publisher fronting a lot of costs.

This method is more consistent than trying to sell cheap to a lot of people (as the R1 market found out). Disc proceeds stabilized during the recession in Japan allowing the market to stay stable/expand later. In NA, the only way the publishers remained solvent was to buy licenses for cheaper since the amount of money coming in dropped once they moved to cour sets and people bought less.

People go "maybe you need to re-think the business model" but the other models fail to pay for producing shows (or even OVAs).
Click to expand...
Well, then you have shows like Aku no Hana which exist only as advertisements for the manga and disappear into the ether. I mean, anime is just another marketing tool in the greater production group's goals - it's one of the things Yura, rightly or wrongly, was bitching about on that Under the Dog podcast.

But my thing is that it's easy for me to think of figures and posters and video games as commodities. It's hard for me to think of anime, manga, and novels as commodities because there's still a part of me that thinks of them as "art".

Although I guess Ping Pong is a lot like a David Simon show. It makes no money and no one watches it. But somehow HBO kept both The Wire and Treme going for 5 seasons, even if it went against all common sense.

Disgaeamad said:
a) 3.5k (should be about 4k next week/final) means that out of noitaminA's last 15 shows only 2 have sold better, and despite being a box it wasn't any cheaper than those.
b) It's an adaptation made years after the manga finished and the live action film was done, so there was no ongoing material to crosspromote the anime and yet it attracted quite a few viewers.
c) It was greenlit last winter and a very small team of people made it so the project was as cheap as it could possibly get.
Click to expand...
noitaminA is in a position where the broadcasts do matter, so there's that. But when more people subscribe to a youtube channel of a girl doing vlogs about her favourite boy bands than buy your anime... well, it just seems like there's a problem.

Hell, I still think it's kind of amusing that anything over 10k is supposed to be considered a massive success, when in any other context, that would probably be considered a failure.
 
T

TUSR

Banned
Hyouka 22

Ill probably end up writing a series review because of how much I enjoyed the show.

How much conclusion would I get from reading the 5th novel? I did enjoy the ending in the anime.
 
Jex

Jex

Member
duckroll said:
Well, the extra "drama" here is that it's a story where Ginko encounters another person who knows who he is and also knows Tanyu, creating a sense of a more personal tale, and on top of that they attempt a bit more tension than usual with regards to Ginko's safety being threatened, and there was even an actual action scene where two giant mushi duked it out. That's a lot more active than Mushishi usually is, but in the end it was still handled in a really low key and passive way, so it just seemed like a story trying stuff which really had no real impact in the end.
Click to expand...

Many of those elements have appeared in other stories, besides actual 'mushi on mushi action'. It didn't feel very different from any other story, to me at least, except that it simply brought a problem to the fore without even attempting to resolve it. I happened to quite like that approach in so much as it demonstrated a sense of the wider world but it wasn't terribly satisfying as a narrative.
 
S

Shergal

Member
TUSR said:
Hyouka 22

Ill probably end up writing a series review because of how much I enjoyed the show.

How much conclusion would I get from reading the 5th novel? I did enjoy the ending in the anime.
Click to expand...

I haven't read it but I don't think there's much of a conclusion in the 5th novel, as it is still ongoing.
 
C

CheapJuice

Member
Akame Ga Kill - 09

Cool that they introduce the new "gang" in such a light and comedic way, I like that alot. If Leone switched team I would root for team Esdeath.

dat crab tho

o9gyufn.jpg
 
C

cajunator

Banned
Jex

Jex

Member
CorvoSol said:
As I said in my other post, I absolutely agree that the franchise is entirely too stuck in rehashing the run from MSG to CCA bit by bit. If anything, this was an enormous problem with AGE. It was simply too much distilled product of the UC conventions. What made both the original Gundam and G Gundam great was that they were such breaks from the establishment.

I think that speaks to a problem with the entire genre nowadays, though. Far, far too many Mecha shows are trying to be "the next EVA" or "a Gundam-Killer" or one up this or that thing, when in reality what makes the truly great mecha anime their own thing is their willingness to be themselves.

The Big O is a great example of this. Who would ever think to combine Asimovian Futurism, Batman/Film Noir narratives and aesthetics, Super Robots and heavy doses of Metropolis? It's an unusual combination executed boldly, and without fear or shame of not pushing products. But so much of Mecha anime nowadays feels rather soulless to me because it's all become a prisoner of past successes.

Tomino's been talking some game about G-Reco being a huge break from Gundam standard, and I would love for him to be right. Off the tail of Build Fighters' success I think that now is the time to take that kind of a risk and see what happens. Now is the time to make something that will be referenced, not something that references.
Click to expand...
This certainly all seems true. The endless copying of previous works certainly makes the mecha genre feel rather safe and stale. The truly revolutionary shows (Mazinger, Gundam, G Gunda, The Big O) all came from very strong creative visions but the problem is that's not easy to re-create. Most people creating mecha today aren't looking to be quite so bold. It's a very hard thing to do to make a truly original title in a genre that's so stuffed. It must be very hard.

That doesn't mean, however, that I can forgive Sunrise for recycling the same Gundam story for decades.
 
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