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Summer 2014 Anime |OT2| Or, where Jexhius finally watches more Doremi for Hito.
- Thread starter Narag
- Start date
- Status
windmill gundam still GOAT
Chaika the Coffin Princess 4
Pretty meh episode. Not terribly interested in Tooru's romantic non-adventures. The fighting wasn't a sharp this time either. The dragoon's design is a visual mess and you can tell the animators struggled with it. Naturally,
And by my count, half the party now wants to kill Tooru.
#ThreeWordsSheWantsToHear here's daddy's eyeballs
Pretty meh episode. Not terribly interested in Tooru's romantic non-adventures. The fighting wasn't a sharp this time either. The dragoon's design is a visual mess and you can tell the animators struggled with it. Naturally,
the mature female has to transform into a little girl when she joins the party.
nintendoman58
Member
G Gundam - 24
An absolutely grand finale to this first half.
Like for real, this was some final episode stuff going on here.
A great finish to a great first arc. It started out really slow, but oh man was it worth it.
An absolutely grand finale to this first half.
Like for real, this was some final episode stuff going on here.
From Rain powering up the God Gundam through the sheer power of her love for Domon, to its activation along with the finishing off of Master Asia (he's totally not dead), to Domon slingshotting himself to the other side of the planet using the edges of the ring, and to Domon barely making it on time to the finals as he is attacked by mysterious lights, slowing him down.
A great finish to a great first arc. It started out really slow, but oh man was it worth it.
Admiral Woofington
Member
it's nice to see people loving Nozaki-kun. I know that of Ore Monogatari got an anime there'd be just as much love as Nozaki-kun and Barakamon.
How many cats do I sacrifice to the elder god for this to happen?
How many cats do I sacrifice to the elder god for this to happen?
Earth Maiden Arjuna 8
Okay show, I've dealt with a lot of your philosophical crap before. But railing against words? Words? Language? What the hell are you even on about anymore? And then Chris says we use words because we're lonely and afraid of being alone? I just...what?! What possible logic could you be using to come to that conclusion? That doesn't make any goddamn sense. The only way I could possibly see this show convincing itself of this is that humans are the only beings that use language, so therefore it's bad. And even that explanation is so fucking nonsense that...no, I can't even.
Oh and by the way Chris, you're using language and words in your communication with that short little fucker. So don't act like you're above this. Because you're not. Douchebag.
Okay show, I've dealt with a lot of your philosophical crap before. But railing against words? Words? Language? What the hell are you even on about anymore? And then Chris says we use words because we're lonely and afraid of being alone? I just...what?! What possible logic could you be using to come to that conclusion? That doesn't make any goddamn sense. The only way I could possibly see this show convincing itself of this is that humans are the only beings that use language, so therefore it's bad. And even that explanation is so fucking nonsense that...no, I can't even.
Oh and by the way Chris, you're using language and words in your communication with that short little fucker. So don't act like you're above this. Because you're not. Douchebag.
Love plus on smart watches. Be with your waifu 24/7. Konami would be rolling in bank if they ever thought of this idea.
AquaWateria
Member
But but what if it gets a shitty adaption, then what would you do?
Admiral Woofington
Member
Animation wouldn't really matter as the humor is fantastic, so unless they completely changed the plot it would be fine. Each chapter is fairly long so they'll probably cut down on some stuff if they did make it into an anime.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Brad from Giantbomb tries to watch Kill la Kill and the GB thread suddenly turns into a mini KLK thread.
MetroidPrimeRib
Banned
That's a word.
I eagerly look forward to what Dan picks as his first anime lol
Antiwhippy
the holder of the trombone
What if it was done by shaft?
Kazuma Kamachi 's To Aru Majutsu no Index 10th Anniversay PV project
A J.C.Staff/Dengeki Animation which showcase all of Kazuma Kamachi's works such as Index, Heavy Object, Intellectual Village no Zashiki Warashi and Waltraute-san no Konkatsu Jijou.
I'm actually half optimistic about this, it gives a chance of a Index III despite no announcement and a chance of a Heavy Object anime because it actually has a decent animation action plus J.C.Staff actually arrange VA for the Heavy Object Characters.
But damn is is hurtful to see future index characters which won't be seen until like 2/3 more seasons if J.C.Staff ever made this far.
A J.C.Staff/Dengeki Animation which showcase all of Kazuma Kamachi's works such as Index, Heavy Object, Intellectual Village no Zashiki Warashi and Waltraute-san no Konkatsu Jijou.
I'm actually half optimistic about this, it gives a chance of a Index III despite no announcement and a chance of a Heavy Object anime because it actually has a decent animation action plus J.C.Staff actually arrange VA for the Heavy Object Characters.
But damn is is hurtful to see future index characters which won't be seen until like 2/3 more seasons if J.C.Staff ever made this far.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
I almost feel like it'd be funnier if someone sent him Hidamari Sketch or an Oshii film than something legitimately trolly.
Please tell me that's not his first anime.
Antiwhippy
the holder of the trombone
He watched bubblegum crisis.
Earth Maiden Arjuna 9
Fuck this bullshit show.
Why does it feel so good?
firehawk12
Subete no aware
No, but it's his first "new" anime. lol
ThatChairMan
Member
I agree. It was fun to watch, but then the slow realization that this will probably be the only animation of the later Index arcs, or his other works, and then it's just a bit sad. It was neat seeing the cameo at the end of his newest series though.
Earth Maiden Arjuna 9
Fuck this bullshit show.
Don't you see that modern civilization has wrought this evil?
Patlabor 7
I'm actually really impressed by this episode. The reason behind it is it sets up a really good explanation for the progression of military use giant robots. It requires the initial belief that mankind found giant robots useful for performing construction tasks and the like, which is the suspension of disbelief, but from there you simply follow what I feel is a good, solid progression.
People began to realize they could use giant robots to commit crimes, and so it was necessary to use those same robots to prevent crimes, which lead to the creation of more specialized criminal and police robots, and companies realized they could make big bucks developing those into military weapons.
What's especially good is the way the cast reacts to it. It never really crosses the threshold into melodrama, but the point is made, while staying true to everyone's established characters, that this is an unacceptable outcome for the cast.
Interspersed in this serious episode about not wanting to be complicit in the development of weapons were a number of gags, my favorite of which being Shinobu's final victory: she told the higher ups that she'd allow the use of the SRX-70 only if Officer Ota were its pilot. Since Ota thinks he's a Super Robot pilot, well, the joke flows from there.
Speaking of the SRX-70, I can't get over its similarities to a favorite mech of mine. In addition to looking like Full Metal Panic!'s Arbalest, the Arbalest's call sign: ARX-7 is pretty damn close to it.
Earth Maiden Arjuna 9
Fuck this bullshit show.
Why does it feel so-- damnit Brandy
All I see is a 'fatty' like Mayaka Ibara.
I thought in the dark past Brad reviewed anime.
Earth Maiden Arjuna 9
Fuck this bullshit show.
Now you know.
Do that many people think the watch looks too bulky? I guess it would be difficult to tell for me at least until I have a chance to see one in person.
Apparently. I never saw it, but it did seem to be a running joke here.
Putting my Arjuna stanning hat on, so please feel free to ignore me...
Isn't that exactly why we use words? To communicate? To stop us from feeling isolated? Have you ever been to a country on your own where you can't speak the language? It's incredibly isolating.
I got confused and thought you meant episode 7 (The Invisible Words), but of course Episode 8 deals with very similar themes which I had forgotten. I will have to revisit that at some point to check exactly what Chris says; he never says anything like that in ep 7.
Layzner #7, well, sort of.
So here's the thing about Layzner thus far: the show has been built almost entirely around depriving the cast and the audience of hope altogether. Every time things seem to be looking up for our unfortunate band of survivors, a nuclear missile drops on top of it or a sniper fires into it etc. The series has maintained its momentum via this sort of game of cat and mouse of hope and despair while establishing its cast and world.
And it's got me thinking: Mecha anime is incredibly bleak from this period of time. Bleak or grim, take your pick, I guess. The point is that in shows of this era there's this pervasive feeling of almost agony, of pain and a fear for the lengths mankind can go to in war. I want to note here that I'm going to be drawing pretty much exclusively from the real robot genre of anime, and basing my comments out of about five shows, so this current supposition could well be wrong.
The shows I'm drawing from are Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Mobile Suit ZZ Gundam, Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, Armored Trooper VOTOMS, and Blue Comet SPT Layzner. By way of conceit, VOTOMS, Macross, and ZZ Gundam are all shows I would argue are very hopeful and positive at given points. Especially the latter two. However, what I'm looking at is some of the setups to these shows. VOTOMS opens with Chirico coming home essentially shell-shocked from a war that has lasted centuries. ZZ Gundam begins with the Argama seeking port after a climactic battle in a war that has existed and will exist for decades. In Macross' backstory there was a terrible war of unification, and the Zentradi themselves have been at war since before they themselves can remember. Zeta Gundam itself is heavily couched in both the old One Year War and its own boiling conflict.
There's an extension beyond this, however, in that the shows all take pains to sort of portray their casts as troubled people in the midst of some very real and striking depictions of agony. Chirico begins VOTOMs resembling better a wild animal than a human being, so completely on guard against a world he finds hostile he is. An entire arc of the show centers on his breakdown when forced to confront his sins in war, and the victims of his atrocities. Kamille Bidan, Zeta's protagonist, is rife with problems of his own, not the least of which are the loss of many of his loved ones due to the ongoing war. Even the usually unflappable Judau Ashta begins to crack under the pressure of the show's second half. In all of these shows we're exposed to shots of women screaming over their husbands' graves, warriors crying in terror as their mechs explode and they die like dogs, and vast swaths of the world laid waste in the crossfire.
NeoGAF user and eternal sounding board for my mecha ideas, Narag, has suggested to me that there is a reactionary root to all of this, and I feel that it is an important element to understanding and explaining this transition of the genre. Essentially, he put it to me, the entire genre was reacting to the 1970s Super Robot status quo.
There's a great deal of sense to that. 1970s robot anime was innocent, and maintained a sense of wonder. The mecha of that era tended to belong to scientists and laboratories than military forces, implying a trust in the scientific to use these machines for the greater good. I've considered it for some time the need to address the need for military might in a sort of terrifyingly military world that prohibited Japan from having weapons of their own. In a way, though, it's impossible to not view the entire 1970s Super Robot cycle as the Romantic period of the genre. Although violent, the heroes of Super Robot anime of that era, the likes of Ryoma and Kouji, always had their violence ultimately romanticized into either the rough-and-tumble hijinks of somewhat troubled high-school-boys or as an effort to save the world. Even that prior implies romanticism in demonstrating how young men with, putting it lightly, personality problems to spare might band together for a common good. There's an undertone of hoping to persuade viewers to follow suit there, as well. The genre was inundated with this kind of story, though, of heroic humans banding to fight wicked aliens, who were on occasion formerly good people themselves.
It follows, then, that with the 1979 release of Mobile Suit Gundam, the genre began to change away. Mecha became weapons of war, and episodes ended less and less with the gang laughing into the sunset and more and more with them crying their souls out over the bodies of their fallen friends. It should come as no surprise that the Real Robot subgenre of Mecha anime is in essence also its Realist movement. Stories tried to combine the genre's inherent science fiction with a more 'grounded' approach. No longer were the enemies bizarre aliens bent on turning innocent people into aliens. Instead they were human beings with differing political ideologies. Prick them, and they bled red. The lionization and romanticizing about the glory of piloting a giant robot was stripped away. The path was paved from Kouji, who bore no real strain from piloting the Mazinger Z, to Shinji, whose mind was at the mercy of Unit 01, upon the backs of Amuro and Chirico alike.
There was also an enormous anti-war sentiment present in the works of the time. You don't ever really hear Ryoma stop and say war is a terrible thing because in Getter Robo the war, such as it is, is a battle for the survival of two different, incompatible species. However, protagonists like Hikaru Ichijo would go on to constantly have misgivings and doubts about both the nature of war and the intentions of the military forces fighting them. These feelings would remain forever after a huge part of the genre. VOTOMs and Zeta Gundam both introduced authoritarian governments (on the alleged side of the hero) and ZZ and Macross would explore the concepts of military-government corruption.
The question, though, is why? What caused this enormous shift? I can offer guesses, but I'm not really sure. My best bet is that the Cold War was taking its toll on people in Japan at the time, if not, really, on the world itself. It had carried on for decades and, contrary to its name, there were quite a few casualties across the world! Super Robots were born as a part of the zeitgeist that demanded a power to grant the feeling of security in a land caught directly between the two powers wielding nuclear flame against one another. And no country knew the terror of nuclear power better than Japan. As the war drug on, then, that same zeitgeist began to question these forces altogether, and this shifted into anime in the form of a questioning by writers of giant robots, which had become the equivalent of Super Heroes and Nuclear Power in one fell swoop.
And the feeling of hatred for the Cold War seems almost transparent. Votoms had Gilgamesh and Balarant. Gundam had Zeon and the Federation. Macross had Mankind and the Zentradi, and Layzner opened with the Soviets and Americans nuking one another before moving on to Humanity and the Gradosians. Each show had its major powers locked in a struggle where the world's survival and governance was the stakes. Each had a powerful anti-war message, and the endings were of varied condemnation of mankind's power to avert such war. VOTOMs has Chirico exit history "until an age without war." ZZ Gundam ends with Judau leaving the inner Solar System in disgust over the unwillingness of mankind to achieve peace. Macross has Zentradi and humans fighting in the ruins of Earth well after the supposed peace has been attained.
The problem I have with this explanation is mostly that I don't really know anything about Japan's role in the Cold War, or the actual feelings people had at that time about the war. If this were about how Americans felt and American works, I would be confident that the Cold War and especially the Vietnam conflict had figured in, but since I don't know how any of this truly effected the Japanese, I'm not as confident in my statements. This caveat given, however, I do feel some measure of surety in my assessment, and hope it stands up to the scrutiny of you, my peers.
So here's the thing about Layzner thus far: the show has been built almost entirely around depriving the cast and the audience of hope altogether. Every time things seem to be looking up for our unfortunate band of survivors, a nuclear missile drops on top of it or a sniper fires into it etc. The series has maintained its momentum via this sort of game of cat and mouse of hope and despair while establishing its cast and world.
And it's got me thinking: Mecha anime is incredibly bleak from this period of time. Bleak or grim, take your pick, I guess. The point is that in shows of this era there's this pervasive feeling of almost agony, of pain and a fear for the lengths mankind can go to in war. I want to note here that I'm going to be drawing pretty much exclusively from the real robot genre of anime, and basing my comments out of about five shows, so this current supposition could well be wrong.
The shows I'm drawing from are Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Mobile Suit ZZ Gundam, Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, Armored Trooper VOTOMS, and Blue Comet SPT Layzner. By way of conceit, VOTOMS, Macross, and ZZ Gundam are all shows I would argue are very hopeful and positive at given points. Especially the latter two. However, what I'm looking at is some of the setups to these shows. VOTOMS opens with Chirico coming home essentially shell-shocked from a war that has lasted centuries. ZZ Gundam begins with the Argama seeking port after a climactic battle in a war that has existed and will exist for decades. In Macross' backstory there was a terrible war of unification, and the Zentradi themselves have been at war since before they themselves can remember. Zeta Gundam itself is heavily couched in both the old One Year War and its own boiling conflict.
There's an extension beyond this, however, in that the shows all take pains to sort of portray their casts as troubled people in the midst of some very real and striking depictions of agony. Chirico begins VOTOMs resembling better a wild animal than a human being, so completely on guard against a world he finds hostile he is. An entire arc of the show centers on his breakdown when forced to confront his sins in war, and the victims of his atrocities. Kamille Bidan, Zeta's protagonist, is rife with problems of his own, not the least of which are the loss of many of his loved ones due to the ongoing war. Even the usually unflappable Judau Ashta begins to crack under the pressure of the show's second half. In all of these shows we're exposed to shots of women screaming over their husbands' graves, warriors crying in terror as their mechs explode and they die like dogs, and vast swaths of the world laid waste in the crossfire.
NeoGAF user and eternal sounding board for my mecha ideas, Narag, has suggested to me that there is a reactionary root to all of this, and I feel that it is an important element to understanding and explaining this transition of the genre. Essentially, he put it to me, the entire genre was reacting to the 1970s Super Robot status quo.
There's a great deal of sense to that. 1970s robot anime was innocent, and maintained a sense of wonder. The mecha of that era tended to belong to scientists and laboratories than military forces, implying a trust in the scientific to use these machines for the greater good. I've considered it for some time the need to address the need for military might in a sort of terrifyingly military world that prohibited Japan from having weapons of their own. In a way, though, it's impossible to not view the entire 1970s Super Robot cycle as the Romantic period of the genre. Although violent, the heroes of Super Robot anime of that era, the likes of Ryoma and Kouji, always had their violence ultimately romanticized into either the rough-and-tumble hijinks of somewhat troubled high-school-boys or as an effort to save the world. Even that prior implies romanticism in demonstrating how young men with, putting it lightly, personality problems to spare might band together for a common good. There's an undertone of hoping to persuade viewers to follow suit there, as well. The genre was inundated with this kind of story, though, of heroic humans banding to fight wicked aliens, who were on occasion formerly good people themselves.
It follows, then, that with the 1979 release of Mobile Suit Gundam, the genre began to change away. Mecha became weapons of war, and episodes ended less and less with the gang laughing into the sunset and more and more with them crying their souls out over the bodies of their fallen friends. It should come as no surprise that the Real Robot subgenre of Mecha anime is in essence also its Realist movement. Stories tried to combine the genre's inherent science fiction with a more 'grounded' approach. No longer were the enemies bizarre aliens bent on turning innocent people into aliens. Instead they were human beings with differing political ideologies. Prick them, and they bled red. The lionization and romanticizing about the glory of piloting a giant robot was stripped away. The path was paved from Kouji, who bore no real strain from piloting the Mazinger Z, to Shinji, whose mind was at the mercy of Unit 01, upon the backs of Amuro and Chirico alike.
There was also an enormous anti-war sentiment present in the works of the time. You don't ever really hear Ryoma stop and say war is a terrible thing because in Getter Robo the war, such as it is, is a battle for the survival of two different, incompatible species. However, protagonists like Hikaru Ichijo would go on to constantly have misgivings and doubts about both the nature of war and the intentions of the military forces fighting them. These feelings would remain forever after a huge part of the genre. VOTOMs and Zeta Gundam both introduced authoritarian governments (on the alleged side of the hero) and ZZ and Macross would explore the concepts of military-government corruption.
The question, though, is why? What caused this enormous shift? I can offer guesses, but I'm not really sure. My best bet is that the Cold War was taking its toll on people in Japan at the time, if not, really, on the world itself. It had carried on for decades and, contrary to its name, there were quite a few casualties across the world! Super Robots were born as a part of the zeitgeist that demanded a power to grant the feeling of security in a land caught directly between the two powers wielding nuclear flame against one another. And no country knew the terror of nuclear power better than Japan. As the war drug on, then, that same zeitgeist began to question these forces altogether, and this shifted into anime in the form of a questioning by writers of giant robots, which had become the equivalent of Super Heroes and Nuclear Power in one fell swoop.
And the feeling of hatred for the Cold War seems almost transparent. Votoms had Gilgamesh and Balarant. Gundam had Zeon and the Federation. Macross had Mankind and the Zentradi, and Layzner opened with the Soviets and Americans nuking one another before moving on to Humanity and the Gradosians. Each show had its major powers locked in a struggle where the world's survival and governance was the stakes. Each had a powerful anti-war message, and the endings were of varied condemnation of mankind's power to avert such war. VOTOMs has Chirico exit history "until an age without war." ZZ Gundam ends with Judau leaving the inner Solar System in disgust over the unwillingness of mankind to achieve peace. Macross has Zentradi and humans fighting in the ruins of Earth well after the supposed peace has been attained.
The problem I have with this explanation is mostly that I don't really know anything about Japan's role in the Cold War, or the actual feelings people had at that time about the war. If this were about how Americans felt and American works, I would be confident that the Cold War and especially the Vietnam conflict had figured in, but since I don't know how any of this truly effected the Japanese, I'm not as confident in my statements. This caveat given, however, I do feel some measure of surety in my assessment, and hope it stands up to the scrutiny of you, my peers.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
I'm curious, what role did Japan have in the Cold War? I mean, obviously they would have probably worried about actions in Korea and Vietnam, but it seems they are only dragged into it by virtue of having an American base forced onto them by the old treaties. That and the fact that they are only allowed to have a "self defence force" and essentially cannot set any foreign policy that requires military intervention.
An extremely brief Google search indicates that, after rebuilding itself at the end of WWII, Japan spent its time allied with the West, seeking Economic, rather than Military containment of Communism. Which makes sense, since falling into the hands of Communist China and North Korea was probably not a very pleasing concept to Japanese leaders.
Too much bad melodrama. Not enough robot love.
But in the end the best girl won right? That counts for something.
Canis lupus
Member
I love it when this song comes up with every duel in Utena https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHOFE718uZ0
Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku
mokushi kushimo
shimoku kumoshi
moshiku shikumo
mokushi kushimo
shimoku kumoshi
moshiku shikumo
Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku
mokushi kushimo
shimoku kumoshi
moshiku shikumo
mokushi kushimo
shimoku kumoshi
moshiku shikumo
PhantomOfTheKnight
Member
Psycho-Pass - 09
Goddammit, I thought we were done with the creepiness factors, now we got this bug-eyed cyborg hunter in the spotlight talking about immortality and making pipes out of human bones and shit. On the other side Akane is learning more about criminal profiling, and we learn about why Ginoza is such a tight-ass.
Goddammit, I thought we were done with the creepiness factors, now we got this bug-eyed cyborg hunter in the spotlight talking about immortality and making pipes out of human bones and shit. On the other side Akane is learning more about criminal profiling, and we learn about why Ginoza is such a tight-ass.
Dedication Through Light
Member
World Trigger character design looking so great, Yuma in anime design is just as good as manga form, just need his faces there and it will be perfect.
PhantomOfTheKnight
Member
Psycho-Pass - 10
This was probably the best episode yet. Makishima has started to become a pretty interesting bad guy. I especially like how he's testing/playing with both Kogami and the cyborg Sugenji. The hunting game between the two also takes some interesting turns as well... and of course
.
--------------------
Psycho-Pass - 11
...and thus the shit hath hit the fan. Makashima ends up getting away but not until testing Akane and lecturing her about free will and the flaws of the Sibyl System, right before
. Half way through, and the show has definitely gotten a lot better.
--------------------
Psycho-Pass - 12
Ah, just what I needed after the past few episodes: some filler. This one focuses on Yayoi (that one female Enforcer who I could never remember the name of, so I just called her "Pantsuit") before she became an Enforcer and back when Kogami was still an Inspector (and hey, we get to see the partner that was killed, too!). This episode tries to address one of the main problems I've had with the show, which is that the characters weren't entirely interesting. While I'm not sure it succeeds with this episode, at least it tried. Also, new OP is meh.
This was probably the best episode yet. Makishima has started to become a pretty interesting bad guy. I especially like how he's testing/playing with both Kogami and the cyborg Sugenji. The hunting game between the two also takes some interesting turns as well... and of course
the final piece of the transmitter was in her bra
--------------------
Psycho-Pass - 11
...and thus the shit hath hit the fan. Makashima ends up getting away but not until testing Akane and lecturing her about free will and the flaws of the Sibyl System, right before
killing her best friend before her eyes when she fails the test
--------------------
Psycho-Pass - 12
Ah, just what I needed after the past few episodes: some filler. This one focuses on Yayoi (that one female Enforcer who I could never remember the name of, so I just called her "Pantsuit") before she became an Enforcer and back when Kogami was still an Inspector (and hey, we get to see the partner that was killed, too!). This episode tries to address one of the main problems I've had with the show, which is that the characters weren't entirely interesting. While I'm not sure it succeeds with this episode, at least it tried. Also, new OP is meh.
Earth Maiden Arjuna 9
Fuck this bullshit show.
AHAHAHAAHAH There it is!
Feels so good!
Kimochiiiiiiiii
You feel so dirty now I bet.
This song is legendary. Basically everybody loves it.
Joe Molotov
Member
The movie version is pretty awesome too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqG7P3ymLc4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqG7P3ymLc4
Makes sense to me. Now, tell me if this seems right:
After, this "robot war is hell" style was reaching its peak in the mid-90s, there was something of a backlash, which primarily took two forms. First, the revival of old-school super robot shows, like GaoGaiGar, Gurren Lagann, Star Driver, the currently-airing Captain Earth, etc. Second, and more interesting in my view, is the synthesis style, which tries to uses the same military setting as early Gundam and the like and tries to maintain some level of moral ambiguity, but also treats the main characters more like super robot heroes, who are able to overcome not only the enemies of the moment but the problem of war itself with their special skills.
Here I'm thinking of shows like Gundam SEED and 00, maybe even going back to Wing, Code Geass, Valvrave, stuff that tends to end on an upbeat note to the effect that the problem of war has been to some degree solved.. You know what show I would say most perfectly captures this sense of synthesis between old-school heroism and modern moral ambiguity? Majestic Prince, of all things. I don't even think it's that great, but it does strike that balance very well.
Princess Tutu 09-11
Am I highbrow about lowbrow things? When I visit the theater, it's for the comedies. The arthouse anime are never on my backlog list. Yet by bringing together multiple fairy tales and ballets and classic pieces of music, and layering them on top of a magical girl series where the basic plot can easily have parallels drawn with things designed to sell merchandise, I can enjoy it, and feel highbrow. Most of what I can do is voice actor jokes, but even if I'm not intimately familiar with the people behind the scenes, I can still see their work, still appreciate it.
It's often said that the art of animation in Japan is the art of disguising your budget. Something like Sakurasou can look pretty good once it gets its coloring right. This goes for theater, too. The average theater set can be less detailed than a visual novel background, and ballet even more so, where it's all told through movement. So the natural theatricality of anime goes well with an anime that's actually about the theater. But I have yet to actually talk about the episodes.
Goddammit, Dross. So Edel's being manipulated by the king of the wackadoos. He even said as much that Rue lacks resolve. It makes me wonder if the turn of events at the end of the episode was more his doing than hers. Also further reevaluation of my stance on Fakir. He's a broken-down knight to be sure, but a knight is always a hero. Having him be aloof at the start is also a traditional anime archetype - or did anime take it from other stories like Beauty and the Beast?
Even highbrow artists aren't fully above some lowbrow humor. In a tale of tragedy and beautiful music and metacommentary, you still have scenes like Mr. Cat licking his own butt.
I'm really enjoying what I see so far.
Am I highbrow about lowbrow things? When I visit the theater, it's for the comedies. The arthouse anime are never on my backlog list. Yet by bringing together multiple fairy tales and ballets and classic pieces of music, and layering them on top of a magical girl series where the basic plot can easily have parallels drawn with things designed to sell merchandise, I can enjoy it, and feel highbrow. Most of what I can do is voice actor jokes, but even if I'm not intimately familiar with the people behind the scenes, I can still see their work, still appreciate it.
It's often said that the art of animation in Japan is the art of disguising your budget. Something like Sakurasou can look pretty good once it gets its coloring right. This goes for theater, too. The average theater set can be less detailed than a visual novel background, and ballet even more so, where it's all told through movement. So the natural theatricality of anime goes well with an anime that's actually about the theater. But I have yet to actually talk about the episodes.
Goddammit, Dross. So Edel's being manipulated by the king of the wackadoos. He even said as much that Rue lacks resolve. It makes me wonder if the turn of events at the end of the episode was more his doing than hers. Also further reevaluation of my stance on Fakir. He's a broken-down knight to be sure, but a knight is always a hero. Having him be aloof at the start is also a traditional anime archetype - or did anime take it from other stories like Beauty and the Beast?
Even highbrow artists aren't fully above some lowbrow humor. In a tale of tragedy and beautiful music and metacommentary, you still have scenes like Mr. Cat licking his own butt.
I'm really enjoying what I see so far.
This series is criminally unappreciated. Right down to the horrible release. Please love it
School Days 03
Fucking lol. You couldn't have been dating her for more than a week you muppet.
Outside of that, not a very riveting episode. Makoto is still annoying and his interactions with Katsura are as dull as dishwater. That ending should at least shake things up.
I cant think of a more manipulative harem main than Makoto. dude knows what he wants but this kind of shit ends up on Jerry Springer IRL.
Rail Wars 9
Train practically fell apart on then. Then again, with how impractical the driving and condition, it's a miracle they made it at all
Train practically fell apart on then. Then again, with how impractical the driving and condition, it's a miracle they made it at all
And it only gets better from here.School Days 03
Fucking lol. You couldn't have been dating her for more than a week you muppet.
Outside of that, not a very riveting episode. Makoto is still annoying and his interactions with Katsura are as dull as dishwater. That ending should at least shake things up.
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