Well in here, yea I get that, I think 1-2 people in here are watching Fairy Tail, while no one seems to be watching One Piece. In general though, I've seen plenty of OP gifs in OT aside from the One Piece thread of course.
Well in here, yea I get that, I think 1-2 people in here are watching Fairy Tail, while no one seems to be watching One Piece. In general though, I've seen plenty of OP gifs in OT aside from the One Piece thread of course.
Im laughing at how people were impressed at the buzzer check, I wish the ones I used during high school could light up like these did. We had some rather lame ones
Well in here, yea I get that, I think 1-2 people in here are watching Fairy Tail, while no one seems to be watching One Piece. In general though, I've seen plenty of OP gifs in OT aside from the One Piece thread of course.
To me it was like "Konosuba but done boring" it--like, for a show called "In Another World with my Smartphone" it doesn't play at all like it should. The smartphone should be a much bigger focus. But he has all these extra powers and the phone seems like a super small part in this opener. And the jokes just-- aren't there like they need to be. It was frustratingly boring to me.
Edit: To add, I sorta feel like a more interesting version of the show would've been God Powers up the smartphone and it becomes a frustratingly ego-filled sentient character in itself. I dunno how much better that would really be with the kind of bland writing we saw here, but it'd at least live up to the name a lot better.
WARNING: Some mild unmarked spoilers, but really only things that you'd learn by the end of the first episode that are impossible not to bring up to talk about the show. If you want to see SCHOOL-LIVE! completely unspoiled, please ignore this post.
Genre mash-ups can often be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they pull in a larger audience of people interested in parts of the show (if not the entirety of the premise itself), but they can often feel like they aren't able to execute any one part of their show as well as one dedicated to that specific genre or idea. It seems, however, that someone forgot to point this out to the creator of SCHOOL-LIVE!, a blend of club-focused high school moe hijinks and post-apocalyptic zombie horror that works together so well in a way that defies all logical sense, I can't help but marvel at the audacity to make this bizarre premise feel natural given the incredible artificiality of its construction.
I think a lot of that has to do with the way the show is framed around the various viewpoints of the main cast. It's a real visual trip on any given episode to see the way the world is reflected from Yuki's point-of-view, then to have the layers of her "dreamscape" slowly stripped away as the fun hijinks slowly give way to the grim reality of their situation. From the constant changes to the OP for practically every episode, to the nature of how the school's appearance changing slightly, with warmer tones earlier on giving way to a far more muted color palette as the show progresses closer towards depicting reality. It's an exceptional looking show from a design standpoint. In particular, I think the depiction of the undead themselves is one of the show's most striking ideas. So many shows that feature zombies focus on the idea of depicting people who died horrible deaths and now shuffle about with bodies that barely function in extremely grotesque detail. SCHOOL-LIVE! does the opposite and removes practically any distinguishing characteristics from them at all. The perspective of the characters is that these are no longer anything except monsters inhabiting the shells of their classmates, so mentally stripping them of any distinguishing features makes them easier to kill from a psychological standpoint.
Speaking of psychology, let's get into the show's central premise: the fact that the lead character is living a lie in an attempt to stay sane after she and the other members of the "School Living Club" ended up trapped at the school during the zombie apocalypse. This might itself be one of the most interesting ideas I've seen in regards to the way people deal with the end of the world. In most zombie fiction, people either adapt a methodology where they sacrifice their humanity in order to do "whatever is necessary" to survive, or they reject the change the world has undergone and lose their sanity completely, becoming a zombie in a different sense. SCHOOL-LIVE! is different, though. Yuki's desire to continue living a normal school life and committing to it despite all the changes to the world around her as the show goes on isn't because she's necessarily insane in the same sense as usual zombie fiction. There's some comfort in finding a routine that gives you purpose, something reflected in Miki's past where
being trapped in a room with no purpose lead to her friend risking death in the outside world due to feeling like the living dead being trapped inside a room with nothing to do.
Miki comes to discover this on her own during her time with the School Living Club, and it proves that, while it seems crazy in its own way, Yuki's methodology might be among the most sane of anyone there, regardless of the personal pain she might inflict on those around her for committing to it as much as she does.
If that was all SCHOOL-LIVE! had accomplished, I would still be impressed, but by using that construct of Yuki's to present us with half a cute, moe, after-school club activities show, it's incredible accomplishment is how in presenting that it actually finds a way to integrate the horror in a more natural way than most straight horror does. Effective horror needs moments of respite, where the audience is lulled into a false sense of security before that is violently ripped away. The moe club activities part of the show is perfect for that, and it's interesting to see these usually benign adventures re-framed as everyone desperately grasping at their humanity by making the most of their time trapped at school. I mean, considering the events of the penultimate episode, the fact that the last episode
ends with a traditional graduation ceremony and it neither felt out of place or tonally inconsistent with the past episode and a half is a marvel of how well intertwined these two aspects of the show are, and how much we care about the girls' attempt to make their time being trapped there have meaning beyond pure survival.
I also give full credit to the show for making me care about the cast as much as I do. Good horror requires you to care about the cast, though most moe shows like this don't try to create characters that are much more than stereotypes so that you can enjoy their adventures and not be caught up in their personal drama. Finding a way to develop the cast while not sacrificing the hijinks or the horror in just the twelve episodes the show has is really something, and goes to show how effective character development when every scene is utilized to the fullest.
I could continue to rave about SCHOOL-LIVE!, but I think I'll leave it with this thought: a zombie show with a remarkably positive outlook on life is a rare thing. But even if the show may not present the most realistic portrayal of the living dead, its commitment to
spending time on giving the girls something to strive for rather than reveling in their insanity
makes it much more satisfying to watch than most horror, and is something I feel really captures why the school-based moe genre itself is special. If that's not something to be celebrated about a mash-up like this, I don't know what is.
Also still good. Didn't realize that the stories would still be interconnected. I was assuming they were basically all going to be really short one shots.
Also still good. Didn't realize that the stories would still be interconnected. I was assuming they were basically all going to be really short one shots.
I'm actually somewhat surprised that Smartphone is so by the numbers. You would think with a concept that dumb and worn you wouldn't even bother with it unless it was subversive in some way but nope.
While One Piece is the most popular manga series of all time, the anime has been going non stop for 15+ years and its clearly at the bottom of the Toei Totem Pole. You might get a bone thrown at you every couple of months but theres not a whole lot of interesting things going on in One Piece, even shows people love to lambast like Dragon Ball Super look way better and have good sequences far more often.
The A-game usually on stuff like PreCure or Tiger Mask W will show up for movies and TV specials and thats about it.
The time to stop would probably be the timeskip as that's when they really go in on the one chapter an episode pacing.
They also usually add unnecessary flashbacks/padding to episodes (I'm talking flashbacks to things that happened an episode or two ago) because there usually isn't enough material in one chapter to maintain the one chapter per episode ratio. An example would be they adapted something where one character does something in like 4 or 5 pages and spends an entire episode on it and does multiple perspective shifts to random citizens running away from the bad thing and the varios people involved in fights exchanging blows but no progress is made by any of the characters except for the character who did something that was covered in 5 pages.
It's still worth watching some of the big moments, but as an episode to episode anime it's pretty bad, but it's also not really good for binge-watching because of some of the things I've mentioned above.
Episode to episode it is not worth watching. I would never recommend it as your primary source. Taking out things like voice acting, there isn't a single thing it does better then the manga. What it is good at is delivering good emotional weight to important moments. Some of the notable stuff -
Luffy knocking out Bellamy in a single punch
Luffy punching the Tenryuubito
Zoro taking Kuma's hit and standing
Gear Second
Jet Gatling
Luffy beating Crocodile
That kind of stuff is good as supplementary material but it its not a replacement.
I think its enjoyable up until around Thriller Bark. Past there you are really pushing it, and there are even sections of Enies Lobby that are a draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag. Its better-ish now but from around Amazon Lily to Punk Hazard (hundreds of episodes) it was a slog to watch.
Princess Principal 1
I'm usually not to into spy anime, and making all the main characters little girls basically ensures I'm not going to be into this either.
it's fine before they start doing 1 chapter per episode. that's when i dropped it. i think that was when the impel down arc started, which is some 330+ episodes in. everything before that is fine, but as soon as you start to think the pacing has slowed down tremendously, jump to the manga
This production can be very mediocre at times (the hatching on the final shot this episode was hideous), but hearing Megumi Hayashibara's grouchy, aggressive voice for Lina Inverse is always a delight. I could stand more beginning-of-episode recaps if they were narrated as colorfully as Lina does them.
My only real complaint with it was the way the show just kept throwing random fanservice at us every now and then, which really clashed with how young the girls looked. It also felt pretty out of place in a show that was mostly about the juxtaposition of a happy-go-lucky cute girls in school SoL and a despair-inducing zombie apocalypse.
My only real complaint with it was the way the show just kept throwing random fanservice at us every now and then, which really clashed with how young the girls looked. It also felt pretty out of place in a show that was mostly about the juxtaposition of a happy-go-lucky cute girls in school SoL and a despair-inducing zombie apocalypse.
