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Winter 2014 Anime |OT2| Waiting for Sakamoto

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C

cnet128

Banned
Fresh Precure! 41

After being completely ignored for the first half of the series, this is the second episode in the space of five in which Outrageously Rich Boy Mikoshiba-kun has played a notable role. And it seems he's finally settled properly into his "love interest" role to match the other two boys in the trio.

In this episode, he invites Inori to join him at a high-class party that he's hosting on a massive cruise liner. He even sends her a nice dress to wear. How thoughtful. In the end it turns out he was really nervous about the party - his dad had made him host it and put him in charge of the whole ship as a way of building up his sense of Rich Kid Responsibility - so he invited Inori to help keep him mentally grounded, as it were. Which he thinks was pretty selfish, but Inori thinks is pretty sweet. Awww, how cute. You get in there with that massive fortune, Inori!

Also Wester turns the entire ship into a Sorewatase, in perhaps the most effective plan he's ever come up with. Unfortunately for him, Setsuna's teleportation powers are capable of evacuating the ship in next to no time. Poor Wester.
 
N

nintendoman58

Member
GaoGaiGar - 25

What's better than one rock n' roll song playing during a mecha fight? How about TWO rock n' roll songs?!?

Every time the show does this with its opening theme I start fist pumping. It's just so dang awesome. And we got a second song in today's episode as well! DESIIIIIIIREEEE.

It's getting reaaaalllly easy to predict when a Zonder is going to show up at this point. Literally when the ice cream guy started talking I said: "He's gonna be today's Zonder."
 
F

firehawk12

Subete no aware
Jexhius said:
Anyway, on a slight tangent, time to do some book pimping:

Anime A History

http://abload.de/img/41bktup9tdl._sy445_hle3w.jpg
Click to expand...
I'm a bit disappointed that Mai Mai Miracle backers chose the pamphlet over the special commentary by the author of this book as the next stretch goal. I can almost see why, since nerds like swag, but it is a bit of a missed opportunity.

Watanabe Kazuma said:
No.

http://i.imgur.com/2LzF9C0.jpg
Click to expand...
I know what this because of Gintama!
 
C

cnet128

Banned
Fresh Precure! 42

Wow, this is feeling pretty endgamey already, and there are still eight episodes to go!

The Cures come up with a plan to put a stop to Labyrinth's plans for good -
by mounting an attack on their mansion and destroying the Misery Gauge that is causing Chiffon to turn into Infinity
. The only problem is,
Setsuna knows that destroying the Gauge would be incredibly dangerous, as the misery within would pour out and most likely destroy whoever released it. Also there's the little problem that the Labyrinth folks have hidden their mansion away and the Cures don't know how to find it.

So
Setsuna resolves to solve both of these problems at once, infiltrating Labyrinth's mansion by pretending she's switched sides again, and then destroying the gauge on her own so that even if she loses her life, at least the others will be safe. It's a pretty damn badass moment when she transforms right in front of the Gauge, ready to destroy it and atone for her sins as Eas.

But sadly,
Northa had seen right through Setsuna's plans and was ready for her attack on the Gauge, turning her own attack against her and taking her captive. I must admit, after Setsuna's highly effective use of her teleportation ability in the previous episode, I was kind of wondering why she didn't use it to escape Northa's onslaught here (and for that matter, why she wouldn't be able to use it to escape the consequences after destroying the gauge instead of just sacrificing herself). But I guess we can't have solutions quite that convenient. And in fact, she did use her teleportation ability to escape the mansion in the end, after the other Cures had shown up to try and rescue her (and give her some words of encouragement in the process).

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this episode, though, was that there was no return to the status quo at the end -
in breaking out of the mansion, Setsuna also shattered the dimensional pocket it was hiding in, so the Cures are now ready to mount a full-on attack and try to destroy the Misery Gauge as a team!
Fuck yeah! Though
it does look like Northa has some more nasty traps waiting for them...
 
N

Narag

Member
Space Dandy 7

NwQi7Jbl.png
Click to expand...

Better than Redline.

Were those eyecatches homages to older shows?
 
M

MikeHattsu

Member
Jexhius said:
Anyway, on a slight tangent, time to do some book pimping:

Anime A History
Click to expand...

Nice writeup. Might get this book.


firehawk12 said:
I'm a bit disappointed that Mai Mai Miracle backers chose the pamphlet over the special commentary by the author of this book as the next stretch goal. I can almost see why, since nerds like swag, but it is a bit of a missed opportunity.
Click to expand...

I voted for the commentary at least. Pamphlet is fine with me too though.
 
A

astrogamer

Member
Nobunagun 7
A very military savvy show. The spirited nobunagun personality is a lot of fun to see still. Galileo also makes the show very fun.
 
B

BGBW

Maturity, bitches.
I bet all those BBC newsreporters who have had to spent this week wadding through waters wished there was a British movement like Pixiv so they could at least get a silly doodle at the end of it.
 
N

Nordicus

Member
Alright, so onward with Haibane Renmei

Episode 3 - Temple, Communicator, Pancakes

Reki's acting strange again, I wonder if her current painting might be a clue when it's revealed.

So now Rakka got the book that allows her to do transactions in that weird way specifically meant for Haibane. The visit to the temple to get that had this very uncomfortable atmosphere.
You can't even speak when spoken to, you have to communicate through bells attached to your wings? It begs the question what kind of hold Haibane Renmei and Toga have on the surrounding population and how they keep it.

Hikari seems rather unaffected by their pressure though.
She has some real balls to use the church's halo carrying tool to make donuts in the bakery she works at.

Crows again.

Episode 4 - Trash Day, Clocktower, Birds Flying Over the Walls

Is this gonna build up to be an anime adaptation of The Birds? Except with just a legion of CorvoSols screaming over Arjuna's bullshit?

Anyways, Kana has a rather interesting job, being a clocksmith. However, her being so content with her job might've caused Rakka to become a bit more insecure and stressed since she's no clue what she's going to do with her own life. I think there might reason to believe she won't get a job at all actually, at least in this town.

ojMFTMn.jpg

Titans, my dear.
Click to expand...

She keeps looking at the birds with such envy.

Humans apparently can't mess with Haibanes' lives too much, which Kana's master says is the reason that he won't fix their clocktower. The housemother didn't have wings, right? Was she assigned there by Haibane Renmei as a necessity to keep this small community running with so many kids and few adults?
 
M

madp

The Light of El Cantare
Jexhius said:
Anyway, on a slight tangent, time to do some book pimping:

Anime A History
Click to expand...

Well, you've certainly sold me on the book at some point. That is a really unexpected choice of cover given that this is an academic text spanning the entire history of the medium, though. I suppose that you have to get people to read your book somehow.
 
C

cnet128

Banned
Fresh Precure! 43

Soyeah, this really was practically series finale material already. Northa certainly did have a lot of traps prepared.

First she used
a reverse-Lotus Eater Machine, trying to crush the Cures' spirits by trapping them each in illusions of the worlds they least wanted to see. This one was simple enough to escape in traditional Lotus Eater Machine fashion, by recognising that these worlds weren't real and rejecting them.

Then there was
a more insidious illusion which appeared to trap each of the Cures individually in a world with a giant monster to defeat, but the monsters were actually their fellow Cures, making them come dangerously close to destroying each other. They managed to escape this one thanks to Chiffon sensing their plight and bringing them back to their senses.

Finally,
Northa encased the Misery Gauge itself in a crazy huge Sorewatase. Thankfully, size isn't everything, and once the Cures had overcome its attacks through the force of their desire to protect Chiffon, a standard Lucky Clover Grand Finale finisher was enough to take it down. (I noticed that they streamlined the animation for that finisher quite a bit here, cutting out all the extraneous shots of the clover disc flying through the air and of the Cures landing on it at the end, for a much slicker-feeling finisher overall.)

And then it turned out that
even destroying the Gauge was playing straight into Northa's hands, since the released energy would rain down upon the world and cause disaster. Thanks to some initiative from Chiffon, though, the Cures managed to destroy even the misery energy itself and save the day!

So yeah, a pretty intense sequence of challenges, and the Cures pretty much managed to come out victorious over it all and achieve their goal, which is an impressive feat at this stage in the series! But of course, there are still seven episodes to go, so there had to be one sign of trouble left in the midst of the glorious victory. In this case, it was
a mysterious shining crystal that emerged from Chiffon after the misery was destroyed, unnoticed by the Cures, which Northa seized for herself.
A little ominous, to be sure...

Incidentally, perhaps the best part of the episode happened parallel to the Cures' own struggles - while the Cures were trapped in one of Northa's challenges, Northa and Wester had a thrilling battle with Tart and Chiffon, of all people, in which the two mascots basically ran rings around the enemy bigshots. It was hilarious. Chiffon really is Best Mascot Ever.
 
G

Gazoinks

Member
Admiral Woofington said:
C3yjOdh.gif
Click to expand...

My main issue with Bebop is that I feel like it takes a while to ramp up. The first half wasn't bad or anything, but it took till the second half for me to feel like the show was really delivering on the hype. Still a great show, and when it gets great it gets greeeeeeat (the final episode! The feels!), it just doesn't quite crack my super exclusive top anime list. :p

Except Tank! That's awesome from episode one.
 
N

nintendoman58

Member
GaoGaiGar - 26

The Zonderians are planning something called the Zero Operation? Aw no, this is gonna be Code Geass R2 all over again!

Ok, it's obviously not going to be that way (at least I hope not) but how can I not make that reference? Lol.
 
F

firehawk12

Subete no aware
wqImimrl.jpg


You know, Ruri in Nisekoi would be a god-tier character if it weren't for the fact that I know the manga apparently doesn't go anywhere. lol
 
G

Gazoinks

Member
firehawk12 said:
wqImimrl.jpg


You know, Ruri in Nisekoi would be a god-tier character if it weren't for the fact that I know the manga apparently doesn't go anywhere. lol
Click to expand...

She's the only person who has motivation to make things happen and isn't incredibly thick.

So of course she's a side character. :p
 
D

Deputy Dangle

Member
Tenchi Muyo Ryo-Ohki - 1-2
ixhaGRFge6w6Z.PNG
Click to expand...

This sure has been fun to revisit after so many years. My memories of what aired on Toonami are vague when it comes to the story, but the characters are just as charming as I remember. Their english voices are practically ingrained into my brain too, so I thought it would be fun to try it out subbed for the first time. I loooove Ai Orikasa as Ryoko so far. Everyone else has sounded surprisingly similar to their english counterparts.

Coming back to this almost fresh, I like that it goes straight into introducing Tenchi and Ryoko's dynamic very early with little setup prior. Plenty of silly faces ensued.
 
M

Midonin

Member
Wizard Barristers 06

I have a weakness for toku homages, even in stage show form, so having Cecil and Tsunomi spend a good portion of the episode in costume (though it's less of a Sentai costume and more of a something else), plus another giant robot fight, means I'm okay with it. Even if it's self-imposed, seeing an episode where the heroine tries to get by without using her special powers can make for a good one-off. I've seen some posts on various Japanese blogs suggesting Moyoyon may be a spy, and the whole bullet thing and that expression on her face at the end certainly don't hurt the theory.

Next week: Canadia!
 
S

Shergal

Member
Space Dandy 7 sub
I'm making a different post because it honestly felt like a different episode. The race caster was amazing, lol. UNBELIEVABLE!

Besides, the fucking eyecatches were insane this week. Like 10 of them, and very creative. Hell, the final "Dandy" of the episode even feels funnier because of all the repetition, it actually feels kinda in sync with the eyecatch overuse. Prince was infinitely more fabulous as well.

I enjoyed the dub anyway because animation and stuff, but this episode is 100 times better with the original voices.
 
Jex

Jex

Member
Shergal said:
Space Dandy 7 sub
I'm making a different post because it honestly felt like a different episode. The race caster was amazing, lol. UNBELIEVABLE!

Besides, the fucking eyecatches were insane this week. Like 10 of them, and very creative. Hell, the final "Dandy" of the episode even feels funnier because of all the repetition, it actually feels kinda in sync with the eyecatch overuse. Prince was infinitely more fabulous as well.

I enjoyed the dub anyway because animation and stuff, but this episode is 100 times better with the original voices.
Click to expand...

So what you're really saying is that dub fans are dummies, right?
 
A

Articalys

Member
Noragami 7

That scene
in the shop with Yukine being accused of stealing money
was great. You could really feel the tension hanging in the air.

Guess they're going to be moving to original material from here on out?
 
M

Mature

Member
Jexhius said:
Anyway, on a slight tangent, time to do some book pimping:

Anime A History

41bktup9tdl._sy445_hle3w.jpg


So I mentioned this briefly when I first got my hands on it a couple of months ago but now that I've delved a lot deeper into the text I have more to say about it. In the English language world there honestly aren't that many academic/factual books about anime that are really worth your time. If you do a little bit of research you can find articles and essays here are there which are pretty good but, by and large, most of the work you find is really just a collection of disparate essays which are all arguing for their pet theory about this or that e.g. female identity in Utena.

What makes Jonathan Clements Anime A History different is that it's actually a scarily thorough scholarly work of history that devoted to the entire field of anime. Not only has Clements read the English sources, or Japanese translations of the Japanese book, but he can read all the native original Japanese sources too. He's intimately familiar with the entirety of the scholarship in the field and he does a great job in pulling it all together. Not only does he take all these varying sources and compile them but he examines them critically, pointing out where autobiographies make no sense and where people being interviewed have clearly got their facts wrong. It's thorough and comprehensive in a way that nearly every other book I've read on the subject isn't.

Probably the most interesting part of the book for anyone interested in the history of anime is the section that focuses on 'early anime' e.g. anything pre-1964 Astro Boy. Now, I imagine most people with an interest in the subject are well aware that there were anime works pre-1964 but I really hadn't grasped just how much anime had been produced in that period. To give you an idea, we don't get to Astroy Boy till 1964 and therefore over 100 pages of the book deal with anime before that period.

What I really about the text is that you're not just getting a history of anime but you're learning about the history early 20th Century Japan as well as the earliest days of film both in Japan and elsewhere. Here's a few interesting extracts:

On Moral Panic

"The incorporation of cinema and cartoons as mere elements within the wider field of sideshow entertainment seemed to persist until 1911, when cinema itself was foregrounded as the focus of a new moral panic, in the wake of an allegedly harmful foreign import that glorified the activities of a live-action French master-theif. Ji-Go-Ma (1911, Zigomar)...Zigomar was soon followed by it's French sequels, and by several Japanese works that purported to be continuations. To the horror of the Ministry of Education, Japanese children were reported 'playing' games in which they and their friends imitated the French criminals. Inevitably, newspaper reports began to associate juvenile delinquents with the film assigning the name 'Zigomar gangs' to disaffected youth...by 1912 newspaper were suggesting that Zigomar was merely one of several dangerously influential narratives consumed by impressionable youth and that the nature of film itself made cinema a potentially dangerous and subversive blight on society."

There's a later section that deals with secret anime produced by government as instructional tools for war and later in that chapter:

On Fantasia

"In 1941, a dozen men assembled in a private Tokyo screening room. The select group had been called together to see an item that had been seized in the South Pacific by a Japanese navy patrol boat before the official outbreak of hostilities. Hidden in the hold of a raided American transport ship, a number of canisters of film had been brought back to Japan for inspection, and then prepared for a viewing.

The film was Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940), screened in secret so that the animators of wartime Japan could know their enemy. Fantasia itself would not be distributed in Japanese cinemas until 1955, but had a powerful effect on its tiny, invited audience. Ushio Soji, then working as animator under his real name of Sagisu Tomino, sat in the dark and wept at the finale...we only know this because it his account of the screening some sixty-six years later that confirms it...it was show only to the topmost animation directors."
Click to expand...
Thanks for the write-up, sounds like I need to pick this up.
 
N

nintendoman58

Member
GaoGaiGar - 27

Well, now that the Zonderians are out of Zonder metals, the only logical thing for them to do is to well, turn Tokyo into a giant Zonder Metal Plant.

Lol at the song. If the song in this episode doesn't scream "Power Rangers" to you, then I don't know what will.

So now we're going to see the Zonderians in some mecha forms. Pizza's looks awesome, but Penchinon still looks ugly as hell. Seriously, this villain's human form looks like Hayate from Nanoha if she got infected with some kind of zombie virus.
 
S

Shard

XBLAnnoyance
Burn Up Excess Episode 1:

Well, I am in the mood for something less then highbrow intellectual and this certainly fit the bill and then some. Truly an utterly brainless anime and it seems to be damn proud of it, yet I find myself rather enjoying it, well, for the most part, I get the feeling I am going to want Rio to be thrown into a lake sooner rather then later. There is a certain ineffable quality here that is making sort of fun to watch, maybe it is because it is a relic of a bygone era, I am unsure at this point.
 
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