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Winter Anime 2016 |OT| Celebrating the New Year and PSO2's release in the west!
- Thread starter BGBW
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Too long.
Still read.
This charge that scriptwriters have less influence on how their characters act or at how "dramatic situations develop" then animators seems silly to me. It is the script that at the fundamental level decides what even will be drawn. Sure it can be drawn as an offmodel still or or a superfluid 65 frames per milisecond sequence but the subject matter has been already decided by the script.
Ditto about the writing quality in anime quality.
Fate Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works and One Punch Man are your best bets if you want good looking action from 2015. Yoru no Yatterman has a number of well animated scenes.
Neither of the above is a very good show but if you went through ~20 episodes of latest Naruto filler ...
Teekyu latter half S4
Teekyu S5
A bit of a break from the shows seems to have done me good as I enjoyed those more than I did the first half of S4. But I really feel this would work better if they calmed down the pace a bit. Keeping track of the subs is Tatami Galaxy 01 levels of pain in the butt sometimes.
Wrong. 2015 had Fafner Exodus. If you're looking for a great mech show, look no further.
I'll just paste my blurb from the AOTY thread here:
"The true AOTY that no one watched, because it requires viewing of a 2004 show, a 2005 OVA and a 2010 movie. But its absolutely worth it! Fafner Exodus is beautiful to look at, has a stellar soundtrack, a large cast of likeable and well-developed characters, crazy mech action, hard-hitting deaths, a truckload of emotional moments and more. If you're going to start with the 2004 series, let me just warn you that the first half can be quite slow, but it really takes off once the second half kicks in and from then on it just becomes a non-stop ride of amazing you wish would never end."
So yeah, start with the 2004 show and work your way onwards if you're interested. but let me just warn you again, that the first half of the 2004 show can be a bumpy ride. I wouldn't really say it's bad, just slow and deliberately obtuse, but it's worth it.
I'll second One Punch Man and Ushio and Tora, though.
Heavy Object probably also qualifies for both action and mecha. It's still ongoing currently and it's been a consistently entertaining ride from the beginning.
Cornbread78
Member
Dedication Through Light
Member
Baroquemantic
Member
DanMachi 8
Yoooo, that fight was amazing! Really great episode. Bell is an awesome protag.
DanMachi 9
That Argonaut skill seems like quite the ass pull, but whatever. I'll assume there are some drawbacks. Blacksmith dude is pretty cool.
DanMachi 10
Hmmm, so it does seem like Argonaut takes a toll on Bell.
DanMachi 11
This show is so good. I can't stop watching.
Yo that Goliath looked very similar to ol buddy from Attack on Titan.
Yoooo, that fight was amazing! Really great episode. Bell is an awesome protag.
DanMachi 9
That Argonaut skill seems like quite the ass pull, but whatever. I'll assume there are some drawbacks. Blacksmith dude is pretty cool.
DanMachi 10
Hmmm, so it does seem like Argonaut takes a toll on Bell.
DanMachi 11
This show is so good. I can't stop watching.
Yo that Goliath looked very similar to ol buddy from Attack on Titan.
First thing I learned about when I started to post in here, DTL has an interesting taste to say the least and to remember that when he recommends shows.
Same
hosannainexcelsis
Member
I often disagree with you, but I do agree here to the extent that I think film and television, both live-action and especially animation, are composite mediums where their constituent parts need to be judged as to how they work together to create a whole. Neither animation nor writing (nor direction, voice acting, music, color design, background art design, character design, etc., etc.) are unimportant and they all have something to contribute positively or negatively to the overall artwork.
I'm not sure if tamerlane would essentially disagree with that, though I do find that he tends to focus on animation to the exclusion of all other elements a bit too much for my tastes. At any rate, a few specific comments on the linked article.
I would hesitate to use the word "animation" to describe a series of stills, because that seems dangerously close to eliminating the distinction between character animation and character art and thus needlessly obscuring the use of words. I like a good picture drama, such as the recent Tabi Machi Late Show, but I would also describe that sort of thing as having minimal to no animation - which doesn't have to be a problem depending on how it's executed, but is still a factor to be considered. But I agree (in opposition to some Western animators and anime fans) that framerate is not the primary factor in determining whether animation is good or not. A segment of animation can be very fluid and yet still be a failure in context, as in the infamous Nanoha breakfast scene by Kou Yoshinari or this nonsensical Nisemonogatari cut (slight NSFW warning) by Gen'ichirou Abe.
I mean, yes, this is an obvious point that can go overlooked. Animation is not a garnish on top of everything else. But neither is everything else the garnish for animation. There are animated works with unpolished or mediocre animation that I still appreciate because of everything else they bring to the table, just as there are live-action works with unexceptional direction and cinematography that I appreciate because of everything else they bring to the table.
This is totally a problem, and still unfortunately is (note recent complaints about Space Dandy animation in this very thread). Demanding that animation stay absolutely consistent in a work with no stylistic deviations is something that really irks me, because one of the things I most enjoy about anime is the variety that an animator like Shinya Ohira brings to the scenes he works on. (Of course, a director has to take into account the context of scenes and assign animators intelligently to them, but that's a different matter.)
This is unnecessarily pedantic. A book doesn't cease to be written when it's consumed in the form of an audiobook with someone speaking the text out loud. Spoken text or written text, it's still text. Even stage directions in a play are still writing.
I agree that writing is generally speaking the weakest link in anime, but the latter half of this sentence is so dogmatic that it ceases to be true. I don't really consider the writing in, say, Anne of Green Gables or Wolf's Rain or Eccentric Family to be "formulaic, embarassing, and shallow". If writing in anime really was entirely as bad as that, there's no way I would still be interested in it at all. Of course, looking at all writing and saying "Well, it's still not as good as Shakespeare" - or, for that matter, looking at all film direction and saying "Well, it's still not as good as Tarkovsky (or fill in your favorite film director here)" is missing the point. I don't look at all music and go "It doesn't match Bach's mastery of counterpoint; why even bother?" Every work of art has its own goals that it's trying to accomplish, and needs to be judged on how well it accomplishes those goals (and you can also throw in whether such goals are worthwhile in some cases), not on whether it "matches up" to a particular great artist of the past.
I somewhat agree with the criticism of Legend of the Galactic Heroes, in that greater refinement in direction and animation would certainly enhance the work. You can just look at the film Overture to a New War to see what benefits a visually strong treatment of the material brings. But I wouldn't be so dismissive of it either. Some of its writing is actually quite weak, most notably the cartoonish portrayal of the Earth Cult, but some is quite good; I like the portrayal of a character such as Yang. There are real merits to the work that aren't merely imagined by stupid uneducated viewers. Speaking of which:
This is just pointlessly insulting, and I do not see the grounds for or the purpose of such a statement.
I have no problem with kids' anime; I really appreciate something like Jewelpet Kira Deco. But I do value maturity in art - genuine maturity, not the silly "M for Mature" idea that some people have when they extol hyper-violent, hyper-sexual OVAs of the 1980s and 90s as the ideal, but a certain seriousness with which an artist approaches their craft and tells whatever it is they want to tell. If a work relies too heavily on crudeness, such as Imaishi's Panty and Stocking, I'm not going to appreciate it no matter what medium it's in. There is material such as very base toilet humor that is simply unworthy of attention, no matter how much effort went into creating it.
But I do partially agree with the sentiment to the extent that I don't give a work points merely for having unusual or particularly appealing subject matter; it also has to execute that subject matter in a well-considered fashion. Hyouge Mono is a treatment of a really fascinating niche subject in Japanese history, but the sound direction of its anime is so abysmal that it's unwatchable.
Anyway, I do appreciate the seriousness with which tamerlane approaches this subject and I certainly appreciate the sakuga fandom. Yuyucow's articles on ANN dealing with animation and exposing a wide audience to its nuances - that's something I wholeheartedly applaud.
SliceSabre
Banned
I've got to be one of the first testers.
Disappointed in you for not posting Miku Maekawa. You're losing your touch.So today is Cat Day because 22/2 can be read as nyan nyan nyan.
hosannainexcelsis
Member
Because it is disgusting and immoral.
Perhaps "attention" was the wrong word to use there though; "praise" might be a better substitute.
nintendoman58
Member
PdotMichael
Banned
I'm still not sure how GuP became part of the most successful movies based on a night anime.
We can only hope that Japan will realize that tanks are so much better than silly mechas.
We can only hope that Japan will realize that tanks are so much better than silly mechas.
ColossalLazy
Member
NaDannMaGoGo
Member
Oh god, the damn von Stroheim theme music in JoJo... I can't even. Glorious.
Cornbread78
Member
huh, say what?
Yup, nothing wrong with a little childish humor. I'll never be too highbrow/mature not to laugh
Dedication Through Light
Member
Ace of Diamond Second Season Episode 46
Typical mid game 6th inning stalemate. Interesting stuff occasionally especially the montage when Sawamura was pitching as well as Miyuki's injury report.
Hype for the next episode, expecting big things.
Typical mid game 6th inning stalemate. Interesting stuff occasionally especially the montage when Sawamura was pitching as well as Miyuki's injury report.
Hype for the next episode, expecting big things.
IBM I guess
IBM maybe
hosannainexcelsis
Member
I believe in the power of art to act for good or ill. Too much consumption of crude content can diminish us morally and psychologically, causing us to view ourselves and others as less than human, bodies without souls that can be used or abused as whimsy takes us. In the same way, I find that particularly mean-spirited humor, such as that exhibited in Azazel-san, can be harmful in the way it trains our thinking to be disparaging and dismissive of others. Everyone has to use a certain amount of caution in the media they consume. This is one reason, for instance, that I limit my consumption of certain kinds of atonal music, because I find they express negative emotions that can amplify my own worst psychological tendencies.
That's a very interesting and well written argument. Something I have observed as well but could never put in words precisely.
Key part here is "too much consumption" though. I don't believe that it should be cut off entirely and for everyone from an artistic perspective. It's up to the 'consumer' of the work.
The only types of media I could actively consider 'immoral' though are things that actively cause harm in or during its production. Harm derived from interpretation is too fuzzy an area for me to ascribe immorality to (with the possible exception of media with clear authorial intent such as actively advocating or encouraging acts I consider immoral, such as genocide or sexual assault, etc - although, of course, determining what is an isn't 'clear authorial intent' is itself fuzzy. But I digress.).
I feel like I should ask what your definition of "toilet humor" is! Because I agree with what you're saying here re: stuff like sexism or racism or other forms of bigotry. I feel I'm able to enjoy works of art that contain these things while also criticizing the stuff I don't think is good (see my frequent complaints about the rampant sexism in anime), but I can totally empathize with someone wanting to limit their consumption of such content. Besides, I have my limits, too.
...But when I think toilet humor I literally think just, like, dumb gross fart jokes or poop jokes or whatever. Probably sex jokes, too, but sex jokes aren't inherently some form of bigotry (though they are hurtful or harmful more often than they should be).
I pretty much vehemently disagree with your last point, though. I think there's value in embracing negativity every now and then, as long as we're cognizant of what we're doing. Nobody is positive and happy 100% of the time, and sometimes absorbing "negative" art can help me, personally, vent my frustrations or anger or sadness. But, hey, to each their own. Everybody's different.
Wait I always thought you were either the action of a duck rolling, or a Peking duck style roll. Which is it?
hosannainexcelsis
Member
Certainly, that is why I was careful to include qualifiers such as "too much" and "can" instead of "will". People are different and what is harmful to one person may not be to another.
Note also that I included the qualifier of "very base" in my original post. I do not mean to condemn toilet humor as a whole (though I tend not to be fond of it in general), but merely when it becomes too exaggerated and emphasized. Sex and Violence with Machspeed, as well as the first episode of Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, would be perfect examples of the sort of thing I am talking about.
Sorry if I was unclear, but I'm not saying that expressing negative emotions is bad in itself. In fact, I do find too much positivity, when expressed superficially, grating as well. That is my main problem with Aria the Animation, in which it feels like any sad or painful emotions have been forcefully eradicated and the world feels maudlin and cheaply sentimental to an insulting degree. I am a big fan of Flowers of Evil, an anime which showcases ugliness both visually and psychologically. But I do think one has to be careful about "embracing" negativity. As someone who has struggled with depression for most of my life, there are times when I've watched/listened/read things that have increased my depression and encouraged my reliance on self-destructive thinking patterns. On the other hand, there have been times where I've experienced some work of art that has helped lift me out of depression, pulling me out of myself and causing me to become aware of the beauty in the world and people around me. That is why I believe so strongly in the power of art, and believe that it should not be wielded without consideration of its potential impact on its audience.
striferser
Huge Nickleback Fan
Durarara x2 ketsu 31
I love it when Shizuo play big part in it. It's been too long!
Shizuo getting hit by a bulldozer and he shrug it off like it's nothing.
I guess this is it for Shizuo and Izaya, no more kidding around. They both ready to kill each other.
I love it when Shizuo play big part in it. It's been too long!
Shizuo getting hit by a bulldozer and he shrug it off like it's nothing.
I guess this is it for Shizuo and Izaya, no more kidding around. They both ready to kill each other.
But Gintama exists. It elevates toilet humor to new heights.
Praise be.
Praise thy lord and saviour Sorachi-san!
I would disagree with Aria not having any sad moments at least, although not sad to a dark or depressing degree, they merely converge to a happy ending and at times even moving but I get the gist of what you are trying to say.
I really don't mind Aria for that. It's one of the reasons I always savor it for when I'm most stressed out, its world is not realistic but I thought that's alright. It's one extreme and the show I believe is self aware about that. You do frequently hear the words "Embarrassing remarks are not allowed" and for good reason, it's when Akari crosses the line of being of being happy to mushy.
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