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What are you watching right now? Why? (please read 1st post)


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Tuor_of_Gondolin



Joined: 20 Apr 2009
Posts: 3524
Location: Bellevue, WA
PostPosted: Mon Aug 29, 2011 9:48 am Reply with quote
PetrifiedJello,

I, too, just finished watching Spice and Wolf II, though my take on it was somewhat different than your own.

So, like with Season 1, there are two stories being told in this series. The first corresponds to the 3rd light novel; I'm not sure which novel, if any, the latter arc was taken from.

I had already read light novel story for the frist arc, so I knew what to expect from it, and it delivered well (though for some reason it felt sort of short). In this arc, we see Lawerence finally forced to come to terms with how he feels about Holo. Furthermore, he has to exert a lot of inner strength to show that he really does care about her, and he has to do it all on his own (due to him misunderstanding her actions). I thought this was an excellent arc and really answered Holo's question to Lawerence, "What am I to you?"

The second arc I was more ambivilant towards. In some ways, it did seem like a furthering of ther their relationship, but it felt... edgier. I think, PetrifiedJello, that what may have been part of your issue is that their relationship by this point is a lot further along than it was in the original two stories. Holo even comments about this. Also, *Holo* is having to come to terms with her relationship with Lawerence. Her reoccurring dream is an indicator of this: she is afraid to love someone who will be gone after such a brief time (to her). This is also the first time where Lawerence definitely thinks of her in a sexual light (though this is relatively subtly handled). In other words, by this point in their relationship, it had to either move to full and eplicit commitment from which there can be no turning back, or die. At the end of the series, we see which happens.

I'm not sure why you're being so harsh with Lawerence. In the second arc, he touched base with Holo every time he made a decision. And in the end, he *had* his shop, because Holo had essentially told him that it didn't matter what he did, their time together was over so he might as well take it. And he *still* returned it once he saw what he needed to do and how he could stay with Holo. I was happy with how the arc ended, even though it's tone wasn't as light-hearted as the first season.

I rated this series as Excellent. It's a rare anime series that actually deals with a relationship in such an adult manner.
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PetrifiedJello



Joined: 11 Mar 2009
Posts: 3782
PostPosted: Mon Aug 29, 2011 1:04 pm Reply with quote
Tuor_of_Gondolin,

I don't disagree with your position, but the fact remains all these issues were brought to light thanks to the greed of Lawrence. It's as though the man has no common sense. When Holo first proposed the question to him, it took the events which followed before he could even answer.

Again, the events which were at the expense of everyone else around him, even if it were to answer the question.

Two wrongs don't make a right and under no circumstance is it okay to spoiler[crash a stock market] just because he couldn't immediately answer "What am I to you?"

I'll re-iterate the show wasn't bad, but I certainly can't agree it was excellent. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree and that's okay.

Now, on a comical note: I keep reading your username as "Tour of Gondola". Don't know why, but I can't help but think you need to say something sappy.
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Tuor_of_Gondolin



Joined: 20 Apr 2009
Posts: 3524
Location: Bellevue, WA
PostPosted: Mon Aug 29, 2011 3:22 pm Reply with quote
PetrifiedJello,

I think reading the light novel would help as it better shows Lawerence's thoughts and feelings during this time. One of the mistakes I think Lawerence made was that he took Holo for granted, in addition to the other failings he mea culpa'ed to at the end of the arc.

You're right: Lawerence couldn't answer Holo's question. He is a travelling merchant. His mind is (or was) locked on thoughts of risk and profit, of goods and fostering connections. Remember what his merchant friend said to him about how, when Lawerence first arrived, Lawerence wouldn't have thought of him as a friend, but merely a contact, but that Lawerence had changed and now Lawerence *did* regard him as a friend. This truth surprised Lawerence. Lawerence was changing, and it was Holo and his feelings for her that was changing him. This is one of the main themes of this arc.

As for "crashing the market". This is a bit like in the movie "Trading Places". It's not like he crashed the *whole* market, but only the one item (Pyrite), which was going to come down *anyway* (and hard). The question wasn't whether it was going to happen, but *when*. Also notice how wheat buyers weren't buying their wheat because of the *insane* value placed on Pyrite, which itself had no real use. The wheat would *have* to be purchased eventually or there'd be a lot of starving people later on. At any rate, much of the increase in value of Pyrite was artificially generated by the rival merchant kid in order to obtain the funds needed to buy out Holo's supposed debt. So both the increase *and* the decrease were through market manipulation.

When Lawerence's friend explained to him why he couldn't help Lawerence crash the market (talking about how he was a town merchant, not a travelling one), Lawerence didn't argue with him; it wasn't something Lawerence had considered before, and in doing so, he agreed that it wasn't something he could ask his friend to do.

Sappy, huh? Hmm.... I would endure a thousand agonies, each more painful than the one before, if only to see the sunlight in your hair again, or hear a single word from your lips. <-- Sappy!
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Cam0



Joined: 13 Dec 2009
Posts: 4884
PostPosted: Mon Aug 29, 2011 5:51 pm Reply with quote
Watching Da Capo Second Season right now and it's been decent mostly. The filler episodes, like Aisia and Junichi getting stuck into a garbage truck are boring, but it's pretty good sometimes aswell. I really liked how in the last few episodes I saw now, they sort of made Nemu seem like a villain. Unlike in many other animes where a girl in Kotoris position turns into a bitch, Kotori keeps her cool. Kotori is definitely my favourite character here, which is weird since she didn't really stand out in the first season.

I'm at episode 15 right now, and expecting more fillers. The opening and ending themes are nothing to behold, there aren't any good soundtracks and the funny parts aren't funny most of the time. I'm guessing it's going to be like this all the way through, a kind of decent and a bit sweet experience.
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wandering-dreamer



Joined: 21 Jan 2008
Posts: 1733
PostPosted: Mon Aug 29, 2011 9:17 pm Reply with quote
Tuor_of_Gondolin wrote:
So, like with Season 1, there are two stories being told in this series. The first corresponds to the 3rd light novel; I'm not sure which novel, if any, the latter arc was taken from.

The second story came from volume five, for some reason the anime decided to either skip volume four or to compress it into a one episode OVA, I can't recall which off the top of my head.

I'm still working my way through Trigun and still not loving it as much as I should and that's not the only show right now I'm not enjoying as much as I hoped. I liked how Baka to Test 2 started off but after spending two or three episodes just trying to sneak into the girl's bathroom the show is trying my patience, thankfully it looks like that arc is over and maybe they'll get back to having ridiculous battles at school. And I've stalled on Nura 2, while the pacing is certainly better this season it's just not grabbing my attention the way the manga did when I read it. Although I should probably be glad that I'm starting to drop some shows, I have just so many to watch right and not quite enough time for them all (especially with Doctor Who starting back up, that's the time equivalent of watching two episodes of anime!).
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EmbraceMe



Joined: 17 Dec 2010
Posts: 2013
Location: Growing old and jaded.
PostPosted: Tue Aug 30, 2011 2:17 pm Reply with quote
I did a rewatch of Amagami SS, well, only 3 arcs - The Haruka Morishima, Ai Nanasaki, and Tsukasa Ayatsuji arcs. I still like them but I think I fell in love with Tsukasa. I couldn't sleep well after I rewatched it. I was probably thinking about her and my chest had sudden pains. It has to be love, it has to be. Too bad I'll never get any mutual feelings... but I really think I fell in love with her. My opinion remains the same about the show (arcs). They're beautiful! The girls are! I just wish reality could be as beautiful as this. But, yeah, I fell in love with Tsukasa. Such a wonderful feeling. *Smiles happily* Now, only for me to wait until this feeling is lost and I regress back into my pessimistic self.

I also finished watching Toward the Terra and I have many thoughts about this show but they contain spoilers. I'll write them out but they'll be disorganized.

WARNING: POSSIBILITY OF MANY SPOILERS
(I should use spoiler tags, but they'll be all over the place. I'll use them anyways...)

Terra_E a.k.a Toward the Terra actually made me think of several series while watching it. It seemed a like a mix of Macross Frontier and the Gundam 00 movie, and the setting felt dystopian which made me think of No. 6 despite little similarities. I do realize that this came out earlier than most of the mentioned shows but it really does has some similarities. Take the Macross Frontier factor of traveling to another galaxy or planet, the Gundam 00 factor of "understanding", and a dystopian government like No. 6, and you basically get Toward the Terra. It's not a bad thing but a good blend of ideas. I really enjoyed the show but the end didn't really impress me. Overall, I rated it a Very Good, but I'm unsure what I really felt about it. I was really close to rating it an Excellent or Masterpiece but a few things stopped me. The ending being the one thing that stopped me the most. I felt that after Jomyspoiler[reached Terra and died from battling Keith, they could have add a scene to show what happened to the rest of the crew. Yes, it's hinted that they live with humans, but a scene of that would had worked better. The scene of the reincarnated Keith and Jomy felt cheesy.] There were many characters and some of them were not fully developed or shown to have a great importance. Still, it was a great show. I liked most of the characters and the ones that were developed throughout the series were pretty nice characters. Although, Keith was hard to understand. I liked him at first, but I detested him as the series moved. There were a few times I shed tears, such as spoiler[Shiroe's death. I liked him as a character and was hoping for Jomy to save him.] Despite my wishes for that, the way they explained where Jomy was at the time was good. It was also heartbreaking to see the spoiler[Mu being annihilated. Even after they've settled on a planet to hide from humans, they were still chased by the Member's Elite. The rift between the old and new generation of Mus also create an intense feeling between both groups. Then there was the death of several Mus and the growth of the new generation. ] At first I didn't like Tony but as I learned a few things about him, I started to like his character.

So there you have my disorganized horrible written up analysis of my opinion of Toward the Terra. what
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Unicorn_Blade



Joined: 18 Jul 2010
Posts: 1151
Location: UK
PostPosted: Wed Aug 31, 2011 2:54 pm Reply with quote
I started watching Toward the Terra too. At first glance, I was surprised it was done in 2007, because from the art I would have judged 1997 or so- the character design reminded me strongly of Escaflowne, which is actually not a bad thing, but looks a bit dated. The original voice actors are not that great- somehow the voices totally do not match the 'facial expressions' and situations, but maybe if I turn down the volume it will be less apparent Very Happy Or Ill just get used to them.

On the bright side, so far it has been an enjoyable watch, so I will be definitely sticking to it. It made me think of Rahxephon somehow and and Crest of the Stars atmosphere-wise, that's just a general vibe the series gives.
It has been a while since I saw a good sci-fi anime not full of giant mechas and their teenage pilots, and who knows, maybe I just found one.
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Spastic Minnow
Bargain Hunter
Exempt from Grammar Rules


Joined: 02 May 2006
Posts: 4595
Location: Gainesville, FL
PostPosted: Sat Sep 03, 2011 5:32 pm Reply with quote
Just finished up Big Windup/Oofuri and am starting on the sequel. I'm a baseball fan and really like the way they follow almost every pitch and really get into the game.

But damn, Mihashi is supremely irritating. He is exactly like a rescued, formerly abused Cocker Spaniel some friends had. I spent years as a very frequent visitor, in fact I stayed at their house for three months once, I was nothing but nice to that dog and it NEVER warmed up to me, it cowered and hid every time it saw me. If I unintentionally surprised it - it would piss itself.

Mihashi is without a doubt the most pathetic wussy of a main character I have ever seen in an anime. He makes your typical milktoast of a harem lead, the guys who get beaten frequently for being "ecchi," look like a cigar chomping Cobra.

Obviously a big point of the series as a whole, as done in its manga, must be to show him gaining confidence and hopefully becoming a functioning human being who doesn't suffer a peptic ulcer in his teens, but in the meantime the show features an abused purse dog as its main character. And while his personaility quirks are occasionally funny (as intended), mostly you just want to smack some sense into him.
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Surrender Artist



Joined: 01 May 2011
Posts: 3264
Location: Pennsylvania, USA
PostPosted: Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:43 pm Reply with quote
I've watched several things since my last post in this thread, I just haven't found the will to write about them. I've been coming to understand my sense of taste, I suppose that's what it is, and found that while I can appreciate and sometimes desire things that are of a 'higher' appeal, it is for the most part pretty common. I don't have the lowest of floors, there are still a lot of things that I perceive as degrees of quality below what my values deem acceptable, but even so, it doesn't seem to take too much effort to entertain me. To engage me, however, is a different matter. Several of the things that I've watched have been plenty good as diversion for slightly longer than however long it took me to watch them, but but left little lingering interest and, as my several weeks of relieving silent should tell, don't inspire much of an opinion. I feel a little sick resorting to it, but the 'junk food' metaphor seems to apply, although it's more cheesesteaks and birch beer than hot pockets and coke. (I've never combined those two things, but I've had them separately, though not in a very long time, and the memories of both, especially hot pockets, are a little harrowing)

Anyway, in brief:

Kiddy Grade: I watched Kiddy Grade several weeks ago. This is a little bit significant as I had bought the first volume when it was released in 2004. I don't know what I was thinking as at the time it was ludicrous for me to consider buying an eight volume series at boom-era prices. What's more, the three episodes on that disc were just so unimpressive that I abandoned the series and even threw the volume that I had away. Seeing them again, the first three episodes are still unimpressive and not much of the first nine is very interesting. It gets much better after those nine, but seldom seemed really excellent. There are a lot of ideas and stories in it that could have been an very good series, but it never seemed to go beyond the north end of mediocre. I think that the biggest problems were that no dire loss or severe consequence was allowed to last. Sooner or later it would be reversed, undone or compensated. It's the storytelling equivalent of bumper bowling. The second problem was that the secondary cast wasn't given enough weight and detail. The basic elements of their personalities were shown and some detail given, but the series pulled away after doing just enough to identify a character as a distinct entity before either returning to the central pair, who are only adequately developed, or subsuming the secondary characters into the plot. I did appreciate that the story was pretty coherent and the universe even had some sense of reality; as though somebody had written the essential facts of who existed in it and how it worked. I also give credit for GOTT being a remarkably untortured acronym, although I'd wonder about the experience of any future Germans being told by the improbably buxom young woman with a cross-shaped 'window' in her blouse saying that she works for God. I enjoyed the series, but I didn't find all that much in it to latch on to.

The Tower of Druaga: The Aegis of Uruk and The Tower of Druaga: The Sword of Uruk: The first episode of this is a really funny parody of the dreariest familiar paths and conventions of fantasy stories and the fifth episode is a strange and absurd parody of arcade games, but the rest is a conventional fantasy story, the sometimes intruding parodic elements in most of the first half notwithstanding, that I thought was pretty well done. It's origins in a game and fantasy gaming are so transparent that I half suspect that it was part of the joke. All of the characters are identified with character classes and the accompanying well-defined roles in an adventuring party and the tower of the title is structured just like a video game setting or old-fashioned Dungeons & Dragons adventure. The series is playful with some of its familiar concepts; like the lightning mage who deploys his spells through the artifice of a set of gold clubs, replete with a hereditary indentured servant as a caddy. It handily meets the standard requirements for a simply entertaining series: the characters are easy to like, the plot is straightforward and holds together well and it all happily embraces the familiar. Maybe the first episode was as much a knowing wink as a story in its own right; a way to tell us that they knew that they weren't breaking any new ground, but that certain people could have a good, guiltily pleasurable time. While they aren't too comparable and I don't worry about comparison, I noticed that Tower of Druaga did better with its characters than Kiddy Grade and was more willing to let its miseries stick; it isn't a grim series, but when it dipped into darkness, not all of the lights came back on afterward. I also give credit to the quite good English dub, for making me care a little about its likeable familiar characters and for its 'house of seductive illusions' episode being surprisingly low key.

Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-Chan: I really liked Magical Witch Punie-chan; I liked this too, but I don't think that it's as good as that was. The series has a creepy-sounding plot involving lolicon, but the plot doesn't matter much and there isn't any real lolicon in the series. There is a nine-year old girl who wields a towel as a weapon and is rather blatantly sexualized, but... uh... there's no way out of this hole, but I swear that it isn't what it sounds like. I liked this series for both teasing moe by making its girls causes of pain and chaos rather than simpering sympathy sinks and for subverting the magical girlfriend scenario that I so loathe by having the magical girlfriend not merely be unwanted, but by having her repeatedly mangle and murder the unworthy milquetoast that she's hitched to. I've wanted to see that for so long, going so far as to fantasize about making a series about maid robots that spends its first episodes examining the depravity of their master-servant relationships, then suddenly contorts by having the maid robots murder their masters in flurries of unstoppable violence so vicious and gory that an eighties-era Shou Aikawa would be outraged before going on to subjugate humanity. Uhh... sorry, I turned off into a cul-de-sac there. Anyway, despite satisfying some of my discontents and being funny sometimes, I wasn't laughing all that often, even if I seldom stopped smiling, and the series doesn't really have too many jokes past 'Dokuro-chan thoughtlessly smashes Sakura into hamburger'. That's a good joke, but it doesn't have a great shelf life. It also doesn't in practice have much of a plot. This style of show doesn't avail itself well of elaborate storytelling, but there are details in the set-up of the series that aren't elaborated or followed up. It also veers into some very conventional fanservice, more than just joking would require, which, as always, seemed a bit distasteful to me. Still, I can't hate something about a cute angel smashing a bland schoolboy with a magical spiked club.

Not much steam left in the boiler and despite being in Pennsylvania, somehow I don't have any more coal. Maybe that's what I get for running on so much bituminous rather than good anthracite.

In very short then:

The Coyote Ragtime Show: It's pretty lousy. None of the characters are very good; the best one is a police inspector who is demoted to supporting player after the first episode and turns out to have been yearning for her quarry because she saw him surf a tsunami once. The rest of the characters either get lost in the suffer or are mostly vacuous archetypes. It also seems that in this universe, being a cyborg means that you can get beat up by a middle-aged man. It's supposed to be a heist film, but it isn't exciting enough and gets muddled up in the end.

Neo-Tokyo: This is a good short anthology. Rintaro's "Labyrinth Labyrinthos" is splendid to behold, but makes no sense. Yoshiaki Kawajiri's "The Running Man" is intense, cool-looking and thrilling, but doesn't have much within it, although it could be construed as having simple themes about obsession and becoming trapped in parts of one's identity. Katsuhiro Otomo's "The Order to Stop Construction" reminded me of "Cannon Fodder" from Memories in how it portrayed people (actually robots in this case) operating perpetually in a system regardless of its pointlessness and malfunctions, all the while keeping a pleasant sense of humor about itself. I like these short anthologies; I intend to find whatever happy few more there might be. (Genius Party has an uncertain reputation, but I'll probably give it a go)

Revolutionary Girl Utena "The Black Rose Saga": I'm still enjoying this series, although I am not and probably will never be truly enamored of it. The repetition in the structure of these episodes bothered me, but I enjoyed watching the series dig into the discontents, inadequacies and miseries of its new characters. I don't value symbolic analysis the way that I imagine the series biggest fans do, but I enjoyed the feeling of something underneath that the symbolism supplies. It informs the story without overrunning it. The closing two episodes were intriguingly bendy and twisty; Utena herself is still cool; the final shot made me all the more interested in Anthy, whose mystery is what pulls me most strongly to it. I'm becoming more accustomed to Kunihiko Ikuhara's sense of humor, especially in the infamous, shall we say, 'more cowbell' episode and the one about 'adult things'. Incidentally, does anybody else think that he looks a little bit like a Japanese Doc Hammer?

Well, now I'm out of things that I watched and trite, awkward metaphors, so now I just wait to pour a glass of scotch and watch Durarara!!*.

*rarararararara!!!!! (Just in case)
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Errinundra
Moderator


Joined: 14 Jun 2008
Posts: 6516
Location: Melbourne, Oz
PostPosted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 1:56 am Reply with quote
Eternal Family

Continuing my exploration of Koji Morimoto anime. In this short TV film dysfunctional family / TV reality show stars / experimental guinea pigs inadvertently escape from their hellish domestic bonds and terrorise a city before being re-captured and returned to the TV studio / laboratory. Happily, Koji Morimoto’s surrealist tendencies are harnessed into a semblance of coherence by the framing structure, although the obvious satire means that there is less of a sense of wonder compared with his best works. The breakneck pace, constant jump cuts, and sheer lunacy of the cast prevent things from getting bogged down and, in the end, there’s some solace to be gained from a family whose members have nothing in common but somehow survive together. Rating: good.

Time Stranger aka GoShogun: The Time Étranger

I watched this because of a recommendation from Surrender Artist in another thread and after reading Justin Sevakis’s Buried Treasure article.

Although it’s not a bad movie, I have to say I wasn’t strongly engaged by it. In fact, I have a serious philosophical reservation about what the anime represents. To make my point, it’s probably best to briefly outline the scenario without giving away the ending.

Remi is the only female representative of a long retired six-member mecha team that heroically saved the earth decades before. A car accident on the way to a reunion has left her comatose in hospital. While her comrades gather around her deathbed she dreams of a life and death event from her childhood and also of a surreal world in which she and her five friends are fated to die horribly within a few days – in her case only two. The parallels between the two dreams and her actual circumstances are obvious. Will her indomitable fighting spirit prevail? Will this be the final battle of a fading warrior?

My problem is that, regardless of the outcome, the film ends up being a paeon to militarism. If she lives, it’s because her warrior’s strength of will has overcome the greatest battle of her life; if she dies, and with the way the film approaches the crisis, then it becomes a romantic tribute to the soldier’s life.

War is the greatest wrong that humans do. In war, even the winners are losers. It is thanks to a misguided faith in militarism that we have the messes of Iraq and Afghanistan. America spends as much on the military as the rest of the world put together. If it had a more realistic approach, it could balance its budget. Anime like Time Stranger promote the myth that militarism is a genuine solution to the problems of the world. Give me Martian Successor Nadesico or Irresponsible Captain Tylor any day.

Compounding the problems, Time Stranger has scenes where the six friends massacre hundreds of single-minded Islamic looking adversaries. Due to the absence of any qualifying point of view, the viewer can only accept what is happening at face value – it’s presented as exciting and adventurous, even fun.

My attitude may seem odd, given that I’m a regular booster for Girls with Guns anime. Yes, I’ll admit there is some doublethink going on here, but the portrayal of violence in entertainment, in itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. More important is what underlying belief system is being suggested or explored. Anime like Noir or Kite come from a long Film Noir tradition, where the viewer is initially detached from the protagonists, fully understanding that everyone within the tale is essentially compromised and where everyone is ruined by violence. What’s more, the very image of a woman with a pistol undermines the concept of violence as a form of expression.

This idea segues nicely back to Time Stranger. Its greatest strength - Remi - ties it to the Girls with Guns genre, for she is, after all, a woman with a gun. Yet she is an oddly masculine woman, for all her appeal. The men of the film, for their part, rarely manage to be more than their different manifestations of macho stereotypes, from samurai to soldier, from politician to businessman. What makes each of them human, thankfully, is their shared love and respect for Remi.

On a different tack, I was probably unlucky watching this after a slew of Koji Morimoto films. With his wondrously magnificent imagery fresh in my mind, the surreal segments of Time Stranger came across as visually mundane.

Rating: so-so.


Last edited by Errinundra on Thu Sep 08, 2011 10:15 am; edited 3 times in total
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EricDent



Joined: 28 May 2008
Posts: 997
Location: Georgetown, TX
PostPosted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 2:37 am Reply with quote
I am going back through the Skayers seasons again.

Slayers was a bit more serious, and though it had an OK ending.
Introducing a particular weapon in almost the last episode seemed a bit Deus Ex Machina to me.

Slayers Next starts silly and stays that way until almost the end of the season. This had a more realistic ending than the last season.

Will be watching Try next, which is perhaps the oddest season of them all. Of course the next "2" seasons (Evolution-R & Revolution) seem to pretend that Try even happened.
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Maken Buster



Joined: 30 Mar 2006
Posts: 104
PostPosted: Mon Sep 05, 2011 9:45 pm Reply with quote
I am currently watching Initial D: First Stage as I've always wanted to watch it but it always seemed to fall by the wayside for something else. Also, I'm in a bit of a car phase with my recent obsession over the Lamborghini Aventador.

Embarassed

I also watched MD Geist & MD Geist II just to see if it they were really that bad. The first one I didn't mind, although the animation towards the end went south. But the sequel really is terrible ... perhaps the worst anime I've ever seen ... utterly pointless.
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dtm42



Joined: 05 Feb 2008
Posts: 14084
Location: currently stalking my waifu
PostPosted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 5:31 am Reply with quote
Maken Buster wrote:
I am currently watching Initial D: First Stage as I've always wanted to watch it but it always seemed to fall by the wayside for something else. Also, I'm in a bit of a car phase with my recent obsession over the Lamborghini Aventador.


Ah, good choice. The first five episodes form one of the best starts to an Anime, ever. I mean, it does not put a foot wrong in terms of storytelling, character introduction and building up the excitement. I could name a lot of series that were better overall and yet had starts that pale in comparison to Initial D's. The franchise never again reaches those heights again, but that's not surprising; you can't improve on perfection. If only the visuals were perfect too . . .

Are you watching the show subbed or dubbed? The sub is by far the superior version, with its much better voice acting and cooler euro-beat music instead of the ghastly rap music the dub used.
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zawa113



Joined: 19 Jan 2008
Posts: 7357
PostPosted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 2:14 pm Reply with quote
Unicorn_Blade wrote:
I started watching Toward the Terra too. At first glance, I was surprised it was done in 2007, because from the art I would have judged 1997 or so- the character design reminded me strongly of Escaflowne, which is actually not a bad thing, but looks a bit dated.

Well it does have the same character designer as Escaflowne. Oddly enough, I didn't really go "oh yeah!" until I found out this info, the designs look a bit closer to Chrono Cross than Escaflowne to me, but I didn't connect the dots until I read the info anyway (there's a short TtT preview somewhere on youtube serving as a series promo where the designs look even more obviously Nobuteru Yuuki. And Tony has white hair for some reason)
Of course, the series is based on a late 70s shojo, I feel like it needs to feel a bit shojo that way in order to be truer to the source material. I found the designs to be a great balance of modern with old school shojo influence for me personally.

If you like the series, you should most certainly read the manga, from a story aspect, the manga does some things better and the TV series does other things better, but the entire last volume of the manga goes a different route than the anime does, so it's worth checking out both. Even the little changes here and there between them got "Oho!" reactions from me. You should skip the movie though, it's like a horribly made cliffnotes of the manga, not at all worth it.
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asayaga



Joined: 06 Sep 2011
Posts: 1
PostPosted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 5:34 pm Reply with quote
Kinda just finished Tokyo Magnitude 8.0
Have to say i really like an anime with a realistic setting.
The ending is a reall tearjerker though. Can't even remember the last anime that put me to tears like this one.
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