Forum

Yeah, that's why I heard - and that just generally the second season wasn't as good as the first. I think that's why I haven't watched it yet - I don't want my favourable impressions of the first season, overshadowed.

Yeah, the 1st season is something special, no doubt about it.

There are people who like the second season better, but they're simply dramatically different shows that happen to share characters and continuity.

Hmm, interesting. I don't know for a fact, but I'd be willing to bet that people like me who rilly, rilly, rilly like the first are unlikely to be in the group that prefers the second. Only one way to find out, I guess...

@Blood-

I rilly rilly liked the first season of GG, and while I can't and won't say that the second season was better, it wasn't nearly as bad as some people made it out to be. The OAV set now, that's another story.

I liked the first season much better than the second, but past experience suggests that's good news for Blood-. I will warn you, it doesn't really lead with its best material.

Ommigod, I ate the whole thing! I just, devoured it all! I finished that entire DVD set in 2 days. But unlike all those other anime that I claim I will rewatch, but totally don't (sorry, Planetes, I really am!) I know that I will rewatch Digimon again. A lot. I'm going based on how many times I've seen Avatar: The Last Airbender (hell, I've already seen Korra thrice in like 6 months and will totally buy it on DVD eventually when it comes out on DVD), I do seem to really love good adventure series! I've watched my Avatar DVDs at least 3 times despite still watching it almost every time I'm channel flipping and see it on Nicktoons Network.

But now I feel like I can say what I need in an adventure series too. It can't be purely episodic or mostly episodic (like Pokemon, which is why I prefer the games so much to the series), and it needs to have plenty of "sitting around talking" sorts of moments dedicated to just the characters. I think I mostly need that. Though Oban Star-Racers mixed episodic races with ongoing character and plot development, that's about as episodic as it can get. Oh and good pacing, though I'm willing to forgive the existence of "The Great Divide" ep of Avatar.

I think this was my biggest marathon yet. Sure, I watched Gurren Lagann in a single day, but I didn't then watch another 26 ep series the very next day. I can't wait to show this to my nephew, answer his burning question about how it's not Pokemon related despite ending in "-mon", but also to show him my favorite cartoon from when I was a kid (though when I was about 2 years older than he is now, but I'm thinking 8 should be fine). And it doesn't matter what he says, he was totally getting into My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic when I was showing it to his 5 year old sister and ep 1 ended on that cliffhanger and he wanted to see ep 2, ha! I've explained the brony thing to him, he thinks it's the strangest thing he's ever heard in his life.

And Izzy, feels like I fell in love with him all over again (creepy now given age differences and the fact that he's a cartoon), it was such a joy to revisit the series after all these years! And knowing that I'm totally going to be doing so more than once! The last time I saw it was back in high school when I decided to rewatch seasons 1-4, that was at least 5 years ago though, so I have seen it once since it stopped airing on TV when I was in elementary school. So it wasn't uber jarring since there wasn't as big a time difference, but man, seeing two eps a day in the afternoon is definitely different than eating the whole thing at once. I felt like certain parts took longer when I was a kid, but that's not to complain about the pacing now as it's actually quite good. Time does pass differently to kids though I guess.

But I think back to this vs other seasons, and I feel like this one was the least complicated. Well, in terms of the digivolving, it was so straight forward, no over the top combining stuff and mode changes going on. But I think this was a positive thing, it didn't make other character obsolete when the Hero and Lancer got the power ups *cough*Frontier*cough* and it let them focus on the story and characters and not crazy ways to do more digivolving. So I like the more simplistic approach to the digivolving. Curious what other people think of this, though season 3 was pretty even with giving the digivolving goodies to Henry, Rika, and Takato, and it was obvious from right away that Jeri, Susie, and Those Two Guys weren't getting special powers and were happy to just have a Digimon on the basis it was cool. Of course, then they gave powers to freakin' Ryo, excuse me, but did we get a WonderSwan over here?

Quote:

I haven't yet seen the second season of GG, but the first is one of my fave animes of all time.

I will probably try to get around to watching the series again(bought both seasons and OVA). I just wasn't a fan of the violence by/against children aspect. I thought I was a hardened cynic, but I guess that's not true yet.

As for Heroic Age, I probably will get around to watching it all. I just don't like the feeling of having to slog through an anime. I prefer to watch anime for entertainment purposes.

I just showed my school's anime club the first episode of Madoka. Everyone reacted quite favorably to it--quite a success in my eyes. Sadly, I couldn't show the 2nd and 3rd episodes, as I wanted, but life's not always fair.

I watched The Girl Who Leapt Through Time yesterday, twice. I had seen it once before, but it had been awhile so I watched it in the morning, enjoying a lazy Saturday. Later my mom came home and saw the DVD on the table and was actually kinda interested in watching it! I've been trying to pique her interest in anime for a long time, but she doesn't like fantasy, mind trips OR TV series Confused

. That throws out all of Satoshi Kon's movies and most Ghibli movies too. So even though I had just watched it that morning, I watched it again Anime hyper

.

Rewatching a show is something I don't do often, especially twice in a single day. But I was surprised that I wasn't bored; on the contrary, rewatching it so quickly gave me the chance to notice things I didn't pick up on the 1st or 2nd viewing. Like how spoiler[Yuri, Makoto's best female friend, had a crush on Chiaki from the very beginning.] I had originally thought that that was a product of her time leaping (another consequence of her actions), but no. They do an excellent job with what seems like ordinary throw-away small talk at the start of the movie, but if you rewatch and listen, it shows that the wheels were in motion long before the assumed initial catalyst (Makoto gaining her ability to time leap).

A lot of things come together excellently to make this movie great; I love the character designs, it's beautifully animated, and the music (especially the piano pieces) are wonderful. But the character of Makoto really makes this movie stand out. She's so different than the typical main character. She's selfish and very prone to whim, but because she's such an innocent/oblivious soul I can't help but let it slide and root for her.

One thing I noticed on the 2nd watch yesterday that I had previously missed was the ladybug. Throughout the movie, a ladybug makes many appearances around Makoto. Ladybugs are said to carry good luck, and that if one lands on you your wish will come true. The ladybug only lands on Makoto once in the movie, near the end spoiler[after Chiaki uses his last time leap to stop Kousuke and his girlfriend from dying. Both Makoto and Chiaki are out of leaps and out of luck, so Chiaki leaves forever. Makoto is depressed at home when a ladybug lands on her arm. She raises her hand to brush it away, only to notice that she still has 1 single time leap left!] The ladybug has granted her wish C=. I love the subtlety and simpicity of this.

This really is a great movie. I need to look up the director and watch more things they were involved in.

Tris8 wrote:

I need to look up the director and watch more things they were involved in.

The director is Mamoru Hosoda. His other titles include a Digimon movie, Summer Wars (which I see you have already watched) and the upcoming Wolf Children film, which I am eagerly awaiting. I really enjoy his work.

@murph76

Wow, I'm surprised. He's done a lot less than I would have thought. Some work on Dragonball Z, One Piece, Digimon... Sad

I am also very excited about Wolf Children though! Now that I know he's the director I'm even more psyched to see it.

So I watched Legend of DUO earlier today. On the assumption that it would suck, and I was not proven wrong. After I finished watching it, I had to go do some errands, and then I came back and watched Interview With the Vampire to get the stink of Duo's vampire tale out of my brain.

So, first off, it's a 12 episode series. The episodes are 5 minutes long each. Why anyone thought this was a good idea, I don't know. As a result, they try to cram approximately 5 different ideas into every episode, and none of them obviously work. On the plus side, I guess I could say that, unlike most indecipherable OVA shorts, like Cipher or Mars of Destruction, the story is pretty easy to understand. It's about this vampire guy named Zeig who wants to kill this other vampire guy, Duo, for being such a dick as to tell humanity that they can survive their "disease of death", which conveniently kills any human seen on screen for more than 6 seconds by... kinda shriveling them? by drinking the blood of a vampire. And they spend most of the 12 episode series staring at each other and talking. There's these three scenes, one of Duo's face, one of Zeig's, and one of them standing about 30 feet apart in some... sewer? thing? place? I dunno, that wasn't very clear. And you see these three shots an awful lot.

Ok, so let me detour into the animation a bit. They clearly spent their entire budget on making everyone look bishie, because they didn't spend money on anything else. There are random walking footsteps sounds everywhere. They usually make characters move by tilting the heads up or down in the most obvious way possible. And oh boy, the gun fights! They're terrible CGI monstrosities. Actually, most of the fights just cut to the end result, which is a good thing based on their attempts on the gun fights. It's like Gundoh Musashi level bad, except the characters look nice. And the gun fights are somehow worse. There is this 2 second clip of decent animation, but it only took them 11 episodes to get to it. I dunno, should we be happy they blink their eyes and move their mouths? You wouldn't think it looks so bad from stills, but see anything attempt to move...

So, the vampires themselves. They don't appear to be any different from normal humans. Except sometimes their eyes glow red and they're immune to dying a horrible death. Seriously, sun doesn't affect them, they can be photographed, they don't even appear to drink blood. Ok, the one dude has this 30 second blood drinking scene, then has a "what have I done?" scene and the other guy is like "nah, it's cool" and the guy who drank gets over it like that. Oh, and they're all required to have pierced ears apparently.

So, Zeig, for reasons I am unclear of because he must've been blooded ages ago, is going to some private high school looking place. This new dude wants to be "king of the school" or something, so he attacks him and fails to the most hilarious sound effects ever to put to anime. Anyway, he's a human who has been on screen for more than 6 seconds and even has lines, so he starts dying out of freakin' nowhere so Zeig bloods him because he says he's "too pure" to let him die. This is actually a flashback though, of the guy who clearly dresses like he wants to be Vash the Stampede, and we find out he's a half vampire. We saw him do some card tricks for a crying kid in like ep 2 and then his eyes turn red, like he's having an anime nosebleed out of nowhere (eye incontinence?) and the dad demands his blood. Note that there doesn't seem to be any difference between full and half vampires, or even between normal people and vampires except for that dying horribly thing. There's also this vampire hunter dude going around shooting humanity's only hope for survival in the head and his name is Lizzie. That's about his entire story, he's a vampire hunter. And he's mad at Zeig for not killing him, as shown in yet another flash back.

So back to Duo and Zeig's stare down in between all these terrible flashbacks, Zeig is mad at him for telling the humans that drinking the blood of vampires will save them. Also, they call it "Plana" for some reason. Meanwhile, Zeig keeps saying very loudly how much he loves humanity and doesn't want them to suffer. Which only begs the question, why the hell are you letting them all die when there's not really any difference in being a vampire? Can you only change people who are bishie enough? If not, just make everyone a vampire, it's not like they do anything vampire-like anyway. So yeah, while I might understand the plot, that doesn't make anyone's motivations anything other than moronic. I mean, it's not like berries trees in Pokemon where you have to remove the whole thing to get the berries, just blood a few people and pass it on. It seems pretty dickish to me to not save people after claiming you like humanity when it's not that hard to do so.
As for their meeting flashback, Duo has this mansion for some reason, and after Zeig's entire town somehow dies from idunno, Duo takes him in as a house bishie. His butler is also a vampire, but all he seems to do is get jealous and attempt to kill Zeig making the most hilarious face in the whole show. Then Duo says he doesn't know how to blood them, then 10 seconds later, he bloods him. That's about it. Then back to their talking scene, Duo has had a sword the whole time, Zeig suddenly pulls one out of hammerspace, they fight, the end.

But then, the thing ends with "to be continued..." on the screen. Did they somehow plan to continue this? Seriously? WTF? Whatever. Anyhow, my synopsis didn't make much sense, well neither did the series, but damn if it wasn't funny!

So, out of curiosity, I looked up what else the scriptwriter has worked on. The one guy has worked on FMA 2003, Death Note, Yawara, Master Keaton, Ranma 1/2, DBZ, and Hokuto no Ken. So what the hell was someone capable of writing scripts doing working on this hour long terror?

So yeah, that was a real treat, but I needed some brain bleach after that in the form of good vampire stuff. But, after all is said and done... spoiler[it's still a better vampire story than Twilight]
Also, there are probably more words here than in the entire script I'll bet.

classicalzawa--
May I ask you for your reason(s) for using the "spoiler" tag? I did not see anything that I judged to be spoilerific. I am merely curious.

Today I have watched OVAs of Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu, Minami-Ke, and Upotte.

Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu: Finale OVA 2
If you had a problem with the slowness of the leads getting together, well this is going to be kind of like pulling teeth in some ways. It is going to be painful, but it might be that a infected piece that is what allowed for Harem is finally gone. It goes off the previous OVA of spoiler[pink haired girl (I forgot names) confessed to Yuuto, and we get a big long ep of him thinking about what he should do, distressing Haruka out, and getting her stalkers angry (her sister and the maids which wear rediculous costumes)]. Of course in the end he remembers all the spoiler[super intimate stuff he has done with Haruka, you know the stuff that made us think "finally", and chooses Haruka. But they decide to keep their relationship a secret, a secret between the two of them], where does that sound familiar.

Minami-ke Omatase OVA 1
Probably a good watch for you Minami-ke and Halloween fans, at least for the first skit, which also got points just for Mako chan. And cute outfits. Nothing really happened in the OVA, but if memory serves that is Minami-Ke to a T, what with the disclaimer at the start, and I don't know if that is a bad thing. It took a little while for me to remember how each of the characters interacted, but I think I was still able to have fun, did not really feel to dissapointed. Apart from Japanese kids doing a lazy grasp of trick or treating, there was also one on spoiler[whims], kind of made me think of a SZS piece without all the dispair, although someone did spoiler[freak out over appearance changes on the whim]. The main group got placebo spoiler[drunk] (one person used a different method) leaving Kana the only spoiler[sane one], truly a first in the series. And a skit with a joke that everyone except two characters seemed to be in on.

Upotte!! OVA 1
First the elephant with the OVA, it is chock full of fanservice, more than I would have expected. I mean the series had a number of it, but never did show Funco's supposed thong, this OVA included pretty blatent swimsuit wearing, some throw ins of a scantly dressed spoiler[teacher (full on boobies)] and a very showing spoiler[hotspring] scene. I think the real winning character in this OVA was Elle, who's Bonny top took centre stage, and just had some nice parts to make up for her always playing the fragile mess. There were also some rather humorous scenes with 16 also, her hot headed gun ways especially got a smile during the river shooting public announcement part. It was largely the girls having fun on a holiday, and several cuts to other character doing their own thing, It would be good if the OVA means there is another season comming, well in the mean time it looks like I have the tank show to fill the hole.

Forum - View topic
What are you watching right now? Why? (please read 1st post)

The ANN Aftershow - Will You Watch Solo Leveling Season 2?

Dark Moon: The Blood Altar Volumes 1-2 Manhwa Review

Interview: Voice Actors Rika Hayashi and Hiroki Tōchi Talk About Their New Golf Anime, Tonbo!

Japanese TV Special Ranks Top Anime Songs, as Chosen by Foreign Fans

This Week in Anime - So, Is Sound Euphonium Queerbaiting or Not?

Wonderful Precure! Episodes 1-12 Anime Review

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: The Ways of Monster Nation Manga Ends Due to Artist's Health

Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction Part 1 Anime Film Review

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Game Review

	Anime News Network Forum Index -> General -> Anime	All times are GMT - 5 Hours Goto page Previous Next
Page 730 of 1062

Forum - View topicWhat are you watching right now? Why? (please read 1st post)

Forum

Forum - View topic
What are you watching right now? Why? (please read 1st post)