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


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Kruszer



Joined: 19 Nov 2004
Posts: 7981
Location: Minnesota, USA
PostPosted: Sun Feb 10, 2013 6:04 pm Reply with quote
Currently I'm watching:

Amnesia- So far this is interesting, although I started it late, so I have some catching up to do and have only watched a few episodes of it. It's currently one of only two things from this current season that showed any promise, the rest was pretty much disposable.

Blast of Tempest- This is a carry over from the last season. So far I am enjoying it. The story is interesting and I like several of the characters.

From the New World- This one I got into after hearing it was good. Definitely wasn't disappointed. The frequent timeskips kind of fracture the story a bit though.

Magi- Not the greatest or most interesting thing I'm watching, but I do find it entertaining and it has some decent action. Some of the character annoy me though.

Maoyu- Who'd have thought that a show that revolved around agriculture could be interesting, but it is. It's supported by a good cast of characters and some underlying romance.

Psycho Pass- This is probably the show I most look forward to watching every week. It's smart, complex, and mostly serious with a cast of adults. Not only that but it's one my favorite genre combinations, Sci-fi and mystery/crime drama.

Robotics Notes- Frankly I did not expect much from this show after it's initial episodes, however, I stuck with it since it's from the same people who brought us Chaos; Head and Steins; Gate which I liked a lot. Sure enough the show turned itself around and got really interesting.

Space Brothers- Some real sci-fi with some slice of life. I also enjoy these types of series as well, namely things like Planetes and Moonlight Mile, so I've been following this as well. This one leans more towards the slice of life aspect and further away from sci-fi than those are though. I thought it was initially pretty good, then it hit a rough patch and was kind of a chore to watch, but eventually recovered it's steam.
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ladywhitewolf



Joined: 20 Aug 2012
Posts: 5
PostPosted: Sun Feb 10, 2013 8:29 pm Reply with quote
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Ortensia1980



Joined: 31 Aug 2011
Posts: 803
Location: some town near Amsterdam
PostPosted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 5:37 am Reply with quote
Well, I finished Hiiro no Kakera Dai-ni-Shō and it was a lot better than the first series. I'm kind of glad that I didn't decide to drop it now.

Yes, Tamaki is still annoying, the fanservice endings are still awkward (I was amused to no end by the fact that Ryo's endings were a lot more suggestive than the ones for the other guys), but apart from that, it was actually pretty good. A couple of things from the first series were explained, spoiler[like the voice that Tamaki kept hearing in her dreams], and the backstories on the characters and the reasons as to why they did certain things/behaved in a certain way were good as well.

So in short, it wasn't as bad as I expected. Hope that you feel the same way about it, st_owly!
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st_owly



Joined: 20 May 2008
Posts: 5234
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
PostPosted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 7:07 am Reply with quote
I've only seen 1 episode of it so far Wink There was too much other stuff airing at the same time for me to keep up with it. I might bump it a little higher up the priority list now though.
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Surrender Artist



Joined: 01 May 2011
Posts: 3264
Location: Pennsylvania, USA
PostPosted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 7:24 am Reply with quote
ailblentyn wrote:
Two shows simultaneously: Birdy the Mighty: Decode and Corpse Princess. And based on the first four or so episodes of each, I have to parrot what I gather are the standard opinions, in that Birdy is pretty fine and Her Royal Shikabane Hime is not (even if she does have a good opening song).
I'm really enjoying the artwork for Birdy. It seems so cheery, with its colours and fun. Any fanservice provided by Bridy's skimpy outfits is frank rather than sleazy, and she is given a cool enough personality to carry off the trappings.
Corpse Princess seems just cheap, cheap, cheap. Cheap horror, cheap plots, lots of buttocks. I guess being dead means never having to wear underwear again.


You've pretty well got it right. You've seen me gush about Birdy the Mighty: Decode a lot. Birdy's a looker, but the show isn't interested in groping her with its camera angles. The first season is quite good and if you liked that, well, it gets better. The second half also has some interesting animation in a few scenes that has proven divisive, with me very much on the side of loving it.

Shikabane Hime, however, is nothing to write home about and less. I remember being barely lukewarm toward it. I expected a crazy, over-the-top action series with a wild heroine, but it's not really all that much fun. There is some effective drama later on in the first season, but it isn't especially good on the whole. Just wait until the second half when they cut the budget and introduce a character named Flesh who... well, has a lot of her name just where you'd expect.

How many times has the titular Shikabane Hime screamed the premise at whatever she's fighting so far?
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ailblentyn



Joined: 28 Mar 2009
Posts: 1688
Location: body in Ohio, heart in Sydney
PostPosted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 8:07 am Reply with quote
Surrender Artist wrote:
How many times has the titular Shikabane Hime screamed the premise at whatever she's fighting so far?
I know! As if at every fight scene the viewer thinking, "You're the main character, aren't you? I forget — what's your deal, again? Ah, yeah. I remember now! Thanks!"

In light of your comments, I'm looking forward to seeing how Birdy develops. (It gets even better?!) I'm also now curious to hunt down the original series. She's just such a great character. Have you seen the old series too?
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Ortensia1980



Joined: 31 Aug 2011
Posts: 803
Location: some town near Amsterdam
PostPosted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 10:04 am Reply with quote
st_owly wrote:
I've only seen 1 episode of it so far Wink There was too much other stuff airing at the same time for me to keep up with it. I might bump it a little higher up the priority list now though.


I feel the need to point out that I have no taste whatsoever. Just so you know Wink
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Ggultra2764
Subscriber



Joined: 21 Jan 2004
Posts: 3863
Location: New York state.
PostPosted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 12:03 pm Reply with quote
Been watching My-Otome since Sunday and so far, I haven't warmed up well to it. I'm assuming that the anime is gonna be like My-Hime where it slowly builds up to shocking events for the anime's second half. But it's kind of hard to care when I can't really connect with many of the show's characters like I could with the gals of My-Hime such as Mai, Mikoto and Natsuki. Lead gal Akira is a bit bland for a lead character compared to Mai from the first series and the show's humor isn't as fun as My-Hime, but I'm guessing it mostly has to do with Otome implementing a maid gimmick for the Otome in the series (like I need another maid-themed anime Rolling Eyes ). The fan service is noticeably greater here in Otome, which doesn't really contribute anything and has me not caring too much. If this keeps up, I could care less about wanting to look into other animated material from the series, like Zwei.
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trilaan



Joined: 17 Jan 2009
Posts: 1053
Location: Texas
PostPosted: Fri Feb 15, 2013 2:46 pm Reply with quote
Currently watching Naruto SD(Rock Lee and his Ninja Pals) and frankly...I'm surprised nobody ever mentions it. I find it to be a hilariously lowbrow comedic romp.
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Sentire



Joined: 21 Apr 2008
Posts: 981
PostPosted: Sun Feb 17, 2013 8:52 am Reply with quote
A friend of mine stopped over and we started to watch Amnesia. I am wondering if it will be the last episode before everything comes together, but we are both intrigued so far. This isn't a bad series to watch with someone else. We were able to point out a few interesting things we noticed to each other. I rather like the different approach to the eyes with the color variations. I don't recall seeing that before.

Then my boyfriend arrived home. He knew my friend likes comedies. He recommended Puni Puni Poemy, so we popped that one in. Yikes! It was a mad, anime on crack, "can't believe I'm laughing at this", bunch of chaos. Embarrassingly funny. I almost spit out my coffee a couple times. This show is not for everyone.
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ailblentyn



Joined: 28 Mar 2009
Posts: 1688
Location: body in Ohio, heart in Sydney
PostPosted: Sun Feb 17, 2013 12:30 pm Reply with quote
I power through Shikabane Hime, despite its stupidity and general lameness. One very odd moment in episode 13 struck me: Kamika, über-Shikabane Hime, spotted sitting in a car wearing a seatbelt. A seatbelt?!

I do still like the OP, however, and am watching it every time. Grim-faced, screaming girls wielding swords and spewing bullet casings, all in an orgy of despair and destruction. Explosions on an epic scale. Tender moments. Buddhist hocus-pocus. The always-impressive ground exploding upwards. It's a shame the show doesn't bring all of it off better.
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Melanchthon



Joined: 02 Oct 2010
Posts: 550
Location: Northwest from Here
PostPosted: Sun Feb 17, 2013 10:10 pm Reply with quote
Well, St. Valentine's Day was last week, so I've been watching something a little romantic with Acchi Kocchi. Also, AK has a release date coming up, and I like to peruse shows that getting a release to see if they are worth purchasing. I'm almost finished with it, enough to form a preliminary opinion, and the result is this: I like the eyecatches. The rest, not so much. I am disappoint. I have to admit, I have gotten pretty good at estimating the quality of a show, and going in I figured AK to be about a 8/10. It's true score is less than half that. To misjudge so badly was rather disconcerting, to say the least. Why? Three major reasons. First, static characters. Now, I will admit that falling in love is more exciting that being in stable relationship, but there is still room for character development. But instead of exploring, building upon, or tribulating the relationship, it simply exists, like a piece of background scenery or a day of the week. The static character problem is systematic, every character is very much one-dimensional, and they spend most of their airtime repeating the same jokes in different locations.
Secondly, the animation is bad. And cheap, but cheap itself isn't always translate to bad. Hetalia is cheap, but the characters are have nicely detailed designs, and you can't expect much from a five minute short. AK has cheap, simplistic, and crude character designs coupled with ridiculously poor backgrounds. If there is a word that means 'visually stimulating' then AK is its antonym.
And finally, it is rudderless. In good slice-of-life, the show comes from its characters, not events. What I mean by this is in a good show, the characters can spend half the episode sitting under a kotatsu and talking, and remain engaging and entertaining (see: Minami-ke). Since the characters in AK have no personalities apart from their vaguely defined stereotypes, they can't create entertainment on their own. So the show tries to artificially create action by constantly throwing the characters into new events. It views like a high school greatest hits montage (also, it relies on a lot of sport competitions, which serve the purpose well, generating conflict and action without having to deal with all that messy characterization business). But something is always going on, as the show skips from highlight to highlight, never stopping in all those normal moments in between, where life actually happens. Regardless of how you feel about Lucky Star, the show was a master of the slice-of-life; the first seven or so minutes of it were spent in discussion of the correct way to eat a dessert. It was irrelevant and pointless, but also poignant, since is not all life irrelevant and pointless? And besides, who hasn't had similar deep conversations with friends on pointless topics like that? But AK can't do that, since the characters are so shallow they would have nothing to say. This is a kind of show that would work well as a five minute short or a 4-koma manga, but not as half-hour length feature. There is little more to AK than echoes and tedium.
And one more complaint. All the girls get moist when Io talks to them, but all this amateur Romeo does is act polite and sprout platitudes. If that's enough to set Japan's hearts aflame, then how pathetic is the rest of the male population? I think I may have discovered the reason for Japan's declining birthrate.

Also, been watching some Master of Mosquiton. Anybody seen that? It's a vampire story told by somebody that has read von Daniken too many times. Also, one of the villains is the Count Saint Germain, which is awesome. And Erwin Schrödinger makes an appearance in a really wonderful scene. The animation is really weak, especially for a OVA series, but it's got heart. Once I finish, I plan to start on the TV series and see if that's any good.
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dtm42



Joined: 05 Feb 2008
Posts: 14084
Location: currently stalking my waifu
PostPosted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 2:38 pm Reply with quote
Dropped Tamako Market, rated it Decent:

Six episodes.

It's pleasant enough but not what I'd call a great title. Episodic Slice-of-Life with only the barest frame of a plot is a perfectly good genre, but works in it have to be dramatical and/or funny. Unfortunately, Tamako Market has very little drama (practically non-existent) and is not especially humourous or endearing. It's simply just there. Yes, it's very cute, adorably so. You have to hand it to Kyoto Animation, they are the masters at producing Moe character designs. And yes, the bird is quite amusing in his outrageous way. But the humour is simply not compelling enough.

As for the themes, they're not too strong either. It just seems to boil down to, "Isn't friendship wonderful?" Well, yes, but the extent of this show is merely to watch a group of kids and the adults around them interact in an idealised setting and living out snapshots of their lives; Christmas, New Year's, Valentines, starting school in Spring, enjoying Summer vacation, et cetera. That's it. If it were consistently funny then that would be more than fine. But as it's not, there's very little here of actual substance.

Of course, I could just not be getting the joke, or am not attuned to the particular brand of humour in the series. I disagree with that sentiment, but even if it were true, it just shows how one-note the series actually is. Humour is subjective, and putting so much emphasis on the spotty humour is like putting all your eggs in one basket. Okay, okay, the series is still incredibly cute. But that seems to be something that is audience-dependent rather than an actual merit of the show.

Tamako Market is perfectly harmless. But by taking no risks in order to cater towards shallow Moe fans it has not created any room to succeed in anything but already-guaranteed financial success. Artistically-speaking, comedically-speaking, this show is rather lacking.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15434
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 7:45 pm Reply with quote
Okay, I finally have internet, and before I catch up on all of the episodes I missed, I only saw like one episode of all of the new shows, I will talk about what I have watched on DVD.

I finished Excel Saga that I had on my shelf for some time. I thought the series would have absolutly no actual story line with the random episodes, and that with a number of jokes just being misses with me convinced me to stop watching. But when I decided to watch all of it I was surprised to find a story that went beyond Excel just blindly doing what she was doing from the begining, and the one big no gags episode really focused on this point. Although I would say I had a dislike for the whole storyline with Nabeshin and Pedro, the summary episode of Pedro having me skipping a lot. I found the infamous last episode to be very entertaining. I watched this in Japanese with subs, and the speed Excel talked was sometimes rediculous.

I also blindbought Disgaea, the reason was partially becaus I quite liked a number of artwork I had found connected to the series. Although I was at first a little disapointed as it felt rather kiddy when I started it. But this was later offsided as I ended up having a lot of fun anyway with how Laharl was so different from the normal hero, in fact was pretty much just a villain, which worked funnily in his enemies being people like a human hero, and a Demon who fought for love. There was also Etna and Flonne who's characters were wonderfully messed with early on, I looked forward to Etna as her character was something that grabbed my attention, and I ended up having fun with Flonne who was used well fir comic with how she differed from those around her, and emotion later in the series. The Prinnies ended up also being rather fun, I ended up making little jokes with the talking habit with my little brother.

Now when I watched it first I found the whole ting with Gordon to be rather distracting, I disliked the trio from Earth at first due to their annoying voices (this was in Japanese), it kind of gave me a soured feeling when they got a big part in the series. Although I guess when I watched it again in English I had a little understanding of how they were not entirely shallow characters, and I found their voices actually tolerable, and ended up liking them. I have a feeling that it may have been a cultural difference, the English dub not needing to try and convey Gordon and Jennifer as foreign and instead showing them as the action heroes they are paroding. And the high robot voice of Thursday that I quite dislike in a lot of anime was chaned to a deeper voice that felt more easy to listen to.

And talking about the languages, I found the English dub to be a very good rendition with the characters feeling very similar regardless of the language, for this point I might even say that it made the English dub even more enjoyable for me.

I also did some rewatches, I rewatched: Oreimo, Ookami-san, and Angel Beats. That feels short for some reason, oh it might have been that I got into a couple American cartoons too. Now to watch 5 straight episodes of Ixion Saga DT.
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getchman
Space Cowboy



Joined: 07 Apr 2012
Posts: 9117
Location: Bedford, NH
PostPosted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 9:35 pm Reply with quote
Ii was wondering where you went Dusky, welcome back
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