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


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Unicorn_Blade



Joined: 18 Jul 2010
Posts: 1151
Location: UK
PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2011 7:06 am Reply with quote
Finished Mushishi, that I found surprisingly fast (as compared to what I remember when I started watching it ages ago before I dropped it halfway through) and desperately trying to finish Casshern Sins, which I find surprisingly slow for what it is. Maybe not slow, but it fails to maintain my attention. I find myself reading TV programme and all sorts of other things while watching; not a good sign. I am not too fond of the characters and repeated dialogue. The setting is something right up my street- dark, post apocalyptic, but I am a bit tired to see the same thing over and over and over: robots slowly moving, reciting the same lines like a mantra, and there were only a few background characters that were some sort of refreshment.

I started watching Night Raid 1931, so far seems like an enjoyable show, I suppose as the series progresses there will be less of comic relief? It reminds me a lot of Baccano! and it is interesting to hear all the languages within (I am not too tempted to try out the dub to be honest). The pace is good and the plot seems interesting enough to make me stick with it.
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The King of Harts



Joined: 05 May 2009
Posts: 6712
Location: Mount Crawford, Virginia
PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2011 4:44 pm Reply with quote
I'm halfway through the first season of Queen's Blade, and I came up with something this morning that I need to say before I forget.

Let's speak in metaphors for a moment. There are two kinds of fanservice shows. There are the shows that set you down at the table, make you dinner, maybe say prayer or two, and tell you to eat up. Then there are the shows that tie you to a chair and force feed you like a difficult baby. A show like Rosario + Vampire, which I previously watched, would fall into the latter because of it's random boob grabbing, motorboating, and gusts of wind among many other things. A show like Queen's Blade, however, falls squarely into the former. Yes, it's throwing skin at me every second, but I never feel like it's shoving it down my throat; it was simply presenting the fanservice to me. It certainly isn't what I'd call "natural" in its presentation like, say, Spice and Wolf does, but it certainly is smoother and less abrupt than what you find in typical ecchi shows. This, to me, is what makes ARMS so good at making ecchi shows, and, frankly, I appreciate it. I enjoy seeing lots of fanservice that doesn't involve men falling on women or stock hot springs/bath house episodes. Just give me some pretty and scantily clad characters, some physics, and I'm happy.

And, to be perfectly honest, as a man who prefers the backside to the frontside, the copious amounts of ass fanservice is also appreciated. I'm not a fan of the big boobs or the crotch shot, so some fanservice of the buttocks for once is nice.

That is all for now.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23667
PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2011 4:53 pm Reply with quote
Hmmm, sounds like my suggestion for you to tackle QB as the next show on your back(side)log has not gone amiss...
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methedemon



Joined: 19 Aug 2007
Posts: 112
PostPosted: Fri Dec 23, 2011 7:12 pm Reply with quote
I am watching Slam Dunk because its been over a year since I watched it! I love this show
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WhiteHairGirls



Joined: 27 Apr 2011
Posts: 4713
Location: New York City
PostPosted: Fri Dec 23, 2011 8:54 pm Reply with quote
Besides the current new anime coming out, I am watching Katanagatari and The Legend of Legendary Heroes.Katanagatari will probably receive a masterpiece rating and Legend will either be excellent or very good. Katanagatari story and unique characters is very appeasing to the eyes. While Legend is a very nice anime about the stuggles of Kingdoms and "demons". I like how there really is not a villian kingdom in the series. Gastark's King just wants a unified world. Not to mention the characters are great, especially the Ryner and ferris duo.
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Que_Tal



Joined: 17 Jul 2010
Posts: 80
PostPosted: Fri Dec 23, 2011 11:03 pm Reply with quote
watching THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO right now.

visually stunning.
the hair and clothes are like, transparent and flat non-moving 2D patterns are laid underneath so when characters move...the patterns in their hair and clothes do not, but remain stationary.
so hair and clothes are totally 2D and independent of movement.
never seen anything like it before.
its unforgettable.
horrible opening theme music, forgettable bgm. ok ending song.
story-good, tad slow, but its a surreal re-telling of the monte cristo novel..19th century fashion mixed with 1930s tech.
mmmm.
but its the visuals that grips you.
its like someone combined gustav klimt with japanese woodblock prints.
weird right?
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23667
PostPosted: Fri Dec 23, 2011 11:24 pm Reply with quote
I've been waiting to watch The Count of Monte Cristo until I owned an HDTV ... got one this week and really looking forward to checking this title out.
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504NOSON2
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Joined: 28 Jul 2008
Posts: 647
Location: Body:Santa Barbara, CA ~ Heart:New Orleans, LA
PostPosted: Fri Dec 23, 2011 11:56 pm Reply with quote
Then let me be first to tell you that the first set of episodes' quality are an adaptation exquisite beyond description. After that, it begins to deviate and mold into something a bit different than the original source material. At one point, towards the middle/end I believe, the pace becomes damn near excruciating, but promptly picks back up, and I guarantee you won't be able to take your eyes off of it.

I can't see how anyone could not appreciate the BGM; it was just enough to remain conscious of, but not overbearing. ("Mercedes (Nagisa Nite)" is a personal favorite). Classical pieces were also used for the series' soundtrack.

The visuals are spectacular, and there's even some very well-done mecha in the series. All in all, Gankutsuou is a very mature show with a satisfying, though somewhat sad, ending.
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Shiyonasan



Joined: 18 Aug 2010
Posts: 30
PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 6:21 pm Reply with quote
I'm currently 10 episodes into the original Hunter X Hunter anime. I decided to watch it out of curiosity due to the new anime currently airing in Japan. I have never seen it before, but I must say, I'm pretty impressed with what I've watched so far.
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PetrifiedJello



Joined: 11 Mar 2009
Posts: 3782
PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 8:00 pm Reply with quote
Leave it to the last minute to get my latest shipment in from TRSI, but today, it arrived. In addition, the second box arrived too, though wasn't in a hurry for it (DB seasons 1-5).

The package I was waiting for contained the blurays of Soul Eater, which is one of the extremely few anime I would double dip for.

And it's worth every single penny spent (and the sale sure helped, too). I loved this series the moment I laid eyes on it as it's absolutely refreshing to see animation look like a cartoon, and not try to emulate real life. The designs of both scenery and characters really stand out.

But the star of the show: the colors. Those deep, dark purples, twilight-inspired oranges, and the blending of the yellows, reds, and often times green make this series really pop from the screen into our world.

And it's absolutely stunning in HD.

Yep, going to be watching this one all weekend long. Hell, I may just watch it twice.

Now, what to do with my other DVDs. Nevermind. They're going to be given away as a present.
Very Happy
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504NOSON2
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Joined: 28 Jul 2008
Posts: 647
Location: Body:Santa Barbara, CA ~ Heart:New Orleans, LA
PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 9:46 pm Reply with quote
PetrifiedJello wrote:
The package I was waiting for contained the blurays of Soul Eater, which is one of the extremely few anime I would double dip for.


Man, I honestly don't get how you liked Soul Eater that much. I remember watching it on fansubs when it had first started airing (mind you, this was during a time when I was obsessed with Bleach and Naruto), and every episode felt like a damn chore, until I just gave up around episode 6 or 7.



Quote:
Now, what to do with my other DVDs. Nevermind. They're going to be given away as a present.
Very Happy


You know, I'd be more than happy to take those off of your hands. Anything for free, legal anime. Laughing
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Surrender Artist



Joined: 01 May 2011
Posts: 3264
Location: Pennsylvania, USA
PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 10:34 pm Reply with quote
I watched Mezzo Forte a month ago at the end of what turned out to be a very bad Friday.

It isn't the sort of thing that one can have much to write about. I enjoyed it, except for the pornographic parts. When I went to buy it, the cheapest version available through Right Stuf at the time was by a substantial margin the special edition of the uncut edition, so contrary to my standards, that's what I have. The pornographic content in Mezzo Forte is unpleasant and almost perfectly irrelevant to the story, so if one has a choice of editions, the cut one is surely better.

I'm not at all versed in pornography, which I am now even more grateful for, so I don't know how to judge it. Is all of the phallus worship, abuse and diminution of women and abundant fluid standard? Does anybody really find it erotic? It was exceptionally repulsive to me.

My distaste for its allegedly erotic content aside, Mezzo Forte is a really entertaining pair of episodes. Kite suggested that Yasuomi Umetsu had at least two parts to him. One is stylish, dark and moody. The other is sensationalistic, energetic and goofy. Kite had scenes that reflected both, but the second is clearly in command for Mezzo Forte. This is the work of the Yasuomi Umetsu who threw a girl out a window onto a tanker truck, then crashed that truck through the street. It doesn't quite reach that preposterous height, but it's close to the spirit. The characters are all at least a little preposterous, Momomi Momoi is so outlandishly vicious as to be a delight, while the things that happen in fights and chases match them in enthusiastic preposterous. Kurokawa's Volkswagen Beetle should be entered into a drag race against the bluesmobile.

Fittingly enough, the Friday before last was an even more terrible Friday, which I ended by watching Weather Report Girl.

Weather Report Girl is a very strange, however simple, story with characters that are as preposterous as those in Mezzo Forte, but made without the cheerful wink that I also feel Yasuomi Umetsu give. It's also pornographic at times and undeniably exploitative, as a story about a woman who gains fame by flashing her underwear must be, but didn't make me feel as repelled as Mezzo Forte did. Perhaps I was partially inured of it, or perhaps it was just more tolerable without the phallus worship, overflowing fluids and utter disconnection from the plot. Sexual domineering and humiliation are part of the story. It certainly does have some abusive characteristics; one character is forced to clean the lead's underwear by licking it, after all.

I'm thus slightly ashamed to admit that I probably enjoyed it because of Keiko Nakadia, the woman flashes her panties and commands the licking, among other things. She's a truly magnificent bitch who is too excessive to be taken seriously. Her shameless ambition, outsized confidence, luxurious cruelty and the part where she brutally beats a gang of thugs with skills that she learned from a Karate correspondence course somehow all suckered me into rooting for her. So much of this is just so absurd, like a catfight at a swimming pool that ends as a synchronized swimming routine, that I couldn't become as incensed as I probably should have at the exploitative prurience of it.

It isn't a great work, but it was pretty good for shameless trash and it only cost me four dollars.

Yeah, I feel some cognitive dissonance too.

Lastly, I watched Chrono Crusade on Hulu. This took me three weeks, but most of that was a long gap of at least eight days in the middle between episodes fourteen and fifteen.

I just couldn't become invested in this series.

I watched it in part because for whatever reason I regretted not taking the chance to watch it on the late Animonday block on SyFy (*groan*) because the title made me think that it was a video game adaptation, probably because of the Chrono Cross RPG series. In fact it's a supernatural action series about a nun and her demon ally set in the roaring twenties. That sounds like a very appealing premise to me, but I just never really cared.

I can't explain why I couldn't develop enthusiasm for this series. I think part of it was that the period setting wasn't particularly well used; everything looked superficially like the era, but didn't feel like it and the setting didn't feel very important. I was particularly disappointed that the series had a fairly usual musical score instead of using the dixieland jazz of the era. Either original compositions, as Metropolis used to great effect, or songs from the era would have been a great boon to the series.

I applaud the spirit of the finale, at least. It was less emotionally effective than it should have been for me, but I appreciated that he producers didn't let the characters off easy.
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Tris8



Joined: 30 Oct 2009
Posts: 2114
Location: Where the rain is.
PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 11:18 pm Reply with quote
I've just started watching the shorts of Koji Yamamura, and found a surprising amount of buried treasure. Strangely what is probably his most well-known work (Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor), I didn't much care for. But I especially enjoyed The Old Crocodile, and Bavel's Book & Mt. Head were good.
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supercreep



Joined: 11 Dec 2011
Posts: 526
PostPosted: Sun Dec 25, 2011 12:21 am Reply with quote
Quote:
horrible opening theme music, forgettable bgm. ok ending song.


It's funny that you say that because I just could not stand the ending song. The lyrics just made me cringe; it was too ham-fisted. The opening theme I felt was okay and did grow on me but I could never get fully on board with the melody.
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dirkusbirkus



Joined: 10 May 2008
Posts: 699
Location: Manchester, UK
PostPosted: Sun Dec 25, 2011 7:29 am Reply with quote
PetrifiedJello wrote:
The package I was waiting for contained the blurays of Soul Eater, which is one of the extremely few anime I would double dip for.


I really enjoyed Soul Eater and you've reminded me it's due a rewatch soon. It's just extremely stylish and for want of a better word, cool. Great humour, great music, interesting story and as you've pointed out, lovely artwork.

The only thing I could fault it on really (and it's a personal gripe) was Omigawa Chiaki voicing Maka. If she'd voiced a less significant character I might have let it slide, but Maka gets so much damned screentime. That voice just... grates. It's probably a really petty hangup but Omigawa also ruined Sore-Machi for me, and I love SHAFT shows. Arakawa was fine because she was in a large cast with few lines, and she was tolerable in Hanasaku Iroha. Her performance as Maka, however, makes my ears bleed.
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