The State of Anime Today

[pochercoaster]

Originally Posted by Tev

I also gave up on watching Gundam Unicorn. Each episode felt like 80% pretentious monologues, 10% crying, and 10% mech fights, which is not the percentages I was hoping for. I hear Iron Blooded Orphans has closer mech fighting percentages to Gundam Wing, which is what I was looking for.

I tried to suffer through Unicorn and gave up.

Iron Blooded Orphans is 1000x better. I haven't seen wing so I don't know how it compares to that specifically, but there is a lot of action. It's not just mindless action though, which is good.

[MuMu]

-Samurai Flamenco: Someone suggested this to me but I forget who and why.

The first season is a nice parody of Sentai series but somewhere along they decided parodies are no fun and begun playing it straight. Reccomend watching all of Season 1 for closure.

I watched one ep of S2 and gave up.


edit: In fact, now that you peoeple brought it up, it does remind me of RE:ZERO; It begins as a different take in a played genre until, for no real reason, they go back and just do the same thing as every other iteration.

[_mike]

As a fan of the absurd, I actually enjoyed how SamFlam started off as a budget Batman-wannabe and then escalated and escalated until even Guren Lagan would be like "whoa buddy, tone it down a bit, kay?" It ends up going some interesting places in the end, but it's clear that this thing is more of an artifact made possible by government funding rather than a viable commercial work.

Dissenting edit: I think Kono Suba is still pretty funny. It's more of the same, but I like the doofy looking animation and running gags like "what will make Aqua cry this episode?"

[phil_]

Just some thoughts on the last page or so of the thread.

First off, Qualia was a neat read. Thanks for that, MuMu; I've been reading nothing but on-going manga for a while and it was nice to finish something. Plus, while the vocabulary and phrasing showed some misunderstandings of sub-atomic particle physics, the sci-fi was sci enough that I could actually accept it rather than just shaking my head and reminding myself that mangaka are usually mangaka because they aren't good at anything else. I think the author's notes from volume one implied that this was a manga based on a book, so perhaps that's the cause. In any case, that was more negative than I meant it to be. I dug it, teared up a little at the end.

Maid Dragon gets better each episode. Like, I didn't even really like episode one except for the casual mention of turning the city into a sea of flames as a special skill, but now I'm really looking forward to the next episode.

I'd like to address Tev's list, now. I'm leaving out Konosuba and RE:Zero, though, because I'd like to end this on my thoughts concerning those. So, in order:

Izetta was a really nice show. No one was an idiot, Izetta and FIne's relationship changed for better and worse in an interesting way, and the ending was, I think, mathematically formulated to contain the exact amount of ambiguity to leave what happened with Izetta as weighty and meaningful, but potentially not a completely bleak, "nothing good comes from doing good" ending.

New Game is cute. I'd watch another season, but I can't even remember the characters' names.

Is the Order a Rabbit? is, like, perfect cute girls doing cute things. Kei-on! trips over its premise with "if they're a band, why do they spend every episode chilling and eating cake?" Gochiusa is about chilling and eating cake coffee, so there's nothing in the way of just "Here are girls, you will want to be their friend and drink coffee with them. Isn't this delightful? How about you close that 'How to tie a noose' tab?" So, if you dig that kind of thing, it's really good. It isn't artistic like Hidamari Sketch, or wacky like Yuru Yuri, or saccharine sentimental like Aria, but it is, in a word, happy.

I would not describe Leviatan as "girl-group fantasy anime." It is stupid dragons screwing around for twelve episodes. There is fighting and magic, and the girls do go somewhere, but it's not Record of Lodoss War or even Slayers. There is a great evil that is destroying good and sacred things and will eventually destroy all life on the planet; the heros try to see how many cookies they can stuff in a fairy. So, there is a normal fantasy anime in the background, but it is very much in the background of their weird non-adventures. The characters are likable, but they aren't fleshed out very much; they exist as vehicles for gags. The story doesn't really go anywhere. Um, on a purely positive note, the music for the series was composed by the same person responsible for most of Hidamari's music, so there's that. All that said, and here's where I'm a terrible person, it has both Hayami Saori and Hanakana as main characters, and they laugh while another character almost drowns in a bog. The stupid ending song makes me want to go on an adventure. Something about this non-entity of a show struck a chord with me: I've watched it several times, I played the game (in Japanese) for a short period until it shut down, I have strong opinions on how certain character's names should be spelled (It's "Rage Law," I have it in print). So, you might want to skip it, because it's really not that good, but I really, really like it for reasons even I don't fully understand.

Black Bullet is a show about how humans should all just die. "Sexy little girls" is a major theme, so be prepared for that. It looks cool, and cool stuff happens, but way way more "this is totally not cool" stuff happens. If you want to be frustrated, this show will do it.

Kill la Kill I don't know where to start. It's a "Go here, fight this guy/girl, now fight the next one" show. There are some entertaining twists, the ending is acceptable, the fights are really fun to watch and there are a lot of them. I can solidly recommend it to anyone who can look at the stripper suits and only roll their eyes once, but it doesn't have much of a place in my heart.

Show by Rock has a weird setting, and a lot of it comes down to accepting that things just are how they are. After that is accomplished, it's a really funny show that I got a little obsessed with while the first season was airing. The songs are good (if you like anime music), the CG is good (hot opinions), and the ending is a little better than Bones's usual screw ups. The second season is, essentially, just more time with the characters, which you'll want if you liked the first season, and adding more characters from the game. Back to that obsession bit, I really was. I even floated the idea of, of all things, doing a SB69 RP here, to the point where I even had a simple RPG system put together. So I guess if it gets its hooks in you, they go deep. Or maybe I'm just weak to bright colors.

Sam Flam is what happens when a train derails, does a flip, then lands on another track and keeps going. It's not exactly a good thing, but it definitely could have ended up way worse and it's just impressive that it happened. I feel like it was worth my time to hang on and see where it went.

Luluco is Inferno Cop in slow motion. Watch it.

Flip Flappers should probably be watched at a one episode per week pace. Give yourself time to chew on each episode's particular weirdness before having a go at the next.

I remember nothing of Zombie Deskchair.

Outbreak Company, beyond the "Other world, normal guy" thing, is a completely different show than Konosuba and RE:Zero. I realize I sound like a tool when I claim that "A random guy goes to another world where there are dragons and stuff" can be part of a story and not define that story, but here I am, being a tool. I'm gonna keep it up below, when I get to discussing those other shows. Anyway, Outbreak Company is about exploiting fantasyland as a new market for anime, as well as all that other stuff that makes up Japanese culture. So, instead of freezing in a barn or dying every week, our hero makes political ties between a kingdom in fantasyland and Japan, builds a Japanese-style public school, and generally gets into cultural misunderstandings rather than fighting orcs. And then a bunch of women and girls throw themselves at him because of course they do. So, it's pretty much a normal comedy, except there are elves. I don't really remember much more specifics than that, but now I kinda want to re-watch it.

And now some crap I don't think anyone really wants to read. Konosuba and Re:Zero are completely different shows on opposite ends of the Comedy/Tragedy axis, and comparing them doesn't really make much sense. May as well not bury the lead (17 paragraphs in). Like I said up there, yeah, we refer to "Normal guy, fantasyland" as a genre, and in some ways that's a useful tool. There is usually some, non-complete overlap between shows that start like that in themes and characters, and it's very useful when you want to write off a work as being something the author is writing to feel better about themself/as wank material. Now that I think about it, using it to dismiss works is probably the most useful and most common application of the isekai genre. Dissing the author self-inset might have even been the seed of both Konosuba and RE:Zero (hey, look, overlap). But, beyond that, it's about as much of a genre as "anime." We could compare the themes of humankind's relationship to technology in Ghost in the Shell and Castle in the Sky, but it would be kind of silly to expect the same things of a movie about finding a killer who has become like a computer virus and a movie about kids flying to a magic robot castle, and even sillier to have one's appreciation of one movie flavored by the other. Even though they're both anime, even though they both have robots. Konosuba is a comedy. You want bad things to happen, because it's funny. There's no real sense of danger. Hell, after the first episode of this season of Konosuba, Darkness has only showed up in short scenes of implied sexual assault. But you know that isn't happening, because the actual genre (comedy) sets up your expectations that she's probably just being put into embarrassing outfits or doing chores (using sexual assault as the gotcha for this kind of joke I'll just quietly nudge into the corner). If you saw the same scenes, but it was Emilia instead, well WOW RE:Zero would have gone somewhere shitty but you'd take them at face value (and as something Subaru would have to die to correct) because it's a tragedy (or a horror show) before it's a "Normal guy, fantasyland" show. Like, surely there are exceptions, but most of the time "Normal guy, fantasyland" is just an easy in to a story that has nothing to do with the "Normal guy" part. Other than Subaru's ignorance of the state of the world, how much would change if he had just grown up there as some spoiled, rich child? Really, would anything change at all beyond the jersey if Kazuma had died in the same world he reincarnates into? So, here I am using the isekai genre to punch the authors for using a lazy crutch to get their stories started, but after they start, that similarity becomes fairly inconsequential.

So all that was me being a jerk and saying that it's really weird when you guys are like, "I can't like Konosuba because RE:Zero was better." It's like if you wrote "I can't like Kobayashi's Maid Dragon, Ikoku Meiro no Croisée was so much better." They're just really different stories about different things, beyond the presence or absence of dragons and witches.

Oh, and I really like Tekketsu Orphans. It's neat, in a Gundam show, for the grunts to still be Glaives after 40 episodes. And while it was pretty transparent how they set up sympathy for Naze right at the end, I can't say it wasn't effective. And, if we're comparing it to Wing, I like how Orphans manages to have no side be Definitely the Good Guys™ without just making every. single. character. such a broken psychopath that there's no way they could survive a day anywhere but Gundam Wing. And like pooch said earlier, that they have the princess one: not just realize that maybe she's a spoiled rich idealist who has to operate in the real world but two: actually have her use her political skills and connections to actually become a useful ally, rather than either languishing as the token useless chick or throwing away her original character to climb into the Gundam is just so damn impressive. It shouldn't be, but here we are. And like _mike said, Mikazuki is a much better broken psychopath than Hiro (that's Gundam Wing's psycho in charge). Like, I just laughed when Hiro chose every opportunity to jump from a tall place and land on his neck. I feel like Mika is more of a person, just a really different person from anyone I've met. He's fun to watch. Like, how he manages to be the super-practical, super-level headed murderer without he or the show shitting on his friends who are closer to functional beings but less than Superman in a robot fight is another really impressive part of his character and the show's writing.

So I guess I didn't end this on the isekai thing. Probably better like this.

[pochercoaster]

More Gundam thoughts:

1. Why can't they just (minor season 2 spoilers kind of) give Mikazuki a wheelchair? Carrying him around and dumping him on the ground is so mean, even if he doesn't seem to care. XD

2. What the hell happened to Kudelia's father?

3. Mikazuki is definitely a good character in that he's actually a person and not just a shallow representation of a sociopath.

4. (Major season 2 spoilers) LAFTER NOOOOOOOOOOO. I thought she was gonna be a super special gundam pilot and wreck shit. : (

5. It's pretty cool how they explain that the Turbines used to be girls/women doing dangerous/shitty work that men wouldn't do, because that has actual parallels in real life.

[MuMu]

Another short one. Warning: If children being harmed and/or abused isn't your cup of tea, avoid.

Boku dake ga Inai Machi or Erased

"Satoru Fujinuma is a struggling mangaka who, to make ends meet, works part-time as a delivery man. He also possess a unique ability: The Revival/Rerun, a moment where time rewinds to the same spot until he figures it's cause, usually the death or injury of a nearby person.



When his mother makes an unexpected visit, a dark subject is brought up: The kidnapping and murder of children that happened when Satoru was younger, including close friends of his; While taking a walk with his mother, a Revival/Rerun occurs and Satoru - unwittingly - stops a kidnapping from happening. Despite being 18 years since the two incidents, the question of whether these happenings could be connected is raised.



Unfortunately, the killer is also on Satoru's tail. They kill and frame him for the murder of a loved one and while on the run from the police, in a fit of despair, Satoru does a special Revival/Rerun that sends him far back



To 1988, when he was still in school and the year where the original murders happened. Considering the nature of his ability, he reaches one conclusion



That the reason he was sent to this specific time period was to stop the killings before they happened and apprehend the murderer."

Addendum: This series had an anime adaptation that follows the original story very closely so if you're the kind that prefers moving pictures, give it a try.

[shiney]

Been watching Little Witch Academia on the slightly less than thoroughly upstanding websites.

It's so endearing. I love this show.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Just started watching Death Note. Holy fucking crap why did I not watch this sooner? So good!

[_mike]

Next time on Kidou Senshi Gundam: Tekketsu Orphans
Erry body gonna die お楽しみに！

[Gregness]

So, people got a little salty with Crunchyroll's anime awards 'cause it ended up being more of a popularity contest than this kind of thing is even by default, and Yuri on Ice ended up winning way more stuff than it should have (so the complaints go). Not that it wasn't a great show (so I hear, haven't gotten around to watching it yet) but people were irritated that it won stuff like 'Best Animation' over stuff like Mob Psycho 100.

So, the anime subreddit guys decided to have their own awards, with blackjack and hookers. Here's an infographic with the results.

If nothing else, there was a more diverse crop of winners there.