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boredsatellite posted:Where the hell am I supposed to get my entertainment now. You are the true monster There's always select excerpts of the light novel from Namtab.  It's a great way to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes without ruining our sanity even further. However, I think the excerpts do plenty of damage on their own. Seriously Namtab, you're doing God's work here but don't push yourself too hard. 
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Jun 12, 2014 23:49
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I'm actually having a lot of fun with the excerpts (the novels are readable, plus there's enough terrible stuff that it remains entertaining for me to do). I'm just trying to figure out how to do them now that I've passed the anim whilst retaining readability, cause it's a tad unfair to spoil things for people (well the handful of people reading this thread who don't want to be spoiled) but at the same time I hate the way threads look when there's huge posts full of spoiler tags. I'll prob resume actual novelposts this weekend.
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Jun 13, 2014 00:01
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They're not spoilers, they're unintentionally hilarious warnings. 
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Jun 13, 2014 00:12
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you've left me with no other choice....i must kill anime. *unsheathes katana*
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Jun 13, 2014 00:26
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So are there any light novels... Well, not just better than this, since that's such a low bar to clear you could qualify while still being tedious garbage. Mediocre, maybe? Suggest mediocre and above LNs for me to read.
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Jun 13, 2014 03:40
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All the good ones has already been made into anime/manga/other mediums already. It seems like they're scrapping the bottom of the barrel now.
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Jun 13, 2014 03:45
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The problem is the bulk of light novels available in English...are translated so, so, so poorly that you can barely call it English. Everything on Baka Tsuki is pretty much unacceptable. I've heard the Haruhi LNs are deece. I liked the anime but I haven't checked them out but they are getting a professional translation on them so that's certainly a big advantage there. I recommend reading some cool Japanese lit by people that aren't writing anime scripts, instead.
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Jun 13, 2014 03:54
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Rangpur posted:So are there any light novels... Well, not just better than this, since that's such a low bar to clear you could qualify while still being tedious garbage. Mediocre, maybe? Suggest mediocre and above LNs for me to read. I remember liking Boogiepop a lot, but kinda lost track of it. Has there been anything new by that series, or was that already marked as finished? Shouji Gatoh's most recent novel (Brilliant Park) is decent, too. At this point, and given the fact the anime based on normal novels from Tomihiko Morimi (Eccentric Family, Tatami Galaxy) Honobu Yonezawa (Hyouka) and Yusuke Kishi (From the New World), I'd say go for normal novels. I'm hoping one day a Haruki Murakami anime adaptation happens. e:fb
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Jun 13, 2014 04:18
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Doesn't Haibane Renmei count?
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Jun 13, 2014 18:30
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This thread is like the anime message board equivalent of It's a Wonderful Life.
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Jun 14, 2014 01:06
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About why Tatsuya is considered a failure by his family: They've glossed over a lot of the insanely long techno-babble/world building (thankfully) from the LN so either this got cut or they haven't approached that part yet (I don't remember exactly where it is) but it's essentially an extension of the reason he's considered course 2 instead of course 1. Tatsuya's innate magic's sole use is reconstructing and deconstructing existing things. The magic processing area in his brain is completely devoted to those two magics to the point that he can't (naturally) do anything else. The Yotsuba family (and, I guess, magic society in general) measures the strength of magic based on its ability to alter or create new phenomena. Since Tatsuya can't affect any kind of change with magic (only break things down or rebuild them as they were), he's considered to have no magic. The experiment his mother performed repurposed a part of his brain (the emotion part) to be a second magic processing area. This gave him limited ability to cast simple sequences of more versatile magic (albeit almost instantaneously) but, again, since strength is measured on how drastically he can alter phenomena, he is still considered sub par by the standards of the school's tests. Edit: He's kind of like Scar from Fullmetal Alchemist in that he can't perform full alchemical transmutations, just stops at the deconstruction phase.
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Jun 14, 2014 22:54
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organism posted:Edit: He's kind of like Scar from Fullmetal Alchemist in that he can't perform full alchemical transmutations, just stops at the deconstruction phase. That's really convenient for an action protagonist.
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Jun 14, 2014 23:15
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Counterpoint: Dude can break down and reassemble matter. Oh no, the shame! He has a godlike power but not a much more mundane power. It is just dumb quibbling for why he is downtrodden despite his wealth and privilege. What a brave little soldier, people say mean things to him every once in a while! I mean sure, the vast majority of the people he interacts with on a daily basis verbally fellate him at every opportunity, but other people he rarely sees don't like him much. I'm sure it must hurt Tatsuya's feelings terribly, except for how it doesn't because he only has feelings when Satou thinks it makes him cooler. Also, the mages that can serve as tactical military weapons are always without fail a source of prestige for their family. Why wouldn't they be? Japan is #1, but surrounded by the gaijin hordes who hunger to despoil its serene beauty and serene beauties. Magic nukes are there to be used (against the chinese), after all. For another thing, the yotsuba don't seem to give a flying gently caress about being respected when they can be feared instead. Matter-disintegration Lad seems like a pretty good tool to make people afraid of them. He wouldn't be part of the larger magician community, he wouldn't be sought after as a potential spouse, and most importantly no one would want anything to do with him when it wasn't time to murder hundreds of thousands of chinese soldiers because he could kill you by looking at you. Everyone would be scared shitless of Tatsuya and he would belong solely to the yotsuba clan. But no, instead he is alternately shunned and fawned over, and he is only used as a bodyguard because he has to be kept secret.
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Jun 14, 2014 23:27
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All of Tatsuya's shunning by the Yotsuba becomes meaningless when one remembers that Miyuki is the next heir so really the aunt and butler are p.much being dicks for the sake of it.
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Jun 15, 2014 01:02
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Namtab posted:All of Tatsuya's shunning by the Yotsuba becomes meaningless when one remembers that Miyuki is the next heir so really the aunt and butler are p.much being dicks for the sake of it. I hope at one point Tastuya recovers his emotions full throttle just so he can dick around with the aunt. Not because it'll provide room for some poetic retribution for all the shunning, gods no. I just want to see what kind of awful, ham-fisted prose Satou will come up with in case such an event happens. ... is this what writing fanfiction feels like?
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Jun 15, 2014 02:30
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Wark Say posted:... is this what writing fanfiction feels like? No, it's what writing garbage feels like. It doesn't matter if it's original fiction or fanfiction, bad writing is bad, and when it's bad it's terrible.
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Jun 15, 2014 03:39
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i ask an actual japanese person what their thoughts on mahouka, they respond: what's mahouka
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Jun 15, 2014 06:33
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by drackthar's hammer.....what a loli savings
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Jun 15, 2014 06:56
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Serious Frolicking posted:Matter-disintegration Lad I'd read a stupid-overdone Silver Age comic starring Matter Disintegration Lad. Pity that Mahouka is just stupid.
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Jun 15, 2014 09:00
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JimmyT64 posted:I'd read a stupid-overdone Silver Age comic starring Matter Disintegration Lad. "Galloping gigawatts, Matter Disintegration Lad just reduced the entire battlebot army to their constituent atoms!" "That's nothing! Remember, I can instantaneously reconstruct things exactly as they were!" [See issue #48 - ED] "But what good will that do? We don't want the battlebots back again!" "Ah, but if I stop part-way through, like... this!" *KAPOW* "Trumpeting teravolts! You reconstructed them without weapons or programming!?" "That's right! Just think, an entire army of robot servants that could be programmed to help the elderly or infirm, or to do jobs too dangerous for humans!" "You're so brilliant, Matter Disintegration Lad!" "I know!" 
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Jun 15, 2014 09:29
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I'm actually despairing over this show being so liked and accepted in Japan right now(going by more polls). Is it too much to hope for that possibly most viewers haven't read the LN and don't know how amoral Tatsuya is?
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Jun 15, 2014 16:51
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Eh, he came across as really amoral to me in the anime too. But hey, that's not inherently a bad thing! If written well amoral characters are actually really cool and compelling but of course, that hinges on quite the *if* there. Hard to find impressions from Japanese viewers but I'm just assuming it's popular because of the usual checklist-y stuff.
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Jun 15, 2014 16:54
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A protagonist doesn't need to be a good guy. It helps if they have some redeeming traits, but really the story just needs to acknowledge what they are on some level. But then, this is based on a masturbatory LN written by a talentless hack, so Tatsuya isn't a good guy, he doesn't have redeeming traits, and the story pretends that he is the most perfect human being who ever lived.
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Jun 15, 2014 17:27
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WickedHate posted:I'm actually despairing over this show being so liked and accepted in Japan right now(going by more polls). Is it too much to hope for that possibly most viewers haven't read the LN and don't know how amoral Tatsuya is? Like Serious Frolicking said, it's not necessarily bad for the protagonist to amoral or even evil. The problem is mostly with the fact that Tatsuya's amoral actions/beliefs are juxtaposed with most of the cast praising him.
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Jun 15, 2014 19:34
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What I'm getting from WickedHate is: Nationalism = OK Secretly amoral protagonist = Not OK. I'm glad that I found a quote to stop Wickedhate liking this but somehow I feel it's been dropped for the wrong reason
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Jun 15, 2014 19:50
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You can do anything so long as you include some shallow moral platitudes for why it is right. Hero: "Grr, I hate those subhuman chinese so much that I'm going to kill hundreds of thousands of them." Villain: "(robot voice) Chinese are subhuman and I am going to kill hundreds of thousands of them." In this episode, Tatsuya touches an unmarried lady's shoulders and hand! Oh my, how risque. We also got the explanation for why Mayumi is obsessed with him, which is the same as it was for the last person. "You are utterly indifferent to me which is all I ever wanted in a man." I'm sensing a running theme, here? Pretty much the whole rest of the episode was generic untermensch being effortlessly beaten by the wealthy scions of powerful magic families. Okay, two running themes. Oh right, and Tatsuya once again only showing interest in men. He volunteered to rewrite all of Mikihiko's spells and now he had a fancy (retarded) magic sword custom-made for Leo. Add this to the prior examples of his imagining that one dude naked and his lavish praise for Mr. Most Likely to Engage in Domestic Abuse and a pattern starts to emerge. Perhaps his one true love was always the abusive butler?
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Jun 15, 2014 20:08
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Man that would have been a great twist. I can't think of any homosexual characters in the series at all. Do any ever turn up in the novels, or have gay people, like skimpy clothing, been eliminated in the enlightened future?
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Jun 15, 2014 20:12
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Ytlaya posted:Like Serious Frolicking said, it's not necessarily bad for the protagonist to amoral or even evil. The problem is mostly with the fact that Tatsuya's amoral actions/beliefs are juxtaposed with most of the cast praising him. Heck, when you consider a lot of critically acclaimed TV recently, people really dig amoral or even outright despicable protagonists when they're written well enough!
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Jun 15, 2014 20:13
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Namtab posted:What I'm getting from WickedHate is: I have a thing about heroes and justice. But yeah, I can like villain protagonists, but the amorality isn't treated as bad. I also don't think anything in the show up to the last time didn't seem nationalist but now I'm not actively watching it so who knows. Sindai posted:Man that would have been a great twist. Tatsuya does seem like he might be gay if it weren't for the tampering with his brain.
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Jun 15, 2014 20:34
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Serious Frolicking posted:Oh right, and Tatsuya once again only showing interest in men. He volunteered to rewrite all of Mikihiko's spells and now he had a fancy (retarded) magic sword custom-made for Leo. Add this to the prior examples of his imagining that one dude naked and his lavish praise for Mr. Most Likely to Engage in Domestic Abuse and a pattern starts to emerge. Perhaps his one true love was always the abusive butler? Two or three more episodes and the anim will finally be caught up to my bookposts. I know the source material is kinda slow and they're going for 26 eps but christ this anim is glacially paced.
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Jun 15, 2014 20:55
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Sindai posted:Man that would have been a great twist. It is completely unintentional subtext. I mean, actor (and to a lesser extent, politician) was portrayed as an immoral, wanton profession. Even acknowledging that homosexuals exist is probably too far left for Satou's taste. I kind of doubt it is even a matter of Satou being a closet case as is so popular among ultra-conservative nutjobs in the US. For Tatsuya to be the perfect man, he has to be close to men (a military tradition) while remaining distant from women. That this was written as him snatching a present he designed and built for a male friend (completely unprompted, I may add) from a female friend like she was going to leave cooties is just a hilarious coincidence.
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Jun 15, 2014 21:07
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Serious Frolicking posted:He volunteered to rewrite all of Mikihiko's spells and now he had a fancy (retarded) magic sword custom-made for Leo. The stupidest thing about the magic sword (besides how dumb it is as a concepy) is that Tatsuya has this thing designed and made for Leo before he is picked for the magic olympics. In other words the author basically has tatsuya make something for Leo on a whim in the middle of his busy schedule for the magic olympics which turns out to be exactly the tool Leo needs to be useful later on. With regards to the magic olympics themselves Tatsuya and pals win so easily that when a contestant isn't being brilliant due to something tatsuya's done the books pretty much are just "and then miyuki took part in the next heat and won easily". It's especially badly written. I'm behind on the anim, have they revealed the villain's motivation yet chinese gangsters are gonna lose money if first high win, therefore they eventually set a lobotomised magician loose to kill hundreds
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Jun 15, 2014 21:17
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No chinese person has appeared or even spoken.
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Jun 15, 2014 21:19
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Serious Frolicking posted:No chinese person has appeared or even spoken. yet. FYI he villains for book 6 are also the chinese. This time it's illegal chinese immigrants trying to steal first high's thesis for the magic thesis competition. Unlucky for them that Tatsuya's helping out on the thesis team.
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Jun 15, 2014 21:27
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Namtab posted:yet. Seriously? What's next, evil Chinese food restaurant owners with mind control pills?
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Jun 16, 2014 07:13
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I think you're on to something. Tatsuya gets pressed into service to help the school culinary club compete against them and he ends up ruthlessly disintegrating all their dishes when Miyuki takes a bite.
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Jun 16, 2014 08:27
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Where does the conception come from that Tatsuya killed hundreds of thousand innocent chinese? All the ones he killed tend to be terrorists or participants outright acts of war even (spoiler for a later occassion) when he drops his nuke magic on a harbor city and utterly annihilates it including the fleet and china's own nuke mage with it, it 's still called a solemly military structure and there were no civillians) Now it's horrible writing to show all chinese as evil/responsible for everything bad happening in the entire series so far (especially the cartoonish kind it is here) and not all military personal deserves the death they get but it's usually written as a reaction on an hostile act against Japan so it's "justified" defense I guess. Well the spoilered one is kind of preemtive and thus can be much more scrutinized because of it. It's not like I try to defend the writing since I know fully well how bad it is but some criticism seems to be blown way out of proportion while there is plenty else to be picked upon.
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Jun 16, 2014 14:14
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Right, he destroys a city. How fortunate that it is the only inhabited city in the history of mankind not to contain civilians. See, this is a work of fiction. When Tatsuya kills hundreds of thousands of helpless chinese soldiers, it isn't because he had no other choice. It is because Satou created the situation in which there was no other choice. Repeatedly, even! China keeps attacking Japan because they are inferior and want Japan's (magic) resources. The attackers are then killed, mostly by Tatsuya. Then there is how chinese immigrants and japanese citizens with chinese ancestry are all eager to get in on attacking Japan. Since all chinese want to attack Japan, they are all hostile forces and killing them is never wrong. Well, not that anything Tatsuya does is ever wrong. He has seriously never made a mistake in the entire LN series, but that is going off topic a bit. Can you really not see where that line of thinking leads? Of course, it is important to maintain perspective. Satou is not a political or religious leader. He writes garbage novels for a moderately sized audience. This crap is not going to incite a war, or even the slightest hint of violence against any chinese person. It is a symptom of nationalism, not a cause. That doesn't make it any less repugnant, though. gimme the GOD DAMN candy fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Jun 16, 2014 |
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Jun 16, 2014 15:27
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Any civilians in that city were obviously trade unionists and had to die.
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Jun 16, 2014 18:48
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Serious Frolicking posted:Right, he destroys a city. How fortunate that it is the only inhabited city in the history of mankind not to contain civilians. See, this is a work of fiction. When Tatsuya kills hundreds of thousands of helpless chinese soldiers, it isn't because he had no other choice. It is because Satou created the situation in which there was no other choice. Repeatedly, even! China keeps attacking Japan because they are inferior and want Japan's (magic) resources. The attackers are then killed, mostly by Tatsuya. Then there is how chinese immigrants and japanese citizens with chinese ancestry are all eager to get in on attacking Japan. Since all chinese want to attack Japan, they are all hostile forces and killing them is never wrong. Well, not that anything Tatsuya does is ever wrong. He has seriously never made a mistake in the entire LN series, but that is going off topic a bit. Oh I in no way defend this course of action. I just stated that they give an excuse for it and wholeheartedly agree that it's horrifying either way and really bad writing. And yeah Tatsuya never makes a mistake at all which is hilarious in it's absurdity. I fully understand and even said that it's horrible to portrait every single chinese as evil in it. It's basically an even more extreme version of action films during the cold war showing every russian being evil or more modern works delegating middle eastern guys to that role. It's stupid stereotyped writing that should never be taken seriously.
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Jun 16, 2014 19:10
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