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Baccano! and Dennō Coil are both things I'd recommend as beautifully draw, well-constructed anime. I've heard some interesting things about Death Parade but I've yet to sit down and watch it. Jojo is just straight-up good fun with a lot of weird powers thrown in for good measure. The english dub of Ghost Stories still remains the height of anime for me though.
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Jan 27, 2017 23:18
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Mushihi is very good, very chill depiction of people dealing with shinto-esque spirits.
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Jan 27, 2017 23:24
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Nuns with Guns posted:There's always the standby of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, too. Each of the parts of JoJo that have been animated are standalone but have links to the prior stories. Part 2 and Part 4 are my favorites. It's pretty easy to jump into Part 4 with no prior knowledge of the setting other than a few secondary characters in the story. Part 4 is also where the concept of "stands" morphs into the intense puzzles over the normal things like rock, paper, scissors, cashing a check, and eating good Italian food. And it somehow works out very well I've never watched JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and I narrow my eyes suspiciously at anime, but I did enjoy RPPR's analysis of JoJo's and the parallels between the anime and the FATE rules system of tapping weaknesses for fate points. "RPPR Episode 137: JoJo’s Compelled Aspect" http://slangdesign.com/rppr/2016/12/podcast-episode/rppr-episode-137-jojos-compelled-aspect/ It held my attention about anime for a good hour, so that's got to be a recommendation for someone with a passing enjoyment of the subject. Halloween Jack posted:
Love Ghost in the Shell: SAC, but I have to admit this analysis/criticism is dead accurate.
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Jan 27, 2017 23:25
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Evangelion is bad.Slimnoid posted:Baccano! and Dennō Coil are both things I'd recommend as beautifully draw, well-constructed anime. I've heard some interesting things about Death Parade but I've yet to sit down and watch it. Jojo is just straight-up good fun with a lot of weird powers thrown in for good measure. Follow this advice (I know nothing about Death Parade though).
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Jan 27, 2017 23:29
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Death Parade is very good and has one of the best opening songs ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjjTMNDZi-A
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Jan 27, 2017 23:32
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Now I remember why El Hazard is so great, the score is amazing. The arabesque style was really a standout in an era when nerds thought a symphonic arrangement of Sephiroth's theme was high art. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0WWZwDqG9M Ulpio Minucci's theme for Robotech was exactly what it needed to be, no more and no less 
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Jan 28, 2017 00:42
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Gonna second Baccano and Mushishi. I keep waiting for someone to adapt the Baccano guy's vampire book, because really, the idea of a monster hunting team that funds itself at least partly by selling fake tacticool vampire hunting gear via a website and then just looking for the folks leaving sincere "There's really monsters, what do I do" comments as clients is maybe the best set up for a Hunter: The Vigil game I've ever heard of?
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Jan 28, 2017 00:55
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I'm an old man who hasn't really watched anime since college so I have no idea what modern shows are good but since you mentioned you like El Hazard I might be able to contribute. Specifically, I think that Rumiko Takahashi's stuff still really holds up and is great in general, especially Urusei Yatsura and Ranma 1/2.
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Jan 28, 2017 01:31
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unseenlibrarian posted:I keep waiting for someone to adapt the Baccano guy's vampire book, because really, the idea of a monster hunting team that funds itself at least partly by selling fake tacticool vampire hunting gear via a website and then just looking for the folks leaving sincere "There's really monsters, what do I do" comments as clients is maybe the best set up for a Hunter: The Vigil game I've ever heard of? Holy poo poo I think I'm going to steal that.
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Jan 28, 2017 01:34
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I can't even remember why we're recommending anime, but Cowboy Bebop is a lot like an RPG group of competent people doing missions semi competently. Best music ever and great characters, let down only by the fan servicey design of the main female lead, but that's easy to ignore if you've ever seen any other female anime character
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Jan 28, 2017 01:36
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starkebn posted:I can't even remember why we're recommending anime, but Cowboy Bebop is a lot like an RPG group of competent people doing missions semi competently. Best music ever and great characters, let down only by the fan servicey design of the main female lead, but that's easy to ignore if you've ever seen any other female anime character I remember liking El Hazard but I cannot remember a single other thing about it.
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Jan 28, 2017 01:43
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Slayers is pretty much the most accurate portrayal of any given D&D game ever.
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Jan 28, 2017 01:48
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Yawgmoth posted:I like a good many anime series but NGE is basically the D&D of anime. It's a pile of garbage that's been sitting in a particularly stagnant and sun-baked area but everyone gets recommended it because it was popular. D&D... is bad?
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Jan 28, 2017 02:44
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Yeah, sorry guys pack it up, yawg says dnd is a poopoo pile of trash  edit: hajime no ippo is the best anime, ippo is a lawful good fighter Ominous Jazz fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Jan 28, 2017 |
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Jan 28, 2017 03:01
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Haystack posted:Mushihi is very good, very chill depiction of people dealing with shinto-esque spirits. Third this. As a person who does not like most anime for many of the same reasons HJ gave, I also really loved Shin Sekai Yori which starts out as a sort of fantasy slice-of-life thing about psychic teenagers, and then takes a hard left into...uncharted territory, and slowly unveils the sinister and terrifying elements of its setting. I personally have been burned so many times by anime recommendations that I take almost all of them with a grain of salt but I did also end up liking One Punch Man. It toys a bit with anime genre conventions and as inoffensive as Genos is as a shonen-style protagonist, I still love seeing him get his face pushed in the dirt as a proxy for all the other stupid shallow power-fantasy characters he represents. Oh, and it's funny. The hero powers/themes are often are adorably absurd. ETA: Holy crap, looking over Mutant Year Zero stuff, the Compendium 3 is The New Kingdom of Deeproot: The fanatic and militaristic mutant rabbits’ stronghold in the Zone, built after their escape from Genlab Alpha. Blackhand’s Bar, the headquarters of the famed Zone Riders and the lair of their secretive leader The Garbage Masters, a tribe of mutant toads who have made a huge ancient garbage dump their home. Many Zone dwellers flock to the scrap digs, hoping to strike it rich The Island of Doctor Life, where a mysterious machine being who survived the fall of Genlab Alpha has settled. Is the machine friend or foe? The Squirrel Wars, a tale of hounds and tail runners, locked in endless combat. Can the players break the cycle of violence and save the forest from destruction? militant rabbits and junktoads and and a Gene Wolfe reference occamsnailfile fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Jan 28, 2017 |
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Jan 28, 2017 03:01
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I remember Please Save My Earth going between interesting and depressing. Did revolve around reincarnation and bad karma, which kind of fits with the earlier question about player character death. How do you balance the generational game handling of death with the surving characters? A character dies and the party packs it in until the next turn of the wheel? Kill off the entire party if any character dies? Go full Groundhog Day (or eternal recurrence, if you prefer Nietzche) until the party gets it right or at least develops amor fati.
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Jan 28, 2017 03:59
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Rockopolis posted:I remember Please Save My Earth going between interesting and depressing. Did revolve around reincarnation and bad karma, which kind of fits with the earlier question about player character death. I would let the dead character's player play a previously minor character or introduce a new one, while letting everybody know that this guy won't get a second chance at this. So while their accomplishments might have meaning, your paths would never cross again. Depending on the goal of the campaign that might even make the rest of the group try harder. I mean, there's nothing that specifically states in that kind of game that the entire group makes it across the finish line (unless you said so), just that they get to keep trying until they do make it. If you do have to have the original party intact to defeat the final boss (whatever that boss is), it's still worthwhile to try to make it that far to either delay the BBG's plans or try to find a weakness or lay groundwork for another attempt (specific mechanics permitting, if it's Groundhog Day time loop then you can only gather intel). Of course, this is sidestepped by just making any encounter that is capable of killing a PC be capable of killing ALL PCs in the event that one of them dies, via power up or fiat or making each PC load bearing in that if one falls, the others follow shortly after even if they survive the encounter. If you do this make sure you tell the players beforehand, so they know when to pack it in and when to keep fighting. There's nothing more frustrating than 'winning' a fight you lost if you could have avoided it and actually won if you had just saved the guy that died.
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Jan 28, 2017 04:22
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I will always recommend Monster as a sober, depressing look at a man making a series of terrible decisions in incredibly poo poo circumstances while his life and the lives of those around him go catastrophically wrong. It's very similar to Breaking Bad, thematically - it's a bit like an HBO anime. The actual plot is that a spinal surgeon is fired when he refuses to stop performing life-saving surgery on a young boy and let a drunk take over when the mayor comes in after a car accident and they need him to operate. He is resigned to having been punished for making the right decision but then all the people involved in his firing turn up murdered, making it look to the FBI like he definitely did it. Turns out the boy whose life he saved was a serial killer. He decides the only morally correct thing to do as a doctor is to evade the police and hunt down and kill the boy. This is episode one and there are like 70 episodes and it just keeps getting worse. I also have a soft spot for Elfen Lied for being the first anime I ever watched and its unflinchingly horrifying portrayal of what combat looks like between people whose superpower is that they can slice anything at a 3 metre range with invisible vibrating knife limbs.
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Jan 28, 2017 04:32
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I dropped Elfen Lied after 15 mins. A feat only matched by Lucky Star.
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Jan 28, 2017 04:47
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i watched every awful bit of it but i can only remember the vauge outline because elfin lied is ultra garbage
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Jan 28, 2017 06:18
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Yu-Gi-Oh! Season Zero is a fun viewing: the "Duel Monsters" card game hadn't been introduced, so the series involved Yugi transforming and challenging various criminals and douchebags to different games of skill and chance. The catch? If they lose they Plus, the series introduced Bakura (and his dark side) through an RPG arc where learning to throw dice so they'll always end up on the number you want is a major factor in the good guys winning. For a beautiful art piece that'll make you cry in awe, I'd recommend Macross: Do You Remember Love? Totally hand drawn (as it's from the 1980s), I watched it thinking it was overhyped. I was wrong, it was beautiful, and needs to be released on DVD or BD at some point. And for the contest proper, have you considered "Ultimate Muscle: The Kinnikuman Legacy"? EDIT: It would help if I got the title right... TheSoundNinja fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Jan 28, 2017 |
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Jan 28, 2017 06:42
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Legend of the Galactic Heroes is great and the novels are currently being released in English. Evangelion is decent but not for everyone. It's controversial in that it was supposed to turn conventions on their head, had a messed up production, and Anno is very referential, he's one of the original otaku animators and he really wants you to know it. It was sort of revolutionary for its day too but it's gone on to sell out like there's no tomorrow. Shin Godzilla is pretty much the first 15 minutes of Evangelion, drawn out into about 2 hours but drawing on the work of Max Weber instead of an intro psych textbook in the second half of the overall story. TheSoundNinja posted:For a beautiful art piece that'll make you cry in awe, I'd recommend Macross: Do You Remember Love? Totally hand drawn (as it's from the 1980s), I watched it thinking it was overhyped. I was wrong, it was beautiful, and needs to be released on DVD or BD at some point. This is very true and I highly recommend it. Good luck finding a decent version, Harmony Gold is still around somehow and still messing with any Macross releases.
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Jan 28, 2017 07:00
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Alright, the modifier is up for the February TGD Contest: Sequel Series. Now to see what comes out of it...
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Jan 28, 2017 07:37
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Serf posted:I dunno. It was pretty bad. The new movies are actually good. SunAndSpring posted:I dunno, I think that one guy in Games who hates Fallout New Vegas because he went north from Goodsprings despite numerous NPCs telling him not to do it is worse. You can trust me on awful opinions. I'm an expert in the field.
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Jan 28, 2017 07:52
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Legend of the Galactic Heroes is great and the novels are currently being released in English. At first I thought you were talking about Science Ninja Team Gatchaman. Which everyone should watch anyway, so I'm going to pretend you actually did and agree that Condor Joe is the best. Keep pressing that missile button, Joe.
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Jan 28, 2017 08:43
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Legend of the Galactic Heroes is great and the novels are currently being released in English. Thanks, it's nice to get a little good news.
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Jan 28, 2017 08:49
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That Old Tree posted:At first I thought you were talking about Science Ninja Team Gatchaman. Which everyone should watch anyway, so I'm going to pretend you actually did and agree that Condor Joe is the best. Keep pressing that missile button, Joe. I've only seen a few episodes of Gatchman but Joe really did love firing those bird missiles, didn't he?
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Jan 28, 2017 09:55
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TheSoundNinja posted:Alright, the modifier is up for the February TGD Contest: Sequel Series. Can't wait to do this and a KS at the same time 
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Jan 28, 2017 11:06
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gradenko_2000 posted:D&D... is bad? Yes, it's pure garbage.
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Jan 28, 2017 12:14
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New to the forum and fairly new to traditional games, posting to ask for advice. I bought the Cryptozoic Ghostbusters game through the Kickstarter because I'm a Ghostbusters super fan, and playing with one group of friends really got them turned on to board gaming. Recently they proposed us having a semi regular night for board gaming, and last night was it. Unfortunately, last night my friend the host had Doom the board game lined up - it was a lot more complex than anything we had played before so resigned ourselves to try another day and ended up playing Nintendo Monopoly  One game I remember playing as a kid that was awesome is Heroquest but a quick look online suggests that's now something of a collectors item. So what I'm looking for is advice on good games for 4+ players that offer a decent gaming session without being too difficult to pick up: am I right in assuming the more experience you have with different board games the more familiar you become with complex systems?
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Jan 28, 2017 12:29
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TheSoundNinja posted:Yu-Gi-Oh! Season Zero is a fun viewing: the "Duel Monsters" card game hadn't been introduced, so the series involved Yugi transforming and challenging various criminals and douchebags to different games of skill and chance. The catch? If they lose they Kinnikuman Nisei kicks rear end even with the lovely 4kids changes. It also made me read the original manga years later.
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Jan 28, 2017 14:05
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Bacon Terrorist posted:New to the forum and fairly new to traditional games, posting to ask for advice. I bought the Cryptozoic Ghostbusters game through the Kickstarter because I'm a Ghostbusters super fan, and playing with one group of friends really got them turned on to board gaming. Recently they proposed us having a semi regular night for board gaming, and last night was it. Unfortunately, last night my friend the host had Doom the board game lined up - it was a lot more complex than anything we had played before so resigned ourselves to try another day and ended up playing Nintendo Monopoly A lot of board games use similar mechanics, and once you've learned how one example of that works, it's usually pretty easy to adjust to another game that uses the same basic principles. As for something like Heroquest, while I've never played it the Descent board game is similar in premise, with one antagonist player and several 'hero' players who go on quests, collect loot, and fight monsters. If you really want to ease people into board games though, it's best to break out the 'classics' of the boardgame renaissance like Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne. Their basic rules are simple, but you can expand upon them by adding optional packs over time to build up complexity.
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Jan 28, 2017 14:05
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Kwyndig posted:A lot of board games use similar mechanics, and once you've learned how one example of that works, it's usually pretty easy to adjust to another game that uses the same basic principles. Thanks for the swift reply! I will check out Descent, I have heard good things about Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne but never played either of them. I think that's what we need though, something easy to pick up that can then be made more complex. I think we may have just been getting our heads turned by the licensed games on the market.
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Jan 28, 2017 14:21
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Bacon Terrorist posted:Thanks for the swift reply! I will check out Descent, I have heard good things about Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne but never played either of them. I think that's what we need though, something easy to pick up that can then be made more complex. I think we may have just been getting our heads turned by the licensed games on the market. Be warned, if you're looking for a "simple" game, Decent is not it. If you're set on a dungeon crawl a la Heroquest check out the relatively recent D&D board games. There are at least three that I know of, and while they're not really simple games they're certainly a lot simpler then Decent and they're cooperative so you and your group can all play together without one of you having to run the dungeon.
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Jan 28, 2017 14:37
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If you play Descent with the Road to Legend app, I think it becomes about as streamlined as other co-op dungeon crawl thingies.
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Jan 28, 2017 15:25
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Doodmons posted:I will always recommend Monster as a sober, depressing look at a man making a series of terrible decisions in incredibly poo poo circumstances while his life and the lives of those around him go catastrophically wrong. It's very similar to Breaking Bad, thematically - it's a bit like an HBO anime. The actual plot is that a spinal surgeon is fired when he refuses to stop performing life-saving surgery on a young boy and let a drunk take over when the mayor comes in after a car accident and they need him to operate. He is resigned to having been punished for making the right decision but then all the people involved in his firing turn up murdered, making it look to the FBI like he definitely did it. Turns out the boy whose life he saved was a serial killer. He decides the only morally correct thing to do as a doctor is to evade the police and hunt down and kill the boy. This is episode one and there are like 70 episodes and it just keeps getting worse. You're exaggerating how dark this series is. I mean, yeah, Johann hurts and traumatizes a bunch of people, but Tenma never really loses his sense of ethics no matter how bad things get, and generally continues to make people's lives better even if his driving goal is 'kill Johann.' Tenma's role in the series, though, is not so much hunting down Johann, but rather figuring him out while preventing or mitigating the harm that he's causing. At it's core, its not so much a horror series as much as a mystery: who the gently caress is Johann, and what happened to make him into such a psychopath? There are definitely elements of tragedy, but I'd argue that everyone who survives ends up more at peace with themselves and able to resolve the issues that plagued their lives. Even the viewpoint characters who die, generally end up dying on their own terms. It's a grim series, but it's not gratuitous. It's also an uncannily well researched portrayal of Central and Eastern Europe. Basically anything by Naoki Urasawa is good, including 20th Century Boys, Pluto, and Billy Bat.
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Jan 28, 2017 18:23
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I recommend posting your board game question in the board game thread, not in a "that's where it belongs" way but because the people there are quite experienced with recommending games to a huge variety of skill levels and tastes.
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Jan 28, 2017 19:00
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What were the best boardgames released in 2016?
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Jan 28, 2017 20:35
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That's a pretty broad question since there's a lot of "best of"s. Best for hobbyists? Families? Wargamers? Collectors? Parties? Not-Quite-Hobbyists-But-Deeper-Than-Catan-ers? Here's some of my personal favorites from 2016 in no particular order. Codex: Card-Time Strategy: A two-player (technically supports 2v2 or FFA but those are mediocre and poo poo, respectively) card game where each player assembles an "army" of three mini-decks representing different factions divided by color. There's 6 colors with 3 factions each (you can mix colors at a minor cost) plus a neutral color with 2 factions. The gameplay itself has elements of TCGs and Dominion-style deckbuilders since every turn you dig through your titular "codex" and add two cards of your choice to your discard pile face down to draw soon in hopes of counterpicking your opponent's strategy. Solves some problems with M:tG-style creatures games via the RTS-inspired "scouting" board but has some problems of its own. Note that there isn't really deck construction like there is in TCGs, all you do is pick your 3 factions and smush their decks together to make one codex. Captain Sonar: Team-based game that plays best with 6 or 8 players. Each person has a role on a submarine - either a captain, first officer, engineer, or comms officer - and plays little minigames on dry erase boards in real time to do their jobs faster than the other team but relying on everyone else to do their job well to actually have the resources to do poo poo with. I've seen it described as Battleship with teams and limited communication which isn't quite right but is definitely a decent elevator pitch. Not quite a "comedy of errors" thing but you definitely need to be able to laugh at yourself as you order the engineer to load the torpedoes after finally getting a lock on the other team's sub only to realize the torpedoes have been offline for the past 3 minutes since you refused to move North. Sushi Go Party!: As the name suggests it's a party game, but with enough "party" and "game" that it keeps hobbyists and their families equally engrossed. A huge hit with my folks over the holidays. Standard drafting game ala 7 Wonders, but with totes adorbs little sushi. You're dealt a hand of 7(?) cards and each player picks one simultaneously then passes around the table, rinse repeat for 3 rounds. A step up over the original "Sushi Go!" (no "party"), even for non-parties, because it comes with a much greater variety of cards that you can use each game. A fast, light drafting game with cute art that you can explain to anyone in minutes. Agricola: Revised Edition: It's Agricola, but revised. I guess it sorta doesn't count since the changes are pretty minor but any excuse to recommend Agricola is a good one. Go Cuckoo!: A dexterity game where you draw sticks out of a cup and then lay them across said cup, and attempt to balance eggs on them. The first person to run out of eggs first wins. Scythe: Looks like a minis game, quacks like a minis game, but isn't really a minis game aside from, well, having minis. A very stylized economics/area control game with subtle asymmetry where the threat of violence is often more potent than the actual act. Everyone has a different pseudo-fictional country and works to gather resources, build monuments, recruit locals to their cause, and establish military and economic supremacy. I played this for the first time today and really enjoyed it but a lot of people have mixed things to say since they go in expecting a large scale war game since you have giant mechs everywhere but it really isn't one. Games I personally haven't played but have had recommended by people I trust: A Feast for Odin Junk Art Dominion 2nd Edition Exceed Codenames: Pictures Millennium Blades Millions of Dollars Terraforming Mars Vinhos Mechs vs. Minions Now I only went through the first 7 or so pages of games released in 2016 on Board Game Geek here - 7 of 48, each with 100 games/expansions/promos. That's a shitton of games. A lot of them are trash for pretty much everyone and there likely exists 5 games that do what you want better, but plenty of the games I have listed here may just be trash for me or just something I haven't tried or heard of. Like no one has recommended me Stronghold 2nd Edition but I want to try it. Or maybe the Castles of Burgundy Card Game is really great but no one I know is interested in it. Most importantly, there's been so many amazing games since 2010-2012 that someone could have an amazing fleshed out collection that covers everything from party games, to traitor games, to epic strategy games, to co-op games just from picking any year since then.
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Jan 29, 2017 03:32
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Bedlamdan posted:You're exaggerating how dark this series is. I mean, yeah, Johann hurts and traumatizes a bunch of people, but Tenma never really loses his sense of ethics no matter how bad things get, and generally continues to make people's lives better even if his driving goal is 'kill Johann.' Tenma's role in the series, though, is not so much hunting down Johann, but rather figuring him out while preventing or mitigating the harm that he's causing. At it's core, its not so much a horror series as much as a mystery: who the gently caress is Johann, and what happened to make him into such a psychopath? Yeah, those are fair comments. Like, it didn't make me want to literally put a gun in my mouth like Saikano did, but I can't say I came away from Monster feeling good about existence.
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Jan 29, 2017 03:41
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