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Kanos posted:I forgot Argevollen until I read this post. what the gently caress is an argevollen *google* no, no way, this doesn't exist this is some kind of ruse
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May 17, 2022 04:12
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| # ? May 30, 2024 11:55 |
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:forgetting argevollen is what argevollen is for, though. The only memorable thing argevollen did was jumping from a series of zero stakes fights to a war crime extravaganza and random grunt killing spree in the space of single episode. It almost foiled me into thinking it would become something like flag or gasaraki
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May 17, 2022 18:52
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2014 was a big year for robot anime, huge variety of shows of varying quality and memorability.
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May 17, 2022 19:12
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super-redguy posted:2014 was a big year for robot anime, huge variety of shows of varying quality and memorability. Any favs from around then? Looking at MAL there are quite a few there. https://myanimelist.net/anime/24835/Mobile_Suit_Gundam-san
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May 17, 2022 20:10
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pro click https://twitter.com/topherflorence/status/1526938759064956928
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May 18, 2022 16:38
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The gimmicks on the RG transforming Crunch galleon must be incredible
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May 18, 2022 16:41
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Kyoukai Senki just keeps getting worse and worse. The one thing the show has is hand drawn mech fights, and it just went two episodes in a row without any of them. Worse, one of the episodes was completely filler, with no apparent impact on the wider plot, killing any momentum it could have hypothetically built up. If I gave half a drat about the characters, this would still be a problem. Since they're all cardboard, it's even worse. I think they want intrigue about why Brad is acting like a villain this season, but because everything is so thinly sketched, it doesn't land. It just seems like more bad writing, in a show full of it. Of course the closest thing the show has to an interesting character would lose all his depth. That's just how this is written. This episode, everyone except the Americans decided to just give up and be nice, making a deal with the protagonists to give Japan back. Meanwhile, the Japanese government was confirmed to be totally in the American's pocket which... kind of makes the politics in the show even dumber? It makes the Americans the villains when they were invited in, while the countries that launched hostile invasions and had people selling citizens into slavery in bulk lots are now just misunderstood. It's so, so bad. But not in an interesting way.
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May 24, 2022 01:04
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It's weird it took this long for them to even focus on the Japanese government since the first two episodes established all the countries were here on their say so, which just made me wonder what kind of lovely deal they made where they can just do whatever they please to Japanese citizens. Revealing they're on the take of the one army not really doing that seems pretty on-brand though.
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May 24, 2022 02:08
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Justin_Brett posted:It's weird it took this long for them to even focus on the Japanese government since the first two episodes established all the countries were here on their say so, which just made me wonder what kind of lovely deal they made where they can just do whatever they please to Japanese citizens. Revealing they're on the take of the one army not really doing that seems pretty on-brand though. Oh, don't get the wrong impression. They don't focus on the Japanese government. They give it somewhere around one offhand line. The protagonists being a terrorist group rather than a resistance organization might seem like it could be something worth examining, with the moral and practical implications getting some discussion focusing on how their ideals contrast with the people just wanting to survive, and how their commit to a higher moral standard is, in part, because of how delicate their position is, causing internal debate about how far they should go in opposing their government. But as far as Kyoukai Senki is concerned, an episode about throwing a surprise birthday parties for the AIs is much more important than five minutes explaining the political situation. We get more attention to the idea that other resistance groups might feel bad about our heroes being the public face of a free Japan than to how any of this works. I had a more entertaining time going back to Ehrgeiz. It's also confusing, has worse visuals (you'd think something from '97 would look at least half decent, but here you'd be wrong) and the plot only has the three main threads vaguely interact in episode 4, but it has somewhat more entertaining interactions, a more character driven plot, and has action on a more regular basis. Don't get me wrong, it's bad. It's just better than Kyoukai Senki.
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May 24, 2022 04:16
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Kyoukai Senki's writers: Turns out they're just CSPAM posters.
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May 25, 2022 18:28
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Build Divers set my expectations low but Kyoukai Senki is sliding under them.
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May 25, 2022 18:34
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Fivemarks posted:Kyoukai Senki's writers: Turns out they're just CSPAM posters. If a CSPAM goon ever did a mech story, I suspect it would be a lot more Joshi Kouhei than Kyoukai Senki.
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May 27, 2022 03:20
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Kyoukai Senki... what can I say? It sucks. ...That was quicker than I thought. It's not just that it's boilerplate. Top Gun: Maverick is boilerplate and it's a lot of fun. Kyoukai Senki has almost no ideas of its own, but it executes them worse than whatever it rips off. This week at least had some action, but it wasn't particularly well shot, without a good flow or interesting focus. It was just poorly shot scenes of grunts killing grunts before one of the protagonists showed up to mow down all the bad guy grunts by sitting still and firing a Gatling gun. (I was also reminded of how much Gundam throws off my sense of scale when I found out it was a 45mm autocannon. In real life, the Warthog "only" has a 30mm main gun, but because Gundam has 60mm for its CiWS, 45mm feels really dinky for a main gun. Then again, the Boxer from Full Metal Panic is 57mm, so... yeah. It's a pretty sad excuse for a terrifying big gun in general mech anime terms.) It's kind of embarrassing how the AI murder drones just line up to get shot when the protagonist is stationary until half of them are dead. The plot, meanwhile, was as bad as usual. The peace talks turned out to be a trap, the war was "explained" by starting with a terrorist incident that no-one found a culprit for, with Brad's Moral Ambiguity being put more in the spotlight with everyone going "He's acting differently, and helped the heroes against his father's plan. HMMM." I can't even tell you why there was a fight this episode, beyond "the peace talks fell through." Three-to-five episodes to go. I only hope that Bandai has an A-team working on Witch to explain how dire this is, because, other than mech designs, this really has nothing going for it. It's not even bad in an interesting way.
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May 31, 2022 03:44
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I have to ask, why are you hatewatching this show when you could just pitch it and do something else with the time?
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May 31, 2022 04:25
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Midjack posted:I have to ask, why are you hatewatching this show when you could just pitch it and do something else with the time? At this point I assume because they've already gotten too deep.
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May 31, 2022 04:26
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Sometimes the only way out is through.
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May 31, 2022 04:35
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Midjack posted:I have to ask, why are you hatewatching this show when you could just pitch it and do something else with the time? I don't like leaving a job half done. I also don't like it when I look up some old mech anime and no-one has anything to say about it. Boring as Kyoukai Senki is, it's worth documenting, especially with hand drawn mech anime as a dying art. Most of all, though? Well, a quote comes to mind. "Hell no, it's the most disgusting sludge I've put in my stomach in years. But you see, nothing really compares to a cup of truly awful coffee. (...)When you drink a cup of really good coffee, you try to immerse yourself in that cup. You focus all your senses on what you're drinking. How it smells, how it tastes, how it feels on your tongue. You savor the experience. But when you drink a cup of absolutely horrid coffee, you do everything possible to NOT immerse yourself in it. You try to shut out your senses from what you're drinking. Inevitably, you try to stave off the assault on your poor innocent tongue by mentally comparing it to all the better coffee you've had in your life, reliving each cup in comparison to the godforsaken sludge you're pouring down your gullet right now. So when you drink a good cup of coffee, you're only drinking that one cup... but when you drink a bad cup of coffee, you remember every good cup you ever drank. And at my advanced age, that's a helluva lot of good coffee."
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May 31, 2022 04:40
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So what did you flash back to to compare to today's episode?
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May 31, 2022 04:44
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chiasaur11 posted:Three-to-five episodes to go. I only hope that Bandai has an A-team working on Witch to explain how dire this is, because, other than mech designs, this really has nothing going for it. It's not even bad in an interesting way. Considering the same Sunrise studio will be doing Witch...  Personally chanting the mantra "studio doesn't mean same creative team" in my mind just a little bit louder every time I think about it
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May 31, 2022 04:58
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IIRC one of the purposes of Kyoukai Senki even being made was to help train a new batch of animators on how to do non-CG mecha animation since Sunrise was concerned about the dwindling talent pool for that particular skill.
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May 31, 2022 05:11
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it didn't seem like that was really paying off, but i also had the good sense to quit like 5 eps in
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May 31, 2022 05:18
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dogsicle posted:it didn't seem like that was really paying off, but i also had the good sense to quit like 5 eps in I won't say the animation is amazing, but they do seem to be getting better at showing mechs in motion than at the start of the show. I hate to say something like this, but if you don't watch all through, you can't judge it... at least on this count. If the idea is to help people improve, then only seeing the "before" picture doesn't tell you much. Anyway, unless I missed an announcement, I don't think the Beyond team is working on Witch. It'd be kind of an odd choice when Sunrise has multiple mech animation teams to force the one that's already loaded down with Kyoukai Senki to also do early production for one of the flagship titles.
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May 31, 2022 07:27
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kyoukai senki team will probably get pulled onto witch when they're done but at that point they'd probably be working on like the 2nd cour and everything will be written/boarded already anyway
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Jun 1, 2022 19:56
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Really, I get the impression that Kyoukai Senki's most fundamental problem is that Noboru Kimura is a terrible writer. So long as they have just about anyone else in their stable doing series composition, it doesn't matter if the two shows share staff members.
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Jun 1, 2022 20:35
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Darth Walrus posted:Really, I get the impression that Kyoukai Senki's most fundamental problem is that Noboru Kimura is a terrible writer. So long as they have just about anyone else in their stable doing series composition, it doesn't matter if the two shows share staff members. That's also been my read. The production design of the show has been pretty good across the board, it's just that the story has been dogshit.
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Jun 1, 2022 22:54
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Which everyone saw coming after build divers also being compentently produced and deeply mediocre in its writing.
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Jun 1, 2022 23:10
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Omnicrom posted:That's also been my read. The production design of the show has been pretty good across the board, it's just that the story has been dogshit. I'd say the direction in combat has also been kind of middling most of the time. There's better episodes for it, like the Ghost fights, but this episode had a lot of "line up to get shot" from the antagonists, which is a directing problem more than a writing one.
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Jun 1, 2022 23:34
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If the show is meant to be a training school for mecha animators then they probably need to learn baby's first bullet spam fight scene before trying to pull off Patlabor 2's tunnel fight. Not that it helps the show all that much.
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Jun 1, 2022 23:44
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Don't forget June 16 Macross F: The False Songstress is being put on by Fathom and Sayonara no Tsubasa on the 30th. Support your local theatres
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Jun 2, 2022 03:44
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Close to the end of Kyoukai Senki. Seems like they're moving towards a plot, but it's the dullest one available. This whole season has just been "New American Robots are so strong everyone else has to team up! Except when they go up against named characters, who explode them by the dozen." Mechanically, it feels to me like the fight scenes are functioning more as a practice session than anything else. Here's a missile launch, draw that. Here's a guy shooting down a missile, draw that. Here's a melee attack, draw that. The bulk of the combat isn't meant to be good itself. It's just meant to get the animators an idea how to draw various scenarios that could be used in an actual good scene later. The scenes also highlight Kyoukai Senki's exceptionally half-assed justifications for mechs. While most shows give some quick technobabble about why giant robots are the best, Kyoukai Senki just has mechs around performing the functions of stationary artillery, and people don't even spend five seconds going "Huh. Maybe AA guns would be just as good here." I mean, we all know that the real reason for mechs is because they're rad, but some handwaves would be nice when you're having them perform functions that any other machine could. Plotwise, this episode was basically just "The heroes get back to base" with pointless fighting and poorly done political scheming as is standard, but this time one of the protagonists died! ...It was the most generic member of the crew, who hasn't been characterized much at all. We're talking sub-Shrike characterization. Also, the politics had people talk about how this was an excuse to attack new Japan... but they were more or less at war already, so that makes needing the excuse much more confusing.
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Jun 7, 2022 03:44
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Another week, another episode of mediocrity. Mostly this is just a table setting episode, which doesn't do much interesting. One small thing I did notice, though, was a scene where the protagonists get told the odds... and they get 45%. Normally, if we get odds, it's almost a joke. Like in Gurren Lagann, the heroes fight on even if the odds are literally 0, challenging their fates with hard work and guts. Kyoukai Senki, meanwhile, treats odds barely worse than a coin toss as a shocking dire omen. I mean, they're going up against the superpower that's kicked everyone's rear end for the last several months. 45% isn't "that's much worse than expected" in those circumstances. It's "Didn't expect much better". Especially since that's the default, without making a clever plan or accounting for pilot quality. The contrasting speeches at the end of the episode were a bit of a step up from the show's standard, showing the villains as uniform and convinced of their strength, while the heroes had to depend on others, but it does highlight this season's awkward change from "Everyone but the Americans are mustache twirling villains" to "The Americans are bad, everyone else is nice." It also continues to be politically confusing, with people talking about how this action or that action allows escalation from people who'd been escalating anyway without concern. Two or three episodes to go. Curious how much action we'll get, and if the ghost fight in season 1 is going to remain the highwater mark. Ah well. At least Doan's Island is good.
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Jun 14, 2022 01:20
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I'm not watching Kyokai Senki, but people reacting really badly to those odds makes sense to me in the context of what's intended to be a more realistic setting. Like yeah in your Gaogaigars and your Gurren Laganns courage turns 0.1% into 100% and all that, but in a realistic setting being told "yeah uh you have a better than coinflip chance of dying horribly and your mission failing completely" would be a pants-shittingly terrifying moment.
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Jun 14, 2022 19:39
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It's still loving weird to me that, in 2022, its the AMERICANS who are evil in a Japanese work while the Russians and Chinese are good guys or at least decent.
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Jun 14, 2022 23:40
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Fivemarks posted:It's still loving weird to me that, in 2022, its the AMERICANS who are evil in a Japanese work while the Russians and Chinese are good guys or at least decent. Why is that weird to you?
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Jun 14, 2022 23:48
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Fivemarks posted:It's still loving weird to me that, in 2022, its the AMERICANS who are evil in a Japanese work while the Russians and Chinese are good guys or at least decent. It's especially funny because in season 1, the Americans were the relatively decent-but-condescending faction, with the focus being "Even an occupation with the best intentions is still culturally damaging for the locals", while the Chinese and Australians were cartoonish villains. Meanwhile, now the Americans are the villains, and everybody else is on team protagonist. (It's presumably weird because right now the Chinese and the Russians are conducting well documented genocides.)
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Jun 14, 2022 23:56
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Its the Genocides, and the generally good relations that Japan has with the United States- Even the japanese far right and those that want to get rid of Article 9 are still, broadly, of the opinion that having the US as an ally is a bonus and not a negative.
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Jun 15, 2022 01:10
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Fivemarks posted:Its the Genocides, and the generally good relations that Japan has with the United States- Even the japanese far right and those that want to get rid of Article 9 are still, broadly, of the opinion that having the US as an ally is a bonus and not a negative. I have some bad news about the post-WW2 alternate history genre of fiction.
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Jun 15, 2022 02:04
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chiasaur11 posted:
Wait until you find out about America
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Jun 15, 2022 02:20
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Midjack posted:I have some bad news about the post-WW2 alternate history genre of fiction. The US being an enemy state in an anime isn't that weird. Even aside from cultural questions (“Postwar extends forever.”) there's the simple fact that if you want your protagonists to be Japanese, it works better if there's not a bigger country with a more powerful military in position to do the actual heavy lifting. Switching the Chinese and Russians to be everyone's buddies after they were depicted selling people into slavery in season 1, just as Russia becomes a pariah state and China is getting more and more isolated, is the weird bit.
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Jun 15, 2022 02:20
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America being antagonists isn't that weird. They're a hegemon with questionable foreign policies where benevolence and exploitation are interchangeable so it's easy to treat them as allies or enemies where the story demands it. Ghost in the Shell's American rump states are run by absolute dicks. Has Kyoukai Senki ever explained why exactly Japan has been occupied and divided between foreign power blocs?
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Jun 15, 2022 02:26
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