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.Clash posted:I think it was episode 8? where M3 finally got its feet. Not sure I would have made it if not watching weekly.
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Sep 21, 2015 10:06
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I've been finding Logos to be pretty decent after a rough start, but even at its best the characters just aren't as fun as Evol's. Though they do have their moments. Also it's tackling some similar ideas as Gatchaman Crowds and that's a tough show to compare to, particularly when its excellent sequel is airing in the same season. A two part episode awhile back involved mob mentality on social media but in a way that felt like it was simultaneously trying to be serious and trying to handle it the way a 70s super robot show would (if you flame someone online they would be covered in magical fire irl that apparently doesn't burn as much as actual fire). That said I'm about 4-5 episodes behind and am planning to catch up this week, so there is something about it that makes me curious enough to see it through. I had only ever seen a few episodes of M3 and thought it was alright but not something I'd want to catch every week, so I waited until it was over and never heard a peep about it again. Hearing people actually talking about it does make me want to go back and give it a another shot.
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Sep 21, 2015 10:34
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Allarion posted:That said, I still need to watch Patlabor. I always put it on my watchlist before forgetting about it, and then remembering that I wanted to watch giant robot cops. Also Paranoia Agent since that's the only Satoshi Kon thing I haven't seen. Well, as you may or may not know, I'm planning a Patlabor simulwatch, so you could hold off until then.
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Sep 21, 2015 11:32
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Mecha anime is bad and for babies, except for Platlabor which is good.
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Sep 21, 2015 16:11
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Code Geass.
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Sep 21, 2015 16:47
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The Devil Tesla posted:Mecha anime is bad and for babies, except for Platlabor which is good. Eugh
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Sep 21, 2015 17:24
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No, you see, Patlabor's not really mecha, because
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Sep 21, 2015 17:33
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Yes_Cantaloupe posted:No, you see, Patlabor's not really mecha, because because I like it.
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Sep 21, 2015 17:54
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I'm enjoying Aquarion Logos but it definitely could be better. Most of the supporting cast doesn't get nearly enough to do, despite actually being pretty cool when they get the spotlight, if it fixed that it could be great. I mean, that and add a Fudou, because it is definitely lacking in Fudou. Akira is more likable than the terrible duo of Amata and Mikono, if only because nobody takes him seriously. And I mean, he is literally Tendo Souji in a mecha anime, I'm not going to complain about that. Also I really like the route they went with Aquarion proper, with lots and lots of forms and even cute animal forms. Phoenix, bug, rabbit, gryphon, it keeps being unique and neat and I hope that continues forever. That said I have to seriously wonder how the hell they're adapting that to Super Robot Wars. I'm really curious.
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Sep 21, 2015 18:25
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drrockso20 posted:I'd suggest adding Mazinkaiser to the OP as it's fantastic and pretty short(the OVA that is, the movie is pretty abysmal), same with Mazinkaiser SKL From what I remember of Mazinkaiser SKL, it's only a really good introductory mecha anime if the person being introduced is a 14 year old boy. Wan't it just a lot of robot fight scenes with guns that are axes and then a volcano explodes?
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Sep 21, 2015 19:58
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boom boom boom posted:From what I remember of Mazinkaiser SKL, it's only a really good introductory mecha anime if the person being introduced is a 14 year old boy. Wan't it just a lot of robot fight scenes with guns that are axes and then a volcano explodes? Yeah pretty much. It's great mindless fun, but that's all it is.
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Sep 21, 2015 20:04
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boom boom boom posted:From what I remember of Mazinkaiser SKL, it's only a really good introductory mecha anime if the person being introduced is a 14 year old boy. Wan't it just a lot of robot fight scenes with guns that are axes and then a volcano explodes? this sounds like everything i could want in life, putting on my to watch list
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Sep 21, 2015 20:18
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boom boom boom posted:From what I remember of Mazinkaiser SKL, it's only a really good introductory mecha anime if the person being introduced is a 14 year old boy. Wan't it just a lot of robot fight scenes with guns that are axes and then a volcano explodes? SKL can be best described as a series of metal album covers loosely animated and voiced, with the soundtrack being songs from said albums. And it's amazing, if just for the fact that it runs with it, without even a hint of shame or wink-wink nudge-nudge irony.
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Sep 21, 2015 20:24
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boom boom boom posted:From what I remember of Mazinkaiser SKL, it's only a really good introductory mecha anime if the person being introduced is a 14 year old boy. Wan't it just a lot of robot fight scenes with guns that are axes and then a volcano explodes? That's exactly why I'm suggesting adding it to the OP, a lot of the choices up there currently while good are also very light on the actual robot action
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Sep 21, 2015 20:30
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K. Flaps posted:Code Geass. Where are you going with this?
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Sep 21, 2015 20:53
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Droyer posted:Well, as you may or may not know, I'm planning a Patlabor simulwatch, so you could hold off until then. Which Patlabor? OVAs, movies or tv? Most people seem to prefer the OVAs, but personally I found the tv series to be by far the most entertaining and engaging entry. The Early Days OVAs nearly put me off the franchise because I found it so dull, but it's probably that you're considering doing.
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Sep 21, 2015 21:07
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tsob posted:Which Patlabor? OVAs, movies or tv? Most people seem to prefer the OVAs, but personally I found the tv series to be by far the most entertaining and engaging entry. The Early Days OVAs nearly put me off the franchise because I found it so dull, but it's probably that you're considering doing. I want to do all of it, but I was planning on doing early days + the movies first, and then continue on to the tv + second ova series.
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Sep 21, 2015 21:09
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Blaze Dragon posted:I'm enjoying Aquarion Logos but it definitely could be better. Most of the supporting cast doesn't get nearly enough to do, despite actually being pretty cool when they get the spotlight, if it fixed that it could be great. I mean, that and add a Fudou, because it is definitely lacking in Fudou. Probably just have all the Vectors be the default units, and rearrange them pretty much at will either before or during a mission, or like...combination attacks to the extreme. Kinda depends on what kinds of things the robots can do later on, so far none of the forms have done more than one or two things.
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Sep 21, 2015 23:49
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For those of a more historical bent, Tetsujin-28 is mandatory watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2zYuQqzEJQ You'll probably know it better as Gigantor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNEKhxvEvlc Not all of it, of course, but just an episode or two to get the flavor of what giant robots were like at the very beginning. If folks are interested, I can do an effort post about the series and it's influence down the line, not just in mecha anime, but also in series like Akira.
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Sep 22, 2015 00:02
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boom boom boom posted:Where are you going with this? Its so good.
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Sep 22, 2015 01:04
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So recently my roommate made me watch Cyber City Ouedo. Man that show was fun.
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Sep 22, 2015 02:10
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Posting in new thread to say that Gunbuster and Diebuster (and TTGL, their spiritual successor) collectively make up the best anime show ever, mecha or otherwise. There was a particular strain of folk working at Gainax for a long period that simultaneously hated anime, hated anime fans, and yet appreciated both on a deeply human level, and embraced their potential to be great. They fully embrace the entire point thematic point of giant robots in the first place - that they represent the power of humanity's ideals and inventiveness, abstracted into pure symbols. There are so many fuckin' rad things about these shows that I could accidentally write for ever about them and need to stop myself right now. Watch them. Honorable mentions: Shin Mazinger Z, original Mazinger Z with horrifying chinese subtitles in VHS quality, Mazinkaiser, the unrelated and hilarious Mazinkaizer SKL, Space Runaway Ideon, original and Zeta Gundam, and Bokurano. Shin Mazinger effectively failed to get a second season continuing from its semi-cliffhanger ending, but the story was told in such a way that this failure enhances the story to a mythic level and recasts Kouji's struggle against the chaotic, godlike mechanisms of control as a struggle against the real-life capitalist nightmare that is the Anime industry. It is an infinite nightmare, and you are broken, yet you leave behind a dream that saunters on and fights for ever more. Hbomberguy fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Sep 22, 2015 |
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Sep 22, 2015 03:39
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TheManSeries posted:So recently my roommate made me watch Cyber City Ouedo. Man that show was fun. It's the best cyberpunk anime, frankly.
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Sep 22, 2015 03:49
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Gunbuster is absolutely a fantastic show, but I have really mixed feelings about Diebuster. It just wasn't as good a show.
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Sep 22, 2015 03:49
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Schwarzwald posted:Gunbuster is absolutely a fantastic show, but I have really mixed feelings about Diebuster. It just wasn't as good a show. I used to think so too, but I liked it even more on a rewatch. Try it again sometime!
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Sep 22, 2015 03:52
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Schwarzwald posted:Gunbuster is absolutely a fantastic show, but I have really mixed feelings about Diebuster. It just wasn't as good a show. I disagree. Despite their many obvious similarities, I think Gunbuster and Diebuster are different enough both stylistically and thematically to be difficult to compare, which I think is to Diebuster's credit. If Diebuster had simply been a retread of Gunbuster it would have been a clearly inferior product, but it is instead an intentionally different product, and is great by its own right.
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Sep 22, 2015 03:55
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Droyer posted:I disagree. Despite their many obvious similarities, I think Gunbuster and Diebuster are different enough both stylistically and thematically to be difficult to compare, which I think is to Diebuster's credit. If Diebuster had simply been a retread of Gunbuster it would have been a clearly inferior product, but it is instead an intentionally different product, and is great by its own right. Diebuster, thematically, has two 'twists'. The first is that it's a sequel, and yet no-one from the original turns up, it's way in the future and a totally different setting and tone. The second is that it really is a sequel. It just took the ideas of the original and extrapolated them outwards so far you don't see the connection until it's too late: Instead of people being people and robots being an externalisation of humanity's development, humanity and machines are themselves a singular species - characters can become ideas, rather than simply invent and wield them. It takes the necessary step from 'ideas can make humans great' to 'humans are themselves comprised of ideas'. It's no surprise that the same studio made gurren lagann, a show where the robots are literally powered by believing in something, and renege on all forms of internal logic. Gunbuster is principally about a character who, simultaneously, never appears, is omnipresent, is dead, lives on in the form of the world built in their name, represents the greatest mankind has to offer, and was a relatively ordinary awkward teenager. And also isn't dead. It's a dense as gently caress show. Like, New Testament style. It is love.
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Sep 22, 2015 04:06
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Hbomberguy posted:It works as a successor using the original as a jumping-off point but not as the sort of 'here is more Gunbuster' you could be lead to expect. I can imagine being disappointed if I wanted More Gunbuster. I'd say that Diebuster is far more about Nono than Noriko. Noriko's actions inspired Nono's, but they did not define them.
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Sep 22, 2015 04:10
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Droyer posted:I disagree. Despite their many obvious similarities, I think Gunbuster and Diebuster are different enough both stylistically and thematically to be difficult to compare, which I think is to Diebuster's credit. If Diebuster had simply been a retread of Gunbuster it would have been a clearly inferior product, but it is instead an intentionally different product, and is great by its own right. I definitely agree with you when you say they are both very different shows, and I agree that it's too Diebuster's credit that it is different. It's just, even when based fully on it's own merits, I still don't think Diebuster was that good a show.
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Sep 22, 2015 04:10
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Schwarzwald posted:I definitely agree with you when you say they are both very different shows, and I agree that it's too Diebuster's credit that it is different. I really liked it, but to each his own.
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Sep 22, 2015 04:11
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Hbomberguy posted:Posting in new thread to say that Gunbuster and Diebuster (and TTGL, their spiritual successor) collectively make up the best anime show ever, mecha or otherwise. There was a particular strain of folk working at Gainax for a long period that simultaneously hated anime, hated anime fans, and yet appreciated both on a deeply human level, and embraced their potential to be great. They fully embrace the entire point thematic point of giant robots in the first place - that they represent the power of humanity's ideals and inventiveness, abstracted into pure symbols. There are so many fuckin' rad things about these shows that I could accidentally write for ever about them and need to stop myself right now. Watch them. Gunbuster and Diebuster are great. Shin Mazinger was awesome and I'll be forever happy about its finally getting a DVD release in English yet also sad at its lack of a proper continuation. This is a pretty cool post, in general, except I don't necessarily think Gainax as a collective has ever really hated anime. Especially not the "classic" Gainax before the production of Evangelion. Many of their original founders were essentially otaku who developed the skills to actually work in anime for a living, rather than otherwise unrelated normal people. Gunbuster in particular was an explicitly commercial celebration of what they knew a lot of otaku wanted to see back in 1988, without any critical lens applied to the situation. It's still awesome, but that was literally fanservice in every sense of the term. Something like Otaku no Video from 1991 did attempt to be more self-critical and cynical about how the entire business worked, to be sure, but including enough sympathy for the idealized otaku "dream" in spite of it. Quite far from, say, Welcome to the NHK territory. Specific persons like Hideaki Anno have had some tough things to say about anime (+ its fans) over the years, but I don't believe the Gurren Lagann team was even remotely trying to follow that route. If anything, I feel Imaishi and his cohorts just liked giant robots (+ T&A) and weren't making any grand statements with that show. Naturally, you can still dissect, discuss and reinterpret the themes of a work of fiction in many ways, thanks to Death of the Author and all, but my point is that not everything Gainax made back in its heyday had the same level of authorial meta commentary as Evangelion. Sometimes the giant robots are, well, giant robots. wielder fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Sep 22, 2015 |
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Sep 22, 2015 04:16
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Also Hbomberguy, If you really liked TTGL that much I think you should definitely check out the getter robo manga. The director of TTGL said that getter robo was the biggest influence on the project, and if you have experience with both you can really tell.
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Sep 22, 2015 04:22
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Droyer posted:I'd say that Diebuster is far more about Nono than Noriko. Noriko's actions inspired Nono's, but they did not define them. wielder posted:This is a pretty cool post, in general, except I don't necessarily think Gainax as a collective has ever really hated anime. Especially not the "classic" Gainax before the production of Evangelion. Many of their original founders were essentially otaku who developed the skills to actually work in anime for a living, rather than otherwise unrelated normal people. Gunbuster in particular was an explicitly commercial celebration of what they knew a lot of otaku wanted to see back in 1988, without any critical lens applied to the situation. It's still awesome, but that was literally fanservice in every sense of the term. Something like Otaku no Video from 1991 did attempt to be more self-critical and cynical about how the entire business worked, to be sure, but including enough sympathy for the idealized otaku "dream" in spite of it. There is a certain nobility and civilised-ness to human cultures that can be naked around each other like it ain't no thing. There's a reason the most advanced cool future-people are called the topless. It almost implies that once we can get over ourselves and embrace whatever we really are, we spontaneously gain superpowers. You can dismiss the robots as just giant robots the creators liked, but that fails to deal with why people like giant robots, and why people decided to create art with giant constructions of humanoids in them. Viewing mecha as 'just cool' or 'just robots' is a failure to account for their actual existence in art imo. Hbomberguy fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Sep 22, 2015 |
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Sep 22, 2015 04:40
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Hbomberguy posted:Nono's entire personality is based on half-remembered memories of a girl whose name was spoken in hushed tones around the time she was born. It's about how people relate to an idea. So it's about Noriko in the sense that most art in the Christian tradition is about Jesus and the ideals they represent. This isn't true though. That's a part of her personality yes, but she is also defined by her relationship to L'alc and her conflicting desires to be a hero and a normal girl.
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Sep 22, 2015 04:45
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Hbomberguy posted:Otaku No Video is certainly my go-to example for their autocriticism, but Gunbuster manages it too with its very specific approach to nudity. Characters consistently are just sort of naked and it's not a thing anyone points out, reacts to or notices. IIRC no-one is embarrassed by their body ever. This forces the viewer to question the reaction they are having to the content. It reflects a world where people's views regarding each other's bodies and their own have developed beyond ours in a fundamentally positive way. You see similar approaches in early paintings and sculptures - they indicate a society which had better ways of looking at certain things. I dunno dude, I think maybe they just liked tits
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Sep 22, 2015 04:48
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Hbomberguy posted:Otaku No Video is certainly my go-to example for their autocriticism, but Gunbuster manages it too with its very specific approach to nudity. Characters consistently are just sort of naked and it's not a thing anyone points out, reacts to or notices. IIRC no-one is embarrassed by their body ever. That's explicitly not true, though. There's a seen when Noriko, Kazumi, and Jung are bathing, when some passing soldiers peek in on them through the window from their RX robots. I really find it hard to believe that there is anything to the nudity aside from the people at Gainax liking tits.
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Sep 22, 2015 04:57
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Schwarzwald posted:That's explicitly not true, though. There's a seen when Noriko, Kazumi, and Jung are bathing, when some passing soldiers peek in on them through the window from their RX robots. Well, there is also that tits would sell.
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Sep 22, 2015 04:58
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Hbomberguy posted:Otaku No Video is certainly my go-to example for their autocriticism, but Gunbuster manages it too with its very specific approach to nudity. Characters consistently are just sort of naked and it's not a thing anyone points out, reacts to or notices. IIRC no-one is embarrassed by their body ever. This forces the viewer to question the reaction they are having to the content. It reflects a world where people's views regarding each other's bodies and their own have developed beyond ours in a fundamentally positive way. You see similar approaches in early paintings and sculptures - they indicate a society which had better ways of looking at certain things. I like reading your interpretation, but for me that scene mostly proves Hideaki Anno's directorial skills include the ability to use a degree of subtlety and restraint for the purposes of passive sexualization. Shower scenes are often a common example of this. After all, in many older shows fanservice was initially treated as something "extra" for the fans. It could even be a single frame of nudity that they needed to freeze the playback of a VHS tape to find. Curiously enough, it seems the original version of Gunbuster apparently had a somewhat explicit shot of full frontal nudity that was only included in the laserdisc (?) release and mysteriously edited in the rest. I guess it might have gone too far for Japanese censorship laws or something along those lines. Mind you, I will concede that the concept of "topless" introduced in Diebuster does have a number of thematic implications. It might well retroactively support your views. quote:You can dismiss the robots as just giant robots the creators liked, but that fails to deal with why people like giant robots, and why people decided to create art with giant constructions of humanoids in them. Viewing mecha as 'just cool' or 'just robots' is a failure to account for their actual existence in art imo. I am not dismissing that as a valid approach to the analysis of mecha. In fact, it's certainly intellectually stimulating to ask that question and propose a series of possible answers for why giant robots are so appealing to a number of people from around the world. That's a fair subject of study and I admire those who can come up with nuanced theories. From my point of view, however, most mecha creators might not have been truly aware of all the implications and wrinkles that such an analysis will ultimately provide. wielder fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Sep 22, 2015 |
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Sep 22, 2015 05:08
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Hbomberguy posted:Nono's entire personality is based on half-remembered memories of a girl whose name was spoken in hushed tones around the time she was born. It's about how people relate to an idea. So it's about Noriko in the sense that most art in the Christian tradition is about Jesus and the ideals they represent. Nudity in art is not evocative of civilization, but of nature. Nudity is either representative of a mythical golden age of complete unity with nature (i.e. the Garden of Eden, popular conceptions of "uncivilized" native peoples) or complete debasement of morality (Weimar German and Taisho Japanese art). If anything, the topless are throwbacks to a time before organized states juxtaposed with the ultimate symbol of civilization, technology
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Sep 22, 2015 05:11
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wielder posted:Curiously enough, the original version of Gunbuster apparently had a somewhat explicit shot of full frontal nudity that was only included in the laserdisc (?) release and mysteriously cut from the rest. I guess it might have gone too far for Japanese censorship laws or something along those lines. The scene your thinking of showed Noriko's pubic hair.
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Sep 22, 2015 05:13
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