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Looking forward to MHA 3, Lupin III 5, and FMP 4 (assuming I get around to finishing the first three FMP seasons first). Shows I don't want to watch myself but am interested in other people's reactions to include Mahou Shoujo Site (Magical Girl Raising Project is already a guilty pleasure series; a knockoff of its already fairly unoriginal concept will probably be outright bad) and Caligula (Not sure if this is a satire of Japanese pop culture's obsession with high school or a straight example of it). Funniest description award goes to Last Period. Using completely random capitalized English words to add fake distinctiveness to your setting's wizards and monsters never gets old. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Mar 18, 2018 |
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Mar 18, 2018 23:49
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Koirhor posted:I recently did the same and feel the same. Now fumoffu is still pretty hilarious and I think TSR holds up far better than Season 1. Like Kurz is just loving cringeworthy in that first episode. I'm on episode 14 of the original series. I agree that Kurz is really annoying early on. Fortunately he doesn't really appear much after that. The weirdest thing about FMP so far might be how un-military the non-Sosuke Mithril members are. "A Cat and a Kitten's Rock and Roll," for example, revolves around Tessa and Mao interacting as though Mao was an older student at Tessa's school, rather than Tessa being a superior officer. I guess that's just how Mithril works, and Sosuke is different because the group he worked for when he was a child soldier in Afghanistan was more formal. Chidori is the character who most dates the show. The tsundere archetype is very much alive, of course, but generally without the kind of violence Chidori engages in (which is pretty uncomfortable if you take it "literally"). Despite this, I like her. It's interesting to see a relationship developing between two people "looking at different skies," as the ED puts it. Plus she functions as both an audience-viewpoint character and a love interest while having both a spine and a brain, which I think is a depressingly rare combination. The weak link in terms of major characters might actually be Gauron. Making the villain a loose cannon who's steadily burning his bridges is fine for a storyline like the hijacking (it actually builds tension there), but makes him rather unthreatening in the long run. It doesn't help that pretty much the only thing from The Second Raid I've been spoiled on is that not only is Gauron the main villain, he comes back from apparent death again and again. Also, the "I'm not actually Chinese" bit made me worry that they're setting up a twist where he turns out to be Sosuke's father or something equally dumb. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Mar 19, 2018 |
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Mar 19, 2018 18:18
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Koirhor posted:Tessa I don't think signed up as much as was born into Mithril. The bit where she talked about going to school in Okinawa made it seem like her father was US military rather than Mithril. But maybe I'm misremembering.
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Mar 19, 2018 18:50
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I've resumed watching Full Metal Panic. In Episode 14, I was disappointed when Chidori teamed up with that rear end in a top hat. I'm not sure what she was trying to accomplish by that. Episode 15 introduces Sosuke's homeland of Helmajistan. OK, the Khanka Autonomous Region was one thing, but Helmajistan is just a stupid name. Apparently the LNs used actual countries (Afghanistan and North Korea); I guess the anime people felt it would be in bad taste, especially since the US invasion of Afghanistan began shortly before the anime came out. Edit: Wow, there are a lot of stupid people in Mithril. The ones who aren't are basically just the old man, Tessa, Grace, and sometimes Sosuke. Also, you can tell Gauron's mech is better than everybody else's because it's red, lol. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Mar 27, 2018 |
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Mar 27, 2018 03:43
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Silver2195 posted:I've resumed watching Full Metal Panic. I guess I made a slight mistake there. Zaied's mech is the red one; Gauron's is the one with the long white hair. Thoughts on the rest of The Wind Blows at Home: Zaied is a rather uninteresting case of the Forgotten Friend, New Foe archetype; Gauron even points out how uninteresting he is. I think he did feel something towards Sosuke, despite what he claimed, but only enough to make him slightly hesitate when he had Sosuke on the ropes. I guess it is slightly interesting that Sosuke won in part by being slightly more willing to kill Zaied than vice-versa, though that's probably less because Sosuke cared less about Zaied than because Sosuke had more to fight for; Zaied's only reason given for his actions was "I want to be on the winning team," which isn't very inspiring. Plus Sosuke was actually less willing to kill Zaied at first, which is why is ended up on the ropes in the first place. I'm a bit unclear what happened with Gauron in the end; I guess he realized he was losing the Lambda Driver clash and ran away? It felt a bit jarring when Sosuke used the Lambda Driver there (why didn't he use that against Zaied?) but then I realized he was just following Zaied's advice about conserving bullets. The next episode preview is a pretty jarring change of tone; it looks like we're straight back to wacky comedy. Though I guess that makes sense, since Sosuke doesn't really seem like the type to brood about killing Zaied. Edit: Wow, the beginning of episode 18 is an interesting payoff of sorts to what I wrote earlier about Gauron gradually burning all his bridges. It seems he has his own project and saw the terrorism for hire as a "side job." After burning another bridge, he's decided to focus on his real evil plan. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Mar 28, 2018 |
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Mar 28, 2018 05:52
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Episode 18: The way Kurz and the male no-name soldiers behaved towards Tessa was super uncomfortable. While in theory she's their superior officer, that's really not how the power dynamic feels (especially since she's 17 or so). Mao's bullying in episode 13 was one thing because it was so absurd, but this feels too similar to real-life workplace sexual harassment to be funny. (To be clear, this is a fairly brief subplot, not the focus of the episode or anything, but it bothered me enough that I had to mention it.)
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Mar 29, 2018 03:39
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Episode 19 of FMP gives us more Kurz being terrible. It also gives us another silly country name: Beru. Obviously it's based on Peru, and the bad guys in this episode are meant to be the Shining Path (Shining Bath?). In Episode 20 we get a surprising revelation about Whispered. Well, surprising to someone like me who doesn't watch much giant robot anime, since I remember reading about something similar involving Newtypes in Gundam. Apparently Whispered don't just have supertechnology blueprints in their heads, they can also form psychic connections with each other. But while I'm under the impression that Gundam treats this as a good thing, Tessa says that this would be bad if taken too far because she and Chidori would lose their individual identities. The talk about Tessa and Chidori forming psychic bonds struck me as having some yuri overtones that I'm not sure were intended. (In a more recent anime it would totally be intended.) Perhaps they weren't intended but the writers realized it anyway, and hence felt the need to assure us they're both straight by having them talk about how much they both love Sosuke right afterwards. Or maybe the point is that Tessa is assuring herself and Chidori that they're rivals and hence in no danger of merging their consciousnesses. If I'm overanalyzing this, it's only because the revelation felt so jarring. It's possible there was some sort of foreshadowing I forgot, like maybe Tessa simultaneously reacted when Chidori was having Whispered visions or something. Edit: Kurz actually does something intelligent for once and uses the sniper skills he demonstrated in Episode 19 to dump a building's worth of rubble on Gauron to make him use up his Lambda Driver. It looks like Sosuke is seriously considering committing a war crime and just shooting a surrendering Gauron right there, but stops himself. The next episode preview makes it look like Mithril screws up keeping Gauron restrained somehow, resulting in him not only getting free but also killing some no-name soldiers. Ugh. Hopefully the details don't make Mithril look too incompetent. Edit 2: It's interesting that Sosuke was more affected by the deaths of the mooks in Helmajistan than I'd expected. This may be in part because Gauron actually killed Grace, whereas before I'd assumed she just got her mech smashed but survived. On the other hand, killed Zaied doesn't seem to bother him much in comparison. This perhaps shows that Sosuke has a better moral compass than the average action-adventure protagonist; I think normally they seem to care more about childhood friends turned evil than about mooks even on their own side. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Mar 30, 2018 |
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Mar 30, 2018 03:51
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Episodes 21-23: The grizzled commander guy claims that despite acting impulsive, Gauron is actually a smart guy who always has a plan to ensure his own safety. This actually does fit his behavior, come to think of it; the dumb risks he takes seem to be with the mission objectives rather than his own safety. Sosuke uncharacteristically snaps at Kaname. When Kurz calls him out on his venting his frustration with the situation at her, Sosuke shows an entirely characteristic lack of self-awareness and denies that's what he's doing. Mithril actually does not come across as particularly stupid here; Gauron escapes from the guards only because one of them was a mole for whatever his current faction is called (but apparently not someone he knows personally, oddly enough) and takes over the submarine only due to another mole and a computer program specifically designed for taking over the submarine. You might think this would at least make them stupid in terms of screening personnel, but Gauron makes it sound like their troops are actually harder to bribe into becoming moles than those of most military organizations. Tessa, Kaname, Sosuke, and Kurz all get a chance to be cool in their own ways in the resulting crisis. Weirdly, grizzled commander guy turns out to be wrong about Gauron ensuring his own safety; apparently he's genuinely reckless and was willing to die as long as it was a sufficiently spectacular death. It looks like the season finale will be a setpiece mech fight between Sosuke and Gauron, which would have more impact if they hadn't already fought before. Now that Sosuke is angry enough to use the Lambda Driver again, the question is no longer "how will Sosuke survive?" but "how will Gauron survive?" Will Sosuke capture him alive again?
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Mar 30, 2018 07:50
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Episode 24: I forgot about the mechs having a self-destruct function, which allowed Gauron to threaten Sosuke's life after all. The question of how Gauron survived this time remains, though.
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Mar 30, 2018 08:18
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dogsicle posted:i don't care But Fumoffu comes next, and it isn't a mecha show!
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Mar 30, 2018 18:29
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Silver2195 posted:But Fumoffu comes next, and it isn't a mecha show! Joking aside, I'll take future FMP episode reviews to the mecha thread.
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Mar 30, 2018 22:55
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Waffleman_ posted:Lupin III Part 5, along with being an explicit sequel to Part 4, also establishes Parts 2, 3, and Castle of Cagliostro (and assuming with that, Part 1) as canon. I thought Lupin didn't really have a canon. This is a franchise that's inconsistent about fundamentals of the main characters' characterization if you look at the big picture: Is Lupin a cold-blooded murderer, a Robin Hood-style hero, or something in between? Is Zenigata a genius thwarted by bad luck or an idiot? Is Fujiko a femme fatale or a plucky Disney princess? That's not even getting into timeline issues: What years were the main characters born in? (You have to either apply a Marvel-style sliding timescale or assume an offscreen adventure involving a fountain of youth or similar plot device to keep the characters using smartphones in Part IV consistent with the Part I episodes explicitly set in the 70s.) Fujiko has a bunch of backstories that don't quite fit together. (Apparently this is because in the original manga, there were multiple characters named Fujiko Mine, which Part I combined into a single character.) Mamo, one of the few recurring true villains, is such a pile of inconsistencies that the wiki suggests, "This can be attributed to the fact that these stories may have taken place in different universes or that the existance [sic] of a time machine caused the space time continuum to crumble."
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Apr 3, 2018 22:28
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Watching the first episode of Magical Girl Site now, and wow, this is pretty tryhard. I burst out laughing when this exchange happened: Heroine: Every day, all I think about is dying. Bystander: Isn't it a little early for this? Yes, I know it's not intended that way (the heroine's line is internal monologue and the bystander is probably talking about the train schedule), but I couldn't help but parse it as a Signal from Fred, some part of the writer's brain wondering if they were going too dark too early in the show. Even Magical Girl Raising Project had enough restraint not to have the protagonist nearly get raped in the first episode, or make literally everyone we see her interact with before becoming a magical girl be monstrously cruel to her just for kicks, or have the magical girls bleed from the eyes when they used their powers. More sample dialogue: Heroine: Please, don't hit me in the stomach. I won't be able to get my period... Older brother: Why the hell would I care what happens to your body? Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Apr 7, 2018 |
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Apr 7, 2018 01:18
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Spiritus Nox posted:It's kind of weird how bad Madoka clones seem like they all go turbo-violent and hosed up when Madoka itself really didn't have all that much physical violence in it. And even a good chunk of what violence it did have was framed pretty indirectly. Magical Girl Raising Project, at least, was clearly riffing on stuff like Dangan Ronpa (and by extension Battle Royale, etc.) as much as on Madoka. I'm not sure what Magical Girl Site's excuse is.
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Apr 7, 2018 01:42
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DisDisDis posted:It's very rare for violent media to acknowledge that people pisss and poo poo themselves when they die so I applaud whatever show you're referencing there It's Magical Girl Raising Project. Edit: I just learned that Magical Girl Site is actually a spinoff of Magical Girl Apocalypse/Magical Girl of the End - that series that used to get posted a lot in the convince-to-read-a-manga-with-one-image thread. Huh. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Apr 7, 2018 |
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Apr 7, 2018 02:06
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kater posted:I wanted to watch MHA again before the new stuff and it made me realize... maybe MHA isn't that good? Like it is fun enough to be a watchable weekly shounen theng but gosh nothing happens ever forever and there's like one good action thing per half a dozen episodes. The anime pads things a bit, and in the first season more than a bit. The manga is actually quite fast-paced.
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Apr 7, 2018 18:24
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Elephant Parade posted:A bit late, but I'd like to defend Worm here, but I can see why you made the comparison. (It feels like MSS took the bullying aspect of early Worm and removed all touches of realism from it, leaving only misery porn.)
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Apr 8, 2018 19:28
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Darth Walrus posted:This one will work, although it does have slightly more callbacks than the previous series, Part IV, and is generally a bit more self-referential. So you could start there in order to ease you into the series if you want, but it’s far from mandatory. Basically this. Lupin is a pretty inconsistent franchise (continuity-wise, tonally, and in terms of quality), both between and within series. Part I (Green Jacket) is generally pretty good, but has some really bad episodes, especially early on ("Farewell, My Beloved Witch" stands out as especially bad, despite coming right before the very good "Last Chance to Breakout"). It's episodic, and while there are a few points continuity across episodes (Goemon joining the group, Zenigata mentioning the number of times he's caught Lupin), there's also some things that don't fit very well together (like Fujiko's backstories that feel like the backstories of multiple characters - because that's what they were in the original manga). There's a shift to a lighter tone around the time Miyazaki takes over as director, which requires a degree of inconsistency in Lupin's characterization - he becomes a lot less ruthless without any acknowledged in-universe character development. Part II (Red Jacket) is the longest series, and perhaps the most inconsistent in multiple senses. Very episodic (although there are some two-parters), characterization can swing wildly between episodes (particularly Zenigata's level of competence), some classic episodes but also plenty that feel phoned-in (to the point where watching the whole show straight through is generally considered a bad idea), a lot more embrace of supernatural or otherwise out-there elements than Part I (especially early Part I). I haven't watched any of Part III (Pink Jacket), but it's generally not well regarded. It's supposed to have an unusual animation style and very formulaic plots. Part IV (The Italian Adventure/Blue Jacket) breaks from tradition by having more of a continuous story arc (although there are several individual episodes that are essentially self-contained). It's set mostly in Italy, and introduces new recurring characters (although they have made only cameo appearances in Part V so far): Lupin's wife (on paper) Rebecca, her long-suffering butler Robson, and the MI6 agent Nyx. I'd say it's the most consistent quality-wise. There are some individual episodes (like "Requiem for the Assassins" and "High School Undercover") that are pretty bad, although even then the show stays fast-paced enough to avoid becoming truly tedious the way some Part II episodes do. There's also a bajillion movies and specials, of varying quality. Castle of Cagliostro is probably the best-known and one of the best-regarded.
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Apr 19, 2018 20:43
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an actual dog posted:The Woman Called Fujiko Mine rules a whole lot, definitely check it out. It got some movie follow ups that I need to watch. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that one. I haven't gotten around to watching it yet, but it's generally well-regarded. It's a prequel to Part I, focused on Fujiko. Apparently it has a fairly dark tone and feminist themes.
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Apr 19, 2018 20:55
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Homura and Sickle posted:i am basically the target audience for magical girl site and i thought the first episode was an offensive steaming pile of dogshit. does it like get better or did you actually like the first (terrible) episode
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Apr 27, 2018 16:09
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I'm watching Lupin III Part V, Golden Kamui, and MHA s3. I'll probably watch FMP Invisible Victory when I finish The Second Raid and Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Chapter when I finish the Sealed Card movie. Which reminds me: Cardcaptor Sakura is an actually good magical girl show to watch instead of Magical Girl Site. Though with a totally opposite tone, of course. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Apr 27, 2018 |
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Apr 27, 2018 17:56
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SatoshiMiwa posted:Lets play a game called guess the director! You mean Kazuyoshi Yaginuma? Google isn't turning up anything about an anime director named Yamaken.
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Jun 7, 2018 01:48
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 05:04 |
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Edit: Never mind
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Jun 17, 2018 02:45
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