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Iaboo, Youaboo, Weallaboo for Anime!
- Thread starter Johnny Unusual
- Start date
LOL you buried the lede there, Johnny.
I was interested in the show b/c of the pedigree and the tonal shift from the guy's usual works. (Though things like his live action Patlabor show was pretty light hearted) And it's a little weird that Crunchyroll dumped the first five episodes all at once, since that's not their usual M.O. I wonder if it's because it took them a little bit longer to secure the streaming rights for whatever reason?
I was interested in the show b/c of the pedigree and the tonal shift from the guy's usual works. (Though things like his live action Patlabor show was pretty light hearted) And it's a little weird that Crunchyroll dumped the first five episodes all at once, since that's not their usual M.O. I wonder if it's because it took them a little bit longer to secure the streaming rights for whatever reason?
I watched the first two episodes of Vlad Love last night and I giggled my way through. Then again, I'm a fan of broad slapstick comedies, so this is right up my alley. So far, this is a show that tells you to sit down, buckle up and hang on because we are going for a wild ride. Do I know why the blood donation bus blew up or why Mai piledrivered the nurse? Nope, it just did because it's funny.
As for the opening, it reminds me of Asobi Asobase. It's there to trick you into thinking this is going to be a serious show and then nope! There is also a second video written by my now liked band Lovesbites.
As for the opening, it reminds me of Asobi Asobase. It's there to trick you into thinking this is going to be a serious show and then nope! There is also a second video written by my now liked band Lovesbites.
So, it somehow completely escaped my notice until like yesterday that an honest-to-god Pacific Rim anime is releasing in a week. This is what happens when I'm kind of dropped off a lot of social media.
Anyway, Pacific Rim: The Black is a Netflix/Polygon CG joint, so I'm not holding out a lot of hope for it being amazing or even much more than mediocre, but a combination of franchise nostalgia and cool giant robots and kaiju will certainly be enough to get me to watch it.
Anyway, Pacific Rim: The Black is a Netflix/Polygon CG joint, so I'm not holding out a lot of hope for it being amazing or even much more than mediocre, but a combination of franchise nostalgia and cool giant robots and kaiju will certainly be enough to get me to watch it.
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
Its weird to be nostalgic for something 8 years old but after 2020...
There's kids who watched giant robots punch giant monsters in the face at age 10 who can now vote and join the Army and remember PacRim as a childhood favorite.
Yes I just self-detonated into dust with that sentence.
Hey, speaking of. I've been watching a show called Back Arrow. Like, objectively, it's nothing incredible or groundbreaking. But I adore it. All tyrant mecha-heads should give it a try.
Watch "Back Arrow" OP - "dawn" by LiSA/Clean, HQ | Streamable
Watch ""Back Arrow" OP - "dawn" by LiSA/Clean, HQ" on Streamable.
streamable.com
IMO, it's a very intentional throwback show to the glory days of mecha, so it feels nostalgic despite being a brand new IP, and is clearly being made by people who adore the genre. It's an anime-original show, so there shouldn't be any normal worries about manga-adaptations or otherwise. And it's being made by a surprisingly legit group of talent.
Comparisons are in general kinda lazy, but they get the idea across and I'm not great with words so here it goes: I'd say the best comp is that the show is like Aura Battler Dunbine, but mixed with Star Driver. It's got that primordial isekai vibe where the MC shows up in this contained, medieval, fantasy setting where there are feudal states warring against each other with mecha. And while there's a bunch of drama and politicking going on, the general tenor/tone of the show is more along the lines of Star Driver, where it's very upbeat, positive, and bombastic. The main character is basically Takuto with regards to his care-free, positivity, and his almost whimsical attitude towards trying to completely upend the status quo of this new place he finds himself in as an outsider. Instead of being medieval European knights though, the motifs so far are a mix of Dynastic Chinese culture, and Wild West frontier culture on an opposite side (Kinda Wild Arms-y). The components of the show feel very familiar, but the unusual mix of them feels fresh and new, especially in an anime landscape that basically forgets mecha exists outside of the stray Gundam show that happens once every other year.
On the production side, it's being made by Studio VOLN (best known for their Ushio & Tora adaptation). It's being directed by THE Goro Taniguchi.
The director behind Code Geass, Active Raid, ID-0, Infinite Ryvius, Planetes, and s.CRY.ed. The script/series composition is being done by Kazuki Nakashima who was responsible for creating/writing BNA, Kill la Kill, Promare, and Gurren Lagann.
Visually, it's kinda bland. But it's never bad or incompetent. The mecha themselves are not the greatest, but they're fun and eclectic. By the same mecha designer as relatively recent Knights & Magic, so expect something along those lines. (They actually look really dope as models; the 3DCG in the show just makes them look kinda bland.) But I'm more here for the themes and the fun times versus anything else.
I hope some of y'all give it a try! I don't think it'll remotely be for everyone, but I think there's enough going on here to merit not being looked over/lost in the shuffle. Especially if you're like me and thirsty for a good, old fashioned, mecha show.
Netflix commissioned an anime adaptation of Gokushufudou: Way of the House Husband a while back, and now we've got the first meaningful look at it through a PV and...
I fucking hate Netflix so god damned much
I fucking hate Netflix so god damned much
There's literally not a single moment of animation in that entire trailer. What a hatchet-job.
Yeah, watching that trailer again the only things even close to animation are the flapping mouths, the spray of ketchup, and cheap Flash-ish stuff like moving the stills around and the cat's paw.
This is definitely a motion comic.
Must have hit the wong button but anyway it’s not Netflix’s fault the animation sucks. It’s the producers.Netflix commissioned an anime adaptation of Gokushufudou: Way of the House Husband a while back, and now we've got the first meaningful look at it through a PV and...
I fucking hate Netflix so god damned
Pretty sure Netflix is on the production committee? Which makes them some of the producers?
Like, they commissioned this. Why are they handing out money to people who would do this kind of hatchet job to such great material?This is why I say that Netflix hates anime. At the very best, they've repeatedly shown an extreme ignorance and indifference, just blindly shoving money in directions with no accountability or oversight at the command of their algorithms to disastrous results.
Edit: Also, the 'artistic decision' to make it completely static images, doesn't excuse the fact that the static images themselves are rather poor in quality by itself. Like, if you're going to just make it a bunch of key frames with no tweening, least you can do is make those key frames really good looking.
Yep! This. I'm really beginning to understand the manga version, and why it is the way that it is. In the manga, they basically strip out the other students POV and it's all spooder, all the time. I still think the students POV is important because it serves thematically as a contrast to Kumoko's whole experience. And later when their stories inevitably intersect, things will make more sense for it. But maaaan does it drag.
Also, like most nerd-media out of Japan, on average they're imminently easier to digest with a lot less bullshit when they're written by women. By contrast, this season's Mushoku Tensei is like, a bonfire of problematic. Big woof. Noooobody should be watching that show.
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Let's talk about Sailor Moon R: The Movie and the greatest narrative climax to a work of fiction.
This 1993 film is not the first or last directorial effort by series stalwart Kunihiko Ikuhara, but it may be the definitive treatise on the series in the language and thematical content that his directorial output specifically emphasized in it. It is achingly queer, in a much more prominent, central and unambiguous way than even the largely homosocial interactions in Sailor Moon regularly foster. You can't disavow it as subtext when the emotional arc of the film concerns a star-crossed romance predicated upon childhood promises that forms the core of the narrative, and as Sailors Neptune and Uranus pushed their own boundaries in gender and sexual expression in the main series, so does the focus here benefit from it being placed strictly on Mamoru and another man and the relationship between them. Whether one views same-gender romantic relationships as taboo or not--especially in 1993--it's important to recognize that it's often usually far more socially permissible for those relationships to exist and be interpreted between women than it is for men, in media and otherwise. R: The Movie's decision to center that thematicism around Mamoru is a doubly fortuitous move because it frames him as actually relevant and present outside of his stock narrative role while also expanding the series's inherent notions about queerness beyond just one gender baseline.
The way the movie addresses and acknowledges sexuality feels akin to a Comics Code Authority-subjected monthly book breaking out into a format exempt or loosened from those content guidelines; it's not only treated as the thrust of the story but affects how the characters talk about their own relationships and in what language. Usagi and Mamoru display physical intimacy which captivates the rest of the Senshi, and when a figure from the latter's past returns and professes his love to Mamoru, Usagi's reaction is jealous and protective, but most importantly it is not negatory to Fiore's feelings; she does not lean into reactive erasure about her boyfriend's potential queerness either. In fact, Usagi spends a great deal of time internally conflicted and troubled about the revelation, but it's only in context of her own relationship with him: through her acknowledgement of Fiore as a potential romantic rival, she in turn affirms and accepts the legitimacy of his and Mamoru's relationship on a deeply kind level that is both reflective of her as an individual and the work's overall ethos. Another conversation between the Senshi drifts between light teasing and the casual acknowledgement of gay people in their social circles; I will not disguise the tone of these comments as they are a little scandalous and voeyuristically othering at times (and spoken by fourteen-year-olds in 1993), but also speak to the level of newfound unambiguity present in the work even as holistically Sailor Moon tends to be engaged with these themes nearly always; the clarity does not go unappreciated.
In light of all of this, R: The Movie would have substance enough to leave an impact as a foundational cornerstone of the 200 episodes and however many movies and specials comprise the original animated adaptation of Sailor Moon, but what truly and irrevocably made me treasure it was the way it closes the curtain on itself in an act of masterful thematic summarization and storytelling synthesis in its conclusion. During the inevitable confrontation with Fiore (whose hurt has also been manipulated all along to propel the film's events) the Senshi bear witness to his outpouring of trauma and reflect internally on their own hardships, their own personal struggles. Sailor Moon is a giant series even if you stick to whatever core narrative one can discern in it, and with that scale and scope there's a danger of forgetting what makes the series so enduring in the first place, as the monsters of the week and energy-sapping schemes grind ever on to provide gruel for the weekly mill. I can only speak for myself but the central appeal of the series was always that it was about this group of girls who through thick and thin not only saved the world however many times over the years but grew together, socialized and just plain liked each other and the individual dynamics each pair of them provided. The series goes through artificial structural loops periodically as one solo focus episode usually begets another up until the core cast have all had time in the limelight; while this can seem as routine as the other narrative trappings of the series, it's also evidence pointing to how important the creators and writers thought the relationships between the characters on a consistent basis, and consequently some of the strongest moments in the series can be found in that character-focused material.
Fiore is ultimately undone and redeemed by the very love he has for Mamoru, and newly, Usagi, but the residue of his plot remains with deadly consequences for the heroes, and that's where Usagi steps up to protect everyone she loves, and we're met with "Moon Revenge." As a watcher of this medium, I'm surely not alone in valuing the art of the insert song, and the practice's emotional efficacy is hopefully not lost on anyone else either. Proper use of the concept has made me blubber my eyes out or sent chills down my spine, and even at its basest level of utilization slotting in a regularly heard opening or closing theme can result in something contextually elevating in the process. "Moon Revenge" is spectacular not because of that kind of fondness brewed through familiarity; the song plays here and only here, at least up to this point in the franchise's history. Its impact comes from the construction of the song, in being sung by the five Senshi themselves, sharing chorus duties but each having solo verses, which are then matched up to their narrative resolutions in remembering and reaffirming with themselves that it was this lazy, selfish, clumsy, crude and cowardly dumpling head that saved each of them just through facing them head-on with all of her own faults and never backing down from theirs. The lyrics during Usagi's solo section veer toward the fatalistic as she struggles to keep her loved ones safe, and verse by verse, the lone voices of the other Senshi vocalize their love for her and finally unify in the chorus and refrain that brings them home. It's an action sequence, it's a setpiece, it's Usagi's Jean-Grey-bringing-the-shuttle-back-to-Earth moment of the ultimate self-sacrifice, death and subsequent rebirth, and it does all of this while distilling the series, its themes and its truest merits to an unmatched symbiosis of storyboarding, scripting and audiovisual coherence and resonance. It's simply unbeatable.
That's what Sailor Moon R: The Movie is: a single extended episode in a series that lived by that structural mantra, and by that same token, it's likely as perfect an episode as one might find in its entirety.
Only watched the first episode, but I think Pacific Rim: The Black might be a better sequel than Uprising was. And absolutely better than those godawful Godzilla movies were.
They certainly don’t waste time over explaining things, at the very least.
They certainly don’t waste time over explaining things, at the very least.
I watched the first two eps so far, and yeah, it's not bad. Polygon still hasn't quite perfected CG-animating people, but the Kaiju and Jaegers all look great, though they have the more agile disposition of Uprising rather than the lumbering weight of the original. Speaking of Uprising, I'm not super clear on the timeline but I think this may come after it, as it's including some concepts tangentially from there like small kaiju and the idea of kaiju/jaeger hybrids. Not to mention addition rifts weren't a thing in the timeline leading to the first movie.
The second episode does introduce the most anime of tropes, a mysterious mute probably super-powered waif in a test tube, but I'm willing to see where they go with it.
(Peklo, that awesome Sailor Moon R write-up makes me wish I'd actually watched more of the series, so I could get the most out of just popping it on some time.)
The second episode does introduce the most anime of tropes, a mysterious mute probably super-powered waif in a test tube, but I'm willing to see where they go with it.
(Peklo, that awesome Sailor Moon R write-up makes me wish I'd actually watched more of the series, so I could get the most out of just popping it on some time.)
Guess what’s coming back after nine years?
Low key kinda shocking
Low key kinda shocking
What’s funny to me about all this, is that this comes not too terribly long after the original Light Novels ended. And apparently the ending of the source material had a legendarily bad ending that caused all of its fans to turn on it.
I'm intrigued but I don't speak Japanese. What is the English title of this Anime/Manga?
Sorry, my bad. It's "Hataraku Maou-sama!" aka The Devil is a Part-Timer! It's like the reverse of an isekai show, where instead of a normal person going to a fantasy world, the end boss baddie from a fantasy world comes to the real world and has to learn how to get by as a regular joe and works at a McDonalds. It's mildly problematic in the way most late night anime is, but it's generally a fun show. It should be streaming on Netflix IIRC.
Oh? I've been slowly working my way through the localized novels and they're pretty alright, but this makes me really concerned now
Just from unwanted cultural osmosis it seems like mostly fans being upset that the wrong girl "won" which is to say their favored romance did not become canon and a different romance did. Because as we all know if you're a love interest in a story and don't end up marrying the protagonist then your existence is retroactively meaningless and holds no possibility of future happiness
It's another problematic fave but I will never get over how Kashimashi had the wrong girl "win," realize that she won for the wrong reasons, break up with the protagonist and help her get back together with her actual true love, then when asked if she wanted to date someone else was like "uh no I'm actually pretty happy being single for now, check back with me later" which was pretty fucking rad and goes to show that the world still needs more trans lesbian self-insert wish fulfillment stories.
It's another problematic fave but I will never get over how Kashimashi had the wrong girl "win," realize that she won for the wrong reasons, break up with the protagonist and help her get back together with her actual true love, then when asked if she wanted to date someone else was like "uh no I'm actually pretty happy being single for now, check back with me later" which was pretty fucking rad and goes to show that the world still needs more trans lesbian self-insert wish fulfillment stories.
Yes, that's a perfectly valid point. However, when the central thrust of your entire story is written around a specific romantic pairing, and the vast majority of your fans get invested in that romance, and then at the very end you pull the rug out from under your readers and don't fulfill that pairing in favor of a different one nobody likes and is actually kinda problematic, it's uh. Gonna understandably ruffle a lot of feathers when you do that.
I don’t think it’s a sequel so much as an Instead-quel
Oh. I think I know what this means, and that does make me kind of unhappy if true. Not for the reason you say, but if it is that one then I just really don't think it makes sense or works. I can't really express what I mean, but the LNs have suggested this at times and it just feels wrong.
