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Comments
Conqueror of Shamballa is on Hulu. How helpful.
I think I'll start Kaiba soon. I need something beautiful and horribly sad in my life.
The Tiger & Bunny dub actually makes me want to watch that show despite having nothing but a total indifference to the show itself (I saw it, it was okay, never wanted to do it again but the dub is really awesome).
So, I finally watched Conqueror of Shamballa, and... well, it's what I expected: Deeply flawed, rushed, and inconsistent in plotting, yet also entertaining and ultimately satisfying to equally high degrees.
Really, the rushing was what kept it from being truly excellent, which it very well could have been. It was clear to me that many of the new characters had initially been written as having more time to establish themselves, but then had been forced due to time restraints to limit those explanations to mere lines out of scenes. Eckhart's self-justification was particularly abrupt: While given what was potentially a very strong motivation (fear and hatred of the unknown), the lack of foreshadowing made it seem almost trite. It's things like that which make me wish that I could see what Aikawa's original, 180-page script was like.
And yet it did not fail to amuse me. Vast excised swaths aside, it was still a rather nicely constructed piece of work, particularly in the animation department... CG bits aside. Those were kind of meh.
One of my major gripes with CoS is its insistence on killing off a huge swathe of characters with little to no reason behind it, Hughes's and Nina's deaths in the anime. Then there's also (and I may be wrong on this one, since it's been a while since I last saw it), its apparent effort to invoke sympathy for Envy, who's pretty much on the list of Pride, Kimbley and Dante of people who do not deserve it.
Yeah, I can understand that, although I think most of them at least made narrative sense. But again, the rushing. Seriously, it's like they took at least six TV episodes and slammed them together into a little over half the running time.
I wouldn't say that Envy was on the same level as Dante in the "irredeemably horrible" department. Given his experiences and environment, I could never say that his behaviour was justified—really, what sane person would?—but I think that it is at least imminently understandable. It's like hearing that a serial murderer was horribly abused as a child: It does not diminish the crimes, but it explains them, and ultimately makes the whole affair that much sadder.
In other news, I was just reminded of this one friend who dislikes spoiler tags blanking out parts of a sentence because he finds the result--textual Swiss cheese--to be aesthetically unappealing.
It's kind of important here; otherwise I would be avoiding it.
So. To more lain and beginning Kaiba, away...
I'm not faulting you; I don't mind it.
I was really more trying to say that I understand the problem, not that I thought that you felt that way per se.
So, first episode of Kaiba down, and it is weird. Beautiful, too. It's very hard to describe adequately. It's like someone grafted a Philip K. Dick novel onto the body of a goofy kid's show and it works.
Kaiba is cool. Though I've only seen the first two episodes. I might get around to watching it soon. But right now I'm trying to watch Turn A Gundam, interspersed with whatever else I download on a whim. Plus in a couple weeks the new season is starting (most of it going to be bad, but I want to at least watch the first couple episodes of most shows), so...
So basically I'm going to end up not watching Kaiba ever.
That's unfortunate. I'm about to watch the third episode right now, actually...
Compared to a lot of you guys, I think I'm a pretty casual anime fan. Or maybe I'm just really, really picky. I don't know.
I say it's better to be picky about cartoons than to suffer through drek because it has a VA you like.
^^Nah, you're fairly normal as far as I'm concerned.
I suppose. I'm more into Japanese animation than most of the people I know in real life, but the few serious fans I know are a lot more devoted to the medium—well, this branch of the animation medium, to be precise—than I will or could ever be.
Really, I just love animation. I love what it can do.
^^^ To be totally honest, I've only ever really felt like I was forcing myself through an anime once, and it was because I had already bought the DVDs for it. Anything else I say I'm forcing myself to watch is really more like... it's not very good but I'm willing to watch it anyway if I'm sufficiently bored and unwilling to concentrate much on anything.
I know that feel, bro.
I tried doing that with Mai-HiME and failed, actually.
THERE ARE NO WORDS THAT CAN CONVEY MY EMOTIONS RIGHT NOW
wow dyre your optimism is blinding
You guys are so lucky...
>Pretending to know what forcing yourself through an anime feels like if you haven't seen .hack//ROOTS
So evidently this fall there will be a show by the guy who made Steins; gate called Robotics; notes. (also originally a VN)
It looks to be less drama and more moe, but it does seem to be more actual speculative fiction sci-fi and we don't exactly have a glut of that.
He has a semicolon fetish.
At least the title makes more sense this time.
Well the point of Steins;Gate was that the phrase doesn't really mean anything and was just something Okabe thought sounded cool. But yeah Robotics;notes looks cool. I mean Steins;Gate was pretty good sci fi even if the science was bullshit, so something more grounded in reality might be pretty cool.
Robotics;notes... I dunno. I'm currently planning on watching it (since I'm planning on watching the first episodes of everything and then dropping shows as necessary), but... I dunno. It's probably going to be one of those shows where I don't actually like it but everyone keeps saying it's good so I think of it as being more enjoyable than it actually was.
...I say based on absolutely nothing, since it hasn't aired yet.
I'm actually looking forward to Robotics;Notes, especially since there's an Elena copycat (Just with purple hair instead of pink) in it.
Oh, and robots.
So Summer noitaminA has wrapped up and as much as I'll miss Natsuyuki Rendezvous I can't say I'm not happy to have it off my mind forever and ever, soap operas like that are hard to quit.
Moyashimon on the other hand I never bothered watching since I haven't seen the first season and don't plan to anytime soon.
Somebody's working on a pretty nifty Star Wars anime thing:
Early Winter 2012/2013 chart. Dunno how accurate it is.
Vividred Operation is obviously AOTYAY so I will watch it for sure. Sasami-san is SHAFT so I'll watch that too. Everything else is either a sequel to something I haven't seen or else bad looking, but whatever. And of course I'll watch Kizumonogatari and probably the Hanairo movie, but those won't really come out for a long time, so... yeah.
So basically, looks mediocre so far, but it's okay because it's still far away so more good stuff will be announced later.
I'm going to skip the entirety of next year aside from AKB0048, Chiyahafuru, Neptunia, Accel World (This show is like drugs to me) and a possible Symphogear sequel.
...And Savannah Game
...And VividRed
...And Sasami-san@Ganbaranai
AND ARVE FREAKING REZZIE I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY'RE FINALLY MAKING IT!
So basically I'm not skipping next year.
Also, Savannah Game, don't be BTOOM 2.0...
^ AOTYAY?
Anime of the Year, All Years.
Why would you do this?
Because I have an immense backlog of 70s, 80s and 90s shows and I've only seen Science Ninja Team Gatchaman and Giant Robo since I started at the beginning of winter this year (Which was when I became obsessed with Symphogear, then E7AO and Hyouka).
I mean, at this rate the licensed versions will be out of print before I save up enough money to buy them.
I haven't even seen the original Kamen Rider yet!
Wow, that's a bunch of anime I don't give a crap about. The only thing in that chart I care about is Kizumonogatari.