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Comments
>Implying I meant to imply that
>Implying that there could have been a much clearer phrasing
It would suck though. The book is basically an introduction for a new character, and it focuses mostly on her, so it'd be extremely strange for that to be the last part of the series to ever be animated...
We're just going to have to hope the anime made the books more popular, and that the author will write faster because of that. And then that they'll actually get translated because really, KyoAni isn't going to do another season or a movie of Hyouka.
I thought it would wrap up Houtarou and Eru's relationship or something, but I guess it was wrapped up as well as it could have been. Houtarou's daydreaming gave me unrealistic expectations...
The books are probably never going to see the light of day in (licensed) English, but then again Yen Press just randomly announced that they'd be releasing the Another novel. So maybe there's hope...
:-;
Well, the author plans to keep writing more of Hyouka (well, the Kotenbu series I guess, since that's what the series is called) for... apparently a long time, so their relationship has plenty of time to develop. But yeah, we'll probably never see it in English, licensed or otherwise.
It's selling like 9,000 copies. That'd probably normally be enough to at least consider a sequel (for a normal studio, not necessarily for KyoAni), but considering there isn't enough source material, and at the rate it's been written at there won't be for like 5 more years or something...
Unless it's significantly better than the first half, then probably not.
Well, I recall not being very interested by it at first, but I'll give it a look.
Y'know what I figured out? A series needs to have two things for me to keep thinking about it.
First, it has to have points or questions to ponder. This may be philosophical questions raised by the story, or setting or plot points left hanging. Just, something to chew on afterwords, something to do other than say "that was great" or "that sucked". To this end, stuff that kinda sucks is often more interesting than a story that's "too perfect"--that's something I've sometimes commented about Eureka Seven.
But it also needs to have an emotional motivation for me to care. A show can leave me with all sorts of questions, but it needs to provide me a motivation--why should I care? This can often come by one of two means: comedy, where something amuses me (let's leave out the "how" question for now) and thus makes me want to re-experience that sense of enjoyment and spread it to other people; and drama, wherein something--a character, an event, or other plot point--makes me distressed or angry or otherwise upset. These two means can be in-universe--say, with intentional comedy, or with a heartstring-tugging scene--or it can be out-of-universe--such as a character doing something stupid in a memorable way (comedy, or more accurately, amusement) or a scene whose grounding philosophy I think I disagree with (drama, or more accurately, upsetness).
So basically, you need a "rational" basis to think about stuff, and an "emotional" motivation to go think about it.
I don't know if it is singnificantly better. but I think that Fate/Zero is a great story and it deserves to be seen in full. So yeah, I'd say it is a must watch. Dogfights! A monster out of C'thulu! Betrayals! Iskander being Iskander! the final battle between Kiritsugu and Kotomine!
I forgot how much I loved Madoka Magica until I watched a video review of it today. I know that a lot of people think that it's overrated and it was certainly overhyped in very questionable ways, but it remains one of the most immaculately constructed television shows that I have actually seen, period. Sure, I've seen programs with better pacing, better dialogue, better characters, better plotting and so forth, but I have almost never seen so many things work together so perfectly on so many levels with such consistency across the board. It runs like a Swiss watch, and I love that about it.
Plus, the animation is effing gorgeous. Sure, Shinbo is whack, but when he's on, he is on.
Shibo what?
Akiyuki Shinbo, Studio SHAFT's house director.
I meant to say "a whack," in reference to his extremely strange/dubious project choices and eccentric stylistic manoeuvres. (I mean, Le Portrait de Petite Cossette...? Come on.) That being said, when not either overindulging in odd camera angles or weird Freudian creepiness, he's an extremely talented director. His frame compositions and use of colour and texture are just breathtaking, and while Madoka isn't his most enjoyably out-there, he pulls it all off so tautly that I can't help but applaud him there.
So Accel World is over and t seems that there still aren't any plans for a second season according to the LN author. The ending is basically "What would happen if Naruto ended at the Rescue Gaara arc?", we don't learn anything about Brain Burst, we don't have Haru anywhere near level 10. It's even more of a waste of time than it was a couple of weeks ago.
Remember how I said that Accel World's soundtrack was very good? I was apparently thinking of something else entirely because the only memorable songs on that soundtrack are the 'everyday' song, Sky Raker's theme and it's various reprisals.
Yeah, there's still a little hope as long as Yen Press continues to exist.
I know it's pretty much the first example of Shinbo being Shinbo but I think that it's stylistically pretty... bad, even if it does a lot of the same things that show up in Shinbo's other later works. There are a lot of things that are just weird for the sake of being weird and a lot of the imagery (read: all of it) is hilariously unsubtle, so it kind of makes it hard to take seriously. Also the character designs look weird, but that might just be because the characters have noses and lips. And doesn't really have anything to do with Shinbo in any case.
Also, as much as I like Shinbo, you can't give him all the credit for his shows' visual style. Tatsuya Oishi and Shin Oonuma contribute a lot, and the witches in Madoka were the product of Gekidan Inu Curry.
For a moment I thought you meant that Shinbo, Oishi and Oonuma came up with them after having hallucinations caused by some really bad curry.
Is the first episode something good to get people hooked into Time of Eve? Alternatively, do you think more people will likely become interested than will lose interest after seeing one episode?
I proposed to a few people in my anime club that we watch Time of Eve next week. Coincidentially, it turns out that next week's theme is "anime that make you think", and the club prez is taking suggestions (as usual).
Should I suggest it as part of the lineup and have him announce that we're watching episodes 2-6 as a small group during the free time in the latter half of the club meet, or should I just let other people's picks run their course and then show this to the small group?
^^^ Absolutely. Without Inu Curry's visual design work and its contrast with Ume Aoki's soft, pretty character designs, the psychological scenes that carried the bulk of the show's impact wouldn't have been nearly as affecting; and that's totally ignoring the glory of the labyrinths, particularly Gertrude's first appearance. But again, I really think that what made the show so strong was how each element managed to act so beautifully in concert. Shinbo's direction, Inu Curry's art, Aoki's figures, Urobuchi's writing: Without any one of these, the others would have been insufficient. They enhance each other by dint of how well they fit together.
So I was looking up LN sales and Sword Art Online is really dominating the charts (Like, 7 volumes in the top 10) and Hyouka (as in the first Hyouka Kotenbu book) is also up there. Under the top then is the latest Oreimo (I think), lots of Horizon, a P4 novel nobody's heard of and a BL LN (I didn't know those sold so well).
The P4 novel is the one about Naoto Shirogane as a sophomore detective, if I recall..
It is called Persona X Detective Naoto but I can't find an English plot summary anywhere.
What I did find are these odd ship-teasey official visual sheets ($98 is a lot of money to validate your ship...)
Yu creeping on Chie.
Blatant YuxYosuke.
Somewhat subtle YuxRise.
I went ahead and suggested Time of Eve for next week's sampler lineup.
And should I get 480p or 720p version of AKB0048? Alternatively, how worth it is this series?
You should always get a higher resolution version of whatever, unless it was made digitally and not in HD (so basically, if it was first released between about 2000-2008 or so) because why would you ever want a worse version when you have the choice?
That said, AKB0048 was really mediocre, I thought, and I wouldn't recommend watching it in the first place.
I thought it was pretty good. Good story, heroine could have had a bit more personality but that was okay. The characters are a decent mix of good and bad (Chieri, Mariko/Tsubasa & Takamina V Kanade, Sonata & Linda) and the music is AKB48 and Takaki Hiroshi (Who was involved with wonderfully Engrish Sky Girl's theme songs and Kyousogiga's score), so if you like them you should give it at least one watch.
Plus it's by Satelight so the CG sequences are beautiful when they're not intentionally dark as night (They are jarring in the beginning but as it goes on you get used to it).
So, I restarted watching Baccano! the other day. I'd only actually watched the first half initially, but I realised that it would be folly to jump back into the middle of this series after a multi-month gap. And I was quite right about that: I'd basically forgotten half of it, not because it was dull or because my memory sucks (it doesn't) but because there is so much there. In any case, great series, highly recommend it to anyone that hasn't already seen it.
Yeah I watched that show over the course of like a week and I was still quite thankful for the "previously" segments in reminding me what relevant things had happened before.And Mobile Suit Gundam AGE ended today. Wasted potential and pivotal mistakes did take a toll on the show. While not obejtively good, I wouldn't call it unejoyable or objetictively bad. It did have impressive fights, though.
Couldn't you say those exact words about pretty much any Gundam though?
Actually no. There are shows that are objectively good, like Zeta Gundam or Turn A Gundam or G Gundam. What can be said is that after Gundam SEED broadcasted gundam shows are falling in the same pitfall of Pacifism brought about by an overpowered mech with an insufferably hippie pilot, credibility and reason be damned.
While I felt that Gundam SEED was pretty good I agree with vandro. Mostly because it acted as the definition of 2000s Gundam because it was insanely popular so every show before it was saved the trouble of being bound to it's formula as what people expect from a Gundam show.
Gundam seems to be the only anime mega-franchise with such a huge plot-copy-paste formula in recent memory (The others currently running/in recent memory that I can name off the top of my head being Precure, Digimon and Battle Spirits).
Turn A Gundam had a pacifist pilot, but he actually killed people when there were no other options! Unlike Kio Asuno and JESUS Yamato.
There wasn't a Jesus Yamato until SEED Destiny (IIRC he's the one who killed Nicol in SEED). You could argue that there was a JESUS Clyne though.
That might be something that's a problem with (hardcore?) shonen today, it's become less common to have a protagonist who kills people and therefore harder to portray one who does so as a hero. That's why we have so many messianic shonen protagonists now.
Translation: I liked it but I think people will judge me if I say that so I have to say it isn't good.