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Comments
I don't really see anything wrong with shows that are just fun. The problem is more that that's all there seems to be.
Madoka was a pick-apart of a genre that's been dead for awhile anyway, IMO. I'm not sure how relevant commentary on the magical girl genre is now that it's been "out" for so long. Though the revival of Sailor Moon next year could possibly change that I guess.
In Winter or in general?
Magical girls aren't dead as long as Precure is around (This is kind of like saying Tokusatsu is dead because there aren't any late-night Tokusatsu), plus the genre has never been big with the average Otaku in the first place. Nanoha and Symphogear are the only late-night Magical girls shows I can think of.
Well, there's been Symphogear, Black Rock Shooter, the newest PreCure, Madoka, and arguably Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, in the past year or two. All of which have been fairly successful, so I don't think you can really call the genre "out".
I forgot about Precure, but I honestly wouldn't call either BRS or Panty & Stocking magical girl shows. Unless they really changed some stuff up with B*RS in transition from OVA to full series, which I guess is possible. I haven't seen the anime.
It's kind of arguable whether BRS is a magical girl show, but enough people think it is that I think it's worth noting.
This is completely unrelated to the current discussion, but it really distracts/slightly bothers me whenever people use "anime" to mean specifically "TV anime" and imply that movies and OVAs and the like aren't anime... >.>
I'm not sure whether that bothers me more or less than "animes."
Also for recent magical girl series there was also Kuromajo-san ga Tooru! and Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel ~Kyun Kyun ☆ Tokimeki Paradise!!~. And I guess Majide Otaku na English! Ribon-chan: Eigo de Tatakau Mahou Shoujo, but that might not count really because 3 minute episodes and it's mostly just generic parody stuff as opposed to a proper magical girl show.
Odd, I just noticed that I tend to use 'show' or 'TV show' instead of anime to refer to TV anime...
So, I just watched the first two episodes of Narutaru.
I like it, but it's weird.
is narutaru the one where a girl gets raped with a test tube
because i think it's the one where a girl gets raped with a test tube
It is.
Unfortunately that's pretty much the only good part of the show.
The first two thirds of the series is boring, incoherent, and horribly animated.
Not that the rest is any better, but it's at least shocking.
Though, I think the manga is supposed to be a lot better than the anime (that is, the anime is just a bad adaptation), so maybe my opinion of the manga would be more positive, but I haven't read it yet.
i'm... not sure how to take that
at all
Unless you're replying to JHM?
I mean that that story arc is the best part of the show, because unlike pretty much everything else, it actually manages to both make me care about the characters involved, and be very disturbing. I don't mean that it's good because test tube rape.
Well... That's somethin', at least.
Hmm... well, I liked the beginning of the series pretty well (shoddy animation aside), so depending on how this pans out, we may have to agree to disagree.
As usual.
Precure is, one show per year. That doesn't really show the genre being... well. "relevant" these days. You can say the same about tokusatsu as well, I guess. At least the superhero type, since there's only Rider and Sentai nowadays, and like Precure, they're both by Toei. (okay, there are new mini-episodes of Ultraman that's a segment of those glorified reruns, but that's it, for now)
Actually, does Toei usually have any sort of "competition" in the magical girl genre? Seems that a lot of mahou shoujo shows and framchises are Toei's, and as far as I can tell, they're the only people you can count on to continuously make new shows in the genre.
I would hesitate to call any genre "dead"; "dormant" might be a better term if there's no activity with it.
And Garo (Two series and a second movie on the horizon) and Ultraman (The movie series that ended a few months ago, not the glorified episodes) and the Hero Next movies.
Not in the Magical Girl Genre, not in toku, practically nowhere do they have competition in the fields they deal with.
Did we not establish the other relevant magical girl shows less than ten posts ago? In the past two years we've had Symphogear, the second Nanoha movie, Madoka, Kuromajo-san ga Tooru and Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel. Next year we'll have Vividred, PRISMA ILLYA and that new ufotable series too.
Well, I've mostly been thinking in terms of TV shows that are currently airing. Garo had about six years between its two seasons, and the second one ended earlier this year. No clue how long until the next one. Ultra Series has been less superhero-y these as far as TV programming is concerned. (the last Ultra show was a sitcom/variety show, and before that was basically Pokemon with aliens and kaiju). And um... isn't Hero Next also a Toei thing?
Okay, to be honest, there's at least three things in that list I haven't heard of.
Toku as a TV thing (and a standard Super Hero Thing) has always been just Sentai/Rider, sometimes with two or so other shows airing too.
And yes, Hero Next is Toei, but I already said:
Well, I wouldn't say it was always like that. Ultraman was established as a brand name earlier than Kamen Rider did. Hell, before Kuuga, KR disappeared from TV a few times. There was a hiatus of a few years between Stronger and New KR/Skyrider, then another between Super-1 and Black. Then there were no more TV shows for about a decade. Only Sentai had this "evergreen franchise" status, up until relatively recently.
That's why we divide KR between Heisei and Showa riders >_>
I mean, are we really going to go 20 years into the past when the current formula has already been working for 10?
Also, derail. If you want to continue we should take this to the toku thread.
Alright.
Anyway, more on-topic, I started watching My-HiME because apparently, it used to be the anime most compared to Kamen Rider Ryuki before Madoka Magica came along (same composer as Madoka, too) . I'm just 8 episodes in. Some thoughts:
I've been wondering whether they purposely chose the terms "child" and "orphan" because they had female characters with magical abilities.
I've seen 15 episodes. I just haven't been able to get around to watching 16 onward for some reason. (Also I don't have it on me right now.)
I still think that the show would do better without trying to be chock full of drama or comedy all the time. In fact, take out the comedy, take out the romantic drama, make it just about the conspiracies and the politics. And then give the characters downtime to ponder the implications of their actions.
@Nova disagrees with me completely. At least not including that last line (which she hasn't commented on yet). Apparently she likes the romantic drama.
Also, she ships Shizuru and Natsuki, which I oppose. I don't ship, but if I would, it would be Natsuki and Nao.
I read through volume 19 of Bleach again, since it was lying around and I forgot to resell it somewhere. I forgot how slow the pacing was, even before the Soul Society arc ended. Literally an entire chapter was spent solely on Ichigo activating his Bankai for the first time.
At least it was pretty nothing. I've always been very happy with the artistry of the series.
Pretty nice medley
I think I can recognize some of those memes...
HOLY SHIT IS THAT...THAT IS AGAPÉ
YES YES WANT
AND THEN JIBUN REST@RT FOR ICING ON THE CAKE
Just watching that vid has suddenly made me realize that I know enough that I might be able to carry on a conversation about Japanese pop culture memes (given an English-language interface).
Not sure if this is a good thing.
The thing is that the prettiness is in no small part related to the slowness. Kubo has a very nice sense of panel flow, but it really clashes with the WSJ format (15/20 pages a week).
ななひら was in that medley? When? When was there even any singing? This bothers me, but I don't want to rewatch a 15 minute video because of it.
^^ Oh, definitely. This isn't my original sentiment, but I think it would have helped the series's pacing in publication greatly: it should have been a monthly, at, like, 50 pages per month. Plenty of time to make the whole thing look nice and pretty, while still leaving room to cram some substance into each page.
I KNOW
The Prince of Tennis musical is in it too!
On one hand, I feel cheated by the not Natsuiro Kiseki 2nd Season announcement.
On the other, Eden of the East/Eureka Seven AO's sometimes scriptwriter and Natsuiro Kiseki's artist IN THE SAME MOVIE (You can even see Saki, Brown Haired Natsumi and Lighter Green Haired Yuka too).