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Dudemanguy
Metalhead

Joined: Tue Mar 30, 2010 7:19 pm
Posts: 2449
PostPosted: Thu Jan 05, 2017 9:04 pm 
 

Spoiler: show
I mean it was only one flashback episode, it's not like they could flesh out Sozin's character deeply or anything. But I thought the basic idea for the reason why the war even started was pretty decent. The Fire Nation was super prosperous, and Sozin thought the entire world would be a better place all under his rule. You know it's the whole idea that they have a moral duty to bring civilization to the rest of the world or something. One of the things I did like was that Sozin showed up to help Roku fend off the lava from the volcano. But when given the opportunity to sacrifice an old friend for the sake of his holy war, he took it without a single hesitation. What a jerk.

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hots_towel
Metalhead

Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2013 2:19 am
Posts: 426
Location: United States
PostPosted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 4:53 pm 
 

WTF I hate WW2 now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk6-wJUHquQ&t=116s

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Zelkiiro
Pounding the world with a fish of steel

Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2009 5:30 pm
Posts: 7721
Location: Pennsylvania
PostPosted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 9:32 pm 
 

hots_towel wrote:

Zur fick ist das?!
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MetallicaTrueFan
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 8:23 pm
Posts: 689
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 11:23 am 
 

I recently finished K Project and Blood Lad. Both were really fun for me to watch. K Project had a really interesting story and the characters were investing while Blood Lad was funny from beginning to end. Next I hope to go onto Shiki, Witchblade and Assassination Classroom.
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stainedclass2112
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Joined: Tue Nov 24, 2015 5:36 pm
Posts: 2545
Location: United States
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 2:02 pm 
 

Shiki was interesting. I'm pretty sure that show is maligned to hell and back, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.
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MetallicaTrueFan
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 8:23 pm
Posts: 689
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 2:43 pm 
 

I also finished Mushi-Shi at the end of last year. Mushi-Shi is a great anime that invests a lot on atmosphere and world building. It is also fairly relaxing to watch as a whole.
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stainedclass2112
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Joined: Tue Nov 24, 2015 5:36 pm
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Location: United States
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 2:48 pm 
 

I've been meaning to try Mushi-Shi, actually. I heard that it's great.

I finished My Hero Academia recently and I'd be definitely lying if I said I didn't love it or am not looking forward to the next season.

I also finished Sweetness and Lightning and I almost overdosed on cuteness because of it.
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Sepulchrave
Metalhead

Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2015 7:29 pm
Posts: 1994
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 5:52 pm 
 

Mushishi was a little TOO relaxing IMO. Nice to look at and it's good in its own right and all, but damn if it isn't a good treatment for insomnia.
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Kerrick
Metalhead

Joined: Wed Aug 26, 2015 5:02 pm
Posts: 1413
Location: United States
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 8:14 pm 
 

I introduced my wife to Princess Mononoke last night. Such a great flick! She liked it though didn't love it.

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BastardHead
Worse than Stalin

Joined: Thu Aug 18, 2005 7:53 pm
Posts: 10857
Location: Oswego, Illinois
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 9:29 pm 
 

stainedclass2112 wrote:
I finished My Hero Academia recently and I'd be definitely lying if I said I didn't love it or am not looking forward to the next season.


I don't watch a whole lot of anime and tend to read manga instead. I haven't done it in a long time since I cracked my phone screen which makes it a gigantic pain in the ass to read on there and that's my main avenue for it. I got a ways into My Hero Academia before putting it on hold due to the aforementioned screen crack and I've gotta say it's pretty much the only obviously-kid-friendly thing I've really liked in the medium. Lots of cool, creative stuff in there. The only thing I didn't like was all the little extra chapters where the writer shamelessly outs himself as a gigantic perv and drools over his own drawings over and over again.
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Zelkiiro
Pounding the world with a fish of steel

Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2009 5:30 pm
Posts: 7721
Location: Pennsylvania
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 10:01 pm 
 

BastardHead wrote:
The only thing I didn't like was all the little extra chapters where the writer shamelessly outs himself as a gigantic perv and drools over his own drawings over and over again.

I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't do the exact same thing if my art wasn't total shit.
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BastardHead
Worse than Stalin

Joined: Thu Aug 18, 2005 7:53 pm
Posts: 10857
Location: Oswego, Illinois
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 10:18 pm 
 

Well I mean he's up and said this dude was his favorite specifically because he can perv out in that universe so I dunno, always made it weirder to read for me.

Spoiler: show
Image
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stainedclass2112
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Joined: Tue Nov 24, 2015 5:36 pm
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Location: United States
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 11:27 pm 
 

Tsu was already one of my favorite characters, but the part where that very character grabbed her boob, and she responded by just trying to fucking drown him was priceless :lol:
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hey
Metalhead

Joined: Thu Feb 07, 2008 6:41 pm
Posts: 1636
Location: United States of America
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 11:34 pm 
 

MetallicaTrueFan wrote:
I recently finished K Project and Blood Lad. Both were really fun for me to watch. K Project had a really interesting story and the characters were investing while Blood Lad was funny from beginning to end. Next I hope to go onto Shiki, Witchblade and Assassination Classroom.

Shiki's cool and all... but the hair...
Spoiler: show
Image

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MetallicaTrueFan
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 8:23 pm
Posts: 689
PostPosted: Fri Jan 27, 2017 3:05 pm 
 

I have a Funimation account that I got for Christmas and it is so far only in use for 6 months. I decided that because it is taking me too long to finish Shiki that I will instead save that anime and Witchblade for later and go on immediately to Assassination Classroom and then onto the anime schedule I have typed up. I guess I will watch Season 1 of Assassination Classroom on DVD and finish it up online.
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volutetheswarth
Our Lady of Perpetual Butthurt

Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2011 8:37 pm
Posts: 3489
Location: Australia
PostPosted: Sat Jan 28, 2017 8:32 pm 
 

Randomly browsing through an Australian retailer website and came across "Strike Witches". Seems fairly perverted. I haven't kept up with anime in a long time, as in 2004, is the perverted stuff prevalent outside hentai and mixed throughout mainstream anime? Are there particular production companies that shoehorn sexual stuff in?

I remember really enjoying Spriggan, Sin: The Movie, Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll. Any other non-Miyazaki film recs?

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Zelkiiro
Pounding the world with a fish of steel

Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2009 5:30 pm
Posts: 7721
Location: Pennsylvania
PostPosted: Sun Jan 29, 2017 1:25 am 
 

volutetheswarth wrote:
Randomly browsing through an Australian retailer website and came across "Strike Witches". Seems fairly perverted. I haven't kept up with anime in a long time, as in 2004, is the perverted stuff prevalent outside hentai and mixed throughout mainstream anime? Are there particular production companies that shoehorn sexual stuff in?

Strike Witches is pretty skeezy, yes. Ecchi series are common, but not necessarily prevalent. MyAnimeList is a good resource to look at shows and their genre tags, and thus you can tell pretty easily whether something has the ecchi tag or not. Studios Shaft and A-1 Pictures produce more fanservice-y stuff more often than other studios, but they both have good series that don't rely on T&A to get your attention (namely, Puella Magi Madoka Magica and AnoHana, respectively). Other than that, just looking at the production company won't help you much on that front.
Quote:
I remember really enjoying Spriggan, Sin: The Movie, Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll. Any other non-Miyazaki film recs?

You will accept Miyazaki recommendations, and you will then go watch Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro, On Your Mark, and Castle in the Sky, and you will like it!

As for non-Miyazaki films/things that are practically films, I suggest Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Wolf Children, Redline, Otaku no Video, Read or Die OVA, Rurouni Kenshin: Tsuiokuhen (a.k.a. Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal), Macross Plus, and all the film tie-ins for Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, and Trigun. :V
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I've written a fantasy novel. It's 145,000 157,586 184,899 words long!
It's also going to be the first part of a trilogy!
Currently seeking an agent willing to touch this massive doorstop.

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stainedclass2112
Veteran

Joined: Tue Nov 24, 2015 5:36 pm
Posts: 2545
Location: United States
PostPosted: Sun Jan 29, 2017 2:00 am 
 

I really enjoyed Sword of a Stranger too, if that counts.
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volutetheswarth
Our Lady of Perpetual Butthurt

Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2011 8:37 pm
Posts: 3489
Location: Australia
PostPosted: Sun Jan 29, 2017 3:33 am 
 

Zelkiiro wrote:
Ecchi series are common, but not necessarily prevalent.
Had no idea this 'Ecchi' term existed but that's really quite helpful to know so I can avoid the weird shit.

Thanks for recs. Plenty to get through before cuing up A Boy and The Beast.

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MetallicaTrueFan
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 8:23 pm
Posts: 689
PostPosted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 8:59 pm 
 

A recently finished Assassination Classroom and it is a great anime. Fun characters, amazing concept, great action and a well developed story despite the absurd premise. I fell in love with characters like Nagisa, Karma, Itona, Kayano and of course Koro Sensei. It ranks among my favorites produced by Shonen Jump alongside Black Cat and Death Note. The dub was pretty good as well providing excellent characteristics for everybody. All in all I found it to be a great anime as a whole.

Next stop is A Certain Magical Index which is going to be a lot of fun.
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ratedgdr
Metal newbie

Joined: Tue Mar 17, 2015 10:03 pm
Posts: 324
Location: Northeast Wisconsin
PostPosted: Thu Feb 09, 2017 10:49 am 
 

So during the Super Bowl, one of the commercials was a trailer for the live-action Ghost In The Shell movie.

As a fan of the original (one that is one of my favorite films overall), I nearly had a fucking aneurysm. I have zero intention whatsoever of seeing this atrocity.

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Dudemanguy
Metalhead

Joined: Tue Mar 30, 2010 7:19 pm
Posts: 2449
PostPosted: Thu Feb 09, 2017 11:03 am 
 

Yeah Hollywood has been out of ideas for years now.

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MetallicaTrueFan
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 8:23 pm
Posts: 689
PostPosted: Thu Feb 09, 2017 11:55 am 
 

There are two reasons why I find it hard to convert animation to live action. The first is that it is hard to make everything look convincing that it looks like the show came to life. The second is that real life acting doesn't have the amount of emotional range that animation has. Animations emotional range is heavily exaggerated and can be unrealistic. It would be better to adapt anime that is grounded and more down to earth to live action before trying to branch out to more complex stuff. That is why I choose for people to try out adapting something like Wolf's Rain first.
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Trashy_Rambo
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Sep 07, 2008 8:04 pm
Posts: 1821
Location: United States
PostPosted: Thu Feb 09, 2017 4:17 pm 
 

I've been making my co-worker watch JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and even the second time through it's absolutely glorious. We've hit a bit of a stumbling block though, as he can't get past the absurd censorship in the third arc.
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Dudemanguy
Metalhead

Joined: Tue Mar 30, 2010 7:19 pm
Posts: 2449
PostPosted: Thu Feb 09, 2017 5:10 pm 
 

MetallicaTrueFan wrote:
There are two reasons why I find it hard to convert animation to live action. The first is that it is hard to make everything look convincing that it looks like the show came to life. The second is that real life acting doesn't have the amount of emotional range that animation has. Animations emotional range is heavily exaggerated and can be unrealistic. It would be better to adapt anime that is grounded and more down to earth to live action before trying to branch out to more complex stuff. That is why I choose for people to try out adapting something like Wolf's Rain first.


Eh, GiTS could be workable in a live action setting (it's not like it's a battle shonen or something), but I have zero faith in their ability to come up with anything decent.

Trashy_Rambo wrote:
I've been making my co-worker watch JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and even the second time through it's absolutely glorious. We've hit a bit of a stumbling block though, as he can't get past the absurd censorship in the third arc.


You mean Stardust Crusaders? BD rips are surely floating around for that part by now.

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MetallicaTrueFan
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 8:23 pm
Posts: 689
PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 8:56 pm 
 

For Valentine's Day I got Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away. Such an amazing movie. It is one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen and a movie that transcends anime as a whole.
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Zelkiiro
Pounding the world with a fish of steel

Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2009 5:30 pm
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Location: Pennsylvania
PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 11:06 pm 
 

MetallicaTrueFan wrote:
For Valentine's Day I got Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away. Such an amazing movie. It is one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen and a movie that transcends anime as a whole.

Ehhhhhhhh...

Spirited Away looks nice, certainly, and there's a lot of creativity in the characters and setting, but...I'm not gonna lie, the story feels super-lazy and the main characters are as boring as dirt aside from Kamaji and Noh-Face. The film sits alongside Ponyo and Howl's Moving Castle as my least favorite Miyazaki films. D:
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I've written a fantasy novel. It's 145,000 157,586 184,899 words long!
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Sepulchrave
Metalhead

Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2015 7:29 pm
Posts: 1994
PostPosted: Mon Feb 20, 2017 2:05 pm 
 

I don't like Zelkiiro anymore. ):

But the real Ghibli classic is Porco Rosso obvs.
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Zelkiiro
Pounding the world with a fish of steel

Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2009 5:30 pm
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Location: Pennsylvania
PostPosted: Mon Feb 20, 2017 10:16 pm 
 

Porco Rosso's fuckin' dope, man.
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It's also going to be the first part of a trilogy!
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Sepulchrave
Metalhead

Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2015 7:29 pm
Posts: 1994
PostPosted: Tue Feb 21, 2017 12:00 pm 
 

And it takes place in my country, too (no, not Italy)! You have no idea what it feels like when a respected anime director makes an entire movie set in your tiny country, man.

I dunno, it's got some of the best, wittiest scripts I've seen in anime - at least the English dub has, anyway. That punch up at the end had me in tears.

*Punches* "Pwuhhh she loves you, pig!"
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I drank a lot of cheap beer and ate three Nacho BellGrandes. A short time later I took a massive messy shit and I swear it sounded just like the drums on Dirty Window from Metallica's St Anger album.

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stainedclass2112
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Joined: Tue Nov 24, 2015 5:36 pm
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Location: United States
PostPosted: Tue Feb 21, 2017 3:13 pm 
 

The friend who got me into anime in the first place always loved Porco Rosso. I should watch it, eh?
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cultofkraken
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Joined: Tue Jan 11, 2005 1:18 am
Posts: 3004
Location: Canada
PostPosted: Thu Feb 23, 2017 4:51 am 
 

Kerrick wrote:
I introduced my wife to Princess Mononoke last night. Such a great flick! She liked it though didn't love it.


Divorce? Lol
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Sepulchrave
Metalhead

Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2015 7:29 pm
Posts: 1994
PostPosted: Sun Feb 26, 2017 1:34 pm 
 

Watched the Ninja Scroll movie just now. Nice, smooth animation, badass character design and an atmosphere made for Berserk fans, what's not to love. Decided to watch the first few episodes of the series then gave up, how disappointing.
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iamntbatman
Chaos Breed

Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 5:55 am
Posts: 11421
Location: Tyrn Gorthad
PostPosted: Mon May 08, 2017 12:35 am 
 

A friend convinced me to watch Death Note. I'm not the biggest anime guy - other than scattered episodes of things, the only ones I've watched in full have been Hellsing, Trigun and Ghost in the Shell. Anyway, here are my thoughts, with plenty of spoilers in there.

Spoiler: show
The whole time I was watching this, it was impossible for me not to draw comparisons to Dexter and Breaking Bad. Yeah, it's a different medium, but other than the shinigami themselves, some rare scenes in their realm, and a few exaggerated death scenes, most of the animation here was pretty low-key and it takes place in the real world, so I think it's a pretty fair comparison. All three deal with casting villains in the lead role, playing cat and mouse with their would-be enemies in law enforcement.

Like Dexter, this show is ruined in no small part by the fucking ridiculous amount of exposition. Basically the entire series revolves around Light having a battle of wits with L and L Jr., but fucking every time anything clever happens, the whole rationale behind it has to be explained to the audience via tedious voiceover. In that regard I can't help but compare it with Dexter, which suffered so much from the exact same problem. There's a reason "show, don't tell" is such a popular mantra, it seems.

Next up, and call me morbid, but the fact that there's a book out there that allows the wielder to off people in the manner of his own choosing, providing it's physically possible, and to also control the actions of the soon-to-be-dead to a really high degree, the show almost never actually had Light or anyone else actually do cool shit with the Death Note. The only really cool use of it was when he got that one criminal to hijack the bus as a means to trick the FBI agent into revealing his identity, then having the hijacker panic and run out of the bus, getting smashed in traffic. That was clever and well-thought-out, and the show needed a whole lot more of that kind of thing.

The characters were also dull as shit - just a bunch of lame mary sues. Light has no interesting facets at all and doesn't seem to grow or change as a character at all. Again, compare this to Dexter or Breaking Bad. In Dexter we've got this cold, calculating sociopath who needs to murder like it's a drug, convinced he has no emotions and that he can only survive by convincing the world otherwise, but who slowly comes to terms with his own nature and finds emotions buried deep inside himself. Walter White changes from a sad and desperate dying man who makes a bad decision to ensure the financial security of his family after his own death into a power-mad megalomaniac who has found that his real place in the world is as a ruthless criminal mastermind. Light goes from a sociopathic, "killing all of the criminals will make the world into a better place" handsome ubermensch into...ok, he literally doesn't change at all, unless you count his external monologue in the final episode of shit he has been internally ranting about the entire series as "character development" (I don't). Apart from him, L is also a lame mary sue prodigy who's basically just Batman who doesn't ever leave the Batcave and whose personal demons or baggage we never see. He's just a weird rich guy who is super good at solving crimes for some reason. Then Light kills him and he gets replaced by a little kid who's exactly the same as him. Only Mello is really different, and he doesn't even get to do all that much and gets killed as a pawn of the real ubermensch anyway. All of the "regular joe" characters are both more interesting and constantly cast aside by the bigger cast members as being ineffectual and no match for their super mary sue powers of murder/mystery solving.

And don't even get me started on the female characters - the last time I saw anything this misogynistic, it was The Man Show, but I'm pretty sure this is worse. There are basically four women in the entire series who do anything important. You've got Light's sister, whose sole function is getting kidnapped and being a damsel in distress. You've got Takada, one of the women Light was heroically? two-timing in college, who upon finding out he's Kira instantly becomes his total slave. Plus gratuitous eye-candy when she has to get naked for no reason. Then there's Misa Amane, the pop-idol/model/whatever bubbly girl who starts out as being the "second Kira" who also has a Death Note and worships Kira as well, but as soon as she actually meets Light/Kira she becomes completely obnoxious, loses all agency, is another of Light's slaves who fanatically listens to his every command, serves as male gaze shit just over and over again, and is generally just fuckin' awful. Oh and she kills herself at the very end after Light dies, of course. Finally, you've got that girl, the FBI agent's girlfriend, the ONE female character in the series who seemed like an actual goddamn human being with agency and who wasn't just something to stare at, and as soon as we find out she is such a person, Light kills her. (OR DOES HE?!?! - but this is never addressed, so we can just assume he did.)

Next up is the terrible writing. It makes no goddamn sense at all that the shinigami are apparently discouraged from interfering in human doings, but then there are like ten billion arbitrary rules governing interactions between shinigami and humans and use of the Death Note and passing it from person to person and memory loss and all of this other horseshit that makes no objective sense and was clearly only added in order to facilitate plot events. Some of them are fine, like having to imagine the person's face when you write their name, and giving a 40-second window to write the cause of death (else, heart attack) but once it got into shit about self-caused Death Note amnesia and transferring ownership of Death Notes and shit like that it just got plain silly.

And how about the fact that Kira killed probably thousands and thousands of people, maybe even more than that, and the actual impact of global murder is never really addressed at all? None of the murderers in the show ever feels remorse and only once is Light ever in a situation where he has to interact with someone who was personally impacted by his serial killing, and he doesn't care at all. I mean, ok, he's a sociopath so maybe he wouldn't care, but the show's constant avoidance of this subject kind of gave the impression that the show didn't care that much, either. I mean, shit, we're kind of rooting for Light, right? I mean, he's the main character and is always shown as being cool and likable? He's handsome, smart, successful with women - and I think it'd be pretty hard to argue against the idea that the show portrays these qualities in an admirable light (pun: totally intended).


Anyway, hot garbage, with a FEW clever moments scattered throughout, but otherwise pretty shit. Also unforgivable nu-metal bullshit music that goes on wayyyy too long at the beginning of half of the episodes.
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MetallicaTrueFan
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 8:23 pm
Posts: 689
PostPosted: Mon May 08, 2017 7:58 am 
 

Recently finished Ergo Proxy and while it was confusing at times, I feel it was a well made and interesting anime as a whole. I liked Pino a lot as she was the lone comic relief in such a serious show. Some recent animes I have also enjoyed are Another, Log Horizon, A Certain Magical Index and Assassination Classroom. Assassination Classroom was probably the most entertaining of the anime I have seen in the past few months. On the other hand I feel that Another is one of the best Horror anime I have seen recently for being really good with its scares while providing an interesting and mysterious story.
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MetallicaTrueFan
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PostPosted: Mon May 08, 2017 8:10 am 
 

Also recently saw Serial Experiments Lain and boy that was one weird anime. I still don't think I have figured out all the metaphors in that show.
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~Guest 334273
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PostPosted: Mon May 08, 2017 8:33 am 
 

iamntbatman wrote:
A friend convinced me to watch Death Note. I'm not the biggest anime guy - other than scattered episodes of things, the only ones I've watched in full have been Hellsing, Trigun and Ghost in the Shell. Anyway, here are my thoughts, with plenty of spoilers in there.

Spoiler: show
The whole time I was watching this, it was impossible for me not to draw comparisons to Dexter and Breaking Bad. Yeah, it's a different medium, but other than the shinigami themselves, some rare scenes in their realm, and a few exaggerated death scenes, most of the animation here was pretty low-key and it takes place in the real world, so I think it's a pretty fair comparison. All three deal with casting villains in the lead role, playing cat and mouse with their would-be enemies in law enforcement.

Like Dexter, this show is ruined in no small part by the fucking ridiculous amount of exposition. Basically the entire series revolves around Light having a battle of wits with L and L Jr., but fucking every time anything clever happens, the whole rationale behind it has to be explained to the audience via tedious voiceover. In that regard I can't help but compare it with Dexter, which suffered so much from the exact same problem. There's a reason "show, don't tell" is such a popular mantra, it seems.

Next up, and call me morbid, but the fact that there's a book out there that allows the wielder to off people in the manner of his own choosing, providing it's physically possible, and to also control the actions of the soon-to-be-dead to a really high degree, the show almost never actually had Light or anyone else actually do cool shit with the Death Note. The only really cool use of it was when he got that one criminal to hijack the bus as a means to trick the FBI agent into revealing his identity, then having the hijacker panic and run out of the bus, getting smashed in traffic. That was clever and well-thought-out, and the show needed a whole lot more of that kind of thing.

The characters were also dull as shit - just a bunch of lame mary sues. Light has no interesting facets at all and doesn't seem to grow or change as a character at all. Again, compare this to Dexter or Breaking Bad. In Dexter we've got this cold, calculating sociopath who needs to murder like it's a drug, convinced he has no emotions and that he can only survive by convincing the world otherwise, but who slowly comes to terms with his own nature and finds emotions buried deep inside himself. Walter White changes from a sad and desperate dying man who makes a bad decision to ensure the financial security of his family after his own death into a power-mad megalomaniac who has found that his real place in the world is as a ruthless criminal mastermind. Light goes from a sociopathic, "killing all of the criminals will make the world into a better place" handsome ubermensch into...ok, he literally doesn't change at all, unless you count his external monologue in the final episode of shit he has been internally ranting about the entire series as "character development" (I don't). Apart from him, L is also a lame mary sue prodigy who's basically just Batman who doesn't ever leave the Batcave and whose personal demons or baggage we never see. He's just a weird rich guy who is super good at solving crimes for some reason. Then Light kills him and he gets replaced by a little kid who's exactly the same as him. Only Mello is really different, and he doesn't even get to do all that much and gets killed as a pawn of the real ubermensch anyway. All of the "regular joe" characters are both more interesting and constantly cast aside by the bigger cast members as being ineffectual and no match for their super mary sue powers of murder/mystery solving.

And don't even get me started on the female characters - the last time I saw anything this misogynistic, it was The Man Show, but I'm pretty sure this is worse. There are basically four women in the entire series who do anything important. You've got Light's sister, whose sole function is getting kidnapped and being a damsel in distress. You've got Takada, one of the women Light was heroically? two-timing in college, who upon finding out he's Kira instantly becomes his total slave. Plus gratuitous eye-candy when she has to get naked for no reason. Then there's Misa Amane, the pop-idol/model/whatever bubbly girl who starts out as being the "second Kira" who also has a Death Note and worships Kira as well, but as soon as she actually meets Light/Kira she becomes completely obnoxious, loses all agency, is another of Light's slaves who fanatically listens to his every command, serves as male gaze shit just over and over again, and is generally just fuckin' awful. Oh and she kills herself at the very end after Light dies, of course. Finally, you've got that girl, the FBI agent's girlfriend, the ONE female character in the series who seemed like an actual goddamn human being with agency and who wasn't just something to stare at, and as soon as we find out she is such a person, Light kills her. (OR DOES HE?!?! - but this is never addressed, so we can just assume he did.)

Next up is the terrible writing. It makes no goddamn sense at all that the shinigami are apparently discouraged from interfering in human doings, but then there are like ten billion arbitrary rules governing interactions between shinigami and humans and use of the Death Note and passing it from person to person and memory loss and all of this other horseshit that makes no objective sense and was clearly only added in order to facilitate plot events. Some of them are fine, like having to imagine the person's face when you write their name, and giving a 40-second window to write the cause of death (else, heart attack) but once it got into shit about self-caused Death Note amnesia and transferring ownership of Death Notes and shit like that it just got plain silly.

And how about the fact that Kira killed probably thousands and thousands of people, maybe even more than that, and the actual impact of global murder is never really addressed at all? None of the murderers in the show ever feels remorse and only once is Light ever in a situation where he has to interact with someone who was personally impacted by his serial killing, and he doesn't care at all. I mean, ok, he's a sociopath so maybe he wouldn't care, but the show's constant avoidance of this subject kind of gave the impression that the show didn't care that much, either. I mean, shit, we're kind of rooting for Light, right? I mean, he's the main character and is always shown as being cool and likable? He's handsome, smart, successful with women - and I think it'd be pretty hard to argue against the idea that the show portrays these qualities in an admirable light (pun: totally intended).


Anyway, hot garbage, with a FEW clever moments scattered throughout, but otherwise pretty shit. Also unforgivable nu-metal bullshit music that goes on wayyyy too long at the beginning of half of the episodes.


Sigh, i know the feeling. A spark of brilliance (mainly in the first episodes) the a downward spiral in cringey moments, bad stereotyped ideas and awful parts at the end.. i also agree about your point on the female characters :(

I watched it a lot of time ago and i can see the bad aspects becoming worse and worse with age

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CoconutBackwards
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Joined: Thu Dec 01, 2016 2:02 pm
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 06, 2017 11:19 am 
 

Xeogred wrote:
Shigurui is pretty cool from what I've seen, you can easily tell it's from the Texhnolize director. This kind of stuff is what I like when I'm in the mood for real dark stuff, completely shits all over Elfen Lied or whatever.

Satoshi Kon (RIP) was amazing. Paprika makes Inception look like a joke kind of.

Wow Hunter x Hunter fans? lol, I can't really concur since the hiatus' are hilarious and the current arc I don't really care for. Gon and Killua are my least favorite characters out of the mains and it's been about them for the last 100 some chapters. The OVA's were a big step down as well and the confrontation with the Spiders in the city/auction arc was very unconcluded. HxH has its moments, but I think One Piece blows it out of the water. I can see how One Piece isn't for everyone, but the payoff is great... it's hilarious how Oda connects things throughout the series, you can tell he did a lot of thinking ahead. It gets increasingly easy to blast through the episodes later on too since they practically become 15 minutes long. I love how One Piece keeps a good balance between all the characters, unlike DBZ, HxH, or whatever, and it's quite an adventure, never diving into boring training segments even from everything I've seen about 400 episodes in. It does a great job giving a lot of detail and history about the world which makes it all the more better. It's pretty nuts where I'm at. (fun fact these two shows started up around the same time, and now One Piece is like 2-3x longer because it's consistent).

Never got into Bleach and all my friends that have seem to really hate it thesedays. Naruto I just stopped caring for eventually, the generic training and story, hated most of the characters, etc, didn't do much for me.

You should watch LOGH failsafe! You'd probably love it. I'll kill you if I hear you complain about old art though, haha. It's just like metal to me man, I prefer older anime by far when it comes to art, cel drawn stuff beats the crap out of digital animation, but digital is finally looking good more recently. If you take a look at stuff from 2000 though, like say Gundam SEED, that stuff looks like pure ass. Old stuff once you're used to it, has the superior character designs, heavy use of shading, thicker lines, and just lots of personal touches that make it amazing.

Just for fun: Bubblegum Crisis OVA (1987) vs Gundam SEED (2000) (this is also giving SEED bonus points since openings look even better than the actual show, but that BGC footage is straight from the show).

BGC is probably my favorite OVA, next to Iria, Gunbuster, and some others. Back when anime sci-fi fucking rocked.


If it ever stops being about those two I may have trouble watching.

My love for them is unparalleled.
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BastardHead
Worse than Stalin

Joined: Thu Aug 18, 2005 7:53 pm
Posts: 10857
Location: Oswego, Illinois
PostPosted: Tue Jun 06, 2017 8:39 pm 
 

iamntbatman wrote:
A friend convinced me to watch Death Note. I'm not the biggest anime guy - other than scattered episodes of things, the only ones I've watched in full have been Hellsing, Trigun and Ghost in the Shell. Anyway, here are my thoughts, with plenty of spoilers in there.

Spoiler: show
The whole time I was watching this, it was impossible for me not to draw comparisons to Dexter and Breaking Bad. Yeah, it's a different medium, but other than the shinigami themselves, some rare scenes in their realm, and a few exaggerated death scenes, most of the animation here was pretty low-key and it takes place in the real world, so I think it's a pretty fair comparison. All three deal with casting villains in the lead role, playing cat and mouse with their would-be enemies in law enforcement.

Like Dexter, this show is ruined in no small part by the fucking ridiculous amount of exposition. Basically the entire series revolves around Light having a battle of wits with L and L Jr., but fucking every time anything clever happens, the whole rationale behind it has to be explained to the audience via tedious voiceover. In that regard I can't help but compare it with Dexter, which suffered so much from the exact same problem. There's a reason "show, don't tell" is such a popular mantra, it seems.

Next up, and call me morbid, but the fact that there's a book out there that allows the wielder to off people in the manner of his own choosing, providing it's physically possible, and to also control the actions of the soon-to-be-dead to a really high degree, the show almost never actually had Light or anyone else actually do cool shit with the Death Note. The only really cool use of it was when he got that one criminal to hijack the bus as a means to trick the FBI agent into revealing his identity, then having the hijacker panic and run out of the bus, getting smashed in traffic. That was clever and well-thought-out, and the show needed a whole lot more of that kind of thing.

The characters were also dull as shit - just a bunch of lame mary sues. Light has no interesting facets at all and doesn't seem to grow or change as a character at all. Again, compare this to Dexter or Breaking Bad. In Dexter we've got this cold, calculating sociopath who needs to murder like it's a drug, convinced he has no emotions and that he can only survive by convincing the world otherwise, but who slowly comes to terms with his own nature and finds emotions buried deep inside himself. Walter White changes from a sad and desperate dying man who makes a bad decision to ensure the financial security of his family after his own death into a power-mad megalomaniac who has found that his real place in the world is as a ruthless criminal mastermind. Light goes from a sociopathic, "killing all of the criminals will make the world into a better place" handsome ubermensch into...ok, he literally doesn't change at all, unless you count his external monologue in the final episode of shit he has been internally ranting about the entire series as "character development" (I don't). Apart from him, L is also a lame mary sue prodigy who's basically just Batman who doesn't ever leave the Batcave and whose personal demons or baggage we never see. He's just a weird rich guy who is super good at solving crimes for some reason. Then Light kills him and he gets replaced by a little kid who's exactly the same as him. Only Mello is really different, and he doesn't even get to do all that much and gets killed as a pawn of the real ubermensch anyway. All of the "regular joe" characters are both more interesting and constantly cast aside by the bigger cast members as being ineffectual and no match for their super mary sue powers of murder/mystery solving.

And don't even get me started on the female characters - the last time I saw anything this misogynistic, it was The Man Show, but I'm pretty sure this is worse. There are basically four women in the entire series who do anything important. You've got Light's sister, whose sole function is getting kidnapped and being a damsel in distress. You've got Takada, one of the women Light was heroically? two-timing in college, who upon finding out he's Kira instantly becomes his total slave. Plus gratuitous eye-candy when she has to get naked for no reason. Then there's Misa Amane, the pop-idol/model/whatever bubbly girl who starts out as being the "second Kira" who also has a Death Note and worships Kira as well, but as soon as she actually meets Light/Kira she becomes completely obnoxious, loses all agency, is another of Light's slaves who fanatically listens to his every command, serves as male gaze shit just over and over again, and is generally just fuckin' awful. Oh and she kills herself at the very end after Light dies, of course. Finally, you've got that girl, the FBI agent's girlfriend, the ONE female character in the series who seemed like an actual goddamn human being with agency and who wasn't just something to stare at, and as soon as we find out she is such a person, Light kills her. (OR DOES HE?!?! - but this is never addressed, so we can just assume he did.)

Next up is the terrible writing. It makes no goddamn sense at all that the shinigami are apparently discouraged from interfering in human doings, but then there are like ten billion arbitrary rules governing interactions between shinigami and humans and use of the Death Note and passing it from person to person and memory loss and all of this other horseshit that makes no objective sense and was clearly only added in order to facilitate plot events. Some of them are fine, like having to imagine the person's face when you write their name, and giving a 40-second window to write the cause of death (else, heart attack) but once it got into shit about self-caused Death Note amnesia and transferring ownership of Death Notes and shit like that it just got plain silly.

And how about the fact that Kira killed probably thousands and thousands of people, maybe even more than that, and the actual impact of global murder is never really addressed at all? None of the murderers in the show ever feels remorse and only once is Light ever in a situation where he has to interact with someone who was personally impacted by his serial killing, and he doesn't care at all. I mean, ok, he's a sociopath so maybe he wouldn't care, but the show's constant avoidance of this subject kind of gave the impression that the show didn't care that much, either. I mean, shit, we're kind of rooting for Light, right? I mean, he's the main character and is always shown as being cool and likable? He's handsome, smart, successful with women - and I think it'd be pretty hard to argue against the idea that the show portrays these qualities in an admirable light (pun: totally intended).


Anyway, hot garbage, with a FEW clever moments scattered throughout, but otherwise pretty shit. Also unforgivable nu-metal bullshit music that goes on wayyyy too long at the beginning of half of the episodes.


I read the manga first because I'm a gigantic dork but the anime is pretty much 100% faithful and I can't think of a single thing offhand that it added or took out needlessly
Spoiler: show
barring the third volume being done really quickly. The manga is split into four distinct volumes (I: Light and L playing catch-me-if-you-can, II: Light wiping his memory and working with L, III: Mello's aggressive plans that cause all sorts of chaos, IV: Near slowly unraveling everything while Light gives the note to Mikami) and they're all dealt with in depth except for the third one which gets blown through in like three episodes. I'm of the opinion that I think most fans share, which is that it's exciting when L is around and really dull after he gets killed off. Pardon the videogame comparison and extra spoiler but it's sorta like when Luca Blight gets killed halfway through Suikoden II. You spend the entire game on the run from him and his sadistic insanity and the take him out on your first attempt at a counterattack. Well... fuckin now what? The rest of the game is still phenomenal but he was very clearly the most imminent threat so it really felt like the game was scrambling at points to throw Neclord and the rest of the Highland army at you when it's been definitively proven that neither of them are nearly as threatening as Luca was.

And that leads to my biggest problem with the show, which was that Near was fucking perfect. L and Light were always on equal footing, consistently outsmarting each other and keeping things tense with each new turn, then Near shows up and just constantly has the upper hand and never slips up. I sorta understand why they did that, since Light needed a worthy adversary after taking out his only real opponent beforehand, but the entire second half of the show could be summed up as Light smugly declaring "I WIN" and then immediately losing. It leads to another videogame comparison because I'm a helpless dork, but it turns him into Kefka. Kefka spends the entire second half of FFVI just sitting in his tower doing nothing while the party regroups and prepares for the final attack, and it can only logically be explained that he's super arrogant and doesn't think he'll lose anyway so he doesn't see the point in using his obviously OP planet spanning death laser to vaporize you instantly. Light constantly fucks up and eventually fails due to arrogance because that (coupled with making his adversary flawless and capable of figuring everything out in a matter of minutes) was the only feasible way he could lose since he had a massive head start on everybody once L died. I feel like he clearly wasn't the hero by at least the halfway point of the show, after killing L. Before then he's at the very least morally grey, but after he starts indiscriminately killing anybody who might be on to him (including his own family) it's pretty clear we're not supposed to root for him, just to see the story told through his perspective.

You are right about pretty much everything else though. The women are portrayed terribly and he never really did anything interesting with the Death Note after a certain point (though it could be argued that that's because at that point a sudden heart attack was a clear indication that Kira was responsible and his entire plan was about becoming a God so he loved the attention that gave him), and for some reason I never even considered how weird it was that the Shinigami had a million rules for using the Death Note despite being discouraged from ever meddling in human affairs. You definitely nailed that one, a lot of those were purely there so the plot could happen, and I've always said that nonsense rules of the universe with no rational explanation or characters making dumb decisions purely to move the plot forwards are obvious signs of bad writing.

I do have to say though that I actually loved how it spent so much time inside the characters' heads, spelling out their every move. It showed how far ahead they were usually planning and gave a good look inside their heads. Disagree with you on that point, but everything else was analyzed very well.

Overall I think I still like it despite rewatching it a few months ago and noticing more problems than the first time I read it, but it could just be nostalgia talking so take that with a grain of salt.
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Zelkiiro
Pounding the world with a fish of steel

Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2009 5:30 pm
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Location: Pennsylvania
PostPosted: Tue Jun 06, 2017 8:43 pm 
 

I don't think I can ever not love Death Note. It doesn't matter how many nagging little flaws come flying out of the woodwork and nibble on your brain, it's just too much fun as a roller-coaster ride for me to care. It is the ultimate "turn your brain off and enjoy" series for me.

In other news, I just saw Your Name and it was fucking phenomenal. I'm a huge Makoto Shinkai nerd, and this just hit all the right buttons for me. An astounding film, to be sure.
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