Anime Thread 2.0

[Tsurayu]

Well, I've taken another break from anime and manga and have been playing Fire Emblem games instead.

However, I finished Legend of the Galactic Heroes and it was really good. I totally shed manly tears at the end, if you watch it you will know why. Was a very good anime. It may be old (80s to early 90s) but it didn't suffer from being out dated because it makes up for it with amazing characters and some of the best political intrigue I've seen in an anime. It really does put Star Wars to shame.

I decided, after talking to a couple of friends, not to drop Fruits Basket after all, and I think I'm glad I did. It just starts out so slow. It introduces way too many characters, too fast, and even about 1/3 of the way through the manga I'm still struggling to get my head around every character I've been introduced to, but at least the story is picking up and becoming more interesting.

After LotGH I picked up Chrno Crusade. Although I'm not awfully excited about it because I had it ruined for me a couple of years ago. I know how disappointing and confusing the ending is, but at the same time I'm anxious to see how it all plays out. Right now it feels more like a daily monster event like the first half of Witch Hunter Robin.

[Kassidy]

Recently watched:
Hyakko: Enjoyable, short, very disjointed.
RideBack: Liked the idea, got rather repetitive in the "woe is me" sector. Took some very dark turns, which is nice, and a well presented (if somewhat predictable) finale.
Shigofumi: Didn't really cause much of an impression.

Currently watching: Basquash!

[Kimiko]

Finished:
Ryoko's Case File - Ah, a good old crime-fighting detective story
The mysteries are solved rather easily, but the art is pretty good (and the French fake). From ep.9 onwards the plot is continuous. Although not everything is believable, the action more than makes up for it. Highly recommended to fans of the supernatural and detective/secret agent genres.

Currently watching:
Tokyo Mew Mew - For a magical girl anime the characters get rather sketchy introductions. I hope they get more depth later on or this is going to be a long series.

[Abdul_Moti]

Tokyo Mew-Mew is a good idea, Kimiko. I don't know what will be your opinion next, but mine about it, it's recommended for girls, not me. Sometimes the 'romance' makes me kind of sick. I like the main story, but the battles aren't as intense as Digimon of any series. Hmm, perhaps because it's for girls?

[Kimiko]

Good thing I'm a woman then..
But yah, I know what you mean. Tokyo Mew Mew is definitely aimed at the shoujo demographic (like Shugo Chara, it focuses a lot on the main character swooning or angsting over cute boys). Personally, I'd rather see her hang out with her girlfriends instead, but I don't hate romance per se.

[Magus_Melchior]

From what little Mew Mew I did see, it's like Sailor Moon for a different generation of girls.

[Tsurayu]

Big update!

I managed to force myself to finish Chrno Crusade. I liked it for the first half or so. It reminded me of Witch Hunter Robin. It felt like it was emulating the "Witch of the Week" feeling that the first half of WHR, but similar to WHR the main focus was in the second half, and was just as odd and broken. However, at least WHR had a strangely satisfying end, where I didn't get any of that from Chrno Crusade. It just ended, and it was poor. It tugged your heart strings, but not in a good way. It just left you wanting more, but at the same time you aren't willing to put up with it even if there was an actual tangible ending.

Aftewards I watched: Spice and Wolf, Spice and Wolf II OVA and Spice and Wolf II. I enjoyed them pretty well. They really are text heavy, which is a little strange for a romance story, but it worked. Oddly enough I found myself more interested in the economic side of the story. Several times I was more anxious to hear Lawrence's insight into profit, trade and negotiations than his growing relationship with Holo. It turned a slightly above-average romance anime to a pretty good anime overall.

Manga wise, I finally finished Fruits Basket. I was pleasantly surprised. It was a lot better than I thought it was going to be in the outset, but I wish they had condensed it a bit. The manga could have been half the size that it was and still covered everything they needed to do. None of it felt like "filler" per say, but it still felt like it was really dragging by about the 2/3 mark. Ending was nice, if not terribly predictable. It felt like the ending was meant to really catch you off guard and surprise you, but frankly you'd have to be terribly dense to not have figured out how it was going to end and who was going to end up with who.

Also read Beast Master and I was terribly surpised by how... GOOD it was. It's only a six chapter manga, with one extra story and two side manga stories (that have nothing to do with Beast Master itself.) However, even that short it was good. It was able to accomplish what it was set out to do with so few chapters. For one there was only one underlying plot focus. "Beauty" and the "Beast" as it were, and there relationship. They were the only real characters that were focused on, and there wasn't anything to deter you from focusing on them. Don't get me wrong, their characterization, while not incredibly in depth, was very to-the-point, but it worked. You didn't need, and quite frankly should haven't wanted, to be bogged down with their life history. Manga was just about those two and how their relationship blossomed. Short, sweet, and to the point mixed with surprising good characterization and art.

Next I'm planning on watching Mushishi and probably reading Watashitachi no Shiawase na Jikan.

[Kimiko]

Finished:
Tokyo Mew Mew - For a magical girl anime the characters get rather sketchy introductions. I hope they get more depth later on or this is going to be a long series.
A little over halfway through. Despite some episodes focused on particular characters, overall it is still all about Ichigo, and very little about the rest of the Mew Mew group. The main plot advances with sudden twists that aren't properly foreshadowed (so they feel completely random), and the rest of the story is episodic, without any coherence.
Overall it's not really a waste, but definitely not a top magical girl anime either.

Kino's Travels - I think it's.. dreamy. Like watching something that's kinda random, mostly pleasant, but sometimes melancholy or scary, but with a detached feeling, like it's not really happening to you. Hmm, yes, that's about what this anime feels like.
One thing though, the visual style will be very dated in a few years. A 'next-gen' color palette, artificial scanlines, and bloom lighting everywhere.
Kino's Travels -Life Goes On- - See Kino's Travels. A prequel episode showing Kino's training with Master.
Kino's Travels -For You- - See Kino's Travels. Another episode of Kino, this time without the scanlines.

Negima!? - Is this the version that's not so fanservicey/ecchi?
Whoa, character overload o_o It's just like Pani Poni Dash, with Becky replaced by Negi and all the students put in one class. And it's just as great and funny too
Ep. 19 is so adorable! ^_^ If the last few eps. don't mess it up, this anime will be even better than PPD. Yep, we have a winner here.

Kokoro Library - I'd say that this anime is kinda in the middle between Aria and Ichigo Mashimaro. Like Aria, it is a slice-of-life anime without any plot, just cute characters doing stuff at a very relaxed pace. Like Ichigo Mashimaro, it is aimed at a seinen audience with a bit of a fetish for little girls in frilly clothes. It's a pity that it has to be that way, but I suppose that's this genre's version of fanservice
This isn't the greatest slice-of-life anime, but it's worth watching.

Currently watching:
Red Garden - Listed on Friedman's Okazu blog as 'yuri'.
Whoa, shockingly uncute art style. Not precisely ugly, more like realistic in ways that anime usually isn't. And there's a bit of musical too. The first ep. is quite intriguing. A mix of mystery, horror, and a little drama. And it's set in America. I suppose that goes well with the art style

[Magus_Melchior]

Negima!? - Is this the version that's not so fanservicey/ecchi?
Whoa, character overload o_o It's just like Pani Poni Dash, with Becky replaced by Negi and all the students put in one class. And it's just as great and funny too
Ep. 19 is so adorable! ^_^ If the last few eps. don't mess it up, this anime will be even better than PPD. Yep, we have a winner here.

I think SHAFT (the animators here) really hit their stride with Negima!?. Half the fun is the assorted gags they scatter throughout the show, since they wreck the animation at a few key moments.

Currently watching:
Red Garden - Listed on Friedman's Okazu blog as 'yuri'.
Whoa, shockingly uncute art style. Not precisely ugly, more like realistic in ways that anime usually isn't. And there's a bit of musical too. The first ep. is quite intriguing. A mix of mystery, horror, and a little drama. And it's set in America. I suppose that goes well with the art style

Yeah, this one's animated by Gonzo, so don't expect too much in the way of story strength. They're much more about the visual aspects (which IMO weren't too bad in RG); you could tell that the creator did quite a bit of homework on New York. The finished OP appears later in the series (assuming you're watching a fansub using the original broadcasts), and that pretty much tells you their approach to most anime.

[Quemaqua]

Still watching Aria the Natural and this show is still pretty much the best thing to happen ever.

[Kassidy]

Finished Basquash!, and leaving aside the blatant advertising littered through it, it started with a certain amount of promise, but then fell into the hole of beating a dead horse and trying to make things link in or stretch to extents that they just can't. I guess kinda like the Matrix trilogy in that respect, trying to make a winning formula spread over too much bread.

But at the end of the day, let's face it, it's a bloody shounen, so you can't expect too much. Makes me want to watch Rockman.exe again.

[Kimiko]

Finished:
Fairy Musketeer Akazukin - Cuute. I love Akazukin's shoes that go 'fwip, fwip, fwip' ^_^
I think this is one of the best magical girl anime out there. It's fantasy setting completely changes just about all of the Grimm fairytales, and Akazukin herself is just too adorable, in a strong way that's different from regular genki-ness. I wish there was a boxset available of this.

Next:
Gunbuster/Aim For The Top, Chobits

[Magus_Melchior]

Finished Basquash!, and leaving aside the blatant advertising littered through it, it started with a certain amount of promise, but then fell into the hole of beating a dead horse and trying to make things link in or stretch to extents that they just can't. I guess kinda like the Matrix trilogy in that respect, trying to make a winning formula spread over too much bread.

But at the end of the day, let's face it, it's a bloody shounen, so you can't expect too much. Makes me want to watch Rockman.exe again.

At the end of the day, if Kawamori starts it, Kawamori ought to finish it (it switched directors early on, and pretty much lost cohesion in the old Japanese tradition of groupthink planning). The ending felt as though Valve handed Half-Life 2: Episode 3 to EA.

[IrishLuiz]

I´m an old guy now, not following new stuff.

All I know is today i´m fulfilling a childhood dream: Just downloaded Ranma 1/2´s complete pack, every season, ova and movies. Finally i´ll be able to see everything, my favorite anime ever. Curiously they just started printing the manga AGAIN in brazil, after being dead for almost 10 years.

[Kimiko]

Finished:
Aim For The Top (aka Gunbuster) - *うはwwwwww* Anime from 1988 that still features a Soviet Union. The makers not only didn't understand basic physics and astronomy, but have no sense of scale either.
Pfft. Ep. 6 is in black&white, which makes the whole thing look even more antique. And a large part is just moving shots of the manga. How cheap. Overall, the story is rather boring. Some scenes are supposed to be dramatic, but there isn't really any character development. I have no idea why this anime is rated so high. Maybe it's old-school fans blinded by nostalgia. I'll look up the story for Aim For The Top 2. If it's more of the same I'm not going to bother watching it.

Aim For The Top 2 (aka Gunbuster 2/Diebuster) - Well, at least this one looks more modern, doesn't have all the technobabble, and doesn't pretend to be realistic. It looks a lot like FLCL indeed. That silly colorful style is unmistakable. Hmm, it's also just as fanservicey as FLCL, and the events are difficult to follow because very little is explained properly. Nono and Lal'C are sympathetic characters, so I was disappointed that they didn't get to be together in the end.

Summer Wars - Mamoru Hosoda's latest movie. Ugh, I got an atrociously low quality version it seems. Ah well, it'll have to do for now.
Part of the OZ introduction looks a lot like Superflat Monogram. Natsuki's family is very funny together. All in all the story is not super deep, but quite satisfying nonetheless, with a nice mix of action and comedy. The art and animation are great, although I can't properly appreciate them like this. I wish I had the DVD already.

Just finished:
Chobits - I'll probably dislike the ecchi stuff, but it gets recommended quite often, so I suppose I'll give it a try.
Chi and Sumomo are very cute, but I'd like Hideki to die please. Horribly would be okay.
Well, toward the end of the series the ecchi stuff is lost, although Hideki still has moments of being too dumb to live. The ending (eps. 19-26) felt a little rushed. It had a deeper intrigue going that I think deserved more space. The first part of the series (eps. 1-17) could have done without Hideki being stupid and ecchi. Overall, I don't regret watching this anime. It wasn't bad, but it could have been even better.
Chobits ('OVA') - See Chobits. Ep. 27 is another recap/clip episode.
Chibits - Nothing really special. Just a short bit of comedy with Sumomo and Kotoko.

And now it's December. After buying a lot of anime DVDs in November, I decided that December will be spent rewatching several anime I haven't seen in quite a while. First will be the Miyazaki/Ghibli movies I haven't rewatched yet, Lucky☆Star, Crest/Banner Of The Stars, and My-Otome.