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Anime
Jul 7, 2018 13:56:38 GMT -8
Post by Zarnium on Jul 7, 2018 13:56:38 GMT -8
Been watching Fafner.
Seems like a pretty brazen copy of Neon Genesis Evangelion, which isn't really a bad thing since I don't like NGE very much and I'm hoping I'll like this better.
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Anime
Jul 9, 2018 12:07:56 GMT -8
Post by Jay on Jul 9, 2018 12:07:56 GMT -8
FLCL: Progressive (I've edited this a couple of times, so...)
Ah yes, the sequel that no one thought was necessary but we felt blessed to get... I wish I had something more to say about it but the process of eventually watching I can only describe as being akin to fanfic. They loved the original. They wanted to build on it. They didn't get how it worked.
I'm going to try to lay out some positives first before jumping in with the more frustrating aspects.
* The Pillows are back and provide the soundtrack. The main theme for Progressive, "Thank you, my twilight", with all it's silly Engrish, is great and I won't hear otherwise. Hearing it start up in the scattered episodes that it did was always a highlight. * Hidomi's VA, Xanthe Huynh, I had literally never heard of before but she was legitimately talented in voicing a character that was emotionally muted in spots and utterly manic in others as the plot dictated. I think she even outshone Kari Wahlgren, who was playing the Haruko character for all it was worth. * Hidomi Hibajiri and Ko Ide are both interesting concepts for characters. I don't want to spoil them completely, but neither is totally what they seems, Hidomi presenting as a nihilist tsundere-like with morbid dreams and Ide as... well, basically a "bro" or the junior high equivalent of it despite not exactly looking the part. Both have more to their motives than you initially suspect and, while the reveals are in some cases too reliant on exposition for my tastes, it works to confirm junior high and that phase in one's life as a failed form of posturing. * Episode 5. The animation quality was not at all consistent but they blew the budget on episode five and it shows. We also get the return of "manga" style, difficult as it supposedly is.
So, there's some decent stuff in there. I think that had it been a standalone and not trying to riff of a seminal work released some fifteen years prior, we would have been okay with it as its quirky self, but it suffers too much from comparisons and from here I have no choice but to address the negatives with spoilers and comps to the original. * Subpar Narration. One of the odd triumphs of FLCL was the recognition that, without being hit over the head with it, Naota was fundamentally an unreliable narrator. It's not that he was trying to lie to you as other famous literary unreliable narrators were, he was merely convinced in his own moment that in order to present a narrative of his own life, he needed to protect Samajima Mamimi or whomever. The experience of watching FLCL was the experience of watching a teenager, immature but thinking that he knows how the world works better than everyone else around him, try to craft a story in which his life makes sense both in the moment and going forward as far as justifying action he's yet to take. After so many of these episodes in which Naota appears to make a decisive declaration that doesn't add up to much, you realize that it's not a bug, but a feature in trying to capture the teenaged conviction about what's to come. Hibajiri narrates... a little... but it's predominantly not as things are happening to her but rather as she's dreaming. Without getting into the persistent argument of "it was all a dream!" presenting relevant stakes within art, the whole thing is structured about as well as, say, when a long running series that builds its narrative arcs around fixed points in the schedule goes through a series of flashbacks or flashforwards preceding each episode in order to give you the illusion of development towards a specific endgame. Even without that unflattering comparison, you have a double removal within the dream sequences in that you are not only conscious of the dreaming, but have Hidomi's more Id-like subconscious emerging, no less nihilistic, but at least willing to have fun, and said subconscious is anomalous with the exception of episode four when it comes out to play in full. If I'm pulling a Mikejer for a moment, this could be analogous to the lazy writing that comes with "here's an episode where the characters are drunk" or "here's an episode where a magic spell causes them to be more candid than they would ordinarily." Naota's narration and all the attendant flaws were highly organic, arising out of his character and shortcomings. Hidomi's narration is artificial, rarely utilized, and mostly in the service of reminding the audience of what the shows fears they may not have picked up on.
* No Conceits. Each episode of the original was wrapped around a conceit that was developmentally reflective of where Naota was at as he was trying to become an adult. You had a video games episode, an airsoft / paintball episode, a class play episode, a baseball episode (I also discovered DBZ had a baseball episode which I watched the same evening as the finale). There's nothing in particular to organize any of the episodes of Progressive. You could conceivably say that ep 2 was a part-time job and ep 3 was riffing off the beach episode trope, but they weren't really doing anything with them. The potential was definitely there to explore something, as the original tried to deal with male-gendered tropes (maybe class play excluded) and there could have been ways of exploring Hidomi's more feminine presentation through consideration of other rites of passage. They just didn't. * Amorphous Time. FLCL was very much of a time and place in its references, which was risky but I think worked, it's just hard to tell what the staying power will be once those references fall out of circulation. Progressive shied away from making any references to topical pop culture at all. The closest it came was talking about gendered clothing, ultimately a non-starter, and having Hidomi scrolling through her phone. References aren't going to make or break a show, but the original used them in a smart way where you could see the gestures they were making and how they were supposed to sync up with your understanding of the characters making them, especially in how Haruko referenced bands that presented as counter culture. There's nothing really "2018" or any single year about the issues the kids were dealing with or the world they were living in, and thus the whole exercise lacked that feeling of both density ("I can follow this thread and see how far it takes me") or being grounded in a specific setting or timeframe.
* Haruko. It's both too easy and too difficult to level one's aim at the show's "star," but the Haruko of the original was genuinely ambiguous as to her motives and aims. You can't really forget some of the revelations of the FLCL finale, but Haruko's personality in the sequel could be summarized as manic, controlling, and covetous, and not even Jinyu (as a largely unnecessary foil) can really overcome the fact that you're watching a character who mind-controls most of a classroom for... reasons? If it brings out anything, it really batters you with the "adults are wrong, kids are also wrong" motif from the original but not to any productive effect. Moreover the brainwashing bit is scarcely relevant to anything that's happening, outside of "let's get everyone to the amusement park!" late in the series, ultimately another failed conceit. * Mori / Aiko. I suppose this is going to be a possibly polarizing opinion, but I liked Aiko's initial episode because I was convinced that we were finally getting a social commentary that was topical, in that Mori is pretentious and attempts to be fashionable but has almost no understanding of human nature, culminating in him paying Aiko to be the shy "I'm so embarrassed" anime girl stereotype because it's what he thinks he likes and it's what his notion of a relationship is. Aiko cutting him down to size and just taking his money in episode three was excellent, because it took to task all the dudes with similar notions, of such there are enough among the weebs. And then he continued to follow her around anyway and did a few selfless things in the finale episode and got the girl. Without really developing as a character or getting what was wrong about his prior behavior. I don't have an inherent opposition to the dumpy guy getting the girl, but for god's sake, at least have him come to some sort of realization about how awful his earlier behavior was. * N.O. Overload. The trouble with just about every series, but particularly shonen, is that once certain abilities become prolific among the characters, they stop working as what singles out the original characters and makes them unique. Hidomi and Ide probably would have been enough, Marco, maybe, since they did it with Naota / Ninamori in the original, but when the whole junior high population appeared to have some version of N.O. that was being sucked out by Interstellar Immigration during the finale, to power whatever was fighting the giant iron, it felt that was taking away from the characters we were most familiar with.
* Lazy tie-ins. I don't really know what to do with Canti or Amarao or the mystery of the bass because even though the promo material asked "what ever happened to" this or that, the payoff was never there. Canti was little more than a Macguffin. Amarao was a visual name drop and then an actual one. The bass was there, but the potential tension between the Jinyu aesthetic and the Haruko aesthetic was never exploited nor spelled out particularly. The impression was given that Medical Mechanica was now just about everywhere and yet they simultaneously had very little "presence" in the show outside of the visual of the iron, which was rarely used to any particular effect, certainly not the siren and steam burst that accompanied Naota's more emotional moments. In short, they utilized a lot of the imagery without actually doing anything with most of it. Or rather, while the original highlights such characters and traits, the sequel referred to them, and then refused to expand on them. Thus, it positioned itself with the more lazy of the sequels, asking us "remember when?" without improving our understanding of what was happening.
Objectively, I'm not sure Progressive is bad, although a lot of people will probably say it's bad (MAL has a lot of 3/10 reviews right now), whereas I merely found it to be mediocre and poorly thought through. I'll still be watching Alternative when it arrives on the scene in the fall, but I feel like a lot of the wind's been taken out of me in terms of enthusiasm.
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Anime
Jul 13, 2018 12:36:38 GMT -8
Post by Jeremy on Jul 13, 2018 12:36:38 GMT -8
Well, I'll say this about Ponyo - it gave me a newfound appreciation for My Neighbor Totoro.
Sure, Totoro was predominantly aimed at little kids. But it featured beautiful animation, a serene atmosphere, and some wonderfully minimalist storytelling. (And the Catbus. Can't forget that Catbus.) It may not be made "for" adults, but an adult audience can still find plenty to appreciate in it.
Ponyo, on the other hand? It's a kid's film through and through. There's very little artfulness on display, outside of the art of keeping the single-digit age bracket entertained, I guess. The story is juvenile and often nonsensical, the dialogue (at least in the English version) clunky and awkward - even the animation, by Ghibli standards, isn't all that impressive.
Miyazaki's films usually benefit from a sense of wonder, but there's very little wonder on display in Ponyo. The arrival of a fish-girl into a small seaside town, and the ensuing havoc she brings, is treated with very little fanfare, almost as though the film is afraid to show its characters get overexcited. Scenes in which Sosuke's mom is shown driving like a maniac lack any sense of tension or fun - the reactions are simply too subdued to get caught up in.
I don't want to sound too harsh - after all, the lack of crude humor or innuendos is always refreshing in a children's film. And by general standards, this is still a decent animated flick. But by Miyazaki standards (at which I've come to judge these films), Ponyo is an unfortunate disappointment.
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Anime
Jul 29, 2018 18:34:06 GMT -8
Post by Jeremy on Jul 29, 2018 18:34:06 GMT -8
The Wind Rises was... unexpected, to be quite honest. Here is a Miyazaki film without any sci-fi or supernatural elements, lots of dialogue-heavy scenes, a really slow and leisurely pace, and a PG-13 rating. (But it has lots of airplanes, so you still know it's a Miyazaki film.)
While the film can drag in spots - more so than in Miyazaki's other films, in fact - and features kind of a cliched Hollywood ending, it's easily his best film since Spirited Away. What's particularly impressive is the way the film deals with such heavily dramatic topics (World War II, mass destruction, terminal illness) yet still maintains an idealistic and hopeful tone.
Also amusing to hear both John Krasinski and Emily Blunt in the film, playing characters who never actually interact onscreen. Plus, Blunt's brother-in-law, Stanley Tucci, is in the film as well! What a lovely family reunion.
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Anime
Aug 4, 2018 11:35:20 GMT -8
Post by Jay on Aug 4, 2018 11:35:20 GMT -8
I suppose we use this to catch manga sometimes too, don't we? I like having a shonen to follow along with as "something to do", seeing as how they publish consistently and otherwise I'm caught between dry periods of releases that interest me. I used to follow along with Bleach before it was forcibly retired, but I never felt like picking up One Piece, having seen an episode or two of the anime which I'd describe as "all the characters are voiced by Fran Drescher or Gilbert Gottfried", nor was I going to pursue Naruto since, beyond being kind of tired of the really obnoxious determined hero trope vs. the moody boy genius antihero trope, let's be honest, that shit's for weebs.
Somehow, I settled on My Hero Academia, which actually does have those tropes, although Deku isn't particularly obnoxious, he's just an obsessive tryhard who cares about others, and Kacchan is more surly and bellicose than purely moody and is not the one with the most potential either. Just enough is tweaked to make it clever and refreshing while still being targeted towards that same general audience and thus not with too many surprises. It's a Japanese take on X-Men in a sense, but more goofy and with more frequently useless powers with significant drawbacks, so imagine instead of one Beak you have about a dozen. In that sense, I'd say it's almost like Darker than Black minus the "Hei is Batman" aspect and played more for comedy, since rather than having OCD tendencies that support their powers, the powers in the MHA world are just limited by arbitrary constraints.
I don't think I'd give it a ringing endorsement. One-Punch Man is definitely bolder and weirder and may even be making a point, whereas MHA is just silly fun. Still, the levity ain't so bad now and then.
Edit to add: One of my favorite running gags so far is everyone commenting on how All Might is drawn in a different style. I'm into the meta of it.
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Anime
Aug 18, 2018 22:49:08 GMT -8
Post by Jay on Aug 18, 2018 22:49:08 GMT -8
A few quick thoughts (like I have those)...
Attack on Titan season three has started airing in English in the U.S. For me, it's a strange detour back into the past to see things as they were years ago in manga time, but it's also refreshing in that the series only gets darker and darker over time and to see it when the circumstances were less dire is almost comforting in its way. It's one of the few that maintains that tone and seriousness all throughout, probably comparable at best with Fullmetal Alchemist except.... considerably worse and more ambiguous.... anyway, I have hopes that as it's a monthly it will be able to end properly and on its own terms like FMA managed. It seems like the weeklies are more prone to interference.
I've also rewatched bits and pieces of FLCL: Progressive and it seems odd to me that I didn't personally make the connection earlier that the "secret weapon" turning everything into mochi being semi-reminiscent, visually, of the destruction of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters. The reference seems obvious to me now but also a bit out of place, and even if it's in my wheelhouse, it doesn't make me "like" the execution much better. Still committed to Alternative in any case. I mean, there are plenty of trilogies where the middle part loses focus. Take Indiana Jones for one.
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Anime
Aug 20, 2018 7:57:29 GMT -8
via mobile
Post by Zarnium on Aug 20, 2018 7:57:29 GMT -8
I'm going to start watching AOT season 3 soon, and give some thoughts on some other series I've watched.
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Anime
Aug 22, 2018 15:09:38 GMT -8
Post by Zarnium on Aug 22, 2018 15:09:38 GMT -8
Fafner: The similarities to Neon Genesis Evangelion are very obvious, but Fafner is a lot less deliberately inscrutable and relentlessly dark than NGE is, and is a more engaging show because of it. It's still confusing, mysterious, and depressing, but at a more manageable level. Like many other shows about child soldiers, Fafner explores themes like the loss of childhood innocence or individuality brought on by warfare and the cruelty of early death, and it does it pretty well. The dark stories are interspersed with lighter moments that resemble standard Japanese high school fare, which makes the setting feel more alive than in NGE and makes all the untimely deaths sting more. The alien threat, the Festum, are also well-presented, always feeling very creepy with their inhuman appearance and actions. There's a second season that was produced over a decade after the first one ended, but it's not on Funimation so I haven't seen it. However, the first season definitely ends on a satisfactory note and does not feel unfinished.
Chronos Ruler: In theory, this show is about humanity's fight against the horologs, time-eating monsters who feed on human regret and devour those who wish to change the past. In practice, the horologs barely appear, to the extent that I have to wonder why they're present at all. There's an introductory episode with tons of exposition about what horologs are and how they work which presents the two lead characters as horolog hunters, which could have been interesting if subsequent episodes followed up on it and explored the various ways in which the people being preyed on by horologs are dwelling in the past to the detriment of their current lives. Unfortunately, the rest of the show is largely about conflicts between humans, rendering the whole idea somewhat pointless. There's also an interesting concept here where one of the lead characters is the other one's father, but due to an incident with a horolog, he's "lost his time" as well as his memories, and is now younger than his son and acts more like an annoying brother than a father. The show tries to capitalize on this and show how this makes their interpersonal relationship difficult, but it doesn't do a great job. Very little is shown of what their relationship was like before the father lost his time, so there's not a good frame of reference for how this is causing either of them angst. Overall, the show is just a hodgepodge of decent concepts that it refuses to do anything useful with.
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Anime
Aug 26, 2018 23:34:22 GMT -8
Post by guttersnipe on Aug 26, 2018 23:34:22 GMT -8
So it suddenly occurs to me that I haven't made a post in half a year, despite lots of intention to say at least something about the Oscars, the time of which (and their subsequent forgettability) only highlighting my inactivity. I have been busy, in my own way...Out of curiosity, Jeremy, when you decided to go through the Miyazaki catalogue, was it to watch just his films in particular? Because though he is undoubtedly their figurehead and most prolific writer-director, it'd be a shame for you to not see the other half of their output, especially those by the late Isao Takahata. Though there is probably less of an auteurist stamp with him, his work is actually more varied, touching upon 'straight' drama, children in wartime, possibly Japan's oldest folk story and even a Peanuts/early-Simpsons-esque vignettes film, which you may appreciate more than most.
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Anime
Aug 27, 2018 5:49:27 GMT -8
Post by Jeremy on Aug 27, 2018 5:49:27 GMT -8
I was originally focused on Miyazaki's films, but I've grown interested in expanding. I watched The Red Turtle (a Ghibli co-production) a few weeks ago, and found it an intriguingly minimalist film. I haven't seen any of Takahata's films yet (rented Princess Kaguya recently, but didn't set aside time to watch it), but I've heard very good things about his work. And any Peanuts/Simpsons-type film definitely piques my interest.
I'm going to wrap the Miyazaki run with Princess Mononoke this week; after that, I'll try branching outwards.
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Anime
Aug 30, 2018 18:13:10 GMT -8
Post by Jeremy on Aug 30, 2018 18:13:10 GMT -8
Princess Mononoke may be the most convoluted film Miyazaki has ever produced. There were times while watching it that I hadn't a clue what was going on. It's also goofily, almost comically violent at times, working overtime to distinguish itself from his more kid-friendly fare.
That said? I still really liked it. The scope of the film is incredible, and the animation is top-notch. And despite the two-hour-plus running time, it doesn't feel padded. The very experience of the film is itself worth commending.
It's not at the level of Nausicaa or Spirited Away, but Mononoke proves that even when the story is more complicated than a Christopher Nolan film, Miyazaki is able to keep viewers' attention through sheer terrific filmmaking.
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Anime
Sept 2, 2018 9:47:13 GMT -8
Post by guttersnipe on Sept 2, 2018 9:47:13 GMT -8
I was originally focused on Miyazaki's films, but I've grown interested in expanding. I watched The Red Turtle (a Ghibli co-production) a few weeks ago, and found it an intriguingly minimalist film. I haven't seen any of Takahata's films yet (rented Princess Kaguya recently, but didn't set aside time to watch it), but I've heard very good things about his work. And any Peanuts/Simpsons-type film definitely piques my interest. I'm going to wrap the Miyazaki run with Princess Mononoke this week; after that, I'll try branching outwards. Excellent. I've never heard of anyone rave about My Neighbors the Yamadas but it's neat that the Ghibli umbrella can be so diverse as to warmingly accommodate probably its most formally unusual film, though I should point out that when I say early Simpsons I kinda mean Tracey Ullman, such is its sketch structure. You'll soon also find that the non-Miyazaki films feature less aviation, amimism and eco-concerns (with the exception of Pom Poko, which is based on an idea of Miyazaki's), yet there nevertheless exist certain unifying threads which cohere the studio's body of work.
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Anime
Sept 2, 2018 14:30:45 GMT -8
Post by Jeremy on Sept 2, 2018 14:30:45 GMT -8
My Neighbors the Yamadas looks quite interesting. I'd be interested in seeing how the studio fares when Miyazaki himself isn't at the helm, and that looks like an intriguing change of pace.
Also, I just noticed that The Castle of Cagliostro is on Netflix! So I can complete the Miyazaki run with his very first film.
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Anime
Oct 3, 2018 7:16:12 GMT -8
Post by Jay on Oct 3, 2018 7:16:12 GMT -8
I just took a look out of curiosity and it appears that they're going to do a three-part Psycho-Pass movie series with the first film coming out in January. I wasn't a huge fan of the original series (and the sequel, far less so) but it's compelling enough on paper as a concept so I'm interested to see whether they manage the format of a "movie" slightly better overall.
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Anime
Nov 23, 2018 21:04:36 GMT -8
Post by Jay on Nov 23, 2018 21:04:36 GMT -8
I suppose I could render this somewhat topical by noting that an anime arrives in 2019...
So, I had a weird jones for a dark fantasy work and ended up spending the last couple of weeks blazing through what's been released of The Promised Neverland. The brief of the premise is that demons have been raising human children as cattle in orphanages, the kids find out, shit gets real.
It scratched the itch I felt like I needed scratched, although I feel as if it was there primarily because other similar entries like D. Gray Man and Berserk are so long between releases that it's hard to maintain a recollection of what's happening. TPN to its credit is weekly, but falls into a similar trap that shounen often do, late-run, which is that they spend the first six or so pages of a chapter rehashing points already familiar from the previous twenty. At least, such has been the tendency in recent arcs. Previously it had been more of a slow burn that was effective for creating tension on its own terms (the escape arc), but now the pacing has become uneven, such that we'll spend a dozen or more chapters on a particular incident and then whoops, a year and a half has passed in-world. If not for the anime in the works, I'd suggest that they were being pressured by the publishers to wrap things up, but that could still be the case.
Probably among the more notable characteristics of the manga, other than the female protagonist (which is scarcely relevant in the long-run), is that for how dark and bleak the setup is, there isn't much death to speak of for the first hundred chapters or so, which takes the edge off of the initial sense of doom. However, even if they were to off a few more characters here and there, it's a large cast and most are poorly rendered such that the deaths don't seem impactful when they do come. The series for some reason reminded me of Eureka Seven and I think that this is why, not because it's some mech setup (although the pursuit of a better world is a goal in both), but because there's a large if poorly defined supporting cast and few casualties despite the doom. One could note that Full Metal Alchemist also had very few deaths at the outset, but I feel as if the cast in that, as well as the worldbuilding, was better realized.
I don't know that I'd recommend it as the others I listed have more compelling premises. TPN seems to hem and haw between something needing to happen, then having no coherent way of explaining, then drifting back to an ex post facto realization about what happened and why via a flashback only to clumsily lurch forward once again. It feels as if the pair authoring the manga (one draws, one writes) only have a broad-strokes blueprint for what's going to happen or how to provide the characters with nuance. You'd think that divvying up the responsibilities in a weekly would lend itself to better forward progress (I won't judge it against AoT as a monthly), but so far it hasn't really happened. Given that this is one of the more followed and well-regarded titles out there, I'm a bit disappointed, but there's only so much you can expect from a shounen manga anyway.
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