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Post by Zarnium on Mar 24, 2017 12:44:04 GMT -8
As the title suggests, this is the place to discuss all things related to Japanese animation! This isn't a straight repost of the old thread, but it was getting so long that I was considering starting a new thread anyway. Feel free to start new discussions, or transfer some old ones!
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Post by Jay on Mar 25, 2017 9:20:55 GMT -8
Well, I'm re-watching Baccano! rightn ow and being more critical of it than I was last time (it's always been apparent that Durarara!! was the superior series). Finished Drifters a while back. New Monogatari season on the horizon. Also I've been watching a few episodes of One-Punch Man here and there after catching up on the manga. Yep, I've got nothing.
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Post by Zarnium on Mar 26, 2017 10:44:32 GMT -8
I finished Scrapped Princess a couple weeks ago. It's not bad; it covers a lot of interesting themes relating to determinism, moral relativism, and religion, it has a neat mythology, and the chemistry between the three leads is pretty amusing. That said, it falters a bit where the titular "Scrapped Princess" herself is concerned. Most of the show revolves around her, every character is defined by their relationship to her, and she's ostensibly the primary protagonist, getting more screen time than anyone else. However, she doesn't really do much, and she doesn't grow a whole lot, either. She's mostly a macguffin used to advance the plot with very little agency or development, which wouldn't necessarily be a problem if it weren't for the fact that she herself is the focal point for almost the entire show. There's a point about halfway through where it looks like as if she's finally going to take her fate into her own hands as part of her character arc, but then a surprise plot development occurs and the show's momentum is set back considerably, never quite regaining it. It's unfortunate, because the first fourteen episodes or so were a pretty good starting point, and it could've really gone somewhere if the story had properly followed through on them.
As it is, it has my recommendation, but don't expect anything amazing.
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Post by Zarnium on Mar 26, 2017 20:50:18 GMT -8
I'm also watching Assassination Classroom now! It's pretty good so far, as of the 6th episode. I don't usually like Japanese humor all that much, and as such tend to stay away from overt comedies, but I think it works for me here because the exaggeration is just one aspect of the entire ridiculous setup. Korosensei is already a sentient emoticon intent on destroying the planet unless his students can kill him first, why not make him an overly emotional nutcase obsessed with cleaning things too? Additionally, English dubs often don't deliver humor well, but Korosensei's English VA, Sonny Strait, is reeeeeeeally good. I'm surprised I've never heard of him before.
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Post by Jay on Mar 27, 2017 9:30:25 GMT -8
Ugh, just had the first "forum ate post" experience.... I'll just do bullet points...
* Most Japanese comedy anime do "singular straight man against wacky cast" which I think only really works well in FLCL as it's in service of Naota's disenchantment and cynicism. * Assassination Classroom I think plays its hand for its type of humor excellently in the first episode when you have the newscasters, having just seen the moon explode, complain about never being able to see a full moon again when at a cosmic level, you'd think there were larger concerns at play. One success of the show at large is that the straight man role is never one person and tends to be occupied by the class as a chorus more often, but for all its absurdity, the emotion I think proves real in the end. * Strait voiced Hughes in the FMA dubs!
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Post by Zarnium on Mar 27, 2017 20:11:57 GMT -8
* Strait voiced Hughes in the FMA dubs! Yup, I've heard him before, I just never knew his name or cross-referenced his work. I've probably at least heard almost everyone who's ever worked at Funimation by now. Incidentally, one nitpick about the dub; anytime the prize money is mentioned, it's always referred to as just "ten billion," not "ten billion yen." This sounds awkward, and is sort of confusing since I was initially unsure if they were talking about dollars or yen. I'm not really sure why they omitted it, since pretty much anyone watching a show like this would have basic knowledge of Japanese money.
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Post by Zarnium on Mar 31, 2017 22:42:21 GMT -8
Incidentally, I noticed that J. Michael Tatum is the English script writer for both Assassination Classroom and Steins;Gate. Despite this, the dub for Assassination Classroom appears to be a very literal translation, while the dub for Steins;Gate makes extensive use of Woolseyisms. I would presume that this is symptomatic of a key difference between the two shows, and also a good comparison between two different translation philosophies at two extreme ends of a scale; Assassination Classroom is a classically Anime-esque show, wearing anime tropes and conventions on its sleeve and using a very Japanese style of comedy. If you changed very much of that, you wouldn't really have the same show. Steins;Gate, on the other hand, intends to be a lot more "real" than most anime television I've seen. It doesn't feature many overt anime trappings, and its pacing, tone, and style of dialogue is much more similar to live-action than most animated shows are. As a result, any spoken English script needs to feel very natural in order for it to work, and counter-intuitively, this means that the translation needs to be less literal in order to get the original message across. To wit, while dubs are often criticized as being the lazy plebeian option or for supposedly being inaccurate, the fact that the same script writer chose to take such wildly different approaches for two different works shows that there's a lot more to crafting a good dub than initially meets the eye. (I should mention that this is entirely based on comparing the dubs to subtitles, and not from any experience with the Japanese language, so I could be dead wrong!) Also, Attack on Titan season 2 is finally being released! At last! I'm hoping it goes past the point in the manga where I stopped reading, but apparently it's only twelve episodes, so maybe not. I'm glad the show has been careful not to overtake the manga, though.
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Post by Zarnium on Apr 3, 2017 21:56:01 GMT -8
In preparation for season 2 of Attack on Titan finally being released, I am rewatching season 1, this time in English. While I was initially lukewarm on the franchise way back when, I'm taking more of a liking to it now, whether that's because of the dub or because I'm taking stock of more little details and connecting dots on my second run through. One thing in particular that I'm noticing is that the biggest threat to humanity's extinction is not the titans, per se; it's politics, human greed, and a lack of planning.
Before Wall Maria was breached, the human territory encompassed an area about the size of Texas or France, and there were around one million people living in it. That's not a very large area, but the population was very small, so it should be more than enough. However, when the wall is breached, there's a famine because there's only enough food within Wall Rose to feed the people who were already living there, and most of the refugees are forced out and get killed by the titans as a result. There was almost certainly enough suitable land and manpower within the walls to grow extra food, so there should have been an emergency food store, but there wasn't. Why is this? Two reasons, probably; the first is that humanity has clearly gotten complacent during the prior century, assuming that the walls would never break, and they therefore never formulated a contingency plan. The second is that a considerable amount of the limited resources are likely spent making luxury goods for the aristocrats living in the center rather than being properly allocated. As a result of this mismanagement and lack of foresight, the breach in the wall was far more disastrous than it had to be.
Another major problem is that the army is severely ill-prepared to deal with an actual titan outbreak due to improper organization and lack of experience. The entire training regimen for every soldier is based around killing titans, but most have never fought one. The trainees who show the most promise of actually being able to fight a titan are sent to the Military Police, where they will never see combat, and don't even wear their 3D maneuvering gear while on duty. Most of the rest join the Garrison, which is supposed to be a front guard that fights the titans in the event of a breach, but they're unprepared when a breach actually happens. They're never made to fight a titan outside of the walls as part of their training, so they're unable to take one down when it actually matters, and are also mentally unprepared to face one since most of them have always assumed they'd never need to. When Trost is breached, there are thousands of Garrison soldiers present, but nearly all of them are too terrified to do their job. The Scouts are the only competent and effective branch of the military, but their numbers are very low. This is due in large part to the high casualty rate, but it's also likely because they are regarded so poorly due to the cultural mistrust of anything related to the outside world or anyone who tries to disrupt the status quo, and the government doesn't push recruits to join them or give them the attention they deserve. As such, the vast majority of the military is utterly useless due to how badly it is managed, again due to either complacency or due to the rich and powerful having an interest in keeping things the way they are.
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Post by Jay on Apr 4, 2017 7:56:27 GMT -8
Good points on AoT, I'll add a couple more.
So, you've got the class differences which is important but there's also a "blink and you'll miss it" reference to a civilian campaign taken on by Armin's grandfather to retake Wall Maria, which naturally fails. This was intermingled with some attempts at farming and toil, but it could be that the prime arable land was already used up and a society based around subsistence over surplus wasn't going to be too clever about finding extra uses for the land. There's also the fact to consider that it wasn't a simultaneous attack on all sides, but all of Wall Maria was abandoned, so there's a lot of surplus refugee population in and around Wall Rose, some of which obviously are going to be pushed into trades that they're unaccustomed to according to the rules of supply and demand.
The other thing is that while, yeah, mortality for the Survey Corps is incredibly high and that leaves them in the position where they can't collect and pass on much data (it's sort of implied that Shadis has gotten a lot of people killed), there's also the relative novelty of the 3D maneuvering gear as a whole, leaving few people proficient in it. They've only recently figured out how to kill titans, for that matter, whereas previous defenses were deterrents but ineffective otherwise since titans can regenerate from cannon blasts, etc. But it's important that all these technologies are relatively new and have few living and experienced practitioners.
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Post by Jay on Apr 4, 2017 8:30:48 GMT -8
Another spur-of-the-moment musing, but I often spend time thinking about the character tropes of shonen anime and how they're making use of them. Examples would be how main characters tend to be not extraordinarily bright, but determined and prodigies by way of some hereditary glitch, rival characters who are intelligent and build up an arsenal of skills to support their aims, and self-doubting support characters who lack conventional combat abilities. I'm thinking specifically of Bleach and Naruto while drawing out these comparisons, but I can think of parallels in franchises going back to Fist of the North Star and Yu Yu Hakusho. So, I mention this because I think that Attack on Titan is entirely in conversation with these tropes and Eren fits the conventional protagonist role to a T. BUT, they do a little bit of subversion in making the skilled rival a girl who is sweet on the protagonist (Mikasa) and making the support character male (Armin), along with other stuff they later do with his character which I don't expect the new season to completely catch up with. These aren't revolutionary moves by any stretch, but it helps keep things fresh in a genre that's averse to change.
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Post by Zarnium on Apr 4, 2017 12:03:44 GMT -8
So, you've got the class differences which is important but there's also a "blink and you'll miss it" reference to a civilian campaign taken on by Armin's grandfather to retake Wall Maria, which naturally fails. This was intermingled with some attempts at farming and toil, but it could be that the prime arable land was already used up and a society based around subsistence over surplus wasn't going to be too clever about finding extra uses for the land. That's true, but the humans had over a century to develop farming practices that would give them a surplus of food for a buffer in case the walls failed. The fact that such a plan never had the support of those in power is a pretty big fail. They also use the food that they do have very poorly. When Sasha steals that cut of meat from the captain early on, the other cadets say that meat is very rare now (at least in the outer districts), which implies that it was once a relatively common sight even in Wall Maria. Farming meat is a very inefficient means of producing food, and if the grain that was fed to the animals was used to directly feed humans instead, there would likely be a surplus that could be stored for emergency. Therefore, we're left with two conclusions; that the humans have been inefficiently wasting food on the production of meat for a very long time, and that even now, after a famine has directly or indirectly killed twenty percent of the population, the rich and privileged are still growing meat. Maybe I'm reading too much into a throwaway scene, but there's definitely a general theme throughout the story that the aristocrats and rulers are mismanaging the entire civilization, leading the peasants and soldiers to suffer through no fault of their own. I'm unclear on how long the 3D maneuvering gear has been around, but I always assumed it was invented well before the series takes place, leaving at least one generation to have time to become accustomed to it. I could be wrong about that. Regardless, it's also apparent that the government has not been focusing on research and development nearly as much as it should. It seems that the cannons are the only titan-fighting innovation since the gear, and Hange appears to be the only scientist in the entire territory. No one else sees any value in learning about the titans or developing new ways to combat them, which has put humanity at a disadvantage. Eren is slightly more subversive than a typical protagonist on account of him not really being particularly competent or intelligent. He's one of the first to die in the attack on Trost, perhaps due to his hubris outstripping his actual ability, causing him to rush into battle and get himself killed. He only escapes death due to being a shifter, and the only reason the Scout Regiment takes an interest in him is his shifting ability, which isn't even that impressive or unique once other shifters start appearing. Mikasa is pretty subversive for a female character, taking a traditionally male role, but I can't help but feel that her character is exceptionally weak by the standards of the series. She's slavishly devoted to protecting Eren, and displays almost no personality outside of that. They don't have many substantial interactions and are rarely shown to be enjoying each other's company. In fact, Eren seems to barely tolerate her presence and usually just blows her off whenever they speak. I guess their initial meeting is supposed to be her motivation for continuing to protect him, but that seems pretty flimsy for something that defines her entire personality against Eren's own wishes. Her relationship with Armin is more detailed and substantial, which is very strange considering that it's not really a focal point of the story.
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Post by Jay on Apr 4, 2017 12:50:57 GMT -8
You're definitely right about the mismanagement, and I'd argue that government interference/incompetence helps complement the whole "war sucks" narrative the series has going on. Having read further along in the manga, there are some reasons for why technological innovation lags behind (not particularly a GOOD reason, but a reason. It can be a superstitious society at large), 3D maneuvering gear has been around for about twenty-five years at most, and Mikasa has some raw material in the background that could potentially make her more interesting, although they haven't made much of it yet. And still, she compares favorably in development to Touka from Tokyo Ghoul who has been all but abandoned since the manga reboot, but that's neither here nor there. One issue I see on the horizon though is that there's a big plot point reveal that's due to be adapted to the anime that is absolutely stupid and has no defense that I can think of not for lack of trying.
For the record, the manga's been pretty darned good for the last year or so.
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Post by Zarnium on Apr 4, 2017 13:20:58 GMT -8
I read the manga up to volume 12, which was the most recent one at the time. I've ordered 13 through 20 from the library, though, so I'll be caught up soon, and will hopefully find out what's in that damn basement and where Eren's father disappeared to, which is a question that has haunted me for nearly three years.
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Post by Jay on Apr 4, 2017 13:30:16 GMT -8
The next arc for you is going to be mostly about the politics inside the walls and I can't say it's my favorite arc, but you will find out what Grisha's been up to and have some of the material aspects of the world explained, albeit not all of them. The basement itself, that looks like Vol 21, which will be released stateside in a few weeks.
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Post by Zarnium on Apr 4, 2017 17:12:34 GMT -8
Speaking of genre subversions, what are your thoughts on One Punch Man? I thought the show was absolutely hilarious even in subs, which I was very surprised by, considering that I'm rarely on the same wavelength as Japanese comedy. I've described it before as "The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog with a point," since it has a similar bizarre, nonsensical style of humor, but combined with an actual story structure and underlying theme. It's just so absurd, but in a very self-aware way, and it's really good at using the anticlimax for humorous effect, as well. Saitama describing his training regimen was one of the funniest things I saw last year.
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