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Post by Jay on Apr 23, 2017 11:43:01 GMT -8
Sometimes, but not always. It can also be used for general oddballs. Ayumu Kasuga from Azumanga Daioh is called "Osaka" and speaks in the Kansai dialect, but is self-consciously a counter to the general stereotype. The kids in Abenobashi Mahō Shōtengai speak in Kansai dialect and aren't gangsters by any stretch of the imagination (the dub made them Texans though, and was impossible for me to listen to)
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Post by Zarnium on Apr 23, 2017 18:59:57 GMT -8
It seems to be more broadly used than I thought. According to TVtropes, it's also common for real people with the accent to drop it if they move to Tokyo, specifically to avoid negative stereotypes... which is kind of sad, but fits pretty closely with what we see in AoT. To extrapolate further, this would mean that the use of the Kansai accent in the story is much closer to how it actually exists in reality, since it isn't being used as a silly affectation and is instead a representation of something that real people actually face. This fits in pretty well with Isayama's deliberate subversion of common anime tropes.
'Course, that depends on whether Sasha's accent actually is Kansai, and on just how accurate TVtropes is, in all of its unsourced glory. Americans with a southern accent sometimes do the exact same thing, though, so it makes sense.
Since we were talking about Wolfwood earlier, I also found this interesting tidbit:
If true, having him speak with a southern accent could have been an interesting addition to his priest image. Then again, as you intimated earlier, hearing northerners and city-dwellers try to speak in a southern accent usually sounds awful, so if a real southerner wasn't available, forcing it probably wouldn't be real great.
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Post by Zarnium on May 7, 2017 18:23:10 GMT -8
I finally finished Assassination Classroom. *sniff.*
Jesus Christ, that next to last episode is one of the most emotionally wrenching episodes of TV I've ever seen.
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on May 7, 2017 19:35:43 GMT -8
Not that I've seen the show or watched any anime (no, Patrick, A:TLA is not an anime), but One Punch Man is riffing off superhero tropes and is accordingly more approachable from a Western persepctive because the tropes are Western origin. I think. I mostly know about the show from memes and that one Bill Burr sketch.
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Post by Jay on May 10, 2017 19:40:02 GMT -8
Assassination Classroom might be one of my favorite recent shows for its payoff of silliness later turning into emotional investment and actual drama. But it sneakily makes the characters matter throughout and gives them quick little arcs, not to the same degree as the manga supposedly did, but enough to get you to where you need to be for that punch to hit you.
One-Punch Man riffs off of enough stuff from both sides of the pond. I think Saitama is recognizable because of that idea of some dude in spandex with a pointless cape, but I feel like Genos is more distinctly Japanese in his depiction (long-winded origin stories) and the idea of running around fighting monsters, I don't know, it seems more influenced by Japanese media (Power Rangers, what have you) than the west. The structure also follows arcs in a way that feels really Japanese to me, although that may in part because the most recent manga arc involves an arbitrary martial arts tournament which is one of the most manga/anime things that could happen.
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Post by Zarnium on May 11, 2017 14:58:10 GMT -8
One-Punch Man riffs off of enough stuff from both sides of the pond. I think Saitama is recognizable because of that idea of some dude in spandex with a pointless cape, but I feel like Genos is more distinctly Japanese in his depiction (long-winded origin stories) and the idea of running around fighting monsters, I don't know, it seems more influenced by Japanese media (Power Rangers, what have you) than the west. The structure also follows arcs in a way that feels really Japanese to me, although that may in part because the most recent manga arc involves an arbitrary martial arts tournament which is one of the most manga/anime things that could happen. I'd say One-Punch Man is superficially very heavy on the Western Superhero mythos and a lot of its trappings remind me of American superhero comedies like The Tick, but it's core themes and story structure are more Japanese in nature. That said, I do think it's still a very accessible show for anime newbies, as you only need to have a passing familiarity with the tropes to see where they're being parodied. Plus, I just found the show to be extremely funny even when taken at face value. I've said this before, but I still think that Saitama describing his training regimen is one of the funniest scenes I've seen on TV. Anyway, I'll go into more detail at a later time, but not only have I finished Assassination Classroom, I've also watched Tokyo Ghoul and have started Shiki. My thoughts on Tokyo Ghoul are complicated. I'm liking Shiki so far, though I have to say, the hairstyles are pretty out there, even for an anime. I mean, what the heck is this? I'm also not watching the spoiler intro! Though the actual song is pretty rad.
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Post by Jay on May 11, 2017 16:39:04 GMT -8
Shiki has the most anime hair of all. It's utterly bizarre and takes away from an otherwise serious storyline. Wait until the doc's wife shows up, 'cause she's got it baaaad....
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Post by Zarnium on May 11, 2017 17:12:41 GMT -8
I think this graphic sums it up pretty well.
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Post by Jay on May 11, 2017 19:57:28 GMT -8
Oh my goodness I am so glad that the hair is so obnoxious as to lead to charts and memes because it really does deserve it
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Post by Zarnium on May 11, 2017 20:38:38 GMT -8
Um, also, I thought until just now at episode 6 that Natsuno was Ozaki's son? In a show where most of the character designs are ridiculously distinct, they look so much alike.
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Post by Zarnium on May 14, 2017 6:59:28 GMT -8
Alright, on to Tokyo Ghoul.
I like the idea of this show. The problem is, it doesn't capitalize on its potential very well, and tends to progress far too rapidly or toss characters to the wayside without exploring them enough. Touka is a perfectly fine character in the first season, then she just spends the second season being sad that Kaneki is gone without actually doing anything. Hide's investigations into Onteiku and Kaneki's transition show promise in the first season, but then he barely appears in the second season and has no impact on the plot. Kureo Mado had a lot of promise as a character concept, but he's killed in the first season before his character is explored much, and then most of his development happens through flashbacks after he dies. Worst of all, Kaneki's development in the first season is largely ignored in the second season, when his personality changes overnight for no reason and he spends most of the season doing fight sequences and not really interacting with anyone. The characters who get the most screen time in the second season are Amon, Akira, and Juuzou, who are either not major fixtures in the first season or don't appear in it. So, not only are most of the characters from the first season not given satisfying continuation or resolution, but the characters that the show does focus on are mostly new ones with little connection to the preceding events.
Part of the reason for this is because the second season just wasn't very good in and of itself, tending to focus on battle sequences rather than story advancement, but the first season isn't blameless either since its pace is much too fast. The entire first season story arc could've been told much better over two 13-episode seasons rather than just one, and given us more time to linger on important events and explore the concepts and issues raised. As it is, no matter how much time is supposed to have passed in-universe, the audience isn't given much time to absorb the effects of the latest plot development before moving on to the next big thing. Kaneki barely has time to accept his new existence as a ghoul before moving onto his white-hair phase, and while his white-hair phase is pretty vapid itself, no matter what came next, it wouldn't have been serviced very well by his first-season development.
Ultimately... it's an ok show, but there are much better "monsters among us" shows on both sides of the Pacific, and Tokyo Ghoul does little to stand out in terms of either originality or writing quality.
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Post by Jay on May 14, 2017 12:40:46 GMT -8
So, re: Tokyo Ghoul, which is now Tokyo Ghoul re:... you know what, let's start over....
I've read and kept up with the manga in its couple of incarnations and one thing that I have to warn you about is that the second season is a gaiden, alt-universe what-if storyline, and it doesn't work as well because there was no basis for Kaneki to hook up with Aogiri, and it didn't happen in the manga for that very reason. In the manga, there was less of the overnight transformation. Otherwise, to address some of your complaints: Better off as two seasons than one for the initial run? Yeah, totally. Akira Mado ends up becoming a major character in the series despite being initially overshadowed by her father. Juuzou.... still is around and still isn't the greatest, and characters that were brought in long after him have gotten far more development. I can't say much about Amon because he remains a work in progress (I forget if the initial series ever hit on why he became an investigator). I regard it as not great but a mostly competent shonen that rarely has interesting social commentary. Having well outpaced what's been adapted into an anime series, I would say that some of what you're complaining about doesn't ever get any better, in that like a lot of shonen, there are way too many characters to competently do anything with and one not-infrequently has to jump back into a fansite to figure out who was supposed to have been killed when. To add to the potential ire, the uniqueness of Kaneki's situation rapidly becomes less and less unique, as a bunch of other hybrids of various affiliations start to emerge. But at its core, it remains your basic shonen, albeit with more effort in certain places.
To cover some other territory, I never had that problem with Shiki, confusing that particular family relation, because I felt like I had a sense of Natsuno's home life and a more amorphous sense of Ozaki's that didn't lead them to cross-over much. I also hit one of the points in the AoT adaptation that I had the most misgivings about as a reader of the manga although I do understand the shifter's motives a lot better now than I did way back when, so that eases some of the the unpleasantness I experienced before. It's still sloppily handled, but I get why now. That being said, there was a delightful moment in the last episode where Hange is perched on Eren's shoulder giving him advice and Eren nods, at which point Hange, being obsessed with titans, fangirls out and gets all "SENPAI NOTICED ME."
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Post by Zarnium on May 15, 2017 7:34:43 GMT -8
Yeah, I heard about that, and it feeds into my dislike of anime adaptations that hew close to the manga only to go their own direction partway through, because it often doesn't work very well. If they wanted to have Kaneki Join Aogiri in the anime, why not change the first season as well to make it work better?
After a flashback, I remembered that Natsuno's father is present in one of his earliest appearances, so I guess I'm just unobservant.
Also, what exactly is the plot development in AoT that you didn't like so much?
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Post by Jay on May 15, 2017 10:45:02 GMT -8
The blurting out of who the Colossal and Armored Titan were. I know it would've had to have come out eventually, and there were reasons for its happening seeing as how everyone just had a harrowing experience at Utgard Castle and figuring out what Ymir's deal was, but it banks on some assumptions in how Eren would respond that don't make a lick of sense and, the more I think about it, seem to be there in large part because it would be difficult to have the Historia and Royal Family storylines functioning with those two around.
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Post by Zarnium on May 15, 2017 11:25:43 GMT -8
Hmm... yeah, kinda. But at the same time, the situation had changed drastically in the course of just a couple months with the discovery of Eren and Ymir and Annie's capture, they don't appear to be in regular contact with their superiors to receive new orders, and they're clearly very anxious to get home by this point. I'm not sure what they had to gain by continuing the ruse, and straight-up kidnapping Eren and running away was just about the only course of action they had left, since returning empty handed wasn't an option for an as-yet undisclosed reason. So, while it does come off as a somewhat abrupt and convenient way to progress the plot, I think it makes sense, and there's enough foreshadowing that a shrewd observer could figure out what's going on beforehand. It's not something that ever struck me as problematic.
Something that's been bothering me a fair bit more is that I'd forgotten just how little Minister Nick actually appears in the story. (Wait, sorry, "Pastor" Nick.) He's just there to exposit a bit in Stohess, then we don't hear about him again until he's dead. That would be fine, if it weren't for the fact that his death makes Hange go absolutely ballistic, even though she barely knew him and didn't like him a whole lot when he was alive.
Still, despite all our needling, I'd say that AoT is better than at least 80% of the other anime/manga I've seen/read, shonen or not, and it's way more ambitious than all but a scant few. It holds together way better than Tokyo Ghoul, at least.
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