2641

Hehe, I watched as it aired as well and enjoyed the “WTF IT STILL DIDNT END?” climate. And I love stories like it…in moderation. And I agree, I can look back and not totally hate it but at the time, given so little Haruhi out there, I was a little annoyed at the prospect of “wasting” 8 of 14 episodes on the same exact episode (yes I know, they are different whatever).

MoHS is in my top 5 anime of all time so even as annoying as it was to me, I still appreciate it.

2642

Finally started watching Nodame Cantabile, was hooked after the first episode. The first two episodes are pretty heavy on the laughs but I couldn’t stop watching it till the final episode.

Short of Twelve Kingdoms and Mushishi it’s pretty much as good as anime gets for me. If it wasn’t for these three gems I would have given up on anime on a long time ago.

2643

Good lord, I got Netflix instant watch for my Wii.

I have watch so much anime in the last couple weeks.

From “Devil May Cry” to "Jyo-Oh-Sei. I am having an anime overload, but I like it.

Soul Eater I rather enjoyed.

2644

The Level E anime is a competent, well drawn, well animated faithful adpatation of a great manga. So it’s being great! :)

2645

I finally got around to watching Slayers Revolution and Evolution-R, which are really linked to form a single large story. Not bad. Slightly redefines the magic system, but everything is still generally consistent. Looks like the original animators could have just continued the series last decade instead of taking however many years off it was, as the design and animation seem perfectly consistent with the older series.

Typical Slayers mix of random ludicrous joke episodes with a slow dramatic arc buildup that ends in a climax that is always remarkably affecting considering the general silliness and caricatured character style.

Anyhow, I’ve always liked Slayers for some reason, so it was fun to see some new episodes. I particularly like how utterly evil Lina’s incantations can be, especially Dragon Slave and Giga Slave.

Of course she’s pledging herself to the most destructive and powerful entity in all of creation every time she casts her favorite spell…

2646

Kore wa Zombie desu ka? is fucking fantastic in every way. Level E has very stylish animation, and it didn’t exactly bore me, but I think I need to warm to it some more before I make any judgment.

2647

I love Slayers, but it peaked with Next. Try was still good, but the OVAs and Revolution were disappointing by Slayers standards. I’d say Slayers was probably one of the most influential shows in what I ended up liking, alongside Kenshin and Urusei Yatsura.

The funny thing was how popular shoujo was among the arcade rats I used to hang out with back in the 90s though, such as Cha Cha and Maramalade Boy.

2648

So apparently the reason why we stopped getting Slayers back in the day is that the production team back then decided they’d taken Slayers as far as they could with Try. Someone had the bright idea to try and keep the franchise going in the same time slot, so to speak, by making shows set in the other “pillars” of the Lord of Nightmares’s world.

Each of the four pillars was supposed to be happening in a different genre, causing the physics and characters to be different. So they produced Lost Universe, set in the sci-fi pillar, which turned into a complete disaster due to the Budget Crash and a studio fire. After Lost Universe finished, the production team simply dissolved.

The current TV productions spun out of renewed interest in the property brought about when the light novel series finally published its last volume in 2008. The original production team got back together and decided to just pick up where they’d initially left off. Right now there’s a bunch of manga running in Japan and more anime might even be possible.

2649

I wouldn’t go that far, but it is a lot funnier than I thought it would be. It’s basically a harem comedy with a supernatural action twist.

Our hero is an average teenage boy, with one tiny exception: he’s a zombie. But set aside your Romero-based conceptions of what zombies should be like; he acts like a regular teenager - thinks, talks, eats, goes to school, daydreams about a girl - except (A) he’s a lot stronger than a normal person (but not necessarily any tougher) and (B) he can heal from just about any injury. However, unlike say Wolverine, whose healing factor is used to show what a badass he is, this guy’s immortality is mostly played for gruesome laughs; who knew getting cut in half could be so funny? By the end of the first two episodes, he winds up with a bunch of girls living in his house: the mute silver-haired necromancer who zombified him in the first place (and about whom he has the aforementioned daydreams); a monster-hunting chainsaw-wielding magical girl; and a buxom vampire ninja chick.

Part of what makes the show funny is the girls aren’t instantly smitten with our protagonist and thus don’t immediately devolve into a pack of simpering doting idiots like most harem comedies. On the contrary, they mostly find him creepy and/or disgusting and treat him like the disposable trash he is. I’m sure by the end they’ll all realize what a swell guy he is and one or more of them will want in his futon, but for now it’s regular heapings of abuse! I have a feeling this one will run out of steam as soon as it runs out of gory gags at the lead’s expense, but until then it looks like dumb fun.

2650

Well the OVAs were godawful. I think they had a nod at this by mocking the “Nama” character in Revolution that no one could remember the real name of. I agree Evolution-R/Revolution wasn’t as good as Next, but it’s still consistent in style and approach to the other season series, so however you order that first group, it’s Slayers, Try, Next, Evolution/R >>>>>> OVAs.

2651

Interesting, I never know much about the industry or what happens in Japan. I just want to see more Slayers, Ghost in the Shell, Bubblegum Crisis and old stuff like that, and not so much the teenage soap operas and crappy horror series…

2652

Sadly, the more you know about how the anime industry works, the more miraculous it seems that good anime ever gets made at all.

2653

Oddly enough, the same thing applies to the game industry.

And if you ever have the misfortune to learn how the telecom industry works, you’ll find it amazing that the Internet works at all, much less the voice network.

2654

I remember our college group watching Slayers weekly- we all came to the conclusion that it was Next, Original, Try. No one dissented at all.

We all agreed Lost Universe wasn’t that good.

Still 90s-style anime isn’t really made too much these days, which is a sad thing. Most of what seems to be good to methese days has been light novel shows such as Guin Saga, Spice and Wolf, Wagaya no Oinari-Sama, Sora no Woto.

Slayers also qualifies as a light novel show.

2655

Hey hey, the voice network is rock SOLID, man. It’s the data and mobile stuff that confounds me.

I’m currently catching up on Super Robot Taisen OG: The Inspector from last season. Having only played the American GBA OG game I about 1/3 to 1/2 way, I’m having more fun seeing all the robots being rolled out 3-5 per episode than I really should be. This show is nothing but cliche, but it’s like they cut all the decent scenes from 50 other series and blended it. Guilty pleasure. I’m now tracking down some fansites to figure out the whozzits and the whazzits.

Other last season comments:
Overall: I watched too many series that season, and there were a lot of dreck. But I couldn’t stop!

Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt: Best show last season. I can’t believe how well they copied the style of Ren & Stimpy et. al.

Legend of Legendary Heroes was an OK series, but ultimately unsatisfying because it didn’t go anywhere, and wasn’t as overly complicated as all the setup implied. No tension.

Thanks to Amagami SS, my harem show quotient will be full for 2011. This show is structured for people who plays ‘galget’ games. Plot resets every 4 episodes, which gives the writers room to tell better stories…but there’s only so many high school love stories in Japan…

Hyakka Ryouran Samaurai: Was this like a really high budget anime? This series is so pretty and fluid…look at all the non-anorexic well-proportioned women… This season’s Freezing can’t match the quality…

Ore no Imouto: The good thing is that this is NOT a harem show. The main guy did not accidentally grope anyone (especially his sister), nor did he see anyone naked (especially his sister). The bad thing is the sister…totally unbelievable character (in terms of behaviour and circumstance)…I cannot sympathize with her at all.

The world something God something…the one starring the boy who plays galget games 24/7 (and doesn’t need to watch Amagami). This had its moments (especially the one in episode 2 where the angel introduces herself to the boy’s mom), but is otherwise forgettable.

Star Driver (still going): why can’t they all just be friends?!? And I guess the reveal will have something to do with why Takuto’s robot has to break into the world to fight. I’m only watching for the upcoming reveal…it better be good…

2656

I’ve found this one pleasantly surprising, given how abysmal the first two attempts at OG anime were and how abysmal Masami Obari’s last few projects have been.

I guess the material finally clicked with Obari in a way it didn’t with earlier production teams. He clearly has more of a budget to work with here than he did with either Gravion season.

(Divine Wars, the last TV series, even got Ichiro Itano to work on it-- yet somehow still totally sucked.)

2657

I recently brought a blue ray player and have been shopping around for good looking movies to play on it. So I picked up Akira and Ghost in the shell shell 2.0. I haven’t watched a great deal of anime but these two were among the first I experienced and I haven’t watch either in an age.

Oh boy, what a bummer GITS 2.0 was. The bland 3d animation stuck out like a bloodied compound fracture! Especially after recently watching ‘How to train your dragon’ which looked terrific on blue ray. Also I guess the self indulgent slow pans across futurtic tokyo and philosophical lecturing impressed me more when I was younger. Nowadays I just snigger and think “hmm, that is a good question…what if I did put my brain in a robot body?”. Still as a cyber punk action flicks go there is not much else around like it but I have a feeling I should have stuck with the dvd version…for the nostalgia.

I only watched the first 20 minutes of Akira because it was already way past my bedtime but damn I love that movie. From the first time I saw it on a worn down VHS rental to today in its full Hi-def glory, it’s still just a wonderful and crazy experiance. The soundtrack so great even today with it’s supposed ‘hypersonic effect’ it stands up so well.

2658

Because of this I decided to give the show a try, wasn’t even going to look at it. Currently enjoying it more than Level E, or Fractale. We’ll see if it can beat out Wolverine or Beelzebub. Though I don’t think I’ll enjoy it more than Gosick, wayy to many panty shots so far.

Laugh out loud hilarious it is.

2659

Did the same, myself. Far more enjoyable than I expected based on the season previews I’d seen.

2660

Watched a whole bunch of first episodes last night and so far I’m liking Fractale best. Wandering Son was really beautifully put together, but I’m not sure how long a show about cross-dressing middle school kids can hold my interest.