You quoted the wrong part ShivaX!
And with that sentence, Dingus nullified all my recommendations too.
Sorry!
It’s just that Miyazaki is about the only Japanese animation that I know. I have a friend who works for Disney and she got me a lot of his work when Disney started working with Miyazaki (if you want to call it that). So I feel like I have a handle on the types of things he is doing in animation.
Thing is, I think of things like Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away or Howl’s Moving Castle, or any of them really, as somehow separate from anime. Or my biases of what anime is. I realize I need to be disabused of that assumption, and I need other examples of these worlds to help me with that.
So thank you, and @ShivaX, for bringing them up. I’m just looking to get some other tastes in order to be less ignorant.
-xtien
@arrendek has it. seriously. Listen to him.
Og that list I would really recommend:
Your Name (amazing)
Wolf Children (one of my favorite movies ever, no matter the genre. This one is the most touching take on parenthood I have ever seen)
Grave of the Fireflies (see above, only this is more about loss. And really sad. Really, really sad. Most people describe it as the saddest movie they have seen. I woulnd’t go that far, but it is afecting)
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (more “anime” as commonly understood -High school, magic, a little bit like YOur Name then. Same director as Wolf Children)
Time of Eve
Tokyo Godfathers (for me the best Satoshi Kon movie -you being a film buff might also greatly enjoy Millennium Actress, which has a LOT of film references-. This one’s a Frank Capra movie through the lenses of contemporary Japan. Really good)
Unless he has Plex. :P
So is it any good? My take on it is probably not uncommon in general. It came out around the same time as Sword Art Online, which I tried to watch and got sick of before the end of Season 1. People said Log Horizon wasn’t as good as SAO. So I never watched it.
Is it worth giving it a shot? Is it better than SAO?
I realizing you basically already answered my question by saying you’re watching it for the third time. I’m just wondering if you could expound a bit.
Interesting different set of opinions among the people we’ve each heard from. I haven’t watched either, but basically every time I’ve seen someone mention Log Horizon, it’s been framed as “it’s like Sword Art Online except actually good.”
I really liked SAO until the point they made Asuna a helpless damsel in distress.
I’d say the first season of Log Horizon is better across the board. The second season of Log Horizon wasn’t nearly as good. The creator of the series got into a major tax evasion issue. That’s been resolved, I think, but don’t believe there has been any word on a new season and no new light novels have been released since 2015.
Thanks guys for feedback. Still doesn’t sound like a must watch to me but let me know if I’m not “getting it”.
@ChristienMurawski I didn’t see the thread about the movie fundraiser thing since I don’t follow your guys’ movie podcasts. Are you guys watching Redline? Is that right?
To prepare for that consider watching something like a few episodes of Gurran Lagann.
Yeah, I wouldn’t rank Log Horizon as a “must watch” by any measure, but it’s one of the better shows in the “regular people get sucked into a fantasy world” subgenre that’s all the rage these days. I’d put something like Re:Zero above it, and SAO comfortably below it.
@ChristienMurawski to go into something totally different than Miyazaki, i’m going to recommend you watch the 3 Berserk movies, its more mature and gory than most anime, and it has some weird CGI that is hard to get used to, but its totally different than any other anime and i liked it alot.
I warn you tho, the movies end in a cliffhanger, since it’s the first arc of the manga.
I actually watched SAO before Log Horizon, and it made me retroactively hate SAO.
SAO is relentlessly one-note compared to Log Horizon. In SAO the story focuses almost entirely on the impossibly-talented yet dull protagonist, and nearly everything anyone does is directed toward beating floors of the dungeon and escaping so you won’t DIE FOR REAL. The whole affair is just an angsty, dreary slog.
Log Horizon differs from the above in several critical ways. There’s a clear protagonist, but there’s a much stronger ensemble cast than SAO, with the side characters getting generous screen time. The MMO they’re stuck in is not a VR game, so everyone suddenly finding themselves fully immersed in it is an extra level of WTF all the characters have to deal with. When you die, you just resurrect. Nobody knows how they got trapped in the MMO-like world, so while escaping is on their minds, it’s not the singular goal. Instead the series is driven by discovering what it’s like to actually live in this world. Tonally, it’s much more light-hearted than SAO, and you can tell it was written by someone who really plays and loves MMOs… the sometimes stupid character names, the silly ways people dress themselves, etc.
Final point toward Log Horizon-- one the best opening themes ever.
Well the thing is… movies are kind of separate from anime from that viewpoint. Most anime movies aren’t very anime. You tend to not get the tropes and “anime stuff” in them, unless they’re a movie of a series or something. If you want to expand your view of anime you’re pretty much going to have to hit up a series of some sort imo.
Database, database, we’re living in the database whoa oh…
It doesn’t even matter if there is no hope, as the madness of the system grows…
A recent favorite opening. It just makes me happy every time I hear it:
Oh, we’re sharing great openings?
Easily my two favorites.
That GitS: SAC opening. I hated the 3d, but that song. Holy shit. I knew I was down for watching the whole season right then the first time I heard it.
Yuri on Ice. The first time I saw the intro I didn’t like it much. By the 3rd or 4th time I was singing along at full volume.
Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei has a great song, even if they don’t do anything with it
How fucking creepy is the opening from Paranoia Agent
Nichijou
Serial Experiments Lain
Cowboy Bebop has the one of the best openings of all time though :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw3fN3OPk3A
That would be Yoko Kanno, just like Bebop. All I wanted from the movie was new music. 🐼
Have I posted this AMV lately?
Anyway, apart from the great music in Cowboy Bebop and GitS, I also like the opening themes to Samurai Gun, Soul Eater (first season), Texnolyze (Juno Reactor), Area 88, and Revolutionary Girl Utena (though I like the battle songs better still). Also like pretty much all the music in Noir.
Holy fuck. I had no idea. She also did the Uncharted Waters (video game) soundtrack. I’m in love.