Anime' - Whatcha Watchin? (Is it good?)

I really wasn’t too fond of My Hero Academia. Don’t really like the lead character.

Thanks for the recommendation. I discovered Erased because of your high praise for it upthread, so I’m currently giving your recommendations a lot of weight. Looks like this one (My Hero Academia) is also on Hulu. My Hulu membership kicks in again in June, so I’ll try to check it out then.

Keep in mind this is a very different sort of show. It’s hard to describe, but I think @geewhiz is right. It taps into that part of us that wanted to be a superhero when they were a little kid.

If you aren’t averse to shows that skew a bit younger, worth giving it a go.

Edit: of stuff I’ve seen, I’d say it most resembles something like Gurren Lagann

I was not a fan of Erased. Its plot moves so very, very slowly, and when it did progress, it always felt like one step forward, one or more steps back. Slow plot progression is fine in slice-of-life series, but this is very much NOT that kind of series given the premise, so it’s just frustrating and annoying.

Today was the 20 yr anniversary of Utena. It still holds up really well.

I keep getting emails from Crunchyroll about Attack on Titan season 2, which has apparently started. I’m in no hurry to watch it. Maybe in a few months when the whole season has been released.

It seems this season is only going to be of 12 or 13 episodes.

First episode was good.

Same here. I’ll probably wait until the whole season is on Netflix like I did with Season 1.

Yes, and they must be expecting good things, because they’ve been running a bunch of 20th anniversary special edition box sets. And they’re making the packaging higher end too.

I know because I’ve been working on them ;)

Utena is one of those I’ve heard of many times but never seen.

It’s at the same time really cool and really strange. I can see that it would be strongly hit or miss for many people, especially with the old-fashioned stylized animation, the naive lesbian romance, and the true perversity that develops over time in certain key characters (which incidentally has nothing to do with gender preference). Generally I thought it was a lot of fun, charming, and interesting, too, but I was a little dismayed by the ending sequence of episodes.

If you watched and liked penguin drum, this is an older one that was a bit more awesome.

This continues to be an absolutely trippy show (I don’t read the manga, so I don’t know what’s coming). The art direction for titans, especially ‘running’, is truly disturbed/frightening. The Abnormal that shows up in this episode is one of the less freaky ones to the point that I laugh about it being the ‘abnormal’ one.

Getting pretty deep into Nana now. The show sure does take a very angst-ridden turn after Hachi meets Taco-Me. It turned from a light-hearted show into a pretty heavy one. Not that this is bad necessarily, just not what I expected, given the first 18 or so episodes. I’m around episode 28 now. Honestly the seeds for this were always there, now that I think about it. In the pilot episode we learned that Hachi’s first boyfriend was an older man with a wife. So the seeds for a low self-esteem turn had been laid in advance. But it still doesn’t feel good when you’re in the shit.

This show is definitely one of my favorites in a while. I love the japanese superhero manga/anime boom that is happening right now. I love the unique costumes/abilities and characters. Does a pretty good job of being humorous and serious. The main character isn’t whiny or super headstrong. Just a good kid, that you like, gifted with the greatest (possibly) superpower.

So, all in all, a very likeable show. Bones has been doing an excellent job with the animation work, per usual.

Glad to see it is back, though I worry it doesn’t have a lot to go on right now. I don’t know where the story goes from here.

I finished it as well, and I agree with this assessment 100%.

[details=Last Episode Spoilers]The biggest thing that bothered me is that at the end when they jump to the future, they don’t really tell us whether Nana is coming to their annual fireworks get-together.

That was what we were waiting to find out for the whole last ark of the show, whether or not the two Nanas would become friends again and be in each other’s lives or not. And whether or not they were was left completely up in the air, which is literally the ONLY thing I wanted to find out in that final episode. I don’t even care all that much about all the other relationships.[/details]

Yeah, Nana is unfinished. the author was supposed to try to continue it, but after she fell ill, she didn’t come back to it. So actually what we watch is not an ending, but the ending of an arc that was going to have stuff after it.

I think the mystery about where Nana is is not necessarily what you point out.

My guess is that something bad happened after the last episodes we see in the present and Nana is either sick, dead or just mysteriously gone. the attitude of everybody in the “future” seems to support this is not just her refusing to come, but I might have read too much into it or missed an important point. It’s sad that we don’t get to see the real ending.

I finally watched it maybe 2 years ago only. I used the following guide for end-of-episode critique (like reading Cole’s Notes):


It was like studying English Lit, or something similar for TV/movies. Highly recommended. If you tell me that Utena is the best put-together show of all time, I’d believe it. (Or, it could be the most pretentious. Dunno…)

I’ve been watching a lot of Ghost in the Shell. Re-watched the first movie a few weeks ago. Always watch that one every few years or so. Wouldn’t say I love it, but I do enjoy getting sucked into the world. I watched the sequel Innocence last night. The first time I watched Innocence years ago I was bored and wondering where the Major was the whole time. I appreciated it more this time around since the first movie was still fresh in my mind, but it was still merely okay. Love the way it looks however, and Batou and Togusa are always awesome together.

Between those two movies I watched the first season of Stand Alone Complex. I hadn’t seen any episodes since I watched them on Adult Swim a decade or so ago. Back then I enjoyed the series, but I never had a good grip on the overarching story due to seeing episodes from both seasons out of order. Now, seeing everything in order I fell in love with it. I had to marathon the last few episodes of the first season it got so good. I started 2nd GIG last night and it’s off to a great start.

I like how the series really expects you to pay attention. I like to read forum posts of each episode and it’s interesting to see what confused people. Sometimes if you miss a line of dialogue you’ll get lost. Other scenes you have to come to your own conclusions because they don’t spell everything out for you which I really like.

Finished up watching 2nd GIG of Ghost in the Shell, so good. Hard to say which season I liked more. Season two had awesome villains with Kuze and Gouda, and I liked the storyline quite a bit, though all the politics wore me out a bit. I liked the stand alone episodes more in season one I think, but there were some great ones in season two. Wish we could have gotten a Borma or Ishikawa-centric episode, but the Saito episode “Poker Face” kicked ass. Followed it up with the movie Solid State Society which I thought was real good while watching it, but now I can’t really remember a thing about it except for this one tense part with Togusa.

Then I watched Arise and The New Movie. Blehhh, I should have watched this before Stand Alone Complex. First off, the character designs are total shit. I loved how visually defined the characters were in SAC. There were some issues with the Major in the first season, but she looked great in the second. Arise on the other hand, the characters looked hideous to me. I did get mostly used to them by the end of the series, but I was constantly comparing the characters to how they were in SAC. They made my boy Saito some kill hungry mercenary that sleeps all the time. Batou is just sort of there where in SAC he was like the most relatable character. The storylines felt really convoluted and confusing. Also they are constantly paying homage to the original movie as well as SAC, so much so that it got distracting. There was a lot of rehashing old ideas that were explored in the earlier series. I think the episodes were mostly entertaining enough, but pretty mediocre compared to SAC. I will say that the Pyrophoric Cult episodes and The New Movie were both legitimately good though. I think I’ll likely revisit the movie at some point, possibly the series too to see if I don’t get as lost.

Finally, I watched Paranoia Agent. Another anime I remember seeing years ago on Adult Swim, I remember that opening theme being very memorable and that along with the Berserk soundtrack are what led me to diving into Susumu Hirasawa’s discography. As for the series itself, I was quite disappointed with it. It’s 13 episodes long which made me think there would be a really well developed smoothly paced story, but no. I really wanted to like this series, I absolutely love Satoshi Kon’s Paprika and his other stuff like Perfect Blue were pretty entertaining. This series though was rather frustrating. They spend several episodes introducing this mystery along with the cast of characters, and then they hit the brakes on everything and start showing these filler episodes with new characters that are only in that single episode and the main plot goes nowhere. They finally get back to the main characters and story only to give a disappointing reveal and wrap up. Don’t think I’ll be watching this one again. I did however love episode 8 “Happy Family Planning.” It’s one of the filler episodes, but after you watch it once you’ll want to go back and find all the clues that you totally missed the first time.

Not sure what else I’ll watch next. Oh, I’ve also been watching the newest season of Berserk. I enjoy it, but I know that series like the back of my hand so I don’t really get hyped for it as much as new stuff.