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

Hah, nice, will have to check it out. Wife will be amused I am sure. Hopefully it fares better than every other childhood cartoon I ever tried to rewatch.

Well, my kids sure enjoyed watching it with me. Unlike, say, Robotech.

I have a free 48 hour Crunchyroll pass if anyone wants it (PM me).

It states no credit card needed YMMV.

Your Name will be available on Netflix Brasil on December 6th. I’m jumping up and down. Woot!

For such is the fate of parody: it must never fear exaggerating. If it strikes home, it will only prefigure something that others will then do without a smile–and without a blush–in steadfast virile seriousness.

Brr…

Anything by Satoshi Kon (RIP), with the caveat that his four films are quite different from each other:

  • Perfect Blue is a psychological thriller about a pop-star-turned-actress who thinks she’s being stalked; but for much of the film it’s not clear what’s real and what’s just her (possibly paranoid) imagination. Blurring the lines between dreams, imagination, and reality is a recurring motif in Kon’s work, so get used to it.
  • Millennium Actress is also about an actress (duh), but it’s more of a faux-biopic as she’s interviewed in her twilight years, with heavy use of flashbacks and again blurring the lines between her real life and her fictional roles.
  • Tokyo Godfathers is the most conventional; it’s loosely based on the novel The Three Godfathers. Three homeless people find an abandoned baby on Christmas Eve in Tokyo; they search for the child’s parents while looking after it. Along the way, we learn about the main protagonists’ backstories and their screwy quasi-familial relationships. Just a gorgeous, charming little tale - and hey, just in time for Christmas viewing!
  • Paprika is…man, after a decade I’m still not sure how to describe it. In simplest terms, I guess it’s a crime film: a MacGuffin has been stolen from three scientists who try to get it back, along with a police inspector. But the MacGuffin lets the user record dreams and even enter people’s minds; and that’s where things get really trippy. It’s everything Kon learned about blurring reality dialed to 11.
    https://i.imgur.com/SEZGDK4.mp4

Also pretty much anything by Studio Ghibli - particularly Hayao Miyazaki - is worth checking out. Much of it could be considered family-friendly kids’ fare…and then there’s Grave of the Fireflies. If children’s fairy tales and depressing war films aren’t your thing, I would check out Only Yesterday and From Up on Poppy Hill.

I’m not personally a fan of Makoto Shinkai’s films, but I know a lot of people are, so consider checking out his work. His latest film Your Name just came out on US home video and has a 97% RT rating. I do like Mamoru Hosoda’s films; so far my favorite is The Boy and The Beast.

I just watched Your Name (finally!). What a lovely, lovely movie.

Interesting. Care. To elaborate? For me this one was a big let down after Wolf Children and The Girl Who Leaped Through Time (the former being perhaps my favorite anime movie so far). Not that I disliked it, but it felt more pedestrian in the plot, like it is was made to create cool animation sequences first and a story later (I feel this way about Spirited Away too, so maybe it’s something about that particular setup and me).

I watched Orange recently and enjoyed it. Not so much the romance aspects, which I thought were generic and uninspired, or even the time travel, which was very hand-wavy and basically just a background plot device. But all that was more than made up for by the way that the show portrayed someone dealing with guilt and depression and how much difference it can make when the people around him notice.

Note to self: Watch Food Wars Season 3, which is now finished at 12 episodes (short season it seems). And watch Orange, which is now finished at 13 episodes.

Thanks for that, I thought Food Wars was going through Winter (early 2018 season) with this season and I was waiting too. Time to watch!

Just remember that the second set of 12 episodes is starting in April.

It is? Damn, this article lead me astray.

Ack! Thanks. I thought I’d seen another 12 episodes lined up. :(

They can call it a fourth season if they want, but it’s part of a single plotline and might as well just be a single set with a three month break in the middle.

Just be duly cautioned accordingly.

Thanks for the info! How much of a cliffhanger is the last episode that’s aired so far? Is it a good breaking point?

It’s a decent breaking point. Some revelation drama and hints of an escalation in the main plotline that I’m being intentionally vague about. I wouldn’t personally call it a massive cliffhanger, but I’m also not the type to wait until something is over so I can marathon it, so my point of view might be a bit skewed.

No I’m ok with catching up as long as I know I’m not getting into a situation where I’m on edge for months waiting.

Thanks!

Just finished up three series:

Black Lagoon - This was a rewatch, but I had never seen Roberta’s Blood Trail which came after season 2. I really like this series and it had been so long since I’ve seen it, it was practically like seeing it for the first time. I love how each story arc is around 3 episodes, makes binge-watching the series easy. I thought the second season ended weakly, but Roberta’s Blood Trail OVA made up for it. I usually think live-action adaptations of anime are a bad idea, but I’d be all in if this was made into one.

Inuyashiki - Episode 2 was brutal as hell, but that is the darkest part of the series. Pretty simple story, but they did some interesting things with it. The ending was pretty weak and felt abrupt, but I enjoyed the ride up to it. That OP is pretty catchy too.

Made in Abyss - This has been on a lot of top anime lists of 2017 so I gave it a chance and I’m glad I did. I loved this one from the first episode. Excellent concept and characters, the artwork and world building are superb. I really dug the OST and the voice acting. Ozen’s character especially I loved listening to. Watching this felt almost like playing Link to the Past for the first time, with the feeling of adventure it gave me. Inuyashiki answered everything and left me unsatisfied, Made in Abyss left me with a bunch of questions, yet somehow satisfied. Highly recommend this one, looking forward to next season.