I watched the original FMA first and brotherhood second. I liked the original series a lot more - I was really gripped by the first few episodes in the original. If I hadn’t see it, the brotherhood episodes would have been even less interesting.
Shonen and seinen are categories are not set in stone. I would say it’s more like a gradient. There are a few works that I would say are more less in between shonen and seinen, and FMA is one of them.
Hell, some seinen are very much like shonen works, point by point, but with added gore/sex (which ironically, it’s done for the teenager demographic).
I also vastly prefer the original series, aside from how Wrath is handled.
The Shounen/Seinen split, at least in the way its used in the West, is more of a function of which ‘magazine brand’ (i.e. DC vs Vertigo) they are printed on than a strict genre split.
For some reason they is also a tendency to lump all teen focused comics as Seinen even though in Japan they are usually part of a separate imprint (although it does seem like that word is being used to refer to a broader range of target ages than in the past in Japan as well) .
this isn’t entirely accurate, but to me Shounen equates roughly to PG or T and Seinen to R or M ratings.
I told you! It only gets better from now on.
Jesus. So it gets better after 15-20 weak episodes? I’m not sure if I have that kind of patience or time.
On the other hand, that’s better than what happened with Nana, which started off really good, and then turned into a horrible show later, once you’re already committed to watching it.
I suspect there are a lot of TV shows that got better over time; why not an Anime?
That’s a matter of opinion. One I’d imagine many of us don’t share. And as noted, some of us prefer the original series, which spends considerably more time on the early part of the story (they delve deeper into the early bits of the manga since it wasn’t finished at the time).
The original FMA didn’t use the crazy stylized emotional outbursts employed in Brotherhood, but over the top Alchemist fights are a lot of the appeal to both versions.
I didn’t really think either of the Full Metal Alchemist series was all that great. Certainly not terrible, just eh.
I just got around to watching Your Name (Kimi no Na wa.) What a beautiful movie. It might just be where I am in life, but it really felt like a bit of a gut punch that really got to me. Damn. I didn’t expect to have so much emotional resonance with well…anything. It reminds me of listening to Jeff Buckley at 3AM on a saturday night…
Glad you liked it! I’d suggest you watch two other movies by Makoto Shinkai, namely The Garden of Words and 5 Centimeters per Second. The latter particularly, while the one with the least production values (although you can clearly see a pretty well done “rehearsal” of the meteor shadow scene in Kimi no Na wa, only reversed), is the one that I thought was strongest thematically. The Garden of Words is technically a wonder - some of the scenes there are the most beautiful Shinkai has done so far, even eclipsing the otherwise more technically competent (and more expensive) Your Name. It’s also well worth watching for the story itself.
But yeah, Your Name does have a few gut punches. They’re not as strong as the ones in 5 Centimeters per Second, but they are more unexpected. It’s a great movie anyway, in many different ways.
That season 3 opening song has really grown on me over time. Watching this season through weekly episodes has been torture though. I wish I’d had the discipline to just wait and watch it all at once.
Maybe someone smarter will correct me, but it doesn’t actually sound auto-tuned to me, but that they are using a chorus effect. Not entirely dissimilar, and I can see where it might grate, but this one has grown on me as well.
On a side note, this is the lock screen on my new (old) phone:
This season’s theme song is the only one available on the App Store and I need a ringtone.
Maybe, maybe not. My first thought was Autotune, but its just as easy for me to say I hate pretty much any and all computerized voice modulation, so the actual post processing is irrelevant to me.
That’s fair.
As long as you don’t hate Hatsune Miku, I’m fine with that. ;)
I’m watching Kakegurui on Netflix.
It’s okay. The fan service / sexualization is basically table-stakes for a lot of modern anime, so I don’t have a lot to say about that. The art is deliberately distressing, which is kind of interesting.
The presentation makes it clear that it’s fairly critical of gambling (Jabami’s obsession with risk for it’s own sake is clearly pathologized) but that’s also kind of wrapped up in a more general critique of single minded obsession. There’s a contrast built between gambling as a means to an end vs. her compulsive risk-taking that muddies it a bit as well. It’s somewhat interesting to see the Shonen / High School anime form turned onto this topic with such clearly targeted social commentary though.
There’s an almost throwaway commentary on idol culture that was interestingly honest. An idol is revealed to be disgusted by her sweaty, mouth-breathing die-hard fans, which is assumed to be a career-ending revelation. Instead, they reply: “We still love you, you aren’t supposed to love us back.”
Again, fanservice aside, I enjoy the ending theme, which has a very steady drumbeat and clear escalation as the song progresses, mirrored by the visuals. It’s simple, but effective.
I haven’t been watching because I wait for the seasons to finish, but if this is the one:
Then it’s got a lot of vocal effects, and it’s been auto tuned, but with a great deal of restraint. Mostly it’s natural but there’s a few places where they put it to work to get the vocal effect, but I don’t think they actually needed it since he hits most of his other notes that they left alone pretty perfectly. I’ll give it another listen later on better hardware (because I have a problem, not because anyone wants me to, lol).