Also, do watch Wolf Children. Makoto Shinaki (Your Name) and Mamoru Hosoda (Wolf Childrne) are the new Japanese masters, in my mind overtaking Miyazaki (also, because their themes are more contemporary and relevant to modern life).
So, just watched all of “Made in Abyss” in the last 24 hours.
Well, that was really good. Late to the party, I know, but wow. It is on Amazon Prime.
The pacing isn’t great, things slow down a ton near the end, but the world building and production values are just next level. Very good.
Yay, more Made in Abyss love. That was my favorite from last year, still listen to that soundtrack. Hoping season 2 is coming soon.
Woah, the third season of Attack on Titan is already out (it came out in the summer of 2018). Did I miss that news in this thread? I had no idea the break between seasons would be so short this time.
Now I just have to wait until I subscribe to Hulu or VRV to see it. I think that will be in either February or March.
I am three episodes into Sword Art Online and I don’t understand why this is popular. So far it’s just very loosely connected vignettes, and the premise of being in a game is barely alluded to and on the couple occasions they tell you anything about the mechanics of that game it sounds boring as fuck (so the fact that there are like six tie-in games on Steam is a little baffling). (Also they haven’t, e.g., explained how people have survived being stuck in the game for a fuckin’ year already when it doesn’t do anything to maintain your physical body, it’s just a VR rig.) Does it ever start telling an ongoing story? What am I here for?
This is exactly how I felt about Log Horizon. I haven’t tried Sword Art Online, and probably won’t.
OTOH, I don’t know if this makes a difference, but someone mentioned upthread that SAO changes a lot after the first 12 episodes. But they were saying it changed in a way they didn’t like.
I’ve found LitRPG novels to be a guilty pleasure (they’re not usually immensely well told, but it scratches a certain something in my brain) and thought maybe SAO or its ilk would be a similar experience and/or have inspired the subgenre. But the things that work for me about LitRPG are the advancement and empowering of the protagonist through game mechanics and the exploitation of much-deeper-than-real-MMOs simulation and mechanics to achieve great things. And SAO doesn’t care about the procedural elements of its premise basically at all as far as I can tell and if anything its game seems dramatically shallower than real MMOs. :/
That does get explained later, but I can tell you we loved the first half of that season and hated the second half, so you might just want to bag it now.
If you do just watch the first season and then pretend it ended.
If memory serves, it took no more than two episodes of the first season to pretend it all ended. Maybe only one, but I can’t be bothered to go back and figure out which it was.
Definitely leaning towards bailing, then. :p
High Score Girl popped over on Netflix.
It is the year 1991. The game is Street Fighter II. A 13 year old boy loves video games. He is defeated by a quiet girl from his class. They develop a friendship through a shared love of video games.
It’s a mix of nostalgia and very accurate video game depictions. They draw the screens interlaced. They talk about cheese tactics. They don’t overdo it thought, and the main drama is important. I think it’s The Wonder Years with video games. Try it, you may like it.
Baki, The Most Evil Death Row Convicts Saga is on Netflix and it’s everything I ever wanted out of an anime
- fighting, lots of it
- emphasis on styles
- over the top but without the city sized energy blasts of OPM or DB
- infoverts interrupting the action to explain some of the daft stuff going on in the fight.
Oh, and nearly everyone is a bit of overly violent and brutal dick. The good guys are barely good guys at all, but its totally unapologetic about it.
Going to have to find some of the earlier stuff now too. Especially the tournament. I did catch a clip on youtube on the fight between Baki and the guy who pulled out veins and tendons with a finger from one of the previous releases.
Finally got around to watching this myself. It makes a great first impression, but I too wonder how long the joke will hold up.
I should probably also catch up with Attack on Titan, which I fell off after a dozen episodes or so.
There is way more forward motion and expansion on the concept in One Punch Man than Attack on Titan. FWIW.
I will temporarily remove my vouch for Slime.
In theory they have a lot of story to deliver from the manga. I believe that means they can deliver a interesting history.
But I can’t give a pass to how uninspiring and generic has been the latest episode. Both from a storytelling and visual quality.
I started rewatching Legend of the Galactic Heroes, because I am not capable of making compromises and watch mediocre stuff at the moment.
The original? I’m 10 eps into my first viewing of it on Hi-Dive.
First episode of season 2 of Mob Psycho 100 was fantastic.
Also watched the first episode of Lord El-Melloi Case Files and it was really good too. Nothing like the usual Fate stuff, so far.
The original. But I watched the new version until the end of the first season. Some things are a improvement, but others kind not much. The original had weird faces and thats a plus when you have a serie about so many different people (make it easier to remember a character when have a funny face)
Yeah, I’m kinda bummed how we have to wait so long for the rest. Fate without the Holy Grail War can still manage to be refreshing even after most of the rest of the franchise has been run into the ground.
If you like Baki check out JoJo as well, they are different but similar.