War of Dragons recently up on Netflix, story wise it’s not as good as Thunderbolt Fantasy but I still like watching the glove puppetry. Here’s a bunch of Pili characters doing the bottle cap challenge.
Watched From the New World recently on Crunchyroll, and largely enjoyed it. The slow-reveal-of-the-world plot style worked really well with the future dystopia world-building, in my opinion. Some of the interpersonal relation stuff was pretty contrived, and there were a few episodes they could have cut without losing anything significant, but overall I thought it was fairly well done.
This is beyond senseless and absolutely devastating to me. KyoAni has worked on some of my favorite series over the last fifteen years, and some jackass wandered in with gasoline and a lighter and burned down one of their buildings, killing a significant portion of their employees in one act of shitheaddery. What a way to start the day. I can only imagine what it must be like for the families of the victims, and am hoping that death toll doesn’t count any higher than the horrendous total they already have.
RIP the great artisst we have lost. A enormous tragedy. Apparently it was caused by a mentally ill person that through the studio was copying his work.
No offsite backups or archives it seems. All is lost, paper and digital.
Death toll up to 33, apparently.
Last I heard it’s at 34 after an additional person died in hospital today.
Such a shame. My daughter is really broken up about it.
[via Google Translate]
On the 29th, Kyoto Animation revealed that it was able to collect data from a server that escaped fire in the first studio where there was an arson murder case. It was said that it contained digitized original images.
The server was on the ground floor of a completely burned 3-story studio. It seems that they were not damaged by being in a room covered with concrete on all sides and were not affected by water from fire fighting.
For this reason, the company pulled out data when working with the cooperation of experts. The company’s agent, Dr. Daisuke Shibata, said, “The data recorded on the server has been recovered without loss. We sincerely thank the dedicated professionals for their dedication.” .
A tiny, tiny comfort given the horror that happened. At least these people’s life works are preserved now in some way.
Kengan Ashura is on paper, something I would like. It’s like an OTT martial arts number like Baki, Fist of the North Star and the like, although in this case the protagonist has his hair a little longer than Baki or Ken so its overmuscledbrucelee look is totally different amirite. So i’m enjoying the long fights, the style tropes, and really enjoy the pauses and informercial bits where they spend an age explaining a style or why a character is so fast or his fingers so strong but the actual premise is absolute nonsense.
Usually fights are tournaments and its about revenge or a big prize or being the best but this is merely that gladiator deathmatches are a normal part of corporate practice, and all companies have fighters killing each other so they nominate chairmen of business associations, and everything outside the fights is full of corporate culture and salaryman references.
So is representing a Life Insurance company worth getting your tendons pulled out by some guy who just got a finger strength training montage and some x-ray shots of the finer detail? Well you can find out in the adventures of an unlikeable dick and his hysterical and repulsive salaryman manager. The fighting is good though, that’s why Im up to Episode 7.
I watched a bunch of RWBY.
I had previously heard of it, but didn’t have much interest: “a waifu anime from the guys who did funny Halo videos? Sign me up!” Also, the first season is unconscionably ugly. Like, a company should have been ashamed to release that as a consumer entertainment product in 2013 ugly. Like, CG that looks worse than Reboot ugly. I actually recommend people watch the first episode just to experience how bad it is.
But, it’s character showed up in BlazBlue CrossTag Battle, which means it’s must have some cred somewhere?
There is something there (mostly the fight sequences, which is where all the animation effort went), and by season 3 it looks as good as a low budget kids TV show, so that’s something. The whole thing is just a playground for character (i.e. weapon/ fighting style) designs, and they’re clever and inventive. It makes sense the characters ended up in a fighting game, as that’s really the overarching aesthetic. I gather the fandom is super into people creating their own original characters with that style. The world is neat even if the writing is a bit lackluster. So, it does a lot right.
I’m considering starting a standalone thread for it. There’s a lot going on there, and I think it might someday end up in the general company of The Last Airbender as a Western anime classic (RWBY owes a lot to AtLA -among many other influences, and knows it). But the start is so ugly, and the pacing throughout is super weird…it’s just a weird lumpy thing overall.
Something something social commentary?
I saw the first three season. The music of RWBY really helps sell it for me.
Also, the Food Fight!
I think I might have started an RWBY thread in the past…
And I did not. So, start one up! I have a lot of catching up to do, but I would read it.
Yeah, they do a good job with that. It’s part of their fighting-game-music-video-fight-scene-first aesthetic that really works.
They also understand the importance of a very stupid opening theme song for an anime.
Seasons 1-5 are free on Amazon Prime video.
Sweet! I am watching the some more!
And not so sweet, I was already caught up. I thought I was several seasons behind. Turns out, I had watched all up to season 6. So, I will have to wait for season 6 to come out.
Carole & Tuesday just arrived on Netflix yesterday. Looks like a slice-of-life thing with a hint of sci-fi/cyberpunk. I heard good things about it. Anyone here going to watch?
It’s just the first half of it, and I think it has a strong start but quickly begins to fall off as you get closer to that halfway point. There’s very little of what I would consider “cyberpunk” in the more modern sense, but the whole show takes place on Mars and is wrapped around the idea of AI’s prevalence in society so there are definitely certain elements of it at work.
The series has a severe identity crisis that it looks like it will never manage to shake off. One minute it’s a slice of life/coming of age story about two young people of different backgrounds trying to make it together in the world of music, the next (minor overall plot details blurred) it’s a parody of the “American Idol” era that overstays its welcome, and then it decides to layer on a very bland political storyline for some reason I can’t quite fathom.
The music’s nice and the supporting cast is fun, for sure. I’m just bummed out it isn’t really demonstrating any other significant strengths in my book.
Even if I don’t end up watching the show, I enjoyed reading about the tech the showed during the show:
I like that the Microsoft Surface table will make a comeback in the future on Mars fast food places.
I saw the whole season of Cannon Busters. It… Wasn’t worth watching.
Canon Busters had potential, certainly, but while it wouldn’t got that far (to say it wasn’t worth watching) it was certainly a disappointment. My daughter and I believe the season would have been considerably better if the prince (and all the stuff about his home, including the big bad) didn’t ever show up during the first season.