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Freehold DM wrote: HOLY S%$! *drool*
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World's youngest ass kicker
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What's up, guys?
Seems awfully quiet up in this piece.... so let's see what we can do to get some action going on here.
Submitted for the awesome One Piece X Avengers art.
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Well, personally, I'm immensely enjoying Re: Zero this season. XD I haven't seen a show with that particular quirk done this well in quite some time, and it's (unexpectedly) my favorite show of the season.
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I've just started watching Kabeneri of the Iron Fortress and My Hero Academia and have been enjoying both so far. Also took the time to watch Overlord and God Eater as well finishing up both Ajin: Demi-Human and Seven Deadly Sins. Need to catch up on Dragon Ball Super, Sailor Moon Crystal, and Ushio and Tora, mainly due to helping a relative of mine expand their anime viewing (he was hooked with Fairy Tail, Hunter X Hunter, and Wakfu).
And of course, I'm counting down to the release of the new Berserk series coming out in less than six weeks.
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Kabaneri is basically AoT this season. I like it better than AoT, with the world building being the star. The plot is seeming to go somewhere as of episode 5, but I can't stand Ikoma. So annoyingly shounen protag it hurts. mumei is ok as long as she's interacting with civvies but gets boring the moment she starts fighting and going all emo.
I'd probably drop it if not for the fact that my girlfriend wants her weekly shounen fix.
Sakamoto desu ga? is funny. CLAMP-style glasses bishounen being ridiculously cool and impressive while people around him try to to ruin things for him.
Tanaka-kun wa itsumo kedaruge is an amusing show about a really listless/lazy guy, his best bud, and the overly energetic people who for some reason want to hang around him. Best bromance since Ore Monogatari's Takeo and Suna.
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I am watching Macross Delta and I love the setting. VERY Macross with the singing as well.
Also watching Gundam Unicorn totally UC awesome... Even though that typical Gundam sexism moment is coming and I know it... Where the girl has to die to motivate the boy.
I am liking Haifuri. Half WWII naval lesson and half weird mystery all wrapped in a high school drama.
I stopped watching Kananeri of the Iron Fortress. It started as a cool survival zombie horror, but it has mutated into a generic Japanese super team saves everyone show with unlikable characters. Yawn.
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Adventure Path Charter Subscriber
I've long been of the opinion that the absence of something good in a show doesn't necessarily make it a bad show. There's a difference between an actual instance of failure, in any particular regard, and simply not doing something very well. That's the difference between a series that's genuinely bad versus those that are forgettable in their mediocrity.
This latter category is how I would categorize Linebarrels of Iron (Kurogane no Linebarrel). (I should also note that, in the English title, there really doesn't seem like there should be an "s" in "Linebarrels." That's because not only is there no such sound in the original Japanese, but the actual Linebarrel in the show is unique. But I digress.)
A twenty-four episode series, Linebarrels takes place in the extremely near future. It begins when a perpetually-bullied young man, Kouichi Hayase, is killed when a giant mech falls out of the sky and crushes him. Resurrected by the guilt-stricken (and very beautiful) female pilot, Kouichi finds that his newfound lease on life has not made him into the pilot of that mech - the eponymous Linebarrel - and in doing so dragged him into a war that's just breaking out between KATO-KIKAN (a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world) and a small group fighting against them.
While the initial premise isn't anything to write home about, it's the execution where the series really fails to deliver. I enjoyed the fact that, once Kouichi finds out how much power he's been given, it almost immediately goes to his head, resulting in him lashing out at anyone who opposes him, regardless of the collateral damage, while pontificating about justice. That struck me as more interesting than his instantly becoming an archetypal hero.
Unfortunately, the show never develops that - or really much of anything - to its full potential. Once Kouichi is made to realize the error of his ways, the show largely develops into a situational comedy with periodic action/adventure breaks. Virtually every cliché you can imagine is utilized, such as the villain who self-confidently says that everything is going according to plan no matter what setbacks he suffers, the hero unlocking new powers with his mech when he becomes utterly enraged, several female characters all pining for Kouichi in their own way (the tsundere leading lady, the spitfire female mech pilot, the warm and caring other female pilot, the childhood friend who's good at cooking, etc.), and even a beach episode with a giant octopus monster.
The worst of these is with characters dying (or about to die), only to be revealed to actually have survived/be rescued/be resurrected later on. That particular bait-and-switch is pulled on us several times over the series, to the point where it becomes more unexpected for characters to actually stay dead (which only happens rarely).
The end result is a series that feels not so much bad as simply paint-by-numbers, and so is rightly overshadowed by other series that have done it better. I read on Wikipedia that the anime for this took a large number of creative liberties from the original manga, and while I haven't read the manga, the anime doesn't seem to have benefitted from having gone so far astray from the source material.
Ultimately, Linebarrels of Iron is such a low-impact show that it's not only not very good, but isn't even very bad, either. It's just sorta there, and can be overlooked with absolutely nothing noteworthy being missed for having done so.
TriOmegaZero wrote: Trying to decide if I'll watch the dub with Mrs TOZ or not. Mrs. Toz? You have to get her a handle on this board. I can see it now... posts by Lady TriOmegaZero... or MS.TOZ.
Oh, she doesn't post here. She's the smart one.
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One of the characteristics of many harem shows is that they don't feature an actual harem, per se. That is, they typically feature a cast of three or more girls (having only two is a love triangle, rather than a harem) simultaneously competing for the same guy, rather than a featuring a stable polyamorous relationship between one guy and multiple girls.
Magika Swordsman and Summoner (Magika No Kenshi To Shoukan Maou) is one of the latter.
Magika is a light novel series with eleven volumes to date, and is ongoing. While there is a manga adaptation (which is receiving an official English translation), there's no anime that I'm aware of. At least, not yet. That said, the light novels have been translated into English via the fan community.
Set in the near future, Magika features a world where magic has come back, and completely changed everything. Everyone has at least some magic power, which can be used for defensive purposes, which is important because magic pretty much always trumps non-magic, making things like guns useless. Beyond mere physical enhancement, however, is summoning magic - the ability to bond with an astral entity (virtually always a god or spirit from a mythology), that allows for the use of stronger magical abilities. Only a few people have this, all of them women (since women naturally have greater magical affinity than men).
As a result of this, every country has exalted those who contract with its native mythology, becoming theocracies. The sole exception is Japan, where rather than the native mythology, the summoners contract with the spirits of the Lesser Key of Solomon.
It's against this backdrop that we meet Kazuki Hayashizaki, the only male to receive a summoning contract. Moreover, his contracted spirit isn't one that's among the seventy-two spirits that form the Pillars of Solomon.
It's not a spoiler to reveal that Kazuki's contracted spirit, Leme, is actually the incarnation of the Lemegeton (e.g. Lesser Key of Solomon) itself, as this forms the central premise of the series; Leme lets Kazuki use the powers of up to seventy-two other spirits, but his ability to do so is entirely dependent on how the girls contracted to those spirits feel about him. In essence, his power is directly tied to how many girls are in his harem, and how they feel about him.
It's this contextualization that really helps to ground the series, in terms of making everything adhere to the internal logic it presents. Kazuki, for example, is initially extremely leery of being a "harem king" - as Leme terms him - but given that summoners are needed to fight magic beasts (e.g. animals that have gained too much magic power and mutated) and rogue summoners, he quickly comes to realize that he needs to establish himself with multiple girls if he wants to have enough power to do anything.
Moreover, the eleven volumes (and counting) give the series enough room to spread this contextualization to other areas that a tighter focus would be hard-pressed to answer, such as why Japan's summoners don't use the native Japanese mythology, what mythology America's summoners use, or even what really constitutes a "mythology" in the first place and how that relates to these astral entities. There's some well-considered world-building here, even though it's doled out in small bits over the whole of the novels.
While I wouldn't go quite so far as to call the series lighthearted, it's far from being grim. The adventure portions of the series do stray into drama and tension with credible ability, for example. But the series never loses sight of the fact that it's home is in the harem genre. Even leaving aside the illustrations being focused primarily on beautiful girl after beautiful girl, the series placed a great deal of focus on Kazuki meeting new girls and increasing his "positivity level" - a handy numerical ranking that Leme gives him that lets him see what girls like him and how much - with them.
Overall, Magika is not just one of the better harem series around, but can credibly be called one of the best. Its adventure-focus means that it never gets completely lost in the sexy hijinks, while keeping said hijinks at the narrative forefront of the story and developing them as things progress (by the last couple of novels, Kazuki's relationship with the girls with the highest positivity level are very nearly pornographic). If you're a fan of harem stories, this one should definitely go in your reading list.
Here4daFreeSwag wrote:
Of course, when folks think of tokusatsu, they tend to envision more along the lines of this and that.
The latter of the above "that" was supposed to refer to this further (or more of this could be substituted instead as a brief audio-visual example).
*****
And for those who made it through that grammatical mess... the line between anime and tokusatsu can get even more blurred.
P.S. For the overtly curious, references were made to this, that, these, and those- for completeness sake.
Here4daFreeSwag wrote:
The Non-Fanservicey Hand Giveth: The Daughter of 20 Faces; from Orphan to Action-Girl, Gentlemen Rogues and their Entourage, a lesser-known Bones production.
More of that obscure Bones anime with post-WW2 intrigue and capers, The Daughter of 20 Faces.
Coming Soon
the reutrn of Future Trunks
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Bjørn Røyrvik wrote: Kabaneri is basically AoT this season. I like it better than AoT, with the world building being the star. The plot is seeming to go somewhere as of episode 5, but I can't stand Ikoma. So annoyingly shounen protag it hurts. mumei is ok as long as she's interacting with civvies but gets boring the moment she starts fighting and going all emo.
I'd probably drop it if not for the fact that my girlfriend wants her weekly shounen fix.
Given that people refer to this show as Steampunk AoT and then talk down about Ikoma like he's Eren, it's a wonder that I didn't post this sooner.
New DBSuper Trunks saga begins this weekend
with video preview
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So.... who has watched the new Neflix Voltron reboot by Dreamworks and the Avatar guys(producers and animation studio both)?
If not. Do so. Right now.
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SAMAS wrote: So.... who has watched the new Neflix Voltron reboot by Dreamworks and the Avatar guys(producers and animation studio both)?
If not. Do so. Right now.
It was pretty damn good. short and Cliffhanger ending, but good.
Princess started out sort "generic Elven Princess" but evolved nicely in a much more complex and powerful character as the story progressed.
I like the Pidge reveal
and (unlike some people) I like the whole Shiro, Kieth, Lance dynamic.
Plus ... Evil Space Druids
Can't wait for season 2
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SAMAS wrote: So.... who has watched the new Neflix Voltron reboot by Dreamworks and the Avatar guys(producers and animation studio both)?
If not. Do so. Right now.
I loved it.
CANNOT WAIT for next season.
Freehold DM wrote: SAMAS wrote: So.... who has watched the new Neflix Voltron reboot by Dreamworks and the Avatar guys(producers and animation studio both)?
If not. Do so. Right now.
I loved it.
CANNOT WAIT for next season. Note to self...
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TriOmegaZero wrote: Oh, she doesn't post here. She's the smart one. A reporter once asked Barbara Bush on her 90th birthday if she was going to jump out of a plain like her husband did on his 90th. Her response:
"He's the crazy one."
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So the Lion Voltron has become interesting for reasons other than the visuals of the robots?
I was a vehicle Voltron fan - drawn in because the first episode I saw had them destroy the monster of the week without resorting to the blazing sword, then I realized that it had a much more involved plot than the other - at least for what was shown on American TV.
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Grey Lensman wrote: So the Lion Voltron has become interesting for reasons other than the visuals of the robots?
I was a vehicle Voltron fan - drawn in because the first episode I saw had them destroy the monster of the week without resorting to the blazing sword, then I realized that it had a much more involved plot than the other - at least for what was shown on American TV.
I remember watching Voltron on the afternoon cartoons back in the day. Never made any sense to me - they might have been showing them out of order or maybe I just didn't catch them often enough. Seemed like every time I tuned in, there was an entirely different plot and completely different characters - Vehicles one day, lions next time.
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Well, Voltron was like, three different shows crammed together, none of which really had a whole lot of plot in the first place (kill monsters, celebrate, sell toys).
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^That. Voltron took its concept to its logical conclusion. Even the show itself was a conglomerate of multiple different shows.
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thejeff wrote: Grey Lensman wrote: So the Lion Voltron has become interesting for reasons other than the visuals of the robots?
I was a vehicle Voltron fan - drawn in because the first episode I saw had them destroy the monster of the week without resorting to the blazing sword, then I realized that it had a much more involved plot than the other - at least for what was shown on American TV.
I remember watching Voltron on the afternoon cartoons back in the day. Never made any sense to me - they might have been showing them out of order or maybe I just didn't catch them often enough. Seemed like every time I tuned in, there was an entirely different plot and completely different characters - Vehicles one day, lions next time. Luckily where I came from they aired them as two entirely different shows. Made it easier to keeps things straight.
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Hey, at least it's not as much of a mess as Macross... XD Legally speaking, anyway.
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GM Rednal wrote: Hey, at least it's not as much of a mess as Macross... XD Legally speaking, anyway. a mixed blessing.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber
Pure fanboyism here, but I keep hoping that Dragonball Super brings back...
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Finally getting around to watching Bodacious Space Pirates. Its awesome, but I keep having to convince my female friends they would love it. There is practically 0 fan service relative to what the name would imply.
Yeah, that's a pretty good series. XD
Caineach wrote: Finally getting around to watching Bodacious Space Pirates. Its awesome, but I keep having to convince my female friends they would love it. There is practically 0 fan service relative to what the name would imply. It's an incredible series - one of my wife's favorites. Although the subtext is pretty heavy (never quite becoming actual text). The author denies it, but in the anime it's pretty obvious.
Grey Lensman wrote: Caineach wrote: Finally getting around to watching Bodacious Space Pirates. Its awesome, but I keep having to convince my female friends they would love it. There is practically 0 fan service relative to what the name would imply. It's an incredible series - one of my wife's favorites. Although the subtext is pretty heavy (never quite becoming actual text). The author denies it, but in the anime it's pretty obvious. The opening theme song makes the subtext text.
Caineach wrote: Grey Lensman wrote: Caineach wrote: Finally getting around to watching Bodacious Space Pirates. Its awesome, but I keep having to convince my female friends they would love it. There is practically 0 fan service relative to what the name would imply. It's an incredible series - one of my wife's favorites. Although the subtext is pretty heavy (never quite becoming actual text). The author denies it, but in the anime it's pretty obvious. The opening theme song makes the subtext text. Yes, yes it does. The opening theme couldn't ship any harder without a kissing scene, and I'm not sure how much harder even that make it.
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And for a little bit of trivia - yes, that is Marty Friedman (former Megadeth lead guitarist) playing guitar in the Bodacious Space Pirates opening theme.
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Grey Lensman wrote: And for a little bit of trivia - yes, that is Marty Friedman (former Megadeth lead guitarist) playing guitar in the Bodacious Space Pirates opening theme. THAT IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!
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Adventure Path Charter Subscriber
Adapting a work from one medium to another often entails having to make alterations to the presentation. Sometimes the reasons for these changes are self-evident, and other times they leave you scratching your head in confusion over why they did what they did. In the case of Koihime Musou ("Love Princess Unmatched"), it had elements of both, but leaned quite a bit more towards the latter.
The anime version of the eroge of the same name, Koihime Musou is a thirty-six-episode anime divided into three cours of twelve episodes each. My experience with the original games is limited, but from what I can tell each cour is loosely adapted from the three versions of the game (from what I can tell, the subsequent games in the series are expansions to the original, rather than sequels).
I use the word "loosely" here for a reason; while the anime keeps the setting and characters from the source material, it jettisons almost all of the plot elements, only to find that it has very little with which to fill in the gaps. That's the major reason that I've spent the last few paragraphs harping on how the anime isn't the game; in firmly deciding what not to be, the show struggles to define itself.
The basic outline of the show is that it's the story of Romance of the Three Kingdoms (e.g. set during the turbulent times of China in the late second century), with all of the major characters being presented as beautiful girls. To this end, the show puts most of its emphasis on Kan'u, showing her early travels through the countryside as she tries to figure out how she can make a difference for the better. During these wanderings, she falls in with Chouhi, Koumei, Chouun, and pretty much everyone you'd expect from the "Shoku" faction of the novel, as well as having meetings with almost every other major player from the original Romance story. Later episodes take more latitude in spotlighting other characters.
Unfortunately, this large cast comes at the cost of any actual plot or character development. Kan'u and her sworn-sisters never actually engage in the large-scale fighting that was the subject of the original Chinese novel. The warring that the titular three kingdoms are supposed to be engaged in has been pushed so far into the background that it's only referenced obliquely, with the characters making reference to "these turbulent times" more than once. (Naturally, this completely precludes the game's meta-plot about time-travel and parallel universes.)
So given everything that the show isn't, what is it actually about? Well...not very much. In terms of genre, the show is essentially a low-grade comedy series. The gags are fairly nonstop, and usually of middling quality at best (e.g. the running joke about people saying to Kan'u, "Wait, you're the famous 'Black-Haired Bounty Hunter?' But I thought the rumors said that she was supposed to be a real beauty!") What fight scenes there are make absolutely no attempt to create any kind of dramatic tension, nor visually impress. Instead, we're just supposed to laugh over things like the recurring thugs who get continually launched into the air Team Rocket-style, or Chouun's obsession with menma (pickled bamboo shoots), or Enshou's combination of complete incompetence and unwarranted arrogance, etc.
The show does have one other thing going for it, that being the ecchi factor. The show treats this as largely being yet more fodder for humor, and so is fairly casual in its presentation. In this regard, the series straddles keeping these vaguely-naughty bits in-character (e.g. some of the girls needling each other about the size of their boobs or being lesbians, etc.) and meta-contextual (e.g. the many times we get scenes of the girls bathing). Of course, these latter scenes are censored with pervasive steam-clouds, which further weaken one of the show's few remaining draws.
The end result is a show that has very little going for it. A paper-thin plot combined with a wide cast of one-note characters makes for a show that's lacking in substance. To be fair, the series is eminently aware of this, but rather than taking steps to address it seems to take an attitude of "why try hard?" Ironically, this works in its favor, as it helps to lower expectations.
Overall, Koihime Musou isn't so much a bad anime as a lazy one. If you go into it expecting nothing more, then there are certainly worse shows to kill some time with.
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I f!@+ing love koihime musou. But that's because I play the game.
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Freehold DM wrote: I f&*!ing love koihime musou. But that's because I play the game. Yeah, the game is undeniably better than the show.
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Studio Trigger is rapidly becoming my favorite studio.
I have yet to find a Japanese cartoon show I like more than, or as much as, Berserk. I wish they would continue that one. I know it is a comic book too, but I want to see it animated. Yes I am also familiar with the movies. One Punch Man is a close second though, with Desert Punk coming in third. Sure there is some good stuff but so very very much junk. I heard a friend rave about A Certain Scientific Railgun but I could not even make it ten minutes through the first episode. It got a bit too creepy with the middle school shower. I am told they smarten up, but they lost me. Can anyone suggest a good one that isn't harem based, creeping the lines into inappropriate kid stuff, overly goofball, or the one piece problem of "Ok I get it. Can we get to the point already please and have the pirates do piracy? Too much filler."
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They are continuing Berserk...technically.
Info Here
Atheral, you win. Whatever you call this situation, you just win. Also that 91 days thing looks interesting.
No harem? does not compute
anyway:
Ghost in the Shell.
The first movie and Stand Alone Complex, to start with. If you like those, try the other stuff.
A bit overly pretentious when they try to be philosophical but at core it's a solidly animated cyberpunk show with plenty of mystery, investigation and action.
Lupin III.
Several series, lots of movies. Heavy on the humor, the tale of the greatest thief in the world and his elaborate heists. A fair amount of cartoon physics and some of the episodes of the older series got a bit too clownish for my personal Lupin-taste, but all in all it's a great series. With the exception of the most recent series, it's all stand alone stuff so you can dive in and enjoy whatever you find with little to no previous knowledge of the series needed.
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Jaçinto wrote: the one piece problem of "Ok I get it. Can we get to the point already please and have the pirates do piracy? Too much filler." What filler? There's very little in the usually accepted sense (material not in the manga meant to pad until the manga gets far enough ahead).
The show is literally about the characters wandering around and getting into trouble wherever they go. They're only meant to be pirates in the sense that they do things the government doesn't like, not the rape/pillage/burn sort.
Look at it as an adventure show, not an animated version of Black Sails.
Anywho, given your tastes (which seem good besides disliking One Piece, you heathen), I'd suggest perhaps giving Jojo's Bizarre Adventure a try (season 1 is meh, but it's all uphill from there).
Hunter x Hunter is also an excellent example of a Shonen series done right.
Parasyte is a great body horror series if you want something gory and good.
I'm really enjoying Boku no Hero Academia currently as well, if you want something a little more lighthearted. Not often you see a Japanese take on traditional superheroes (no killing, varied powers, etc.) that's any good.
I'm assuming you've seen a lot of teh older stuff, so I'm sticking with examples from the last 5 years. Which all happen to be adaptations of manga from the 80s and 90s.
Bjørn Røyrvik wrote: No harem? does not compute As a tangent, given the overwhelming popularity of both Shonen action and fanservice Harem series', WHY by all that is holy is there not a good adaptation of Negima! Magister Negi Magi?
I get that it's a bit of a slog through the early chapters but it's a damn good action series when things get rolling.
Sundakan wrote: As a tangent, given the overwhelming popularity of both Shonen action and fanservice Harem series', WHY by all that is holy is there not a good adaptation of Negima! Magister Negi Magi?
Because it isn't very good?
With very few exceptions, I don't enjoy shounen stuff, and Negima was not one of those exceptions. Negima makes sense when you know the backstory but the harem aspect is just creepy and bad, and the shounen stuff is dull.
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Sundakan wrote: Bjørn Røyrvik wrote: No harem? does not compute As a tangent, given the overwhelming popularity of both Shonen action and fanservice Harem series', WHY by all that is holy is there not a good adaptation of Negima! Magister Negi Magi?
I get that it's a bit of a slog through the early chapters but it's a damn good action series when things get rolling. Well
We are getting a UQ Holder anime if you are up for a full grown Eva and Negi's more Shonen action hero grandson/clone.
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