HE HAS NIPPLES
AND THEY SPARKLE

Sorry Akio but you have lost the game, set and match. :'(

Watching Kill la Kill. I wanted an anime I could watch casually without getting too emotionally caught up because turning in papers late due to being emotionally fucked up by a work of fiction is lame.

CarolineWellwater wrote:

(( Hey YamPuff,

Aikuro Mikisugi also has other... parts that glow later in the series as well.  In fact... after a while, the poor guy seems to have a horrible time with clothes just sliding off him. ))

Ooh more sparkly bits? I'm in this for the long haul in that case 8)

(( Hey all,

Has anyone watched the "Flowers of Evil" anime? ))

(( Hey purplepolecat,

I'm not sure if I enjoyed it or not.  I picked it up, basically at random, as the cover art really caught my attention.  I've only watched it once, and I want to watch it again.

The biggest thing I remember about it was how... suffocating it felt watching the show, and that the slow pacing seemed very psychosis inducing.

Oh... and the evolving-ending credits / music.  I also remember that. ))

Finished watching Nabari no Ou. It was...okay I guess. It was really frustrating for me to watch because I thought it could have been really amazing but was just fairly average. A lot of it didn't make sense either, lot of plot holes that don't quite add up.

[If Kouichi is an immortal, why does he appear like a small child in the flashback where everyone regains their memories?
Why does Miharu's mom make him and everyone else forgot what happened that day? What difference did it make whether they remembered or forgot, why was the teacher dude so keen not to let anyone know and who really cares anyway? Didn't it put Miharu in more danger, being ignorant?
Everyone is after the superpower Miharu has but suddenly stops going after him because he claims he has 'sealed it away'. Really? They're just gonna take his word for it? Why don't they just kill him so it will be released to someone else? The problems has not been solved.
For someone born and raised as a samurai, the blond pigtail girl sucks. All she does the entire anime is fail and lose.
I still don't get Yoite. His parents hated him? That's it?
Raiko really thought it would be better for his sister to believe a pack of lies and hate him, spend her life planning revenge on him then just explaining what happened and leaving her as like a six year old around a bunch of dead bodies?
Gau shouts 'Raiko-san!' exactly one time and then it totally okay with Raiko's death?
Kouichi gets no closure, just he's immortal and okay with it now?
Yoite turns into glittery stars wtf if this bullshit.
What was the anime trying to say? Humans shouldn't have limitless power? Secrets are dangerous? Human existence is precious? Love is important?
I thought it was going to end with Miharu wishing he had never existed/ the shinrabanshou had never existed, in a Magica Madoka kind of paradoxical twist, changing history in the series as we know it.
Why don't more anime characters ride in Mini Coopers? Yukimi is freaking cool.
Why does the shinrabanshou white fairy lady care whether Miharu uses the power or not?
Are ninjas magical people or not? Can anyone become a ninja? How do they hold full time jobs and be ninjas at the same time? What does being a ninja entail? What do they get out of it? Why do they do it in the first place? Like, besides living in mist covered villages, like exactly what are they and their purpose in life?
Why does everyone freeze in terror when Yukimi wields a gun? Why don't they all use guns?
Why does Raiko's hair turn pink when he becomes evil?]

I enjoyed watching the series just for Raiko x Gau and Yukimi x his mini cooper.

I am tempted to watch either Trigun or Berserk next.

I agree with that. Trigun first. I believe it's a series you will enjoy.

YamPuff wrote:

I just binge-watched One Punch Man
I have not so thoroughly enjoyed an anime so goddamn much in a long time. It it really, really good, really funny and, somehow more importantly, has such a nice heart-warming moral to it. Everyone should watch it.

Not to mention the sick animation. OPM is by far the best anime of the year, and I can't wait to see more.

I also enjoyed Noragami, which is probably the best show from the genre of "Ordinary High School Girl becomes friends with a minor deity".

(( Hey all,

I... never really thought Trigun was all that good.  It wasn't bad.  Just... not good.  Maybe a C // C+ grade.

Anyway, right now, I've been going back and rewatching some of my older stuff.

So, I just finished Martian Successor Nadesico, and Devil Hunter Yohko.

I also caught a couple of episodes of Demonbane on crunchyroll.  I enjoyed the eroge game a ton, so I thought I'd see how it was made into an anime.  Long-story-short, the anime is alright... but you miss a ton of the story from the game.  ))

(( Hey YamPuff,

Okay, so I just finished marathon-ing through Kill La Kill, and... I'm not sure if Mako made it.  As weird as this is going to sound.  I... don't think Mako is Mako.  I think it might be[       Nui        ]wearing Mako.

But still, I think that would be an awesome pairing.

Hey All,

Anyway, Kill La Kill had a few scenes that suprized me in how much they affected me.  So... here they a pair, all whited-out for spoilers.

Scene 1: [Episode 18... when Ragyo is disciplining her daughter, for a brief second Satsuki brings her hand up... not in defense or to block her mother's attacks, but... more in a pleading, childish way to beg her mother to stop.  So... even after all these years, Satsuki is still terrified of her mother.]

Scene 2: [Episode 20... Ryoko crying as she wears Junketsu.  To me, the really upsetting part of this is that I think Ryoko realizes she's trapped in the Lotus Machine, and... isn't sure if she can bring herself out again.  She so desperately wants what the Lotus Machine is feeding her, but... she also knows its all fake.  So... her crying isn't from raptured ecstasy, but from knowing that the life she "remembers" is fake, but she wants it all the same]

Also, as a weird tangent, so I was wondering in Kill La Kill why the Folk Dance Troupe dressed up like Greys, and I kept thinking to myself, "I've seen that somewhere before...", and then I remembered it.  It's alluded to in To Heart!  So I re-watched To Heart on New Years.  Felt it was appropriate.  Though, I could have sworn at one point Shiho gives Hiroyuki a Christmas gift... maybe that was "Remember the Memories".  Shoot, I can't remember... which... is also weirdly apropos.



EDIT: Fixed some English errors. END EDIT ))

Last edited by CarolineWellwater (01-02-2016 01:25:24 PM)

We just finished season one of No Game, No Life.  It's refreshing to see a NEET hero in a comedic anime...but is the incestuous subtext absolutely necessary? Anyway, I ship Sora/Steph already.

YamPuff wrote:

That is one majorly upsetting yet somehow fitting theory about Mako.. O_O

So I'm checking out Berserk.
And damn. That's a lot of gay. I mean, I expected some subtext or a bit of foe-yay but MAN. In the space of a couple of episodes, they've gazed deeply into each others eyes, had a water fight in the nude and the one female soldier is madly jealous of how Griffith treats Guts.

EDIT: My burning question; why does Griffith's hair get curlier as he gets older? See I thought it was some change of artist or something...the animation is obviously on a tight budget and characters are often off-model. But suddenly I'm seeing Casca's flashback and there Griffith is with flowy Utena hair again. Weird.

Berserk's levels of gayness are very, very high indeed. I wonder how the new anime will fare.
As for Griffith's hair, it gets even prettier in the manga [once he becomes Femto. It's not just the hair, Griffith himself goes from already absurdly beautiful to perfectly so. There is that famous panel in the manga with naked Femto and it really is something else. At that point I am not even sure if we can consider Femto to still be Griffith, the details are a bit foggy in my mind as it's been a while, but the transformation is quite impressive.]

And speaking of gay, I picked up HaruChika mostly because it actually has a canonically gay character as one of the mains, the eponymoys Haruta. Four episodes into it and I have to say it is a mix of Hibike, with the brass instrument club, and Hyouka with the mystery angle. A rather unusual combination that I am not too sure works out all that well, to be honest. Thus far it has followed a formula in which some prospective member of the band has given up music because of some serious issue that will then be mostly resolved given Haru's amazing powers of smart nakama-gathering.
Which brings me to Haru himself. For once, the gay character is not played for laughs for which I am intensely happy. His crush on the music teacher is seen on the same level with Chika's, the female lead. He is the very intelligent, intuitive bishie type whose ability to solve other people's problems is not all that unusual in anime main character but is still highly unrealistic. Issues that would require therapy are smoothed in one neat Haruta led intervention. Yet every now and then he will say something that actually has some depth to it. [The way he snaps Glasses Girl out of her grief by telling her that being in deep mourning for a year means more to teenagers as opposed to grownups because a year has a greater significance for the young, for example. While the whole thing was a bit too contrived, that particular line struck me as surprisingly insightful.]
Since Haru does everything, Chika ends up doing precious little. It does not help that she comes across as homophobic even if her reaction is to be expected. It's hardly the vicious kind of homophobia but it's still there and does little to make her a more interesting character. Then again she has plenty of room to grow.

At times it feels as if the light novel author, as it seems the anime is very faithtful to its source material, in an effort to avoid the very pervasive tropes of the 'evil gays' went into the other direction and constructed a character that is almost flawless. Haruta is not entirely Marty Sue material but he does veer dangerously close to it at least once per episode. I expect that if they ever run into a riddle involving, say, quantum mechanics, we will find out that Haruta is an expert at it. Apart from his tendency to be a bit gauche and all too ready to accept food and eat at others' expense, Haruta is just super amazing. I expect that future episodes will develop his character, hopefully. 

As for both Haru and Chika's infantuation with their teacher, it strikes me as a bit random. Certaintly Chika who fell in love with him within a couple of minutes. Haru at least has known for a while even if it comes across as a tad on the stalkish side on occasion.

It is still too early to make a fair assessment of this one as it may still become good. Thus far it remains average even if I applaud the decision of having a gay lead.

Last edited by Nocturnalux (03-04-2016 12:15:35 PM)

I highly recommend this season's Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu, especially for people who like subtly conveyed emotions and teh gay. It's a period piece about performers of an obscure form of Japanese theatre called Rakugo, in which one man (always a man) performs a whole play from a seated position. It's exquisitely directed and very compelling, despite the seemingly dry subject matter.

Also loving KonoSuba (fantasy/comedy), Erased (drama/mystery), Sekko Boys (surrealist short comedy), Yamishibai (short horror), Lupin III part 4 (crime/comedy).

EDIT: Agree with YamPuff on Lupin III: A Woman Named Fujiko Mine. Amazing on an artistic and character development level, especially re: the agency of female characters in noir fiction. The current season of Lupin III is similarly high quality, but without all the sex and psychedelia.

Last edited by purplepolecat (03-04-2016 03:10:20 PM)