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Spring Anime 2012 | Welcome Home, Space Cowboy

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F

firehawk12

Subete no aware
icarus-daedelus said:
I'm kind of embarrassed I did remember it. Strawberry Panic is just that memorable!

Woah woah woah bro, first of all, they're just friends. Only shorthairs and aspiring nuns get to go beyond that in this show, and with tragic results. (Cautionary tale?)

Second of all, from what I remember, they don't really go anywhere with it in s4. Been a while since I seen Marmite though.
Click to expand...
You are the Strawberry Panic doyenne!

Also, the fourth season is all about Yumi being an oneeeeeeeeeee-sama, so there's that stuff.

SDBurton said:
Lmao, it was.. but it still pulled me in.

http://i797.photobucket.com/albums/yy256/The_Rumor/Maria-sama18.png?t=1334707566

I mean, look at that! :p

Edit: One season left to go, need to stay strong and finish this before I start Strawberry Panic.
Click to expand...
She has Panda-senses. :p
 
Trojita

Trojita

Rapid Response Threadmaker
My sports harem anime is being made by the people that made Space Pirates, Symphogear, and Macross Frontier.
 
C

cajunator

Banned
S0ggU.png

Hmm..
 
A

Articalys

Member
There's a few more interesting questions on that site, including one that I'd love to post now but won't for fear of cluttering up the thread even further. Maybe later, during a lull in traffic.
 
I

Ice Lightning

Member
I do not think this was answered yesterday, but is it appropriate to discuss the Haruhi Suzumiya light novels here? Manga-gaf turned me away due to lack of knowledge on what I was going to discuss.
 
Z

zeroshiki

Member
Ice Lightning said:
I do not think this was answered yesterday, but is it appropriate to discuss the Haruhi Suzumiya light novels here? Manga-gaf turned me away due to lack of knowledge on what I was going to discuss.
Click to expand...

Knock yourself out. Although be aware that most people here only have knowledge up to Disappearance.
 
T

Typographenia

Member
Armitage III: Dual - Matrix



This was a rather interesting viewing experience for me, since it had been nearly 10 years since I saw this originally. There were moments when I would recall what was going on, and times where I wondered how I couldn't recall the events of what happened at all. Even stranger was the fact that I didn't realize there were actually two other movies/ovas before this film. I just assumed the III was for unusual naming conventions. I was very wrong. Anyway! This is a cyber-punk inspired anime film. And yeah.



Story / Characters

Okay, so this wasn't as easy to settle into as I had hoped it would be. I thought there would be a slight learning curve, like there is for the Ghost in the Shell film, but this expects you to have seen the previous entries before watching this one. There is no hints to past relationships between any of the characters in a way that benefited me, there are events brought up that are never explained from the past media (I assume), and the tensions between Mars and Earth are only very briefly mentioned.

That said, the story is... half there? This was easily the most disappointing aspect of Armitage III. The movie begins the first half introducing many different themes and plot threads, but all but one are completely dropped in the second half with no resolution of any kind. The worst example of this was the touching upon the subject of whether or not robots should be given equal rights as humans. Heck, that was essentially the primary driving force behind the story events of the first half of the movie, but you never hear a single thing on it after the halfway point. One would think this would come up again later one when Naomi and Ross were to meet up after
he abstains from voting on the bill,
but nope...

The plot centers around tensions between Earth and the Mars Colony regarding rights for robots. Naomi (protagonist) is a robot married to security guard Ross Syllibus. They apparently managed to have a child, this child gets kidnapped after traveling to Earth with her father because he was asked to represent some guy at the hearing on the bill for Robot Rights after he unwillingly becomes a "hero" to the people on Mars after a terrorist attack at his workplace AND IT'S JUST A GIANT BORING MESS HONESTLY. GEEZ. Sorry.

It starts with some sort of behind-the-scenes political mess, corporations rocking the boat for their own benefit, and all that jazz, but the second half devolves into a "we have to save our daughter and escape!" thread that runs on for so long it becomes laughable. There are twin robot killers in jump suits too, but whatever. It's just not a well planned or presented story, and it just wasn't an enjoyable plot. I don't know if that's more the fault of the movie or more my own fault for not being properly acquainted with the subject matter more before watching, but it just didn't gel with me at any point.

--------------------

Talking about characters will be extremely easy, because there weren't any!
Okay, Mouse is the one exception, but even he isn't worth mentioning in the grand scheme of it all.

The characters were completely non-existent, and I know that isn't the fault of me not knowing the Armitage universe. They just simply never touch on any real characterization, and the moments you would expect them to are either replaced with an oh-so-clever one liner/comeback or it cuts away to something else. Every single character is boring to the point of exhaustion, and I don't think I could even give a single descriptive word for any personality that played a part in the movie that wouldn't just be the definition of the role the character played. I don't know how that is possible, but it is.

Naomi is a robot that does cool stuff sometimes, but sometimes she doesn't. Ross is the guy who hangs around so we can remember that there are supposedly things going on that resemble a plot. The bad guy is the bad guy who does not nice things. The twins are twins that do bad things to the good guys. Mouse is an eccentric guy that sometimes does stuff for the good guys or the bad guys. Yup. Exciting stuff.



Presentation

The movie looked okay, I suppose. It was really inconsistent with the design of locations, though. Exterior shots would often look really cyber-punk, but anything the involved characters in a scene often resembled really generic designs or fell back heavily on gradients.

The few really cyber-punk fueled stuff was okay. It just didn't really push strong enough with the genre (visually) for my own personal liking. The film felt more like it was flirting with the aesthetic more than committing to it. It didn't ruin the movie because of it, but it often left me wanting for something more entertaining to see.

I am still not sure if it was meant as a motif, if it was a signature thing by the director, or if they just had a fetish for them, but there were a TON of cuts to location stills. It wasn't even necessary as an establishing shot most times- it was just there! They were generally well done and interesting to look at, but it became a bit too frequent for my liking.
There were strange moments when the animation would get a suddenly sped-up look to it that were generally only during action scenes, the cgi looked INCREDIBLY dated, and the movie was regularly too dark or too grey to watch for a reasonable length of time. Honestly, the ending fight scene began to hurt my eyes because the contrast was so low. I have never really had a problem like that before, but it definitely wasn't something I expected.

The music was a serious offender in the movie. If I recall correctly, most of the movie was void of music until the action would start to ramp up. The music they used just did not hit the mark at all. It was very uninspired, phoned-in electric guitar pieces that were so easy to forget it wasn't funny. They never matched the pace of the action on screen, and it detracted from a few of the fight scenes. It's unfortunate that it didn't have some tracks that matched the tone of the film's setting more, but it was almost par for the course...



Final Thoughts

I think this could easily be summed up in one word: "lazy."
Themes are introduced and never followed up on, characters have no personality, the second half of the film runs for far too long, there is no emotional investment planted for the viewer to care about the weight of anything that happens (it would have been very easy to cut some of the second half's time in favor of properly establishing this), they cheaped out on anything that would have been moderately interesting, the cyber-punk aesthetic is half-hearted, the music was unacceptable, and the list goes on. It's just a terrible mess of bland, and it really disappointed me. I didn't remember much of anything about it from my first viewing, and I was looking forward to seeing it again. I can now see why I didn't recall it to any great capacity.

This is the first thing of my backlog that I've picked up that I don't really see myself revisiting. When I watch movies, I have two criteria in mind for it to be successful, and it must meet one or both of them.
1. Show me something new/interesting
2. Make me feel something

If a movie can do either of those things, I consider successful in making it worth my while. However, Armitage III failed to show me anything new or interesting because it didn't try. If something can't make it worth my while to watch, then it might as well be just a book.
It also failed to make me feel anything because it squandered its time with things that had no weight to me a viewer. I didn't care once about anything that was happening to any of the characters or in the story because it was so poorly handled from the start to the end.

I hope fans of the previous Armitage works found it enjoyable, because I certainly didn't, and I don't believe I'll be looking into any other Armitage works in the future.

At least it provided me with this hilarious moment.
 
C

cajunator

Banned
Typographenia said:
Armitage III



This was a rather interesting viewing experience for me, since it had been nearly 10 years since I saw this originally. There were moments when I would recall what was going on, and times where I wondered how I couldn't recall the events of what happened at all. Even stranger was the fact that I didn't realize there were actually two other movies/ovas before this film. I just assumed the III was for unusual naming conventions. I was very wrong. Anyway! This is a cyber-punk inspired anime film. And yeah.



Story / Characters

Okay, so this wasn't as easy to settle into as I had hoped it would be. I thought there would be a slight learning curve, like there is for the Ghost in the Shell film, but this expects you to have seen the previous entries before watching this one. There is no hints to past relationships between any of the characters in a way that benefited me, there are events brought up that are never explained from the past media (I assume), and the tensions between Mars and Earth are only very briefly mentioned.

That said, the story is... half there? This was easily the most disappointing aspect of Armitage III. The movie begins the first half introducing many different themes and plot threads, but all but one are completely dropped in the second half with no resolution of any kind. The worst example of this was the touching upon the subject of whether or not robots should be given equal rights as humans. Heck, that was essentially the primary driving force behind the story events of the first half of the movie, but you never hear a single thing on it after the halfway point. One would think this would come up again later one when Naomi and Ross were to meet up after he abstains from voting on the bill, but nope...

The plot centers around tensions between Earth and the Mars Colony regarding rights for robots. Naomi (protagonist) is a robot married to security guard Ross Syllibus. They apparently managed to have a child, this child gets kidnapped after traveling to Earth with her father because he was asked to represent some guy at the hearing on the bill for Robot Rights after he unwillingly becomes a "hero" to the people on Mars after a terrorist attack at his workplace AND IT'S JUST A GIANT BORING MESS HONESTLY. GEEZ. Sorry.

It starts with some sort of behind-the-scenes political mess, corporations rocking the boat for their own benefit, and all that jazz, but the second half devolves into a "we have to save our daughter and escape!" thread that runs on for so long it becomes laughable. There are twin robot killers in jump suits too, but whatever. It's just not a well planned or presented story, and it just wasn't an enjoyable plot. I don't know if that's more the fault of the movie or more my own fault for not being properly acquainted with the subject matter more before watching, but it just didn't gel with me at any point.

--------------------

Talking about characters will be extremely easy, because there weren't any!
Okay, Mouse is the one exception, but even he isn't worth mentioning in the grand scheme of it all.

The characters were completely non-existent, and I know that isn't the fault of me not knowing the Armitage universe. They just simply never touch on any real characterization, and the moments you would expect them to are either replaced with an oh-so-clever one liner/comeback or it cuts away to something else. Every single character is boring to the point of exhaustion, and I don't think I could even give a single descriptive word for any personality that played a part in the movie that wouldn't just be the definition of the role the character played. I don't know how that is possible, but it is.

Naomi is a robot that does cool stuff sometimes, but sometimes she doesn't. Ross is the guy who hangs around so we can remember that there are supposedly things going on that resemble a plot. The bad guy is the bad guy who does not nice things. The twins are twins that do bad things to the good guys. Mouse is an eccentric guy that sometimes does stuff for the good guys or the bad guys. Yup. Exciting stuff.



Presentation

The movie looked okay, I suppose. It was really inconsistent with the design of locations, though. Exterior shots would often look really cyber-punk, but anything the involved characters in a scene often resembled really generic designs or fell back heavily on gradients.

The few really cyber-punk fueled stuff was okay. It just didn't really push strong enough with the genre (visually) for my own personal liking. The film felt more like it was flirting with the aesthetic more than committing to it. It didn't ruin the movie because of it, but it often left me wanting for something more entertaining to see.

I am still not sure if it was meant as a motif, if it was a signature thing by the director, or if they just had a fetish for them, but there were a TON of cuts to location stills. It wasn't even necessary as an establishing shot most times- it was just there! They were generally well done and interesting to look at, but it became a bit too frequent for my liking.
There were strange moments when the animation would get a suddenly sped-up look to it that were generally only during action scenes, the cgi looked INCREDIBLY dated, and the movie was regularly too dark or too grey to watch for a reasonable length of time. Honestly, the ending fight scene began to hurt my eyes because the contrast was so low. I have never really had a problem like that before, but it definitely wasn't something I expected.

The music was a serious offender in the movie. If I recall correctly, most of the movie was void of music until the action would start to ramp up. The music they used just did not hit the mark at all. It was very uninspired, phoned-in electric guitar pieces that were so easy to forget it wasn't funny. They never matched the pace of the action on screen, and it detracted from a few of the fight scenes. It's unfortunate that it didn't have some tracks that matched the tone of the film's setting more, but it was almost par for the course...



Final Thoughts

I think this could easily be summed up in one word: "lazy."
Themes are introduced and never followed up on, characters have no personality, the second half of the film runs for far too long, there is no emotional investment planted for the viewer to care about the weight of anything that happens (it would have been very easy to cut some of the second half's time in favor of properly establishing this), they cheaped out on anything that would have been moderately interesting, the cyber-punk aesthetic is half-hearted, the music was unacceptable, and the list goes on. It's just a terrible mess of bland, and it really disappointed me. I didn't remember much of anything about it from my first viewing, and I was looking forward to seeing it again. I can now see why I didn't recall it to any great capacity.

This is the first thing of my backlog that I've picked up that I don't really see myself revisiting. When I watch movies, I have two criteria in mind for it to be successful, and it must meet one or both of them.
1. Show me something new/interesting
2. Make me feel something

If a movie can do either of those things, I consider successful in making it worth my while. However, Armitage III failed to show me anything new or interesting because it didn't try. If something can't make it worth my while to watch, then it might as well be just a book.
It also failed to make me feel anything because it squandered its time with things that had no weight to me a viewer. I didn't care once about anything that was happening to any of the characters or in the story because it was so poorly handled from the start to the end.

I hope fans of the previous Armitage works found it enjoyable, because I certainly didn't, and I don't believe I'll be looking into any other Armitage works in the future.

At least it provided me with this hilarious moment.
Click to expand...

Armitage III is excellent. One of my first anime experiences and one that I still watch to this day. Aside from Naomi being cute and badass, it had a cool cyberpunk story and a freaky ass bastard of a villain. Great stuff. I'm of course referring to the original Armitage the III. I ghaven't seen this particular movie I don't think. there was Armitage III dual Matrix and Polymatrix. I'm guessing this is Polymatrix.
 
T

Typographenia

Member
cajunator said:
Armitage III is excellent. One of my first anime experiences and one that I still watch to this day. Aside from Naomi being cute and badass, it had a cool cyberpunk story and a freaky ass bastard of a villain. Great stuff.
Click to expand...
You'll be better off it you don't read my post, then, haha.
 
B

Branduil

Member
By Studio 4C, a 50 episode hentai anime about Hitokage's harem.
Click to expand...

By Shaft, a 22 episode yuri anime about hitokage's hikikomori adventures.
Click to expand...

Second one sounds more like Hito.

By Studio 4C, a 2000 episode super sentai anime about pizzaroll's suffering.
Click to expand...

pizzaroll must stop the evil of iOS anime apps.

By Asread, a 21 episode BL anime about 7th's outer space adventures.
Click to expand...

Heh.

By Madhouse, a 1 episode magical girl anime about Jman's stalking adventures.
Click to expand...

Must not end very well.
 
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