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Spring Anime 2013 |OT -7| My Giant CG Pony Can't Possibly Read This Much Baudelaire

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Kagami

Member
The worst part about waiting a week for free Crunchyroll is people spoiling the episodes in advance.
Man, that was me the whole winter season with Funimation's Haganai NEXT. It was five days later than the earliest broadcast (TBS), so with all the fansub screencaps being posted, I gave up on reading the thread except during the two-day window between the stream on Tuesdays and the TBS broadcast on Thursdays.

Still, even five days was earlier than some parts of Japan. I felt sorry for the people in the 2ch thread watching it on Japanese stations that were a full week behind TBS, so they never had a safe zone the whole time.
 

JCG

Member
Majestic Prince - 1

As expected, the 3D CG was great and probably the best part of the show so far. I really enjoyed how the introductory battle was handled, though the combat debut of the five main mecha was also fairly well executed. And yes, the mechanical designs were also nice to look at. Definitely more than enough to keep me watching in this respect.

What did surprise me in a rather positive way was the soundtrack, which turned out to be pretty enjoyable and fitting for the material. Other than that, I have to say the characters came across alright but had absolutely nothing that would make me impressed at this stage. I suppose only time will tell if they'll try to do anything interesting or at least exciting with them. Still, I'm probably not going to be demanding much in the long run.

The characters designs...well, I guess they're not out of place but they won't win any rounds of applause from me. Sometimes they looked okay, sometimes they looked ugly. In other words, they basically fell within my previous expectations and, in any case, I don't think this is a big deal.

On a related note...the team interactions were clearly whimsical and lighthearted, which was fun, though it also seems the overarching story will be rather straightforward and not entirely devoid of some seriousness once things get going. The generally relaxed tone was prominent throughout, despite the potential danger of the mission, but I feel the humor itself was a little hit and miss. In particular, the gags involving the overly excited girl weren't nearly as amusing as the series tried to present them.

Overall, my impressions tend to be more positive than negative and I'm willing to stick around for now.
 

789shadow

Banned
Man, that was me the whole winter season with Funimation's Haganai NEXT. It was five days later than the earliest broadcast (TBS), so with all the fansub screencaps being posted, I gave up on reading the thread except during the two-day window between the stream on Tuesdays and the TBS broadcast on Thursdays.

Still, even five days was earlier than some parts of Japan. I felt sorry for the people in the 2ch thread watching it on Japanese stations that were a full week behind TBS, so they never had a safe zone the whole time.
I just won't actually read any posts. :)
 

Seraphis Cain

bad gameplay lol
So here's a thing I've been wondering about. How many great OPs out there stay great after the part used in the actual opening? I mean, there are some that are really good all the way through, but I've encountered a lot that just feel like they gave up after the first 1:30 of the song and just knocked out the rest in a day or two because "well, we do have to sell this as a single I guess".
 

DiGiKerot

Member
Accidentally deleted my 009 post and have a train to catch early tomorrow, but I will say that I actually really liked the way the movie looks. The 3D I found to be genuinely additive to the experience.

It's not a glorious CG future, though, because most of the backgrounds were still traditional 2D, admittedly layered in a stereoscopic manner. It'll probably be way more obvious once we get to see it in flat-o-vision.
 
So here's a thing I've been wondering about. How many great OPs out there stay great after the part used in the actual opening? I mean, there are some that are really good all the way through, but I've encountered a lot that just feel like they gave up after the first 1:30 of the song and just knocked out the rest in a day or two because "well, we do have to sell this as a single I guess".

Pretty much every OP or ED is just the song repeated twice with an unnecessary guitar solo.
 

trejo

Member
Space Bros 51

I've really been enjoying these past few episodes. It was about time Nitta got some much needed character development and I'm really digging his whole backstory. Mutta is still the superior bro, though.

One thing I do not care for is
the whole fortune telling business and the promise of something that is bound to happen to Mutta
. It feels like a very cheap and lazy way of introducing some expectations and, much like with the episode that had Mutta worrying about wasting his allotment of luck on some lottery, it feels like extraneous bullshit that has no business featuring in a show that is for the most part grounded in reality. On the bright side, Amanti is pretty hot.

Hair Fetish Crime Edge 1

As alluring as initial impressions might seem, this show has nothing on MGX. Not impressed.

Also, short hair >>> long hair.

Mai Ritoru Sawashiro 1

This would be a whole lot better if she just used either her Serika or her Inaba voice.

And japanese Fluttershy doesn't sound quite as moe which, somehow, feels unsurprising and yet shocking to me at the same time. It's weird.
 

Branduil

Member
So here's a thing I've been wondering about. How many great OPs out there stay great after the part used in the actual opening? I mean, there are some that are really good all the way through, but I've encountered a lot that just feel like they gave up after the first 1:30 of the song and just knocked out the rest in a day or two because "well, we do have to sell this as a single I guess".

You can always trust Yoko Kanno or Round Table to deliver on great OPs that are still great in the extended versions and actually do interesting things with instrumentation and variation.
 
Funimation got Karneval, thankfully(via their sms messages). Starting Monday April 8 at 1:35PM ET.

Cool. Good job Funi.

Funimation's second pick up for a stream is The Devil is a Part Timer (Hataraku Maou-sama!)

Excellent. Great job Funi.

I wish Kobayashi was alive. I don't think she's in anything this season. :(

You can always watch Yu-Gi-Oh! ZeXal for that three second Kobayashi cameo every episode or so wwwwwwwwwwwwww

Yo Quartet had an interesting premise. Manga was bollocks though. Wonder what the anime will be like.

First anime was terrible. OADs look awesome. Manga is in the middle.
 
Man, that was me the whole winter season with Funimation's Haganai NEXT. It was five days later than the earliest broadcast (TBS), so with all the fansub screencaps being posted, I gave up on reading the thread except during the two-day window between the stream on Tuesdays and the TBS broadcast on Thursdays.

That reminds me of my time with Magi, Hakkenden, Toriko, though at least in these cases, so few people actually watch and discuss that Id never know the plot in advance.
 
Natsume's Book of Friends season 4 on July 2, 2013.

ItemDescription


Contains episodes 1-13 plus a full-color, 28-page hardcover art book styled after the Book of Friends and featuring detailed info about the characters, an episode guide, and key character and background art.

Special Features: Clean Opening, Clean Ending, Japanese Commercials.
 

Regulus Tera

Romanes Eunt Domus
[Girls und Panzer] 12

Truly genius. I'm starting to become a believer of the CGI future after that great display. They even reused the First-Person View trickery from the first episode, but it wasn't as horrible as last time. My only complaint would be that the textures are still very dull when compared to the rest of the art. They could use some more work there.

Amazing series. It's a sports anime with an interesting and whimsical premise that focuses on the good aspects of the genre while maintaining a cast of entertaining characters. It doesn't do much in terms of innovation, but it's a show that knows which are its strengths and successfully runs through with them. Season two fucking when?

Four out five goosefish.
 

BluWacky

Member
It's late, and I have work in the morning, but I thought I'd type up the few bits and pieces that I thought were interesting from the Q&A with Kenji Kamiyama after this evening's screening of 009 RE:CYBORG. The film itself is an interesting puzzle - part pulp action film, part psuedo-religious mystical experience - but that will have to wait until I've had time to marshall my thoughts and fiendishly Google as much as I can about the original manga to try and place some of the events of the film into context.

- Kamiyama gave us a very brief overview of the history and popularity of the original mangaka, Ishinomori's, work in Japan. Ishinomori inspired a lot of very passionate fans who would ask him to rewrite his stories and plotlines all the time. However, he died before he could finish the "final story" of Cyborg 009.

Kamiyama specifically referenced the "Battle Against The Gods" arc of the manga as this "final story", which a quick Google suggests was a bit controversial - not only was it a remake of a previous failed attempt to end the story, the "Angels" arc (significant to those who've seen the film!), but it was visually and textually much denser than previous 009 stories and slightly controversial due to adult themes.

- I asked Kamiyama whether, given his interest in international relations and politics as a theme in both this film and Eden of the East in particular, he specifically thought about international reception of his work when making it. His response was that he didn't really take international reception into account but it was fortunate that he was dealing with universal themes. If I were less polite, I'd have asked him why he seems to have such an intense distrust of government, particularly the US, but that'll have to wait for the imaginary day where I'm drunk in a bar with the man :p

- he felt that, if he were making Eden of the East again today, he might not end the second film (Paradise Lost) with the same message to the youth of Japan. Since the tsunami in 2011, he feels it is very difficult to make a work that is purely for entertainment's sake as the outlook of the Japanese audience and creative teams have changed irrevocably.

- someone asked whether he thought the CG techniques he'd employed in the film would eventually start making their way into popular TV anime like Bleach or Fairy Tail. Clearly whoever it was had never seen Kingdom :) Kamiyama felt that at present not only was the technique too expensive (he estimated that producing the film in this way had cost possibly four times as much as it would have done to produce it in traditional animation, even though the production process wasn't significantly longer than normal for an anime movie at around 2 years) but there simply aren't enough 3D animators in Japan to produce more work of this type.

Not so interesting answers:

- it's total co-incidence that both the Nolan Batman films and several of Kamiyama's works deal with terrorism as a plot point

- when he was a child, he wanted to be Cyborg 004 and have machine gun hands. Now, he would like to be 009 to use his time accelerator and get more work done.

- if Motoko Kusanagi and Cyborg 009 got into a fight, it would be a draw. Although 009 would have a physical advantage, he can't access the Internet.

- he'd consider revisiting the 009 universe but feels that it's open for any director or writer to have a go

- he enjoys directing adaptations and also his own original work; original works are more fun, but more stressful
 

Branduil

Member
someone asked whether he thought the CG techniques he'd employed in the film would eventually start making their way into popular TV anime like Bleach or Fairy Tail. Clearly whoever it was had never seen Kingdom :) Kamiyama felt that at present not only was the technique too expensive (he estimated that producing the film in this way had cost possibly four times as much as it would have done to produce it in traditional animation, even though the production process wasn't significantly longer than normal for an anime movie at around 2 years) but there simply aren't enough 3D animators in Japan to produce more work of this type.

What a fricking waste of money.
 

Jintor

Member
By the way, I'm trying to figure out a way to get an interview with Hosoda 'bout Wolf Children through my media contacts. I don't think I could actually do it since I don't actually work with anyone who would really bother publishing it, but if I could, what the hell would you guys want to ask anyway?
 
Devil Survivor 2 01

Oh boy, this is worse than the Personas that were used in the P4 anime!

The story is kinda weak. It's not very gripping or engaging to me and I find myself tuning out every once in a while. Lol at the UI looking like it was ripped from the games.

Uh, the OP wasn't as terrible as I remember it to be and the ED started bad and got 'decent'
 
Devil Survivor 2 1

i8Dpau0ga8Djo.jpg

Miyukichi already present, 10/10 show of the year.

Decent first episode, nothing to get really lost in to people like myself who are unfamiliar with the game. I wish a little more was going on though, and the things that did go on like the demon fights weren't really as exciting as they could have been. Definitely going to continue, and will probably pick up the game to see how the gist of the story will play out.
 
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