Topic: Anime & Manga (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

Didn't watch Toonami this last Saturday, because it was just a marathon of Mitchiko & Hatchin reruns, and while I like the show, it couldn't surpass the allure of the new games I bought, one of which is Zone of The Enders HD Collection, which leads me to my next thing...

I watched Zone of the Enders: I Dolo on YouTube last night. It's an OVA that's a little over 50 minutes long.

It's a prequel to the first game (though I'd recommend playing it first), and it gives a look into the history of the game's main antagonist, and what drives their motives. It's kind of interesting getting a look from "the other side", and how their motives originally started out noble.

Toonami Saturday night!

DBZ Kai - Piccolo VS Frieza! Just as it looked like Piccolo had the villain outclassed, Frieza transforms again!

Akame ga Kill - We got the backstory on Sheele (the purple haired woman), and she went from being humorlessly harmless to being potentially the most disturbing member of the group. Also, Tatsumi is finally hit by the realization that he'll never see his old friends again, and a new ruthless villain appears on the scene, as well as a kind hearted girl who is also on the opposite side of our heroes.

Michiko & Hatchin - Michiko arrives to take Hatchin away from the circus she'd been traveling with, something Hatchin accepted immediately after learning the circus was going to illegally sell her into underground slavery.

Sword Art Online II - And things just got utterly depressing. It's revealed that this happy go lucky arc with no connection to the real world really has a sad connection to it indeed. Turns out that the "Sleeping Knights" (the guild Asuna has made friends with) is really made up of termanilly ill patients who are using an experimental medical dive device to make their final years easier on them (it provides a way for them to "get out", and can alter their senses so they don't feel pain). They are breaking up the group not because they are going to be too busy IRL to play (like Asuna was previously told), but because two of their members (including Yuuki, the member Asuna is closest to) only have days to live. Yuuki's entire family contracted AIDS after her mother got a bad blood transfusion while giving birth to Yuuki & her twin sister. Symptoms didn't show up until a few years after birth, and both her parents & sister died in years prior to the current day story.

Naruto Shippuden - The Akatsuki's evil plans are laid out (spoiler: it's the totally surprising motive of world domination... totally), and while Naruto has just made a new stride in his training, some terrible news has reached the Leaf Village.

One Piece - The Strawhats say goodbye after a visit from some old friends, and then hold a big ol' end of arc victory party!

Also, they had a new show montage thingy.

I honestly went back to a couple of Conan specials for the first time in years (beyond just watching whatever the newest ones are). I sometimes forget this, but when Conan is at its best it is THE best. It makes me want this series to end soon, just so I can properly recommend it to people.

Now you remind me I have to start watching Conan again. I took a little pause from the show and finished watching Hunter x Hunter which did quite impress me, but I can't quite shake the feeling I wanted more out of it. There are so many things left unanswered which is no fault by any means but why hype and create excitement about things to come and then not do anything with it. I loved the scenario with Chrollo and Kurapika, I quite liked Hisaku as a protagonist('m probably not getting all the names correctly), but in the end what the heck did it even matter. There's little to nothing done with it, which is a shame. And then came the cell saga, ugh I didn't like that much. The ending with the king etc was cool though. Again I did enjoy it a lot and would definitely recommend it to all but it also confirmed why I like One Piece so much. So many great characters and backgrounds. I just watched a few of the latest episodes and it was awesome.

Oh and I also started watching Prison School with my brother and that show is pretty awesome lol.

How far were you in it?

Read the manga. The show is about as good as you can get in adapting 70ish chapters of manga in 12 episodes, but the manga is so much better.

@kkslider5552000: I took a break after episode 311, which was really a thrilling episode .

@CaviarMeths: While I do believe you and you're probably right, I choose to remain ignorant about it. Because one, it's nice to have something you can watch together with someone else. Reading is not really the same. And two, watching an anime adaption of the manga after reading the manga itself is usually quite a painful experience. Because you get reminded by how slow it developes or you notice things missing. But reading after watching is still quite a good experience to me, because it can only add to the experience instead of subtract.

But yeah, if what you say is true(and I believe you!xD) it probably won't end well but it's all for the sake of brotherhood!
Btw, you say 70ish episodes, is the manga already done?

I only watched the first couple of episodes, but it looks like the infamous T vs A scene just happened in the anime, so the next couple of episodes is probably gonna cover the best volume of the manga. It's the volume that caused Hana to dominate pretty much every favorite character poll for the series.

Oh that's quite surprising to hear because she definitely isn't on the top of my list at the moment. But judging from the last episode I saw, she does seem to go all out, so i'm looking forward to that haha. But oh man, the last episode made me laugh so hard with the whole nonsensical "butt vs boobs" discussion. Japanese manga writers really do have a great sense of humour lol.

I've moved my Toonami recap to the Push Square anime thread, because it seems to be more active than this one.

So Braves of the Six Flowers ended this weekend. On a cliffhanger. It doesn't appear to be that popular in Japan either, so a second season isn't guaranteed. Swell.

Really good first season though. Not very often you see an anime take its time in establishing plot and setting like this one did. Didn't feel rushed, the twists and reveals were spaced well, action scenes were used sparingly. I'll hope for a second season, but won't hold my breath.

GATE is going through a bit of a lull right now. It's setting up a more political arc, but trying to balance that with one or two too many subplots, none of which are progressing much. A tad too much time devoted to female characters talking about Itami when he's not around... Still a very interesting series though.

Not much coming up for the fall season that catches my eye. More Monogatari is never a bad thing, I suppose.

Ordered the first Hōrō Musuko dvd from Japan

Well, I finally worked my way through the Ikkitosen manga (well, the 16 volumes I could find online, anyhow). It's not the best fanservice laden martial arts series I've read, but it's not the worst, either.

On the plus side, the attention to detail in the art is fantastic (an upside of being a monthly series, I'm guessing), the action is really good (I'm sure the detailed art helps), and if you like fanservice, this series has you set (which I honestly don't have an aversion to, otherwise I wouldn't have read it).

As for the neutral elements, the story definitely. It's very loosely based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms from Chinese history, where all the generals are reincarnated as Tokyo highscool students for whatever reason (with their schools taking the place of the three warring kingdoms that they fight for). It's never so much as to where you can't follow it, but it assumes you have a working knowledge of that history (which I'm sure is more common in Japan), so there's a lot of characters to follow, so you just got to play close attention to what's going on to keep all their alliances in check.

As for the bad, there were a just a few instances of fanservice that I felt a bit uncomfortable with. When a character is captured & being tortured, it's not okay to use that as an outlet for fanservice (I know it's a Seinen series, so it's going to go a bit further that what they'd do in Shonen, but they have PLENTY of other opportunities, where they shouldn't have felt the need to do this).

I'm in the chimera ant arc in Hunter x Hunter and it's getting g 00 d

I wasn't into it at first.

I finished reading Akira, I have loved the animated movie since I was 15 and the Manga was like crack. After reading It I wish they made it into a series and not just the movie, if money and time where not an issue they could of easily gotten 20+ episodes out of it, but I think the Manga was still going when they wrote the Movie. I also watched Berserk, it was amazing, wish it keep going ugh!

I've recently finished two things.

Mazinger Otome (manga) - Action comedy centering around a group of female cyborgs with the same powers of the robots from the Mazinger Z series (their creators are fans of the series, which is still just a manga/anime in this universe). It's pretty funny, but has a lot of fanservice.

Zone of the Enders: Delores, I (anime) - Spinoff of the Zone of the Enders video game series. Despite some obvious fluff/filler episodes, I actually quite liked this one. It was nice to see a more traditional mecha series, since the last one I watched was Eureka 7, back when Toonami showed it back in 2012.

I went back rewatch Higurashi no naku koro ni (since I never watched past season 1). It's a very silly series about cute anime girls doing cute anime things and you should all watch it for that reason. : D

It's cool that even though I saw it about 3 years ago, I already forgot so much stuff about Steins;Gate so I'm surprised when plot twists happen.

My co-worker just sent me this link. http://www.amazon.com/Steins-Gate-Complete-Classic-Blu-ray/dp...

Steins Gate Complete Series for $32