Topic: Anime & Manga (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

The second episode of Danganronpa 3: Despair Arc is great. Especially the extended references to games like Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart, and Bomberman.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2016-07-22/adult-swim-to...

There are other anime this season that I need to watch, but going back to school kind of interferes with that.

I also made an MAL account a while back. Turns out that I want to watch more than 90 anime, and only have completed 7.

I remember when there were only 90 anime I wanted to watch.

Wait, no I don't.

...That's not even really a brag, more a comment on my ****ty memory.

BTW, has anyone here used any online backlog lists like My Anime List that isn't MAL? Because I don't like how they use romaji for everything, even shows with official English names (which I could go on a long rant about...and I almost did, but I decided to spare you all the page space. It's just counterintuitive, and there's still no option to change it, even for members, last I checked). Not to mention they get hacked several times a year, sometimes once a month. I thought the new website software would fix that, but I think I saw that they were hacked even afterwards, so...why are they so popular? I've seen alternatives, but I haven't tried any except AniList (which had all the same problems MAL had, and was huge load on my browser, AND its website design was terrible. At MAL was clean and organized once I installed NoScript). At this point, I'd like to get some feedback before I start giving my email address away. I already have an email I can no longer use thanks to MAL...

Well, saw a bit of Genocyber today. And holy crap, I seriously don't not want to finish it.

Smart man. Except for the part where you started it in the first place. That was really dumb.

Genocyber is an AMAZING gore anime. Classic 80's nightmare fuel. Way better than MD Geist, too, although I'm not sure that's really saying much.

There are definitely more entertaining gory anime out there, though. Like Ninja Scroll. Or Wicked City. Or Corpse Party: Tortured Souls.

Good stuff.

The only Gore Anime I can think of that I liked were Berserk and Jin-Roh. Because they actually had a plot, and characters, and in the case of Jin-Roh, the shock elements actually served to enhance the main point of the story, instead of just being morose entertainment (I mean, it did that in Berserk, too, just not all the time).

...so, Anime with Gore, instead of a Gore Anime. Just like any other fanservice anime, I prefer to just stay away from them. It's like whenever I eat a cupcake, if there's so much frosting that I wind up having to scrape it off just to get to the actual cake part, I'd rather just eat a muffin...

@CanisWolfred That's the first time I've ever read a convincing cupcake analogy. Colour me impressed.

Episode 4 of Orange appears to be up. I've been following it along happily enough, but Episode 3 gave the whole thing a greater sense of purpose than simply drifting through a series of attractive backdrops with some unobjectionable teenagers. I'll be interested to see where it goes.

I had a go at Battery, and while I've been able to get into other anime about sports I've had zero interest in, I couldn't really click with Battery. I don't think I'm really a fan of sullen, over-talented protagonists unless the rest of the cast can balance them. Episode 1 didn't seem to feature any characters I really liked, or enough moments of levity to counteract the monotonously grumpy lead.

Does anyone have any other recommendations that are currently airing? I've got a habit of ignoring anything with particularly obtuse names, so I might have missed something. Though that's normally because I associate them with overly sparkly Magic Girl shows (★Kira Kira! Super Heart no Lovely na Bishoujo Magic Team: Waku Waku Go Time★!) or overwrought, obsessively edgy shows that take themselves too seriously (Jigoku no Maximum Destruction: Saikyou no Excelsior Apocalypse! Re: Death Jikan XX). But still, I'm sure there is a greater variety of absurdly long-titled shows than that.

The reason MAL is so popular is because it's connected to other anime businesses (Crunchyroll, Daisuki, ANN, etc.). I'm with you too about the titles issue, I hate how half of the time I have to Google an anime's title in English just to find the Japanese title. I don't know any other anime list site though.

So far out of this season, I'm liking Nejimaki Serei Senki: Alderman of the Sky the most (and I'm sure I misspelled that, as the name is too long, and I'm not sure if it has an English title).

It's set in a fantasy world with a sort of late 1800's setting (they have rifles & blimps, in terms of more modern technology I've noticed, and they have these sort of magical fairy companion things). Anyway, it finds a group of young military recruits who find themselves honorary members of a prestigious officer's academy, after they save the empire's princess out of a tough situation.

The main character, Ikta Solork, despite his tactical genius, actually wanted nothing to do with the military, and is sort of bummed about the whole ordeal. It's been pretty interesting so far.

@Manx

I'm kind of impressed that worked out, too. I kind of only wrote it because I was hungry...but it's a simple analogy, really. It's all about what the main appeal is supposed to be, and while it's possible for the "frosting" to be fantastic, even the best part of the "cupcake" by far, it's still filler, no matter how you cut it. And I think we all know how often "too much frosting" is used as a trick to disguise a cake that's cheap and bland...

No, it's been poular for at least 6 years, and actually heavily advocated piracy for most of that time. I remember when I got caught up with Funimation's dub of One Piece, I could go on MAL to find different fansub groups, and they usually had links to them right on their page. They were essentially bribed to put a stop to that last year. Heck, their fansub connections were probably the real reason why they had the romaji titles as the default - the fansubbers usually stuck to the Japanese names, especially back when they could get them out faster than the legal streaming sites, and even now they can only stay in business by spouting their elitist "purism," which of course involves avoiding the official localized names the legal sources use (because it's not like they're just trying to avoid takedown notices or anything, nooooo their work is more true to original works than the foreign companies that were contracted by the anime producers themselves, because these guys are true fans! )

...but I digress. The point is that they've been around for a long time, and have been popular since at least 2009. And that's really the only reason they're still popular. Anime is too niche, so once a database like that gets established, there's not a lot of room for competition. I've seen it with other fandoms as well, so I don't fault them for it. However, I have seen a number of competitors crop up recently, so I had to at least hope one of them might gain momentum. I've seen giants toppled by little guys numerous times at my age. I think I've earned the right to believe in miracles.

New episode of Delta was fun. Bogue a cute:

I finished up Gravion Zwei tonight (obviously the sequel to Gravion, which I watched beforehand). It's more of a continuation than a sequel, and is still just as much of a decent super robot show as the first (though the fanservice is a bit more explicit than the first, if that bothers anyone). I liked the designs of the EFA's machinery more than Gravion itself, though.

Also, I've started my annual summer rewatch of the InuYasha films (more detail in the Movie Thread, for those that care... I know none of you do, lol).

Same. Also, if you ever get around to Dancouga Nova, let me know. I always wanted to watch that one. It's billed as a spiritual successor to Dancouga - The Beast Machine God (which I have seen, and greatly enjoyed, but it's very old-school and the characters are so terrible that it starts to feel like a precursor to Evangelion at times, especially considering it was an early attempt at crossing Super Robot and Real Robot genre conventions), but it's basically just more Gravion.

...Really, I only know about Dancouga Nova because of a Super Robot Wars game where they appear together. That segment was actually really cool, and their team-up attack is, well...

...that said, I keep putting it off since some of the series that appeared the SRW games wind up being both cooler, and more well-written when they're adapted into their cross-over plots. That's mostly because they're terrible to begin with, but still, I don't need another Detonator Orgun situation (turns out it is possible to make an anime where the main hero dons a Man-sized battle suit with a Motion Wave Gun mounted in its chest armor insufferably boring...), or worse, a Linebarrel situation - turns out the only way that series would ever be tolerable if you chuck the previous story out the window and reverse all the roles of the characters involved. At least I got to give the Linebarrel the butt-kicking it (and it's pilot) most definitely deserved...

Oh my god, Junjo Romantica is the most painfully trite thing I've ever watched in my life. Why is good yaoi so hard to come by? I want a proper anime adaptation of FAKE that's longer than two episodes!

I fully understand that. If you're not a gore hound, the gore content of an anime probably won't have any appeal to you on its own. Me, I've been watching Lucio Fulci films, Italian splatterfilms, and more traditionally known exploitation films almost my entire life, so I eat this kind of stuff up.

I'm with you on fanservice in anime, though: I don't mind it being present if its artfully done and well-integrated into the fabric of a show (RE: Cutey Honey, for example, or Kill La Kill), but it annoys me when an otherwise decent show devolves into jiggling breasts and panty shots (looking at you, High School of the Dead).

Alrighty, I'm back! That was a fun trip - in any case I've resumed my watching of Gundam & it's still very enjoyable.

In other news - this was unknown to me, but apparently Rightstuf is releasing Revolutionary Girl Utena on Blu Ray. Seeing as the series became my favorite anime after I saw it this past December, that news makes me incredibly excited - I would have bought the DVD box sets little suspecting a higher quality release was imminent! And! Viz is re-releasing the Utena manga, (like Evangelion, it's a separate entity - while both were made by "Be-Papas," Kunihiko Ikuhara's direction for the show & Chihio Saito's manga were very different) in a nice box set! I considered buying those a while back, but when a single volume is over $50, I start to think twice. So both versions of the series are being released in high-quality, affordable collections just over the horizon, what a great day to be an Utena fan! (Speaking of Viz boxsets, One Piece Box Set 3 Volumes 47-70 is also coming this fall! I got Box Set 2, so this would be a great addition! Unfortuately I already own volumes 69 & 70, but that small overlap is minor when there's such a huge value i the box set!)

Seeing as how incredibly expensive the Evangelion Platinum Boxsets are becoming on Ebay, I've also started to wonder if I should just wait for someone to pick up the Blu ray license. Surely a series as influential & important as Eva won't just not be licensed again, especially when so many more old & obscure shows are getting nice releases these days. The End of Evangelion DVD from the early 2000s had atrocious quality & is atrociously expensive atm, so I was already waiting on that...but the question will become when is too long lol.

Also it sounds like One Piece Film Gold was great - as expected. If Funimation deigns to screen it anywhere near me, (especially with their dub!) I'm 100% going to see it in theaters - if not I'll wait till the Blu ray.

Final days of Bleach update! This week:

• Ywach splatters all over the place after last week's surprise attack. Aizen then gives his spiel about how he figured out how Ywach was susceptible to his mind altering powers.
• Aizen is taken out (though unsure if dead) by a reviving Ywach, who states he can even rewrite futures in which he died. Ichigo then launches an unsuccessful assault on Ywach.
• During the action, Uryu shows up and hits Ywach with a special arrow that temporarily robs Ywach of his abilities (against any other Quincy, it would have supposedly been a one hit kill).
• Ichigo goes all in during Ywach's period of weakness, and while Ywach tries to destroy Zangetsu, it's core (it's classic shikai form) holds together and Ichigo once again cuts Ywach in half.

Tune in next week to see if this is the end!

Just watched the first episode of Under The Dog. I've had a mild curiosity about it since Masahiro Sakurai tweeted something in support of it awhile ago. It was... interesting. A bit graphic for my tastes - I'm not a big fan of dismemberment even in cartoon form, but I more or less got used to it by the end. Though... I still don't really have clue what's going on, other than the fact it's extremely important and involves a lot of difficult decisions be made, and lot of people get shot in the process.

I hope I can like it. It's clearly got a lot more behind it that most derivative shows. I can't say I found the first episode comfortable to watch, but I don't think that's the point. We'll see.

@Tsurii Yeah... I was trying not to be overly negative as I watched the backing trailer and was charmed by the case they put forward; that most of the modern anime industry is stuck in a creatively-deficient, finance-focused, risk averse cycle blah blah blah and that the only way to make something artistically bold was WITH YOUR SUPPRT, the good people of Kickstarter.

But I can't help agreeing with you - so far - on just about every point. It seems that the only thing it's really used to differentiate itself from a lot of other anime is a heightened sense of gore and a couple of 'shock deaths' (that pretty much render most of the first episode pointless).

I've yet to pick up on anything particularly charming, subtle or witty about it. It's just 'edgy edgy edgy' so far, which is proving a bit wearing.

I guess the only place it can go from the bullet storm of a first episode is to something easier to watch and follow... Maybe. Or maybe the explosions only get bigger. :/

But yeah, I'm generally not a fan of charmless seinen bullet fests with an over-inflated sense of self importance whose only real defining feature is an edgy, graphic aesthetic. We'll see if UtD can shake that. It's managed to basically say nothing about the story in Episode 1, so who knows, it might actually be quite good.

I need to thank you all for reminding me of Under the Dog. I remember being interested in the trailer, but kind of forgot about it since it started later than everything else, lol.

As a disclaimer, I'm unaware of the Kickstarter & what it promised, so my opinions are of someone who went in blind.

While I'm not so sure how I feel about the U.S. being the "antagonizing" force (though we still don't know the full story. It seems like the Flowers are being blackmailed into doing what they're doing), I actually thought the presentation of the military operation & action was really cool (if a bit gory). The environments & machinery look really good, but the people & that monster don't quite look up to the same standards (they're not bad, and the animations are fluid, they just don't look quite as good to me, I guess). Can't say much on the story since it's only one episode in, but it has promise.