Topic: Anime & Manga (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

@iLikeUrAttitude Eeeeew, High Garudian Spice. Isn't that the so-called "Gender equality" anime? I'm a girl, and I don't think only hiring girls is gender equality, it's just stupid. The only good Crunchyroll original they have is Tonikawa, but that's it. That is literally it. And yes, pirating is moral. I've been doing it even before Crunchyroll started doing this. I'll pirate anything I can't afford, as I have no other choice unless I don't wanna watch a show until I'm old enough to get a job. Like, I can't afford all these anime services, I ccan't afford Crunchyroll, let alone Crunchyroll with 5 other streaming services. Like, ya'll used to have Lucky Star, but where is it now? Only availible by pirating ro buying a Blu-ray or DVD. Plus, they'll even premium new episodes of their originals for a week or so, that's why I now watch Tonikawa on pirating sites. AND they don't let you download anime unless you have premium, but guess who does let you download? You guessed right, PIRATING SITES. ANd I know it's in the rules not to praise pirating, but I don't think anyone here is gonna report me, and even if you do, I have 70 alternative accounts.

Man, I've missed Pop Team Epic. Nothing else is an experience in anime quite like it.

Arrivals I got in last weekend (a bit of a 90's fest).

Fatal Fury: the OVA Collection - the two 90's era Fatal Fury OVAs, obviously enough. Watched them back to back like a movie (about 2 hours long total). Every bit the cheesy martial arts flicks of the time, they're not particularly deep, but they are a fun time (only minor issue is that they changed a prominent character's hair color between the two). I enjoyed the corny faux "Arnie" German accents the big bads had, lol.

Outlaw Star - Still not even quite 10 episodes into it, but I'm already having an immensely fun time with it. It doesn't seem to have had the cultural staying power of an Evangelion or Cowboy Bebop, but it was just as much part of my childhood.

Bonus: Alternate box art under the slip cover for Fatal Fury: the OVA Collection

Anyone here know where I could watch the Ace Attorney anime? I've heard it's basically just an adaptation of the original trilogy's cases with a few new moments and an entirely new case thrown in for good measure and, with me being as big an AA nut as I am, I'd love to give it a watch sometime (the clips I've seen especially make it look hilarious at points).

I guess I may as well ask about where I could watch the Japanese live-action movie as well: that s*** looks utterly absurd and it's absolutely something I'd love to watch.

Oh and this is moreso for anyone who's played all the games: is the sequel trilogy referenced in any way? I don't want to be spoiled on stuff like Apollo Justice or the Investigations sub-series by watching the show

@Fizza I believe Crunchyroll has the anime on their website to watch for free. You might need to make an account, though. I have no idea about the live-action movie, but I also think it looks awesome and I want to watch it at some point. The anime only focuses on games 1 through 3, so you're good on spoilers for AJ and AAI.

Chainsaw Man is a fascinating series where I feel like I need to at least see the season through before I have thoughts on it. My initial thoughts beyond the incredible animation and art is that it feels like a bizarre halfway point between the "dumb and wacky on the service yet secretly brilliant" and the "obviously dark, violent and political" sides of shonen.

It is nice to have another anime this popular that understands that ecchi comedy isn't automatically bad, most other shonen anime are just kinda bad at it.

Honestly, as a shounen fan, I am eating well right now.

The Witch from Mercury is really fun, and gorgeously animated.

I feel like MHA has just been hitting it out of the park every week, this arc absolutely hit the ground running and the animation is excellent.

Bleach got off to a slow start this new arc, and I kinda hoped they would go harder with the animation given its the final arc, but now we are at the point where the war has properly begun, it is gonna be a great time I think for those who just enjoy massive battles between people with wacky powers.

I also recognise that some people are not happy with the CSM changes, but I think the gatekeeping from manga readers has become borderline aggressive and I personally think the adaptation is excellent. The art in the manga, especially early on, is very scruffy, with battles captured usually with minimal panels that are hard to follow. I guess it deviates from the "spirit" of the manga to expand on those battles and chuck in some cinematic visuals has just been a treat, I think the animation exists in a really nice sweet spot of keeping the intent of the manga, but making it work better for a medium of motion like this.

@Pizzamorg as a fan and someone who is waiting for chainsaw man to be available online in its entirety before subbing to any of the AWFUL anime focused services...did they ACTUALLY change things up or is it just the usual, dumb and obnoxious whining of nerds who can't handle their precious SOURCe material not being translated 101% to animation?

Cause just seeing snippets of the series online has me incredibly antsy to finally get to the anime myself lol

Ok, sometimes when the anime isn't even close to the source it gets annoying. Like in Tonikawa, the anime story goes in a different order than the manga. In the original 1992 run of Sailor Moon, it goes way off the manga story. But I understand ther eare people who get mad when the sub changes a quote just a little bit. But I'm one of the people who can and will complain when the subtitles aren't accurate to what they're saying. I speak just enough to Japanese to sometimes tell when the sbutitles are inaccurate. I was watching an anime one time and a character said "Your bento is so pathetic. How cute." but the subtitles only said "How cute."

It is six and two threes here, really.

Some scenes have been out and out removed, their removal alters pacing and also changes the way scenes come across because they now have altered context. I wouldn't say any of those alterations are dramatic, it is still the same story, they haven't added like filler arcs or whole new characters or whatever, but it isn't a panel for panel recreation of the manga.

In terms of battles, it is a little different. The fights have been, so far, the same as they are in the manga. The same beats, the same conclusions etc, but they are just expanded. Where a fight may just be a couple of borderline incoherent poses of Chainsaw Man surrounded by gore, they have now created cohesive bridges through the panel moments to give action scenes a complete end to end flow, whereas the manga required you to use a LOT of imagination.

If one is an aggressive purist they may say these expansions are not true to the source, which I guess technically they aren't, but I much prefer the action in the anime. And I'm not one of those who thinks that animation always makes an action scene better when it comes to adaptations.

It will be interesting, however, to see how they approach some of the more experimental, later, action scenes which invert shounen expectations for more minimalist showdowns as those will clash with the animes presentation I think.

@EllaTheKawaiiNeko maybe I should've added that I'm mostly talking about stuff that's actually faithful and only adds little bits and bobs to flesh out scenes.

I think One Piece actually does that a lot lately with fights that are super short or straight-up off panel in the Manga.

I get being frustrated with adaptations that just go completely off the rails.
Didn't throw a tantrum like a lot of the community but I was - rightfully, if I may say - PISSED OFF when the second season for Promised Neverland came around.

@Dom_31 Yeah, I wanna punch a wall when the anime doesn't follow the story of the manga. Tonikawa is still my favorite anime, but if you were to ask me what season I think the secret of Tonikawa will come out in, I couldn't tell ya because the anime has different order of plot. It's still the same events and plot, but it's in a different order than the manga. So the secret could come out this following 2nd season, or in the 10th season. No one knows.

@Pizzamorg hmm, the stuff about removing (small?) moments is news to me but I didn't really follow online discourse about it tbf.
Curious how that may impact the story, whether it's in big or small ways, or if they just shuffle some things to different spots. Don't really remember EVERYTHING that's happening in the story and I will wait with reading the Manga again until I saw the anime just to enjoy the latter more if stuff I may have liked got cut or something.

An early example, and SPOILERS, is they took out the Muscle Devil part of the story. The explanation for this is it makes it very obvious straight away that Makima is a villain, and they thought the exchange between her and Denji with the noodles and the "what is your type" stuff had more nuance without the Muscle Devil stuff framing the exchange. I honestly sorta agree with this too, but I dunno whether the mangaka wanted us to not like her/be wary of her straight away. I don't really feel it meaningfully changes anything personally, but people really lost their ***** over this.

@Pizzamorg see, I don't even remember that whatsoever
Guess I'm not a real fan and only bought the Manga because I'm a poser haha

I probably only noticed because I recently reread the whole manga from start to finish in prep for the show. I thought the first half of the manga was really good, I thought the second half was pretty terrible, but the new arc which is like Part 2 or whatever and has sorta changed protagonists? Kinda? Pretty cool, to be honest.

It is actually the second half of the manga I am most excited to see animated though, as the second half of the story is really battle heavy and the art is often really not great when it comes to intelligible action scenes. So I'd love to see all that noise and clutter translated to clean, fluid, action scenes. I think in motion the second half of the manga will make for some incredible anime episodes.

I do think because of a bunch of botched adaptations that people have really over-corrected into thinking an exact one-to-one recreation is the only way to do said things. Which is not remotely true, just on the obvious basis that most manga are not perfect.

Tomorrow is Spy x Family Saturday. I'll walk to Wesco and get a big bag of popcorn, I say this episode is gonna be great.

Started watching chainsaw man because they already started dubbing - and streaming - it over here and it's incredible how damn good this series looks in its first episodes already.

And I constantly see people saying it only seems to look better with each new episode, which is STUPID exciting to me as a huge fan of that series (and Fire Punch.. And Look Back... And Goodbye Eri... I may have to look into the one shot collections by Fujimoto)

Forgot to post, but I got these in last weekend.

Lupin the 3rd: The First - As far as I'm aware this is the newest Lupin 3rd film, and the series' first attempt at a CG flick. It was actually really fun. You can definitely tell it's not as advanced as what Disney or the other big western animation studios produce (in terms of the tech), but it didn't feel particularly dated either. Good jumping on point too, as it's probably the cleanest Lupin film I've seen since Cagliostro (though not quite as tame as that one). Pretty much Lupin 3rd: Indiana Jones edition, and it was fun. BTW, I got the steel book edition since the cost was about the same as the standard release.

City Hunter 3 - Just finished this one up (at only 13 episodes long, it's much shorter than the first two series, which were over 50 & 60 episodes each respectively). It's pretty much more of the same, and although the animation quality may be a bit better than the earlier series' on average, I wasn't a huge fan of the aesthetic choices on offer. A minor issue, but it had a much more autumnal color palette I felt (a lot of oranges, creams, & browns) which I didn't care for after the very bright 80's neon pallettes of the earlier episodes. They even changed up a few characters' hair colors (Kaori went from reddish to brown & Saeko from bluish to black) which I never quite got used to.

City Hunter '91 - The last series in the franchise, so I'm almost done (like CH3, it only has 13 episodes). Only one episode in so far so not much to say yet (other than that it doesn't look to shake up the formula much, if at all), though at least they fixed Kaori's hair at least.

Bonus: Alternate City Hunter box art under the slip cases.

Probably going to move on from the Lupin stuff for a bit since I've gotten so much of it, and this appears to be the end of the line for City Hunter as well (already got the 2019 film as well).