Topic: Anime & Manga (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

Been watching Tiger & Bunny on Anime On Demand. It's... um. Perhaps Product Placement: The Animated Series would've been a better title. Seriously, if you had a drinking game where you had to take a shot every time a real-world brand name got screentime, you'd be paralytic by the time you'd reached the end of the opening credits. And it's not even subtle. Like really, really not subtle.

_{...I want some Pepsi}

That being said, the anime's entertaining enough, and definately one to watch if you're a mecha fan.

You do realize the product placement is obvious satire and the entire point of the series is to show corporations getting their hands on superheroes and making their job into a reality show right?

I'm starting to get back into Gundam Wing. The old school one. I have nothing against the others that have come out. But i just love the characters from the very first one. Heero is awesome. Also starting to get back into watching Cowboy Bebop, FLCL, OutlawStar, and Dragonball Z. (Not that horrible Dragonball Z Kai )

so what's more horrible, the actual sane pacing, the lack of filler or the good dub?

Yeah, I got that. Can't help but be a cynic and wonder if the plot was wrapped around the product placement though, rather than the product placement being integrated into the original plot
It's no bad thing, I'm sure it helped the budget and the production values, I've just never seen it on that kind of scale. Maybe 'cos I'm in the UK, and product placement in TV shows here has only just become a legal thing... and even then we're talking "tiny Nescafé coffee machine in amongst background furniture of morning TV show." When American shows air here, brand names get blurred out, lol (like the coca-cola glasses in Pop Idol USA)

Well first off Gohan sounded better from the original DBZ one he sounds like a girl now...Bulma isn't as bad the original for Bulma was extremely annoying. I honestly wish they would ask Ocean dub to do it over again. I thought they did good. I still think the voice actor for Vegeta in the Ocean dub version was better than the FUNimation one.

EDIT: But it was also really stupid to see Nickelodeon have to color Mr. Popo Blue when he is obviously Black. (thankfully i believe it wasn't done in the actual dvd version of Kai.)

Blackface characters are something of a faux pas in the Western market for obvious reasons, hence why they're always changed. Those reasons don't apply in Japan, so it's not considered racist there. I don't have a problem with it being edited in the Western releases, given the considerable backlash that would occur if it weren't - Jynx's original design kicked up enough of a storm to have her design permanently altered in all markets, and an episode of the anime banned. By comparison, the other West-banned episodes featured: James playing with large fake boobs, a guy going ax-crazy with a shotgun, and a flashing tunnel of strobe lights that caused widespread epileptic fitting when it first aired in Japan. It has to be pretty serious for the banhammer to fall. Wouldn't want to see that happen to animes like DBZ when a quick paint job fixes it - it's not like they're deleting whole scenes here.

I liked The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. The last episode is AMAZING!!!!!!
_{Nah, not really, but the rest is really good.}

I just started to get into Eden of the East. It's a bit hard to explain. Best I can sum it up is 999 meets 24. Plus I just saw Summer Wars for the first time. Man thats such a great movie

@Raylax: Jynx wasn't a blackface to begin with, that issue was one gigantic cultural misunderstanding.

@Tails: I know right? And what's worse is they've started using her to voice young Goku too. I don't know where they got the mindset that she's good at voicing male characters... XP

Take it you watched it in chronological order? Go back and watch it again in broadcast order. It's 100 times better that way :3

Yeah, Eden of the East is great, if a little confusing. And Summer Wars is excellent <3

Uhhh, that was only in the Toonzai airing mandated by 4Kids. The Nicktoon's Network airing shows Mr. Popo in his black glory.

I've been watching series 2 and it's not as good as series 1. Two words sum up why it isn't as good as series 1: endless eight. Those repetitive episodes take up over half the series but apart from that its really good. This youtube channel has all 14 episodes of series 2.

I was reccomended a two episode anime called ikem but couldn't find it anywhere so I thought they might've got the name wrong so I was wondering if any of you knew what they meant. Apparantley its crazy and kinky if that helps.

I saw the trailer for that show. It looks really freakin' crazy.

That show's dub was THE original abridged series. I loved watching it as a little kid then some Medabots right after.

-
So I decided to finally catch up on the 8 episodes of Digimon: Xros Wars I missed. I'm actually really impressed. Still not much character development,but Cutemon's little backstory touched my soft heart. The action was great and one BIG complaint from the fan base was finally answered in episode 30. I myself squealed like a girl. I'm hooked back in now.
Beyblade:metal Fusion(Metal FIght Beyblade) was terrible. I'm not saying this with Nostalgia goggles on. Every battle is literally "Gooo Pegasus!". It got annoying and I lost all interest I had for it at the beginning. It starts off strong,but gets dumb as it goes on. Should have expected that of an anime about spinning tops targeted for kids. I think I'll go back and watch the original beyblade now. I remember it being much better but that could just be my faded memory talking.

Wonder when the next episode of [C] will come out... loved the first one.

Well, I'm bored, so quick summary of [C] and Tiger & Bunny.

[C]: Control: The Money and Soul of Possibility tackles the temptations of money in the way that anime really knows best - high-school students, a madcap and slightly creepy clown guy, and a huge alternate dimension known as The Financial District, where deals are opened and settled by... dueling giant monsters. And the first episode doesn't disappoint. If you liked Summer Wars and Darker Than Black, then this is one well worth checking out. It also opens with a lengthy scene that makes almost no sense whatsoever. It's a popular technique to show first and explain later, but this bombards the viewer with so many unexplained sequences that it risks turning them off before it's even properly started.
After the titles though, things pick up. Kimimaro, a high-schooler, finds himself too short on cash to even attend a drinking party, despite working two part-time jobs alongside his full-time education. He's then met by a bizarre man from the Financial District who introduces himself as Masakaki, and is offered him a very special loan... all the money he could ever need, secured against his future. Kimimaro refuses, and wakes up as though the whole scenario was a bizarre dream, but later discovers 500,000 yen has been deposited to his bank account. He assumes it was a bank error, but decides to pocket the money.
Asides the hugely confusing opening, the series gets off to a very strong start and it's certainly going to be interesting to see where the story goes, particularly with the denizens and dealings of The Financial District. This could be one of the better animes of 2011.

Tiger and Bunny takes a league of super-heroes and straps them into a extremely heavily-sponsored show, where the ratings and viewing figures are put above all else. They're often ordered to delay saving someone's life or stopping a super-villain until the cameras are in the best position and the scene is at its most dramatic. The superheroes that perform best earn points, thus increasing their popularity amongst fans and by extension, popularity of their sponsers. It's an interesting plot, but unfortunately not one that's pulled off as well as it could be. It's by no means bad, it just goes for both action and comedy but falls short of the potential of either. There are some moments of comedy gold, but they're too few and far between, and the action sequences are similarly "good but could be better." There's a little too much emphasis on Tiger's depression at his dwindling popularity (exasperated when he's forced to partner up with a new, younger, and much more popular hero who has the exact same superpowers) and some really narmy moments in his backstory flashbacks, which don't suit so well in the show's otherwise light-hearted comical tone. If you like mecha and super-heroes, then it's definitely still worth checking out. I'll probably end up watching the whole season, there's fun to be had here, even if it does fall a little short.

Ok I have to ask this and I never seen the anime but I have been wondering about this for a long time.

How dose FLCL mean Fooly Cooly or whatever its called? When I first saw it I thought it was called Flakla.

It's the acronym. FL=Foo ly CL= Coo ly. (I may be wrong.)

Don't worry, I watched them in their intended order originally. I just didn't find the last episode very exciting (the last episode in the first series, that is).

Beezlebub? Is this Sand Land related by Akira Toriyama?

@Tails, the DBZ Kai DVDs are all uncut. And I hate Gohan's new voice. I can't imagine what it will sound like in the Buu Saga. D: At least Krillin and Vegeta's voice actors are ok though.