Topic: Anime & Manga (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

I can name 2 things that have disappointed me with Detective Conan in the past few years.

-The main female lead/love interest started out as the nice childhood friend who stays strong despite secretly being sad about not seeing her love type of story. Because of quality writing it used to work but after some many ideas and stretching it out the character has been reduced to boring nice girl who is too pathetic to not need her man (a man whose respect for her is sometimes questionable). Basically a stereotypical anime character who rose above her stereotype eventually became everything wrong with the stereotype.
-The other issue is midway through the already slow moving, rarely gets too much focus plot arc it was random decided to ignore the plot for no reason for a year and a half despite it already moving at a glacial pace. And it took somewhere close to as long a period of time of relatively consistent cases with some plot to actually grab my interest again to the same degree again (though to be fair, since then the writing has mostly unintentionally listened to literally every complaint I had with recent Conan for a while, barring the first complaint I just made)

To answer my own question, there's a 4 episode filler arc (episodes 137-140) of InuYasha that even I think is utterly terrible (and is considered to be the worst part of the series, even by fans). I could write a whole wall of text on what's wrong with it, I'll shorten it up:

• It's clear that the anime writers used the first phases of the series as inspiration for the characters' personalities. It's not as egregious in other fillers since they're usually more comedy relief based, but here they use those outdated personalities in an attempt to try and make a more serious story, and it fails on all levels. At this point in the series, they've matured enough as to where many of the events that happen here simply wouldn't have happened. The writers just ignore all of the major canon progress the characters have made in terms of personality, simply for the fact that this arc wouldn't work any other way.
• Secondly, it's incredibly lazy. It's obviously just a failed concept of the second movie (and is much, much, worse than the movie, which is great), and instead of simply throwing it away, they shoehorned it into the anime (it's 4 episode length gives away it's movie origins). Furthermore, many of the villains involved are just less interesting pallet swaps of foes they fought before.

I guess that was longer than I intended, but it could have been much longer, lol.

This video, XD

Interesting question. Here are my responses;

• Now And Then, Here And There: It's never explained how...

I mean, it's the biggest conflict of the story in terms of screen-time and importance, but it's not once mentioned how that conflict could even exist. Of course, I think the emotional conflicts make up for it, but it's a legitimate criticism nonetheless.

• From The New World: The ending. I know I've complained about this before, but I honestly don't think it fits with the setting or the set-up. I won't extrapolate on it here, as it will just lead me to reiterating my previous thoughts on the topic.
• Baccano!: When you look at it critically, there's a few scenes in Baccano! that ultimately have no bearing on the story. And considering that this is a thriller which likes to tease the audience and drop story hints everywhere, those few scenes are certainly worthy of criticism.

• Zetsuen no Tempest: Initially, I didn't like the direction the series took in its second half, though I do believe the last third+ending more than make up for it. I guess I should be grateful the philosophy felt entirely appropriate throughout the entire series as opposed to only a single part.
• Spice & Wolf: Why does the anime skip Vol. 4 of the LN? It's really bugged me, since the second half of Season 2 is Vol. 5, which is only the first part of a later arc, making the anime's ending seem somewhat inconclusive (a great contrast to the first season, where every conflict was resolved, yet there was still room for the characters to grow). My theory is that since Vol. 4 has many aspects related to religion, the studios behind S&W decided it wouldn't bode well with a western audience (even though the book does such a good job illustrating the widening divide between Lawrence and Holo).
• Toaru Majutsu no Index: Index's personality, or lack thereof, along with how most of the arcs and fights were almost dumbed down. Granted, it made Toma look like a badass, but still...

With One Piece, I find myself quite easily not liking the filler (save for the movies and some specials) as much as the canon. I also am not a huge fan of Oda's heavy use of death psych-outs, which he seems to love ever since the Pell incident. However, I am a fan of the occasional implied death .(where it is absolutely clear a char is dead, almost never happens with actual important chars, just side ones, but it helps add to the danger)

Finished up Legend of Lemnear earlier. It was alright, but nothing about it really stood out, and I can't say any of the characters were particularly memorable. It's just a typical Shonen series set in a western fantasy type world. It's not too long (18 chapters), so if the genre's your thing it might be worth a look, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else (there's an absurd amount of fanservice, though, in case you're worried about that sort of thing).

Also, I just started reading Kyoukai no Rinne. Just read the first chapter so far, so I can't really comment on it yet, but that's fine because I'll probably end up being biased towards it anyways, lol.

BTW, thanks for all the interesting replies

These are, legit, some of my favorite AMVs:

Fairy Tale (Spice & Wolf)

Spanish "Wolf" (Spice & Wolf)

Time Bomb (Zetsuen no Tempest)

Take my Hand (Zetsuen no Tempest)

Damn…That new Boondocks wasn't funny...

Honey and Clover II - There's one plot twist towards the end which feels like drama for drama's sake. This is from an anime which has up until this point been all about realism and subtlety. The twist is also set to one of the most unfitting insert songs ever.

Kids on the Slope - I felt like the romance and the jazz fought against each other for the viewer's attention. Both were good, but sometimes I felt like I was watching two things at once.

Mushishi - Mostly a complaint about season one. Everyone kinda looked the same, and there were lots of frames with no motion.

I just started watching Jojo's bizarre adventures, as I saw a lot on tumblr about it. I haven't read anything about it plot wise so I'm not sure what to expect haha.

It's basically "Posing: The Anime". It's quite entertaining.

lol never seen someone make a description of it so spot on and so wrong all at the same time! XD

Might give Jojo a go tomorrow.

Trust me, Jojo is jotastic.

Seriously though, it's definitely one of my favorite anime I've seen. (I watched the first season in 10 days!)

Just finished up chapter 68 of Kyoukai no Rinne (yeah, I've been binge reading it, lol). I'm quite enjoying it, and it's the first time I've been excited reading through a manga since History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi. Now, I don't think it's quite up there with Ranma 1/2 or InuYasha (though it's closer to Ranma 1/2, it feels like it's still not quite sure which of those two it wants to be like). Still, I'd like to see an anime adaptation very much.

With that said, they switched translators as of chapter 69, and whoever is doing it for these chapters had the "bright" idea to cram 2 pages into a single image (instead of the more common, and logical, one page per image), making it too small to read on a mobile device, so I'll probably have to start reading it on my 360 for the larger screen (if they ever get that Internet Explorer issue figured out :/)

AAAhhhhhh~! So I'm really late on this one but it's April! Another anniversary for the premier of the beloved Cardcaptor Sakura anime has passed! ^_^ The anime premiered in 1998 and the manga a whole two years prior in 1996. Check out this outstanding 3D rendering for the opening in honor of the anniversary!

Oh man, I totally forgot about Card Captor Sakura! I used to watch it in the afternoons after school! It was the perfect complement to Dragon Ball Z's hyper manly action. Not that any of my friends knew I watched CCS, of course

lol I thought I was the only guy that liked Card Captor Sakura! XD

Cardcaptor Sakura is literally the 2nd anime I ever watched (after Pokemon).

of course it was the stupid dub and its episode skipping...

I'm actually considering watching the original version in the next few months and hopefully it's better than the last time I decided to watch a magical girl anime.