I'm Currently Watching...

All anime and manga discussion that doesn't fit elsewhere goes here.
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Swagnarok

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Re: I'm Currently Watching...

Post by Swagnarok »

Finished Kiznaiver.
Spoiler:
Wasn't that great at first, but it was by the end. Some of the character designs were cringey as frick, but if you can get past that then it's a fun ride, and it has a really unusual and fascinating OP, seeing which on YouTube being what drew me to Kiznaiver in the first place. At first I thought their concept of pain (displeasure/the opposite of pleasure) was so incredibly simplistic and dumb, but by the end it revealed itself to actually be kind of clever. Only twelve episodes, not a big investment of your time. Just imagine a fringe study with results as f**ked up as those of the Stanford Prison Experiment, but on steroids. Basically it's twelve episodes of why connecting people's minds is a horrible idea.
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CandyCandy

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Re: I'm Currently Watching...

Post by CandyCandy »

Tokyo Ghoul...
>:D >:D >:D >:D >:D >:D
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k11chi

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Re: I'm Currently Watching...

Post by k11chi »

The Promised Neverland, the first arc in the manga is great and the animated version so far is up there.
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Re: I'm Currently Watching...

Post by Nemomon »

k11chi wrote:The Promised Neverland, the first arc in the manga is great and the animated version so far is up there.
Yeah, I liked the episode as well, but I didn't like how they shown Ray knowing more than he should. Too soon for that.
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Swagnarok

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Post by Swagnarok »

Spoiler:
Honestly the most unbelievable thing about it is how a person like "Mama" could exist. Somebody who was willing to get so close to and affectionate with the children, and yet she never seemed to show remorse for her actions, much less reconsider her continued complicity in what was happening to them.
In any case, The Promised Neverland is definitely the kind of feel-good, heartwarming show that you should recommend to all your anime-loving friends who want an escape from the constant negativity they see on the news everyday. Nothing but saccharine goodness through and through.
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Swagnarok

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Re: I'm Currently Watching...

Post by Swagnarok »

Alright, here are my thoughts on SAO III: Alicization, 15 episodes in:
Spoiler:
-I don't remember all that was said in that lengthy exposition drop episode back in the 1st cour, but it seems as though there are some problems with the Underworld. For starters, considering that the Underworld by this time likely has tens of thousands of denizens, and considering also that every year in real-world time is *at least* 100 years in their time, continued population growth should at some point overtake the government's ability to secretly scan the brains of infants in various hospitals. Though theirs is clearly a pre-industrial society, the fact that life is assisted through system commands along with the apparent absence of bacterial/viral infections should somewhat account for the lower than expected birthrate, since a big part of why people back then churned out babies left and right was because of the high likelihood that many of them would not survive to adulthood. However, the fact that this was still an agricultural society (ergo, children were still an economic asset rather than a liability) intent on maximum expansion across the Underworld geography (to the degree possible, given certain limits that Quinella put in place), combined with the fact that more people would've survived long enough to have children in the first place (given the relative absence of war and banditry), should've meant a population growth rate well above modern Japan's. I don't see how a small team of scientists could've kept providing enough new fluctlights, unless they simply started duplicating such, the key differences between such duplicate persons being environment and the bodies that were rendered for them.

-Additionally, to render an environment for the perspective of every person living in the Underworld would've required a computer with probably several times the processing power of the system used for SAO. And that demand would've increased with population. Moore's Law means that processing power for computers doubles every two years, which would be at least 200 years worth of population growth for the Underworld (note that in the roughly 200 year span from 1804 to 2011 the global human population septupled from 1 billion to 7 billion; though that was accompanied by consistent and dramatic technological advancement and economic growth, it goes to show how much breeding humans are capable of). I imagine that they could've compensated by continually expanding the physical size of the Underworld server.

-The idea that somebody's consciousness would disintegrate into nothingness at the mere realization that one was a clone seems pretty stupid. I don't imagine that that would be more psychologically stressing than things that real human beings can and have survived.

-Considering the differences between early modern and modern English (which developed over the course of about 400 years), the Japanese that Eugeo and his peers spoke should have been noticeably different from the Japanese that Kirito spoke, given that there elapsed 500 years for such differences to arise. Some communication difficulties should've arisen.

-I presume that the project's aim was to accelerate time until the Underworld reached a roughly modern level of technology, since for the inhabitants of such to effectively pilot 21st century military drones and whatnot would be problematic if its most learned people were only at the late medieval level of knowledge; however, the fact that system commands were allowed to solve real-world problems would've surely stifled incentive for scientific innovation, possibly for thousands of years. It seems odd that the Underworld developers would've included such an ultimately counterproductive feature.

-It's nothing short of insane that Kirito, acting in the capacity of somebody concerned for the well-being of the Underworld inhabitants rather than as a contractor for Rath, would side with Cardinal against Quinella; as bad as Quinella is, she's a self-interested actor who brought about peace and stability to that world. With the obvious exception of the people who work for her as soldiers, along with lawbreakers, most of the people in the Underworld are able to live decent, long lives because she's in charge. Cardinal, on the other hand, literally wants to destroy the Underworld. It would be the wholesale murder of tens of thousands of people whose lives Kirito evidently places value on, and she only promised that she might save about seven people. He talks about how he wants to "liberate" the Integrity Knights even though they're all gonna die as soon as Kirito helps Cardinal re-assume control over the system.

-I swear to Gott if they kill off Eugeo but spare Alice just so she can be the newest addition to Kirito's harem then I'm gonna be so mad. The time that Kirito and Eugeo have spent together, living together, doing everything together, has by this point exceeded all the time that he's spent with Asuna, and possibly even Suguha also. I don't care what happened in the light novel: they better not pull a d!ck move of that magnitude.

-What's with this pacing for the 2nd cour? Two episodes in they're already halfway up the cathedral? They still have 10/11 more episodes to go
right?

Anyways, it's been a pretty good ride so far, even though always having to wait a week is rather jarring. I probably should've waited until they already had a number of episodes aired before starting.
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Swagnarok

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Re: I'm Currently Watching...

Post by Swagnarok »

Well, after 13/15 years of hype that I either missed or ignored, I finally gave the Fate series a try, starting with the original 2006 anime (first/Saber route). I must say, not half bad. It left me confused about some things, but still.
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Swagnarok

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Re: I'm Currently Watching...

Post by Swagnarok »

Well, I just finished Youjo Senki. Probably the only good Isekai work out there (though more than a little blasphemous). 12 episodes of amazing aerial fight scenes and cigar-chomping buffoons doing everything they can to lose the peace, there apparently not being a single one of them who studied European history at all.
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Swagnarok

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Post by Swagnarok »

3x3 Eyes

Not very well known in 2019, but apparently it used to be pretty popular. As usual, I must thank the TV Tropes website for this excellent recommendation. If you want to find cool shows to watch, they're the place to turn.

As a 7 episode OVA series trying to adapt a 40 volume manga (though to be fair it wasn't anywhere near finished when this adaptation started), I think it's pretty hard to overstate just how incoherent and rushed the whole thing was. It would've been so much better as a 26 episode anime, but, well, television censorship and whatnot. The mangaka behind this was apparently also involved in pornographic works. And it kind of shows here (though nothing too bad).
The amount of blood in this was overly gratuitous. Got old really fast. Same shut-eyed teenage boy being made into a gory punching bag for whatever tentacled monster he came across, rinse, lather, and repeat thirty seconds later until he somehow ends up winning.

I thought it was messed up enough already that "Pai" was the product of Parvati going senile but oh my, she was
Spoiler:
actually a snake
all of the second part. I did not see that coming. They picked a really great VA for her character though.

Second part is better than the first by far. But if you're going to give it a try you have to start with the first part.
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Swagnarok

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Post by Swagnarok »

"I Want To Eat Your Pancreas"
Spoiler:
...Was a very lacklustre movie. It tried really hard to be a good, tearjerking work but it just came across as really generic and kind of stale. The main plot point has been used in movies around the world since at least the 1970s, and the fact that the MC girl died from that certain other thing instead was a Yusaku Ex Machina a**pull that served no purpose, since she could've died from a sudden complication of her illness instead, to the same effect. The last 30 or so minutes were a chore to slog through.

Now, say, if at the end of the movie it'd turned out that she was the serial killer all along, trying to eat people's pancreas in a psychotic bid to recover via magical thinking/voodoo logic, or if at least the serial killer was a character who appeared on screen (say, to be confronted by the OP guy, even after being taken into police custody), the movie would've been better. Because the aforementioned development would've totally blindsided and shocked the viewer, and at least then the movie could've accomplished something. Most of the movie was alright but the end was a major bummer.
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Re: I'm Currently Watching...

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Picked up the latest One Punch Man Season. It's okay, slowly getting back into anime
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Swagnarok

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Re: I'm Currently Watching...

Post by Swagnarok »

Welcome to the N.H.K.

At last. Where has this been all of my adult life so far.
I'm going to use one word to describe my watching experience: Comforting. This show felt oddly comforting. I haven't enjoyed something this much in a while. The soundtrack was awesome, and I don't just mean the OP and ED, as I usually do; no, the soundtrack itself that played during the episodes was great. They made superb use of the guitar to produce some beautiful effects at exactly the right moments.
Spoiler:
And Bertholt's the MC's scream. Oh man. Listening to him scream was, to quote a very wise man who went to jail for soliciting sex from a 13 year old girl, "the cleanest, best pleasure". I laughed so hard at this, especially at the long "internet game girlfriend reveal" scene. I went back and watched that part again, if not twice so. And it was 24 episodes. Actually long enough that I didn't go through it all in 48 hours.
The "Great Anime Boom of 2006" produced some pretty memorable series, but this just might be my favorite of those. I watched Death Note years and years ago, and that's probably the only one that could hold a candle to this.

The chemistry between the MC and Yamazaki was amazing. And that's part of it, I think. Most guys in their 20s and 30s, if they fail to grow up at the same pace as their peers, will inevitably lose the ability to relate with old friends. This was a pleasant scenario in which that didn't happen, or at least not for a time. It made fun of the main character, but it was also pretty nonjudgmental overall. I can relate to this guy a lot more than with a typical anime male protagonist.
At the same time, though, they recognized the phenomenon of hikikomori for what it is: the tragic waste of years of one's life, and something unnatural, enabled only by the generosity of the likes of family, for which going out and getting a job is the proper remedy.

I do have some complaints, of course. The gratuitous application of full female nudity was jarring, to say the least. They not only had an episode devoted to the MC beating off in front of a monitor with a box of Kleenex, but they even included it rather prominently in the opening.

In addition, it's rather obvious that the depiction of the female main was not faithful to the source material. From summaries of the series that I read prior to watching I expected her to be obsessive, controlling, prone to fits of hysteria, and to excessive attention-seeking behavior. That it'd turn out to be an abusive relationship, like something from an absurdist/nihilist work by Dostoevsky. Instead, she was just an innocent girl with self-esteem issues, who took on a passive/background role for most of the middle part of the anime.
The potential for social commentary here was absolutely massive, as was the potential to borrow from the themes of the great atheistic writers of the late 19th century, but the anime watered it down so that it was little more than a "dark comedy", as the Wikipedia description put it. But then again, maybe it wouldn't have been so comforting to watch, were that the case.

A "conspiracy theory" is a means of coping when one seems to lack control over his or her life circumstances, or in other observable events that you have a strong opinion about, and believing in such is certainly preferable to complete despair, but ultimately having the courage and resolve to face one's issues head-on and do something about it is infinitely better.
And, um, I guess that's all I have to say about this.
(Also, I was completely unaware that in 2006 a computer could hold 120 GB of storage. That's insane.)
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Re: I'm Currently Watching...

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Welcome to the NHK is amazing. I've not seen it and barely even seen anything related to it in 9 years but I still think about it fairly regularly.
Let's Play Bioshock Infinite: https://forums.dctp.ws/viewtopic.php?f= ... 94#p879594

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Swagnarok

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Re: I'm Currently Watching...

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Usually I finish watching something before I comment on it here. So I guess this is an exception, or, rather, for once I'm actually describing a show that I'm "currently watching" rather than "have recently watched".

Space Brothers is the name of it. This show has a lot of heart. Also a bit of the sorta meaningless fluff you get from Violet Evergarden or whatever crap but overall I like it. The dude's got an afro so that's something you don't see in anime very often. The first OP is memorable, one has to give it that.
I don't know whether this will get boring later but right now (8 episodes in) the allure is the procedural walkthrough of becoming an astronaut, presumably similar to how the selection and training process might work in real life, by a guy who's accomplished not very much in his life at 32 years old but who now has a second chance. It's hilarious at times, and it's a heartwarming story of an enduring relationship between two brothers that withstands the stresses of growing older. So...I guess I'll see where this goes.
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Re: I'm Currently Watching...

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"Ajin: Demi-Human", because my sister recommended it. I didn't figure her tastes would be very good, but she was the one to recommend Attack on Titan to me 5 years ago, back when I wasn't a big anime fan. That, of course, was one of the four series that got me permanently hooked on the genre. So, with that in mind, I decided to give this a try.

And indeed, it was a good pick on her part. Not very long, all things considered. There were things they could've covered, or spent more time on, but didn't. It felt like an incomplete story in many ways.

-I wasn't crazy about the CGI at first, but Izumi and Mr. Sato probably wouldn't have looked as fantastic as they did otherwise. You can tell they had to cut corners to compensate, though. A lot of the background is lazily rendered. But nobody really pays attention to that anyway, so.

-Tosaki sucked through and through. An annoying waste of space on the TV screen. Ironically, had I watched this 5-6 years ago he probably would've been my favorite character, though he literally does nothing but scowl and issue general, unhelpful statements. Like they put him in this just for the sake of having someone like him in it.

-I really thought Kei was a sociopath, until it later turned out that he wasn't. His characterization was really abnormal. The series main shouldn't be that eccentric (if eccentric is the right word).

-Netflix, if this is the type of content you think to put out, keep up the good work.
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