Forum - View topicWhat are you watching right now? Why? (please read 1st post)
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Akane the Catgirl
Posts: 1091 Location: LA, Baby! |
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^ But does it need to feel like you're being lectured by your philosophy teacher in the middle of a hot afternoon? No, I don't care if the otaku are so stupid they need to have the concepts and themes explained to them in the script. It's bad form to pause the action just so you can talk about whatever you want to talk about. If Princess Tutu- a children's anime- can express it's themes in a subtle and mature way that doesn't feel like you're being told what to think, then why can't EVA?
That's just my opinion so far, though. I haven't finished the series, yet, but...oh boy. |
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Unicorn_Blade
 Posts: 1153 Location: UK |
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You are watching 3 out of my favourite shows out there. I have not seen Princess Tutu, but looks good. That episode of FMA is probably one of the most traumatic for many fans... until episodes 25/26 that is. Are you planning to watch FMA Brotherhood as well? |
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jl07045
 Posts: 1527 Location: Riga, Latvia |
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The great irony is that Eva is one of the most misinterpreted and seemingly obtuse pieces of animation out there. The unconventionality is one of the main things that confuse and/or irritate a lot of people and what make it so interesting to others. You won't find many creative works where a scene of introspection is camouflaged as a therapy session between a cosmic horror creature and a depressed kid. Personally i didn't feel like I was lectured at all. I'd suggest you watch End of Eva after Episode 24. The TV ending is not necessary to tie up the plot and will probably piss you off. There's no problem with watching it afterwards if you wish. |
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Akane the Catgirl
Posts: 1091 Location: LA, Baby! |
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^ But I must, Sir! I have a duty to fulfill!
But there will be good things, too. This is when we really start to dissect the archetypes our characters fulfill! We'll see Ritsuko's, Asuka's, Rei's, everyone's pasts and desires! Sure, the philosophies might be a little muddled, but the psychologies will be well-written! ...I hope. |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4084 |
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I myself liked the TV ending but hated the End of Evangelion. Well, not just the end but the middle and beginning as well. And never fool yourself into thinking Evangelion has a plot; There's a rookie mistake right there. Things happen but they don't mean a damn thing when sequenced. Me :"Hey, did that guy just die?" Show: "Why, does it matter? Why does it matter? Nothing matters!" I have a hard time dealing with manic depressive narratives. Also, it's a manic depressive narrative ... for a reason. Not a particularly good reason. Or enlightening reason. Or entertaining reason. Ultimate meaning of the TV series: Life sucks and Anno wants to explain why by using fictional characters at his mercy, meaning everything is rigged to favor his position yet he still believes what he does is informative and important even as he denigrates his audience. Ok, remind me again, what's the appeal of this show? I didn't hate it or maybe I didn't hate it until the movie. Princess Tutu and FMA Brotherhood, I can get behind those ... ah, that Fullmetal Alchemist, the one finished by Studio "Hey, we can right a story?" Bones. {Not a typo; They did the same thing with Soul Eater} With Fullmetal, they missed several clues as to what was wrong with Equivalent Exchange, the first one being that a soul is worth an arm while the complete package is worth an entire body and a leg {and the result?}. I applauded when Brotherhood finally came out and said the obvious. Fullmetal Alchemist: An emotional series that wears its idiocy on its sleeve. It went downhill from their version of Greed which had me wondering what was going on as I watched it. Or was it Shou Tucker and the meaning of his "research"? Roy Mustang's connection to two boys from the countryside? The filler bit with people imitating a State Alchemist, a military rank, which would not just merely a crime but should be a capital offense? The filler bit where Roy Mustang left the care of State Officials {The dub said he was a Senator but it's supposed to be a dictatorship so whatever...} to untried boys? |
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jl07045
Posts: 1527 Location: Riga, Latvia |
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Actually I already partially said what its appeal is. Considering Eva has always been a highly flammable topic I don't think I want to continue until you at least back up things you said in your rant. For example, what is a "manic depressive narrative"? What's so meaningless about the plot? If it is, why is that bad if Anno's focus is clearly elsewhere? How did you arrive at what its "ultimate meaning" is? What is bad with, according to you, his position? |
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Akane the Catgirl
Posts: 1091 Location: LA, Baby! |
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^ I also take offense at his criticisms of the first FMA anime. Honestly, would you be making those complaints if you didn't know that there was a manga/more faithful adaptation in the first place? I haven't seen the first anime all the way through, and yet I can find holes in his arguments, which are entirely based on the "this wasn't in the original source material" whiny crud I see too many people spew.
Well, you know what? Would you rather they had written a billion filler arcs while the manga was still running? Anime series as a whole need to pump out four episodes on average every month. Manga series need only ONE CHAPTER in that same time period. As far as I've heard, the original manga didn't even finish until the second anime series was a third of the way through. So far, the first anime is working out fine as a standalone. Hell, there's even a plot point I thought was much better written than in the original manga (that being the Nina Tucker story). I like the first anime so far, and I don't care how faithful to the story it is. There! Sorry, just needed to get that out of my system. |
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Surrender Artist
 Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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I finished watching Banner of the Stars II last night and had watched the two series that precede it, Crest of the Stars and Banner of the Stars the week before. That was a long time coming as I had originally bought the first two discs of Crest of the Stars twelve years ago, but beyond an abortive attempt to watch the first few episodes, neglected the series. I bought the last two discs of Crest of the Stars and the collections for the Banner of the Stars series shortly before Bandai closed. That certainly took me long enough.
I didn’t bother watching the English dub except for a few minutes of a bonus episode tucked, to my surprise, away in the extras on the third disc of Banner of the Stars II. What I heard sounded about as direly bad as the series English dub is reputed to be, so I felt vindicated for having kept to Japanese with subtitles throughout. To tell the truth, that’s probably why I abandoned it twelve years go. I’ve been watching subtitled film since I was pretty young, but I’ve always had something of a block on watching subtitled anime. I’ve mostly overcome that, else my Crunchyroll subscription would be pointless, but I still strongly prefer to watch anime in English. Crest of the Stars and the two Banner of the Stars series have some very good, quite creative ideas, which is probably why they seemed to begin so strong with Crest of the Stars, but beyond that, nothing much seems cultivated from those ideas, so the series barely seems to sustain interest, when it should have been abundant. The characters, setting and premise are all rich with possibilities, but a lack of focus or perhaps ambition leaves many of those possibilities only suggested or at best adequately, unspectacularly presented. It all seems impeded by quietly strange decisions that detract from scenes and characters who could have been far better. The three series together aren’t a failure, but have a frustrating lack of the success that they seem primed for. The compelling fundamental strength of Crest of the Stars and the Banner of the Stars series is their novel, interesting ideas. Central to this is the Abh, who are a genuinely distinctive creation. They are a variant of human beings genetically engineered specially for space travel, which endows them with a special sensory organ and relieves them from aging over their two century lifespan. Most unusually, but also most cleverly, they and their empire are portrayed as uninterested in the surfaces of planets; they seek to control only the space around them. They are suggested to have some particular psychological idiosyncrasies and cultural habits, but the series fall short on exploring these. The uniqueness of the Abh mind is, for most of the series, more or a trick played for dramatic effect or narrative utility than a constant difference. Often Abh seem distressingly human, which is distressing because more commitment and dedication to their distinguishing traits would be a very daring and remarkable hallmark for the series. Crest of the Stars begins intriguingly with the independent planet of Hyde surrendering to the Humankind Empire Abh with the planet’s president, Rock Lin, becoming an Abh nobleman as part of the terms. The first deuteragonist is that newly enfeoffed nobleman’s son, Jinto, who begins as a confused child, but via a generous leap forward in years, becomes an adolescent recently graduated from an academy and set to rendezvous with the series second deuteragonist, Lafiel, an imperial granddaughter, as it happens. These two are the heart of the three series and it’s usually at its best when it follows them. Crest of the Stars is almost solely about their first adventure consequent to meeting and that close, intimate focus on two characters moving clearly forward through their story makes the first of the three series quite effective and engaging. The series diverts its eyes to other characters or events from time to time, but they by and large plausibly relate to or revolve around Jinto and Lafiel. The points when their centrality to things or the hints of convenience that the narrative supplies them, which might be characteristic of the young adult novels whence the series was adapted, are when the compelling effect is weakest. Sometimes the challenges that they face don’t have quite enough cost, difficulty or believable danger to secure the viewer’s investment, as though the series is too clearly aware that we like our lead characters and want to see them win, so overplays its appeasement of that desire. Yet, that the desire exists at all is a credit to the series. Jinto and Lafiel, especially Lafiel, are good characters to follow. Jinto is refreshingly mild-mannered and sensitive, but neither spineless nor in need of psychiatric care. He shows courage and ingenuity from time to time, but without obnoxious bragging or a ridiculous, puerile fixation on BE A MAN! He errs lightly toward shy and reserved, but without being locked off or inert. Lafiel is a subtle contrast to him. She acts with regal confidence and strong emotion, although not impulsively. She and Jinto show a curious distinction in their introspection: both worry over their relationship to society, but Jinto worries more over whether it has any regard for him at all while seeming relatively sanguine about his nature, whereas Lafiel is fixated upon whether she satisfied expectations and doubts herself more. This is also a contrast between their outward attitudes and internal concepts of themselves. It makes them nicely complementary and lends a subtle, but potent believability to the bond that they develop. The subsequent Banner of the Stars series widen the focus of the series by adding four bridge crew, a cat and several Admiral-Chief of Staff double-acts. Joining Jinto and Lafiel to a bridge crew need not be a problem as expanding the realm of their regular interplay while keeping it well defined could have created a great many new dramatic opportunities, but the series mostly just perfunctorily suggests and hints at them. There are a few long scenes or strong indications for the various possibilities, but there is a lack of constancy, recurrence or effect. It gives a good taste of excellent possibilities, but never satisfies the desire that creates. This is perhaps because the other widening influence gets in the way. The admirals and their chiefs of staff have very theatrical affectations and staging. They might be intended as complex characters underneath, but for the most part they’re just collections of exaggeration desperately trying to give life to dull, expository dialog. Admiral Spoor is a haughty, laughing noblewoman who relishes crushing the enemy and taunts her chief of staff. The Bebaus brothers are supposed to be afflicted with, “spectacular insanity,” but it manifests mostly as dull, contrived weirdness. There are others, but they’re largely too uninteresting to rate even being decried. These characters might have been enjoyable in a difference series or useful counterpoints if used more carefully in this one, but in a dry, serious story, they seem out of place and bring the story to a grinding halt even as they try vigorously to push the narrative along. The want of concentration on the characters is perhaps just a consequence of the overweight story that they’re forced to labor under. Banner of the Stars and Banner of the Stars II are set against larger military operations, which intrude, especially in the first series, forcefully upon the story of Jinto and Lafiel. The series do not try to tell the tale just of what Jinto and Lafiel saw of the campaigns, but rather tries to tell their story and give an account of the larger campaign. The humbling of or deuteragonist’s battles are just one ship in a vast fleet is interesting context, but that context seldom manages to be interesting. Fleet battles are narrated over abstract representations, supposedly tactical and strategic displays, quickly intercut, sometimes repeated, shots of spaceships in battle occasionally complemented by general battle chatter and of course the admirals gumming on the scenery while they relay their expository orders with a few flashes of emotion, but many of affectation. It is seldom exciting. Banner of the Stars II benefits from having some of Crest of the Stars’ focus and manages to being as an intriguing story that builds into a relatively tense one, but then fleet battles insist that they intrude in the closing acts. The faults of the series are exacerbated by its wanting, sometimes weirdly directed animation. All three series seem to have been produced economically, which becomes more pronounced as they go on, and at a time when digital animation was apt to be less than attractive even when well funded. This has its worst effects in the key moments of the series. The space battles in the series, which could enliven the otherwise staid military context of the story, have neither the grandeur of a space opera nor the gritty intensity of something aiming to be more realistic. Perhaps to a keen eye the flurry of underwhelming images conveys the events, but it is difficult to see how that could be. The greater the alleged scale of a battle, the more its visual representation was likely to feel like an annoying screen saver. The animation and direction fail the quieter moments of introspection rather badly. While a character is talking at length on something introspective or ostensibly thoughtful, the camera will often pan over seemingly random stretches of their bodies, sometimes repeatedly. It is baffling as to what purposes this serves other than being cheap. The shots chosen lack evident purpose or logic; it would be stretching credulity to impute either symbolism or prurience onto them. The effect is pointless, irritating distraction. A more ordinary talking heads strategy would have at least only been a little boring. It’s a pity that the series can never afford to be lavish and the director seldom manages to show whatever he might be able to. The ethereal, elfin Abh in their splendid uniforms aboard their interesting-looking ships would probably be pleasant to behold if more shots that might befit that verb were offered. Lafiel’s race is suitable distinctive and successful in being just alien enough to not always be obviously different, but usually inspire a nagging sense of otherworldliness. The spaceships do not have especially practical designs, but aside from their mostly drab color schemes, are fairly distinctive and worth looking at. Their insides tend to be uninspiring, but one would expect that of military ships. Then again, given their impractical configurations, the erring toward pragmatic interior design seems like an unresolved aesthetic tension. Crest of the Stars, Banner of the Stars and Banner of the Stars II a more frustrating than bad. Crest of the Stars begins things very well, but the Banner of the Stars series don’t capitalize on the potential that it promises, coloring them with stronger disappointment than they might warrant in isolation. They carry enough of that unrealized potential to merit not being dismissed, but it becomes a burden when they don’t make more of it. There is a feeling that whatever good they might have, it is incomplete. There is clearly more to the story as the two-episode OVA Banner of the Stars III was never released and there were further books that have not been adapted into animation, but also because there is so much more that they could have had within them. You know, I originally had no intention of writing anything at all… |
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Akane the Catgirl
Posts: 1091 Location: LA, Baby! |
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Before I begin, I'd like to announce that I have finished Princess Tutu. I can officially confirm that this show was better than I remembered and may be the best children's show I have ever seen. (For example, remember Fakir? Best character development I've ever seen.) I freaking love this show, and I hope to see it again in the future.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Last Stopped: Episode 11 I ended on a two-parter this time. So far, not much has happened plot-wise. However, I must commend this show for creating very lovable and/or memorable characters, even if they only appear for one or two episodes. We haven't even seen our arc baddies like Lust or Envy for a while, and I'm looking very forward to them if the writing is this good. YAY! Also, I have to give credit that they got actual competent child actors for the dub. Thanks, Mike! Haibane Renmei: Last Stopped: Episode 2 This is a healing-type show. I know because the atmosphere is very welcoming and calm. Sure, its pacing is slow, but it never drags at all. It's like taking a bath by candlelight, if you know what I mean. We've even got some symbolism (that damn crow...) and a bit of foreshadowing. The characters themselves are likable and friendly. Special mention must be made for Reki, who's got a very cool vibe to her. I want Reki to be my big sister. She knows what's going on, and doesn't even hesitate to call bull when need be. So far, so good. Neon Genesis Evangelion: Last Stopped: Episode 21 To save my sanity and yours, I will talk about this show as a character piece instead of as a plot. That way, I can talk about the wonderful cast and the exploration of their broken psyches. (Speaking of which, Shinji as a main lead is terrible plot-wise, but fantastic from a character drama point-of-view. I don't know how they accomplished this.) From boisterous Asuka, to bold leader Misato, to cool-headed Ristuko, to flirtatious Kaji, and to shy and depressed Shinji, these characters are interesting to follow as the world falls apart around them. Even Gendo used to have a heart before his wife kicked the bucket. Speaking of O-Yui-sama, my god, berserk EVA Unit 01 is effing scary. That noise...those eyes...I can never sleep again. It's not right. It's just...that thing...ugh... Trigun: Last Stopped: Episode 7 Alright, we're starting to get hints of Vash's past. From what Elizabeth saw, our doughnut-munching pacifistic gunslinger might not be a normal human after all. Also, what the hell was with Vash talking to the plant? Unless...oh, whatever, I've been partially spoiled by the internet in regard to this series. But I'm still going to enjoy the ever-loving crud out of this. Meryl and Milly make a great duo. One's crabby yet practical, the other's ditzy and kind-hearted. Together, they are the Insurance Girls! Traveling all across Gunsmoke, paying for your property damage and keeping tabs on Vash the Stampede! That's all for now! |
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jl07045
Posts: 1527 Location: Riga, Latvia |
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Be sure to watch the Director's Cut for Ep. 21-24 if possible. |
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Akane the Catgirl
Posts: 1091 Location: LA, Baby! |
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Sure will! I plan on watching Death and Rebirth, End of EVA, and both Rebuild films that have been released in America so far. I also will be forcing myself to sit through the TV ending, which I have nicknamed "the we-ran-out-of-money ending". |
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jl07045
Posts: 1527 Location: Riga, Latvia |
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A more accurate name would be "we-ran-out-of-time-and-money ending". At least they themselves attribute its style more to the schedule than budget.
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
 Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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Whoa there, Akane. Regarding "Death and Rebirth": if you're going to watch the final few episodes of the series (director's cut or not) as well as End of Evangelion, then there is NO NEED to watch Death and Rebirth. "Death and Rebirth" is basically two smaller movies stuck together. The first bit is simply a compilation of the TV series you *just watched*. It adds no new footage from the director's cut episodes. The last bit is the first half of End of Evangelion, which you stated you intend to watch anyway. So Death and Rebirth can safely be skipped without you losing anything at all, except the music on the DVD's menu screen, which is pretty good. |
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Akane the Catgirl
Posts: 1091 Location: LA, Baby! |
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Actually, I might not be watching the Director's Cut, due to it being REALLY hard to find online for legal streaming. At this point, I just want to complete the series and continue on to Gurren Lagann and my fourth rewatch of FLCL. (God, I love FLCL.) Besides, I don't have much time left before school starts, and I need to focus on about five other animes (four when Space Dandy finishes it's run) at the same time. Director's Cut is completely out of the question. MAYBE I'll look for it after I finish the series. |
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Polycell
 Posts: 4623 |
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