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ironchapman
Guest
I’ve kept up with Hamatora, Witch Craft Works, and Hozuki no Reitetsu this season pretty well. All three are varying levels of good.
I want to catch up on Noragami and D-Frag, too.
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I want to catch up on Noragami and D-Frag, too.
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Kamaduck
Guest
I’d agree with that, but that’s not any better. IMO objectifying people just for the sake of it is even worse than wishing to see yourself represented.
Planetes is one of the best SF shows I’ve ever seen, very down-to-earth and realistic, in both characterization and science. It’s about people who collect garbage in space to keep it from running into ships and killing people, and most of the plots are just about the realities of life in space. The characters make it interesting, but it’s not exactly as action-packed as your average mecha show (though there are terrorists at one point).
I’m not sure how many other space-related shows I’ve seen. Trigun is excellently plotted and even has clearly Christian themes (the writer was Catholic), but takes place on only one planet. And I’m told Cowboy Bebop is amazing, but I’ve only seen one episode. Though the one episode was really good.
I dunno if I’m going to finish my one show this season- I’ll probably just go back to Attack on Titan, or else start watching Log Horizon. Nobunagun is kind of like Soul Eater, as I suspected, but the fact that more than 50% of the humor relies on violating people’s boundaries (be they those of the protagonist, Jack the Ripper, or Galileo) makes it almost painful to watch. Last I saw Sio was being harassed by Ghandi, plus half the other characters in the cast. So yeah, I’ll probably go back to Attack on Titan and watch something about soldiers that actually respect each other.
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Sailor_Kenshin
Guest
But it makes me ill.
I was really, really enjoying Prince of Tennis until they had to introduce that. It literally gave me nightmares, and I haven’t been able to watch it since, and I BOUGHT the series.
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CesarAugustus
Guest
And as I said in earlier pages (starting in the 6th), there are the problems of normalization of these sins, the effect on people in the fandom (ocassions of sin, softening of positions regarding these problems, possible support for lgbt causes, etc -things I have observed in various fans-).
Before buying or watching a series, is good to read beforehand what kind of stuff is present in the production.
God Bless you!
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CesarAugustus
Guest
As I said earlier, there are series with these audience in mind, and not only are bait for fetishists.
Since that episode involving copies of the protagonists (I watched some parts only), I knew it was going to get worse.
This winter season has been bad, but thankfully, lots of shows from the next season seem to be very interesting.
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Sailor_Kenshin
Guest
There was nothing that would have forewarned me.
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CesarAugustus
Guest
Blog reviews, comments from fans, or wiki sites.
These are common now, and detailed. But, maybe you bought it some years ago, and detailed information about anime and manga series wasn’t as frequent back then.
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Sailor_Kenshin
Guest
Nope.
I just bought it. Like last year.
I will not read the entire Wiki about a series because I refuse to look at spoilers. (Along those same lines, I did not so much as glance at anything related to Inu Yasha’s ending before I had seen the entire series.)
I detest spoilers.
But as for POT , it had a decent rating, it was in the sports category, and this eeewwww-gross stuff came out of nowhere, almost near the end of the series.
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CesarAugustus
Guest
I see.
Another indication would be comments on blogs, or forums. These types of things tend to be mentioned a lot by certain people, so that is going to surface eventually in some conversations, even if the focus isn’t spoilers.
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Sailor_Kenshin
Guest
I guess they would be. But I spend very little time with blogs, forums, etc.
A friend sent me a mini-disc with a single episode and, surprisingly for me, even though it was dubbed, I thought it interesting. The characters were charming, the situation intriguing.
So I just HAD to have it in Japanese.
Loved the music, loved the sci-fi elements…just this one slice of ick, near the end…
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Tenofovir
Guest
I don’t mind looking at spoilers, myself. There are series which are pure silliness (most anime is like that). Checking out the spoiler, or watching the last episode allows one to avoid a series with an undesirable ending - e.g. main and lovable character killed off, or some equally nice side character killed off. That was a sort of thing I should have checked with “NEET Detective” (Heaven’s Memo Pad). Never mind, I have the Bluray. Haha. It’s still a great series for most of the episodes, then it does something incredibly stupid. I also remember how much of a downer it was for a Japanese friend of mine when one of the characters in Valkyria Chronices (the anime not the game) was killed off.
Of course one may say, ah but unnecessary or rigged tragedy is necessary. Well it isn’t. Great works of literary genius such as say Anna Karenina are great literature. 99.9% of anime is pure fluff. The reasons for watching are different to say reading a great writer.
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Tenofovir
Guest
The problem is that mainstream TV has more I would say normalisation in the way you speak of. With the exception of fanservice, I would say most anime is much, much better than mainstream TV from Hollywood. Sitcoms, soap operas and whatnot. They also enjoy soft fanservice: characters in most shows are attractive and simulated sex is shown quite often. And they show people cheating and having pre-marital/extra marital sex all the time. Porn is nornalised because having a porn mag in such a TV show is a joke or an issue about how much a loser the guy is, or how embarrassing it is.
In an anime at least, the loser may have a porn mag, but it’s only purpose is to serve as an excuse to provide an embarrassing situation when some tsundere girl finds it. He’ll still be labelled a pervert for having one. It’s still some sort of a negative response. And he’ll be embarrassed about having one.
So all in all, I’m not excusing anime in general. But pointing out that our own Western culture is a greater cesspool.
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Tenofovir
Guest
Guys and Girls, just look at NOAH.
scifiwright.com/2014/03/no-to-noah/
The choice for me is easy. Give money to a pagan/non-Christian who still usually has respect for our religion/tradition and whose morality reflects ours in some ways, or give money to anti-theistic people who are parasites on the gullibility of Christian people in the West? It’s a no brainer.
scifiwright.com/2014/03/no-to-noah/
The choice for me is easy. Give money to a pagan/non-Christian who still usually has respect for our religion/tradition and whose morality reflects ours in some ways, or give money to anti-theistic people who are parasites on the gullibility of Christian people in the West? It’s a no brainer.
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Tenofovir
Guest
The idolm@ster games on the iTunes store are now on sale. They’re still very expensive at $39 each but that’s as cheap as they will probably get and they’re very cool, family friendly games. The games include 30-60 minutes of anime each.
img.acianetmedia.com/i/NiFU.th.png
http://img.acianetmedia.com/i/Y5Fd.png <---- I’d get the “Rhythmic Record” if I was going to buy one.
img.acianetmedia.com/i/NiFU.th.png
http://img.acianetmedia.com/i/Y5Fd.png <---- I’d get the “Rhythmic Record” if I was going to buy one.
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Kamaduck
Guest
It is not 99.9% I am going to prove this mathematically. For it to be 99.9%, there would be only one show of literary merit out of every thousand.
There are maybe 200 shows per year, 50 at most per season (counting new seasons of old shows). So there would be an anime of merit every five years, at most. This is simply not the case. I’m not saying we get an instant classic every five years, but certainly something does not have to be a classic to be more than “pure fluff”, which I’m considering to be something with roughly no meaning or literary merit.
Since I specifically seek out shows that do have some kind of literary merit, and are worth analyzing, I’m fairly certain that that applies to more than one story per five year period.
In the last five years (since 2009), we have had, among other things:
Madoka Magica
Attack on Titan
Steins;Gate
Even what I saw of Hyōka wasn’t “pure fluff”. The others can’t be, because we’ve spent pages in this thread and the previous thread discussing them, and that discussion included themes.
Plus, I know the 200 number doesn’t include movies, but I think it’s high anyway. Time of Eve was brilliant, and nobody can convince me otherwise.
I could probably list more series if I actually watched anything. But in any case, I’d place the actual number at more like 95%. One out of twenty anime probably has the most basic things that give a story literay merit- themes, consistent characterization, some kind of insight into human life. Something doesn’t have to be brilliant or earth-shattering to have that. Sure there’s a lot of stale repetition and cutesy comedy without anything to say, and Miyazaki knew what he was talking about when he said that people were making way too much pure wish-fulfilment fluff. But to claim that only one in a thousand anime has even a little insight is ridiculous.
Incidentally, I just found out that Tor.com now does anime reviews. Excuse me while I go watch all the greatest SF anime of 2013.
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CesarAugustus
Guest
I don’t mind some spoilers either. I rather read some of them than watch certain content.
That was something I was discusing in the other anime thread some weeks ago. That most anime isn’t high culture, and that certain fans and otaku think too high of themselves for liking anime and manga.
Of course, most mainstream or prime time TV from Hollywood are terrible. And western people shoulld know better, so they have more culpability.
With anime, people could use it for normalization and social engineering, but is mostly fan uses.
In western productions, ideological groups are behind these, the involvement is more direct. (In Japan that could happen too, but I don’t think is at the same level as the west’s cultural marxists and liberals).
I agree.
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CesarAugustus
Guest
I agree.
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Tenofovir
Guest
I found PSYCHO PASS intriguing. But it was too pretentious and they did not go deeper into the philosophical issues they were discussing. It was more or less a type of GITS SAC redux in a way. I don’t want to spoil it but it’s a great show and season 2 is coming. I would have had fewer murders though and less gore and explicitness.
Steins Gate. Well I dunno. Anime style is nice. The gore/killing is too much. It’s a nice romance type story in a way with plot devices of time travel/paradoxes and betrayal thrown in.
Madoka. Sailor Moon dealt with these issue when in some episode most of the cast is killed off I remember. They then came back I guess. I just don’t see what’ so special about Madoka. Little girls fighting to the death is something quite sickening really. A girl gets her head bitten off. Little girls forced to make life/death decisions and die in pain? Nah. Pass.
That shock factor is all that Madoka has.
Hyoka had great anime style, kind of like K-ON. Have not completed it.
Attack on Titan seems to be a gore fest with death of characters a shocking point. It’s a non-lolita Madoka. It’s better I guess. There’s nothing worse than mixing little girls and gore - real gore. Fake gore as in Moon Phase is not so bad.
I’m just not impressed. That’s not to say others can’t find these shows intriguing.
99.9 % is a type of figure of speech. Of course I haven’t done the sums to work this out.
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Tenofovir
Guest
I tell you guys for classic old school anime, nothing like Armitage III. The TV episode version. The sequel was not as good. (That anime does contain a few adult scenes, unfortunately, nothing graphic but avoidable.)
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Sailor_Kenshin
Guest
I guess I am old, old school.
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