[Mikey]

[BotageL]

I think I watched some cartoons

Picking Up Girls In Dungeons is bad, but the Database has produced what seems to be the clear winner of the Internet's favorite waifu of the season.

Plastic Memories is competent but makes a lot of clearly ludicrous plot and characterization decisions for the sake of a particular style of Visual Novel Melodrama. Blue Twintail Robot is totally dying at the end of this.

Show By Rock should probably decide whether it's for little girls or the "big friends" also playing a mobile game for children, then pick an art style and stick with it. The 3DCG stuff looks OK on its own, but looks really weird and uncomfortable mixed in with the 2D moe stuff.

Ultimate Otaku Teacher is one of those garbage manga pitches from Even A Monkey Can Draw Manga made animated flesh.

Sound! Euphonium is a Kyoto Animation show. It's well-produced. It just doesn't do anything for me.

Nagato Yuki Something Something is someone's massively out-of-character fanfic, the TV series. Can't understand who it's supposed to appeal to. Clearly not fans of the characters, and clearly not people who like good cartoons.

MY LOVE STORY!! is sweet as heck, which I already knew from reading a volume of the manga.

I have already forgotten what Wish Upon The Pleiades was about.

Mikagura School Suite is some boring LN garbage, but the main character is a teenage girl who is super horny for all the other teenage girls. I guess it beats a piece-of-shit milquetoast dude?

Blood Blockade Battlefront still hasn't gone up on Funi's site, but I've seen a couple of webms and it looks like it's got some rad episode 1 fight scenes, at least. I think that's it. Cartoons.
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[Mikey]

Triage X is probably going to be the trashiest show of the season, hands down.

Still waiting to see if Ninja Slayer turns out to be the 90s throwback I want it to be.

[Mikey]

Oh, and RE: Death Parade - watch the first episode like it's a short film, then pretend the rest of the show doesn't exist.

[Talbain]

[Mikey]

Fair point.

[ArOne]

PUNCH LINE is probably nothing more than a walking checklist of modern anime trends that should be looked down on but I can't help but be attracted to its energy and colors.
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[Mikey]

Maybe it's just wishful thinking but Blood Blockade Battlefront gave me a little bit of a Cowboy Bebop/Big O vibe. But perhaps still a bit more mainstream anime in its sensibilities.

[BotageL]

BBB's pretty stock in setting/events so far, but, it looks great (actual PERSONALITY in the direction/storyboarding, plus great fight animation) and it's pretty fun. And the "everyone gets drunk and dances like idiots" ending credits sequence is a riot
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[Rud31]

So after watching the Utena film and think it was the great pile of madness I decided to dive into Utena series. I uh...found it fine as disposable entertainment. My favorite episode was the curry gag episode 8. What are the other episodes that are joke episodes filled with dumb dumb jokes? I got up to 16 and saw the cowbell episode. Then I read some wikipedia and just watched the last 5 episodes.

Anthy being symbolized as a physical rose bush just led me to always think of her as a rose bush which made her character make a lot more sense.
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My Hawt Blog Vita Games

THERE ARE DEFINITELY WORSE VIDEO GAME PODCASTS

[notbov]

you missed probably the best gag episode, where Nanami lays an egg (ep 27)

Tesagure! is a fun MMD-type show with dumb improv and probably a good argument about why the spate of improv/ad lib/MMD shows shouldn't have half-hour episodes

Teekyu season 4 (note: already renewed for a fifth season) and Teekyu Spin-off are things that exist and I'm glad that they do as I'm basically watching one or two people trying to jam a chapter of comic into 3 minutes as cheaply as possible, on top of said material being nutty as fuck. I'd probably waste the 6 minutes it takes to have both shows blow by my brain anyway

in anticipation of realizing that I don't want to watch any of the dumb cartoons this season, I started up Sabagebu!, which is a dumb gag comedy about a terrible high school girl and the survival club she's drugged to join. obviously I like it because I like dumb things. also, some kind anon on /a/ is retiming subs for the Urusei Yatsura BD boxes so now I'm committed to watching 200 episodes and 6 movies of 80s romcom and I'm sure that'll work out just fine once I finish some time next year.
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[misadventurous]

[misadventurous]

Though speaking of skipping 1/2 a series, I skipped 1/2 of Sailor Moon R (in favor of getting to S sooner) because I got tired of Mamoru being a fuckboy. Did I miss anything really good? I guess the latter half is all Chibi-usa's story + Crystal Tokyo but that didn't sound as interesting to me as awesome lesbians.

[notbov]

mmm, I dunno, most of what he skipped was the Black Rose stuff, which is kinda filler-y in the grand scheme of the story. you could get by pretty well by just watching the first and third arcs and filling in the rest with summaries and the like

I'm not going back to watch the show and check, though, until I can pay cash money to have the whole thing on bluray in English. I've seen pictures of the JP BD release and it looks glorious

what I'm saying is that technology has ruined everything for me
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[misadventurous]

I dislike this modern notion of "filler" defining anything that's not immediately obviously relevant to the main story arc. The strength of the TV medium is that there's room for the plot to breathe, why even watch a show if you're just in it for the bare bones.

Again, I realize that this sounds hypocritical since I just talked about skipping half a season of a show, but where SM is a 200+ episode series with big self-contained season arcs (and lots of actual legit filler episodes), Utena has 40-something episodes and uses a portion of them to stretch out and develop side-characters and subplots in support of an overall theme. It's not like Black Rose arc is a string of hot springs episodes, there's plenty of memorable stories and imagery in there (Utena v. Wakaba springs to mind).

I guess if you're just in it for the Ikuhara symbolism and weirdness you could do worse than watch just the movie + last 5 episodes, but I sincerely can't imagine what you'd get out of them besides "whoooaaa trippy visuals man!"

Disclaimer: it's my favorite anime. and I'm not trying to come off more than mock-serious or slightly-pretentious :P if Rudie didn't want to watch all of a weird slow-paced old postmodern 90s cartoon that's a-OK, it's 2015 and we're all adults with lots of important things to do other cartoons to watch. But I wouldn't call any episode of Utena straight-up disposable except for that crappy second recap episode with the diary.

[BotageL]

The joke in Utena is that the recap episodes also tend to have a couple of really important scenes just to mess with you.

[Drem]

I don't really know if that's just a modern notion- I'm sure people have been complaining about that stuff since cavemen drawings. I think the existence of filler is something complained about by people who watch a ton of stuff simultaneously and, if we're talking specifically about anime, a lot of anime "filler" they complain about are shows just going through the motions. Most anime characters and one-off episodes tend to follow the established genre archetypes and plots so all the interactions and adventures in between the "plot episodes" has been done over a dozen times in things they've already watched. Any bit of new information about a character's personality doesn't feel particularly relevant because they are aspects of the characters you already expected and don't feel like anything meaningful.

I think once you're accustomed to that kind of storytelling being the baseline for the genre it can be difficult to immediately realize when a show actually isn't that.

[boojiboy7]

The funny inverse of the "filler" complaints was the X-Files, where the episodes that had nothing to do with the big plot were often just way better.

[misadventurous]

Maybe not the notion itself so much as how liberally it's applied -- I've seen people complaining about the frequency of non-"plot" episodes of Adventure Time, of all things.
Idk I always took filler as a judgment of quality -- cheap, shitty episodes clearly made just to pad out a season's length, typically made when an anime adaptation gets ahead of its manga's plot.
If the Black Rose stuff is considered filler, it's at least good filler. Like the tasty fat on a juicy steak.

[notbov]

considering my favorite episodes are the gag ones - episodes completely made for comedy, to take a breather from the plot and focusing on the same side character in all three - I don't have an issue with filler. if anything, the presence of stuff like that helps shows mimic the natural rhythms of real life.

with that said, if he wanted the meat, I'm just telling him where the fat is. whether or not that fat is tasty, that's up to him (or anyone) to decide.
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[Tulpa]

[Rud31]

I'll clear up what I mean by disposable. I mean that I watched it and went "okay". Nothing stuck with me. I didn't chew on the heavy symbolism or what was going to happen next. I got 16 episodes into the the thing, and I got that far because of how high the praise was around SB for it. I can say exactly why it didn't stick with me and why (I think) it has stuck with others, but the reasons will make me sound like a complete ass. I was also pretty blown away but how completely nuts the movie was. I really really enjoyed the movie. The series has tiny tiny drops of the weirdness of the movie. Most of the episodes for me were straight faced and then "oh a tiny weirdness."

And then skipping to the end and watching it I went "I definitely didn't miss anything." Outside of the possible gag episodes. And I had a straight face for that entire egg episode so :| . I laughed at least 6 times at the curry episode because and that was despite and because of how dumb the sight gags were.

misadventurous you and I could get in a big dumb argument that would go nowhere and enlighten no one.

----

Also I'm 14 episodes into Votoms and god do I want a currated list of episodes to watch of THAT. I swear at least 10 of those were Chirico gets caught and escapes. The opening 2-3 episodes where it is this brooding pulp sci-fi was great. It didn't change from that, but it did not have enough fuel on the fire to keep that going.
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My Hawt Blog Vita Games

THERE ARE DEFINITELY WORSE VIDEO GAME PODCASTS

[misadventurous]

[notbov]

so, those Dirty Pair movies

I'm back to watching them and I've got Affair of Nolandia on and Jesus Christ I can feel how cheap this thing through my TV. I can see the film splices where they put the film together nearly every cut and the whole thing feels lifeless (I'd say it looks like a cheap OVA, but the actual DP OVAs look better) and what is this direction

I miss Project Eden already and I still have 10 minutes left. at least there was a blackface gag.

edit: oh god what why do the end credits have video generated effects

what the hell did i even watch
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[Tulpa]

are there any resources that talk about the correlation between OVA animation quality and the Bubble Economy of the late 80s? It's one of those things that feels retrsopectively true, just looking at the steady decline in animation quality and the eventual death of the OVA as a popular format and the rapidly declining japanese economy in the 90s.
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[notbov]

I've read some scuttlebutt that strongly implies that the rise of late night shows comes with the fall of the OVA, which makes sense since a lot of OVAs were more or less glorified promotional material for other products and a lot of recent late night shows would fall under that umbrella (there are a few shows that have gotten second seasons not on the back of their own sales, but rather their effect on the sales of the source material).

Flight 005 Conspiracy: better than Affair of Nolandia, but it didn't have a psychic unicorn
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[BotageL]

OAVs have basically gone back to being promo material, but, far more openly so. Most of the OAVs these days are literally pack-ins with new graphic novel releases, or a pack-in with the home video release of the TV infomercial series.
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[notbov]

have I mentioned that for original joints, the move to 12/13-episode long series is pretty great and that that particular limitation was one of the reasons why I loved Yurikuma Arashi so much as it turned out to be such a tightly focused, meaty show

...y'all have seen the lesbian bears, right? I don't want to be alone in my love :(
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[Mikey]

Did it turn out better or worse than the penguins, I'm sure I'll have a slow day and want to watch something and picking that show back up could be the ticket

[notbov]

it turned out better, it was laser-focused on its themes and plot, nothing feels wasted and it didn't feel like half of it was rewritten because reasons

man did I love that ending; love is beautiful
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[notbov]

I watched more shows from this season as a declaration of how little I value my waking time on this earth

My Love Story is probably the best thing this season and it's pure love :3

Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches is a show that seems mediocre but I'm willing to overlook that for reasons

okay fine, I'm into body swapping nonsense, don't judge me
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[Drem]

I recall the manga of Yamada-kun being one of the least sleazy shounen comedies in a while. There's some fanservice but it doesn't overpower the rest of the manga for the most part and I don't recall any of it being weird victimization stuff. A more generally good-hearted comedy/drama/romance.

I can't remember the beginning very well despite being up to date on the Crunchyroll releases of the manga. I just know this second story arc it's in is of a decidedly worse quality.

[ArOne]

I was personally hoping for something played a bit more straight but Ninja Slayer is the greatest animation achievement this season.
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[notbov]

OH FUCK I FORGOT ABOUT NINJA SLAYER

OUR LORD AND SAVIOR INFERNO COP HAS RISEN ONCE AGAIN

YEEART

the actual legit comedies running this season wish they could be as fun and funny as Ninja Slayer
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[Takashi]

[Mikey]

Personally I found Ninja Slayer boring, didn't even finish watching the episode.

[notbov]

I'm not going to lie, the best part about Ninja Slayer is the anger and bemusement from people who didn't like it all over the world
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[ArOne]

I love Blood Blockade Battlefront but I'm not the biggest fan of how it moves from point to point in its contained narratives.

Ninja Slayer bump:
Kinda wish during the sliding still cuts that Ninja Slayer had some cheap wooshy effect on his feet when he's supposed to be running fast like on the power lines for that extra ninja flavor.
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[notbov]

oh god, the Love Live movie is going to play in DC

I'm actually afraid because there's a decent chance I could be showing it

I'm digging that Euphonium turned/is turning into anime Whiplash, but everyone in the opening is happy so this plot arc clearly won't last
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[Hojulas]

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

can anyone suggest any good and/or subversive 'phantom thief' type manganimes