[Takashi]

Their ranks keep increasing:


With that out of the way, whoa Valvrave, but it was time to bring the whole inhumanity aspect back.
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[Loki Laufeyson]

just learned of the existence of daisuki.net, a legal streaming site that's mostly/totally free and doesn't have region restrictions (except for japan)
there's not a lot of on there currently, but they're running polls asking what shows should be added, and the polls include a lot of older series that don't currently have any english versions, official or fansubbed.

i'm sounding like a viral marketer, but really i just want there to be a translated version of the kamui tv series
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[Takashi]

Yeah, please register and support daisuki. It's not only that it's legal, it's owned by the producing companies, so you are actually supporting them. Also a lot of cool anime in there, especially old Sunrise stuff and Precure.

I'm not fully aware of the background, but it seems like this comes from the success of the gundam/etc streams made available on ANN last year?
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[notbov]

while I like the idea of daisuki in theory, as someone in the states, it has nothing that's new or that I can get elsewhere aside from Z Gundam and Seed HD and I believe Lupin '78. once they start beefing up their library (and if those surveys they put out are any indication, nothing is off the table), yeah, I'll throw some money their way (also I totally voted for everything Precure on the surveys, so I did my part)

I was thinking about Valvrave and realized: so Saki promises to take Haruto out if he gets too bad in the last episode. a few episodes ago, you see her in the future stating that a promise is a promise, even after 200 years

I smell a timeskip incoming
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[Mikey]

Is anyone else reading Onepunch Man it's sort of great.

[BotageL]

[notbov]

oh thank god

I was afraid Valvrave wasn't going to pull anything silly this week, but it pulled through right at the end
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[notbov]

so much stupid and crazy shit happened during the season finale of Valvrave that even L-Elf didn't know what the fuck was going on

confirmed for S2: SPACE VAMPIRES VS. THE ILLUMINATI.
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[Brooks]

So the Kyojin show was already starting to bug me with all the drawn out dramatic closeups of haunted stares and crying and then it actually turned into Evangelion: The Gulliver and that was quite enough of that

[Takashi]

Yes, that's the twist in Kyojin that made me stop reading.

Also, turns out Gargantia was okay. It's one of those series where I wish they had gone for a 2 hour movie instead of 12 episodes with way too much downtime.
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[BotageL]

Unfortunately the team who took the already silly attempted gravitas of Death Note and turned it into a comic masterpiece couldn't save the dreck that is 90% of Titans Attack!

Valvrave is a really dumb show, but I'm going to miss it for the next three months.

Looking ahead to the Summer shows, the anime version of Genshiken Nidaime is dead to me for recasting Madarame's voice actor. Jonathan Joestar isn't a bad voice, but he's no Hiyama, man, no Hiyama.
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[notbov]

I'm sorta excited for Watamote (no i'm not typing that whole title out), mostly because the circumstances behind its popularity is the feel good story of the year, but with more pictures of dicks. I'm also fully expecting to be depressed by it at least as much as the manga

did I mention I watched all of Working! a while back? man, that was a fun little show. I especially enjoyed how the budget bump for the second season was put towards making the violence more impactful. so yes, I guess I also want to see Servant x Service
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[Lucaz]

Gargantia managed to pull of a decent show, mostly by making the robot be the protagonist. I like that it's the closest I'll ever have to Brain Powerd with actual animation.

Attack on Titan should be 3 minute shorts, because that's as much show they are willing to do.

Valvrave was one of the best this season, and I'm putting all my chips in it keeping up the absurd and being the best one in fall.
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[chevluh]

Gotta say I've been kinda ignoring anime this season apart from Little Witch (pretty good), Inferno cop (excellent) and Eva 3.33 (what the hell did I watch/whip me harder Anno).

Continuing that trend of ex-Gainax people, at the very least I know what I'm gonna watch this october.

[A Heart in Funeral March]

i'm bearing with shingeki because even though the pacing can be frustrating i feel like it pays off in increments. really diggin' aku no hana. apparently there's gonna be another season which is cool. i've been meaning to watch little witch but i keep forgetting. i'm still catching up on stuff from a few seasons back (ie: steins;gate and madoka). i was gonna watch eva 3.33 but decided to just watch the original because i fuckin love togi so much and i'm sort of confused ab why he couldn't be the 'new' pilot instead of that girl with the glasses.

on the manga front i am p fuckin behind on punpun and i'm mad at myself. i also made the hilarious mistake of re-reading / finishing some stuff i used to read in high school

( like angel sanctuary and let dai lol )

i guess i'll just finish nana because i just remembered that i never finished.

[notbov]

for some reason, I turned "catching up on Gargantia" into "watch all of Gargantia in a sitting"

I'm trying to figure out an angle in which to criticize the show from, mostly because "survive" is boring and there's a few of them there, screaming for attention (like religion versus science-as-religion and distinct undercurrents of anti-imperialism and -militarism and maybe some anti-America/Manifest Destiny feeling for good measure)

but mostly, it came off as an okay show set in a really interesting universe, to the point where I enjoyed the living and chilling on Gargantia bits more than the main plot thread. I'd also agree with Takashi's assertion that it would be a better movie, pacing-wise, with just the main plot present.
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[BotageL]

Gargantia's a lot like other shows (partially) written by Urobuchi: he sticks to the expected genre story beats like clockwork. When the production is on, it's satisfying and enjoyable. When he's off, it's tedious and dull. It's the difference between "Oh, man, they're totally gonna do [x]!" and "Oh, man, they're totally going to do [x], huh?" Gargantia's the latter with me. It never got me involved, never got me to give a shit about the characters, and actively wrecked the tone a couple of times (Pinion's characterization, Doronjo), so when all the Emotional Payoff scenes came calling I didn't answer. When Chamber sacrifices himself to save Ledo, physically and spiritually, all I could think was "Of course the robot dies while quipping in a deadpan! He was a mentor of sorts AND he was the only interesting character!".

It would've been a far better movie, yeah.
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[notbov]

let's talk about what stupid things we've seen for the start of the season. I, for one, have sampled just a bunch of everything because why not

Watamote - it's just like the manga, except people are moving. I guess the opening is nice
Stella C3 - (K-on) - (doing nothing) + (GUNS)*(RAMBO)
Kiniro Mosiac - this was some serious fucking bait and switch action. you can't give me 15 minutes of light, breeze-y comedy predicated on Engrish with nice backgrounds and framed in 2.40:1 and then not expect me to be pissed when you go "lol, nope, it's a Cute-Girls-Doing-Nothing show" in 16:9. yes, I'm angry they changed the aspect ratio, that England chunk just looked so nice
Day Break Illusion - oh god what the fuck is happening in this show
Servant x Service - Working!, but with characters who are roughly my age, therefore making it better. also contains a male character who defends himself from female violence, thus making him the smarmiest asshole this season
Teekyu 2 - while I wish MAPPA didn't have to do this and could instead do things that are nice and eventually bankrupt them, this continues to be the Inferno Cop of the Cute-Girls-Doing-Nothing genre
Rozen Maiden Zurückspulen - a recap so blazingly paced, it gave me whiplash
Fantasia Dolls - the description reads "Rozen Maiden's bootleg counterpart", but the actual show is kind of like if Angelic Layer was a magical girl show. also has Magic: The Gathering ToGATHER
The World God Only Knows S3 - so after 2 seasons of languidly seducing evil spirits out of girls with the power of video games, season 3 starts by recapping 70 chapters of comic in 7 minutes, hurriedly sets up the plot, then cliffhanger
Symphogear G - okay, first off, why didn't anyone tell me the original was so earnestly dumb and stupid and ridiculous and fun. I guess I should watch AKB0048 too, huh. so G is just the first show, but with more money being thrown at it. I'm hoping this means more stupid attack card names (GIGA ZEPPELIN)
Dog & Scissors -


staying cautiously optimistic about Silver Spoon and Gatchaman Crowds and I sorta want to watch Manly Swimming Club Adventures

oh, and while America was asleep, 4chan gave Trigger over $150k in 3 hours for more Little Witch Academia (the number stands at $220k as I post), which won't probably mean anything for the industry in the long-term, but at least Trigger cares about our money
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[Takashi]

[notbov]

honestly, once I saw a man who trains by eating, watching action movies and sleeping punch the air hard enough to knock a giant sword out of midair, the idea that God's jilted ex-lover wants to blow up the moon to initiate the Human Language Instrumentality Project is a pretty grounded plot. that, or I've watched too much anime and have gone native
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[Mikey]

Huh, I actually like a few of those shows more than I thought I would based on their first episodes. I guess I'll keep watching until they let me down.

[Takashi]

[notbov]

ah, we're in agreement then. see, if they had let her blow up the moon, this miscommunication wouldn't have happened.

I actually recall being taken a bit aback by the violence at the beginning, only because you couldn't tell what it would be like from all the random screenshots floating around of the show (the Noise-turning-people-to-ash is especially brutal and disturbing). even if the the blood looks like tasty jam.
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[Takashi]

It wouldn't be a post-Madoka realistic magical girl show without senseless violence.
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[notbov]

I don't know if Symphogear qualifies as post-Madoka, since they aired in fairly close proximity to each other (8-9 months)

now, Day Break Illusion... that's definitely post-Madoka
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[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

Hanging out at Barnes & Noble the other day I read the first couple chapters of Uzumaki on a whim. I can't remember the last time I found a graphic novel so viscerally disturbing since I unsuspectingly picked up a volume of Battle Royale in the sixth grade. Bravo, Junji Ito.

On the topic of horror manga though: Del Ray's translation of Parasyte is absolute ass. Reads like a second-rate fansub. I'd take Tokyopop's flipped version with the nonsensically Americanized names over this - at least that adaptation had readable, non-atmosphere-killing dialogue.
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[BotageL]

I was busy doing other stuff at AX so the only new shows I've checked out so far are Daybreak Illusion and Genshiken: The Next Generation.

Daybreak Illusion is painfully post-Madoka, and storyboarded by someone with a strangulation fetish. There's a third creepily-eroticized plant strangulation shot in the trailer on Crunchyroll, in case you didn't get enough tentacles going for 14-year-old titty in the show itself. Character designs would be less awful if there was any significant difference in the almost super-deformed proportions of any characters at all -- the pregnant woman at the start of the show has almost exactly the same body type as the heroine. Total eye-rolling stuff.

It's really weird watching a somewhat fluid and on-model animated version of Genshiken. I hate all of the voice actors, especially the changes for returning characters. TNG is a weird and uncomfortable series anyway; it's kind of better and worse than the post-Ogiue original series arcs at the same time.

I never watched more than an episode or two of Symphogear, but I dug how the girls were forced to actually break into song during combat. I don't mean like convenient insert songs, I mean an almost musical compulsion to sing during combat, in-universe. That was pretty funny.

Oh, I fell asleep halfway through the first episode of Servant x Service, but I was also exhausted and filled with convention food misery at the time so I dunno if that means anything
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[notbov]

that's the best part, at the end of Symphogear, they get an armor upgrade that grants them telepathy, so they can sing and talk while fighting

honestly, if the show was any dumber, it'd collapse into a pile of cheesy J-pop and schoolgirl fetishism

edit: oh, and music idol worship, can't forget about that
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[Lucaz]

This season made remember that somehow I came to honestly like The World God Only Knows, and I'm still dumbfounded by that. Then I watched the ovas.
Uchouten Kazoku's original author is the guy from Tatami Galaxy, and the first episode caught me fully.
Day Break Illusion's first episode, on top of what botagel says, was as horribly written as it was self-serious. It's attempts at some conflict and drama are so hasty they fall completely flat.
Checked Symphogear G, but I can't bring myself to watch that again.
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[BotageL]

I watched another cartoon or two selected by randomly clicking on shit on Crunchyroll

Godless Sunday: Oh, it's about zombies. That was some awful nonsense even for anime.

Uchouten Kazoku: That was actually really charming and enjoyable, where the heck did this cartoon come from? The art style's kind of ugly, and many of the backgrounds are obvious traces/Photoshop filters of photographs, but it has some really nice moments and a good mood to it. It makes you wanna get tipsy and bum around the city on a cool evening.

Stella Ladies' Academy Airsoft Club: The knee and elbow pads are a good idea, but y'all girls are really gonna regret not using the full-face masks and doing all that running and sliding in short skirts. Overall, a solid "Whatever."

Look, There's Just No Getting Around The Fact That Y'all Are The Reason I'm Unpopular: I can't actually make it through an entire episode of this without stopping to cringe for long periods

Fate/I Don't Know Where To Start Unpacking How Twisted Our Multiverse Is Now ~Prisma Ilya~: I guess Cardcaptor Sakura parodies are cool again
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[Takashi]

Uchouten is interesting. The way the ears are drawn reminds me of french BD artists, somewhat. It's also not offensive in any way, what is a huge success.

[notbov]

if you've never read Watamote, let me tell you now: it gets worse

much, much worse
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[BotageL]

[chevluh]

Stduio trigger's kickstarting Little Witch Academia 2, they've reached their goal already:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1311401276/little-witch-academia-2

[Takashi]

[notbov]

Pacific Rim is the best summer anime, and I won't hear otherwise
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[LandRoverAttack]

i love watamote & i can't wait to watch the show, they got a milky holmes to do her voice wow
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[Mikey]

First episode of Gatchaman Crowds sort of left me cold, though it has sort of a Persona 3 vibe that I dig.

[Take It Sleazy]

[remote]

[Loki Laufeyson]

i dropped the keiji series midway through the second episode, as it's more concerned with divorce procedure in fuedal japan than it is with dudes swordfighting

there's a tv series of hyper neptune thingy thing (that game with the sega console little girls or something?)
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