Anime Discussion Thread

Legend of Korra is not anime - it's TLairbender spinoff. Didn't watch it but some friends of mine did and say it's great. It's on my "to watch" list for years… If only I had more time.

Code Geass that should have been titled The Sorrows of Young Werther Lelouch is imo the most overhyped mediocre anime that ever existed.
It's no surprise we'll be seeing another season, the thing sells and Japan is not immune to milking as we see it in their videogames.

Still didn't watch complete (final episodes just aired or about to be aired) of a few anime series I've mentioned previously, that'll probably happen in next few day then I'll write a proper full impression that isn't based on just a couple of episodes.

joxer said:

Legend of Korra is not anime - it's TLairbender spinoff.

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Watched a few episodes. While Avatar is one of my most favorite Anime-ish series ever, Legend of Korra didn't hold my interest that long, unfortunately.

Code Geass that should have been titled The Sorrows of Young Werther Lelouch is imo the most overhyped mediocre anime that ever existed.

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IIRC I watched the first season way back when the hype was strong and deliberately removed the next one from my to-watch list. I did remember that I was very disappointed with it.

I used to watch a good amount of Anime. Anyone here ever watch Grave of the Fireflies? That was one of the saddest movies I have ever watched. I know it came out in 1988 but I never heard of it and watched it a few months ago. What a good movie.

I forget anything that's sad. Dunno how and why, it's just my brain works like that.
Because of that, I don't watch sad things, I know I'll soon forget them.

The only sad movie I remember because I couldn't stop tears for at least 10 minutes was Imitation of Life (by Douglas Sirk), it's not anime.
It was the first time I learned that noone knows how deep the love is until goodbye happens.

Grave of the Fireflies is one of those devastatingly sad but good movies like Schindler's List.

On that note, Your Lie in April is a series on Netflix that I found to be another sad but unexpectedly decent anime. Nothing supernatural or guns or murders in that one. My main complaint is that it felt like they dragged it out too much so progression is a little slow. The japanese seem to have something for psychologically tortured children.

joxer said:

Code Geass that should have been titled The Sorrows of Young Werther Lelouch is imo the most overhyped mediocre anime that ever existed.

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I personally love entertaining trainwreck and awesome mecha and Code Geass was very much both.

Also, the soundtrack was amazing.

Hastar said:

I used to watch a good amount of Anime. Anyone here ever watch Grave of the Fireflies? That was one of the saddest movies I have ever watched. I know it came out in 1988 but I never heard of it and watched it a few months ago. What a good movie.

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Yes. Devastating. I could not stop thinking about it for a long time.

Crunchyroll decided to gather vote from it's customerbase on best Anime in 2016. There are 14 categories, voting starts January 3, 2017 and ends January 10, 2017.
https://theanimeawards.com/

Nominations are… Frankly pretty bizzare. Whoever listed nominees in certain categories should IMO go check their eyes. Only blindness can explain Drifters opening not being among nominees (it's IMO the best opening this year, I've linked to it in one of previous posts). Also, Satou from Ajin not nominated as the best villain? Unbloodybelievable. Hero of the year without Guts from new Berserk? Man… Who actually made those nominations?!

Anyway, this is not me, it's someone else beaten me to it on Crunchyroll forum:
http://www.crunchyroll.com/forumtopic-976961/crunchyroll-presents-anime-awards-2016?fpid=55421851

Someone else made a list of number of nominations for each anime:
Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress - 9
Mob Psycho 100 - 8
Yuri!!! on Ice - 7
My Hero Academia - 7
Erased - 6
Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju - 4
Kisnaiver - 3
Space Patrol Luluco - 3
Joker Game - 2
Re:Zero - 2
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - 1
Iron Blooded Orphans - 1
Flip Flappers - 1
Flying Witch - 1
Orange -1
Sakamoto - 1
Keijo - 1
Konosuba -1
Drifters - 1

9 nominations for Kabaneri - some anime I refused to watch after reading how mediocre if not disastrous it is from numerous sources?! If I didn't see this nomination list myself, I would never ever believe it's happening.

I dont really follow things that closely but after looking through the awards Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress certainly looks like the the one I'd check out first as it has highest production values but fancy pictures isn't everything I guess.

Only other one I've seen at all is JoJo's and that lasted at most 5 minutes before I deleted it and never looked back. I at least started Ajin but it didn't hook me in; I vow to try again when I'm in the mood. Erased might be something I would check out but really would want more information.

Doesn't matter if its not on Netflix or Amazon at the moment with me as my backlog is long in both games and tv shows (Kabaneri is on amazon so I might try it; I consider myself warned at least)

Ajin was great. Season 2 just became available on Netflix.

It didn't immediately grab me though, mostly because of the 3d graphics. However I loved their previous stuff, knights of Sidonia, so I endured and you get used to it. It was less of a problem in Sidonia.

Legeass was disappointing yes, I had to force myself to finish it. At least season 1, not sure if there is a second season as I solely depend on netflix for anime.

Edit: Korra, and avatar, are great as well. I like the visual style

I think we've already discussed Erased, it's IMO a top notch anime, you won't be sorry for watching it even if you don't like the ending.
Something similar? Only one thing comes in mind - Butterfly Effect (the movie), but unlike that one Erased is a thriller without Cindy Lauper outfit cameo.
Watch it ASAP.

Knights of Sidonia is not a must watch sadly. The season 1 was promising and rough around edges but season 2 is a disastrous harem with plotholes and illogical turns. Not sure if manga is better, if you feel like it, you can grab complete manga in new Humble Bundle:
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/science-fiction-manga-book-bundle
Anime… Skip at all costs.

Ajin had to be made as CGI. Once you get into it, you'll understand why. Sure, it's "cheap" CGI, it's not The Witcher 3 Platige Image trailers quality, but one can't deny it's artistic approach.
Many anime series spawn irrelevant and filler OVA (short spinoff) episodes. Ajin did not do this. First OVA explains a certain incident mentioned a few times in season 1 and is of the same quality as normal serie episodes. But second OVA is a damned masterpiece.
This second OVA you should watch after the first episode in season 2. No, I don't know where to watch it outside of illegal streams sorry. The series itself is streamable legally on Netflix but they didn't add OVAs (at least not in my region): https://www.netflix.com/hr/title/80043576
Yes, I've fallen from grace for that bloody OVA, but if it ever gets released on media, I'll buy it. It was released with certain manga issue, limited edition in Japan, I don't know how to buy that otherwise I would. It is not availabe at amazon nor archonia.
Just finished watching season 2 and it's fantastic, it's just as good as season 1 if not better.
For RPG fans this anime is a must watch before you die and not nominating it's villain for the annual award is an unforgivable blasphemy.

Speaking of Netflix, I saw it added Magi: Adventure of Sinbad. First two Magi seasons were awsome and were airing just about everywhere, but this is some spinoff it seems and is not generally available outside of Netflix. Did anyone watch it, I mean, is it worth a shot?

One more thing, also finished watching Trickster, series I mentioned that had a few promising starting episodes. Sadly the show gets derailed from the most intriguing part fast and you get filler after filler that's not fun at all. I was yawning out of boredom.
Skip this one too.

Still have to complete also mentioned as promising in some old post Drifters and Yuri on Ice:
https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1061418868&postcount=136
Why days can't last a bit hours more…

joxer said:

Knights of Sidonia is not a must watch sadly. The season 1 was promising and rough around edges but season 2 is a disastrous harem with plotholes and illogical turns. Not sure if manga is better,

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The manga has even more harem stuff and the plot is quite the same.

I ended up watching a few Kabaneri episodes and azarhal had it right earlier this year.

azarhal said:

It can be resumed as Feudal Steampunk Japan Snowpiercer with Zombies.

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I knew of Snowpiercer but didn't know the name but that is absolutely what I was thinking when I started watching. Not sure if I'm going to keep going as I still need to finish Korra and I think I like that better (unfortunately Amazon Prime does not have the final season for free so I've been taking my time hoping it will be there by the time I'm ready).

Snowpiercer is a complex social analysis of some possible future ice age - there is no other similar thing out there, especially not combinations with Walking Dead drag-o-rama.

Inhospitable world due to (Kabane|climate change) leaving remaining inhabitants to survive on a train. Existence is maintained by ensuring the train stays in motion though granted KIF needs water refill and doesn't have a perpetual motion engine. Class warfare and elitism pervades the train cars with poor/unwanted in the back. Insufficient food and rationing for the all of the people but no sign of cannibalism in first couple of episodes in KIF though perhaps the desire for blood to feed the Kabaniri is close enough. I'd say its close enough for a pithy 6 words to give an potential viewers an impression of what to expect but we can agree to disagree about that.

That's not what I've heard.
I've heard that Kabaneri is Walking Dead story goes nowhere boredom where people live in settlements but had to put fences around to keep zombies out. To travel between those settlements they use trains - unlike Snowpiercer there is not just one train in Kabaneri. People don't live on any train, they use them to travel.

joxer said:

That's not what I've heard.
I've heard that Kabaneri is Walking Dead story goes nowhere boredom where people live in settlements but had to put fences around to keep zombies out. To travel between those settlements they use trains - unlike Snowpiercer there is not just one train in Kabaneri. People don't live on any train, they use them to travel.

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The show is 80% on the same train kept in motions to avoid Kabane (the zombies) to overrun it after their run away from their infested settlement.

During the series, there is a single settlement that isn't or doesn't get destroyed by the kabane and we see three train: one overrun by kabane, the main train of the series and another one later that linked up the main story train.

and all that in a Feudal Japan setting where the bushi (warrior class) think themselves superior to everyone (well most of them).

"Your favorite anime sucks."- it's written on her t-shirt lol!

Erased is really a good anime. It is my #1 of 2016.
It has such a great structure and emotion. And much more,like importance of friends and family,among others.

Re:Zero is #2 for me in 2016...if there was not Erased, it would be no.1.

Konosuba takes the third place.

I watched a good amount of Anime this year. But not all new ones.
So, some surprised me how good they are.
For example:
Ansatsu Kyoushitsu (watched both seasons this year)
Arslan (watched both seasons this year)
Ushio to Tora (also,watched both seasons this year)

For these all three I say, wow they are great!

Well,Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress is not that bad. However, it is a high production (mainly visually) slightly above mediocre Anime.
Drifters might have the best OP,unfortunately it is also slightly above mediocre Anime.

Watched just a few movie Animes this year...from 2016 only Kimi No Na wa(Your Name), which is an highly impressive movie.

Black Rune said:

Drifters might have the best OP,unfortunately it is also slightly above mediocre Anime.

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As I've finally finished watching it, I have to disagree.

Drifters has something rarely seen and it's combining classic cheap animation, rich animation and of course CGI elements - in deliberate way. The style (or a mix of) is not episode centric, extremes are reached every few minutes, sometimes scenes look like the richest detail manga brought to life, soon after some scenes look like they came from kindergarden but not without reason (comic relief).

The story is basically one side vs another side but functions as if two people went into some pvp strategy match online. Only heroes or armies in a game here are not digital but actual historical people. Nothing really new when you think about it, except there are two manipulating "masterminds" instead of one. Two Cthulhu wannabees.

The huge problem of this anime is bloody style over substance approach. It feels like Hellsing and does dive into boredom often just like Hellsing. There is still a chance to get better with season 2 so here's hope it will.

IMO it's highly above average promising product, the second season will mark it as a nearmasterpiece or yet another pos. I suggest watching (or not) only when second season (dis)proves it's quality, it won't escape anywhere in the meantime and noone needs cliffhangers.

I personally finds Drifters boring, I watched a few episodes for Mitsuki Saiga's voice (Yoichi) but that's not enough to keep me watching. I might finish it up later…or not. I have no issue dropping something after a few episodes.

I watched Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso/Your lie in April over my Christmas Holidays. I liked it a lot. Same studio that did Erased (but from 2014) and also based on a manga. I guess you need to like romance and music to like it though.