The TV Series discussion thread

Originally Posted by txa1265
OK, so we just started with Downton Abbey, enjoyed the first episode. Any others watching this at this point (LTTP I know!)

I watched the first episode of season one and was hooked years ago. I always wondered how a show about servants could be compelling, but it is. Season 4, imho, was a little disappointing.

I think DA jumped the shark in its first season. I've watched it all but the last (PBS) episode and I'm not sure its going anywhere interesting. After watching it though I'm curious about Upstairs/Downstairs though.

As far as Game of Thrones is concerned, George R. Martin has made sure he will finish the next book a bit faster for a future season to be based on it: https://twitter.com/_GRRM_/status/456824016641486848

Still watching Game of Thrones at a fast pace. I'm already halfway through the third season now, and the overall quality still seems pretty consistent so far. Lords Varys and Baelish are particularly well written imo, and Peter Dinklage is an amazing actor.

Last night's episode was a rather large change from the books. Not sure what to make of it..

It's impossible to keep everything unchanged from the books. And honestly, I have yet to see a change that was originally a key thing to the story and would result in a major impact on the world and the story (aka there is still no Tom Bombadil ban!).

Well, we'll see.

Use spoiler tags if you're going to talk about specific events…

Meera being taken by surprise was completely silly, imo. She woulda heard or seen those mouthbreathers 10 klicks away. Also, I'm gonna have nightmares bout babies with creepy blue eyes for months, now. =xxx

ha. Yeah that whole white walker scene was not in the books. The babies also were not explained in the books. I wonder if the writers are getting some preview info from George?

Yep, there's no good reason to put off his arrival, and then make something interesting continue to happen there.

I finished Season 3 last night. Those last two episodes were pretty shocking to say the least. Now I'm trying to decide if I want to start watching Season 4 right now or wait until it's complete.

My favorite scene from the series so far? Rather than talk about it, I'll just post this link. It's from the 4th episode of Season 3, so don't watch it if you haven't gotten that far yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTgiPmG7OLE

Simply brilliant…

It's not another Fox show which means there is no way it'll get cancelled in the middle, without a proper ending and with too many cliffhangers.
Yea… I'm not watching Fox shows anymore unless I know there is a season completed and the show is not cancelled. God bless internet, imdb and wiki.

The design allows you to watch it an episode per hour, per day or per week without losing an impression (unlike for example recently mentioned by me SyFy's Helix which aired weekly and since every episode shows what happens the next dayIMO it should have ran daily).

In the end it should depend on your RL friends. If they are watching it regularily, GoT recent episode can provide a nice chitchat over a coffee. If they like to watch the whole season when it's done and not before, no reason to wait for the weekly episodes. If your friends for whatever reason are not watching Game of Tits at all… What are they waiting for?

Mhm, can't do anything better now so…

FMA

I'll start by saying that manga is a term used to describe a specific style of comics developed in Japan. Usually it's used to say some comic is from Japan, but there are many manga inspired comics all over the world.
If you've never seen one, you've definetly seen the style in animated movies (called anime), TV shows or videogames.

Now I'd like to talk about something with someone from Japan, sadly it's impossible as I don't know anyone (well, there was a certain girl, but I was too young to go that direction).
The whole nation seems to be obsessed with gigantism. You can't find an art in Japan without something oversized. It's somewhere an overgrown lizzard, a skyscraper sized mechs, so huge that should be unwieldable tools and weapons, and just to be sure something is too big, characters usually have bigger eyes than their head should allow.


A tool or a weapon? Both! (Septerra Core RPG)


Anyways, a certain manga appeared in some (for this text) irrelevant Square Enix magazine with the title Fullmetal Alchemist. It was an ongoing comic published in episodes. And it was so damn good the logical thing was to put it on (TV) screen. It usually happens with good manga.
What was good exactly? If you've seen at least a page of it… I'd say there is nothing special in the style.
It was the story that kicked arse.

In a steampunk world lived two kid brothers who's father left home never to be seen again ages ago and mother died. But the world is not about mechanics, constructs and machines only, there is a magic too. An alchemy.
It is used to transmutate (transform) an object into another. No, you can't make something out of thin air, but you can, for example, repair a broken radio just by rearranging atoms in a part that doesn't work!

Those two kids decided to do the one thing alchemy forbids. Human transmutation.
They wanted to bring their mother back to life.
And it went wrong. The thing they've created was not their mother. And the price they've payed was very high. One brother lost a hand and a leg and is now using mechanic limbs, the other brother lost his whole body and only his soul remains glued onto an old armor set.
A rumor is that the mistake can be fixed by using something that can make things out of nowhere. A philosopher's stone. Thus brothers will go on a voyage full of adventures in order to find that miracluous item.

Without spoiling it more and blabbing about what happens next. Manga and anime are not plain horror although there are some horror things to see. The text is hilarious (not in the negative way!), there are philosophical debates everywhere, all protagonists have real character flaws that eventually become very handy under certain circumstances, there is a romance, friendship, respect and betrayal.
A mix of everything. Such stuff usually can't work but somehow they've found a perfect dose in Fullmetal Alchemist. A bit of this, a bit of that and alchemical mixture succeded.

Back to the history.
So manga was awsome, and Square Enix decided to make anime TV series out of it.
In 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist anime series became a global phenomenon, there was no person who'd say "thus sux!":
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421357/

What wasn't commonly known was that TV series didn't follow manga after 12th episode. In fact manga was still being made and unfinished, TV audience wanted more, so anime crew made up their vision how the story will unfold with the blessing but not involvement of manga creator. And it turned out to be an awsome piece of work.

Somehow, someone, again in Square Enix, got the idea, hell let's also make a version that follows manga completely, not just the start. What we would call a reboot in videogames, happened with this anime. In 2009, again the audience all over the world, was full of praise for Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1355642/

So what do we have here.
Two anime series that only start with the same premise and that's it. Anime series without godzillas, mechs and oversized weapons. A brain food story and not just the eyecandy! Oh and unlike many other anime series - NO BLOODY FILLER!
This is untrue ofc as the first series is after the start a filler of it's own as it doesn't follow the original script but no matter as a viewer can't get that impression.

Or in other words, we got RPGlike anime that branches into two directions with a completely different ending!
Never before and never after a thing like this happened. And still, both series are so awsome I dare to say it's the best anime ever made. And it's impossible to say if FMA or FMA:B is better.

Please watch them. A suggestion though. Don't watch them one after another. Watch one, then take a break af a few days or weeks, then watch the second one. It doesn't matter which one you'll watch first. Both deserve:
10/10

—-

A few more words. You'll probably want to watch spin-off movies. There are two and both are the result of Square Enix greed to milk more cash. Both are average and not really worth your time.
It doesn't stop there. Square Enix made a few FMA games on consoles, you may check the gameplay on youtube. I was like "WTF, this is not FMA!". Do not buy. Square Enix could make proper FMA games or outsource (to Obsidian) the whole thing. They just don't have guts to do that and I hate them.

If you'll buy series on optical media ment for watching outside of Japan (available on amazon, very expensive, there are cheaper on ebay and etc) you'll be able to choose japanese audio with eng. subtitles or english audio. I've watched with the original audio as usually anime dubs are so rotten you can't understand what's going on unless you revert to original audio with subs. But everyone on internet says that english dub for these series was made perfect so no worries if you can't read.

And the final word. Maybe you've noticed and maybe not that in my sig it's written Toka Koka.
If you want to know what does it stand for, you'll have to watch FMA. Or FMA:B. Better yet, both.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I finished Season 3 last night. Those last two episodes were pretty shocking to say the least. Now I'm trying to decide if I want to start watching Season 4 right now or wait until it's complete.

My favorite scene from the series so far? Rather than talk about it, I'll just post this link. It's from the 4th episode of Season 3, so don't watch it if you haven't gotten that far yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTgiPmG7OLE

Simply brilliant…

Great storytelling!

The show is best in HD, so I'd reccomend whatever approach gives you HD.

I just finished watching the 3 episode story arc of South Park where they spoof Game of Thrones. The episodes are called 'Black Friday', 'A Song of Ass and Fire', and 'Titties and Dragons'.

It's a must-see if you're a South Park fan and like GoT.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full…7-black-friday

Speaking of Fox, they axed Almost Human recently. I really really should learn not to watch anything on Fox till the show is in it's third season or so.

Originally Posted by joxer
FMA
(..)
10/10

I've seen the first back then and the first half (?) of the second and agree.

It's too bad that animes are still misunderstood and it's a shame many people miss great series because they still hear "anime" and say "nahh…" for various reasons.

I haven't really followed up on the more recent series, but from the top of my head I'd like to name some that were completely engaging and worked on many levels just like Full Metal Alchemist.

- The Twelve Kingdoms (Juuni Kokuki); awesome story about a young woman whisked away to a medieval fantasy world and her many struggles in a place full of wonders and intrigue.
- Rurouni Kenshin; dramatic/comedic historical series about a former assassin from the Meiji period in Japan. incredibly fun
- Kaleido Star; bright, enchanting and highly inspirational feel-good series about an acrobatic girl trying to make it in a prestigious circus (think Cirque du Soleil).
- Glass Mask (2005); a very emotional and inspirational drama about a girl trying to become an actress in a theater

All of them 10/10 in my book.

People don't want to give it a shot because of all that bad anime that aired for ages.
I remember that the first anime I've watched was some dreadfull cartoon about doctor Doolittle. It was disgustingly bad and was supposed to be a kids show, but the story was so idiotic I couldn't believe I'm seeing that. And I was a kid!
That was a time when on TV you couldn't watch something you really want, computers on the market were ZX Spectrum and C64 and mobile phones were sci-fi.
Anyway, because of poor Doolittle, I avoided anything that had similar drawing back then.

And then came Candy. Now that was a piece of work, it had a funny start, a nice music but it was a hidden soap with numerous episodes where nothing of significance really happens!
Later there were Pokemons, Yu-gi-oh and all those utterly useless animes who's function was only to persuade you into buying some crap cards and dolls. The fraud they did on TV made me so sick I said I'll never watch anime in my life again!

The only anime I did find good back then, was Transformers. I loved the show and was a fan. And I say that Transformers movies are an insult to all fans of the old anime show.

I'll stop there, but the point is that the flood of bad products soured the milk not just for me, but for everyone. And when everything seems bad, you just don't want to waste time on finding a possible gem in a sewer.

For whatever reason I started to watch now very old Sailor Moon. It was so cheesy and was obviously made to be trashy, I fell in love with that show and why is that I don't know. But although I loved it, I don't recommend it! It was a sort of a guilty pleasure, you're aware something is bad, yet you still enjoy it.
Anyway, I've seen dozens of bad anime over years, but I've also found some true works of art. Later, I'll number some must watch ones.