Official Anime/Manga Thread

[Kevin]

So guess who jumped on the Yuri on Ice bandwagon? I watched the first episode earlier and I'm already liking it with both its music and character development and dynamic!

[Ristar]

Quote

So guess who jumped on the Yuri on Ice bandwagon? I watched the first episode earlier and I'm already liking it with both its music and character development and dynamic!

I got my friend to watch it yesterday. She only watched a few episodes but she's crazy about it already xD.

I've been watching it since episode 1, I think it's enjoyable. The Grand Prix episodes were a bit boring imo.

 

[goku262002]

...

Why is this happening?

[TheBlueGuardian]

20 hours ago, goku262002 said:

...

Why is this happening?

Wait, WHAT?!! Naruto's getting a live action film? What's next? Kodansha doing a live action Fairy Tail film?

What was Hollywood even thinking about?!

14 hours ago, Aoi said:

 How the fuck are they going to compile this one? And Americanized too? I can't even imagine xD

Me neither, I never personally watched Naruto myself but I know where your going with this Aoi.

[Yoko/葉子]

Eh, another live-action. Even though I hate the series, I still wish it the best. 

Anyway, anyone hear read Sakura Kinoshita's manga? I've been reading her Detective Loki trilogy of series in Japanese. While I can't pick up on all of it, it's still very amusing to catch all of these references to stories from long ago. Ah..., Frey singing about a cockatrice...

[Dizcrybe]

I don'r read manga, period, so no.

[Remy]

12 hours ago, Dizcrybe said:

I don'r read manga, period, so no.

OK.

---

So I've been reading the english release of Goodnight Punpun lately.

I've read it before just once, via scanlations right as it was coming toward the end of it's original run. so that would be around... 2013? I remember being so emotionally exhausted after finishing it the first time  that I thought I would never read it again. With hindsight, that's probably on my weird mental state during 2013 than the book though. I wrote a really long post about it on facebook back in the day- 

" The gist of it is that's it's the life story starting with childhood of the titular Punpun. PunPun is an otherwise normal boy, depicted symbolically depending on his mental state, but most often as a poorly drawn bird, surrounded by otherwise realistically drawn humans in a realistic world.

What's refreshing is how real it feels, despite Punpun making some extremely poor decisions, his trials with dysfunctional family, unrequited love, depression, anxiety, work, and whatever other terrible things happen to him strike a chord emotionally because they're tackled with a brutally real, down to earth approach from the author. Nothing is spared, shyed away from, or gloss over, you see awful things happen, and the fall out of these awful things as characters learn to cope and move on from the shitty situations they find themselves forced into.

This is combined with amazing art, and a great sense of humor. The humor in particular, especially with the amazing art and author's love of surreal imagery often adds a much needed breather from the seriously heavy content that tends to take place from chapter to chapter.

It’s really a unique feeling story, and it’s definitely something that you can feel the artist poured his heart into, which comes across in the empathy he shows to his characters, even if they’re not perfect people.

Anyway, it's really good and if you like manga read it. If you get through the whole thing then you too can have you soul crushed like I did, peace out "

I still mostly agree with what I wrote there. It's really beautiful, the humor is smart and funny, the surrealist imagery makes the story feel special and is used extremely effectively, but it's interesting that on a re-read I feel like I'm taking completely different stuff away from the story.  I remember very strongly emphasising towards Punpun the first time I read it, but now two years later I find myself gravitating towards some of the other characters in the story... it's interesting with very few exceptions that Asano doesn't really paint the characters being "good" or "bad" people- Despite how punpun himself is so serious and a fundamental person (that guy is in asshole, aiko wants to kill me) most of the characters are painted as complex people.

Characters have moments where they are kind and great people, and they also have moments of selfishness where they inflict hurt on others and themselves. Maybe I have been reading way too much shonen manga (ok I have BUT) reading something like this again is interesting to me. It's also interesting seeing how the more fantastical moments in the artwork are used.  there's a panel in volume 4 that to me suggested possession- with a  characters eyes  glowing demonically, lighting the rest of the room around them like spotlights beaming into the sky before something godawful happens. Stuff like that is what makes punpun so interesting and one of a kind to me. 

anyway, mebbe i'm rambling but you should definitely check out the english release if you're at all interested in manga https://www.amazon.com/Goodnight-Punpun-Vol-Inio-Asano/dp/1421586207

so dw dizcrybe

[Kevin]

Just picked up the Yuri on Ice soundtrack a few days ago and what can I say, it's absolutely beautiful and is definitely one the best anime soundtracks I've heard in a long time! For anyone who hasn't heard it yet, I highly recommend it!

[Lucid Dream]

So the winter season of 2016 finished. 

The best anime this season by a mile was Natsume Yuujinchou Go, but that was inevitable. That said, it was worse than it's immediate prequal, Natsume Yuujinchou Shi. It's still fantastic as usual though. I don't think you could say anything competed with it this season. Another good sequal was Hibike Euphonium 2. A very Solid and good music anime. New Haikyuu season was it's worst season. I couldn't be bothered to finish it. 

Yuri on Ice was probably the best non-sequal anime this season, and while it was pretty good, it wasn't amazing. You can tell not many good new anime came out. On that note, jesus, Yuri on Ice is extremely overrated, it's hardly better than Ginban Kaleidescope. I guess fanservice, pretty animation and decent music really does do wonders considering the difference in score and popularity between the 2. Well, at least it's actually a good anime. 

I also watched Keijo and Touken Ranbu. Keijo was just as stupid and bad as you'd expect, but still entertaining as background anime, with all its ridiculous fights and logic. Touken Ranbu was almost completely trash, which is a shame because I was really interested in it. 

So yea, a pretty bad season in general. The best things that came out were a bunch of sequals, but even then, a few of the sequals were inferior to their prequal. I'm happy more Natsume Yuujinchou came out though. Hibike Euphonium was really nice too. 

[Kevin]

The film, Your Name is now the highest grossing anime film of all time.

Having seen the film myself, I can say both the animation and music is absolutely beautiful. While it may not be my favorite anime film of all time (that belongs to Spirited Away), I can highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it. I'm looking forward to seeing the dub when it comes out later this year,

[Yoko/葉子]

Has anyone here seen Rin-Ne, Shigofumi: Stories of Last Letter, Dusk Maiden of Amnesia or Shinigami no Ballad/Momo the Girl God of Death,by any chance? I tried Bleach, but was too macho and long for my taste.

[Ristar]

On 17/1/2017 at 2:54 AM, Kevin said:

The film, Your Name is now the highest grossing anime film of all time.

Having seen the film myself, I can say both the animation and music is absolutely beautiful. While it may not be my favorite anime film of all time (that belongs to Spirited Away), I can highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it. I'm looking forward to seeing the dub when it comes out later this year,

I want to see it but here in Spain it won't be on theaters until April >_< This movie is taking so long...

[Inkarnate]

As you may infer, the new adaption of Blue Exorcist has gotten my attention. 

While I am happy that this will be a bit more closely following the manga, I will say this much about its predecessor getting retconned— I was kind of curious how they could’ve continued the anime adaption from where it ended. Though, I suppose with how trite the finale was it makes perfect sense to dial things back and get things back in order.

[Inkarnate]

Just now, Aoi said:

I don't know anything about Blue Exorcist besides this girl's hime brows. And man, this post delivers.

Izumo's eyebrows are a fun time, though I imagine she'd disagree.



Haha.

[Yoko/葉子]

So I have a mildly funny story to tell. 

So my mom and I were watching the first Saber Marionette J series and I thought it would be fun to watch in Spanish,  since she used to be a Spanish teacher. Now keep in mind that the R1 DVD sets had English, Japanese and Spanish as language choices. 

Watching a Japanese anime with Spanish audio and English subtitles was unintentionally too much for her. We had a laugh because of it.

[Phos]

I've been on a bit of a Fist of the North Star kick, It's so weird to me that Club, one of Shin's lieutenants, got some of the most striking and dramatic animation in the whole anime:

 

[Kevin]

On 3/10/2017 at 11:07 AM, Phos said:

I've been on a bit of a Fist of the North Star kick, It's so weird to me that Club, one of Shin's lieutenants, got some of the most striking and dramatic animation in the whole anime:

 

When it comes to Fist of the North Star, this to me is one of the best scenes in the whole series if not one of the best death scenes in any anime:

 

[Kevin]

I finally got around to seeing Yu-Gi-Oh: The Dark Side of Dimensions. As someone who loved the original Duel Monsters anime, it was quite a treat! I especially loved watching the duels play out! I'm glad most of the original VAs reprised their roles as well.
 

[Meta77]

I miss air gear

[Daisy-Fan]

I was able to watch Kimi no Na wa twice this weekend. One with the english dub and the other with sub only. totally enjoying so much the Sub only version, the soundtrack vocal and visual overall is great and if you have the possible chance to watch it, i recommend to do so. its worth to take a look of it! Now hopefully they gonna release a silent voice soon!

[Kevin]

For those who are watching Attack on Titan Season 2, what are your thought so far? The end of the season's 2 first episode was pretty intense!

[Sean]

So I just watched all of Madoka over the weekend. I didn't even like this show and the Rebellion movie still managed to piss me off.

The movie wastes your time with a 30-minute, non-canonical, fanservice-laden OVA that doesn't serve any purpose for the movie itself than for the writers to circlejerk over their own subversiveness (something the TV anime never really did, even in its early episodes). Then, it proceeds to commit the most blatant character assassination I've seen in anime, undoing all of the events of the show in the last 20 minutes with absolutely no build-up or foreshadowing. And this all happens after the great big climax and it seems the entire story is finally about to come to a close.

Imagine if in The End of Evangelion, while Shinji is talking to Rei and Kaworu during Instrumentality and realizing his newfound emotional strength, he suddenly piledrives them into the ground and finds a way to jack Lilith's body, and he laughs and gloats about how it was his plan all along to become Lilith himself while twirling his evil moustache. That's precisely what happens in Rebellion, and don't get me wrong I legitimately hate all of the comparisons with Evangelion the fanbase has made with Madoka, but the way people misinterpreted EoE as a giant "fuck you" to the NGE fanbase is precisely what I feel Rebellion was.

[Tailikku]

I myself have gotten around to watching a fairly nostalgic anime for anyone born in the 80's on here:  Gurimmu Meisaku Gekijou (Grimm Masterpiece Theater) or Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics

 

The best I can describe this series is that Nippon Animation (the same studio behind the classic Heidi of the Alps) took to adapting the classic stories by Wilhelm and Jakob Grimm, adding their own spin to certain stories.

My best example of the changes that often enhance the story are found in the second episode, Hansel and Gretel.  The story for the most part begins the same but it becomes much darker when they get to the Witch's house.

Like remember how in the story, the kids were lead to the house by a bird?  It turns out that the bird was actually an imp in disguise.  The house itself isn't actually a gingerbread house, but rather a standard haunted house magicked into a gingerbread house.  As the episode goes on, the witch gets more and more monstrous until she transforms into a demon for the climax, sprouting wings in the final battle.  Gretel doesn't even get the chance to trick her into the oven, Hansel stands off against the hag and out manouvers her, immolating her and eventually burning the house down.

*shudder*

But perhaps one of the more interesting changes is with its adaptation of Snow White.  The princess does indeed look like her Disney counterpart, but she already has a noble friend whose uncle lives in the next kingdom (conveniently where the prince hails from).  The evil queen has a witch in her dungeon whom she turns to for hexes and such to kill Snow White with, and the huntsman is a more malicious hunter nearly killing Snow White, but being killed by a boar himself.  As for the Dwarves, they are named after the days of the week (Thursday is the grouchy dwarf) and live in a farm house similar to Caer Dallben from the Chronicles of Prydain.  There are two attempts on Snow's life by the queen: one by suffocation via tight dress, the other being the poison apple.

The series was dubbed by Saban in the late 80's and aired on Nick in the early 90's.  You might be surprised to find that a few familiar voice actors in the industry were involved in this anime and are still active.  Most notably Axel Roberts (Lord Zedd himself), Gregg Berger (Jecht in FFX), Dave Mallow (Akuma), Reba West (Batou's Tachikoma), Barbara Goodson (Rita Repulsa), Phelice Sampler (insert Lucky Star clip here) and Mike Reynolds (Gennai from Digimon).  And because it's Saban, good luck getting Disney to release this series on DVD.

[Phos]

OK so I was watching "Darling in the FRANXX", which is already weird enough in being a collaboration between A1 and trigger, but that's not what sent me running here so quick.

The mechs require both a male and female in order to be piloted because I guess someone hoped enough people had forgotten about Five Star Stories, and some of the controls for the mech are attached to the female's plug suit.  

Now I might read that as some kind of puberty metaphor if this anime wasn't giving me so many pilot candidate flashbacks, but then we see one of the training units for the male pilots and...

It's got a butt on it like it's that Kancho arcade game.  

[Kevin]

Winter 2018 has been a pretty good anime season so far. Right now I’m watching

Devilman Crybaby

Cardcaptors: Clear Card

Takunomi

Pop Team Epic

Mitsuboshi Colors

Devilman Crybaby and Clear Card have both been fantastic. Pop Team Epic c is crazy to the point of being funny. I’m not sure what to think of Takunomi, and Mitsuboshi Colors is simply adorable with great visuals!