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Post by Woody Alien on May 17, 2019 9:26:59 GMT -5
Hi Score Girl
Just got through 12 episodes of this, and it's super cute. As it is, the story spans from 1991 - 1995, as an elementary school student develops a bond with a female classmate over playing arcade games like Street Fighter 2 and Final Fight. It really captures that golden age of gaming from PC-Engine to Playstation and Sega Saturn. The dynamic is pretty hilarious. And hilariously enough, the female lead never speak. Not a word. Her awkwardness and propensity for violence reminds me of my wife in a lot of ways. Even tense and emotional moments are met with slapstick hilarity. I can't imagine any hardcore gamer not liking this series. I started watching it today and got to episode 6 (or "Round" as they're called) or halfway the 1st season, but I have more mixed feelings about it. Naturally all the references to famous and obscure games and consoles, plus the image of Japan's arcade and gaming culture from the early 90s is the most interesting thing, but for the rest I didn't find it all that compelling. The characters are a bit stereotyped and annoying (and the ugly character design and cel shading don't help matters), and the titular Hi Score Girl who "speaks" by punching and pinching the male lead is an archetype that I never found especially funny.
The protagonist having Guile and other game characters as his voice of conscience could be a fun and interesting idea, but it's underused and it's never as funny as it could be. I'm going to watch it to the end but just to see which other games and consoles will appear next.
EDIT: the scene where the protagonist and his other girl friend play Mortal Kombat is especially surreal. Basically you have two Japanese super-deformed characters rendered in cel-shaded CG playing as realistic digitized American people as 2D sprites. Cool huh?
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Post by Snake on May 17, 2019 11:38:48 GMT -5
Hahaha, yeah, the art isn't exactly compelling. The protagonist isn't exactly the admirable hero type, but I kind of like the fact that he's a pretty ordinary punk kid. While the character archetypes are unoriginal, I still enjoy their interactive dysfunction (like when his idea of a Christmas exchange gift is an issue of Gamest). Especially in the context of 1990's gaming climate. It's like a snapshot time capsule into the popularity of Game Centers back then. I certainly remember the popularity of Street Fighter 2, and having to quarter queue (or I guess, 50 yen here) for a turn to play.
Certainly a pleasant surprise to see Mortal Kombat get some representation. Totally surreal!
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Post by Woody Alien on May 21, 2019 6:08:37 GMT -5
Hahaha, yeah, the art isn't exactly compelling. The protagonist isn't exactly the admirable hero type, but I kind of like the fact that he's a pretty ordinary punk kid. I can get behind that as well, however I find it forced that the narration always reminds us that he's a crappy and unpleasant person besides his obsession for games, and yet he gets two perfect girls to fawn over him and has several friends who think he's alright or even cool. I get that it is part of the character development but it seems the usual wish fulfillment kinda thing.
Anyway here's a pic of a couple friends of mine (an actual married couple to boot!) cosplaying as Akira and Haruo. The library of retro consoles was just a happy accident that I immediately exploited for the pic: |
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Post by kaoru on May 29, 2019 1:15:56 GMT -5
Rewatched Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love. For the first time in 20 years or so. I do wastly prefer it to the original TV Show, which was a bit too slow for my taste. As someone as old as me, there are also some warm fuzzy Feelings when I see the space battles and everything is animated by hand, not a single CG ship or explosion in sight xD But yeah, it is a pretty great space opera, one that is very Japanese of course, where else would the power of song and emotions/love win a last-stand-large-scale space battle? The love triangle is also handled a lot better than in is often to be expected. I did not remember that the blonde commander guy was this sexist, but otherwise it aged well enough.
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Post by Woody Alien on Jun 6, 2019 5:21:44 GMT -5
Currently watching One Punch Man season 2.
Fans were clamoring for it, and with good reason, but I'm not sure if it was really a good idea after all: besides the downgrade in the artistic department (with the passage from Madhouse to JC Staff), the tournament and Monster Organization arcs aren't as interesting as the beginning of the story, the humor is very toned down without the constant bickering between Genos and Saitama, and without his counterpart Saitama's bored attitude towards everything becomes... well, kinda boring in itself. And there are so many characters and monsters that most of them are given very limited screen time. It almost seems to have become one of those shonen series that it was parodying so well.
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Post by Snake on Jun 7, 2019 14:42:36 GMT -5
Rewatched Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love. For the first time in 20 years or so. I do wastly prefer it to the original TV Show, which was a bit too slow for my taste. As someone as old as me, there are also some warm fuzzy Feelings when I see the space battles and everything is animated by hand, not a single CG ship or explosion in sight xD But yeah, it is a pretty great space opera, one that is very Japanese of course, where else would the power of song and emotions/love win a last-stand-large-scale space battle? The love triangle is also handled a lot better than in is often to be expected. I did not remember that the blonde commander guy was this sexist, but otherwise it aged well enough. Animation quality for Do You Remember Love still holds up quite brilliantly. I do love how succinct it is. The TV series begins to drag after everyone resettles on Earth, but I do like some of the finer details of having the story drawn out; like the budding romance between tensai/genius Max Jenius and the enemy ace pilot (we still don't have 3-D holographic dog fight arcade games yet?!). I would hardly call Roy Fokker sexist. More like a bold, masculine, womanizer. His death for Do You Remember Love is at least more plausible then what he chooses to do in the TV series. |
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Post by kaoru on Jun 9, 2019 12:39:46 GMT -5
I dunno, almost all of Roy's few lines in the movie are him berating Misa and Hikaru about how a "real" woman/man should act. He got annoying fast.
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Post by Snake on Jun 10, 2019 13:34:41 GMT -5
Given that in this day and age, academia and social studies have come to a point where, yes, everyone is real outside of culturally-specific gender norms, Roy's advice still has a given context in terms of heterosexual courting rituals and instinctual cues.
Majority of women do not want to "wear the pants" or "be the man" in the relationship. If harlequin novels and mary sue rom-coms are any indication, the average woman wants a strong/dangerous man (who chooses not to be dangerous, and not to be abusive with his power). They want a man who doesn't get pushed around, and isn't wishy-washy about asking a woman out. They want confidence (and not needy/desperate), and considerate directness. Just as a lot of men want a feminine woman who is not nagging away at them.
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Post by kaoru on Jun 12, 2019 1:56:32 GMT -5
In this case, both Misa and Hikaru are doing fine though. No one asked Fokker for help when it comes to dating, none of them obviously struggled, he just unwantingly goes "Hey btw, as a man/woman you really should be more…". He's just a dumb macho dude spouting his archaic gender norms on people who had been fine being the way they are. They don't even particularly listen to his advice, funny enough. But just because he is well meaning, or that certain stereotypes are still prefered (which though isn't really a reason for one to feel they have to adhere to them, you be you and find someone that likes you for it), doesn't mean his manerisms aren't sexist.
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Post by silentstorm on Jun 12, 2019 10:20:26 GMT -5
Recently, i remembered that Watamote existed:  The show about the lonely, awkward, judgemental and hypocritical asshole girl that you could feel pity for, and i decided to check the manga, imagine my suprise when i found that the manga has never stopped unlike the anime, and that, holy shit, the main character actually goes through a lot of character development in the anime(still a pervert though) and her life actually improves!? Seriously, the anime just ends with her lonely as always, at this point in the manga she actually has friends!  And actually becomes the helpful Senpai to another girl as well, all of that while still remaining perverted enough and assholish enough(nowhere near as much as at the start) to still be Tomoko, huh, it does make the early chapters and the anime a lot better knowing that she actually changes and things do improve, at least it means the story isn't completely sad. Fun thing i noticed, her social life only improved a while after she stopped caring about being popular, when she wasn't doing any insane schemes to get popular. Though i do see some people who left the series because they really liked the fact that the main character was so flawed, awkward and lonely, saying that her actually getting friends ruins everything and turns it into a more normal slice-of-life series...kinda does, but Tomoko is still Tomoko enough for it to be entertaining, and the other characters are fun too, just wish something of this could be shown in the anime to give it a happier ending. Also, funnily enough, apparently Watamote was selling poorly and getting less popular even in the west, the main character actually having some slow character development and gradually turning her life around ended up making the series more popular and the manga is selling more and more again, apparently people either really got tired of the main character being quite a bit of an asshole or her life being crappy and just wanted to see things change for once. |
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Post by lurker on Jul 4, 2019 23:47:06 GMT -5
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Post by lurker on Jul 8, 2019 20:44:00 GMT -5
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Post by lurker on Jul 10, 2019 22:22:39 GMT -5
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Post by jorpho on Jul 11, 2019 23:05:58 GMT -5
Now, this, this I can get hyped for. Not that there haven't been some awful Lupin movies. But dayum, how can that not get picked up for international distribution? |
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Post by Woody Alien on Jul 12, 2019 12:35:39 GMT -5
The preview of the fabled Rebuild of Evangelion 3.0+1.0 that was shown a few days ago at Paris' Japan Expo, with English subs and nice image quality.
To be honest I stopped caring about Rebuild of Evangelion (and NGE in general, not counting the recent Netflix dub fiascos) a long time ago, ever since 3.0 came out... and this teaser did really nothing to pique my interest once again. Everything looks so absurd, exaggerated and involuntarily comical in some parts: we have tons of CG, bizarre mecha designs, the typical boring technobabble dialogues, Mari as her usual annoying self, the Eiffel Tower being used as a lance and the discover that NERV has an Euro branch in Paris (kinda like EuroDisney, then?). But if you wanted to see Ritsuko in one of those tight plugsuits, well this is for you!
Maybe I'm being too negative but I was really underwhelmed by it all, despite (or maybe even because of) it was presented as being something cool and badass.
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