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Post by jorpho on Apr 4, 2020 12:49:50 GMT -5
The reviews for Lupin III: The First were a little tepid, but I'll go see it – if movie theaters ever start operating again.
Anyway, have you heard of this Chargeman Ken thing?
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Post by jorpho on Apr 26, 2020 15:55:34 GMT -5
So, I'm about halfway through reading the Death Note manga at the moment. Was not expecting that twist. I saw the two live action movies way back when they came out, and I was not expecting that twist. Does the anime follow the manga very closely, or does it add yet another twist on things? I only saw the first half of it (again, many years ago). And if you didn't hear about this year's one-shot, it's pretty neat. in.mashable.com/entertainment/11082/read-the-new-death-note-one-shot-manga-for-free-here-youre-welcome |
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Post by jackcaeylin on Apr 28, 2020 10:05:55 GMT -5
So, I'm about halfway through reading the Death Note manga at the moment. Was not expecting that twist. I saw the two live action movies way back when they came out, and I was not expecting that twist. Does the anime follow the manga very closely, or does it add yet another twist on things? I only saw the first half of it (again, many years ago). And if you didn't hear about this year's one-shot, it's pretty neat. in.mashable.com/entertainment/11082/read-the-new-death-note-one-shot-manga-for-free-here-youre-welcomeI read it last year, I still remember a few things.
They don't change twists, but do some minor alterations.
The anime and manga are mostly the same. They just handle some scenes in a different way, but without changing the plots/twists. Certain scenes have more details than some other scenes. The ending is the "biggest" minor alterations, but it is roughly the same thing and has the same outcome, if I remember correctly. The coffee shop scene is longer in the manga than in the anime, for example, "certain character" asks more questions to another "certain character". The anime is pretty faithful, if I remember correctly.
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Post by kaoru on Jun 23, 2020 1:27:09 GMT -5
So I finally watched Dragon Quest: Your Story. It makes sense they would adapt V, since it is the one with the strongest narrative hook. I think it is also the one the current adult generation in Japan has the strongest nostalgic reaction to, which is important for the ending. I enjoyed it quite a lot! It is a super fun and well animated adventure. Of course it does have to take some liberties to fit the three generation spanning story into less than 2 hours. But the way the ending goes even explains why there might be differences to the Super Famicom game. I heard a lot of Japanese fans didn't like the ending twist. But I thought it was a cute idea. It's an ode to the nostalgia of the generation that grew up with DQV. And in extension a legitimisation for any kind of media one might have fallen in love with as a child and has a strong connection towards still all these years later. Might help that I'm probably right in the age demographic this is supposed to appeal to, if I were Japanese, I most likely would have played V in 1992 as a kid.
Oh yeah, I also watched Madoka Magica, both the TV show as the follow up movie, some weeks ago. I thought it was decent. The whole "Magical Girl, but make it dark" schtick is of course nothing new anymore and even wasn't all that special back in 2011. It sometimes goes a bit overboard in seemingly going down a checklist of typical Magical Girl tropes to then turn upside down, where I wished it was tighter focused on the storyline and characters which don't get that much room until the end. I think because of that I liked the movie more. It is an interesting watch nonetheless, but not quite as clever as the classics of Magical Girl deconstruction like Revolutionary Girl Utena or Princess Tutu.
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Post by kaoru on Aug 17, 2020 13:20:50 GMT -5
Watched two movies recently:
Ride Your Wave. A nice and cute little story about coming to terms with loss and moving on. Tho the supernatural component is sometimes a bit strange.
Konosuba: Legend of Crimson. More like an overlong special. Sometimes a bit aimless. Mostly decent fun, but the jokes that do fall flat tank hard.
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Post by Woody Alien on Aug 19, 2020 9:01:53 GMT -5
BNA Brand New Animal, the new Studio Trigger show. I like Trigger and it's only 12 episodes, so I binged it on Netflix and... I thought it kind of sucked.
They wanted to tackle racism, terrorism, religion, cults and a bunch of other Important Stuff, but it's all very muddled and a 12-episode anime is not the best medium to talk about it, especially since most characters are so poorly developed and Trigger's action-y style, complete with final battle with lots of lasers and shit, does not leave much space to nuances and discussions. The protagonist Michiru is the usual plucky headstrong but not too bright girl, in the vein of other Trigger heroines like Ryuko or Akko, but she comes off as flat and annoying many times and after a while you stop caring much about her, especially since she stops very soon worrying about not turning back to a normal human ever. Deuteragonist Shiro is yet another cool overpowered character and his backstory is kind of muddled too. The resolution is weird and stupid and it closes with the usual non-ending of these kind of shows. I'm sorry that we missed season 2 of Little Witch Academia (not a masterpiece but a very nice anime all the same) for this. You should (re)watch Zootopia instead of this.
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Post by Woody Alien on Dec 15, 2020 6:38:44 GMT -5
I started to watch Demon Slayer - Kimetsu no Yaiba and currently I'm halfway through it. It's well-made and entertaining enough, but honestly I can't explain the ridiculously huge success that it is currently having in Japan. Basically it's on the verge of overtaking the juggernaut One Piece after only a few years and the recently released theatrical movie is breaking all records. And yet it's the usual Shonen Jump story with a plot seen a thousand times: young boy has the family exterminated by demons, he trains a lot and gains a lot of fancy special moves, there's the good guy squad with different powers and appearances, the big bad's demon generals/squad with different abilities, etc. The only original thing is that for once it's not set in feudal Japan, but in the Taisho era (the 1920s), so we have a Japan that is starting to get Westernized, with electricity, trains, Western medicine and such, but functionally is almost the same. Also for some reason the main bad guy kinda looks like Michael Jackson!
The most curious things is that is having a huge success with elementary aged kids, this despite being a show where the demons have to be dispatched by beheading and good and bad characters are both gruesomely killed, with broken bones, flying eyeballs and more. Yet according to a survey, kids love the show's characters more than their teachers and even parents! |
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Post by toei on Dec 15, 2020 17:16:37 GMT -5
I started to watch Demon Slayer - Kimetsu no Yaiba and currently I'm halfway through it. It's well-made and entertaining enough, but honestly I can't explain the ridiculously huge success that it is currently having in Japan. Basically it's on the verge of overtaking the juggernaut One Piece after only a few years and the recently released theatrical movie is breaking all records. And yet it's the usual Shonen Jump story with a plot seen a thousand times: young boy has the family exterminated by demons, he trains a lot and gains a lot of fancy special moves, there's the good guy squad with different powers and appearances, the big bad's demon generals/squad with different abilities, etc. The only original thing is that for once it's not set in feudal Japan, but in the Taisho era (the 1920s), so we have a Japan that is starting to get Westernized, with electricity, trains, Western medicine and such, but functionally is almost the same. Also for some reason the main bad guy kinda looks like Michael Jackson!
The most curious things is that is having a huge success with elementary aged kids, this despite being a show where the demons have to be dispatched by beheading and good and bad characters are both gruesomely killed, with broken bones, flying eyeballs and more. Yet according to a survey, kids love the show's characters more than their teachers and even parents! I think the explanation for that is that is just that new kids are born all the time, and everything that's old to us is new to them. That's how the Shonen Jump recipe can continue to work so well. And kids, generally speaking, don't like anything too old, because a year feels like 10 when you're a kid. The One Piece manga started in 1997, and the anime in 1999. There are roughly five million volumes, and 900+ episodes, so that's a lot to catch up with. I haven't watched or read Demon Slayer, but I think it got popular because it was just time for another big fighting shonen. Also, little kids love violence, especially if it's not realistic. Demons getting decapitated would have sounded incredibly cool to me in elementary school. |
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Post by Woody Alien on Dec 16, 2020 13:54:25 GMT -5
Sure, I'm not saying that kids shouldn't watch it or anything, just that it's curious that its huge success is outside the usual demographic for Shonen Jump shows/manga, with little kids but also older adults and even grandparents enjoying it all together. I saw on some forums that Western commenters are similarly stumped by this huge success, especially since the manga came out in 2016 and it had a good reception but nothing outside the ordinary.
Some state that it was the anime by ufotable (which admittedly is well-made) that made it so successful, but it still doesn't explain how it made the sales skyrocket and caught the entire nation by storm, generating massive amounts of money with merchandising and stuff. I will continue to watch it but I suspect that I won't remember it for long after I am finished with it.
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Post by Snake on Jan 6, 2021 20:46:10 GMT -5
Sure, I'm not saying that kids shouldn't watch it or anything, just that it's curious that its huge success is outside the usual demographic for Shonen Jump shows/manga, with little kids but also older adults and even grandparents enjoying it all together. I saw on some forums that Western commenters are similarly stumped by this huge success, especially since the manga came out in 2016 and it had a good reception but nothing outside the ordinary. Some state that it was the anime by ufotable (which admittedly is well-made) that made it so successful, but it still doesn't explain how it made the sales skyrocket and caught the entire nation by storm, generating massive amounts of money with merchandising and stuff. I will continue to watch it but I suspect that I won't remember it for long after I am finished with it. While Kimetsu no Yaiba is by no means my favorite series, I really did enjoy it. I think one of the reasons it got so damn popular is because the movie directly continues where Season 1 leaves off. So you can imagine 3 generations of people who follow the manga, and ESPECIALLY the anime (who must be dying for the continuation of the story) who jump at the chance to see a high-budget depiction of the story. The same way blockbusters like Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Marvel films continue to get high attendance because it's a continuation of a cliff-hanger. The series itself does get better as it goes on, with a pretty brisk pace. anTanjiro as a Shonen Jump character has a very strong sense of empathy and compassion for even his enemies (most of which have a interesting back-story). I also like that it is concise, and ends without dragging out the way Bleach or Inuyasha did. |
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Post by Snake on Sept 24, 2021 13:19:39 GMT -5
Been watching the first few episodes of Dorohedoro. I have to say, I love who crazy whacky, imaginative it is. Just the unspoken, assumed fashion sense of wearing masks is pretty funny.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2021 14:32:35 GMT -5
Been watching the first few episodes of Dorohedoro. I have to say, I love who crazy whacky, imaginative it is. Just the unspoken, assumed fashion sense of wearing masks is pretty funny. It's nuts. |
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Post by Woody Alien on Jan 3, 2022 12:08:26 GMT -5
Not a review, just wanted to point out that after like 40 years the Urusei Yatsura anime is going to get a reboot, with slightly modified character designs. There's no other news about it for now but I'm curious to see how the adaptation will work. UY is one of the most iconic and influential manga/anime ever, but in 4 decades pretty much everything in society has changed and some of Rumiko Takahashi's humor may be outdated and unfunny in this day and age. Here in Italy it has been really popular among people around 30-40 years old under the name "Lamù" (the Italian pronounciation of Lum) for a while. By the way I loved the first two theatrical movies, "Only You" and "Beautiful Dreamer", liked the third one, found the fourth to be an incomprehensible jumbled mess and the others to be fairly bad and irrelevant.
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Post by Snake on Jan 3, 2022 17:09:31 GMT -5
Wow! It'll be cool to see a modern update on Urusei Yatsura. "Lamu" isn't far off from pronunciation, since the literal katakana romanization is "Ra-Mu."
Rurouni Kenshin, Slam Dunk, and Bleach also got some reboot announcement trailers, so it seems like it's gonna be a pretty cool year for old-school stuff.
Recent series I watched was Super Crooks. Pretty cool, pretty fun, pretty stylish. Not a bad anime take, from a page of the Jupiter's Legacy universe.
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Post by Woody Alien 2 on Oct 21, 2023 17:05:07 GMT -5
So I just saw a bizarre anime movie titled "Violence Voyager" directed by someone under the name "Ujicha". I'm not sure whether to call it anime since it is barely animated but a very unusual product: hundreds of cardboard cutouts used to portray movement of the characters, with an effect similar to those paper street theater things, I'm told that it is called "Gekimation". American boy Bobby and his Japanese friend Akkun go by themselves in the mountains and find the titular Violence Voyager amusement park, only they discover that the "robot alien invaders" they have to fight with water guns are somewhat real and the owner of the park is a madman who performs horrible experiments on whoever has the misfortune of getting trapped in the park. I decided to watch it because of various glowing reviews and other pieces stating it was an unforgettable piece of animation, but honestly, while I appreciated the enormous work of cutting, painting all those cutouts and then adding practical and digital effects, I found the film in itself fairly disappointing and forgettable.
Reviews say it's one of the most bizarre, atrocious, disgusting, messed up etc. things they've ever seen, but I don't know if I'm desensitized about these kinds of things or if it's just hyperbole, because I was never really scared or disgusted by it, and I even laughed a couple times. The protagonist gets turned into something that seems a cross between E.T. and a bootleg Ninja Turtle, and the final part also seems an action movie parody of sorts, complete with preparations montage, and ending with stuff randomly blowing up and burning. Actually though I'm not sure of whether it's serious or not since the whole movie has that bombastic tone, typical of old anime, that takes everything too seriously. Things happen for little reason and characters appear and disappear, live or die seemingly at random. Also there's a character named "Old Man Lucky Monkey" so what more do you want?
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