The Anime Thread

[CountDeMoney]

Mono, did you know that the Sengoku Period was caused by a time traveling Joker and his henchmen fighting Batman and his sidekicks?

No? Than feast your eyes on Batman Ninja! Starring the Joker as Oda Nobunaga and Gorilla Grodd as Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

[Monoriu]

I dunno.  It could be better than some of the crap super hero movies that Hollywood produces. 

[Monoriu]

Granblue Fantasy.  This is a fantasy world of floating islands.  The story begins when Katalina, an officer of an evil empire, deserts her post and escapes with Lyria, a mysterious but magically powerful young girl.  It was Kalalina's job to keep Lyria from escaping but she could no longer stand the ill treatment of Lyria.  They bumped into a young boy in a village and the encounter sparked off a grand adventure, as the party tries to find a promised land of sorts.   

First and foremost, Granblue Fantasy is one of the most popular online mobile RPG games in Japan.  Everything about this show has to be seen through that lens.  That's why this is one of the most beautifully animated fantasy shows out there.  That's why most of the voice actresses and production staff are stars (e.g. the music composer is legendary Nobuo Uematsu of Final Fantasy fame).  That's why side characters pop into and out of the show out of nowhere, because the game has hundreds of playable characters that cannot otherwise be fit into the story.  That's why they can never actually reach the promised land, otherwise the cash will stop flowing.  That's why the show is episodic, because the game is quest based. 

Beyond the sky high production values however, the story is forgettable.  The mobile game is an ongoing project that attracts customers through eye candy, tons and tons of characters, ridiculous female costumes, interesting one-shot events, and the biggest names in the voice acting industry.  The story suffers and most of the plot development is completely predictable.   A lot of anime do put more emphasis on characters and scenery porn, but the balance is rarely so out of whack. 

[The Brain]

I wish my floaters were a fantasy.

[Duque de Bragança]

Mono, did you know that the Sengoku Period was caused by a time traveling Joker and his henchmen fighting Batman and his sidekicks?

No? Than feast your eyes on Batman Ninja! Starring the Joker as Oda Nobunaga and Gorilla Grodd as Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

Well, Batman sure looked like a ninja at times, if not outright inspired. 
Plus, I have seen a Nintendo DS Pokemon game set within the Sengoku era so why not? 

[Monoriu]

These are the shows that I intend to watch in the Winter 2018 season (Jan - March)



Overlord Season 2.  This is a pretty good "trapped in a game world show".  What distinguishes this is that the protagonist originally role-played an evil overlord and guild master in an online game.  He is now surrounded by NPCs that came alive and are fanatically loyal to him, interpreting everything he says as gospel.  He is now on a quest to find if any of his former human-controlled guildmates were trapped in the same world.  He also mentioned half-jokingly to his servants that he wants to conquer the world.  They certainly didn't see it as a joke. 



Fate: Extra Last Encore.  This is another spin-off of the very popular Fate series.  The Fate core idea is that seven teams, each comprising a human magician "master" and a "servant", who can be a historical and mythical hero, engage in a survival battle.  The winner may have a wish granted by a holy grail.  I think the story is about a random guy being dropped into this battle to be a "master", but he can't remember who he is.  The promotional poster features a red version of the ultra popular heroine of the original story, Saber.  They seem to stress that the original Fate creator is involved in the scriptwriting for this one.



Seven Deadly Sins Season 2.  This is a good shonen fight series.  The seven deadly sins refer to a group of seven powerful but free-spirited soldiers who were framed for treason and were scattered.  Season 1 was about gathering some of them back to clear their name.  The adventure continues in season 2.

These two are maybes, if I have time. 



Violet Evergarden.  I haven't watched a Kyoto animation production for quite some time and I want to fix this.  They are known as one of the best production studios in the anime world.  Reviews of the first few episodes released earlier are good.  Not entirely sure what the story is, but it seems to involve "auto memory dolls", who turn people's memories and emotions into words. 



Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody.  This is yet another "trapped in a game world" show (yes I am a sucker for those).  The protagonist is a programmer constantly asked to work crazy hours (hence the "death march").  He is now trapped in a video game.  Although he wants to relax and disappear, events may force him to do otherwise. 

[Monoriu]

UQ Holder. The story takes place 80 years after the events in Negima.  Negima was a 10-year old magician disguised as an English teacher with a class of over 30 middle school female students.  Eventually, his secret was out and his students accompanied him to an adventure in the magic world.  Evangeline, one of his "students", is actually a 700-year old immortal and extremely powerful vampire.  She gathered other immortals in the world to form the "UQ holder" organisation.  She and a new generation of young adventurers are the protagonists of this story. 

I almost feel compelled to write two posts about the show.  One for newcomers to the Negima universe, and the other for old-timers.  If you are new, this show is an absolute mess.  There is a fine line between "fast paced intense action", and a "rushed and fragmented plot that makes little sense and allows little character development".  Everything happens so quickly, and the plot is so cramped, that plot points are almost meaningless as they are quickly overshadowed by other events.  Old characters from 80 years ago are brought back with little explanation.  Negima is a universe with loads of characters and I can only imagine the frustration of people who are not familiar with their backstories. 

For old timers, this show is designed specifically to invoke nostalgia.  They even recycled the Negima season 1 theme song from ~10 years ago, with the new voice cast as singers.  Almost everybody from the old show made at least a cameo appearance, even though this show takes place 80 years later.  They mostly retained the original voice cast.  Some of the characters, especially Evangeline, still play important roles in the story.  A lot of the elements that make the original show interesting are still present.  There are even more colourful characters now with the addition of an entirely new generation of adventurers.  The fights, harem vibe, fanservice, sense of adventure, mysteries, world exploration, complex character relationships are all here.  The plot is still a trainwreck, and the adaptation is as messy as ever.  I get a strong sense that this is only about the characters, and the story is added as an afterthought.

 

[Monoriu]

My favourite anime of 2017 are -

1. Attack on Titan Season 2

2. Made in Abyss

3. My Hero Academia Season 2

4. Kizumonogatari

5. Owarimonogatari Season 2

[jimmy olsen]

Thanks Tim for recommending this show.

The crazy thing is, this anime was made more than 10 years ago, and a sequel will air next year 

You're welcome.

How can they make a sequel? [spoiler]Every one died.[/spoiler]

[Monoriu]

Thanks Tim for recommending this show.

The crazy thing is, this anime was made more than 10 years ago, and a sequel will air next year 

You're welcome.

How can they make a sequel? [spoiler]Every one died.[/spoiler]

I don't know.  But [spoiler]only the top 10 ninjas from each village died.  The two villages were mostly unharmed.  I suppose they can easily produce another generation of ninjas.[/spoiler]

[Monoriu]

This reminds me.  I forgot to include it in my to-do list.  The sequel will air in like two weeks.  Here is the promotional poster.  [spoiler]Looks like everybody is new, but they will probably retain the love story, considering that the main pair is again male and female.[/spoiler]



Going to be a pretty busy season.

[Monoriu]

Shirobako.  Literally, white box.  This refers to the anime industry's practice of putting completed anime episode CDs/tapes in white boxes.  This is an anime about making anime.  Five high school girls made a promise that they would work on an anime show together.  When they graduate, they all join the industry in different roles.  The story focuses on Aoi Miyamori, a member of the production staff responsible for coordination. 

This show is fantastic.  Everything about this show is just right and well-balanced.  There is enough interesting exposition about the inner workings of the anime industry to lure viewers in, but the details won't become too technical as to overburden the audience.  The overall tone of the show is light-hearted, joyful and optimistic, but there are enough challenges and conflict to keep it going.  There are loads of characters, yet there is just enough focus on each one of them.  The problems of the industry are explored.  The staff are shown to rely on food supplies mailed from their parents, and secondary jobs to make ends meet.  This is balanced by the heartwarming relationships, willingness to bail each other out, and effective comic relief. 

Prior to watching this show, I had no idea what the production assistants do.  Each of them is assigned to work on an episode.  They actually have to identify suitable and willing animators to work on each of the scenes, either from within or outside their studio.  Then they have to find someone willing to check their work and make sure everything is fine.  Any number of things can go wrong in the process, from personality conflicts, that nobody is good at drawing moving horses, lazy directors being unable to produce story-boards in time, creative differences with the source author, bad quality output from animators, to animation supervisors injuring themselves in cycling races. 

There aren't a lot of shows about the working lives of adults, and this is a much needed one in a forgotten genre.  There are even two bonus episodes on, yes, the two "animes within an anime" that the cast produces in the show.  Imagine having to create three sets of characters.  The amount of passion and effort that go into this is amazing, and it shows.   

[Monoriu]

Geez.  The huge popularity of the Fate series has spawned a seemingly endless stream of spin-offs.  It is supposed to be a somewhat serious and dark show, lots of fights, plot twists, horrific treatment of some of the characters etc. 

And now, the latest spin off is gloriously titled Today's Menu for the Emily Family.  I just saw the first episode, and it is a...cooking show.  Done by ufotable, one of the most celebrated studios out there best known for its fantastic fight scenes.  Now they are doing food porn. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VO6kcEecsw

Imagine getting all the main Game of Thrones characters to do a cooking show.  That's how crazy this is. 

[Monoriu]

Fate Apocrypha.  This is a spin-off of the popular Fate Series.  The core Fate idea is that seven teams, each comprising a human magician "master" and a heroic spirit "servant", engage in a survival battle.  Any historical or mythical person can be a servant, e.g. Alexander the Great, Achilles etc.  Even Shakespeare.  The winner gets a wish granted by the holy grail.  Apocrypha asks the question, instead of a survival battle of seven small teams, what if there are two big sides?  Instead of 14 characters battling it out, now there are 28 of them, divided into two sides.  Double the number of characters, double the fun.

Except that it doesn't work.  Fate Stay Night needed three parallel routes to fully explore the 14 characters.  Fate Zero needed a 40 minute infodump as its first episode to introduce all 14.  A 25-episode show with 28 major players predictably leads to under-developed characters.  There isn't much emotional impact when they inevitably drop like flies.

Another major problem is the source author seems to have abandoned the two sides battling it out idea early on.  The main pair that gets the most screentime is actually from outside the 28.  Within the 28, the servants and masters change sides casually.  Some of them refuse to fight for their own sides from day one, and form independent teams.  The whole point of having 28 masters and servants is to see what happens when they form two sides.  Instead, they go back to having a free-for-all, defeating the fundamental premise of the show almost from the beginning. 

It isn't unwatchable, just average.  But there are much better Fate stories out there. 

For those who hate Saber's identity in Fate Stay Night and Zero, Apocrypha finally has a Saber like character that is explicitly based on Joan of Arc. 

[jimmy olsen]

Mono, have you watched Irresponsible Captain Tylor? It's a 90s classic.


I recently read the manga Goblin Slayer, and the GS: Year One spin off manga. Holy shit is this dark.

Basically set in a high fantasy world, the state and most high level adventures are dealing with demon lords, dragons, etc. They don't have to time to bother with small time shit like Goblins; it's dirty, dangerous work that doesn't pay much. They have bigger fish to fry.

The problem is that once Goblins get numerous enough, they ain't just stealing livestock. They kidnap women, and can escalate to sacking and razing whole towns on the frontier. The man are torn apart and eaten, the women gang raped (to death if they're lucky, if not they're used as breeding stock to pop out litters of new goblins. Don't think the logistics of it all really makes sense). They can be easily defeated if an armed force catches them on open ground, but going after them in the deep forest, or worse in their underground lairs is much, much more dangerous and they can wipe out even experienced veterans.

Enter the Goblin Slayer, as a child he was the lone survivor of a village massacre and is now a high ranked adventurer on a monomaniacal and hopelessly impossible quest to genocide all goblins forever. 

Based on a series of best selling light novels, where the novels are coldly detached and Goblin atrocities are mostly just heavily implied, the manga on the other hand is a visual medium and shows things in pretty graphic detail.