What Are You Watching?

[gunswordfist]

Such an underappreciate job. She was my favorite.

[Avaitor]

I'm watching the EEnE Christmas special (because of course I am), and it always blows me away how good the sound is to the show. Not just the eclectic, jazzy soundtrack, but the sound editing is really clever. There's a bunch of things that the show should have won awards for, and that's one of them.

This is still a pretty good special, too. I like the notion that Eddy just gets clothes for Christmas. It's better than coal, but nothing kids want. It's basically Santa purgatory.

[Avaitor]

This year's nominations for Best Animated Feature are:

Animated Feature
Kubo
Moana
My Life As A Zucchini
The Red Turtle
Zootopia

I'm happy to see Finding Dory shut out- a weak sequel to an overhyped original, as far as I'm concerned. The Red Turtle is the only one I haven't seen here, but it's on my list. The other four are fantastic.

[VLordGTZ]

I'm kind of surprised that Your Name didn't get nominated, especially since it's now the best selling anime film of all time.  While I'm not a fan of Zootopia, I enjoyed/heard great things about the other four nominees (Kubo was easily my favorite animated film last year).

[Avaitor]

I can understand why Your Name didn't get the nod. Of the two not-widely released films, The Red Turtle is a co-production of Ghibli, which is a far bigger name here than Shinkai, while My Life as a Zucchini is being distributed by G-Kids, who have a solid idea of how to market to Academy members, while Funi is still kind of new to this game.

I feel that if they waited to try the film this year (especially since I believe that it's getting a wider release soon), it could have been more likely to get nominated. From the mainstream studios, it's looking like a light year. WDAS is taking the year off for Pixar to do 2 films, one of which is Cars 3, Dreamworks doesn't seem to have anything of note, Laika do releases every other year or so, and Blue Sky and Illumination aren't even worth bringing up IMO.

I'm also sad that Funi gave up on trying to nominate The Boy and the Beast the moment they got the rights to Your Name. I don't think it would have had much more of a chance to be nominated, but it deserved better.

Ah well, in other news, I have the next few series that I plan to watch planned out.

Mobile Police Patlabor + Movie 1
Chowder
Patlabor Movie 2
Yuri on Ice
Patlabor Movie 3 + Minipato
Initial D Second Stage + Third Stage
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Parts 3 & 4
Lupin III: Episode 0 + The Legend of Fujiko Mine
Blood Blockade Battlefront

I've been wanting to check out Patlabor for a while, since I like the concept and I've been slacking on mecha as of late. From what I understand about the franchise, it looks like the OVA + trilogy universe is more appealing to me than the series + second OVA timeline, so I'll do that first. Depending on how I feel, I might give the other timeline a go at some point.

After finishing Harvey Beaks, I'm curious to pinpoint exactly what went wrong with Chowder, and to find if there's any gold that I miss, since I only saw a handful of the post-season 1 stuff. I kind of doubt it, but I'm still kind of curious.

I've been hearing great things about Yuri on Ice for a little while now, and as typically late as I am to the party, I want to give it a spin and see if it lives up to the hype. I also want to give more sports anime/manga a try, so this might a good primer before I go back to reading the Slam Dunk manga and try other things.

I am familiar with Initial D, though, as I saw and liked the first act a while ago. I felt like I could hold off on the rest for a while, but I think it's time to get to the next part. The second act is pretty short, and the third is a movie, so I can easily give those a go.

I'm still slacking on Jojo, and even though it'll take me a while to get here, I might still have some time before the next part starts up.

I think you guys remember that I gave Lupin a full second shot last year, as I watched his first 3 seasons in full and saw some of his movies. I was planning to watch the entire franchise in full, but it's not as easy to find all of the specials in good quality, and it doesn't sound like I'm missing too much for them. But I kind of stopped going through the franchise as I gave up on those, so I plan to fix that. Depending on how I feel, in fact, I might just do Part IV after that. Unless Toonami gets it, at least.

And I've been wanting to do BBB for a while, and I plan to before season 2, if not before the year is over.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I really did enjoy Yuri on Ice, but I also feel that people kind of overhype it to the point of being a bit irritating, and mainly because of its appeal to the LGBT community, even though the homosexual romance is clearly not the main focus of the story.

As for me, my favorite anime of 2016 is pretty much a tie between SGRS and U&T, followed closely behind by the likes of My Hero Academia, Mob Psycho 100, and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part IV: Diamond is Unbreakable.

As for Re: Zero, my opinion has kind of soured on it over time. I enjoyed ERASED, but the show definitely has its flaws, even though I think people are way too overly critical of the second half of the series.

And aside from a few other ongoing shonen series like Dragon Ball Super and Haikyuu!, that's really about most of what I actually completed from last year. My time to watch anime is extremely limited these days.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Mob Psycho 100, Sakamoto desu ga, and Diamond is Unbreakable were definitely highlights of this year. Re:Zero was cool on the first watch, but thinking about it, it played so many of the "Japanese guy goes to a fantasy world" story devices as painfully straight as the many it breaks open. I had some hope for 91 Days, but it didn't really do much for me after establishing its plot (it also killed off my favorite character too early on).

Divine Gate, Mayoiga, Big Order, and Occultic;Nine were my "this is so fucking stupid but I can't stop watching because it's hilarious" watches of the year. And I should get to watching BBB some day. I heard the dub was pretty good, especially for a simuldub.

[Avaitor]

I'm still pretty behind on anime. U&T is the only series I caught from last year, which is great.

A lot of the series you guys have named are ones I've been meaning to get to, and I'll try to soon.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Mob Psycho 100, Sakamoto desu ga, and Diamond is Unbreakable were definitely highlights of this year. Re:Zero was cool on the first watch, but thinking about it, it played so many of the "Japanese guy goes to a fantasy world" story devices as painfully straight as the many it breaks open. I had some hope for 91 Days, but it didn't really do much for me after establishing its plot (it also killed off my favorite character too early on).

Divine Gate, Mayoiga, Big Order, and Occultic;Nine were my "this is so fucking stupid but I can't stop watching because it's hilarious" watches of the year. And I should get to watching BBB some day. I heard the dub was pretty good, especially for a simuldub.

Well, FUNi's simuldubs have been pretty high quality in general, since in order for a series to get the simuldub treatment in the first place, FUNi would have to be banking on it to be a big success in the West from the start. Space Dandy and My Hero Academia also have excellent simulcast dubs, IMO.

[Avaitor]

So Kubo could very possibly win the Oscar now. Between its nomination for its visual effects, to how it won the VFX and BAFTA, both of which are good indicators of Oscar winners, it's looking like a serious possibility. Which means that the old rule that Academy voters go for whatever movie their kid liked most may not be happening this year.

[Avaitor]

Oh shit, Netflix just added a bunch of Real Ghostbusters episodes! Not every single one, but over 100.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Nice! I missed out on this show, so this is a good chance for me to finally check it out.

[Avaitor]

So they're changing the rules for the Best Animated Feature Oscar, and I'm pretty livid.

Obviously, it was a hard bet to expect most of the lesser-known films to win the award, but it's nice to see good, if more obscure films like My Life as a Zucchini get nominated than crap like The Secret Life of Pets, which is ensured a nod now. It ups their agenda and gives people a chance to find them. But now that's just a moot point.

[Dr. Insomniac]

/co/ had a tournament to figure out what was the best cartoon. There were the results.

[gunswordfist]

I ain't mad!