What Are You Watching?

[Dr. Insomniac]

I get the feeling that Nausicaa was just a prototype for Princess Mononoke, since the latter has many of the other movie's plot details but more polished.

[The Shadow Gentleman]

I get the feeling that Nausicaa was just a prototype for Princess Mononoke, since the latter has many of the other movie's plot details but more polished.

Yeah, I did kind of got that feeling too. At the very least, I was intrigued by the premise to check out the manga. Maybe it's more fleshed out there?

[LumRanmaYasha]

I've heard the Nausicaa manga is much better than the film, and one of the best.

Personally, I really enjoy the film. I do agree Mononoke improves on various aspects common to both films, though.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I finally set down and watched Nausica? of the Valley of the Wind. While I loved the visuals and the design of the world, I didn't care to much for the story or the characters. Maybe it's just me, but a lot of it just seems...dull to me.

So, basically it's just like every Miayazaki movie ever made?

[The Shadow Gentleman]

Oh you.

[LumRanmaYasha]

So, basically it's just like every Miayazaki movie ever made?

Have you seen The Wind Rises yet? I personally think it's the most intimate and "human" of his films, and a fascinating quasi-factual life story as well. It's easily my favorite Studio Ghibli film.

[Avaitor]

I've heard the Nausicaa manga is much better than the film, and one of the best.

Yeah, I have a couple of issues of the manga (remember when we'd release comic-length issues with a couple of chapters for manga in the US?), and the story definitely seems more developed there.

[LumRanmaYasha]

I finally finished Space Adventure Cobra this morning. Didn't really care for the last episode. I would have much preferred if Dominique stayed dead and Doug stayed alive, and Salamander being the spirit of a mummified Hitler was kind of random. Overall I thought the show was a lot of fun, though. The best part was easily the Rugball story arc, but the Nelson's Treasure arc and a lot of the shorter stories were enjoyable too in the same kind of fashion Lupin III is for me. I'm going to watch the OVAs at some point, but first I think I'll finish a couple other things on my backlog that I really want to get to. 

[gunswordfist]

Grrrrr, why'd you tell me that

Because it's the one cliche he clings to no matter what.

There are parts in Chimera Ant where you'll wonder how come Gon or Killua didn't die seconds after someone far more powerful than either bit it. It doesn't bother me all too much (the arc has other problems), but it's hard to not notice.

I think only Gon has been in situations where he clearly should have been killed by a much more powerful character. I don't remember Killua being in any (sorry, I only found this because I was looking for another post)

[LumRanmaYasha]

I just finished the 2004 Area 88 anime. I...thought it was fun to watch, at the very least. The thing about it for me was that I really enjoyed the 29 chapters of the manga that are available to read in english (illegally) online. It's not even close to the entire series, which is over 170 chapters long and will probably never be fully translated in english, but there was more than enough interesting story and characters in those 29 chapters alone to endear me to the series. I went into the anime expecting it to be even better since I thought it would be a good adaption and tell more of the story than I can read in the manga right now. But, surprisingly, the anime tells incredibly little of the story and is organized in a very episodic way, with it's overarching plot, completely different from in the manga, which, while not bad, was rather standard stuff I felt I've seen before in a "eh" way. Even more annoying to me was how the characters barely had a smidgen of the characterization and development they had in the manga, and the series went out of it's way to introduce characters that were introduced in the manga later on early and expanded the role of Shinjou the photographer, an incredibly minor character in the manga who is killed off four chapters after he's introduced, into a main character who gets more screentime than Mick, Saki, and fuck, even Shin, who is supposed to be the main character, but barely gets any nuance to him like in the manga and is just in a cool/stoic mood most of the time. So, that kind of annoyed me. Don't get me wrong, I found the series fun to watch, but honestly, if I hadn't already read what I've been able to read of the manga before, I doubt I would have enjoyed as much. So in that sense, I think it's a rather disappointing series, especially since it's source material is so good and there are plenty of other series that I've seen that have told much better stories with more fleshed out characters with the same amount or even fewer episodes.

I'm going to try the OVA series from the 80's next. I've heard mixed opinions on those, but they apparently told more of the series than this 12 episode anime did, so I'm curious to see some of that. I'll also check out the movie too, if I can find it.

[Spark Of Spirit]

All the adaptions of Area 88 are incredibly different from each other. There's no real way to guarantee which version of the story someone will like best because of it. Though they're never going to make a full series adaption of it, as it's too old and niche for most anime fans nowadays.

Personally, I liked a lot of the OVA, except the ending which was a bit too typical "80s OVA anime" for me and I thought they made it a bit too overly melodramatic at times. I actually thought the anime's ending was much better.

But the best version is probably always going to be the manga.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Huh, I can't believe I never noticed that! Such a neat, weird oddity.

[VLordGTZ]

Today, I finished watching season 2 of Silver Spoon.  I think it probably has become one of my favorite slice-of-life anime.  I'm definitely going to start keeping up with the manga.

[gunswordfist]

I didn't know there was a Did You Know Anime. I was actually wondering about that. I'd follow them if I wasn't scared of spoilers.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Well, you could always just watch their episodes on shows that you've finished. I think you'd like their Outlaw Star and DBZ videos, in particular.