What Are You Watching?

[Spark Of Spirit]

Obvious topic.

So, uh. Episode 15 of Bakuman was pretty much all filler. What the heck? I'm starting to think (especially with that awful OP) that the producers are trying to sell this as a love story or something at the expense of everything else. I mean, we have 10 episodes left and we haven't even met Fukuda or Aoki yet and Nakai has appeared for like 10 seconds. Filler at this point (that adds nothing, really) is not something we need at this point.

I'm not saying Azuki isn't important to Bakuman (she is a pretty big part of it), but she isn't the focus of the story, only on one aspect of it.

Seriously, if you're going to do filler, at least use one of the lesser used manga characters and don't tell us what we already know from three panels of the manga.

(By the way, we are nowhere near Detective Trap and I'm starting to get worried.)

[Avaitor]

I haven't seen past episode 1, and EK told me that it's a pretty straightforward adaptation towards the manga, so I'm not missing much.

But that really happened? Damn, my hopes for the show have sunk a little now.

[Spark Of Spirit]

It's pretty faithful overall despite somewhat slow pacing compared to the manga, but they seem to be putting more of a focus on the romance aspect than I feel like they should. I mean, i't important sure, but it isn't the focus of Bakuman's plot and really only involves a small handful of the characters.

I mean, that OP has nothing to do with Bakuman. Especially when they play it after a speech by Eiji before we get back to Hattori giving Ashirogi Muto advice.

But then we get stuff like Money & Intelligence and the Two Earths animated and I'm back to being confused. That's really what I want out of this show. If you're going to do filler, how about more of like how they slipped Koogy into the background (which was great foreshadowing) and more of like how Eiji thought of Crow. I mean, they wasted this episode pretty much telling us what the manga did in less than a page. Considering how much further we have to go until apparently the 25 episodes are complete, this seems like a pointless waste.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Honestly, I'm really bored with the Bakuman anime by this point. Its faithful enough as an adaptation, but like Desensitized said, the producers are pushing the romance aspect of it way further than they should. The manga is fantastic and completely interesting because its primary focus is always on educating the reader on the complex processes involved with creating manga and its reception among readers. The anime in comparison pushes that aspect aside in favor of trying to emphasize relationships, which in the manga is mainly just a way to kind of add a story around everything, but its clearly not its main appeal. Honestly, at this point I kind of feel like I might as well drop the anime. Its certainly not bad, but it is pretty boring since it rarely ever does anything new or interesting for people who have already read the manga, such as myself, and anytime that it does something new its usually useless filler. The points where we got to see their ideas in animated form such as with Money and Intelligence are only brief moments of brilliance among the people responsible for making the anime. If they did more of that, this would easily be one of my favorite anime of last year and this year, but really, the Bakuman anime adaptation comes off as plain lazy. I wish it could have had as good of an adaptation as Death Note did. At least with Death Note the people making the anime attempted to please both non-manga readers as well as people who had already read the manga by adding in some of their own new elements into the mix to keep up a level of unpredictability, and also even changed some stuff around (sometimes it could make things worse, but at other times it was actually for the better ,and at the very least I appreciated the effort).

By comparison, Bakuman's anime is way too predictable and kind of useless to watch for anyone who has already read the much better manga. If it doesn't end by episode 25 and still keeps up its painfully slow pacing after that point, then I'll likely just drop it.

[gunswordfist]

Watched Saint Seiya volume 10 and 11 yesterday. volume 10 had way too much flashbacks, the scenes dragged out too long and there was a lot of falling through infinite space but at least it had this unintentionally funny exchange:

Shiryu: Seiya, what did I just step on?
Seiya: Let's see...it's a man's face!
Shiryu: What??? A man's face!!!!

Volume 11 was better though. I think the next volume is the last of the show. Not sure...

[Angus]

Magical Witch Punie-Chan was a nice kick. I think GSF would enjoy it.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I tried to find the English dub version of Saint Seiya, if only because I heard that Mike McRae voice acted for a character in it, but I couldn't find it so I went with the Japanese version with subtitles. Anyways, I watched the first 3 episodes, and I assume it follows the manga's story line pretty closely since the first episode seemed to be a straight-up adaptation of the beginning chapter of the manga. So far I like the set-up and it has more substance to its characters than just the basic character tropes for shonen series, which is impressive for this series being as old as it is (but then again, its really a lot of the older shonen classics that stand out these days compared to the extremely generic ones of today). So far I've been enjoying the anime, and I'll try and check out some more episodes later.

I'm also enjoying re-watching Hunter X Hunter, though I plan on taking a break from that now to watch Kino's Journey, and then perhaps after that I'll either watch or read Please Save my Earth. I also need to finish watching the last 2 Shounan Junai Gumi OVAs.

[gunswordfist]

Angus, what's that magic show aout? An EK, I'm glad you're liking Saint Seiya. I have no complains about the show up until the arc I'm on. They're doing a little bit too may shounen mistakes there but before that it's fine.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

And what episode would that be at?

Currently I'm at the beginning arc where they are all going through that Galaxian tournament. The show is great though the static-ey sound quality of the voice-acting (which is understandable since in Japan this series was made and voice acted in the early 1980's) can take some getting used to just like with Fist of the North Star, which kind of makes me want to see if the English dub is accurate enough to the main script, since then I'd just watch that version of the show instead (mostly to see Mike McRae's fine voice acting in the series). Still, the Japanese voice actors are pretty good at their roles, for the most part (well, for the male characters, anyways, since all of the female characters sound as generic as they possibly could, or at least so far).

I'll probably watch some more episodes after I finish studying for Immunology tonight.

[Angus]

Angus, what's that magic show aout? An EK, I'm glad you're liking Saint Seiya. I have no complains about the show up until the arc I'm on. They're doing a little bit too may shounen mistakes there but before that it's fine.

It's a typical magical girl parody except that Punie uses wrestling submission holds, and it's short enough so you don't have to be bothered with real plot or romance. The last episode even briefly references one of the AR's favorite movie series.

I need to watch Puni Puni Peomy next.

[Foggle]

I need to watch Puni Puni Peomy next.

It's a pretty good watch if you like the Excel Saga anime, if I remember correctly.

[gunswordfist]

And what episode would that be at?

Currently I'm at the beginning arc where they are all going through that Galaxian tournament. The show is great though the static-ey sound quality of the voice-acting (which is understandable since in Japan this series was made and voice acted in the early 1980's) can take some getting used to just like with Fist of the North Star, which kind of makes me want to see if the English dub is accurate enough to the main script, since then I'd just watch that version of the show instead (mostly to see Mike McRae's fine voice acting in the series). Still, the Japanese voice actors are pretty good at their roles, for the most part (well, for the male characters, anyways, since all of the female characters sound as generic as they possibly could, or at least so far).

I'll probably watch some more episodes after I finish studying for Immunology tonight.

Let's just say I'm WAY ahead of you so I won't spoil anything. You have nothing to worry about for a long time. Up until where I am at, all of the arcs are short and fast paced. The show doesn't seem like it knows what to do with longer arcs though.

Angus, what's that magic show aout? An EK, I'm glad you're liking Saint Seiya. I have no complains about the show up until the arc I'm on. They're doing a little bit too may shounen mistakes there but before that it's fine.

It's a typical magical girl parody except that Punie uses wrestling submission holds, and it's short enough so you don't have to be bothered with real plot or romance. The last episode even briefly references one of the AR's favorite movie series.

I need to watch Puni Puni Peomy next.

Having the words "submission" and "anime" in the same sentence scares me.

[Angus]

Watching Eden of the East now. Pretty cool that they're using real Washington DC references like the International Spy Museum and the National Air/Space Museum billboard.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Been watching Katanagatari. Everybody talks so fucking much in this show, whether it be about the mission, their special moves, the swords, or what else.

[Angus]

Watching Gungrave, but wow, they're spending a lot of time developing the back story in volume 2.