What Are You Watching?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So I watched the first episode of Fate/Zero. Being that the first episode was 40+ minutes long and had a lot of exposition, I found the first half of the episode to be pretty slow, and to be honest I didn't get a lot of what was being talked about (its been a while since I saw any of Fate/Stay Night, and I didn't even watch all of it, at that). Namely, I still don't seem to understand the whole point of The Holy Grail War. I also don't really get what exactly qualifies a magi as being chosen to become a master.

That said, I did like the art design of the series and I always do enjoy when a series has an extensive mythos behind it, even if there's currently a lot of it that I don't understand despite the heavy exposition. At any rate, the episode picked up the pace in the 2nd half and got a bit more interesting. I like how it did take the time to give all of the masters a chance to introduce their characters and even explore quite a bit about them, their personalities, and what makes them who they are. It also ended just as the servants were being summoned, so of course now I have to at least watch the next episode to see how things unfold from here.

Oh, also, I finished watching Kaiji Season 2 last week but forgot to mention it. God damn was that a lot of episodes for a game of Pachinko. I also noticed that there is a shit-ton of crying in this series, not just from Kaiji, but from everyone. Oh well, it was definitely an entertaining series, and I'll probably continue it via the manga, but I do feel that it'd probably have a low re-watch value for me due to the dragged out nature of the content, which is fine the first time through because you're genuinely interested in seeing what happens next, but it may not hold up so much on re-viewings when you already know what to expect.

[Foggle]

I still don't seem to understand the whole point of The Holy Grail War.

That may or may not have been what Nasu and Urobuchi were going for.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Oh, I didn't realize that Urobuchi worked on Fate/Zero. Well, I liked Madoka Magica, so I'll trust that his writing shines as good in this series as it did in that one.

[Foggle]

Fate/Stay Night is by Nasu, Fate/Zero is by Urobuchi, with a little bit of supervision from Nasu.

[Jay L. Corbell]

Evangelion 3.0 - You Can (Not) Redo
with subs.
Excuse me while I cream my pants.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I need to catch up on those Eva movies when I get the chance.

Also, I watched the first 5 episodes of Slam Dunk. I have to say, those 2 bumpers they have for before and after the commercial intermission are among the most hilarious uses of 'Engrish" that I have ever seen. I wish I could find a Youtube clip of them.

[Lord Dalek]

Mdawg was morbidly curious to see SAO. I could only oblige....

[Grave]

Finished watching Moribito earlier today. Had some time to let it sink in a little bit. It's pretty good. Very informative for a fantasy type series. It's no longer in my top 10, though, mainly because I'm an animal person, and I was holding back a lot of anger watching disc's 6-8 (might've been 7 & 8) since they held nothing back when it came to showing animal corpses (and that's a good way to really get under my skin)

Anyway, the characters, the only people I actually cared about were Balsa and Chagum. Everyone else, while they aren't bad, they didn't do much to stand out.

Action, when there is action it's great, but it's very scarce. I suppose the one issue I had was they went from fighting people to fighting creatures, and, well, the fighting wasn't that great, but suspense is there to make you want to know if anyone'll make it out alive.

I'd recommend it, but only to those that're looking for something that had a lot of talking rather than fighting.

[Grave]

I'm currently watching Sengoku Basara, and this might be one of those "spur of the moments" type of thing, but I have to say this series is quite something. It has a lot of wacky moments, but the fighting is pretty good. The pacing of it is pretty fast, perhaps too fast, since the only characters I feel that're getting fleshed out is Yukimura, Nobunaga, Shingen and Date, at least that's from what I've gathered so far. When it comes to samurai series I'd rather they go at least 20 episodes so other characters can be fleshed out. Of those who're fleshed out so far, I favor Date. Yukimura is too much of a gullible idiot for my liking, and Date is the badass of the series.

This is shaping up to be a top favorite.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm around 45+ episodes into Slam Dunk, and it looks as though I've finally hit filler territory, so I'll probably take a break from it for now. Overall, though, as someone who has hardly ever read any other sports manga (and what I have read, I generally haven't cared for) and consequently has never bothered to watch any sports anime, I do have to admit that I find this series to be surprisingly entertaining. Most of the characters are kind of one-note, like Sakuragi and Rukawa, but they don't come off as annoying either and somehow they still manage to stay entertaining in their own ways. In general, though, I tend to prefer characters like Akagi, Ryota, and Mitsui who seem to be a bit more layered and dynamic (but ironically are only the supporting characters).

One thing I don't get, though, is how Sakuragi was supposedly a really good player on level with another top-tier team during that one practice game in the beginning, but when the interscholastic preliminaries start, he automatically reverts to being a joke player in the beginning who fouls out of every game and gradually has to get better as the season goes on. It just felt jarring and kind of a forced way to give him a character arc in which he had a specific problem that he had to overcome. At any rate, the anime still managed to keep me interested, so I'll probably still stick with it, but if the filler is too drawn out, then I may just switch over to the manga at that point.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I haven't read it in a while, but I remember Sakuragi being way too full of himself to the point where he wasn't paying attention to the rules and leading the other players to take advantage of his inexperience. I know that is what leads him to want to become better when he realizes he's the team's weak link and not the star player. Then he becomes way better by using his own weaknesses as his strength.

Anyway, I'm glad you're enjoying it. I'm not the biggest fan of sports manga, but this is one of the exceptions.

[Foggle]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkCAE8UBeYo

[The Shadow Gentleman]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkCAE8UBeYo

[Rynnec]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkCAE8UBeYo

[Lord Dalek]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkCAE8UBeYo