What Are You Watching?

[gunswordfist]

I actually have finished neither show.

[LumRanmaYasha]

You haven't finished Outlaw Star? That's a surprise. So exactly how much have you seen of it?

[LumRanmaYasha]

I just finished watching all of Kino's Journey in one sitting. I wasn't planning on watching the whole series today, but once I started, I felt compelled to just keeping watching more of it. I thought it was a very thought-provoking and interesting series and I really enjoyed Kino as a character. I sort of wish there was more of it, since the light-novel series it was based on is still ongoing, and I definitely would have enjoyed seeing more of the kinds of stories it tells. Still, I always appreciate watching a great short series, and I'm satisfied with it as it is.

[gunswordfist]

You haven't finished Outlaw Star? That's a surprise. So exactly how much have you seen of it?

20 something, probably. I also have never seen the unaired on Toonami episode

[Avaitor]

You haven't finished Outlaw Star? That's a surprise. So exactly how much have you seen of it?

20 something, probably. I also have never seen the unaired on Toonami episode

Oh, that's a fun one!

[LumRanmaYasha]

Yeah, "Hot Spring Planet Tenrei" is easily the funniest episode of the series, imo.

[LumRanmaYasha]

I finished Fate/Zero today. I thought it was a very entertaining action series and enjoyed how wonderfully cruel it was. I was kind of surprised that the ending was basically a darker version of what happens at the end of InuYasha, though (the Holy Grail is pretty much the Shikon Jewel and what happens to Kiritsugu inside the Grail is kind of a more violent version of what happens to Kagome inside the Jewel), but that most certainly wasn't a bad thing. I'm looking forward to watching the new Fate/Stay Night anime in the fall.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Watching Planetes while simultaneously reading Space Brothers. 

[Spark Of Spirit]

Watching Planetes while simultaneously reading Space Brothers. 

Be sure to read Planetes, too. It goes in a bit of a different direction from the anime but still good.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Space Brothers is a fun series. I need to get back to it sometime soon.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Be sure to read Planetes, too. It goes in a bit of a different direction from the anime but still good.

Already read it, my friend. I went through it in a single day after I caught up with Vinland Saga two months ago. 

Half-way into the anime, and I honestly prefer the manga. I appreciate it's not a direct adaption and enjoy a lot of the original characters, but overall I enjoyed the more serious story and character development of the manga to the more comedic nature of the anime. But I hear the second half takes itself more seriously...as I can already see from the episode I'm watching as I type this, so I'll see how I like it overall once I finish it.

Space Brothers is a fun series. I need to get back to it sometime soon.

I remember you mentioning you were watching it last december. Personally, I didn't really care for the first two volumes. It was decent stuff, but basically beat the same ideas of "follow your dreams" and "take risks" a bit too much and had some rather corny and forced emotional moments. I didn't start to really like the series until Mutta's third round of testing, after which I've really enjoyed it a lot (though it still has some corny moments every now and again). Don't really think I'll watch the anime, since from what I can tell it only adapts two chapters an episode and even less than that as it goes on, but I might try checking out a few moments I really liked from the manga and see how well they adapted it later on.

I'm half-way caught up with the manga and will probably try to finish it by tomorrow. I only have my free Crunchyroll membership until Friday, after all, and I still need to read all their exclusive Takao Saito manga!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Eh, I disagree with you completely, but whatever. I mean, yeah, anything upbeat as that can be corny at times, but I definitely didn't find it to bore. What worked for me was Mutta's very snarky attitude. He was optimistic and all, but he also had a fun personality to him and a sense of humor, whereas most characters of his type are just bland and stoic. Anyways, I was watching the anime before I took a hiatus due to studies, and then I kind of got into other stuff before remembering that I still had to finish this series. I was also watching Magi at the same time and took a hiatus from that for the same reason, though SB definitely caught more of my interest at the time.

[LumRanmaYasha]

I never said I didn't like Mutta. I love Mutta. He's a great main protagonist that has good wit and determination, and is a likeable, normal guy that I enjoy rooting for. I have no problems with him as a character. I just found some moments early on in the series, such as when Mutta played the saxaphone (the significance of which was set up just earlier in the chapter) immediately after receiving the letter that he passed the initial examinations, or when was pressed up against the space suit display box exactly like Serika's father, tried a little too hard to be poignant moments and instead came off as silly. The series improves on this quickly after the first two volumes though and it's not a problem anymore outside of occasional moments (Serika's whole "dancing astronaut" business in the chapter where she gets the news she's been hired as an astronaut for JAXA, for example).

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

And I still don't see a problem with any of that. It's a manga. Perhaps a more realistic one than most, but it's still manga. It's not supposed to play out like a super serious drama. It was always meant to be a fun series, and I don't find any of those moments to feel out of place or too corny in terms of fitting in tone with the series (that, and the fact that the series itself is clearly self-aware of the silly elements, given character reactions to stuff).

[LumRanmaYasha]

The series being a manga has nothing to do with my problem,  I never said anything about those moments feeling out of place, and I did not go into this series expecting a "serious drama". My problem was that those moments came across to me as trying to be genuinely poignant scenes, but having seen similar moments in other series, I just found them a bit forced and rather rote in execution.

I think you are focusing too much on a problem I mostly just had with the first two volumes of the series. As I said before, I like this series! I've read 13 volumes by this point, and I'm enjoying this story quite a bit. I just found the beginning few chapters a bit underwhelming, especially since I had heard good things about it for a long time, but I feel like that about a lot of things. For example, I thought the first volume or so of The Seven Deadly Sins was incredibly tedious to read, but around the time Ban and King got introduced the series started to get considerably better, and I now find it to be one of the more consistently enjoyable weekly battle shonen I'm currently reading. I do think Space Brothers started off a bit weak, but it also quickly improved for me. That's what I meant to get across in my initial post, though it seems it came off more negative than I intended.