What Are You Watching?

[Foggle]

Went on a Lupin III binge after Daisuke Jigen's Gravestone reminded me of how much I love the franchise. Re-watched the first TV series, Castle of Cagliostro, and Mystery of Mamo, then watched The Fuma Conspiracy, Return of the Magician, and Lupin Family All-Stars for the first time.

The original series was definitely a lot better than I remember it being. I still don't like the first 2-3 episodes that much, but the rest were all pretty great IMO; except for #12, which was probably my least favorite. I've definitely grown a much bigger appreciation for Osumi's episodes over time, but #s 1 & 2 are kind of boring, and #s 3 & 12 are borderline nonsensical. The casual chauvinism is also somewhat bothersome, and though it wasn't as bad as I'd remembered, I do find some parts of the first and twelfth episodes fairly uncomfortable. That said - after a second pass - I'd say Osumi actually directed a couple of my favorites in his short tenure, so I'm happy he was able to contribute to the series. And, of course, Miyazaki/Takahata's work holds up remarkably well. Their episodes make amazing use of the limited budget, turning potentially shoddy animation into fun slapstick at every turn. The finale in particular is an excellent watch.

Not much needs to be said about Castle of Cagliostro. It's simply a masterpiece, and has definitely worked its way back into my top 10 favorites now. Excellent animation, writing, acting, music - the works.

Mystery of Mamo tends to get a bad rap from a lot of people - which is understandable, because it's fucking bizarre - but I still really like it. It captures the essence of Monkey Punch's original manga perfectly while also retaining the more fun sense of humor from the anime series. It makes me laugh a lot, and its occasional datedness and weirder elements are fairly endearing, at least to me. It's also an important work in the history of animated film, apparently!

The Fuma Conspiracy was very good. It has absolutely breathtaking animation, especially for an 80's OVA, and the setup is fun. Unfortunately, the replacement voice actors are awful, and the soundtrack is kind of obnoxious (except for the opening credits theme, which is great!).

Return of the Magician is shit. Complete garbage. Bottom of the barrel refuse. This is, without question, the worst Lupin anything I've ever seen. The animation is horrible, with characters constantly going off-model and action scenes comprised mostly of still frames; I'm not kidding when I say that the original Pilot Film from 1969 looks and moves better. It also has the most laughable 3D art/animation I've ever seen in anime. You may think I'm just exaggerating for effect here, but no - as soon as you see the robot birds and Pycal's laboratory, you'll know I'm being 100% serious. The story is simultaneously nonsensical and boring, the pacing is abysmal, and the characters act like humorless versions of themselves with no personality. Do NOT watch this movie unless you hate yourself and want to waste almost an entire hour of your life.

Lupin Family All-Stars was a very fun short, with excellent animation and great humor; the perfect sendoff for the old voice cast! Definitely give this one a watch if you're a fan.

[gunswordfist]

i like mystery of mamo more than castle of cagliostro because lupin is like his 2nd series self. mom would be my favorite anime movie ever if it weren't for the 2nd half. the post island scenes weren't that entertaining and goemon was absent for one of the stupidest reasons possible.

[Foggle]

Yeah, Mystery of Mamo's last 30-40 minutes aren't nearly as good as the excellent first hour, but I still like the whole movie a lot. It's a pretty close race for me, but I think Cagliostro edges it out just slightly.

[gunswordfist]

What other lupin movies should i watch?

[Foggle]

What other lupin movies should i watch?

I haven't seen that many of the films, unfortunately, though I'm planning on changing that soon. Of the ones I've seen, I'd say:

Episode 0: First Contact
Daisuke Jigen's Gravestone
The Fuma Conspiracy
Lupin Family All-Stars (if it counts)

[gunswordfist]

thanks.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Lupin Family All-Stars is an interesting short in that I think it is the only Lupin anime thing I know of that directly adapts a chapter of the manga. Specifically, it adapts the first chapter of the second manga series, World's Most Wanted, and pretty faithfully to boot. The only real changes is the execution of some of the humor and some small details, but otherwise everything story-wise is the same. I think that's pretty cool they chose to adapt it, since it's a good one to adapt for the purposes of a commemorative special and as a send off to the old voice cast.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Mushi-shi will getting a film next summer, which will adapt the final two-part story of the manga. Sounds like an excellent way to send off an excellent series, and I'm looking forward to it.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Last week I finally started watching through Full Metal Panic! and today I finished The Second Raid. I have mixed feelings about the first season, overall. While I was into it for the first third of the series/the first arc, I didn't get much mileage out of the remainder of the series. In addition, while I was quickly endeared to Sosuke and enjoyed Kurz, Mao, and Kalinin, I didn't particularly care for Kaname or Tessa. Gauron was great though, and his scenes were always entertaining. In any case, I enjoyed The Second Raid much better. Not only was the animation quality significantly improved, the story was much more interesting and multi-layered, the fight scenes were really cool and awesome, and the character development for many characters was really good, particularly for Sosuke and Kaname, and I came out of it liking all of the characters much more or even more than I had previously. As far as the new characters went, Mr. Gates was fucking hilarious, though admittedly it makes no sense why anyone would work or put up with him, and Leonard was quite interesting in the scenes he appeared in. I have some nitpicks with a few aspects here and there, but overall I enjoyed it a lot and it made me interested in finishing the story through the Light Novels or the manga adaption sometime.

Also, having finished The Second Raid, I can now say that I have seen every story arc on our Top 30 Anime/Manga story arcs list and can fully justify it, so that's cool. 

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Glad to see that you liked TSR. I'd also recommend checking out Fumoffu, which IMO is a much better comedy than Amagi Brilliant Park.

As for the first season, I actually enjoyed it more than most people, and I found the second half of the series to be more enjoyable tha the first half, honestly, so I'm a bit reversed when it comes to my opinion on that compared to yours, but it is a flawed series, either way. Part of that has to do with it being based on the weaker LN's being that Gatoh was a less experienced writer at the time, but more of it has to do with Gonzo's kind of lackluster adaptation efforts. As for TSR, it had Gatoh helping a lot with the screenplay (similar to how George R. R. Martin has done that for Game of Thrones), and despite some notable changes and additions from the books, it actually turned out for the better, IMO.

Unfortunately we never got to see the best material animated. Continuing On My Own and Burning One Man Force are excellent, as are the 9th and 10th books. The last 2 books are also very engaging, although certain aspects of the ending were disappointing to me. Even so, I did really like where the story left off, which is why I have no desire to ever read FMP Another (which isn't even written by Gatoh, anyways).

[LumRanmaYasha]

I finished Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu yesterday. Surprisingly hit-and-miss for me. I laughed more at some episodes towards the end of the series than those at the beginning, but there were many episodes that just didn't do anything for me. Overall, like the first season, I have mixed feelings towards it as a whole. But I do have to say I liked Amagi Brilliant Park much better.

On the flipside, I finally watched and finished Welcome to the NHK a few days ago, and LOVED it. It's a new favorite of mine.

Now I need to get to finishing/catching up on last seasons' stuff before the new season comes.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, I suppose that just goes to show how much more subjective comedy is than most other genres. Personally, I found that Amagi Brilliant Park was just average, and I like this brand of humor much better than stuff like School Rumble, AC, and a few other comedies that I just couldn't get into. I will admit that most anime comedy is pretty boring for me, though, so this and OHSHC are among the exceptions for me (manga is a different story).

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

In order to save space, I posted my research ones under a spoiler tag:

Spoiler

What brand of humor do you mean? I would say most of the humor in Fumoffu is pretty similar to School Rumble myself as far as the kind of humor goes. The only thing I see that sets the two apart is that Fumoffu uses the military-aspect of Sosuke's character to play off of normal school-based anime comedy tropes and plots in some unique ways, but even then, a lot of series like School Rumble go to varied and interesting extremes with it's characters and situations as well.

The only similarity is that they are school-based comedies. With School Rumble, it's more related to stuff like normal Japanese student archetype characters partaking in everyday activities in absurdly over-the-top ways, mostly relating to romance, but also encompassing other stuff as well. With Fumoffu, it's also over-the-top, but it's more about Sousuke being assigned to protect Kaname but having absolutely know real understanding of how normal high school students live or function, so a big chunk of the humor comes from his hard-headed militaristic approach to every menial situation, and how it effects the rest of his class and school and puts them in awkward situations of their own. School Rumble to me is more of a character comedy, which I actually usually prefer, but I just found the characters to be a tad flat for my liking. Fumoffu is more of a simple situational comedy with a fair dose of slapstick humor, which isn't my favorite kind of humor, but I found that it worked really well in this series.

Humor is definitely subjective, yes. But I'm surprised I didn't enjoy Fumoffu as much as I thought I would, because from what I heard I thought it would be my type of series, and it honestly is, except things just didn't seem to click for me most of the time. I will say that a big reason that I think that Fumoffu didn't seem to do much for me is that it's pretty much completely reliant on Sosuke to deliver the humor. Most of the comedies I enjoy are heavily character-driven, with a large cast of characters with distinct personalities and quirks who could drive episodes even if the main characters aren't around. Not much the case here. None of the new characters added for the series made much of an impression on me outside of just being their standard archetypes, so any humor with them didn't take for me.

You see, I actually agree in preferring more character-driven humor, but that's only when the characters are interesting personalities. The fact that they are really nothing more than their archetypes in stuff like School Rumble (and IMO, in AC, which isn't a typical school comedy, but still had very flat characters for me) is what makes them not work for me. I need something more interesting than that. OHSHC was much better when it came to setting up characters in specific archetypes, but then playing with your expectations and making them much less predictable yet incredibly hilarious to watch as they interacted with each other in such situations. You're insistence on viewing Fumoffu as a school comedy of that nature is viewing it as something that it's not. You said that it is your type of series but not done as well, but I disagree. It's not your type of series from what you described. It's a different "brand" of humor in that it relies more on slapstick and the odd situations that Sousuke causes. And while I agree that this would not be as funny as a good character driven comedy (with the emphasis on the comedy and characters actually being "good," IMO), I think that it does a great job of being a more simplistic comedy series that it sets out to be. Granted that, there are about 2 episodes that I don't care for, but in a short series like this where the rest of the episodes do make me laugh, that's not bad at all. Had it been longer, than the shenanigans being caused by Sousuke ploy would have grown stale, but at just twelve 20-minute episodes (with some being split into multiple segments), it doesn't overstay it's welcome, or at least not for me.

In School Rumble, and yes, even Amagi Brilliant Park, there are a whole slew of characters who all have very different and vast relationships between each other and they all play off each other to varied comedic effects.

There are a whole lot of characters and relationships, I'll give you that. But they are not interesting, or at least most of them are not. In School Rumble, the characters never grow out of their archetypes, leaving the humor feeling completely predictable, and the punchlines feeling rather stale and not worth the set-up. Amagi Brilliant Park was much the same way. You seem to just be picking up the fact that series like that have better set-ups than Fumoffu, which in and of itself is true. You also assume that I can't see that aspect of it which is why you chose to explain all of this, but that's not the case. It's just that, I don't find that either of these series "carry out" on that aspect of humor particularly well. With Fumoffu, I feel that it goes for an easier and cheaper kind of humor, but manages to excel at doing that to the point of still being very funny. School Rumble and Amagi Brilliant Park do not do nearly as good of a job of doing what they set out to do, IMO, which is why I consider them to be different brands of humor and not all that funny.

Basically, the latter 2 feel more like a lot of set up and little payoff to me, whereas Fumoffu feels like little set-up and fair pay-off to me. Now if those series had that same set-up but had a much stronger delivery and sense of timing, then I'd consider them to be superior, and an example of a series that does that well is, once again, OHSHC. Or, even if the series wasn't laugh-out-loud funny but still had their actual concepts and situations play out in interesting fashion like Level E and certain episodes of Space Dandy, then I'd find them to be much better. As it stands, they just don't, from my point of view.

There are a lot of possibilities with what you can do with them and you can put them in practically any situation and let them play off one another, and the story and humor just evolves out of that. But Fumoffu is just Sosuke reacting to things, always in the way he typically does, and he does this for 12 episodes straight. It didn't always work for me and often times it just stopped doing anything for me.

Look, if you're going to critique a series in a serious manner, at least do it fairly. Fumoffu is NOT just Sousuke reacting to things. It's about setting up awkward or absurd situations and problems, and the brunt of the humor from the episodes comes from either him or other characters dealing with those problems and trying to get themselves out of whatever disaster he causes or is about to cause, but then they typically just dig themselves deeper into the mess. That's a brand of humor that I don't often see in anime, and I enjoy it.

Now, I get that this isn't your thing, which I'm fine with the fact that it doesn't appeal to you, but that blunt an over-simplified description of what you apparently think the series does irk me since I am personally a fan. It'd be like if I said Assassination Classroom is nothing but some kids undergoing shenanigans to try and kill their teacher and pointless anime and manga references that you are supposed to find funny just because they happen to be there. Of course, even though I can't get into AC and don't find it particularly funny, I at least have enough respect for it's fan-base to know that they admire it for more than just that, and having read the first 40-chapters of it, if I were to give an honest critique, I'd say that it also does more than that, even if it still doesn't really particularly interest me. In the same regard, saying that Fumoffu is nothing but Sousuke reacting to things is just flat-out untrue, and really undersells what it manages to do well.

As for your last point about why you like ABP better, I pretty much already addressed it earlier on in the post. Yes, it has more characters and more interactions. So what? They actually need to be funny or genuinely interesting to watch, otherwise they still don't do anything for me. I mean, like I said, I can understand why you don't care for Fumoffu and prefer the other series that you mentioned. But you're also wrong in saying that it's the same kind of humor. It's not.

[close]

And just to put a capper statement on my response so that I don't have to make another long-winded response defending my opinion:

I still respect your opinion a lot. I just don't agree with it in some cases, such as this one. You don't really need to spend paragraphs upon paragraphs hammering home the same point about why something does or doesn't work for you. I get it from just the first few sentences. That said, in terms of being honest, I do feel that you have a tendency to over-analyze things (and in some cases like in above, over-simplify them), which is probably why the tone of my post probably comes off a little more annoyed in tone than what I had intended. The bottom line is that it's a really subjective genre, and I think that we've each done adequate enough jobs of explaining what we each do an don't find to be funny, and why each series does or doesn't appeal to us. No amount of discussion after this point will really do anything to change that.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

My thoughts on the first half of Parasyte (the anime, obviously):

-I like Shinichi and Migi. Their dynamic is easily the highlight of this show.

-I like how the Parasytes grow in intelligence and as a community. It has a nice "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" sort of vibe to it, but with a clever twist of its own thrown into the mix.

-I do feel that this series has one major weakness so far, for as good as the rest of it is, and that's how it really lacks any strong supporting characters up to this point. Shinichi's parents got some characterization, which was nice, but I wouldn't necessarily consider them fleshed out or fully realized. Neither of the love interests do anything for me,either. Murano is admittedly good at serving as a reference point to us viewers in terms of showing how much Shinichi has changed as a character so far, but on her own she's a bit too mopey and not that interesting (once again, only up to this point), and Kana's characterization is probably the only one that I flat-out dislike, because it feels like we're supposed to sympathize with her, but her boy-crazy infatuation with Shinichi and general demeanor is just not very appealing.

Overall, though, it's a good show, and there's still the second half left for it to get even better.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

My thoughts on the first have of Unlimited Blade Works:

-This series is both better and inferior to Fate/Zero in different ways.

-The core characters here are actually more likable than the ones in Zero, which was sorely lacking in people who you could sympathize with, however they are also less interesting and nuanced than said cast of characters, as well.

-I'm not a fan of all of the dialogue foucused on Shirou arguing with other masters and servants about his ideals and why they are right or wrong. It just feels far too forced and quite frankly isn't very interesting. Zero had some of this as well, but not enough to feel like it was being force-fed to us. That said, this series is better than Zero when it comes to sparing us the details of the exposition on technical stuff like the rules of the game. We get most of the exposition out of the way in one episode.

-The plot is much smoother and less convoluted than Zero could get at times, at least so far, so that's definitely a plus.

-The choice to focus on a few key characters rather than trying to characterize all of the players is definitely a smart one (though technically it's not a choice since they are just adapting the visual novel which had this kind of narrative). In Zero, I felt that we ended up wasting time on some less interesting characters that could have been devoted to more worthwhile ones. I'd say that a huge cast works for a long-running narrative like Legend of the Galactic Heroes or A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones. For a relatively shorter series like Zero, it felt a bit too cobbled together for my liking.

-The animation and fight scenes are top notch. Not a huge deal, but certainly worth mentioning.

Overall, this is also a good show, but could still be better.