Reviews & Features Discussion

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I have to admit that I have always had a rather unfair animosity towards Zatch Bell! if only because its the show that completely replaced Yu Yu Hakusho by taking up its time-slot. So, I never really ended up giving the show a fair shake. Maybe I'll try watching it some day, since I'm among the few members on this board who doesn't automatically look down on anything that's shonen and not one of the classics, but as for now I have to admit that the animosity was so strong that it still kind of lingers in me today, even though it was never the show's fault that it got put on at that time (naturally, its the fault of Toonami watchers for apparently tuning out whenever YYH was on and giving it markedly lower ratings than other shows, to give the CN executives a reason to take it off of that time-slot).

And in case anyone doesn't get that last comment of mine....

Spoiler

....I'm joking....well, half-joking, anyways.

[close]

[Foggle]

I've disliked what I've seen of Zatch Bell, but I admit that's mostly because the artwork and character designs make me physically ill. At its core it seems fine.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Admittedly, I probably would have never gotten into Hunter X Hunter if it weren't for the fact that it was written by Togashi. The guy had some terrible artwork, and to be honest I was never really much of a fan of HXH's art-style. Then I slowly got into it and realized how its story-telling and characterization was leaps and bounds ahead of what most generic shonen series with such amateur writers could even hope to accomplish. I mean, the actual show has plenty of adventures and fighting and all of that good stuff, but it also delves into dark themes of revenge, corrupt politics, drug-trafficking, and even constantly obscures the lines of morality with its own heroes; examples of that include how Killua was raised as an assasin, how Kurapika works as a body guard for a shady mob boss to use the perks and benefits that he gets to work towards his own goals, and how Gon holds a person freaking hostage to get a villain to try and revive someone for him, and its not just a fake-hostage either. Seriously, Leorio is the only straight character among the main group when you think about it.

At any rate, to not get off-topic, I learned long ago to not judge stuff solely by art-style. That's when I got into One Piece. And, despite the fact that I'm not a fan of any of the series so far past the post time-skip, I still contest that most of the stuff that came before it was genuinely good and well-written material for a shonen series. I can't help it if most other people on this board are naturally biased toward shonen.

That said, I did watch some of Zatch Bell as a kid and it didn't really click with me, but like I said, I had an unfair hatred towards the show to begin with, so I never watched it properly. I'll try it seriously one of these days to see if its actually any good, or if it even holds up at all from its initial airing on Toonami.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Yeah, I can understand where people who don't like Zatch Bell! are coming from, and it is a better manga than an anime, so it'd probably better to read that instead if you wanted to check it out. The overarching plotline builds slowly in the series and I admit it has repetitive elements, but for me there's a lot of heart and humor in the series that makes it and crafts it into something special and appreciable,  so when people compare it to something like D.I.C.E I naturally get a little irritated.

[Foggle]

Here's a totally serious article by Marquis about SheZow! http://animationrevelation.com/readables/?p=1209

[Avaitor]

I tried something new.

What do you think?

[Foggle]

I dig it! Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen more than a single episode of this show, so I probably should give it a try sometime.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Nice job, Avaitor! Good idea to talk about the Weekenders, too.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

That was a great read, and something that really makes me want to try out something similar myself.

As for The Weekenders, I used to watch that show everyday after school on Disney Channel back when it and Recess were having a lot of their re-runs aired in the early 2000's. I'm glad to hear that it has aged well. I need to give it a re-watch one of these days.

[Avaitor]

I'm going to try to make this a recurring series, so I'll work on another, hopefully more detailed post this week.

And please guys, feel free to try one of these by yourselves. It's a very simple formula.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've already been considering what I would do an article like this for, but its kind of hard coming up with something, since most of what I could think to talk about is stuff that you guys have already seen (stuff like GTO or Gargoyles).

Now, another type of article idea I've been thinking of trying out is a rip-off of Doug Walker's Raiders of the Story Arc idea, though instead of just limiting it to the first few episodes of a series, I'd like to just take any arc or multi-part episode from any series that I like and explain why I think its such a great piece of fiction all on its own. In that regard, it doesn't matter if people have seen it because it can still be interesting to give my take on it.

[Avaitor]

That reminds me of my first episode review series. Which I planned to do a few of, but only did so for B:TAS.

I should probably do that again, but I'm not sure for what. Definitely not Justice League, since Insommy already did it. Maybe S:TAS and Batman Beyond, but I'd rather do something not-DC related, and I have no interest in watching Avatar again, and can't think of much else. We'll see.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yeah, that's a good ideas as well, though for me I also like the idea of not necessarily having to be limited to the very start of a show.

[TheEclecticDude]

I'm going to try to make this a recurring series, so I'll work on another, hopefully more detailed post this week.

And please guys, feel free to try one of these by yourselves. It's a very simple formula.

Hmm may consider this for one of my future reviews on my blog. Looks like a neat way of doing it

[Dr. Insomniac]

Blog hungry. Blog want eat.