Reviews & Features Discussion

[Spark Of Spirit]

Attack on Titan has pulled no interest from me whatsoever. The good doctor's article states a lot of the things that have put me off of a lot of its ideas and execution and quite overbearing fanbase all in the same breath.

Don't get me wrong, I can get behind dumb, but it has to be a well written kind of dumb. Everything I've managed to see or read of this series has been the poorly written kind of dumb and everything I've grown out of since I was a teenager. All I see are cliches I've seen a million times wrapped in a shiny new package of modern otaku-style bleakness ramped up to its logical extreme. I just get absolutely nothing from it and I doubt I would have at a younger age, either.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I just want to point out something about the criticisms of this series. While I generally agree with them, one point that irks me is when some liken it to Death Note and claim that was a series that was also trying too hard to be dark and edgy for the sake of it. This is what I find to be a complete misunderstanding of DN. The reason that its good is precisely because, unlike AOT, the author of DN knows what he was writing was not deep. As he has made clear in interviews, DN was inspired by his love for detective and crime manga, and he wanted to make a series that was for all intents and purposes as simple as possible to follow, but that threw readers for a loop in a way that would get them excited to read more. The reason the characters were so plain and simple was because they were purposely written as such in order for their clashes with each other to be all the more confrontational. Hence why Light and L going head to head felt more entertaining than contrived. Essentially, DN is written by an author who knows his limitations and how to work around them, and its all the better for it.

Also, the dude knows manga and clearly loves the genre. Just for the simple fact that he essentially got me into Ashita no Joe gives him an automatic pass from me.

[Foggle]

Death Note is obvious pulp and has its fair share of intentionally fun moments along with characters that are actually interesting. I don't hate Attack on Titan, but I find the entire cast to be incredibly one note and bland. Plus, yeah, the darkness approaches JRPG fanfiction levels at times. The action scenes are fucking cool, though.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'll say that the anime is better than the manga since at least the animation is almost good enough to momentarily distract you from the bad writing. Almost....

I will concede that the first opening theme is fucking addicting as he'll to listen to. It's basically the best thing about the to come out of yhe property.

[Foggle]

I wrote more bullshit about how I think Space Dandy is intelligent. http://animationrevelation.com/readables/?p=2577

[LumRanmaYasha]

I have to agree with you that Space Dandy is one of the most unique animated series I've seen. Well, the Urusei Yatsura anime actually did similar in how it mixed up episodes that were wacky comedy, then slice of life, then space adventure, and then incredibly serious psychological stuff, but I think Space Dandy is doing a better job with making all of it feel natural so far (and of course, on a visual and animation level it's putting shame to every other animated show I've ever seen).

I don't think everything is quite hitting the mark for me, though, in terms of the execution of these stories. While I enjoyed how disjointed episode 8 was, it was executed a bit predictably to me in terms of both halves played out. More importantly, though, I did not find the second half inventive or amusing enough to sharply contrast with the serious first half. So instead of being throughly entertained by the whole episode, I instead ended up enjoying the first half more while regarding the second half almost as filler. I loved the concept of it, but I felt the episode itself didn't live up to it's potential. The 9th episode, on the other hand, wasn't very engaging to me from the start. Visually it was stunning, but, that annoying kid-like plant aside, the story moved along so slowly, and quietly, that I ended up loosing interest in it outside of a few really great sequences. I love strangeness myself. Hell, I love the fourth Urusei Yatsura movie, which is also a love/hate kind of affair for people and even more bizarre than this episode. The difference here, though, had to do with the message and objective of this strangeness. The point of it is very easy to figure out, but yet, I can't bring myself to care because it feels detached from the characters and the show, as if even they themselves don't care. And while there's nothing wrong with that if that was purposeful, it still didn't make for an interesting or entertaining viewing experience for me the first or second time around.

I will say that I love and appreciate how Dandy plays with viewer expectations, and how every episode is very different from the last, and just how creative they are getting with the presentation of them. I do think it's still not quite there in terms of consistently pulling off these experiments, and I do hope the second season improves on this.

[Avaitor]

Hi.

[LumRanmaYasha]

You're resuming this! Yay! 

I don't really have any elaborate thoughts on them right now, but those are some pretty good episodes. The PPG one is one I have fond memories of, in particular. But I think my favorite segment of the bunch is "Dream Machine" from Dexter's Laboratory. I've always loved the concept, and the ending, of that one. I'll also agree with you that the Justice Friends segments were stronger than the Dial M for Monkey segments because the Justice Friends had more interesting personalities, whereas Monkey and co. were kind of basic and a little cliche.

Looking forward to seeing you do more of these. 

[Lord Dalek]

CLUSTERFUCK BEGINS NOW!

[LumRanmaYasha]

Yeah, the minute I saw the preview for this I was like "oh, fuck no." But I did watch that first ep just to see, and as I expected, it was bland, boring, and cheap as fuck. Bleh. I'm not really that into the series as it is anyway (anymore, at least), but I'm still pretty ticked at how lame this is compared to the original series. I can't see even the most hardcore Keroro Gunso fans liking this.

Really, the only anime I'm expecting to be good this season are Stardust Crusaders and Mushi-shi 2. I still look forward to the rest of the spring clusterfuck, just to see if they'll be any surprises. 

[Dr. Insomniac]

I anticipate the glory of this year's Sword Art Online. That's not Gun Gale.

[Dr. Insomniac]

So, hello to our new Sword Art Online.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Good lord, wasn't one show with an incest subplot enough?

This show basically sounds like another otaku-bait, male fantasy show that completely wastes it's premise. Sword Art Online 2.0 indeed.

[Rynnec]

It's easily the worst anime of the year so far. The only good thing about it is the music, and even that's a waste of Taku Iwasaki's talent.

How this PoS got simulcasted before a show about lesbian assassins is beyond me.

[gunswordfist]

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.

Replace ill with 'meh' and you have how I feel. Same goes with some swordboy anime that they used to show (I forget the name)