04-25-2013, 04:25 AM | #5026 |
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kaisap just mentioned them. They're what we refer to as "beta males"...Japanese guys who live around their parents house, watch anime/play video games, and shun interaction with the female sex.
The soon-to-be anime Talon brought to our attention is something that appeals immensely to such individuals. The premise is as gaudy as rainbow coloured vomit!
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04-25-2013, 06:55 AM | #5027 | |
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-Shinji Ikari (Neon Genesis Evangelion) -Kasuga (Aku no Hana) More in the sense that they're quiet, have no initiative, no leadership skills, whine about everything and get abused by women frequently without even trying to fight back. The example used online frequently is the dude who married his girlfriend...in the NDS-game Love Touch. A film an extreme herbivore man Air Doll, where his sex doll comes to life and he dumps her, because now she's "like a real woman" and hence more much trouble than he wants (he can't deal with real women who *gasp* think for themselves). It's a great movie, by the way, and not nearly as erotic as the setting might make it sound.
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04-25-2013, 01:09 PM | #5028 |
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Wow Suigin! That anime looks like a sure-fire winner! Actually I might try it out just to see how god damn awful it is. It sounds worse than Accel World.
Kodomo no Jikan (manga) This was finished. I was questioning whether or not I should bother talking about it, but meh, whatever. This had potential, and everyone had some pretty good emotional problems/background stories. I was also sort of interested in the forbidden love part of the story. Sadly that potential wasn't really met. After the third quarter, things just got filler-ey, and the ending was rushed out the ass. Also the author spent too much time trying to make things ecchi. It got pretty annoying. All-in-all, I guess this gets a 6. If the author spent less time making this ecchi and more time on the character's emotional issues, then this could have been alot better. Oh well. Each chapter released at a slow, but consistent rate, so it was easy to follow. |
04-25-2013, 03:05 PM | #5029 |
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Is 'beta' really a correct term, considering the pack structure terminology it seems to be drawing from? I'd think that Epsilon or some such would be a better moniker.[/nitpicking]
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04-25-2013, 09:38 PM | #5030 | |
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Quote:
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04-26-2013, 12:01 AM | #5031 |
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Shingeki no Kyojin: Watched Episode 01. The premise strikes me as a bit silly, and I really don't care for the designs of the giants, but man if the ending scene wasn't intense.
Despite knowing the word kyojin "giant", I thought this story was set on Jupiter's moon, Titan, since everyone a) kept capitalizing the T, b) not pluralizing it as "the Titans", and c) bringing the series up alongside the other space series, Suisei no Gargantia. For some reason, I didn't put two and two together that the kyojin in the title was referring to Titans! Also, I think I'd seen people use the official subtitle, "Attack on Titan". So again, I assumed that they meant the Jovian moon. Apparently I chose to watch with CommieFail subs. Despite wanting nothing to do with Haidaraaaa since everything he touches turns to shit on my computer, and despite making absolutely certain that he wasn't listed in the site credits for this project, it turns out that the same problems I had with Commie's JJBA starting with Episode 20 are present here too. And wouldn't you know, Haidaraaaa reveals in the blog post that he did encode this! How kind of him! (Fuck. ) But it's not Haidaraaaa's CPU-melting encodes that have people talking. It's the translator Margaan's subs! Apparently he/she is a huge English language dork and decided to a) call the giants "Eoten" (an Old English word for giant) and b) use declensional forms of the word (e.g. Eotenas, Eotene) wherever perceptibly appropriate. This has a lot of people quite angry -- over 300 replies to their blog post for Episode 1! -- but it doesn't really bother me. I think it's cute that the translator knows this, cares so much, and is applying it in a setting where, frankly, it kinda works. The only problem I do have is, kyojin isn't Japan's "eoten". It's Japan's "giant". So he/she is kiiiiiiiiiiinda wrong to use the OE term. But hell, whatever, I don't mind. What I do mind is THIS FUCKING ENCODE. >_< If I stick with the series, I may have to switch over from Commie to somebody else.
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04-26-2013, 08:11 AM | #5032 | |
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As to fansubs, I tried to watch Episode 3 with Commie subs. The video instantly crashed my media player, over and over again, just by showing the first screen of the video. >.< I watch SnK with gg-subs, it doesn't crash my player, I can read the subtitles and...well, Commie seems to love using translation solutions no one else would even think of, not to mention use. The grapple hook thing the characters use to move around and fight the giants? Everyone calls it the 3D Maneuver Gear. Commie? They went with Multiaxial Gear. It's not technically wrong, but I find just reading the term "multiaxial gear" difficult as hell. And 3D Maneuver Gear has a nicer ring to it.
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04-26-2013, 02:24 PM | #5034 | |
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Meme made reality?
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04-26-2013, 02:41 PM | #5035 | |
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From the article you linked:
Quote:
>focus on the sport >focus on the sport Umm, did we even watch the same thirty-second PV, Mr. Blog Guy? That preview he linked (the thirty-second one) shows a lot of bishie bishie bishounen padding and then all of two "focus on the sport" things -- a waterproof stopwatch (OH GEE, WHAT AMAZING EVIDENCE! ) and a guy getting ready to dive down a lane in a packed stadium. But like ... how the fuck can you tell from that one little bit that this is going to be an anime with such a "focus on the sport"? You can't. From the trailer I saw (the one linked earlier, the 1m33s one), this looks like a typical high school harem -- five friends of various cliché molds, same gender, all in the same club -- but the only difference this time is that they're boys instead of girls. I would never in a million years guess from the trailer that I linked that this anime is going to be a serious sports anime with a bishounen cast (ŕ la The Prince of Tennis, Slam Dunk, and various other sports animes). It just looks like K-On! except with pOnOses instead of vagOOOs. And, I guess, with college-age faces instead of baby girl faces.
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04-26-2013, 03:16 PM | #5036 |
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I find it amusing. BBB linked me the video before anyone knew that the animation clip was actually a preview for the new show. The rancor from this "troll" production might drive people to watch it, in a similar vein to how the horrible rotoscoping of Aku no Hana hooked a larger audience than would have been expected. Remember back in the day when Haruhi introduced itself with a slapdash video presentation? I don't think the creativity involved is all that dissimilar.
That said, it looks to me like the anime, while ostensibly for fujoshi, definitely has a male audience bent. I don't know how Japan's homophobia will play a role but Westerners are gonna watch these sausages sizzle. My evidence? The conspicuously chosen, typically female but technically gender-neutral names of the swimmers... Rin Rei Nagisa Haruka Makoto Plaster a line-up like that in the face of anyone who knows anime, and they'd think it was an all-female cast. Definitely suspicious.
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04-26-2013, 03:36 PM | #5037 |
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I wouldn't call those five names all gender neutral.
Female Gender neutral, truly: Rei (short for either Reiji (m) or Reiko (f) or even just stand-alone Rei) Male Nobody names their son Haruka. It's like naming your son Lindsay. You could, but ... Likewise, Makoto is such a, such a, such a well-known boys' name. The only Makoto I can even think of who's a girl is the iM@S character whose schtick is that she's confused for a boy by people. The name's also used by Sakuraba Coharu to drive home the funniness of a crossdressing character. But like ... that is a man's name. Granted, it simply means a combination of virtuous ideas centered around truth / honesty, so like, you could theoretically name a girl it ... but it'd be like naming a girl Peter and asking "Well why not? Why can't my daughter be someone's rock?"
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04-26-2013, 04:47 PM | #5038 |
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Shingeki no Kyojin: I watched Episodes 02 and 03.
Episode 02: Spoiler: show Episode 03: Spoiler: show Something I forgot to mention last time is just how gorgeous the background animations are. The character animation isn't bad either (8/10 "Very Good", I'd say), but the background animation is often times like a fricking painting and is truly 10/10 stuff. Not a fan of the giants though. They're definitely nightmare fuel. >_< Especially the one that finished off Episode 01. Good God, what a hideous, hideous sight. It remains to be seen to what extent (if any) the giants are a neutral or even a positive force on the planet. They're clearly painted as villains in this early portion of the story, but we don't really know the full scope of their motivations, their history, or their intellect. That last one's a clincher: while they've been depicted thus far as being these lumbering dullards, one can't help but to wonder if their race is capable of intelligence that matches or even exceeds that of humanity. After all, they did build ... well, read my Episode 02 spoiler boxed comment. PhotoKano: I watched the first episode of this series as well. Up until the part where he's led to the Photography Club, I was thinking a) this series is pointlessly pervy / voyeuristic, b) this series is kinda dull, quite frankly , and c) this is just like Amagami SS. -_-; I dropped Amagami SS two episodes in, and I was pretty much prepared to drop PhotoKano one episode in after watching the first half. But then our protagonist is led to the Photography Club ... and that's when things improved, improved enough for me that I'm willing to tune in to a second episode. What happened? Well, two things:
P.S. Based on looks alone, this is totally my waifu pick of the litter.
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04-27-2013, 01:44 PM | #5039 |
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Should write up that Fate/Zero Episode 25 post some time soon. (Should also watch Minami-ke Tadaima Ep13 and write that post up as well.) But anyway, I just so happened to have the song that plays during this scene going through my head, so I felt like rewatching the scene, and ... now I feel like watching F/Z again. -.-; Not too much, thankfully, considering I just friggin' watched it like two months ago. But yeah. Still. ^^; Best prequel ever. If only George Lucas could've discovered and hired the Star Wars equivalent of Urobuchi Gen to handle the Star Wars prequels. Man, imagine that.
PhotoKano: Watched Episode 02. The show is sending some really mixed signals, and I suspect it's because the writing staff (whether for the game too or just the anime) was torn between portraying the character respectably (i.e. not as a voyeuristic pervert) and delivering an experience which would titillate their target audience of ... voyeuristic perverts. 'Cause that's the impression I'm getting. Let me give you some specific examples to illustrate what I mean. In one scene, the protagonist is talking to one of his potential romantic interests near the student shoe lockers. He detects that two of his fellow club members (the short boy and the tall boy) are nearby, waiting to take pervy snapshots of this cutie. So he shields her from their lenses, much to their dismay. Later he gives them a tonguelashing for being such pervs. In another scene, the protagonist goes to take some snapshots of the girls gymnastics team but is sent away by his romantic interest there. She tells him that he's not allowed in because he's a member of the Photography Club and the Photography Club is guilty of having taken pervy shots of the gymnasts in the past. He spits on their names in front of his romantic interest, swears he'd never do such a thing, and she excitedly goes to ask her coach if it's okay for the protagonist to have special permission to shoot. So far so good, right? But in another scene, the protagonist is approached by Niimi, the osananajimi character and the school idol. She's wearing nothing but her school swimsuit. And what does she tell the protagonist? "Take photos of me. If you're fine with it, I'd like you to take photos of me. I want you to look at me! " Not only is this not something I would expect to ever see happen in real life but Niimi's forwardness results in this: Seriously? I'm supposed to believe that in-universe she would friggin' pose like a fashion model for him? This goes beyond forward, beyond asking a boy to be your boyfriend. This is the sort of (kinda pervy) thing that I'd expect a couple to do. Naturally taken photos are one thing, but posing? Posing in a bathing suit? This is almost like a gravure idol photosess-- "Gravure idols usually wear swimsuits, right?" (14m23s) ... so you're trying to imitate a gravure idol? Just ... woooooooooooooow. The other problem with this sort of scene is, it's totally pandering to the voyeur crowd. For all the show's ostentatious "BOO TO VOYEURISM! PERVERTS! ECCHI SKETCHIES! " scenes elsewhere, it's clear with scenes like this one that all of that is just lipservice and that the reality is that *wink wink, nudge nudge* this show is made by photography pervs for photography pervs. Which like ... wth. Not only is that uncomfortable for me (since I hate voyeurism of this sort) and makes me want to not watch anymore, but it also makes me not want to watch because what confusing mixed messages you're sending! @_@ Is or is your protagonist not a champion of women's privacy? (And lest you say "Well, she volunteered! ", there's a scene later on where he totally snaps an upskirt shot of a girl climbing over a stone wall and tells her, when she asks him to delete it, that he's not going to because it'd be "such a waste". ) I dunno. The show's been cute enough in places that I do still want to watch, but it's also starting to look like it's going to be a 26'er and not a 13'er. And that kinda puts me off / makes me more inclined to drop it now rather than sticking with it. But for now? I think I'd like to watch Episode 03, just to see where the show might take things.
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04-27-2013, 02:23 PM | #5040 |
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I'm not convinced there's a dissonance, Talon. Clearly the writers want to titillate the audience but they don't want to guilt trip them while doing it! The guy is struggling between trying to be a pure hearted saint and giving in to his petty dark carnal desires, it's a crisis that only first world boys who do not know the terrors of war would be bothered with!
Wow, those girls are cute though. I can sure see the appeal.
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04-27-2013, 02:44 PM | #5041 |
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My problem with PhotoKano is that if it was one girl, I could be okay with him taking gravure pictures by the poolside. Being told you're beautiful and seeing good pictures of yourself can boost a girl's self-confidence by a whole lot.
But since the anime's based on a game with multiple routes, he's doing this shit with every single girl he runs into, taking it away from "shy girl gains confidence from photoshoot and they begin a relationship, how sweet" and throwing it to "guy takes perv pics of all the girls while telling other guys not to do so, and boy is it hypocritical". That's my problem with the show. I actually kinda liked Clannad for this very reason; there's one main girl all the romance happens with, and the other girls are just friends and do friend-stuff with the MC in the anime. PhotoKano is either not being the least bit subtle about heading for a harem ending, or it'll go through the routes of each of the girls to the point of gravure shots and then tossing one girl for the next Girl of the Week - with the girls either forgetting about the whole thing or no one simply giving a damn. I know that I'd personally get pretty emotional and upset if I did a photoshoot like that with a guy, and then he'd go on to ignore me and do the same thing with some other girl. It's also pretty crappy in a romance-way as well: one girl gets less than 20 minutes of screentime, and most of it is the MC looking at her through the camera lens, so I don't get to know the girl or grow fond of her. The girls remain distant all the way, becoming not much more than objects for the male's perversities.
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04-27-2013, 03:05 PM | #5042 |
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Kaisa, your concerns pretty much describe Amagami SS, which is what I keep comparing this series to in my own concerns. That's exactly what that series did (and many similar harem eroge adaptations have done). They had the protagonist meet everybody ... and then he would date one girl at a time over 2-3 episodes. It went something like this:
Doppel, you're probably right that for their target audience the signals aren't mixed, but for me who is outside of their target audience, it's totally mixed messaging. I wish they'd just pick an angle and go with it instead of constantly flickering between both.
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04-28-2013, 09:10 AM | #5043 |
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New shows and all that.
Ore no Imouto S2 With this week's episode, I have dropped this show. I can't take this shit anymore. Kirino is just too god damn annoying, and outside of this, the show is just typical harem nonsense. Hentai Ouji to Warawanai Neko This week's episode was surprisingly good. The blonde had a fairly decent problem and the emotional moments in this episode were nice. Also thankfully they stopped shoving the whole "YOU'RE A PERVERT!" thing down your throat. Will this be the first good show from JC since Toradora? Probably not, but I'm still enjoying the show. Shingeki no Kyoujin Good fucking god! How many god damn times does Sorata have to remind everyone of his goal until it sticks with them? I was relieved at the end of the episode, since there shouldn't be cliche'd out the ass drama in killing shit, but watch this show do so anyway. Will I drop this show? I don't know yet! Neato! It seems one of the Shuffle sequels, Tick Tack! has been translated. While I don't remember the Shuffle VN being extraordinary, it's still something to do, and it's about Nerine, so that's a plus. |
04-28-2013, 11:21 AM | #5044 |
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Evangelion 3.33: You Can (Not) Redo
*NOTE: As the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion is almost 20 years old, I won't bother with spoiler-boxing stuff that is basically repeating plot elements from the original series.* So after waiting for ages, ages and a couple of centuries on top of that to see how the new, shiny Evangelion saga looks, I can tell you one thing: You can not redo Shinji Ikari into a decent character even if it killed you, can you, Anno-sensei? Even Mari, the new character (who got so much hype and looks so awesome and speaks English and wear glasses and *fangasm*) let me down. Somehow, the action girl from the previous movie (2.0) has been demoted into a...catgirl. I kid you not. She uses "nyan" with everything she says, for Christ's sake! Her motives and actions are now confusing as hell, constantly bipolaring between "I'll do anything you say, [Asuka]!" and "I'll just sit back and see how this shit plays out, screw saving the world". But the worst offender of all...is still Shinji Ikari. For a main character, he sure knows how to fuck things up. I'm not using the term lightly. We are presented one and a half hours of Shinji Ikari and the following pattern: Shinji destroys the world, Shinji ends up not liking it, he whines and asks "Is this my fault?" (even though it clearly is!), someone else manages to keep things borderline-bearable, Shinji proceeds to destroy the world again, rinse and repeat. "Stop being such a cry baby, Shinji Ikari!" should've been the subtitle of this film. About 99% of all the problems in the Evangelion universe could be averted if Shinji were killed off - and this idea is actually visited in the film! But he is rescued from early death for...no reason I can think of. Kaworu (now openly gay with Shinji, it's very rape-tastic) manages to yet again enforce Shinji's happiness-destroying behavior for no good reason, and then gets blown up by the explosives that were supposed to kill Shinji. The one Angel who has all the tools in the world to dispose of Shinji seems to never learn to actually do it, instead spending a good half an hour trying to whine at Shinji to stop touching things and destroying the world. Every single moment of the film with Shinji in it was painful to watch, if for nothing else than the fact that Shinji seems incapable of growing some balls and stopping his never-ending whining, even when every single other person around him has done so years and years ago. Shinji's at the mental level of a small child who just doesn't learn not to stick his finger into the electric socket, even after the fourth time. It's sad that if Shinji wasn't there, the movie would actually be fairly decent. Asuka's developed marvelously, her plot new instead of the one in the original series. "Baka Shinji" is still there though, so prepare to spend the entire film listening to the following phrases: "Is it my fault?" and "Baka Shinji! [Insert insult here.]".
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04-28-2013, 11:33 AM | #5045 |
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Age has nothing to do with it. You wouldn't want to spoil Charlie Chaplin's films for somebody who's never seen them before, and they're nearly a century old! That stated, your disclaimer paragraph does a good enough job anyway of alerting people who haven't seen Eva yet to GTFO and not press on with your post. I'd say you're good. :p
I have no desire to revisit the Eva universe. Reading your post only reinforces that attitude. It sounds like the reboot is little better than the original, every bit as aggravating and pseudo-intellectual as NGE was. That stated, there was a surprising little thing I saw via doujin recently. It has to do with Ayanami Rei. Spoiler: show Like I said, it's little. ^^; Did you like the original series, Kaisa?
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04-28-2013, 11:46 AM | #5046 | |
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Spoiler: show I've learned my feelings are mixed about the original series. It was the first "real anime" I watched (for adults, and not Pokémon or Sailor Moon), I was 12-13 years old and back then it was the biggest best thing ever on TV for me. Thinking back on it, it was to me what Baudelaire is to Kasuga in Aku no Hana. But even so, when I did a presentation on Eva in class I summarized Shinji Ikari as "the most hated anime character of all time" - with full confidence, even though I had no evidence to actually prove this. So I did enjoy Evangelion loads years ago, but now I've matured and watched better stuff. It's mostly a fond memory of my initiation to the world of anime now. Shingeki no Kyojin Someone wrote about the episode as follows (minor spoiler pointing out something VA-related): Spoiler: show I laughed at that. I actually laughed watching the episode, too, and Spoiler: show Just so people know: I've read the general summaries and some character profiles about Shingeki no Kyojin, so I'm vaguely aware of what happens to the main characters and so on. I don't talk about any of that in my spoiler boxes, but some things will not be a big surprise for me and I might write little to nothing about them. Watching the show every week though, with great interest.
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04-28-2013, 06:04 PM | #5047 |
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04-29-2013, 03:02 AM | #5048 |
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I don't think Evangelion would have been nearly as interesting if Shinji wasn't so extreme. Granted, I don't think the justification was completely warranted - Shinji's past, while not rosy, certainly isn't depraved enough for him to act like he does. He's never undergone any form of military training so his inability to man up to the crises he faces are quite understandable.
The sequel movies not developing him further isn't surprising, since Anno is directing them and his vision has changed a lot since Eva. Heck, it changed during Eva! I've long passed off Anno as completely insane, as Talon could attest when it came to Kare Kano. Anno said something like, "it's been 20 years but no anime is as new as Evangelion!" implying animation stood still after Eva came out. Pretty arrogant!
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04-29-2013, 11:12 PM | #5050 |
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Out of nowhere, this popped into my head just now:
Spoiler: show And now I want to finish off Katawa Shoujo. Vhether I vill or not, ve shall see! Not ignoring you. I'm just not one of the people here who watched it. Was told it was pretty bad.
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