#no one posted the sakuga of this fight scene here so i will do it

[bdor1995]

if youre not willing to fight an entire army dudes to find your wife what kind of husband are you

[aciddaffodil]

Spring 2024 Anime- What I Finished

Dungeon Meshi

For a manga reader the anime adaption is doing a fantastic job with its pacing and Senshi panty shots. It's definitely became a comfort anime to watch for the past six month so weird not to have Dungeon Meshi Thursdays. BUT upon reflection, the earlier episodes can feel redundant and episodic in nature to people, but I love it. The world building, the cooking, the silly interactions, the crazy camera shots and amazing Trigger animation just made it a fun experience to watch. Season 2 will be even better.

Train to the End of World

My one of two 10/10 anime this season, and I rarely mention ratings for stuff as is. It's a post-apocalyptic affair after an event called 7G warps the world, changing each town to some wacky version. The show takes place 2 years after the 7G. These 4 girls living in Agano, after seeing a newspaper with a photo of their missing friend Yokano in Ikebukuro take a tarin car on the tracks to go look for their friend after knowing she's alive. What comes is just this wacky adventure and world, where friendships are tested, and we see them all become closer to each other. The animation is insane, and I loved how perfect the music was for this series. I can't wait to rewatch this again and just experience it when I show it to my partner :)

Re: Monster

A very mediocre iskeai with an OP character who grasps the system very easily to his advantage. The format of days, especially early on are SO annoying and just take you out the story. There is not time enough dedicated to characters outside Ogoura** as he is narrating...*constantly*. As a protagonist, is very confident and he rarely fails, there is no struggle to his story. I have to say it did get cute towards the end and to see him and his harem, along with the mercenary group, working together and happy. Not something I’d choose to watch again but tolerable.

I was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince so I can take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability

Reincarnated Isekai are a hit or miss (though I do try to watch as many because it's my favorite genre of manwha) and this definitely was worth sticking out for. There's a ton of sakuga animation and seeing how unhinged Llyod is over learning magic and spell casting makes it worth it. The fanservice IS unnecessary in this show when it just randomly happens or with long running gags like with Slyvia loving Llyod EXCESSIVELY. Overall though, I enjoyed this series and I'm happy I stuck it out even if I'll never rewatch this again lmao.

Bartender: Glass of God

A very pretty SOL following a hotel trying to hire a Bartender who keeps declining they're offer. You learn a lot about bartenders and here people's life stories. The best thing about this show is the drinks and seeing them poured and made, but also the struggles of people. The music is not much to speak of but the animation is clean and pretty. It's a feel-good anime and definitely a great series to wind down and watch pretty cocktails and drinks be made while enjoying a good cast of characters.

An Archdemon's Dilemma: How to Love your Elf Bride

The genre of "bad-guy-falling-in-love" will never fail to be entertaining to me. It's just the most wholesome shit on the planet to watch and to see their relationship develop. Will they kiss? Or will there be tons of fake-outs to get the audience excited enough to keep watching to see if it happens... I loved that the finale was just a wholesome ending seeing all the characters interact with each other.

Windbreaker

A very wholesome, feel-good delinquent anime. We follow Sakura a bi-colored and heterochromia kid who comes to Furin a town known for their delinquents to fight and be the best. What we get, is a heartful story of seeing people accept you, fighting for the sake for others, and friendship. It's so cheesy but in the ear of high stakes shounen anime, this was so refreshing to watch. Cloverwork's also will continue to blow me away because the fight scenes are so dynamic and fluid, along with art style changes in impactful character moments. The cliffhanger ending I think was the best way to hook people for the next season, and just excited to see where it'll lead.

Astronote

I started watching this series because the art style reminds me of Akiko Higashimura and it did not disappoint. It's a story about Mira, a space princess, who comes to run a boarding house, for the purpose for finding a key to reclaim her right to rule Wid. The show follows the residents at the boarding house along with the deuteragonist Takumi, a chef, who is in love with Mira. It's a wacky, heartfelt and at times, fast paced. The finale we get a little mecha action and just a wholesome wrap up in loose ends of all the characters. Truly a story about found family and good food. Some of my favorite lines:

" I'm going to choose a life that makes me happy."

" Just know I'll always be thinking of you on the other side of the universe."

Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night

NGL I totally watched this over Girls Band Cry because it had jellyfish in the title lmao. The anime follows 4 girls to collab together to be JELEE, a music project, and also to confront each of the girls' own struggles and past. Whether it be trying to live up to a mother's standards of being a performer to make her dreams come true, trying to find yourself and finding comfort in idolizing someone, the social anxiety of trying to be yourself as you grow up even when being your online persona is easier, the pressure to be an artist and like you're art. It's also just a really stunning anime to look at and the character designs pop off. The second half got crunched for the plot, which made some interactions half-baked in-between all the girls. But overall, I did enjoy it a lot!

Tonari no Yokai-san

The single-handed seasonal anime that has made me break down and sob. I was on and off crying the entirety of episode 12 and what an ending. A slice of life series following a community, or a world rather, of youkai, spirits and humans coexisting. Grief is so well explored (and experienced) from the kids to the adults, and the way the conflict at the end has been hinted at, just happens and is so well done. A 10/10 on my list for sure.

Vampire Dormitory

A love triangle disaster filled with miscommunication tropes where the FL becomes a thrall of a vampire which gives her a purpose in life. She cross-dresses as a guy for her own safety so he doesn’t know she’s a girl who’s actually his destined partner. Someone who Ruka needs to marry in order to inherit the Leader of the Vampires. Honestly the plot of this infuriated me and I considered dropping it, but it's a cheesy dramatic vampire romance so of course I stuck it out. It was a happy ending, even with the cliffhanger and hint of another love triangle if the series continues.

Tadaima, Okaeri

Best romance of the season. Follows a gay couple in an ABO world, as they rias they're family and interact with the people around them. This show is so precious to me. I think seeing the innocence and honesty kids have and HOW WELL its written in this, was so refreshing. The dynamics and conversations that the adult cast goes through, about moving past one's doubts and loving yourself to ABO problems, somehow just works together. Studio Deen for real be carrying a BL a season for the anime community, which I'm here for.

Oblivion Battery

MAPPA's seasonal original anime entry, that is about baseball. I'd say it's a fairly well character drama that happens to be about baseball. I loved the internal battles we saw of several of the character's with t the anxieties that come playing and trying to be the best. I think it's cool when insecurities are explored and aren't automatically fixed. I definitely cried the second most to this anime and wished more people had checked it out. The music doesn't always work for me but the animation, as always by MAPPA, was done very well!

Kaiju no. 8

Probably the quietest hyped shounen entry I've experienced? As a manga reader it's been so fun to see fights and to see it be adapted. The music is a bit grating at times but overall fits the anime very well. The fact they're rumors of Season 2 already being worked on, tells of how much old and new fans alike are enjoying it. The redesign of characters from the manga, however minor, don't bother me and still obviously keep the essence of the characters. Hoshino has been the coolest to see animated and I just love him-character shout out moment. Do I like either OneRepublic or Yungblood song......no.....

Mysterious Disappearances

Was a dark horse for me. I think what drew me to it, was the art style and music until I got invested in the story. Follows a 20-something writer who works at a bookstore when she wrapped up with her coworker when a youkai in the form of a book takes over her body. What comes to follow is a tale of her adventure with him and his younger sibling. There's tons of explanation of legends and Japanese folklore which is super cool and digestible. It had a predictable plot, but it had a satisfying end.

Go Go Loser Ranger

Gotta confess, the concept for this series is SO COOL, the Boys but power rangers. We follow Fighter D, who's been used for the past 10/15 years along with his fellow Fighter Monsters to prop up the Rangers, an organization that uses the Monsters to promote their own power and prominence in society. I think he makes for an interesting protagonist, because he's firmly on his own side even when a Boss Monster appears in the latter half of the show. I admire that he doesn't become over-powered but somehow makes it through by his own luck and cunning. The animation and the 3D models killed my soul...but I'll watch another season when it comes out and I plan on reading it so.

The New Gate

Read the manga. I was so disappointed by this adaptation especially in the last two episodes. They rushed the flood arc, and all the training and backstory you get from it. I think Shin's mischievousness' and silliness gets really played down in the anime. The fight scenes just DON"T hit the same way and.....this is why you don't compare it.....but I had dropped the anime after 4 episodes to pick it back up after having read to chapter 104 and was just...disappointed. Sigh.

I had a lot of fun with the season and just, am happy that I chose to go through with this and to try and watch new things and just explore animanga. It has helped me have a focus in life, and a desire to analyze media and art.

[stillness-in-green]

When MVA/MLA Arc gets animated, what will you be looking forward to the most? What (canon-compliant) additions and/or changed do you want or think Bones should make, if any?

There’s--a lot.  Does that surprise anyone?  There’s a lot.

o  I have been foaming at the mouth for voice actor announcements for almost a year now, particularly for Trumpet, Geten and RD.           Trumpet’s superpower is literally his voice!  I mean, nothing about that statement requires that voice be particularly entrancing, but it certainly seems like it should be, right??             Geten is a boku-type in the manga, but that was literally the only hint foreshadowing his pretty boy face through 21 solid chapters of Pure Feral Gremlin.  Everyone was shocked by Geten’s face reveal!  How do you maintain that surprise value with an actual voice actor in the mix?  Do you not even try?  Do you play up the disparity--in which direction?  I can’t wait to see what they do.           And Re-Destro!  Re-Destro requires so much range!  From his peppy, silly businessman persona, to the urbane commander, from the overeager yes-man to the raving zealot--who on earth do you get to believably cover all that ground?  I can’t even begin to guess, but I am living in anticipation of that article going up on ANN or the official Twitter sources.

o  I’m also much looking forward to getting official coloring on Trumpet and Geten.  Skeptic seems pretty straightforward--black, black, more black--and RD and Curious, we have color art for, but I wonder if Trumpet will also be all black clothes, to go with that dignified politician image of his, or if he’ll get some color to pep him up a little.  What color are those tinted shades of his?  His eyes?  The wicked-cool Sevens Loud?           I assume Geten is all wintery shades, but it’ll be great to confirm which ones.  I mean, we all assume he’s white-haired to better annoy Dabi with family parallels, but what if he turns out to be platinum blond?  And are his eyes blue?  Gray?  White?  What color is that awful parka?           Also, Re-Destro’s stress powers.  Having been writing them as black since at least August--Rorschach test blots are generally black, after all, and they’re the clear inspiration--I would much like it if the anime would have my back on this.  They made Destro’s mask a dark cinnamon brown, though, so I’m prepared to be unpleasantly surprised in this matter.

o  Predictable MLA adaptational choices aside, I’m also eager/anxious about how they’ll handle Spinner’s narration.  What I really hope is that they actually straight-up hand him ALL the narration duties--not just the stuff he dictates directly in the manga, but also e.g. the name and quirk explanation material that Present Mic normally gets, or the previews that are always handled by Deku.           The opening and closing sequences are another big structural thing, of course--based on the flashed snippets of Hawks and Endeavor in both our current and the previous OP, I’m expecting we’ll see at least a bit of something referencing the upcoming internship arc (which I expect to close out the season), but I hope the villains just walk away with the closing entirely.  I want my slice of life villainy ED, dangit.

o  Another thing I’m eager/anxious about would be Kotarou, and the Shimura flashback generally.  There’s a brittle edge of to Kotarou that I really love, and I hope he manages to keep it in the anime, despite the anime being generally not so great at moments that I would describe as “delicate.”  For example, I’d like it if he doesn’t get a super deep voice, and if they could manage to keep his pretty face, and capture how deeply bitter and tired he looks in the scene where he’s reading the letter Nana left him.           Also, I hope they keep the little montage bits and, crucially, the changes of clothes the family goes through.  We see Tenko in no less than five, possibly as many as seven, different T-shirts through the course of that flashback.  It seems like a small thing, but it’s one of the factors that makes me skeptical that AFO gave Tenko Decay, when so many days clearly go by between the opening with the man at the door and the tragic end.  It’d be nice not to see too much resurgence on that just because the anime can’t be bothered to come up with more than one outfit for the Shimuras.

I have enough issues with the anime’s usual adaptation choices that I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high on the actual content of the episodes.  The staff is diverting too much of its major talent to the movies (BAH) these days for me to expect the whole season to look all that great, and it’s never been particularly creative or daring outside of its climactic sakuga-heavy fight scenes anyway.  I’ve also long had a bone to pick with its scoring decisions, and am already eyeballing the climax of the RD/Shigaraki fight and imagining the minor-keyed terrifying dirge I fear the anime will play there, at the moment that Re-Destro (and, shortly afterward, Spinner) are supposed to be experiencing something akin to religious awakenings.           There’s also the issue of the violence and gore--judging by how the anime handled the scene where Shigaraki and Compress maim Overhaul, I have some severe reservations about how much blood they’ll be allowed to get away with, particularly in the scene where the League brutally decimates that CRC group and, of course, Shigaraki’s backstory.  I’m looking at MVA to serve as a preview for how all the same issues will be addressed in the War Arc.

That bit of pessimism aside, as to what I’m hoping they’ll add or change?  Well, off the top of my head.....

o  I would love to get a full episode devoted to the time the League spends fighting Machia.  Not that first tussle, but the six grueling weeks in the mountains.  There’s so much you could add there for character building and atmosphere that Hori didn’t so much as montage through.  Where was their food coming from?  How’d they pick out places to pitch camp?  How much access to news from outside did they have, and how frequently?  What were the circumstances in which Gigantomachia “told them himself” about his great sense of smell??  Stuff like that!             I don’t think we’re at all likely to get this--honestly, the series of late has had enough of a problem with trimming bits and pieces that I’m as worried about what they might cut as I am hyped about things they might add--but the one thing that gives me some hope is the training camp arc.  Specifically, the moment 1-A first gets to the Pussycats’ forest, they get jumped by earth golems, a fight that the manga off-panels entirely, but the anime spends a modest amount of time on, giving the kids a little bit of time to show off their moves and such.  I’d love to get something equivalent for the League.

o  On a similar note, I wouldn’t turn it down if they fleshed out some of those running street fights a bit.  One obvious thing comes to mind: there’s a weird jump in the manga between Skeptic and a horde of his golems being all but on top of Twice at the beginning of 233 and then that fight just--doesn’t happen.  There’s no mention of it at all.  I think the suggestion is that either Machia’s appearance or the tower going down interrupted it--Skeptic breaks off from his fight the same way Geten and Trumpet do theirs, shifting focus to protecting Re-Destro--but it’d be nice to see the anime touch on it.

o  It’d be nice to get a bit of expansion on the nature of the bullying Spinner endured.  We’re told he was, but was it limited to verbal?  Did he get beaten up a lot?  Was there an online element?  Deku’s our only other reference point for “bullied kid,” and whatever one might think about the story’s development of Bakugou’s mentality, it’s been made clear in retrospect that there was a lot more too that than just the matter of Deku’s quirklessness.  I’d love to know how Spinner’s bullying looked in comparison (not least because of some of the theories about Spinner and Deku needing to come to some kind of accord to free Shigaraki from AFO).

o  Make the Villa (both here and during the War Arc) look more realistic.  By which I mean, I know Horikoshi is capable of drawing interesting and lived-in interior spaces--he has an entire chapter dedicated to it in the 1-A dorm room contest, after all--but he normally doesn’t bother much with it.  At UA, it’s not too distracting, because we know good and well that that whole building is probably maintained by Cementoss anyway.  Ditto places like Tartarus (intentionally, dehumanizingly barren) or the League’s post-Kamino hideouts (abandoned homes and industrial spaces).  But the Villa?            For heaven’s sake, it’s called a mountain villa.  It has a clear reception desk on the ground floor; it’s obviously some sort of high-end hotel, if not an outright resort or rentable retreat lodge.  Speaking as someone who’s worked in one, places like that don’t look as fuckin’ bare as the rooms we see there always seem to.  For fanfic purposes, I’m happy to go on telling myself that e.g. the pool and the bar and the restaurant(s) and the gym are in the building Cementoss doesn’t tear in half, but it’d be nice if the anime could class the whole place up a little, maybe put some real furniture and decor in the rooms that are in use.  (Yes, I know this is a ridiculous nitpick.)

o  This is less a change and more a correction, but for fuck’s sake, BONES, give us white-haired Shigaraki.  The climax of Deika is a solid time for it, given that it’s obvious in the manga that Shigaraki’s hair gets paler in Deika--you can see it in the way Horikoshi inks it (which is to say, the way he stops inking it)!  I think if we ever get white-haired Shigaraki in the anime, a somewhat better time as far as narrative justification goes would be when Shigaraki gets out of the tube in the War Arc; you could easily justify it as a side-effect of the surgery.  Still, I’d rather see it here.  I want white-haired Shigaraki, gleaming and brilliant through the scattering ash in that crater, a veritable angel of sacred destruction.           Honestly, more than anything, the crater sequence is the one I hope I love.  It’s probably my favorite single moment in the entire manga, as Shigaraki wins over Re-Destro, Spinner and Gigantomachia in the same moment, and finally comes into his own.  If they can at least nail that, I’ll consider myself pretty satisfied.

[silvadour]

Tagged by @squirrelstothenuts (thank you for the mention btw).

Why did you choose your url?: Well, I chose it because it's essentially been my definitive name I started going with for my Internet identity since 2016. It has a bit of my actual Last name it and it's unique enough that it doesn't sound boring or standard. The Dour part of it came from a mild obsession I have for pompadour hairstyle, and just proper hair care. Plus, I've been known to be called Eraserhead (like the David Lynch film) because I have like a real shaggy hairdo.

Any side blogs? nope, just this one.

How long have you been on tumblr? I think I only started my tumblr account around mid-to-late 2019, but I didn't start actively posting till early to mid last year.

Do you have a queue tag? No. I don't that (mostly because I don't care and I don't understand how this shit works)

Why did you start your blog in the first place? Mostly for just a dumping ground to post gifs while I was learning to make them. Now it's become a place where I share gifs of sakuga scenes from both anime and western animation projects.

Why did you choose your icon? Because I gravitate towards older sibling characters, also Choso from JJK is a good boy.

Why did you choose your header? HAVE YOU SEEN SATORU GOJO'S EYES???

What’s your post with the most notes? I think it's either my first JJK gif set or the One Piece post celebrating the series' 1000th chapter milestone.

How many followers do you have? Idk at this point anymore, I think I have some invisible ones from when I first started but then Tumblr had a major change dealing with "certain" types of accounts, now I don't if I have like around 600 or 700 followers.

How many people do you follow? Like 223

Have you ever made a shitpost? I think so, but I don't remember.

How often do you use Tumblr? 3 to 5 times a week roughly.

Did you have a fight/argument with a blog once? I came to Tumblr so I wouldn't have to do that. Truth be told I barely talk to anyone here.

How do you feel about “you need to reblog this post”? eh, it's whatever.

Do you like tag games? Do you like ask games? I honestly don't mind them. I'll participate if I have some free time.

Which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous? You can be famous on tumblr?

Do you have a crush on a mutual? I can't have a crush if I don't know what the person looks like. Plus, this is the internet and people are spread it out. It don't work like that.

Tagging: @koyo-koyo @kozuuki @pururin @gojous @karinzany @rorronoa @tsukimajo

[kihocrystal]

Winter 2019 - Final Impressions

So, uh, yeah... these are definitely late. ^^;

These were my thoughts on anime that I watched while they were airing that finished at the end of the Winter 2019 season. I had these done months ago, but just never got around to posting them... but hey, better late than never! Like my other final impressions I’ve done, these are written very casually, so don’t take them too seriously :P

Anyways, these are in alphabetical order and under the cut!

Ace Attorney S2 - 7.5 / 10 (C+ / B- )

better than S1, I think! But still kind of the same quality overall

this game covers the 3rd game (T&T), so the pacing is less rushed overall

there are some anime original stories here too (including an original case)! So for people who’ve only played the games, there’s some added worthwhile content for ya

I didn’t watch the dub, but this might be a show where the dub would be better than the sub (if only for hearing the localized names being spoken instead of just being subtitled in)

since I already knew the story, this was a good anime for me to do work while watching / listening too ^^;

the game is still the better way to experience this story (duh), but at least this season of the anime was decent enough that I’d recommend it to people who’ve already played the game

BanG Dream! S2 - 8.0 - 8.5 / 10 (B / B+)

This season is good like season 1! But it’s very different, too

I’ve played the EN version of the game since the beginning! But I watched S1 for the first time during a rewatch on r/anime this past December

S2 is almost entirely in CGI, and it’s good CGI for the most part (it’s best during the performances)

for anime-only people, this season introduces many things previously only in the game (most notably the other 3 bands), and their introduction can be a bit jarring

at least each band gets their own focus episode outside of the main narrative

I liked PoPiPa’s dramatic arc this season (centering around Tae this time); the bait-and-switch at the end of the school festival was effective too

the song created at the end “Returns” was a very effective song as well!

Raise A Suilen is definitely an interesting band, but (at least with ChuChu) are very antagonistic

Their story is definitely not over though, if the ending of the finale is any indication (so keep in mind this season doesn’t have a conclusive ending in that regard)

The not-as-conclusive ending hurts my score for this a little bit, but S3 is already confirmed, so just consider this an 8.0 until S3 comes out (then it’ll be an 8.5, I guess? Depends on how good S3 is)

Mob Psycho 100 II - 8.5 / 9.0 / 10 (A-)

IT TOOK ME WAY TOO LONG TO WATCH THE LAST 3 EPISODES >_<

but yeah, S2 is really good. Definitely one of this season’s best

this is probably my AOTS runner-up behind Promised Neverland, but it didn’t lose by much!

animation is great of course. sasuga Studio Bones (those fights, hot damn!)

also this is probably one of the most pacifist shounen series ever made, lol

everyone fights, but Mob is just motivated by being there for others & trying to stop the fight :’)

also accurate to say this is a very emotionally sincere shounen too ^^

Reigen had a very good dedicated character arc during this season… helped flesh him out more!

It took forever for Teruki to become relevant again though (considering his relevance in S1) ^^;

also that arc involving the evil spirit of the dead medium Mogami was pretty intense!

definitely had the best sakuga outside of the final arc

This season plot-wise kinda felt like a bunch of un-related plots strung together, but I think that works ok here

By the end of this season, the Claw plot seems to be done.

There’s probably more subplots to be wrapped up in a potential S3 though!

since this show’s so popular, you’re probably watching it anyways, but go watch it if you haven’t!

also tfw MP100’s S2 is gonna be better than OPM’s S2 😂

Run with the Wind - 8.5 - 9.0 / 10 (A-)

Great feel-good anime about running. Production IG does it again!

All the boys in the team had fun personalities! (& their character development!)

Their improvement in running is kinda unrealistic, but hey, it’s anime :’D

also GET FUCKED, NOT-SHINJI 8)

not tournament-based like Haikyuu, so it’s a more introspective-type sports anime!

animation was good of course, even though there was bad CGI runners sometimes

conclusive ending(!!!), plus a time skip at the end made for a real good ending~

btw, if you liked this, go watch Fune wo Amu! (same source material author!!!)

kinda wrestling between an 8.5 or a 9.0 for this one, but either way, go watch this show!

The Promised Neverland - 8.5 - 9.0 / 10 (A-)

VERY VERY GOOD THRILLER SHOUNEN JUMP ANIME

the first episode is very effective in getting a lot of people hooked! I knew about the premise going in (so I was spoiled in that regard), but it was still a very good premiere

All the main trio are good! Emma is my fav (I love how her intelligence is not the traditional smarts kind), but Norman and Ray are very good sneaky boys

Those two boys are masters in the art of Keikaku at this point

Isabella / Mother is a very effective villain too! It’s so interesting how she genuinely cares for all of them even while breaking their limbs and their spirits :’)

though that one scene in episode 11(?) could suggest that she could have doubts? Maybe???

it’s been pointed out that Sister Krone’s portrayal in this (as a black woman) is problematic to many people. Heck, even one of my (white) mutuals dropped the manga bc her portrayal bothered her too much to continue.

I wasn’t bothered by it personally, but I definitely understand why people would think this.

If it helps at all, she’s not in the show for a long time, so at least she comes and goes within this season? YMMV

Animation’s really good (CloverWorks did good for once???), and the OP song is a banger

finale was really good and was as conclusive as it could’ve been at this point, really

plus we got more Isabella backstory! that humanized her a whole lot.

And also THAT REVEAL o_o

so uh yeah, I definitely recommend this show to most people! Can’t wait for S2 in 2020 :’)

Sword Art Online: Alicization [1st Half] - 8.5 - 9.0 / 10 (A-)

HOLY DIRECTION BATMAN… did the direction / animation / music score elevate this show or what! A-1 Pictures and the rest of the squad did a phenomenal job here

visuals looked great all the time (had this glow to it) & fights were really good for TV!

Of course the story was good too! Albeit kinda basic when you get down to the nitty gritty, but there were some notable interesting nuggets

Eugeo turning evil (i.e. Integrity Knight) actually got me to dive into the Wiki, so I consider that a good accomplishment (plus those episodes / scenes got the doki-doki’s going ^^; )

also just thinking about how all the humans in this world are real, yet also not… it make me think a little harder about the world building and stuff

though you can’t have SAO w/o at least one problematic rape-like scene, apparently! 🙃

at least the author’s come out and said he regrets writing those plot points… still sucks that they’re here in the anime, though :(

and man, did the sad parts of the finale hit me HARD in the kokoro

WHY DID EUGEO HAVE TO DIE…….. (I was spoiled on this due to previously mentioned wiki-diving though, so R.I.P. me :’) )

Those death scenes were super well done though, Damn!!!

plus it ends on a cliffhanger……… really intriguing, but obviously doesn’t leave a sense of conclusion at the end (plus it kinda is a big mood whiplash after watching Eugeo and kid!Alice die)

so yeah, this show has 9-10/10 direction with like a 8/10 story (& -20/10 certain plot point(s))… so this gets an 8.5 overall, I guess

I enjoyed the good parts enough to outweigh the bad, for what it’s worth

in any case, definitely looking forward to the second half of this arc!

P.S. - This will likely be my last Final Impressions post. I didn’t watch anything that finished in Spring 2019, and for this current season, I’m only watching a couple anime plus I’ve gotten kinda burnt out on writing these posts anyway. I kept this series going for over 6 years tho, so that’s gotta count for something! Feel free to check out my Final Impressions tag if you wanna see my thoughts on anime’s past, I guess. To everyone who’s read these posts: Thank You! 

[just-a-url-doing-url-things]

ALTERNATE UNIVERSE THEORY

FLCL Alternative has just ended, and I’m pretty sure everyone is in a state of confusion as to what EXACTLY happened near the end of FLCL, so here’s my little theory that many people are calling the “Alternate universe theory”

I made a similar post on the reddit discussions, so I will also post the same thing here with a few modifications

So Alternative takes place in a different universe than Classic and Progressive, this might be now obvious. In the final moments of Kana's "i love you" speech, tsukata kanda (aka the dude in the suit 24/7) mentions that "space and time will collapse" while being shown this giant wormhole (this is more or less important cuz this random fact was kinda put for "no apparent reason other than sounding sciencey" so this was a small hint to what’s happening). When you see everyone being sort of dissipated into nothingness, we see haruko NOT doing that, instead she gets thrown into the sky and we get shown the famous "haruko and vespa + clips from FLCL season 1" scene. Everyone else who was transported to god knows where (some say mars, some say another universe) was given that specific animation, but haruko. So we can assume she’s in a different area than kana and the rest. After the FLCL season 1 clip scene Haruko then gets thrown into what people are speculating would be Naota's universe. This would essentially make Alternative the prequel to FLCLassic. This would explain Haruko in Alternative being more mature, she (and I quote from ep 6) "doesn't want a bad ending" meaning she actually cares about Earth unlike how (in season 1 ep 6) she states that she doesn't care about earth only atomsk, and why she doesn't have her atomsk tracking chain bracelet in alternative.

Another possible speculation is that Kana transported her and everyone else into a different dimension while leaving haruko to be transported back in time. Which would support how Medical Machina in all three seasons are still doing the same thing: flatten planets. yet we don’t see any Irons in the end credits to FLCL Alternative ep 6, where Kana and her friends are. Also it explains why NO is still a thing where Haruko is around. The problem with this possible outcome is the flattened earth in Alternative’s ending credits and that we would be essentially be making Haruko time travel so FLCL 1 and 2′s setting makes sense because it’s on Earth (they mentioned America in FLCLassic so I’m assuming they are on Earth). And if Haruko time traveled, why was everyone in alternative so surprised about the irons if they’ve already known about them in Classic and Progressive which would be before Alternative. Our main theory has it where Kana and them just transported to Mars leaving Earth to flatten and Haruko is sent into Naota’s universe where Earth hasn’t been flattened. We can simply assume that MM and NO was either transported with Haruko or that Naota’s universe is very VERY similar to Kana’s so Medical Mechanica and NO still exists(I mean...Naota’s universe has way more wacky characters than Kana’s somewhat realistic universe, if that’s to add to anything).

So let's now. tie all 3 seasons into what would be a coherent story line of FLCL. Haruko originally came from Kana's universe where she was part of the Brotherhood, Galactic Police. She worked as a space investigator and her job was probably to get rid of the irons that were about to flatten earth. At the same time she's also searching for the N.O. She knows it exists, but from what we and what haruko knows of as of alternative, the only things that comes out of people's heads are small robots, small weapons, and the occasional guitar and the fact that NO strengthens with emotional intensity. As Alternative ep 5 comes to a close, we and haruko experience the strong power of NO and how it can make gigantic MM robots disappear in mere seconds. This was probably what began haruko's spiraling obsession with strong NO and not just anyone who has it. Then ending ep 6, Haruko is thrown into what would be now Naota's universe. There is a bit of a gap between ep 6 of alternative and ep 1 of classic. Within this gap, Haruko has fallen in love with Atomsk and his massive NO capabilities, she makes her vespa fly, she gains her rickenbacker, and she drops her tied up hair style. Then ep 1 of flcl begins. I am pretty sure Haruko targeted Naota because either 1)her atomsk bracelet helped her, 2) naota greatly resembles kana, or 3)she just guessed. Regardless, Haruko now meets Naota and Haruko becomes Naota's family maid. By the end of ep 1 of Classic it's been subtly implied that Canti was seen as an enemy in Haruko's eyes because he looked like the MM robot she fought in ep 6 of Alternative. Haruko also now has found the general location of Atomsk. As the episodes go on, we fight more robots and we reach the end of ep 6 where Naota takes atomsk's power for a short time and then sends the bird into space once again. Before Haruko leaves she gives Naota her Rickenbacker. Then we timeskip over to Progressive, but before ep 1 begins let's talk about what happens in between the two seasons. Haruko gains Atomsk's power temporarily and she splits into Haruko and Jinyu, the original cast got older seen in cameos, and in the end credits scene we see...all of the main cast of FLCL, but in the peculiar order...Alternative shows up first, then Classic, then Progressive. The order might be "random", but the order of which the cast appears matches up with the Alternate dimension theory we have going. Anyways, continuing onto Progressive. Haruko shows back up again after a decades of being out in space and she's back because she wants to find atomsk again while also terrorizing the lives of Hidomi and Ide to start up that strong NO that she needs to get to atomsk. The story is relatively easy to follow after just watching the episodes to Progressive so there isn't much to say other than Hidomi maturing episode after episode, Haruko and Jinyu's bickering about what they want regarding Atomsk, and how Atomsk escapes again after hugging Haruko in ep 6. Then Haruko leaves the planet once more.

There are many little moments that can tie each season to one another like how kana looked like atomsk in human form (based off of Amarao's depiction of him). The many irons in Progessive matching the many iron locations in Alternative. The bridge where Canti was born on still exists in Progressive. And many more little clues and hints. 

Overall, I personally loved each season for different reasons and even if Progressive and Alternative can't match up to what we like about FLClassic, I think it's safe to assume that the 2 seasons did a pretty alright job giving us a story about adolescence, because that's what FLCL is all about.

Scores:

FLCL- FLCL/10, furi kuri~

Progressive- 9/10, the massive amounts of Sakuga in some episodes raised this score by 3 (I’m a bitch for sweet SWEET animations shut up). I wished Progressive had more wackier scenes and more info condensed within the episodes instead of spending 20 seconds of shots of Hidomi walking or looking at something, but this sequel has a LOT of FLCL vibes to it. I like this sequel (good thing to note that I DID rewatch this season the same amount of times I watched FLCLassic’s season)

Alternative- 8/10, loved the character arcs and how it loops back to FLCL, still wished we could’ve had a more clues to figure out what EXACTLY happened near the end (I think showing Mabase (Naota’s town) in the distance rather than the landscape with a small city in the distance woud’ve solidified this theory a whole lot). The show was consistent which was good, but I hated how safe they played it this season with each episode’s animations (i’m just glad there’s plenty of sakuga scenes at all). Also it’s replay value is somewhat low since everything is easy to remember within the story. I wouldn’t enjoy Alternative if I would rewatch it again and again. still loved it tho.

[whisperandmantra]

My Favourite Shows of 2017

Happy New Year! It’s time again for my list of favourite shows of the year. Here’s to another year of good anime. Thank you for following and I hope you are enjoying the good anime we had this year. I present the list, in no particular order.

ACCA: 13-ku Kansatsu-ka

Political intrigue, double crossing, and a secret coup. This show was excellent at world building and making the world seem like a real and interesting place. It’s rare to find a nicely wrapped up show in one cour especially when there were so many different plot lines going on with the characters.

Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu: Sukeroku Futatabi-hen

Continuing off a few years after the first season ended we get to hear the rest of the story. Focusing more on Konatsu and Yotaro, we see the story of Yakumo taking on an apprentice and trying to keep rakugo alive. The second season was a roller coaster of emotions and had some of the most beautiful scenes.

Little Witch Academia

Trigger back to save anime again! This time making a series out of an OVA. This show is charming and adorable. Akko is a genki girl with so much spunk and the supporting cast is just as awesome. In typical Trigger fashion the show amps up the stakes in the final arc and we get a grand finale that is both wonderful and sweet. The animation is great as expected in a Trigger production, and the various little Easter Eggs always make me smile.

Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon / Miss Kobayashi’s Maid Dragon

An otherworldly creature takes up residence in a office worker’s home and decides to live with her. Hi-jinx ensue. This show is full of warm fuzzies and Kana is the cutest. Plenty of jokes to be had here and the animation is very smooth, as expected of Kyo Ani.

Re:Creators

Take the isekai trope and reverse it, that’s what you get with Re:Creators. Fictional protagonists get transported to the real world.Add a dash of Sawano and you have an entertaining series with quite a few twists and turns. I enjoyed that they pulled in different types of protagonists from different genres of shows as well. A mech pilot, a chivalrous knight, a magical girl, and a mage to name a few. I was thoroughly amused by this series and it was good fun. The antagonist was a little too much for me at times with their over powered abilities. But just a minor annoyance in an otherwise great show.

Uchouten Kazoku 2 / The Eccentric Family 2

The long awaited sequel to a show I never thought would get a sequel, but I am so glad that it did. Rejoining the antics of Shimagomo family we get introduced to a few new characters. I love the colours in this show and how vibrant everything looks. Yasaburo is also a babe <3.

Made in Abyss

Wow, this show took me by surprise having heard virtually nothing about it before watching the first episode. The world building is fantastic, and the character designs are so unique. The creatures living in the abyss are also terrifying. Also the soundtrack is PHENOMENAL and inspired. Do yourself a favour and watch this show. The suffering depicted throughout their journey into the abyss was pretty gut-wrenching as well.

Mahoujin Guru Guru

Where do I even begin with this show. I think it was one of the most consistently funny shows that I watched this year. Every episode has me laughing out loud at one joke or another. The gags don’t get stale even when re-used. Kukuri is so precious and her smile must be protected. The animation is really smooth and consistent and they occasionally use 16 bit animation. It actually feels like I’m watching an RPG, they even have status bars that show up throughout the show that sometimes show their levels. It’s really quite hilarious.

Princess Principal

Female spies in an alternate universe steampunk-London. If you can handle a non-linear story progression then you should take a look at this show. The soundtrack is done by one of my favourites, Yuki Kajiura. The episodic nature of the show allows some of the side characters to really shine and I actually like a side character as my favourite character because of their backstory. It’s rare that an original show like this manages to be so captivating so early on in it’s run.The artwork and character designs are nice and Victorian England makes for an exciting setting for spies.

Garo Vanishing Line

I know this show is 2 cour and will spill into 2018, but the first cour was excellent and warrants it’s inclusion on my list of faves. I really am getting into the Garo franchise and Mappa is doing an incredible job of showing their strengths with this franchise. It’s got plenty of action and an interesting plot line. The first cour was mostly episodic in nature, introducing the characters of the series and now the second cour I think will delve into more lengthy story arcs. But so far it has me entertained.

Houseki no Kuni / Land of the Lustrous

OMG this SHOW!!! I think I can say that it is my number 1 favourite show of 2017. Everything about it is so stunning and gorgeous. The choice of using CG has some people divided, but I love it. I’ve been a fan of CG shows since Knights of Sidonia and Ajin, and Houseki no Kuni demonstrates the epitome of awesome things you can do with CG. The camerawork is stunning for fight scenes and you can do things that you’d never see in 2D animation. I think CG is the perfect format for a show like this. The colours are gorgeous and the characters are so endearing and full of life. The show’s universe is mysterious and I desperately want a season 2. I could literally talk about how much I love this show for hours, but I’ll just tell you that you have to watch it. It’s criminally under-watched in my opinion. Story wise, you have these genderless gemstone characters who fight against the Lunarians who are trying to kidnap them, break them into fragments and use them as weapons to capture the remaining gemstone characters. There is also an air of mystery going on and you barely scratch the surface of the truth behind this universe. I love this show it’s a masterpiece of art.

Inuyashiki

Well this show was a pleasant surprise. Not only does it have a complete adaptation, but it’s a pretty badass show. So this old man and teenager get turned into super powered robots. Then you see how different they react with their new found powers. They mix a little CG in when they use their robot powers. It’s a bit clunky at times but the story is compelling enough to make me not notice it. Also the OP is sung by Man With A Mission, one of my favourite Japanese groups so that’s a bonus.

Kekkai Sensen & Beyond / Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond

I didn’t think it was possible to top the first season of Kekkai Sensen because it was so cool. But this second season is WAY better. Now you have to be a fan of the episodic format as each episode is pretty much standalone except two two-part arcs. We get a lot more time with side characters and learn more about the background of my favourite character, Chain. <3 <3 Also Steven (total DILF) gets a lot more screen time which is great. It has the same humour and upbeat zany atmosphere as the first season but it really feels more like a labour of love where the characters are given time to shine. And the characters are the strong point of this show. The OST is also really great as it mixes jazz, RnB, rap, hip hop style songs as it’s supposed to be a take on New York. It also has some amazing sakuga scenes because it’s got the BONES people working their magic.

Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou / Girls’ Last Tour

This show really surprised me. It was so comfy, yet melancholy. Two girls are just travelling around in a tank in what appears to be a post-nuclear/apocalyptic Earth. The background and atmosphere is really great, it reminds me of Blame or the city of Sidonia with layered city structures and industrial almost steampunk type environment. It’s kind of a lonely show with just snippits of their lives together roaming the wasteland. The OST is glorious and relaxing though. I’d say it’s kind of like a slice of life except not heavy handed with the jokes. You really feel that they are the last few remaining people on Earth. The voice actors also have excellent chemistry as it’s just those two girls talking to each other essentially the entire episode, yet the show remains engaging.

[tuchimuchibrainvomit]

EPISODE 2:

Aloha, fellow Sakuga Seedlings!

Welcome to my case study series, Brain Vomit.

Name’s

Tuchimuchi Yoshinori – or just Tuchi…

And I enjoy animation. Especially animation from the eastern archipelago of Japan, also called “Anime”

In this series, right here, I’ll be exploring Japanese Animation Production and enlightening this growing community and myself to the power they have in this expansive animated medium.

Today’s Lesson is on Animation Principles!!

So, you want to learn the basics of animation--which are completely universal, so this may be our most accessible… Maybe, I should have made this the first episode instead.

Oh well, my show, my rules…

Back onto topic--

Q: What is animation?

A: Animation (n): the technique of photographing successive drawings or positions of puppets or models to create an illusion of movement when the movie is shown as a sequence.

“I GET SO EMOTIONAL BABY!! EVERY TIME I THINK OF ANIMATION!!!”

Or basically, moving pictures one after the other in sequence.

But you can’t just go in and animate all willy-nilly, yet. Not until you’ve learned the basics of Animation.

Think of them as analogous to the Art Elements of Line, Color, Form, Value and Texture.

But since there are far better sources to give you a more in-depth analysis of each principle -- I’ll take a rudimentary approach to save myself time because it’s Saturday and I have like a billion other things to do...

I’m a human, damnit! Fight me!!

So let’s break them down, shall we:

-- Squash and Stretch: My favorite principle, and in short, exaggerating proportions in movement to allow for stronger illusions of motion. A great example of this from both an animation and writing standpoint is Monkey D. Luffy from One Piece, who is written completely around this principle.

But how can I use this in my own animation?

Well, it can be used for a myriad of things, from effects to specific character motions. However, due to the limitations of frames, these stretches and squashes have to be calculated and takes a lot of experiments to get it right!

-- Anticipation: As it sounds, setting up actions between other actions. Be it holding a motion back, extending a keyframe to a longer period or slowing down/adding more frames to a specific action. Like in horror, anticipation is about slowing things down and snapping when necessary. Snaps without anticipation look choppy and anticipation with no pay off is unfulfilling. Unless you’re like horror movies and trying to troll your audience into a false sense of security.

In this example, the Obari Punch method is literally an exaggeration of Anticipation. A build up to an action -- thus anticipation for the punch itself. Take it away, Saitama:

-- Staging: While one of the more vague. Staging is both literally and metaphorical. Staging a set or scene, is knowing your layout, your characters and the context.

But staging in this sense is more about clarity.

Is the idea of your action, scene or emotion being delivered clearly? That’s the most important question.

The start of a Pokemon batlle is just a style of staging. You know the scene, two trainers, two monsters, battle. Stage set.

Bonus: JEDI LUNGE!!!

-- Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose: While less of a type of animation and more a method of animation, these two together are different ways of animating and both are integral to understanding animation.

SAA (Straight Ahead Action) is when you draw each frame and in-between one after the other, letting the outcome from the action’s flowing.

P2P (Pose to Pose) is drawing each pose and filling the transition between them in. This is most commonly seen in limited animation as Keyframe Animators draw Keys which are main poses, and In-between Animators fill in the rest with--in-betweens.

Both are integral, but I find using a mix of the two depending on the situation and direction to be the most successful. Better tool sets.

Here is an example of more clear straight ahead animation...

And my Animator Husbando, Imaishi is an obvious lover of pose-to-pose animation.

Both have merits in different situations, ya see.

-- Follow Through and Overlapping Action: Probably the most literal of the components, Follow Through is literally following through the action, making sure motions stop when they are supposed to and Overlapping Action follows, setting up the next action. Like people, characters never stop existing and Overlapping Action and Follow Through keep that sense to never be lost. A great example of this is imagine a jump, when you land, you impact (possibly stumble or roll), Follow-through and Overlapping Action.

All of these Rolling Girl animations, while traced from an original base, are full of follow-through and overlapping actions. Each movements flow and adapt to one another.

Knowing how weight works in reality is one of the many facets needed to master FT and OA.

In my opinion, anime can be very -- flaky to weight and overlapping action in general anime. But then there is Mitsuo Iso.

An animation is worth 24,000 words per second.

-- Slow In and Slow Out: Or more commonly known as Ease On and Ease Out, is the natural acceleration and deceleration of an action beginning and ending. When a ball rolls, it doesn’t just start at top speed or stop on a dime. It starts slow and gains speed, then tops off and comes to a stop.

See how a bouncing ball steadies as it reaches the apex and accelerates as it bounces?

Slow in and Slow Out.

-- Arcs: Curves. Real life is about curves. This is one principle that can have several different meanings.

Curves as in curvature motion is one. All human motion is done through curves, angular motion is often more attributed with mechanical systems.

Curves can also mean line of action, or a character’s basic motion can be broken down into a series of curves.

It’s also a meaning for the fact the visual path is in arcs. As in how you see and perceive motion. This principle is all about knowing how the human eyes work and acclimating that to extend to the illusion of movement.

Bouncing Ball is the best animation study subject. It can hit most everything. Just draw the arcs in animation, it’ll make more sense and will become handy as I hit more topics and animators down the road.

-- Secondary Action: As we know, all moving parts are not created equal. This is that principle, animation is the exact same idea, If you have a character with a long flowing tail, it will animate far differently and at a different pace than the rest of the body and clothing. Secondary Actions are the motions created by the actions of another. Such as moving cloth, the smoke leaving the character’s mouth or water splashing from a character taking a dive.

A scarf or hair is a great way to practice Secondary Action.

-- Timing and Spacing: Arguably the most important principle, understanding what time actions occur and how to space the drawings to be believable. The best way to practice and understand Timing and Spacing is to research, research, research and then experiment.

What movement speed feels right for the actions I’m working with?

Now how do I space the drawings to emulate that timing?

In limited animation, am I using the same frames or all new ones?

Am I animating on the ones, twos, or threes?

These are important things to remember and ask yourself. On the ones, twos and threes is merely how long each frame is held, often messing with the natural times.

Experimenting with timing and spacing can lead to strong impacts and more believeable formats.

I know this was in one of my last posts, but this GDC conference about Skullgirls animation goes into timing manipulation to add to fighting game impact. I’m putting it here again because it’s truly worth watching.

-- Exaggeration: How far can your character’s proportions be warped for the sake of movement? Knowledge of this is omni-important.

Exaggeration can be both in art, as well as a specfic metaphor or motion. Tsuritama does a really good job at both metaphorical and artistic exaggeration. But that’s just one example.

Other anime that do a great job are anything directed by Akiyuki Shinbou,

This -- just this... Everything about the facial expression, the wind, the camera, the shot composition and negative white space... It leads to an exaggerated sadness and feeling of loneliness -- hell, it could even see as a loss of innocence in an imperfect world, when you see the weight of the left side of the frame breaking the of subtly overpowering the white purity on the left and her intense motion breaking the balance even further...

It’s Monogatari so probably both and more, because this series is all about visual metaphors and exaggeration of emotions. But I digress, I didn’t come here to become the next Mother’s Basement or Digibro -- I love them both, so don’t flame me.

Moving on...

-- Solid Drawing: Simply defined, difficult to master. Solid Drawing is the ability to draw your character from ANY POSSIBLE angle in any pose and make it look accurate. This comes with knowledge of both manipulating a metaphorical camera, knowing your character’s design and body and form. The best advice I can give is to practice.

Model sheets are a must-need for solid drawing, especially with a team of animators from different backgrounds and styles.

-- Appeal: Simple and conclusive, draw something that is satisfying to the audience’s eyes. Make it feel authentic, whether it’s horror or action, it has to come across that way to the audience. Appeal is a broad spectrum as not everyone can be satisfied by one thing. So know your audiences well and appeal to them. However, my best piece of advice and in my honest opinion in amateur animation is to appeal to yourself and enjoy what you are making.

If you don’t enjoy it, you wouldn’t do it, right?

Goddamnit, Pusheen... You’re too appealing that I cannot...

And this is a great segue into our topic for Episode 3, where Appeal matters most: Character Design.

I’ll see you all next time!!

ON THE NEXT BRAIN VOMIT!!

EPISODE 3: CHARACTER DESIGN, THE LIFE FIBER 100% SYNCHRONIZE -- KAMUI SENKETSU!!!

STAY TUNED NEXT SATURDAY AT 7PM EST FOR NEXT EXPEDITION INTO SAKUGA GOODNESS!!

DON’T MISS IT, OR I’LL HAVE TO PUNISH YOU!!

Remember: Always bloom proudly,

– TUCHI OUT!!!

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Kado 11 | Boku no Hero Academia 26 | Hina Logi 1 | Grimoire of Zero 12 (FINAL) | Tsukigakirei 12 (FINAL)

I’ll just leave another reminder for this straw poll here, because I need a tiebreaker vote.

Kado 11

Even anisotropic beings have dreams? Welp, that was unexpected.

Uh, hey. Kado staff. Algerian people don’t all look like Asians, y’know? Google says Algeria is in Africa…

So, staff. Why is Shindo the only man/person/human who can stop zaShunina?

Oh yeah. Shinawa knows a way to stop the fregonics!

Basically how I feel about Kado is how Hanamori feels about the situation + Saraka right now – confused and torn.

(laughs) Thank…(face falls) you, Hanamori, for making me laugh with your mapo tofu comment and remember why I loved this show in the first place. It was fleeting, but good…Wait, but isn’t abduction against the law?

Uhhhh. Kado staff. The fregonics suit has boob space. Meaning a woman will wear it…awkwarddddddd…

Finally, we get back from our “shonen battle” roadtrip to drive to the final battle.

zaShunina’s like an old lady now, LOL. Reading on a rocking chair and enjoying the sunset.

Yeah…please just keep your lips away from each other, guys. I was here for the negotiation, remember?

Oh. That wasn’t a boob plate. I was LOLling at their idea to give that to a woman, because the one woman who needs that plate is Shinawa, whose job is already over. Good thing I was wrong there, then. It’s also interesting to note this suit looks like a gladiator suit…like humanity has reverted itself to medieval times to fight zaShunina, who represents the future. (I’m still laughing though, because I knew Shindo was hot under that shirt, but damn, I did get more than enough eye candy this season just by this one gladiator suit…and zaShunina’s butt.)

Well, I kinda did get what I wanted by having the Hanamori/Shindo ship broken, but even though I got a het ship (which I’m normally more supportive of), I don’t support this het ship at all.

It’s cute to see a floating pink cube act like a phone. Or one of those annoying fairy companions…

Welp, it’s almost over. See you next ep for the final simulcast commentary.

Boku no Hero Academia 26

Apparently BnHA’s on break this week, meaning I’m caught up after this.

There was a thing called work experience that we had to do at one point – that’s how I got the experience needed for One Wish They Never Wanted’s bookstore scenes.

It’s cool to see Eraserhead and Present Mic in the same situation as Deku and everyone else. Aizawa looked kinda bishie then, which is unexpected.

I don’t get the reference involving acid blood…

That’s nice. I already knew the names everyone was going to come up with due to the time I’ve spent on the wiki, but the homage becomes much more significant when you see it in context.

Dangit, Midnight. You stole my explanation thunder.

I always wondered why Shouto never got a better hero name. So he literally just used his own name, huh?

I wanna cry at the Iidas’ plight but I have no tears, dangit!

I don’t get it- what’s the “air chair exercise”?

Gran Torino. I’ve watched the movie that has that name, it’s about a vintage car (Ford Gran Torino), an old guy called Walter (Walt for short) and racism. I always suspected Walt was the reason Gran Torino (hero) was named thusly...but until Horikoshi says something about it, we’ll all have to keep speculating…(By the way, the racism perspective in that movie resonated with me, despite my not being a Hmong person. Maybe I’m not properly acknowledging it, but it might be one of my inspirations for Half-Paid Heroes…?)

Hina Logi 1

I have come here to hate on this magical girl spinoff, because man, Luck and Logic squandered what could have been a very good plot – it was “pretty but no substance”, to quote a past me. Indeed, it’s because magical girls are my passion that I have high expectations of new entrants into the genre…

Okay, what is this? Hogwarts???...Actually, the best match, right down to the white turrets, would be Alfea of Winx Club.

It’s stoic girl, Ojou-sama + companions and Shinawa-lite. See? Stereotypes, although I ribbed the names from ANN (having read it a few weeks before I got here). However, before I read ANN, I’d already predicted this would be a pile of road apples.

I feel like I should know who Nina is (from ANN), but I didn’t get far enough to familiarise myself with Nina in the original Luck and Logic, haha.

This genki glutton girl is basically gender bent shonen cliché, y’know? Serve me something slightly different, and I’ll be a happy camper.

I can’t believe I laughed at Nina going “my teacher told me to”, because I expected it.

The humour isn’t funny in this for the most part…the eyecatch says, “16th May. Fluffy! (Fuwaafuwaa!)” “Fluffy” of course being in reference to the messed-up hair.

Urgh, this fanservice is driving me up the wall and giving me a headache…

Ooh, nice transformation sequence!

Enough with the yuri between Nina and Lion! Gah!

“May 16th. From this point forward,  [Kagura] became very angry.” (I had to Google the teacher’s name. She’s so insignificant this episode, I can’t even remember it…)

Lion’s face is getting more annoying by the second…

“May 16th. Everyone ate heartily.” (I used the word “heartily” because I didn’t have a better substitute for oishii in this case, but *shrugs* I don’t care either way.) The use of itadaku I’m still fairly new to, so hopefully someday I can use the word with confidence…

“…reminds me of my mommy.” – Gah, Lion. Are you a toddler? I imagine you with a toddler’s tone when the subs say that.

“Send your beloved Hina on a journey.” – It’s actually a reference to something. Check this article’s title for what it is. That’s a Japanese proverb which says to not baby your kids too much.

I feel like this is a pretty clean drop. After all, if I rage for all the wrong reasons (and come out with a slight headache in the end), you know that the show is a drop.

Grimoire of Zero 12 (FINAL)

Thirteen’s with the crew at the end of the OP. Huh.

I have the feeling that Holdem will never kill Thirteen, even though that dogface is trying to stab the sorcerer right now.

Intruders,much? It’s an army!

It seems like these animal fights were meant to be a big spectacle but observe the background animals and see how off model they are. That’s how much care was put into what was meant to be the show’s climax this ep.

I would’ve loved to see Mercenary do a Batman backhand. Those are always cool and sometimes funny.

The cloud and white-frame animation look gorgeous in a sakuga way! Now we’re talking!

Having someone die solves nothing. It is only those who need an outlet for blame that require needless death, am I right?

Ohhhhhhhh! One kiss made at least 2 or 3 people jealous, LOL.

I wanted to see Mercenary as a human. He could’ve been real hot…dangit.

The ED song is real cute and iyashikei. I don’t think I’ve properly listened to it until now, so…good on me for doing so, haha.

Tsukigakirei 12 (FINAL)

Tsukigakirei’s been a middle ranker for me most weeks, so to suddenly get better around the time when Kado fell was practically begging for the two to switch places…(Note: I’ve made a personal ranking for each ep in a document I’ve kept all to myself, and I haven’t posted them online. That’s why I’ve had comments that indicate where shows are on that ranking at the start and end of an ep’s simulcast commentary.)

That sparkly shot of the river is in the OP too, so when there was a shot of Kotarou and Akane, I was disappoined I wasn’t seeing the OP (even though I still think the live-action bit is a lil’ weird). It’s cute how those guys are wearing the same jackets, though.

There’s a water thermos in the back of Tachibana’s (glasses guy’s) bookstore.

Kotarou’s dragon background is so cool. I want one.

The thing with the rhino doesn’t translate well. The word for “goodnight” here is oyasuminasai and rhino is sai, so…yeah. I think it would be better to call it “sleep rhight” (including typo) to convey that pun better, but hey. I’m not going to major in Japanese.

When Chinatsu revealed she got into the same school as Kotarou, I verbally went, “Oh no!” Don’t you remember how I was with ep 7???

Even Chinatsu has that black jacket, so it seems to be a school-issued one.

My heart just broke a lil’ bit as Chinatsu hugged Kotarou…I’m not sure what to make of it…

I’ve never seen “graduation” being abbreviated to “grad” unless it’s “grad school” and the “grad” in that stands for “graduate” (noun). It’s a very American term, so I never use it, but…the term translated to “grad” is “graduation ceremony” (sotsugyoushiki). Seriously though, CR. Enough with your Comic Sans translations.

The translation of the prologue misses something. The first sentence has da to omou at the end, meaning “I think…”.

A novel board. Y’know, like Honeyfeed. I’ve got quite a lot of experience with ‘em, because I don’t intend to be a person who gains money from writing…not fulltime, anyway.

There’s a site called Syousteuka ni Narou which is basically Honeyfeed for a Japanese audience, with the added bonus of possibly getting your works into print and then anime. The recently announced Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari, as well as Re:Zero and a lot of its kin, have come from that board. It’s pretty clear that Syousetsuka is being parodied here, that’s all…even though the titles of the websites are completely different phrases.

What’s that bird with the long neck called? The one standing in the water? I wanna know…

Normally with anime tears, it’s like me and CGI - I bash most efforts. However, I think this is the effort that I commend the most so far…this anime season is full of surprises…Well, Kotarou? Can you keep up with a girl that does track?

Everyone cries when someone leaves, so long as that person has made an impact. I know that all too well…

Dangit trash CGI people. Just as I got used to you, you become obvious again! Grah!

I admit I shed a few tears there…I’m not crying, you’re crying! (Also, if you haven’t paid any attention to what I’ve been writing, One Wish They Never Wanted was based on similar experiences to Kotarou and Akane’s graduation, although a lot of it happens outside Takuma’s point of view and so I didn’t write it.)

Oh! Hey, these are the end of ep LINE convos from previous eps, coupled with pics of the ones who typed them! The “seaman” convo would’ve made more sense if the translator would’ve bothered translating the word “semi” (short for “seminar”) as it was, because that makes more sense. I really don’t get the “marr” one though.

Well, any show that makes me cry on its first run is a show I don’t regret. I still feel weird putting Kado below it, because Kado was betted than Tsukigakirei for most of its run (as I’ve said at the start of this commentary). Regardless of what happened though, I guess…I’ll see you all for the next show then! Bye for now!

[funkaliciousfrog]

I’m bored, so I’m temporarily turning into a seasonal anime blog for a single extremely long post. 

I’m checking out more new anime than usual this season, and I’ve been in the mood to write lately. So, I thought it’d be fun to record my expectations for each show and my impressions of their first episodes. Even if no one but me ever reads it. 

Joran the Princess of Snow and Blood

That one show I’m watching partially just cause Aoi Shouta is there. I’m interested to see if he can pull off a female character who dresses as a man, which as he put it himself is the “gyakku-pattern” compared to his usual roles. Tbh watching shows just cause Shouta is in them hasn’t worked out super great for me in the past (I didn’t really like 2.43 or Kimi to Boku, and Hamefura was just alright), so we’ll see what happens here. It’s an anime original so who knows how the story will end up. But going off the trailer, at the very least we’ll get some cool aesthetics and sick fight animation.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the plot of this show is gonna involve some politics, since it takes place in an alternate 1930s where the reign of the Tokugawa shogunate hasn’t ended yet. Yeah, you might need to skim a Wikipedia article or two on Japanese history for this one. The main characters are assassins, working undercover for the shogunate and fighting some group of superpowered shapeshifting animal people. The protagonist works in a bookshop by day and lives with her very young sister who does all the housework. She also has some kind of crow-related powers that haven’t been explained yet. In fact, there’s a lot of things about the setting that were only touched upon and I guess will be elaborated on later. 

The character designs and background art are very nice, but something feels off with the actual animation. Things move in weird stiff ways, some of the special effects are kinda ugly, and the fight scenes in particular are disjointed at points. Although I think that disjointedness came more from the storyboarding than the animation itself? I can’t say for sure since I’m not one of those sakuga expert people. But, I can still tell the production value here isn’t quite as high as it appeared from the PV. The premise has potential, but as the story unfolds we’ll see if it’s good enough to carry the less than stellar animation. 

And as for Shouta, all he really got to do this episode was be dapper and talk in cryptic insect-themed metaphors. Oh, and randomly pull out a lightsaber, since I guess they have those in this show? I’m mostly curious to see how the people who don’t pay any attention to voice actors will react when his character’s actual gender is revealed. 

Mashiro no Oto

Hibike Euphonium was one of my first anime and remains one of my faves. So,  I’m always interested in shows about classical music and/or playing instruments. The manga has won multiple awards so it should be a good story, and hopefully this adaptation is just as good. As another show about a traditional Japanese instrument, the Kono Oto Tomare comparisons will be inevitable. But honestly, I’d be happy just learn some stuff about the shamisen cause I think it's cool. 

This was quite the whirlwind first episode. Our main character Setsu has been playing shamisen with his grandpa since he was a little kid. But, turns out his grandpa is displeased with his grandson’s sound, so he makes it his dying wish that Setsu stop playing shamisen. Once his grandpa does die, Setsu feels distraught, impulsively gets on a bus to Tokyo, ends up living with a random gravure idol for a week, picks fights with her no-good wanna-be rockstar boyfriend, at the very end a SWAT team shows up... it’s a lot. 

And I don’t really know how it will proceed from here either. After speeding through this escapade in Tokyo, I think (or hope) that the pace will settle down starting next week. And going off the poster we’ll eventually end up in a high school shamisen club, somehow.

I really enjoyed the bits and pieces of shamisen music in this episode, it just sounds so cool! I hope to eventually get more specific information about the instrument and its repertoire. All I really want from these shows about extremely specific topics is to be educated! They also played either the OP or ED at the end, and it sounded pretty neat. Unlike Kono Oto Tomare they actually put the instrument of question into the song, which I appreciate (though I still like all the Kono Oto OPs and EDs). 

The art in the PV didn’t seem like anything that special, but the episode itself actually looked very nice in the important moments. I especially liked the snowy background art from the beginning. They also took an interesting direction with the character designs: everyone is drawn with very thin lines and most of the time without cel shading. Sometimes it looks like an aesthetic choice, and other times it just looks kinda cheap. The animation itself is nothing crazy, but at least from my uneducated perspective the shamisen playing looks pretty believable. 

After 2.43's Fukui-ben from last season, I guess this show will be my new source of Japanese regional dialects. Apparently Setsu’s accent is so strong that the girl he’s staying with asks him if he’s a foreigner, which I thought was funny. They don’t mention where he’s from, but he and his family use the same “-be” ending as the main character from the Great Pretender. Which isn’t helpful cause I can’t remember where he was from either. But anyway, for some reason it just amuses me every time someone says “dabe”. 

(A footnote about Setsu’s accent: I’ve done a bit of research, or rather literally just typed “be” into jisho.com, which I can’t believe actually worked, and it seems to be some type of Touhoku dialect. His voice actor, Nobunaga Shimazaki, is from that area so I guess that checks out? Although according to the Wikipedia page it’s used as a generic rural accent in media, so maybe they don’t care about the specific region as long as he sounds like a country boy.)

Farewell, My Dear Cramer

Finally, an all-girls sports anime! There are a few out there already, but I haven’t seen any of them yet (except maybe Chihayafuru, which has a mixed gender cast but an awesome female lead). As far as I’ve read, most have mixed reviews and tend to lean into other genres and/or have a lot of fanservice. So, I’d really like this show to be the female version of a straightforward realistic sports show like Haikyuu that is missing from all our lives. But it looks like it might be a drama about sports instead, which potentially could be just as good. It did come from the Your Lie in April mangaka after all, if you couldn’t tell from the weird lips. Besides that, the art in the trailer looks really nice. 

So apparently soccer, especially women’s soccer, is an unpopular sport in Japan? The protagonist Nozomi thinks she’s too good for girl’s soccer after playing with the boys for all of middle school, but is convinced to join the girl’s team in high school anyway. Then we meet a couple of her new teammates who were similar prodigies in middle school, and jump right into a scrimmage between the first and second years? 

It’s kind of a weird first episode. While it does technically establish the setting and characters, after the first few minutes it kind of feels like we’ve just been thrown into the mix of things. There’s also a noticeable lack of music in a lot of scenes which makes it feel even weirder.

The character designs are less of a problem than I thought they’d be, although the lips and sometimes the eyes still do look a bit strange. The simple, almost graphic quality is actually kind of interesting. It’s also very refreshing to see a variety of female characters that just look and act like normal high schoolers. They’re really just here to play soccer, not to be sexy or cute or really attractive to the viewer in any way. 

Although we do get some nice soccer playing in the ED, the animation in the episode itself definitely isn’t at Haikyuu levels or anything. They avoid actually animating a lot of the action with speed-line backgrounds and barely-moving shots where only the hair and clothes flap in the wind. 

Nozomi has the same voice actress as Kaede from Gal and Dino, and her performance there was one of my favorite parts of that show so I’m looking forward to more from her. Aoi Yuki and Tomoyo Kurosawa, definitely a couple of notable names, also show up in this episode. 

Fruits Basket Final

More Fruits Basket, lets gooo! Second season was awesome so I have high expectations. I’ve already been slightly spoiled on a few things about the ending, but I’m still looking forward to seeing the specifics of the mystery of the Soma family curse wraps up. 

We pick up right where we left off last season with Kureno dropping the ~big reveal~ about Akito’s gender on Tohru. Turns out she’s a girl, but raised as a boy by her mother from birth for yet unknown reasons. Then he talks more about her parents: her dad Akira seems to be dead (yet another mysterious white-haired Akira Ishida character for the books), and her relationship with her mother Ren is messy to say the least. 

Finally, best girl Saki shows up and saves the day! She brings Tohru back to her house, and along with Arisa gives her the reality check we’ve all been waiting for: she is going to burn herself out if she keeps on putting others’ needs before her own. 

Interestingly, even though she seems to be a pretty bad mom, Ren is in the right here about the unhealthy relationship between Akito and the zodiacs. Is she really being kept inside because of physical and mental illness, or is that just Akito’s excuse for locking her mother away? I suspect it’s the latter. Akito loves a good power trip, and if Ren were allowed to talk to the zodiacs she could possibly undermine the hold Akito maintains over them. It could also be a combination of both reasons, so I’ll just have to wait and see.

The OP is awesome! The photo backgrounds incorporate the 2D characters well and it just looks very nice. The song’s R&B-ish sound also stood out instantly from the pop ballads Fruits Basket usually gives us. Once it comes out on Spotify, I will be adding it to my playlist along with Chime and Eden. Btw, if you haven’t heard the full version of Eden I recommend you check it out cause it really goes some places you don’t even get to hear in the TV-sized version.

On a side note, this show has some real fashionistas. Rin, Haruhatsu, Saki, and this episode Arisa have great outfits. That cropped shearling jacket with the skinny scarf? 👌 It’s also adorable how Saki and her little goth brother coordinate their looks. I will never forget that time they casually rolled up to an okonomiyaki restaurant rocking black opera gloves. 

Zombieland Saga Revenge

More Zombieland Saga! The best part of the first season imo was the comedy, but I’m guessing we’ll get more into the mystery/drama part of the show here: more information about Kotaro and his motives/methods, Tae’s identity, etc. We’ll see how it goes. I’m also hoping for more bops like Adabana Necromancy and Saga Jihen. 

Oh how I missed this show’s manic energy...

Since the end of the last season, it seems Kotaro got overzealous and booked an arena for a concert that only sold 300 tickets, putting the group into a whole bunch of debt. So now the girls are all working part-time to pay it off, and they’re not nice jobs either: factory worker, farmhand, construction worker... milk-deliverer? Do they even have those in Japan? Now there’s some #commentary on showbiz. 

As for Kotaro, the whole thing has left him in such a haggard state that he’s managed to grow his hair down to his collar bones in a month flat. Now he spends his days bar hopping and rambling even less coherently than usual (although Mamoru Miyano is clearly having as much fun as ever). Franchuchu are left to prepare all by themselves for their anniversary concert at the tiny venue where they made their debut. But, they decide they’ll use it as a chance to sing the unperformed encore song from the arena concert for Kotaro, thinking it might relight his spark. 

We do get a drop of new information about the plot: turns out there’s a strict deadline on the Zombieland Saga Project, which is the real reason why Kotaro so upset. Maybe whatever necromancy he used on the girls will wear off after a certain amount of time and turn them back into corpses? The bartender at his favorite spot is apparently in on the whole zombie thing, and he’s the one who finally snaps Kotaro out of it. He sprints over to the anniversary concert and literally starts throwing hands with the unreceptive metalhead audience. To finish out the episode we get a glorious slow motion brawl sequence as Franchuchu sing the encore song. 

I don’t know if that encore will be the OP or ED, or if it’s just a insert song. It was alright I guess. To be honest I liked Iron Frill’s songs more than Franchuchu’s in the first season, and I feel like that will continue to be the case this season. I’m excited to see the new OP tho, even if it’ll be hard to beat the iconic Adabana Necromancy. And on a vaguely related note, it was cool to see the real Zombieland Saga ost album, Franchuchu The Best pop up in the episode.

Pretty Boy Detective Club

This one has people intrigued because it’s written by the author of the Monogatari series (which I haven’t seen yet) and animated by Shaft. There’s also the extremely Ouran-esque setup, with Maaya Sakamoto even voicing the cross-dressing main girl. Also I just think the title is funny. Honestly I don’t really know what to expect from this one besides the usual Shaft aesthetic, so we’ll see what happens. 

Mayumi wears glasses to keep attention away from her pretty eyes, but while stargazing on the roof she gets caught without them by Ayumu Murase in a detective hat. He ropes her into the Pretty Boy Detective Club, a shady secret organization at her middle school. We enter the clubroom and meet the members, a bunch of over-the-top eccentric tropey characters that wouldn’t be found in any non-anime middle school in a million years. Shoutout to that one guy in the hot pants. Then Mayumi reveals that she’s been looking for a star she saw once on a family vacation, and the boys decide to take up her case. 

I knew I was really in for something when I was hit with musings about Voltaire right out of the gate. Although from what I’ve heard about the Monogatari series, this kind of ~intellectual~ monologuing is totally on brand. And I don’t know if anyone else picked up on the subtle hints they were dropping in those monologues, but I sense that, maybe, perhaps, beauty is going to be a theme in this show...? Maybe it’s going to be some kind of #meta #commentary on pretty boys anime? That could be interesting, although there’s also a chance they’ll just play it straight. They even have an idol-anime-esque ED sung by the the main cast, so honestly it could go either way. 

As expected from Shaft, the visuals are all on point. I love both celestial and geometric imagery so this show’s aesthetic feels made just for me. The shifts in art style are also pretty neat. As for the character designs, my favorite part is probably the snazzy school uniform with the galaxy printed ties and striped pants and skirts. Although Murase’s character momentarily sprouted one of those flesh-fangs that I HATE they look so NASTY. 

I has a pretty fun time with this episode, it was just so absurdly Anime. I liked hot pants guy and his poses (tho I don’t love that he’s 12), and delinquent guy who was just tired of everyone else’s nonsense and casually ate food off the ground. They were at the beach too, so it probably got all sandy? And when this popped up I died laughing; truly words to take to heart.  

(A footnote about the ED: I thought I had spotted an Elements Garden member in the songwriting credits, and then of course I had to find out if they actually made it or not. The lyrics were written by RUCCA, who isn’t actually in the group but collaborates with them frequently according to the Google Translated version of his Japanese Wikipedia page. He’s written for quite a few Elements Garden produced Aoi Shouta songs, which is where I recognized his name from. The composer is Masatoma Ohta, who as far as I can find isn’t associated with Elements Garden but did a pretty good job emulating their sound. Both of them have done a lot of work for seiyuu, idols, and seiyuu-idols, so I guess that’s why I instantly understood what this song was going for lol.)

[georgesmithyear2motiongraphics]

The 12 Principles of Animation

15.11.18

Animation is a simulation of movement which is created by displaying a series of pictures that are drawn or photographs, which are then moved in each frame to create a moving image, like a walking sequence or something else. Animation is everywhere such as the television and websites. Animating on a computer is one of the most popular methods of creating animation, and there are many different software applications that enable one to create an animation. 

What are The 12 Principles of Animation?

In animation, there are these guidelines, if you will, which are known as the 12 Principles of Animation. These are very important to know and understand when creating animation. The 12 principles were developed by the ‘old men’ of Walt Disney Studios, among them were Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, during the 1930s. Of course, they weren’t old men at the time, actually, they were young, and they were at the forefront of creating a new and exciting art form.

Now, I’m going to briefly explain the 12 principles, and also provide some examples which will help you visualise them more clearly. I have already written a post talking about the 12 principles before, and there I used Disney movies as examples. While Disney arguably pioneered animation throughout the 20th century and definitely, the 12 principles are probably the most prominent in Disney animation, I have decided to use much more recent, and non-Disney examples, to give some spotlight to other studios etc. I’ve chosen examples from Japanese anime series as that is more relatable to me.

The examples I will be using come from a really interesting and fun website, called Sakugabooru. Sakuga ( 作画 ) is a term that is used in anime that describes moments in a show or movie when the quality of the animation drastically improves, typically for the sake of making a dramatic point or enlivening the action. I couldn’t get the videos to show up here, and even if I could, there’s a maximum of 5 videos allowed on one post. The links should take you to a WEBM or MP4 of the scene. 

Squash & Stretch

This first one is the action of expanding and compressing the character’s body—this gives the illusion of weight and volume to a character as they move. We believe that they are moving because we see the impact that gravity has on their bodies. This first example features a character dribbling a basketball, the ball transforms from a circle to an oval and then back again, which acts as a sort of motion blur to express how fast it is moving. Series is “Kuruko’s Basketball”.

Sakugaboorucom. 2018. Sakugaboorucom. [Online]. [15 November 2018]. Available from: https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/be7b1d38371452ee2b10158fa92bcca8.mp4

Anticipation

It is used to let the audience know that a major action is about to take place, to do this, the animator will often work in a smaller action or two, just before the major action to signal that something big is coming. This transformation sequence from “Sailor Moon” from the early 90s is a classic example of anticipation. It’s full of lots of mini-anticipations in terms of characters’ bodies, visual effects, and even camera motion—all of which add up to a big anticipation for the final pose of the character fully transformed. 

Sakugaboorucom. 2018. Sakugaboorucom. [Online]. [15 November 2018]. Available from: https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/345f7eaeb958cb612c2473ffe567bab3.webm

Staging

This is where every pose or action that the character makes should convey a very clear intention. This scene from “ACCA” has some simple but very effective staging. The character is mostly in the center of the frame, but there’s a cutaway to him smoking in profile, the clearest angle to show the shape of the cigarette.

Sakugaboorucom. 2018. Sakugaboorucom. [Online]. [15 November 2018]. Available from: https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/781a55090d818a86e2371bfa6dbe1a70.mp4  

Straight Ahead & Pose to Pose

These principles refer to how animation is created, the pose to pose technique involves firstly, drawing the main, key poses you’d like the character to take and then filling in the transitional poses second, much like a tween. The straight ahead technique is more nuanced and involves an animator literally drawing each frame to make it look really fluid. Compare these two similar sequences from “The End of Evangelion”. The first is clearly animated pose-to-pose with clear key frames. The second is animated straight ahead and never quite settles into any particular pose. These sequences use roughly the same frame rate, but the different approaches produce radically different personalities.

Sakugaboorucom. 2018. Sakugaboorucom. [Online]. [15 November 2018]. Available from: https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/f1c9b8685dfdab19fbf68bcd98857d45.webm

Sakugaboorucom. 2019. Sakugaboorucom. [Online]. [15 February 2019]. Available from: https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/39cd74db8d52543043d7244928341715.webm

Follow Through & Overlapping Action

The follow through technique is when a character during an action stops, not everything stops all at once. Tied to this idea is the overlapping principle, which expresses the idea that if a character is in motion, some parts of the character will move faster than others. When Paprika (long haired girl) leaps onto Cocona in “Flip Flappers”, she compresses her legs afterwards to accentuate the force of her hug. The scene of Paprika running is also full of overlapping arm and leg motions.

Sakugaboorucom. 2018. Sakugaboorucom. [Online]. [15 November 2018]. Available from: https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/dc42d9cff964876cba862e1be8e36866.mp4

Slow-in & Slow-out

This is another principle designed to add realism to the movement of characters. When a character is performing an action, the animator will draw more frames at the start of the action and fewer frames during the middle, and finally, more frames again at the end of the action to create this slow-in/slow-out effect (much like a pendulum). This scene from “Yuri!!! on Ice” shows how slow-in-and slow-out can give a sweeping, organic feeling to Victor's (white hair) arm movements while helping draw focus to the poses on either end of the motion.

Sakugaboorucom. 2018. Sakugaboorucom. [Online]. [15 November 2018]. Available from: https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/0fb5b08896e91617c43c7fb09877bf81.mp4

Arc

This is an interesting principle that means that almost all actions in life have a slightly circular motion, such as when an arm moves or a head turns, very rarely will it just thrust in and straight out. Often it will have a subtle curve to it. This fight from “Sword of the Stranger”, animated by Takashi Tomioka, is a study in arcs. Everything from the swords to the pot to the dog moves in a curve, whether a subtle or an extreme one.

Sakugaboorucom. 2018. Sakugaboorucom. [Online]. [15 November 2018]. Available from: https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/b050ea2f16100d114f53d9e52668b180.mp4

Secondary Action

It’s when an additional action is added that reinforces and adds more dimension to the main action. The scene from “Izetta The Last Witch”, animated by Akira Hamaguchi, is primarily driven by the character’s voice acting and corresponding facial animation, but her hair also whips around her head as she's speaking, adding extra anger and tension to the scene.

Sakugaboorucom. 2018. Sakugaboorucom. [Online]. [15 November 2018]. Available from: https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/20a40b4ae43490e23e8819b293a1386b.mp4

Timing

Timing helps create the illusion that an action is abiding the laws of physics (sometimes not usually done in animation) by adjusting the timing of a scene, an animator can either make a scene look slower and smoother (with the addition of more frames) or faster and crisper (with fewer frames). Compare these fights between the same two characters from “Dragon Ball Z”. The first has a rugged tension that reflects the push and pull between these fighters. The second one, by comparison, feels cleaner, smoother, and arguably less intense.

Sakugaboorucom. 2018. Sakugaboorucom. [Online]. [15 November 2018]. Available from: https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/ac70393f61c93169d788b41c54e604df.mp4

Sakugaboorucom. 2018. Sakugaboorucom. [Online]. [15 November 2018]. Available from: https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/5211a7103526ebb9bc44f25e0c2e6b2b.mp4

Exaggeration

This one is fairly self-explanatory, and it involves the overstating of certain movements in a way to help evoke a point, yet at the same time doesn’t ruin the believability of said scene. When Akko from “Little Witch Academia: The Enchanted Parade” talks to her friends, she’s not just happy. She’s ecstatic, with literal stars in her eyes and outsized movements to match. This is the kind of exaggeration that animation excels at. Animation by Shouta Sannomiya.

Sakugaboorucom. 2018. Sakugaboorucom. [Online]. [15 November 2018]. Available from: https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/5211a7103526ebb9bc44f25e0c2e6b2b.mp4

Solid Drawings

This encourages animators to be more mindful of the fact that while forms may be presented in 2D, they should strive to make it look 3D. “Bobby’s in Deep” showcases a masterful command of the character, his bike, and the surroundings. In order for the sequence to work, with its shifting camera angles and subtle motions of the character in relation to the bike, Koji Morimoto had to maintain the proper proportions of each object in every frame (which he drew all by himself with no in-betweens).

Sakugaboorucom. 2018. Sakugaboorucom. [Online]. [15 November 2018]. Available from: https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/65fa0998965cf9e2fc0e7b20d9f30e46.mp4

Appeal

This means that animators should strive to create images that will be interesting and compelling to an audience. When Heidi takes off her heavy clothes so she can run with the goats in “Heidi: Girl of the Alps”, her design, facial animation, and the clumsy way she removes her clothes instantly communicate her free-spirited nature.

Sakugaboorucom. 2018. Sakugaboorucom. [Online]. [15 November 2018]. Available from: https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/a3788c639a3f706e59b673ffef7d6a70.mp4

That’s all the 12 essential and basic principles that make animated films, shorts, etc. There is no doubt that animation would not quite be what it is today without these twelve pieces of wisdom.

[gabethegen]

Talking About the 2016 Anime Awards

So Crunchyroll has started the Anime Awards not too long ago, where people can vote on the best of what 2016 had to offer for anime. I think it is pretty cool that they are doing this. It’s a good way to pay tribute to the good of the anime and, in my opinion, possibly get more newcomers into anime. However, things are not quite as well as I thought it would be and then the results came, which brought in a lot of polarizing thoughts and discussions about the awards. I might as well throw in my thoughts as well and talk about each category and what I picked for each category.

Please note that I haven’t watched some of the anime nominated for the awards so my knowledge for them are pretty low so you can take my view very lightly.

Hero of the Year My Pick: Izuku from My Hero Academia Winner: Izuku from My Hero Academia Happy that Izuku was in this category and he truly deserves this awards. In terms of the other nominees, Mob from Mob Psycho 100 is a good pick to be here, Mumei from Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress may not be a good pick due to what happens to her in later parts of her show, and Satoru from Erased is not quite a good pick for this category. Maybe a good protagonist but not a good hero.

Villain of the Year My pick: Tomura Shigaraki from My Hero Academia Winner: Not saying it here due to spoilers from Erased.  I think it was a weak year for anime villains and the nominations are evident of that. I only picked Tomura has he’s the closest to being effective as far as I’ve seen.

Best Boy My pick: Arataka Reigen from Mob Psycho 100 Winner: Yuri Katsuki from Yuri!!! on Ice This could have gone many ways with who’s nominated for this category. Seeing Yuri win this made me go eh... but again, it could have gone either way. Izuku would be a good pick for this because of what he goes through but I went with him for Hero of the Year. Reigen is be my pick for this due to his tricks and acts as he’s doing his job and he’s kinda inspiring. Can’t say much for Yakumo due to little experience with Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju but considering he made it on the voting poll, I guess there’s something good about him. Best Girl My pick: Rem from Re:Zero Winner: Rem from Re:Zero I knew Rem would be number 1 and I haven’t seen Re:Zero. There’s just no doubt about it. As for the others, Ochako from My Hero Academia is fine but I think Tsuyu would be the better pick (though due to the amount of time the characters on screen had, it’s hard to say). Mumei, again, probably not a good pick. As for Nico from Kiznaiver, well she’s friendly, weird, and cute but also the most annoying out of the main cast of that show so why she’s here, I don’t know. More choices could have been made.

Best Fight Scene My pick: Mob vs. Koyama from Mob Psycho 100 Winner: Mob vs. Koyama from Mob Psycho 100 Had to pick that as I think some of the action scenes in the show are really good. Though I think the fight Mob had with Teruki Hanazawa would have been a better choice. Hard to say the fight scene chosen for Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress is the best one from the show. Deku vs. Kacchan is pretty decent but not quite stellar as the other fight scenes in My Hero Academia. As for Altland vs. Moss from Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans, I have yet to see season 2 of the show so I can’t give any thoughts for it.

Best Animation My pick: Mob Psycho 100 Winner: Yuri!!! on Ice This one I call bullshit on because I think the popularity of Yuri on Ice got it to win for this category. Yuri on Ice, aside from well animated ice skating sequences, has slightly above average animation and out of all the nominees in this category, it is weakest out of the bunch. Flip Flappers has some pretty good animation and art that makes it stand out well. Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress has pretty good animation and there’s no doubt about it due to the studio that worked on it also worked on Attack on Titan. Mob Psycho 100 had great animation that’s so good, it could really turn on a sakuga fan. I don’t know if it was because Yuri on Ice was the most recent hot anime, or that there wasn’t enough focus on the other shows but I think this one was a misstep. Also where are the Kyoto Animation shows? That studio always make some great looking anime so why aren’t they there? I think the 4 nominees per category, minus anime of the year, is kinda hurting the each category, even if the “other” nominee option is there.

Most Heartwarming Scene My pick: Kayo’s first home-cooked meal, Erased Winner: The kiss, Yuri!!! on Ice Again, something tells me the popularity of Yuri on Ice managed to make this win this category. The kiss scene may be most heartwarming thing but not to everybody. Don’t know much for the scene in Orange as I haven’t seen anything about it. The same thing could be said for the scene from Flying Witch. The scene from Erased is definitely a heartwarmer for me in terms of how its build up to it. Though if you ask me, a lot of the scenes from the anime, Sweetness & Lightning, should have been on this list. Hell, I think the whole show should win this category.

Drama of the Year My pick: Kiznaiver Winner: Erased Drama isn’t my first genre to go to so my knowledge for this genre isn’t the best. Erased is mostly good so I see why it would be here. I thought Kiznaiver was good, despite some issues. As for Joker Game and Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju, I have nothing to say for them, apart from hearing that they are good shows. (Boy, I got a lot of anime to check out)

Best couple My pick: Luluco & Nova, Space Patrol Luluco Winner: Yuri and Victor, Yuri!!! on Ice Firstly, GODDAMN, Yuri & Victor won by a landslide. They got 99,194 votes and the second place winner only got 19,377 votes. The Yuri on Ice fandom is strong with this one. As far if it actually deserves this, I think they are worthy of being nominated for this category though I will have to put that up for challenge later on. For Saturo & Kayo from Erased, it is eh... Katsuhira & Sonozaki from Kizanaiver, I don’t really think they were good as far as what is seen. Maybe a post-show story may make them good. Luluco and Nova are the only other legit couple in my view that is good enough for this category and they are my pick because I think they are good and cute together and seeing what the two go through made it the most memorable for me.

Best Comedy My Pick: Space Patrol Luluco Winner:Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto! This was the most difficult pick for me as I think all of the nominees were really funny shows. I went with Space Patrol Luluco because of the references and the humor won me over just slightly more than the others. I would have been fine if any of the 4 nominees had won.

Best Action  My pick: Mob Psycho 100 Winner: Mob Psycho 100 I think all of the shows in this category had really good action scenes in them. I pick Mob Psycho 100 for this one because not only the action scene were really good, but the story was good and it went well in conjunction with the fight scenes. My Hero Academia comes 2nd in my mind for that same mindset. As for Drifters and Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, they all had good action but the story’s not the best. May seem odd that I view the picks this way but that’s the way I thought of them.

Best Opening (Theme) My pick: Kiznaiver Winner: Yuri!!! on Ice Openings (as well as ending songs) are the most subjective topics to discuss about because of everybody having very different taste in music. This could have gone many ways. As far as the nominees are concerned, they are good. However, I am surprised that the opening for Kiznaiver wasn’t on the list. That show’s opening was really good. Why wasn’t that included with the other nominees? I know I’m not alone on there. Even people who disliked the show liked the opening a lot. Again, the 4 per category thing is not a good idea. As with Yuri on Ice winning this, I’m fine with it, even if the popularity of the show may have helped on boosting this up the ranks. It is a good opening theme.

Best Ending (Theme) My pick: Mob Psycho 100 Winner: Yuri!!! on Ice Again, music is very subjective so this could have gone many ways. The ending themes for Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress and Yuri on Ice were alright to listen to. Space Patrol Luluco’s ending is nice and good. I went with Mob Psycho 100′s ending theme because out of all the songs in this category, this one gets me the most pumped and I would wound up listening to it a lot more than the others.

Anime of the Year My Pick: Mob Psycho 100 Winner: ??????? The winner has yet to be announced due to Crunchyroll saving that for an event on January 28. As for the nominees, this will be very interesting as most of shows on the voting poll are definitely worthy of being in a top anime list of 2016.

So there’s my thoughts on the Anime Awards. Again,this was a decent first try from Crunchyroll. I think it was interesting to see this and talk about it. Could have been a bit better. I would have liked to see more categories in the Anime Awards. I would have liked to see Best Slice of Life and Best Science Fiction somewhere. As for how to handle what nominations should be there, more options should have been there. So with that said, I look forward to the 2017 Anime Awards, Crunchyroll.

What do you think of the Anime Awards? What did you want to see win from the Anime Awards? Let me know somewhere in the internet.

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

Full Dive VR is a pretty cool thing in the future Earth that SAO proposes.

But waifus in the mail is where it’s fucking at!

So War of Underworld 2 episode 11 - the final episode - aired today. And I really liked it! We spend the first half pretty much just resolving the character conflicts that Kirito and Alice have been going through while simultaneously giving their relationship some satisfying payoff.

Alice is honestly super pretty.

Now one particular scene here that I really admired involves Kirito and Alice having a little spar with some wooden swords and then falling on one another since oops the swords were too weak for how serious they both were. And I hear you, a male and a female fall on one another? In Sword Art Online? Everything about that sounds horrible! But no, Reki motherfucking Kawahara decided to show some self restraint. Without ever landing on Kirito or having his hands end up in some inappropriate body part of hers, Alice is able to prop herself up with her arms, and nothing sexually suggestive at all happens. There’s no indecent exposure, no accidental groping, no shot of their crotches rubbing together, just nothing. Amazing job.

It should also be noted that these last few important scenes bring Kirito’s position in his family to light, in so far as his parents are obviously gonna be concerned about the kid disappearing and getting himself in crazy shit at the expense of his school life and stuff. But he makes his new ambitions clear in a nice scene and like, yeah I just really enjoyed the first half or so of the episode.

And then the second half was fucking insane! Alice gets sent a riddle, faxes it to Kirito, they decode it to find out it’s an IP address that takes them to Underworld, and then they go there and 200 years in the future, right, the show’s become a fucking Star Wars-esque space sci-fi show where cool looking ships fight scary alien abominations. And these ships are piloted by the descendants of Tiese and Ronie, who look exactly like Tiese and Ronie but their outfits are really bad. And we just like, see them fight the alien, it doesn’t go well, but then Kirito, Asuna and Alice all get to do some mad fucking flashy ass sakuga moves to take care of it and then move on.

And the thing is, right, I had no idea what was going on. That plot point last episode ended on about the Kirito clone isn’t brought up. Once they defeat the monster we get a text scroll saying like “the end for now but everyone’s next fight is the Inter-Intelligence War” or something like that, which throws me off because I know that this isn’t Unital Ring so how and when does that come about? In terms of plot and character there isn’t actually anything to get out of this.

However, I honest to god fucking loved it anyway. It’s so indulgently just, insane, and out of nowhere, and the idea that in the 200 years where Kirito and Asuna ruled over Underworld they decided to bring about space faring, I just find that almost hilarious. But not in like, a bad way or anything, it’s definitely silly and I’ll call it that, but I was unironically about the whole thing, just having an unconditionally good time watching it.

So this episode was one half cool character stuff to bring about a satisfying ending, and another half flashy visuals and indulgent cool-factor nonsense. And I’m happy to say I enjoyed all of it.

And with that, we end War of Underworld 2. And moreover, we end Alicization.

And the ending visual we get during the credits is like, cool I suppose.

I’ll obviously have like, a fuller thoughts on this season thing coming whenever my Season in Review does, but of course my SAO tag has my opinions of every Alicization episode and stuff. Because of that I don’t think I’ll make a “full thoughts on Alicization as a whole” sort of post, at least until I rewatch it, because like, yeah. This started airing nearly 2 years ago and I have no confidence that I could write a full thoughts post I’d be happy with having only seen it once and with the episodes spread so far out. But uh, yeah. Sword Art Online.

And then yeah, Progressive anime got announced, hopefully it’s pretty pogressive, no idea when it’ll air but you can bet I’ll sit through that one too.

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha - Movies Review

Like two months ago, I watched all of the Nanoha TV anime, and I really enjoyed them. I even wrote a review for all of them which you can read here. Today, I present the follow up to that post, in which I review all 4 Nanoha movies that currently exist. Not much else to say really, let’s go.

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha The Movie 1st

So to start with, we’ve got a complete retelling of the first season. And it’s pretty good! This could best be described as a near line-for-line retelling of the anime, albeit with some lines of dialogue being changed to fit in better with the established worldbuilding of later arcs, the recap movie trend of cutting things out, and literally every technical element – animation, backgrounds, voice acting, soundtrack etc completely redone. And I fucking mean completely redone here. It’s not even like the Madoka recap movies where most of the shots are the same except better looking, nah literally everything here is entirely new. Cause I mean the aspect ratio’s 16:9 now so they’ve got a lot more room to work with and stuff. It’s all leagues ahead of the TV show, unsurprisingly for a movie budget. The sakuga in this is brilliant – all of the fight scenes, of which there are a lot more because I guess they wanted this to be more of an action movie, are a complete joy to look at. And the voice acting and various other sound things are just of a much higher quality too. It’s everything you’d expect from a movie and more.

About that cut stuff, it’s quite a bit. In essence like everything that’s not related to Nanoha and Fate is removed. Nanoha becomes a magical girl and sorts out her meeting with Yuuno like thrice as fast and from then on, it’s all Fate stuff. I’m mostly okay with this in so far as even though I did actually enjoy the supposedly “boring” first few episodes of the anime, I recognise why people might want that stuff cut out entirely and that that also makes the movie flow better. That being said, I do think lots of the stuff about Arisa and Suzuka being cut out makes Nanoha herself something of a weaker character, since in the TV anime she has kind of this mini background arc going on about actually talking to her friends which is fitting since she’s so insistent on talking to her enemies, but Nanoha’s still a fun main character here so I didn’t totally mind the omission.

Other than that though I don’t really recall anything especially noteworthy being cut out. It’s just the anime, minus the parts people might find boring, and in their place we’ve got extended aerial fight scenes between Nanoha and Fate that look fucking incredible. I’ve already kinda talked about those kinda though so like, whatever. The movie’s still over 2 hours long by the way so despite the omissions and the general expectations people have of recap movies, the pacing’s not actually that far off of what the TV anime had so I can’t complain on that front.

And that’s actually about all I have to say on this movie. I’d give it an 8/10, same as I gave the TV anime. I think it’s a viable substitution for the TV anime, which is the highest honours a recap movie can get, though I’m inclined to say I like it less because for as incredible as the visuals and stuff are here, I did appreciate that bit more character that Nanoha herself got in the TV show.

Oh right fuck I forgot to mention that they show Nanoha’s nipples in her transformation sequence. 10/10.

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha The Movie 2nd A’s

Vita’s iconic “Takamachi Nandoka!” line got cut. 1/10.

Actually this time around not only do we get to see Nanoha’s nipples again, but we get to see Fate’s nipples, which were tragically missing for the first movie. She grew nipples just for A’s movie. How could any other character be best girl? 11/10.

Okay to stop joking, the A’s movie! This one’s a lot different from the first movie. Rather than just a straight recap of the TV anime’s plot, this is more of a retelling that changes several plot points from the original. For example, the head of the Bureau and his two catgirls that disguise as handsome blue men and interrupt climactic fights just before the uh, climax, are removed entirely. And some other such omissions and changes to the general plot in order to create a tighter and more cohesive narrative. If y’all remember my A’s review you’d know that I was kinda confused by these guys as well as some of the rules of the Book of Darkness, and this movie goes a long way to rectify that. So like, it’s the show but with a better plot. Coolio.

Fate felt like she got hardcore fucking shafted though which upset me because she’s my favourite character and I’m allowed to be biased. Most of her fight scenes we don’t really get to see much of, hell when she debuts her Sonic form we like, don’t even see her use it in combat on screen because Nanoha’s doing everything. That upset me. She still gets her dream sequence though thank fucking god or else she wouldn’t get any development.

With regards to some of the stuff that got cut out that I remember from the TV show, there’s the scene where Nanoha tells Arisa and Suzuka about her magical girl life as well as Nanoha encountering them during the Book of Darkness’s rampage, but then there’s a bit in the credits where she like, properly shows off Raising Heart, so that’s an adequate replacement. They also cut out the “where are they now?” from the end of the TV show but that makes sense since the next two movies chronologically happen before StrikerS so like, gotta make a movie marathon flow well, you know?

Despite some cuts and plot changes, the movie feels pretty fast. Yeah, even though it’s 2 and a half hours long. Maybe it just felt fast to me, or maybe it felt fast compared to the TV anime which had a lot more of Hayate slice-of-life-ing with her knights which was mostly reduced to a montage here, but idk the movie felt fast. I like, didn’t really mind though.

Obviously this movie looks and sounds a lot better then the original A’s, though I’m not even gonna lie I was kinda underwhelmed with lots of the battles here. Maybe I’m salty that I didn’t get to see Fate fight more, or more likely it’s just that the first movie’s battles were so much better. Obviously the fights in this still looked good but there were less of them, they were shorter, and they weren’t quite as fun as those of movie 1. They’re not interrupted by weird blue men though so hey it’s better than A’s proper.

And that’s pretty much all I have to say on this movie. I do think this movie is actually better than A’s, but looking at my 9s I uh, gotta keep this at an 8. Which is still a really good score so you know. Don’t know if I’d consider this a viable substitution for A’s – it’s just that little bit too different for me to so strongly be like “watch this instead of the TV anime”. But I mean I can only speak from the perspective of someone who watched the TV anime first and has only seen that plus these two movies once each, so maybe I should invest in some hot rewatch hours before I say which I think is the better viewing experience for newcomers. Anyway, time to finally move onto stuff that’s not recap movies.

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha: Reflection

So at last, we’ve got some original content. At least, original put to animation. I’m pretty sure this is an adaptation of a PSP or PS Vita game? Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure it’s one of those. Regardless, it’s brand new animated content so I’m just gonna run with it being original compared to the first 2 movies.

So the central conflict of this movie is that there’s this girl called Kyrie, whose dad is dying, so she and her AI pal go to Earth to find the Eternal Crystal – a macguffin that’ll heal her dad and also planet. In order to find the Eternal Cyrstal though, she’s kinda gotta beat up Hayate and steal the Book of Darkness, so her sister Amita comes to Earth to team up with Nanoha and friends and stop Kyrie, also she doesn’t trust the AI which turns out to be fair because in the end the AI betrays Kyrie. And it’s either before of after she betrays Kyrie but she also summons some peeps from the Book of Darkness that look like Nanoha, Fate and Hayate pretty much just by saying “give me admin privileges please”, and the Eternal Crystal also happens to actually be a Satan loli that kills planets and Iris wants to kill the Satan loli but also use it to destroy the Earth. Or something. Then the movie ends.

Sorry to give so much of a synopsis there, but I kinda wanted to convey just how many parties there are in this plot. We’ve got the good guys vs Kyrie who’s betrayed by Iris who summons another 3 people, 2 of which are obedient to the Hayate looking dude, and then an evil crystal loli who doesn’t seem that bad but Iris wants her dead, and I’ve got no idea if the Hayate looking dude is gonna stay loyal to Iris, follow the crystal loli, or just fuck off and do his own thing. Now I do think with there being so many parties, including several newcomers, the villains were kinda weak. Because we’ve got Kyrie who’s supposed to be kinda sympathetic in so far as she wants to save her dad and planet but because she’s an anime little sister nobody really thinks she’s mature, but other than a really good magical girl design, she’s got little else going on and I struggled to really sympathise with her. She shares a really good scene with Iris when Iris betrays her though, where Iris calls her out on her hypocrisy for being willing to hurt others yet reacting so negatively when Iris hurt her, so that was cool. Iris kinda sucks though and is just shady AI that completely failed to surprise me when it was revealed that she’s the twist villain. The twist that she’s not actually an AI was surprising, but didn’t exactly feel built up to at all, so it was just a twist for twist’s sake. And whatever her motive is that relates to the Eternal Crystal loli doesn’t actually get to be seen because the movie just abruptly ends. We’ve got the lookalikes summoned from the Book of Darkness, and frankly I’ve got no fucking idea how that works. As already stated Iris kinda just, summons them by saying she’s got admin privileges, no build up or anything like that, Iris says she needs them to find the Eternal Crystal but the Eternal Crystal’s just chilling in an aquarium so like. The only purpose they seem to serve is that in being lookalikes, they’re suitable opponents for Nanoha, Fate and Hayate. And credit where credit is due the fight scenes that happen as a result are great fun – Fate especially has a really touching moment with Lindy and gets to partake in a genuinely badass fight thanks to her lookaile. Unfortunately their personalities or ideals aren’t really a contrast with their main character equivalent, and they’ve not really got anything else going on, so they’re pretty crappy as villains. And then the Eternal Crystal loli just gets mind controlled by Iris before the movie, uh, ends. All of our villains kinda suck and I’m gonna have to wait for Detonation to come out in the rest of the world before seeing if they’re improved at all (fun fact these first 3 reviews were written at the end of May, just to put into perspective how long I had to wait for Detonation) (Addendum now that I’ve seen Detonation – I didn’t even need to wait 4 weeks lol).

As for the movie outside of the villains, it is a lot of fun. Nanoha being Nanoha gets a lot of time to shine and involves herself in a lot of awesome fights, and early on in the movie we get to see kind of the aftermath of her telling Alisa and Suzuka about her mahou shoujo stuff. Obviously they’re super chill so they pretty much just come to watch Nanoha and Fate’s sparring sessions which is a lot of fun. Nanoha’s great, who’d’ve thought? As a fan of Fate I desperately wanted this movie to not shaft her, and not shaft her it did – she gets a lot of awesome fights as well and the aforementioned scene involving Lindy was really, really good too. Absolute best girl. Hayate is elevated to more narrative importance than the other two thanks to her owning the Book of Darkness which Kyrie wants to and eventually manages to steal, so the quest has even more meaning to her because she needs to get back her very important book. Unfortunately she feels somewhat shafted after this. Actually that’s not entirely true, it’s just that Nanoha and Fate get like full battles with their I suppose doppelgangers, but Hayate’s fight with hers, who by the way is the king that the other doppelgangers serve, doesn’t really get shown a whole lot and so in general she gets less fun moments than Nanoha and Fate. I love Hayate though, and she’s still super fun, so like whatever. The entirety of Wolfenkritter get a lot of moments to shine in their battles, even Shamal manages to drop actual combat usefulness which was super appreciated. Yuuno appears often and even has some combat usefulness, and that was really nice to see because my boy deserves more love than he gets. Chrono is noticeably older now, which I prefer to him being the same age as Nanoha and Fate, though his usefulness is somewhat limited here, even if his first big combat appearance is a lot of fun. Arf is like, she’s not a loli but she’s a lot smaller? Does her age just fucking regress or something? She’s smaller here than she was in A’s and she’s gonna be even smaller when we get to StrikerS? Arf didn’t do much here and I’m constantly confused by her biology. And that about covers every returning hero. Kyrie’s older sister, Amita, is kind of just Kyrie’s older sister – she’s on the good side and wants to bring back her sister, and is super nice and considerate to everyone else. She’s definitely cool though and has a lot of fun moments, both in and out of combat, so I did like her. Plus like, her design is pretty neat.

Movie looks and sounds really good, obviously. I’d say it looks better than A’s movie though not quite as sakuga as the first movie, also the art style is a lot more modern than the first 2 movies which were largely just the original art style but polished up, whereas now like the detail of the eyes is more in line with what you’d expect from modern anime sensibilities. I like it, think I prefer the old art style, but this one is still nice to look at so hey. Oh this movie’s fuckin’ really gory by Nanoha standards, the Eternal Crystal loli namely causing some pretty gruesome shit, but I thought that was fun so hey.

The biggest problem with the movie probably is that it’s unfinished – it’s shorter than the previous two films but feels pretty long, in a good way though, and I felt the pacing was really solid throughout. It’s the fact that the film just abruptly cuts off when we’re literally in the middle of a wide scale battle that threatens the planet that kinda sucks, because aside from cutting that off you’ve also made it so that, at least for this movie alone, most of the newcomers kinda suck, and I have to wait until Detonation to see if they’ll get better, rather than just having this one movie alone make me like them. Overall though, I did enjoy this movie, I’d give it a 7/10. Even if the newcomers are kinda weak and the plot isn’t brilliant, the action’s super fun, presentation is all around pretty strong, and all of our favourite returning characters manage to be very enjoyable, this ain’t no StrikerS where it’s the no fun zone for the entire cast. You know in that sense I’d almost say this movie’s kinda fanservice-y, but not like, in a bad way.

Since I’m on the topic of fanservice though I’m now allowed to say that I was very upset with the absence of nipples in this movie compared to the first two, even if that one shot of Fate’s chest accentuates the shape of the nipple there’s no additional colouration like the fist two movies so it doesn’t count. 1/10.

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha: Detonation

And lastly in the Nanoha movies, we’ve got Detonation, the direct sequel to Reflection. Since this is just a direct sequel to the last movie I don’t really need to go into plot details, but I will say that the actual quality of the plot is, pretty much the exact same as in Reflection. Questions about characters are answered in multiple lengthy exposition scenes that weren’t really fun to watch and didn’t actually help me to understand anything better. Apparently the doppelgangers were cats? What the hell is that one about? And Yuri the Satan loli appears to be another Book of Darkness program or something? I’m gonna have to take a long read of the Nanoha wiki to be honesty because this movie’s exposition was very hard to follow.

Despite being a continuation of the first movie, Detonation isn’t content giving us a story that only uses the pieces from the previous plot, and instead new elements that only make everything even more contrived and hard to follow are constantly introduced, including the fact that Iris can apparently infinitely duplicate weird robot clones of herself that she forms an army of and they also do shit like take over satellites and other bullshit. Or the fact that Iris was never the real villain, but instead some old scientist dude who was in charge of saving Eltria. So that’s Kyrie, Iris, this scientist, the doppelgangers, and Yuri, all of whom are technically antagonists in this saga, and all of whom have a shit ton of varying allegiances. I don’t know, man, this movie’s a lot.

There were definitely good things in this movie, though. I can’t pretend I’m a fan of the doppelgangers but they actually get a lot more good moments in this movie than they did in the last, such as Levi adopting Fate’s “help people” philosophy and getting a hug from Fate as like, a thank you, and fuck do I want to be hugged by Fate. Or at one point, Dearche like, wants to go fight Yuri but has no energy, so the other two give him their energy and die but later get their bodies back anyway and Dearche used their energy to do an attack that killed him also, but he also gets his body back, wait, what? What’s good about this? Nah see when they give Dearche their energy his design changes to like, something of a fusion of the three of them, himself being the most prominent, and I actually thought that was really cool. None of the magical girl shows I’ve seen incorporate fusion but it’s a lot of fun to use so like. I mean fuck maybe Sailor Moon has fusion and I just don’t know since I’ve not started watching that yet. Ah, magical girls. All the action and animation and sound stuff is just as good as in the first movie, though I noticed a lot more 3D models that looked ugly as hell, also there are like 6 insert songs but that’s not actually a problem at all. Nanoha’s the MC so she hogs all the glory, Fate doesn’t get anything quite as good as she got in the first movie but she didn’t necessarily feel shafted, and Hayate actually got to participate in a few fights this time, which is great. Even though I didn’t understand shit about any of them, Iris, the doppelgangers and Yuri getting to go back to Eltria alongside Amita and Kyrie was sweet. And the ending was super cool but I’ve got a bit to say about that so I’mma hit that enter keyyyy

So the ending has Nanoha flying up to space to stop one of Iris’ clones from destroying their town with a gun, and their fight, though brief, is a lot of fun. They use very different lighting in space which already makes everything look unique and more memorable than some of the other fights, but in particular, Nanoha actually ends the fight with a punch. Like a normal fucking hook to the face. It’s got a bit more flare than that but I mean, if you know me, you know I love watching little girls punch things, so this ending was really satisfying. Here’s where the levels of satisfaction start wavering though. See, Nanoha’s punch doesn’t actually end it, and instead the Iris clone just like, grapples Nanoha and actually self-destructs. And surprisingly, this actually does shit to Nanoha! She loses an entire fucking arm like holy shit she’s like 12! And dying in the cold of space with Raising Heart barely holding on, Nanoha pretty much just thinks “oh fuck, guess I’ll die now” and here’s where it gets weird. Nanoha has a dream of a younger Nanoha telling her “you must not really love yourself, huh?” and they go off on this not actually long conversation about the nature of helping people and loving yourself and being loved but here’s the thing – when has Nanoha loving herself ever been an issue in this entire franchise? She’s struggled with loneliness before, we know that much, but like actual lack of self love? That came completely out of nowhere! I appreciate the attempt to give Nanoha actual character development since she is something of a flat character but like, this doesn’t fit in with anything to do with her character as established by the franchise prior. Anyway Fate and Hayate rescue her and those two look really really good in space as well because space lighting and nice panning shots of the two in space that are drawn super fucking well. Also now I’m like, seriously curious about the power scaling of Nanoha, particularly with regards to speed, because those two got to space, like actual fucking high ass space where satellites orbit, in evidently a matter of seconds, or even minutes but like, not that many minutes. Point is they must’ve been going fast as fuck, and also Fate has her Sonic form which dramatically increases her speed and I mean all these characters use massive beams and shit, how strong are they. Not really relevant though.

Since I’ve about run out of things to say about the movie itself, let’s fuckin’ do this final thoughts thing. 7/10. Probably not actually as good as Reflection, and while that movie at least accentuated the outline of Fate’s nipples, this movie doesn’t even give us that. However, if you watched Reflection, there’s literally no reason not to also watch this. The two of them do make for a fun pair of action movies with all your favourite characters before they turned into boring military bullshit.

Conclusion

I’m only calling this section “Conclusion” since that’s what I did for my series review. Which you should read by the way if you’ve not already. Anyway, if you haven’t gathered by now, I quite enjoyed these movies! The first two are really good variations on their respective TV series and while the latter two which told one story between them had a lot of issues throughout, I still had more fun with it than I did, say, StrikerS. I’m totally okay with StrikerS aging up the characters but that new setting and specifically its tone were very boring to watch. In that sense I really like how the movies retain the tone and setting of the first two anime seasons. Like yeah movies 3 and 4 aren’t brilliant but they’re still awesome action romps with fun characters and great emotional moments, just like season 1 and A’s. I’m this deep in the Nanoha rabbit hole already, I may as well go all in and read the huge amounts of spinoff manga and so much other stuff, if I can get a fix closer to what these movies offered rather than what StrikerS offered then hey I’m gonna love it. Also getting into that stuff is a good excuse to actually see where ViVid went since the anime just, ended…

Fun time. Only one way to end thIs post.

Fate-chan is absolutely positively still best girl.

[kihocrystal]

Spring 2018 - Final Impressions

Sorry this post is so late (again)! I had a *really* busy July, which really didn’t help at all. But anyway, here’s my thoughts on the shows that I finished this past season! All but one are sequels, though (and the one non-sequel was a carryover from last season)... Don’t worry, I’ll watch stuff like Megalobox and Hinamatsuri eventually! :’D

All “reviews” are listed in alphabetical order!

Amanchu! Advance - 8.0 / 10 (B-)

I liked season 2 as a whole! (Except for one episode / thing…)

QUEERBAITING SUCKS

I dunno if this is the fault of the anime or the source material…

…but this is still the most blatant example I’ve ever watched >_>

episode 11 didn’t need to happen!!! Why couldn’t Kokoro just… be a girl

or y’know, just let Pikari and Teko continue to “love” each other as they have! OTL

maybe why it annoyed me so much is that it’s like… a total bait & switch that went on for 2 SEASONS

to be fair, the reveal kinda went over my head? But when r/anime pointed it out, that’s when the salt began :/

yet the finale still has them blushing over reading thank you notes? It’s like this show wants its cake & eat it too

at the end of the day, the Kokoro stuff just… got in the way of Teko & Pikari’s interactions, platonic or not >_>

Also I’m one of the few people who actually liked the Peter arc

and it gave Ai some spotlight time!!!

it’s nice to have a little story arc to change things up (as opposed to an episodic structure)

(though I understand why many didn’t care for it… it leans a lot more towards supernatural than usual)

IMO they at least gave precedent w/ that one lucid dreaming episode w/ Teko, though

AND THERE’S ACTUAL SCUBA DIVING THIS TIME \o/

the underwater moments can be very magical… definitely the visual highlight

And the cast of characters is still enjoyable to watch too~ (def. a good group dynamic there)

Kokoro is considered a polarizing character for sure

I didn’t mind him that much until, y’know… his gender reveal led to the queer-baiting thing >_>

The finale was really nice though! It had pretty diving scenes and had cute Teko & Pikari moments~

In any case, this is still a very relaxing and heartwarming anime~

It has all the things I enjoyed about S1 here; it’s just the things added on top were a mixed-bag

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card - 8.0 / 10 (B)

EVERYONE IN THIS SHOW IS BEING VAGUE AS SHIT

But at least the mystery is interesting!

It’s just too bad it took like… 20 episodes to start getting any kind of explanation :’)

I actually watched the original series through a r/anime rewatch at the end of last year!

(meaning there wasn’t much time for me going from that series to this sequel)

I enjoyed the callbacks to the original series as well!

(including going from *anime* canon! i.e. the 2nd movie actually being canon)

The visuals look nice! Even though it almost looks a bit… *too* rounded in comparison to the original

I enjoyed watching Sakura capture all the new cards in different ways~

Even though this season was VERY light on plot (mostly), this aspect provided the action~

Also I enjoyed watching the character interactions too ^^

But yeah… the lack of overarching plot development and VAGUENESS kinda holds this season back

that being said, the final episodes set up some potentially interesting developments to come

and the finale itself *definitely* was not a conclusive one, so S2 better be confirmed soon!

Overall, I still enjoyed this continuation for the things it did right! I’ll be looking forward to a S2~

Darling in the FranXX - 8.0 / 10 (B)

Well this is/was a… polarizing show, to say the least.

I enjoyed it overall, but certain things about it hold it back from a higher score for me.

There’s two main elephants in the room with this series, really

#1 is… the heteronormativity

this was basically from the get-go, and in the roots of the story / themes itself

since the themes revolve around male/female partnerships & the importance of that… Yeah

one of the core quotes being “a female and a male aren’t complete w/o the other” …Yeah, again

also the sex-like positions of the “stamen” and “pistil” while piloting also doesn’t help

the workings of this world’s society has hetero relationships as the standard and doesn’t really allow for other options

(i.e. the FranXX piloting, Ikuno’s female attraction not working out in both operating the mech & her feelings for Ichigo, etc.)

at least Ikuno and Ichigo got a scene to talk about their attraction feelings & make up somewhat ^^

plus the Nines are basically gender non-binary but are seen as antagonistic forces for most of the show… Yeah

and just basic hetero things (like sex & pregnancy) were like being attacked in this show (when it’s not in real life???)

there’s an image meme that’s like “no, Prime Minister Abe… this will not get people to have babies” (…agreed :’D)

sure, there are *many* ways you can interpret this show, but the fact that so many people have seen it as such is Not Good

#2 is… the show supposedly “jumping the shark” towards the end

the main culprit of this (for many people) seems to be the “suddenly aliens!” reveal in episode ~20

this didn’t really impact my enjoyment of the show at all, but I definitely understand why people would be disappointed

in a way, it does kinda shift the story away from the themes it was using prior to this…

perhaps the lack of foreshadowing was another reason the shift in plot didn’t go well

plus it tends to directly riff off of certain visual cues from other mecha (like Eva & Gurren Lagaan)

Those two main gripes aside, the directing & visuals in this show were what kept me interested throughout

music choices, visual choices, etc. just really made certain moments better than they probably should’ve been

I enjoyed the characters as a group as well (even if most of them individually weren’t anything to write home about)

Goro’s a good bro, Ichigo went through good development, Kokoro & Mitsuru developed as a good pair…

Futoshi ended up being kind of a fat joke to the end though (& it was interesting that him & Kokoro didn’t end up together)

of course, Zero Two is the one everyone loved (& I liked her & Hiro’s dynamic as well)

sure, some people felt like she had “no personality” after she realized the truth about Hiro, but I didn’t mind the change

Plus I like that this show had a… pretty good ending, actually! (All things considered)

Directing as always was on point, and we got to see everyone’s lives over time (& Hiro + Zero Two eventually re-uniting as kids)

I just wish the main group got to see the two of them again :’)

though I do wish VIRM actually got full-on destroyed instead of a “we might come back” ending :/

and the ending was also kinda like “oh yeah, all the Children sent away didn’t actually die!” ???

This show will likely have a legacy not unlike Guilty Crown going forward, but I thought it ended better than that show, for the record

But yeah, this show is far from perfect and has questionable themes. But I still enjoyed it over all for the things it did well~’

Nanatsu no Taizai S2 - 8.0 / 10 (B-)

Unfortunately, not as good as S1 (but I still enjoyed this season overall)

S1 felt like its own self-contained story, but this season is clearly a “Part 1” for things to come

I wish Diana had more to do this season… she lost her memory early on and STILL doesn’t have it back

she was out of the main conflict (& separated from the group) for most of it :/

she also had these WEIRD ANGLES & POSES all the time… the fan service w/ her was *Really* distracting

the only consolation is that we got to learn some backstory for her & meet her fellow giants

oh well, at least she’s met up with King again and is enjoying his company by the end :)

The Gowther twist is interesting, but the way they revealed it was kinda… underwhelming

plus that *also* hasn’t been resolved yet (like many other things this season)

Some good moments this season were centered around Ban

such as his relationship w/ Jericho, time w/ a resurrected Elaine, and the small arc w/ his foster dad :’)

Also the final Sin got introduced w/ Escanor! PRAISE THE SUN

he’s a fun character; skittish by night and INVINCIBLE by day

The addition of power levels was kinda weird

it wasn’t necessary in S1, so why add it now???

The training arc gave us a full flashback to Melodias’ past w/ losing Liza, which was nice (and sad ;~; )

plus the vs. 10 Commandments fight actually showed Melodias full-on dying? That doesn’t happen much

it was a brutal death too! Hard to watch ;~;

plus they even changed the OP animation to reflect that he died… now that’s commitment

of course he came back later on, but there’s a catch… (since he loses some emotions every time)

There were some good fights, mostly during the “tournament” arc

(especially Melodias vs. all commandments… a sakuga highlight for sure)

The finale had a good stopping point, but it definitely makes clear that the story’s not over

so yeah, unlike season 1, this season *needs* a season 3 to be worth the watch

So yeah, there were some good moments & fights this season, but as a whole, it’s weaker than S1

Shokugeki no Souma S3 (Part 2) - 8.5 / 10 (B+)

I enjoyed this season! Continuing on the darker tone that the first half of S3 set up

This plot line of Central taking over the school is still my favorite plot point thus far, tbh

in other words, shit is finally going down!

…even if many of Central are just mustache-twirling villains :’D

Erina’s gotten great development from this arc too…! She’s not just a typical stuck-up tsundere anymore

her backstory is definitely a harsh one. It was great seeing her gain the courage to stick up to dad!

We also learned more about Souma’s dad! :O

Especially about how he was seen as feared, and the pressure of success got to him :’(

along with how this backstory tied into Asami’s motivations as well

Most of the season was kinda a gauntlet of opponents for the “resistance” to face off against

seeing Akira turn evil (for a bit) was interesting, but it’s a good thing he turned good again~

we oddly haven’t seen a lot of the Elite Ten in cooking action yet???

The final part of the season started off the big Team Shokugeki! …but it only got through the first round

the stakes are definitely high for this one, and also seems like the big conflict of this arc for sure

it’s just, y’know… the season ending in the middle is not a good look, really

at least the ending wasn’t abrupt; it was open-ended but still had a sense of conclusion

All in all, a good second half of season 3 (with some of my favorite plot content thus far!). Keep it up!