#though if you don't watch dbz i'd suggest watching it

[nerdywyrds]

So I'm six episodes into Pluto and I have to write down my thoughts. So far my rating is about 6.5/10. There is some really good stuff in here, but I keep being underwhelmed by the execution.

My thoughts are under the cut so Pluto fans can avoid it if they want.

STUFF THAT ANNOYS ME

Things only happen at the speed of the plot, so some really intense scenes end up going on for way too long and I get bored. Like when Hoffman was being threatened by the robot in the elevator. Hella tense! I like Hoffman and don't want him to be murdered! Then everyone and their mother has to have a long conversation while the robot waits politely for everyone to get their shit together and Hoffman is saved.

The plot only cares about the important characters. Remember how Ochanomizu's grandson is threatened by Pluto and Atom has to run over and save him? And the grandson's life is in danger? He might die? That kid? Last time we see him he's dragging his possibly-mortally-injured mother (who doesn't get a name, though the grandson does) to dubious safety. Then Atom is injured and we never see or hear about the grandson again. Next episode Ochanomizu only talks about how worried he is about Atom and completely fails to mention his own daughter or grandson at all. Like, are they okay? Are they safe? Do you care?

Unfortunately I imprinted on Gundam and Eva young, so my standards for fight scenes are high. Pluto's fight scenes suck. They're mostly quick flashes of the protagonist running or shooting, a bunch of swishy smoke, and then a loooong cut to a bystander looking shocked. If I wanted to watch bystanders being shocked during a fight scene, I'd just watch DBZ.

All of the characters that matter are men.

On a related note-- every woman has the exact same personality (supportive but gently exasperated wife, helpful to the men around her, quiet and demure) and all of the children have the exact same personality (sweet and energetic and cheerful). Even Uran is mostly just your Standard Darling Girl Child.

I wish the flashbacks were a different color than current time, because sometimes it is really hard to follow.

I just don't find Hercules or Epsilon interesting.

What is with the teddy bear. We first see it in episode five with absolutely no foreshadowing or lead-up. The way it is presented and the music suggest it is evil, but I'm like. Buddy I don't even know who you are.

STUFF THAT CONFUSES ME

Why are robot children a thing? Do they grow up? Are they eternally children? When adult robots adopt children robots, is this like. a thing that lasts until they all give out from obsolescence or do the robot children become robot teenagers and then robot adults? Are Atom and Uran going to grow up?

STUFF THAT I LIKE

I really, really like Gesicht.

There is an underlying sadness to the entire world that I really like. It's so bleak.

"A robot like you wouldn't understand emotions/beauty." Hard cut to a robot suffering from PTSD or crying because her husband was murdered or dreaming of growing flowers in the desert.

Brau 1589 is my favorite character. He only shows up occasionally but he owns every scene.

All this shit about robots can't kill humans and then we learn about robots that kill humans, and the robots are real fucked up about it. It's so good. SO GOOD.

All this stuff about artificial intelligences and how they learn and if they count as alive, and how much they can be like humans, so good. Also, love the callback about Gesicht's wife refusing to have her memory erased like Robby's wife refused.

The fact that robots marry delights me.

All the talk about grief is good. So many sad characters.

The actual story-- robot serial killer serial killing other robots, now let's follow our plucky detective as he keeps ending up in mortal danger-- is hella interesting.

Every now and then we are forcibly reminded that our most human-looking robots are not human and it's great every time.

Making a robot because your son died and you want to replace him and then being upset that your robot is his own person instead of an exact copy of your son is so fucked up it's great.

So in conclusion, Pluto is an interesting story, but based on how I was equally irritated with what I've seen of Monster, I think that Naoki Urusawa's writing style just is not my jam. Which is a shame because on paper his stories are incredibly up my alley.

[kaiowut99]

So I said before I’ll be going ahead on this side-project, replacing Yamamoto’s music with Yutaka Minobe/Wall 5 Project’s work from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s’ awesome soundtrack–just so there’s a consistent soundtrack I can watch the show with, and also just messing around for some fun–and I’ll be sharing it for whoever’s interested in seeing how it pans out.  I downloaded some 320kbps rips of the first two Sound Duels to get some good quality in here, too.  The goal’s to make it to The Final Chapters to give the show a full consistent soundtrack, ideally without any placements rivaling that disco theme (you know the one) in terms of awkwardness.

After months of delaying it, here’s episode 4! I did a new sort of tweak with the scene where I had Godwin’s Theme play for the scene with Yemma, having it cut out as Goku’s all “Yo!” at him (as opposed to my earlier idea of a disc-scratch).  Personal favorite scenes include “The City” over Goku being ridden towards Snake Way, “Showdown” over the Raditz flashback, and one of the twins’ themes over Goku worrying about eating/asking about Baba, since the Yamamoto track had a cutesy track there.  Let me know what you think! 

I might include song lists too, as I get these done; I plan to work on these a little quicker, so hopefully episode 5′ll be done sooner.

[radish-club]

So I'm in a unique position animewise compared to other folks (or rather weebs) my age. I never watched any until a couple years ago and was introduced via suggestions by my wife (who is a self described anime snob) and my friends and stuck mostly to stuff under 30 episodes, so most of what I've seen are the Good Shows, stuff that's fun and quick, and some trash thrown in there for good measure.

But I don't really have experience with those "foundational" anime other people my age do (dbz, naruto, sailor moon, etc), which is mostly (not all, mostly) shonen mediocrity or worse, but also means I'm not pulling from the same pool of reference

Like the other day at dnd a friend made reference to some dbz character and I was like who? and was surprised and caught off guard that I hadn't heard of whoever. Not like in a rude way. But like if you had to explain to someone who Donald Duck was or something.

I never even watched Pokemon. I was huge into pokemon as a kid in the era of the first and second gen. I had the games and the cards and really WANTED to watch the show but didn't know how to find it. We had satellite so the cable channel numbers my friends told me it was on didn't match up. I knew how to find Nickelodeon and Disney Channel but that was about it until I was older. Plus my folks limited the amount of time the TV was on during the day.

Now I'm not saying I'm gonna go and watch all of Naruto or One Peice or something just so I can understand memes or some bullshit like that. And I have watched plenty of ubiquitous stuff in the past few years like Evangelion or Cowboy Bebop (stuff considered essential and also self contained), so I do have a decent enough frame of reference to navigate whole western anime fan mileau.

When I mentioned to the aforementioned friend that I have considered watching DBZ despite its length just to say I have, he suggested I watch the original Dragon Ball first or instead. I forget his reasoning but I'm tempted even though it is also very long bc I like the idea of continuing my approach to the medium in a nontraditional path.

Also whenever I bring up that I haven't seen DBZ folks always tell me to just watch Abridged and, like, I get its supposed to be very good and condensed but from what I've seen of it the jokes and humor seem predicated on having prior knowledge of the story and characters. I probably could grock it eventually and appreciate it for what it is, but I feel I'd appreciate it more with more a frame of reference.

"But you'd have to sit though so many episodes of power up scenes." Yeah. I know. It's one of thefew things I know about DBZ bc people always talk about that. If I'm watching a show to be able to relate to my fellow weeb, why would I deny myself something that appears to be a notable facet of said show. Will I suffer? Yes. But there is comradiere to be found in suffering.