I enjoyed KLK but I thought it didn’t live up to the promise of the first episode, which was one of the best things I’ve seen. (I rewatched it the next day which I’ve never done before). I liked the characters and art style, but the plot and themes weren’t that interesting.
To expand a bit, Kill la Kill feels very self-consciously retro, an homage to a very ’90s style of anime that’s much more cartoony than today (it owes something to Needless which I looked up and found to be more recent than I expected—I can only assume that was itself a retro effort?). There’re a lot of exaggerated visual effects (think heads expanding to 10x usual size), limited animation tricks (cyclic eating motion, speed lines); a few of the visual touches are quite clever clever (using a square aspect ratio for the sepia-tinted flashbacks) and it obviously looks a lot better than the animation of the era it’s echoing, but I’m not sure how it objectively stacks up against modern style. The plot is deliberately ridiculous and over-the-top, and the show’s pretty heavy on fanservice (admittedly integrated closely into the plot, but it still feels like a lot of gratuitous nudity). As well as Gurren Lagann it reminded me of Mysterious Girlfriend X—different genre, but the same retro fanservice style.
The overall impression was reminiscent of Grindhouse—“ok, you’ve crafted an excellent pastiche of this old style—but actually we abandoned that old style for a reason”. I found Kill la Kill very fun to watch at the time, but it hasn’t stayed with me since.
How To Train Your Dragon—a Dreamworks animation which they didn’t just fill with tropes the kids won’t understand to keep the parents amused. And today the 7yo and I watched the first six episodes of the TV animation that comes next in the story, Dreamworks Dragons. It’s really pretty good and Freda laughed like a drain. You and your kid will enjoy it. Second movie is out shortly.
I ran it by her because she’s been playing the online School of Dragons game (requires Unity Web Player). Literally the first activity in the game is to teach the player a version of the scientific method, as are several subsequent activities. I thoroughly approve of putting that into a 7yo’s head.
Sword Art Online: The premise is completely untenable—thousands of people are trapped in the titular MMORPG—but after the third or fourth episode it becomes a very good anime with a strong female lead. Then the second story arc takes all the good things about the series and removes or reverses them. Alas.
I thought it was pretty but ultimately I couldn’t really get into it. Accel World shares a universe (I think it takes place in SAO’s future) but I liked it more.
From the season just finished, Hitsugi no Chaika consistently overdelivers on what it promises, despite a weak first episode. The worldbuilding is pretty decent (I normally use Moribito as the touchstone for that, and it’s not quite that good, but few things are), the plot—while not overly complex—seems quite fresh, and cliches are often avoided. On the downside, while they don’t actually leave you on a cliffhanger, you get half a series—the other half to come in the autumn.
Also One Week Friends is pure tissuebox material, possibly one of the most emotion-inducing shows in the last year or two. That sort of thing is not everyone’s cup of tea though, natch.
Sakamichi no Apollo (Kids on the Slope): A fantastic one-season slice of life about a city boy who plays classical piano learning jazz from a country boy. We’d been going through a spate of good-to-mediocre anime with horrible endings (the aforementioned Sword Art Online, for instance) so it’s worth noting that the ending of Kids on the Slope is excellent. Skip if you’re not a fan of jazz, obviously.
Hunter X Hunter: I’d heard several recommendations that this was some kind of “thinking man’s shonen”, which it hasn’t really lived up to so far (I’m around episode 80, so I understand I’ve finished all the complete arcs and are about to start the ongoing one). The powers seem very arbitrary (far more so than e.g. Fate/*), and any number of characters seem to be massively overpowered if they’d think a little more about how they use their abilities. It’s hard to get a coherent sense of the world, because there are a huge number of differences from reality that one would expect to radically change the world, but the consequences of these things aren’t really explored or visible, so it never felt real to me.
I’ll keep watching—the way the various plot threads interact is quite clever, and some of the powers and fights are quite fun, but I can’t really recommend this.
Summer in Andalusia (Ghibli-esque movie about a professional cycling race in Spain; better than it sounds)
Ghost Hound (attempt at psychological/supernatural horror that ultimately falls short of building up to anything interesting)
Un-go (incredibly lame mysteries in the worst vein of Sherlock Holmes, offputting fan-service, not one but two major deus ex machinas; stick to something like Umineko)
You liked Umineko? I found it impossible to engage with because we saw plenty of impossible things happening onscreen and were apparently supposed to deduce what was really going on, but it was never clear what we were supposed to take as true / the facts that needed to be explained.
If you are talking about the anime then I agree. The anime version left out the things you need to solve it. The VN has more than enough to know whats real and what isn’t.
The important thing to note is who is around to see an event. The fantasy battle in game 3 is witness by no one. When people witness theses things that are killed or are in with the culprit(not necessary that they know people are really dying). The fantasy should not be dismissed though as it contains important clues to the emotions of the characters.
My feelings about Uminekoare complex; but given a choice between something as dumb as Un-go and something clever-but-enraging as Umineko, I’ll go with the latter every time.
TV and Movies (Animation) Thread
Kill la Kill is excellent. Watch if you liked Gurren Lagann (at least some of the same people were involved), although I think it’s better.
I enjoyed KLK but I thought it didn’t live up to the promise of the first episode, which was one of the best things I’ve seen. (I rewatched it the next day which I’ve never done before). I liked the characters and art style, but the plot and themes weren’t that interesting.
To expand a bit, Kill la Kill feels very self-consciously retro, an homage to a very ’90s style of anime that’s much more cartoony than today (it owes something to Needless which I looked up and found to be more recent than I expected—I can only assume that was itself a retro effort?). There’re a lot of exaggerated visual effects (think heads expanding to 10x usual size), limited animation tricks (cyclic eating motion, speed lines); a few of the visual touches are quite clever clever (using a square aspect ratio for the sepia-tinted flashbacks) and it obviously looks a lot better than the animation of the era it’s echoing, but I’m not sure how it objectively stacks up against modern style. The plot is deliberately ridiculous and over-the-top, and the show’s pretty heavy on fanservice (admittedly integrated closely into the plot, but it still feels like a lot of gratuitous nudity). As well as Gurren Lagann it reminded me of Mysterious Girlfriend X—different genre, but the same retro fanservice style.
The overall impression was reminiscent of Grindhouse—“ok, you’ve crafted an excellent pastiche of this old style—but actually we abandoned that old style for a reason”. I found Kill la Kill very fun to watch at the time, but it hasn’t stayed with me since.
It was interesting to compare people’s reactions to Gurren Lagann and Kill la Kill, seeing as one is in essence the gender swap of the other.
How To Train Your Dragon—a Dreamworks animation which they didn’t just fill with tropes the kids won’t understand to keep the parents amused. And today the 7yo and I watched the first six episodes of the TV animation that comes next in the story, Dreamworks Dragons. It’s really pretty good and Freda laughed like a drain. You and your kid will enjoy it. Second movie is out shortly.
I ran it by her because she’s been playing the online School of Dragons game (requires Unity Web Player). Literally the first activity in the game is to teach the player a version of the scientific method, as are several subsequent activities. I thoroughly approve of putting that into a 7yo’s head.
Sword Art Online: The premise is completely untenable—thousands of people are trapped in the titular MMORPG—but after the third or fourth episode it becomes a very good anime with a strong female lead. Then the second story arc takes all the good things about the series and removes or reverses them. Alas.
I thought it was pretty but ultimately I couldn’t really get into it. Accel World shares a universe (I think it takes place in SAO’s future) but I liked it more.
From the season just finished, Hitsugi no Chaika consistently overdelivers on what it promises, despite a weak first episode. The worldbuilding is pretty decent (I normally use Moribito as the touchstone for that, and it’s not quite that good, but few things are), the plot—while not overly complex—seems quite fresh, and cliches are often avoided. On the downside, while they don’t actually leave you on a cliffhanger, you get half a series—the other half to come in the autumn.
Also One Week Friends is pure tissuebox material, possibly one of the most emotion-inducing shows in the last year or two. That sort of thing is not everyone’s cup of tea though, natch.
Sakamichi no Apollo (Kids on the Slope): A fantastic one-season slice of life about a city boy who plays classical piano learning jazz from a country boy. We’d been going through a spate of good-to-mediocre anime with horrible endings (the aforementioned Sword Art Online, for instance) so it’s worth noting that the ending of Kids on the Slope is excellent. Skip if you’re not a fan of jazz, obviously.
Hunter X Hunter: I’d heard several recommendations that this was some kind of “thinking man’s shonen”, which it hasn’t really lived up to so far (I’m around episode 80, so I understand I’ve finished all the complete arcs and are about to start the ongoing one). The powers seem very arbitrary (far more so than e.g. Fate/*), and any number of characters seem to be massively overpowered if they’d think a little more about how they use their abilities. It’s hard to get a coherent sense of the world, because there are a huge number of differences from reality that one would expect to radically change the world, but the consequences of these things aren’t really explored or visible, so it never felt real to me.
I’ll keep watching—the way the various plot threads interact is quite clever, and some of the powers and fights are quite fun, but I can’t really recommend this.
Summer in Andalusia (Ghibli-esque movie about a professional cycling race in Spain; better than it sounds)
Ghost Hound (attempt at psychological/supernatural horror that ultimately falls short of building up to anything interesting)
Un-go (incredibly lame mysteries in the worst vein of Sherlock Holmes, offputting fan-service, not one but two major deus ex machinas; stick to something like Umineko)
You liked Umineko? I found it impossible to engage with because we saw plenty of impossible things happening onscreen and were apparently supposed to deduce what was really going on, but it was never clear what we were supposed to take as true / the facts that needed to be explained.
If you are talking about the anime then I agree. The anime version left out the things you need to solve it. The VN has more than enough to know whats real and what isn’t.
The important thing to note is who is around to see an event. The fantasy battle in game 3 is witness by no one. When people witness theses things that are killed or are in with the culprit(not necessary that they know people are really dying). The fantasy should not be dismissed though as it contains important clues to the emotions of the characters.
My feelings about Umineko are complex; but given a choice between something as dumb as Un-go and something clever-but-enraging as Umineko, I’ll go with the latter every time.
Ah, I hadn’t realized you were talking about the VN rather than the anime