Akuma no Riddle: awful, the worst show I’ve watched all the way through. Incoherent setting, implausibly stupid characters, cheap and mistake-ridden animation, and an ending that’s actively hostile to the rest of the show.
Knights of Sidonia: half good, quite hard sci-fi, half staid harem antics. My friend insists on comparing it to Attack on Titan, which I don’t think is entirely fair (Sidonia has a coherent setting that drives the plot while being amenable to reasoning), but it shares that series’ problem of a boring perfect protagonist. There are some questionable aspects to the ordering and where time is spent (it feels like the series is trying to establish a B-plot about Sidonia’s history and an ongoing conspiracy, but it never quite connects to anything else), but the main plot is solid and the fight action is a lot of fun. It’s done in all-3DCG, which makes the robot fights look great and the people look weird (I quite like it, but I know some people who hate the look). I do recommend it, but it’s got plenty of flaws.
Katanagatari—talky action with a weird visual style. The overarching plot doesn’t really click IMO, but the episodic “get to know a person, fight them, do something clever and take their sword” is plenty of fun, and together with the high production values I’m happy to recommend it.
Toradora—a rewatch of a series I counted among my favourites. It holds up—a story of teenage love, discovering what you want and learning how to relate to your family, with a good sense of humour and a very satisfying conclusion by anime standards. But it definitely has its flaws; the pacing is off (the first ~9 episodes are basically establishing, which is way too long, and the twists crammed into the last two episodes should be spread out a bit more; by modern standards the whole thing drags), and the second half in particular is structured as a bunch of specific-character arcs that don’t entirely connect to each other, meaning if you don’t like a particular character there’s little to engage you for 3-4 episodes at a time. Recommended, but only if you can tolerate teenage melodrama.
Movies:
Time of Eve—didn’t quite live up to the hype from my point of view; the sci-fi side fails to really raise anything new or interesting (and as a friend pointed out, we should really have moved on from talking about Asimov’s Three Laws by now). Salvages itself with likeable characters and a very good sense of humour; I also liked the slightly overexposed visual style. It was pleasant enough, but not the mind-blowing experience I’d been lead to expect.
Redline—a gloriously over-the-top car race in a pulpy space-opera setting, with a retro, hand-drawn visual style (a la Kill la Kill or TTGL). No deep meaning, but very fun; we all laughed a lot.
Watching on my own I’ve finally finished Hunter X Hunter (new series); it had a very strong final main arc, which pretty much lived up to the hype. Nonetheless I can’t quite justify recommending a series that only really finds its stride somewhere in the mid-80s.
I think I might like Toradora a tiny bit less than you, but apart from that, I’m surprised to agree with pretty much everything you’ve said on these particular titles. I didn’t watch Akuma all the way through though, I figured it was trash about 2 minutes into the first episode and dropped it without looking back.
Although your friend is right about Kishi, it’s pretty much AoT in space in terms of premise.
I think I might like Toradora a tiny bit less than you, but apart from that, I’m surprised to agree with pretty much everything you’ve said on these particular titles. I didn’t watch Akuma all the way through though, I figured it was trash about 2 minutes into the first episode and dropped it without looking back.
Yeah, I would’ve dropped it if I could, but others at my weekly anime insisted.
Although your friend is right about Kishi, it’s pretty much AoT in space in terms of premise.
There are two things that I seem to value more than other people: coherency of the setting, and animation quality, and both of them are areas where I think Sidonia is far ahead of AoT. The setting of AoT is ludicrous enough that I can’t apply logic to it; the big reveal at the end of the series didn’t make me go “ah” but rather “wtf, that’s dumb”. Sidonia doesn’t stretch my suspension of disbelief anywhere near as much; the materials science that would produce something that could stand up to planet-busting weapons is a bit implausible, but not too much. We’ve been able to predict things that happened later in the series by thinking about the setting. On the animation front, Sidonia’s may well be a budget-saving measure but it looks different rather than AoTs excess of still frames, which just looked cheap.
There’s some similarity sure, but the differences are significant, at least to me.
The new Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works TV adaptation by Ufotable is only 5 episodes in but so far it’s an amazingly good adaption of the VN. (From what I hear, previous adaptations weren’t too good). Important elements are preserved, long-windedness is reduced (although the show is willing to take its time and rarely feels rushed), and the new added scenes complement the existing ones nicely. There are also some nice callbacks to Fate/Zero that (naturally) weren’t in the VN. The animation is incredible, perhaps the best I’ve seen in TV anime, and a step up from the already high level of Fate/Zero. Highly recommended if you have any interest in the Fate series.
For those who aren’t aware, Fate/stay night (the visual novel) has been mentioned/recommended here before in Eliezer’s Three Worlds Collide short story:
I suspect the aliens will consider this one of their great historical works of literature, like Hamlet or Fate/stay night -
Reading the visual novel can take some time, so anyone who isn’t interested in that should really consider watching this TV adaption instead. Personally, I found Unlimited Blade Works to be the best part of Fate/stay night (closely followed by Heaven’s Feel, which they’ve also promised to make a TV adaption of), so you wouldn’t be missing too much in my opinion.
(From what I hear, previous adaptations weren’t too good).
You probably already know all of this, but for the sake of completeness, IMHO (Thar be spoliers below!):
The original eroge novel had (as is the tradition) several endings and plotlines. The “Fate” plotline mostly dealt with Shirou/Saber; the “Unlimited Blade Works” (UBW) plotline resolves Shirou and Archer’s relationship while focusing on Shirou/Rin (and to some extent Shirou/Rin/Saber); and “Heaven’s Feel” focuses on Shirou/Ilya and explains Sakura’s backstory. Then there’s Realta Nua, an expansion of UBW that rewrites the ending into Shirou/Saber forever (literally). There’s also a sequel called Fate/hollow ataraxia which supplies a lot of the backstory and the metaphysics of how the grail war actually works.
As is the tradition will multi-ending visual novel adaptations, Fate/stay night (the original anime adaptation) tries to combine several elements of Fate with Heaven’s Feel, and hints of the ending of Realta Nua. The animation is not great e.g., most fights are still-shot montages and even if it were, there are few high-powered attacks in the fifth grail war, other than perhaps Archer’s version of UBW and Enuma Elish. For crying out loud, Enuma Elish is represented by flat red splotches.
People were rather unhappy that UBW got shafted, and so Type-Moon produced an OVA (now-confusingly also called Unlimited Blade Works) that tries to do too much from UBW in too little time with practically no budget. The animation quality is crappier than Fate/stay night and the plot hangs together with duct tape and string cheese.
Then ufotable came along, and Fate/zero was mindblowingly awesome.Some of this, IMO, is just because the heroes of the fourth grail war have attacks that are far greater in scope (Ionian Hetaroi, fully-powered Excalibur, Enuma Elish, For Someone’s Glory and Prelati’s Spellbook) than the fifth (shitty Excalibur, Archer’s UBW, Enuma Elish, Gae Bolg?). That and they had a vastly larger production budget.
I enjoyed it a lot at the time, but it’s diminished in the memory (I think mostly due to what I see as a lack of ambition). (I think I said much the same thing in a previous thread)
I liked it but it could have been so much better if they actually committed to doing a serious plot in their over-the-top style rather than just going “fuck it, we’ll make the plot stupid too”.
TV and Movies (Animation) Thread
My group finished our Summer season last week:
Akuma no Riddle: awful, the worst show I’ve watched all the way through. Incoherent setting, implausibly stupid characters, cheap and mistake-ridden animation, and an ending that’s actively hostile to the rest of the show.
Knights of Sidonia: half good, quite hard sci-fi, half staid harem antics. My friend insists on comparing it to Attack on Titan, which I don’t think is entirely fair (Sidonia has a coherent setting that drives the plot while being amenable to reasoning), but it shares that series’ problem of a boring perfect protagonist. There are some questionable aspects to the ordering and where time is spent (it feels like the series is trying to establish a B-plot about Sidonia’s history and an ongoing conspiracy, but it never quite connects to anything else), but the main plot is solid and the fight action is a lot of fun. It’s done in all-3DCG, which makes the robot fights look great and the people look weird (I quite like it, but I know some people who hate the look). I do recommend it, but it’s got plenty of flaws.
Katanagatari—talky action with a weird visual style. The overarching plot doesn’t really click IMO, but the episodic “get to know a person, fight them, do something clever and take their sword” is plenty of fun, and together with the high production values I’m happy to recommend it.
Toradora—a rewatch of a series I counted among my favourites. It holds up—a story of teenage love, discovering what you want and learning how to relate to your family, with a good sense of humour and a very satisfying conclusion by anime standards. But it definitely has its flaws; the pacing is off (the first ~9 episodes are basically establishing, which is way too long, and the twists crammed into the last two episodes should be spread out a bit more; by modern standards the whole thing drags), and the second half in particular is structured as a bunch of specific-character arcs that don’t entirely connect to each other, meaning if you don’t like a particular character there’s little to engage you for 3-4 episodes at a time. Recommended, but only if you can tolerate teenage melodrama.
Movies:
Time of Eve—didn’t quite live up to the hype from my point of view; the sci-fi side fails to really raise anything new or interesting (and as a friend pointed out, we should really have moved on from talking about Asimov’s Three Laws by now). Salvages itself with likeable characters and a very good sense of humour; I also liked the slightly overexposed visual style. It was pleasant enough, but not the mind-blowing experience I’d been lead to expect.
Redline—a gloriously over-the-top car race in a pulpy space-opera setting, with a retro, hand-drawn visual style (a la Kill la Kill or TTGL). No deep meaning, but very fun; we all laughed a lot.
Watching on my own I’ve finally finished Hunter X Hunter (new series); it had a very strong final main arc, which pretty much lived up to the hype. Nonetheless I can’t quite justify recommending a series that only really finds its stride somewhere in the mid-80s.
I think I might like Toradora a tiny bit less than you, but apart from that, I’m surprised to agree with pretty much everything you’ve said on these particular titles. I didn’t watch Akuma all the way through though, I figured it was trash about 2 minutes into the first episode and dropped it without looking back.
Although your friend is right about Kishi, it’s pretty much AoT in space in terms of premise.
Yeah, I would’ve dropped it if I could, but others at my weekly anime insisted.
There are two things that I seem to value more than other people: coherency of the setting, and animation quality, and both of them are areas where I think Sidonia is far ahead of AoT. The setting of AoT is ludicrous enough that I can’t apply logic to it; the big reveal at the end of the series didn’t make me go “ah” but rather “wtf, that’s dumb”. Sidonia doesn’t stretch my suspension of disbelief anywhere near as much; the materials science that would produce something that could stand up to planet-busting weapons is a bit implausible, but not too much. We’ve been able to predict things that happened later in the series by thinking about the setting. On the animation front, Sidonia’s may well be a budget-saving measure but it looks different rather than AoTs excess of still frames, which just looked cheap.
There’s some similarity sure, but the differences are significant, at least to me.
The new Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works TV adaptation by Ufotable is only 5 episodes in but so far it’s an amazingly good adaption of the VN. (From what I hear, previous adaptations weren’t too good). Important elements are preserved, long-windedness is reduced (although the show is willing to take its time and rarely feels rushed), and the new added scenes complement the existing ones nicely. There are also some nice callbacks to Fate/Zero that (naturally) weren’t in the VN. The animation is incredible, perhaps the best I’ve seen in TV anime, and a step up from the already high level of Fate/Zero. Highly recommended if you have any interest in the Fate series.
For those who aren’t aware, Fate/stay night (the visual novel) has been mentioned/recommended here before in Eliezer’s Three Worlds Collide short story:
Reading the visual novel can take some time, so anyone who isn’t interested in that should really consider watching this TV adaption instead. Personally, I found Unlimited Blade Works to be the best part of Fate/stay night (closely followed by Heaven’s Feel, which they’ve also promised to make a TV adaption of), so you wouldn’t be missing too much in my opinion.
You know, it may well actually make it to ‘acclaimed univesal classic’ status. It’s tremendously good stuff.
You probably already know all of this, but for the sake of completeness, IMHO (Thar be spoliers below!):
The original eroge novel had (as is the tradition) several endings and plotlines. The “Fate” plotline mostly dealt with Shirou/Saber; the “Unlimited Blade Works” (UBW) plotline resolves Shirou and Archer’s relationship while focusing on Shirou/Rin (and to some extent Shirou/Rin/Saber); and “Heaven’s Feel” focuses on Shirou/Ilya and explains Sakura’s backstory. Then there’s Realta Nua, an expansion of UBW that rewrites the ending into Shirou/Saber forever (literally). There’s also a sequel called Fate/hollow ataraxia which supplies a lot of the backstory and the metaphysics of how the grail war actually works.
As is the tradition will multi-ending visual novel adaptations, Fate/stay night (the original anime adaptation) tries to combine several elements of Fate with Heaven’s Feel, and hints of the ending of Realta Nua. The animation is not great e.g., most fights are still-shot montages and even if it were, there are few high-powered attacks in the fifth grail war, other than perhaps Archer’s version of UBW and Enuma Elish. For crying out loud, Enuma Elish is represented by flat red splotches.
People were rather unhappy that UBW got shafted, and so Type-Moon produced an OVA (now-confusingly also called Unlimited Blade Works) that tries to do too much from UBW in too little time with practically no budget. The animation quality is crappier than Fate/stay night and the plot hangs together with duct tape and string cheese.
Then ufotable came along, and Fate/zero was mindblowingly awesome.Some of this, IMO, is just because the heroes of the fourth grail war have attacks that are far greater in scope (Ionian Hetaroi, fully-powered Excalibur, Enuma Elish, For Someone’s Glory and Prelati’s Spellbook) than the fifth (shitty Excalibur, Archer’s UBW, Enuma Elish, Gae Bolg?). That and they had a vastly larger production budget.
Kill la Kill: confusing, but I think I liked it.
I enjoyed it a lot at the time, but it’s diminished in the memory (I think mostly due to what I see as a lack of ambition). (I think I said much the same thing in a previous thread)
I liked it but it could have been so much better if they actually committed to doing a serious plot in their over-the-top style rather than just going “fuck it, we’ll make the plot stupid too”.
I thought it got off to a great start, dragged a bit in the middle (too many standard anime extremely long battles), but had a decent ending.
Boyhood is one of the better movies I’ve seen recently.