I’ve been watching Silicon Valley, a sitcom about a startup in the eponymous, erm, valley. Overall I’d say that it’s fairly good. One of the characters, Gilfoyle, is a surprisingly sharp portrayal of a certain contrarian cluster type: polyamorous and satanist (and probably a libertarian, too). Shades of ESR, too, somehow. Worth a look.
(Edit: retracted in order to repost under live action subthread.)
Macross Zero (4/5 watched): half the length of a regular series, but crams in an engaging romance (with very well-done character revelations), a fun plot and some great action series. The whole thing has visuals that would be impressive in a series half its age. I’ll withhold full judgement until the ending, but right now I’d say it’s been better than Plus. Recommended.
Allison to Lillia: quite a sweet, childish fantasy series, lots of emphasis on the joy of flight. Fun but didn’t entirely stand up to a rewatch; I think Patapata Hikousen no Bouken is a more enjoyable example of the genre.
Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Not that good; reasonable visuals, but the plot was all over the place; episodes didn’t really hang together into a coherent whole, lots of plot elements that came up once and were then never referred to again. Antagonists were unable to present a believable threat after the first half or so; some of the more interesting relationships were left unexplored, whereas the ending romances seemed to come out of nowhere unsupported by the rest of the series. I’ve seen far worse series, but I wouldn’t recommend this.
A note on Hunter X Hunter now that I’m up to episode 95 or so: quality really does seem to have picked up in the last 20-or-so episodes, so some of my negativity last month was unwarranted. I still can’t really recommend a show that takes this long to get going though.
TV and Movies (Animation) Thread
Anime:
_Seto no Hanayome_ (review; tldr: don’t bother)
I’ve been watching Silicon Valley, a sitcom about a startup in the eponymous, erm, valley. Overall I’d say that it’s fairly good. One of the characters, Gilfoyle, is a surprisingly sharp portrayal of a certain contrarian cluster type: polyamorous and satanist (and probably a libertarian, too). Shades of ESR, too, somehow. Worth a look.
(Edit: retracted in order to repost under live action subthread.)
Macross Zero (4/5 watched): half the length of a regular series, but crams in an engaging romance (with very well-done character revelations), a fun plot and some great action series. The whole thing has visuals that would be impressive in a series half its age. I’ll withhold full judgement until the ending, but right now I’d say it’s been better than Plus. Recommended.
Allison to Lillia: quite a sweet, childish fantasy series, lots of emphasis on the joy of flight. Fun but didn’t entirely stand up to a rewatch; I think Patapata Hikousen no Bouken is a more enjoyable example of the genre.
Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Not that good; reasonable visuals, but the plot was all over the place; episodes didn’t really hang together into a coherent whole, lots of plot elements that came up once and were then never referred to again. Antagonists were unable to present a believable threat after the first half or so; some of the more interesting relationships were left unexplored, whereas the ending romances seemed to come out of nowhere unsupported by the rest of the series. I’ve seen far worse series, but I wouldn’t recommend this.
A note on Hunter X Hunter now that I’m up to episode 95 or so: quality really does seem to have picked up in the last 20-or-so episodes, so some of my negativity last month was unwarranted. I still can’t really recommend a show that takes this long to get going though.