The Anime TV Thread

Since there's been a bit of conversation about it on Shoutbox I figure: Why not? Just talk about any anime TV series (or direct-to-video or direct-to-interet releases) here.


I've been watching - as I've said elsewhere - four shows in the current anime season. Really digging the supernatural action series Noragami; Nisekoi is increasingly disappointing (though hardly surprisingly - it's a romantic harem comedy with insipid characters and does little with the gangster stuff which is the only interesting part of it); Space Dandy is very clever animation-wise but rarely lands for me in terms of humour and Kill la Kill has sort of embraced its gonzo nuttiness with some absurd twists that make me feel it's building up for a typically over-the-top finale.

Looking further ahead I am rather looking forward to the second season of Mushishi due later this year and I have mixed feelings about the news that Legend of the Galactic Heroes is being remade (or more exactly, the original novels are being re-adapted, so we're likely to see many new designs for characters and spaceships and so on.)

Well, we've covered quite a bit of this territory on Shoutbox and AVC so I'll talk about stuff I haven't brought up yet.

First, three older series that I unequivocally recommend to everyone: Moribito, Guin Saga, and The Twelve Kingdoms. The first two are available for streaming on Crunchyroll, while for the last I borrowed the DVDs from the library (it was actually more convenient than pirating the BluRays and finding a way to run the files on my PS3). All of the series are based on book series.

So, Moribito: Guardian of the Sacred Spirit is set in a fantasy version of Japan before the rise of the samurai. It's about a female bodyguard who has to protect a young prince who has been cursed by a water spirit and whose father thus wants him dead. The series is interesting for its anthropological detail, which is unsurprising because the author has a PhD in anthropology. She did her ethnographic fieldwork in Australia and I keep meaning to dig up a copy of her dissertation. I also like the relatively realistic action sequences. No boulders are cut in twain and no forests are cleared in one blow. The martial arts techniques depicted are entirely possible to do for skilled practitioners in the real world. Wikipedia says she also won the Batchelder Award for best foreign children's literature translated into English, which I'd never heard of but now I'm thinking of reading past winners.

Guin Saga is essentially Conan the Barbarian without the misogyny or pornographic depictions of bloody violence. This time the setting is in a fantasy version of the Silk Road. A leopard-headed warrior with amnesia becomes the protector of two royal children on the run from their kingdom's conquerors. This series shows that the author has extensively studied the dynastic politics of medieval Europe and all the backstabbing feels like the Byzantine Empire with magic thrown in.

Lastly, The Twelve Kingdoms is about a Japanese high school girl who ends up in some weird kung fu fantasy version of China. Basically it's The Chronicles of Narnia with more beheadings. Human beings grow as fruit from trees and the Mandate of Heaven is a law of physics, with countries experiencing environmental disaster should their rulers not be chosen by the will of Heaven (and just because they're chosen doesn't mean the rulers are actually competent). The protagonist is kind of annoyingly whiny in the beginning but she actually gets interesting once she goes axe-crazy in like the third episode.

Next comes stuff available on Crunchyroll's rival streaming service, Funimation. Shiki is basically Salem's Lot set in a Japanese village, with a clear homage to Stephen King in one scene (the bedroom window scene if you were wondering). The series again is based on a novel and it's also about vampires overrunning a small town. Unlike Salem's Lot the series also shows things from the vampires' perspective. King never showed his vampires hiding in terror from bloodthirsty lynch mobs or begging for their lives from their former neighbours as they're dragged into the sunlight. There's one particular scene where a vampiric little girl is being chased by a burly bearded vampire hunter shouting for her death which is just uncomfortable to watch. Although let me just say that the character designs are, well, unique, let's say. But the story is aces. And the book series was written by the same author of The Twelve Kingdoms.

I'll probably remember some more later on. I know there are a few non-action series I haven't covered, mostly because my work day is almost done and I'm not staying late just so I can talk about anime some more.

Anyway, a question for you all out there: Funimation has Serial Experiment Lain and Texhnolyze on their service. I know they're important in a historical sense, most notably in how they influenced The Matrix, but how do they hold up today? Still good or perhaps they'd appear clichéd by now?

Okay, one recommendation of a non-action anime written on my commute home:

My biggest surprise in recent anime discoveries has been Oreimo, aka My Little Sister Can't Be This Cute. I had written it off as borderline wank material but my brother kept insisting I should try it out. And yes, there's fanservice, but not the sexual kind (okay, there's a gratuitous panty shot in the second episode).

The series is about a high school guy who discovers that his otherwise perfect overachiever of a sister is addicted to pornographic computer games, specifically the subgenre of incest porn where the male protagonists nail their younger sisters. He understandably freaks the fuck out, especially since his sister hates his guts. Then he discovers that his little sister is into the porn for its emotional content, which is to say that she's enamoured of the idea of having a little sister if her own.

The series is one of the few anime that shows being into geek shit is actually not a mainstream thing in Japan. The fanservice, then, is in the show's depiction of the little sister as the ideal otaku: well-adjusted, popular, and good-looking. Actually I can see that she's more like the otaku's ideal girlfriend, like an independent invention of that male nerd fantasy, the girl geek. And there's even an episode where the sister defends her hobby to her judgmental father.

The fantasy of the series, the yearning that informs every episode, is the desire for acceptance. Well, they'd also the fantasy of a girl who appreciates the misunderstood target audience, which I will acknowledge as not something I care about. But once you can see what the series was going for then perhaps you might be able to appreciate the story for itself.

As always, your mileage may vary.

Seriously. I cited it specifically because it is often raked over the coals for its pretentiousness and its often gratuituous use of philosophical references and lack of cohesion. It has a less good reputation than Texhnolyze for these reasons but to me it was a far more entertaining series because it had fun characters and interesting stakes. Is it a mess? Sure. But it's not a boring mess.


In my defense I only recommended Welcome to the NHK! to a beginner. It explains any and all of its references fairly thoroughly, it's not invested in otaku-culture-for-otaku-culture-sake the way other Hikikomori shows are... and people who don't know what a 'Hikikomori' is will have that spelled out.

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is an acquired taste, and one I'd never claim to fully get (as steeped as it is in reference humour, and not just otaku stuff - the some of the style of the show consciously recalls Japan's Taisho period; it once had an opening that obliquely referred to a UFO death cult, and so on) but if I didn't include it on the list of favourite shows - not my list of recommendations to newbies - I just felt I'd be lying. As uneven as the series can be - and it's incredibly uneven in places - it's one of the few anime comedies I just unabashedly dig.

Honestly it took me a while to warm to Cowboy Bebop. It was like the third time I tried it that I really got it. I'm not saying you definitely should give it another shot, but the fifth episode is one of the best so there's that.

Totally this.

I've recently watched <b>Attack on Titan</b>, basically because my boyfriend forced me to watch it at first, but then I got addicted. It starts off mostly dull, but with an interesting premise. Then HOLY SHIT it gets good in the first major arc. It doesn't sustain the same quality for long, and it definitely has its issues, but that first arc is worth watching. My biggest gripe with it is that it isn't finished yet. They only produced 25 episodes so far, and there is still a lot to happen.

Good idea Sarapen. On that note here's a fan made trailer for Mushishi:


And here is a scene (with subtitles) from the imaginative Tatami Galaxy:

I haven't kept up with any anime for years now and everything seems different. Like whenever I hear or read people talking about anime it all sounds like this:

At this risk of sounding like a Buzzfeed article, this...times two...plus 12.  I watched a fair amount of stuff in high school and college, but now I have no clue what any of the shows are that people are talking about, unless said show existed as a comic first, because for whatever reason while my patience for watching anime dropped off steeply post-college, I continued reading Japanese comics.

Has anyone watched something called Ruin Explorers? I apparently taped it off PBS ages ago and never watched it.

Man, everyone and their mother were recommending this to me back when I was anime-ing all over the internet, and I was bored by it. It was gorgeously animated, but I felt like it was the most cliche plot imaginable. I just couldn't understand why people were watching it. I don't want to oversell how much I didn't like it; it's not the worst thing I've ever seen and I didn't hate it exactly. I think I was responding more to the hype than the show. I watched all 26 episodes so it's not like I didn't give it a shot.

Although I definitely prefer pretty shows to crude shows, I realized recently while watching Rick and Morty that writing is way more important to me than art style. Earth Girl Arjuna was another stunning, beautifully animated show that I actually hated. I thought it was vile and hate watched through it.

I could understand if you said that the series was too slow, since I'll admit that the plot doesn't move that fast in certain parts, and I'll also admit that the fantasy part was less interesting than the political conspiracy and ordinary life parts, but I'm unsure what you mean exactly when you call the writing cliched. I didn't think it was particularly egregious in that department, especially in light of the absolutely shitty anime I've watched because I wanted to squeeze all the value out of my Crunchyroll subscription. Could you elaborate? 

Yeah, I saw that news just this morning. I've only watched a couple of episodes from the second half but I'm missing the original opening already.

I would honestly love to, but I must have seen it over 5 years ago and I can't remember anything except being bored it by thinking it was vastly overrated. It's by no means terrible, and compared to a lot of shitty anime I can see how it can shine through. Again, I thought the animation was gorgeous. But I've largely focused on seeing the cream of the crop, and Moribito just didn't compare to the things I was seeing at the time. 

In accordance with prophecy, and also with the discussion Douay-Rheims-Challoner and I had on Shoutbox, I'm listing anime I'm considering watching for feedback on whether they're sponge-worthy from you fine folk. For almost all of them I barely know more than the short blurb that shows up on the show's info page on Crunchyroll or Funimation. Gotta say, listing them all out makes me realize that there's a metric shit-ton of anime on my to-watch list.

Dennou Coil

Pupa - This one is funny because the little I've read on this show leads me to think that it's big on body horror, whereas from the promotional pictures one might think it's a teen romance series. Particularly telling is that on Crunchyroll it's rated 2.5/5 stars when the worst and most insipid crap gets 4-5 stars. To make a movie analogy, I assume viewers try the show thinking it's Amelie and discover it's actually Re-Animator. But I still haven't seen an episode, so tell me more.

Beyond the Boundary

From the New World

Watamote

The Eccentric Family

Another

Chihayafuru

Kyousougiga

A Certain Scientific Railgun

Guilty Crown

Buddy Complex

Corpse Princess

Robotics;Notes

Chaos;Head

Full Metal Panic

Haibane Renmei

Kanon - I'm iffy on this one based purely on the art but the 'mysterious town of amnesia' angle intrigues me. Isn't there a Borges story about this?

Origin: Spirits of the Past

Project Blue Earth SOS

Tokyo Ravens

Utawarerumono