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Post by sarapen on Jun 18, 2014 13:13:03 GMT -5
The first promo for that show was a crossover with Queen's Blade, which is really all you need to know. Actually I have no idea about Queen's Blade but I did watch the first episode of Aesthetica of a Rogue Hero and it was just terrible in an unentertaining way, instead of terrible in an addictive way like Valvrave the Liberator or Total Eclipse.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jun 18, 2014 13:59:10 GMT -5
sarapen You have no idea about Queen's Blade? Oh my sweet summer child... It's the porniest T&A-ing-est of anime fantasy series this side of outright hentai.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jun 20, 2014 7:56:10 GMT -5
So, this may be of interest: This month, the Shinchiro Watanabe/Yoko Kanno series Terror of Resonance got a new, longer preview that shows much more of what's going on. Creepy kids, angsty lighting, and buildings detonating in lethal terrorist attacks: And on the anime's Japanese website there are some sample tracks from Yoko Kanno's soundtrack for the series, which will be released on the 9th of July, mere days after the series' premiere on the 5th.
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Post by sarapen on Jun 22, 2014 22:06:30 GMT -5
Well, I finally saw the Steins;Gate movie. It's nice to have Kurisu be the time traveller this time. Ryan Britt was right, men are usually the ones playing god with the time stream, probably since men are the primary actors in a lot of fiction. I do wish the explanation for deja vu had more technobabble and pseudoscientific hogwash behind it and less "emotions will overcome the barriers of the multiverse" handwaving mysticism. You know, something Star Trekky about brains being quantum computers or some shit. Kind of like how I originally thought the anime was going to be like Primer. Still, it's okay if you liked the TV show. I feel like I missed an episode or OAV or something, though, because I ended up getting spoiled online by finding out that there's a story where Kurisu gets assassinated by Mr. Braun's kid travelling from the future. Is this only from the game?
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jun 23, 2014 6:50:32 GMT -5
sarapen Haven't seen the Steins;gate movie, yet I kind of gave up on Steins;gate's purported more logical attitude to time travel during the whole Mayuri must die every time arc. The series took time travel seriously right up to the point it'd be more melodramatic to not.
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Post by Lemminkainen on Jun 25, 2014 1:11:10 GMT -5
So, this may be of interest: This month, the Shinchiro Watanabe/Yoko Kanno series Terror of Resonance got a new, longer preview that shows much more of what's going on. Creepy kids, angsty lighting, and buildings detonating in lethal terrorist attacks: And on the anime's Japanese website there are some sample tracks from Yoko Kanno's soundtrack for the series, which will be released on the 9th of July, mere days after the series' premiere on the 5th. If anyone mentions Haiji Sawada I'm gonna scream
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Post by ComradePig on Jun 30, 2014 17:04:11 GMT -5
Let's get some good OPs/EDs in here:
Sora No Woto, which I began watching yesterday
Of course, one of the greats, Cowboy Bebop
Welcome to the NHK
WCW's delightfully strange ED
Watamote's inventive ED
Noragami
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Post by sarapen on Jun 30, 2014 18:26:45 GMT -5
So that's how you want to play it, ComradePig? Okay, let's go for it. High School Girls ending (a.k.a. Girl's High on Crunchyroll)The show is about a group of friends at an all girls school. I like how the girls are all dancing awkwardly and in character, like actual high school girls fooling around. It's thematically appropriate since the series is about showing high school girls in their horrible, horrible truth (how disgustingly dirty they can let themselves get when there are no boys around, how frank their discussions of menstruation can get, etc). But the manga was better, the anime never had the time or the will to explore everything the manga did. Plus I think the anime version never really took off. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya endingThis one also has dancing, but I think this is more technically impressive since the closing for High School Girls was clearly rotoscoped, whereas this is pure brute old-fashioned drawings. Well, I'm pretty sure they use computers, but creating movement from scratch is always harder than copying an existing sequence. Samurai Champloo openingThis show had style out of the wazoo. I don't think the story quite reached the level of the art but at least the opening is good. The Boondocks openingWhile we're at it, I did also like this opening, but thinking back it was more the music than the animation. But an opening is an audiovisual experience so I think having good music can elevate so-so animation.
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Post by ganews on Jul 1, 2014 7:26:31 GMT -5
That's right, I un-ironically enjoyed this.
And with a name like "Maximum the Hormone!" you'd better believe I had to find some more songs by them, too.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jul 1, 2014 11:16:48 GMT -5
ganews Love or hate the Death Note OPs and EDs, they suited that show's nihilism kind of perfectly. Well this is certainly not a subject I have thought hard and long about. Ah I'm not kidding anyone. I'm going to deliberately limit myself from OPs I haven't posted already (so no Lain, even if I do love Lain.) First off the earwormy jazzy badassery of the OP to Gunsmith Cats! Eden of the East has one of the most cleverly animated EDs I have seen: The memorably melancholic op to Gunslinger Girl: And while the series never had an OP, I did love From The New World's ED: Because I must include a Shaft OP, Arakawa Under The Bridge has one of their very best: And c'mon, there's a reason this one's a classic (infectious song, memorably edited visuals):
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Post by sarapen on Jul 1, 2014 12:10:06 GMT -5
Okay, this is bizarre. Youtube recommended to me three other anime that use the same ending sequence as High School Girls. I'm fairly certain that High School Girls came first, so I assume the studio was just reusing some of the work that they'd put into a failed series. For inventive openings I would put forward Bakemonogatari and its sequels. It actually has a different opening for each story arc and each one is chock full of symbolism you can only understand once you've watched the episodes. Anyway, since we're bringing up guilty pleasures I wanted to include a video of the opening for Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse, but it seems the forces of copyright have demanded that the song be removed from Youtube. It's too bad because it perfectly illustrates that the show is for fetishists of military hardware and large breasts. I'd have been fine if the show either just focused on the military porn or went all in and depicted actual sex instead of the juvenile "tee-hee boobies" thing it was going for. Anyway, if you want to check it out go to Crunchyroll and skip to the 30 second mark. It also seems that you can't embed the opening of Durarara for some reason. Well, you can watch it on Youtube for yourself. Here's the opening for Black Lagoon, at least: Sometimes I think this would make a great live action show but the story is set all over Southeast Asia and arranging all of that would probably be too expensive for TV. UtakoiI actually just finished watching the first episode for this. It appears to be about a famous anthology of Japanese poems, the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu. Basically the show is an anthology series which explicates and creates a story from each poem. The meaning of each poem is even explicitly spelled out for the benefit of the audience. I was kind of iffy about trying this out since poetry is one of the hardest things to get across in translation - personally, I think understanding poetry would be the highest level of fluency possible in learning another language. But a TV show is about story, not poems, and the two stories covered in the first episode are refreshingly mature about romance and sex. I couldn't help thinking how many peasants historically laboured so that these bored aristocrats had the time to write poetry and bone each other but I suppose that's a critique that's outside of the text.
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Post by sarapen on Jul 1, 2014 12:25:43 GMT -5
Douay-Rheims-Challoner I have to say that I've never seen Evangelion, but I did just watch the first episode of From the New World. I was not immediately enraptured. I'm going to keep watching, though. I assume that if this show were a penis, we would call it a grower and not a shower?
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jul 1, 2014 12:39:13 GMT -5
sarapen Well as I discussed in my post about it FTNW does have a bewildering, alienating first episode. Just trust me that not only will all that stuff rammed at you make sense, quite a lot of it will start making sense just a couple of episodes in. And another issue with linking OPs is indeed availability. The animation for the Kemonozume OP is unavailable, and that is a shame as it is one of my favourites for all of Yuasa's series. Wasn't able to get the OP to Madlax, which, like the series itself, I suspect I enjoy far more than I should. That out of the way here is the peppy OP to Madoka-esque misery-fest Bokurano:
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Post by Deleted on Jul 1, 2014 15:36:39 GMT -5
Gravion opening more for song than visuals.
Blue seed opening
Baccano opening
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Post by ComradePig on Jul 1, 2014 15:51:47 GMT -5
Okay, this is bizarre. Youtube recommended to me three other anime that use the same ending sequence as High School Girls. I'm fairly certain that High School Girls came first, so I assume the studio was just reusing some of the work that they'd put into a failed series. For inventive openings I would put forward Bakemonogatari and its sequels. It actually has a different opening for each story arc and each one is chock full of symbolism you can only understand once you've watched the episodes. Anyway, since we're bringing up guilty pleasures I wanted to include a video of the opening for Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse, but it seems the forces of copyright have demanded that the song be removed from Youtube. It's too bad because it perfectly illustrates that the show is for fetishists of military hardware and large breasts. I'd have been fine if the show either just focused on the military porn or went all in and depicted actual sex instead of the juvenile "tee-hee boobies" thing it was going for. Anyway, if you want to check it out go to Crunchyroll and skip to the 30 second mark. It also seems that you can't embed the opening of Durarara for some reason. Well, you can watch it on Youtube for yourself. Here's the opening for Black Lagoon, at least: Sometimes I think this would make a great live action show but the story is set all over Southeast Asia and arranging all of that would probably be too expensive for TV. UtakoiI actually just finished watching the first episode for this. It appears to be about a famous anthology of Japanese poems, the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu. Basically the show is an anthology series which explicates and creates a story from each poem. The meaning of each poem is even explicitly spelled out for the benefit of the audience. I was kind of iffy about trying this out since poetry is one of the hardest things to get across in translation - personally, I think understanding poetry would be the highest level of fluency possible in learning another language. But a TV show is about story, not poems, and the two stories covered in the first episode are refreshingly mature about romance and sex. I couldn't help thinking how many peasants historically laboured so that these bored aristocrats had the time to write poetry and bone each other but I suppose that's a critique that's outside of the text. You could definitely make a live-action, neon-tinged Black Lagoon show or movie with the proper budget, though I imagine it'd lose some of its more absurd elements in the process and that of course would be a damn shame. Utakoi is sitting on my queue at the moment, along with many many other things granted, but I'll get there in due time. The first 2-3 episodes of From the New World definitely have some clunkier expositional stretches, but it gets very good, very fast. Flaws aside, the whole Monogatari series is definitely a treasure trove of great OPs. Here's the two from Nise, the second of which is ridiculously ear-wormy, though for some reason it's sped up a bit in this video.
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Jul 1, 2014 16:12:38 GMT -5
AHHH AHHH AAAHHH AAAAHHHHHH! FLUSH THEM! SHOOT ME! SHOOOT MEEE! THE HORRORRR THE HORRRRROOOORRRR!
I donât think the TI wants me posting pictures of a tank full of cloned soulless fourteen year-old girls. Plus what you really need is a gif where they turn and smile at you. Iâm shuddering just thinking about it.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jul 1, 2014 16:29:55 GMT -5
Jean-Luc Lemur I don't even have to ask to know what you mean (if you want to know what the above spoiler is for it is for Evangelion .) It gets so much worse, especially in the movie finale.
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Jul 2, 2014 17:14:56 GMT -5
Aww, do I have to watch the movie finale, Douay-Rheims-Challoner? I just watched the final episode and The final stretch of the series has a nice emotional arcâalthough everyone applauding Shinji is a bit cheesy, itâs just such a relief to see all those faces, even if theyâre only images in his head, and to know heâs found some means of self-actualization. I wasnât expecting to be reminded of Woody Allen watching the Marx Brothers in Hannah & Her Sisters, after his character fails to commit suicide and figures out that he doesnât have to spend the rest of his life in an existential funk. I think Iâll have to wait a while before tackling the movie.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jul 2, 2014 17:29:31 GMT -5
Jean-Luc Lemur Yeah the movie ending goes a very different direction. Waiting before watching it is likely wise - like the series itself the movie is enormously divisive.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 3, 2014 20:32:48 GMT -5
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jul 4, 2014 3:40:01 GMT -5
So the anime summer season is upon is. I'll probably check out a couple of interesting shows and get back to you about them but my first anime priority is Knights of Sidonia, which just ht Netflix today.
Posting to let you know Netflix dubbed the series (that might interest @taxman.)
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Post by thebigmeh on Jul 4, 2014 22:08:42 GMT -5
I just checked out the first two episodes of knights of sidonia and got a very evangelion meets battlestar galactica/soylent green vibe from it.
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Post by flowsthead on Jul 4, 2014 23:18:43 GMT -5
Yeah Beck! I freaking love Beck. I haven't seen the anime since the first time I watched it, but I wanted to know what happened so I read the manga, and at this point I've reread it at least 5 if not more times. It's just fucking awesome. Aww, do I have to watch the movie finale, Douay-Rheims-Challoner? I just watched the final episode and The final stretch of the series has a nice emotional arcâalthough everyone applauding Shinji is a bit cheesy, itâs just such a relief to see all those faces, even if theyâre only images in his head, and to know heâs found some means of self-actualization. I wasnât expecting to be reminded of Woody Allen watching the Marx Brothers in Hannah & Her Sisters, after his character fails to commit suicide and figures out that he doesnât have to spend the rest of his life in an existential funk. I think Iâll have to wait a while before tackling the movie.
The film is a must. End of Evangelion and the last two episodes of the series are like two sides of the same coin. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I can't believe the Honey and Clover opening hasn't been mentioned: That was one of the most inventive openings I've ever seen. While the other ones mentioned have some good music sometimes and good animation, this one actually felt like its own arty thing.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jul 6, 2014 4:43:58 GMT -5
In space, nobody can hear you hold hands.So, some early impressions of the season and also Knights of Sidonia. Sidonia is a full CGI anime series and as such character movement takes a while to get used to and is occasionally distractingly stiff, and as a space war mecha series it sometimes feels like it has more characters than it knows what to do with and a mildly convoluted backstory that can get a little difficult to follow plus a ton of jargon getting thrown around. And while it's not really become a harem series it does have a fairly standard anime protagonist - talented but inexperienced and yet still getting all the coolest toys - who somehow gets himself entangled in romantic quadrangles with very little effort on his part. There is a bit of fanservice. ...and that's about all I have to say that's negative (and some not very, what's a mecha series without pointless jargon?) The art style and designs for the show are simply spectacular and the animation is the best CGI I've ever seen for an anime TV series, with a muted and cinematic look for the interiors of Sidonia that is significantly above par. Add to this fluid action sequences, an alien menace they fight that is suitably monstrous (and in the best anime tradition of body horror from Akira's Testuo down, they are messy, invasive things with vicious tentacles), a fun if familiar space war narrative, and some interesting twists to the 'so why is the bland protagonist getting all the toys?' question, throw in some mild mindfuckery, and really thebigmeh's description of the series as Evangelion meets Battlestar Galactica is not far off (though the design of the series feels like a modern take on classic 1980s mecha to me, especially the spacesuits.) I enjoyed it a lot. Whatever my top anime series of the year are gonna be, Sidonia will likely be one of them. But yeah what about new shows? Well of the ones I've checked out thus far, Tokyo Ghoul and Aldnoah Zero have a degree of promise. This remake of Face/Off got a bit lost in translation.Tokyo Ghoul is essentially a show about a nice young man who gets bit by a ghoul and all of a sudden discovers normal food doesn't satisfy him and he has a craving for human flesh. It's a moody, dark, Gothic series with a vague promise of a dark sense of humour about its subject matter. Best premiere I've seen thus far. In space nobody can hear you tighten a corset.Aldnoah Zero has all the excessive expository and theme-building dialogue one would expect from a series penned by Gen Urobochi (Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Psycho-pass) but also has the good old fashioned heavy handed anti-war spiels of many a TV show about robots punching other robots. Still the exposition suggests that as per usual a lot of thought has been given into constructing this show's universe (in this case, an alternate history where humanity found portals on the Moon that led to Mars, which had already been colonized by humans centuries before who love 19th century fashions and are now ramming their gigantic not-Gundam-colony things onto Earth to conquer it...) so this might be the thing to follow if, after binging Sidonia, anyone still wants a regular mecha fix. However it could also completely blow up into something unwatchable, like last season's Captain Earth, or Urobochi's last mecha series Gargantia on the Verduous Planet (which, unwisely, had Urobochi write the first and last episodes and then let a team of writers try to connect those two points.) Oh and Hiroyuki Sawano is doing the music, thus far it's the same kind of bombastic orchestral score he used for Attack on Titan and Kill la Kill, but with some Mass Effect-y synth touches. Pictured: Death Gun, a character I am sure is nuanced, carefully developed, and probably has a tragic backstory....oh, yeah, and Sword Art Online is back. There were things I actually liked about the first season - for all its myriad flaws and its rather unwarranted blowup into being one of 2012's big anime hits - but I struggled to find any of them in season two's premiere. Still looking forward, obviously, to Terror of Resonance.
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Post by sarapen on Jul 6, 2014 9:48:04 GMT -5
Aldnoah Zero has all the excessive expoistory and theme-building dialogue one would expect from a series penned by Gen Urobochi (Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Psycho-pass) but also has the good old fashioned heavy handed anti-war spiels of many a TV show about robots punching other roobts. Now that you mention it, I can't think of a giant robot anime, or an anime in general, that isn't anti-war or anti-violence. The shows that luxuriate in violence, like Black Lagoon, make clear that the characters are psychologically damaged in some way. The shounen fight series are either about making friends (like One Piece), are comedic (like Ranma 1/2), or have a stick up their ass and continually remind the viewer that the hero is only fighting reluctantly (like Bleach). I suppose the atomic bombings and the enforced postwar pacifism are ever present in the Japanese consciousness. Though two series that glory in war and violence are the right wing wankathons Total Eclipse and High School of the Dead. One of the characters from the latter show even remarks, as he's using a baseball bat to bust open a cash register, "You know, this is pretty awesome". And he's right, it would be goddamn sweet to be running wild in a zombie apocalypse with a Humvee full of guns and big-tittied girls in high school uniforms. Or being encased in a mechanical womb and using swords, cannons, and other phallic objects to unleash death and figurative semen on hordes of invading aliens. Of course, there's no such thing as zombies or alien invaders, which is to say that there are no faceless Others one can morally slaughter; thus, in anime, the depiction of violence simultaneously demands an apology for its use. But it seems that it takes a right-wing dickwad to not give a shit about such distinctions.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jul 6, 2014 10:40:51 GMT -5
sarapen Right but what I mean is stuff like 'war is bad' is a huge thematic part of, say, a lot of Gundam anime. There is an ambivalence about violence (with characters emotionally and psychologically scarred from their experiences and dying left, right and centre) that one finds in a lot of Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino's work. Add this to the apocalyptic planet-falls wiping out entire cities off the map and the whole thing had a kind of Gundam headspace. I agree about the wartime and postwar influences though.
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Post by sarapen on Jul 6, 2014 10:49:46 GMT -5
sarapen Right but what I mean is stuff like 'war is bad' is a huge thematic part of, say, a lot of Gundam anime. There is an ambivalence about violence (with characters emotionally and psychologically scarred from their experiences and dying left, right and centre) that one finds in a lot of Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino's work. Add this to the apocalyptic planet-falls wiping out entire cities off the map and the whole thing had a kind of Gundam headspace. I agree about the wartime and postwar influences though. Weren't many sci-fi anime of that period consciously grappling with the legacy of WWII? Like Star Blazers, which was basically the Pacific war set in space. And by now that pacifism has trickled down to their descendants. Though thinking about it further, I guess Mazinger-Z, Daimos, and Voltron had little to say about anything except "explosions are cool" and "buy our toys".
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jul 6, 2014 10:58:53 GMT -5
Star Blazers (or Space Battleship Yamato) does deal with WW2 rather literally with an actual Japanese WW2 warship being sent into space to save the day (and the show's iconic opening sequence beginning with a rusted, ruined hulk of a ship that soon slouches toward rebirth in galactic adventure to a stirring male chorus.)
I'm personally partial to Space Runaway Ideon, whose notorious finale was an inspiration for Evangelion a decade later.
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Jul 6, 2014 18:59:52 GMT -5
I'm personally partial to Space Runaway Ideon, whose notorious finale was an inspiration for Evangelion a decade later. HAH! Speak of the devil angelâI watched End of Evangelion earlier this evening. Thoughts on the film (and to a lesser extent the show) beneath spoiler tagâit ended up article-length without me really intending it: Well, itâs not so much a movie as it is two extended episodes, although the ârealâ thematic break actually ends up somewhere in the new episode 26. Itâs a bit jarring, having only seen the rather cathartic television finale a few days ago, to see Shinji back in his ultra-depressed state over killing Kaworu. But things get into swing quickly enough, and when NERV gets attacked itâs nice to get back in the old swing of things, seeing the old graphics and hearing the old gearing-up-for-battle music. And itâs nice that we get Asuka really kicking ass in the way that we were always told she could (to Bach, no lessâreclaim the Baroque!). Of course it reverses quickly (and the emotional whiplash is great), but it was a real fuck-yeah moment. flowsthead mentioned that the two finales were pairs to the same coin, and heâs right on thatâwe do know in episode 25 that something very terrible and final happened at NERV HQ (Misato having been shot against a wall in particular), but since weâre in the midst of Instrumentality we donât really know what happened in the outside world. Here we get to see it. Ritsuko and Rei tell Gendo off (the latter more effectively). In a nice twist, we get to spend a lot of time with the three computer techs and Fyutsky, who completes his journey from vaguely menacing second-in-command to being the protagonist of his own little storylineâtheir running commentary from NERV HQ helps keep the increasingly weird orbital stuff grounded. Less well-served was MisatoâI think that sheâs a big, underrated part of what makes the series work, and Iâd go so far as to call her the deuteragonist or even co-protagonist of the entire TV showâshe tends to take initiative and show the most agency. Maybe itâs due to being closer in age to Misato than to Shinji, but she often struck me as the driving force of the show, gathering everyone together and trying to piece together what was really going on. And by the end of the show ends up one of the most, maybe even the most, layered and human of all the characters. And Misato does show a lot of growth in the short span hereâsheâs connected with her maternal side here (although in a very Oedipal way by the end). But thereâs a feeling that sheâs sacrificed by the story, and that her arc ends with her protecting him. That doesnât sit well with me (though in the confines of the story sheâs splendidâthe philosophy of life she outlines to Shinji is, almost word-for-word, my philosophy of life, which was passed down to me by mother, who also has a thing for coupesâŠoh God, you canât watch this show without stepping on a psychological mine, can you?). Anyway, the first story pretty much ends when everyone pops into primordial goo (everyone say âawwâ for Maya and Fyutsky), a little while into the second half . Then we go back into a more inner story, albeit one mediated more by more trippy visualsâand interspersed live actionâthan collage of familiar animation like we got in the show. While thereâs some element of repeat from the final episodeâthe importance of loving yourself and not shutting off othersâwe also get a very explicit note that you canât live in a fantasy world. This seems like both an addendum clarifying that the previous ending wasnât intended to be read as solipsism, but also a critique of obsessive fandom in general: âGet a life!â in the words of Bill Shatner. I looked up my my reflections on the first eleven episodes of Evangelion from almost exactly a year ago (press âload moreâ four times so you can see both the comment and the discussion) and I expressed my reservations about some of the more fanservice-y seeming elements. I was first exposed to the show years ago with Asukaâs introduction, which struck me as over-the-top pervy when I first saw it, when I watched it as part of the series I started to wonder whether it was satirizing both teenage views of love and the way these sort of shows tend to be designed to facilitate a bit of perving. Flowsthead told me that a lot of it would seem less so as the show progressed, and he was right to a degree. While the show, particularly early on, tried to have it both ways, the show ended up depicting sexuality as a very complex thing, and did a much better job of showing the emotional entanglements that go along with it than lots of more âadultâ entertainment. And itâs also good at showing naĂŻvetĂ©. I did a bit of reading on the show after finishing the series, and saw that Asuka and Shinji are partly gender-reversed versions of your typical hotshot pilot and meek quasi-romantic partner. In this context, some of Asukaâs more eye-rolling stuffâthe breast-size:temperature mini-lecture, for instanceâmakes more sense. Itâs almost an aggressive male approach to sexuality, but coming from a girl, which only stated to come into focus with her over-long kiss. Although much is made of the filmâs opening scene, itâs pretty clearly in the context of Asukaâs first appearanceâalerting the audience to their gaze, though in a way that leaves a lot less room for having it both ways. And thereâs no little schoolroom fantasy hereâreal life isnât like that. Of course, the show develops Asuka far beyond that, and sheâs very well utilized in the first part of the finale. Misato and Ritsukoâs arcs get brutal closure. Rei gets her big âIâm not a dollâ moment. But after Instrumentality, the story is essentially all Shinjiâs. This was true of the final episode too, but there we were preceded by a sort of shared-mind group therapy session among the four leads in the Episode 25, and the fact that there wasnât much in the sense of traditional narrative meant that we got of voices contributing. And we just find out in Episode 25 that Instrumentality happened, but it happened to everyone, so thereâs no real sense of Shinji as chosen one. Weâre explicitly told the fate of all life on Earth is in Shinjiâs hands in End of Evangelion, though. And after Instrumentality it is essentially all from Shinjiâs POV. And its not the minds of his colleagues and remembered experiences that guide him so much as it is Rei/Lilith and Kaworu/Adamâhe has privileged access to the angels here. Some of it works, like the playground, and some of which works less well, like the re-imagined version of Asuka learning of Kajiâs death that results in Shinji choking him. Although there are a lot of arresting imagesâRei and Shinji interpenetrating on the orange-and-red sea, for instanceâI actually think the original, cobbled-together episode 26 worked better. Since it was heavily montaged from previous series it served to highlight experiences the audience shared with Shinji, making it more effective. And the more ensemble-oriented nature means that we get a better sense of both the interlinkedness of humanity under Instrumentality and the potential to forge connections as individuals. Upthread I compared the ending of Evangelion to the scene in Hannah & Her Sisters where Mickey gets over his fear of death by laughing at Duck Soup. End of Evangelion isnât nearly that positive, even though it carries the same message as the series finaleâif I were to sum it up in one line, itâs âbut we need the eggsâ (just so no one thinks my only reference point for existentialism is Woody Allen, I actually have read some Sartre and a bit of Kierkegaard; plus a ton of Camus, though I donât know whether he counts in this case). No applause for Shinji when he wakes up. Asuka being there seems to imply that she had a similar experience to Shinji, even if we didnât get to see it. Anyway, we get the chokingâwhich really perplexed me, but the best I can think of is Shinjiâs just confused and reaching for anything to prove the reality and some kind of reaction from Asuka. And he gets it: âHow disgusting.â Theyâve re-established contact for the first time since the series, but they still have a lot of work ahead of them. That touch to the cheek, though, was legitimately touching. I think Evangelion, the TV show and its original ending stand perfectly well on its own, in my opinion. Although I know thereâs stuff I missed out on or was slow to catch due to my lack of familiarity with anime ( Evangelion is literally the only anime TV show Iâve seen, and all the Japanese animated films Iâve seen were from Studio Ghibli, so Iâm really not familiar with anime as a whole at all), I think I benefited more from not having any expectations and going in with an open mind. We have so many cinematic and television apocalypses today, so it was great to see a show that took apocalypse, really the Apocalypse, more seriously. Early on I thought the Biblical stuff was just set-dressing, and even though it played a role to a great extent I was right. Though the show expertly sustained sense of mystery to the end, I think my initial impression was rightâthe Biblical stuff was just set dressing. The showâs really about people, how they alienate themselves, and how they try to repair the damage. The depth isnât in whatâs in the showâs version of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but in the characterization and quality of the ensemble. Even in End of Evangelion, which in my mind faltered a bit on this (with the exception of Fyutsky & co. and Gendo), even the tertiary supporting cast is still growing in some way. While itâs nice to see the âoutsideâ narrative of episodes 25 and 26, I donât think itâs entirely necessary. End of Evangelion is, in my mind, more a complement than a completion. The action has real punch to it, thereâs some legitimate expansion the themes of the show, but none of it feels strictly necessary. The additional explanations or clarifications of the machinations surrounding NERV and technology are fun, theyâre not theyâre not the focus of the show. It also felt at times like End of Evangelion was really straining for grandeur, which is a feeling I never got from the series (on a personal note the heavily red-tilted palette during the Instrumentality/Black Moon scenes didnât totally work for me either). I much preferred the less grandiose, ânow the world is like thisâ approach of the show to the self-impalements, swirly ghosts and arrays of crosses. But a preference for one thing doesnât mean tossing aside another. End of Evangelion isnât necessary, but itâs still a worthwhile watch and recommended. Random Thoughts: *Although a lot of the mysteries of the show are more-or-less solved by the end, weâre still kind of in the dark about what Gendo was up toâYui was depicted as basically 100% sympathetic, and it seemed to me like Gendo was trying to undermine SEELE from within with his own plan. I also liked the implication of Gendo essentially being what Shinji would grow up to be if he didnât get an attitude adjustment. *Major props on the design of the mass-production Evangelions. The wings folded up in a manner that reminded me of Greek icons, but those snouts were absolutely horrifyingâbig teeth and no eyes (i. e. windows to the soul).
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Post by sarapen on Jul 6, 2014 23:48:21 GMT -5
I watched most of Knights of Sidonia tonight. I'll finish off the last four episodes tomorrow. Some scattered thoughts follow. First, Douay-Rheims-Challoner, what's this? A bit? The justification for the women getting nekkid parts is so flimsy it's almost shameless. Seriously, "I have to accidentally flash you my tits because I'm photosynthesizing"? It reminds me of the decontamination chamber's gratuitous sexiness in Enterprise. I'll note that so far I haven't seen any men pulling down their pants so their penises can photosynthesize more efficiently. I do have to give props for the show using the nosebleed cliche in a scene out of a classic 80's anime, which goes: dude accidentally sees naked female flesh, is implied to be aroused, gets nose bleed, then is violently reprimanded by the female spied upon. It's so hokey it's almost original. The show actually reminds me of Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, not just for the heteronormativity - there's a third sex in the future, people, why are we not exploring this? - but also for how pleasantly mindless it is to binge watch. Eight episodes went by in a flash and now it's after midnight. When did that happen? I think the cliches just help everything be absorbed faster, you don't have to use so much brainpower figuring out relationships, back stories, or motivations. Of course, the show does have weightier ideas than Gargantia, but yeah, it's very BSG in the whole "we're some of the last humans in the universe and we're out of water, we owe it to the human race to survive by drinking our own piss". Also, another thing in the plus column: the show doesn't hold the viewer's hand about the cloning thing. There's no clunky expository scene spelling out how that happened or why, you're just supposed to fill in the blanks yourself. Thanks for that, show. Also, the thing about security using only swords and bows, which I guess is either to avoid puncturing holes in the walls that lead into outer space or because they've forgotten how to make anti-personnel weapons. Or they prefer not to have guns in the first place, though a homemade one isn't actually too hard to make as long as you can get the gunpowder right, which is also not impossibly hard either. Anyway, I know the guy who wrote the manga has been at it a while but apparently the only thing of his I read is his one-shot Halo comic about how the Sergeant Apone lookalike survived the end of one of the Halo games (I think number 2).
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