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Gar For Archer said:
Just read Gantz after hearing someone on Youtube talking about it. Overall I found it enjoyable but had the following key issues (spoiler'd just in case):
1. I felt it was never clearly established what their weapons were capable of. A lot of the times it felt kind of arbitrary whether or not a monster would actually get damaged by their guns/katanas, outside of the fights where they specifically strategize and find a monster's weak spot.
2. There was a whole stretch in the middle that just felt out of place. Basically starting with the introduction of the Kato lookalike who puts on a black man mask and shoots up a train station to harvest more fighters, and ending with the vampire arc that never really went anywhere. It's especially egregious because the inciting incident of the climax is literally just a timer, so you could really cut out this whole middle section without really losing all that much. I liked the beginning and I liked the end, but this stretch in the middle really bogged down the story with stuff that didn't really seem to matter.
3. Everyone just seems so ridiculously casual about "terrorist attacks" happening a few times a week in Tokyo, and multiple people being straight up killed in a school, including two instances of two entire classrooms being completely slaughtered. It's just kind of jarring to see school scenes after that more or less play out as if nothing happened.
4. The actual ending was kinda corny with Kurono facing off against the (giant) alien king in single combat for the fate of humanity.

Most of all though, I felt like the whole last arc is how Iseyama wanted the Kingdom of Marley twist to be like in Attack on Titan.
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Just an FYI, Gantz has another series called Gantz:E, it's based in the Edo Era.
 
Cabelaz said:
What do you guys think is Nasu's best work?
I'm gonna say Tsukihime
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I like Tsukihime and FSN but they also have big flaws which makes me think that once I get to Kara no Kyoukai(I'm still undecided whether I want to watch the anime first or read the novel fan translation) I will probably end up finding it better out of the main ones that I know of if the quality stays consistent.
 
Gar For Archer said:
Just read Gantz after hearing someone on Youtube talking about it. Overall I found it enjoyable but had the following key issues (spoiler'd just in case):
1. I felt it was never clearly established what their weapons were capable of. A lot of the times it felt kind of arbitrary whether or not a monster would actually get damaged by their guns/katanas, outside of the fights where they specifically strategize and find a monster's weak spot.
2. There was a whole stretch in the middle that just felt out of place. Basically starting with the introduction of the Kato lookalike who puts on a black man mask and shoots up a train station to harvest more fighters, and ending with the vampire arc that never really went anywhere. It's especially egregious because the inciting incident of the climax is literally just a timer, so you could really cut out this whole middle section without really losing all that much. I liked the beginning and I liked the end, but this stretch in the middle really bogged down the story with stuff that didn't really seem to matter.
3. Everyone just seems so ridiculously casual about "terrorist attacks" happening a few times a week in Tokyo, and multiple people being straight up killed in a school, including two instances of two entire classrooms being completely slaughtered. It's just kind of jarring to see school scenes after that more or less play out as if nothing happened.
4. The actual ending was kinda corny with Kurono facing off against the (giant) alien king in single combat for the fate of humanity.

Most of all though, I felt like the whole last arc is how Iseyama wanted the Kingdom of Marley twist to be like in Attack on Titan.
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I don't think Oya planned even half of the shit in that series but it's funny how the story still went more sensibly and gracefully than Attack on Titan did. Yeah though your points are all valid. I always bring up the vampires when I'm talking to people about the middle of the series lol. It's not that it isn't entertaining anymore, but he clearly gives up on a lot of what he was building up because he was more interested in getting to the aliens. It feels like a different series at that point. I know the aliens were established from the beginning but I preferred when they were strange inhuman and unknowable, this is just a standard invasion from a very human like sentient species. Even the horrifying parts were mostly stuff humans would do anyways, and the series already had enough humans doing cruel evil shit. Though maybe that itself was a breath of fresh air from having stranger more unknowable antagonists? It had been going on a long time I guess.

Xenomorphs Are Cute said:
Just an FYI, Gantz has another series called Gantz:E, it's based in the Edo Era.
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It's good but holy shit is it slow. I'm gonna give it a year or two to build up chapters. I hope he doesn't get bored and rush an early ending like Gantz:G.
 
Trashfire Garbagefuck said:
I don't think Oya planned even half of the shit in that series but it's funny how the story still went more sensibly and gracefully than Attack on Titan did. Yeah though your points are all valid. I always bring up the vampires when I'm talking to people about the middle of the series lol. It's not that it isn't entertaining anymore, but he clearly gives up on a lot of what he was building up because he was more interested in getting to the aliens. It feels like a different series at that point. I know the aliens were established from the beginning but I preferred when they were strange inhuman and unknowable, this is just a standard invasion from a very human like sentient species. Even the horrifying parts were mostly stuff humans would do anyways, and the series already had enough humans doing cruel evil shit. Though maybe that itself was a breath of fresh air from having stranger more unknowable antagonists? It had been going on a long time I guess.


It's good but holy shit is it slow. I'm gonna give it a year or two to build up chapters. I hope he doesn't get bored and rush an early ending like Gantz:G.
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'
One more issue I forgot to bring up is that the art can get seriously hard to follow sometimes. Some of the fights have the black-suited heroes fighting spiky knobbly-skinned black monsters in the middle of the night in fast-paced, motion-blurred action panels. Combine that with the relatively realistic way Oya draws faces and the breakneck pace at which new characters are introduced, killed off and brought back to life, can make the story a bit hard to follow at times without going back and rereading the last chapter.

--

Regarding the story, I honestly thought he was building up to giving the vampires a more important role after the Osaka arc, where it comes out that they're apparently allied with the aliens (and are most likely of alien origin themselves), but instead the two vampire characters literally just fuck off after that fight and are never seen again. I think it would've been interesting if they were revealed to be somehow responsible for the Giant Aliens' arrival, given their shared propensity for the consumption of humans. Given that they're the product of nanobots, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that the Giant Aliens had sent the nanobots over to indoctrinate some humans to their cause in order to prepare Earth for their arrival. That would neatly tie them into the setup for the final arc.

I really liked the Giant Aliens as the "final boss". In order for the characters' "they're just like us" realization to have an impact with the readers, having the enemies actually look like us (...just enough to engender empathy) is kind of necessary. Like, I'm not gonna speak for anyone else, but I kinda felt genuine sympathy for the first mostly-human-looking alien they hunt down who goes into a mad berserker rage after they brutally murder his son whereas it's much harder to empathize with the HR Giger nightmare that crawls out of the thousand arm buddha statue, or the boss crow monster, or the 20 story tall axe-headed talking brontosaur, even if they're all technically going through the same situation. It would be hard to rationalize not destroying the alien mothership if it had been filled to the brim with these horrifying, unknowable monstrosities, and I think the "stranger more unknowable antagonists" role is handily filled by the intensely creepy God Alien / Gantz originator species that sates my appetite for cosmic horror.

--

Probably the funniest thing about the manga is that the plot can essentially be summed up as, "Fuck off we're full, illegal aliens go home!"

Moguro Fukuzou said:
Old comment but Ouran is one of my most loved series to this day and I'd recommend reading the manga afterwards since the anime doesn't cover the whole thing. The director for the anime Takuya Igarashi is a favorite of mine, he has a very clear style that is seen through a lot of his works, like his use of giant arrows to point to things (Ouran, Soul Eater, Bungo). He apparently did the Doremi series and Ashita no Nadja, the latter I've had on my ptw list for a while now.
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I just got the manga box set NIB for $70, looking forward to reading through it this weekend. Did a cursory glance of some of the changes and tentatively I have to say I feel like I prefer the direction the anime went with Kaoru and Hikaru explicitly not getting into a love triangle with Haruhi, an ending that leaves it ambiguous who Haruhi ends up with, and the incorporation of Renge as a recurring gag character. But hey, the manga is much longer, so I'm sure it'll be able to sell me on the original version of the characters/story.
 
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Gar For Archer said:
Regarding the story, I honestly thought he was building up to giving the vampires a more important role after the Osaka arc, where it comes out that they're apparently allied with the aliens (and are most likely of alien origin themselves), but instead the two vampire characters literally just fuck off after that fight and are never seen again. I think it would've been interesting if they were revealed to be somehow responsible for the Giant Aliens' arrival, given their shared propensity for the consumption of humans. Given that they're the product of nanobots, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that the Giant Aliens had sent the nanobots over to indoctrinate some humans to their cause in order to prepare Earth for their arrival. That would neatly tie them into the setup for the final arc.
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That would have made the plot progression perfect. You could still have the the surprise of the invasion happening so suddenly but the overall story would feel more connected.

Gar For Archer said:
I really liked the Giant Aliens as the "final boss". In order for the characters' "they're just like us" realization to have an impact with the readers, having the enemies actually look like us (...just enough to engender empathy) is kind of necessary. Like, I'm not gonna speak for anyone else, but I kinda felt genuine sympathy for the first mostly-human-looking alien they hunt down who goes into a mad berserker rage after they brutally murder his son whereas it's much harder to empathize with the HR Giger nightmare that crawls out of the thousand arm buddha statue, or the boss crow monster, or the 20 story tall axe-headed talking brontosaur, even if they're all technically going through the same situation. It would be hard to rationalize not destroying the alien mothership if it had been filled to the brim with these horrifying, unknowable monstrosities, and I think the "stranger more unknowable antagonists" role is handily filled by the intensely creepy God Alien / Gantz originator species that sates my appetite for cosmic horror.
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That's a fair point. Though I think the onion alien also does the unknowable thing well too. he's just barely understandable enough to evoke empathy but otherwise still impossible to communicate with and both he and his son's behavior is only similar enough to normal human behavior to give it an uncanny valley effect. that trick continues throughout the series and I love it, though I would have liked more enemies that did both at once like onion dad and onion son. on the other hand the giant aliens are simply human. Not that I didn't like them. I still thought they were done well. The relationship Kurono and that teenage girl one was particularly interesting. For all my complaints I loved phase 3 the whole way through. Even the last battle felt appropriate to me. It made sense for the last battle to be a straight up duel rather than a traditional battle for survival against a bunch of monsters. I feel like a proper duel gave it more finality, and it made sense from the perspective of the giant alien's top warrior since his whole civilization was fucked anyways, all that's left to fight for is honor. Any complaints I have about the series are fairly minor compared to how good it is overall.

Now if the main character arcs weren't satisfying I might have been annoyed. I loved watching Kurono gradually transition from someone who used to be a good person but let his own emotional lazyness devolve him into uncaring nothing, into someone with actual feelings again that has people he cares about. He's not even evil or anything he's just a selfish dick without much purpose in life at first. He basically has to be traumatized repeatedly into caring about people other than himself. I like when he first meets his best friend from elementary school again and he's genuinely surprised when the guy reminds him of the good person he used to be. And he doesn't just magically become a better person after realizing that, like in real life it's a long gradual process in either direction, with a few big moments spurring you forward or backward. You come to this series for the crazy bloody fights but there's a surprising amount of heart to the characters.

Gar For Archer said:
Probably the funniest thing about the manga is that the plot can essentially be summed up as, "Fuck off we're full, illegal aliens go home!"
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lmao I never even thought about it that way.
 
A Random said:
What are good series about sports, and by that I mean actual sports and not the bullshit magical soccer they call Inazuma Eleven, or bullshit fake sports like ping pong, lacrosse, or figure skating? [I kid, of course, I'm sure there's awesome series about any of these, but I would rather watch something either fun or amusing.]
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Recommend these manga
REAL (wheelchair basketball)
Ashita no Joe (Boxing)
Rookies (baseball)
Touch (Baseball)
 
Atatata said:
So apparentally, the Act-Age author got arrested for touching middle schoolers while bicycling, wtf.
www.animenewsnetwork.com

NHK: act-age Story Writer Tatsuya Matsuki Arrested on Suspicion of Committing Indecent Act with Minor (Update 2)

Middle school student alleges Matsuki touched her inappropriately while walking in Nakano ward of Tokyo
www.animenewsnetwork.com www.animenewsnetwork.com
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I'm late by an actual second. Fuck. But I will contribute in a way possible

Japanese article, cause fuck ANN.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20200808/k10012558471000.html

Her exact age isn't known but she is a middle school student (12-15 years of age).

The incident occurred on June 18th, around 8PM. Matsuki touched and harassed a middle school girl. Approximately 1 hour later he harassed another girl. Matsuki’s age is 29

After the police received a report about the first incident, he fled by bicycle. The Metropolitan Police Department analyzed security camera footage and came to the conclusion that both cases were connected.

Tatsuya Matsuki was arrested by the Metropolitan Police Department. Matsuki has also admitted to the allegations presented by the Japanese Metropolitan Police.

Act-Age is trending #1 in Japan just minutes after the announcement.

Act-Age Volume 13 which was previously set to be released on October 2 has been [removed from Shonen Jump’s release schedule.

Act-Age is now trending #1 worldwide.

English version of the article: https://imgur.com/a/ObcOjLx
 
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New trailer for Spring Song today.
I'm beyond ready for Kirei VS. Shirou
 
I got reminded lately by one of the worse fucking ending I've ever seen for a manga. The manga is The World God Only Knows. I'll spoiler the ending though it's really one of the cases of the quality dipping massively as it progresses with the ending itself being over way too quickly. Hopefully I haven't forgotten too much:
So the manga is about a guy who played dating sims and needs to get girls to fall in love with him or they lose their lives. About a third of the way through the plot introduces a new character who's the main character's former childhood friend and they pretty much inseperable for the rest of the series. Near the ending, the manga decides to have an actual conclusion who's the girl the main character is really in love with and it's a girl that, while not being a complete non-entity in the comic is quite close to that.
Besides coming out nowhere, the most infuriating thing about this decision is that it feels like an unwarranted twist ending that goes against actual character relations in the manga without really justifying it.
It's sort of like Re;Zero with Rem, but that at least happens relatively early in the story and Emilia is an actual important character rather than a character that feels like a throwaway.
 
Atatata said:
So apparentally, the Act-Age author got arrested for touching middle schoolers while bicycling. Sucks for the artist, that shit was on its way to getting an anime.

www.animenewsnetwork.com

NHK: act-age Story Writer Tatsuya Matsuki Arrested on Suspicion of Committing Indecent Act with Minor (Update 2)

Middle school student alleges Matsuki touched her inappropriately while walking in Nakano ward of Tokyo
www.animenewsnetwork.com www.animenewsnetwork.com
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Rough month or so for Jump. Large number of big series ending/ended (KnY, Haikyuu, Neverland, etc) and now one of their biggest ongoing ones is killed by the author being a pedophile sex pervert (not named Watsuki). Cherry on top is HxH which just broke its own hiatus record with its 81st issue missed (https://twitter.com/WSJ_manga/status/1291301426786959360)
 
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