Anime/Manga - Discuss Japanese cartoons and comics here; NO CULTURE WAR DOOMPOSTING!

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They got fucking J.C. Staff for this, FFS Netflix.

YKW? Fine, if they put the live action show (yes it exists, it's pretty good from what I've heard) on Netflix too then I don't mind this that much. But damn, that looks cheaply made.
I wanna hold out hope 'cause J.C. Staff was behind some pretty funny anime in the past, and Chiaki Kon is a competent director who has put up with crummy animation quality before.
 
The series itself seems pretty bleh. I find the main character unpleasant, the side characters are cute and perky but pretty typical, and they keep trying to make games feel more melodramatic than they need to be. In Saki or Chihayafuru, I could understand why the characters were frustrated to lose a game they spent months practicing for... but to have a character break down sobbing over basic analysis paralysis in a game - outside of one friend my group no longer plays with, that just doesn’t happen.
Nobody gets sent to the Shadow Realm or duels for the fate of the world over Yugioh cards and you don't have to sacrifice your soul/someone else's show just to play certain cards, but it happens on the show anyway.
 
I wanna hold out hope 'cause J.C. Staff was behind some pretty funny anime in the past, and Chiaki Kon is a competent director who has put up with crummy animation quality before.
It looks fun. Am I missing something. It could be worse
 
The umibe no etranger movie rip and fansub is hidden behind a discord group and while getting in isn't hard or anything I wonder if there's legit some ingrained fan culture thing that makes women so much more annoying with how they handle piracy. Like, them hiding stuff behind livejournal groups and passwords so much more compared to men who just openly spread download links and upload stuff to torrent sites.
 
Fuck you for ruining this, Netflix. Fuck you.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=cvZ9thKolOA
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thanks Netflix.
 
Didn't the Haruhi franchise die because they caught Haruhi's VA doing drugs?
Kinda. The Endless Eight fiasco really hurt and her actions were kinda the 2 hit combo that knocked the main franchise out.

She wasn't outright caught with drugs but she did get high on pot with and had sex with a band mate. She then took selfies of them post coitus naked in the bed when the guy was still sleeping/out there high. Needless to say, once they leaked her career was basically over. Both for the drug use and Japan was having one of their big "purity" trends at the time. (When the actors/idols have to remain or appear to be virgins or they are seen as dirty by the fans/industry.)

From what I remember, it was her actor trying to break out of the anime voice acting industry and all the hell that comes with it sometimes in Japan. It's not quite as bad as it was in the mid 00's, but there is a really seedy underbelly in the industry. Lot of ties to the Yakuza and red light districts plus lots of really creepy otaku.
 
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Nobody gets sent to the Shadow Realm or duels for the fate of the world over Yugioh cards and you don't have to sacrifice your soul/someone else's show just to play certain cards, but it happens on the show anyway.
True, though that’s sort of what I was trying to figure out how to explain. In Yu-Gi-Oh, there’s actual stakes to winning and losing, so the drama makes sense. In this show, it felt disproportionate to the stakes to suddenly have the sweeping music and dramatic “we can win if we just believe!” speech.
 
I watched the first 2 episodes of “After School Dice Club”. (Houkago Saikoro)

As a fan of board games, I enjoyed pausing a couple times and seeing how many of the games I could recognize in the various wide & establishing shots, esp without text (or with Japanese text).

The series itself seems pretty bleh. I find the main character unpleasant, the side characters are cute and perky but pretty typical, and they keep trying to make games feel more melodramatic than they need to be. In Saki or Chihayafuru, I could understand why the characters were frustrated to lose a game they spent months practicing for... but to have a character break down sobbing over basic analysis paralysis in a game - outside of one friend my group no longer plays with, that just doesn’t happen.

It’s cute, so I’ll probably save it for a sick day, but not super excited to keep going.

I was curious what they'd do with it myself. but you have to remember it's
a) slice of life / cute girls playing boardgames
b) aimed at people that never played boardgames
c) it still needs to be entertaining enough for said demographic

that's why I could forgive them the embellishing/over-exaggeration (it's not like most SOLs are exactly realistic or deep to begin with) and the character subplots, and imo it does get better when you see some character progression and the problems they face later on. I mean, how would you present boardgames to total normies so they can follow what's happening and it's still exciting to push cardboard and wood around?

there's better stuff out there, but imo it's not that bad (although I gotta admit I'm very tolerant when it comes to CGDCT). and some of the portrayal's are just hilarious when you're involved enough with boardgames to a certain degree, like when they talk about german designers and stuff.

Kinda. The Endless Eight fiasco really hurt and her actions were kinda the 2 hit combo that knocked the main franchise out.

She wasn't outright caught with drugs but she did get high on pot with and had sex with a band mate. She then took selfies of them post coitus naked in the bed when the guy was still sleeping/out there high. Needless to say, once they leaked her career was basically over. Both for the drug use and Japan was having one of their big "purity" trends at the time. (When the actors/idols have to remain or appear to be virgins or they are seen as dirty by the fans/industry.)

to this day I still can't figure out what the goal was with endless eight. if you're nerd enough you'll have encountered plenty of timeloop shenanigans, the whole point is seeing how people try to get out of it. but man, watching 7 episodes and the protagonist literally going "nah, nothing I can do, gonna figure it out next cycle" is infuriating as fuck. unless it was meant as some kind of meta "show, don't tell" how depressing the repetition is, but there's a reason you skip over mundane parts of a story that don't contribute anything.

maybe they wanted to draw more of haruhi & the gang in bathing suits, but then put that stuff in an OVA (although kyoani doesn't do many of those) or do a doujin on the side...

and while I can understand why it's still somewhat surprising to see that nippon has such a stick up their pooper with weed when getting sloshed is perfectly acceptable. but even more progressive countries are still retarded when it comes to that, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised.
 
to this day I still can't figure out what the goal was with endless eight. if you're nerd enough you'll have encountered plenty of timeloop shenanigans, the whole point is seeing how people try to get out of it. but man, watching 7 episodes and the protagonist literally going "nah, nothing I can do, gonna figure it out next cycle" is infuriating as fuck. unless it was meant as some kind of meta "show, don't tell" how depressing the repetition is, but there's a reason you skip over mundane parts of a story that don't contribute anything.
One possibility is that the endless repetition gives more context to Nagato's actions in Disappearance. She's the one who actually remembers every single loop, constituting just shy of 600 years, which is going to break even a data-based lifeform like her and make her want to remake the world.
 
When it comes to art in anime/manga. I always think of Tsukimizu and Dowman Sayman. I ended up reading Girls Last Tour and Shimeji Simulation, the sequel(?) series because of his art and I've been using it as my PC backgrounds for years. His artstyle is so unique that I actively tell people to not watch the Girls Last Tour anime and to read it instead. They aren't even on the same level.
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Dowman Sayman's artstyle reminds me of a more evolved form of Panty and Stocking's artstyle, and it gets pretty wacky with things. If I had an unending amount of money, I would pay for an OVA of The Voynich Hotel that would be able to bring his art out to the fullest.
I was actually super impressed with how faithfully they recreated the scenes in the Girls Last Tour anime, it's pretty much a 1-1 rendition of the books. Though I agree that the art doesn't translate that well to anime. I love the books and art style, and I would definitely recommend you read the series before watching if anyone was interested.

He did hand animate the ED which does a really good job of recreating the style, I could easily watch the whole series if it was animated this way.
It really makes you appreciate just how much effort goes into his drawings.
 
So A Whisker Away was an alright movie, kinda cute. But the Cat Mask Seller was the best part, he was so lively in both animation and in voice-acting that the movie was much more interesting whenever he was on screen, and he's a bit malicious (he's kinda like the cat version of Majora's Mask Mask Salesman, actually). And as it turns out, the dub voice-actor is Keith Silverstein.

A.K.A. Johan Liebert.

:story:
 
So A Whisker Away was an alright movie, kinda cute. But the Cat Mask Seller was the best part, he was so lively in both animation and in voice-acting that the movie was much more interesting whenever he was on screen, and he's a bit malicious (he's kinda like the cat version of Majora's Mask Mask Salesman, actually). And as it turns out, the dub voice-actor is Keith Silverstein.

A.K.A. Johan Liebert.

:story:
Hey, I watched that recently too. It hit a little too close at times with the main problems of the protagonists but it was an uplifting film overall. Pretty decent animation all around.

I actually didn't know it was that VA, so now I'm picturing the Bad End in Majora's mask with cats and him saying "You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?"
 
I wanna highlight something I started reading on a whim: Area 51, which is sort of an action/mystery seinen that takes place in the titular Area 51, which is described as "America's 51st state" which the US military maintains as a containment zone for gods and supernatural creatures. It takes a few chapters to get going (I almost dropped it at the first chapter but gave it another 2 chapters to hook me) and it delves into mature themes without being edgy or explicit, like seinens can get sometimes. The main thing I want to point out is the unique artstyle which is very stylized and high-contrast, very different from most of the manga art I've seen. It's fairly short, about 60 chapters (granted each chapter is 40-50 pages). I'm about 15 chapters in and it's a pretty solid read so far, with the plot just starting to kick in.
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Saotome Senshu, Hitakakusu​

Fujiyama-san wa Shishunki

I know it might go unheard, but I would love it if Japanese anime studios in the future would turn these into an anime. In the past couple of years, I’ve found myself liking and enjoying these mangas for it makes happy to see that more tall and muscular girls are getting the attention that they deserved. The former deals with a martial arts/romance storyline whereas the latter deals more with a slice of life/school life storyline, yet both male MC’s are self-aware and comfortable enough to not let their height get in the way of how these act towards Fujiyama and Yao Saotome.

It reminds of the time when romance mangas were actually fun to read when they mix comedy and school life themes the right way. In my opinion, these were the best mangas of the last decade.
 
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