ITT overrated anime
this show was mediocre as fuck
>>141057812
An overhyped, overrated, inflated-by-details anime of Mary-Sue dialogues and bland battles. When somebody says "the show doesn't get good until 20+ episodes in" you know there's something wrong.
As you can already tell, nothing good can come from me writing this review. Legend of The Galactic Heroes is beloved on this site, a great deal call it a classic, and here I am writing about it being only "average". I have not finished the series: I can't, and this review is intended to tell you why I can't, but moreso, why others like me, who bought into the hype, shouldn't waste their time (a LOT of time).
The story of Legend of the Galactic Heroes follow the protracted war between the The Galactic Empire and Free Planets Alliance with a stunning degree of depth. You will know why the war started, who started it, why they started it, and why it mattered to the characters. What you might wonder is: why does it matter to you? This is where the main problem with LoGH arises, and the first problem with the story: this is a series of details, not entertainment, not development, not provoking ideas, but details. This is where LoGH gets its staggering 110 non-filler episodes. It is a slow crawling assault of information, mostly useless. If you enjoy fictional history, this will not be a problem for you. You'll even be treated to several episodes of literal fake history lessons, in a documentary-style format, with interviews from fake historians and everything. Having fun, yet?
>>141057922
The second problem with the story is actually a problem with its characters. They fall into only two categories: Mary Sues and trying too hard. The main characters, Yang Wenli and Reinhard Lohengramm, can twist probability and reason in such ways that would make the characters in Gurren Lagann blush; they can do no wrong. Yang Wenli is outgunned to some astronomical degree like 1 to 100 most of the time and he wins because of "superior strategy" or "morale". Julian, Yang's boy servant, can also do no wrong. He'll commandeer warships with little or no effort. They don't try to disguise this, as every character who loves Yang, Reinhard, or Julian will survive, and everyone who disagrees with them, regardless of how justifiable their reasons are, will die, at least in the first half of the show. This is where trying too hard comes into play. Look no further than the character Poplan, where you'll notice it first. He's horny, and he will appear in no scene without reminding you he likes women and that's his only trait. Oberstein will go through every scene looking suspicious only to have absolutely no payoff. An even greater insult to this cast is Fredrica Greenhill, who just blatantly admits she's useless aside from making sandwiches and tea. We get it, these are one-note characters. You cannot care about any of them aside from the aforementioned Mary Sues, making over half the cast uninteresting. Most of them just serve as vehicles for the three main characters to spout more of their ideals.
How does "morale" make a difference, anyway? Does morale make lasers stronger or weaker? These are space ships; morale has no bearing on the functioning on mechanical constructs, morale barely has an effect on conflict even in our time. Everything you heard about the tactics in LoGH is a joke. They use simple ideas like "Circle around behind them" or "Don't tell them about our main fleet", and apparently, that's very impressive to a lot of people.
>>141057812
would have been improved by an all-loli cast honestly
>>141057955
You won't need to worry about this, though, action is sparse in LoGH because they prefer to drink, eat, stare out windows, converse, and philosophize for most of their screen time away. You ever wondered how Yang feels about democracy? You're gonna know. You're gonna know over and over again.
The third issue with the story is that it's entirely implausible. There's only two ways for the enemies to cross into each other's territories, and they never really explain why other than "we'll die". Wars are lost and the remnant survivors are still implausibly able to combat the enemy for the sake of plot. This would work in a show that didn't take itself so seriously; it doesn't work in LoGH. Also, in the future, wars are waged with battle axes and armor in space ships, lasers are less lethal than bullets, and everybody lives and looks the exact same way that they do now. LoGH exists in some strange mindset of the future where we got into space (somehow), developed some very limited mass-communication, and all other technology stayed in the Middle Ages. The show Star Trek did it better in the 1960s, and even changed the world we live in with its ideas (like the wireless communicator AKA cell-phone), what is LoGH's excuse? It doesn't have one, it's just not creative enough. What's strange is that one would think, given the absurd amount of historical and political babble, that this show would've given equal care to imagine life in a futuristic outer space, but it doesn't.
While the creativity and story of LoGH is sickeningly weak, its artistic merits were more worth my viewing. Classic and orchestral music scores carry the scenes well, though the scenes themselves look bland; characters are barely animated, even compared to other anime of this era. It's very stiff, not that it needs to be extremely fluid for characters to sip drinks and talk.
>>141057995
There's some shocking scenes of gore randomly spread about, too, but the action mostly comes down to these short bursts of lasers, explosions, and blood effects. It lumbers monotonously on the dance floor, but it does it to a classy sound-track, at least.
The main attraction of this show is, apparently, the dialogues between the Mary Sues. Admittedly, they are pretty entertaining for a good 50 episodes. They touch on a lot of subjects that are relevant even more in today's world than they were then, which is surprising and delightful. If you keep up on current events, or even politics in the slightest, there's a lot of meat for you here to dig your teeth in. This raises the question, though: why aren't you just reading about politics? The ridiculous set-up of this story's conflict, and the sheer "greatness" of its main characters makes taking its subject material seriously impossible, yet it practically commands you to.
Let me sum up, and re-phrase that last part. The main attraction for Legend of The Galactic Heroes is the ability for one to say "I watched something from the 1980s that nobody's heard about or cares about". Then one can say "It was mature and intelligent, despite the fact I learned nothing". This show is a waste of time as entertainment, this show is an example of what NOT to do with a show about the future, space, philosophy, politics, and the human condition. There's a reason only MAL and hipsters care about LoGH, and everyone else knows Star Trek and Star Wars. Star Trek (classic) and Star Wars (classic) had vision and creativity that inspired generations and scientists. LoGH has 110 episodes nobody watched, flat characters nobody would recognize or identify with, and a literal universe of wasted potential.
>>141057922
>>141057955
>>141057995
>>141058035
>autism
reminder that no one on /a/ can refute this review
all they can do is sputter and scream about "bait" or "plebs" like the tards they are
Monster-what a mess of a series with that terrible ending.
Evangelion-pretentious garbage with vague pseudo religious symbolism
All moeshit
>>141057812
If you want something good, then you'll have to download Crest of the Stars, buddy.
Space Brothers.
Watching that show was like digging for diamonds in a big pile of poop. You eventually find them, but it took too fucking long and now your hands are stinky and covered in poop.
Hellsing, Twilight except shit.
Darker than Black? More like Browner than SHIT
Neon Genesis Evangelion, makes about as much sense as a pedophile in a retirement home.
Beck, if I wanted to watch shitty bands, I would go see Tool live.
One Piece, if I wanted to watch a good shounen I would watch Naruto.
Eureka 7, more like Gurren Lagann 2.
Vinland Saga, shitty manga and even worse anime. 2 episodes in and I fell asleep.
The Girl who Leapth through time? I wish she leapt through a meat grinder.
Koi Kaze, if I thought incest was wrong I would stop having sex with my little sister.
Golden Boy? If I wanted to see a genius get horny, I'd videotape myself masturbating.
Mononoke, if I wanted to see a crossdressing, homosexual pothead wearing make-up, I'd move to Brazil.
Kannon? If I wanted to cry, I'd look at how my life is now.
Claymore, looks like a dick, strong beginning and middle but a cheesy ending.
Elfen Lied, Deep, complex well developed characters that are not afraid to tell it like it is, with a strong ending
>>141058171
More accurately Space Pirate Captain Harlock if you want to cut through all the bullshit and only enjoy the best.
You're welcome, OP. You're welcome, /a/.
>>141058336
>naruto
>good shounen
Hope this is bait.
gunbuster
here's a list of good things I can say about gunbuster
>time dilation of space is a neat concept, although its psychological effects weren't explored as much as they could have been
>the Inazuma Kick is a pretty dope attack, doesn't make sense that it's some secret attack only Noriko can do but whatever
>the crossed arms pose is sweet
>it influenced many superior shows in the future, such as NGE, diebuster, and TTGL
>>141058171
Thanks man, is it better than that titanic disappointment that is LotGH?
>>141058336
why are you watching One Piece in the first place, same for Naruto?
Wasn't even aware Vinland Saga had an anime.
Claymore is awful though. It's pretty much a for girls Berserk doujin.
>>141057812
What Steins;Gate does can accurately be described as pandering. It panders with such gusto that the anime has been confused with a masterpiece by the fanbase that is spellbound by being spoon-fed memes and eccentricity. People have heaped so much praise for this show that the glaring blemishes of its characters and pacing are neglected from acknowledgement. Time to attempt to change that.
The story's protagonist has about as much trouble picking a name as this show has picking a genre. Okabe "Hououin Kyouma, Okarin" Rintarou is a supposed mad scientist who operates in a quaint apartment, which he so endearingly calls a lab. Mayuri Shiina, his personal sidekick, mindless husk, and jailbait also works with him, along with his fat hacker, otaku, and token pervert Itaru Hashida. They call it a lab, the viewer can call it purgatory, because the next eleven episodes consist of listening to these characters talking about noodles, bananas, anime, and internet memes.
Anyway, somewhere amid mind-numbing dialogue, the maid cafe replete with cat ears, perverted jokes, and other hijinks, they invent a way to send text messages through time and change the present. Finally, what follows is the science-fiction thriller that was teased by the first episode. Still, this is time travel, so you basically know what to expect from the story: something that is relatively pointless as a whole, because time travel means no development is permanent. Unfortunately, while the pace does recover and redeem itself from its slog of a first half, its characters and setting do not.
>>141059197
Okabe, Mayuri, Itaru, and later Kurisu, a blatant tsundere, are the most transparent characters you can find in anime not just because they're generic, but because they exist solely to milk the audience. Okabe is the least offensive of them, but for half the show he doesn't act like a human. He is a walking weird-machine there only to bring a contrasting spirit to the otherwise extremely monotonous cast of characters. 50% of all dialogue scenes can be summarized in three steps: Okabe says something whimsical, Kirisu protests him, then Itaru puts him down sarcastically. More distracting than this obvious formula is that Okabe is really only there because anime fans tend to view themselves as eccentric and awkward geniuses, themselves. Hence, every time Okabe gives a villainous laugh or says something extraordinary it's because absolutely nothing else is interesting about the scene, not as a result of an emotion or thought like a human being.
Speaking of humans, why didn't one bother to write a personality for Mayuri? Oh, because she's only there to be cute for the audience and to be harassed by Itaru, who's the most unforgivable sin of Steins;Gate and the sole reason the dialogue scenes are so unbearable. The writers must have gone down the checklist of demographics and saw they were missing a character who spouted memes, so they threw in a big fat guy who says them and just happens to be tech-savvy. Not only that, but Itaru's a pervert, as well. How convenient to have so many comedic cliches in one character. Unfortunately, fat, try-hard, obsessed virgins are extremely difficult to like, and comedy doesn't work when you've already heard the punch-lines, kind of like how tsunderes don't work when that's their only trait. Kurisu, who's a red-headed mate for Okabe, plays hard to get for the entire show until she decides not to anymore. Anime fans enjoy when an elusive, intriguing mate succumbs to their geeky charms, right?
>>141059229
Her eyes are as empty as her character.
Did I say empty eyes? Well, that's the trademark art style of this masterpiece. Since the characters are empty, anyway, the artist apparently decided to give everyone in the show empty, soul-less features. Naturally, this extends to the colors of the show, which have all received the Harry-Potter treatment. That is, every last bit of color and energy has been siphoned from the show to make it more stylish. Everything is a pale blue or bright yellow, which gives Steins;Gate a presence of light and darkness, which works well when paired with the unique, doll-like appearance of many of the characters, but also makes things pretty drab to look at, too.
So, are you a nerd who needs to live vicariously through characters who do nothing but try to ingratiate themselves to you? Perhaps you're thinking time travel is cool, but you'd really like it in the form of a slice-of-life anime with no drama? Maybe you're tired of characters who have reasons for what they do, instead of just doing things because they're in an apartment and it seems wacky to be a mad scientist? Or maybe you want characters to talk nerdy to you because your anime club's been extra stinky and pretty full of hormones lately? Well, Steins;Gate might be for you. After all, it's certainly trying to be.
The main argument as to why Panty & Stocking is a masterpiece are all embellished ways of saying "funny," "it's a parody," and "cool art." Some people go as far as to say that Panty & Stocking is actually genius scripting - a juxtaposition between today's current moe anime standard and hardcore "American pop culture." I've even come across the explanation that Panty & Stocking is "a new level of anime," one that doesn't require intricate or meaningful plot, characters, or story - essentially an anime that thrives on emotion and it's acute sense of humor.
That my friends, is complete bullshit.
Panty & Stocking is an anime that relies on swears, penis jokes, and violence as its selling point. Now many anime have capitalized on at least one of these points before and have succeeded (Detroit Metal City, Seitokai Yakuindono, and Baccano! in respective order). So Panty & Stocking tried to do all three simultaneously. I found this not only moronic, but offensive. Never before have I actually been ashamed of watching anime. I am a male, and I have even strapped myself to a chair and watched such titles as Boku no Pico, Bible Black, the Ghost Stories dub, and a high amount of other borderline disturbing anime and media with radical content and ideas and not ever have I felt what I felt when watching Panty & Stocking.
I felt stupid.
>>141059314
nice MAL review m8
>>141059314
Panty & Stocking insulted my intelligence and grouped me in the level of humor that one would find in such riveting pieces of American glory like "Family Guy". I openly started Panty & Stocking with hopes that it would verily mock the tropes one could find in American media in a way that had not been done before. What I received was a trashbin of repetitive storylines combined with zero-dimensional characters that did nothing but yell about phallus's and excrement. The attempt on grasping American culture disgusted me. Not once did I find the use of references to famous American films appropriate. Not only did the references have nothing to do with the episodes at hand, I felt that Panty & Stocking tried to take such references and use them as a tool of manipulation trying to coax viewers into thinking that Panty & Stocking was legitimately a smart piece of composition.
I can easily see where people would be misled, that is with the art looking similar to various cartoons in America, Panty & Stocking must be a parody! Not at all. In fact, Powerpuff Girls had a stronger plot to begin with, and to even group this anime together with that cartoon would be slander to Craig McCracken. The animation may be new to Japan, but it has been seen before in cartoons, and it's been seen better so all exclamations like "The art is weird so it's good!" and "Different art just isn't appreciated!" are false. Gainax, one of the most acclaimed and profitable animation studios in Japan, truly abused the art style to boot. Watching only a few episodes you can see where corners were cut (which is extremely noticeable in episodes 10, 11, and 12.) A recap in a thirteen episode anime, should never be necessary. How is it that anime such as Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Monster, and Glass Mask, spanning over fifty episodes each never used a single recap episode in its main series, yet Gainax has the balls to put one in a thirteen episode /comedy/ series? Truly outrageous.
>>141059413
A lot of anime fans are goth, emo, edgy kids who want to see "dark" things because they feel like outcasts. Death Parade is the Jerry Springer, Judge Judy, Steve Wilkos, Maury Povich of anime; it's a tabloid talk show in anime form. In other words, this is a show where trashy human beings fight over their problems for your entertainment, proving anime creators will create any shlock they can to get the edgy anime audience.
Your host and protagonist, Decim, exists as a game master, a judge over the dead people who end up in his court. They play games like darts, slowly revealing their past sins and competing for the fate of their souls, inflicting punishment on each other in the process. However, he is no Judge Judy, because he fails immediately in his role of making these animated monkeys throw excrement at each other. By some baffling error, they made him an emotionless albino. Ding, there's your cold protagonist, edgy kids, eat it up! Decim's not the only unimaginative character who inhabits this afterlife, though. He's joined by a cast of other arbiters, who can be promptly put into archetypes including goth loli, and fish-out-of-water goth vixen.
Like daytime talk shows, the driving force of the show is the development of the characters, usually into a volatile argument. In Death Parade's case, the driving force lies on two fronts: not only do the deceased develop into pathetic, sinful human messes, but the arbiters try to as well. Naturally, the only development available for Decim is for him to finally experience emotion, and for the other arbiters to become conflicted of their role as judges. This should've been the main story, and the main driving force, not a sideshow to the deceased's development.
>>141057812
Using a TV Trope as a criticism.
>>141059516
Thus, Death Parade ends up creating itself as a show where the engagement story is dependent on episodic throwaway characters, and not the main characters you see frequently. Also, although daytime talk-shows on actual TV are notoriously fake, the actors are physically there, hitting each other with chairs tangibly. Anime characters playing darts to give each other stomach cramps is not tangible. The characters are fake, their feelings are fake, their emotions are fake, their stories are spontaneous and without meaning or purpose to any overarching structure. There's no volition for these characters, no sense they existed before, and no sense they're real. Hence, there's no investment to anything between any stretch of episodes.
The only shining virtue of this program is the smoothness of its art, but being a show for edgy kids, they put a pale filter on everything. Everyone dresses in black, white, and otherwise muted colors or lack thereof, except when they're bleeding, of course. It's a show only recommendable to people who truly want to see fake people suffer unrealistically, with no real message at the end. Death Parade is an anime Jerry Springer Show hosted by an albino bore. It goes nowhere, and there's nowhere for it to go; the only credit you can give is that it truly feels like 12 episodes of limbo
>>141057812
It's pretty good besides from the fleet battles. They're incredibly boring.
>>141057812
Imagine if Dragon Ball Z was actually good, or if Kill la Kill wasn’t so weird.
I feel sorry for this anime. It takes a stupid, pointless idea and makes the best of it. The world has dozens of stories about macho dudes beating up other macho dudes because they don’t agree with their morals. In the worst cases, these stories are filled with overcomplicated fight systems nobody cares about, and silly monologues.
The world of macho dudes who never really die, where time doesn’t exist is a bit tired now. Franchises like Naruto, One Piece and Dragon Ball will outlast the heat death of the universe. It’s bizarre how no author of these mangas pulled a Robert Jordan, but nothing is as bizarre as this anime.
Macho-ness, like most tropes, is bad because it’s boring. The problem with using tropes has nothing to do with sophistication. It’s just that after seeing the same technique for 100 stories, you get bored. You become like JoJo and can predict their next sentences. Bad cliches are used by storytellers who don’t know what kind of story they want to tell. Is it an epic adventure? A silly show about silly people beating each other? An examination of good an evil?
JoJo‘s strength is the focus, unlike all these shows. The anime makes it clear what it wants to be early in the beginning. Then, every single thing that happens connects to that. JoJo wants to deliver a simple story of good and evil. The bad guys are really, really bad. The good guys are really good and charming. If the fate of the world was really in the hands of a macho dude, we’d all be filled with adrenaline. When it’s a bunch of colors on the screen, you need more than this.
>>141059889
Since JoJo knows its purpose is to deliver excitement, it will do everything it can to raise the stakes. Bad guys don’t come back after being defeated just because you can milk the show a little more. They come back because it raises the stakes, makes us wonder how they can be defeated. The anime establishes that everyone knows what everyone’s next move is, which is exciting because we wonder when will one of these will fail.
Battles in anime always have pre-determined results. Every battle in anime is a man playing chess against himself. So a battle is only as exciting when the writers can challenge themselves, when they find ways to overturn their own schemes. The set-pieces drive the battles, not just meaningless shots of people using fists. Each battle is a progression of moves. It’s an odd way to describe a fight but they’re like a chess game in how every move has a clear influence on what happens next. There’s something thrilling in seeing a person trying hard to beat himself up in chess.
It’s not the animation that sparks up the battle, which is weird. Most of the time, exciting fights are well animated. They have fluid movements that create a kinetic energy. JoJo opts for more still shots, but its set-pieces and beautiful progression saves it.
The art style itself is very old school and gloriously macho. It’s so old-school it’s jarring at first. Everyone has a Schwarznegger build and dangerously low amounts of fat. Even characters who don’t fight look muscular, with square faces and bodies of an endomorph. This style can be ugly. It does suffer from Same Face Syndrome, but they make up for it in other ways. Where it fails to dazzle in character shapes, it succeeds in customes and hairstyle. Every important character has a unique, often elaborate dress style.
>>141059921
In fact, beyond the endomorph build, JoJo‘s version of macho is unique. Perhaps it was common in old times, but today it’s rarer. We now love our heroes rebellious, slightly selfish and enforcing their morality in brutal ways. We want Deadpool and Iron Man, heroes who are only good because the plot requires it. The macho-ness of JoJo is the ‘respectable gentleman’, a man who respects even his enemies. The first part drills this the most, but even the second arc with the rowdy second JoJo has it. Wham is an honorable villain. JoJo duels him fairly and with respect, rather than with malice.
So the characters don’t look gritty and tough. Rather, in the language of 12-year-old kids, they look gay. Their customes are elaborate and decorative. They look like men who are so sure of their macho-ness that they don’t mind looking so ridiculous.
The female design also enforces this weird form of macho-ness. JoJo doesn’t downplay the female’s femininity. In fact, it shows it with all the glory. Although there are no ecchi moments, the female characters look distinctly feminine – lipstick, eyelashes, gentle features. A common problem in battle shounen is that everyone is so macho, the show is afraid of femininity. So besides having longer hair and breasts, the females look like men. JoJo doesn’t need sexuality to remember its female characters are female. It’s a macho series that doesn’t view femininity as a weakness.
For all its fun (and it’s a lot of fun), there’s a glass ceiling it cannot break. It’s a great macho adventure about saving the world, but that’s all there is. It does a lot with its style, but it’s always limited by it. Dragon Ball Z looks pathetic next to it, but JoJo is overshadowed by Kill la Kill. For all of its weirdness and energy, it never becomes as absurd Kill la Kill. It aims there and it succeeds enough to not become useless.
>>141059951
I’ll definitely check out the sequels, but Imaishi’s cartoon prove there is so much more you can do with macho bullshit and saving the world. The fact JoJo keeps up with it and and is still worthwhile is a point for it.
JoJo is excellent at what it does. There are plenty of silly people who think there’s no value in adventure stories about saving the world. It may not be Kill la Kill, but it gets everything else right – the pacing is focused, the art is beautiful, the fights are coherent. It’s the sort of thing that inspires a lot of anime that can’t measure up to it.
>>141059977
>>141057812
To call Texhnolyze one of the most predictable stories is an understatement. The only expectation it defied was the exepctation to be worthwhile. Other than that, this is your typical artsy anime. It beats you over the head with how artsy it is, using techniques that distinguishes it from mainstream anime. None of these techniques distinguishes it from the many ‘artistic’ stories out there. It often looks like an immature, more angsty little brother of Blade Runner or Eraserhead.
Is there a more redundant way to inform your audience that your story is serious by having grey colours and serious characters? Nolan used the same technique in Inception and made a complete fool of himself. He was so focused on being serious that hsi dreams looked like Michael Bay directed them.
The anime doesn’t follow an idea of its own. The directors behind it watched a bunch of art house films, noticed the lack of dialogue in Blade Runner and decided that this is the reason it got the acclaim.
Being serious isn’t going to make me take your story seriously. Halfway through the series and all the characters still act the same. They all present the same variation of the stoic, apathetic characters. Some are less stoic than others, but that’s like saying there’s a major difference between New York Hardcore and Beatdown Hardcore. They more similar than they are different.
>>141058717
hownew.ru
>>141060040
After 20 episodes, the 100th shot of Ichise’s indifferent, emotionless face is hilarious. It reeks of trying too hard. Is the life of people in harsh environments like this? Did the Jews in the Holocaust or the fighters in Sudan had time to just stare off into the distant with a stoic face?
Think of any photograph of a war-torned or poverty-stricked place. Do the people have the privilege of being stoic? No. These photographs are harrowing because they’re full of pain and suffering. These are people who want life and struggle to survive, to find some kind of joy in it. Stories from Holocaust survivors are full of these moments. They’re not stoic but swinging from one extreme painful moment to a small relief of happiness.
The only place that actually is monotonous is your office job and suburban job. Texhnolyze is full of angst, the kind your suburuban dad gets after 20 years in the same job. It’s your boring monotonous pessimism you hear from a teenager when every day is exactly the same.
Actually, comparing this to teen angst is a compliment. Teen angst is an existensial storm of ups and downs, like that Nine Inch Nails album. It can be silly but it’s exciting. Texhnolyze is macho angst. It’s the same thing that fuels Game of Thrones and Cormac McCarthy novels. The old macho fantasy of men in suits not expressing emotions is a big hit now and is often confused with depth. The only surprise is that Texhnolyze doesn’t have graphic sexual abuse (Although we do get a sexy doctor).
>>141060071
You cannot horrify the audience by constantly showing suffering. Humans adapt. When feel something too much we get used to it and our perspective changes. Texhnolyze has the same emotional tone throughout the series.
Bleakness and grimdarkness cannot be leading tones. They’re too narrow. You can use them in certain scenes but unless you’re doing something especially unusual there’s nothing there. You need to contrast it with something. People don’t suffer because they don’t have something. People suffer because they don’t have something that they want.
There are plenty of tragic and dark works out there, but they’re effective because they’re aware suffering doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You don’t have to show a moment of joy. Just showing it can exist in your world is enough. I only have to skim over Serial Experiments Lain to find a shot of girls laughing in bright colors. This is enough to inform me that in the world of Lain, people can be happy.
Some moments have potential to offer contrast, but the mood suffocates it. A sex scene is in dark colors and full of dread. We see a party, but there breaks Hal’s heart. It is a flat line, which means it’s both shallow and dead.
If Texhnolyze found a unique way to express the grimdark cliche, I would have forgiven it. If it would have gone full retard in the Techno-Industrial depart it would be a little fun. While the soundtrack is nice, the scenery never reminded me of Front Line Assembly. The decay gets more focus than the mechanical nature. The focus is on the mood, rather on something that will create the mood. This is no City of Rapture.
>>141060101
The most radical switch from this mood is the action scenes. The anime joins BTOOOM! and Deadman Wonderland by bathing in blood and faces distorting in pain. The show already established a cold, stoic tone. When these scenes kick in, the violence isn’t harrowing. The scenes don’t reveal any pain because we were already beaten the head with pain before. So all they do is take the suffering one step further, showing it more explicitly. Someone should’ve told them that what makes pictures from the Holocaust or Unit 731 harrowing is because we know these are real people. The people in Texhnolyze aren’t real.
There’s a revealing interview with the creators. They said these action scenes were a response to the Shounen Jump style violence, where characters walk away bleeding. The creators wanted to express ‘pain’. If they had any understanding of action films, they would have known they are not about pain. Action anime is about aestheticized violence, about making violence look really cool.
Asking what the creators wanted to communicate, they said they don’t have any idea. They admit things changed as they series went along and that’s it. He hoped that the viewer would feel some kind of empathy or that they will think ‘this might mean this’. Does that sound like a work which involved deep thought?
I did not want the creator to analyze his own work. Still, I expected them to have some kind of direction. Lynch saying he sees absurditiy and weirdness all around him is enough to give you some idea what his films try to express.
If Texhnolyze was a mess of ideas it would still be amusing. If it jumped off from one idea to the next it would at least be there. Not knowing what it’s about, instead, makes for an anime that never builds towards anything. The tone never changes, since they never know what it was about in the beginning so they had no foundation to build upon.
>>141060134
It ends with a big battle and an antagonist who’s a rip-off on Fallout‘s The Master only without the charisma, humor and the depth.
I engaged in a long debate with hopes of finding value. While the person raised a lot of valid points and there is something here about the nature of existence and ‘being human’, it’s not conveyed. I engaged in that debate while watching the last episodes. They’re an improvement and the above-ground is a great idea, but the stoic mood and boring violence overpowered any depth there could have been. You don’t cover depth and ideas with a boring story. Your cover needs to serve the ideas, not obscure them.
Some also told me the characters are not the point, but if this is about humanity they must be the point. You cannot have a story about human nature or existence without characters. Existence and stories don’t exist outside of characters. You can have a story without many things. You can have a story that’s just an inner monologue, but without characters the only thing you can write about is asteroids hitting planets and blowing shit up. That’s just a Michael Bay story without women.
Perhaps I’m an idiot. Perhaps there is something deeper beneath the 100 shots of apathetic and ultra macho faces. Perhaps everyone just jumps on the bandwagon of grimdark and think that if the anime has a serious tone, then we must take it seriously. I’ve experienced plenty of strange and ‘artistic’ stories. Most of them were weird enough to be interesting for a while even if they failed. Texhnolyze is a predictably artsy anime that can’t escape its trap. Even if it says something about existence or optimism, in the end it wants too much to be serious and everything is dead.
>>141060166
Additional content: Style and substance aren't the same, but they're linked together. Texhnolyze does have interesting ideas and ambitions, yes. It does end on a slightly more positive note, which makes in unique in the reality of grimdark stories.
However, the style of the show prevents all of these ideas to surface. There are different personalities, but they are more similar than they are different in their toughness and stoicness. The series tries too hard to set atmosphere, spending too much time on it than other 'atmospheric' works like Mushishi or SEL. Moreover, the atmosphere is incredibly generic. Mushishi has the mysterious, indifferent nature thing going on. SEL has the digital-paranoia going on (Even if it's not very original, it's at least specific). Texhnolyze sometimes points to an Industrial-Apocalyptic decay thing, but most of the time it's just really grim and dark. Lux isn't defined by a specific aesthetic but just a general tone of Really Bad Life.
Texhnolyze is actually my type of anime. I love cyberpunk, post-apocalyptic stories, the theme of technology and progress and weird narratives. I'm a pessimist, so I'm all for dealing with life's harshest realities. Texhnolyze was boring because it wasn't challenging or weird or exciting enough. If Texhnolyze was truly bizarre, I would've forgiven its flaws. Instead, I just felt like I've seen it all before.
1.5 stoic faces out of 5
>>141057812
Kaiji
Mononoke
Kino's journey
My hero Academia
Attack on Titan
Steins gate
Clannad (awful series)
Haruhi
Gintama
All of them.
>>141060774
what anime do you like?
>>141060798
Most of them.
>>141057812
Rather than being about heroic ideals in broad, Shirou's story is about a “beta male” confronting various toxic images of idealized “alpha masculinity” (Archer, Gilgamesh, and Kirei) and rejecting them to become comfortable with himself as he truly is. I will explain these terms in more detail to fully clarify what I mean, and I do understand why people are attached to this story, but it's honestly not a comprehensive examination of idealism versus reality. It's certainly trying to be and easily could have been, but the story's baggage over gender is too heavy for me to read it as applicable to the world outside Kinoko Nasu's head. Stories about idealism should pit the ideal against the real world, but FSN:UBW fails to make its world recognizable enough to be relevant. This isn't going to be a nice review, but I'm not going out of my way to “target” anything but the work itself. This is what the story says, as I've been able to interpret it through now multiple versions. I can no longer refrain from articulating these ideas and confronting them as FSN:UBW goes downhill.
>>141060875
First, I need to outline Shirou's supposed conflict of idealism and how it fails as an adequate exploration of the theme. Shirou is an idealist who seeks to do good no matter how much it hurts him. This is unsustainable, so he becomes a broken, morally compromised person. For convoluted plot reasons, he is immortal, so he decides to commit suicide by going back in time and killing his teenage self. Teenage Shirou gets wise to this, confronts his future self, and then decides to continue on the same path that leaves him a broken shell of a man. This should set up a “hope springs eternal, the future is filled with despair but humanity can endure through kindness and effort” moral, but the show fails to establish an upside to his decision. There are examples of this done right: in Fate/Zero, Kiritsugu's actions kill thousands of people and ruin his life, but he's able to save one child and (we presume at the time) give him a happy life. In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Madoka's actions don't eliminate the need for magical girls to sacrifice their lives in the struggle against entropy. Instead, she performs an act of mercy, giving them painless deaths. These moments are uplifting because they show that human decency can survive in even the most overpowering environments of futility and despair.
>>141059516
A lot of anime fans are just shitty human beings in general. No need to go into paragraphs about it when you can probably witness it in practice just by scrolling this very page
>>141060946
do you mean all the reviews?
>>141058336
>a pedophile in a retirement home
pedos have to retire eventually too
>>141058135
Some of this review is refutable. Battle axes and weaponry are used because of the fear of the Zephyr particles, IIRC. Morale is also a more realistic version of the whole "sudden strength from nowhere" as a team that feels pride in their side and what they're fighting for will certainly do better than those who don't give a shit.
The parts that aren't really refutable are the disguised opinions. I'm not sure if LOGH influenced any modern technology, but criticizing a show for the sake of not coming up with any ideas for technology is kind of a cheap shot. I also wouldn't call someone like Reinhard a total Mary Sue, as he was prone to losses, scandals, andeven died from a sickness instead of the spectacular death battle he wanted. The main draw, for me at least, was the politics and the scandals that occurred, as well as some of the fights with the Rosenritter - those that aren't interested should probably look elsewhere.
Curiously, I wonder what shows whoever wrote this review likes. I'm not going to stoop so low as to poke fun at their favorites, but do they just prefer a faster story or a smaller cast? What qualities do they look for in an anime that makes them enjoy it?
When are the American BD's coming out?
>>141063784
I'm not sure if this is OP, the guy who wrote the reviews in this thread, or someone completely different, but I could get along with you just fine. I was just thinking FMA would be the series for you - and I see that you enjoy that. I like NGE because of the psychological/arthouse-y moments of 25 and 26, as well as the cool robot fights and strange twists. I'm not sure you're the reviewer if you like JoJo that much, yet sort of pounced on it above.
Granted, we'd have some differences - I'm not a fan of straightforward shounen, so something like TTGL doesn't really appeal to me. I also thought 2.0 was a bit dramatic near the end, and not as good as the series.
What I see here is just merely different opinions. Heck, if we met in real life, we could probablybe friends.
>>141063949
the guy who reviewed JoJo is different. His list is pic related
>>141059374
this whole thing took straight out from MAL
>>141064328
You mean all the reviews? yep
>>141064165
Can't say I personally understand why he wouldn't like JoJo. His review seems like he watched the 2012 version and that's it. One of his criticisms is that every character is old-school machosville - an opinion with two flaws (the first being that it IS old-school, originally from the 80's. The second is that this style starts to die down around Part 4 - just compare someone like Giorno to the hulking character Johnathan playing rugby). Perhaps he is just merely unaware? I get the feeling he'd watch a parody of something and not get its a parody. In any case, he should haveread the manga.
Is Digimon Tamers really that good? My friends who actually watched Digimon claim its an excellent season, but I believe that I might need nostalgia goggles in order to enjoy it.
the hell is with all these walls of text, get off your fucking soapbox you nerds, 100 words or less
>>141064500
that's exactly it kek, he only watched t he anime and didn't bother with the manga. & I haven't seen Digimon Tamers myself m8, are the new Digimon films any good?
>>141059951
>JoJo is overshadowed by Kill la Kill. For all of its weirdness and energy, it never becomes as absurd Kill la Kill. It aims there
So whose gonna' tell this neckbeard that Jojo came first?
>>141064677
You'd have to lurk around the Digimon threads when they show up. I watched Pokemon like everyone else did, but never Digimon. It's 51 episodes or so, so it's a small investment, but I certainly don't mind if it's spectacular.
>>141057812
gr8 b8 m8
>>141065477
what don't you agree with m8?
Literally anything Anno was involved with.
>>141066185
>>141066185
Petite Princess Yuucie is severely underrated imo
>>141057812
>>141066734
Funny, I literally just put that on my backlog. That bad huh?
>>141063645
For Ranma? They've been out.
>>141057812
(You)
>>141067232
(you)
SAO
>>141066849
Watch it now and find out. Report back to this thread.
