i'm 5 episodes off from the end of SAO season 1 now
it got . . . uncomfortable. spoilered for discussion of rape themes, also incest, also regular spoilers if anyone cares
Spoiler:
and i was annoyed, cuz the end of the first arc was a real cliffhanger, for once i was genuinely excited for the next episode
then the next episode turned out to be, well, that really gross scene with the horrible creepy rapist character touching Asuna's comatose face while monologuing at Kirito, meanwhile Kirito's sister Suguha has a crush on him BUT it turns out they only *thought* they were brother and sister, actually they are cousins so she figures she's in with a chance
they also really ramped up the fanservice for this arc. during the first arc there was some fanservice, but it was just kind of unexpectedly there, very occasionally, in a way that was jarring cuz the rest of the show felt so staid and chaste. whereas this arc it feels almost like they tried to retool this as an ecchi show, lot of lingering close-ups on body parts, it's really odd
the villain is upsetting, because he has the lead female entirely at his mercy, and he's trying to rationalize ways in which he might force himself on her sexually and have it be 'not rape'. he's not an interesting character, or an especially plausible one (he engages in a lot of theatrical monologuing, all of it sexual in nature), he's just deeply unpleasant to watch
so between all these aspects it feels kind of like, with this arc, the writers set out to make the viewers as uncomfortable as possible, and to ruin fairies in the process
one thing i did enjoy was the scene near the start of the arc, where Kirito challenged Suguha to a kendo match and lost. it was unexpected, cuz Kirito had only the previous episode defeated the arc villain in a swordfight, but it made perfect sense: Suguha is a national-level kendo practitioner, Kayaba was just some nerd waving a sword around in a video game, as was everyone else Kirito fought so far
sadly once Kirito arrives in Alfheim he miraculously gets to keep all the levelling he did in SAO for reasons that will probably be given some diegetic explanation but are basically an excuse to make him the best at everything and never challenged in any way. And, in what i assume is just lazy uncritical writing, he repeatedly takes the lead in fights while Suguha gets stuck in a support role even though this makes very little sense from a strategic standpoint when his character specializes in illusion magic and she specializes in beating up nerds
this arc is also weird because of how *seriously* everyone takes Alfheim, when for most of them it really is just a video game. The show tries to say this is cuz the only people who take the "just a game" mentality are bad, cynical people, which actually made a good deal of sense in the context of the first arc but doesn't seem to apply here at all (although i feel there is an underlying suggestion that this is because video games cause violence in the real world and actual roleplaying is for weirdos and perverts)
i'm going to stick it out to the end of the season and then focus on Log Horizon . . . a show which i also have some issues with, but which i have been enjoying a lot more and which started to get really interesting from episode 6 onwards
Sounds a lot like what I saw by skipping ahead and watching piece, or heard from anime bloggers I follow(ed) said about it. It's a great show, characters are all totally three-dimensional and engaging.
SAO is the best looking trash fire of recent anime history. I didn't even make it up to the described point, though, because of how damned empty the experience was for me. Kirito begins the show as this fully-formed messiah character that never develops, and his plot armaments put a low ceiling on potential tension. Other characters don't fare much better.
The way it tries to appeal to its audience gives it this robotic focus group kind of quality. Kirito is the perfect avatar for many adolescent fantasies, and while I can sympathise with that, a story can indulge such fantasies and be interesting -- the writing just has to be a little brave sometimes, and maybe engage with themes and scenarios wherein the good guy's sword arm is not a good solution.
there was a bit, during the first arc, where Kirito actually lost his hand during a fight
that was a surprising moment for me, and i was sort of eager to see what would come of it - up to that point they'd been emphasizing his 'dual wielding' ability, so taking that away from him felt like actually giving him a problem he couldn't hack and slash his way out of. 'about time', i thought.
in the next scene the hand had grown back, because video game logic i guess
Even before seeing any of it I couldn't take SAO seriously because one of my best friend's crushes (who turned out to be a dick-- how unexpected) put his name in their phone as Kazuto Kirigaya, so anything related to it would just make me think of that.
I gave my brother hell for actually liking it during his phase. I'd call it "Shit Art Online" and he'd always try to fight me over it. (Thankfully he's moved on to greener pastures w/r/t anime; I'm not sure what he's watching now but previous favorites of his include Fairy Tail and Hunter × Hunter.)
it sounds as though your brother has similar tastes in anime to my brother (who got really annoyed by this deviantart joke, for some reason). action series, marketed primarily to boys, lots of fight scenes and fantasy environments
Fairy Tail is alright. It's unabashedly stupid and silly (and kind of porny a lot of the time), but it has a heart to it which i feel wasn't present in SAO, the characters are lovable and they do expend effort to overcome adversity, they don't just cruise their way to victory from being a higher level. Also the music is better.
It's not One Piece good, but it's a decent enough imitation if you just want to switch off your brain for 20 minutes and enjoy the fireworks. It's also willing to devote some time to romantic arcs and encourage shipping, which One Piece resolutely isn't.
Hunter x Hunter is genuinely excellent, and worth watching even if you don't normally like the genre. The stories are seriously moving, the characters feel like real people, even the antagonists, and the action is tense and dramatic, with high stakes to balance the flashy stunts.
It really is an emotionally devastating show. And its source material is curiously subversive when you think about it. I mean, the Yorkshin City arc finished in the late '90s. That's kind of wild. I mean, the last two take things even further in that direction, but it's certainly something.
i think partly it might be that HxH likes to explore the implications of its ideas whereas subsequent imitators just copied the surface plot points without thinking through how the details change things or how this relates to the themes of the story as a whole
e.g. a lot of the first HxH arc was oddly familiar to me from having seen Naruto's Chuunin Exam arc, but they go in quite different directions and for me the HxH was decidedly more interesting and thoughtful despite being the older of the 2
^^ True. But I think one of its big strengths is that it is seamless in its thoughtfulness. It plays like a great action show, but there's always this self-awareness and warped playfulness to the proceedings.
Fair warning in case someone is interested in the interviews, but hasn't seen Samurai Champloo yet: The last interview contains some spoilers for the end of the show, so you might want to hold on reading the 7th interview until you finish the show.
So the new Berserk anime is pretty mediocre. The second episode was narratively... fine? But the visuals and audio are so clunky and graceless. Using 3D animation was a fine idea, but the animators seem to be learning as they go; there's all these awkward instances of an animation terminating into an unnaturally static pose. It all comes across as this clunky, awkward puppet show. A real shame, given that Berserk is commonly held to be one of the Best Manga and the voice talent is solid.
I get the feeling that it's exacerbated by the fact that Japanese 3D animators intentionally cut frames to try to make it look more like 2D animation, and it's just the worst stylistic tic because it doesn't work at all.
I get the feeling that it's exacerbated by the fact that Japanese 3D animators intentionally cut frames to try to make it look more like 2D animation, and it's just the worst stylistic tic because it doesn't work at all.
It smells of applying 2D techniques to 3D animation without a care. With this execution, I daresay they wanted video game animators rather than conventional anime animators on this project, but didn't know it. Whoever's currently on animation just doesn't seem to grasp it.
As usual with adaptations of this calibre, I think it'll end up being an advertisement for the source work rather than a representation of it.
Comments
it got . . . uncomfortable. spoilered for discussion of rape themes, also incest, also regular spoilers if anyone cares
then the next episode turned out to be, well, that really gross scene with the horrible creepy rapist character touching Asuna's comatose face while monologuing at Kirito, meanwhile Kirito's sister Suguha has a crush on him BUT it turns out they only *thought* they were brother and sister, actually they are cousins so she figures she's in with a chance
they also really ramped up the fanservice for this arc. during the first arc there was some fanservice, but it was just kind of unexpectedly there, very occasionally, in a way that was jarring cuz the rest of the show felt so staid and chaste. whereas this arc it feels almost like they tried to retool this as an ecchi show, lot of lingering close-ups on body parts, it's really odd
the villain is upsetting, because he has the lead female entirely at his mercy, and he's trying to rationalize ways in which he might force himself on her sexually and have it be 'not rape'. he's not an interesting character, or an especially plausible one (he engages in a lot of theatrical monologuing, all of it sexual in nature), he's just deeply unpleasant to watch
so between all these aspects it feels kind of like, with this arc, the writers set out to make the viewers as uncomfortable as possible, and to ruin fairies in the process
one thing i did enjoy was the scene near the start of the arc, where Kirito challenged Suguha to a kendo match and lost. it was unexpected, cuz Kirito had only the previous episode defeated the arc villain in a swordfight, but it made perfect sense: Suguha is a national-level kendo practitioner, Kayaba was just some nerd waving a sword around in a video game, as was everyone else Kirito fought so far
sadly once Kirito arrives in Alfheim he miraculously gets to keep all the levelling he did in SAO for reasons that will probably be given some diegetic explanation but are basically an excuse to make him the best at everything and never challenged in any way. And, in what i assume is just lazy uncritical writing, he repeatedly takes the lead in fights while Suguha gets stuck in a support role even though this makes very little sense from a strategic standpoint when his character specializes in illusion magic and she specializes in beating up nerds
this arc is also weird because of how *seriously* everyone takes Alfheim, when for most of them it really is just a video game. The show tries to say this is cuz the only people who take the "just a game" mentality are bad, cynical people, which actually made a good deal of sense in the context of the first arc but doesn't seem to apply here at all (although i feel there is an underlying suggestion that this is because video games cause violence in the real world and actual roleplaying is for weirdos and perverts)
i'm going to stick it out to the end of the season and then focus on Log Horizon . . . a show which i also have some issues with, but which i have been enjoying a lot more and which started to get really interesting from episode 6 onwards
that was a surprising moment for me, and i was sort of eager to see what would come of it - up to that point they'd been emphasizing his 'dual wielding' ability, so taking that away from him felt like actually giving him a problem he couldn't hack and slash his way out of. 'about time', i thought.
in the next scene the hand had grown back, because video game logic i guess
I gave my brother hell for actually liking it during his phase. I'd call it "Shit Art Online" and he'd always try to fight me over it. (Thankfully he's moved on to greener pastures w/r/t anime; I'm not sure what he's watching now but previous favorites of his include Fairy Tail and Hunter × Hunter.)
Fairy Tail is alright. It's unabashedly stupid and silly (and kind of porny a lot of the time), but it has a heart to it which i feel wasn't present in SAO, the characters are lovable and they do expend effort to overcome adversity, they don't just cruise their way to victory from being a higher level. Also the music is better.
It's not One Piece good, but it's a decent enough imitation if you just want to switch off your brain for 20 minutes and enjoy the fireworks. It's also willing to devote some time to romantic arcs and encourage shipping, which One Piece resolutely isn't.
Hunter x Hunter is genuinely excellent, and worth watching even if you don't normally like the genre. The stories are seriously moving, the characters feel like real people, even the antagonists, and the action is tense and dramatic, with high stakes to balance the flashy stunts.
e.g. a lot of the first HxH arc was oddly familiar to me from having seen Naruto's Chuunin Exam arc, but they go in quite different directions and for me the HxH was decidedly more interesting and thoughtful despite being the older of the 2
^ Midway through the Tarot thing.
I finally finished the Samurai Champloo DVD staff interviews, so here they are.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10WvsaPuo8xnYn-0WzX_N_pHEqkXF9-t67v8F_1UZtJQ/edit?usp=sharing
Fair warning in case someone is interested in the interviews, but hasn't seen Samurai Champloo yet: The last interview contains some spoilers for the end of the show, so you might want to hold on reading the 7th interview until you finish the show.
I'll get a look at that in a bit.
Good stuff, in any case. I'm not sure I'd ever have the guts to perform cosplay.
suppsoedly there are other characters but that sounds fake tbh
did The Big Reveal in the last five minutes
one more hishiroface
I get the feeling that it's exacerbated by the fact that Japanese 3D animators intentionally cut frames to try to make it look more like 2D animation, and it's just the worst stylistic tic because it doesn't work at all.
Holy crap guys.
My mind keeps being blown the more that I think about it.
Finished, completely.