Watching any anime?

[Idun]

I am finally about to start on Irresponsible Captain Tylor sometime next week. I forgot who suggested this to me, but they also suggested TTGL and that was good stuffs.

[Fudozukushi]

Umineko: Episode 11 is all sorts of batshit insanely awesome.

[Shale]

I am finally about to start on Irresponsible Captain Tylor sometime next week. I forgot who suggested this to me, but they also suggested TTGL and that was good stuffs.

They're pretty much batting a thousand, then. Tylor is awesome.

[Hunter Sopko]

Umineko: Episode 11 is all sorts of batshit insanely awesome.

Indeed. More hilarious than awesome. The batshit insane part totally fits though.

[Twilkitri]

Finished Basilisk. It was pretty great all round.

Oboro even managed to improve slightly by the end, for all that that was mostly due to her ceasing to exist as much. That there was eventually no-one left for her to whimper around means that they had to start making her take some initiative by default as well I suppose.

Translators need to be shot for flagrant suffix abuse.

[Sierra]

Baccano: Yeah, finished this. Very stylish and enjoyable piece of fluff. If there's a problem with it, it's that there are too many characters running around for all of them to get appreciable levels of development. The show's penchant for snappy dialogue ensures that most characters do at least leave some impression, but they just tried to cover too many subplots for everyone to benefit from this (the Gandor brothers are particularly blank). Probably a symptom of trying to cover everything in the source material and not having time for it. OVA episodes honestly didn't help much here, sadly. Still, any show that produces the likes of Isaac and Miria is alright by me. It's good fun.

Gunslinger Girl: Oh hey, they made another season of this while I wasn't paying attention. Sneaky. It's pretty much more of the same, but this is not a bad thing. I'm still rather astonished that such a show could exist, much less be produced by Japan, and not be a total disaster. They took a completely ludicrous concept (cyborg loli assassins working for the Italian government) and made it work by being totally serious about everything. Someone clearly sat down and went about very methodically determining the precise nature of the clusterfuck the base concept would produce, and I appreciate seeing that kind of effort. It helps that they apparently forgot that they were Japanese and decided not to fetishize the characters in any way. (I think I can say with confidence that the producers are more turned on by firearms than by other human beings.)

The only real downside of season two is the critical lack of Delgados music. Not that the replacement opener is bad as J-pop goes, but...well, it's not this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTxkOM7PMRE (Season two, for comparison: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3_xJ7NE-A0)

[Ultradude]

You'll be happy to know that the original manga format was a somewhat racy doujinshi, before the author scrapped it and started over from scratch with some actual plot and a professional release. Granted, the manga is still a tad fanservicey compared to the anime, at least with the introduction of an attempt at converting a somewhat older girl, but that's only what I've heard since I haven't gotten that far.

[Sierra]

That only makes the anime more surprising (and, I can only assume, better than the manga).

[Ultradude]

Well I've also heard fans complaining that the second season of the anime doesn't do justice to the part of the manga it covers, but again, stuff needs to be read and watched to see if that's true.

[NotMiki]

That only makes the anime more surprising (and, I can only assume, better than the manga).

The legitimate, non-doujinshi Gunslinger Girl manga is quite good.  Haven't watched the second season yet so I can't compare that, but it's on par with the first season for quality.

[Ultradude]

Right. Finished reading Gunnm/Battle Angel Alita. Pretty cool stuff; the setting is interesting and pretty well thought out, and it's hard not to love a lot of the cast. Pacing's a little awkward at some points, and dialogue during fights ranges from 'wow these people are fucking nuts' to 'badass hellz yeah' to '...okay...' Also, damn the writer for trying to add some slight degree of sympathy for even the nastiest of villains. Though monologuing their tragic back-stories was one of the less awesome dialogue points.

Last couple chapters were obviously rushed, though this is because the author was seriously ill and thought he might die... or something. Then he didn't, so he retconned the last couple chapters, and now I'm going to read Gunnm Last Order which is how it was supposed to be.

[NotMiki]

now I'm going to read Gunnm Last Order which is how it was supposed to be.

It's damn good.  Lacks a bit of the gritty atmosphere of the first series, but makes up for that with a slew of fun characters and, natch, a lot of top-quality fighting.

[Shale]

It gets really, really weird in later chapters, though. Like, guy-who-shoots-lasers-from-his-dick weird.

[Ultradude]

It gets really, really weird in later chapters, though. Like, guy-who-shoots-lasers-from-his-dick weird.

That... is something I'd already heard about, actually. Given that my friends and I came up with 'light bending dick' as a superpower, it's not a big deal.

[NotMiki]

It gets really, really weird in later chapters, though. Like, guy-who-shoots-lasers-from-his-dick weird.

The really wonderful thing about this comic is that it's much funnier in practice than it is on paper.

[Shale]

Oh, I know. You think I'd have stuck with it this far otherwise?

[Ultradude]

Oh, I know. You think I'd have stuck with it this far otherwise?

[NotMiki]

Oh, I know. You think I'd have stuck with it this far otherwise?

I dunno, laser-firing dicks still sounds pretty funny in a vacuum.  I mean, think of all the jokes about explosive depressurizati--*is shot*

[Grefter]

No More Heroes.  Just saying.  Destroyman.

[Twilkitri]

Gurren Lagann V3 -

Entertaining all round.

How can Nia be so annoying and yet not so annoying simultaneously. To be fair, I think most of her problem is her horrible voice.



Gundam 00 V1 -

Art style is too seedy. That was in no way a high point in those serieses.

Nice political bent the series is running with at the moment. I wonder whether they will keep it up.



Also two discs in to Gankutsuou. As I have the full set I will refrain from speaking about it now aside from saying that it is currently being thoroughly enjoyable.

[Bardiche]

Just sat down and finished Persona ~trinity soul~.

Impressions:

IGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR. BEST. PART. OF. THE. ANIME.

AKIHIKO-SENPAI! You've become a useless bureaucrat who can cook stuff (cool man) but your plans seem to never bear fruition, also, you suck because you keep being bogged down by your superiors man what did you DO with your SEES time?

ROCKS FALL EVERYBODY DIES.

oh btw we're not explaining a lot of shit like what happened to those who suffered apathy syndrome and the entire city man and what was up with that last bit around suddenly HEEL TURN or what the FUCK was going ON here and so many people died in such grotesque ways but what do you mean getting psychological trauma oh right we're wearing personas to cover that up fuck yeaaaaaaaaaaah

TEN STARS, WOULD WATCH AGAwaitwhatthehelldidIjustwatch.

Disappointing. >_>

[Ultradude]

Soooo joined in on a Code Geass R2 marathon with 4chan's /a/. Got in around ep. 8, was on intermittently until 17 or 18, and sat straight through the rest of it.

...it was kind of a blast. It's already pretty entertaining despite (because of?) all of its issues, and watching it with 50-some 4chan users is madness, especially when even those who aren't huge fans get in on the fanboy/girlism. Some of the caps of the chat room are pretty funny.

Oh, and that last episode... yeah, I still like it despite how poorly it stands up to later scrutiny.

All Hail Lelouch

[Twilkitri]

Gankutsuou -

Exceedingly beautifully awesome. Easy 9.

Complaints: Cadareuse is randomly out of proportion with every other humanoid. Also Episode 23 is not particularly spectacular, from the out-of-idiom early credits joke (presuming there wasn't something wrong with the disc, anyway) to some cheesy happenings later on. Show also needed a lot more of Peppo in general.

[NotMiki]

Disappointing. >_>

Yeah, I'm really not sure how to take this show.  There's a lot of cool stuff in there, and to its great credit things that happen are all consequential, in other words there's no return to normalcy really ever.  I like how stuff goes on and they don't feel the need to beat you over the head with its implications, things happen and people don't sit around talking about them for the next few episodes...but all that economy of storytelling they balance with psychobabble, so it's kinda eh.

I mean, they really nail the setting, the family and friend dynamics are well done, character growth is solid, the plot flows, it's just all beholden to a particularly ill-defined higher purpose.

[Tonfa]

The Ovan Show feat. Ovan with his amazing technicolor glasses and permanent smugface: I don't think I've ever before watched a show where the characters quite literally spend 90% of their time talking about one guy. Also I think there's some dude named Haseo.