What anime are you watching?

[Psycho Molos]

One of my current neighbors is someone my sis and I grew up with on the same street until my sophomore year in high school...I got him hooked on Death Note!!! HAHAHAHAHA :-D

[Atria35]

Ano Hana 6-11 (complete)- Marathoned. Great thing, too. It was a great series. On a personal note, I don't like it as much as Hanasaku Iroha, but honestly? I still loved it. Sad but beautiful.

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

King of Bandit Jing in Seventh Heaven episodes 1-3 Complete.

...Okay? Someone brought it to anime club, and it was amusing, I guess.

[Adorima]

FMA Brotherhood.

So many new characters I love. Excellent plot-line and voice actor performances. Excellent music and intro/outro music.And I'm on ep 30...just realized Ed is a bishounen and that I've joined the ranks of Roy Mustang fangirls. Tsk, tsk.

[Atria35]

Fractale 4-11 (complete) Figured as long as I was finishing up series, I should go ahead and do this one. Wht a disappointment! I knew that it would be, since I'd heard people here talking about it. Even so, that was worse than what I had expected. Ah, well. At least it's over, and I can move onto some *good* series!

EDIT: Serial Experiments Lain 1-4- A series to be marathoned, for sure. I'm going to see how much I can get through today, since a touch of the stomach flu means I'm not going anywhere today.

[MightiMidget]

Aww! Hope you get better soon, Atria! *hugs*

Watched the first episode of Durarara!! in English --> '_' Well...um...it was a little better than Vampire Knight...I'll try to give it another episode's chance so I can hear Shizuo and Izaya...but so far...*cringe*

[rocklobster]

Just started Durarara.

[FllMtl Novelist]

Started watching Tatami Galaxy. Looking forward to the rest.

And on adult swim, I caught Durarara ep. 1 (Masaomi sounded so weird after watching the subs), FMA: Brotherhood ep. 51 (do not eat cereal while watching this episode XD), and InuYasha episode 49.

[AnimeGirl]

Finished ep.8 of Steins;Gate and continued watching up to episode 10. This show is just so addicting! It's starting to get really interesting now!

[Atria35]

Serial Experiments Lain 5-13 (complete)- Boredom and a library that carries the series ended with me finishing it. Wow. That's some serious mindbending stuff right there. I do have my own theory on it all, but I did like the note that this ended on.

[Mouse2010]

Watched Cowboy Bebop episodes 12-13. More hints about Spike's past; yay!

I might start watching Durarara, too, since Adult Swim seems to be putting the episodes on their On Demand channel. . . not that I am not already in the middle of enough different shows.

[bakura91]

Ranma 1/2 (got bunch of the Dvds for cheap at a con) and Im re-watching Blue Seed (a great anime I used to watch all the time when it was on tv and I was like 14) And Im watching One Piece because that show is endless lol

[Wallachia]

I just watched the first three episodes of Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica.

I don't know what to think yet. The last bit of episode 3 was pretty interesting though.

Watching Slayers with a friend. Episodes 3-4 tonight. So much fun!

Enjoy! Slayers is one of my favorite series. Especially Slayers Next, the OVAs, Return and Gorgeous.

[Atria35]

I just watched the first three episodes of Mahou Shoujo Madoka★].

I don't know what to think yet. The last bit of episode 3 was pretty interesting though.

Keeep going....

[B]Planetes 1-2- I decided this has been on hold for so long I should start from the beginning. Yeah, that first episode is pretty good!

[TheSubtleDoctor]

Armored Trooper VOTOMS: Pailsen Files

A prequel to the classic 80s TV series, Pailsen Files gives us a bit about some of the major players before the main story. This 12 episode OVA was created by the same team that made the original.

All the mecha are CG. Though I usually don't prefer this sort of thing (due to Gonzo scars), Pailsen Files looks really good. Right from the opening sequence, which is the D-Day invasion of Normandy only with robots, you can see that the VOTOMS staff wasn't going to let the CG be the thing that dragged their project down.

The plot zips along and is fairly tight early on, and it's a tense affair. It definitely starts out stronger than it ends, but, in fairness, there were some scenes at the end that were pure fan service for those who have seen the 80s show. I am not one of those people (yet), so naturally a bit of the impact was lost on me. This is not to say that Pailsen Files cannot be enjoyed independently of seeing the original. I liked it a whole lot. However, long-time fans will probably get a wee bit more mileage out of it. Still, if you dig the darker, grittier real robot stuff, VOTOMS is your show.

Gun X Sword

Goro Taniguchi made a modern super robot series that isn't weighed down by continuity to anything else. He did some good work.

My three favorite things about this series are the soundtrack, the mecha design and the evolution of the main character. Wonderful, wonderful music that wills tick with you long after you're done watching. The OST is up there with Getter Robo Armageddon, for me. A small sample.

The bright color palette they use just pops out at you as the fantastically designed super robots, animated crisply and cleanly, fight for the world. A couple of the more minor foes have just drool-inducing mecha. Awesome stuff.

And then, there's Van of the Dawn. At the beginning of the show, he appears to be nothing more than a dumb, hot-blooded hero archetype. He has a goofy look plastered across his face and cannot remember anyone's name. Yet, as the show moves forward, we get to know more about Van and the layers of his past are peeled back, we see that he is a more complicated guy than we thought. His encounters with the (pretty cool) cast of villains force him to make choices and grow within himself. Van is the kind of character that says what he feels, so the struggles of his inner man often come pouring out during battle. This leads to some very moving and memorable dialogue, some of which is absolutely top notch in the medium.

Now, the show is a bit haremy at times. Episode 17 is quite the fan service romp. The episode quality is also a bit inconsistent. There are certain episodes that make you think the show is 10/10, then others are just underwhelming. Also, I wanted a couple of minor characters to come back for cameos, but alas it was not to be.

Very solid show that ends on a high note. This one might even have some appeal to general anime fans, rather than just the mecha crowd.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Golden Wings

Alright, whose idea was this? Ugh...Just...blegh. Well, I can't really call this movie a disappointment because I knew it was bad going into it, but...yeah...it's pretty mediocre stuff. The story itself is OK, but the aesthetics are just terrible. When you're making a movie about an established 110 episode series, you can't change the aesthetic. It's such a big part of LoGH.

There's also a ton of footage that is nothing more than reanimated stuff we've seen already. For a 40 minute movie, that's bad. And the villain just does not belong in the LoGh universe. Imperial soldiers just aren't that.

[Mouse2010]

Gun X Sword



My three favorite things about this series are the soundtrack, the mecha design and the evolution of the main characters.

Fixed that for you!

Seriously, I know that I'm in the minority here, but Wendy Garret was my favorite character. It's true that she largely existed as a means of getting Van to display his chivalrous side (especially early in the series, when he had to rescue her from dire peril just about every other episode), but she also grew as a character. A lot. [spoiler]Just look at the scene in the first episode where Van attempts to leave her behind, and she tags after him like a puppy, insisting on marrying him even though she hardly knows him. Then compare that with second-to-last scene in the desert, when she really is love with him (as much as a teenager that young can be, anyway), but accepts that he doesn't want her to keep following him, and turns around and walks away. She shows a lot of maturity there in comparison to her earlier behavior. [/spoiler] I just think that Wendy deserves more credit than she usually gets from fans of this series.* Yeah, her sentimentality can be annoying sometimes (the number of times she says "nissan" in the Japanese dub is astounding!), but she is also one of few characters who really tries to grapple with the moral implications of what's going on. Plus, anyone who can travel alone with Van for weeks on end without committing murder or suicide deserves a reward.

* Not that you dissing her, of course. It's just, people gush about Van. True, he was the protagonist, and he was most definitely awesome. But Wendy was a main character, too, and I think she's actually the one who develops the most over the course of the series.

[ShiroiHikari]

Glad to see more people on this board enjoying Gun X Sword.

I think the Eldora guys need their own series.

[Maokun]

King of Bandit Jing in Seventh Heaven episodes 1-3 Complete.

...Okay? Someone brought it to anime club, and it was amusing, I guess.

Ugh, I hated, hated, hated King of Bandits Jing. Awfully predictable and trite episodic plots, an insufferable Mary-Sue of a protagonist, exasperating sidekick, weak attempts at random humor. Ugh.

Ranma 1/2 (got bunch of the Dvds for cheap at a con) and Im re-watching Blue Seed (a great anime I used to watch all the time when it was on tv and I was like 14) And Im watching One Piece because that show is endless lol

Ah, Blue Seed, awful character design and animation and a terrible (and unstable) palette, but ultimately an interesting and satisfying series.

I just watched the first three episodes of [B]Mahou Shoujo Madoka★].

I don't know what to think yet. The last bit of episode 3 was pretty interesting though.

Enjoy! Slayers is one of my favorite series. Especially Slayers Next, the OVAs, Return and Gorgeous.

I had the same views as you on Madoka up to that episode. All I can say is, carry on.

[TheSubtleDoctor]

I think the Eldora guys need their own series.

THIS (especially Carlos!)

Crossover with Gaogaigar. PLZPLZPLZ!

And yeah, anyone on episode 2-3 of Madoka should push on. It gets better, I promise.

[musicaloddball]

I'm watching Deadman Wonderland. I have never seen villains that are so sick and disgusting and sadistic, so I just feel like I HAVE to see them get their hinies kicked. I can't stop watching! O.o The hero is not particularly original, but he is very sympathetic, IDK why exactly.

....But if there is no happy ending, I am going to be majorly ticked. -_-

[AnimeGirl]

Just watched episodes 11-12 of Steins;Gate. Oh...my....gosh....

[spoiler]
NOOO!! MAYURI!!!! I always knew that Shining Finger was suspicious!! Okarin, go back and save her!!![/spoiler]

I almost cried when I saw how they ended this episode. Now I have to wait a week until I am able to watch episode 13!

[AngelicTotoro]

I had a insane-(I'm never doing that ever again)-all-36-episodes-of-SDF Macross marathon yesterday. So that's finished. *_*
My comments on it are...
I loved the music, I thought that the suit and robot designs were fantastic, I loved the fighting scenes (for a nearly 30 year old anime, they were amazing~),
Max and Milla are awesome and I hate Minmay.

[spoiler]Also, were they trying to make me hate Hikaru in the end? Even though he was still all. 'Minmaaaay' all the time, up until episode 30, I wasn't angry with him or anything. However after that, I thought he was being really cruel to Misa, and if he hadn't finally figured out that she was the better girl in the end, I would have hoped both Hikaru and Minmay died in the end. Lucky for them, Hikaru told Minmay she, 'Wasn't alone, she has her songs' (ouch. ) and went with Misa.
One last thing, I didn't like the really abrupt ending... I mean, what happened to the crew? They don't tell me! I assumed they lived... but I still don't know.[/spoiler]

Closing comments... I hope the movie re-telling redeems the main character a little bit for me, since I ended up becoming so disappointed in him.
That is all. xD

[ShiroiHikari]

Yay, you watched it! It's addictive isn't it? I had a hard time keeping myself from marathoning the whole thing at once.

The ending made me mad too. Stupid Hikaru. I liked him until then. And I also hate Minmay. She's just so annoying. Misa is clearly the better woman.

Also

[TheSubtleDoctor]

I am overjoyed to see a new convert to Macross. Spread the love around.

Thank you for that pic, Shiroi. Absolutely made my day.

Slight spoiler, but I'm OK with that: Does DYRL redeem Hikaru?



I will let the image speak for itself.

[AngelicTotoro]

Hey look, it's Max~! xD
I have to admit, when that happened I was all like, 'Wait, what? You're marrying her right after she tried to kill you?' Then at the start of the next episode I was totally sold.
(The fact that the last eight or so episodes hardly had Max in it also made me a little ****... He's one of my favorite characters.)

Anyway, I just finished Macross: Do you Remember Love?
I loved it.
It fixed everything that went wrong with the tv series and made it better.
(Of course, you had to have watched the anime first to understand what was going on a lot of the time. That didn't bother me, in fact I thought it was pretty cool.)

Finally, Hikaru redeemed himself completely, it made me like his character all over again and Misa was great in it.
(I just wish it had Max in it more... but at least I was spared a bunch of Minmay and her stupid cousin.)
And I finally like some of Minmay's songs, I like 'Do you remember love?' a lot and I like the song that was played at the very end leading into the credits.

Definitely one of my favorite series, it gets 9/10.

"Shao, Pi, Lon!"

Edit:
Yes, the fact that Hikaru finally slapped that little brat really made my day. =3
I was like, "Yes!!! You should have done that back in the tv series!!!"
I'm now a total macross junkie. xD

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

I had a insane-(I'm never doing that ever again)-all-36-episodes-of-SDF Macross marathon yesterday. So that's finished. *_*
My comments on it are...
I loved the music, I thought that the suit and robot designs were fantastic, I loved the fighting scenes (for a nearly 30 year old anime, they were amazing~),
Max and Milla are awesome and I hate Minmay. ]Also, were they trying to make me hate Hikaru in the end? Even though he was still all. 'Minmaaaay' all the time, up until episode 30, I wasn't angry with him or anything. However after that, I thought he was being really cruel to Misa, and if he hadn't finally figured out that she was the better girl in the end, I would have hoped both Hikaru and Minmay died in the end. Lucky for them, Hikaru told Minmay she, 'Wasn't alone, she has her songs' (ouch. ) and went with Misa.
One last thing, I didn't like the really abrupt ending... I mean, what happened to the crew? They don't tell me! I assumed they lived... but I still don't know.[/spoiler]

Closing comments... I hope the movie re-telling redeems the main character a little bit for me, since I ended up becoming so disappointed in him.
That is all. xD

Yay! Another Macross fan!

I don't know much about Macross 7, aside from the fact that it's really ridiculous, but it has Max and Miria in it, so you might want to check that out. Though, any Macross is worth checking out, really, aside from Zero. It's a really great franchise. Macross Plus, which is on Yotube legally, is probably the best place to start.

The Subtle Doctor pretty much covered my thoughts on Gun X Sword, so I won't rehash everything he said again.

Ghost in the Shell

I ILL'd this classic because I figured it would be an interesting watch, and Patlabor hadn't shipped yet. It was pretty cool and I'm glad I got to see it and leave the two others who haven't seen Ghost in the Shell yet.

Section 9 are a pretty cool group of dudes to see in action. Kusanagi is certainly pretty BA to see shootin' things up, and that fight with the tachikoma was pretty awesome. It was pretty obvious that they'd put a lot of thought into how the universe worked, and all the attention to detail was pretty awesome to watch. Seriously, that fight with the tachikoma was awesome.

The bad? For starters, Oshii keeps up his trend of making people talk. A lot. So much of this movie is just people talking about stuff, and while it certainly isn't as bad as I hear a lot of his stuff is, it still got a little old watching people talk so much over the whole what gives something a soul thing. The other problem is the length. Eighty minutes wasn't really enough to establish any of the characters all that well, and I can't really remember anyone except Kusanagi and Togusa.

Regardless, it was a good watch and I'm definitely looking forward to Stand Alone Complex sometime in the future. Recommended for anyone who can handle some of the content.

Patlabor: The Movie...

...is amazing.

The universe and ideas behind Patlabor is something I really adore. Robots that are mundane, everyday things that someone would pay no more attention to than a fire truck or police car. SV2 2nd Unit is a group of people who are pretty much normal dudes, or, at least they aren't going to show up on any recruitment ads for the police. Headgear obviously put a ton of effort into thinking how this world works and it works magnificently.

Along with the portrayal of the robots being pretty much how I think real robots should be portrayed, Oshii does an excellent job making Patlabor feel real. There's still a fair bit of people sitting around and talking, but it feels so natural the way these people are chatting with each other. Noa, Asuma, and Gotoh all feel like these normal people you could conceivably go and meet. They interact so comfortably with each other that I was completely fine with them sitting around and just talking about stuff. There wasn't long conversations where the characters were throwing quotes from obscure philosophers at each other, it was conversations you could conceivably have with people. The movie was also really funny. Oshii has an excellent sense of humor that was missing in Ghost in the Shell.

On another note, this movie is absolutely beautiful. I saw DYRL?, which was pretty spectacular, but this movie is several degrees better than that. What really impresses me about how incredibly beautiful it is is that everything you see in this, aside from the robots, is pretty much ordinary stuff. There wasn't any shots to emphasize the scenery or anything, it just had this incredible look to this mundane, kind of bland world. The character designs are awesome, and the animation is excellent.

This is honestly one of my favorite movies of all time. I went into this mostly blind and it is as if they were making a movie specifically for me. Patlabor is just really incredible and I look forward to watching much, much more of it and I'm glad Japan liked it as much as I did. There is not a single thing about this movie that I can really criticize, except that I guess I wish there'd been some background music in a couple parts. Oh well.

Really, people. Go out and get this movie.

[TheSubtleDoctor]

The bad? For starters, Oshii keeps up his trend of making people talk. A lot. So much of this movie is just people talking about stuff...it still got a little old watching people talk so much over the whole what gives something a soul thing....[In Patlabor t]here weren't long conversations where the characters were throwing quotes from obscure philosophers at each other

But, but...this is what I like about Oshii!

Seriously though, how is this different from LOGH, apart from the conversations being about political theory/military strategy instead of philosophy? I know you've only seen the first movie, but that's pretty much an extended OAV episode.

Oh, and Patlabor is indeed awesome. I'm curious to see what you think of the 2nd movie and the TV series.

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

H-h-h-how do I put it?

Ghost in the Shell was a short, self-contained movie. While the conversations about ghosts and shells were relevant, when you only have eighty minutes to tell a story, you don't spend all of it talking about philosophy. I don't expect or want my films to all be mindless action but I'd like some more plot or character development than there was.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes, on the other hand, has plenty of plot and slightly more relevant conversation. While the people were talking, it was as they were either planning or committing the actions. It also has 110+ episodes to do stuff, rather than 80 minutes.

[ShiroiHikari]

Minmay and her stupid cousin

fjkdsfjkg I HATE HIM SO MUCH. He is seriously one of the most unlikable characters ever.

Also Doc, you have sold me on DYRL. I am going to watch it ASAP.

also lol this is now a Macross discussion apparently

[AngelicTotoro]

fjkdsfjkg I HATE HIM SO MUCH. He is seriously one of the most unlikable characters ever.

Also Doc, you have sold me on DYRL. I am going to watch it ASAP.

also lol this is now a Macross discussion apparently

You haven't watched DYRL? yet!? I'm shocked! You should definitely watch it ASAP, good choice of words.

Btw, her cousins name is... uhh... *wiki's it* Kaifun.
(I guess I hated him so much that my mind blocked name from my memory. ) I still think that the series should have ended with Minmay and Kaifun both dying. It would have been perfect, since I'm pretty sure most people who have watched SDF Macross, hate the two of them.