Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Gyra_Solune
Apr 24, 2014

Kyun kyun
Kyun kyun
Watashi no kare wa louse
This season was good. Especially on Sundays, like omg everything on the internet these past months has condensed into Sunday. It's hard to beat the triple threat of Gundam, Concrete Revolutio, and OPM.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Pootybutt
Apr 5, 2011

P good season, but I was more optimistic back when it started. OPM is cool sometimes, Concrete is cool sometimes, and I don't even necessarily like that last one very much. It's more just...interesting. Owarimonogatari really hooked me at first, but with Ougi gone and Sodachi Lost over, it p much turned back into normal monogatari, which means I don't give a poo poo anymore. IBO is...OK? About the best thing I can think of to say about it is "it's not bad." It's a perfectly serviceable, normal Gundam without any super weird or loopy direction or writing. I just haven't caught up with it in nearly a month cause, as it turns out, "super loopy or weird" is what I come to Gundam for. Miss ya already, Reco.

ZepiaEltnamOberon
Oct 25, 2010

I Failed At Anime 2022
This is for my good friend Dark Tits Anime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EL1caEbrv0

Kytrarewn
Jul 15, 2011

Solving mysteries in
Bb, F and D.
So Taimadou Gakuen just finished as well, being the other high school magiscience battle thing this season, and I think that I might have been more satisfied with it at the end than Rakudai Kishi, whose ending felt "anime-original" whether or not it actually was. There were still all manners of problems to sort out, but they just sort of tied it up with a bow and a 'happily ever after'.

The major problem with Taimadou Gakuen is that there's really an awful excess of 'atmospheric'/'comic relief' content, especially given how rushed the season was. The story arcs in themselves are quite moving, focusing on each member of the team in his or her own existential crisis. But rather than trying to delve into the worldbuilding and presumably-interesting details of these interesting conflicts and perhaps not getting through all of them in a single season, they give each of the five characters 1-2 episodes for her arc (since there were about 2-3 introductory episodes and then a filler episode in the middle) and just move right along.

Reading between the lines, you can see all kinds of depth with regard to the 'relic eaters' (magical weapons that increase the bearers' power, but at a cost), workings of magic (They've mentioned how different witches have different classes which influence the efficiency/power of various magical abilities), hallway magic (magic that doesn't have to be 'cast' but is rather present in some sort of charm to be used by anyone), different species in the world, etc.

Really, what I want to do is read the LN. But the guy translating them took them off the web a week ago today, and Yen Press will likely never pick them up, so my curiosity will remain unsatisfied forever. Which is almost enough to make my lower my opinion of the show even further.

Plutonis
Mar 25, 2011

last Hackadoll ftw

Davincie
Jul 7, 2008

TheLovablePlutonis posted:

last Hackadoll ftw

this

.Clash
Apr 10, 2009

TheLovablePlutonis posted:

last Hackadoll ftw

Decided to catch up on all of it from ep 5 and that was pretty amazing. Especially the shirobako parody where everything was actually poo poo.

Dark_Tzitzimine
Oct 9, 2012

by R. Guyovich


:allears:

gimme the GOD DAMN candy
Jul 1, 2007
Okay, I'll admit it. Her headpiece owns. I like something about valkyrie drive now.

Chalupa Picada
Jan 13, 2009


did the titty monster and the high school girl from the beginning fuse or something

Dark_Tzitzimine
Oct 9, 2012

by R. Guyovich
Yep

Chalupa Picada
Jan 13, 2009

Dark_Tzitzimine
Oct 9, 2012

by R. Guyovich
Well, Valkyrie Drive ended today. Just like Senran Kagura before it, the show was a pretty standard shounen story all things considered but that was carried extremely well by its characters. Every character presented had a well defined arc and role to serve on the story. From Mirei finding a reason to live on Mamori, to Mamori coming to terms with new facets of her persona (and some that were clearly against what she was taught it was normal). Even the villians got their own arc!

Momoka was such a delightfully evil character and yet, she caught the hearts of all the fandom with her backstory and excellent seiyuu (Hitomi Harada clearly had lots of fun voicing what it was pretty much a lesbian expy of the Joker).

I can't ignore the fanservice since it was such a huge part of the concept and quite frankly, it was properly handled since it didn't cheapened the characters and (YMMV obviously) it fit within the outrageous premise and offered a pretty unique spin on the Magical Warrior Girl genre. The show is not for everyone but for anyone willing to endure the fanservice, is a pretty entertaining show.

The anime closed its plot in a satisfying way while at the same time planting the seeds for a sequel that I really hope it materializes in the near future. There's so much to explore within the setting.

So long Valkyrie Drive, it was a wild, wild ride.








Now to wait for the BDs! :v:

Xelkelvos
Dec 19, 2012
Posting here because it's still part of the Fall Season technically and its thread is in Archives now.


Locodol Christmas Special is up. It's still cute. No midriffs this episode.

Xelkelvos fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Dec 27, 2015

Yes_Cantaloupe
Feb 28, 2005
That Christmas tree dress is hideous.

Gyra_Solune
Apr 24, 2014

Kyun kyun
Kyun kyun
Watashi no kare wa louse
as stupid as the entire concept was i think motorcycle lady and friend were probably the only characters i actually liked

they're just two secret agents who were all, gently caress the man, we're gonna be secret agents on our own now. also blonde lady has cool shades and their final act is to turn into a gradius thing complete with corny old super robotish music. so pretty much badass 80s OVA cops on a vacation gone wrong, it's pretty great

everyone else was either a turbo-bitch, boring, or posed serious questions. i'm especially dubious on Akira's whole thing because basically everyone was right on board with her since she was a reasonable school president, but suddenly jerk oujo was all 'LOOK SHE'S NOT ACTUALLY A MAN' and the entire population turned on her and decided jerk oujo should be the leader instead...even though Akira did no actual things wrong besides a disguise that could be seen through before the show even aired. basically what seemed to be taken away from that scene is 'you cannot be a fair and egalitarian leader and also be a woman because nobody will trust you'. ew and ugh.

Xelkelvos
Dec 19, 2012

Yes_Cantaloupe posted:

That Christmas tree dress is hideous.

The wearer shares your sentiments

Dark_Tzitzimine
Oct 9, 2012

by R. Guyovich
Actually the problem was that Akira entire leadership was built upon the Veste trusting her and her promises of a chance at returning if they followed her rules. Having her being outed as a liar the entire time destroyed everything she had built.

Compendium
Jun 18, 2013

M-E-J-E-D
I don't believe any of the words that you actually said, but I will believe that you enjoyed it.

Gyra_Solune
Apr 24, 2014

Kyun kyun
Kyun kyun
Watashi no kare wa louse
even though the entire reason she was crossdressing was to lead them to start with, because she was told she had to do that to get people to trust her

no matter how i look at it the entire thing stinks of a theme that women can't lead which is a problem that really should not be there in an all-female cast. you can't mean to tell me that all the good things a person does are invalidated because they keep an unimportant thing secret.

hell it's 2015 the prevailing response from actual teenage girls would more be something to do with being upset that this jerk is making fun of someone for being trans, even though she actually isn't or something lol

graybook
Oct 10, 2011

pinya~
I want to watch the Locodol OVA so badly but sadly I won't be home until the 30th.

Nanako mai waifu.

Dark_Tzitzimine
Oct 9, 2012

by R. Guyovich

Gyra_Solune posted:

even though the entire reason she was crossdressing was to lead them to start with, because she was told she had to do that to get people to trust her

no matter how i look at it the entire thing stinks of a theme that women can't lead which is a problem that really should not be there in an all-female cast. you can't mean to tell me that all the good things a person does are invalidated because they keep an unimportant thing secret.

Well, that is something that happens with politicians all the time.

And in the context of the whole franchise, there's no thing like implying women can't lead. Bhikkhuni's principal is a woman, Torino handled by herself an entire village and AAA organization is lead by a woman. That on itself was Akira's mistake, she never trusted her subjects (despite asking them for the same trust in return) and instead she was blindly following her mother's instructions.

Neddy Seagoon
Oct 12, 2012

"Hi Everybody!"

Gyra_Solune posted:

even though the entire reason she was crossdressing was to lead them to start with, because she was told she had to do that to get people to trust her

no matter how i look at it the entire thing stinks of a theme that women can't lead which is a problem that really should not be there in an all-female cast. you can't mean to tell me that all the good things a person does are invalidated because they keep an unimportant thing secret.

Wow, you need to actively try for something like that, as some shows that pull an all/predominantly female cast wind up with at least a decent stab at initiative action just by sheer accident due to numbers (ie; not enough male characters to give those roles to).

kater
Nov 16, 2010

I want to know what happened to the giant girl.

Thuryl
Mar 14, 2007

My postillion has been struck by lightning.

Gyra_Solune posted:

even though the entire reason she was crossdressing was to lead them to start with, because she was told she had to do that to get people to trust her

no matter how i look at it the entire thing stinks of a theme that women can't lead which is a problem that really should not be there in an all-female cast. you can't mean to tell me that all the good things a person does are invalidated because they keep an unimportant thing secret.

I didn't get quite that read off of it but the whole crossdressing subplot was stupid and pointless in the first place even by the standards of the series. Nobody watching the show was surprised by the big reveal so it mostly just made all the characters look like idiots.

Dark_Tzitzimine
Oct 9, 2012

by R. Guyovich

kater posted:

I want to know what happened to the giant girl.

She pulled a big drat heroes moment on the final episode, giving the good guys the chance to snatch the win.

It was pretty drat awesome that everything that happened through the series was used on the finale on some way or another.

Thuryl posted:

I didn't get quite that read off of it but the whole crossdressing subplot was stupid and pointless in the first place even by the standards of the series. Nobody watching the show was surprised by the big reveal so it mostly just made all the characters look like idiots.

Momoka calling them out five seconds after meeting Akira was one of the highlights of the series. :allears:

And for some incomprehensible reason a lot of japanese were fooled by Akira's disguise. It was such a point of contention for them than the production staff delayed the release of Episode 7 synopsis until after the episode had aired on every network.

Dark_Tzitzimine fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Dec 27, 2015

Kytrarewn
Jul 15, 2011

Solving mysteries in
Bb, F and D.

Gyra_Solune posted:

even though the entire reason she was crossdressing was to lead them to start with, because she was told she had to do that to get people to trust her

no matter how i look at it the entire thing stinks of a theme that women can't lead which is a problem that really should not be there in an all-female cast. you can't mean to tell me that all the good things a person does are invalidated because they keep an unimportant thing secret.

hell it's 2015 the prevailing response from actual teenage girls would more be something to do with being upset that this jerk is making fun of someone for being trans, even though she actually isn't or something lol

It wasn't about trust IIRC. It was that the sole (apparent) cock in a society of pubescent teen girls somewhere far away from society would be "special" enough that he could, if he played his cards right, secure a position of leadership.

Phobophilia
Apr 26, 2008

by Hand Knit
I'm glad i stayed with owari no seraph, because that ending was solid as hell. That was some really good action in the last episode. Also the directing and pacing was excellent, and people didn't repeatedly perform head scratchingly stupid actions.

This show was originally sold as shingeki no kyojin with vampires, then it turned out to not be that, and then it turned out to be that much more than expected. It's all conspiracies and politicking and human beings summoning freaky monstrosities that they by rights they should never touch.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012

Phobophilia posted:

I'm glad i stayed with owari no seraph, because that ending was solid as hell. That was some really good action in the last episode. Also the directing and pacing was excellent, and people didn't repeatedly perform head scratchingly stupid actions.

This show was originally sold as shingeki no kyojin with vampires, then it turned out to not be that, and then it turned out to be that much more than expected. It's all conspiracies and politicking and human beings summoning freaky monstrosities that they by rights they should never touch.

Nice to see them getting a little imaginative with Yu's angelic powers (c'mon, that's not a spoiler), too. Now I wanna see the Seraph who shreds people with locust swarms, or buries them in tides of frogs.

Plutonis
Mar 25, 2011

Kytrarewn posted:

It wasn't about trust IIRC. It was that the sole (apparent) cock in a society of pubescent teen girls somewhere far away from society would be "special" enough that he could, if he played his cards right, secure a position of leadership.

Jesus Christ gas

Gyra_Solune
Apr 24, 2014

Kyun kyun
Kyun kyun
Watashi no kare wa louse
yeaaaaah i'm going to say the last words on valkyrie drive should be MY THOUGHTS ON FALL SEASON 2015 AS IT CONCLUDES

so yeah the bad bits on VD have already been noted. It is often sketchy and has questionable implications all the time and yeah. but there are good bits in my opinion? There are some fun moments and I do think the visual style and a lot of the armor/weapon design is surprisingly nice for this kind of show. Like if it were not that kind of show and everyone was designed accordingly with their body parts not wobbling around all the time, you'd have things I'd be happy to buy like...revoltechs or figmas or whatnot of. I dunno. it's stupid, and dumb, and bad, but it's kind of pretty, sorta, and the plot is...okayish, at the very least. in short it's better than cross ange to drat it with faint praise lol. ...it also had better mechs considering it's not even a show where those even show up that much

And then, Aquarion Logos! So this show. It...really would've benefited greatly if it had not actually aired this season and concluded entirely last season. Altogether far too much filler...which maybe would've been okay if any of the characters were interesting. The only one I sort of could get behind was the purple-haired commander lady, she seemed cool. The story touched on some interesting things (even if, from a real-life perspective, what it is trying to say about the nature of writing and how it relates to how we interpret ideas is basically complete nonsense, i'm pretty sure if you suddenly forgot how to read one day you would still actually recognize what things were and how they functioned) and was full of enough events to carry the show despite weak characters...were it not for airing altogether too long. And the robots weren't that great looking and barely did anything. Decidedly meh.

Comet Lucifer! It wanted to be Eureka Seven. So bad. It ended up sorta dumb. I dunno, the story overall just kinda...happened. I'm not entirely sure why everyone was doing what they were doing actually, as far as I can tell they all went on their big magical trip because there's an ancient ruin somewhere and it might do something. Characters were boring, I get the feeling Felia only did that weird age-up thing because the writers were fully prepared to have her romance stuff as-is but then suddenly everyone was like 'PLEASE DO NOT LET THIS MAN DATE THE LIKE SIX YEAR OLD CHILD' and they realized their leading lady looked like a six year old child and panicked, because it affected absolutely nothing else. But the music and visuals were nice. Orange worked on the CG right? They did good on that, the robots looked pretty snazzy in general. Overall another meh.

One Punch Man! look we've all said what needs to be said about one punch man. there is a man, he punches, it takes one time, it all looks really goddamn good and it is funny. good show. a+! well okay there's like, a few marks on it. like this was a comment sort of made fun of but I kinda agreed that /basically/ everyone who isn't a straight white man is a joke if they exist at all. Tornado's like constant PMS, that prisoner guy was like a 1940s representation of how gay people act and goddamn did you see that black guy wtf he looks like they based him off a minstrel show or some poo poo oh my god and that's it. it's not like there's not that many characters, there are quite a few indeed. i dunno a thing that bothered me about it personally, because those things always feel less than ideal to me.

Yuru Yuri! it was more Yuru Yuri. as I said in the Yuru Yuri thread, this didn't have as much of the sillier bits that Yuru Yuri has that I really like, but to compensate the more slice of life that is kind of the majority of Yuru Yuri were a bit better. people say it's the change of studio but these are the same guys that did Nachuyachumi which opened up with a pretty hilarious bit apropros of nothing. still sad about the loss of the akarin intros. in fact did they even SAY the word 'akarin' at any point? i...i don't think they did. oh dear

Fafner Exodus the Second! god have i gushed about this show enough. at this point it's less 'it's really good that they made a sequel to this show i liked' and more 'actually i really wish it wasn't a sequel because the biggest thing holding this show back is how they expect you to have seen the way weaker first show and know what's up'. Because goddamn is this show good. First season was ever so slightly weak - things were moving a little slow and it felt like little was at stake, and it was sort of hard to keep everyone sorted out because they were juggling a main cast of like twenty, a quarter of which got bare scraps of screentime in the movie and another quarter of which were completely new. But basically it ended up being setup for a much much much much much much better second season. Everything was exciting, all the setups from the first led to things going down the drain in the most glorious way, the gigantic cast started getting thinned out and also easier to identify when they didn't, a...surprisingly sweet lesbian relationship out of nowhere (some twitter of the director is going to try to sell us that Seri and Orihime were just 'special friends' but they said the same about Euphonium and well), and a satisfying ending that kept things potentially open but concluded everything in just the right balance. I'd be absolutely thrilled if this same team got to do another season, because I loved almost every minute of it, but I'd understand if they didn't and want to keep this as an ending. Easily one of my favorite shows ever. Kind of a rare feeling when something you've been looking forward to for years actually exceeds all your expectations. also the robots did cool things and were animated great but they're still fafners and they all look a bit dorky and hard to tell apart

uh I haven't seen the last ep of Concrete Revolutio but it is also good. I like its style, the whole 'what if every genre of hero got squished in the same world' setup is handled really well for how all these different archetypes burned into us by the classics would react to each other, and the overarching plot is good. The biggest issue is it can be hard to tell what order exactly things are happening, just because the only indications are slightly confusing-ish inserts that tell you what year a scene happened at the end of it, but it makes sense if you look at a timeline. One of the other greats of the season.

And lastly the first half of Iron-Blooded Orphans which I'm counting because why not. it is also also good! the angle away from 'let's save all of spacekind' to 'let's make enough money to eat and earn a better future than literal meatshield slaves, like being farmers and shopkeeps' is pulled off excellently and does well on its own to make everyone's fight relatable. The action is insanely cool and well-orchestrated, the music is great, every character is well fleshed out, it is probably actually the best Gundam to date. But let's be honest Sunrise sort of had to do some major things different because Gundam wasn't doing so hot in recent years, I hope IBO is a great success and sets a precedent for the future of the franchise.

i feel like i'm missing something.

:words:

Gyra_Solune
Apr 24, 2014

Kyun kyun
Kyun kyun
Watashi no kare wa louse
OH RIGHT three things.

Everything Becomes F was alright. i probably wouldn't have watched it were it not for people being like 'this is the coolest thing ever for something that is mostly talking' and...maybe it was a bit of a time sink, tbh, but it presented some kinda interesting ideas, and Magata was a pretty well realized sort of genius killer. everything she does is sort of insane and completely nonsensical but she's an insane genius and so she thinks it makes perfect sense and she has the math to back it up. see it is completely logical that children kill their parents when they come of age because

and dropped shows. heavy object became wearying after like four episodes much less twenty-six. the idea is excellent but the execution is bad. bleh. oh well.

dropped sakurako's magical bone detectives because it was sooooort of neat but I would've only continued if it did more interesting things, which it did not. also i guess dead things bother me so probably not my jam anyway.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Bad Seafood
Dec 10, 2010


If you must blink, do it now.

Kytrarewn posted:

It wasn't about trust IIRC. It was that the sole (apparent) cock in a society of pubescent teen girls somewhere far away from society would be "special" enough that he could, if he played his cards right, secure a position of leadership.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBzJGckMYO4

  • Locked thread