Zaggitz posted:

FMA: Brotherhood, yes. og FMA is the RTD era of anime.

Bown posted:

theexactusernameoftheguyrunningit@gmail.com

Toxxupation posted:

black lagoon is if someone saw the christmas invasion swordfight and went "we should make a tv show of just that"

i mean for gently caress's sake this happens in the second loving episode

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjASERYanDI

Bown posted:

idonotlikepeas, that synopsis is hilarious. if you wrote it yourself please tell me you're planning on doing them for the rest of the season. sorry these other fools are too busy arguing about anime to appreciate a good thing

and you're all wrong because Paranoia Agent is the best anime

Payndz posted:

Joining the club (is there a badge?) that thought Deep Breath was utter, excruciatingly embarrassing poo poo until the restaurant scene, as if the first half of the episode had been directed by the same guy who did Rose and went to town with the burping wheelie bin and r-r-r-robot Mickey. Not since The End Of Time Part 1 have I been so glad that I wasn't watching it with a non-fan in the room, because they would have been completely justified with any mocking "You like this crap?" comments.

Bown posted:

A Field in England

mind the walrus posted:

It also really depends on what type of anime you're looking at. The majority of stuff is designed for younger fans in Japan and that tends to feature the awful tropes/style even in really good works like FMA and Attack on Titan and even Berserk, but there are pockets of genuine adult/all-ages material that can go toe-to-toe with the best of live action cinema-- I'm thinking Satoshi Kon and Miyazaki's work-- and Kon's work in particular doesn't pull its punches when it comes to recognizing anime/fan culture for what it is.

Also Macross Plus, which is such a weird confluence of factors-- it's a melodrama set inside the world of a Giant Robot Franchise, directed by the guy who'd go on to do Cowboy Bebop, with a younger Bryan Cranston of all people doing the English dub--that works beautifully.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkcg5A2-C28

Bown posted:

idonotlikepeas, that synopsis is hilarious. if you wrote it yourself please tell me you're planning on doing them for the rest of the season. sorry these other fools are too busy arguing about anime to appreciate a good thing

and you're all wrong because Paranoia Agent is the best anime

An Ounce of Gold posted:

The best anime has already been posted months ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt3qZYUPi2Y

dirksteadfast posted:

I've still never seen any of Fist of the North Star, but way back when I was a small child my friend described it as "this guy punches a mountain and then it blows up." Is that an accurate summation?

Autonomous Monster posted:

I have been meaning to watching this forever, because the trailer is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRRvzjkzu2U

I've also been putting it off forever, because there's no possible way the final product could live up to that.

JoltSpree posted:

I never got into anime [because] every time I see somebody ask about what they should watch first they get about fifty different responses from fifty different people.

JoltSpree posted:

fatherboxx posted:

Can't bring myself to finish Brotherhood, because the middle has really bad pacing.

Autonomous Monster posted:

(The Best Anime™ is actually Utena, though. )

JoltSpree posted:

Fungah! posted:

legend of galactic heroes. get to it

Oxxidation posted:

A NEW DOCTOR APPROACHES: TWELVE

All of the Doctor’s various incarnations (as well as most decent characters in general) have negative qualities to balance out the selfless, heroic super-scientist alien we know and love. Most obvious would probably be the Sixth Doctor, who decided to celebrate his regeneration by choking out his Companion and spent the rest of his tenure being insufferably arrogant even by Time Lord standards, but the revival-era ones also made their issues clear. Nine’s PTSD and bitterness with the universe at large often leaked through his friendly demeanor, turning him mean and dismissive towards the people he’d pledged to save. Ten’s vanity and melodramatics were matched only by his habit of murdering his enemies in horribly inventive ways. Eleven, in his worse moments, was a craven liar whose flair for the dramatic came hand-in-hand with a general mistrust for the people around him, even when they established over and over they’d lay down their lives to keep him safe. And now we have Twelve, played by the venerable Peter Capaldi, who’s basically just a prick.

Actually, I take that back. To call Twelve “just a prick” would do a disservice to the magnitude of his prickery, its breadth and depth. “Deep Breath,” when it’s not wasting our time with slapstick comedy and lesbian lizards, gives us a whirlwind tour through the prickosity Twelve is capable of. He’s a rude, dismissive prick, as shown by his casual insults and verbal abuse towards every single person he speaks to. He’s a conniving, manipulative prick, aptly demonstrated by his “abandon Clara for free exposition” gambit. He’s a loud, wrongheaded prick, considering that he makes at least two disastrous misjudgments in thirty minutes (both concerning who placed that mysterious newspaper ad) and then acts like it’s everyone else’s fault that he was incorrect. If prickitude were a meal, then Twelve would be a three-star dinner. If it were a song, he’d be Mozart’s 9th Symphony. If it were a color, he’d be a double rainbow all the way across the sky (so intense).

As Madame Vastra’s gratingly haughty little monologue to Clara implies, Twelve is a man without filters. He’s the first of a whole new set of regeneration cycles, coming fresh off a death where he finally made peace with all the disasters and hang-ups that had plagued him for at least three prior lives. He looks his age for once, as shown by the emaciated stick of gently caress that Capaldi calls a body. He's totally tactless, loudly broadcasting his every thought with no care given to how others will react. He’ll vocalize and act upon each new idea and hypothesis he has when solving a problem, and when he’s wrong, he’ll blame everyone else and start all over again. Compared to Eleven – who looked at least a millennium too young, played with all his cards close to his chest, and preferred to just vaguely claim he had “a plan” until he was absolutely certain everything would go in his favor – it’s a bit of a whiplash, as Clara finds out.

In fact, almost everything about Twelve is a major departure from the other three Doctors, especially Ten and Eleven. From Nine onwards, the Doctor’s character was that of a hurting, hesitant war veteran who outwardly acted like a child, all big smiles and wild flailing gestures and flashy sentimentalism. Twelve, on the other hand, is a child – a big, wrinkly, petulant, foot-stamping child – who outwardly acts like a dignified old man. Capaldi’s physical acting is downright sedate compared to Tennant’s rubber-faced expressions or Smith’s hand-flapping; his gestures are reserved and purposeful, and his facial expressions range from “glare” to “stronger glare” to “a glare that will etch a hole through your skull and into the masonry beyond.” Whereas Nine, Ten, and Eleven handled the TARDIS’ controls like men on a bucking bronco, Twelve calmly paces around the console, flipping a switch or two when needed. And unlike Ten and Eleven’s Gatling-gun rapid speech, Twelve speaks in brief. Disconnected. Sentence fragments with, occasional emphasis like he’s constantly fighting for breath - or maybe like he’s giving a lecture, which would be more appropriate, because he very often is. Twelve does not have charming little catchphrases, unless “shut up!” counts. Most of all, Twelve is unlikable, and that’s what makes him fascinating for me.

When Occ asked me which Doctor was “my” Doctor, I gave it some thought and eventually said Twelve. Not because of Capaldi’s acting (he’s certainly no slouch, but he’s only got one series under his belt and that ain’t enough to overtake Smith), but because the Twelfth Doctor is the first one I’ve seen that interests me as a character, and not just as a heroic joke machine. Both Occ and I pontificated plenty on Ten’s and Eleven’s deeper character traits – even if, in Ten’s case, we had to make some of that poo poo up wholesale – but those traits were still covered by the same coat of paint, the cheerful, manic, occasionally angsty hero figure. Twelve is none of those things. Twelve is a grim rear end in a top hat who happens to fight monsters. He’s not my Doctor because he’s an rear end in a top hat, but because he makes me think about why he’s the Doctor at all; he gives me a look at how the Doctor's heroics stand up without the bubbly personality, at someone who might be good even if he's not at all nice. As always, he saves people at any cost, through often questionable methods – as seen in “Deep Breath,” where he marshals all the monologue forces of darkness to hound the Half-Faced Man into an assisted suicide – but for once, he seems to do so for reasons more complex, or at least more opaque, than “humans are just the best, don’t’chaknow.” It's a refreshing change of pace after the relatively straightforward goodness of the last three Doctors.

Also refreshing is that, even if you disregard his attitude, he's just plain weird. Eleven was a good deal more “alien” than many of his predecessors, but in a zany, approachable way – he was super-spacey and talked a lot and bounced around and got touchy-feely with all his fellow actors, but was still your super best friend in the end. Twelve’s not just alien, he’s alienating. He’s almost totally face-blind, often recognizing people by voice or silhouette on the rare occasion he thinks they’re worth his attention. He forgets things constantly, but it’s difficult to tell when his forgetfulness is genuine and when it’s a put-on for his own esoteric amusement. He’s worse with social cues than your average [goon joke goes here], and while he pisses people off on a routine basis, he often has trouble understanding how or why they’re upset. And all of that’s not counting when he needles people on purpose, due to being, as mentioned, a great big knobbly prick. Not even Clara is exempt from his scorn.

Yes, Clara. Above all else, the main reason I like Twelve is what he does to Clara by proxy, as Moffat takes this opportunity to make her an actual character instead of a quippy plot robot. Eleven supported and enabled from their very first meeting, bending over backwards to keep her happy and entertained so that he could ivestigate that “Impossible Girl” nonsense. Well, Clara’s no longer the “Impossible Girl.” She’s a very tiny schoolteacher who’s way out of her depth, and her funny, madcap alien friend is now simultaneously her grumpy alien dad and her bratty alien ward. All the Doctors have needed Companions, but usually for vague, emotional reasons – they’re lonely, or they need a human perspective. Twelve might need Clara for those reasons, but he also needs her because his social skills are so awful that he’s liable to get stabbed with his own screwdriver by one of the people he’s trying to save.

So, this is Moffat’s second shot at Clara, and already the differences are so striking that I could probably make a whole new introduction for her. The point where “Deep Breath” pulled out of its tailspin was, for me, that brief flashback of Clara’s first day teaching, when she’s weeping in front of her rowdy students. That wasn’t just convenient foreshadowing for her negotiations with the Half-Faced Man; it also showed how badly Clara handles situations when they start to escape from her control, and lends some credence to that “control freak” joke that, until then, just came across as a half-assed attempt to give her a decent flaw. Clara was doing just dandy as Eleven’s special guest, when everything happened on her terms, but Twelve isn’t the same man, even if he is still the Doctor, and now she has to work to keep their relationship and her own skin intact.

Much of Series 8’s draw comes from that dynamic – how Clara learns about Twelve, how Twelve learns about himself, and how the both of them learn just where their lives stand now that they’ve gone through such a drastic change. Learning and education is a big theme in Series 8, which is appropriate, given that one of the two mains is a teacher and the other’s basically a cranky tenured professor with terrifying eyebrows. Clara has trouble accepting Twelve as the Doctor, and the same goes for a lot of the audience, especially since “Deep Breath” spent so much time short-changing Capaldi in favor of a stupid terrible lizard (and a T-Rex). But he’s the Doctor now, and will be for the foreseeable future, so either get the gently caress in or gently caress the gently caress off.

quote:

He's a child in an old man's body, over Eleven's old man in a child's.

Bicyclops posted:

Are you.... posting Oxx's reviews for him because he's invested enough to write reviews but doesn't just want to swallow his pride and come back or something?

Mortanis posted:

Also, that new CG TARDIS in intro is clearly the worst part of the new season and my god I can't not bitch about it every time I see it. Have to agree there.