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The Colonel
Jun 8, 2013


I commute by bike!
i already watched vifam

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Yes_Cantaloupe
Feb 28, 2005
I'll add a non-scanlation resolution: I will watch Vifam.

Sharkopath
May 27, 2009

The Colonel posted:

i already watched vifam

if you watched vifam you can tell me what to watch

its the trade

The Colonel
Jun 8, 2013


I commute by bike!

Sharkopath posted:

if you watched vifam you can tell me what to watch

its the trade

girls' last tour

Sharkopath
May 27, 2009

The Colonel posted:

girls' last tour

ill abide but i already read the comic...

Sharkopath
May 27, 2009

if its an adaption i probably already read the comic on account of my love of comics

Sharkopath
May 27, 2009

I seen: 1 ep.

The Colonel
Jun 8, 2013


I commute by bike!
oh

in that case uh. yama no susume. i'll rec yama no susume because you can watch season 1 of that in like an hour and then decide if you want to watch season 2 and 3

i'll accept you watching girls' last tour instead if you want to do that though because it would be rude to nullify the commitment

The Colonel fucked around with this message at 09:38 on Jan 16, 2019

Sharkopath
May 27, 2009

The Colonel posted:

oh

in that case uh. yama no susume. i'll rec yama no susume because you can watch season 1 of that in like an hour and then decide if you want to watch season 2 and 3

i'll accept you watching girls' last tour instead if you want to do that though because it would be rude to nullify the commitment

I gotta finish this first, as per the contract. Thats number 2. I heard good things anyways.

Sharkopath
May 27, 2009

Girls Last Tour also I think has a lot of work done to it that elevates it above the comic, more than some other adaptions.

The Colonel
Jun 8, 2013


I commute by bike!

Sharkopath posted:

I gotta finish this first, as per the contract. Thats number 2. I heard good things anyways.

season 1 of yama no susume is mostly small character stuff but season 2 of yama no susume has real cool stuff about dealing with burnout and anxiety after a real bad experience doing something you normally like and struggling to get back into the normal swing of things. season 3 is pretty cool too cause it deals with how relationships can naturally change over time and learning to maintain them and stay close with each other

there's also a part in season 2 where there are english tourists talking in the background of a scene and one of them is actually an english va guy who lives in japan and the other is just a lady who's fluent in english and it owns because they're both just really naturally reading dialog that doesn't make any sense at all

Sharkopath posted:

Girls Last Tour also I think has a lot of work done to it that elevates it above the comic, more than some other adaptions.

i wanna read the manga at some point cause tsukumizu is a cool artist but yeah, the anime's really solid. hope those rumors of them announcing a s2 soon turn out out to be true

Smoking Crow
Feb 14, 2012

*laughs at u*

Strange Quark posted:

I'll watch it, but keep your money for yourself, Crow.

You're allowed to skip the recap episodes

dogsicle
Oct 23, 2012

dogsicle posted:

i tossed a google form out so people could recommend me 1-3 series for the new year, and then ran that list through a randomizer for the bare minimum 6 shows i will commit to watching this year:

1. Wake Up, Girls!
2. The Hakkenden
3. Bodacious Space Pirates
4. Red Garden
5. Higurashi (unspecified amount, but I'll watch at least the first season obvi)
6. NHK ni Youkoso

as a secondary resolution, i have too much anime and need to thin the herd. to accomplish this, i won't download anything this year outside of seasonal anime and the shows that were put into my google form. i have to watch 6 more shows from the anime i already have and/or the 9 shows that didn't make it through the randomizer.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

and a second anime falls

Wake Up, Girls! (movie + tv): Idol stuff is pretty touch and go for me, whether they're guys or gals I seem to struggle with the series I've tried that center idol-dom first and foremost in the characters' motivations/lives. Or at least that's how I'd describe it I suppose? As I type this I realized I'm mostly just thinking about how awful I found Side M to be since I have enjoyed the few other idols things I've started/finished. Anyhow, WUG was a great experience that served as a new point on the spectrum of idol anime I've seen, with its toes dipped into a harsher side of the entertainment industry. Granted, this take mostly excludes the egregiously bad health club episode, where the depiction of sexual harrassment against the girls is really a bridge too far. Though these things are largely divorced, it doesn't feel any better to watch that episode now knowing stories of Yamakan's sexual harassment and this production using a batch of newbie VAs that mostly began and ended their careers with WUG.

With that caveat out of the way, I can say the rest of the harsh reality that the WUGs faced really connected me to the world of the show, as did each girl having a very distinct background and/or goals. The young glutton Minami who is scouted at a folk song competition; Kaya, a freeter who joins just for a new experience; Nanami, who hopes to hone her skills and join the Takarazuka Revue; Miyu, a bubbly maid cafe waitress with a fanclub and otaku information network; and Mayu, a disgraced idol from the show's villainous AKB-alike. The remaining members Airi and Yoshino are a bit more standard, being an insecure high school student and child actor given de facto leader status, but these roles stabilize the group dynamic and let them have some more down-to-earth drama that a humorous character like Miyu misses out on. The fact that their backgrounds continue to come up at various times really made their unit feel like something you'd see happen. A group of girls join together and their experiences and strengths/weaknesses coalesce to build an idiosyncratic music group. Another part that added depth to the world of the show was a running plotline with Ota, a chan poster who is shown at various points advocating for the WUGs online and eventually forming a small fanclub. Having this innocuous and just genuinely supportive view of a blossoming fan culture may not be hardcore realism but it's a welcome contrast to the struggles and setbacks the girls face, and certainly better than falling into a "fat, gross pervert" depiction. Rounding out the cast are Tange, Matsuda, and Hayasaka who all offer good doses of comedy while pushing the girls towards success even if the path is somewhat demeaning (local news bits) or difficult (Hayasaka's training). In terms of production value, it's certainly limited but that fact fits perfectly in the narrative and for me, increases the charm of the show. The movie is an obvious step above what the tv series is able to do, but both execute their performances well and in 2d, and they are even careful enough to add various stutters to the performances that you'd expect of mostly amateur idols. The few songs that are featured in the show were quite good as well. I'm definitely interested in following the girls further, though it sounds as if later installments struggle both visually and with writing.

The Hakkenden: A 90s OVA series filled to bursting with big names in animation like Shinya Ohira, Masaki Yuasa, Mitsuo Iso, Hiroyuki Okiura, etc. seems ripe for a deep dive but I think I exhausted myself with those idol feels. Granted, these OVAs are also the sort of scattered thing that is still hard for me to nail down many feelings on. As pure animation? This was a delight, traveling through multiple distinct directorial styles throughout its run and having the sort of lavish animation only afforded to these OVA projects that were just before the format's decline. As a coherent story I could draw much from? Mixed bag there. The series dips heavily into symbology but also just ignores any strict sense of continuity or chronology. Later episodes exist almost as unconnected adventures, where we drop in on one of the cast with no idea how or why they got where they are. Unborn children are released from a mother's womb, fully grown, as she dies...but then we see their souls incarnated as babies. Later, another baby is given to this same dead mother to raise into a child who then meets our adult cast. A young boy meets that child near the entrance to the underworld, but then grows into an adult before meeting the same child, who is unchanged, as an enemy in the living world.

If we're being honest, with retrospect I can see how these elements don't matter terribly much and the overarching story is intact if you ignore them. The process of watching the story unfold makes them seem incredibly confusing though, and kept me a few steps behind everything as I was trying to parse it all out. I'll also say that knowing the origin of this is one of the longest pieces of classical Japanese literature, the sort of folkloric and broad scope and characters do make sense. I did enjoy the dynamic of the cast and several specific characters, but they do feel a bit shallow in the way that prototypical stories can. The real weight and worth of this series, outside of the visual experimentation, is in the themes it interrogates. This is where I'll just say I failed. The particular events of the story took precedence for me to a degree where I wasn't digging into those nuances, and so this really merits a rewatch at some point. In a general sense, the series spends its time questioning/exploring the feudal system, familial bonds, destiny, faith, etc. While I don't know if these insights merit much praise in a modern context, obviously they came from a much older time and through the execution of this series they enable a lot of compelling drama.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Gurren down. Still got most of Eva to go, but well begun, half done, all that.

People were right. Overall, it's really good, and even having seen a lot of the stuff it's building off of, calling back to, and playing with beforehand, it still has a concrete identity of its own. (Just as a note, my thoughts on this are going to be a bit less coherantly organized than usual. Also, probably not terribly original.)

Another thing that stood out, though, was how many plans clearly got scrapped come the second half. A lot of shows either have crappy answers to mysteries or just don't address them, but relatively few shows have quite the "We decided it's not important. Here's an answer, it's done, we're cool?" feeling that Gurren Lagann gave to "Who's the weird old dude?" and "Is there anything in the book?"

It felt less like an in-narrative reveal, and more like a slightly bashful confession that the story really wasn't about that in the final draft. Which... I kind of like.

Going in knowing about the big plot twists and turns, I could really see why people were staggered at Kamina's death. It comes pretty early in the overall series, and he has more of the feeling of a main character than a mentor in a lot of ways, with his idiotic mistakes, central narrative focus, and tendency to initiate most of the action. Having Simon spend the next few episodes depressed and withdrawn just amplified the feeling. Works well in the larger context, but I can see it being rough going week to week.

The ending, meanwhile, went down a lot smoother than I'd been lead to believe. Having Simon and Nia go in knowing how this worked, even if the viewer didn't, lets it function as a character beat instead of just tragedy. (Similarly, Simon saying he was nobody flowed a lot better as an amused comment on a kid not caring who he just met than I thought it would when assuming he said it unprompted.)

One thing that worked less well, though, were some of the last act arcs. Viral didn't quite feel like there was enough going on to connect everything, although I can't say why it didn't entirely land for me, and the deaths often gave a kind of "Who were you?" feeling that hurt the impact. I think the film was right to trim those ones.

So, yeah. Got the energetic half of the set done. Now I just need to watch the depressed one, and I'm done with my resolution ahead of schedule.

Guess I'm grateful for my worst list for last year. They gave me the push to actually start watching the classics they didn't live up to.

Namtab
Feb 22, 2010

Namtab posted:

So the VN resolution went badly because I kinda bounce off Visual Novels nowadays.

For 2019 therefore I'm going back to my original resolutions that keep my anime levels up, but with some minor tweaks.

I will be watching 35 anims in 2019. Of these 35
- At least 20 have to air in 2019
- No more than 5 can be rewatches
- No more than 5 can be shorts
- Only one season of a show counts towards completion (e.g. if I watch the entire monogatari franchise, it counts as 1 entry)
- I may not make any complaints on discords, the forum or any other medium about this toxx. If I do then I automatically fail.

I will also finish Fate/Stay Night because its been years, I can at least finish 1 VN right???

(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

Month one update. Mostly started things off this month. Rd watching the Kara no kyoukai movies, started mob psycho 100, slime isekai, promised never land, magic girl specops. I figure I need to be watching at least 5 seasonal anime and then filling in the gaps elsewhere.

I have not touched the visual novel, but I have plans...

everythingWasBees
Jan 9, 2013




everythingWasBees posted:

Finish OG Vanguard, start G.

Post at least 2 3D models in chat that I attest I'm happy with.

Finish the Symphogears.

everythingWasBees
Jan 9, 2013




edited because I couldn't do it while probated but I think this is a fair change because there are many many vanguard episodes

Wark Say
Feb 22, 2013

by Fluffdaddy
Wark's Toxx, Part 01:


Chivalry of a Failed Knight

(This post contains some unmarked spoilers, but I've taken the liberty to tag almost everything else, just in case)

There's a ton of anime (most of them based on Light/Web Novels) about High School-aged students duking it out with a diverse range of powers/skills where there's a "tournament arc" element to them. "Battle High School" or something of that ilk. I think it was the fad sub-genre for a while there, kinda like how we can't go for a season without getting at least 2 isekai shows since a few years. They all basically wanted to be where My Hero Academia currently sits, but at most the most popular among them just got around the level The Irregular at Magic High School achieved back when it aired in the heady days of 2014. Popular, sure, but absolutely nothing worth writing home about (aside from a sick-rear end soundtrack by Taku Iwasaki, in the case of Irregular).

Chivalry of a Failed Knight is pretty much the same, but there's a strange earnestness to this doofy anime. It tells the story of one Ikki Kurogane, a boy with everything to prove meeting Stella Vermillion, a red-haired, hot-tempered princess who also wants to strut her stuff and get people to notice her, and the path they both walk to get there.

And while it has some typical, eye-rolling anime hogwash...



(this is the response about how she'd forgive him if he committed harakiri in exchange for having seeing her in a state of undress)


...They--

--waitaminnit, hold the motherloving phone. Kiss? You mean our boy here actually gets to express his feelings in a healthy fashion with a girl he likes? No way!

Yes way. There was a huge joke about how both this show and The Asterisk War basically had the same premise right from the get-go and were basically going through the same motions in the beginning (hell, they aired in the same season and, iirc, within hours of each other), but here's the stumper: While, again, nothing to write home about, this anime cuts right through the bullshit and has our two good-looking teenagers accept that they have the hots for each other and become a couple right at the end of volume 1/Episode 4. That's right, baby! We're going places with this motherfucker!

Sadly, at 3 volumes covered across one 12-episode season, the anime barely gets the first tournament arc out of the way. From what I've read here and elsewhere, the reaction is somewhat mixed about the following novels.

With regards to the anime:
Pros:
  • When battles are properly depicted, they're actually fairly rad and can get you pumped.
  • While not completely successful in my humble opinion, there are some art shifts here and there in the last third of the show which add a certain je-ne-sais-quoi at times.
  • There's a transgender character who's A) Not treated as a joke B) Is implied to be a stone cold badass.
  • Smug rear end in a top hat enemies get their comeuppance in a fairly satisfactory manner.
  • There's a girl who's basically Sagat (from Street Fighter 4 onwards), but with big baps, mega-twintails, glasses and a sword.

Cons:
  • Though the motivations are given some background and a modicum of justification, can you please knock it off with the little sisters who are in love with their brothers, LN writers? :cripes:
  • The main two antagonists in arcs 1 and 3 are so cartoonishly devious it's hard not to laugh at just how blatant they are.
  • Could've really used some more fights shown fully instead of just seeing short glimpses of them.

All in all, not a completely un-enjoyable time.

Wark Say
Feb 22, 2013

by Fluffdaddy
Sorry for the double post and all, but just to reiterate


  • Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood - 0/64
  • Chivalry of a Failed Knight - 12/12 DONE!
  • Hoozuki's Coolheadedness - 0/39
  • Kamisama Kiss - 0/25
  • From the New World - 0/25
  • Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju - 0/25
  • Coffin Princess Chaika - 0/22
  • Blood Blockade Battlefront - 0/24
  • Free: Iwatobi Swim Club - 0/37

261 episodes left.

Yes_Cantaloupe
Feb 28, 2005
wtf wark you haven't watched brotherhood???

Wark Say
Feb 22, 2013

by Fluffdaddy

Yes_Cantaloupe posted:

wtf wark you haven't watched brotherhood???
Not on Crunchy, no. Already watched it on Netflix and through :filez: almost a decade ago. I do, however, want to rewatch it from zero.

Strange Quark
Oct 15, 2012

I Failed At Anime 2022
Seeing FMA 2003 is good enough.

Davincie
Jul 7, 2008

watched the first of my resolution list:
Koko wa Green Wood by parallax

the first episode makes this seem like some real yaoi baiting, but then the mc ends up getting a girlfriend through the power of ntr, what a twist! its a bit of an odd anime, as its obviously not meant to be a real adaptation of its source material, but neither does it seem to be full on commercial like some others. There's direct references to the manga in it, with panels appearing on screen as well as moments that don't happen in the show being talked about. It doesn't really matter though, since its all rather easy to follow.

Visually its a pleasant 90s looking show, with some really nice painted backgrounds. Story wise every episode takes another angle, from ghosts to gangs which makes for a nice and varied viewing experience. Not all jokes landed for me though, so while i appreciated the mild absurdity of them, there weren't a lot of laughs. 7/10

i'm also adding one last show, Mawaru Penguindrum, by spaceflower

Julias
Jun 24, 2012

Strum in a harmonizing quartet
I want to cause a revolution

What can I do? My savage
nature is beyond wild

Strange Quark posted:

Seeing FMA 2003 is good enough.

The ending is kinda ehh, but I actually like the style and overall tone of the 2003 series more, and enjoyed how some of the chatacters played out more. Plus it feels Brotherhood very much assumes you watched the 2003 series first, since it rushes through the early arcs in a way that's very detrimental to the establishment of the Elric's relationships with people in the gov (you have shou tucker and his family wrapped up in a single ep of brotherhood, which really hurts)

Foxhound
Sep 5, 2007
Bit late but I just spotted the thread. For 2019 I will:
Anime:
Catch up to and follow where Jojo is at the end of the year. Currently in the middle of part 4.

Manga:
Catch up to and follow My Hero Academia. Currently on chapter 138.
Catch up to and follow The Ancient Magus' Bride. Currently on chapter 0.

LN:
Finish what I've bought, which is
Oregairu vol. 1-5 (read 2/5)
Konosuba vol 1-5 (read 0/5)

Video games:
Finish Nier Automata beyond ending A, which is what I've gotten so far. Gonna get the "real" ending, whatever that is. F?
Finish the main story of Dragon's Crown (the remaster for PS4).
Finish the main story of Ni No Kuni 2.

Read more Dredd in general.

:toxx:

Might add more manga to the list as I discover them. Was considering putting Shonan Junai Gumi on there but gently caress I don't have the time for a 270-chapter monstrosity.

dogsicle
Oct 23, 2012

i've an anime problem

dogsicle posted:

i tossed a google form out so people could recommend me 1-3 series for the new year, and then ran that list through a randomizer for the bare minimum 6 shows i will commit to watching this year:

1. Wake Up, Girls!
2. The Hakkenden
3. Bodacious Space Pirates
4. Red Garden
5. Higurashi S!
6. NHK ni Youkoso

as a secondary resolution, i have too much anime and need to thin the herd. to accomplish this, i won't download anything this year outside of seasonal anime and the shows that were put into my google form. i have to watch 6 more shows from the anime i already have and/or the 9 shows that didn't make it through the randomizer.

1. Witch Hunter Robin
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

not gonna write these up yet, since higurashi is really only half-over.

NowonSA
Jul 19, 2013

I am the sexiest poster in the world!
You're in for a treat with Rakugo and BB-Battlefront Wark, I liked both of those quite a bit.

GorfZaplen
Jan 20, 2012

KAIJI! GOT! THE BALL! IN THE! HOLE!!! HE GOT THE BALL IN THE HOLE!!!

I finished both seasons of Kaiji. The old contract has been finished, and now I begin on the new.

When Kaiji is good, it's truly an exceptional show. The human derby and E-Card were some of the tensest moments I've seen in an anime. Hell Chinchirorin was really great too. However, with both seasons taken as one, it's bookended with scenarios that weren't as exciting to me. I think the climax of the Rock Paper Scissors arc was really good, although not the most exciting way to start the show given the heights it reaches, but the Bog kiiiind of put a damper on the show. I enjoyed it, because of the slow unfurling of Kaiji's absolutely wild plan, and it gave us more of Hyodo being an absolute monster and talking about making a giant underground corporate empire so he can truly be free from any threat to his power, but my enjoyment of The Bog was of a different sort than the rest of the show. I'm excited to bite into Tonegawa, which I will do once I start to miss this show.

Srice
Sep 11, 2011

I thought about what I'd try to challenge myself with this year. Last year I had a few goals that I met but it was a struggle to complete them in time since it turned out to be a heck of a busy year for me. I don't wanna jinx myself again so I figure that since even during the busiest parts of my life last year I could still manage to squeeze in room to read at least a little bit nearly every day I'm gonna commit to reading at least 6 books that directly relate to anime. Maybe it'll be more by the end of the year but I'm thinking I'd rather underestimate this time around! Regular ol novels or non-fiction. No light novels unless it's done in one, as a simple weigh-in will reveal that despite the name a complete series set can actually be heavy and I'm not sure if I wanna support such lies. No visual novels either because only a nerd would ever consider looking at words on a screen. And before you try to pull a gotcha and say that's what I'm doing right now I'll have you know I'm typing this with my monitor off.

Anyway it's a broad definition but I already have 5 books in mind so I'll see how it goes (spoiler: two of them will be the two Tomihiko Morimi books that are getting an official release in English this spring and summer. Curious to see how they compare to their anime adaptions!). Got a few things in my book backlog I'm getting through first but hopefully by the end of the month I'll have something to post about.

Ibblebibble
Nov 12, 2013

Ibblebibble posted:

Time to challenge myself. In order of personal importance:

1) Finish off Ninja Slayer and watch Inou Battle to say that I have watched all the Trigger shows. Maybe also watch the LWA movies.

2) Clear my on-hold list except for JoJos because that's way too loving long. This means Railgun S2, AssClass, Fujiko Mine and the aforementioned Ninja Slayer.

3) Watch the three dramas that have been suggested to me for a long time: March Lion, Rakugo and NagiAsu.

That's all for me.

Railgun S2 finished. I sat on it for a long time because I had watched Index S1 and the Sisters arc, whilst very good, was starting to feel a little worn out for me after a bit. Luckily, I mellowed out and forgot the finer details of the arc whilst doing other stuff and came back with a better appreciation of it. I also quite liked the Febri arc that came after. I still really loving hate Kuroko though.

I'll start working on AssClass next, most likely.

everythingWasBees
Jan 9, 2013




10/196 episodes in to OG Vanguard but this series is so good.

everythingWasBees fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Feb 18, 2019

Davincie
Jul 7, 2008

finished show 2. Gun X Sword by endorph

i like van, i like wendy, carmen, the mexican sentai team and the soundtrack. heck i liked the first 2 episodes as well. the mustache men were a great one off villain. unfortunately after that it gets in a rut of a dozen episodic episodes most of which do little to nothing to develop the overarching plot, have uninteresting premises, or have interesting premises that it does nothing with. examples of these are the twins ep, who never show up again and whose life ruining revelation gets at most half a minute of attention. others such as mafia town are so dime a dozen its hard to stay interested.

the setting starts out interesting enough, with the whole western thing going on, but quickly kinda goes off rails with mad max esque towns seemingly being in walking distance from rich merchant towns and huge port cities. these sort of things don't matter much, but i do wish it had stuck to the more interesting western setting it started with.

as a whole the story, outside of a few episodes in the middle, never hooked me. i didn't care for the villains nor for their motivations. the closest i got for caring for a 'villain' was the rival character ray and he didn't really get that much screen time. which is also a problem for most of the characters outside of the van wendy pair really. the entourage grows a bit, but carmen and joshua never really get all that much depth and the others even less. the various original 7 villains mostly don't get much development either

so yeah overall while i liked some aspects of it, i didn't think it was a great show cause it was hard to care about most of what happened in the story. the episodic episodes were mostly uninteresting, and the overarching story lacked depth in the character department. 6/10

dogsicle
Oct 23, 2012

dogsicle posted:

i tossed a google form out so people could recommend me 1-3 series for the new year, and then ran that list through a randomizer for the bare minimum 6 shows i will commit to watching this year:

1. Wake Up, Girls!
2. The Hakkenden
3. Bodacious Space Pirates
4. Red Garden
5. Higurashi S!
6. NHK ni Youkoso

as a secondary resolution, i have too much anime and need to thin the herd. to accomplish this, i won't download anything this year outside of seasonal anime and the shows that were put into my google form. i have to watch 6 more shows from the anime i already have and/or the 9 shows that didn't make it through the randomizer.

1. Witch Hunter Robin
2. Gilgamesh
3.
4.
5.
6.

gilgamesh is basically 2003's Devilman Crybaby tonally so i'm taking another raincheck on writeups. almost halfway through Bodacious, which is mostly ok.

Srice
Sep 11, 2011

The first book I picked is something that most people don't even know exists. An officially licensed, YA tie-in novel to the popular series Attack on Titan written in English for a western audience.



The only reason I know this book exists is because I happened to see a review on the sidebar of ANN while checking the news one day. At the time I'm writing this only 145 users have rated the book on Goodreads. That's real low, and Goodreads as a community definitely skews towards YA! My best guess is that either the venn diagram of big YA fans and big AoT fans intersects at fanfiction and they'd generally rather not read a tie-in novel, or the marketing for this book was so non-existent to the point where the people that would be interested in it have zero clue it exists.

Personally, if I were a betting man (and I am!) I'd place money on both things being incredibly true. Since there was very little chatter about this to the point where so few know it exists, I was curious enough to see for myself what it was even though I knew that chances were pretty drat good that I wouldn't like it. After all, this specific sort of deal is pretty rare with anime, especially when it involves a property that didn't accidentally sign the rights away for decades! As a big normie I enjoy AoT but I certainly don't care for the other parts in this equation!

Unfortunately it's the sort of book that leaves me with little to say. Sure, I can tell that the author did some research on the series while writing it. But some uninspired prose combined with a cast of YA archetypes that actively refuse to break out of their molds just leads to a dull experience that would be even duller to break down; just knowing that a rich girl with a fiance joins the army and gets assigned to a squad led by a handsome but rude boy is enough information for you to fill in a lot of blanks. Whenever there's not a titan around the characters don't feel feel true to that AoT spirit as they're much too sane, and the elements outside of that are so by the numbers it becomes a bit of a chore to get through. The fact this book exists is much more interesting than the experience of reading it. I knew going in that it'd be a tiny miracle if I liked it because the combination of YA and being a tie-in novel are both factors that I'm predisposed to dislike. And sure, I'll admit to turning up my nose at a lot of YA fiction in general but heck, YA readers certainly deserve better than what Garrison Girl offers.

One last thing I'll mention is the odd detail that will likely be the main thing I remember about this: the two leads eventually read The Count of Monte Cristo together. I don't mean a version of The Count of Monte Cristo that's changed to fit the setting of Attack on Titan. I mean they literally say the book is called The Count of Monte Cristo. I can respect the idea that the author loves that book so much that they'll straight up ignore how wildly out of place its inclusion is.

As a final punchline upon finishing the book my Kindle recommended to me another book by the author so I clicked on it and turned out to be a LitRPG book*. And now I fear that has ruined my Amazon recommendations. Ack!

*Translator's Note: LitRPG means Isekai.




The next anime-related book I have planned will hopefully be a palette cleanser. Manga in Theory and Practice: The Craft of Creating Manga by Hirohiko Araki. Despite the name it sounds like it's less a how-to guide and more about Araki's personal creative process. I'm far from the biggest Jojo fan but I'm real curious to see what he says on the matter. If nothing else it will be interesting to take a look into the mindset of someone who has been working on manga for longer than I've been alive.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Srice posted:


Unfortunately it's the sort of book that leaves me with little to say. Sure, I can tell that the author did some research on the series while writing it. But some uninspired prose combined with a cast of YA archetypes that actively refuse to break out of their molds just leads to a dull experience that would be even duller to break down; just knowing that a rich girl with a fiance joins the army and gets assigned to a squad led by a handsome but rude boy is enough information for you to fill in a lot of blanks.



Yeah.

Obviously, she marries her fiance, and then the jerk crashes a golf cart into the wedding, does sick donuts that get mud all over the wedding cake, and then says "Later, losers!" which motivates the heroine to kill a Titan and get the blood all over the jerk's car.

(The jerk invented golf carts and cars just to be able to crash into people's weddings, as is a tradition in these things.)

As for Araki book, I haven't read it, but I have read his story of the first time he got something published, and it's good enough I'd expect that he's going to have a lot worth saying. Especially considering how early Jojo wasn't exactly the beloved cultural phenomenon it grew into.

Wark Say
Feb 22, 2013

by Fluffdaddy
I've read the Araki book and spoilers: I don't think I've ever fallen even more in love with a writer/mangaka after reading a non-fiction book that they've done. Hell, not even with Haruki Murakami.

Srice
Sep 11, 2011

Cool to hear such good things about the Araki book, can't wait to hit it up in a few weeks :cheerdoge:

Davincie
Jul 7, 2008

show 3, level e by canteloupe

i thought this had a great first 4 episodes. first 3 were really funny and the 4th was a spot on parody of sci fi horror. after that however came an arc that combined several things i absolutely do not care for. sentai, jrpg/isekai stuff and a grade schooler cast. the show never really recovered for me after that, so while the last 3 episodes came back to the style of the first 3 the laughs were gone. still, i really enjoyed those first 4 eps so i'll give it a 7

GorfZaplen
Jan 20, 2012

I finished Sweetness and Lightning. Thoroughly pleasant show and a joy to watch. Not sure what's next...

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GorfZaplen
Jan 20, 2012

The fates have decreed that I will watch Real Drive next.

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