"Climaxed halfway through the series" suddenly takes on a different meaning :gonk:

Wahaha gech hating Kaleido Star, what's to expect. The man says Eva is everything he hates about anime. So character designs, production values (minus few dodgy eps), music, genre mixing, difficult issues and :gendopose: are also wrong with animu :(


Anyway, I've been very much out of anime for months now and the starvation theory of early years works. Back then everything was new and exciting, you even managed to tolerate AD Police and Doomed Megalopolis on your shelf because you foolishly bought that shit on VHS and by god you were going to keep it. Nowadays I nearly always limit myself to a few series per season, depending on what catches my interest, judging by character designs and basic setup. So comparing the amount of good series I watch, things haven't changed all that much. All I see is bigger production values (now everything pretty has that sunbleached evening effect to them!), more choice and easier, much easier access to it all.

From an actual anime lover's point of view, things seriously couldn't be better. My issues only come from how many of the older, wonderful series easily get overlooked in favor of the more known (and more readily available) titles but ah well.

Sure, I doubt we'll ever have anything of the magnitude of Mobile Police Patlabor in terms of charm, talent or influence, much like I doubt any romantic comedy will ever be able to top Maison Ikkoku (manga), but recent times have given us completely wonderful miracles like Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo (which still stands as my favorite animated motion picture of this century), Millennium Actress, Haruhi, Victorian Romance Emma, Haibane Renmei, Stand-Alone Complex and Pani Poni Dash, and you simply can't complain about those (unless of course you somehow despise comedy or cyberpunk).

Then again, after Yotsuba anime hits, there will be no need to make any more.................................

Haha, my cousins still have Genocyber and Lensman.

I'm pretty much in agreement that really good anime comes pretty rarely these days. Every now and then something like Gungrave and Death Note will come out, but a lot of it is bullshit series like Blood+ or .hack series #53645. Before I watched Death Note, there was one show I saw that was hilarious, but I can't remember what it's called. It was about some sort of princess/magical girl who fights with grappling moves and is always twisting and breaking the shit out of people. Last I saw, it was only a few episodes in. Haven't checked it out recently.

I've been hearing a lot about this Tengen Toppa show lately, so I might give that one a shot sometime soon.

Tengen Toppa is one of those animes that make you yell at your screen because of the amount of MAN it eminates, and thus the amount of MAN you receive.

Just watch the first couple of episodes, pay attention to Kamina and you'll know what I mean. It's like the guy is pure testosterone or something it's amazing, like you (or at least I) didn't know how to react aside from just yelling at the screen. I don't know why i yelled at the screen and i felt silly for doing so but it just felt right.

Yeah, definately an awesome anime. Filled with twists and turns and testosterone.

EDIT: Yeah, Shinji really does fap to Asuka. What happens is she's in a coma, he tries to wake her up and somehow pulls open her patient outfit or something. The screen focuses on the IVs and you hear generic masturbating grunts. He creams all over his hand and and says "I'm so fucked up".

The movie starts with a bunch of live action scenes that are really weird, and most people skip it. But if you watch through it, right at the end is where Shinji plays with himself.

One of the main covers of the S2 compilation works (a CD set with all of Evangelion's music) is a close-up of Shinji's jizz-covered hand. Classy!

Thanks for the recommendations folks. I've taken a look at the first few episodes of Toppa Tengen and it's definitely grabbed my interest enough to make me keep watching, unlike some of the other shows that've been recommended to me of late (Darker Than Black, Lucky Star). The show's got a killer intro (good hook), a great man's man of a character in Kamina, and an interesting overall story arc. Other anime I'm looking at: Mushishi - seems like just the original anime i was looking for, and Planetes - heard this one picks up later on.

What's wrong with Lucky Star -_-

I thought parts of it were funny albeit altogether silly. Guess it really isn't something you try to recommend to people.

Eh, Lucky Star's moe was poison. Seto no Hanayome was superior humor.

Why do I always fall in love with those twisted chaos animes that nobody likes to sub (Negima!?, PPD, Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei) or are so completely deliciously twisted in premise that everyone ignores it or runs away (Blue Drop, I'm looking at YOU)?

Wasn't PPD licensed by ADV not too long ago? I think a few volumes are available on amazon right now. I was especially interested in seeing Zetsubo Sensei - the premise seems really interesting to me, and I agree it is a darn shame that no one's taken upon themselves to sub it.

What? Is that in the works? =o

Negima!?, PPD and Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei are all produced by SHAFT, and SHAFT series are notorious for being a pain in the ass to sub. They love their blackboard graffiti.

Also, Sin Ansem, isn't San the very definition of moe?

Fortunately, SHAFT keeps the blackboard graffiti and other pause-button requiring gags to an absolute minimum in ef, concentrating on the other weird animation tricks they like.

And the one graffiti/pause-to-see gag they've limited themselves to so far was epic.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y26...1784966470.jpg

Aren't most SHAFT-isms more of Akiyuki Shinbo's doing? The camera tricks that were so prevalent in Shinbo-directed shows like Hidamari Sketch on top of everything else mentioned in the above indicates that this isn't SHAFT so much as Shinbo.

It should be noted that Shinbo is credited with supervising ef, which explains some the (excellent) use of the camera. That, and ef's director has worked alongside Shinbo on a few projects (notably PPD and Negima).

That explains the SHAFT Line (which explains my love for those crazy comedy series), and btw I've long since had the PPD sub and want the dub soon.

That doesn't solve everyone ignoring Blue Drop though. The drama in that show is brilliant.

Let's be for real, Anime has always been crap.

Of course as far as crap goes, the past half decade has been pretty great. Planetes has been my favorite television show period. You'd have to be watching a series of stinkers to come to any concrete conclusions about relative quality. Just because somebody has screenshots in their av/sig isn't indicative of quality.

Also taking this opportunity to plug Voices of a Distant Star.

I've got Voices of a Distant Star here, but still have yet to watch it....I'll get around to it soon.

My interest in anime has generally been limited to whether I can be bothered downloading the entire series (if it has already finished) or whether I can dedicate myself every week to get it when a new ep comes out.

As far as Bleach and Naruto are concerned, I'm only watching them more out of habit now than anything, since I've come this far already.

I haven't watch a whole load of post-2000 anime, but the ones I have watched I really liked (even if they kinda fizzle out toward the end, or are so popular that they get old and annoying fast because of stupid fans milking it for all it's worth).
- Honey and Clover I & II
- Genshiken I & II
- Yakitate!! Japan
- Ouran High School Host Club
- Death Note
- Samurai 7 (I loooove this. Thought it was a great alternate take on Seven Samurai)
- Full Metal Panic (all 3 seasons)
- Azumanga Daioh (SO LOOKING FORWARD TO YOTSUBA ANIME!)
- Ichigo Mashimaro
- Cromartie High

Anime I really want to watch are Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo, Claymore, Samurai Champloo, Afro Samurai.....I forget the others.....

I tried to get into Lucky Star, but just preferred Ichigo Mashimaro a lot more. It seemed to me that Lucky Star was trying a bit too hard to be cute and over-the-top slice of life thing, while Mashimaro has a really laid back charm I like.
I'm trying to get into Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya as well, but I just keep thinking back to the thousands of otaku fans who only love it because Haruhi's a cutesy bizzarre chick and thats the reason why they 'identify' with her. Plus I've been to a couple of conventions where literally hundreds of people are participating in the Hare Hare Yukai 'Dance Off' comps.....UGH.

If all you can think about is creepy fanboys when watching something, I'd say you should probably give up trying to get into it. :tpg:

Does anyone know the reason why they stopped abruptly with the Berserk anime series? I'm sure this has long been discussed, but I only recently got into reading the manga and I feel like it's a great tragedy that this series never got continued past volume 12. It's one of the greatest anime and most detailed manga's out there and for no production company to snap it up is shocking to me.

Well the fact that it's still being developed presents some problems, plus the show sort of wrote itself into a hole without any real good way to resolve the conflict.

It was probably just a vehicle for the comic anyways.

I haven't been watching anime all that much lately, but I'll watch a few series every now and again. I don't think anime as a whole is completely sucky these days. It's just that there are tons of titles and a lot to choose from, so sometimes it's hard to find shows you consider good.

Edit: I totally forgot to recommend something to watch. Like I said, I haven't been keeping up with stuff in the past few years, but I really loved Toward the Terra and Mushishi.

I don't keep up with nearly the same amount of anime I used to watch a few years ago, but there have been a few good titles from 2006-present that I've enjoyed. I won't list the popular ones, but an anime that I haven't seen much discussion about is Seirei no Moribito. The animation and overall atmosphere reminded me a lot of an older title I've always liked called Juuni Kokki (The Twelve Kingdoms). I'm only 6 episodes into Seirei no Moribito, but it seems like one that I'm going to finish since it's only 26 episodes long.

Hmmmm. Sounds like I'm not alone in keeping track of fewer and fewer shows. In fact the only show at the moment that I've really bothered to keep track of is Gundam00 perhaps only because its Gundam. I was watching a few other series this season and last and I found most of them to be tediously boring and dropped them shortly into the season. Everything seems so similar, must be from all those years of watching practically every series that rolled around.

Still waiting on that next season of Full Metal Panic, that and the Gurren Lagann OVAs they said they were making (they still are, right?).

I just finished watching tengen toppa and I must say that it is definitely one of the better animes out there. The massive amount of 'man' it enamates truly sets it apart from all the other mech series.

... however, I kinda hated the ending. :(

As for naruto, the manga is showing some promise lately with all these fights and events but the anime is crappy lately.
-animation sucks compared to DBZ which is older.
-some episodes are spent on meaningless talk and plot reminders in the heat of battle.
The manga surely looks better, at least it lets you imagine battles.

http://www.gamingforce.org/forums/at...1&d=1198947965

(Btw this is the akatsuki new leader)

That's Itachi's pose... and he isn't the leader :gonk:.