Anime

[ibanezmonster]

I have to rant somewhere about this show I really despise: Free!

So a few years ago I committed myself to watching everything KyoAni produced. Around that time, the quality of their shows started declining quite a bit.  This is the studio that brought us Clannad After Story and FMP: Fumoffu. What is happening!!!???

Free! has two seasons- just finished the second season which literally just finished airing today (so now I've officially completed every anime produced by KyoAni to date). Free! is a show about a bunch of high school guys in a swimming club. It features plenty of male fan service, embodied by the fangirl that keeps hanging out with the guys only there to claim how she is a muscle enthusiast and just there to look at the shirtless guys.

I like to compare this show to K-On!. First of all, there is an exclamation point at the end of the title. But it seems like a similar idea, because K-On! is about girls forming a rock band in their music club and Free! is about guys forming a swimming team for their swimming club. That premise alone makes me prefer K-On! by a wide margin, but I'm open-minded. The problem with Free! is that it tries to be serious. These guys get very emotional really quick, and there is a lot of crying in the show. It just didn't seem anywhere near believable. What type of guy acts the way that these guys act? K-On!, on the other hand, was only ever serious at the end of the second season, when they realize they are graduating and that their fun was coming to an end. However, it didn't make you sad because there was a bunch of crying, because (well, according to my memory) there wasn't- what made you sad was the going away song they wrote for the one band member who was a year younger than them and the overall tone in some moments turning to melancholy for the first time in 30 or 40 episodes.

I actually gave Free! a 3, the all-time lowest score I've ever given to a full-length anime, only comparable to the other atrocity produced by KyoAni, the show Tamako Market. It's about the level of intelligence of Tamako Market, yet tries to be serious, which leads me to actually laugh during the serious moments when the guys are crying. That's probably not the intended reaction.

So now just gonna watch the first part of Fairy Tail... only 167 more episodes to go. 
(decided not to watch Fairy Tail (2014) until it ended, since I don't want it to be on my "Watching" for possibly several years)

[ibanezmonster]

Episode 34 of Fairy Tail- includes Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto. 

[Jaakko Keskinen]

The first full metal alchemist anime includes Chopin's etude op. 10 no 3 and Beethoven's 5th. 

[ibanezmonster]

The first full metal alchemist anime includes Chopin's etude op. 10 no 3 and Beethoven's 5th. 

I've only seen Brotherhood... though it's probably never a good idea to include Beethoven's 5th (let me guess, the opening), since that's gotta be one of the most overused musical cliches that exist.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Yep, I always prefer finale of 5th to first movement. And Pastoral symphony to whole 5th symphony. The first movement is so widely used in popular culture that it really has lost it's power.

[Moonfish]

So..is Fairy Tail or Steinsgate worth one's time? Greg?

[ibanezmonster]

So..is Fairy Tail or Steinsgate worth one's time? Greg?

Steins;gate is definitely. It's a bit hard to describe the show, but there is a reason why it's #2 on MAL. It's just GREAT. Very unique and very much intelligently written. A must watch, for sure.

Fairy Tail is worth the time if you know what you're getting into. I'm on episode 78 out of 175 for the first part. You'll know if it's the kind of show you like probably before you even watch it. It's a shonen, so nothing deep or thought provoking, but it's basically just a magic guild doing dangerous missions, having fun and being funny (with plenty of drama thrown in). Extremely entertaining. Just the type of show I've always wanted to watch.

Both shows I'm scoring a 9/10.

[Moonfish]

Steins;gate is definitely. It's a bit hard to describe the show, but there is a reason why it's #2 on MAL. It's just GREAT. Very unique and very much intelligently written. A must watch, for sure.

Fairy Tail is worth the time if you know what you're getting into. I'm on episode 78 out of 175 for the first part. You'll know if it's the kind of show you like probably before you even watch it. It's a shonen, so nothing deep or thought provoking, but it's basically just a magic guild doing dangerous missions, having fun and being funny (with plenty of drama thrown in). Extremely entertaining. Just the type of show I've always wanted to watch.

Both shows I'm scoring a 9/10.

Sounds promising. I am a great fan of Claymore, but rarely encounter anything of its caliber. Any suggestions?

Hmm, have you seen Attack on Titan by any chance? Is it any good?

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Hmm, have you seen Attack on Titan by any chance? Is it any good?

It is great, like Steins:gate but my brother thinks manga has become a bit weird right after the point where anime ended. I think it is still excellent but I also see some of it bit weird. Hard to say without spoiling.

[Moonfish]

I watched Akira for the first time this past weekend. Other titles I have on my to-watch list are ..

Spirited Away
Ghost in the Shell
Grave of the Fireflies
My Neighbor Totoro

Sounds like you have a great set of animated films ahead of you!    Spirited Away (in particular) is such an incredible feast of imagination and creativity - (best for a Halloween setting though, but definitely a keeper)!!

[Jaakko Keskinen]

I watched Spirited away last new year. Somehow, it seemed a fitting time to watch it. Excellent film, certainly.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

My brother really likes Pandora Hearts but for some reason I have some trouble understanding the plot at times. Don't know why, I have read much  more complicated things.

[ibanezmonster]

Grave of the Fireflies

Bring the tissues...

Sounds promising. I am a great fan of Claymore, but rarely encounter anything of its caliber. Any suggestions?

I honestly didn't care for Claymore. Not sure why, since everyone seems to like it.

Hmm, have you seen Attack on Titan by any chance? Is it any good?

It's one out of the 4 series that I gave a 10 on my list (in my signature), so yeah, it's pretty good. 
That show is the ultimate portrayal of helplessness (although Gantz and Evangelion are nearly as much so).

To answer your previous question, have you seen Elfen Lied, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Paranoia Agent or Shinsekai Yori (From the New World)? Those are my other 10's, and I have a handful of shows that I'd give a 9.5 to if I could... 

[ibanezmonster]

Finished Toradora!. You could see where this show was going by episode 1, so it's practically impossible to spoil it. Plenty of cheap drama along the way. A romantic comedy where I couldn't really put myself in the perspective of the main male character since to me, the female love interest was just a runt and a brat at the same time. The first love interest was much better- a delightfully weird girl. The strength of the show is the well-developed characters. Other than that, I don't get why it's highly regarded because it just seems like a typical romantic comedy that is rarely funny.

[ibanezmonster]

Finished Fairy Tail. Most episodes of an anime (175) I've watched other than Digimon or Pokemon. (It's technically still airing, but under the name Fairy Tail 2014, which I'm not going to watch now).

It's exactly what I wanted to see. The main story revolves around the Fairy Tail magic guild, especially concerning the four characters in my current avatar. Although there is technically no main character, Lucy is definitely the one out of the four that gets the most storyline treatment and really develops into one of the most realistic and fully fleshed out anime characters I've seen (and is definitely one of my favorite).

The main complaints I have about the show are some typical problems with the shounen genre. Now, it doesn't have extremely long-drawn fights or ridiculous amounts of filler (stuff that Naruto is infamous for) but has a lot of the corniness of the shounen genre.

The soundtrack (which includes some Rachmaninoff), the magic, fantasy, humor, intense moments, etc. are just pure entertainment. If you don't want any profound messages (other than how nearly all shounen think the power of teamwork is amazing and profound) but just want to immerse yourself in a fantasy world world with awesome fights, lovable characters and crazy ideas, this is the anime for you. I love it, if that's not obvious already.

[ibanezmonster]

Going to take a totally different approach to watching anime now... up until now, I've almost always been watching anime one at a time. But now, I'm at the point where I don't care about quickly finishing any of them- I've already built a big enough list (263 so far). So I'm just going to concurrently watch as many series as I feel like at the same time, including airing ones (right now I have 6 on at the same time, including Fairy Tail 2014 which I previously said I wouldn't watch yet). Most other people with a long anime list have 10-20 shows going on at a time. Just going to take my time and savor the variety of genres that I can watch whenever.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Any Death note fans here? I actually haven't watched anime completely but I know some of the differences between endings. At first I seemed to like L more than Light but soon enough my villain-worshipping mind started to prefer Light. Although L (and definitely Mello and Near) has several not so heroic qualities as well... I'm also one of those people who likes Misa.

[ibanezmonster]

At the beginning of the show, I was actually supportive of Light at the beginning until I realized how wrong what he was doing was.  Something happens later in the show that really shows what type of person Light is- at that point it would be impossible to be on his side. And yeah, Misa is terrible.


For fun... my original Death Note post from '09:

I finished watching Death Note today.
Most intense ending of any show I've ever seen. Even slightly more so than Welcome to the NHK, which is saying A LOT.
While watching this show, you end up having to pick a side. Despite all that happened, I'm surprised which side I picked. I wish enough people watched this show, so we could get into a serious discussion about it. Now I wonder what kind of person I am? 

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Yah, Light really did end up going off the deep end. I mean, killing people for lazyness? But he's so cool imo The reason I like Misa is probably that she has certain dorkiness that made her interesting. I think only characters I didn't like were Takada and Demegawa. I didn't like Mello first because I kept all the time seeing him as a girl but after he gets that scar I started to like him so much he ended up temporarily being my avatar.

[ibanezmonster]

Actually caught up now on Fairy Tail, after 215 episodes. This new season isn't that great. Hopefully it's just a temporary slump that is inevitable with long-running shounen.

So now, currently watching:
Death Parade
Mushishi Zoku Sho 2nd Season
Durarara!!x2 Shou
Tsukimonogatari
Fairy Tail (2014)

Trying to stick mostly to shows that are currently airing. I'll be able to add Digimon Tri to that last when it airs in April...