What anime are you watching or manga are you reading?

G.J.

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

Liked
Azumanga Daioh

Going off this one, you might enjoy Lucky Star and Nichijou.

If it's the slice of life element that you enjoyed, then I'll recommend Hanasaku Iroha and Non Non Biyori as well.

Don't judge Non Non Biyori by its cover either, it might surprise you as much as it did with me.

GalwayGuy2 wrote: »

Also, are there any good slice of lifes involving twenty year olds?

I'm really liking NHK at the moment.

Have you seen Servant x Service? It's a SoL comedy about a group of twenty something year olds who work in a civil service office, I thought it was pretty good.

Gunmonkey

G.J. wrote: »

Going off this one, you might enjoy Lucky Star and Nichijou.

If it's the slice of life element that you enjoyed, then I'll recommend Hanasaku Iroha and Non Non Biyori as well.

Have you seen Servant x Service? It's a SoL comedy about a group of twenty something year olds who work in a civil service office, I thought it was pretty good.

I'd 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th all those suggestions (not seen Lucky Star yet).

Another suggestion is Psycho Pass, very similar tone to Ghost in the Shell, also made by the same production company.

Would also recommend Fairy Tail if you liked One Piece.

Full Metal Panic! is probably what you remember, mix of high school comedy and mech battles. Its odd as it has 3 seasons, 1st and 3rd are chronological and follow the story (FMP and The Second Raid) and the 2nd (Fumoffu!) which just focuses on the hogh school comedy, partially in isolated chapters.

GalwayGuy2

Have you seen Servant x Service? It's a SoL comedy about a group of twenty something year olds who work in a civil service office, I thought it was pretty good.

Yeah, I liked it. It was funny.

Tomd983

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

I've recently come out of years long Anime cryo-sleep by catching up with the One Piece manga (good lord, so many), and realising that Crunchyroll is NOT an IP blocked website in Ireland (I always thought it was for some reason), and I checked out this Attack on Titan everyone's been going on about. Feel very conflicted on it, I liked it overall, but definitely it had good and bad elements:

Bad: Terrible and boring characters, muddling plot, second half of the series was worse than the first, very blatant switches to still images to save animation budget, the very few plot-twists there were were presented badly and stopping at episode 25 practically gave me plot whiplash.

Good: Really interesting world, very compelling world mystery, excellent designs both in the titans and the weapons used to fight them, amazing action set-pieces, and best opening sequence of maybe any anime ever.

I would like to give special shout-outs to the first

Titan versus Titan

fight in the forest, which might be the first battle in anime history I've seen where nobody talks, nobody shouts out attack names, and there are no bystanders who go "OH MY GOD, DID YOU SEE THAT ATTACK! WE ARE VERY SURPRISED BY THE POWER LEVEL OF IT!". It managed to be really subdued and epic at the same time. That's not easy.

If anyone wants to hit me up with any other recommendations, I'd appreciate that, he's a random list of anime I've watched in the past that I did/didn't like, if that refines things at all:

Liked
Read or Die the OVA
Cowboy Bebop
Samurai Champloo
Wolfs Rain
Azumanga Daioh
One Piece
Attack on Titan
Full Metal Alchemist
Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Outlaw Star
Ghost in the Shell: Stand alone Complex


Did not like:
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Tengu Tenge
Love Hina
Elfen Lied
Bleach
Naruto
Gintama!
Bobobo-Bobo
Excel Saga
Hellsing
Trigun

Give Code Geass a watch. I thought it was fantastic.

Sephiroth_dude

I've dumped fate zero for the moment having found English episodes of fairy tale \0/

Sephiroth_dude

On episode 85 of fairy tale and they've changed the voice actors and they sound terrible.

Gunmonkey

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

On episode 85 of fairy tale and they've changed the voice actors and they sound terrible.

Is this the English dub? Ive heard a few clips and they sound pretty bad compared to the Japanese voices, even in parts before Ep85. Maybe thats because Ive watched the whole thing with subs and associate their voices more to characters than the Eng ones.

Sephiroth_dude

Ya its the dubbed version,there were using the same voice actors throughout and then they just change it..........I'll get use to it :pac:

Numina

It's become very uncommon that I watch anime at all now. Besides Attack on Titan, I haven't really watched anything since I dropped Steins;Gate in January 2013, so for me this is a little achievement.

I finished Mushishi a day or two ago and it was pretty great. I wouldn't say it's as relaxing as people make it out to be (I expected something like Haibane Renmei.) For me it had light horror aspects which made some episodes a little tense, like the episode about the girl who loses her eyes. The soundtrack for it was amazing. This song especially gets me at 0:40

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puLnIQ-plR8

GalwayGuy2

Finished Madoka Magika.

loved the story, but the directing, especially in the later episodes, annoyed the hell out of me.

Links234

Numina wrote: »

I haven't really watched anything since I dropped Steins;Gate in January 2013, so for me this is a little achievement.

How far in did you drop it?

UberPrinny_Baal

I started both Sword Art Online, and Log Horizon at the same time, recommended by the same person.

I got to about the teens in episode count for each at the moment.

They both have similar premises (Real people trapped in a virtual reality MMORPG). But watching them both around the same time starkly contrasted how much better LH is than SAO.

SAO is just too blatant of a male power fantasy for me. The hero is the ultimate self insert Gary Stu, he is the strongest and most special player in the game. He can solo content that raids have trouble with. Every girl crushes on him. I was just watching it to find out the conclusion of the world mystery (Why were they trapped in the game? Can they get out?), which unexpectedly wrapped up half way through the series. Then they start a new plot arc and introduce the main character's real life little sister who also has a crush on him BUT IS NOT ACTUALLY DIRECTLY BLOOD RELATED SO IT'S COOL, and I ragequit the show.

Log Horizon on the other hand has a main character who's only power is that he's an excellent strategist. Then it fills out the roster with a much larger and more interesting cast of characters, who have distinctive personality traits. It's kinda glaring how I could find some actions scenes of Sword Art Online boring (because the hero is so overpowered), while a small plot-thread in Log Horizon of virtual characters setting up a virtual burger stand to sell virtual food was oddly compelling.

Also Log Horizon's world mystery/big question seems to be the slightly more interesting and nuanced question of "What point is there to life when everything is a game?"

I'll probably have to watch more LH and let it sink in before I can say if it's legitimately a great show, but it blows SAO out of the water.

mrkite77

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

But watching them both around the same time starkly contrasted how much better LH is than SAO.

Indeed. I liked the first part of SAO (minus the irritating plot holes) for the actually progressing love story, but that second arc was just awful. They couldn't have made the bad guy more cartoonishly evil if they showed him kicking puppies and tying girls to train tracks.

UberPrinny_Baal

mrkite77 wrote: »

Indeed. I liked the first part of SAO (minus the irritating plot holes) for the actually progressing love story, but that second arc was just awful. They couldn't have made the bad guy more cartoonishly evil if they showed him kicking puppies and tying girls to train tracks.

As soon as the "Will they/Won't they" of the love story resolves, I agree it takes a massive nosedive in likability. Also I think the two parter where they adopt a child was absolutely woeful.

I'm not sure plotholes in a show so firmly based in unreality would bother me so much (I took more issue in the fact the episodes are spaced so far apart in time, making it hard to feel engaged), but out of curiousity, which plot holes are you talking about?

Numina

Links234 wrote: »

How far in did you drop it?

The last episode I watched was 13. It wasn't anything to do with the show itself really, I thought it was a great show, hilarious and genuinely captivating, but on a whole I just got tired of watching shows altogether.

Links234

That's a pity, because if there's one show that I would really recommend people stick with, it's Steins;Gate. It's slow going at first, but so worth it in the end. Easily one of the best things I've ever seen. Ever.

If you ever feel up to it again, check it out

Numina

Links234 wrote: »

That's a pity, because if there's one show that I would really recommend people stick with, it's Steins;Gate. It's slow going at first, but so worth it in the end. Easily one of the best things I've ever seen. Ever.

If you ever feel up to it again, check it out

I'm very sure that I'll come back to it in the next month or two, I don't like that I left it unfinished. I had a lot of shows that I aimed to watch and I think that was kind of dragging me down, and I was going full speed ahead constantly watching show after show at the time so I probably just burned myself out.

mrkite77

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

but out of curiousity, which plot holes are you talking about?

Avoiding more mundane holes that involve plot spoilers, the most annoying ones for me are the ones buffeting the core conceit that keeps everyone playing the game. Let's assume this could happen in real life. The first thing the government would do is patch the server to log everyone off safely. At the very least, nerf the crap out of the game. Of course they try to handwave that away by saying an AI controls the game... but an AI is just code, it can be patched just like any other.

Even if you couldn't access the server, you can emulate the server and disconnect everyone via DNS hijacking.

Anyways, Log Horizon avoids all this by not explaining at all. As far as anyone knows, it's the result of a trickster god teleporting everyone into another world. It doesn't rely on the watcher not understanding how MMOs work.

UberPrinny_Baal

mrkite77 wrote: »

<They should never have been trapped>

Ah, I had a million problems with the show, but this wasn't one of them, as this was the necessary suspension of disbelief upon which the entire premise was based.

"It's a little ways in the future. VRMMOs are close to reality. I bunch of people buy a highly anticipated title day 1 and get trapped in the game by a super genius. The only way out is to beat it via his rules."

They have to be trapped, or there's no story.

It only really bothers me when a show sets up it's own rules seperate from reality, then breaks THOSE. You need internal consistency to get invested.

The show would have been more awful and more boring if by episode 2 a Government IT specialist in Networking disconnects everyone safely using a cunning packet injection and everything is fine.

If you want to poke holes in the world premise: if those VR headsets existed, I find it unrealistic that anyone is playing MMOs, and the world hasn't just degenerated into 24/7 interactive porn.

Sephiroth_dude

Think I 'm gonna watch log horizon next,sounds very interesting.

baron von something

i hate watching week by week, so, painfully, i go months without watching naruto, and all the bullplop fillers and backstories end, and i finally watch it again this week and it happens to be the first time its back to the main story.damn you for sucking me right back in.i want more.i thought it would be way ahead in the story by now

cherryghost

One Week Friend is probably my AOTY so far

Links234

Bought Girls Und Panzer for my girlfriend, we're both really enjoying it

Gunmonkey

Links234 wrote: »

Bought Girls Und Panzer for my girlfriend, we're both really enjoying it

Its shocking how awesome that series is, the tank battles are surprisingly well done.

Links234

6 episodes in, and it's pretty damn gripping! Not the usual kinda anime I'm into, but I'm really liking it a lot. herself is absolutely loving it!

And damn that ending theme is a catchy one Enter enter mission!

Numina

Numina wrote: »

I'm very sure that I'll come back to it in the next month or two, I don't like that I left it unfinished. I had a lot of shows that I aimed to watch and I think that was kind of dragging me down, and I was going full speed ahead constantly watching show after show at the time so I probably just burned myself out.

I finished Steins Gate faster than I thought I would. I didn't rewatch the episodes that I had already seen, instead I just read the synopses to get a recap on what I had already seen. Helluva story.

Sephiroth_dude

I've given fairy tale a break for the moment, and I'm now watching black cat,good so far.

Links234

Going to start watching Fate/Zero soon I think

GalwayGuy2

honestly, I've kind of given up on fairy tail. It's funny, but the story arc has turned into a rinse and repeat.

Sephiroth_dude

GalwayGuy2 wrote: »

honestly, I've kind of given up on fairy tail. It's funny, but the story arc has turned into a rinse and repeat.

ya it also doesn't help that they changed the voice actors on the dubbed version and it did my head in, they all have different accents and sound really stupid.