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Anime in general.

Started off around 1990 with Akira (which is ace).

After that, it all became a bit pervy, in far too many ways, for my tastes.

I’ve dabbled since (Princess Mononoke and Ghibli in general is good), but it’s too Russian Roulette for me, except instead of a bullet it’s an unfeasibly prehensile ‘male chicken’ with a worryingly underaged girl on the end of it.

I know I’m doing the majority a disservice. And I’m probably just incredibly unlucky with the stuff I’ve seen (and spoiled by seeing Akira”s perfection as my first taste), but it’s just something i don’t get on with.

Absolutely no disrespect or shade to anyone who does enjoy it.

I had a remarkably similar experience with anime.

However, I started with Dragon Ball. When I tried Akira, I didn’t like it. The Ghibli stuff I like, but not enough to seek out.

In college, I thought I would get into anime for sure, so I joined the anime club. We watched a bunch of stuff, and other than Ah My Goddess, I had trouble sitting through more than half an hour at a time. Evangelion finally convinced me I just wasn’t going to be an anime fan.

Dragon Ball is something I’m not allowed to discuss, for fear of harshing many mellows!

To those that enjoy? Enjoy. I just have strong feels, which are of no import except to me. And this is how i constructively vent.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 MDSW wrote:
Here's a throwback - John Norman and his Gor book series.

When i was shipboard in the Navy and going on deployment, I picked up the first 10 books (I think they went up to 18? 20?) thinking I had some great fantasy fiction to keep me occupied for a number of months. First few books were great, even if it was a pale adaption of Burroughs Princess of Mars plot. The main character was honorable and the stories entertaining.

Then, a few book in, the plots began to take a very dark, S&M twist and frankly got unbearable. I stopped the series before I even finished the 8th or 9th book. Old John must have a very warped sense of male/female relationships and it frankly disgusted me to read him take a higher and higher woman in status only to break her down into what he truly thought of women. I can only say how disturbed his thoughts patterns must be.

I heard back in the late nineties or early 2000’s that law enforcement kept track of who bought the Gor books the same way they tracked who bought The Turner Diaries.

Yes, I believe it; good thing my purchase was way back in the early 80's!

 Mr Morden wrote:


Its a fairly notorious series - interestingly its not without its female fan base but then so had 50 shades of Grey etc.

I almost get the 50 shades appeal; super ultra-rich dude that can cater to your every wish wants to get his kink on. Not for me, obviously... Just no reason to treat a women in this manner IMHO.

Someone mentioned how nuGalactica was affected by the writer’s strike, but I don’t think any show was more badly affected than Heroes. After a spectacular and incredible buzz generating first season, the strike caused it to completely crash and burn.

Ditto about anime and manga. Akira is one of those films that should be seen, whether you're an anime fan or not. Ghibli's stuff is charming with some proper gems. But the only anime TV show I managed to sit through for any amount of time was Pokemon, when I was a kid.

Manga: I once had the entire set of TPB volumes for Akira, based on the strength of the film. Been a while since I sold them on, so I could hardly tell you what the plot was in the later volumes. But I remember that I'd be hard-pressed to tell you anyway. It was not straightforward. I since bought the first volume again, mostly for the art. (There are those trying to ape 'the manga style', and then there are manga artists)

I've upped my manga reading recently. I got that Shonen Jump app - cheap enough for the huge back catalogue you get access to, and let me check out some of this stuff that people rave about. I also started buying Battle Angel Alita on kindle after the film came out. It helped me realise that Akira's kind of escalating-but-meandering, stretch-it-out-for-the-sales-figures plotting is kind of a common thing in manga, isn't it? Mind you, some do it better than others. Dragonball was fun but I have no problem dissing Dragonball Z in front of it's fans. It earned a spot here for the whole continuity, because of how monotonous that formula became. Big enemy > train > get new power > beat enemy > tournament > new bigger enemy > train more > get even bigger power > beat bigger enemy > tournament > new even biggerer enemy > train moar wash rinse repeat aaargh

Out of everything else I read (a handful of series) Death Note is the other one that belongs in this topic. I have trouble figuring out how all that go-nowhere genie-lawyering two-nerds-second-guessing-eachother stuff became so popular.

Like Harry Potter, I guess you had to be a kid.

For the most part marvel movies after end-game. There's just nothing left after end-game to keep me interested. Maybe if guardians 3 comes around or another ant man movie but when I saw the movies coming most just seemed crap. Maybe scarlet witch will be ok or black widow but I saw a scene from a black widow trailer that just rubbed me the wrong way and I'm on the fence with that movie as it is.

@mad dok: I don't watch anime much myself and I have to watch more serious anime. Anything which comes off as a harem anime, slice of life or le wacky characters lulz is something I skip. I also get that all the characters are in high school due to the core audience but that trope should really die off. I enjoyed gungrave and parasyte. There may be a few other good ones in there. I got halfway through Monster before giving up. It was mostly just too long. Sadly I wished parasyte was a bit longer but it did what it had to do with the episodes it had. I might watch black lagoon. There's a few I've always meant to watch.

--------

Another one to mention is warhammer 40k in general. Hopefully I can count this game. I like it and hate it. I haven't passed the point of no return but beefy spess mehreens always bugged me and now we have them in everything even fantasy. I enjoy 40k but there's still something about it that annoys me. I think the writing has gone downhill a bit or maybe at one point it became more serious rather than goofy and over the top. The prices certainly never helped and the lopsided balance has never been good. Maybe it's getting a fix. Maybe when warhammer fantasy comes back I'll feel good again.

If its part of Shonen Jump, its likely to be stretched beyond its shelf life. A big part of that is the same reason it happens anywhere; Jump is THE spotlight and once you get your shot you'd best ride it as long as it lasts. The other big thing is Jump is one of the most grueling meat grinder industries out there. Each story is a one man show, expected to provide 16 pages of original art and story every single week and if quality doesn't keep up, you'll be dropped for a hungrier, younger artist before you know it. Padding is a pretty common coping mechanism, as is simplified character designs once a character has become established (famously, Goku's hair changes when he goes Super Saiyan so that Toryama didn't have to fill in the black hair).

Anime based on Jump face issues beyond that. Every week they're churning out 20 min of animation, which can go through 16 pages pretty quick. Production won't start on a series until its built up a couple years of popularity, but it doesn't take long to catch up. Traditionally they've coped with this by writing their own drawn out subplots, or just pacing episodes VERY slowly (how many minutes can someone stand and scream?) though they've been improving over time, with the Naruto manga skipping side plots to be covered in the anime and most recently FINALLY switching to a shorter, more seasonal approach to put an emphasis on quality.

That's just the Jump stuff though. There are plenty of shows that aren't based on Manga that can have far cleaner story arcs and pacing. There's just so much content it can be hard to sort the wheat from the chaff. You just have to give it a try, find what you like, find people that like what you like, and can point you in the right direction. I kind of like watching anime on a 2 year delay. It can make it a lot easier to find stuff that holds up.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Dragon Ball is something I’m not allowed to discuss, for fear of harshing many mellows!

To those that enjoy? Enjoy. I just have strong feels, which are of no import except to me. And this is how i constructively vent.

Eh. I can see many reasons to dislike Dragonball. Won’t bother me to hear yours. In fact, I’d be interested, as Drahonball is also one of the series I couldn’t finish, although I’ll probably get farther in the DBZ Abridged series than I did in the original manga.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Seeing as I just realized this is the thread:

Dragonball Z. I started it in the Cell saga, back filled the entire series while I was i to it, and then dropped it pretty quickly during the Majin Buu saga. It’s super repetitive wish fulfillment with few genuinely likeable characters. I might have been more bored if Frieza hadn’t been in Nameksei and Cell hadn’t had time travel and jinzoningen (we called them robots) shenanigans.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Dragon Ball is something I’m not allowed to discuss, for fear of harshing many mellows!

To those that enjoy? Enjoy. I just have strong feels, which are of no import except to me. And this is how i constructively vent.

Do you mind telling me? I have never understood why dbz is soooo well loved, fun and good, but it lacks in so many areas

 Kalamadea wrote:
For anime, I started watching Bleach on a recommendation when it was still fairly new (you had to download the episodes with fanmade subtitles, it wasn't in USA yet). I was really getting into it, had some great character arcs and really awesome fights, leading to enemies slowly becoming allies as they realized the true enemy, all leading up to the the final showdown with the main villain in episode 62

Honestly, you probably lucked out cause the Soul Society Arc was easily the best the series ever managed. It's all downhill from there even as the art improves and the characters get more interesting.

Bleach is so bad I gave up on the manga because it wasn't going anywhere.

Bleach is the anime/manga that I think best exemplifies the phrase "wasted opportunity." Tite Kubo isn't untalented. He has a real talent for characters that just capture your interest and stand out in unique ways without feeling tired or awkward and that's something I think the entire genre struggles with given it's serial nature. His characters have creative powers, the fights start good and only get better in terms of art and panel work. Bleach had so much going for it and it was all wasted because it was just too much. Hardly any of the characters ever got satisfactory pay off for their struggles. Arcs were overlong and overstayed their welcomes (part of that tbf is supposedly executive meddling and not what Tite Kubo wanted). The series had such a spectacular cast and surprisingly well done world building and you just never got to enjoy any of it because the series has the attention span of an ADHD kid on a sugar high. Characters would get introduced, capture your interest, and 95% of the time they just dropped off the face of the Earth when some new interesting character showed up.

It worked for a time in keeping sales going cause there was always something interesting going on, but I think as the series went on the ever piling mountain of unfulfilled potential just left the series fluttering in the wind.

I did soldier through Bleach all the way to the end, but I was definitely on autopilot from the end of the Aizen arc onwards. The anime suffers doubly so cause it just looks so cheap. Especially as it goes on. Naruto actually shelled out serious dough to make some fights look great on screen (many of the last fights in the series are movie quality animation). Bleach never once did that, except maybe briefly for a few frames in the battle against Ulquiorra (which imo is actually one of the biggest let down fights in the story). It's an interesting inverse actually. I think Bleach started really strong and quickly fell part after completing it's first big arc. Naruto started on shaky feet, kind stumbled through lots of its early publication on sheer charisma, and then became amazing up till it's overdrawn (and WTF when did this become scifi?) ending.

(though apparently it might get to now?).

They have announced an anime adaptation this year for Bleach's final arc, so if you liked Bleach you'll get more. I honestly think the final arc exemplifies everything wrong in Bleach though so my interest is a null value. On the bright side, the anime won't be constantly interrupted with filler this time, and that can only improve watchability. Bleach had particularly atrocious filler arcs, and nearly half the anime is filler content.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’ve dabbled since (Princess Mononoke and Ghibli in general is good), but it’s too Russian Roulette for me, except instead of a bullet it’s an unfeasibly prehensile ‘male chicken’ with a worryingly underaged girl on the end of it.

Oh, speaking of this!

Irregular at Magic Highschool.

I think I actually liked it and watched it all the way through the first time when it came out. Recently I tried to give it a watch again... And I quit at episode 4 for the following reasons that somehow managed to slip past me the first time;

-Main heroine has zero character outside of obsessing over whether or not she can force her emotionally stunted brother (and she knows he's stunted) into an incestuous romantic relationship. That's literally all she has going for her as a character. That's it. No idea how I missed it the first go but it makes her completely unlikable bordering on a fething rapist. She even knowing 'kills' him for the crime of interacting with other girls with the foreknowledge that he just magically resurrects himself when he dies with the implication that he doesn't specifically remember she did it.
-Main hero (said heroine's emotional stunted brother) is a fascist who gives a author rant on how people facing inequality and discrimination should think about how the privileged feel. Serious "WTF how did I miss this" moment for me right there. The very first arc of the story is about discrimination between students at Magic High School based on how good they are magic (which admitted does make some sense). There's a girl character who feels inadequate, rejected, and isolated from a society that includes violent discrimination (potentially lethal, violent discrimination) against her for not being the best because her talent is low. He fething gives her a speech about how she should be more understanding of how hard it is to be privileged and that she should just accept her lot and work with it rather than express her frustrations at a casually violent system that is psychologically traumatizing her. This is followed up by talk of a terrorist organization that is apparently evil for thinking citizens of a society should be equal and the citizens are selfish idiots for wanting it... I mean, he's emotionally stunted so there was an opportunity there for the character to maybe grow but feth that the story just reinforces his fethed up worldview at every turn and characters all end up agreeing with him because he's 'great' or something.

EDIT: It's especially weird, cause there is this trend of fascist nationalism in Japanese culture that comes out in anime/manga often enough. It's why I quit Gate, Guilty Crown, and Valvrave. I'm usually pretty fast to note when someone is quietly suggesting Imperial Japan did nothing wrong, I have no idea how I fething missed it this time when the show was basically waving the damn flag in my face.

Bailed right the feth out of that XD

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Anime in general.

Started off around 1990 with Akira (which is ace).

After that, it all became a bit pervy, in far too many ways, for my tastes.

I’ve dabbled since (Princess Mononoke and Ghibli in general is good), but it’s too Russian Roulette for me, except instead of a bullet it’s an unfeasibly prehensile ‘male chicken’ with a worryingly underaged girl on the end of it.

I know I’m doing the majority a disservice. And I’m probably just incredibly unlucky with the stuff I’ve seen (and spoiled by seeing Akira”s perfection as my first taste), but it’s just something i don’t get on with.

Absolutely no disrespect or shade to anyone who does enjoy it.

If this was a few years ago, i would say that you would be doing it a disservice.....but not now. Anime has gotten worse to the point i cant stomach it, and fans are the worse. They Vehemently defend or hand wave the worse of things.

 LunarSol wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

I suppose it depends on how we define foreshadowing.

The big one is the conversations characters randomly have with no one throughout the series which are:

MAJOR SPOILER:

Spoiler:

actually conversations being had with past and future carries of the Attack Titan power that essentially exist at all times simultaneously Dr Manhatten style.

In terms of how the plot reveals itself, you're absolutely right. It totally turns into the kind of story where the people of Victorian London are actually living in a zoo run by aliens, but when they escape the zoo they find out that the aliens are actually part of a huge computer simulation run by people who have put captured aliens in the Matrix to see how aliens would act in Victorian London. It's remarkably coherent, but still nonsense.

You mean something like how Big O ended?

 Just Tony wrote:


You mean something like how Big O ended?

I mean, Big at least foreshadowed it... Sort of? Big O was constantly dropping hints that not all was as it seemed in the setting, that games were being played behind the scenes and that current events were cyclical and had happened before. The ending is 'out there' but not so much that it was completely nonsensical. But yeah, anime has a nasty habit of WTF endings that throw a lot at you really fast and then do a half-ass job at resolving anything and Big O deserves a place right at the top on that list. Part of their issue was that for awhile they were expecting another season and word they would not be getting one again came down suddenly and they rushed to try and wrap up the story.

Big O is funny in that regard. Everything about its ending is paraded throughout the entire series, but it feels like its mostly just artistic window dressing. Then the ending comes around and is all like... no... that's what is really going on, and its kind of disappointing because those things are better as flourishes and nothing is really gained or learned from the ordeal.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:

Oh, speaking of this!

Irregular at Magic Highschool.

I recently gave this a shot myself and.... ugghhhhhhhhh yeah, no. Nope nope nope.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:

I did soldier through Bleach all the way to the end, but I was definitely on autopilot from the end of the Aizen arc onwards. The anime suffers doubly so cause it just looks so cheap. Especially as it goes on. Naruto actually shelled out serious dough to make some fights look great on screen (many of the last fights in the series are movie quality animation). Bleach never once did that, except maybe briefly for a few frames in the battle against Ulquiorra (which imo is actually one of the biggest let down fights in the story). It's an interesting inverse actually. I think Bleach started really strong and quickly fell part after completing it's first big arc. Naruto started on shaky feet, kind stumbled through lots of its early publication on sheer charisma, and then became amazing up till it's overdrawn (and WTF when did this become scifi?) ending.

Both are somewhat victims of editorial demand to keep things going. Bleach just falls apart completely, where Naruto mostly bloats while keeping its eye toward the ending to keep from going too far off course. The editorial Sasuke fetish never naturally links up with Naruto's actual plot and reads like two different comics that don't line back up naturally and have to be resolved with a rather tacked on big bad. It's still probably one of the most satisfying conclusions to one of the Jump super stars out there. Just kind of the nature of the beast I suppose.

An example from today: The Letter for the King, a new series on Netflix that might as well be titled "Generic Medieval Low Fantasy Adventure #34567." The series is apparently based on a Dutch book from the 1960s, so maybe the story was more fresh then. Today it's mediocre in every conceivable way with nothing interesting going for it.

And that's just the premise.

The actual show has a fairly strong first episode, with a pretty strong imo performance by the lead actor. Unfortunately, by episode 2 he's the only actor who seems to be selling his character well. The rest are all really shallow bordering on disinterested and the writers seemed pretty disinterested too cause obvious plot holes start cropping up fast and irrational "because the plot needs it" behavior begins dominating what characters do. The series also has massive issues with basic chronology for a series with an inbuilt time limit for its main quest (14 days). Two days into said quest, somehow people miles and miles away are more aware of what's going on than the main character is despite the main character having a half a day head start. The Queen of dumb-sounding-name-county-A is meeting with the king of dumb-sounding-name-county B despite their kingdoms apparent being far enough apart that the main character expresses disbelief you can get from one to the other in 14 days within those same two days. And a third tertiary character within those same two days has apparently managed to leave country A and get to country B and then be at this meeting in that time period.

It's such a glaring issue only laziness can possibly explain the writers not noticing the glaring time issues in a series that starts by putting the hero on the clock.

I quit at episode 3, when characters taken prisoner by some bad guys who just murdered a bunch of people decided to have a fething snow ball fight in the middle of their hostage situation. It's actually almost funny, cause the actor playing the hostage taker seems legitimately shocked and confused when he says "I can't believe this." I was right there with him. I didn't believe it either and turned the program off.

 totalfailure wrote:
Someone mentioned how nuGalactica was affected by the writer’s strike, but I don’t think any show was more badly affected than Heroes. After a spectacular and incredible buzz generating first season, the strike caused it to completely crash and burn.

I wasn't a Heroes fan, but I watched it a little. I'm not sure that the concept was built to last.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LunarSol wrote:
Anime based on Jump face issues beyond that. Every week they're churning out 20 min of animation, which can go through 16 pages pretty quick. Production won't start on a series until its built up a couple years of popularity, but it doesn't take long to catch up. Traditionally they've coped with this by writing their own drawn out subplots, or just pacing episodes VERY slowly (how many minutes can someone stand and scream?) though they've been improving over time, with the Naruto manga skipping side plots to be covered in the anime and most recently FINALLY switching to a shorter, more seasonal approach to put an emphasis on quality.

I'm actually a big fan of DBZ Kai. That probably will spark some BLAAARGH in some corners. But to me it restores the pacing of the manga, solving the original series' single biggest problem.

I feel like there's a definite trend after experience gained with Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece. Of them, only one is still going and that anime has started taking frequent hiatus' rather than churn out filler. Filler arcs are universally bad. I can't think of any anyone actually liked. The industry is switching over to more episodic production based on publication and popularity, like we see in the production of the My Hero Acadamia, Attack on Titan, and Demon Slayer animes. It's much more focused on quality and faithfulness to the source material than having a new episode available every week.

 LordofHats wrote:
An example from today: The Letter for the King, a new series on Netflix that might as well be titled "Generic Medieval Low Fantasy Adventure #34567." The series is apparently based on a Dutch book from the 1960s, so maybe the story was more fresh then. Today it's mediocre in every conceivable way with nothing interesting going for it.

I remember reading that book when I was a kid in the 80s. It's a coming-of-age story written for kids IIRC (don't know what the show made of it - haven't seen it). Not Harry Potter young teenagers kids, easily pre-high school kids. I think I was 8 or 9 when I read it or something. Then again, I was a prodigious reader then, reading well above my age. 8-year old me was very impressed by it though - read a lot of other stuff by the same author.

Bran Dawri wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
An example from today: The Letter for the King, a new series on Netflix that might as well be titled "Generic Medieval Low Fantasy Adventure #34567." The series is apparently based on a Dutch book from the 1960s, so maybe the story was more fresh then. Today it's mediocre in every conceivable way with nothing interesting going for it.

I remember reading that book when I was a kid in the 80s. It's a coming-of-age story written for kids IIRC (don't know what the show made of it - haven't seen it). Not Harry Potter young teenagers kids, easily pre-high school kids. I think I was 8 or 9 when I read it or something. Then again, I was a prodigious reader then, reading well above my age. 8-year old me was very impressed by it though - read a lot of other stuff by the same author.

I can only imagine the book was better, honestly. Even something as generic as this can't be this bad if it warranted the popularity to be adapted to TV 60 years after it was written. The show's glaring issues reek of 'lazy television' and actors who just want their paycheck. There's only two in the show that I think are honestly trying, and one of them suffers because her honest performance is drowned by actors around her who clearly aren't trying and seem to be surprised that they're actors in a tv show.

 LordofHats wrote:
I feel like there's a definite trend after experience gained with Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece. Of them, only one is still going and that anime has started taking frequent hiatus' rather than churn out filler. Filler arcs are universally bad. I can't think of any anyone actually liked. The industry is switching over to more episodic production based on publication and popularity, like we see in the production of the My Hero Acadamia, Attack on Titan, and Demon Slayer. It's much more focused on quality and faithfulness to the source material than having a new episode available every week.

Two of them really. Boruto is as much a new series as Shippuden was. The emphasis on quality has been fantastic, though its as much a result of the shift to digital distribution as anything else.

 LordofHats wrote:

Bran Dawri wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
An example from today: The Letter for the King, a new series on Netflix that might as well be titled "Generic Medieval Low Fantasy Adventure #34567." The series is apparently based on a Dutch book from the 1960s, so maybe the story was more fresh then. Today it's mediocre in every conceivable way with nothing interesting going for it.

I remember reading that book when I was a kid in the 80s. It's a coming-of-age story written for kids IIRC (don't know what the show made of it - haven't seen it). Not Harry Potter young teenagers kids, easily pre-high school kids. I think I was 8 or 9 when I read it or something. Then again, I was a prodigious reader then, reading well above my age. 8-year old me was very impressed by it though - read a lot of other stuff by the same author.

I can only imagine the book was better, honestly. Even something as generic as this can't be this bad if it warranted the popularity to be adapted to TV 60 years after it was written. The show's glaring issues reek of 'lazy television' and actors who just want their paycheck. There's only two in the show that I think are honestly trying, and one of them suffers because her honest performance is drowned by actors around her who clearly aren't trying and seem to be surprised that they're actors in a tv show.

I'm not even sure it could be called an adaptation in some sense. I remember reading the book as a kid and from the top of my head the series:
Totally reinvents the main character because conflict? In the book he has no struggles in life, he just starts his adventure as he is about to become a knight/come of age.
Massively expands on certain characters and adds new ones (I guess because the book only really featured two boys). So all of that is just invented for the show, even the girl he travels with has only a tiny part in the book.
Adds magic, why? The book has zero magic afaik. Its just ticking generic fantasy boxes off at this point. A prophecy and all that crap? In the original it was just about a letter telling a king about a murder plot. The book was Medieval make belief, not even fantasy in that sense.

So they took the loose overarching story of the book and took a knife to it to fit Netflix. Granted, the book was quite a by the numbers young boy adventure book (red knight bad! white knight good!), which would probably have been boring and simplistic for everyone over 12. But then why adapt it in the first place?? Now its just a generic teen fantasy as far as I can see. It combined the worst of both worlds, a pre-teen children's book with a generic teen fantasy and stitched them together into one boring show.

Edit: a short Google in Dutch by newspaper reviews sums it up as more Netflix than Tonke Dragt (the writer), who herself prefers to call it 'inspired by' as opposed to an adaptation.

Shows;
The Walking Dead.
Battlestar Galactica.
Naruto.

Books;
Dracula.
All Quiet on the Western Front.
The Count of Monte Cristo.

But not intentionally for any other reason than I just stopped midway and didnt follow through. I was enjoying watching/reading them.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Anime in general.

Started off around 1990 with Akira (which is ace).

After that, it all became a bit pervy, in far too many ways, for my tastes.

I’ve dabbled since (Princess Mononoke and Ghibli in general is good), but it’s too Russian Roulette for me, except instead of a bullet it’s an unfeasibly prehensile ‘male chicken’ with a worryingly underaged girl on the end of it.

I know I’m doing the majority a disservice. And I’m probably just incredibly unlucky with the stuff I’ve seen (and spoiled by seeing Akira”s perfection as my first taste), but it’s just something i don’t get on with.

Absolutely no disrespect or shade to anyone who does enjoy it.

Anime can be... odd. When I was first properly introduced to it back in college (not counting dub stuffed that was heavily edited and dropped on US networks as something completely different) I liked a lot of it because it was different and often didn't end up with the same old cliches and tropes. As I watched more of it, I realized that they most anime was using a different set of cliches and tropes, they were overusing and leaning even harder on them than western shows. The formulas were really real, and exceptions were rare

Though there are some good exceptions. Also a lot of wtf exceptions- biggest non-pervy example, Magic Knights Rayearth. The animation quality is terrible, the manga is better, but the story/subversion stabs right for the gut, in a show that's nominally for young teens. But then that's true for a lot of the CLAMP stuff in general. When they're not being super creepy with romance plots for too young kids and incest, they go right for the tragic feels).

I've still not seen The Matrix 3

Shows/movies

Vikings
Game Of Thrones
There will be blood
Rig 45

Books

Wheel of Time
Panserhjerte by Jo Nesbø

Crispy78 wrote:
I've still not seen The Matrix 3

Don't bother - its not very good. I thought the animated stuff was better.

Crispy78 wrote:
I've still not seen The Matrix 3

I've still not seen The Matrix 2.

Just binged watched the first season of Killing Eve while painting some Harlequins.

On the one hand it was amusing and a good twist on classic thrillers like Day of the Jackal, but on the other it falls flat on the connection between the two female leads. Eve is supposed to be getting darker while Villanelle desires to be normal, and that part of it is developled too slowly for certain events which come across as unconvincing, if not flat-out "WHAT???". This can work and a good example would be Aziraphale and Crowley from Good Omens, while the BBC - if they are so obsessed with their lgbt agenda to the point of hijacking Doctor Who with pregnant men - could at least take a leaf out of Avery Brook's DS9 episode "Rejoined" and do it with common sense.

Good concept and there is some fun to be had, but apparently the next two seasons aren't quite as strong, and its on that note I shall leave it there with Killing Eve.


Oh, Matrix. Felt the first film was pretentious clap trap, and get annoyed everytime someone quotes it as a basis for philosophical debte. The two sequels are very silly but the action scenes are good fun, even hilarious in the case of Reloaded's "burly brawl". It's Highway chase and the Dock battle in Revolutions are too much fun to miss out on.

"Mr Anderson! We missed you!"

Killing Even season 1 is great fun but Eve simply isn't - I really enjoyed the show but felt the book was better except for Jodie's Villenieve and the MIG lady - she is fantastic in the show.

Season 2 is ok Eve driven episodes are not as good.