Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 LordofHats wrote:

I find My Hero Acadamia much better personally.

That's because it is.

Has anyone seen Koe no Katachi?

I really enjoyed K-On! And I knew that Naoko Yamada was going to be one of those directors to watch. Now, having seen this film, I can definitely say she's definitely one of Japan's new directorial talents that we should all be paying more attention to.

Koe no Katachi is fantastic, it's just (unfairly) overshadowed by Kimi no Na wa.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Koe no Katachi is fantastic, it's just (unfairly) overshadowed by Kimi no Na wa.

After having seen it, I'm now greatly interested in seeing Liz and the Blue Bird. I've heard that it is just as good and enjoyable.

Togusa wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Koe no Katachi is fantastic, it's just (unfairly) overshadowed by Kimi no Na wa.

After having seen it, I'm now greatly interested in seeing Liz and the Blue Bird. I've heard that it is just as good and enjoyable.

Liz and the Blue Bird is great. It's kinda an independent follow up to the second season of Hibike! Euphonium (takes place in the next school year with two Hibike! Euphonium side characters are the main characters this time and Hibike! Euphonium main characters as side characters). You can totally watch it without having seen anything of Hibike! Euphonium and having zero knowledge of the backstory of the side characters. What you would get from watching the series is not that important for the movie (it's a self-contained story) but it does add a bit flavour/nostalgia when you see them (and the second season has a tiny focus on the two main characters for an episode or two).

The style is a bit softer and stylised (less "realistic") but the slightly dreamy style really fits the story that's told. It's just really, really good.

Kyoto Animation are also working on a second Hibike! Euphonium movie (not Yamada, different team) that's more of a real followup to Hibike! Euphonium's main characters in the second year.

Bonus: Orpheus in the Underworld feat. Kumiko (Hibike! Euphonium)

Regarding Yamada, I really like this video about her work: Naoko Yamada — At The Entrance To The Universe, it's such a good introduction to her work and methods (of course: slight but for the most part not that significant spoiler for most of her work).

Mario wrote:

Togusa wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Koe no Katachi is fantastic, it's just (unfairly) overshadowed by Kimi no Na wa.

After having seen it, I'm now greatly interested in seeing Liz and the Blue Bird. I've heard that it is just as good and enjoyable.

Liz and the Blue Bird is great. It's kinda an independent follow up to the second season of Hibike! Euphonium (takes place in the next school year with two Hibike! Euphonium side characters are the main characters this time and Hibike! Euphonium main characters as side characters). You can totally watch it without having seen anything of Hibike! Euphonium and having zero knowledge of the backstory of the side characters. What you would get from watching the series is not that important for the movie (it's a self-contained story) but it does add a bit flavour/nostalgia when you see them (and the second season has a tiny focus on the two main characters for an episode or two).

The style is a bit softer and stylised (less "realistic") but the slightly dreamy style really fits the story that's told. It's just really, really good.

Kyoto Animation are also working on a second Hibike! Euphonium movie (not Yamada, different team) that's more of a real followup to Hibike! Euphonium's main characters in the second year.

Bonus: Orpheus in the Underworld feat. Kumiko (Hibike! Euphonium)

Regarding Yamada, I really like this video about her work: Naoko Yamada — At The Entrance To The Universe, it's such a good introduction to her work and methods (of course: slight but for the most part not that significant spoiler for most of her work).

Fantastic, I'll give that a watch tonight. As I understand it, women are still a minority in the animation directors seat in Japan. She seems to be a cut way above even the most average of directors, so I'm glad to see her works finding a lot of success in the animation world.

Is there word on how many episodes Rising of the Shield Hero is getting? I'd really like to see it make it to 26. Just 13 will leave the story in a somewhat awkward hang.

 LordofHats wrote:
Is there word on how many episodes Rising of the Shield Hero is getting? I'd really like to see it make it to 26. Just 13 will leave the story in a somewhat awkward hang.

It's confirmed to get the two full cours, 25 episodes (the first was double length).

Nice.

 Togusa wrote:
Fantastic, I'll give that a watch tonight. As I understand it, women are still a minority in the animation directors seat in Japan. She seems to be a cut way above even the most average of directors, so I'm glad to see her works finding a lot of success in the animation world.

Kyoto Animation is a bit of an anomaly in the anime industry. They actually have a majority of female employees (I think that's still true), they managed to work their way out of the constant treadmill of being "just another outsourcing studio", and they actually employ nearly all of their animators on wages (instead of paying per drawing on a freelance basis). I think their wages are still below what western animators make but it's a bit better/stable than the Japanese average.

The industry in general seems to work more with a freelance model: Essentially a production committee (everybody who has financial stake in the success of that series: manga publisher, music publisher for the soundtrack, other companies that help out financially) "hires" a studio create the series. And that studio in turn tends to hire a lot of animators on a freelance basis and maybe outsource some episodes or parts to other studios. Studios tend to get overworked at low rates because they are not a stakeholder in the production. And the committee members are the ones who end up making money from licensing the series (and all the merchandise). The studio that do the actual work often just buy themselves a financial runway extension (hoping to secure another series soon).

On the positive side: Anime production is booming right now (more stuff gets made) but on the negative side most of the financial benefits don't end up at the studios and workers (but at the committee) and a lot of people are over-working themselves. Getting young animators into the industry also has been a challenge as studios didn't have the time to hire/educate newbies but often relied on outsourcing studios for in-between work so there's a bit of a gap/lack of newbies (Kyoto Animation also has it's own animation school so they were not really hit with that problem).

Kyoto Animation managed to get off that treadmill with some financial security and can produce its own work with mostly full-time in-house staff (and can pick and choose what they want to work on instead of having constant financial pressure). That leads to better management/scheduling, better working conditions, and less volatile finances for the studio.

I'm anticpating a boom in American animation in, oh, about 10 years or so, actually. I think the greater acceptance of animation as a serious, all-ages media is going to push against the 'animation stigma', and those who have grown up with high-quality Western animation (Avatar, Korra, some of the Netflix series) will start founding their own studios and finding funding. Especially with Netflix spearheading the use of newer, smaller studios for licensed content.

Mario wrote:

 Togusa wrote:
Fantastic, I'll give that a watch tonight. As I understand it, women are still a minority in the animation directors seat in Japan. She seems to be a cut way above even the most average of directors, so I'm glad to see her works finding a lot of success in the animation world.

Kyoto Animation is a bit of an anomaly in the anime industry. They actually have a majority of female employees (I think that's still true), they managed to work their way out of the constant treadmill of being "just another outsourcing studio", and they actually employ nearly all of their animators on wages (instead of paying per drawing on a freelance basis). I think their wages are still below what western animators make but it's a bit better/stable than the Japanese average.

The industry in general seems to work more with a freelance model: Essentially a production committee (everybody who has financial stake in the success of that series: manga publisher, music publisher for the soundtrack, other companies that help out financially) "hires" a studio create the series. And that studio in turn tends to hire a lot of animators on a freelance basis and maybe outsource some episodes or parts to other studios. Studios tend to get overworked at low rates because they are not a stakeholder in the production. And the committee members are the ones who end up making money from licensing the series (and all the merchandise). The studio that do the actual work often just buy themselves a financial runway extension (hoping to secure another series soon).

On the positive side: Anime production is booming right now (more stuff gets made) but on the negative side most of the financial benefits don't end up at the studios and workers (but at the committee) and a lot of people are over-working themselves. Getting young animators into the industry also has been a challenge as studios didn't have the time to hire/educate newbies but often relied on outsourcing studios for in-between work so there's a bit of a gap/lack of newbies (Kyoto Animation also has it's own animation school so they were not really hit with that problem).

Kyoto Animation managed to get off that treadmill with some financial security and can produce its own work with mostly full-time in-house staff (and can pick and choose what they want to work on instead of having constant financial pressure). That leads to better management/scheduling, better working conditions, and less volatile finances for the studio.

I hadn't realized that Kyoto Ani had done the production work. Been a fan of their studio for a long, long time.

Endro~! is pretty fun so far. It's basically moe Konosuba meets Gabriel Dropout.

Finally managed to watch Maquia, absolutely loved it. It's hard to describe without spoilers but the character growth was great, the art and animation was beautiful, and it had the bittersweet ending that comes with everything with a mention of flowers that Mari Okada is known for.

 Wolfblade wrote:
Finally managed to watch Maquia, absolutely loved it. It's hard to describe without spoilers but the character growth was great, the art and animation was beautiful, and it had the bittersweet ending that comes with everything with a mention of flowers that Mari Okada is known for.

I hadn't heard of this one yet, I am going to have to add it to my list!

It's absolutely fantastic. Go in blind, don't read up on anything about it until you finish it, or you risk spoiling yourself heavily.

For those who don't know Mari Okada, she's worked on Black butler, darker than black, black rock shooter, Dragon pilot, and probably her most well known work (at least recently), Anohana.

Togusa wrote:

 Wolfblade wrote:
Finally managed to watch Maquia, absolutely loved it. It's hard to describe without spoilers but the character growth was great, the art and animation was beautiful, and it had the bittersweet ending that comes with everything with a mention of flowers that Mari Okada is known for.

I hadn't heard of this one yet, I am going to have to add it to my list!

It's really good, Maquia (as its name) is used in the west but it can also be Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms or Sayonara no Asa ni Yakusoku no Hana wo Kazarou
(Japanese).

Wolfblade wrote:It's absolutely fantastic. Go in blind, don't read up on anything about it until you finish it, or you risk spoiling yourself heavily.

For those who don't know Mari Okada, she's worked on Black butler, darker than black, black rock shooter, Dragon pilot, and probably her most well known work (at least recently), Anohana.

Also: Hanasaku Iroha and she also contributed to Toradora! (both very good).

Yup, I'm fairly excited for up the upcoming projects she's involved in, and the next thing is "O Maidens in Your Savage Season" and I havent looked up anyhing on so I really hope it'll be as good as maquia or anohana, but that might be a high bar to set for every work she is involved in now I suppose.

Rising of the Shield Hero is definitely a winner this season. Only 3 episodes and yet there is a ton of good plot and character development going on.

It has indeed been really quite good.

It's been, to use a typical British Understatement, "a little fast", but I highly prefer going at a quick clip than to spending 9 episodes waiting for Namek to explode.

I also really like that they aren't falling into the trap of so many bad adaptations by trying to somehow cram the exact Light Novel points into an animated medium. Books and Animation are not the same and what works in one doesn't necessarily work in the other.

I saw Brolly last night. Good fun, drastically better than the original version, not looking forward to Super Bio Brolly.

So the closest thing that we have in the US for industry anime awards was announced tonight. Some of you I am guess might have voted in Crunchyroll's fan poll like me.

https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2019/02/16/winners-of-the-2019-anime-awardsupdated-live

The ones I am most ambivalent about are the best boy and best film going to My Hero Academia.

Overall, a little less than half of my picks won.

What did you think of the awards?

Jojo won best character designs? Ick. Looking at the character designs for this season has super turned me off on that show, not that I was terribly interested in it before.

Best voice actor went to a character who annoyed me enough I stopped watching the show, but I know a majority were fans of his.

I’m surprised Hero won so much, but wasn’t even nominated for anime of the year. Havented watched Devilman, May have to.

Devilman Crybaby is weird, but strangely powerful. The animation frankly is incredible from start to finish. The story I imagine is a turnoff for a lot of people though. When I say weird, I mean weird. Lots of bizarre/surreal scenes, lots of angst, and more than a little "god this main character is unbearable." It all comes together in an odd way though.

 LordofHats wrote:
Devilman Crybaby is weird, but strangely powerful. The animation frankly is incredible from start to finish. The story I imagine is a turnoff for a lot of people though. When I say weird, I mean weird. Lots of bizarre/surreal scenes, lots of angst, and more than a little "god this main character is unbearable." It all comes together in an odd way though.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. It's spot on. Also, major spoilers for the ending of the anime:

 AduroT wrote:

I’m surprised Hero won so much, but wasn’t even nominated for anime of the year.

Every medium has a bit of a bias against ongoing mainstream highly popular things when it comes to best of the year kind of awards.

Shieldbro is one of those anime that are by design super generic but do what they do well. It's popular with a broad demographic.

The Yuri On Ice awards are back? Sweet!!!! I look forward to shows that got the highest traffic on crunchy roll getting awards and not actual good stuff getting awards!!!!!
Even though the winner was on Netflix....

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
The Yuri On Ice awards are back? Sweet!!!! I look forward to shows that got the highest traffic on crunchy roll getting awards and not actual good stuff getting awards!!!!!
Even though the winner was on Netflix....

Thats really the problem with any type of Awards system for media in general.

Entertainment is a 100% subjective subject, like all Art. So generally there is always going to be a disconnect between the skill of an Artist and weather or not his art is popular.

A technically flawless movie or show might not be very popular simply because it doesn't cater to the tastes of most viewers. A show might have excellent animation, but bad acting or plot development, or any good/bad combination of these things.

Basically, all Media awards systems are going to be complete garbage at discerning what is actually good, because "Good" is in the eye of the individual viewer. Its not something that can be measured or quantified in a meaningful way. And this is before you get into a system essentially being 'rigged', like the Oscars and Grammys are.