BobbyBesar

I think I liked Ayakashi. If nothing else, it's very pretty.

Well, thematically, sure, but I'm talking about literal mecha-space Jesus, with Turn-The-Other-Cheek Shield and Spear of Longinus (a laser cannon, obv) and SHEPHERD PUUUUUUNCH!

First of all, this really made my day. Secondly. Are we sure this doesn't exist already? It really really seems like it would exist already.

Maybe Patrick would like Infinite Ryvius? It's about a spaceship, and has stupid teen angst and political stuff in it, but I don't think anybody is particularly special (disclaimer: I didn't watch much of it because I didn't really care for it).

Hopefully, at one point somebody would call Jesus "the Satan of mech piloting" for his incredible skill.

Mostly a joke. Xenosaga was very fond of incredibly heavy handed biblical references, but used entirely superficially, they signified nothing. I never got past the first game, but I could easily imagine it ending up with space-Jesus piloting a mech.

Wasn't that the point of Xenosaga?

Yeah, this is my general thought as well. For various reasons, I find the "isn't Japan weird?" approach to be actually somewhat offensive, as it has shades of modern-day orientalism.

Screw it, let's all tell him to watch Azumanga Daioh.

Cowboy Bebop is generally considered one of the all-time classics, probably top 10, at least in the US. I think that it wasn't as well liked in Japan though. There are sort of 2 different categories of anime: limited-series (either OAVs that are explicitly limited, or things that only run for a couple of seasons) and forever series (Dragon Ball, Naruto, One Piece, Detective Conan). It sounds like you don't like the go-forever series, which is fair, it's not too hard to avoid. Given that, anime spans pretty much every genre you can think of. So, you should treat it like you would any other medium: look for creators that you like. Cowboy Bebop is by Shinichiro Watanabe, so you can start there (his recent Space Dandy is sort of a comedy version of Cowboy Bebop). He's done some other stuff that's also been pretty well received, like Samurai Champloo, which has samurai, but also has a distinct hip hop influence. Trigun was a contemporary of Cowboy Bebop, and is kind of a space-western, so you might like that. All of the Miyazaki / Ghibli stuff, if you haven't seen it, is worth investigating. It avoids some of what you're talking about, but does have fantasy elements. Miyazaki's protagonists tend to be young girls, but they're more like fairly tales than saturday morning cartoons. All of Satoshi Kon's films might be of interest. Paprika is my favorite of those. We've been talking about FLCL. Do not watch that. It's very well regarded, but it's pretty impenetrable to a newcomer. Alternately, just skim this and see if anything appeals to you: http://www.fanboy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/list-of-worthwhile-anime.jpg There's a lot on that list I haven't seen, but you might possibly like Big O, or maybe Kino's Journey.

Not spoilering because it isn't specific to the newest episodes: Certainly, some level of resentment from the gems towards Greg was always pretty clear, and for that matter there's always been a detectable tension between loving Stephen while acknowledging that he's the reason they lost Rose. Even while watching earlier episodes, I think that Pearl's always seemed to embody that the most, but that's also because she's simply the most emotionally available of them.

Yeah, remember all those masked balls from a couple weeks ago?

Steven Universe: I posted about my ambivalence before, but I'm pretty much on board with Steven Universe at this point. There's enough of the things I like to balance out the things that I don't, and I think the show has deliberately shifted tone away from some of the earlier Stephen-hijinks.

Which series's Goku?

Maybe it's the Teen Witch talking, but as a first time viewer, I assumed it was supposed to be implied that the widow was doing some kind of (unconscious) magic to bewitch the men, and that maybe something would come of that to tie back into the supernatural stuff? Which isn't really a lot better, but at least it wouldn't be a pointless side story. But, from people's comments, it seems like that is probably not going to be the case.

Great post Gaizoku. That's very close to how I read the series as well. When reading it as a full series as well, I think it should also be considered how the show treats nudity in the entire back half. One small narrative thing that did bother me is that the blood-coagulant bullet, which occupied like half an episode, never paid off. I spent the entire finale wondering when it would come up again. I wonder if it's something that was planned but edited away, or if it had a different purpose I don't really understand.

I was curious, so I'm re-watching FLCL. I'm not sure that I still think it's good. Aside from the music (which is both terrific and well-used), I'm not sure that there's anything about it that I really click with. I'm only halfway through, so maybe I'll feel differently by the end.

Yeah, I get that. I even nearly turned it off after the first episode, and that's with people telling me that it's worth watching. (Although, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, I basically don't trust anybody's opinion on anime.) In recent years, I've become a big convert to the idea that a thing can be multiple contradictory things, exactly for things like this. I really have no problem with the idea that it's both exploitative and empowering, or both smart and dumb. (Fun fact: This realization hit me when walking by a Hot Topic in a local mall.) Sexual exploitation and empowerment in particular share a complex relationship in media that goes back at least as far as the exploitation films in the 70's.

So, just went back and skimmed some of the early comments twig, gormongous and synth gerbil posted I guess when Kill La Kill was airing. It's interesting how strongly people were reacting at the beginning, because I didn't really have that kind of reaction. Maybe because I had gotten a sense that it was going to turn out interesting, so I was willing to give it more leeway? Or maybe just because I watched all the episodes in 2 days so I processed it more as a single thing and less as the early episodes. I will say that it seems like the first couple of episodes play a lot more with the sexy outfit jokes than the later ones, so maybe they just got it out of their system early on? I thought the very nearly obscene pretty girl transformation sequence was actually sort of interesting, because by the end it seemed like a very intentional escalation of sexualization from, say, Sailor Moon into the modern day, possibly reflecting an interpretation of changing social mores regarding what's appropriate to represent. The fact that so many boys end up getting pretty girl transformations probably informs that. There were a surprising number of weirdly toned rape-ish "jokes" in the early episodes too, that I felt must have been being deployed thoughtfully, because the tone was weird in context, but maybe that's just me. Seeing things like episode 7, which I mentioned previously, may also have forced me to re-contextualize my impression of earlier content. Eh, that's getting too heavy. In more fun news,

I did some edits to my previous post while you were reading it probably? In any case, I don't get what you're referring to...

So, I ended up watching all of Kill La Kill today. It's pretty good. It does a lot of very smart things. Even the way it evolved from the first episode to the last episode is well handled. I actually considered giving up on it the first time it jumps the shark (I think around the Naturals Election), but I'm happy I didn't. I sometimes have a problem with that kind of plot / power level escalation (and I think its' actually exacerbated by binge-watching?), and this came very close to triggering it. Knowing it was a very limited series helped me decide to stick with it. It's kind of amazing how much they managed to pack into individual episodes, several times at the end of the episode I looked back at what happened in the previous episode and was amazed at how far it managed to come in 22 minutes. It does a very good job of hitting cliches, lamp-shading them, and subverting them in equal measure all while without ever becoming annoying about it. This is probably the case for almost all interesting anime these days, but I feel like you need a pretty good sense of the medium going in in order to really make any sense of it. It would be really hard to use to introduce somebody to anime (although I guess it gets dismissed as just weirdness for that kind of audience). I laughed out loud a good number of times throughout the series, which isn't that common for me, and the show was very very good at "Fuck yeah!" moments. The music was also pretty well handled, outside of the first opening and closing themes which were about as generic "anime theme" as I can imagine. There are several things about it that made me think of Bayonetta. I don't really have a point there though. I didn't really have a problem with varying animation quality between episodes, or even really notice it. It's something I sort of accept as part of the medium, and in something like this, with fairly varied visuals to begin with, I usually chalk it up to an artistic decision rather than a financial one.

Holy shit. Episode 7 of Kill la Kill. (The Fight Club episode.) I actually very nearly turned it off halfway through episode 1, because I was thinking "ok, school club rumble, yeah, that's something I've never seen before *fartnoise*". I sort of just left it on because it was late and I didn't want to start a movie. Also, the visuals were exuberant and varied enough that it was at least not boring to look at. But man, once it gets going, the social commentary is just layers and layers.. Obviously I'm liking it enough that I'm still watching it.

Heehee. It's funny to think that any 3rd person game becomes a voyeurism simulator. More seriously though, the first films wereinitially just a camera pointed at a theater stage, but eventually evolved into something else with a rich language of close-ups, angles, etc. I think something similar may happen for VR. First person insertion is the most obvious application, but who knows what will come out of it after years of development.

Ahem. I'd probably say PC Baang is a better business model: pay by the hour.

Hmm. I'm watching the first episode of Kill La Kill. I had no idea what it was at all going into it. The Netflix edition is mercifully subtitled. Yay! It's always interesting to me the extent to which they filter different kinds of stories through the lens of high school politics. Obviously high school has its own grip on American popular culture, and for various cultural reasons, I could postulate why the effect would be more pronounced, but it's interesting to note regardless. Close-reading is always hazardous, but the power of sexuality bestowed in the form of a sailor suit is...interesting. It's also interesting to see how Trigger has maintained a lot of what I would consider the Gainax "house style", as they're former Gainax employees.