Anime!! and YOU!

Sy said:
Agree about Shinkai, Aion. The art direction is great but I always find his characters lack any real... character. In stories like he does that's important. I think the fact that his work looks good and he usually throws some sort of sci fi element in distracts people from how lifeless his characters are.
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Now that you mention it, I can't remember any of names of the characters in Shinkai's films. It isn't that odd with me since I have a poor memory, but it's still true that none of his creations stand out.


If I'm being honest, nearly all anime films fail. The main reason is that anime film directors try to fit too much story into 90-120 minutes, sometimes leaving main plot points unexplained for the for fun of it, and fans of those sort of films lap it up because they think the lack of explanations equal added depth. I'm not one of those people - I always end up feeling pissed off after watching that sort of film.

Disney has Japan beat when it comes to animated movies...or at least they did until they became CG whores. Japan has very little to answer The Lion King (yes, I read about Kimba), Beauty and the Beast, Fox and the Hound, Aladdin and others with.
 
Aion said:
Maltos said:
Favourite anime is fer sure, still, 5 Centimeters Per Second.
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Shame about everything aside from the visuals, though...
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Sy said:
Agree about Shinkai, Aion.
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Personally, I really enjoy his works. I agree that maybe people do get distracted by the art, maybe that's even effecting me, but I also enjoy his characters and stories.
It's funny you should mention the sci-fi thing aswell actually, because that's my least favourite aspect of his stories; which is why I found his works getting progressively better [minus his two early black and white short films which are awesome]. I also found the second half of The Place Promised disappointing because of the unneccessarily complex sci-fi plot.

When watching romance, I expect my penis to harden or a fuzzy warmth to come over me and make me think like a woman. Neither happened whilst I watched this sleep inducing 60 minute...err, thing.
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5CM wasn't supposed to do that. It was a bittersweet story. I was certainly sad at the end of the film and in no way did I feel "fuzzy" :lol:

As far as calling 5CM, "sleep inducing" and "simply dull and disappointing", it couldn't be further from my opinion of the film. I went into it with lower expectations than Place Promised and it blew me away. The slow stories, like a lot of things I really like, isn't to everyone's taste and that's fine. But calling him overrated because you don't appreciate it, is a little harsh. His characters are good, but they are normal. Mabye it's the comparrisson of chucking them into a sci-fi world which makes them look boring, but they really are just like real people. And with 5CM, again, I thought the characters and their relationships were very realistic.

At the end of the day, it's really down to opinion though. If you don't enjoy his approach at story-telling then that's cool; but there's a whole forum of us that do. :)
 
Aion said:
Maltos said:
Favourite anime is fer sure, still, 5 Centimeters Per Second. I'm an art man. I love art. And this film has simply got awesome art. Such beautiful background and scenery. Wonderful.
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Shinkai is a bit over-rated as a director. He's nowhere near as over-rated as Hayao Miyazaki, whose only brilliant work seems to be Princess Mononoke, but he's up there. Voices of a Distant Star was good because it was short and a bit different, the first half of the The Place Promised in Our Early Days presented a very good school love triangle in the first half...but it went downhill fast with the sci-fi crap in the last half, and 5cm was simply dull and disappointing. In my eyes, Shinkai has produced the goods half the time and failed the other half.
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Aion... You're my enemy now. Same with you, Sy. Whilst I agree that Miyazaki is overrated, but I love Shinkai's work, especially the storyline and such. It's something we can relate to easily. No epic storyline. No end of the world thing. Just two lovers who their main enemy is distance. And in turn, films such as 5 cm per second shows it destroys the relationship between them.

That's what I love about it. It's a story that I want to rewatch again and again because it's romance that's 'realistic but touching'.
 
I've always disliked Shinkai, I even hate the visuals. Admittedly, I haven't seen his "vast" library of work, but I don't have any plans and/or reason to ever watch them. The entire concept of Voices was terrible enough for me to not give it another look.

5CM looked pretty, then I found it it was done by Shinkai.
 
The concept...as in, the idea of one lover aging and the other not? I found that fascinating. It's that plot point that made VoaDS receive the praise it did. It'd be awful to go away, leaving someone you have feelings for, and come back later to find that the person you loved has aged 20 years and has his/her own life.

Everything else was a mess, but that's to be expected when it was so short. It didn't matter a great deal to me because the main theme reached out and touched me.
 
She and her Cat was good. I'll give him that but it lasted what? 3 minutes? Nice that he can keep something interesting for that long but anymore than that and he loses me. It took me two sittings to get through Voices and that's only 25 minutes long. Probably the only reason it's noteworthy at all is because he made it almost completely by himself. The idea itself was fine but an idea alone isn't what makes a movie good.

Be fair, Maltos. 5cm Per Second is a pretty innuendo laden title for a movie. It could easily be mistaken for a porno.
 
Sy said:
Be fair, Maltos. 5cm Per Second is a pretty innuendo laden title for a movie. It could easily be mistaken for a porno.
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I was going to mention that I was upset about how the title misled me: I put romance + 5cm Per Second together, thinking my penis would grow at an amaxing rate, and all I got was boredom.

...of course, I'm much too high class to say something as vulgar as that.
 
Sy said:
She and her Cat was good. I'll give him that but it lasted what? 3 minutes? Nice that he can keep something interesting for that long but anymore than that and he loses me. It took me two sittings to get through Voices and that's only 25 minutes long. Probably the only reason it's noteworthy at all is because he made it almost completely by himself. The idea itself was fine but an idea alone isn't what makes a movie good.

Be fair, Maltos. 5cm Per Second is a pretty innuendo laden title for a movie. It could easily be mistaken for a porno.
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Have you seen Other Worlds? It's like, a minute long. Made before She And Her Cat. I'd say it's worth a look. It's a bit like a poem, with wonderful music and, frankly, very crude animation. I think it's beautiful.

And yeh; thinking about it like that... :lol:
 
Favourite anime:

It has to be Evangelion for me. Ah, where to start? For me, Evangelion encompasses absolutely everything I want in an anime. It's serious, philosophical and enlightening; it's fun, exciting and humorous, too. Evangelion even includes some of my personal favourite classical music. I love biblical mythology and grandiose, secretive organisations (SEELE are a stroke of genius!). I like the giant robot action; I like the intense character exploration; I like the heightened sense of realism; I like how camp it gets at times. It's almost bizarre how perfectly it all fits my tastes. Evangelion is a sweeping epic the likes of which I don't think I'll ever see again. And, of course, End of Evangelion is a life affirming experience. It's gorgeously animated and brilliantly experimental. It's my all time favourite movie and I doubt it'll ever be bested! :]

And if that all sounded pretentious (it did), so be it! :p

Favourite character:

I'm tempted to name any of the major characters from Evangelion, but I'd struggle to choose one over the other, so I'm going to go with Lust from Fullmetal Alchemist. I just love her! She's got the whole gay icon thing going on (she oozes style and coolness, is strong, feminine and has a tragic past) which is probably a big part of the appeal to me. Also, to be blunt, killing things with fingernails that extend into lances is just awesome beyond awesome. Seeing the villain team up the good guys is always something I love to see and that really was the icing on the cake for me :]
 
Favourite anime: For the sake of this, I'll go with my favourite anime being My-HiME (as it's probably easier to talk about a series, than my favourite film which is Kiki's Delivery Service.) My-HiME to me, embodies the perfect reason why I love anime. It somehow displays a wide range of genre's within 26 episodes, has excellent twists and turns, was animated really well, and gripped me from start to finish. It's one of the few series that has truly made me care about the characters emotionally. There are so many elements in it that made it so enjoyable, so many things which gave the characters drive, and so many points where you could tell why things were tearing people up inside. I don't know what else I can say about it, I could easily watch it over and over and not get bored of it.

Favourite character: Sakura from Cardcaptor Sakura. Come on, what's not to love about a 10 year old girl, who has to capture cards which, if left loose, could destroy the world? It gets so much more poignant later on, when the stakes are raised at the final judgment. She embodies the sort of naive, trusting person who gives everything for what she believes in, and is one of Clamp's best characters in my opinion.
 
I think that Shinkai's characterizations are deliberately sketchy. He uses visuals and music to convey emotion and evoke nostalgia and wants the viewer to feel what the characters are feeling. For me, he utterly succeeds; others, however, are less receptive to that approach.
 
Favorite Anime:...Not too sure about this as it changes depending on my mood :p But i know that one of my favorites will always be Tsukihime. Probably because at the time i blind bought it (something i don't normally do unless i'm fairly certain there's mecha in it) and despite it being like nothing else on my shelf at the time i fairly enjoyed it. There was some cliche's present of course in the storyline (mysterious woman or several) but that didn't stop me really getting into it. The OST as well was brillant, to this day i would say that the op (Sacred Moon) is well within my top 10. It fitted the anime style to a t. Of course after wards i found out where the series came from and that there was a manga version available as well but i supose this is a question about anime and not manga :p (suffice to say as much as i love the anime version, the manga one is better)

Favorite Character: Again a tough one for me to answer (i'm very in decisive about these sort of things) but i'll shoot for Vash the Stampede from Trigun. Optimistic and very naive at times, a bit like me really.
 
Favourite Anime: That is a toughy tbh. If I had to choose I would have to say Coboy Bebop like. It was the first full anime I ever watched and the also the anime (besides Tank Police) that really got me into anime in the first place. God bless late night Sci-Fi and Toonami! I like Bebop for many reasons. I love all the characters and how they interact with each other. Faye with her greedy, gambling ways and Ed the carzy hacker (I love her).
The story is solid imo and it has a satifactory end (in it actual being an end). I know there'll won't be anymore Bebop but I'll can always dream. Next to come is the Live Action movie... I wonder how that'l turn out... please don't mess it up. ¬_¬

Favourite Char: Another hard one but in keeping with my anime choice I'm going to have to say Spike (as per avatar). He kicks ass, funny and smooth as silk... everything I wish I was. ^_^
 
Aion said:
Kendarr said:
skikes said:
Anime: Evangelion
reason: It's evangelion

Character: Asuka
Reason: She's from evangelion
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same here!
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Are all Evangelion fans this detailed? Surely there has to be one Evangelion fan who will explain to everyone (in great detail) how pathetic they are for not rating Evangelion.

/drum roll for The Geek
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i simply cud not be bothered... thats what googles for :/
 
skikes said:
Aion said:
Kendarr said:
skikes said:
Anime: Evangelion
reason: It's evangelion

Character: Asuka
Reason: She's from evangelion
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same here!
Click to expand...

Are all Evangelion fans this detailed? Surely there has to be one Evangelion fan who will explain to everyone (in great detail) how pathetic they are for not rating Evangelion.

/drum roll for The Geek
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i simply cud not be bothered... thats what googles for :/
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Google is for finding info; not finding your personal opinion. We can't find your personal opinion with Google. :?
 
Favourite anime: Well, I've struggled to figure out which is "Best of all time!" So I'll give you the top 3 of the more recent stuff.

Black Lagoon: No holds barred gun-slinging modern pirate action... Personally, this sounds greater than One Piece (Saw some eps, and didn't catch me), and it's more realistic, since it's not your typical shonen anime. The crew is miss-matched, the missions are creative as much as gang warfare can stretch to, and the villians... Not for the light hearted.

Chrono Crusade: I really liked this when I watched the whole thiong through. It's a very in-depth show that burrows into the chistian faith, and tells a not-so-modern story about Rossette (a battle nun) and her friend/contractor, Chrono (A devil). The amount of emotional ups and downs is enough to wreck hard-weary anime fans, and the ending was the closest I've come to tears whilst watching a show.

Outlaw Star: Very entertaining. :D I've watched this series the most, as it came alongside watching DBZ on CN (at different times though). A cocky Outlaw who's fine in getting by works with his mechanical smarts teenage friend and goes off to do random missions.

Along the way, he teams up with a woman (who dies near the start of the series), who leaves them a female android in a case, a spaceship to fly, meets up with a crazed catgirl (Ktarl Ktarl), protects his contrator from a female samurai, whilst all the way through all that beats up pirates and goes off to find the greatest treasure in the galaxy (Galactic Layline).
And they still had time for the random hot-springs and racing adventures.

Favourite Character: Haruhi Suzumiya. Well, Ukitsu is my fav of everything, but she rocks more on the manga side. Whereas Haruhi is the most random girl (besides Excel from Excel Saga) I've seen, and if you dont do things her way, bad mojo happens so she has it her way. She would make a nice dictator- I mean Brigade Chief!
 
Lupus Inu said:
Favourite anime: Evangelion
Reason: Along with Nirvana, Evangelion made Final Fantasy VII.

I made your opinion for you, Skikes.
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i have no idea what that post even means? are u suggesting i have a liking toward FF and nirvana...

if so, i have never played a FF game in my life, i cannot stand rpgs AND i a have distinct disliking toward nirvana :/

are u thinking of geek?

i just like eva, i cannot be bothered to explain why.
 
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