Rate the last anime you watched out of 10

Ponyo - 5/10.

Not a typo. Have a copypasta:
Shouldn't be too surprised, as Howl's Moving Castle started to show the first signs of wear and tear, but Ponyo seems very much a clear-cut case of an aged, somewhat bewildered master plotting nonsense whilst everyone around him is afraid to speak out about his recycled attire. It's all very beautiful and sweet, but you end up feeling so numbed against it all, and it certainly doesn't help that the characters seem to be spectacularly indifferent to everything going on ('Oh, your fish friend is human now? Whatever, I need to get dinner'). Ghibli paladins will probably defend the direction-less plot as some inspirational example of the trust Miyazaki invests in the attention spans of his younger audiences, but that doesn't exactly chime with the glut of expositionary dialogue the film lumbers itself with. Easily Miyazaki's worst.
 
fabricatedlunatic said:
@maestro: JC Staff tend to produce a lot of "otaku" shows that don't interest me at all. And I'll never forgive them for hours of my life I wasted watching Shana. Aoi Hana is on my "plan to watch" list, though.
Resisting... urge... to... produce... list. ^^;

Even just for Utena and AzuDai you should "let them off" with Shana. And the actual technical quality of their shows is generally really high, imo.

Plus, as I mentioned elsewhere, you're now up to two J.C.Staff shows you've recommended this week. :p
 
It's all right, I've seen the list. Those two and Azumanga are the only ones I like, and Aoi Hana is the only other one I'd like to see. Utena has never appealed, despite the almost universal praise. (Does that make me a charlatan?)
 
Shadow Star Narutaru (V2)

"First impressions can be misleading..."

The above is what's said on the first Narutaru trailer, and it pretty much sums the show up in a nutshell.

Narutaru begins very slowly; so slowly that most assume it's some kind of kid friendly Pokemon show if they go into it blindly and fail to notice the creepy staring of Narutaru's 'mascot' early on. A young girl goes to her grandparents, finds a star-shaped creature and takes it home. So far, so good on the 'safe for children' front. But, after that, other young owners of mysterious creatures enter the picture, and the other children want more than to just own weird pets...

The animation studio behind it rather foolishly made the show appear even more childish by making the opening into a parody of the show itself; full of smiling faces and complete with a song about sunshine. The opening is rather amusing if you look back at it once you've watched the series and can pick-up on certain things, such as a strong hint towards the bullying arc that the series ends with, but it does little good for people not familiar with the source material...

If you get past the opening episode, it quickly becomes apparent that Narutaru isn't aimed at children at all. Or, to be more precise, once one of the characters pulls out a knife and starts talking about 'shaving' the world rather than changing as a person in order to fit in, it becomes crystal clear that Narutaru is about as far away from being 'child friendly' as an anime about a girl finding a seemingly harmless creature can be.
Children play the starring roles in the story and Hoshimaru (the first 'dragon child') may appear cute, but the children are used to paint a grim picture of society and the monsters are tools for killing. Kitoh's work is among the most disturbing out there because he's not afraid to depict awful things - including rape and murder - happening to children, with children often committing the crimes as well as being on the receiving end. Whatever holds most people back doesn't restrain him as he delves into the minds of unstable children and shows the darker side of humanity.

To start with, Narutaru shows little promise. Compared to Bokurano, Kitoh's more recent work, Narutaru is slow and aimless. In the case of Bokurano, no time was wasted in setting up the rest of the story, and that allowed readers to get some sort of indication of where it was going from the get-go. On the other hand, Narutaru gives no indication and it takes forever for the cast to assemble. And since Narutaru gets progressively darker, rather than starting out twisted, there was very little for me to get my teeth into in terms of the characters. In fact, Shiina's (the lead) simple-minded, overly happy personality and Akira's inability to speak pushed me away more than anything else.

Also holding the series back is its lackluster visuals and forgettable soundtrack. While Kitoh's artwork is copied without issue, the dull colours and general lack of animation make the show a hard one to recommend to those moved more by visuals. The fact that certain scenes had to be executed with much left to the imagination because of how gruesome/disturbing those scenes were in the manga also hurts the anime visually. And, honestly, there's no music on the soundtrack worthy of hunting down the soundtrack to listen to.

Depending on if you're a dub fan, the voice acting side isn't any more impressive, either. The Japanese voice acting is pretty good, as it tends to be in general, with the famous Mamiko Noto playing the role of Akira and making the character slightly more bearable. But the English voice actors quite simply read the lines without inserting any personality or emotion. For example, where as I picked up on Shiina's uneasiness in response to something Akira said to her early on through her Japanese voice actress, when listening to the same line in English no uneasiness was conveyed. Maybe I've just been spoiled by Funimation's dub of late but Narutaru's dub struck me as being quite poor, and I quickly decided to read subtitles rather than letting my ears do all the work.

However, it isn't all bad. Far from it. As odd as it is, Narutaru only really gets going in the last three episodes... and then it ends. For the first time focused, hard-hitting character development took center stage, rather than character introductions and monsters killing soldiers. Two cases of near enough unrelated stories of bullying get told in the final three episodes, the end result being the victims flipping and, in the case one of the girls, lots of brutal murder occurring in retaliation for her parents running her life for her and the severe bullying she endured at the hands of other children in silence (being forced to 'drink' worms, being violated with a test tube, etc.) Unlike in the case of a lot of the previous episodes, time flew by and I was actually saddened when I ran out of episodes.

It's a shame the anime ended there because how it ended made a lot of what went before meaningless. What of Sudo's plan to make the world anew with other children possessing 'dragon children'? Why was there even a standalone episode that... sort of explained how dragons are born? Really, aside from the early episodes and the final three, nothing else was needed for an adaptation that ended so abruptly. It makes me wonder what the intention of the animation studio was... Why even bother starting plot threads they had no intention of finishing?...

...In closing, let me add this: it took me three attempts to finish Narutaru. First the pacing made me on-hold it. Then, months later, the pacing made me 'drop' it when I tried again. Only recently, when I managed to buy the DVDs, did I finish it and see why others rate it highly. I'm now very interested in reading the manga further and I STRONGLY recommend that people stick with it until the end before judging it. If you don't give it time, you'll miss the best part of the anime--simple as that.

Rating: 7/10


Also, this video should tell you all you need to know about the series:

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...I guess I'd better add something about Black Cat, too.

Black Cat - 5/10

'First impressions can be misleading' is something that can be said about both Black Cat and Narutaru, for opposite reasons. Black Cat started out with 'adult' material (well, lots of death, anyway!) and a lead character with a lot of potential. But it ended up as an average, run-of-the-mill anime that only children in body or mind can appreciate.

I'm still mystified as to how a killer (raised as a killer by the man who killed his parents) could turn out to be such a plain, generic shounen lead. He truly had nothing distinctive about him, and the way he easily transformed into a goody-goody, 'Killing is wrong! GOOD PEOPLE DON'T KILL!!!!' type ruined any chance he had of being a believable character.

Black Cat had an awful story and one-dimensional characters. Its greatest flaw is that it's aimed only at young people, despite the start suggesting otherwise. It had some likable characters, such as Sven and Eve, but they weren't enough to save a show where the crazy villain was let off the hook at the end because, according to the goody-goody lead, he had to atone for his sins by living... as a free man (and, of course, the insane baddie saw the error of his ways after being beaten... somehow.) I enjoyed the start and the comedy/light-hearted episodes, but the last section completely ruined it with serious, 'save the world!' type battles occurring between a cartoonish cast of characters, including a brat on a ******* skateboard.

...Oh, and Gonzo are evil. Despite the series having some nice animation at the start, towards the end animation stopped. Episode 20 was a complete joke, with so little animation that attacks weren't even shown; only people falling to the floor. Close-ups, still-shots at such a distance that no mouth movement was needed, repeated animations, lines to show direction... you name it. I couldn't even work out what happened at times! If not for the lovely, bright colour usage and appealing art, it would've been awful to watch some of the episodes...

Black Cat is a great example of why you shouldn't judge something based on its start. My rating dropped from 8/10 to 5/10. :|
 
Aion said:
Also, this video should tell you all you need to know about the series:
That's some cheap-looking animation. In the manga there's also finger rape in that scene, which Dark Horse edited out of their release. I'd always meant to read Narutaru and probably would have if the Dark Horse version was complete.
 
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I own the first seven volumes of the DH releases. I started reading them but stopped. There are no chapter numbers and so much is edited out that it's impossible to figure out which chapter is which.

Instead of reading the books, first I'm going to read scans online so that I don't miss anything. Then, if I can be arsed, I'll read the volumes I own to see what was changed.

And I knew about the test tube sexual assault/raping to death already (she gets split in half, afaik)--I'd had a look at the final volume. It got edited the hell out of and was the last part of the story DH covered since it's meant to only get worse as it goes on.

Bokurano is a better option for you since it's far easier to get into and coming out in English this year.
 
RahXephon
I’ve been meaning to watch this series for years so I finally decided to get my finger out and give it the viewing time it was said to have deserved.

Watching the first couple of episodes I thought it was rather average and nothing great to be honest. It wasn’t until the story got going and the whole dimension/time gap all started getting involved that I really started to get sucked in. The characters are all quite well developed considering the amount of side story lines there are in the 24. Some unneeded, but all appreciated. The music did get a little gritty at times as I found myself noticing it for the wrong reasons. It should be there to compliment the actions/situations on screen but it did feel out of place at times.

Besides the music (which wasn’t that big a deal) I really enjoyed the series. It had the whole shebang for me, love, hate, pain, jealousy, helplessness, insanity and a story line that makes you think rather than making you just switch off.

I can now also see why this series is compared to Evangelion so frequently. I still prefer EVA to Rahx, but not by way of stories by any means. I enjoyed RahXephon as much as Evangelion however, EVA has been etched into my mind from way back when. It will always come first for me. Given that I’ve only seen Rahx once and EVA (insert Grahams Number) amount of times. I’d say it’s stood up very well.

Rating 9/10
 
I'll second much of this. A lot of emphasis was placed on music and musical analogies within the screenplay of RahXephon. It is thus unfortunate that, when compared to Evangelion's memorable use of popular pieces, the assorted musical cues of the newer title provided little enhancement to the action or drama.
 
Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory -- 7-7.5/10

It was very good, without ever being excellent. Once you've seen one Gundam title involving two new, ultra-powerful Gundam units being created, with one being stolen and the other somehow ending up in the hands of a goody-goody, rookie pilot, you've pretty much seen every other Gundam already. Be ready for lots of pursuits/escapes and some inexperienced romance!

The pacing was very slow, and a fair chunk of the content could've been left out. The 'romance' between Uraki and Nina struck me as being fake from the start--I hated how at the start of one of the episodes it was simply stated they'd become close after spending time with each other. And Nina having had some sort of relationship with Uraki's older, much grayer rival in the past seemed as if it was tacked on just to add some 'spice'... and her end choice made what went before feel pointless.

And, talking of Uraki's rival, he and Gato never had a true rivalry where the two 'connected' on some level, which resulted in the battles between them being dull as a consequence. Whenever they met, Gato would point out that Uraki's green, Uraki would go silent/show respect/get angry and that'd be that. Yawn...

WHERE WAS MY NARUTOxSASUKE LOVE!?

...Honestly, Uraki was a dull character, period. He's the type you're likely to see playing the same roles elsewhere many times over: young, naive, passionate and simple-minded. He trained, became stronger, hit a few hurdles and he was done. I expect more from lead characters, and the fakeness of his relationships didn't help him out any.

The series wasn't bad, mind you--it just had some annoying flaws. I liked the gritty feel the story had due to the lack of childish fluff and the series very rarely bored me. It's just quite hard to be too positive about it when, assuming you've seen the original Gundam, SEED or most others, you've pretty much seen most of what Stardust has to offer already.

I prefer 'War in the Pocket' and 'The 08th MS Team'. Both focused on the smaller picture, rather than being mini-versions of the 50 episode titles, and they both had excellent character development as a result. More realistic character development and less Gundaming is a good thing in my mind... though I guess that means I'm no Gundam fan!

One other thing: The R1 video quality did it few favours. The image was fairly 'dirty', with faint vertical lines on the right side and a lot of mess very visible during the space battles. I found it hard to tell what was going on a lot of the time during the space segments because of the poor video quality...
The video quality reminded me of the difference between the remastered JR2 version of 'The 08th MS Team' and the R1 releases. Not good.

...Oh, and one other thing: I didn't quite get why Gato aimed 'IT' at a granary in North America. What was the meaning behind that? :|
 
If that's the case then Aion is like Famitsu, his scores don't make any sense!

So I watched Dante's Inferno... it started off with Western animation (What the ****?) and setting the story up with Dante going home to his shawty, Beatrice. Upon arriving home all residents have been slain, he comes across Beatrice, with her dying words says she loves him and he vows that he too loves her, you know typical dialog for a game/anime/whatever with this setting. She gets dragged too hell because Dante has been naughty, so yeah, he goes to save her and **** gets real. While at first being greeted by God Tier Manglobe animation it got cut short quickly and I had to endure really bad Korean animation while watching Dante's hair grow from average back and sides to becoming a god of metal. Fortunately the realms of hell get covered quickly and don't stay for too long, which is what I enjoyed about it, there wasn't an episode of content for each section of hell, it was quick and painless for the most part. There was some big changes I noticed from playing the demo but they didn't bother me much, I mean this is a bastardization of the Divine Comedy so who cares? But yeah, plot has been ruined for me if I ever wanted to play the game. It was worth the watch for the short Manglobe segment, that's it. Still deciding on rating, maybe 6/10 or 7/10? I don't know.
 
ilmaestro said:
So, Aion, your out-of-ten scale has now become an out-of-forty scale? XD

I don't get it. If you're adding in my .5 scores, wouldn't that change my ratings to 19/19?

The .5 scores are just thrown in to help people see where my ratings are leaning. In the case of Stardust, it's more of a 7-8/10 than a 6-7/10.
 
Aion said:
Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory -- 7-7.5/10

It was very good, without ever being excellent.

Wow - we have very different tastes, you and I. I thought this was one of the stronger Gundam shows I've seen. But fair play - personal preference and all that. :wink:

Aion said:
One other thing: The R1 video quality did it few favours. The image was fairly 'dirty', with faint vertical lines on the right side and a lot of mess very visible during the space battles. I found it hard to tell what was going on a lot of the time during the space segments because of the poor video quality...

This is a bit odd. My R1 DVD looks just fine - have you tweaked the display options on your DVD player, by any chance?
 
Aion said:
ilmaestro said:
So, Aion, your out-of-ten scale has now become an out-of-forty scale? XD

I don't get it. If you're adding in my .5 scores, wouldn't that change my ratings to 19/19?
Adding in your half point scores I assumed you'd adapted a ten point scale to a twenty point one (unless you had ruled out 0.5) - by scoring something "7-7.5/10" I'd consider that a "quarter point" rating somewhere higher than seven but lower than 7.5.
 
Cowboy Bebop: The movie

9/10

Although it's animated by BONES (IIRC) it's hard to believe nearly a decade ago Sunrise made really good series like Bebop and now they make garbage like Code Geass. Oh dear, but still the film was great, I was literally in awe over the animation quality throughout the film.
 
Lupus said:
Cowboy Bebop: The movie

9/10

Although it's animated by BONES (IIRC) it's hard to believe nearly a decade ago Sunrise made really good series like Bebop and now they make garbage like Code Geass. Oh dear, but still the film was great, I was literally in awe over the animation quality throughout the film.

I saw this in the cinema a couple of weeks ago!

Totally blew me away. That final dogfight sequence has to be seen on the big screen with the full surround sound experience. I love this film in the first place. But cinema-ness is so awesome.
 
I've always got time for the Bebop movie!

I quite often see it being maligned as a 'cash-in' or an 'afterthought' - but I think it's a really solid movie, with gorgeous animation. That intro scene is just beyond cool, too.

And hey - I think Sunrise are still making cool stuff!
 
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