Rate the last anime you watched out of 10

From having read a bit of the simulwatch thread, my impression is that the answer would be ‘no’, but would you get a reasonable impression of what TTGL is like from watching the first three episodes? I’ve seen two or three from the middle, including the recap episode (so I know about The Thing Which Happens) and I doubt somehow that seeing it from the start would change my opinion of the show, but I do always feel a bit like I haven’t given it a fair crack of the whip. At the very least, maybe I could better pin down what exactly about it just doesn’t work for me.
 
Professor Irony said:
From having read a bit of the simulwatch thread, my impression is that the answer would be ‘no’, but would you get a reasonable impression of what TTGL is like from watching the first three episodes?
Click to expand...

Personally, I would indeed say 'no' but speaking as someone who was almost immediately hooked that's a bit of a tough call to make. Having another look through that thread as well to remind myself exactly what happens when (and recognising that episode 4 is probably the worst episode of the series due to its poor animation and episode 6 is basically ecchi filler) I would probably give it until episode 9. That seems like a bit of a commitment but I don't think anyone really gets the full range of the GL experience until then. I think it's possible someone could have an "at last, I truly see" moment up until that point, but if it's not doing anything for you by then, it's probably never going to.
 
I watched a few episodes of Gurren Lagann back in the day and it didn't make much of an impression on me so that was that. If ya'll want to compare the show to US politics then let's continue over in the General Politics Thread.
 
@ayase Thanks! I so personally agree with you about dissenting voices and opinions always being welcome in threads and fodder for discussion. I'll try to remember there are others who also feel the same about this, and chime in whenever I can!

The current political cultural landscape certainly influenced the way I expressed my feelings in that review, and to an extent perhaps my interpretation of the show's stance on environmental issues. But I don't think my core feelings about GL would have been too different had I watched the whole series in 2010 or whenever. My comparing it to Donald Trump was probably a little unfair and wasn't really very deep or well thought out. But as Trump and talk of him has been all over the media during my watch through of GL, I couldn't help but be struck by what I felt was a certain affinity between the two. I also don't dislike Trump or GL for being brash or bold or loud. But I suppose it comes down to fact that I just didn't believe in the Gurren Lagann that believes in anything very much.

Ok maybe not nothing, it does have a message of self belief, brotherhood in arms, perseverance and even a quick bit of forgiveness. None of that is bad of course but just the stock principles every shonen story must have, and even then, for me personally, those ideals felt less weighty in GL than in other similar stories. I think it's partly because I felt that the characters lacked weight and depth and personality. But also the show generally seemed to have a pretty dim view of humanity outside of its capacity for fighting and expanding. It doesn't seem to believe in politics, law, democracy or community, nor religion either (not that I begrudge it that last one). But I noticed very little kindness or warmth at all (in this regard the two kids in Yoko's class stand out as an notable exception, but even here Yoko seems intent to stamp it out). It had heaps of macho posturing though.

Team Gurren fought long and hard to be able to live on the surface at last, but to what end? The society they established seemed barely better (and maybe worse) than what they had underground, unless we're expected to simply equate big city with better quality of life? So it felt like the fight isn't a means to an end, but rather the end itself. And quite literally as the show triumphantly closes with the spiral nemesis barely considered but still looming large. For me, the show's action itself just wasn't good enough to justify this perspective.

I do absolutely understand that many will heartily disagree with me about all of this though! I can definitely see how other people interpret the show completely differently from me in all kinds of ways. There isn't one fixed meaning to something like this. I'm pretty comfortable to read political allegory into a work even when I'm unsure of the author's intent, and maybe even when I doubt the author had the intent. I think a work of art leads its own life and becomes its own thing, and becomes all kinds of wildly different things to different people.
 
These are my thoughts:
1000007019.gif
It's a shounen mecha battle show with the power creep turned up to infinity! Think Kill la Kill had more to say, not that much more, but still. Might suggest this for a simulwatch as it's been (looks it up on the viewing journal thread) 7 years ago!
 
Not to keep ragging on ol Gurren Lagan but something else I've been thinking is how relatively uninvolved the actual mecha aspects of the show were. I'm no expert on mecha shows, but I'm guessing it's probably because it draws much of its influence so the less realistic varieties of robot anime, and most of my experience with mecha is with things like gundam. Still something I really appreciate about a lot of the mecha shows I enjoy is the struggle to pilot it and the journey to mastery, the back and forth that happens between pilot and machine, the almost earning of its trust and respect. That relationship is pretty lacking in GL where everything comes pretty immediately and intuitively. It makes the robots in the show feel oddly unimportant. It has put me in the mood for some good ol gundam though I must say.
 
Vashdaman said:
Not to keep ragging on ol Gurren Lagan but something else I've been thinking is how relatively uninvolved the actual mecha aspects of the show were. I'm no expert on mecha shows, but I'm guessing it's probably because it draws much of its influence so the less realistic varieties of robot anime, and most of my experience with mecha is with things like gundam. Still something I really appreciate about a lot of the mecha shows I enjoy is the struggle to pilot it and the journey to mastery, the back and forth that happens between pilot and machine, the almost earning of its trust and respect. That relationship is pretty lacking in GL where everything comes pretty immediately and intuitively. It makes the robots in the show feel oddly unimportant. It has put me in the mood for some good ol gundam though I must say.
Click to expand...
@Vashdaman Yes, mecha is generally split into two sub genres: the ‘real robot’ style like Gundam where the mecha operate in a realistic way, and the ‘super robot’ where the mecha appear to operate outside of the normal rules of physics. Other examples of super robot include Go Nagai’s Mazinger Z, as well as series like Escaflowne and Rayearth which combine mecha with isekai.
 
Vashdaman said:
Still something I really appreciate about a lot of the mecha shows I enjoy is the struggle to pilot it and the journey to mastery, the back and forth that happens between pilot and machine, the almost earning of its trust and respect. That relationship is pretty lacking in GL where everything comes pretty immediately and intuitively. It makes the robots in the show feel oddly unimportant. It has put me in the mood for some good ol gundam though I must say.
Click to expand...

Have you watched Patlabor yet? That really does strike me as being very much your bag, and it certainly has all the character development and mecha realism you’ve found lacking in GL.
 
I'm not a big fan of mecha, but one of my favorites in the "realistic mecha" venue is Flag. The mecha in that series is smaller though, more like the size of those in James Cameron's Avatar movie, but the story is about as realistic as it gets. So good.
 
Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings In Russian

A nice show! The girls are cute and the guys aren't annoying or perverted - what more could anyone want in life?

It starts off as a typical (slightly harem-ish romcom) and ends up more of a slice-of-life show about a student council. I'm sure similar things have been done about a billion times before but it does it well and never outstays its welcome. I liked it! - 8/10

Star Wars Visions

I was a bit disappointed with this. It's nine short episodes from various studios (Trigger, Science Saru, IG, etc), which sounds like a good idea.

Of course, this led to to almost every studio having the same thought: "Hey, Jedi are like samurai!"...which means most of the episodes were slight variations on the same thing.

The Star Wars universe is massive, so there were so many things they could have done. A podracing episode! Something about the criminal underworld! Bounty Hunters! Something about Jawas or Gungans or whatever!

But out of nine episodes, only one of them (by Studio Colirido) isn't about lightsaber fights (and almost all of those are samurai themed). The studios were apparently given permission to do pretty much whatever they want, yet most of them thought of pretty much the same thing.

The episodes all look nice - it's just a shame about the lack of creativity - 6/10
 
Mobile Suit Gundam movie trilogy

(I don't think there are specific spoilers in this review, but maybe still avoid reading if you haven't already watched)

Before having only seen Unicorn and a smattering of Wing (watched through glazed and confused young eyes) I decided to finally watch Gundam from the beginning. And I really did enjoy my time with the 0079 movies a huge amount, it's a phenomenal piece of work. It's written with nuance and its cast all feel real and are mostly a charming bunch without feeling like they were cynically designed to extract the maximum amount of affection and profit out of fans as so many anime characters often do. It's artfully directed and lovingly animated too (yes there are some sketchy frames here and there, but so much genuinely beautiful work!), with brilliant choreography that is still an absolute delight to watch. Stunning soundtrack too, obviously!

I found it both a thrilling and in many ways a harrowing ride (the latter feeling probably exacerbated by Israel starting a war with Iran in the real world as I watched these films). When you stop and get off and think about Gundam though, it's an incredibly strange show that I'd argue is defined by its paradoxes and contradictions. It couldn't have been an easy sell to the producers at the time, but it somehow took off and now the franchise is a fully fledged cultural emblem of Japan, an equal to the tea ceremony or the sakura blossom or kimono.

It's a "real robot" hard science show telling a serious story about war, but the real robots are amazingly flamboyant cool/goofy looking future day samurai thingys clearly designed with one eye on selling toys to kids. It's futuristic industrial warfare fought impersonally through expressionless machinery (even the gundam displays little to no anthropomorphic qualities in this incarnation. And it's a nice touch the way Amuro notes feeling more at ease killing mobile suited up pilots he doesn't have to see than a recognisably human form) and yet it's also up close and personal and reminiscent of samurai duels.

It has the brutal world weary cynicism of the 70s all over it, there's are no real goodies just different shades of bad, deluded, traumatised and naive people, and all of the above are still capable of kindness and affection. Despite depicting a conflict which in a month apparently wiped out half the entire population of the universe, the show still feels hopeful. This is nowhere more evident than the juxtaposition between the cold emotionless machine weaponry, and the whole newtype aspect concerning the next evolutionary stage in humankind where empathic powers are so elevated to potentially make the prospect of world peace seem like it could be a doddle. And yet of course those amazing powers are mostly being misused as just another weapon of war. For me it's one of the more fascinating aspects of show, and it also gives it a certain almost subtly mystical or psychedelic tinge by the end.

All of these tensions only elevate Mobile Suit Gundam and make it the timeless modern classic it is. The one contradiction that perhaps is less successful for me is the show's attempt to trojan horse an anti-war message inside a show sold on its thrilling battles. It never quite manages to stop glorifying it. The show is full of tragedies and trauma, and it does a brilliant job of humanising most of even the average enemy soldiers that would be nameless grunts not spared a second thought in lesser shows. But still, all the significant losses the White Base take are heroic deaths, noble soldiers choosing to go down in a blaze of self sacrificial glory. Their ghosts sometimes even trying to reassure the survivors they're happier now. It feels at odds with the pervading sense of the pointlessness of war that's otherwise present. But I suppose there are limits to the bleakness Tomino was either allowed or could bring himself to depict. And the simple fact of Gundam (and many war films) is that as much as it might abhor war, it still adores the fantasy of it. As do most people I suppose considering that Gundam's overriding legacy is probably less its message of peace and human understanding and more its sprawling Gunpla industry fetishing the franchises war machines. Which is a little bit sad when you think about it.

orders Gundam and Zaku and Zeong and Big Zam gunpla

But this is all what makes Gundam the unique behemoth it is I suppose and I'm fully on board the Gundam otaku train now!
 
Last edited:
Lazarus

Lazarus presents the audience with a chilling dystopian anime vision of the near future: it gives us a glimpse of what anime will probably be a bit like when it starts being written by AI. I'm being facetious of course, I know real humans made Lazarus, but honestly if someone had told me that it was all made by Watanabe typing in prompts to some AI model I would have absolutely believed it. I'm still not entirely convinced Watanabe didn't at least come up with the core plot and characters by typing into Chatgpt "something sort of like what I'd usually make, maybe a bit like Cowboy Bebop for the 2020s".

It's not a hatefully bad show, it's not a lovably bad one either though, and it's definitely not good. It's just so achingly generic. Sometimes it's quite unbelievable just how generic it is. The entire script and every single line of dialogue seems deliberately calculated to be as clichéd as possible, it's almost impressive. The whole thing just refuses to subvert almost any expectation. What is quite shocking in a way though is how the guy who made Cowboy Bebop could decades later go on to make something so devoid of emotional substance. Thr cast of Bebop had real soul, they were complex flawed characters and their relationships felt real. In Lazarus they're all 2d cardboard cut outs, anime tropes hollowed out even more than usual, pastiches of pastiches of his earlier characters.

If the characters don't offer much, neither does Lazarus' world unfortunately. A near future setting on the brink of a poison drug induced extinction event, there was potential there to explore the psychological and social impact of such a scenario. But the show simply isn't interested in doing that, so beyond a couple of brief references to riots, and a scence where a doctor decides that hey if I'm going to die tomorrow maybe I'll smoke a ciggy, people are mostly shown to be carrying on as usual and are pretty unfazed, which is a bit jarring.

The whole thing felt botched together in a hurry and much in the plot either doesn't make much sense or isn't explained. To be fair the show seems to clearly end teasing the prospect of more Lazarus in the future, but I'm not sure if I'll be arsed to watch it (probably would though, out of a forlorn hope it'll click and reach Bebop or Champloo highs against all the odds). Lazarus just feels rudderless, like it's a show that wants to be relevant to the present world, like it wants to have something meaningful to say, but it doesn't know how. I kind of feel like Watanabe keeps trying to recapture his youth and keeps failing, and I think even if we don't like Lazarus we can at least sympathise with him there.
 
Last edited:
Vashdaman said:
What is quite shocking in a way though is how the guy who made Cowboy Bebop could decades later go on to make something so devoid of emotional substance. Thr cast of Bebop had real soul, they were complex flawed characters and their relationships felt real. In Lazarus they're all 2d cardboard cut outs, anime tropes hollowed out even more than usual, pastiches of pastiches of his earlier characters.
Click to expand...
Both shows had several writers besides Watanabe, so it's hard to know how much involvement he had on the scripts for any given episode of either series. This is the issue with the reputations of superstar directors; they get the praise or blame for every aspect of productions that may have had anything from a handful to dozens of key creatives, and were worked on by hundreds of people. It takes a draconian auteur on the level of James Cameron or George Lucas before you can really praise/blame them for the overall direction of a project. There's often no telling how collaborative a given director might be, how much their name is just being slapped on something for brand recognition despite them having minimal involvement, or how much they are beholden to a producer or committee who just want them to pump out something with That Shinichiro Watanabe Feeling. Then again, you have directors like the Wachowskis or Shyamalan who seemed to have a finite amount of good material in them before burning out. At least with Mamoru Oshii you can use the level of bassett hound screentime as a barometer for his level of creative control on a project, but most directors don't have such obvious quirks.
 
The example I can think of is Japan Sinks 2020 which had Masaki Yuasa's name on it, but didn't feel like he was actually involved! Unlike Eizouken earlier that year. At least they were more honest with Yurei Deco, again same year, which only has him credited as Original Creator.
Japan Sinks was a Netflix thing and Lazarus is Adult Swim. So possibly Western companies bigging up how much the big name actually put in to the project.
 
Dai said:
Both shows had several writers besides Watanabe, so it's hard to know how much involvement he had on the scripts for any given episode of either series.
Click to expand...

Yeah and I feel like Watanabe is a very collaborative sort of director, you can see this in how much freedom he apparently gave other directors on Samurai Champloo, I think that's a large part of what makes that show so brilliant really. I never managed to get into it, but wasn't Space Dandy a similar sort of affair? I think when it comes to Lazarus though, I know a few different writers and directors worked on it, but its problem isn't inconsistency, it doesn't vary nearly as much as Cowboy Bebop or Samurai Champloo does, the writing and directorial style is very uniform. So to me it either feels like something beholden to the sort of corporate pressures you mentioned, or it's simply that Watanbe is now a bit of a spent creative force. I kind of sadly suspect it may be the latter though, I feel like Lazarus' issues go to its core. It feels at once beholden to nostalgia for Watanabe's past shows, there's so many little callbacks to them, but also completely lacking the magic they had. And he doesn't strike me as the sort of director to just slap his name on the tin of something he didn't really care about.
 
Last edited:
It would be interesting to know if the show’s producers felt that Lazarus was a success. I don’t know how much input they have (was Adult Swim the main investor?), but it is notable that it’s another one from Jason DeMarco, who appears as executive producer on a number of Adult Swim shows that have either been negatively received or met with indifference.

It’s also interesting that the show is surprisingly well received on Rotten Tomatoes, with the vast majority of their registered critics giving it a positive review. None of them come from sources I would normally associate with anime-specific journalism, however, which kind of ties into my long-held suspicion that there’s a significant anime-watching audience out there who don’t engage with fan-discussion at all.
 
My favorite Watanabe series by far (and I've watched most of them) has gotta be Carole And Tuesday, Space Dandy was a total dud as far as I'm concerned.

​

 
Hand Maid May
This short series makes some baffling creative decisions. It starts off well enough. Despite being made at a time when 'robot maid' wasn't yet an overdone concept, it adds a unique twist by making the titular cyberdoll 1/6 scale. Seeing May attempt to perform her duties as a maid despite being the size of a Barbie doll makes for some hilarious moments. There's just one problem; the show runs out of ideas for what to do with a pint-sized maid after the first two episodes.

The next few episodes instead focus on accruing a gaggle of other cyberdolls, though these are all human size. Stop me if you've met these characters in other shows: the annoying little girl, the motherly one who says "ara, ara" a lot, the one whose only personality trait is being obsessed with ramen, and the supposed genius who acts like an idiot. Add in a pretty standard girl next door and you get some idea of how overstuffed this harem gets, considering it's only ten TV episodes plus an OVA.

Halfway through the series the writer makes their worst decision by having May become full size, which feels like it should have been reserved for the end of the series, not something to toss into episode 5, and the rest of the show just feels totally generic after that. We get a glimmer of the show's early potential again in the OVA at the end, but it's too little, too late.

This isn't to say the series is flat-out bad. Despite having a typically boring male protagonist, his vindictive frenemy Nanbara is delightfully over-the-top. Most of the girls get at least a few good moments in the spotlight too. It's just that the series offers nothing that you won't have seen in a hundred other harem shows once you get past episode 2.

5/10
 
I own Hand Maid May on dvd and have watched it a couple of times and it just doesn't do anything for me at all. I'd rate it at 5 out of 10 possible points and even then I feel that I'm being too generous.
 
Osomatsu-san season 4
Each season of Osomatsu-san changes the formula of the franchise. This can be disorienting at first as viewer expectations need to be recalibrated each time. The first season was a radical reinvention of the 60s and 80s Osomatsu-kun shows, ageing up the titular sextuplets from bright-eyed kids who act as a group to burnt-out NEET adults who are constantly at each other's throats. It gave them distinctive personalities and colour-coded clothes, and replaced the mid-showa slapstick comedy with a more surreal and cynical brand of humour. Season 2 turned everything up to 11: more extreme personality quirks, weirder stories, and a lot of gross-out humour. Season 3 was about fear of the future, asking questions like, "What does it mean to be a comedy in the reiwa era?" and "Will AI take over the entertainment industry?"

Now we come to season 4, and it's the biggest shake-up to the formula since the 1980s Osomatsu-kun transformed into the 2010s Osomatsu-san. Each episode begins with a placard describing this as a project for the original manga author's 90th anniversary. This sets the scene for the drastic changes that follow. The colour-coded outfits are gone. The extreme personalities are gone. The twisted humour is gone. The brothers get along and act as a group. Even Totoko has transformed from a violent egomaniac to a generic and pleasant girl-next-door. With only an odd scene here or there that bucks the trend, the intent is clear: this isn't Osomatsu-san at all. It's Osomatsu-kun dressed up to look like Osomatsu-san.

Perhaps this could have worked, but not in the way it's been executed here. There's an air of uncharacteristically timid reverence for the original author's legacy that results in stories that can, at best, be described as pleasantly bland, and at worst are flat-out boring. This is exacerbated by the decision to mostly focus on one story per episode, making some episodes feel like they drag on forever. As of writing, we're eight episodes into the current season, and there have been just barely enough decent stories for it not to have felt like a franchise-killing disaster yet, but the show really needs to remember that it's supposed to be a comedy.

So far it's a 5/10.
 
Back
Top