The News Thread (for news that does not need a thread)

I first watched Akira and Ninja Scroll late night on the Sci-Fi Channel a decade and a half-ish ago, so very nostalgic to read about. I hope its successful for them, or at the very least maybe catches one or two channel hoppers and gets them interested. (Do channel hoppers still exist, or...?)
 
Anime on the Sci-Fi Channel (sic!) was also important to me back when I was young and unsure what to buy/watch, though I've never watched it since I moved away from home and it went through that weird name change. I don't pronounce 'SyFy' correctly (i.e. like 'Sci-Fi') at all. Terrible branding decision.

In any case I'm of the opinion that traditional TV viewing is in its death throes with the next generation more likely to get hooked via Netflix and the like, but it's still cool to see those big films doing the rounds.

R
 
Rage of Bahamut: Virgin Soul will air during the Spring 2017 season and will run for two-cours.

The Eccentric Family 2 will also air during the Spring 2017 season, adapting the second novel from the original source material.

Touken Ranbu, the Ufotable version, will air during the Summer 2017 season, with Toshiyuki Shirai (Tales of Zestiria the X Animation Director) directing and Hideyuki Fukasawa (Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works] Composer) composing.
 
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Sci-Fi is an odd one to pronounce anyway, if the "Fi" is short for Fiction then you might think it should be pronounced the same way as Fiction starts but I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone actually pronounce it that way.

SyFy, I'd probably go with something along the lines of "see-fee".

Ian Wolf said:
A Kickstarter to make an OVA of the adult visual novel Nekopara has already doubled $100,000 target. The more money that is donated the longer the OVA will be, with a maximum of an hour if they reach $500,000.

NEKOPARA Anime OVA
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Possibly worth noting that the small print says it won't have any explicit content (does nudity count as "explicit" these days?). I'm not sure if that's a positive or a negative.

We could do with more good shows about catgirl cafes but I'm not sure an hour would be long enough to do anything too great while fitting in such a large cast and trying to keep fans happy.
 
Lambadelta said:
$45 shipping is criminal.
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Don't forget the potential customs charge.

I'm surprised that there are quite a few $800 and over pledges. I've underestimated the draw of neko maids.

Rui said:
I mean, I love all of the top three TV shows but the one in third place is unlikely to have reached that spot through normal means ;p

R
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Woah. Love is over!

Pretty sad to see Rakugo and JoJo so low on the list, but even sadder to see The Great Passage not even make it on lol.
 
Kodansha Comics is doing another Humble Bundle this time with the works of Tsutomu Nihei. For $1 you can get BLAME! Vol. 1 and a months free trial to Crunchyroll, for $8 you can get BLAME! Vol. 2 and BLAME! Academy and So On, and for $17 you can get Knights of Sidonia, Vol. 1-17. All DRM free ebooks, in PDF, CBZ or ePub format.

Should the combined purchases reach $50k, those who paid $17 will get access to a prologue for Nihei's forthcoming series APOSIMZ, should it hit $75k a Creator Profiles video with Tsutomu Nihei will be unlocked for them, and should it hit $100k, an exclusive BLAME! artbook not available elsewhere will be made available to those who have paid $17.

If you're unsure and what to check it out, you can get NOiSE absolutely free by signing up to Kodnsha Comics' newsletter, and you can upgrade your purchase to a higher tier whilst the bundle is still running, if you just wanted to back $1 and try it out.
 
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In other news, Crunchyroll released a map of the most popular show of the year in each country. Polygon are surprised/upset the site-busting Yuri!!! on Ice was beaten by Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, and asked why. The article is objectively terrible, but there is some interesting stuff about how these CR Most Popular charts are calculated.

Essentially the chart is based on episode 1 views throughout the year, so Re:ZERO was at a distinct advantage in comparison to Yuri!!! on Ice (the article seems to imply that allowing for time-difference YoI would have been top, but maybe that's just the way it's written). This is weird, but has the benefit of not penalising shows which run longer.
 
Wow, I can feel the salt pouring through my monitor reading that article. Seeing Yuri on Ice is popular with the Tumblr crowd is also the least surprising thing in the world.
 
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Can we please not? The really simple answer is that Yuri!!! on ICE is different and perhaps unique in it's complexity and nuance, Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- is "capital-A Anime". Neither of those things are especially good or bad in and of themselves, but given it appeals to a different, perhaps newer, more casual crowd and how it seemed the envelop the entire world (though that's probably just a social media bubble thing), it probably was a surprise to them to see Re:ZERO top it.

That said, I do not particularly like the implication that preferring Yuri!!! on ICE over Re:ZERO makes you a "Social Justice Warrior". Given the only real social justice cause is the biracial homosexual relationship, the implication that one could only appreciate/prefer YOI because it involves homosexuality, is quite frankly insulting and wrong. I genuinely believe that any romantic drama that was as thoughtfully planned and executed, and as charming and funny, would have succeeded just as well.

As a gay person, I also resent the idea that inclusion and depiction of gay people is only being included for some warped form of societal justice. Nobody was seriously asking or campaigning for this to happen. Not recently, nor two years ago when the writer and director started working on the project. We've reached a grand total of 2 shows with canonically gay (perhaps bisexual?) lead protagonists in the past couple of years, one of which hasn't even been officially localised yet, and already the cries of it taking away from heterosexuals and their interests are happening? This is absurd, as there's literally nothing to support this...

I appreciate that I've probably misinterpreted some of what you've said and taken things the wrong way, but come on! We're better than this...
 
Buzz201 said:
Can we please not? The really simple answer is that Yuri!!! on ICE is different and perhaps unique in it's complexity and nuance, Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- is "capital-A Anime". Neither of those things are especially good or bad in and of themselves, but given it appeals to a different, perhaps newer, more casual crowd and how it seemed the envelop the entire world (though that's probably just a social media bubble thing), it probably was a surprise to them to see Re:ZERO top it.

That said, I do not particularly like the implication that preferring Yuri!!! on ICE over Re:ZERO makes you a "Social Justice Warrior". Given the only real social justice cause is the biracial homosexual relationship, the implication that one could only appreciate/prefer YOI because it involves homosexuality, is quite frankly insulting and wrong. I genuinely believe that any romantic drama that was as thoughtfully planned and executed, and as charming and funny, would have succeeded just as well.

As a gay person, I also resent the idea that inclusion and depiction of gay people is only being included for some warped form of societal justice. Nobody was seriously asking or campaigning for this to happen. Not recently, nor two years ago when the writer and director started working on the project. We've reached a grand total of 2 shows with canonically gay (perhaps bisexual?) lead protagonists, one of which hasn't even been officially localised yet and already the cries of it taking away from heterosexuals and their interests are happening?

I appreciate that I've probably misinterpreted some of what you've said and taken things the wrong way, but come on! We're better than this...
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It wasn't really a comment on the show itself, more so the website. If it's anything like Kotaku, the kind of site who posts stuff about how fan service is the worst thing since the dawn of man and is coming into your house at night to kill you and how anything vaguely LGBT is the best thing since sliced bread, them being so mad about it getting snubbed is just connecting the dots. Perhaps I'm bias in the fact that I didn't like the show, but that's the impression I'm getting from sites like this. Like yes, YOI was immensely popular, but so was Re:Zero. They seem to fail to grasp this fact, and seem to want to go out of their way to totally discredit Re:Zero by going on and on about how much they prefer Yuri on Ice instead. Although maybe I can't see why, I'm sure that the majority of people would have liked this regardless of the gender of the leads.

Also, for the record, I'm not crying about it being taken away from hetrosexuals at all, I have no idea where you got that idea from. I'm simply trying to say sites like these tend to have biases. Could they not have just been happy at the success of Re:Zero, why did they have to take this really negative slant towards it and go on and on about Yuri on Ice instead?

Look, I'm sorry if what I said was offensive. It wasn't my intention, and I actually deleted the last bit as I thought it could be interpreted wrong but you saw it already. My bad.
 
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IncendiaryLemon said:
It wasn't really a comment on the show itself, more so the website. If it's anything like Kotaku, the kind of site who posts stuff about how fan service is the worst thing since the dawn of man and is coming into your house at night to kill you and how anything vaguely LGBT is the best thing since sliced bread, them being so mad about it getting snubbed is just connecting the dots. Perhaps I'm bias in the fact that I didn't like the show, but that's the impression I'm getting from sites like this. Like yes, YOI was immensely popular, but so was Re:Zero. They seem to fail to grasp this fact, and seem to want to go out of their way to totally discredit Re:Zero by going on and on about how much they prefer Yuri on Ice instead. Although maybe I can't see why, I'm sure that the majority of people would have liked this regardless of the gender of the leads.

Also, for the record, I'm not crying about it being taken away from hetrosexuals at all, I have no idea where you got that idea from. I'm simply trying to say sites like these tend to have biases. Could they not have just been happy at the success of Re:Zero, why did they have to take this really negative slant towards it and go on and on about Yuri on Ice instead?
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There are several legitimate arguments about fanservice being bad and LGBT inclusion being good. If you'd actually looked at the Polygon article linked, you would have seen a related opinion piece from another writer explaining what they liked about the show. And the word "gay" is only included twice.

The thing you do have to bear in mind is that Yuri!!! on ICE is the most tweeted about anime of the season (thoroughly destroying it's nearest rival), so if you aren't deep, you can see why they might have assumed Yuri!!! on ICE would do much better. But also, the audience interested in Yuri!!! on ICE is from my purely anecdotal perspective the teenage K-POP listening girl that's constantly throwing parties about how #SomebodyYou'veNeverHeardOfIsOver and pretending they're a VIP or Army member on Twitter and Tumblr, so it becomes this re-enforced echo chamber. They aren't seeing the tweets about Keijo!!!!! or Sakura Trick or whatever that you or I are, they're only seeing a few shows, which have probably been dominated by Yuri!!! on Ice. That said, I really didn't appreciate the tone of that article, hence my criticism of it in the original post.

"Social Justice Warrior" as a term has become somewhat tainted since GamerGate. It's now generally only used by those who wish to dial back media attempts at progressiveness and inclusion, claiming that heterosexual men are having their heterosexual male pleasures taken away from them by such attempts. I appreciate it's possible to use it outside of this context, and it seems from your reply that you were, but SJW as a term isn't really used by anyone that isn't a "Men's Rights Activist" anymore, so it's a reasonably safe assumption to make...
 
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On one hand people are saying YOI is drowning everything out and unjustly popular, on the other Re:Zero is more popular. Lol.

Anyway, interesting map. I wouldn't have calculated it by first episodes, but I think a lot of people did watch the first episode of Re:Zero so it is fair to imagine it's racked up a lot of views, especially as the sharp change in tone after the first half of the first episode would have made a lot of viewers curious to bait friends into watching (I found the first half tedious as heck but it was certainly a strong narrative decision for its target audience). What I find weirder are all of the other shows which appeared, especially the bizarre choices caused by regions with little streaming access.

R
 
Buzz201 said:
There are several legitimate arguments about fanservice being bad and LGBT inclusion being good. If you'd actually looked at the Polygon article linked, you would have seen a related opinion piece from another writer explaining what they liked about the show. And the word "gay" is only included twice.

The thing you do have to bear in mind is that Yuri!!! on ICE is the most tweeted about anime of the season (thoroughly destroying it's nearest rival), so if you aren't deep, you can see why they might have assumed Yuri!!! on ICE would do much better. But also, the audience interested in Yuri!!! on ICE is from my purely anecdotal perspective the teenage K-POP listening girl that's constantly throwing parties about how #SomebodyYou'veNeverHeardOfIsOver and pretending they're a VIP or Army member on Twitter and Tumblr, so it becomes this re-enforced echo chamber. They aren't seeing the tweets about Keijo!!!!! or Sakura Trick or whatever that you or I are, they're only seeing a few shows, which have probably been dominated by Yuri!!! on Ice. That said, I really didn't appreciate the tone of that article, hence my criticism of it in the original post.

"Social Justice Warrior" as a term has become somewhat tainted since GamerGate. It's now generally only used by those who wish to dial back media attempts at progressiveness and inclusion, claiming that heterosexual men are having their heterosexual male pleasures taken away from them by such attempts. I appreciate it's possible to use it outside of this context, and it seems from your reply that you were, but SJW as a term isn't really used by anyone that isn't a "Men's Rights Activist" anymore, so it's a reasonably safe assumption to make...
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Honestly, I barely even know what GG is. I realise that I may have used the term incorrectly, hence me deleting it, but I guess I was too late. Honestly, I should think more before I post things...

Again, sorry if you felt insulted, that wasn't my intention. Even when I'm not talking about YOI as a show, I still manage to put my foot in it :p
 
I would argue that Re:Zero appeal's to a wider audience than Yuri On Ice. Though YOI fans seem very vocal on the matter they do seem to find it difficult to comprehend that it's not everyone cup of tea. Its certain not something I would ever consider watching more because I have no interest in sports anime.

The whole gay relationship in YOI shouldn't really be an issue and it kind of sidtracks discussions of if the show is actually any good.

Regardless Re:Zero's is popular despite the barrage of hate it gets. I still hope this will all lead to a season 2 at some point.
 
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