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Lawrence said:
Personally, I was semi-surprised that AIC actually had the balls to adapt this, after watching last weeks episode.
Don't get me wrong, but it's not exactly my favourite studio. Mostly because most of their existing works are quite poor. Also I imagine them to be money grubbing

So naturally Jinrui doesn't quite seem like the kind of thing that they'd choose to adapt considering that some effort was put into the writing of the original material.
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I don't know if that's fair, on any count. AIC have a huge string of hit shows (purely critically with no likelihood of sales success, as well as either just commercially, or both) stretching back years. They're just a pretty huge multi-team studio, so they also end up doing some dross like R-15 and SoraOto (imagine picking a large book publisher and blithely saying "most of the books they've printed are quite poor" - it's almost too easy, but do you then ignore all the great books they might have published?). Quite a few people even like SoraOto!

As a bare minimum, any studio that will take on Sasameki Koto and Hourou Musuko (and allow them to be done amazingly well) is hardly looking for the easy road all the time.

As far as quality goes, even if you want to argue the toss over some of AIC's shows, the guys directing and scripting this have their own resume, again to use a similar example to the previous one it would be like pre-judging a new movie from Clint Eastwood based on whether Universal or Warner Brothers happened to be producing it.

Is this the new thing (not you, specifically) to just criticize animation houses left, right and center? I guess complaining on the internet will never be "the new thing", but it really does boggle the mind at times what people actually expect - every single thing has to be 10/10 amazing or else a studio sucks?! (Never mind comparing something like JinTai to HxH, since that is a very separate and weird issue)
 
INCIDENTALLY...

JinTai e.7 & 8 - So in the end I decided to catch up before going back, and I'm probably glad I did. This time it was a consummate example of how to use a bit of chronological hopscotch to add emotional weight to the story you're currently telling, and carefully plotted nuance when you reflect on what you've already seen. Given the amount of time our main character has effectively been searching for the Assistant, and given her influence on his character, the close nature of their relationship takes on even more significance. Similarly, thanks to what we already knew about the Assistant and the main character, her plight in searching for him becomes all the more heart-warming.

I still don't think you can draw absolute conclusions from some of the scenes in these two episodes - there's no telling exactly what "really" happened in the squiggly inbetween time that was reset by the (loved this) Time Paradogs, but I think we can certainly speculate in a number of ways about both the Assistant's true nature, and that of the main character. They both clearly have their own relationship with the Faeries, and you have to question whether both or either of them are truly "human". Much like the sentient probes that returned in the previous arc, this raises a lot of questions about the specific difference in JinTai's world between "Jinrui" (humanity or lit. 'man'-'kind'), "Hito" (person), and "Ningen" (human being).

Faeries are described as the "new" jinrui in episode 1, so we can count that out as absolutely referring to humans as we know them. The newly-defeated chickens in episode 2 stop moving when touched by "hito" - more likely to be how the series wants to refer to homo sapiens. The space probes insist that they are "ningen" - so can we take this to mean genuinely man-made, perhaps, rather than typically "human". I wonder where on this scale the main character and the Assistant actually fall, if their extremely close relationship to the Faeries is actually supposed to mean something in this regard.

Even ignoring any random speculation about the in-show nature of how these characters should be defined, the way in which the show weaved together two or three well established story outlines was masterful. The main character continually being peeled from reality and retaining fleeting memories of the previous loops is easy to compare to several sci-fi parables, but some of the imagery in the tea party is chosen with a rare eye for intrigue, alongside things like the sundial watch.

All of this combines for a considered look at the meaning of "person"ality, how our identity is reflected in our surroundings and acquaintances, and the dichotomy that exists between our outward appearances and the humanity they struggle to contain.
 
Shakugan no Shana Season 1 Episode 1

As I received my Shakugan no Shana Season 1 DVD/BD combi today, I decided I might as well compare FUNimation's BD discs to their DVDs and compare them to Geneon's DVD. FUNimation's release is definitely an improvement over Geneon's. To sum up my thoughts: FUNimation's DVD > FUNi's BD > Geneon's DVD.

I mentioned this in the news thread, but FUNi's release doesn't have locked subs - Geneon's does though.

I can definitely see a noticeable colour flush in the blu-ray, which is different from scene to scene - for example, in some scenes, Shana's hair looks like the fiery red it should (and the slight HD upscale does make those scenes look better) but in others it's like a transparent orange. There's also a slight flush when I upscale Geneon's DVDs on my BD player, which FUNimation's DVD doesn't have.
 
Since I last posted I have watched
Nana 1- 15. I am really getting sucked in by the characters, its nice to see romance and drama with slightly older people who have lives and ambitions beyond high school.

Planetes1- 4 I have been enjoying this so far, I want to watch some more asap, but i need to find out what happens next in Nana so its on the back burner for a while.
 
Nabari No Ou Episodes 1 & 2

Bunny Drop Episodes 1 - 5*

Strike Witches Episodes 11 & 12

Ghost Sweeper Mikami Episodes 44 & 45




* Bunny Drop is a rewatch. This is the blu-ray version but I have already watched the region 4 dvd version.
 
Lawrence said:
Uh, I do believe J.C. Staff are terrible on a whole, I must admit, though Kill Me Baby was surprisingly good
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Hmm.

All I meant to say was Jinrui isn't anime of the season since it doesn't make me want to stop whatever I'm doing and watch as much as HxH does.
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Ah, that's fair. You are crazy, but fair. :p

(I do like Kokoro Connect too but it's the kind of show I think I'd rather marathon in chunks anyway.)
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I am also thinking this after catching up on the first seven episodes and then thinking about watching it weekly... at the very least I think ideally it should be watched with each two or three ep arc in one go, even though some of the cliffhangers are quite good.
 
Finished SpeedGrapher. Finishing Spice & Wolf 2 today. Just looked at my 'waiting to watch' dvd stockpile, I'm running very low. Only got NHK, Rideback and Samurai 7 to choose from. Can't get anything new until next week, then another week waiting for delivery... I guess I'll be rewatching a lot soon, or watching stuff online.
 
elixEideJ said:
Finished SpeedGrapher. Finishing Spice & Wolf 2 today. Just looked at my 'waiting to watch' dvd stockpile, I'm running very low. Only got NHK, Rideback and Samurai 7 to choose from. Can't get anything new until next week, then another week waiting for delivery... I guess I'll be rewatching a lot soon, or watching stuff online.
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watch them in this order

Rideback - ok
Samurai 7 - good
NHK - very good
 
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