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Fate/Zero-Episode 1

Very exposition heavy but enjoyable first episode. I think I got the basic gist of everything I think but I'll admit, I probably didn't catch everything. A lot of characters and concepts were introduced all in one go so hopefully I can keep track. I actually wish more shows would take a leaf out of this show's book by having the first episode be 40 minutes long as opposed to 20. It really lets the creators set everything up without rushing things. This goes especially for this show. If they hadn't had taken the time to explain everything and let all the characters have the screen time they did, I would have been lost. With the first episode being double length, it allows to set things up better without sacrificing a second episode to do so. I'm a little unsure who the audience is supposed to be rooting for, either Kirei or Kiritsugu. I'll assume Kiritsugu since he summoned Sabre and she's on the front of the box, but for the sake of what the actual show tells me, I'm unsure. Another thing I'll say is it's a very nice looking show. Glad I went for the Blu Rays, I couldn't imagine watching this on DVD. Good start and I'm looking forward to watching more.
 
Re: Fate (UBW)

black1blade said:
In regards to stay night, it is impossible for it to have a satisfying ending as it is like the middle book in a trilogy. Shirou and archer are by far the main focus of UBW UBW only has the conclusion to archer's and caster's character, most of the other character conclusions are in HF sans a few. The anime has turned people wholly un-sympathetic towards the protagonist which means they wont like stay night. The VN is much better as you get all of shirou's inner thoughts which gives you an attraction to him. The anime lets you see him like most of the other characters do- an idiot.
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Mm, I appreciate that - to be honest this is exactly what happened when I watched Fate/Stay Night which I found dreadfully tedious until Gil turned up and made me laugh. UBW is much better animated but the core problem is the same. I'm sure the VN is better but as I want to strangle all of the characters in the series other than a minor one I'm guessing I will probably struggle to get very far in it and give it a fair chance ^^;

I am somewhat interested in the possibility of there being some way to interpret the series that makes Shirou not seem like an idiot, I'll admit.

R
 
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Stuff I've been watching over the last five days or so...

Attack on Titan ep14-25 (complete) & OVA ep1-3 (complete). That was a lot more awesome than I expected (shame on me for listening to the hipsters who insist anything popular is crap). It's the characters that make this so good, I actually give a damn about ALL of them which is unheard of for me in any previous shounen series I've seen so far other than FMAB. The only real problem I had with it was how little progress was made with the story, most of the mysteries at the start of the series remain unanswered at the end due to it being the early stages of an ongoing manga. For that reason I still think FMAB is the better shounen series, but a second season could change that opinion.

Attack on Titan: Chimi Character Theatre ep1-9 (complete). Took me a few episodes to get into these, but once I did I got a few giggles out of it.

Baby Steps s2 ep9.

Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works s4 ep9. That was the most convoluted suicide attempt in anime history. Oh well, whatever. Like most people here I've mostly given up on this series by now.

High School DxD: BorN s3 ep9. So that's what DxD is...

I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying s2 ep6-8. Cute as always, especially the end of the New Years episode.

Plastic Memories ep9. I actually kind of enjoyed this episode, but only because I accepted it as the romcom it now is and not a serious sci-fi like it initially pretended to be.

The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan ep9. Ah, next episode is the start of the memory loss arc, which will probably take up the remaining six episodes.

The Heroic Legend of Arslan ep9.

The iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls ep5-8.
 
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BanzaiJedi said:
Stuff I've been watching over the last five days or so...

Attack on Titan ep14-25 (complete) & OVA ep1-3 (complete). That was a lot more awesome than I expected (shame on me for listening to the hipsters who insist anything popular is crap). It's the characters that make this so good, I actually give a damn about ALL of them which is unheard of for me in any previous shounen series I've seen so far other than FMAB. The only real problem I had with it was how little progress was made with the story, most of the mysteries at the start of the series remain unanswered at the end due to it being the early stages of an ongoing manga. For that reason I still think FMAB is the better shounen series, but a second season could change that opinion.
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People love to hate whats popular. It's not the greatest show evaaa?!1 but it's by no means awful like some would say. Is it for everyone? nope but it's a definite solid show (IMO) The scenes where 1) The colossal titan suddenly appears at the end of the episode behind Eren (Episode 4 I think) is one of my favorite OMGGG WTFFF moments and 2) When Levi's team are wiped out and Petra's dad speaks to Levi ..urghhh, that hurt are my favorite.
The second season should cover a lot of the questions if they stick to how the Manga goes, if its 2-cour that is..1-cour would leave things hanging ..

IncendiaryLemon said:
Fate/Zero-Episode 1

Very exposition heavy but enjoyable first episode. I think I got the basic gist of everything I think but I'll admit, I probably didn't catch everything. A lot of characters and concepts were introduced all in one go so hopefully I can keep track. I actually wish more shows would take a leaf out of this show's book by having the first episode be 40 minutes long as opposed to 20. It really lets the creators set everything up without rushing things. This goes especially for this show. If they hadn't had taken the time to explain everything and let all the characters have the screen time they did, I would have been lost. With the first episode being double length, it allows to set things up better without sacrificing a second episode to do so. I'm a little unsure who the audience is supposed to be rooting for, either Kirei or Kiritsugu. I'll assume Kiritsugu since he summoned Sabre and she's on the front of the box, but for the sake of what the actual show tells me, I'm unsure. Another thing I'll say is it's a very nice looking show. Glad I went for the Blu Rays, I couldn't imagine watching this on DVD. Good start and I'm looking forward to watching more.
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Oh, I'm jealous. Would love to go back and re-watch.
I didn't get everything to begin with, it's a heavy info dump but as the show goes on it'll come together :)
 
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Fate/Zero (Dub)-Episodes 2-7

Episode 2: Forgot to mention before, I'm watching the dubbed version. Anyway, another interesting episode. Still feels like it's setting up a lot but now all 7 Masters have been chosen, I suspect the story will start moving now. Very curious about why Kirei wanted to break inside Tokiomi's mansion and kill him. I thought they were supposed to be allies. I guess time will tell. Either that or I missed something important :p

Episode 3:Ah, I get it now. Pretty ingenious move to fake being defeated to gain the element of surprise. I do wonder for how long he'll be able to keep it up though. I mean, he'll have to reveal himself eventually. Also looks like the first proper fight will take place in episode 4. Excited to see that.

Episode 4: Wow. I am genuinely impressed. That was probably one of the most well animated battle sequences I've seen out of any anime. I can see why people seem to like Ufotable now. I hadn't seen a show of theirs before this one but I'll be damn sure to look for their other works now.

Episode 7: This show is really setting the record for the amount of child death I've seen in an anime.

Sound! Euphonium-Episode 9

Whilst I think that the show definitely peaked last week, still an enjoyable episode. Surprisingly brutal that that third Euphonium player (I don't know her name, sorry) didn't make it in. Her arc throughout the show is that she didn't care at the start but has slowly been getting back into playing and practising really hard, only to be shot down. Quite unexpected.

Gintama-Episode 75

So they finally did a recap episode. I'll commend them for the fact it took them 75 episodes before they had one, but still, a recap is still a recap. They had a bit of fun with it but it was mostly recycled footage. Oh well. The next arc looks like it could be good.
 
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Puella Magi Madoka Magica 6-10: Okay episode 10 was pretty fantastic, bumped this from what I would consider a average show to maybe a 7.5/10 for me, maybe even a 8. Glad I stuck with it, even though I don't think it's grabbed me quite like it grabbed others.
 
Durarara!! Eps 8-12.5

The references to other anime are pretty cool, a cardboard cutout for Spice & Wolf in ep 1, a billboard for Darker than Black Season 2 a few eps later and in ep 11 Issac & Miria from Baccano! showed up in Ikebukuro and attended the first meeting of the Dollars. Just a shame they couldn't get the same dub voice actors as that would have made their appearance even better.
 
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Rui said:
Re: Fate (UBW)

black1blade said:
In regards to stay night, it is impossible for it to have a satisfying ending as it is like the middle book in a trilogy. Shirou and archer are by far the main focus of UBW UBW only has the conclusion to archer's and caster's character, most of the other character conclusions are in HF sans a few. The anime has turned people wholly un-sympathetic towards the protagonist which means they wont like stay night. The VN is much better as you get all of shirou's inner thoughts which gives you an attraction to him. The anime lets you see him like most of the other characters do- an idiot.
Click to expand...

Mm, I appreciate that - to be honest this is exactly what happened when I watched Fate/Stay Night which I found dreadfully tedious until Gil turned up and made me laugh. UBW is much better animated but the core problem is the same. I'm sure the VN is better but as I want to strangle all of the characters in the series other than a minor one I'm guessing I will probably struggle to get very far in it and give it a fair chance ^^;

I am somewhat interested in the possibility of there being some way to interpret the series that makes Shirou not seem like an idiot, I'll admit.

R
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Well it is pretty impossible going by the show alone. His ideals are still pretty stupid but his justifications make him viable as a character. His thoughts give his actions rhyme and reason in the VN compared to the anime. If anything, the VN is worth reading to pay off all the ironies and foreshadowing from zero. Zero leads into all the routes while not equally (most of the series plot is resolved in HF) there are certain things that wont pay off it you miss a route (saber and gil, azoth dagger in fate, toikimoi in UBW and everything else in HF). Gil isn't great in stay night tho.
 
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Puella Magi Madoka Magica 10-12: A pretty good ending for a pretty good show. While I've worked through what happened in my head since finishing it, and I'm pretty sure I fully understand nearly everything that happened and why, I'm still trying to figure out the scene after the credits as I'm not 100% what that meant, I dunno but it is 3am and I am half asleep so perhaps I'll sleep on it and work it out when I get up for work....in 3 hours lol
 
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Buzzkillington said:
Puella Magi Madoka Magica 10-12: A pretty good ending for a pretty good show. While I've worked through what happened in my head since finishing it, and I'm pretty sure I fully understand nearly everything that happened and why, I'm still trying to figure out the scene after the credits as I'm not 100% what that meant, I dunno but it is 3am and I am half asleep so perhaps I'll sleep on it and work it out when I get up for work....in 3 hours lol
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It means absolutely nothing. The black wings at the end weren't added by the writer of the show but one of the production designers. It's never seen or mentioned again in the sequel movie and may as well not even be there IIRC.
 
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I watched Hello!! Kinmoza Episode 9 yesterday and I really didn't want that first half to end. Then the second half was great too, as brilliant as the beach episode is likely to ultimately be (if it ever happens) I couldn't help kind of hoping that it'd rain. I really like what they've done with characters new and old.
 
Fate/Zero (Dub)-Episodes 8-13 Complete

Episode 8: I really love the amount of action they're packing into each episode now. The action is the highlight of the show and they deliver it in buckets. I'm interested to see if they expand on that scene showing (what I assumer to be)Kiritsugu's back story. Not exactly sure what makes Origin bullets so powerful. I think the woman in the flashback mentioned something about his ribs or something. Also they seem to be a bit overpowered. I mean fair enough if he only had a couple but he has 66? He brought Archibald, an extremely powerful Mage, to his knees with 2. Really loving the series so far. Definitely worth the hype.

Episode 11: So Rider can summon an army of thousands as his Noble Phantasm? Damn, and I thought Kiritsugu's bullets were OP :p

Episode 12: Hmmm. Quite confused at the ending for that episode. Why did the Grail give Kirei more command seals? Surely once you're out, you're out right? If it gave more seals out to everyone who still wanted the Grail after being defeated, the war would never end. I just don't understand what makes him special. One thing that is starting to disappoint me is since Episode 10, the pacing has really slowed down. There hasn't been an action scene since Episode 8 and whilst I understand budgets and what not, not even the story is going forward much in the last few episodes.

Episode 13: Another quite slow paced episode. These last 3 episodes have been too slow paced for me. They haven't been bad by any means, don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed them, the dialogue is quite well written. However, I think that it's important for a show to divide an almost equal time to Story, Character and Action. These last 3 episodes, whilst enjoyable, have featured almost entirely character building dialogue. Whilst it's important to have, it was a little too much in one go, and it made these last few episodes less enjoyable for me than the first 10. I hope Season 2 picks up the pace a bit more. With that ending, I have no doubt in my mind the next episode will, but I hope Season 2 is more like the first 10 of season 1 and less like the last 3.
 
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IncendiaryLemon said:
It means absolutely nothing. The black wings at the end weren't added by the writer of the show but one of the production designers. It's never seen or mentioned again in the sequel movie and may as well not even be there IIRC.
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Huh, that's kinda silly, but oh well at least I don't feel stupid for not understanding what it meant anymore, so there's that. :p

IncendiaryLemon said:
Fate/Zero (Dub)-Episode 8

I really love the amount of action they're packing into each episode now. The action is the highlight of the show and they deliver it in buckets. I'm interested to see if they expand on that scene showing (what I assumer to be)Kiritsugu's back story. Not exactly sure what makes Origin bullets so powerful. I think the woman in the flashback mentioned something about his ribs or something. Also they seem to be a bit overpowered. I mean fair enough if he only had a couple but he has 66? He brought Archibald, an extremely powerful Mage, to his knees with 2. Really loving the series so far. Definitely worth the hype.
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Pretty jealous you're getting to experience Fate/Zero fresh, definitely high up on the list of anime I wish I could delete from my mind so I could watch again....
 
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