Anime discussion thread.

@azurath: I watch it every week and what I'm shocked about is that they let the anime this close to the manga. They are at the same arc and a filler arc just ended not too long ago, so ending the anime (probably it will return at some point) was the right decision. Even though it's cheesy sometimes and the power of friendship kicks in in the most convienient times, I still like it. Moreso than the big three.

Also: Talking about the future of the Shounen genre, Magi is really good.

@azurath: I got up to episode 161 before dropping it. Now I'm contemplating whether or not I should pick it back up just to finish it.

@azurath: I'm a little bummed by the news that Fairy Tail is ending, but looking around the net, I think this is more of a hiatus than a true end. From what I understand, the anime is at chapter 291 out of currently 321, so putting the show aside for a year might not be the worst thing ever. It beats a year of pointless filler. I mean there is filler in Fairy Tail, as is, but shoving it into the middle of an arc is just annoying. Bleach used to do that and it irritated me then, too. With the updated Tweet from the creator seems to suggest some sign of hope for the future. Gintama took a break and came back eventually, too.

Tanken Driland is going to be the time-slot replacement. Like when Gon took Gintama's spot, I take a quick look at the first show, but I doubt I'll stick with it. I have nothing against chibi-character shows (really like Rock Lee), but if it's too juvenile even for me, then I won't waste my time with it.

Personally, I'd like to see some other lost shonen show return such as D-Gray Man, Beelzabub or Eyeshield 21. Or give some other shows a second shot like Kenichi The Mightiest Disciple. It has 500 chapters to pull from, so it wouldn't run out of material for a while. I really liked the first go-around with that one. Just as Hunter X Hunter came back, there is precedent for a return. This season Zettai Karen Children came back, well sort of, so anything is possible. My favorite example is always going to be Slayers Revolution which picked up 11 years after season 3.

If the studios were to take something currently airing and push it for a long-run, my choice would be Ixion Saga DT which find quite humorous.

Interesting to hear you guy's opinions on it. I feel like Fairy Tail was making its way into the top spots along with the "Big 3". I do hope that this is just a hiatus, but there is always the chance that it isn't.

As for the absence of big time action series, I thought about it, and a Soul Eater reboot (Like FMA: Brotherhood) would be great. The manga is so far ahead that if they took their time, they could follow the manga almost precisely.

As an aside: I have never understood why giant series (east or west) appeal to viewers (east or west). Shows like that suffer the same issue as soap operas where drama is very difficult to create without seeming manufactured or nonsense and it gets impossible to bring in new viewers because of the gigantic lore hurdle. Shows like Doctor Who seem to only handle it because they are willing to keep story arcs short and do frequent breaks to allow viewers to jump in multiple places. There is a ton of lore in Doctor Who but very little of it interferes with the next season coming up soon. I couldn't begin to hope to watch Fairy Tail now let alone the ending.

I have already mentioned I favor the 12 episode format where I believe doing this forces the writers to focus on core elements. I do like the goof-off/beach/date/wild tangents episode but those feel better suited for OAVs or the occasional movie.

Speaking of which did Fairy Tail even get movies?

@extomar: I think the length can actually be a positive in some series. It gives ample time to introduce and develop characters, plot, themes, world building, and so on.

I've been enjoying One Piece for years so I'll use that as my example. (Some spoilers ahead) The huge length of the series actually lends well to things such as conflict and drama because you've spent so much time with the same characters and grown an attachment to them. Luffy beating Usopp within an inch of his life is sad and holds more impact because you've seen them goofing off and being best friends for the last 300 chapters. (Or 6+ years if you've been following all along) Longer series also allow the world to be built up and expanded on, which I think is really useful for a fantasy type series. (Something like the Mass Effect Codex, but the info is given to you gradually over a long period of time)

Lots of people have issues with getting into longer series. If I'm really enjoying a series (Plot, characters, world, etc are all fun) I actually like the fact that it's long. It means I'll be able to spend more time reading/watching this thing that I really enjoy.

@extomar: I'm definitely in your camp. 12-14 episodes generally feels as a good length, longer than that and I might just give up without trying and shorter just doesn't bring enough content.

Then again, there's definitely precedent for shows being longer than that. For example I think Angel Beats suffered from being shorter than the story it wanted to tell. In the end it really is all about the pacing.

Good things that happened today:

Trigger releasing a pretty trailer for the Anime Mirai project Little Witch Academia and saying that if it's successful enough they'd consider doing a TV show since they have a lot of story ideas they didn't get to use.

Soooooold.

@cloudenvy: That looks great, really digging the artstyle. Though I wonder how support of the series, and therefore the worth of doing a full series, would actually be. It's kinda telling that 95% of the comments are in English, consisting of people that wouldn't buy the super expensive blurays that would actually fund the series. Hopefully it's popular with the Japanese too.

Mostly unreleated to anime, but I just found out Blue is being replaced in S2 of Akibaranger! It sucks that they actually managed to drum up enough support to get a season 2 but she won't be returning. I hope they say she went to work at the Pentagon.

I'm honestly impressed Fairy Tail lasted as long as it has. The show was a snoozefest early on and I even powered through about 30ish before deciding to finally drop it. I liked some of the humor but the action part of it was lacking. That world could've used more D&D and less Final Fantasy. I think it was specifically the backstory of Gray's training that lost me. It felt like a bland, rehashed version of Hyoga and Issac's flashback in Saint Seiya's Poseidon arc. I'm not being reasonable about my stance on the series but it was incapable of peaking my interest.

Naruto I stopped watching at around 270. My biggest issue was that it felt like that series ran out of "moments." After the death of Jiraiya there was really nothing left that could wow me. Even that scene was bogged down with all the tedious flashbacks that have marred the anime since the beginning. There are certainly still epic parts but few of them feel as earned as that. I've developed plenty of issues along the way, that's just the main one.

I wonder if all the shonens are just getting the eff out of the way of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. It's like the Call of Duty launch of shonens or something. I'm willing to bet plenty of people in the animation biz still hold the comic in high regard so a lot of production studios don't want to step to it. I still watch One Piece but man, JoJo is so good.

@mezmero said:

JoJo is pretty popular, but you're really really overestimating it here. Top 50 manga sold in Japan in 2012. JoJo still places but is beaten out by two volumes of Fairy Tail. The anime is selling very well, but isn't top of the charts. Girls Und Panzer beat it's blu ray sales by a very large margin. The anime of things like One Piece, Naruto, Fairy Tail etc are less focussed on anime sales, and more of merchandise, manga, etc. They get primetime spots so kids can keep interested.

@petiew:Yes I was being somewhat hyperbolic. I have no doubt that market is stacked against JoJo and shonens in general. I watch the cartoons so I wouldn't know much about merchandise that aren't disc based. I'm just saying these types of shows have ground my tastes into a fine powder and I know what I want. I want to rock.

To be clear I don't necessarily hate the volume of episodes where I favor restricting the episode length purely as an "artistic restriction". Often the best art is created when restricted and focused where having the open ended format is detrimental in my view. I have a soft spot in my heart for AMG where I would gladly grab yearly OAVs and occasional TV episodes but I am not sure I have the time or endurance for 300 or so TV episodes of it.

The series that I can recall off the top of my head that does this is Negima. What starts out as a fun idea with fun characters meanders into hundreds (maybe thousands?) of chapters of time travel, fights, time travel fights, inter-world fights, and so on and so on that by the end it was completely unrecognizable from the idea at the start. I was willing to give the show a lot of leeway because the cast was so huge and would have taken time to explore but they squandered it. It lost me because it seemed to be more focused on fighting than any of the other interesting things about the characters or the world.

So I guess I have to wonder, what were the ideas and themes that we started with Fairy Tail? What did we end up at with at the end? Is it recognizable?

I definitely prefer shorter series. I don't mind if they're longer than 12 episodes, FMA was longer than that and that was fine, but triple digits is a bit much. That said the only show where I've actually watched more than a 100 episodes is Naruto (I think I watched until 10-20 episodes into Shippuden or so), so I don't know. I'd like to think 99 episodes would be enough though.

@chibithor: FMA is about as long as I like too

(sailor moon not withstanding)

@petiew: I'm with you on lengthy series. I like shows that give me time to get to know the characters, develop the relationships between them, and reveal the plot arcs over time. I too am a fan of One Piece for this reason. The characters have evolved over the many years the show and manga have been around. Seeing where they are today in comparison to where they started out is exciting. I always wonder what is around the next bend for them. These lengthy shonen shows are comfortable and familiar. Watching new episodes is like catching up with old friends. It's easy for those fans who've been on board for a time. I do understand the formidable task of starting one of these shows. Trust me is takes about 3 weeks to watch One Piece if you spend about 12 to 14 hours everyday on the anime. It's no small feat, but the rewards are worth the effort usually. Well, at least with One Piece they are.

I enjoy short series, too but at merely 12-14 I find that format too restrictive. 24-26 works best with the option of a second or third season equal to the first. It usually takes at least 8 episodes to get to know the characters, hell sometimes it takes that many just to introduce everyone. That leads just 4 or 5 for conflict, resolution and epilogue. I prefer the 12-14 length for slice-of-life where investment is minimal because there isn't much plot to deal with. But even then, if it's good, I want more. I am greedy that way. I liked Yuri Yuri and so I watched Yuri Yuri S2. I've seen 3 seasons of Hidamari Sketch and 3 of Minami-Ke. I plan to see seasons 4 of both soon enough. More is good with these types of shows. Who wouldn't love another bunch of Nichijou?

There are certainly drawbacks with many long running series separate from plotting. The most irritating I find is how some shows artificially lengthen episodes by adding repetitive recaps at the start. DBZ did this often, but the most egregious manipulator was Hitman Reborn in my opinion. Around episode 80 or so, the amount of fresh content in each show plummeted to 12-14 minutes for a 23 minute show. Shows are forced to do this for a variety of reasons the main one being lack of content. If a show is airing at the same time as its manga, the danger of the former catching up to the latter is pretty high. By stretching each episode out, they can put off the inevitable for a while. Plus, 14 minutes of new content means 9 minutes of recycled material. That's a big savings to the animation studio. The other option is to write "non-canon" arcs which often upset the fan base.

I haven't seen Jojo yet. I am waiting until they're about 50 or 60 episodes so I don't have to worry about "what comes next". Right now, I am struggling with the momentous undertaking of watching/re-watching Yawara a Fashionable Judo Girl from 1989. I started it once in the past and got up to episode 66 before taking a break. I want to finish it but I don't remember much more than the basics so I'll have to re-watch it. There are a few moments I do recall, now that I think about it that I would like to experience again.

Long shows are great, but first I need to finish Maria+Holic/M+H Alive. It's a lot of fun so far.

It's only gonna be 26 episodes (story Parts 1 and 2), and 21 just aired. David Production is doing Hyperdimension Neptunia (geez what a fucking downgrade) for spring, and will hopefully continue into Part 3 later this year, since sales are pretty good (volume 1 is second place for fall shows with 24k-ish sales). Also Japan has a ridiculously huge boner for Part 3.

@penguindust: Yeah, I think you explained it much better than I was attempting to. Seeing the characters slowly, and as a result more naturally, develop over the years is one of the best things about long series that you really can't capture with a 13 or even 26 episode series.

Aside from the main characters in One Piece one of my favourite things is the way we slowly learn about the world. The ongoing revolution against the world government, tyrany of the world nobles, prejudice against the fishmen, the makeup of the Marines, the void century, cutting back to previously visited islands and major characters and so on over hundreds of chapters really builds up this huge world. The amount of chapters allows this big world that doesn't entirely depend on the main characters to be created and expanded on. I just really enjoy stupid things like hearing a character from 200 chapters ago has married Miss Universe, or had to interview for a new assistant because his last one was a crazy assassin, it makes the world feel alive.

For long running series' such as this though I'd almost always recommend the manga over the anime. DBZ, One Piece, etc all have bad bad pacing issues to prevent them from catching up with the manga.

It also depends on the subject and themes explored whether or not 12/13 or 26 fits better. What I'm pretty sure of is that it doesn't take hundreds of episodes to explain and explore setting and characters. :)

Man Fairy Tail is ending (or taking a hiatus) and that sucks as its one of the only shows i watch weekly and pretty much enjoy.

Also a Soul Eater reboot would be super neat

Am I the only one who wants to see a reboot of Great Teacher Onizuka?

@wraith1 said:

A reboot? Hmm... I don't know. Why would you want a reboot of GTO?

@extomar said:

Well I don't think anyone said that short series don't and can't explore themes and characters. Having a longer series just gives more opportunity and as such more character development can occur, and a significantly higher number of themes, settings, etc can be introduced due to the flexibility and length of the series.

@alexandersheen: I didn't like the way the anime ended, I want to see a new series that follows the manga more closely, just to see that 100 man arm wrestling match animated

I was just reminded about how much I miss this thread when I just reflected on how I celebrated my meager tax return recently...

I decided to support the industry by buying all the Blu-Rays of basically everything I remember being really worth while. That Miku Hatsune thing is something completely different, though. Someone threw out the idea of me cosplaying as Hatsune Miku for PAX and then linked me to what looked like a really good wig and even though I actually have no intention to follow through with cosplaying as Hatsune Miku I impulse bought it.

I swear I'm managing my finances *okay*, though!

Now I like Hakuryuu even more after his freakout and here is the reason why.

P.S.: First I couldn't make the gifs work properly and now even the video embedding is broken. Great.

@equitasinvictus: Hell yeah Squid Girl! So good. That episode where the characters try to learn English was hilarious. Though I can't remember if that was in S1 or S2.

Also, I didn't realize it was released on Bluray. I bought part one of Season 1 on DVD (cause I'm an idiot I guess) and the cases were so very poorly constructed that the discs arrived hella scratched and the replacement amazon shipped me was also hella scratched. Makes me sad when distributors cheap out on cases.

@alexandersheen: Shouldn't doing it as inline HTML do the trick?

@rubberluffy: Thanks for the info on Jojo. I'll watch it this April then.

A lot of people liked GTO the way it was. On the otherhand, I could accept a Shonan Junai Gumi reboot since there wasn't much to the OVA series.

Sakuraso 21: Life is totally unfair. It's not a fun affair. So go grab a chair and enjoy the despair.

Japan has some weird morals

At KyoAni: "What?! Tamako Market isn't doing well...But we have cute girls all over the place, how can it not be doing well?"

"Maybe the market is shifting, sir!"

"Hmmm, maybe. But how do we adapt to this new market?"

"I'm just laying this out there: Instead of cute girls...Cute boys."

So, this was basically assumed to be a simple studio CM just to show off what they can do but they also released a key visual with the phrase: "Ore to omae no sa o oshiete yaru yo!" (I'll tell you what's make you and me different!) on it and releasing a visual for a studio CM would be a really odd move. The end of the commercial also has text saying "A New Challenge!".

So yeah, I don't know. Probably just a studio CM, but releasing key visuals along with it just doesn't make that theory fit and Animation Do has also had a project in the works since April that's not Tamako Market. If this is KyoAni's new money-making scheme, I'm super interested in seeing what the hell this turns out to be.

Then again, it's probably just a super pretty studio CM but even then this is still pretty different from KyoAni's usual CM's.

I'm sad that I'm done with Nisemonogatari. That show got hella stupid in all of the best ways.

Man I wasn't ready for all this despair in Sakuraso 21, apparently life is unfair; deal with it and talent>>>>>>>>>>>>hard work

@hunter5024: Haha, indeed. Nise is pretty great in the weirdest ways they could imagine. Or at least, I hope it couldn't have been weirder.

In personal news. I've been doing some kind of insane Visual Novel Binge these past few days. Currently rolling through G-Senjou No Maou. I've have some odd opinions on it. On one hand it generally feels interesting and well written but some plot points are just stupidly contrived and it feel kind of... like they needed slightly more thought. It's hard to put into words.

On the other hand though, "slightly creepy Waifu mode ON" TSUBAKI MIWA DESERVES ALL MY HUGS AND I WILL NEVER LEAVE HER! GODDAMN IT SHE IS SO EARNEST I WANT TO DIE! "slightly creepy Waifu mode OFF"

Yeah I really enjoyed her character. Even to the extent that I kind of don't want to keep going at the moment. But I hear Haru's ending is fanfuckingtastic, so I probably will. Just gotta let all these feels sink in for a while.

Oh and yeah, I got the recommendation to read it in this thread. Like a few months back. Anyone who read it in here at the moment? Just curious if it just was a fluke recommendation that hit the spot, or if it's popular.

Before starting that up I played through Little Busters as well. Now that game had one hell of an ending. Even though I want to bitch about the pace, the art and even some of the characterization, everything just falls flat in front of the conclusion. That was a story that hit my weak spots where it hurt the most. I don't think everyone will feel it as heavily as I did, but I'll be damned if anyone isn't able to relate to the message it's trying to bring.

Oh and the music is pretty good.

/rant end.

It's pissing me off how much I'm enjoying Gj-bu.

Sakuraso is making it really hard to remember just how much comedy was in the show at the beginning of the series.

@cloudenvy: What in the world? Well I give them credit that their changing it up but they may need to look a little harder at what their doing wrong.

the manga of Sasameki Koto is FINALLY getting the last issue translated and it's almost done wooooooo

(it is the best romance manga ever, by the way, in case you were wondering)

now to wait for Lililicious to double time Fragments of Love :(

@tobbrobb: It was probably me singing praises for G-Senjou no Maou... KEEP GOING!

I definitely agree there are points that seem super-contrived but I think once the smoke clears by the end and you find out everything behind some of the more head-scratching moments, it feels well thought out. I suppose one of your major gripes is Kyousuke's "lapses"? I'll say my piece on that later if you want to hear it, but I do think that is definitely one thing they could've been much less aggressive about, especially after --- well, I guess you'll understand better when it ends so I won't press this topic.

BUT YOU DO NEED TO GET TO HARU'S END AND THE EPILOGUE. Between that an Sharin no Kuni, I think that's Akabeisoft2's best ending ever, and by that I mean --- well, you'll see.

Yeah yo, definitely press on so I can say more about it. It has its ups and downs but the resolution of it all and how it wraps up is definitely amazing.

I never read the manga but good lord the Anime for Sasameki Koto was great. You reminded me I wanted to check out the manga because the anime just sort of left you hanging.

yep... it's unfortunate.

the manga has just gotten up to the point where it's winding down (I believe it has 53 chapters and it's on 50) and it's so good...

I found A Profile to have a better story overall.

All you guys, get hyped with me!

And to no surprise, there's about 13 designers, art and sound people working on this that previously worked on Guilty Crown so at least the production side is going to be preeeeetty amazing.

I saw Gyo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWNB0kpq8Sk

Most retarded shit i've ever seen.

@cloudenvy: I honestly don't read manga often, so artwork doesn't really excite me without knowing what the series is about.

@sergio: It's basically a "humanity's last stand" story. All of mankind is at the brink of destruction, fighting against overwhelming odds. I think it does a fairly good job of keeping a balance where they all look completely fucked all the time but still barely hold on. I'm not sure how the story is going to progress, but there seems to be some pretty ridiculous shit brewing.

wait is the the manga about giants?

@animasta: Oh yeah. There are giants.

I guess that might have been key information. XD

This week's Little Busters was surprisingly good. There was actually some foreshadowing.