Recommended Anime/Manga?

[KAI]

Then you should know nagano forbids anyone to touch his work ever again

There's an excellent interview on Forbes where the madman talks about his influence on the animu industry, that movie, how he saved gundam... and stuff like that, it's a good reading
https://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarde ... r-stories/

[soprano1]

Is it translated? cant find it anywhere.

Title is "Hakaiou ~GaoGaiGar vs Betterman~ the COMIC". See if that helps.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Golgo 13 Queen Bee - Complete trash.

Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust - Prefer it to the original tbh.

[FinalBaton]

Golgo 13 Queen Bee - Complete trash.

Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust - Prefer it to the original tbh.

Re: Vampire Hunter D and Bloodlust,

I was praising Vampire Hunter D left and right but watching it with a couple buddies who hadn't seen it, earlier this winter, made me realize it may not be quite as solid as I thought it was. Sure has some charm for the ages, a badass setting and is forever a classic anime movie for us westerners, one of the first to break in our market and helped open the floodgates. But as a film, on it's own merits? Maybe not quite as hot as I was pimpin' it in my mind

My buds really weren't impressed with it and I think it's because the character acting and dialogues are kinda clumsy and "big"/over-exagerated and simple to a fault, even by animu standard (there's a word in french called "simplet" that means "overtly simple and dumb" and sometime just "dumb", and I think it really fits what I'm trying to say here). Came across as goofy sometimes, when it was not aiming for that at all, is my point I guess. That's what jumped at me during that rewatch. Other than that I like most other aspects of the film. Gotta love Amano designs and the setting(sci-fi vampires and mutants, are you kidding me?) and the basic plot, the events themselves and the action, are cool. I still like watching it every now and then but I think I'll be hesitant watching it with other people now, haha

Bloodlust I watched once about 3 years ago and I'm due for a rewatch. I remember liking it and feeling like it had held up better. My boy Kawajiri back at it again!

[Steamflogger Boss]

I would probably give the original a solid 6/10. Bloodlust is basically doing the same things (action movie, sick setting as you mentioned) but was more fun to me.

[Vludi]

I watched Bloodlust without watching the first movie . It was quite good for me, probably the best from that director.

[BryanM]

I was praising Vampire Hunter D left and right but watching it with a couple buddies who hadn't seen it, earlier this winter, made me realize it may not be quite as solid as I thought it was.

Yeah, it's a product of its time and market, like Star Wars was. One of the few things where you could see a boob or a violent monster bloodbath on broadcast TV in those halcyon pre-internet days.

On the topic of art, it is pretty incredibly refreshing to see anything that isn't the standard Anime style. The other week I was staring at this desk in a Korean webtoon and was like "I love how shitty this desk looks!" Basic simple ruler work. Just the fact that Grimgar had water paintings for its background or that CGI cafe in Time of Eve are a great change of pace. And something as gruesome and unpleasant as How To Become A Demon Girl would never get to be mainstream.

The brutal, slightly abstract fantasy paintings of the Overlord books are far beyond the work that Madhouse could offer us:

[FinalBaton]

it is pretty incredibly refreshing to see anything that isn't the standard Anime style.

absofuckinglutely!

[Steamflogger Boss]

We talkin' moe blobs here?

[Steamflogger Boss]

Sword of the Stranger.

Yes.

[BryanM]

We talkin' moe blobs here?

Not just the stuff where the main characters are all 13 and a half years old. Regular proportion stuff is pretty standardized too - the difference between Psycho Pass and Bleach are small differences in opinions on how pointy chins can be, what color hair people can have, and how big titties are allowed to be.

They all look like they can practically be a part of the same world. Which is funny in the Standardized Anime Universe. But just another example of boring bland homogenous commercialization otherwise.

[FinalBaton]

We talkin' moe blobs here?

Even the more normal-proportionned stuff I get tired of sometimes TBH.

[Steamflogger Boss]

We talkin' moe blobs here?

Not just the stuff where the main characters are all 13 and a half years old. Regular proportion stuff is pretty standardized too - the difference between Psycho Pass and Bleach are small differences in opinions on how pointy chins can be, what color hair people can have, and how big titties are allowed to be.

They all look like they can practically be a part of the same world. Which is funny in the Standardized Anime Universe. But just another example of boring bland homogenous commercialization otherwise.

Not a fan of either of those, but looking at them on google images, you are right.

I mostly watch older stuff. Recent "newer" watches include various new Lupin series, which are pretty stylized. Ancient Magus' Bride and Golden Kamuy which I have no idea if it looks like everything else. I haven't even really looked in to much if any other anime made in the last 5 years or so.

[soprano1]

Read some more Tezuka manga:
Barbara: Crazy story of a famous writer (who is a sexual deviant) who picks up a bum girl that drinks like a sponge, who turns out to be something quite sinister.
Aiako: The story of a rural family in post-war Japan. Each member has serious issues, which makes the story quite ballsy. The story develops towards a quite cruel, if karmic, ending. If you don't like incest, keep away.
Alabaster: Another crazy ass plot only Tezuka could come up with. The first chapters consist on the protagonist Alabaster getting revenge for himself, then it focus on another girl with the same problem he has, and they end up taking on the world to remodel it as they see fit.
The Book of Human Insects: The main character is a huge manipulative bitch, and the men and women revolving around her are morons. The story is still worth reading, and the ending was actually quite surprising.
Tezuka wrote some good seinen stories. I think these are worth reading if you enjoyed works like Adolf and MW.

[GaijinPunch]

Took me longer than it should have, but I finished the Goku: Midnight Eye manga... and it was fucking awesome. The two OVAs are enjoyable, but sadly, they ran out of dough. Seemed to be a thing when the bubble burst. Anyway, would loved to have seen this run longer. I can't think of anything nearly as cool as this in recent days. (Please correct me if I'm wrong).

[Mischief Maker]

I'm busy watching the second season of one punch man on hulu and to be honest I'm underwhelmed.

Apparently the first season's animators didn't return and their absence is seriously felt.

[kitten]

Apparently the first season's animators didn't return and their absence is seriously felt.

; ___ ;

[Steamflogger Boss]

Always shitty when animation takes a nose dive in between seasons...

So I've been watching Kimagure Orange Road. It's goofy af but keeps me coming back. I couldn't tell you exactly why. It doesn't have me by the balls like Hana Yori Dango did and honestly the MC is an asshole. I assume he's going to inexplicably get the girl that he wants and not the one that has already announced her unrequited love for him in the end.

[BryanM]

I was shocked when I checked the website for the real One Punch Man and saw there was finally an update after two freakin' years. So much better than what the Murata thing has turned into.

Read Worth the Candle and it's such a contrast to mass market content. Besides a heavy-helping of anti-wish fulfillment to balance things out a bit, there's actually stuff the author wants to talk about. Table top games with homebrew elements, growing up in a rural area, ridiculously broken+nonsensical and imbalanced skill systems, morality, a world created for one person, simulated worlds and the nature of being a simulant within one, SCP-like memes and threats, world-ending nightmares only held back by exclusion zones... the guy has lots of things he won't stop talking about until he's thoroughly explored them. An exert on one of the background horrors:

Spoiler

In brief, Captain Blue-in-the-Bottle was a powerful necromancer during the Second Empire, one who reached heights that no other necromancer ever had before, not even in Uther’s time. His particular brand of necromancy got excluded, leaving him as the sole practitioner, but as far as enpersoned exclusion zones went, he was pretty calm and relaxed, capable of making deals with those outside his realm. At the time, that included the Second Empire, and they invested money into the Captain’s lands, putting up factories which were staffed by zombies, the name given to special creations that would slowly decay over time, but could be directed toward simple work until that point, the pinnacle of mindless labor. The Captain’s realm took in raw goods and sent out finished ones, at a fraction of the price that anyone else could do the same work for, and he did it with branding and public relations, little stamps that said ‘zombie-made’ on plates, hammers, all kinds of things. The zombies were, per the Captain, ethically sourced, only taken from people who died naturally in his realm, which had a fair population of the living as well.

The only problem was, Captain Blue-in-the-Bottle had been lying, and the zombies weren’t fully dead at all. Instead, the person who died was locked into their body, fully able to feel everything that happened to them, but unable to take any action on their own. The ‘zombies’ would sit there doing assembly work, watching as their bodies slowly and inevitably decayed, unable to speak, unable to stop, watching their own demise at a remove.

Eventually, the truth came out, thanks to some investigative reporting and a few very specific entads that allowed the zombies to have a voice. It was a big, complicated mess, an atrocity committed almost entirely by one man, and it got tangled up in the burgeoning world economy and the complicated ethical positions of the Second Empire. The upshot was that ‘zombie’ became a dirty word, especially after Captain Blue-in-the-Bottle published a long screed about how people knew in their hearts, and didn’t care, and would continue to buy the products from his factories anyway. ‘Zombie’ had always been his word, with slightly cutesy connotations, pictured in his propaganda as dim-witted but loveable creatures. It was a lot less cute when you knew there were people trapped inside those bodies, forced into permanent labor as they watched their bodies degrade, feeling every single bit of their slow death. Captain Blue-in-the-Bottle had been wrong about people: they’d stopped buying his stuff, mostly through coordinated action and a stringent ban by the Empire of Common Cause, and he’d been stuck in his exclusion zone for quite some time, increasingly unhinged and severely unhappy.

The discomfort comes from the fact there have been billions of people who've lived their entire lives feeling just a few deviations away from this metaphor. It's not a fact anyone normal would want to pay money to be reminded of.

[GaijinPunch]

Always shitty when animation takes a nose dive in between seasons...

So I've been watching Kimagure Orange Road. It's goofy af but keeps me coming back. I couldn't tell you exactly why. It doesn't have me by the balls like Hana Yori Dango did and honestly the MC is an asshole. I assume he's going to inexplicably get the girl that he wants and not the one that has already announced her unrequited love for him in the end.

Never finished it, but now that it's been rescanned I may check it out. I always found this one a bit too cheesy at the time, but now that I'm a bit wiser and nostalgia has kicked in I might give it another go. It's 80's through and through.

FWIW, I know the final movie was always considered the gut-punch, while everything else was pretty light hearted. Never got that far though.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Always shitty when animation takes a nose dive in between seasons...

So I've been watching Kimagure Orange Road. It's goofy af but keeps me coming back. I couldn't tell you exactly why. It doesn't have me by the balls like Hana Yori Dango did and honestly the MC is an asshole. I assume he's going to inexplicably get the girl that he wants and not the one that has already announced her unrequited love for him in the end.

Never finished it, but now that it's been rescanned I may check it out. I always found this one a bit too cheesy at the time, but now that I'm a bit wiser and nostalgia has kicked in I might give it another go. It's 80's through and through.

FWIW, I know the final movie was always considered the gut-punch, while everything else was pretty light hearted. Never got that far though.

Fwiw the BD is excellent. I would not have expected it to look this good.

And yeah it's mega 80s which is probably part of the appeal for me. Love the goofing too, nice light pre-sleep watching.

[cj iwakura]

FYI, Midnight Pulp somehow licensed a ton of old stuff, namely the fifth UY film for some reason.

https://www.midnightpulp.com/video/0154 ... er-dubbed/

[scrilla4rella]

Always shitty when animation takes a nose dive in between seasons...

So I've been watching Kimagure Orange Road. It's goofy af but keeps me coming back. I couldn't tell you exactly why. It doesn't have me by the balls like Hana Yori Dango did and honestly the MC is an asshole. I assume he's going to inexplicably get the girl that he wants and not the one that has already announced her unrequited love for him in the end.

Never finished it, but now that it's been rescanned I may check it out. I always found this one a bit too cheesy at the time, but now that I'm a bit wiser and nostalgia has kicked in I might give it another go. It's 80's through and through.

FWIW, I know the final movie was always considered the gut-punch, while everything else was pretty light hearted. Never got that far though.

I'm interested in checking this out as well. Without seeing any of the tv show I watched some of the movie back in the day (on VHS) and was all, 'fuck this shit!' but I keep hearing good things so I may give the show a try.

[Steamflogger Boss]

If you like awkward love triangles with 80s humor, then you will enjoy it lol.

My favorite character is the cat, I don't remember if I already mentioned that or not.

[blackoak]

I was praising Vampire Hunter D left and right but watching it with a couple buddies who hadn't seen it, earlier this winter, made me realize it may not be quite as solid as I thought it was.

I had a similar experience when I revisited it several years ago. Like you said it's the setting and monster design that really sparks the imagination. As a formative anime experience it was kind of neat too... the meandering nature of the plot doesn't hold up very well on repeat viewings but the first time I saw it, it was almost surreal, kind of a "wtf is happening" and unpredictable in a good way. I love that scene in the middle with the witch in the castle. My wife and I also still say "Oh my god a werewolf" to each other to this day.

Bloodlust I remember having awesome animation but being slightly ruined by the histrionic DUNPEAL!! female lead. Can't remember if I rewatched that with japanese VAs later...

[Mischief Maker]

Bleh. I just canceled my hulu subscription. One Punch Man season 2 bites.

They delayed the release of this episode last week supposedly because of the french open, but rumors said they were using the extra time to punch up the animation quality. Well if they did, I couldn't tell. This was the big episode where Saitama finally starts taking on the rampaging monsters and almost all the action happened offscreen. And the weak animation robs the humor of its punch, too.

Not worth another month of hulu fees.

[MX7]

One Punch Man season 2 bites.

It really does. Even worse, it's just a regular fighting show now. I can't really see how they coud have maintained the central gag beyond 12 episodes but it's still disappointing.

Still keeping my CR subscription for Attack on Titan though, which still stoically delivers.

[RiderKick]

-Watamote : A comedy show about a weird and paranoid high school girl with lots of social anxiety. While the subject matter is rather serious and the depiction of her condition is pretty accurate, there are also a lot of funny situations that come out of it as she often gets herself in embarassing situations or overthinks what others think of her.

WataMote appears to be Pathetic Geek Stories: The Anime. I am ok with it existing.

From what I've seen of this show, Tomoko is a big selfish asshole and she totally deserves to be alone.

The manga continues after the anime ends, and hey, Tomoko develops immensely as the series goes on, even if she is still a pervert, she stops with any schemes to be popular, her judgement of others is way less harsh and she does become a kinder and nicer person, she even gets to become the beloved senpai to another girl.

Also, she gets to become friends with others and she acknowledges she used to be an asshole:

Still a pervert though, but she no longer calls everyone sluts or assumes everyone is talking about sex, nor does she think of others as stupid or beneath her, strangely enough, it was only after she improved as a person that she actually got some friends that didn't come from middle school.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Might have to check the manga out...

The anime is completely done right? I'm a lazy shit so I prefer watching.

[RiderKick]

Oh yeah, fun thing to note, Watamote ended up with only one season because it wasn't very popular, and the manga was selling awfully enough it was nearly cancelled, apparently what they changed it was the author starting to develop Tomoko more and more as a character, having her realize she wasn't the greatest person, and then giving her some actual victories and letting her gain some actual genuine friends, some people did get bored after she became a better person and stopped being a loner, but it seems to have paid off as people liked having a nicer main character and a bigger cast.

It helps that Tomoko is still enough of a pervert and just a bit of an asshole enough to be recognizable as Tomoko while being a whole lot better than she was at the start and giving her a few moments where she comes across as a decent person by herself, guess people just really hated her not winning anything or being so mean that people didn't care she was a loner.

A bit too little too late for anime adaptations though, things becoming better only actually happened after the anime ended so it's manga content only forever, guess the author should have done the changes just a tiny bit quicker.