Recommended Anime/Manga?

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BIL
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by BIL »

Wizardry OVA: My Dick Is In My Hand (1991)

Image

Endearingly literal dungeon crawl adaptation. Our working schlubs SHIN/Warrior, ALEX/Mage and HAWKWIND/Ninja are punching the clock one day salvaging BOOTIES, when JOEZA/Wizard enlists them to go to Floor 10 and kill the last boss WERDNA. Apart from JOEZA's annoying fuckboi catamite/student ALBERT, it's all ultraviolence and BOOTIES from there! At a compact ~50minutes, it's an easy recommendation for admirers of hardcore efficiency. Not as good as the definitive Video Game Anime Ninja Scroll, but if you like that you'll dig this.

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Is be on Youtube, FO FREE Image
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Udderdude »

I remember watching this awhile back. Mostly because I'm a fan of the games. Not a bad way to watch a bunch of fantasy violence, lol.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by BIL »

NGL, the way
Spoiler
ALEX takes out VAMPIRE LORD
is pretty bloodening, right down to the latter's parting trash talk. :mrgreen:
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by FinalBaton »

noted on Wizardry animu. I like medieval fantasy animu so I will watch this violent adventure DIK IN HAND
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

Steamflogger Boss wrote:Hanasakeru Seishounen
Very much enjoyed this anime.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Randorama »

GaijinPunch wrote:I found it in This thread which JoshF started. So it actually wasn't recommended by Macaw.

So probably a dud. I actually went into the database to do a search for Testsuo Hara and that's all that came up, unfortunately. Happy to dig for more if you can give me something to work with.
OK, thanks a lot, and apologies for the delay.

So it seems that my Alzhaimer is running rampant. Kaneda in the thread mentions that Prince features as a villain in Cyber Blue, but I recalled this as Macaw saying that Prince was the main character in some other manga by Hara.

I will need to put this in an article I was commissioned, so you've been a great help. Can I add your name in the acknowledgements? ("GP" would certainly respect your privacy :wink:).

By this point I guess that I own you a long list of drinks, whenever we meet.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by GaijinPunch »

Randorama wrote: I will need to put this in an article I was commissioned, so you've been a great help. Can I add your name in the acknowledgements? ("GP" would certainly respect your privacy :wink:).
Sure -- any time. Real name is fine too. Can put it on my resume. :D
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by professor ganson »

Randomly stumbled on Re: Zero on HBO MAX and it has really sucked me in. What do you experts think about it? Would be curious to hear.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by BryanM »

I really liked the manga adoption when it came out, but fell out of interest halfway into the third arc. (Its addiction loop is a bit similar to Prison Break.) "I'm Standing on A Million Lives" is a little bit similar, in that the main characters are OP at dying. And has an anime adoption going on right now.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by professor ganson »

I'm watching the anime most days to help fall asleep, so I'm not following along perfectly. But there have been some real high points-- mostly emotional bonds between characters or silly filler moments. Good stuff.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

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That Wizardry OVA is so surprisingly compelling as a one-shot dungeon crawler. Dungeon crawl narratives that exist outside of trpgs or crpgs are absolutely facinitating and there used to bevery few as this, though it seems that every other light novel series seems to be about embracing videogame conventions now. The murk and grime of VHS makes these OVAs really unlike anything else. I did a double bill of Wizardry and Digital Devil Story just a few weeks ago and it was a blurry fuggy feast for the senses

Everyone's going on about Tatsuki Fujimoto's Chainsaw Man, which seems cool but unfortunately you can't get the comics (in English) for love nor money. So I've been reading his earlier series Fire Punch, and it IS absolutely incredible. The central conceit is absolutely hilarious and harrowing and really shouldn't be spoilt. But for those of you old farts pining for 80's filth and extreme brutality will get a kick out of this. At times the horror is Violence Jack level transgressive, but it saves itself from edgelord status by being 1: very weird and 2: very funny, which is a rarity for this kind of stuff. It's also only 8 volumes and pretty cheap, so check it out.

Currently re-reading Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction in preparation for the final volume. You know how you get the odd film, TV, book whatever which is so obviously significantly better than everything else it kind of spoils the medium for you? Like hw The Wire ruins television, Pale Fire ruins literature, Tokyo Story ruins film? DDDDDDDD is basically that for comics. It's totally next level, in every regard, and unlike everything else Asano's made, it doesn't even seem like he's trying. Utter sorcery.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

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MX7 wrote:That Wizardry OVA is so surprisingly compelling as a one-shot dungeon crawler. Dungeon crawl narratives that exist outside of trpgs or crpgs are absolutely facinitating and there used to bevery few as this, though it seems that every other light novel series seems to be about embracing videogame conventions now. The murk and grime of VHS makes these OVAs really unlike anything else. I did a double bill of Wizardry and Digital Devil Story just a few weeks ago and it was a blurry fuggy feast for the senses
Oh nice, I'll check out DDS this weekend. :o I was thinking of your old Dungeon Cinema mini-thread after Wizardry, would've been a shoe-in. :mrgreen:

Approaching from the other side of the game/film divide, I've been playing Rygar recently. Even by coinop standards, it's distilled. Run/jump/kill and grab goodies. But quite simultaneously, there's an unmistakably fond sense of place, and journey. Distant landmarks seen in daytime are later silhouetted against molten sunset, shrewdly evoking time and distance. There are no night stages, the torchlit shrines that dot the course presumably giving refuge from "night-goers" that even Beowulfs regard cautiously in the ancient dark.

Artifices amidst the wild are invariably unique, down to tiny curios like the quaint plank spanning an innocuous brook. The same for settlements - Antmen don't appear to like the feral mutants much, going by the skulls lining the former's village. You never see the latter's "home" - maybe they're classic nomad reavers despised by all? Both sides certainly don't like our hero much, guess god will have to sort them out. The midpoint, given the always-reliable #13, is a ruined settlement occupied by enemy soldiers, their beast mounts, and a horde of headless thralls. Concealed within is a massive treasure haul, and a parchment worth a staggering sum. Whether this was a recent sacking, or a fabled store attracting enemy notice, can't be known any more than the provenance of the massive ruined fort where the enemy leader resides.

I'd love to get a committedly hardcore action film, animated or otherwise, with a similar balance of thoughtful detail and outright exposition - that is, lots and none, respectively. :lol:
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Udderdude »

On that note .. where's my ESP Ra.De OVA? Where's my goddamn Guwange OVA? :evil:
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by MX7 »

@BIL - I've got a feeling you'll be all over DDS. It's got red eyes glowing in VHS fug, CRT monitors glowing in VHS fug and indeterminable neon entrails glowing in VHS fug. Bonus stomping OVAtastic themetune too. Along with other objective OVA shit like California Crisis and Call Me Tonight I've seen it way more times than it probably deserves.

Also I'm totally in awe of your ability to recall 7yo forum posts :)
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

Looks like it is on LD as well, but finding it could be problematic. One to add to my YAJ/Mandarake search list..
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by manon_op »

Watch Attack on Titan
Read one piece manga!
I am a blogger and video content creator. I like video games, anime and manga.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Udderdude »

Kyoukai no Rinne: I can't believe I missed out on this one. I love Rumiko's work, so I was surprised to find out I missed this one. It's pretty amusing combo of supernatural and comedy, exactly what she's good at.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

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I had been trying to get through all of Ah My Goddess. Not that it's good, just that its nostalgic innocence was comforting in these doomy times. Fell a bit short of the goal and really only laughed once (for many reasons, I find the idea of a monster summoning ritual being irreversible because the summoner used a permanent marker very funny). Was a bit surprised to find out there's a sequel manga going on that started in 2019 - it's almost completely invisible to the english side of the internet.

I read the advertising summary for Ex-Arm and got a bit interested - it sounded like one of those "I was reincarnated as a space battleship's AI" type things. Which is a bit rare, and, something I think is conceptually flawed. One of those "whenever you do something, it either makes things better or worse and this thing seems to only make the story worse" type things. But am intrigued at the prospect that I might be wrong and there might be some reason to set up a story with that premise that I haven't been able to find yet. (Reincarnating into a Fantasy world as an Autonomous Machine Arsenal kind of makes me think the concept's good enough for a movie, but not anything long-running.)

Further research seems to suggest it's... not that. If you haven't seen it yet, you should check out the trailer.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Udderdude »

Ouch. The downvote ratio is brutal, too.

Still better than that GITS 2045 .. thing.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

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Could not even finish that trailer.

Yeah AMG is one of the first shows that I finished so I remember it fondly but it's another in a line of harem shows. I watched Sekirei and Freezing so you can't even really say I've grown out of it. Sometimes you just wanna blaze it.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by BryanM »

Steamflogger Boss wrote:Could not even finish that trailer.
Holy shit you missed the best part! I'ma spoil it for you if you can't really survive it all no one else peak if you haven't tried it already
Spoiler
It ends with gigantic fuck-off letters that say:

DECLARING WAR AGAINST ALL OF THE SF SERIES AROUND THE WORLD!!

TV ANIME BEGINS BROADCAST IN JANUARY 2021
I obviously must try to watch this show some day.
Yeah AMG is one of the first shows that I finished so I remember it fondly but it's another in a line of harem shows. I watched Sekirei and Freezing so you can't even really say I've grown out of it. Sometimes you just wanna blaze it.
It was quite a more innocent time, before Pantsu And The Vampire proved you could just make 20% of your episodes pantsu and make more money for a bit less work. Simpler times they were.

Honestly the large episode count that's in no hurry to go anywhere is also refreshing to the "12 and done" standard. Maybe that's another thing I liked about the first two seasons of Log Horizon. 50 episodes and they never considered changing the opening song even once - unprecedented in hist0ry.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

Lol I saw that line mentioned in the comments. It was so awful, my eyes were weeping.
BryanM wrote:It was quite a more innocent time, before Pantsu And The Vampire proved you could just make 20% of your episodes pantsu and make more money for a bit less work. Simpler times they were.

Honestly the large episode count that's in no hurry to go anywhere is also refreshing to the "12 and done" standard. Maybe that's another thing I liked about the first two seasons of Log Horizon. 50 episodes and they never considered changing the opening song even once - unprecedented in hist0ry.
True. That was a nice era of harem. Chobits was delightful, not a harem obvs but around the same time frame.

I can definitely appreciate a languid pace. It's like a dragon quest game sometimes you just nibble at it here and there. Marmalade Boy was kinda like this, I'm still not completely done with it. Which interestingly enough has the same op song for all 76 episodes. They did change the ending song however. Looks like LH is the same op and ending for 52 episodes which yeah basically never happens. Even back in the 80s longer series usually changed it up. Off the top of my head Zeta Gundam has 2 op 1 ed. I can't think of anything else 50+ that is 1/1.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by GaijinPunch »

Udderdude wrote:Kyoukai no Rinne: I can't believe I missed out on this one. I love Rumiko's work, so I was surprised to find out I missed this one. It's pretty amusing combo of supernatural and comedy, exactly what she's good at.
I gave this all of a few minutes. Just couldn't get into it. I've watched Maison Ikkoku countless times. 1 run through the manga. Urusei Yatsura I've tried and will probably get back to at some point, but her stuff after Ranma I just couldn't dig.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by BryanM »

Steamflogger Boss wrote:Lol I saw that line mentioned in the comments. It was so awful, my eyes were weeping.
As everyone keeps saying of the Mushoku Tensei animation: "The water... looks like water!" I will say of the Ex-Arm animation: "The floor... doesn't look like floor!"

Even though it's typical to assume the best parts are shown in a trailer, I can't in this case. It's just a shockingly obnoxious, incompetent ad that it's impossible to think an enthusiast approved it. Crunchy Roll went from being a piracy website, to a legitimate business, to this... proving the American Dream that as long as you steal other people's shit, you too can become a wealthy capitalist and produce bad anime some day.

It's light and day from Genshin Impact, from a company that started from three nerds in China who built up starting with a rather humble game. Their product ads might help cleanse one's soul after being befouled by the crunchy: Zhongli and Klee demonstrate the range of what they sell, which I think is a bit better of a sales pitch than HEY RAID SHADOW LEGENDS! PLAY THIS SHIT! 150 FREE PIEC$ES OF SILVER IF YOU SIGN UP NOW!
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

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MX7 wrote:@BIL - I've got a feeling you'll be all over DDS. It's got red eyes glowing in VHS fug, CRT monitors glowing in VHS fug and indeterminable neon entrails glowing in VHS fug. Bonus stomping OVAtastic themetune too. Along with other objective OVA shit like California Crisis and Call Me Tonight I've seen it way more times than it probably deserves.

Also I'm totally in awe of your ability to recall 7yo forum posts :)
Enjoyed it a lot! Ironically, it was a far more "arcadey," pick-up-and-play experience than the Salamander OVA I tried watching after. Had to call it a night with that one, while DDS was nonstop surrealistic evil from start to end. Ala Wizardry ("working schlubs raid tenth floor to kill big dungeon boss"), all you need is the basics. Japanese highschoolers consort with godawful demons via 386 dialup! Some pretty gnarly shit goin' down, spread 'em toots omnomnom :shock: Loved the "new phone, who dis?" ending sequel hook :lol: "Baphomet-kun?" "No, dis ANUBIS, ancient evil mummy w/BBC, who dis" "Sugoiii!"
Spoiler
Poor KELEBROS 3; his goofy yell/howl grew on me! a stalwart devil dog friend to the end, or maybe just a conveniently allied fiend, dunno.
Anyplace one can seamlessly discuss [REC], The Raid, and Neco z Alenky in the context of Donkey Kong Cinema is worth remembering imo :mrgreen:

Shingeki no Kyojin ch.138 It's gotten a bit too big and bouncy for me, towards the end - nothing in the climactic setpiece wasn't hinted at a decade ago, I just prefer the blunt Goyaesque horror of its more parochial early episodes. Still, been a fun, consistently fiery and thoughtful quasi-shonen ride. Kudos for some oldschool biblical ultraviolence in the last stretch - not quite the same thing, but equally grounded in the pants-shitting terror of massive, idly homicidal naked people.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by BryanM »

Just got through the six hour long Tokimeki Memorial review. A bit repetitive, and could have stood to have about an hour cut from it.

I've always had the impression we missed out on an important cultural milestone, maybe video games would have sucked just a little bit less if it had been localized.

In the world of anime, it's certainly responsible for popularizing the "girl makes food that hurts people" trope. In the game, it's a one-off scene that not everybody will see. The consequence? Your health gets permanently, massively slashed and your character gets stuck in bed for like half the game, strongly pushed toward the Forever Alone ending. In anime, it's never consequential, or the subject of an elaborate greater whole. Just an attempt at a brief "haha try to not eat the food funni" diversion. It's akin to repeating "I'll be back" or "check please" - divorcing a catchphrase from any meaning is... the same as saying something meaningless. (I say this, while approving of DTysonator's use of "hasta la vista". That's just proper macro usage.)

The odds of these games ever getting translated outside of an AI overlay that translates on the fly (which we've had for many years now... actually holy fuck the guy who made this video offered to translate for Gideon Zhi, maybe there is a way to do this now...) is as close to zero as it gets. One specific nightmare orbiting this thing: The GBC port literally constantly loads in pieces of the font as its needed, as there isn't enough room in VRAM to hold a font and the graphics. Imagine how much fun that is, and add the fun fact roman characters use about twice as much space. (And I thought waiting for the SNES Dragon Quest 5 translation was taking a long time..)

All this made me stumble on the hit Evangelion game everyone's talking about: Girlfriend of Steel. Which in turn reminded me of how much I like the lighthearted school-life segments where Shinji's being brutally punched in the face by his new friend or being ignored by girls. And what a bummer that it's probably not going to be in Rebuild #4.

In Girlfriend of Steel, there's one ending I think is wonderful: If you break Shinji by forcing him to do something completely out of his character that he'd never ever do (talk to his dad), it completely breaks the universe. They enthusiastically reconcile, go off somewhere to become lumberjacks, and I guess the horrible nightmare alien shit doesn't happen.

It amuses me to think of the world of Evangelion as such a feeble and brittle thing, akin to Drakengard's planet that's always three minutes away from some random nobody asshole bringing about an apocalypse of one sort or another. That the world is what you make of it, and if Shinji wasn't such a potato maybe it would be a world of carefree highschool escapism.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by GaijinPunch »

That seems extremely thorough.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Cretonne »

Steamflogger Boss wrote:Could not even finish that trailer.

Yeah AMG is one of the first shows that I finished so I remember it fondly but it's another in a line of harem shows. I watched Sekirei and Freezing so you can't even really say I've grown out of it. Sometimes you just wanna blaze it.
Ditto for me.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Randorama »

I just stopped by to mention this:

Commence posing, Part 6 (Fall? Release should be 2021, just not now).

I guess that they will time the ending of this part for the 10th anniversary of the overall anime adaptation.

My own conjecture on an Easter Monday morning...

Given the pace they followed for parts 4 and 5 (9 months "on air", roughly 2 years to prepare the next part), and given that JoJolion may end in a year or so, Part 7 and 8 would be completed by 2027 or so...just in time for the 50th anniversary of the series.

Given the epic scale of the manga, it would delightful if I were to be right.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by BIL »

Image

Image

Was really hoping they'd make it to Part 6, at minimum, ever since Phantom Blood's OP included panels from Stone Ocean. David have proven themselves real craftsmen.
Randorama wrote:just in time for the 50th anniversary of the series.
We're getting older, eh. Image Gonna have to bust out the grey mullet ala Oyaji Joseph. Image

Fingers crossed for SBR & JJL & Part 9. :cool:
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