Hisoka has sky-rocketed as creepy motherfucker throughout this whole episode (OOOOOOOOOH GON GON GOOOOOON!) but also hilarious and a stand-out character in his pedoness.
Hisoka has sky-rocketed as creepy motherfucker throughout this whole episode (OOOOOOOOOH GON GON GOOOOOON!) but also hilarious and a stand-out character in his pedoness.
Its a show about a bunch of girls fighting each other to the death because there can only be one. Its a fun action show. Its what I imagined Rinne would be before it became stupid and boring.
I liked Rinne. So much so that the only mecha models I own at the moment are the ARX-7&8, the Strike Freedom, the Wing Zero Custom, ZZ Gundam and . . . Vox Aura.
In fairness I got Vox Aura for Christmas, and a LOT of Super Robots are stupid expensive, whereas real robots tend not to be.
Okay but what Shonen Heart powered Energy isn't Spiral Energy? Lambda Driver, Newtype, etc etc etc
I liked Rinne. So much so that the only mecha models I own at the moment are the ARX-7&8, the Strike Freedom, the Wing Zero Custom, ZZ Gundam and . . . Vox Aura.
In fairness I got Vox Aura for Christmas, and a LOT of Super Robots are stupid expensive, whereas real robots tend not to be.
You'll probably enjoy Mai-Hime then. Its pretty enjoyable in a shut off your brain kind of way because of the Battle Royale-like plot and the all-female cast.
Well if this thing ever ends up being a huge hit I hope someone would at least adapt one serious work like Golondrina or Honey & Honey instead of just more 4koma/comedy yuri manga.
Well if this thing ever ends up being a huge hit I hope someone would at least adapt one serious work like Golondrina or Honey & Honey instead of just more 4koma/comedy yuri manga.
Well if this thing ever ends up being a huge hit I hope someone would at least adapt one serious work like Golondrina or Honey & Honey instead of just more 4koma/comedy yuri manga.
Hey, a show with an original premise. And adults as main characters. Police detectives!(magical) lawyers! Somewhat promising.
Then, then... wait, the MC is not them, but a teenage girl?!!!
And she is moe.
And she has a silly personality.
And have some ridiculous sailor schoolgirl clothes (even other characters comment on the fact)
She is a "genius"... but it's just an excuse of why a teenage girl is a lawyer already, she doesn't give the impression of being a genius in any moment of the episode.
And her boss somehow let her take a case on the first day, even in several of the characters explain how ridiculous it is.
And there silly fanservice that comes out of nowhere.
And she has a magical (perv) mascot. edit: Thanks Cnet for remind me!
And there are other girls with skimpy clothes that serve just to make silly embarrassing remarks to the MC.
And there is gratuitous action/CG scene with a big metallic golem (robot?) at the end.
You know, it's been said that anime is just commercials for manga/LNs/toys/whatever, but Pupa is, like, literally just a commercial. You can't really call it a TV show.
etc etc. overall the manga isn't so bad as anime imo. They wasted so much time on drama crap actual plot got left out D: it helps I can fast forward through this easier than anime too.
Finally did my part in the AOTY thread. Another vote for Yamato 2199 as number 1. Marathoned the hell out the show. Sucks because I enjoyed posting episode impressions. I'm weak, I guess.
etc etc. overall the manga isn't so bad as anime imo. They wasted so much time on drama crap actual plot got left out D: it helps I can fast forward through this easier than anime too.
Speaking of From the New World, it looks like the infamous episode 5 was dramatically reworked for the BD, especially in changing the colors to be much more logical instead of Yamauchi dreamland. This site has some comparison shots. (Warning: site in general is NSFW).
Rejecting One Piece because you don't have time to handle the copious number of episodes is understandable, but I hope you're not rejecting it here because you think the actual story/pacing is bad, because it isn't. Well, the pacing of the anime adaptation is sometimes bad in the later parts of the series, but that's just because of the usual anime-trying-too-hard-not-to-catch-up-to-the-manga bullshit that all these long-running shonen series have to deal with. The series itself is legit (and actually includes barely any gratuitous "training arcs" compared to most shonen - on the few occasions where actual focused training is necessary, it tends to happen offscreen.)
The fact that they haven't reached the actual One Piece MacGuffin yet isn't a slight on the series, because the whole point seems to be that it isn't about the goal, it's about the journey. One Piece is basically just there as a semi-legendary objective to inspire lots of glorious adventuring. And it works.
Hey, a show with an original premise. And adults as main characters. Police detectives!(magical) lawyers! Somewhat promising.
Then, then... wait, the MC is not them, but a teenage girl?!!!
And she is moe.
And she has a silly personality.
And have some ridiculous sailor schoolgirl clothes (even other characters comment on the fact)
She is a "genius"... but it's just an excuse of why a teenage girl is a lawyer already, she doesn't give the impression of being a genius in any moment of the episode.
And her boss somehow let her take a case on the first day, even in several of the characters explain how ridiculous it is.
And there silly fanservice that comes out of nowhere.
And there are other girls with skimpy clothes that serve just to make silly embarrassing remarks to the MC.
And there is gratuitous action/CG scene with a big metallic golem (robot?) at the end.
She has an onee-sama, and on an entirely related note, Project A-Ko is the single most :SDBurton anime I have ever watched. This thing already trumps Gunbuster, Diebuster and The Flower of Rin-ne.
Why the hell do I have to buy all this stuff on CD. Why the hell does no music streaming service have this stuff? *grumble* Not spotify, not rdio, not xbox music, not Music Unlimited. And Sony bloody owns Aniplex.
Wow. Everything about that was so fitting. How it lined up with the rest of the season, and of course, how it lined up with Kaiki's original arc in Nisemonogatari. How Kaiki's character turned out. And even how the Snake arc was resolved (she's still the worst character though!).
Starting with Kaiki, I found it amusing how hard they were trying to push the fact that he is Ararararagi
whoops, bit my tongue
in all but name. This is probably my favourite example of an explicit connection being made:
It's interesting, because of course, you are already primed to see Kaiki not only as Araragi's antagonist, but his anti-thesis. He is everything that Araragi is not - selfish, manipulative, calculating. But for various reasons - starting with one that remains mysterious and will probably be addressed in a following series (why is Kanbaru so important to the most powerful players in this universe?) - we see him start down a path that leads to some form of redemption for the character.
The similarities between the characters begin with the fact that Kaiki is the one who narrates this arc. The fact that this is the "Hitagi End" arc immediately reminds the audience that the series itself began with a "Hitagi Crab" arc, and even in the structure of the stories we see how Araragi and Kaiki are similar through how they end up helping Senjougahara. Even the relationship between Kaiki and Senjou is similar to the Araragi/Senjou relationship, although of course Kaiki is able to push Senjou's buttons much more effectively than Araragi ever could. Kaiki even has a conversation with Hanekawa about the case, which is a beat straight out of the original arc. It's clear enough that we are meant to draw similarities that we don't really need the show to push the constant comparisons between the two men, but it does it anyway just in case you don't get it.
Of course, the culmination of the arc and how Kaiki fixes the snake problem makes sense once you make the connection and learn more about Kaiki's back story with Senjou.
It makes perfect sense that he would understand how to solve the problem, not only in the short term, but also in the long term, since he played villain to a young Senjou the same way that Araragi must play villain to Nadeko.
Using Kaiki to give as a consideration of Araragi, a character who is almost completely absent from this arc, is not only a clever device, but works precisely because the only solution to this arc is for
Araragi to be literally absent
. It's just so good.
Of course, this also ties into the themes of this season in terms of pulling apart Araragi, as he effectively loses his "harem" as we might know it.
But what I find interesting is how this ties back to Nisemonogatari, to Kaiki the villain being banished away. Of course, I sort of knew what the ending to this arc was, but I was still a bit surprised when it finally happened. But then it just made perfect sense to me that it HAD to have happened. By playing the villain in not only Nisemonogatari, but Senjou's life previously, he effectively cut off all ties with her in order to help her grow as a character. But by choosing to help her in this arc, he
effectively "lies" and goes back on his word. Sure, he may have other motives, but if you consider the final conversation between the two, you can't help but sense some irony in the fact that she says she never loved him. He tells Araragi that he can never meet Nadeko again because it will only weaken her, and we see that by meeting Senjougahara again, Kaiki does the same. The fact that Senjou cries in front of him is enough to show this to audience. Add to the fact that even Hanekawa, who knows what she knows, didn't expect him to help them, and you can see how counter to his character he is acting.
So it seems inevitable that Ougi, whom I presume is a manifestation of the "anti-existence" from the previous arc, would engineer his death just as much as she engineered Nadeko becoming the Snake God in the first place. That "she" does it by using the case from the Karen Bee arc - having a middle schooler that he scammed come and kill him only reinforces the fact that he has gone against his word and is living an existence that he shouldn't live. Hell, if you are nihilistic, you might argue that Kaiki was always an empty human being and that by even considering to help Kanbaru by indirectly saving Araragi, he goes against his "code". Or perhaps you might be optimistic and see this as a sacrifice for someone he cares about, whether it's Senjou out of nostalgia or Kanbaru for unknown reasons. That Araragi, in the same position decades from now, would probably go back and help Nadeko even though he knows its against her best interests.
Either way, it doesn't let you forget about the last time you see him... and much like how Mayoi's arc set up perfectly what happens in this season, so does Kaiki's arc.
So this leads to many questions, as all the pieces have fallen into place and three characters had to be sacrificed in order to get us where we are. Who or what is Kanbaru? Who is her mother? Why does her "aunt" not have a relationship with her? Why would Kaiki hold her important enough to risk his life for her? Is she related to Ougi in some way? How will the confrontation between what seems to be the most powerful woman in this universe and the most powerful "non"-being in this universe play out, and what role does Kanbaru or Araragi have in this confrontation? I'm really too tired to speculate, and I'm still high off of this ending.
While the Snake arc is still... something else, mostly because Nadeko's key characteristic is being generic and boring, this season as a whole was great. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think this might be the first light novel series that I've "seen" that has any attempts at depth in terms of levering the long form nature of having dozens of novels. If nothing else, Nisio proves that you don't need to be a phantasy author with thousand page tomes and 60 different characters in order to write a story that is "complicated".
Oh, and this will only please video nerds I suppose, but I LOVED how someone decided to typeset the karoke for the OP:
So this was really good, the visuals were very colourful and appealing and I think the family drama fantasy action thing the show is going for should be very fun.
Hisoka has sky-rocketed as creepy motherfucker throughout this whole episode (OOOOOOOOOH GON GON GOOOOOON!) but also hilarious and a stand-out character in his pedoness.
Wow. Everything about that was so fitting. How it lined up with the rest of the season, and of course, how it lined up with Kaiki's original arc in Nisemonogatari. How Kaiki's character turned out. And even how the Snake arc was resolved (she's still the worst character though!).
Oh, and this will only please video nerds I suppose, but I LOVED how someone decided to typeset the karoke for the OP:
Oh wait, is that the reason for all those recap episodes? Is this like Bakemono all over again? Maybe it's Shaft trolling to really bring things full circle!
Oh wait, is that the reason for all those recap episodes? Is this like Bakemono all over again? Maybe it's Shaft trolling to really bring things full circle!
There were some promising ideas here that break the series out of the pattern it set itself into, but I wasn't feeling like the show was delivering well on anything that it set up. These characters and scenarios are being set up for the raid, but the content here is becoming so abstract that it's difficult to care about anything that's going on. Rule books are being thrown to down enemies and then the rule book throwing gets countered by big slabs of meat for armor which in turn is countered by the rule books growing bigger to deflect tank shells...yeah...no.
It's not just the action scenes that are lame and convoluted either. The story is having even more trouble focusing as new plot lines are opened up and more questions just being added to the old ones. I doubt I could even list everything that is going on in this show between the numerous revenge missions, the reconstruction of Senketsu, the offensive raid, the rogue agent, the multiple factions whose intentions still aren't even clear fourteen episodes in, and Satsuki's plans for a new world order. It hardly feels like the show ever wants to tackle any of these subjects, and these crucial story elements often feel cursory to the silly antics that are frankly tiresome and nonsensical. The next episode preview didn't look promising either, as the show looks like it will continue to stall out.
There were some promising ideas here that break the series out of the pattern it set itself into, but I wasn't feeling like the show was delivering well on anything that it set up. These characters and scenarios are being set up for the raid, but the content here is becoming so abstract that it's difficult to care about anything that's going on. Rule books are being thrown to down enemies and then the rule book throwing gets countered by big slabs of meat for armor which in turn is countered by the rule books growing bigger to deflect tank shells...yeah...no.
Hilarious comedy in this episode to prepare us for the showdown at Shaoyang(sp?). Lian Po (sp?) seems like he'll me an interesting character in coming events, while the combined Feixin force with the other men bringing the total size to 700 with the additional vice commander allowing Xin to be temporary Thousand Man General was a good thing to increase his character and allow hilarious interactions with his other peers of such rank.
Xin winning the arm wrestling was the best thing in awhile
Oh wait, is that the reason for all those recap episodes? Is this like Bakemono all over again? Maybe it's Shaft trolling to really bring things full circle!
While I'm happy we're finally getting true and true Yuri, I admit I would be disappointed if none of the more serious titles were given a shot at an adaptation.
Anyone else kinda lose interest in Samurai Flamenco once it got all serious with the whole Power Rangers twist? I liked it better before, now it's kinda uh... haven't seen the last 2 episodes yet because of lack of interest.
