Bro do you even click tags? #anime #animeclub A lot of anime is pure shit. Some of it is great. War is right - I would consider Madoka Magica to be one of the top two or three television series ever made, right up there with The Wire. From a writing perspective it is a technically exquisite Yngwie Malmstein guitar solo that attempts the impossible, plants the dismount and gives the judges double eagles and still gets a 10. Sitting down to watch it unbriefed (which is how you should watch it) is like grudgingly agreeing to sit through a My Little Pony marathon only to find yourself watching Lord of the Rings. Netflix has Genesis Climber Mospeada on DVD. You might recognize it as the third cycle of Robotech but Robotech re-edited it heavily to hammer'n'tongs it into their existing Harmony Gold narrative. I think it's unique and interesting in that it posits a future in which a malevolent alien race takes over the Earth, the armed forces retreat to Mars, then they attempt to retake Earth some years later, fail miserably, and then we follow a band of guerillas as they try to find their pickup point while also discovering that most of humanity doesn't much mind oppressive alien domination. Also one of the fighter pilots is a transvestite lounge singer named Yellow Belmont because Japan. Having done a preposterous amount of research on schizophrenia for a script, I can honestly say that Serial Experiments: Lain is the best attempt at portraying a schizophrenic's view of the world. A very smart, computer-savvy schizophrenic. The design is also fucking incredible. Watch it in Japanese; the dub is shit. PsychoPass is pretty good. It's Gen Uruboshi, who also did Madoka Magica. It's a little less nuanced, a little more rushed, still worth watching. Attack on Titan is shit. Don't bother. We've covered a lot of these under #animeclub.
I read a couple issues of the manga, and I've been meaning to watch them. It's tricky, though, on AB, to figure out what the proper order is. James Cameron was working on Evangelion as his next project when he ran into budgetary snags, so he did Avatar instead. It's not like the guy wastes his time on bad stuff or puts out a million movies a week, so I figure that's a pretty ringing endorsement. The manga didn't grab me, but to be honest the manga for Nausicaa hasn't really grabbed me either so that's hardly a criticism.
How I watched it was just the original Neon Genesis Evangelion followed by the alternate ending End of Evangelion. The story is ok, but the characters are what I found most compelling about the piece. They are real. The first time I watched it I was still in high school, so that may have played a part in my interest. I haven't watched it since then, but I've been meaning to. If the anime club ever returned in any capacity it might be something to approach.
I did. I tried actually, but nothing really stood out. I half thought about asking over in r/anime but I kind of wanted to avoid the cultural circle jerk that a lot of subreddits are. Not knowing r/anime's reputation, I didn't know if they'd be a trust worthy source. If drunk me at 2 o'clock in the morning can't appreciate a show on Adult Swim, then yes. It's shit. We agree. I kind of like the whole big robots thing, which I think Robotech fits into but I know it's actually a re-write of Japanese cartoons. Is Robotech sufficient or should I try to get my hands on the Japanese originals?Bro do you even click tags?
Attack on Titan is shit
I think everything mentioned on this page has been mentioned either in #anime or actually covered in #animeclub, so you are a liar liar pants on fire. DK can probably give chapter'n'verse on mecha better than I can, but American exposure started with Robotech and Voltron, both of which ran concurrently with Transformers and Gobots. Which... Okay. So things are gonna get esoteric for a minute. This is a big stupid link that makes things more esoteric. Bottom line, Hasbro made TV shows to sell toys because Reagan made it legal. This opened the floodgates for every toy line GenXers freak out about, including MLP, Transformers, GI Goe, etc. Hasbro slammed together a whole bunch of Takara toys into a narrative called "Transformers" that only makes sense when you consider that somehow, a handgun needs to be a villain capable of taking on a fucking semi truck. These were franchise shows, which means they weren't run on any particular network, which meant that the shows were whatever so long as the toys could be sold. There was a cheaper way to get toys into the US without having to create a whole show, however. Grab an existing show with enough episodes and launch it. Voila, Voltron. It would have worked with Speed Racer and Astro Boy earlier but Reagan hadn't gutted the law yet. Unfortunately a lot of Japanese shows never make syndication (70 episodes). Their entire runs are like 26 episodes. So Harmony Gold had to take three disparate series and weld them together into something called "robotech." It worked sort of like this: the first series is about humans vs these giant people called Zentraedi. The second is about humans vs. the guys that built the giant people, called "robotech masters". The third series is about humans vs. this weird collective race of jellyfish called the Invid that were like chased out of their homeworld by the Robotech Masters and actually aren't that bad, aside from the whole world domination thing. As arcs go, it ain't terrible, but it ain't great. The first series welded into that mess was Macross. This is what most people think of when you say "robotech" - the Macross saga. I've never watched it. I found it boring. However, it has the most toys. Shit, through weird wranglings, one of them even made it into Transformers. It might be great. All I know is the toys were the same form factor as GI Joe, which was fuckin' dope on the playground because take this, Cobra. The second series was "Southern Cross", or "Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross." It was fuckin' unbearable dubbed. I've never had any interest in trying to watch it. I don't even think there were toys. The third series was "the New Generation" but everyone just called it "the Invid" and there were cool toys but not nearly as many and of the three, it's the least youth oriented so the kids didn't care much. There were toys, but they were rare. And they would fuck GI Joe up something fierce. For me, it was far and away the best. For one, the narrative was really fuckin' adult. The protagonist's girlfriend dies episode one. Not "is kidnapped" not "is lost" not "is shot with a GI Joe laser to parachute to safety" she fuckin' kicks it because her entire fuckin' ship explodes. So does the whole goddamn fleet. Any kid's show that starts with massive battle casualties can't be all bad, right? Especially in a "knowing is half the battle" world where somehow, nobody so much as gets a scratch despite throwing arsenals at each other for half an hour at a time. Also, the industrial design is tits. Everyone rides around on supadope motorcycles that definitely presage Akira (and turn into rippin' battle suits). The jets are way cooler than Macross, which really, all look like F-14s. And all the episodes end in this weird morally ambiguous place that was right at home next to Kung Fu, which was also in syndication. I have no idea where Robotech lives these days. They tried to restart it as Sentinels which I never saw. For a while, Tobey McGuire was trying to launch Macross as a movie, written by Larry Kasdan of Raiders fame. I'm going over to a kind-of friend's house day after tomorrow for a birthday party; he's literally got a room full of Robotech shit, some of it worth thousands. I know that teh torrentz will get you damn near anything.
Yeah, but you guys have talked a lot in those threads. It's a bit much. I figure starting a thread with a blank slate would be easier to digest. I remember the hell out of Transformers growing up. The cartoons, the toys, even the marvel comics. My parents wouldn't let me watch G.I. Joe cause human on human violence (though that seemed to be the only show they objected to), robots beating the crapplication out of each other though was fair game. I don't think I ever saw a bit of Robotech though, toys or show. Similarly, I heard about Voltron and Speed Racer, but I never saw them and it wasn't until later that I learned they were Japanese too. I think I saw Macross on Hulu, so I'm gonna check that out. Do you know, when these shows were Americanized for syndication, if they also changed the story a bit to be more palatable for American culture? Or were they kept pretty true to the source?I think everything mentioned on this page has been mentioned either in #anime or actually covered in #animeclub, so you are a liar liar pants on fire.
They absolutely gutted the story, showed episodes out of order, recut shit, omitted entire story arcs, the whole nine yards.
Ick. That sounds like they didn't much respect the integrity of the original artists. I can see why they would edit our some things, like the drinking and gore, but it's sad to see that they didn't do three series under a Robotech name like the article said was a proposed idea. I think that would be a fair middle ground. I'm watching Star Blazers right now as I type this and I'm enjoying it, partially because it is kind of campy. It makes me wonder though, what they changed over from the original. I did notice one part, when they caught the doctor in the back seat of a car clearly boozing it up, the dub was saying he was experimenting with a sleeping potion. So clearly, there's at least a bit of change here.
Funny, I remember interpreting Lain's personalities in more Jungian terms, but Wikipedia says you're right.Having done a preposterous amount of research on schizophrenia for a script, I can honestly say that Serial Experiments: Lain is the best attempt at portraying a schizophrenic's view of the world. A very smart, computer-savvy schizophrenic. The design is also fucking incredible. Watch it in Japanese; the dub is shit.