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Watching The Animatrix (I have a bunch of obscure anthologies lined up afterwards)
Reading Appleseed (going through everything Masamune Shirow)

Appleseed I just started so I don't have much to say about it, but the Animatrix I'll be finished up today. So far its been great, my favourite short being "The Program" which reminded me of Ninja Scroll/Wicked City so much I searched it up immediately after finishing it and found out that of course it has the same director.

I've been binging on animation anthologies recently, just because I've been so sick of how low effort, generic, and boring most anime are. Memories, Neo Tokyo, Genius Party (and Beyond), and Robot Carnival I've already finished in the past, but I've recently rewatched them - and now will be diving into every anthology released (at least every single one I can find anyways).

>>36532
>Eat-Man
I see the producer is Yutaka Maseba, I've been meaning to go through all of his stuff. How are you finding it so far?

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>>36533
I actually haven't watch the Animatrix before, so I can't comment on it. I almost watched it with a friend before, but we ended up watching the Golgo 13 anime instead, I think. It's on my backlog.

I don't have much experience with anthology anime overall, but I could recommend a 2-part anthology series called Twilight Q, which is obscure enough that maybe you haven't watched it before. There's only two episodes, so it doesn't have that much variety, but I did really like the second episode. Tomomi Mochizuki directed the first episode and Mamoru Oshii directed the second. Picrelated is from the second.

I'm liking Eat-Man so far. I have presently watched six episodes. I knew the first season was fairly different from the manga and not well-liked by fans, but I honestly can't see why. So far it really hasn't been much different, although all the stories are original and not adapted. And the differences I have noticed have been for the better. The Eat-Man manga can frequently be bland. I'm not saying the anime is amazing or anything, but so far, I think it's the rare exceptional case where the anime is better than the manga.

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>>36535
The Animatrix turned out really nicely, to be expected for an anthology - some were a hit, and some were a miss. Most importantly is that all were interesting enough to not be a waste of time. I thought "Kid's Story" was the best animation wise, and "Detective Story" the best art direction wise. Kid's story really needs to be watched in motion, screencaps don't function well for it. Detective case has this really cool pseudo black-and-white noir look to it, very nicely done and I'll post some images of it. Next anthology for me is "Short Peace".
>Twilight Q
Oh cool, I actually didn't have this on my list somehow. Thanks! I do have his (Oshii) other anthology submission Ani*Kuri15 already downloaded.
> I think it's the rare exceptional case where the anime is better than the manga.
You know recently I've been diving into manga versions of anime more often, and I have to say I think this situation is less rare than I would have thought before. Off the top of my head I can say Akira, GiTS, and Kino no Tabi were all far better in anime form than in Manga or LN. A key thing I notice is that each one strips away a lot of bloated arcs that don't really add anything to the actual themes or ideals of the show. I think I read Akira/GitS right after the first time I touched Nausicaa in its manga form, man what a complete disappointment that was in comparison.

I'll probably watch Eat man one of these days, it's crazy how much of Maseba I've watched without even trying to specifically watch him. Truly a producer you can't ignore. I have crazy amount of anthologies to get through first and also some Kawajiri Yoshiaki OVA's to finish (Birdy the Mighty, A Wind Named Amnesia, etc) after that. If I remember though, I'll come back and let you know what I thought of it.

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>>36536
I will be sure to download The Animatrix the next time I am somewhere with Wifi. I had never heard of Ani*Kuri15, so I've added that to my backlog and will get it at the same time. Thank you.

I'm a bit further along with Eat-Man, but I've been a bit busy, so I've only finished 8 episodes so far. I still think it's substantially better than the manga. I much prefer the protagonist's characterization compared to a rather wooden one from the manga. Well, part of that is the horrible scanlations, but even so, in the manga he didn't have a very expressive face. In the anime, he'll be stoic, but at least every now and then he'll make a goofy kind of smile or something to break up the monotony.

So far as anime vs. manga adaptations, I agree that there are numerous examples, but I would say that it's a very small percentage overall. I'd also say that GiTS is a special case since every adaptation has been significantly different from each other in tone, even Oshii's movies which do have a basis in the manga. The focus and characterizations are simply too different to really compare them fairly.

Personally, I think Masamune Shirow made a blunder in becoming a mangaka and not simply a novelist or at least light novelist. He can come up with some truly amazing ideas and concepts,, but I don't think he can showcase them very well at all. Especially when it comes to Ghost in the Shell 2.0 which is basically incomprehensible and littered with so many extraneous footnotes explaining technologies and concepts that couldn't possibly be expressed through the medium of manga, so he had to physically write them down. I think light novels would have been perfect for him because of his fantastic mecha illustrations and incredibly dense sci-fi abilities. I don't think he was very suited to manga as an art form with the particular stories that we wanted to tell. I love Ghost in the Shell, but I think it could have been expressed in a better way.

Honestly, I didn't care for Appleseed when I read it for much the same reasons. I thought the world-building was much less done and the plots uninteresting and deliberately obtuse. I saw the 1988 OVA which has a much simpler original plotline and I thought it was alright. It's just not the series for me, I don't think. Briareos was really cool, though.

What are your thoughts on Shirow and Appleseed?

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Finished both Short Peace and Appleseed. Short Peace is probably not really worth watching unless you love this kind of stuff. Its heavily 3d, so its not going to blow you away visually, but its very well done with what I'm assuming is a very small budget (probably why they used 3d). The stories were executed finely though, and the highlight of the 4 shorts was "Possessions" which is produced by the same American guy who worked on Tekkon Kinkreet. There was also "Combustible" which had this really interesting RTS camera perspective for a quarter of it, I say RTS since it reminds me of the same angle as AOE2 or Starcraft.

Next up for me is Ani*Kuri15 for anime, and Orion/Dominion for manga.


>>36537
Sorry for the wait, Shirow traumatized me a bit after GitS MMI, so I really wanted to finish Appleseed fully before commenting about it.

I'm not surprised Eat man is sounding better than the manga, when you have Maseba leading it. Like I said last post, I've watched more than half his catalogue unintentionally just from word of mouth suggestions. Midas touch on him, everything he touches turns to gold. I'm assuming you have finished it now, so what did you think, and what are you watching now (or next)?

>'d also say that GiTS is a special case since every adaptation has been significantly different from each other in tone, even Oshii's movies which do have a basis in the manga
Oshii really made GitS his own thing, I was so surprised when I read the manga for the first time and Motoko/Batou had entirely different personalities. I actually think Oshii took the greatest parts of the manga and cut off the nonsense Shirow is known for, as well as creating a more coherent story. Many of the same scenes are there, but just applied and remixed in a better fashion, which to me means they are comparable.

As for the other spin offs, I actually haven't bothered with GitS; SAC or Arise. Generally I tend to stay away from secondary adaptations, spin offs, or addons. I have heard good things about SAC, so maybe one of these days I will turn it on. Usually I tend to prefer shorter movies or =<12 episode series, while SAC is 52 episodes with both seasons lol. I'll probably get to it when I run through every Masebe production.

>What are your thoughts on Shirow
Where does one even start right? Sorry If I ramble for too long in this post ala wall of text style, if its tldr that's fine, don't worry about it. I guess I just had a lot to say about him.

The first GitS manga shocked me entirely, I never expected I was getting into some ecchi filled and comedy injected cop story. Then I got to MMI (ManMachine Interface) and I remember going through something like 200+ continuous nonstop pages of pantyshots and technobabble in one sitting. It's a rather.... interesting experience. Also after reading that, I learned our dear Shirow has a side project of crafting hentai manga, which didn't surprise me since I had now seen two orgies and at least 400+ pages of pantyshots while reading GitS. If you read GitS expecting Oshii's adaptation, your only response has to be "what the fuck did I just read? ". At least, that's how I reacted anyways.

>many extraneous footnotes explaining technologies and concepts that couldn't possibly be expressed through the medium of manga,
I will say is that I like Shirow's notes, and I totally understand why he does it. Especially in Appleseed where he uses it far more effectively to explain references and ideas the reader might not know themselves. Where it went off the rails a bit is in GitS. Even then, it was alright until you reach the monstrosity of MMI. There you have some indecipherable and frankly psychotic technobabble going on regularly, while at the bottom of the page Shirow starts ranting about the intricacies of some other scifi idea seemingly UNRELATED to whats happening on the page or being discussed. I would have less of a problem with his note making in MMI, if it actually explained anything to make his dialog comprehensible.

>made a blunder in becoming a mangaka and not simply a novelist
His choice of making manga over LN's wasn't his problem in my opinion, I think something just went really wrong in MMI and maybe GitS as a whole. Appleseed at least showed me he has an idea on how to write manga properly and in a coherent fashion. Technically there is even a pretty decent story hidden within MMI if you search through enough of the GitS diehard fanbases to figure it all out (mokoto playing 4d space chess while her pseudo-daughters undergo AI based evolution down on earth via fighting each other), but its trapped within hundreds of dialog bubbles that condense down to "hack this, oh crap I'm being hacked, put up a barrer and counter hack his hack" and so on. The weirdest thing is that despite his huge efforts to explains things and be extra detailed, I'm almost entirely sure Shirow's version of """hacking""" is not based on any real reality, nor does he ever seem to properly explain how his hacking works. It ends up coming off like a shounen battle, except with some cryptic, inane, and incoherent technobabble making everything incomprehensible.

>and Appleseed?
I though it was great to be honest, like a solid 7/10. The last volume was beginning to bore - I won't pretend otherwise, so thankfully it stopped there. I think Shirow's idea was that volume one was to show outside Olympus and introduce the city, volume two to show inside and the political ideas there, volume three to show more of the bioroids place and some outsider influence, volume 4 is dealing with foreign policy and make lots of hints that Olympus achieves its "world peace" through warfare. Lots of great ideas to chew on, just like with GitS, Shirow always has great ideas on politics/philosophy. The difference being that Appleseed isn't bogged down by technobabble nonsense, in-depth looks at his imaginary police political systems, or other time wasting bullshit that no one besides Shirow himself would care about.

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>>36538
>>36537
I wrote so much in the last post I went over the limit, I really didn't realize how much I was writing until I was finished (even the before is probably too much for a chan post). This was just a bit more depth on Appleseed/Shirow, feel free to skip over it lol, I made a tldr anyways.

The negatives I have with Appleseed is that Shirow does tend to create a lot of plots that drag on, or are simply uninteresting and stupid. Artemis being a prime example of that, I don't even know why that "character"(plot device more like) exists or is a furry either. Maybe on a second read I will catch an explanation that I previously missed, but I must have missed a lot since I don't know what treasure she had hidden in her body, why they felt it necessary for her to have it, or how she escaped to begin with. Shirow does this a lot, he tosses you in midway through an event, gives some half-assed explanation for it, and then moves on from it to never be spoken of again. Which tends to make me not care about the plot much of the time, since he doesn't seem to either care or know how connect one properly.

Its fine to have a plot that doesn't really matter, as long as there is enough other details to make it interesting. Which usually Shirow manages to do, especially his political, psychological, and philosophical ideas are all great stuff to think about. His main self sabotage comes from when he starts doing some form of standard episodic tv plots, you know his Batou/Mokoto cop routines, or Deunan/Briareos swat exercises. Frankly they aren't that interesting at all; Shirow will explain who is involved (generally loving israel subplots), explain the situation, you will watch them go over there, they kill, there are explosions, pointless characters are introduced (and subsequently throw away), pointless dialog about non-issues, and then... nothing! As I explained in the last paragraph, its like Shirow just doesn't know how to make a story or plot be involving

Note that he does this despite having options to do what hes great at (focusing on his philosophical and political themes), the bioroids were just sitting there primed for some kind of revolt or maybe a character starts creating his own and makes them basically human, lots of opportunities there and elsewhere. Mind you everything else is fine, even his main characters are great and have fantastic synergy with each other. I loved Deunan and Briareos, both of them were well developed and had nice banter. I'll be honest, I think Shirow just isn't that good at writing stories, and especially fails to bother making sure people would give a shit about whatever is happening.

TLDR; Everything else besides his story writing is fine; his art, characters, themes, world building, tones (usually), all of its pretty consistent. He just doesn't know how to write stories properly, and part of me thinks he knows it too - since these days he just sells his ideas to others or makes hentai.

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>>36538
>>36540
I feel a little bad about following such a long and detailed post when I don't have anything well-reasoned or crafted to respond with, really!

Regarding Shirow, I don't have much to add. I think we've pretty much already covered that ground. I do agree in particular with the Artemis plotline and later reappearances in Appleseed as being quite a low point. I'm glad you liked Appleseed. It honestly didn't rank very high with me. One of the major complaints that I had with the series is that it answered a lot of questions that I didn't have, but left a lot of the arcology questions that I did have unanswered. And if I'm being honest, I didn't like Deunan very much at all.

That's really all I have to say about Shirow at this point. The less said about his hentai the better. Too much grease and not enough hips. At least his sameface issues don't really suffer when it's just pinups and horse cocks.

On the Eat-Man front, I've been abnormally slow since I'm currently watching two non-anime shows that have been taking up a good amount of my anime time. I finished the first Eat-Man anime - sometimes called season one - that is very loosely associated with Eat-Man and I did really enjoy it. Plotfags wouldn't like it and I'm going to guess that's why it wasn't very well received by fans way back in the day. I have watched a few episodes of the second series, Eat-man '98 - sometimes called the second season - which is a straight adaptation of some of the manga's chapters. It's completely different from the original anime and just Eat-Man. Nowhere near as good as the weird first series. The designs are also blander and closer to the original manga. But I'll finish it since it's only 12 episodes and I might as well become a complete Eat-Man master. Of the three or four episodes I've seen, I'm a little disappointed with some of the stories they've adapted.

On the manga front, I have recently, just today, finished Tezuka's Triton of the Sea. I read it on a bit of a whim. Thus far, from Tezuka I have only read Vampires, Melmo, Black Jack, Clockwork Apple, and Dororo. Well, that's another one to the list. Not much to say about it. Short, wordy, panel heavy. Of what I've read, I'd probably say that it's only better than Melmo, which is a manga literally meant for seven year olds. Not that it's bad per se, it's just not especially good. It had some nice moments with Triton and especially his family, but it was decidedly unremarkable. I certainly wouldn't recommend it unless you were a Tezuka fanatic, but if you were, you'd have already read it, I suppose.

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Finished reading these manga Orion/Dominion/Dominion C1 Conflict/Black Magic all from Shirow. Orion is worth a read, really interesting designs and world as per Shirow excellence. I'll post some pictures from it. The other three should be ignored unless you just want to say you have read everything from Shirow (that's been translated anyways). Dominion is a very lighthearted comedy, and C1 Conflict is set in the same world, but it's not a continuation. C1 is still lighthearted comedy, just not as much so, there is some actual depth there besides jokes. Black Magic is just frankly awful, the story feels completely hacked together, and the ending was utterly limp. Read it if you need to remember what a bad manga is like.

I don't really know what to read next, until I learn Japanese Shirow is on hold since 1/4 of his catalogue is surprisingly untranslated. I'll be watching more Anthologies until I decide what to do manga wise.

>>36541
>I feel a little bad
Don't worry about it lol, I wrote too much by accident honestly. Anyone actually bothering to read all of that would be a shock to me.

I'm surprised you didn't like Deunan, she was one of the few characters I did like from his manga. Shirow seems to love his brutish female MC's (except in Black Magic), but Deunan was the only one who felt like I could almost believe in. Leona(Dominion)/Seska (Orion) were both ridiculous, Typhon(Black Magic) was a non-person, and Mokoto(GitS) was a bit too much brute to be believable(or lovable) for her story role in my opinion. Perhaps I just liked Deunan more than the others due to her dialog with Briareos, they bounced off each other so well.

>Plotfags wouldn't like it
Whats it got to offer in exchange for the loss of plot coherence? When I looked at its MAL page I totally thought it was an action shooter (it even says shounen in the genre tags), but is it actually different in some fashion?

>Too much grease
Never enough, also he might not have hips, but he does have the best torpedo tits ever. His other fetish tendencies I could do without seeing though...

How good is Black Jack btw? Its been on my read list for a while, but I never got around to it. Currently thinking about reading that, Gantz, or all of Matsumoto, Taiyou next. Although part of me wants to reread Blame/Biomega again lol.

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>>36544
I do intend to read all of Shirow's stuff at some point, but I have heard especially good things about Dominion and Orion. I have also heard that Black Magic really sucks and with evidence mounting, I'm going to guess that's accurate. But before I get into any of those, I must first clear off some others from my backlog that are more pressing. You have to actually tackle stuff from the backlog before adding more, you know?

It's been quite a while since I read Appleseed, so I'm sorry I can't give a more thorough report on Deunan. One thing that jumps to mind is that Shirow's humor - which I don't particularly care for but must endure - I thought was better executed in Motoko as compared to Deunan. It could be that that was the tipping point for me.

Don't get me wrong, much of the original Eat-Man anime is just a plain action anime. The episodes are self-contained little adventures that run the gamut between just talking and shooting. The reason why I mention plotfags is because at the end of the day, there are several questions that are left completely unanswered, certain things that are completely and unrelated unexplained, and some things that clearly don't make sense. Not that it's a very esoteric anime, but it has some trappings. I just assume that little edge of oddity is what made the fans of the manga hate it so much since the manga was a completely cut-and-dry action series. That's my guess, anyway. I don't mean to make it sound more mysterious than it really is.

Incidentally, I finished Eat-Man '98 and I have nothing whatsoever to say about it, so I won't waste your time or mine with typing up a blurb. Don't ever bother watching it.

I love Black Jack. I think it's a great series, although the quality of the story does vary as it too is an episodic case-by-case series. I like the two central characters, Black Jack and Pinoko. I think there's generally a pretty good balance of the nature of the cases, with some being happy, some being sad, some being action-oriented, some being more prosaic, some being realistic, some being fantastic. I really like it. I finally got around to reading it shortly after reading Franken Fran. Of course, Black Jack and Franken Fran are the two most popular manga about surgeons, so one kind of fell into the other. And of course, Black Jack was much more realistic than Franken Fran. If you didn't know, Tezuka was an actual doctor before fully committing to manga, and he uses the knowledge he learned there for a lot of the cases.

One minor complaint about Black Jack that I have is that the official Vertical release has the chapters out of order. Not that it really matters since the episodes are almost all self-contained and the few that aren't are ordered in such a way that they are chronological to each other, but I just seems completely arbitrary to me. It would have been nice to see them in the proper order if only to "chart" how Tezuka changed some things over the course of the serialization. It's a minor nitpick, but I do really wonder what Vertical was thinking, especially when the publication history of Black Jack is so very well documented.

I even watched the 12 original Black Jack OVAs that Tezuka didn't write himself and I thought that series was decent, although much inferior to the manga for the simple fact that it forced Black Jack into a 40 minute long case instead of a fairly short chapter. That and all the episodes had a much greater focus on action or war and there were little "human interest" cases. Also, they focused way too much on the dark, brooding side of Black Jack. In the manga, Black Jack can be a bit dorky and it really does add something to the character, especially since it's in small doses unlike Shirow's zaniness.

I'm also shocked someone as well-read in manga hasn't read Gantz. For a long time, that was "babby's first manga." God only knows how many people got into manga just to follow Gantz. I love Gantz as much as I hate Gantz. It's a complex relationship. Unfortunately, if you aren't an edgy teen, you have already missed the ideal time to ingest the manga. If you do decide to read it, I think you'll find that it's an extremely quick read. There is nothing to speed read. It was meant to be sped read. Perhaps it was sped written. It was certainly sped "drawn" in parts.

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I finished Gantz(manga) today, as well as three anime anthologies called Ani kuri 15, The Cockpit, and Ai Monogatari. Ani Kuri 15 was 15 one minute shorts featuring some giants in the industry such as Oshii, Shinkai, Satoshi Kon, Arias, etc. Its only 15 minutes long obviously, but its fantastic how much is packed into such a short time. Highly recommend watching it. The Cockpit was three shorts based on a manga made by the Captain Harlock author, if you like that artstyle then check it for sure. Some very well detailed shots and animation, however the stories themselves were a bit mediocre if I am to be honest. Ai Monogatari was 9 different romantic love stories roughly 9 minutes each, all good stories, but I think the "Betrayal in the City" short was my favourite. This was directed by Tomomi Mochizuki who also worked on Umi ga Kikoeru (The Ocean Waves), which I liked as well.
Gantz was rather disappointingly boring, too many stupid battle scenes, and I think it just stopped caring around volume 20 or so. The art ranged from ok to completely horrific when I was forced to see CGI in Manga. I really only read it due to suggestions from other "Blame!" fans, but its not even close to what Blame achieved.

Next on my anthology list is "Amazing Nuts", which will be followed by "Twilight Q".
For manga I'll be reading Black Jack.

>>36545
Yea I know what you mean about the backlog, no matter how much I chip away at it, it only ever seems to grow in size since I keep adding to it continuously. These days I don't even like looking at it, list is so long that it almost stresses me out peaking at it. Moving through directors or producers makes things much easier, so long as they aren't the types to take any job they can

> I thought was better executed in Motoko
Really? I thought Motoko's brute personalty was really misplaced for her character and role in the world. The way she acts out just seemed bizarre to me since she's entirely cyborg, the leader of an elite group of pseudo mercenaries, and having her body owned by the government. It additionally seemed to contradict her later more serious introspective side. I'm not saying she should be some stoic emotionless doll, but just that she doesn't flow well as a character imo. Deunan I felt was far more consistent in her brutish personality, she also had Briareos to guide her to more mature outlooks so she could function in the strict environments of government regulation. From start to finish she was always a bit simplistic, a bit rude, a bit hot headed, and a bit kind in an innocent way. You probably won't reread Appleseed since you didn't like it much, but I really do think both her and Briareos were great characters.

Also if you don't like Shirow's humor then don't read Dominion, its entirely comedy - especially the original. Most of it focuses on the Shirow classic brutish MC within a police force, except its like an over the top parody almost. Both versions managed to get some chuckles out of me, but I wouldn't really say it was that great.

>I'm also shocked someone as well-read in manga hasn't read Gantz
Well I'm not thaaaaat well read in manga, I know far more anime than manga if I am to be honest. That and I either tend to stick within niches for long periods of time, or simply zig zag around haphazardly with no real clear goal in mind - leading me to skip many "must reads" or classics. Especially when the must reads tend to not really be as such; for instance Berserk being the height of manga popularity, yet it only has a single good arc (I think after the golden age arc the story slips into being a very boring shounen battle series).

But speaking of Gantz I do agree about the "speed drawing" complaint, seeing 3d cgi in manga is really sad stuff. Then seeing him admit to tracing 3d models made it even worse. Also I kind of knew it was suppose to be for teenagers, but man that was very shounenish overall. Its like halfway through the author just needed to pad out the story for more money, and making battle scenes was his best idea. Even the battle scenes were stupid, I remember the one vs the rock vampire in particular being awful. I actually skipped to the end of that fight to see how it is decided - since I was so tired of how stupid the fights were getting at that point, and it was literally just Kaze ripping the rock vampire's arms off after being caught in a hold. Yet in the beginning of the fight he was suppose to be outmatched in speed and strength. It's utterly stupid, and a waste of my time. Don't forget great writing like adding revive mechanics, so previously bold or unexpected deaths turn out to not even be real. There is nothing I hate more than fake deaths, reviving always only serves to cheapens stories in my opinion.

It's a shame Gantz turned out the way it did, because the world of Gantz is actually pretty cool, and his monster designs were great (I have to admit a bit hit or miss sometimes). Also it seemed like the author wanted to take the story in a more mature and almost philosophical path later on in the story, but I can't help think it was a bit late to do that. Part of me thinks he was just stuck writing more Gantz for money, so he started injecting separate ideas he had on his mind into it to keep himself motivated. I suppose the main issue with Gantz is that it just went on for too long, he should have just finished it up in 20-25 volumes instead of going to 37.

>One minor complaint about Black Jack that I have is that the official Vertical release has the chapters out of order.
I'll be reading Black Jack next, so I'll look up a reading order to correct that. I'll let you know what I think of it when I'm finished.

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>>36532
I won't linger too long on Gantz since you didn't like it and there's really nothing deeper to dig into. The whole series runs off of battle scenes, so that right there is a limitation if you don't like them. I do agree that the series went on too long or at least I should say that I think the final arc was overbearingly long and dull compared to the previous ones. And yet somehow the final conclusion was very rushed and we pretty much only got a few pages on the beach to tie things up. The less said about the reveal behind what Gantz is exactly the better. What a blunder that was.

If I'm being honest, "too many stupid battle scenes" would be my major complaint about Blame! which is a series that I like, but clearly don't like as much as real fans of the manga. I loved the backgrounds of course. The architecture is what makes the manga worth reading. But I didn't especially care for the plot, such as it was presented. And, you know, the whole thing is one long action sequence with brief periods of respite and occasionally a glimpse of plot.

I'll admit that I've only read Blame! and Abara, but I don't think Nihei is the mangaka for me. I do like the cryptic nature of his plots and the backgrounds really are amazing, but at the end of the day, I really don't feel anything afterwards. I think it's for the same reason that I don't care for Otomo either. The action scenes mean nothing to me and the action scenes are the majority of the work; moreso with Nihei than Otomo, of course.

So far as classics and "must reads" go, I'm more sympathetic to the idea of manga canons. I think they can serve as a good starting place for new readers or watchers and even if you and I are firmly entrenched in anime/manga culture, everyone has to start as a beginner at some point. I agree if someone is insufferable about them it's tedious, but I'd say that's the fault of the person more than the concept. And people do also have to take them in a particular context. Gantz, for example, I would classify as a manga that I think everyone out to try out, not because Gantz is especially good, but because of the particular history that Gantz has in the history of manga in the West. You couldn't be interested in manga in the 2000's without having some opinion on Gantz, whether you read it or not. Everyone talked about it. I think it's good to have certain series that when you talk to "an anime fan" that you have a kind of common ground.

It's not the same as it used to be two decades ago. Now there are so many options when it comes to anime and manga, even in the West. You can talk with someone that has a decent resume of anime and manga and even then they haven't read what used to be considered THE anime or manga. Well, I think it's a little bit of a shame when everyone crawls down such tunnels of specialization. But then again, most people don't really think one way or another and just follow what's seasonal, regardless of what it is. That's nothing new. That's how it's always is. And in recent times, there has been such an inane tribalism about the four demographics: shounen, seinen, shoujo, and josei, that a lot of manga discussion is hardly even about manga anymore.

And as regarding the Black Jack reading order, I suppose I can't blame Vertical overmuch, because they simply followed the order that Tezuka himself gave for a Japanese deluxe edition. It's just a little odd to me. If you have any difficulty with reading them in the chronological order, I wouldn't worry about. It's just a very minor nitpick with me and has no bearing whatsoever on the "story." And since Tezuka was a honed mangaka by that point, his style doesn't shift like a lot of mangaka's do when they're writing something long. Especially in Tezuka's case where he'll reuse certain "characters" throughout the decades. I hope you enjoy Black Jack!

Last night, I watched a very whimsical one episode OVA called Orurorane the Cat Player, courtesy of Orphan Fansubs, who if you didn't know, are excellent at random old, obscure OVAs like this one. It's the kind of program that if I had a VHS when I was a kid, I would have re-watched constantly, especially when it was wintertime. It doesn't have any great pretensions, it's simply a joyous short story about an old man who teaches a young man to "play" cats like instruments. It has two major songs with great visuals to accompany them. I'd suggest it to you sometime when you need a little pick-me-up.

Later, I'll post about the manga I've read recently. To tell you the truth, I can't easily upload multiple images at once, so I'm obliged to stretch out over multiple posts when I have some to talk about.

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I've read three short manga recently: Ratakia no Majo by Kasabe Tetsu, Travel by Yokoyama Yuuichi, and Otokonoko Doushi Renai Chuu byFumi Fumiko (Art), Ooshima Kaoru (Story). All three were one-volume affairs and I'm feeling the urge to read something longer next. You know, a full-fledged serialization.

Ratakia no Majo is a series of one-shots that are all generally good, but some are better than others. The title story, about a boy and a witch, is especially good. I think I had actually read one of the stories, "TUDM" randomly on /a/ before. That's about two soldiers, one of whom is a robot, and how they get along during warfare. I don't know the mangaka, but all the stories have a certain kind of feeling to them. Not quite comedy, but not quite drama, just a deadpan oddness. I really liked it.

Travel isn't really much of a manga, per se. There is no dialogue and it's just three guys on a train ride. It really reads more like a sketch book of experiments with motion. I liked it, but there's really nothing to talk about. The art style is quite striking and distinctive. I think as a study of specific everyday motions that people make, it's quite neat. I particularly liked how the mangaka drew raindrops on windows. That's something you see all the time in life, but it's rarely present in art.

Otokonoko Doushi Renaichuu is written by a real former gay and crossdresser JAV star and it's a combination story about how they got into the business, why they're a girlyboy, and also their current relationship with another real life former crossdressing JAV star. The art is appropriately cutesy. There's also a several page essay at the end by the writer and protagonist that casts more light on their relationship that wasn't expressed in manga form. The relationship is interesting and topsy-turvy like all real relationships are. It was finished in 2017. I wonder if they're still together. Things were rocky.

Ratakia no Majo is easy to recommend to anyone who likes one-shots. Travel is harder to recommend because a lot of people don't like experiment stuff. Otokonoko Doushi Renaichuu you can really only recommend to people already interested in that particular niche topic.

The next manga I read will be longer. On the anime front, last night I started Key the Metal Idol and so far I'm loving it.

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I finished up another three anthologies, Twilight Q, Digital Juice, and Amazing Nutz. I still have more anthologies left, starting to get more and more obscure though.
Twilight Q is a two episode anthology with Oshii and Tomomi Mochizuki as directors. Oshii's contribution was fantastic, really cool story about an investigator tracking a father/daughter, only to find out the father is an investigator himself. It gets really surreal, and for a single episode has to be one of the best stories I've seen. Tomomi Mochizuki's contribution was nice as well, but I think he really needed a bit more time to explain a few more ideas he had. Still good as well.
Digital Juice was.... pretty bad honestly. You should just watch the single short called "Moonlit Night" instead, link here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RStIc5UNj8. I did enjoy KEIKAKU's shots, but it was mostly just a trailer for something that never came out. "Chicken's Insurance" and "Table and Fisherman"were somewhat interesting, but only for people like myself who are fine with shitty CGI if the idea is kind of interesting.
Amazing Nutz is split between two ghastly shorts and two impressive shorts, all of which feature a musical track as the main interest. Global Astroliner Gou is a short that seemed to take some Gorillaz music video stylistic influence, turned out great. Kung-Fu Love was a bit nonsensical, but artstyle wise is pretty good although not very special.

Still reading Black Jack, long series.

>>36547
>I won't linger too long on Gantz since you didn't like it
I don't mind talking about stuff I don't like, I might always be wrong or at least gain a different perceptive on it anyways. Plus I didn't really dislike Gantz, more like I just found it "whatever". In the beginning I actually rather enjoyed it, and then somewhere along the line the endless battle scenes, reviving, and plot holes just got tiresome. I mean what the hell was the point of the vampires at all? Don't forgot the two vampires who turned into hunters themselves because Gantz teleported them, another pointless event involving the vampires. Honestly the aliens weren't that bad, and the God-like alien at the end was even kind of cool I won't lie, but everything to do with the vampires was just flat out unnecessary and idiotic in my opinion.

>"too many stupid battle scenes"my major complaint about Blame!
I love Blame to death, but even I call it a flawed masterpiece. However, I find it far more tolerable than something like Gantz due to a few things, firstly that the art is so wonderful and stylish (unlike Gantz), secondly that there are no power ups or other ridiculous shounen ideas (unlike Gantz), thirdly you don't have commentators or cringe worthy dialog during fights (unlike Gantz). Blame to me is just an experience, its just so desolate and isolating while reading it. You don't know whats going on, and there is no attempt to ease you into it. You are just thrown in and left to digest the world shown to you, its pure atmosphere and feeling, nothing else. That being said, yeah sometimes the battle scenes get old, and you just wish he would go back to walking around or talking to survivors. I will say that I am heavily biased to series with great art, I will put up with a lot if I find it interesting to look at. Yet I think that's part of Blame's strength, it truly shows rather than tells, using the imagery of manga to its fullest rather than just making a book with pictures.
Speaking of Nihei, you should totally read Biomega. I won't say the plot is very coherent after the first half, and its just kind of rule of cool for the first half anyways; but holy shit it looks so nice. Abara looked pretty great too, he really went all out on his black inking on that; but I think Biomega just outdoes all his other works, art wise anyways. Noise was another great one, very similar to the original Blame style, which makes sense since its a tie in. Love his art, its unbelievably cool. Shame he is changing it up to his new two tone white/grey style in Aposimz, there was already signs of it in KoS, but man its so different now.
Nihei really does have a loyal following though, even his extremely obscure oneshots are translated . Compared to Shirow, who despite being the creator of GitS has entire manga left with no attempts of translation, its crazy.

> If you have any difficulty with reading them in the chronological order, I wouldn't worry about.
Yea I gave up trying to look for the chronological order, I don't think it would matter much since as you mentioned before, its entirely episodic. So far I am roughly halfway through the series, its rather a bit boring honestly. Not bad by any means, but the vast majority of it is characters talking about whatever situation is happening that chapter. Nearly every panel is just a face with a text bubble, so I have to wonder why it is even in manga format at all. I guess it hearkens back to the old comic book days where short stories were told like that. I guess my problem with it is that the plot is so limited due to being only 20 pages each, and stylistically its so consistently boring. Yeah I get some light laughs here or there, some light feelings here or there, but that's it. I wish that there was something more to chew on, either thematically or artistically.

>I'm more sympathetic to the idea of manga canons.
>Well, I think it's a little bit of a shame when everyone crawls down such tunnels of specialization.
I get what you mean, there is probably some proper term for this but older generations talk about "generational culture". Like a shared culture or knowledge of things they could all talk about and share with each other. On one hand I can agree with the sentiment, on the other hand I can say that watching/reading giants like the big 3 has done nothing for me. I don't really have an interest in those kinds of series, nor will I ever really discuss them at all, and if that's all anime/manga had to offer I simply wouldn't watch or read it to begin with. Then again I was never into "culture" at all. No matter my interest I never felt the need to research about the author's life or what people who read/watch something act/think like. I can give you a massive list of metal bands, but I would never grow out my hair, wear a jean jacket, or anything else to do with it. Just the same as I don't enjoy pretending to be a little Japanese school girl, buying merch, posting smuganimegirl.jpg, or the rest of the nonsense anime fans tend to do.
Generally I think the best people to talk to just enjoy the medium, and participate in as little of the group culture as possible. Usually they are just focusing on whatever interest they have themselves and not focusing on what others like. Even anime/manga itself is a niche thing compared to live action (although these days Anime seems to be ever increasingly popular).
I actually think the gift of the internet is that you can always find someone who knows and loves the same thing you do. You can specialize all you want, and there is always someone there to have a conversation about it with. Imagine being stuck talking to a bunch of mecha loving anime fans, but you hated mecha altogether. Eventually you would crack and just watch some to participate in conversation, but you don't even like mecha anime anyways.

>And in recent times, there has been such an inane tribalism about the four demographics: shounen, seinen, shoujo, and josei,
God it does get old listening to them. I had an argument not too long ago because I said Shoujo and Shounen is for children from 18 and below, which greatly offended the fanboys of those genres, I can't comprehend why that is because THAT'S WHAT THE GENRES LITERALLY MEAN. I don't even get fanboyism for a genre, its totally illogical to attach emotions to a collection of wildly different films and stories. One of these fanboys even told me that each and every single shoujo had mature themes and topics, refusing to accept even a single one was in any form childish at all.
The only thing worse has to be the studio wars, just as dumb as console wars and a total waste of time.

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>>36549
I'm glad that you enjoyed Twilight Q. It's a shame that only two episodes were made, considering the weight of the second episode. Even the first episode wasn't bad. The one major complaint that I have about the first episode is that it clearly has more story than the time allows, so all parts of the narrative suffer from not getting enough time to fully prosper. If it had had a proper run of 6+ episodes, I bet it would be a retro standard. But alas, it's rightfully obscure.

I finished the anime I was working on - Key the Metal Idol. I didn't expect the final two episodes to be film-length, so I took a little longer than expected. I really, really liked it for the first half and I still liked it in the second half, but it was much weaker than what the beginning promised. Still good, and I'd recommend it to people, but I'm not going to ignore the drop in the quality of the story, although the animation stayed very consistent throughout.

The plot is easy to summarize from the perspective we have in episode one. A robot girl lives with her grandfather in the countryside until he dies and his dying words outline how she can become human: she'll become human if she gets 30,000 friends. So, she tries to do just that. Of course the plot gets a little complicated with a certain idol singer and a war robot manufacturer entering the plot.

I will say that the plot was pretty consistent considering everything that happens and really the only missed plotline that I seriously wondered about was a certain blue orb motif that appeared prominently in the OP and with the early scenes of a certain major supporting character, but never amounted to anything. I am convinced that in one iteration of the story, these blue orbs served some story purpose, but got written out for one reason or another. Not that that's a bad thing and that sort of thing happens all the time, but it really sticks out to me. Also something that sticks out to me is the hilarious obvious infodump excuse that the penultimate episode was. Clearly they needed to catch the audience up quick for the finale movie, and I'm not so sure if I'm satisfied with how vague the series was up to then only to be generally infodumped all at once. Well, there are some pretty serious spoilers in Episode 14 that make it hard to talk about the series, so I'll let it drop.

I liked Key the Metal Idol and honestly I'm not sure why it's such an obscure series nowadays. I don't see it even bandied about much in lists of 90's OVAs. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of Lain, although they're completely and utterly different series. One thing that made me laugh a bit from the DVD extras was an interview with the director when the series was only on the first episode or so and he talks about how novel Key's - the protagonist - was in anime because nobody had an emotionally blank female lead. That interview was from 1994 and it aged poorly the very next year.

Also, I love the intro. I think it's a great OP.

So far as Gantz goes, I'm not surprised you mentioned the vampires. Everyone always mentions the vampires. I feel you. I have no idea where that plotline was supposed to be, but it was absolutely cut. Still to this day nobody knows what was their point. And we likely never will. Well, the vampires happened at a pretty transitory stage in Gantz, shortly after a big cast change and they did at the time tie into the Izumi plotline pretty well. Incidentally, I loved the psychics.

Biomega is on my list. Someday soon I'll read it. I was fairly set to go through all his works quickly, but my experience with them cooled that enthusiasm. But I still will read all of his stuff soon. You know, the first series I read of his was Abara and I didn't think much of it, but I said to myself "This is clearly from an inexperienced mangaka who isn't sure about his footing yet," and then I read Blame! and read about it shortly afterwards and I was absolutely shocked that he wrote Abara after Blame! I guess at that time I was thinking more about plotting than anything else.

I'd assume the major difference between scanlations of Shirow and Nihei would be time. The older something is, the harder it is to get, especially when he started out with self-publishing. Compound that only producing art books and porn for the past twenty years and your average weeb scanlator of the modern age probably only knows of Shirow because of Stand Alone Complex. The earthquake did no favors.

Sorry you're not liking Black Jack too well. I lot of people nowadays aren't huge Tezuka fans because he was fairly firmly stuck in the "comic strip" style of paneling, with dense numerous panels. Well, what can you do? He wrote Black Jack was he was a mangaka for already twenty years, and it's hard to change your ways. There's a reason most manga rec's only begin in the 70's. But then again, a lot of people will even complain about someone like Go Nagai or Umezu Kazuo.

I can understand not liking endless pages of text. It's not the easiest thing to marathon.

Kandagawa Jet Girls has been alright, some tits here and there and the dub is pretty good. The art could be better but it works, the story makes the races sound awesome but they don't translate well to action scenes. It's a little too easy to see the plot coming, like the surprise final shot shit is tired. Still worth the money, I'm enjoying it.

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>>36532
Currently i'm watching psychopass for the first time. pleasantly surprised. This is a good anime with lots of suspense and a pretty indepth story with a nice anti-establishment message.

found vol. 1-3 of the FLCL light novel, might give that a read

I just downloaded the Gunsmith Cats manga, and I'm not watching anything right now although I am gonna go see the second Macross Frontier movie next Thursday.

>>36841
I really enjoyed it

>>36916
Gunsmith Cats is really, really good. I actually somehow own the entire run, Burst and the cool limited Zippo lighter they released. Hope you get as much out of it as I did!

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I'm reading a lot of things.

Dead dead demons dededede destruction, Ruri, and Chain Saw Man

I'm watching Rosen maiden for the first time also

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>>36924
I like your picture daearu!
Do you have another one daeruka?

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>>36926
desu

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re-watching Gokicha and going through Rorikura Clutch again. RIP Ako.

>>36941
This looks hella homo/

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>>36946
nah, not at all. Totally joshi, with western puro references. Totally legit.
manga died way too soon.

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What's with russians in anime?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtAqmVBbDX0
Black Lagoon, Jormungand etc.

>>36987
>Americans
Put together sharp and strong, sometimes dicks, with military background
>Russians
Smooth paced and skilled but dark horses and in criminal rings or badass

Russians are gangster pricks IRL and Japan being so close has a long history with them. It literature and when they meet Russians it's about their smooth toughness.

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>>36988
What do you mean by "smooth toughness"?

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Gundam The Witch from Mercury Prologue is now on Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGW2JRxWUU

Bonus: https://yande.re/pool/show/98151

Watching BASTARD & SPRIGGAN

I'm trying to read the Toaru LNs. I haven't made a lot of progress though.

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CYBERPUNK

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Summer Time Render

Gundam: The Witch from Mercury

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Area 88

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Christmas Specials
with KFC

>>37392
Code
Geass
Christmas
Special

Witch of Mercury

Komi can't communicate

Was watching chainsaw man and pretty thoroughly enjoyed it, so I guess nothing now. I haven't red anything in a decade.

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Trigun Stampede

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Which one do I watch first?
Oshi No Ko (must watch)
Yuri Is My Job!
I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World
My Love Story with Yamada-Kun at LV999
Otaku Elf
The Dangers in My Heart
My Home Hero
Magical Girl Destroyer
Mashle: Magic and Muscles
Dead Mount Death Play
Kizuna No Allele
Heavenly Delusion
Skip and Loafer
Insomniacs After School
Hell's Paradise
My One-Hit Kill Sister
The Legendary Hero is Dead!
KamiKatsu

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Umamusume Pretty Derby: ROAD TO THE TOP

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Watching Street Fighter II movie in jap. I only ever watched the english audio version before...

Chained Soldier (manga) is great. Uncensored, great story and art

VOTOMS (show) is great but they censor the later episodes, which of course also take a nosedive in quality because niggers breathe air

Book of Bantorra is heavily censored but the story was really great. Since it's only one season it's worth a watch honestly, brought me to tears once or twice, also NIGGER