Spring 2014 Anime Season

Falcom wrote:

SAO is a pseudo harem as well as a teenage drama, all in the form of an anime which tries to portrays itself as an action anime...

So, basically, every light novel-based anime for the last 5+ years.

Taiyz wrote:

Falcom wrote:

SAO is a pseudo harem as well as a teenage drama, all in the form of an anime which tries to portrays itself as an action anime...

So, basically, every light novel-based anime for the last 5+ years.

Nailed it.

It makes sense. You'd figure that light novels as a concept are designed for teenagers, people with short attention spans who may have outgrown comics. Definitely explains why they tend to have similar themes.

Watch it anyways, I'd like to hear your opinion on it and join our Legion.

I just watched the last episode of it for that Dio, I mean Koyasu screeching voice.

Falcom wrote:

Watch it anyways, I'd like to hear your opinion on it and join our Legion.

Heh, I remember having fun watching harem genre. Now it annoyed me.
Maybe because I see potential like Infinite Stratos as mecha oriented show but it become harem with a bit of mecha.
Shame because the mecha design looks cool.

First few episodes of SAO were interesting. It had a lot of potentials.

Then, it became a never ending train-wreck. I watched every episode...

First half of S1 was good. Second half of S1 was... uh... well, "okay".
Season 2? TENTACLES! WTFBBQAMISEEING?

I liked SAO. I did enjoy the first half more, though.

IMO two words to sum up the entire series: wasted potential.

The first half had the whole death concept handled pretty well but it eventually got sidelined for inane stuff.

Oh and in the first 12 episodes, two years go by. The time jumps can be ridiculous. But it does have pretty awesome fight scenes with the added bonus of beautiful animation and Kirito dual wielding.

Well, since somebody brought up SAO we may as well use this as a "what have you watched" thread.

I started watching Haganai, dubbed. It's pretty great, I didn't realize I was in the mood for a comedy. I like the protagonist and I can't stand the female leads, which I think is supposed to be the point. I'm definitely a fan of the "straight man" characters in Japanese comedy. My only complaint about the dub's modern, and very English lingo, is that they use the term "fail" (only once thus far, but the book publisher uses it as a name of one of their releases, "Haganai now with 50% more fail") otherwise it's kind of appreciated because a lot of dubs tend to lose the cattiness of characters' tone when translated to English if the language itself is not appropriately rude.

If anybody doesn't understand what I'm talking about, run a search for Haganai on FUNi's channel and check out some of the dub clips.

Wait you actually enjoy watching dubs?


...you're alright in my book, Taiyz. When a dub is done well, I enjoy them too. The original Japanese is great, but with a good dub it frees my eyes from being locked on the bottom edge of the screen and I can pay better attention to the visuals.

It all depends on whether I can stand the voices though. Old ADV stuff I watch subbed on principle. Old Central Park Media stuff was good to average back in the day (I <3 their Slayers dub) and Most dubs from FUNi these days I find watchable.

Granted, in high school I had a friend so blind he had to pause at every subtitle to read them so I specifically bought only dubbed VHSes at that time, so I kind of got used to dubbed because of that.

Most people that turn up their nose at the mere mention of dubbed anime I think heard one terrible dub and then simply never bothered with it again.

Tenshi, you seriously didn't know? I think I'm pretty well known for being a fan of English dubs (though also critical of them.)

I think the main reason being, back in high school when Naruto and Bleach were in, I stumbled across a random anime store and got into Get Backers (ADV) and Spiral (FUNimation,) both of which had pretty good dubs. Stuff that stood out from the typical Ocean Studios fare that was on TV all the time (Inu-Yasha, Gundam, DBZ pre-FUNi, Death Note...That's kind of all we had in Canada for a long time.) Nothing outstanding, but they definitely got my attention and got me interested in the companies licensing anime rather than purely pirating everything. Couldn't tell you what the first Geneon series I saw was.


Obviously not every dub is perfect, but it's seriously depressing to hear people make the same tired arguments when it comes to subs, basing their opinions off of cash-in dubs in the 90s made to sell toys to children.

It's this idea that what they watched first is inherently correct. Lots of people claim "oh but FUNimation changed all this," but unless you know the goddamn language, how do you know that the fansubber didn't f*** up?

You have to evaluate something on its own merits if you aren't able to answers questions like that yourself. Unfortunately in a lot of cases, people don't really care what they're hearing in Japanese because they're reading the subtitles, when in English they focus on the acting more and become more critical of HOW the words are said, just just what those words are. Annoyingly, anime fans love to bitch about annoying high-pitched girls are in English dubs, but never seem to bring up the ones in Japanese. Strange, that.

Plus there are some things that just work better in English. Haganai I think is one of those things; if I were watching it in Japanese it'd probably just be the usual parade of tsundere-centric actresses that I've heard playing the same role a hundred times, where-as the dub has some serious bite to it (seriously I'd recommend checking out some clips. It's adapted more heavily than other shows, but I think it's for good reason.) All that added to the point I made before (about Japanese tone versus the versatility of English slang) makes for a great dub, not to mention the actors themselves doing a fantastic job (I really want to hear more of Jerry Jewell.)

Tokko is another odd thing I like to bring up from time to time. That was a seriously monotonous show, but I watched it and felt compelled to buy the DVDs for whatever reason. They added a lot of swearing in the dub, which I think captured the attitudes of the characters more realistically than the original Japanese audio, mostly because it's a situation where fucking demons are lopping peoples' heads off left and right. It was also a show that seemed like it was trying to be American in style, but they used Japanese stereotypes instead, so there was this police chief guy who acted like a yakuza...In the dub he acted like your typical over the top hardass officer that they were trying to do originally. Things like that make a lot of sense, and make a big difference.

Obviously there are some other cases like Tokko's, Baccano! being a great example, where Americanization is very beneficial. In some cases, however, you kind of need to keep things as Japanese as possible, like with something like Sgt. Frog, the dub completely rewrote any verbal jokes (anything that wasn't connected to what's on-screen) because there were so many cultural references and word puns that the Japanese love so much. I honestly didn't see the point of the localization at that point, I guess FUNi was hoping for another hit like Shin-chan.


Anyway, yes, I basically watch anything I decide to purchase, dubbed. Generally anything after 2000 is going to be decent, if not great.

*Sees Haganai*

YOZORA BEST GIRL.

DylDawg wrote:

YOZORA BEST GIRL.

The golden truth.

DylDawg wrote:

*Sees Haganai*

YOZORA BEST GIRL.

Isn't she enjoy insulting everyone other than Kodaka? I really can't stand her.

Yeah episode 3 did a lot to make you empathize with the two female leads, but it also kind of puts Sena out of the running IMO. I mean Yozora gets screentime all by herself in the OP too, it seems kind of unfair to make this a harem show (then again most harem shows have the one true female lead, and it's more common than not that she has a secret past interaction with the protagonist.)

Yukimura is pretty awesome, and yes I'm already aware that he's not a trap.

Yozora development and semi backstory shall be shown within the next few eps, Dogue pretty much explained everything that has to be said. Her personality is explained in the LNs with her past when

Spoiler:

Yozora is best.

That's great but I obviously didn't read anything he said because I'm avoiding spoilers as best I can.

The only thing good in Haganai is Sena fanservice scenes, the rest is Maria.

The animation too. Pretty clear and actually sharp looking colors. ...And don't forget Kate. And I kinda agree with Maria.

I don't like Sena, but so far we also have little background info from her so I can't judge yet.

Without spoiling anything, and pretty much ruin the thread with black patches, Yozora's personality has a justifiable reason why she turned out that way.

It's pretty apparent that there's gonna be a backstory dump, but for somebody who hates bullying her attitude toward Sena is generally unwarranted.

AHAHAHAHA No Game, No Life keeps parodying all the things I love. HOW DO THEY KNOW!?

[spoilerbox][/spoilerbox]

Quote :

Fairy Tail would be kind of interesting if you replaced Lucy with Elfen Lied Lucy.

So I've caught up with Nanana's Buried Treasure.

It's like Xiaolin Showdown with a To Aru Majutsuno Index vibe.

Nanana's damn cute though.