Winter Anime 2016 Season

not sure whether it should be 2015 or 2016, so i just put what anichart says

http://anichart.net/winter

anime forum is going realllly slow but ill just make a thread for tradition purpose.

Shows I'll probably watch:

Gifting (Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo!) - The LN is absurdly funny and random. It's not exactly a harem/romcom story as the promo picture might suggest; you can't exactly have romcom/haremshit when you're too busy playing mom to a bunch of misfits consisting of a dumb and narcissistic goddess, a loli who explodes and only explodes stuff, and a masochistic knight who gets off on tanking attacks. This is gonna be fun, especially since blogger DMCA'ed the fan translator recently.

Grimgar - And here's our despair dose of the season, a rather realistic spin of the fantasy otherworldly RPG stuff without all the cheat MC shenanigan.

Gate S2 - duh.

Ajin - well the manga is enjoyable. It's like Tokyo Ghoul, but with less shounen.

Active Raid - seems like a promising original animation. It feels so oldschool with the music, and it's basically an animated Tokusatsu. The characters are also ...flavorful, and that bit about cancelling an operation because an anime company is in tight deadline stuff is priceless. This randomness and "chill, this anime is not tacking itself seriously" vibe it gives out feels like Samurai Flamenco once again, and I'm liking it. Taiyz, watch it with me pls.

EDIT: so tosh/Saeki Shun is the original character designer for this, no wonder it feels familiar somehow.


Boku Dake ga Inai Machi - because time travel.


Show(s) I'll probably drop:

Musaigen no Phantom World - it's just so....KyoAni. And fanservice. Really man? Self boobgrope to empower yourself?

Sekko Boys is a true masterpiece.

^holy shit wtf am i watching oh my god. yes. masterpiece. so majestic.


Finished watching Boku Dake ga Inai Machi 1 just now, and the tone it sets is really great. I'm going to do something I'm going to really regret later and read the manga now. Shit I hate myself.

This season appears to have a couple of interesting Anime. Let's hope that they don't sink.

okay f*** this shit

ANIME STUDIO, PLEASE FIX BOKU DAKE GA INAI MACHI'S ENDING, SERIOUSLY.

EDIT: oh the manga hasn't ended yet, BUT GODDAMMIT THE LATEST CHAPTER'S LAST SPREAD OH MY GOD WHY MANGAKA THIS IS

Spoiler:

ugh my heart cant take this, this is why i love gary stu mcs instead. brb reading all those alt world summoned/reincarnated omnipotent and omniscient mcs to regain my spirits

IT COUNTS BECAUSE DUB IS NEW

So Seven Deadly Sins is on Netflix, why is there NO buzz for this series? I feel like you guys might've mentioned it at some point, and I mean it got advertising for the manga, in Japan, and Siliconera's covered a game about it a few times, but I've heard nothing about it anywhere, and here in particular I think this is like, tailor made for some of you guys. I think this show is totally up Tenshi and Catmandhu's alleys, because it's got that Slayers-y fantasy feel to it, but every major character is basically unto a god in terms of Shounen Fight Power(tm).

I'm just gonna quote a Skype chat because I'm too lazy to write more currently, spoilers for the first three episodes,

Quote :

[4:04:31 PM] Taiyz: So The Seven Deadly Sins is either one of the best anime ever, or it's really pushing its luck
[4:04:50 PM] Taiyz: The basic premise is EVERY MAJOR CHARACTER IS PRACTICALLY A GOD in terms of shounen fight power
[4:04:58 PM] Taiyz: it's like One Punch MEN
[4:05:08 PM] Taiyz: so battles are like WHOSE OPNESS IS MORE OP
[4:05:22 PM] Taiyz: The first meeting with the protagonist's rival,
[4:05:39 PM] Taiyz: the rival asks a soldier for the heading and direction of the town the protagonist was seen in
[4:05:44 PM] Taiyz: he's like "Yo can I borrow a spear dude"
[4:05:50 PM] Taiyz: he magicks the spear, hoofs it
[4:06:10 PM] Taiyz: I don't know if the magic caused it to home in on the protagonist, or if his plan was to nuke the town (rival would do either, really)
[4:06:22 PM] Taiyz: but the protagonist catches the spear, (this is like 7.3km away BTW)
[4:06:29 PM] Taiyz: just by sensing it incoming
[4:06:54 PM] Taiyz: the spear carries him through the town, crumbling several buildings and causing a crater below a cliff before he can stop its momentum
[4:07:36 PM] Taiyz: then he hoofs it back at the "mysterious enemy" and the spear flies back 7.3km and cuts the rival's cheek, piercing his fucking throne thing and shattering the castle tower behind it
[4:08:17 PM] Taiyz: Also the first guy to show up in the show period, a midboss jobber guy, fells an entire forest on top of a mountain with a single sword swipe
[4:08:40 PM] Taiyz: the protagonist's first attack in the show causes Fist of the North Star-like head mutations to occur and it wasn't even a fatal blow, just one to bruise
[4:09:09 PM] Taiyz: The protagonist is also like a womanizing kleptomaniac
[4:09:25 PM] Taiyz: like three episodes he gropes the princess/female lead and she's like "oh okay"
[4:09:37 PM] Taiyz: he's like the biggest unintentional pimp in anime history
[4:09:45 PM] Taiyz: like, they're walking through a spooky forest
[4:09:58 PM] Taiyz: she goes OH NO I THINK THERE'S SOMETHING BEHIND ME because she felt something
[4:10:13 PM] Taiyz: Meliodas says "Nah, it's just me" (word for word) as he is grabbing HANDFULS OF ASS
[4:10:18 PM] Taiyz: and she's like "Oh, whew!"
[4:10:31 PM] Taiyz: He promptly steals her panties and it takes her a minute to notice, THIS IS RELEVANT TO THE NEXT SCENE
[4:11:09 PM] Taiyz: She gets annoyed occasionally, like once every second episode but he does it so casually that she barely cares

Its second OP is also by the amazing Man with a Mission, legends of DATABASE fame, as they play chess with Death himself:

^Yeah I got to Episode 16 or so of Seven Deadly then stopped because the fansub I was following just sort of disppeared. Need to finish on a different fansub soon.





What I've watched of this season so far:

Myriad Colors Phantom World - looks sort of promising, at least for a Magic High School Harem show. While the Magic High School plotline craze needs to die YESTERDAY, it's KyoAni lending their amazing animation to another action show for once (instead of slice of life) so sign me the eff up. Again, it's a Magic High School though so this isn't going to be Full Metal Panic: Second Raid or Beyond the Boundary.

It sadly has everything you'd expect from Magic High School shows, including the cringe-worthy fanservice. Behold LIMBO BOOBS!



Really hoping the above scene is as stupid as this show gets, but the same girl also seems to activate her powers by groping herself...

Active Raid - Patlabor + Fullmetal Panic + Power Rangers. Pretty fun so far and I'm looking forward to more Patlabor Rangers.

Divine Gate - Oh God another Magic High School? Enough already... Probably dropping this one. The writing's friggin terrible so far anyway. I'll give the next episode or two a watch before I decide to drop or not.

Pandora in the Crimson Shell - Oh my god Masamune Shirow wtf happened. You went from Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed to THIS? Android girl powers up by sticking her finger in the crotch of another android, Chobits style. It's arguably not that explicit but the main character's words as she powers up following this action are annoyingly suggestive. Like Divine Gate, I'll give the next few episodes a watch before I decide whether to drop.

GATE - f*** YEAH MORE GATE.

Bubuki Buranki - A mecha show that could turn out to be everything Comet Lucifer failed to be last season.

Dimension W - A new power source has been discovered, and some of these are illegal for some reason. (Are they unsafe somehow?) Also there are androids, and the one featured has emotions and a personality which is apparently unusual.

Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash - Oh for the love of god PLEASE don't turn into another "trapped in a game" anime. I was looking forward to this one specifically because the description did not mention that it was a game world, but it's definitely structured as one. Since the protagonists have amnesia, it could easily go either way.

Tenshigami wrote:

^Yeah I got to Episode 16 or so of Seven Deadly then stopped because the fansub I was following just sort of disppeared. Need to finish on a different fansub soon.

What I've watched of this season so far:

Myriad Colors Phantom World - looks sort of promising, at least for a Magic High School Harem show. While the Magic High School plotline craze needs to die YESTERDAY, it's KyoAni lending their amazing animation to another action show for once (instead of slice of life) so sign me the eff up. Again, it's a Magic High School though so this isn't going to be Full Metal Panic: Second Raid or Beyond the Boundary.

It sadly has everything you'd expect from Magic High School shows, including the cringe-worthy fanservice. Behold LIMBO BOOBS!

http://i.giphy.com/xCJY8u6FwvuWk.gif

Really hoping the above scene is as stupid as this show gets, but the same girl also seems to activate her powers by groping herself...

Pandora in the Crimson Shell - Oh my god Masamune Shirow wtf happened. You went from Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed to THIS? Android girl powers up by sticking her finger in the crotch of another android, Chobits style. It's arguably not that explicit but the main character's words as she powers up following this action are annoyingly suggestive. Like Divine Gate, I'll give the next few episodes a watch before I decided whether to drop.

Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash - Oh for the love of god PLEASE don't turn into another "trapped in a game" anime. I was looking forward to this one specifically because the description did not mention that it was a game world, but it's definitely structured as one. Since the protagonists have amnesia, it could easily go either way.

I don't know how recent this was updated, but the first summary I found for Grimgar specifically states "Haruhito and his companions find themselves in a "game-like world" called Grimgar and must form a party, cooperate, and learn new skills to survive the harsh environment together."


Also, let's be real here, Masamune Shirow hasn't really had as much to do with his more popular adaptations compared to Kenji Kamiyama and Shinji Aramaki. Ghost in the Shell Arise was garbage for example, because that was by Tow Ubakata. You're forgetting that Masamune Shirow was mostly active during the 80s and 90s where tits and violence were the name of the game. His licenses definitely succeeded him, by far. Nobody cared about the GitS manga that came out in the early 2000s, barely anybody realizes that they exist! This manga is the first thing he's come out with in about 9 years, and in that gap he's been putting out artbooks along the lines of an erotic series he had, literally called GALGREASE.

So we're talking about a guy who for 9 years has literally done almost nothing but draw naked girls covered in oil playing with admittedly-impressive guns that he made up himself.

Here's Cyril Brooklyn for example, Motoko's replacement. (I don't think he has any images with the titular grease without nudity.)

Basically he just realized that people don't want delicious abs and wild west or military girls, they want robot children emerging from smiley cocoons. You probably made the mistake of thinking, oh, it's Masamune Shirow and it involves androids, this should be a return to form, but there is a new purpose behind these skintight bodysuit-clad mechanical molesters.


Initially I wanted to see Erased, but it looks like it'll have dumb pretentious storytelling (and Cathmandu is complaining about its ending which isn't a good sign.) Myriad Colors Phantom World is probably the standout show right now just because it's KyoAni. Seems like it's their bread and butter right now to have this kinda magical/modern fantasy stuff, since Nichijou, anyway.

I feel like I need to watch Beyond the Boundary first though...


Also I forget, do you generally watch subs? The dub for Seven Deadly Sins on Netflix is really good...

^ I watch subs when a show is airing, then dubs when its out in the west on blu-ray/dvd. I don't have Netflix, but if they release it on Blu-ray I will definitely buy.



Beyond the Boundary is definitely worth a watch, though you'll want to watch the last scene of the recap movie and entirety of the second movie as well to get the full story and a better ending. DO NOT use the recap movie as a substitute for the series. the recap movie is essentially your traditional filler recap episode except it's like an hour or two long. What I mean by that is that it skips entire events in a very disjointed way.

That said you wouldn't need to watch it first. Phantom World is not related, though the premise is similar in a few ways. Both have phantoms of a sort that need to be defeated, but Beyond the Boundary is less Magic High School and more "people who go to high school, and only a select few have powers for various reasons".

My requirements for the Magic High School classification is generally that EVERY student has powers and/or they specifically go to that school BECAUSE of their powers.

Taiyz wrote:

Initially I wanted to see Erased, but it looks like it'll have dumb pretentious storytelling (and Cathmandu is complaining about its ending which isn't a good sign.)

Oh no, I like Erased. The whole storyline is pretty solid in my opinion, but I like all Butterfly Effect plotline (with how every single thing you do affect the present/future) in the first place, so I might be biased there.

And the manga does not end yet. There's still several chapters left until March when it finally ends, and from a news I read somewhere, the anime will follow the manga's end when it's ending in (also) March.

It's just this one particular ...metaphorical punch in the dick that gets me. I thought the manga ends right there at that reveal because there's no chapter afterwards and felt that it's a heartbreaking ending. But then I saw the wiki and says the manga is still ongoing, so there's still plenty of way to salvage this.

And it's not even a bad end honestly. If you approach this from another angle, this is actually a really realistic and most humane writing.

Spoiler:

It's just, I felt that guy has gone through enough shit already, and he's a heroic man above men, give him a really happy end pls.

Tenshigami wrote:

Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash - Oh for the love of god PLEASE don't turn into another "trapped in a game" anime. I was looking forward to this one specifically because the description did not mention that it was a game world, but it's definitely structured as one. Since the protagonists have amnesia, it could easily go either way.

I think it's just the world having gamelike mechanics, like levels/skills/classes/guild systems. Like 99% of isekai WNs nowadays.

Anything that happens in that world is as real as it can get though.

Taiyz wrote:

So Seven Deadly Sins is on Netflix, why is there NO buzz for this series?

I haven't watched the anime, but I definitely have been reading the manga. I just haven't really had a good experience with "shounen anime based on ongoing manga" type, so I haven't picked up the anime.

So I watched the first five or so episodes of the Chaika the Coffin Princess dub last night. Here's the (maybe not so) SHOCKING TRUTH - Sentai totally fucked it up.

"Shocking truth!" - the repeated exclamation from Chaika in certain moments, that has become a meme of sorts within the anime community, was changed to "Shocking revelation!" Looking at the clip I just linked, "truth" would not have fit the mouth movements, but I'm still not happy about it because I and other fans across the net have been using "Shocking truth!" amongst ourselves for nearly two years now.

Chaika reveals her purpose - In the original Japanese, Chaika says she is gathering the scattered remains of her father in order to give him a proper burial. In the english dub, she says she wants to "put him back together". I could maybe see where they got the translation wrong, as she speaks in broken Japanese (cave-man speak in the dub and english subtitles) that emphasizes certain words and both involve gathering all the pieces "together" in one place. Still, THIS IS NOT WHAT SHE INTENDS.

"Don't be shocked." - They TOTALLY destroyed this exchange and removed all the humor out of it. Rather than tell her not to be shocked beforehand, he just tells her that they're being followed. After her exclamation of surprise, he says "You can't freak out..." turning a humorous moment into a more serious one.

Voice too low volume - This seems to be a problem with a lot of Sentai dubs. If I turn it up so I can hear the voices, then the music and sound effects will be really loud. If I turn it down so the latter isn't uncomfortably loud, I can't hear the voices. Turning on my receiver's dialogue boost sort of helps, but not really.

Sentai's dubs are known to be pretty mediocre but this one's exceptionally terrible so far.

That said, one positive thing about the dub:

"Chaika?" "Yes, Chaika." "Chaika." - lives on as "Chaika?" "Mhm, Chaika." "Chaika." Which is pretty faithful to the Japanese audio even if we're all used to the "yes" in the subtitles.

Sentai is especialy notorious for not caring about the original media. They just write whatever the hell they want sometimes. Remember how they lost the Gurren Lagann license by changing "Go beyond the impossible and kick reason to the curb!" to "We stick to our crazy guns and kick logic out the door!" or whatever?

^ Well yeah, Sentai was built from the rotting carcass of ADV, and it shows. While their dubs are much better than they were back in the ADV days, they're still pretty terrible - and dated. I've probably said this tons of times now, but Sentai still does things like having voice actors unnaturally pause mid-sentence in order to match lip movements. A better practice nowadays is to reword a sentence so it fits the lip movements more naturally.

To the original company's credit, I just recently rewatched the entirety of Martian Successor Nadesico - this time in Japanese with subtitles as I had originally watched it English dubbed in the VHS days. Surprisingly I find the ADV dub of Nadesico to actually be better than the original Japanese for two reasons:

1) Something just feels off about the original Japanese voices, like they're not as into their roles as they should be, or their acting is just very low quality compared to what I'm used to in Japanese.

2) The cheesy overacting of the English voice actors really worked in Nadesico's favor, as it makes the silliness and comedy of the show that much more entertaining.



Back to Chaika, a couple more things I observed tonight:

1) I thought they had changed "Gundo" to "Gandr", but that's actually the correct term. My guess is that it's a pun (that only works the way Gandr is pronounced in Japanese), as the Gandr are quite literally rifles that fire bullets filled with magic fuel. Speaking of which...

2) "Magic Fuel" has been changed to "Magic Psycho-fuel". I'm actually ok with this change. This fuel is the fossilized remains of dead animals, imbued with their memories - hence the "psycho" part. Generally these fossils are ground into a powder (like gunpowder).

Honestly it's hard to say if their dubs were necessarily better than their current ones, or if the quality of fan translations and localization as a whole has just left them in the dust, and we're just nostalgic for old ADV. I used to have a lot of problems with FUNimation but now they totally save some shows from boring scripts, and companies like Bang Zoom have only improved with the current talent we've got these days.

I mean don't get me wrong, old ADV is definitely better than Sentai, there was a lot more exposure in general with voice actors and behind the scenes stuff where-as now they're just an anime dungeon where you have to hope your favourite shows will come out in one piece.

Ahaha no, sorry, I was misunderstood. I find Sentai dubs to be a step above old ADV, but a step above "terrible" still isn't very good. I generally think ADV dubs are ass, which is why it was surprising that I found Nadesico to be less enjoyable in the original Japanese.

ADV also didn't care/didn't do the research about some of their shows, either.

An example of an ADV dub being screwed up is Orphen. The dub allows Orphen to (at least occasionally) cast spells with a grunt or a scream of nothing but exertion. ("Gruh!" or "Haaaaah!" For example.) This is all wrong because he uses a vocal magic that is formed by his words. There's even an episode where he has a bone stuck in his throat and can't use magic because he can't speak. He spends most of the episode only being able to... make grunting and screaming noises. Which had allowed him to cast magic previously, in the dub. So the dub introduces plot holes that weren't there originally.

Good point. If you haven't played the game Scion of Sorcery, I recommend it. It's got a retro dub that's quite endearing with Quinton Flynn as Orphen, and every attack is accompanied by speech. Funny how a budget game dub was more faithful than ADV now that I think about it.

Regarding Seven Deadly Sins again, I'm impressed with the cast. Apart from King who is lame, it's really hard to decide who my favourite character is. It's similar to One Piece in that respect where everybody feels like they contribute equally to the show.

Also the ED is super hype. Flow and Granrodeo collaborating, so fucking energetic! Liz and Diane dancing are also totes adorbs.

Just watched Grimgar 1. It irked me a bit with how the timeline jumps about, and the fact that they just offhandedly say one line about the part where Renji picked out strong party members over the weak MC party (which resulted in the scene of the bunch of outcast despairing, not knowing what to do); that scene is rather good at setting the survival tone of the novel, where the weak are ignored and trampled. The anime just felt "whee generic adventure" without that scene.

What I like about the anime though is the casting and personalization of the characters. Ranta comes off as too much of douche in the novel, but here, he's quite a lovable idiot. I might have been biased because he's voiced by Hiroyuki Yoshino though. But his interaction with Haruhiro is really great and doesn't feel as strained as I assumed. I'm probably not going to drop this one just because of that.


By the way, is Bubuki Buranki a full CG animation? If it is, then that was pretty awesome. It still has this jittery feeling like what you'd notice in all CG animations, but it doesn't look as doll-like as them.

Welcome to the post-009 Re:Cyborg world of CG anime where great things like Expelled from Paradise don't have to make concessions due to their art style anymore.

The first episode of Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! (KonoSuba) just aired today and it is absolutely delightful. For those of you that enjoyed DanMachi (Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka, also unfortunately known as Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?), this show is for you.

It's kind of like a mix of Outbreak Company, DanMachi, and (to a lesser extent) No Game, No Life. Really promising first episode and it just might turn out to be my AOTS.

Just visited here to say that Osomatsu-san is funny.

Tenshigami wrote:

(Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka, also unfortunately known as Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?)

What, you mean it's unfortunate that English exists to translate the same title from Japanese?

^It loses half of its original double meaning and only leaves the meaning that is misleading as hell as to what the show is about and what kind of show it actually is.

The literal translation is something like "Is it wrong to have an encounter in a dungeon?" Of which there are plenty in the show - with monsters. The show's main focus isn't Bell trying to pick up chicks.

Tenshigami wrote:

Really promising first episode and it just might turn out to be my AOTS.

Should be. Unwilling tsukkomi protag best protag. Though I kinda vehemently disagree about the part about DanMachi; it's a whole different genre even.

One is some generic fantasy harem adventure with quite honestly a very standard donkan MC, and the other is a really random fantasy comedy with an awesome, albeit very unlucky (with that Luck stat nonetheless) MC that uses a goddess as fish bait. Wait, was it water purifier? Meh, probably both. And it ain't no harem. (yeah i dont like danmachi much sue me)

Gifting for AOTY.

I didn't say it was pure DanMachi though, I said it was a mix. It mostly gave me DanMachi vibes though which is why the recommendation for people that liked that show. Also, the first episode was just world building - Have you seen the glimpses of the rest of the party during the ED (or possibly the OP being used as this episode's ED)? This totally looks like another harem in the making.

Ehh no, definitely won't be harem. Yes, there are 3 heroines, but they are all absolutely disappointing. I would describe more, but it'll be a spoiler. Just that MC got the short end of the stick and has to play mom to these rowdy bunch of unsatisfactory female characters. Not that it wasn't hilarious.

And imo, this is a comedy rather than a serious character driven adventure story like DanMachi, hence why I disagree that DanMachi's fan would like it, not that they won't. It's like recommending Mahou Shoujo of the End to Nanoha's fan because it's about magical girl. But I'm just being anal right now when Gifting should be enjoyed by everyone.