Anime & Manga Teh CX Anime Review Thread

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
But I mean, at least Angel Beats had every battle solved by Meifong saying a catchy one liner and then firing the Links Cannon instead of the frentic and exciting combat of Outlaw Star so... um... I just remembered I need to drop that ZZT review...
 

prinCZess

Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
Outlaw Star is a lot of fun. It's cheesy and dumb, with a melting-pot of things thrown in basically just for the sake of cool factor (robot wrasslin' arms...IN SPACE. SPACE-Pirates. Ninjas and Samurai-girls...IN SPACE. Cowboys and revolvers...IN SPACE. Magical-girl type bullshit...IN SPACE. Cat-girl weretigers...IN SPACE), but its charming, with a fun cast of characters and a neat universe that gets expanded-on just enough in the show with shenanigans and by the really poetic description in the opening narrations before each episode to make things intriguing (and I was always impressed by the voice-actor doing that, but never put together it was the same guy who did Jet in Bebop).

It neatly fits into that, like, fun character-drama space that Firefly and Bebop both used a bunch, but much lighter for most of the run-time. Gene kind of lacks for development or depth I think, even if he does grow through the series, but the other crewmembers shenanigans and playing off each other or him more than make up for it--though seeing more of Suzuka probably would've made her feel less like the 'obligatory Japanese sop' character...Which seems kind of bizarre in a Japanese production--I'd have expected her to get a little more focus than she does.

Also a rare instance in the case of Jim for a young sidekick character not to feel tacked-on and silly, but much more appropriate and natural. Probably helps he doesn't have a grating voice of some kind, but I've always mentally associated him with the Chibiusa/Rini kind of character and that...can very easily go wrong and become terrible. But Jim always feels appropriately 'competent kid' in portrayal and even other characters treating him as a kid to his annoyance doesn't make him come across as precocious...And seeing Aisha become some kind'a alien adoptive big-sister to him over the series because they both have a stupid sense of humor/are comedy-relief characters often is d'aww inducing.

And speaking of fan service, did I mention that Melfina is basically the navigation computer of the ship and has to do her job in the buff?
I can't remember the specifics, but I always remember the gist of the clever line Aisha gets on this, at least in the dub, where she sees Melfina in her nudie-tank and immediately is just like "The hell is this? She has to be naked to pilot the most advanced human starship in existence? That's so barbaric compared to the C'Tarl C'Tarl Empire!" And that's one of very few (maybe even the only?) call-outs it gets for being weird. Makes me giggle.
 

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
Speaking of Aisha Clan-Clan...

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As far as Angel Links goes, to say it was disappointing would be underselling it spectacularly. Last summer, I actually recently re-watched Outlaw Star on DVD, and couldn't help but be reminded of this thanks to the trailers for Angel Links on them. What really drove this home was the hopeful ending of Outlaw Star which looked to promise future adventures, only to realize that Angel Links was what they went with instead. :mad:
 

Terthna

Professional Lurker
Actually, fun fact about Outlaw Star; did you guys know it was a sequel? To a manga called Future-Retro Hero Story, that was never adapted into anime or released in the west; this explains the often overlooked "Future Hero Next Generation" bit that's seen in the show's logo:
1621148_Latvian_ShowLogo_6cdadee4-f2e3-ea11-82a8-dd291e252010.png

I've never read it myself, as I don't believe it's ever been fully translated; but apparently it more fully explains the origins of at least some things Outlaw Star just glosses over, like the caster gun.
 
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ATP

Well-known member
Yeah; by all accounts, that was a terrible sequel to a great anime. Of course, the season after that, we also got a sequel to Eureka Seven; which, apparently, managed to be even worse.

Indeed.Eureka Seven:Ao indeed is worst.24 episodes,and 24 too much.But - at least Ao/Eureka son/ get good "harem".Only for that i would gave,let say,2/10.
P.S of course,he did nothing with any of very attractive girls.But harem,even not used,still counts.
 

Val the Moofia Boss

Well-known member
Hell, Evangelion is a harem anime, if you really think about it.

A kind of unsatisfying harem anime, though. He never really gets close to any of the girls except Rei... but then she gets roasted near the end. So by the end of the show, he isn't romantically close to anybody. Misato views Shinji as a comforter for pleasure to escape from her depression but Shinji just views her as a friend. Shinji doesn't have the close relationship with the new Rei that he had with the old. And Asuka spent the entire show being abusive towards Shinji and driving him away from her.
 

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
That show has always been called a deconstruction of mecha anime to show how a "real" teen-aged boy would be effected by being forced to pilot a mecha to save the world (or so it's initially sold as), so I don't see why they wouldn't also apply to the harem aspects. Actually the tsundere trope is particularly annoying to me as I can personally relate to it thanks to having one of my own. It's funny, in a way, because the only reason I know this now is that well over a decade after it would have made any difference, my mom claimed this girl in middle school was "desperately trying to get my attention" because she liked me. Well, could have fooled me - she was a bitch to me so I stayed the fuck away from her. The pathetic thing about Shinji is that he ended up jacking off to Asuka in EoE.
 

Val the Moofia Boss

Well-known member
That show has always been called a deconstruction of mecha anime to show how a "real" teen-aged boy would be effected by being forced to pilot a mecha to save the world (or so it's initially sold as)

I never really got that defense of NGE. Shinji never came across as normal. He is a special case in terms of his relationship and how he grew up and how that shaped his demeanor. Your average teenage boy isn't as wimpy as Shinji is. Then again, maybe the attitude of your average teenage boy is different in Japan than in America or other Western countries. Amuro, Kamille, and Kira were also rather wimpy. Now that I think about it, I'm sorta struggling to think of a mecha protagonist who was relatively normal. It seems that they only come in two varieties: total wimp, or apathetic psycho (Heero, Setsuna, Mikazuki, and Inaho from Aldnoah Zero). Hm... I guess maybe Allen from Escaflowne and Suzaku from Code Geass were relatively normal pilots?
 

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
A lot of the clones of NGE I've seen tend to have the same flaws, too. Though the only one I can think of that wasn't also a harem show was Argento Soma. And at least that one managed to be fairly straightforward and had a mostly happy ending that didn't involve a reset button or the death of humanity.
 

Terthna

Professional Lurker
I never really got that defense of NGE. Shinji never came across as normal. He is a special case in terms of his relationship and how he grew up and how that shaped his demeanor. Your average teenage boy isn't as wimpy as Shinji is. Then again, maybe the attitude of your average teenage boy is different in Japan than in America or other Western countries. Amuro, Kamille, and Kira were also rather wimpy. Now that I think about it, I'm sorta struggling to think of a mecha protagonist who was relatively normal. It seems that they only come in two varieties: total wimp, or apathetic psycho (Heero, Setsuna, Mikazuki, and Inaho from Aldnoah Zero). Hm... I guess maybe Allen from Escaflowne and Suzaku from Code Geass were relatively normal pilots?
Japan has been having issues with their men turning into complete wimps for decades; it's contributed heavily to the decline in birth rate, as many women in Japan feel that many men are too weak to be considered viable dating prospects.
 

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
Desert Punk
(24 episode series)

Though it is set in a post-apocalyptic future in which humanity has devastated itself and its planet, this series is in fact a comedy. An awesome, raunchy comedy.

Following the exploits of Desert Punk, aka the Demon of the Desert, aka Kanta Mizuno, this series doesn't really take itself seriously, at least not until the end. Punk is shown to be competent at being a mercenary, at least at first, so much so that there are rumors that he is actually a demon and supernatural. The series starts with what would have been another successful job, but thanks to his obsession and weakness for large-breasted women, he slips up and lets himself get beaten by Junko Asagiri, who will turn into a recurring foil for him for the majority of the series. This is something of a turning point for Punk, as none of the rest of his jobs go well for him, and we get to watch and laugh at the results.

The series itself is very episodic until the last few, with Punk and some of his fellow mercenaries being hired to do random jobs, sometimes on the same side, and sometimes on opposite sides. While the series does have its serious moments, and it doesn't rely all that much on absurdity, it still manages to be very funny. Most of this humor tends to be sexual or toilet humor, though there's also some dark humor thrown in for fun. This is also the area where the dub especially excels, because the cast really does well, and the humor is definitely more fitting for an English-speaking audience. Eric Vale is the star of the show, and for me this is the role I will always remember him for, because he is so awesome as the perverted, smug Desert Punk.

Along the way, Punk picks up an apprentice named Kosuna, a young teen-aged girl who wants to become the desert's number one power babe (her words). At first Punk doesn't want to go for it, but Kosuna manages to talk him into it by showing him a picture of a busty, bikini-clad woman she claims is her mother. Punk, being the pervert he is, agrees to take her on as an apprentice in what is apparently a long-term goal of getting laid by a busty babe like he's always wanted.

As much as the series focuses on comedy, the episodes are all interesting in and of themselves. In some of the later episodes this actually involves learning a bit more about what happened prior to the apocalypse that created the massive desert the series takes place in. Unfortunately this also marks a turn in the series toward a more serious tone. The last few episodes in particular lose pretty much all of their humor and focus on a storyline that involves the reawakening of old weapons of mass destruction and the possibility that humanity might be finished off for good instead of just severely reduced in number like the last time it happened. Or at the very least one of the four governments existing in the desert world will get sole control over these weapons and devastate anyone who doesn't do what they want them to. So, much like Burn-Up W and Burn-Up Excess, this series is somewhat spoiled by getting a serious ending. Other than that, though, it's very good.

The characters are part of what makes this series so great, too. I already mentioned what a pervert Desert Punk is, but he's also pretty believable as an expert mercenary, too. Kosuna isn't nearly as perverted, but she definitely has her moments, too, especially when it comes to hating on Junko. She also makes a pretty good apprentice, and when she ends up on her own, she does fairly well for herself as another Desert Punk with an apprentice of her own. Junko, despite being very much the Ms. Fanservice of the show, is also very intelligent. She uses her body and sexuality to her full advantage, but she doesn't depend on them. She makes a great foil for Desert Punk, because despite being continually fooled by her, he still sets himself up for another one of her schemes, even if he tries to take precautions against it. Plus there are some hints that she might actually like him a little. Another great foil for the Punk is Rain Spider, a fellow pervert and also an expert mercenary with a reputation for being good at what he does. Both he and Desert Punk play well off of each other. And last but not least are the Machine Gun Brothers, three of Desert Punk's friends from when they were all kids, and also fellow mercenaries. They aren't nearly as good as the others, but they still prove their worth from time to time. They also add a lot to the humor, and not just from being somewhat stupid.

Now I have to admit, I'm somewhat at a loss for being able to describe just why I like this series or what makes it so great, so all I can do is show you this clip, which is a compilation of some of the best lines from the show at its best. I just cannot express the awesome that is this show. Just go watch it, trust me. 9/10.

Oh, and have this blooper reel as an added bonus. ;)
 

Val the Moofia Boss

Well-known member
I thought the Attack on Titan ending was okay.

Just okay.

This panel pretty much sums up one of the biggest problems with AoT's ending.

LlNhHq7.png


Japan is back at it again with the victimization of evil. Mass murderers are never held to account for their deeds. The story has to bend over backwards about how "misunderstood" or how "noble" they really were and how tragic their life was. Really grates me.

I don't know. Meh, I guess? I began losing interest after chapter 100 when the series became very nihilistic. I had overall liked the series up until that point. But everything after...

As for the show, I thought that the first season was the best, albeit heavily flawed. It was well directed and looked good, but the show tried to stretch out 12 episodes worth of material into 24, so you get a lot of really drawn out montages and monologues. Season 2 didn't try stretching out the material and was well paced, but there was a severe decline in the overall animation quality of the show (with the colossal titan becoming a jarring 3D model). Season 3 part 1 adapted a really boring arc that mostly serves as exposition that is just repeated later on anyway and you can safely skip it. Season 3 part 2 is when the plot picks back up again and adapts the best arc in the series IMO. However, as a manga reader it was really disappointing and never really captured the solemnity or the grandeur or the emotion of how it was portrayed in the manga. Season 4 was when the animation got super bad and now all of the titans are 3D CGI. Never finished S4.
 
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Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
Golden Boy
(6 episode OVA)

This is something of a guilty pleasure of mine, simply owing to the fact that I happen to be a pervert, though not as big of a pervert as Kintaro Oe, the main character of this show. While I can definitely understand his obsession with the female form, I have to say that the toilet fetish is definitely something I don't, even if I do still find his kinks hilarious. And that being said, this anime definitely isn't for everyone, because it makes some other sex comedies look absolutely charming by comparison.

Basically the whole point of this OVA is to follow Kintaro around on his adventures as a "student of the world," going around getting some random job each episode despite the fact he would have a law degree if only he applied to graduate. His goal is to learn as much from life as possible, which is why he does this. He'll also scribble down any random bits of knowledge he finds "very educational" in a little notebook he has, often right next to sketches he makes of the various good-looking women he encounters. His mantra is to, "STUDY STUDY STUDY STUDY!" He's also pretty much just a clumsy, socially awkward, mostly inept, perverted idiot who tends to massively screw something up during the job he happens to have during a given episode, only to be revealed to have somehow done something really good during his time there, or as in the first episode completely make-up for it by basically doing something impossible. You wouldn't guess that he's actually quite intelligent and capable from how he looks or how he acts, but at the same time, I personally didn't really care because I was too busy laughing my ass off.

Now, I've seen other reviews that tend to give this OVA a hard time due to its heavy use of clichés and the crude nature of it humor, but to me the humor is just hilarious, and the clichés are a big part of that. If anything, this OVA makes fun of the kind of fan service and awkward romantic buffoonery one might see in other anime that's actually playing everything completely straight and completely seriously and just cranks it all up to eleven. Take, for instance, breast physics. I've poked fun of this kind of thing before in shows like Divergence Eve, where breasts will jiggle about at even the slightest movement of a female character, but here they not only do that, but they make it obvious that they're making fun of it. This is where the clichés come in, and why the woman he ends up helping in each episode tends to be a different cliché. Madam President is the stereotypical Ms. Fanservice, wearing skimpy clothing everywhere, including to her office job as a software developer. In another episode, there's a stereotypical manipulative school girl who likes to play innocent to her father (the Japanese TR) and get various men into trouble. Kintaro naturally calls out all these stereotypes for comedic effect, so I can't really understand complains about clichés and stereotypes because that's pretty much the point of the show. If you’re looking for something that takes itself even remotely seriously, this is not the show for you.

Everything from each episode ends up with Kintaro not only proving himself, but usually with the end result of the woman he helps each week wanting him. This all leads up to the last episode, where Kintaro finds himself working at an animation studio, and ends up calling in favors from all of the women he's helped. Then, as with all the other episodes, he disappears and leaves all the women to chase after him.

So you could definitely say I found this OVA very entertaining, and in fact my local anime club has made it something of a tradition to show it once a year during finals week of spring semester. It's something you can turn your brain off for and just enjoy the hell out of. It has some very perverted humor to go along with everything else it makes fun of, so don’t watch this and then complain about how crude it is. Here's a trailer, have a look. And this. So, with the full knowledge of what you'd be getting yourself into, I would definitely recommend this OVA. Actually, you could probably watch all of it on Youtube. 9/10.
 

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
Pale Cocoon
(single episode OVA)

At only 23 minutes long, this is a very short OVA, and while it looks good and has a decent story, I can understand why none of the US distributers have picked this OVA up and made a dub for it yet. I was actually introduced to this OVA by another reviewer in his first "Top 10 Unlicensed Anime" list.

I have to say, though, that while I found it very visually appealing, and I found the concept somewhat interesting, it confused me somewhat and I don't really understand it. This being the case, I'm going to spoil the hell out of this OVA, so you've been warned.

The setting is basically underground in what was supposed to be an underground climate control infrastructure which once covered the planet (according to the narrator, anyway). Apparently Earth has been ruined environmentally, and the implication is that things are getting worse as people are being forced to move further and further underground. This seems to be the typical environmental aesop, because everything we see points to humanity ruining the planet.

The story itself focuses mainly on two people, a young man named Ura and a young woman named Riko. The two of them work at the "Archive Excavation Department", and are among the last of what used to be a massive work effort. Basically, despite all the advanced technology humanity still possesses, somehow most of human history has been lost, and the job of this department is to dig up as much information out of the archives as they can and restore it. As one might expect, this turns out to be depressing to the vast majority of the people who had worked there as they learn about how Earth used to be and how humanity apparently ruined it through overpopulation and pollution. Ura is actually the only one left who's interested in learning for learning's sake, and everyone else has either already quit, or say that they're going to quit during the OVA. Riko is essentially the voice of the rest of humanity, voicing a very nihilistic view about their work and about the fate of humanity. She's basically stopped caring, and Ura tries to get her interested again by showing her a video file he is in the process of restoring, but she just stops coming into work, choosing instead to lay on a platform next to a glowing core of some kind, staring up at the blackness above. Ura sees something in this video file that changes his perspective along with ours, revealing the thing that confuses me about this OVA. While the video he was restoring is just a music video, apparently a shot of a spiral staircase upside down leading into the sky causes him to climb the staircase around the power core I mentioned up to an old elevator, which seems to take him even higher at a rapid speed, right before it seems to fall... right out into the sky.

As it turns out, they've been on the moon all along, humanity apparently having been evacuated there following an environmental disaster on Earth. Apparently everyone has been on a ship which is still sticking out of the lunar surface upside down, though with a cubic dome covering it. Why, I don't know. All I know is that gravity is apparently being generated artificially and Ura managed to work himself out into the weak lunar gravity after actually falling out of the ground. And that kind of confuses me somewhat because that is the best sense I can make out of it. Apparently this is supposed to double as a somewhat optimistic ending despite Ura's fate not looking all that great, because Earth looks like it might have restored itself, appearing to be blue and normal in contrast to one of the first lunar colonists' description of Earth as looking rusted.

Now, it's kind of obvious that our focus is supposed to be more on how the characters feel and all that, but I guess I'm too left-brained to see all that far beneath the surface. I say that because what was shown doesn't make all that much sense to me. Riko explained the very understandable depression that would come with seeing Earth all pretty and looking fine when they're all living in post-apocalyptic devastation. One of Ura and Riko's unseen co-workers even expresses some skepticism as to whether any of the stuff in the images and videos they've restored is even real. The thing is, it doesn't make sense to me that a humanity this advanced technologically has forgotten so much of its past that it's apparently forgotten that they aren't even on Earth anymore. At the very basic, wouldn't the original colonists/refuges have passed that little nugget of information onto their children and so on and so forth down the generations? So in a way, it would have made more sense for it to be aliens going through an extinct humanity's archives, but that has been done so many times that it's cliché, so I can understand this OVA wanting to do something a bit different. It also bothers me that no one seems to care what caused the apocalypse. I know some people argue that it doesn't matter, but this is something that tends to bother me even if nothing can be done about it. Another example would be The Road, which has much the same tone as this OVA anyway. I guess if nothing else, I would have thought it would be a goal of this "Archive Excavation Department" to find out what went wrong to put them all in their current predicament, but no one seems to care, not even Ura. But, I think this is supposed to be like one of those "art" films, and art doesn't always have to make sense.

I guess you could say that I was somewhat disappointed, because I was hoping that there would be more to it, somehow. It actually seems more like the pilot episode of a series than a one-off OVA. I would still say, though, that this OVA is worth a watch, despite not making all that much sense, at least not to me. It's barely over 20 minutes long, so it's not like you're out all that much even if you end up a bit frustrated like I did. 6/10.
 

ATP

Well-known member
Another OVA,then.
Weathering continent,54 minutes,1992.

Group of adventurers travells desert on dying continent,there are out of water but found ruins with underground hidden city.
Then they found bodies of inhabitants with all their wealth,but wisely do not rob them.
Group of mercs who found it tried that and lived long enoug to regrett that mistake - but they are bad characters,so nobody cares.
Our heroes come back with water and knowledge about true nature of both hidden city and ruins - but i would not spoil that.

Good story,try that if you have time.7/10, i think.But be warned - you would not find any optimism there.In fact,it is story about dying humanity without help or hope.
 

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
Gantz
(26 episode series)

This is honestly one of the worst series I've actually bothered to muddle my way all the way through. Basically it's just otaku porn – filled to the brim with the kind of crap that the stereotypical otaku fanboy is supposed to just love the hell out of. On top of that, the series takes every possible opportunity to hit its audience over the head with as much clichéd bullshit as possible when it comes to denouncing how horrible society has become, militaries, the second Iraq War, the United States (you know, 'cuz it's evil), and ironically violence in general, despite being pretty much all about violence. And if that wasn't bad enough, the characters are all either unsympathetic assholes, too stupid to live, or both.

So what's it about? Well basically there's this mysterious, magical black ball with a bald guy on life support inside of it that apparently clones various people at their moments of death in order to have them compete in a sadistic game it likes to play. Basically it gives them these skintight powered armor suits and some sci-fi guns to go out and kill random creatures it claims are aliens, giving them a limited amount of time and a limited area in which to complete these missions. It rewards points based on the outcome of the missions, with the goal being to gain 100 points total.

The series follows "typical high school student" Kei Kurono, who apparently the average otaku is supposed to identify with. He apparently has a hard time (heh) paying attention in class, undressing his attractive teacher and all the girls in his class with his eyes and popping a boner on a regular enough basis that some of the girls in his class can tell when he's hiding one. They then go on to point out this fact to the teacher, who has some fun embarrassing him about it along with the rest of the class. He's the quintessential pervert, thinking about and doing things that frankly make even me think he's a freak. And if that wasn't enough to make me not like him, he's also a rather selfish asshole. Unfortunately for him, he crosses paths with a creepy old lady who apparently is a recruiter for Gantz. This is as he runs into an old friend of his from elementary school at a subway station, Masaru Kato. Masaru is the kind of noble guy I'm guessing all the otaku want to be like, because he always seems to be doing selfless, sacrificing things for anyone and everyone to the point that he's frankly quite annoying. He also tends to do way too much analyzing about things like the implications of using deadly force to defend himself and others that he's basically useless and indecisive during the various "games" Gantz sends the characters on. I say all this up front, because it's pretty much all Masaru's fault that both he and Kei end up dead with their clones fighting random aliens for Gantz's amusement. In the first episode a drunken bum wanders down into the subway station and manages to collapse onto the tracks. And since society is horrible according to this show, no one but Masaru wants to bother actually doing anything to prevent this guy from getting run over by the incoming train. He also happens to recognize Kei and calls out to him, so Kei apparently feels obligated to help out his old friend. They save the bum, but naturally they both end up getting run over by a train. Despite this happening in front of a crowd, no one believes anyone about what happened because not only are their bodies and all the blood mysteriously gone, but all photographic evidence is also gone.

Kei and Masaru find themselves in an unfurnished Tokyo apartment along with several other people, apparently having appeared out of thin air. Not long afterwards, we get to see how this looks when a wet, naked Kei Kishimoto also appears out of thin air, looking somewhat like a 3-D printer has constructed her. She'd apparently tried to commit suicide by slitting her wrists. She's also the reason why it's really obvious that all of the characters who appear in that room are actually clones of the dead originals, because as it turns out, her original was saved (just remember kids, it's down the road, not across the street ;) ). Anyway, Kei Titty McBoobs is basically the main source of fan service for the series, at least until she buys it. She's also our allotment of moé-blob for the series. Actually it's kind of funny because while the opening titles make her look like a hot action girl, really the only function she serves aside from providing about 75% of the massive amount of fan service is to shriek, need rescuing, and ask plaintively for someone to do something. Oh, and there's a dog that likes to lick her crotch pretty much every time it sees her, leading me to believe that the people behind this show are even bigger perverts than I am.

Fortunately for everyone in that apartment, the stereotypical psycho kid was something of a veteran and smugly explained basically everything to everyone else, and by extension the audience, because Gantz never bothered to explain any of the rules of its twisted little game. Simple rules like not wandering more than a kilometer away from where it beamed them outside to fight whatever random enemies it had sent them after, the importance of the power suits, how to operate the weapons it provided, or to not try talking about anything related to Gantz or its games to anyone. The punishment of breaking the "don’t leave the area" or the "don’t talk about Gantz" rules was for Gantz to set off a little bomb it'd implanted into the clones' heads. Everything else was just a matter of making survivability of the characters and success of their missions more likely, or for that matter even explaining why earning 100 points was a good thing, or that they could leave the room after they'd completed a mission until Gantz transported them back for another "game."

There are so many other characters that show up and don’t even last through more than one of these "game" sessions that it would be pretty pointless to describe them all. I'll just say that they're all pathetically stupid to the point that they pretty much all deserved their fate. Don't get me wrong, some of them actually managed to be sympathetic, but they were still stupid. This is actually the thing that frustrated me the most about this series, because when they should've been gunning down the targets Gantz pitted them against before they killed them, most of the time they just stood around and talked, whether to argue about what was going on or what to do, or to agonize about making the really obvious choice to kill something or someone that represented a deadly threat to their own lives. But even when the characters actually started to do that, they tended to do really stupid things, like running right up to the creatures they were fighting to shoot them instead of doing it from a distance and out of range of the vast majority of these things' attacks, because guns can do that. For that matter, even these alleged aliens tended to just stand there for long periods to let all this discussion and/or argument take place. This also tended to stretch out the series and really slow down the pacing, so while there is action, it tends to be spread pretty thin.

And then there's all the beating over the head we get about how horrible society is and ironically about how horrible violence is, despite how much the series actually glorifies violence in order to attract its audience. It does this by showing us examples of humanity at its worst. For instance, in the subway scene at the beginning of the series, we're given a taste of just how horrible everyone is by being given a window into their inner dialog and pretty much everyone is messed up in some way. And when the bum falls onto the tracks, the reactions range from thinking that someone should do something while being unwilling to actually do anything themselves to looking forward to the hobo's impending death so they can see someone die. One of the valley girl types even snaps a picture of Kei's decapitated head as it flies toward her. Later, when we're introduced to Masaru's home life, we learn that his parents are dead and that he's staying with his aunt, who is extremely physically and psychologically abusive toward Masaru and his little brother. A bit later on, we're introduced to two characters who like to go around and kill homeless people, including the bum Kei and Masaru gave their lives to save. The fun part is that at the end of the series, one of these psycho killers excuses his actions by going on an anti-military rant, which includes some shots at the United States just for good measure.

As for why this series is otaku porn, well, I have a list for that, too. Remember fan service girl Kei McBoobs? She's a virgin. This is only worth mentioning because apparently a lot of otakus consider this to be important, because they want their fan service girls to be "pure" or something like that. They also had her cling to Masaru, who was supposed to represent the kind of nobility that otaku are supposed to aspire for, even while Kei, the character they were supposed to identify with, lusted over her and had some very detailed fantasies involving her. Then there's basically everything Kei has going on in his head, between thinking about sex and women, and going around killing things. He also finally ends up having sex with a busty 30s-something woman who just happens to have a thing for otakus, being sure to explain how when she was younger, all the girls were totally all over the cosplaying anime nerds. And then there's Kei's teacher, who aside from carrying on an affair with another teacher, apparently got off on the idea that Kei was getting hard-ons in class because of her.

So if this show was so horrible, why did I watch all of it? Well, it managed to keep things just interesting enough for me to want to see what happened next. I admit I was somewhat curious to see who was going to die and how things would turn out. It also didn't hurt that all the clichés, fan service, and perverted content gave me something to laugh at. To be frank, the biggest problems I had with this show were the clichéd and moronic commentaries it offered, the extremely slow pacing, and all the characters acting so stupidly. Even if something isn't really what I'd consider good, if I can laugh at it I don't really mind it that much, but if I'm bored or finding myself rolling my eyes quite a bit, that really drags a series down. So really, despite the reputation this anime has for being nasty and messed up, that isn't what bothered me, it was just pretty much everything else. Actually, being messed up is the only reason I'd even tell anyone to watch this series, just so they can see it for themselves. If you could handle Elfen Lied, then you'd probably be able to handle this one, too, you just might not enjoy it nearly as much. 4/10.
 

ATP

Well-known member
Working - 3 series/2-13,1-14/ ,40 episodes in all.
16 year old Sota Takanashi go working in Wagnaria restaurant,becouse he like 17 years old Popura Taneshima from his school,who arleady working there.
Normal romance ? nope.He like her only becouse she is tiny,and all his sisters /except younger - but she is 12 and almost as tall as he/and his mother all tall.
His crush is fixed on being taller.
Restaurant is full of weirdoss,including Mahiru Inami ,girl with androphobia who get it becouse her father keep taking that all males are bad.
MC start dating her to cure her phobia,but eventually they fall for each other.

Fun thing - only person who claim to be normal,Maya matsumoto,work so hard for that ,that she become weird,too.

All in all - funny series which made your day bright.8/10, i think.
 
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Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
Dead Space: Aftermath
(2011 movie)

I'm afraid I have to start this out by saying that even though the "so okay it's average" nature of the first Dead Space movie made me not really expect all that much out of this movie, I still came away disappointed. And it's not even that this movie sucks so much as there is basically nothing of substance to it.

We start the movie by seeing some random military ship dock with a derelict ship named the USG O'Bannon, which is in orbit of what's left of the planet we saw the USG Ishimura carve up in the first movie in order to recover some odd alien artifact they call "the marker" which makes most of the crew go batshit insane and kill most of their fellow crew members so some flying sting ray can turn them into alien zombies. The O'Bannon, as we soon see, suffers much the same fate, having been disabled when the planet went all Genesis on them and it failed to get away, lacking the ability to jump to warp like a certain Klingon Bird of Prey. No one can blame them, though, because there was just no Kirk or Scotty to be found, even though the captain was himself Scottish.

The somewhat amusing aspect to this opening sequence is that the faceless marines that board the O'Bannon actually seem to be somewhat concerned for the loss of life they see around them, and it actually looks like they're there to rescue the four survivors they find, right before one of them kills their supposed would-be rescuers. I find this amusing, because Dead Space is all about some vast conspiracy between a cultish religion, the government, a large mining corporation, and the military which wants to get the alien marker so it can basically end the world, so sayith the church's scriptures. This is easily Dead Space's greatest weakness, mainly because it's so clichéd that it makes me roll my eyes, since it essentially comes off as cheap pot shots at whoever made this franchise sees as evil, namely religion, corporations, the government, and the military. Where this movie is concerned, the amusing aspect comes from the fact that these few faceless marines who genuinely seem to care about the people they rescued for the most part must be the only ones on board who aren't part of the evil conspiracy, and they probably got sucked out into space when the most insane of the survivors thought he'd just go outside and join the hallucination of his dead daughter.

SyFy recently replayed Dead Space: Downfall to celebrate the release of Dead Space 2 along with this hour-long ad for it. Naturally there was plenty of praise for both by the people who made them, but one thing that was supposed to be so awesome about this movie was that it was made up of four different stories as told by the four different survivors. Naturally they showed off some short clips of the show in order to convince people to watch, and what can I say, it worked. Of course what I thought I was getting into was a decently animated mystery movie, because those four stories were said to be treated like witnesses' testimony that had to be deciphered by the rescue team so they could figure out what actually happened. That actually sounded kinda interesting, but the actual movie wasn't what the man on the TV said it would be. I know, shocking. What actually happened was that the four survivors were tortured one by one for their "testimony," which was actually just to determine if the survivor they were questioning had come into direct contact with a shard of the marker the Ishimura had found. I was also fooled into believing that this was a completely animated film, and well, technically it is, it's just that the framing sequences all the torture takes place in is computer generated, and looks about on par with the cut scenes in StarCraft, as in the first one. It really made me understand why the only clips they showed of this movie were from the traditionally animated flashback sequences, which all looked okay, I guess.

The part about four different stories is actually true, though. We see most of the movie as flashback scenes during each survivor's interrogation, and as is the case with eye witness testimony, the parts where the stories overlap aren't all the same. Just to over-emphasize this, each sequence has a different animation style, which is marked by completely different character and art design – the characters, the clothes they are wearing, and the sets all look completely different in each sequence. This bothered me, but not nearly as much as how everything was a completely predictable story leading up to where the movie started. The last survivor that was interrogated even finished everything off with the clichéd, "you know the rest." The story is a lackluster rush job with lackluster characters that can't come even close to rescuing this movie by being even remotely interesting – the movie never gives them a chance to be. While the first movie actually moved a bit on the slow side to the point of being somewhat boring, this movie ties to make up for that by moving so fast that the characters are never really delved into beyond the bare minimum needed to keep forcing the movie forward. As a result, there is never any reason to feel anything more than apathy toward them, or their fates.

As you might guess, the evil overseer (yes, he's actually called "the overseer") sees to it that all of the survivors are either killed or meet a worse fate. One apparently shows up in the second game and ends up in a cryo-tube right next to the game's protagonist, Isaac Clarke. The other, who pulled double duty as the movie's fan service, was lobotomized and brainwashed into being the scapegoat to explain the loss of two ships and a mining colony. Cue evil cackling and the establishing shot of where the game this is a prequel of is going to take place.

So as you can tell, I don't like this movie, and while it's not horrible, it definitely isn't good either. No, not even the tits it threw at me in a last desperate attempt to make me interested in it helped in the least. Despite its much too fast pacing, this movie still managed to be boring, and actually felt much longer than the hour it took to watch it. It was just another shallow zombie movie, and while I know both this and the last movie were just ads for their respective games, that doesn't excuse them from their many flaws since they're still supposed to pretend to be movies. I'm really only throwing this movie a bone because it had an interesting premise that it simply failed to live up to, and another because of the quality of the voice acting, which was an improvement over the first movie. It looks like there was some anime voice talent there, but the one I recognized the most was Christopher Judge, who you might know as Teal'c from Stargate SG-1. Here he played Nick Kuttner, a large scary black man, and the nucking futs survivor who spaced himself. It's a shame such good talent was wasted on such a bad movie.

Don’t bother watching this movie – it'll leave you wishing that you had an hour of you life back. 2/10.
 

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