The new season of anime has just started! Matt and I are going to watch too much of crappy high school antics!
The new season of anime has just started! Matt and I are going to watch too much of crappy high school antics!
I finally finished NANA. It got a lot better during the second half. A lot of anime I watch are like that, I wonder why.
It's definitely worth checking out. It's unlike any other series I've seen yet. It has its habit of putting incredibly over the top facial expressions which also makes the art style stand out in a really weird way.
It had this moment where I suddenly went "when did this show suddenly get so good?" Really, all of a sudden all character relationships and interactions are really intricate and interesting. It's hard to predict where the plot will go. Quite captivating.
Next up on my list, Angel Beats!
...
Space Dandy.
Space Dandy is waiting to be watched here.
Angel Beats!, done. Went by pretty quickly. Overall, it was pretty good, Key (or rather Jun Maeda) products always seem to be quite amazing.
Sadly, I feel the series made the wrong decision. Episode 9, it seems like the perfect setup to have the show go on for quite a while - we have a clear goal and great setting - but no, it doesn't take long for them to introduce the reason that makes it end at Episode 13 already. This makes a lot of characters go without much-desired character development.
Otonashi was a really good protagonist and by far my favorite character of the bunch. Kanede fulfilled the role of someone you never really know what to think of very nicely. Overall, a show well worth watching. Not Maeda's best work (gee I wonder what is) but I'm looking forward to the Key VN. I just wish they'd gone with what they had after Ep 9.
Next up, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica. Decided to watch this now since it's short as well and it seems to be a bit of a must-watch. Little Busters comes afterwards. Anything to fill the Clannad Void would be wonderful.
Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica was the best anime I've seen in quite a while. It starts off as if it were a clichéd magical girls show... takes three episodes to show that that's not quite true... takes another three episodes to prove the exact opposite. It basically takes your preconceptions of series of the genre and throws them right back at you.
The story is pretty dark. I won't go much further into it to prevent spoiling anything, but the plot has a lot of twists that (may) go directly against your expectations of what the show would turn out to be. It had great pacing, always keeping on pressure to make you continue watching. By the end it very much reminded me of two other anime I like a lot, and that would be (SPOILER)Steins;Gate and Higurashi no Naku Koro ni.
It's one of rather few shows with an episode count in the ~12 range that didn't feel cramped. Air and Angel Beats felt like they should've been longer. Not the case with Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica, it took just as much time as it needed, no more, no less.
I can only recommend it further, particularly to people who like shows such as Elfen Lied. Definitely among my Top 5.
Next up, finally Little Busters! I've been itching to watch it ever since someone who's seen Clannad told me it was the saddest anime they'd ever seen. And that's quite a statement. Might take a while till I finish it though since I have a couple of deadlines coming up this week.
Homura.
Little Busters... certainly is something. It flip-flops between serious and silly like nobody's business. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though.
So basically just like all Key adaptations, gotcha^^Originally Posted by Shauna
Homura.
Little Busters... certainly is something. It flip-flops between serious and silly like nobody's business. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though.
I trust you've seen Refrain?
For a long time I actually felt really bad for (SPOILER)Sayaka. She becomes a Mahou Shoujo with no regrets and a positive outlook and then over the course of the next episodes that positivity is completely destroyed and regrets just pile up. But well, when you get further into it, Homura's backstory is really insane. And it also further established just what a certain other anime character had to go through.
I have indeed seen Refrain. So much "What is going on!?". xD
It is less wtf than Air though, which really was the creme de la creme of wtf.
Is Death Note as good as a lot of people said years back?
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is, I believe, the longest running manga to still be in production, nearing its thousandth issue and recently having celebrated its... 25th anniversary? The ending theme of the show, Roundabout by Yes, is full on eight and a half minutes of badassery. Also, because people might not get how badass the show is:
Fun fact: every time you hear "Yare Yare Daze" or "ORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORA!" in an anime, it's referencing this upcoming series.
It is definitely long running, but not as 1 continuous series, there are currently 8 separate series, the longest continuous series would be Hajime no Ippo.Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is, I believe, the longest running manga to still be in production, nearing its thousandth issue and recently having celebrated its... 25th anniversary? The ending theme of the show, Roundabout by Yes, is full on eight and a half minutes of badassery. Also, because people might not get how badass the show is:
Fun fact: every time you hear "Yare Yare Daze" or "ORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORA!" in an anime, it's referencing this upcoming series.
"Little Busters!" does seem to have pretty crazy leaps in tone. You go from Episode 15 to 16 and it's literally going from light-hearted harem to psychoterror. Loving it.
This image is certainly intriguing:
Click to show
1489262_397779890356339_2045539471_n.jpg
I'm certainly looking forward to Refrain. If it's anything like After Story was to Clannad, that would be amazing. No spoilers, mmkay?
Edit: Btw, Kyousuke is the most awesome character in the history of anything. "RIN LEARNED THE RISING MEOWSTBALL!"
Editra: Well, I've been watching pretty much nonstop since I made this post, which was 5 hours ago. First season done and now I'm gonna go sleep and look forward to watching the half-as-long Refrain^^ I'll surely be done by Monday.
Last edited by Karifean; 01-18-2014 at 02:03 AM.
Refrain does feel a little more like the last 16 episodes of Clannad AS, and it goes through and establishes some of the rules, unlike Air or Clannad.
Major Little Busters, Air, and Clannad spoilers, do not open until after episode 10 of Refrain
Don't believe the hype. People who are trying to compare Clannad to Busters are just looking for the next emotional-dramatic fix, and they won't get it. The ending of the anime for Refrain was heavily mismanaged, and the explanation for how the world was maintained was not correct.
You could pretty much go to Wikipedia after you watched Air and Clannad to figure out what was going on. For Clannad, Nagisa is saved because Tomoya goes through all of the routes and collects their good wishes. Clannad the anime plays this off as a traditional harem, except for the part where the visual novel has routes for male characters. If you've ever wondered why there's no Ryou route, it's because that's actually the Kappei or Kyou routes.
In Air, they sort of brush over the Misuzu-Kanna connection. The most important part that they leave out is that Uraha's puppet/magical ability is inherited by all of her descendants. This is especially important in that Yukito may have been the only male inheritor after 1000 years. In a one-frame flashback, we see that Yukito's mother looks exactly like Uraha, but with different hair.
Kurugaya pls
And there we go. Refrain done. It was amazing.
I'd say of the ones I've seen, Little Busters is Key's second-best work. I'll still have to wait before I can honestly judge how I feel about it, but I like it very much. I will try to refrain (heh) from comparing it to Clannad too much although I don't know how well I'm gonna manage.
There are a lot of things Little Busters did right. Kyousuke was a wonderful character from beginning all the way until the end, and the fact that he had Yoshino Yuusuke's voice made him all the more awesome. While it sometimes ended up being downright cheesy, the show also had some very good humor thrown in.
The FinaleI thought it was good. It seemed a bit of a daring move to have them survive after the ENTIRE show has been about making the Ri's strong enough to cope with the loss, but in the end, it worked out fine. You can just as easily say that their gained strength ended up giving them the resolve they needed to be able to also save their lives. Although they might've changed something from the Visual Novel so hell if I know.
All in all, typical Key^^
Seriously, I would've easily and quickly guessed it was a Key adaptation even if I had had no idea. From structure to storytelling to plot points to character synergy to comedy to soundtrack style, it all oozes Key. And that's great since I like Key a lot.
I'm considering checking out the Visual Novel. So far, I've only read Clannad, but it seems LB was not as good an adaptation as Clannad was (not entirely surprising since Clannad was a superb adaptation IMO and in some points even exceeded the original) so I should probably check it out to get the full storyline experience.
At least I might do that once my backlog gets a little lighter. My next choices will be Rin - Daughters of Mnemosyne (it's only 6 eps, might just quickly watch it tomorrow), Ef. Tale of Memories and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I should also be watching FMAB at some point. Oh well, February, February...
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