[LinearPhilosopher]

No idea, i mean judging by the style it looks like an older anime so good luck finding anything. Theres tons of old obscure anime out there.

[LinearPhilosopher]

Where did everybody go?

[D'rek]

LinearPhilosopher, on 28 February 2016 - 11:06 PM, said:

Where did everybody go?

No one is watching the same shows as me this season, and none of these shows have any "OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE THE MC JUST TURNED INTO A SPACE WHALE" moments I feel the need to gush about, either, I guess.

Except maybe AssClass 2, I guess. But I dunno if there's anything to discuss there. The latest episode was kinda dumb, IMO, though still funny. I think I know what the "Last Assassin" end-of-episode-foreshadowing is, though, and it is going to be awesome when it shows up.

Also, Shokugeki no Souma season 2 has been confirmed starting in the summer season.

[LinearPhilosopher]

D, on 29 February 2016 - 03:13 PM, said:

LinearPhilosopher, on 28 February 2016 - 11:06 PM, said:

Where did everybody go?

No one is watching the same shows as me this season, and none of these shows have any "OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE THE MC JUST TURNED INTO A SPACE WHALE" moments I feel the need to gush about, either, I guess.

Except maybe AssClass 2, I guess. But I dunno if there's anything to discuss there. The latest episode was kinda dumb, IMO, though still funny. I think I know what the "Last Assassin" end-of-episode-foreshadowing is, though, and it is going to be awesome when it shows up.

Also, Shokugeki no Souma season 2 has been confirmed starting in the summer season.

wait what? like we talking hitchhikers level of whale turning?


Aside from that have you had a change to give grimgar a go? I found its grown on me. It took a few episodes for me to get it, but the entire premise of the show is rather than having a show about a bunch of gary stus stuck in an mmo, you have a bunch of mere mortals as the main characters. Makes for more interesting show. Also the goblins they kill are more humanlike in terms of behavior which does make you sympathise with them to a certain degree.

[D'rek]

Nope, still no Grimgar. It, and Rokugo, and Erased, I will probably end up marathoning at the end of the season when I find a low-homework weekend.

[D'rek]

We're still a month away from the Spring season, but the announcements are pretty much all done. Here's the chart-list: https://static.nereg...me-Chart-v2.png

What's everyone looking forward to?

I am veeeery excited for the second half of Concerete Revolutio and Sakamoto desu ga?

Hero Academia is getting a lot of hype due to its source material, and there's been a lot of positive expectations for Bungou Stray Dogs, too.

I don't know much about them, but I'm also planning to watch Flying Witch and Mayoiga

Kyoukai no Rinne will be one to avoid - the first season was really boring! Super Lovers looks hilariously, awkwardly atrocious.

Koutetsujou no Kabaneri seems to have a cool aesthetic/premise - steampunk post-apocalyptic survival story?

Phoenix Wright/Gyakuten Saiban will be a must-watch for most people, at least to start. The games were so popular and meme-tastic over here, but a lot of that is due to the localized translation. No one knows yet whether the anime will use any of that, or what sort of adaptation it will be.

[LinearPhilosopher]

I gotta say with durarara the buildingup is quite hard to follow at time but its really starting to pay off. I can see why this is the final season, the way everything is coming to a head. I think im going to need to re-watch this show as ill get a lot out of it.

Based off that

Mayoiga the premise interests me because with a premise like that there are many directions to go in. Horror? psychological? philosophical? character study? etc....

Shingeki no bahamut, hey the series that came out a while ago was a blast so why not.

ACE ATTORNEY ANIME?????? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP!!!!!

Koutetsujou no kabaneri:could be good, could be bad well see

Macross Triangle: WHy the fuck not its macross.I need something brainless

Kiznaiver: interesting premise. Will have to check it out

Joker gameL havent watched a good spy drama in a while, could be good

Digimon tri ep2 (FUCK YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
euphonium movie

Ajin:poster looks badass, based of the description might check it out

7 series
3 movies

The real question is how the fuck will i manage this

April:end of tax season
May: CPA tax elective+concert
June july: CPA tax elective.

and did i mention im now working 40hrs a week on top of that?????

This post has been edited by LinearPhilosopher: 06 March 2016 - 03:52 AM

[D'rek]

LinearPhilosopher, on 06 March 2016 - 03:50 AM, said:

I gotta say with durarara the buildingup is quite hard to follow at time but its really starting to pay off. I can see why this is the final season, the way everything is coming to a head. I think im going to need to re-watch this show as ill get a lot out of it.

It's been a really solid adaptation so far. I'm enjoying it.

LinearPhilosopher, on 06 March 2016 - 03:50 AM, said:

Mayoiga the premise interests me because with a premise like that there are many directions to go in. Horror? psychological? philosophical? character study? etc....

I agree, it sounds intriguing, definitely worth checking out.

LinearPhilosopher, on 06 March 2016 - 03:50 AM, said:

Shingeki no bahamut, hey the series that came out a while ago was a blast so why not.

Apparently, they are both based on parts of the card game, but otherwise this Manaria Friends series is not related to the Genesis series from 2014 at all. Different studio, totally different setting/characters/plot, etc.

But, MAPPA is doing a second season of Genesis, supposedly coming out later this year, too!

LinearPhilosopher, on 06 March 2016 - 03:50 AM, said:

ACE ATTORNEY ANIME?????? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP!!!!!

EAT YOUR HAMBURGERS!

LinearPhilosopher, on 06 March 2016 - 03:50 AM, said:

Koutetsujou no kabaneri:could be good, could be bad well see

Apparently, the internet has decided to nickname it Attack on Trains now.

LinearPhilosopher, on 06 March 2016 - 03:50 AM, said:

Joker gameL havent watched a good spy drama in a while, could be good

It's so rare to see a WW2 setting on the Japanese side, too. I'm definitely interested.

LinearPhilosopher, on 06 March 2016 - 03:50 AM, said:

euphonium movie

I think it's just a re-cap movie (before season 2 comes out later this year). I'm going to skip it.

LinearPhilosopher, on 06 March 2016 - 03:50 AM, said:

The real question is how the fuck will i manage this

I believe in you!!!

[LinearPhilosopher]

domo!

also latest assasination classroom, that was unusually heavy episode. I like it though.

[D'rek]

LinearPhilosopher, on 06 March 2016 - 01:55 PM, said:

domo!

also latest assasination classroom, that was unusually heavy episode. I like it though.

Indeed. I feel like she changed a bit too much, too fast at the end, but I guess they didn't want this to be an ongoing thing, rather just one episode and move on.

[D'rek]

The Bahamut: Manaria Friends series has been indefinitely delayed. Sounds like something happened between Cygames (the game maker) and Studio Hibari (the anime production studio).

From ANN:

Quote

The official website for the Rage of Bahamut: Manaria Friends television anime announced on Tuesday that the planned April 1 premiere has been delayed "due to various circumstances." The website added that the finalized premiere date has not been decided, and the scheduled special advance screening on March 20 has been cancelled. The website and the anime's official Twitter account will announce the finalized broadcast schedule and other details in the future.

The website also removed its entire staff listing except for Cygames, the creator of the original fantasy social card game that inspired the anime. Before Tuesday, the website listed the following staff:

Director/Series Script Supervisor: Takafumi Hoshikawa
Character Design/Chief Animation Director: Megumi Ishihara
Art Director: Kenichi Kurata
Music: Takashi Watanabe
Animation Production: Studio Hibari

Studio Hibari's recent anime production credits include the Monster Strike net anime, the Re:␣Hamatora television anime, and collaborating on this year's Reikenzan: Hoshikuzu-tachi no Utage.

The Rage of Bahamut: Manaria Friends anime would have premiered on April 1 as part of the fourth season of the "Ultra Super Anime Time" programming block. Ultra Super Pictures launched the Ultra Super Anime Time 30-minute programming block in July. Each season in the block features three series of anime shorts.

The anime would adapt the "Manaria Mahō Gakuin" (Mysteria Academy in the English version) event within Cygames' Rage of Bahamut social game. In the game, Mysteria Academy is a prestigious magic school that teaches magic without discrimination to the three factions (men, gods, demons), who usually are engaged in battle with each other. The anime will follow the three young women as students at the academy.

The Rage of Bahamut fantasy social card game already inspired MAPPA studio's 13-episode Rage of Bahamut Genesis TV anime series which premiered in October 2014. The staff announced in May 2015 that a second season of the anime had been green-lit. Cygames anime division employee Nobuhiro Takenaka confirmed that Rage of Bahamut: Manaria Friends is not related to the second season of Rage of Bahamut Genesis.

Funimation streamed the first Rage of Bahamut Genesis anime season as it aired.

[Terez]

Apologies for dropping in on this thread without having read any of it; I'm not much of an anime person. The only anime I ever watched was Dragon Ball and particularly DBZ. I know it's not incredibly popular with anime connoisseurs and I even understand why, but I am a somewhat hardcore casual fan of DB, if that makes any sense. I also love DBZA (the Team Four Star parodies).

Anyway, I am curious as to whether anyone has been watching DB Super. (I CTRL-F'd back to September or so and didn't see any mention of it.) Unlike GT, Akira Toriyama is actually involved in writing the plot. Apparently Toei came to him with an idea for a new series, and he said, okay, but your characters kind of suck and so does your plot, so I'm going to redesign and rewrite. That led to movies 14 and 15, "Battle of the Gods" and "Resurrection F". They decided to make it into a series, with a promotional manga which is actually based on the anime (even when it is released first) and which is not drawn by Toriyama (though it's a good mimic based on his late style).

It's just on Japanese TV at the moment; I usually watch it live online on Saturday evenings and then I watch the middle-of-the-road subs (Anime Cruzers) the next day. Not crappy speedsubs which come out early Sunday morning, but not the best subs (Dragon Team) which often don't come out until Tuesday, though they're trying to go faster because there are hundreds of fans watching crappy subs and getting strange ideas about what actually happened, which annoys the true hardcore fans to no end.

The first two sagas of DBS, which wrapped up in January, were based on movies 14 and 15. It was basically the same plot retold. In some ways, that was good because it filled in some holes and answered some questions about what was going on in the movies. In some ways it was terrible, most especially the art and animation, which ranged from excellent (parts of Beerus vs Goku, for example) to godawful. Apparently the anime studio had an impossible schedule; it wasn't even a budget problem, as I understand it, just a lack of good artists/animators to go around.

The new episodes (past the plots of movies 14 and 15) are much, much better. Not perfect, but DB was never perfect. The new characters are interesting; the new plot is fun (remains to be seen if it will go deep, but with Toriyama on board and with the details on the table at present, it seems likely).

My vote: definitely worth watching. If you're a casual fan of the series, maybe watch the movies and then start with episode 28, which is where the new material begins. But I'd suggest starting with episode 1 of DBS, because there's some really good stuff in the beginning, and the quality doesn't degenerate until it goes on. Maybe watch until it annoys you (assuming it ever does) and then watch the movies instead and skip to ep 28.

If you want more info, you can always check out r/dbz; the pinned thread for the most recent episode always has the latest FAQ and all the info you need, with links including to livestreams.

[D'rek]

Hi Terez!

Interesting to hear your your thoughts on DBS. I was watching it but let it fall to the way-side... have been watching a few episodes when I have extra time on a weekend but still only around episode 24ish.

As you say, there was some atrocious animation so far, plus a lot of crappy writing, too. Good to hear it gets better - that'll spur me to keep watching it and see what happens.

Terez, on 11 March 2016 - 05:55 PM, said:

The only anime I ever watched was Dragon Ball and particularly DBZ. I know it's not incredibly popular with anime connoisseurs and I even understand why, but I am a somewhat hardcore casual fan of DB, if that makes any sense.

Really? I think it's incredibly popular with anime fans/conoisseurs - almost everyone remembers watching and being influenced by DB/DBZ when they were younger. There's a huge nostalgic love of it, but yeah I think most people can agree it has not aged well nor does it live up to its reputation if watched under a critical adult lens. But I think most people are willing to admit that while still loving it and praising its effect on their childhoods.

I am finding DBS not very enjoyable for those same reasons, though. There's no nostalgia filter on this new content, so the awkward slapstick comedy falls flat and the predictably recurring plot elements can be kind of grating ("last episode I was holding back... now I'll fight all out" *two episodes later* "I was still holding back, now I'll really fight all out"). But I'm not really watching it as an adult with critical expectations, I'm just watching it for random giggles.


As far as the animation and staffing problems go, Toei brought it upon themselves, IMO. They're a HUGE studio with lots of resources and decades of experience, they should have been able to find a way around it or planned better. Toei actually cares about the PreCure series (which makes them tooooooons of money), so they work harder on managing PreCure projects and thus never have production issues, and the animation is amazing. But Toei just seems to not care as much about the Dragonball franchise, or One Piece, so those projects seem to often be mismanaged.

[Terez]

D, on 11 March 2016 - 09:01 PM, said:

...As you say, there was some atrocious animation so far, plus a lot of crappy writing, too.

The crappy writing was in many cases just lazy filler, since the movies kind of served as the source material in the first two sagas. (And the alt-u differences are sometimes interesting, something annoying.) There's an episode you haven't gotten to yet (soon) where they basically built the whole episode out of flashbacks. There were good bits in it, so it's not skippable (of course), but this was obviously a desperate attempt to get back on something resembling a sane schedule.

D, on 11 March 2016 - 09:01 PM, said:

Terez, on 11 March 2016 - 05:55 PM, said:

The only anime I ever watched was Dragon Ball and particularly DBZ. I know it's not incredibly popular with anime connoisseurs and I even understand why, but I am a somewhat hardcore casual fan of DB, if that makes any sense.

Really? I think it's incredibly popular with anime fans/conoisseurs - almost everyone remembers watching and being influenced by DB/DBZ when they were younger. There's a huge nostalgic love of it, but yeah I think most people can agree it has not aged well nor does it live up to its reputation if watched under a critical adult lens. But I think most people are willing to admit that while still loving it and praising its effect on their childhoods.

See, that's the thing. I never watched it as a kid; I started watching it in my early 20s, and at the time Toonami was somewhere around the end of the Frieza saga. I would have never watched it if I hadn't been repeatedly exposed to it against my will because I was hanging out with a bunch of kids who were on average 5 years younger than me (younger friends of a friend), and they were so hooked on it that they stopped everything to watch it. And this snuck up on me occasionally because at the time I had no idea what time it came on every day (it was 4pm CST, if I recall now) so I was often in the wrong place at the wrong time. I thought it was terrible and couldn't understand why everyone loved it so much...until I did.

So I find most people who love anime have a very different relationship with DB than I do because they grew up and realized that it kind of sucked in a lot of ways. I never had any illusions about the cheese and the terrible art (which I now appreciate more for having seen worse!) and my opinion of it only changed the one time, when I realized it was actually good. So your estimation of it as quoted above is basically exactly what I was talking about. And when I tell anime connoisseurs that I love DBZ, they (not you) usually try to get me to watch real anime, which I have nothing against. I have just never gotten into anything else and have felt no particular need to try because I have enough time-sucking habits.

D, on 11 March 2016 - 09:01 PM, said:

As far as the animation and staffing problems go, Toei brought it upon themselves, IMO. They're a HUGE studio with lots of resources and decades of experience, they should have been able to find a way around it or planned better. Toei actually cares about the PreCure series (which makes them tooooooons of money), so they work harder on managing PreCure projects and thus never have production issues, and the animation is amazing. But Toei just seems to not care as much about the Dragonball franchise, or One Piece, so those projects seem to often be mismanaged.

You probably know a lot more about it than I do; I only get bits and snippets of this on reddit (of which I can only stand so much). Toriyama mentioned being on a crazy writing schedule and my guess is that the only reason they did the longer version of the movies at all is because he wanted plot control and he has a bit of a deadline complex.

PS: About Toei not caring...I meant to say that this seems to me to reflect that kind of anime-elitist attitude toward the DB franchise. I mean, it has to be their biggest money-maker of all time by a long shot. Why wouldn't they care?

This post has been edited by Terez: 11 March 2016 - 10:05 PM

[D'rek]

Terez, on 11 March 2016 - 09:55 PM, said:

D, on 11 March 2016 - 09:01 PM, said:

As far as the animation and staffing problems go, Toei brought it upon themselves, IMO. They're a HUGE studio with lots of resources and decades of experience, they should have been able to find a way around it or planned better. Toei actually cares about the PreCure series (which makes them tooooooons of money), so they work harder on managing PreCure projects and thus never have production issues, and the animation is amazing. But Toei just seems to not care as much about the Dragonball franchise, or One Piece, so those projects seem to often be mismanaged.

You probably know a lot more about it than I do; I only get bits and snippets of this on reddit (of which I can only stand so much). Toriyama mentioned being on a crazy writing schedule and my guess is that the only reason they did the longer version of the movies at all is because he wanted plot control and he has a bit of a deadline complex.

PS: About Toei not caring...I meant to say that this seems to me to reflect that kind of anime-elitist attitude toward the DB franchise. I mean, it has to be their biggest money-maker of all time by a long shot. Why wouldn't they care?

No, really!

In overseas licensing, yeah Dragonball is the biggest. I could only look-up data from 2011, but it shouldn't be that much different today:

Toei Overseas Licensing Top 4 (Fiscal Year 2011)
Dragon Ball . . 379 million yen
One Piece . . . 156 million yen
Saint Seiya . . 113 million yen
Pretty Cure . .. 46 million yen


But anime is a very domestic-focused industry, and that is where they make most of their money. And dragon ball really is 3rd position there, by a big margin:

Toei Domestic Licensing Top 4 (Fiscal Year 2011)
One Piece . . . 3.339 billion yen
Pretty Cure . . 1.252 billion yen
Dragon Ball . . _ 343 million yen
Digimon . . . . _ 112 million yen


I dunno what's up with One Piece, their biggest money maker, as I don't watch it, I just hear a lot of complaints about it. Probably the same problem that Dragon Ball Z had when it was originally airing - it was airing at the same time as the source manga was being created so they had to go super slow paced or else they'd catch up and overtake the manga (Toei actually did a re-release of Dragon Ball Z a few years ago called Dragon Ball Kai where they re-cut the series to remove a lot of extraneous padding (and re-edited the voices/some scenes so everything still made sense)).


Anyways, as the figures show, PreCure is HUGE in Japan (and barely known abroad) and sells TONS of associated toys, music, etc. Toei gets paid a loooot of money to make it... but still not nearly as much as too-big-to-fail One Piece.

Terez, on 11 March 2016 - 09:55 PM, said:

D, on 11 March 2016 - 09:01 PM, said:

...As you say, there was some atrocious animation so far, plus a lot of crappy writing, too.

The crappy writing was in many cases just lazy filler, since the movies kind of served as the source material in the first two sagas. (And the alt-u differences are sometimes interesting, something annoying.) There's an episode you haven't gotten to yet (soon) where they basically built the whole episode out of flashbacks. There were good bits in it, so it's not skippable (of course), but this was obviously a desperate attempt to get back on something resembling a sane schedule.

D, on 11 March 2016 - 09:01 PM, said:

Terez, on 11 March 2016 - 05:55 PM, said:

The only anime I ever watched was Dragon Ball and particularly DBZ. I know it's not incredibly popular with anime connoisseurs and I even understand why, but I am a somewhat hardcore casual fan of DB, if that makes any sense.

Really? I think it's incredibly popular with anime fans/conoisseurs - almost everyone remembers watching and being influenced by DB/DBZ when they were younger. There's a huge nostalgic love of it, but yeah I think most people can agree it has not aged well nor does it live up to its reputation if watched under a critical adult lens. But I think most people are willing to admit that while still loving it and praising its effect on their childhoods.

See, that's the thing. I never watched it as a kid; I started watching it in my early 20s, and at the time Toonami was somewhere around the end of the Frieza saga. I would have never watched it if I hadn't been repeatedly exposed to it against my will because I was hanging out with a bunch of kids who were on average 5 years younger than me (younger friends of a friend), and they were so hooked on it that they stopped everything to watch it. And this snuck up on me occasionally because at the time I had no idea what time it came on every day (it was 4pm CST, if I recall now) so I was often in the wrong place at the wrong time. I thought it was terrible and couldn't understand why everyone loved it so much...until I did.

So I find most people who love anime have a very different relationship with DB than I do because they grew up and realized that it kind of sucked in a lot of ways. I never had any illusions about the cheese and the terrible art (which I now appreciate more for having seen worse!) and my opinion of it only changed the one time, when I realized it was actually good. So your estimation of it as quoted above is basically exactly what I was talking about. And when I tell anime connoisseurs that I love DBZ, they (not you) usually try to get me to watch real anime, which I have nothing against. I have just never gotten into anything else and have felt no particular need to try because I have enough time-sucking habits.

Ah, that's an interesting alternate perspective on it, then.

Thinking on it more, I guess for a lot of people they'd see it as kids and get super excited about the awesome battles (especially since original dragon ball didn't air in Euro/NA - just DBZ which was much more fighting focused), but then seeing it as an adult the battle focus makes it a big letdown because indeed the battles are not that good compared to many other shows... including other shows from the same time period, let alone all the newer stuff that has come out in the intervening years.

But there are still lots of good points - it's still wacky and funny, the universe it develops is interesting, etc. But if you're going back to DB as an adult after loving it for its battles as a kid you're doomed to disappoint yourself if that's only what you focus on.

And it is definitely the kind of show that simply grows on you and gradually convinces you to be able to simply get in the mood for it even if you at first didn't like it (I mean, how can you not start to like a show after every character is turned into chocolate and eaten by a giant demonic Kirby?). And I do think that plays a lot into many people still revering it and admiring its effect on their interest in anime (usually from a young age, but not always), despite whatever critical flaws it might have.


I wonder how much of those same nostalgia-tinted glasses play into mine and others expectations of Dragon Ball Super, too. Yeah, the animation has had some bumps, is it really that bad? How much of it is "bad animation" and how much is it simply doing a less serious, comedic style of animation (even in the middle of a battle - which happened plenty in DB/DBZ, even if we didn't realize it as kids)?

E.g. here's a battle clip from Dragonball Super that has a bunch of facial animation that some would consider bad but could just be deliberate comedic impressions.

On the other hand, comedic effect or not, the show still spends 5 straight episodes on some of these fights, and it's hard to get as hyped for them/invested in them when the plot reasoning for them is "Goku wants to be stronger / bad person wants to destroy the universe" and, while not bad the animation nevertheless doesn't compare well to other modern works. I think one of the biggest things that always sort of breaks my immersion is that the fighting characters who can travel faster than sound and destroy planets with their fists don't move very fast and don't have much "impact" to their hits when they fight.

By contrast, here's a clip from Concrete Revolutio of two super-human/robots fighting with heavy impact and a great depiction of super-speed.

Or, as per the PreCure comparison earlier, a fight from PreCure with more "impact" to the swings.


Well, I'm droning on and on, and I don't really have any sort of point I'm trying to make, just rambling. I guess maybe I'm just not that interested in Dragon Ball Super because it hasn't really evolved from the original (Vegeta is still just a stoic ass whose entire raison-d'etre is to try and be stronger than Goku, and occasionally shows a glimmer of tolerance for his wife/kid) ... and it's not that it's bad... I just have other newer things I want to watch than just more DBZ.

So I'll check out the post-Freeza storyline, curious to see where it does start going. But no promises beyond that!

[amphibian]

The One Piece anime is a rather faithful adaptation of what I currently believe to be the best ongoing story being told anywhere on the planet.

The complaints mostly lie in how the animation varies in quality (sometimes really cheaping out) and in the extension of Fishman Island into something much longer and stretched out than the manga had. I quite enjoyed the filler arcs, particularly the Davyback one.

The show/manga is unusually developed in terms of backstory, character diversity, and workable narrative swerves for a shonen story. It also beats the hell out of DBZ for fight pacing.

It's Malazan like in terms of epic scope and an enormous cast of interesting characters. There's no on-screen sex and most of the fights end in knockouts/submissions instead of death because it's a shonen.

[Terez]

D, on 12 March 2016 - 05:59 AM, said:

Terez, on 11 March 2016 - 09:55 PM, said:

D, on 11 March 2016 - 09:01 PM, said:

As far as the animation and staffing problems go, Toei brought it upon themselves, IMO. They're a HUGE studio with lots of resources and decades of experience, they should have been able to find a way around it or planned better. Toei actually cares about the PreCure series (which makes them tooooooons of money), so they work harder on managing PreCure projects and thus never have production issues, and the animation is amazing. But Toei just seems to not care as much about the Dragonball franchise, or One Piece, so those projects seem to often be mismanaged.

About Toei not caring...I meant to say that this seems to me to reflect that kind of anime-elitist attitude toward the DB franchise. I mean, it has to be their biggest money-maker of all time by a long shot. Why wouldn't they care?

No, really!

In overseas licensing, yeah Dragonball is the biggest. I could only look-up data from 2011, but it shouldn't be that much different today:

Toei Overseas Licensing Top 4 (Fiscal Year 2011)
Dragon Ball . . 379 million yen
One Piece . . . 156 million yen
Saint Seiya . . 113 million yen
Pretty Cure . .. 46 million yen


But anime is a very domestic-focused industry, and that is where they make most of their money. And dragon ball really is 3rd position there, by a big margin:

Toei Domestic Licensing Top 4 (Fiscal Year 2011)
One Piece . . . 3.339 billion yen
Pretty Cure . . 1.252 billion yen
Dragon Ball . . _ 343 million yen
Digimon . . . . _ 112 million yen

I dunno what's up with One Piece, their biggest money maker, as I don't watch it, I just hear a lot of complaints about it. Probably the same problem that Dragon Ball Z had when it was originally airing - it was airing at the same time as the source manga was being created so they had to go super slow paced or else they'd catch up and overtake the manga (Toei actually did a re-release of Dragon Ball Z a few years ago called Dragon Ball Kai where they re-cut the series to remove a lot of extraneous padding (and re-edited the voices/some scenes so everything still made sense)).

Aside from Kai, what did DB really have going on in 2011? By that time DB was a show a decade or more past its prime. Kai was not new material; maybe it was designed to get a new generations of kids into the series, but that kind of thing is just not going to generate the same kind of excitement as new material.

I liked Kai, and I watched most of it in dubs because I like the dubs. Had to watch Buu in subs. Overall it's a much better way to tell the story; most of the filler is gone along with the stupid time-wasting moments like everyone getting their freaking-out face on when a scary dude or lady appears. I actually rewatched the original Z before I watched Kai, but I skipped the filler bits because I don't care about them. I think I only watched Garlic Jr. once.

IMO they really blew it by repeating a lot of those filler mistakes with the beginning DBS; I can't imagine why everything just had to be so breakneck for them. And maybe they just didn't want to invest the effort into a retelling of the movies. After they get into the new material, the pace picks up and the art gets better; it seems they care about it more; the quality more resembles the original effort in the movies.

D, on 12 March 2016 - 05:59 AM, said:

Thinking on it more, I guess for a lot of people they'd see it as kids and get super excited about the awesome battles (especially since original dragon ball didn't air in Euro/NA - just DBZ which was much more fighting focused), but then seeing it as an adult the battle focus makes it a big letdown because indeed the battles are not that good compared to many other shows... including other shows from the same time period, let alone all the newer stuff that has come out in the intervening years.

But there are still lots of good points - it's still wacky and funny, the universe it develops is interesting, etc. But if you're going back to DB as an adult after loving it for its battles as a kid you're doomed to disappoint yourself if that's only what you focus on.

I dunno; I still find the best battle moments to be affective; Gohan vs Cell ages very well, doesn't it? I think Frieza vs Goku was the worst in terms of time-wasting. I measured the episode time of Frieza's 5 minutes in Z and Kai, and the 5 minutes was something like half of their battle, maybe, in the anime.

D, on 12 March 2016 - 05:59 AM, said:

And it is definitely the kind of show that simply grows on you and gradually convinces you to be able to simply get in the mood for it even if you at first didn't like it (I mean, how can you not start to like a show after every character is turned into chocolate and eaten by a giant demonic Kirby?). And I do think that plays a lot into many people still revering it and admiring its effect on their interest in anime (usually from a young age, but not always), despite whatever critical flaws it might have.

The first bit I definitively remember watching was Goku going SS for the first time against Frieza. It was one of those times when I was in the wrong place at 4pm, and everyone was glued to the TV, so all I could do was watch. One of the next things I remember is the scene where everyone who was killed on Namek was moved to Earth, and Vegeta was bragging about having managed to kill some Namekians permanently. I had no idea what was going on, but this particular iteration of the head-case character type interested me. I think I actually got into it during the android saga, but at that point I dropped everything and started from the beginning of Z, and I caught up some time before Funimation was done with Cell.

D, on 12 March 2016 - 05:59 AM, said:

I wonder how much of those same nostalgia-tinted glasses play into mine and others expectations of Dragon Ball Super, too. Yeah, the animation has had some bumps, is it really that bad? How much of it is "bad animation" and how much is it simply doing a less serious, comedic style of animation (even in the middle of a battle - which happened plenty in DB/DBZ, even if we didn't realize it as kids)?

E.g. here's a battle clip from Dragonball Super that has a bunch of facial animation that some would consider bad but could just be deliberate comedic impressions.

Yeah, some of that isn't too terrible, but a lot of it really is terrible. At the very end of the Frieza fight, there's a scene where everyone is standing around, and a lot of people are just drawn with their eyes too far apart. Few faces are consistently drawn well; Bulma's is one of them that's usually right (for her new look, anyway). Jaco is usually done well too. (Have you read the Jaco manga? It's just one big volume, short and cute and worth reading IMO.)

D, on 12 March 2016 - 05:59 AM, said:

On the other hand, comedic effect or not, the show still spends 5 straight episodes on some of these fights, and it's hard to get as hyped for them/invested in them when the plot reasoning for them is "Goku wants to be stronger / bad person wants to destroy the universe" and, while not bad the animation nevertheless doesn't compare well to other modern works. I think one of the biggest things that always sort of breaks my immersion is that the fighting characters who can travel faster than sound and destroy planets with their fists don't move very fast and don't have much "impact" to their hits when they fight.

You might find this interesting: here's a comparison between parallel scenes in Resurrection F and then DBS, stolen from reddit:

reddit person said:

Comparing this scene to its Resurrection 'F' equivalent really illustrates what all the griping is about.

And this comparison is not an outlier; it's typical.

D, on 12 March 2016 - 05:59 AM, said:

Well, I'm droning on and on, and I don't really have any sort of point I'm trying to make, just rambling. I guess maybe I'm just not that interested in Dragon Ball Super because it hasn't really evolved from the original (Vegeta is still just a stoic ass whose entire raison-d'etre is to try and be stronger than Goku, and occasionally shows a glimmer of tolerance for his wife/kid) ... and it's not that it's bad... I just have other newer things I want to watch than just more DBZ.

No worries on the rambling; I like reading it. I don't expect Vegeta to ever change much on the surface; if he did he wouldn't be recognizable. But he's still changed a lot. I mean, Goku is his best bud now (this becomes even more evident after the ROF saga). And they're gods now. It's easy to blow that off, since they present it as just a new transformation, but I'd be surprised if they're not going somewhere with that, considering the context.

PS: The new material involves a tournament, which is very familiar territory for both Toriyama and Toei (who managed to squeeze in a few filler tournaments, in the series and in the movies). Many fans seem to think the pace is a little too fast, but they had expectations for the pace based on the manga, which was ahead of the anime until last week.

This post has been edited by Terez: 12 March 2016 - 04:06 PM

[D'rek]

Fine fine... I'll go find the graph...

edit:




DB Kai originally ran from 2009 to 2011, and DBS started in 2015.

PreCure basically has one 50-episode series per year and occasional movies.

One Piece has been continuously airing for 17 years so far and occasionally has movies and specials on top of that.

[LinearPhilosopher]

YAY!!!!!!! someone new in the thread, welcome terez.

Now to go read a novel brb

[LinearPhilosopher]

alos wtf is pretty cure. I've never stumbled across it until it was mentioned here.


In regards to DBZ, Its very fondly remebered by everyone in the anime community, but not critically well received. If you started blasting rock the dragon at a con people who go crazy and all start air guitaring. We all have fond memories of watching dbz as kids on ytv or toonami on friday evenings. But because we've grown up watching the medium, tastes grow and develop and when you look at it through adult lenses you have a show thats kinda horrible in terms of pacing.

Outside of the anime world though DBZ is very well known. Heck even my trainer went and watched the latest DBZ movie in theatres.

Kai did fix that so in many ways i see it as a way for a newer generation to experience what a great show it was with less filler and modern animation. But beyond that, comapred to more modern shows it simply doesn't compare. Nowadays if you want the best of the best in terms of shounen you got Hunter X Hunter (2011 reboot) and according to amph/QT you also got one piece.

Cant really judge OP as i havent seen much if any of it, though im told you're supposed to skip the 50eps or so which to me makes my eyes roll.

This post has been edited by LinearPhilosopher: 14 March 2016 - 12:35 AM