[Maark Abbott]

D, on 01 August 2016 - 02:52 PM, said:

Terez, on 31 July 2016 - 06:06 AM, said:

I watched the first season of Attack on Titan and I thought it was pretty amazing. So naturally I started reading the manga because I wanted to see where the story was going, and I usually prefer the book anyway. (This is also true for the DB manga.)

I think the AOT manga actually diminished my appreciation for the story at least a little bit. Isayama seems to be one of those writers who likes to infodump character justifications. Lots of people in the WoT fandom have complained about Brandon Sanderson's habit of doing this, but Isayama is way worse than Brandon ever was; the justifications get a little convoluted and don't always make a whole lot of sense. I doubt it's a matter of translation issues; the facial expressions are usually a part of what irks me. It's like everyone's always coming to these amazing profound conclusions; it's a drama tactic that doesn't really work for me.

The anime had a few things that struck me as overdone (like Armin's plea to the garrison on behalf of Eren in Trost, and the repetition of the lines about "humanity was reminded" and "those who cannot abandon" etc.) but the pros far outweighed the cons. 9/10 Will Keep Watching.

Too bad they delayed season 2! :shrug:

Not unhappy here, gives me time to catch up with the manga!

[Terez]

I'm not too worried about season 2 being delayed since I already know what happens. I finished the manga; now I have to subscribe to Crunchyroll for the new chapters.

A friend of mine has been trying to get me to watch FMA for years. He told me not to watch Brotherhood before watching the original. Another friend told me to skip the original and watch Brotherhood, though, and that idea appealed to me more because I know it's more faithful to the manga and I'd rather not have to watch both.

I'm almost done with episode 3 of Brotherhood and I'm kind of bored. I don't know if that means I just haven't given it enough time yet, or if it means I should have watched the original anime first, or what. AOT hooked me in the first episode. If I didn't have friends bugging me about FMA, I would probably have given up on it already. (I tried reading the manga years ago, and I couldn't get into that either.)

[amphibian]

What do you find interesting in anime? The clearer you are about that, the better I or someone else can tell you whether FMA fits that or if you should move on.

[Terez]

Nothing in particular. It's like any other entertainment medium; I like an interesting story, interesting characters, interesting relationships, good comedy, etc. I don't expect all of the above.

I guess AOT hooked me in the first episode because it was really clear what was on the line, what the story was going to be about. The enemy was interesting; the world was interesting; the characters were relatable and sympathetic and their relationships were interesting.

It took a while for DBZ too hook me; I thought it was a really terrible show at first (still do, in some ways). I started watching around the time of Goku's first SS transformation and I thought the art was terrible and the dialogue clichéd. I remember when it hooked me, though; that scene where everyone got wished from Namek to Earth and Vegeta was being a psychopath and everyone was just kind of tolerating him. I watched with my friends for a little while after that and then I started at the beginning.

I don't expect anyone to tell me whether I'll like FMA, necessarily, but are there any opinions on whether I should have started with the original anime? I'm not convinced that's my problem here. I'll probably watch a few more episodes tonight because I have to do some work with my hands so I might as well watch something while I'm working.

One thing FMA does that bugs me is that sharkface overreaction thing common in manga and anime. Toriyama used to do that a lot, in Dr. Slump and in the early chapters of DB; I'm so glad he dropped it because it drives me nuts.

[Silencer]

Terez, on 05 August 2016 - 05:51 AM, said:

Nothing in particular. It's like any other entertainment medium; I like an interesting story, interesting characters, interesting relationships, good comedy, etc. I don't expect all of the above.

I guess AOT hooked me in the first episode because it was really clear what was on the line, what the story was going to be about. The enemy was interesting; the world was interesting; the characters were relatable and sympathetic and their relationships were interesting.

It took a while for DBZ too hook me; I thought it was a really terrible show at first (still do, in some ways). I started watching around the time of Goku's first SS transformation and I thought the art was terrible and the dialogue clichéd. I remember when it hooked me, though; that scene where everyone got wished from Namek to Earth and Vegeta was being a psychopath and everyone was just kind of tolerating him. I watched with my friends for a little while after that and then I started at the beginning.

I don't expect anyone to tell me whether I'll like FMA, necessarily, but are there any opinions on whether I should have started with the original anime? I'm not convinced that's my problem here. I'll probably watch a few more episodes tonight because I have to do some work with my hands so I might as well watch something while I'm working.

One thing FMA does that bugs me is that sharkface overreaction thing common in manga and anime. Toriyama used to do that a lot, in Dr. Slump and in the early chapters of DB; I'm so glad he dropped it because it drives me nuts.

The 'art breaks' is one of those pet peeves I have with anime. I don't like it. FMA does it quite a bit, unfortunately, but I grew accustomed to it and don't really pay any mind mind to it much any more unless it's really frequent/egregious.

FMA: Brotherhood, is fine to watch on its own. There's literally zero reason to watch the original adaptation except for "completeness" - there's no real value to be gained in watching it first, for sure. Brotherhood is an awesome anime (I happen to be rewatching it now), in that it does a lot of what of other good Shounen do (fighting, comedy, and high stakes), but it does it in a nice compact format (54 episodes, iirc) and has enough "adult" themes to make it a bit less 'generic shounen fighter'.

It didn't catch me for several episodes (random art breaks notwithstanding) but by the time I had finished it I liked it a lot, if that's worth anything. It's not perfect by any means, but it is a relatively well-told story and the characters have solidish motivations and the plot unfolds slowly but surely - personally I'm less a fan of the main characters and more a fan of the secondary characters even though they don't get the focus as much as I might like (Roy Mustang and co are all quite interesting characters and have some of the most intriguing backstory/development even if its mostly a background thing compared to Ed and Al), but our intrepid protagonists aren't poor characters either.

I think one of the things it does well is that it sets down the rules of the 'magic' in this universe and mostly sticks to them. Where DBZ has insane power growth, FMA doesn't ever really have characters becoming "more powerful" through arbitrary "training" - at the end of the series Ed can do much the same Alchemy as he can at the beginning, he's just more experienced, savvy, and creative with what he can do. And the villains are quite decent too, FYI, though I won't spoil anything in that regard.



TL:DR - it's worth it to keep going. If you get say 12 episodes in and it's not at least started to be interesting you can probably let it slide, but honestly it's short enough that you can just watch the whole thing anyway without throwing away too much watching time. It's got a darker tone to it than most Shounen anime and has a relatively interesting world and characters, but doesn't really have any outstanding attributes unless you take to some of the characters or something. Aside from the art breaks the animation is pretty high quality, too.

[amphibian]

I actually stopped watching Attack On Titan after maybe five episodes because I thought it was uninteresting and unlikely to go anywhere truly fun.

FMA has a better story than most anime series and it goes interesting places. I only watched the original series and not Brotherhood, so I can't tell you if you should have seen the original first.

[Terez]

phib, I want to say you gave up on AOT too early; some of the most interesting aspects of the plot are revealed between eps 5-10. But if you didn't like it, you didn't like it.

Silencer, on 05 August 2016 - 06:45 AM, said:

The 'art breaks' is one of those pet peeves I have with anime. I don't like it. FMA does it quite a bit, unfortunately, but I grew accustomed to it and don't really pay any mind mind to it much any more unless it's really frequent/egregious.

Is that the official term for it? lol. I will probably get used to it too. It's actually not as bad as it is in Toriyama's manga; reading Dr. Slump literally gives me a headache, it's so bad.

Silencer, on 05 August 2016 - 06:45 AM, said:

FMA: Brotherhood, is fine to watch on its own. There's literally zero reason to watch the original adaptation except for "completeness" - there's no real value to be gained in watching it first, for sure.

That's basically what Peter said on my Facebook thread. But he implied that, rather than retelling the beginning of the story, they condensed it to flashbacks, so I was wondering if maybe I was missing the original story hooks, or a little more insight on what makes the characters tick (especially the secondary ones, but including Ed and Al).

Silencer, on 05 August 2016 - 06:45 AM, said:

I think one of the things it does well is that it sets down the rules of the 'magic' in this universe and mostly sticks to them. Where DBZ has insane power growth, FMA doesn't ever really have characters becoming "more powerful" through arbitrary "training" - at the end of the series Ed can do much the same Alchemy as he can at the beginning, he's just more experienced, savvy, and creative with what he can do.

This is an interesting way of looking at DB. A lot of DB fans are really pissed that the secondary characters have become so irrelevant because they've maxed out their strength while the Saiyans keep growing, but that was what was supposed to be special about the Saiyans in the first place: their unlimited potential for growth. It's why Frieza was so worried about them. It gets a bit difficult plotwise, but IMO Super is taking it in the only logical direction, with the Saiyans becoming gods. And they introduced the final unbeatable big boss in the very beginning, and he's just kind of hanging around, like they're all friends. (This is what I love about DB.)

I'm on ep 6 of Brotherhood now. According to KissAnime there are 64 episodes. I guess I might as well just watch the whole thing. If I can watch DBGT, I can watch this and make a determination when I'm done. (Not a GT fan in the slightest, but it was also just 64 episodes, so I figured I might as well.)

[Silencer]

Terez, on 05 August 2016 - 07:09 AM, said:

phib, I want to say you gave up on AOT too early; some of the most interesting aspects of the plot are revealed between eps 5-10. But if you didn't like it, you didn't like it.

Silencer, on 05 August 2016 - 06:45 AM, said:

The 'art breaks' is one of those pet peeves I have with anime. I don't like it. FMA does it quite a bit, unfortunately, but I grew accustomed to it and don't really pay any mind mind to it much any more unless it's really frequent/egregious.

Is that the official term for it? lol. I will probably get used to it too. It's actually not as bad as it is in Toriyama's manga; reading Dr. Slump literally gives me a headache, it's so bad.

Yeah, art break/art shift as per TV Tropes: link. Generally if an anime does it much more than FMA does, I get annoyed. They straddle a fine line that was just fine enough for me to get used to - and it kinda-sorta works with the characters, where in a Seinen it is more noticeable and much more annoying. In a manga I can imagine it getting pretty bad especially given the ratio - one image in art shift in a manga comprises a lot more material than one scene in an episode of an anime.

Quote

Silencer, on 05 August 2016 - 06:45 AM, said:

FMA: Brotherhood, is fine to watch on its own. There's literally zero reason to watch the original adaptation except for "completeness" - there's no real value to be gained in watching it first, for sure.

That's basically what Peter said on my Facebook thread. But he implied that, rather than retelling the beginning of the story, they condensed it to flashbacks, so I was wondering if maybe I was missing the original story hooks, or a little more insight on what makes the characters tick (especially the secondary ones, but including Ed and Al).

Silencer, on 05 August 2016 - 06:45 AM, said:

I think one of the things it does well is that it sets down the rules of the 'magic' in this universe and mostly sticks to them. Where DBZ has insane power growth, FMA doesn't ever really have characters becoming "more powerful" through arbitrary "training" - at the end of the series Ed can do much the same Alchemy as he can at the beginning, he's just more experienced, savvy, and creative with what he can do.

This is an interesting way of looking at DB. A lot of DB fans are really pissed that the secondary characters have become so irrelevant because they've maxed out their strength while the Saiyans keep growing, but that was what was supposed to be special about the Saiyans in the first place: their unlimited potential for growth. It's why Frieza was so worried about them. It gets a bit difficult plotwise, but IMO Super is taking it in the only logical direction, with the Saiyans becoming gods. And they introduced the final unbeatable big boss in the very beginning, and he's just kind of hanging around, like they're all friends. (This is what I love about DB.)

I'm on ep 6 of Brotherhood now. According to KissAnime there are 64 episodes. I guess I might as well just watch the whole thing. If I can watch DBGT, I can watch this and make a determination when I'm done. (Not a GT fan in the slightest, but it was also just 64 episodes, so I figured I might as well.)

Yeah, I can see where those fans are coming from. I think for me it isn't so annoying because I can see where that line delineates (though it doesn't really work for the never-ending stream of more powerful enemies for them to face, who are just a Bigger Fish every time) and it makes sense in-universe, but it is still a pretty serious case of power creep; justified or not. I think I was more disappointed with Gohan post-Cell Games. It would have been nice to have someone other than Goku be "the most powerful" hero and for Gohan to take a more active role in things as Cell Games Gohan was one of my favourite characters, but alas.
It's also one of the reasons I like Xenoverse - you can still be very powerful as a human character, even if you can't access the Super Saiyan transformations which are imbalanced as hell. But it doesn't really make sense in-verse.

[Terez]

Silencer, on 05 August 2016 - 08:46 AM, said:

Terez, on 05 August 2016 - 07:09 AM, said:

Silencer, on 05 August 2016 - 06:45 AM, said:

The 'art breaks' is one of those pet peeves I have with anime. I don't like it. FMA does it quite a bit, unfortunately, but I grew accustomed to it and don't really pay any mind mind to it much any more unless it's really frequent/egregious.

Is that the official term for it? lol. I will probably get used to it too. It's actually not as bad as it is in Toriyama's manga; reading Dr. Slump literally gives me a headache, it's so bad.

Yeah, art break/art shift as per TV Tropes: link. Generally if an anime does it much more than FMA does, I get annoyed. They straddle a fine line that was just fine enough for me to get used to - and it kinda-sorta works with the characters, where in a Seinen it is more noticeable and much more annoying. In a manga I can imagine it getting pretty bad especially given the ratio - one image in art shift in a manga comprises a lot more material than one scene in an episode of an anime.

I looked at the link. I think what FMA does is a combination of this and what Toriyama does. What Toriyama does isn't actually an art shift; it's just the sharkface thing. FMA just tends to use art shifts and sharkface together. Not always, but it's most common when people are freaking out about something—non-serious outrage, defensiveness, shock, etc.

Toriyama draws the characters more or less the same all the time, but he has them freak out with huge flapping mouths and flying spit and shark teeth. Again, he really toned it down as DB went on; Dr. Slump was his first big manga and DB was his second (and last, as far as major series go). In early DB, it's usually Bulma with the sharkface. In Dr. Slump, it's usually Dr. Senbei. Toriyama used art shifts with Senbei to make him more handsome, but that was actually given an in-story explanation, lol. (It's a transformation.) Apparently Toriyama was not fond of it either, though he did use different styles sometimes in his title pages.

Toei uses art shifts in the DB anime sometimes; I usually like it when they do it. There was one time when Buu turned a whole city of people to candy and it was depicted in a crayon style that I absolutely loved. I mean, people were dying and it was terrible but it was like they depicted it from Buu's perspective where everything was happy and yummy and cute.

When I signed up for Crunchyroll I tried Your Lie In April which was recommended to me because piano/Chopin. They use sharkface similarly to FMA, but it's more prominent and it annoys me more. I watched one episode and gave up on it, for now. There wasn't even any Chopin! It started out with the 3rd movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata (which is better known for its first movement). I can already see where the plot is going, though. His mother and piano teacher died and he quit playing piano; some girl is going to come into his life and play violin with him and make him live again, woot. Also, his mother was a very stereotypical Asian taskmaster mother, like Chichi, but worse because apparently she actually beat him bloody to make him practice. Sheesh.

PS: I clicked through the Tropes connections and I think someone needs to make a page for Sharkface. It's a distinct type of Super-Deformed.

Silencer, on 05 August 2016 - 08:46 AM, said:

Terez, on 05 August 2016 - 07:09 AM, said:

Silencer, on 05 August 2016 - 06:45 AM, said:

I think one of the things it does well is that it sets down the rules of the 'magic' in this universe and mostly sticks to them. Where DBZ has insane power growth, FMA doesn't ever really have characters becoming "more powerful" through arbitrary "training" - at the end of the series Ed can do much the same Alchemy as he can at the beginning, he's just more experienced, savvy, and creative with what he can do.

This is an interesting way of looking at DB. A lot of DB fans are really pissed that the secondary characters have become so irrelevant because they've maxed out their strength while the Saiyans keep growing, but that was what was supposed to be special about the Saiyans in the first place: their unlimited potential for growth. It's why Frieza was so worried about them. It gets a bit difficult plotwise, but IMO Super is taking it in the only logical direction, with the Saiyans becoming gods. And they introduced the final unbeatable big boss in the very beginning, and he's just kind of hanging around, like they're all friends. (This is what I love about DB.)

Yeah, I can see where those fans are coming from. I think for me it isn't so annoying because I can see where that line delineates (though it doesn't really work for the never-ending stream of more powerful enemies for them to face, who are just a Bigger Fish every time) and it makes sense in-universe, but it is still a pretty serious case of power creep; justified or not. I think I was more disappointed with Gohan post-Cell Games. It would have been nice to have someone other than Goku be "the most powerful" hero and for Gohan to take a more active role in things as Cell Games Gohan was one of my favourite characters, but alas.
It's also one of the reasons I like Xenoverse - you can still be very powerful as a human character, even if you can't access the Super Saiyan transformations which are imbalanced as hell. But it doesn't really make sense in-verse.

I can see where they're coming from too, but as for the power creep, it never really bothered me because DB is clearly a ridiculous show. It's certainly a challenge for Toriyama to come up with new enemies that are actually interesting and not just your everyday Bigger Fish. I think he has been pretty successful at that. Cell just barely escapes being a humdrum powered-up repeat of Frieza because of the way he came into being and because there's so much more to the arc than him (namely Trunks and the androids). Buu was the perfect Big Bad to end Z with. Lots of people hated Buu because he was ridiculous, but I tend to think these were people who grew up on the show and were under the rather mistaken impression that it wasn't always ridiculous, so they were disappointed as they got older and more mature and then got handed Buu.

There's a lot of angst in the fandom about Gohan in Super, but they appear to be staging a comeback for him. One of the things I like about Super is that they allowed Vegeta to more or less catch up with Goku, so it wasn't just Goku with god power, leaving everyone else in the dust; it was both of them. I can't wait for Sunday's episode; I'm really hoping they're about to do a Cell throwback with father-son time chamber training, and we should find out then if Vegeta is going to train Future Trunks. The series has gone on long enough that it's time for the kids to catch up, starting with Trunks who doesn't have Daddy to take care of things in his world.

I've never played any of the DB games, and probably never will; I just don't game much. I have a SNES with one game (Tetris Attack). I haven't played it in a year, and that's because Tetris Attack is amazing and if I start playing it I can't stop. (It's way better than regular Tetris.)

This post has been edited by Terez: 05 August 2016 - 09:42 AM

[Silencer]

Terez, on 05 August 2016 - 09:28 AM, said:

Silencer, on 05 August 2016 - 08:46 AM, said:

Terez, on 05 August 2016 - 07:09 AM, said:

Silencer, on 05 August 2016 - 06:45 AM, said:

The 'art breaks' is one of those pet peeves I have with anime. I don't like it. FMA does it quite a bit, unfortunately, but I grew accustomed to it and don't really pay any mind mind to it much any more unless it's really frequent/egregious.

Is that the official term for it? lol. I will probably get used to it too. It's actually not as bad as it is in Toriyama's manga; reading Dr. Slump literally gives me a headache, it's so bad.

Yeah, art break/art shift as per TV Tropes: link. Generally if an anime does it much more than FMA does, I get annoyed. They straddle a fine line that was just fine enough for me to get used to - and it kinda-sorta works with the characters, where in a Seinen it is more noticeable and much more annoying. In a manga I can imagine it getting pretty bad especially given the ratio - one image in art shift in a manga comprises a lot more material than one scene in an episode of an anime.

I looked at the link. I think what FMA does is a combination of this and what Toriyama does. What Toriyama does isn't actually an art shift; it's just the sharkface thing. FMA just tends to use art shifts and sharkface together. Not always, but it's most common when people are freaking out about something—non-serious outrage, defensiveness, shock, etc.

Toriyama draws the characters more or less the same all the time, but he has them freak out with huge flapping mouths and flying spit and shark teeth. Again, he really toned it down as DB went on; Dr. Slump was his first big manga and DB was his second (and last, as far as major series go). In early DB, it's usually Bulma with the sharkface. In Dr. Slump, it's usually Dr. Senbei. Toriyama used art shifts with Senbei to make him more handsome, but that was actually given an in-story explanation, lol. (It's a transformation.) Apparently Toriyama was not fond of it either, though he did use different styles sometimes in his title pages.

Toei uses art shifts in the DB anime sometimes; I usually like it when they do it. There was one time when Buu turned a whole city of people to candy and it was depicted in a crayon style that I absolutely loved. I mean, people were dying and it was terrible but it was like they depicted it from Buu's perspective where everything was happy and yummy and cute.

When I signed up for Crunchyroll I tried Your Lie In April which was recommended to me because piano/Chopin. They use sharkface similarly to FMA, but it's more prominent and it annoys me more. I watched one episode and gave up on it, for now. There wasn't even any Chopin! It started out with the 3rd movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata (which is better known for its first movement). I can already see where the plot is going, though. His mother and piano teacher died and he quit playing piano; some girl is going to come into his life and play violin with him and make him live again, woot. Also, his mother was a very stereotypical Asian taskmaster mother, like Chichi, but worse because apparently she actually beat him bloody to make him practice. Sheesh.

Yeah, I think the sharkface thing is a form of art shift - it's normally accompanied by everything else being drawn differently too but it can be isolated. If it's just exaggerated expressions though it might fall under Wild Take, or more specifically, Comical Angry Face.

I feel like I've heard enough about Your Lie in April that I need to watch it (it sounds like its a tearjerker on par with Angel Beats/Clannad, but internet hype can be deceptive on that front), but I wasn't aware it had art shift because it seemed like a more serious show, so that might put me off. But yeah, the overall plot is pretty straightforward at the outset, they usually are with those shows.

Quote

Silencer, on 05 August 2016 - 08:46 AM, said:

Terez, on 05 August 2016 - 07:09 AM, said:

Silencer, on 05 August 2016 - 06:45 AM, said:

I think one of the things it does well is that it sets down the rules of the 'magic' in this universe and mostly sticks to them. Where DBZ has insane power growth, FMA doesn't ever really have characters becoming "more powerful" through arbitrary "training" - at the end of the series Ed can do much the same Alchemy as he can at the beginning, he's just more experienced, savvy, and creative with what he can do.

This is an interesting way of looking at DB. A lot of DB fans are really pissed that the secondary characters have become so irrelevant because they've maxed out their strength while the Saiyans keep growing, but that was what was supposed to be special about the Saiyans in the first place: their unlimited potential for growth. It's why Frieza was so worried about them. It gets a bit difficult plotwise, but IMO Super is taking it in the only logical direction, with the Saiyans becoming gods. And they introduced the final unbeatable big boss in the very beginning, and he's just kind of hanging around, like they're all friends. (This is what I love about DB.)

Yeah, I can see where those fans are coming from. I think for me it isn't so annoying because I can see where that line delineates (though it doesn't really work for the never-ending stream of more powerful enemies for them to face, who are just a Bigger Fish every time) and it makes sense in-universe, but it is still a pretty serious case of power creep; justified or not. I think I was more disappointed with Gohan post-Cell Games. It would have been nice to have someone other than Goku be "the most powerful" hero and for Gohan to take a more active role in things as Cell Games Gohan was one of my favourite characters, but alas.
It's also one of the reasons I like Xenoverse - you can still be very powerful as a human character, even if you can't access the Super Saiyan transformations which are imbalanced as hell. But it doesn't really make sense in-verse.

I can see where they're coming from too, but as for the power creep, it never really bothered me because DB is clearly a ridiculous show. It's certainly a challenge for Toriyama to come up with new enemies that are actually interesting and not just your everyday Bigger Fish. I think he has been pretty successful at that. Cell just barely escapes being a humdrum powered-up repeat of Frieza because of the way he came into being and because there's so much more to the arc than him (namely Trunks and the androids). Buu was the perfect Big Bad to end Z with. Lots of people hated Buu because he was ridiculous, but I tend to think these were people who grew up on the show and were under the rather mistaken impression that it wasn't always ridiculous, so they were disappointed as they got older and more mature and then got handed Buu.

There's a lot of angst in the fandom about Gohan in Super, but they appear to be staging a comeback for him. One of the things I like about Super is that they allowed Vegeta to more or less catch up with Goku, so it wasn't just Goku with god power, leaving everyone else in the dust; it was both of them. I can't wait for Sunday's episode; I'm really hoping they're about to do a Cell throwback with father-son time chamber training, and we should find out then if Vegeta is going to train Future Trunks. The series has gone on long enough that it's time for the kids to catch up, starting with Trunks who doesn't have Daddy to take care of things in his world.

I've never played any of the DB games, and probably never will; I just don't game much. I have a SNES with one game (Tetris Attack). I haven't played it in a year, and that's because Tetris Attack is amazing and if I start playing it I can't stop. (It's way better than regular Tetris.)

See, that's the thing with Cell. I didn't care much for Cell (except the 'all your powers combined' and people-eating stuff was interesting), and my interest decreased the more he evolved. Imperfect Cell was Best Cell, imo. But the thing I liked most about the Cell arc wasn't actually the Cell arc, it was the Android saga - 17 and 18 were far and away more interesting to me than Cell ever was (and it pissed me off that he absorbed them, and relatively quickly/easily too), and I wish more had been done with them. Though Abridged makes up for all that, of course.

I *really* need to start watching Super. I've just got so many other shows on my list, and I get sidetracked with things like rewatching FMA: Brotherhood. *sigh*

The first DB game I really played was Xenoverse. It appealed because it was 3D, had a great art style, you could make your own character and gear up accordingly, and I actually really enjoyed it. Don't think I'd enjoy the 2D 'traditional' fighters as much. Seriously contemplating spending money on Xenoverse 2 later this year as well. The only real issue with it, imo, is that the mechanics of fighting in a 3D space where you can also fly is...sometimes frustrating. In a "that'd never happen in real life" way, often - like punching the air half an meter from your opponent because you slightly misjudged your approach/haven't quite got in range of the automatic engage distance. But that's all made up for by "Head Cha La" playing on the title screen. XD

[Terez]

Silencer, on 05 August 2016 - 09:52 AM, said:

Terez, on 05 August 2016 - 09:28 AM, said:

When I signed up for Crunchyroll I tried Your Lie In April which was recommended to me because piano/Chopin. They use sharkface similarly to FMA, but it's more prominent and it annoys me more. I watched one episode and gave up on it, for now.

I feel like I've heard enough about Your Lie in April that I need to watch it (it sounds like its a tearjerker on par with Angel Beats/Clannad, but internet hype can be deceptive on that front), but I wasn't aware it had art shift because it seemed like a more serious show, so that might put me off.

I had the same "serious" impression about FMA from my friends, so I was surprised to find that kind of comic style being used.

Silencer, on 05 August 2016 - 09:52 AM, said:

Terez, on 05 August 2016 - 09:28 AM, said:

Cell just barely escapes being a humdrum powered-up repeat of Frieza because of the way he came into being and because there's so much more to the arc than him (namely Trunks and the androids).

See, that's the thing with Cell. I didn't care much for Cell (except the 'all your powers combined' and people-eating stuff was interesting), and my interest decreased the more he evolved. Imperfect Cell was Best Cell, imo. But the thing I liked most about the Cell arc wasn't actually the Cell arc, it was the Android saga - 17 and 18 were far and away more interesting to me than Cell ever was (and it pissed me off that he absorbed them, and relatively quickly/easily too), and I wish more had been done with them. Though Abridged makes up for all that, of course.

Semiperfect Cell vs Vegeta in the original Funimation dub was probably my favorite fight in DB. I also liked the continuation after Cell transformed because Vegeta getting his ass kicked is fun too (especially when it's his fault) but Semiperfect Cell was hilarious. I think Toriyama said Semiperfect Cell was his favorite version of Cell... and his return in the fight with Gohan was awesome, especially since it came about because he puked up 18. I like DBZA but I don't really see how they improved that other than having 18 talk a little more. 18 became a permanent character; I loved her role in the Buu saga. She's a bit less prominent in Super, but she had a good scene in last week's episode when she was reacquainted with Future Trunks. 17 is apparently a park ranger these days.

This post has been edited by Terez: 05 August 2016 - 10:13 AM

[D'rek]

Silencer, on 05 August 2016 - 09:52 AM, said:

See, that's the thing with Cell. I didn't care much for Cell (except the 'all your powers combined' and people-eating stuff was interesting), and my interest decreased the more he evolved. Imperfect Cell was Best Cell, imo. But the thing I liked most about the Cell arc wasn't actually the Cell arc, it was the Android saga - 17 and 18 were far and away more interesting to me than Cell ever was (and it pissed me off that he absorbed them, and relatively quickly/easily too), and I wish more had been done with them. Though Abridged makes up for all that, of course.

Yeah, the setup/start of that arc is so good, with great dramatic twists. Frieza returns with his dad, but is killed almost immediately and suddenly time travel, just to setup the next main plot? Awesome! And then you go from expecting 2 androids, to easily beating the 2 androids, to "wait there's 5 androids?!", to Cell appearing and there being 3 sides to the conflict... it's great.

And then Cell absorbs them, they fight (good fights, admittedly) and then he stops. And he sets up a tournament. It's... silly. And it doesn't fit with how unexpectedly everything keeps changing in the first half of the arc. From Imperfect Cell onwards its essentially just conventional pre-planned battles and training, without the twists and surprises of the first half.



@Terez

re: FMA/FMA:B - the jury is out on which version is actually better, but they're both quite good. I had the same issue as you where I found it hard to get interested/immersed in FMA:B during the first few episodes. The problem is that FMA:B was made with the idea that most people had already seen the first, so they condense some story elements quite a bit at the beginning - what takes 3 episodes in FMA gets squished into 1 in FMA:B, so the pacing doesn't leave a lot of room to get attached to things. The story starts to shift gears into more than just Ed and Al going on random research journeys for a philosopher stone around episode 10 and fully picks up in episodes 13 and 14. I would try to watch it to that point, and if you're still not interested by then, drop it.


re: classical music in anime - good luck, there's nothing. Most "music" shows still just use music as a device for character drama, but aren't actually about the music, hence are very sparse on details and don't actually play much of the music. The show with the most actual music and detail I can think of is Nodame Cantabile... but the story/romance in it is kinda awful.

[Terez]

D, on 05 August 2016 - 09:39 PM, said:

Silencer, on 05 August 2016 - 09:52 AM, said:

See, that's the thing with Cell. I didn't care much for Cell (except the 'all your powers combined' and people-eating stuff was interesting), and my interest decreased the more he evolved. Imperfect Cell was Best Cell, imo. But the thing I liked most about the Cell arc wasn't actually the Cell arc, it was the Android saga - 17 and 18 were far and away more interesting to me than Cell ever was (and it pissed me off that he absorbed them, and relatively quickly/easily too), and I wish more had been done with them. Though Abridged makes up for all that, of course.

Yeah, the setup/start of that arc is so good, with great dramatic twists. Frieza returns with his dad, but is killed almost immediately and suddenly time travel, just to setup the next main plot? Awesome! And then you go from expecting 2 androids, to easily beating the 2 androids, to "wait there's 5 androids?!", to Cell appearing and there being 3 sides to the conflict... it's great.

And then Cell absorbs them, they fight (good fights, admittedly) and then he stops. And he sets up a tournament. It's... silly. And it doesn't fit with how unexpectedly everything keeps changing in the first half of the arc. From Imperfect Cell onwards its essentially just conventional pre-planned battles and training, without the twists and surprises of the first half.

I dunno, it just seems to me like Cell didn't really need to be the source of those twists and turns as it went on. The tournament thing was a reflection of his ego; he was a product of fighters who live for fighting and proving their skills against others. He was literally made from Goku, Vegeta, Frieza, and Piccolo. To me, the Cell Game made more sense than pretty much any other option I can think of; it was a nice, evil twist on the standard Budôkai plot.

From that point on, it was supposed to be about Gohan, and specifically Gohan as an extension of Goku. How can this arc be a failure and the most popular arc by far in the series? There's a reason why that version of Gohan is the most popular character worldwide; it's because that arc was about him, not Cell.

Cell was exactly what he needed to be at that point. Cruel enough to make it his mission to get Gohan mad so he could see what power he was hiding. Isn't that a perfect combination of Goku and the others? Goku always wants to see his opponent at their strongest; he gave Cell a senzu bean after their fight so Gohan could fight him at his best. Vegeta allowed Cell to reach his perfect form; Piccolo didn't speak up one way or the other when Bulma was trying to convince everyone to kill Dr. Gero before things got nasty, and Vegeta said he'd kill anyone who tried. Goku tried to argue that he hadn't done anything wrong yet, but really he just wanted to fight the androids (he even said so). Vegeta and Piccolo and Frieza, all of them are or have been varying levels of cruel and arrogant. Cell was all of these things, and he was exactly what was needed to push Gohan over the edge. 16 played a role in that, and 18 was coughed up a few episodes later, so it's not like the androids were forgotten about in the Cell Game.

D, on 05 August 2016 - 09:39 PM, said:

re: FMA/FMA:B - the jury is out on which version is actually better, but they're both quite good. I had the same issue as you where I found it hard to get interested/immersed in FMA:B during the first few episodes. The problem is that FMA:B was made with the idea that most people had already seen the first, so they condense some story elements quite a bit at the beginning - what takes 3 episodes in FMA gets squished into 1 in FMA:B, so the pacing doesn't leave a lot of room to get attached to things. The story starts to shift gears into more than just Ed and Al going on random research journeys for a philosopher stone around episode 10 and fully picks up in episodes 13 and 14. I would try to watch it to that point, and if you're still not interested by then, drop it.

I am on episode 9 now. I am starting to miss some things, which is not normal for me when watching subs, but I wonder if I should have watched the dub in this case. It's hard for me to focus on it sometimes because it hasn't captured me yet.

D, on 05 August 2016 - 09:39 PM, said:

re: classical music in anime - good luck, there's nothing. Most "music" shows still just use music as a device for character drama, but aren't actually about the music, hence are very sparse on details and don't actually play much of the music. The show with the most actual music and detail I can think of is Nodame Cantabile... but the story/romance in it is kinda awful.

It's not something I'm really looking for. For reasons I mentioned earlier, the Asian school of classical in general turns me off. (Mostly China, Japan, and Korea.) The taskmistress mother stereotype is a stereotype for a reason; there's a whole school of incredibly proficient pianists who had all the joy of music sucked from their souls in childhood; this happens all over the world but it's especially bad in the Asian school, and sometimes seems worse because they're taught (directly or indirectly) to show emotion on their faces while they play so it can become a bit theatrical. On YouTube it's a child prodigy competition; I feel so bad for these kids.

There are some Asian pianists I love (sometimes; I am very picky and there's no pianist I love all the time), so I'm not trying to over-generalize. My favorite recording of Carmina Burana is Japanese. Etc. It's just not something I'm looking for in anime plots. Soundtracks are enough for me. I'm very happy with the composer for DBS; I'm less happy with his assistant or whoever is in charge of track placement (after the initial scene for which each track was written). Some of the music in FMA:B so far is good, notably the NEP music.

[D'rek]

Terez, on 05 August 2016 - 11:36 PM, said:

D, on 05 August 2016 - 09:39 PM, said:

Silencer, on 05 August 2016 - 09:52 AM, said:

See, that's the thing with Cell. I didn't care much for Cell (except the 'all your powers combined' and people-eating stuff was interesting), and my interest decreased the more he evolved. Imperfect Cell was Best Cell, imo. But the thing I liked most about the Cell arc wasn't actually the Cell arc, it was the Android saga - 17 and 18 were far and away more interesting to me than Cell ever was (and it pissed me off that he absorbed them, and relatively quickly/easily too), and I wish more had been done with them. Though Abridged makes up for all that, of course.

Yeah, the setup/start of that arc is so good, with great dramatic twists. Frieza returns with his dad, but is killed almost immediately and suddenly time travel, just to setup the next main plot? Awesome! And then you go from expecting 2 androids, to easily beating the 2 androids, to "wait there's 5 androids?!", to Cell appearing and there being 3 sides to the conflict... it's great.

And then Cell absorbs them, they fight (good fights, admittedly) and then he stops. And he sets up a tournament. It's... silly. And it doesn't fit with how unexpectedly everything keeps changing in the first half of the arc. From Imperfect Cell onwards its essentially just conventional pre-planned battles and training, without the twists and surprises of the first half.

I dunno, it just seems to me like Cell didn't really need to be the source of those twists and turns as it went on. The tournament thing was a reflection of his ego; he was a product of fighters who live for fighting and proving their skills against others. He was literally made from Goku, Vegeta, Frieza, and Piccolo. To me, the Cell Game made more sense than pretty much any other option I can think of; it was a nice, evil twist on the standard Budôkai plot.

From that point on, it was supposed to be about Gohan, and specifically Gohan as an extension of Goku. How can this arc be a failure and the most popular arc by far in the series? There's a reason why that version of Gohan is the most popular character worldwide; it's because that arc was about him, not Cell.

Cell was exactly what he needed to be at that point. Cruel enough to make it his mission to get Gohan mad so he could see what power he was hiding. Isn't that a perfect combination of Goku and the others? Goku always wants to see his opponent at their strongest; he gave Cell a senzu bean after their fight so Gohan could fight him at his best. Vegeta allowed Cell to reach his perfect form; Piccolo didn't speak up one way or the other when Bulma was trying to convince everyone to kill Dr. Gero before things got nasty, and Vegeta said he'd kill anyone who tried. Goku tried to argue that he hadn't done anything wrong yet, but really he just wanted to fight the androids (he even said so). Vegeta and Piccolo and Frieza, all of them are or have been varying levels of cruel and arrogant. Cell was all of these things, and he was exactly what was needed to push Gohan over the edge. 16 played a role in that, and 18 was coughed up a few episodes later, so it's not like the androids were forgotten about in the Cell Game.

Sure, it all makes sense within the plot and character motivations or whatever. I just don't think it was nearly as interesting of a direction for things to go, story-wise.

Terez, on 05 August 2016 - 11:36 PM, said:

D, on 05 August 2016 - 09:39 PM, said:

re: FMA/FMA:B - the jury is out on which version is actually better, but they're both quite good. I had the same issue as you where I found it hard to get interested/immersed in FMA:B during the first few episodes. The problem is that FMA:B was made with the idea that most people had already seen the first, so they condense some story elements quite a bit at the beginning - what takes 3 episodes in FMA gets squished into 1 in FMA:B, so the pacing doesn't leave a lot of room to get attached to things. The story starts to shift gears into more than just Ed and Al going on random research journeys for a philosopher stone around episode 10 and fully picks up in episodes 13 and 14. I would try to watch it to that point, and if you're still not interested by then, drop it.

I am on episode 9 now. I am starting to miss some things, which is not normal for me when watching subs, but I wonder if I should have watched the dub in this case. It's hard for me to focus on it sometimes because it hasn't captured me yet.

The FMA:B English is dub is quite good, go ahead and switch.

Terez, on 05 August 2016 - 11:36 PM, said:

D, on 05 August 2016 - 09:39 PM, said:

re: classical music in anime - good luck, there's nothing. Most "music" shows still just use music as a device for character drama, but aren't actually about the music, hence are very sparse on details and don't actually play much of the music. The show with the most actual music and detail I can think of is Nodame Cantabile... but the story/romance in it is kinda awful.

It's not something I'm really looking for. For reasons I mentioned earlier, the Asian school of classical in general turns me off. (Mostly China, Japan, and Korea.) The taskmistress mother stereotype is a stereotype for a reason; there's a whole school of incredibly proficient pianists who had all the joy of music sucked from their souls in childhood; this happens all over the world but it's especially bad in the Asian school, and sometimes seems worse because they're taught (directly or indirectly) to show emotion on their faces while they play so it can become a bit theatrical. On YouTube it's a child prodigy competition; I feel so bad for these kids.

There are some Asian pianists I love (sometimes; I am very picky and there's no pianist I love all the time), so I'm not trying to over-generalize. My favorite recording of Carmina Burana is Japanese. Etc. It's just not something I'm looking for in anime plots. Soundtracks are enough for me. I'm very happy with the composer for DBS; I'm less happy with his assistant or whoever is in charge of track placement (after the initial scene for which each track was written). Some of the music in FMA:B so far is good, notably the NEP music.

Meh. Regardless of how it is in the real world, some music anime portray things that way, some don't. Nodame Cantabile is about college kids with nary a parent in sight (for the main characters, anyways - some child prodigies with tiger parents became major challenges at competitions), so they genuinely want to be doing music for the rest of their lives. Kids on the Slope doesn't have any parental music pressure... in fact it doesn't really have any sense of the characters practicing or trying to get better at music in the first place.



Also - re: the sharkface / art shift moments - yeah, I disliked those too. It's not so much the art shift itself that I dislike, it's that FMA:B tends to do the same joke-with-art-shift over and over and over again... someone calls Ed short, he gets mad and art shift happens like 30 times in that series. Whereas something like Magi also does chibi art shifts for some of its jokes, but the jokes are a lot more varied and a lot less shounen-cliche so I didn't mind nearly as much.

[Maark Abbott]

Re:0 Ep 19:

Well, it's good that Subaru finally stopped being a whingy little twit. They left off just as stuff was about to get good, though.

[Studlock]

Studio Trigger is very good. I've recently watched their 'major' output and none of it was bad, and mostly great. Kill la Kill was a great deconstruction of shonen tropes and the underlining 'reality' of a world built upon 'the strongest wins', starting even from the very first, seemingly random, lines about the rise of Nazi Germany. And if you didn't care about it didn't matter the animation is fluid and fun and ridiculous. Little Witch Academia is whimsical and quaint as far a themes go, and reminds me of the best of Harry Potter with more wackiness thrown in. And Kiznaiver is probably their most accomplished work to date--a very good drama with themes you can dig into if you want.

Are there any newer studios like this?

This post has been edited by Studlock: 10 August 2016 - 12:22 AM

[LinearPhilosopher]

Studlock, on 10 August 2016 - 12:21 AM, said:

Studio Trigger is very good. I've recently watched their 'major' output and none of it was bad, and mostly great. Kill la Kill was a great deconstruction of shonen tropes and the underlining 'reality' of a world built upon 'the strongest wins', starting even from the very first, seemingly random, lines about the rise of Nazi Germany. And if you didn't care about it didn't matter the animation is fluid and fun and ridiculous. Little Witch Academia is whimsical and quaint as far a themes go, and reminds me of the best of Harry Potter with more wackiness thrown in. And Kiznaiver is probably their most accomplished work to date--a very good drama with themes you can dig into if you want.

Are there any newer studios like this?

i mean i can reccomend good studios but aside from the animation thats the only real thing theyd have in common from a perceiver relationship.

Sunrise, production ig and bones have yet to dissapoint


@terez

maybe give this a watch

This post has been edited by LinearPhilosopher: 10 August 2016 - 10:51 AM

[D'rek]

Studlock, on 10 August 2016 - 12:21 AM, said:

Studio Trigger is very good. I've recently watched their 'major' output and none of it was bad, and mostly great.

Oh yeah, Trigger always has top-notch animation...

Studlock, on 10 August 2016 - 12:21 AM, said:

Are there any newer studios like this?

I would say Bones is the most Trigger-like studio, where it is very much lead by a few core staff that set it up after leaving another studio, there's a common on-contract staff of animators that works on just about everything the studio produces, they won't just accept any project, and there's a lot of freedom to get creative and try new things.

Bones isn't very new, though - 1998.

Studios that are only a handful of years old, like Trigger, would be Wit and Lerche, which both do have a lot of passion and creativity, but they are each part of a larger studio conglomerate (Production IG/IG-Port and Hibari, respectively)

There's also White Fox (2007), which has had a good slew of series and good quality of output, but I wouldn't say they are as creative or unusual as the others. Also C2C and Ondet, but they're small studios that just do little projects or co-productions.

[Maark Abbott]

This may seem like a daft question, but does anyone know if CR subs show on a bank statement as Netflix? I ask because I can't locate my CR sub anywhere, I seem to have a Netflix one, and I had my card cloned not long since.

[Silencer]

Maark Abbott, on 11 August 2016 - 10:55 AM, said:

This may seem like a daft question, but does anyone know if CR subs show on a bank statement as Netflix? I ask because I can't locate my CR sub anywhere, I seem to have a Netflix one, and I had my card cloned not long since.

Nah, CR shows as CRUNCHYROLL, definitely not as Netflix lol.