Dagger

Eep, I'm glad you like it. Hoping to con more people into watching this. Just one nitpick--it's not directed by Kenji Nakamura, but he & the Mononoke character designer did create Hakaba Kitarou's (totally awesome~) OP. Both shows do have the same art director. Episode 2 is awesomely random and I probably missed a lot of what was going on, but this entire series is worth it just for the scenes of [spoiler]Kitarou's dad popping out of the vampire's ears and nostrils.[/spoiler] The fight scene (and its outcome!) were hilarious as well. Although I'm worried I might start having nightmares about Kitarou's cackle... ~Dagger~

Side note: the novel-adaptation mystery has been solved! :catgirl: I've been told that the anime is actually the original version, although the novels were published first. (Wait; it makes sense.) Basically, the novels were written by the producers/writers of the anime, so the first three episodes are "anime-original" in only the most technical terms. That explains a lot about ep. 3. ~Dagger~

The television broadcast of episode 3 was censored. I don't know exactly why, but I'm guessing it has to do with current events in Japan; there must have been school-related violence or something recently. Anyway, it's not a big deal as long as you're aware of this going into it. [spoiler]The father is carrying a shotgun...[/spoiler] so they seem to keep the scenario & dialogue exactly the same--they just don't show what he's holding. I liked this episode a lot and would never have guessed that it was anime-original, because [spoiler]the Kaname-Mika[/spoiler] thing appears to be quite closely connected to the story of Fumika herself. Unless they're just trying to trick us into thinking that, which would be, um, kind of lame and random. Maybe they used this standalone story as an opportunity to bring up a plot point from the novel? The tone of ep. 3 and the [spoiler]ultimate reason for Sen-chan's suicide[/spoiler] really resonated with me. I thought it was especially great how they used the video games as a backdrop. ~Dagger~

Manga: yes. Figure: no. Unless it's really mind-blowing. :animeswea Took my friends to Cloverfield this afternoon. They enjoyed it, except for one poor girl who got motion-sick. ~Dagger~

The thing about Giant Robo is that everything it is, it is on purpose. (How's that for a sentence?) Where one man sees cheesy and over-dramatic, another will see retro and [i]epic[/i]. It's considered by many to be the best OVA ever made, due to its production values, its musical score and its sheer scale. But anything based--even loosely--on a robot manga from the 60s is bound to be a matter of taste. ~Dagger~

I love this show! (And have been meaning to rewatch it ever since... well, I first saw it.) I got the DVDs on sale super-cheap, knowing barely anything about the series, and all told, it's still one of the best blind buys I've ever made. There's a lot of weirdness going on, from the character winkingly named Moe to the general style of it all, but it holds together surprisingly well. Great plot, really moving relationships, super-lovable main character--and I second Japan's comment about the gorgeous OP. ~Dagger~

Ended up going today, and It. Was. AWESOME. It's been ages since I saw a movie in a theater where other people were so engaged--there was a lot of screaming and talking and nervous laughter, and it actually kind of added to the experience. I'm so going to drag all my friends to this when we get back to school. More than anything else (and James hints at this under his spoiler tags), it's very much a post 9/11 monster movie. I really bought into it; I really believed that "[I]this[/I] is what would happen if..." ~Dagger~

Haha! Nice cover-up. [URL=http://img149.imageshack.us/my.php?image=deskac9.jpg][IMG]http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/7591/deskac9.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL] Not much to see here, since I don't display shortcuts and auto-hide the taskbar. The Aria wallpaper is by tida from animepaper. The ef desktop clock (my pride and joy!) came on a bonus CD with the first ef DVD. You can display three different characters, choose from a bunch of different clock types--and the best part is that they make voiced comments every hour. :love: ~Dagger~

[quote name='2008DigitalBoy'][COLOR="DarkOrange"]eh? I haven't been having this problem... Allamorph, plz take screenshots![/COLOR][/QUOTE] I second this request. :animesmil ~Dagger~

Wow, you guys have gotten to see it already!? I'm hoping to take my dad to go see Cloverfield on Saturday. Originally I was planning to bring my mom & sister as well, but they've got a concert to go to, and since they're both sensitive when it comes to motion sickness, it's probably for the best... ~Dagger~

When you get hungry in the middle of the night, when you can't stand to wait another two hours for dinner, or when you desperately need some brain food, what do you reach for first? For me the answer changes somewhat depending on whether I'm at home or away at school, but dry Cheerios are always a top choice. Especially when they're mixed with raisins. A 1:00 am bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats + almonds and milk is always a pleasure, and a vending-machine bag of Smartfood white cheddar popcorn has given me the willpower to go on writing many a paper. Sometimes the best snacks are even simpler. A teaspoon of peanut butter or Nutella; a Clementine; a slice of aged Gruyere. In terms of packaged stuff, I [i]love[/i] the [url=http://www.fritolay.com/fl/flstore/cgi-bin/Nutrition_ProdID_551734.htm][u]Cinnamon Crunch[/u][/url] Quaker Snack Mix... it's absurdly addictive. Lorna Doones and Baked Cheetos are also a favorite. *goes to cut herself some Gruyere* ~Dagger~

[quote name='Allamorph'][FONT=Arial]Categorization doesn't seem as problematic for me, speaking from a literary standpoint, since the easiest thing to do would be to take the most [I]predominant[/I] theme and use that for classification?again, lumping several types together in the same forum. Surely if one can classify a novel, one can classify an anime series, especially since we have multiple labels in both languages already.[/FONT][/QUOTE] Oh my gosh, don't get me started on publishing categories. :p Disclaimer: it's entirely possible that I see problems with book/anime classification *because* I'm deeply into both of them. Might not be an issue at all for most people. :animeshy: That having been said, novels are a pretty good example of the pitfalls of genre classification. As with anime, the clearest-cut (in the sense that you can't argue with them factually, not in the sense that they're immediately apparent) categories are marketing categories... YA, middle-grade, literary fiction, category romance, urban fantasy, inspirational, self-help, street lit, etc. The problem is that marketing categories have little to do with the true content of the book: literary fiction basically covers every genre imaginable from satire to sci-fi. It sounds like you're suggesting that we divide things not by sales categories (no complaints there) but rather by "genres" like action-adventure, drama-romance... is that what you mean? I guess I feel like too many shows offer a little bit of everything; sure, we can talk about the same show's crazy mecha battles in one place and its stupid comedy somewhere else, but that seems kind of self-defeating. Anyway, time periods might not have been the best way of putting it. Maybe unlicensed vs. licensed (in the US, for lack of a neater barometer) would be a clearer way of getting across what I meant. It would have essentially the same effect, since most unlicensed shows (that people would tend to discuss, anyway) are new, and most shows get licensed after they finish airing or even later. Basically, it would give show discussions a chance to start fresh in a different forum when an anime starts airing/getting released outside of Japan. That might be more friendly for people who are experiencing the show for the first time that way (instead of being faced with already-established threads full of comments about the fansubs or whatnot). I'm not strongly attached to that concept or any other, though--just wanted to explain myself properly. ~Dagger~

I think that's been discussed before, but I can't remember where... :animeswea It's a great idea in itself; the problem is that genre is an incredibly gnarly issue when it comes to anime. You can apply American film/TV genres to anime (which works, albeit only to a certain extent), or you can go by the Japanese demographic categories (shounen, shoujo, etc., which end up feeling sort of meaningless because the only thing separating them is marketing, and each group encompasses examples of every imaginable genre), or you can go by generally recognized genres like magical girl and mecha and so forth, but that leaves a lot of less easily defined shows without an anchor. What might work would be using time as a basis for splitting the forum--something like one forum for newly airing shows (or anything not yet released in overseas in some form... could be defined narrowly or broadly), and one for shows airing or being released overseas. There would be some questions to hash out with respect to that as well, but I think it'd create less somewhat confusion than genre grouping. It's a thought, anyway. I do feel that talking about DVD releases, fansubs etc., and American & other foreign broadcasts all in the same forum is a little bit problematic. Might be just me, but I get a disjointed feel from it at times. Obviously this wasn't an issue in the past when fansubs weren't as big... I don't think it's a coincidence that discussions of American-aired anime have shrunk a lot for us in the past few years. Discussions of both JP-airing and foreign-sold/airing anime might do better if they were sorted out. ~Dagger~

Boast about your collection! Drool over stuff you'll never be able to afford! Besides, I'm awfully curious... do any of you buy (or just lust over) posters? Figures? Artbooks? Plushies? Pillow covers? (And so on.) Might be too late to get a life-size Haruhi figure... [URL=http://img20.imageshack.us/my.php?image=haruhilifesizetg0.jpg][IMG]http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/3650/haruhilifesizetg0.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL] Or a $250,000 platinum Gundam with diamond eyes... [URL=http://img20.imageshack.us/my.php?image=platinumgundamgd4.jpg][IMG]http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/4240/platinumgundamgd4.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL] But there's still a lot of stuff out there for us to waste money on. Speaking for myself, I buy the occasional figure (although I try to keep it to a minimum, eheh). Once in a blue moon, I'll pick up an artbook or a calendar; the last ones I got were Rozen Maiden and Evangelion 2007. My favorite piece of merch by far (at least until I get that Kino figure) is the American Library Association's [url=http://www.alastore.ala.org/SiteSolution.taf?_sn=catalog&_pn=product_detail&_op=2296][u]Cantarella[/u][/url] poster. New You Higuri illustration + seeing a manga character used in their long-time campaign of "READ" posters (found in many a library near you) = total win. Doesn't hurt that I'm a bookworm myself. ~Dagger~

It comes down to the "If you build it, will they come?" question. With our current active membership, I cannot think of a single anime franchise that would be able to sustain its own sub-forum. Of course, simply having a sub-forum might increase interest and/or draw new members... it's hard to tell without trying it. Setting that aside, I'd love it if we could do more to attract members from theO. ~Dagger~

Mm, the Sunday blues. I got those every week in high school, and it pissed me off to no end, since I never thought I had anything honestly worth worrying about. I guess I just did whatever I could to distract myself. So I haven't experienced that unavoidable feeling of doom in the same way for a couple of years... I mean, it comes back to hang over my head whenever I have some big responsibility to take care of, but never so regularly and irrationally as it did in high school. Like you said, the best way to get rid of it is to just bite the bullet and do whatever you have to, instead of delaying and drawing things out. ~Dagger~

A Cloverfield [url=http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-01-16/shonen-ace-posts-cloverfield-movie-tie-in-manga-online][u]side story manga[/u][/url] is being serialized online. [url=http://www.kadokawa.co.jp/tachiyomi/comic/cloverfield/][u]Only in Japanese[/u][/url], unfortunately (click the big bluish button on the upper left-hand side to make it open). I skimmed the first few pages, but the print is way too small on my monitor... might change resolutions to read the rest later, if I feel motivated. ~Dagger~

I dunno. Whether or not they're similar, I don't recall having seen ADV reference Eva specifically* when marketing it. Seems more likely to me that they were motivated to pick it up because action + teenagers + sci-fi has always been a pretty good bet for the American market (at least before the bubble burst) than because of any specific parallels to Evangelion. I mean, if you have to watch the actual show to notice the parallels, then that kind of defeats the point in terms of marketing purposes. :animeswea *Compared to, say, how they pushed the "from the creators of Eva!!!" angle for This Ugly and Beautiful World. ~Dagger~

Haha. My friends will certainly get a kick out of the Star Wars guys. I don't play Soul Calibur 3 much myself... just kind of keep it around for other people to entertain themselves with when we're hanging out in a group or whatever. Kind of like a plate of half-forgotten hors d'oeuvre sitting out on the table. It serves that purpose well enough that I'm not particularly interested in getting Soul Calibur 4... not for a while, anyway. ~Dagger~

Another super high-quality show from Production I.G. My only real complaint about it is some of the choices they made with respect to adapting the novel's plot... clearly they did have to add a lot of material to make it last twenty-six episodes, and that wasn't a problem for me. What I don't understand is why they changed or took some scenes away. I was looking forward to seeing [spoiler]Balsa knock the raging Chagum down again and again,[/spoiler] and they had something sort of like that, but it didn't create the same impact. In terms of action, everything except the very last battle was perfect... and yeah, the fighting there was secondary to what was going on with Chagum, but making the [spoiler]La Lungas[/spoiler] CG was a biiiig mistake. Other than that, though, it's an amazing looking show with impressive world-building. I would love to see the next few books in the novel series get made into anime as well, although I don't know if that's likely to happen. Balsa is an awesome character (as is Chagum, though less so in the anime than in the novel), and I shed a couple of tears at the end. ~Dagger~

[quote name='Desbreko'][color=#4B0082] I'm still feeling abandoned since you went to 4:3 Clannad, by the way. :animecry:[/color][/QUOTE] *slinks away guiltily* Just picked up a new show for the season... [B]Hakaba Kitarou[/B], the latest series to enter the Noitamina slot. It's way out there, even considering that it was preceded by the likes of Moyashimon and Mononoke. Apparently it's an adult retelling of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge_Ge_Ge_no_Kitaro][u]Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro[/u][/url] (which I have no experience with, but it's worth noting that it's a venerable property, and a popular children's version of the series is also currently airing). The art director also worked on Mononoke, and it shows. Episode 1 has a fantastic atmosphere; in terms of the style of humor and the general vibe, it's closer to The Addams Family (albeit with Japanese youkai, spirits, etc.) than anything else I can think of. I can't really offer a more concrete summary, because I have no idea how things will pan out after the first episode (and I have a feeling that Kitarou's personality is pretty different in this version than in the various other Kitarou anime). It's very dark & offbeat. People who like stuff along the lines of Zetsubou Sensei might also enjoy this, although Kitarou already wins in terms of both sheer bizarreness and morbidity. ~Dagger~

[quote name='Raiyuu']I'm not sure how it'll work if the first three or four link and it becomes episodic after that - could feel like a jerky transition.[/QUOTE] I'm a little worried about that, but I'm enjoying the original stories so much that I guess I'll just take in whatever comes. Episode 2 takes place right after episode 1 chronologically, but I think episode 3 might be further removed in both time and featured characters... pretty sure I saw a shot of [spoiler]Shouta alive[/spoiler] in the preview. Won't really have a clue till I watch it, though. As for episode 2, though, it was pretty awesome. As if the echoes of Kino weren't hard enough to ignore already, it turns out that Fumika [spoiler]is also a gunslinger, kind of.[/spoiler] The OP unfortunately sounds like Ali Project either remixed all the worst parts of their other anime music or made it when they were drunk off their rockers. Not bad looking, just kind of weird on the ears. Although the sensationalist tendencies that were mostly hidden in ep. 1 come out in full force here (there were parts that made me want to tell the writer that [url=http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=26763][u]his Geass is showing[/u][/url]), I actually think ep. 2 did a really good job of keeping its sense of gravity. [spoiler]Asuna's manner of death[/spoiler] and the last few scenes involving that helped a lot in this regard. It skirts toward Higurashi-like territory but ultimately takes a different, less overblown tack. ~Dagger~

[b]ef DVD ep. 3:[/b] I'm positive there were some animation fixes in this one, but I can't point out anything real specific without seeing the TV version of ep. 3 again, which is probably not going to happen. Either way, it's just as good on a rewatch. >> Kotomi, but Nagisa and Tomoyo and the twins and Tomoya himself top both of them by far. [b]True Tears 2:[/b] Not bad for an episode in which literally nothing happened. Miles ahead of H2O ep. 2, at any rate. ~Dagger~

Watched the second half of the series today. There were times when the pacing didn't sit that great with me, but I wouldn't change a thing about it... it's a show that feels exactly right in pretty much every aspect, even if that means it doesn't press all my personal buttons. I saw someone mention in a thread on another forum that Dennou Coil's core plot is similar to the plot of the Utena movie--and I had to pick my jaw off the floor, because that comparison is so spot on, it's scary. Unexpected (yet bizarrely accurate) Utena parallels aside, though, I did find it amusing that the main conflict of the show boils down to Isako having [spoiler]a raging onii-chan[/spoiler] complex. :animeswea I really did like Isako very much, though. Haraken was wonderful, too, and Yasako's grandpa has to be the most adorable (or dare I say moe!?) old man I've seen in any anime. But the beard episode still beats everything else hands down, of course. ~Dagger~

[url=http://geass.jp/][u]The official site[/u][/url] has posted some stuff about R2 (season 2). [url=http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-01-10/new-code-geass-series-details-revealed][u]More[/u][/url] at ANN. Not much to comment on except the redesigned costumes for CC, Suzaku (can a snazzy new cape save an irritating character?) and Zero (not bad). *has yet to watch eps. 24 & 25* ~Dagger~