Fasteriskhead

[SIZE="1"]Ah, what the hell, I wasn't doing anything tonight anyways. I think I'll just stick to the classics on this without adding much myself. (I've read all the posts so far, but if I tried to respond individually this thing would be even more tl;dr than it already is) If you think about it, it actually doesn't say much of anything to just say that "beauty is individual" or "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" (I won't try "beauty is subjective" yet, because it's too early to bring up what a subject is). Actually it only says what beauty is [i]not[/i]: it isn't something universally valid, and a beautiful object will not be beautiful in all cases of observation. That's fine, but it doesn't actually try to say what beauty [i]is[/i] in a positive way. Combine the "individuality" of personal taste with the extreme difficulty of doing that kind of positive description, and it's very easy to throw up one's hands, declare that beauty cannot (and even [i]ought[/i] not) be made intelligible, and view any attempt to do so as empty sophistry. I think this is an enormous mistake; if nothing else it means that the experience of beauty has to take its leave of serious examination, and goes off to whittle away time in the realm of sentimentality. The most influential writer on the subject of beauty in recent times is Kant ("oh god, not Kant" - yeah, yeah, hear me out, there's a reason people still read these guys).He deals with beauty, and more widely the human faculty of the aesthetic, in his Critique of Judgment. There he immediately starts off by making the point that the aesthetic - [i]including[/i] beauty - is whatever is [i]subjectively[/i] added to an experience. Everyone here probably has an idea what the word "subjective" means - when we say something's subjective, we mean to say it's one-sided, true only for a particular observer, and unscientific (this is opposed to "objective," which is the opposite). Taken in that way, Kant only wants to say that aesthetics is inexact and personal - which is exactly the point brought up in the previous paragraph. The only problem is that that's [i]not[/i] how Kant understands subjectivity, or at least it misses the point. When Kant speaks of something being objective, he means that it's something really present in the objects we experience - were I not to encounter that object, I wouldn't ever find out the objective facts about it. Subjective facts, on the other hand, are in a certain sense [i]always loaded into[/i] any experience we have. They're [i]how[/i] we experience things, rather than [i]what[/i] we experience. This has the strange result that you can actually be [i]more[/i] sure of subjective facts than objective ones, since the subjective is there in ANY possible experience you could have whereas with the objective you have to go chase down the object you're studying. Furthermore, the "subject" is not actually a real [i]thing[/i] for Kant. For us, when we say "subject" we usually mean it as individual people, individual cases ("subjects of an experiment") - Kant doesn't take it this way. "The subject is not a particular thing but an idea." So when he says that beauty is a subjective element, he doesn't mean it's a fact you can discover in a [i]particular object[/i] which is a subject (say, your best friend, or even yourself). It's a fact about experience in general (it's never an obvious thing that someone else may object to my own taste; I only discover this after the fact, experimentally, after a lot of trial and error). And, if beauty is subjective in this way, it also means that it is only connected to objects loosely. There can be no objective [i]reason[/i] to find one thing beautiful and not something else (looking among all the objective facts of it, you never find "beauty" or "ugliness"). This is different from simply saying that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" - it means, positively, that the faculty of taste [i]as a faculty[/i] is going to be present and the same in all rational beings, even if they don't enjoy the same things. There is no common "beauty" or "ugliness" (and no universal beauty which we could recognize if we would just, if you like, clear up our thetans), but there's a common [i]possibility[/i] that one or the other can show up in any experience, and that faculty can be analyzed as a general fact. Kant's most famous statement about taste and the sense of beauty is that it is the power to judge something beautiful or ugly in a way "devoid of all interest." This is usually misinterpreted to mean that while experiencing something as beautiful we ought to be stoic and dead to all passions. But "interest" here doesn't mean that; it means a project ("business interest") or an inclination. Think of the recent 4chan meme, "this is relevant to my interests," as an example. Kant points out that we can never find anything beautiful [i]for the sake of something else[/i]. We never find anything beautiful because it's useful to us, or because we've been "conditioned" to like certain things (on reflection that may seem likely, but you'll never find it in the experience itself). Silesius: "The rose is without why; it blooms because it blooms." Beauty simply means to experience something as profoundly delightful [i]in itself[/i]. If I suddenly experience the beauty of my daughter, I will never find in the [i]basic experience[/i] anything else behind it (biological necessity, etc.). She's beautiful just because she's beautiful. There's more to say, though, and for this I hop over to Plato. Plato has a unique understanding of the beautiful which he discusses in a couple of places; my favorite's the Phaedrus. Much of the dialogue complains about the tendency of people to forget the world around them; they ignore what is true about things, and fall back into lesser concerns (they're aware of the truth, but only in a half-awake sort of way). Beauty, though, has a special part to play here. "To beauty alone has the role been allotted to be the most radiant, but also the most enchanting." Plato doesn't mean that "beauty" itself is some object out there in the world, which is the most beautiful among things. Plato doesn't even seem to want to include it among his so-called forms. When we says that beauty is the "most radiant," he means it in the sense that the beautiful [i]shines out[/i]; beauty illuminates the world, and by doing so it can [i]wake us up[/i]. Beauty has the chance of making us remember the true (as the "most enchanting" it also has the danger of luring us back [i]away[/i] from truth, but that's a different question). Plato's point still holds true today, I think, although maybe not the way he meant it. If I am given something truly beautiful - a work of art, a floral arrangement, my daughter (again) - the whole of my experience will be "woken up." Things may seem brighter somehow; I may take heed of things I had never cared about before; I may become, if only for a moment, a truly different person. This is not to give beauty a purpose, a reason, or an "interest," which Kant would never approve. It only means that when I experience the beautiful I notice/remember things - or, really, a whole world - which normally would have remained hidden to me. tl;dr, I know, but hopefully it's helpful to someone (who knows, maybe there were a lot of people around here just waiting for a good five-minute intro to Kant). It's an interesting question and it's not going to get resolved in a message board thread, no matter how many personal arguments get started. (the basic duty of all serious dialogue, philosophical or otherwise: always try to get the guy on the other side in as strong a position as he can possibly have)[/SIZE]

[quote name='Copycatalyst']You sound very critical of the artists which we were talking of, which I am not saying is a bad thing at all. That criticalness should come through if you decide to make your own music. . .or do you? Music needs minds which are critical, yet attuned. So I think your criticalness is a good thing.[/QUOTE]Well, I mostly just pay attention to the "breakcore" and "braindance" kinds of stuff now (scare quotes ahoy), but I used to listen to all kinds of things. Especially Goa/Psytrance, although I pretty much gave it up after Hallucinogen's Lone Deranger (which is, for my money, THE album of the genre - Mushroom and the rest have made good attempts at unseating it, but that's still the one to beat). And if I'm critical, especially of "breakcore" or whatever, it's pretty much coming from the same perspective as, say, a Motown fan in 1978 ("this is still pretty good music, but when are they gonna do something [i]different[/i]?"). I'm still absolutely in love with 'Pusher and the rest, but Big Loada came out like ten years ago and most stuff since that time has been an expansion on ideas already pretty established. Damn it, my jaw dropped the first time I heard Autechre's LP5; I want new things that are going to kick my head in, that are going to force me to relearn how to listen. I don't want to sound overly pessimistic or jaded (there's nothing worse than some old vet whining about the state of music), but it's been a long time since that flash of insight ("I don't even know how to react to this") last happened. (and this is the state of the electronic style that's [I]most[/I] willing to try weird new things; I'm a little afraid of what might be going on in house and the rest) And yes, I used to do a little bit of music myself. Most of it was awful, and let us never speak of it again.

606 hasn't really made a decent album since Kill Sound Before Sound Kills You (I'm in disagreement with Wondershot on this), which was pretty much a straightforward rave collection. He hasn't made a [i]great[/i] album since Down With The Scene, which is an absolute monster (the amount of detail alone makes it a CD which, for me, never gets old). Especially in the past two years or so, the "extreme" electronic music crowd (sometimes they get the name "breakcore," but it doesn't really matter what you call them) have really quieted down. It's like someone somewhere found a limit to what they could do, and that was the end. Everyone else also seems to have been faced with the crushing question: is what we're doing right now really any different from what the Warp label was up to ten years ago? Even Snares, the reigning demigod of the scene, has slowed way way down. The really interesting things he's done recently have been [i]soundscapes[/i] of all things; his drum-focused tracks now sound almost obligatory. Hrvatski has veered off towards psych rock and academic music; Squarepusher's moved his bass playing front and center, with the drums an afterthought; Doormouse has loosened up quite a bit; Aphex Twin has returned to his early '90s analog equipment; Tigerbeat 6 has basically disintegrated. Lots of good music is still being made, but the force behind it has receded. (this rebellious streak will definitely return in force, but probably only when there's something more coherent it can rebel against) As for an introduction to "electronica" (note: electronica as such does not exist), even a half-decade on the best attempt ever made remains [URL="http://www.di.fm/edmguide/edmguide.html"][U]Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music[/U][/URL]. If you're curious about this stuff, I highly recommend hunting through it for a few hours. It's extremely useful, if only for throwing dozens of samples at you in one go so you can actually tell what these things sound like (just don't take very seriously the distinctions between genres, and don't pay much attention to the snarky commentary).

[b]Last Alert[/b]. [URL="http://zanyvgquotes.com/lastalert/last_alert1.mp3"][u]Sample 1[/u][/URL], [URL="http://zanyvgquotes.com/lastalert/last_alert2.mp3"][u]Sample 2[/u][/URL], [URL="http://zanyvgquotes.com/lastalert/last_alert3.mp3"][u]Sample 3[/u][/URL]. Thread is now basically over. "People will HATE you, [i]Steve[/i], if you're too STING-Y."

Well, why not. 1. [b]Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona[/b] (Hans Ludwig Hirsch conducting). This is the piece that destroyed Baroque opera, and you can actually hear why if you're familiar with what else was being written at the time. In the midst of very stuffy, very long works stuffed to the gills with bells and whistles, the 20-something Pergolesi dropped a 45-minute comedic intermezzo about a dirty old man with a thing for his maid and all the music stripped to bare essentials - it was insanely popular, and suddenly no one could write like Handel or Scarlatti anymore. It's a lot of fun (imagine - fun opera!) and extremely easy to take, requiring less than an hour rather than an afternoon. This recording, on the Arts Music label, is quite good (I especially like the bass). No translation with the libretto, though. :( 2. [b]Nine Inch Nails' Year Zero[/b]. No, I didn't really follow the mad chase through the internet. Something about a hand and drugs in the water? Anyways, this is pretty good as an [i]album[/i], although I think a lot of the songs are weaker than on With Teeth (and no fair comparing them to anything earlier than that). Basically what you've got here is Trent Reznor trying to write a kind of requiem for the United States (or its soul, at least), with each song being a little episode recording the last days. Vessel sounds like a T-1000 on the dance floor; In This Twilight is a power ballad in a burning office building. Most of the album is unrelentingly dark and claustrophobic (and almost all electronic), although there are bits of hope towards the end. Unexpectedly, this is a really [i]sexy[/i] album; most of the tracks slink along well below 100 bpms throwing bass and static all over the place, making this ideal music for a night of lovin' (or altered consciousness, or both). 3. [b]Gesualdo's Quinto Libro di Madrigali[/b] (performed by La Venexiana). One of the last published collections by one of the most infamous composers ever (I'll let you [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Gesualdo][u]read up[/u][/URL] on Carlo in your own time), and still some of the freakiest music ever written. This album completes my collection of the Gesualdo madrigals. Like the others, it's impossible for me to get all the way through in one sitting; there's so much detail in each madrigal and they require so much attention that listening to more than three or four at a time is completely exhausting. All the strange dissonances and harmonies are like a bad acid trip. Still, the stuff is incredibly beautiful; "sweet poison," as the prince might've put it. La Venexiana have a long history with extremely difficult vocal music, and they acquit themselves well here (sometimes their pitches are slightly off, but that's it). Difficult, and definitely not driving music, but worth it.

[QUOTE=2007DigitalBoy][COLOR=DarkOrange]Fasterisk, that's the most beautiful cap of this show I've read so far. Everything you say rings true, and I meant to mention that this show excells in havin only one annoying character, and he doesn't have much of the series' focus behind him either. I find it hilarious that you mentioned DOA (assuming you were talking about the video game, if not, pardon me) because young Clare looks almost exactly like young Kasuki when she gets her new clothes. I think it was some kind of homage >_> [/COLOR][/QUOTE]Having one annoying character is still a deal-breaker sometimes, although thankfully the staff seem to realize now that they should keep his mouth shut as much as possible. (thanks for the compliment, btw!) And no, the DOA was in reference to the medical term ("dead on arrival," meaning the patient had croaked before the doctors even had a chance). As for Kasumi and the [i]other[/i] DOA, though... well, I'm sure someone will manage to fit Claire into a swimsuit at some point (I mean, we're talking about anime here).

Yeah, Claymore was probably the biggest surprise of the season for me. I was just about ready to drop it after the fourth episode - the shaky animation, the fairly uninteresting episode plots and set pieces, and most of all that [i]annoying god damned kid[/i] all pointed to DOA. For some reason I kept watching up through the fifth and sixth episodes, though, when Romi Paku showed up and lent a new sense of class to the show and suddenly it became a completely different series (I'm with DB on this one). For a shining period of about four episodes (the length of the "flashback") Claymore was, I think, the absolute best action/fantasy series since Berserk. Since then it's dropped off a bit, but it's still one of the brightest gems of the season. Are there things to nitpick about? Oh, definitely. Right now the show's advancing up the dangerous path of power level pissing contests (I knew something was up the moment they mentioned "ratings" for the claymores; by episode 20 I fully expect to hear a line like "IMPOSSIBLE!! Her rating is... zero point seven five!??! But why didn't I detect it on the rating scouter??!?"). It relies on cheap tricks to stretch out fights, technobabble is everywhere, and they drop a deus ex machina any time someone realizes that they can't let the main character get killed. Budget and quality are all over the place, and you can always tell when they had to pull in the c-squad to do an episode or two. If you were grading solely on the technics, Claymore wouldn't do so well. But what I love about it is that it's one of the only shows this season which really has a [i]heart[/i] (the other is Gurren-Lagann, but we've known Gainax were hot-blooded ever since Daicon IV). Dennou Coil and Darker than Black are masterfully made shows, much more well-crafted than Claymore, but Claire I actually [i]care[/i] about - she's just an eminently likeable character, especially after they begin to work through her past. The show has some other merits besides Claire, but she's the only real reason I watch it. Claire's a hard-headed girl who's been thrown into a situation which is vastly, impossibly huge for her. Imagine a blonde, well-endowed Rocky, only in a world with flesh-eating monsters all over the place. What you have in her is much more than just an underdog: you've got someone who's been dealt the worst hand imaginable, but is dead set on winning the pot at a table where everyone else has three of a kind or better. Yet - and here's the important part - at no point does [i]pity[/i] ever enter the audience's mind. Claire really does have the air of someone who's lived for years as a dwarf among giants, someone who's used to failure and whose victories are few and always hard-won, someone who lives only for a dream (which she knows she is utterly incapable of reaching) and has fought for everything she has. I can't recall any anime character quite like her, and she's enchanting. It's impossible not to like her, or not to root for her whenever she takes on a heavy she has no chance against. In a state of the industry saturated in moe, where every character has to be reducible to a kind of faux-puppy state, Claire's self-reliance gives her show something unique. Also: what's with all the Lucky Star hate? :animeangr

[SIZE=1]Pain, I think, has nothing to do with growth. Think of a situation where I, say, break up with a significant other. I don't learn anything (or "grow") at all from the [i]pain[/i] of the breakup; if I learn something or become less naive it's from the breakup [i]itself[/i], from thinking about why it happened, where it started, etc.. I don't become stronger or "less resistant" to pain, either - things like breakups never get easier, at best I can only learn how to handle them better. The idea that pain makes us grow seems to me like an after-the-fact justification for really awful feelings that need to be explained and given reason [i]somehow[/i], even if those reasons have nothing to do with the actual, concrete experience of hurt. (If you wanted to be ambitious, you could probably find the roots of this in the old solution to the problem of theodicy: "why is there evil in the world? because it's ultimately part of God's plan for the kingdom." The goal taken by "pain-as-growth" is personal virtue rather than universal salvation, but the model's basically the same) I tend to think that if you want to understand pain, the way to do it is to examine, as closely as possible, pain as an [i]experience[/i] - not to understand [i]why[/i] certain things are painful, or why pain ever happens at all (the point is to look at pain itself, not its causes or its uses). Everyone understands what pain is in some way, sure - otherwise we couldn't say things like "that really hurt me." But it's one thing to be able to [i]indicate examples[/i] of something, and another to [i]define[/i] it in a more structured way (if someone says to me "whenever I'm around [NAME] it feels like I have butterflies in my stomach," I can reply: "oh, you must be in love"; that doesn't mean I can DEFINE what love is). I'm not really up for that in a message board post, but I can make some indications. First of all, let's just deal with pain in the sense of the "pain" of loss, the "pain" of embarrassment, and so on, rather than the "pain" of (for example) getting hit in the head. I can feel pain in the latter sense (call this nerve pain) all day without feeling it in the former (call this emotional pain). Pain, as we take it here, is an emotion ("no kidding!"). Obviously. But emotions, moods, dispositions, and so on, [i]as experienced by myself[/i], aren't like other kinds of facts: to say "she's mad" is basically similar to "she's from Canada" (both just express that some object is a certain way), but [i]my[/i] being mad is something else. I don't at all experience anger as just a fact attached to an object (myself). I'm somehow [i]in[/i] the anger; I inhabit it in a way similar to how I inhabit my body. Being angry has to do with the way in which I deal with other things around me (angrily) - experientially it might actually make more sense to say that the [i]world[/i] is angry rather than me (I only really say "I'm angry" when I'm in a fairly reflective kind of anger; I'm more likely to say "this is outrageous," etc.). My anger may be focused on something particular (say, the car that cut me off), but more basically it's going to involve how I take the whole world. But not all emotions work the same - not only in the sense that they "twist" the world in different ways, but that they orient me differently [i]temporally[/i]. Emotions have to do with TIME. Take fear: in a certain sense I can be afraid of things immediately in front of me, but this isn't really where the [i]emphasis[/i] of fear falls. In the doctor's office to get a shot, I'm not afraid of the needle as it is AT THAT MOMENT (no matter how sharp it is): I'm afraid of what the needle's GOING to do to me. But not the sting itself. In stage fright, what I'm afraid of is the general insecurity and the unknown quality of the situation, not any single possibility. I'm not afraid of the [i]particular[/i] effect (if I know what shots are like, they're less scary), I'm afraid because I don't really know what's going to happen. The upshot of all this: I never become "afraid" of something in the past (I can be "unnerved" by a past situation, maybe, but that's not the same thing). In any case, this unseats the common sense idea that we're affected most by what's going on NOW; under many circumstances we can be far more strongly bound by what we see coming towards us, or what we see going away. Pain, it seems to me, leans in the direction opposite of fear. Pain dwells with the past, with what has already gone. I am never hurt by events that haven't yet taken place - if I learn that my lover plans to leave me, the pain I feel is from her betrayal already having taken place (even if it hasn't been "finalized"). Take another situation: suppose, as I sit here writing this, that I receive a phone call telling me that my best friend has died. With this, would I feel hurt? Would I wail and cry without a second having gone past? NO - which will seem very strange. More likely, I feel an uncanny kind of calm (the eye of a storm). At most, I might be shocked and I might stumble over my words a bit as I thank the person who tells me and hang up. As I look around my room, I might perhaps be struck by the [i]sameness[/i] of it: the walls having the same shade of white as before, the wall clock moving at its usual speed. Most of all, I wonder about myself. I try to think of my friend and her death, and fail - somehow all that comes to mind is the party scheduled at her place for tuesday night, and how I haven't bought any food for it yet. I wonder how it is that I'm not feeling any grief, or anything at all, even though I should be. I might even still be in a state where I can finish the work I'm doing. None of this is "denial" - my problem has nothing to do with the fact that I don't know what's happened or that I'm denying it, but that the event - and my friend - [i]haven't yet moved into the past[/i]. The death is still too PRESENT - the taint of the "now" somehow prevents me from feeling the pain I know is proper. Only after her death has properly become past, only when I can [i]remember[/i] her, do I experience the loss and the grief. It can take five seconds, it can take days. In any case, I think this is representative of something generally true: pain only happens in [i]remembering[/i]. Anyways this started wandering into tl;dr territory a couple of paragraphs ago, and that's about all I have to add to this (Engel - it may not seem like it, but everything I've said here is directed to your post). I won't try to talk about pain as something good or bad; I take it as a [i]fact[/i], and that's all. Truthfully I don't know if the experience of painful remembrance - taking pain now as part of a whole [i]situation[/i], not as something by itself (like in the first paragraph above) - leads to growth or regression or what. I guess it's often true that pain can help you bond with others (although I don't know how I feel about the idea of picking up dates from one's support group). I don't really know the best ways to cope with pain. I'm not a psychologist and I can't really give you the statistics on any of this stuff. All I can do, really, is try to [I]describe[/I] it, and (were this not too long already) to ask what this means about how I encounter the world around me, how I relate to others, about time above all, and the basic state of being human. None of this is "useful," in that it can be applied somewhere to get good results. "What [i]is[/i] pain?", not "how do I deal with pain?" or "what causes pain?" etc. - that question seems to get us nowhere. It produces no effects: at best it only offers a clear view of what is [I]given[/I] in pain. All it can do is talk about the obvious. Which is often much more difficult than you would think: "One is unable to notice something - because it is always before one?s eyes."[/SIZE]

You lost me at "Superstar" being in the same sentence as "Internet" and "OtakuBoards." Now, [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcBs8QHpGdo][u]"Megastar"[/u][/URL] on the other hand...

[quote name='2007DigitalBoy][COLOR=DarkOrange']Not much is more annoying than watching girls flirt all day only to never establish a relationship thill the very end and not even have sex, or at least insinuate that they did.[/COLOR][/quote]That can be annoying, or it can be [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria-sama_ga_Miteru][u]pretty much one of my favorite shows ever[/u][/URL]. Marimite practically oozes eroticism, especially in the first season, but the sex thing never comes up (we get maybe two kisses in the entire series). Everything's in little sideways hints and ambiguous signals - frusterating for the horny viewer wanting nothing more than a horizontal cha cha, but somehow magical to anyone who can get over the learning curve. Strawberry Panic is a terrible show. It's not enough that they took everything from Marimite and replaced half the shoujo (the flowers, the glances that last forever, the designs so sharp and angular you could open a beer bottle with them) with backstocked moe. Oh no. It totally misses what the older show had long understood, namely that there are distinctions between cuteness, sexuality, and eroticism (Marimite partakes in the first and third a lot, but almost never the second). The effect while watching SP is like you have a short, pudgy guy sitting behind you, constantly whispering into your ear: "They're all gay, you know!!" At every big moment: "Ha, oh man! Those girls totally want to have sex." Right after a scene ends: "Bet they're lezzing it up, eh? Eh??? I'll tell ya, I bet that short one's the one on top, right? She's feisty! She's totally giving that other one the ol' [i]magic carpet ride[/i], you get it?? ...I mean to say they're having SEX. They're SCREWING right now. SEX SEX SEX. Because they're LESBIANS and they enjoy having INTERCOURSE with WOMEN, and right now that's what they're doing. SEX." Good god, give me real shoujo - coy to the point of absurdity - rather than this horrible imitation stuff spawned from an unfortunate one-night stand with moe (shoujo must have been really, really drunk). Not every show needs to be one where you can look up the dress of its licensed figurines and see the girls' panties.

I guess I'll kick this one back up to the top. I don't know if I can say much; the movie's just incredibly, incredibly good. The folks involved managed to find the hearts at the center of both romantic comedy anime and the grand old tradition of sci-fi time travel yarns, and somehow mashed them together. The weirdest thing is how [I]effortless[/I] it seems (Dagger also seems to be pointing to this). An enormous amount of care and thought went into pulling all the little details together and having the whole make sense, yet the movie comes off as light as a Mozart concerto (kind of a bad analogy, sorry). It works not only as a serious piece of speculative fiction, but also as just a good flick to enjoy for an hour and a half. Of course, I suspect that its simplicity and willingness to sell itself as just a good piece of entertainment also means it probably won't get much of an international audience - it's a better film than, say, Innocence, but it's also not the kind of movie that's going to get to the finals at Cannes (too approachable, too little storm and stress, no looming sense of "importance" - basically, not European enough). No current plans to release the thing domestically, so torrenting is pretty much your only option (man, is it just me or do anime movies get released really sporadically in the US? unless they're Miyazaki or connected to a major license, movies almost always get skipped over). Anyways, it's good, go and see it asap.

[QUOTE=2007DigitalBoy][COLOR=DarkOrange]Have you heard the one for GX? It's about gang warfare. Chillin out with my crew at the schoolyard findin trouble but never lookin too hard back in class they never tought us this some things you gotta learn hit-and-miss come on, it's so obvious[/COLOR][/QUOTE]One of the most curious trends in anime theme songs is indeed the increased use of gangsta rap. Take the [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF-n6tuS_jk][u]Lucky Star OP[/u][/URL], for example. So far incidents of shootings and other violence have been uncommon, but they will continue to grow over time. We've already got Kansai seiyuus regularly calling out Kanto ones, and the latter return the favor. The anime community is still recovering from the recent loss of Tupako and the Notorious M.O.E.; either the industry will get itself in shape soon, or they'll lose even more of their brightest talents to this useless violence.

Frankly I find this entire topic disturbing, and it's a personal issue for me. Too many people today, especially young men and women, are using their hadoukins without taking even the most basic safety precautions. Hadoukens must be strictly regulated so that they can be used without risking lives or property (if they're not banned altogether). But more important than that is providing our citizens with a basic education on how to hadouken [i]safely and productively[/i]. I'll admit, back in the day I would have laughed at someone who told me this. I would have told them that it's my life to live, and then I would have hit them with a hadouken (jab only). Back in those days I would use my hadouken for just about everything, from jumpstarting my friends' cars to doing trim work around the lawn. That all changed after an uncle of mine, whom I was very close to, was in a horrific hadouken accident which he never completely recovered from (you can see the video [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO6wQTlmNNc][U]here[/U][/URL]). After that I never quite trusted them again. I know I'm probably not going to change any lives here. But to anyone reading this, I urge you: if you [i]must[/i] use your hadouken, please do so responsibly! Educate yourselves on the risks. There are now 1-2 week seminars on proper hadouken handling available in 36 states, and at reasonable prices. There is also an abundance of information available on the internet. Hadouken smart, and hadouken safe!

God, this thread makes me feel old. I can't shake the sense that "old school" should probably have its absolute cutoff around 1990 or so, if not earlier. Ah well, enough bellyaching. I'm arbitrarily setting my own cutoff at 1985, mainly so I don't have to talk about all my beloved late '80s shows (if I got into Bubblegum Crisis I'd be writing all night). -[b]Lupin[/b], which I can say absolutely nothing about. It's [i]Lupin[/i] for god's sake. It's absurd to criticize this series; it's like passing judgment on Space Invaders. -[b]SDF Macross[/b] (original only), probably the towering achievement of '80s mecha and space opera. For all its emotional thrust, the original Gundam was still for kids (and Ideon, while more mature, was populated entirely by idiots). Macross has honest-to-god characterization and development, all without sacrificing fun. Uh, but just forget about the wedding episode and the last quarter or so of the series... -[b]Rose of Versailles[/b], essentially the show (well, it had more impact as a manga and a stage show but still) that's to classic shoujo what Macross is to Gundam. Where before you had high school tales or sports shows or light fantasy, with Rose you've got a sprawling, hugely complex historical drama. It was a considerable step away from traditional shoujo at the time , yet now it's one of the major touchstones (and, I think, easily one of the best animes of all time). I guess I'll leave it at that? EDIT: [quote name='Rachmaninoff] The whole thing frankly. It relied too much on an impending sense of doom, or so it seemed and I do not care for the giant robot [spoiler]I know they weren't but still[/spoiler'] fights. That sort of storyline does not interest me. It was the same with Full Metal Panic. I enjoyed the characters, but the fighting part bored me. It's just not my thing.... There was so much hype on how cool it was and I'm sure for some it is. But for me it was not. :animesigh[/quote]Well, really, no one should be watching NGE for the fights. They're basically intermezzi, although well-animated ones. If you're going to be turned off by the show, it has to be because of... well, everything else. And I can fully understand disliking it for those reasons. PSA (directed at everyone): I have no idea what idiot in the late '90s started pushing NGE as THE anime in the US, but I would like to retroactively punch him. There is no single less appropriate introduction to the style than Eva - newcomers seeing it with few other shows under their belt are, I think, being done a disservice. The series is rooted in two decades of mecha anime, and is the most extreme extension of that tradition. Sure, it still works as a kind of emotional rollercoaster and it can still frusterate, but it's impossible to really judge where it stands without having an idea of where it's coming from and what themes it's playing around with. I've said this before: NGE is for veterans only. Ideally it's something you lead up to and love or hate from there, never what you start off with. Someone once said that you shouldn't try to read Proust before you're 30 - I wouldn't go that far with NGE, but the same kind of caution is advised.

First choice: [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbhXGIQRl0s][u]this[/u][/URL]. For obvious reasons. Second choice: [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0o_IAteU4k][u]this[/u][/URL]. Assuming I was in a TV show, the audience would quickly associate the first few bars of this track with me showing up a moment later and doing some popping and locking.

[SIZE=1][quote name='Lunox][color=dimgray] Japanese porn in general is funny. Ever since I came across [url="http://www.outpostnine.com/editorials/porn.html"]this gem[/url'], I seize every opportunity to laugh over the next hentai picture or video bit.[/color][/quote]I usually like Azrael's stuff, but that article strikes me as rather unfortunate. A is stylistically pretty much a "reporter," which works great when you're talking about, say, high school boys trying to grope you, but taking on a bad porn flick is something... different (I know this because I've done it before and been really unfunny). For one thing, it's not good enough just to tell us what happens and then comment that it's ridiculous and soul-destroying - sure you might score a few giggles, but basically you give us nothing we won't get by watching it ourselves. In most cases, unless you're the first child of Seanbaby or something, you can't even get by on personality and sheer style. The thing that makes writing about bad porn different from anything else is that no matter how ridiculous it is, someone somewhere is (or at least could be) [i]totally getting off on it[/i]. "Reviewing" (if that's the right word) any other bad movie you can just attack the personal shortcomings of the individuals who made it. With [i]this[/i] stuff, every time you give it any kind of deep thought you're forced to wonder if there's something very, very odd about humanity in general, that the whole damn world might be broken merchandise (unless you take the easy way out and find a "fetish" to be ridiculed, which never seems very genuine to me; sexual predilections are not like club memberships). Perhaps I'm showing my veteran status too much here? In any case, it irks me when folks go for the lulz via a hentai write-up. Getting the cheap laughs is easy (sex, especially foreign or animated sex, is always hilarious when you're not involved), pulling out a piece of writing which is more than a blow-by-blow married to hyperbolic condemnation is not. [quote name='Dagger']There are some gorgeously animated hentai... Front Innocent / Another Lady Innocent is probably the example that most people would think of. It's like seeing a Satoshi Urushihara artbook come to life. The curious thing is that despite its beauty, it doesn't exactly succeed as a hentai. It's shiny and much better looking than any TV series, but ultimately it comes off as being kind of sterile and boring. It's pretty without being titillating.[/quote]With Urushihara you are guaranteed two things. First, that whatever he's doing will take forever (I think we'll be lucky to see Front Innocent 2 before the Mayan calendar runs out). Second, that its erotic material will be so lovingly detailed that "verbing the noun" becomes secondary - it ends up some kind of wonderful, absurd sexual cabaret dance, usually with crying lesbians (and the absurdity thing is never helped by his complete inability to do plot). I think I agree with your general point about the high-quality h-anime. It tends to go in the direction of 1) paper-thin dramas or romantic comedies propping up tepid paint-by-numbers "events" or 2) depravity and spectacle. The greatest present torchbearer for the horrible, sadistic, and absurdly well-done is Teruaki Murakami, for whom I don't think it's even a question of eroticism anymore. You have never, ever seen anything like what's in Kuro Ai, Kazama Mana, etc., and should never do so on a full stomach, but for better or worse that's where a lot of the innovation is happening. On the other hand, I really think that more generally we're in something like an h-anime renaissance - there's still tons of crap coming out, but more and more of it is truly willing to be engaging and creative (a huge sea change after the relative wasteland of the late '90s/early oughts). Some shows are [i]genuinely funny and cute[/i] again, as if the genre suddenly remembered what it was doing in the '80s and early '90s (you can actually have a fun time watching old Cream Lemon episodes together with a significant other, but good luck trying that with, say, Houkago Nureta Seifuku). Hatsu Inu is a good example. (you are probably learning way more about my viewing habits than you wanted to know here) [quote name='Copycatalyst]...this thread shows credence to the fact that OB does need--to dis-attach from the hentai centerfuge--[i]a forum for 18+ members, where they can be adults away from the kiddies[/i'].[/quote]Actually I'd say this thread indicates the exact opposite: that it's perfectly possible for a board that's open age-wise to have a good, intelligent, (mostly) unobjectionable discussion about something as risque as cartoon porn. Unless someone really, really needs to post images or something, I'd say the case is lacking. [quote name='Premonition][B][COLOR=Navy]Just deal with it, it's a form of art, just like pin-up girls or the naked decapitated statues around museums.[/COLOR'][/B][/quote]Sure, there's lots of nudity everywhere in art - even occasionally in healthy family entertainment! There's even some sex here and there, believe it or not. But in a lot of cases you've got it included in something whose main purpose is quite different from porn. It's in something there for, say artistic appreciation (whatever that is) or mere diversion (airport novels, summer movies). This is, so far as I can see, quite different from something released for the main purpose of (shall we say) [i]self-abuse[/i]. That's not to say that the latter is [i]bad[/i], but you're playing by different rules in those cases.[/SIZE]

[quote name='Dagger]Buddy! But last I checked, you weren't one of [url=http://www.otakuboards.com/showthread.php?t=57211&page=1&pp=15][u]them[/u][/url']. :animesmil[/quote]Man, RPG thread be damned, if I don't count as a terrorist agitator then who does? [quote name='Dagger']Boku no Pico? F'real? :catgirl:[/quote] You shut up, you shut your dirty mouth! You weren't there. You can't criticize what I did!! Sometimes a man begins to lose it when he's out in the field too long, that's all. How can you blame me, when it was the whole world that went mad!

[quote name='The Boss][color=darkred][size=1]In response to a particular challenge, I am here to rally support for a new forum on the OBs concerning Hentai.[/color'][/size][/quote]Uh, 4Chan is [i]thataway[/i] dude. H is one of those things you talk about in some dark, deserted corner of the internet where the light is low enough that no one can really tell who you are and where you can probably buy cheap smack a couple of yards away. It is not for a bright, family-friendly, model-home-in-a-newly-built-suburb kind of message board like Ohh Bee. (I do hope you're getting money from the "challenge," though) [quote name='The Boss][color=darkred][size=1]What's your favorite hentai title? Got any particular taste you'd like to discuss? Any voice actor who's particular tone you prefer?[/color'][/size][/quote]In order: Cream Lemon episode 4, hey shut up my opinion on Boku no Pico is none of your damn business, and whoever it was that played Kazama Mana (well, "prefer" isn't the right word). And that's all I'm admitting to. Those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, more power to you and [i]for god's sake get out of the thread now[/i] before it's too late. [quote name='Dagger']Just curious. Let's rule out visual novels & static pictures & manga for the time being. How many of you terrorist agitators actually watch hentai?[/quote]*Cough*

[URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTLfcq2UEEs][U]The Sore Feet Song[/U][/URL]. I will never, ever understand why anyone would do this to their show. It's not just that it has absolutely nothing to do with the series it's supposed to be setting the mood for - it sounds like something Pat from [URL=http://www.achewood.com/][U]Achewood[/U][/URL] would like. And then there's [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO-zRPiLue4][U]this one[/U][/URL], which I don't really [i]dislike[/i] but... well, call it a love-hate thing. :3

[quote name='Lambinate]...it's hard to know much about Japanese culture unless your [sic] part of it. That's why its easy to adopt stereotypes arived [sic] at from popular media sources. Sure, these representations are true in that they are represntations [sic]. But whilst [sic'] we have a qualitative understanding of American 'geek', we have a purely academic understanding of Japanese 'otaku', which gets us nowhere.[/quote]I'm missing a lot of this, aside from the broad point (representations are true in that they're representations? "qualitative understanding?"). While none of us are Japanese (anyone want to correct me on this?), I think it's been fairly widely accepted that Japanese society has taken an extremely negative view of otaku and have commonly associated them with criminality and the antisocial. So far as I know this has been the case since the Miyazaki arrest two decades ago. As for the [i]current[/i] situation, I confess to getting my own info mostly from some old industry vets that hang out on the Animesuki boards (the first rule on the internet is, of course, to never trust anyone, but if those guys are fake then they're quite good at it). The situation for otaku, if they are correct, has not much turned around. Anyways, I consider most of this stuff firm enough to treat as fact (here following William James: "the truth is what works") The question I (maybe not everyone else) treat above is not "what is it like to be an otaku?" That requires much more of a jump than I need to make (and relativism is, I think, a fair objection). Neither is it "what is an otaku?", a kind of question that mostly leads to chasing one's tail. I only ask, "how does Japanese society (on average) tend to treat otaku, and what reasoning does that treatment follow?" You can find, I think, a good quarter-century's worth of evidence for the first part of the question (which someone more dedicated to hard research than me should look up). For the second part, I think it's possible to come up with a plausible explanation. The point is not to get [i]beyond[/i] the "stereotype" of the otaku, but to see how and why it functions, where it came from, how it's changed, etc.. I haven't answered your first question ("I was wandering if anyone relates to Japanese otaku, not just through a love of anime, but through being singled out as geeky and anti-scoial [sic]?") because I don't know how to yet. However, I should point out that if you're serious in saying that we only have "a purely academic understanding of Japanese 'otaku', which gets us nowhere" - that is, we don't really understand them at all - then you already have the answer. It is: no, we don't "relate" to them, not really. Assuming genuine empathy requires real knowledge of the other person, no "geek" over here can possibly relate to these otaku we understand only "academically." The best explanation for any feelings we [i]do[/i] have, then, seems to be that they're just our projections of our own situation. Personally I find this conclusion reprehensible. (I can't shake hope in people's ability to understand each other)

Guys, come on. There's good anime, there's mediocre anime, and there's bad anime. But well beyond any of that, there's... [center][img]http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/a/a3/250px-Musashi_Gundo.jpg[/img][/center] Musashi Gundoh is a veritable symphony of cheap and awful. With [i]any other series[/i] you can usually find a way out, [i]something[/i] that works in spite of everything else falling apart. Not so for Gundoh. There's no rest, no escape from the awful. This is a show so poorly made that it is genuinely shocking. Evidence: [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7urUYFjLUk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7urUYFjLUk[/URL] Watch this. Just WATCH it - yes, ALL the way through. Anything I could say about this clip is completely superfluous. No other show even comes close to this thing. EDIT: how didn't I notice the Lupin III jab? :animeangr

[SIZE=1]Well, it's helpful first of all to make distinctions here (they won't be sharp - let me repeat that for emphasis, these points are NOT ABSOLUTE - but they are useful to illustrate the question). Recently - I'm talking only in the past decade, decade and a half - there have been strong shifts in how geeks/nerds/whatever are seen in the U.S.. I don't want to say it's become [i]fashionable[/i] to be a geek, but it's now a more or less neutral term. Eccentricity in some areas is almost to be expected in people now, although they are also expected to have discretion about it (that is, they can shut up about their interests when they need to). To be a geek can often mean that you have a lot of future job potential. Now, the Japanese situation is a little different. Again, blanket statements don't always apply, and [i]certainly[/i] not ones about an entire country, but are [i]heuristically[/i] (look it up) helpful. Japan, too, has been changing as of late, especially after the famous [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Densha_Otoko][U]Densha Otoko[/U][/URL] affair. "Otaku" is no longer just an insult: although there's still a stigma attached to the word, it's slowly moving towards the same kind of neutrality as our word "geek." However, I don't think this is necessarily changing the general Japanese stance towards "otakuness" as a whole, but only towards certain [i]surface traits[/i] of being an otaku (like watching anime and being shy). (It's sometimes said over here, in grand pronouncements, that the Japanese treat animation as an "art form" - as opposed to us, who mainly see it as entertainment for children. I am not sure how this is supposed to work; I often suspect that the people who think this imagine a whole society holding hands and singing "We Are The World" while watching Naruto. While ordinary adults are perfectly willing to enjoy anime on occasion - otherwise there wouldn't be adult-oriented stuff like Hataraki Man and Miyazaki films wouldn't break box office records - the chief audience for the stuff is still children and young adults... and otaku. Everyone else has mostly moved on) When I talk about "otaku" from here on, I'm not talking about people who are fans of x, y, or z, or who are just "shy" or whatever. I'm talking about a [i]class of people who have a very particular place[/i] (or, better: non-place) [i]in the society[/i]. It's fine to watch anime now and then, but an otaku in [i]this[/i] sense is something else. An otaku is someone who, when given some money and a choice between buying 1) food or 2) a limited edition figurine for some new series, will choose 2. Their [i]entire lives[/i] revolve around fandom - and, I might add, the anime industry as it is today would not exist without such otaku who are willing to feed their lives and most of their finances into supporting it. Mind you, I am [i]not[/i] making a case about whether this kind of life is itself good or bad, only how it is [i]seen[/i]. The general disapproval of otaku has nothing to do with whatever fandom they subscribe to (that's really only a secondary association), but with the fact that they have broken away from all other social obligations - i.e. from the rest of society. They are seen as parasitic, and from there it's easy to elide otakuness with all other anti-social elements: otaku become perverts, murderers, thieves, if not [i]really[/i] then at least potentially. This is a huge difference from the general American take on extremely isolated "geeks," who are (for the most part) seen as only harming [i]themselves[/i], not living up to [i]their[/i] potential, ruining [i]their[/i] lives. They're seen as a "waste," but basically harmless. A Japanese otaku is really taken as a kind of cancer on the social good. I mentioned Densha Otoko before, which has become the new test case for how the Japanese treat otaku. In the end, I don't think it's made any big difference. An otaku is seen as useless at best, and at worst a blight on the country; an otaku who is willing to [i]step up and engage the world[/i], such as by saving a woman on a train from someone harassing her, is by definition no longer an otaku in my sense, no matter what shows he may enjoy or how insular he may be. At that point he has become a genuine social element. The shift that Densha Otoko indicates is not towards acceptance of "otakuness," but the recognition that people who have certain [i]traits[/i] usually associated with otaku may not be irredeemable. The guiding principle remains the necessity of social participation and contribution to the whole, so on that level nothing has changed. "Otaku" may become an acceptable word, the same as our "geek," but that doesn't mean that living the life of an otaku (as I mean the word) is suddenly okay. And even so, I add as a coda, it doesn't mean that all the old associations have fallen away; not as long as a professor in Japan who mentions to his students that he watches anime can suddenly find himself out of a job.[/SIZE]

[CENTER][IMG]http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/213/konatachikosamavg7.jpg[/IMG] [COLOR=Magenta]~~~~~[/COLOR] [I]The otaku who assemble in Lucky Star have such wry smiles that good taste and common sense pass through them and disappear. Their obsessive bodies and minds are wrapped in fetishistic seifuku. The circles under their eyes from level grinding all night should not be noticible. Their DVD collections must be neatly shelved and alphabetically organized. Walking slowly is preferred here, unless you are lining up to get into Comiket.[/I] [COLOR=Magenta]~~~~~[/COLOR][/CENTER]

I'm going to have to fall in with the "disappointed" group. The movie just tried to do too much, especially in the last half or so. Too much reliance on random coincidences - I can accept [spoiler]a meteor with the symbiote just happening to land near Peter[/spoiler], but that [i]plus[/i] [spoiler]an escaped criminal who also happens to be Uncle Ben's real killer getting caught in a physics experiment gone wrong[/spoiler] [i]plus[/i] [spoiler]the butler who knows everything but only says so when the plot requires it[/spoiler] [i]plus[/i] [spoiler]Peter choosing exactly the right place to pull his costume off (despite the "vulnerable to sound" thing never being mentioned) and a guy who hates his guys happening to be right there below to give the goop a new home[/spoiler] [i]plus[/i] [spoiler]Spidey kindly taking the time to chat with Sandman while his pal is dying a few feet away[/spoiler]... well. In a superhero flick you're allowed a lot of leeway, but there's stretching the believable and then there's lazy screenwriting. And the [spoiler]dance scenes and emo hair[/spoiler] were fine by themselves (being an increasingly aggressive geek does not mean you stop being a geek). The reason they don't really work, I think, is because the MJ/Peter relationship stuff never rings true at all, and that's the real source of the black suit developments. There are plenty of good scenes in the movie (the action sequences are especially nifty), but they're held together by a string of coincidences and a lot of emotional stuff that comes off as tone-deaf. After [spoiler]Venom[/spoiler] shows up the movie just becomes overloaded. There's no time to show off the menace of the new bad guy, and the preparation for the final act is completely inadequate. The final battle itself, even if it's pretty to look at, doesn't hold the weight of the Spidey 2 climax or even some of the earlier fights in the movie (e.g. Black Spidey versus Sandman). By the end all you've been given is a lot of eye candy and very little holding it together. [quote name='RobinWH']The green goblin dies in the comic to give rise to the hobgoblin (Harry), so we all know he actually is dead.[/quote]That's actually incorrect, so far as I recall. In the comics Harry becomes the second [i]Green[/i] Goblin; the Hobgoblin is a different villain altogether.[/nitpick]

[quote name='Rachmaninoff]Did I hear you correctly? [silly question, of course I did, but still'] Which one did they use for the show?[/quote]The first movement of the second, of course. The first and fourth are too obscure, and the third... well, I mean, the in-house orchestra and pianist the show's got are really good, but there's difficult and then there's the cadenzas for the third Rachmaninoff concerto. Maybe they could dig up Horowitz to do it...