Soren

[FONT="Courier New"]Yes, I know, this thread is almost a whole year old. However, I'm not exactly on the cutting edge of the latest anime; my two prime sources for anime are Adult Swim and Anime Network on Demand (I want to know, by the way, why I get On Demand but not the channel itself). I just finished watching Elfen Lied over the course of 13 weeks (13 [I]long[/I] weeks of pained expectation) and saw the OVA on the internet. Now, I have to say I was really wowed by this show. The opening was absolutely beautiful (I've had it stuck in my head since I first heard it. No, seriously, can someone help stop humming it all the time?) and the ending song (to me, at least, though I haven't found anyone who shares my opinion) is so cheery in comparison to the darker themes in the show that it is almost blackly humorous (or at least very ironic). I really became attached to the characters (lukewarm to Yuka, pity towards Kouta, and real empathy towards the Diclonius, particularly Lucy). The opening was a little off-putting, the fan-service was very unnecessary, and the cuteness could have been toned down a little to put more emphasis on the dark color of the show, but overall I really liked it (the end made my eyes water up, even, and that virtually never happens to me) So what a shock it was to me, then, when I started looking up reviews for the show (when a show I like ends, I go into denial mode and start looking up everything I can about it to delay the realization that it's over.) and found mostly lukewarm or even negative reviews. I read them, thinking, "These people must be crazy," but it turns out that there are quite a few good points to them. So here I am, a little depressed, searching for justification of my emotional investment in the series. Thus, I come to the point of the post: I want to ask everyone who's seen the show what they think of these two reviews, and hopefully tell me why their wrong (I haven't put enough space between watching the show and analyzing it to be very objective yet). Here are the websites: [url]http://www.geocities.com/pheldies_place/reviews/ElfenLied.html[/url] [url]http://www.animeacademy.com/finalrevdisplay.php?id=591[/url] (and I'm serious about the problem I'm having with the opening: I've had it stuck in my brain for 13 weeks!) [/FONT]

[FONT="Garamond"][SIZE="3"]Yay, summer assignments! (Runs) I don't have it too bad, except for the fact that I took summer school (my schedule is [I]very[/I] crowded) and most of my assignments were popped on me 3 weeks before school starts.:animedepr English III/GT: Read "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck (so far, really good), mark 10 passages that I think are well written (I have upwards of 20 picked out, and if I had it my way I would turn the entire book in as a well written passage) Creative Writing: Read and write a report on each: 2) books (one fiction, one non-fiction) (I am going to cut corners and pick East of Eden, and the non-fiction is a biography, "The Man who Loved only Numbers") 1) poetry collection (Poe! Woohooo!) 1) play (some Shakespear, no doubt) 1) short story collection (I have a collection of Korean shorts under the title "Land of Exile", but I don't think there is any way I will have this part of the assignment done on time.) 5) pages of original work (already done) Instrumental Music: Have all scales and arpeggios prepared Learn a new piece It's giong to be a little craxy, but I love school work (ducks), so it shouldn't be to bad. @Clur: What do you mean, recovery? What's more relaxing than reading more than a thousand pages of writing and writing reports on all of them? [I]WHO SAID I"M NOT RELAXED?! WHERE'S MY COFFE?![/I]:mad: [/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT="Garamond"][SIZE="3"]Oh, alright. Thanks for telling me.[/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT="Garamond"][SIZE="3"]Some good recommendations, hm? Since I haven't seen much more than I can get on cable and Anime Network on Demand (which is weird that I even have it, since I don't have Anime Network:confused:), I'll just point out some of the classics, and a few of my personal favourites (like Dagger said before, since there isn't too much to go on, you've given us a lot of freedom to respond.) [B]Cowboy Bebop:[/B] I'm pretty sure anybody and everybody has seen this one, but in case you haven't [B][I]you must[/I][/B]. It's hard to give a brief of this show, because mostly each episode is it's own story. Set in the future, where mankind has explored the many regions of space and colonized on quite a few planets, this anime is about the exploits of a group of bounty hunters who roam space. [B]Trigun:[/B] Another classic. This one's about super-wacky but kind hearted gunman who gets himself into and out of all kinds of trouble. Oh, and he has a $$60,000,000,000 bounty on his head. [B]Outlaw Star:[/B] The setting of of this show is much like that of Cowboy Bebop (what with the space ships and stuff). Gene Starwin, a small time bounty hunter on the backwater planet Sentinel IV, finds himself in possesion of the fastest ship in the world, as well as in the company of a mysterious girl called Melfina, who is a biological android and serves as the ships navagation system. Both ship and the girl are tied to the 'Galactic Leyline' , which nobody seems to know what it is, but everybody wants to get to it. [B].hack//SIGN[/B] This recommendation is a little out there. (Many people tell me they don't like it because the pacing of the show is slow). In the near future, a new computer game, 'The World", a MMORPG (or "Massive Multyplayer Online Role Playing Game") is the most popular game in the world. One player, a boy named Tsukasa, can't seem to log off and return to the real world. This mysterious glitch has its source in a much deeper problem in the game, one that could bring disaster to both the game and its players. ...and of course... [B]Neon Genesis Evangelion:[/B] Like Cowboy Bebop, everybody and their uncle has seen this one. This show is arguably the best anime in exsistence. The year is 2015, and 15 years ago a disaster caused by mankind's first contact with another intelligent life form, called Angels, melted the Antartic ice cap, ruining the ecosystem and killing many people in the immediate aftermath. A para-military organization called NERV was created to deal with these beings, and NERV has developed the only weapon capable of defeating these creatures: The Evangelions. Shinji Ikari, a teenage boy who is also the son of the commander of NERV, is chosen to piolit Unit 02 when another Angel attacks.[/SIZE][/FONT]

This is most likely due to my name being spelled with an unusual charactor "ø". I don't really [I]really[/I] mind, but I'd like to know that I actually exist on the OB, and am not just the product of a collective hallucination of the OtakuBoarders.

[FONT="Garamond"][SIZE="3"]I think that would be a pretty good idea. (So long as I can keep my own custom-title too.) It would certainly spice things up, and if worst comes to worst, it can always be undone. I agree that, since the quality here is better than other boards that do ranks based on posts, we probably won't get too much of spamming. Also, this thought just occured to me: Is there an event where the participants vote on titles for others? (ex: Most Irish, teh l337, Biggest Eva fan, Most-Likely-To-Cause-Others-Blindness-Do-To-Font/Size/Color-of-Posts) If not, could we do something like that. (I haven't been active for to long, so I missed out on the creation of Otakupedia and the like.)[/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT="Garamond"][SIZE="3"]So that explains it. ( I am still a virgin, and, since I probably would not be here typing if my IQ was much lower than 70, I hope I fall under the smart-person category) I like the quote from Aldus Huxely. I whole-heartedly agree. I did not know testosterone had a hampering affect on one's intelligence. It's believable, though, since I hardly have any sex drive at all. ("Prude" , that's me) Also, I don't think the chart means that getting laid will make you dumber above the average intelligence and smarter below. Since intelligence is the x variable (the variable being tested) and virginity is the y variable (the result), I believe the graph means that your IQ affects your sex-life, not your sex-life affecting your IQ. (If you already knew that and were just going along with the joke, please forgive me for being a stick in the mud and ruining it.)[/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT="Garamond"][SIZE="3"]Interesting? Well, in my highly biased and self-serving opinion... eh. I do go to a fine arts school, and this upcoming year (I am finally an upper-classman! Yay!), I'll be double majoring in Instrumental Music and Creatve Writing, so I will have a lot on my plate. I am almost finished with summer school, which I took to catch up on math I would be missing because of my full schedual. Aside from part-time OtakuBoarder, I also compose some, write some, and am learning to programm and to Deutsche Sprachen. I don't have a job quite yet, and I am not sure when I will get one. And that's about it.[/SIZE][/FONT]

[QUOTE]Originally by Dagger: Mm... well, to paint it broadly, Rah is more of a love story than a daddy issues story. I would say that the shows are similar in terms of psychological depth, not psychological themes. Also, Rah doesn't refer to theories like Eva (oral stage, anyone?).[/QUOTE] [SIZE="3"][FONT="Garamond"]I've watched only up to episode 13 of RahXephon, but what I've seen so far, that looks about right. It's just started getting [I]really[/I] interesting.[/SIZE][/FONT] [QUOTE]I also forgot to add that Evangelion is rife with Sigmund Froy, the phycologist. For instance, each of the three children represent the three egos of people that every falls into. We each either fall into a Rei, Shinji, or Asuka catagory. Also, the AT Field means Absolute Terror Field, and Froy discovered that this is also present in the human mind, and it is what protects us. It creates doubt, as well as most negitive emotions that keep us away from certain people or things, and draw us closer to others.[/QUOTE] [FONT="Garamond"][SIZE="3"]That's not the only personalities that those three represent, either. It has been speculated that they also represent the three kinds of despair humans face, as illustrared in Kierkegaard's "The Sickness Unto Death" (the title of which, by the way, is the source of the name of one of the episodes, "The Sickness, Unto Death, And..."). They are as follows: Rei represents the despair of being unaware of possesing an eternal self (soul or real self awareness), Shinji represents the the despair of, once realizing one has a 'self', not wanting to be one's self. (Shinji suffers the most severe of this kind of despair, which is more properly worded in his case as wanting to be not oneself, or wishing not to exist.) Asuka represents the despair of wishing to be oneself (thus her pushiness and assertivness). It is interesting to note that, while Kierkegaard described "not wanting to be oneself" as a more feminine kind of despair and "wanting to be oneself" a more masculine kind of despair, Anno reversed the roles. (I would like to add that Kierkegaard was in no way sexist, but simply illustrating his points with the common convention of thought of the time, saying what was thought of as feminine was really this kind of despair, and what was thought of as masculine was that kind of despair.) (One could spend their life discussing the mysteries of Eva) Also, I don't know if this is true, but I heard from a friend that Kuze from Ghost in the Shell: 2nd Gig, was supposed to parrallel Christ's story in some way (dying to save the refugees, revolutionary ideas, etc) I haven't given this much consideration as of yet, but if anyone else knows anything about it, I'd like to hear more.[/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT="Garamond"][SIZE="3"]I believe I entered into a discussion like this last time I frequented this board. Here's how the discussion wen tlast time. Someone, like yourself, explained the derrogitory connotation of the term "Otaku", abd it's meaning of super-obssesed geeks who stay home all the time. Then someone, like myself, explained that a term or phrase imported from another country does not always retain its exact meaning in the other country. While in Japan, it is meant to be an insult, the word has taken on the new meaning of anime fan in America. Although I have no examples to give you, I am sure that this is not the first or the last time that the meaning of a phrase has been butchered or otherwise altered as it moved from one country to another. I believe that word in America has come to mean someone who has deeply imersed themselves in not only anime, but Japanese culture as well. Besides, "otaku" sounds alot cooler than "anime fan" ;)[/SIZE][/FONT]

[SIZE="3"][FONT="Garamond"]It's not like it's heavily discouraged at my house, but my parents don't approve. My mother thinks it's mostly just silly garbage (she gets most of her impressions of what anime is from when I watched DBZ), but the thing she really dislikes about anime is the exagerated expressions and unrealistic temperments (think Vash) I don't think she's ever seen one of the animes that doesn't exagerate (Ghost in the Shell, .hack//SIGN, etc). She thinks I'll grow out of it, though, so she doesn't stop me from buying anime and manga. My dad just thinks it's silly, probably because he only knows what he hears from mom. They both trust that I'll excersize my better judgment when it comes to pornographic material (which I have zero interest in) About animes using sex appeal to attract buyers: To be honest, I find it a little irrtating. When done in moderation, it's not so bad, but when somebody's breasts are the size of watermelons, and every other scene is a panty shot, I feel it detracts from the anime. As for innuendos, I might have built up a tolerance for them after FLCL. After watching it a thousand times (the minimum requirment for understanding any of the plot) they only get funnier and funnier ( I swear that show is the most insane of all time)[/FONT][/SIZE]

[QUOTE]Orrigianlly by Fasteriskhead: I don't think so. It's certainly true that the assertion of a sentence has to do with its verb (Indian grammarians figured this one out a couple of thousand years ago), but I don't think it's possible to take a logical subject (a concept) and "imply" a verb out of it. Not even if the concept includes a verb acting as a noun, such as gerunds, infinitives, and so on (and "assassination" is just a noun). Oswald actually did assassinate Kennedy, but this is never clear from the mere concept any more than in a counterfactual case ("Oswald's assassination of Nixon," "Babe Ruth's ruling over France," etc.). It requires some kind of extra push to say that the concept is or is not - a push doesn't seem to be analyzable in terms of the sentence's conceptual content. Thus my confusion. [/QUOTE] [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"]Sorry, I mis-worded. What I mean to say is, every concept has but one function: it is. "The wheel", "The whell is". "The spinning of the wheel", "The wheel spins", "The spinning of the wheel is." When it comes to conceptual context, I suppose it wouldn't be apparent. Like you said, every concept needs to have something that makes it actuall. Every statement concievable can probably be reduced into it's concept and it's function (and when it gets right down to it, there is really only one fucntion, 'is'. Even negative statements can be expressed like, "The not-spinning of the wheel is.")[/FONT]

[QUOTE] Lucid Dreaming Is What You Really Want The Dreams That You Can D What Ever You Want And It Happens Its Very Hard To do You have To Train Your Self And Take Melatonin Its A Pill That Makes You Relax But Don't Take To Many And Just Train Your Mind To Think Of What You Really Want This Could Take Months But Just Look In To It. [/QUOTE] [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"]Ummm, I am not taking any pills if that's what my typing is going to look like afterward. :p As for nightmares, I do the same thing that Dagger does. When the going gets tough, I become somebody different, and though sometimes I do feel scared when I am being pursued, what I usually feel that manages it is grim determination to win. I had a crazy one where aliens/monsters had infiltrated an office (pretending to be the higher ups) that was hidden in a junkyard and were luring the people there out alone to eat them. I was one of those people, and I knew that they wanted to eat me alive, so I impaled myself (?!), somehow knowing someone would be here soon and be able to save me. I also used to have a re-occuring nightmare when I was little. In our house, we had an old fashioned scale to measure our weight ( I think it used water somehow, but you just stood on it like another scale). In real life, my parents had told me not to jump on it or mistreat it, and in the dream it translated into "DON"T TOUCH ON PAIN OF DEATH!!" . In the deam, we owned a black cat (never would happen, my mother hated cats and still does). Every time I stood on the scale, the cat would turn into a panther and try and devour myself and my little brohter. I wasn't very long, but it haunted my dreams for a year, I think. I finally told my father about it one morning, and ever since, I've never dreamed about it. (Not that I know of, anyway). I always thought it was pretty wierd that you could sometimes be rid of a nightmare just by telling it to someone else.[/FONT]

[FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"]So far, I really like what I see about Noein. I jumped in on the second episode, so I don't know how they start the show off, but it has held my interest so far. I keep hearing things about bad animation quality. Is that for a few episodes only, or for the series (Personally, I haven't had a problem with the visuals) I don't know anything more than I've already seen, but these are my iimpressions: Although it is a serious anime, it sometimes lacks a sense of [I]gravity[/I], for lack of a word. (If your not sure what I mean by gravity in an anime, take a look at Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) That gives me reason to think that the story line is going to take some interesting (bizarre, even?) turns. Tokko looks good. Action, references to ancient alchemy, blood sucking monsters, what else does one need? ;) I was a little surprised at Street Fighter. I thought it would be (and any DBZ fans, don't hurt me) another DBZ kind of show, but I gave it a shot, and the first episode seems okay, so I keep watching.[/FONT]

[QUOTE=The Boss]So.... your uneasy feelings about homosexuals would be what kind of feelings? Sorry, I shouldn't single you out like that. But really, it can be directed at Japan_86 and a few others as well. I mean, yeah, you can say that you have reasons that you're so uncomfortable around gays/lesbians, but really, what valid reasons? Were you victimized by a group of homosexuals in school or something? [/QUOTE] [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"]I distinctly recall earlier in this thread that the preference towards homosexuality was compared to the preference towards mayonnaise or mustard. So to, it could be, for a natural repulsion of homosexuality. If that is the case, let me combine your 'victimize' example and the 'mustard/mayo' analogy: Do I need a reason to prefer mustard over mayo? What you're saying to break is the equivalent of asking me, "Were you bitten by a mayonnaise-eater at a restaurant or something?" As for my own opinion, you guys on the fence make room, I joining your ranks. I have a personal distaste for homosexuality (actually, I have a personal distaste for a large chunk of [I]sexuality[/I], period. I am the last of a dying breed: a prude.) But I don't have anything against homosexuals. I have, too, have a few friends who are homo- and bi-sexual, and I count them as among my closest. Now, to clarify a few Bible discussions... ChibiHorsewoman: Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of their sodomy. Abraham was only there because he was begging God to spare the city if there was a hand full of righteous men there. As a Christian Existentialist (see: name, avatar), I believe that, after death, the individual is placed before God and measured. If homosexuality sends you to Hell, you can ask God then why, (or more probably, "Wth, man?). If not, then no problems. Since homosexuality differs from the other sins in that nobody is really being harmed, I can't see any reason from here on Earth why it's a problem, so I choose to withold judgement. I know it might sound a silly, but that's the best this sleep-deprived brain of mine can explain my own personal philosophy. (Now that I think about it, I feel ashamed that,even though I trudged through "The Sickness Unto Death", one of the hardest books I've ever attempted reading (and less than 100 pages, to boot), I was only able to come up with that. :animedepr [/FONT] Edit :[FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"]Those other posts just popped into existince while I was taking my time typing! The Boss: It seems the argument has changed slightly, so if my response is off base, it's because I was a little behind[/FONT]