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J.H.

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I just finished, back to back, Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou and Violet Evergarden. Both deal with loss and various degrees of PTSD, beings with irreparably broken worlds trying to piece together something coherent out of said chaos.

If you can get past the moeblob style, Girls' Last Tour is well worth it. It's reminds me of Fantastic Planet in how out-worldly everything gets. It seems like you're in the kiddy pool at first but you soon realize just how freakin deep the water can get.

Violet Evergarden is straight up awesome; gorgeous art and fantastic animation that serves a contemplative story (and the feels, the feels). Probably amongst Kyoto Animation's very best, I hope Netflix fully funds an anime series from them in the future. I seriously want them to make a modern Anne of Green Gables anime series after seeing this.

Spoiler

The skill set a good Auto Memory Doll has is akin to therapist and speechwriter in one. How letter writing in their world has become a fantastic therapeutic process is pretty damn awesome.

Like, I would absolutely love it if someone did a live adaptation of this, preferably the Brits (because it came off like a really great historical drama).

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  • 2 weeks later...

So thinking of diving into a few new shows:


Hakkenden: Eight Dogs of the East

Violet Evergarden

The Ancient Magus Bride

Garo Vanishing Line

 

Don't know a whole lot about any of those, and reviews seem a little sparse on the internet.  Not seeing reviews on the sites I usually turn to for anime reviews.  Anyone want to say anything for or against any of these shows?  I've heard good things about Violet Evergarden and Ancient Magus Bride was on IGN's best anime of the year list, for whatever that's worth.  Not familiar with Garo at all, but there have been several other Garo projects released over the past 3-4 years.  Should i watch them first?

Thanks.

 

 

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The first Garo anime was quality. IMHO, Vanishing Line, not so much. It was sort of boring. The protagonist was also a giant meathead. Like this show was I think like 24 episodes. I felt like they could've finished it in 12 or 13. It really started to drag in the second half. I would watch the first Garo anime and if you like that, go from there. I just found it hard getting into the other two shows. 

The Ancient Magus Bride is excellent. It's like Guillermo del Toro making an anime series. Production IG at its finest. It's a prestige show. Great music too.

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On 6/7/2018 at 10:50 PM, Keep Calm, Akira Hokuto On said:

Hakkenden: Eight Dogs of the East

The Ancient Magus Bride

Garo Vanishing Line

Hakkenden is forgettable.

The Ancient Magus Bride didn't amaze me, but I thought it was good and well worth watching by the end.

Garo: Vanishing Line was solid. Its the latest of the anime series. The first series might arguably be the best though I think the actual world it takes place in in is easily the most boring and uninteresting. That said, the writing and characters were generally solid so it was a good show by the end. The second series is not well written and boring since they meander throughout most of it. Its easily the worst of the three. Vanishing Line was solid and had some nice fights in it. While the shows all technically take place in the same universe the timelines and cultures are so far apart that you really don't need to see the first two to check out Vanishing Line. That said, I would say you should check out the first series since it was good.

I have only seen the first episode or two of Violet Evergardrn so its not really enough to give an opinion on. I don't hate it so far.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Lost Paradise trailer inspired me to (a) give Yakuza Kiwami another go a few months after buying it and falling off in the tutorial and (b) watch some Hokuto for the first time since I got Ken's Rage.  As it turns out, the movie is currently streaming a few places; Amazon Prime has the Streamline-produced dub and Crunchyroll has the sub and dub (though only the sub is on their Vrv channel).  I went straight for the dub because it was so transfixing in high school.  zObservations:

 

1) I love how Zeed, Heart and Boss Fang are at least sixty feet tall and no one remarks on this.  (They're much smaller in the series IIRC, more in the 8-10 foot range, right?)

2) I had completely forgotten that no two characters pronounce Airi's name the same in the dub

3) I had remembered the fountains of gore--deaths like Jagi's and Boss Fang's, along with some of Rei's victims, are hard to forget--but the weird psychedelic video effects overlaid make them even more fucked up.  

4) I always remember Michael McConnohie as playing Kenshiro instead of Shin.  Also, holy shit James Avery is Boss Fang? NEVER noticed that before.  About the only cast member I accurately remembered was Tony Oliver as Bat.  Also, Heart's voice is terrible for the character.

5) I have no idea why the Boss Fang vs Raoh fight is in there.  It's a neat spectacle but doesn't really do anything for the story.

6) Mostly this just made me want to go back and re-watch the series, and reminds me why I thought the whole thing was a sick shock-driven joke for so long.  In the context of the longer narrative the brutality feels more like punctuation, but when you strip out everything but the fights and amp up the body horror deaths, it just feels like campy gorn.

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On ‎6‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 11:50 PM, Player One said:

Hakkenden: Eight Dogs of the East

On ‎6‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 3:40 AM, Eivion said:

Hakkenden is forgettable.

Aw, that makes me sad.  I have the Hakkenden:  Legend of the Dog Warriors animated series from the 90's on VHS and I love that story.

I even have a soft spot for that really cheesy Hakkenden live action movie that Sonny Chiba and Hiroyki Sanada were in back in the day.

I'm bummed to hear that this new Hakkenden series does not past the sniff test.

 

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On 6/7/2018 at 10:50 PM, Player One said:

Violet Evergarden

I finally went ahead and finished this over the course of a week or so. It is quite good and the type of thing that I can see getting a person just a pinch dusty eyed  if they are the type (I am not).

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Eight episodes into Ancient Magus Bride and really liking it so far.  Really liking it.  As in, best anime I've watched in a long time.

We'll see how it develops over the next 16 eps, but I could see it ending up in my personal top 10 or 20.  Too early to say for sure, though.

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Ancient Magus Bride didn't hold up for me over the long haul.  There's a lot I really like about it.  The art/animation look great, the music, the world-building, etc.  Didn't like get hooked by either main character, but their evolving relationship was interesting.  Thought the early episodes were outstanding.

On the downside, I didn't feel like there was much enough narrative progression to make the episodes feel important.  18 episodes into a 24 ep show and it feels like they're still doing world-building.  And then the last six episodes hit and suddenly there's a plot driving events forward and a big bad of sorts who didn't seem particularly important earlier, and it show suddenly feels like a different show.  The first 18 eps or so felt like something special, the last six feel like a FMA clone (to me, anyways).  The stuff with Joseph and the eye and Chise's mom gets incredibly dark, so dark it feels like another show. 

Felt like the show had a lot of potential that went unrealized.  The first eight or ten eps felt like something special to me.  Then I realized the supporting characters weren't getting developed any further and the pacing seemed kinda off me and started noticing little flaws.  And then the show gets dark and kinda goes down the path of a traditional fantasy anime.

Eps 22 & 23 really took me out of the show.  Just way too dark.  Couldn't reconcile that with the rest of the show.

Still recommend it.  Just don't feel like it was all it could have been.

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  • 2 weeks later...

STUFF I HAD NO IDEA WAS ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO:

Harlock: Arcadia Of My Youth

Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer

Black Jack (the 1996 movie)

most importantly: Robot Carnival!

 

There's no easy way to search for anime movies on Prime so there MIGHT be some more that I just hadn't noticed besides those and Hokuto.  But that's 3 absolute stone cold classics and one I've never seen based on a property I like (Black Jack) to start with.

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