Anime recommendations

[Sheepherder]

So, my brother gave my sister an extrernal hard rive with 232 episodes of Bleach and a couple of movies on it, and I just have one question:

Why are there Baysplosions in a swordsman anime?

[Simond]

The Rule of Cool.

[Sheepherder]

Okay, next questions: why did the retarded archer person spend a week making clothing for the party of cool kids as the Soul Society arc was closing rather than, you know, going and finishing his fight with the Captain that killed his grandfather/sensei and which he swore to kill?  Similarly, what happened to that captain's plans to butcher the two retarded cool kids which he bumped in to?

Why is Zangetsu a pimp?

[AutomaticZen]

Okay, next questions: why did the retarded archer person spend a week making clothing for the party of cool kids as the Soul Society arc was closing rather than, you know, going and finishing his fight with the Captain that killed his grandfather/sensei and which he swore to kill?  Similarly, what happened to that captain's plans to butcher the two retarded cool kids which he bumped in to?

Filler.  The mangaka (Manga creator) does chapters weekly, but the anime can condense multiple chapters into a single episode.  So occasionally the anime catches up to the manga.  When that happens, the anime production staff makes up their own random stories and villians to fill the gap until the manga is sufficiently ahead again.

Why is Zangetsu a pimp?

Same reason Hollow Ichigo is crazy.  Just cause.

[Sheepherder]

Next question: Zangetsu's pimp form hangs out in Ichigo's head while he's not manifesting as a God of cool, right?  And when Ichigo goes bankai he gains Zangetsu's pimp suit, right?  Therefore logically when Ichigo is doing the bankai thing he has a naked pimp hanging around in his subconscious, right?

Why is it that Ichigo always needs to get an ass beating to not be terrible?  Why does his blood spatter always look the same after he coughs it up after aforementioned ass beating?

[tazelbain]

It's DBZ with more interesting setup.

My question: why can people be killed in the underworld?

[stray]

Why is it that Ichigo always needs to get an ass beating to not be terrible?

Genre rule. Never watched a shounen series before? Almost all of them are based around.. being pissed off/triumph over adversity/powering up etc.. It's OK to an extent imo, but there are better series that base the fighting around creativity and/or strategy instead.


You must have been somewhat impressed to last all the way to Zangetsu though.  

Don't feel bad.. I lasted until then as well. And a little afterwards (basically, just the Soul Society arc).

[stray]

It's DBZ with more interesting setup.

My question: why can people be killed in the underworld?

Not to get too deep, but it only doesn't make sense from a western paradigm/point of view. Not to say this is Buddhist, but the general conception of underworlds and such are different in the East. Even when there are "hells" and "heavens" and various godly realms, they are merely temporal places one gets reincarnated into (yeah, you even get "reincarnated" into hell). They are just different dimensions, if you will. While the only place you can't die in or get deported from is an ascended realm, one that is even above gods - i.e. nirvana..

Shit, it's kind of hard to explain.   Basically I'm just guessing that the writers don't draw from western sources much when using concepts like underworlds.

[AutomaticZen]

Next question: Zangetsu's pimp form hangs out in Ichigo's head while he's not manifesting as a God of cool, right?  And when Ichigo goes bankai he gains Zangetsu's pimp suit, right?  Therefore logically when Ichigo is doing the bankai thing he has a naked pimp hanging around in his subconscious, right?

Zangetsu is the sword and the pimp form is in Ichigo's headspace only.  But even then, Hollow Ichigo takes over gets way more play.

Why is it that Ichigo always needs to get an ass beating to not be terrible?  Why does his blood spatter always look the same after he coughs it up after aforementioned ass beating?

It's his basic state really.  He unlocks his most powerful form so far by getting killed.  The Japanese seem to love the 'never give up, never surrender' types in shonen series.

Then they introduce the Arrancar (Hollow+Shinigami) and the Vizards (Shinigami+Hollow).  Queue more fighting.

[Sheepherder]

You must have been somewhat impressed to last all the way to Zangetsu though.  

Don't feel bad.. I lasted until then as well. And a little afterwards (basically, just the Soul Society arc).

I'm operating under the assumption that when they die in the spirit realm they get reincarnated in the real world, otherwise the talk of balance as it pertains to retarded archer dude and his clan makes no fucking sense.

EDIT:

Then they introduce the Arrancar (Hollow+Shinigami) and the Vizards (Shinigami+Hollow).  Queue more fighting.

Baysplosions in greyscale, right?  I think you just saved me 56 hours of shit I really don't care to watch.

[Hoax]

If  you've gone far in you might as well watch the Ichigo versus Grimjow fights.  Those are fun.  Also you should go back something like 10 pages and you will find some discussion about the show, Vash posts an epic and insanely useful guide that will help you skip all the bullshit.  I'd post it and some thoughts but I'm not on my home machine where I have it all saved in a word doc.  It made it much more interesting but its been some time since I bothered to pick it up and that was more of a me + 14yr old brother summer activity.

[stray]

Baysplosions in greyscale, right?  I think you just saved me 56 hours of shit I really don't care to watch.

If you want a short fighting anime with swords, watch Claymore (a recent one at least. There are many good ones).

[Simond]

Utena has swords! 

[Bzalthek]

Utena is a... surreal anime.  I watched it but in reflection I had no idea what I watched.  While I was watching it I would lose moments of time, as if aliens who moved at speed barely perceptible to man would come in, knock me out, anally violate me with probes best left undescribed, and then return me to my anime already in progress.

All in all, I liked it.

[Stormwaltz]

Utena has tons of yuri innuendo.

It also bores my wife.

Which makes her drink heavily.

Which makes her frisky.

I love Utena.

[Hoax]

I've only seen the movie, which was 1 part awesome and 10 parts wtf.  It did make me want to one day watch the series but I never have.

[Sheepherder]

I have a rating system called "Japanime weird".  For example, Bleach rates about 6.5 humanoid robots fighting with swords in space out of a possible 10.  Where would you guys suggest that Utena lies?  The full 10?  Something beyond that?

I still don't know if I want to finish Bleach.  My tolerance for Japanese neckbeard is only slightly better than the North American average, and at the same time i really don't like selectively watching certain episodes of anything, no matter how horrible it is.  Really, I kind of fucked myself by even starting to watch it.  I knew it was going bloated and neckbeardy, but I'm retarded like that.

[stray]

I'm confused on how it's neckbeardy..?

Bottom line is that it's a cartoon for teens, not neckbeards, and you probably shouldn't watch it anyways. ;)

Anyhow, I have a tolerance for anime with lots of episodes more than most here, but my limit stops after 60 eps or so. This goes on like DBZ and Naruto... Probably heading towards 200, if it's not already there. And some movies to boot. If I can't tolerate the shit, then neither can you.

I've never seen Utena myself, but anyways.. Don't waste your time here. There's a lot of great shit in the 13-26 episode range.

[Bzalthek]

I tend to stay in the 13/26 episode range, though I try everything for a few episodes and keep watching it it perks my interest.  Monster is 74 episodes, but 74 episodes of psychological horror, not constipated powering up for fight scenes.

[Sheepherder]

I'm confused on how it's neckbeardy..?

"Power gaps", all the high-ranking dudes in the spirit world being inherently more powerful, random minor plot mechanics that have to be exposed in detail before shit can continue, Deus Ex Machina shit in general.  Massive chunks of the fiiller / training / infodump / random exposition shit is pure fucking neckbeard wankery that just should not exist.

[Stormwaltz]

Yoshiyuki Tomino thinks video games are evil.

You'd think, with his reputation for mass murder, he'd approve.

[Teleku]

I only sort of read the first part because I couldn't stand reading it much longer.  But, uh, wtf.  Is he really trying to say games are a waste of time that offers nothing to society, while sitting on your fat ass watching a shitty derivative cartoon about robots fighting in space is ok?

[stray]

I'm confused on how it's neckbeardy..?

"Power gaps", all the high-ranking dudes in the spirit world being inherently more powerful, random minor plot mechanics that have to be exposed in detail before shit can continue, Deus Ex Machina shit in general.  Massive chunks of the fiiller / training / infodump / random exposition shit is pure fucking neckbeard wankery that just should not exist.

I don't think so. To be honest, I think the only neckbeard in the equation is you.  You put too much thought into it/give it too much credit. The filler is just that. Filler. A means to prolong the show and make cash. They've been following this formula of squeezing every drop of life out of an anime for years.. Not to say there isn't some genuinely decent storytelling involved, but a big motivation is just cash. The same company also writes Dragonball, Naruto, One Piece, Fist of the North Star, Yu-Gi-Oh... all of which contain 300 episodes or more.. plus spinoffs of other series lasting 300 episodes.. all geared towards younger kids and teens.. who will slurp this particular brand of storytelling up, and buy the toys and card games to boot. Bleach is just one of the latest ones.

The only thing I might call neckbeard-y that's anime related is Ghost in the Shell. But then, egghead-y is a better word for it. Oh, and boring.

[sidereal]

Bleach is, like most anime, just a distillation of teen angst ("WHY DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND ME! YOU CAN'T DEFEAT ME! YOU UNDERESTIMATED ME!") repeated ad infinitum.  After the hero heroically rises up from near defeat and wins.  Some bigger bad guy comes along and he does it again.  It's sort of like professional wrestling.  That moment when Hulk Hogan is slowly rising from his knees gaining strength from the crowd after it seemed like Bad Guy A had him out for the count OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

I enjoy it despite it being so emotionally stunted because Japanese mythological tropes are so fucking weird.  Also, sword fights.

[stray]

Come to think of it though, my sister in law is from Tokyo, nearly 40 yrs old, and seems to know too much about this show.. And stole my (yes I purchased it in a moment of weakness... there are few fighting games for the DS) Bleach game. So maybe it's not for kids. But my impression is that it usually is.

Then again, I still get a tear in my eye watching Wrestlemania 3 too.  

[Vash]

Bleach is, like most anime, just a distillation of teen angst ("WHY DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND ME! YOU CAN'T DEFEAT ME! YOU UNDERESTIMATED ME!") repeated ad infinitum.  After the hero heroically rises up from near defeat and wins.  Some bigger bad guy comes along and he does it again.  It's sort of like professional wrestling.  That moment when Hulk Hogan is slowly rising from his knees gaining strength from the crowd after it seemed like Bad Guy A had him out for the count OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

I enjoy it despite it being so emotionally stunted because Japanese mythological tropes are so fucking weird.  Also, sword fights.

This.

I was disappointed in Bleach because it started out looking like it was gonna be a pretty interesting action show, something akin to a modern Rurouni Kenshin + supernatural elements, but after the Soul Society arc quickly went full DBZ with swords.   

I still watch it, but I like to think that's because I have some rare genetic disorder that compels me to watch Shounen anime regardless of how generic or ridiculous it is or becomes.   

[Simond]

I have a rating system called "Japanime weird".  For example, Bleach rates about 6.5 humanoid robots fighting with swords in space out of a possible 10.  Where would you guys suggest that Utena lies?  The full 10?  Something beyond that?

From the TVTropes article on Utena: "Class, meet the Neon Genesis Evangelion of the Magical Girl genre."
And that's a fairly good comparison...especially when you bear in mind that Kunihiko Ikuhara (Utena's director) was actually Anno's first choice for director of Eva (which is one of the reasons Rei Ayanami is called 'Rei' - it's a tribute to Rei Hino from Sailor Moon...which had its best seasons directed by Ikuhara).

[Lantyssa]

The Utena movie is nothing like the series.  About the only simularity is the names used.

It's still strange, but the series is more cutsey in its oddities.  At least until the end of the series when things take a more sinister turn.

[Sheepherder]

I don't think so. To be honest, I think the only neckbeard in the equation is you.  You put too much thought into it/give it too much credit.

That might be so.

all geared towards younger kids and teens.. who will slurp this particular brand of storytelling up, and buy the toys and card games to boot. Bleach is just one of the latest ones.

You never can tell with Japanime until it's too late, and then you're an irreparably scarred child looking for your latest ninja meatsplosion fix.

In other news, Ninja Scroll is pretty awesome.

[Viin]

I ran into this site today, has anyone used it to watch Anime before?

http://www.crunchyroll.com/


It looks like you can stream for free and download for $2 an episode...

[Simond]

Everyone should totally watch this series there - it's a nice boat take on the stereotypical harem show. 

[stray]

I ran into this site today, has anyone used it to watch Anime before?

http://www.crunchyroll.com/


It looks like you can stream for free and download for $2 an episode...

Been around for ages.. It used to be free, but they went legit/licensed. Also has k and j dramas if you're interested.

I'm there to read more often.. It's easier to just watch anime through other avenues (some legit!! heh..).

[Stormwaltz]

Crunchyroll has also been releasing first-run episodes the last season or two -- often while the eps are airing in Japan.

It's a good way to counter the fansub phenomenon, IMO. The only reason I ever turn to fansubs is when a series hasn't yet or never will (Macross Frontier) get released in NA.

[satael]

Crunchyroll has Gintama which in itself is pretty much all that is needed to justify the site's existence

[stray]

I've not seen it past the 30th ep or so. I liked it, but like all Jump stuff - too long.