7th Station ~TV, movies, games~

[Starra]

I'm just not really into mecha, I guess. Like, it's certainly not bad, but I just don't feel as though it'll end up being one of my faves. Then again, I did watch those first few episodes a few years ago, so things might've changed.

From memory, my main problem was that I didn't feel attached to any of the characters. For me, liking the characters is a very important part of whether or not I end up enjoying a series. This isn't always the case, as with Negima!, which is one of my favourite manga and yet I only really cared about 7 characters (out of about 40 -- and only two of them were main ones)... but on the whole, it's an important aspect to me.

I can still tell if a series is technically good or not, but I never really care about that and just enjoy what I enjoy. I enjoy a lot of series that I know are bad, too. (Hetalia, for example.)

[resop2]

I have decided that I now consider The Girls Live as kind of a successor to Iron Chef, only without the campy narration and worked competition.

[Zunu]

I recently finished watching Aku no Hana. It's about a pretentiously self-absorbed middle school kid who comes across his crush's gym uniform one day after class, feels the urge to fondle it, gets spooked by a noise and winds up taking it home with him. Oops, but

Spoiler: show

some creepy girl saw him.

And there begins a kind of blackmail/pas de deux/camaraderie

which doesn't go well for anyone.

It's really painful to watch, to the extent that I couldn't sit through some of the episodes all the way through without taking a break. Also, it was done in this stuttery rotoscope style which will I think most will either really love or really hate. To tie it into the earlier conversation, the main character has that same kind of whiny mealy mouthed indecisive quality as Eva's Shinji. The people who fret over him do so for no discernible reason; he's a loser. Even so, I recommend it for the thrills.

[Celedam]

I'm just not really into mecha, I guess.

Gurren Lagann is not about the mecha. The mecha are a McGuffin. Sometimes absurdly so.

Which is one reason why it's the anti-Evangelion. Evangelion spent a lot of time wringing its hands over the nature and limitations of its various mecha. Gurren Lagann almost literally laughs at that stuff.

From memory, my main problem was that I didn't feel attached to any of the characters.

Now that I can understand. I don't know how to say this without sounding sexist, but Gurren Lagann is a classically and unapologetically masculine story (albeit geared up in the tropes of shōnen anime/manga), and I can see how it would turn off people who aren't expecting that.

We even used to have a saying, back in the heyday of the American space program: "steely-eyed missile men". That's what Gurren Lagann is about.

Which is another reason why it's the anti-Evangelion…

[stam4o]

And I've been kinda sorta meaning to watch TTGL ever since I heard Shokotan's mighty OP. So now my interest is re-piqued.

Highly recommendable. I started it without knowing well what I was getting into and at the beginning I had no idea where to start sorting the series' ideas from, but at the end I end up liking it really a lot.

(I haven't seen enough of Gurren Lagann to judge, but from the first six episodes it doesn't really seem to be my thing. I'll probably finish it eventually, though...)

Because the first six chapters are made kind of I guess to attract the attention of people who have or have got even I little experience with that type of anime, it gave me that dort of vibe. Like, if you like mecha you could definitely enjoy them and if you had seen mecha before though don't like it that much you could also find it attractive because of various other things.
Also, the good starts at the chapters 7-8 and then it will go escalating incredibly.

Stuff from the post above

^
Yup, exactly. Also, there are plenty of other references, many of them indirect, to the whole anime history, so....

I recently finished watching Aku no Hana. It's about a pretentiously self-absorbed middle school kid who comes across his crush's gym uniform one day after class, feels the urge to fondle it, gets spooked by a noise and winds up taking it home with him. Oops, but

Spoiler: show

some creepy girl saw him.

And there begins a kind of blackmail/pas de deux/camaraderie

which doesn't go well for anyone.

It's really painful to watch, to the extent that I couldn't sit through some of the episodes all the way through without taking a break. Also, it was done in this stuttery rotoscope style which will I think most will either really love or really hate. To tie it into the earlier conversation, the main character has that same kind of whiny mealy mouthed indecisive quality as Eva's Shinji. The people who fret over him do so for no discernible reason; he's a loser. Even so, I recommend it for the thrills.

Not an anime, but Onani Master Kurosawa(probably one of the most famous doujins over there) is incredibly good and has a bit of that air. Painful, but a good lecture

[Zunu]

Ewww Master???? I'm not sure if that's in the same category at all. That is,

Spoiler: show

the boy in Aku no Hana has a kind of teenage lapse of perviness at the very beginning but he immediately regretted it. Probably that would've been the end of that, he would've gone back to being a bored aloof poetry reading semi-loner in his sleepy nothing town. EXCEPT that the creepy girl caught him in the act, and instead of turning him in, she blackmailed him. She used his misdeed as a lever to push him into committing things he would have NEVER done on his own. He felt guilty doing these things but at the same time (as she hoped would happen) he felt more alive than ever. She thought she was waking him to his inner sicko, but really what she was doing was creating a severe derangement where only an incipient one, really, a void, existed before. So what it's really about is a strong-willed but psychologically disturbed girl, who manipulates a spineless kid with a weak father figure, into following her into nihilism and juvenile delinquency. But

there's no sex or "onani" involved. (If there were I wouldn't be talking about it, not on this forum anyway.) At the end of the day these are middle school kids, and any thoughts they have about sex are inchoate, immature, and unrealistically idealized.

[resop2]

Does anyone know how many episodes Sailor Moon Crystal is going to go?

The way they are burning through plot points I am wondering if it is going to last 13 episodes, with 26 episodes being a high estimate.

[boinsie]

It's scheduled for 26 episodes.
My understanding is that it's supposed to follow more closely along with the manga, which had less filler than the anime.

[stam4o]

Ewww Master???? I'm not sure if that's in the same category at all. That is,

Spoiler: show

the boy in Aku no Hana has a kind of teenage lapse of perviness at the very beginning but he immediately regretted it. Probably that would've been the end of that, he would've gone back to being a bored aloof poetry reading semi-loner in his sleepy nothing town. EXCEPT that the creepy girl caught him in the act, and instead of turning him in, she blackmailed him. She used his misdeed as a lever to push him into committing things he would have NEVER done on his own. He felt guilty doing these things but at the same time (as she hoped would happen) he felt more alive than ever. She thought she was waking him to his inner sicko, but really what she was doing was creating a severe derangement where only an incipient one, really, a void, existed before. So what it's really about is a strong-willed but psychologically disturbed girl, who manipulates a spineless kid with a weak father figure, into following her into nihilism and juvenile delinquency. But

there's no sex or "onani" involved. (If there were I wouldn't be talking about it, not on this forum anyway.) At the end of the day these are middle school kids, and any thoughts they have about sex are inchoate, immature, and unrealistically idealized.

Heeeeeeeeey, you're making it sound like OMK is some creepy fetichized thing or something D:
And it's not!
Actually the fact that it's a doujin doesn't mean it's porn (or something worse), it's just a non-published manga, plenty of reasons why, that's true, but it's not a hentai nor it has anything seriously descriptive to do with sex or "onani" more than the ideas of it and the consequences. It's a bit dark and psychologically heavy but the story is great, and the romances behind everything give it even more points. And by the way you described Aku no Hana I do see some resemblances and I'd even say AnH could be also inspired in OMK (that one has been around for pretty much already).
But well, got to check out AnH first, I've had it n my "To Read Later" list for quite much already tbh.

Spoiler: show

Curious random fact: I found OMK totally by chance, choosing manga titles randomly from an app some years ago,. I didn't even know what "onani" was so..

[esm]

Super Smash Bros. for 3DS is waiting for me at home <3

Probably won't even have time to play it much because of NYC.