What are you watching/or completed? (Anime)

[alienhulk2099]

This morning I gave the second Fullmetal Alchemist movie, The Sacred Star of Milos, a watch. For some reason I never bothered seeing this until now despite finishing Brotherhood way back in 2011. I thought it was great and it had nice twists even if the character designs looked kind of cheap. With that said I was not sure which anime series to take on next and didn't feel like giving anything a complete watch at once so I did the sensible thing and decided to watch five first episodes at a time! Plus it helps cut down the backlog a tad. I'll post basic thoughts about said series:

-Buddy Complex: The first mecha anime from last year which I missed out because Valvrave fallout. Unlike the other short mecha series from last year (Dai Shogun and Daimidaler) this looks watchable even if the beginning had a weird sad beginning what with time travel shenanigans. It also appears to have a lot of mechs for a one course series, come to think of it I don't know any real robot series that are this short. Seems really generic thus far.

-Angel Links: Not counting the music AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME I CAN'T STOP APPLAUDING WHY DID GARBAGE LIKE OUTLAW STAR GET POPULAR BUT NOT THIS? It actually looks good! And its action packed! And this first episode was surprisingly solid! And the mascot turns into a freaking sword! And the fan service is not obnoxious (yet)! You know what's sad? Yesterday I bothered looking up who did OS. Same guy that worked on Ryu Knight, Detonator Orgun, and Zegapain, the last of which is my sixth favorite anime of all time AND has my favorite anime mecha of all time. HOW. THE. HELL. Did he make something so sucky!? No matter, I am assuming this series makes up for that and so far it is very impressive! Definitely the best of the five!

-Oh! Edo Rocket: This was recommended to me at Anime Suki nearly two years ago. Its really dumb random comedy and amazingly lackluster looking backgrounds; I assume this is intentional to give a cholegraphy (spelling?) look to it, but it doesn't work. Also monsters are hunted by samurai in this for some reason when the main story is about luxury banning on the poor.... Yeah I don't get it either. Worst of the five so far.

-When They Cry: The last in a series of recommendations given to me by a friend a couple years back which I never got around to seeing for some reason and I am not taking up his hentai recommendation. Supposedly a story about a serial killer and some time loop if the discussions pertaining to when Super Heroine Chronicles was announced are any indication, instead this story seems about some teenage guy with four lolis at his small village school.... Playing solitaire and getting a sailor doll out of a junk yard. At least the ending indicates things will get serious soon.

-Fruits Basket: Why see this one? Because it managed to win the Anime Grand Prix and since I've seen most of the winners already I figured "why not?" This compares to the likes of Mobile Suit Gundam, Ideon, God Mars, Nausicaa, Castle in The Sky, Evangelion, Nadesico: Prince of Darkness, Cardcaptor Sakura, Gundam SEED and Destiny, Fullmetal Alchemist, Code Geass, and Attack on Titan? Well most of it seems like a generic school oriented slice of life anime with some tragedy. Then the episode ended and it turns out the male characters were all animals in disguise. Did NOT see that coming! I'm curious to see where this goes.

This much is certain, none of the music is that good.

[Dr Kain]

Speaking of One Piece, we finally watched the first volume of Thriller Bark today and I really love some of the additions they have made towards the manga. I don't think they needed to have it be nearly one chapter per episode, but at least it isn't boring like Enies Lobby got. Ian Sinclair is down right awesome as Brook.

[MekaGojira3k]

Finished Watamote. Too much of this show was either my adolescence or my girlfriend's. I kind of love the show now.

[Hybrid Gojira]

I'm through episode 8 or so of Parasyte. I love this show so far. Check it out if you haven't.

[Dr Kain]

Today was a Sailor Moon day. First off, we watched the final disc to the first BD volume. There are some really interesting episodes to be found in that batch, but for the most part, they are some pretty dull episodes.

Then we watched the new episode of Crystal and oh my "OH GODZILLA! WHAT TERRIBLE LANGUAGE!" god, I expected the anime to at least fix the ADD pacing of the episode, but nope. They decided to spend 3 minutes on a transformation sequence rather than actually make the story sensible. This was as much garbage as this very manga chapter.

Oh yeah, and Crunchyroll is absolute garbage when it comes to streaming. I haven't been able to watch a single Crystal episode without it either freezing, buffering, going out of HD, since the 8th episode. Thank the gods I use my friend's account as it is not worth paying for myself.

[EricDent]

There's a reason people didn't like Angel Links over Outlaw Star.
BTW at least one Holywood guy must have LOVED Outlaw Star, cause he basically made a live action version called Serenity/Firefly.

As for Oh! Edo Rocket it gets better.
Got it for a steal at a local HPB before it went the SAVE route.

I finished Spice & Wolf it had a kinda open ending.
Kinda hope they go back & do a movie/OVA/3rd series to tie up the story.

Bought a show from the same people as Spice & Wolf.
Maoyu is the name, and instead of economics, looks like we will learn about Republic/Democracy.
Got it at work on DVD for about $30.
Kinda random that Sentai didn't dub it, since they could have "borrowed" Briana Palacina & J Micheal Tatum from Funimation (they did the dub voices of Holo & Craft Lawrence on Spice & Wolf).
I say that cause the Japanese voices for those characters are the voices for the main 2 in this show.

[Dr Kain]

I really hated Maoyu, but then, I'm not that big of a fan of Spice & Wolf either.

[Hybrid Gojira]

I started watching Parasyte. Currently it is up to episode 18 (I think). The show is awesome.

[MekaGojira3k]

Finished Pokemon: Origins.

I kind of wish this was a full 13- -26 episode series.
I'd actually love 26 ep series based on each generation like this. It's always great to see Pokemon well animated.
I kept having flashbacks with these scenes..but it was crazy to swap between this and the mental image of those
classic games.

[Hybrid Gojira]

I started Terra Formars. The first episode was pretty engaging, though apparently I should have watched the OVAs first in order to have a better grasp of what is going on. I'm waiting on Parasyte to release their next episode. That show is so good.

[alienhulk2099]

[klen7]

Just finished the manga for 'Jaco the Galactic Patrolman' by Akira Toriyama. Its an action/comedy prequel to Dragonball. It was fun. Published by Viz. Without any spoilers i would say that Dragonball/ DBZ fans should check it out.

[Dr Kain]

[Rody]

I just binge-watch all 12 episodes of Gugure! Kokkuri-san today. It was weird - amusing for the most part, but really weird.

[EricDent]

Well it's been a bit, so I guess I need to update.

Watched & finished Maoyu.
It was decent for what there was of it.
Yes I know that anime is usually designed to sell manga/light novels but they need to have some sort of closure.
With this one there's no closure, it just ends (and apparently the light novels don't continue either).

I bought Wolf Children & watched that as well.
I thought it was very good, possibly better than Summer Wars (by the same guy).
Of course I like wolves,which helps things.
The house that the characters move to (deep in the country) reminded me of the house from My Neighbor Totoro.

Also currently watching Living For the Day After Tomorrow.
It's pretty good.
The story is a bit mixed with drama & fun stuff.
Basically it's like Freaky Friday, but with non related people.

[klen7]

[alienhulk2099]

Yesterday I finished Buddy Complex (minus the OVAs that came after it). Very solid and entertaining, the only real issue I have with it is the lack of build up to the final battle and subpar music. The twist ending was actually really good, looking forward to the conclusion. After that I decided to watch a few OVAs I came across recently. The first being some short called Ryo (from the same anime festival that had Death Billiards and Little Witch Academia), a decent story with pretty effects, but it feels more like a long prologue more than anything. After that was Battle Royal High School. Lets see: a manly karate champion possessed by his evil wizard self, a pretty boy demon slayer, a metal heroes knock off, a giant teddy bear, and fairies that possess animals including turning them into demonic dinosaurs.... This was awesome even if the animation was subpar. After that was Puppet Princess, an interesting idea taking life sized puppets and using them to fight wooden robot ninjas. I actually really liked the villain in this. Good, but not great, forgetting to put pupils on the eyes of your characters including random children is kind of a bad thing. After that was Call Me Tonight, the first of a four part series of OVAs from 1987, I watched a metal hero homage called Hikaruon which was cool and happened to be the second entry. This third entry is some hentai and because of that I will not watch and the fourth is a three episode OVA about demonic dragons or something, but lets talk about this one. I expected ecchi trash and partially got that, I also got a story about a guy that turns into monsters whenever he gets aroused (didn't see that coming) because an alien collector merged with his body and lost his memory. Also he gets rapped which turns him into an alien version of Cerberus. Also gangsters, one of which heavily resembles Pai Thunder from Dangaioh. That and the music was tolerable. Found it decent overall. Finally I finished Angel Links earlier, it had some very nice twists to it and properly built up its final battle although the epilogue went on too long. It beats out Buddy Complex, but by very little.

Oh! Edo Rocket, When They Cry, and Fruits Baskets I'll update on at another time.

[EricDent]

Finally finished Living For The Day After Tomorrow.
It was a fun & heart warming show.
Should be a keeper.

[alienhulk2099]

Just finished Oh! Edo Rocket earlier after marathoning the second half all day. Yeesh, this anime was un-funny, tedious, boring, had poor build up, was composed mostly of filler, had such a flat cast- Point is it was horrid, but there were two good things to it: Akai and Yuhi make a great villain couple and the scenery art was very good. Otherwise its one of those over-hyped anime that doesn't deserve the praise it gets. When They Cry and Fruits Basket I'll cover later. A couple days ago I finally got around to watching Black Lagoon: Roberta's Blood Trail.... And because Revy takes such a backseat I'm liking this more than both television series already! Hoping there will be more action in it, otherwise it is okay.

[Rody]

I finished Hideaki Anno's His and Her Circumstances the other day. I was pleasantly surprised with it for the most part; Anno focuses less on the romantic angles of the story and more on the comedic angles and characterization. Unfortunately, he left 3/4 of the way through, and without his direction the show fell apart.
It's still a good show overall, but it could have been a lot better. It's worth a look if you're a fan of Hideaki Anno.

[klen7]

is that what happened at the end? i had no idea

[Rody]

Yeah, that's what I've read - although I'm not sure where the story would have gone anyway.

Meanwhile, I finished Your lie in April last night, and - oh my goodness - it was an absolute MASTERPIECE. I can't recommend it enough; go watch it at your first chance.

[MekaGojira3k]

I've started re-watching Dragon Ball. Woo!

[jellydonut25]

[MekaGojira3k]