So, Anime You Like Lately

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Jan 18, 2015 9:39 pm

Learning that Yurikuma Arashi is by Kunihiko Ikuhara really does explain everything. He played a major role in the anime and movie of Revolutionary Girl "This is the part where they turn into cars" Utena.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sun Jan 18, 2015 9:44 pm

never watched utena actually.

furthermore:
The Recollections of a certain Pilot < = beautifull movie, but story mediocre and a bit weak in my eyes sadly. had much promise.

Kofouko Graffiti is Loli Vore Porn basically O.o

ok, new WTF Anime found:
Rolling Girls. Looks like FLCL. And is lolrandom enough to simply roll with the punches @.@

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Jan 18, 2015 10:34 pm

shin sekai yori is really good. I also can't watch more than one episode at a time. Like, I like every episode, but I feel exhausted and terrified at the end of every single episode.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Jan 22, 2015 11:47 am

I think Yurikuma Arashi is actually making less sense the further it progresses. This doesn't exactly surprise me, but it's still a bit annoying.

Meanwhile, Shinmai Maou no Testament is... interesting. I decided to give the first episode a chance, on the grounds that it could be really really shit: magical girlfriend with a side of harem. I generally don't like Magical Girlfriend shows - you get a really boring guy who is there for the male viewer to paint his own face onto, and the superawesome girlfriend's powers are in some way hampered by the fact she needs him to hold her hand to do anything at all ever. Meanwhile he thinks his situation is so terrible, waking up with tits in his face every morning. And Harem is generally just increasing the above.

But I have liked some of them. Oh My Goddess takes an interesting approach to things and has a good story it wants to tell. Rosario + Vampire is cheerful and has some really solid fan service going on.

This one was good: the guy is neither generic or powerless. In fact, the big reveal in the first episode is really good with that. The magical girlfriend isn't even his girlfriend yet, exactly, but second episode establishes the proper link between them. She still doesn't *need* him, but there are reasons why she can't fight on her own (she can fight, but the enemies are such that you want a team of 3 or 4 to smash them).

I'm not calling it a groundbreaking masterpiece in entertainment or anything, just a decent show with an acceptable story, and it's also kind of pervy (ruined by mist and light beams at times, obviously the Blueray release will be better in that regard).

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Jan 22, 2015 2:17 pm

Yeah, i am thinking about dropping lesbian bear storm simply because it is not fun to try and follow something that simply does not make any sense . .

Rolling Girls is FLCL Combat Anime more or less it seems O.o

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Jan 22, 2015 11:53 pm

I don't have a strong opinion on shinmai. I just got done watching all of terraformars and have so far enjoyed it. The second season of Tokyo Ghoul is losing me. A friend of mine is telling me that the manga covers a lot more ground that he claims the show inexplicably is leaving out.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Jan 23, 2015 12:03 am

Military! is a strange little anime with less than 10 minutes per episode . .

Pixels · Post by **Pixels** » Fri Jan 23, 2015 2:41 am

Stahlseele wrote:Kofouko Graffiti is Loli Vore Porn basically O.o

It's none of those things. It's your typical cute high school girls who totally aren't lesbians* doing cute things with each other, but in this show they have foodgasms.

* They seriously aren't lesbians guys**
** But they actually are

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sat Jan 24, 2015 11:04 pm

More Aldnoah Zero.

Slaine you magnificent bastard!

However, I am afraid you are still at negative points for continuing a war of conquest against the will of you girlfriend.

Hiram McDaniels · Post by **Hiram McDaniels** » Sun Feb 08, 2015 2:35 am

name_here wrote:More Aldnoah Zero.

Slaine you magnificent bastard!

However, I am afraid you are still at negative points for continuing a war of conquest against the will of you girlfriend.

I just started watching Aldnoah Zero, and I'm loving it so far. The basic premise of VF-1 Valkyrie vs. Mazinger Z is awesome, and the animation is gorgeous.

I also love that Nao is 100% motherfucking business, with absolutely no navel-gazing, Shinji Ikari bullshit. I'm about 10 episodes in, but I'm really hoping he remains a tactical mastermind rather than becoming a newtype or some shit.

Hiram McDaniels · Post by **Hiram McDaniels** » Sun Feb 08, 2015 2:40 am

How many episodes do people give an anime series of questionable quality before just giving up and washing your hands of it?

I started watching World Break: Aria Of Curse For A Holy Swordsman. The opening scene was the shit, but it seems to be sliding into prototypical anime cheesecake bullshit. When a series becomes primarily about upskirt shots and jigglytits, I start to lose interest really fast.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Feb 08, 2015 2:45 am

3 or 4, usually. And yeah, with anime quality varying wildly, I've dropped a lot of shows around that mark.

This week I decided I can't be fucked continuing with Shinmai Maou no Testament. It has failed to grasp me with an interesting story, and doesn't even have as much silly pervy comedy as promised from the synopsis and first episode. Oh, and fucking "buy the BR disc!" light beams.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Feb 08, 2015 3:03 am

I think the answer to that is something like either 10 episodes or 1+the number of good episodes I really liked.

So, if it is a new series, I drop most anime 5 minutes into the 3rd episode or after the first episode.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Feb 08, 2015 3:41 am

If I don't like the first episode I see then I typically won't give the rest a chance unless there's some extenuating circumstances. In fact I may not give the entire episode a chance if it can't hook me.

The bigger dilemma for me is when an anime that I liked has become unbearable. I guess I pull the plug when I decide that the odds of the next episode being as bad as the last one are pretty solid. A fairly ephemeral decision making rule.

I confess I felt like a goddamned idiot after far too many episodes of a story about some guy who joins a manga club... and that is all. I kept thinking it was going to shift into some horror, fantasy or whatever. I just convinced myself so hard that something non-boring was going to happen that I couldn't stop for a long time. I know there was an anime of it that I watched some episodes of, but at some point I decided to try fast forwarding through the Manga to find out when it gets interesting.

Then I learned that there's slice of life, and it is a thing. A thing that people make and read and watch. So mad. So very mad. So very sad.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sun Feb 08, 2015 4:41 am

Depends. Sometimes the first episode just doesn't grab me and I don't come back. Other times I really like the premise and slowly lose interest after a while, like with Magical Warfare which maintained a low background level of pissing me off for basically the entire run until I gave up entirely around episode 10.

Hiram McDaniels · Post by **Hiram McDaniels** » Sun Feb 08, 2015 10:41 pm

erik wrote:Then I learned that there's slice of life, and it is a thing. A thing that people make and read and watch. So mad. So very mad. So very sad.

Yeah...I really don't get the appeal of animated slice of life comedies that aren't Bob's Burgers.

To me, anime is at it's best when it's about giant, phantasmagorical shit like robots beating the ballbearings out of eachother, or guys making people's heads explode with precision kung fu strikes, or little girls working in extraplanar bath houses. I don't see the point in animating something that could be easily filmed in live-action with little special effects budget.

Maybe I just don't get Japanese humor, and I find it more difficult to identify with cartoons than with actors.

So in conclusion:

*Parks & Recreation: Ooohh...I really hope Andy and April live happily ever after, while never losing their sense of adventure.

*Fate/Zero: Holy shit he just killed a guy with a portal full of swords motherfucking fuck yeah!

*Say "I Love You": What the fuck why?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Feb 09, 2015 12:21 am

I truly hope that Hiram is doing an amazingly beautiful job of mocking erik. I mean, it probably is. Because the alternative is that he is an idiot. Poe's law and all.

But just in case, let me come down 100% on the side of yes, slice of life exists, and it is perfectly acceptable on general principle. How you could have missed that for so many years I have no idea, since there is a year old joke in someone's sig of me comparing Haruhi to another slice of life that is from 2007. These really aren't new.

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Feb 09, 2015 12:53 am

It was years ago that I discovered slice of life so and indeed felt like a goddamned idiot that I hadn't imagined it was a thing. I don't remember the exact year, but it was before I had kids so at least 6+ years ago.

But anyway I agree with Hiram. I don't see the point of it as a cartoon. It's a waste of the medium. Like watching The Simpsons with all the zaniness removed to get animated Rosanne. I don't think that I would enjoy that.

If Irresponsible Captain Tylor wasn't set in an epic space war on a space ship, but was just a guy at a paper shipping company... I think I'd fucking bail.

And I have sigs turned off. There was a fucking irritating animated gif, and some just were too long so I cast them away a year or two ago (I think).

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Feb 09, 2015 2:04 am

WTF found:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cvP8fPOPWE
WTF shared.
Turn off your brains and laugh like a loon.
It's only half an hour or so for an entire 12 episode series.
And no, it only LOOKS like Slice of life. It's completely bonkers.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Feb 09, 2015 2:13 am

erik wrote:And I have sigs turned off. There was a fucking irritating animated gif, and some just were too long so I cast them away a year or two ago (I think).

I just ignored him.

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Mon Feb 09, 2015 2:36 am

erik wrote:But anyway I agree with Hiram. I don't see the point of it as a cartoon. It's a waste of the medium. Like watching The Simpsons with all the zaniness removed to get animated Rosanne. I don't think that I would enjoy that.

As a the dens most prominent moefan I'd have to disagree, there a plenty of good reasons for slice of life shows to be animated. One is that most slice of life anime tend to be adaptions of a 4koma series, as an anime you get to keep the same style only in motion. See for example this scene form Hidamari sketch in manga from.

and the in animated from

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Feb 09, 2015 3:25 am

I like slice of life when it's a slice of a life so mental that no human has ever experienced it, nor will they. Like Nichijou, which is slice of life which happens to have a robot.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Feb 09, 2015 3:53 am

I'm not sure the slice of life label means anything anymore. I'm not sure if it ever did. It's the sort of the term that sounds like it might mean "Seinfeld with cute anime girls," but actually seems to mean fuck all. For crying out loud, Haruhi has a bunch of significant character arcs featuring mystical bullshit. Nichijou is absurdist sketch comedy. Mushishi is an episodic paranormal investigation show. All three of those shows are labelled slice of life on MAL, and none of them are episodic observational humor/drama based on someone's daily life. What the fuck is slice of life supposed to tell me about those shows? There are characters in them, and the episodes feature a part of the character's life? No. Fucking. Shit. You have described every show ever.

There's a definite need for a way to describe shit like K-ON. That's an entire genre, and it should have a label to wear so it can advertise itself to people interested in that label. But clearly whoever's in charge of the terminology here has made slice of life fucking useless for that job.

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Feb 09, 2015 4:32 am

That seems fair. Hell, my idea of slice of life doesn't seem to match with a plurality of posted opinions here.

I took "slice of life" to be:
• Serial (so not just random 2 minute clips of psycho model builders)
• Mundane (so no spaceships, no robot people, no fight club)
• Nothing zanier than you would find in real life (possible exception for animeisms like bloody nose for erections or brief cuts of chibi... but not constant craziness like in Plastic Nee-san)

For example: Genshiken
This discussion jogged my memory enough to remember the title. I think I watched/read it somewhere around 2007 and it was my introduction to anime as boring non-fantastic drama slice of life. I'd started watching anime about 15 years prior to that, tagging along with my brother to an anime club as I was too young to drive. So I did spend a fairly long time without exposure to the seedy, boring, underside of anime.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Feb 09, 2015 5:01 am

That is probably what you should think when you hear slice of life. And that is probably what most people mean when they say say slice of life. But on the flip side, if you browse MAL, the label is on all kinds of crazy shit because... reasons. If anything the way you're using the term is the most appropriate (certainly the most useful), and we need to find the word police and kick them in the balls until this shit makes sense again.