Moments when a piece of entertainment completely rocked you.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 6:20 pm

That site mentions the fact that popularity directly influences entry size, and Firefly in particular is a very popular show on the internet. I don't like how some people try to say that Firefly didn't deserve any real praise because ratings are ratings, and it just didn't do well, completely ignoring what happened to it on Fox to make its ratings soo bad.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 6:40 pm

That site mentions the fact that popularity directly influences entry size, and Firefly in particular is a very popular show on the internet.

Popularity does not mean awesomeness.

Popularity means fanboyness. And considering Firefly's limited demographic appeal, are you really surprised that people are going to inflate its quality as an expression of said fanboyishness? You know, sort of what we do here.

Let's keep things in perspective here.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 6:51 pm

Well "awesomeness" is certainly a subjective thing. I think the show was pretty good but i have a friend who thinks its awesome.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 10:52 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Also, I can do one thing here that you can't do on that website: criticize other peoples' entries.

Wait really? I thought this was the happy fluffy bunnies fiction thread. If I can be critical that's great because it just feels hollow to praise without some sort of contrast or comparison.

Melancholy of Haruhi? - It was OK but if thats the hardest you've ever laughed at anime you haven't watched much anime, or maybe laughed very hard.

Bleach/Naruto at all - I never understood why anyone liked those things. From episodes 1 I disliked them, often for similar reasons to the ones fans gave for eventually hating them by episode 1000 or something, and I'd abandoned both of them before hitting the high teens of episodes (I was stubbornly TRYING to get into those stupid shows).

Captain Tylor - Yay! No, this one really is great. I just wish they'd continued it a little bit more. I think there was supposed to be a second series after the OVAs that never happened.

Other Anime/Mange -
Ranma! - Best show ever. I'd say that it's the Panda related violence and hilarious characters/actions of the two Fathers that made it for me but then again maybe it was "Martial arts rythmic gymnastics" which did it? A damn hillarious show (and better manga, at least for the later parts). Apparently there is a new episode out there... in Japan... from like last year... (Edit: Oh, and a lot of people who don't get what's funny about Ranma didn't watch it with the excellent english dub so watch the DUB version fools!)

Angel Dentsu - A totally cool manga, most likable lead male manga character ever. Apparently there is an OVA out there... in Japan... flailing in obscurity.

Guu! - (OK the title is a lot longer, "Jungle no hale something something... Guu") Guu eating everything and everyone made this one kick ass early. And it only got weirder.

Air Master - A lame ass fighting Anime. With an ugly girl as the lead freakish caricatured annoying side kicks and all. But somehow really good and watchable (unlike every other fighting anime ever). What sold it to me was when in the first episode you expected her to just beat up these two thugs she encounters on the street to save her new friends. INSTEAD a masked Mexican wrestler leaps out of the crowd and smashes one of the thugs then challenges her to a fight that takes the rest of the episode and is exciting and watchable.

Computer games-
Morrowind- Look it was great. It's best aspect was proving that pretty graphics and current technology was not outside the realm of acceptable for RPGs. But people are unfair in their praise of it being "non linear". It was very linear and scripted, it just had a lot of script. But most notably it was MORE linear and scripted, and SMALLER than two of it's own immediate predecessors. Daggerfall is the name you are looking for if you want to talk "open" "unscripted" "non Linear" and "huge".

TV-
Firefly - Was basically mediocre. If you could put up with the offensive bits it was largely watchable but little more than that.

Arrested Development - Now if you want to talk a show that Fox screwed over and had poor ratings THIS is the good one. DAMN good. I couldn't put my finger on a SINGLE moment I mean there were so many, even in the first episode or two.

Farscape - And if you want to talk a sci fi show that got screwed and canceled this is far better than firefly too. It actually took a little while to hook me. But some time during season one it slowly dawns on you as you watch it that they actually intend to have character growth and story continuity emerging across multiple episodes (always a good sign with these kinds of shows). By the time they kept a clone of the main character alive for nearly a whole season the show was already in VERY strong territory, and it only ever got better from there.

Lexx - Lexx... is actually a really bad sci fi series in a lot of ways. Questionable special effects, mildly depressing, makes minimal sense, one of the lead actors is very cardboard, even compared to the disembodied robot head character, and has silly hair...

But I really liked it and have a good "Moment it rocked me" story.

See I was up in the middle of the night and it just comes on TV. So Half asleep I get off the computer and go sit in front of this... weird... movie (the first one) and watch it. It was so strange, dark, with weird repetition and strange themes, that I was convinced I had fallen asleep and was having weird dark dreams.

And that sold me on appreciating the show as a dream like surreal drama rather than a sci fi. Which is what you have to see it as. (Spoilers)

Heath Robinson · Post by **Heath Robinson** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 11:05 pm

PhoneLobster wrote:Guu! - (OK the title is a lot longer, "Jungle no hale something something... Guu") Guu eating everything and everyone made this one kick ass early. And it only got weirder.

"Jungle wa itsumo hare nochi Guu", also known as "Hale + Guu" (I believe this was the US title) and "The jungle was always kind until Guu" (translation of the Japanese title).

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 11:37 pm

You've got the translation right there. I was very entertained when a friend showed me that anime. It wasn't the eating people part that got me it was Guu's downright creepy nature.

-Ranma- is utter crap. It was average at first but it went on for too long with the same antics. Sure you got more characters piled in every now and again but it was a show where nothing happened. Even in the end the original lovebirds didn't really... go anywhere with their relationship.

Jumping to the defense of Bleach and Naruto: There is nothing particularly wrong with either of them in the beginning. Honestly the first 26 episodes of Naruto (they are a bit long winded so you have to skip over the constant flashbacks) aren't anything special but after that, from the announcement of the Chuunin exams to the Valley of the end everything is nicely done. (note: To skip over some annoying voices though and the catch phrase "believe it" its probably better to watch it subbed)

Bleach is similar. Up until Rukia's brother shows up everything is pretty much par for the course in comparison to other similar anime. The whole soul society arc though is very nicely done though.

-Morrowind: Someone did tell me about that about the previous games but I've never played them.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 12:22 am

PhoneLobster wrote: TV-
Firefly - Was basically mediocre. If you could put up with the offensive bits it was largely watchable but little more than that.

What offensive bits?

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 12:39 am

He considers the show very sexist, much like Buffy.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 12:56 am

ah, that's right. I still don't see how it's sexist, but, whatever.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 1:12 am

It has hugely sexist characters in it.

That doesn't make it sexist, tho.

-Crissa

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 1:31 am

MGuy wrote:-Ranma- is utter crap. It was average at first but it went on for too long with the same antics. Sure you got more characters piled in every now and again but it was a show where nothing happened. Even in the end the original lovebirds didn't really... go anywhere with their relationship.

Which is why the manga is better in the second half. The manga saw minor developments in their relationship in every story arc, you can see it to some degree in the first 2-3 seasons of the anime. Then they departed and turned most of it into filler. It still had it's moments (Ghost Cat!) and the OVAs are great. But it never continued to develop or reach some sort of conclusion like the manga did.

But if you don't get that the first three seasons or so of the anime are the funnest animation you will watch coming from Japan.... Then you either 1)Are dumb 2)Didn't watch the excellent dub version or 3) Are insecure about gender issues (a lot of critics just can't seem to get over the girl boy thing).

Jumping to the defense of Bleach and Naruto: There is nothing particularly wrong with either of them in the beginning. Honestly the first 26 episodes of Naruto ... aren't anything special... Bleach is similar.

That isn't a defense. If I have to watch 30 episodes of crap to even begin to appreciate something, I'm not impressed. 2-4 I can handle. Even 10-12 is... almost acceptable. but 30+? I have better things to do with my time than watch 30 episodes of crap on the off chance that it DOES get good.

That those series then have severely alienating and repetitive shit that even fans complain about endlessly not too long after that makes it even worse.

-Morrowind: Someone did tell me about that about the previous games but I've never played them.

All bar the core story line quests were generated on the fly. NPCs and locations were selected/created as appropriate and you never had to worry that murdering shop keeper X or overland Bandit Y was going to come back and bite you in the ass a year later when a scripted mission expected him to exist.

And the overland map was huge. It would take you days of real time to walk from one city to another without fast traveling. Daggerfall also had horses, wall climbing for cat burglars, and nudity/adult themes.

Even Oblivion still hasn't caught up in some regards.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 1:58 am

-Ranma- Then I'd be part of group 2. Didn't watch the Dub and whatever group didn't read the manga (anime wasn't appealing enough for me to start) I watch wayyyy too much anime for me to be bothered by the boy girl thing. I think the first time I was ever shocked about such a thing was near the end of Vandread when the vice commander lady/guy came out on it (I swear that shit just came from nowhere).

-Bleach/Naruto- The defense being that they aren't bad in the beginning. They are just mediocre. After that up until filler time things went pretty well, there was an interesting plot (getting through the Chuunin exams, the Attack on the Village, Sasuke Leaving), the action was good, and there was decent character development. Sure some parts were crap (Sakura and Ino's "rivalry", a number of episodes where nothing happened) but as a whole (right up until filler hit) it was a pretty damn decent show. With the same being similar. They are far from being my favorite anime (what with them being ruined and over hyped now) but they weren't bad shows.

-Daggerfall- That must have been a PC game then. I honestly only heard bits and pieces of it from a friend who got his information second hand as well.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 2:30 am

PhoneLobster wrote:All bar the core story line quests were generated on the fly. NPCs and locations were selected/created as appropriate and you never had to worry that murdering shop keeper X or overland Bandit Y was going to come back and bite you in the ass a year later when a scripted mission expected him to exist.

And the overland map was huge. It would take you days of real time to walk from one city to another without fast traveling. Daggerfall also had horses, wall climbing for cat burglars, and nudity/adult themes.

Even Oblivion still hasn't caught up in some regards.

Daggerfall never really did it for me. Mostly because it really wasn't randomly generated. There was only a select few dungeons that existed in the game that it would choose from, and thus once you figured out which dungeon you were in it got really repetitive. And speaking of dungeons, the layouts were fucking horrible.

In an effort to confuse you, they threw any kind of realism out the window and made these weird ass dungeons which were an elaborate mix of up and down sloping corridors for no reason. Like seriously I can see if a cave is like that, but you go into the queen's dungeon under her keep and it's set up that way. It's not in coherent levels, but rather an odd twisted mess of a labyrinth that served no real purpose other than to make it difficult to automap your way out. It was really like because 3D dungeons were their new technology in Daggerfall that they decided to inundate the player with them for no reason other than to show off. And it was just horrible and ruined the game for me.

Also the random quests tended to be so simple that they were boring. It was just a "go here, kill x, return" setup that was pretty boring. Like dungeons there were only a limited number of quests that you exhausted really fast.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 2:37 am

RandomCasualty2 wrote:Mostly because it really wasn't randomly generated. There was only a select few dungeons that existed in the game that it would choose from, and thus once you figured out which dungeon you were in it got really repetitive.

That is just plain not true. Now if you mean there were a select dozen or so in each and every province to choose from, out of the fuck knows how many you could just wander into...

Hell if you mean you knew one of the best ways to game the system was to travel to that one really small region or whatever in Daggerfall where there were only about 5 quest dungeons and you could get to know them backwards as a kind of cheaty exploit to advance quickly in guild ranks, THAT would be correct.

Also the random quests tended to be so simple that they were boring. It was just a "go here, kill x, return" setup that was pretty boring. Like dungeons there were only a limited number of quests that you exhausted really fast.

That was the era. But it was still better than 100% scripting. Which during that era, was the same, only 100% scripted.

As for the zany 3d dungeons. I suspect they were generated (not on the fly, but still) rather than hand crafted.

The biggest problem with Daggerfall (and arena and everything Bethesda has ever made) is that it was buggy as all hell, and Daggerfall was probably the worst. You actually had to patch Daggerfall or the main quest story line was impossible to complete. But that's a very different angle of criticism/praise to this "Morrowind isn't linear!" thing.

Edit: Oh I just remembered, and in Daggerfall you could buy your own damn boat and sail it to different cities and live on it and stuff. Suck on that Oblivion!

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 3:59 am

PhoneLobster wrote: Hell if you mean you knew one of the best ways to game the system was to travel to that one really small region or whatever in Daggerfall where there were only about 5 quest dungeons and you could get to know them backwards as a kind of cheaty exploit to advance quickly in guild ranks, THAT would be correct.

Well honestly, it wasn't cheating so much as annoyance at getting lost. Like while exploring dungeons, the teleport spell was absolutely necessary because it was all too easy to become hopelessly lost in the needlessly complex dungeons.

And sometimes you just couldn't find your objective since it was a bitch to navigate them. You couldn't search them level by level, because it was just such a tangled mess for no reason. I mean honestly, I could see a cave being like that... but does every crypt, keep and catacomb have to be like that? Was every architect in the land insane? It just made the game tiring to play.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 4:12 am

One of the things I most loved about Morrowind was it's sense of identity. Walking into sight of Balmora with the rain and that music playing was an amazing feeling. But even just the fact that different citites had different architecture was great. Sadrith Mora was a magical place made out of magic mushrooms where you needed to be able to levitate and everyone hated you for being a foreigner. Whereas in Oblivion all the cities are pretty much identical.

I can't really compare it to Daggerfall because as soon as I tried Daggerfall out I knew it was going to give me headaches and make me throw up. I really hate games like Half Life 2 that do that to me.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 5:24 am

Ranma 1/2 was fucking awesome, and McGuy should set himself on fire for thinking otherwise.

I always found that Bleach fans had some kind of penis obsession - they focus on guys having huge swords, much like they do with Final Fantasy, and guys having huge guns in (I can't remember which series).

Which doesn't actually impress me, by the way. You can draw weapons of any size, so the fact that X was drawn with a 3km sword means nothing, you actually have to do something with the story/character to make it good.

Did PL mention Jungle wa Itsumo Hale nochi Guu first, or did I mention it earlier and forget? I know I was talking about it on another site... anyway, it rocks.

I've always been a fan of Ikkitousen (including Dragon Destiny and Great Guardians), but that shouldn't surprise anyone.

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 6:03 am

Hrmmmm, my favorite moments of favoriteness...

Disgaea, when Flonne is sneaking around going "nin-nin!"

Firefly, when Captain Reynolds kicks the guy though the engine intake.

Jurassic Park (movie), where I fall asleep and dream that the kids get eaten.

Tombstone, many points really, especially the duel between Johnny Ringo and Doc Holliday.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 6:28 am

clikml wrote: Disgaea, when Flonne is sneaking around going "nin-nin!"

Classic moment.

Jurassic Park (movie), where I fall asleep and dream that the kids get eaten.

That's a classic too.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 6:42 am

Koumei wrote:I always found that Bleach fans had some kind of penis obsession - they focus on guys having huge swords, much like they do with Final Fantasy, and guys having huge guns in (I can't remember which series).

Honestly, I have watched every single episode of bleach, but only because I'm an incredibly boring person who can be entertained by anything with moving pictures on a screen, so ease of access is more important than quality.

There was one twist/plot shift that was actually really awesome, and that was episode 67. If you could compress everything about the first 67 episodes into a two hour movie (and let's face it, it's anime, and 'popular' anime too, so 90% filler, you totally can) That would be worth watching.

But yeah, 90% of the section from episode 1-67 (mostly toward the one side) is totally worthless. And everything afterword except one 3 episode filler plot about what happened a 100 years about is also totally worthless. If I ever see a "we removed all the shit" version of bleach about the first plot arc, I'd recommend that. Until then, not unless you can bear minutes of penis extension sword fights per episode and late DBZ style power up sections.

Although, their reiatsu (dragonball power up shit) graphic job is actually really good. The screen goes all flickery in a weird cool way. Much better than bullshit glowing auras.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 8:20 am

MGuy wrote:To skip over some annoying voices though and the catch phrase "believe it" its probably better to watch it subbed

It's so much better subbed... I seriously hated Naruto until I watched the subbed version. It's an entirely different anime.

TOZ · Post by **TOZ** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 10:12 am

PhoneLobster wrote:Melancholy of Haruhi? - It was OK but if thats the hardest you've ever laughed at anime you haven't watched much anime, or maybe laughed very hard.

I probably should have quantified it as 'in recent memory'. It's been awhile since I've watched a lot of the things in my collection. FLCL and Slayers come to mind.

Back on track, Dead Fantasy. 'Nuff said.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 1:31 pm

Black Lagoon- "I don't speak no fucking Japanese!"

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 8:39 am

Farscape gets seconded. Thats some awesome scifi that got treated like shit by the network over here.

True Blood: Synthetic blood has been developed so vampires have come out of the coffin and are integrating into society. Set in a small Louisiana town. I think its excellent but at least one person will watch it and complain that the parallel between vampire rights and civil rights is too heavy handed.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 8:53 am

Draco_Argentum wrote:True Blood: Synthetic blood has been developed so vampires have come out of the coffin and are integrating into society. Set in a small Louisiana town. I think its excellent but at least one person will watch it and complain that the parallel between vampire rights and civil rights is too heavy handed.

Is that it? Sound like maybe I should check it out.