Sampler Saturday, part 1
May. 5th, 2018 11:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jennariaFive anime so far, two keepers!
GHOST STORIES: in dub format (! - unusual on Crunchyroll), but given what the internet tells me, that's maybe not surprising. (For those who don't want to click on the link, the tl;dr is that the original Japanese version of the series tanked, so it was sent over to the US with permission, nay, encouragement to re-write, and wow did they.) The animation style is very 90s, not particularly impressive, and the English voice-acting is pretty standard as well, but the dub script is really the star here - it knows better than to take itself seriously, and instead makes (mostly) gentle fun of all the 90s 'kids facing down ghosts' tropes.
LORD MARKSMAN AND VANADIS: On the one hand, this is super stereotypical in a lot of ways - the talented, earnest young man who is somehow underestimated by the assholes around him! The attractive young woman (in a super improbable outfit) who kicks ass and takes an immediate liking to the young man! Not gonna lie, totally had first-arc Sword Arts Online flashbacks. On the other hand, I loved the first arc of SAO, and it's not like tropes and stereotypes are necessarily a bad thing, so in the queue it stays!
HORROR NEWS: on the artistic front, this is fascinating - a blend of motion capture, traditional anime, and something like animated manga (by which I mean that literal speech bubbles appear when characters, or the narrator, are talking). On the plot front, eh, not sure? Boy who doesn't believe in ghosts is forced to do so when a mysterious Horror News starts being delivered to his windowsill! Really, I dropped it because even the short episode (only about ten minutes) was a little too, mmm, visceral for my taste.
SHOWA GENROKU RAKUGO SHINJU: Guy gets out of prison, decides that he's gonna get into Rakugo (traditional Japanese style of storytelling), makes an ass of himself to the master storyteller and still gets accepted...and I tapped out. I mean, the art is nice, the script seemed to be well-written, but it was utterly Not To My Taste.
JOJO'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE: I've heard that the series is supposed to be utter crack. Unfortunately, in which I watched, mostly I saw Good = Beautiful (And Stupid - it's never a good sign when your heroes are too good to be suspicious of the dude literally stealing your ring off your finger, I know you're concussed but really?), and Bad = Ugly (With The Notable Exception Of Dio), and just...nothing that actually made me want to watch more. Insufficient crack, maybe.
Next up: lunch. Then more anime.
GHOST STORIES: in dub format (! - unusual on Crunchyroll), but given what the internet tells me, that's maybe not surprising. (For those who don't want to click on the link, the tl;dr is that the original Japanese version of the series tanked, so it was sent over to the US with permission, nay, encouragement to re-write, and wow did they.) The animation style is very 90s, not particularly impressive, and the English voice-acting is pretty standard as well, but the dub script is really the star here - it knows better than to take itself seriously, and instead makes (mostly) gentle fun of all the 90s 'kids facing down ghosts' tropes.
LORD MARKSMAN AND VANADIS: On the one hand, this is super stereotypical in a lot of ways - the talented, earnest young man who is somehow underestimated by the assholes around him! The attractive young woman (in a super improbable outfit) who kicks ass and takes an immediate liking to the young man! Not gonna lie, totally had first-arc Sword Arts Online flashbacks. On the other hand, I loved the first arc of SAO, and it's not like tropes and stereotypes are necessarily a bad thing, so in the queue it stays!
HORROR NEWS: on the artistic front, this is fascinating - a blend of motion capture, traditional anime, and something like animated manga (by which I mean that literal speech bubbles appear when characters, or the narrator, are talking). On the plot front, eh, not sure? Boy who doesn't believe in ghosts is forced to do so when a mysterious Horror News starts being delivered to his windowsill! Really, I dropped it because even the short episode (only about ten minutes) was a little too, mmm, visceral for my taste.
SHOWA GENROKU RAKUGO SHINJU: Guy gets out of prison, decides that he's gonna get into Rakugo (traditional Japanese style of storytelling), makes an ass of himself to the master storyteller and still gets accepted...and I tapped out. I mean, the art is nice, the script seemed to be well-written, but it was utterly Not To My Taste.
JOJO'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE: I've heard that the series is supposed to be utter crack. Unfortunately, in which I watched, mostly I saw Good = Beautiful (And Stupid - it's never a good sign when your heroes are too good to be suspicious of the dude literally stealing your ring off your finger, I know you're concussed but really?), and Bad = Ugly (With The Notable Exception Of Dio), and just...nothing that actually made me want to watch more. Insufficient crack, maybe.
Next up: lunch. Then more anime.