Anime/Manga Thread

If anyone cares about airing stuff, Banana Fish is the only thing worth watching. OP is great too. MAPPA adapting old manga is a godsend, they did a great job with Ushio to Tora as well.

 

Just finished Hajime No Ippo. The first season, 76 episodes. I wish I could explain it but the story works. Add to that the dynamic animation of the fights and action moments with that beautiful Japanese art style that works with simple lines and stark contrasts. Since Hunter X Hunter and Berserk (original anime) I have not seen something this good. Then there is the realism and honest script. I am fan.



The way they animated the Dempsey Roll is a thing of beauty. CG is not the answer. Drawn images still work better...

P.S. There is only one exception for great CG in my experience: Ghost In The Shell. That is a high standard...

 

Great CGI:

- Ginga Kikoutai Majestic Prince
- Houseki no Kuni
- Garo: Honoo no Kokuin & Divine Flame
- Girls und Panzer series

Some examples:



(Try to ignore the terrible SVP 60FPS crap, it was the only video I could find of this online)

 

In the better Mecha-anime series, in particular the newer Gundam series CG actually works to tell a better story. My problem with CG is what the reboot of "Berserk" gave us. If you cannot make it at least as good as the manga, give up.

 

Rewatching Cowboy Bebop (the series) on remastered Blu Ray. Goddamn I love that show!

 

I've just started watching a new release called "That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime" with the wife, and we are thoroughly enjoying it. Very entertaining, and high budget. We continue to watch One Piece, though this arc has dragged on a bit, and are also watching the newest season of Sword Art Online:Alicization, which is much better than the 2nd season in my opinion.

Has anyone else checked out the extremely gritty new show Goblin Slayer?

 

Alicization does a much better job of telling a story than the previous series, I think. It also helps that the anikatioa (EDIT: animation— how the f**k even with that typo) is lovely!

As for Goblin Slayer, it's edgy as hell at times and makes unfortunate use of

Spoiler

rape as a plot device

, but aside from that is a great dark fantasy show. Animation leans a bit too heavily on CGI and characters go off-model a bit, but apart from that is good-looking, maybe slightly bland. Enjoyable for basically being medieval high fantasy Batman. I read the manga a few months back and they seem to have omitted a more contentious arc from the anime, and one scene I absolutely loved from the manga was executed pretty poorly in a recent episode. On the whole it's a passable time-waster I'd say, but definitely not for more sensitive people (especially the manga).

 

Glad to see there are some recommendations for Banana Fish in here, I have been going back and forth between whether or not I should start it and I think I will. As someone who has been watching anime for the better part of a decade I'm starting to think it is going to turn into a lifelong thing like audio has for me, and I'm okay with that.

So, for my first recommendation in this thread, I will throw out "Elfen Lied" for any of you who may not have seen it by now. I would consider it a classic. As for a manga recommendation, "Claymore" is by far one of my absolute favorites. I am still upset by how badly they botched the anime adaptation. (Don't bother looking it up.) I'm still holding out for a proper reboot someday.

 

Didn't know this thread was a thing.....

I mostly fell out of Anime/Manga as I gotten older, due to I swear the majority of material out there wasn't aimed for me. I was never into Shonen shows, I was mostly into 80s/90s OVAs that started to make Anime more popular in the US at the time. I remember having the old laserdisc releases from Pioneer and Steamline Pictures from back in the day. I wasn't old enough to buy them new, I gotten then from a collector in the area a long time ago. I thought something like Vampire Hunter D was amazing, including MD Geist (everyone's favorite punching bag).

I think I also have a problem that a lot of the art just doesn't appeal to my senses. I will admit I'm bias, I never got over the look of Anime when everything flipped over to computers in the early 2000s. I always thought the traditional cell-based animation was so warm in the color pallet, more detailed, and have the human hand touch that at least to me the current computer based stuff just can't compete. Then again, cell-based animation cost too much and it isn't convenient.

As of late I been reading the Blackjack manga that Vertical published a few years back. Better to get the e-book version of the series since the later volumes are hard to find in physical. Glad I own my Kindle Oasis, it's nice to read the manga on e-ink.

While not truly a manga, the original Legend of the Galactic Heroes novel series is fully coming out in the US in English. Viz started releasing the English versions many year ago, but they didn't promise they will publish the full ten volume series. They were doing a "wait and see" approach. Well, volume 9 and 10 will be released this year (both on pre-order on Amazon). This is amazing by itself. Now if Viz can only translate the Gaiden releases of LOGH.

The original OVA of LOGH is epic, too bad Sentai Filmworks kind of screwed up the OVA release in the US. I think it's due to the contract agreement with the license holder. There's the reboot coming out, which I don't care about at all.

 

Watch "Hajime No Ippo", the hype is real and the seasons have little to no filler.

 

Friend of mine went a little crazy couple years back buying tons of anime figures. Now he wants to move apartments but has well over 100 figures to try to figure out how to deal with.

Few options revolve around selling individual figures on like eBay but that could take a while.

There is big anime figure store in LA called Anime Jungle that buys back figures for around 40% of list price. But they are over 50 miles away from him and they themselves are not taking any buybacks until after Anime Expo. And the evaluation process will probably take hours as they look and inspect every box. We could possibly send them a pallet of figures he has so many.

Other option was renting a storage unit and stuffing them there for now.

Not a whole lot of great options.

 

My friend who lives with his mom, 35, virgin, has about 3,000+ pieces in his collection. Half is in his small bedroom and the other half is in the storage unit. Since I'm in FL, the storage unit gets HOT inside. Almost perfect conditions to have melting toys (which deep down inside it makes me happy).

 

There is a lot of very high quality manga out there for mature readers, they just aren't nearly as hyped up as the shonen/seinen stuff.

For example: Hotel: Since AD2079 by Boichi, Eden: It's an Endless World by Hiroki Endo, or even
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (the manga, not the anime movie, which is aimed at a completely different audience imo).

 

Try this:

 

Have seen it, its decent

I don't think anyone has mentioned this one yet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re:Zero_−_Starting_Life_in_Another_World

This is probably the best Isekai I've watched, by far. I would have binge watched the entire season in one sitting if I could have.

 

This started out like "oh Gott in Himmel not another isekai" for me, but came around because I loved the way it deconstructed a lot of the tropes of the... genre (I'm ambivalent about calling isekai a genre since it's more a situational thing, but there seem to be a great many commonalities to isekai LNs/manga/anime that warrant the label). There were some genuinely intense moments that make it stand out among modern anime for how it panders to both "serious" audiences and the (d)weebs who were inevitably attracted to it by virtue of the premise.

Speaking of isekai, anyone here watched El-Hazard or Strange Dawn? Those were some of the shows I started off really getting into when I was a kid. I'd clear my schedule to catch the 6PM airings on AXN, haha.

Man, I actually kinda miss TV schedules.

@Deep Funk And +1 Sword of the Stranger, the action scenes are f'ing brilliant, and the whole movie is just well-made. It's not groundbreaking in any sense of the word but you can tell that a lot of care went into the storyboarding and the animation process— sakuga to beat out One Punch Man S1 I'd say (not sure about S2, I really did just give up w watching it early into the series)

 

Just watched Castlevania on Netflix. Holy cow, this was enjoyable!

 

Late response, but thanks!

Semi-Off Topic: How do people read their digital manga? I just can't do Tablets. I been happy with my first gen Kindle Oasis displaying manga. At times it's slightly small. New gen three Kindle Oasis is coming out with a seven inch screen with warm lighting. The storage increase will help a lot.

If you guys weren't aware, a lot of the Osamu Tezuka mangas has been translated into English and available in both physical and electronic via Amazon. It appears all the Blackjack Manga vols are available in English for $7.99 a pop on the Kindle. Phoenix is also available as well.

 

I liked reading manga on my nexus 7, small enough to not get in the way. I also download all my manga so there were a few apps pretty handy for reading. Otherwise on desktop I use CDisplay to read stuff I download.