Chatterbox - Anime & Manga

Nice OP.

/presents middle finger to the person poisoning Kuroko merchandise

My interest in the series is not high enough to get me to throw money at the franchise on its own but all the news reports about the poisonings is tempting me to buy Kuroko merc. Can just give 'em to my brother. He loves Kuroko.

Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.

Space Dandy will be airing in North America at the same time as Japan

Been a while since something like this happened

Holy fuuuuuuuuuu

To pity someone is to tell them "I feel bad about being better than you."

Crunchyroll has gone manga.

This... is huge.

Take note of the fact that some of the series are ones that Kodansha USA has stated on their blog to be antsy about releasing, like Mysterious Girlfriend X.

Forgot to mention this when I first discovered it last week.

To all Yuri Genre manga fans here, you may be interested to know that Wife and Wife, whose fan-translations seemed to have been stuck in an indefinite hiatus, has been finally updated this August. To put it simply: Silly Kana and her selective obliviousness.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Some of you might be interested in this: anime blog The Cart Driver aggregated the reviews of 82 anime bloggers to produce a overall ranking of anime quality, Rotten Tomatoes style. The list can be found here.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes took the top spot, along with Touch, a series I know nothing about.

edited 28th Oct '13 4:47:16 PM by BokhuraBurnes

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.

Anime bloggers aren't really the same as critics, particularly in having their choice of what they watch...

Also, RT is best used with actually looking at the reviews, particularly the cream of the crop section

Note that the number 2 only had 6 people cover it. Presumably, those 6 were fairly generous. So it would appear to be a series with a a very strong appeal to a small minority.

@14959: The Potemayo specials got #33 on the list? Better than Toradora, Trigun or Code Geass? Whaaaaaaaat?

Not to mention how Kino's Journey gets way higher placement than Clannad, and Chibits gets better than Mahoromatic season 2, and...you know what, they could have shuffled them all randomly and probably gotten a more reasonable ordering than they have.

edited 28th Oct '13 8:23:52 PM by Meklar

Join my forum game!

My comment about bloggers having the ability to choose what they watch was important. Something that appeals to a small number of people will only be watched by people already prone to like it, while something with wide appeal will have many people finding it dissapointing

...Also, I note that it lists Kyousou Giga (TV). Which has barely started. Either he's listing things still running, or he screwed up and meant Kyousou Giga (ONA). Neither option inspires much confidence in me

I'll give you Potemayo (though Hylarn's explanation fits pretty well), but there are people who would rate Kino's Journey higher than Clannad coughjesuotakucough.

My impression of the list is that it's what you'd expect of a mish-mash of opinions and tastes.

I'd look to MAL's toplist before this because there are less randoms at the top.

edited 28th Oct '13 8:45:10 PM by UltimatelySubjective

"Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri, quo me cumque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes."

Most actual rankings use more sophisticated statistical techniques that, say, regress extreme values to the mean if there are based on only a few observations. Obviously, that should be kept in mind when analyzing this list. Still, for a project done in someone's free time just for fun, it's fairly impressive.

And some of us would consider ranking Kino's Journey above Clannad a mark of excellent taste.

He is listing things still running. Amusingly, Diabolik Lovers is third from the bottom.

edited 28th Oct '13 10:03:15 PM by BokhuraBurnes

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.

Well, I've never subscribed to the 'excellent taste is what you have once you have completely eliminated fun from your evaluation criteria' viewpoint.

Is Kino's Journey more artistic than Clannad? Sure. Is Clannad more fun than Kino's Journey? Hell yes. I wouldn't choose to be a person with no sense of fun, even if I could.

I've never set much store by reviews anyway, especially 'professional' ones. All I'm saying is, this list only reinforces that policy for me. Which is unfortunate, but expected.

Join my forum game!

Define 'fun'. I, for one, found Clannad frequently dull

fun: v.
- subjective

edited 29th Oct '13 4:35:10 PM by PhysicalStamina

To pity someone is to tell them "I feel bad about being better than you."

The list is pretty random and there is a ton of wackyness there. Although they only have 82 reviewers, so that list is pretty reflective of their tastes.

The problem with Clannad is that After Story is where it hits its stride. I loved Fuuko and Tomoyo, but god dammit Kotomi's arc seemed to drag.

I used to consider Clannad the best VN I'd read if perhaps not my favorite, but after reading more of them and watching more anime I can't really say that anymore. There are too many characters in the visual novel and of significantly varying quality and relevance. Even many of the good ones have routes that drag on for too long or simply aren't that interesting. For example, Kyou's route is a long, tedious love triangle that doesn't leave any of the characters looking very good. The development of the relationship is rather weak as well and the only conflict is that one of the three primary characters is actually just a third wheel.

The story in general takes too long to get anywhere, even in terms of the mechanics. That teacher guy gets an individual story, Sunohara gets a story, Kyou, Kotomi, Fuuko, Yukine, Misae, Tomoyo and Kappei also all have long and occasionally tedious stories to suffer through. Finally, the payoff for this is After Story, the most highly praised part of the novel which has its own snarl of problems, especially since in the end basically nothing that happens after Nagisa's "death" actually matters. Before that, there's a lot of filler for characters like Ibuki and Yoshino. Finally, a lot of the morals and lessons learned in Clannad are pretty skewed.

So, in short, saying that Clannad is definitely more fun than something else is overlooking the obvious flaws that the story contains.

edited 29th Oct '13 7:17:38 PM by Arha

Even comparing them that specifically is kind of missing the point though.

Clannad's soundtrack is very appropriate and high quality, the direction is strong and even artistic at times and it has characters well thought out and enjoyable to watch interact. The story is quite personal and it's a journey and it has just the right sized scope reaching into adulthood and it's well woven with sidestories and comedy.

For a time I considered it a story that I wouldn't see surpassed and the pinnacle of anime. Now obviously that isn't true, but it is true that what it does it does very well and I still hold it in high regard.

However, In the end it comes down to how much I personally liked it.

I can tell you it's good and genuine effort has been put into it, but what I enjoyed about it, other people won't or may even actively dislike.

I think it deserves praise and has more than limited appeal though, so I would find it strange if more niche titles were rated higher in an average. It would suggest just the kind of statistical skewering that we've already discussed.

"Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri, quo me cumque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes."

I haven't even seen Kino's Journey, so I can't say anything specific about it. I'm merely pointing out that Clannad is very flawed and there's no reason in particular it has to be the most fun thing ever even if you actually like the kind of story it tells.

I don't really disagree either.

Kino's Journey is equally flawed, it just tells a different story.

It's older and lacks a lot of the strong points I detailed about Clannad. Its own strong points are light philosophical subtext, executing gray mortality with a consistent tone and the central premise. Even t there it's not perfect, necessitating you accept the central premise.

"Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri, quo me cumque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes."

Crunchyroll manga is launched. I can't get it to work, but I'm sure they'll iron out the bugs soon enough.

It was working for me, and I'll gladly appreciate legal Fairy Tail simulmanga. ^_^