Chatterbox - Anime & Manga

Well, there's the resident Badass Normal Master Swordsman of Fate Stay Night, who pretty much achieved the power to refract his sword through multiple parallel universes so that he can land three simultaneous strikes from completely different directions (left, right, and above), an inescapable death-trap for anyone foolish to be within striking range due to his exceedingly long sword (a nodachi over 90 cm long) and the nigh-instantaneous Super-Speed with which the strikes are executed (thus precluding the typically obvious solution of backing away). And by "Badass Normal", I mean exactly that: The guy has no aptitude for anything magical whatsoever, or any superhuman ancestry. He was just too stubborn and had nothing else to do but swing his sword in an effort to achieve the ability to strike down a flying swallow mid-air, until reality more or less gave up. And yes, it's as ridiculous-sounding to other characters as it does to us real people.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

There's also Rakan and his battleship cutting swords. Shinmeiryuu is also pretty ridiculous.

Killer Bee from Naruto with his seven swords, all held everywhere else but his hands.◊ It's brutally effective too.

Damn, I was just about to mention Tsubame Gaeshi. It's pretty awesome how a normal swordsman managed to create a sword technique so good that it crossed into dimensional magic literally because he had nothing better to do. It's also his only trick; he doesn't have any special weapons or other techniques. He just gets by on that one move, and he can do it because that move is almost unbeatable.

Sex-negative outrage culture and the Illuminati are real

No other named techniques. He's still a better swordsman than Saber despite her being stronger, faster and having a better sword.

Oh yeah, that too. Hard to beat someone who abuses his magical contract-given powers to manifest skyscraper-sized swords to swing at magic-driven flying battleships by the dozen. And no, he remains at a "mere" 7 feet tall (that's what he looks like to me, at least).

I think Shinmeiryuu gets an automatic pass for being explicitly based from the foundation up on actual use of mystical energy to perform their supernatural techniques. That's very far from the sheer absurdity of FSN!Assassin's defiance of the laws of reality through incessant repetition of his attempts to achieve what he wants, which he also knows to be impossible, and yet kept doing it with no real expectation of actually achieving anything. That he ultimately succeeded was a complete surprise to him; by his own admission, he himself that he doesn't know when the success happened, just that "it was like this" when he finally realized it.

edited 14th Mar '15 1:04:35 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Shinmeiryuu comes from Love Hina and predates the addition of ki to the setting.

You sure the ki stuff wasn't already implicit in Love Hina, per the common conventions of Japanese fiction? I mean, there's a freaking cursed sword that possesses its wielders. I can't see how that doesn't count as a blatant admission of the supernatural's existence in the setting, especially given that the Motoko's arsenal of techniques includes the aptly named Zanmaken ("Demon/Spirit-Cutting Sword"), explicitly designed for exorcising malovelent spirits.

edited 14th Mar '15 1:50:26 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

No mention of Ki comes up in Love Hina IIRC, but it was probably based on that concept. Especially considering her signature attack is attacking through a person and damaging the thing behind them.

I don't think ki is explicitly mentioned until Keitaro suddenly becomes superhuman after training with Seta or whatever it is they were doing together.

Thanks, guys. Rakan and Bee had completely slipped my mind, and I never did get into Fate/.

Of course, more is still appreciated.

edited 14th Mar '15 4:29:27 PM by burnpsy

How about Guts? I mean, I guess it's just a less extreme version of Rakan, but without the 'magic' excuse.

Damn, my last comment in here was from 3 March 2013. Long ago, and the work i mentioned there was a job which would fire me almost 3 months later.

Currently watching: To Aru Majutsu No Index, which reeks of certain Light Novel tropes and is often predictable, but has amusing characters and some cool metaphysics. Does Railgun get better?

Either way, i think i'm going to jump to Kill La Kill next.

Also just swapped out my Reina Vance figurine with Anarchy Stocking.

Railgun is flat out better, so long as you're reading the manga and not watching the anime. If you're watching the anime, the first half of both seasons is probably still better than most of what you'll find in Index, assuming you have a high tolerance for girls sitting around eating ice cream. Index and Railgun don't really have the same author and the director for the Railgun anime is weird.

edited 14th Mar '15 7:21:31 PM by Arha

I dunno, the Index anime always felt generally low-stakes, but at least things actually happen that aren't less interesting than watching grass grow. Also, there's sufficiently less gratuitous fanservice and WACKY LESBIAN HIJINKS.

Haven't read the manga (cause I don't read manga), but anime-wise, Railgun is definitely worse.

edited 14th Mar '15 7:28:52 PM by PhysicalStamina

It's one thing to make a spectacle. It's another to make a difference.

The Railgun manga has some coherency issues. Not sure I'd advise reading it alone

I watched some of both, Index had some kind of plot, Railgun was mostly cute girls doing lesbian things while things happen in the background. Railgun manages to feel far more trashy than it objectively is.

Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.

Which is why I really recommend the manga. The anime is kind of tough to sit through thanks to all the stupid cute girl stuff and filler.

The filler is some excellent filler though especially if you like the characters. Its not really filler though at least in S1 as it was all written by the original author.

Proof that it's filler since Kamachi doesn't write Railgun!

I'm not a very big fan of the characters, so maybe that's why I couldn't sit through Railgun.

I have watched two whole series about cute girls doing lesbian things, aside from being a one-time prolific YoruSoi writer. I could get down for a series about cute girls with superpowers and ho-yay and some background plot.

Edit: Reminds me, Yuru Yuri's up for season 3. Hells to the yeah, it was much better than Sakura Trick, where the characters were less interesting in turn for turning the subtext up to practically text.

Though the way it was implemented felt almost cowardly. If you're going to go that far, but not make them outright queer, it feels worse than playful Ho Yay in a work that otherwise makes no implications that these people are trying for a full-on relationship.

edited 14th Mar '15 8:12:33 PM by Ogodei

As I said before, cuteness to me is like fries. Yes, they're tasty, but they're kind of empty by themselves and eventually I want some fucking meat (read: plot and interesting character traits).

relevant

x5 not exactly Railgun anime s1 and the manga were based off the Railgun side story novels. The manga just continued from that and S2 was based on the manga.

It wasn't filler.