Chatterbox - Anime & Manga

Just a note, but the budget for Kyoani shows is usually the same as most other studios'. They're just better managed, take very good care of their employees, and have a tight-knit group of good animators who only take on a few projects per year.

In fact, those problems (scheduling, overworked employees, unreliable/subpar third party contractors) are usually the main issues with bad/average looking shows.

edited 28th May '16 11:59:17 AM by wehrmacht

Kyo Ani is not that great

The writing may vary from show to show, but their visuals are consistently top-tier. When they're adapting something that also has good writing, like Euphonium, the results are pretty spectacular.

Also Kyoani runs their own animation school (that kinda pays for itself). From which they source some of their animators◊, trained to do either key animation or background art. Coupled with the consistent artstyle (to the point of suffering from a degree of Only Six Faces), one can say the studio probably has a very efficient workflow to animate things their way.

They're definitely 'not that great' in that they're just another business seeking to profit from creating animation. They're nowhere even close to being the richest studio nor the most successful. But their expertise in the craft, as well as some of their more out-of-the-norm practices definitely has merit in discussion.

edited 28th May '16 9:08:00 PM by FlowingCotton

I'm reading Wandering Son.

Chiba is such a touchy little shit, that girl. She can hold a grudge over the smallest things, always tries to be mature and on top of a situation and fail, can be inconsiderate while chastising others for being insensitive...She also might be my favorite character. She's a piece of work in the same way a lot of kids in real life can be a handful.

That's sort of what I'm loving about the series so far; a lot about its presentation is muted and low key. Chapters are more like snapshots of life, at least compared to the usual over the top anime escapades.

This thread is great for recs.

H Igh Score Girl was fantastic.

Just finished Kobato. It was okay, perhaps a little drawn-out but mostly solid stuff. Very much an innocent moe show, although subtle enough in its themes and portrayals that I probably wouldn't recommend it to kids. The final episode, while fortunately not an example of unfinishedadaptationitis, felt kind of unnecessary, and gave the entire show a feel sort of as if it was trying to do Clannad but didn't really understand how to make it work. It wasn't a bad ending, but I think there are lots of ways it could have been done better.

Next up is Grenadier. I gather this is basically the ecchi version of Trigun, and I'm not sure what to expect other than...well, an ecchi version of Trigun.

EDIT: Fixing link.

edited 10th Jun '16 2:24:02 PM by Meklar

I'm trying to find out which of Megumi Hayashibara's myriad voice-acting roles involved characters that are mothers (e.g. Yui Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion). Can anyone help? Manually sifting through all of the roles one by one would be quite tedious given her prolific career.

Uhh Maeda's Mother in Cromartie High School is the only one that comes to mind.

Haruka in Love Hina was not a mom but a Christmas Cake.

<looks up "Maeda's Mom"> ... No f***ing way. Hayashibara voiced that Gonky woman?!

Incidentally, I'm reading her page now, and I just came across this (emphasis mine):

Not as weird as when I found out Koichi Yamadera (Spike Spiegel, Beerus) voices Donald Duck. And he sounds exactly like Donald, except in japanese.

Hilariously he is also in that Donkey Kong show as DK himself.

She is also Marcie in the Peanuts specials.

Really she does not play many mom roles. Her roles are mostly type around her early roles as Lina in Slayers, Female Ranma in {{Ranma 1/2}}, Musashi Aka Jessie in Pokemon and Ai in Detective Conan.

Lots of snark and Ojouness and that's pretty much it.

edited 14th Jun '16 7:54:49 AM by Memers

She's also Sam in Danny Phantom, which probably would've surprised me more if not for DIDDY KONG.

She'll always be Faye Valentine to me.

.She's the Hakumen no Mono at the moment.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2016-06-16/award-winning-shakespearean-actor-sir-ian-mckellen-recites-archer-incantation-from-fate-stay-night/.103310

Ian McKellen chanting Unlimited Blade Works. He's a bit confused at the end, though.

edited 17th Jun '16 8:55:46 AM by general_tiu

so we got an anime about a girl who talks big about books she has never read

Damn they just distilled 90% of the Internet and probably 75% of tv tropes into one character.

The Door Into Summer is considered a masterpiece?

I think they are more referring to 'classics' and not masterpieces in the manga.

I equated that title at first to the 70's manga and anime movie of the same name and not the 50s book lol.

edited 17th Jun '16 11:44:48 AM by Memers

Considering it's japan and how big they are on lolis, it makes sense that the Door into Summer, aka middle aged man learns to love his twelve year old niece after he invents time travel, is considered a classic there...

Doesn't she get aged up before the ending? Oh wait, Hikaru Genji. Never mind.

Okay, jokes aside, it was a fun book. It just surprises me that The Door Into Summer would be listed as a masterpiece/classic before The Moon is a Harsh Mistress or Stranger in a Strange Land if they're going for Heinlein at all.

edited 17th Jun '16 1:45:15 PM by Arha

W Ow that is indeed like 90% of all fiction fans I ever met.

Just finished Grenadier. It was kinda like a cross between Trigun and Elemental Gelade, and not really as good as I was expecting (it probably owes most of its popularity to Trigun comparisons). The story felt a little brief with only 12 episodes, but wrapped itself up reasonably well in the end. One thing I liked was that there were no useless characters; many animes would have made the male MC a pathetic tag-along, but in this show, despite his flaws, he pulled his weight and had his share of both story and action. The theme of pacifism in Grenadier was presented much more explicitly than in Trigun, and with a much more idealistic tone (in Vash's world, it's the right thing to do even when it doesn't work, but in Rushuna's world, it's the right thing to do and it works). Despite the considerable amount of screentime featuring the female lead's mountainous mammaries, the show was much less ecchi than I thought it would be, more often casually subverting ecchi tropes than playing them straight (and most of the characters seem to be pretty genre-savvy about them, too). The voice acting was nothing special, and the animation wore a little thin at times, but the soundtrack was decent.

Next up is Super Sonico. I've really been falling behind on my recent anime- the latest TV anime I've seen is from 2013- so this is to help me catch up a bit. I remember people saying it was a surprisingly good show when it came out, so I hope it doesn't disappoint me.

edited 19th Jun '16 11:18:24 PM by Meklar

The dub of One Punch Man will premiere at Anime Expo!