Level E

To be honest, I'm mainly watching this series just to see Kraft. Also this is the only series where I read the manga first then seeing the anime. The other being Dance In The Vampire Bund...but that series has Adaptation Decay...plus I'm interested in the episode that will feature those Makubaku...

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So about the anime....it appears use a lot of CG. Ouji/Prince appears a bit more masculine comapared to the manga.

Compared to other animes I've seen this season, this show has by far the best Opening and Ending sequences. YMMV of course. And it appears to be adapting the manga scene by scene. With the exception of the random parrot scene, everything was pretty similar to the manga...though noticeably more subdued. But I think that applies to all anime adaptations.

edited 10th Jan '11 4:16:24 PM by Signed

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."

Thoughts:

I like the OP's style, and the song is nice too. Excited to see those creepy children elaborated on. The crazy shirtless coach guy was pretty funny, along with the Prince/Yukitaka dynamic. And I like that the story has Starfish Aliens.

I tried guessing the voice actors for Prince and Yukitaka, but was wildly off both times. :| And I feel silly because I forgot and looked up Yukitaka's voice actor less than a week ago, after I watched another one of his roles.

I wasn't too sure about watching this at first, but I think I'm pretty sure I will continue.

Tumblr here.

Wait… what's this? A show based on a pair of main characters who have actually a dynamic that's both entertaining and fairly original?

Wha- What kind of Fell Magic could have birthed such a thing?

edited 10th Jan '11 7:45:45 PM by Gilphon

"Canada Day is over, and now begins the endless dark of the Canada Night."

That's no coach , and unfortunately, there's no Starfish Alien  ^*

as far as I can remember in the manga...

Can't wait till the part that gets good though. The mangaka always had trouble with introductions in his works(just look at Hunter X Hunter).

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So ummm...the random CG doesn't bug anybody?

edited 10th Jan '11 7:50:14 PM by Signed

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."

It was fun enough. Although the level of yaoi-bait is over 9000.

But yeah, will keep watching.

"No, the Singularity will not happen. Computation is hard." -Happy Ent

It's a bit sad for the state of Anime that nowadays most of them are so Bishoujo-centric, that this is considered yaoi-bait just for having two male protagonists.

One who is very bishie and two male protagonists who live together.

"No, the Singularity will not happen. Computation is hard." -Happy Ent

If it helps...they won't be living together for more than an episode, and Tsutsui becomes more of a side-character after the first arc, which appears to be ending the next episode if the pacing remains the same.

One thing nice about the anime though, I didn't realize that there was a Shout-Out to ET when the finger scene happened in the manga.

edited 11th Jan '11 10:21:55 AM by Signed

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."

If the Prince's gender was flipped, and it was a girl living that apartment with that guy, you'd get romantic vibes immediately, no? She'd be immediately seen as a potential love interest even. So saying that the yaoi vibes are there just because the Prince is bishie or just because it's two male protagonists is just a little unfair.

Though of course for those of us who've read the manga, we know that... but ahaha I don't really want to spoil the delicious arcs that follow this, so.

And yup, I'm totally in the watching this for Kraft party, because he is the best fucking character in the entire book. Well, of course except for the Prince, but then the Prince is a hateful bastard. Hilarious, but a bastard nonetheless.

Also what do you mean by Togashi has problems with his intros? Both Yuu Yuu Hakusho and Hunter X Hunter had dynamic openings that grip you from the very beginning, I mean, come on, the main guy getting killed off in the very first page and a scrawny little boy hooking a giant monster fish and then asking to apply for some kind of life-threatening hunter exam? Do I need to remind you that Hunter X Hunter's first arc remains one of the very best, if not THE best arc in the entire series? Granted, Level E's opening is not quite that strong, and it's exacerbated by the fact that the anime choose to draw out the inconsequential details before his discovery of Prince in the apartment...

...but overall I'm pretty pleased with the anime because of its faithful rendering of the manga - almost panel by panel, even. The girl's voice is slightly higher and the Prince's voice is slightly lower than I imagined, but overall voice acting is great. I'm just curious why they chose to change the scene of the healing from the guy's room to b y the river. I mean, the Prince is shown to have slept indoors anyway, so what's the point?

And they kinda botched the ending, I feel. I mean, they cut out the entire punchline! Now people will actually think this is a dramatic alien scifi story than the weird quirky scifi comedy that it is... well, granted, this entire thing is genre busting, what with horror and scifi and rpg parodies and fantasy and romance and- but I feel that most the segments revolving around the Prince are treated as comedy in the manga and - damn it, just removing the punchline changes the audience's entire interpretation and expectations for what the show is going to be! Would it be that hard to animate the extra punchline, argh? Just cut out the gratuitous comet shot in the beginning as well as shorten the moving in scene...

Oh well. I just hope that this anime adaptation increases interest in this series because god knows it Needs More Love.

Also... Kraft appears in the next episode! FANGIRL SCREAMMMMMMMMMMMM~

edited 11th Jan '11 11:15:44 AM by Anarchy

As far as I know, only ONE chapter is truly serious in this entire series....and it's the mermaid one. And even that one isn't that much of a downer. But yeah, I can tell already that a lot of people will mistake this as an action packed and serious alien series. Wait till they see the reveal...did they have to end the episode mid joke? Might force uninterested viewers looking for serious pretentious series to watch the next episode though.

She's just be a Pretty Freeloader in a harem...

I'll be honest here...for me, Hunter X Hunter was entertaining during the Hunter Exam where Togashi got to introduce a bunch of creative wildlife. But for me, the series really took off after the introduction of the Genei Ryodan. That's around where Hx H became my favourite shonen series.

Speaking of Hunter X Hunter, I just realized that the mangaka has a knack for making up cool wildlife and fantastic species in his stories. Level E is devoted solely to all the different alien species, such as Clive. And Hunter X Hunter had all those animals in the exam, as well as the ants. And he appears to like RPG games.

I wish they would make more anime for Hx H...

As for yuyu hakusho...it's too old, I can't remember a thing about it. I liked Hunter X Hunter a lot better too.

edited 11th Jan '11 4:50:32 PM by Signed

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."

Well, going by the first episode, this is a series I'm definitely going to have to follow.

The CG was conspicuous, but with the exception of the hand puppets, it wasn't so much that it bothered me.

I like the use of starfish aliens. The Opening made me expect him to be humanoid, and it was a pleasant surprise.

Infinite Tree: an experimental story

...yeah.

Cutting off the episode mid joke was a huge, huge mistake. Damn it.

^^Yeah, I would qualify my comment about "best arc" with except perhaps for the Genei Ryodan/Yorkshin arc. But regardless of quality in terms of narrative, the very first Hunter arc was when the story seemed to be the most "together", with the most drive and suspense. It was tight. It was surprising. The characters' interactions have never been as focused and strong since (well, for the four "main" characters, at least). It just seems to be the best put together arc overall, without any feeling of imbalance that I got from future chapters.

Hunter X Hunter is probably my favorite of all Togashi's works. Probably biased because it was the first work of his that I saw, and because I never finished Yuu Yuu Hakusho. Meh, I just love Togashi's works in general. I wonder what I need to do to find out more about his older stuff.

Also, I do agree that Level E is basically a comedy at heart. There are some really serious plots thrown in though, from time to time. Like the story that turned out to be the Prince's manga submission, for one.

I'm half dreading and half looking forward to people's reactions to next episode.

edited 12th Jan '11 11:19:17 AM by Anarchy

Screw other people's reaction, next episode gives us Kraft.

I wonder how many episodes will it take to get to this scene...◊and how many episodes after that will they get to princess Saki.

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."

Damn, why did you have to- KRAAAAAFT-SAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA <3 <3 <3

...

Okay, now THAT'S out of my system... OMFG YES. I demand that if they make DV Ds out of this, they include a "the making of" extra where we see the seiyuus attempting to do that scene. IT WOULD BE HILARIOUS.

The RPG arc is one of my favorite arcs in the entire series. I don't think I've ever seen any RPG parody quite like it before or since. I love Togashi's sense of humor. And Kraft's role, as usual, is priceless.

If they screw up his seiyuu I will be extremely, extremely, extremely pissed.

Also OMG PRINCESS SAKI. I want to nominate her for best Togashi female character ever. Not that that's saying a lot, but still.

edited 12th Jan '11 11:33:18 AM by Anarchy

I checked it out of curiousity, and was really glad i did. It's absolutely hilarious from what i've seen so far. At first the art style sorta made my head tilt... Guess it's because i've been up to my ears in moe lately.

I didn't know it was done by the same guy that did Yu Yu Hakusho but now that i know i'm not too surprised. It has his style all over it.

Since i haven't read the manga though iknow pretty much nothing... Like who the hell is Kraft? Actually, no, don't tell me. I'll just wait for the next episode. I'll definatly be following this on crunchyroll.

Bleye knows Sabers.

And this is surprising how in a Yoshihiro Togashi series?

To be honest, I had trouble placing the Prince's voice. I kind of expected Kouji Tsujitani, in a Shout-Out to another Togashi character the Prince looks like a blond, blue-eyed version of. (But then again- it always amuses me when Togashi recycles some part of Yaminade no Itsuki, heh.)

Heaven doesn't want me, and Hell's afraid I'll take over.

Finally, an OP that gets me excited for the show. I haven't been this excited for a new show since Heroman.

Hm. The first episode sold me on the humor; the second episode sold me on the plot. I'm going to like this series.

Infinite Tree: an experimental story

I've only watched the first few minutes of episode 2 but that was the best/funniest twist ever. XD Aaah, I can't believe I fell for it.....

Tumblr here.

awww, I was hoping they'd somehow animate the part about the language barriers in the anime rather than completely skipping over it...

Ah well, Kraft's facial expressions and behaviours are still priceless.

btw, would Germans Love David Hasselhoff fit Level E 's trope page? Since TWO entire race of aliens are super baseball fanatics to the point where they live peacefully on earth just to be with humans(who play baseball) rather than constantly fighting everything like they are known to. Whereas on Earth, and Real Life, baseball is only enjoyed by Japan and New York...and pretty much niche everywhere else in the world.

edited 17th Jan '11 4:53:27 PM by Signed

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."

I do think that would work, yes.

And yeah, it's a bummer they didn't animate the part about the universal translator, because this page is really quite funny, though I suppose it was necessary to save on space. Level E's chapters are really dense, and even though it's a short manga, they seem to be animating it fairly faithfully, and so to be done with it within the space of a season, they're inevitably going to cut some stuff out. Sadly that means that some of the good stuff is going to be cut out too.

WARNING MANGA ENTHUSIAST WHINING ABOUT ANIME NOT BEING AS GOOD AS MANGA WARNING GO AWAY IF YOU DON'T LIKE THAT KIND OF WHINING WARNING

The manga's funnier, sadly. Getting to hear Kraft voice-acted is fucking awesome, but how can you NOT animate panels like this? Omitting this made the entire opening scene completely serious instead of hilarious like in the manga.

They also completely ruined this joke.

Also the Diskunians look much creepier and less bishie-ish in the manga. There just wasn't the same sense of menace.

Also, omitting things like this and this kinda rob Sado of his personality. Right now in the anime he's just playing the straight man to Kraft, and that's not all Sado is, y'know? He's also a passionate biologist and I wanted to see more of that.

Speaking of Kraft, I thought it was funnier in the manga with the way he was constantly smiling and being all nice and mild and respectful to the old man, and then when he switches to berserk mode it's funnier because there's that contrast. In the anime, however, he's just constantly repressing anger all the time, and though his outbursts are still funny, they're not gutbustingly hilarious because of the lack of that kind of sharp contrast. I mean, Kraft is still the Captain of the Prince's guard. It makes sense for him to be able to restrain himself when he really needs to. And to see someone as cool as that go completely insane when the prince is around makes up a really integral part of the humor.

...man, rereading Level E amazes with how fucking amazing Togashi's art used to be before Hunter X Hunter. The anime's art doesn't quite compare. I mean, compare this to the corresponding scene in the anime. The sense of brutality is not even on the same level. Level E's art in generally is extremely creepy and unsettling and has a feeling of strangeness to it. It's a quality that is usually present in varying degrees in all of Togashi's work, which is inevitably lost as the anime makes everything prettier and more normal. Which is why I always strongly recommend anyone who really likes Togashi's work to read the mangas, with possibly the exception of Hunter X Hunter simply because of the fact that some of that manga's art are basicaly scribbles... but then again it isn't fully animated so you need to read the manga to get the whole story anyway.

The good thing that the anime does is that it takes the wall of text about the conference and animates it. I wonder if they're going to do that with a certain other wall of text that comes at the end of this arc. Part of me is hoping they don't because part of the humor comes from the unexpectedness of such a big humongous wall of text appearing in a manga, but...

They did get a majority of the jokes right, though. So overall I'm pleased and I can't wait for the next episode to come out!

edited 19th Jan '11 4:53:34 AM by Anarchy

^I don't think they look more bishie in the anime o-o

"Bishie" was probably a poor choice of words, but they did definitely lose those pronounced fish-eyes.

The blithe attitude the show took towards the murder had me going kinda D:, but looking at Anarchy's links this was apparently another thing that was played up in the anime. I guess they're just making it into a blacker shade of comedy than I expected.

Please be gentle with me.

Yeah, not more bishie (poor choice of words indeed), but... prettier? Less creepy/ugly/disturbing?

And yeah. Level E is pretty dark. The opening makes it seem like it's going to be a campy alien show, but neh.

edited 20th Jan '11 4:49:02 AM by Anarchy

To be honest, I checked the manga, and at the moment it was revealed that it was a prank, they instantly lose their fish eyes o-o(I found that pretty funny xD)

Sorry for not marking spoilers ^^;

edited 20th Jan '11 7:25:04 AM by SpookyMask