so glad this week’s birdie wing temporarily got back to the level of goofy jojo’s style golf cheating that brought us anti-golf pheromones
2 Likes
watching flcl on my laptop in bed/the one air conditioned room in my house in the ffmpeg retroarch core in italian without subtitles because i gave up
like god intended
10 Likes
Finally got around to watching Den-Nou Coil after seeing it recommended around here. It’s definitely a top 10 anime series for me.
It takes me back to my own childhood where we would do stakeouts in my friend’s backyard to try to catch the “Ghost Tyre” he’d convinced me was lurking there.
If child me was able to see this it would have set off a nuclear explosion in my brain and have me producing my own rip off comic strips.
6 Likes
Top 10 for me too! Lovely anime, one of those that nails exactly what I want from anime (humanistic storytelling, lovely animation, a thoroughly explored SFF premise)
3 Likes
Yeah there were so many aspects to the SF setting that felt like they would have just been enough on their own for an entire series, like I would watch a show that was just about child cyber-sleuths doing sidequests for the Candy Store Grandma.
It premise works very well across the broad range of modes that it tackles, from comedy to serious drama, to straight up horror in the final arc
I saw some people complain about too many filler episodes, but I thought the beard warfare episode was probably my favourite
2 Likes
That director also did a mini series called Orbital Children that’s on netflix if you want something similar to watch (also called The Extra-terrestrial Lives Of Boys And Girls if you can’t find it).
2 Likes
I absolutely loved Den-Nou Coil when I watched it a year or two ago. I wasn’t sure about the last several episodes though. The show starts in this very grounded way; despite the fantastical imagery, it mostly flows logically from the premise of this AR technology. Toward the end it got really metaphysical and tried to tie those metaphysics into the technology in a pretty complex way I had a hard time following. I’d probably chalk it up to an awkward translation though, it felt like there was a lot going on that I was not receiving.
I would still recommend it to anyone though!
1 Like
Long ago I mentioned the very weird and very french cartoon Crisis Jung. Well, it’s now gonna be on youtube at the rate of one episode per week, including an english dub. Personally I’m a big fan and cannot recommend it enough but be aware it’s absolutely NSFW and contains disturbing imagery on a number of levels :
4 Likes
2 Likes
owl house is so similar to amphibia it is ridiculous that both of these shows were running at the same time
not a knock against it necessarily, i liked amphibia and i like owl house too. to me, the animation style in owl house is a little bit less cool, feels less stretchy and bouncy which is one thing that i think amphibia did that was kind of unexpected.
the thing that both of them do that i guess is just What Stuff Is Like Now is the really overt anime influence? it feels weird to even comment on it as a thing, like i’m not saying its cultural appropriation or whatever but it’s odd to me the way so many cliches and gimmicks and stuff have just been internalized without retaining any reference to their original contexts.
i guess part of it is that they’re not only made by people who were influenced by that stuff, they’re clearly made for an audience who is also pretty familiar with those kinds of plotlines and character archetypes and stuff and expects to see them in animated shows. i wonder if these shows are popular at all in japan?
it’s just weird to me how things like “the school club fair episode” can come across as totally normal in a show, even though as far as i know that is not and has never really been a meaningful part of high school life in the us? i guess it’s because people know about that shit from other shows?
anyway idk. these shows are fun! it’s a whole new era of animation. i still don’t think any show has worn its anime influences on its sleeve better than bee and puppycat, but i think i probably liked that show more because it was clearly made for weird old people and not for actual children. also the soundtrack simply slaps
5 Likes
Unicorn: Warriors Eternals rules. I loved the first two eps.
1 Like
it’d be really unlikely for an american animator born in 1990 to not be indelibly influenced by anime, right? by 1999 pokémon was running alongside batman beyond and syvester & tweety mysteries, so it wasn’t even really siloed in toonami etc. that’s the exact age to buy how to draw japanimation at the scholastic book fair.
twenty years ago american children were fantasizing about which dorm they’d be assigned to at magic boarding school, so owl house’s occupational tracks aren’t wholly unprecedented. i like that the concept is presented as an arbitrary imposition of order despite the kids’ aptitudes
the references are there, btw… i screamed when they gave someone crona’s haircut from soul eater in the third season
1 Like
4 Likes
Yeah but that’s the thing–they’re references to other shows, not to the stuff that actually exists that inspired those shows! It’s kind of cool in a way, just a long game of telephone kind of
1 Like
have you seen this shonen anime called the clone wars
1 Like
Yeah I kinda agree that it gets bogged down in technobabble and metaphysical concepts a bit towards the end, and becomes hard to follow. There were a few scenes in the last couple episodes where you’d have either Isako or one of the adults stoically rattling off complex technical exposition to an audience of 6 - 10 year olds which I found funny.
Also the way the AR technology is established to work in-fiction meant that there were a fair few scenes where the kids were in ‘peril’, and I was like “Just turn off the glasses and the danger goes away”.
Similar for when the kids are shooting each other with lasers and throwing up walls as shields, you’d think the they’d just run straight through the wall since it doesn’t technically exist, but nobody ever seems to do that. I chalk that up to kids being more likely to get invested in the illusion of the virtual world and so they probably just don’t think to exploit it that way.
2 Likes
I always felt like this was intentional and one of my favorite things about the show: the characters were exactly the right age for the AR technology to be both completely normal to them and the means by which they invested in the presented fantasy as if it were real
6 Likes
You’d be amazed how much your brain just accepts virtual reality as a real thing even as a real life adult, so that all checks out.
2 Likes
even if this was “holy crap I’ve seen so many goddamn idiot animes with festival hell arcs that my stupid sponge brain has sopped it all up”, our equally idiot United Statesican cartoons with schools seemingly always have a science fair episode so the DNA is there even if you’re on the boomer side of millennial
2 Likes
like, don’t get me wrong, I haven’t seen any Owl House but I know it’s the Disney cartoon with Literally Fucking Ryoko From Tenchi so the creator is some level of pervert so it’s probably anime but we do stupid school life shit too
1 Like