Studio Shaft is going all-in on collaborations with pervy old auteurs this year. They also released a trailer for the next Madoka movie today:
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ign labor exposés branching out
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casual reminder that Dreamworks laid off their in-house animation production staff after Kung-Fu Panda 4 was the first box office hit of 2024
first show is good because the god that brings back the protag makes her average according to the world she’s sent to and the (obvious) joke is it’s a fucking fantasy world full of dragons and shit so she’s the strongest human alive
second show is garbage because you’re watching extremely smarmy and self-important assholes
rest are probably fine, who knows
edit: okay I was right, World End is the show that uses a cover of Scarborough Fair as its opening and is probably good on that basis
no i will not watch it to confirm
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I liked the Ningen Fushin manga when I was reading it but the scanlation group dropped it and I never picked it back up.
This isn’t a recommendation just it’s the only one on that list that I am familiar with
Hell yeah, been hoping someone would animate City! I’ve been reading the manga and it’s a lot of fun.
the city adaptation has a really fun website w some cute animations (i specifically recommend scrolling all the way to the bottom of the page and clicking on the TOP button)
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They’re French, of course they’re going to do Dirty Pair worship.
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5 eps into 500 Million Year Button, the latest souta sugahara (gdgd fairies, seha girls) joint. pushes the ugly MMD aesthetic to new heights by among other things situating it in a photorealistic unity asset flip world
thru the first four eps 1 character spends his 500 million years in the shadow realm attaining enlightenment, in a slightly facile new-agey way (i.e. he studies prana and quigong despite having no contact with the outside world? with the implication that he arrived at them independently, or something. also the invocation of string theory) which is where the above-pictured rapping socrates comes in
am interested enough to keep watching for now… straight title robot anime is still my favorite of these things for being extremely pointless nd it exploits the weird metafictional quality of its improv segments the best (whereas in 500MYB they feel even more like an afterthought than usual)
is there a name for this kind of show
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omg i love straight title robot anime and i didnt know there was other hideous shit like it yay
lol i really enjoyed gdgd and found straight title unwatchable (except for the alternate openings, which were hilarious and i ended up just skipping to after a while)
im glad theyre still making stuff
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gdgd fairies is a masterpiece
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the alt openings were definitely the best part haha
watching steven universe to fall asleep. never seen it past pancake episode before
observations:
- estelle steals any scene where they give garnet dialogue so they don’t very often
- pearl should respect that greg doesn’t want steven to go to space, considering
- lapis trapped in a mirror for a thousand years? girl, same
- peridot is zim
- every time an episode is about steven duplicating himself i feel like i’m being punk’d
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i think Zim was literally given to Shelby Rabara (Peridot’s VA) as a point of reference
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My memories about Steven Universe are mostly bad ones. I felt the series was in a lot of ways, like the writing in The X-Files, but in reverse, where the plot driven episodes were better than the monster of the week ones. The X-Files thrived best in the episodic ones while Steven Universe had many dud; lacklustre slice of life / weekly stories that don’t really do enough in their 11 minutes run, not counting those when they were able to carry their plot over for the next episode(s) like a tiny arc.
It is not like Adventure Time, that can and was able to write strong episodic and self contained stories, using their 11 minutes. I don’t take away how the show helped and reached out to kids and teens that needed the voice and the place to process their identity and orientation. The show was not for me, but it meant a lot, and still means a lot to fans who grew up with it over time.
I recall Loki saying he did not get into MLP G4, because all the plot driven / action / epic episodes like the ones in G1 were mostly used at the start and ending of every new season. The way Steven Universe directs its own myth arc, if you will, is frustrating due to its breaks / hiatuses. You can get drawn in an ongoing arc, just for you to wait months, and then you get nothing but townie episodes. The dramatic stakes are hand waved, until more episodes pass and you go back to the story arc you were waiting on in the first place.
Like, I would get this if the show have made its priorities clear from the start. When you get into a weekly show like Detective Conan, you know the myth arc / plot driven cases are few and far in between. The show is a vehicle for weekly cases, even if there is a myth arc to justify the setting and changes to the cast over time, you know there is no rush to cure Conan and bust the Men in Black.
Steven Universe wants to be a space opera and a slice of life show, its first inspiration was Tenchi Muyo (Get it, Steven / Tenchi Universe), but Tenchi similarly fell into its convoluted story bullshit, that took the show in different timelines. I get Steven Universe’s fate was not clear, each season, even the first could have been the last for their crew, but they still wasted a lot of the seasons they had with filler episodes.
Maybe you could have your cake and eat it, too, if you run things like Japan, where they over work their animation studios to pump out weekly episodes down to the hour for each season you are green lit for, so they can plan and story board ahead. But with the many hiatuses and breaks Steven Universe took, you would think their writers are going to prioritise how much they can do with a season. I just felt they were forced to do story as they went along.
At some point, when you watch The X-Files, you realise that you are in it for the monster of the week episodes, the myth arc being a bumpy ride. For Steven Universe, if you are not drawn to their extended and supporting cast, its townie episodes are hell, because you just ask to go back to its ongoing story instead. I don’t doubt some fans stayed for the townie episodes, which they prefer to the space opera, or like as much as the space opera, just like The X-Files and Conan has fans that enjoy both the episodic and the story heavy ones. But I felt the writing was its best to Steven Universe just when they were doing the plot relevant shit.
One aspect from the show I feel does not get talked about often enough are its BGM by Aivi & Surasshu, who are still making albums to this day. There are fans who can tell you / sing many of the musical numbers / vocal songs without missing a beat, but how often do you hear about its BGM? Even the official sound track releases separate the vocal songs and the BGM for two different volume runs. It is not like you see in anime, where vocal songs and BGM are in the same album like they did in .hack//SIGN or Cowboy Bebop.
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Gonna be honest. Rebecca Sugar’s art reminded me a whole lot of HarveyJamesTM and he was in the process of burning bridges with various folx here, so that made me not want to watch much Steven Universe. I liked it later when I had less feelings about JamesHarveyJames but with the broadcast shedule I could never keep up, and I stopped watching it when Lars went into space.
Other things I remember was that I was a lunch lady at the time the show was popular and the kids seemed to really like it, and one thought i was wearing a Steven Universe shirt once, because it looked the same from the front if I zipped my jacket up enough to cover up the text that said “Sharing is for Communists”
edit: James Harvey looked like he was gonna be some kinda art world superstar for a while there but he ended up sort of disappearing and sometimes I wonder what happened to him
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