What Anime are you Currently Watching?/Anime Recommendations

[Fragems]

Heavy Object is pretty good if you haven't seen it yet. The mechs are more like tanks but it's got some pretty awesome action sequences. It also changes things up since there is a huge focus on essentially two foot soldiers turning the tide of each battle.

Trailer

Aldnoah.Zero is also really good although I would say ignore season two since the story shits all over itself and the ending sucks big time.

Trailer

[Sano]

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

[Xeogred]

You're right about the female lead. She definitely suffers from "anime girl syndrome". I wonder if there's a single female writer in the production staff, because the robot got more character development than the girl did.

Chamber was an awesome bro-bot though, to be fair.

On the more intense side of mecha anime I just watched Gundam Thunderbolt: December Sky.

It's definitely not something for someone uninitiated with Universal Century Gundam stuff but for me it was one of the best Gundam related animations I've seen in years.



Now to find something new for my current mecha-thon.

Thunderbolt was pretty cool. Very gritty stuff and I like how it made both sides look pretty terrible and disgusting.

I love Unicorn though, have you seen that one? I'm still iffy on Iron Blooded whatever, but I'll check it out sometime. I generally only like UC Gundam, but X, G, and Turn A were good. Everything else that just tries to copy UC while trying to be its own world just totally sucks to me. Wing, Seed, 00, and Victory was horrendous...

[Gunstar Green]

Thunderbolt was pretty cool. Very gritty stuff and I like how it made both sides look pretty terrible and disgusting.

I love Unicorn though, have you seen that one? I'm still iffy on Iron Blooded whatever, but I'll check it out sometime. I generally only like UC Gundam, but X, G, and Turn A were good. Everything else that just tries to copy UC while trying to be its own world just totally sucks to me. Wing, Seed, 00, and Victory was horrendous...

Unicorn was alright. I didn't love it but it was closer to the kind of Gundam stuff I like. The Sinanju is one of the sexiest mobile suits ever though.

Iron Blooded Orphans is crap. I couldn't get through much of that one.

I've heard mixed reviews on Reconguista in G, mostly about it being a hard to follow plot, but I haven't seen it yet. The mecha designs are very cool at the very least.

G Gundam is my favorite AU show because I love Super Robots and Imagawa's work.

Victory actually is a UC show but yeah it's pretty detestable and its existence pretty much screwed the UC timeline forever. As much as I like Gundam I can't say I like Tomino very much.

[Xeogred]

The urban legend is that Tomino himself hates Victory and slapped DON'T BUY THIS stickers on them.

It's probably true because at the time Bandai was acquiring Sunrise, which Tomino is said to be against. The original plan was for F91 to be a full 50 episode series as well and with that getting canned, for them to poop out Victory a few years later, Tomino certainly got his revenge in creating one of the worst anime shows in existence. In a funny way, I say he succeeded with what he probably set out to do with it. It's abysmal and the entire energy behind the story and everything behind it is so utterly depressing and drab, it's just terrible. It's painfully dark and violent just for the sake of being shocking and disturbing.

G-Reco is forgettable just like King Gainer to me.

I love Tomino, but his glory days were in the past. I absolutely love Ideon, L-Gaim, Xabungle, Daitarn 3, and the original Gundam / Zeta, and even don't mind ZZ for the most part. I wouldn't write off Tomino unless you've seen some of these. Xabungle is probably the easiest to recommend because it's lighthearted, with 4th wall breaking and jokes that are still relevant to mecha in 2016. Ideon is the darker one, but with a really cool story and OST by the Dragon Quest composer. L-Gaim and Daitarn 3 are both fun but know when to get serious, they have a nice balance.

I might even like all these more than Zeta after rewatching that one a second time... Zeta does have a lot of issues, Scirocco disappearing for 70% of it and the cyber newtype girl characters are horrible, but yeah... I think for me I just love Zeta because of its insane production values and badass 80's vibes. 0079 has the issues of its wacky budget, but it does have the best self contained story probably.

Unicorn was a little hard to follow and weird plot wise, but the last episode is just so damn good, I love how it felt like the ultimate conclusion to the main UC timeline and in a way felt like something Tomino would have directed back in the day. I love when Gundam is space heavy, so I know it's not popular to say but I'm not a huge fan of 0080, I'd say Unicorn is my favorite of the UC OVA's because it's that high scale / space battles / war thing going on that I love about it.

80's Sunrise is my favorite stuff ever.

[Gunstar Green]

The urban legend is that Tomino himself hates Victory and slapped DON'T BUY THIS stickers on them.

Yeah, I know the backstory to Victory. I don't hate him as a director, what I meant is I don't think I like him very much as a person with his passive aggressiveness regarding stuff like Victory Gundam among other things.

Instead of just walking away he felt it necessary to plop a giant turd onto the franchise, making it necessary for the AU shows to exist in the first place. Yeah, it sucks F91 didn't happen (the Crossbone Vanguard is awesome) but he punished the fans as much as he did Bandai.

It's why they brought Imagawa on for G Gundam, a relative new guy who they thought they could control (though despite some executive mandates getting through, they couldn't, which is why G Gundam is so weird and awesome).

As a director I think he's a mixed bag. No arguing he's kind of a genius and his impact on the mecha genre was being felt even before Gundam, but there's a lot of things he doesn't have a firm grasp on. Even Zeta Gundam is really poorly paced, lagging pretty badly halfway through (though if I'm being honest most 50+ episode anime tend to fall into this trap).

Also every time he attempts to do romance it's like an alien life-form trying to write about human relationships.

I read his novelizations of the original Gundam and they were interesting. I can't say it was better than the anime but it was cool to see what he wanted Gundam to be without all of the meddling from Sunrise and the sponsors.

[Exhuminator]

Lupin the Third: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine | 2012 | 13eps | 8/10

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupin_the ... ujiko_Mine



Well this is a show I'd been watching on and off for like a month now. Normally I would have finished it off pretty quick, but life. Anyway, last night I sat down with a bowl of chunky hot salsa and some blue corn tortilla chips, and finished this one off.



So what is this show? Well, it's a show about Fujiko Mine, one of the most famous characters of the Lupin saga. It's somewhat of an origin story, and not just about Fujiko, but also goes into the first time Lupin met Jigen and Goemon. There are two things you'll notice immediately in watching this show. First off the artistic merit of this anime is off the charts, especially for a TV show. And secondly, holy hell this is one ecchi to the max show. By that I mean, Fujiko is often seen naked, fully naked, a lot.



But before you write that off as mere fan service, you have to realize that this show is far more true to Monkey Punch's original Lupin manga. And secondly, this show was actually directed by a woman (Sayo Yamamoto), and rather than portray Fujiko as a mere sex object, she's rather accurately portrayed as a true femme fatale. Meaning she uses her good looks to get her way. But when looks fail, she goes cold blooded and will blast her way to victory.



The initial half of the show I really, really enjoyed. But towards the latter half of this series, the plot kind of falls up its own ass. We're talking secret societies, plot twists that make no sense, deus ex machina, all that bad writing amateur hour stuff. Not sure what happened there, other than perhaps the creators were trying to compress too much story into too few episodes. Despite that, the awesome art, fun characters, and superb direction carry the saggy last few episodes just fine.



Ultimately if you are a fan of Lupin (and I mean the true Lupin, not the candy coated kids version many of his movies portray) watch this anime. You'll see Zenigata as an actual intelligent detective. Jigen as a haunted hitman. Goemon as a misunderstood yet enlightened samurai. But above all else, when this show is over, you'll see Fujiko Mine as a lot more than just sidekick eye candy.

[Michi]

Fujiko Mine is probably one of the most beautifully stylish shows that I can ever remember watching. Absolutely gorgeous. I could probably have put the show on mute and watched the whole thing that way and still have been entertained.

Plot-wise though, yeah. They jumped the shark a bit at the end. There was just a little too much going on and not enough time to explain it. Kinda sad.

[Xeogred]

Yeah, I know the backstory to Victory. I don't hate him as a director, what I meant is I don't think I like him very much as a person with his passive aggressiveness regarding stuff like Victory Gundam among other things.

It's why they brought Imagawa on for G Gundam, a relative new guy who they thought they could control (though despite some executive mandates getting through, they couldn't, which is why G Gundam is so weird and awesome).

Also every time he attempts to do romance it's like an alien life-form trying to write about human relationships.

I read his novelizations of the original Gundam and they were interesting. I can't say it was better than the anime but it was cool to see what he wanted Gundam to be without all of the meddling from Sunrise and the sponsors.

Haha, well I like how Tomino today is a pretty positive guy. It's people like Miyazaki and Anno that really suck and just take a massive dump on the entire medium and people scraping by for pennies. It's a real mess, but their piss poor attitudes about it aren't going to help anything.

So if you know Imagawa, let me just say that I have a hunch he had a huge influence on Xabungle. I know he's credited as an episode director on it. So yeah, the entire series felt like he had a major hand in it and was almost like something he could have directed. I know he was somewhat of an apprentice to Tomino apparently.

I'm still waiting for the NEXT FIGHT for G Gundam 2...

Yeaaaaaaaaah, Tomino romances are bad. It's hilarious how starking his female characters are though, there seems to be no middle ground. They can be really badass like Haman Karn, or just pure bitch slap fodder? Apparently he had a thing for the voice actress who did the fairy in Dunbine and L-Gaim, whom married Nagano who did L-Gaim's art designs and then did Five Star Stories. I've heard there was a strange Macross like love triangle debacle between them. It's just funny that Tomino did write some progressive female characters back in the day, but most of them are... yikes.

It's safe to say Katejina is single handedly the worst anime character ever in my book.

I think I've heard Char is the main character in the novels? lol

[Gunstar Green]

I think I've heard Char is the main character in the novels? lol

I don't know if Tomino intended it but he's definitely the favored character. Amuro is a legitimate soldier from the start and less averse to fighting.