What Anime are you Currently Watching?/Anime Recommendations

[Fragems]

The best two recent mecha anime I've seen are Aldnoah Zero and Heavy Object. Iron Blooded Orphans is pretty good but I felt like the second half of season 1 was pretty weak and I only got through 4-5 episodes of season 2 before I put it aside. Will get back to it eventually hopefully.




Aldnoah Zero which is kind of like Gundam basically the martian colonist and earth have been at odds for years and after a political meetup goes to shit the martians invade with their superior technology and super mechs while the earthlings have rather basic mobile suit technology. Show basically boils down to the lead character who is a tactical genius beating out the mechs with his superior skills as a pilot and strategies. The only bad thing about the show is season 2 which has pacing issues and possibly the worst ending of all time if you had any interest in the character relationships.

Trailer:
Shows Streaming on Aniplex's website: http://aniplexchannel.com/category/show ... ero/page/2




Heavy Object on the other hand has mechs that are basically massive mobile fortress super weapons and focuses on ground forces and their usefullness in a world where such super weapons exist. Basically wars have boiled down to sending out these massive mechs against each other and all other forces have basically become cannon fodder. However two of the lead characters start shifting the tides by scouting and using specialized tactics to support their nation's mech turning the course of a number of battles and upsetting the balance of the military powers in the world. It's a pretty good show and has a solid conclusion. Kind of hoping it gets another season at some point.


Trailer:
Entire Series Funimations Youtube Channel:

[Sano]

Sword Art Online II

[Exhuminator]

I finally got around to watching some anime this year.



Bikini Warriors | 2015 | 12eps + 2ova | 7/10

Here's a little ecchi series about a group of female fantasy warriors attempting to do fantasy warrior stuff. I started watching this because I'm a dirty old man, but it ended up being a lot funnier than I expected. The central joke of the namesake is that the smaller the armor, the more effective it is. A riff on the typical way female armor is portrayed in fantasy games.



But there's also a lot of meta humor that only veterans of classic RPGs like Dragon Quest or Dungeons & Dragons would understand. Overall I enjoyed the jokes as much as the eye candy, but it's also all a bit shallow. However the show clearly knows this and makes fun of itself aplomb. Recommended to pervy nerds.

[Xeogred]

I hate ecchi shows but that looks like one I'd probably get a kick out of.

Watched Queen's Blade yet?

Been playing with the idea of watching Gundam Age or Iron Blooded Orphans soon. Maybe the new Macross. I guess I said this a few posts ago and months back... haha.

[Exhuminator]

Watched Queen's Blade yet?

I own the whole shebang, but I've only watched the first season. The ecchi aspect is on point, but the writing is bad even for a pervert show.

[Gunstar Green]

Just got this in the mail:



It's so cool to finally have an official American release on DVD. I wish the rest of the trilogy would follow suit.

[Xeogred]

Shin Mazinger also got a release, or whatever the newer series was a few years ago.

I watched five episodes of Mazinger Z with the newer fansubs before Discotek was born, and yeah I can tell it will be one of my top favorites from the 70's.

Have you seen these Gunstar?
- Daitarn 3 = happy but serious Tomino. If you can adjust to the 70's style, I thought the budget was fairly mindblowing. Every single frame looks like high quality comic art and the series was just crazy absurd in awesome ways. It made me think of Space Adventure Cobra but with mecha in the end. It was an amazing finale and some weird, cool evil villains, and gets dark when it needs to be. It also has the greatest butler character ever...



- Voltes V = this show had amazing music and I hear the Nagahama trilogy were some of Tomino's biggest influences, I think he was good friends with Nagahama or something. You can tell, there's basically a Char prototype here. This show was a blast, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I hear Combattler is rough, but Daimos is awesome... but we're still waiting on subs for that one.

I guess there's also Zambot 3, which is probably the darkest Tomino show of all time (even more than Ideon to me). I mean there's a fucking episode called HUMAN BOMBS. It is utterly mindblowing kids had this to watch growing up back then. The violence and dread wasn't an issue, I just freaking hated the main character's voice and the show generally looked super sloppy and ugly.... but it's been ages since I've seen it and it leaves a permanent mark for sure.



tl;dr I am sure Mazinger Z will be my third favorite 70's super robo next to Daitarn and Voltes V.

I got through Getter Robo too but frankly didn't care for it much. I hear the sequels are better.

[Gunstar Green]

Oh, I've seen fansubbed Mazinger and whatever else I could get my hands on already. I'm just thrilled to have an official DVD release of it. I also already had the Shin Mazinger DVDs.

The Robot Romance trilogy is definitely some of the best stuff of the era but there's something special about Mazinger. I guess because it was the trailblazer it was operating in a vacuum without set tropes to follow.

Tomino's super robot stuff is cool, it's not my favorite but you can see where his career was headed. I respect Tomino's work as well as his massive contributions to the medium but I've never been his biggest fan.

I also agree with you and don't care for Toei-Getter either, it's not one of the better 70's shows and it's pretty far removed from the source material. The modern OVAs and the entire saga of Ishikawa's manga is where it's at for Getter. I'm still pretty devastated that he died before finishing up the story. I think as far as super robot manga goes, the Getter saga is a masterpiece (specifically Getter Robo Go which has an even WORSE 80's anime with nothing to do with it).

[Xeogred]

Dang, we can't be Tomino bros haha. But I either love or hate his shows. We probably talked about it awhile back, but these are my top favorites:

- Daitarn 3
- Ideon
- Gundam 0079/Zeta (rewatching Zeta was kind of hard actually, the Cyber newtypes suck)
- L-Gaim
- Xabungle

Can't praise those enough for the most part. With Zeta it's all about the "vibe" and the art/animation looking like a full blown 50 some episode OVA. But yeah it's got some issues. Turn A is also okay, his last really good show.

Victory Gundam is probably the worst anime series I've ever seen. Fucking loathe it.

As a director, I do like Ryosuke Takahashi's shows more. Dougram, Votoms, Layzner are all amazing, with Votoms being probably my favorite. Galiant was okay. I think Tomino is maybe the better creator, but Takahashi's shows are definitely better directed.

I love how ...

Mazinger = Mega Man
Casshan = Mega Man X (Braiking Boss is like literally Sigma)

So it was natural for me to love Mazinger. , I liked Mazinkaiser a lot and Shin Mazinger, can't wait to get the original series myself sometime. It's my next anime purchase.

[Gunstar Green]

When I watched Zeta as a teenager totally I loved it, when I watched Zeta a few years ago I cringed at a lot of it. I used to love it more than 0079 but those shows kind of switched places for me. Zeta Gundam's art design is incredible though, there's no denying that.

I think we had a Gundam/Tomino talk earlier in this thread somewhere. Anyway, yeah, Victory Gundam is dog crap.

Mega Man is also Astro Boy and he's got Casshan's dog. Mega Man made sure to steal from everyone, as is his power.