What are you Watching?

Discuss anime, especially but not limited to 1950's~1990's series, and related sub-topics
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llj
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Re: What are you Watching?

Post by llj »

Saw . Cute.

I'm generally not as much of a fan of Shinkai as most anime fans. I find his stuff repetitive and cloying and precious. And Your Name has all of these things. But he's progressed enough as a director to package his stuff in a mainstream pleasing manner. I gotta respect that. Your Name shows considerable skill in the kind of notes it hits to manipulate a casual audience's emotions...I don't say this as a bad thing either. Even someone more cynical like me got into the storytelling, despite copious amounts of cheese and bad j-pop in dramatic moments.
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llj
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Re: What are you Watching?

Post by llj »

For above: Saw YOUR NAME.

Gah, I miss the ability to edit posts.
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llj
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Re: What are you Watching?

Post by llj »

Finished Jormungand. The second season was better than the first...but there's just a lot more scenes of guys in business suits standing around in dimly lit rooms than I would have liked. I like the detail in politics...but it feels filler-ish in a way that Ghost in the Shell SAC didn't when they did the same things. Overall the show wasn't quite as good as I hoped it would be.

Oh, and a few other thoughts on Your Name. I'd just read that Shinkai has been studying American animated box office hits like Frozen...now it makes sense how he's crafted such a mainstream-pleasing film. He's really found a way to marry a crowd-pleasing Hollywood structure with your typical anime tropes in a successful manner.
jdoll
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Re: What are you Watching?

Post by jdoll »

watched your name recently with wife and a friend we loved it amazing film!
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usamimi
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Re: What are you Watching?

Post by usamimi »

I saw Your Name opening weekend as well. I thought it was lovely, though I didn't get as emotional over it as some of my friends seemed to. I definitely see how he purposely made the movie a bit more accessible to a wider audience, but like llj said that's not a bad thing. It's incredibly well animated and a unique concept so I'm glad it's getting all the attention it is & hopefully this paves the way for more anime in theaters & being taken a bit more seriously by box offices. :mrgreen:
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Char Aznable
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Re: What are you Watching?

Post by Char Aznable »

I've been re-watching Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2nd GIG. Even better than I remember it, and more enjoyable than the first season. I love the episodes that focus on the Section 9 characters and their backstories, since so many of them were overlooked in the previous season...not to mention the original film and manga.

Incidentally, I also just watched the American Ghost in the Shell movie. Pretty awful. I went in to the movie, already separating it from the source material and with the mindset of viewing it on its merits just as a basic sci-fi/action film. Well, didn't work. Movie was still bad. In hindsight, it could have been worst...but the film was so completely lifeless and never engaged me on any level.
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DKop
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Re: What are you Watching?

Post by DKop »

Char Aznable wrote:
Incidentally, I also just watched the American Ghost in the Shell movie. Pretty awful. I went in to the movie, already separating it from the source material and with the mindset of viewing it on its merits just as a basic sci-fi/action film. Well, didn't work. Movie was still bad. In hindsight, it could have been worst...but the film was so completely lifeless and never engaged me on any level.
I honestly didn't mind Ghost in the Shell, I had some level of enjoyment from it. It did the one thing well that I was expecting it to do well on, and that was the visuals and recreating scenes from the Oshii film. I was pretty content with that. But for me, it's still far from the worst animated to live action adaptations that I remember seeing in the past. I knew what it was going to get wrong, so I focused on what I thought they got right. But I get your thoughts on the film, which is what I was expecting to happen to begin with.
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llj
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Re: What are you Watching?

Post by llj »

I'll probably watch GITS on DVD or Blu. A lot of controversy over the whitewashing aspect of it. As an Asian myself, I'm used to this kind of thing and look at it with amusement rather than "outrage", which apparently was the same with many in Japan too.

I'd heard there was some interesting visuals, mostly having to do with Sanders' attempts to copy Oshii's famous shots. Which leads me to say, Oshii's damned good at making striking visuals that translate to the big screen well whether it's animated or live action.
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labsenpai
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Re: What are you Watching?

Post by labsenpai »

Even if you are the biggest Oshii fan on the planet, a second scene of feeding a basset hound is too much.
Also, more budget should have gone to the "mecha" team (only 2 robots) and the "VR" guys. If Shirow drew it decades ago you'd think modern CGI could render a facsimile.

At least Berserk, Bahamut, and Boku no Hero are back on TV :)
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Re: What are you Watching?

Post by DKop »

labsenpai wrote:Even if you are the biggest Oshii fan on the planet, a second scene of feeding a basset hound is too much.
Also, more budget should have gone to the "mecha" team (only 2 robots) and the "VR" guys. If Shirow drew it decades ago you'd think modern CGI could render a facsimile.

At least Berserk, Bahamut, and Boku no Hero are back on TV :)
I thought the basset hound was the best part of that whole movie. It looked kinda thin, so it needed all the love and food it could get from Batou.
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