Just watched Evangelion 3.33.

I really like the beginning portion of the film, which was filled with awesome space battles, awesome aerial battles and awesome plot twists.

Then it seems like everyone gets hit on the head with an idiot ball.

I can get why NERV did what they did, but the main reason Shinji even failed was because WILLE was a failure at communicating. They would punish him but not tell him why.

I get the feeling that the whole plat could have been resolved before the hour mark if they had just sat down with him and answered his questions.

That, I guess, is the point of the films.

All the while, I felt that Shinji was taking stupid actions but then I realised that he is only 14 years old with no one telling him anything but expecting him to understand everything.

The whole while, the chief emotion that it managed to evoke was that enormous sympathy for Shinji. He's doing stupid stuff but manages to so stupidly sympathetic that you can't help but root for him.

God, I wish Anno would get over his depression already.

Really, Ikari Shinji might be one of the most hated MC's in the anime world, but when you look at the context...

He's obviously been set up from the start.

 

Checked out the first 4 episodes of Suisei no Gargantia. Interesting premise and great production values, but the actual execution is pretty crap. No idea why anyone really thinks particularly highly of it.

 

I did until Ep 3, Ep 4 just made me give up. Same old stuff turned a really interesting premise into me slamming my head against a wall repeatedly in frustration.

Fans will tell you is your fault for expecting mecha action when the series is nothing like that, I'll tell you I went in expecting nothing and was still disappointed.

 

I watched the first two eps but I'm not sure what made it so interesting to people in the first place. Though I don't have much experience with mecha anime.

 

Because it's being written by the Urobutcther. Need I say more?

 

*looks up Urobutcher*

*sees Fate/Zero and Puella Magi Madoka Magic*

Oh.

 

Yeah. Sure you want to stop watching Gargantia after only two episodes?

 

Even these first episodes aren't bad. The typical mecha starts with a boy being forced - either by circumstances or by his father - to ride a mecha to save the world.

Here we have a young trained soldier with his mecha landing on a rather primitive world and trying to adapt. He isn't whining about having to fight and even kill enemies but wondering that someone complains about him vaporizing all these evil pirates.

It starts different, takes place in a different setting than most mecha series and the storyline is done by someone known for good or even great plots.

 

When a series is scheduled for 12 episodes and the first 4 episodes are uninspiring, what reason is there to continue?

 

Well it's actually scheduled for 12 episodes and 3 or 4 OVAs, the first of which is going to be a backstory episode for Ledo showing what his life was like before the first episode.

I have to disagree about the first 4 episodes being uninspiring though, they are pretty much a perfect examples of how to do exposition though 'show not tell' and natural dialogue between the characters. There hasn't been a point yet where a character has just started having a monologue at the camera for exposition, all of the exposition has come from characters actions and dialogue that fits the situations the characters find themselves in.

I really do have to give the script writers for each episode credit for that. Urobuchi may be writing the overall plot of the series, but so far each episode has been written by a different writer and I have to give them credit for keeping the script rather tight so far.

 

Other than ledo, I've seen all these characters before countless times in other anime.

Best part? Looks like it's going to be one of those where they make him one of them a la Avatar.

I'll still watch it though, if for no other reason than the females all having nice pins...

Guehehe

 

I, for one, would like to point out that Puella Magi Madoka Magica was only 12 episodes and the first few were not particularly groundbreaking. And we all know where that went.

 

Yeah, I didn't particularly like Madoka Magica. Besides, even with that show shit got real in less than 5 episodes.

 

Speaking of shit getting real in less than five episodes...
I probably shouldn't embed this.

Well. I guess technically this was the fifth episode. Still, they foreshadowed this.

Yep.

 

Episode 5 of SnG adds swimsuits, skinny girls discussing their concerns about weight gain, and muscled masculine crossdressers to the ever growing list.

I think I'm done with this show for now. Someone let me know when/if it ceases to be borderline retarded.

 

My issue with Titan is that it looks like shit. The chracters are off model whenever you get a profile shot of them, and the animation in general looks like the studio is taking a lot of shortcuts. The anime has gotten me to start the manga, which is awesome, but has made me care even less about the anime adaptation.

 

The thing with Attack on Titan's animation is pretty blatant budget concerns. I'm not going to say they have a small budget, because I don't know, but it's readily apparent that they're being very deliberate with how they animate it. There are a lot of stills and, like you said, some off model shots, but then the sequences with the 3D Gears happen.

It's readily apparent that the studio working on Attack on Titan is spending the vast majority of its time and budget on those sequences, and I can't berate them for it. The 3D Gear sequences are really fucking good.

 

My general take from Kyojin was that the animation within the 3D sequences was absolutely spectacular and what you'd expect from an anime movie more than a series, and the other scenes was just about average. Didn't feel like they took that many shortcuts at all.


And newest episode of Suisei no Gargantia was utterly terrible. How could they wreck it this bad? If they only had enough ideas for 4 episodes, they should have made it into an OVA...

 

Re: Attack on Titan Yeah I actually feel like the studio is probably putting most of its work right now into later episodes, not what's happening right now. It's frustrating because even a well animated info-dump can be fun - but I think the pay off will be worth it.

I actually ended up reading the manga as well because I was getting way interested in the world and whatever. Seems like everything's getting even more fucked up.

 

Having just watched the recent episode, I disagree. The overall theme of the episode falls in line with the theme of the whole show (i.e. a statement for young people just entering the world). Yes, the fanservice and barbecue itself was kinda dumb, and arguably pointless, but Ledo's search for work wasn't.

Here we have a guy who essentially has a masters degree in Alien Extermination, and has spent his entire life striving for it, suddenly thrown into a world where, guess what, that degree and the lifetime of work spent achieving are worth dick. Subtle, Urobuchi is not.