I really like this show now. The characters and situations feel natural, and their motivations are pretty earnest. The direction this week felt better than last week, and scenes moved at a brisk pace. The music and singing is really pretty good, and I like how the dynamics are panning out. The way they cut to the ED was really well done too, and it's a smart way to make invested viewers not skip the ED since the song continues. Will definitely be watching more of this show. PA Works is redeeming themselves pretty quickly with Hanairo and this. Canaan and the Layton movie are almost a distant memory now!
Dude, if you spent time watching Shining Hearts that you could have been spending watching Lagrange because of me I'd have to self-flagellate with barbed wire.
Still, sneak in an episode every now and again and you'll eventually get my rage!
Dude, if you spent time watching Shining Hearts that you could have been spending watching Lagrange because of me I'd have to self-flagellate with barbed wire.
Still, sneak in an episode every now and again and you'll eventually get my rage!
There are many bad parts in Angel Beats but there are also good parts. I also really liked the ending. It's not in any sense a classically bad show, it's just full of randomly bad bits in between the bits which aren't bad and sometimes good. I think it is incredibly inconsistent, especially early on when they are throwing in some really bad melodrama for no apparent reason.
Dusk Maiden of Amnesia 3:
I really like the OP and ED of this show. The animation style actually works well with the content of the show as well. Normally SHAFT just crams their style into whatever they are animating and it just doesn't fit at all or make any sense. Here it actually works, because the style is consistent with the material. The various main characters are all likeable too.
I'm still not sure about ghost moe though. Well, for a dead girl she certainly has stonking great tits.
Well, I was sufficiently curious about the SHAFT-isms in this show to look up the director. It seems that Shin Oonuma has worked quite a bit with Shinbo and also directed some shows for SHAFT, notably ef: A Tale of Memories. ef has been on my watchlist forever and ever, I suppose I'll have to get around to it.
It's one of those weird shows where it felt like it was rushed to hell but at the same time didn't even have enough material to cover the 12 episodes it had.
I'm not sure how to concisely describe that phenomenon.
It's one of those weird shows where it felt like it was rushed to hell but at the same time didn't even have enough material to cover the 12 episodes it had.
I'm not sure how to concisely describe that phenomenon.
The music was good. I appreciated the stories and backgrounds of several characters. The bits and pieces of stories that it had to tell was pretty awesome and it immersed me into their world. Sure the animation wasn't great and the overarching storyline sucked - fuck you crappy pacing - but I took it more of a book containing multiple stories. From that perspective, I found Angel Beats! to be a worthwhile time spent. I mean, I really enjoyed Otonashi's background so.. yeah. The only reason I'll hate something is because I absolutely cannot overlook one or a few aspects of the show. For me, Angel Beats! didn't really have anything that made me feel that way so I don't mind it. Therefore that's why AnimeGAF and I will never see eye to eye on this issue imo.
See when people posts shots of AB! I really don't care because that's only one aspect of the show. While for some it matters a lot, it's not so bad that I can't tolerate it. As such it doesn't ruin it for me. For others, it does.
See when people posts shots of AB! I really don't care because that's only one aspect of the show. While for some it matters a lot, it's not so bad that I can't tolerate it. As such it doesn't ruin it for me. For others, it does.
See when people posts shots of AB! I really don't care because that's only one aspect of the show. While for some it matters a lot, it's not so bad that I can't tolerate it. As such it doesn't ruin it for me. For others, it does.
There is a problem with moe, and it has to do with the fact that you have to operate under the assumption that whatever it is, that aspect is desirable to members of your audience. Normally this isn't a problem. However I'm still trying to wrap my brain around ghost moe and right now it's more unsettling than it is adorable. I guess it's a good thing that Yuuko isn't yandere, because how would you stop her if she did decide to start killing everyone?
Tari Tari 2 - This was pretty good, I really enjoyed the whole situation of the episode, and the character interactions continue to be enjoyable to watch, the last few minutes were surprisingly pretty epic too, although I'm always a sucker for stuff with singing!
My only problem is I'm actually finding it hard to keep up with all the characters and figuring out who's who. The only names I remember at this point are konatsu and sakai.
Speaking of which, the pacing feels very fast for a series like this. It definitely feels more plot-driven then say a Satojun SOL series like Aria or Tamayura, but it still manages to preserve that laid-back SOL feel despite that.
Direction-wise definitely felt a lot better than the previous episode, but I found it funny the rehearsal scene was a bunch of stills. This show would probably be way better if it was handled by better staff / director, but the characters and script are carrying it pretty well so far, so it's all good!
Season is off to a fun start with this and Natsuyuki Rendezvous mmmm.
There is a problem with moe, and it has to do with the fact that you have to operate under the assumption that whatever it is, that aspect is desirable to members of your audience. Normally this isn't a problem. However I'm still trying to wrap my brain around ghost moe and right now it's more unsettling than it is adorable. I guess it's a good thing that Yuuko isn't yandere, because how would you stop her if she did decide to start killing everyone?
Yeah, that was okay. Sucks that they're going to have to waste time
converting Muginami all over again
, but otherwise I see lots of space battles and chillaxin' in Kamogawa and thinly-veiled yuri in S2's future so it's all good. The production values don't appear to have dropped, but it's really glaringly noticeable that both the OP and ED reused footage from S1's OP and ED and that just reeks of desperation to cut costs. I can't say that I blame them given how bomba the show is, but it's still pretty lame. At least the ED had a couple of fun parodies of the first ED:
New OP music sucks (still performed by Ranka, though, I guess they had her under contract for both seasons), new ED music is more desperate cost-cutting by making Ishihara Kaori perform in-character as Madoka. It's a jazzed up talky-singy version of the Jersey Club theme, and it's surprisingly fun to listen to.
I don't know if there's too much more to speculate on in terms of plot as all of the Le Garite/KISS confrontations were pretty much designed to get Lan and Muginami back on Earth. I have no idea how any of this is going to resolve considering that Dizelmine (and Le Garite, by extension) is being depicted as an asshole more than ever and Madoka has always been pretty neutral about this whole alien business anyway. I suppose we'll be relying on the FLOWER of RIN-NE to bring about universal peace........or something. Have they seriously dropped the issue of
Lan being permanently psychologically damaged by her mind rape
The biggest problem with Angel Beats writing is that nothing is earned. They ham-handedly attempt to force you to sympathize with the characters by giving them ludicrously tragic backstories that don't even always make sense(
why did the robbers kill not-Haruhi's family but not her?
). The episode with
the goofy marriage at the end
is a prime example of how the series mishandles all attempts at inducing tears with clumsy dialogue and rushed resolutions. And a director who's tone-deaf doesn't help things.
There is a problem with moe, and it has to do with the fact that you have to operate under the assumption that whatever it is, that aspect is desirable to members of your audience. Normally this isn't a problem. However I'm still trying to wrap my brain around ghost moe and right now it's more unsettling than it is adorable. I guess it's a good thing that Yuuko isn't yandere, because how would you stop her if she did decide to start killing everyone?
is a prime example of how the series mishandles all attempts at inducing tears with clumsy dialogue and rushed resolutions. And a director who's tone-deaf doesn't help things.
It's one of those weird shows where it felt like it was rushed to hell but at the same time didn't even have enough material to cover the 12 episodes it had.
I'm not sure how to concisely describe that phenomenon.
I think one lead to the other. It's been a while and I've mostly purged the show from my memory, but the big problem was that you could see the arcs developing... but what should have taken several episodes was basically crammed into one.
Rather than do the hard thing - edit - they decided to try to rush through as much as possible.
----
Tari Tari
Oh hey, it's a show about show choirs but without the stupid Ryan Murphy-isms that ruins any show he touches! That's why I was wondering why it felt a bit familiar.
I suppose for obvious reasons, I thought this shot was cute:
It's probably the closest that an anime will get to
admitting that teens may have sex in Japan
. lol
But, I'm in. I think it's pretty damn obvious why Sakai doesn't want to play music at this point (and why all the teachers/adults around her are trying to push her to get back into music), so I'm looking forward to seeing how that plays out. Good times.
centering the entire second half of the series on a love story involving one character that is only developed via convenient flashback, and another character that isn't even a character.
EDIT - Then again,
EVERY character save maybe Yui was developed solely via convenient flashback, so this isn't a Otonashi-specific problem
I don't get it either, but it's mostly because Key wrote it, and a bunch of people at animegaf have made unfairly hating on Key one of their primary missions on this site, essentially. This mostly comes out towards Kanon (Kanon 2002 particularly, but '06 somewhat as well) and Angel Beats, but it's almost all completely unfair and ridiculous.
Of course, I'm biased the other way -- Kanon '02 is one of my favorites, really ugly art or no, and Angel Beats is one of the best animes of recent years -- but if you listened to the general animegaf Key-hate, you'd think that Key were actually bad writers, or something, when actually, they're quite good writers, and the hate is entirely, 100% a matter of opinion. But don't expect most of them to every admit THAT obvious fact.
As for the stupid "look at this screenshot, it's so awful" garbage, seriously, why do you care so much? I sure don't. If screenshot composition bothers you so much that you'd literally hate on an entire series just because you dislike how some of the CG composition looks... seriously, I find that pretty ridiculous. Ad besides, there are a million animes that look far worse, and most of those "bad" shots don't look bat at all. First example of that, that shot of the stairs from the last AB argument. I still have no clue why you people were bashing it, that shot looked fine. As for the "room" ones, sure, that looks a little silly, but seriously, who cares... the visuals overall look great. The show was high budget and looks it, with good visuals and plenty of flash. But visuals certainly don't matter anywhere remotely near as much as story, writing, and characters. That's the kind of stuff that matters the most, and that's Key's greatest strength.
... Seriously, all the griping about minor visual effects issues (some of which exist, and some of which don't) is just absurd.
Now, sure, Key isn't for everyone. It is true that their thing is trying to make you sad, and feel bad for the characters. That's what they do, and they do it well. And sure, not everyone's going to like that. But how does that translate into and that means everything they do is horrible"? That's ridiculous too. Just because you dislike the style it doesn't mean it's bad. And on that note, Key is very popular just about anywhere else online (in anime-fan circles) for plenty of good reasons, mostly related to their skill at writing. There are plenty of things I dislike, but I always try to separate things that I dislike for purely opinion reasons, from things I think are objectively bad... too few of the Key and AB-bashers here make much of an attempt at that.
But, is Angel Beats emotionally manipulative? Yes, of course it is. The goal with Angel Beats was to make a show that mixed Key drama with comedy and some action. Key had a lot more experience with Key-style tragic drama than with comedy and action, and it does show, but all three elements were done more than well enough to hold the show together quite well, and it was interesting to see a somewhat different Key show -- it was their first anime that wasn't harem, for instance. Progress!
Also, yes, it has a fantastic ending. I was really worried about how it'd end, and a different ending could have completely ruined it for me, but instead, the ending affirmed the value of the whole series. I loved it, couldn't have been better. Endings matter to me. That's probably the main reason why AB ended up second on my 2010 best anime list, because I didn't like Katanagatari's ending nearly as much... (my #1 was of course Sora no Woto, which was far and away the best anime series of the year.)
Story, characters, script, writing, some of the humor, and some of the action. It'd be harder to say the things I didn't like about it, really. My main complaint would be that it IS a bit over-depressing at times, which can be hard to get through. Apart from that though, fantastic all around.
centering the entire second half of the series on a love story involving one character that is only developed via convenient flashback, and another character that isn't even a character.
EDIT - Then again,
EVERY character save maybe Yui was developed solely via convenient flashback, so this isn't a Otonashi-specific problem