General Anime Discussion

It’s weird that the anime-original portions are more interesting than the Manga stuff.

She’s the only reason to watch the show really. The only character who had a consistent and somewhat developing personality.

I didn’t even see it as a tearjerker, or much of a drama. It was clear that it wanted to be both, but didn’t want to move away from the pleasant atmosphere it had already created…
The finale still managed to get me somehow, and as I said before, I think it’s because of the show’s simplicity, so maybe not focusing heavily on drama gave the ending more impact.

I just wish they kept it up 'til the season’s finale. It kinda whimpered out in my opinion. The mid episodes really showed what potential the Punchline story can have, so it’ll be interesting to see what the VN does, but the anime didn’t end in a satisfying way.
The OP was catchy though~ I’m going to hear it live soon A It’ll be cool.

I still don’t even know what the drama was in her arc. They never actually went over it.
I’m looking forward to the manga though.

Oh, I knew I missed something from my post! I’ll have to add that.

Remember what uncle Naoki said over and over again? Never shut off your brain when watching Yahari. NEVER. It’s often hard to understand and the reasons behind character’s actions are non-obvious. So you need to try and figure out what it is. It’s part of the fun. If you’ve decided to give up, read some explanations on discussion topics (while avoiding the shipping wars posts -_-) or directly ask people who understand it - me for example.
Don’t say there’s nothing behind it. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. There’s A LOT behind it, it’s complicated and it’s not spoon-fed to the viewers, because that’s how it is in real life as well. There’s a lot of subtle hints, yes subtle. The story is told solely from Hachiman’s point of view - and he can’t read thoughts, though he’s good (not perfect) at analyzing that stuff.

The first season was more forgiving in that matter. If you stop thinking there, the show will look like a generic romcom, which, I guess, you can still get some standard entertainment from. You’d still be missing about 40% of the entertainment, though.
The second season is more serious and purpose-driven. The stuff you need to figure out holds like 85% of the entertainment value and it’s really good stuff.

srsly, ask away. I can explain everything most of this series’ events, character motivations, thoughts, etc… I spent a lot of time figuring this stuff out and I enjoyed every second of it.

Technically, it’s impossible to shut your brain off. I mean, unless you die or something.

While figuring things out can be fun, and the only stories I am really invested in have been ones where you can figure out so much from little bits of content, KH and Kara no Shoujo being great examples of this, Zoku was a bad example of this.
You don’t make the main gripping drama of a series something that has no background to it. Again, I have little memory of season 1, so maybe that’s why I don’t see it, but there was no explanation or reasoning for any of the drama at the end. It was stupid.
Subtle hints don’t matter if there is no reason to feel compelled enough to explore them. KH had me figuring out the whole plot around a character named Ventus, who hadn’t even been given a name yet, solely from a crappy DS game. Kara no Shoujo had me stopping every few scenes and checking over all the notes I had collected, just because a little thing appeared on-screen, or a character spoke in a weird way.
Zoku had none of that. There was no reason to explore anything. There was no conclusion to any of it, it came out of nowhere, and the characters didn’t treat whatever the drama was with the respect you’d expect from a cast. All it did was draw out the anime longer than it needed to be drawn out for, ending it with an episode that I didn’t even know was the finale until I checked it off my watching list. The last few episodes just felt empty, adding in some random unknown drama because it ran out of material.

Again, if it was something intriguing, I would, but the anime never introduces a reason to care. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to care for, because it’s never mentioned.
Was it something introduced in season 1? Because that may be my problem, and another reason why it’s stupid to not flashback to a story that was told 2 years ago.

If I don’t perceive something, how can it exist? Existence is born when I am aware of it.
It’s not there. This anime is a shell that tries hard to be smarter than it actually is.

Not sure I can agree with that either. Sure, he’s the protag, but I never felt like it was his story.

Ok, let me get the most annoying point out of the way first.

While this kind of ‘logic’ does have some philosophical value, it gets annoying really fast in cases like this one, because it’s drifting into the “my opinion is absolute and the only true one” area, which is, as you know, disrespectful and absolutely inaccaptable in a discussion. If you’re engaging in a conversation with people, you obviously have to acknowledge their existence.
And while you’re probably just trolling at this point, let me get one thing straight in case you’re actually serious:
You are NOT the only existence in the universe. You are not the only one who can perceive the world.
You can’t perceive nuclear radiation, but it’ll give you cancer regardless, so instead of being stubborn, you’d better listen to what the guy with the Geiger counter says.
So once again, just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.
It’s like I’m trying to show you my red teddy bear in order to prove that I have one and you just keep your eyes closed while shouting “I don’t see a single teddy bear! You’re a liar, Nick!”

Now back to the topic.

When something is happening and you don’t understand it, you’re supposed to want to gain understanding of it. If you can’t figure it out from the hints, it’s due to your inability. If you refuse to think about it, it’s due to your unwillingness. Don’t blame these things on the anime. It wasn’t tailored specifically for you. It’s not automatically bad because you were unable - or refused to - understand it. You decided not to make the minimum investment. There’s plenty of people who felt ‘compelled enough’ to use their brain (or ask other people) and capable enough to figure things out. If you don’t care enough about the series to even try, then I guess it didn’t match your tastes enough. It’s not the anime’s fault.

You have no right do judge something without gaining understanding of it.
From my point of view, the biggest problem here is that you already went into the first season with the wrong attitude and the wrong perception and refused to change them (despite my warnings) when you went into season 2. I’ll say it again: Yahari is NOT a regular silly romcom and series like Oreimo are nowhere close to it.

If you care for the characters, you also care for what’s going on with them. If you don’t care enough, why watch the second season? If you don’t remember what happened, (which is again, your inability,) why not go read a summary or rewatch some episodes?

Though it’s not so much about “What happened” but more about “What kind of people are certain characters?” (Unfortunately, that’s not something you can convey through flashbacks.) For example, the protagonist, Hachiman, can solve problems efficiently and effectively, however, he often disregards people’s feelings in the process and he’s fine with sacrificing himself (which, again, hurts the feelings of those close to him) as many times as it takes. Yukino hates lies. Both Yukino and Hachiman despise superficiality. All those factors taken together were the cause for the first conflict, which arised at the end of ep2, season2.

Another example:

First of all, Hayama Hayato’s clique are not bullies. They’re popular kids.
Secondly, this is actually not an unnatural situation if you know what kind of people they are. Tobe is an idiot and he’s super dependent on Hayato. In most cases, he will do as Hayato tells him to. He won’t give up on the girl he’s got a crush on, but he will ask the ‘evil’ kid for advice if Hayato says that’s where he should go. And Hayato knows exactly that Hachiman is capable of “solving” the problem (And unlike most people, he knows Hachiman didn’t actually do anything evil in that flashbacked rooftop scene, since he’s seen through his deception, but went along with it in season 1). He probably had the whole thing planned by the time he entered the room.

Just say the word and I’ll send a detailed explanation of this, or any other situation your way. An explanation for everything that went down in the first to episodes? No problem. I have the answers…

It was a very faithful adaption (apart from skipping over a lot of material) with no anime-original content. The drama was never random or unknown and it was actually shown in a more understandable manner than most things that were kept ambiguous throughout the series. You can see it if you try. I know you won’t, so just ask me.

The ending was a cliffhanger of sorts. It’s unfortunate that there wasn’t more material, but let me assure you of one thing: An anime-original ending would be an absolutely terrible farce in many ways. (In the first place, the story did not end)

I have the answers, Taka. All you have to do is ask the questions… I can help you understand (almost) everything about Yahari…

I was :stuck_out_tongue: It’s fun to get some jabs in. Same for the “shutting your brain off” part.

A viewer generally doesn’t decide to just not invest in a show. I give every show I watch the respect it deserves until it comes to a conclusion, as you’d see if you looked at my posts about Punchline.
There’s a difference between not wanting to do something, and having no reason to do something.
I will blame the anime. The job of an anime, first and foremost, is to entertain. If it fails to do that, then it’s not the fault of the viewer, it’s the fault of the anime. Even if it did not intend to cater to that audience, I won’t excuse it, because excusing mistakes is not part of my review process.

I enjoyed the show, up until they introduced a drama that was empty. It didn’t ever make me want to look around and see if there was reason, as it should have done, because it gave me no reason to do so. There was no hook to reach for.
It’s crazy to say, but I really doubt there was anything there, because they never made it seem like there was more behind it all. They just had some kids being dramatic for the sake of it, and there was nothing more.

Why not? I watched the same show you did. I have my own impressions. The whole point of these season summaries is that I give my impression.
Did my impressions cause harm? Did I overstep some boundaries? No, I watched a show and brought up it’s flaws.
Everyone has a right to an opinion, and luckily enough, I am a part of that everyone.

The start of a show should create your attitude and perception. With the first season, I never felt like the show was anything different to another generic show. It was a good generic show, but it was par of course.
With the second season, as I mentioned before, I tried to look for why some people think the first season was something special. And in the confusion of figuring out who is who, and wondering why the characters seem different to what I remember, I didn’t see anything else.

And I have nothing to back you up with. Zoku was a cute show with some bad drama thrown in.

And I do. Yui is a pretty great character at least. She does some dumb stuff sometimes though, but all the others do too.

It was airing. I tend to watch most of the anime that airs in a season. The first season was good, but nothing special, and with Zoku, I could find what that special thing was. Maybe it just made me overly attentive to the bad things~

I shouldn’t have to spend my time rewatching or re-experiencing something I’ve already watched. There was more than just Zoku airing. I’d rather see the new.
I judge shows as a standalone. If a sequel comes out so long after the original, and it doesn’t stand alone, then that’s the anime messing up.

I remember the characters. Hachi is the stubborn guy who is a bit masochistic. Yukino is the stereotypical smart girl who gets cute date scenes. The both of them have the “we have fakes” thing going on, which sometimes starts drama. Yui is the closest to normal of the group. She’s a bit dumb, and doesn’t have good decision making, but she tries.
The three of them make an awkward group who want to get along, but can’t, because muh opinions.

They present this in season two very well. They introduce Hachiman’s character, and there’s a whole arc dedicated to “hey audience! This guy is misguided! Make sure you remember! … Do you remember? Just in case… This guy is misguided!”
The problem there is that his behaviour would have been fine at the start of the story, when it was just a contest to solve cases or whatever the start up plot was, but now there are people who don’t like him doing it, so he can’t.

I know some of the characters are nice enough to depend on someone, but I just remember them as the bullies from season one. I’m not sure what happened to lead them from having minimum awareness of Hachiman to having heart-to-hearts.

But it could have stopped at the end of the previous arc, and then had the next season dedicated to this drama, instead of stopping so abruptly.

I can see the drama, and I know what’s going on. There are enough in-your-face moments to push that home.
I just don’t understand when the drama started, or why it’s happening. They were fine until they suddenly decided to be more awkward than usual. So when watching, it just feels like the show wrapped up the student council thing, forgot it had more episodes, and quickly started a drama that had no real reason to start.

“Of sorts.”
It felt like the end of an episode, but not the end of a season.

I shouldn’t need to. The show aired and finished, and there were many problems. Even if my questions get answered, my experience with the show as it was airing ended on a bad note, and I don’t do follow-up reviews.
The show may have wanted to raise questions, but it was handled abysmally.
There are other shows to care for, that are currently airing, and that I need to keep up with (14 shows at the minimum) so until a further season comes about, Oregairu is off my radar.

Is anyone watching Gakkou Gurashi? I’m liking the anime adaptation very much. They’re really really doing a great job. Also: Yuki best girl.

Yup, episode 1 destroyed me, 2 was still pretty good then 3 was great again. This is currently shaping up to be my favourite anime if the season.

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Watched NonNon yesterday…

It’s wonderful and magic the way you like it the more you watch it… Such beautiful and relaxing episodes… It’ll easily become my favorite anime soon if things keep on like this…

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Fairy Tail became likeable again ~

The road was long but now it’s over. Canon episodes resumed with the Tartaros arc and it’s really good so far. Well, a flashback at the beginning of every episode is kind of boring and shows that they want to save up their budget but it’s still a lot better than all the fillers crap we had during three months…

NonNon Biyori really is a masterpiece in its own way, I can’t think of many shows that just make you feel so at ease, and I’m a sucker for countryside settings so that’s another plus!

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I don’t know why I never replied to this thread before.
Here’s my anime planet account. I was reading the earlier posts and I guess I should use Hummingbird instead :stuck_out_tongue:
http://www.anime-planet.com/users/Rippleshadow/anime
I haven’t updated it in a while so…

I’ll fill this form out, I guess, but it isn’t exclusive to 2015.

Favorite anime: Angel Beats! and Clannad Afterstory :stuck_out_tongue:
For non-Key anime… I like NagiAsu, Ano Hana, Barakamon, and Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun (I think everyone can tell what kind of stories I like, lawl)

Least Favorite anime: VIVIDRED OPERATION UGH
Well, there’s also Vampire Holmes but that doesn’t really qualify as an anime tbh.
Oh, and DRAMAtical Murder. It seriously makes me want to puke.

Favorite moment: Like, every part of Clannad Afterstory from episode 16 onward. Probably others, but specific scenes never come to mind.

Best guy: Marth I don’t know, all of them xD
I love Toudou Jinpachi from Yowamushi Pedal and Kaneki Ken from Tokyo Ghoul

Worst guy: Makoto from School Days and nasty Midousuji from Yowamushi Pedal

Best girl: I really like Shiina from AB! and Celestia Ludenberg from Dangan Ronpa.

Worst girl: Uh, Sekai from School Days

Best cast: DANGAN RONPA AAAAAHHHHHHH and Angel Beats! and Haikyuu!!

Worst cast: Vividred Operation

Guilty pleasure: Attack on Titan and Tokyo Ghoul

Biggest disappointment: Glasslip (which I still gave a 4/5 stars for some reason???)

Unexpected favorite: Clannad (first time I tried watching it I was like “uh no this is too weird”)

Favorite OP: I honestly cannot choose (although the first thing that comes to mind is the Death Parade opening, since it’s been stuck in my head)

Favorite ED: I can’t choose this either

Favorite Soundtrack: Clannad and AB! (Key OST are the only ones I bother paying attention to)

Late to the show: (favorite anime from before 2015 that you only watched this year.) I haven’t watched much this year tbh. One thing I was really late to the shows for was Neon Genesis Evangelion, but I watched that at least a year ago.

Looking forward to in the future: SnK season 2, Haikyuu!! s2, anything that is getting a second season of something I like, anything by KyoAni or P.A. Works really.

So yeah. I really love anime that focus on the characters more than the plot. I love the feels anime.
I HATE magical girl anime (I’ve only seen MSMM, Sailor Moon, parts of Tokyo Mew Mew, and Vividred Operation but I don’t think I can take anymore). I also don’t really like Shounen anime that much…
And episodic anime are just bleh.

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Lyrical nanoha should change your mind about this. The new season has been a let down but I enjoyed the first 3 quite a bit.

I really enjoyed hell girl and the world god only knows but yeah I see how people don’t like them.

I’ve heard Lyrical Nanoha is good, I’ve just been very doubtful it will appeal to me ^^"

I’ve seen the World God only Knows, and I thought it was okay. Because I liked Keima. It was kind of boring, but the characters were good.

A-P is the good one. Hummingbird is just the new popular thing, like MAL was.
The awkward thing about the three is their purpose. MAL is all about noting and sharing a list of the anime you have seen, and since it’s the most used of the sites, it’s the first to fill in show summaries and bring in reviews. It lives off of popularity, so all of the information on the site comes in a quick burst, and then tapers off.

Hummingbird focuses more on discovery than logging. It has more of a modern design, and focuses more on the friendship/community aspect. Whereas MAL was created to help anime watchers, Hummingbird exists to create anime watchers.
It’s very much a difference in the times. MAL comes from a time when niche things were looked down upon, and it could be considered elitist by modern standards. Hummingbird is a part of the social era.

A-P had already accomplished MAL’s goal before MAL existed, and it had a recommendation system unlike it’s competitors. It really tunnelled in on the community aspect, being a big hub for anime bloggers and the like. However unlike the company-backed MAL, or the modern Crunchyroll, A-P is largely run by a single person. While MAL was growing, A-P was the hobby project of a busy life. The headstart A-P had slowly became less noticeable, until MAL stopped doing anything, and the A-P creator did a massive update on the site, bringing it up to scratch. In recent years it has gone from being a place to list and share anime, to becoming a site for discovering new anime. The tagging system is constantly updated to modern standards, meaning you can find shows, characters and creators with very specific traits. If you like characters with hair over one eye, or characters who play sports, you can find them easily. It has a good consistent amount of reviews coming in. You can also watch anime on the website and update your list on-the-spot, much like the old system Crunchyroll had until 2012, and you can create isolated lists to share. You could make a tearjerkers list, or a comedy list.
It was MAL before MAL, it had the big community-building aspect of Crunchyroll before Crunchyroll, and it had the social sharing and recommending features of Hummingbird before Hummingbird…
But it’s just a hobby project. It’ll probably always be the lesser site.

Or, if you just like lots of info and categorization, Anidb exists.

Transferring everything to a new list can be time consuming, so once you are set on a site, it can be hard to switch.

One of the most, if not THE most soulless show I’ve ever seen. It was so empty that it was creepy.

Mahou Shoujo and Mecha are the two genres I hate. The rest can be good or bad.

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Woah, I never expected such a thorough analysis of MAL, A-P, and Hummingbird. I do have a MAL (which I hardly use because the people there are bleh) but I prefer A-P. I checked out Hummingbird but it doesn’t seem any easier to navigate than A-P does, and I’m not sure I want to put in the effort to transfer my watch list.
Besides, I’m not really looking into finding new anime. I’ve got plenty of stuff on my “to watch” list as it is.

There is absolutely nothing I like about DRAMAtical murder. The music, the colors, the setting, the characters, the premise… It really wasn’t my thing.

Mecha is… I’m not sure how I feel about it. I disliked the mecha aspects about NGE, I quickly became uninterested in Argevollen, and I ended up liking the train wreck called Aldnoah.Zero despite the robots and outer space.
So I guess I dislike the robots, but I can get through a mecha anime if I like the characters.

[quote=“Rippleshadow, post:257, topic:27”]
I guess I should use Hummingbird instead
[/quote]Yes, you should :wink: You and Taka are the only people here with A-Ps, and we all look down on you for it.

Not really.

Actually, I just prefer HB, its no big deal.

Heh… he… h… AAGRHGARHIPEABLNUFFIBIUABRGFIUQEBHUIV

WHY WASNT IT ABOUT GLASS BLOWING???

If I were ever to write a review (anyone who knows me pretty well knows I despise rating and reviewing), I would be on Glasshit. I could rant forever about this show. I know lots of people disagree with my catagorization on this, but I like to call this show the worst mindfuck ever. You should go back and change your rating right now. Ok. Deep breath. Im done for now.

[quote=“Rippleshadow, post:257, topic:27”]
Haikyuu!!
[/quote]Yay~ Someone else who watches Haikyuu! I actually originally watched this just because I play volleyball, but it was actually damn good.

[quote=“Rippleshadow, post:257, topic:27”]
Key OST are the only ones I bother paying attention to
[/quote]You dont worship our lord and savior Hiroyuki Sawano-sama???

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Is it the community you prefer, or the mechanics of the site?

Hehe, it made me angry too. When I finished, I was sitting there regretting everything. Like, it was so stupid and pointless and BORING but I look back on it with fond memories, like I enjoyed watching it.
I’m probably a masochist.

YES OMG YES
At first I was thinking “Ugh, Tumblr is totally hyping this because it’s obviously fujoshi bait” but then it was so GOOD. Sports anime don’t usually interest me (I liked Free!, but it’s about as much a sports anime as K-On! is a music anime) but Haikyuu was so intense.
I mean, sports are really boring to me. But Haikyuu!! made me seriously intrigued about the game and teamwork and stuff. The show revolved around actual technique and strategy unlike the other sports anime I’ve seen.

As hard as it is to believe, I’m not really a fan of music without words. I like to be able to sing along when I’m listening to music. However, Key music makes me really emotional, and so I actually like listening to the background music.
Aldnoah.Zero’s aLIEz was composed by Sawano, right? I absolutely adore that song. But I probably wouldn’t like it so much if there were no lyrics.
I mean, the entirety of the A.Z soundtrack was great, but it’s not something I go out of my way to listen to.

Followed~

I found myself disliking most of the DG cast but also found myself liking Kyoko so much.

I actually enjoyed watching Makoto fuck things up big time. School Days was really fun to watch because of its ridiculous characters.

Do you mean those slice-of-life thingies where the characters do absolutely normal things, and in most cases, nothing at all??

I luvvv them but I haven’t watched one lately =/ The last epsodic animu I watched was Yondemasu Azazel-san! and now it’s my favorite anime ever.

NGE mecha talk was really boring. I’d rather watch my characters fall into despair than watch them talk deeply about robot mechanics which I don’t really understand.

:komue:

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Originally, both. I dont spend too much time on the forums anymore though.

[quote=“Rippleshadow, post:263, topic:27”]
Like, it was so stupid and pointless and BORING but I look back on it with fond memories
[/quote]I look back on it with… um, memories. But hey, I watched it all, so that must be something, right? One of those that you just sit there and think… what the hell is going on… and not in a psychological way. Definitely pointless. One of those that at the very end you think… did any of that matter… did any of that even happen??? But anyways. Yes, you are a masochist.

[quote=“Rippleshadow, post:263, topic:27”]
But Haikyuu!! made me seriously intrigued about the game and teamwork and stuff. The show revolved around actual technique and strategy unlike the other sports anime I’ve seen.
[/quote]Volleyball is a pretty unique sport in the amount it relies on the team aspect. Like, in other sports, if you have one star player, your team as a whole can still be good. In volleyball, you literally cannot win without completely relying on your teammates.

Haikyuu does a pretty great job at showing that. Of course, in order to make it actually interesting and exciting, it did have to pretty much take out the “at least on the highschool level, there are a hella lot more mistakes made” part, but thats kinda the nature of sports anime in general.

Although Im sure many people arent huge fans due to how memematic most of them become, I love Sawano’s vocal tracks. Along with aLIEz, there’s BIOS, Before My Body is Dry (aka DONT LOSE YOUR WAAAAAAAAAY), Blumenkraz, Reluctant Heroes, Call Your Name, Vogel im Kafig, etc.

I also think that, somewhat uniquely, I like Sawano’s music more by itself than while watching the show, so there’s that.

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Have you read/played the Dangan Ronpa VN?
I really disliked the anime adaptation, but I still loved the characters because I gained my love for them by reading Orenronen’s LP of DR.
Lucky for you, most of them got killed off, eh? XD
The only character I really dislike is Yamada. He was a boring and annoying character. I also disliked Maizono a bit but she died first so I didn’t have to deal with her
I love the cast of Super Dangan Ronpa 2 even more, but there is no anime adaptation :c

The end was almost worth it. But I still hated those two. Ugh, they were dumb. I wanted to strangle Sekai so badly.

Nah, I don’t mean that. I was talking about the episodic shows that are REALLY episodic like Mushishi. And a lot of shows that are like “monster of the week” or similar.
All the slice-of-life shows I’ve seen usually have some sort of plot, no matter how trivial or unimportant. I don’t really consider those shows episodic, I guess…

The thing that got me through NGE was Shinji. Everyone hates him but I just felt bad for him. I wanted to make sure he was happy in the end.
But…I still don’t get the end.