Anime and Manga Discussion Thread

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Isekai is technically just someone from our world to another. Like Escaflowne is an isekai (and I really like Escaflowne). D&D Cartoon would be isekai as well. Tanya the Evil is also a more recent isekai that isn't "video game" themed.

I just think there has been this crazy glut of video game themed ones recently that is driving me nuts.

That said, I did like Re:Creators which is a reverse isekai (people from fictional universes (manga/anime/light novels/video games) start appearing in modern day Japan).
 
Oh, also there was a gag manga isekai that I liked that I read some of recently called "A Story about a Cat Reincarnated in a Different World Where There are no Cats."

It is what it says on the tin. Cat is hit by car, goddess reincarnates it in the same form in a fantasy adventure world where cats don't exist. There is nothing special about this cat except it is a cute cat. It's a very dumb comic but I'll admit I got some laughs out of it.
 
Isekai is technically just someone from our world to another. Like Escaflowne is an isekai (and I really like Escaflowne). D&D Cartoon would be isekai as well. Tanya the Evil is also a more recent isekai that isn't "video game" themed.

I just think there has been this crazy glut of video game themed ones recently that is driving me nuts.

That said, I did like Re:Creators which is a reverse isekai (people from fictional universes (manga/anime/light novels/video games) start appearing in modern day Japan).

Hmm, so then that goes back to the beginnings of fantasy fiction, and mythological stories of folks entering the Otherworld/Underworld/Dream-Time


I guess I've seen/read a ton of Isekei then.
 
Just started watching Demon Slayer, the surprise hit anime/manga of 2020 that was the first to unseat One Piece at the top of sales and Shonen Jump's reader polls in 30 years. It's...allright so far. Not sure what the big deal is yet, but Samurai fighting Demons in Fuedal Japan is a solid enough premise I can get behind.
 
Demon Slayer would be a better anime if it knew when to cut gags. There is one character where every single one of his gags is WAY too long. I did watch it all the way through though. My older son though has read all the manga and tells me I should read it. I probably will eventually.
 
Demon Slayer would be a better anime if it knew when to cut gags. There is one character where every single one of his gags is WAY too long. I did watch it all the way through though. My older son though has read all the manga and tells me I should read it. I probably will eventually.

I read the first volume of the manga and it has far less forced humour and the clumsy characterization shorthand you see in the anime.
 
A lot of anime tends to drive certain themes and tropes from hits into the ground for obvious commerical reasons.

That's why I find myself enjoying manga more consistently, there is more room for more personal and idiosyncratic material to get made.
 
A lot of anime tends to drive certain themes and tropes from hits into the ground for obvious commerical reasons.

That's why I find myself enjoying manga more consistently, there is more room for more personal and idiosyncratic material to get made.

Ever read Pandora Hearts?
 
That's why I find myself enjoying manga more consistently, there is more room for more personal and idiosyncratic material to get made.

Yeah, Manga has a lot more room for creativity and shows it in what comes out.
 
I only really got exposed to Anime back in 2019. The guy introducing me was really into Isekai, I liked Overlord, but after watching some of "That Time I Got Turned Into A Slime" I began to notice all the tropes. Just based on reading some of the summaries, the Overlord light novels seem to be a lot more in depth and thought provoking.
On the manga side, I've read 2 mangas, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Card Captors Sakura. Both well over a decade ago now.
 
Ever read Pandora Hearts?

Not yet but it is on my list because EmperorNorton EmperorNorton mentioned it sometime!

Just grabbed the first volume on my Kindle after checking out some of the artwork, a dark play on Alice in Wonderland sounds promising.

Is the anime based on it any good?
 
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It was a relatively faithful adaptation until it ran out of Manga material to adapt and so tacked on its own ending.

Also just to say, don't watch it until you've read the manga, because it does spoil a reveal that you don't get until much further into the manga.
 
The issue with Anime is that it's built on a formula which sometimes shifts, but it follows them very strictly, which is what the Japanese audience wants. This is why almost all Shonen (Boy's Action) protagonists are often orphans. Something will come along and create the formula that will form the next decade in their stories, like how Love Hina created the Harem genre's tropes that every Harem will now follow. Sword Art Online created the Isekai system.

Thankfully, they''ll mix up the surface traits, to make it seem unique, but if you know what you're looking for you can see the similarities from genre to genre.
 
Not unlike American superheroes

I find if you really want to break free of the tropes in your anime viewing experience , your best bet is working backwards to the early 90's and the 80's Golden Age of anime, when there was no assumed audience and there was much more variety.

Some good palette cleansers I recommend -

Robot Carnival - essentially the anime equivalent of Disney's Fantasia...but with Robots.
Ghost in the Shell (the original film) - philosophical cyberpunk
Serial Experiments: Lain - um, also philosophical cyberpunk, but very, very different
Vampire Hunter D - Gothic Pulp, sorta Solomon Kane meets Philip K dick by way of Castlevania
The Sea Prince and the Fire Child - Romeo & Juliet if they were Mythological Gods, sorta? It's weird. Most of this stuff is weird. The best anime seems to defy descriptions.
Angel's Egg - nope, can't even come up with a description. This one borders on the anime equivalent of an experimental film, like David Lynch scripted a post apocalypse cartoon.
They Were Eleven - almost like an Agatha Christie Mystery in space with Dystopian themes, but way weirder. I'm not sure I can convey how weird these are.


Also, a more recent one which is delightfully different - The Ancient Magus Bride. Great to watch after Full Metal Alchemist, as the main "villain" is a thinkly-vieled Elric brother pastiche, if his origin was a thousand times more twisted. Unlike FMA though, this isn't an action series, but a slow, almost meditative, picaresque fantasy weaving together elements of Pastoral pre-industrial Britain and Celtic folklore with possibly the best character arc ever put to screen of any genre.
 
Not unlike American superheroes
Kinda? Not in the same way, though.

The Tropes in Superheroes is in the situations that come up. Like two heroes (Or teams) meet, there's a misunderstanding and they fight until they realize where the real villains are, and go after them. It's the characters that make them different and unique each time it happens.

In Anime it's the characters that embody the tropes. The good hearted idiot, the always hungry martial artist, the first girl (Who often ends up being the main hero's love interest. Here it's the situations that change it up.

I'd also like to point out that tropes and formulas are not bad things. It's HOW they're used that determines that.
I find if you really want to break free of the tropes in your anime viewing experience , your best bet is working backwards to the early 90's and the 80's Golden Age of anime, when there was no assumed audience and there was much more variety.
Actually, the tropes were already there, but no one in America was aware of them. But that list is a good primer of Seinen anime, which tends to be more mature and aimed for the 16+ audience, which means they can experiment a bit outside the box.
 
Also, a more recent one which is delightfully different - The Ancient Magus Bride. Great to watch after Full Metal Alchemist, as the main "villain" is a thinkly-vieled Elric brother pastiche, if his origin was a thousand times more twisted. Unlike FMA though, this isn't an action series, but a slow, almost meditative, pastoral fantasy weaving together elements of Pastoral pre-industrial Britain and Celtic folklore with possibly the best character arc ever put to screen of any genre.

I've been reading the manga and enjoying it. Not sure how the anime compares though/what has changed/etc.
 
Kinda? Not in the same way, though.

The Tropes in Superheroes is in the situations that come up. Like two heroes (Or teams) meet, there's a misunderstanding and they fight until they realize where the real villains are, and go after them. It's the characters that make them different and unique each time it happens.

In Anime it's the characters that embody the tropes. The good hearted idiot, the always hungry martial artist, the first girl (Who often ends up being the main hero's love interest. Here it's the situations that change it up.

The Cape, the Cowl, the Brick, the Archer, the Amazon, the Super Scientist, etc. Character archetypes in comics abound. I don't think I could even list all the Superman etsy's before running out of text space alloted to one post.


Actually, the tropes were already there

Some were being created, but on the whole there's a much bigger variety in anime premises and storylines of the 80s/early 90s, without the reliance on established tropes outside out of a few very specific genres. I find the most common tropes of modern anime are relatively recent, originating in the early aughts, especially now that Isekei and Shonen have pretty much taken over the landscape.
 
Also, another more recent manga that I think is really interesting (it has an anime but again, I haven't watched it so I can't compare) is Children of the Whales.

(I've been reading a lot of manga/western comics recently because I tend to do it before I go to sleep, and if my wife has gone to bed before me I can't watch anime in bed :tongue:)
 
Oh, another Anime/Manga that I really enjoyed was Wotakoi. It's a comedy/romance manga about 4 adult otaku in Japan who have functioning adult jobs and their relationships and how they interact with the world. One of the things I like about it is that it kind of ditches a lot of the anime romcom bullshit because the characters are actually adults. Like they still have some emotional issues at times, but it is dealt with in a much less "teen" way.

It's nice just to see geeky adults being geeky with each other and stuff. And it's cute. (With this one I can suggest the anime, it's just a solid adaptation of the first bits of the manga).
 
The Cape, the Cowl, the Brick, the Archer, the Amazon, the Super Scientist, etc. Character archetypes in comics abound. I don't think I could even list all the Superman etsy's before running out of text space alloted to one post.

Without getting too deep into it, the similar archetypes exist in Anime. The weapon master (which is broader version of the Archer), the Super Scientist shows up everywhere, although in Anime they tended to be support types. The Amazon was VERY big in late 80's to 90's anime, with Priss Asagiri of Bubblegum Crisis and Deunan Knute of Appleseed being notable ones. Braireos Hecatonchire is the Brick, but those tend to show up a lot in fighting anime...

The Cowl is represented by all the Ninja. The Cape is the only who is uniquely Western.

Again, there are a lot of parallels in almost all media. It's the 'direction' they focus on that makes the telling uniquely theirs.

Some were being created, but on the whole there's a much bigger variety in anime premises and storylines of the 80s/early 90s, without the reliance on established tropes outside out of a few very specific genres. I find the most common tropes of modern anime are relatively recent, originating in the early aughts, especially now that Isekei and Shonen have pretty much taken over the landscape.
As someone who watched a lot of anime, I'd disagree with the variety in terms of premise/storyline, it was more in the 'expression' if I'm using the word right. If you break it down, there were a lot that had similar plots, but how they played out was very strikingly different.

Still, this is a pointless divergence that I apologize for even starting.

At the end of the day, I happen to like both mediums a lot.
 
I've been feeling like death today (got the vaccine yesterday, my immune response is kicking my ass), so I've been laying in bed all day so I decided in my addled state to rewatch Utena.

And honestly, even having watched it before, even having tried to explain to my older son how wild it is, I still get surprised by just HOW wild it is.
 
It says a lot in regards to what I think about Macross Delta when I'm only excited about the upcoming Delta movie because it will have a brand new Macross Frontier short animation attached to it called Labyrinth of Time.

This (what I assume is a teaser for the short) popped up recently on YouTube.



Short videos are provided for the more recent songs Gorgeous and Good Job. The final part features some new visualization for Wings of Goodbye.
 
GAK! DECULTURE!


Robotech.com has a Macross Frontier image on the page. Hell has officially completely frozen.

It won't let me read the story without signing up, and everytime I try to sign up it tells me I failed the security test
 
It won't let me read the story without signing up, and everytime I try to sign up it tells me I failed the security test
Oh, duh. Well, just use Tulpa Girl's news link in the other thread. It's better anyway.

I got past the whole signup bullshit by just clicking login, which made the annoying pop up disappear but didn't force me to log in. I haven't had a Robotech.com account in ages.
 
Watched a lot of short, 13 episode anime series recently

Spice & Wolf was the standout. Really fascinating series focused around, of all things, medieval commerce. Impressed enough to order the light novels to continue with the story where the anime left off.

Tonikawa: Over the Moon for You is an odd one, a romance series that I can only describe as cute with more cute on top, wrapped in a cute burrito and smothered in cute sauce. It involves a young boy who meets a girl and falls instanty in love with her, and when he goes to talk to her, gets hit by a vehicle in the street. Before he's taken to the hospital, he asks her to marry him. And then he is in the hospital for weeks, before going home to his apartment, when, in the middle of the night, she shows up with a marriage certificate and drags him down to the local registrar.

My Next Life as a Villainess is kinda like an Isekei, where a girl becomes suddenly aware that she's been reincarnated as the main villain in a romance book series, and goes about doing what she can to change her fate at the end of the story, gathering a reverse harem along the way.

In Another World with My Smartphone is an Isekei with the main premise obvious from the title. It was...pretty bad, honestly, the main character being mostly a black hole of charisma, gaining a harem of fantasy girls by virtue of being exceedingly bland. I gave up around episode 6.

Gantz was really, realy good. I hope we get more of the anime, because I really don't have time for the manga. I was pointed towards it by this video, so I misewell let SuperEyepatch Wolf sell people on it better than I can:

 
Tonikawa: Over the Moon for You is an odd one, a romance series that I can only describe as cute with more cute on top, wrapped in a cute burrito and smothered in cute sauce. It involves a young boy who meets a girl and falls instanty in love with her, and when he goes to talk to her, gets hit by a vehicle in the street. Before he's taken to the hospital, he asks her to marry him. And then he is in the hospital for weeks, before going home to his apartment, when, in the middle of the night, she shows up with a marriage certificate and drags him down to the local registrar.
Awwwww.
 
I really like to read solo leveling manga online and Well to be honest it is the best manga so far that I ever read and I love to know more so please author don't stop this manga for at least a century and also waiting for when it is going to release its anime version.
 
Welcome to The Pub P peter45

Haven't heard of Solo Leveling before, what's it about?
 
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