Anime and Manga Discussion Thread

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I hate subtitles on animation.
There are some series I like dubbed, some I like subtitled. For instance I like the Full Metal Panic! dub quite a lot, and Martian Successor Nadesico. But Eva I first watched on old Singapore VCDs back before it was ever released in English so I got used to the JP voices too much.

I did end up drinking all night with the Director's Cut English voice actor for Kaworu (Greg Ayres) once several years back though. He was a cool dude.
 
Also, I read a manga recently called Kasane. Basic plot is there is a girl, she is the daughter of a famous beautiful actress, but she has an incredibly "monstrous" face and is bullied relentlessly for it in school. Her mother died in some kind of incident that she barely remembers, but left a lipstick to her that, when you kiss someone while wearing it, you swap faces with them for a set period of time. The girl (Kasane) wants to follow in her mother's footsteps as an actress, but feels that she can't act with the face she has, so does increasingly messed up stuff to maintain the ability to steal a consistent beautiful face to use for her acting career.

The entire cast is various levels of horrible person with trauma that explains why they are that horrible. There is like, one character in the entire manga that is legitimately a decent person. But it is written in a way that you can really still feel for everyone. And the ending is really good in that the characters have growth that lets them achieve their dreams, while not escaping the karma for all the shit they've done.

I really enjoyed it. A good more character driven story with a lot of growth and twists.
 
There are some series I like dubbed, some I like subtitled.
Only series I prefer dubbed to Dutch is Pokemon. The Dutch voices make it even more ridiculous, which was the whole point of enjoying Pokemon for our circle of friends. Smoking pot may also have had something to do with it.
 
So I just finished reading Billy Bat. I'm a huge fan of Naoki Urasawa's works, loved 20th Century Boys and Monster. And man... Billy Bat is just really good. It is kind of a mystery thriller and the main story spans from like, the 1940s to 2060s, with quick dips into other time periods like Sengoku era Japan, Biblical era Jesus, etc.

The overall story is basically "What if Walt Disney took over the world, but oh, also Mickey Mouse is an ancient being that talks to the artists and has been secretly manipulating all of human history since caveman times".

And it is incredibly wild and mixes in a lot of historical events. I was not expecting to experience manga Lee Harvey Oswald.
 
I discovered ArtisWitch this evening and was utterly mesmerized by it. Particularly episode 4.
 
I stumbled on a complete set of Magical
Girl Apocalypse today on super discount, so I got them. I’d been intrigued by the series years ago, but had been given major spoilers on what I thought was the entire series, so I aboided it until now.

Turns out the person I talked with apparently only read up until the fifth volume and thought it ended there. I’m on volume six, and it’s doing all sorts of things I wasn’t spoiled on, and I’m enjoying it.

My only complaint, one that would be magnified if I’d paid full price, is how unclear some portions are. The author does enjoy pulling out flashbacks to explain things out of nowhere, but some things are just bad storytelling. There’s a continuity error where the Magical Girls’ vulnerability is discovered, ignoring that this was not shown to work earlier. One scene has two characters in hospital beds, the rest of the room empty, and suddenly a third character is there in their own bed. Most annoying,a lengthy combat in volume six that I had no idea who was participating, who was on whose side, or if a car was moving or stationary as its occupants watched the fight.

There’s also a character that seems to be a nod to a DC Comics character, but going into those similarities would involve major spoilers.

Lastly, in the event anyone here reads the American English edition, avoid the fairy tale story at the front of the volume. It’s a major spoiler, and I’ve no idea why it’s there.
 
Magical Girl Apocalypse is interesting. It is definitely flawed though. I've read the whole thing. Its one of those series that if someone asks me what I think I'd be like "if the premise sounds good, sure try it" but I'd probably never suggest to someone out of the blue.
 
Watched Chivarly of a Failed Knight. Pretty good, brought to a satisfying end in one season, but plenty of room for further seasons.

The Good: Fantastic fight scene animations, compelling characters with satisfying arcs, and one of the rare light harem-esque anime with a decisive conclusion where the main character definitively makes his choice, it's got some fan service every few episodes, but it's not every episode and it's not used as a substitute for plot

The bad: it's framed around a tournament arc (some folks must really like these as common as they seem to be in anime these days, I don't really care for them), the two main girls are pretty much Asuka and Rei from Evangelion, in appearance, personality, and even the weird incest aspect - speaking of...

the ugly: in this anime, one of the girls competing for the main character's attention is his sister. No qualifiers to that, no excuses made like adoption or anything, just "hey I'm your sister, want to make out?" This also seems to be turning up a blt often in recent anime (No Game No Life comes to mind) and, well, just kind of a weird fetish to become a trope. I'll write that off as "cultural differences" ( because I don't live in Alabama)
 
Magical Girl Apocalypse is interesting. It is definitely flawed though. I've read the whole thing. Its one of those series that if someone asks me what I think I'd be like "if the premise sounds good, sure try it" but I'd probably never suggest to someone out of the blue.

Agreed. I know no one in my current circle of friends would enjoy it, except for the memeable bits.
 
I am currently watching Digimon Ghost Game, by the way, and let me just say that I approve of the contents of the video below, which asserts that Digimon Ghost Game is the best Digimon Series in 20 years:

 
I’m two volumes in since my last post, and Magical Girl Apocalypse is now making me think multiple people are writing it and don’t communicate with each other, ala some Destroyer novels. This would explain the continuity errors, and the new thing I’ve seen in the last two volumes I’ve read where characters directly or indirectly acknowledge continuity errors or plot inconsistencies.

I’m still enjoying it a lot, though. I just feel like a drinking game should exist for this manga.
 
Getting to the point in One Piece where you can figure out the main mysteries, looking forward to what's coming from Oda in 2022.
 
i've thought about getting into One Piece several times, but I don't have a spare decade at the moment
 
i've thought about getting into One Piece several times, but I don't have a spare decade at the moment
There's also a bit of an issue that the official English translation is only 7/10 or so. This isn't a case of minor stuff but some foreshadowing etc that needs notes and a glossary at the end of each volume to explain.
 
There's also a bit of an issue that the official English translation is only 7/10 or so. This isn't a case of minor stuff but some foreshadowing etc that needs notes and a glossary at the end of each volume to explain.

I had a similar issue with Magical Girl Apocalypse. I think the all-time winner is the portion of the Biohazard/Resident Evil manhua that made it to English, where AFAIK the “translation” was “Make up something that goes with the panels.”

One of these days I should buy the English edition and compare it to the original Chinese editions I have.
 
How big is Anime there in general? Is there a big native cartoon industry?

Lots of imported shows from Japan, Korea or other Asian countries, and a decent sized domestic television industry, but very heavy on low budget reality and variety shows. Anime is something of a staple and they definitely have weebs in Indonesia - Mrs. Nobby-W Nobby-W got into anime via a friend at school. As I understand there's a pretty healthy animation sector in Indonesia, although they mostly subcontract to overseas production companies.

Fun fact: Mrs Nobby-W Nobby-W's ex is a freelance manga artist who was (at one point) working for DC (I think).
 
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Lots of imported shows from Japan, Korea or other Asian countries, and a decent sized domestic television industry, but very heavy on low budget reality and variety shows. Anime is something of a staple and they definitely have weebs in Indonesia - Mrs. Nobby-W Nobby-W got into anime via a friend at school. As I understand there's a pretty healthy animation sector in Indonesia, although they mostly subcontract to overseas production companies.

Fun fact: Mrs Nobby-W Nobby-W's ex is a freelance manga artist who was (at one point) working for DC (I think).

Indonesia had a pretty amazing exploitation film industry in the 80s. The films of Barry Prima and Sisworo Gautama Putra have developed a cult following in the West.

 
For almost two years I’ve been seeing memes with a character drawn in an anime style, and I just assumed the character came from a meme originally. On Sunday I finally learned it’s a character from a mobile game called Girls Frontline, and that two days earlier an anime was released for it.



I watched a trailer for it a few minutes ago, and I had to laugh, as I recognized the voice of one character as the fellow who did the voiceover for the first Silent Möbius trailer back in the 90s.



I am absolutely terrible at recognizing voice actors in different series, and I find it hilarious that the one time I do recognize a voice it’s from something I watched 30 years ago.
 
I watched a trailer for it a few minutes ago, and I had to laugh, as I recognized the voice of one character as the fellow who did the voiceover for the first Silent Möbius trailer back in the 90s.

"Cyber psychic movie. Silent Möbius: The Motion Picture!"
 
Perhaps tangental to anime and manga, but You’re Under Arrest is a series I have little exposure to, but has always intrigued me. Last night I found someone selling DVDs of one of the live-action adaptions, but looking at the box description I’m thinking bootleg.
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Just binge-watched all 3 seasons of "Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?" over the last two days.

Not what I was expecting at all based on the title, got pretty compulsive after the first 3 episodes.
 
I've looked at that a bit but only watched a few minutes of the first episode. Maybe I'll take a look in at it.
 
I've looked at that a bit but only watched a few minutes of the first episode. Maybe I'll take a look in at it.

It takes a couple episodes to get going, but just as a vaguely D&D-ish fantasy series about a young would-be hero gaining in skill over time it is quite entertaining. I was expecting it to be more romance/ecchi, and it really wasn't that at all, even a pretty surprisingly little amount of fanservice. It's really just straight fantasy
 
Honestly I've watched so little anime recently but read so much manga.

The only time I watch anime is when I'm on my rowing machine, but I read manga almost every night at this point because I read it in bed on my tablet and my wife would get mad at me if I had sound on while she was trying to sleep :tongue:.

I remember before I got my CPAP I used to watch so much stuff at night on my tablet cause my wife and I had separate bedrooms because of my horrendous snoring >_>.
 
Reading Berzerk volume 15 and this from Shintaro Kago. His infamous comics are surreal ero-guro combining body horror, satrical black humour and pornography. Much of it very well drawn and more humourous or grotesque than erotic for most sane people.

He notes in the Afterword that he was was often drawing early on for a porn mag (or manga, unclear to me) but as long as he included sexuality they were fine with much of his extreme body horror not only not being sexy but often overtly anti-erotic in effect.

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Been looking for a good book on erotic manga in Japan, at first I got this on Kindle but the translation is terrible, garbled and unprofessional. Although I did read a review online suggesting these flaws are in the original text as well.

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Much, much better is this academic but accessible history recently well translated from the Japanese from the University of Amsterdam press.

Highly recommended, the tone in unsensational and the work covered is wide ranging and uncensored. Fascinating stuff.

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