Current watches

[thepanda]

Was that a twist? It didn't come across as a twist.

[Muphrid]

Maybe I was too vague, or maybe I just have a different idea of what a twist is.  I'll elaborate.

Spoiler: ShowHide

So Kuriyama works/worked for Izumi.  Kuriyama has a hidden agenda we don't see until late, very late, in the season.  Don't get me wrong: the reveal itself is well-executed.  It's clearly planned--with Kuriyama meeting with Izumi at various points that we saw.  So in that sense, the astute viewer might not consider it a twist.

But I definitely think from a structural standpoint, it doesn't work.  No one's in a position to react to it, so the only purpose it serves is exposition.  It invalidates the character development in Kuriyama that we thought we were seeing.

Don't get me wrong: it's clear that great care was taken to ensure that Kuriyama's actions were always consistent with this agenda, but the revelation only serves to explain her actions after the fact.  Doing so takes emphasis off her decision in the first place.  Revealing the true nature of things means we can't follow along with the character's development but must accept who and what she is in one lump sum, as it is told to us.

So maybe it's not enough of a surprise to be a twist.  Still, it awes me how much about the execution of this plot point they did right...while failing to appreciate how the timing of the reveal itself gave no space for it to feel organic or to provoke natural responses.

[thepanda]

Maybe I was too vague, or maybe I just have a different idea of what a twist is.  I'll elaborate.

Spoiler: ShowHide

So Kuriyama works/worked for Izumi.  Kuriyama has a hidden agenda we don't see until late, very late, in the season.  Don't get me wrong: the reveal itself is well-executed.  It's clearly planned--with Kuriyama meeting with Izumi at various points that we saw.  So in that sense, the astute viewer might not consider it a twist.

But I definitely think from a structural standpoint, it doesn't work.  No one's in a position to react to it, so the only purpose it serves is exposition.  It invalidates the character development in Kuriyama that we thought we were seeing.

Don't get me wrong: it's clear that great care was taken to ensure that Kuriyama's actions were always consistent with this agenda, but the revelation only serves to explain her actions after the fact.  Doing so takes emphasis off her decision in the first place.  Revealing the true nature of things means we can't follow along with the character's development but must accept who and what she is in one lump sum, as it is told to us.

So maybe it's not enough of a surprise to be a twist.  Still, it awes me how much about the execution of this plot point they did right...while failing to appreciate how the timing of the reveal itself gave no space for it to feel organic or to provoke natural responses.

I see a twist as something that changes the context of the narrative without much, if any, set up. I am your father and the like.

This, I felt, was a reveal. There was enough hinted at throughout the show to raise questions about said spoiler and that was them putting the last puzzle pieces so you can see the full picture.

Spoiler: ShowHide

 The first thing we see Kuriyama do is stab Akihito. Then we see she has trouble killing actual shades. The show couldn't scream 'this is important you should pay attention to this!' any louder.

Rather than invalidate her character arc I found it solidified it. Her choosing to let Akihiko live feels more meaningful than her just giving up on killing him.

I guess we just have very different ideas about this one.

I'll give you Sakura, though.

Sorry if this reads a little incoherent. My keyboard is acting up.

[Empyrean]

So, I tried a few different anime of the current season.

Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei: http://www.crunchyroll.com/the-irregular-at-magic-high-school

It's pretty good. I've read the manga, and it seems to follow fairly closely. The animation is high quality with a pretty typical modern style. Summarized as Bullshit Ninja Wizard solves his problems with Ninja Wizard Bullshit.

Black Bullet: http://www.crunchyroll.com/black-bullet

I ditched it 3-4 episodes in. Seen a few people calling it "Loli Death Simulator 2014." Little girls fight monsters. I haven't read the LNs, so I don't know how it compares. The pacing seems a little fast. One of the things that annoyed me early on was when the female lead noticed that a person had been infected by the monsters and was going to turn into one of them, she told him that there was nothing she could do for him and let him die a horrible death when his body exploded into a giant spider thing. After that, she fought the spider. She didn't give him a quick and painless death even though with her powers, she could crush him in an instant. Nope, gotta stand there looking sad while he gets town apart in a shower of gore to produce a monster for her to fight. Stupid writing, in my opinion.

Chaika the Coffin Princess: http://www.crunchyroll.com/chaika-the-coffin-princess-

This just didn't catch my interest very well. Characterization seems very shallow. I watched a few episodes and ditched this one as well. Chaika is entertaining, being a bit of a ditz with a magical sniper rifle and a unique way of speaking that doesn't get on my nerves like a lot of verbal tics do, but the other characters are about as flat as they get. I ditched it after a couple of episodes as well.

No Game No Life: http://www.crunchyroll.com/no-game-no-life

I love this anime so much; it's hilarious. The premise is that a brother and sister, both hikikomori and unbeatable god-tier gamers, are drawn into a fantasy world where all disputes are resolved (and their resolution magically enforced) by playing games of various sorts, per the dictate of the god of that world. The art style is pretty unusual; where most anime would use black lines for borders, NGNL uses colored lines. Combined with the bright and unusual coloring of the fantasy world itself, it makes the whole thing look pretty surreal.

The first episode of NGNL isn't really representative of what the series is like. Game theory is a big part of it, at least enough for the main characters to defeat their opponents who are usually cheating or using magic (or cheating with magic). By the end of the third episode it's completely hit its stride, and by the end of the fourth you'll know where the rest of it is going from there. I really can't emphasize enough how much I enjoy this show. Just watch it.

Edit: I tried the NGNL manga. Dropped it in disgust after less than two chapters. It's pedo-pandering bullshit. Dammit Japan, she's fucking eleven.

[JonBob]

I've tried a lot of anime from the current season.

Mahouka:
I'm still gonna finish it, and it's pretty faithful to the light novel, but man, does it seem a bit slow.

No Game No Life:
I also am really enjoying this show. It has enough humor and awesome strategy to keep me interested, and it doesn't pander too much. Also, ahahaha, Empyrean, you got Japan'd!

Black Bullet:
I suppose it says something about me that I'm not turned off by the premise yet. It has decent action, a nicer over-arching plot, and mostly likable characters, but I do think that there's something slightly off.

Captain Earth: http://myanimelist.net/anime/21677/Captain_Earth
Kinda like Star Driver, but less FABULOUS and trying harder to have a more coherent plot and stronger themes (children cleaning up adults crap).

One Week Friends: http://myanimelist.net/anime/21327/Isshuukan_Friends.
In the style of Bunny Drop, and about as sweet. While the two leads are nice and you get those warm fuzzy moments, I really like the backups, like Kiryuu, who's the straight-shooting wingman. Gives Hase a kick in the butt when needed.

Mekakucity Actors: http://myanimelist.net/anime/21603/Mekakucity_Actors
Shaft show of the season. Kinda disjointed, since it's based off of numerous stories shoved together into an overarching plot. So, when you change POV, your experience changes. I thought episode 1 was a bit blah, 2-3 good, 4 out of nowhere, etc. If you can handle the massive context switch to try to hold out for the big plot points, or you like the source material, give it a shot.

[Rukatin]

They weren't separate stories. All the songs in the Kagerou Project were connected in one way or another.

[KLSymph]

I'm watching Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei.  My prediction about turning exposition into time-wasting animations is turning out not as accurate as I thought, mostly because they're cutting out most of the exposition (conversely, my prediction about cutting exposition making setting more sci-fi generic is still going strong).  At least the animations are pretty.  On the other hand, the character art is... kinda okay?  In particular, the novel puts some effort into describing Miyuki as extraordinarily beautiful, and the anime's character art doesn't reflect this at all. Also, Kirihara's voice is super deep, while Ono's voice is super young.

But the CGI is pretty!

[Rukatin]

Just watched Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker. It was... Okay. Just okay. The Fight scenes were awesome, but the animation on everything else was....eh.

Gonna watch Eureka 7 soon though. High hopes for that one.

[Rukatin]

Update! Eureka Seven is awesome, but the Dub is SHIT, Only watched the first episode before switching to subbed.
Binged watched a series called Knights of Sidonia on Netflix. It was good, but short and left me wanting more.

RWBY comes out in 3 weeks, instead of being released after RTX like last time.

Swort Art Online II actually looks better than both the Aincrad and Alfheim arcs combined. Sailor Moon Crystal looked cute. Though it might give me diabetes...

[Muphrid]

Thought SAO II dawdled a bit.  Comparison to the book below:

Spoiler: ShowHide

For some reason, they decided to take Kirito and Asuna's date and split it with a flashback, compared to how it played out in the book--with Kirito going to meet with the gov't dude Kikuoka first, uninterrupted.

Never mind that the date scene doesn't serve a ton of purpose.  It was that way in the book, too.  Never mind, though, that Kirito did something very important after the date that has yet to be seen...and would actually be quite surprising to see in the second episode, if it were so separated from the date itself.

But hey, exposition over, obligatory fanservice crotch shot of our female lead for this arc is out of the way, hopefully once and for all.

[Arakawa]

Skimmed episode I of Sailor Moon Crystal. It's shot, edited, and shaded like a Visual Novel for some reason. The stick figure designs of everyone make the characters from the old series look positively chubby. (The limbs look like they're about to start wobbling in rubber hose animation style.) Didn't notice them doing anything really new with the story.

A few small touches are fun? Luna's laid-back trollface rivals Princess Celestia. The lines say "Usagi! What are you doing! Fight her!!" but her expression says "meh; this is going about according to plan."

Okay, so Luna is standing on a table, there are brainwashed youma zombies stampeding all around the table, and she still has the same cheerful poker face. She also plays Usagi's weak points mercilessly in the earlier scene: "pay attention to me because I am giving you a shiny thing!" It could be just bad animation/writing (some of the transitions between shots are horrible), but I have decided this version of Luna is amusing.

Still watching. Counterintuitively, plugging some of the plot holes and 'wut' moments of the original actually hurts the overall feel of the series. It's a show about transforming princesses who put on makeup as a prerequisite to going all sentai on a bunch of monsters. You either need to just embrace the goofiness, or need a pretty creative background for why the hell it's set up that way. Given that this is a big franchise, obviously they're going to play it safe and not even reach the level of versimilitude of any of the fanfic that tries to add depth to this thing.

It's the same thing with the visual designs. The designs of the original are simple or even endearingly stupid. Taking simple and stupid designs and adding this kind of surface polish to them makes them not endearing and even more stupid.

Okay, you really need to do something unpredictable here if you want to match the experience of the original in some comparable fashion! In the original first episode Usagi hurting the youma by throwing a tantrum kind of worked because of how unexpectedly silly and borderline idiotic it was. Here they have that scene again but then they try to explain it by having the youma babble about 'ultrasonic waves', which just misses the point entirely.

I dearly hope that they mix it up a bit as things go along. Ideally they would do a Rebuild of Evangelion thing where it starts out familiar but then goes completely off the rails.

[thepanda]

Crystal is based off the manga story/designs. Don't expect any real deviations from the original anime until after Venus is introduced, storywise. Outside of the 'we need to stretch this to 26 episodes' filler, Sailor Moon R followed the manga plot heavily until that point.

Over all, I expect crystal to compare to the original anime the same way the manga does; the manga had a more interesting story but paper thin characterization, while the anime had better characters, but much weaker storylines past R. I'm just hoping they plan to do the whole series. As much as I liked the original anime, some of those arcs are just painful to sit through.

[Empyrean]

No Game, No Life has wrapped up its first season. Highly recommended.

I've watched the first half dozen or so episodes of Log Horizon. I've heard that it's like Sword Art Online without the stuff that makes Sword Art Online stupid, although I have no idea what that would be and haven't seen/read SAO myself. Anyway, it's by the same guy who wrote Maoyuu, so I've got high hopes for it. Pretty cool so far, anyway.

[Rukatin]

Started watching Blood+. I wish they'd get on with the plot and more to the gory vampire violence please.

[KLSymph]

The last episode of Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei came out.  Overall, I thought it was a half-hearted adaptation that just copied plot elements from the light novel too directly without exploiting the strength of the visual medium.  The non-action scenes from the novel lacked the full nuance of text and the action scenes weren't animated to be as visually exciting as I hoped.  The animation and the art style look bargain-bin generic.

And they put an image of butt-naked Tatsuya into the Material Burst activation sequence at the end, for no discernible reason.

In conclusion: Ugh.