Current watches

[Dracos]

Watched some Bakamonotogari yesterday.  Maybe I even got the name right.  I'm about seven episodes in.

It is really cast narrow.  It has yet to have more than 3 people on the screen at a time.  And it's cast is very narrow otherwise.  Protagonist dude.  Old mentor.  Pile of teenage girls.  Not that I mind, but just kinda feels too obvious about it.

The Tsundere (More Yandere really) main female lead so far shows...character development.  This is kinda shocking in a tsundere.  She almost completely stopped with physical threats (Did one last ep just as I was commenting on the character growth sadly) and has even said she's sorry at points.  Compared to most crazy bitches, she actually has some violent backstory to deliver why she is a crazy bitch who doesn't trust people.

It's kinda cute.  Very slow paced.  Lots of talking.

I'll watch more.  but I'm still kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, as they haven't progressed the metaplot much so far.

[Brian]

Where are you seeing dere?

She's totally yantsun.

Edit: No, but seriously, she hints at dere on occasion ... mostly with a strong yan influence. ;)

[Dracos]

Now now.

We've both seen YanTsun.

That is not yantsun.

He hasn't lost a single body part.

[Kt3]

Bakemonogatari

roughly meaning:
bakemono (monster) + monogatari (story)

You could maybe very roughly equate that to... 'monstory', or 'monstery'.

I know once I realized the pun, I could never forget how to spell that name again.

[Dracos]

heh

[thepanda]

Dog Days is still the best show this season.

[Kt3]

Dog Days...

literally gives me a migraine when I try to watch it.

It's so stupid.

(Sword Art Online is pretty cool, though)

Edit:  To avoid a double-post, Joshiraku this season is pretty amazing.  It's a comedy based mostly on talking, but it uses the sound and animation effects very well to get the comedy across.  It is absolutely hilarious.  The group who's doing it is also doing a really good job on translation too, so there's not really much lost in translation, or at least the translation was well enough that word puns are translated.

[Brian]

Finished Bakemonogatari.  I'm not sure I'm 100% on the style.  When 10% of your animation budget is spent on a black panel with white text saying 'blank scene'....  I dunno.  I guess they were going for some existentialism or minimalism thing, but beyond that I saw a lot of the protagonist's reactions were recycled as well.

What little animation there was, was well done.  The story was kind of ... vague.  Interesting, but ultimately I found the 'metaplot' (as such) pretty lacking.  I found the character interactions mostly amusing, and it was kind of nice how they put in a different opening for each character (pretty much).  The fanservice was surprisingly blatant when they went that route (which was a surprising amount of the time), and....

Yeah.  Mostly a positive experience, just one that left me thinking it could have been a bit better.

[Korsar13]

Brian, Bakemonogatri -- TVRip or BDRip?

[Brian]

BD.

[thepanda]

When 10% of your animation budget is spent on a black panel with white text saying 'blank scene'....  I dunno.  I guess they were going for some existentialism or minimalism thing

Naw, just Shaft being Shaft. They've been doing the kind of thing for a long time now. Madoka was a shocking break from the norm. (The weird stuff having a point more than just style) Pani Poni Dash, So Long Mr. Despair, Negima?!. even Hidamari Sketch was filled with it. And I loves me some Hidamari Sketch. New season, please. ^_^

[Dracos]

It was interesting.  I'd mainly encountered the series before by fanfiction that takes for granted the lessons the main character is pushed: That Kai aren't people.  That their world isn't the same as our world.

I didn't think it'd have such a solid romance angle in it.  The main female lead is the Bitchiest ever but is less annoying being so than say Akane.  Psycho-posessive.  And fairly direct about it.  She kind of reminds me of a less over the edge Yuno Gasai.  "No, you can't let her kill you because otherwise I WILL kill her.  And you don't want to make me a murderer, do you?"  Tsundere Service.

The lead was both easily bullied...and not really spineless.  Definitely not cowardly.  Dense.  Whimsical and perverted, while hiding it.  But then the girls aren't any better.

Yeah, SO Long Mr Despair had this crap going on all the time with the flash panels of craziness and text.

[Brian]

But Sayanora Despair-Sensei was also generally comedic (even if it was often dark comedy), so the style wasn't so bad.  Also, it recycled a lot less footage.  The big thing was "...makes me despair!"

Bakemonogatari actually kind of grated with just how much they jammed in the 'kuro' and 'aka' panels.  The minimalist style made it feel that despite the fact that it was around 90% exposition, nothing was actually happening.  I did like that almost every character got their own op, the characters were generally interesting when they weren't lining up in a generic pseudo-harem (or being a molested loli), and the romance angle was well explored.  They didn't do much to answer the question of the main character's own oddity, and I felt that Hasegawa's storyline was surprisingly lacking in closure, all things considered.

As much as I can complain, I didn't dislike it, I just felt it deserved to be better than it was, and using less gimmicky animation techniques (or just the existing ones more sparingly) might have done a lot to alleviate that.  For example, the very brief action segments in the final episode were so stunningly well animated they made the rest of the anime look bland and static by comparison.  I don't know.  Stylistic suck?

(Never saw Dash, and Negima put me off from the manga, so I never even tried -- but I actually liked Madoka quite a bit.  Don't get me started on Hidamari Sketchbook; Sketchbook Full Colors over Hidamari Sketchbook any day of the week!)

[thepanda]

The minimalist style made it feel that despite the fact that it was around 90% exposition, nothing was actually happening.

Nothing was happening. The whole show is powered by the strength of the characters' conversations than anything else. Having seen some of their early works I know tend to have these faceless people stand-ins all over the place. The absence would suggest that the characters we follow are isolated from the rest of the world in some way.

And no, I'm not trying to say your opinion is wrong or anything. Hell, you said you liked the show.

Sketchbook Full Colors over Hidamari Sketch any day of the week!)

Blasphemy! Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou(manga) = Aria > Hidamari > Sketchbook!

Bonus!

[Dracos]

Eh.

They achieved the 'these people are isolated' well. The additional 'here's a flicked card with nothing on it' didn't really contribute to that experience.