Anime Thigh Thread II

[Sj]

Ever since they rolled out the new version of imgur I can't upload shit

[Deleted]

Ever since they rolled out the new version of imgur I can't upload shit

Managed to upload plenty of things, you are just doing it wrong :P

[Sj]

Managed to upload plenty of things, you are just doing it wrong :P

If you mean by doing it the right way and the site just errors out every time, regardless of browser, then yes I am doing something wrong.


Taboo Tattoo 4 - This shit is awful. Izzy can't carry this show. Dropped.

[Sj]

Kizumonogatari pt 1 BDs come out tomorrow. Almost there, boys.

[Sj]

This week's episode was the first time that I actually questioned if I can watch all of this.

Last week wasn't terrible, but wasn't good either. This week was just bad. The MC is terrible, the story is generic. The girls are the only thing it really has going for it imo, and I'm not one to watch a show just for girls.

[Sesto]

Anyone here get Furi?

[Sj]

First volume of Sweetness & Lightning came in today aw yiss.

[Deleted]

The girls are the only thing it really has going for it imo

The action animation was quite good in ep01, did that change?

[Shinzai]

The action animation was quite good in ep01, did that change?

I actually found Taboo Tattoo's animation distractingly bad, in an unexpected way. They basically just use key-frames for the majority of fight animations, without any in-betweens half the time.

[Neichus]

(As much as I bad-mouth the Chimera Ant arc, this episode was spectacular)

Hunter x Hunter (2011) - 6/10

Shounen series are some of the most iconic and well-known in anime, regardless of their level of quality. Hunter x Hunter (HxH) makes an attempt to buck the usual shounen stereotypes or employ them in creative ways while still sticking with the endearing simplicity of the genre.

Take Gon, the series' protagonist. A mixture of Luffy's dreams of adventure and Goku's half-feral wild child, Gon encapsulates many of the qualities one would expect. He has transparent motivations, an innate sense of justice, sticks by his friends, and has vast potential to become the best there ever was. The primary story is built around him becoming a Hunter and finding his father.

However, there are several purposeful adjustments to this narrative. For instance, Gon is not always instrumental in victory. The usual pattern of side-characters squaring off against lieutenants while the protagonist takes on the Big Bad is largely avoided. Gon never fights Hisoka or Illumi during the Hunter exam, any of the Zoldycks when retrieving Killua, Chrollo in Yorknew arc, or Meruem in the Chimera Ant arc. Because of this the series is able to dodge several awkward questions that implicitly plague shounen series, such as why the protagonist always happens to fight opponents he can barely defeat. These types of modifications are not limited to Gon but are peppered through all of HxH. When writing this series the author was clearly familiar with battle shounen and knew both how to give his audience want they wanted while keeping things fresh.

That said, the series simply loses its way after a period of time. Novelty gives way to brittle plot elements and poorly-paced story, culminating in an experience which feels far closer to the standard shounen mold. Ultimately while HxH does encapsulate some original ideas and can boast a few excellent episodes it fails to go the distance.

The Good:
Easily the best part of HxH relative to other series are the villains. Most of the time villains exist for one purpose in shounen: to be defeated. Before that point they are contract-bound to gloat over their superiority, refusing to lift a finger to stop the heroes from running amok until it is too late. Essentially they are written as though their lives revolve around the protagonists. HxH goes out of its way to embellish its antagonists, giving them a separate existence outside of the current context we have met them in. The two that stand out the most are Hisoka and the Phantom Troupe.

Hisoka is arguably the best character in the entire series. His visual design elegantly portrays what he is about, reflecting his mysterious nature (face paint), utilization on illusion (clown/carnival), and wild card nature (the suit symbols). And yet, it isn't overdone. We see him without his mask, so we know he isn't some monster from beyond. We learn the secrets of his deceptions, yet this doesn't make him any less potent. And finally we are fully told about his motivations yet this does not make him more predictable. But what pushes Hisoka to the top for me is that the series manages to keep him in the right balance of relevant but not central. He frequently interacts with the protagonists, and indeed has a...erm...vested interest in them, but defeating him is not the end goal. In the end he is a clever independent personality that sometimes aids the protagonists, sometimes opposes them, and the rest of the time pursues his own desires without having to relate them to the main characters.

The Phantom Troupe also goes into my book as an evil organization done right. Like Hisoka above they have an independent existence. During the Yorknew Arc their paths temporarily cross with Gon, Killua, and Kurapika but that is all. This isn't a defining moment in their organization's history. They aren't wiped out nor does Kurapika resolve his business with them. The other aspect that I liked was that members of the Troupe had positive attributes without the series trying to redeem them. They shared a profound sense of loyalty and camaraderie, joked with each other, and felt deeply when they lost members. But the series never tried to justify them for this: they were still in the business of killing and stealing even if they were nice to each other. In this regard it was very refreshing to have a shounen recognize that the bad guys don't have to be 100% evil to still count as villains.

This segues into my compliments for the best segment of the series: the Yorknew arc. It is the arc that best exemplifies all of the positive features I have listed so far. It has an interesting plot that does not always default to combat to resolve situations. Both sides are intelligent and act in convincing ways that keep the outcome from being certain, with Hisoka in the middle playing his own game. Gon and Killua, rather than flying to the rescue, are actually taken hostage and have to be ransomed back. In the end, surprisingly little is resolved. It is true that Kurapika manages to kill both Uvo and (indirectly) Pakunoda while disabling Chrollo, but that isn't the end of the Troupe or his quest. It even manages to introduce a few side characters, such as Melody, who actually complement the arc rather than distracting from it. All in all, the Yorknew arc bucks every trend I've come to expect from shounen while still managing to be entertaining with a satisfying conclusion.

Finally, I want to give some credit to Meruem. As I will detail below I consider the Chimera Ant arc as a whole bad, but Meruem himself is an exceptional character. Just like how I praised the Phantom Troupe above for being the right way to do an evil organization, Meruem was the right way to do a villain that has a change of heart. He is a hyper-intelligent toddler, born knowing that he is King and feeling his superiority to all of life. When presented with a contrary reality, that he cannot best Komugi despite his superiority, he is thrown into mental disarray rather than simply dismissing her. But even here, he surprises us. He doesn't suddenly fold to this. Instead he realizes that his sheer might negates any possible strengths she may have. At the end when he is talking to Netero he admits that humans have some value, and that he would like to set aside a refuge for them rather than completely eliminating them. This might not sound like much to us, but for Meruem he has come a shockingly long way in a short period of time. He really is the most perfect being in the HxH universe, capable of both amazing physical and mental feats. It really is a shame that he is weighed down by the mire that is the Chimera Ant arc.

The Bad:

As already indicated, the primary problem with HxH is that it does not manage to keep the quality of the Yorknew arc for the rest of the series. We see the first glimmerings of this during the Greed Island arc, where the villains end up being quite one-dimensional and many of the victories are achieved through sheer grit alone. But it is the Chimera Ant arc that truly fails the series. These episodes were a protracted mess filled with stock villains and excessive time devoted to unimportant side characters. Nobody, I repeat nobody, wanted to see that much of Ikalgo. The plot was also necessarily simple: because the Chimera Ants' existence was antithetical to that of humanity the only possible conclusion was elimination.

But the final nail in the coffin was the destruction of consequence. At the end of the Greed Island arc we see the first glimmers of this with the Breath of the Archangel healing Gon's missing arm. The Chimera Ant arc takes this further by making the Chimera Ants a form of reincarnation, negating the finality of death. Innocent villagers who were butchered are able to have touching reunions and Kite, who's death was absolutely central to Gon's motivations during this arc, is able to live his newfound life as a freckled redhead. This culminates in the final arc with Alluka, who is an incarnation of the Dragon Balls. She is simply able to wish away the debilitating effects of Gon's sacrifice, making it no sacrifice at all. It is this that, in my opinion, really destroys HxH at the end.

These shortcomings also begin to painfully highlight the ridiculousness of Gon and Killua's development. While it is simply accepted in these series that our protagonists will have exceptional ability, these two abuse it to a degree that destroyed my suspension of disbelief. Training that should have taken months or years was completed in a single weekend. I can only hope that the author was trying to poke fun at series having this type of rapid development, but that it occurs repeatedly and is necessarily for the plot makes it a bad joke.

Finally, I want to remark on a philosophical problem I saw with HxH: it wanted to be better than its audience could support. That is, the author wanted to demonstrate the inner mental workings and shifts of personality for a variety of major and minor characters. Everybody in the HxH universe is meant to be 'real', rather than just a throw-away used for a few scenes or episodes. This is a laudable goal, especially for an anime that also seeks to be more than a niche artistic piece. However, this creates a problem: good character development is usually accomplished with hints. How a person reacts, the words they choose, and the actions they take all give insight into their inner workings. But the audience of HxH is, frankly, that of the average shounen series. Because of this it has to satisfy the lowest common denominator and it cannot risk having these subtle cues being missed. So it falls back on exposition. A lot of it.

Exposition in itself isn't bad. Often it is what is needed to ensure that certain things are explained. But in HxH it overstepped its boundaries, where the narrator became more and more compelled to explain every single change that was happening. "Gon was shamed." "The King had never felt something like this before." "Knuckle then made a poor decision." When exposition reaches this level it interferes with the actual story and throws its shortcomings into sharp relief. Perhaps I am being too demanding of the series, but given its apparent goals I feel this criticism is fair.

In conclusion, I went into HxH with relatively low expectations and was pleasantly surprised by my initial experience. Even as I watched the series go downhill it continued to demonstrate sporadic moments of brilliance. Despite my criticisms I would still rank this as the best shounen series I have ever seen, and regret that it squandered so much of its potential.

[Schirmy]

So there's like nothing interesting airing next season.

[Deleted]

I actually found Taboo Tattoo's animation distractingly bad, in an unexpected way. They basically just use key-frames for the majority of fight animations, without any in-betweens half the time.

The fight animation wasn't actually that good. It was weirdly ambitiously animated with an excessive amount tracking shots despite having low framerate and distractingly obvious and bad CGI in a lot of places.

Maybe you're right, I didn't pay that much attention... Picked up the manga to see where it goes, and it's pretty much nowhere. Safe to say it's droppable unless I need to waste some time, then.

[Schirmy]

Link me a list or something and I'll prove you wrong!

http://myanimelist.net/anime/season/2016/fall

Give it your best shot.

Only one that looks interesting to me is Drifters so far.

[BloodyAngel12]

http://myanimelist.net/anime/season/2016/fall

Give it your best shot.

Hibiki season 2

[Epuration]

http://myanimelist.net/anime/season/2016/fall

Give it your best shot.

Only one that looks interesting to me is Drifters so far.

Maybe Drifters...

[bals]

http://myanimelist.net/anime/season/2016/fall
Give it your best shot.
Only one that looks interesting to me is Drifters so far.

ajin s2, drifters, Natsume Yuujinchou Go if you are caught up with that, Okusama ga Seitokaichou!+!, gundam ibo s2, brave witches if you keep up with strike witches, show by rock s2, Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku could be interesting depending on what it's like, wixoss

[Sj]

3gatsu and Hibike s2 are givens. Will probably check out Girlish Number because Yahari author and also it's not set in high school.

[Enjeh]

Natsume Yuujinchou Go if you are caught up with that

everyone in this thread needs to get caught up with that one.

[Sj]

Watched Kizu raw since I recently read the novel. There's something about the art style that I just don't like.

- - - Updated - - -

everyone in this thread needs to get caught up with that one.

That's the show a friend told me to watch that I couldn't remember the name of. It's been bugging me for a little while now. I'll crank that up once I'm done with the stuff I'm watching now.

[Shinzai]

For some random reason, I decided to check out Mahou Shoujo Naria Girls episode 1. What the hell am I watching? It's like they got 3 seiyuu to just mess around, while recording it, then threw it against the backdrop of some kind of magical girls, with really terrible MMD style CG and fairly awful hand drawn... stuff.

I think I like it.