Author Topic: General Anime Talk/Reviews  (Read 44227 times)

oldkid

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Re: Sam Watches Anime
« Reply #80 on: July 26, 2016, 04:56:14 PM »
Nice stuff.  I might watch it just for the art.
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Sam Watches Anime
« Reply #81 on: August 01, 2016, 04:56:19 PM »
Anne of Green Gables 6-10



6 Anne of Green Gables

Marilla observers that Anne’s only real shortcoming is her penchant to daydream. Marilla decides to wait to tell Anne that she will stay at Green Gables. Of course, Anne asks at one point and Marilla tells her to get back to work. When Anne is finally told she imagines herself soaring to the sky. Anne promises to be her best.

This episode highlights the joys of Anne’s imagination. When Anne is told that she will be staying, she goes to tell the blossom tree she’s named Snow Queen. She also has a tendency to romanticize and fantasize everything. She imagines herself walking through the mirror and holding hands with her mirror image as they float into the woods. She also imagines herself as a princess at one point in the episode.



7 Mrs. Rachel Lynde is Properly Horrified

Mrs. Rachel comes to visit and comments on how Anne is skinny and ugly. Anne calls her out as rude and unfeeling. After Anne storms off, Marilla calls Rachel out as well, which doesn’t go over well. Marilla says Anne must go apologize and ask for forgiveness. Matthew backs Anne’s behavior, but says she must be punished as well so Anne goes off to apologize.

While Anne is quite the chatty dreamer, she’s been a rather subdued child. This is the first time we see some of her spunk. It also gives Marilla a flashback to her own youth where she experienced ridicule. As stern as Marilla is, she seems to be trying to instill Anne with good values. Of course, Anne’s apology is quite melodramatic and flowery. While Anne might be practicing some of these virtues, her heart might not be in the right place.



8 Anne’s Impressions of Sunday-School

As Sunday approaches, Anne’s fantasizes about what her dress will look like. Her lofty expectations are dashed when she is presented with several plain dresses. Marilla states there’s nothing wrong with sensible dresses. Anne ends up going to church alone and along the way she decorates her hat with flowers. Even when wearing plain clothes, Anne finds a way to be dramatic. And instead of focusing on the service, she thanks God for the majestic view out the window.

At this point, a lot of the episodes feel the same. And for a show as gorgeous and charming as Anne of Green Gables, that’s not entirely a bad thing. The show doesn’t feel episodic as each episode pushes forward a larger narrative, but the general structure and the tangents it goes on are often similar.



9 A Solemn Vow and Promise

The future holds excitement for Anne as she is told she will meet a young girl her age named Diana. Anne is consumed with worry that Diana will not like her while simultaneously imagining that she and Diana will become bosom friends. It’s a moment where she realizes that reality doesn’t always meet up with her dreams. Anne meets Diana, a girl taken with books and not likely to venture outside much. The two hit it off spectacularly and make an oath to be bosom friends.

It’s nice that the show is broadening its horizons beyond Green Gables. Last episode it was the church, this episode it’s a new friend for Anne. It’s nice the show is giving Anne someone else to interact with as Anne and Marilla can only show one side of Anne. Diana begins to show a new dimension of who Anne is as a person.



10 Anne Plays with a Bosom Friend

Anne and Diana plan to meet on a bridge to play, but Diana doesn’t show. Anne decides to go to Diana’s house and discovers that Diana’s younger sister is keeping Diana trapped. Anne suggests that she comes along, but Diana’s mother whisks her away. The two run off to play in the woods and consume some candy Matthew gave Anne.

This episode is another glorious showcase of Anne’s imagination. Anne and Diana stumble across a mirror and Anne insists that it’s a spirit mirror. The two also imagine a grove of trees as a house and Anne makes up a game on the fly for the two to play. They also take the clear colored candy wrappers and look through them to see the world in a different light. It’s a good image of how Anne sees the world through a different light than most people.

Sandy

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Re: Sam Watches Anime
« Reply #82 on: August 02, 2016, 10:38:18 AM »
“Miss Barry was a kindred spirit after all," Anne confided to Marilla, "You wouldn't think so to look at her, but she is. . . Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”

Here's to kindred spirits! :)

DarkeningHumour

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Re: Sam Watches Anime
« Reply #83 on: October 08, 2016, 05:03:17 PM »
I'd like to see some more AoT in here. Episode 6 seems to have left us in the same place. But as olkid says, *remains silent*.
« Society is dumb. Art is everything. » - Junior

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Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Sam Watches Anime
« Reply #84 on: October 08, 2016, 05:31:11 PM »
I quit that show. I've got better Anime to watch. I'm focusing this month on watching all the 2015 films I missed. Plan to spend November catching up with some TV.

oldkid

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Re: Sam Watches Anime
« Reply #85 on: October 08, 2016, 06:53:43 PM »
I *remain silent* because this is Sam's marathon, and I figured (correctly, I guess) that he didn't care for it.  That's okay.  Sam often doesn't like good things. ;)
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Sam Watches Anime
« Reply #86 on: October 08, 2016, 07:11:18 PM »
It's true. I also have high standards for TV given how much of a time-sink it is.

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Sam Watches Anime
« Reply #87 on: August 31, 2018, 01:52:09 PM »
Has it really been almost two years?

Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team



Gundam is one of the pillars of anime, an entire franchise birthed in the medium that branched off into other mediums and the most lucrative intellectual properties in the world to have its origins in anime. And it makes sense given how the spectacle of giant mecs fighting an interplanetary war is the perfect world for the animation medium where production costs won’t run as high as live-action TV and film.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team picks up at the tail end of the original series’ One Year War as the titular unit gains a new leader, the young, driven Shiro Amada (Nobuyuki Hiyama). But he finds his desire to kill the enemy Zeons curtailed when he meets Aina Sahalin (Kikuko Inoue) on the battlefield. She’s bold and beautiful and he quickly finds himself questioning everything as he tries to lead his band of misfit soldiers.



It’s a earnest show that wears its political commentary about the evils of war and the exploitation of youth on its sleeve. While there’s certainly lots of cool action, it’s a show very much about questioning warmaking, the invasion of the land of indigenous people, and military power structures.

But those who want to come for the fun mecha action will have plenty to enjoy. The animation is from the ‘90s hand-drawn era meaning there’s lots of vibrant colors and flashy setpieces. The animations and design pop and it tends to stick to the more realistic end of portraying characters and the world. Also, at 12 episodes, it feels like the studio went for quality over quantity as the detail of animation here is fantastic across the board.



Where the brevity of the show comes back to bite it is when the final conflict arrives, involving the higher-ups in a game of political intrigue that the show hasn’t explored enough to make the story beats hit as well as they could have. It might have been better to keep as much of the show from the perspective of the 08th MS Team because as the final episodes drift away from that, the weaknesses of the show’s antagonist begins to show.

The show entices with the promise of cool mechs and epic battles, but it’s the moments of anti-war drama that make the series notable. Sure, it’s a typical unrequited love romance story between a couple of crazy kids in a war, which might make it too sentimental for the kind of people who want to watch shows about mechs shooting each other. It might seem hokey to look for love amidst war, but perhaps that’s the only beautiful thing to salvage out of the horrors of war.

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Sam Watches Anime
« Reply #88 on: July 22, 2019, 11:44:42 AM »
And we're back.

Psycho-Pass



Inspired by the work of American sci-fi author Phillip K. Dick and Western philosophy, Psycho-Pass envisions a future Japan where justice is enforced by an advanced technology known as the Sibyl System. Each person is scanned for his/her potential to do crime in an assessment known as a Psycho-Pass which measures one’s Crime Coefficient. If your Crime Coefficient is too high, lethal force is authorized by the Sibyl System which results in immediate judgement.

Akane Tsunemori (Kana Hanazawa) is a brilliant young woman who scores high on her work placement test but decides to join the CID, the governing body that enforces the Sibyl System. As an Inspector, she is assigned Enforcers, latent criminals who are kept imprisoned until they are let loose on cases to hunt down potential criminals. One Enforcer is Shinya Kogami (Tomokazu Seki), a former Inspector whose crime coefficient rose beyond acceptable levels when his partner was killed, a partner he vows to avenge.

Akane sees potential for redemption in Shinya, but when the two discover that the many cases they have been working are leading them into Shinya’s past, his thirst for vengeance returns. As the cases begin to tie into the past, the shadowy figure of Shogo Makishima (Takahiro Sakurai) begins to take shape, a brilliant anarchist who seeks to overthrow the Sibyl System as he sees it as a violation of humanity’s basic right to free will.

While Psycho-Pass boasts a strong ensemble cast, it’s these three characters and their conflicting ideologies that keep the show going and explore the big questions posed by the world these characters inhabit and what it says about human nature. Themes of identity and control emerge quickly and are strong echoes of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Blade Runner influences.

Psycho-Pass liberally quotes Western philosophy as it grapples with ideas of determinism, free will, and the ethical quandary of trying to reconcile an inhuman justice system with an innate, albeit corruptible, human thirst for justice. Each major character comes to his or her own ultimate answer by the end and the show is willing to let each one have its day in the sun.

The portrayal of Shogo is what makes Psycho-Pass work so well. He’s essentially a psychopath, but his ideology is rooted in a lot of valid critiques of a society that seeks to protect by taking away many of the freedoms afforded to developed societies. In an age where government employs technology to fight crime, the idea of Psycho-Pass is not too far-fetched. Already AI is being used to predict crimes in a number of countries and it may not be too long before one country decides to go the way of Minority Report and prejudge people before acts can be committed.

It’s a great work of sci-fi that can take contemporary issues and extrapolate and explore them in a space that feels plausible but also allows the audience and the characters to ask the big questions. Psycho-Pass is not completely original, many of its ideas are cribbed from arguably better works, but by the end it stands as its own compelling journey with a unique set of characters and a distinct enough world to make this interpretation worthwhile.


pixote

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Re: Sam Watches Anime
« Reply #89 on: July 22, 2019, 02:58:21 PM »
Watchlisted.

pixote
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