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[Elephant Parade]

Daily reminder that Kotaku is an overgrown blog and you shouldn't use it. If you're looking for gaming news and reviews, go to Polygon; if you want articles, Waypoint has you covered. If you want anime news... okay, I don't actually follow anime news, but surely Kotaku can't be the best site out there. Maybe Anime News Network? ^{I'm still kinda skeeved about them editing someone's article to be more nazi-positive, though...}

Wasn't Polygon one of the sites implicated in the whole spin-coordinating scandal a few years ago, or am I misremembering?

IIRC that scandal was manufactured by 4chan and other anti-social-justice groups--but gamergate is a banned topic here, I think.

[Cruxador]

IIRC that scandal was manufactured by 4chan and other anti-social-justice groups--but gamergate is a banned topic here, I think.

I've never seen any source in that claim not originally authored by sites already implicated (without compelling evidence to supporting it) while I have seen some evidence of its authenticity. But I do agree that the folks who decided some minor online news sites being sketchy should be the foundation of a movement do tend to be a bit distasteful. I think that's a common trait of nerds in the internet who get overly keen without a broader perspective, but in any case, it's not anime.

[Reelya]

Daily reminder that Kotaku is an overgrown blog and you shouldn't use it. If you're looking for gaming news and reviews, go to Polygon; if you want articles, Waypoint has you covered. If you want anime news... okay, I don't actually follow anime news, but surely Kotaku can't be the best site out there. Maybe Anime News Network? ^{I'm still kinda skeeved about them editing someone's article to be more nazi-positive, though...}

ANN is unrelated to My Anime List, where that post was edited. However, i agree with the editing. The original article took a very virulent and aggressive / violent tone. The fact that it was against Nazis is not a relevant point here. If you wrote an article highlighting - in a gleeful tone - animes women got beaten up or sexually assaulted, that would be edited out of recognition too. From the published direct-messages between the writer and editors, it seems to be the fact that the original work included suggestions of violent threats against other users of the site if they were on the right-wing side of politics. At least the editor mentioned those concerns, and the writer himself didn't seem to make any effort to deny it.

If you start allowing people to write an article entitled "10 Anime And Manga About Kicking Nazi Ass," which includes threats against right-wing users of the site, then you can't ban people writing e.g. a comparable article which is "10 animes about beating up evil muslim terrorists" which includes insinuations and threats against Muslim users of the site. A policy that bans violent speech directed at any group really does mean any group, and not just ones it's fashionable to defend. At the very least, if you let the "kick Nazi ass" article stand, then someone is going to write the "kick Muslim ass" article (or articles attacking other groups who may also be users of the site) with the justification that muslims are terrorists, pointing back at the Nazi article that you allowed to be published as justification.

That's the thing about a safety culture in which articles calling for violence against particular groups are banned because they could harm/trigger etc. They can't really turn around and then get upset when the very same editorial policies that these people advocated for also end up removing articles written against their political enemies. Basically MAL seems to ban content from it's front page that advocates violence against any group based on gender, sexual orientation, religion, or political affiliation. Those policies are not waived when talking about unpopular groups (even Nazis), because treating unpopular groups fairly is the entire point of having anti-bullying policies in place.

[Cruxador]

Daily reminder that Kotaku is an overgrown blog and you shouldn't use it. If you're looking for gaming news and reviews, go to Polygon; if you want articles, Waypoint has you covered. If you want anime news... okay, I don't actually follow anime news, but surely Kotaku can't be the best site out there. Maybe Anime News Network? ^{I'm still kinda skeeved about them editing someone's article to be more nazi-positive, though...}

ANN is unrelated to My Anime List, where that post was edited. However, i agree with the editing. The original article took a very virulent and aggressive / violent tone. The fact that it was against Nazis is not a relevant point here. If you wrote an article highlighting - in a gleeful tone - animes women got beaten up or sexually assaulted, that would be edited out of recognition too. From the published direct-messages between the writer and editors, it seems to be the fact that the original work included suggestions of violent threats against other users of the site if they were on the right-wing side of politics. At least the editor mentioned those concerns, and the writer himself didn't seem to make any effort to deny it.

If you start allowing people to write an article entitled "10 Anime And Manga About Kicking Nazi Ass," which includes threats against right-wing users of the site, then you can't ban people writing e.g. a comparable article which is "10 animes about beating up evil muslim terrorists" which includes insinuations and threats against Muslim users of the site. A policy that bans violent speech directed at any group really does mean any group, and not just ones it's fashionable to defend. At the very least, if you let the "kick Nazi ass" article stand, then someone is going to write the "kick Muslim ass" article (or articles attacking other groups who may also be users of the site) with the justification that muslims are terrorists, pointing back at the Nazi article that you allowed to be published as justification.

That's the thing about a safety culture in which articles calling for violence against particular groups are banned because they could harm/trigger etc. They can't really turn around and then get upset when the very same editorial policies that these people advocated for also end up removing articles written against their political enemies. Basically MAL seems to ban content from it's front page that advocates violence against any group based on gender, sexual orientation, religion, or political affiliation. Those policies are not waived when talking about unpopular groups (even Nazis), because treating unpopular groups fairly is the entire point of having anti-bullying policies in place.

In my opinion, their crime was to do it without notifying the original author. All that you said is good and fair, though I think an article identifying shows where nazis are the bad guys could be edited far less comprehensively to retain the original intent without advocating violence against real people. But if you're going to do a substantial overhaul of an article, you really need to tell the original author and allow them the opportunity to either withdraw the article in light of the changes or (if they agreed to cede that right when submitting it and/or it's so changed as to no longer be the same as the original article) remove the original author's name from the article. I mean hell, even if you're only making minor spelling and grammar changes, it's discourteous not to send the original author a little note summarizing what you've done.

[Reelya]

Sure, I agree their major misstep was in actually publishing the thing at all with substantial editorial changes, rather than just sending back a note mentioning that the article breached editorial policies, along with a link to what the policies are: don't advocate violence against any group based on political views, gender, LGBT status, nationality, religion. Then, the guy couldn't really complain about it. Rules are rules, and he could clearly then see that the policy preventing him speaking ill of Nazis is in fact the exact same rule preventing Nazis speaking ill of him, a Jewish person.

That's what you get with a site run by untrained volunteers however, which I think is something we need to get used to more and more, since saying "they shouldn't have done that" tends to reflect the expectations we have of professional journals manned by people with actual college degrees in journalism. ANN doesn't have these issues. However, that's because ANN only reprints news articles and lacks commentary and user opinion stories. Basically, if nobody can speak, you get no problems with unwanted speech, so ANN keeps it's nose clean that way.

[JoshuaFH]

I'm kinda overjoyed at the amount of great anime, just on CR.

I just finished the latest (ep 4, s2) of Overlord, and while I still have my original reservations about the show, I'm just fuckin SOLD on the drama of these lizard people, and that our protags are primarily the catalyst for that drama.

Season 2 of Dagashi Kashi? Oh me oh my. It's got all the season 1 magic that I loved, and more. Advertise to me Hotaru, advertise your Japanese candy to me!

Junji Ito Collection is not disappointing so far, and I love the creativity that is being displayed in each ED.

Yowapedal: New Generation! By far my favorite anime about boys on bikes. More gimmicks than ever before! No character left behind! Doesn't matter how many characters are in the roster! Doesn't matter how seemingly insignificant a side character is! They're going to GET that time in the limelight and get they're own badass moment.

Oh yeah and New Basilisk as well. This one is the only one on my backburner, as I feel instigated to go back and rewatch the first one, and so my only complaint is that the OP isn't nearly as cool as the original. But Jesus that's a hard one to top.

And I'm wondering if I should re-up my Netflix subscription just for a month to catch up on Little Witch and Crybaby Devilman, cause I just can't throw a stone without bruising someone's extremely vocal love for these shows.

[Reelya]

Yowapedal: New Generation!

It seems like everyone wanted to cash in on the Yowapedal craze for a while: the Jan 2017 season had three cycling animes airing at the same time, which basically means a majority of all airing sports anime were about cycling.

[Cruxador]

I'm not that excited about this season in general, but Yuru Camp is super comfy. It's very casual camping so I do find myself looking down my nose at them a bit, but it's still nice enough.

Mitsuboshi Colors is also cute and fun, it's about kids that act like kids, which is kind of rare and also really nice for me since I haven't worked with kids since the summer.

Sora Yori mo Tooi Basho is next on my list.

I just finished the latest (ep 4, s2) of Overlord, and while I still have my original reservations about the show, I'm just fuckin SOLD on the drama of these lizard people, and that our protags are primarily the catalyst for that drama.

I'm not watching the anime, so maybe they're cutting it down a lot, but I found the lizard arc in the novels to be pointless and belabored.

[Jopax]

I'm finding it rather tedious myself. They're pretty stock trope characters that we're supposed to care about which is kinda hard to do, seeing as they're utterly uninteresting. The whole premise of it could be interesting if I cared enough about the folks involved to see how they get out of it, but it's just gonna come down to a fight and that'll be it. The ruling them part might be interesting tho and I'm kinda looking forward to that I guess. But the second season has been rather meh so far and if it keeps up like that I don't see myself sticking around 'till the end.

[Cruxador]

I'm finding it rather tedious myself. They're pretty stock trope characters that we're supposed to care about which is kinda hard to do, seeing as they're utterly uninteresting. The whole premise of it could be interesting if I cared enough about the folks involved to see how they get out of it, but it's just gonna come down to a fight and that'll be it. The ruling them part might be interesting tho and I'm kinda looking forward to that I guess. But the second season has been rather meh so far and if it keeps up like that I don't see myself sticking around 'till the end.

Spoilers there's fuck all ruling, after the lizard arc it switches to another place we never heard of before this. And that's two volumes so together with the lizards that's probably the whole season. Although I think the characters are pretty good for that bit, and there's a proper story there, and the climax is great. I would say skip to the end of this volume if you're not liking it but we've gotta be about done with it soon anyway.

[Reelya]

To be honest, a better strategy on their part would have then been to skip those books for television, and make them as OVAs instead. But like you said, if the next book is pretty great they're probably considering the current episodes to be "filler-ish" so that they end the season on a high note, which makes getting an S3 more likely.

[Cruxador]

To be honest, a better strategy on their part would have then been to skip those books for television, and make them as OVAs instead. But like you said, if the next book is pretty great they're probably considering the current episodes to be "filler-ish" so that they end the season on a high note, which makes getting an S3 more likely.

I wouldn't say it's the best, I think it spends too long on too little as well. But I'd still put Men in the Kingdom above Lizardmen. And the climax of that arc (though it's a two-book arc) is very important to the overall story, while the lizardmen arc is more about the characters and setting in motion much subtler things that really didn't need a whole volume to cover.

I don't think they're going to cut much of anything though, they're unusually committed to a faithful adaptation, which means it'll probably continue being slow and this season will climax with the end of volume six, and that's way better than the climax of any of the volumes in the first season. Not as good as the climax of volume 9, but I would put it in second place.

[Tack]

So my current top picks on Crunchyroll for this (/last) season so far are:
'Death March to the parallel world'
Guess what? It's an Isekai. Guess what x2? The main character is overpowered.
Regardless, they so far have managed to make it a little bit more Log Horizon and a little less Cellphone, so I'm keeping my eye on it just to see when actual drama will happen.

'Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens'
Durarara meets Gangsta. Hitmen killing hitmen framing hitmen. So far not even that bloody, more of a likeable Spike-esque main character and the various shenanigans surrounding him.

'Garo: Vanishing Line'
Pure Macho Macho-ness. It's like someone saw Commander Badass from 'mgdmt' and thought 'THAT'S THE PROTAG WE NEED'.
The shiny super suit is interesting but hey, gotta have some japan to go with the Duke Nukem hyper-steroid testosterone.

[Reelya]

'Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens'
Durarara meets Gangsta.

Man, that description really got my attention like I wasn't expecting.

Also, apparently the Netflix-funded Godzilla anime was awful according to someone i know. The telling part is that nobody ever bothered to make a Godzilla anime before now, in the entire 50+ years that both Godzilla and anime have existed, until Netflix decided they needed one. Godzilla is Japanese, and anime is Japanese, why don't we pay the Japanese to make a Godzilla anime? Brilliant! And lo, the scriptwriter was Gen Urobuchi, the Michael Bay of the anime world.

And nobody in Japan even went to see this movie! $3 million at the box office, compared to $355 million for "Your Name". So... Netflix got their fucking wonderful Godzilla anime movie now, that nobody actually wanted, and guess what, consensus is that it's not all that great. My guess is that Japanese people view Godzilla movies as so fucking common that nobody is even interested. It's the shit your grandparents are into, there were 31 previous Godzilla movies, so this one is like "Transformers 32" direct-to-DVD territory. "Wow there's an anime of Godzilla now" barely raised a peep of interest in Japan, but to Netflix, that shit's like manna from heaven.

Nobody actually gave two shits who was working on this, but hey, Netflix has nice money to throw away, it beats working on another ecchi harem series, and if they want to waste money making the most cliched "Japanese" thing possible - so cliched that the Japanese never thought to make it - that's their business.

[Jopax]

Eh, Netflix has had a pretty good track record of throwing money at wierd stuff nobody thought of so far. Even if the movie ain't great I like that they're willing to take risks with the things they make. Otherwise we wouldn't have Devilman Crybaby or the Castlevania anime (which is getting a second season it would appear, which is pretty cool since the first one was way too short, more like an intro than anything else), or any of their other great movies/shows for that matter.

@Tack
I read the synopsis of that Death March one and I swear it was just a listing of the most common tropes for the gets-transported-into-another-world-gets-harem type of anime, like someone literally had a pile of money left over and didn't want to bother thinking so they just grabbed a checklist of things a popular anime these days has and went by the numbers.