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[MCreeper]

Finally watched Tsukihime anime (vile one-voicer, no subtitles  ), which does not exist and is thus understandably tough to find. I expected worse. Could have been closer to canon (all-together trip to luna park, with Arihiko and should-be-dead Satsuki? Blasphemy!). I wanted to write more, but got out of mood, so i'll just say that Nero is rather unimpressive and that Ciel saving Shiki every other time with her Throwing Swords That Explode Into A Bunch Of Pages reminds me of a certain song from a classical soviet multserial. Relevant part(no, google translate just does not compute it all):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

- Ну, а сами вы старпом
Шли хоть раз ко дну?
Шли хоть раз ко дну?
Шли хоть раз ко дну?
- Я в науках десять лет,
Я в науках десять лет,
Плавал и тонул.

- А спасали вас друзья?
- Да, в жестокий шквал
Друг шпаргалочку бросал
И меня спасал.
- Что я слышу, стыд и срам,
Вам, старпом, разнос.
Вам экзамен незачтен.
- Погибаю! СОС!

Couldn't resist.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

EDIT: Ah yes, there are also flashbacks, to the point of bad taste at times. Scene where Shiki kills Arcueid: 1.Shiki notices Arcuied. 2. Shiki collapses before a pile of gore. 3. Shiki haves a flashback to "Shiki stabs Shiki" scene. 4. Shiki haves a flashback to him getting his knife. 5. Shiki haves a flashback to him turning Arcuied into ludicrous gibs (who was apparently running away in terror? WTF, proper freaks of POWAH don't run away from ain't no lame human dudes). Then there are "flashbacks" to other half of a previous scene. What prevented them from showing things in proper order i have no idea.

[TamerVirus]

Finally watched Tsukihime anime

Oh you mean Carnival Phantasm?
It's pretty funny!

Edit: Oh man, Tsukihime is 20 years old this year. STOP ROLLING IN FGO GACHA BUX TYPE MOON AND FINISH MAKING THE DAMN REMAKE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[IronyOwl]

Watched Beastars, which I've heard described as anime Zootopia. Not a bad comparison. Beastars is also CGI (for the moving bits), but obviously a more muted style. Doesn't look especially distinctive, but avoids the hideous look of low-grade stuff.

Content-wise it's pretty great. Manages to stuff a lot of things in there- high school drama, Zootopia style animals doing animal things, uncertainty about feelings, uncertainty about potentially murderous feelings, face-punching high school drama, morality vs nature issues, creepy serial killers, and mild amounts of rabbit porn. Notably, it manages a fair bit of uncertainty and hesitation in a brief enough way that it never really drags. You still get sick of the main character being such a wuss, but it's always a slightly different flavor of wussery as things progress at a relatively decent pace. On screen, anyway. There's a handful of timeskips implying rather lengthy amounts of doing-nothing-with-your-feelings, but oh well.

Does get kinda weird at the end, even aside from the fact that it's clearly going for a Season 2 (announced for 2021). I do look forward to this.

Spoiler: Actual Yet Predictable Spoilers (click to show/hide)

Best girl loses again, though.

[MCreeper]

Fuck in Kara no Shojo

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

What the fuck is that fuck? It's ugly as fuck and also doesn't make fucking sense. And it makes me constatly say fuck. It goes like fucking this:
*detective talk*
Autopsy woman: Hey, let's fuck!
Detective: Let's.
*fucking ensues*
*detective puts his huge fucking dick back into fucking pants, then more dedective talk*
Autopsy woman: Hey was fuck great?
Detective: No, fuck wasn't fucking great, garstorp raping me, ugly woman.

Pretty much every time? Except Mizuhara's fuck, where oh wow, they made a fuck that is actually fitting!

Fuck in Cartagra - i heard you wanted some fuckin':
Mediocre at best Fuck almost completely overshadows mediocre at best plot. It really feels like half of the screen time is just main character getting his daily fuck from a random girl. And i thought Kara no Shojo was bad.

Also, "choices" (at least in Kara no Shoujo) went from usual unnecessary and annoying feature to a fucking disaster. When you read it first time, you inevitably get bad end in the first third of a novel (unless you did not do some arbitrary thing and did get it a bit earlier). Then you are allowed to progress to second third of a game, where you inveitably get some bad end (which are also routes, of sorts). And only then you can get to the end. God, what a way to break the pacing. If it weren't for that shit and Fuck, i wouldn't have pretty much rapid-fire clicked both VN's to the end with disgusted face and groans of increasing discomfort (c).

To add insult to injury, the whole thing is utterly, 100% arbitrary and they push it in your face. In first bad end, detective dudes go into maniac's lair, but the maniac has long ago done his thing and escaped. Next day he murders main chacter's sister and main character goes stark raving mad. In next playtrough detective dudes find a completely unrelated clue, goof around for two hours more before going to maniac's, then ambush him when he was just going in. Pure bullshit.

After some idle thinking, i realized that Cartagra is accidentally neckbeard's dream instead of grizly detective novel. Free home, free food, any and all work is done for you, you can just fuck your harem of girls all day, and just in case something goes to shit, there is always a wealthy and supercool punchgirl, also in your harem. 

[TamerVirus]

There is no Kara no Shoujo anime

Also I’m surprised Kara no Shoujo and Cartaga even got mentioned in this corner of the Internet
VNs and smut kinda go hand in hand so I don't know what you were expecting

[MCreeper]

There is no Kara no Shoujo anime

I swear to god...

Also I’m surprised Kara no Shoujo and Cartaga even got mentioned in this corner of the Internet
VNs and smut kinda go hand in hand so I don't know what you were expecting

Sure. But among VNs i did read, smut in those is rather outstanding. Maybe i just didn't read enough VNs.  Or didn't looked at genres hard enough, eh.

[TamerVirus]

What have you read so far? Man, VNs used to be this super niche underground thing and now they're being sold on Steam. That was considered an absurd notion not that long ago

[MCreeper]

In no particular order:
Katawa Shoujo (somehow didn't finished even one route despite trying two times and it being great)
Higurashi no naku koro ni
Umineko no naku koro ni (kinda regreted it, but persevered to the end)
Higanbana no saku yoru ni
Rose guns days (i thought it was all of Ryukishi, but turns out he also wrote a bunch of smaller things. All untranslated. Damn.)
Serial experiments Lain (on internet, of course)
Doki Doki literature club
Say no uta
Last day of the decade
Tsukihime
Kagetsu tohya
Fate\stay night
Nekopara (smut a-plenty, but that's clearly the whole point there  )
Angel beats (got exactly what i expected and have no complains.  )
Ever 17 Out of infinity
Kara no Shoujo
Cartagra
Aaand... Looks like that's it.    That's rather short list, turns out. Was also considering reading Crimson Grey, but heroine's face turned me off.

[scriver]

What have you read so far? Man, VNs used to be this super niche underground thing and now they're being sold on Steam. That was considered an absurd notion not that long ago

For the record I consider this the break of the seal that brought us 2020

[TamerVirus]

That's rather short list, turns out.

I've got around 50 or so under my belt but I've still haven't gotten around to reading Fate 
maybe someday

[Reelya]

According to the synopsis, dude's libido is stolen by the grim reaper-type gal that's decided to move in with him and he has to get it back, but that's so far off the mark of the actual plot of the show that I have to scratch my head at whoever came up with that.

I kinda guessed it was a light novel, and it turns out it is. You can see this stuff a mile off. What you have there is what I'm guessing is the back of the novel blurb from the first volume. So that's the hook and it's what the author took to the publishers, and it's what's meant to start you reading. But that plot hook will never resolve, so long as they want to keep churning out volumes. So many light novel things start with a plot hook then go into permanent plot stasis so they can churn out interchangeable volumes and it doesn't matter if you miss one, you can just get the next.

However, I'm not really sure about that specific series, i found it fairly forgettable compared even to similar 1-cour animes. Hell, Dog and Scissors is worse, but at least you'll have remembered watching Dog and Scissors, for better or worse.

Dog & Scissors centers around Kazuhito Harumi, a high school boy who is obsessed with reading books. One day, while reading in a cafe, he is shot and killed when he attempts to protect a random stranger during a robbery. As he is determined to read his favorite author's unreleased last work, he gets a second chance and is reincarnated as a long-haired dachshund. As a dog he is adopted by Kirihime Natsuno, the very person he tried to save, as well as the only person who can understand him in his new form. Kazuhito then discovers that she is not only his favorite novelist, but also a sadist who enjoys terrorizing him with scissors.

[Reelya]

Series, man, I dunno, it's only one season. I can't speak for the light novel, since I didn't read the light novel. No idea where that hook goes, if it goes, in the light novel series.

If it has episodes, it's a series. Fawlty Towers is a series, it also only has 12 episodes. Maybe if you're used to the American model where everything runs for 15 years until they've driven it into the ground, it can seem otherwise.

The light novel observation is a general one, about the general light novels of this type, of which this one is pretty typical. I mean, what you said about him applies to pretty much every similar character. "Generally likeable, has a personality, isn't just "he's so nice!" He's just, well, lewd". Applies to Demon Lord Dai Maou, Aesthetics of a Rogue Hero, Highschool DxD, Sora no Otoshimono, Kenzen Robo Daimidaler, etc etc etc. All of which I enjoyed more than that particular one, so check some of those out. Warning: range from very lewd to extremely lewd.

I don't really read LN's but there are a lot of articles written breaking down what they're like en-masse, by people who've read a lot of them

https://geekorner.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/light-novels-are-poorly-written-and-adapting-them-shows-that/

If you have a read through that, relate that back to the personality of the main character in the show you saw, see how much of it fits and actually follows merely from the format / formulas all these books follow. Basically every light novel MC is a wry and intelligent cynical genre-savvy observer, because that fits the formula and biases of the format and it's writers / readers. He wouldn't waffle around during the anime, mainly because in the books most of that is done as internal monologue, and most anime adaptations just cut the internal monologue completely, leaving the character appearing as a somewhat stoic man of few words.

This is where manga and light novels are HUGELY different. Light novels are all internal monologue heavy from genre-aware cynical wise guys, whereas in manga dialogue and action carry all the weight of the story. You can notice the sheer amount of times in series based on light novels where the protagonist works out what the other guy is going to do then beats them effortlessly or with minimal effort. That's because in the book, most of the space was taken up with the long-winded internal thought processes, but when it gets adapted it turns into a scenario where the bad guy does some elaborate stuff then the hero beats them easily without seeming to do much if anything. That's because the bad guy is expressed through actions while the protagonist is expressed through the internal monologue / author's voice. There's literally no room in there for many actions from the hero. Gives it a very fan-fiction, author's insert feeling compared to manga.

[Cruxador]

Hey, uh, thanks again for lecturing me about how I'm too American to understand one-season animation, or the essential characterization of light novels vs. manga, but I'm still only talking about the anime 'cuz that's all I've consumed.

You can go on all you like about how the light novel protagonist acts like a light novel protagonist, but I'm still not talking about the light novel, aye?

Pretty sure that's why Reelya was giving you context, rather than assuming you already knew it.

This is where manga and light novels are HUGELY different. Light novels are all internal monologue heavy from genre-aware cynical wise guys, whereas in manga dialogue and action carry all the weight of the story. You can notice the sheer amount of times in series based on light novels where the protagonist works out what the other guy is going to do then beats them effortlessly or with minimal effort. That's because in the book, most of the space was taken up with the long-winded internal thought processes, but when it gets adapted it turns into a scenario where the bad guy does some elaborate stuff then the hero beats them easily without seeming to do much if anything. That's because the bad guy is expressed through actions while the protagonist is expressed through the internal monologue / author's voice. There's literally no room in there for many actions from the hero. Gives it a very fan-fiction, author's insert feeling compared to manga.

You're using a lot of negatively connotative words here, and that's understandable given the quality of a lot of LNs, but there isn't necessarily anything wrong with this manner of story-telling on its own. It basically makes the narrative a framework to drive the worldbuilding, and makes the protagonist someone who succeeds through greater understanding. It's highly suitable to stories about intrigue (more typical in Korean stories such as Dungeon Defense) and mysteries, which are sort of a sub-genre of that. And stories about engineering or complicated magic systems can do it well. It's only trash when the worldbuilding or the systems involved in the combat aren't sufficient to support the amount of page space given to them.

[MCreeper]

I usually play without sound, so i missed on (mediocre at best  )Cartagra music a bit. This one made me chuckle. I'm not going to listen it, but it made me chuckle. It also made me open Umineko and try to separate a pile of great music from a pile of vile trash. During that process i stumbled on this here greatness. Words sometimes stretching and squeezing beyound all reason made me cringe a bit, but after watching original once i guess that's a feature. Ah, there is also a russian one! With the first voice being clearly male. Nope!

[TamerVirus]

I usually play without sound

*visible confusion*
Sound makes up like half the experience! Character voices, the music, sound effects...
Umineko is explicitly described foremost as a 'sound novel'