Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Darvi]

Only half as weird.

[majikero]

Here's a link of Molester Man from mangahere: http://www.mangahere.com/manga/molester_man/

summary.
Based off a real story which was posted on 2ch, Molester Man is the story of how Molester Man is mistaken for a stalker by Miss Understanding, and how they overcome their personal challenges while slowly growing closer to each other.

[Tellemurius]

i actually enjoy reading that series, i was skeptical for sure though

[Chaoswizkid]

So I watched End of Evangelion yesterday and I have to ask, why do people like this movie? Or this series?
I am actually curious, because I found both pretty bad. I watched it with someone who has seen the whole series and all the movies multiple times and someone who has never seen anything about it, and all three of us concluded afterwards that it was "like someone had taken bad LSD while reading a bunch of Sigmund Freud books."

It got huge in Japan first, then developed a popular (or cult?) following in America.

NGE was the first anime that really got people, on a large scale, to look deeper into it. It was one of the first (if not the first?) anime deconstructions of a genre, to the point that the genre shifts from traditional mecha (young male protagonist pilots a robot to save the world) abruptly to a full-on psychology series where the audience is left asking a -lot- of questions if they don't look deeper into the series and really explore the characters. It was done professionally and in such a way that sucked people in and kept them thinking about it.

Probably one of the biggest factors for its success in Japan is the overwhelming apocalyptic feel. Not only is the world post-apocalyptic in the beginning, they are facing an imminent apocalypse in which there is such a thing as an 'apocalypse of the mind'. According to scholars on the subject, the Japanese are more receptive to that sort of thing (and are more into the moment-of-apocalypse rather than the averting-the-apocalypse that the West is more appreciative of), maybe being related to the firebombing and nuclear bombing of Japan at the end of World War II. Because it was done so well and in such a way that prompted deeper thought, in addition to being original, Japanese philosophers and psychologists actually studied NGE.

Its success in Japan can also be somewhat attributed to the financial conditions of the industry at the time and there was a sort of a dry spell in the wake of Akira, which was eventually filled by Ghost in the Shell and Neon Genesis Evangelion. It's success made it exportable to America, which made it a Big Deal, and a lot of people watched it because it was one of the only things around, even if they perhaps were not otherwise interested in the subject. Most of the American fans stuck around for the same reason it was such a success in Japan.

GAINAX earned a reputation for its crazy/bullshit/just-what-is-going-on/trolling endings off of NGE, with its legendary budget-missing anime ending and Anno's screw-you-for-making-me-do-this movie End of Evangelion. Fans of GAINAX's signature later work (FLCL, TTGL, P&SwG) sometimes feel obligated to watch what started it all.

That's a bit more of an objective look into why people like NGE, or why a lot of people watch NGE (and then may end up liking it).

 

I've had my eye on Code Geass. Anyone see it? Care to reccomment it? How are the giant robots? Lots of whining kids around? Which one should I start with if I do?

Thanks in advance

I've seen it. Yes, I recommend it. The giant robots are somewhat smaller than other giant robots. There is giant robots and then essentially magic (Geass), and both play important, core parts but there is a greater story beyond them that is most important (See: the manga doesn't even have giant robots). The robots that do feature initially are almost all standard-issue. Later in the series a lot of R&D and resource acquisition has been done such that there are much more unique mecha around. There are a couple of whining kids, and they are usually the ones that the fans don't care for, but they largely have side roles (some people have a couple issues with Suzaku, but nothing enough to make the series unentertaining).

What do you mean "which one"? If you're talking about R1 or R2, then R1, because they are the same series and R1 is the first season. If you're talking about the new set of OVAs "Akito the Exiled", then I have no idea because I haven't seen it yet and only one has been released. You'll lose a lot of you don't watch Lelouch of the Rebellion, though, so watch that.

Code Geass is in my top five favorites, swapping between second and third usually. It has the best ending of any series, anime or live action, regardless of genre, in my opinion. It was absolutely fulfilling.

[Darvi]

There have been genre deconstructions since far earlier than NGE. As far back as, say, Shakespeare.

[Chaoswizkid]

There have been genre deconstructions since far earlier than NGE. As far back as, say, Shakespeare.

Edited to make it pertain specifically to anime.

[Hawkfrost]

One of my major problems with NGE is that yes, it tries to make you look deeper into the characters but none of them actually have much depth there at all.
Some of them are exceptions to this rule, but the kids in particular tend to have just one or two dominating personality flaws that make up their entire character and leave most of it undeveloped or unfinished.

The setting, Angel and Eva design I will agree is all done well and I appreciate them actually having "alien aliens", but it all falls a bit flat when instead it's focusing on a main character whose reaction to everything is to run and hide while everyone else is actually doing things.

My feelings coming off of it and from talking to other people who have seen it is that a lot of people probably watched NGE as children and liked it because it was dark and edgy, with a lot of gore and sexual themes which is not a thing many North American shows ever deal with. I could be completely off base of course and it's just not my thing.

[Neonivek]

It doesn't help though Hawkfrost that the characters in NGE don't really act the way someone in their possition would act.

Heck I bet I am right, since I BARELY ever watched the series, that the suits themselves have a mental deterioration effect on the pilots.

[kaenneth]

Wearing your mothers corpse can't be good for you.

[fqllve]

I'm gonna preface this by saying I don't actually like NGE, as I found the philosophy muddled, to say the least, and the characters unsympathetic. But to truly appreciate the show you really have to consider it as a creature of its time. Before NGE came out the only other mecha anime that resembled it in tone were Space Runaway Ideon, which wasn't exactly popular, or Megazone 23, and both of those were ten years old by the time NGE came out. At that point most mecha was just lighthearted action affairs like Saber Marionette, Macross, or Raijin-Oh. Heck, Ghost in the Shell was only just released around the same time.

You also have to look at what Gainax had released up until that point, which was basically Gunbuster and Otaku no Video. So in a lot of ways NGE was a real departure and was certainly historically important. I don't think it was necessarily deep, but mecha had kind of been languishing for a while at that point and NGE did a lot to give the genre credibility.

And everything about the show makes more sense, especially the characters, when you examine it as a product of its time and compare the protagonists to the characters in other shows. They are starkly flawed, rather unlikeable, and rather ineffectual, which is exactly how they were meant to be. They aren't really deep or multifaceted, but they are a huge contrast, and in a lot of ways an effective one. The same is true of the plot. There's no actually saving the world of Evangelion, it's already far too late and humanity has proved itself incapable of being saved. All that's left is to fight uselessly and bring about our own destruction.

[Hawkfrost]

You know what, I will agree with you on those.
I certainly understand the significance of it to the medium and the kind of changes it introduced. Culturally it is important.
But I also think that it has not aged well and put against shows that have come afterwards, it does not hold up as something enjoyable to watch.



In other news I just finished watching Black Lagoon: Roberta's Blood Trail tonight. Rock certainly changes a lot over the course of the show.
Black Lagoon was something I thought would be pretty good, but I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. It turns remarkably dark in the second season and carries that through in the OVA.

[ToonyMan]

My feelings coming off of it and from talking to other people who have seen it is that a lot of people probably watched NGE as children and liked it because it was dark and edgy, with a lot of gore and sexual themes which is not a thing many North American shows ever deal with. I could be completely off base of course and it's just not my thing.

Maybe playing MuvLuv has let me appreciate NGE's characters more, but I do really enjoy both series for doing apocalyptic mecha series really awesomely.  They both have a lot of problems but I so enjoy the setting and music and aliens when the writing actually uses it well.  Of course, I have only seen NGE quite recently (May 2011 I believe?) and I can't even say doing these things I do now has ever been a real hobby or interest until 2009.

[GreatJustice]

I'm gonna preface this by saying I don't actually like NGE, as I found the philosophy muddled, to say the least, and the characters unsympathetic. But to truly appreciate the show you really have to consider it as a creature of its time. Before NGE came out the only other mecha anime that resembled it in tone were Space Runaway Ideon, which wasn't exactly popular, or Megazone 23, and both of those were ten years old by the time NGE came out. At that point most mecha was just lighthearted action affairs like Saber Marionette, Macross, or Raijin-Oh. Heck, Ghost in the Shell was only just released around the same time.

You also have to look at what Gainax had released up until that point, which was basically Gunbuster and Otaku no Video. So in a lot of ways NGE was a real departure and was certainly historically important. I don't think it was necessarily deep, but mecha had kind of been languishing for a while at that point and NGE did a lot to give the genre credibility.

And everything about the show makes more sense, especially the characters, when you examine it as a product of its time and compare the protagonists to the characters in other shows. They are starkly flawed, rather unlikeable, and rather ineffectual, which is exactly how they were meant to be. They aren't really deep or multifaceted, but they are a huge contrast, and in a lot of ways an effective one. The same is true of the plot. There's no actually saving the world of Evangelion, it's already far too late and humanity has proved itself incapable of being saved. All that's left is to fight uselessly and bring about our own destruction.

I'd agree with you to a point on this. NGE's main importance was inspiring later works that were significantly better. However, there were certainly mecha shows before that that were certainly similar, case in point being Victory Gundam. Now I'm probably in the minority for liking VGundam a lot more than some of the others, but you have to admit that both shows were quite similar in major ways, if not presentation, and the Gundam series was influential in of itself. It's not like all anime in the 90s was silly shit, even if that was the trend.

Now besides that, NGE was certainly different, but not necessarily for the better. Okay, there was a depth and seriousness not present in anime of the time, but it had innumerable problems, at least some of which ended up spreading (which I'll get to). There was a focus on the characters, yet after a point I really stopped caring about the characters at all. Most of them could largely be summed in a sentence or two, and they acted like caricatures. That can work just fine sometimes, but it really didn't in NGE. The plot was littered with gigantic holes, and symbolism was basically shoved in because it looked cool as opposed to having any reasonable connection to the plot.

Oh, and I'd say it popularized that annoying tendency of anime to present totally nonsensical situations alongside similarly nonsensical "tough moral choices" to create a sort of artificial gravity to the show. I know that isn't explained very well, but I know at least some people will know what I mean. It's like the anime equivalent of the binary moral choice system that's so common in games today, in that it takes something interesting that can add depth to the medium and basically waters it down to avoid having to make people actually think about it, decide for themselves, or, god forbid, take a view that might differ from the viewer's on an issue they might take a realistic side on.

[fqllve]

I've not actually seen Victory Gundam, but the only Gundam I've seen that I would call at all similar in tone to NGE is 0080: War in the Pocket. Even the darker animes of the 90s, which were certainly rarities in the mech genre, didn't approach the absolute bleakness of NGE. I'm actually having trouble coming up with many mech anime from the 90s with darker premises at all, there are a few, but the only thing I can think of that's comparable to NGE is Genocyber, and that was for a completely different audience and is actually way worse. The other dark anime I think of all involve some kind of hero cleaning out a post-apocalyptic setting, so while the setting is dark, the characters and plot aren't, which is the main thing I think sets NGE apart.

But again, I don't actually like NGE and I never have. I agree with Hawkfrost in that it didn't age well but I'd take it one further and say it wasn't particularly good for its time either. I could go on an on about NGE's failings but I think they're mostly obvious. My biggest problem is that it presents the illusion of depth through various tricks of sleight-of-hand. It's ingenious, but I don't particularly enjoy watching it. However, I don't think that illusion is really what draws many people into it, or at least keeps them there. It's the absolute contrast that it presents with the largest part of early 90s anime. Even when I watched it, which was approaching 10 years after it first aired, it was something different, and after Akira it was my introduction to the darker side of anime. And that's just my take on why I think people like the show.

[OREOSOME]

I'm a bit miffed, because I WANT to watch NGE, but there is no place I can find it.