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[JoshuaFH]

I pounded out the first season of Yowamushi Pedal and started on Grand Road. I'm really loving every second.

The author has a thing for tongues though. Every 'evil' bicyclist has a large swollen tongue that just flops wildly around getting spit all over the place.

[Furtuka]

Picked up Concrete Revolutio and I'm loving it so far. It's like anime Watchmen with expies of Japanese cultural icons from the 60s and 70s.

[Neonivek]

Watched like a minute of Shootfighter Tekken and decided not to go through with watching the series.

It is rare that an anime goes with beefy characters now adays (and usually when they do, they are either jokes, villains, or side characters). Yet I never seen art quite like the way this anime does it.

The best way to describe it is all the muscular guys look like ordinary people wearing full body muscle suits with openings around the face.

Though given the box art... I might have stopped watching too soon.

[Orange Wizard]

Watched like a minute of Shootfighter Tekken and decided not to go through with watching the series.

Hm.

How do you guys decide what shows to watch/not watch? I mostly just pick things up at random without much in the way of background-checking, and sometimes I'll go with something that's been recommended.

[Neonivek]

I change my methods from time to time.

Sometimes I just chose something based entirely on its premise which oddly fails most of the time*. Sometimes I just chose at random and just stick with it no matter what. Sometimes I just go for a genre (Detective Q I was recommended and even though it is an unfinished series I really miss watching it). A few times I actively sought hilariously terrible animes and oddly enough I've seen more good anime using this method then actually trying to find animes I'll like myself.

But lately I haven't had the energy to watch an anime no matter what like I used to... Peach Girl is probably the worst anime I ever forced myself to watch (as in the anime I hated seeing the most)... and ever since then whenever I thought of sitting through a really boring anime I just get flashbacks to the plot that never ends. Though the only anime to ever offend me enough to get me to stop watching was Familiar of Zero and the less I say about that anime the better.

*: It is actually because like most things in life... People think up a good premise but don't really want to follow through with it.

[itisnotlogical]

I like shows with interesting art styles. A lot of anime looks very samey, so I like something that adds even a little variation to the style. For all DBZ's trouble with cheap animation, I haven't seen a show quite as colorful or visually memorable before or since.

I'll also give a show a shot if there's something truly unique in the premise. Hurou Musukou (aka Wandering Son) has a transgender protagonist, for example. Rurouni Kenshin seemed to be about letting go of the past and spiritual restoration, which is a feel-good theme not explored often enough in anime, IMHO.

If I'm seeking out a specific genre, usually it's either trashy pervy romcoms (see Monster Musume) or genuine girly romance (like Say I Love You).

I also automatically adore anything that resembles Ghost in the Shell

Another way to get my attention that I just remembered: long landscape shots with cicadas in the background. That's something that I've carried over from Evangelion fanboyism, although I'm sure it was around before then.

[Frumple]

How do you guys decide what shows to watch/not watch? I mostly just pick things up at random without much in the way of background-checking, and sometimes I'll go with something that's been recommended.

S'about how I choose manga, yeah. Just bumble around whatever genre I'm interested in at the moment until something catches the eye. Actual anime... that takes a fair bit more, since the time investment involved is tends to be notably larger. Usually go by recommendations, sometimes follow stuff coming from series I previously enjoyed (See: Gundam), sometimes watch junk coming from a manga series I enjoyed (See: Jojo, though I still haven't really watched much of the anime).

Don't really do the random thing there, though. In the time it takes to watch a single episode, I can usually chew through several manga chapters... makes hitting dud anime a considerably larger time investment, so m'more careful on that front.

[EnigmaticHat]

I feel like many psychological essays could be written about the prevalence of the "guy who doesn't want sex at all ends up surrounded by beautiful women and keeps getting his face buried in their boobs totally on accident, protesting all the while" setup.

I think the western equivalent would be "nerdy/comedic male lead gets with the smoking hot female lead through no effort of their own".  They're different but the core fantasy is the same, which is getting laid/getting a date without earning it.  With the market being a younger male audience that doesn't have the confidence to think that they can convince women to like them?  I don't know, that's my theory anyway.

The other thing I would say is, from a writing perspective, its rather clever.  Unless you are writing unambiguous fapping material, your story needs a conflict or its going to be pretty much unwatchable.  With that premise, now the smut IS the conflict.  Which is an impressive feat.  This is probably the same reason there are a few games out there with the premise of "win fights or get raped in a fetishy manner".

[JoshuaFH]

I mean, Paranoia Agent is related to Perfect Blue and Paprika in the Satoshi Kon "Acid Trip" genre of anime. Though I remember really loving PA.

[Flying Dice]

It's been ages since I watched PA, but I recall it being a satisfying trip, yeah.

[Neonivek]

I feel like many psychological essays could be written about the prevalence of the "guy who doesn't want sex at all ends up surrounded by beautiful women and keeps getting his face buried in their boobs totally on accident, protesting all the while" setup.

I think the western equivalent would be "nerdy/comedic male lead gets with the smoking hot female lead through no effort of their own".  They're different but the core fantasy is the same, which is getting laid/getting a date without earning it.  With the market being a younger male audience that doesn't have the confidence to think that they can convince women to like them?  I don't know, that's my theory anyway.

The other thing I would say is, from a writing perspective, its rather clever.  Unless you are writing unambiguous fapping material, your story needs a conflict or its going to be pretty much unwatchable.  With that premise, now the smut IS the conflict.  Which is an impressive feat.  This is probably the same reason there are a few games out there with the premise of "win fights or get raped in a fetishy manner".

I think it has more to do with the idea that the male lead is supposed to be a "Pure hero" who would never take advantage of these women who has a kind heart yada yada yada... But gets pretty much all the advantages anyway.

Basically it is a male ideal (the "never take advantage").

Though given that our society is so bent on saying that all male ideals are power fantasies to the point of enforcing it and ignoring all others... This narrative is extremely uncommon in Western narratives unless it is a female character.

[Hawkfrost]

I'm about four episodes out from finishing Paranoia Agent. I'm still trying to figure out of the writers ran out of ideas after the seventh episode or if

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

the developing incoherence and unrelated episodes are an effect of the investigation of Shonen Bat being dropped.

If the show were a 200-piece puzzle, it feels right now like there are some 230 pieces in the box, and it's more frustrating than it is confusing.

Paranoia Agent was created when Satoshi Kon had a bunch of ideas laying around unused from making Perfect Blue, and knowing that makes it a bit more understandable; it's more of a collection of short stories than a cohesive plot.

Additionally, what was it, the eighth episode, with the three characters trying to commit suicide together?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

They're all some kind of dead by the end of the episode, right? The young guy probably snaps his neck at the hanging, the old man runs out of medicine ("just a delusion," you sure there?), and the girl drowns in the hot springs? Maybe they're deceased at the start of the episode- they're never acknowledged by any passerbys. The freakish reaction the ladies have at the end of the episode when they're having their picture taken suggests that they're not all there, y'know?

And what's Shonen Bat have to do with it, anyways?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You can go back and check for the point at which their shadows disappeared, which was in the abandoned house where they were trying to die of carbon monoxide poisoning; they succeeded. Everything after that, they were dead. It's actually rather clever, in my opinion, how well they hide it without the viewer noticing.

I'm very much on the fence about whether or not I should be pissed at this series. I have to finish it first (you have to pass the bill to find out what's in it!), I suppose.

I actually had the exact same feeling, but eventually I flipped over into the "I like it anyway" side. I still feel that the first seven episodes are the best and that the payoff isn't as strong as the mystery, but in the end it's a show full of a lot of ideas and most of them are pretty cool.

[Reelya]

Yup, I don't really think "ran out of ideas" sums up Paranoia Agent whatsoever. Run out of ideas would imply repeating yourself, or dragging out additional episodes from the same plot just for the sake of filling up the alotted time, which Satoshi Kon definitely did not do in that series. Too many ideas for one series is more like it.

[itisnotlogical]

"The stares of those looking at someone unlike themselves are piercing... and excruciatingly so. We nonhumans are always subjected to these stares. We know better than anyone how painful those stares are."

I... I think Monster Musume just dropped a truth bomb about living in foreign cultures. My borderline-pornography, unabashedly sexist, trashy, "watch it behind closed doors", embarrassing shameful guilty pleasure series..... made me think for a second.

The thing is, this wasn't part of some "it's the ending so we have to be serious for a few minutes" climax, there's still quite a bit to go.

I mean, it's still trashy and I'm probably not going to mention this series again, but I was pleasantly surprised.

[JoshuaFH]

"The stares of those looking at someone unlike themselves are piercing... and excruciatingly so. We nonhumans are always subjected to these stares. We know better than anyone how painful those stares are."

I... I think Monster Musume just dropped a truth bomb about living in foreign cultures. My borderline-pornography, unabashedly sexist, trashy, "watch it behind closed doors", embarrassing shameful guilty pleasure series..... made me think for a second.

The thing is, this wasn't part of some "it's the ending so we have to be serious for a few minutes" climax, there's still quite a bit to go.

I mean, it's still trashy and I'm probably not going to mention this series again, but I was pleasantly surprised.

That's kind of what made me so disappointed in the series, in that it had the potential to be a series about clashing cultures and being a lone foreigner in a faraway land, but it never went with it. I felt there was something of a fleshed out world that was behind the scenes, just waiting to be explored, but it got obscured by all the boobies.