Print

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

[JoshuaFH]

I just binge watched Aggretsuko. What a fun show, if very short. All 10 episodes, at 15 minutes each, means the whole series doesn't consume the time of two normal movies.

[Reelya]

Originally that was 100 episodes of 1 minute each. I'm still working out how that relates to what you saw. At first I thought you'd just seen a repackaged version, but it says on Wikipedia that it was recently released as a "Netflix original" program that had 10 episodes, and the original writer/director was hired for that, so it's probably completely new/reworked material.

BTW the original title is actually アグレッシブ烈子 => Aguresshibu Retsuko.  That's what appears on-screen in the original release. If "Aggretsuko" is a thing, and I hadn't actually heard it called that before, it would be specific to the English dub or Netflix version.

So as luck would have it, there's more Aggressive Retsuko to watch, for both of us. Adding all those together, the first web series is equivalent to 4 normal episodes, and the Netflix series is equivalent to 6 normal episodes. So it's still not all that long.

[JoshuaFH]

Oh yeah I forgot to mention, I'm got on the Netflix free trial for a month of binging on the Netflix originals. I watched Violet Evergarden, the show you recommended earlier. I was greatly impressed! It's a very beautiful show, for some reason my monitor itself crashed twice and I had to restart my computer, something which has literally never happened before. I just put it down to the show being literally too beautiful for my hardware to handle, but it was concerning.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

For most of the show I actually thought Violet was a robot with convincing human skin, kind of like the kind you find in Plastic Memories, but nope she just... has autism I guess? The show never explains her unusually pathologic personality, other than that her upraising was made her that way... But anyway, her quest to develop her own personal empathy is very touching. I liked it a lot. The action scenes actually badly undermine the theme of the show, it feels like the creators just couldn't help themselves, they just HAD TO put a scene in where she Naruto-runs at some dudes and takes them out singlehandedly or the weeb community would get mad at them on MAL. And I would say there's no fanservice, but those elaborate and unique outfits the characters wear are, I would say that's a type of fanservice; gotta do it for the weebs.

One thing that isn't explained is the premise of the show, what's the state of literacy in this fictional world that hiring ghost writers is such a popular thing? Can people read but not write? Can they write but would rather not to? Is writing skill just that rare and difficult in fictional fantasy Germany? And what's with the name Auto Memory Doll? That kind of naming convention is a very obvious Japan-ism sticking out like a sore thumb right in the middle of the show set in WW1 era fantasy Europe.

Overall I liked the show a lot, thanks for pointing me in its direction Reelya.

[Reelya]

Cheers, it's always nice to get feedback on suggestions and know that other people appreciated them.

BTW I just finshed off Junji Ito Collection, which was pretty enjoyable. However something someone here said got me thinking about horror, and the different types and how cultural expectations can shape what we expect from a genre. e.g. someone said they didn't get Junji Ito Collection because it didn't "scare" them, and that got me thinking about whether the intent was even that.

e.g. one type of "horror" is the type that defines its appeal as "shocking" the audience with jump-out-of your seat moments. It's all based around eliciting the emotion of "being scared", so this type of horror will have a lot of jump-scares and monster-in-the-closet moments, as well as fake-outs, since it's hard to maintain that level of jump-scares continuously.

Whereas Junjo Ito isn't really based around that at all. it's not Freddy vs Jason material. Junjo Ito's stuff is based on setting up ideas that are wrong and disturbing then letting them play out to their tragi-comical finales. Yeah, that verges on horror, but it's a different type of horror, more going for pervasive unnerving feeling, or a sense of things being wrong or incongruous. In that sense it might be more akin to something like the Twilight Zone than it is to western horror films. e.g. Ito's stuff is more a cerebral type of body-horror, than an "omg get out of that room" sort of visceral horror, although it can definitely elicit that feeling too.

[JoshuaFH]

It's unfortunate that Junji Ito Collection was going to fail no matter what, as it's obvious that what makes Ito's horror function at all is his obsessive master craftsmanship over the art and medium, while the crew in charge of the anime are obviously not obsessive master craftsman in any sense of the word, so they just wound up making schlock.

[Reelya]

A brand new isekai fantasy light novel series. Volume 1 synopsis:

Description

After dying in a traffic accident, I find myself standing near an unfamiliar lake. My body won't move, I can't hear my voice, and when I try to shout in confusion, words that I never expected come out:

"Get one free with a winner."

I-it seems I've turned into a vending machine... I can only do what actual vending machines can. It's impossible to move by myself, and there's no way for me to have any meaningful conversation-how am I going to survive some fantasy world's dungeon like this?

... Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon, Vol. 1

[JoshuaFH]

That Vending Machine and the Female Fridge should be introduced to eachother.

[Cruxador]

Oh hey, that got licensed. Not too surprising considering that the very concept continually gets people's attention and the writing is at least decent enough to hold it for a bit.

[Frumple]

... yeah, quick look at it and the writing's fairly decent for what it is. Pretty inoffensive so far.

[Reelya]

I still have a couple of spare gift keys for visual novels, on NSFW looking one (Karakara) and one SFW looking one (fault milestone 1 + fault milestone 2), anyone interested?

[Cruxador]

Overlord season 3 was confirmed in the afterword of volume 13. If they do volumes 7, 8, and 9 as they probably will, then this will be the best season so far. But I suspect that they'll switch to two volumes per season after this, since the books just keep getting longer, and volumes 12 and 13 should be kept together same as with the two men in the city volumes of season 2.

[SabbaticGoat]

Spice and Wolf is one of my faves.
But you could have guessed that.

Other than that, I love the parody anime, like the official dub for Ghost Stories, Nichibros, Nichijou, and KonoSuba.

[Reelya]

Coincidentally, the fault milestone visual novels are actually written by the same author who wrote the Spice and Wolf novels, if you'd like to have my spare steam gift keys for that, let me know.

EDIT: Also I'm a big fan of the Aria series and have been watching the spiritual successor to Aria, Amanchu. It's nice but not as great as Aria (which isn't really a criticism). It's from a manga by the same author, and also directed by Junichi Satou (known for series including Sailor Moon, Aria, Princess Tutu and now Amanchu). If you like Spice and Wolf I'd recommend giving Aria a look.

And also Maoyuu Maou Yuusha, it's fairly similar to Spice and Wolf, and was directed by Takeo Takahashi, who was the director of Spice and Wolf, so it could be seen as a spiritual successor to some degree.

[JoshuaFH]

I ran into "To Be Heroine", and if you remember "To Be Hero" then you already know the acid trip is starting again.

This week's episode of Golden Kamuy is the best yet in pure humor.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It features a character that is shot at point blank by a rifle, stabbed multiple times, poisoned by an arrow, chomped on by an Orca Whale, pulled into the freezing cold winter ocean, held underwater and drowned for a short while, beaten utterly senseless by that Orca, and he's not only still hanging onto life, but his erection is still going strong the entire way. The only thing I could think was "You can kill me, but you can't kill my BONER!"

[Frumple]

And also Maoyuu Maou Yuusha, it's fairly similar to Spice and Wolf, and was directed by Takeo Takahashi, who was the director of Spice and Wolf, so it could be seen as a spiritual successor to some degree.

Ain't seen the anime of this, but the books are pretty nice. Dunno how hard I'd recommend 'em, but they're not bad reads.