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Author Topic: I like anime, do you like anime?  (Read 2763199 times)

Great Order

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Re: I like anime, do you like anime?
« Reply #32715 on: December 16, 2022, 07:47:05 pm »

Beat me to it.

It's kinda sad, even though I've not watched pokemon since I was like... 10.
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hector13

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Re: I like anime, do you like anime?
« Reply #32716 on: December 16, 2022, 08:03:53 pm »

Looks like you have to ketchup.
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Great Order

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Re: I like anime, do you like anime?
« Reply #32717 on: December 16, 2022, 08:09:01 pm »

Got over 1000 bottles to empty for that.
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JoshuaFH

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Re: I like anime, do you like anime?
« Reply #32718 on: December 17, 2022, 05:12:54 pm »

Come on Ash, you finally made it to the post-game and you just quit?
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scriver

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Re: I like anime, do you like anime?
« Reply #32719 on: December 17, 2022, 06:24:02 pm »

It's Ronaldo all over again
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JoshuaFH

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Re: I like anime, do you like anime?
« Reply #32720 on: January 07, 2023, 09:44:18 am »

MitchieM finally released another song, after like 2 years:

https://youtu.be/JQoeuGNJfAg

and I'm just laughing at the cartoonishly cheery and happy beat, juxtaposed with the outrageously tragic storyline.

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IronyOwl

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Re: I like anime, do you like anime?
« Reply #32721 on: January 07, 2023, 04:30:59 pm »

Rereading Kingdom, because waiting for regular weekly updates is unbearable. It's still really good! I was expecting things to kinda blend together or get repetitive on a reread, but it's still an amazing mix of shonen nonsense, shonen strategy, large-scale combat, courtly mechanisms, and character interactions. Politics are unfortunately kinda flat, but interesting enough to make me wish there was more.

In more up to date news,
Spoiler: Chapter 743 Spoilers (click to show/hide)


Started reading Chainsaw Man, which I would describe as "magnificently stupid." It's got that amazing ability to blend ridiculous things with everything else, and so be totally silly and totally coherent at the same time. And, in this case, excessively dark.

The main character is also a work of art, because he's a beaten dog with agency. He's utterly mundane in his desires, but he still really really wants them, so he avoids the usual issue downtrodden characters face of being pushed around by others or motivated by a single blazing star. This contradiction is one of the many things seamlessly woven into the rest of the world, and so works really well both internally and in his dealings with everyone and thing around him.
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Loud Whispers

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Re: I like anime, do you like anime?
« Reply #32722 on: January 07, 2023, 04:49:07 pm »

Reminder that in the character popularity rating poll for Chainsaw Man, fans rated Kobeni's car higher than Kobeni

Rolan7

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Re: I like anime, do you like anime?
« Reply #32723 on: January 09, 2023, 07:33:55 pm »

Rewatched Jojo episode one twice today, subs and dubs.  There are various arguments for subs over dubs, but for me a lot of it boils down to "The Japanese VAs have deep sexy voices which I can take more seriously and also drool over".

It's also distracting trying to watch the dub *with* subs (I use subs on all shows because I have trouble understanding speech sometimes) because of how different the dubs are.  And the dubs are actually good!  They're using appropriate English aphorisms and stuff, instead of the subs where you have to get a lot of the meaning from visual cues.  The accents are also kinda nice.  But the language is SO different that it's impossible to read while listening.  They're VERY different instead of the usual, interesting, amount of different.

Plus compared to the original VAs they sound like kids!  I wish I hadn't checked the subs version because the dubs version was very enjoyable until I contrasted them!
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Re: I like anime, do you like anime?
« Reply #32724 on: February 01, 2023, 06:56:49 am »

So uh, Eminence in the shadows is a thing I've picked up in the current lull of shows. I can't tell if I hate or love it tho.

At the surface it's the most basic and bland isekai ever, except it's aware of it? The protag is absolutely batshit insane in his quest to be this nobody who's secretly the ultimate badass, and it kinda works? He's basically aware of the plot and the tropes and actively goes for shit that'll make him be the background dude or secondary character because then he can swoop in at the end and upstage everyone with how OP he is, without anyone knowing it's actually him.

Except it seems to want to have its cake and eat it too. Like, at one point their school gets invaded and the protag comments how it's the basic teenage power fantasy of having to beat the bad guys that have taken over your school, but then he goes and executes the power fantasy perfectly because that's his thing I guess? There's also the whole girls can't resist him thing that's played around with, but I can't tell if it's great or terrible. Where for a number of episodes there was just a revolving door of romantic interests thrust upon him (which he has little to no interest in for bonus points) and it feels like someone taking that basic fantasy of being liked by girls but turning it up to fucking eleven. And I can't tell if it's being played for laughs or completely fucking straight.

It's a fascinating show and I'm already like 15 episodes in, I don't care much for the plot or the characters but I keep watching because I so badly want to see that punchline, I so badly want there to be a punchline too. Because if there isn't one, then holy shit the isekai genre needs to be taken out back and put down.
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Loud Whispers

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Re: I like anime, do you like anime?
« Reply #32725 on: February 01, 2023, 08:36:56 am »

So uh, Eminence in the shadows is a thing I've picked up in the current lull of shows. I can't tell if I hate or love it tho.

At the surface it's the most basic and bland isekai ever, except it's aware of it? The protag is absolutely batshit insane in his quest to be this nobody who's secretly the ultimate badass, and it kinda works? He's basically aware of the plot and the tropes and actively goes for shit that'll make him be the background dude or secondary character because then he can swoop in at the end and upstage everyone with how OP he is, without anyone knowing it's actually him.

Except it seems to want to have its cake and eat it too. Like, at one point their school gets invaded and the protag comments how it's the basic teenage power fantasy of having to beat the bad guys that have taken over your school, but then he goes and executes the power fantasy perfectly because that's his thing I guess? There's also the whole girls can't resist him thing that's played around with, but I can't tell if it's great or terrible. Where for a number of episodes there was just a revolving door of romantic interests thrust upon him (which he has little to no interest in for bonus points) and it feels like someone taking that basic fantasy of being liked by girls but turning it up to fucking eleven. And I can't tell if it's being played for laughs or completely fucking straight.

It's a fascinating show and I'm already like 15 episodes in, I don't care much for the plot or the characters but I keep watching because I so badly want to see that punchline, I so badly want there to be a punchline too. Because if there isn't one, then holy shit the isekai genre needs to be taken out back and put down.
It's suffering from the same problem that One Punch Man's manga is. In the original Eminence in Shadow source material, it is unambiguously a satire, with a character who is self-aware that he's just pretending to be an edgelord but has no idea that their delusions of conspiracy are 100% factually correct. In the show adaptation I wasn't fully sure if he had figured out the cult was real or not, and was surprised to find at the season finale the protagonist was still supposed to not know the cult is real. Part of the reason is the guys adapting Eminence in Shadow have a lot of experience with making animes about young kids with god like powers who do battle shonens to get stronger... Which is exactly what EiS is satirising. A good example is how in the source, the guy fakes a lot of his god-like ultimate mega nuclear darkness 1000% gigia atomic split because he's just an edgelord who's larping as a nuclear bomb.

In the show, he is actually a nuclear bomb. His powers are real. They are playing everything straight as if it were a show about an actual 500 IQ grey eminence outplaying the demon cult, but then will cut back to the source material's original theme periodically of people falling flat on their face. And then you get that weird juxtaposition where the MC is "pretending" to be a nuclear bomb, juxtaposed to the fact that he is, in fact, a nuclear bomb.

The OPM manga vs webcomic is like this. Webcomic is taking the mick out of "AAAAAH I WILL GET STRONGER AAAAAAA I WILL BEAT bad guy #45 who is really strong SO I WILL GET STRONGER AAAAA" by having a MC who is clearly too overlevelled and simple to gaf. Manga... Takes it very seriously that everyone will get stronger, missing the point.

Also I get saddened when I see too many anime shows are isekais that did not need to be isekais. It's like the clout chasing version of every game trying to be an MMO, or a MOBA, or a battle royale, or an E-sport just because some other game did it. It's getting to the point where even ones which aren't isekais are pretending to be ones, complete with characters talking about class levels & adventurers guilds and ranks -_-

Frumple

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Re: I like anime, do you like anime?
« Reply #32726 on: February 01, 2023, 01:15:58 pm »

It's getting to the point where even ones which aren't isekais are pretending to be ones, complete with characters talking about class levels & adventurers guilds and ranks -_-
Meanwhile, I'm just over here waiting for the one that does the entire show in status boxes. There's actually at least one, and I think more than one, isekai told more or less entirely through boxes. I want that as an anime, a manga, an everything.

Just about my entire life I've been primed to interact with media through blue boxes, and I want to see this brought to an apotheosis. I am here for the system apocalypse coming down upon media.
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voliol

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Re: I like anime, do you like anime?
« Reply #32727 on: February 01, 2023, 02:14:20 pm »

It's getting to the point where even ones which aren't isekais are pretending to be ones, complete with characters talking about class levels & adventurers guilds and ranks -_-

On that topic I read Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibōken some month ago. For context, it ran in Jump for some 40-ish volumes in the 90s, which alone should make it safe from isekai-ism, the genre in its current form not having been born yet. But then there's the "Dragon Quest" part of the name meaning in reality, it goes quite heavy on the stat-isms, character classes, and the now beaten tropes of demon lord (by that name) and hero destined to beat them. Without being one bit isekai more than Star Wars, in terms of world-shifting.

Here the question is where the tropes came from - as Dai sold a lot of copies (47 million volumes according to wikipedia) can it be considered seminal proto-isekai? At the same time, the Dragon Quest games and all their derivatives would have existed and influenced kids growing up in the 80s and 90s even without Dai, and Sauron is ostensibly a "demon lord".

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Re: I like anime, do you like anime?
« Reply #32728 on: February 01, 2023, 03:34:01 pm »

Proto-isekai predates Tolkien; the general conceit predates english, showing up in mythologies and old literature all over the world. It's not even a little new in terms of story beats, so trying to point out when exactly one trope or another involved with it showed up is something of a fool's errand, especially if you're not like literally a history/literature major or somethin'.

Dragon Quest in general did have a genuinely huge influence on japanese culture, though, especially the fantasy and fantasy adjacent stuff that would later inform a lot of the things going on with isekai. It's not exactly isekai in any sense (well, some of it isn't, parts of the monsters line explicitly is at a minimum), but it was hugely influential on the cultures that would produce the modern forms of the stuff, so it's completely unsurprising you'd see its influence in modern isekai -- you see its influence in great swaths of modern fantasy, period, even outside of Japan where it's particularly loved.
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Loud Whispers

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Re: I like anime, do you like anime?
« Reply #32729 on: February 01, 2023, 04:26:12 pm »

Meanwhile, I'm just over here waiting for the one that does the entire show in status boxes. There's actually at least one, and I think more than one, isekai told more or less entirely through boxes. I want that as an anime, a manga, an everything.

Just about my entire life I've been primed to interact with media through blue boxes, and I want to see this brought to an apotheosis. I am here for the system apocalypse coming down upon media.
Reincarnated as a spider manages to do something like that in a fairly fun way. 99% of the show is literally just the MC levelling up as a spider and trying to overcome status effects... But it's strangely compelling, especially as they switch between the MC's self perspective (as a cute spider) and the perspective of random adventurers (seeing giant monstrous spider)

Proto-isekai predates Tolkien; the general conceit predates english, showing up in mythologies and old literature all over the world. It's not even a little new in terms of story beats, so trying to point out when exactly one trope or another involved with it showed up is something of a fool's errand, especially if you're not like literally a history/literature major or somethin'.
Yeah it's not that hard to find stories which could be classified as an isekai, like Dante's divine comedy where you have a self-insert MC getting isekai'd or a Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's court which managed to do the whole "I teach a whole bunch of medieval yokels how to industrialise with my big brain 21st century knowledge" despite being published in the 19th century.

However when I mean isekai in the context of anime... I mean a very, very specific thing, which has been contributing to the isekaification of the entire medium.
-Main character is off-hand mentioned as coming from somewhere in Japan in the opening scene. This is never brought up again.
-Main character either has no defining character traits, or else has some superficial trait like "he's fast," or "he copies his enemies."
-Harem of love interests who all clearly express strong sexual desire for one another but get flustered at the thought of holding hands and so never develop any relationship at all.
-Adventurer's guild with ranks. MC is overpowered but decides to participate in the ranking system for reasons (???).
-We have to defeat the demon lord. If the MC is the demon lord, they don't actually do anything evil, and the only reason people call them the demon lord is because they've got horns.
-If the MC has changed gender or race as a result of being Isekai'd, they will never bring this up again after episode 1.
-Video game mechanics, right down to hit points, mana points, levels, class levels, pre-set skills and ability points.

And then you have shows which try to be like this format - who cut out the whole opening line saying "oh yeah MC is from Japan" but otherwise are indistinguishable from this exact format of isekai.

Something like "The hero is overpowered but overly cautious" does this formula down to a T, complete with an overpowered main character with one defining char trait (he grinds before facing an enemy). "She professed herself pupil of the wise man," - also similar problem, in that the MC makes an amazing old wizard character and then turns him into an uwu moe girl and then persists with their defining trait being an overpowered summoner who has to deal with the usual isekai format of ranking up, gaining the respect of colleagues in the workplace. The only thing it does different from the format is that thousands of players got isekai'd at the same time, so you occasionally get really cool moments when the players bump into each other and reminisce on their old lives, but they don't dwell too long on that to go back to the format. "Is it wrong to pick up girls in a dungeon" is so painfully this format that it's unwatchable.

Some ones which break the format a bit:

"A guy who reincarnated as a fantasy knockout and a ____" - main character is transformed from a neet into a beautiful girl and has to defeat the demon lord all the while trying to avoid not falling into a relationship with his best friend. Breaks the format, it being an isekai is actually relevant to the plot and they continue to actually explore the fact that the char just reincarnated and lost his identity basically every episode.

Overlord - the fact that the MC comes from such a miserable dystopian shithole and being the last player in his guild in a dying MMORPG is always relevant to the story, and perfectly in line with the theme that in his old life he was the last remaining man in the guild, a skeleton left behind. And in the fantasy world he is literally the skeleton that goot left behind.

Reincarnated as a spider - no harem. No plot. MC is a spider. That's all you get, that's all you need.

The Dungeon of Black Company - the fact that the MC is from our world is very relevant to how he uses the forces of labour exploitation to amass riches for himself, very much in the vein of a Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's court.

Gimgar Ashes and Illusions - an incredibly high quality and completely straight take on fantasy isekai with video game mechanics, class levels and the full works. It's incredible how slow and atmospheric this one is, and you have to watch it to really see how bizarrely possible it is to play it straight that everyone is living in a world run by video game mechanics but it feels believable and internally consistent. The main cast are underpowered as hell, and even a fight with a single goblin is intense - the goblin wants to live and is not just treated like a walking sack of XP. The main characters feel the guilt of taking a life, and every fight is a fight to the death they might not walk away from.

I don't think there's anything inherently shite about the format. "Reincarnated as a sword" is the most generic shit possible but it's decent and the MC's adorableness hard carries the show. The trouble is though that this specific format is basically when 99% of new anime just do a checklist ticking exercise and call it a day, and all of the fantasy animes which used to take inspiration from Tolkein or Dragon's Quest are instead just copying other generic isekais of this format who are copying each other too. It's like the meme isekai city with the red walls and river running through it: you have the power to make anything, and yet you make every single city into Friuli.

Friuli is a good city.

But why make every city into Friuli

This is especially egregious when just tweaking even one thing in the format is enough to differentiate you from the rest. E.g. Welcome to Leadale is another one which as generic as it gets. But the main character is female, no harem, and her three NPCs now treat her as a mother. The elements of the format work in favour of the story rather than exist as a "oh yeah this is a thing" off hand mention

Dragon Quest in general did have a genuinely huge influence on japanese culture, though, especially the fantasy and fantasy adjacent stuff that would later inform a lot of the things going on with isekai. It's not exactly isekai in any sense (well, some of it isn't, parts of the monsters line explicitly is at a minimum), but it was hugely influential on the cultures that would produce the modern forms of the stuff, so it's completely unsurprising you'd see its influence in modern isekai -- you see its influence in great swaths of modern fantasy, period, even outside of Japan where it's particularly loved.
One of the things I love charting is seeing how Tolkein, Dungeons and Dragons, Dragon's Quest, World of Warcraft, Warhammer all fed into each other to create all the things people recognise as fantasy staples today. Like why goblins are goblins now, and not orcs, and why orcs are green and not porcs
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