Chaika - The Coffin Princess
I tend to struggle with fantasy shows.
I don't really know why this is. I mean, fundamentally, I'm a scientist, but having said that I've no real problem with science being bent to make cool stuff happen. Though to paraphrase Arthur C Clarke, any sufficiently advanced technology will seem like magic to the less advanced.
I guess it's like the Marvel v's DC question. In Marvel comics there's a tendency to be Science Fiction (science bent to produce superheroes via mutants or gamma rays or what have you) and in DC there's a tendency to be fantasy ("alien comes to earth and just has super-powers because we say so", "here, have this this magic lamp/ring - it gives you powers"). And I always came down on the science side, rather than the fantasy side.
I guess I also find the repeated re-using of exactly the same things a bit tedious - orc, goblins, elves, paladins, blah, blah, yawns.
I've gone on quite a bit there, but the point is I wasn't expecting to like Chaika, but I've been pleasantly surprised. It's actually moved up my ranking as later episodes have revealed more of a plot that seems quite interesting and it's hinted at explanations for some of the odder aspects.
In particular, I've found Chaika's staccato way of speaking quite annoying. I'm guessing I'm supposed to find it cute, but it made little sense to me until we found out something that's probably a bit spoilery to say here, but suggests that there's a reason behind it.
Captain Earth
I want to like Captain Earth more than I do.
It's a giant mech series and is certainly a lot better than Dai Shogun. The animation is by Bones, who seem to have a surprisingly high number of shows out this season for some reason, and is very nice.
I think the problem is the show can't quite seem to work out what it is. There are elements that are quite like the old super-fun but super-dumb giant mech shows. So for example, in order to pilot the mech (which looks eerily like a gundam), the hero has to launch into space on a rocket, which is sort of realistic, but then he passes through a whole series of "assembly stages" in orbit that add on various bits, that each "transform and combine" in a sudden switch to high-tech and cheesiness that's fun, but feels incongruous due to the mixing of real and absurd.
The show has lots of stuff like that, so there's a weirdly high level of fan-service, which is fine in and of itself, but it pops up randomly dispersed among really serious and downbeat scenes. It makes the fan-service seemed tacked on (and tacky), but also makes the serious-ness seem po-faced.
And the seriousness seems like it's trying too hard to be like Eva, but the writing isn't quite strong enough to pull it off. It also has lots of design elements that I don't know if they're meant to be tributes or copies or accidental. For example, there's an overly sensitive half bad guy half good guy... with purple hair, red eyes and they've just given him a dark blue plug suit er I mean pilot's costume. So it's Kaworu from Eva.
I dunno - it's all just a bit disappointing.
Haikyu!!
Haikyu is actually one of the shows I'd left initially and have since caught up on.
I'd actually been through the shows when I saw there were so many available on crunchyroll this season and had tried to prioritise the ones I thought I'd be more interested in. As these mini reviews show, many have been quite disappointing (it's actually not been that great a season, in my overall opinion), but this and Baby Steps also show I got my guesses quite wrong.
Along with Baby Steps, this is a sports anime, which I increasingly seem to be a fan of for some reason. In this case the sport in question is volleyball (the version played indoors on a court, rather than on a beach), which I can't honestly say I know a great deal about.
However, what makes this show is the characters - the main character is the "super genki" type. He's actually a short-arse, and volleyball tends to favour tall players as the net is set quite high.
Quite a few of the characters fall broadly into types you've seen before - the sour-faced, arrogant, egotistical type, for example. However, the thing that's been making the show is that it's really about breaking down those character traits.
Showing posts with label anime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anime. Show all posts
Thursday, 22 May 2014
Friday, 16 May 2014
bryn who?
More mini anime reviews today.
I'm doing my best to catch up with the ones I'd not watched from this season, but there's quite a few!
Brynhildr in the Darkness
There's a particular type of show I have no easy terminology to summarise. A good example of it is Freezing and it sort of involves physically torturing or causing excess pain to characters. A bit like torture porn, but not actually with torture. In the case of freezing this was also wrapped up in fan-service, and Brynhilder has a smattering of this too, but it's more like this is a cross between a fairly generic instant girlfriend / harem show and that over-the-top cruelty show.
It's not a blending that really works. The normal anime pap stuff is unremarkable and the nasty pain stuff is excessive, so it feels like two separate shows have been cut together. It also doesn't help that the show's humour is of the silly & fan-service varieties.
You end up with this weird thing of flipping between a generic high-school anime with stupid silly gags (or tits gags in later episodes) to moments of nasty pain and suffering. One moment the hero will be cracking gags about how the heroine can't do times tables and the next she'll be leaking blood from every orifice and clearly having a very bad time of it.
I dunno - it all just feels quite poorly put together.
No Game No Life
No Game No Life is a bit of a weird show.
I would say it's definitely gown on me compared to my impression from the first episode. In the first episode the hero came across as quite an arsehole, to be frank, and I was very doubtful as to whether I would continue.
My issue was he was quite annoying, tbh - he was very arrogant, and for no real reason. He was also a NEET, along with his sister, and if I have a continuing criticism it's that it does pander quite a lot to anime tropes. There are some big chunks of fan-service, for example, which I don't mind specifically, but it is the sort of thing that mires the show in the predictable.
However, it's also very good at undermining this stuff. The failing in the first episode is that it didn't really use that trick at all, so the guy was just an arsehole. It wasn't until the second episode that it poked fun at him.
However, even though I've enjoyed it more, I still have some issues. The whole thing seems a bit pointless - I don't really know why they're doing what they're doing. Also things can be quite inconsistent - one moment they're giving a big speech to hundreds of people, the next they're being all agoraphobic about going outside and there being "too many people". I also find the colour palette quite jarring - it's like having an acid trip in a candy factory - though I can see what they were trying to achieve.
Baby Steps
This is actually a sports anime, though you wouldn't be able to tell from the title. I've found in the past I often enjoy sports anime more than the sports themselves, generally because they often treat the sports in an odd way.
In this case, the basic idea seems to be that the main character is able to improve through the use of analysis - he sort of works things out and can then implement various strategies or techniques once he's worked them out.
Now that makes the anime quite interesting, but it means it veers off into a bizarre world where the decades of practice that real tennis players need in order to reach professional standards can essentially be circumvented by someone who can remember what shots a player tends to use most often. Yeah, it's a bit odd.
But a particular redeeming feature is the main character, who's actually a bit different from the usual high-school main character type and you do end up rooting for.
I'm doing my best to catch up with the ones I'd not watched from this season, but there's quite a few!
Brynhildr in the Darkness
There's a particular type of show I have no easy terminology to summarise. A good example of it is Freezing and it sort of involves physically torturing or causing excess pain to characters. A bit like torture porn, but not actually with torture. In the case of freezing this was also wrapped up in fan-service, and Brynhilder has a smattering of this too, but it's more like this is a cross between a fairly generic instant girlfriend / harem show and that over-the-top cruelty show.
It's not a blending that really works. The normal anime pap stuff is unremarkable and the nasty pain stuff is excessive, so it feels like two separate shows have been cut together. It also doesn't help that the show's humour is of the silly & fan-service varieties.
You end up with this weird thing of flipping between a generic high-school anime with stupid silly gags (or tits gags in later episodes) to moments of nasty pain and suffering. One moment the hero will be cracking gags about how the heroine can't do times tables and the next she'll be leaking blood from every orifice and clearly having a very bad time of it.
I dunno - it all just feels quite poorly put together.
No Game No Life
No Game No Life is a bit of a weird show.
I would say it's definitely gown on me compared to my impression from the first episode. In the first episode the hero came across as quite an arsehole, to be frank, and I was very doubtful as to whether I would continue.
My issue was he was quite annoying, tbh - he was very arrogant, and for no real reason. He was also a NEET, along with his sister, and if I have a continuing criticism it's that it does pander quite a lot to anime tropes. There are some big chunks of fan-service, for example, which I don't mind specifically, but it is the sort of thing that mires the show in the predictable.
However, it's also very good at undermining this stuff. The failing in the first episode is that it didn't really use that trick at all, so the guy was just an arsehole. It wasn't until the second episode that it poked fun at him.
However, even though I've enjoyed it more, I still have some issues. The whole thing seems a bit pointless - I don't really know why they're doing what they're doing. Also things can be quite inconsistent - one moment they're giving a big speech to hundreds of people, the next they're being all agoraphobic about going outside and there being "too many people". I also find the colour palette quite jarring - it's like having an acid trip in a candy factory - though I can see what they were trying to achieve.
Baby Steps
This is actually a sports anime, though you wouldn't be able to tell from the title. I've found in the past I often enjoy sports anime more than the sports themselves, generally because they often treat the sports in an odd way.
In this case, the basic idea seems to be that the main character is able to improve through the use of analysis - he sort of works things out and can then implement various strategies or techniques once he's worked them out.
Now that makes the anime quite interesting, but it means it veers off into a bizarre world where the decades of practice that real tennis players need in order to reach professional standards can essentially be circumvented by someone who can remember what shots a player tends to use most often. Yeah, it's a bit odd.
But a particular redeeming feature is the main character, who's actually a bit different from the usual high-school main character type and you do end up rooting for.
Thursday, 8 May 2014
so bad it's good
I've so far failed to watch all of the shows available this season on crunchyroll, because as previously discussed; there seem to be a lot more than usual. However, I have watched a few and am up to date with them, so I thought I'd do some reviews. These are broadly in reverse order - I have to say I've actually been a bit disappointed overall with the season and a lot of the shows are poor to middling (of course I've not watched quite a few so I may not have seen the great shows yet!)
Dai Shogun - Great Revolution
This is the one that's inspired the title, as it's really quite bad, but sort of fun because of that. It's not totally terrible in all regards. The drawings are good and well rendered, but please note - that's specifically the drawn images. What they then do with those images is horrible, because the entire show isn't really animated.
You know that cheap technique they used a lot in the old days but not so much now where they literally slide the single drawing around to "animate" it - in this show that is almost the entire extent of the animation. I honestly can't work out if it's just plain cheap or if it's trying to use that technique deliberately to give it a particular look and style. It's like when you watch a show that's a homage to something, only the thing this is a homage to is terrible animation, and who wants a homage to that?
But that's not the only problem - the plot isn't so much terrible as it is non-existent. I honestly have no idea what the show is really about, but not in a good way. It's not trying to be suspenseful or introduce mystery; it just doesn't seem to have any real point. The only thing that comes close is getting a big mech across the country... which the hero apparently doesn't want to do... for some reason that isn't at all clear.
As for characters, everyone is a one dimensional cut-out, with entire "character arks" basically taking less than about a third of an episode to resolve.
With the lack of animation, the fan-service is also pretty disappointing... it's just all around poor, which is kinda what makes it enjoyable - it's so bad it's funny, in a baffling sort of way.
Magica Wars
This is a series of shorts from Gainax. I believe the characters are meant to be anthropomorphic representations of regions, or the region mascots or something. I dunno, I kinda didn't bother looking it up. It also doesn't really make any sense - perhaps it does if you know more about the regions of Japan, but to me it's basically a fairly random and meaningless magical girl show. With quite a bit of objectionable content - the girls are all pretty young and there's quite a bit of perving (including groping of one while she's sleeping... as you do).
If the episodes were longer I would have dropped them, but the animation is nice enough for me to lose 4 minutes of my day a week.
Blade and Soul
At some point Gonzo started making anime again. I'm not quite sure exactly when, but they've done a sequel to Fam - The Silver Wing and a few other things. This is a Gonzo show and seems to be right on the money for that - lots of fan-service and a plot that doesn't quite seem to be big enough to fill the episode count so there's a lot of filler.
The show is actually based on a game - a Korean MMORPG, if memory serves, though I think it's an original story but using some of the characters in the game. I'm not totally sure about that as I have no knowledge of the game.
Anyway, the plot seems quite generic overall - an assassin seeking revenge, though as mentioned, her revenge seeking doesn't seem to be quite full time as she does a lot of other stuff too. There are a few peripheral characters, some of whom are a bit more interesting (the main character is of the "blanks slate with no emotions" variety). There's also quite a lot of fan-service with more than a fair dash of bouncing.
I dunno - it's pretty poor, but it's kinda nice in a way to see Gonzo doing what they do again.
Inugami-san to Nekoyama-san
This is another series of shorts. In this case it's a comedy series around a few yuri (that is to say lesbian) character. If you have a light knowledge of Japanese, you may notice that the two names involve "dog" and "cat" (well, an inugami is a dog-god, and I'm not sure if nekoyama is a cat god?) - but the basic idea is that the characters are animal-like and their relationships kinda bounce off that.
It's okay - some of the jokes fall a bit flat, but it's very quick-paced. Indeed, I find it a bit too quick paced in places, and it can be difficult to follow the subtitles. However, it's sufficiently short that skipping back isn't too big a deal.
Dai Shogun - Great Revolution
This is the one that's inspired the title, as it's really quite bad, but sort of fun because of that. It's not totally terrible in all regards. The drawings are good and well rendered, but please note - that's specifically the drawn images. What they then do with those images is horrible, because the entire show isn't really animated.
You know that cheap technique they used a lot in the old days but not so much now where they literally slide the single drawing around to "animate" it - in this show that is almost the entire extent of the animation. I honestly can't work out if it's just plain cheap or if it's trying to use that technique deliberately to give it a particular look and style. It's like when you watch a show that's a homage to something, only the thing this is a homage to is terrible animation, and who wants a homage to that?
But that's not the only problem - the plot isn't so much terrible as it is non-existent. I honestly have no idea what the show is really about, but not in a good way. It's not trying to be suspenseful or introduce mystery; it just doesn't seem to have any real point. The only thing that comes close is getting a big mech across the country... which the hero apparently doesn't want to do... for some reason that isn't at all clear.
As for characters, everyone is a one dimensional cut-out, with entire "character arks" basically taking less than about a third of an episode to resolve.
With the lack of animation, the fan-service is also pretty disappointing... it's just all around poor, which is kinda what makes it enjoyable - it's so bad it's funny, in a baffling sort of way.
Magica Wars
This is a series of shorts from Gainax. I believe the characters are meant to be anthropomorphic representations of regions, or the region mascots or something. I dunno, I kinda didn't bother looking it up. It also doesn't really make any sense - perhaps it does if you know more about the regions of Japan, but to me it's basically a fairly random and meaningless magical girl show. With quite a bit of objectionable content - the girls are all pretty young and there's quite a bit of perving (including groping of one while she's sleeping... as you do).
If the episodes were longer I would have dropped them, but the animation is nice enough for me to lose 4 minutes of my day a week.
Blade and Soul
At some point Gonzo started making anime again. I'm not quite sure exactly when, but they've done a sequel to Fam - The Silver Wing and a few other things. This is a Gonzo show and seems to be right on the money for that - lots of fan-service and a plot that doesn't quite seem to be big enough to fill the episode count so there's a lot of filler.
The show is actually based on a game - a Korean MMORPG, if memory serves, though I think it's an original story but using some of the characters in the game. I'm not totally sure about that as I have no knowledge of the game.
Anyway, the plot seems quite generic overall - an assassin seeking revenge, though as mentioned, her revenge seeking doesn't seem to be quite full time as she does a lot of other stuff too. There are a few peripheral characters, some of whom are a bit more interesting (the main character is of the "blanks slate with no emotions" variety). There's also quite a lot of fan-service with more than a fair dash of bouncing.
I dunno - it's pretty poor, but it's kinda nice in a way to see Gonzo doing what they do again.
Inugami-san to Nekoyama-san
This is another series of shorts. In this case it's a comedy series around a few yuri (that is to say lesbian) character. If you have a light knowledge of Japanese, you may notice that the two names involve "dog" and "cat" (well, an inugami is a dog-god, and I'm not sure if nekoyama is a cat god?) - but the basic idea is that the characters are animal-like and their relationships kinda bounce off that.
It's okay - some of the jokes fall a bit flat, but it's very quick-paced. Indeed, I find it a bit too quick paced in places, and it can be difficult to follow the subtitles. However, it's sufficiently short that skipping back isn't too big a deal.
Thursday, 24 April 2014
spoilt for choice
Wellp, the new season of anime is upon us and I have to confess I'm struggling a bit.
Just recently I've been doing my best to tackle crunchyroll, and last season was the first ever where I've kept track with all the shows that interested me as they came out. I've not extended this beyond crunchyroll, but found the shows on there to be just about doable.
Now, every year there are a chunk of shows that crunchyroll gets, but the licence excludes us in the UK (this may be just us that's excluded, or it may also be everywhere outside of North America). Generally, these shows are picked up by other distributors (funimation & sentai, mainly), so I download two episodes of fansubs in order to sample them and then perhaps look to buy them if I really like them (I've actually been belt-tightening, so this is quite rare recently).
Sometimes they're not picked up in this way or I can't access them a tall or nobody picks them up, in which case I will download the complete series as fansub, with the possible intention of sampling them or watching the lot.
Crunchyroll also has a few of the long-term shows like Bleach and Naruto, but I don't generally go in for those, and of course there are a few shows that are "double season" so they keep going and I may or may not be watching them.
However, this season there seems to have been a bit of a shift towards almost everything being accessible on crunchyroll. I think it's partly because, being the new FY, there are more new starting anime, but it also seems like there are fewer region restrictions this time around as well.
All this is a very round-about way of saying I'm rather struggling to keep up. Indeed, there are quite a few shows I've not checked out at all, where this time last season I'd at least taken a look at all of them.
I think I may need to be a bit harsher with my pruning. Certainly much of what I've watched so far has been "okay" so I'm, tempted to put it on a bit of a back-burner.
The other option is I try to use some of the time of I've got to watch stuff on crunchyroll. The problem is that I'm struggling to watch regular TV shows as I've been playing Civ 5 rather obsessively for a while now.
Just recently I've been doing my best to tackle crunchyroll, and last season was the first ever where I've kept track with all the shows that interested me as they came out. I've not extended this beyond crunchyroll, but found the shows on there to be just about doable.
Now, every year there are a chunk of shows that crunchyroll gets, but the licence excludes us in the UK (this may be just us that's excluded, or it may also be everywhere outside of North America). Generally, these shows are picked up by other distributors (funimation & sentai, mainly), so I download two episodes of fansubs in order to sample them and then perhaps look to buy them if I really like them (I've actually been belt-tightening, so this is quite rare recently).
Sometimes they're not picked up in this way or I can't access them a tall or nobody picks them up, in which case I will download the complete series as fansub, with the possible intention of sampling them or watching the lot.
Crunchyroll also has a few of the long-term shows like Bleach and Naruto, but I don't generally go in for those, and of course there are a few shows that are "double season" so they keep going and I may or may not be watching them.
However, this season there seems to have been a bit of a shift towards almost everything being accessible on crunchyroll. I think it's partly because, being the new FY, there are more new starting anime, but it also seems like there are fewer region restrictions this time around as well.
All this is a very round-about way of saying I'm rather struggling to keep up. Indeed, there are quite a few shows I've not checked out at all, where this time last season I'd at least taken a look at all of them.
I think I may need to be a bit harsher with my pruning. Certainly much of what I've watched so far has been "okay" so I'm, tempted to put it on a bit of a back-burner.
The other option is I try to use some of the time of I've got to watch stuff on crunchyroll. The problem is that I'm struggling to watch regular TV shows as I've been playing Civ 5 rather obsessively for a while now.
Thursday, 20 February 2014
final mu
These are the other three series I've been watching on crunchyroll, and I've kinda saved the best for last, in that I like these three more than the others I've talked about so far.
Witch Craft Works
Witch Craft Works kinda took me by surprise. Reading the premise and watching the first couple of episodes I thought this might be a fairly standard harem anime, however, it isn't really. I mean, there are lots of things in the series you've seen before, but this particular mix is somehow quite fresh and interesting. It's not a harem, although there are lots of girls in the show. It's also almost totally devoid of fan-service. I mean, some of the characters have big boobs, but I've not seen a single flash and the main character never gropes them; and many of the skirts are short, but I've not seen a single flash of panties; no-one has been to the beach (so far) or taken a hot springs bath. It's also beautifully animated and both the story and characters are interesting and the funny stuff is genuinely funny.
The Pilot's Love Song (Toaru Hikuushi e no Koiuta)
Unfortunately, unlike Witch Craft Works, the animation on this show is quite lacking. It's clearly being done on a much lower budget and there are some very glaring moments - in the beach episode (unfortunately, this one also complies with many anime tropes, and some of the ones it picks are a bit unfortunate - the whole beach episode is horribly shoe-horned in) there's a scene where the layer with the swimming costumes doesn't align properly with the bodies, so you get some weird jutting-out angles. I mean, it's not all horrible: the flying stuff is pretty good, but it doesn't help. The story is a bit contrived if I'm honest and as I say does utilise too many tropes; but it's really the characters that make this one - the central romance is quite interesting, particularly when you learn the full truths about who everyone is.
Nobunagun
If I'm honest, I think if I was sampling for purchase, rather than watching it all on crunchyroll, I think this is one of those series where I'd have watched the first two episodes and put it down as a definite purchase... but then been a bit disappointed by the rest of the show. I mean, obviously we're only half way through, but it got a little bit less interesting when it moved into proper monster-of-the-week and team-of-weirdoes territory than when it was just the one military otaku given unexpected powers. I mean, don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed it; it's just not quite the awesome-fest the first couple of eps implied.
Witch Craft Works
Witch Craft Works kinda took me by surprise. Reading the premise and watching the first couple of episodes I thought this might be a fairly standard harem anime, however, it isn't really. I mean, there are lots of things in the series you've seen before, but this particular mix is somehow quite fresh and interesting. It's not a harem, although there are lots of girls in the show. It's also almost totally devoid of fan-service. I mean, some of the characters have big boobs, but I've not seen a single flash and the main character never gropes them; and many of the skirts are short, but I've not seen a single flash of panties; no-one has been to the beach (so far) or taken a hot springs bath. It's also beautifully animated and both the story and characters are interesting and the funny stuff is genuinely funny.
The Pilot's Love Song (Toaru Hikuushi e no Koiuta)
Unfortunately, unlike Witch Craft Works, the animation on this show is quite lacking. It's clearly being done on a much lower budget and there are some very glaring moments - in the beach episode (unfortunately, this one also complies with many anime tropes, and some of the ones it picks are a bit unfortunate - the whole beach episode is horribly shoe-horned in) there's a scene where the layer with the swimming costumes doesn't align properly with the bodies, so you get some weird jutting-out angles. I mean, it's not all horrible: the flying stuff is pretty good, but it doesn't help. The story is a bit contrived if I'm honest and as I say does utilise too many tropes; but it's really the characters that make this one - the central romance is quite interesting, particularly when you learn the full truths about who everyone is.
Nobunagun
If I'm honest, I think if I was sampling for purchase, rather than watching it all on crunchyroll, I think this is one of those series where I'd have watched the first two episodes and put it down as a definite purchase... but then been a bit disappointed by the rest of the show. I mean, obviously we're only half way through, but it got a little bit less interesting when it moved into proper monster-of-the-week and team-of-weirdoes territory than when it was just the one military otaku given unexpected powers. I mean, don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed it; it's just not quite the awesome-fest the first couple of eps implied.
Thursday, 13 February 2014
more mu
I don't really have time to post this week (although I do have plenty to post about!), but I did do 3 more of the mini reviews:
Z/X: Ignition
As I understand it, this is based on a collectible card game. However, from what I've seen, I'm guessing it must be an electronic version? Certainly the cards in the anime are actually a sort of digital mobile-like thing. I have to confess I'm not 100% sure why I'm still watching this. Generally these types of show are horrible and this is certainly rather wonky in many places, but I dunno, there's an odd charm to it. Certainly you have to ignore the stuff that doesn't make sense (and there's a lot of that), but I don't find it bad enough to drop. Plus the angel character is very cute.
Nobunaga the Fool
I think is probably among the most disappointing shows of the season. It feels epic in scale and it's got a fair amount of mecha action (about the only show that does this season that I've seen). But it also just feels a bit flat. It's one of those shows where they mash up historical characters, but in this case, they feel so utterly irrelevant to the actual characters it basically hurts, rather than helps. Also the characters are way too thin - I really don't care about any of them. However, it does have mecha so that's why I'm still watching, but given how long it is I'm not sure that will last.
Wizard Barristers: Benmashi Cecil
I'm not sure I've really taken to Wizard Barristers. The show is very nicely animated. Some of the battles are a bit CG heavy, perhaps, but generally speaking the action is the highlight of the show. However, if I'm totally honest I don't think that's enough. One of the problems I have with the show is the character designs. I find the way the eyes are done quite weird, and they freak me out a bit. There's also a sprinkling of fan-service that I find a bit wrong. Teh fan-service is all focused on the main character, but she's supposed to be this young girl (she looks a lot younger than her character age) who's quite badly affected by her mother having been put on death row - it just feels weird perving over her, and in such an obvious way. Plus the episode pacing is horrible, and many of the other character sho coudl be interesting are virtually not in the show. I'm not keen.
Z/X: Ignition
As I understand it, this is based on a collectible card game. However, from what I've seen, I'm guessing it must be an electronic version? Certainly the cards in the anime are actually a sort of digital mobile-like thing. I have to confess I'm not 100% sure why I'm still watching this. Generally these types of show are horrible and this is certainly rather wonky in many places, but I dunno, there's an odd charm to it. Certainly you have to ignore the stuff that doesn't make sense (and there's a lot of that), but I don't find it bad enough to drop. Plus the angel character is very cute.
Nobunaga the Fool
I think is probably among the most disappointing shows of the season. It feels epic in scale and it's got a fair amount of mecha action (about the only show that does this season that I've seen). But it also just feels a bit flat. It's one of those shows where they mash up historical characters, but in this case, they feel so utterly irrelevant to the actual characters it basically hurts, rather than helps. Also the characters are way too thin - I really don't care about any of them. However, it does have mecha so that's why I'm still watching, but given how long it is I'm not sure that will last.
Wizard Barristers: Benmashi Cecil
I'm not sure I've really taken to Wizard Barristers. The show is very nicely animated. Some of the battles are a bit CG heavy, perhaps, but generally speaking the action is the highlight of the show. However, if I'm totally honest I don't think that's enough. One of the problems I have with the show is the character designs. I find the way the eyes are done quite weird, and they freak me out a bit. There's also a sprinkling of fan-service that I find a bit wrong. Teh fan-service is all focused on the main character, but she's supposed to be this young girl (she looks a lot younger than her character age) who's quite badly affected by her mother having been put on death row - it just feels weird perving over her, and in such an obvious way. Plus the episode pacing is horrible, and many of the other character sho coudl be interesting are virtually not in the show. I'm not keen.
Friday, 7 February 2014
new mu
I've been trying to keep up to some degree with this season's anime.
This has mainly revolved around me making sure to watch the newly released episodes on crunchyroll each week that they come out. I've been doing well, though there are a couple of shows I haven't looked at.
I therefore thought I'd do some mini-reviews as it's about a third of the way through the season. Plus I couldn't think of anything else to blog about.
Hoozuki no Reitetsu
I'll start with one I found quite disappointing. This is a very "talky" show - it's about a middle-manager in hell. I don't mean a middle manager who has been sent to hell, but a demon who is a middle manager in hell. I dunno, there are quite a lot of jokes revolving around cultural elements (both in terms of mythology and management culture) that I basically didn't get, and since that's all it is I basically dropped it.
Tonari no Seki-kun
There are quite a few short shows this season. I don't know if that's normal or if crunchyroll usually picks quite a few up, the three I've watched have all been okay. All three are basically gag shows and this is probably the one I like the most - the idea is it's about a boy who takes time-wasting in class to epic levels and the girl who sits next to him who we see things through the eyes of and usually gets in trouble for reacting to his antics. It's possibly a bit too long per-episode, but it makes me chuckle.
Onee-chan ga Kita
This is one of the other short shows. It's probably the closest to being one of those shows you could see as being a full-length show that actually they've made as a series of short episodes. I mean, each show is self-contained, but could easily be expanded up into a full-episode, or several combined together to make a full episode. However, the shorter length does seem to mean an improved budget, as the show looks good (not true of the other two short ones, where short probably reflects cheapness). The subject matter is a bit odd - big sister (but via marriage, rather than genetically) who is in love with the main character. However, for me it stays just the right side of freaky in most places.
Strange+
This is the last of the short shows, and is by far the weirdest. It's basically a spoof of detective gang shows (I think) - it's very short and tbh is really more like a series of gags strung together. One of the things I'm not keen on is that each episode seems to basically start at the end/middle and sometimes it's too confusing, especially given within just a few minutes the episode ends.
Saki: Zenkoku-hen
I quite enjoyed the original Saki. There's been a sort of off-shoot show, which I haven't actually watched, but this is the proper continuation. And it really is a continuation: it actually confused me to start with as it almost picks up as it it's a next episode and it's been several years since the end of the last series. It also seemed to decide to go on a splurge of introducing new characters, which made me feel a bit lost, as well as constantly throwing them into hot springs type baths. Now I've nothing against that, but Saki is really all about the OTT Mah-jong and so I got a bit bored while it messed around with this. It's back to Mah-jong now, so I'm enjoying it more.
More mini-reviews in future blog posts when I can't think of anything to post about!
This has mainly revolved around me making sure to watch the newly released episodes on crunchyroll each week that they come out. I've been doing well, though there are a couple of shows I haven't looked at.
I therefore thought I'd do some mini-reviews as it's about a third of the way through the season. Plus I couldn't think of anything else to blog about.
Hoozuki no Reitetsu
I'll start with one I found quite disappointing. This is a very "talky" show - it's about a middle-manager in hell. I don't mean a middle manager who has been sent to hell, but a demon who is a middle manager in hell. I dunno, there are quite a lot of jokes revolving around cultural elements (both in terms of mythology and management culture) that I basically didn't get, and since that's all it is I basically dropped it.
Tonari no Seki-kun
There are quite a few short shows this season. I don't know if that's normal or if crunchyroll usually picks quite a few up, the three I've watched have all been okay. All three are basically gag shows and this is probably the one I like the most - the idea is it's about a boy who takes time-wasting in class to epic levels and the girl who sits next to him who we see things through the eyes of and usually gets in trouble for reacting to his antics. It's possibly a bit too long per-episode, but it makes me chuckle.
Onee-chan ga Kita
This is one of the other short shows. It's probably the closest to being one of those shows you could see as being a full-length show that actually they've made as a series of short episodes. I mean, each show is self-contained, but could easily be expanded up into a full-episode, or several combined together to make a full episode. However, the shorter length does seem to mean an improved budget, as the show looks good (not true of the other two short ones, where short probably reflects cheapness). The subject matter is a bit odd - big sister (but via marriage, rather than genetically) who is in love with the main character. However, for me it stays just the right side of freaky in most places.
Strange+
This is the last of the short shows, and is by far the weirdest. It's basically a spoof of detective gang shows (I think) - it's very short and tbh is really more like a series of gags strung together. One of the things I'm not keen on is that each episode seems to basically start at the end/middle and sometimes it's too confusing, especially given within just a few minutes the episode ends.
Saki: Zenkoku-hen
I quite enjoyed the original Saki. There's been a sort of off-shoot show, which I haven't actually watched, but this is the proper continuation. And it really is a continuation: it actually confused me to start with as it almost picks up as it it's a next episode and it's been several years since the end of the last series. It also seemed to decide to go on a splurge of introducing new characters, which made me feel a bit lost, as well as constantly throwing them into hot springs type baths. Now I've nothing against that, but Saki is really all about the OTT Mah-jong and so I got a bit bored while it messed around with this. It's back to Mah-jong now, so I'm enjoying it more.
More mini-reviews in future blog posts when I can't think of anything to post about!
Thursday, 9 January 2014
rest of christmas
So what did I do over the rest of christmas, then?
Not much.
I had quite a short to do list:
I saw most of the friends, but unfortunately the weather poxed up some of my plans, with cancelled trains and blocked roads. The weather also poxed up the walking plans, obviously. I've put on 4 pounds across Christmas - obviously this was mainly due to the over-eating, rather than not being able to walk, but this won't have helped things.
I did an "update" file back-up, rather than a full one. this was mainly because I decided that the gaming machine problem was software based and the cleanest solution was to wipe and re-install. This was fine and appears to have worked perfectly, but of course it took well over a day with all the updates and putting the games back.
I did make a significant dent in the PVR, though it still groaning with stuff. I now have about 35% of the drive clear, with about 65 programmes to watch. I know this is a lot still on there, but you have to remember that over Christmas there was a lot of stuff to watch and none of this was left. Also, I focused on things that didn't have ad breaks, so although the programmes are mostly 1 hour, there are a lot of adverts that will reduce the actual watching time.
I also watched a chunk of anime fansubs. If I'm honest this was one of the least successful areas, though, as it wasn't a big proportion of all that I've got. However, I also had a sort out and there's stuff I could take off for other reasons (OAVs of series I didn't like, have been licensed so I only need a 2 episode sample, rather than the full series, sequels so might as well burn them to disk for later, etc, etc). I still need to attack them, but I've certainly created a bit of breathing space.
I also did the full clean, though this seemed more hard work than I remember from last year. It took me 2 full days (one for the Kitchen & Bathroom and one for the living room / bedroom) to do the actual cleaning, but the impact was more extensive - they weren't consecutive days, as I was shattered after doing the kitchen. After the bedroom I was basically crippled - I'd put my hamstrings through so much that I could hardly walk the next day. This was due to the hoovering, mainly - I go at it with a special attachment and it's really effective, but also inconvenient to use and so I end up bent over in a bad way.
The "plans for next year" was the really big failure. I've not really got a plan, and will have to give it some thought - there's a big event that I'm not really sure how I'm going to work around.
So the holiday was pretty mundane - nice to not be at work for an extended period, but not exactly exciting, and mostly poxed up by the awful weather where it might have been.
There was also some unpleasant stuff. My landlord has decided to put up my rent by 5%. This is particularly annoying as it now means the bedsit is uneconomical, but I'm left in a quandary as to moving, owing to the aforementioned unclear plans for the year. I also scratched one of my alloy wheels on my car - some penis pulled up in the station in front of me at the petrol station rather than wait the 10 seconds it took for me to pull away and in going around him I caught the curb. There was also a break-in where I live: they only got into the garden, rather than the house or shed and didn't take anything, but another reason for me not to stay.
Not much.
I had quite a short to do list:
- Couple of friends to see.
- Do my file back-ups.
- Sort my gaming machine - it had developed some problem where it crashed constantly.
- Try to make a dent in all the recorded stuff on my PVR.
- Watch some anime - preferably downloaded fansubs in order to clear the hard-drive I use, which is full.
- My traditional New Year's "full clean" of the bedsit.
- Do plenty of walking.
- Work out plans for next year.
I saw most of the friends, but unfortunately the weather poxed up some of my plans, with cancelled trains and blocked roads. The weather also poxed up the walking plans, obviously. I've put on 4 pounds across Christmas - obviously this was mainly due to the over-eating, rather than not being able to walk, but this won't have helped things.
I did an "update" file back-up, rather than a full one. this was mainly because I decided that the gaming machine problem was software based and the cleanest solution was to wipe and re-install. This was fine and appears to have worked perfectly, but of course it took well over a day with all the updates and putting the games back.
I did make a significant dent in the PVR, though it still groaning with stuff. I now have about 35% of the drive clear, with about 65 programmes to watch. I know this is a lot still on there, but you have to remember that over Christmas there was a lot of stuff to watch and none of this was left. Also, I focused on things that didn't have ad breaks, so although the programmes are mostly 1 hour, there are a lot of adverts that will reduce the actual watching time.
I also watched a chunk of anime fansubs. If I'm honest this was one of the least successful areas, though, as it wasn't a big proportion of all that I've got. However, I also had a sort out and there's stuff I could take off for other reasons (OAVs of series I didn't like, have been licensed so I only need a 2 episode sample, rather than the full series, sequels so might as well burn them to disk for later, etc, etc). I still need to attack them, but I've certainly created a bit of breathing space.
I also did the full clean, though this seemed more hard work than I remember from last year. It took me 2 full days (one for the Kitchen & Bathroom and one for the living room / bedroom) to do the actual cleaning, but the impact was more extensive - they weren't consecutive days, as I was shattered after doing the kitchen. After the bedroom I was basically crippled - I'd put my hamstrings through so much that I could hardly walk the next day. This was due to the hoovering, mainly - I go at it with a special attachment and it's really effective, but also inconvenient to use and so I end up bent over in a bad way.
The "plans for next year" was the really big failure. I've not really got a plan, and will have to give it some thought - there's a big event that I'm not really sure how I'm going to work around.
So the holiday was pretty mundane - nice to not be at work for an extended period, but not exactly exciting, and mostly poxed up by the awful weather where it might have been.
There was also some unpleasant stuff. My landlord has decided to put up my rent by 5%. This is particularly annoying as it now means the bedsit is uneconomical, but I'm left in a quandary as to moving, owing to the aforementioned unclear plans for the year. I also scratched one of my alloy wheels on my car - some penis pulled up in the station in front of me at the petrol station rather than wait the 10 seconds it took for me to pull away and in going around him I caught the curb. There was also a break-in where I live: they only got into the garden, rather than the house or shed and didn't take anything, but another reason for me not to stay.
Thursday, 25 July 2013
loads of anime pt3
rideback
I seem to be making the same basic point on quite a few of these series I've watched - that I found the direction it took a little disappointing after the initial few episodes that I'd watched by way of preview.
Well in this case I can say... pretty much the same thing.
In the first couple of episodes of rideback we're introduced to the main characters, as well as the ridebacks, which are essentially bicycle mecha hybrids. They're pretty cool and the sudden and instant connection that the main character Rin has with them is just as enjoyable as I remembered. It also develops the point about her being a former ballet dancer and that the ridebacks become something like a replacement for this.
The problem really is that there's a whole political thing that is uses initially as a kind of backdrop, which is fine, but that then becomes a central part of the story. And my problem with it was that it was the usual unrealistic anime weird political stuff. I mean, it goes on about the world government and this being taken over and stuff, but it makes little to no sense.
Of course the important thing is how it affects the characters, and it does this quite well, though it does generate a couple of rather one-dimensional military types as a result, which just took the edge off of it for me.
I also found the character designs a bit off. I'm not saying they're bad, it's just they felt very old skool, but obviously it is quite a new anime. It wouldn't have been so bad if the technology was depicted in a similar old skool style, but it isn't so it felt a bit like taking an older anime and airbrushing some new CGI mechs over the top, which didn't really work for me.
I'm being quite harsh and it is an enjoyable anime that seems to have fallen between the cracks a bit; it's just for me it didn't become an instant classic.
kimi ni todoke
I actually first encountered kimi ni todoke in anime format, though it is actually an adaptation of a manga. Having sampled the show and enjoyed it I then read the manga and subsequently bought the anime. I have to confess I got a bit annoyed at the manga, so I was a little worried when I finally came to watch the anime.
Anyway, kimi ni todoke it's a shoujo series and centres on a girl who unfortunately looks like the character "Sadako" from the ring films, with a similar name. She is Sawako, where the ring character is Sadako, which her classmates give her as a nickname - it doesn't really refer to this fully in the anime, I'm guessing for copyright reasons, though keeps the nickname so it's still there. She therefore ends up linked by her peers to the occult, partly due to the films thing, but also because of her look and behaviour.
Unfortunately, Sawa is socially rather inept. She's actually very kind and does lots to help her fellow students, but the way she presents herself and behaves means that they are all scared of her - or creeped out by her, at least.
However, she has fallen for the class's mister popular and he has fallen for her, and the series is therefore about their love - will it overcome their shyness, etc?
Well, that's definitely what the anime is about. There are obviously some peripheral characters to this main story and the reason I got a bit pissed off with the manga is that it veers and hauls over to focusing on those peripheral characters. Now this would be okay if it was short-ish or it was about how the main characters really help them, but actually our main characters become a real side-act during these diversions.
However, the anime doesn't lose this focus, so it's more satisfying in a way. Well, the first series is. I found the second series quite frustrating. It deviates a fair bit from the manga and takes the whole miss-understandings aspect of the story to an extreme that I actually found a bit annoying. I mean, it justifies why their friends don't properly interfere, but I just wanted to bonk them on the head and say - "Look: you love each other, get on with it!"
But that's really only a small thing and it is a very good series that's worth watching if you like romantic stuff.
steins;gate
I have to confess when I sampled this one I wasn't massively impressed.
I'd watched a bit of the previous one in this "series" (I don't think series is quite the right word - I think these ones with the semi-colon by 5pb are related, but I don't think they have the same characters in them, so I'm not 100% sure how) Chaos;Head and found it awful. The main character was so annoying I couldn't watch more than an episode, from memory. The premise also seemed daft.
My sampling therefore pretty much boiled down to me watching the first couple of episodes and deciding the protagonist of this was also annoying (though not as bad) and finding the story very confusing.
However, later on I read quite a few people raving about the series, so for some reason I decided to buy it (yeah, no wonder I'm skint, right?). When I came to watch it, then, I wasn't really expecting much from it, and suspected I might end up stopping half way through.
I guess time mellows a bit as I didn't find the protagonist annoying, but did still find the plot a bit confusing. Well, initially I did - it takes a while, but it starts to make a bit more sense later one. Or rather it does until it fully gets into its time travel stuff, then it becomes quite confusing, but in a good way.
I have to confess, though, until about half way through the series I really didn't see what people were raving about. However, at that half-way point there's a particular episode that really elevates the series from okay to quite good. the rest of the series is about the ramifications from that, and it's this latter half that really works, helping to develop the characters and their relationships properly.
If I'm honest I'm not sure it quite "works" in terms of its time travel, as I think the way it does it means that it undermines itself, but really that's secondary compared to what it does with the characters.
I wouldn't put it in the "classic" bracket, but it was certainly more enjoyable than I'd expected.
I seem to be making the same basic point on quite a few of these series I've watched - that I found the direction it took a little disappointing after the initial few episodes that I'd watched by way of preview.
Well in this case I can say... pretty much the same thing.
In the first couple of episodes of rideback we're introduced to the main characters, as well as the ridebacks, which are essentially bicycle mecha hybrids. They're pretty cool and the sudden and instant connection that the main character Rin has with them is just as enjoyable as I remembered. It also develops the point about her being a former ballet dancer and that the ridebacks become something like a replacement for this.
The problem really is that there's a whole political thing that is uses initially as a kind of backdrop, which is fine, but that then becomes a central part of the story. And my problem with it was that it was the usual unrealistic anime weird political stuff. I mean, it goes on about the world government and this being taken over and stuff, but it makes little to no sense.
Of course the important thing is how it affects the characters, and it does this quite well, though it does generate a couple of rather one-dimensional military types as a result, which just took the edge off of it for me.
I also found the character designs a bit off. I'm not saying they're bad, it's just they felt very old skool, but obviously it is quite a new anime. It wouldn't have been so bad if the technology was depicted in a similar old skool style, but it isn't so it felt a bit like taking an older anime and airbrushing some new CGI mechs over the top, which didn't really work for me.
I'm being quite harsh and it is an enjoyable anime that seems to have fallen between the cracks a bit; it's just for me it didn't become an instant classic.
kimi ni todoke
I actually first encountered kimi ni todoke in anime format, though it is actually an adaptation of a manga. Having sampled the show and enjoyed it I then read the manga and subsequently bought the anime. I have to confess I got a bit annoyed at the manga, so I was a little worried when I finally came to watch the anime.
Anyway, kimi ni todoke it's a shoujo series and centres on a girl who unfortunately looks like the character "Sadako" from the ring films, with a similar name. She is Sawako, where the ring character is Sadako, which her classmates give her as a nickname - it doesn't really refer to this fully in the anime, I'm guessing for copyright reasons, though keeps the nickname so it's still there. She therefore ends up linked by her peers to the occult, partly due to the films thing, but also because of her look and behaviour.
Unfortunately, Sawa is socially rather inept. She's actually very kind and does lots to help her fellow students, but the way she presents herself and behaves means that they are all scared of her - or creeped out by her, at least.
However, she has fallen for the class's mister popular and he has fallen for her, and the series is therefore about their love - will it overcome their shyness, etc?
Well, that's definitely what the anime is about. There are obviously some peripheral characters to this main story and the reason I got a bit pissed off with the manga is that it veers and hauls over to focusing on those peripheral characters. Now this would be okay if it was short-ish or it was about how the main characters really help them, but actually our main characters become a real side-act during these diversions.
However, the anime doesn't lose this focus, so it's more satisfying in a way. Well, the first series is. I found the second series quite frustrating. It deviates a fair bit from the manga and takes the whole miss-understandings aspect of the story to an extreme that I actually found a bit annoying. I mean, it justifies why their friends don't properly interfere, but I just wanted to bonk them on the head and say - "Look: you love each other, get on with it!"
But that's really only a small thing and it is a very good series that's worth watching if you like romantic stuff.
steins;gate
I have to confess when I sampled this one I wasn't massively impressed.
I'd watched a bit of the previous one in this "series" (I don't think series is quite the right word - I think these ones with the semi-colon by 5pb are related, but I don't think they have the same characters in them, so I'm not 100% sure how) Chaos;Head and found it awful. The main character was so annoying I couldn't watch more than an episode, from memory. The premise also seemed daft.
My sampling therefore pretty much boiled down to me watching the first couple of episodes and deciding the protagonist of this was also annoying (though not as bad) and finding the story very confusing.
However, later on I read quite a few people raving about the series, so for some reason I decided to buy it (yeah, no wonder I'm skint, right?). When I came to watch it, then, I wasn't really expecting much from it, and suspected I might end up stopping half way through.
I guess time mellows a bit as I didn't find the protagonist annoying, but did still find the plot a bit confusing. Well, initially I did - it takes a while, but it starts to make a bit more sense later one. Or rather it does until it fully gets into its time travel stuff, then it becomes quite confusing, but in a good way.
I have to confess, though, until about half way through the series I really didn't see what people were raving about. However, at that half-way point there's a particular episode that really elevates the series from okay to quite good. the rest of the series is about the ramifications from that, and it's this latter half that really works, helping to develop the characters and their relationships properly.
If I'm honest I'm not sure it quite "works" in terms of its time travel, as I think the way it does it means that it undermines itself, but really that's secondary compared to what it does with the characters.
I wouldn't put it in the "classic" bracket, but it was certainly more enjoyable than I'd expected.
Wednesday, 10 July 2013
loads of anime pt2
More of these anime mini-reviews.
no. 6
I'm not sure this was quite what I was expecting.
I basically bought it on the strength of the first 2 episodes and what essentially happens is that after that it takes a bit of a left turn and goes in a rather different direction. Well, I say that - it retains the same basic thing that I thought it was about, but it then includes a bunch of stuff that was rather different and not quite what I was expecting.
The inclusion basically relates to these wasp things that kill people. It's part of a whole environmental strain to the story that, as I mentioned, is kinda included later, but wasn't part of those first couple of episodes. It's also not a particularly satisfying part of the story.
The bit I "signed up for" was to do with a perfect city that is rotten to the core and a kid who is dissatisfied and finds out what's going on. I mean, I'm not saying that was some super original story, but it's the kinds of dystopia stuff I really like.
I'm also not saying that the other stuff broke it, it's just a found that part less satisfying - it had quite a bit of religious mumbo jumbo wrapped around it.
Anyway, the important bit is the characters and No. 6 really excelled at this, with some really interesting characters who were developed really well. I'd therefore recommend it, though it's quite 'grown up' and cerebral, rather than being an action-packed adventure.
bunny drop
Bunny Drop is an interesting one as it's difficult to put it into a genre and thereby let people know exactly what it is.
This isn't massively helped by the fact that the anime concentrates on the first half of the manga. I mean, this is good in some ways, but the second half of the manga is more easily categorised. Although, to be fair, the categorisation is part of what makes the second half of the manga somewhat controversial.
Anyway, the series is about Daisuke, a guy who adopts Rin, who is, in actuality, his half-aunt. I know, bit weird - basically, his grandfather had a child with his housekeeper, so in a technical sense the child is his half-aunt, but she is around 6 years old where he is in his thirties. When his grandfather dies, they essentially discover the child and the rest of the family doesn't want to adopt her due to the shame associated with it, so Daisuke takes her in and raises her. So what genre does that fit in?
Anyway, the anime series is beautifully done. It is not 100% faithful to the manga, but takes the key elements and bases the story around them, tweaking to suit the structure better. The artwork is very pretty and it doesn't go quite as "70s" as the manga does, which was always a weird look given it's set in the modern day.
baka and test
I have to confess to being massively disappointed with baka and test.
As is my usual way I watched the first couple of episodes as a sampler and enjoyed them quite a bit, so I decided to buy it, as it was a licensed series. It came out on Blu Ray and there was a second series and an OAV too, so I bought all of them.
My problem with the show really stems from the fact that the bit I found most interesting and amusing - the class fights with the avatars actually ends up playing a relatively small part in the show proper. I mean, there are some stretches where it's key, but there are also long stretches where there's none of that.
It's also becomes quite reliant on running jokes - particularly in the second series - and I have to confess I found many of these unfunny and even in some cases a bit annoying. I mean some were okay and I did find some bits of the show amusing, but not enough to really justify the purchase.
It's weird - I also found the main character quite shouty and annoying, and he's like this from the start, but I don't recall thinking this when I sampled the show. I think part of it might be that the US dub version was even shoutier - I'm not blaming the dub as "ruining it" or anything, the Japanese character is shouty and annoying, it's just not quite as bad.
no. 6
I'm not sure this was quite what I was expecting.
I basically bought it on the strength of the first 2 episodes and what essentially happens is that after that it takes a bit of a left turn and goes in a rather different direction. Well, I say that - it retains the same basic thing that I thought it was about, but it then includes a bunch of stuff that was rather different and not quite what I was expecting.
The inclusion basically relates to these wasp things that kill people. It's part of a whole environmental strain to the story that, as I mentioned, is kinda included later, but wasn't part of those first couple of episodes. It's also not a particularly satisfying part of the story.
The bit I "signed up for" was to do with a perfect city that is rotten to the core and a kid who is dissatisfied and finds out what's going on. I mean, I'm not saying that was some super original story, but it's the kinds of dystopia stuff I really like.
I'm also not saying that the other stuff broke it, it's just a found that part less satisfying - it had quite a bit of religious mumbo jumbo wrapped around it.
Anyway, the important bit is the characters and No. 6 really excelled at this, with some really interesting characters who were developed really well. I'd therefore recommend it, though it's quite 'grown up' and cerebral, rather than being an action-packed adventure.
bunny drop
Bunny Drop is an interesting one as it's difficult to put it into a genre and thereby let people know exactly what it is.
This isn't massively helped by the fact that the anime concentrates on the first half of the manga. I mean, this is good in some ways, but the second half of the manga is more easily categorised. Although, to be fair, the categorisation is part of what makes the second half of the manga somewhat controversial.
Anyway, the series is about Daisuke, a guy who adopts Rin, who is, in actuality, his half-aunt. I know, bit weird - basically, his grandfather had a child with his housekeeper, so in a technical sense the child is his half-aunt, but she is around 6 years old where he is in his thirties. When his grandfather dies, they essentially discover the child and the rest of the family doesn't want to adopt her due to the shame associated with it, so Daisuke takes her in and raises her. So what genre does that fit in?
Anyway, the anime series is beautifully done. It is not 100% faithful to the manga, but takes the key elements and bases the story around them, tweaking to suit the structure better. The artwork is very pretty and it doesn't go quite as "70s" as the manga does, which was always a weird look given it's set in the modern day.
baka and test
I have to confess to being massively disappointed with baka and test.
As is my usual way I watched the first couple of episodes as a sampler and enjoyed them quite a bit, so I decided to buy it, as it was a licensed series. It came out on Blu Ray and there was a second series and an OAV too, so I bought all of them.
My problem with the show really stems from the fact that the bit I found most interesting and amusing - the class fights with the avatars actually ends up playing a relatively small part in the show proper. I mean, there are some stretches where it's key, but there are also long stretches where there's none of that.
It's also becomes quite reliant on running jokes - particularly in the second series - and I have to confess I found many of these unfunny and even in some cases a bit annoying. I mean some were okay and I did find some bits of the show amusing, but not enough to really justify the purchase.
It's weird - I also found the main character quite shouty and annoying, and he's like this from the start, but I don't recall thinking this when I sampled the show. I think part of it might be that the US dub version was even shoutier - I'm not blaming the dub as "ruining it" or anything, the Japanese character is shouty and annoying, it's just not quite as bad.
Thursday, 4 July 2013
loads of anime pt 1
I thought I'd do the first lot of the mini reviews of anime stuff I've watched today (well I sure as heck haven't done any of the reviews of films I should have).
heaven's memo pad
I quite enjoyed this.
A lot of anime just recently have focused on NEETs, which is an acronym that stands for "Not in Education, Employment or Training" and is usually understood to mean young people who are not really making anything of their lives.
In this series the idea is that some of these NEETs have banded together to form something akin to a detective agency. The members all have particular otaku-focus, so one is a military nut and the leader is a young girl who is a genius hacker and a hikikomori (a shut in, basically).
There are also quite a few peripheral characters to the main agency people, many of whom add their own interest. The protagonist is roughly your typical nothing special cypher for the viewer, though as it goes on we see he does have some appropriate skills, though not quite in an otaku type way.
Overall the series is pleasant enough. It takes an interesting forma in that it's a very mushed-together version of independent episodes and on-going stories, such that you could watch some episodes as stand-alone, though not quite get everything and others only work as part of a particular ark. I guess what I mean is that it has blocks of stories, but these can run across a variable number of episodes.
freezing
This is a fighting-and-fan-service anime at its core.
And as far as those two things go, it's a pretty good example. If that isn't your cup of tea then I really wouldn't recommend this over and above it. It does do a lot better in the story and characterisation department than other anime in this area, but not to the extent that I'd recommend it if those aren't of interest, if you see what I mean.
The story is bobbins, obviously - a mash up of a variety of random religious and spiritual things, smooshed together with giant inter-dimensional monsters that bare an un-canny resemblance to something out of RahXephon (though with the religious overtones it has a distinct Eva feel to it too). However, it's not that intrusive of a plot - it keeps going with the story, but you don't end up with entire episodes of info dump. Indeed, they also didn't attempt to wrap the whole thing up in a single short season, so it doesn't actually end by the close of the series. This, I guess, ties into the length of the manga it's based on, but is interesting because they've only just announced the second season, suggesting the second wasn't guaranteed.
While the plot may be daft, the characterisation and the development of those characters is a lot better done. It's not subtle - a lot of the characters are quite arch and they don't tend to hide their feelings. I have to say the girls are all a little odd as well - they all seem to basically hate each other, and it's not really clear why.
I think part of it relates to the more contentious aspect of the fighting, which is that the girls get genuinely quite badly hurt when they fight (they need to practice for fighting the bad guys, obviously). I think the idea is that, although they get hurt, their special powers and super-science can patch them together. I guess this makes them quite antagonistic towards each other, as otherwise they're just horrible for no real reason.
Anyway, overall I quite liked it and will certainly pick up the second season, but you have to remember it is what it is.
majikoi oh! samurai girls
After watching this I guess I now know what the anime equivalent of a train wreck is.
I actually went on Wikipedia to look this one up as I know it was based on a light novel series, and I also looked at a couple of reviews on MAL. Part of the reason for this was because it felt like I was missing something - the series seems to start in the middle of something and also seems to do stuff like make running jokes for the first time as if you already knew they were running jokes.
It's also horribly inconsistent with its characters. The main protagonist can be the most pervy guy with a group of pervy mates in one episode, trying to sneak a peek at one of the girls naked, and then the next he's some milquetoast who seems to want to run away if any of the girls come near him and only has eyes for the main girl. Who is some sort of non-lesbian-lesbian - she seems to lust after girls, but also seems to expect the main guy to be in love with her and is in love with him. Or something - as I say, it isn't consistent and doesn't make a lot of sense.
Of course at its heart this is another fan-service-and-fighting anime but compared to freezing or ikki tousen the fighting isn't particularly interesting (and a little thin on the ground) and the fan-service is kinda hampered by some non-descript character designs and a rather low animation budget.
heaven's memo pad
I quite enjoyed this.
A lot of anime just recently have focused on NEETs, which is an acronym that stands for "Not in Education, Employment or Training" and is usually understood to mean young people who are not really making anything of their lives.
In this series the idea is that some of these NEETs have banded together to form something akin to a detective agency. The members all have particular otaku-focus, so one is a military nut and the leader is a young girl who is a genius hacker and a hikikomori (a shut in, basically).
There are also quite a few peripheral characters to the main agency people, many of whom add their own interest. The protagonist is roughly your typical nothing special cypher for the viewer, though as it goes on we see he does have some appropriate skills, though not quite in an otaku type way.
Overall the series is pleasant enough. It takes an interesting forma in that it's a very mushed-together version of independent episodes and on-going stories, such that you could watch some episodes as stand-alone, though not quite get everything and others only work as part of a particular ark. I guess what I mean is that it has blocks of stories, but these can run across a variable number of episodes.
freezing
This is a fighting-and-fan-service anime at its core.
And as far as those two things go, it's a pretty good example. If that isn't your cup of tea then I really wouldn't recommend this over and above it. It does do a lot better in the story and characterisation department than other anime in this area, but not to the extent that I'd recommend it if those aren't of interest, if you see what I mean.
The story is bobbins, obviously - a mash up of a variety of random religious and spiritual things, smooshed together with giant inter-dimensional monsters that bare an un-canny resemblance to something out of RahXephon (though with the religious overtones it has a distinct Eva feel to it too). However, it's not that intrusive of a plot - it keeps going with the story, but you don't end up with entire episodes of info dump. Indeed, they also didn't attempt to wrap the whole thing up in a single short season, so it doesn't actually end by the close of the series. This, I guess, ties into the length of the manga it's based on, but is interesting because they've only just announced the second season, suggesting the second wasn't guaranteed.
While the plot may be daft, the characterisation and the development of those characters is a lot better done. It's not subtle - a lot of the characters are quite arch and they don't tend to hide their feelings. I have to say the girls are all a little odd as well - they all seem to basically hate each other, and it's not really clear why.
I think part of it relates to the more contentious aspect of the fighting, which is that the girls get genuinely quite badly hurt when they fight (they need to practice for fighting the bad guys, obviously). I think the idea is that, although they get hurt, their special powers and super-science can patch them together. I guess this makes them quite antagonistic towards each other, as otherwise they're just horrible for no real reason.
Anyway, overall I quite liked it and will certainly pick up the second season, but you have to remember it is what it is.
majikoi oh! samurai girls
After watching this I guess I now know what the anime equivalent of a train wreck is.
I actually went on Wikipedia to look this one up as I know it was based on a light novel series, and I also looked at a couple of reviews on MAL. Part of the reason for this was because it felt like I was missing something - the series seems to start in the middle of something and also seems to do stuff like make running jokes for the first time as if you already knew they were running jokes.
It's also horribly inconsistent with its characters. The main protagonist can be the most pervy guy with a group of pervy mates in one episode, trying to sneak a peek at one of the girls naked, and then the next he's some milquetoast who seems to want to run away if any of the girls come near him and only has eyes for the main girl. Who is some sort of non-lesbian-lesbian - she seems to lust after girls, but also seems to expect the main guy to be in love with her and is in love with him. Or something - as I say, it isn't consistent and doesn't make a lot of sense.
Of course at its heart this is another fan-service-and-fighting anime but compared to freezing or ikki tousen the fighting isn't particularly interesting (and a little thin on the ground) and the fan-service is kinda hampered by some non-descript character designs and a rather low animation budget.
Thursday, 27 June 2013
bloody wimbledon
Wimbledon started this week.
If memory serves the main singles part lasts two weeks? I think there's then a couple of weeks of the other types of tournament - doubles, mainly, I think.
I'm not a massive fan of tennis. I do find it odd that we are really only pay attention to it in Britain when it's being held in this country. It's like, "we'll like your sport when it comes here, but not before and not after."
One advantage of this is that it means the BBC basically fills up with wimbledon coverage so I have less stuff to watch. The flip-side to that is that if they extend the coverage then the programs I do want to watch get shifted around.
This obviously impacted by if we have anyone who's in with a vague chance of winning. Andy Murray is about the best player with a genuine chance who's fallen into this category for a while. I'm obviously referring to Murray as being "a Brit" in the traditional way we English do - if he's successful he's a Brit, if he's not, he's a Scot.
The post title, by the way, is a reference to one of my Dad's stock phrases. He has a lot of stock phrases, one of which is "bloody wimbledon". It has to be said in a miserable tone and at quite a low pitch to get the proper effect.
Another such phrases is "the derisories" for cricket. This is a reference to the fact that when the opposition does well (gets a 4 or a 6 or what have you) then opposing side has to acknowledge the achievement, but doesn't really want to show any enthusiasm, so they clap, but it ends up sounding a bit like the derisive slow hand clap thing.
Anyway, point of the post is that summer is now upon us, so I'm hoping that the amount of stuff I want to watch will decline. This will help me watch the stacks of recorded stuff I have as well as take some of the pressure off when I've also been trying to watch the anime.
I mentioned this before but I've been in a situation where I've had to watch a bonkers amount of stuff. I'm going to do a proper update (or two!) to talk about them specifically, but this is the list:
If memory serves the main singles part lasts two weeks? I think there's then a couple of weeks of the other types of tournament - doubles, mainly, I think.
I'm not a massive fan of tennis. I do find it odd that we are really only pay attention to it in Britain when it's being held in this country. It's like, "we'll like your sport when it comes here, but not before and not after."
One advantage of this is that it means the BBC basically fills up with wimbledon coverage so I have less stuff to watch. The flip-side to that is that if they extend the coverage then the programs I do want to watch get shifted around.
This obviously impacted by if we have anyone who's in with a vague chance of winning. Andy Murray is about the best player with a genuine chance who's fallen into this category for a while. I'm obviously referring to Murray as being "a Brit" in the traditional way we English do - if he's successful he's a Brit, if he's not, he's a Scot.
The post title, by the way, is a reference to one of my Dad's stock phrases. He has a lot of stock phrases, one of which is "bloody wimbledon". It has to be said in a miserable tone and at quite a low pitch to get the proper effect.
Another such phrases is "the derisories" for cricket. This is a reference to the fact that when the opposition does well (gets a 4 or a 6 or what have you) then opposing side has to acknowledge the achievement, but doesn't really want to show any enthusiasm, so they clap, but it ends up sounding a bit like the derisive slow hand clap thing.
Anyway, point of the post is that summer is now upon us, so I'm hoping that the amount of stuff I want to watch will decline. This will help me watch the stacks of recorded stuff I have as well as take some of the pressure off when I've also been trying to watch the anime.
I mentioned this before but I've been in a situation where I've had to watch a bonkers amount of stuff. I'm going to do a proper update (or two!) to talk about them specifically, but this is the list:
- eden of the east (series+both movies)
- steins;gate (series + oav)
- kimi ni todoke (series 1 & 2)
- ride;back
- bunny drop
- baka and test (series 1 & 2 & oavs)
- No. 6
- Freezing
- Heaven's Memo Pad
- Majikoi Oh! Samurai Girls
Tuesday, 25 June 2013
why you no bloggy?
So I didn't really explain yesterday why I have been so long without blogging.
The basic reason was a bunch of things... :)
So first off I've been somewhat busy at work. I mean, I'm not mega busy; I get bits of time where I'm not maxed. However, I've been tending to use that time to sneakily watch anime on crunchyroll.
I did blog about how I'd watched a few of this season's shows and I've done some of that in the quieter bits at work. Well they're not paying me very well, so there you go.
I have also watched some of this crunchyroll anime at home, so that's obviously eaten up some time I would usually use for writing the blogs. However I've also been watching quite a lot of anime on Blu Ray and that takes up a whole lot more time.
And I mean a lot of time - I've watched several whole series (half and full seasons) and a half-season is about 4 hours or so. The harsh reality is I've had to watch these shows because I needed the money from selling them on e-bay. Previously I'd "gotten away" with this by ripping them, but I have no means of ripping Blu Ray. Also while I do have some DVDs I could theoretically do this for Blu Ray you can get a bit more for and the DVDs I have left are ones I suspect I will want to add to my "permanent keepers" pile.
I've also been trying to keep up with the TV, rather than let it slide while I watched all this anime. My PVR is still very full, but I've been actively keeping it below 60% by watching stuff at the weekends.
And then of course there's the fact I've been playing SimCity quite a bit.
The final big issue was this - http://www.animepaper.net/ . In case the link doesn't work or dies, one of the sites I frequented posted up a message that, well, I'm not 100% sure quite what it meant. It seems to be saying that the site is being put on hiatus, but could mean it's going to be switched off.
I won't go into the detail, but basically I had a lot of stuff I wanted to download from it, but if it was going to close that meant I had to do it sooner, rather than later. I must have spent about 4 whole evenings and 1 weekend sorting through what I could actually download and then downloading it - I still ended up with about 60 images I couldn't get.
I mean, hopefully it's temporary and it will come back in some form, but if not I had to act.
So in summary the main issue has mainly been that I've spent my spare time doing other things, rather than writing blog posts.
There was also a bit of a side issue - Ian Banks died and I'm afraid this made me a bit depressed so I therefore wasn't really in the mood to blog for some of it either.
The basic reason was a bunch of things... :)
So first off I've been somewhat busy at work. I mean, I'm not mega busy; I get bits of time where I'm not maxed. However, I've been tending to use that time to sneakily watch anime on crunchyroll.
I did blog about how I'd watched a few of this season's shows and I've done some of that in the quieter bits at work. Well they're not paying me very well, so there you go.
I have also watched some of this crunchyroll anime at home, so that's obviously eaten up some time I would usually use for writing the blogs. However I've also been watching quite a lot of anime on Blu Ray and that takes up a whole lot more time.
And I mean a lot of time - I've watched several whole series (half and full seasons) and a half-season is about 4 hours or so. The harsh reality is I've had to watch these shows because I needed the money from selling them on e-bay. Previously I'd "gotten away" with this by ripping them, but I have no means of ripping Blu Ray. Also while I do have some DVDs I could theoretically do this for Blu Ray you can get a bit more for and the DVDs I have left are ones I suspect I will want to add to my "permanent keepers" pile.
I've also been trying to keep up with the TV, rather than let it slide while I watched all this anime. My PVR is still very full, but I've been actively keeping it below 60% by watching stuff at the weekends.
And then of course there's the fact I've been playing SimCity quite a bit.
The final big issue was this - http://www.animepaper.net/ . In case the link doesn't work or dies, one of the sites I frequented posted up a message that, well, I'm not 100% sure quite what it meant. It seems to be saying that the site is being put on hiatus, but could mean it's going to be switched off.
I won't go into the detail, but basically I had a lot of stuff I wanted to download from it, but if it was going to close that meant I had to do it sooner, rather than later. I must have spent about 4 whole evenings and 1 weekend sorting through what I could actually download and then downloading it - I still ended up with about 60 images I couldn't get.
I mean, hopefully it's temporary and it will come back in some form, but if not I had to act.
So in summary the main issue has mainly been that I've spent my spare time doing other things, rather than writing blog posts.
There was also a bit of a side issue - Ian Banks died and I'm afraid this made me a bit depressed so I therefore wasn't really in the mood to blog for some of it either.
Thursday, 23 May 2013
animu
I've been watching some anime.
I know - shock revelation, what with it supposedly being one of my hobbies and all, but it’s been a long time since I really watched any anime.
I therefore thought I might revive my mini reviews:
attack on titan
I've read several volumes of the manga and basically enjoyed it. The artwork is a bit rough around the edges and the story is all over the places, but I quite like it despite those.
It kind of goes without saying that the artwork in the anime is much better, but it is actually of quite a high standard. They've also done a lot to smooth out the story - it's less 'high energy' because of that, but it also makes it easier to follow.
My only real criticism would be that the gore has been toned down - a lot happens off camera - and really it's this that's one of the key aspects of the manga: when the characters are whining about how scared you are, in the manga you've seen their friends be eaten alive, but in the anime you know it happened but didn't actually see how horrible it was, so you don't quite feel the same way.
But that's a fairly minor gripe - it's still worth watching.
flowers of evil
I've only actually watched 3 episodes of this.
It's drawn quite a bit of flack as it's actually rotoscoped. I've never really been a fan of rotoscoping. I think it's okay here, but I think much of what it brings could have been achieved with traditional animation. Indeed, I think a lot of what people have been complimenting that they think the rotoscoping is the reason for is actually more to do with the sound design. The sound is really creepy - there's a lot of bits that really ramp up the tension and atmosphere.
But the reason I've not really watched more than 3 episodes is I find he characters a bit annoying. It also seems very unrealistic - and I think this is actually made worse by the rotoscoping. You know it's been acted out in real life, so it's like a drama someone has drawn on, but it's therefore a very unrealistic drama.
gargantia on the verduos planet
I think this might actually be my favourite of the season. It's certainly the most proper science fiction of the shows I've watched. I like the premise, the plot and the characters and I think it looks great and has been done really well (it is a Production I.G. series, after all).
If I was pushed to make one criticism it's that it could have moved a bit swifter - there were some bits that could have been chopped out to move things along a lot quicker. But even during those bits the show is entertaining enough. Oh, and I suppose the fan service it has is a bit unnecessary too; given the overall SF nature of the show it can feel a little out of place.
majestic prince
I have to say my interest in this one has waned a bit over the course of watching it. I think a part of this is that it's been quite samey. I am actually a bit puzzled that this was listed as having 24 episodes where Gargantia was listed as having 13 as I'd have said the longevity of the two series feels the other way around (but not sure where I saw these listings so I don't know if they're true).
Another problem I had was that in the first few episodes I had the feeling that the show was actually a bit of a parody, or at least that it was making a few knowing winks at the story itself, but as the episodes have gone on I've felt this much less.
I did actually think it bore a resemblance to shows like GaoGaiGar - certainly the bad guys are the same sort of bonkers OTT bunch. However, GGG had the advantage of a proper giant robot and a real sense of fun. This tries to be a bit more serious than it needs to be to work properly.
Although saying that it could have worked if it had gone the other way. I mean, I think the main characters are meant to be kids who have had their memories wiped so they don't remember their families or anything, but it doesn't really examine how dark this is.
yuyushiki
It's difficult to hate shows like this.
Yuyushiki is one of those girls in clubs shows like K-ON, only in K-ON the girls are meant to be in a music club but actually spend their time doing nothing, where in yuyu their club is basically searching the internet.
I dunno, as an example of the genre it's perfectly fine and I enjoy it, but it's hardly ground-breaking stuff.
This isn't all the stuff from this season; but it's the ones I liked the look of. I might try sampling the other series from this season across the Bank Holiday weekend to see if they're worth watching.
I've also watched some stuff I bought (I was kind of forced to, because it's on Blu-Ray and, as my post earlier in the week said) I need the cash from selling them on e-bay. I'll talk about those in another post.
I know - shock revelation, what with it supposedly being one of my hobbies and all, but it’s been a long time since I really watched any anime.
I therefore thought I might revive my mini reviews:
attack on titan
I've read several volumes of the manga and basically enjoyed it. The artwork is a bit rough around the edges and the story is all over the places, but I quite like it despite those.
It kind of goes without saying that the artwork in the anime is much better, but it is actually of quite a high standard. They've also done a lot to smooth out the story - it's less 'high energy' because of that, but it also makes it easier to follow.
My only real criticism would be that the gore has been toned down - a lot happens off camera - and really it's this that's one of the key aspects of the manga: when the characters are whining about how scared you are, in the manga you've seen their friends be eaten alive, but in the anime you know it happened but didn't actually see how horrible it was, so you don't quite feel the same way.
But that's a fairly minor gripe - it's still worth watching.
flowers of evil
I've only actually watched 3 episodes of this.
It's drawn quite a bit of flack as it's actually rotoscoped. I've never really been a fan of rotoscoping. I think it's okay here, but I think much of what it brings could have been achieved with traditional animation. Indeed, I think a lot of what people have been complimenting that they think the rotoscoping is the reason for is actually more to do with the sound design. The sound is really creepy - there's a lot of bits that really ramp up the tension and atmosphere.
But the reason I've not really watched more than 3 episodes is I find he characters a bit annoying. It also seems very unrealistic - and I think this is actually made worse by the rotoscoping. You know it's been acted out in real life, so it's like a drama someone has drawn on, but it's therefore a very unrealistic drama.
gargantia on the verduos planet
I think this might actually be my favourite of the season. It's certainly the most proper science fiction of the shows I've watched. I like the premise, the plot and the characters and I think it looks great and has been done really well (it is a Production I.G. series, after all).
If I was pushed to make one criticism it's that it could have moved a bit swifter - there were some bits that could have been chopped out to move things along a lot quicker. But even during those bits the show is entertaining enough. Oh, and I suppose the fan service it has is a bit unnecessary too; given the overall SF nature of the show it can feel a little out of place.
majestic prince
I have to say my interest in this one has waned a bit over the course of watching it. I think a part of this is that it's been quite samey. I am actually a bit puzzled that this was listed as having 24 episodes where Gargantia was listed as having 13 as I'd have said the longevity of the two series feels the other way around (but not sure where I saw these listings so I don't know if they're true).
Another problem I had was that in the first few episodes I had the feeling that the show was actually a bit of a parody, or at least that it was making a few knowing winks at the story itself, but as the episodes have gone on I've felt this much less.
I did actually think it bore a resemblance to shows like GaoGaiGar - certainly the bad guys are the same sort of bonkers OTT bunch. However, GGG had the advantage of a proper giant robot and a real sense of fun. This tries to be a bit more serious than it needs to be to work properly.
Although saying that it could have worked if it had gone the other way. I mean, I think the main characters are meant to be kids who have had their memories wiped so they don't remember their families or anything, but it doesn't really examine how dark this is.
yuyushiki
It's difficult to hate shows like this.
Yuyushiki is one of those girls in clubs shows like K-ON, only in K-ON the girls are meant to be in a music club but actually spend their time doing nothing, where in yuyu their club is basically searching the internet.
I dunno, as an example of the genre it's perfectly fine and I enjoy it, but it's hardly ground-breaking stuff.
This isn't all the stuff from this season; but it's the ones I liked the look of. I might try sampling the other series from this season across the Bank Holiday weekend to see if they're worth watching.
I've also watched some stuff I bought (I was kind of forced to, because it's on Blu-Ray and, as my post earlier in the week said) I need the cash from selling them on e-bay. I'll talk about those in another post.
Thursday, 24 January 2013
anime watching (or not)
I appreciate most of these review posts are a bit negative, but as I said before I don't really feel last year went very well.
I guess my point in this one is that watching anime and reading manage is supposed to be one of my hobbies - something I dedicate spare time to because I enjoy it. Well one of those I managed to achieve (the reading manga side of things) but the other didn't go so well.
I seem to recall there was some watching of anime fairly early in the year, but there was a real lack of anime watching in the latter half of the year. Now there are some reasons for this.
One is that I have not really been scanning my imported anime magazines. While I scan I used to watch fansubs and/or crunchyroll. Fansubs and crunchyroll don't really fit in very well with my more general TV viewing. I have got a PC set up as a Blu Ray that I could theoretically use to watch both, but in practice this hasn't proven very practical.
One of the biggest issues is a bit unusual in that TV / monitor is actually relatively small, particularly given the distance I am away from it, so it can be very hard to see stuff, even with using the larger font modes of windows. But also I have a wireless keyboard and mouse I use with it, but UI have to take the batteries out of the mouse and that means I have to re-synch it every time I switch the computer on, making it a huge pain in the arse.
I mean, I had managed to streamline the process a bit, but then not so long ago one of the hard drives in it packed up and I still haven't gotten around to really sorting it out properly since.
Anyway, point is that fansubs and crunchyroll are best done at my normal computer while scanning and I've stopped scanning. I've stopped scanning mainly because I've found the whole A4 scanner plus "image stitch" on Photoshop to be horrible. It doubles or even in some case quadruples the number of scans you have to do and then (and this is that bit I really hate) it takes three or four times as long again to stitch the pictures together... assuming it even works - a lot of the time it just doesn't put them together very well and then I have the horrid nightmare of having to try to do it myself.
The solution would be to get an A3 scanner again (I have one, but it doesn't have drivers for windows 7 and the machine I intended for XP doesn't work and I was never arsed to fix it) but that will cost me money I wasn't really expecting to have to spend, given what I've spent on it all already.
Of course if I'm honest it doesn't help that I'm not a fan of the whole weekly watching of anime that streaming sites seem to basically only be set up to support. I prefer to watch series in big chunks. But then the rubbishness of the Blu Ray machine also means I often hold off on watching Blu Rays and I've started to buy more anime on Blu Ray, so that's not exactly a help.
The final issue of course is time - given how much time I have spent job hunting and then working it's tough to find a good chunk of time to sit down and watch something that could be 10 or 20 hours long.
Obviously none of that has stopped me buying anime, because I'm an idiot. Why am I spending all this money and then not enjoying the stuff I buy?
I really need to come up with some better plans. Maybe a proper Blu Ray player could help in some regards, but then I really need multi-region and that's not something that players really support in the way DVD players used to - there seems to be a lot of faffing around with firmware, which surely negates the benefit over using my current system.
I guess my point in this one is that watching anime and reading manage is supposed to be one of my hobbies - something I dedicate spare time to because I enjoy it. Well one of those I managed to achieve (the reading manga side of things) but the other didn't go so well.
I seem to recall there was some watching of anime fairly early in the year, but there was a real lack of anime watching in the latter half of the year. Now there are some reasons for this.
One is that I have not really been scanning my imported anime magazines. While I scan I used to watch fansubs and/or crunchyroll. Fansubs and crunchyroll don't really fit in very well with my more general TV viewing. I have got a PC set up as a Blu Ray that I could theoretically use to watch both, but in practice this hasn't proven very practical.
One of the biggest issues is a bit unusual in that TV / monitor is actually relatively small, particularly given the distance I am away from it, so it can be very hard to see stuff, even with using the larger font modes of windows. But also I have a wireless keyboard and mouse I use with it, but UI have to take the batteries out of the mouse and that means I have to re-synch it every time I switch the computer on, making it a huge pain in the arse.
I mean, I had managed to streamline the process a bit, but then not so long ago one of the hard drives in it packed up and I still haven't gotten around to really sorting it out properly since.
Anyway, point is that fansubs and crunchyroll are best done at my normal computer while scanning and I've stopped scanning. I've stopped scanning mainly because I've found the whole A4 scanner plus "image stitch" on Photoshop to be horrible. It doubles or even in some case quadruples the number of scans you have to do and then (and this is that bit I really hate) it takes three or four times as long again to stitch the pictures together... assuming it even works - a lot of the time it just doesn't put them together very well and then I have the horrid nightmare of having to try to do it myself.
The solution would be to get an A3 scanner again (I have one, but it doesn't have drivers for windows 7 and the machine I intended for XP doesn't work and I was never arsed to fix it) but that will cost me money I wasn't really expecting to have to spend, given what I've spent on it all already.
Of course if I'm honest it doesn't help that I'm not a fan of the whole weekly watching of anime that streaming sites seem to basically only be set up to support. I prefer to watch series in big chunks. But then the rubbishness of the Blu Ray machine also means I often hold off on watching Blu Rays and I've started to buy more anime on Blu Ray, so that's not exactly a help.
The final issue of course is time - given how much time I have spent job hunting and then working it's tough to find a good chunk of time to sit down and watch something that could be 10 or 20 hours long.
Obviously none of that has stopped me buying anime, because I'm an idiot. Why am I spending all this money and then not enjoying the stuff I buy?
I really need to come up with some better plans. Maybe a proper Blu Ray player could help in some regards, but then I really need multi-region and that's not something that players really support in the way DVD players used to - there seems to be a lot of faffing around with firmware, which surely negates the benefit over using my current system.
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
a (long) short list
I'd obviously put together one of my famous to do lists for my holiday.
One of the main things I wanted to do was watch some of the fansubs I have failed to keep up with. I did watch a few things, although not as much as I'd hoped. However, I was sensible to watch things that haven't been licensed since they take up more room (for licensed stuff I generally only download a couple of episodes to sample them).
I also watched Nausicaa and Howl's Moving Castle on DVD. I've had them for ages but have failed to find time to watch them. I liked both, but they won't be going into my permanent collection - for Nausicaa I think he's done the same basic themes better elsewhere (Mononoke in particular) and Howl's was enjoyable, but lacked depth.
One of the things I wanted to try was my new portable Blu-Ray drive. This is an external type drive for a computer, rather than a stand-alone portable player. Weirdly it has a thing that says you can essentially run Blu-rays directly into TVs from it via USB, but then contradictorily it requires two USB sockets when you plug it in to a computer in order to power it, so how can it run okay on a TV when you only plug it into one USB slot?
Also, it moaned horribly about my laptop's graphics card not providing hardware acceleration (fair enough, it is an old laptop) so how can a TV run Blu-Ray disks direct?
Anyway, my laptop wasn't really man enough for the job of playing Blu-Rays. The drive came with Power DVD, which basically refused to play the disks at all without the hardware acceleration and even when using the other player (the open source Korean one - I forget the name) the playback was horribly jittery. However, the other thing this drive gives me, which in some ways is more important, is the ability to play DVDs multi-region.
Well, the drive itself doesn't, but AnyDVD is able to get around the region coding issue. I discovered last time I took a holiday with the intent of watching some anime (the vast majority of my collection being Region 1) that my laptop's internal DVD drive is essentially built in such a way that it can't be gotten around - once you use up your allowed number of changes, that's it.
The other thing I wanted to do was catch up on reading - I've ended up with a lot of manga that I wanted to read. I'd also managed to accumulate several magazines, all of which I finished. I also read World War Z, which I got on the kindle. It's really very good - even if you don't like zombies it's done in such a way that the fact it's zombies is mostly sort of incidental. It's difficult to explain, but I can see why it's been such a hit. Quite how they'll make a film of it and make it exciting I'm not sure, though.
I say I read them all - I read all that I took, which is the majority, but I've some more manga at home I need to read. Most of this is actually in hardback or very large size format, which is why it was difficult to take with me.
One of the main things I wanted to do was watch some of the fansubs I have failed to keep up with. I did watch a few things, although not as much as I'd hoped. However, I was sensible to watch things that haven't been licensed since they take up more room (for licensed stuff I generally only download a couple of episodes to sample them).
I also watched Nausicaa and Howl's Moving Castle on DVD. I've had them for ages but have failed to find time to watch them. I liked both, but they won't be going into my permanent collection - for Nausicaa I think he's done the same basic themes better elsewhere (Mononoke in particular) and Howl's was enjoyable, but lacked depth.
One of the things I wanted to try was my new portable Blu-Ray drive. This is an external type drive for a computer, rather than a stand-alone portable player. Weirdly it has a thing that says you can essentially run Blu-rays directly into TVs from it via USB, but then contradictorily it requires two USB sockets when you plug it in to a computer in order to power it, so how can it run okay on a TV when you only plug it into one USB slot?
Also, it moaned horribly about my laptop's graphics card not providing hardware acceleration (fair enough, it is an old laptop) so how can a TV run Blu-Ray disks direct?
Anyway, my laptop wasn't really man enough for the job of playing Blu-Rays. The drive came with Power DVD, which basically refused to play the disks at all without the hardware acceleration and even when using the other player (the open source Korean one - I forget the name) the playback was horribly jittery. However, the other thing this drive gives me, which in some ways is more important, is the ability to play DVDs multi-region.
Well, the drive itself doesn't, but AnyDVD is able to get around the region coding issue. I discovered last time I took a holiday with the intent of watching some anime (the vast majority of my collection being Region 1) that my laptop's internal DVD drive is essentially built in such a way that it can't be gotten around - once you use up your allowed number of changes, that's it.
The other thing I wanted to do was catch up on reading - I've ended up with a lot of manga that I wanted to read. I'd also managed to accumulate several magazines, all of which I finished. I also read World War Z, which I got on the kindle. It's really very good - even if you don't like zombies it's done in such a way that the fact it's zombies is mostly sort of incidental. It's difficult to explain, but I can see why it's been such a hit. Quite how they'll make a film of it and make it exciting I'm not sure, though.
I say I read them all - I read all that I took, which is the majority, but I've some more manga at home I need to read. Most of this is actually in hardback or very large size format, which is why it was difficult to take with me.
Thursday, 29 September 2011
shelves of doom
I mentioned last week I would take some pics of my shelves, so I thought I'd present those today.
There are actually two shelves.
First is the one on the right.
A: Ink Cartridges
B: Some of my important documents.
C: Stack of important (and non-important, to be frank) documents that I haven't sorted out yet (though I'll need to go through them soon as I need to find something). Plus this is where I keep my TV listing and all my remote controls.
D: These are basically piles of anime where I've bought and imported the original Japanese anime version (and I wonder why I'm skint). I'm also in the process of collecting the western versions and my hope is that this combo will sell quite well on e-bay. I'm somewhat afraid that actually they won't sell at all well, so I'm also kinda ignoring them.
E: This shelf is where I keep all the unscanned Japanese anime magazines. As you can see, it's a fair pile, but it's a lot smaller than it was. There used to be so many that they lived on the shelf below, which is much taller.
F: These are my PC games. The ones in the front row are those I haven't really played much yet, if at all, and the ones in the back are ones I have played and want to hold on too or want to play a bit more, but feel I should really do something about those unplayed ones first.
G: And this is the core stack of anime. As you can see it's quite a deep shelf and you have to remember that these are stacked in two piles, one in front of the other. That's a lot of unwatched stuff. It's also the stuff I've prioritised to watch "first" which obviously means I have a couple of other stacks of stuff I want to watch "after" :/.
H: This stack (again, double depth) is the real life TV series (or at least non-anime and non-film) all unwatched (well, I'll have watch the majority of the actual shows when they were broadcast, but I've not watched the DVDs).
I: This stack is "films". Again, double depth and featuring a mix of live action, foreign and anime.
J: This is my cheater stack, where I've stacked up all those series I'm in the middle of. It's yet another way of excluding stuff from the to watch pile because I like to marathon things.
K: These cake boxes contain all of the audio books that I've already listened to. I like to listen to audio books while I walk. as you can see I walk quite a bit.
L: This is the main chunk of box files containing important documents.
M: My digital radio which wakes me up in the morning. I got it as a present from my Dad and was worried I might not be able to get a signal, but actually it's great. My digital telly is problematic, but I think it's because the aerial is pointing at the London region antennae, rather than the Meridian, which is a lot closer. Also we've still not switched over to full digital service in either region, so signal strength is lower than it could be anyway.
N: These stacks are original Japanese manga that I'm disassembling in order that I can scan the big spreads and dramatic images. It's really a hang over from when I used to make wallpapers and I used to find new/different/original content by doing this. Now they're just stuck in the huge scanning backlog (they're sell for a pittance on e-bay, so this way they at least get put to some use before being chucked away)
O: My right speaker, perfectly positioned so I get great stereo effect when watching DVDs or Blu-Ray... except of course I stuck a bunch of stuff in front of it :/.
Second is the one on the left.
P: The other speaker
Q: The overspill pile. It's mainly anime, but there's plenty of normal TV stuff in there too. My intention is to watch this stuff after the other stuff... yeah, because I'm ever going to get through all that other stuff :/.
R: My unread books.
S: VHS Tapes - burn the heretic! They're old anime VHS tapes that I felt guilty about chucking away without rewatching at least once.
T: Supposed to be my unread manga pile, but they actually spill down on to the shelf below. I've actually not being doing so bad recently with keeping on top of reading manga.
U: This is ostensibly my western comics to read pile, but it also has a bunch of CD old/empty jewel case I intended to use as spare parts to replace broken ones, but have never gotten around to.
V: These are the CDs I'm hanging on to for now. There's two stacking crates into eh kitchen of CDs I either want to e-bay (god, the effort required) or sell on one of those "sell your DVD sites" (bound to be a rip off).
W: These fans were headed out to the garage. Well, until this current heat wave so now they're sort of back in use.
X: I'm rapidly running out of letter, so, from left to right we've got: The DVDs I plan to take to watch on my upcoming holiday; CD cake boxes containing fansubs (I'm supposed to be sorting through them but got distracted half way); my Blu-Rays (I promised myself I wouldn't let it grow :() and a box of software.
Y: These spindles are the blank ones with DVDs and (out of picture) CDs for burning stuff on too. Oh, and some pants.
So there you go. The perfect shopping list for burglars. Well, burglar nerds. Which is very different to nerd burglars.
There are actually two shelves.
First is the one on the right.
A: Ink Cartridges
B: Some of my important documents.
C: Stack of important (and non-important, to be frank) documents that I haven't sorted out yet (though I'll need to go through them soon as I need to find something). Plus this is where I keep my TV listing and all my remote controls.
D: These are basically piles of anime where I've bought and imported the original Japanese anime version (and I wonder why I'm skint). I'm also in the process of collecting the western versions and my hope is that this combo will sell quite well on e-bay. I'm somewhat afraid that actually they won't sell at all well, so I'm also kinda ignoring them.
E: This shelf is where I keep all the unscanned Japanese anime magazines. As you can see, it's a fair pile, but it's a lot smaller than it was. There used to be so many that they lived on the shelf below, which is much taller.
F: These are my PC games. The ones in the front row are those I haven't really played much yet, if at all, and the ones in the back are ones I have played and want to hold on too or want to play a bit more, but feel I should really do something about those unplayed ones first.
G: And this is the core stack of anime. As you can see it's quite a deep shelf and you have to remember that these are stacked in two piles, one in front of the other. That's a lot of unwatched stuff. It's also the stuff I've prioritised to watch "first" which obviously means I have a couple of other stacks of stuff I want to watch "after" :/.
H: This stack (again, double depth) is the real life TV series (or at least non-anime and non-film) all unwatched (well, I'll have watch the majority of the actual shows when they were broadcast, but I've not watched the DVDs).
I: This stack is "films". Again, double depth and featuring a mix of live action, foreign and anime.
J: This is my cheater stack, where I've stacked up all those series I'm in the middle of. It's yet another way of excluding stuff from the to watch pile because I like to marathon things.
K: These cake boxes contain all of the audio books that I've already listened to. I like to listen to audio books while I walk. as you can see I walk quite a bit.
L: This is the main chunk of box files containing important documents.
M: My digital radio which wakes me up in the morning. I got it as a present from my Dad and was worried I might not be able to get a signal, but actually it's great. My digital telly is problematic, but I think it's because the aerial is pointing at the London region antennae, rather than the Meridian, which is a lot closer. Also we've still not switched over to full digital service in either region, so signal strength is lower than it could be anyway.
N: These stacks are original Japanese manga that I'm disassembling in order that I can scan the big spreads and dramatic images. It's really a hang over from when I used to make wallpapers and I used to find new/different/original content by doing this. Now they're just stuck in the huge scanning backlog (they're sell for a pittance on e-bay, so this way they at least get put to some use before being chucked away)
O: My right speaker, perfectly positioned so I get great stereo effect when watching DVDs or Blu-Ray... except of course I stuck a bunch of stuff in front of it :/.
Second is the one on the left.
P: The other speaker
Q: The overspill pile. It's mainly anime, but there's plenty of normal TV stuff in there too. My intention is to watch this stuff after the other stuff... yeah, because I'm ever going to get through all that other stuff :/.
R: My unread books.
T: Supposed to be my unread manga pile, but they actually spill down on to the shelf below. I've actually not being doing so bad recently with keeping on top of reading manga.
U: This is ostensibly my western comics to read pile, but it also has a bunch of CD old/empty jewel case I intended to use as spare parts to replace broken ones, but have never gotten around to.
V: These are the CDs I'm hanging on to for now. There's two stacking crates into eh kitchen of CDs I either want to e-bay (god, the effort required) or sell on one of those "sell your DVD sites" (bound to be a rip off).
W: These fans were headed out to the garage. Well, until this current heat wave so now they're sort of back in use.
X: I'm rapidly running out of letter, so, from left to right we've got: The DVDs I plan to take to watch on my upcoming holiday; CD cake boxes containing fansubs (I'm supposed to be sorting through them but got distracted half way); my Blu-Rays (I promised myself I wouldn't let it grow :() and a box of software.
Y: These spindles are the blank ones with DVDs and (out of picture) CDs for burning stuff on too. Oh, and some pants.
So there you go. The perfect shopping list for burglars. Well, burglar nerds. Which is very different to nerd burglars.
Friday, 23 September 2011
sing a pore (or is that bore?)
Singapore Grand Prix this weekend.
I’m guessing it will also be he weekend when Sebastian Vettel gets his hands on the championship.
It will also likely be another very big challenge for the new rules as Singapore is a dire race usually. Like Valencia and Monaco it’s on a tight street circuit and therefore ends to produce dull races. Unlike Monaco, Valencia was still dull and I would guess Singapore will be too.
A big part of the problem has been the length in Singapore - laps take such a long time that the race usually drags on for ages.
But we’ll see - who knows, maybe it will be a good one. Of particular interest is the other part of how I've written the title. According to the weather thing the BBC does for the next race it's basically been raining all week in Singapore. Usually rain adds a bit of spice, but given that Singapore is a night race, illuminated by great big spotlights, I'm unsure quite what will happen if it rains.
Other plans for the weekend are relatively simple. I need to buy my dad a present. What he's asked for can only really be picked up in a shop so I can actually pick things up and have a look at them.
I also really need a haircut. I get this weird thing with my sideburn area where they become very curly when my hair gets too long. It's odd - there's a point where they suddenly become curly.
Well, I say that. Maybe it's more that I suddenly notice it's happened.
I've been watching a lot of telly in the evenings and, as I mentioned before, I trimmed out quite a few programmes. Also, some others have come to an end. I'm therefore hoping I can do some scanning and, in particular, get back up to speed with anime stuff.
I'd quite like to plough through the fansubs I've got. I mentioned before that unfortunately, this season, there seemed to be a retro step that meant more stuff was only really accessible via fansub. Well, the new season is rolling around, so the hard drive I use to hold fansubs is very nearly full because of the combination of all the shows I've downloaded and my poor watch rate.
I’m guessing it will also be he weekend when Sebastian Vettel gets his hands on the championship.
It will also likely be another very big challenge for the new rules as Singapore is a dire race usually. Like Valencia and Monaco it’s on a tight street circuit and therefore ends to produce dull races. Unlike Monaco, Valencia was still dull and I would guess Singapore will be too.
A big part of the problem has been the length in Singapore - laps take such a long time that the race usually drags on for ages.
But we’ll see - who knows, maybe it will be a good one. Of particular interest is the other part of how I've written the title. According to the weather thing the BBC does for the next race it's basically been raining all week in Singapore. Usually rain adds a bit of spice, but given that Singapore is a night race, illuminated by great big spotlights, I'm unsure quite what will happen if it rains.
Other plans for the weekend are relatively simple. I need to buy my dad a present. What he's asked for can only really be picked up in a shop so I can actually pick things up and have a look at them.
I also really need a haircut. I get this weird thing with my sideburn area where they become very curly when my hair gets too long. It's odd - there's a point where they suddenly become curly.
Well, I say that. Maybe it's more that I suddenly notice it's happened.
I've been watching a lot of telly in the evenings and, as I mentioned before, I trimmed out quite a few programmes. Also, some others have come to an end. I'm therefore hoping I can do some scanning and, in particular, get back up to speed with anime stuff.
I'd quite like to plough through the fansubs I've got. I mentioned before that unfortunately, this season, there seemed to be a retro step that meant more stuff was only really accessible via fansub. Well, the new season is rolling around, so the hard drive I use to hold fansubs is very nearly full because of the combination of all the shows I've downloaded and my poor watch rate.
Thursday, 15 September 2011
re-rearrange
I rearranged my DVDs and books. Again... again.
I liked the idea of my plan when I rearranged them last time, but the results were a bit of a mess. The big problem was that I mixed stuff up and tried to put books, anime and normal DVDs all together.
Trouble was the ‘slots’ on the shelf weren’t the right size and so what I ended up with was more like a jumble of stuff where I was trying for a more sensible order to watch stuff in.
My new arrangement tries to keep things together - so all my books are back over on the other book shelf, for example - and instead I’ve focused more on putting the groups into a sensible order to watch them in. So in other words, all the books are together, all the normal DVDs are together and all the anime is together, but what I‘ve done is put those groups into an order where I can watch stuff from the top down.
Well, I say that, but there is one shelf that’s ended up as a random mix of stuff. I’m not too fussed about that, because it’s more a reflection of the stupid amount of DVDs I’ve got to watch than any real failure in my ordering.
There was also an ulterior motive for my rearrangement.
Basically, I couldn’t find my copy of High School of the Dead. HOTD was released last week on the Bank Holiday Monday an I’d pre-ordered the Blu-Ray version almost as soon as it was announced. But I couldn’t find it.
I say I couldn’t find it because I was sure I’d received it. I had a memory of being a little disappointed with the image they’d put on the Blu-Rays. I also vaguely remembered unwrapping it and, more importantly, I checked my e-mail and Amazon had sent it on the Bank Holiday.
Now obviously there was the possibility that I hadn’t actually received it, but as I say, I was sure I had, but I couldn’t find it. I have a small stack of Blu-Rays and it should have been with them, but no sign.
Therefore, by sorting out the mess I’d created with my last re-arrange, it gave me a chance to look through the piles and see if I’d put it somewhere odd. But there was no sign.
And then, a couple of days after I’d basically decided I’d somehow lost it (perhaps doing something silly like chucking it away like I did with a volume of Bakuman) it turned up in the post. It had taken some 8 days to arrive. Now to be fair I do use the Amazon slow and free service and of course if they posted it on the bank holiday, it wouldn’t actually get picked up until later, but still, I think that’s the longest I’ve ever had it take to get to me.
I’ve actually cancelled a lot of the stuff I pre-ordered on Amazon - manga, mostly. I‘m actually rather skint (all this dental work I’ve had to have has really not helped me) and I need to get more stuff on e-bay. I’ve got quite a lot lined up - not least of all because I’ve been watching stuff on DVD - but I just don’t seem to be able to find the time to sit down and take photos and write the stuff for the auction pages.
I liked the idea of my plan when I rearranged them last time, but the results were a bit of a mess. The big problem was that I mixed stuff up and tried to put books, anime and normal DVDs all together.
Trouble was the ‘slots’ on the shelf weren’t the right size and so what I ended up with was more like a jumble of stuff where I was trying for a more sensible order to watch stuff in.
My new arrangement tries to keep things together - so all my books are back over on the other book shelf, for example - and instead I’ve focused more on putting the groups into a sensible order to watch them in. So in other words, all the books are together, all the normal DVDs are together and all the anime is together, but what I‘ve done is put those groups into an order where I can watch stuff from the top down.
Well, I say that, but there is one shelf that’s ended up as a random mix of stuff. I’m not too fussed about that, because it’s more a reflection of the stupid amount of DVDs I’ve got to watch than any real failure in my ordering.
There was also an ulterior motive for my rearrangement.
Basically, I couldn’t find my copy of High School of the Dead. HOTD was released last week on the Bank Holiday Monday an I’d pre-ordered the Blu-Ray version almost as soon as it was announced. But I couldn’t find it.
I say I couldn’t find it because I was sure I’d received it. I had a memory of being a little disappointed with the image they’d put on the Blu-Rays. I also vaguely remembered unwrapping it and, more importantly, I checked my e-mail and Amazon had sent it on the Bank Holiday.
Now obviously there was the possibility that I hadn’t actually received it, but as I say, I was sure I had, but I couldn’t find it. I have a small stack of Blu-Rays and it should have been with them, but no sign.
Therefore, by sorting out the mess I’d created with my last re-arrange, it gave me a chance to look through the piles and see if I’d put it somewhere odd. But there was no sign.
And then, a couple of days after I’d basically decided I’d somehow lost it (perhaps doing something silly like chucking it away like I did with a volume of Bakuman) it turned up in the post. It had taken some 8 days to arrive. Now to be fair I do use the Amazon slow and free service and of course if they posted it on the bank holiday, it wouldn’t actually get picked up until later, but still, I think that’s the longest I’ve ever had it take to get to me.
I’ve actually cancelled a lot of the stuff I pre-ordered on Amazon - manga, mostly. I‘m actually rather skint (all this dental work I’ve had to have has really not helped me) and I need to get more stuff on e-bay. I’ve got quite a lot lined up - not least of all because I’ve been watching stuff on DVD - but I just don’t seem to be able to find the time to sit down and take photos and write the stuff for the auction pages.
Friday, 9 September 2011
internet & fansubs (BT)
I mentioned a while back that I’d gotten myself BT broadband.
Well, unfortunately I recently had to boost my package to the unlimited downloads one. This is quite a lot more expensive (the broadband bit of the package basically doubles), but there was no way I was going to be able to keep within the bandwidth limit, and they charge you a huge amount for each gb you go over.
There are two basic problems that have really brought this to the fore. well, actually there’s one problem, but it has a couple of facets.
That problem is the entire reason I got the BT broadband in the first place- fansubs.
As I’ve explained before, I got the Bt broadband because I was hammering my landlords connection so hard and so often that it seemed to be causing the line to fall over on a very regular basis. When this happened it meant I had no internet access at all, sometimes for quite long periods of time.
Also, my usage was clearly causing the line to hit its limit often, so when my landlord used it he’d get really slow speeds. Therefore, by transferring my fansub downloading to another line, I’d stop being an arse.
But then two problems cropped up. Firstly, the shower broke. As I explained at the time, that meant I couldn't download any fansubs because my computer is underneath the hatch to get access to the stopcocks. And because it was out for a week, I created a big backlog of stuff.
The other problem is that this year there seems to have been a real problem over shows that have been picked up for legal streaming. I try to be a good boy and only dl shows that haven’t been picked up by crunchyroll and AOD. However, this year a whole raft of stuff either wasn’t licensed at all or was licensed, but I was region locked out of.
A new service called Nico Nico started, which seemed to take several shows and I found the site basically unusable. But then quite a bit of stuff on crunchyroll was region locked and then there was this big announcement that most of it was going to be on AOD.
I’m not sure I buy into the conspiracy theories that it wasn’t picked up by crunchyroll for the UK because of AOD, but what was definitely true was that it was ages before AOD announced they had them and then literally months before they started appearing.
On top of that, AOD’s site has been crushingly slow, making it unusual and there’s still the problem that AOD's content can only be viewed full screen or in a tiny window, making it a much less practical site for me.
In other words, I seem to have reverted back to downloading just about everything.
And things seemed to be going so well :(
But it did mean that last month I was hammering the connection and I had to increase the bandwidth allowance.
What made this slightly more annoying was that when I tried to rest the payment direct debit thing, it wouldn’t let me set it to a sensible level. It had this weird thing of one page was recommending a sensible amount, but then when I went onto the page to change it, it insisted I couldn’t take it below a different “recommended” amount that was £10 more than the other recommended amount. I put the higher recommended amount in quotes, because if you it acts as a fixed minimum value, it’s not really a recommendation is it?
Still, I guess if a large credit build up because of this stupid flaw in the system, I’ll eventually be able to set it lower.
Well, unfortunately I recently had to boost my package to the unlimited downloads one. This is quite a lot more expensive (the broadband bit of the package basically doubles), but there was no way I was going to be able to keep within the bandwidth limit, and they charge you a huge amount for each gb you go over.
There are two basic problems that have really brought this to the fore. well, actually there’s one problem, but it has a couple of facets.
That problem is the entire reason I got the BT broadband in the first place- fansubs.
As I’ve explained before, I got the Bt broadband because I was hammering my landlords connection so hard and so often that it seemed to be causing the line to fall over on a very regular basis. When this happened it meant I had no internet access at all, sometimes for quite long periods of time.
Also, my usage was clearly causing the line to hit its limit often, so when my landlord used it he’d get really slow speeds. Therefore, by transferring my fansub downloading to another line, I’d stop being an arse.
But then two problems cropped up. Firstly, the shower broke. As I explained at the time, that meant I couldn't download any fansubs because my computer is underneath the hatch to get access to the stopcocks. And because it was out for a week, I created a big backlog of stuff.
The other problem is that this year there seems to have been a real problem over shows that have been picked up for legal streaming. I try to be a good boy and only dl shows that haven’t been picked up by crunchyroll and AOD. However, this year a whole raft of stuff either wasn’t licensed at all or was licensed, but I was region locked out of.
A new service called Nico Nico started, which seemed to take several shows and I found the site basically unusable. But then quite a bit of stuff on crunchyroll was region locked and then there was this big announcement that most of it was going to be on AOD.
I’m not sure I buy into the conspiracy theories that it wasn’t picked up by crunchyroll for the UK because of AOD, but what was definitely true was that it was ages before AOD announced they had them and then literally months before they started appearing.
On top of that, AOD’s site has been crushingly slow, making it unusual and there’s still the problem that AOD's content can only be viewed full screen or in a tiny window, making it a much less practical site for me.
In other words, I seem to have reverted back to downloading just about everything.
And things seemed to be going so well :(
But it did mean that last month I was hammering the connection and I had to increase the bandwidth allowance.
What made this slightly more annoying was that when I tried to rest the payment direct debit thing, it wouldn’t let me set it to a sensible level. It had this weird thing of one page was recommending a sensible amount, but then when I went onto the page to change it, it insisted I couldn’t take it below a different “recommended” amount that was £10 more than the other recommended amount. I put the higher recommended amount in quotes, because if you it acts as a fixed minimum value, it’s not really a recommendation is it?
Still, I guess if a large credit build up because of this stupid flaw in the system, I’ll eventually be able to set it lower.
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