Agora Road General Anime Thread

[№56]

I feel like the modern anime community moves too fast. I always look into the past few years to see what were some good shows while the majority seems to be watching current shows, have their flavor of the month favorites and then forget about them as soon as the next season arrives with new shows.

It's always been like this but it does seem to be getting faster. I stopped actively following anime about eight years ago and have no idea what half the people in this thread are talking about, especially when it comes to all the "classics" that have apparently been released in the past ten years. I can remember similar "classics" that were ten years old ten years ago and that have since been forgotten. Not that I mind, but it is kind of funny to watch. The same goes for how the supposed decade of "good old anime" keeps getting pushed up - it used to be the 70s, then the 80s and 90s, and now people say it's the 2000s. As someone who used to argue with "muh retro 80s" nerds on /a/ about how their nostalgia was blinding them to whether or not a show was actually good, the unironic Lucky Star nostalgia feels very vindicating (how do you have Lucky Star nostalgia while ignoring Haruhi entirely?)

Where Ghost in the Shell at? I know it's a film, but it does count as anime, right?

Stand Alone Complex definitely counts as a TV anime. I went back and rewatched it a year ago and was surprised at how much I still enjoyed it, the second season in particular. I've heard people criticize it for being less existential and more Tom Clancy than the films, but I actually don't mind that at all, especially seeing as how the plot points about memetics, an international refugee crisis, corruption in the healthcare industry, and the general references to how people interact with the internet still make it feel pretty relevant. It's definitely the high point of the franchise for me, and I don't care if that's a heretical opinion or not.
Also, if you like magical girl anime you might also like Revolutionary Girl Utena, which I also watched at some point in the past decade and enjoyed very much.

 

[☯змія☯]

funny how three of my favorite animes include a dude in a red coat going hard af.

 

[☯змія☯]

Revolutionary Girl Utena

i was not prepared for you to recommend kino, or that you even watched revolutionary girl utena, but here we are, you are full of surprises 56.

 

[☯змія☯]

Black Lagoon(I recommend watching it with the English Dubs)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4ZhML4YGUw

 

[幽邃森林]

- Black Lagoon(I recommend watching it with the English Dubs)

I've heard that English dubs are recommended over subs in this anime. Are there any others where foreign dubs are better than the Japanese voice acting?

 

[☯змія☯]

I've heard that English dubs are recommended over subs in this anime. Are there any others where foreign dubs are better than the Japanese voice acting?

the spanish dub of dragon ball z.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLf1J2tnC3I

 

[幽邃森林]

I can remember similar "classics" that were ten years old ten years ago and that have since been forgotten. Not that I mind, but it is kind of funny to watch. The same goes for how the supposed decade of "good old anime" keeps getting pushed up - it used to be the 70s, then the 80s.

I can't believe you were arguing with people claiming that 70s and 80s were the decades of "good" anime. Maybe for manga that is understandable but the animators in Japan from those times egregiously used the budget cutting strategies of Hannah Barbara to make their shows. Fist of the North Star was fun to watch, but you won't catch me defending its quality.

 

[BarnSwallow]

I've heard that English dubs are recommended over subs in this anime. Are there any others where foreign dubs are better than the Japanese voice acting?

"Better" can be subjective, but I find it more pleasing to use dubs with "western" influenced anime, like Cowboy Bebop, Space Dandy, or AoT, just to name a few off the top of my head.

Baccano would be another that I'd choose English dubs over sub, what with it taking place entirely in the Prohibition Era US of A. What would you have to gain by listening to a bunch of American gangsters speaking Japanese?

It's my hot opinion that sub superiority rests entirely on an imagined sanctity of the art form that's made moot by translating it in the first place. Now I'm not some nut that thinks a 4Kidz dub is just as valid as a fansub, but disregarding supposed impurities in an art forms translation/localization leaves a lot of productive derivatives by the wayside. Sometimes derivatives are good enough to circle their way back into the original product. Japanese video games do it all the time with rereleases, implementing localization changes or patches made specifically for western translations.

 

[幽邃森林]

I know torrents are the best method in terms of quality but I've been streaming anime via this site called animelon. Don't throw shade, I think I remember getting this site recommended to me on Agora. It's great because you can get Japanese subs on top of English subs. You can even toggle for it to be kana only subs. It's amazing for learning Japanese.

Anyways the servers they use for streaming seem to be down. What do you recommend as a replacement? I'm catching so many commonly used phrases in the subbed torrents but I can't look them up in my dictionary without knowing how the word is spelled.

 

[Holy]

As someone who used to argue with "muh retro 80s" nerds on /a/ about how their nostalgia was blinding them to whether or not a show was actually good, the unironic Lucky Star nostalgia feels very vindicating (how do you have Lucky Star nostalgia while ignoring Haruhi entirely?)

A lot of the Lucky Star "nostalgia" is zoomers who've never seen the show latching onto it for superficial reasons like the so-called aesthetics or whatever (they also do this with Lain). They're in it for the trend, not beause they actually care about the material. I bet most true Lucky Star fans have probably seen and enjoyed Haruhi.

Most of these had either an expansive universe or actually interesting villains (even from an adult PoV). Though I found HxH quite overrated and too "power-level-y" after some point (don't judge the whole by the few awesome moments) and Kenshin started quite good but was quickly ruined by the Baki-tier characters and mostly the strange mix of slapstick comedy and seinen darkness that gave us the Tsuiokuhen OAV masterpiece; wavering between Vagabond and Crayon Shin-chan is weird, man.
Ashita no Joe may have been published in a shonen magazine, but it wouldn't be nowadays. Shit is dark.

I think the reason that the tone shifts so much in the Kenshin OVAs is because the director of the show Kazuhiro Furuhashi pretty much had free reign to implement his creative vision whereas the anime seems to stay truer to the manga. He also directed HxH 1999 and you saw more of his dark style and expressive shot composition throught that series. It especially comes to the forefront in the Yorknew arc which was hands down the best part of the show, though I'd say even the earlier parts of HxH look more like a lower budget version of said-grimdark style featured in the Kenshin OVAs than the Kenshin TV anime does by comparison.

I do think the Kenshin TV show has it's moments though, like the Saito duel and really most of the Kyoto arc. It's only the beginning that seems pretty goofy but that can also work in it's favour by suckering you in before stuff hits the fan and you learn about Kenshin's past. To me the tone does not feel that conflicting or whiplashy, things start off pretty lighthearted and gradually as the plot unfolds it descends into hell a bit. Most of the slapstick was concentrated towards the beginning in my experience and rarely does it feel out of place. Personally I liked the characters even if they're a bit archetypical outside of Kenshin, Saito and Shishio.

I actually just recently watched Joe for the first time so it's fresh in my memory. I agree it covers some heavy topics and that it would perhaps be a Seinen today, but you can also feel some Shounen in it IMO. Namely the melodrama being ridiculously exaggerated (all of the crying, breaking stuff for no reason, etc.), the boxing in the early going with the no-guard silliness can feel a bit "power of friendship-y" too and also the characters kind of just orbit Joe in a way that feels cartoony, moreso at the beginning of the series. Joe's character writing is incredible but the circumstances that were necessary in order for him to develop came about in a way that felt a bit contrived. Really I found the first part of the series to be a bit overrated but Joe 2 is a peak of the medium.

I do agree with one of the replies you got though, that demographics aren't the be all end all. I mean we were talking about Trust and Betrayal, that poo is not a shounen in anything except technicality lol. Meanwhile stuff like Kaguya-sama is Seinen. That's sorta why I don't like throwing the terms around liberally or using them to gauge a show's "maturity" so to speak.

It's my hot opinion that sub superiority rests entirely on an imagined sanctity of the art form that's made moot by translating it in the first place. Now I'm not some nut that thinks a 4Kidz dub is just as valid as a fansub, but disregarding supposed impurities in an art forms translation/localization leaves a lot of productive derivatives by the wayside. Sometimes derivatives are good enough to circle their way back into the original product. Japanese video games do it all the time with rereleases, implementing localization changes or patches made specifically for western translations.

I see what you're saying and that could be a factor but I think the bigger one is just that Japan seems to generally take voice acting very seriously. The Western dub scene also comprises of a lot less voice actors than the Japanese one does due to the industry historically being more obscure here than there for obvious reasons. I've noticed some repeat Seiyuus before, but not nearly as often as I notice repeats in English dubs. Whenever I do notice, all I can think about is the character who that person played in another show and it takes me out of it even if it's a good dub.

With subs the floor is a lot lower. Even if a sub is bad, the language barrier will make it so that an English viewer doesn't notice it thus increasing one's immersion within the story. That said I agree that the sub elitism can be silly particularly when it's aimed at shows that actually do have good dubs. The dubbing industry has come a long way in general since the 90s and 00s and nowadays a lot of shows receive good ones.

 

[UltramarineWeather]

@Holy Much sorry, I was mostly thinking about the mangas, not the animes. Agree on Kenshin's good points (the animation outside the OAVs was often cheap, though).

The unironic Lucky Star nostalgia feels very vindicating (how do you have Lucky Star nostalgia while ignoring Haruhi entirely?)

Because Lucky Star was better.
t. Lucky Star fanboy

 

[Holy]

On the topic of dubs...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci8dIpNcyEY

 

[ĦĦĦ]

I have been watching Gurren Lagann and the sheer incompetence of the Capital's military is astounding.
They have zero recon and intelligence efforts. Their commanders are downright incompetence with the height of their brilliance being an overly obvious trap that only worked due to the human leadership also being tactically retarded.
The entire usage of gunmen in the flat terrain of the planet against the dispersed human tribes is downright idiotic. Speaking of which the gunman themselves are a complete design enigma being both extremely durable yet lightweight. The Dai-gunman's design is downright impossible with those massive legs. A combination of drones, IFVs and chemical weapons would have been more effective while being much more cheaper.
There are also a lot of downright impossible things in Gurren Lagann like the Dai-gunman being able to float with bloody flippers having a conversion rate of 300% which is impossible according to the second law of thermodynamics. Also the entire mental weaponisation of gunman is enigmatic.

dude its a Japanese mecha cartoon, it aint that deep. its all about hype moments and aura

 

[ĦĦĦ]

just thought i should come back here to say thank you! ive not checked it out entirely yet, but it had the first anime i was looking for! and website looks sleek, no fuss, no nonsense as far as i can tell! :3

got this warning from cloudflare today, didn't know that it stole personal info until today. sorry dude but thanks for the nice comment, be careful!

 

[polar_coyote]

got this warning from cloudflare today, didn't know that it stole personal info until today. sorry dude but thanks for the nice comment, be careful!
View attachment 150839

Interesting!
I assumed it was just mining for data or something, cause the browser is a resource hog at times when using that website! (but not all of the time and well, youtube does the same so, lol)
Did you have some account there or something? I only typed the anime title and started watching, no sign-in or following links or typing anything other than the title.

 

[ĦĦĦ]

Did you have some account there or something? I only typed the anime title and started watching, no sign-in or following links or typing anything other than the title.

thankfully i didn't. creating an account on a piracy website is like giving your social security number away without a second thought

 

[polar_coyote]

thankfully i didn't. creating an account on a piracy website is like giving your social security number away without a second thought

haha true. i wonder what the supposed phishing is then? like what can they possibly "steal" unless you give them/follow weirdo links etc? i'll have a looksie and see if there are other reports on that site!

edit: just tossing in a few links

Whois miruro.tv

Whois Lookup for miruro.tv

www.whois.com

^ not sure what to make of this but it's there at least.

it seems it also has a locked-off subreddit, but i didn't bother so.


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/1ixx0gb/is_mirurotv_good_for_streaming_ankme/

^ people here seem to give it a thumbs up (but they're on >reddit so....)

miruro.tv Reviews: Is this site a scam or legit?

Curious if miruro.tv is a legitimate platform? Is it safe or dangerous? Our review provides insights into it, whether it is legit or a scam.

www.scam-detector.com

^ this website does not approve of it, but funnily enough that website in itself looks like absolute trash scam shit. what the hell. word salad garble ai text, no actual useful proof, just "vibes are off" types shit

could it be that the ads on that site are the actual scams/phishing/etc? I didnt even realize there were ads since I use ublock origin? would make sense at least. Maybe websites have become super advanced as of late, just cant understand how a website would phish info unless I'm actually giving it anything other than my watch-time lol

 

[pressC4caius]

I finally got around to watching the final Satoshi Kon work i had not seen, Millennium actress. I really enjoyed it.
I liked the more subdued color palette, as well as the soundtrack. The way the plot blends between sequences and different settings really had me going. I can't tell if i liked it more then perfect blue, paprika or paranoia agent, but i think the fact it tapped into my Autistic hyper-fixation of old samurai movies (i mean there was an entire character/sequence that referenced throne of blood) may have swayed me more in it's favor.

Now i have seen all the animated works Satoshi Kon has directed, it has filled me with a mildly empty feeling. I know it's been said a million times before and i'll keep saying it until the sun blows up, but it's a tragedy he died so young. Highly recommend all his stuff.

 

[morus]

how do you have Lucky Star nostalgia while ignoring Haruhi entirely?

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Haruhi. The humor is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theological studies and metaphysics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer's head. There's also Kyon's nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterization - his personal philosophy draws heavily from Osamu Dazai literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these jokes, to realize that they're not just funny - they say something deep about LIFE.

 

[morus]

I mostly prefer older anime like the Kyo ani classics

I just aged 10 years.