More Anime Sols, Gargantia, etc.
Jun. 5th, 2013 08:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foxinthestarsTime to blabber about anime some more...
I went through sampling everything at Anime Sols (except Black Jack, which is on Crunchyroll). All the reviews are telling me you have to stick with Creamy Mami for awhile, but within the first two episodes it hasn't become something I would watch for fun. On the other hand I am loving Tobikage. I haven't seen it before, but it has a really good nostalgia vibe for me; I think it must be tapping into childhood memories of Voltron or something (Crunchyroll actually has GoLion, BTW, although I haven't gotten around to watching it yet). I guess I did grow up on super-robots more than magical girls...
As for the current-run stuff, most of it is staying on course. Valvrave finally crossed my line from "cracktastic" to "just embarrassing to watch" and was dropped, but Hataraku Maou-sama! is still brilliant, Chihayafuru is still awesome (but enough with the recapping), Red Data Girl is still awesome-but-not-fully-comprehensible, and Karneval is still mediocre but fun (Tsukumo's not dead, BTW; I went to the manga and checked because I would have been pissed, but she's OK). I'm nicely into Devil Survivor 2; I wouldn't say it's anything special, but it at least has a situation in which tension is steadily building. Gargantia, after vacillating between "OMG, you're amazing!" and "Why did you have to go and do that??" has finally settled in at "Meh;" it's not too bad, but it is disappointing. Episode 9 had a big twist that I want to comment on, under the cut; suffice to say it didn't lift me out of my disappointment, although it could possibly provide tools to do so.
So. The Hideauze are people. I wasn't expecting that, but I wasn't shocked by it; it struck me as within the realm of things they might do. The thing is, this didn't work as well for me as it was supposed to (while I should have been going "OMG" I was more like "oh, that explains the whalesquids' tooth structure"). The Hideauze are people, so you say --- but they've always acted like animals until the convenient cute kid here. The Evolvers rendering themselves incapable of communicating with other humans or apparently of using tools just seems pretty dumb (and plot-convenient). Worse yet, okay, the Hideauze are people --- now they're morally culpable. The Galactic Alliance attacking their nest still deserved what they got, but now these aren't just dangerous animals defending themselves, they're sapient beings who've done their part in this atrocious war, and have apparently killed enough Terran humans to instill them with the Holy Shivers. Once Ledo calms down, he actually has a good reason to hate them more; I'd be really surprised if they went that way, but it's quite possible. The only reason I care that much is because Ledo just had his world turned upside-down and I wonder what he's going to do now (and what Chamber's going to do now; we're finally at the long-anticipated/dreaded point where those two might be in conflict). For me, Ledo's character development is really the point of the show and it always has been, and on that front, this could lead to something good, but in a way even that's disappointing --- I wanted to see Ledo develop into a new worldview and blossom on his own; having it happen via the plot throwing a brick at his head just seems like a cop-out and makes his choice too easy (it's like the problem I had toward the end of The Unlimited, except if Andy's character development and difficult choices had been pretty much all the show had going for it). So my first take on this is that the Hideauze were actually more interesting as wildlife, both for the blue-and-orange morality they brought, and as a more three-dimensional moral conundrum. They could be going somewhere good with it, but the twist in itself didn't impress me much.
Or to put it harshly: the Whalesquid used to be the Ohmu; now they're a bunch of stupid jerks.
I went through sampling everything at Anime Sols (except Black Jack, which is on Crunchyroll). All the reviews are telling me you have to stick with Creamy Mami for awhile, but within the first two episodes it hasn't become something I would watch for fun. On the other hand I am loving Tobikage. I haven't seen it before, but it has a really good nostalgia vibe for me; I think it must be tapping into childhood memories of Voltron or something (Crunchyroll actually has GoLion, BTW, although I haven't gotten around to watching it yet). I guess I did grow up on super-robots more than magical girls...
As for the current-run stuff, most of it is staying on course. Valvrave finally crossed my line from "cracktastic" to "just embarrassing to watch" and was dropped, but Hataraku Maou-sama! is still brilliant, Chihayafuru is still awesome (but enough with the recapping), Red Data Girl is still awesome-but-not-fully-comprehensible, and Karneval is still mediocre but fun (Tsukumo's not dead, BTW; I went to the manga and checked because I would have been pissed, but she's OK). I'm nicely into Devil Survivor 2; I wouldn't say it's anything special, but it at least has a situation in which tension is steadily building. Gargantia, after vacillating between "OMG, you're amazing!" and "Why did you have to go and do that??" has finally settled in at "Meh;" it's not too bad, but it is disappointing. Episode 9 had a big twist that I want to comment on, under the cut; suffice to say it didn't lift me out of my disappointment, although it could possibly provide tools to do so.
So. The Hideauze are people. I wasn't expecting that, but I wasn't shocked by it; it struck me as within the realm of things they might do. The thing is, this didn't work as well for me as it was supposed to (while I should have been going "OMG" I was more like "oh, that explains the whalesquids' tooth structure"). The Hideauze are people, so you say --- but they've always acted like animals until the convenient cute kid here. The Evolvers rendering themselves incapable of communicating with other humans or apparently of using tools just seems pretty dumb (and plot-convenient). Worse yet, okay, the Hideauze are people --- now they're morally culpable. The Galactic Alliance attacking their nest still deserved what they got, but now these aren't just dangerous animals defending themselves, they're sapient beings who've done their part in this atrocious war, and have apparently killed enough Terran humans to instill them with the Holy Shivers. Once Ledo calms down, he actually has a good reason to hate them more; I'd be really surprised if they went that way, but it's quite possible. The only reason I care that much is because Ledo just had his world turned upside-down and I wonder what he's going to do now (and what Chamber's going to do now; we're finally at the long-anticipated/dreaded point where those two might be in conflict). For me, Ledo's character development is really the point of the show and it always has been, and on that front, this could lead to something good, but in a way even that's disappointing --- I wanted to see Ledo develop into a new worldview and blossom on his own; having it happen via the plot throwing a brick at his head just seems like a cop-out and makes his choice too easy (it's like the problem I had toward the end of The Unlimited, except if Andy's character development and difficult choices had been pretty much all the show had going for it). So my first take on this is that the Hideauze were actually more interesting as wildlife, both for the blue-and-orange morality they brought, and as a more three-dimensional moral conundrum. They could be going somewhere good with it, but the twist in itself didn't impress me much.
Or to put it harshly: the Whalesquid used to be the Ohmu; now they're a bunch of stupid jerks.
