Anime II: Back to Zero

[Rippounet]

9 minutes ago, sifth said:

Sorry, but I don't agree.

I think your take on it is perfectly valid tbh.

Nonetheless
 

Spoiler

I do think Oda had planned for Luffy to be the savior of the world with nearly limitless power from the start.
Generally speaking, I feel that Oda planned his story better than Kishimoto or Kubo. Of course, it's obvious many elements were made up along the way, but the core story seems to have remained the same throughout the manga. I just can't say the same of Naruto or Bleach, both of which introduced completely new powers out of nowhere (to say nothing of new themes).
To sum up, I just don't find Luffy's power up to be random or completely out of the blue. On some level, the power he uses at the end of chapter 1 against the sea king is the exact same one he uses against Kaido in the latest chapter: a trick straight out of a Tex Avery cartoon. And, to my eyes, his powers finally make sense (I never quite understood how they worked).

I do understand you not liking it though. I'm not a huge fan of the "savior" trope either tbh. But that's a problem with the genre imho. Shônens pretty much always end with the main character wielding the power to save (or destroy) the world, don't they? I can think of a few counter-examples, but as a rule, the hero ends up relying on the "power of friendship" to save everyone.
In a nutshell, I like the way Oda chose to use tropes.
And the story isn't over anyway. Though we now know how it ends, I still expect a handful of surprises here and there.

 

[sifth]

10 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I think your take on it is perfectly valid tbh.

Nonetheless
 

  Hide contents

I do think Oda had planned for Luffy to be the savior of the world with nearly limitless power from the start.
Generally speaking, I feel that Oda planned his story better than Kishimoto or Kubo. Of course, it's obvious many elements were made up along the way, but the core story seems to have remained the same throughout the manga. I just can't say the same of Naruto or Bleach, both of which introduced completely new powers out of nowhere (to say nothing of new themes).
To sum up, I just don't find Luffy's power up to be random or completely out of the blue. On some level, the power he uses at the end of chapter 1 against the sea king is the exact same one he uses against Kaido in the latest chapter: a trick straight out of a Tex Avery cartoon. And, to my eyes, his powers finally make sense (I never quite understood how they worked).

I do understand you not liking it though. I'm not a huge fan of the "savior" trope either tbh. But that's a problem with the genre imho. Shônens pretty much always end with the main character wielding the power to save (or destroy) the world, don't they? I can think of a few counter-examples, but as a rule, the hero ends up relying on the "power of friendship" to save everyone.
In a nutshell, I like the way Oda chose to use tropes.
And the story isn't over anyway. Though we now know how it ends, I still expect a handful of surprises here and there.

 

I see your point as well and it's all good. I agree Oda did plan out his story better than Kubo and Kishimoto and One Piece has had many moments that have made me cry, which is something the other two series have never managed to do. I hope One Piece ends on a high note, I really do. I just hope Teach and the WG are great end game villains. So far I've loved the latter, but the former has been either hit or miss. I suppose only time will tell though.

[A True Kaniggit]

So RWBY is actually getting an anime spin-off/adaption?

Just condense the last few seasons please.

I'm combat ready!

 

https://youtu.be/tjmBDfulaGk

 

[AncalagonTheBlack]

So Netflix dropped this anime called Bastard!! Heavy Metal, Dark Fantasy. I have no idea what it's based on but the title and cheesy synopsis has me interested in watching it!

Quote

When evil forces threaten to resurrect Anthrasax, the God of Destruction, the Kingdom of Meta-llicana calls on a volatile dark wizard for help.

 

[Calibandar]

Dark Schneider?

Whats with all these German terms in anime I wonder.

On another note, dont like the voices. Occasionally I prefer the original Japanese but I have to say I often prefer the English dubbing.

[Ran]

Is no one else watching Vinland Saga? This latest episode was fantastic. Heartbreaking at the midpoint, and then setting up with tremendous flair an inevitable showdown at the end.

[sifth]

43 minutes ago, Ran said:

Is no one else watching Vinland Saga? This latest episode was fantastic. Heartbreaking at the midpoint, and then setting up with tremendous flair an inevitable showdown at the end.

Saw the first season a year or two ago. It was good, but very depressing. Not sure I have it in me for a second season. 

[Ran]

2 hours ago, sifth said:

Saw the first season a year or two ago. It was good, but very depressing. Not sure I have it in me for a second season. 

This season has been very humane. It starts in a dark place for Thorfinn, but at the mid-point there's a pretty strong episode that marks a change for him. Admittedly, the story being told in the second half looks tragic, but I feel like Thorfinn may be coming out of it in a more positive view on his life and his future.

I'm really struck by how philosophically mature the story is. It's got all this shonen stuff in the first season but it didn't mask a fairly complicated approach to the world and the characters, and this season the crazy shonen stuff is pulled way back and it really digs into some deep territory. I'm very impressed by it.

[Ran]

What a heartbreaking but beautiful episode of Vinland Saga. Plus that promised showdown delivers, and adds a detail I had wondered about:

Spoiler

Snake and his comrades-at-arms are using names they've taken for themselves, because they are outlawed under their original identities. "Snake" as a name for a Viking isn't so odd, given the famous character of Orm ("Snake" in Swedish) from Frans Bengtsson's The Long Ships historical adventure novel. That said, given that Snake is clearly a former Varangian Guard, and I believe Orm ends up among the Varangians in one episode in the series, perhaps Yukimura was making a deliberate nod to Bengtsson. He's done a lot of research.

Also, liked the refrence to "Miklagard", without explaining what it means.

Edited May 2 by Ran

[The Grey Wolf Strikes Back]

I'm watching Vinland Saga and enjoying the hell out of it.

Also been watching the second season of The Ancient Magus' Bride (one of the few works to have made me cry), Hell's Paradise, and the new Netflix Junji Ito anthology series. At some point, I need to watch Attack on Titan. Oh, and the second season of SW: Visions comes out tomorrow.

@Ran

Thanks for reminding me to look up what Miklagard means. Learned something new.

Edited May 4 by The Grey Wolf Strikes Back

[The Grey Wolf Strikes Back]

Has anyone else seen Suzume?

Edited May 5 by The Grey Wolf Strikes Back

[sifth]

The current Gundam show, The Witch From Mercury has been really good. I’ve not enjoyed a Gundam show like this in a long while. 

[The Grey Wolf Strikes Back]

Anyone watching the new season of SW: Visions? So far, I'm enjoying it more than I did S1.

[The Grey Wolf Strikes Back]

I was thinking of finally catching up on AoT but someone I trust says the manga/show is both pro-Japanese imperialism and anti-Semitic. Can anyone comment on that?

[IFR]

16 minutes ago, The Grey Wolf Strikes Back said:

I was thinking of finally catching up on AoT but someone I trust says the manga/show is both pro-Japanese imperialism and anti-Semitic. Can anyone comment on that?

I've only seen the anime, and it remains incomplete, but I think that assessment is quite a bit of a reach. A major character is on a genocidal warpath, but I don't see anything remotely supportive of this agenda in the narrative itself. The camp which advocates genocide isn't caricaturized as pure evil - it's populated by characters who have their own motivations and dimensions - as is the camp that opposes them - but I think that's a good thing for the sake of storytelling.

Edited May 23 by IFR

[karaddin]

On 3/29/2022 at 1:09 PM, Rippounet said:

So after almost 25 years and 1044 manga chapters, we finally have a clearer idea of what the main story of One piece is.
And it's amazing.
I have mad respect for Oda right now. To craft such an ambitious story, and manage to bring so many elements together in a way that is so coherent that it feels natural and even -with hindsight- obvious, is genius.
It will take many more years for the story to be told in full, but we can now appreciate it in all its dimensions, as an aesthetic and narrative project that has the potential to bury -at the very least- all other shônens. Has there been many such attempts to tell a story over more than thirty years? And it remains a story for kids too, that is fun and moving, and, though I couldn't quite see it before, that will offer surprising levels of depth and meaning for the readers.

Apparently I hadn't checked in this thread for a while lmao. I'm in awe of the story he has conceived and the way he's kept building this world out and up in a way that makes it feel alive and thematically coherent. I wasn't happy with the wrap up of Wano, but aside from that it just keeps hitting it out of the park for me.

The last few weeks are also raising the possibility that there's a lot more nuance to how the big evil government came to be, after I've spent 15 years thinking that we had a pretty clear black and white view of that.

And he's doing all this while managing to remain accessible and entertaining to kids.

On 3/30/2022 at 4:05 AM, Toth said:

Then again, I ran out of patience with this story at season 3 of the Anime. I just hate forever stories where the author makes shit up as it goes because there is no ending planned.

It's never going to be for everyone, and I'm not going to tell you that you're wrong for not enjoying it, but I just don't think this is remotely a fair criticism. He's known how this ends since he started, he definitely gets caught up in the exciting new things he's creating in each arc and that's how the story bloats from 5 years to 30, but its not pointless, its not filler and once you're looking back at it from the other side all of those details enhance where the story is at rather than detracting from it in the way filler does.

Also the anime certainly has its rough moments in terms of pacing and if you're watching from a streaming service, which I assume you are if you're looking at it in terms of "seasons" you're going to also catch all the actual filler the anime inserts to avoid catching up to the manga and those are an entirely different story to what I was saying above with one exception. If you're ever inclined to give it another chance, try looking up the "One Pace" fan edit which cuts all the non-canon material and speeds up the pacing a lot. It's not perfect and it definitely has some issues with music matching, but at the very least its significantly shorter than the full anime lol.

On 3/30/2022 at 7:18 AM, sifth said:

To answer your question, No and they're not even close. Maybe in 2 or 3 years things might look different, but seeing as Oda takes every third week of the year off, not counting holidays, it's going to take a long while. Maybe I'd have more faith in the series ending soon, if Wano wasn't so insanely long. This has easily been the longest arc in the history of the series and sadly one of it's worst.

The shot at his work ethic really isn't fair, the main still does 6 days a week of about 18 hour days which is utterly ridiculous. The break weeks were a very firm recommendation to try prop up his health as he was working himself to death before that.

I had some issues with Wano and it was definitely more divisive than the community hoped for. I think events since you posted this back up the idea that Wano got away from him and he needed that 4 week break to refocus and get the rest of the story structured out properly. 

We're over the peak on the rollercoaster and its slamming into the end of the story at breakneck pace now. Hopefully you're enjoying things more since Wano ended!

6 hours ago, The Grey Wolf Strikes Back said:

I was thinking of finally catching up on AoT but someone I trust says the manga/show is both pro-Japanese imperialism and anti-Semitic. Can anyone comment on that?

AoT is....complicated on that front. I can definitely see parts of both arguments, it really comes down to there are things I feel are unarguably problematic which don't make a ton of sense as being deliberate on his part

Spoiler

The Eldians in Marley are very clearly drawing on Jewish people in Nazi Germany with a lot of the aesthetics etc, and then turning around and making them literally turn into monsters is..yikes. But that side of things being deliberately anti-semitic doesn't track with who is the sympathetic viewpoint for the story.

This video is probably the most reasonable discussion of it I've seen, although depending on how far you got with it there may be spoiler issues.

He isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I think he does a good job (from memory - its quite some time since I watched it) of talking over the issues and how...confused/mixed they are. If you skip the intro and chapter 1 (time stamps are in the description) I think the rest of the video would have spoilers up to where the anime was current at the time so midway through season 4.

If the spoiler angle is too much of an issue, I think the takeaway is that there are definitely issues but not the sort that should preclude enjoying it, just be mindful of them and view it with a critical eye. Funnily enough when I'm putting that forward, I also think that and finished the story in the manga - I want to get my hands on the Blu Ray release and watch the anime again from the start before continuing through to the end, I haven't see season 4 onwards in the anime.

The story is excellent, with phenomenal tension and twists which I think are all internally coherent and hold up when you go back to earlier parts of the story and view them with knowledge of what comes later, and deserves to be enjoyed on that basis. What would cross the line for me would be if Isayama was using the money from this to directly fund things I consider evil, and I've never seen any suggestion of that. The anime is an absolute marvel and is the most "eyeball enjoyment" I think I've ever had from anything. 

[sifth]

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

Apparently I hadn't checked in this thread for a while lmao. I'm in awe of the story he has conceived and the way he's kept building this world out and up in a way that makes it feel alive and thematically coherent. I wasn't happy with the wrap up of Wano, but aside from that it just keeps hitting it out of the park for me.

The last few weeks are also raising the possibility that there's a lot more nuance to how the big evil government came to be, after I've spent 15 years thinking that we had a pretty clear black and white view of that.

And he's doing all this while managing to remain accessible and entertaining to kids.

It's never going to be for everyone, and I'm not going to tell you that you're wrong for not enjoying it, but I just don't think this is remotely a fair criticism. He's known how this ends since he started, he definitely gets caught up in the exciting new things he's creating in each arc and that's how the story bloats from 5 years to 30, but its not pointless, its not filler and once you're looking back at it from the other side all of those details enhance where the story is at rather than detracting from it in the way filler does.

Also the anime certainly has its rough moments in terms of pacing and if you're watching from a streaming service, which I assume you are if you're looking at it in terms of "seasons" you're going to also catch all the actual filler the anime inserts to avoid catching up to the manga and those are an entirely different story to what I was saying above with one exception. If you're ever inclined to give it another chance, try looking up the "One Pace" fan edit which cuts all the non-canon material and speeds up the pacing a lot. It's not perfect and it definitely has some issues with music matching, but at the very least its significantly shorter than the full anime lol.

The shot at his work ethic really isn't fair, the main still does 6 days a week of about 18 hour days which is utterly ridiculous. The break weeks were a very firm recommendation to try prop up his health as he was working himself to death before that.

I had some issues with Wano and it was definitely more divisive than the community hoped for. I think events since you posted this back up the idea that Wano got away from him and he needed that 4 week break to refocus and get the rest of the story structured out properly. 

We're over the peak on the rollercoaster and its slamming into the end of the story at breakneck pace now. Hopefully you're enjoying things more since Wano ended!

AoT is....complicated on that front. I can definitely see parts of both arguments, it really comes down to there are things I feel are unarguably problematic which don't make a ton of sense as being deliberate on his part

  Reveal hidden contents

The Eldians in Marley are very clearly drawing on Jewish people in Nazi Germany with a lot of the aesthetics etc, and then turning around and making them literally turn into monsters is..yikes. But that side of things being deliberately anti-semitic doesn't track with who is the sympathetic viewpoint for the story.

This video is probably the most reasonable discussion of it I've seen, although depending on how far you got with it there may be spoiler issues.

He isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I think he does a good job (from memory - its quite some time since I watched it) of talking over the issues and how...confused/mixed they are. If you skip the intro and chapter 1 (time stamps are in the description) I think the rest of the video would have spoilers up to where the anime was current at the time so midway through season 4.

If the spoiler angle is too much of an issue, I think the takeaway is that there are definitely issues but not the sort that should preclude enjoying it, just be mindful of them and view it with a critical eye. Funnily enough when I'm putting that forward, I also think that and finished the story in the manga - I want to get my hands on the Blu Ray release and watch the anime again from the start before continuing through to the end, I haven't see season 4 onwards in the anime.

The story is excellent, with phenomenal tension and twists which I think are all internally coherent and hold up when you go back to earlier parts of the story and view them with knowledge of what comes later, and deserves to be enjoyed on that basis. What would cross the line for me would be if Isayama was using the money from this to directly fund things I consider evil, and I've never seen any suggestion of that. The anime is an absolute marvel and is the most "eyeball enjoyment" I think I've ever had from anything. 

I'm not sure I'd consider Wano the worst arc of the series, but it comes pretty close and yes, since it's ending I've been enjoying the series a whole lot more. A friend of mine linked me to a pic, of all the panels of Luffy running in the climax in the Wano arc, and both the number of them and how similar they looked just disgusted me. I love Oda, but he did not pace that arc well at all.

[Rippounet]

8 hours ago, The Grey Wolf Strikes Back said:

I was thinking of finally catching up on AoT but someone I trust says the manga/show is both pro-Japanese imperialism and anti-Semitic. Can anyone comment on that?

It's hard to answer without massive spoilers.

AoT is anti-semitic like Zootopia is racist: while there is one massively problematic plot point, anyone having actually followed the whole story should understand the intended meaning. If anything, AoT ends up being less problematic than Zootopia imho.

The imperialist thing bothered me more tbh (it's rather "in your face" aesthetically). Though I would say it's actually pro-German imperialism, given that its world is much closer to early 20th century Europe - not unlike Full Metal Alchemist. And just like FMA, AoT actually has its own Asia.
How "pro" is it though? AoT presents us with a militaristic society, but the plot doesn't condone it. If anything, the horrors of war or genocide are so... uh, graphic (to say the least), that the militarism kinda becomes ridiculed, far more than in other animes I've seen. Honestly the "pro" vibe mainly comes from an opening or two, but the story almost makes those... ridiculous. Imho, because military operations aren't glorified, the overall message seems closer to a critique of imperialism and militarism.

At a glance, I believe someone arguing that AoT is anti-semitic and pro-Japanese imperialism has probably not read or watched the whole thing. Like yeah, you can see the themes, but you must also look at how they are used within the story.
I'd personally argue that AoT attacks both anti-semitism and imperialism... and that some people don't know what they're talking about.... but YMMV...

[sifth]

For me AtoT jumped the shark after the time skip. It basically felt like a completely different story after that point. 

[IFR]

AoT is anti-semitic and pro-imperialism in the same way that Fight Club (the book or movie) endorses anarchist militarism and Starship Troopers (the movie) is pro-facism. That is, only a very shallow reading of the work would lead to this impression.

AoT pulls from history to craft its own brand of drama. The purpose of AoT using this approach is an attempt to create a nuanced drama where there isn't an obvious "good" side, but rather is the human heart struggling with itself. The difference between Martin doing this and AoT doing this is Martin draws from distant history, so it's removed enough that it doesn't offend groups who are sensitive and very eager to be offended by anything that might even remotely set off their sensors. AoT uses more modern history that did in fact have a deeply racial context. AoT draws from this segment of history to use in a pure fantasy context that has enough differentiating characteristics that make it a totally separate beast.

It's pretty obvious that the author is not trying to suggest that genocide is good, Jews bad, and imperialism is a sound philosophy. You have to be deliberately obtuse in order to have this takeaway. But I suppose people are free to feel however they will about a work of fantasy.

Edited May 23 by IFR