:;()$&@"\The Anime Pub/:;()$&@"

Huh, so apparently there's going to be an actual anime for RWBY now. By studio Shaft no less... that alone might be reason enough for it to be worth watching. One way or another.
I think I'll give it a try. Never seen it before, but I have some friends that just kept bugging me with that series ad nauseam.
Gotta check the staff first though and see if there's anyone on there I recognise.

Edit: Uh-huh, yep, alright, there's names. Holy crap. The staff looks promising to say the least. Basically the entire staff that did the Monogatari franchise. I HAVE to give this a try now.

hm, eh, maybe...

I mean it always had a killer seiyuu cast because they figured out that's exactly how to sell a non-anime animation to otaku.

I remember when RWBY first came out -- RT were promoting it SO hard at Pax Aus in like 2013 I think. Maybe 2012. It looked cool but then we realised it was just glorified fan work. I'm glad it's somehow transcended that but I've seen better studios than Shaft take on shit I don't like and left it where it was. We'll give it a look. Probably after it's aired, because Shaft.

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

hm, eh, maybe...

I mean it always had a killer seiyuu cast because they figured out that's exactly how to sell a non-anime animation to otaku.

I remember when RWBY first came out -- RT were promoting it SO hard at Pax Aus in like 2013 I think. Maybe 2012. It looked cool but then we realised it was just glorified fan work. I'm glad it's somehow transcended that but I've seen better studios than Shaft take on shit I don't like and left it where it was. We'll give it a look. Probably after it's aired, because Shaft.

Ugh, I couldn't watch this because of motion sickness... Was too much. Not sure what it was, but damn even fate didn't move like this series.

Edit: Maybe it was the style...

yeah it was kinda crap really. Rough CG and poor direction. GF has just told me she doesn't care if Shinbo himself is doing it and all the cast of monogatari pitched in, she'd not watch it. She knows more about it than I do thanks to osmosis and 'the story is really shit' is her conclusion. So be it. One less thing to worry about.

Okay, let's analyse this a bit:

"

RWBY: Ice Queendom will be directed by Toshimasa Suzuki (Lagrange: The Flower of Rin-ne) at studio SHAFT with Gen Urobuchi (Puella Magi Madoka Magica writer) conceptualizing the series, Tow Ubukata (Heroic Age) writing the series compositions and scripts, and STEINS;GATE character designer huke adapting the 3D designs for 2D. The series is produced by Bandai Namco Arts alongside Good Smile Company and Rooster Teeth.

1. Not Shinbo, but the guy who did...The Price of Smiles? Oh Jesus no. Fine, he's done a lot of good storyboarding and episode direction over the years, but his record as main director is extremely spotty.

2. Urobuchi also 'conceptualized' Bubble, but someone else wrote it; same case here, and Heroic Age isn't exactly Urobuchi-level stuff.

3. huke's good at least.

Temper those expectations, FCK42.

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

Temper those expectations, FCK42.

I will. My current thoughts are pretty much "If it's good, it's good, if it's bad, I wanna see how awful it can get". Morbid curiosity more or less. Knowing shaft, it'll at least be entertaining one way or another.

So fans are satiated, non-fans are curious, but those who expected SHAFT were left shafted, because well most of that talent left for David Pro to work on Fire Force or A-1 to make Kaguya-sama fucking amazing.

Also it was just a cursed production to begin with: it started pre-covid, back when Shaft was looking a lot healthier.

One thing I did miss was the significance of huke.'s involvement: they are the original creator of Black Rock Shooter, and Monty O was explicit in his...homage to BRS with RWBY. So it is a shame he never lived to see his fan work actually get adapted by his hero.

That all aside, it'd be a different story had WIT gotten their hands on it, because as we saw from Bubble, those guys really know how to do 3-D action with 2-D figures, which was Monty's original intention.

I'm looking forward to mononoke, the series was quite good!

and RWBY, we will see. I don't really care about their gatari franchise, i wasn't even able to finish the first season back then. But their artstyle was quite good, so maybe we get a least a little bit of eyecandy.

but the next season is also stacked, but this time not with comedy but creepy adventure shows. made in abyss s2 and shadows house s2 yay!
hatakaru maou-sama... denpending what arc they will choose will either be good or boring.

And never forget those 20 isekai entries^^

"

鬼殺し wrote:

So fans are satiated, non-fans are curious, but those who expected SHAFT were left shafted, because well most of that talent left for David Pro to work on Fire Force or A-1 to make Kaguya-sama fucking amazing.

Also it was just a cursed production to begin with: it started pre-covid, back when Shaft was looking a lot healthier.

One thing I did miss was the significance of huke.'s involvement: they are the original creator of Black Rock Shooter, and Monty O was explicit in his...homage to BRS with RWBY. So it is a shame he never lived to see his fan work actually get adapted by his hero.

That all aside, it'd be a different story had WIT gotten their hands on it, because as we saw from Bubble, those guys really know how to do 3-D action with 2-D figures, which was Monty's original intention.

Well, I'll give it a shot then. Not sure what to expect now though.

Also, that is a name I haven't seen in quite a while.

Yeah, I discovered I'd never linked my steam account so hey, why not.

We're up to episode 32 of GeGeGe no Kitarou and I've decided that in a better timeline, Mizuki Shigeru (the original mangaka) would be as big a name in the West as Toriyama, Tezuka or Miyazaki. The show itself can dip a bit in quality (it's your typical ~100 episode Toei production) but the storytelling is so sharp, the yokai so inventive...and the message so consistently resonant and mature that this stuff deserves to be a classic even outside Japan (where it's big enough that his hometown has a bunch of statues of his yokai, a street named after him, etc).

And most importantly, his life story is woven into his work. He fought in WW2 in Malaysia and New Guinea, refused unusually cruel orders regarding POWs, *lost his left arm to an explosion*, determined never to return to Japan, finally did to face his parents, dealt with an older brother who DID commit war crimes, and then dedicated his life to writing anti-war manga and highlighting Japanese war atrocities to Japanese kids. Sit back and think about that for a bit -- he was creating manga for kids with fairly clear anti-war themes (mixed into yokai tales, of course) in the 60s and 70s, when nationalist and revisionist manga was really booming.

And it hasn't necessarily stopped either: Miyazaki did the rather on-the-nose, timid 'The Wind Rises' in 2012, which almost deftly sidestepped the complicated relationship between Japanese zaibatsu like Mitsubishi and the Axis war machine. And I won't even go into the controversy behind both Bokuno Hero and Shingeki no Kyojin.

I've read Tezuka's 1983 last serial 'Message to Adolf' and I get the feeling that Mizuki's 1973 biographical manga 'Hitler' is a lot less roundabout in how it portrays Japanese perception of the German part of the Axis. Not that MtA is bad; it's really very good. It's just a little bit misleading: the 'Adolf' in Tezuka's work refers to three characters, not just one. 'Hitler' is much less likely to be extrapolated and abstracted as far as namedrops go.

Anyway, GeGeGe no Kitarou really opened my eyes to how much the West has missed out by only fairly recently discovering Mizuki Shigeru.

__

Two days until the remake of my absolute favourite anime of all time hits Netflix. It's going to be so bad and so awesome and I'm so excited. Dark-Schneider was my screen-name/RP persona for the entire Bnet era; it's my 黒歴史 and I'm not even vaguely ashamed. ^_^

Watching Fate today, which order should I watch them?