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Attack on Titan Part V (Episodes 23-25): Wrap Up

 

Titan, but since these posts were less about describing and commenting on the actual plot and more about my personal impressions, I figured I would attempt some sort of wrap up and general thoughts  on the show.

First off, the final arc was actually pretty damned good (aside from containing one of the least surprising reveals in recent memory), and in most aspects it harkened back to the show’s first several episodes, which were probably the strongest. The level of drama and action really reached a crescendo at the end, which is a positive thing. You never want a show like this to peak too soon and then meander its way to the finish line. It started strong and ended strong, and I think that left a good final impression on people (myself included) and began the painstaking countdown to season 2, which, as manga readers have informed me, could take quite a while. Isayama’s manga doesn’t rush the story – which is also clearly evident by the pacing of the anime – so there simply isn’t enough source material at this point. The only problem is that the show’s massive popularity could lead to an anime that departs from the manga plot and proceeds down its own path. While this tactic could work, it often doesn’t, and the show has been so faithful to the original story that taking a different path could really change it in a fundamental way. read more

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Attack on Titan Part IV (Episodes 14-22): Remember the Titans

 

It’s been a while since my last Attack on Titan post. I keep wanting to sit down and write something about it, but I found that I just didn’t have an awful lot to say.

In that sense it is a bit of a weird show. Most other shows I watch provide a certain amount of material to discuss each week, but Titan is a bit different. It’s almost universally agreed that the pacing of this show is glacial, and sometimes 2 or 3 weeks will pass before a certain even is resolved, which leaves very little to discuss in each individual episode. I hear the manga has this similar kind of pacing, which in my mind is like that of a soap opera (as I’ve mentioned before). However, recent episodes put me in mind of old time serials as well, where one storyline would be spread across many episodes so that each one would feel like a fragment of one storyline as opposed to a self-contained episode. "Join us again, same Titan hour, same Titan channel, kids!" read more

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Attack on Titan Part III (Episodes 5-13): Attack on Tighten

Ironically, my previous Attack on Titan posts were long but dealt with short mini-arcs, while this post will probably be shorter but deals with the longest arc in the history of anime.

It’s just that I don’t have a ton of stuff to say about Defense of Trost. It had a couple of major plot twists and some terrific emotional moments, but it was really drawn out both in terms of plot and production values. By the time we hit episode 13 (which was the ninth episode of the Trost arc), the telltale signs of an unfinished product were readily apparent. 13 clearly went to air with several sequences unanimated and masked by cutting away to static scenery shots while still hearing the sounds of the battle (the audio post production is probably tracked to unfinished visuals so you could still hear the sounds of what they animated, but the animation itself was absent). On that front it feels a little weird to judge it now, because clearly the home release will be at least somewhat better. Strangely enough, this same sort of thing happened last year with Psycho Pass, even forcing the creators to issue a public apology for the quality of episode 18, but in the case of Titan, I didn’t really see that type of outrage. read more

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Dragon Ball Z: Rock The Dragon Set Is Coming

 

Three years ago, I caught whiff of a possible English dub for Dragon Ball Z Kai done in the frosty North, by the Sasquatch-breeding Canadians at Ocean Studios. For three years I have waited with bated breath, my eyes opening to the day with fresh hope that the dulcet tones of Doc Harris would course through my ears with "Stand by for Dragon Ball Z… Kai!", only to be struck each day with a sense of unrelenting defeat (moreso than usual). Eventually, I had no choice but to settle into a remarkably steady indifference, puncuated by the occasional glimmer of curiosity (and something somebody in the know told me). read more

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Dragon Ball Z: Battle of the Gods Clip

Wow, that looks, moves, and sounds fucking gorgeous. Guaranteed purchase from me when we get it over here. Unf. The only problem I have is that there’s a weird glare, an over saturation of color, I think. It can be a little overwhelming.

I wonder how Kaio got a new planet? This one seems bigger than the previous one. I know that in the notes for the movie, Toriyama said it was Birusu who made Kaio’s previous planet small to begin with because he destroyed most of it and Kaio had to reconstruct it. Now Kaio has a bigger planet and Birusu appears and wrecks it again? What a bad guest. read more

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Three Episodes In – Vividred Operation

Naked Impact!!!

(Note: Contains some spoilers, but it doesn’t matter. You’ll understand what I mean if you read this)

So, as mentioned in my Sasami-san@Ganbaranai review, having been disappointed with the Winter 2013 crop of anime, I decided to step outside my comfort zone and watch a couple of shows that I would normally skip because they had caught my eye for various reasons. The second show I took a gamble on was A-1’s new original show Vividred Operation. It piqued my curiosity for two reasons: read more

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The Anime I Watched Before I Watched Anime – Akira

 

In some form or another, I’ve been around anime my entire life. A bunch of the cartoons I watched as a kid were anime, and I also had a chance to watch various anime movies that crossed over into the mainstream throughout the 90’s and early 2000’s. In the early 2000’s I dipped my feet a bit deeper into that world (including watching my first proper show as an adult – Cowboy Bebop), but I quickly lost interest due mainly to lack of availability, and spent the next ten years or so watching the occasional big time movie that came to my attention as I did in the 90’s. read more

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