Anime/Manga Journal

[Dice]

I'm enjoying the anime just fine, obviously still too soon to really judge, but I do thing the gruesome-factor (that looks like it may be "PG-13'd" or translated into a hot-blooded-action-anime) helps to really give the weight of the series: The struggle that humans are really using every last trick in the book just to survive, and the absolute terror these people live in (and displayed so casually in the manga of people in the streets getting gnawed on or showing a person with a missing head or a limb in a Titan's mouths).  It's clear the people in the comic are pretty fucked up and generally scared to even fight at all -- I mean, who wouldn't be??

I don't know, the anime still seemed pretty gruesome.  Maybe not quite as graphic about it, but the content is definitely still there.  And we haven't gotten to the really horrible fights yet...

But seeing it in motion is beautiful.  The production values are great.

Manga Spoilz:

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And a big round of applause to the few "wham episodes" too:  Annie's identity was a strange and scary reveal (esp. when the "titan smile" came kicking in), the "stuff inside the wall" is just all sorts of degrees of fucked up and weird, and I *loved* how they just stuck in the true identities of Bert and Reiner for the bottom of the page.  Which reminds me: the books *deserve* a second read, hints about their identity are literally everywhere.

But none of that was more weird and eerie than the hairy-ape titan... the fuck is that thing???  For any Chronicles of Narnia savants, it sort of reminded me of Shift...

I take some pride that I

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totally called the whole Annie thing midway through the fight with the female titan.  Her attitude was always a little strange and I noticed the similarity in their fighting style.  Of course the fact that little details like that could be picked up on is a testament to the author's skill.

Bert and Reiner came out of nowhere for me, though.

11 books in already though.  No idea where the fuck it can go.

Seriously, this is one manga I definitely can't predict.  There are still so many unanswered questions...

I agree that the show still is gruesome; I did have a gripe with the "EPIC WIND" blowing when the soldier shows the dead fella's mum his arm (which...is a terrible thing to show a grieving woman IMO =/ ).  Also, the blood "rain" after mum's death was cut and just ridiculous looking.  I'm waiting for more of course.  But y'see, I'm an "artiste", it could also be a bad fondness for the original material (and c'mon, how many people who "read the novel" of anything every *love* the movie they make from the source material?).  I'm damn excited to see what the action will be like animated, particularly the fem-titan arc (she's running half of it). =D

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Besides the obvious, Bert and Rein being absent when they appear and the Armored Titan and Reinhold looking a lot alike; Annie and Reinhold have...a lot of dialogue together despite Annie being generally unsociable.  What IS incriminating was when Rein gets caught by the Female Titan, in what was a obviously stupid move, but cuts her up.  Immediately after he gets himself loose, for no reason, the Female Titan started running towards her target, Eren, despite the fact the soldiers were trying to deliberately mislead on his location among their unit.  There's also a bad/vague story from Bertholt about what happened on that day 5 years ago...y'know, when he attacked as the Colossal Titan.

[Kevadu]

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Yeah, OK, there were some signs but I didn't really catch on to them.  I did remember thinking that Reiner's escape from the female titan was pretty weird, but I didn't really give it much thought afterwards.  Just chalked it up to the manga being imperfect.  Boy was I wrong ;)

Anyway, after I had already given up hope Crunchyroll managed to snag the license!  Guess the IP holder finally saw the light.  Hurray for legitimate anime consumption everywhere!

[Dice]

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Yeah, OK, there were some signs but I didn't really catch on to them.  I did remember thinking that Reiner's escape from the female titan was pretty weird, but I didn't really give it much thought afterwards.  Just chalked it up to the manga being imperfect.  Boy was I wrong ;)

Anyway, after I had already given up hope Crunchyroll managed to snag the license!  Guess the IP holder finally saw the light.  Hurray for legitimate anime consumption everywhere!

Naw,  I'm the same, usually I just tune out everything and even obvious spoilers catch me by surprise.  I just get taken in and think nothing of it and enjoy.

And yay!!

[Klyde Chroma]

Ahhhhh you lucky folk (dice and kevadu) are making me jealous! I have to order (and wait) for everything after volume 2 of AoT!!! (manga availability in my area is pretty poor) and I'm already hooked...

In other (current) anime/manga related business I watched the first ep of Gargantia today and can safely say I'll be tuning into the rest of that. The pretty space battle that kicked stuff off was a wee bit too much sci-fi-flash for my taste (a subjective matter) but everything else seemed reeeeeal promising.

Good golly guys, I gotta say. After having suffered through all of Persona Trinity Souls, subs don't seem troublesome at all to me now. I actually wonder why I really had a problem with em in the first place...

Lastly.... THAT FREAKIN' DBZxTORIKOxONE PIECE crap totally made me crave DBZ! LoL! For the first time in like 15 years I decided to re-watch some. Nostalgia at its finest, rivaled only by sailor moon for me... I love it.

[Dice]

Ahhhhh you lucky folk (dice and kevadu) are making me jealous! I have to order (and wait) for everything after volume 2 of AoT!!! (manga availability in my area is pretty poor) and I'm already hooked...

In other (current) anime/manga related business I watched the first ep of Gargantia today and can safely say I'll be tuning into the rest of that. The pretty space battle that kicked stuff off was a wee bit too much sci-fi-flash for my taste (a subjective matter) but everything else seemed reeeeeal promising.

Yeah, I was surfing the net for the first half of Gargantia (generic space combat), but I'm curious where the series will go and I like how they've set up for it with the second episode.  Between that and Maou-sama, it's weird hearing "foreign languages" (made up) in Japanese tongue.

Maou-sama was pretty good this week.  Less funny but expanding the plot to stretch beyond the Mc-Job.

Attack on Titan.  Lovely ending theme, but more importantly was a great addition to the...

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Armored Titan's appearance

.  Fuck they made it cool.
Christa Lenz is like the cutest character ever....for a character in a horror/action comic.
Annie has the best nose ever made for anime (MUTHAFUCKIN AQUILINE!!)

[Klyde Chroma]

just got around to watching the first 2 eps of attack on titan. gotta say, in my opinion, they seemed to have handled turning this into an anime REAL well! I thought I would be somewhat disapointed because of how much I am enjoying the manga but I'm happy to report that is not the case at all. Although I do have to agree with Dice about the awkward blood bath/rain animation at the end of episode 1... for such a beautifully done episode, what an excruciatingly terrible way to convey a blood splatter... really bugged me brief as it was...

while i'm still very early on in both the manga and (obviously) the show I can't believe how engrossing the material is.

in other news, I reported a few posts ago I decided to watch some dbz after the recent crossover eps left me fiending for some goku in my life. i heard such horrible things about the newer "kai" re-release of the series but I must disagree. kai kicks ass in this DBZ fans opinion. end of story! kai will be how I indulge the re-watching of some of this dated classic for sure. waaaaay faster pace = waaaaaay better DBZ to me! But in all honesty, nostalgic value aside, holy crud is this just a bad freakin' show... don't get me wrong, subjectively I love it... objectively speaking though I really can't understand how it fostered the acclaim it has... its just... bad...

[Akanbe-]

Looking at shows for this season.  Not really interested in AoT.  Red Data Girl, Valvrave the Liberator, and Gargantia are probably the ones I will begin to watch and then eventually stop as I seem to do for some reason.

Still need to finish Koutoura and Accel World.  Someday, someday...

[Tooker]

Watching the latest One Piece, and it's pretty dark.  As part of the current story arc, they've rescued a whole herd of kidnapped children from a secret lab, and we just found out that

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they're being used as lab rats in some process that makes them grow huge.  As part of the experiment, the evil scientist has gotten them all addicted to drugs.  Who turns kids into drug addicts?

[Hathen]

Finished Serial Experiments Lain. Can't say I liked it very much, even as an "artsy" show. I just didn't get much out of it.

Probably gonna start watching Gundam Unicorn. Dunno why I postponed watching it so long given I've bothered to watch every other major Gundam work. Probably because it takes them like 6 months between each episode...only have to wait for one more now, though.

[Klyde Chroma]

Just watched the first 2 eps of karneval and red data girl... why the hell does so much new anime make me feel like I'm being dropped into the middle of something I should understand but don't...?

 
All I can say at present is that both are beautifully done. And I could probably appreciate both series a great deal more if I had read some manga first. Either way I'll keep tuning in out of pure curiosity now.

[Hathen]

I sat down and watched all 6 current Unicorn episodes in one sitting. Haven't enjoyed myself with a Gundam show this much for a while. Can't believe it's gonna be like half a year still before the next episode comes.

As far the actual story it's really nothing special, but the direction, the music, the animation- everything else just comes together perfectly, IMO. Of course, that might just be me recoiling from how bad Gundam AGE was, and it's a bit unfair to compare an OVA to a TV series.

[Mickeymac92]

I sat down and watched all 6 current Unicorn episodes in one sitting. Haven't enjoyed myself with a Gundam show this much for a while. Can't believe it's gonna be like half a year still before the next episode comes.

As far the actual story it's really nothing special, but the direction, the music, the animation- everything else just comes together perfectly, IMO. Of course, that might just be me recoiling from how bad Gundam AGE was, and it's a bit unfair to compare an OVA to a TV series.

I dunno, I have that same reaction every time I watch an episode of it, before and after I watched some Gundam series I wasn't enjoying.

[(Tunnels)]

Valvrave the Liberator Episode 1.

I've had this really bad itch for some flashy, new mecha anime, and this show is definitely doing the trick. If it was designed to sell toys, it's totally working cause I love the mecha designs and I want them all. So far it looks like the show is basically Gundam SEED, but we'll have to see how it plays out. The main is your average milquetoast, but he seems to grow a pair near the end of the 1st episode. I know it prolly won't last, which would be apropos given the genre, but I didn't come into the show expecting a game changer.

I just know the fanservice teacher is going to get on my nerves, but for the most part the 1st episode was light on the fanservice.

[Bytor]

OK, Little Lady and I finished Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 last night...wow. Thinking of starting Hanasaku Iroha as our bedtime show next.

[Dice]

OK, Little Lady and I finished Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 last night...wow. Thinking of starting Hanasaku Iroha as our bedtime show next.

Hanasaku Iroha is sweet and fluffy. 

Attack on Titan episode 03.

Sasha kills it this episode, her delivery on "KAAAMMIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (appropriate amount of exclamation points) was beautiful, and I loved the scene between her and the drill sergeant.
http://i.imgur.com/l8XpBag.gif

The upcoming segment (switched around a bit with the manga) is gonna be interesting.... so many people die in terrible ways, I'm curious how it will and how bad it will be toned down