Weeaboos Anonymous

[Apollo the Just]

So posting that vid led to me watching 90s/2000s anime openings which led to me impulsively starting my first rewatch of Shaman King in like 15 years.

The first twelve episodes did not age particularly well and I was on the verge of putting it away and calling it fond memories that can stay as just that, and then episode 13 was like "HEY WE FINALLY HAVE GOOD ANIMATION NOW WATCH PROTAG PUT A SAMURAI SPIRIT IN HIS MAGIC KATANA" and now I'm in **** love again and gonna binge all 60+ episodes

[Apollo the Just]

So I've lost control of my life and have binged 52 episodes of Shaman King since I got off work on Friday. 12 more to go.

Here's the thing - I honestly can't decide how I feel about it. Like objectively it's pretty trash, there are like a handful of cool moments and several hilarious moments and most of the rest really should just stay in the early 2000's. Also the art is pretty garbage and when you compare the designs to how **** super cool everything looks in the manga it is quite clearly a downgrade.

Yet, it has 2 complete certified banger openings, and - somehow - the shenanigans filler episodes are among the best. The Lily 5 are so stupid and yet I am becoming very endeared to them.

Honestly at this point we're at where the anime just decided to go off the deep end and say "it's an early 2000's anime so screw the manga we are just making crap up now", which worked for fma2003, and is decidedly not working for Shaman King. But I'm 52 episodes in so I really might as well finish it off, because my whole reason for re-watching is that I pretty much didn't remember what the **** happened in this show at all despite watching it like 3 times when I was twelve.

(To be fair the manga also had a non-ending. You can tell the author halfway through decided 'screw this I wanna write a mech series' and then just ends it in a really stupid BS way. I kind of want to binge read the manga after finishing the anime so I can compare the two stupid BS endings.)

Mephisto E. is a **** awesome design though.

[Booyakasha]

Isn't it odd how bad animes can have such rad openings. 'Adventures of Kotetsu' isn't good at all, and yet its opening is top-tier. And, like, I've watched not one moment of 'Sakura Wars' (I hear it's pretty ass), but the opening is one of my favourite things.

...I should check out 'Sakura Wars'. It looks like 'Sailor Moon' times 'Girl Genius'------------maybe it's secretly my jam.

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

Sailor Moon has a pretty good one despite me not really being into the show.

[X-3]

Well, they gotta sell music CDs and stuff.

[Apollo the Just]

I think it's funny Anna's voice actress sang both openings AND the insert song for Shaman King. Anime may be mediocre at the very best but dang if she didn't own that ****, hope she got a hell of a paycheck

[RinkuTheFirst]

The only thing I know about Shaman King is that

Spoiler.

the sequel series about the main character's son heavily implies he was conceived during the original series. Yay teen parents lol

[Apollo the Just]

all i know about the sequel series is

Spoiler.

for some reason tao ren ends up with jeanne d'arc and i cannot think of a single reason why but you know what i have a lot of questions about this series regardless so like

[Apollo the Just]

Double post. Any of you weebs watch Gosick? The ending **** slaps and it is a detective anime so I honestly think it would be my ****, but if it's actually garbage maybe I will just continue to enjoy it from afar. I am tempted to give it a shot after I finish bingeing shaman king tho, I'm feelin anime rn

[RinkuTheFirst]

Double post. Any of you weebs watch Gosick? The ending **** slaps and it is a detective anime so I honestly think it would be my ****, but if it's actually garbage maybe I will just continue to enjoy it from afar. I am tempted to give it a shot after I finish bingeing shaman king tho, I'm feelin anime rn

I've never watched it, but you should binge it and report back. Vicariously enjoying bad anime through other people can be fun lol

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

Detective anime sounds cool.

[Apollo the Just]

So update I finished Shaman King shortly after my last post here about it, and it was.... well it wasn't great but I enjoyed it and I thought it was badass when I was 12 so it will always have that going for it. Also, as mentioned, absolute banger OP's.

Anyway I've been continuing my watch of Magic Knights Rayearth and absolutely **** LOVING it. It's one of those really early genre-defining isekai so like it isn't being self aware and subvert-y about tropes and ****, it's just kind of doing everything earnestly in a super charming way. I love fantasy that just lets itself be magical but also with swords and giant robots because those are cool, but they don't take away from the magic.

I absolutely love orchestral soundtracks from 90's anime. Anyway, I'm really digging this one. There are some things that... well, that are very 90's style and humor wise, shall we put it. But the backgrounds are all so pretty and the designs are fantastic and the characters are so endearing and the stories are really sweet. And there's magic and swords and robots. It's basically the perfect anime.

I know it's one of those shows that branches way the **** off from the manga in season 2, but honestly the Cardcaptor Sakura anime also branched way off the manga and I like virtually all of the changes there, so that's not always necessarily for the worse. I'll watch it all the way through and then might check out the manga and see which I like better. Manga art is phenomenal for sure but storywise sometimes I like how anime adaptations do their own thing, long as it's thematically consistent.

TBD. Adore the show so far.

[Apollo the Just]

Finished Rayearth season 1. Absolutely loved it. Then learned something about how the manga apparently went and I think I'm ok with knowing the anime vastly diverges LOL

Spoiler.

did u kno mokona created earth? now u do

more thoughts later but was very good great protags and villains and aesthetic and themes. similarities to ToS were not unnoticed so **** is def my vibe

[ScottyMcGee]

I started watching Neon Genesis Evangelion for the first time. I knew very little about it going in other than the main characters and how weird the ending is supposed to be, and I though it would be more serious from like a weird, David Lynch sort of standpoint. Instead it's a lot of. . .typical anime.

[Deku Tree]

^I watched that since this topic started and for some reason it doesn't look like I posted about it. Maybe after the finale I didn't know what to say. I confess I had to go read through an explainer or two when I was done.

[Apollo the Just]

I finished Rayearth!

It's honestly up there in terms of like all time fav anime but I know I should give it some time before saying definitively. But it is really REALLY hard to beat magic fantasy with big anime swords and mechs that is an isekai and also has space battles. Like, really hard to beat that.

(Related, god I need to finish Escaflowne.)

I absolutely adored season 1. Season 2 was fantastic, it did a great job of delving more into specific ideas from the first and basically just being a very fascinating foil in a lot of cool ways and the ending was literal perfection. Like it has been a long time since I was THAT satisfied with the ending of an anime.

I will say it felt a bit more like a phenomenal original series and a really good sequel than one continuous series. Not a criticism so much as an observation.

The thing I liked the most about season 1 was how most of it I was in love with because of that wonderful fantasy world exploration aesthetic; it felt like watching an adaptation of an RPG I haven't played. The backdrops look like paintings and the soundtrack is orchestral and wonderful and the colors are so bright and everyone has cool armor and swords. THEN, the last like 3 episodes drop a bombshell on you and everything gets so wild and it is just absolutely **** incredible.

Like, a certain hime-chan's motivations are pretty terrible and she is one of the worst characters in the history of anime but as a PLOT DEVICE she is sooooooooo successful like hot damn that was some good ****.

Season 2 has the inherent "problem" (not even problem, just... quality) that because season 1 leveled up Hikaru and Umi and Fuu to basically god status with mechs, there was no way it was going to have the same ~traverse the world and slowly glow up/mature~ vibe that was iconic to the first half. The second season is about grappling with the consequences of season 1 now that you have god status and mechs, and given that that is basically what it HAD to be about, it did it in a really cool and good ass way.

Really loved it, loved every character by the end including that pink ass yandere and it is really **** hard to get me to care about a pink ass yandere because I hate that archetype so much.

stan umi ryuuzaki 2k20

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

Started rewatching Big O. It's really very disappointing that it never got a continuation or any games or anything. It has great characters, phenomenal music, and a genuinely intriguing mystery so...what happened?

[I am nobody]

I guess you could say...



..."Big O" runs in O(ꝏ)

[Apollo the Just]

i am either missing a reference bc i haven't seen Big O, or you are making a math/programming joke i am not smart enough to get

[ScottyMcGee]

^I watched that since this topic started and for some reason it doesn't look like I posted about it. Maybe after the finale I didn't know what to say. I confess I had to go read through an explainer or two when I was done.

The most I understood after my first watch through was:

Spoiler.

The Human Instrumentality Project aimed at merging all human consciousness together. After Shinji kills the last angel, the project started and the last two episodes are what it feels like to literally be merged with everyone else. The secrets and desires of the main characters are exposed to everyone around them and they feel ashamed and awful, but then learn to heal. It's like basically one big group therapy session. The idea is uncomfortable and mind blowing IMO. I stayed up in bed a good hour just thinking what it feels like to not be an individual anymore but part of one consciousness.

I don't quite understand though then the point of the angels and what Shinji's father was trying to do. Because he seemed to want to go rogue but then not but then---???¿¿¿ Kind of confused still by who the "villain" was, if anyone. I think I'm also more confused by how things happened than what it was that happened. I don't understand the mechanism(s) by which the Human Instrumentality Project actually started. It just. . .happened. But I wonder if that's kind of the point? It's like trying to remember how a dream started.

Anyways. I take back what I said about not being serious and weird. Around episode 17 or 18 is when things start moving really quickly and get really weird really fast and then the last two episodes are full-on surreal.

However, I saw Gurren Lagann years ago and realized this felt similar to that because of certain themes about humanity. Then I realized they were both made by Gainax! So that makes sense.