Anime, Manga, VN, JRPG, Related Things Discussion Topic CIV

heIly posted...

guessing you stopped at the space globalist arc

which is where season 2 ended off at the beginning of it

Yeah, I stopped at the end of the arc, after the powerful AF youkai destroys the invaders, the protag group go shopping, and Turbo Granny reacts in disgust to the approach of Turbo Geezer.

spoilers for current dandadan now: i fucking hate this amnesia bullshit.

I had an itch to try and continue a bit further through one piece again, using one pace. Even with one pace, shit is soooo slow. I made it to an important milestone though, which is episode 207, aka when they switch from 4:3 to 16:9 aspect ratio. I am free of the black bars on the side of the screen. It does seem that one pace now covers everything which was not the case before when I was watching.

I feel like the main characters all have infinity hp. It's hard to feel much tension when they get obliterated over and over and over and then stand up and keep fighting with bandages on and then run 10 miles and then climb a giant tree, and then fight for like a day straight. At that point, whats even the point of having them take damage in the first place? Bad guy was hitting people with 100 million volts and then they just shake it off after an episode if they even wait that long. Not to mention sanji in this arc fell like a mile several different times landing on hard ground. Bro got his leg injured in one fight and just walked it off and suddenly his leg is fine from then on despite not even resting or bandaging it or anything.

I find the show very frustrating because it has aspects that I really like but then it's just hard to get past not liking the cast and not being able to have any tension in any of the fights. I also really don't like the artstyle and how willing it is to make characters look really stupid design wise. But then, the world building and adventure aspect and plot is all stellar. I want to know about the void century and gol d roger and the world government and the commentary on oppression and revolution is very well handled outside of how cleanly it always seems to wrap up. I also get that that is the point though.

In a grand sense, Luffy's childlike wonder and optimism IS the cure to all the oppression and despair. The show says that just meeting violence with violence isn't enough,, that rebellion begins in the mind, and I get it but man is Luffy and crew just annoying as hell to me.

Don't think I'm nearly as conflicted on any other anime.

one piece is not good

I do have to say, I don't think I've found a single joke funny in the time I've been watching, which is kinda rough because like 2/3rds of the air time feels devoted to comedy. I don't think this attempt to watch through is going to last much longer. Probably gonna finish the current arc (long ring long land) The weird thing is looking up the humor apparently a ton of people say it WAS great during the part I'm enduring and that it stops being funny. How painfully annoying must those jokes be if these are the good jokes?

Well that started to feel like torture but I managed to finish the arc. At least the last episode was fun. 4th time wasn't the charm. I'm sure in a year or so I'll be back trying to get a little further. At this rate I'll reach the timeskip by the time the series is finished.

Huh, it seems the arc I just finished was the most hated one in the whole show. Maybe I'll give the next arc a try and hope it won't be as miserable. I think people generally like this one (water 7).

Also ninja gaiden 4 is sick. About 5 chapters (of 19) through on hard and having a great time. It's weird to play a ninja gaiden game and not become a constant pincushion of incendiary shurikens on hard. Decent chance I go back and beat everything on master ninja when I unlock it. Honestly the best timeline, platinum games makes one of their really good games and the normal ninja gaiden studio is making nioh 3.

I beat Radical Red... only to realize that because it's the 2.1 version, it might not have the Sevii Islands (or other endgame content). However, I took care of the reqs for the Sevii Islands, which includes the gym leader rematches (which I might've already done), all of the Johto leader matches (I'd apparently missed a few), and the 2 secret NPCs (one of whom I thought was going to be a hard fight since I tried fighting him earlier, but he was pretty easy)

The eighth gym would up being harder than expected since it's Claire (or whatever that dragon trainer's name is) instead of Giovanni . However, the E4 wound up being way easier than expected -- for the first three, I just had to change my leading Pokemon (usually right away after starting the fight), although Lance might've taken a try or two (saved states before the fight). However, I breezed through the Gary fight with ease.

What's kinda bullshit, though, is the NPCs can use primals AND a mega whereas I was pretty sure the game counts a primal as your mega evo. What's even more bullshit is Lance has primal Dialga, which isn't even a main game Pokemon. Apparently, he's only appeared in a spinoff

Afterward, I decided I'd at least capture Mewtwo, which is what I'm still goofing around with (partly in hopes of find a shiny, but I'm also trying for a near perfect). The kinda cool thing is RR set the IVs for the encounter where you're guaranteed to get 3 perfect stats then the other are 3 random, so it's a lot easier to get a good one. And, honestly, I've had a few (which I saved state on) that I would've dreamed of getting in a main game, but because saved states are a thing, I keep re-rolling. (Plus RR also has a advantage of not having to worry about nature (since you can change it), so I avoid other compromises.)

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Grassy glide is gen 8. In gen 9 they nerfed it heavily from 70 BP to 60 then further to 55 while keeping the +1 priority if grassy terrain is up. All terrains also give a 30% damage boost (down from 50% in gen 7 and earlier) to moves of that type so grassy glide was effectively a 91 BP priority move when grassy terrain was up. Combined with rillaboom having grassy surge and great stats, it was a bit much.

It's just ridiculously OP. The Radical Red version I have has it at 70 BP. The initial fight against Erika was pretty absurd as a result (iirc, most of her team had grassy glide, although she only had Rillaboom and maybe one other Pokemon who'd set up the terrain), although if Radical Red didn't set Corviknight's evo level as 60, it would've been a cakewalk (and if I'd just rare candied a Corvisquire, I could've done it with ease... but I wanted to save the rare candies, which I never wound up using as a result). Of course, when I had a Corviknight, the rematch against Erika's buffed team was easy.

The move combo helped me clear out the Misty rematch, which I hadn't been able to do (I had a Rillaboom and a Chesnaut or whatever for that, although I might've got by with just the Rillaboom and I probably should've just used 2 Rillabooms instead of having a different second grass)

YoukaiSlayer posted...

I had an itch to try and continue a bit further through one piece again, using one pace. Even with one pace, shit is soooo slow. I made it to an important milestone though, which is episode 207, aka when they switch from 4:3 to 16:9 aspect ratio. I am free of the black bars on the side of the screen. It does seem that one pace now covers everything which was not the case before when I was watching.

I find the show very frustrating because it has aspects that I really like but then it's just hard to get past not liking the cast and not being able to have any tension in any of the fights. I also really don't like the artstyle and how willing it is to make characters look really stupid design wise. But then, the world building and adventure aspect and plot is all stellar. I want to know about the void century and gol d roger and the world government and the commentary on oppression and revolution is very well handled outside of how cleanly it always seems to wrap up. I also get that that is the point though.

Don't think I'm nearly as conflicted on any other anime.

I 100% relate. I love One Piece on some levels, but after a while it's just unwatchable given how much everything gets stretched out -- and that's even true of the manga, although it's a thousand times worse for the anime.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

I do have to say, I don't think I've found a single joke funny in the time I've been watching, which is kinda rough because like 2/3rds of the air time feels devoted to comedy. I don't think this attempt to watch through is going to last much longer. Probably gonna finish the current arc (long ring long land) The weird thing is looking up the humor apparently a ton of people say it WAS great during the part I'm enduring and that it stops being funny. How painfully annoying must those jokes be if these are the good jokes?

I enjoy the show's humor in many cases, but some of the mini adventures just aren't amusing, like the set-up for one of the movies (that Golden Lion one). And the Davy Back fight just looked awful.

The Chainsaw Man Reze arc movie was fantastic.

heIly posted...

spoilers for current dandadan now: i fucking hate this amnesia bullshit.

Yeah, I heard there was an amnesia BS thing going on currently, and saw in the comments for the series' manga the whole thing has gone from delightfully weird to plain weird.

I started to play Pokemon Kaizo (or Emerald Kaizo?). The "difficulty" mostly feels like balance issues, with the exception of changes like a random ice puzzle in Granite Cave (which caught me completely off-guard).

Not liking it as much as Radical Red so far. However, it seems like has a greater variety of wild Pokemon than Emerald (can't remember that much about Emerald; up until I tried the vanilla Emerald again the other week, I didn't even remember the weird color swap on Brendan/May where they added green to their designs... which is more distracting on May since it's a bigger change).

One of the things that annoys me about Emerald Kaizo is that the encounter rate is set absurdly low at times (which I *assume* is being used as a soft level cap tactic). As a result of this, my effective team consists of two over-leveled Pokemon who generally run through opponents so long as they don't get a status effect (mostly because I couldn't really level anything else since the trainers one-shot or two-shot evenly-leveled Pokemon).

I recently unlocked the white flute, which upon activation boosts encounter rates a bit so it's not quite as bad (although it's still far lower than the normal rate). However, I was kinda very annoyed to realize that sweet scent -- which I've had available to me a few times so far -- is a guaranteed encounter instead of just a rate boost. That could've saved me so, so, so, so much time when either looking for shit or trying to level my team so it's a bit more mixed.

Also, Kaizo is annoying because it leaves in a lot of unusable stuff -- X Guard and other battle items (where you can't use items during any battle, even vs wild Pokemon (unlike RR where it was just trainers)) -- instead of replacing those items.

All that said, I think Kaizo has far more variety in wild encounters than standard Emerald. I know the selection is better than RuSa. But Kaizo doesn't seem to have the same kinds of QoL improvements that RR did (ie, not needing to teach HMs, always-run settings, etc) and the gyms are random (whereas RR still kept to the gym's theming).

Decided to go back and watch The Dangers in My Heart . A cute and wholesome show.

Currently playing Dragon Quest I & II HD. Like old times, but with a lovely new coat of paint.

i bought the fma union arena precon, and it came with a 4 card promo pack and i pulled a holo louis armstrong so that's pretty neat

it's a color i can't use but it's neat

i also bought a pokemon precon

idk why, no one i know irl plays it

I'm kinda realizing how much Radical Red kinda spoiled me, both between the QoL and the fact it used so many more recent mechanics.

This disparity wasn't as bad while playing other versions of FireRed because they used a gen 1 map, mostly had gen 1 Pokemon, etc, but it's a different story with Emerald Kaizo. I have to keep remembering that the attack/special split isn't a thing. Then back when I decided to level a Ralts for Gardevoir, I kept not thinking about how fairy isn't a thing in this game and that fairy typing was 99% of the reason it wasn't completely outmoded by the Abra family (sure, the Ralts family has better defensive stats, but speed + spec A are more valuable).

And, of course, steel was barely present in FR (iirc, just Magnemite/ton prior to the Sevii islands, for the versions with Sevii), so I didn't have to think about the weird interactions in older gens. Specifically, the old type table had steel resisting dark and ghost, which always throws me for a loop because that's not how it's worked in like many generations. Then I caught a Rhyhorn thinking it'd be good for Rhyperior... only to remember that was gen 4. Ditto for when I was looking at Swinub, who's kinda useless before gen 4 added Manoswine.

Beyond that, Kaizo's level-up table is somewhat different. Not to mention that some of the moves are changed, but the in-game text doesn't reflect that properly. The only kinda neat thing is Kaizo apparently automatically PP-maxes all attacks (making the PP up another useless object).

Anyway, because of how Kaizo works, I kinda wound up favoring (and overleveling) a Zangoose since the NPC trainers' varied teams, all of which seem to have a lot of counter-coverage (including access to things that feel weird), means that normal typing is valuable again for dealing and taking neutral damage. (It's like gen 1 all over again, except psychic isn't as OP.) On top of that, Zangoose has great coverage for the things that resist normal -- ghost (shadow ball) and steel/rock (brick break as a level-up, then probably other stuff). And crush claw was buffed for no particular reason, giving it a 100 bp instead of the usual 75 (meaning it jumps to 150 with STAB, so Zangoose hits most things pretty hard)

In a weird way, I've kinda wound up where I started, over-relying on 1-2 Pokemon, although Zangoose is a lot better at it.

heIly posted...

i also bought a pokemon precon

idk why, no one i know irl plays it

tbh, a big reason why I left CCGs entirely. Kinda lost track of everybody I card gamed with over the years.

It is always weird to me when any romhack doesn't just add the physical special split. Like, it's so fundamental to the games functioning I feel like. I need like AT LEAST gen 7 mechanics but I'm really looking 8/9 in games I play.

That and re-usable TMs. It was probably the most overdue update, too.

Anyway, I kinda wound up indirectly looking some stuff up and realized that I'm going to need to change my approach for the E4 since the game level-caps them at 100, so I can't rely on a 10-15 level buffer. Also, this is probably the first time in a Pokemon main campaign that I might have a lv100 Pokemon not just prior to the E4, but before before finishing the seventh gym because I've been leaning on my Zangoose so hard.

Kinda need to figure out the rest of my team (which was an already an issue because apparently the seventh gym is all double battles with a concentration in psychic, whereas the other Pokemon I'd mostly been using -- Blaziken (and to a lesser extent a Venusaur) -- is/are weak against Psychic. I guess what I could do is just run a team of 2-3 Zangoose then a few non-Zangoose for match-ups where I can't just sweep certain opponents. (The biggest problem are Pokemon with Static or Intimidate.)

Oh, and I've kinda been thinking about the whole One Piece thing again. I'm half-wondering if just sticking to the manga makes more sense than an abridged anime, although the manga also stretches some shit out. I love the series, but it's just tedious.

the manga has been in the middle of one of the most boring flashbacks for this entire year it feels like

it doesn't end, and the only purpose for it is to show who killed someone that doesn't matter to the plot.

Emerald Kaizo is really pissing me off with all of the text it didn't bother editing (or possible glitches?). I buy TM24, go into my inventory, don't see it, so I try to buy it again... and notice the message I get for it is for buying TM30. I can understand changing what TMs are available in the arcade, but why the fuck couldn't they list them right?

...and after checking the other stuff, I realize that TM31 is listed as TM32. (ie, it says TM32. You click to buy it, it asks about TM31.)

I do like to watch LPs of Pokmon fan games, especially old ones like Brown and Quartz . Would play them if they were easily portable.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/f/fb48cc25.jpg

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/691088-xbox-one/80970718

I finished The Girl in Twilight. I was a little underwhelmed in my first impression of it, because it took quite some time before the main plot got moving and the ending left a few major questions unanswered. But after reading some reviews I gained a deeper appreciation of the show as a whole.

The series fuses concepts from Abenobashi and Persona - hopping across parallel worlds and meeting alternate versions of you and people you know, and confronting ugly truths about yourself to gain great power. It's got a lot of potential, but the action scenes in the show are actually few and far between. The focus is more on the characters and their development, which I didn't understand for a while.

The ending can leave you disappointed if you're primarily in it for the plot. Without spoiling too much, the conflict is directly tied to the characters' inner conflicts and issues, so resolving those wraps up most of the plot, but not all of it. I think some things were deliberately left unfinished due to its status as a multimedia project, and also possibly hoping for a second season which hasn't happened. Also some things go unsaid or subtly implied for the viewer to put together, which I also failed on.

But once you understand what the show was going for, you can appreciate it a lot more; what I thought was poor pacing to get to the plot was me not seeing the forest for the trees. My only remaining gripe with the show is that the character animations are kind of flat; there's very little range in their facial animations or any over the top cartoon-y reactions even in the more lighthearted moments. It's like the animators saved their effort and budget for the action scenes, which are surprisingly good - but given the aforementioned focus on characters rather than plot, it seems like an odd choice.

Overall though, I definitely enjoyed and would recommend it. It's a very nice show I found randomly while I had the Crunchyroll streaming channel running on TV.

Got to the end of Victory Road (I was worried about a mach bike section -- since it's hard to do that shit on my phone -- but realized I could turn the game speed way down to compensate).

Of course, after that I realized I'd wasted a lot of time. I'd learned very late on that the Evergrande Pokeshop sold rare candies, but I hadn't known they were 1 pokebuck each, so... between that and not realizing that EVs weren't a thing in Kaizo until way late (I'd kinda thought something was up when I couldn't get an effort ribbon), I wound up spending a lot of extra hours on nothing (although in some cases I was also hunting for rare Pokemon). Even going through Victory Road, I set aside some lv100 Pokemon so I could use others that still needed to level, meaning all the trainer fights were harder.

Anyway, might challenge the E4 tonight. Although before that, I should probably figure out where lum berries are (and leftovers) since most NPCs use those but I haven't seen them.

What exactly is the point of some people passing around the quoted message of the One Punch Man season 1 director saying passion and skill matter more than budget in reference to the season three director allegedly complaining about the limited time and budget?

It's technically true but it doesn't change how Bandai Namco has been shamelessly profiting from producing tons of cheaply made OPM slop since Season 1's success all those years ago. All the OPM games have been cheaply made cash grabs too. I don't consider the mass produced and copy pasted Dragon Ball and Naruto arena fighters high quality stuff but they clearly had much more effort, and budget, than any of the OPM stuff.

What, is it meant to be in defense of how Bandai Namco is as a company, or treats OPM in general?

it's not about the games at all lol

it's about season 2 and 3 of opm being garbage. has nothing to do with bandai at all.

ConfusedTorchic posted...

it's not about the games at all lol

it's about season 2 and 3 of opm being garbage

You're missing the point, every bit of OPM media Bandai Namco has produced aside from Season 1 has been low effort cash grab slop. Season 2 and 3 are not the exceptions, but the trend.

Bandai Namco has been treating OPM like trash, for a long time now.

They are in no way the innocent party in this, I would say they are the main culprit.

Oh, FYI, Bandai Namco are the producers of all OPM media, the game and the anime, as in, they decide which studios make the games and anime, and decide their budget.

TigerTycoon posted...

You're missing the point, every bit of OPM media Bandai Namco has produced aside from Season 1 has been low effort cash grab slop. Season 2 and 3 are not the exceptions, but the trend.

Bandai Namco has been treating OPM like trash, for a long time now.

They are in no way the innocent party in this, I would say they are the main culprit.

Oh, FYI, Bandai Namco are the producers of all OPM media, the game and the anime, as in, they decide which studios make the games and anime, and decide their budget.

How would Bandai Namco decide who makes an anime if it was originally in a magazine owned by Shueisha?

TigerTycoon posted...

You're missing the point,

no.

bandai has nothing to do with the directors of the anime talking about the anime.

the reason why the season 2 and 3 director is complaining about time and budget doesn't mean anything, is that the issue is the studio. jc staff is not known for doing anything good if it's not railgun or index, and even then it's startlingly hit or miss.

madhouse, who did season 1, is known for doing amazing work, however, which is why season 1 is so extraordinary. their budget was most likely the same or less than season 2 and 3s, as well as having around the same amount of time. they are more skilled. jc staff is not. one reason given for this is because they spread themselves so thin taking on so many projects, which certainly can contribute, but seemingly isn't actually an issue given they keep doing it

maybe i'm just wrong, that's a possibility, but since it's jcstaff, i really don't think so. i think it's just pure incompetence on their end, and shingo natsumes statement was accurate. passion and skill matter more, because look what it produces versus a studio that has no passion and skill.

to that end, the official manga has gone pure to shit too, and that's not gonna really be the fault of bandai either

Does seem like an odd thing to say. Obviously even great talents with not enough time and no budget aren't going to produce quality. Season 1 director was refuting the other side of the coin, which is to say you can't just throw money at an animation project and expect it to be season 1 quality. I think public perception has changed somewhat, but for a while people were generally just throwing around budget = quality, despite that some of the best animations have been produced on an average budget.

Nothing about what he said means poor budget and time can't be a valid reason for a poor production.

Of course, everything is generally made intentionally vague so we don't really know who to point the finger at.

Revelation34 posted...

How would Bandai Namco decide who makes an anime if it was originally in a magazine owned by Shueisha?

ConfusedTorchic posted...

no.

bandai has nothing to do with the directors of the anime talking about the anime.

the reason why the season 2 and 3 director is complaining about time and budget doesn't mean anything, is that the issue is the studio. jc staff is not known for doing anything good if it's not railgun or index, and even then it's startlingly hit or miss.

madhouse, who did season 1, is known for doing amazing work, however, which is why season 1 is so extraordinary. their budget was most likely the same or less than season 2 and 3s, as well as having around the same amount of time. they are more skilled. jc staff is not. one reason given for this is because they spread themselves so thin taking on so many projects, which certainly can contribute, but seemingly isn't actually an issue given they keep doing it

maybe i'm just wrong, that's a possibility, but since it's jcstaff, i really don't think so. i think it's just pure incompetence on their end, and shingo natsumes statement was accurate. passion and skill matter more, because look what it produces versus a studio that has no passion and skill.

to that end, the official manga has gone pure to shit too, and that's not gonna really be the fault of bandai either

One Punch Man's budget and scedule is decided by a production committee, and, the member with the most power and influence in that committee is Bandai Namco. No, Bandai Namco does not primarily make video games, it's not even their main source of revenue, which is merchandise. Anime, in general, exists to advertise the much more profitable revenue source of other products like merchandise.

Who do you think choose JC Staff, known for being the cheaper, faster option, and decided their budget and schedule? It wasn't One, the web comic creator. If they wanted Madhouse they could have paid them an appropriate amount for their services and waited for their schedule to open up, and given them more time. They had literal years to do this, it's not like they couldn't wait, it's that they decided it didn't matter.

In this case, OPM season 3 was even made under Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc as it's producer, ensuring they had more control over it.

The main thing you can realistically blame JC Staff for, is taking on a project under a limited budget and schedule they must have known they could not handle, when other animation studios turned it down.

Again, it's technically true that amazing work can be performed with just skill and passion alone even with limited time and resources (your name is a coincidence to this analogy but I consider Palworld to be this compared to the Pokemon games), but Season 1 was the exception that endured those conditions. All OPM media which has been under Bandai Namco, aside from that has been cheap slop, that made money because it was cheap slop riding off of the strength of the IP, on purpose, because it works.

In regards to the manga, I cannot defend the ninja arc being rewritten for 3 years before being pretty much scrapped, but I don't think all of the manga is bad up to that point.

TigerTycoon posted...

One Punch Man's budget and scedule is decided by a production committee, and, the member with the most power and influence in that committee is Bandai Namco. No, Bandai Namco does not primarily make video games, it's not even their main source of revenue, which is merchandise. Anime, in general, exists to advertise the much more profitable revenue source of other products like merchandise.

Who do you think choose JC Staff, known for being the cheaper, faster option, and decided their budget and schedule? It wasn't One, the web comic creator. If they wanted Madhouse they could have paid them an appropriate amount for their services and waited for their schedule to open up, and given them more time. They had literal years to do this, it's not like they couldn't wait, it's that they decided it didn't matter.

In this case, OPM season 3 was even made under Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc as it's producer, ensuring they had more control over it.

The main thing you can realistically blame JC Staff for, is taking on a project under a limited budget and schedule they must have known they could not handle, when other animation studios turned it down.

Again, it's technically true that amazing work can be performed with just skill and passion alone even with limited time and resources (your name is a coincidence to this analogy but I consider Palworld to be this compared to the Pokemon games), but Season 1 was the exception that endured those conditions. All OPM media which has been under Bandai Namco, aside from that has been cheap slop, that made money because it was cheap slop riding off of the strength of the IP, on purpose, because it works.

In regards to the manga, I cannot defend the ninja arc being rewritten for 3 years before being pretty much scrapped, but I don't think all of the manga is bad up to that point.

This does not answer my question. Shueisha owns the copyright of everything published under them. They can pull production at any time from anybody trying to adapt one of those works.