Board 8 > Anime & Manga Discussion Topic 293 - Beyond Topic's End

(+) Yeah! (+)

I never said the voice actress was an inherently bad VA. I'm sure she was told to sound like that. But...

GranzonEx posted...

Any of the other 50 veteran waifu VAs would still voice Rem in the same exact way if the original VA had to be replaced.

This is not a good thing, lol.

KamikazePotato posted...

It's very telling is that I've never seen a pure sub watcher ever admit that Japanese VA for any show is bad. That would imply that all Japanese VA is good, which is fundamentally impossible. It's far more likely that western people just can't tell the difference. It's gets even worse when those people equate anime voices to what Japanese people actually sound like - when that couldn't be farther from the truth. Anime voices are often extremely exaggerated compared to what real people speak like, especially the female waifu voices.

Asta's Japanese voice got a ton of hate when Black Clover started airing. Zenitsu's voice gets a fair amount of hate, too.

I most commonly see negatively directed to voice actors in movies, since they're more often regular actors doing anime for the first time, and can sound off because of that.

The anime voices sounding different from real people is a good thing - I'm not a fan of live action Japanese acting styles at all, haha.

You'd be surprised how wrong you are with that last bit though. Ai Nonaka (Fuuko in Clannad, Kyouko in Madoka, for example, sounds exactly like her characters, despite having an extremely cutesy voice for them. Chiwa Saito (Homura in Madoka, Senjougahara in Monogatari, Asahina in Danganronpa) also sounds way more like her cutesy characters than the deep voice she uses sometimes.

MacArrowny posted...

You'd be surprised how wrong you are with that last bit though. Ai Nonaka (Fuuko in Clannad, Kyouko in Madoka, for example, sounds exactly like her characters, despite having an extremely cutesy voice for them. Chiwa Saito (Homura in Madoka, Senjougahara in Monogatari, Asahina in Danganronpa) also sounds way more like her cutesy characters than the deep voice she uses sometimes.

This doesn't seem like a great way to argue that anime characters sound like normal Japanese people. I assume Japanese VAs are just disproportionately likely to have natural voices resembling anime characters in the first place.

You can find counterexamples for every general trend. Adam Jensen's voice sound nothing like a normal human being despite that being his VA's natural voice. That doesn't mean Adam Jensen is an example of the average person.

Now imagine a Japanese person playing Deus Ex with English VA and thinking we all sound like that. That's how a shocking number of anime fans view voices in anime.

Monster finished. 162 chapters in 1 day

What a fucking masterpiece. Ended perfectly, but also could have gone on for who knows how long, the best feeling to have.

Man that last chapter. Man.

I'm glad you're getting to experience Naoki Urasawa's works. Legitimately the best anime/manga writer of all time.

Definitely recommend 20th Century Boys, although it's even longer. Haven't read his latest work (Billy Bat) but I've heard mostly good things about it as well.

KamikazePotato posted...

See this is an attitude I can completely appreciate. Much better than "all dubs voice actors are just shitty youtubers", which is a direct line from my personal experiences!

If that's how I came off I apologize because I definitely didn't mean it that way. Just that, for me, I struggle with older animes often having poor quality voice acting. Nowadays I generally just default to subs because its what im used to. It has gotten better though (and there are older exceptions, like the previously mentioned Baccano).

I'm sure not speaking the language helps cover up flaws but that would be a point in its favor for me.

Either way watch whatever you prefer, whichever way let's you best enjoy it.

KamikazePotato posted...

I'm glad you're getting to experience Naoki Urasawa's works. Legitimately the best anime/manga writer of all time.

Definitely recommend 20th Century Boys, although it's even longer. Haven't read his latest work (Billy Bat) but I've heard mostly good things about it as well.

Will check them both out. Definitely joining Mizukami as one of my favs for manga. I may end up reading Pluto, but it sounds like it was such a faithful adaptation there may not be a need.

Really an eye opening moment to read something like this immediately after knocking out 100 chapters of a Shounen I manga I legitimately do really like, and the junk food to fine dining is comparison couldn't be more obvious.

I was so confident I had figured out the main twist halfway through that I spent a solid 80 chapters waiting to post about how I got it early after I was done, only to get totally bamboozled by what was probably an intentional red herring.

From what I've heard Pluto's anime meets (potentially exceeds) the manga's quality while being close to a 1:1 adaptation, so you probably don't need to read that one.

Pluto's anime is a super close adaptation yeah. Reading it right after would probably be a mistake, but it's up to you.

20th Century Boys is the best manga. Despite having some flaws, the highs are higher than pretty much anything out there.

Billy Bat is also really cool at times but the highs don't last as long and the lows are lower. You can tell it was created with a co-writer (who may have been the main writer? I dunno).

After 7 episodes, I'm done with After the Rain. It was fine for the most part, though I can't say I was invested in the potential relationship between the two leads. What really bothered me was the "friendship" between Akira and Haruka. I lost all interest in Akira as a character and have no desire to see her character arc progress. Shout out to Wit Studio, though. Show is very pretty, though the camera can be casually horny at times. Think I'm just gonna drop the pretense and start a rewatch of Kandagawa Jet Girls next. Doesn't look like there are any sequels next season I need to catch up on.

I didn't think After the Rain was terrible or anything, but it wasn't very good either. Both of the main characters were boring and I had no investment in their relationship on any level. The art and animation did look pretty, though.

If you liked the concept of After the Rain enough to try it but it just didn't land, and want something that does that aesthetic much better, you should check out the manga "Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You".

After the Rain is awful yeah.

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Guess we're adding Robert Pattinson to the actors who can voice act list. Wouldn't have guessed that was him in a million years.

It continues.

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I finished Hell's Paradise. It was pretty good! I went in with high expectations, though, and sadly it didn't quite match up to that. The premise is amazing. A bunch of convicts with crazy powers, paired up with powerful samurai who are monitoring them, go on an expedition to a freaky island looking for the elixir of life. The setting was really interesting, full of weird monsters and impossibilities. I liked most of the characters too. Sagiri and Gabimaru had a great dynamic, but other characters like Yuzuriha and Shion were good too.

My complaints mostly come down to pacing. I feel like these thirteen episodes could've easily been expanded to twice that length just to give everything more time to breathe. I hated a sequence early on that was essentially "I know we set up a bunch of neat characters, but we don't have time for them all so let's kill half of them right away". A few of the duos had very little screentime and I wanted to see more about what they were up to. Quite often, too, they would have a bunch of flashbacks to flesh out a character... literally in the moment where they're dying. Maybe I would've cared more about their sad backstory if you established it earlier, Hell's Paradise, but showing it to me when I know they're going to die doesn't really work.

I dunno. For a show with such a great setting, premise, and characters, I guess I was just disappointed that the presentation of it all kind of fell flat for me. I'm still excited for the future second season, though! It was still a solid 7/10 anime.

That's a lot of fingers to ingest all at once

I've been told that one before

Robazoid posted...

I finished Hell's Paradise.

I also gave Hell's Paradise a 7. I went in with no expectations, so I wasn't disappointed. Just a very good anime. The action was good. The strategy was good. The characters were good. The setting was amazing at first, but after the first wave of deaths, the remaining characters outscale the island so hard that 99% of it isn't a threat anymore. The deathbed flashbacks didn't bother me, and I thought one of them was a nice final touch to a character, but I get why people don't like them.

Yeah, the power scaling was a bit wacky. Some things went from being genuine threats to no threat at all in like half a day. They always introduced new threats, though, so I didn't mind as much. Like you said, too, the strategizing during the battles was another strong point for Hell's Paradise. I'm always a fan of battles that have more going on than just a character digging deep and hitting the bad guy harder than before.

Alright Frieren I wasn't expecting such sick animation, calm down now

Edit: I did not realize it was by Madhouse, I see now

I liked these last 3 episodes of Frieren a lot. Very cool show. I don't think it will work if there's higher stakes stuff all the time but giving a mix works well I think.

Now no one can disagree that Nanami is very hot

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GANON1025 posted...

Now no one can disagree that Nanami is very hot

even maki was smokin'

I've been watching The Faraway Paladin. Today I finished season one and caught up on the currently airing season two. This is yet another anime that would be vastly improved by simply not being an isekai. Other than some incredibly thin motivation for him due to wasting his first life, the fact that he has memories from another world literally doesn't matter. Other than that, though, I'm enjoying it! It's a solid fantasy world with neat magic and good characters. I like the setting too, it's neat seeing a society still recovering from a cataclysmic demon war.

I still need to catch up to AOT anime, and I never read the manga
I just read that the ending in the manga is horrible and one of the worst ever

So I am just curious, is the anime ending any different? (I know I can easily Google this but I am afraid of spoilers, I am looking for as non-spoiler answer as possible)

Nanis23 posted...

is the anime ending any different?

A couple minor changes but nothing to alter people's opinions on it.

Robazoid posted...

This is yet another anime that would be vastly improved by simply not being an isekai

Wish Japan understood this. Fantasy stories, even with the Dragon Quest/Lord of the Rings/Dungeons And Dragons/etc stylings and tropes, can be fine.

Isekai makes it much, much worse than it could be.

Anyone else here watch the Attack On Titan finale?

I quite liked it! I was bracing for something really bad from what I hear about the manga, but no it was good. Ive now learned what the manga had, and am glad the anime did what it did to fix it.

I'm saving it for tonight when a friend is available to watch

Still don't know what happened in the manga so it'll be all new to me

It was always a good ending, just some poor word choice in some moments.

Reg posted...

Isekai makes it much, much worse than it could be.

There are some isekai where the past life matters a lot (like Ascendance of a Bookworm or something similar). Then there are others where it's just a lazy way to info-dump the setting because the character doesn't know anything about the world. The Faraway Paladin is just an especially pointless case of making something an isekai. The guy is raised as from a baby and has to learn about the world just like anyone else anyway. And the people who raise him have out of date information, so when he goes out into the world he has to learn everything the normal way again! Plus he literally never does anything with his knowledge from another world. Nothing would be lost by just making him a regular person from that world.

Robazoid posted...

There are some isekai where the past life matters a lot (like Ascendance of a Bookworm or something similar). Then there are others where it's just a lazy way to info-dump the setting because the character doesn't know anything about the world. The Faraway Paladin is just an especially pointless case of making something an isekai. The guy is raised as from a baby and has to learn about the world just like anyone else anyway. And the people who raise him have out of date information, so when he goes out into the world he has to learn everything the normal way again! Plus he literally never does anything with his knowledge from another world. Nothing would be lost by just making him a regular person from that world.

The reason it has that 0.00001% Isekai is extremely valid.

Having the tag will improve the sales.

...You know what, you're right! I hadn't considered the cynical marketing angle.

Oh well. I'm legitimately enjoying the show so it doesn't matter much anyway. It just bugs me that isekai is the "standard" for fantasy stories even when it really doesn't need to be. Like, imagine if Frieren was actually a reincarnated Japanese girl but it didn't change anything because the show never did anything with it. Ugh.

I was going to ask if there was a chance it was a normal fantasy manga and had to add the isekai element to get published.

My understanding is that most modern-style isekai originates as amateur self-published web novels, particularly on this site:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8Dsetsuka_ni_Nar%C5%8D
The popular ones generally get picked up for publication and undergo some editing to become light novels, with manga and anime adaptations often following.

Given this, whether it's through inexperience, incompetence, or pandering to the audience, any common creative issues with isekai can probably only be laid at the feet of the authors themselves, who have the core of their stories already worked out well before any corporations can begin adapating them to more profitable mediums.

Caught up on the manga for Apothecary Diaries.

Great series and great show, but the anime will probably never catch up to the manga so I don't regret reading.

I finished the second season of Malevolent Spirits: Mononogatari. The first season was one of my favorites from earlier this year, and I'm happy so say that the continuation was also great! It takes the idea of tsukumogami, spirits that inhabit objects, and uses it to craft an interesting setting. Hyoma, a spirit hunter who hates tsukumogami, is forced to coexist with Botan, a girl with a cadre of loyal tsukumogami protectors. The two of them have such a fun and heartfelt relatonship. I really loved it. The entire supporting cast it good too, everyone from the tsukumogami crew to the other spirit hunters to various other villains... everyone fills their role well. It's also all tied together by some genuinely awesome fight scenes. Each character has a unique power and it's a lot of fun seeing the battles play out.

Not sure if anyone else stuck with this show, but if you have any interest in this kind of supernatural action series, I'd definitely recommend it. I hope they get another season or two in the future, but S2 ends on a fine note.

Attack on Titan beated yeah I don't see what was there to make manga readers still mad to this day, just another average ending. I really liked the credits showing what would happen to Paradis Island in the far flung future just humans being humans

There are three different version of the Attack on Titan ending.

1. The original manga version.
2. The amended manga version after complaints.
3. The anime version, which amended more things after complaints.

Additionally, the anime played it smart and released the last bulk of the ending as one big movie. The questionable writing is easier to swallow after you've just got done with a high-octane battle scene. Also, the anime benefits from...being an anime. Music and vocal performances can help to paper over that same questionable writing.

While the plot beats are basically the same, it just isn't a fully comparable experience to what manga people got on Day 1. Like, for example...

SHINE_GET_64 posted...

I really liked the credits showing what would happen to Paradis Island in the far flung future just humans being humans

This detail was different in the manga.

thought the AOT ending was just okay. everything related to eren seeing the future kinda washes right over me and doesn't affect me much, so to have the final final act so dependent on that was pretty meh.

also up to now there had been no precedent for killing a transforming titan so it was at least a little jarring that they did it twice so easily. i also didn't quite understand falco getting wings which i understand they foreshadowed at the end of part 1. it looked really silly and i laughed, though that wasn't necessarily a bad thing

i think eren's motivations are generally "fine" and in character but the way they're delivered are a letdown especially with the time travel and super-long flashbacks. overall not thrilled with the ending but it was okay, and it didn't really sour an amazingly plotted story, though the immediate and distant endings are both bummers.

i went to r/anime and the outpour of nerdrage is pretty scary, but i probably have been there if the actual manga experience was something like game of thrones

I don't think the OG manga ending was GoT-level bad, and i fell off the series before it came out anyway, but I did want to provide some context about why some people feel the way they do. The situation reminds me of Mass Effect 3 or Cyberpunk (the game), where the original experience that caused the outcry has been 'patched'.

KamikazePotato posted...

There are three different version of the Attack on Titan ending.

The original manga version.
The amended manga version after complaints.
The anime version, which amended more things after complaints.

also some people read a crappy speed translation of the original manga version that made things seem even worse than it already was

Yeah, that's where a lot of the memes come from.

SHINE_GET_64 posted...

I really liked the credits showing what would happen to Paradis Island in the far flung future just humans being humans

yeah that sequence was from the "extra pages" that were put out like, a while after the final manga chapter was released. And as the episode was ending I was like "I hope they include the extra pages in the credits sequence" and they did!!

Good ending and good series all around though its best stuff was in the earlier seasons, of course. Between that, a Sanosuke-centric Kenshin episode and a Yor-centric SxF episode (and a haremn-centric Goblin Slayer episode), been an A+ anime week for me.

Yor's the weakest of the main SpyFam cast, so focusing an ep on her doesn't result in great content...

Yor's is the weakest part of SxF on an chapter by chapter basis (besides her brother), but she's also the star of the only truly great arc in the series.

It's quite the conundrum.