OT The Nerdy stuff Thread

[KnicksGadfly]

Neon Genesis Evangelion - dad issues and existential crisis - whats not to love

My controversial anime opinion is that I did not care for Evangelion

I get what they were going for, but I don't think they stuck the landing, even with End of Evangelion.

I don't think Evangelion even had the beginning right at all. Like if you read the author interviews, he didn't even know what he was going for. For example, he uses a lot of Christian symbolism and imagery, which can be really deep and thought-provoking if done right. But he was only doing it because it looked cool, not out of any sort of understanding or intention. I think the other part is that they had budget cuts, which meant they had to recycle random scenes at the end.

I think even animes like One Piece, which can be really goofy, intersperse deeper themes on a more profound level.

[DOT]

Neon Genesis Evangelion - dad issues and existential crisis - whats not to love

My controversial anime opinion is that I did not care for Evangelion

I get what they were going for, but I don't think they stuck the landing, even with End of Evangelion.

I don't think Evangelion even had the beginning right at all. Like if you read the author interviews, he didn't even know what he was going for. For example, he uses a lot of Christian symbolism and imagery, which can be really deep and thought-provoking if done right. But he was only doing it because it looked cool, not out of any sort of understanding or intention. I think the other part is that they had budget cuts, which meant they had to recycle random scenes at the end.

I think even animes like One Piece, which can be really goofy, intersperse deeper themes on a more profound level.

I mean, I get it, it's a story about depression

The hedgehog problem. Shinji (and the author by extension) want to open up to people, but are afraid of getting hurt, so they close themselves off to those connections. But when offered the easy way out, to merge with everyone so everything is shared and there are no barriers, his conclusion is to reject that, as the barriers between us are how we define ourselves. I am me because I am not you, in essence. He chooses to live in a world where he can be hurt by getting close to people, but decides it's worth it in the end, and to not close himself off in spite of that

I agree with the message at least to an extent, but I just don't think he pulled it off well enough, though again, a lot of that could be due to them running out of money. With regards to the symbolism/imagery, I think that's part of the problem too, in that it isn't really worked into the philosophy well, at least not as well as it could be. But also because the overall plot is a bit of a jumbled mess, and not in a good way. The internal and external struggles are often working against each other instead of the external struggles being a physical manifestation of Shinji's internal struggles.

[j4remi]

My controversial anime opinion is that I did not care for Evangelion

I get what they were going for, but I don't think they stuck the landing, even with End of Evangelion.

I don't think Evangelion even had the beginning right at all. Like if you read the author interviews, he didn't even know what he was going for. For example, he uses a lot of Christian symbolism and imagery, which can be really deep and thought-provoking if done right. But he was only doing it because it looked cool, not out of any sort of understanding or intention. I think the other part is that they had budget cuts, which meant they had to recycle random scenes at the end.

I think even animes like One Piece, which can be really goofy, intersperse deeper themes on a more profound level.

I mean, I get it, it's a story about depression

The hedgehog problem. Shinji (and the author by extension) want to open up to people, but are afraid of getting hurt, so they close themselves off to those connections. But when offered the easy way out, to merge with everyone so everything is shared and there are no barriers, his conclusion is to reject that, as the barriers between us are how we define ourselves. I am me because I am not you, in essence. He chooses to live in a world where he can be hurt by getting close to people, but decides it's worth it in the end, and to not close himself off in spite of that

I agree with the message at least to an extent, but I just don't think he pulled it off well enough, though again, a lot of that could be due to them running out of money. With regards to the symbolism/imagery, I think that's part of the problem too, in that it isn't really worked into the philosophy well, at least not as well as it could be. But also because the overall plot is a bit of a jumbled mess, and not in a good way. The internal and external struggles are often working against each other instead of the external struggles being a physical manifestation of Shinji's internal struggles.

They've basically been trying to rework and fine tune the same story for decades now. There are like 3 or 4 versions plus alternate manga interpretations. Meanwhile...I think they'd have been better off if they stopped everything with the "we ran out of budget" ending that was subversive but left EVERYTHING up to people's interpretation.

From a theory POV, that first season of Evangelion was fun to discuss non-stop. End of Evangelion actually put pieces together and I like it. But the more we got, the less enthusiastic I felt for it. Like...I kinda lean toward Gurren Lagaan for my crazy mech plotlines that include more philosophy than you'd expect these days.

Also on the mech note, I hear the new Gundam series is great. I haven't watched any Gundam stuff in a very long time though.

[DOT]

Also on the mech note, I hear the new Gundam series is great. I haven't watched any Gundam stuff in a very long time though.

I hear that too. It's on my short list

Not a Gundam fan, the only one I've watched that I can recall is Iron-Blooded Orphans, and that's a hell of a show, definitely recommend it to people. Far as I know it's completely separate from the rest of Gundam and can be enjoyed without any other knowledge.

[j4remi]

So the sleeper anime of the season is a slice-of-life anime about a girl with extreme social anxiety, who desperately wants to be seen. So she practices guitar like a maniac throughout middle school but never addresses the anxious tendencies. She lucks her way into a band and it's wound up being one of the funniest anime in a while as this girl takes baby steps toward being able to express herself without panicking.

Where it bodies though, is that they mess with the animation to get in her headspace. She'll do something slightly embarrassing and feel so beaten down that she does the dead Yamcha meme. There's also a lot of in-jokes about band personalities that kinda slap.

Anyway, it's called Bocchi the Rock, and this girl finally snapping out of her shell is one of the top-5 payoffs of any anime this year.

Watch on YouTube

There's so much subtle ish that slaps about how they animate characters. Bocchi can't make eye contact with the crowd still, so her head is almost always focused on her strings. The bass and drummer will head nod at each other. Just small stuff that fits the personalities they built into characters.

[MrDollarBills]

After that arc ended, it was a gradual decline in story quality as I feel like there was a lot of editorial crap going on behind the scenes.

I will say though, I did like Naruto becoming friends with Kurama finally

It took the right amount of build up, and was excellent payoff

Lots of other things where there's a few good payoffs in the final arc, but a lot of mediocrity.

Oh yeah, not everything was bad, not at all. There were some good character moments across the board.

Oh, now that you've read it, you may want to watch this

Watch on YouTube

The Day Naruto Became Hokage. If I had my say, this would be the final story of the franchise. It's just a perfect end.

[j4remi]

Also on the mech note, I hear the new Gundam series is great. I haven't watched any Gundam stuff in a very long time though.

I hear that too. It's on my short list

Not a Gundam fan, the only one I've watched that I can recall is Iron-Blooded Orphans, and that's a hell of a show, definitely recommend it to people. Far as I know it's completely separate from the rest of Gundam and can be enjoyed without any other knowledge.

My biggest struggle with Gundam was always figuring out where to start and how to catch up on all the plots. Iron Blooded Orphans and this new one (Witch of Mercury I think?) are supposed to work as stand-alones and that makes me more interested in hopping back in. I've heard great things about Iron Blooded Orphans and this new one feels even more hyped than that was.

[NYKinMIA]

Watch on YouTube

Crazy new stop motion animation movie

It's very dark, but often fascinating for the details of the hellscape the director invented

this deserves shrooms

Speaking of Bruce Lee. Did yall ever hear of Warrior? It's a series his daughter produced based on his writings (essentially trying to recreate the series he had wanted to make during his life). There are two seasons on HBO Max, and I really enjoyed it for it what a kung-fu inspired series. It was renewed for a third season, but that was before the cancellation epidemic so you may wanna check it out in case it gets banished to the nothing like so many other properties.

that looks good too

[DOT]

After that arc ended, it was a gradual decline in story quality as I feel like there was a lot of editorial crap going on behind the scenes.

I will say though, I did like Naruto becoming friends with Kurama finally

It took the right amount of build up, and was excellent payoff

Lots of other things where there's a few good payoffs in the final arc, but a lot of mediocrity.

Oh yeah, not everything was bad, not at all. There were some good character moments across the board.

Oh, now that you've read it, you may want to watch this

Watch on YouTube

The Day Naruto Became Hokage. If I had my say, this would be the final story of the franchise. It's just a perfect end.

I read the manga chapter of that

See, but the issue is, I read it on a free website (same with all of Naruto/One Piece, I finally caved and bought a Shonen Jump subscription and that's what I'm using to read Bleach), so some of the translations are wonky

So I get to Sakura/Sasuke's kid, and I know her name is Sarada, but the translation I read called her "Salad", so that's her name to me forever now lol.

[MrDollarBills]

So the sleeper anime of the season is a slice-of-life anime about a girl with extreme social anxiety, who desperately wants to be seen. So she practices guitar like a maniac throughout middle school but never addresses the anxious tendencies. She lucks her way into a band and it's wound up being one of the funniest anime in a while as this girl takes baby steps toward being able to express herself without panicking.

Where it bodies though, is that they mess with the animation to get in her headspace. She'll do something slightly embarrassing and feel so beaten down that she does the dead Yamcha meme. There's also a lot of in-jokes about band personalities that kinda slap.

Anyway, it's called Bocchi the Rock, and this girl finally snapping out of her shell is one of the top-5 payoffs of any anime this year.

Watch on YouTube

There's so much subtle ish that slaps about how they animate characters. Bocchi can't make eye contact with the crowd still, so her head is almost always focused on her strings. The bass and drummer will head nod at each other. Just small stuff that fits the personalities they built into characters.

YES. Bocchi The Rock! is the best show of the winter season to me, the way that they depict the protagonist's anxiety and disassociation that she goes through is amazing. Also, the music seriously slaps

But yeah that scene where they perform in the club is some solid work...can you imagine how hard it was for the animators to animate the girls playing in real time? That had to have been a nightmare.

Watch on YouTube

As someone who is trying to self learn the electric guitar, I can appreciate that they animated Bocchi and the girls hitting the actual notes and didn't just BS it. It makes it looks so much better.

Outside of the "live" performances though, my favorite part of the show is just how dark some of this stuff really is but they still manage to make it hilarious.

Watch on YouTube

^^alcoholism

Watch on YouTube

^^disassociation

I'm still waiting for them to release the SICK HACK song from the previous episode on Spotify. Now that song was a banger. They had one of the artists from the band KANA*BOON work on the songs for the show.

[TerrenceClarke]

Also on the mech note, I hear the new Gundam series is great. I haven't watched any Gundam stuff in a very long time though.

I hear that too. It's on my short list

Not a Gundam fan, the only one I've watched that I can recall is Iron-Blooded Orphans, and that's a hell of a show, definitely recommend it to people. Far as I know it's completely separate from the rest of Gundam and can be enjoyed without any other knowledge.

Witch From Mercury is good but it starts very slow.

IBO is not from the Universal Century time line which is the main Gundam timeline from the original. Many Shows are not in the UC timeline. Seed, Destiny . Etc Etc.

IBO by many fans is not considered a real Gundam Show even tho its good.

[MrDollarBills]

I will say though, I did like Naruto becoming friends with Kurama finally

It took the right amount of build up, and was excellent payoff

Lots of other things where there's a few good payoffs in the final arc, but a lot of mediocrity.

Oh yeah, not everything was bad, not at all. There were some good character moments across the board.

Oh, now that you've read it, you may want to watch this

Watch on YouTube

The Day Naruto Became Hokage. If I had my say, this would be the final story of the franchise. It's just a perfect end.

I read the manga chapter of that

See, but the issue is, I read it on a free website (same with all of Naruto/One Piece, I finally caved and bought a Shonen Jump subscription and that's what I'm using to read Bleach), so some of the translations are wonky

So I get to Sakura/Sasuke's kid, and I know her name is Sarada, but the translation I read called her "Salad", so that's her name to me forever now lol.

Yeah some of those translations were done years before the official English names were released if I recall.

If you have the Jump app, the only other Naruto related story I'll recommend is the last one drawn by the author, it's called The Seventh Hokage and The Scarlet Spring.

[TerrenceClarke]

The fact that nobody posted this means this thread should be closed...



If you want something Highly Intellectually and Complex and grounded in reality to watch it gets no better than this show for two seasons....

[TerrenceClarke]

Lets give some American Cartoons Love.


I slept on this but its Excellent and much more mature than what it looks like.

[MrDollarBills]

Also on the mech note, I hear the new Gundam series is great. I haven't watched any Gundam stuff in a very long time though.

I hear that too. It's on my short list

Not a Gundam fan, the only one I've watched that I can recall is Iron-Blooded Orphans, and that's a hell of a show, definitely recommend it to people. Far as I know it's completely separate from the rest of Gundam and can be enjoyed without any other knowledge.

Witch From Mercury is good but it starts very slow.

IBO is not from the Universal Century time line which is the main Gundam timeline from the original. Many Shows are not in the UC timeline. Seed, Destiny . Etc Etc.

IBO by many fans is not considered a real Gundam Show even tho its good.

Watch on YouTube

Cosigning this, The Witch from Mercury is some damn good Gundam. It starts slow but if you watch the prologue and connect the dots between that and what has taken place in the last few episodes, you can see that the show is veering into some dark territory...which is standard Gundam fare. I love that the focus is on corporate oligarchy style politics and not the standard colony stuff from previous shows.

IBO was good but I think The Witch From Mercury is better overall, but it's early.

This is one of my favorite clips from the show

Watch on YouTube

That may be the cleanest knock out I've ever seen in an anime

Watch on YouTube

The Gundam Aerial has become one of my favorite Gundams, next to the Deathscythe Gundam from Gundam Wing.

I also like the balance of slice of life moments that they blend in with all the dark stuff that you know is just bubbling under the surface

Watch on YouTube

^^using Gundam tech for healthcare is pretty clever. I like how there's a millennial twist to this incarnation of Gundam. They even do crowdfunding

Watch on YouTube

Also, the decision to make the protagonist's love interest another young girl (well, among many since it seems like everyone falls in love with Suletta) is something I felt that was long overdue along with making the Gundam pilot a young girl this time.

Watch on YouTube

If anyone wants to check out some good Universal Century Gundam, check out the movie Hathaway's Flash on Netflix. It's not your standard Gundam story but its really well done. Beautiful animation too.

[TerrenceClarke]

Oh yeah, not everything was bad, not at all. There were some good character moments across the board.

Oh, now that you've read it, you may want to watch this

Watch on YouTube

The Day Naruto Became Hokage. If I had my say, this would be the final story of the franchise. It's just a perfect end.

I read the manga chapter of that

See, but the issue is, I read it on a free website (same with all of Naruto/One Piece, I finally caved and bought a Shonen Jump subscription and that's what I'm using to read Bleach), so some of the translations are wonky

So I get to Sakura/Sasuke's kid, and I know her name is Sarada, but the translation I read called her "Salad", so that's her name to me forever now lol.

Yeah some of those translations were done years before the official English names were released if I recall.

If you have the Jump app, the only other Naruto related story I'll recommend is the last one drawn by the author, it's called The Seventh Hokage and The Scarlet Spring.

You must not know about these then.... Its off the meter.

[DOT]

Lets give some American Cartoons Love.


I slept on this but its Excellent and much more mature than what it looks like.

Gravity Falls is a 10/10. Still entertaining even as an adult

Avatar TLA is a straight 11/10 though. Absolutely incredible.

[MrDollarBills]

Neon Genesis Evangelion - dad issues and existential crisis - whats not to love

My controversial anime opinion is that I did not care for Evangelion

I get what they were going for, but I don't think they stuck the landing, even with End of Evangelion.

I don't think Evangelion even had the beginning right at all. Like if you read the author interviews, he didn't even know what he was going for. For example, he uses a lot of Christian symbolism and imagery, which can be really deep and thought-provoking if done right. But he was only doing it because it looked cool, not out of any sort of understanding or intention. I think the other part is that they had budget cuts, which meant they had to recycle random scenes at the end.

I think even animes like One Piece, which can be really goofy, intersperse deeper themes on a more profound level.

Absolutely.

It also should be noted that the creator was clinically depressed at the time he was making the original series, like, really bad. That's why I found the ending to the Rebuild of Evangelion series to be refreshing...you can tell that he's in much a better place now, which left me with a much better feeling than the depressing End of Evangelion.

[MrDollarBills]

I read the manga chapter of that

See, but the issue is, I read it on a free website (same with all of Naruto/One Piece, I finally caved and bought a Shonen Jump subscription and that's what I'm using to read Bleach), so some of the translations are wonky

So I get to Sakura/Sasuke's kid, and I know her name is Sarada, but the translation I read called her "Salad", so that's her name to me forever now lol.

Yeah some of those translations were done years before the official English names were released if I recall.

If you have the Jump app, the only other Naruto related story I'll recommend is the last one drawn by the author, it's called The Seventh Hokage and The Scarlet Spring.

You must not know about these then.... Its off the meter.

I haven't had a chance to read them, I heard that they're really good. I know that they're starting to animate some of those novels for TV since the Boruto anime is running out of content.

[MrDollarBills]

Back to work I go, yall could have me sitting here all day talking about this stuff.