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Castoreum said:
Question for the Frieren manga readers: Why are demons fighting mages 1-on-1? Do they ever fight as a group and gang up on one mage?
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That question is specifically answered later. They are individualists, and on average they are much stronger than humans, so they believe that as long as they can reduce a fight to a series of duels, where humans can't use teamwork, they have it in the bag. Generally, they are not wrong. Revolte's gang already killed top-rank mages before. Just this time they ran into the two biggest genetic lottery winners on the planet.
 
I finished the first season of Frieren yesterday. The first half was great, I love how chill it is, and those reflections about time passing by and mortality was great. But the second half and its exam arc was boring. It felt like it was there to satisfy those who wanted fights instead of telling a story. It's sad, the first part is one of the best Japanese animation fantasy thing of the last 20 years I think.
 
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Why is this happening to anime? Not just the surge in unneeded remakes, but downgrading to plastic pastel art styles while at it
 
Shibou Yuugi de Meshi wo Kuu (Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table) ended yesterday, it was a really disappointing mess. It had a strong start with an interesting premise that gave away juuust enough information while keeping things mysterious - which fooled me into thinking “oh, that’s pretty neat. I’ll pay extra attention to the dialogue and try to read between the lines to answer some questions I have”. My biggest mistake was ignoring the Source: Light Novel red flag. The Mary Sue mc wants to clear these dangerous death games 99 times because… uh.. umm.. she doesn’t really know. Literally. Naturally, this makes the side characters far more interesting than this retard, because almost all of them have tangible reasons to risk their lives (debt, abuse, etc..) but the problem is they get killed off anyway so you’re stuck with lil miss Mary Sue as your protag. By the final episode, it’s revealed that this is AKTSHUALLY a metaphor for depreshunz when the mc finally cleans up her room and tidies up then says: I guess I’ll play death games… to put food on the table then everybody clapped A lot of shit just straight up doesn’t make sense, for example, isn’t mc supposed to be filthy rich after clearing 20+ games each with massive payouts? Then why is she living in a 1K sardine can and eating scraps?

The “creative” directing is also really fucking annoying and gets on my nerves. Sure, the first couple of times seeing those silhouettes & massive negative space / hearing that minimalistic music & whispery voice acting with long stretches of oppressive silence were unique and cool and whathaveyou, but doing the same shit in every episode gets tedious real fuckin fast. I’m really fed up with some voice actors being more interested in whispering into the mic like they’re trying to seduce me into an ASMR-induced trance instead of, you know, acting. Whats up with that?

I’ve sperged enough so let me end this post on a funny note. It was hilarious hearing mc refer to her 30th game as “hitting the wall of 30” and “I have to get over the wall of 30!!!”, it gave her legitimate trauma over several episodes too lmao. One more thing, they decided to use the same abstract footstep sfx every time characters moved around, but it sounds very similar to vidrel I can’t unhear it
 
The greater a'tuin said:
Why is this happening to anime? Not just the surge in unneeded remakes, but downgrading to plastic pastel art styles while at it
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It fits more closely to the modern aesthetic and it's easier to animate for your Korean slave laborers.
Wild Wild Wisteria said:
Shibou Yuugi de Meshi wo Kuu
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I gave up on it half way through the second episode, so thanks for reaffirming my suspicions.
 
The greater a'tuin said:
View attachment 8723691
Why is this happening to anime? Not just the surge in unneeded remakes, but downgrading to plastic pastel art styles while at it
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Unironically Pokemon. The Ditto episode made studios fearful of strong colouring so everything is the same safe palettes.

Wild Wild Wisteria said:
Shibou Yuugi de Meshi wo Kuu
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It's extremely faux intellectual show, the slow pace and minimalist design doesn't symbolize anything or improve it (if anything it makes the main character appear more bland without hearing her inner thoughts). I like some ideas in it, like "censoring" gore by temporarily removing players internal organs with what looks like fluff, or having long time players body decay from having this process, but it needs to have a better plot hook than a girl playing death games that most of the times seem to get you randomly killed without any way to change your fate.
 
The greater a'tuin said:
Why is this happening to anime? Not just the surge in unneeded remakes, but downgrading to plastic pastel art styles while at it
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I got one for this.
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wtfNeedSignUp said:
Unironically Pokemon. The Ditto episode made studios fearful of strong colouring so everything is the same safe palettes.
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You mean the porygon one with the strobes and kid seizures? Maybe in part, but probably moreso generational style changes, upscaling for modern streaming, cell shading, cgi, industrial norms etc. Retvrn to 480p.
 
The greater a'tuin said:
View attachment 8723691
Why is this happening to anime? Not just the surge in unneeded remakes, but downgrading to plastic pastel art styles while at it
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Just look at the Japanese economy since the late 1980s, it's not prospering, it's a shambling corpse. Literally, art is a barometer for a nation's health. Bad art = faltering nation, Good art = thriving nation. The switch to time-saving digital provided a nice balance to even out the degradation, for a time, but that wasn't going to last forever. Old talent gets replaced with less skilled talent, costs go up via inflation (this is the main killer), work gets outsourced, and slowly shit goes to sludge.
 
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I think the Ranma remake is the exception there where the new style actually suits it really well, and I like what they did with the voices too.
However it also feels completely pointless and undermines itself with censorship, since half the original jokes completely lose their impact.

(Plus the original anime already solved making it by representing nipples as vague blurs of colour; whoever thought replacing everyone's punchlines with distracting high-def mannequin tits was a good idea is an idiot.)

JeanRob1 said:
I finished the first season of Frieren yesterday. The first half was great, I love how chill it is, and those reflections about time passing by and mortality was great. But the second half and its exam arc was boring. It felt like it was there to satisfy those who wanted fights instead of telling a story. It's sad, the first part is one of the best Japanese animation fantasy thing of the last 20 years I think.
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It's season one of a manga adaptation, dude. They didn't just invent it for ratings.

The manga follows the same structure of travel vignettes between bigger plot arcs. Mage exam is on the longer side for one of these (and I admit I had a similar reaction when I first saw it), but it serves the purpose of introducing a lot of important characters who have stuff to do later. Then they go right back to walking and reminiscing about her gay dead friends, so relax.
 
In racing anime, the cars depicted, aside from the obvious Japanese cars, seem to be mostly European, with some American ones. Is there a reason why Korean and Chinese cars aren't depicted in those shows? Is it because those companies refuse to license them, there's no demand/fanbase for Korean/Chinese cars in Japan (even though BYD has been pushing more into Japan, and is even making a Kei car solely for the Japanese market), the shows don't want to depict them for the same petty reasons why East Asian countries hate each other, and in the case of Chinese cars, depicting them in a less than perfect way would risk getting the show or even the entire anime company banned by the CCP?
 
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