November 2014 Media Thread

ArisKatsaris

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please post only under one of the already created subthreads, and never directly under the parent media thread.
Use the "Other Media" thread if you believe the piece of media you want to discuss doesn't fit under any of the established categories.
Use the "Meta" thread if you want to discuss about the monthly media thread itself (e.g. to propose adding/removing/splitting/merging subthreads, or to discuss the type of content properly belonging to each subthread) or for any other question or issue you may have about the thread or the rules.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please post only under one of the already created subthreads, and never directly under the parent media thread.
Use the "Other Media" thread if you believe the piece of media you want to discuss doesn't fit under any of the established categories.
Use the "Meta" thread if you want to discuss about the monthly media thread itself (e.g. to propose adding/removing/splitting/merging subthreads, or to discuss the type of content properly belonging to each subthread) or for any other question or issue you may have about the thread or the rules.

My group finished our Summer season last week:

Akuma no Riddle: awful, the worst show I've watched all the way through. Incoherent setting, implausibly stupid characters, cheap and mistake-ridden animation, and an ending that's actively hostile to the rest of the show.
Knights of Sidonia: half good, quite hard sci-fi, half staid harem antics. My friend insists on comparing it to Attack on Titan, which I don't think is entirely fair (Sidonia has a coherent setting that drives the plot while being amenable to reasoning), but it shares that series' problem of a boring perfect protagonist. There are some questionable aspects to the ordering and where time is spent (it feels like the series is trying to establish a B-plot about Sidonia's history and an ongoing conspiracy, but it never quite connects to anything else), but the main plot is solid and the fight action is a lot of fun. It's done in all-3DCG, which makes the robot fights look great and the people look weird (I quite like it, but I know some people who hate the look). I do recommend it, but it's got plenty of flaws.
Katanagatari - talky action with a weird visual style. The overarching plot doesn't really click IMO, but the episodic "get to know a person, fight them, do something clever and take their sword" is plenty of fun, and together with the high production values I'm happy to recommend it.
Toradora - a rewatch of a series I counted among my favourites. It holds up - a story of teenage love, discovering what you want and learning how to relate to your family, with a good sense of humour and a very satisfying conclusion by anime standards. But it definitely has its flaws; the pacing is off (the first ~9 episodes are basically establishing, which is way too long, and the twists crammed into the last two episodes should be spread out a bit more; by modern standards the whole thing drags), and the second half in particular is structured as a bunch of specific-character arcs that don't entirely connect to each other, meaning if you don't like a particular character there's little to engage you for 3-4 episodes at a time. Recommended, but only if you can tolerate teenage melodrama.

Movies:

Time of Eve - didn't quite live up to the hype from my point of view; the sci-fi side fails to really raise anything new or interesting (and as a friend pointed out, we should really have moved on from talking about Asimov's Three Laws by now). Salvages itself with likeable characters and a very good sense of humour; I also liked the slightly overexposed visual style. It was pleasant enough, but not the mind-blowing experience I'd been lead to expect.
Redline - a gloriously over-the-top car race in a pulpy space-opera setting, with a retro, hand-drawn visual style (a la Kill la Kill or TTGL). No deep meaning, but very fun; we all laughed a lot.

Watching on my own I've finally finished Hunter X Hunter (new series); it had a very strong final main arc, which pretty much lived up to the hype. Nonetheless I can't quite justify recommending a series that only really finds its stride somewhere in the mid-80s.

I think I might like Toradora a tiny bit less than you, but apart from that, I'm surprised to agree with pretty much everything you've said on these particular titles. I didn't watch Akuma all the way through though, I figured it was trash about 2 minutes into the first episode and dropped it without looking back.

Although your friend is right about Kishi, it's pretty much AoT in space in terms of premise.

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November 2014 Media Thread

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November 2014 Media Thread

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