Media Anime and Manga Thread MK3 - Beware Spoilers

When I get time, I like to read a lot of horror manga. Junji Ito is the most obvious, but there's other cool stuff out there.

Free | Ratio introduced me to Mieruko-chan a while ago. Looked into Izumi Tomoki, the artist, and they've made some pretty cool stuff in the past, like Gemini. Seems they didn't hit their stride until Mieruko-chan though..? May be wrong.

If anyone wants to recommend me horror/surreal/etc manga feel free to drop a DM or something lol
 
Fumes said:
2. Code Geass: While I see many people complain about how ridiculous Lelouch and Suzaku are as characters, and how the show has so many unexplained loose ends, I raise them one point. This show is so damn entertaining. There is action around every corner, the animation is flashy, and the drama is well written and feels extremely real. The second season was a even better follow-up to a great show. Lelouch gets much further developed and does a lot of shit you wouldn't expect him to. So many thrilling twists and turns in this show, all the consequences of people's actions weigh very heavily. Amazing ending as well, not to spoil anything.
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If anyone has watched Code Geass, I urge them to watch this video:
 
Read Hakaijuu earlier, it's fairly interesting. The characters are fairly interesting, with strong development. You don't really see the development, it's slow and natural, which really adds to the narrative, I feel. The plot is very well-done, even with minor featuring of unreliable narrators, which is a nice touch. It does a lot of cool things, but it's hard to explain without spoiling it lol.

It honestly could have ended after its first arc, though. It's very strong, and I don't think they needed to keep it going. It ended up hurting it more than anything, introducing unnecessary new things, generally what you expect from longer manga series. It demeaned the overarching hopelessness that it's trying to get across. Overall, it half feels like cosmic horror, but if that's the case, I don't think that concept was executed well. As a gory thriller sort of thing though? It's interesting and serviceable.

Oh, and the art is amazing.

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If I were to rate it...it'd be a 6.5/10, roughly. I don't think I could go more than that.
 
Hi guys,

I hope you are doing great I wanted to share my list of anime I really like, if you enjoy survival games like Hunger Games / Battle Royale you should watch these animes if you don't know them yet:

1- Danganrompa

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There are three seasons and it's also a video game. I would say it was a mix of Case Closed and Hunger Games, but nowadays you can clearly say it is like Among Us. It's all about elite people who have specific ability, for example the Elite Swimmer is a person who has swimming expertise etc.. In the first season they are trapped in a school and the only way to go out is to kill someone. However, after each death, a court will be organized to determine who the killer is. If the group is right, the killer is executed, if the group is wrong, then the group is executed and the killer wins.

Second season is more interesting I would say because the story is deeper after the introduction to the context of the first season.
The third season explains everything we had to know and understand about the show timeline.

2- Btoom!

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I've watched this show a long time ago. They have to play the same rules than a video game but in real life in an island. Basically like Hunger Games but with different types of mines and grenades. The only way to escape this island is to collect enough Green Sensors (I forgot the number), but to do so, you have to kill participants.

3- Juuni Taisen

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12 warriors who represents the zodiacs are reunited in an abandoned town where they have to fight with each others. The only way to win is to stay alive with participants Jewels (which are inside the participants).
I really loved this anime since there is not the Main Character Syndrome

4- Mirai Nikki

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Popular one, they are all participating in a game to be the next Space & Time Master. All the participants have a specific journal which predicts the future in different way.
The end was a bit disappointing but the story was very nice.

5- Akuma No Riddle

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A class composed by professional assassins who are reunited to execute the same target. The assassin who successes will have the reward of their choice.
The story is ok since there are different type of assassins which makes it interesting to watch


That's it for me, they were probably present in the past pages, sorry for that, and also if you have Survival game animes to share I would love to watch them ! :)
 
momo! said:
i recommend serial experiments lain to anyone who hasn't seen it! #1 for me for years.

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I actually own the art book that illustration is from—one of my favourite possessions. That said it may have also been used as a poster/other production material, but I remember it from the art book so I'm gonna pretend it was there first LOL. Anyway, there are so many outstanding pictures in it—ABe's really good at everything from character and pose design to colouring to background detail, and he can squeeze a tonne of meaning out of the tiniest details—but if I had to pick one favourite it'd be this one:
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Plague von Karma said:
Interestingly, there's a video game adaptation on the PS1(?) that fetches ludicrous prices.
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It's not actually an adaptation but is instead an entirely separate story. That said, it never received an official translation—there are a few fan translations, but idk if anyone's actually got around to implementing it like a game yet or not. I've not read any of them yet though—I should probably do that at some point.
 
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Can confirm Terror in Resonance is an entertaining watch. Been swamped with too many sports to post my monthly anime intake but I'm still watching! I'll try and get Oct-Nov up this weekend
 
I finished re-reading Liar Game by Shinobu Kaitani, the same mangaka who wrote One Outs, which I posted about earlier. The only other time I had read this was when I was a kid, and while I enjoyed it then, I decided to re-read it to see how an older version of myself would experience it.

Nao Kanzaki is an honest girl who is roped into the Liar Game, a tournament where players have to compete in various games with each other to win money with the risk of racking up debts. She manages to get the help of the genius ex-swindler Shinichi Akiyama (my profile pic) who carries her through the first couple of rounds. Nao grows stronger as a person and as a player, and attempts to spread a message of trust and unity among the players of the game. They meet various allies and opponents and use their winnings to pay off their debts.


As for the games themselves, there are many clever twists on popular games. Examples include turning Musical Chairs (yes, you read correctly, and my personal favourite) into a strategy game; Bid Poker, where players bid on hands and discarded cards; a modified version of Russian Roulette, obviously with money sums as penalties instead of lives, leading to more strategic approaches, and so on. While the two series aren't too similar in general, there are many Death Note style mind games which are incredibly entertaining and keep the reader on the edge of their seat non-stop. Akiyama's group vs Yokoya's group vs Harimoto's group in particular had me excited more than I have been reading manga in a very long time.

Liar Game is a psychological manga that takes academic game theory and psychology and applies them to illustrate the importance of trust and bonds in a competitive system (criticism of capitalism?). The different characters are used to represent different types of people in society. The artwork is simple, but that's not really a selling point of this series.

It gets a 8.5/10 from me, marked down due to its rushed ending. Although I doubt it, I would love to see this turned into an anime one day with its ending expanded on. I would recommend it to anyone that liked Death Note, or is interested in psychology or economics.

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I'm like a season too late here but Wandering Witch: Journey of Elaina has quickly become one of my all time favorites.
 
Ooo it’s by Robico! I haven’t read this yet but her earlier series Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun is very important to me :’)
 
Was gonna watch the first episode of The Promised Neverland and call it a night, but got hooked by the end of it and ended up binge-watching the entire first season in one sitting. Might be the best first arc of any anime I've ever seen. Been told to not watching the anime but read the manga from here instead. I loved Norman and Emma. The twists and cliffhangers were really entertaining, and kept me spamming the "next episode" button. This series is a perfect example of how film/TV/anime can use facial expressions to make the viewer feel involved.

Over lockdown I watched the first three Yugioh series (DM, GX and 5Ds). I didn't expect much from this nostalgia binge but I was completely wrong. I expected card games good vs evil you know the drill, but I got some quite complex stories and characters that I thought were really well done. I don't think I'll watch any more, though, as I'm told they're not that great after 5Ds.

I had watched all of DM in the English dub as a child but holy fuck the Japanese version is infinitely better. Kaiba is fleshed out a lot more by the end, darker themes are brought up, and the soundtrack is insanely good. Also, biggest lie of my childhood but the Shadow Realm is entirely a dubbed censorship thing lol. People straight up die in the original. The first arc might be kind of tough for some people to get through because, despite the story and characters being pretty decent, the game doesn't even have proper rules yet lol. It is still quite captivating though. The duels get a lot better as the story progresses, however, and players come up with a lot of cool strategies to one up each other. All the Egyptian mythology incorporation is really cool. Honestly one of my top 10 anime and really glad I went on this nostalgia binge.

GX was a hot mess, but a lovable mess, and some of its ideas are good. They introduce a lot of potentially interesting characters in season 1, but most of them end up doing nothing. The only one that gets some sort of development gets faded out as the story progresses. They introduce a lot of characters whose roles could have been done by existing characters. Season 1's slice of life style was quite cool, but when things started getting serious the show took a nosedive. The first season's villains after Manjoume (if you can really call him one) are very boring and generic, and season 2's isn't much better either. Season 3 flips the show on its head and is pretty good, though retains a few of the series' overall flaws, and Sho's character arc was laughably bad. I wish they brought back some of the old characters from DM into S4 though. You'd think with the kind of threats the gang were facing that Yugi and co. would get involved. A fun ending though, almost as a way to reward Judai for all the shit he went through.

5Ds is almost as good as the original, and has the best protagonist out of the three by quite some margin. The first half focuses on poverty. Yes, poverty. Half of main characters represent how different people grow by growing up in poverty. Interestingly, there was a lot of controversy behind the scenes which lead to them having to completely change their story midway through which kinda held it back. One of the voice actors was involved in a cult, and when the news broke out they removed all cult references as best as they could... in a series where the two antagonist groups are based on cults. Secondly, Crow and Kiryu were supposed to be the same character, but because the people that played the game loved Crow's cards so much, management told the writers not to take any risks with Crow, so they created Kiryu which killed the twists as Kiryu was a nutjob and Crow was just out here vibing with no nuance so there wasn't that link between them, only contrast I guess. Aki's voice actor got pregnant so they made her character take a back seat. Still a great show, though, and the duels themselves are way better than they were in GX. The soundtrack here is pretty good too, especially the character themes. Yusei has like 5 or 6 but they are all bangers.
 
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I'm usually very open minded when it comes to anime and media in general. I'm perfectly able to enjoy shows such as Mirai Nikki and Kakegurui despite its flaws, but today I got to witness the grand finale of The Promised Neverland and I'm simply speechless. This has to be, hands down, the worst adaptation for a beloved franchise that I've watched.

The whole going anime-original idea apparently stems from the fact the author wasn't happy with how the manga story unfolded because of all the parameters and limitations that the Shonen Jump had. HOWEVER, I think they might have a poison rather than the cure, because this second (FUCKING LAST) season does not do any justice to the greatness that was The Promised Neverland, much despite its decline towards the end. Seriously, you'd get much more emotion and thrill from Tokyo Skelter and Mars of Destruction than from this poor excuse of an anime.

IF YOU PLAN ON DIVING INTO THE WORLD OF THE PROMISED NEVERLAND, DO WATCH S1 ANIMATED AND THEN SWITCH OVER TO THE MANGA. Otherwise, if you continued with s2 animated, you will literally get spoilered most of the plot points needlessly. Just to get a rough idea of what's up: TPN s2 skips over a whole arc, a huge number of characters and skips right to the end of the manga.

That's it. I just wanted to get this off my chest.

Off-topic: next Sunday is the last AOT Sunday, SAD
 
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Posho said:
I'm usually very open minded when it comes to anime and media in general. I'm perfectly able to enjoy shows such as Mirai Nikki and Kakegurui despite its flaws, but today I got to witness the grand finale of The Promised Neverland and I'm simply speechless. This has to be, hands down, the worst adaptation for a beloved franchise that I've watched.

The whole going anime-original idea apparently stems from the fact the author wasn't happy with how the manga story unfolded because of all the parameters and limitations that the Shonen Jump had. HOWEVER, I think they might have a poison rather than the cure, because this second (FUCKING LAST) season does not do any justice to the greatness that was The Promised Neverland, much despite its decline towards the end. Seriously, you'd get much more emotion and thrill from Tokyo Skelter and Mars of Destruction than from this poor excuse of an anime.

IF YOU PLAN ON DIVING INTO THE WORLD OF THE PROMISED NEVERLAND, DO WATCH S1 ANIMATED AND THEN SWITCH OVER TO THE MANGA. Otherwise, if you continued with s2 animated, you will literally get spoilered most of the plot points needlessly. Just to get a rough idea of what's up: TPN s2 skips over a whole arc, a huge number of characters and skips right to the end of the manga.

That's it. I just wanted to get this off my chest.

Off-topic: next Sunday is the last AOT Sunday, SAD
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no offense but I really don't understand this whole thing about "TPN season 2 had a horrible ending" when the manga ending itself was really bad.

Didn't the ending consist of one demon just.... Asking the other demons (who are all conveniently gathered in one location) not to eat humans anymore? And everyone just agreed peacefully? I realize that human meat is like used to control the demons but can you imagine if it came out that cow meat was doing the same to us? Would anyone ever first of all believe it second of all actually just agree because someone asked? No way in hell, even if there was solid proof that cow meat somehow changes us physiologically. It was always going to be bad unless they made an anime original ending.

I guess you could say "well they're demons not humans so they wouldn't act like us." I kinda thought the whole point of Mujika and Emma becoming friends was to show that the two species weren't all that different. Especially with stuff like the anime opening that had comparisons to the children eating meat to the demons eating humans. Despite being different species, aren't we not that different after all?

Also I'm not sure if this was just an anime problem since I kinda skimmed the manga but I feel like the whole story arc was kinda approached the wrong way. The whole time it felt like it was trying to up the stakes but in reality there were no consequences whatsoever for all the kids. Nobody died or really came close to dying except for a few of the main 3, but it was always kinda obvious that they wouldn't actually die, so it wasn't really a well written thriller anyway. I really would have loved to see more tactics and strategy but there wasn't really much of that with any stakes.

Anyway yeah I'm just really confused on why people were disappointed in TPN s2 when it seemed really obvious to me that it wasn't really good in the first place. Sorry for calling you out specifically.

Plague von Karma said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1395212918040391680

Apparently, the author of Berserk has passed away as a result of acute aortic dissection, which is essentially your heart tearing from the inside. Jesus christ...
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While this is really, really sad, I hope that the manga industry recognizes that this is probably a direct result of overwork and stress. He has mentioned health issues in the past and the schedule of a mangaka is really awful for no reason other than to pump out a chapter by the next deadline. Many of them are working the majority of the day every day, barely getting any sleep or free time. I know Berserk didn't update as consistently as a weekly manga but I'm positive this was still a factor. Something in the industry desperately needs to change.

RIP Kentaro Miura, I haven't read Berserk but the manga community will have a huge hole in it now.
 
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Any One Piece fans/experts here? I just started watching it yesterday and there’s obviously... a lot of content to take in. Are the movies/OVAs necessary? Or am I good to just watch the first 130 episodes on Netflix?
 
phoopes said:
Any One Piece fans/experts here?
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Plenty
phoopes said:
I just started watching it yesterday
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Awesome!
phoopes said:
there’s obviously... a lot of content to take in
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Yeah there's quite a bit
phoopes said:
Are the movies/OVAs necessary?
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Not really, especially since some of them just kinda rehash a few arcs, but some of them are worth watching just for fun
phoopes said:
Or am I good to just watch the first 130 episodes on Netflix?
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"Stack 'em high and let 'em fly" - Eiichiro Oda, probably
 
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