Anime

[sleipnir]

What do you guys think about the anime lineup for spring 2008?

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2008-04-08

Some big series this season, namely the second series of Code Geass, the third season of Tsubasa Chronicles, and xxxHOLiC: Kei.

Seems to me as though there's going to be a flood of generic sword-wielding action anime, but there's a few that stand out. Bus Gamer has got my interest. All in all, a solid number of series being released. Thoughts?

[I-n-j-i-n]

What do you guys think about the anime lineup for spring 2008?

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2008-04-08

Some big series this season, namely the second series of Code Geass, the third season of Tsubasa Chronicles, and xxxHOLiC: Kei.

Seems to me as though there's going to be a flood of generic sword-wielding action anime, but there's a few that stand out. Bus Gamer has got my interest. All in all, a solid number of series being released. Thoughts?

Honestly, this season might be one of the best I've ever seen.

There's around a dozen I can follow without any reservations:

Code Geass- Self explanatory in just naming it. Going to be wild, crazy and most probably, fun.

Macross Frontier- Return to the old Macross style of mecha. Unless they mess it up bad at the end, it's going to be a modern classic.

Itazura na Kiss- I was impressed by the first episode. The typical 'superior guy meets stupid girl' romance comedy. I thought it was funny enough.

Zettai Karen Children- Japan's version of Power Puff Girls but more dynamic, a bit more mature and the action on screen is really nice.

xxxHolic- Another season and it should be good enough to pass time at least.

Chi's Sweet Home- Very cute but also very short cat-anime. Only 3 minutes per episode! No loss in following but I think it's a cute enough show even if it's conventional.

Kanokon- Furry fanservice show but it could get good later on. I'll probably end up watching it all for the inevitable comedic romance.

ToLoveRu- Space fanservice show. Same as Kanokon in reasoning. The fanservice is downright pornographic though.

Tower of Druagua- Funny oldschool RPG spoof. First ep was great, not sure if it can continue. But I'm hoping. I think the Druagua game was on the NES in the 80's.... Which is pretty weird.

Vampire Knight- A vampire romance drama with vampires that are actually pretty threatening. I loved the first episode.

Kurenai- Very cerebral with its dialogue. Other than that, it's a mystery, but it looks great so far.

Blassreiter- Generic action, but it looks nice I guess. I might follow to the end anyway.

Special A- Another 'inferior girl, superior guy' scenario. First ep was very cute and funny enough.

Soul Eater- Shonen/Fighting anime that is probably way better than Bleach as far as the imaginative/creative side goes. Looks like one of the best of the season actually.

Nabari no Ou- Another shonen/fighting show that looks really promising. GREAT first episode.

As for Bus Gamer, it's only 3 episodes and it really doesn't have the depth to it to make it noteworthy IMO. But it IS only 3 episodes..

[Avatar of Justice]

What do you guys think about the anime lineup for spring 2008?

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2008-04-08

Some big series this season, namely the second series of Code Geass, the third season of Tsubasa Chronicles, and xxxHOLiC: Kei.

Seems to me as though there's going to be a flood of generic sword-wielding action anime, but there's a few that stand out. Bus Gamer has got my interest. All in all, a solid number of series being released. Thoughts?

I'm always amazed at the flood of "dating-game" animes. Some dude with some girl who is an alien/time traveler/esper who has a pseudo-romantic relationship with him. This season isn't quite as bad as some of the previous ones on that front, but there are still a bunch like that.

Bus Gamer and Macross Frontier were the only ones I saw that sounded somewhat interesting. Aside from Code Geass, but that's not really new.

[I-n-j-i-n]

^

Not a whole lot of true dating sim games though, just very fanservicey ones. Last year's 'ef a tale of memories' was a dating sim game and it was one of the most compelling watches too.

Also, from what I watched so far, there's a ton of variety and quality to the season if you're willing to look beyond the genre you'd be normally comfortable with.

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

Wait... There was a second season of Tsubasa? I thought it was just the first season and the OVA...

[Knives]

I was wondering if any of you have ever considered learning japanese because of anime or manga. Because a couple months back the thought, "I've been watching anime for a couple of years now and I'll probably continue to do so for the rest of my life, it wouldn't be a bad investment to at least learn some japanese," hit me. Has this every happened to you?

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

I speak Japanese.

[I-n-j-i-n]

I was wondering if any of you have ever considered learning japanese because of anime or manga. Because a couple months back the thought, "I've been watching anime for a couple of years now and I'll probably continue to do so for the rest of my life, it wouldn't be a bad investment to at least learn some japanese," hit me. Has this every happened to you?

I watch so many anime that I can actually watch most of it raw (without fansubs) and know what most characters are saying. Words I don't know, I can look it up in the dictionary. I used to not know a single word before.

[sleipnir]

I've got to say, when I first loaded up ef - a tale of memories, I didn't have very high expectations. The overall design, storytelling and artwork put up well above similar series.

For all the gamers who've played the Armored Core series, they're making an anime based on it, and from the previews(which are few), it seems they'll be using a lot of cg that you would see in the video games to render the mech scenes. For those of you who have played the games, you know how epic the videos are in it. It's called Armored Core: Fort Tower Song.

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

Even if you're doing it just for the sake of your nerdy whims(like I pretty much did at first), learning a new language is a pretty good skill regardless and marketable.

[Knives]

Haha, "nerdy whims," I like that. But yea, there are lots of good reasons to learn a second language, whether anime is one of them or not. I've been fiddling with a few different methods and approaches of how to teach myself japanese, and the best thing I've gotten so far is "memorize a shitload of kanji and just start reading." What approach did you guys take to learn the language?

[sleipnir]

Best thing to start off with is get a good feel for the language. I'm not sure how much anime you watch, but if you do watch a good bit, try to pay a bit less attention to the subs and try to see if you can grasp the basic idea of the sentence. Eventually, you'll notice words in the subs and match it with the audio, therefore building your vocabulary.

Grammar is very much unlike English, if anything its closer to French. I suggest if you really want to learn it, go over to youtube or something and look up "learn japanese". There you'll find videos that basically cover "tourist" Japanese. If you invest a good hour or two into it, you can learn the basic structure, and how to use important words like I, you, this, that, there... blah blah blah.

Writing is a whole other story, I can't read or write kanji if my life depended on it. If you learn how to understand/speak the language though, you can communicate with most people through the use of romaji, which is very easy once you have a repertoire of words built up.

Sorry about the long post, just thought I'd let you know how I went about doing it. Keep in mind this isn't exactly the fastest way of doing it. Oh and about the nerdy whims... if you can speak basic Japanese, you're an asset for any IT career.

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

I said I speak Japanese, not that I can read it. Screw Kanji with a rusty spoon.

That said, I pretty much did the rounds with a basic japanese language page I found on about.com. It's actually very handy and covered most of the basics as well as things like prepositions, pronouns, verb conjugation, and sentence form.

Japanese is my 4th language, so it wasn't hard to grasp at first, but yeah, really try to get a feel for it by just watching anime and anything in Japanese really. Also have practice conversations. If you can't do it with anyone, just talk to yourself or something.

[MisterBiggler]

Anime and manga were a bit of the reason I started taking Japanese classes while I was in college; I actually ended up minoring it. Writing wasn't the hardest part for me, though going in I thought it would be. I just practiced a lot, writing the syllabet and various kanji over and over, much like a child would be taught to do when learning their first language. Same with listening, speaking, grammar, and reading, I just practiced as much as I could; repetition helps.

I haven't been doing that as much now that I'm out of school, but I still watch anime and some dramas, and I get the jist of what people say most of the time, but I'd need a dictionary to watch anything without subs. I can hold a conversation to a point, and I can read manga and some books. God do I hate kanji though, although karaoke helped a bit with that and with learning Japanese in general.

[I-n-j-i-n]

Haha, "nerdy whims," I like that. But yea, there are lots of good reasons to learn a second language, whether anime is one of them or not. I've been fiddling with a few different methods and approaches of how to teach myself japanese, and the best thing I've gotten so far is "memorize a shitload of kanji and just start reading." What approach did you guys take to learn the language?

I got started with a basic dictionary + kanji dictionary + some self help language books. I think you need a lot of determination to do it yourself but it worked for me.

I don't understand why people say the structure is hard to grasp, because it's just in context of a language. I can somewhat agree that it's similar to French in structure, but the entire Eastern Asian continental nations have the exact same structure so it's just a matter of getting accustomed to it.

The Kanji is almost fun to learn if you do it in the childrens' grammatical way of combining the radicals and smaller kanji words (there aren't too many variations. Just a lot of combinations) and it becomes easier to digest. I know maybe a hundred at most, but I need 1000 until I become almost fully literate in terms of writing/reading.

If I had the money, I could have majored in it too. No big deal. I am interested in maybe Chinese and Italian, but I'm not sure I'm terribly enamored with either culture as of yet to devote my life to it. All I care about Italy is Venice and its food anyway.

[I-n-j-i-n]

Wow. I just watched the first episode of Soul Eater and I never thought anime could look this refined and crazy at the same time. It actually looks a shade better than Gurren Lagann for a comparison. I think there's finally a true must watch of the season, unless you really detest great animation.

[Knives]

The Kanji is almost fun to learn if you do it in the childrens' grammatical way of combining the radicals and smaller kanji words (there aren't too many variations. Just a lot of combinations) and it becomes easier to digest.

Yea, that's what I'm doing, learning/memorizing kanji any other way is a real bitch.

Thanks for the advice so far, everyone.

[Manic Cinq]

subtitles are a crutch for the weak

like me... I didn't really understand everything that was going on in Soul Eater because I watched it raw. I do find that I pay more attention when there aren't subtitles though.

I agree with i-n-j-i-n's methods... because I've done that stuff too.

... kanji

btw, romaji sucks you should learn the kana because they're easy.. just look up the stroke order somewhere and start practicing writing it out. I used to fill pages of notebooks with blocks of hiragana & katakana

[sleipnir]

Is Soul Eater really that good? I always wait for the new anime to have at least 20 episodes or so out before I start watching them because I dislike putting on an episode, getting in the mood to watch it, then waiting a week. I really enjoyed Gurren Lagann, so I find it hard to believe, but I may just have to watch the first episode if it's true.

[Drack]

I'm taking Japanese as my elective at Georgia Tech (majoring in Computer Science) and am on my second semester. I'm seriously learning the language, not just trying to understand games/anime.

Really, it's all Grammar, Vocabulary, and Writing. Of those three, I find vocab - not writing - the hardest. There are always so many words to learn.

しかし、漢字の勉強が好きですよ。

Then again, I like studying Kanji.

[MisterBiggler]

I used to fill pages of notebooks with blocks of hiragana & katakana

YES YES YES. I'd get away from romaji as soon as you can. Googling just now, I ran past a a couple of sites that have the stroke order animated, and I think some have movies you can DL as well. Flashcards are good too.

[Knives]

I can read hiragana, and I can write it too, but not in proper stroke order, though I hear it's important so I'll get around to learning it soon.

I'm taking Japanese as my elective at Georgia Tech (majoring in Computer Science) and am on my second semester. I'm seriously learning the language, not just trying to understand games/anime.

Really, it's all Grammar, Vocabulary, and Writing. Of those three, I find vocab - not writing - the hardest. There are always so many words to learn.

I'd like to seriously learn the language as well, anime may have inspired me but it's not like I want my vocabulary to only consistent of ちくしょ and だってばよ(naruto referrence, LOL). I haven't had that much trouble with vocabulary or writing yet since both are pretty straight forward, it's the grammar that I find mystifying. I need to spend more time studying particles and sentence structure.

[MisterBiggler]

Damn. So I just found out that there's a Golgo 13 series, and that it debuted today. I know what I'm watching this season.

[I-n-j-i-n]

Is Soul Eater really that good? I always wait for the new anime to have at least 20 episodes or so out before I start watching them because I dislike putting on an episode, getting in the mood to watch it, then waiting a week. I really enjoyed Gurren Lagann, so I find it hard to believe, but I may just have to watch the first episode if it's true.

YES, watch it, if at least for the incredible first episode.

Also, it's going to be a shonen/fighting type of show, so it should be a relative easy-to-digest type of show unless you have a deep seated hatred for that type of show. I can watch Naruto fillers without flinching (not too much anyway..) and besides, Studio Bones is doing Soul Eater, so it's bound to be pretty consistent.

[sleipnir]

Wow, that was a really good episode. Alright, so I'll definitely be watching that series. I really liked the artwork, it was like a more interesting version of D.Gray-Man.