phatchanadventures:

bitch please

(Source: sogekings)

*Let’s out a deep breath*

So, “Shin Sekai Yori” (“From the New World”) is over. What a beautiful, engaging, and constantly surprising series.

The series spans the life of 12 year old Saki to her 26th spring and four of her friends who are part of her school group. Which is both unusual and fascinating. There’s mysteriously disappearing children, monsters, and politics. It takes place in the far future, over 1000 years. In this time everyone has telekinetic powers and people live in these peaceful little villages. Well, at least it seems pretty peaceful.

All of the characters have deep feelings and motivations and personalities, and it’s interesting seeing their ideas and opinions clash. It’s a truly fantastic show.

Stray thoughts:

• The costume designs. Omg, it’s all so well thought out and great looking. It’s obvious each era has it’s own style with references to fashions from our past while staying remarkably original.
• The direction is almost consistently well done. Tense and artistic, good pacing for the most part. Sometimes I just couldn’t stand the suspense.
• I’m not a huge fan of Saki, but she had her moments.
• I tried reading the manga and it was horrible. It read like a trashy doujinshi. The relationships were better felt in the show instead of as purely sexual fanservice.
• The designs were all really appealing. A lot of the girls/women/boys/men looked too similar and I would’ve appreciated more variety, but w/e, just learned to accept it.
• I kind of mentioned this above, but the colors and scenery are simply gorgeous.

So if you haven’t checked it out yet, I recommend you do so now.

secondlina:

yamino:

secondlina:

I love anime because of the way it can be anything. Artistic, intellectual, targeted at kids or adults or everyone, sometimes stupid and often engaging, adrenalin pumping or a complete mindfuck of a narrative maze. That because these shows or movies or shorts are animated and Japanese would limit them somehow or relegate their potential to one type of creation is baffling.

Because Anime is a medium, not a genre.

In classes I give in schools about comics and animation, I always try to explain that all so called “types” of comics and animation are technically the same thing. The names we give them (American, European  Anime) are simply linked to the country of origin’s main aesthetic. Manga means the same thing as Bande dessinée and comic. These things should be separated by age group, themes and genres rather then cultural origin. 

While I agree that generalized statements about all manga/anime being the same are ridiculous, I also think it’s important to recognize that the origin of a story is still important context.  

Different cultures emphasize different values and themes in their works, and even the methods of storytelling tend to follow certain patterns.  There are always exceptions, of course, but I don’t think it’s bad to have terms that define a work’s cultural origin.

That is true - each culture has a certain way to spin a story. The culture does influence the content. That is impossible to deny.

I still prefer to divide stuff by theme and age group when I present them in classes rather then using the cultural terminology because the cultural terminology is synonymous of low quality/specific visual and story tropes among people who don’t know comics well (aka manga is nothing but porn, american stuff is nothing but superheroes, european stuff is nothing but Tintin). I still mention that manga and american stuff have it’s own patterns, but I think it helps them understand comics better when you don’t directly go for the cultural terms. At least, it helps me keep the teacher’s attention. 

It may not be the best way to present it, but so far, it worked pretty well for me to present comics under the general term of sequential art and divide stuff in another way, while still mentioning the cultural influence. Hummm.

As usual, Yamino brings a good point to the table and makes me want to chatter about comics all day…

Ditto. I’m sick of moronic, bigoted people, (particularly “animation students”) putting down anime. All you’re really saying is you hate animation from japan. “ANIME” is Japanese for “CARTOON.” Jfc. Don’t put down an entire art form from one country. It’s something that makes me legitimately angry.

(Source: mishawinsexster)

Mmm, I just finished watching “Sukitte Iinayo” (“Say ‘I Love You’”). It was good! The first episode especially, had fantastic direction that I wish had continued throughout the entire series. It was solid and beautiful all around. The next episodes went along on a good trot, the story flowed along quite well. But, it really could have done with a 2-cour. 13 episodes is just not enough, and I was kind of bewildered by the amount of chapters they tried to cram into the last couple episodes.

Above are a couple pretty screencaps.

germainetrain:

New year, new season of anime. Looks like there’s nothing very interesting. The only anime I’ll be watching for certain is Tamako Market. As always, I will also be watching whatever else has significant buzz on the internet.

Larger version

Uuuugh, I knoooow. I’m so sick and tired of anime that seemed to be made just to show cute girls doing cute things. Tamako Market doesss seem pretty nice though. (But it still falls into that category.) I’ll also check out Amnesia, even if it is for shallow reasons. But man, those eyes are too much for the characters. Their basically rainbows. And I’ll check out the show by Shaft, because Shaft. Otherwise the premise seems to be another boring, cute girls, slice of lifer.

This is the final secret hidden within the soul gem. When this jewel becomes dull and black, we will become grief seeds, and then witches. This is the inescapable fate of becoming a magical girl.

Anime style—to me in a nutshell— is a complete understanding of human anatomy, gesture & environmental design interpreted in a simplified manner with cartoon heads. Part of the reason why many contemporaries scoff at mimicking this style is because many kids who blindly copy anime style don’t understand this, and therefore suck at the aforementioned masteries…They get the cartoon heads right, though.

(via leseanthomas) —