Report Vasilivros's Profile

Thank you kind sir

Hate to tell you but I don't have much thoughts on it. Diebuster looks like post-Evangelion pre-Trigger Gainax. I by-and-large agree with the video. Fan-service in Diebuster works to the shows' favor.

I don't really think that there isn't many great shows of the 2010s anymore. Actually, I think there are plenty--they're just hard to find because there's just so much anime out there now. The bar is shifting because of that. Also, I think the 2010, 2011, and 2012 were the strongest years of this decade, aside from 2018 and 2019. The middle of the decade seems very weak to me. Then again, I've only seen a bare fraction of what this decade has to offer (152 anime total so far, and watching Vinland Saga and Charlotte right now makes it 154). Although I've seen less shows from the 80s (90 so far) and less from the 90s (125 plus Blue Seed and its omake series make it 127) I've seen a higher percentage of shows from those decades and thus have a much stronger impression of those periods.

I'm interested in Neptunia. I want to give the games a try first but I might cave and watch the show. Fate/Zero is excellent. Psycho-Pass is excellent--although I've been told Season 2 sucks and to skip it. The movie was pretty good but not as good as the show. Penguindrum is on my HiDive queue as well.

Actually, a good friend of mine loved Steins;Gate but he definitely said watch Zero.

Sure, lemme know what you've watched and what's good.

Steins;Gate is awesome. Made in Abyss is a slow burn and would have just been average if the last four episodes or so introduce some real character growth and moral dilemmas that absolutely catapulted the series. Mushi-shi was great--all those who recommended it were right but you have to watch it with the mindset that it is a sort of monster-of-the-week show. Pupa was as bad as everyone said it was. A Certain Magical Index season 1 was awesome. Season 2 had some weak arcs (and one that was just atrociously bad) but overall it was good. I watched the Mahoromatic OVAs and movie and they were delightful (first OVA season had Anno on the staff). Azumanga Daioh was a good time. My niece convinced me to give Assassination Classroom and No Game, No Life a try--the former was kind of bland but the latter was awesome. I finally finished Saint Seiya (after watching it for two years off-and-on). Shiki was a pretty decent vampire tale. And I finally got a chance to watch the Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai movie and it was a good finale to a cute, charming series.

I also caught up on a lot of old-school mecha. Space Runaway Ideon was pretty decent but the movie is awesome and you can see where it influenced Anno Hideaki's End of Evangelion. Armored Trooper Votoms and Xabungle were pretty good but don't expect next-level storytelling. Aura Battler Dunbine is a weird mix of mecha and isekai--and reverse isekai at the end--but wasn't all that great (not bad but not great) and frankly, Escaflowne did a lot of similar things much, much, much better.

On the non-anime front, Stranger Things 3 was all right but I can tell the show is going downhill and Season 4 will likely be shit. I've basically given up on Hollywood so I've seen no new movies lately and American TV disgusts me anymore.

As for books, I'm burned out lately. Been doing a lot of reading for work the past two semesters and I've taken the summer off.

Surviving as best as I can. :)

I consider it poor because it is.
The whole mirror idea is centered around inverting character personalities, and it would possibly work as a groundwork for character building. However, not only was it stretched unnecessarily over pretty much everything in the installment, but it ultimately gave us nothing. Even if we were to say that the deliverance of the twist was passable, which it wasn't, the revelation gave as absolutely nothing. Not only does it end the story in a rather unsatisfactory manner, but the result itself has no value. The 20% reflection discount gives us nothing but a poor excuse of an answer to the story.
The whole mirror idea has no value behind it, no plot was advanced, no characters progressed, nothing new was created. i won't elaborate further on what it did(n't) bring, because I stated that part quite clearly in my review.

Lost 20% isn't the clue, it's the outcome.
I know what you're trying to argue, and I understand why you think it's a fair point. But that's ultimately pointing to a dead end; intentional or not, it gave us nothing. It just payed the homage to its poor mirror philosophy.

That is true, although that's a very poor philosophy that I don't want to bring up in this discussion. However, it DID end up being completely redundant for that exact reason: every clue pointed to nothing, since it was lost within those 20%. Sure, Ougi was only to blame for the cover up part, but it was still a very poor outcome regardless.

When building any type of mystery, writer is more or less obligated to give the audience some sort of hints along the way. Not just because it makes the viewer invested into solving the mystery, which is part of the appeal, but also adds to the weight of the possible twist that may come around at the end. It helps build the story and keep it rolling even if a lot of information still remains hidden, and all the relations between elements remain covered. However, when the mystery is "solved" with a plot twist that not only had all the pointing clues completely miss the mark, but also make them completely redundant in a bigger picture, the audience is left very disappointed.
I'll explain what i mean exactly in the spoiler below



Hope this helps.

Well, I was expecting something that amounted to "all style, zero substance." While I'm not as harsh as MAL user ZephSilver on VE (read his review, it's good), I still agree with a lot of his criticisms. Yet I don't think those criticisms really account for why he gave it a 6 whereas I gave it an 8. VE nails its premise, and a lot better than I think Zeph gives it credit for. It COULD have been an absolute classic. It's damn close. But it isn't. I think I enjoyed it so much was because I was expecting it to have been a victim of the hype machine and went in with low expectations. While it WAS a hype-machine victim, I thought it was still very good.

The Monogatari series suffers from the issue of translation. To truly appreciate it, you have to be fluent in Japanese. That much is patently obvious. So far, though, I think it is very interesting. I need to rewatch it--direction is either ingenious or pretentious and I can't decide which, yet.

Heck yeah. I was surprised by how good Violet Evergarden was. Damn, dude. Watched Jojo's season 1, liked it a ton. Nearly done Ranma 1/2 after slowly crawling through it for nearly a year (I only got up to halfway through season 3 in the 1990s). Watched the Dirty Pair TV series (I had missed it back in the day). Finally watched Bakemonogatari and liked it a ton as well.

Eh. It may not be very wise to put your streaming habits in print in public. And I'm playing with my cards close to my chest.

I'll say this, though: I certainly SYMPATHIZE with people who stream unlicensed or unavailable anime through pirate sites. Or stream uncensored/unedited versions (in some cases, original, unaltered versions) of anime when moral busybodies decide something needs to be modified. I certainly sympathize with those people and really, truly understand why they do it.

I haven't seen Diebuster yet. I'm waiting to see Gunbuster first. And waiting is quite annoying.

I prefer to watch shows that have been properly licensed through legitimate means. PREFER. And that's all I'll put in print in public about my own activities.

Bro's got Diebuster on DVD/Blu-Ray but Gunbuster isn't licensed in my country yet. I want to watch those legally. I'm running out of patience, though.... I DESPERATELY want to see it.