ittaku

Finished Kuragehime. See my quote below from my romcom challenge thread. Since I have plenty of spare time in the evenings here on holiday, I'm going to start on the absolutely mammoth task of watching all 96 episodes of Maison Ikkoku. I never finished it the first time and I feel like it's something I need to finish since it's a romcom classic that inspired so many other manga, anime and light novels, including my all time favourite, Love Hina. I'll even be rewatching it from episode 1 all over again.

Finished watching kuragehime. it was a fun show even if romance was only hinted at. It was very light-hearted and easy to enjoy. A lot of the plot evolved in convenient rather than logical ways, and a lot of the characters - mainly the other otakus she lived with - were about as interesting as cardboard and received no development whatsoever. On the other hand, Hanazawa Kana was singularly sensational voicing Tsukimi which was more than enough in itself to make this worth watching. 7/10

Nope, I'd say not. I believe it's more about possible further season funding.

Absolutely. Should and will are completely different. The forces at work that determine how much funding a series gets towards being animated have far less to do with the original story and far more to do with how saleable the product is in the short term. The two examples I gave, the romance is resolved early on in the manga so it made sense to do so. Stories that end with resolution of romance it makes sense to hold off till the last episode or two. It's the rest that are frustrating - shows that are animated before the original source material has ended (LN, manga etc.) and they cannot resolve the romance since it "spoils" the original material, or shows that only get funding for a short stretch of the original material and thus never get to the romantic resolution part. It's something I've struggled with in anime for decades now and one of my biggest peeves... After a frustrating ending without resolution I usually fire up a VN with a solid H scene to wash away my frustration.

When Biba appeared they jumped the shark.

I really enjoyed jitsu wa as well and was disappointed by lack of resolution too. The reality is I did thoroughly enjoy it anyway. No doubt they're banking on getting funding for another season. Still, all it takes is to watch something like rakudai kishi or ore monogatari which goes "fuck that shit" and resolves the romance early on instead and runs with it to see that this approach of not resolving romance should have died as a mechanism a decade ago in anime.

I'm unsure whether this will be helpful or not but I'd like to give my perspective on temporary bans as I'm a moderator on a very busy forum with over 50x the traffic of this one and a hell of a lot more mods than here. In short, a lot of people aren't intrinsically trolls and they fuck up and get carried away without knowing they're doing so until they get a temporary ban. This is usually 2 out of 3 people that we hand out bans to. Those people come back and basically never infringe upon the forum rules ever again and tread much more carefully. The rest, however, are just trolls and there's a variable length of time between them getting their first temporary ban and their final permanent ban. Basically the rate at which they graduate from one place to the next depends on their intrinsic troll nature. Some troll as soon as they return while most are calm for a while before losing it and falling back into their old habits. In short, the temporary bans make a massive difference to the overall signal to noise ratio on the forum and are a much more obvious flag to the unwitting perpetrators that they've overstepped the mark. Whether the balance is different on this forum or not I cannot tell but no doubt the same rules apply to some degree or other. Deleting/hiding posts tends to actually aggravate the latter group much faster and brings them to ban-worthy status quicker rather than teaching them they've overstepped the mark while the former group are less likely to elevate to ban status. Both bans and deletions are necessary evil components of maintaining the delicate balance between free(ish) speech and worthwhile contributions. One thing I am unsure of is whether members on this forum get notification if their posts are deleted/hidden/moved and the reasoning behind it. That often helps the member declare whether they're going to be a repeat offender or learn from their mistakes before needing a ban. Note I'm not passing judgement about the details of this argument, moderation accuracy or anyone's behaviour in particular that was discussed in this thread but simply pointing out what we've observed on another forum.

They're extremely similar in style, scope, comedy type, and even the lead characters. If you liked one you'll like the other. I watched both and would say SA is a little better, but I gave them both 6/10.

Finished watching Special A. It was okay but never really tickled my fancy very much. Not a popular enough show to write a lot more about it. Now watching Kuragehime.

^ Nisekoi was awesome But it's a romcom, not really a SOL show.

Finished Special A. It was okay. Once again the old school humour and animation fell flat for me. The overall story was mildly amusing and the ending quite satisfying. The last 6 episodes were a cut above the rest which were just not that funny. Either way I didn't lose my time watching it but it only rates a 6/10 for me. Long story behind that but I had already dropped the clannad series for hating it in the first place and then found myself being part of the fansub group that did the first release of after story. I did not enjoy subtitling it as the material just didn't click with me on any level and the melodrama felt like nonsense to me after hating the series too. Watching kuragehime next.

Then why are you even here if, by your comment, it sounds like you basically don't like visual novels?

Looking on the posts so far, finally I don't feel alone in saying Key sucks.

Yeah but skipping you can watch what goes on and get a vague idea of the story which will then distinguish itself from standalone H CGs.

Check my watched list. I've already seen it. 8/10

Chihayafuru was very good but it wasn't strong in either the rom or the com side - the rom side appears to be waiting for further seasons to really come to the fore. Nonetheless I enjoyed the two seasons of it that exist to date, thanks. 8/10

Well there's nothing like being on many hours of boring flights with a laptop full of anime to catch up, so I marathoned my way through Chihayafuru S1 and S2 (yes Australia to Europe really does take that long.) All in all this is a very good sport anime (and I really mean that since it could have been baseball, tennis, ping pong, cycling or anything else the way it was handled.) I liked the character evolution, the execution and the introduction to a game I knew nothing about and probably never would have. One of my complaints with it is the over the top melodramatic music was sometimes out of keeping with how dramatic the actual events were. It was all music with a limited selection which is not unusual but occasionally managed to detract from the story telling since it was so over-the-top. The other thing was, even though I preferred the characters in season 2, there was far too much in the way of flashbacks filling out the story by that stage - and by flashbacks I don't mean past backstory but scenes we'd already watched over and over already. It was kind of tiring. The story itself seemed to be heading in a mostly predictable direction though rarely through obvious plot devices. The romance was indeed very much secondary to the story and with no sign of it being resolved any time soon; fortunately since it was only minor in the story it didn't hurt to not be resolved so much (unlike shows where romance is the primary endpoint.) No doubt romance will become a big part of any future season(s). Towards the end of season 2 they started to overuse my most hated plot device though - the conveniently interrupted important comment from someone who never gets to finish what they want to say and lose the opportunity or courage... The fact that the episodes are numbered as poem verses suggests to me they plan 100 episodes in total, one for each of the card poems which would mean 4 seasons. I'll definitely watch a S3 and S4 if they ever come out. A most appreciated recommendation, 8/10

There's a cardcaptor reboot planned (?) next year so you can revisit Sakura's romantic comedy disguised as a magical girl series all over again.

I was part of a fansub group that tackled To Heart 2. While I was watching it through I was rather bored until the character Ruuko appeared who blew my mind. This led to me investigating the visual novel and somehow... 8 years of translating and project management later I'm completing the translation project for it because of her.

Indeed tastes vary wildly and I agreed with that to begin with. Interestingly enough I concur with "popular" opinions on ANN/MAL about 80% of the time and 20% of the time I rate shows much less than the average there. On the other hand it's much rarer that I rate a show much higher than the average there so there must at least be a fair amount of crossover between most peoples' tastes. However usually if I rate a show lower than the average there it's not for production values but just because it doesn't click with me - not funny, don't like thematic material, too frustrating writing etc.

I did that with Gakusen Toshi Asterisk but it exceeded all my expectations and just kept getting worse till it had the flattest most boring ending I've endured in a long time.

Sure, everyone has different tastes. For me at least, I'd rate that the worst show for many seasons...

There is no standard whatsoever; it's left up to the artists to figure out their own interpretation of the obscenity laws and the law enforcement agency uses their own discretion to determine if something is obscene or not. The vagueness of the law means each studio will determine how much pixelation they need and often you find the higher profile the company, the larger the mosaics. Yep, it's totally fucked up. Feel free to look into the history of it and see how the US was actually responsible for telling Japan to be less obscene after WWII and they formed their own bizarre interpretation with this obscenity law that is so cemented now it seems absurd in this free-for-all Internet age.

For your own sake, drop big order asap and pick up another show instead.