Animedragon

Here's the result of 20+ years of buying manga...

I think that anime ranking systems are very subjective. A quick read through of the Top Ten List topic on this forum will soon make it quite clear that what series appeals to one person does not necessarily appeal to someone else. Some reviewers rate series for various aspects of the series like storyline, animation, artwork, sound etc but even those can be subjective. People's taste in anime series can, and often does, change over time. Some of the series I watched 20 years ago and thought were excellent I now wonder what I ever saw in them. I think that while 'Top Ten' lists are fun to do we shouldn't get too hung up on 'ranking systems' we should just sit back and enjoy watching the anime we like and not worry too much about what other people think of our favourite series.

What's the coolest thing anime can do? Let's think... It can reach into your heart and break it. It can reach into your heart and lift it up. It can reach into your mind and challenge it.

Like you I got the Gunsmith Cats manga because I wanted more than just the OAV.

Royal Space Force : Wings of Honneamise. I first saw this film back in the mid 1990's when VHS ruled the home entertainment industry, and I thought it was a really good film. So when the DVD era dawned and I was replacing my old VHS tapes with DVDs it was one of the films I wanted to have in my DVD collection but the DVD release when it came out was one of those Special Editions and *seriously* expensive, so I didn't buy it. Then last week I spotted it on Amazon at a 'bargain bin' price so I added it to my current order. Last night I settled down to watch it, for a film made in 1987 it is very much a product of its time and has the distinctive 80's anime style, this is not a bad thing of course and there are many 80's anime series that are still well worth watching, but to my mind Wings of Honneamise is not one of them and the 25 years since I last watched it have not been kind to it. I can see why when it was first released it was regarded as a great film, but I don't think it has aged well and I found the storyline pacing a bit slow and even slightly boring in places. Part way through the film someone knocked on my door, now normally this would annoy me as I don't like being interrupted while watching anything, but I was quite willing to hit pause and answer the door and I suspect that had the call been about something that needed immediate action I would quite happily not gone back to the film. I realise that there must be those who regard Wings of Honneamise as a great film and I'm sorry if I've upset or offended you, but in my opinion (for what it's worth) it was a great film that just hasn't stood the test of time.

You do realise don't you that that couple have a framed copy of that photo hanging on their wall and tell all their friends how they met a professional wrestling star.

I'd buy a manga usually for one of three reasons. Because I enjoyed the anime version and want to read the manga it's based on. I've found that some anime follow the manga very closely others, just don't. Sometimes I think the manga is better, sometimes I think the anime is better, sometimes I can't decide which I prefer. But generally I find the anime adaptations to be much closer to the original than the average Hollywood film-of-the-book, which often leave me wondering if the scriptwriters had only read the dust jacket rather than the whole book. Because the anime is only the first few volumes of the manga and I'm curious to know how the story continues, although for a couple of manga I quickly realised that it was a sort of soap opera and there wasn't going to be an ending and dropped the series. Because there isn't an anime version, but the story looked interesting.

The sun is shining in an almost cloudless sky and the weatherman says it could reach 18 C today.

You did well. 9/10 Top row: Cardcaptor Sakura. Clannad. Fushigi Yugi. Middle row: Ef: A Tale of Memories. Macross. Magic Knight Rayearth. Bottom row: You're Under Arrest. Noir. Bubblegum Crisis.

I'm just finishing watching Love Hina again after, well, rather a long time. It's as crazy and off the wall as I remember it to be. The two movies are what anime series movies should be, a continuation of the story not an attempt to recap the whole 24 episodes in one and a bit hours.

Age is just a number. Never forget that while Growing Old is compulsory, Growing Up is optional.

Currently 20 C, warm and sunny. Which makes a nice change, but it also means that I don't have an excuse for staying in and watching anime.

"interpretive" is a very good way of describing the final couple of episodes.

I've noticed that problem with replying to certain posts. When I click 'submit' it comes up with message that says 'saving' but that doesn't seem to go away until you move off that page. The emoji pop-out closing when you move the mouse outside the pop-out bar is common to all such controls, not just this forum. If you move the mouse outside the pop-out area the program thinks you no longer wish to use that feature and closes it. Horizontal and vertical scroll bars do the same thing, which can be annoying, but the program is working as designed.

I don't think I'll outgrow anime. I watch anime every day, usually while having my lunch and dinner as there's nothing I want to watch on TV at mealtimes. The big plus being that when watching a DVD the programme starts when I've got the meal ready and there's no advert breaks! Apiology accepted . I wonder if that makes me the oldest person on here? Are there any other claimants for the (dubious) title?

At 69 I'm probably more of an Animedinosaur than an Animedragon. I discovered anime in 1996 while flicking through the TV channels looking for something interesting to watch, then found some anime on VHS in a local shop. The rest, as they say, is history.

Welcome aboard. Have a look around and make yourself at home.

"A Silent Voice" I bought this film because I have a friend who is deaf and I was interested to see how it handled a deaf character. But I have to admit that I wasn't over impressed with the film. I understand why Shoya Ishida set out to make deaf new girl Shoko Nishimya's school life miserable, and I understand that when the teachers step in, the ringleader of the bullies can quickly find themselves being shunned. The story moves on a few years and Shoya is a bit older and trying to see Shoko again but his motives aren't very clearly explained nor are the actions of his former classmates when he and Shoko meet them. I also felt that the film didn't really explain the blue crosses on everyone's faces. Shoko's suicide attempt also seemed to come compleatly out of nowhere, one minute she's happily watching fireworks the next she's going to jump off a balcony and kill herself. Having watched the film twice I couldn't really understand why everyone was saying what a great film it was, what was I missing? Eventually I found a YouTube video about the film and having watched this I watched the film a third time and now agree that it is indeed a good film, but I think a it could have made a better job of explaining Shoya and Shoko's motivations for their actions. In conclusion I think the problem with the film is that it tried to put too big a story into too short a time, it would I think have been much better as a 13 part series where there would have been time to fuly explore and develop Shoya and Shoko's personal circumstances, characters, motivations and interactions with the other characters in the the story. Thinking about it, this film comes across to me as one of those films that attempt to compress a 5 hour TV series into a 90 minute film with the result that some important plot details get omitted. People with "invisible" disabilities like deafness often face an uphill battle in our modern world and Kyoto Animation are to be commended for creating a film to highlight the issues such people face and a daily basis.

I went to anime cons for about 9 years from 2002 onwards, I went for two main reasons. 1. For the video rooms where I had the opportunity to watch a couple of episodes of series I'd heard about but was unlikely to see because they weren't easily available. 2. For the dealer's room where I could get CDs, artbooks, models and badges etc which were generally hard to get anywhere else. Why did I stop going? Three main reasons. 1. Family commitments and other such things. 2. The arrival of international credit card payments made it possible to buy anime merchandise direct from Japan. 3. Towards the end I realised that I was old enough to be the father of many of the other con-goers and I just didn't fit into their culture. Overall, I enjoyed my 9 years as a con-goer I saw some good anime and spent serious money on lots of anime goodies in the dealer's room!!!

I think that in the 80's & 90's series were either a mecha series or a comedy series. Now, I realise that that is a pretty sweeping statement and there were a number of series that weren't mecha or comedy but it seems to me, thinking back at the series that the 80's & 90's series that were being released on VHS when I started watching anime in 1996 were either mecha or comedy. The mecha examples that come most readily to my mind are Macross and Gunbuster. Evangelion broke the standard mold for mecha shows that the others seemed to follow, which was I think a major factor in its poplarity. The comedy series that come most readily to my mind are Ranma 1/2 and Urusei Yatsura. These series are sort of like my anime watching history, and watching them now they all have a definite artwork style that's very different from later series. I think that if I was starting out watching anime now I'd be looking to watch more recent series rather than those 80's & 90's series.

It's cold and wet. The weather man says it will be better tomorrow, but I'm not sure about that, he said it would be nice today!

I think, almost, everyone was a Bubblegum Crisis fan I still like the series and still listen to my BGC soundtrack CDs. Patlabor was good at the time and I quite liked it, but I watched some of it a couple of months back and I don't think it has 'worn' as well as some other shows. I never got into Gundam, I was (and still am) a Macross fan. But like you I have a hard job remembering the shows from the 80s & 90s, I only remembered Armitage III because I saw the DVD at the back of the cupboard and thought I'd give it a watch. Curiously while it was the Sci-Fi shows that really got me into anime I tend more towards the slice of life shows these days.

I watched a bit of 1990's retro Sci-Fi Cyperpunk today in form of Armitage III. A four part OAV series with lots of action, some of it quite violent, but still as good a series as it was when I watched it way back. It's always interesting to see what anime creators in the 1980's & 90's thought the world of the 21st Century would be like.

Yes, and the Gunsmith Cats manga was rather more, shall we say "adult", than the anime version.