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GeekNights 071121 - Hentai
Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss hentai in all its... glory? In the news, we don't have any news (other than Death Note coming out), so Rym throws down a GeekBack and Scott throws out a GeekBite.
Scott's Thing - How creativity is being strangled by the law
Rym's Thing - This man exists.
Scott's Thing - How creativity is being strangled by the law
Rym's Thing - This man exists.
Comments
[Edit] This is it, right?
That wasn't hotlinking, it was direct linking. There's a subtle difference. ^_~
By the by Scott, great thing of the day
What a CREEPY COMIC!!!!! :O
However I will say that the best hentais out there are done by U-Jin. Because, they were hilarious. Not so much his recent works though.
Also, Akagi is an awesome anime. Do not listen to Scrym, everyone should at least give it a try. (you do not need to know how to play Mahjong to enjoy, though it does help) I grew up playing mahjong and I do admit that it can be figured out to play optimally once you understand the concept and probability calculations. In the end, luck comes into play more than skill. However, the way Akagi portrays its Mahjong games makes it as if there is indeed a lot skill involved, regardless of whether there is in actuality or not. Because of this, the slow pace and commentary is required by the anime to achieve its suspenseful edge-of-your-seat action. Remus is not exagerating when he says Akagi utilizes the method masterfully. Mahjong is in itself a boring game to watch but they are able to make it so entertaining, it is unbelievable. You also compare it to Hikaru no Go. HnG is also very good due to its story but that actual games of Go are boring. I also know how to play Go but because the game is very complex, when someone does an amazing move, you can not immediately understand how amazing a move it is. I find myself having to pause often in order to examine the board just to understand what everyone is screaming about. Akagi, on the other hand, has the perfect pace to give you enough time to understand what is going on. Of course, Mahjong is a much simpler game than Go so i give HnG plenty of slack, but in the end I enjoyed Akagi much more because of the way the draw it out. HnG, i believe, could also benefit if it focused more on the actual games.
Scrym's tastes are their own and i respect/understand them but they speak as if their views are correct and that every should be like them (Scott more than Rym). I have seen every anime that they have recommended and found them to all float around mediocrity. Whats worse is that they resemble the precise problems that they complain about. Trigun and Utena, for example, is basically nothing until near the end. Talk about only getting good 14 episodes in, try only getting good until the last 5 episodes and even then, it is subpar. Everything before that is just plain uninteresting. They complain about how Shounen fighting sucks because of its monster of the week style, how is Utena and Evangelion not just the duel/monster of the week? At least shounen battles makes sense (random cars and moving tables, wtf?). Also, how are the epic battles in, say Naruto, in anyway inferior to the retarded 30 second battles in Trigun or Utena? Are people so crazy to prefer cool awesome fight scenes over the sorry excuses for duels in Utena? (i'm going to lunge at you and flash the screen to end this, every time) Compare the epic Naruto vs Sasuke battle to any fight in Trigun or Utena and tell me which is better. They also complain how stupid it is that shounen fighting just makes up moves to counter other moves but how else can the characters overcome obstacles? Furthermore, how is this bad? I found myself greatly entertained and impressed when someone pulls out a new badass ability. You know what i think is stupid and made up from nowhere? The retarded fake science in Escaflowne. I mean, enhanced luck soldiers and fate particles? Come on Scyrm! I enjoyed the anime up until then but the last few episodes where so absurd that i felt like they were taking their audiences for 3 year olds.
Oh noes, i guess i wont have Scott's respect anymore. My life will no longer have meaning.
The only way you can get a feeling of suspense is if you force yourself to pretend that the things happening during the battle actually do matter, or if you don't realize they don't matter in the first place. A drawn out battle is nothing more than just boring waiting for something that actually matters to happen.
This is why we like Cowboy Bebop style battling. It is short, so no boring waiting. Almost everything that happens in the battle matters. Even when things in the battle do not matter, there is at least interesting and entertaining animation and choreography.
Also, filler episodes are awesome.[/sarcasm] What is the ratio of filler to story episodes in Naruto, Bleach and/or One Piece atm?
Example 2 (Naruto): Naruto vs Neji in the exam. Randomly pulls out the ol' Nine-tailed fox to defeat a vastly superior opponent who was owning him mere moments before.
Example 3 (Saint Seiya in general): No one can stay dead no matter how badly they're messed-up.
Need me to keep going?
In some of the Naruto episodes I've seen (the one where they're in the forest, fighting those Four Sound Ninjas), the fights are relatively fast paced, fairly well-choreographed, and entertaining to watch. I think the point of those fights were to showcase the natural progression of each character's abilities and how each character would deal in such an impossible situation. They weren't pulling abilities out of their ass because the abilities used in this arc were all used by their parents in an earlier episode. It was interesting to see how every character was slowly growing up and becoming just like, but completely different from, their parents.
Also, the situations were quite entertaining. It's fun to see a character like Neji, who is used to being the condescending elite genius, facing an opponent that was obviously out of his league. It's fun to see Kiba, a character who took advantage of his opponents by outnumbering them with his dog/beast clone, fight an incredibly powerful ninja who can split into two. It's fun to see Chouji, a rotund glutton who has a ridiculously stupid clan ability, actually fight. The fighting wasn't cerebral, but sometimes you just have to lay back and watch the fights as they go. It's about as fun as watching wrestling or UFC, you know it's either fake or heavily mediated, but it's still enjoyable to watch.
I'm probably not as pissed off at Naruto as most of you are, since my friends only really showed me the most important episodes (cutting it down to about 25-35 episodes). Well, keep in mind that harnessing the Nine-Tailed Fox was the only way for Naruto to unblock his chakra points. Also, what REALLY beat Neji was Naruto's usage of the Shadow Clone to fake his defeat, catch Neji by surprise, and ultimately attack him from underground with a direct uppercut.
The thing about Saint Seiya is that they are not allowed to die, not ever. And come, on would you let this pretty face die :P
But really, they just won't die!
But in defense of Saint Seiya, all the batlles on the 12 houses only lasted a couple of episodes :P
Actually, Chouji's pills and Shikamaru's light grenade were entirely new. However, that arc gets into real trouble when they go into three or four battles at once, and it starts to wear and really get annoying. Also, the last three fights are all wrapped up with this ridiculous deus ex machina. Finally, they (as always) have way too many flashbacks, so half of the episodes there's not even any fighting going on.
Also, I really liked the stylish way they brought Sand Ninjas in. I didn't think they messed that up at all.
Hell, a lot of the duels themselves are way more about the significant dialogue and specific imagery presented than about the physical actions that are taking place around them. Big example of such: the fierce back-and-forth dialogue between Utena and Juri during their duel, quick flashes of Shiori in Juri's mind, and the miraculous spearing of Juri's rose to the ground at the end of it. Utena and Juri's second duel is even more significant, but I won't describe it here so as not to spoil it for those who haven't watched that far in the series. And no, the spoiler isn't that Utena wins.
Also, there is the factor of stock footage in the Utena duels. As anyone who has watched the series knows, the series was on a low budget and thus forced to re-use a ton of animation to save money, especially in the duels. However, despite the fact that the production staff had to re-use footage, they managed to use such footage in a way that has an enormous effect that especially becomes apparent later in the series. In regards to the duels, the re-used footage seems to reinforce the fact that the actions taken in the duel don't matter - the actions in the duels are similar every time, nearly identical in a lot of cases. That seems to symbolize a literal "revolution" (going around in circles), and implies that they are essentially pointless. Not to give anything away, but that pointlessness becomes a big concept in the series that comes even more into play in the series' final episodes. Even if you take the symbolism and such out of the equation, it still stands that the staff felt the duels were not as important to spend money on as other things in the series were. However, as you so helpfully pointed out earlier, that sort of thing comes down to personal preference. You prefer good action and lots of it for long periods of time, and that's fine - it's your preference. I will agree that the way Scrym talked in this episode, they made it sound as though their preferences are the gold standard that everyone should follow, and maybe they should have toned that down a bit. You can't just turn around and do the same thing, though, by claiming that your preferences are more valid and "better" than those of others. Clearly, a lot of people on this board prefer shorter, more to-the-point fights, and that's their preference. If everyone here could just say, "Fine. I like what I like, and you like what you like. Neither one is 'better' than the other," then that would be great.
As for my preferences: I like a good bit of action myself, and will seek out the appropriate material to find it in when I want it. I like lots of action, but like others on the board, I don't like it to be too drawn out. My ideal way to see lots of action would be best presented by the movie Shoot 'Em Up. This movie was made for one purpose and one purpose only - to have as many gunfights and action sequences as possible. Note the word "sequences," though. While the action made up about 90% of the movie, there were short, slower scenes in between the individual action sequences that let the audience catch their breath, making individual fights last about five minutes each, ten at the most. The breather scenes were not very good on their own (some were funny, though ^^), but at least they didn't last long. It was just long enough to let me come down from the previous action high for a bit and then get excited for the next one, which tended to come right when I was ready.
The reason I don't tend to like shounen action series is that a lot of the "fights" either last too long without providing a breather (thus making me "mellow out", as One Sin said, and tune out the fight after a certain point), or spend far too much time on the breathers (i.e.: flashbacks, long pans across characters staring at one another, random standing there and taunting, pointless "ha ha, you are too weak! look at you down there!" dialogue while one character sits there breathing hard and bleeding, etc.) and not enough on the actual fighting. When I want action, I want it to pack a big punch for as long as possible without being spread thin (five straight minutes is my ideal max, maybe ten minutes if it's very clever and entertaining). If a show or movie can provide a lot of those sequences without putting them too too close together, I am a happy viewer.