Anime Apolyton

[loinburger]

Originally posted by ixnay37
You rate anime titles you've seen, and it builds a list of recommended anime for you.

Your top 5 suggested anime to watch
Whisper of the Heart (Mimi wo Sumaseba)

Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi)

Rurouni Kenshin OVA 1 (Samurai X)

Laputa: The Castle in the Sky (Tenkuu no Shiro Rapyuta)

Voice From a Distant Star (Hoshi no Koe)

Dammit, I haven't heard of any of these!

Ah well, it gave me a predicted rating of 7 for both Escaflowne and Evangelion, so at least there's no need to change my next intended anime purchases yet. (It seemed to be fairly accurate, since once I'd entered in about a dozen titles my actual rating rarely deviated from the predicted rating by more than 2 points.)

[Wraith]

--"This is an interesting site: "

Ran across that one a few weeks ago. Seems fairly accurate, although not amazingly so. It is still in the early test stages, though.

--"Anybody seen Spirited Away yet?"

Not the dub, but I've seen it subbed (thanks to the R2 DVD). Excellent movie. Lots of Japanese myths and legends are invoked, but it should still be very watchable without knowing about them.
Also, call the theater if you are interested in seeing this. There are some showing running subtitled prints instead of the dub. I've also heard that the dub is actually quite good.

--"I downloaded the first couple of episodes from the donkey"

They're on DVD in the US you know (*nudge nudge*).

--"I just rented the Lodoss War 2-disc series set from Lackluster and wasn't very impressed."

Not sure you really fit their target demographic, which would be fantasy RPGers. The series is based on some books which were based on actual RPG sessions. For people who played a lot of games like AD&D it's a fun trip.

--"Dammit, I haven't heard of any of these!"

Interesting. Several family movies there.

Whisper of the Heart is an excellent movie, about a young girl who pretty much accidentally finds an antique shop near where her father works. She spends some more time there and encounters a young boy (his grandfather runs the shop) who's studying to make violins. The story goes a lot further than this, but you really should watch it if you get the chance rather than have me spoil the plot. Might be hard, there's no R1 release yet.

Spirited Away is in theaters now so you can go watch it

Ruronin Kenshin OVA is pretty good. Story of a warrior in feudal Japan who is one of the top swordsmen around who gets mixed up in some of the politics, then tries to get out of it. Again, this description doesn't do justice to the story, but do avoid this dub.
You'll find this listed as Samurai X in stores and so on. Another company got the TV series, so there was some conflict on who could use what title. Guess who lost?

Laputa is one of the ones I haven't seen yet.

Voice of a Distant Star is actually an indie anime. One guy did the entire anime on his home PC, and he and his wife did the voice acting. It was later picked up by a studio, who redubbed it. It's quite a good story, best described as mecha shoujo concentrate (think Gunbusters condensed to one episode and you won't be too far off). The animation quality is great, too. From the backgrounds and characters to the mecha movements (even firing reverse thrusters) and warp effects. Good stuff. ADV licensed it for R1, so it'll be around sooner or later.

Wraith
"Every time I look at your scar I wonder what the person being slain has seen."
-- Tomoe

[ixnay]

loinburger and I must have very similar tastes...

Your top 5 suggested anime to watch
Banner of the Stars

Voice From a Distant Star (Hoshi no Koe)

Whisper of the Heart (Mimi wo Sumaseba)

Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi)

Laputa: The Castle in the Sky (Tenkuu no Shiro Rapyuta)

edit: How convienient, I just found someone sharing Laputa on my network. I'll have to watch it sometime soon.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Wraith
Interesting. Several family movies there.

Really? That's pretty surprising, especially since all of the anime to which I gave ratings of 9 or 10 (Perfect Blue, Princess Mononoke, Cowboy Bebop, and Lain) were, to some extent, violent and/or ****ed up.

[SnowFire]

Hmm.. Miyazaki films seem to take these lists. Before I realized that I forgot to rate it, Naussica was on the list (not a bad guess, but wrong.). I've got a nice mirror with my 4 Miyazaki films I've seen; Nausicca was a failed experiment, while Princess Mononoke was Nasuicca done right; Laputa was a terrible movie from the depths of the Abyss, while My Neighbor Totoro was its complete opposite, being awesome.

Whisper of the Heart (Mimi wo Sumaseba)
Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi)
Porco Rosso (Kurenai no Buta)
His and Her Circumstances (Kare Kano no Jijou)
Banner of the Stars

And btw, being that dubs came up before... the other dub that I think is clearly better than the sub is Ranma. I mean, my roommate watched it subbed, and it's just not funny. They translated the jokes properly in the dub, so maybe Kuno was quoting famous Japanese poets or something, but it just doesn't work unless he's doing random Shakespearean style. And the voice actors are all great too.

[ranskaldan]

I've seen Spirited Away. I found it as least as good as (or better!) than Mononoke. Overall, it's an amazing movie, and you should see it, whether or not you like anime.
(I watched it with original soundtrack and subtitles in Chinese.)

I wasn't impressed by Porco Rosso, but that could be because I watched it late at night and was falling asleep... lol, if I watch it again I might like it better.

Bottom line: go watch Spirited Away! You will like it.

[ixnay]

If Spirited Away comes anywhere near here, I'm going to see it.

[Apocalypse]

I saw an ad in the Chronicle that it comes somewhere in the Houston area next Friday.

[Wraith]

--"loinburger and I must have very similar tastes..."

Looks that way.

Banner of the Stars is another one I haven't seen. It should be out on DVD in R1 soon, and I will be getting it. I've seen the first season of this series, Crest of the Stars, and it's quite good science-fiction.

--"Perfect Blue, Princess Mononoke, Cowboy Bebop, and Lain"

Hmm. Well, Princess Mononoke explains the three other Miyazaki movies ^_^ Not quite sure how they got Kenshin out of that, althought it is good (and violent).
Spirited Away, btw, is also to some extent ****ed up. Sort of Arisu in Wonderland.

--"Miyazaki films seem to take these lists"

Well, you like one, you probably like at least some of the others.

--"Porco Rosso"

I quite enjoyed this one. Have the R2 DVD. Miyazaki again, this time the main character is a seaplane pilot in the Adriatic who's now working as basically a bounty hunter (set around WWI I think). He just happens to have been cursed to look like a pig.

--"His and Her Circumstances"

I've seen part of this. It was quite good, although I understand they catch up with the manga towards the end, at which point the quality goes down and they don't really get a resolution. However, it's rather unique among anime romance stories simply because the characters get together early on, and the rest of the show is about them coping with a releationship. Interesting characters.

--"I saw an ad in the Chronicle that it comes somewhere in the Houston area next Friday."

Yeah, this one's actually getting a little publicity. Like Mononoke, it isn't breaking any box office records, but it's doing incredibly on per-screen sales.

I'm trying to update my profile on that predictor right now. Half the things it had for recommendations were things I've seen Y(=^_^=) It's just running slow.

Edit:
Wow, that took a while. He's added quite a number of titles since I last looked.

Banner of the Stars
- Makes sense, I did quite enjoy Crest of the Stars and I have some other sci-fi shows very highly rated (Infinite Ryvius, which was on the recommended list until I updated it as watched)

Ocean Waves (Umi ga Kikoeru / I Can Hear the Sea)
Laputa: The Castle in the Sky (Tenkuu no Shiro Rapyuta)
Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind (Kaze no Tani no Naushika)
- These are all Studio Ghibli works, which again makes since, since all the ones I've seen got high marks.

Memories: Magnetic Rose
- Never even heard of this one. It seems to be one part of a thee-piece compilation, although the three pieces don't seem to have anything to do with each other. It does sound interesting.

Wraith
"Go ahead...do it....drink me."
-- Inaho ("Master of Mosquiton")

[SnowFire]

Well, you like one, you probably like at least some of the others.

Well, two. PM & MNT.

As for Memories, it's a group of 3 smaller features, and Magnetic Rose is the first (and best) one of them. Magnetic Rose is a bit of a slow starter, but it gets better, even if it is ultimately a Star Trek (TOS) episode. The second mini-movie in Memories is so hideously awful (to my tastes at least) that I could not stand to watch it all, I left 3/4 of the way through. Let's just say that comically inept villians are fine, and comically inept heroes a la Inspector Gadget are fine, but mega-stupidly inept characters that the show thinks is a hero but is in fact a mass-murdering villian don't work for me, thanks (Haha! All the tanks trying to save Tokyo from destruction blew up because Nobuo's a moron! Again! Ha! Ha!). The third part of Memories I didn't see (obviously), but I'm told it's nothing special. A picture of a society based completely around war, basically, kind of a blandified 1984.

[DanS]

"They're on DVD in the US you know (*nudge nudge*)."

Yeh, I know. I bought it on Monday. Reasonably priced at $80 for the series box set.

"Not the dub, but I've seen it subbed (thanks to the R2 DVD)"

Thanks for the pointer. I have an R2 NTSC-J player, so I'll check it out. Just to confirm, the Japanese version has English subs?

"Not sure you really fit their target demographic, which would be fantasy RPGers. The series is based on some books which were based on actual RPG sessions. For people who played a lot of games like AD&D it's a fun trip."

"Fun trip?" Egads. I've played a lot of AD&D, at least on the computer.

"Seems fairly accurate, although not amazingly so."

Had a question regarding that. What is "fanservice"?

[SnowFire]

DanS: Fanservice is the term for, er, gratuitous nudity pretty much. When you have two average shows competing amongst each other, one can often get the edge by being racier, alas. Generally the worse the show, the more they add fanservice to try and make up for it (although there are certainly bad shows without it, too). Also, it afflicts some genres worse than others, for obvious reasons. And some shows have a good excuse for their content, too. But it's not too hard to tell when that latest skirt blowing up was pointless.

[DanS]

Got it. Thank you.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by SnowFire
DanS: Fanservice is the term for, er, gratuitous nudity pretty much.

Ah, I was wondering why there didn't seem to be a "pornography/nudity/whatever" category, especially since some of the titles listed are (borderline) Hentai (like Kite, f'rinstance).

[Wraith]

--"Yeh, I know."

Medetashi medetashi

--"Just to confirm, the Japanese version has English subs?"

Yes. All the Studio Ghibli R2 DVDs seem to. All the ones I've seen, anyway.
Edit:
Decided I'd be more specific. I know for sure that the Spirited Away DVD does, so as long as you buy from a legitamite retailer you'll be fine. I've been using AMO Tokyo for R2 DVDs.

--"What is "fanservice"?"

Technically, it's anything done to please the fans of the show. This ranges from the little references (like seeing a stuffed Totoro on someone's shelf in the show) to the kind of nudity SnowFire mentions. Most of the time it's used to refer to the flesh-factor, although this ranges from panty shots or tight outfits up to nudity.
This is, understandably, rather more prevailent in shows targeted at teenage boys.

--"especially since some of the titles listed are (borderline) Hentai"

A couple of them aren't borderline at all.

Wraith
"I like you. Want to be my guinea pig?"
-- Washu