I do get the sense that this was a weaker decade than the 2000s and 1990s. Especially for non-indie games.

Quote from: Verbatim on September 01, 2019, 11:13:40 AM

No need to get all salty because I don't enjoy your favorite anime. We don't all have as much free time (or care) to spend writing down detailed reviews of cartoons or games. Seems pretty obvious that much of these snide remarks still stem from me calling you out over your stupid comments in that Serious thread. Get over yourself my man.

i'm not even asking for detail, i'm asking for coherent points and meaningful observations

all you're doing is quibbling over nonsense, so maybe you should change the thread's title to reflect that

if your biggest complaint about a show is the size of a knife, i think you have more free time than you're letting on

EVA EPISODE 3:

So many pan shots over still images. Gets beat up by bully whose seemingly nice friend just stands by and smiles as if it's common. No one questions why a child is the pilot of humanity's only real defense. Literal 0/10 monster design. Kid finally showing some emotion is good. The tiny little knife as the ultimate attack was honestly just laughable. Start of bully redemption arc was okay. Monster fight was uninspired.

3.5/10, was waiting for it to end and am losing interest.

unless you're an infant who needs constant shiny objects to be flashed around in order to be entertained, there's nothing wrong with panning shots over still images—it puts more emphasis on the dialogue, which is a nice and economic way of letting you know that what's being said is important (this episode in particular brings up the hedgehog's dilemma to explain shinji's fear and social anxiety in a way that the audience can relate to, which invariably makes him a more sympathetic character)

if the dialogue doesn't seem important, then the shots probably serve to give the audience a chance to reflect a bit on what's happening (either in the grander scheme, or in the characters' minds), while simultaneously providing an establishing shot for what's about to happen next

i guess that bully's "seemingly nice friend" isn't so nice after all, then, is he? it's not completely unnatural for somebody (especially a kid) to take the side of close friends during physical conflict, even if they're in the wrong—so once again, you're doing that thing where you mistake a character flaw for a narrative flaw, which basically means that you're running out of things to arbitrarily criticize, and are just grasping at straws

it doesn't even count as a nitpick if it's just wrong

while how the public feels about children being eva pilots (and whether they know at all) is left ambiguous, you cannot definitively say that "no one questions" it—once it eventually comes to light, and knowledge starts spreading, adults in the general public may very well start questioning or even protesting this in the background, but the reason we're not shown these moments is because it's ultimately unimportant, since there's nothing anyone can do about it anyway, and it would just dilute the plot with a bunch of uninteresting crap that you're only pretending to care about

i don't see anything wrong with shamshel's design—it's not one of my favorites, but i think it's perfectly fine

you're right about the eva's progressive knife, though—for an "ultimate attack," it does seem pretty underwhelming, which i too thought was kind of weird

my interpretation is that, when shinji was being asked about it in class, he just got nervous and threw something out there—it's not like he knows all of the eva's capabilities, but since he was getting pestered by everyone about it, he didn't want to leave them hanging—but i do agree that the knife could've been made significantly larger, or at least cooler-looking

that said, the fight scenes have virtually nothing to do with the show's overall appeal to me, so i don't really give a fuck either way

pretty disappointing "analysis"—despite acknowledging a couple of positives, you've given the episode a 3.5/10 for nothing but the most vapid and insubstantial observations, ill-conceived complaints and criticism, meaningless nitpicks, and no substantive commentary whatsoever

you can't even articulate your thoughts very well, which is just embarrassing and, again, proves that you're reaching

i was genuinely hoping that you'd be able to find legitimate reasons to dislike this show, if only to give me something to chew on, and even though it was clear from the outset that you weren't actually trying, this was still just kind of pathetic

i'm not sure what i expected from this thread, really—i thought it had some potential, but at this point, it's quite obvious to me that you are NOT equipped for this sort of thing (and that goes for all media)

maybe i should take over for you

WHAT ABOUT THE SOUNDTRACK THOUGH VERB

this is good, even though it's literally the fairy fountain theme from zelda

it's worth reinforcing that flee should NOT click any of these spoiler tags, and that if you're going to post something in a spoiler tag, make sure it's an actual spoiler so it's not confusing

Spoiler

Quote from: Verbatim on August 30, 2019, 06:36:23 AM

misato's like, "what's wrong? it's not like i'll be putting the moves on him,"

*proceeds to try to didle him TWICE before the end*

Maybe I should come up with an actual scale or something. Like:

4/10 = "the show is bad, but it was somewhat tolerable and while I didn't have a good time, I can stand watching it"

7/10 = "I actually enjoyed watching this, this anime is actually what I would consider good"

9/10 = "would recommend to others and actually admit I watched it"

Something like that, you know?

i'd say it's a good idea to explain what each number means to you, yeah

provides a bit of clarity, and allows you to be consistent with how you rank things

WHAT ABOUT THE SOUNDTRACK THOUGH VERB

i was too flabbergasted with the plot to even notice tbh

i know it's the same composer as the show, so i wanna say it was good, but i probably need to relisten to the soundtrack

I'm sure he has more important things to do than post reviews of anime he rates poorly but I really would like to see Verb's full opinion on 3.0/Q seeing how it's not only one of my favorite anime movies but also one of my favorite movies in general.

Plus I gotta plenty of info-bombs I can dump in regards to 3.0.

yeah school started up which is slowing me down, but i do intend to post something huge about it within the next few days

i will say that i'm not sure if 1/10 is legitimately how i feel, or if i'm just really mad, but it really was one of the most frustrating things i've ever seen

And you actually like this, right?

it's one of maybe three anime that i genuinely love yeah

and i've tried over three hundred

not that i wouldn't understand if you couldn't get into it—as i implied, i didn't enjoy it the first time either

oh, you also have to watch the whole fucking thing (unless you just REALLY hate it for whatever reason)

even if you slightly like anything about it, i encourage you to continue

it's not that long either, so it's not a big deal

1. Epsiodes 1-26
2. End of Eva
3. 1.0, 2.0, 3.0

^
genuinely kind of interested in your thoughts on this

so i just watched the third fucking movie, and


more on that later

So yeah, I'm definitely sticking with a 5/10.

I guess the best thing I can say about 2.0 is that, since we've officially diverged from the original story, we do get to see a lot of new character interactions, which in turn leads to a lot of fun and memorable scenes. Rei, in particular, received a bit of a personality upgrade. She expresses her thoughts a lot more, takes an active interest in things like cooking, and it's actually quite pleasing to watch her relationship with Shinji actually go somewhere tangible.

Asuka, on the other hand, appears to be a completely different character this time around. Even her name is different. She's still pretty unlikable, but not for all the same reasons. This time, she actively dislikes socializing and prefers to be alone, although she does appreciate a good heart-to-heart every once in a while. Still don't like her at all.

Shinji and Misato remained mostly the same, as far as I could tell. I guess you could say Shinji bitches a little less, and there's many more scenes of him doing nice things for his friends (especially Rei). I guess the complaints about Shinji being a whiner were taken very seriously, because I don't know how anyone could dislike this kid anymore.

As much as I enjoyed the new scenarios and character interactions, I can't say that I really understand why the story is being "rebuilt" this way in the first place yet, though it may become obvious later. The way things have been changed aren't entirely unwelcome, but the characters do feel considerably more shallow. It kinda gives the first half of the film a completely different atmosphere from the series. I don't want to say it feels happier, but it feels almost like Anno started taking his meds, or something. Before everything goes to shit in the second half, it's almost slice-of-life-esque, with the addition of brighter color schemes, pleasant conversations, comfortable scenes, and a seemingly increased amount of comic relief and fanservice.

Speaking of...

As I feared, this Mari character shows up in this one. You probably don't need me to tell you that I hate her, but I do. Her design and personality seem to have been pulled straight out of Gurren Lagann (which is a bad thing), and her fifteen minutes of screentime were entirely spent on bouncing her breasts all over the place and getting fucked up by Zeruel to job for Shinji. She's utterly useless, and I wanted to end my life every time she was on screen.

I am genuinely interested to see if there's anything else to her character, but her utter lack of presence here, knowing she had already been teased in 1.0, is a little concerning. In any case, she added nothing to the story but fanservice. Maybe Anno's onto something with her. I don't know.

I've heard some people try to argue that these films are meant to be an acerbic takedown of modern harem anime (if not just anime in general), and Mari is just there to help sell that point. If that's true, then I can dig it, but I'd be lying if I said I'm completely on board with that hypothesis just yet. Even so, it wouldn't necessarily improve my opinion. I can always get down with any possible underlying anti-otaku sentiments, but... I have the original series for that. What do I need these movies for, exactly? I guess we'll just have to see.

Mari's not the only source fanservice, though. The movie has (just as Misato promised, I guess) a lot of it. Way too much. I mean, any amount would've been too much, but this was actually getting on my nerves. The original show certainly had its fair share, and I don't give it a free pass on that, but 2.0 is noticeably over the top about it. So that sucked.

Structurally, I think the movie is a hot flaming mess. It's basically trying to cram, like, ten or twelve episodes from the show together at once (where 1.0 limited itself to just six, and already had pacing issues), so my biggest problem with the first film has been heavily exacerbated in 2.0. So much shit is packed in, and it never stops moving, even for one second. I decided against rewatching the film for this reason alone. It's just a headache to get through.

Once again, there's a lot of CG action that I didn't care much for, and the music choices weren't exactly up to snuff. I can appreciate the technique where a soft and upbeat song gets played over an intense, violent scene to make it all the more disturbing, but I don't think it really worked this time. End of Eva did it WAY better; here, it felt a little cheesy.

There's also a number of scenes with some gratuitous Engrish, and of course, they're ALL horrendous. Pretty sure they didn't even try.

Pretty sure that's all I have to say for now. The ending was cool, I think. Loved the visuals. Certainly not End of Eva level, but still enjoyable to watch.

Let's see what 3.0 does.

Spoiler

Verb is killing me without even realizing it. What they did to the Mark 06 is criminal.

does this post spoil the rebuilds overall or just 2.0 specifically

So I just watched Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone, and it was decent.

Given that it's essentially just a retread of the first six episodes (which I already knew about going in), it's gonna be kinda hard for me to find anything to say about it. I enjoyed the first six episodes of Eva; two of them (4 and 6) are some of my favorite episodes in the series, and for the MOST part, I feel as though they were all done justice with this fresh new coat of paint.

Almost everything I have to say that's positive, however, would also apply to the original series even more, which pretty much leaves only the negatives to discuss.

Here's the thing—first and foremost, Evangelion is a TV show. All of its episodes are written, directed, and paced in a very distinct way that I think only works in a serial format.

For example, in the original series, there's a handful of these slower episodes with really long and drawn-out scenes that show very little while saying a lot. Episode 4 (Hedgehog's Dilemma) is rife with these introspective moments, all of which are very important, because they provide some crucial insight into the headspace of both Shinji and Misato—yet, out of all the episodes that were crammed into this movie, this is the one that got cut down the most.

I get that this probably had something to do with time constraints, but this is kinda what I'm talking about. In a TV show, you can afford to have each episode paced a little bit differently, because that's the nature of the medium. Every episode is a self-contained segment, giving them some wiggle room to play by their own rules for 20 minutes. Films, on the other hand, are designed to be watched in one sitting, so in order for the narrative to feel cohesive, the pacing has to remain consistent throughout. I get all that, and that's what they were trying to adjust for here. However, not only does this make the end-result feel a little bit stilted and rushed, it also comes at the expense of the episodes' deeper emotional qualities. There's just something intimate about the original series that feels kinda lost here.

TV show episodes also allow for more cliffhangers, which I get nobody likes anyway, but I'd say the show always used them fairly intelligently. The first episode ends in a cliffhanger—just before the very first fight. When the second episode begins, we don't actually get to see how the fight played out until the end. Naturally, this is different in the film, where we actually get to see the fight play out in real time, but in my opinion, this is a far less interesting way to convey this part of the story. It feels too linear, and it puts more emphasis on the action, which has literally never been the primary appeal of Eva. Not to me, anyway.

The few changes made to the story so far have been pretty intriguing. Not only does Misato already know about Lilith (for some reason), she also reveals her to Shinji almost right away. That was weird. She doesn't even think she's Adam, so I guess that plot is gonna lead to something completely different now. Gendo's plans appear to be going in different directions as well. I'm also moderately excited that Kaworu is going to get more time in the spotlight, because his sudden presence in the show and subsequent lack of development has always been one of my least favorite things about it.

The new art, naturally, was very pretty to look at, though I'm not that big on the abundance of obvious CG used for the most mundane things, like the reels on Shinji's Walkman thing. It's not a big deal, but it tends to clash with everything that's not CG.

CG isn't automatically bad, though. It was used appropriately for the Angel special effects, which helped make them seem a lot more formidable—especially Ramiel, my favorite, who definitely had the coolest animations.

Wasn't really a fan of what they did to the soundtrack, either. Any time they used a song from the original show, I was happy, but every time some newer arrangement started playing, not once did I ever feel like it was an improvement. In particular, the dramatic choir vocals that play over a couple of familiar tracks were completely out of place, in my opinion.

Overall, while getting to revisit the early parts of Eva's story with modern visuals is inherently appealing, I do have to say that I'd much rather watch the original six episodes. This was fun, but I think too many aspects of the show don't translate very well to a movie format, because I feel like several important facets that made the series unique and special in the first place have been casually defenestrated in favor of more dumb action, making it feel watered down and ultimately not as good.

I remember watching these early episodes for the first time, and thinking to myself, "Hmm, okay, there's definitely something more to this show than just giant robots." But if I watched 1.0 first, that thought probably wouldn't have crossed my mind at all. Instead, as somebody who's already seen the entire show, I'm naturally more interested in seeing where the seeds of divergence planted here will take us in the next three films (which I'm sure was the whole point).

6/10, will watch 2.0 later.