Quote:
Originally Posted by Ginkasa
My wife and I have been keeping on with our "Toonami" four show block! We've completed a few shows since I last posted. Here's how the lineup has updated:
Gundam Seed > Gundam 00
Excel Saga > Madoka Magica > Sailor Moon
Revolutionary Girl Utena > Revolutionary Girl Utena (again!)
Nier: Automata > Gurren Lagann > Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
As mentioned above, I really enjoy Gundam generally, but I'd always kind of bounced off of Seed (unrelated: the Final Fantasy fan in me always wants to spell it SeeD). I was determined to make it through this time and give it a fair shake, though. It is firmly Okay, I Guess. It has some pretty good dramatic moments, but those tend be fairly far between and the time in between really drags a bit. I never really fell in love with any of the characters. Some of the plot beats missed. There were some Big Twists at the end that I don't think hit as much as they were intended. They held them back too long so they couldn't really impact the plot and they were covered pretty briefly and vaguely. Initially my plan was to move on to Seed Destiny as it was the next released, but my lack of interest in Seed generally and the poor reputation of Destiny means we skipped it in favor of 00.
We just started 00 and I've never seen it before, but I understand its supposed to be good!
Excel Saga was an enjoyable watch. It does have some cringy moments, cringy enough they kind of bring down my opinion, but overall we enjoyed watching it and had some laughs. I'm glad we revisited.
Madoka Magica came after and I really enjoyed it! The art style put me off a bit. The overly cutesy, "drawn young" characters in magical girl outfits kind of icked me out at first, but the witchy bits are really inventive and interesting to watch. I realized overall that the contract is intentional and helps visually convey the story the show is trying to tell. It really won me over with the dark tone and commentary it makes on the magical girl genre. I'm excited for the new movie to come out some time this year!
Following that and also Utena I felt like we should revisit the founding work in the genre with Sailor Moon. I'd seen bits and pieces back in the day when it was on Toonami, but during the school year it was on before I got home so I never could watch it regularly. So we're watching it! It is a little antithetical to what we were originally look for: shorter, contained series with a larger focus on a tight story. Sailor Moon, in contrast, is a classic multi-hundred episode series filled with episodic "filler" between major story beats. But we want to watch it so here we are! Potentially if we want to take a break after the first major arc we can do a smaller show and come back (or not if we're not enjoying it by that point).
Revolutionary Girl Utena is definitely one of my favorites now. I like the style, I like the characters. The overarching themes of overcoming trauma and growing past it really resonate with me. Its a very metaphorical show. Many of the events on screen don't make literal sense, so once we finished we decided to give it a second go to pick up on stuff we hadn't realized the first time. Especially early on I wasn't sure what kind of show it was going to end up being, so some of the directions it went were not expected.
Gurren Lagann is a much more Masculine show than a lot of the others we watched. Its not generally the tone I'm going for nowadays, but we enjoyed it overall. I really appreciated how quickly it ratcheted up the energy and move the plot along briskly. At the beginning, I thought I knew what the formula of the series woudl be (at least for a while) on episode two. And then on episode 3 or 4 it threw that away and skipped ahead to the next "formula" and then moved quickly past that and that and that. The way the scope just ballooned by the end was very satisying. If this were DBZ or something the team would have still been wandering the surface fighting Beast Men of the Week at episode 27, but instead the show zipped ahead (without every feeling poorly paced) and we were done at that point! It was very enjoyable.
Fullmetal Alchemist is something I've never seen before, but I've heard it was good and I remember when it was new and kind of The Thing. It was next on the list I had mentioned in my prior post, so we went ahead and put it on here. We chose the Brotherhood version both because that was what was on the list and also I've always heard its the better take on the material. Just a few episodes in! I wasn't really into the first episode and was concerned we'd bounce off of it, but then it did the origin story in episode 2 and that drew me in. Three was okay, but four was messed up in all the right ways so I'm excited to see where this goes.
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We're still doing this! We go through hot and cold phases where we'll watch a bunch and then stop for a couple of weeks, but we've been trucking along.
Gundam 00 I just did not get into. I wanted to. I might try again sometime. But it just never settled on any particular characters; it felt like it was all over the place all the time. I just couldn't get hooked. Might be better to watch as a binge sometime. We were nearing the end of the first season. I just wasn't feeling it and I've heard that the second season is less good, so lost energy to keep on it. We decided to jump forward to to Iron Blooded Orphans. I'd seen that one before and enjoyed it. My wife saw bits of it and liked it; I thought it'd be nice to watch it together and it was. After that, we moved on to Witch from Mercury which we had watched as it came out and kind of kicked off this whole anime kick for us. It really impacted me in some important ways so was nice to revisit. Now we're going back to the beginning and watching the OG Mobile Suit Gundam. We're both pretty familiar with this one, but only through the compilation movies. I haven't seen the show since it aired on Toonami nearly 25 years ago. We just started.
(we also followed GQuuuuX while it was releasing; I thought it started strong but crashed hard in the end)
We are still on Sailor Moon. We haven't taken a break from it at all. We got through the first three seasons since I posted last and just started Super S. I'm really enjoying it. It'll probably have taken us at least 2 years by the time we actually get to the end of Sailor Stars, but its been worth it. Probably will move on to Crystal at that point if we haven't fallen completely off of the anime bandwagon.
After moving on from Utena following the second watch, the third slot has kind of become our high brow slot (relatively, anyway). The series have been shorter so we've moved through a few. The Vision of Escaflowne was our next show. Kind of felt like maybe a similar tone to Utena? I remember wanting to get into it way back in the day, but the dub back then was no good and I didn't have access to a sub. I thought it was okay having now watched it through. I didn't feel compelled to continue to the movie, though, and I don't know that I'll ever need to revisit. .hack//SIGN followed. That was a really impactful show to me back in the day (where I got the name Ginkasa from!) and has only become more meaningful with time. It was my wife's first time watching it through. We then moved on to FLCL which I remember enjoying back when it was on Adult Swim a long time ago. I did not enjoy it this time. It just didn't resonate and I have some theories as to why. FWIW, I hardly remembered any of it and usually I remember things pretty well, so I think I felt more "compelled" to enjoy it as a kid/teen.
After FLCL, Nier had completed its second season so we did a rewatch of the first and moved on to the second. I thought it was a really good adaptation of the game. Now we're watching Serial Experiments Lain. I had no relationship with this series before other than seeing its name floated around. It is weird! I think I'm enjoying it so far, but its the kind of show I'll probably need to reassess once its done and I can think on it holistically.
FMA:B I struggled to get into. I forget how far we got; maybe a third of the way through? I thought it had some strong episodes, but it just never hooked me with the story overall. I dunno; might need to revisit sometime or maybe its just not for me. We actually decided to put Dragonball in that final slot. My wife and I both enjoyed it back in the day and haven't watched it in forever. Its going to take us a million years to get through it, but its been a fun time. We're currently approaching the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai.