Favorite Anime

Cowboy Bebop movie? Pretty amazing.

I'm glad you liked it.  On my first viewing I was kinda like "eh it's a neat stand-alone episode that was blown up to feature length for some reason", but I have grown to appreciate it as one of the franchise's finest moments since then.  The music is so incredibly on point too.





NB If you're interested in other anime movies, the guy who directed the opening credits sequence, Hiroyuki Okiura, also directed Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade which is another of my all-time favorites.

Yeah, I'd definitely say it's one of their finer moments. Perhaps because they stuck to the building blocks of the show, and just intensifying those, rather than doing something different. And the music as always was really on point.

Could they have done anything differently? Perhaps it was a little contained. And when you have two hours and the whole solar system to play around with perhaps one could do more, but.. somehow.. I didn't mind.

Btw, I had no idea both my Ed gifs was from the movie.

Bluebottle wrote:

Bluebottle wrote:

Rumour is someone isn't doing enough homework!

Orwell wrote:Rumour is someone isn't doing enough homework!

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

"What about the time you guys took down the Fire Lord? That must have been epic."

"Oh, yeah."

God, the Avatar finale is amazing. I'm glad I waited this long ot rewatch it properly.

I'm glad you enjoyed it so much. Nowadays I feel kinda petty when I try to quibble with the finale.  I don't think it's perfect, but endings are so hard to pull off and there are so many crap ones out there to otherwise really good stories, that I'd rather focus on all the things ATLA did well, of which there were a lot.

Yeah, I guess as Aangs actions in the finale always resonated so well with how I saw his character I never really took note that how they handled it could be a bit clunky. I'd still say it's stunningly good though, if in blockbuster mode.

And, yeah, the amount of botched endings there are out there, it feels a bit silly complaining about this one.

http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/studio-ghibli/37209/studio-ghibli-its-final-films-the-future-of-2d-animation

That was an interesting article. I think they undersell the continuing success of 2D animation in Japan, but the Japanese industry is clearly an exception to the global trend on this front. The retrospective on Ghibli is definitely appreciated. It's a shame they haven't developed more talent but I think they to some extent have themselves to blame for that one, as the article sorta touches on. But they've given us some really phenomenal films and it's worth taking a look back on their work. Thanks for posting.

I was kind of considering switching back to an Avatar avatar, but.. like.. which one?

You should definitely be hippie/flower Aang, Blue.

Haha, yeah.. maybe.

I find myself feeling more like this at the moment though.  

*would it help you screaming into this pillow*

Well, I'm giving it a go.

Excellent choice.

Yeah, although I always thought Aang looked a lot better when he grew his hair out.

I agree on Aang and the hair. I've never understood what so many fans seem to see in the bald version. Other than it being the first.

I made a lot of progress on my on-and-off rewatch last week. Wrapped up "The Day of Black Sun" shortly before we left for camping. Hoping to wrap up the back half of Book 3 quickly. Those episodes tend to flow together really quickly for me (perhaps an artifact of watching them every night during the week-long "Countdown to the Comet" burnoff when they were first aired).

Last Airbender was really good. I haven't gotten around to watching the second season of Korra. But I really liked Last Airbender. I haven't watched it in a while though. I might give a rewatch sometime. One of the things I like most about time off work is getting wrapped up and invested in a story. There's nothing quite like a good adventure story - getting up early in the morning, making some popcorn, getting a comfy chair, and just having a good time following a set of characters.

It makes me think of Christmas, probably because that's when I get time off work for these sorts of things

The second season of Korra was by far the worst one, and I say this as someone who was rarely more than lukewarm on that show even in its best parts.

Avatar is definitely a phenomenal show though, and I'm glad to hear you liked it too, RA. I've had a lot of fun rewatching it.  I was going to watch "Sozin's Comet", the four-part finale, tonight although I might not be able to stay awake through the whole thing. The show does a ton of things right but part of what I like about is definitely it being in genres I like -- epic fantasy, action-adventure -- and doing them so well.

I never really warmed to Korra. Neither the characters or their choices really made sense to me. And I feel the cyclical nature the show took up, as opposed to Avatar telling one long story, was kind of counter productive on the whole. Each season needed a new big bad, the danger of which needed to be demonstrated in the same ways, etc, etc.

That's not to say it's all bad. It still has a lot of things going for it. And it still has all the building blocks that made Avatar great. They just didn't combine or work out as well in this case.

The last airbender to me seems one of those rare cases where everything that was working for it came together perfectly. And that's not because everyone involved did everything perfectly, they were probably a lot more clued in when they made Korra, but somehow it just came together perfectly. Something that is more than a sum of it's parts.. That is rather rare in television, I seem to find anyway.

Eldorion wrote:I agree on Aang and the hair.  I've never understood what so many fans seem to see in the bald version.  Other than it being the first.

You too. So, it's not just me then.

It's odd how one of my least favorite parts about late season 3 is Aang shaving his hair off again.

Eldorion wrote:I made a lot of progress on my on-and-off rewatch last week.  Wrapped up "The Day of Black Sun" shortly before we left for camping.  Hoping to wrap up the back half of Book 3 quickly.  Those episodes tend to flow together really quickly for me (perhaps an artifact of watching them every night during the week-long "Countdown to the Comet" burnoff when they were first aired).

Ah, yeah, that's always where I kind of pause. Because I know if I continue I'm kind of on a headlong rush to the end. And while i do really like the finale it is kind of emotionally exhausting. Both for watching, and i always seem to take an extended break from getting back to the show when I'm done with the whole thing. The episodes from season 2 to mid season 3 are a lot easier keep watching. Over and over, even

I ended up passing out last night before watching anything; I guess work wore me out more than I realized (it's been crazy this week with new releases and a big book signing today). I don't expect that I will watch much Avatar again for a while once I'm done with the finale. In the past I've gone through phases where I get really excited about the show again and watch a lot of episodes for a while until I sort of tire out. This time I've been deliberately watching them in order, which is new for me, although my failed attempt at a paced approach meant this rewatch took much longer than planned. If I had plowed through the entire series in a week or two of marathoning, I might still be excited enough to rewatch a bunch of it. But now I'm just happy to be about to cross the finish line.

I will post a ranking of all the episodes when I'm done, something I've been working on throughout the rewatch over the past ... most of this year. I ranked each season individually to start because each one had a somewhat unique feel to it, and it's sometimes hard for me to compare episodes from different seasons fairly. But I'm gonna try to combine those three lists once I'm done with the finale into an overall master ranking of every episode. Should be fun for me, since I like lists and rankings and numbers like that.