Anime recs?

[thistlechaser]

BT isn't working very well (I'm generally getting 30-50 KB/second, though now and then it shoots up to 500-600 for a moment or two before falling back down to the double digit range), but between that and direct downloading I can get stuff! I'm not sure why I stopped watching anime (too much FFXI, most likely), but wow there's so much good stuff out there!

If you liked Gunslinger Girls (and if you like mature storylines with very morally disturbing subtones how could you not?), there's a second season finally out! You can direct download both the original and the new season here. The first season was one of the best series I've watched, and the second one looks like it'll match it.

It only took a full day, but Death Note finished downloading through BT. I think I've only seen the first 20 or so eps, so there's plenty of new stuff ahead! (I'm going to re-watch it from the start though.)

I picked a random series to try out, and ended up with Blassreiter (download here). I dislike the anime style (too obviously done by computers) so it's hard to fairly judge the storyline. I think I'm not liking it though. (Motorcycle racer gets into a crash, basically makes a deal with a drug company/the devil and becomes some crime-fighting monster thing.) Sometimes checking out a series at random will work out (I found Dear Boys and Whistle! that way), but other times... meh. I'll probably watch the second ep I downloaded, but I doubt I'll grab more.

So, any recs? My tastes tend towards dark, serious, angsty. Sex is fine, gore for gore's sake is less so. I stongly dislike princesses, girls in pink fluttering and sparkling around -- silly fluffy stuff.

^^

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WoW: I logged on today, even though I hadn't planned to. Shouldn't have. Did one quest, though it took me a couple hours. Had to go to the opposite side of the world, into an area that was a tad too high level for me. (The quest mobs were the right level, but all around me were aggro things that wanted to eat me alive.) When I finally finished the quest, I realized there was a flight master in the town on the opposite side of the zone. Sigh. How could I leave without getting it? So I got on my mount and rode as fast as I could, hoping nothing would eat me before I outran it. Fun (not). The plan was made harder because the place was swampy, so every now and then the water would be deep enough to "knock me off" and make me swim... allowing the mobs to catch up.

FFXI: Funny how WoW making me grumpy makes me fall back into love with FFXI. I didn't do much other than run around and do light crafting, but I loved every second of it. No adjusting my camera every fricking five seconds so I can see where I'm going, and controls are better than second nature.

More RL/anime likely tomorrow. Ha ha on you MMOs! :P

Comments

[xvolph.livejournal.com]

Someone recently got me to watch Kemeko DX and Chaos Head on veoh.com. The former is kind of a train wreck on acid... gives a lot of random, sometimes subtle nods to other anime. So far, I've only watched ep 1 of Chaos Head, and I like it a lot better. Some of the art style reminds me somewhat of Escaflowne, but different. There are other reasons it appeals, but that may be because one of the characters reminds me of a few people I know.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Woo, thanks! I just made a post asking for recs. You read my mind... in the past?

Edit: Oh god, duh. The order of my LJ comments got all messed up, and I thought you were commenting on yesterday's post.

[draymor.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Chrono Crusade? It's not new but gun totting nun + demon partner fighting other demons + satanists always makes for good entertainment >.>;
The ending always gets me though :

[doxxxicle.livejournal.com]

Chrono Crusade is good. And I agree that the ending rips your heart out and eats it.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Nope, I haven't! Adding it to my list though. :D

[tacrozar.livejournal.com]

What are your tastes?

I like
Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu,
Aria (the Animation, The Natural and The Origination)
Nodame (Season 1)
Code Geass and Code Geass R2.
Gundam 00 (Season 1)


For this season, I'm enjoying
Kannagi
Tytania
Nodame (Season 2)
Gundam 00 (Season 2)

[doxxxicle.livejournal.com]

Try Claymore. Dark, somewhat gory, no sex, but a cool storyline.

[doxxxicle.livejournal.com]

Although perhaps I should warn you that the ending may leave you frustrated. It feels a bit incomplete.

[voidmagus.livejournal.com]

My manga-reading friends say Claymore is still going, so the series is incomplete (though no word of it getting another season).

[doxxxicle.livejournal.com]

Maybe I should try find the manga. Is it available in English?

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Sounds good, I'll look for it next!

I'm kind of used to the whole "ending may leave you frustrated. It feels a bit incomplete", the first season of Gunslinger Girls was like that. (But it only took them, what, five years to make the second season? :P )

Recs you say?

[wanderingscribe.livejournal.com]

Mushi-shi (http://www.hulu.com/mushi-shi): Don't know how to quite describe it. It's like Hell Girl in that it deals with the supernatural and has self contained episodes, but it's more of a bunch of intertwined "ghost stories" than anything else.

and...

Soul Eater (http://tadashisubs.wordpress.com/): A fantasy shounen anime that straddles the line between dead serious (has some pretty gross moments in it, tbh) and stupidly funny. Wikipedia describes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_Eater_(manga)#Plot_and_characters) it better than I could. If you're wondering, the plot of the manga is pretty much the same as the anime at this point.

Re: Recs you say?

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I grabbed the first ep of Soul Eater, and the second is downloading now. I really like the art style of it! It's hard to comment on the storyline so early, but the art is really nice!

And woo Mushi-shi being on Huhu! That makes life so much easier! :D

[wanderingscribe.livejournal.com]

Okay, just...what. You saw that icon, right? That's totally not mine.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

LJ has had that issue in the past (random icons showing up for people). Maybe the bug is back?

[wanderingscribe.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, now I remember. I didn't really pay attention when it was happening because it didn't happen to me, but now that it has, it's a bit startling.

I also kind of want to keep that icon, but that wouldn't be fair since I didn't know who made it and I don't have the space in my icon slots to do so.

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

I'm really confused by your camera problems in WoW. I very rarely have to adjust my camera. What's making it so hard for you see? Whenever I play, it's in a third person perspective from behind my character and I don't have problems with that.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I've been planning to make screenshots of the issue, I just have to get online to do it. I also play in third, camera beind me, pulled back as far as possible.

When I go up a hill, my camera tilts down, so I see only the ground just in front of my feet. I have to stop and drag it upwards. When I hit the top of the hill and start down the other side, it goes up so that I end up seeing nothing but the sky. I have to stop and adjust it as I go down so I don't run into aggro without seeing it. When I hit the bottom of a hill, the focus goes in, so that my shoulders take up at least three-fourths of the screen. I have to stop, draw the camera back, and adjust it again (because it would have tilted up towards the sky as well).

I know there's a setting in options about having the camera track the land, but I've tried both checking and unchecking it and still get this issue.

It happens on all hills, both tiny (a step or two) or big. And there are a darned lot of hills in the game!

It also happens when I'm swimming (the camera goes down and in closer, so I end up only seeing the water within arm's reach). However when I try to adjust it then, half the time it makes me go underwater instead.

It's the darned most frustrating thing I've encountered in most any game. It's unlikely to be an install issue, since I've been uninstalling the game whenever I shut it off. (Too many plugins to do that this time though, I think.)

All these odd vision/camera things end up giving me a headache and a motion-sickness kind of stomach ache -- the world isn't supposed to act the way I'm seeing things there!

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

Wow, there's definitely something funky going on, because that's definitely not the way the game normally behaves. How old are your keyboard and mouse? I wonder if something's sticking a bit? I don't know. The only other thing I can think of is something with your graphics card, but that doesn't really make any sense. I'm assuming you've googled to see if anyone else has had the same problem?

Man, no wonder it's hard for you to play the game.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Hm, mouse and keyboard are kind of newish (under a year each?). Graphics card would be more likely, since I'm having crashing issues in FFXI as well (which seem to happen during intense graphics times).

Yeah, I've googled, but I seem to be alone in this. I wasn't sure if everyone else had this behaivor and it was considered normal or if it was just me. I'm glad to know that you all don't play like this all the time. :P It causes such an amazing headache/stomach ache.

[citizenbleys.livejournal.com]

CODE GEASS.

I ignored recommendations for Code Geass for a year and regretted it. It's awesome.

Others you've probably already seen that I really liked: Scrapped Princess, Scryed, Tokyo Underground, Kanon (fuck off I can be sappy if I want sometimes), Darker Than Black, and Stellvia of the Universe. That's just off the top of my head.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Woo, thanks for the recs!

[seph32.livejournal.com]

Hokuto no Ken Raoh Gaiden: Ten no Haoh is also really good if you liked the series Fist of the Northstar

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Sounds good, thanks!