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waywardsalt · 1 year

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thoughts on totk now that i’ve beaten it

under the cut bc of length and bc there is honestly a fair bit of negative stuff

i don’t really think i can say that i liked totk.

it’s fine, it’s genuinely fucking incredible from a technical standpoint with ultrahand, recall, the three map layers and with how smoothly it ran for me. as a game it’s fine.

i’ll start with the things i dislike and end with what i actually liked

i honestly didn’t really like ultrahand? i disliked how much the game leaned on it, since so many puzzles and whatever just boiled down to ‘make something that’ll work’ and it just... it was far too clunky for me to really enjoy using it, outside of using some of the same few designs for traversal. there were a few times when i could see what the game wanted me to do with ultrahand and the given zonai parts and sometimes it just... didn’t work at all. more often than not ultrahand was frustrating for me to use so the game’s reliance on it just made it into a chore sometimes.

in a similar vein the dungeons were serious letdowns. i mean, don’t get me wrong, they’re fine, they had good themes and (mostly) had good aesthetics and general looks and identities to them, but the fact that they were just... basically twenty-ish minute little things was kind of disappointing. i hate that they all had the exact same ‘go hit x number of switches’ gimmick. it really limited what you could do and fucked with the dungeon design, too. the only one where that really worked for me was the fire temple, which was my favorite overall. the water temple was especially dismal, with the least inspired look and just being an astoundingly easy experience. the puzzles in those dungeons were so awfully easy, too, especially since half of the time they just hand you what you need so you barely need to really assess the situation and put a plan together

i hated the water dungeon’s little mini-areas where you do a single piss-easy puzzle to automatically get your prize, i hated the wind temple’s god damn ‘pull a lever and get your prize’ kind of puzzles, i hated how soul-crushingly disappointed i felt when i took a look at the lightning temple’s map and realized that every fucking floor had a singular room just for the switch puzzle. god forbid it’s as fun as the lowest level of that temple. i really miss stuff like mini-bosses or rooms where you have to do a puzzle in order to just... progress, i miss dungeons that i could get lost in or spend a while in or just had... something more interesting or some more substance so that i can’t just breeze through like it’s a glorified shrine. most of the puzzles in those dungeons were simpler than some shrines i did.

i didn’t care to do much exploration since there honestly isn’t much motivation to explore the surface map if you’ve already played botw, and the scarcity of materials this time really got to me, it took me a while to have a half-decent stock of materials, and i still had trouble not running out of stuff even though i was using amiibos to stock up on some things. the money situation was rough, too... a lot of things are cheaper to sell, but some armor is still really expensive plus you have to pay the great fairies to upgrade your equipment in addition to having the correct materials. that especially felt odd- having to grab a handful of (goddamn hard to get) lynel guts is hard enough to upgrade the soldier’s armor, but you want me to cough up 500 rupees, too??

(the scarcity of monster guts also got on my nerves, but i’ll just chalk that up to just some kind of really weird difficulty thing. it was annoying until i tracked down the stronger monsters.)

the story is probably the weakest part of the game to me. it’s really hard to have a baseline investment when you don’t care about these characters, anyway, and what i saw in this game’s story still failed to endear me to hardly any of them. link’s role frustrated me; he just comes off like a tool rather than a character this time through, he barely has any actual relevancy to the story segments beyond being the guy who can use the master sword and being the player’s vehicle to get from point a to b in the story. the blank stare and limited emoting worked in botw because... there’s a given reason for his lack of outward emotion in the past, plus he has no memory in the present. it makes sense. but this time around, he’s gotten memories in the years between this and the last game, but he just feels like a background character in most of the story beats.

he has no role in the memories and in the present just exists to gather some stuff for other people, he gets the master sword from zelda and then helps the other sages get their secret stones, but he’s barely addressed as his own character in the grand scheme of things unless he’s being directly spoken to. he’s just the swordsman capable of wielding the master sword and zelda’s chosen protector as far as the story is concerned. he has no opinions outside of doing what he’s told and looking for zelda. at least not as far as i could really tell. at least in botw, the story directly concerns him, and it’s his story we’re following. this time around zelda and the sages seem like the most important characters, link’s just... there, doing what he’s been told to.

the new sages are fine, none of them really endeared themselves to me, and i will say that making the player watch essentially the exact same cutscene each time you finish a dungeon was BAFFLING. they were long and you learned almost nothing new after the first one, and there was nothing done to make them very distinct to each individual pair of sages or their respective regions; at the very least, it could have been interesting to meet the ancient sages not in the exact same stone garden, but perhaps at the top of a snowy mountain for the rito, near a volcano or something for the goron, maybe in a shallow pool of water for the zora, and in the desert for the gerudo- but no, they’re all effectively the same thing just with the speaking character swapped out with some minor changes.

(the sages themselves are a pain in the ass to use, having to chase them down to activate their power or accidentally activating a power when you don’t want it; yunobo was honestly my favorite, but because i generally defaulted to having them all activated at all times, i had a lot of trouble with tulin blowing shit away from me when i was trying to grab it while midair. they’re half-decent for combat)

i didn’t really care for rauru or sonia, either. rauru in the present as a ghost was fine, he was kind of interesting and seemed to have changed from his time in the past, but he never managed to be a character i particularly liked. i wasn’t really a fan of his... arrogance? or something in the past scenes, and he never really came off as very interesting. sonia was nearly completely uninteresting which is a shame since she has an interesting design, she just felt delegated to the role of supporting rauru and zelda and then dying to motivate them.

ganondorf is a character i was really looking forward to seeing, and it really fucking sucks that he’s so god damn one-dimensional this time! the story can’t be fucked to delve into him beyond just giving us scenes that just tell us that he’s evil and wants to rule hyrule and get the secret stones and nothing else because fuck having complex villains, i guess. especially frustrating because within the game itself you can draw more interesting motivations up for him, but the game really just doubles-down on him being evil for the fuck of it and wanting to end the world because uhhhh... he’s evil don’t fucking worry about it

the ignoring of the triforce in this game sucks in that way, too, because the way the triforce works and how it can grant wishes made it a much more interesting goal for ganondorf to attain, rather than some poorly-named ‘secret stones’ that do nothing more than just amplify power or something. it sucks how black-and-white this damn story is and how it seems like it just wants to do away with any possible nuance or gray area. no one but the bad guys or side characters are flawed in any actually interesting or significant way.

at least ganondorf was still the most interesting character in the flashbacks.

and then zelda, oh god ZELDA. i honestly really liked her in botw. i liked how you saw her as a flawed, insecure, pressured teen, and how you saw her struggles to relate to link and how she eventually warmed up to him. you saw her as a flawed person who develops and as someone who cares deeply about her friends and her duties and gets frustrated by her failings.

and then in totk a lot of her more interesting traits- her interest in sheikah tech, her excitement over field study and research, her more defining traits as this incarnation of zelda- are basically sanded down and she’s just this perfect flawless princess with great power and an insanely passive role in the past beyond finally taking some kind of action after one of her friends dies and she’s pushed to the brink. cool. great.

she has practically no flaw in totk. if anyone in the present talks about her, they have nothing bad to say and just want to please her and follow her orders, she is right in telling the gerudo how to train their troops she is right even when misheard to tell people to put themselves in danger and she is hardly meaningfully questioned when her imposter is doing very clearly suspicious shit. neither the story nor any of the characters wants to let her be flawed. she’s just perfect in damn near every way and barely retains any interesting characterization she got in botw. there are some interesting snippets in her being a teacher and setting up memorials to those who died in the calamity, but there’s hardly any more than that, and it makes it really hard for me to give a damn about her. she’s not interesting this time.

the whole thing with zelda becoming a dragon too, is... it’s fine. it’s ok. but the fact that she turns back at the end with no problem whatsoever is one hell of a fucking misstep. why talk about draconification being forbidden for a good reason anyways if it doesn’t actually matter anyways??? if you never actually see any of those fucking repercussions why even bring them up??? i really feel like it would have been more effective for there to have been actual consequences for zelda beyond just fucking flying around half-conscious for a millennium or whatever- have her lose her memory when she’s brought back! there you go! there’s the reason why draconification is forbidden! there’s the thing about losing yourself! plus, zelda losing her memories as a result would mirror link having lost his memories in botw! that has so much more weight and significance then ‘oh uh ignore the warnings from a while back she’s completely fine dw abt it’ i hate that she’s back just like that without any of the consequences that the game suggests.

the dragon’s tears in general kinda just felt weaker than botw’s memories anyways bc you’re more just. watching stuff happen then actually learning anything. it has less characters and yet i feel like you only get to know like half of the important ones. like three of them are all about the same event. a few times they just replay parts of old memories in new ones. if they ever reference a past memory they just show you what they’re referencing instead of leaving you to piece it together. just play the voices or something don’t break the flow of things to play a clip of something i’ve already seen.

plus the fact that totk... barely acknowledges that it’s a sequel to botw really rubs me the wrong way. i understand that loz is extremely loose with its lore, but totk is a direct sequel set in the same world a few years later, and yet the events and characters of botw have might as well been forgotten and its all either ignored, brushed aside, or straight up replaced by something else for no good reason. the continuity between these games is absolutely dismal and to see the different ways in which the events and concepts or botw are just... disregarded really just left a bad taste in my mouth.

just- i love good stories and worlds in video games, and while some games can coast by for me by feeling good to play, having a good and engaging story and characters is usually essential to my enjoyment of a game, and when i don’t care about to the point of disliking the story and characters, and when none of the important areas are fascinating or distinct enough from each other, and when the game even fails to really reel me in with the gameplay...

i wanted to like totk, but it really just did not work for me. i just ended up feeling frustrated and disappointed and even sometimes bored with all of the major stuff and man. totk is really, REALLY, not for me, and it just left me wanting to play older zelda games instead.

...

HOWEVER! there were actually some things i really loved about totk! it’s not all doom and gloom! (well, not all doom, at least)

so! the music was great! not all of it really fit or made a lot of sense with the context in which they played or failed to evoke the feeling they were meant to, but the new tracks in this game were great! i especially love the first two phases of the fire temple’s theme, the depths music, and most of the new battle and boss themes. zelda games almost never fail when it comes to the music.

i did genuinely like the fire temple- yunobo’s ability was used the best in this dungeon, and it had the best five switches gimmick, i loved how you had to hit the gongs (sometimes having to construct a path to account for the weaknesses of yunobo’s ability) and how it then ‘scared’ each of the five statues holding a part of the gate- it was very cute and fit in very well with the general feel of that part of the story. it was the best in terms of difficulty and complexity, but it didn’t have the best boss- the lightning temple had the best boss, and i will admit that even if most of them were easy, i really enjoyed the mirror puzzles, as well as the process to unlocking the dungeon. the wind temple had my favorite visual identity and aesthetic, though, i liked it being a part of this old rito song, and how it was the most distinct in looks from the other dungeons.

the sky islands were honestly fun, even if they weren’t all that interesting. getting to some of the harder-to-reach islands were some of my favorite times i had to use ultrahand, and stuff like the zonai forge island and the one orblike island with the mirror puzzle, and pretty much all of the more complicated parts of the sky islands were a lot of fun to explore and figure out.

being able to ride on the dragons was just really cool, and the fact that they come out of the chasms was fun.

the new horns for the monsters were cool, it helps differentiate the different monster strengths and i just thought they were really neat.

the quest with lurelin village was fun, even if the pirates just being monsters was a real let-down.

the stable trotters were also a fun bunch of characters, that was a good, new way to open up fairy fountains.

all of the new stuff with the yiga was really fun, like getting their outfit and being able to pretend to be one of them and learning the blademaster attack- so much fun it was so cute.

most of the new outfits are really good and useful, and while a bit janky and not that great, the house-building bit near tarrey was endearing.

while none of the main characters interested me, i really, especially liked tauro and yona and penn. for some reason they just appealed to me and i really wish they had bigger parts in the game because they’re interesting and they have good designs and i’d really like to know more about them.

the underground gerudo shelter was pretty cool, to be honest, and the look of the caves was really cool.

i adored the proving grounds shrines- easily my favorite shrines in the entire game, i had no problem spending a decent amount of time in those kinds of shrines, they were fantastic.

the new ingredients and recipes and new weapons were cool.

the way you basically return to the area you started at on your way to ganondorf is pretty cool, that whole path is really neat.

ganondorf in general was a pretty cool boss, even if he ended up being kind of easy for me. the whole final boss sequence was neat.

by FAR, though, my absolute favorite part of this game was 100% the depths. the fact that there was just an entire second layer to the map that was the same size as the surface, just inverted and dark and filled with new bosses and locations... i spent hours down there without going back up to the surface and absolutely had a BLAST screwing around in the dark, lighting up my path with brightblooms and tossing together little vehicles with lights so that i could get to the next lightroot off in the distance. the depths was probably where i ended up using zonai vehicles the most, and it was honestly pretty fun to go around spotting and reaching every lightroot, coming across different mines and weird little landforms and coliseums and yiga camps. the music and plantlife and look of the depths were so good, and it really felt distinct from the rest of the game in a very good way. doing all of the lightroots and getting enough zonaite to max out link’s energy cells was definitely a good move since it made finding shrines and dealing with later zonai machine stuff easier.

overall, tears of the kingdom was a severely mixed bag for me, and while there was stuff i did like, i don’t think it’s enough to really get me to say that i really liked this game overall- after all most of the stuff i disliked was unavoidable parts of the games, and it definitely put a hamper on my interest in the rest of the time. totk is fine, but it’s really not my thing.

#i just- *slams head into brick wall* bro i did not have a good time with this game #going back to my silly little comparison point; totk was $70 and my copy of phantom hourglass was $70 #$70 is a bullshit amount for a game but thats no the point here #totk from a technical baseline standpoint as a GAME is worth $70 #its story and the amount of enjoyment it gave me was not worth $70 tho. the story and enjoyment i got from ph was more worth $70 to me #salty talks #loz #legend of zelda #totk #'zelda games almost never fail when it comes to the music' if you talk shit abt ph's soundtrack i'll kill you. i like the dungeon track #i partially have the shinji chair image saved for this but i did also initally save it yesterday when i finished nge #listen this was fine on a surface level but it just wore me the fuck down #link was just some flavor of stonefaced or surprised or determined in any given cutscene and like. idk. wasnt too interested in him either #look i know about the silly little dialogue options. still didnt do it for me #link getting his arm back only makes sense to me bc i got every last light of blessing and heart container and stamina vessel #the gloom in his body is 100% gone hes squeaky clean for me. whyd you take his shirt off tho. at least keep his hat. cant take it seriously #put him in the archaic set or smth his arm is fully visible that way at least and its full circle thats what he wears at the start #couldnt take the whole grabbing zelda sequence seriously bc i missed the (hold) prompt and link flew away lol #totk spoilers #also wasnt really a fan of most of the voice acting yeah sorry. kinda rough all around aside from like ganondorf and dimitri- i mean rauru #mineru and the rito sage were fine too ig. im not going to bother watching any vids or whatever to check again #riju and sidon were fine too #sonia was cool too but everyone else was a lil rough tbh esp with having to say 'secret stone' that name sucks shit #my switch died in the middle of the credits. i had like 25% when i started fighting ganondorf.#it died twice actually cuz i charged it for a few minutes and what like yeah 5% should be good and nope. died again #anyways whatever. im not giving it a rating im tired of this game i dont think i'll be replaying or even just touching it any time soon #music was top notch again tho. made me feel stuff more than the actual story did. cool ig #bitching abt totk

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beneaththetangles · 3 years

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WONDER EGG PRIORITY: We Don’t Talk About These Things

This guest post was written by longtime support and contributor to our ministry, Bob Aarhus. I encourage you to also read his excellent article about Kimi no na wa (Your Name).

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If you have not yet watched at least the first episode of Wonder Egg Priority, stop reading now. Even if you have no intention of ever watching the show, just close your browser and walk away. I guarantee you, you will learn nothing of the series from this discussion, because the context will be unintelligible; even if you read between the lines, you may come away with the wrong impression. This anime doesn’t deserve that. So, I will assume you have seen the series so far—four episodes as of this writing—and will drop you into the middle of the conversation, but I know you’ll have a map to find your way out. Here be spoilers. For the rest of you—why are you still reading this?

I’m at a loss to identify another 12-episode production that is so equal parts beauty and horror as WEP. The animation is far above the norm, the symbolism deep, the action scenes frenetic yet well-choreographed, the soundtrack mysterious and engaging, the voice acting believable and well-tailored to the characters. The themes and topics of each episode are devastating: alienation, bullying, child abuse, eating disorders, self-harm, rape, suicide. Why would this combination ever work? And why would a Christian ever watch it?

We need to watch this, because we don’t talk about these things.

Or perhaps we do. But not enough. Or not in the right way. Or not with the victims in mind.

This series doesn’t pull punches. Like a typical Coen Brothers movie, no one is clean. Ohto Ai betrayed her best friend. Aonuma Neiru let her sister die. Kawai Rika sent an adoring fan into a fatal tailspin. Sawaki Momoe did something that drove a girl to jump in front of a train. And those are just the “good guys.”

The fact that we actually like one or more of the four main protagonists lets us know we still have a soul in there, somewhere. I dread to think what would happen if any of these girls went public with their stories on Twitter. They would get hammered. Maybe it wouldn’t matter: They are constantly hammering themselves.

There’s a word from the classic anime Haibane Renmei: 罪憑き, tsumitsuki. Sin-bound. Guilt-haunted. In that anime, the condition prevents the person suffering from it from receiving the blessing of the town and moving on spiritually. In WEP, the girls are driven to try and bring back their dead friends by putting their lives on the line fighting for others who, as far as we can tell, committed suicide. In both cases, the implications are clear: Escape from the prison of your own making, or die.

So thoroughly are the girls imbued with this condition that they cannot flee even in their dreams: Ai is back at school and on the rooftop that Koito leapt from. Momo is on a train, perhaps the train that brought her friend’s life to an end. The symbolism for Rika has not yet been discussed, but she is drawn to the vast plain night after night.

Maybe you have already walked a mile in her shoes. Maybe you have changed someone else’s life for the worse, have driven them to despair, and are acutely aware of your sin. Maybe you had no clue you did it. I’m not here to judge you, because I’m sure I’ve done the same. I suppose it was good that Jesus came at a time before social media, otherwise the woman caught in adultery would have been stoned into oblivion by a thousand boulders all marked ‘anonymous’.

Like I said, we don’t talk about these things. Even in the first episode we learned the proper response to bullying was, “Pretend not to see!” Perhaps we are afraid of the social implications of bringing wrongdoing—that of ours, or that of others—to light. Maybe we lack confidence in our senses and don’t want to be incorrect in our assessment of a situation. Or maybe it is more fun to let the chips fall where they may and enjoy the ensuing circus at no cost to ourselves.

These girls are willing to make things right for their friends. Their crosses to bear involves the saving of strangers from the bully, the coach, the obsessed fan, the pedophile, and the legion of “seenoevils” that often appear. You might figure that the girls have already suffered enough—for example, Ai has been picked on because of her heterochromia—but there is deeper learning and self-realization going on here. Remember Ai’s confession on the lighthouse stairwell.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” He follows it immediately with another statement: “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.” That doesn’t just pertain to preaching the Gospel. When you stand up for the oppressed, the widow, the orphan, the alien—when you are living the Gospel in your life—you are to expect insults, untruths, and persecution as part of the deal.

In their own way, these girls are doing just that, or at least trying to learn how. We see Ai’s development even through the first four episodes, from hikikomori to hero. She was too scared to record the girls abusing Koito, too frightened to accompany Kurumi on her flight from the axe-wielding administrator. But her early victories have given her more confidence and determination. She’s in active pursuit of her goal: save Koito. And in the process, she’s becoming more ready to Talk About Those Things. Because she’s going to have to: There is a collision coming that the series has telegraphed from the first episode—the teacher, Sawaki, and how he fits into the puzzle. You can bank on it.

It’s always risky to fawn over an anime that hasn’t yet finished its first season. This series could go off the rails in dozens of different ways. But for the moment, for these first four episodes, the series has people talking, myself included, and I see openings on a number of fronts, to carry on conversations with friends and strangers alike. Let’s talk about These Things, because their victims (and, for that matter, their perpetrators) are the substance of the broken world that Jesus died for.

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On average, Bob Aarhus finds an anime worth obsessing over every five years: NGE, Haibane Renmei, Madoka Magica, Kimi No Na Wa and, most recently, Seishun Buta Yarou (don’t judge, just watch it beyond the first eight minutes). Otherwise, he retired from the military and is now a full-time PhD student at George Mason University in northern Virginia.

Wonder Egg Priority can be streamed through Funimation.

#Anime #Christianity #Wonder Egg Priority #Guest Posts #Articles #Author: Bob Aarhus

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blackandorange · 7 years

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Random thoughts on Bungou Stray Dogs

Ok so as some of you have noticed, I’ve just binge watched the two seasons of BSD and I feel the urge to scream a little:

THIS ANIME IS A MASTERPIECE. Like, truly, it’s one of the best anime I’ve ever seen, it went straight into my all time faves anime top 5 for sure

The art style is amazing, completely different from all the other anime I’ve seen. Not to mention the character designs. They are one more stunning than the other.

The soundtrack. Like, wow. The songs of the OP/ED are dope, I can’t stop singing them. Also I loved the use of those specific songs in particular moment of the anime, it added even more epicness to the scenes

Not to mention the animation of especially the closing titles. They are incredibly suggestive.

I come from NGE which is quite frankly the most philosophically elaborated anime ever created, but BSD too is filled with cultural reference that are (gladly) easy to grasp. I’m still in awe thinking about how much thought the team has put into assembling all of that. Really. Amazing. It educated me on so many levels.

The plot is incredible, it has lots on unexpected twists. I got nervous, I was shocked, I laughed, I screamed, I was hurt (DAMN IT EPISODE 4), I squealed, I cried (like, A LOT)..it has everything an adult audience is searching for.

It has the kind of characters that stay with you forever and, Agency or Mafia, you end up loving them all. It’s sort of a Karasuno vs Aoba Johsai dynamic. You…really can’t decide a side to pick. You know it should be the Agency but ???

Yes, you’ll end up adopting a whole Armed Detective Agency (Kenjiiiiiii!!!!!) and a whole bunch of Mafia Executives, I’m warning you. Make some room for your new sons.

I’m hopelessly, desperately, in love with Edogawa Ranpo.

If you are a fan of the Darry dynamic, I’m gonna give just two names: Atsushi and Akutagawa. BYE.

“Why are you here?” “To kill you” he says 5 minutes before using Rashomon to save his life (all of this while screaming JINKO with a voice almost choked by tears).

“Die, Jinko!” he says, as he wraps Rashomon around his arms to make Atsushi’s fist deadly enough to win against their strongest enemy.

Ok then.

And they’re supposed to be enemies. Like Mafia vs Agency and stuff.

Yes, I’m a huge Shin Soukoko trash.

CHUUYA. CHUUYA. CHUUYA.

Frigging quote of the year: “I’m familiar with your attacks, your timing, your thrusts”. *softly but with a lot of feeling* …what the fuck

As you can see, the otp game is strong here

If you’re a fan of enemies to lovers dynamic, Chuuya and Dazai are your boys.

Yes, I ship Soukoko hard like…really hard. They are like an old married couple with their two little sons who are 100 times more mature than the two of them combined. I LIVE.

Listen I could stay here and list all the reasons why you should watch BSD…but just do like I did, take a leap of faith, you won’t regret it, I promise.

#b rambles #oh my god this post is so long no one will ever read it #bungou stray dogs

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crystalnet · 7 years

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My TOP 5 Anime

Oh dear god. I was half way through this and my browser crashed. I don't know why I'm having to relearn that you should never EVER write from scratch in Tumblr's text editor but so be it. My mistake. Fuck. That really hurts... Anyway~

So yeah this will be the first in a series of Top 5 lists in the coming weeks including top consoles, games, music and possibly films and/or anime OPs. This is a really big deal and I just hope that I can pay the respect and due diligence that some of my favorite media of all time deserve. None of these are hidden gems, so I won't be alerting anyone to something they've never heard of necessarily, I'm simply taking pen in hand to pay homage to some of my all-time favorites.

1. Case Closed/Detective Conan

Until recently, during anytime in the past couple years, I would have told you NGE was far and away my favorite anime, hands down. But these, days I tend to especially value sheer watchability, and while this may sound a bit utilitarian, I think there's really something to be said for shows that feature self-contained episodes, that function individually outside of an extended arc, not beholden to the strained narrative structure that so many long-form TV shows suffer from. Indeed, this show perfects the 22-minute who-dun-it. And while they are just that: simple, contained who-dun-its, they are some of the most consistently enjoyable one's this Poirot fan has ever seen. After 130 episodes and tons of solid movies, this show just doesn't seem to get stale. Featuring my hands-down favorite English voice-acting cast this side of NGE and DBZ, the presentation is rounded out by way of pleasant and under-stated animation circa anime's visual peak in the mid-90s.

The scripts meanwhile are always sharply funny, even hilarious sometimes, and at other times suitably spooky and dark when needed. The Conan/Jimmy dialectic is weirdly engaging, and Richard's severe alcoholism gives the series an at times madcap but slightly dark undercurrent that matches the grizzly nature of much of the murders. Even side characters like Inspector Mcguire and the Phantom Thief Kidd fill out the cast and keep things interesting. Oh and did I mention the music? Because it's incredible. One of the best soundtracks in an anime outside of something by Hirasawa, Hisaishi or early Kajiura. And beyond the jazzy soundtracking and super-creepy sound-design, the third opening is hands-down the best one I've ever heard/seen. With a keen eye for details one truth prevails and its that this song fucking rocks my world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPi9lvDe6LY

2. NGE

It almost seems like I shouldn't even try to sing the praises of this widely accepted classic. That it's praises have so long been writ in stone that there is no point in trying to encapsulate what it does so well. But I will try anyway, and when I apporach this show, beyond the depth of the characters themselves, I am struck by their excellent visual designs, which are whistful and graceful, and I'm struck by how they seem to be at odds with the apocalyptic nature of the show. Indeed, much of this show is very bleak. Shinji's familiar relations are bleak. His emotional state is bleak. Tokyo 3's hope for survival is bleak and the planet's fate seems the bleakest and yet: There are moments of ephemeral satisfaction and even happiness to be had when you least expect it, in the form of evenings at Misato's, where the cheap beer is always flowing, intrusive room-mates are abound, and hot, cheap meals are to be had, along with the company of a grumpy penguin.

Indeed, Shinji finds a version of domestic stability in the apartment of Misato, and these moments of fleeting bliss are the heart and center of the show. If NGE teaches you anything, it's that if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, to cherish it and hold on to it for as long as possible because pretty soon the Fifth Child will show up, steal your heart, steal away to Terminal Dogma and attempt to trigger the Third Impact. We are blessed to have in a medium such as anime characters as uncomfortably human as Shinji, Asuka and Misato are. On script they leap off the page, and in the show proper, they are vibrant. There's some archetypical aspect to this show that makes it feel like it is adapted from some ancient national mythos in the way it depicts such universal themes, and yet it is also clearly a product of the 1990s, distinctly modern and yet transcendent of its context. We react to Shinji's realistic and lovingly portrayed emotional insecurity and self-doubt in the same way that readers have reacted to Homer's incredibly vulnerable portrayals of Achille's angst and hubris or Priam's desperation and humility for the sake of a slain prince for centuries. This is Humanity recognizing itself in an inanimate object, in this case an anime, and coming away from the experience feeling as though there was something substantial gleaned. Something deep and true. If these characters's relevance also end up lasting nearly 3,000 years as well, I really couldn't be surprised. So yeah, this one is legendary. 'Nuff said. Oh and also something about the buzzing of cicadas. That’s super important.

3. Paranoia Agent

Oh Mr. Satoshi Kon. I feel for you a kinship that I imagine people may similarly feel for any fiercly individual creators like Isao, Hayao and Hideaki upon coming to know your animations. Indeed, I believe if animation can hope to do anything well specifically, it is in capturing human emotion, and the cerebral depth which actual humans possess in what are essentially simplistic, representative line-drawings, and Kon has that in spades. On a sheer visual level, Kon's work is the most immaculate I can imagine, with Paprika being comparable to Spirited Away on a technical level, and this show hints at the visual level he would be working on, while sporting an even stronger script in my mind. If NGE hinted at the psychological and emotional depths which could be found and expressed so effectively in anime, this show goes all the way in to the true deep-end. At the heart of it, is an actually somewhat straight-forward mystery, but things are obfuscated by unstable mental states and unreliable victims, all depicted wonderfully in the serene, nuanced style of Kons, which is wonderfully at odds with the subtly dark feeling of the show. As twisted as things get though, the show always come back to a very human place, and with everything punctuated by Hirasawa's fresh-as-hell OST, we have ourselves a serious keeper.

I just can't over-state how much this guy's visual style does it for me. The color-palette especially just really pops and makes my eyes go all googly in the same way they do when I think of shots of Shinji looking plaintive infront of a solid blue sky's backdrop. The script itself might be the true gem though, despite all the visual excellence. This show has lots to say about things including identity, perception, and media, and functions in some ways as a treatise on memes-- not in an internet-y way but more of in the sense that things and ideas can spread and develop and take on a life of their own despite the intentions of their creator. It's really fascinating stuff, with a fractal-esque structure all organized around a certain grinning Little Slugger. It's fascinating to see all these initially loose-seeming ends get tied up so nicely despite how off-the-rails it sometimes gets all with in its relative short run of episodes. It's one to watch over and over, as getting to the center of this labyrinth is a joyful excercise indeed.

4. .Hack//SIGN

Alright this is where I better brace myself to get written off by people who weren't turned off already by the inclusion of a detective shonen. The pessimistic take is that this is a long, boring show that takes a promising premise (to some) of being trapped in an MMO (about a decade before SAO) and features almost no action, existing mostly to accompany a string of largely repetitive Bandai-Namco action RPGS on the PS2 which themselves exist in order that some people might be suckered into buying all four volumes, procedurally-generated dungeons and all at approx. $200 US. The optimistic take though, is that this is one of the most atmospheric animes of all time thanks largely to an early OST from Yuki Kajiura before she got formulaic.

The show also sports excellent character designs which I think were very influential for other digitally drawn fantasy shows going forward. But where those shows become generic looking, this one has a pretty unique style, even if yes, scenes are largely consisting of conversations, plotting, waxing philosophical, and everything besides actual action. But the music! I don't know how Kajiura goes on to make so many lackluster OSTs later on (all that money) but here she shines brilliantly. The strings! The angelic vocal harmonies! I can't deny that this shows inclusion is largely due to the soundtrack. But beyond that, there are some interesting ideas to be found, including the central concept of a massively successful VR MMO game based on a fragmentary German epic poem in which people can become trapped in the game while in a coma-like state in real life, or the concept of sexual freedom of identity while on the net. For millenial kids who might be given to enjoying cyber-punk, I think this show is largely excellent, if yes a bit dry perhaps. But the overall atmosphere and feeling of the show is largely successful and I think it excellently captures the actual feeling of playing a good MMO. Critics like Digibro will trash this show save for the soundtrack, but I think the fact that this show fully encapsulates what it feels like to actually log into a game like Final Fantasy XI Online when your a kid makes an invaluable document of early 2000′s MMO culture. Limitless possibilities, mysteries abound, and `the absolving of the flesh and prior identity. A faint hint of danger and the unpaved crossroads. Those wide-open horizons are as fresh to me when I watch this show as they were when I was first getting my hands dirty exploring fantasy worlds online as a lad, and that's why there's no question about its placement on my list.

And seriously, listen to this song and tell me that this isn’t from a top 5 anime.

https://soundcloud.com/alexandr-valhala/01-yasashii-yoake-tv-size?in=alexandr-valhala/sets/hacksign-ost

5. FLCL

This one is a bit tricky. It's well-loved sure, and it's not too hard to tell why. It's off-the-walls sense of humour, playful animation and the fucking Pillows speak for themselves. But beyond that there's something deeper. And that deeper thing is simultaneously what makes me question if I should put it on this list at all while also being the thing that seals the deal. And that's the sheer attitude and feeling of this show. Which, yes is largely due to the Pillows. Again, I am no saint when it comes to ranking shows high based largely on the OST, but it's way more than that. It's a right-place, right-time kind of thing for sure, because if I hadn't seen this in its original US airing in the 6ths grade, it never would have hit me right. But at the time, it hit me harder than most shows. And even if it isn't something I can re-watch in the same was I can NGE or Paranoia Agent, its youthful energy and style are undeniable, and perfectly enshrined in its modest 6-episode run. Somethine about Naota is so damn relatable at that age. Because of this show I dreamt of growing up in a sleepy Japanese town, thinking about my professional baseball playing brother in the states, stressing about a lump on my head that might be a portal to an alien dimension, vespa-riding nymphomaniacs, and a dish-washing robot, among other things. In its short run time, this show packs a crazy amount of feels and light-hearted concepts. It takes slice-of-life and runs it through a mad-cap surrealist sci-fi cartoon filter. So while it's not something I can really sit through now-a-days, I will always be grateful for the way it made me feel so revved up and psyched when I was a kid. It gave me a new perspective in a weird way, at a time when I needed that, so thanks FLCL.

ok that’s that, shout-out to my 6-10 slots which I don’t feel like deciding the order of or writing about! Up next, consoles, games, OPs or albums?!

#anime #list #otaku #top5 #top 5 #paranoia agent #flcl #fooly cooly #case #closed #case closed #detective conan #neon genesis #nge #neon genesis evangelion

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