Tuned in to Retro Anime / Manga!

>>2901
Loved this show when it was originally airing. I think the reason modern audiences don't understand it is because they don't remember what it was like before the internet/global network/wired was everywhere and connected to everything. When this show originally aired there was still a huge divide in society where most people either didn't interact with the internet (and the people on it) at all or they only interacted with it through limited or secondary means. By that I mean. You might have an email address for the company you worked with but you rarely used it for anything beyond getting reports from 2-3 people. Or you saw print outs of stuff someone else printed off from the web. Maybe you dialed in for a couple of hours now and again to browse a handful of websites. But most people weren't doing stuff like building up a friend group online on BBSs/forums/IRC. The people that were really into the internet and doing those things were seen as strange by most of society. Even they unplugged now and again either by choice or not. Since you had to disconnect from time to time to maintain a normal life. There was no internet in your pocket at all times. You had to be at your "home base" to interact with it or you had to rent time on someone else's system at places like the library or school.

Those of us that were already really into the internet *got* the show because we could see the internet invading more and more activities in life at that time. Even the people that watched it a few years after it aired didn't have that kind of experience. Since things like broadband were starting to become available to most people (thus allowing 24/7 connections) and flip phones were becoming affordable. Society changed rapidly from about mid-1999 to 2002. It's really had to describe to someone that didn't live through those years just how much change happened in that short amount of time. Most people I know in the states weren't even aware of Lain until 2004+. Since tape trading/early digisubs were kind of a closed circle and Lain didn't get dubbed+aired on America TV until years later. I forget the actual date the dub aired in America but I think it was after ZDTV/TechTV changed its programming blocks for geek stuff to start including gaming+otaku stuff. So I'd say it was after 2003 at least and maybe later.

I actually don't remember how I first stumbled upoPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>3643
>different Wired Lain and "Real" Lain are
There's a nuance here people miss. There is Iwakura Lain (irl one) and Lain of the Wired. Afaik an iwakura is a sacred rock where a kami resides. The name Iwakura is never used for Lain's wired self. Usually, people see Lain as someone who's become a goddess via the wired, but the show seems to be suggesting the opposite. There is an original sacred human nature which is lost as someone interacts with the wired. By the end of the show, Lain isn't a god, she's just an internet schizo.

>it felt like the anime went through a midseries change in plot, or that there were a good number of rewrites after some episodes, mostly due to how quickly some plot elements were ignored or quickly passed over
Not sure this really is a flaw. A good chunk of the anime is visualizing Lain's experiences on the wired. Like most people online today, she's constantly cycling through masses of information, fixating on one thing, then shifting to whatever else that titillates her short attention span. It feels erratic and it should because the internet makes us erratic consumers of ultimately meaningless and incoherent data.

>>3646
This. SEL is filled with that 90s zeitgeist. Well into the 2000s, socializing online still felt like a relatively niche thing. Physical media (newspapers, VHS, cassettes, letters) were on the cusp of obsolesce but still widely used.

Its not just lain. virtually every popular anime is popular for the wrong reasons.like they werent paying attention to what the animators were saying.

>>2901
>>3425
Agree with some of what you're saying, but disagree with other parts for the following reasons.
Lain's family isn't real and even if you consider them an analogy to a real dysfunctional family, it's hard to believe the creators intended for this to be a central theme.
Even as an analogy, it doesn't really work, since Lain turned out alright under her parents, more so compared to her video game version who became suicidal without real human connections. In the end, Lain's parents were good parents, despite not being real, as they helped her reach a positive conclusion.

I don't think anyone really focuses too much on Lain being a cyber goddess, but I do agree that they shill the whole 'transcending the material for the internet' deal, and I think that's a mixup. Lain chooses to leave things be and the people who all wanted to integrate were shown as unstable throughout. At the same time there are many aspects of the show that cater to these kinds of people.

Lain has a lot of denpa appealing aspects/references: it aired past 12AM, the power lines humming, the VR headset guy, etc. I think the show is intentionally appealing to the denpa audience of, at least, Japan and so it resonated to the American alternative, which isn't real, but is the younger audiences experiencing the effects of the effects this show had on the older audience who integrated it into the zeitgeist. When the newer audience began watching it, its effects were already ingrained into that younger audience before experiencing it. Most of the younger audience likely saw it already having an idea of what was going to happen or what it was about. Their connection is a feeling of being denpa without knowing what denpa is, a copy with no awareness of the original. They are wrong about the literally me aspects, but those aspects are intentionally there and integral to the whole meaning of the show, which is a callout to those kinds of people.

The show being 'denpa' opposes that its general themes are loneliness, atomization, and breakdown by technology. For one, those aspects are part of what makes it denpa, and for that reason it could be argued that focusing on those aspects is the same as people focusing on the "literally me" aspects. They are aspects that are details Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>3663
You are probably right about the denpa angle. But it does feel like there's a tension running throughout the whole anime between lamenting what technology is doing to the world and being fascinated with tech as a new kind of magic that makes radically new experiences possible. SEL doesn't seem to resolve this tension, being deliberately ambiguous about how it feels and what to do about it. I've always seen the ending as open ended, an attempt at just trying to live with the new world and let it be but without passing any real judgement on it or trying to hammer home a hamfisted message. So you have this mix at despairing at this new world while being drawn into it at the same time. And its perfectly possible for a family to be dysfunctional and still good loving parents. Sometimes Lain feels like an iyashikei anime but its inverted the aesthetic into something darker and more uncomfortable and mysterious.

La Blue Girl would be great.

Today's stream:
More ToHeart
Some Battle Athletes
and La Blue Girl because you people really want it (hopefully won't get my account nuked)
at the usual time (4PM EST)

>>3736
can you stream this >>2313 too? I really wanna see it

>>3736
LA BLUE GODS WON. Embed as pre-stream lobby music?

Streams will be taking a break this week as I will be out of the house all weekend

Why wife Ran-chan with film grain!

>>3523
I'll give it a shot

DBZ looks great when it's actually scanned properly.

>>3553
nice fuckin' grain

Japanese dislike Barefoot Gen because its critical of the Japanese government, which more or less insists it did nothing wrong. Americans dislike Barefoot Gen, not because they feel anything for the characters, but the implication that they are in fact guilty makes them extremely uncomfortable. When you fear for your life, you call the police. You intuitively turn to the government and, in that moment, you feel they will sort it all out, that they know what they are doing, and things will be ok. Similarly, people now get their moral values from the state. This habit of finding comfort in authority is what Takahata was trying to criticize in Graveyard of the Fireflies. We even get our moral values from the government. “I am not breaking any laws” is a phrase we hear may times its meaning is simple: I am not violating the laws of the king, so you can’t disagree with me or criticize my actions. Barefoot Gen tells us this authority we seek comfort in, this coddling mommy figure, is actually psychopathic and utterly uncaring. Humans are nothing but statistics and commodities that can be sacrificed or murdered to further national ambitions. It is like this horrible Goya painting of a god eating his own son. Barefoot Gen is essential viewing because it points out this out. But there is a stronger moral message about overcoming suffering and growing stronger. Real strength is moral courage. Since the 2000s, young people have not shown this strength and the world has slowly drifted towards tragedy.

>>3726
I watched it and yeah I think the first film is a great classic. The second I respect too but it gets a bit suffocating. They were adapted by pretty good directors, Mori Masaki and Toshio Hirata respectively, and I guess this is Masaki's best work.
I don't really watch the streams.

>>3728
take your meds

Review Shouwa Ahozoushi Akanuke Ichiban

It's a superpower romcom, but mostly comedy. Characters do not change, romance barely develops, and the episodes generally follow the same formula even if the premise changes. It's love triangle comedy broken up with a few dokidoki moments.

The comedy is loud and mostly slapstick, along with verbal misunderstandings and constant gags (like UY). Most of these can be pretty funny, but binging is not recommended as the form of the jokes is repetitive.

The characters are charismatic and the premise is unique enough to make it work. The MC acts on the trope of country hick, although he is more broadly a dumb pervert trope character. The voice actor who plays him puts 100% into the exaggerated emotion, silliness, and heroic aspects of the role. Similarly, the other voice actors are all well in tune with their characters.

One downside is that some episodes lack a driving plot. Each episode usually involves a central problem and the resolution being a climax near the end of the episode. When this premise is lacking the entire episode can move like a slug. For example, the stories centered around the Jariten character are fine, until they repeat and it's the same plot of him following the girl he likes or messing something up involving his planet.

When the premise is decent enough, the episodes are fine to great. The non narrative aspects of the show are generally top tier. The direction and storyboarding is well done, with shots flowing into each other with seamless transitions that introduce the subject of the following shot into the scene usually with music being employed to signal or ease one scene into the next. However, even good direction isn't enough to carry a boring or unoriginal plot, which is why I mention these aspects after mentioning plot.

Other minor downsides include there being sometimes excessive sound effects when the animation/cutting should be doing the talking and there sometimes being too many jokes that aren't tied into the plot. I get slapstick comedy involves abrupt jokes, but when there are so many that aren't ever acknowledged by the character or plot, they begin to feel like unnecessary pauses that make the narrative less engrossing. Generally these aren't always the case which is why these are minor nitpicks.

Other aspects that are done well include the art, animation, and music. Light and bright colors, with a lot of detailPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

Review Video Girl Ai

High quality all around, except that it's hard to find online in high quality. Romcom OVA of 6 episodes, at about 30 minutes each, including OP/ED.

Animation was extremely polished, majority of what is happening onscreen appears fluid with the exception of the mouths. Art was also top notch with lots of detailed shading (on characters and setting pieces) paired with complementing lighting choices, such as bright sun flare effects and the general presence of bright, but soft overhead sources of light, creating glossiness and illuminating the soft colors, while also creating deep shadows.
Expressions are fairly emotive, but not overdone as is usually the case in comedy anime. There are comedy faces, but it's kept to the art style; they lean towards realism more than wackiness. Highly detailed outfits paired with already mentioned aspects made the characters fit well into the backgrounds, a rare example of characters not looking out of place in front of artistic backgrounds. The faded, laid back color scheme is relaxing and anachronistic, making this a good late night anime. The colors, setting, and art also add to the bittersweetness of the romance. This is a romcom more focused on the rom, although the comedy is fairly funny. There's a lot of oppai and good ecchi scenes too, yet it's a genuinely heart tugging show and the ecchi never detracts from the overarching romance.

The style is oddly denpa. There's lots of imagery reminiscent of denpa such as tv static, telephone lines, strange heavenly techno imagery, uncanny shots of distant places, EM waves effects. Ai in the tv is very reminiscent of that one shot from Lain, and I feel there are many other shots that Lain could have been inspired by. It often feels similar to the atmosphere of Beautiful Dreamer and Lum the Forever.

The music is great. It's more like VN osts than the usual 80s stuff, but with some unique tones like in related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlBhuD04lT8

In all really well done and a real classic.

10/10

Review Lily Cat OVA (1987)

Homage to horror classics The Thing and Alien. Set in the future, the crew of space cruiser Saldes is sent out to explore a new planet. The crew wakes up from a 20 year hyper sleep having arrived at their destination and to the notification that two crew members are disguised criminals. Unbeknownst to them, their ship found and captured a floating alien life form during the journey.

Minor spoilers: Despite the direct influences, the story isn't a direct copy. It follows the framework of the classics, but to the effect of subverting plot anticipation. It's clear from the get go what route the story is taking, but this upfront presentation of narrative also sets the audience up for twists and the unexpected find of depth in the writing.

The art style has impressive lighting, but it's a fairly standard 80s OVA art style catered towards realism. It isn't poorly made, but it's not outstanding either. Characters are detailed with shadows, hair glossiness, realistic facial/body structures, face feature lines, lips, etc., yet none of this really pops out. I would owe this to the use of thin lines over the stylistic thicker lines that most anime go with. Without thick lines and few hatch lines, the faces lack the depth or style to be memorable. This choice seems to have been made to appear more western, but honestly a more distinctive style could have looked better at the cost of some realism. The monster is also fairly lacking in style. Its tendrils were well done, but the main biomass was pretty boring. The choice of coloring it completely black was a copout as it obscured. detail of the monster's gore/tumours. The lack of gore was also disappointing.
Despite these faults there is a saving grace in the interiors. The detail here is at its peak. Most of the backgrounds are fully 3D and pop out with multiple layers of shading, coloring, and line work. As the background rarely appears flat and distant, it's often present and imposing.

Music shows promise at the start, then they make the choice of going full campy. Monster scenes were accompanied with 80s hard rock like it was Scooby Doo or something. Not the best choice, but there were some good uses of music near the beginning. Sound effects were well done though. Footsteps and echoes were used well to create tension and the monster sounds were creative. The monster sounds were clearly inspired by The Thing, using some kind of hissing sound, rePost too long. Click here to view the full text.

Review Yawara (1986)

Yawara is a TV series about a young girl, Yawara, who has, all her life, been trained to be a judo champion by her 5 time national judo champion grandfather and master. Despite her training and natural talent for judo she wants to live a normal life distant from judo.

By technical aspects this anime is impressive. The quality of the animation stays consistent for over 100 episodes and the style is fairly detailed. Flaws are mainly present in writing and plot.

Spoilers:
The main flaw of the show is the contrived bias and unrealistic sway towards Yawara accepting judo. Like Yawara's grandpa, the plot is excessively one sided towards Yawara becoming involved with judo. There is little exploration or leg room given to Yawara's desire and the show insists that judo is right for her. None of the supporting cast supports Yawara's wish to live a normal life. This is to say, all the supporting characters are either directly or indirectly involved in convincing her to do judo. There are characters, like the grandpa and newspaper journalist, who excessively believe Yawara has to do judo, and do everything to convince her so; characters who have some sort of emotional deficit which can only be healed by Yawara doing judo, like Fujiko; and characters who are there to show that Yawara can do judo and live somewhat normally, like Jody and Belkins. Even the one character Yawara sees as her connection and outlet to a normal life secretly wants her to do judo. The lack of thought given to Yawara's personal desire makes her struggle for individuality nonexistent and the show a repetition of plots where Yawara is unfairly coerced into being involved in judo. It's hardly fair, or good writing, that she's surrounded by people who either excessively push for her to do judo or are somehow dependent on her doing judo. She's also portrayed as selfish when she puts her own desires over the hopes and needs of the rest of the cast who all coincidentally agree she should do judo or are in a position where her doing judo would benefit them. The writing basically insists that Yawara needs to do judo and even portrays her wish to live by her needs as superficial and silly. The full title of the show is "Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl", yet most of what "fashionable" refers to are scenes such as Yawara thinking about going shopping while she's being forced to participate in judo. I continue to use words like coercion or forced because Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>3715
>>3715
is that crummy upscaling or denoising?

>>3658
Guess it depends on your resources. Most people could not afford high quality VCRs and generally rented VHS or bought them second hand. That is why so many of us had problems with tapes getting eaten or worn. If you could afford a decent set up then those issues were probably less common for you.

Retro zoomers are gay. They are the gaming equivalent of the Taliban. VHS is fucking trash. CRTs have some minor benefits. Like older games being designed for them. I woud not use them to watch anime.

VHS rips not the original VHS tapes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEzmbw_Y-Tw

>>3684

Once you start having to name all the programs you had to use on a simple vhs rip to make it "watchable" for yourself with all these "corrections" you lost the point and may as well go watch the bluray or whatever.

>>3685
Sometimes… VHS is all we have. We have better ways to rip media, and it's domesday based.

>>3381
Bebop Laserdisc looks the same as the original released DVD just slightly less sharp so it's the usual but Bebop changes aren't really visual anyways even if Blu Ray is darker.
https://youtu.be/vK3G07zN6NA

>>3387
It is, the only HD direct scan SM has is the movies which are sadly only in 16:9 (played in theaters that way but it was animated and shown on Tav 4:3 so it's better) and fan upload of Sailor Stars op.
https://youtu.be/322WvZ3e2zs

You can literally see white specs fly up during the scene.

Any new 16mm or 35mm fan scans?

>>3587
Fuck you.

>>3541
you should also invite
>kissu
>hikari3
>bantculture
>smugloli
>39chan

I'd love to play chess for wap, but only if there aren't noob-filteringly short time controls

Moved to >>>/wap/3021.

THE GREATEST SHOUNEN ANIME OF ALL TIME IS ONE CLICK AWAY
FRIDAY NIGHT 21:00 UTC
Exclusively on https://cytu.be/r/GreedIsland

You do NOT want to miss the anime that Noboru Kawakami has gone on record to call "life-changing".

Video's up on Nine!
https://youtu.be/ZvjghVlCazw

>>536
I loved Touch and H2. I enjoyed Cross Game and Mix, but don't feel that they lived up to the legacy. Probably an unpopular opinion.

OP 4 of Touch always hits me RIGHT where it hurts. "Hitoribocchi no duet"... what a name, what an image. https://yewtu.be/watch?v=zLHt0Yo6TZc

>>536
Even more than Rumiko I find his works samey, the first one you read or watch will be the best

>>537
I like Rough the most

>>3341
This is kind of how I feel. I read a collection of oneshots of his that Viz (? I think) released back in the day and it was fine, but the best one was the mystery of the cute psychic girl at the ski lodge and even a series of one shots was getting repetitive by the end.

Still, what he does do, he does well.