Alrighty, then! Knock yourselves out! No sweat off my sack.

Strictly speaking you are right, G-Core, but on the other hand... we do not have a thread or forum section for "Cartoons" or "Western Animation", so this thread is the closest possible choice. No need to be more catholic than the pope.

I am watching Suzumiya Haruhi-chan no Yûutsu, on YouTube.
There are "so-so" episodes and some really awesome episodes, a collection of more or less unrelated short chapters, which see the return of Asakura Ryôko and depict Yuki's Otaku interests (her Karaoke singing of "Paradise Lost" is priceless!).
Each episode has five and a half minutes, including the opening and ending sequence.
To my regret (or rather yours) the episodes are presented in Japanese with Chinese subs. The channel is called "vercetticipriani".

Don't worry, i already learned my lesson. If i was the Pope, i'd probably write a letter to Japan asking them to send me some of their anime to be perfectly honest!

Just got done with Grave of the Fireflies, not too long ago. Dunno what to say to this movie, aside from wondering why the fuck I haven't seen it sooner. It's too bad ADV (who – I'm assuming – seems to have picked up the CPM edition after that company fell, much like Critical Mass picked up some of the stuff released by CPM's hentai arm Anime18) has also fallen, because that pretty much means it's not on the market at the moment. Sad, since I'd recommend adding this movie to collections.

I was contemplating throwing out my Chinese garbage bootleg copy of Samurai Champloo since it's practically worthless, and spoils my otherwise legitimate collection. Well, the video quality isn't very good, as expected, for the series was crammed on 3 discs at the factory o' pollution. At least it has the English dub so I don't have to endure poorly translated unofficial subtitles like most bootlegs.

I ended up watching all the way through it over a few days. The personality is just as awesome as ever, but the animation put me off. There's almost no consistency in the speed of the fights, and frequently there is superhuman speed used the cut down on the amount of frames and replaced with a slash effect, when other times it looks like it's going in slow motion unintentionally.

The baseball episode is fucking ridiculously awesome, anyway.

Sailor Moon: Ami's First Love - Well, 42317, you were right! If i hadn't seen this, i would've regretted NOT seeing it for all eternity!!! Ami-chan is SO KAWAII!!! That was most definitely my ONLY chance at seeing her in the bathtub , while reading a book of course, and how fast she can cover with the pink towel rivals her I.Q. I do wonder what would've happened if she had met the REAL "Mercurius"...

Spoiler

Mercurius is a total nerd, glasses and all, and Ami was told that he looked like a pretty boy from a magazine. Ami implied that is the sort of guy she falls for so if she knew it was Umino's pal who shares a similar look to Umino, she'd probably crack!

It was funny how she thought the spirit girl was Mercurius and no matter how many times she tried to tell her the obvious, Ami kept doing her Sailor routine.

Duck Dodgers. When a 7 minute-flick from 1953 inspires a full-fledged series about its characters you think it's good. But you don't expect the short flick is, well, going to be the best thing of the series (which it is, by far and large, as it is IMHO one of the best Looney Tunes cartoons ever made). It has some good points, but I think I'm going to switch to other kind of more serious series. Batman: Gotham Knights, I'm coming for you!

Devil May Cry (TV), disc 1 of the Complete Collection I bought when I picked up Grave of the Fireflies. So far so good. Kind of wish I hadn't taken those first 2 games into GameStop now. Didn't think I'd be thinking about playing them again, though.

Of the new season of stuff I'm watching, Durarara! seems the most promising. Quite a funny story how the name came about... the author of the novels the anime is based on sent an untitled story to his editor. And when his editor asked for the name, he just went Durarara randomly as a joke. But the editor liked it, saying he liked random names like that and thus.... Durarara.

Anyway its by the same creators of Bacanno! Hard to describe, but has that massive cast all seemingly entwined together in some way or another in ways yet unknown as far as episode 2 can tell. The story telling is far easier to keep up with. Its more or less a typical linear progression and doesn't hop between three time threads, and back and forth and has more focus. In essence its an easier to understand Bacanno! in terms of storytelling. It takes place in current day Japan, Ikebukuro and so has a very different feel. The characters that made appearances are already very interesting. A guy who throws vending machines and people into the air, a black Russian man who works at a... Russian owned sushi-shop.... the mysterious tiger helmeted black rider... just to name a few!

So in just a few simple terms:
Bacanno!
In current day Japan!
Less erratic storytelling!
24 episodes!


It should be quite the ride.

It's funny that I found your description of Mushishi today, because on Thursday I watched the first four episodes and when asked about it I described the situation exactly the other way round:

"Mushishi is a bit like Bakemonogatari - minus the interesting characters, minus the enigmatic dialogues, minus the awesome cuts, minus the captivating soundtrack, and without any suspenseful plot elements."

Mushishi is so unbelievingly boring - I'm so not opening a thread for that show!

Mushishi isn't so bad...its more like a calming anime..where each ep to its own...ha...it never gets to a point where things start to heat up for a climatic last ep!...
No...it's all the same...but as I said...it's not bad to watch an ep every now and than without expecting anything exciting....
Reminds me of Somedays Dreamers where nothing really awesome happens at any point...it just feels calming to watch

Mushishi I classify as a stoner anime, for stoned people like me who like to lay there and just watch without a care in the world. Its not for everybody! I like it because of the whole fantastical setting and the general calmness to it. I always get moments where I just feel like laying there and not doing a thing, so I might as well watch stoner anime while laying there.

I stumbled across an opportunity at isohunt, so I got myself the first episode of Urusei Yatsura (from 1981).
As for the designs, it looks like a typical Takahashi Rumiko piece, but it looks way more interesting than, say, Inuyasha...
I have mentioned on other occasions that I dislike Takahashi's handling of relationships, you know, there's a girl and a boy, and while they like each other and are clearly a perfect couple they tend to say the wrong things at the wrongest times and ambiguous coincidences do the rest, so they get closer to each other and once they're so close that the only thing missing would be a proposal or a kiss, something stupid comes up and they blast away from each other, starting the routine all over again.
That's Takahashi in a nutshell alright. But Urusei Yatsura is different in a possibly decisive way:
The loser-type protagonist Ataru already has a girlfriend, Shinobu, who even proposes to him, and Lum's appearance and consent to marriage give the plot a totally different outlook than the usual constellation of the couple who at least initially doesn't know they're actually a couple.
I'll be watching on... there's 192 episodes,six movies, and an 11 episode OVA (which is, crazy enough, the sequel to the movie named "The Final Chapter"), and I'm very interested in seeing whether there'll be a definite end to the story!

Evangelion 1.01: You Are (Not) Alone - I really gotta say that watching it this time with the Japanese track and subtitles made the experience much more appealing and interesting to follow through than the first time that left a bad impression with the English dub track.

Perhaps this is the confirmed sign that from now on when i buy anime, i should totally ignore the English track and go straight for the original track. Although following the subtitles was a challenge sometimes since lots of lines go by so fast when planning an Angel attack, i loved the seiyuu performances! Megumi Ogata as Shinji and Megumi Hayashibara as Rei, both haven't lost their touch. They still got the same style and pitch to their characters after all these years. Kotono Mitsuishi as Misato still retains her playful side when not being serious, but i did notice that her serious tone has definitely matured a bit. I felt in those scenes that it was really an adult talking.

I look forward to Eva 2.0, and from what this experience has given me, i'll most likely skip the English track and stick to the Japanese audio.

Well, it's been a while since I've posted on this topic and I've been watching quite a lot of series lately.

I've finally finished off the first season of Steel Angel Kurumi and it's a pretty damn solid series overall. Love every minute of it. Saki is definitely my favorite character because she's very sweet and her love for Kurumi is both funneh and kinkeh at the same time.

Watched the first episode of Kaleido Star out of curiosity and it looks pretty decent and the plot is quite unique for a magical girl series. I'm gonna put it on hold for a while since I have so many series to watch atm.

Here's what I'm currently watching:

Heroic Age episodes 1-6: It's pretty friggin' epic. I'm REALLY digging the story a lot since it's based off of the Twelve Labors of Hercules and Hesiod's The Five Ages of Mankind. And Belcross is just oozes with badassry.

Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo episodes 2-5: The textures in the show just keep getting more random and more stranger with each episode.

Black Cat episodes 2-5: Ugh. The sheer blandness and lack of character development is killing me. X_X Hell, Queen's Blade had more character development than Black Cat AND it's a lot more fun to watch, in a guilty pleasure sense yes.

Claymore episodes 2-5: I. LOVE. CLARE. Other than that, it's a fantastic series so far.

Samurai Champloo episodes 2-5: Pretty much speaks for itself. Superb in every conceivable way.