The Community Thread

[ivrognard]

@RedFoxxie Some really nice titles there. So i gather that is around a 8 year pause. I think i can put a small list with what i consider decent/good releases in the period. Cromartie is one of those ignored/forgotten gems, sadly. And there you can put Azumanga and School Rumble. Cowboy Bebop is still one of my all-time favorites. Loved that series and i still do. 

Zetsubou Sensei was under the radar for the most anime consumers. So i am glad when i see more people that saw that one. 

Personally, i have nothing against a good Harem/Action/Comedy/Fantasy. Sometimes, i just need something to relax and those genres are pretty good. Though i could probably recommend at least one really good fantasy title.

Twelve Kingdoms is still one of my favorite fantasy series, despite its slow start. The evolution of the main character was amazing and the story caught me and never let go until the end. The whole anime is somewhere in a morally grey area, where you can understand many points of view of the various characters and can't just deem them as villains or pure evil, because you have the motivations and the circumstances of their action layed out. Even the main character evolves from the model student to a person that will have to deal with the consequences of her actions and live with them. I wouldn't call it a light series, nor one easy to digest. But definitely one of the best fantasy series that i've seen. Sadly, the anime adaptation is just a quarter of the whole saga (there are 6 novels and 2 short story collections and 4 novels were translated in english, so far and the anime covers only two novels, from what i recall). 

If you've enjoyed Legend of Galactic Heroes, you might want to give a try to some more anime based on the works of the man that created it (and he's a very popular science-fiction/fantasy author in Japan, with at least one Seiun award - the japanese equivalent for Hugo Awards). Tytania would be the one that would suit your tastes better, as is in the same style as Legend of Galactic Heroes, but with a more modern touch. Yakushiji Ryoko can be considered a sort of X-Files (my avatar represents the main character), but with a twist. The Heroic Legend of Arslan can be considered fantasy, but is more of an early middle ages setting, with magic rather suggested than used. The story takes a young prince that loses his country and shows his road to rulership> Sohryuden: Legend of Dragon Kings (or of Four Kings, kind of varies on who published the novels) is more of a comedy-fantasy and probably the least serious of the bunch. Enjoyed it nontheless, as it's well written. 

[RedFoxxie]

Thanks for the suggestions @ivrognard  , I'll write those up ~

Twelve Kingdoms I believe I've heard of at least, the art style looks very familiar. Need to look that up. Tytania I am also preeeetty sure I have seen some of the novels of at my friends house who's a huge junkie for mangas and novels from nippon. Quick look into it and I can totally see the similarities between the series's. That one surely goes on a watch list. The rest sound unfamiliar to me. In any case, needa check those out alright.

Zetsubou Sensei is one of those series's which I personally love but a lot of my friends do not get at all. Only the aforementioned friend who is generally very much into japanese culture in general agrees with me that the series is made of genius. After all, it is quite difficult to understand a lot of the humor in it without some good understanding of japanese culture.

As for harem stuff. There's always exceptions. I really enjoyed Fruits Basket, I think it's considered harem despite its reversal of roles ? It's just that more often than not many harem animes seem so.. how would I say it. Whimsical. Like, they may have one good episode here and there and then the rest is basically absolute filler full of fan service. Basically the issue is that oftentimes it feels like the creators themselves use the harem genre as an excuse so that they do not have to care about the details on the anime :D Something like Futakoi would be a good example of such.

Came to my mind from Zetsubou Sensei.. Do you watch any other japanese stuff outside of animes ? Like, I enjoy watching Gaki no Tsukai sometimes. It's difficult to find friends who'd like to watch it with me and the only times they laugh are the times when they do something very directly funny while all the jokes based on culture or other shows go totally past their radar. One which made me outright sad was the last Batsu game of theirs in which they did an Astro Boy -based skit and only me actually got it as nobody else even knew the character =x Same thing with another skit on another Batsu in which they kept making joke appearances of Black Jack during an episode in which they were at a hospital..

Anyways, thanks for the suggestions again ~

[ivrognard]

@RedFoxxie  I do watch jdramas and movies and also listen to some music that i liked. Ali Project is one of my favorite japanese bands, along with X-Japan. Would add Keiko Matsui for her great jazz and Aya, which can be considered the best grunge musician from Japan (she also sang with the Seattle scene back in the nineties, along with names like Soundgarden and Nirvana). There are a lot of other bands and musicians that i like a lot, though.

Zetsubou Sensei is not a manga/anime for everyone. It will probably never attain the celebrity status. But for the people that can get the series, is a true gem.

Fruit Basket - another blast from the past. Yeah, it is considered Harem, though the label is Reverse-Harem. If you liked Fruit Basket, you might want to try something less modern and that is actually well-made: Saiunkoku Monogatari (two seasons, sadly not covering even a quarter of the 22 light novels). The opening song is quite nice, too.

Japanese jokes are quite different of the western jokes, so most people will probably miss the point, especially if they don't have the mindset or a basic understanding of the japanese culture or a more serious knowledge of japanese shows/dramas/movies/etc. I've seen a few episodes, but they are usually hard to come by and you can rarely find a translation and a good translation is even harder to come by. 

As you mentioned that you want to read the GTO manga, i would like to point that you should start with Shonan Junai Gumi, continue with Bad Company, GTO, GTO: 14 Days (the missing weeks from the GTO manga) and GTO: Paradise Lost (direct sequel to GTO). Add to those Ino-Head Gargoyle (with Saejima, the box policeman, former partner in crime of Onizuka) and Great Transporter Ryuji (Onizuka's best friend). Last two as spin-offs and quite short. I've seen probably all the GTO j-dramas made so far and i have a hard time to choose which is my favorite, as each has its own merits. If i would be hard pressed i would probably lean towards the one released in the nineties. 

[Straatford87]

Heads up all!

If you're up for it, feel free to stop by for a chat with me while you're at Gamescom. You can find me in Hall 6 at the Battlefront II Galactic  Assault booth.

If you can't find me, just ask anyone in a black shirt and they will hit me up.

Hope to see ya there!

[ivrognard]

@Straatford87  wish you a good time there, Tom. Waiting for the weekend so i can watch the press conferences and the anouncements. I hear that some of the announced games had a positive reception, so i guess you had some really convincing presentations. 

[Red_Hood_1810]

Greetings everyone!

I finally played Pyre last week and I must say it exceeded my exception. Supergiant has done a great job in their third game. The music and the art style of the game is top notch. I saw Totalbiscuit play it earlier and it's a lot of fun watching and playing it. 

I also saw trailer for Fe. If I remember correctly, this was announced way back and I just hope it is great at launch. I am excited for it. @Straatford87 Just want to know if it will be available for trial in Origin Access?

What games have you all been playing? Did anyone play Pyre or Telltale's Batman The Enemy Within? @BigPete7978@ivrognard@RedFoxxie@EA_Archi...

[ivrognard]

@Red_Hood_1810 Not yet, sadly. A wee bit outside my price range and i usually don't buy any Telltale game until the season is over.

[RedFoxxie]

Man I was thinking @Red_Hood_1810 first meant XCOM Enemy Within , but no. I haven't played Pyre nor the Batman title. The only Telltale title I think I've even played is the Tales of Monkey Island. Right, and The Wolf Among Us..

Pyre I've looked at but haven't picked up. I love Supergiant's games in general and was hyped to see and hear how the current game is like. But, I first misunderstood that the game would be online multiplayer and my friends scared me at first by saying "It's like mixing up dota and rocket league" and it immediately put me off *laughs* I play Rocket a lot and have former experience out of Dota and I found mixing those two together being a disaster abrew. But I've understood later that it doesn't actually even have online multiplayer and that it is very enjoyable against the AI. So we'll see, might pick it up on next sales or something. My roommate could perhaps enjoy some sofa coop with it. For now, to my "football" sort of needs I'm happy with Rocket League and Kopanito.

But yeah, lately I've been playing Battlefield 1 after a bit of a break I took earlier. Other than that I am playing currently Romance of Three Kingdoms 13 and Rocket League namely. Once Sonic Mania comes out on PC, I'll be playing that through for sure. Out of Origin-games, I've been planning on playing through the Ultima-series at least up till Pagan at some point and some of the C&C series's older titles.. I have a lot of nostalgia for both of the series's, but I haven't gotten to replaying them as of yet.

[EA_David]

+1 on Pyre's amazing art & music. The actual gameplay is hard to describe, it's closer to the old NBA games from the 90s but it's very unique.

As for what we're playing, Titanfall 2 is still king for me. If anyone has it and hasn't played for a while they should come back and check out the co-op Frontier Defense mode. 

[RedFoxxie]

I should really give Titanfall 2 a go sometime. It seems to be pretty cheap even right now. For me it was just that when it came out, I really wanted Battlefield 1 at the time and I didn't want to put money on Titanfall 2 as I prepurchased BF1 and Premium pass so I kinda spent my game fundings there for the time being, haha ! ~

My roommate is really into mechas, we used to love playing together with him Battlefield 2142 and pilot the walkers there. Should really try to get him to Titanfall 2 now that I think of it.

As for 90's NBA, you mean like NBA Jam back in 94 or so ? That'd be a blast if the Pyre is like that, haha ! I used to play that with Sega CD as a kid. Man, crazy to think how long ago that was.