Bookend47

Dire's special move was pretty ridiculous, eagle-spread your legs and display your crouch in the enemy's face. I'm looking forward to Part 2 the most since people are always say it's the best arc, I prefer Part 1's horror movie vibe though so let's see if that changes.

You're welcome. I can remember a few highlights from every ep but that mostly came from many rewatches of certain eps. IBO was a bad show to watch so late especially when it came after One Punch Man. I mostly just tried to pay attention while my focus was divided between reading forums and posting but when I rewatched the show Sunday mornings I enjoyed it a lot more. Maybe more people would feel the same if they did that. Personally the show peaked for me at ep 3 when Mikazuki dueled Lieutenant Crank, but the action in this show was generally pretty good, I agree. I like it when characters in anime just spend time talking, even more so than fight scenes because it's fun to see how the writers allow them to interact. Whenever IBO did this I couldn't help but enjoy it. But I grew a bit sick of the pattern in the middle of the show, where there's a action ep, then a character building ep, then another action scene which is resolved at the beginning of a development ep. That's a generous rating, personally there's a lot of greatness in the show with the concept and themes but the execution just wasn't clicking with me. I watched halfway through Unicorn and while I haven't finished it I think that you would have to be insane to think it's worst than IBO. Also I don't think that it will be as confusing as most people think for a newbie to UC. There were some terms and connections that went over my head but most of the stuff the show explains, and what isn't is easy enough to figure out. Like Laplace's Box is some sort of puzzle and the title gundam is the key to locating it. I doubt that vague simplified description is on the mark but from the clues the show gave that's what I figured.

Damn this show is still pretty rough right now, maybe it's because of my high expectations or something because I'm not enjoying these early parts as much as I thought I would be. Still a pretty ok ep, didn't think it was necessary at first to explain in detail what a doppelganger was, but since it was tied back to nen I let it slide. I'm really looking forwards the next ep for foreshadowing reasons.

Now this was a season finale, and a damn fine one at that. Felt like all of the good elements of the show barring the Kudelia parts culminated in this last episode. The Ein vs Mikazuki fight was great, I actually rooted for Ein a bit since Mikazuki was too nonchalant for my liking. It was refreshing to see him actually struggle in a fight for once too. The Mcgillis and Gaelio part was excellent as well, with Mcgillis being such a stone-cold bastard that I was honestly surprised. I felt a bit sorry for him as he killed Gaelio, since I always enjoy villains who shows a tinge of regret in their sacrifices to further their goals. If he doesn't end up being at least a major antagonist for Tekkadan in Season 2 then there will be a big missed opportunity. But from my knowledge of the "new" villain in season 2 I think that Mcgillis in that role won't be necessary. Not much to say about the rest of the episode except I'm surprised that the asspull about Shino, Lafter, and Azee being alive wasn't as bullshit as I thought it was going to be. But I guess killing characters off for needless shock value is too edgy and letting it seemed that you did is somehow better writing. Everything else was wrapped up nice and neat, so yeah it was good. My overall thoughts of IBO is that I didn't pay any attention to the first few eps and pretty missed the great parts of the show, I had later rewatched the first 9 eps and growth a large appreciation for it, it was the mature, complex show Toonami needed at the time along with Champloo to keep it from looking like a late-night kid block, if HXH had started half a year earlier that would have helped too. But since I started to get into the show around the time of the Brewers arc I noticed that I was enjoying it far less than the earlier eps and was forcing myself to like the show. Then the Dort arc happened which was where I kinda stopped caring but the Carta and Edmonton arcs salvaged my final opinion of season 1 though, so it's all good. I definitely don't think it's trash like the loud minority of posters on this forum, it's just a very mixed bag of a show. I personally think that most people just don't get it. I'm also happy in the end that the gundam/hunter power hour is still alive.

Surprisingly I didn't find the fight all that thrilling, but watching Dio in his dastardly magnificence more than made up for it. Definitely the best villain on the block right now and makes up a large part of what is entertaining about Part 1, which even though is objectively the worst part is still a underrated masterpiece. With it being second to Part 2 as the most unknown arc of Jojo to me I had great faith that it would have its redeeming aspects, which it does but there are some minor gripes I have. I thought fights like Bruford and Tarkrukus would be more important than they actually were in the show, I can't fault the show for having really good pacing but it felt like in Bruford's case especially that the show moved to a different setpiece too quickly. Same with Tarkrukus, I thought that after he killed Zeppeli he would have a longer more spectacular fight, instead of Jonathan getting a instantaneous power-up and killing him FOTNS-style. Still the final move was really cool, so it's fine. The second thing, which I hear is more of a problem in part 2 and fixed in later parts, is that everyone except Jojo doesn't get time to shine against a named opponent. Dire probably set a new record for the quickest time it took to job, but obviously he would have given he stupidly fought Dio. Still he landed a single hit and huge blow to Dio's ego, he did better than most of the z-fighters at least. But even Zeppeli in retrospect didn't actually win a fight, he had let Jonathan finish off Jack the Ripper, jobbed to Dio the first time and got killed by Tarkrukus, meh. It's probably annoying for me to harp on these shows' flaws as a substitute for commentary and is pretty boring, so I'll leave my two-cents and look forward to next week for the conclusion of Part 1 and beginning of Part 2. Hope they make a promo for it.

DBZ Kai had pretty much lost me since the end of the Frieza Saga and knowing that the story is far from over nulled all the emotional weight I could have gotten from this "finale". This was still a pretty good ep and it did an excellent job bookending the end of the original Kai series. There was still some goofy stuff in this ep though like Vegeta's proclamation to never fight again or the rushed revival of Trunks, and by the third time they did Giant Ghost Goku in the background it became ridiculous. Even though Kai just became the show that kick-offed Toonami for me I'm still somewhat hungry for the new stuff. I'm sure Super will be a refreshing change of pace from the monotonous of the Cell saga and Buu will kinda be same old same old. But still two new shows and guaranteed killer ratings definitely excites me.

Yeah, hopefully Part 2 can retain the viewers better than part 1 from whatever replaces Kai. It's a mild shock to see Jojo struggle these past few weeks, thought that since the Toonami crowd loved Akame Ga Kill and Parasyte that they wanted more shows with some bite.

We're Dracula now. He's dead, like you predicted.

That was certainly the best Fotns homage I have ever witnessed. Tarkrukus was less threatened than I expected him to be from what I heard of Part 1 but he was cool mini-boss. Rip Zeppeli, he had a cool hat and I liked the cut of his glib.

Zeppeli got out-maneuvered. The ultimate handshake. Indeed, Speedwagon. Indeed.

Thank you, Goku.

When there's nothing to lose and when they're staring death in the face, now do they gang up on a stronger opponent. Here comes the speeches, really makes this feel like it's the final battle.

I really don't want this show to go for now as I have grown fond of the Gundam/Hunter power-hour but luckily that will live on. Becoming a part of Toonami for many, many weeks... Anyway let's see how things go down in Edmonton.

The Recent One Piece movies starting from Strong World are amazing in that regard and that one ep of Super looked movie-quality as well. Don't forget Precure in the few things Toei puts effort into, only this studio would allow a magical girl show to have better DBZ-style fights than their actual DB show.

I feel kinda the same way, the voice acting sounds the exact same which is perfect but the animation is really jarring after watching so much of Kai. I knew that it definitely wasn't anything great but I didn't expect it to look so soulless. It felt like the typical feeling of seeing a classic animated show in a new digital style, like going from a Golden Age Season ep of The Simpsons to one from the current season. Not being that 90s anime guy at all but the decline is quite noticeable.

I stand corrected, but I swear I'd heard some news about the two.

Can't air something that doesn't even have a dub yet. I heard Aniplex got the rights to it and considering their success with SAO I'm sure Re:Zero's a strong possibility, would much rather Fate Zero instead though.

The climax of Thiller Bark is one of my many favorite parts of One Piece so I'll defend it without hesitation.

If I could I would definitely throw in a vote for Lupin as well, keep Mob Psycho 100 away for a bit, I don't hate the show at all but it would just be such a predictable choice. I'm gunning for Tokyo Ghoul as well, not because I think the show is good but it's been a while since there was a good hatewatch show.

I'm inclined to agree with him about it being more interesting than Naruto and HxH right now, never really cared for Naruto and HxH's pretty "eh" for the start of this arc. One Piece is going to be quite excellent for the next month at least so I disagree there.

I'm hardly surprised, when I heard Jason went to Sunrise Stidios again I had expected either this or Gundam Thunderbolt: December Sky but I'm very pleased anyways. I watched halfway through the series recently and can say with great confident that this is a far superior Gundam series than IBO, just to put worries about that to rest. Unicorn also has a lot more action than IBO with a fight scene at least every ep, way more likable characters as well.

I'm expecting decent to mediocre ratings this week like I imagine most sensible people are, due to Thanksgiving and competition from that 600 eps Simpson marathon on FXX. But I have a good feeling that it might surpass my expectations with Intruder 3 ending and the refreshing newness of the redesign.

Well at the end of the day it's all subjective anyways, so whatever, dislike the show all you want. Personally I like the fight scenes even if your claims is only true for some of them. But really if you watched the fight scenes in a majority of these types of shows you would notice that they're almost all plagued by stalling monologues, cut-aways, and scenes of characters just standing for a bit. Not that HxH isn't guilty itself of these types of things. Also back to your complaint of the writing being poor because "Wing entrusted them with this incredibly deadly power" I forgot to mention that Wing didn't actually trust them with Nen completely at first. He kinda lies to their faces about the aspects of nen, since they weren't his students he only wanted to give them hints of what it actually was. It's only after Killua shallows his pride that he teaches them.

You're really wrong.

It isn't exactly entrusting them with those powers if they're just going to get mauled by the first nen-user they fight on the 200 floor, hell Hisoka was technically saving them by barring them entrance until they were ready. It's convenient yes, but not really poor if I like I said they only know how to defend themselves and Wing literally tells them to wait two months before fighting. Advice in which Gon ignores and appears to bites him in the ass immediately as he faces off against a guy who specialty is tearing through defense. So again how is this poor writing?