The Buu saga is great. The series comes full circle and falls back into tropes the original Dragon Ball set. More slapstick and all. Buu character wise is nothing compared to Freeza or Cell, but he was an unstoppable big blob of evil that pretty much never once shows any instance of "feeling damage", so he was going to get bored and destroy the universe. A fitting final boss to me. Watching the entire 450+ some series in Japanese is the real deal and the better experience. Don't bother with FuniBall.

GT is completely terrible though, not worth the curiosity at all if you're a fan.

Yeah, that sums up the GT experience pretty well.

Well, based on people hating Elfen Lied, I went and watched it in one sitting. It was pretty good, but I'm kinda new to anime, and I was told that they toned down Lucy's powers from the manga.

I fully concur here. Hokuto no Ken gives you what Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z does. It combines what made Dragon Ball and DBZ good into one show. Adventures and new places to go and new people to meet along with fist fighting and special moves. I mean can there really be anything cooler than post apocalyptic fist fights?

But its main drawback is there isn't a lot of humor. Like hardly any. It's serious. So if someone's looking for at least a little humor in their anime they won't get it from Fist of the North Star.

Also, the protagonist is Bruce Lee. So that's cool, too.

EDIT: Scrap that, I went full retard. I've got in dual audio.

And Fist of the North Star eh? I heard elsewhere that it's a serious waste of time, but then again I also hear that about DBZ. I'll look into it.

Ugh, I indeed ended up watching GT, and after I got to that episode with the dancing retards I became much less enthused to watch the rest of it... It's basically like watching an embarrassing children's show. I might slog through these shitty first episodes to see if it gets better once it drops the goofy adventure stuff and gets back to the SUPER POWERFUL ANDROID SPACE WARRIORS FROM SPACE shtick which I can't help but love. I definitely plan on watching the original DB this summer for sure though.

Regarding Buu, I do believe that he was a pretty awesome villain at the beginning, before he became "Kid Buu". I hate Kid Buu because he isn't capable of rational thought or carrying a conversation (as well as all other villains with that trait, such as Broly in his latter two films). I mean, it's not necessarily bad to have a totally insane villain who wants to destroy everything for no reason, but the appeal of DBZ is not only in the battles, but the stupid dialogue that comes with it. Let's admit it, the point of DBZ is basically to watch shredded, shirtless men scream at each other about their powers... when you take away the antagonist's ability to shoot the shit with Goku, it eventually gets very boring. We'd already seen Buu transform dozens of time before that, so what's the point in making his final form a tiny little monkey man that only screams his own name?

The answer is to watch both. I even loved Saint Seiya myself, which had -10% story. (I'll argue anyone into the ground though that it has the best anime OST I've ever heard), if you think DBZ or HnK are pure fighting... haha nope. Seiya is repetition to the max. But it was all fun and games with some charm to it and if you can put up with it.

Still getting through HnK myself. It's a slower journey, taking it slowly myself. The only problem I had was that the first 20 episodes or so are for the most part filler from what I hear, just nothing really happens other than seeing Kenshiro kill shit... which is basically why you want to watch HnK, but it does get more interesting later with some awesome characters. Finally saw Raoh come in during the middle of it and the budget leveled up a ton, those were some crazy episodes.

Anybody seen Blue Gender? If so, what are your thoughts on it?
I just finished it today. I thought the entire story was great, except for the last episode. The last 5 minutes of the episode left it all open, and informed us about nothing. But besides the horrible ending, the rest of the anime was quite phenomenal. I recommend it to any fans of realistic Sci-Fi anime fans.

So as it happens the genius who put together the DBZ torrent I got, was kind enough to give me the remastered version, and 3 different audio tracks, but no subtitles

However after listening to the Japanese audio, I suppose it's just as well, Goku sounds seriously annoying, is that a woman voicing him? wtf? I'll watch it in english this time and give it a second run at a later date.

In general I don't really like Anime, but I did like Pokemon growing up and I did like the movie Princess Mononoke.

Yeah it's an old woman who voices him. I think she voices Gohan too. If not young Gohan old Gohan for sure since the voice is identical to Goku.

The Japanese audio is by far superior. Way better voice acting. And I like that Goku's voice is higher pitched to contrast with the darker characters with deeper tones. It shows his personality of him being more nurturing and the good guy while someone like Vegeta with his deeper voice is gonna be all about the ends justifying the means.

Also the Japanese music sets the mood way better.

I always go for original language audio with subtitles in every single possible form of media when available. The rare exceptions are studio Ghibli films where they hire professional American actors. Like Princess Mononoke has Claire Danes voice San. In that case it's about 50/50 which I prefer.

Same. English is not my native language, so I have no reason watch stuff dubbed in english, and I hate dubs in my language because it sounds like shit.

But woman doing male voices is a really fucking annoying. Like in Ruroini Kenshin. Ugh.

Now in that respect I'm good to go, I've got english language with japanese music as an audio track.

Women voice many males in anime. It's nothing new.

What do you want... a naive, warmhearted Goku who wants to be the strongest? (Japanese)
Or a whiney lame bitch who never wants to fight? (English)

This difference is miles apart. If you watch Dragon Ball first, the voice makes sense. The rest of the cast is infinitely better in Japanese as well. Yamucha, Vegeta, and Piccolo all especially come off as retarded in the dub. The dub adds a hilarious amount of worthless dialogue, and it's the dub that adds in the constipation.

Qft, the dbz dub is one of the worst out there, the difference is like between job for a cowboy and incantation.

Arhgh, that blows, I didn't know it was that different.

Just for the sake of having an alternate opinion, I've never thought that FUNimation's dub of DBZ was ever that bad, but then I prefer dubs to subs, mostly because it takes effort to make a good dub. While I wouldn't necessarily consider DBZ to be one of the best dubs, I don't remember ever having any problems with it. I personally think Goku's voice was perfect, but that says as much about where I'm from and the process of localization. From an American perspective, Goku really is just a martial-arts-focused Superman, so having a strong, relatible, manly voice made sense. However, when I watched Dragon Ball (Z) Kai in Japanese, I did eventually get used to the Japanese voice actor, so my recommendation is to pick one and stick with it.

Speaking of which, when TheOldOne was first talking about doing this, I should have recommended Dragon Ball (Z) Kai because it takes the Saiyans-Namek-Frieza-Androids-Cell stuff and edits it down to half as long, if he was already familiar with that particular stretch of the story. However, if he is planning on marathoning them, it shouldn't feel too long.

Nah the length doesn't bother me, I'm mostly in the dark when it comes to DBZ, I just wanted to see the whole thing, filler and all.

So apparently, Zac Efron is a Slayers fan. What the fuck.

Nothing is sacred anymore.

So I gave Full Metal Alchemist a chance and saw the first 5 or 6 episodes. It's interesting and enjoyable. But that was it. I was giving it a chance and not getting into it really.

After seeing the first episode of Ergo Proxy I think I've found my new anime to get into.

It has the feeling of Bladerunner, but replace a young Harrison Ford with an Amy Lee from Evanescence look-a-like. If you even know the most basic philosophy you should know "cogito ergo sum" and its meaning "I think therefore I am" So within the anime when they talk about being infected with the Cogito virus and what a PROXY is, it should ring a bell.

I get the feeling that this is an anime more for adults (not talking pornographic but maturity level) and exactly what I've been looking for. Since it doesn't have that many episodes I have a good feeling it won't have a bunch of filler material the way Monster did.

I just finished watching the ep. 10 of Ergo Proxy. It's not that interesting so far, other animes did the cyberpunk atmosphere better, and the philosophy bits are not particularly deep or interesting either(raison d'etre raison d'etre raison d'etre raison d'etre)

Maybe because I was expecting to have my mind blown by that anime, but so far it has been a let down. There's still 13 episodes to go though, so who knows.

Ergo Proxy jumps from cyberpunk to post apocalyptic pretty quickly (not major spoilers or anything), so yeah. I think on the outside before I saw it, I was expecting more cyberpunk... but yeah. The ending is pretty weak and open in a bad way, but overall I liked it. Nothing mindblowing but solid stuff.

If you want something slightly comparable (but a lot more violent) check out Texhnolyze.

Recently finished a few anime that were pretty great all around, old and new. First was Princess Jellyfish, which I bought on a whim after seeing the commercial for it on the Black Butler II box set. It's an amazingly heartwarming show, though it's a josei for you durned fools that care about that sort of thing! It's quite amusing, and is an interesting look into the Japanese aspect of otaku culture (not the English variant which applies only to anime and manga). I'd definitely recommend it, though it's a pretty short season, sadly.
Following that was Excel Saga and the first season of The Slayers. Excel Saga is amazing, as you're hopefully all aware (being presumably not as slow to watch things as I am!), and is definitely what I'd consider to be the funniest anime series that I've ever watched. An absolutely insane show. The Slayers was also good, though I wish that there were more "filler" episodes, as those were generally the most entertaining ones. Every time that they tried to force it into being some kind of serious showdown against a major story-related enemy, it just seemed silly.

My room mates and I have started on Fullmetal Panic! so that'll be interesting to see. It seems okay so far, though I'm not the biggest mecha fan, so we'll see.

You have no idea.

I don't mind that. In fact I can sort of see how that'd happen already. I'm not looking specifically for cyberpunk but just an engaging story and a nice atmosphere. I want an anime that does what it intends to do very well.

Monster is in the same vein as a serious TV drama that has an interesting story arc that's a little bit over the top. Studio Ghibli gives you happy joy joy feelings and makes you feel at peace, unless it's one of the more dramatic movies and in that case there's suspense and an amazingly creative atmosphere followed by the peaceful happy feelings.

So far Ergo Proxy just feels so dystopian and depressing and dark and certain parts have already made me feel a bit sick to my stomach. Sort of like how Grave of the Fireflies was so good at being so depressing. Add to that the mystery element and Ergo Proxy has a good first impression with me.

I've found that Fullmetal Alchemist tends to be fairly average until you hit the point when they discover the "recipe" for the Philosopher's Stone. In the first series, it's episode 18 (IIRC), so if you were just watching the first series and only got 5 or 6 episodes in, I can see how you'd feel it wasn't adding up to much. If you're watching the second series, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, it happens a bit sooner, but I still think it's the key moment that pushes the series from above-average to incredible, and (in my opinion) it maintains that high level through the rest of the series. So basically, I'm saying that it gets better, if you're willing to invest in it.



Full Metal Panic! is pretty awesome, mostly because they seem to do a pretty good job of balancing between comedy and serious military action. The Mecha do take up some of the center stage later on, but I think that FMP is well-balanced in general, so I doubt you'll have too many concerns about it.



Putting it that way, you'd probably be interested in anything Gainax creates (Evangelion, FLCL, Gurren Lagann). They always seem to be able to put together a show that sets a goal and then reaches it. You also might like Big O, Eden of the East, Guin Saga, Kino's Journey, Phoenix, Blue Sub No. 6, Level E, Shangri-La, and the Story of Saiunkoku. On the flip-side, if you want to watch something so terrible it actually works, you should check out MD Geist. It sets out to be the trashiest 80s over-the-top garbage and unfortunately succeeds.

Dude, I can never concur with that about Geist... maybe it's the trashy dub that gave it that rep (this happened to Cyber City Oedo as well I believe, one of my favorite OVA's but has a rep of being "so bad it's good" for some reason), but I think it's honestly a pretty decent OVA. Like, I recently watched the Baoh OVA, and I'd say that was way worse than Geist. Genocyber and Cybernetics Guardian (from the Geist director I think) are also way more terrible.

Not to mention Geist has one hell of a soundtrack, it's seriously top notch stuff.

Yeah it's straight up stupid and fun, but I've seen much worse for sure.

I still need to see Apocalypse Zero, I hear that one is definitely one of the worst of the worst, but so bad it has to be seen.

Ergo Proxy is terrible, it had a promising first 4 episodes and then nose dives into mediocrity and pretentiousness, Texhnolyze is worlds better and I didn't even like it that much, it had really poor pacing and never really got that interesting, felt much longer then it needed to be and it was only 22 episodes. Personally, I'd skip those and go read Gunnm.

Everything can't be Gunnm!

I need to finish the last two volumes. Isn't the sequel kind of bad though? I know the art looks awful in comparison to the original...

Sadly.



I wouldn't say the sequel is bad, not nearly so as the original rushed ending it replaced, its different for sure though. It looks less dated with more emphasis on futuristic settings and exaggerated super powered fights (Kind of like dbz I guess ). Its been a while since the sequel had new chapters and even longer since I read the original so I don't remember which one I preferred the artwork in, but I remember the sequel is fluid and satisfactory enough for me.

About halfway through Scrapped Princess and... SHIT JUST GOT REAL. No longer cut and dry middle ages + some magic stuff, now we've got floating fortresses and fucking beam cannons.

This is how Princess Tutu turns out.

Episodes 1-19: Pleasant cityscapes.
Episodes 20-26: FUCKING GIGANTIC REALITY-RAPING CLOCK TOWER.

I was browsing through a couple episodes of DBZ subbed, and shit, you guys were right, the dialogue is waaay different. Completely ridiculous actually.

The dub is just dumb through and through. I can never go back to it.

Here's an ancient internet relic revived for posterity which pointed out the many ways the DBZ dub sucked.

Click "The Series" and go through the Saiyan and Frieza saga episodes, and gaze in horror.

The Latin American DBZ dub is good. Or at least I think it is because everybody here ever grew up with it and it's an integral part of our childhood memories. Weird kids watched Saint Seya.

On the other hand, I guess we didn't get the Vejituh dub.

Does anyone know any good Medieval/Swords and Sorcery anime? i only know Slayers and Berserk

Berserk was great, Slayers was decent but a bit kiddy from the few episodes i saw