I gotta go with Corazon. That guy makes me glad that I put the word "heart" in my username :ninja:
Latest posts made by heart_diode
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RE: What Are Your Favorite Characterd Introduced Durong the Dressrosa Arc
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RE: Animation Summer 2014
Aldnoah ep 6: better than 5, with more than enough Marito to make me want to watch the next ep at least. As usual I found it difficult to pay attention to the other things going on, but at this point I'm just gonna accept that and not really try to understand the storyline. It's not that difficult to understand; I just don't care about the rest of the show enough. Guess I don't mind, as long as Marito lives. I'm seeing some dislike of him on MAL though, which is kinda sad because I don't find him half as annoying as some other characters. When somebody's got a legitimate reason to be angsty and basically useless like he does, I can't find them irritating unless they're that way for the whole show and never change. Hope that won't happen to him.
Also I think I've finally figured out why I'm not that big of a fan of Aldnoah's soundtrack. Been paying more attention to the songs, and I think a lot of it sounds…lifeless. Might be because I technically don't care for the show, or because the soundtrack style is similar to SnK, but I'm not getting any soul or passion from the music at all. It's like it was put together with a formula for musical success or something.
Basara ep 6: MUCH better than 5. I really enjoyed this one, magical girl shrine maiden aside. We get Mitsunari vs Yukimura, Masamune vs Ieyasu, Kojuurou being great, Motochika also being great, and that dude on the floating platform showing up unexpectedly; all the recipes for success in my book. As usual, I spent the whole episode laughing at everything, and again I really think the fight scenes are choreographed beautifully. There are a lot of things I prefer about the first two seasons, but from what I remember about them, this season's got them beat for fights.
I'm three episodes behind on Barakamon now...not sure why I haven't watched the rest. Also missed last week's Gekkan Shoujo, so I need to watch that before tomorrow's ep.
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RE: AP Character Popularity Poll
- Characters must be canon (no anime or video game exclusive characters).
Someday Shuraiya will get a chance :ninja:
This is gonna take me forever, though. I know my favorite characters, just not sure how to rank them.
- Trafalgar Law
- Sanji
- Zoro
- Kaku
- Rob Lucci
- Spandam
- Conis
- Enel
- Robin
- Usopp
- Eustass Kid
- Paulie
- Franky
- Crocodile
- Norland
…I think that's pretty accurate. Maybe switch Spandam and Lucci around depending on how I feel, though. I'm not sure if Kaku is my steady #4, too. Problem is that I love mainly all these characters around the same, so aside from picking a #1 who's not Shuraiya, I got no idea.
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RE: 2014 APCT Third Round: Return of the King Discussion Thread
Do it for Kaku-chan.
You know, I just remembered Jabra was the one carrying Kaku in the cover story…...he's got my vote. (Not like I didn't like the guy before, anyway.)
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RE: 2014 APCT Third Round: Return of the King Discussion Thread
Let's see.
! 1. Norland
2. Enel
3. Probably Croc but it all depends
4. Don't think I'll vote
5. ??
6. Bon
7. Bellamy
8. ??
9. Brook
10. Zoro
11. ??
12. Bartolomeo
13. ??
14. Cavendish
15. I'm still laughing
16. LawI basically just want Law, Barto, Enel, Caven, and Norland to make it. Aokiji too, but then he's up against Robin so I got no idea what's gonna happen there.
I'm still sad about Kaku though :ninja: -
RE: Animation Summer 2014
Was busy this weekend so I only had a chance to watch Basara and Aldnoah, but honestly, both the episodes were the weakest yet.
Basara wasn't awful or that confusing, but it left me sorta blinking at the screen when we encountered that fanboying blond dude and the guy chained to the giant iron ball. Thinking about it now, I can't really remember what was going on aside from Motochika trying to get allies in Kyushu and Masamune being more crazy than usual. But I'm glad Mori showed up, since I love him, and the Masamune-Yukimura and Motochika-thatoldguywhosenameIforgot fights were pretty well choreographed and animated. So probably about the most average episode thus far. Still fun, but weirder than usual somehow.
Aldnoah on the other hand just…bored me, and I'm starting to cringe at Inaho. Unless I'm missing something, he's basically the opposite version of the hero who beats everyone with his super powerful Gundam and emotion; he's the hero who beats everyone with his run-of-the-mill Gundam and strategy. Yeah, it's only episode 5, but I think it's a pretty weird start to the show when you have three successive mecha of the week being taken down by him plus infodumps of his strategies at the end to boot. Like I said last week, it's a cool idea, but the execution hasn't captured my interest at all. Otherwise this episode did a decent job of setup but it had some predictable bits. I wasn't even paying much attention to Marito, except in his first and last scenes. I might end up dropping this by the next episode, if I also feel dissatisfied by that.
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RE: Animation Summer 2014
This is one criticism I can't get behind, because AZ has been very light on technobabble so far. There's two made up terms I can think of and that's "Kataphract", which is a local made up term for mecha and "Aldnoah" which is as of yet unexplained magic martian supertech powering the Martian mechs. That's it. Any Gundam show throws way more technobabble in it's first 4 episodes, to speak nothing of the technobabbling horror that is Captain Earth.
I was thinking about this last night and it's probably because I'm not paying much attention to the show. I'm probably sabotaging myself there, but I can't bring myself to be that invested in any of the characters like I said in my last post, and characters are usually the most important part of a show for me; I'm also a nitpicker in general, so it's just tough for me to remember what's going on when I'm too busy criticizing something that happened five minutes before, lol. So yeah, it's probably mostly my fault.
Also, I gave Captain Earth a try a couple of months ago and I'd definitely agree with the "horror" part. I still don't understand what the show was trying to do, and from what I've read about it since then, it hasn't figured that out itself? I gathered almost no information from it through the 3-4 episodes I watched, though. That's one thing Aldnoah does pretty well - at least I know who's behind the conflict, what happened to cause it, and what's going on now.
The emotionless one just seems like a strange choice for an MC of this show, a lot of his actions and mannerisms are plain weird and come off as a half-hearted attempt at comedy, but they at least make it obvious when something is troubling him so he's not that bad. I'm still waiting for the blonde guy to do something interesting. I also have issues with how melodramatically evil the bad guys are, that worked in something campy like Majestic Prince but here it just feels a bit lazy, like they're just doing it to drum up sympathy for the good guys who have to suffer because these selfish Martians.
As of right now, I see Inaho as Urobuchi and company's answer to the Kira Yamato type of mecha MC. He's apparently really intelligent and talented, but instead of being a good fighter yet angsty about fighting, he's a good fighter because he's pretty emotionally detached and views things from a different angle than most of the other Earth soldiers. It's an interesting idea, but Inaho just doesn't stand out to me at all, especially not when he has his more outspoken and emotional friends clustered around him all the time. Plus we haven't seen what makes him a non-Gary Stu, since he's just doing his thing right now.
Slaine, on the other hand, is confusing me. Plus, maybe it's because I recently finished Gundam Seed, but I'm reminded of Athrun Zala whenever he shows up on screen, especially because of his apparent angst. Not only that, but the way he reacts to getting hit by Count Crouton (not sure how to spell his actual name lol) makes it seem like this beating trend is a recent thing, but Slaine's not doing anything to avoid it. I'm curious as to why he's even still alive if the Martians are so disgusted by him, too. Hopefully I didn't miss the explanation to that….
The Martians are a little disappointing to me as well. Again, I can't help but compare it to Seed; I really liked the duality between the Earth forces and ZAFT, especially when we see that both sides are equally deluded and desperate despite some differences in technology. It made me feel sympathy for both sides because of just how bad the conflict becomes, whereas in Aldnoah I'm not sure how to feel about the Martians at all. We haven't met too many Earth people yet, too, aside from Inaho and friends plus Marito and a few other soldiers and civilians. So far I feel like Aldnoah's conflict is pretty small, almost contained, without much of an epic feeling despite Inaho's two battles and all those vocal soundtracks - we haven't gotten an idea of the scope of the conflict yet. Not really a bad thing, but I'm not sure how to react to anything because of it.
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RE: Animation Summer 2014
Just finished Aldnoah ep 4. Quite frankly at this point I'm not really paying much attention because the terminologies are starting to get confusing (just finished watching Gundam Seed pretty quickly and didn't have that problem there, so I'm not sure what's up here) and I'm still not invested in the characters; at this point I actually actively dislike a few of them, especially that blond freckled friend of the protagonist's because that kid really gets on my nerves for some weird reason. I'm also a little confused as to why people seem to love Slaine, because to me he's been portrayed as kind of a thick-headed character walking into situations that will get him whacked around and yelled at - guess that's supposed to show him as being intrinsically "good" or something, but I find myself shaking my head at the poor guy most of the time and otherwise I can't say I feel attached to him yet. I guess my interest level hasn't changed, I'm just still not getting any vibes that the show's gonna be really great for me in the future. I just sit back, relax, and start internally screaming whenever Marito shows up onscreen and gets to do something.
Also, I've been reading the ep discussion on MAL every week, and man, all the people who love the soundtrack. I'm surprised because I've only liked maybe one of the songs so far, while the rest feel like you could toss them into SnK without much problem. Even the song I liked kinda got wrecked by having sudden vocals, which is something of Sawano's that I'm getting a little fed up with. But either way it's interesting that so many people are so impressed with the soundtrack when I find it to be pretty mediocre. Guess it's because Sawano is popular right now?
Also watched Basara raw as usual, and enjoyed it again. I can't take this show seriously but that's like 99% of its charm…I literally laugh at almost all of the characters and Mitsunari's already grown tremendously on me even though he only got one "Ieyasu" yell this episode.
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RE: All Out Battle: Best to Worst Characters of OP
@The:
Really great stuff on Lucci, I never thought about it that way. I always thought Lucci was a great villain, and that he had class to his violent demeanor. I think some people didn't like him because he wasn't over the top, and had a more cold personality compared to the others. The cover story with them really showed the way the group thought of each other, since all of them were doing stuff to help Lucci, even Jabra. It also showed they can be kind, and it's not an act because it's their duty. I would love to see them again, because each one was unique and had their quirks.
Thanks! I agree with you on the cover story as well. Learning more about CP9 as actual characters and not just as villains gave me a lot more love for them, and it also makes me even more sure that they're gonna return someday. Although I'd have loved them all even if we didn't get the cover story, to be honest.
The thing I never particularly liked about Lucci is that he felt forced down my throat as being a collosal badass.
This may be my own personal taste but I always preferred people like Spandam or, to take a character from this list, Don Krieg. I like villains who are cowardly or dishonorable yet still manage to be incredibly dangerous due to either the system they live in or due to their own sense of pragmatism and whatnot. Finding strength from non-typical sources for a show that's all about willpower and training.
For that reason I think I'd rank Lucci lower than he is there in terms of story. He always felt like the arm of the true villain of the arc, Spandam. Dangerous and efficient but not really interesting. His fight was always going to be the best part of his impact for me and it really was awesome. But that was mainly a spectacle thing. Even there it felt more like it was to hammer in how dangerous the World Government is. Even a cowardly, emotional weakling like Spandam could come SO close to achieving his goals because he had people like CP9 at his beck and call. Thematically it could be seen as a set up for the Celestial Dragons. I feel like any character you could come up with could've worked for that role as the arm of the government. It didn't have to be Rob Lucci as such. So I hesitate to give him the credit for it, necessarily. If that makes any sense?
I definitely know where you're coming from. Personally I love Lucci as a character, and not just as a villain; even though his setup was really interesting to me and I found him even more fascinating as CP9 than as a shipwright, I'll be just as happy to see him again if he's a revolutionary, a pirate, or if he's even given up fighting altogether for some reason. As a CP9 agent, he was basically a tool, and because of his stoic character, he fills the stereotypical "tool" role better than most of the others in the group. While I don't think that makes him one-dimensional as I've said, I also think you've got a point, especially about Lucci not being particularly different from other powerful villains encountered before and afterward.
Speaking of Spandam, I'd love to see him added to the discussion list in the future. I adore the guy and I'd love to discuss him with everyone else!
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RE: All Out Battle: Best to Worst Characters of OP
Since I've only watched up to the end of Water 7 and haven't read the manga past that, I don't really feel qualified to talk about Whitebeard or Franky and I haven't even met Shirahoshi yet. But either way I've seen some opinions on Lucci in this thread that I don't share, so I'd like to discuss and score him and I might as well score Don Krieg while I'm at it.
Don Krieg:
I wasn't impressed by him when I first watched Baratie and I can't say I feel any different now. I feel like he's one of those villains who exists mainly to show us the difference between the hero's point of view and the villain's - in this case, it was Sanji's "respect for all" and Luffy's "crew is important" versus Krieg's "who cares, my crew is expendable". I don't remember too many details about what he did, but I do recall that he could be pretty annoying and lasted longer in the Luffy fight than I expected him to. Otherwise, he's not my favorite villain, mainly because he doesn't really stand out. I personally prefer villains who have some depth to them - they don't have to be sympathetic or likeable, just people who have reasons for what they do beyond selfishness and the desire for power (or legitimate reasons behind their selfishness and desire for power lol). I didn't get much of that from Krieg, so I didn't really pay much attention to the guy. But he is important to a point, because he helps us to understand Sanji better and also gives us a better idea of the kind of captain Luffy will end up being. As for his design, I can't say I care too much for it.Importance: 5/10
Character: 3/10
Design: 5/10
Total: 13/30Rob Lucci:
I'd personally rate Lucci lower on both character and story on the other hand. His character isn't anything special to me, he seems somewhat similar to Akainu in character. I'd give him a 5 on character, cause honestly I can't think of much interesting things about his character.
Character wise, there wasn't really that much to him. He was just really extreme in doing his thing.
I find these opinions really interesting. I'm not sure if I disagree because I paid obsessive attention to Lucci during Water 7 and Enies Lobby, or if it's just my taste, but I definitely feel differently about him. I think he's a character that can either work really well or really poorly onscreen, because in a visual medium you either understand subtle implications or you don't, and in my opinion there's plenty of subtlety to his character. I'll stick the rest of my comments under a spoiler; I'm very biased toward Lucci so I'm gonna go on for a while.
! The Franky Tank mentioned Hattori as a way of characterizing shipwright Lucci as a quirky, eccentric sort of guy, which helps to make the shock of his CP9 reveal greater, but I think there's more to it than that (though I agree anyway). If Hattori was only there as part of Lucci's cover, why wouldn't he have left the bird behind after revealing himself as CP9, or even killed him to make sure he wouldn't stick around? Instead, we get Hattori immediately going to Lucci as he's about to reveal himself to Iceburg, and after that Hattori is almost always around. Literally. When Lucci gets that fancy coat, Hattori gets one too; when Lucci has a drink in his room at Enies, Hattori also has a little drink. We don't get to see actual moments between the two of them, but we see that Lucci takes care of Hattori and treats him almost as an equal, because let's face it - the man's got more than enough strength to get rid of a little bird if it was bothering him, and he has absolutely no need for it anyway because it's got no special abilities. So while it's basically an assumption on my part, I think that Lucci at least thinks of Hattori as a valued pet, or possibly even a friend (although that's getting into headcanon territory).
! So I like to use Hattori as an example to show that Lucci isn't a straightforward, kinda one-dimensional killer. I definitely don't think that he's not a killer, since he basically outright admits it at one or two points; I just think that he's the type of character who doesn't actually show character very quickly or obviously, so it's easy to see him as bland. (His lack of emotional responses puts him in the autistic spectrum for me, but that's headcanon territory again, lol.) I can't compare him to Akainu since I haven't gone through Marineford yet, but from what I've heard about Akainu's view on justice, I also think Lucci isn't quite that extreme. He's a little less straightforward - not going after Chimney and Gonbe so that they'd lead Luffy to him, for example, which to me proves that Lucci likes a challenge and doesn't just find pleasure in killing people who can't even really defend themselves against his power. What I think explains him pretty well is what he said as a teenager: those who are too weak to do their duties deserve to die. He doesn't share Spandam's view of "everyone from a specific place being evil and worthy of death", at least not openly. It's worth noting that he didn't take any chances to really beat up on Robin the way Spandam did, too. Lucci isn't going to go easy on people, but at the same time he's not going to be unnecessarily violent towards those who don't deserve it - for example, he did that "excessive justice" thing on the Candy Pirates in the cover story because they were being a nuisance and trying to wreck St. Poplar and attack the people. Hey, if he was as justice-focused as he initially seemed, then the final page of that cover story would've been titled "Off to hunt the Strawhats" or something, most likely. But taking everything into consideration, I just think that he's a really logical and level-headed guy, who does what he thinks is right after weighing facts without emotional bias. It's not quite a memorable type of character for a visual medium such as anime (or even manga), but I wouldn't put it under the one-dimensional category either, especially not with his attachment to Hattori.
! Otherwise, I think he's important too. Not only did he give Luffy his first real, close-to-death challenge that required all the Gears he could use, but Lucci was also a great example of just how powerful the WG is. It makes you stop and think - if Luffy almost died fighting him, then how much stronger will the rest of the WG be? We didn't get a true fight with Aokiji, either, so having Lucci cut loose and really beat Luffy up for the majority of their fight was a pretty weighty thing. I also think that he and CP9 will be returning, although of course I can't really guess how; having them be fugitives from the WG without being pirates implies that they're definitely gonna come into play in the future, and possibly become Luffy's allies. As for Lucci's design, I think it's one of the more intriguing male designs of Oda's because it's interesting but also really pretty. He gets a catlike look and a very cool silhouette but also doesn't look particularly weird, and there's just enough different elements (goatee, top hat, Hattori) to make him stand out too.
! Importance: 8/10
Character: 9/10
Design: 10/10
Total: 27/30