Discuss and Rate the Last Thing You Watched (non-movies)

Gordon_4

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I won't be touching any Eva .0's period. I usually tell people to watch 2.0 and end it there. Either that, or read fan fics more worth your time.
I think that’s an unfair track to take until you’ve seen 4.0 or 3.0+1 or whatever the fuck they’re calling it because the overall story is as of yet unfinished. 3.0 ends on a really, really nihilistic note but as has been said, sometimes you gotta hit rock bottom before you can pick yourself up again.

Although if the last one fucks it up a filthy drain pipe, fair enough :p
 

BrawlMan

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I think that’s an unfair track to take until you’ve seen 4.0 or 3.0+1 or whatever the fuck they’re calling it because the overall story is as of yet unfinished. 3.0 ends on a really, really nihilistic note but as has been said, sometimes you gotta hit rock bottom before you can pick yourself up again.
Nihilism is boring and has especially been overdone in anime.

Although if the last one fucks it up a filthy drain pipe, fair enough
Exactly why I won't be tuning in. Better anime to watch.
 

Gordon_4

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Nihilism is boring and has especially been overdone in anime.


Exactly why I won't be tuning in. Better anime to watch.
Except I never get the impression that Evangelion is selling nihilism as a cool alternative like say, Joker, but instead lays it out as this miserable, undesirable and otherwise not good state of being. No one engaging in the viewpoint is cool; they’re broken and pitiable.
 

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Except I never get the impression that Evangelion is selling nihilism as a cool alternative like say, Joker, but instead lays it out as this miserable, undesirable and otherwise not good state of being. No one engaging in the viewpoint is cool; they’re broken and pitiable.
Don't care it's depicted as "cool" or not. No deal. If you end up having fun or not, more power to you.
 

Kae

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Lose 1d20 sanity points.
Legend of Korra, currently in the beginning of the 4th and last season, I'm going to keep this brief, because I think I might want to discuss it more in depth once I'm done with it, which probably means I'll make a thread, but my opinion so far is that it's not a good show, it has some really good elements and I think Korra is a very interesting character but I don't really care for the rest of the main cast, the show itself is mostly mediocre and there are some aspects of it that are bad, but I think they're bad in a very interesting way that I very much would love to discuss in much more depth, obviously I'm talking about the extremely political plot and it's messaging, but I have so much to say about it, that I think I'm going to stop now in case I do decide to make that thread.
Yes, as an Anarchist I very much want to talk about Zaheer.

Also yes, I'm extremely late to this show.
 

Thaluikhain

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So, finished all of Penny Dreadful (not counting the US version that nobody seems to have liked so I won't watch).

Visually it's very good, and there's some very good bits with Eva Green and also some less good bits with people who aren't Eva Green. There's a lot of pointless waffley bits that don't go anywhere, though, and some really cringeable stuff.

On the whole, it was ok.
 

Johnny Novgorod

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Soulmates

Anybody see the Black Mirror episode Hang the DJ, about society being shaped and ruled by a dating app that matches people together and hangs expiration dates on them? Imagine a whole series (well, a whopping 6 episodes) dedicated to anthologizing the different ways in which this idea sucks. That's Soulmates.

In the year of who gives a shit scientists have discovered a "soul particle" and a company sells tests that let you discover your one and only soulmate (assuming your soulmate has already taken the test; otherwise you sort of just wait it out).

This is obviously a horrible idea, and so the show can claim no power in proving so half a dozen different ways. Each episode has its own little what if: what if your soulmate isn't he person you're with, what if they're not the gender you're attracted to, what if your soulmate is dead? And so on. Obvious questions with even more obvious answers that unfailingly dismiss the determinism of having a soulmate.

The tone of the episodes swerves widely, so there's some variety. Some are grim and depressing, others are mumblecore trash, there's one that goes for campy comedy, etc. They're not exactly boring, but very predictable and really not that clever.
 
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happyninja42

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Legend of Korra, currently in the beginning of the 4th and last season, I'm going to keep this brief, because I think I might want to discuss it more in depth once I'm done with it, which probably means I'll make a thread, but my opinion so far is that it's not a good show, it has some really good elements and I think Korra is a very interesting character but I don't really care for the rest of the main cast, the show itself is mostly mediocre and there are some aspects of it that are bad, but I think they're bad in a very interesting way that I very much would love to discuss in much more depth, obviously I'm talking about the extremely political plot and it's messaging, but I have so much to say about it, that I think I'm going to stop now in case I do decide to make that thread.
Yes, as an Anarchist I very much want to talk about Zaheer.

Also yes, I'm extremely late to this show.
It's fine, you're thoughts on the show are pretty standard really. The spectrum I've seen range from my and, what seems like your opinion of "It's not very good, but some bits I like, but a lot I don't" to "It's a toxic garbage fire that should be ejected into space". And LOTS of people have shared their thoughts on it over the years. :) If you do make a thread entirely about your Korra thoughts, get ready for some....spirited responses. That show really fires up a lot of people to vocalize their opinions on it, at length, either in defense, or condemnation. For multiple reasons and angles.

I mostly find the show ok, with some glaring problems, that REALLY irk me, but they are fairly isolated to specific elements of the show that irk me. So how much a particular episode/season annoys me, is directly proportional to how much of those elements are in it. I find Korra the most annoying part of the show, but that's just me. I won't go into length about why, as I already have on the previous version of this site, plus it's been years since I watched it, and most of the details have faded from memory. But yeah. Decent show, with some serious flaws that make it a chore to watch, and that I wish was something I could've enjoyed more. Because I wanted to enjoy that show a lot, I just couldn't, despite my best efforts.
 
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Hawki

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Astro Boy (3/5)

So this is the 1980 series I'm talking about. And regardless of whatever else I say, just remember this - the series isn't good. If you're looking to enjoy this unironically, look elsewhere. Even if you have kids, there's far better options out there. That said, in a way, I kind of actually reccomend this, because it's a TV series made in the 80s, imagining the world of the 2030s, and it's kind of fascinating to see what the writers imagined that world would be like.

Anyway, so, scientist guy is building a robot, and his son Toby dies in a car crash. Yes, dies. Something t note with this series is that it's unambigous when it comes to death and violence. As in, the action itself isn't particuarly violent, but the consequences are. Helicopters are blown out of the sky, fighers are shot down, people are shot, etc. Even if there's no blood or gore, I'm surprised that the writers can get away with as much as they do, and still have this rated for children. I suppose standards are different in Japan, but this is still an English dub. And when it comes to dubbing anime, well, 4Kids, anyone?

Anyway, so, Toby dies, and scientist guy makes Astro in his son's likeness. Only he casts him aside while on a cruise. Fun fact, Astro's creator/father never makes an appearance beyond the first two episodes, and beyond that, I think is only mentioned once. Astro never reunites with his creator, or anything like that, and I really don't get why. It's character development that's begging to be explored, but nup, never happens. He ends up getting a robot mum, a robot dad, and a robot sister, but his actual creator? Nup.

Anyway, Astro ends up in a robot carnival, before being brought back home (which I'm assuming is Japan), and is put in school, and is kept in school when he isn't doing high stakes missions. Yeah, the show's kind of weird on that, in that this is a kid who goes to primary school in one episode, and is captaining missions to Mars in another. What follows on from then is a series of stand-alone episodes. There's some continuity via Atlas, Astro's main nemesis who's an upgraded robot who wields a sword, flies around in a crystal spaceship, and rides a robotic horse through the sky (yes, really), but aside from that, pretty stand-alone.

So, yeah. Characters aren't that deep, storytelling isn't that deep, and the voice acting. Oh dear God, the voice acting. It's...well, it's terrible. Absolutely terrible. So terrible that a few times, I couldn't stop myself from laughing. There's also the question of themes/moralizing. I've read that Astro Boy was/is praised for tackling prejudice, and while that's true to a point (this is a society where robots are common, but often discriminated against, such discrimination enshrined in law), it doesn't go beyond your garden variety "be nice, and don't be prejudiced, because prejudice is bad." Problem with that is that these are still robots, and robots are built to serve humans, and a lot of things are vague as to the global situation, or even national one. For instance, one villain wants to take out a robot due to him losing his jobs to robots. He's a villain, sure, but if people are losing jobs to robots, then maybe you want to look at that as well?

So, yeah. There's a number of flaws in this series, and I can't say I'm a fan. Even if you're a Mega Man fan, which is clearly influenced by Astro, I doubt you'll get much out of it. Yes, Astro has a few beat-downs, but nothing too special. So why then do I say that this series might be of interest?

Well, as I said earlier, it's the worldbuilding, or, rather, an insight as to how people imagined the future. The series starts in the year 2030, then skips to 2031, and then kind of has a floating timeline (in that Astro seems to constantly be in the same year at school). So in the 2030s, here's a few facts of life:

-The Soviet Union still exists, or at least is implied to exist

-People drive around in hover-cars.

-Space travel is routine. There's numerous space ports around Earth, a moon base, and a Mars base. People go into space for everything from holidays to mining.

-Robots are pretty much everywhere, but rights appear to vary by country. E.g. in the series, one country celebrates its first robot president, whereas in Astro's, robots need permission to leave the country, and if they leave without permission, they'll be dismantled.

-The Internet apparently doesn't exist, VHS tapes are still used, as are film reels.

-Animals are in a state of near-extinction, but hunting is still a thing. Robot animals are used to satiate hunters in place of the real thing, kept in game parks.

Overall, that doesn't sound like much, and okay, fair enough. But it's still an interesting insight to see how the writers thought we'd act in the 2030s, yet completely failed to account for the technological advances we have made, and the ecological suceess stories we've had.

Still, there's cases where worldbuilding just doesn't work, and that includes alien invasion. Over the course of the series, Mars is invaded once, Earth twice, and a rogue alien weapon crashes on Earth in another episode. There's a lot of aliens in a series that's meant to be about robots, and no-one really seems to care that alien life exists beyond Earth.

So, yeah. I can't really outright reccomend this. But still, it was interesting to watch in some areas, but it's not something I have any desire to watch again.
 

Thaluikhain

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Disagree there, been a while since I watched Astroboy, but I remember liking it, though it got really bleak and depressing sometimes. The continuity was, yeah, not great, and they didn't deal with prejudice in a particularly deep way, but still quite decent, I thought.
 

Xprimentyl

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Watched the first episode of Debris last night. As far as I can tell, it's about some space debris that landed on Earth some time ago with the odd property that allows it to defy gravity, and anyone who comes in contact with it experiences... I dunno, weird shit. Feels like it's going to be like Lost in that it's whole purpose will be to raise more questions than answers; I just hope they've got a road map to bring it all together in the end, and it doesn't turn into a "shaggy dog" story like Lost. Really head-scratching, and I'm in no mood to get into another years-long saga of weekly "huh?" with months-long periods between seasons. I might wait until it ends and binge stream it.
 

Dalisclock

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Watched the first episode of Debris last night. As far as I can tell, it's about some space debris that landed on Earth some time ago with the odd property that allows it to defy gravity, and anyone who comes in contact with it experiences... I dunno, weird shit. Feels like it's going to be like Lost in that it's whole purpose will be to raise more questions than answers; I just hope they've got a road map to bring it all together in the end, and it doesn't turn into a "shaggy dog" story like Lost. Really head-scratching, and I'm in no mood to get into another years-long saga of weekly "huh?" with months-long periods between seasons. I might wait until it ends and binge stream it.
Yeah, LOST really burned me as well. I'm fine with the slow burn but you have to actually bring it togerher at the end if you're gonna use the Mystery Box as a keystone of your work. I guess the question is do the writers/director/producer have any kind of track record for things like that to extrapolate from?
 
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Xprimentyl

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Yeah, LOST really burned me as well. I'm fine with the slow burn but you have to actually bring it togerher at the end if you're gonna use the Mystery Box as a keystone of your work. I guess the question is do the writers/director/producer have any kind of track record for things like that to extrapolate from?
I really don’t know anything about the minds behind Debris, so I don’t know what their credits (if any) might be. I haven’t followed episodic television like this SINCE Lost, but I know there’ve been lots of “and theeeeeen…” clones since, and I don’t have the patience for protracted drama and mystery that might pay off anymore.
 
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Johnny Novgorod

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Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan

Documentary series covering the Oda Nobunaga/Toyotomi/Tokugawa sequence of events that unified Japan in the late 16th century and set up roughly 6,000 animes about has-been samurai. I like it for the storytelling, and would probably work wonderfully as a podcast. The dramatizations suck (they give the documentary a cheap, low-budget look) and unfortunately they take up most of the time. I'm talking criminally low budget: no wide shots, no establishing shots, the blood spurts look like PS1 era sprites, every battle takes place in the same patchy backwoods and you can tell they repurpose the same cheap set for absolutely every interior conceivable. Again, I like the focus and structure of the storytelling (even if it seems to skip over some events you'd think would take up a whole episode each) but the production value is embarrassing.
 

Kyrian007

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Watched the first episode of Debris last night. As far as I can tell, it's about some space debris that landed on Earth some time ago with the odd property that allows it to defy gravity, and anyone who comes in contact with it experiences... I dunno, weird shit. Feels like it's going to be like Lost in that it's whole purpose will be to raise more questions than answers; I just hope they've got a road map to bring it all together in the end, and it doesn't turn into a "shaggy dog" story like Lost. Really head-scratching, and I'm in no mood to get into another years-long saga of weekly "huh?" with months-long periods between seasons. I might wait until it ends and binge stream it.
I just watched that first episode. Wait and binge or just wait and see might be the best way to deal with this series. They were surprisingly heavy handed and unsubtle with the whole space debris premise, and to me that made the places where they attempted to inject potential conflict... seem really contrived. Why would this show have its primary protagonists work for agencies with conflicting agendas? And the answer at this point is, "because its a TV show and there needs to be tension." Plus, that episode supposedly took place in my city... and they didn't so much as use some b roll to establish that.

And I'm not seeing a lot of buzz online. I suppose it could just be a slow starter, but so far it doesn't look good for Debris.
 
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SilentPony

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So I tried to go back and watch some King of the Hill, because I remember liking it as a kid and wanted to rewatch some.
HOLY SHIT DID IT NOT AGE WELL!

Hank Hill is a monster. He's a violent, bigoted, sexist, racists, child and wife beating alcoholic. He treats Bobby horrifically, everything Bobby tries to get into or express in a way his dad doesn't like leads to Hank violently either yelling at him, breaking his stuff, or taking it away.
And the mom Peggy? A manipulative, lying, manic depressive sociopath. I mean these characters are horrible, I can't believe I ever laughed at this. Like ha ha the racist Asian stereotype character uses child labor and doesn't want blacks to move into the neighborhood, and ha ha Hank threatened to kill a child protection agent if he ever came back to check on Bobby after repeated concerns about Hank's temper. Ha ha Luanne gets knocked up by a drug addicted insurance fraud scammer, marries him and everyone fully admits she's going to have a sad, miserable life and she shouldn't be marrying him. But they let her do it because baby.

I mean at least Family Guy had the sense to make 90% of their jokes non-canon so Peter isn't actually a mass murdering child molester. King of the Hill plays the horrible shit so straight.
 
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happyninja42

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So I tried to go back and watch some King of the Hill, because I remember liking it as a kid and wanted to rewatch some.
HOLY SHIT DID IT NOT AGE WELL!

Hank Hill is a monster. He's a violent, bigoted, sexist, racists, child and wife beating alcoholic. He treats Bobby horrifically, everything Bobby tries to get into or express in a way his dad doesn't like leads to Hank violently either yelling at him, breaking his stuff, or taking it away.
And the mom Peggy? A manipulative, lying, manic depressive sociopath. I mean these characters are horrible, I can't believe I ever laughed at this. Like ha ha the racist Asian stereotype character uses child labor and doesn't want blacks to move into the neighborhood, and ha ha Hank threatened to kill a child protection agent if he ever came back to check on Bobby after repeated concerns about Hank's temper. Ha ha Luanne gets knocked up by a drug addicted insurance fraud scammer, marries him and everyone fully admits she's going to have a sad, miserable life and she shouldn't be marrying him. But they let her do it because baby.

I mean at least Family Guy had the sense to make 90% of their jokes non-canon so Peter isn't actually a mass murdering child molester. King of the Hill plays the horrible shit so straight.
Yeah that shit, and Blue Comedy Tour, really are horrible. They lionize the worst aspects of the traditional "down to earth" american culture (i think most of it's shit, but you know what I mean). They encourage people to embrace stupidity and disdain education, and basically all concept of human decency, on the altar of what they're comfortable with.
 

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So I tried to go back and watch some King of the Hill, because I remember liking it as a kid and wanted to rewatch some.
HOLY SHIT DID IT NOT AGE WELL!

Hank Hill is a monster. He's a violent, bigoted, sexist, racists, child and wife beating alcoholic. He treats Bobby horrifically, everything Bobby tries to get into or express in a way his dad doesn't like leads to Hank violently either yelling at him, breaking his stuff, or taking it away.
And the mom Peggy? A manipulative, lying, manic depressive sociopath. I mean these characters are horrible, I can't believe I ever laughed at this. Like ha ha the racist Asian stereotype character uses child labor and doesn't want blacks to move into the neighborhood, and ha ha Hank threatened to kill a child protection agent if he ever came back to check on Bobby after repeated concerns about Hank's temper. Ha ha Luanne gets knocked up by a drug addicted insurance fraud scammer, marries him and everyone fully admits she's going to have a sad, miserable life and she shouldn't be marrying him. But they let her do it because baby.

I mean at least Family Guy had the sense to make 90% of their jokes non-canon so Peter isn't actually a mass murdering child molester. King of the Hill plays the horrible shit so straight.
Yeah that shit, and Blue Comedy Tour, really are horrible. They lionize the worst aspects of the traditional "down to earth" american culture (i think most of it's shit, but you know what I mean). They encourage people to embrace stupidity and disdain education, and basically all concept of human decency, on the altar of what they're comfortable with.
I watched King of the Hill a couple of times, but it never connected with me much, nor did I find it as funny as Beavis and Butt-Head. Hell, B&B have way more class than either King of the Hill or Family Guy. Panty and Stocking have more class than both shows too. At least the two title characters get punished or asses kicked on occasion for being idiots and jack-asses. When I was around my early teens I noticed why disliked the show it was when they took a big piss out of D&D, its fans, and those that LARP. I ain't a LARPER nor D&D fan, aside from the Capcom arcade brawlers, but even I knew the writers were full of donkey dog shit. Oh, and someone on the writing team must despise soccer too, cuz fuck the assholes on that as well.

Ironic enough, it's the nerds, Medieval/Asian fantasy settings, and superheroes that got the last laugh. So up yours Hank Hill. The world is beyond "normal" or "as it should be" from your warped perspective.
 

happyninja42

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I watched King of the Hill a couple of times, but it never connected with me much, nor did I find it as funny as Beavis and Butt-Head. Hell, B&B have way more class than either King of the Hill or Family Guy. Panty and Stocking have more class than both shows too. At least the two title characters get punished or asses kicked on occasion for being idiots and jack-asses. When I was around my early teens I noticed why disliked the show it was when they took a big piss out of D&D, its fans, and those that LARP. I ain't a LARPER nor D&D fan, aside from the Capcom arcade brawlers, but even I knew the writers were full of donkey dog shit. Oh, and someone on the writing team must despise soccer too, cuz fuck the assholes on that as well.

Ironic enough, it's the nerds, Medieval/Asian fantasy settings, and superheroes that got the last laugh. So up yours Hank Hill. The world is beyond "normal" or "as it should be" from your warped perspective.
Yeah I never watched much of King of the Hill, as I never found it funny. It was just redneck assholes being assholes. I grew up around way too many people that reminded me of those fuckers. Hell I was related to plenty of them. I didn't see "slice of life 'murica" , I just saw the kind of assholes in school that I wanted nothing to do with.
 

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Legend of Korra, currently in the beginning of the 4th and last season, I'm going to keep this brief, because I think I might want to discuss it more in depth once I'm done with it, which probably means I'll make a thread, but my opinion so far is that it's not a good show, it has some really good elements and I think Korra is a very interesting character but I don't really care for the rest of the main cast, the show itself is mostly mediocre and there are some aspects of it that are bad, but I think they're bad in a very interesting way that I very much would love to discuss in much more depth, obviously I'm talking about the extremely political plot and it's messaging, but I have so much to say about it, that I think I'm going to stop now in case I do decide to make that thread.
Yes, as an Anarchist I very much want to talk about Zaheer.

Also yes, I'm extremely late to this show.
I've tried to get into this show multiple times, but as soon as Mako and Bolin show up and that fucking love triangle starts going I just can't anymore. It's a shame too, cuz man this show looks so good - I really like Korra's design.
 
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