So, after like a good month of watching this on and off, I finally finished it.
I have to admit, there were some things about it that were just ridiculous. A few of them are spoileriffic, but the majority of it was just how nonsensical some of the philosophical parts of the plot wound up.
Beyond that, though, I have to admit…it was pretty fun. It was a very superficial fun, and I think that it absolutely, completely and utterly failed at most of the things it attempted to do…but it still somehow managed to be enjoyable. I don’t really get how. I watched it with a girl, and I was sure that it wouldn’t hold up farther than the potential for misogynistic and misandristic humour ended…but it did.
In any case, I guess that takes the number of animes I enjoy up to three…just barely. Vandread passes with a D+.
I liked it. It wasn’t deep, or meaningful, or even anywhere near stellar for mindless super robot series, not to mention GONZO’s goddamn 3DCG is as shitty as always, but it was good enough for a little bit of fun. Probably the thing I liked the most was that as hotheaded as he was, Hibiki was a rare case of a protagonists that realizes when he’s being and idiot and learns from it.
The character designs for Second Stage were awful though. I hated the triangle chins.
Yeah, I read your review and was shocked to find how similar your opinion was to mine. My favorite character also happened to be Bart, heh. That really tragic episode that focused on Bart was my favorite episode by a longshot.
The little robot really got annoying in Second Stage. From the description I’d heard before I started watching, I thought it was more serious and not so fanservice-y. In my defense, I didn’t know before hand that it was a Gonzo show. But, yeah, like everyone else said, it was fun enough.
So this is only the third anime series you’ve enjoyed SG? Have you tried looking through something other than bargain bin shows, or have you tried stuff with better reputations and found them wanting?
I dunno…I don’t know enough about anime to know what’s popular, or what’s obscure, or different types. All I know is, I’ve seen a fair amount, and disliked most. For example, I thought Vandread was pretty popular, but most of my friends who like anime have never seen it (And they’re the kind of people who like more anime than just like, Naruto, Dragon Ballz, Yu-Gi-Oh, or whatever the hell, so I was pretty surprised at that).
Vandread comes from just before (I think) anime became reasonably popular, so I’d guess it probably missed out on becoming either one of the legendary 10th-gen VHS-fansub-in-the-anime-club or a title you’d pick up on CN. Haven’t seen it myself.
