Things I watched in 2017

Posted by Phoebii on July 9, 2017, 7:22 a.m.

DISCLAIMER: This bloody knife I have is not a decoration. I have just mercilessly butchered some of your favourite shows.

10/10:

Handmaid's Tale

This makes Game of Thrones seem like kid show.

It's powerful and meaningful.

Not something you would watch for fun, but… Yeah.

Preacher

The 2nd best thing I've watched this year.

0 flaws. Just awesome.

Castlevania

It has everything I want.

It's smart, dark, epic, it has awesome characters, visuals, music, demon invasion, etc.

Why isn't there more things like that?!

I mean seriously, why not?!

Planet Earth 2

Heh, would be a dick move to rate whole Earth below 10/10.

I mean, that's our only planet so far.

And nothing tops episode with racer snakes.

9/10:

One Punch Man

Huh, anime that's not dumb and focuses on action instead of on whiny characters and characters are not whiny!?

It was very chill, fun, cool and original.

I really hope it's done entirely by Japan, they really lack good things.

Legion

Non-stop eye candy, especially if you love the surreal stuff.

It gets less interesting once they explain what's happening, but it doesn't make it less cool.

Rick & Morty Season 3

As good as previous seasons.

Arrival

YES. World needs more well-written and interesting sci-fi.

Aliens were extremely good and their language… Wow.

Raid 1 and Raid 2

Raid 1 is literally raid - a team of people sent into a level 80 dungeon filled with trash mobs and bosses.

Just it's a movie and in cops, VS Mafia using fists setting.

Hell yeah.

Raid 2 has even better action and with the actual story, just is less "Raid".

I loved both of them, but I think Raid 1 has a better atmosphere and Raid 2 has better action.

8/10:

Silicon Valley

I relate to this show, so I like it more than I probably should.

Got to say that it went downhill after season 2.

Sunshine

It should be rated higher.

Alien and Aliens

Good stuff.

7/10:

Ugly Americans

Bizarre.

Samurai Jack Season 5

It was good to finally see the ending of Samurai Jack.

It was a bit rushed, but for understandable reasons.

American Gods

I love the surreal stuff and the whole idea of the show.

6/10:

XMEN

Tried watching that old show. Like up to episode 5.

Meh.

I don't get what people see in comics heroes.

Is nostalgia really that strong?

Red 2

It was rather funny. And kind of good, especially when compared to the other action movie I've watched.

5/10:

Steven Universe

It sucks now.

Instead of some sort of story, there are just random episodes.

Yes, I get it. Gay people are people too.

Can we get to interesting parts now?

No? Ok, bye.

4/10:

John Wick 2

Dude pretentiously and effortlessly shooting other dudes for two hours.

What a waste of time.

Why it's rated so high?!

Cowboy Bepop/Firefly

Couldn't keep me. It just wasn't interesting enough.

Making sci-fi into a western is just dumbing down awesomeness that is sci-fi.

0/10:

Attack On Titan Season 2

Haha, we have cool and creepy titans, we know how to animate decent action scenes and we have an interesting setting, but instead, we're going to focus on characters, even though we have no idea how to make interesting characters.

Now gives five stars. Thank you.

Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Was the most bizarre of the animes I tried this year.

It had potential, but instead of focusing on giant robots fighting giant monster robots, they decided to focus on some dumb neglected kid's mental issues.

And girls with some other issues. And the camera angles with even more issues.

Really?

Couldn't even start watching … Gears? What was the anime called, the one that had robots and Britania was an invading country?

Couldn't watch because of obvious anti-USA propaganda.

C'mon, have some decency. I know the USA is evil, but it's just low.

Several other anime's, which names I won't mention.

Just go to IMDB top rated animes and they all are there.

I didn't watch the whole thing, just first few episodes just to prove myself that it's garbage so I could stop wasting time.

Now I know for sure that anime is garbage, so I can stop looking for a good one.

"Honorable" mention:

Scrubs/The Office/Parks And Recreation/F Is For Family/King Of The Hill/Bob's Burgers

Only old or/and boring people could enjoy that.

Just not for me. So no rating.

Quote: Better late than never:
Uh, these are not reviews. At first, I just wanted to write down what I watched. Then I decided to give shows ratings. THEN I have decided to write down why they got such ratings from me. Then I have realized I can't sit for 10 hours writing a post…

One Punch Man "focuses" on the action in comparison to Attack On Titan/Evangelion, which has like 1 minute of action per episode.

It takes 0.5 seconds to say that "Wow that is awesome!" and 5 days to fully analyze why something makes me feel like that. I'd rather be unfair/inaccurate than waste my time explaining why I feel in one way or the other.

I don't feel bad about giving Firefly/entire anime genre (minus One Punch Man) such rating, but hey, they probably are overrated, so there's no harm in them being underrated for once.

Also, anime really pissed me off. Show stupid shit, and you'll get stupid shit, I'm not holding myself back >=|

I do hope that I got some of you to watch Castlevania.

Comments

Astryl 7 years, 5 months ago

Quote:
Couldn't even start watching … Gears? What was the anime called, the one that had robots and Britania was an invading country?

Couldn't watch because of obvious anti-USA propaganda.

C'mon, have some decency. I know the USA is evil, but it's just low.
Code Geass, and technically it's a conquering Britain (Thus Britannia) that's being dicks to the rest of the world.

And IMDB is a bad place to look for good anime, just sayin'.

Phoebii 7 years, 5 months ago

Quote:
Code Geass, and technically it's a conquering Britain (Thus Britannia) that's being dicks to the rest of the world.
That doesn't make it better. Red arrows pointing at Japan from the US shows the real intentions.

Quote:
And IMDB is a bad place to look for good anime, just sayin'.
Yeah, I've noticed =P

Moikle 7 years, 5 months ago

Quote:
Making sci-fi into a western is just dumbing down awesomeness that is sci-fi.

now you are straight up wrong

It is a really cool setting. The writers get to explore something other than "wow everything is shiny (pun not intended) and clean and pew pew lasers wow… oh look aliens…"

I love sci-fi, but sci-fi western is something special

twisterghost 7 years, 5 months ago

I liked Firefly a lot after watching it relatively recently for the first time. I remember trying to watch it back in college but never got into it.

I'm not a huge fan of sci-fi to begin with, but Firefly was a good crossover that made it enjoyable to watch for me.

To each their own really

Phoebii 7 years, 5 months ago

Quote:
It is a really cool setting. The writers get to explore something other than "wow everything is shiny (pun not intended) and clean and pew pew lasers wow… oh look aliens…"
In the first episode of Firefly/Bebop, I couldn't wait for boring dudes to get off the screen, so I could see spaceships. Since the dude to spaceship ratio is like 1:20 I decided to not watch it.

I bet the story is focused on characters and sci-fi is just a background thing.

And characters weren't that interesting.

That's what I've got from the first episode.

F1ak3r 7 years, 5 months ago

If you enjoyed Handmaiden, I'd highly recommend reading Margaret Atwood's other book Oryx and Crake (no screen adaptation AFAIK). I really enjoy the way she plots by interweaving concurrent stories happening to the same people at different times.

Quote:
Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Was the most bizarre of the animes I tried this year.

It had potential, but instead of focusing on giant robots fighting giant monster robots, they decided to focus on some dumb neglected kid's mental issues.

And girls with some other issues. And the camera angles with even more issues.

Really?
This is like saying, "Watchmen had potential but instead of having superheroes fighting supervillains Moore decided to examine what would happen if superheroes existed in the real world and what kind of weird people they would have to be."

Like, if you want a straightforward giant robot show, NGE is the last thing you should watch. The mental issues were the entire point of the series.

And while I'm disagreeing, I'll add to

Quote: Moikle
It is a really cool setting. The writers get to explore something other than "wow everything is shiny (pun not intended) and clean and pew pew lasers wow… oh look aliens…"
by saying that the Western aesthetic makes a lot of sense in sci-fi context. The inner planets in Firefly's universe are covered in futuristic cities, because those are the highly settled places where the wealthy live, whereas most of the series takes place in less central areas, where planets didn't really take the terraforming as perfectly, and so the ground is barren, life is tough and the people are, well, hardy frontier folks. Those planets and moons are the frontier. The parallels are literally perfect, and I'm sure the first human settlers on other Earthlike planets would resemble the cast of a Western in some respects.

What I really enjoyed about the series was how these space cowboys would occasionally visit more affluent worlds and hang around in futuristic cities, and it was totally congruous and made sense within the setting. Also the Chinese admixture in the culture was pretty neat. But I think most people who really like Firefly like it most because it had the potential to be such an awesome series with far more cool and inventive mash-up settings but got cancelled before it could. I almost like the idea of what the second and third seasons could have been like more than I like the first (and only) season.

I can't, however, dispute that the series is mostly about the characters. But so is pretty much every series and movie and everything, so I'm not really sure what you're looking for or expecting?

Phoebii 7 years, 5 months ago

Quote:
If you enjoyed Handmaiden, I'd highly recommend reading Margaret Atwood's other book Oryx and Crake (no screen adaptation AFAIK). I really enjoy the way she plots by interweaving concurrent stories happening to the same people at different times.
Not translated probably, so I can't get it in the library. And I can't afford books.

Quote:
This is like saying, "Watchmen had potential but instead of having superheroes fighting supervillains Moore decided to examine what would happen if superheroes existed in the real world and what kind of weird people they would have to be."
But robot parts were pretty good, while the rest wasn't. I think… It's hard to rate show about mental issues if you don't really have mental issues? Whatever, I don't want to think about it…

(Watchman sounds interesting)

Quote:
The mental issues were the entire point of the series.
Yep, but I thought it was going to be about robots.

Quote:
Western aesthetic makes a lot of sense in sci-fi context.
It's good that it does, but I don't find it that interesting.

Quote:
I can't, however, dispute that the series is mostly about the characters. But so is pretty much every series and movie and everything, so I'm not really sure what you're looking for or expecting?
I want to see those fantastic worlds through characters eyes and see character interact with those worlds.

Not look at the characters all the time.

Flashbacks are great to measure this.

When character development and action is proportional, I love flashbacks.

When character development and action is disproportional, I hate flashbacks.

I'm like "Nooo, get back to action! Show me more of enemies/world/protagonist fighting…"

Firefly seemed like the disproportional, it was annoying to wait until characters stopped talking and action happened.

F1ak3r 7 years, 5 months ago

Quote:
Not translated probably, so I can't get it in the library. And I can't afford books.
Yeah, it is disgusting how expensive books are. I only ever buy secondhand, or… um… borrow… from "friendly library websites". It's just not affordable.

Quote:
I want to see those fantastic worlds through characters eyes and see character interact with those worlds.

Not look at the characters all the time.
Okay, sure, that's understandable. It's something that Firefly did have to some degree, but not as much as you would like. Which is kind of a general thing I find with series as opposed to film – they don't have the budget to do new incredible worlds every week, so they gotta make it about the characters. :p

We definitely differ hard in tastes on action. I fast-forward through fight scenes if they're too long.

S3xySeele 7 years, 5 months ago

One Punch Man is great.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is great.

Cowboy Bebop is great.

Sunshine is pretty good.

Can't comment on the rest, haven't seen 'em.

As an aside, Evangelion takes a lot of inspiration from classic sci-fi novels and films… 2001 and Andromeda Strain in particular come to mind, though I'm sure there are others. There's some crazy stuff going on under the surface that they mostly just gloss over in the show rather than explicitly explain or dwell on. In other words, there's more to it than just "robots and daddy issues".

flashback 7 years, 5 months ago

Quote:
Cowboy Bepop/Firefly

Couldn't keep me. It just wasn't interesting enough.

Making sci-fi into a western is just dumbing down awesomeness that is sci-fi.
Ultimately judgement of art is purely subjective and up to each individual.

That is to say, you're wrong and I hate you now.