BakeNeko-Chan

You and I never really interacted much and I don't follow you on Twitter so I can only assess the situation based on this thread. It sounds like you handled this transition very immaturely but it also seems you acknowledge this and genuinely want to do better from here on. I don't have any reason to feel betrayed by you, I'm just an outsider on this. I don't even ship NS anymore or have much feelings about Naruto either. But I do still have a fondness for this place because of friends I met here whom I love dearly outside the bounds of this forum.

It really shouldn't matter what you ship in order to be part of this community or continue to have friendships from here. If those friendships really mean anything they'll survive you changing ships. And heck, if you ship NH one day and go back to NS the next, that's not betraying anything, not yourself and not this community. It's just multi-shipping. Ships don't actually matter beyond the enjoyment they give you.

Again, we don't really know each other well, but I wish you all the best with what you're dealing with IRL. You may have made mistakes here, but it sounds like you want to aim to be better and kinder that's all any of us can really do.

The reason this manga fail was because it has Masashi Kishimoto name in it.
Don't underestimate Japanese readers` sentiment. You treat them bad, they'll stop buying from you.
Consider Arakawa sensei's work after Fullmetal Alchemist. She decided to write a story about farm life --Silver Spoon. Not an action adventure manga like FMA. It's a risky transition, and I can bet you that if Hiromu Arakawa name was not in it, it won't be the 7th best selling manga in Japan in 2012. The name alone warrant her loyal readers to buy the manga, since she was splendid in FMA.
I'm not at all surprised Kishimoto works after Naruto will face a tough challenge to succeed, because of how he handled Naruto.

Feels a bit like comparing apples to oranges though. Arakawa was always a stronger storyteller than Kishimoto, so it feels pretty natural that she would find success post FMA with Silver Spoon and The Heroic Legend of Arslan, it's not the same monumental success, but she's doing well regardless.

By contrast, I feel in hindsight, that Kishimoto just sort of came along with Naruto at the right place and time for it to be popular. He mooched a lot of ideas from better writers (Togashi most obviously) and at the time Shounen Jump was the main avenue of exposure for people outside Japan.

While Naruto was popular in Japan, it was not the most popular, and a lot of it's success can be attributed to an overseas fanbase - for a time Naruto was probably the one of the most recognizable anime/manga franchises to western audiences, besides Dragonball. That's where the concept of 'The Big Three' comes from. Back at the height of those three series running together - One Piece, Naruto, and Bleach - they were the main gateway into anime/manga for a majority of western fans, the term was never in use among Japanese fans, even for the ones aware of it's use overseas, and today, the term is obsolete. SJ is no longer the sole gateway outside Japan, with more and more manga publishers popping up in more and more countries. France now has the biggest market for manga, second to Japan. The medium has become less niche, and The Big Three will never exist again, because the circumstances that created them, and by extension, Kishimoto's unique success, no longer exist.

It's not impossible that Kishimoto will find an audience again, but the cards are not so stacked in his favor anymore.

Some "love of Japanese culture" there, I don't see any references to Japan that would fit an incoming Apocalypse 

Well, that’s not quite true. Fudo Myo-o is a figure of Japanese Buddhist mythology: http://www.onmarkpro.../html/fudo.html

From the sound of it, it could be a sci-fi take on Japanese mythology, which I admit, does manage to pique my interest. My expectations are still not high - you can have a good premise and still eff it up - but I may be inclined to keep an eye on it.

Im of the opinion that how good or bad a trope is should be something of a case by case basis. Tropes are an important tool for storytelling, theyre so common because they are effective and widely recognized. Its the same reason cliches exist because, generally, they work. It really just comes down to function and execution.

That said, I can think of one I always seem to take issue with, and thats when theres some big plot reveal near the end and a character in the know goes on a long info dump explaining it in detail to another character(s) who serve as proxy for the audience. To me, it shows a severe lack of faith in the reader/viewer to be able to put things together on their own through clues and context. It makes me feel handheld and condescended to by the writer and I cant think of an example were this was used that I wasnt taken out of the story. Somewhat related is when crucial information is withheld from the audience with no hint it even exists until it is revealed in a gotcha moment for the sole purpose of making the writing or a character seem more clever. Its cheap and lazy.

....Well Sasuke originally was either quite when Naruto and Sakura were doing their antics or was right along side them. It was once he got the curse seal that his personality shifted to either "stoic emo," or psychotic to remind people he was suppose to be an antagonist. Nail has pretty much been either aggressively hostile or "angst ridden emo" since he appeared. Also we didn't learn of Sasuke's past immediately nor did it consume his entire personality -AT THE START- we also didn't know that he would become a villain at the start. We start off the story with him being a villain in a flash-forward implying he is going to be "Boruto's Sasuke," we quickly learn of his past, and his past completely shapes his personality.
 

It varies, but often its more of just an inconvenience. The anime was more annoying because it took up more of my time, and was weekly instead of monthly.

So basically just taking all the worst parts of Sasuke’s character and recycling them into this guy? Great. Fantastic. So inspired. And I suppose it’s all for the sake of keeping the Naruto/Sasuke dynamic going in some form (cause as we all know, that was the Best Part of Naruto *heavy sigh*) and for the parallels, not like that concept hasn’t been done to absolute death in this series at this point.

Volume 7 cover is out: 
 
 

 
 
 
 
Covers Chapters 24-27 (basically it ends where Boruto tells Kawaki to make up the vase incident for Himawari)

Me coming into the thread having no clue whats going on in Boruto or who the heck this guy is: Whoa, someones going through their emo phase.

I know anime has more than its share of crazy hair and by comparison this isnt THAT out there, but for some reason all of it combined is somehow hilarious. The little tattoo(?), the dumb black on blond haircut, and the piercings just screams edgy. The unsmiling side eye expression just brings it all together to make the kind of face that looks very punchable.

Wow, I kind of thought he’d never get around to it after so long. Guess he wanted to take an extended vacation after Naruto? My first thought was, “I know I’ve heard of a series with a very similar title”, Samurai 7 was it? I’m not familiar with it but either way I can’t exactly give Kishimoto points for originality there. But I wish him luck anyway. I’m well past any bitterness for his handling of Naruto, and conceptually it sounds potentially interesting, though I very rarely read current shounen manga these days, with Hunter x Hunter (when it’s not on hiatus) and The Promised Neverland among the few exceptions.

I heard about this the other day. Honestly I don’t really use ff.net at all anymore. It’s just... really outdated and I personally find it a pain to use. AO3 is great though, and definitely an alternative worth looking into. Once you get used to the layout it’s really user friendly, great tagging system, no annoying ads, and it’s fan run by people who actually care about protecting the work of fan writers- which means no fic purges even of mature content.

Done. I do apologize and we're sadden to see you go. Hopefully you will decide to come back soon.

Thank you so much! Wow, sorry for taking like five months to say that. Who knows, life’s been busy and stressful, but I do lurk around every now and then. Unfortunately my interests just seem to have shifted away from this place, but I’m grateful that I got to be a part of this forum and met people I consider friends.

 

 

Can you believe that this was Studio Deen?! Notoriously considered to be one of the worst anime studios out there created this masterpiece... This just shows us that all a studio needs to do is to adapt more quality animes. I hope more studios will adapt josei and seinen mangas.

 

I think it really shows how much the animation team cared about the story they were telling. I really love when that happens and you can just tell that a story was a real passion project for those involved. (HxH 2011 also has that feeling imo)

 

As much as they leave it "open," I thought it was handled really well and understandable on the circumstance. The last episode got me really curious and thought he has to be his son. It's well played and I like it didn't make into a drama because what you have is what matters. There's a lot of things I would love to say but basically, it's amazing on how it managed to keep the momentum strong.

I don't know if it will ever come to USA but the manga is. I never read it but the hell with it, I'll get them.

A lot of seinen and Josei gets adapted; it's just the pinnacle ones are handled terrible (Berserk). Not sure why they have to act it's too deep, because while they may be, just treat them like anime. That's all.

 

I feel the same. I have to disagree with those who say it was thrown in there for drama (and I have seen a few make that claim) because I don't feel that was the purpose behind it at all. In the end Shinnosuke's biological father is something neither confirmed or denied, even the mangaka herself has apparently not said one way or the other. But leaving the possibly open, regardless of how you may personally feel about it, makes for an interesting story, and that I think is why Konatsu skirted around the question even when asked directly. She's a storyteller and often the best stories leave room for interpretation and speculation and I feel that's really the message SGRS was going for as a whole.

 

At it's core, this is a story about storytelling, and one of super interesting things about SGRS, imo, is that the characters are such unreliable narrators. We can't really take everything they say at face value and the best evidence of that is the fact that Kiku's story and the entire first season's narrative gets thrown into question because of the lie he told to protect Konatsu. He twisted the truth to tell a good story and we can't know how much of it was actually true. It leaves you to wonder and raises so many interesting questions and possibilities. And the same goes for the question of Shinnosuke's father. It leaves questions and ideas and a story in there somewhere, but the truth is ultimately left for your interpretation. In the end it doesn't even matter what the actual truth is anyway because Yotaro's his dad in every way that counts, and Konatsu says as much. 

 

This turned out kind of ramble-y, but gosh I have so many thoughts about this series even weeks later.

I guess I'm going to be That Negative Voice and say I have zero confidence in any American remake of an anime/manga. So much gets lost culturally in these stories when they're "westernized", and consequently they end up bastardized versions of themselves.

It don't see Death Note playing out any better, even with having a more real life setting than previous series to get in the hands of western writers with no real appreciation or understanding of the source material.

But seeing as I don't have Netflix anyway, I couldn't watch it even if I wanted to. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't care what anyone says: This anime is a masterpiece.

 

The reconciliation scene b/w Konatsu and Kiku was what I have been waiting for all this time. Konatsu was just afraid that she was a burden to Kiku, but in reality she and rakugo were Kiku's blessings.

 

I love how no one's blood related to each other in this family, but at the same time they are so much closer than others out there.

 

I agree 100%. I don't know how they managed it, but season two not only surpassed the first, it outdid itself with every episode. I'm blown away. People always want to talk about "the anime that saved anime", well, this is the one that did it for me. Recent years have had such a decline in overall quality, with some exceptions here and there, but SGRS just really stands out for me. Everything was executed so near flawlessly and there was obviously a lot of passion and care put into it by the writer and animation team. It's going to be hard for future series to match it, imo.

MangaStream has picked up this series. Interesting. Yes, I am up to date. Yes, I am collecting the volumes (better than getting some crap like Big Order...). And yes, the latest chapter is damn good.

 

Nice! I've got the first two volumes (on Kindle). Once I can get a few more I'll start rereading.

 

It's warmer outside than inside here. Except at night.

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ Here, have some of the snow because I don't want it all.

the preview for the next episode is in black and white

 

 

Lol, they're not even trying. That, or budget cuts. Either way it seems like everyone associated with making this series is just tired and wants to be done with it. I'm not even watching, but it'll still be a relief once this train wreck is finally over.

 

This also reminded me why I hate Sasuke, he's so full of kitten, talking big but never following through. Every time he opens his mouth I want to punch his teeth out. Sasuke's an insult to every character Kishimoto was "inspired" by to make him.