Just finished “The Bear”.
Oh my god so good, can’t recommend enough. The penultimate episode was the most stressful 20 minutes of television I’ve ever seen. Solid ass drama.
I have some recommendations that might feel similar enough to hook you!
Ghost in the Shell (original movie) is my favorite cyberpunk anime and scratches similar itches for me as Steins.
For more time travel drama, Erased is effed up and insanely bingeable.
If there are other movies or shows you like (non-anime) let me know and I can try to conjure up some similar anime
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Current anime being watched:
Shadows House S2
Healer Girl
Outburst Dreamer Boys
Kageki Shoujo
Finished two action-oriented anime:
Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer - Supposedly the manga is brilliant. The anime adaptation, not so. This show is an example of why I don’t watch a lot of action anime - the tendency towards formulaic plot, characters, etc. The premise was mildly interesting - a gigantic magical hammer poised to smash the Earth to pieces, and a girl with superhuman strength to claims to be Lucifer, who wants to defeat the wizard behind the hammer so that she can destroy the Earth herself.
Deca-Dence - Now this is actually an action-oriented show worth watching. Set in a post-apocalyptic future in which the remnants of humanity live in Deca-Dence, a rolling fortress city, and defend themselves from the Gadoll, giant monsters bent on killing off humanity. But then there’s a twist… and that’s the start of the show getting interesting.
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Finished two anime with “other side” in the title.
Otherside Picnic - Two women explore the Otherside - which looks a lot like the Upside Down in Stranger Things - for profit, first entering it through an elevator that can access parallel world, then later through other portals as they discover them. It’s an ok scifi/adventure show. It’s marketed as yuri but there’s only a hint of it.
The Girl From the Other Side: Siúil, a Rún - Takes place in a land divided into Inside and Outside. The Inside is occupied by humans, who are told never to cross to Outside. The Outside is known for demonic beasts who could curse with a touch. One day a little human girl appears in the Outside, and is quickly adopted by one of those beasts, who she calls “Teacher”.
Between these two titles, the latter left a more lasting impression on me
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tonight… it’s gotta be
“7 vs wild” on Youtube. German and very entertaining. 7 dudes get dropped into the wild and stay isolated with 7 items for 7 days, each on their own. Not even camera men, they film themselves. Very entertaining. My wife loves it too
Bocchi The Rock
It’s inspired loads of album cover parodies. Can’t quite place this one though
I think their own music is pretty good
The Viewing from Panos Cosmatos (Mandy, Beyond the Black Rainbow), score was Daniel Lopatin/Oneohtrix Point Never which did such a good job at '79 vibes that I thought Cosmatos was still working with Jeremy Schmidt/Sinoia Caves.
The gritty electro-funk grinding in the background and mild nod to Moroder gave me a new respect for the artist. I’m tempted to check out Uncut Gems just for the score now!
The story was fine, pacing good once it picks up, Cosmatos’ aesthetics always charm with their 70s era slick, slimy horror. And hell, the awkward dinner party was horror enough.
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Old Doctor Who episodes from 1960s-1980. Fun fact is that the actor who played the Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy went on to play the wizard Radagast in the Hobbit films many years later.
Was power watching Bosch series. Now I am power reading Connelly’s books (chronologically, Bosch stories and all the others). I am on book number 16 in less than 3 months…
I try not to consciously compare, but I feel like The Wire spoiled TV for me in the same way Breath of the Wild has spoiled video games
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I watched the whole of Cabinet for the sole purpose of The Viewing. Most episodes were good, some were very good, one was bad. The Viewing though was an absolute ball. The weirdest bit was Eric Andre doing a good job at normal. Cosmatos and Oneohtrix is a match made in glass and gold 80s heaven. I hope he only went CGI for budgetary reasons. Could do with less lens flares.
I did really enjoy the anthology, short film format. 8 directors doing their thing for an hour. We need more of that.
I’m watching The Rehearsal. I’m not convinced by any of it; the approach doesn’t reach the lofty aims. And personally Fielder comes off as a bit of an asshole. Just makes me want to watch Synecdoche, New York.
@kairos Ive more or less given up hoping we’d ever see that level of writing and studio risk again.
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Amongst other things, I think The Wire set the bar for dialogue by which I (unwisely) measure all subsequent shows.
Spoiler alert: they fare badly.
The last 3 shows we’ve tried to watch have all been cursed by terrible dialogue:
House of Dragons - utterly flat, plot-serving banalities that brought home just how cracking those early GOT series were.
The Old Man - Everyone speaking in cod-profound analogies with empty projections of portent and grandeur, that on interrogation mean absolutely nothing. You see through the cracks. You don’t play the game, the game plays you. A bicycle has two wheels.
The English - Utterly maddening, and interminable strivations for quasi-spiritual meaning, blatant ‘tee ups’ for pithy-sounding responses - ‘my story… Our story’ that neither developed character nor progressed the (ridiculous) plot, all followed by massive exposition dumps in the last episode to explain all the nonsense.
And of course ‘dead kid ending’, for shortcut to viewer empathy and unearned gravitas.
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it’s amazing how fast that show lost steam, great start but went from 100 to 0 in record time. I gave up on 4th episode.
Just finished True Detective (S1 - am late to this one, was great)
Now halfway through We Own This City (bent Baltimore cops get caught - has a The Wire kind of realism to it, based on real events, I know nowt about the real story so interested to see where it’s headed)
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I think we’d have been about episode 4 as well. Utter nonsense by that point.
I have We Own This City on the list, so might give that a whirl next.
The only thing we’ve enjoyed right through this year has been The Bear (through Disney+)
The reason being that the characters in it actually spoke in a way that was recognisably human, meaning that we actually believed them to be real people with real needs. It’s why we felt more invested, and more sense of jeopardy watching a pot of veal stock being left to spoil, than we did watching any number of cowboy mutilations, plots of regicide, or failed assassinations.
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Once again, I’m late to the party but The Boys on Prime is one hell of a Series. I’m totally in love with it.
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He’s definitely “more is more”, I like my flourishes and at least get a chuckle out of the intense aesthetic and cinematography. I wish more was in-camera and less post-processing, but it holistically works, there’s plenty of excellent photography to keep me happy.
I enjoyed some of that Hot D, but I loathe CGI dragons and the worst of the banalities you caught were dialogue taken verbatim from early GoT seasons and I don’t really need retreads and history rhyming within the same universe.
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