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Author Topic: The Embarassing Confession Thread  (Read 16329 times)

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Classic

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #20 on: December 11, 2009, 10:04:26 PM »

I really do like hugs as much as I claim!
:advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice:

 :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice: :advice:
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Classic

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #21 on: December 11, 2009, 10:05:11 PM »

I actually still read Questionable Content. ::(:

Though, I have managed to be megatokyo free for about 4 years.
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Burrito Al Pastor

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #22 on: December 11, 2009, 10:22:51 PM »

I enjoy Gunsmith Cats.
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I'm a heartbreaker... My name... Charles.

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #23 on: December 11, 2009, 11:26:12 PM »

I own the entire Daphne in Brilliant Blue collection. And I enjoy it, too.
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yyler

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #24 on: December 11, 2009, 11:35:58 PM »

WHOOPS WRONG THREAD IMAGINE MY EMBARRASSMENT
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Frocto

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #25 on: December 11, 2009, 11:47:04 PM »

I enjoy Gunsmith Cats.

how is enjoying one of the greatest anime ever made embarassing
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"And it is because they have fallen prey to a weakened, feminized version of Christianity that is only about softer virtues such as compassion and not in any part about the muscular Christian virtues of individual responsibility and accountability."

Mongrel

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #26 on: December 12, 2009, 07:46:01 AM »

I read a couple of the manga, still have them, I think... it was okay. Kenichi Sonada's ridiculous level of fetishism (gun fetish and plain' ol porn) just gets more gratingly annoying the older I get.

I mean, I know that manga is all too often guilty of LOL CONTRIVED WHAT, but Sonada is like some kind of Godfather of Contrived Situations.
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Büge

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #27 on: December 12, 2009, 07:58:49 AM »

I read a couple of the manga, still have them, I think... it was okay. Kenichi Sonada's ridiculous level of fetishism (gun fetish and plain' ol porn) just gets more gratingly annoying the older I get. 

Says the man with TWO copies of Ghost in the Shell on his shelf
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Mongrel

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #28 on: December 12, 2009, 08:24:19 AM »

Short answer: In GitS, Shirow Masamune doesn't spend pages upon pages telling you why that girl had to get naked. He just draws a naked girl. Nor does he spend pages and pages on lavish explanations of projectile trajectories, the history of gas-charged pistols, or extravagent rifling patterns in semi-automatic handguns.


Longer answer: Shirow is no less a fetishist than many of his contemporaries. He likes him some porn and obliges himself happily with scantily clad women and lots of cool gun and robot pics. The difference there is that for a good while, he let his fetishism take a back seat to good writing and good stories. His dialogue and plots were excellent and the science fiction storylines behind the original GitS and the first two volumes of Appleseed is of a quality that I think ranks with the best conventional science-fiction authors of the second half of the 20th century. He also knew how to tell a good joke: Orion and the two Tank Police volumes are a laugh riot.

Then he too succumbed to his inner Sonada. The last two volumes of Appleseed were just long exposés on commando ops and any science fiction seems to have been thrown out the window. The long-awaited sequel to Gits was just appallingly awful. It was completely incoherent (he was always a fan of en Media res, which I love, but then he pushed it just a little too far) and bore little resemblance to anything, let alone a sequel to a book that should have just stood on its own.

'Old' Shirow still remains one of my all-time favourite writers of comic books on any continent. Later Shirow... well, it takes years for the guy to put out a book now and each one is bound by chains wrought of my heartbreak and disappointment.
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Frocto

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #29 on: December 12, 2009, 09:03:22 AM »

Nor does he spend pages and pages on lavish explanations of projectile trajectories, the history of gas-charged pistols, or extravagent rifling patterns in semi-automatic handguns.

You are actually so incorrect here I am not sure how you are still alive
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SCD

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #30 on: December 12, 2009, 09:41:40 AM »

I ask that every day of each inhabitant of the city he lives in..
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Mongrel

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #31 on: December 12, 2009, 09:46:34 AM »

Nor does he spend pages and pages on lavish explanations of projectile trajectories, the history of gas-charged pistols, or extravagent rifling patterns in semi-automatic handguns.

You are actually so incorrect here I am not sure how you are still alive

About Shirow or Sonada? 'Cause I was exaggerating with regards to Sonanda, though not by much (unless you want to talk about Exaxxxion... wooo geez, leave that one in the crapper).

I know Shirow has those little exposés he does at the beginning of some chapters... or the datafile appendices, not sure if either of those is what you're talking about.

I ask that every day of each inhabitant of the city he lives in..

I ask that every other day myself.
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Frocto

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #32 on: December 12, 2009, 10:02:11 AM »

Right, I was referring to you claiming Shirow didn't have pages and pages of that bullshit, I'm pretty sure it was his shtick even before Sonada picked it up. Pretty much everything he's done since the GitS manga has had massive tldrs about the setting, the technology, all that crap, because if there is one thing Shirow loves doing, it is predicting technology.

Probably the biggest offender I can remember here is in my favourite work of his, the Dominion manga, in which he dedicated something like 12 pages at the back of the book to spreads about how the Bonaparte tanks worked, their equipment (the machine guns are equipped exclusively with rubber bullets and the central cannon can be replaced with a fire hose!) and of course the fact is a major plot point in stopping the bad guys that Leona has an intricate knowledge of the structural integrity of cannon firing range walls combined with her filling out paperwork earlier on in the story specificially requesting HEAT rounds for her Bonaparte.

Heck, there's even a little comic at the back where the characters just blather about tanks for like eight pages. Or maybe that was Appleseed? My memory is a bit fuzzy.

This stuff largely gets overlooked in the adaptations of Shirow's work to the screen (because Oshii is a fucking HACK goddamn him) but it's all there in the comics and it can honestly get pretty fascinating. It's one of the main reasons I've wanted to track down Orion, aside from Cthulhu Rape (TM), because the robot featured in Black Magic is in there, and that's my favourite animated Shirow work (and by work I mean Terminator and Alien condensed into one badass fucking awesome fucking holy shit this rules fest).
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"And it is because they have fallen prey to a weakened, feminized version of Christianity that is only about softer virtues such as compassion and not in any part about the muscular Christian virtues of individual responsibility and accountability."

Büge

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #33 on: December 12, 2009, 10:22:08 AM »

Right, I was referring to you claiming Shirow didn't have pages and pages of that bullshit, I'm pretty sure it was his shtick even before Sonada picked it up. Pretty much everything he's done since the GitS manga has had massive tldrs about the setting, the technology, all that crap, because if there is one thing Shirow loves doing, it is predicting technology.

Probably the biggest offender I can remember here is in my favourite work of his, the Dominion manga, in which he dedicated something like 12 pages at the back of the book to spreads about how the Bonaparte tanks worked, their equipment (the machine guns are equipped exclusively with rubber bullets and the central cannon can be replaced with a fire hose!) and of course the fact is a major plot point in stopping the bad guys that Leona has an intricate knowledge of the structural integrity of cannon firing range walls combined with her filling out paperwork earlier on in the story specificially requesting HEAT rounds for her Bonaparte.

Heck, there's even a little comic at the back where the characters just blather about tanks for like eight pages. Or maybe that was Appleseed? My memory is a bit fuzzy.


This is quite true. In the first INTRON DEPOT (a collection of Shirow illustrations from 1981 to 1991), there are hundreds of pics of girls in skimpy clothes draped over carefully-rendered tanks, oiled-up girls climbing into well-thought-out mecha and Mokoto Kusanangi holding plausible-looking firearms with her inexplicably well-manicured fingers.

In other news, Hhhhhhnnggh
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Mothra

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #34 on: December 12, 2009, 10:33:16 AM »

Frankly the whole reason I picked up the Black Magic manga at all was because the military pornography was just so dang gorgeous. I hold GitS up to a higher standard on account of the fascinating setting, but really, I've never expected much out of a Shirow work but really, really cool mecha and tech designs in action. The way he runs with biomimicry, the animal and natural look of all his machines, is something I absolutely adore about the guy.

The story, however, is just nonsensical and bizzare in ways that are not even remotely related to the anime. There's like a magic witch in the future who evades assassins for some reason that is never explained, and then she just disappears in the last last half of the book, which basically just drops everything in favor of heavily-armored ODST commandos breaching a corporate office and taking out a sexy rouge killbot.
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Mongrel

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #35 on: December 12, 2009, 10:35:21 AM »

Right, I was referring to you claiming Shirow didn't have pages and pages of that bullshit, I'm pretty sure it was his shtick even before Sonada picked it up. Pretty much everything he's done since the GitS manga has had massive tldrs about the setting, the technology, all that crap, because if there is one thing Shirow loves doing, it is predicting technology.

Probably the biggest offender I can remember here is in my favourite work of his, the Dominion manga, in which he dedicated something like 12 pages at the back of the book to spreads about how the Bonaparte tanks worked, their equipment (the machine guns are equipped exclusively with rubber bullets and the central cannon can be replaced with a fire hose!) and of course the fact is a major plot point in stopping the bad guys that Leona has an intricate knowledge of the structural integrity of cannon firing range walls combined with her filling out paperwork earlier on in the story specificially requesting HEAT rounds for her Bonaparte.

Heck, there's even a little comic at the back where the characters just blather about tanks for like eight pages. Or maybe that was Appleseed? My memory is a bit fuzzy.

This stuff largely gets overlooked in the adaptations of Shirow's work to the screen (because Oshii is a fucking HACK goddamn him) but it's all there in the comics and it can honestly get pretty fascinating. It's one of the main reasons I've wanted to track down Orion, aside from Cthulhu Rape (TM), because the robot featured in Black Magic is in there, and that's my favourite animated Shirow work (and by work I mean Terminator and Alien condensed into one badass fucking awesome fucking holy shit this rules fest).

Yeah, I know he does that, but that stuff is mostly excised from the story in Shirow's book. He used to take great pains to not allow all his prediction junk interfere with the flow or readability of the story. I look at that stuff in the same way I do the maps and appendicies to LotR or something. They're not part of the story, they're supplementary reference material that you can read at your leisure or disregard.

Sonada makes you sit for pages and pages in the middle of the damn story - in the middle of action sequences even - so he can, again, pound it into your brain that the CZ75 original military edition is the greatest handgun ever produced or whatever. Or how the cannons in Exaxxion use gravity to alter their trajectory (WITH TWO PAGES OF DIAGRAMS).

I went and did the ultimate nerd-arguing-on-the-internet thing and went to get my own copy of GitS off the shelf and actually looked through it. Here are the following scenes that could be called pointless fetishism:

- The two page conversation in chapter 3 (Junk Jungle) between the Major and Togusa, while Togusa drives the van.
- 5 out of the six pages of chapter five (Megatech machine 2), but this is arguably important, as it shows how the cyborgs of the GitS world work and are made, which is pretty crucial to understanding the book.
- The first page of chapter 7 (Phantom Fund)... and it still includes a key plot panel.
- The first two pages of chapter 8 (Dumb Barter) (debateable, since it's mostly plot, but I'll add this since that's a LOT of expository dialogue.
- Technically, there's also all the ethereal dialogue with the puppeteer, but since that's actually the point of the book and is fascinating, I wouldn't count it.

Other than that there's a *lot* of created jargon, but that's not really any different than the dialogue on your average cop show on TV. It still moves the plot or action along. Agreed that most Shirow adaptations are very poor. I can't watch any of those anime at all. It's like trying to watch grade six flash-animation version of the Foundation series or something.

 :tldr: version: Shirow's fetishism helps deepen the immersion in his worlds, whereas Sonada's fetishsim is jarring and throws you out.
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Frocto

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #36 on: December 12, 2009, 10:40:58 AM »

dude, let me rephrase myself

leona and umi are driving this tank at full steam after the bad guy and leona explains they need to blow a hole in a wall, then she goes on to take like TWO PAGES WITH DIAGRAMS talking about concrete strength compared to shell velocities all without managing to go flying past the spot she is supposed to be shooting

it is the most amazingly absurd thing I've ever seen shirow do in his manga and I am giggling just remembering it

fuuuuuuuck this is making me depressed that I never bought my own copy or chased up the second volume :(
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Mongrel

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #37 on: December 12, 2009, 10:41:58 AM »

dude, let me rephrase myself

leona and umi are driving this tank at full steam after the bad guy and leona explains they need to blow a hole in a wall, then she goes on to take like TWO PAGES WITH DIAGRAMS talking about concrete strength compared to shell velocities all without managing to go flying past the spot she is supposed to be shooting

it is the most amazingly absurd thing I've ever seen shirow do in his manga and I am giggling just remembering it

But Tank Police is absurd. It fits.

Hehe. Regardless of arguments, this was actually worthwhile because I hadn't read GitS in quite a while. That was fun.
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Mongrel

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #38 on: December 12, 2009, 10:45:14 AM »

Actually, wait, I know the scene you're talking about (no, I didn't go look at my Tank Police).

That's from the second book, not the first, right (I was thinking of a different scene when I posted the reply above)? That book is borderline, right on the cusp of when he started to get bad, so I take it back, you're right-on that one. Tank Police 2 is still pretty damn funny, but yeah, it contains more than a few bad scenes like that. It was probably his last genuinely readable book.

Shirow's best work will always be a very small list: GitS 1, Tank Police 1, Appleseed 1 & 2, Orion, and maybe Black Magic M66 - basically the stuff he was putting out in the 80's, that came over here in the 90's. The stuff he puts out now is almost unreadable. EDIT. Actually, the stuff he puts out now really is flat-out unreadable.
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Frocto

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Re: The Embarassing Confession Thread
« Reply #39 on: December 12, 2009, 10:54:17 AM »

I absolutely adored it. He created a living, breathing police station where every single character got their own sub-plot that was eventually tightly and snappily resolved.
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