Supergrunch

As I suspected. Too bad, but there's still a lot to watch the show for. Don't worry, the whole thing hasn't been spoiled by any means. And now I'll edit your post so nobody else gets spoiled.

God, I've had too many all-nighters recently - my body has adapted to a 48-hour day.

He won't have told you what happens properly - it's a lot more complicated than one simple spoiler, so it'll still be enjoyable. What did he tell you, anyway?

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." We didn't evolve to be able to understand such concepts and dimensions, and I think that's part of what makes them seem so amazing to us.

Oh dear, please nobody else watch the film, whatever you do. It's really, really bad, and they ruin the story by playing about with it and trying to squash it into about an hour. At least watch KyoAni unveil after story with style first.

I'm with jayseven on polls - votes mean nothing without reasoning.

Right, this is a thing of total brilliance... will experiment with more when I have less work. Incidentally, try typing the word "pity."

Happy birthday to ye.

*hides away from unemployment by being a student for the forseeable future* A tip for staying up all night: limit the amount of caffiene you use - if you drink loads, then your body will adapt to it and it'll just end up being ineffective. Go for as long as you can without any, and try to take some around 20 minutes before you're about to drop off - this is especially useful before a shower, as you're likely to feel tired immediately afterwards. And having lots of all nighters, while not terribly good for you, makes you better at them - for instance, I've yet to use any caffeine tonight. :wink:

Awesomeage, congrats.

My school were bastards and only let us take time off school for two open days, and we had to fill out a form to get permission for each. It was really silly, everyone just pretended they were ill or whatever and went to more. Haggis, by Anglican do you mean Anglia Ruskin? I hear it's cool there.

You're right, but people try to make pretty much all successful books into films or shows, with drastically varying levels of success. Anyway yes, as they're basically language free of any necessary context, books probably exhibit more variety than any other form of media. Yes, anime covers many different things, we've established that - I just think it could cover even more. I wasn't talking about manga at all. In fact, manga shows a lot more variety than anime, as it's far more mainstream. (in fact, it makes up a third of the Japanese publication industry) This is because it, unlike anime, is socially acceptable, and so is made to cater for everyone (apart from perhaps old people) rather than just kids and otakus. However, only certain manga make the transition to anime, due to the limited audience and scope that the people making such decisions forsee anime to have. If all manga were made into anime, or, more realistically, if a broader selection of manga were made into anime, there'd be much less of a problem. Nonetheless, I disagree with you about manga providing more freedom than films or TV shows. (though yes, it probably does provide more than American comics, which suffer from the same sorts of artificial constraints as anime) You can do clever things within the genres, but the same is true for all media, and there's no real reason to assume that manga allows for more genres than anything else. What I was saying was that common occurrence of young characters in anime is atypical of Japanese (and indeed most) fiction in general. You can't refute this using anime as an example - anime is strange in its featuring of young characters, as are games, which tend to have storylines very much inspired by anime. Traditional Japanese literature isn't generally about people that young, and if we're to look at contemporary literature, then young characters are more common, but by no means near-ubiquitous like they are in anime. And yes, the other factors you mentioned along with a pared down writing style do contribute to Murakami's Western-seeming style (although the gritty Noir-type writing is less common in his later works), but I have heard before that his choice to write about young people is also somewhat Western, presumably because it conflicts with classic Japanese literature. And this isn't only true for literature - dramas and films also don't have a near-exclusive focus on the younger generation. It's an analogy - I'm not actually talking about maths, I'm talking about a phase-space of possible genres, defined by a certain number of continuous dimensions. Each form of media encompasses a certain characteristic chunk of this space, which covers various hazily defined patches which we think of as different genres. These chunks have finite boundaries so something from one form of media cannot be about anything, but it can be about a multitude of different things, and as the dimensions are continuous, this multitude is infinite, despite the fact it doesn't encompass everything. All I'm trying to say is that the anime chunk could easily be larger, as there are many genres that exist that people could make anime about but do not, and I think this is a pity. It may seem like I'm making this needlessly complex, but I'm just trying to explain what I mean by possible genres being something that is infinite yet bounded. Ultimately, I suppose the problem arises from the fact that anime is constrained by its audience. If this audience is enlarged, and it becomes more mainstream, then I think that further and hopefully more interesting genres will develop.

He's got to be talking about futaba, images (excluding Shift-JIS art of course) don't tend to come from 2ch. Anyway, futaba isn't that different to 4chan really - it's in Japanese, all the memes are different, /b/ kind of exists a bit in all boards, and it's maybe slightly less irreverent, but is otherwise much the same. To be honest, I find it to be the better of the two.

Erm, it is a Japanese sentiment, but Japanese literature hardly conforms to that. I mean, Murakami's considered outlandish and American for writing about students. With regard to infinte variation within certain paradigms, consider say, the numbers between 1 and 10. There are infinite possible numbers there, but the region they occur in is finitely bounded. You can consider a multidimensional variant of the same sort of system to see what I mean. And I think I disagree abot books - there are some aspects that can't be captured cinematically, but that hasn't stopped people making films of everything popular.

The catbus is probably the best vehicle ever conceived.

Like I said, I agree with you that it's infinitely varied, but it only tends to be about certain things, and when compared to, say, modern British literature, it seems terribly limited. I suppose it depends on whether you treat it as a standalone genre or a sub-genre of television or whatever - as a sub-genre, it's very wide, but if we conisder it as a form of media on it's own, it could do so much more. I disagree with your point about why anime is always about teenagers - surely if this were true, then it would be reflected in all fiction.

Those who post on 4chan without adapting their register appropriately are just asking to be ripped apart. You have to learn the dialect first.

I suppose somewhere has to exist where humour has no boundaries. This means that what comes out of 4chan varies between hilarious and terrible. To be honest though, I don't think it's much of a threat unless kids are exposed to it, as nothing there's supposed to be taken seriously.

The point? Well, what's the point of any art? Your argument about anime being a good medium to portray sci-fi and supernatural themes is a good one, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be experimented with. There are a few experimental shows (for instance, Honey and Clover is extremely realistic for an anime) and they tend to be interesting, but such things are few and far between. Yes, most people who would be interested in such shows probably aren't currently interested in anime, but that doesn't mean they can't be. I think the genre has a lot more potential than is taken advantage of. You seriously think anime isn't limited in the stories it portrays? Sure, there's infinite variation within certain paradigms, but people tend not to go outside them. For instance, have you ever seen a show where most of the characters are, say, middle aged? If there is one, I'd be interested in it, but the point remains that such experimentation is very rare. I'd agree with you on that, but some people seem to take an instant dislike to Nagisa - not sure exactly why, something to do with her not being very strong willed. Not so for me - she's one of my favourite characters, although I think Tomoya steals the show. Have you seen the special? That has a bit more, but it still doesn't really end the story properly - actually, it cuts off midway through the final manga arc. (and the final manga arc sort of ends things, but not all that much) Rummy: I won't give you any more suggestions, because people have given you tons of good ones, so enjoy. You might find not everything is to your taste (this is definitely true for me), so try out various different series before thinking of giving up.

I found this pretty hilarious.

As you guys are just using this thread to talk about Bluey, I think I'll lock it as it's at the very least way off topic. Just leave it alone.

If you use one of those sites that write it for you, doesn't that sort of destroy the point of doing the course in the first place? You end up paying one lot of people to give you work, and another lot of people to do it for you, without any guarantee of quality - ultimately, you're just paying an awful lot for a qualification you don't deserve. So yes, I suggest you actually do it, and try to do as well as you can. 6000 words in 6 weeks isn't really that bad to be honest - I have to write considerably more than 1000 words a week and manage to do so.

Happy birthday.

Yep, they do the same for my subject, but to get between 80 and 85 (starred first) you have to basically come up with a new and complex theory of your own. I think by contrast in Cambridge maths exams you just get your raw mark, so it's theoretically possible to get 100%, but even those getting firsts will only be able to complete a fraction of the questions.