How Anime is Made Inside the Studio

 Have you ever wondered how anime is made well today? We're going to take a behind-the-scenes look at some of your favorite animation studios and see how this whole [process] is done, from  scratch It all starts off with a script the script is produced by the artist who developed the original [Manga] himself and after a lengthy review Process by the director it gets greenlit and goes into production next we have a storyboard these storyboards include drawing movements panning of the camera, and the length of each shot next we have layouts for the actual scenery [and] Landscapes that take place first hey're drawn on paper And it is reviewed should we have a tree here should we have a building here? And then actually once it is finalized goes to a landscape department where they used to hand paint them
 They don't do it so much anymore Now it has turned into a lot of digital landscapes, but think old-school dragonball z That's all hand painted landscapes and backgrounds, and thank new age one-punch man. It is all digital backgrounds now however sometimes they still do paint in Regular acrylics, but typically don't they'll only do that in a scenario where it's faster or better for some particular [reason] But primarily now. It's all digitized because you have all your tools right at hand. It's faster cleaner and cheaper Next we have key animation now what key animators do is they draw the first frame the middle frame and the last frame Typically of an animation so basically if one guy of guy a was going to kick guy B He'd have him standing there. He'd have middle the kick and then he have the kick impacting the guy After the key animation is done for every frame. It'll go over to the [in-between] animators here's something you might find interesting When the key animators are drawing they have to use references so that they get everything correct now Here's an example of a key animator using a mirror so that he can look at his hand in order to draw the hand Proportionally and correctly after the key animators are done it goes over to the in-between animators who make sure that that animation is a solid fluid movement by tracking the three pictures that they were given or more and basically drawing the frames in between Those in order to give it that motion key animators usually are more amateur. They're less expensive a lot of times They're brought in from Korea over in Japan and that Is part of the reason that Dragon Ball Super episode 5? Didn't look great in a lot of those scenes is because it was done by less Experienced animators who were brought in to do the heavy [lifting] on those [in-between]? Fluid movement animations now what you have to understand is that in animation? just a TV series a 30-minute episode can have as many as 1,500 Redrawn pictures in that single episode After all the animations are complete it goes over to compositing now compositing is a slew of different departments But primarily it is the coloring studio the shading and this is where they put in and Fill all [of] the lines of the animations that have been created [with] the correct colors now a lot of these companies have entire Departments just for the coloring because it is so time-consuming Each of these artists will be given a correct palette of colors to use to ensure [that] all characters Keep and [Maintain] their level and quality of colors throughout the entire animation now.

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sometimes they'll be in a cave or [in] a building where there's not as much light and they'll be given a different color palette for the Darker Shades And that's why sometimes you'll see characters having different shades of color Whether it's their clothes or their skin the final stage of production is effects the effects department will take the fully drawn animation fully colored With landscapes and everything, but basically the rest of the departments are done at this point And now we'll start adding effects whether it's lightening glows or as shading blurs They'll add various effects to ensure that that animation looks amazing glints on swords more things than you probably even know A lot of blurs for certain scenes so that it gives it more of a speed motion there are so many things that the effects Department does in the end that really add [to] the stellar quality of an animation and add those effects that make you love those key moments in that anime Finally we go to post production which is editing so that the anime the 30 minute cartoon is exactly the amount of broadcast time meaning they may have to cut some pieces out and we do the Voiceovers the voiceovers are probably one of the more on stages in this entire process You guys probably knew that the voice of Goku is voiced by a woman walking [Sudhana], or underneath it feels old ah But did you know that the voice of naruto was - oh see what after dinner? You go get a shell company to understand [company]. Chaos there you [still] gotta I'm the coo you know they're not pan out I'm jake Master master our media. Thanks for joining us today Make sure to hit that subscribe button, and I will talk [to] you guys soon so lucky 

Attack on Titan Season 4 Anime Trailer Breakdown

 Hey.... it's dangerous here Go, fly... Far away... ...from here. Whoever destroys the machine gun will become the next warrior The armored titan will be one of us!! I think I understand you now. You wanted to save the world Right? Shut up... Why?... Why can't you let me die? From the appearance of the founder Ymir to the present day The Titans have taken many lives But in recent years That peace has been taken away!! Because someone has stole the founding titan inside the island of paradis! His name is... Eren Yeager!! An now I proclaim "Fight" To the enemy forces of Paradis a declaration of war!

 Welcome back everyone it's Charlie thisis going to be my attack on Titan season 4 trailer for the final season they'regoing all the way through the final arc and the manga so if you're new to thechannel be sure to subscribe to get all the videos I got a lot of requests to doa video for this and they actually show quite a bit from the very recent mangastuff in this so if you're wondering how they were able to get all this footagein if they're not completely done animating the season it's because a lotof the animation in the trailer was made separate from the actual episodes so theanimation for the actual final episodes might look a little bit different thanthe way they look in the scenes of the trailer but all the scenes in thetrailer will be stuff that they cover during the final season and they show abunch of stuff here the rest of the original 9 Titans there's a couple newones that we're seeing for the first time including the founding Titan I knowthere's a bunch of questions about what's going on with that they even fullblown to show us the coordinate so if you're not really familiar with what'sgoing on with that I'll try to explain in his non spoilery away as possiblebecause this is basically everything through the end of the story season 4will be 12 episodes total so they're obviously going to be compressing a lot ofthe story where we left off in season 3 episode 22 in the finale that'sbasically going to be the beginning of the Majerle arc so they'll cover that prettyquickly and then you have the war for paradis arc which is basically the finalarc and the manga the marlee arc picks up at the end of season 3 episode 22where they find the coastline and they're all playing around but then theyrealize that this is where all the Eldian exiles are brought and thenforcibly turned into titans and set loose because basically Paradise Islandis a prison island where they send all the exiled but the Majerle arc itself isall about the Marlins realizing through their war with the Middle East Alliedforces that even though Majerle controls a number of the special Titans in theTitan shifters their special Titans themselves aren't enough to win wars asmilitary technology continues to evolve they believe that the only thing that'sgoing to guarantee their supremacy is the power of the founding Titan but thatpower leads them to Paradise Island so obviously this gets involved inAaron's story and his family's history in season 3 episode 22 he has thatvision learning a little bit about his connection to the Eldian royal familywhen historia touches him so if you jumped off theseries there have been a number of really big reveals about the history ofAaron's family how he came into possession of the attack Titan how hecame into the possession of the founding titan in what the coordinate is and whatthis grand plan is because there's a lot of competing agendas with differentforces on the show so as at the end of season 3 and going into season 4 thereare going to be a couple of time jumps they kind of deal with that at the end ofseason 3 in the finale where they basically say six months have gone bybut as the finale Christa's true identity has been revealed as historiaReis lasts or one of the last remaining members of the Eldian royal familytechnically there are a couple other royal bloodline members out therebecause that sort of gets into
who  can control the power of the Titans how thepower of the founding Titan works she decides to reveal the secret of theTitans to everyone and naturally everybody freaks out the funny thingabout this is that if you were watching the intros for pretty much the lastcouple of seasons they'd tell you the history of the Titans of the history ofthe world in those intros if you kind of know what's going on the whole deal withthe vision that Aaron gets is that he's actually seeing a vision of thefritzsche royal family we learned about Aaron's father's history in Marley heactually infiltrated Marley seeking to gain the power of the founding Titanfrom the Reese family eventually he started a relationship with Dana Fritzone of the royal family members they had a child together that became Zeke theirfirst child who's Aaron's half-brother then later he was exiled was able tosteal the power of the founding Titan for himself while he contained the powerof the attack Titan then later he starts another family with Aaron's mother thenmore recently Aaron winds up eating his father when he's in a pure Titan formand gains the power to the founding Titan that way so this huge final arc ofthe series is all about what Aaron is going to do with the power of thefounding Titan now I'll talk about that in a second because it has some reallycool powers beyond those of the other Titans but in this trailer you see mostof the other Titans the new ones are the jaw tightened the hammer tight and

 I'llexplain those in a second but you also see the cart Titan with all the weaponsand the guns the Beast Titan again because that's Zeke but then you've alsosee Annie come back in her chrysalis no spoilers for who this jaw Titan is butas the name implies the jaw Titan possesses incredible biting and crushingstrength with its jaws in its nails it's really good as a siege weapon for saytearing walls apart and for crushing other Titans the Warhammeractually has the ability to create other structures using the hardened Titanflesh which has you pretty useful no spoilers for who possesses the power ofthe hammer Titan but that'll be a big part of the Marley Arc so I'm assumingthey're going to cover that during the first half of the season all the physicsin the history and the mechanics of how the founding Titan work are actuallypretty complicated there's a lot of complications for what your bloodline isand who can control it at what time and how it's being controlled and what youcan use it for but it's a very Lord of the Rings Ring of Power situation onering to rule them all the founding Titan is able to control all the other Titansto alter their Titan forms change their size their physiology and the person whois currently in possession or controlling the founding Titan can useit to telepathically communicate with everyone that is genetically a subjectof Amir you can even use the power of the founding Titan to alter everyone'smemories which actually you find out happened in the pastthat's why Marley wants to get their hands on it so badly because it's a godtier Titan this shot here for instance though is the coordinate the foundingTitan is also referred to as the coordinate where all paths of allsubjects of a mirror and the Titans cross so it's sort of this focal pointacross time space in the sort of metaphysical way between all thesepeople that are connected through this bloodline of a mirror going backcenturies sort of connections between all these different people but this isalso known as the unknown land it's just the metaphysical place where this allexists but if you're a big fan of history and attack on Titan because itgoes so deep one of the cool things about this final arc is that you do getthe full explainer for what happened with Amir the origin of the Titans andwhat happened with the first king fritz you learn why it is that people hatedthe Eldians so much because they were kind ofterrible people you also get a lot of Amir's personal history here too so it'sactually really cool you'll learn about how she actually originally gained thepower of the very first Titan of the founding tightened around 2,000 yearsago before the king learned of her power she was actually being attacked she raninto this giant tree didn't realize there was a sinkhole fell into thisgiant pool infused with a very spine like structure that actually gave herthe power of the founding Titan so that's kind of what you're seeing hereyou're getting a little bit tree in the trailer Amir was the firstperson to obtain the power of the Titans but she became enslaved to the Eldian king who just abused her power and then eventually trapped her inside thecoordinate in the unknown land and used her power to control all the otherTitans until thousands of years ago you have the great Titan war and the Eldianking and the rest of his people are exiled to Paradis Island and then theycreate the walls and then erase everyone's memories so they don'tremember everything in order to use the power of the founding Titan technicallyyou have to be a member of the royal family though either from the fritz ofthe Reese family that's how historian Reese is connected to the founding Titanbut if the founding Titan is inherited by someone outside the royal family likeEren Yeager here the power can still be used if the inheritor like Eren is inphysical contact with a Titan with royal blood that's how he's able to have thisgiant flashback and see her memories because he contains the power of thefounding Titan when he's doing this once they do decide what the actual releasedate is going to be that's probably when they'll release another big trailer soI'll try to do another video when that happens but because the Rick and Mortyseason 4 finale is tomorrow click here for my Rick and Morty finale trailervideo and click here for my brand new Marvel Wolverine deleted scene videothank you so much for watching everyone stay safe I'll see you guys tonight! 

Best Single Season Anime All time

 Konnichiwa, snitches. I’m B, and this is Brotakuza. That was a classic scene for us older kids,and it perfectly captures how I feel about watching anime, especially since I startedworking in Japan. I’m currently trying my best to catch upon Hunter x Hunter…and very slowly at that. But sometimes I want an anime that’s shortand sweet while giving me the same character development and story depth as the Narutosand One Pieces of the world, without having to invest in hundreds and hundreds of episodes,because I simply don’t have time for it. Luckily, there are plenty of anime like this,some of which can be binged through in between 1 and 3 sittings. Many of these are considered classics, withone believed by many to be the best anime of all time. That being said, here are my picks for the top 10 single-season anime of all time…so far.

 #10 Parasyte the Maxim When you initially read the synopsis aboutworm-like aliens invading Earth and causing mayhem after taking over humans’ brains,it seems like a straightforward horror story, but what follows is an unlikely friendshipbetween a human host and his parasyte that offers us a great lesson about our relationshipas humans to the Earth as only one in a myriad of species. And it does it in a way that doesn’t comeoff as too preachy, and even throws in some pretty thought-provoking takes on the relativityof morality. At

#9, Kill La Kill Come for the fan service, stay for the subliminalmessaging. Kill La Kill was a highly polarizing animewhen it came out. While many thought this was an overly misogynisticanime, and it is kind of hard to get past all the T&A, others felt it was a bold shotat the ecchi genre. Whichever side you may fall on, I felt thishigh school revenge story of a girl looking for her dad’s killer had plenty of substanceto back up its choice of delivery. And I also enjoyed Kill La Kill’s subtleshots at hierarchal societal structures, which is a hallmark of Japanese culture, but a reallyantiquated way of determining a person’s value in my opinion. If you can get past the overabundance of skin,I think you’ll really enjoy this one.

 #8, Ouran High School Host Club So, a short-haired girl named Haruhi stumblesher way into her new high school’s host club, breaks a vase, and now the guys, thinkingthat Haruhi is also a guy, force her to work to pay off the debt. The only thing more ridiculous than this isthe fact that a high school has a host club in the first place. The only thing more ridiculous than THAT,is the fact that host clubs exist in real life. Still a great anime, and one of the very fewthat adapted well to the live-action treatment.

 #7, Madoka Magica Madoka Magica is the story of a group of girlswho are granted a wish in exchange for their souls and service as witch fighters. The fine print of their agreement is kepthidden, and they find that their decision has a pretty lofty consequence. The magical girls genre has been done to death,but Madoka Magica throws in a surprising twist element that really cuts to the core and makesyou rethink your stance on some of the key characters. And this is a spoiler, but not really a spoiler,but sort of a spoiler…but pay close attention to the opening theme, as it kind of givesaway the twist, which still has a bit of a sting even if you see it coming.

 #6, Samurai Champloo I was fascinated with Japan’s Edo periodwhen I was little, and it wouldn’t be until I was much older before I got into watchinganime. So finding this was like a match made in heavenfor me. This is a great story about a tea shop waitresswho hires two samurai whose lives she saved, to help her find a samurai who smells of sunflowers. This anime was created and directed by ShinichiroWatanabe, who also made another anime you might have heard of that will also make anappearance on this list a little later. But for now, onto

 #5, Erased I feel like I say it in almost every video,but I love anything that has to do with time travel, and Erased is no exception. The main character Satoru has the abilityto go a few minutes back in time and stop a disaster from happening, but the murderof his mother sends him way back to his elementary school days where he must undo this terrifyingfuture by solving a sequence of violent events as a 10 year old student. There’s a bit of time hopping involved,but its never overkill, and this results in a masterpiece of an anime that also has aquality Netflix live-action version attached to it. Now at

 #4, Eden of the East I honestly don’t remember how I stumbledupon this anime, but it turned out to be one that had me on the edge of my seat. It starts 3 months after a casualty-free missilestrike in Japan with a chance meeting in Washington DC between a Japanese university student namedSaki and a naked Japanese man with the alias “Akira” who has completely lost his memory. A mysterious cell phone is their startingpoint to discovering who he really is and how he’s linked to the apparent attack justa few months prior. Now for our top 3. At

#3, Death Note Obvious classic. if you’re new to anime, this is part ofthe essential viewing curriculum. It’s about Light Yagami, a high school studentwho inherits the power of life and death with a single pen and the Death Note, a notebookthat can terminate a person’s life simply by having their name written in it. If it’s such a classic, then why only #3? Well, what made this anime work so well wasthe intellectual chess match between Light and L, the quirky detective tasked with takingLight down. After L left the picture, the magic of whatmade this such an intense game of cat and mouse died out a little for me, but it’sstill a must-watch nonetheless.

 #2, Neon Genesis Evangelion This is about as love-it-or-hate-it as ananime can get, and I fall on the side of love. This mid-90s classic takes place in a post-apocalypticJapan where mankind is fighting for its survival against giant Angel monsters with the useof Evangelion mechas. A super annoying main character and difficult-to-decipherending really left a sour taste in many viewers’ mouths, such to the point that the creatorof the series, Hideaki Anno, received death threats over it, leading to a film releasewith a new ending. But if you notice the tree of life from theKabbalah in the opening theme, that should tip you off that this anime is dealing withsome serious symbolic undertones, and I was definitely in the minority that actually appreciatedthe original ending. Check it out and decide for yourself. Before we get to #1, here are 3 honorablementions that should also be on your single-season watch list. Angel Beats, Steins;Gate, and Trigun. Definitely check those out. And at

 #1, no surprise, it’s Cowboy Bebop. Most anime series, no matter how well writtenthey are, no matter how well animated they are, usually have even just the slightestblemish. And that’s why Cowboy Bebop is revered theway that it is. It stands as a bullet-proof artistic standardfor the medium, and no anime has been able to quite recreate or recapture its flawlessness. The future dystopian space setting and soundtrackcreates a wholly unique atmosphere that is second to none.

 And the characters from the Bebop bounty huntingcrew are so well fleshed out, that there is a level of authenticity that you just don’tget from many other anime characters, period. Well, those were my picks. As always, if you’ve got an issue with thistop 10, or the order…drop a comment and let me know what your list would look likedown below. I will be back soon, but until then, Sayonara,suckasss! 

Top 10 Anime Movies & Series Recommended After Watching Your Name

 So you just finished watching "Your Name" for the second time, third, or maybe even 15th? But what else can you do to alleviate this hole in your heart? In this video I'm going to recommend 10 anime movies and series you should watch and may enjoy after watching "Your Name.

" Makoto Shinkai the director of "Your Name" received great praise from the anime and film community when this movie was released in 2007. If you enjoyed the beautiful animation and heart-tugging love story of "Your Name" then this movie is for you. Takaki and Akari, two very close friends and classmates are torn apart when Akari's family is transferred to another region of Japan due to her family's job. Despite separation they continued to keep in touch through mail. When Takaki finds out that his family is also moving he decides to meet with Akari for one last time. As years pass by they continued down their own paths. Their distance slowly growing wider and their contact with one another fades yet they keep remembering one another and the time that they share together wondering if they will ever have a chance to meet once again. Directed by Mamoru Hosoda, personally my favorite director. If you enjoyed the romance and time altering aspects of "Your Name" you will enjoy this as well. Makoto is in her last year of high school but is having a hard time deciding what to do with her future.

 In between enduring the pressures of her teachers and killing time with her best friends, Makoto's life suddenly changes when she accidentally discovers that she is capable of literally leaping through time. Following Makoto as she plays around with her newfound power she soon learns the hard way that every choice has a consequence and time is a lot more complicated than it may seem. When five students at Yamaboshi Academy realized that there are no clubs where they fit in, they band together to form the student Cultural Society. One day Aoki and Yui experienced a strange incident. Without warning they switch bodies for a short period of time. As the supernatural phenomenon continues to occur randomly amongst the five friends they begin to realize that it's not just fun and games.

 Now forced to become closer than ever they soon discover each other's hidden secrets and emotional scars which could end up tearing their club and their friendship apart. Another film directed by Makoto Shinkai the artwork and animation far exceeds any of his past but the story and romance aren't as compelling as his other works. Mitsuha's teacher the same teacher shown in this movie and many of the train sequences also feature the same characters. On a rainy morning in Tokyo, Takao, an aspiring shoemaker, decides to skip class and sketch designs in a beautiful garden. This is where he meets Yukari Yukino, a beautiful yet mysterious woman, for the very first time offering to make her new shoes, Takao continues to meet Yukari throughout the rainy season. Without even realizing it, the two are able to alleviate the worries hidden in their hearts just by being with each other. However their personal struggles have not disappeared completely. And as the end of the rainy season approaches their relationship will be put to the test. Steins;Gate is a bit different from the rest. The first few episodes may divert non anime audiences away as the characters and sitting take place around otaku Akihabara culture and is very slow moving, but I insist for you to continue watching. Understanding the culture is not necessary because the characters are so relatable and fleshed out anyone can enjoy this this is one of my favourite anime series but it took a while for me to watch only until episode 12 is when I marathoned it in a day.

 The self-proclaimed mad scientist Rintaro Okabe or HOUOUIN KYOUMA! rents out a room in a rickety old building in Akihabara where he indulges himself in his hobby of inventing prospective future gadgets with fellow lab members Mayuri, his airhead childhood friend, and Hashida Itaru a perverted hacker nicknamed "Daru" the three pass time by tinkering with their most promising contraption yet, the machine dubbed the phone microwave which performs the strange function of morphing bananas into piles of green gel though miraculous in itself the phenomenon doesn't provide anything concrete in Okabe's search for a scientific breakthrough. That is until the lab members are spurred into action by a string and mysterious happenings before stumbling upon its unexpected success. The phone microwave can send emails to the Past altering the flow of history steins gate takes Okabe through the depths of scientific theory and practicality forced across the diverging threads of past and present Okabe must shoulder the burdens that come with holding the key to the realm of time. In an alternate reality 1974 Japan the country is split with the southern islands controlled by America and the northern islands claimed by the Soviet Union Hokkaido referred to as Ezo decides to construct the tower in the sky by 1996 Hokaido's tower construction is complete and three students of Aomori have big dreams concerning this tower Hiroki and Takuya are considered child prodigies and both harbours romantic feelings for Sayuri though neither of them will dare admit it when a drone crashes down the two boys resolved to repair it and slide to the top of Hokkaido Tower but before the dreams of flying it are realized Sayuri vanishes unbeknownst to them her disappearance is related closely to the tower that the two dream of reaching This is the very first independently produced project by Makoto Shinkai although only 25 minutes long it tells a heart-wrenching story of a long-distance love after watching all of Shinkai's work you can really tell why "Your Name" was so successful. It was really a story revised and edited into the masterpiece it is almost 20 years in the making. A story of a long-distance love and mail messages between a boy and a girl set in 2046 after the discovery of the ruins of an alien civilization on Mars man has been able to make leaps in technology and is trying to send an expedition into space in the next year Mikako and Noboru are junior high school students however while Noboru will be entering senior high next winter Mikako is selected to join the space expedition also it has giant robots fighting, so that's cool. I've never finished this series as I found the first five episodes to be very boring but I've heard from others that the show finally picks up in the second season I may revisit it in the future but if you feel the need to chop onions in front of the TV this is for you.
 Tomoya Okazaki is a delinquent who finds life life dull and believes he'll never amount to anything he skipped school and plans to waste his high school days away one day while walking to school Tomaya passes a young girl muttering quietly to herself he soon discovers the girl's name is Nagisa Furukawa.  Tomoya learns Nagisa has been held back a year due to a severe illness and that her dream is to revive the school's drama club claiming he has nothing better to do he decides to help her achieve this goal along with the help of four other girls as Tomoya spends more time with the girls he learns more about them and their problems as he attempts to help each girl overcome respective obstacles he begins to realize life isn't as dull as he once thought. I really enjoyed this show not only for the romance but the great music and artwork as well I do have some problems with it that I may talk about in the future on how the series could have been a masterpiece like "Your Name." "Music accompanies the path of the human metronome.
 The prodigious pianist, Kousei Arima, after the passing of his mother Kousei falls into a downward spiral, rendering him unable to hear the sound of his own piano two years later Kousei still avoids the piano and lives a colorless life alongside his friend Tsubaki and Ryouta however everything changes when he meets a beautiful violinist Kaori who stirs up his world and sets him on a journey to face music once again. This is my all-time favorite movie even more than your name by just a tiny bit while not exactly a romantic show it tells the love of a mother and her children Hana a hard-working college student falls in love with a mysterious man who attends one of her classes though he is not an actual student as it turns out he is not truly human either on a full moon night he transforms revealing that he is the last werewolf alive despite this Hana love remains strong and the two ultimately decide to start a family Hana gives birth to two healthy children Ame and Yuki both possessing the ability to turn into wolves all too soon however the sudden death of her lover devastates Hana's life leaving her to raise a peculiar family completely on her own the stress of raising her wild nature children in a densely populated city all while keeping their identities secret culminates in the decision to move to the countryside where she hopes Ame and Yuki can live a life free from judgments of society wolf children is the heartwarming story about the challenges being a single mother in an unforgiving modern world if you have any other recommendations please let others know in the comments below be sure to LIKE and subscribe as I may talk about one of these in the future my next video I'll be talking about Sword Art Online, so be sure to watch it before then! 

Pokemon Anime Series

 Ahh, Pokémon! It was a new world of child like adventure and wonder. A world brimming with new life, new experiences, and it is one that I have slowly over time let fall by the wayside. Not that Pokémon has stopped just becauseI’m not paying attention to it. Pokemon is nothing less than a massive worldwidephenomenon that few can truly encapsulate, one that has been in the works continuallysince the original release of Pocket Monsters Red and Green back in Japan 1996. It has spawnedgenerations of games, films, albums, and books. But we here at Glass Reflection like talkingabout one particular kind of medium, and that is what we are going to be focusing on today. THE VHS TAPE! ...or more specifically, what's on the VHS tape and everything like it. I’m called this video “Remembering Pokemon”because, as I said, the Pokemon anime has not stopped airing just because at some pointin my young life I stopped watching it. At the time of recording this video, Pokemon has been on the air for 22 seasons and has a current total of 1,058 episodes. That’s a lot. Take that One Piece. But today, we are really only caring aboutthe first 82-ish. Or 77, if we decide to exclude the episodes banned in North America due toguns, seizures, and inflatable breasts. While Pokémon was not my first anime, nordid I watch it at a time when I really knew what Anime was, I cannot argue its importanceto my childhood and its influence on me. But it has been quite a while since I actually sat down to properly try to enjoy and watch the series. So how does this initial seasonhold up? Is it still worthwhile to watch, or is it only palatable with a heavy glassof nostalgia juice? Let’s find out.

 The original baseline plot of the Pokémon anime is quite similar to the video gamesreleased only a year prior. A young 10-year-old boy, Satoshi – or, as we know him, Ash Ketchum– prepares for his 10th birthday when he is finally old enough to head to the localPokémon professor’s laboratory and receive his first ever Pokémon. This small pocketmonster will accompany him through his journey across the country in a competition that defineshis entire existence. Where the anime differs, however, is quite apparent from the get-go.Not only does Ash arrive too late to receive one of the three original starters (Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle), but Professor Oak really only has one Pokémon left: a smallelectric rat Pokémon Pikachu, a Pokémon that even Oak is reluctant to hand over dueto its poor temperament. But Ash is nothing if not stubborn, and if he’s going to basehis entire self-worth on being able to capture and train these creatures, then bad temperamentis nothing he shouldn’t be able to handle. Pikachu disagrees.

 "It's also known as an electric mouse. It's usually shy but sometimes can have an electrifying personality." "I see what you mean." "Shocking isn't it?" Throughout the show’s first episode Ash literally drags Pikachu through the countrysideoutside his home town and tries his best to deal with this Pokémon who would much ratherbe anywhere else. This was just episode one and, while it didn’testablish the status quo that would soon come to light over the next few episodes, it clearlylays out several facts that remain prevalent throughout the series’ first season.First, Ash is a horrible trainer. I’m not the first person to say this, but it bearsrepeating. Ash constantly measures his worth by trying to become a “Pokémon Master”,which in this world involves catching Pokémon, training them to challenge gym leaders forbadges, and to attend the Pokémon League and compete to be the very best…..like noone ever was. And this is identical to the same journeythat players take through the original games. There’s only one problem. By Ash’s ownmetrics, he fails constantly and very rarely succeeds. Out of the original 150 Pokémon, try and guess how many out Pokémon Master Ash caught during his time in the Kanto region? Eleven. And even that’s being generous and counting the Tauros that we in North Americadidn’t actually see him catch because it was in a banned episode.Now let’s take a look at the other metric upon which Pokémon Masters are usually judged:number of gym badges. By the end of the series, it is true that Ash physically owns all eightKanto badges required for entry into the Pokémon league. But if you were a fervent watcher,you will recall that Ash…didn’t earn most of them. At least not really.Let’s go through them real quick shall we? Bolder badge against Brock: Ash fails in his firstattempt, and after hooking up Pikachu to a nearby watermill to charge his electricity,faces Brock again. Only this time…Pikachu still fails, but a stray electric boltactivates the building’s sprinkler system which showers Brock’s rock Pokémon Onixwith water, which you know it is weak to, and that makes him more susceptible to Pikachu’selectricity. That’s not actually how that works, but okay, fine. So Brock gives hima badge. Bonus, he joins Ash on his journey. and to become one of Ash's closest friends. Badge #2 Cascade badge. Ash’s rival GaryOak has already swept through the city and wiped out the gym’s Pokémon supply. Buthey, it just so happens that the girl who’s been following Ash around, Misty, is the sisterof the gym leaders and challenges Ash to a battle in their stead. Now Ash should be ableto wipe the floor here. Electric Pikachu vs Misty’s water Pokémon, no contest right?Well unfortunately for him, Pikachu doesn’t want to fight a friend and refuses to participate.Leaving Ash stuck to only fight using the other Pokémon at his disposal. Which…isn’tgood enough. Then Team Rocket barges in, has their moment in the sunshine when they capture all of the Pokémon in the gym, but then fail spectacularly because they were fighting against the literal god of thunder that is Pikachu…and Ash gets his badge. Not for defeating the gym leaders,but because Pikachu is OP as hell. In fact, this is kind of a theme that youmight start to notice. Ash is not succeeding because of his own personal ability as a trainer orbattler, but because he won the lottery in receiving a Pikachu who holds the power ofThor. Badge #3, Pikachu vs Raichu. To furtherdemonstrate how OP the little rat is, he defeats his own evolved form through sheer tactics,because Pikachu is a better battler than Ash himself. True Story. Badge #4, Saffron city and Sabrina. Ash fails twice overall, and after literally DYING andbefriending a Haunter, said Haunter makes the Psychic demon of a gym leader laugh, which apparently is good enough for a badge. Who knew? Badge #5, Ash insults the gym leader and then has to cross-dress with the help of TeamRocket to get into the gym itself. He fails to actually defeat the gym leader, butluckily for him Rocket sets the gym on fire. You know, the Gym for...Grass Pokemon. So then Ash is able to save the gymleader’s Gloom. Earning him a badge. Uh huh. Badge #6, now this time I would like to be perfectly fair. This is one where I can't really fault Ash’s skills. This is thefirst time he legitimately defeats the gym leader in question and earns the soul badge. It’s just odd that Koga, being the poison type gym leader, doesn’t actually use any poisonmoves and much more emphasis is instead placed on him being a ninja? But sure, this one Ashgets. Fair enough. Badge Seven. This one occurs around thetime Ash’s Charmander has evolved into a Charizard and has begun his proper teenage rebellionphase. As such, Ash has zero control over Charizard, because again he’s not reallygood at what he does. Charizard eventually helps fight because, while he’s enjoyingnot listening to Ash at the moment, he also doesn’t want to be one-upped by Blaine’sMagmar. So technically this is another one where Ash wins in a legitimate battle, butonly because Charizard decided to cooperate, not because Ash is in any way a good trainer.Badge Eight was basically a throwaway. Instead of fighting Giovani like in the games, orlike Gary had to do, Ash faces off in a gym battle against Team Rocket. You know, thesame trainers that Ash has been fighting since episode two who he has never lost to becausePikachu is a god. Now I’m not going to continue very far afterthis, but the point is that by Ash’s own metric of success he’s a constant failureand does things against the grain in hopes that everything just works out. and it just so happens that it does...most of the time. He constantly fights opponents going against type advantage, without actually training his Pokémon, instead relying on their own innate intuition and abilities to win fights on their own.

 However, I think this is mostly just a problem with him and how he views himself and hisself-worth. He constantly proceeds under the impression that battling and earning badgesand their equivalents is the only thing worth-while in his adventure, despite the fact that hehas been shown to be very adept in other Pokémon-related professions. His Pokémon absolutely adorehim as a person, and he takes great care of them. To him, they are not mere tools to beused to win battles, but friends with which to face challenges, and that’s a worthwhiletrait to have. For like a Pokemon Breeder. But a Pokémon Master he ain’t. One of the reasons I never enjoyed watchingAsh as a protagonist is because he just seems to be failing upwards through life. He keepsrunning into great Pokémon that are so enamored by him they just want to follow him, badgesare mostly given to him without great challenge, and he is living a life that us watchers canonly dream of. Like seriously, they never explain how he can afford to continually feed himself, or make money at all really, doing what he does. So it's quite literally a dream formost of us regular folk. But at least I can talk solace in the fact that we regular folk,unlike Ash, can actually beat Brock and Misty without bullshit tactics and instead justpummel them with sheer force and an adequately levelled Charmander. Like I did! Dooooooooooon't "That's what I'm talking about!" In fact, what kept me watching Pokemon for as long as I did wasn’t Ash at all, butrather... because of Team Rocket. Team Rocket is the group of three failureswho appear in basically every episode of Pokémon after the first, who constantly try to capturePikachu because they are one of the few who recognize this electric god’s power. Unfortunatelythough, because they keep trying to face a literal god of thunder, they almost never succeed,and them blasting off again every episode is played mostly for laughs.But I would posit that Team Rocket, often, are shown to be better trainers than Ash himself.Now I am not saying that they are always good people. Their first introduction shows themraiding a Pokemon hospital to steal sick and defenseless Pokémon, not something good peoplewould generally do. But as characters, they are the ones who grow the most over time.Their constant ideas and inventions get more and more grandiose, and honestly, while theirsuccess rate is near 0%, if they weren’t constantly up against the god of thunder thatis Pikachu, they’d probably find much more success for the effort they put out on a regularbasis. Team Rocket is the team of loveable losers that I’ve grown more attached toas I’ve grown older, because it’s hard to relate to this kid that has a lot of thingshanded to him when instead you can relate to these three shmucks who fail constantlybut never let that get them down…well, at least not for long.Hell after almost two decades worth of episodes, they actually manage to succeed in defeatingAsh fair and square in a battle, Pikachu included, and it is such a good moment to watch. Yes,they are the token villains, but their villainy is just cartoonish in nature. No one is reallythreatened by them and they don’t actually harm anyone, but they have the capacity tolearn and grow, which is something I never felt Ash was able to properly do.Now this all comes back to determining how enjoyable the show as a whole now is, whetheror not it has stood the test of time and can still be enjoyed by those who have never watchedit before now. To which I say….ehhhhhh, probably not.As a test, I watched several episodes beyond the initial 80-some-odd to try and get a feelfor how the series progressed and how enjoyable the Pokémon formula actually is, while somewhatremoving my nostalgia googles by watching episodes I had never seen previously. I watchedsome episodes from the era of the Orange Islands, only to discover that I was suddenly a lotless lenient towards many aspects of the series that I otherwise was able to brush off.The tone, the pacing, the puns. My god, the English dialogue is so full of puns that itwould make a committee of the most cringe-worthy dads cringe. "Stop pussyfooting around!" "Just biting my time!" "Ahhhhhh! The moment of tooth!" Now in fairness, the closer youget to present day, the less jarring this becomes. Many sections inthe X-Y era up until the current seasons appear to be a lot more enjoyable considering. Though I haveto admit, it feels a little odd for me after that unfortunate voice actor swap that happenedback in 2006. But we're not gonna get into that. But classic Pokémon as I grew up with itis a bit more of a relic. Something that doesn’t really stand up unless it is as steeped innostalgia for you as it is for me. I am a kid who grew up watching the series religiously,memorized the PokeRap (in the wrong order) just because I was watching it at the end of  every episode, and it wasn't necessarily in order back then I went to go see the first two films, because A) watching a Pokémon movie in the theater was nuts as a concept back when I was a kid and 2) Lugia is my favourite legendary. Fight me.It’s a product of its time that I will rewatch, not necessarily because it’s a good series,but because for me it reminds me of better times. The kind of times when this naive littlekid, who played N64, drank juice out of a box, and collected Pokémon cards, had nota care in the world. I do have a holographic Charizard though,so I have that going for me. This little card made me king of the playground! ...That's a lie I was never a king of the playground. Downside to all of this, if you truly lovePokémon and want to watch it, your options keep changing over time. At the moment theoriginal series is available on Netflix but we don’t know how long for and even thenit doesn’t contain all of the original series, only going up to episode 52 by my count. Surprisinglythough A bunch of Pokémon episodes are available on the official Pokémon Website, but onlyup until somewhere in Joto for the classic episodes, and the most recent Sun and Moonepisodes. Still huge swaths of Pokémon anime history left undisturbed. But if all you wantis the nostalga those will do you fine. Lastly, a very special thank you to my patrons,who not only support my work in general, but who also allow me to do what I do. I loveand appreciate you all. Specifically though, as I like to do, I want to give particularshout-outs to patrons Matthew Robertson, Hector Montemayor, Siri Yamiko, Ryefan Boneapart,Rune Jachobson, Joshua Garcia, and Calhoonboy for being especially awesome. You guys aregreat! And until next time – ladies, gentlemen, and others – watch more anime…and stayfrosty. 

Ghost Stories Anime Show

 I have a small list written down on a piece of scrap paper somewhere, of shows that I would like to get around to review, but just... haven't yet for whatever reason. Well, Ghost Stories recently got a rerelease, so let's just go and checkmark that one off, shall we? 'Cause, you know how every once in a while, you come across this show that you think is-- so good, that you just have to tell EVERYONE you know about it? And usually what I mean by "SO GOOD" is that there's only just.. One PART of it that is good; just this one thing that you feel is so noteworthy, you have to tell everyone about it. You feel as if you almost have to FORCE it ON them, because... they just HAVE to witness this, EVEN IF... that one thing just happens to be, how monumentally HORRIBLE the show is. Today, we're going to be talking about a series that is... well... ABSOLUTELY horrible.

 Weeelllll,  no. Horrible doesn't... fully explain... the CRAP that is this show, at least from a story perspective. But, the show is still noteworthy, not for how BAD the show is -- and it IS bad -- but... for how GOOOOOD the DUB is. Now you might be asking me right now, "Arkada, how GOOD could a dub for a BAD show actually be? Like, wouldn't it just be translating that badness?" You are correct in that, normally, a dub cannot make a crap story better. But this here would be a very... special case. Ladies, gentlemen and others, my name is Arkada and welcome to Glass Reflection. Today-- ooohh booyyy-- Ghost Stories. Let's Jam. Actually-- no, because of the uniqueness of this particular show, we're actually going to skip forward to the end, to the part where I normally talk about the dub, then backtrack. Okay? That's what we're gonna do. AND AWAY WE GO!!

So I can't say that I know the exact details of how this particular dub came into being. All I can tell you is that it is AMAZING. Like I know I've already SAID that a few times, I've insinuated it a few times, but it really is true. Which way did he go? Wah heugh hwegh... *mockingly* WAHH HEUUGHH HWEEGHH Now we'll never find out who the ghost is. I hope to GOD you're adopted. AAH HEUGH. From what I've been able to gather from rumors in that one Q&A video between Greg Ayres and Vic Mignogna, when ADV ended up licensing the show, they were told by the Japanese owners that it wasn't very well received in Japan and that they would have to... WORK with the material in order to make it sell. Not surprising considering that the show is, to put it lightly, a sack of dogshit that's been sitting out FAR TOO LONG in the summer heat on black pavement that bores a hole ALL the way down to HELL, using its stench alone. And yeah, that is me putting it lightly. So, after being told that they needed to... WORK with it a bit, they were given a very small set of rules.
 1) No name changing - this includes both the main characters and the ghosts that they banish - and also,
 2) They cannot change the method in which the ghosts ARE banished. Other than that, everything else is fair game and, let me tell you, those two rules... are not very limiting. Enter Stephen Foster and the voice actors. Now, normally, I am one to criticize Stephen Foster because, historically, I'm not a fan of the dubs that he works on. They're just... not my cup of tea. But, basically, what they had was a writing team and a bunch of voice actors who, at FIRST, seemed to be translating everything... NORMALLY. Satsuki, get your head back in here, you'll get your head cut off. Oh, Dad. You worry too much! At the beginning everything makes sort of sense, but there's those one or two lines that make you do a double take. When this bitch kicks, I'm moving to Vegas. Ahehehehaha, *inhale* ahaha. Then some characters get introduced and you question their backstory... ♫ You're such brave strong handsome men. ♪ HaveyouacceptedJesusasyourpersonalsavior? - No, I'm Jewish! And then, about eight or nine episodes in, *laughing* they really don't seem to care anymore. Aww, perfect. It's in JAPANESE. CHING CHONG DONG MING DAO. No, wait, that's Chinese. Luckily, I can read Barricade. It gets to the point where they might have just thought, "You know, heeey, as long as I'm able to match the lip flaps, who cares?" Hey, put the donuts down!!*panting* DROP the Krispy Kremes, Serpico, we need your help here! - Theytookovermyhouselooklikemyfathermybrother ahftnighmishoostah- Yah, BoobidyGiddiGoogityDigDigDigDiggityDiggity!!! The best way to describe this show, or rather this dub, to someone that hasn't seen it is basically to just say, "Hey, have you ever watched an abridged series? You know, those videos on the internet that guys put together to 'shorten shows' but really they just make it very humorous by adding jokes that weren't in the original translation or anything like that?" Yeah, this is kind of an official abridged series, except it's not actually abridging anything. It's the full show with more like a... fandub. *Panting* Think of a BIG BLACK MAN CHASING YOU!! HAAHAHEUGH!! *Panting* Well, he's not racist. Okay, so we're gonna go back to the beginning of the review now... Just keep in mind that some of the things that I may say about the show's story and characters might actually be taken from this rather absurd dub, and not the original article. But considering that the original Japanese isn't really worth watching - and you can quote me on that -- I don't think many of you are going to mind. Anyway, and AWAAY we GOO! <<RW<< So there is not too much to this, but I'll go over it anyway. The show starts with a group of young elementary school children, two of which are new in town, whose mother used to be a student and principal at their new school. Now, because they own a dumb cat that likes to run off into creepy buildings, they end up trapped in the old "haunted schoolhouse," after some less-than-tasteful panty jokes. Inside said school house, they awaken and piss off the resident evil spirit, Amanojaku, who begins rampaging and trying to kill them. Thankfully, the lead character, Satsuki, finds an old journal of her mother's that CONVENIENTLY happens to have ALL the instructions on how to banish ghosts. They set up a trap, say some voodoo and - BING BANG BOOM - ghost defeated. Now take that episode plot, rinse out aaalll the gunk, and repeat. Each new episode is like a Japanese version of Scooby-Doo, or some such as there is this new ghost that is terrorizing everything, or at least just causing general mischief, and it's up to our young group of main characters that go about banishing said ghost. And then EVERYONE is happy. I'd say in concept that the show is interesting but most of the stories of these ghosts are, just, cliche takes on traditional haunting stories that you may have heard if you ever did a campout as a child and someone decided that they would tell you said stories by the campfire. Really, though, from the base show I have explained more or less all of it. There are no major character or story arcs, no End-of-the-World scenarios; just a standard "monster-of-the-week" series with a group of fairly average elementary school students and one high school student who is a born-again Christian and before she was... REEAALLY f*cked up AAAHH. But that's from the dub. In reality, the characters are... boring, generic and in some cases I wonder what they are even doing there for the most part, as they are all seemingly thrown together through happenstance. Half the time the characters don't even fathom to think that the supernatural happenings are ghost-related because if they did, Satsuki would just pop out the journal in Act 1, and everything would be solved right there. Instead, things get drawn out until we have a climax where they "suddenly remember" that the MacGuffin of a journal actually exists.

 What'll we do~? - Okay, I'm sorry. When are you going to need another "Dramatic Plot Point" until you decide to whip out that damn ghost book? - HAAAH!? I guess from a historical standpoint, it is somewhat interesting, as every ghost is based off of an actual spirit or legend from Japan, or, sometimes from China, but if that's what you're into, there just has to be a better place to get information from. There just HAS to be. So the series originally aired at the end of the year 2000, finishing early 2001. That being said, comparing it to other anime of the time... it really isn't all that remarkable. Let me just throw out some shows that were around at about that time. Digimon Adventure. Excel Saga. Angelic Layer. FRUITS BASKET. And that's not even counting all the extremely well produced shows from the 90s. The only animation portion that I thought was actually pretty good was the use of 3D animation. Now, by today's standards, it isn't that remarkable, but I don't recall anything from this era being as well integrated, so there. There's a nice positive point about the original. There is nothing noteworthy from the soundtrack at all from this show, unfortunately. And sound-wise they even go so far to use that overly cliched string sound effect for ~SCAAARY~ Moments. AAUUGHH!! *Gasps* AAAAAGHHHHGLGLGL???!*SCREECHING VIOLINS* The opening and ending songs, however, deserve note for how much sense they DO NOT MAKE. Even ignoring the differences from the dub, the opening... seems like it's for a more happy slice of life series with its upbeat tone, rather than one about ghost hunting. And, man, the ending song-- the ending song. It's called "Sexy Sexy" in a show about elementary school children and ghosts. What - uh - what's supposed to be sexy about that?! Like, when I first heard it, I honestly thought it was added in with the dub. But, NO, the original creators of the original show thought it was prudent to have a song called "Sexy Sexy" in a show starring fourth graders. Smooooth. If you haven't guessed what my verdict here is going to be, then you haven't been paying attention. Ghost Stories is this horrible horrible mess, [that's] only saving grace is this, OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD, dub, that saves it from being, not even worth mentioning. Like, it feels like an abridged series. And ignoring the fact that it doesn't actually abridge anything it might as well BE ONE, considering the kind of humor that it contains. And at this point, I can't really say anything else to try and convince you that this series, or rather, this DUB, is worth your time. Because if you do watch this show, you're watching it for the dub and... nothing else. And if you can pick up this show, you definitely should. And if after watching this video, you try it and you don't enjoy it, I'll be seriously surprised. It gets REALLY good at Episode 9, if you can stick it out that long. Unless, of course, you're one of those... "purists" who think that this sort of thing is an ABOMINATION because it changes the original Japanese material. And if you are that kind of person, WEEEEELLL get out. No, don't actually get out. Come-- come back. Come back. Don't-- don't get out. But still, that's just like... your opinion, man. With all that in mind, I present ghost stories with recommendation to BUY IT, rather than stream, because, well, you can't stream it even if you wanted to. Not CERTIFIED FROSTY this time however, as good of a dub as it is, the show itself... is still CRAP and I have some semblance of standards. Some, anyways. At the time of this video, Ghost Stories has been licensed by Discotek Media North America, and is available on DVD from them. Unfortunately, that is the only way to watch it, as it is, like I mentioned, not available for legal streaming anyway.

 Sorry about THAT. As for alternate anime recommendations, well, there is really only one series I can think of off the top of my head that is as funny as this one is, dubbed-wise. that show, of course, being Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu. Fun fact about that one is that the dub casts between Fumoffu and Ghost Stories are more or less identical; Fumoffu just has a lot more Luci Christian in it. Also, if you're looking for an actual show about a variety of traditional Japanese ghost stories, then look no further than Ghost Hunt, which is basically that. Just do yourself a favor and skip the opening song for it. It'll bore you to tears. But hopefully between those two shows you should hopefully find something to your liking. And that's it for me. Please subscribe! If you enjoyed the video, follow me on Twitter if you feel so inclined, and hey, if you like what I do here and feel like helping me out please consider going and checking out my Patreon page, and if you feel it within your heart, also consider donating. Very special thanks to Jocelyn Atkins, Daniel Nye, Joshua Garcia, Grace Anderson, Nicolai Grey, Rurika Adachi, and JustAHuman for donating already. You guys are ALL SUPREMELY AWESOME. Thank you. And until next time, ladies, gentlemen and others, Stay Frosty. *Kickass Outro* *UNCE UNCE UNCE UNCE* 

Avatar the Last Airbender Anime Show

 Avatar the Last Airbender. For years I hemmed and hawed on the idea of it and ultimately decided against it. Because, I talk about anime, and by most definitionsAvatar is not anime. Therefore it’s something I shouldn’t talkabout, since it’s not in my realm of expertise. Sure it’s an animated series, and its styleand content are anime inspired. Heck, its sequel series Korra was even attimes animated by Japanese Studio Pierrot. You know, the guys who animated Tokyo Ghoul? They did seven full episodes of Korra. But! Avatar was a show created by Americans, writtenby Americans, and aired on an American channel for an American audience. The show is American in origin and as suchdoes not qualify as an “anime”. At least, not as far as many westerners generallydefine the term. Now I’m not going to go further into whatdoes and does not qualify as anime. That’s something worthy of its own video. But I am personally of the mind that Avataris not Anime. Yet, I also believe that any fan of animewill enjoy watching Avatar, for the same reasons that they love anime. It might not be anime, but that shouldn’tstop you from watching it like it was one. So ladies, gentlemen and others, my name isArkada and welcome to Glass Reflection, today the 2005 animated series made for Nickelodeon:Avatar the Last Airbender. Let’s Jam. The TL;DR of me talking about Avatar, ignoring the beforeexplained

“WHAT IS ANIME” argument is thus: It is not a perfect series. There are several dips and bends that Avatarmakes as a piece of entertainment. But, it’s one of the best animated seriesfrom North America that I have seen. I would even put it leagues ahead of manyother Japanese animated shows that I have watched. It’s a show that has this balanced blendof comedy, action, and characters. A balance that make it’s episodes absolutejoys to watch. In my review for the Seven Deadly Sins, Isaid that it was a kind of show where each episode went by so fast. Fast enough that you don’t even notice asthe episodes passed you by, because you were just enjoying it so much. Avatar is similar, except for me it went byeven faster. A year ago is when I first watched the series,and when I did, I ended up going through it all at an average of a season a day. I just turned it on and stopped when it feltlike the sun was rising to bring in a new day. When I needed some sleep because I was pastthe point where coffee could help me. Avatar follows the story of the last remainingbender of Air, Aang. In this world, there are special individualswho can bend the four elements of the world. Air, Water, Earth and Fire. While there are many tribes of people dedicatedto each of these four arts, Aang is the last of his tribe.

 He is also the mystical Avatar. Because in this world there can only be oneperson at a time who can master all 4 elements, and that person is the Avatar. There’s a lot of mysticism here that makesthe story’s origin compelling. It’s like how the Force and the Jedi workedin the early days of Star Wars. You don’t need to know how the Force worksto think that it’s cool and awesome. Just like here we don’t need any kind ofscientific explanation on why and how bending works. Certainly don’t need an explanation on whyand how the Avatar exists. Because that would be akin to introducingmediclorians to this series. Good thing that never happened, right Korra? Anyway, while we never have scientific explanationsin Avatar, the show had many in-universe explanations for why things work. Also, many of the traditions of the peoplein Avatar were based on actual real life cultures. Bending is an example. The 4 different kinds of bending all havetheir own individual martial art influence. There is much of this series that comes offas a love letter to Asian cultures, anime, and to Hong Kong kung fu films. This makes the show, despite being for children,still have a kind of mature seriousness to it at times. It’s this seriousness that draws peopleinto its story. Similar to why people like me watch Japaneseanimation. For me, I started watching anime back in theday because what I watched from Japan was just so new, so different. Anime drew me in because it had the fluidnature of cartoons. It had the ability to bend reality that liveaction shows could not, but it did so in a serious and real way. Anime never treated me like a child even withthe shows designed for them. Too often in American animation, you get thatfeeling like this was meant only for a child. Like at times it’s talking down to you.

 Anime never did that for me, and Avatar isa rare American series that does the same thing. Which leads me into being able to talk aboutone of the best things that Avatar has. Life lessons done right. Because ultimately this series is about agroup of children on an adventure. Along the way, they learn things about theworld and about life that every child usually goes through. But how the show handles it is different fromothers. It never comes off as a show that preachesto its audience. Each lesson it teaches is not something that’sfocused on specificly. The characters don't end off each episodetalking about what they learned. Which is astounding when one of the best characters,preaches advice left and right. Uncle Iroh is one of the best characters inanimation, and this includes anime. Iroh is never a focus of the story, neverin the spotlight. But he guides the characters, like his nephewZuko, in a way that's so profound and full of wisdom. Instead of Iroh lecturing the audience bluntly,he teaches characters in ways that helps them. But in doing so he has the audience learnso they don’t make similar mistakes. I know what you are going to say. She’s my sister, and I should be tryingto get along with her. No, she’s crazy and she needs to go down. True, he’s a caricature at times, beingthat old sage sprouting Chinese proverbs. But there are times when his advice is movingand emotional. Here’s a good example of what I mean:What are you doing here? I was just about to ask you the same thing. What do you plan to do now that you have foundthe Avatar’s Bison? Keep it locked in our new apartment? Should I go put on a pot of tea for him? First I have to get it out of here. AND THEN WHAT? You never think these things through! This is exactly what happened when you capturedthe Avatar at the North Poll. You had him, and then you had nowhere to go! In this scene, Iroh is confronting Zuko abouthow he never plans for the future. How he always seems like he’s just goingthrough life by the seat of his pants and never looks at the big picture. But he’s also pleading with him to not continuetrying to please or live up to the expectations of others. Instead to live for himself. In just about a minute he’s able to coverboth these aspects of Zuko’s character. It's masterful, and the show has many momentsof writing like this. But the show is not all life lessons and sageadvice.




 It contains plenty of action, even from characterswho you’d least expect it from. Like the other best character that Avatarhas to offer: Toph. Toph is blind. She is a young blind girl who also just happensto be the best earth bender in the world. She has a daredevil-like ability to be a badassand see without eyes. She is also the reason why I watched thisshow to begin with. I kept seeing her scenes posted online andwanted to know her story, what her deal was. Toph is an example of a character introducedto cover diversity and disabilities. Mostly because no one else ever touches thesetopics so it’s wide open for awesome stories to occur. Too often in many cultures, disabilities aresomething that's frowned upon. They are something not normal, something tobe pitied. But Avatar decides to say screw that! Let’s have one of the most powerful bendersbe a little blind girl. Not only that, let's show the world how adisability can make a person stronger! She has moments of weakness, yes: she can’tread. She can’t see any enemy if they attack herfrom the air. Also, in less-than-ideal conditions she’shindered by her environment. But she is far from useless or weak. And she’s not the only one. Early in season one we have a wheelchair boundchild take flight in a glider. Heck, even Zuko has something to a similareffect. Having half his face burnt off is somethingthat in our society would place him in outcast category. But they all have their stories of awesomenessthat make Avatar what it is. I haven’t even talked about the main characterseither. Jeeze. Avatar has this weird kind of entertainmentvalue. While watching it, I could see the flaws. The entire third season was far lower in storyquality than what the previous seasons offered. Despite that, though it was still enjoyable. At that point you have fallen so far in lovewith the characters that the rest rarely matters. On top of which, Avatar is a series that isan example of preplanning and arc building done right. You see, if you look at a show with 3 seasonslike this, what you normally get is a show with three clear and concise arcs. Arcs that each have their own stories, climaxesand conclusions. But they are arcs that are separate from eachother. Here though, that’s not the case. The main goals get defined early on and thatnarrative lasts all the way until the final episode. Sure there are subplots disguised as theirown arcs but the true story of the show is always present. It's always visible, and eventually it concludes. This reminds me of one of my favorite sciencefiction shows ever. Babylon 5. Bab 5 a show that had its entire narrativearc conceived before the first episode was ever written. The result is one long story that has thesame cohesiveness as one a 5th of its length. Avatar feels like that. You know early on how Avatar is going to end. Aang is going to defeat the fire lord andsave the world. But you keep watching because the journeyof Aang from an uppity air bender to a proper avatar is what is compelling about the show. The story of Zuko, fighting against the desireto please his father is what is compelling about the show. The nuances of the villains, from the firelord to his daughter Azula, is what is compelling about this show. Sokka’s failure at romance is what is compellingabout this show. M

first girlfriend turned into the moon. That’s rough buddy. Avatar is a series that I’m disappointedothers have not taken pointers from. It’s a show that takes various elementsthat we’ve all seen before. Plucky young characters pitted against anultimate evil, fighting for freedom and peace. But the show expands so much from those traditionalcliché elements. Its characters are more than just archetypesor embodiments of tropes. Instead they are daughters, they are sons,they are enemies while also being friends. The depth of all the characters is so muchvaster than other shows of its kind. It makes this series SO much more than justsome young kid setting off to fight evil. It’s about the relationships that the charactershave. It's about how they interact, and learn fromone another. How they develop into living, breathing people. If you’ve never watched Avatar before, allowme to recommend a single episode for you. From season two, there is an episode called“Tales from Ba Sing Se”. It’s unique because it's not one story thattakes up 25 minutes, it’s a collection of short stories. Stories about the various characters who arenow living in the Earth Kingdom city of Ba Sing Se. It doesn’t advance the main story of Aangfighting the firelord, nor does it continue any other character's storyline. In fact, most would consider this episodeto be useless filler. But it’s an episode that is less of a progressionfor any of the characters, and more of a summary of what some of them are. It’s an example of what Avatar tries todo with its characters that other shows don't and I highly recommend it. *sigh* I just want to keep talking about thisshow. Because I’ve held off for so long that Icould just sit here and talk for hours. It reminds me of last year for the RWOA whenI reviewed HunterxHunter. I had so much to say, because that show wasso long. But I didn’t want to keep you here all day. So allow me to summarize again. Avatar has much to it that many other Americanshows, and even quite a few Japanese shows lack. It never draws out its content, it never setsup narrative arcs that don’t get developed.


 It actually has narrative arcs which sometimesdo not occur in TV animation in the West. It is a series filled with individual stories,paced quite well. Stories that develop its characters in a waythat doesn't make it obvious that it's even doing it. My qualms with the show are few, the thirdseason being one as in my mind it never matched the quality of season two, which was the bestby far. The intro to the show, Katara’s speech aboutthe world and Aang gets tiring when you marathon the series. And, I just wish that the show had at leastone more season to flesh out the remaining backstories of characters. Ones that got teased to us but never got expandedupon. Legend of Korra, while nice, couldn't do thatbecause that takes place so many years after the fact. It may not be Anime, and I won’t try toargue why people should consider it one. But it’s the best non-Japanese animatedseries that I have watched. As such, I am proud to present it with a GlassReflection Rating of Certified Frosty. A rating I reserve for only the best of thebest, and those shows too important to ignore. With Avatar, I think it more than covers bothof those requirements. If you have never watched it, you are missingso much. And I highly recommend you remedy that atyour earliest opportunity. At the time of this video, Avatar the LastAirbender is available from Nickelodeon on DVD. For legal streaming, I’ve heard it’s availableon Nickelodeon’s website. But that’s inaccessible from Canada, soI can't confirm. It’s also on Netflix, but only if you livein the UK. To be honest though, the DVD’s are cheapas dirt with most places running each season at only $20 each. Plus, the DVD’s just aren’t hard to find. I’m not going to give alternate anime recommendationsthis time around. Because, Avatar itself is just one big giantrecommendation for people who like similar series. For people who just watch anime in general,so it’s hard to compare Japanese anime to it. So I’m not going to try. Just go watch Avatar. DO IT. DO IT! And finally I’d like to thank all my patrons,including Joshua Garcia Jocelyn Atkins , Rurika Adachi, Calhounboy, Viktor Ekmark, and NicolaiGrey without whom I would not be able to produce these videos to the same extent that I wouldlike. And that’s it from me. Thank you gentle viewers for watching. Until next time, Stay Frosty. 

Mars Of Destruction Anime Show

 The Year is 2005, it was not the worst of year  but most certainly not the best either. Anime releases such as Eureka Seven kept the hype for anime high, with alternate releases like Noein and Blood+ In the mix for those with a more (mocking voice) “Refined Pallet”. Added along of course with the big three inshounen going strong, Bleach had just started the year before, One Piece goes into its 6thyear and the original Naruto is only 2 years out from having been rebooted with the release of Shuppuden. This was a fairly low-key year, nothing bigor gaming changing, but nothing too drastically horrible…until of course the release of the anime we are going to be talking about today.

 A single OAV production that not only is consideredby some to be the worst anime they have ever witnessed, but was so bad it ended the careers of many of the staff who worked on it. It has a story so convoluted it was like tryingto deliver the plot to an average 24 episode mech anime in a mere 20 minutes It is a production that is really only noteworthyfor one thing, that it got animated in the first place. Thankfully it’s almost impossible to find,let alone watch. Ladies, Gentlemen, and others my name is Arkadaand today on Glass Reflection we have dived deep into the bowels of anime history to bringyou an anime so loathed, and so horrible, I almost couldn’t find the footageto show you just how bad it really is.
 Today is Mars of Destruction, God Help usall. Let’s Jam. So before we dive headfirst into this sh**fest allow me to explain upfront how this OAV is one that you will thankfully never have towatch. Mostly because of it’s availability. It’s never been licensed in North Americaso no DVD’s and even no VHS copies are available, because it is just barely old enough to qualify for that. It’s not available on any legal streamingservice, and in my research only one Fansub group was ever brave enough to sub and releaseit online. Even that release though is hard to find anywhereand comes in “beautiful 640x480 AVI format”. Which I say in jest because it’s not even640x480. It’s more like 640x413 because there’sthis suspicious black bar at the bottom. There’s no other releases out that I couldeven find to compare, so I can’t confirm if this black bar is in the original production or if itwas just added by the subbers as a convenient place to put subtitles. Considering though how the shots are framed,I’m inclined to believe it’s actually the anime that’s doing this, in which caseWHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR ASPECT RATIO. I should also point out that this video willbe spoiler-tastic, though honestly? Do you really care in this case? Like really? Freakin Re- Allow me to attempt to explain what exactly is going on in this show, because as I mentioned the pacing is completely wackedin the head. In the long far off year of 2010 some guysreturning back from Mars and burn up upon retry to earth's atmosphere due to some “mysterious malfunction” that is never explained. Shortly afterwards many a bizarre event beginsto happen on the streets of Tokyo, apparently because of this Martian debris. At least that’s what’s being assumed bythe expletory text here. Make sense so far? Good! that won’t last. Next we see some alien creature’s referredto as “ancients” attacking the city. And it’s up to an elite taskforce of Moeblobgirls with assault rifles to defend the city! Why Young girls? Why no Helmets? WHO KNOWS! I’d say that they forgoed the helmets toshowcase the character designs but I’ve seen fan work on Deviantart better than this.

 Not that any of this matters because one ofthe girls gets her head blown off anyways, as your reminder that this is a “serious”and “grounded" action series. Eventually though the girls get outmatched,and are saved by our protagonist in a skin-tight mech suit wielding a plasma sword. Though I say ”saved” but our protagonistgets smacked down so hard I question why the story didn’t just end there with all of their DEATHS. We cut to him in the hospital being dotedupon by the surviving female soldiers but nowhere do we get an explanation on how theymanaged to escape. The ancients just let them go I guess? Ok. Sure. Because that makes sense. There is a lot in this story that’s blatanthand waving for the sake of progressing… what I assume to be the plot. I don’t know if someone thought that thiswas good character development or what but having our protagonist get the living shitkicked out of him is not a good start. In fact it’s not a good end either. Within 5 minutes we are in another fight scenewhere he once again gets shat on. But eventually he’s able to save the daybecause, who I assume to be the main female lead is in danger once again, but alsobecause our big bad conveniently and very politely stands still for the pre-requisiteamount of time for our hero to line up a sniper shot and slam it into his torso “SAVINGTHE WORLD”. This is of course after “twist” wherethe bad guy reveals that they were REALLY earthlings all along, awakened by the Martiandebris, and Humanity itself is the villain! Because that makes sense. *sigh* ooook. We have a lot to unpack here, so let’s startsimple. There is no reason to care about any of thecharacters in this story because there is no character development. Yes there’s only 20 minutes long and that’snot a lot of time to work with, sure, but deal with that by cutting away all of the extra characters and just focus on one maybe two of them. Let’s not spend several minutes of our limitedtime talking about these 4 female soldiers and how specialized and badass they are, onlyfor them to be of no use whatsoever. The development of our main character Takeruconsists of two fight scenes where he get’s beat up showing how inept he is at what he’ssupposed to be good at.

 There’s an overly long suit up sequencewhere he gets seemingly crushed by the suit as he attempts to put it on. Oh yeah and their's this scene of him talking to a disembodied voice telling him to get into the damn mech suit because if we can’t give him his own character development we can just pretend he’s shinji ikari andhe’ll get development via osmosis or something. #BECAUSETHATMAKESSENSE The animation is not much better than the story. It is not only poorly drawn, it is not juststiff, it is something I’d use on someone if I wanted to attempt to cause blindnessthat’s how bad I found it. To be fair this was 2005, the industry isjust starting to get a leg to stand on in this new era of digital animation. For a lot of productions your mileage didvary, but for a time where we had such samey bland digital character designs, thesefeel like they came out of the bottom of the bargain bin. They consist of every bad stereotype fromthe time, the action scenes could be recreated by a student and 30 minutes in an editingprogram moving characters from one side of the frame to the other. Saying nothing about the musical score forthe show which somehow I found somehow to be an even more of an outrageous offence. There is little original music in this production,what exists I feel like was created on a $5 synthesizer someone found in a back alleyin Akihabara. The worst though is the out of context bastardizationof classical music. Seemingly thrown into the mix because itsfree to use and someone thought “well there has to be music right”? Is a bunch of well-known pieces by classical composers. There for no reason. No thought however was put into how this music is supposed to complement the rest of the production, because it doesn’t complement AT ALL. It’s there to have music playing.

 That’s it. It enrages me because I now cannot listento these pieces without remembering this sh**fest I now attach them too. And don’t get me started on that “Twist”shamalan-esk ending by saying “Oh the ancients are the real earthlings and it’s the humanswho are the invaders.” That is such a copout ending with no buildupwhatsoever. It would have been fine to end with that ifthere was anything before it to lead us to believe it was even remotely a possibility,or you know if we had any reason to care about the plot in the first place. Really though by the time the twist came aboutI’d already tapped out and was trying to figure out if I would die via alcohol poisoning if I tried to turn watching this into a drinking game. The answer to that is yes by the way. Every single aspect of this production, fromthe story, the characters, the animation, the sound are all devoid of any creativityor possible enjoyment. Everything is so bad that if even one of theseaspects was in any other production they would have dragged down a 10/10 show down into1 or 2 out of 10 territory at best. No one in their right mind should watch this.

•  I’m obviously not in my right mind becauseI watched it THREE TIMES to try and figure this s**t out, trying to find some “Deeper Meaning” but there is none. Don’t watch this. Don’t buy it, not that you can. Don’t download it, it’s an insult to yourbandwidth. I’d rather marathon both SAO and SchoolDays back to back without a bathroom break, because at least then I’d have some semblance of asatisfying ending to trick me into believeing that it was worth it in the end, but this? There's nothing. no payoff, no reason towatch at all! Go and watch paint dry, at least that's entertaining on a microscopiclevel. I’m legitimately pissed right now, you knowwhat I’m not even going to dignify this with a proper ending, I have threemore horrible anime to review and need to keep my fortitude up so I’m going to gowatch something good and this video can just finish on its own. Ok? Stay Frosty everyone. Bye. *Door Opening* *PS3 startup beep* *PS3 startup sound* *PS3 resume sound* *Off-key singing of STAND PROUD* 

Seven Deadly Sins Anime Show

 Originality is a word that I want to talkabout today. I’ve spoken about it in the past, usuallyin a negative light. There are many shows out there that don'thave much of it, instead relying on what was good in the past to hoist their series intogreater prominence. You know, without doing anything differentfrom what’s already available. Or other shows that outright copy charactersand plotlines due to laziness or production issues.
 But I wanted to talk about it, in regardsto today’s show because, you don’t want to aim for a series that is 100% original. Instead want to strike a balance between thethings that worked before and some new twists that, while might not be original on theirown, how they meld together comes off in a way that feels new. A good example of that is
The Seven DeadlySins, because this show is 100% Shounen. If you like Shounen, of any kind, if you loveFairy Tale, if you watched Bleach back in the day, if you are currently watching OnePiece, if you are saddened by the ending of Naruto or rather it’s temporary hiatus,then The Sins is what you want. So let’s get into it shall we? Ladies, Gentlemen and others my name is Arkadaand welcome to Glass Reflection. Today the 2014 anime directed by Tensai Okamura,produced over at A-1 Pictures and based on the original work by Nakaba Suzuki: The SixDeadly Sins. Oh I’m sorry did you think I miscounted? I assure you. I didn’t. Let’s Jam. Seven Deadly Sins is a series that I’m probablygoing to start pointing people towards for you know those who aren’t into anime andwhat to know what a good shounen is without having to make the commitment of a show withseveral hundred episodes. It’s got everything you could want froma Shounen: The staples, the clichés, the overpowered characters fighting each otherwith excessive amounts of violence. Everyone brings something familiar to thetable, like this is a Shounen potluck and every character brings their best dish. It’s not a series that tries to be original,but it’s not lazy in its execution, instead doing its best to be THE BEST with everythingit does. The story is fairly simple, Princess Elizabethof Britannia… Ok I’m good. Elizabeth’s family has been subject to amilitary coo from the kindom’s “Holy Knights”. Her father and sister imprisoned were imprisoned,and the blame for everything was placed firmly on the kingdom’s strongest fighters: TheSeven Deadly Sins. E
g this to be false, headsout on her own to seek out the Sins who have been in hiding for the last 10 years sinceall this shit went down. Eventually she finds Meliodas, who was theformer Captain of the Sins despite his childlike appearance, and the two of them set off tofind Meliodas’s former comrades and save the kingdom. All of the Sins and the Holy Knights havebeen imbued with various super powers that you would expect from a shounen and most arcsrevolve around various characters duking it out for dominance despite death never reallyhappening. What I really liked about the show, epicallyits introduction was how quickly it got good. Normally when you talk about shounen anime,it’s fairly common for there to be a particular number of episodes or arcs that you need toget through in the beginning before the show becomes actually enjoyable. For example back in the day when people toldme I needed to watch Bleach, I was told specifically that I’m not allowed to say that the showsucks until I got to the Soul Society Arc, which doesn’t kick in until episode 21. Conversely by episode 21 of Sins the showis almost over. What made it grab me so well is kind of hardto explain, it’s more like a feeling. Like you know you’ve been grabbed by a showwhen the ending credits of an episode kick in and you could swear you only just startedthat episode. It’s that kind of thing. Another example would be to say it’s likepopcorn, you have this big bag of popcorn, and you start eating it, but suddenly yourlike, damn it’s all gone, where did it go? But also like popcorn, as enjoyable as itis, there are only certain times that you feel like having it. So let’s look at some of the problems. Starting with Meliodas as a main character. It’s mostly in the early arcs where is thisapparent, but he’s too over powered.

 Like I’ve complained in the past about characterswho never fail at what they do, but at least most of them you can see trying their hardestat whatever it is. Meliodas doesn’t often look like he’sbreaking a sweat. Even the few times he takes an actual beatingit’s usually on purpose. He never end up facing an opponent that hecannot defeat. He’s not given any real challenge. He has this demonic trump card that’s useda few times sure, but even then the trump card is powerful enough to just end fightsoutright, which is disappointing. Next is his attitude. On the one hand it is kind of refreshing thathe’s not the super serious kind of protagonists that common in shounen. He’s the most nonchalant and laid back guyever. He’s not doing what he’s doing for revenge,or for answers despite his backstory being wide open for such a motivation. He’s merely doing it because Elizabeth askshim too. Sure it’s probably because Elizabeth remindshim of his former flame with the same name but her explanation gets so little time she’sbarely a factor in the show at all. Also, heh, the groping. Meliodas is a self-proclaimed panty stealerand serial groper. His introduction with Elizabeth has her gropingher chest and quite often he performs what can only be called sexual harassment againsther. Main difference is that, it always feels forced. Like it’s not really a part of his characterbut an act that he does to appear more human. Which may well be a thing, we’ll see ifthe show continues. The other, kind of disconcerting thing ishow the harassment is actually handed. Normally in any other show such actions wouldbe responded immediately with a slap, beatdown, or heavy object to the face Lupin the 3rdstyle. But that never happens here. Mostly because….I actually think Elizabethactually enjoys it. The closest thing Meliodas get to a reprimandis usually an anger induced attack from Diane the Sin of Envy, but that’s kind of hercharacter description and she’s only doing it because she’s not the one getting theharassment. Princess Elizabeth is the second problem Ihave character wise. Mostly in large part because beyond beinga weak driving force for the plot, her actual use in the story is minimal. I would just call her the Token fan servicecharacter of the series but that depresses me considering how badass most other Shounenfan service characters end up being. Her job in the show is usually relegated tobeing an onlooker to the action at best, damsel in distress at worst. Oh yeah and she works as a waitress at Meliodis’sbar. That’s good princessing work right there. But back what I said about the originalitything. There are other examples that just work. For example, Ban, the sin of Greed. Why does he work? Because he’s Greed from Full Metal Alchemist. Which is fine, because he plays it off sowell. He’s not a direct copy of Greed obviously,he has several motivating character traits that differ from Greed, which is what makehim work. The Greed of FMA would have no want or desireto really fight with the sins of this show, it doesn’t benefit him. But Ban, well he is able to work outside ofhis greed, even if at times to others he still looks selfish. The only negative I have for him is similarto Meliodas. Ban is immortal and it’s rare that he everhas any real kind of challenge. The best challenge the show gave him was whenhe and Meliodas fight off in the tournament arc. Oh yeah, and there’s a tournament arc that’sused as another excuse for the Sins to fight each other. Not that they really need to give a reasonas they already did it so much. WHICH IS ANOTHER THING! I don’t mean to beat on this show as muchas I am, it’s just fun to do. But the sins are the only characters thatcan really fight each other on an equal playing field. So, the show comes up with every possibleexcuse to get them to fight. From Misdirection, to the tournament, to everyonehaving collective amnesia on what each Sin looks like. It’s kind of a running thing that the wantedposters of the Sins look nothing like the sins usually do, to the point where even thesins forgot what each other look like. It’s something that got old quite fast forme honestly.

BUT BACK TO THE GOOD BITS. A-1 Pictured did a phenomenal job with theaction animation. It kind of reminds me why If I ever had topick a long running shounen to watch it would be Fairy Tail, another show that they did,just because I liked how they handled the production. Also because the music in Fairy Tail was amazing,which side track, I didn’t know that Hiroyuki Sawano did the music for Seven Deadly Sinsuntil I looked it up. It sounds nothing like his other work! Though I think I didn’t recognize him becausethe series is missing that one overused vocal track, with that one beat drop that he usesall the time always. You know the one, you do. Anyways back to the animation, I was quiteimpressed with that they did and also just the direction of all the action. It’s something I didn’t expect comingfrom Okamura. Like this is the guy who CREATED Darker thanBlack, who directed Wolf’s Rain. Not the guy I would have thought to do anamazing job directing this happy go lucky shounen, but damn did he do a good job. Like I’m just going to have some of my favoriteaction bits playing for the last little bit because hot damn were they fun to watch. Shame that there were some animation dipsoccasionally when action was not a thing happening at those moments. SO FINAL THOUGHTS, like I figure that me sayingthat I would recommend it to people to watch it earlier for those who have never watchedshounen before kind of gave my recommendation away. But yes, it has its flaws but those flawsdon’t take away from the final product enough to make me say it’s not worth the watchbecause it definitely is. As such I give it the official Glass Refectionrecommendation to BUY IT! Not that it’s possible to do so at the timeof this video. The license for this show is kind of confusing. Officially it’s a series licensed by Aniplexof America, however it’s kind of a Netflix exclusive title. To the point of where Netflix is touting itas a Netflix original, similar to all those live action shows that it helped produce. Which is odd considering they didn’t seemto actually help produce the show at all, they didn’t even license it either becauseAniplex did that. I’m actually kind of confused as to whythey advertise it the way they do. Either way if you are looking to watch theseries it’s available for streaming on Netflix in both Sub and Dub, and with luck we’llget a home video release in the future. Who knows though.

 For alternate anime recommendations, wellI already used HunterxHunter recently so let’s hawk my two favorite Bones Shounen shows startingwith Full Metal Alchemist. Starting with the 2003 version, taking a break,and then watching Brotherhood. I made 3 separate videos on this last yearwhich you should watch if you are wondering why I don’t recommended Brotherhood outright. So I’m not going to repeat myself here. Second recommendation goes to Soul Eater. Many people hate this series for it’s animeonly ending, but if you are like me and don’t give a care about the manga then it’s anenjoyable romp and was honestly my favorite shounen series for several years. Between those two you should hopefully findsomething to your liking. Finally I’d like to thank patrons JocelynAtkins , Rurika Adachi, Calhounboy, Viktor Ekmark, Nicolai Grey, and Joshua Garcia withoutwhich I would not be able to produce these videos to the same extent that I would like. And that’s it from me, thank you gentleviewers for watching. Until next time, Stay Frosty. 

Assassination Classroom Anime

 Assassination Classroom is an action anime released in 2015 by Lerche. This production company is famous for School-Live, a show where students are fighting in a zombieapocalypse while still trying to be students, and Danganronpa, a show where students aredesperately trying to kill one another. Seeing a pattern here? I am. Lasting for two full seasons, with 53 episodes total Assassination Classroom covers not only whatit means to be an assassin, but also a model student, all wrapped in apremise that borderlines the absurd. What do I mean by that? Well, ladies, gentlemenand others, today on Glass Reflection we are going tobe looking at the story of E-Class’s journey out of failure, as well as theyellow octopus who makes it all happen:

 ASSASSINATION CLASSROOM. Let’s jam. Welcome to Kunugigaoka Junior High, a schoolwith a very interesting history and tradition. Following the doctrine of the school's principal,under-performing or otherwise delinquent students are sent up a nearby mountainto the school’s old campus as a punishment of sorts. Isolated from the restof the school, these delinquents face a trial-by-fire wherethey are expected to either shape up or come to terms with their lot in life. Enter Koro-Sensei. This is where things get weird. A mysterious octopus-looking alien being,Koro-Sensei, claims responsibility for the recent destruction of Earth’s moon.He also informs the world that in a year’s time he plans to do the same to Earth. Their only hope is to assassinate him beforethis happens. But unfortunately for them, he is a super-poweredcheat code of a being, able to travel at Mach 20. Thankfully though, he also laid the conditionthat during the Earth’s final year he plans to take up the mantle of teacher to the aforementioneddead-end class of delinquents with the goal of nurturing them not only intobetter students, but also better people.

 The students are now tasked twofold: graduatefrom junior high in one year, and also kill the octopus before Earth isdestroyed. You might have realised that this sounds kindof absurd. Why would an alien both want to destroy Earth,and also decide to teach some random class of junior high kids? an act which would benullified at the end of the year regardless, unless they successfully kill him. The crux of the whole show is actually tryingto unravel the premise into something that makes a lick of sense. But in the end, thepremise is almost brilliant in how it achieves Koro-Sensei’s actualgoal of nurturing the students. These kids all have problems that got themto where they are, and honestly the biggest obstacle for any of them to improve would justbe getting the motivation to do it. Hell, I sometimes have a hard time motivatingmyself in the morning just to get out of bed, so I understand. But the end of the worldis a hell of a motivator. At the same time though, the show likes toput a lot of emphasis on its comedy. It uses the absurdity of the situation tomake light of things, from the backstories of the students, to introducinga super advanced AI as a virtual student, to having a language teacher called Bitch-Senseidue to her developed looks and snarky attitude.

 But the comedy is not the show’s strongsuit, which might confuse you if you look at it too briefly. See, you could view the harsh contrast betweenthe show’s attempt at comedy and its more dramatic attempts at teachingthe students life lessons as a negative. You might be tempted to think that the showis unfocused and doesn’t know if it wants to be a comedy or an action drama. But I lookat it slightly differently. The comedy of the show is more like a mask,a front, or more like the armor of the show. It’s something put into place to cover andprotect the more serious heart of the narrative. It helps that not much of the comedy landslike it’s supposed to, which only adds to the nature of the front.

 As “LOL, random!” or obvious as some ofthe jokes tend to get, the increased levity is an overall boon to the series as it attemptsto build these characters into greater versions of themselves. Well, as bestas it can anyway. One of the slight downsides to this is thatthe cast is rather large. It’s a full classroom with almost thirtystudents, not accounting for the three teachers, groups of students from other classes, andthe myriad antagonists over the course of the show. It’s not an easy task to try and developthis many characters effectively. This leads to the majority of the studentshaving only a few notes to them, while a decent amount of development is insteadspent on the big three, or the RGB characters if we go by their haircolors: Karma, Kaede, and Nagisa. Outside of the RGB crew, the most we get isabout half an episode’s worth of development per student. It’s enough to individually showcase whomost of the students are and the quick minor adjustments that Koro-Sensei can make to massivelyimprove either their lives or their outlook for the future. Some of these workvery well with little effort. Isogai, the class president with a poor financialbackground, landed himself in E-Class after being caught working part-time outsideof school to support his family. Others, like the aforementioned AI Ritsu,gets almost instantly back-burnered after her introduction unless the class needsa MacGuffin hacking method to advance the plot, and even then she’s susceptible to beinghacked herself and becoming absolutely useless. While the large cast of characters is nicefor the variety, and while the show does try its best to keep most of them from beingone note, there’s only so much it can do, even with 50+ episodes. But while the spotlight on any one studentoutside of the main cast is few and far between, there are plenty of times when the teamworkof the group as a whole makes up for it. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the storiesof the main cast suffer as well, quite the opposite in fact. Karma, an intelligent but underachieving mastermind,gets a worldview swap into actually giving a damn about people other than himself,with a reasonable arc to facilitate that to boot. Nagisa, on the other hand, is almost the completeopposite.

 He cares very little for himself to the pointof making a kamikaze strike against Koro-Sensei as one of his first assassinationattempts. The duality of these two characters and howthey slowly journey to a more productive middle ground is the key to their individual arcs and iscultivated by Koro-sensei’s unique methods. Koro-Sensei himself is the enigma of the series. His personality is primarily portrayed bya smile very rarely leaves his face, and his mannerisms are shown as varying tentaclemovements. You don’t really know why he is doing whathe is doing or for what purpose, but very rarely are we ever made to believethat he doesn’t have his students’ best interests at heart, despite their almost constant attempts onhis life. Credit for my enjoyment of his character thoughmust come down to both of his actors. While I at no point doubted the ability ofJun Fukuyama to pull off the bizarre idiosyncrasies of Koro-Sensei, I have to fullyadmit that the English performance by Sonny Strait caught me offguard. Honestly, the English dub for the series ingeneral is probably one of Funimation’s best from the past several years, in part because how easy it could have beento screw up such an off-the-wall character like Koro-Sensei. Butin full honesty, they nailed it. Now, the title of this series contains twowords: assassination and classroom. While the former is how it started, the latteris how it ended.

 Though the assassination aspect of the seriesnever fades, it doesn’t end up in the forefront as often as one might expect. Largely, I found the series to be a modern version of one of my favourite classic anime, Great Teacher Onizuka.It’s a series about a less-than-average teacher, finding great success in obscure methods toteach not only his students, but also the audience, some very importantlessons that they can take with them beyond the end of the series. Assassination Classroom is very similar. It’s not just a show on how we could learnto teach kids – in fact, I would wholly suggest we do NOT do this to kids becausethat could get dangerous real fast – but rather the show ends up having some veryentertaining things to say on how we can teach ourselves for the better, whetherwe are students or not. It’s not the easiest show to recommend atits start, but if you’ve seen it all the way through, I hope you’d agree with me that it was totallyworth watching. Assassination Classroom just has this level of fun to it that’shard to describe. It’s art style is sharp and colorful, so even being about trying to kill some alien squid creature, it also feels like it’s like everything I wish school actually was like. Not only didI enjoy watching this series about a bunch of underdogs learning to accept themselves andbuild their personalities for the better, but I feel like to a point I learned a thingor two about myself as well. And for that, Koro-sensei, I thank you. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise thatI rate Assassination Classroom in its entirety as Certified Frosty, a rating for only thebest of the best or those shows too important to ignore. It's really a fantastic series that I reallyhad a hard time trying to write about. It’s just one of those levels of.... it’svery easy to rant about things you don’t like, its harder to find things that you do likeand be able to explain them in a way that people can understand. It’s really just a fantastic series andI hope that you’ll check it out after watching this video. Which you can do, over on Funimation, andI’ll put links down in the description for your benefit if you decide to check it out. If you need further watching however, theaforementioned Great Teacher Onizuka is another fantastic watch if you can lookpast the 20-year-old animation. My second recommendation goes to SayonaraZetsubou Sensei, which leans far more into the comedic side about a teacher whokeeps considering suicide on a regular basis. Neither of these recommendations is availableon any legal streaming services at the time of writing however, but Onizuka can be picked up fromDiscotech on home media, at the very least. Lastly, a very special thank you to my patrons,without whom I would be unable to do what I do, so I am eternally grateful. Specifically though,I want to give particular shout-outs to patrons Siri Yamiko, Ryefan Boneapart, Rune Jakobsen,Calhoonboy, Richard Emil Bradley, and Hector Montemayor for being especially awesome. You guys aregreat! And until next time – ladies, gentlemen, and others – watch more anime… and stay frosty.