FalseDawn

That proves the notion that two different people can see the same thing completely differently. If there were context to any of it, I'd be far more willing to buy Shigurui as an attempt to recreate a dark (and probably somewhat realistic) samurai interpretation. When there is abolutely no substance to show, though, outside the fact that it's got dark themes, it's really hard to sell quality.It reminds me of some network gore flick I saw several years back. A group of city-slicker colleagues go paintballing in the woods and get caught by some crazy, violent cult who want to rape the women so that the cult can have children. Everything about it was awful from the way they tried to "force" character development to the unrealistically stupid presentations of the cultists. The movie's sole selling point was the "shock gore" aspect to it - much the same way I view Shigurui - and I just don't see that as rationale to better a score. In my eyes it's akin to rating a romance anime highly because the characters hold hands at some point. They may have arbitrarily slapped it in the samurai feudal period to give it a bit more believability, sure, but I highly doubt that era suffered from completely one-dimensional people running around engaging in "just because" violence. Recreating the period needs more than just throwing in dark stuff. =P

And yes, the second season was significantly worse than the first. The ending was at least acceptable to me, but I felt a lot of the philosophical banter in the first season forced them in that direction and stripped away a lot of the story's intrigue (it made it way too easy to predict how the heroic spirits would behave). The whole thing with Berserker was especially awful. The only redeeming factors I found were Kiritsugu (they handled him quite well) and a fluid continuity of action scenes, the latter which happened to be the only real reason I was watching the show. ufotable's track record at work, I guess. Still, overall good for an action flick - hence the solid 7.5. Were the story a little better constructed and a number of the characters less whimsically one-dimensional (see: Caster, Berserker, Kirie, the Grail, and others) I'd rate it higher. Mediocre antagonists all around, I guess.

And you'll have to harass a review out of Vivi. She's all into podcasting in her Britspeak these days and less into writing with it.

Totally just added comments into my official Shigurui review in the overall section. I wonder if anybody will read them. =PBy the way, after finishing Fate/Zero a couple months ago: 7.5. Decent action flick with lots of nice animation. If only it weren't followed by Fate/Stay Night.

Yo. I dunno how often you check the forum, but I edited your DSC review (months late T_T)

Heyyo! I was wondering if perhaps you'd like to talk about Shigurui with me for a bit, sometime soon. I finished it today, and happened to notice that you gave it a similar rating. For sure it seems to be a controversial show, although I enjoyed every tense moment of it. The ending, though...hmmmm still thinking about it. 

Hmm... I might take you up on the offer to write Fate/Zero 2. This is purely for the sake of your health, of course, nothing to do with me wanting to plaster my drool on AP's review pages for the users to attempt reading. Oh, and if it helps spur you on with Berserk series, you'll most likely like it more than Fate Zero. Yeah, it's that damn unbelievably good.

I am depressed that Viz are doing the movies. I just can't forgive them for their shoddy behaviour on Monster and fear now that they'll always cancel an incredible show for whatever lazy reasons they come up with.