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[JulianImp]

Rozen Maiden was a double whammy with it being an underwhelming show that spawned an equally underwhelming and barren let's watch thread, so it's good to see more people hopping aboard this time around.

I've only watched the first episode a couple months ago, so I guess I'll try to catch up in the coming days.

 

[Yomidi]

Episode 5

Damn, that was very good. The animation was beautiful and I really liked the ending.
I was a bit confused with the samurai story but that theory posted previously has made thing more clear.

 

[Szadek]

Finally got the time to catch up.

Episode 2-5
The art still looks amazing, but on top of that the animation got a lot better ,too.
Episode 1 had very little movement and ,while it doesn't exactly looks like a Production I.G, it has gotten a lot better.

As for the story, well I was right that the anime is all about ghost stories, these stories are better than I though they would be.
The 2. arc also got some really interesting characters.Let's hope we get more of it.

So yeah, it's still really good and thanksfully it doesn't lack substance like I was affraid of.

 

[MetroidPrimeRib]

Mononoke 07

TERRIBLE subs this episode. WTF Crunchyroll? This episode had two people talking at once a lot, but instead of doing the thing everyone else does and have two different lines, the same one just kept switching around every second and a half making it a nightmare to read, that is if the other voices were subbed at all. Do we really need to read the same line 20 times when someone else is talking? Yeah, I get it. She's saying "No" and "Mother, listen to me" because she's been saying that for the last 10 minutes.

 

[Cornbread78]

That was great story telling right there and held my attention through both episodes. Not only is the artwork excellent, but the soundwork is excellent as well.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Episode 4
Oh hey, more explaining of how stuff works. Oh hey, Wakamoto as a fish thing. And it's a real dick. Is the samurai dead? Everyone else seems fine. Oh hey, the fish didn't make illusions for the monks.

Episode 5
Yeah, opening the coffin seems like a bad idea. Oh, the samurai is alive after all. And incest backstory. I'd ask how a mononoke inside the bishop created the ocean of ayakashi when he presumably wasn't anywhere near it, but spirits are weird like that. Oh hey, the twist is that the bishop wasn't into incest after all, at first anyway. This time we get to actually see the Medicine Seller do his thing. Odd that the bishop became younger... did he die? It's hard to tell with this series. I'm guessing from that ending that the samurai returns.

I thought this arc was better than the first one, because there's a better grasp on what's going on.

 

[OniBarubary]

Episode 5
I'd ask how a mononoke inside the bishop created the ocean of ayakashi when he presumably wasn't anywhere near it, but spirits are weird like that.

It created the ocean because his denial attached all his resentment/denial/bad juju to the ship because he thought that's where it lied. So as the mononoke ate away at him and made him all squatty and frog-like it put the actual curse into the ocean because that was the focus of all his negative emotions. He convinced himself of it and the mononoke made it true.

Odd that the bishop became younger... did he die?

No. But there are two ways to interpret his appearance at the end. Either holding the mononoke inside himself turned his outer appearance to match his inner appearance and he actually physically changed to be uglier OR he looked beautiful the whole time but only when the mononoke was destroyed and he was capable of looking at himself with an honest view did he see himself as he really was. I'm prone to the 2nd interpretation myself because it explains why both his sister and the other priest were into him since he's an attractive man AND it's a more meaningful assumption that only by seeing his true ugliness was he able to look past the false ugliness he put on himself and reveal his real beauty. It just feels a lot better that way. More interesting since the mononoke infests his eye.

I'm guessing from that ending that the samurai returns.

Spoiler

Nope.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Episode 6
I didn't expect the Medicine Seller to end up in jail. Or get #rekt.

Jeez, even mononoke can get confused by what's going on, huh? And the Medicine Seller is fine after all.

Episode 7
Huh, I was actually wondering if we'd see a story where the Medicine Seller has to determine the truth and reason before the shape of the mononoke. It's odd that the woman was the mononoke the whole time and the Medicine Seller didn't notice with his scales.

I wasn't really paying that much attention to this arc.

 

[Cornbread78]

Episode 6-7:
Pretty good arc about the woman in prison. Although, did she kill herself in the end, as well as her mom? I missed something at the end there. At least we finally got to see his full sword. Definitely good stuff.

 

[inana]

Jin Roh

 

[SigmasonicX]

Episode 8
That precredits scene was interesting. Oh what the hell, Crunchyroll, you immediately switched the subtitles explaining the contest to the single word appearing on the screen. Though they ended up playing a different game, so it doesn't matter, I suppose. Jeez, people sure did have a lot of time on their hands to come up with names for every combination of blocks. The suitors didn't seem too bad at first, but then they became obsessive about the Todaiji. I was confused at first, but it turned out we weren't supposed to know what it was.

Episode 9
I liked the Medicine Seller doing that moe thing where he hits the side of his head after mixing poison into one of the incense samples. It's odd that they'd do the murder mystery thing, but then have the Medicine Seller just somehow know who the killers are. Wait, why did the guy with the fake nose kill that woman?

I was going to say that the Medicine Seller was kind of a dick, but those guys were apparently all dead already, so he was actually being nice. This arc was interesting in that I could see it pretty easily being made into a Doctor Who episode or something, but it was lacking in weirdness in the first episode.

 

[MetroidPrimeRib]

We're on Episode 10 right?

Found this at 11:50. Spooky.

Also weird how this jumped from the Edo to the Showa era for seemingly no reason? Guess the Medicine Seller isn't human.

 

[phaze]

Episode 6-7:
Pretty good arc about the woman in prison. Although, did she kill herself in the end, as well as her mom? I missed something at the end there. At least we finally got to see his full sword. Definitely good stuff.

I took it more metaphorically. She "killed" herself repeatedly cause she extinguished her own desires and sacrificed herself to her mother's whims. Though I have no clue whether she murdered her mother, or the husband and his family. (or whether she even got married in the first place.) That ending is pure mindfuck

 

[OniBarubary]

Episode 6-7:
Pretty good arc about the woman in prison. Although, did she kill herself in the end, as well as her mom? I missed something at the end there. At least we finally got to see his full sword. Definitely good stuff.

I took it more metaphorically. She "killed" herself repeatedly cause she extinguished her own desires and sacrificed herself to her mother's whims. Though I have no clue whether she murdered her mother, or the husband and his family. (or whether she even got married in the first place.) That ending is pure mindfuck

To break it down to be as simple as possible, she basically trapped herself using the mononoke within her own mind. She didn't kill anyone she just created a world where she did in her head and the visions on the screens. When the Medicine Seller finally destroys the mononoke she basically snaps back to reality at the exact moment she started imagining everything that was going on, when she broke the dish. Realizing the importance of the Medicine Seller's words ("If you want it to be it is a prison") she simply...leaves. No longer trapped by her feelings towards her mother she just gets up and leaves the house. That's all. It ends a lot better than most of the stories, as she doesn't kill anyone or herself and just finds the strength to walk away from her shitty marriage.

It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the general gist.

Edit: I'd figure the Medicine Seller showing up in different time periods wouldn't surprise anyone.

 

[Cornbread78]

To break it down to be as simple as possible, she basically trapped herself using the mononoke within her own mind. She didn't kill anyone she just created a world where she did in her head and the visions on the screens. When the Medicine Seller finally destroys the mononoke she basically snaps back to reality at the exact moment she started imagining everything that was going on, when she broke the dish. Realizing the importance of the Medicine Seller's words ("If you want it to be it is a prison") she simply...leaves. No longer trapped by her feelings towards her mother she just gets up and leaves the house. That's all. It ends a lot better than most of the stories, as she doesn't kill anyone or herself and just finds the strength to walk away from her shitty marriage.

It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the general gist.

Edit: I'd figure the Medicine Seller showing up in different time periods wouldn't surprise anyone.

Damn, now it makes sense. I was really confused what happens there, but that makes complete sense now and it is even better!

 

[MetroidPrimeRib]

Mononoke

Mononoke is an extensively creative and beautiful show, truly one of a kind. It is well crafted in nearly every facet, from visual direction to framing to horror to the use of color, all which serve the show very well. While the individual stories can be confusing and little is ever done explanation wise, neither of these bothered me because of how creative the show was and there is enough there to fill in the blanks for yourself. For me, the Medicine Seller is a Shinigami there to remove the Mononoke, which shouldn't exist in the human world. This is why he goes after the Mononoke that don't even seem evil, and also why he could magically appear in the Showa era in the last arc, 300 years after the setting in the previous arcs.

To classify this as horror wouldn't be incorrect, but it's a type of horror I've never seen before. Horror typically uses drab and dark colors but Mononoke is extensively colorful. It still utilizes all the horror techniques in sound design and framing but in a way I've never seen before. It's not like Kagewani or Yamishibai, it's not like the works of Junji Ito or Kazuo Umezu, it's not like Silent Hill or Fatal Frame. It's inherently unique.

The one problem I have, and this isn't the shows fault, are Crunchyrolls absolutely TERRIBLE subs. I don't know if this is on CR or Toei for providing the subs, but they are hardsubbed, the dialogue runs over other lines (for example if two characters are talking at the same time, instead of showing both lines, the one who talks second will overrun the first line even if the first line is only shown for half a second. That's not even going into typos and grammatical errors. Amateur hour is too kind for these garbage subs and they are by far the worst subs I've ever seen on a professional site.

Mononoke is truly excellent.

 

[Yomidi]

Episode 8-9
Favorite arc so far. I really liked discovering the fates of the theree characters and the ending was really good.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Episode 10
Sudden jump to much later. And an astronaut cat.

This is another story that reminds me of a Doctor Who episode, so far.

Episode 11
I'm not a fan of the people on the train. And these cat noises aren't scary at all. The sequence where the most annoying guy is killed was the silliest in the series so far.

And everyone's dead now. You really screwed this one up, Medicine Seller.

Episode 12
Haha, that scene of the reporter being covered in cats.

This flashback is pretty boring. That was a sudden ending. Oh, there's stuff during the credits. I take back what I said in the previous episode, you did good Medicine Seller. This arc was rather boring overall, I felt, and the visuals weren't even that particularly interesting.

Overall
This was an interesting series, but often there was little engaging other then the weird visuals. My favorite arcs were probably the Sea of Monsters, since that at least had some fun characters and Wakamoto fish, and the story with the Nue and incense.

I'm surprised that I'm the first one to write about the last episode here, and that the next series choice hasn't been put up yet.

 

[Cornbread78]

Code: Breaker on Hulu!
http://hulu.com/s/bq6

http://www.funimation.com/shows/code-breaker/home

The Next “Let’s Watch” is up:
Code:Breaker

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1175235
(available dubbed and subbed)