(L) BlazBlue Alter Memory

[Galaxian]

I really like episode 3, but then again I did play the games so I can understand things in hindsight.

[Echoes]

Originally Posted by AmeNoJaku

Am I the only non-game-playing/spoiled viewer that have no idea why anyone does anything in this anime

I imagine not. While watching this, I thought about what an absolute nightmare this must be to piece together for anyone who's not familiar with the game. The show does little to entice people unfamiliar with the source material to join in.

Then again, I am familiar with it, and I'm mostly displeased with what I'm seeing as well. Episode 3 was at least pretty entertaining. The fights are still bad, and I think the use of the game's soundtrack, brilliant though it may be (I'm a huge fan of Daisuke Ishiwatari's work) leave a lot to be desired. They're really hit or miss with when they choose to employ the tracks, and some of them don't work as well in a series as they do as background music during an actual fighting game. The fan in me is always happy to hear them whenever they show up, but I don't think they always work in context.

I can't wait to see more of Tsubaki, though. She's my favorite character, and I hope that giving her some screentime will heighten my enjoyment of the series. Now that I've seen the first three episodes, I can curb my expectations and try to see the good bits among what's largely a pretty messy adaptation.

[DragoonKain3]

Taokaka steals the show again! I dunno, most of my enjoyable moments of playing story mode was of the alternate route events with Tao involved, and IMO they're showing that side of her personality pretty well in this adaptation.

And I just noticed that Noel is a bit more stacked than she is supposed to be. How's that gonna work?

But EEEFFFF YYEEAHHHH, Tsubaki this early!

[Cloudedmind]

So Tao is still the best thing about this show and Hazuma is an evil troll doll.

[Galaxian]

Originally Posted by DragoonKain3

Taokaka steals the show again! I dunno, most of my enjoyable moments of playing story mode was of the alternate route events with Tao involved, and IMO they're showing that side of her personality pretty well in this adaptation.

And I just noticed that Noel is a bit more stacked than she is supposed to be. How's that gonna work?

But EEEFFFF YYEEAHHHH, Tsubaki this early!

If you read some of the artist's notes in the gallery, the reason why Noel was so flat-chested was because one of the people in charge of the game demanded it. I guess he has no say in the anime

[JiCi]

Originally Posted by Cloudedmind

So Tao is still the best thing about this show

Yup, and I thank her for that delicious moment with Litchi XD

[Dextro]

Originally Posted by AmeNoJaku

Am I the only non-game-playing/spoiled viewer that have no idea why anyone does anything in this anime

As a game player let me tell you: by this point in the game you would be asking the exact same thing. The game is a giant wtf for the better part of the story so it's only natural that people would have absolutely no idea what's going on by the 3rd episode. Heck, I'm watching this just to try and piece together some details that I haven't managed to fully understand in the game.

As for the episode itself it was better than the previous ones. I have a feeling that they purposely rushed Calamity Trigger's story in two episodes to get to this point by the third one where plenty of folks who go by the 3 episode rule would drop it otherwise. At least that was the effect it had on me: I was ready to drop this if they didn't up their game a little bit. Luckly they did even if the OP is still the most lazy thing I've ever witnessed and that midpoint jingle is so old school that the cobwebs probably have cobwebs on them. Jezz!

[molitar]

Can someone please explain a bit of what I am watching? The only bit I have figured out after watching episode 4 is..

1. They were stuck in some sort of time loop and he would always lose the battle and cause the world to be destroyed.
2. The loop was broken by who appears to be Saya
3. His brother attempted to kill him blaming him for the deaths
4. Teruumi is behind it all
5. He somehow became possessor of the Grimoire and everyone wants it
6. Saya has become host to some evil and they want to wake it
7. Some satellite embodies some creature that appeared to want to destroy them for letting the time loop be broken

This story makes absolutely and utterly no sense at all.

[Triple_R]

Ok, three episodes in, and this is all I know:

1. Ragna seriously needs anger management counseling. Dude is so perpetually pissed off it would make Attack on Titan's Eren blush. On the other hand, maybe that's understandable since...

2. Ragna's sole purpose in life appears to be to constantly get into fights with countless people. Going back to the first episode, dude had something like five back-to-back fights with five different opponents, all without a significant rest break of any sort. Who powers this guy? The Energizer Bunny?

3. Ragna defeating Nu apparently breaks him out of some sort of horrible time-loop. This is pretty much the only overarching plot element I'm confident about so far, lol.

4. Terumi is the bastard child of Gin Ichimaru and The Joker. Have to say he's the most entertaining aspect of the show so far. Probably one of the five most Joker-esque characters I've ever seen in anime.

5. Rachel Alucard strikes me as being on Ragna's side, but she likes playing things so cryptically it would make Akemi Homura blush.

6. The show just keeps going from one flashy but familiar set-piece to the next to the next. Most are action scenes, some are about vague ominous implications and cryptic dialogue. It's not even that this show is style over substance. It's that the substance of the show is anime style. It's amazing how far this show is going with this. I figured that at least by Episode 3, we'd see Ragna calmly explain at least part of what motivates him. But nope, it's just constant anger, constant short one-liners, constant cryptic dialogue, and constant action. It's like someone took a full-fledged anime show, and severely edited it to give it a highlight reel feel, cutting out any scene that could properly contextualize what the hell is going on.


As much as this show confuses me, it also has some very entertaining bits. And I find it strangely fascinating how they can actually keep a narrative going this long without the slightest amount of contextualizing or explaining what's going on (either through show or tell).

[Cloudedmind]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

Ok, three episodes in, and this is all I know:

1. Ragna seriously needs anger management counseling. Dude is so perpetually pissed off it would make Attack on Titan's Eren blush. On the other hand, maybe that's understandable since...

2. Ragna's sole purpose in life appears to be to constantly get into fights with countless people. Going back to the first episode, dude had something like five back-to-back fights with five different opponents, all without a significant rest break of any sort. Who powers this guy? The Energizer Bunny?

3. Ragna defeating Nu apparently breaks him out of some sort of horrible time-loop. This is pretty much the only overarching plot element I'm confident about so far, lol.

4. Terumi is the bastard child of Gin Ichimaru and The Joker. Have to say he's the most entertaining aspect of the show so far. Probably one of the five most Joker-esque characters I've ever seen in anime.

5. Rachel Alucard strikes me as being on Ragna's side, but she likes playing things so cryptically it would make Akemi Homura blush.

6. The show just keeps going from one flashy but familiar set-piece to the next to the next. Most are action scenes, some are about vague ominous implications and cryptic dialogue. It's not even that this show is style over substance. It's that the substance of the show is anime style. It's amazing how far this show is going with this. I figured that at least by Episode 3, we'd see Ragna calmly explain at least part of what motivates him. But nope, it's just constant anger, constant short one-liners, constant cryptic dialogue, and constant action. It's like someone took a full-fledged anime show, and severely edited it to give it a highlight reel feel, cutting out any scene that could properly contextualize what the hell is going on.


As much as this show confuses me, it also has some very entertaining bits. And I find it strangely fascinating how they can actually keep a narrative going this long without the slightest amount of contextualizing or explaining what's going on (either through show or tell).

It's now become a game of "How long can they keep the audience in the dark, and still have us watch?".

[Mephis]

I am still pissed how Nu-13 gets a bad end whether in game or anime.

[XFire]

Originally Posted by molitar

Can someone please explain a bit of what I am watching? The only bit I have figured out after watching episode 4 is..

1. They were stuck in some sort of time loop and he would always lose the battle and cause the world to be destroyed.
2. The loop was broken by who appears to be Saya
3. His brother attempted to kill him blaming him for the deaths
4. Teruumi is behind it all
5. He somehow became possessor of the Grimoire and everyone wants it
6. Saya has become host to some evil and they want to wake it
7. Some satellite embodies some creature that appeared to want to destroy them for letting the time loop be broken

This story makes absolutely and utterly no sense at all.

[shadow1296]

^no better explanation. also i don't think that monster was attacking that place because the time loop was altered more like it was one of the solutions to alter time loop in one of the previous timeloops which ultimately had failed and the world was still destroyed and as one of the game player i don't remember if that thing was ever explained or even showed up for that matter, though its been awhile since i played CT so it might have

[Xero8420]

Great... Now we got 3 yanderes in this series. First, we got an emotionless humanoid girl turns cute and crazy whenever Ragna is around. Then, we got a crazy psychotic otouto who's obsessed of killing his nii-san all over again. And now, we got a jealous girlfriend of that crazy jerkass.

[JiCi]

Guys, don't try to bust your heads on figuring out the story in the anime, it's not even that clear in the games either XP

[AmeNoJaku]

Originally Posted by JiCi

Guys, don't try to bust your heads on figuring out the story in the anime, it's not even that clear in the games either XP

So it doesn't look that good, and has no story... then what's the point in having an anime

[hyl]

Originally Posted by AmeNoJaku

So it doesn't look that good, and has no story... then what's the point in having an anime

While the story in the games is pretty convoluted and often times confusing, but it is not non-existent though

[Dawnstorm]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

3. Ragna defeating Nu apparently breaks him out of some sort of horrible time-loop. This is pretty much the only overarching plot element I'm confident about so far, lol.

Hold on to that as long as you can. It's, at least, not wrong.

I've deleted a lot of replies to this thread because I don't know how to reply without "spoiling" things, even though spoiling things is hard, since you almost always have mutlitple interpretations. In that respect the anime is pretty user-friendly. They eliminated some of my theories by making things explicit you had to infer in the game.

As hyl says there is a story. It's not one that makes sense, and the more you learn the less sense it makes, but it makes more and more sense for it to make no sense, and that is really all I can say.

If the anime gets that across it's a work of genius, and - storywise - I actually think they're doing a good job. You're all scratching your heads, but that's the design. They're on track, and they've streamlined stuff. If you look at the ending, you'll see the characters you need to introduce all the puzzle pieces. I'm even spotting a character I don't know in the ending, so...

However, where the anime doesn't do a good job, IMO, is to provide a hook. It makes no sense, and I can't for the life of me figure out why you should care to find out. The game distracted you with a multitude of deliciously wacked characters (which the anime sort of does, too, but by focussing on the story most of it is lost, and it's reduced to fanservice which - to anime-original viewers - should be about as relevant as a cameo from something you've never seen; and with fights (which are in the anime, too, but if you're not actually fighting yourself with a controller, these fights are far less interesting, and they're not making them especially compelling in the first place, so...).

This may sound strange to anime-only viewers, but I think the story is actually pretty well translated (i.e. the changes they made all make sense). The one major problem is that they've been hiding important stuff in throwaway lines. For example, who will even remember Ragna saying something like "The seithr is thick around here." in the first episode?

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by Dawnstorm

The game distracted you with a multitude of deliciously wacked characters...

With this in mind, Terumi is the main reason I'm going to give this show at least another episode or two. He was very entertaining in Episode 3. "Overpowered Joker" is about as good as it gets for a villain when it comes to my tastes.

I'm also finding myself liking Rachel. As troperrific as some of Rachel and Terumi's lines are, they also accomplish what that sort of dialogue is meant to do - Intrigue you, mystify you, make you want to discover just what it is they're talking about.

My patience is a bit stretched at this point, but the intrigue is still there. Your reassurances also help in that regard.

[MisaoFan]

Spoiler for Episode 4:

The new episode was pretty fun to watch. I have recently noticed that the story's pacing gets better and doesn't feel too rushed as a result. We watch Noel reminiscing her old friends as she encounters Makoto, the squirrel girl who was her friend. The explanation ensues between them and I can sense a lot of tension coming in. The Taokaka antics are very entertaining and I'm guessing that the story will get darker as time goes. It's clearly one of the dark horses of the season despite its rough beginning, so the later parts could be fascinating to watch though not close enough to be a masterpiece.