>Haha so what if we made the best anime of the 2010s and,

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>distracted by the visuals
Are you implying visuals are not supposed to be enjoyed in Ikuhara shows?

Dyke bears was the worst thing Ikuhara has ever worked on an Penguindrum is the actual underrated masterpiece.

>>152898096
it's not a bad thing to be impressed by great visual direction.

So what was it actually about? I mean, what was the message? I was too distracted by the BORING that I didn't pay much attention.

>>152898323
I was too distracted by the deliberate withholding of characterization in an Ikuhara work which bizarrely substituted an unsuspenseful mystery in its place.
The only episode that felt like it was directed by him at all was the LuLu flashback because she was safe to flesh out now that she was being killed off and wouldn't ruin the "mystery" of it all.

>>152898323
love's full of violence but it's transcendent too

>>152898228
>Penguindrum
>not autistic drivel
Penguindrum the pinnacle of what uncontrolled Ikuhara looks like, it was a complete mess that didn't know what it wanted until the last 6 episodes. YKA was perfect length and told a great story with a lasting message, it wasn't as emotional as Utena but it was still enjoyable.
>>152898323
That seeing every side of the story is important and that if you try your best then you will never be truly alone in life even when fate puts the odds against you.

>>152898732
Penguindrum is almost as holistic as Utena and you're the autist if you don't understand what the first half did to set up the second. The transition was almost perfect.
Hint: It's the characters. It's what Ikuhara actually does best if you aren't some stupid pleb just gawking at muh symbolism.

>>152898323
Cyborg lesbian bear sex finds a way.
http://www.hello-online.org/index.php?/blog/1586/entry-12700-last-episode-of-yurikuma-arashi/

>>152898096
Way too short and the art was shit

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>>152898096
>nobody would get it

It was pretty subtle

>>152898228
YKA is about as good as MP, neither even comes close to Utena.
>>152898323
The same message as every other Ikuhara show, duh.
>>152898732
>>152898881
Penguindrum felt like it was planned as a 3 cour show and changed to 2 mid production. The second half is extremely rushed.

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I want more pink-haired male Ikuhara characters.

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Yeah Ikuhara is so DEEP lol
Really made me think huh really makes you think...
https://u.nya.is/bxevvt.webm

>>152899205
I'll meet you part of the way and say the Penguindrum does feel condensed like he's not used to the 2 cour paradigm.
But I won't give you YKA is "about as good". It's narrative driven trite and the obvious odd show out. It shouldn't even be mentioned in lists of things he's worked on.

>>152899375
Are you this guy? >>152898450

>>152898323
3deep5you m8

How is it even hard to get? Yurikuma is a pretty straightforward fairy tale. There isn't that much subtlety here, not that that's a bad thing.

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>>152899577
Yes.

>>152899333


ZETTAI

UNMEI

MOKUSHIROKU

>>152898096
Ikuhara probably knows he fucked up hard with this. Do you think he'll ever direct an anime ever again?

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>>152900063
I hope he does, don't scare me like that.

>>152900063
Who fucking knows, maybe he'll do one next year maybe he'll take a 15 year long break like after Utena.

>>152899855
Then I don't really get your point, withholding informations and characterization is something Ikuhara has always done.
And it was even more blatant in MP, a "fake" thriller full of red herrings and cliffhangers that ended up being jokes or having no consequences in the following episode. The show had other strengths to make up for it, but it wasn't as graceful as Utena in handling a narrative that was just a pretext.
YKA did it better with its relatively straightforward mistery, or "slasher without blood".

>>152900063
I remember someone mentioned he was asking for ideas or some shit on Twitter a while back, so probably. Why would he stop directing just because he made a mediocre show, anyway?

>>152900455
The show wasn't mediocre, but it was one of the worst selling in its season.

>>152900455
The worst Ikuhara show is still miles above being mediocre.

Ikuhara's next show should be about sexy robots. The theme could be transhumanism, or something, but mostly I'm interested in the sexy robots.

>>152900514
It was only like lower-middle-of-the-pack, if I recall. Might not have been bottom ten, even.

>>152900624
Didn't the Ghost in the Shell guy already do something like that? Ikuhara wouldn't even be able to do yuri robots without people comparing it to that recent series.

>>152900690
Do you mean Pandora? That was just a SoL.

>monkey
>penguin
>bears
I hope next is turtles with some kind of Urashima Taro theme

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>>152900805
>>monkey
Sometimes I forget that ugly little shit existed.
Ikuhara certainly has stepped up his mascot game since then.

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>>152900805
>>monkey
I don't think of Monkeys when I think of Utena.
Chuchu is awesome but I'm much more likely to think of cows, kangaroos or surfing elephants.

>>152900455
I kind of feel bad for him. Utena was his masterpiece and I don't think he's ever going to surpass it. At least he seems to genuinely enjoy making these shows.

>>152900888

Chuchu only looks like that because of the original mangaka.

>>152901025
Penguindrum is pretty on par though
Kinda comes down to personal taste which you think is better but they're close enough.

>>152898096
>nobody would get it because they were too distracted by the visuals?
Its probably the most straightforward thing Ikuhara's ever done.

>>152901068
I love Penguindrum but it was a mess that doesn't come close to Utena. YKA was closer by at least being consistently good and getting what it set out to do done.

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>>152900455
>asking for ideas or some shit
Ikuni's new masterpiece Keit-Ai

>>152901025
Utena was only good because of Bepapas to contain his autism

Penguindrum was based off of train terrorist attacks.
Yuri Kuma was based of bear attacks.

What was Utena based off of?
>inb4 attacks on Ikuhara's virginity by upperclassmen

>>152900455
He should adapt that novel he did with Nagano, I want to fucking see what they came up with.

>>152901025
It looks like that he only had one story to tell, and after nailing it the first time he just keep telling it again with different coats of paint.
But since he most likely will never have as many episodes and a writer like Enokido at his disposal again, he'll never reach those heights.
>>152901068
"No".

>>152901025

I think he works best when he's adapting pre-existing properties. He takes the aspects of them that the original source material doesn't critically explore and does so.

Just look at Sailor Moon S. In the manga, the lesbianism is pretty incidental and brushed over. In the anime, Haruka and Michiru represent an unhealthy co-dependent relationship.

best show of 2015
fite me IRL

It was his worse show even worse than penguindrum.

>>152901286
>It looks like that he only had one story to tell, and after nailing it the first time he just keep telling it again with different coats of paint
There's a lot of legitimate complaints to be made about his other shows but this isn't one of them.

YKA was still better than Penguindumb

>>152901337
It is. Even if they start from different premises, his shows all touch the same topics (with different degrees of focus depending on the show), use the same symbols (change coffins with cages or boxes and swords of hatred with child broilers or invisible storms and the substance doesn't change) and have the same ending and message.

>>152901388
delet this

>>152901519
>his shows all touch the same topics

Only if you drastically simplify them.

>>152901569
MP and YKA are practically identical thematically, to the point that I have a hard time not considering them two parts of the same story.
Utena had a big focus on the coming of age aspect that is mostly absent in the other two, probably as a result of Enokido's involvement (Tsuwabuki's episode is proto-FLCL and all the considerations about adults, cars, etc are 100% him), but in the end it all boiled down to another strategy employed by the protagonist to survive in a frozen/invisible world, that they were still not ready to face.

>>152900413
>that ended up being jokes or having no consequences in the following episode
I don't think you get Ikuhara at all, frankly.
A smokescreen of a narrative (especially at an episodic level) was the means by which he'd get a solid 24 minutes of entertaining with his characters. Remarkable consistency, a real commitment to having these characters act or grow in a logical direction every episode is the strongest thing Ikuhara has going for him. While not strictly character driven in the literary sense (more so Utena since he wasn't the writer but rather the planner) this is the biggest strength of his work.
In Utena, the nature of the school is the mystery, but it's the the constant rotation of highlighting the various characters at the school that makes it work. In 4 cours everyone is really fleshed out in the end.
In Penguindrum the nature of its title is the mystery, but that's largely shelved to entertain, and develop, Shouma and Ringo (and to a lesser extent the tertiary characters which is why I concede it feels condensed, these guys don't get enough time relative to Utena) in the first half and Shouma, Kanba, and Himari in the second.
And then there's YKA where the bullshit with the main character leaves here completely undeveloped and unused until the very end. Whereas Penguindrum has truncated characterization YKA pulls the plug on it for everyone until the last episode or LuLu. We're left to be entertained by the narrative when we don't give two shits about the characters or even understand them until the ultimate episode. The tertiary characters are all cardboard that solely serve to advance the plot a bit. There's no depth whatsoever to the invisible storm which serves no purpose other than blunt allegory. That allegory is undermined by the animalistic nature of the bears predations upon society. And once again the real kicker is that The MC and Da Bears history is left dangling until literally the last episode.

>Ikuhara's worst show is still better than any TV anime in the last two years
How does he do it?

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I wish Ikuhara wasn't so inactive, He has the brains to make so many good shows.

>>152903174
i'd rather have one 8/10 show by him every other year than one 9/10 show every five years or so.

>>152903174
what if Ikuhara directed Rolling Girls

>>152902831
>I don't think you get Ikuhara at all, frankly.
I do, but the narrative just didn't work in MP. It wasn't anything like Utena where the formulaic mahou shoujo set up is both perfect for the character drama to unfold and meaningful narratively and thematically for is repetitive, almost ritualistic nature.
The mcguffin chase of MP constantly tries to keep the viewer entertained with red herrings and cliffhangers, that the Ikuhara fan easily see as the smoke and mirrors they are, with no real repercussion on the character themselves, that are, by the way, far weaker than Utena's. Add to that all the plot twists about the provenience of the characters and the nature of their relationship, that aren't any different than in YKA.
And about YKA, the only time when the lack of intimations makes the characters hard to grasp is in the first 2 episodes, when Lulu and Ginko are still presented as menacing. After that the mistery boils down to exactly what happened between Ginko and Kureha when they got separated, but that certainly didn't prevent the characters from growing.
>There's no depth whatsoever to the invisible storm which serves no purpose other than blunt allegory
Not really, it worked within the world of the show as an exaggeration of common group dynamics, in this case specific of the scholastic environment. But I don't see the point in complaining about blunt allegories in Ikuhara, especially after the cages showing up one episode before the end in Penguindrum.
>That allegory is undermined by the animalistic nature of the bears predations upon society
You're taking it too literally.

Utena - 10/10
Penguindrum - 8.5/10
Da Bearz - 8/10
Debate me fuckers.

>>152903762
pretty good desu, i'm 10/10 & 09/10 & 09/10 since i don't do half points and i got a soft spot for the art and music in yka and its relative compactness

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>>152903762
I'd put Penguindrum at 9.
The livewatch threads with /a/ really were something.

>>152903762
9.5
9.5
8

>>152903762
10
8
8

>>152903409
It wouldn't have been shit.
Same as if he directed Flip Floppers.

>>152903668
>that are, by the way, far weaker than Utena's
The cast is truncated by the run time. The characters themselves are quite good. The dynamic between the three main characters is what makes it work which is what you're watching anyway, not the mcguffin that ends up as more of a gun anyway.
>cages showing up
The difference being it was a single episode in Penguindrum, not a shallow allegory pounded every, fucking episode.
>too literally
That the fringe is justified in spurning the will of the collective even if it hurts them? I don't think that's very literal.

>>152903762
9
8
4

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Penguindrum was incredible, especially watching it with /a/ from week to week.

I really did like YuriKuma, but it was definitely a flawed show. The thing is, Ikuhara shows are more about the journey than the destination, and YuriKuma being 12 episodes really felt like it was squishing too much into a small space.

If it was a full 26 episode series, we would've had a lot more space for the wonderful character-focused episodes that make Ikuhara shows really special. Instead he was forced to shove a lot of plot into a very small space, and we never got to spend time with the most colorful individuals in the show.

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The GOAT episode.

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>tfw no appreciation for formalism around here

>>152906142
>>152906263
Why do people make this shitty excuse so often? Twelve episodes is almost five hours. If you can't tell a good story in five hours, you suck

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>>152906299
yes

>>152906307
>tfw uncovered the meaning of the shadow girls' plays through Hegelian dialectic

>>152906142
I don't think the runtime is an excuse, I can think of one cour shows with better characterization than MP. Once again it feels like the problem is the series feeling like a 3 cours until 2/3 in. And suffering from it the most are Kanba, whose descent into darkness feels rushed and lazy, and Sanetoshi, reduced to an hollow plot device without real characterization. But even most of the other side characters really.

As I said the invisible storm works within the dynamics of the world of YKA. They're just teenagers excluding girls from their group in an all girls academy. I dunno why you dislike it so much.
The cages on the other hand were just the coffins of Utena, just introduced on episode 23 instead of at the beginning, and without any real in-world justification like Utena's parents death. That's what a lazy symbolism is.

Too literally because you're considering eating = killing, when it often has a sexual connotation, and generally it represents the more destructive, primitive and egoistic nature of love.

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>>152906357

Form really matters. Five hours might make for an incredibly long movie, but this is television, and in the context of the medium it's a pretty small amount of space to work with.

Ikuhara is a creator who really likes to go into character writing. His best work is filled with entire episodes spent on the motivations and nuances of his characters. That all comes at the expense of the most precious of resources -- running time. To fill out those moments for the whole cast; to prevent them from being underdeveloped sketches.

Certainly, a writer can work within the limitations of a novella and do great work, but that really misses the point of the criticism we're giving.

I'm a faggot for replying seriously to a troll post.

>>152906857
Peach and Sanetoshi are archetypes. They exist as part of the frame story, the same as reincarnation does.
>Kanba descent into darkness
There's no descent. What's important is the revelation that his motivation is the same as Shouma's. He's the other side of the coin. They're both motivated by self sacrifice which is really the culmination of both's character arc right before they burst into flames and shatter. Everything else is typical Ikuhara red herrings. Just because the back half isn't running on hijinks doesn't mean it isn't strategically the same as the first.
I dislike the invisible storm because it's point is made blatantly clear in its first appearance yet it sucks down plenty of run time beating that drum for the whole cour.
>without any real in-world justification
The fate of children bearing the sins of their parents? That was abundantly clear.
>>152906357
Utena has the opposite problem for me in that it strays into redundancy on more than one occasion but the point is it's really quite thorough and plays to the strength of its runtime for the most part by having a large cast.

>>152907630
>Peach and Sanetoshi are archetypes
So was Akio. Characters being embodiments of determinate concepts within the narrative doesn't excuse the lack of characterization. And Kanba's character arc it's clear. It's the execution that's messy and rushed near the end, presumably for the lack of time.
>Everything else is typical Ikuhara red herrings
Why do you say typical, Utena didn't need red herrings, plot twists and cliffhangers every other episode. Only MP did because of its lack of formulaic narrative, and it didn't execute it brilliantly, worse than YKA in fact.
>I dislike the invisible storm because it's point is made blatantly clear in its first appearance yet it sucks down plenty of run time beating that drum for the whole cour.
Because it serves a purpose in the narrative until the end. You figuring out the meaning is irrelevant, you could say the same about any other allegory.
>the fate of children bearing the sins of their parents? That was abundantly clear.
That's the meaning of the symbol. Not the justification within the world of the show for its existence. The coffin is used as a symbol for cutting yourself off from a scary and cruel world where all the childhood's dreams are dead, because that's literally what Utena does when her parents die. The fucking cages? Why does such a gratuitous allegory suddenly exists?

>>152898323
Everyone that has yuri in their name is a bear.

>>152906134
Rolling Girls wasn't shit, though.

>>152908477
It really was.

>>152908477
>>152908922
It really, really was.

>>152908075
>The fucking cages? Why does such a gratuitous allegory suddenly exists?
Because Ikuhara had a boner for Kanba and wanted to give him a redemption no matter what. Everytime someone criticize Kanba's twisted characterization, some fangirl/edgy faggot always post "but the cages man, Kanba saved Shouma and Shouma saved Himari, therefore Kanba saved the Takakuras"

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>>152908477
>Rolling Girls wasn't shit
No no no no no no no.

>>152898096
>yuri
>best anime of any year
Ehm nope!

>>152910903
>implying NTR won't be AOTS
It will make Kuzu no Honkai look like babyshit.

>>152910903
Nice ebin meme hate
But you forgot to link >>>/u/
You fail as a memer

>>152910903
2011 (^:

>>152903762
7
7
4

>>152908477
I really wish it wasn't, but it was, or at best mediocre. It started off strong and looked/sounded great, but it just lacked focus and development. The only things I even remember after the first two episodes were the great concert scene and Chiaya being a space octopus.

>>152913664
>the great concert scene
How did I forget about that?
http://openings.moe/?video=Ending2-RollingGirls
YAMA WOOO KOETE