Ajin: Demi-Human

[MFauli]

Ajin are humans that cannot die. Seventeen years ago, they first appeared on a battlefield in Africa. From then on, more of their kind are discovered within the human society. Their rarity in appearance means that, for experimental purposes, the government will generously reward anyone who captures one. In the present day, for what a certain high school student expects to be a typical summer holiday, his life is about to turn unexpected...

Wtf, first two episodes are out already! I only keep track of HorribleSubs, ugh. Havent yet watched it, but this was my most looked forward to anime of the season. I doubt that it´ll be as great as Boku dake ga inai Machi, but Im still curious. Will comment later.

[MFauli]

episode 2 is out
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It´s interesting to watch, that´s for sure. I´m glad Kaito exists, ´cause the hero himself is a bit plain.

I wonder if that shadow creature is his ability or if it´s some sort of spirit that´s taken the hero as a vessel to preside in. So far I´d go with that it is a manifestation of his subsconsciousness, carrying out his will. That´s what the "I want to pee"-scene at the end imo hints at. But then again we have this flashback scene with his sister, where it looks as if the shadow creature approaches the hero from the outside and just then joins him. Weird.

And on a sidenote: Aww, pure wannabe-rapists didnt get to bang the hot school girl

[David75]

I'm waiting for underwater. I guess I won't be able to follow the thread due to spoilers as they will lag behind speedsubs.

But for your information, they release in HEVC, main10 profile, with high bitrate average. That's why the image looked so clean even in speedy/detailed/low light scenes. There are 20mbits/s spikes in the intro.
That's great, because that means it's almost as good as an high quality raw, without the weight.
And my mid-highend 2008 processor deals with it easily.

As for my impressions of ep1, they are in the season start thread.

[MFauli]

episode 3 is out
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Nobody but David and me watching this? It´s easily contender for the #2 of this season (undisputed #1 is Boku dake ga inai Machi, contending #2 is Dimension W).

The only thing really hurting this anime is the wooden animation style, that´s definitely a bit worse than Knights of Shidonia. It sucks, because the story is interesting and the friendship between the hero and his human friend is exciting to follow. On one hand, you have this rather timid, but immortal hero, on the other hand, you have this brave friend, that is in constant danger of truly dying.

Concept-wise, I feel like this is a more mature version of Tokyo Ghoul, going deeper into the psychological effects of these events, rather than focusing on stereotypical anime-emo-angst full of nonsensical battles.

The two things I´m looking forward to: The hero getting in contact with that old man, who I assume is a experienced ajin himself. And finding out about Kaito´s continued position in this story. Right now he´s in danger of becoming the typical trigger-sacrifice, so that the hero "awakens" in whatever way. Since I like Kaito, I hope I´m wrong here.

[shinta|hikari]

Been watching this earlier than you guys because of the raws.

I have no frigging idea why they used 3D art for this.

When cute cop girl died, I thought, "No way they're gonna kill such a cute girl. She's gonna getup and fight back with her own shadow clone. If she doesn't revive, props to the author for guts." Then they confirmed all that in the preview. Who the hell was stupid enough to ruin such an awesome cliffhanger like that?

[David75]

I like some scenes and atmospheres... And then some others truly feel awful because of the totally unnatural poses and attitudes.
3D does a great job for everything cars and setting. Nice lighting too most of the time.
But it's just painful to watch 3D people.
I think the tool gets very nice, in some scenes like in Sidonia it does marvels, but the art directors really need to work those everyday life scenes...

As for the scenario, well I'm not sure the ghost fighters/killers are a good idea. Because they justify the fear people have towards demi-humans. And now we know it's possible to control them.
I'd rather have demi-humans without those entities, but I'm not the writer, so I just have to shut up and watch, or drop the show.

As for the preview, well I hate previews for a good reason and that is one of the worst example in a good while.
Even if we had a feeling she and her superior are demi-humans, their ghost being controlled by their 'mint tabs', it's still silly to spoil a cliffhanger that much I agree.

[shinta|hikari]

That's a nonsensical way of discriminating against Ajins though. It's like saying people with military training should be jailed because they are a danger to normal civilians who cannot defend against them should they decide to attack. There are also Ajin cops, so the analogy is more accurate than you think. Power =! Immorality.

[MFauli]

just for the future: It´d be nice not to talk about the preview in here. This is a story-heavy anime and it kinda ruins it when people spoil what´s coming. :/ Ofc you can keep talking about it, then I´ll have to leave though.

[shinta|hikari]

I'll just mark it with a preview tag. It's not like I want to spoil people.

[David75]

That's a nonsensical way of discriminating against Ajins though. It's like saying people with military training should be jailed because they are a danger to normal civilians who cannot defend against them should they decide to attack. There are also Ajin cops, so the analogy is more accurate than you think. Power =! Immorality.

I agree. But we get to see that irrationnal behaviour all the time. So this time I'd rather have had something more subtle. But that's not the road taken...

As for previews, they are not spoilers technically. Just that this time, the material itself was spoilers... I'll try to be careful next time

[MFauli]

episode 4 is out
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Hm. Tbh, this is a bit too close to Tokyo Ghoul at the moment. A bit less emo hero, choppier animation. And that old guy ajin is a complete look-alike of the old guy in TG, too.
And I hate how every scene that one guy is swallowing his pills. We got it. He has to take them for whatever reasons. Now shut up.

Had to laugh when Nagai was wandering the street, almost dying from thirst, because apparently the motorbike ran out of gas. Well, Kai isn´t an ajin ... and he´s got a lot longer to walk. Guess he´ll die from thirst :P

[MFauli]

episode 5 is out
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oh god oh god oh god!

ok, fuck this bs, this is now officially the least realistic, least believable anime out there. No matter how much you want to stay "good", when these bastards go after your teeth with an electric drill with the only goal to inflict "as much pain as possible", you KILL THEM. Fucks sake! Oh my god, I´m only halfway through the episode, but my teeth hurt from just watching that. Fuck fuck fuck.

Edit: Yeah, that old guy is super freaking cool. Using his ajin powers in a reasonable way, without any flash special moves. And I guess Nagai is a "failure" because of his whiny nature.

[shinta|hikari]

Nagai is a failure because he didn't come to hate humanity even after the torture.

[MasterOfMoogles]

I just caught up on this.
Really enjoying it so far, even though a bit of the CG is questionable.

Very curious about Hatman's motives. He wants to build a squad of ajin to fight against humanity or something? He seems to have overestimated his ability to twist Nagai to his whims.

I've never been a huge fan of the "government does evil experiments" plot. It could have been interesting if they realized that horrible experiments on the people with superpowers is a bad idea. Why not just make friends?
If ajin were treated like celebrities, then you wouldn't even have this stupid manhunt business, and more of them would come forward.

[shinta|hikari]

You severely overestimate humans if you think that is possible. Humans treat fellow humans like shit just because they are a little different. Treating an immortal being that can pawn them with shadow clones well is a practical impossibility, especially because the Ajins are an extreme minority.

If they number in the thousands, then that's another story.

Then again, Ajins would just eliminate the human race if that were the case.

[David75]

Contrary to Fauli, I think the torture added a new path to the story. I'm not a fan of the idea, but it does mesh well with the show so far. And yes, the reactions you got are what the director/scenarist are after.
As for the experiments, well they do not even know about black matter ghosts yet.
If they knew about it, they would freak out even more than they do now....

[MFauli]

Well, sure it opened a new story path - I just don´t think anybody could have his teeth shredded to bits via drill and NOT hate at least those individual human beings. Actually, I´d doubt that any human being would even let it get this far if he/she had the ability to stop it. It´s just too much pain. Most of us know how much pain teeth can produce, and that´s with just a regular problem. Now imagine a drill shattering your teeth into raw bits. No, you cannot even imagine that, because it is unimaginable.

Btw. it really is remarkable how similiar this anime is to Tokyo Ghoul. Down to the whole torture scene. But Ajin is still infinitely better, more subdue, still more believable.

[Harima Kenji]

Just picking up on this series, but I'm wondering what fansub I should go for. I assume the series is done now, so the quality subbers have had plenty of time to catch up. I've seen too many v3 of some of the episodes to trust in the quality of the subs (v4 of the deadfish episode 1 still had the ED karaoke out of sinc..)

[David75]

Underwater was fine, I mean after sometime you get used to fill in the blanks, or understand what you need to.
And it's not like détails matter that much in that show.

[MFauli]

Binged the last 5 episodes. Will there be a second season?

Anyway, I will say this: The plot had the right balance of realism and sympathy. Its groundedness in reality wasn´t as off-putting as for Terror in Resonance. But it also was far from the ridiculous anime-stereotypism of Tokyo Ghoul. What hurts this anime, ultimately, is the horrendous cgi-animation. WHY? Not only did it ruin certain finer animations (omg, the lauhing animation of that boy towards the end!), it also was so low frame. Like playing a video game at 15 frames per second. Wtf.

Still, we got an interesting first season and I´d love to see more.

Most importantly: This anime might just have the most awsome old guy-character of all times. Usually, old men in anime are boring "wise guys" or they´re arrogant, overconfident idiots. Not Satou-san. He was old, but his attitude was that of a young man. His planning was great, and his fighting abilities fantastic. And his "Do you know why I play video games on highest difficulty? ´Cause it´s more fun that way!" line was super nice