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Phantasy Star Online 2 The Animation (TV).


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Vanadise



Joined: 06 Apr 2015
Posts: 500
PostPosted: Sat Jan 16, 2016 2:57 pm Reply with quote
Despite the fact that it's a blatant advertisement and some of the CG is kinda janky, I have to admit that I'm enjoying this show. It makes me laugh, even if sometimes I can't tell whether the dialogue is clever or bad.

I kinda hope that they don't go with the "it's actually real!" angle and that the new girl is really just a total dweeb.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15503
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sat Jan 23, 2016 5:29 am Reply with quote
Episode 3

I have come to a general acceptance of how terrible this show generally is, and it does seem to offer something despite that.

I actually did like the tackling of the subject of using avatars far different to every day self, it has been a topic not touched too much in other game anime.
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xifeng.hu
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Joined: 18 Dec 2014
Posts: 103
Location: Oahu,Hawaii
PostPosted: Mon Jan 25, 2016 11:46 pm Reply with quote
I finally got around to watching episode 2. spoiler[Since Aika was living overseas until recently she couldn't have "legitimately" played PSO2 unless in this alternate world Sega didn't totally forget about the Western release. Though it is possible to play the game in real life outside of Japan, it requires using loopholes (eg. proxy server) and technically it is against the game's ToS so you can be banned at any time for breaking it (though I haven't seen this happen).]
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15503
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sat Jan 30, 2016 5:28 am Reply with quote
Episode 4

With that end I have to say, that this series is all over the place with its plot. Because we finally have spoiler[what looks like proof that the game world can cross over with the real world], and that is actually a bit silly. In some ways you cannot say that it came out of nowhere, there was a bit of hints before, and the episode was kind of hinting at when the group suddenly decide that this might be related to events like cars driving by themselves. But that is ridiculous, actually it was downright stupid info-dump that has no rhyme that they are related at all. What does him acting a bit odd in the game have to do with cases of missing persons and all that? And to help with this odd case of friend, they rope in a young child, elderly men, and a couple that is also looking after their baby, which I would think be a bit irresponsible to make them help, or at least I don't think it feels quite right.

Here I am saying mostly bad things, it really is not too much of a problem now. It is mostly okay when you think of it as more of a case study on games as an entertainment and social device. But that just makes the whole now introducing fantasy elements into it silly. It was an aspect I did not quite liked about the OP, and I guess that might hint at it. But I think it really has turned into a case where the show perhaps should have tried that from the start, and now it feels like they tried to do too many things, and I think undoes what it had been building.

If you want to do an anime about actual culture surrounding a game and its influence on different people, that is fine. If you want to do a fantasy anime where you take the story of the game, and present it to an audience that could take that with them into playing that game, that is also fine but you probably should not do the first one too. Maybe I am being a bit melodramatic though.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15503
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 4:21 am Reply with quote
Episode 5

The plot reveal is kind of growing on me now, which I guess is owed by the actions of the girl from the other world.

The action scene of the episode was pretty cool too.... except the frame rate was absolutely horrid. It kind of feels like the scene was not designed to have such low changes of frames, which kind of made it worse than if it was made with the limitations in mind.

I kind of keeping having this weird relationship with this show where I will be angry at it, but then enjoy the innocent like charm. Although the preview shows that next week is a onsen episode, with the preview show girls in the hot spring. That is not very charming.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15503
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sat Feb 20, 2016 8:05 am Reply with quote
Episode 6

It happened. I am no longer so weirded and embarrassed about the ED song that I cannot watch it, instead kind of enjoyed it. I imagine this is some form of brainwashing.

It is like this anime is trying to say something about the story of dropping academics from playing too much video games as I have been in the middle of exams and playing video games each night.

Predicted and feel very happy in doing so over the in game bath scene.
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Stark700



Joined: 30 Jan 2012
Posts: 11762
Location: Earth
PostPosted: Sat Mar 19, 2016 1:51 am Reply with quote
Episode 10:

So I wonder if Rina's ability to manifest her weapons from the PSO2 world into the real world is possible is when she is stressed or she can do it on her own will? Eh weird episode. It does set up for the the final two with that cliffhanger though. And Suzuki can also look quite cute when she is dressed up in maid style outfits.

I heard Maito is pretty OP in this show. Wonder why they showed up this late in the series.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15503
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sat Mar 19, 2016 6:49 am Reply with quote
Stark700 wrote:
I heard Maito is pretty OP in this show. Wonder why they showed up this late in the series.

Well the extra info the show provided was that she used to be a Darker, a high level one, and she came back from it. Could be setting a precedent for it happening in the show.

Itsuki going in a blue "blur" as a wheel made me think he looked suspiciously like another Sega character.
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Stark700



Joined: 30 Jan 2012
Posts: 11762
Location: Earth
PostPosted: Sat Apr 02, 2016 1:46 am Reply with quote
Episode 13 (finale):

Well, I finished the show today and honestly, I'm not sure how to feel about it. A good portion of the finale had action but also some of the usual gimmicky stuff going on outside in real world. The battle itself was okay but the way it was resolved was rather predictable.

I didn't feel a strong connection between Itsuki and Reina although I think they did have the closest connection in the series. Suzuki and Itsuki though?...their chemistry just felt odd almost the entire show. So yeah, my impressions of the series overall is kinda meh in the end.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15503
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sat Apr 02, 2016 4:07 am Reply with quote
Episode 13 (finale)

My opinion on the show is it is bad, but kind of gloriously so. When you kind of get used to it there is some sort of charm that makes it so bad it is actually good. It starts off as a thinly veiled ad for a game, and the "quality" just continues from there. Lets look at the plot of the series. You can maybe guess that there is going to be some crossover of game world and real world, but this just happens so slowly and with hints that are both too little and way too obvious that it actually becomes a bit laughable when it is like the show actually finally starts near the end of the series with making more than just people playing games.

I have said it before, and I think that they might have actually done something interesting if they decided not to do that, if they actually totally made it about a real game and made stories only about things this real game could do. For example it touched on the interesting topic of people playing game avatars that are even a different gender to their real self, which is kind of cool and only lightly touched by other game anime. On that theme though it does become a little unfortunate when she switches over, but at least they kept SORO even at the end in spirit. They made the show more standard with the other plot, but also not as focused. Although it would not have stopped it from being bad.

Of course the friend character was wearing the maid uniform when he was making an entrance, you could see it happening, it was stupid, but still I thought it funny. As a rating I go with Not really good (4/10). It might be even lower, but I think it somehow proves to not actually be a total waste of time, I don't really regret watching this. Also kind of a fan of the female love interest being the senpai rather than the usual other way around. Why no romance at the end?!
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15503
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Mon Oct 07, 2019 10:22 pm Reply with quote
Phantasy Star Online 2: Episode Oracle, Episode 1

I probably should create a discussion just for this, it seems to have some differences to the other Phantasy Star Online 2 anime, but I kind of doubt that I am going to talk about it enough for me to warrant an actual discussion. This version seems to not have the being a game thing, but also seems a little gamey so far, and much darker. Actually made me swear when suddenly we see that a cute elf girl gspoiler[ot decapitated with us shown her head on the ground]. First series was kind of young audience friendly, but suddenly it is like Terra Formars or something.
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Ezodagrom



Joined: 10 Mar 2019
Posts: 3
PostPosted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 10:19 am Reply with quote
DuskyPredator wrote:
it seems to have some differences to the other Phantasy Star Online 2 anime

Episode Oracle is pretty much adapting the actual game's story, it's covering the base game's "Episode 1" story and the following 2 expansions, "Episode 2" and "Episode 3", while the previous anime was just a side story that took place during a 2 years timeskip between the "Episode 3" and "Episode 4" expansions.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15503
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Tue Mar 31, 2020 12:17 am Reply with quote
Phantasy Star Online 2: Episode Oracle, Episode 25 (Finale)

Thank god it is over. Will be honest that there is a good chance I was not always paying attention the most well, because I was awfully confused when certain character appeared and did not properly understand where they fit into everything. Some of this was actually a part of the story and I think made it worse, when Ash just woke up and reality changed, he met a kouhai that knew him, but he did not even know what race she was. I think it was a clear example of what would have been an update in the game, adding in another player race, but was just kind of confusing and traits like that race did not really even mean anything in the scheme of things. After that Ash acts like he was totally normal with a relationship of a person he did not know at all.

That weird change came with the most confusing element of the show in general, time travel. Like time travel can be confusing in the best of times, and generally I have little trouble with things like paradoxes, but for me this show was kind of different. It mostly felt like an excuse to do flashback arcs of characters, and to change things that already happened. This despite the fact that Ash kept being told he was not to interfere with anything in the past, but he did it pretty much every single time, to the point it seemed silly that his guide to time travel would even let him near important events if he was just going to change things every single time. With the whole feeling that Ash's reality could be changed like earlier said an entirely new race, it just felt like to me that these were not even the versions of the people that he knew, and he was not the Ash that they knew. Unless there was some fusion with his alternate self that gave memories that I don't ever remember given. To me it just felt really weird that reality and connections in the show later did not match what we watched earlier.

I in general think the show was also pretty boring, with Ash's personality being something like standard hero #3, his best friend being standard hype man who calls you partner #2 like some sort of NPC male friend in a dating sim. Stuff happens, and I am sure the game mechanics get explained as story world building, but it just became kind of boring. There are things like the start of the series showing that they require a transport ship to take them to places, and you have one story beat like a character stealing one to run away, but a good majority of the time there does not feel like a good explanation how they get to places between scenes, unless they are just teleporting.

There were a bunch of characters with somewhat diverse characteristics, but it did often just feel like at times they were maybe overdone written to be weird and different, like the robot girl with split personality and wants to fight everyone, idols, weird mysterious characters and over the top villains (without actually being fun). It also feels kind of weird that Ash does not seem to have any history before the start of the series, and although some plot is made about him being an artificial person or a clone or something, it just felt weird that this important person that just changes everything even goes into the history of others, and outside a supposed spooky experiment thing, he apparently had no connection with anyone before the show started.

My rating is the same as the other series, Not really good (4/10), where maybe while that version was technically worse, it was at least fun and did not make me feel isolated from sudden reality shifts. Also no dancing birds.
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