D&D General D&D vs. Anime

[Charlaquin]

Sword Art Online should still be somewhat current, too.

I’ve only heard bad things about that one. Though I have heard the abridged series for it is quite good.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I’ve only heard bad things about that one. Though I have heard the abridged series for it is quite good.

So I've tried it twice: once form the beginning, and once starting in season 3 (I think? Alicization for those who know and wish to correct me).

From the beginning: I didn't bother with episode 2. The main character is just way to bland. His entire characterization is "he's good at video games and doesn't express emotion." The prevalence of this kind of character is why I'm not a big anime fan in general, but he's just so... basic. I didn't care enough to learn what happens to him.

Jumping into the middle: it was pretty good. Not the coolest thing ever, but a decent little fantasy show with a neat mystery and some interesting side characters (the MC is still dull as rocks but the story seems to know that this time) and good action. The fact that everyone knows they're in a universe that plays by game rules is just a nice little twist, though I'm not sure it adds to the story. It sure doesn't get in the way.

 

[MarkB]

I’ve only heard bad things about that one. Though I have heard the abridged series for it is quite good.

I enjoyed a lot of its first couple of seasons, but it went downhill. The major annoyance was introducing a strong female co-star for the first half of the story, but then reducing her first to a damsel in distress, then merely an occasional background character.

 

[Lylandra]

The best parts of SAO are the music and the abridged series. The first few episodes were okay, but the main character is bland, as you said, as he is the typical light novel self insert power fantasy boy.

 

[Campbell]

I recommend staying away from Sword Art Online. It's pretty much the worst shonen series I have ever seen. One note characters with no real motivations, pointless fights, and mustache twirling villains that do not relate to the protagonist in any meaningful way. It's like a really bad D&D game.

At it's best shonen anime is about deeply emotive storytelling where fights are reflective of inner conflicts and conflicts between characters. Sword Art has no heart.

 

[Charlaquin]

I recommend staying away from Sword Art Online. It's pretty much the worst shonen series I have ever seen. One note characters with no real motivations, pointless fights, and mustache twirling villains that do not relate to the protagonist in any meaningful way. It's like a really bad D&D game.

At it's best shonen anime is about deeply emotive storytelling where fights are reflective of inner conflicts and conflicts between characters. Sword Art has no heart.

The impression I get is that SAO has a lot of promising ideas that it utterly fails to execute on in any meaningful or even interesting way. Which as I understand it is why the abridged series is pretty well liked, as in addition to parodying the original, it also executes the concepts the series sold itself on much more competently. I also watched a video by a YouTuber called Mother’s Basement on how they would fix the arc that’s generally considered the worst one, and I thought that sounded pretty cool.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I watched some animes for the 80's, for example Mazinger Z, and in the 90's but I never bought manga. My cousin did, Appleseed. For a time Superman was not my cup of tea, too powerful, like those boring Mary Sue, but twenty pages of a Superman comic has got more plot than 20 episodes of Dragon Ball Z. In the begining Dragon Ball may be fun, like a parody, but since Picolo started to become annoying. Dragon ball was training and fighting against villains, and later a new stronger enemy.

Sometimes we have bought RPGs sourcebooks for the fluff/lore/background, but today we have got lot of free fluff thanks fandom wikis. I wonder how we could recycle those ideas for our own games.

But anime heroes are too powerful for D&D standard, even playable characters from action RPGs.

Have you wondered anytime how would be D&D setting created by Japanese, Korean and Chinese publishers? I guess the kemonomimi ("animal ears") would be a PC race.

 

[Minigiant]

My Saturday game team name is the Ginyu Force.
But they are closer to Konosuba with 3 Aquas.

 

[Bagpuss]

I like both, but I'd say my preference in anime and manga is generally more towards the sci-fi ones, not a huge fan of fantasy anime. In D&D style fantasy I prefer a more grounded realistic style of play game gets silly for me after about 5th level when it starts being more like a superhero game I lose interest. There are RPGs that do the style of fantasy I prefer better.

 

[TheSword]

There’s a big difference between watching the odd dubbed studio Ghibli and being a fan of anime.

The biggest tension I’ve ever seen in our group, was when a new player who was one of the latter joined with a group comprised of the further. He had fundamentally different expectation about what was reasonable and possible in our games. What fitted and what didn’t.

I’ve told too many times, the story of his desire to play a giant wolf riding pirate in my low magic skull and shackles campaign. I’m told One Piece is a thing and that it features such things but it got short shrift from me. Fundamentally different expectations within the same group cause problems.

The only non-studio Ghibli I liked was Last Exile, which really was excellent.