Fushigi Yugi
So, I just finished watching Fushigi Yugi. It's definitely an older anime, with a more traditional style--almost a more serious and delicately-crafted Dragonball Z with more of an appeal for girls (but still basically an action show despite all the emotional content). I thought the show did best when it was focusing on action, and whenever it started to get weepy I'd kind of roll my eyes and wait for that part to pass. :-) And it's not that I'm opposed to emotion in shows--on the contrary, how else I could I have loved Honey and Clover so much? No, the weepy bits of Fushigi Yugi were just not that great. :-)
Overall I'd give it like a 5.5 out of 10. Almost everybody has seen it, I think, so I think in a way that makes it worth watching just so you can bond over it with other people. And it's not bad. I thought the ending was pretty decent, and the beginning was pretty strong. It got a little dull about 3/4 of the way through, but picked up pretty well in the last 1/8th or so.
One great thing about the series is that you get like 6 to 8 episodes per disc! They didn't fill the discs up with silly extra features or anything, they just put more actual episodes on them, which is soooo much better than the discs for any other series I've watched. I mean, I think I've even heard of series where they only put 1 or 2 episodes per disc...Fushigi Yugi is positive proof that nobody actually needs to do that.
Still, even with all those episodes per disc, there were something like 8 discs. It's definitely not a short series! It didn't feel all that long, though, somehow. Perhaps it's that since there were so many episodes per disc, I would watch a lot of episodes at once! So it didn't take all that many sessions of watching to finish it. :-)
Anyhow, glad to have seen it, but really glad to be going on to something else now--maybe even some normal movies or TV series for a little while, taking a little break from anime. Well, except for the Azumanga Daoih that justdave lent me--I do want to watch that! :-) So I guess it won't be a total break. :-)
-Max
Overall I'd give it like a 5.5 out of 10. Almost everybody has seen it, I think, so I think in a way that makes it worth watching just so you can bond over it with other people. And it's not bad. I thought the ending was pretty decent, and the beginning was pretty strong. It got a little dull about 3/4 of the way through, but picked up pretty well in the last 1/8th or so.
One great thing about the series is that you get like 6 to 8 episodes per disc! They didn't fill the discs up with silly extra features or anything, they just put more actual episodes on them, which is soooo much better than the discs for any other series I've watched. I mean, I think I've even heard of series where they only put 1 or 2 episodes per disc...Fushigi Yugi is positive proof that nobody actually needs to do that.
Still, even with all those episodes per disc, there were something like 8 discs. It's definitely not a short series! It didn't feel all that long, though, somehow. Perhaps it's that since there were so many episodes per disc, I would watch a lot of episodes at once! So it didn't take all that many sessions of watching to finish it. :-)
Anyhow, glad to have seen it, but really glad to be going on to something else now--maybe even some normal movies or TV series for a little while, taking a little break from anime. Well, except for the Azumanga Daoih that justdave lent me--I do want to watch that! :-) So I guess it won't be a total break. :-)
-Max