Not an anime, and mentioned this awhile back on FB & in chat, but saw the Rurouni Kenshin live action movie. It's pretty good, although probably not as good if you're not familiar with the show. A movie + live action accentuates RK's strengths and downplays its weaknesses, IMHO; the problems of the show, especially the first season, is too much damn filler as well as too many opponents who just aren't a credible threat (which is fair enough, actually, most shouldn't be if your character is in the top 5 biggest badasses in Japan... but then you should let the side characters do stuff more often. which alas won't play, you gotta have the main character do most of the stuff. sigh.). A movie condenses things nicely to "okay these people & opponents matter" and demote Yahiko and the like to cameo status. Additionally, live action lends the affair a certain gravitas which animation lacks, at least for me.
On that note... since I just got back from GenCon... I killed some occasional downtime in-between games with both lectures & anime. Didn't actually watch any anime, but went to a few geeky panels (top 10 and bottom 10 anime villains, some silly night court ripoff thing, etc.). One of said panels was Anime Deadliest Warrior, taking the format of the TV-show: examine two characters, look at their movesets, compare the similar ones, then try and argue for who'd win. In other words: Yes, this was the anime DL. So I'll ramble some on it.
They broke down 3 match-ups. First was swordsmen in Kenshin vs. Roro from One Piece. I'm not familiar with One Piece, but it seemed in its own way a sort of fair match-up - Kenshin is kind of hax, so throwing someone from a series with authentic superpowers is probably okay. (Including the superpower of super-ventriloquism to talk despite holding a sword in his mouth and somehow not drooling everywhere.) Because yeah, Kenshin has a theoretically good match-up in a lot of ways - it was pointed out in the ultimate technique section, for example, that the Hiten Mitsurugi ultimate technique is designed to counter a 9-point disabling strike. Well, Roro's ultimate technique apparently involves getting possessed by a demon and swinging 9 swords (which which he can, uh, kill a giraffe w/ a 6 pack stomach??). HMMM. Additionally, though the presenters didn't stress this too much, Roro didn't appear to be the brightest bulb in the yard, getting new techniques because his sword talks to him or something, so knowing Kenshin fights, that means that after they dink around for awhile Kenshin can presumably find some weakness in his style and exploit it. Unfortunately for Kenhin, much like a Middle "spoiling" a Heavy yet still losing, some of Roro's other stuff is just a little too hax. Apparently Roro can cut steel dudes or something and is shown breaking lots of swords at once, can take ridiculous hits and keep going, etc. Also, he majorly wins the "ranged" category - he's got some BS 108-pound cannon move that just sends some force beam that's capable of knocking down walls (dunno what this has to do with swords, but uh sure I guess). Meanwhile the best the Kenshin presenter could come up with was one time where Kenshin basically uses his sword as a golf club to kick up a wave of pebbles & dirt in the direction of his enemy. That might actually work in reality, but it's way weaker here. So yeah, Roro ended up winning the vote, which I can't entirely argue with from a distance.
Second match-up was Nanoha vs. Lina Inverse. Yet another match where I only know half of it, but Lina was awesome enough for me to stick around. Much like DLers hyping alternate forms or "but you can do this at endgame even if you couldn't the whole game!", the Lina presenter actually hyped Lina as skipping casting times on some of her big spells because some later episodes didn't show it... yeah, if she's casting 6 Dragon Slaves in a single episode, I think that's called "we don't want to bore our viewers," nice try. Anyway, I have to say, from what I could gather from the presentation, Lina looked depressingly enough like the loser. A lot of her spells seem subject to gravity and Nanoha apparently fights in the air constantly, Nanoha & her enemies apparently have magic shields up constantly, and Nanoha was even shown interrupting enemy move-name recitals with fast shots herself. Lina's most powerful stuff all has long casting times, and more to the point, while fantastic at destroying scenery & buildings, she curses the comedy side of her show as it's rarely enough vs. non-mooks. So if it isn't interrupted, it's likely just getting shielded anyway. I really don't buy Lina breaking out Giga Slave for anything less than a demon lord, which this isn't. That leaves Ragna Blade as the only shields-piercing spell that's likely to do much in Lina's arsenal... except even that didn't work once in Slayers Try, and more to the point, it's short-range, while Nanoha seems a long-range fighter. From a "perfect AI" sense Nanoha flies around and pelts Lina from range forever while being invincible. ... this isn't to say that I didn't vote for Lina anyway, and so did most of the room (although who knows, maybe others were baking in Giga Slave hype). Just this is clearly a case where Lina's propensity for fighting dirty and trickery comes into play, and assuming that Nanoha is some kind of at least SOMEWHAT naive magical girl, there's presumably a variety of horrible unchivalrous things to do to lure her into range for a killing Ragna Blade.
The third match-up was Gurran Laggan vs. GaoGaiGar. Mood of the room seemed to be that Gurran Laggan autowins vs. anything, but I didn't care about either so left before watching the breakdown.
