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Microbry - Sketches and Reviews
12 November 2008 @ 05:15 pm
Emru Townsend died from leukemia yesterday.
I'm sure most people reading this wouldn't have known Emru, which is a real shame.
From his own capsule bio:
Emru Townsend sees the connections between Japanese and American animation, stop-motion and CGI, the art and the industry, the fiercely independent and the relentlessly commercial. He has been preaching his Unified Animation Theory worldview since 1989, and is the founding editor of fps.
Back then, I was a starry-eyed would-be animator going to film/animation school who regularly attended international animation festival screenings, loved works from the Disney, Warner Brothers, Fleischer, and other domestic studios, and was a big anime junkie nuts overv Miyazaki and working on a collaborative fan translation of one of Studio Ghibli's latest works, Omohide Poro Poro (aka Only Yesterday). In those days (and while less so, still some today), anime was largely looked down on by the US animation old guard and at the same time, anime fans largely looked down on most other animation, a diametric opposition that I did my best to fight against from both sides. Neither side seemed to be willing to look much at the merits of what the other one offered, or were even aware at times that such merits existed, or of what each had in common.
When Emru invited me to write for his new 'zine, I jumped at the chance (I'd already done some guest articles before for the old Animag and V-Max mags of questionable quality), and did a column on the unified animation appreciation theme titled "Cel Compositions" for the initial couple of issues, along with one or two reviews (I believe the Streamline dub of Megazone 23 part 1 was one of them). Emru's view of animation, its history, and its potential was largely similar to my own, and it was refreshing to talk to him about the works that excited us.
After a couple of issues, a number of things occured that shook my worldview of anime and of how I felt it was neccessary to analyze it, and I lost contact with Emru while I was working it all out. On top of this, my 2D animation-related career path hit a dead end and my enthusiasm for US-produced commercial animation largely dried up with it (a lot of it frustration with the idea that animated feature works had to all be musicals to be sucessful). I remember when I was in film animation school, I had seen the direction 3D CG animation and cel-shading were taking things, and could see the writing on the wall for the traditional commercial animation industry even back then (but wasn't able to do much myself to anticipate it skill-wise), even if most of my colleagues and teachers then were unable to see CG with no more potential than as a clunky-looking, mechanically moving novelty, and bemoaning this to Emru on at least one occassion.
I switched mostly to full-on appreciation of anime and manga and increased my intake of shows fresh from Japan in raw Japanese, widening my taste for various genres within the medium so as to fill part of a craving for variety and perspective (lately a new season can have over 30 new anime programs which widely range in material aimed at a variety of discreet demographics), and became less focused on the works of Studio Ghibli and artsier productions. I lost touch with Emru as I stopped being involved in the Miyazaki list and had nothing I really felt like contributing to the magazine. I kept collecting FPS for a while, but it disappeared from the newsstands and I feared it had met the end of its run. Searches on the web didn't yield much, it was almost like the magazine never existed.
Years later, in 2005, I was looking FPS up again and discovered it had in fact come back as a web-zine and had been running again for a while, still under Emru, of course. I had changed emails twice since I last talked with him, and had lost his contact info, so the site allowed me to find his new contact info and I sent him a message to try to catch up (it turned out he had in fact tried to contact me when the magazine resumed, but couldn't find my current email info). We had a brief exchange and he asked me if I'd like to write for FPS again, even as just a blogger for the site. I told him I'd think about it but that I wasn't as much an animation generalist as I used to be.
Here's part of his kind reply, the second to last time I heard from him:
If anyone else said they were drifting into the "hardcore otaku scene," I wouldn't be interested. But your writing has always been keenly analytical, which is what I'm most interested in. If you'd like to contribute, even as a blogger, you'd be most welcome.
We exchanged a few mails but his last reply in December of 2005 got lost in the holiday message shuffle and I never really thought of anything to contribute, so I never got back in touch again, sadly. For a while FPS's site was pretty inactive, then it switched more to group blogging effort and started to move again. Still, I just wasn't as into independent animation and non-anime animation as I used to be, so I didn't keep close tabs on it.
Anime News Network had apparently reported on Emru's condition twice previously, but I missed it as the headlines were vague and didn't refer to him by name. It was only this latest ANN post there that alerted me to the matter, after the fact. :( He apparently even had a blog in which he documented his fight with the cancer, the effort to get the needed marrow transplant, the successful finding of a matching donor, and the loss of when the transplant failed to do any good.
I've been upset, sad, and angry all day today. To honor him, I watched the three shorts today that were most recently linked to on the FPS site.
The first (from Australia) The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello is a dark, gothic work done in silohuettes similar to the works of Lotte Reiniger (The Adventures of Prince Achmed) mashed up with Edward Gorey.
The other two are two Canadian National Film Board works linked to here :
http://www3.nfb.ca/webextension/get-anim
Flutter by Howie Shia is a nice, atmospheric piece while At Home with Mrs. Hen is more a domestic comedy or moral lesson, perhaps?
I'll probably go out of my way to find some other diverse animated works from around the world or dig out some I haven't watched in a while from my own collection again. Emru may have been a casual net acquaintance, but this loss has affected me profoundly. I wish I had tried to get back in touch again.
(Edit: I mistakenly thought the first one was Canadian, too--thanks to Tamu Townsend for the correction.)
03 November 2008 @ 02:36 pm
The new season's been pretty overwhelming. There's a huge number of shows as usual for fall and spring seasons, and while the ratio of good ones is quite high, the range of genres is somewhat narrow in scope this time. I'm also lagging behind evaluating a couple of shows as keepers or not, such as Kurogane no Linebarrel, which toes the line between good 80's mecha homage and bad cliche.
I'm holding off from blogging about the season for now. I may just skip it as my enthusiasm for anime-blogging took a big dip recently for various reasons. If anyone actually wants to know my opinion of any given series in progress or completed, let me know, though.
In the meantime, let me refer you to my roommate's post about the fall season. I agree pretty much with everything he says on the shows (although I'd rate ToraDora! above Hyakko and my ordering might differ a little) except for Box of Goblins, which looks like it has potential (haven't watched it yet though).
I'm holding off from blogging about the season for now. I may just skip it as my enthusiasm for anime-blogging took a big dip recently for various reasons. If anyone actually wants to know my opinion of any given series in progress or completed, let me know, though.
In the meantime, let me refer you to my roommate's post about the fall season. I agree pretty much with everything he says on the shows (although I'd rate ToraDora! above Hyakko and my ordering might differ a little) except for Box of Goblins, which looks like it has potential (haven't watched it yet though).
26 September 2008 @ 05:41 pm
I've linked to this blog a few places including on my new facebook profile, so it's possible there's some new blood wondering what this thing's all about, and of course I haven't updated in a good while. So I'll take this one in a couple of parts: a quick intro, then a minor update on what's been up.
I've got a couple of blogs, this one is where I generally shoot the breeze about what shows (mostly anime airing in Japan or recently aired there) I'm following or catching up on and anything else media-wise that's caught my interest. Usually it's all pretty geeky stuff. I experimented a bit earlier with posting sketches here in an effort to get myself drawing and modeling again more, but that fizzled a while back. But I haven't abandoned the possibility and have a new wacom Bamboo tablet to play with and some modeling projects I've been meaning to get back to, so that sort of stuff *might* pop up here again later or on my Flickr page. Mostly I'm interested in developing some new toy ideas, being both somewhat eccentric toy collector as well as having worked on designing a few myself for former toy company Palisades Toys. As such, I tend to more actively post on my toy collecting blog,![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
rockettubes which you might enjoy for a dose of 70's and 80's toy geek nostalgia if that's your thing. As for the anime, I've tried to list all the stuff I've watched and am watching on MyAnimeList but with well over a thousand anime series and movies under my belt and usually a couple dozen in progress at any given time, it's hard to keep track, let alone when I hit something obscure that the list doesn't seem to recognize as existant, or when I've forgotten one or two along the way, heh.
I don't tend to get into philosophical, religious, or political discussions here too much, as that's more what I like to keep to a more private blog which I've admittedly avoided updating for about a year or something now (I won't link it here, but I'll consider one-on-one requests, usually after a "are you really sure?" reply...). I figure a lot of folks that read this don't really want to hear rantings from an annoyed far-left atheist transhumanist, on a review-type blog anyway. :P But that doesn't mean it won't creep in from time to time, such as when I finished reading Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale.
Let's see, so yeah, I've bounced around doing art stuff and testing stuff, and haven't quite "found my true calling" yet. I do have some plans to get into independent toy design in the next couple of years, but that's something I'll take at my own pace. Currently I work as a software test engineer for Excell Data on assignment to a lab at Microsoft. I like it, definitely a lot less crazy than my usual testing jobs in the game industry in the past. I'm expecting to start taking new classes this or next quarter, though I haven't decided yet to focus on computer skills or art skills. We'll see. That's what I get for having genes from a programmer mixed with an artist/musician/doll collector. It's confusing, I tell you! ;D
So returning to the subject of this journal at hand, anime-wise the Summer season is just wrapping up. I've mostly been following Macross Frontier (just finished and still digesting it!) and Code Geass R2, and catching up on a few things here and there. Like Nodame Cantibile, which is really fun for anyone who's ever played in an orchestra before, as it's about a young would-be conductor and pianist, but far, far funnier as comedy than it has any right to be... :D
Oh, I am a little curious about a US television series called The Mentalist. I should try and track that down.
There's some other stuff I want to write about and update on, not to mention have my post-series Macross thoughts, but I'll get back to it later. More to come then, I guess...
I've got a couple of blogs, this one is where I generally shoot the breeze about what shows (mostly anime airing in Japan or recently aired there) I'm following or catching up on and anything else media-wise that's caught my interest. Usually it's all pretty geeky stuff. I experimented a bit earlier with posting sketches here in an effort to get myself drawing and modeling again more, but that fizzled a while back. But I haven't abandoned the possibility and have a new wacom Bamboo tablet to play with and some modeling projects I've been meaning to get back to, so that sort of stuff *might* pop up here again later or on my Flickr page. Mostly I'm interested in developing some new toy ideas, being both somewhat eccentric toy collector as well as having worked on designing a few myself for former toy company Palisades Toys. As such, I tend to more actively post on my toy collecting blog,
rockettubes which you might enjoy for a dose of 70's and 80's toy geek nostalgia if that's your thing. As for the anime, I've tried to list all the stuff I've watched and am watching on MyAnimeList but with well over a thousand anime series and movies under my belt and usually a couple dozen in progress at any given time, it's hard to keep track, let alone when I hit something obscure that the list doesn't seem to recognize as existant, or when I've forgotten one or two along the way, heh. I don't tend to get into philosophical, religious, or political discussions here too much, as that's more what I like to keep to a more private blog which I've admittedly avoided updating for about a year or something now (I won't link it here, but I'll consider one-on-one requests, usually after a "are you really sure?" reply...). I figure a lot of folks that read this don't really want to hear rantings from an annoyed far-left atheist transhumanist, on a review-type blog anyway. :P But that doesn't mean it won't creep in from time to time, such as when I finished reading Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale.
Let's see, so yeah, I've bounced around doing art stuff and testing stuff, and haven't quite "found my true calling" yet. I do have some plans to get into independent toy design in the next couple of years, but that's something I'll take at my own pace. Currently I work as a software test engineer for Excell Data on assignment to a lab at Microsoft. I like it, definitely a lot less crazy than my usual testing jobs in the game industry in the past. I'm expecting to start taking new classes this or next quarter, though I haven't decided yet to focus on computer skills or art skills. We'll see. That's what I get for having genes from a programmer mixed with an artist/musician/doll collector. It's confusing, I tell you! ;D
So returning to the subject of this journal at hand, anime-wise the Summer season is just wrapping up. I've mostly been following Macross Frontier (just finished and still digesting it!) and Code Geass R2, and catching up on a few things here and there. Like Nodame Cantibile, which is really fun for anyone who's ever played in an orchestra before, as it's about a young would-be conductor and pianist, but far, far funnier as comedy than it has any right to be... :D
Oh, I am a little curious about a US television series called The Mentalist. I should try and track that down.
There's some other stuff I want to write about and update on, not to mention have my post-series Macross thoughts, but I'll get back to it later. More to come then, I guess...
07 August 2008 @ 02:20 pm
06 August 2008 @ 03:35 pm
Still haven't felt like doing much more anime blogging lately, though I found three more good shows: Birdy the Mighty turned out to be a pretty good update on the original, with an interesting production design for the SF elements although the male lead is a little lacking so far, Natsume Yuujinchou is yet another good Brains Base series, and Detroit Metal City is just wonderfully wrong featuring a uber-popular KISS-inspired metal band with over-the-top songs about murder and rape whose popular lead is actually really a mild-mannered pale looking nerd who only really wants to succeed on his own as an independent solo folk song guitarist--but falls victim to his own exaggerated reputation and the out-of-control split personality he's formed as a result of his band character.
In other news, Yen Press has started a manga magazine called Yen Plus that just popped up on the stands around here, and Higurashi is being serialized in it! The magazine really impressed me, the first worthwhile manga magazine I've seen in English in ages. 2/3 of it are manga from SquareEnix, the other third are OEL manga and Korean Manwha. Of the Sqeenix manga, all but one of them are tied to shows I've liked...Bamboo Blade (I hope it has the Macross DYRL reference that was in the anime version!) which is an unusual kendo club comedy, Nabari no Ou which is a lightly Yaoi-ish contemporary ninja drama, Higurashi--which I'll get back to in a moment, Sumomomo Momomo which is the one I didn't care for the anime of, but was still a funny enough read, I'll grant it, and Soul Eater. Soul Eater is a pretty fun shounen action series with a Tim Burtonesque flair that I really liked the design of main heroine (Maka) in the anime...the manga character design is totally different at first though and is almost completely at odds with how she currently looks in the later manga and anime--the current version is lanky, angular and somewhat masculine with a gawkish appearance, while the early manga version is more a typical cutesy puffy moe little girl sort. I don't mind it so much, I have more than my share of moe and/or loli type favorites out there (I blame Pioneer and shoujo anime), but I can see why the artist grew her out of it... the "real" Maka is just simply badass...
The OEL/Manwha portion is a mixed bag. I hated the first OEL one. The second one, by the creator of Dramacon, was really good though. Most of the Manwha felt too fluffy (a problem I've had with most Manwha I've read...they just don't seem to get many good writers) although most cut off too soon to really fairly judge yet, but the last one (the only one I can remember the title to at the moment), Jack Frost, looked like it had some real good potential.
Going back to the manga, Higurashi was pretty good. It's all early character setup in this chapter, with only the tiniest hint of a hint of the stuff that's to come, so it's still a little fluffy at this point, but that's faithful to the original and expected. Chapter 2 is the one that had the imagery that yanked my attention to the series before I saw the anime. Some minor qualms on the interpretations of some of the characters in terms of how the dialog was either westernized or such, but everything is true to character, even so. Rika always calling Keiichi "sir" seemed a little stilted at first, since it sounds so western to me and she is very Japanese, but it does work in capturing her modest politeness and somewhat quirky-cute speaking style. I prefered the sound novel translation's handling of Mion's refering to herself as "Uncle Mion" for "oji-san" rather than the more typical "old man" interpretation, but that's splitting hairs. Rena's tendency to repeat herself was handled pretty well. Satoko was pretty much dead on. Keiichi's self narration is nice as it matches the novel more closely since the anime couldn't really do that kind of narrative approach without appearing heavy-handed and so opted for telling the story more visually.
The only problem I can see with Yen Plus is that since this issue is all introductory stories, it has a bit of a superficial feeling that I think will pass once the stories all get rolling. At the very least, I *know* that Higurashi will become more of a "thinker" manga soon enough, even if all the others end up boiling down to action, comedy, or whatnot. But yeah, if you have the spare change and see it in your area, Yen Plus has my stamp of approval. It's nice to see an entry in this category that isn't from Viz, TokyoPop, or Dark Horse for once.
22 July 2008 @ 02:54 pm
I'm probably not going to do my usual comprehensive rundown of shows for the Summer season. The new crop has a couple of noteworthy titles, although really only one that I'm gung-ho enthusiastic about (Hidamari Sketch 365), and the rest so far seem to be more "B-list" shows. The new Slayers Revolution series and Birdy the Mighty series might be okay, though it's hard to think of them as "new" shows right now (Hey, 90's!). To be fair, Spring and Fall are usually the two big seasons, and this coming Fall looks pretty exciting, especially with the second Hayate no Gotoku in the works and other good stuff.
Mostly though, I'm kinda "meh" about new shows since we have two A-list shows continuing from Spring, one of which I'd rate pretty much 10/10, the other 9.5/10--Macross Frontier and Code Geass R2 respectively. That and so MANY good shows ended at the end of spring or went into hiatus if you include Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who on top of the anime. I still need to finish a couple of good shows from then, but I'm in no rush.
Macross Frontier is amazing. It's about time we finally got not only a good Macross sequel, but one that exceeds every expectation and then goes even further. This show is why I got into anime in the first place, really, and it also finally follows up on the parts left dangling by the original Macross that were never really truly well exploited until now. The production quality is top-notch too, it's really hard to believe that it's being maintained (for the most part) throughout a 25 episode serial. I really hope that its success will help push anime in some new and exciting directions again.
Code Geass is wonderful theater. I am enjoying each and every surprise twist and turn it's made along the way. Can they really wrap up the story in this season? We'll see...
The big thing now for me instead of the new shows is catching up a little on the visual/sound novel translation scene, which I've been curious about for some time now. I'm playing through Higurashi No Naku Koroni - Onikakushi Hen right now and have Umineko No Naku Koroni, Fate/Stay Night, and Clannad waiting in the wings. What I've sampled of each has left me pretty impressed with the translations overall, especially Fate's, although Umineko's handling of dialect is annoying (typical lame rendering of an Osaka-ben as a Southern drawl...bleah).
I have to say that while I like the writing much more, I have to give some credit to Studio Deen for once that their handling of the anime of version of Higurashi's Onikakushi chapter felt a little better balanced somehow (though of their work on the series, it was the strongest). The manga is probably the best visual interpretation, and you can hardly fault the source material as it was both the original and the first effort, and the art is not the focus. I have little doubt from what I've sampled that the later chapters are best read in the original sound novel format.
The manga starts getting released in English in November and I can hardly wait. Who'da thought that my favorite storyline adapted to anime yet would be a supernatural horror/mystery series? But there it is. The structure of Higurashi and its layered secrets are just too compelling for me to ignore, and what it rewards you with is just so inspiring.
The other thing that's holding me up going more into the new season's shows (other than still needing to sample many of them) is that I have some serious updating to do on my toy blog...lots of new additions to document. :) And I have a few projects I really ought to get back onto (Microman manga translation, 3D modeling, etc)... Oh yeah, and housecleaning so I have room to do this stuff. @_@
Mostly though, I'm kinda "meh" about new shows since we have two A-list shows continuing from Spring, one of which I'd rate pretty much 10/10, the other 9.5/10--Macross Frontier and Code Geass R2 respectively. That and so MANY good shows ended at the end of spring or went into hiatus if you include Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who on top of the anime. I still need to finish a couple of good shows from then, but I'm in no rush.
Macross Frontier is amazing. It's about time we finally got not only a good Macross sequel, but one that exceeds every expectation and then goes even further. This show is why I got into anime in the first place, really, and it also finally follows up on the parts left dangling by the original Macross that were never really truly well exploited until now. The production quality is top-notch too, it's really hard to believe that it's being maintained (for the most part) throughout a 25 episode serial. I really hope that its success will help push anime in some new and exciting directions again.
Code Geass is wonderful theater. I am enjoying each and every surprise twist and turn it's made along the way. Can they really wrap up the story in this season? We'll see...
The big thing now for me instead of the new shows is catching up a little on the visual/sound novel translation scene, which I've been curious about for some time now. I'm playing through Higurashi No Naku Koroni - Onikakushi Hen right now and have Umineko No Naku Koroni, Fate/Stay Night, and Clannad waiting in the wings. What I've sampled of each has left me pretty impressed with the translations overall, especially Fate's, although Umineko's handling of dialect is annoying (typical lame rendering of an Osaka-ben as a Southern drawl...bleah).
I have to say that while I like the writing much more, I have to give some credit to Studio Deen for once that their handling of the anime of version of Higurashi's Onikakushi chapter felt a little better balanced somehow (though of their work on the series, it was the strongest). The manga is probably the best visual interpretation, and you can hardly fault the source material as it was both the original and the first effort, and the art is not the focus. I have little doubt from what I've sampled that the later chapters are best read in the original sound novel format.
The manga starts getting released in English in November and I can hardly wait. Who'da thought that my favorite storyline adapted to anime yet would be a supernatural horror/mystery series? But there it is. The structure of Higurashi and its layered secrets are just too compelling for me to ignore, and what it rewards you with is just so inspiring.
The other thing that's holding me up going more into the new season's shows (other than still needing to sample many of them) is that I have some serious updating to do on my toy blog...lots of new additions to document. :) And I have a few projects I really ought to get back onto (Microman manga translation, 3D modeling, etc)... Oh yeah, and housecleaning so I have room to do this stuff. @_@
Current Mood: 
chipper
chipper13 May 2008 @ 04:24 pm
Anime Relations: Code Geass - Hangyaku no Lelouch R2, Junjo Romantica, Tower of Druaga - the Aegis of Uruk, Wagaya no Oinari-sama., Kure-nai, Amatsuki, Real Drive, Blassreiter, To-LOVE-Ru, Vampire Knight, Special A, Kanokon, Macross F, Kyouran Kazoku Nikki, Soul Eater, Toshokan Sensou, Neo Angelique Abyss, Kamen no Maid Guy, Naisho no Tsubomi, Nabari no Ou, Monochrome Factor, Nijuu Mensou no Musume, Kaiba, Crystal Blaze, Himitsu - Top Secret, Zettai Karen Children, Macross Frontier Deculture Edition
Sunday
Starting April 6th
Code Geass - Hangyaku no Lelouch R2
Well, this one's one of the highlights of the new season, only overshadowed by Macross Frontier on my list. So far, it's a bit subdued compared to the climax of the last season, but I suppose that's to be expected. Also with the new mainstream primetime airing slot, the early episodes need to do a bit of recapping (but in the context of the story in progress) as a significant percentage of viewers will be new (and oh my, what they have missed...including one of the more evil surprise twists I've seen in a series in recent memory). I'm eagerly awaiting each installment of this show, though not to the extent that I need to see the raws, especially as the subs are pretty quick.
Verdict: Following to the bitter end.
Verdict: Following to the bitter end.
Nabari no Ou
This is probably my fourth favorite of the busy season so far. Aside from being an enjoyable contemporary ninja tale (enough so to draw inappropriate Naruto comparisons, as if Naruto *invented* jutsu hand gestures and the like), the show features a not-overly-so bishounen cast and the lead male character's mock-submissive charms have to be seen to be believed (screenshots don't do the series any justice), making the series instantly popular with a number of fujoushi (yaoi fangirls)--Miharu is devilishly cute. But in any case, it works great as a good ninja action series.
Verdict: Following eagerly.
Verdict: Following eagerly.
Neo Angelique Abyss
Speaking of bishounen series, this is the latest anime series spinoff of a series of popular so-called "reverse harem" fantasy dating sims (okay, I'm not sure if it's technically a dating sim, RPG, visual novel, or what, but whichever) that have been around for years. The intial setup was okay, though the animation direction flat and uninspired, and the fact that the main character's magical powers comes through prayer left me pretty put out.
Verdict: Dropped.
Verdict: Dropped.
Net Ghost PiPoPa
Didn't check this one out, looked too cartoony/gimmicky/childish from what I've seen. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, though!
Verdict: Leaving unwatched.
Wagaya no Oinari-sama
An interesting-looking if somewhat average-feeling and somewhat slightly kidsy series involving notable Japanese gods and mythical creatures in a modern context and a fair amount of Shintoist magic. The title character is the incarnation of Inari, the fox god, who is interestingly indifferent about hir gender in human form, thankfully without much of the wacky hijinks usually associated with that sort of thing. It's interesting to see Shinto magic working as its believers visualise it, portrayed in a somewhat "realistic" if not very believable manner.
Verdict: Casually following for the present time.
Verdict: Casually following for the present time.
Zettai Karen Children
Opening: http://www.veoh.com/videos
Opening: http://www.veoh.com/videos
Ah, here we go. One of the first really big disappointments of the season. I should have known as it's based on a manga by the artist that did the early 90's Ghost Sweeper Mikami, which was usually more miss than hit, but I had hoped their writing might have improved by now, and knowing it was to be handled by the excellent staff of Hayate no Gotoku, I suspected this might be a hit in the making. Unfortunately, it's a twee Japanese recontextualization of the PowerPuff Girls, admittedly closer in humor and spirit to it than the actual official Japanese remake PowerPuff Girls Z--which was all fluff and zero cleverness, lacking the self-conscious humor of the original. This one's not quite that bad, but at the same time, after two episodes, I could not find a single character I cared about, the humor was too heavy handed, and often simply offensive: stereotyping plus other issues, such as Aya Hirano's Buttercup-like character behaving like a dirty old man which just seemed in questionable taste (not to mention it's the first time I didn't like her voice acting). It's okay for her to act like that as ota-queen Kona-chan in Lucky Star, but as a 10 year old, it's just crass. I was going to give it a couple of more episodes, but after reading other reviews of the next couple, I dropped it.
Verdict: Dropped.
Monday
Starting March 17th
Gyagu Manga Biyori 3
Never watched the first two of this series of random gag shorts, but maybe I'll check some out soon of the original series. Doesn't seem to have an established opening animation.
Verdict: Leaving unwatched for now.
Verdict: Leaving unwatched for now.
Starting March 31st
Chii's Sweet Home
Chii's Sweet Home
Cutesy shorts about a cat. No relation to Chobits, in case you thought otherwise. Airs Monday through Thursday, actually.
Verdict: Leaving unwatched.
Starting April 7th
Monochrome Factor
A bishounen/yaoi action fantasy series that had some of the worst and most predictable writing I've seen in some time, and a not particularly likable cast.
Verdict: Dropped.
Verdict: Dropped.
Soul Eater
This one has me a little bit perplexed. I absolutely loved the first episode, but the second two, while all right, weren't nearly as engaging. The fourth one was okay, but a bit simplistic. The fifth was a bit better, but still I'm a bit underwhelmed by the writing. I think I'm mostly fond of the pairing of Gorillaz-band-member-look-alike Soul Eater, and the ever-so-badass Maka in her outfit that looks like a mix of Giant Robo/Cyborg 009 sensibility with oh, I don't know, Gad Guard or something, along with her very non-moe shounen style facial contortions and scowls and her lanky Jack Skellingtonesque frame (her awkward adolescent-sounding voice--a common indicator of using non-voice-actor talent--really suits her harsh gawkiness, too). That along with the Tim Burtonesque setting and expressionistic art style, the weird, wholly contrived mashup of reimagined real world and fictional baddies in a comic-bookish world, and some strong animation by the character designer from Full Metal Alchemist, and well, yeah, there's a lot to like. The other main characters didn't click quite as much for me though (Death the Kid was kind of interesting, especially how he wields his twin pistols upside down, pulling the triggers with his pinkies, but his exaggerated obsessive-compulsive disorder over symmetry could get old fast), but now the show has finished their individual intros, so I'm curious to see how everything fits together next, and there is certainly a lot of potential for good old shounen series action done in a relatively novel fashion. If it can pull that off, I'll probably be hooked. If not, I'll probably maintain some casual interest at least. Also, what is it with Japan and shinigami (death gods) lately? I assume it's largely due to the popularity of Bleach and Death Note, but it is getting rather out of hand and seems like a rather morbid obsession, particularly for one of the most largely non-religious countries on the planet. That said, I don't mind it if it's being used in a good show like this (assuming it can keep things going well). Oh, and the opening and ending animations are great stuff!
Verdict: Following.
Special A
Meh. The style is taking a page from post-Utena Ouran High School Host Club shoujo anime design, but the characters and direction had me snoring before the episode was over, and a review of the following episode showed recycling of gags that were already overdone in episode one.
Verdict: Dropped.
Vampire Knight
Another series showing some of that Ouran vibe, but a little more entertaining with the vampire theme. However, it does feel a little bit trite and tired, and I've heard reports that the manga gets pretty muddled rather quickly, so this is a probable drop. I'll give it a little longer though, I think.
Verdict: Tentatively dropping.
Tuesday
Starting April 8th
Himitsu - Top Secret
Tuesday
Starting April 8th
Himitsu - Top Secret
A sort of Sci-Fi CSI, where memories can be extracted from a brain for a short period after one's death, however the investigation group doing so also has to cope with the stigma of concerns over invasion of privacy. The first episode was pretty good, but I'm not sure if it will hold up in episodic format.
Verdict: Casually following, but probably dropping later.
Verdict: Casually following, but probably dropping later.
Real Drive
Hard SF series by Masamune Shirow and Production IG with much overlapping technology with the Ghost in the Shell universe. Has an interesting Vernor Vinge-like feel to it (and some early Bruce Sterling), with strong transhumanist themes and a rather bizarre ocean/diving metaphor for what is called the "Meta-Real" (or just "Metal" for short), a semi-post-Technological Singularity realm of shared consciousness similar perhaps to the sublimed in Iain M. Banks' Culture novels. At first I was concerned about it getting too metaphysical, but we'll see...so far everything is still rooted in a hard SF explanation. Episode 2 was a bit of a drag for the most part (except the last portion), but episode 3 picked things back up again. 4 was kind of hit and miss, so I am kind of wondering about the writing consistency at this point. The character animation seems a little ungainly and drawn in a rather weird style. Does Shirow prefer his art style NOT to be used in anime? I'm starting to wonder.
Verdict: Probably following until it ends or I am uploaded, whichever comes first.
Uchi no 3 Shimai
Uchi no 3 Shimai
Cartoon family show.
Verdict: Leaving unwatched.
Wednesday
Starting April 2nd
Junjou Romantica
This is about as shounen ai/yaoi as it gets without being outright gay porn (and as it is, it is borderline soft porn). From what I understand, there are three storylines that are told in this one. The first one so far is entertaining me, I like Usagi-san and his toy-collecting hobby, lol. I don't know if this will devolve into the usual angsty abusive stuff common to the genre, but I'll watch it for now.
Status: Currently following.
Status: Currently following.
Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's
Ahahaha. No.
Verdict: Leaving unwatched.
Starting April 23rd
Da Capo II Second Season
Starting April 23rd
Da Capo II Second Season
Confusing title, given this is the third (or is it fourth now? *shrug*) anime series of Da Capo. I was intrigued with the visual novel-based original, but as I've never gotten far in it, I don't have any reason to watch the sequels yet.
Verdict: Leaving unwatched, possibly for a future look.
Verdict: Leaving unwatched, possibly for a future look.
Thursday
Starting April 3rd
Allison & Lillia
Initial reports have this pegged as too bland and NHK animation-ish (not to be confused with Welcome to the NHK, lol) for my taste.
Verdict: Leaving unwatched unless convinced otherwise.
Verdict: Leaving unwatched unless convinced otherwise.
Kure-nai
Promo video: http://www.veoh.com/videos
The sleeper hit of the season. Probably my number 3 show this season after Macross Frontier and Code Geass R2. The animation was filmed after the voiceover was recorded, allowing for some really nice subtle facial animation, and the directing style is reminiscent of the kind of Italian neo-realist cinema in films like The Bicycle Thief http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
Verdict: Definitely following.
Verdict: Definitely following.
Kyou Kara Maou! 3rd Series
This show's still running? I saw some of the original series and it looked fun, but didn't complete it, so no reason to watch this second sequel.
Verdict: Leaving unwatched.
Verdict: Leaving unwatched.
Macross Frontier
Yahk deculture!! The true hit of the new season, exceeding all expectations so far as the new installment in the classic Macross saga on it's 25th anniversary. This show does so many things so right so far, it's hard to even know where to start. I'll probably save my gushing for another post, but whether you are a classic Macross fan, a fan of Macross Plus, or even of the Macross 7 series (which I didn't care for), or completely unfamiliar with Macross, this is the show to check out this season, in my opinion. Don't miss this one!
Verdict: Following the raws and subs as I can't wait for my next Macross fix.
Verdict: Following the raws and subs as I can't wait for my next Macross fix.
To-LOVE-Ru
Opening (probably NSFW): http://www.veoh.com/videos
Lame, exploitive moe fluff show, derivative (once again) of Urusei Yatsura but with none of its class.
Verdict: Dropped.
Verdict: Dropped.
xxxHolic - Kei
While I was semi-interested in the original CLAMP manga, the first anime series left me really, really flat with its awful animation and simian-armed interpretations of the character designs. This one is supposedly better, but I've lost interest by now.
Verdict: Leaving unwatched.
Starting April 10th
Kaiba
Generally speaking, I'm something of an anti-fan of this director's works (he also did the popular art film "Mind Game", which was a stream-of-consciousness, navel-contemplating avant-garde surreal work that I enjoyed early pieces of and was left put out well before the ending). This series is a surrealist mashup of classic Tezuka art style and Fleischer Bros. Popeye/Betty Boop era animation that has its moments and some interesting themes. I'll probably drop it after a while, but there was enough whimsy and interesting post-human thematic stuff in the first episode I'll give it some more time.
Verdict: probably should be watched as a recreational drug. Following for now, may drop later.
Toshokan Sensou
Toshokan Sensou
The first episode was pretty decent, if a little fluffy. I'm wondering how it will play out, but it's an interesting premise that doesn't seem too far removed from the Bradbury-esque/Orwellian contemporary climate of late, with its ultra-conservative media moral watchdog group act versus the liberal-spearheaded countermeas
Verdict: Tentatively following.
Starting April 17th
Crystal Blaze
Mixed feelings so far. Not really sure what it's about just yet, other than a private detective agency that gets sucked into something big and mysterious that involves people being turned to glass. The characters are entertaining, but the show is fairly average. Will see how it progresses.
Verdict: Tentatively following.
Friday
Starting March 14th
Friday
Starting March 14th
Bus Gamer
"Bus" in the title of this OVA series is short for "Business". Initial reports I've heard of the first episode were not very encouraging, so I'll pass.
Verdict: Leaving unwatched.
Starting April 4th
Amatsuki
Eh...it's okay. A bit "edutainment"-ish, but with some potential. Apathetic high schooler visiting an Augmented Reality recreation of period Edo gets sucked back in time somehow, to the real Edo, except with monsters. Not exactly original or innovative (though the AR tech was cool, similar to Denno Coil's technology), but could still be a fun watch, if the main character can just find a clue soon...
Verdict: Very tentatively watching.
Itazura na Kiss
Shoujo romance melodrama soap opera, similar in feel to Marmalade Boy. Looked really boring, honestly.
Verdict: dropped.
Tower of Druaga - The Aegis of Uruk
CrunchyRoll official full episode downloads: http://www.crunchyroll.com
Very loosely inspired by the ancient video game, Gonzo's new RPG fantasy-comedy series actually pulls off an interesting setting, likable characters, and some good humor so far. Has a similar feel to the original .hack, but other than the opening animation there's been no hint that the fantasy world should be taken as VR (if it is to be at all--the opening animation is very likely a clever joke). What's particularly neat about this show is that it is being streamed subtitled for free on the web concurrent with the Japanese broadcast with Gonzo's blessing (along with Blassreiter) and is being offered in higher-quality for cheap downloads at more than one site in a licensing deal (Crunchyroll offers the downloads in exchange for user-determined donations in a mostly simple, user friendly method). This is Gonzo's first effort to fight against online piracy, and I really hope it works out. I watched it on YouTube (slightly better streaming than CrunchyRoll's free streams, and just as official) long enough to determine I wanted to keep the show and see it in better quality. I would gladly use this service were it available for any of my favorite shows currently airing, and it's nice knowing the money goes directly to Gonzo. My only complaint is that the resolution of the downloads is close to broadcast/VHS quality, but the show is widescreen and clearly meant for HD video quality--and watching shows like Macross F in full res really drives home how much nicer that is. But I can't say getting VHS-quality official downloads for, say $2 an episode is unfair. Perhaps they could offer higher quality downloads at a set price point later (or just leave that as incentive for the DVD version).
Verdict: Following.
Verdict: Following.
Starting April 11th
Golgo 13
I've given Golgo's animated incarnations enough chances before and can't say I'm really that curious this time around. Maybe someone will convince me later.
Verdict: Leaving unwatched.
Verdict: Leaving unwatched.
Starting April 25th
Naisho no Tsubomi
Opening: none
OVA series based on a popular shoujo manga with a strong, positive sex-ed theme. Not sure what to make of that, though I'll admit I'm mildly curious how the subject is handled in the context and from that point of view. I can have some rather strong opinions on the subject matter since I personally felt like the omission of some key data (or perhaps my failure to wrap my head around some of it), left me with some pretty wrong-headed notions at that age.
Verdict: Possibly watching.
Saturday
Starting April 5th
Blassreiter
Official CrunchyRoll download site: http://www.crunchyroll.com
Couldn't quite make it through the first episode. Motorcycling and boomers, more or less, but it's no Bubblegum Crisis, I'm afraid.
Verdict: Dropped.
Verdict: Dropped.
Kamen no Maid Guy
This one is kind of a paradox. On the one hand, the show is mostly outright awful, misogynist crap (if occassionally amusing for just being so blatantly off-color and so wrong) ...for example, one episode is pretty much entirely about the repeated "gag" that a female's mathematic capabilities are inversely proportional to their...um...proportions. Uh, yeah. Wacky hijinks ensue, including a bizarre, futile effort to, erm, harness the effect. Oh the humanity...
On the other hand, the title character, the masked "Maid Guy", a huge monolith of a burly man dressed in the traditional female maid costume and wearing a mask with eyeholes that look impossibly far apart for his own skull, is at once one of the most absurdly, independently funny and bizarre characters I've seen in a show, and in fact, I think his presence in *any* series of any genre would improve that series by a factor of 90%. I mean, imagine taking the Tick and sticking him in General Hospital, or Heroes, or the Price is Right---it's instantly pretty amusing, and probably better than how the show would normally be. This works the same way, taking an inherently funny, messed up character with totally random powers and tossing him into a show that is otherwise pure dreck. I could care less about the rest of the show, just seeing Maid Guy step in and being totally random just makes you instantly forget everything else that was going on. Oh, and the ending animation's song is pretty fun, too.
Verdict: Watching for teh lulz!
Kanokon
Opening (probably NSFW): http://www.veoh.com/videos
Another ecchi show I suppose I need to make some excuses for. This one seems to be determined to dip into just about every taboo it can think of, and on top of it all, it's pretty much harem fluff. Normally, I'd write off this kind of show in a few minutes, but I've enjoyed hearing Ayako Kawasumi and Mamiko Noto (playing the boy, lol) playing these roles that are so atypical of the kinds of characters they usually play, so I'm mostly deriving some amusement from that. I almost dropped it after the last episode I watched though, so I don't know how much more I'll sit through--I may well be about done with it. If it weren't for the pairing of these two voices--two of my favorites--I'd probably not even have made it through one episode.
Verdict: Tentatively following until the novelty factor wears off.
Starting April 12th
Kyouran Kazoku Nikki
The bizarre orphaned lovechild of Dokkoida and Fairy Princess Reine. While neither Akitaro Daichi nor Nabeshin seem to have any hand in this series, it continues the tradition of the hyperactive motormouth lead character that fans of Reine, Kodocha, and Excel Saga should be well familiar with by now, and mixes it up with a totally random, mishmash adopted family setup that includes a catgirl mom, a Torchwood-type agent dad, and a biological weapon, a talking lion, a homosexual, a girl, and a jellyfish as the children. All with a "perfectly justifiable" reason that I'll just leave you to wonder over. It doesn't get much more random than that... So far, it's about as psychotic as you'd anticipate.
Verdict: how can I not watch this madness?
Nijuu Mensou Musume
Still need to watch more. Semi-fantasy world setting, girl comes under the tutelage of the famous kaitou (phantom thief) 20 Faces (Nijuu Mensou) out of the pages of popular Japanese literature. I'm not usually a fan of Kaitou shows, they tend to be too formulaic and all too episodic, but I'll watch some episodes and see if this bucks the trend or not. Not really holding my breath.
Verdict: not sure yet. Tentatively following for now.
16 April 2008 @ 12:40 am
I got a new lab job through Excell working at Microsoft again, starts Thursday. Looks like a probable good fit and if all goes well a chance to learn new stuff, too. I'm also switching to Excell's health coverage so I don't have to pay hundreds each month anymore to keep getting my insulin, coverage, and other meds. This comes as something of a relief. :)
Last week or so was a flurry of interviews, which was draining, and when I wasn't dealing with that, I was catching some more of the amazing new season and finishing some bits of the old one. I'll try to have my usual seasonal assessment for that with the OP links again sometime soon when I feel up for throwing it together and satisfied I've seen most of the new offerings. This time, I may also provide links to other bloggers who have in-depth reviews that I can agree with.
Still, I feel compelled to mention first quick impressions: so far Macross Frontier (stunning) and Code Geass R2 (audacious and awesome) are the big hitters, with some promising starts for Nabari no Ou (contemporary ninja yarn), Kure-Nai (in spite of a very bad opening animation that has nothing to do with the style or genre, looks like a good, unique dramatic work from the same studio as Baccano), Kyouran Kazoku Nikki (a gag anime on the same crack as Fairy Princess Raine and Dokkoida...I was intrigued as soon as I saw the jellyfish character...), Kamen no Maid Guy (just on crack, period), Soul Eater (hyper-stylish action series), Wagaya no Oinari-sama (well-presented Shintoist magic and a fox god, looks good), Kanokon (fan-service vehicle but with good actors and dialogue saving it somehow so far), and maybe Vampire Knight (less convinced, but somewhat stylish vampire school yarn).
I had high hopes for Zettai Karen Children (basically the Hayate no Gotoku team--hence my optimism--doing a Powerpuff Girls rip-off based on a manga by the same person that did Ghost Sweeper Mikami something like almost 20 years ago), but episode 1 felt really flat to me, and it may be the first time I've not liked one of Aya Hirano's voices (as the scratchy-voiced Buttercup-like leader of the trio). I kind of hate to say it, but I think the cheesy, mildly funny, and less offensive Ground Defense Force Mao-chan did the same thing years ago, but better (if not with as flashy powers) and not as forced, somehow. Still, given the staff, I'll give it a little more time to see if it's just a shaky start.
Doctor Who and Galactica's first two new episodes were great, too. It's a good time to be a fan! :)
Last week or so was a flurry of interviews, which was draining, and when I wasn't dealing with that, I was catching some more of the amazing new season and finishing some bits of the old one. I'll try to have my usual seasonal assessment for that with the OP links again sometime soon when I feel up for throwing it together and satisfied I've seen most of the new offerings. This time, I may also provide links to other bloggers who have in-depth reviews that I can agree with.
Still, I feel compelled to mention first quick impressions: so far Macross Frontier (stunning) and Code Geass R2 (audacious and awesome) are the big hitters, with some promising starts for Nabari no Ou (contemporary ninja yarn), Kure-Nai (in spite of a very bad opening animation that has nothing to do with the style or genre, looks like a good, unique dramatic work from the same studio as Baccano), Kyouran Kazoku Nikki (a gag anime on the same crack as Fairy Princess Raine and Dokkoida...I was intrigued as soon as I saw the jellyfish character...), Kamen no Maid Guy (just on crack, period), Soul Eater (hyper-stylish action series), Wagaya no Oinari-sama (well-presented Shintoist magic and a fox god, looks good), Kanokon (fan-service vehicle but with good actors and dialogue saving it somehow so far), and maybe Vampire Knight (less convinced, but somewhat stylish vampire school yarn).
I had high hopes for Zettai Karen Children (basically the Hayate no Gotoku team--hence my optimism--doing a Powerpuff Girls rip-off based on a manga by the same person that did Ghost Sweeper Mikami something like almost 20 years ago), but episode 1 felt really flat to me, and it may be the first time I've not liked one of Aya Hirano's voices (as the scratchy-voiced Buttercup-like leader of the trio). I kind of hate to say it, but I think the cheesy, mildly funny, and less offensive Ground Defense Force Mao-chan did the same thing years ago, but better (if not with as flashy powers) and not as forced, somehow. Still, given the staff, I'll give it a little more time to see if it's just a shaky start.
Doctor Who and Galactica's first two new episodes were great, too. It's a good time to be a fan! :)
05 April 2008 @ 02:13 am
I forgot to mention finishing Spice and Wolf, as well. It was a good series, and accomplished what it set out to--telling an engaging fantasy story where the battles are ones of commerce, not of swords. It left things hanging a little, but the conclusion was satisfying and it was a good spot to leave off. I hope the novels provide enough source material for a follow-up series someday. The characters certainly left a strong impression, which I really appreciated.
I'm starting to catch up on the just-finished third Aria series, The Origination. The production quality is much improved and you can tell the team's last research trip to Venice paid off, both in terms of background art as well as in more realistic touches to the way the gondolas are paddled and controlled and the accompanying sounds. Another thing that surprised me pleasantly this season was the relevation (to me at least) that Neo-Venezia is not simply a recreation of Venice on terraformed Mars, but actually is largely built from the relocated buildings of the original Venice, which has long since sunk on ManHome (Earth), and that the reconstruction and relocation of the original buildings is ongoing. I always assumed all the buildings and plazas and such were replicas, not actual full transplants of the real deal. I'm not sure it really matters that much, but it does seem to add some repsect for the place as being as old as it looks after all, more or less. It's also interesting viewing Aria from the perspective of comparing it with other Junichi Sato-directed anime series, particularly Sailor Moon...even though both are independently based on manga, it's hard not to draw some parallels between the trio of character archetypes (not to say that Akari, Aika, and Alice are exact mappings of Usagi, Rei, and Ami by any means, but the similarity of their interactions at times certainly evokes a pleasantly mild sense of deja vu) along with some similarities in narrative structure (albeit without the monster-of-the-week) and such. For one thing, he sure likes the device of having characters in his shows stalk each other at times, doesn't he? Heh. I do feel still, even now in the thrid series that he could have done without the constructed character of the litte girl Ai-chan. The original manga involves letters sent to ManHome by Akari to an unrevealed recipient. The anime introduced Ai-chan in its first episode (the character she replaced in the original manga was a one-shot cranky old man character, which actually I thought was more effective for that story in particular than a precocious child) so as to have someone for Akari's letters to be addressed to, and for some summing-up commentary at the end of each episode that to me feels a bit too twee and tacked-on ("oohhhh, that was nice, I wish I could have done that too!"), though I suppose it gives the show more of a storybook fairy tale feel, of sorts. And at least Ai-chan was created for the show by the original mangaka, Amano Kozue (who also later wrote her into some side-stories for the manga), so it's not TOO forced at least.
The first free episode of Tower of Druaga went up today. It was a fun (and unexpected) spoof of the RPG genre, and I'll probably shell out for the purchasable download. However, it didn't really do much to reveal what the show proper is going to be like, so I'm a little hesitant until I see more. I also rewatched the last episode of season 3 of Battlestar in anticipation of the final season's premiere, which I'll check out tomorrow. Good stuff...
I'm starting to catch up on the just-finished third Aria series, The Origination. The production quality is much improved and you can tell the team's last research trip to Venice paid off, both in terms of background art as well as in more realistic touches to the way the gondolas are paddled and controlled and the accompanying sounds. Another thing that surprised me pleasantly this season was the relevation (to me at least) that Neo-Venezia is not simply a recreation of Venice on terraformed Mars, but actually is largely built from the relocated buildings of the original Venice, which has long since sunk on ManHome (Earth), and that the reconstruction and relocation of the original buildings is ongoing. I always assumed all the buildings and plazas and such were replicas, not actual full transplants of the real deal. I'm not sure it really matters that much, but it does seem to add some repsect for the place as being as old as it looks after all, more or less. It's also interesting viewing Aria from the perspective of comparing it with other Junichi Sato-directed anime series, particularly Sailor Moon...even though both are independently based on manga, it's hard not to draw some parallels between the trio of character archetypes (not to say that Akari, Aika, and Alice are exact mappings of Usagi, Rei, and Ami by any means, but the similarity of their interactions at times certainly evokes a pleasantly mild sense of deja vu) along with some similarities in narrative structure (albeit without the monster-of-the-week) and such. For one thing, he sure likes the device of having characters in his shows stalk each other at times, doesn't he? Heh. I do feel still, even now in the thrid series that he could have done without the constructed character of the litte girl Ai-chan. The original manga involves letters sent to ManHome by Akari to an unrevealed recipient. The anime introduced Ai-chan in its first episode (the character she replaced in the original manga was a one-shot cranky old man character, which actually I thought was more effective for that story in particular than a precocious child) so as to have someone for Akari's letters to be addressed to, and for some summing-up commentary at the end of each episode that to me feels a bit too twee and tacked-on ("oohhhh, that was nice, I wish I could have done that too!"), though I suppose it gives the show more of a storybook fairy tale feel, of sorts. And at least Ai-chan was created for the show by the original mangaka, Amano Kozue (who also later wrote her into some side-stories for the manga), so it's not TOO forced at least.
The first free episode of Tower of Druaga went up today. It was a fun (and unexpected) spoof of the RPG genre, and I'll probably shell out for the purchasable download. However, it didn't really do much to reveal what the show proper is going to be like, so I'm a little hesitant until I see more. I also rewatched the last episode of season 3 of Battlestar in anticipation of the final season's premiere, which I'll check out tomorrow. Good stuff...
03 April 2008 @ 11:17 pm
The spring season of anime is starting, and it's flushing out just about all the shows that have been running until now, series that have run either one season, two, or a whole year. It'll be a while before the fansubs catch up with both (two interesting exceptions from Gonzo--The Tower of Druaga and Blassreitter--are being released direct to the web in subbed English by the studio itself in the first such effort to compete against fansubs directly...it will be interesting to see how the experiment works out, if either show is actually any good, and I think a huge step in the right direction), but a couple of shows have completed in my queue, and sequels are in the works for two favorites.
Clannad wound up breaking off before the second arc from the original visual novel, which has mixed results. The more serious material and drama is in the second act, which leaves the series being pretty light-hearted overall, and leaving it feeling fluffier overall (the fact that two character arcs were pretty much dropped in the adaptation doesn't help). In some ways that's good though, since the show ends on a positive note and is consistent in character as a whole. It will be interesting to see how the second series, After Story, will feel in contrast. Until then, most will keep the impression that Clannad is a nice show with some charming characters, but lacking the more sophisticated undertones that Air had, or the twists found in Kanon (although I'll argue that the Toei version of Kanon pulled the ending off better than the otherwise superior Kyoto Animation version).
I haven't finished Hayate no Gotoku yet, but it's one of the best longer comedy shows I've seen in anime since, well, Urusei Yatsura. Sure, Galaxy Angel had it's moments of brilliance, but also had its not-so-great moments, while Hayate has hit very few of those. I'm quite happy to know now that a new run of the show is in the works, if not directly on its own heels. I suspected this might happen, but admittedly that was more wishful thinking.
Shakugan no Shana II ended fairly lamely. The second part of the series was a lot of fun, but in the end, they left a lot unexplained and poorly tied up. I feel like I had to expend effort to appreciate the show as a whole, and that's a shame. I still think shows that hold out on delivering until the second half or so of the series constitute a form of fan abuse (exception: Kiddy Grade, though admittedly it held out more like a third of the series before it got really good).
Aside from anime, I'm almost done with Torchwood, which has been hit-and-miss. I don't think this season's been quite as good as the original one, and a few episodes felt kind of lame, especially the circus one.
The new season should be good for SF fun...we've got Code Geass r2 and Macross Frontier for anime among others, and both Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica's final season for live action. Going to be pretty fun, I think!
Bookwise, I've read a couple of more of Iain M. Banks' Culture series (Matter and Player of Games) and also finished two books by Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale and The God Delusion. Banks was fun as usual, although I thought Matter's setting was a bit too out there for my tastes. The Ancestor's Tale is an amazing work that explains the workings of evolution and its scale in more clarity and depth than anything else I've read before, it's a fascinating and humbling read, and is Dawkins at his best form. It definitely changed my appreciation for the scale and workings of evolution. The God Delusion (which starts off with a fitting dedication to the late Douglas Adams, for reasons that become apparent in the book itself) was an interesting read, and made some good cases against the religious indoctrination of (and labeling of) children in particular, emphasizing the importance of allowing children to learn to think for themselves and draw their own conclusions about their religious affiliations, as well as giving a good overview of arguments against religion in general (though perhaps not in as much depth as in other similar works, more just a summing up of what both Dawkins and others have written before with some newer examples). The paperback edition was worth waiting for not just for its cheaper price, but for its new preface addressing later criticism of the book (addressing common retorts such as "I'm an atheist, but don't people need religion?") as well as some updating, corrections, and new annotations. Overall, I think Carl Sagan's A Demon-Haunted World is much better reading (and more uplifting) in a similar vein (a book which I think ought to be recommended reading in schools, really), but Dawkins definitely does a good job of summing up most of the things that can be said countering religion and magical thinking. I'd recommend it to believer and infidel alike. A nice bonus is that Dawkins provides a list of organizations at the back which can assist people who are seeking a way out.
Clannad wound up breaking off before the second arc from the original visual novel, which has mixed results. The more serious material and drama is in the second act, which leaves the series being pretty light-hearted overall, and leaving it feeling fluffier overall (the fact that two character arcs were pretty much dropped in the adaptation doesn't help). In some ways that's good though, since the show ends on a positive note and is consistent in character as a whole. It will be interesting to see how the second series, After Story, will feel in contrast. Until then, most will keep the impression that Clannad is a nice show with some charming characters, but lacking the more sophisticated undertones that Air had, or the twists found in Kanon (although I'll argue that the Toei version of Kanon pulled the ending off better than the otherwise superior Kyoto Animation version).
I haven't finished Hayate no Gotoku yet, but it's one of the best longer comedy shows I've seen in anime since, well, Urusei Yatsura. Sure, Galaxy Angel had it's moments of brilliance, but also had its not-so-great moments, while Hayate has hit very few of those. I'm quite happy to know now that a new run of the show is in the works, if not directly on its own heels. I suspected this might happen, but admittedly that was more wishful thinking.
Shakugan no Shana II ended fairly lamely. The second part of the series was a lot of fun, but in the end, they left a lot unexplained and poorly tied up. I feel like I had to expend effort to appreciate the show as a whole, and that's a shame. I still think shows that hold out on delivering until the second half or so of the series constitute a form of fan abuse (exception: Kiddy Grade, though admittedly it held out more like a third of the series before it got really good).
Aside from anime, I'm almost done with Torchwood, which has been hit-and-miss. I don't think this season's been quite as good as the original one, and a few episodes felt kind of lame, especially the circus one.
The new season should be good for SF fun...we've got Code Geass r2 and Macross Frontier for anime among others, and both Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica's final season for live action. Going to be pretty fun, I think!
Bookwise, I've read a couple of more of Iain M. Banks' Culture series (Matter and Player of Games) and also finished two books by Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale and The God Delusion. Banks was fun as usual, although I thought Matter's setting was a bit too out there for my tastes. The Ancestor's Tale is an amazing work that explains the workings of evolution and its scale in more clarity and depth than anything else I've read before, it's a fascinating and humbling read, and is Dawkins at his best form. It definitely changed my appreciation for the scale and workings of evolution. The God Delusion (which starts off with a fitting dedication to the late Douglas Adams, for reasons that become apparent in the book itself) was an interesting read, and made some good cases against the religious indoctrination of (and labeling of) children in particular, emphasizing the importance of allowing children to learn to think for themselves and draw their own conclusions about their religious affiliations, as well as giving a good overview of arguments against religion in general (though perhaps not in as much depth as in other similar works, more just a summing up of what both Dawkins and others have written before with some newer examples). The paperback edition was worth waiting for not just for its cheaper price, but for its new preface addressing later criticism of the book (addressing common retorts such as "I'm an atheist, but don't people need religion?") as well as some updating, corrections, and new annotations. Overall, I think Carl Sagan's A Demon-Haunted World is much better reading (and more uplifting) in a similar vein (a book which I think ought to be recommended reading in schools, really), but Dawkins definitely does a good job of summing up most of the things that can be said countering religion and magical thinking. I'd recommend it to believer and infidel alike. A nice bonus is that Dawkins provides a list of organizations at the back which can assist people who are seeking a way out.
27 February 2008 @ 02:25 am
Anime Relations: Sketchbook ~full color'S~, Mnemosyne - Mnemosyne no Musume-tachi
I caught the first OVA of Mnemosyne. Oooh, nice. The soundtrack has a very 80's anime feel to it (as does, to a certain extent, the OVA itself--I felt like I could have been watching something from around the release of the first Bubblegum Crisis), and Mamiko Noto is playing the title character out of type, which is nice to see more range from one of my favorite seiyuu (who normally plays characters with a kind of whimsical yet sort of breathless quality that is hard to describe, but this time is almost unrecognizable). There's a lot of mysterious elements to the set-up, and the sub-plot of this particular episode is a clear nod to Biohazard/Resident Evil. The tone is a bit dark and the villian-of-the-episode is sadistic to a not-for-the-weak-of-heart extreme. Definitely mature viewers only. I look forward to future episodes.
Earlier I said I didn't have high hopes for Sketchbook-Full Color'S (sic), which I'd been meaning to catch up on from a prior season. I'm pleased to report that actually the show turned out to be quite fun and I've since sped through a good number of episodes of it. I could do without all the cat bits, since I'm really not a big cat lover, but otherwise it's a lot of fun in a kind of Azumanga-esque sort of way.
Sketchbook actually brings me to a pet peeve of mine that is probably not shared by many. I really, really, really can't stand the term "Slice of Life" and its use to describe a "genre". I tend to like shows that get dubbed this by fans, and it annoys me to no end in many cases where I see it used.
The expression itself just sounds so twee and patronizing or dismissive to my ears. I want to slap my forehead more than half the time I see it. I can understand calling something like Azumanga or Sketchbook a "slice of life", though it still grates. A slice of life? Who's life? Which character's? In what setting? It oversimplifies what are usually unique stories told in unique ways often set in unique places (some more or less so than others) or about unique characters. Slice of life on the other hand to my ears implies a sort of "everyman" view of things that is more about universal things. I especially can't bear seeing Yokohama Shopping Log or Aria called "slice of life", as it reduces these works to sounding like they are the epitome of normalcy, rather than reflecting their far-out settings and particularly unique vision. Yokohama Shopping Log is my favorite manga and OVA, but it sure doesn't resemble much any life I'm familiar with. Perhaps "A Day in the Life of..." would ring truer to my ears. Or maybe I'm just being a cranky old pedantic otaku. But don't expect to see me use the term anytime soon...07 February 2008 @ 01:57 am
Anime Relations: True Tears, Spice and Wolf, Rosario+Vampire, Ayakashi, Minami-ke ~Okawari~, Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, Kimi ga Aruji de Shitsuji ga Ore de, Gunslinger Girl -Il Teatrino-, Armored Trooper Votoms: Pailsen Files, Yatterman 2008, Aria the Origination, Hatenkou Yuugi, H2O ~Footprints in the Sand~, Persona -trinity soul-, Shigofumi, Porfy no Nagai Tabi, Wellber no Monogatari : Sisters of Wellber Zwei, Noramimi, Macross F, Moegaku*5
Winter 2008 Shows
Time at last for me to weigh in with my initial assessments of the new season thus far...links are to show openings when available. All initaial impressions are subject to change, YMMV, etc.
Sunday
Macross F http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRQ3xUdCP
Well, actually this is a spring show, not winter, but the 25th anniversary special version of the first episode was shown, so it was listed. In any case, the first episode was amazing and I can’t wait for the series to start in spring. See my previous blog entry for more thoughts on this.
Assessment: will definitely follow.
Minami-ke ~Okawari~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxZWSlcZ7
The approach with Minami-ke is a bit like how Futakoi and Futakoi Alternative was handled, with the two series given to two different studios for them to each do their own take. However, while Futakoi was two alternate takes from the ground up (one an awful bland harem-type series, the other a more interesting experimental work from the folks at UFO Table), Minami-ke is simply two consecutive seasons of the the same continuity, with one ending at New Years’ Eve and Okawari picking up the next day. The art is rendered in more detail in Okawari, possibly trading off some animation for better rendered palettes and gradient colors, while the original was more flat, uncomplicated colors, and the pacing and comedy seems more understated compared with the original, like it is taking itself slightly more seriously somehow. If anything, I’d say the directing is getting in the way of the charm of the series and its characters. It’s still quite good, but the first series had a stronger feeling of spontaneity and yet more relaxed somehow. I really enjoyed the first series a lot, especially the gender-bending humor around Mako-chan and later Touma, and it had a lot of the same feel as Ichigo Marshmallow did from the same studio. Okawari feels like the studio is still learning the ropes. I do like the new opening though, which gets pretty surreal and kind of into Ikuhara-space. The original show had a catchier tune for its OP http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWQ-uCOlL
Assessment: will follow.
Monday
Aria the Origination http://youtube.com/watch?v=G8HUOVXz8co
I will get to this third Aria series as soon as I finish Aria the Natural and the Arietta OVA. I expect it will be as good and relaxing as the prior shows have been.
Assessment: will follow when I catch up to it.
Gunslinger Girl -Il Teatrino- http://youtube.com/watch?v=WBxYYyavZ3E
The fact the opening doesn’t give away what the animation looks like it might have been the first warning sign… Ugh. Utter and complete failure. The original Gunslinger Girl is one of my top-listed anime TV series ever, and the manga is one of my all-time favorites. This garbage is painful to watch…from the less-than average animation (or lack thereof when a shakey-cam apparently sufficed), to the comparative “moe-fication” of the characters, the new voices, the awful directing and writing the generic unresearched background art, I couldn’t even bear to watch the full first episode. What a travesty. To think I was looking forward to this one and was going to try to keep an open mind, knowing that Madhouse really put the bar high on the perfection that was the original series, but this didn’t even try, it’s below generic quality and a total waste of a good license and betrays the whole post-traumatic mood and well-researched setting of the original. I can’t believe that Artland would botch things so badly, especially after their acclaim with Mushishi. More recent reports indicate that it gets WORSE from here out.
Assessment: will forget this ever existed if at all possible.
Moegaku*5 http://youtube.com/watch?v=HFTI72zYncg&f
A Moetan knock-off that “teaches” 5 different languages in an eight-minute (though about 80% recycled formula) segment with a different language each weekday. If it was particularly funny or inspired, I might have watched it for laughs. But what I previewed wasn’t either, really, just lame, if not as obnoxious as Moetan’s anime adaptation was. I might like Aya Hirano a lot, but this was probably not her best choice of role.
Assessment: no plans to follow.
Yatterman 2008 http://www.stage6.com/user/Coil_ed/video/2
No real interest here…remake of the old 70’s Tatsunoko Time Bokan spin-off gag anime series, aimed more at younger viewers (and some nostalgic otaku).
Assessment: not following. I might check an episode out of curiousity, but that’s all I expect.
Tuesday
H20 ~Footprints in the Sand~ http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZQOge1P_RlY
Harem anime. New twist, though. Main character’s blind. Hijinks, groping, and drama ensue. Yawn. The tacky Christian homily quoted at the first show’s start that is its namesake didn’t help, either.
Assessment: Zzz. What? Oh, yeah, I’ll pass on this one too.
Okami to Koshinryo http://youtube.com/watch?v=21foK1ZF4P0
Sleeper hit of the season. Simple set up, excellent writing and dialogue. A merchant enters a sort of business partnership with Horo the Wise, a wolf-god in a land where pagan worship is falling out of favor in the face the spread of a unified church. Much of the show is simply banter between the two characters as they travel, so far, but thanks to really clever storytelling and a good setting, it really charms.
Assessment: definitely following.
Rosario+Vampire http://www.stage6.com/daddycool-anime-ch
Lowest common denominator sleaze, about a boy that has accidentally ended up in a school for youkai (supernatural monsters), with a heavy low-angle camera fixation on the panties and anatomy of his new female vampire friend. Not that I’m above the occasional sleazy fanservice appreciation by any means, but watching shows pretty much dedicated to it above all other elements of the series like this one have been reported to cause permanent neural damage (cough cough Aika cough). ;P That said, I’m kind of enjoying it in an MST3K laugh-at-it kind of way, and I like the way the school looks more like the Addams mansion, lol. The first episode was at least amusing in its predictability and was a little more entertaining than other shows I’ve seen in this category. Generally I prefer plot and good characters to balance out my fanservice (cough Kiddy Grade cough) or at least actually funny “humor”, but I’ll give this fluff a couple of more episodes to see if it holds my cheese tolerance or not.
Assessment: somewhat reluctantly following for now.
Wellber no Monogatari: Sisters of Wellber Zwei http://youtube.com/watch?v=P21A3O9hg3s
Meh, I didn’t get into the first Wellber series, so I don’t have any reason to try this one.
Assessment: not following.
Wednesday
Noramimi http://youtube.com/watch?v=5K6DXd08yz8
At first I thought this, by the title, was one of the Doraemon spinoffs. Actually I was kind of partly right, but more in terms of source of inspiration. This actually comes from a seinen magazine and is billed by some as “a children’s manga for adults”. From what I understand, the concept apparently revolves around it being set in a world where mascots are hired by families for their children from agencies to help them along in life, and the main character is one who’s had a hard time keeping steady work. Sounds like it could be worth following.
Assessment: will try it out if fansubs become available.
Friday
Ayakashi http://youtube.com/watch?v=9uMcFsBexG8&f
Nice opening, but the show doesn’t deliver anything new, and the directing felt fairly flat. Not to be confused with the earlier Amano Yoshitaka-based Ayakashi anime series, nor with Ayakashi Ayashi.
Assessment: not following.
Kimi ga Aruji de Shitsuji ga Ore de http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQokM_Dwl
Blatant Hayate the Combat Butler rip-off, with none of its cleverness, self-conciousness, great humor, or entertaining characters. I would have watched this had it been sharper in at least one of those categories, but instead I can’t help but feel “knock off!” and “what are they trying to pull here?” every cut of the way. It’s a shame as some of the characters look like they could have been entertaining, had they just been written for better. Blah.
Assessment: not following.
Hatenkou Yuugi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR-lpuqOr
This one’s been surprisingly good. Fairly average sort-of-ghost-busting anime premise, but some witty and snarky banter, a sense of self-consciousness to the point of mocking the “by the numbers” set-up of one episode, and a speedy delivery that plows through the plot of the entire first manga volume in the first episode, with some refreshingly cocksure protagonists adds up to a fun enough ride. The design style is very evocative of CLAMP influences, but not in a bad way.
Assessment: following.
True Tears http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XExzG9krJ
Looks to be mostly a typical romantic anime dramedy, but I enjoyed the setting and characters enough in the first episode, I’ll at least eventually watch some more before I decide I like it or not.
Assessment: tentatively dropping, but not quite sure.
Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XJoTLzFU
I’m catching up on the original first series, so I expect I will continue with this next portion of this wacked-out suicidal gothic-emo high school black comedy. Compare the new opening with the first one (somewhat non-worksafe due to certain brief cuts at the start) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM8ODecbu
Assessment: will follow when caught up on the prior series.
Saturday
Persona -trinity soul- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZR-XSJhT
Based on the popular video game series, though minus the controversial “summoning technique” of blowing one’s brains out. Actually it feels to me like a cross between Aquarian Age and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, which is not a bad thing, I think. I need to see some more episodes, but the first one was certainly much more enjoyable than I had expected it to be (these game anime adaptations usually don’t turn out so well…).
Assessment: Tentatively following.
Porfy no Nagai Tabi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC-S72fzI
Blah…NHK anime about an orphan blah blah blah. In the same vein as all those other post-Miyazaki “educational”, usually western literature-based anime shows from NHK.
Assessment: Why?
Shigofumi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnxWQiNJZ
Another twist on the overdone shinigami theme, this time about a girl who acts as a postman for the recently deceased, accompanied by a really annoying talking staff/cane. The directing is slow, the gimmick doesn’t quite work. The end of the first episode was a nice surprise twist, and made up for a few flaws, but not enough to maintain my interest.
Assessment: dropped.
OVA series
Armored Trooper VOTOMS: The Pailsen Files http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWSN0ZtJh
Three episodes in and it’s pretty much same ol’ Votoms. Same continuity, basically a side story. If you liked the original Votoms, then this will make your day. If not, then don’t bother, as it doesn’t really offer anything new, and the CG effects are pretty low-budget and honestly would have looked better done traditional-style instead. I almost wonder if they deliberately dropped the frame rate on the CG and kept it low-budget to somehow maintain that 80’s “classic anime style”. If you can’t tell, yes, I liked the original angst-ridden, bitter coffee-drinking original, and this is just as fun in the same way.
Assessment: following.
Beyond that, I’m still following the still-running shows of prior seasons:
Hayate no Gotoku, Bamboo Blade, Kaiji, Clannad, Shakugan no Shana II (stuff’s finally happening in the second half…kinda like ROD TV, lol), and Kimi-kiss ~ pure rouge (well I haven’t watched much of it yet, so it’s still under evaluation).
24 January 2008 @ 12:10 am
Pretty soon I'll do a Winter anime season update, I've delayed it due to waiting to check one last show that might have some potential. So far this season's been pretty slow, but that's not unusual. The spring season will be bringing in some great shows, regardless.
I'd kind of drifted away from console gaming after the Phantasy Star Online days. I was a late adopter of the PS2, and there were some games of interest on there once I had one, but I'd found that the current generation of games at the time for the most part had left me kind of unfufilled. I liked some stuff like Katamari and DragonQuest VIII (though I never finished it, like most JRPGs after the 16-bit era I've dabbled in--action-RPG favorite Ys and the RPG-ish Castlevania SOTN being exceptions to the rule). When I got a GBA and later a DS, I found the sort of gaming I'd missed again, and pretty much abandoned the TV machines after that point with the occassional curiousity exceptions. Of the new consoles, 360 didn't have a lick of software that interested me, the PS3 was too expensive and also lacking in compelling titles at launch. The Wii looked like the best bet with its original control UI and refocused style of gaming. In the meantime, my PC provided the most console-style gameplay I wanted in the form of Phantasy Star Universe (which while a bit disappointing at launch, evolved into a compelling, fun title and has become downright recommendable again with the first expansion pack released).
I also got a PSP, which has become a marvelous playground. There are a small handful of good titles for it, but the most fun uses for it are independently designed applications such as the marvelous PSPTube software, which blends search functions with multiple streaming video sites, not just limiting itself to YouTube, or other programs that allow streaming of video from your PC (or music from internet radio, etc.) to the PSP and other cool functions.
So I finally got a Wii and a batch of some of the best games for it, and here's my thoughts on that...
The hardware and UI is quite nice, though it does have a slight "lo-fi" feel to it, as if it is specifically saying out loud, "yeah, I know, I'm not really a 'next-gen" machine, but let's have fun anyway!" I'm a bit dissapointed they didn't make GBA games directly playable on it with either the GameCube GBAplayer attachment or directly putting a slot on it for that, but perhaps a later DS add-on bit of software could allow the DS to transmit that data to it via wi-fi. The controllers are a bit pricey, and I'm disappointed they weren't made with built-in rechargability like the DS. Solutions exist, but are third party and cost more still. The speaker on the controller is a great idea, but is too tinny and often "rasps" when sounds are too strong for it to handle. The built-in game cube support is nice, as is the use of SD memory. Virtual Console is a great idea and it's nice to see Turbo Graphx (they better damn well do Ys 1&2 now that they've shown they can do the CD-RomRom games) and Neo Geo games in particular get a new audience, and to see some experimenting with bringing "lost titles" to our shores this way, something I'd love to see expanded upon.
Wii Sports, packaged with it, is a fun tech demo and great for that "first out of the box game" experience, user friendly for pretty much anyone. Some of the games are a bit lacking though--Baseball is a little too automated, Golf is pretty lackluster visually. Tennis is fun, but it'd be nice to have the option to control side-to-side tracking manually, say with the d-pad. Bowling is authentic enough, and boxing is outright awesome (and the most exercise).
Super Paper Mario is really a late-ported Game Cube game, but a really fun one. The writing is nicely sarcastic and witty enough, with a similar feel to the writing in Animal Crossing (perhaps the same localization team?). The gameplay is a nice blend of platforming and RPG-style elements, similar almost to Castlevania SOTN, though without the "fill in the map screen" exploration, which would be nice, though understandably a bit out of place in this title. There's not really any real Wii-specific functionality other than a gimicky use of control as a pointer at times, but it's no less fun for it. Lots of great retro fun to be found.
Metroid Prime 3 makes great use of the UI to really fix a lot of what seemed wrong to me about the first one (haven't played the second). I still wish though that it had a 3rd-person view option, and the first person-based interactions at times don't feel authenticly analogous to the wiimote/nunchuck interactions, not always synching right. The design and art direction is great, though the level design feels too derivative of standard FPS formula gameplay as defined by Half-Life and its cousins/descendents and not enough like the classic 16-bit era Metroid. I've only played a little so far though, so perhaps my opinion will change after I get deeper into the game.
Sonic the Hedgehog for Wii was a great idea (and comes highly recommended by folks who mastered the controls easily), but the motion controls just didn't work for me and were far too imprecise with no options for tweaking them to a more preferred play pattern. I returned it immediately. Had the UI been closer to the classic Sonic (i.e. pressing a button to attack, not thrusting your controller forward in the hopes it doesn't screw up the direction you were facing), I'd have totally dug it, though. Ah well.
NiGHTs was similarly a great idea, reviving a fun game concept from the Saturn, but with so-so controls (but at least playable) and really annoying non-skippable cutscenes with no Japanese voiceover option. I'll play it more later, it's passable, but it's also definitely second-tier. I always felt the Saturn game's controls were imperfect, and had hoped the Wii version would correct for that. Instead, it duplicates the same issues as the original quite authentically.
Mario Galaxy is as fun as I'd hoped it would be. Some say the UI isn't using the full potential of the controls, but I think it's a good compromise between established, familar game play (same basic moves as Mario in the last two generations of machines) with enough Wii-specific actions to enrich the experience. The luxury of moving hands independently in a Mario game, particularly for one to multitask slightly, is very intuitive and doesn't wreck the smooth control Nintendo's spent so many years refining. Sonic could learn some lessons here. The level design is amazingly inventive and makes far more use of all 3 dimensions than any previous platformer (an irony given the tongue-in-cheek 2D of Super Paper Mario), the music is great with plenty of homages to Mario games past in surprising places, and the graphics are great. The character graphics are a step up from Mario Sunshine, and the levels more fun, but I'll give Sunshine points for having really pretty environments that hold up well against this title. My one complaint is the title's use of astronomical terminology. It helps to think of Mario as more a board game than anything based in reality, so terms applied to areas are metaphors similar to what you'd expect in a more abstract board game such as Cosmic Encounters. That said, it annoys me that small clusters of Flash Gordonesque (or better yet, The Little Prince-like) almost-planetoids that are the equivalent of what used to be called simply "worlds" or "areas" or "lands" in prior games are now termed "galaxies". This in spite of their real small scale, that they orbit in planetary clusters, and are affected by modifiers called "prankster comets". Clearly whoever designed the game levels knew more or less what they were doing and probably named them appropriately, then someone else, probably from marketing or such, went and chose "better" names. Besides, even the title of the game isn't Super Mario GalaxIES, so what the hell? I guess "planets" or any variation thereof didn't sound cosmic enough for them. Now, to be fair, this is a fairy-tale game inhabited by sentient star-beings and the like, so it's not like scale or rational sensibility has too much to do with anything here.
Lately though two games in my collection have grabbed me the most. The first of which is The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I was a bit skeptical of the controls for the game after a lukewarm trial of a demo at a store when the game first was released. The reason for this was that I was jumping into a part of the game that was fairly deep in, and the level was designed with the assumption the player had learned all the basic skills needed by that point, so of course it felt clumsy and unintuitive. In contrast, playing the game from the start has been nearly mesmerising, and the control surprising easy to master and natural to use (well, with one embarassing "mission" that didn't work out so well, but that was more my own fault). You can really tell that there was inspiration taken from two already outstanding games, Shadow of the Colossus and Okami, but the game uses these influences well and in an original enough fashion. The game world is fun to play in and explore, and the characters all feel about right. I haven't had this much fun playing an action RPG since Ys IV (not counting maybe Castlevania). My only complaint is that while the main overworld of the game feels very well-constructed, the dungeons of the game at times feel a little too over-the-top platformy formulaic, although clearly they are all derived from the classic Zelda dungeon format. That said, this is the first Zelda I've played that I feel really compelled by, mostly due to the other ones arriving at unfortunate times in my gaming past or on consoles I didn't own (n64), and I have little doubt I will not stop playing this one until I've completed it.
The second game is the biggest surprise, Endless Ocean. This game really is amazing in its elegantly simple premise and UI yet great depth of gameplay. Some people will miss that there even is gameplay in the first place in what on the surface looks like a simple scuba-diving sim. But in fact, Endless Ocean exposes the raw essence of what almost all dungeon-exploring games are all metaphors for (basically spelunking and surveying mixed with a bestiary) , while at the same time works just as well as a metaphor for a dungeon adventure in itself. You explore the vast map of the world, find labyrinthine caverns and other "dungeons", go spelunking, find "natural" features which strike awe and often bear a haunting resemblence to man-made wonders, much like you could expect to find in a real setting. All along the way you have encounters (some random) with exotic creatures that sometimes defy imagination or strike awe in their vast scale or elegant or creepy forms, and some will even "join your party" for a while. Sometimes you can find treasure, or go on small assignments, and escort fellow adventurers (or even join up with one online). Penny Arcade had a great strip that jokingly turned Endless Ocean into a FF-style RPG, but the reality of the game isn't really so far from that mark. The interactions outside the water are a little awkward, and that part of the UI feels more an afterthought, but it only further enhances (albeit probably unintentionally so) how well-done the underwater experience is itself. The Wii is powerful as an early-generation VR interface, and this is a virtual holiday that one can truly enjoy almost like the real thing.
Lastly, today I picked up the critically acclaimed No More Heroes, which is a bit refreshing for both its M-rated dialogue, funky gameplay, quirky characters, and light otaku humor... the unlikely assassin main character is a total anime and Star Wars nerd; his room decorated with moe figures, mecha, and his ride an odd mix of Akira bike and X-wing fighter. It's not quite as impressive at this point as I'd hoped it would be (I think I was hoping for a bit more Shenmue-like play and more interaction with his collection), but it is fun and I look forward to playing it more in the weeks ahead. So far the controls mostly are used well, though I would have preferred the combat to be a little more Zelda-like and the bike controls perhaps making better use of the controller.
So yeah, in a nutshell, the Wii has gotten me excited about console gaming again. It's not perfect, and the software shows much room for further innovation and improvement, but it really reinvigorates console gaming much as Nintendo's prior inventions have in the past. The only danger here is that the Wii is mostly dependent on its peripherals for gaining its attention and attracting original development. Historically, almost every good console peripheral invention Nintendo has devised has subsequently been imitated and often outdone by the competition. Sony's Six-Axis is something of a bad joke by comparison, but nothing is there to stop them or Microsoft from coming up with their own take on the Wii's interactive controllers and further improving upon them. Once Wii-like controls or alternatives appear on the 360 or PS3 with good software to support it, then it will be back to Nintendo having to find ways to keep its user base interested. There's some great stuff that can be done with the existing Wii control hardware to further push the envelope of interaction, and at the same time, hobbyists here and in Japan are starting to discover new and excitingly simple ways to use Augmented Reality in ways that are a step past Sony's latest Eye Toy developments. The console arms race will be exciting in the years to come, as always.
I'd kind of drifted away from console gaming after the Phantasy Star Online days. I was a late adopter of the PS2, and there were some games of interest on there once I had one, but I'd found that the current generation of games at the time for the most part had left me kind of unfufilled. I liked some stuff like Katamari and DragonQuest VIII (though I never finished it, like most JRPGs after the 16-bit era I've dabbled in--action-RPG favorite Ys and the RPG-ish Castlevania SOTN being exceptions to the rule). When I got a GBA and later a DS, I found the sort of gaming I'd missed again, and pretty much abandoned the TV machines after that point with the occassional curiousity exceptions. Of the new consoles, 360 didn't have a lick of software that interested me, the PS3 was too expensive and also lacking in compelling titles at launch. The Wii looked like the best bet with its original control UI and refocused style of gaming. In the meantime, my PC provided the most console-style gameplay I wanted in the form of Phantasy Star Universe (which while a bit disappointing at launch, evolved into a compelling, fun title and has become downright recommendable again with the first expansion pack released).
I also got a PSP, which has become a marvelous playground. There are a small handful of good titles for it, but the most fun uses for it are independently designed applications such as the marvelous PSPTube software, which blends search functions with multiple streaming video sites, not just limiting itself to YouTube, or other programs that allow streaming of video from your PC (or music from internet radio, etc.) to the PSP and other cool functions.
So I finally got a Wii and a batch of some of the best games for it, and here's my thoughts on that...
The hardware and UI is quite nice, though it does have a slight "lo-fi" feel to it, as if it is specifically saying out loud, "yeah, I know, I'm not really a 'next-gen" machine, but let's have fun anyway!" I'm a bit dissapointed they didn't make GBA games directly playable on it with either the GameCube GBAplayer attachment or directly putting a slot on it for that, but perhaps a later DS add-on bit of software could allow the DS to transmit that data to it via wi-fi. The controllers are a bit pricey, and I'm disappointed they weren't made with built-in rechargability like the DS. Solutions exist, but are third party and cost more still. The speaker on the controller is a great idea, but is too tinny and often "rasps" when sounds are too strong for it to handle. The built-in game cube support is nice, as is the use of SD memory. Virtual Console is a great idea and it's nice to see Turbo Graphx (they better damn well do Ys 1&2 now that they've shown they can do the CD-RomRom games) and Neo Geo games in particular get a new audience, and to see some experimenting with bringing "lost titles" to our shores this way, something I'd love to see expanded upon.
Wii Sports, packaged with it, is a fun tech demo and great for that "first out of the box game" experience, user friendly for pretty much anyone. Some of the games are a bit lacking though--Baseball is a little too automated, Golf is pretty lackluster visually. Tennis is fun, but it'd be nice to have the option to control side-to-side tracking manually, say with the d-pad. Bowling is authentic enough, and boxing is outright awesome (and the most exercise).
Super Paper Mario is really a late-ported Game Cube game, but a really fun one. The writing is nicely sarcastic and witty enough, with a similar feel to the writing in Animal Crossing (perhaps the same localization team?). The gameplay is a nice blend of platforming and RPG-style elements, similar almost to Castlevania SOTN, though without the "fill in the map screen" exploration, which would be nice, though understandably a bit out of place in this title. There's not really any real Wii-specific functionality other than a gimicky use of control as a pointer at times, but it's no less fun for it. Lots of great retro fun to be found.
Metroid Prime 3 makes great use of the UI to really fix a lot of what seemed wrong to me about the first one (haven't played the second). I still wish though that it had a 3rd-person view option, and the first person-based interactions at times don't feel authenticly analogous to the wiimote/nunchuck interactions, not always synching right. The design and art direction is great, though the level design feels too derivative of standard FPS formula gameplay as defined by Half-Life and its cousins/descendents and not enough like the classic 16-bit era Metroid. I've only played a little so far though, so perhaps my opinion will change after I get deeper into the game.
Sonic the Hedgehog for Wii was a great idea (and comes highly recommended by folks who mastered the controls easily), but the motion controls just didn't work for me and were far too imprecise with no options for tweaking them to a more preferred play pattern. I returned it immediately. Had the UI been closer to the classic Sonic (i.e. pressing a button to attack, not thrusting your controller forward in the hopes it doesn't screw up the direction you were facing), I'd have totally dug it, though. Ah well.
NiGHTs was similarly a great idea, reviving a fun game concept from the Saturn, but with so-so controls (but at least playable) and really annoying non-skippable cutscenes with no Japanese voiceover option. I'll play it more later, it's passable, but it's also definitely second-tier. I always felt the Saturn game's controls were imperfect, and had hoped the Wii version would correct for that. Instead, it duplicates the same issues as the original quite authentically.
Mario Galaxy is as fun as I'd hoped it would be. Some say the UI isn't using the full potential of the controls, but I think it's a good compromise between established, familar game play (same basic moves as Mario in the last two generations of machines) with enough Wii-specific actions to enrich the experience. The luxury of moving hands independently in a Mario game, particularly for one to multitask slightly, is very intuitive and doesn't wreck the smooth control Nintendo's spent so many years refining. Sonic could learn some lessons here. The level design is amazingly inventive and makes far more use of all 3 dimensions than any previous platformer (an irony given the tongue-in-cheek 2D of Super Paper Mario), the music is great with plenty of homages to Mario games past in surprising places, and the graphics are great. The character graphics are a step up from Mario Sunshine, and the levels more fun, but I'll give Sunshine points for having really pretty environments that hold up well against this title. My one complaint is the title's use of astronomical terminology. It helps to think of Mario as more a board game than anything based in reality, so terms applied to areas are metaphors similar to what you'd expect in a more abstract board game such as Cosmic Encounters. That said, it annoys me that small clusters of Flash Gordonesque (or better yet, The Little Prince-like) almost-planetoids that are the equivalent of what used to be called simply "worlds" or "areas" or "lands" in prior games are now termed "galaxies". This in spite of their real small scale, that they orbit in planetary clusters, and are affected by modifiers called "prankster comets". Clearly whoever designed the game levels knew more or less what they were doing and probably named them appropriately, then someone else, probably from marketing or such, went and chose "better" names. Besides, even the title of the game isn't Super Mario GalaxIES, so what the hell? I guess "planets" or any variation thereof didn't sound cosmic enough for them. Now, to be fair, this is a fairy-tale game inhabited by sentient star-beings and the like, so it's not like scale or rational sensibility has too much to do with anything here.
Lately though two games in my collection have grabbed me the most. The first of which is The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I was a bit skeptical of the controls for the game after a lukewarm trial of a demo at a store when the game first was released. The reason for this was that I was jumping into a part of the game that was fairly deep in, and the level was designed with the assumption the player had learned all the basic skills needed by that point, so of course it felt clumsy and unintuitive. In contrast, playing the game from the start has been nearly mesmerising, and the control surprising easy to master and natural to use (well, with one embarassing "mission" that didn't work out so well, but that was more my own fault). You can really tell that there was inspiration taken from two already outstanding games, Shadow of the Colossus and Okami, but the game uses these influences well and in an original enough fashion. The game world is fun to play in and explore, and the characters all feel about right. I haven't had this much fun playing an action RPG since Ys IV (not counting maybe Castlevania). My only complaint is that while the main overworld of the game feels very well-constructed, the dungeons of the game at times feel a little too over-the-top platformy formulaic, although clearly they are all derived from the classic Zelda dungeon format. That said, this is the first Zelda I've played that I feel really compelled by, mostly due to the other ones arriving at unfortunate times in my gaming past or on consoles I didn't own (n64), and I have little doubt I will not stop playing this one until I've completed it.
The second game is the biggest surprise, Endless Ocean. This game really is amazing in its elegantly simple premise and UI yet great depth of gameplay. Some people will miss that there even is gameplay in the first place in what on the surface looks like a simple scuba-diving sim. But in fact, Endless Ocean exposes the raw essence of what almost all dungeon-exploring games are all metaphors for (basically spelunking and surveying mixed with a bestiary) , while at the same time works just as well as a metaphor for a dungeon adventure in itself. You explore the vast map of the world, find labyrinthine caverns and other "dungeons", go spelunking, find "natural" features which strike awe and often bear a haunting resemblence to man-made wonders, much like you could expect to find in a real setting. All along the way you have encounters (some random) with exotic creatures that sometimes defy imagination or strike awe in their vast scale or elegant or creepy forms, and some will even "join your party" for a while. Sometimes you can find treasure, or go on small assignments, and escort fellow adventurers (or even join up with one online). Penny Arcade had a great strip that jokingly turned Endless Ocean into a FF-style RPG, but the reality of the game isn't really so far from that mark. The interactions outside the water are a little awkward, and that part of the UI feels more an afterthought, but it only further enhances (albeit probably unintentionally so) how well-done the underwater experience is itself. The Wii is powerful as an early-generation VR interface, and this is a virtual holiday that one can truly enjoy almost like the real thing.
Lastly, today I picked up the critically acclaimed No More Heroes, which is a bit refreshing for both its M-rated dialogue, funky gameplay, quirky characters, and light otaku humor... the unlikely assassin main character is a total anime and Star Wars nerd; his room decorated with moe figures, mecha, and his ride an odd mix of Akira bike and X-wing fighter. It's not quite as impressive at this point as I'd hoped it would be (I think I was hoping for a bit more Shenmue-like play and more interaction with his collection), but it is fun and I look forward to playing it more in the weeks ahead. So far the controls mostly are used well, though I would have preferred the combat to be a little more Zelda-like and the bike controls perhaps making better use of the controller.
So yeah, in a nutshell, the Wii has gotten me excited about console gaming again. It's not perfect, and the software shows much room for further innovation and improvement, but it really reinvigorates console gaming much as Nintendo's prior inventions have in the past. The only danger here is that the Wii is mostly dependent on its peripherals for gaining its attention and attracting original development. Historically, almost every good console peripheral invention Nintendo has devised has subsequently been imitated and often outdone by the competition. Sony's Six-Axis is something of a bad joke by comparison, but nothing is there to stop them or Microsoft from coming up with their own take on the Wii's interactive controllers and further improving upon them. Once Wii-like controls or alternatives appear on the 360 or PS3 with good software to support it, then it will be back to Nintendo having to find ways to keep its user base interested. There's some great stuff that can be done with the existing Wii control hardware to further push the envelope of interaction, and at the same time, hobbyists here and in Japan are starting to discover new and excitingly simple ways to use Augmented Reality in ways that are a step past Sony's latest Eye Toy developments. The console arms race will be exciting in the years to come, as always.
07 January 2008 @ 08:55 pm
Anime Relations: Macross: Do You Remember Love?, Code Geass - Hangyaku no Lelouch, Mei Ou Project Zeorymer, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai, Hayate the Combat Butler, Clannad, Rental Magica, Genshiken 2, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, Shakugan no Shana II, Code Geass - Hangyaku no Lelouch R2, ef - a tale of memories, Kimi-kiss ~ pure rouge, Sketchbook ~full color'S~, Blue Drop ~Tenshi-tachi no Gikyoku~, Night Wizard, Bamboo Blade, Moyashimon, Kaiji, Macross F, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni 3rd Season 
Happy 2008!
This looks to be a great year for anime, especially mecha, with both the second Code Geass series and Macross Frontier coming up in April.
I was cautiously optimistic about Macross Frontier until I saw the 25th Anniversary Special “Director’s Cut” preview of the first episode on Dec. 26th and had my socks blown off. Now THIS is what Macross is SUPPOSED to be like, and the homages throughout the episode to all the prior series and particularly to Ai Oboeteimasuka (including the great Yoko Kanno remix of the title song itself for the ED credits) and the classic first episode of the original don’t hurt. This episode alone was far truer to the spirit of the original Macross than any of its spinoffs, yet managed to acknowledge all of them in the same breath. Plus the Macross movie-style blending of the space dogfights and Sheryl Norme’s Minmay-meets-Fire-Bomber-meets-Sharon-Ap
Now I’ll look back at my last anime blog entries and figure out what shows I’ve dropped and which I’m still following or have finished:
I did in fact drop Blue Drop. It might gradually improve, but I’ve had better stuff on my plate to catch up on.
I’ve only followed Shakugan no Shana Second the last few episodes of its first half because my roommate still hasn’t quite given up on it. That said, we skimmed the last two or three episodes after seeing they were still boring as hell. I “love” how often the characters have flashbacks to the original series, like they are thinking, “hey, remember back when STUFF HAPPENED?” My MyAnimeList rating of the show has dropped to four and then three out of ten. To put that in perspective, this is the first show I’ve continued following after it dropped below a five. At least it looks like the point of the end of episode 12 was “okay, STUFF’s going to HAPPEN now…tune back in a couple weeks after the New Years holiday week is over and you’ll see for yourself.” So perhaps the second half of the series won’t continue this noxious fan abuse.
I did in fact finish Zeorymer, which had the classic melodramatic “everyone must die” ending, but the whole thing was such an outright mishmash of 80’s anime clichés mixed with some awesome mecha designs, and so short, that it was all good fun anyway. Not as classic as, say, Iczer-One, but worth the popcorn and peanuts.
Night Wizard was as bad as (or worse than) Rental Magica turned out, so it joined it in getting the boot. Ah well, I was really hoping one of those two would work out, and Night Wizard at least looked like it had a good cheeseball factor going for it. Rats.
Bamboo Blade continues to impress and surprise, a fun, funny, well-written show that hides itself under a modest-looking kendo sports anime exterior.
Kaiji is fantastic, chilling and evil, a train wreck in progress you can’t tear your eyes from. I can’t imagine what kind of thought processes the mangaka went through to create this one…
Moyasimon’s still been entertaining, though I’ve only watched a couple so far. I did drop Heroic Age (I found out it gets much worse in the eps ahead, sigh) and Terra E, regretfully.
I finished Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni Kai and was quite satisfied, though very surprised that there will be a THIRD series, even though the main story arc of the original sound novel series has been fully completed now. I ended up giving the show a “nine” on MyAnimeList, but only because Studio DEEN continued to drop the animation ball in a number of places. Had they done a GOOD job animating the show, it would be my favorite anime TV series ever. As it is, I’d still rank it up with my top favorite “tens” for story, at least.
Hayate no Gotoku (aka Hayate the Combat Butler) needs no further discussion, it simply is one of the better anime comedies out there.
Genshiken 2 is one of those few anime that is actually BETTER than the original manga it’s based on (thanks in part to heavy involvement by the mangaka). EPIC LULZ for the episodes about the visting fujoushi otaku from the US and the massive amounts of coached English. And that’s saying a lot as the manga is in my top five favorite manga series. A massive improvement over the past anime versions of Genshiken, and far, far more risqué.
Clannad is quite good as ever. KyoAni’s anime record is quite unblemished and they deserve every bit of recognition they’ve earned from fans. Forget Gainax and Gonzo, keep your eyes on these guys…
As much as I love surreal and avant-garde stuff like Utena and FLCL, and innovation in anime art direction, especially adoption of and further adaptation of the techniques Gonzo pioneered in their greatest work, Gankutusou, I really can’t quite keep up with Shaft and Akiyuki Shinbou’s avant-garde style of presentation (as much as I applaud their bold experimentation and the way it can enrich the rest of the medium). Sometimes it works brilliantly, like in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, which I have been watching in small gleeful doses. I think it ALMOST worked for me in ef: a tale of memories, but the writing in the show just didn’t click and one character just really got on my nerves, so I couldn’t follow it. I dug the style and presentation, as I often have on Shinbou’s stuff, but, as also often with his work, I found that the material itself didn’t work out.
Kimi Kiss ~ pure rouge has been waiting for me to get back to it. Looks like a nice romantic comedy without getting into annoying harem wish-fufillment wankery and fluff, at least so far, and isn’t over-the-top wacky either. We’ll see.
I still haven’t bothered checking Sketchbook ~full color'S~ as what I’ve heard sounds pretty unpromising.
I know I’m forgetting some others, but that’ll do for now. Soon I’ll have to put together my winter season agenda.
30 November 2007 @ 02:57 pm
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/editoria
Very well said and worth reading.
UPDATE:
The letter has now been translated into Japanese, and Justin has this to say on the matter in one of the followup comments:
JETRO, the Japanese government body that promotes Japanese entertainment content overseas, has expressed interest in disseminating it to their anime related contacts, which is pretty much everyone. That would be pretty amazing.
Very well said and worth reading.
UPDATE:
The letter has now been translated into Japanese, and Justin has this to say on the matter in one of the followup comments:
JETRO, the Japanese government body that promotes Japanese entertainment content overseas, has expressed interest in disseminating it to their anime related contacts, which is pretty much everyone. That would be pretty amazing.
27 November 2007 @ 06:05 pm
Anime Relations: Mei Ou Project Zeorymer, Heroic Age, Terra e..., Baccano!, Terra e... (movie), Shakugan no Shana II, Night Wizard, Bamboo Blade, Moyashimon, Kaiji
Just finished Baccano. One of the better shows of the year! I may have to rewatch the first couple of episodes to better piece the chronology puzzle together. The shaggy dog epilogue 70 years later in 2001 (which I believe one of the later novels is set in) still makes me chuckle thinking about it. It’s not often you see anime handle magical realism this well, let alone in a non-Japanese period setting.
Blue Drop started strongly for me but it’s losing my interest quickly. I looked ahead at forum posts on future episodes and it looks like people are still wondering when/if the pace will pick up four episodes ahead of me, so it may be time to abandon ship.
Shakugan no Shana 2 plodded for 7 episodes, forgetting that it was an action-fantasy series and trotted out a by the numbers school romantic comedy formula for most of this first quarter of the series. Such failure. Episode 8 starts a recounting by Margery Daw of her earlier career as a Flame Haze in late 1930’s New York, which is an improvement but still feels like the show is avoiding actually advancing the story forward in the slightest. All of the energy and vitality of the original series just seems to be gone lately, and largely it seems to have forgotten what made it unique and interesting. I continue to hold out hoping for it to get back into gear, but Nanoha Strikers has left me a lot less patient with shows that are padded out this season (and Nanoha wasn’t as badly padded as this has been so far).
I’ve started to finally watch the old 1988 OVA Super Robot series Zeorymer, and it’s good fun Hirano Toshiki cheese, with a classic Iczer-One-ish soundtrack and feel, too. Looking forward to the next episodes!
The second episode of Rental Magica left me really flat (the directing just really turned me off), so I’m abandoning that one. I hope Night Wizard episode 2 is more entertaining. Bamboo Blade and Kaiji are both great so far, still. I'm also enjoying Moyashimon so far for reasons I'm not sure of. From earlier, Heroic Age’s subs (excluding the awful ones done earlier by the notorious Your Mom fansub group) dried up early on, and while the first episodes were quite fun, it was starting to feel a bit dopey where the subs left off, so I haven’t looked out for more. Terra E looked promising, especially as I enjoyed the manga and the original 80’s film, but I thought the storytelling was too drawn out and the directing was not really compelling. I think they tried too hard to “update” and adapt the series rather than get caught up in the retro-appeal of a classic SF yarn with espers. Perhaps the staff of Cyborg 009 would have handled it better.
20 November 2007 @ 04:02 pm
Anime Relations: Code Geass - Hangyaku no Lelouch, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Hayate the Combat Butler, Ghost Hound, Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro
I decided after the third episode to drop Ghost Hound. The show is interesting, but just not clicking for me, and I feel like I’m putting more effort in to watch it than what it’s giving back is worth, and as a result, watching it feels like a draining experience. Close, but not quite my thing.
I also dropped Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro, at least for now. Episode 2 was rather off-putting and the first episode wasn't so great either. I'm still prepared to believe the story gets interesting later if if moves in a different direction, but the formula as set up for now just doesn't grab me. If you want a comedic student/demonic avatar detective and monster-of-the-week mashup, though, by all means check it out.
The Code Geass spoof in the latest Hayate no Gotoku was brilliant, can’t wait for the next episode!
Finished watching Gurren Lagaan last night. Well, actually, I might go back and rewatch some of the episodes at the latter part of the first arc that I only skimmed through.
What it boils down to is that the first arc was okay, probably a lot better if you never saw shows like Wataru and Lamune and KO Century Beast and the like. I could have done with less cartooniness, especially on the robots. But other than a couple of mis-steps like the infamous episode 4, it's decent enough as shounen fare, with some great lines and some memorable scenes.
The second arc, on the other hand, is the stuff of legends and tall tales, especially the latter. The whole show by then feels like Gainax spinning a super-robot-meets-Matsumoto yarn over a campfire or on the playground, and the ultimate conclusion is, well, beyond description, hyper-galactic in scale and pure gutsiness. Gurren Lagaan is now the Paul Bunyan of anime, I'd say.
Great stuff. Cosmically great, epic, physics-defying, over the top, macho, ridiculously absurd and unbeatable, with increasingly bigger and more drill attacks than Freud could shake a...you know... at. It's the same kind of campy, cheesy joy one gets watching the Flash Gordon movie and then some.
Over 9000, nothing...
12 November 2007 @ 06:42 pm
Anime Relations: Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, Hayate the Combat Butler, Clannad, Baccano!, Genshiken 2, Ghost Hound, Shakugan no Shana II
Finally finished Nanoha Strikers subtitled. With full (albeit sometimes sloppy) translation rather than my spotty Japanese knowledge, it was much improved. Overall, the series was okay, just drawn out in places. It gets points for trying to explore new territory as a post-mahou shoujo, military SF-fantasy anime, more or less, and portraying the kids grown up and working as adults. It loses points for losing the pacing of the first two series, and the tired mad scientist cliché, even if it is an appropriate follow-up to the story of Precia Testarossa. Lackluster TV animation, getting fixed in the DVD version, didn’t help things either. Still, good times. I’ll be content with this as the final chapter of Nanoha. Another series would be okay if they can return to the energy that the original two had, but otherwise could spell trouble.
The second episode of Ghost Hound was a bit better…and creepier…than the first one, but I’m still not really sure about it. One more will determine it for me, I think. Probably dropping it though.
The trailer for the new Macross F series (http://macross.co.jp/?id=special,2007111
Clannad is *excellent* so far, with a lot of character. The start is played for even more laughs than Kanon was, and it has more of a high school comedy/drama vibe than the harem-ish feel of the start of Air and Kanon. A few hints have been dropped about some of the underlying mysteries, and some darker hints here and there, such as Tomoya’s estranged relationship with his widowed and apparently once-abusive father. The first active mystery is around the rather strange character Fuko, deliberately teasing the Kanon-familiar viewer into inferring an Ayu-like explanation for her setup, which Tomoya pretty quickly dismisses right off, suggesting two alternate hypotheses that are more likely instead. It’s interesting that the show is already exploring her mystery right at the outset. If, as has been hinted, this series is multi-arc like Air was, then it may be necessary to blow through the light-hearted setup rapidly in order to get to the meat of the storyline.
Also on a lighter note, Hayate no Gotoku is a real blast, a bizarrely well-matched mix of mainstream anime comedy with otaku-nudging in-jokes of all levels of obscurity. The Nabeshin episode was pure crack as expected, though somehow he managed to slip in some fun character development along the way.
The fansub of Baccano! is getting close to the end. Quite a whirlwind of a series, I’m impressed that a magical realism show mostly set on a transcontinental train trip in 30’s America could be so damn good. Mafia, gangs, thieves, vigilantes, immortals, alchemists, demons, and more!
Genshiken 2 is outstanding. High production quality and fresh writing with new work from the original creator, exploring the characters far more intimately than before. Yes, it’s still damn funny. The portrayal of Ogiue’s yaoi fantasies in episode 5 about the guys in the club has to be seen to be believed.
Shakugan no Shana 2 is really starting to piss me off, on the other hand. I really hate when a sequel series takes advantage of a fanbase created by good material and a solid cast turns around and goes brain-dead. 5 episodes in and the series still flounders about, doing its best imitation of a bad harem anime rather than returning to the intense seinen action and drama of the original series other than two sequences that just felt hacked together. The opening and the past series all indicate that the good stuff is still on its way, but I’m really frustrated with shows that pull this kind of crap. Out of devotion to the original characters, I’ll stick this out a bit longer, but it’s getting really close to being dropped or put on indefinite hold. ;(
I don’t normally talk much about manga in my blogs, but I’ll put a big shout out for Tokyo Pop’s release of the first volume of Kozue Amano’s prequel to her Aria series—Aqua--in English. The art is outstanding and the story is a real treat. One can hope the Aria manga, which ADV dumped after lackluster sales of the first 3 volumes, will get renewed in turn…
05 November 2007 @ 04:33 pm
Anime Relations: Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Genshiken 2
Not listed previously in my fall season impressions was the new Genshiken series. The new opening (http://youtube.com/watch?v=L1JFcG2ESXc ) has to be seen to be believed...a full on Gundam parody animated by no less than Satoshi Urushibara. Madarame makes a great Char… The show’s being handled by an all-new staff and they’re doing a great job with it. I’m pretty excited as this series should get to some of my favorite scenes from the manga, which is among my top five favorite manga titles currently. Painfully funny stuff.
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Tengen Toppen Gurren Lagann has been on and off my radar for a while now. It’s been hyped by many as one of the best super robot series ever, on par with Gunbuster and others. Personally, I have to question the experience of the people billing it as such—for an oldschool fan like myself, the series is far too derivative during the first arc (opening: http://youtube.com/watch?v=7yCSHwQt1go ) of stuff I’ve seen before for it to hold my interest, as much as I’d like it to. The setting is kind of like a reversal of KO Century Beast, where in this case it’s the humans being oppressed by the beast-men rather than the other way around. The cartoony “Ganmen” robots which are designed with emotive faces as their torsos evoke the designs of the old Wataru shounen series along with hints of Lamune&40 (the original series, not the later incarnations), not to mention the various Yuusha series, maybe plus a hint of Gaiking. The character Kamina is directly parallel to Roy Fokker’s role in Macross and Daigouji Gai in Nadesico, the manly senpai who dies too early. I can’t place the abandoned naïve princess, but I’m sure I’ve seen that somewhere too. Undoubtedly, this is actually the point of the series, much like Gunbuster, sticking to Gainax’s Daicon roots of parodying/paying homage to what has gone before. But it’s a bit too trite, too shounen, and too, too, too cartoony with the robot action for me to really sink my teeth into it other than a few choice scenes and some inspired testosterone-pumped dialogue.
However, the second arc may be what changes everything (opening: http://youtube.com/watch?v=y_q4TEqw8Ew ). Set seven years later, the latter arc’s look and production style was given a total overhaul, and presents itself more like a classic robot series rather than the goofy cartoony stuff of the first arc. The later setting is of course yet another trope borrowed from shows like Layzner (which similarly much improved in the second arc), Nadesico, not to mention sequel series such as Zeta Gundam, and a lot of familiar clichés and motifs are instantly recognizable to seasoned fans. But with a new, uncartoony enemy, mass-produced mecha, older characters, and far more polished backdrop and character art, the second arc appear to have the kind of stuff that appeals to me that I found lacking in the first 15 episodes. So I’m still on the fence for this show. What I’ve seen and heard about the progression of the series from this point on suggest that it might still find a place in my heart before it is over…otherwise I guess I’m just getting too damn old for this kind of stuff…
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I’ve ranted about it before, but I have to say it really bugs me lately to see what I believe is a misinterpretation of the term “moe” of late. More and more, the term is getting hijacked to refer just to series focused on cute girls, either of the harem variety or the loli one, or both. Personally, I think this is outrageous for a number of reasons. First of all, “moe” as I encountered the term in Japan and among Japanese fans is not something limited by gender or genre. A lot of people say “moe” is a concept that doesn’t translate easily into English, and this is the source of much of the confusion. In actuality, there *is* an English word very close in meaning to “moe”, and that is simply “charm”. A character that is moe is a character that has charm, and their moe attributes are those charm points that make them stand out. As such, moe has nothing to do with either sexuality or a lack thereof, despite some dubious interepretations of it to mean one or the other. Moe is an attribute completely independent of both. It is the raw appeal of a character that lends itself well to the anime and manga mediums (although “three-dimensionals”—real people--can be moe in some instances as well), and can be attributes that appeal to either male or female fans. A moe character can come from any show or manga and can be any age, gender, an even be not remotely human in some cases.
The other reason this mislabeling is aggravating is because a number of shows can be brushed off as “moe” without ever looking “under the hood” or even considering the fact that they might be more than what they appear to be on the surface. True, there’s a lot of really bad harem and loli shows out there, but a fan that ignores, for example, the AIR series for this reason will be missing the chance to see a remarkable seinen spiritual journey of tragedy, loss, and Kafkaesque transformation. It could get worse over time, too—imagine for example if someone later brushed off Yokohama Shopping Log as a “series about moe android girls”.
The confusion of usage isn’t limited to westerners, though (unlike terms such as "hentai" and even "anime" itself*). Part of the problem is that since moe is an ambiguous term, a number of high profile Japanese artists have weighed in with their own personal definitions that are often picked to fly in the face of what others say. One famous artist linked moe directly to a maternal, non-sexual feeling, while another artist talks about it in completely erotic terms. It’s these sorts of contradictions that have helped spread the impression that there is something shady about moe in itself, which is understandable given the number of erotic materials that have been published in Japan to also have moe appeal, with moe even in their title at times. But make no mistake, moe should be considered independently of this trend. Note that many of the past winners of the International Saimoe (“ultimate moe”) Competition have been characters from non-erotic contexts, such as Nadja Applefield, Kinomoto Sakura, and Furude Rika (not that this will stop fan-made doujinshi to the contrary, of course). In the male Saimoe competition (less known to western fans), for that matter, one year's winner was apparently Sai from Hikaru no Go...
*"Hentai" in Japanese refers to a perverted person, not erotica, and mixing the two in Japan will probably at best get you laughed at. "Anime" in Japanese refers to 2D animated works of any nationality, so American cartoons such as Disney stuff are "anime" in Japan as well, although interestingly, "Wallace and Gromit" is not generally considered "anime" by Japanese people I've talked with, being 3D claymation.
Here's a couple of links to check out in his honor:
Bob Wilkins interviews Anthony Daniels
http://www.youtube.com/wat
Captain Cosmic intro
http://www.youtube.com/wat
And this is a clip from the very show that got me into Japanese animation 30 years ago:
http://www.youtube.com/wat
We'll miss you, Bob.