What are you Watching?

[davemerrill]

We're in the home stretch of DEAR BROTHER and I'm enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. I mean, I figured I'd like it, but it's turned out to be really entertaining.

For my part I always felt COWBOY BEBOP lived up to the hype, and I've enjoyed all of it I've seen. It's one of the few Japanese cartoons that stands on its own as a good solid adventure TV show - it's the kind of thing you can show anybody without having to explain some sort of pre-existing genre trope like "giant robot" or "magical girl". Space bounty hunters - go.

I like that it's a show about adults who drink and smoke and have sex and worry about money, and it can spend all the time it wants shooting pool or lingering over cocktails; it's confident in its own ability to deliver. Rather than being a 'western' style series, it feels to me more of a globally-influenced show - Hong Kong action movies, spaghetti westerns, American dsytopian SF and pulp detective fiction all rub shoulders with each other.

And yes, it does have a great soundtrack.

[Gunso]

I've been rewatching stuff I haven't watched in a while. Couple nights ago, it was Patlabor 2 and last night I watched Bubblegum Crisis. I was reminded constantly how modern technology has that love/hate relationship with creativity. These days, the animation is better but the animators are worse. Back when cels were used to create a film master which got recorded to LD or master tape, they had to get it right the first time or leave it wrong in the finished product. There was no fixing it later on the computer when they have the time. (this is the biggest gripe I have about technology making companies lazy, could rant forever about that - look at the video game industry, it's the same way with pushing out buggy products and fixing with updates)

Of course, I was also reminded of how bad the DVD mastering was back in the early 00's. My copies of the first two Patlabor movies were released by Manga Video - they were done with only 4:3 TVs in mind, even though widescreen "HD Ready" TVs were coming out at the time (I actually had a CRT TV that had a widescreen mode that squeezed the whole image into a 16:9 letterbox on the screen to take advantage of the full resolution of the signal). Yet, they made the DVDs with the movies letterboxed into a 4:3 video stream instead of just the 16:9 video and letting the player letterbox it for 4:3 TVs. So, it was no better than a DVD copy of the VHS release I already had - actually a bit worse, there was some instances where text written on something in the scene was readable on the VHS and not on the DVD.

Moving on to Bubblegum Crisis - AnimEigo was always great with their VHS releases, but never really got the DVD thing right. In this case, the company that authored the DVDs for them were sure proud of themselves - they put a big fancy animated logo splash with music before the menu comes up. "Menu" being the buggy overly complicated mess of an ordeal that you had to deal with to get things going. Also, not sure who was at fault, but the video and audio throughout the OVA was off, the sound started getting ahead of the animation by as much as a second and then at some point got back into sync. Don't recall this with my VHS copy, but couldn't compare as my VCR is broken.

So, I guess this turned into a rant, sorry folks. To end on a positive note, after last night's BGC, I felt a bit teary-eyed with nostalgia. I am going to declare my friday nights old-school anime night. I've spent too long watching only the latest and greatest stuff, while this old stuff sits idle on the shelf. I couldn't recall when I last watched any of BGC.. I bought the DVD and obviously watched it at that point, but then it's just been on the shelf, got packed up when I moved, got unpacked and sat on the shelf until next time I moved, etc. (military has me moving every couple years)


Adding my 1¥ (that's about 2 cents with the exchange rate now, eh?) to the Cowboy Bebop discussion - it was great in its time. I think it should be considered on its own merits and not through the perspective of hipster irony as it is interpreted by so many people over-hyping it these days.

[r-18]

rewatching k-on!...and k-on!!...just as good or better than i remember...

[greg]

For my part I always felt COWBOY BEBOP lived up to the hype, and I've enjoyed all of it I've seen. It's one of the few Japanese cartoons that stands on its own as a good solid adventure TV show - it's the kind of thing you can show anybody without having to explain some sort of pre-existing genre trope like "giant robot" or "magical girl". Space bounty hunters - go.

I like that it's a show about adults who drink and smoke and have sex and worry about money, and it can spend all the time it wants shooting pool or lingering over cocktails; it's confident in its own ability to deliver. Rather than being a 'western' style series, it feels to me more of a globally-influenced show - Hong Kong action movies, spaghetti westerns, American dsytopian SF and pulp detective fiction all rub shoulders with each other.

And yes, it does have a great soundtrack.

I agree. Calling Cowboy Bebop an anime that appeals to the Western market means that it is about adults doing adult things, which is rare in anime these days. In the 80s, anime was full of badasses, but that diminished in the '90s. The point of Cowboy Bebop is ambience, and it hearkens back to old noir films from America, full of smoke-filled bars and cocktails. I hate smoking and it is ridiculous that anyone would smoke cigarettes (A friend of a friend just had a triple bypass heart surgery at the young age of 34 because he's a smoker), but stuff like this makes it look cool, just as the old black and white movies did. It is an amalgamation of everything Dave mentioned above, and the show follows the patterns set forth by those genres (a cowboy asking for a last cigarette before he dies, etc). The action is phenomenal, both with Spike's kung-fu fistfights and the space dogfights. Darth is completely right about how the show follows the same cookie-cutter pattern for episodes, but I readily forgive that because the show is an homage to the stories from those old, derivative movies.

Ed is the only character that borderlines on falling into that spastic, retarded anime character pitfall, but she never goes that far. Japan is a country that doesn't understand why we all hate Jar Jar Binks, because that sort of character is so prevalent in anime. In my opinion, CB does not have "that one token annoying character" like so many other anime do.

[greg]

Moving on to Bubblegum Crisis - AnimEigo was always great with their VHS releases, but never really got the DVD thing right. In this case, the company that authored the DVDs for them were sure proud of themselves - they put a big fancy animated logo splash with music before the menu comes up. "Menu" being the buggy overly complicated mess of an ordeal that you had to deal with to get things going. Also, not sure who was at fault, but the video and audio throughout the OVA was off, the sound started getting ahead of the animation by as much as a second and then at some point got back into sync. Don't recall this with my VHS copy, but couldn't compare as my VCR is broken.

I have a question... when you mention the out of sync audio on the DVD, are you talking about the BGC "Remastered Edition" box set? That's what I own. I haven't watched it in forever, but I'd hope that something called "remastered" would have fixed such errors.

[llj]

I have only watched the last volume of the BGC "remastered" set and I have to say, I was surprised how good it looked considering when it was released. I didn't notice any audio problems.

There apparently were about 2 or even 3 different editions of BGC that Animeigo released on DVD. I will look into this.

[r-18]

hyoka so far i'm up to ep 6.......

[Jen526]

I watched Time of Eve/Eve no Jinkan last night.

SOOOOOooo my sort of title... science fiction that shines a light on the poignancy and humor inherent in the human condition. Really beautiful.

[Daniel]

but I'd hope that something called "remastered" would have fixed such errors.

The remastered Dragonball DVD sets released in Japan have audio sync problems. There are five box sets (DB, DBZ first and second half, GT, and movies), and I know that at least the DB and DBZ ones have the sync issues. All three of these originally sold for 100,000 yen each.

[_D_]

If I want to just watch anime, there is a lot out from rental shops, Netflix, Crunchyroll, etc. with the new US TV season upon us though not going to be much time for it.

Tried to watch Revolution on Monday. Definitely SM Stirling lite. NBC released the pilot online for whomever wants to watch it. Will give it a couple more episodes but that will be make or break time for it. Lots more stuff like Arrow (Green Arrow) to look forward to. Are any of you folks in Japan watching US/UK/Canadian TV? If so, what? Wondered if there is a fansub community like there is with the Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, Russian, etc. communities. Odd that fan subs are not confined to just Japan and English languages but to a lot of other languages as well.