What are you Watching?

[llj]

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.

The remastered Lupin III DVD TV sets also have audio sync problems, both in Japan and the ones released by Discotek (which presumably were from the same source)

That said, sometimes a faulty DVD player can create sync problems. I have one I have to stop and play again every once in a while to get the audio and visuals back into sync.

Anyway, getting back to topic, I am currently watching xxxHolic and I have Slayers season 1 sitting around waiting to be watched. xxxHolic is interesting, I like that it's basically a collection of myths and old folklore. As such, the show tends to be episodic. The animation is a bit dodgy, though.

Stuff I recently finished:

Bamboo Blade: A pleasant surprise. There are some cute references to old video game consoles like the Saturn, Super Famicom, PC Engine and Mega Drive. There's also an awesome reference to VHDs .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDxSidSVTig

Magic Knight Rayearth TV S1 + S2: A bit draggy, and without the humour of Sailor Moon to get through some of the slower episodes. That said, I did enjoy it on a certain level, and it's really a pretty cool anime for preteens. I did spend a lot of time wondering why they didn't get this on U.S. TV in the 90s--I'd heard there were serious talks but they never got to the finish line. I am guessing what tripped the negotiations up was the merchandise. It's an action show targeted at girls but without a lot of "girly" merchandise. As Rayearth fans know, the show features a lot of swords and mecha. I can picture U.S. marketers going, "It's a show for girls...but you can only make boys' toys from them! How can we ever market this?"

[Jen526]

^ I don't know the timing, but if MKR, but given the failures of the U.S. efforts at boy-ifying Card Captor Sakura and Escaflowne, the U.S. market clearly didn't know what to do with shoujo series.

I found season 2 of MKR actively painful to watch. I liked most of the characters, but the whole season felt like it had about five minutes of plot, and the rest of the time was spinning their wheels. I like my repetitive shoujo/shonen action series to feel like there's some forward movement happening between combat events.

[llj]

MKR on U.S. TV talks were rumoured to be active as early 1996, before the anime boom hit children's TV with Pokemon. I have to think that if it made it to syndication like Sailor Moon, it might have escaped some of the network interference a bit. Escaflowne and Card Captor Sakura were altered significantly to fit the TV networks' perception of what would bring ratings, and networks tend to mathematically crunch the numbers when it comes to target demographics. Whereas shows that are syndicated tend to be edited more for censorship, though this is only a general observation of mine.

In some ways MKR season 2 is both better and worse than season 1. There's a tighter plot setup and the story is slightly more complex, but they do spend a lot of time just running around in circles. And it felt like Hikaru spent the entire season pretty much out of commission. Like I said, MKR just is not a funny show, so when it drags, there is no humour to carry it through the slow parts. Still, I would have really liked watching this show if I were 12, and I think other kids would too, boy or girl.

[greg]

I remember reading about Nelvana trying to remove Sakura as the main protagonist somehow from the show, and they skipped every episode up until Shaoran was finally introduced. This sounded bizarre to me. I was living in Japan at the time, so I never caught any episodes, but my friend told me how Kero-can's voice actor would pronounce Sakura as "Suh-kyoo-ruh" and his voice sounded like a New York cab driver's. Ugh.

I had a friend who was big into MKR. He even bought the Sega Saturn RPG that was surprisingly released in English just before the console died in North America. I tried watching some of it, but my reaction was, "This is mostly just boring filler." His reaction was that it gets much better during the 2nd season, so reading what you had to say about the second season, Jen, was an interestingly different point of view. I have no opinion whatsoever on the matter myself since I haven't seen the show, but when it comes to shows like Deep Space 9 or Stargate SG-1 when people tell me, "Oh yeah, it's pretty boring at first, but wait until you get to season six and then it gets very interesting," I just do not have patience for something like that. So, I never really invested myself into it.

Then again, I remember not caring much for Slayers back in the '90s either, but I finally sat down and watched the first season about five years ago and really liked it.

[llj]

I saw every episode of "Cardcaptors".

This attempt at bumping up Shaoran was obviously a marketing decision to try to make the series appeal to a broader demographic (boys AND girls). I think this was the decision of the U.S. network it aired on; the same dub ran on Canadian TV with most of the episodes intact (with the exception of bad voices and name changes and the requisite censorship), so it was probably less on Nelvana than the U.S. network it aired on, the WB. It's all about marketing and demographics. In many ways, this is probably an even worse reason to edit something than censorship.

Many episodes in the middle were also skipped. I think the WB managed to air about 39 of the original 70 episodes. They did air the final episodes as well...

I believe Canada aired the same dub, but aired almost all of the 70 episodes. I cannot confirm completely though.

In case you're wondering, I still do watch some edited anime on network television because seeing the changes and figuring out the thinking behind them always interests me. I am currently watching Dragon Ball Z Kai on the CW, btw.

[r-18]

lucky star ...but it is in 720 p this time...

[greg]

This attempt at bumping up Shaoran was obviously a marketing decision to try to make the series appeal to a broader demographic (boys AND girls). I think this was the decision of the U.S. network it aired on; the same dub ran on Canadian TV with most of the episodes intact (with the exception of bad voices and name changes and the requisite censorship), so it was probably less on Nelvana than the U.S. network it aired on, the WB. It's all about marketing and demographics. In many ways, this is probably an even worse reason to edit something than censorship.

I agree. As for censorship, I think the only thing they had to worry about with CCS was that Shaoran had some sort of misguided "man crush" on whats-his-name... Yukito? I identified with that while watching it, because there were some older guys at my school I looked up to and thought were cool, and felt flustered when talking to them. Something like that could be perceived as a "gay" thing (which I think they were hinting at in the J version, IIRC), and I think that would be something they would change for a Western audience. It turns out that this wasn't the case in the J version, but I can't remember what exactly that was all about (some attraction between magic powers or whatnot).

As for what I've been watching lately, it has been Panda Ko Panda nearly every night. Discotek released this on DVD, and my daughter loves this. It's '70s Miyazaki and Takahata anime, and I believe they are two short films made for TV. While watching it, it is obvious to see the correlation between it and Totoro, just as it is easy to see the correlation between Future Boy Conan and Laputa.

And speaking of which, it would be great if some company could release Conan on R1 DVD. I was introduced to the show via fansubs back in the day, and my LD box set, despite its beautiful packaging, has succumbed to laser rot in the last half of the final episode of the show.

[llj]

I remember Shaoran blushing around Yukito was in fact kept intact.

I distinctly remember that the one of Sakura's friends had a crush on a teacher and was in fact engaged to him (?). The one episode they aired about her and the teacher sort of rewrote the dialogue to make it more like she was afraid of the teacher, or whatever.

As for Conan on R1, that would be nice. I saw about 20-24 episodes of it back when I was a teenager, and would like to finish the series someday.

As for me, I currently have Vampire Knight (seems quietly popular with teenage girls...HMM I WONDER WHY) and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles on my rented pile. Oh yes, I also purchased a copy of ADV's New Cutey Honey OVA at a used video store.

[Jen526]

Two "Z" titles stood out for me of my watching this weekend.

I'm about halfway through Zegapain and am *loving* it. The sci-fi setup is a cool twist on the Matrix - taking that movie's premise and one-upping it a bit - and I think they're doing a great job balancing the emotional, angstier side of things with a sense that the characters are all mature enough to get past their melodrama when duty calls. I'm really curious what the end game is going to be.

Also started on Zipang, which is looking pretty cool. I love period pieces, and it's going to be interesting seeing the Japanese side of WWII from the modern-day Japanese characters' points of view.

[greg]

This past week, I have started on the original Gundam TV show that was fortunately released on DVD about a year ago. Having only watched the 3 codensed movies, it's interesting to see what I have been missing. The movies mostly just cut to the action, and the show has more charcter development and tension leading up to the action.