What are you Watching?

[SteveH]

Arpeggio of Blue Steel Ars Nova

Two episodes in.

OH MY GOD THE MOE IS KILLING ME

I don't know if I can make it all the way. Damn the SF worldbuilding is interesting and the ships are lovingly detailed and ARRGGGH SO MUCH GOTH LOLI MOE and and and with episode 2 even hints of HAREM BULLS**T NOOOOOOOO

I gotta go watch a couple of Yamato 2199 episodes to wash this out of my brain.

[greg]

Meganebu!,

HA! I just researched the premise of this show on Wikipedia and it looks amusing. My JHS 3rd grade students are learning how to say "What makes you happy?" in English. When they ask, I say "meganeko."


As for myself, I just uploaded another clip of my working on a plastic model of the Yamato 2520 ship on YouTube. I've never seen this ill-fated show that only lasted a few episodes, but I found a clip of it on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQoPcobDdLY

This is seriously the coolest! Of course the Syd Mead designs get me excited, but the level of animation is superb! It's on-par with Macross: DYLR and maybe up the notch a bit. This sort of epic fleet battle in space stuff excites me to no end! Maybe I can try tracking down some of the episodes to watch. I doubt Tsutaya has it though.

Another clip shows more epic fleet battles in space. I can definitely see a LOGH influence:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXBaN4xKl_g

[davemerrill]

One of the few things I picked up at AWA was the recent BD release of the first Patlabor OVA series (thanks Ryan!). I'm putting together a piece for Colony Drop about the show, so I figured this was something we needed to watch, and watch it we did. The BD looks great; not a lot of extras, though. I can remember being less than impressed with the first OVA series back in the day, but Patlabor is definitely a show that requires fansubs, and while there are a few parts where you can see the production staff struggle to shake off the habits of years of Urusei Yatsura-style comedy, all in all it's an entertaining bunch of stuff, and holds up pretty well 25 years on.

[SteveH]

So, Arpeggio of Blue Steel ep. 3.

I think I'm out. The goth loli avatar of a defeated enemy A.I. warship is having thinly disguised sexual fantasies about the main protagonist, thus starting the show on a MOE harem slant.

I'm guessing each ship he defeats will fall in love with him.

Dammit, there's some really nice design work and interesting world building going on here. The hell with it.

OTOH I'm not at all ashamed to say I'm digging Gundam Build Fighters. It's very very silly and reminds me of that manga from 1980 or so.

[_D_]

At Peter Payne's recommendation I checked out Nagi no Asukara ("Calm Sea From Tomorrow") but I can't take the cute. Oh well, the first episode of the new Dracula series was on tonight so I had something to watch...

Watched 4 episodes now and it grows on you. The visuals are very lush and it's quite rustic looking. Ditto for the undersea village. Yes, quite fun and recommended...

[greg]

We've begun post-AnimEigo Yawara today, starting with episode 41. It's been a while since we finished the DVD box set! It must've been last summer, IIRC. Unfortunately, my daughter gets bored with Yawara. But she still makes my wife play judo tournament with her. She keeps trying to put her foot around my wife's and trip her! It's funny.

I rented Urusei Yatsura volume 3 for my daughter to watch. I only caught a little of it because I was busy. I think I'll have time to watch it again before I must return it to Tsutaya.

[_D_]

Yamato 2199 last episodes up on a number of streaming sites (well, #23 and 24 at any rate)...

[greg]

Nuts! And my local Tsutaya doesn't have any 2199 DVDs beyond volume 4. Maybe I will check out the Tsutaya near my in-laws, since we're driving up there for the 3-day weekend tonight.

[SteveH]

Yamato 2199 last episodes up on a number of streaming sites (well, #23 and 24 at any rate)...

All are up and running.

[llj]

Finished Rose of Versailles. I think one of the things I love about Osamu Dezaki's shoujo work is that they're so damned macho. "So hardcore girly it goes all the way around and becomes manly," to paraphrase the expression. Once again, many reviews of Rose of Versailles I read in the past few months were off-base--a lot of them mentioned how the second half of the series is more focused on romance, and that is patently untrue. While Oscar's love life does become more of a factor as she gets older, I could count maybe less than 4 episodes that really focused on her romantic relationships, while most of the time they're simply minor elements that pop up every few episodes. This show is definitely more about the politics than the romance. Fersen wasn't as major a character as I was led to believe, either. The most prominent male character in the second half of the series, aside from Andre, is Alain.

Another thing I found interesting about the series is that the characters they designated as villains--St Just, Polignac, Jeanne--all usually had one moment in the series where they would make a compelling and convincing point justifying their worldview. Perhaps it was a way of paying respect to the real life figures and apologizing for using them as villainous plot devices, but I find it gives the villains some teeth. Another thing I've never seen mentioned in historical books, and where Rose of Versailles probably "got" was that Saint Just was basically a common thug who just happened to work for a political cause. Everything I've read about him leads me to believe that Rose of Versailles probably boiled the person down to his basic essence, even though I'm sure historians would flinch at such a characterization of him.