What are you Watching?

[greg]

Yes! The series certainly motivated me to read up about these characters. Stuff like the necklace scandal was real, and the ridiculous spending was spiraling the country into an abyss. I imagine must of the people who were responsible for the French Revolution were not noble intellectuals, but just opportunist thugs. St. Just was the main guy behind all of the beheadings, was he not? I don't believe Polignac was as maniacal and despotic in real life, though. She may have been a maligned character who played on the favors of the queen, but I didn't find anything about her driving her daughter to suicide and all that.

So aside from Galaxy Fraulein Yuna and an occasional Bubblegum Crisis episode, I've been watching Yawara a lot with my wife. I couldn't care less about judo, but leave it to an anime to make it interesting by spicing up the drama! There's no way that a girl like Yawara could train for judo her whole life and still be so petite, lithe, and feminine. If she was really that strong, she would be just as thick as the opponents she faces. In the end, it's just an anime, so who cares? We are up to episode 64 or so now.

The Yawara fansubs were done by Live eviL, but whoever did the translating is a bit odd. Bibimbap was "vivinva" or something weird, yakiniku was called "fried food" for some reason, and ecchi was... weird. I'm at the point now where I want to try to focus on listening first and use the subtitles to catch what I couldn't understand (depending on the level of conversation) instead of wasting my time reading subtitles I don't need to read. So I am not paying too much attention, but it's annoying to see stuff like that.

Something else that is annoying is how fansubbers these days want to try to superimpose English text on top of, or next to, Japanese text. Whether it is a store sign or whatever, a simple footnote subtitle would suffice. Trying to integrate English text as if it was a part of the actual animation is, in my opinion, offensive. In one episode, a bulletin board at the college was full of slogans like "Fight, Yawara! You're number one!" etc. The fansubbers puked translated English text all over it, covering up the Japanese text, and as the animation scrolled, this forced text attempted to scroll along with it and it looked absurd. This is the sort of thing that ADV would do, and it pissed me off. A simple footnote would have sufficed, and let the gist carry the story.

[llj]

Yeah, most anime have the Hollywood mentality of keeping their heroines good looking and traditionally feminine appealing when working in a physical environment. Very few have bucked the trend. Right now, I can only think of Air Master as the only anime where the lead heroine actually looked like she fit the subject matter of the show (former Olympic gymnast turned street fighter). The Air Master girl is certainly the most masculine looking anime girl I've ever seen as a main character.

[SteveH]

Gundam Build Fighters.

This is stupid. This is SOOOOO stupid. So why can't I wipe the grin off my face every time I watch an episode?

It's because it's completely shameless. Usual stock standard shonen "I will be THE BEST!" plotline, with all the 'life lessons' basically coming from (mostly) Original Gundam. Gundam model kits are the MOE of the show. The gimmick is a concept that has surfaced time and again since 1980 (and the birth of the MSV line of fan-inspired model kits) where one can build a model, set it inside a 'virtual reality' scanner/arena and 'fly' the model as if it was a real machine. Battles are to the 'death' and any damage suffered is translated to actual, physical damage to your model. BTW, that's a technology with some frightening implications, ya know.

All designed to sell model kits, of course.

God help me, I completely love this show. I love the drama amped up to '11'. I love that 'Ranbal Rall' is a guest character. I want to build a gunpla and fight with someone!

[usamimi]

Yeah, most anime have the Hollywood mentality of keeping their heroines good looking and traditionally feminine appealing when working in a physical environment. Very few have bucked the trend. Right now, I can only think of Air Master as the only anime where the lead heroine actually looked like she fit the subject matter of the show (former Olympic gymnast turned street fighter). The Air Master girl is certainly the most masculine looking anime girl I've ever seen as a main character.

The only other character that comes to my mind would be Mikasa of Attack on Titan, though even though she has a super muscular body, her face is still (of course) very soft and feminine.

[greg]

My daughter is up to UY TV vol. 5 and New Yatterman vol. 5. Mach Go Go Go (aka Speed Racer) makes a cameo appearance in the Yatterman episode! There are also references to Casshern and Gatchaman. It's a 2-part episode in which popular TV celebrity Mino-san makes an appearance. His anime likeness is uncanny and immediately recognizable, and Mino-san does his own voice acting. It turns out the ring given to him by his mother contains a Dokuro Stone, and the big reveal is that he is actually one of three identical triplets. Funny.

We're tearing it up with Yawara! We are up to episode 85 or so now. Aside from some nitpicks, I really appreciate the efforts of the fansubbers who worked on this. The quality of the translation work went up since I last mentioned this, too. There are 124 episodes total, and it's getting more and more interesting!

This series made quite an impact on Japanese culture, and judoka Ryoko Tamura was nicknamed "Yawara" because of her strong winning streak and her charming stature resembling the anime character. She also won the silver medal for judo at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, which the anime series will inevitably lead to.

By the way, the name Yawara is a bit of a pun. 柔 (yawara) is the kanji stem for the word 柔らかい yawarakai, which means soft. (It's not a common girl's name, but it seems appropriate for a daughter born into a family centered on judo.) So Judo 柔道 literally means "the gentle way." The concept behind that is that no matter how big or strong an opponent is, flexibility can be used to overpower such an opponent and make them fall. So Yawara is a very modest and gentle girl, who is able to overcome her opponents not by stature, but by her super fast reflexes. In the show, she inadvertently inspires her college friend Fujiko (a tall, lanky girl) to also become a judoka, and Fujiko's background in ballet enables her to also compete in judo (with the instruction of Yawara's grandfather, of course). It's amusing how much I've learned about judo from watching this show. The amount of technical terms and descriptive words really prevents me from trying to tackle reading this manga or watching the anime raw without subtitles.

The show was animated by Kitty, so it has that same late '80s/early '90s production feel to it as Ranma 1/2.

[usamimi]

I really do want to finish watching Yawara eventually...I got to about half-way through the series back in the ol' VHS fansub days before I started watching something else and forgot about it. (D'oh.)

I recently picked up the first part of "Michiko & Hatchin" with a gift card, since I'd been meaning to watch it for a while. I just finished it today, and it's really good so far. You can tell that some of the same crew that worked on Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo worked on it--it has that same kind of gritty-with-a-heart-of-gold feel. And super fun music! I'll either watch the rest on Hulu or try to get the second part next time I have the means to.

[greg]

We started watching volume 6 of the New Yatterman. At last, they've begun with the time travel that was featured in so many of the episodes of the original. Yatter Pelican was introduced too, and he is way cooler than in the original, I must say! He can fly and is more like a real pelican. the time travel vortex animation was pretty cool-looking, too.

[_D_]

Just sorted my bud's store's anime tape collection.Lots of stuff to watch if I wanted to. Ditto on the sort of his horror movie collection but for that I ripped the Hammer Horror films collection for viewing at a later date...

[greg]

On Sunday afternoon, I switched ISPs from Nifty ADSL to Vic Tokai Hikari fiber optic internet. I also signed up for cable TV. Until now, we have only used the TV for DVDs and video game consoles because we didn't feel like paying for NHK's BS fee. Well, we finally made the plunge into not only regular broadcast channels but BS and cable channels as well. This means both Animax and Kids' Station! Last night around dinner time, my daughter got to watch Chibi Maruko-chan and Sazae-san, which we've only been able to see at the in-laws' place until now. On Animax we caught a bit of Detective Boy Conan on Animax, and this morning they were showing Future Boy Conan. Neat! Last night I also got to watch Game Center CX on Fuji One. Until now, I have only been able to watch this show on YouTube. HAPPY.

It doesn't make sense, but now that we can finally watch TV at home, it feels like we really live in Japan. We've been here for nearly two years now, so it's silly to think that way. Still, it's like a new window to the country has just opened for us.

Everybody says that Animax is where it's at, but I used to watch Kids' Station at the in-laws' place for the longest time, up until a few years ago when everything was upgraded to HD. They used to get Kids' Station for free. During the day would be children's stuff like Anpanman and Hello Kitty, but around dinner time they would show stuff like Ranma 1/2 and Urusei Yatsura. At night I could see LOTS of classic shows: Dunbine, Dirty Pair, Ah My Goddess, City Hunter, LOGH, and so many other great shows.

I understand that with the channels I have yet to explore, I can get stuff like Game of Thrones and Big Bang Theory in English. It's maybe a couple of seasons behind. The cable box also has a built-in DVR function, so I need to figure out how to access that and use it.

[greg]

Well, we finally finished Yawara last night! For some odd reason, the final episode wasn't subtitled. I cound understand most of it and asked my wife to help me with some parts I couldn't follow. It was a satisfying ending, for the most part. Sayaka was a great antagonist throughout the show, the type you love to hate. The annoying photographer girl though (I forget her name) is just annoying as hell, though. She's just a character I hated. What I don't get is why Matsuda just can't grow a pair and tell her to get lost. He obviously doesn't like her, but at the same time he needed her because she was the photographer assigned to him. Still, she annoyingly latches onto him and convinces everyone in the office that they are a couple. Technically this is sexual harrassment, but this is Japan and it's the early '90s to boot. Still, his inability to tell her to take a hike is annoying, and just creates tension with his relationship with Yawara.

Anyhow, having watched the fansubs, it would be my glad duty to buy the DVDs if they were to be officially released by AnimEigo or some other company (although AnimEigo is by far my first choice!).

Next is either Votoms or K-On! Most likely we'll go with the latter. Hopefully the GS Mikami DVDs will come soon.