The Old School Otaku Lounge

greg wrote:Yes, "proactive." That is a good word to describe Kamille to set him apart from Amuro. After seeing his parents killed by the Titans right in front of him, that was enough to get him to grow up and strengthen his resolve.

Sad to see you give up on ZZ. The first 18 episodes or so are rather weak, but after that, it becomes a bona-fide Gundam series. Much better than I have faith for Seed of ever being. Spoiler: Sayla makes a return!

I didn't give up on ZZ; they just didn't have any more ZZ episodes in the Asian video rental store I frequented. If I could find a way to finish it affordably and legally today, I would.

Currently getting caught up on One Piece (at Ep 487 right now). And watching some scattered episodes of Ranma 1/2 I never got around to.

Just watched the first two episodes of AnoHana. Eyes were starting to water up a little and getting a bit emotional so I got too anxious to watch it all at once. I'm starting to get a little verklempt!

Ha! It's Linda Richmond!

So today I went to Tsutaya to rent some crap. My daughter has been sick since Wednesday, so this is her third full day of feeling like crap. I wanted to rent the first Futari Wa Precure (which is called Pretty Cure in English for some reason), but I must've grabbed the wrong one and Got Futari Wa Precure: Splash Star. All I know is that the original show's two girls are named Honoka and Nagisa, and there's two friends by those names in one of my 5th grade classes at a school I work at. I tease them and say, "Honoka and Nagisa! Futari wa Precure!" They think that's fun. Anyhow, I've never seen a Precure show before. In this show, the two girls, Saki and Mai, encounter these two plush mascot thingies (one suspiciously resembles Sanrio's Cinamaroll character) that turn into cell phones or something. When they transform into their magical girl outfits, they can pull off their choreographed moves in unison with no practice or whatever. At least it comes as much of a surprise to them as it does to the viewer.

In the first episode, they beat up some demon-possessed tree. It explodes into a shower of happy faced white teardrop-shaped thingies. Huh. Okay.

In the second episode, they kill some weird plant thing with vines (vines are always evil in anime) by chucking it into the ocean and blowing it up (also exploding into a shower of happy face drops).

Next is a baseball, so enter the obligatory baseball monster made of baseball bats. Apparently the battles take place in a subdimension where nobody else is? The battle in this one takes place in the middle of a baseball game, but everyone seems to disappear. Maybe I'm not following the show closely enough to realize what's going on.

The fourth episode involves a trip to the countryside, and the monster they kill there is a big fly. It also explodes into weird happy drops of something. The antagonist throughout these episodes is apparently Plant Man.

I'm not a big fan of magical girl shows. The only one I've really gotten into was Cardcaptor Sakura. However, I am open to interesting ones. I thought that Precure was interesting because it involves two girls. Later Precure episodes remind me too much of Sailor Moon, since they are a team of five girls. Also, the newer episodes feature the girls transforming by tossing makeup on their faces. Yuck.

I also rented Nanoha. I have no idea what that show is, other than it is probably another magical girl show. The character design looks cool, and I've seen Nanoha figures a lot here in Japan.

My favourite anime of the 2000s was *technically* a magical girl show--Princess Tutu. When all was said and done, it met almost all the requirements of what constitutes, in my opinion, a top anime show. Good direction, excellent music (a no brainer since it's made up of classical music, much of it built around Tchaikovsky), pleasing enough design work (although this one is the most subjective) and exceedingly well researched thematically. It's incredibly dense with references to fairy tales both well known and obscure, and references a bunch of "real" ballet moves.

Oh, and yes, it IS a magical girl show about fairy tales and ballet. A lot of younger people were turned off by the "bleh, ballet" theme, but I've never been bothered by stuff like that. I've found it's a pretty popular anime with people who like to go watch stage plays, as it is structured like one. There are a surprising number of old folks who like this show. It's also, of course, a pretty popular show with ballet companies.

llj wrote:My favourite anime of the 2000s was *technically* a magical girl show--Princess Tutu.

Yay! Did you hear that it's getting a Blu-Ray release? There was a big announcement for the 10-year anniversary. I keep in touch with several people that worked on it, so I always love hearing people talk about it. I'm also consistently impressed with the impact this title had on the AMERICAN staff, I don't think I've ever seen anything as cool as Luci Christian (US voice of Ahiru) asking to see the end (even though she had no more lines to dub) and crying over it. I'm back and forth on the show itself, but I agree that it has great character designs.

I want the Samurai Pizza Cats box set when it comes out. I finally found the old Doujinshi I have for it so that cover scan goes into Wikipedia.

Heero wrote:

llj wrote:My favourite anime of the 2000s was *technically* a magical girl show--Princess Tutu.

Yay! Did you hear that it's getting a Blu-Ray release? There was a big announcement for the 10-year anniversary. I keep in touch with several people that worked on it, so I always love hearing people talk about it. I'm also consistently impressed with the impact this title had on the AMERICAN staff, I don't think I've ever seen anything as cool as Luci Christian (US voice of Ahiru) asking to see the end (even though she had no more lines to dub) and crying over it. I'm back and forth on the show itself, but I agree that it has great character designs.

I know for years Luci said it was her favourite anime that she worked on. I don't know if it's been supplanted by something else now, but she was crazy about it for a long time.

Anyway, getting back to topic, I am currently watching Tekkaman Blade. I watched Teknoman on UPN in the 90s, but that dub stopped at around episode 29. I'm currently at episode 7, so most of this is pretty familiar to me so far, even if it's unedited. I watched my Teknoman recordings ad nauseum when I was a teen.

So we watched Lyrical Nanoha on Sunday. 3 episodes per disc for the Japanese version. We were watching it on the small, portable DVD player while eating and dealing with our daughter's cold, so I couldn't pay too much attention to it. But, it looks like a show I could really get into. My wife kept saying, "This is just like Cardcaptor Sakura! It must be made by the same creator." I'm pretty sure it isn't a Clamp show, so I just explained that the "magical girl" genre is just another rubber stamp genre like sentai shows and whatnot. She grew up watching Lupin III and saw stuff like Touch and Hokuto no Ken, so she never saw shows like Creamy Mami or Minky Momo.

This looks like a show that anybody who is a fan of CCS will like by default. Nanoha is a 3rd grade elementary girl who discovers a magical ferret who is a reincarnation of some Dungeons and Dragons type character who is introduced in the prologue. This becomes her familiar/mascot just like most other magical girl shows seem to do (Precure, Sailor Moon, CCS, Pretty Samy, etc). Her magic staff is pretty cool and high tech. It is mechanical, transforms, and speaks English even for her magic commands. Nanoha lives with her older sister who is a high school student, her older brother who is a college student, and her impossibly beautiful parents who are apparently somehow about the same age as her brother. But hey, it's a little girl fantasy show. Her transformation sequence is cute, but I like CCS because of how practical it was---Sakura's costumes were all made by her friend and tangible. Anyhow, once again, concrete fences can get destroyed, the streets will get trashed, and telephone poles will be toppled by the monsters and nobody ever thinks to look outside to see what the commotion is. The lights are all on in the houses, so it's not like everyone is asleep. But anyhow, again, it's just a little girl fantasy show. My 4 year old seemed to like the show too.

Anyhow, I checked Amazon to see how much the NA DVD goes for. The box set of the first 12 episodes is worth hundreds of dollars brand new. Yikes. Then again, it is a Geneon release and OOP (I should check to see how much my Fate/Stay Night box set is worth these days). Also, apparently this is just the first season or only the first part of the first season. Geneon quit the North American market years ago, unfortunately.

Watching the second half of Stein's;Gate on Blu and also watched "Ninja Scroll" and "Grave of the Fireflies" on Blu. Now about to watch the Mass Effect anime film.