What are you Watching?

[megazone]

Yamato 2199-Very Nice!
スパイダーマン Supaidāman (Not anime, Japanese Live Action Spider-Man TV series)
Been obsessing on the Otomo "Short Piece" trailer:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/20 ... ilm-teaser

[Daniel]

Started Kamen no Ninja Akakage. Really nice ninja/samurai stuff. The opening's probably on youtube... It is! Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzO9Rc0R2JY

[danth]

Whoa, the main guy in that intro reminds me of Strider Hiryu:

[llj]

Reminds me of Red Mask from Giant Robo's Magnificent Ten, actually. Is this based on a Mitsuteru Yokoyama creation?

[davemerrill]

yup, Ninja Akakage is the Mitsuteru Yokoyama red mask ninja manga, turned into a live-action TV series and an anime TV series and lord knows what else, and that's him in Giant Robo. So cool watching him pop up in that. I think GR ended on exactly the perfect note, myself.

[usamimi]

I've had a few friends recommenced Psycho-Pass to me, so I watched the first 2 episodes today on Huluplus (I was surprised to see it was subtitled and not dubbed, wow!). I can see why people thought I'd like it: It's kind of like a mish-mash of Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, and Minority Report. (Minority Report is a movie I keep wanting to like, but ultimately don't because I don't like Tom Cruise. I do like the premise, though.) So far it's interesting, and I was surprised to see Tomokazu Seki playing one of the main characters.

[davemerrill]

Had a justly-forgotten 80s OVA evening this weekend. watched COSMOS PINK SHOCK, which is a bit of fluff I hadn't seen since '87 about Toshihiro Hirano designing characters and spaceships and mecha; MUGEN SHINSHI: DREAM DETECTIVE GENTLEMAN, about a young-looking detective rescuing young-looking ladies from an evil scientist attemping to resurrect the dead, and GIRLS DETECTIVE CLUB, which is about three girls who attend a private school who are not detectives; two of them have to rescue a third when she's kidnapped by the minions of the evil school president.

All three of these are pretty light on plot; COSMOS PINK SHOCK at least looks great, has this swell Hirano vibe to everything. MUGEN SHINSHI is set in this strange 1930s alternate-universe Tokyo, and it almost works. GIRLS DETECTIVE CLUB is, on the other hand, one of those OVAs that makes you ask "why was this ever made?" It honestly baffles the mind. It's like a Cream Lemon that they forgot to put sex scenes into - the story is nonsensical, and not in a humorous or interesting way, and the animation is substandard. I'm sure there's an interesting story as to why it was made - it feels like an anime parody of a live-action show, or some similar circumstance. Definitely missing something.

[usamimi]

Was that released here as Debutante Detective Corps? I remember seeing that back in the day and having basically the same reaction, lol.

[davemerrill]

GIRLS DETECTIVE CLUB (1987) and DEBUTANTE DETECTIVE CORPS (1996) are two different OAVs. Well, I say "different", but I'm being technical. They're probably pretty similar. I've never seen DEBUTANTE DETECTIVE CORPS but from what I can tell it seems to have a little more on the ball in terms of plot, 5 girls instead of 3, etc. I know DDC got a release in America thanks to ADV, but if GDC ever got more than a Japan-only VHS/LD release, I'd be very surprised.

I was searching for MUGEN SHINSHI - I saw about ten minutes of it way back in the day and for some reason I thought I'd try to figure out what the heck it was - and came across a magazine ad for GIRLS DETECTIVE CLUB, and then I found a Japanese site that listed different OAV releases from 1987 and they both came up. And they've both been fan-subtitled. That is some deep dedication to fan-subbing right there.

[danth]

I had a MANime weekend. Watched the Fist of the North Star movie and Cobra: Space Adventure. It's nice to see anime from a time where girls were actually drawn to be pretty. Both movies were very entertaining. The video quality was just amazing, except for the gory scenes in FotNS that for some reason were censored down to VHS-like quality.

I might have to double dip on some of these Discotek titles if the video quality is going to be this good (mainly wondering if I should replace my Venus Wars and Golgo 13 dvds).