The Old School Otaku Lounge

Finished Fate Stay/Night TV. Having finished the Fate Stay/Night film a few months ago and now this, I know more about this franchise than I even wanted to (being a popular franchise with otaku didn't exactly make me excited to watch it at first).

That said, it's watchable if you know what you're getting into. I expected some decent hack and slash and visually pretty magical FX entertainment and I got it. The characters are totally generic but just dodges the pithole of being annoying (Okay, Shiro is a annoying at first, and also seems to suffer from "benevolent" sexism--"I won't let a girl fight and get hurt blablabla!"--but he does eventually learn to see his female partners as equals. Not surprisingly, it's very video-gamey in plot--there are some ridiculously convoluted rules here just to pit a bunch of characters against each other.

I like the philosophies espoused in both the TV series though. It's got a very anti-retcon stance. Too many anime these days end with the main character(s) gaining some god like power and undoing all the bad that has happened previously and mindwiping everyone (hello, Madoka Magica). I hate that kind of shit. This show, however, manages to express exactly what's wrong with that philosophy--undoing everything bad that's happened in the world is an insult to all the people who suffered through the hardship and tragedy and tried to move on. Essentially, Fate Stay/Night says, "Life is tough. Deal with it."

And in a weird way, it's a pretty good relationship drama too! You've got two people with totally different goals, personal flaws, and beliefs who slowly learn to respect each other and learn to compromise in order to function as a pair. Shiro's a bit of a chauvinist at first and is hell bent on being some Shonen Jump style "night in shining armor" for Saber (despite the fact that she's clearly like 5000x stronger than he is--classic Shiro sexism) but by the end, he realizes that Saber's pride is the most important thing to her and he's gotta respect her as an equal. The end battle follows through with this "gender equality" message too. Shiro doesn't "save" Saber or vice versa, they kind of just fight their own battles and trust in each other that they'll both win individually.

So in a funny way, despite its silly plot and generic characters, this is a show with some very sound messages to impart to its teenage fanbase, I think. I'm pretty surprised, because a lot of otaku friendly anime like to either play up male empowerment or go the other way and have the main male character be totally useless.

The film, by the way, takes a different "game" path than the TV series (the franchise being based on a game, of course). It's not bad, but the film is pretty much just all eye candy and there aren't any of the more interesting messages the TV series path tries to impart.

Yeah, Fate/Stay is a series I didn't think I'd like BUT some of the supporting characters were just interesting enough to catch my interest (I love Archer and Rin, I like them way more than I like Shiro--though Saber is ok). Fate/Zero is honestly a lot more interesting than Fate/Stay to me, though. The supporting characters shined a lot more in that series, I think.

I might get to Fate Zero someday. It's not high on my list, being a prequel and all. I already know what the endgame will be. Also, since I don't stream often, and I'm not going to pay Aniplex's ridiculous prices, I'd probably have to wait for a rental option anyway.

I picked up Rose of Versailles part 2 and Gunbuster 2 this week. I know a lot of people here seem to think Gunbuster 2 is gonna be crap, but I've heard it's not so bad if taken by itself. And I do like the look of the thing, which is why I picked it up. You gotta remember the original Gunbuster was largely silly and fanservicey too. I'll report back when I get around to watching Gunbuster 2. I'm watching it so that you guys don't have to.

As for Rose of Versailles--once again Nozomi gives us some nice goodies with their releases. While it's not the 100 page booklets that they included in the Utena sets, the 48 page booklet in RoV part 2 is very welcome.

llj wrote:Finished Fate Stay/Night TV.

I was mainly drawn to this show by the Saber character design. I was hoping it would be a fantasy anime, but what it actually is isn't a letdown. I wasn't aware of there being any sort of continuity. Saber is actually the manifestation of various historical characters: in FSN, she is the noble King Arthur; in the Fate Extra PSP game, she wears a red dress and is the narcisstic Emperor Nero. I imagine that Saber Lily and Saber Orta are different beings, as well. I like how they can just reboot the series over and over again in different ways. Recycle the character designs, redress them, and make them different. It's little more than reshuffling the deck to tell a different story, kinda like Evil Spock with a goatee and such.

I have a Fate/Stay Night shitajiki (pencil board) I have with my stuff at school. The elementary students never know what it is, and only a handful of JHS kids know what it is. They get excited to see me holding some anime thingy, but when they see it, they just say, "shiranai." I want to go back to Nakano Broadway Building to buy that Crusher Joe pencil board I saw last December. I hope they still have them! I bet none of the kids would know what that is.

llj wrote:I picked up Rose of Versailles part 2

We are almost finished with the 3rd DVD already, soon to start on the fourth and final DVD. While the show starts out slowly, you know that with the threat of the French Revolution looming overhead, you know there will come a point when it's obvious that "shit's goin' down."

I never caught RoV as fansubs back in the day, so I am ignorant as to who will die and who will live in the end. (Also it makes me wonder if they will show Marie Antoinette getting beheaded and such).

But this late in the series and they have yet to touch on her infamous quote (or what was attributed to her saying), "Let them eat cake."

That book is pretty cool, and it touches on the whole diamond necklace scandal and the history behind this plot point. It's interesting to read up about characters like the Duchess of Polignac to see what history says about them. Marie Antoinette did indeed become infatuated with Polignac and she was a schemer and a leech, but she doesn't seemt to be as evil as the anime makes her out to be, driving her daughter to suicide and even laughing maniacally while blackmailing Rosalie. But hey, it makes good drama, and it is a manga/anime after all!

Urgh! Only two more episodes of RoV to go, but tonight my wife is working late! I may have to wait until tomorrow night.

This weekend will be another 3 day weekend, and we will be going up to the family's home in Nagano-ken again. I will bring a stack of anime DVDs with me to watch.

Started watching Shakugan no Shana season 2. I wasn't a huge fan of the first season, but I found it watchable enough as a rental, and so I am only watching season 2 as a borrow/rental. Some fans consider Shana to be a "tsundere" (really hate that term, but I've ranted enough about it here in the past) but I think she's just your typical hotheaded girl who's reluctant to show her romantic feelings--a fairly normal character type in Hollywood and American television as well. In these type of shows, though, I usually hate the main guy more than the girl. There's something about whiny, indecisive, do-gooder protagonists that gets my goat for whatever reason. I liked flawed heroes, and I didn't mind if when Amuro first started pulling that stuff in Gundam, but at some point in time that archetype went way out of control.

I watched "Fate/Zero" but I played the video games before I watched the series. I know the series is quite popular especially its action-figure/nendoroid line but after watching the film and anime series, I wasn't exactly captivated by it. I felt the series was good, not great.

"Shakuna no Shana" was a maddening series as each season felt so unevenly connected. I enjoyed the first season but the second and third season were OK. The OVA's were good and the film was a condensed version of the first season.

Right now I am watching the OVA "GYO: Tokyo Fish Attack!", a horror anime series about fish or sea creatures being given the ability to walk via spider-like feet with spikes (that contain a virus) and they start infesting the world and trying to kill all humans.

kndy wrote:I watched "Fate/Zero" but I played the video games before I watched the series. I know the series is quite popular especially its action-figure/nendoroid line but after watching the film and anime series, I wasn't exactly captivated by it. I felt the series was good, not great.

The Fate series isn't really spectacular. It's strongest point is the cool character designs. Second is the action, and then a distant third is the actual plot.

I re-watched Project A-ko and Black Magic M-66 recently since I bought the new releases for them.

Black Magic M-66 is great mainly for how effectively it portrays the creepy, unstoppable killer robots. Their inhuman movements are so well choreographed! This OAV is short with a very simple plot, which some people don't have the sense to realize is a good thing. I talked a couple non-anime fans into watching it with me, and their main problem with it was "why would the guy who built the robots program them to kill his granddaughter?"

Project A-ko is one I have to watch every couple of years. Another show with a simple plot; Two girls fight over the affections of another girl who is secretly a space princess! The animation in this show is so fun to watch that it can get away with being very silly. Whether A-ko is mopping the floor or running up a volley of missiles, it just looks so cool. This is the great thing about 80's anime: the animation was what it was all about.

I also attempted to watch a huge stinking turd called Ergo Proxy. My god what a mess. Nothing is simple about this show: the watcher is thrown into another world with too many funny names (auto-rave? Uh, so like a Robot?), too many characters, and too many fast-paced plot points, and no actual reason to care about any of them. In the second episode we learn that there is - GASP - a conspiracy! But who cares? It involves people and agencies that I know nothing about.

I can instantly grasp that the robots in Black Magic M-66 are fucking scary and that the main characters need to get the hell away. I can easily see that A-ko and C-ko are friends and the B-ko is jealous. But in Ergo Proxy, there's like nothing to hold on to. Re-L needs to like, solve a robot case, but there is like, this conspiracy, and then people say stuff. Like, Ergo Proxy tries so hard and fails so miserably to be interesting. If it had incredible animation then it might be at least fun to watch (although Re-L is quite pretty). But I guess it's full of cosplay-fodder which is all that matters these days.

Listen Japan, if you are going to try for something deep and complex, you need to make me care about the characters FIRST. Storytelling 101.

Very well said, Danth!

We finished the final two episodes of Rose of Versailles tonight. Wow. This is for sure one of the best anime series I've seen. Plus, it's educational. I can't remember ever studying the details of the storming of Bastille, but this show depicts it. My only gripe is the foley, since the rifles sound like modern guns and not black powder muskets and such. But that's such a minor detail.

After that, we started watching the first episode of Gundam 0080. So, we've gone from one tragedy to another! I haven't watched 0080 in many years.