What are you Watching?

[SteveH]

Many companies have their warts. I think Mikami is a unique case that showcased Sentai's subtitling warts more because it's so kanji heavy compared to other anime. Since Animeigo doesn't do anime anymore (BGC kickstarter excepted), there's only Funimation, Discotek, and Nozomi to compare them to now. Most of Discotek's properties don't require much sign translating. I generally like Nozomi the best, but the stuff of theirs I own aren't kanji laden as well. Funimation edits pretty much all their titles' OP and ED sequences. Viz also isn't great.

I generally like Sentai these days, although they have certain QC issues at times. But their older titles are generally well handled I feel.

Anyway, I managed to snag a used BD of Sentai's Patlabor TV 1 yesterday (used anime BDs are really rare around my area, and when you see them you have to consider getting them if you like it, since new anime BDs are still the most expensive BDs on the market). It's interesting how having Sunrise animating the TV series makes the characters look a bit more like mid 80s Gundam character designs, although you can see the beginning of the 90s style starting to creep into Noa's design here as well. In some ways, it's a more attractive and professional looking production than the OVA which was animated by Studio DEEN, but I don't know if playing it too straight design wise exactly fits the tone. But it's definitely nice to look at.

I'm also near the stretch run of Captain Harlock TV. I just finished the first appearance of Tochiro and Emeraldas....you can see the Matsumoto universe begin to really take shape in the 2nd half of the series. It's funny how there are so many different versions of Harlock and Emereldas' origin stories. In this version Tochiro just dies and you assume his ghost is haunting the ship, but in GE999 and some other versions, you see Tochiro actually sending his soul to the Arcadia through some machine.

I think, if you go thru the various Matsumoto works (excluding Space Battleship Yamato as that is NOT a Matsumoto work, it's the creation of Yoshinobu Nishizaki with input from Matsumoto) in a chronological order, you will see how each subsequent production seems to hit a 'history reset' button which is meant to 'explain' something already existing. Tochiro's death and transference into the eternal soul of the Pirate Ship Arcadia is an obvious touchpoint. Matsumoto has famously said he doesn't like stories ending, he clearly prefers eternal journeys. So we get Maetel and Emeraldas suddenly being called sisters by blood instead of the metaphorical sisters of eternal loneliness and endless roads. And so on.

[greg]

HI! I've been busy on vacation this week, yay. Nothing much to report, although I showed some of Cromartie High School to my mom-in-law who is staying with us this week.

I'm going to Tokyo tomorrow for a couple of days, yay.

Here's a spoof on 4Kids and how they would screw up everything to make it "kid friendly." TACOS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5UfIRmkv28&

[llj]

Finished the Captain Harlock TV series. I wouldn't say it's perfect--there are some really questionable plot devices used to move the show along, but when the show works, it *really* works. Plus, I went through the series in a pretty short amount of time--a little under 2 weeks--so it had to be doing something right, as I usually go through long series really slowly. Definitely recommend you pick up the DVDs. I really want some more classic Matsumoto anime, though. It's too bad S'More got GE999, maybe when the rights expire Discotek or Rightstuf can pick it up. I hope the poor sales for the S'More don't deter companies in the future, though.

Queen Millennia would be a great pickup too.

[llj]

Snagged a copy of Wings of Honneamise on BD. I haven't seen this since I had a VHS player, which was about...over 12 years ago?

I have to say, this film is still legitimately great. You don't see this kind of ambition in anime filmmaking anymore. Sure, there are a few ambitious anime films that drop here and there today, but nothing on the level of what we got in the 80s. I'm not someone here who's a big believer about the Big Decline of Anime, but I don't think anyone can argue that most of the innovation is being done on the small screen now. You got Studio Ghibli...and then Mamoru Hosoda. And Ghibli and Hosoda are not exactly rebel filmmakers. Aside from the odd film from Oshii and great anime films that drop out of nowhere like Disappearance of Haruhi, there's just not a whole lot of variety and ambition out there these days.

Another thing I want to mention is that the dub holds up pretty well acting-wise (and having future American TV star Bryan Cranston in your dub doesn't hurt, either), though they take a lot more liberties in the adaptation than I originally thought.

I also watched Ef A Tale of Memories. God, what an awful show. Romances are a guilty pleasure of mine, but when they're bad, they're REALLY bad. I almost wished for a School Days ending here. Actually, a lot of romance anime today might be better served for a School Days ending. I sometimes wonder if these writers have ever been in a relationship. These characters are written so phony and false that it's like the writers' entire knowledge of relationships is based on other anime. There's an scene halfway through the series which is absolutely cringeworthy in its contrivance. I actually wanted to throw my remote through the TV screen because of how condescending it all felt. The sad thing is, I almost feel like they think that they were being "real". This is another SHAFT show I find absolutely terrible. Why does this studio get so much acclaim?

[greg]

So today is New Years Day, and I'm doing nothing productive. I suppose I could go jog up the nearby mountain and pretend to be healthy, but I'm under the warm covers with my face glued to my laptop scouring auctions on YAJ for plastic models, video games, and anime merchandise. <NERD ALERT.>

So I watched vol.1 of DearS on my laptop and finished it just before lunch. Good God, this show represents most everything that's wrong with anime these days. Sexual pandering, sexual exploitation, moeblobs, obsequious "go-shujin-sama" crap, etc. It's not a hentai show at all, but it certainly panders to the pervy Japanese otaku spanktard crowd.

So why do I have this DVD? For one thing, I bought it on a whim. Second, dare I admit, at one time I'd bought and read the entire manga (I believe it was released by Tokyo Pop). What can I say? It was a guilty pleasure of mine. The premise is somewhat like Urusei Yatsura meets the movie/TV series Alien Nation. This race of slaves crash land on Earth and make it their home. The main character is a reprehensible, uncharismatic, unkind high school dickweed who is a total porn addict and a loser around girls (gotta make him relatable to the Japanese otaku crowd, apparently). Takuya comes across the alien slave girl Ren and inadvertently brings her home and takes care of her. Having a busty beautiful naked girl would be too easy a story to tell for such a boy, so the plot device of making him anti-alien and suspicious of the DearS (as the aliens are called).

The intro and ending themes are terribly annoying and puke-inducingly overly-cute. The perverted teacher who keeps taking her clothes off in front of her students and makes them translate smutty English into Japanese is obnoxious, offensive, and pandering. Ren is a servile moeblob. Watching this anime made me wonder why I ever bothered reading the manga to begin with. Then while watching it, I began to remember why I kinda liked it. The artwork is kinda cool (done by somebody named "Peach Pit"), the story doesn't resort to yet another harem trap (as far as I can remember), and the relationship is somewhat intriguing. Plus there's the whole mystery as to where Ren came from. I think I remember how it all ended in the manga.

I think I'm gonna watch some Lodoss War to get my mind back on track. I'd bought this DVD years ago right when Geneon was going under. It doesn't look like this DVD is worth much. I don't know what I'll do with it. Maybe give it to the same pervy friend I gave the manga to before I moved to Japan 2 years ago.

[_D_]

My buds invited me out to 47 Ronin for today. I'll pay as they paid for me going to The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Good start to the New Year anyway as I won money at the casino last night so this outing doesn't affect my budget. That's what windfall money is for anyway...good times with great friends...

Of course last night's bash at Richard Branson's island must have been something else:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-n ... ns-2650931

[SteveH]

Finished the Captain Harlock TV series. I wouldn't say it's perfect--there are some really questionable plot devices used to move the show along, but when the show works, it *really* works. Plus, I went through the series in a pretty short amount of time--a little under 2 weeks--so it had to be doing something right, as I usually go through long series really slowly. Definitely recommend you pick up the DVDs. I really want some more classic Matsumoto anime, though. It's too bad S'More got GE999, maybe when the rights expire Discotek or Rightstuf can pick it up. I hope the poor sales for the S'More don't deter companies in the future, though.

Queen Millennia would be a great pickup too.

Were Discotek to pick up Queen of a 1000 Years TV, I would completely crap my pants. NOBODY cares about that show nowadays.

It's got a fairly complicated plot under the guise of "Hajime gets kidnapped/threatened, is rescued/escapes, and then SIGNIFICANT LOOKS AS DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS" cycles, and there's some pretty nice animation going on. The odd episode count leads me to believe it was prematurely cancelled, as does the curiously truncated publishing merchandise.

Not sure why the show didn't seem to catch on. It could have been the choice of sponsors, the wrong network, the wrong timeslot, or the fact it seems to have been specifically targeted at the young female audience (because, female protagonist? because 'feelings'? I don't know).

I think the show could find an American audience, with the complex politics and all.

[greg]

I read that Harlock SSX was prematurely cancelled. Even after it was launched by the Arcadia of my Youth movie and everything, they aired it at the same time as Zeta Gundam, and it failed to attract enough viewers. I don't know if they just rushed the ending or if it just ended abruptly with no resolution.

[llj]

Snagged a bunch of obscure/rare R1 DVDs last week. Geobreeders and Geobreeders: Breakthrough, and Cleopatra DC. Cleopatra DC actually ain't that bad. The few reviews of it I've seen seem to slag it, but it sports some pretty nice production values, interesting Kaoru Shintani designs, and decent if uninspired genre writing. It's basically Richie Rich with a sexy girl as the lead and some mediocre spy thriller plots. I've always felt that JC Staff was underrated by fans when it came to action choreography, and they do some really good work here as well, although a few more elaboprate action scenes would have tipped the show over to "trashy classic" instead of "inoffensive time waster".

[danth]

Yep, I feel the same way about Cleopatra DC. Liked it quite a bit.

Looking forward to what you think of Geobreeders. I tried to watch it but gave up twenty minutes in. I might have to give it another shot.