The Old School Otaku Lounge

I honestly haven't seen ANY new anime for quite a while. And it's not because I have anything against newer anime, as some of you know. I've been as supportive of fresh new work as anyone out there.

It's just that we've hit a dry patch lately when it comes to "hard" seinen action shows, which is still my favorite genre in anime.

I've been interested in watching more Kill La Kill, but not as interested as I should be for a show with that calibre of staff.

Ben wrote:I just thought I'd mention that I'm working my way through Macross Frontier, and have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, rehashing the love triangle formula again doesn't do much for me, but I like the character designs, the music is fantastic, and the Bajura or whatever they're properly romanized as are an interesting enemy.

I had mixed feelings when I was watching it too, having just watched all previous Macross series right before it (minus 7). I do agree with you on latter though. I still listen to the music every so often.

ParaParaJMo wrote:Well, the Jojo's Bizarre Adventure anime series based on teh first two manga stories are on my list and then I plan to watch Taiyou no Kiba Dougram

Oooh! Dougram! Keep me updated on that one. I haven't seen it myself. I bet LDs can be had for a reasonable price.

I'm up to 17 on Yamato 2199. It's really putting me into the mood to build either a Cosmo Falcon or Cosmo Zero fighter model kit. However, I have so many other models on my plate these days...

I guess the Bubblegum Crisis kickstarter has prompted people to start selling off their DVDs. I got a full set of the remastered BGC for pretty cheap. I have to say, before the kickstarter came out, the remastered edition pretty much looked like the definitive version.

Finished rewatching BGC and I have to say, it's still damned good fun. I used to like Priss the best because she's a "badass", but now I lean more towards Sylia who's the brains behind the whole thing. I thing from episode 4 and on, the series pretty much pumped out quality episode after quality episode, especially since they started treating them like mini-films after episode 3.

Those old BGC questions still tantalize. What did Largo mean when he told Sylia that they were two of a kind? She can't be a boomer (I think) but does that mean she's not fully human? Come to think of it, Largo wasn't actually a "real" boomer either, at least in the mechanical sense. His final form was sort of a synthetic superhuman... of course, this might probably just be another one of those Blade Runner in-jokes, referring to the Deckard "is he a replicant or not?" question.

I've been re-watching BGC myself off and on and I've made it up to episode 6 or so by now. I guess all of the questions about Sylia are answered in Bubblegum Crash, however the disappointment with that series is that it just doesn't have the same production values. Boomers now include just ordinary robots, the Knight Sabers no longer sortie under cover by trucks and instead fly around in a VTOL plane only because Batman had come out in 1989, and everything just seemed cheaper overall. It feels kinda dumb, but I'd still watch it over the even dumber BGC remake, though.

The "badness" of Bubblegum Crash's reputation kinda scared me away from it, and for a while some fans were considering it even non-canon. That said, it's ironic that despite its rep, copies of Bubble Crash on DVD or VHS aren't exactly easy to find these days, compared to Crisis.

Is the Kickstarter edition going to include Crash if you pledge more? The Kickstarter page for BGC is so confusing.

One other thing: on the Animeigo remastered DVD set, they list Urushihara as part character designer for episode 8, but I see no evidence he was heavily involved in that episode. Episode 7, however, is pure Urushihara.

Crash isn't terrible; it just lacked the "edge" that BGC had. The city suddenly seemed cleaner and brighter, etc. The episodes are certainly enjoyable, but they just don't have the "oomph" that the original 8 episodes had. Moreover, there were only three episodes. It's still the same creator, Suzuki. It just has a different production aesthetic and such.

The biggest problem with Crash is the CONSTANT reuse of "stock footage". There are certain sequences that you will see again & again.... and AGAIN.

Oh, that's RIGHT! I'd forgotten about that. They did reuse a lot of the same animations over and over again. Overall, it just felt considerably cheaper and did not have the same production value as Crisis.