The Old School Otaku Lounge

I finally got to properly watch Windaria.

Only one image can really express my feelings towards it.



It had been a long time since something got me in this mood.

This is reaching way too far back into my high school days in the early '90s, but I seem to remember watching the Macek'ered version of Windaria with a friend of mine. I've never seen the real version.

This morning I watched the first episode of the Iron Man anime. It seemed alright, but without proper subtitles, I couldn't get much out of it, especially since it focused more on establishing the characters and not so much on the action. Hmm...

Nadesico is starting to grow on me. Some aspects still bug me, like how Gai was murdered with a gun and nobody even thinks to look into how he was killed. Still, it's getting good. They just landed on Mars. I really can't remember much about this show, so it's basically like watching it for the first time.

Iron Man anime is decent enough. It has the ZODIAC as the main villains and has a smokin' Japanese scientist as a sort of love interest (IIRC). The guy that plays Tony Stark is the same that plays Ali Al Saachez in Gundam 00, and he nails it. He's the best part of the show.

llj wrote:but Hosoda gives her more interesting things to do here than he did with the protagonists of Summer Wars and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

I haven't seen "Wolf Children", and I wasn't super impressed with "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time", but I LOVED "Summer Wars". "Summer Wars" is a very solid ensemble piece, it has at LEAST 4 distinct protagonists with each getting the focus depending on where the story stands. A large part is probably the computer scientist in me, but I also have no issues with "people tapping on computers" as key scenes. But the thing that makes that movie "pop" for me is the whole middle sequence with the grandmother, who is THE breakout character in the film. The girl that is the center for the promo material is entirely forgettable and the male "lead" is admittedly a bit bland, but the grandmother is an INCREDIBLE character and the way its all built around a "family reunion" is great.

To each his own, but frankly speaking "Summer Wars" is the first anime in a while that I absolutely felt I HAD to own.

The thing with Summer Wars is that in terms of movies about large Japanese families, there are just so many better ones I've seen and so many better ones to choose from. "Japanese movies about Japanese families" is practically its own genre. And I actually feel like many characters got the short shrift in Summer Wars, including the grandmother, in favour of emphasizing the computer plot. I don't normally say this about movies, but I think the film might actually have benefited from another 20-25 minutes so that we could spend more time getting to know a few of the other family members a bit better. Heck, Tokyo Story had a family cast of only about 9 characters and it still needed 136 minutes to satisfactorily tell its story. Summer Wars had over 20 characters, and it largely chose to focus on the least interesting characters in the cast in its 114 minute runtime.

At least we are in agreement with The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, though. I didn't know how anyone could make time travel feel so bland, but somehow it succeeded.

I've been watching Ranma subbed on Hulu. I tend to avoid long Takahashi TV shows, but man, it's been pretty good so far. The fight scenes are silly but fun. Gotta love that super dynamic, non-shoestring-budget 80's animation.

The first two episodes of Gundam Unicorn will be aired on Animax tomorrow (Saturday). I have the first one on DVD already, so I will just record the second one. Now that the 7th and final episode has been released, it's a matter of time before that one is shown on Animax, too.

greg wrote:The first two episodes of Gundam Unicorn will be aired on Animax tomorrow (Saturday). I have the first one on DVD already, so I will just record the second one. Now that the 7th and final episode has been released, it's a matter of time before that one is shown on Animax, too.

You're in for a ride, mate.

danth wrote:I've been watching Ranma subbed on Hulu. I tend to avoid long Takahashi TV shows, but man, it's been pretty good so far. The fight scenes are silly but fun. Gotta love that super dynamic, non-shoestring-budget 80's animation.

May I inquire why? One of Takahashi's best shows is Dougram, which is longer than your average 80s mecha anime.

ServantOfPriss wrote:

danth wrote:I've been watching Ranma subbed on Hulu. I tend to avoid long Takahashi TV shows, but man, it's been pretty good so far. The fight scenes are silly but fun. Gotta love that super dynamic, non-shoestring-budget 80's animation.

May I inquire why? One of Takahashi's best shows is Dougram, which is longer than your average 80s mecha anime.

Rumiko, not Ryosuke.

Holy shit, I actually confused Oshii with Ryosuke for some reason.