As a child of the 80's I was on the receiving end of a deluge of of marketing, one particular niche of this deluge being Japanese animation. This is a niche that haunted the very core of my being and shaped my appreciation of animation as an art form with it's style, stories and distinctive application of drama, action and comedy.
Allow me to entertain you as I bloviate, babble, and rant regarding aspects of anime today and titles I would strongly recommend or prescribe caution towards.
Drink deep of my sorrow as I entertain you with tales of Japanese Animated debauchery.
I've picked up Yuppie Psycho: Executive Edition on the Switch and it has awoken a craving that nothing the industry has bothered to satisfy for years.
A poor sod named Brian is hired at the most successful company in the world for reasons he can't comprehend. The paycheck is great, the rules are super lax and he's given free reign to do his job how he likes.
He's only given a single task... written in blood: KILL THE WITCH!
From there you set about exploring the building gathering materials and clues as you try to settle in for your first day of work, while keeping your true purpose there a secret.
Its Gameplay is entirely based around evading hazards or disabling threats with your wit and timing. As in traditional survival horror, the closest thing you have to a weapon is a sharpened pencil. So you don't fight, you survive!
Folks as old as me might recall adventure titles such as Maniac Mansion as you out step and outsmart the grisly horrors slithering your way.
For those skeptical, once you get past the bitsy visuals and appreciate the shocking detail and masterful atmosphere in the game you'll find this experience will take you places and make you more uncomfortable in an office for the rest of your days.
It's a magnificent horror story that feels like the answer to a question of how HQ must be like in Resident Evil's Umbrella. Murder printers, zombified corporate drones, sensual carnivorous wall lips, etc. The pitch black humor also manages to evoke nostalgia for games in a similar vein like Maniac Mansion.
I spotted it by chance and learned I'm a year late to the party. The pc version has free DLC baked into the game now, so if you played it try it again. If you haven't brace for a heftier package than widely advertised with multiple endings alternative paths and tons of magnificent scares. I love this game so much I'm absolutely double dipping on another platform.
I assumed that it would be rock solid AWESOME by trimming all the fat from the Eva TV series and movies and making a coherent story that flows more smoothly with no sacrifice to the definitive mecha-on-monster action.
I was wrong on both counts.
I've only had the one go through because I couldn't do another without falling asleep. To sum it up, it's all "new" animation as in they "re-shot" the original scenes from episodes that sum up the events up until the appearance of the fifth angel. Well, I think it was the fifth... It was that one that was like a floating crystal that shot lasers and Shinji had to snipe at it while Rei covered him with the super shield thing.
It's NOT a reboot, it's the same fucking thing all over again and runs in that same familiar, "I'm have a seizure" style and pacing that fans of the show will recognize from the numerous re-re-re-recaps the show is notorious for and begin cutting again upon watching.
Cutting themselves.
Cutting themselves out of angst and despair they hadn't endured for eons (IE: 12 years, basically). Spike Spencer (voice of dubbed Shinji) is a brave man. I could not (unless many a dollar were involved) come back to such a mewling, painful and pathetic role AGAIN after trying to outrun it for over a decade. Poor bastard. Since Funimation is at the helm they gathered some of the ADV Films voice actors including Misato and Shinji's original voices making for some decent consistency for fans of the dub.
But again, it's still the same old thing. It's the same scenes re-made with currently existing stuff with the EXACT same angles, dialogue, purpose for progression within the story, etc.
It's a Cliff Notes version of the first chunk of the Eva TV series with maybe five minutes MAX of new footage which does little, if anything, to sway the original audiences. I really wish I'd rented it first. It's the same old crap I burned myself out on by running an Evangelion marathon every week introducing to friends who needed something as pretentious as they were.
If there's a counterculture in anime, Eva is its messiah in the USA. Only those who "get it" can truly appreciate its magnificence and epic story, but that's not going to save the fact that since the first VHS release the series has been pretty well burned out of the once revolutionary enthusiasm. My own thirst for Eva stuff is running on fumes and having Gainax Re-do Eva just to slap us in the face with the same thing is rather disconcerting.
I've got ideas and unfortunately the anime angle isn't really meshing with this site. It meshes REALLY well is Tekyu.com though...
I'm gonna pound my noggin' for a use that this delightfully handy blog can utilize, possibly still being tied to anime or perhaps even local anime projects? Hmm. Well, in any case, I'll be posting, tweeting and twitchin' as I try and get this site o' mine under control and in motion and we warned I'm going to get back to regular posts here.
Spawn may think it's crazy, but I know for a fact that HE IS RIGHT! Oh. Wait, that's not... damn.
Well, anyway, I guess I'll just get back to work on some other stuff. Need to find more things to distance myself from Mass Effect 3 since Bioware fucking ruined it and I've got serious genuine projects about to lift off the ground and I am beyond ecstatic, excited and freaked out!
So look forward to more and brace yourselves for awesomeness!
Fan movie maker Olan Rogers slapped together a film about Mega Man X. The film mainly shows a flickering Dr. Light explaining X kind of like the opening journal crawl from the game.
Then he fights Protoman? Um. Okay.
You know what, I'm okay with this. Even if he punched out Papa Smurf it looks awesome and besides that, for such a brief video it at least ties into all the important element of the game.
I just hope we see something more in this vein of awesomeness.
(Opening for the original Mega Man X game and the subsequent highway battle that followed.)
Sometimes epic literature invites bastardization. Sometimes it just begs for a video game. Sometimes it needs both. And MEN. Manly men, cuddling close to stave of the hard cold... of loneliness.
Enter: Saiyuki - The Journey West!
(To say that the images of our heroes shown above put them "out of character" would be putting it lightly.)
A dark evil clouds the land, the once peaceful demon-folk (basically elves) that lived alongside humanity have turned violent and bloodthirsty. A higher power calls upon an unlikely monk to gather 3 dangerous demons and half demons to halt the progression of this evil and save the land of Shangri-La from the return of an ancient evil.
So a clear problem is established, a specific villain is looking to return and you have the address for the general location of his resurrection, you have the means to stop this evil entirely AND you have a dragon that can magically turn into vehicles to haul your crew of warriors to accomplish the mission. So for the sake of all that is sacred, you head straight to your goal and save the world, right?
Pfft, whatever!!! Screw that noise! Turn the dragon into a jeep, dude! Road trip! Hey, got any food?
Which... basically sets the tone for the entire series. Instead on just GOING to bad guy central, our heroes stop for anything and everything within miles of their path of travel and whenever a craving for snacks comes up in conversation, which is to say that it comes up in EVERY conversation. Or cigarettes. Apparently the magical land of Shangri-La has a huge market for menthols. Nevermind if there's a pigeon or a branch laying in the road, that has the making of a 2-part episode.
By the time you're ten episodes in, you can see the writing on the wall in that our heroes couldn't find their asses with both hands and a map. But finding eachother's asses... that's a different story entirely. As the opening visuals convey there's some not-so-subtle homosexuality to be dealt with here, not that 4 dudes wandering the backwoods aimlessly for an unspecified amount of time with two of them constantly demanding things to put in their mouths is gay. I didn't say that. I just want to be clear.
When a guy HUGs like that, dresses like that and WALKs like that, there's telltale signs that distinguish which locker room he'd RATHER be looking into. Just sayin. Furthermore, I don't care that there's elements of homosexuality in this story and I would otherwise welcome more of it if it weren't trying so hard to be coy about it and go through all the by-the-numbers pairing with females (though, nothing serious because they can't let some chicks get in the way of their "fishing" time with the guys) and when trying to throw them at women doesn't work (which it doesn't) they throw them at the skeletons in their closet, which must be really scary for them because they're already so deep in the closet that they're finding Christmas presents!
(This is a major part of each episode. The whole "I'm not touching youuuu!", "He's on my side of the jeep!", "He keeps stealing my food!", "He's blowing smoke at me!", etc. stands as one of the major things that keep the audience in a constant state of amusement and confusion.)
There are two big strengths to Saiyuki, the first is decent visuals. It's not much to watch, but it's actually pretty pleasant to look at and in a visual media that really means more than you might think. Clearly more than Saiyuki's producers thought when they signed it on for another series and chucked the decent visuals out the window. The second big thing is that it has an absolutely amazing english dub that ADV Films put together, which makes it a much stronger series, not to mention one of the funniest things I've ever had the pleasure of watching. The language is more foul than most, but its all very appropriate for the context of its use and establishes better character depth as a result.
The action is debatable as it never reaches the overpowered and frenzied ballet of violence you see in the opening. It's mostly slowed to a crawl where there's a lot of posing and wisecracking amidst pointless angst over ideals, the concept of justice, the meaning of family, etc.
Mind you, these are fights usually involving the same eight characters taking place outside restaurants, hotels and grocery stores. Just to keep things in the proper perspective that this "epic" sets up for the audience. The theme set for the episode even becomes a discussion point for each the party members fighting and they kick comments back and forth like they're in some sort of therapy workshop.
I should touch on our antagonists at least a little bit. Our heroes' demonic counterparts led by Kougaiji (himself being dressed like Britney Spears' backup dancers), is the son of the great evil being resurrected, and his band of evil elves (consisting of a well-meaning meathead, a busty, airheaded sacrifice and his large breasted little sister who is basically a female Goku) at some point stop being a mere detriment to progress and become part of the damn decor because with their ceaseless appearances they abandon all tension or drama in their fights which becomes so casual that they practically ask each other to dance. To put this into perspective, they literally do that in the series after this, after which they make no apologies for beating a dead horse with uninspired, quip-driven combat that was already a weak point of the franchise.
The Characters, despite my bitching, are the greatest element this show has to its name. Its cast is so varied and bizarre that their motivations and resolutions alone aren't as interesting as their base personalities and how they interact with one another. The violent monk carrying a pistol has a strange and goofy back story, but seeing a genuine human warmth occasionally emanate from his person is profoundly strange and yet it's STILL not as strange as seeing all the characters (good AND bad, particularly Lirin and Goku) as they fawn over him and beg for his approval or even an angry glance.
As problems go they looked at Saiyuki and expected it to be as successful as say... Bleach or Naruto, so they basically bled the franchise to death as most episodes contribute nothing to the main plot if anything to the plot at all like they were waiting for investors to come raining down on them or something. It plods all over the landscape in trying to milk the errand our heroes are sent on without offering meaningful plot development, character arcs or coherent closure. The result of such sloppy work is an incredibly unsatisfying story.
Without wandering any further west, Saiyuki is a decent anime made better by ADV's dubbing expertise. On its own it's preachy, slow and dull. With the dub, it's preachy, funny, slow and entertaining. It's not the best show in the world, but it's certainly worth your time if only to see the difference a good dub can make on so-so anime titles. It's one the ADV's titles so it's not as easy to find as it used to be, but it's cheap on the secondary market and AnimeNetwork has the rights to show it still so it frequents Netflix's instant watch program on and off.
(Uh... why are you antagonizing the damn narrator? This is the opening for Saiyuki: Reload, the 2nd series intended to pick up after this one)
Spinning Off...
Misinterpreting the high praise Saiyuki received while in the wise hands of ADV Films, Pioneer/Geneon snatched the follow-up series without bothering to examine the show itself and without considering an appropriate english dub. The original series had a lot going for it in terms of great looking visuals, a marginally coherent story and ADV's outstanding english dub all conspired to make a much stronger and effective product than it would have been otherwise.
Reload, the follow-up series, has declining production values from the first episode on and lacked an even remotely acceptable dub, much less a worthwhile script that wasn't ripped verbatim from the base japanese translation. I actually threw in the towel early and stopped after the first DVD as the dub, visuals and lack of any obvious plot drove me away entirely. Since ADV didn't handle anything else and since my enjoyment of the series always ran a razor's edge anyway, Pioneer/Geneon made my decision very easy and I haven't been inclined to look back since. There's also a Saiyuki: Gunlock that followed Reload and that just blows my mind since Reload started off so badly and Saiyuki was already on shaky ground to begin with. FYI, I don't plan on discussing the spinoffs with any energy because I waste enough time in this world without trying to comment on turds and their levels of polish.
Candyce refreshed my memory with some suggestions to throw on here because they NEED to be thrown on here. They just DO.
I figured I'd start these MUST NOTE series with a well-known head turner that was so stupidly popular it ran on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim for years. Since 2001, it has been a primary part of Adult Swim.
It's still showing up to this day!!!
It only has 26 episodes and one feature film.
YEARS!!!!!!!!
Let's all punt a genetically super-smart Corgi and take a look back on good ol' Cowboy Bebop!
(CB's infamous opening known as TANK!, a savvy, fast jazz instrumental piece to a cool backdrop detailing the characters and their respective vehicles.)
If you haven't seen this then you should kick yourself in the face.
Do it.
Do it now.
Cowboy Bebop is basically bottled cool. It has the budget, the music and the slick style in motion that distinguish it from the rest of the herd. It especially has the TALENT, which helps a LOT. The blokes (and blokesses) behind Macross Plus came in to kick ass and take names and lordy lordy LORDY they managed to do that and then some. In a series, no less!
Nothing this awesome can ever happen again. It's just a fact. No one will reach for the stars like this again because they know they will fail. I don't exaggerate, it is that awesome.
Well... I'm going to stop gushing and break this thing down.
Spike & Jet are a martian ex-mobster and an ex-cop respectively who put aside their pasts and partnered up to take on the greener pastures of bounty hunting aboard Jet's ship, the Bebop.
During their adventures they pick up a few strays. Namely, a femme-fatale con-artist/competitor named Faye and a juvenile, nonsensical super-hacker GIRL named Edward, as well as a genius Corgi named Ein that is typically the only rational mind aboard the ship.
Spike is the series protagonist, which isn't as cool as it could be because we're stuck watching ALL of his flashbacks and each of the big plot points always manage to revolve around him. The other characters achieve closure in their lives through evolving storylines that flow with the series progression, but Spike's baggage dogs him until the end of the series and forces everyone in the Bebop to join him in the ride.
Speaking of which, Spike's biggest article of luggage is tied to his ex-girlfriend and his mafia rival. On the plus side, this leads to awesome action scenes and intriguing plot twists. Problem is Spike isn't exactly a likable or necessarily intelligent character that is pleasant to follow, while his bloodthirsty, power hungry rival is entertaining to follow for what little you are actually allowed to see of him.
In fact, most of the conflict in the show is a result of his poor decisions, particularly his piss-poor taste in amazingly stupid/crazy women.
On that note...
Let's talk about Julia.
I HATE Julia.
Spike is the dictionary definition of "Mr. Cool" until something reminds him of Julia or someone mentions Julia or he recalls the style of plumbing he familiarized himself with during his time with Julia... Anyway, his "cool" sputters and dies, his comparatively semi-rational mind instantly erodes into pure idiocy and his actions become childish and spiteful. At least more than usual.
While I can relate to a woman making me "twitterpated" and brain dead, the sheer scale of Spike's stupidity as a sprinkle of instant conflict for the plot is the primary weakness of the series. Julia's a paper tiger of a woman whose reputation doesn't do her a lick of justice when the real thing actually presents itself at the end of the series.
Who's Julia? Oh... right, I didn't really touch on her yet.
She's the woman between him and his mafia rival, Vicious, that he's following a flimsy trail after by word of mouth, hearing bartenders and street vendors sputter and gush about how she's a "real woman" or some such babble, and then she only shows up in the second to last episode and proves her worthlessness in a moment that still makes my jaw drop. The resolution of her story ties directly into Spike resolving things with Vicious, his rival who at that point has seized control of "The Syndicate" causing uprisings from within and mafia civil war across the galaxy.
Now Vicious is a fun character because he's an extremely active antagonist and a real bastard to boot. Why is he named Vicious...? Well, without embellishing his personality too much, that's his basic personality characteristic! He's vicious! And that's why we love him. He's the kind of brash asshole that compliments Spike's goofy antics in an EVIL way and he also embraces weird taboos by bringing a sword to gun fight! WOO!!!
CB balances a lot of normally difficult things like plot, action, music, style and story making a vaguely noir-ish, epic romp through a space-age gangsterland with a broad spectrum of music accompanying their dark voyage through space. You see an almost Blade Runner-esque dirty, dismal view of the bright and shining future as our Cowboys scour the stars looking to score bounties and endure moments of gorgeous scenery peppered with wanton dogfighting, bars being redecorated with bullets and colorful local eateries being smashed up in frenzied street fights.
Without putting too fine a point on it, the show is TOO GOOD for television and yet, THERE IT IS.
This is the obvious no-brainer to have in your collection. It's been printed, reprinted, re-reprinted and it still sells damn well for a show that should have otherwise been run into the ground by Cartoon Network, but they only made it more powerful.
Speaking to its unusual powers, Bandai is usually so-so in their dub quality and this is probably one of their finest adaptions ever. Spike Spiegel's actor in particular can't STOP working these days as he's become the semi-official voice of Wolverine in animation for Marvel Comics in addition to the tons of video game voiceovers and anime dubs he still participates in to this day. Hell, he seems to voice half the characters in Batman: Arkham Asylum, mind you I mean he's the voice of every other guard and criminal wandering the place.
Knockin' on Heaven's Door, The Movie
To satisfy fans hunger for more and without spoiling any of the reasons that certain characters couldn't be part of a follow-up series or movie, a film was made that detailed the efforts of a madman to murder millions of people over the course of their Halloween celebration on Mars and our heroes efforts to stop them.
They abuse the length of the film in order to wax artistically too far, but aside from that the entire thing just feels like a high budget, feature length episode of the show. Which is exactly what we wanted anyway!
It's value isn't really appreciated, but then it doesn't tie into the main story and serves as little more than a distraction to those of us who had already watched the show to its conclusion. It's worth watching, but if you pay more than $10 for it you're being swindled. Check it out used or on Netflix, but whatever you do, make a point to check it out if you enjoy the show.
If you haven't come across this series yet, make every effort to do so. It's insanely awesome and wickedly fun. Amusingly, Cowboy Bebop did brilliantly in the USA, but didn't do so well back home, which probably explains why only the movie was made to satisfy western audiences.
The TV show is is still pretty easy to find in piecemeal form on separate discs, but most commonly available are select episodes. Any way you slice it, if you're a fan of anime you should be collecting this show. Now.
So fixing mistakes is awesome. Super Awesome. Time machines could fix all kinds of troubles like wars, plagues, Jersey Shore, etc.
Clearly messing with the genepool is more important. Or so it seems with the minds behind DNA2.
Let's chat.
(Opening for DNA2, see the romance, feel the drama and TASTE the puke. SEE IT?!? He's puking! It's... surprisingly colorful for vomit.)
So Junta is an average Japanese teen, perverted as hell and surrounded by schoolgirls begging for tentacles. There's one little issue though, he quite literally has a "girl allergy" whereupon feelings of lust, dirty thoughts, contact with any part of a woman or visual contact with any of their girly parts ends with him blowing chunks.
Really. I'm quite serious. Puke city.
You're welcome.
But life's not all bad for Junta as he's destined to become the devastating "Mega-Playboy", notorious for his super virile seed that impregnated 100 women and choked out the genepool by overpopulating the planet in the future as each woman gave birth to their own Mega-Playboy who repeated their father's footsteps, as did their children and so on.
Karin, an almost copyright infringing (intentionally) Iria/Zeiram-esque female of the future, is sent terminator style to end his sensual conquests before they even begin by taking him down a genetic peg well before his "skills" ever manifest. Naturally, something goes awry... Well, two HUGE things go awry: Karin jump-starts his Playboy-powers prematurely by shooting him in the middle of a coffee shop with the wrong ammunition right after he falls in love with her (before and surprisingly AFTER she shoots him). This happening all after she bungles her mission and makes direct contact with Junta wreaking untold havoc with both the future and her mission in the present.
While trying to conceal her failure, Junta's powers aren't stabilized yet so he goes in and out of his Mega-Playboy mode as he's bathed in twinkling lights, his soft eyes glowing with warmth and a smile that literally hits the ladies so damn hard that they fall to the ground swooning. Then they get in close and he reverts back as he starts bazooka-barfing all over the place leading to rampant confusion and misunderstanding.
The word you're looking for is AWESOME.
(First chunk of the first episode dubbed, most of the vocal talent/direction is kind of weak, but script is strong enough to support the series.)
The formula you're looking at is a Soap Opera coupled with comedic sci-fi elements. It's Back to the Future of the Days of our Lives gone full-blown retarded and as they outlined in Tropic Thunder, it's never good to go FULL retard. Well, this may be the exception. Then again...
Basic logic takes a back seat as the future's stupidest special agent tries to fix a problem that requires a scalpel's precision as she uses a trio of chainsaws in its stead, bending and twisting the future ridiculously as every effort to fix her mistake makes things worse for Junta and exponentially for the future being that he's about to start his MEGA-BREEDING way out of season.
Stand back, I'm putting my nerd hat on for a moment. Granted, it's all part of the comedy, but as far as the time travel sci-fi logic goes Karin's changing the future as she talks about it to people in the past. Boy does she talk about it... Karin spills the beans to anyone who'll listen and even when her superiors show up later in the series, they're all really casual about being noticed in their weird timeships and devastating the past with litter, explosions, spectacular instances of real estate destruction and teashop massacres. The only thing holding the logic together is magic and good intentions as making a romantic comedy, but they throw those elements out the window toward the end by turning a rival into a shape-changing, gene-eating villain as the absolutely stupidest means to provide closure to the Mega-Playboy dilemma.
The dub is so bad... The script is great, but the actors and voice direction all fall flat like bad porn. Karin is amazing and steals the show, not surprising because she's portrayed by Jessica Calvello who went off to play Excel Excel in the equally batshit Excel Saga english dub by ADV Films. It retains its humor all the same so I can't exactly piss all over it, but I stand by the fact that it could and SHOULD be better. The script isn't bad, especially since they included Junta actually SAYING "barrrrrrf" as he throws up. Again, they also got Jessica Calvello to play Karin, which is probably my favorite thing about this series which is strange because it's one of the titles from CPM's US Manga Corps! It's only strange because she came in through the "back door" in a sense because all I had heard her voice in previously were the "adult titles" distributed by CPM's Anime 18 arm.
That's right, I just unsubtly noted that she was doing cartoon porn. And that I watched it.
What can I say? I try to keep my mind open. Anyway, she's as versatile a voice actress as they come and I'm just sad she doesn't get more work because she's hilarious and brilliantly talented in her field. I don't think she's doing anything else though since Excel Saga literally put her in the hospital halfway through the series.
The first 2/3 of the show are exceptionally fun, but they clearly realized that they needed to find something to close with, so they just sort of threw out nonsense and hoped for the best. As they establish awkward teenage loveish-type feelings, they also make a point of damaging them with paranoia, vomit and severe flatulence. The pattern of randomized Junta behavior makes for great comedy and a surprisingly touching story of awkward romance that get more complicated as the only girl Junta really loves is Karin, the girl who shot him and jump-started his "Playboy powers" is the only one he fixates on and as that develops is a twisted, sad little love story as she keeps trying to push him on to his childhood friend, while it's clearly killing her inside since she falls for him more every day.
It's unusually difficult to come across these days, which is a damn shame. The whole set seems to go for about $50 or so on Amazon, which isn't bad considering how pricey a lot of lesser shows have become since the depression got its gears turning.
Find it, love it and enjoy it. Just brace yourself for an immensely stupid and unnecessarily complicated close
at the expense of the otherwise well constructed story.
