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.
So I've seen enough mad women in my time (through no fault of my own, mind you) that when they stab THEMSELVES in the head with a little data comb thingy you should already be running.
Let's chalk up another chance for hilarity at the expense of someone's manly pride as we discuss Kia Asamiya's greatest animated work to date, Compiler!
A trio of 2-D computerized female programs are sent to Earth to destroy/enslave it with the spear of their assault being led by Compiler, a program capable of bending our reality to her will. All that went to hell when they decided the food was too good and they got boyfriends, now two of the three girls are freeloading at Toshi and Nachi's house eating food and destroying and reassembling their home.
All of that stuff I just noted is woven into the narrative as the anime is set after the origin story happened and somewhere in the middle of the Manga storyline closing one arc and starting another. And for the record, Kia Asamiya is the pen name of the artist/writer behind cult favorites Silent Mobius and Nadesico, amongst other awesome things.
Watch Compiler_OVA_01 in Animation | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
(Veoh has the first episode... subtitled in Spanish? At least you can SEE some of the stuff in the opening like the assassins being turned into women as punishment for their consistent failure.)
For your viewing pleasure however, you have three episodes in this outstanding OAV that show (according to the culprits) a 37th failed attempt on Compiler's life as they unleash fast-food hell on Osaka, a bungle of record proportions as the girls try to work out their love lives and sleep arrangements and finally a showdown that took a lot longer to happen than you might have expected.
The show itself is already pretty funny on its own as the girls struggle to understand life among humans as they kind of guilt/force themselves on both of the guys. So they live in the house being very complicated guests as assassins drop in constantly to kill them both. There's a third girl, Interpreter, but she's sparsely utilized in the anime as most of the focus is on the domestic awkwardness of affection craving aliens who can/will eat the boys out of house and home.
I was only ever fortunate enough to obtain the first tape, that's right TAPE. As in cassette. I'm talking about a VHS tape I picked up like ten years ago.
Don't go rushing out to find it, ADV Films put it on Tape in the USA, but they never brought it over to DVD for some reason. Then again, they had such a huge library I'm not entirely surprised it got lost in the shuffle... Bummer though.
The dub REALLY shines with an outstanding script and incredible delivery by some of ADV's best voice actors. I had seen it subbed before at a convention and while it was also amusing it was not even remotely as funny as the english dub.
I've scoured Youtube and I'm STILL shocked that more clips of this aren't up there because some of the scenes set up in this show are well beyond perfect. Chaos as breakfast, constant coupon references, fast food mascots fighting in the streets and a romantic dynamic so messed up it's a wonder Dr. Phil and Oprah haven't noted it in their shows. Then again... The could bring up Ranma, too...
I'm really not sure what else I can say about it except that it exists on two cassettes, Compiler 1 has the first two episodes and Compiler 2 has the third. I'd certainly look for the dubbed before I'd recommend the subbed, so if you come across a VHS copy of Compiler 1 & 2 (each of which have a market value of roughly $10) and you have a VCR that still works then give it a shot.
As messed up romantic comedies stacked with cute girls and stuff blowing up everywhere, this stands as a high quality product. I'll update and... probably completely revise this review if someone EVER gets it on DVD. I'm just hoping they keep the dub.
So AnimEigo is still way the fuck behind the rest of the world. They stopped padding their anime selection forever ago (losing basically everything except for their most sought after titles) and focused heavily on old Japanese movies, Samurai stuff in particular, but they have this... ISSUE with boxes.
So they have typical cheap dvd cases, cheap (disappointing) dvd extras, cheap (usually shitty) english dubbing, and not an ounce of sanity when it comes to business.
Why is printing boxes or mass producing thinpak style boxed sets so difficult for them to grasp? I know it seems weird, but given the sheer SIZE of Urusei Yatsura they should consider the opportunity they're missing by hoarding it as they are. Sure, on one hand you're paying roughly $2 an episode, but there's 195 episodes so if your like it you'd better brave yourself for over $400 worth of pain after taxes, not to mention the shipping. Oh and for the record that's JUST the TV series, for a complete collector there's about $96 more dollars of pain for just the 6 movies and the six discs containing MOST of the OAVs, just not the most recent one from 2008.
You're basically looking at over $500 worth of anime. Does it make sense? Not really considering the anime is about 30 years old and its distribution method is the same as when they had on the VHS tapes, the primary difference being that they charge roughly one-third of what they charged for each tape back in the nineties.
I'd fork over shitloads of money for UY stuff, in fact I have personally distributed quite a bit of money into AnimEigo's pockets and I'm not fond of being ripped off over shitty products. The anime is fine, but everything coming out of them is almost poison to their industry.
If it's not DBZ, Pokemon or Bleach no one is buying that shit for so hefty a price today. They made something of a killing when they printed awful looking boxes for Boxed Set, which were just flimsy paper sleeves for more overpriced DVDs. The first series of Boxed sets are still worth a bundle because so few were produced, I held out because I assumed they'd have half the mind that other anime distributors had in that they would push their product appropriately with updated boxed sets or DVDs that had more than four episodes.
I wouldn't gripe so much if they had added anything to the entirety of the Urusei Yatsura Library, but all they do is sit on it and let it stagnate trying to soak up as much money from the series as they can before the copyright owners see what they're doing to their products.
Funimation makes shows better every day, it keeps its titles fresh with re-releases and cheaper selling points to save you sanity, money and shelf space. ADV films (before passing) had similar methods of keeping product on the shelves and money in people's pockets.
(UY makes me as happy an anime character in P-p-pajamas!)
Lemme give some comparisons here:
UY has multiple seasons consisting of 195 episodes as well as 6 Movies and 11 OAV episodes.
I know that seems like a lot, but when you look at how Viz released Ranma 1/2 in neat, well dubbed packages arranged by season, you gotta wonder how fucking inept the folks at Animeigo can be when they can't even manage putting out the UY seasons in manageable packages for all this time. When Ranma has its entire library out there three times over! Starting with pricey Digital Dojo in a large $100 set for the first season and then dropping to price and size to a manageable thinpak set for about $20-$25.
It's been over fifteen years, just so we've got a picture of how pathetic this is and how far behind the rest of the industry these assholes dicking around in their garage have gone. The movies are in a PARTIAL boxed set because they turned over the 2nd Movie rights to Central Park Media (making Beautiful Dreamer the ONLY marginally decent dub that UY ever had and leaving the rights to one of its best films floating out in the cold since CPM's bankruptcy), but the OAVs and the series discs still manage to be scattered by AnimeEigo like you're putting together a pricey vase back together.
The Slayers has Numerous seasons itself, the first 3 alone season ran at 26 episodes apiece, it also has a handful of movies as well as OAV episodes. The first three seasons of Slayers have been put into boxed sets every time through their re-releases and they've even been released together in rather attractive book-style packaging recently. Granted, they're not as old as Urusei Yatsura, but their common sense in distibution is vastly superior. ADV had the right to the Slayers OAVs and Movies so naturally they released each movie or set of OAVs (3 episodes per disc) as they obtained them (or managed to put them onto DVD). They also managed to put them out in sturdy boxes when they released the boxed sets of thinpaks which made the formerly sizable stack into a significantly petite collection. Hell, if Central Park Media can put UY in a dub AND release The Slayers seasons in boxed sets what the hell is the excuse for lagging so far behind??
ADV's Guyver: The Bio-Boosted Armor came out in single bits, but it also came out with a large, strudy box for you to collect the discs with as they came out. When ADV went under Funimation took the franchise under its wing and released the show in its entirety with an attractive thinpak style set. There were some complications in Guyver getting to that point on its own, but that was the same style of distribution ADV practiced anyway.
This raises the question though, would someone else be able to sell UY better? The simple answer is: "Hell Yes." I ran across UY discs that Animeigo put out only on occasion and there's no way I was going to pay what stores were asking for so few episodes. So I waited for the rational decision to make a more enticing set that I would willingly purchase, which was hard for me to stave off because I wanted it so badly.
The rational and economically sound release of UY never happened to this day. I own them all now because I went to Amazon and got the entire series used or on clearance. I paid about $140 including shipping. That's for all of the discs, which are impossible to display and even harder to store, so all save for a few live out in the open when I need a slice of Tomobiki.
UY is the most important anime out there for me personally, but even I feel that about 70 DVD cases are really fucking pushing it. Their cases look like an asshole spent 2 minutes in photoshop putting them together, their boxes granted to a precious few of the masses are ugly and look cheap, the DVDs don't tend to have more than 4 episodes on each disc and the most exciting addition you can expect to own when you buy their dvds are the paper cultural files tucked in the case to translate japanese humor to an american mind, that's their forte after all.
I hold Animeigo in great contempt because they've let such amazing titles sit and collect dust without hiring someone like the Ocean Group and Viz to come in and fix up their anime titles so they sound amazing and can pull in new audiences with their classic status and contemporary, acceptable dubbing that might even get their foot in the door for airing on specialized cable television. Split the costs. Whatever! JUST STOP SMOTHERING THESE THINGS BEFORE YOU LOSE THEM!!!!
Animeigo's one claim to fame is that they are exceptional english and japanese speakers. Their translations are so brutally accurate that even THEY get subtitles for their subtitles that explain the cultural significance of a distinctly Japanese action or saying making you almost worried that watching their stuff might make you learn something. I appreciate that and I swear by their accuracy, but they are supposedly a business as well and they can barely keep the roof from leaking or so it seems back at their website.
Back in '91-'92 their catalog was very impressive and they kept a lengthy, updated list of their movies and series in stock which followed one or two lengthy trailers that led to many purchases on my part. Their anal retentiveness almost seemed prudent back then, but when the market changed to accommodate things like the INTERNET AnimEigo decided to dick around and let most of its titles dissolve while they pursued shoddy old Japanese movies.
AnimEigo, get your shit together. Please.
You don't have enough titles to be so indifferent about protecting what little investments you've made. UY is your flagship series and alongside Bubblegum Crisis they stand as your only connection to today's market. Sure, that keeps people coming back after taking Japanese class or seeing Project A-ko, but you should give them something to come back for and something to draw new people in so that you can stave off dying a coward's death and instead make a practical financial decision to FIX your mess.
If you don't want to, someone will come in and eventually fix it for you. Why not do so in a way that actually keeps you afloat and food on your plate? Do you truly fear success?
It should be noted that some things become popular for a reason. An enduring premise as simple as the loving bond between a boy and his pet have been the driving force behind many pieces of popular fiction.
But let's be honest, a catgirl is much more enticing.
(A fun AMV using mostly clips from the OAVs, Nuku at her finest.)
So I recently completed my All Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku collection and my gripe meter just spiked from irritation to pure fucking rage.
When I decided to stop being a stick in the mud, I picked up the TV series and shortly before it arrived I bought Nuku Nuku Dash. In my elation, I held off on Dash so I could watch the series in production order and... that was a mistake. In fact, everything past the OAV was a mistake.
Let's go over why this particular franchise spins around in my guts like glass shards...
(ADV Films Trailer for the Nuku Nuku OAV series)
All Purpose Cutural Catgirl Nuku (OAV)
Trial separations can really hurt a family dynamic. It puts a strain on the bond between the parents and creates a conflict over control of the children. Sometimes their necessary to find common ground and let love heal any wounds or gaps in their relationship.
Sometimes you need to drive faster when an attack jet is chasing your car.
In this case, the harm is pretty obvious when Kyusaku, a scruffy scientist escapes the clutches of his death merchant wife, Akiko, with their son, Ryunosuke, and his latest invention: a nearly indestructible combat android. On Christmas Eve Ryunnosuke adopts a friendly cat while the guys take a short break while on the run from Akiko, but her thugs cut the kitty's life short when they hose down the Kyusaku & Ryunosuke's car with machine gun fire. Or do they? Kyusaku, in order to appease his son, installs the brain of the fallen kitty into the unbelievably powerful cyborg body.
Some time later, the cat now calls herself Nuku Nuku, but her "legal" name is Atsuko Natsume and she's clearly become their maid and sole caretaker as neither Ryunosuke nor Kyusaku can function without her. Her casing is unusually attractive, a point that Akiko keeps pointing out with alarm and jealousy, it's also worth noting that each and every boy she encounters becomes smitten with her.
At it's core Catgirl Nuku Nuku is a poor man's Project A-ko featuring a hopelessly demented specimen of snaggletoothed, eccentric jailbait who is really a deadly battle robot that a well-meaning, but clearly deranged scientist cobbled together to placate his mourning son after the murder of his newly adopted pet kitten by jet-flying thugs sent by the boy's mother.
That's right! It's a cat brain transplanted into a powerful robot body coated in the attractive shell of a buxom teenage girl and when she's made into a determining factor of a violent custody battle between a mad scientist (Kyusaku, Ryo's Dad) and the cutthroat owner/manager of a global death machine manufacturer (Akiko, Ryo's mom), hilarity ensues! The classic image of a diminutive, attractive schoolgirl dismembering giant robots and sneaking off make mischief and eat fish sets the tone for the OAV's entirety and when you see it, you'll understand why this series endured for so long and why they were able to green-light two awful spin-offs.
The best part is how it stayed true to its origins in Yuzo Takada's one-shot manga, he's the mind behind 3x3 Eyes and Blue Seed. My favorite aspect of that is his artwork is beautifully represented in the original OAV. It takes some mild artistic interpretation, but it's magnificently consistent in its visual style, storyline and provides a consistent delivery of laughs.
It's legendary in Anime nerd circles and Nuku practically defines an Otaku dream girl with a body she's not shy about showing off and a ditzy, sweet personality that's hard not to like. Just like Blue Seed and 3x3 Eyes, this is another essential part of any worthwhile anime collection that Yuzo Takada masterminded.
(Opening for Nuku Nuku TV)
Nuku Nuku TV
A terrible mistake made horribly real.
Off the bat you'll notice they threw out the Yuzo Takada's character designs, but borrowed heavily from them (the same Character designs find their way into Dash as well). You'll also notice the massive divebomb in visual quality from the OAV, this also carries over in Dash.
The basic framework of the original story is... sort of there except that there's inadequate strife within the home to draw you in. In fact there's NOTHING to draw you in like the OAV did. Ryunnosuke is now a mean, spiteful little shit who picks on Nuku Nuku all the time, Akiko is living with the family and works for a new character called "Hell Mishima" wherein she works late nights dressed up as a villainous power ranger bondage queen. Nuku is borderline retarded and has an origin akin to Megaman; essentially, the TV show claims she was made to fight Mishima Industries... making the cat brain a conscious decision in construction rather than an endearing fuck up by Ryo's Dad who dresses up similarly to Tuxdeo Mask to foil the plans of his wife's employer by cover of night.
They aimed for laughs, but the problem is that they aimed too low, too fast. The whole thing feels like it was produced in a hurry and edited heavily post production so they could bleed out introductions to fill airtime. They don't build up anything and can barely focus on the gags they try to set up, it's like they stack up Jenga blocks and then intentionally walk away. I've watched its entirety and I have gotten a few laughs out of it, but there's no room for timing and as a result the comedy burns itself out before it can find closure to a gag.
In an unusual twist for ADV, the Dub is actually kind of painful to endure, it mostly has to do with them trying to keep with the super fast dialogue erupting forth constantly. It's not like Excel Saga where the dialogue has meaning as part of ranting character or fast-paced dialogue that some clear meaning to both the scene and story as a whole, most of the dialogue is actually a means to keep track of which characters are in a scene akin to taking attendance in class.
By comparison, the Japanese audio is comparatively palatable, but it doesn't make it funny or interesting when the literal parade of B and C list characters crowd Nuku off the fucking screen. Seriously, the biggest detriment to the show is the new cast of characters tacked on for no reason AT ALL. Their appearance basically requires much of each episode to be dedicated to their moments of being accounted for in a scene that NONE of the chatty extras can resolve. The other students appear spouting a tagline or spew some awful blathering befitting their stereotype (folk singer sings all his lines, spoiled brat spouts rich brat lines, creepy fortuneteller spouts ominous fortunes, etc.) and through about half the series they actually put the brakes on the scene for a few seconds while seizure inducing characters fill the screen introducing the same character... again. And again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again.
By the time they're done re-introducing the characters who have no bearing on the overall story (such as it is) and they've belted out their pointless lines, they've actually eaten up a substantial run time of the episode. Nothing is developed, EVER and the methods used to introduce an issue and then completely resolve the same issue could have been done in five minutes and still have as little impact on the episode (and the series as a whole), but instead they're bled out dreadfully as the main cast (mostly Nuku) gets interrupted as much as humanly possible by these cardboard cut-out caricatures on their way to unsatisfying closure.
I watched in horror wondering how this got funding and I still writhe in agony over how something so awful could be produced. Worse still, how the same asstard behind it was signed on for the Dash series...
(Opening for Nuku Nuku Dash)
Nuku Nuku Dash - So the same rat bastard who messed up the TV series suckered his way into making ANOTHER TV show into a Power Ranger-ish bastardization.
In this short series you'll find the same trademarked title idiocy from the TV series (Son calls his Dad Mister Kyusaku and his Mother Miss Akiko, what the fuck is that all about?). Also the term "androbot" comes back along with members of the awful TV show's cast, but the BIG difference is that young Ryunnosuke is now a hot-blooded teenager who is horny as hell for his family's amnesiac houseguest, Nuku Nuku. While members of the original cast populate their original roles... mostly, the show is heavily populated by a generic mishmash of the original OAV characters and the TV characters.
On the plus side, there's a story in play. I'm not saying that it isn't a horrible pile of shit, but I am saying that unlike the random, and pointless nonsense that comprised the TV series there is a clear story that flows through the show. The evil Mishima corporation is now run by a trio of sinister old men that search the company records for fodder to throw at luring out and collecting a missing robot: Nuku Nuku, who is staying incognito as a young woman with amnesia by day and fighting the unfortunate idiots sent to smoke her out by night. Nuku stays under the same roof as the Natsume family (Akiko, Kyusaku & Ryunnosuke) where Kyusaku tries to hack into her programming in the basement when no one's home and Ryunnosuke simply lusts for her at all times, but is unable to make a move on her due to being a unusually pathetic Japanese loser who actually cries when she willingly walks in naked to scrub his back in the bath. For those of you wondering what happened, he ran out of the bathtub and spent the night crying so loud that even the neighbors knew what happened.
Anyway, Dash's distinction is that it feigns seriousness. What I mean by this is that characters die during the course of the story and there are very heavy consequences to be weighed, but that's usually an afterthought because this was made for all the stammering nerds who need to see someone else fail at even basic socialization with the fairer sex. Much of the show is dedicated to Ryo's pathetic gibbering fantasies and the head injuries he receives while walking, riding or running in the midst of them as he yearns for Nuku's affections and ruins every single chance he could have with her.
To spice up that angst, there's the family drama where Akiko works for Evil Incorporated and Kyusaku is looking to take it apart from the inside using Nuku. Things get interesting when clones and Nuku's sister come out to play near the end, but the buildup was so slow and sloppy that nothing is really yielded from the effort of putting up with it for the show's entirety and the ending itself is so disappointingly ambiguous and creepy that is actually makes me pissed off. It's completely incapable of wielding any one of the elements it tries juggling with any effectiveness: The romance falls flat and feels rather perverse being that it's all in one guy's head, the action is stilted and hinges on gimmicks power rangers would be ashamed of, the comedy is poorly timed and interferes with every other aspect of the show and trying to tie it into the Nuku Nuku franchise seems to have done more harm than good.
I love the OAV series that kicked things off, but the two series that followed tarnish an otherwise good name for the sake of brand recognition, in their effort to keep attention to the name alive they try forcing a square peg through a round hole. The one awesome thing I can take note of is that throughout the entirety of the franchise while in ADV's hands the series had consistent voice casting and to their credit the voice acting is outstanding, but you can't polish a turd and the latter two are verily turds.
After a lengthy, crazy rant like the last one I feel it's only fair to throw ya'll a bone. Brace for laughter kiddos, your childhood innocence is on the chopping block!
LEVITY, I CHOOSE YOU!
A friend showed this to me awhile back and I'm still between tears and laughter. To clarify for the uninitiated: In the final, tense moments of Evangelion soldiers are sent in to seize the NERV base and use its contents (Angels, ADAM, Eva units, Alka-selzter) to kick-start Armageddon.
In this beautiful bastardization they send in GI Joe to kill off NERV and the Eva units are Optimus Prime (Unit 2) and Galvatron (Unit 1), with the evil "Eva Series" being represented by the entirety of the Decepticon forces.
The video uses footage from the Transformers movie, GI Joe Movie and Evangelion respectively. Well, and A LITTLE bit of footage from each series to pad out some of the scenes.
Shut up and FINISH THE JOB!!! Make them stop talking!
(A collection of anime deaths put to music. That's a little creepy, but perfect for this topic.)
Let's start with a generic example:
Two men who’ve been fighting a bloody fight for roughly six ACTUAL hours of your viewing are now chatting like pals as one bleeds to death in the street after the good guy punched clear through his opponent's chest, his fist wet with dripping red remnants of life after bursting from the bad guy's back. This bloody exchange being the final punctuation in an epic tale leading to the ultimate closure with a gruesome reward.
The character dying has caused the death of the other character’s goldfish, wife, fifteen children, best friends, dog, cat, parents, horse and llama. Yet, the surviving character, a heroic protagonist, is holding the evil bastard’s hand patiently listening to his dying words while a tear forms at the edge of his eye and a flashback sequence shows that the bad guy was sexually abused by reindeer as a kid and blames the protagonist for having a yard full of grass and our protagonist appears to mourn the baddie's passing.
This is a typical event used by lazy anime and comic writers to characterize a bad guy in their final moments and eat up screen time in order to stall for additional production time or a way to write themselves out of a corner. Not that the Japanese are the ONLY culprits guilty of this cop-out, but they are one of the most consistent culprits and certainly the most successful in spite of their wanton misuse of this particular gimmick. Also, this is an anime blog first and foremost so I'll pick my fights accordingly.
The De-Evilfying Deathbed Confession typically appears in the twilight hours of a storyline, but it is used most frequently in fighting anime like the infamously shallow Dragonball franchise as well as better written shows like Yu Yu Hakusho and Bleach. But let's be clear, it’s not limited to whiz-bang style action, in fact it’s the same BS used at the end of powerful girly drama, Fushigi Yuugi (AKA Mysterious Play), where an incredibly evil character dies revealing that as a child his pretty face ensured a life of ceaseless rape and abuse (It's Japanese, after all) at the clutches of a creepy royal type, which is why the baddie murdered, tortured and manipulated members of his own team while he happily butchered the good guys in a sadistic fashion, writhing in delight as they suffered. Ultimately, so he, like many anime cliche types, can exercise his nihilistic tendencies and end the world instead of wishing for a better life or something.
So he was misunderstood and now we feel sorry for the bad guy suddenly? Well… No, not really. His actions were the very definition of unforgivable. It's not terribly effective when blurted out near the end of the story when the satisfaction of the baddies' satisfying demise is already on your mind.
Here's a positive example of what these guys are trying to attempt: Darth Vader's change of heart and tearful reunion with his son making for a heartwarming redemption to the most evil character imaginable bringing a powerful saga to a close in its third act. It's not a random change of heart either, everything from body language, to the way they fought, to specific choices in dialogue show Vader's hesitation, affection and pride in reacting to how far his child has come as the movies have developed him into a very human character in spite of the evil acts we see him doing (like choking someone to death every 15 minutes). Vader was a complicated dude and the audience needs to see that if they're going to feel the same sense of loss that anime tends to attempt to convey.
When used in moderation there’s no problem, in fact it’s often an amazingly effective tool in high end drama that, when used properly, causes a rift in the audience’s ability to judge a character painting the entire story leading up to this one character’s loss in shades of an uncomfortable gray. See in THAT context, it’s no problem! It’s even flexible enough to be used to twist things making a hero into the worst villain imaginable.
There’s no shame in admitting you’re not b-b-bulletproof. However, when you cram in a really cool idea as a method of covering up your inadequacies you cheapen EVERYTHING that your touch.
For instance, Dragon Ball Z doesn’t necessarily milk the revelation/twist aspect of death too hard, but Bleach won’t stop. They kill bad guys all the time in Bleach (A cast of thousands fall on Ichigo & Co's weapons liek they're raking motherfuckin' LEAVES), while with DBZ it doesn’t require a much save for a lot of balls to just shrug off a terminal condition like say… DEATH.
On the other hand, Bleach can’t decide how BAD the bad guys are supposed to be as every evil dude’s death triggers a pace-killing flashback that can run for a few minutes or an entire set of episodes and that’s not even counting how long it takes them to actually freakin’ die! DBZ baddies essentially give their own eulogies before croaking and these guys wipe out three planets before lunch—Lunch being a tray of live babies, because DBZ baddies are rarely ambiguous about their moral orientation.Vegeta being their only shade of gray.
Basilisk chews at the bone of this problem like the marrow will cure it’s wholly stupid ending. Basilisk in particular doesn’t know how to keep dead people DEAD or stay with the fact that hideous, evil, cannibalistic; rapist scumbags were inherently vile from the start. It even goes so far as to have heartwarming flashback episodes before the conflict that killed them all, showing them in cute settings like trying to cure hiccups, playful mischief kicking a fat man down a mountain, etc. After all this they STILL try for the mid-death flashback to a tragic origin that explains why the architect of everyone’s horrific misery acted as he did because his family was caught in the crossfire leaving him orphaned.
Does it soften your anger? Does it stifle your rage? Does it do anything to really hinder your loathing for the character? Not if you're human and have a functioning brain! Lots of orphans have gone through life without going on hundred year murder sprees so that scarcely gives this asshole an excuse for literally murdering clans over and over for generations.
Tuning in to Bleach I felt it necessary to peck at this particular gripe after seeing it abused so eagerly in anime for years. After seeing a guy who was SO evil he changed form into some monstrous fly-thing and in his final moments after having his throat gouged out… he managed to have a brief chat(?!) with two heroic characters who knelt at his side somberly mourning his imminent demise without ONCE holding the character accountable for HIS actions.
So in Japan's eyes, there's no such thing as personal responsibility? There's no reason to be held accountable for all the evil shit you do in life as long as you had a horrific past or some measure of trauma? Is morality like some intangible credit program?
Anime is the epitome of action, style, drama combined and as a genre it holds the yoke to a larger audience than that of its entire home country (Japan, not Korea where it's ACTUALLY animated) now, but with its commercial success the writing and genius that made anime so amazing has died out and become a cookie-cutter industry making half-assed products that put their predecessors to shame.
You may wonder just what the hell I'm asking for? Well, I'm not asking for much. I just want people's deaths to mean as much as their lives. I want writers to really consider the factor of humanity into what they create and I'd like to care about characters again. It's not impossible, Fullmetal Alchemist had an appropriately complicated plot with villains as likeable as the heroes and it constantly forced our wide-eyed young heroes to choke back their tears to walk a path of grey that made them more intriguing characters every step of the way. It can be done. Quality products last longer than piles of shit, Fullmetal Alchemist was SO well received they had to bastardize it as much as possible by milking it with a spinoff series much like Dragon Ball Z Kai and the recent Slayers series.
Creative bankruptcy is ravaging the economy as much as financial drought. Studios and their parents corporations need to reconsider some of stuff they churn out if only so long as to consider if they're creating job security for themselves or jumping right into the toilet. Think a bit about what you're doing before you do it. Just THINK.
Dragonball Z is absolute horse crap, but there's a reason it went on FOREVER and was recently resurrected as a zombie. It's not because Akira Toriyama can't write (because he's a hack writer and an artist so high on cocaine that even his art screams "REHAB!"), but the mere personality of his art and characters possessed such incredible charisma that it devoured everyone it touched in any country it's translated in. Dragonball is fun, it's classic action with adventure with heroic heroes and devious villains. It doesn't require an ounce of thought because it's pure entertainment with fighting that constantly runs the risk of burning itself out as they go from laughing off bullets to casually using the sun like a folding chair as a wrestling prop.
Stuff like FLCL, Dead Leaves, Gurren Lagann, and Panty & Stocking w/ Garterbelt are gaining in popularity and there's a reason for it. They look AWESOME for one and they're not afraid to take chances. Lots of stuff makes no sense, but they don't give a crap because they're telling a story THEIR way. It's berserk enough to make one froth at the mouth, but it makes Dragonball Z look like as serious as a college thesis.
How can weird ass shows like FLCL connect with anyone? Easy!
1) They connect visually with the audience: The moment you wonder what the hell is going on, you're trapped gazing into their works of madness. It's too late to look away, you're already wondering if that robot is eating a monster, if a guy's eyebrows are made of seaweed, how someone can be stabbed with underwear or what the hell is wrong with a woman's eyes you're practically their plaything and they know how to keep you watching.
2) They keep it simple: A good complicated story is the mark of genius writing, but it's difficult to keep that kind of pace in such a competitive industry! So they find one simple theme and ride it into the ground with unyielding brutality, but they have enough brains to weave it into the narrative than make it one 26-episode diatribe about big drills or shiny guitars, instead it's a fight for genetic survival with the spiral of fate and a long sought symbol of power that draws cosmic forces so powerful they threaten to wipe out existence. See what they did there? They created AWESOME from a nothing more than a prop concept.
3) They draw on humanity: Real human emotions drive drama! Writing that someone feels guilt in something like Claymore is different than SHOWING someone feeling guilty in Gurren Lagann, ditto for showing that someone loves another character, but can't express it out of a childish sense of shyness and fear like in FLCL as opposed to THOUSANDS of anime out there. The Gainax amalgamation making these treasures isn't TELLING you a damn thing, they're showing you what's happening and keeping you attached to the characters in direct spite of the batshit things occurring in front of you and that means a lot when they go through the trouble of conveying emotions rather than telling you through clumsy dialogue.
I know, some of you are begging me to stop, but the house that Evangelion built is the BEST example of fresh creativity on the market. They do whatever the fuck they want. Maybe you missed that last comment, THEY DO WHATEVER THE FUCK THEY WANT and they still manage to make fistfuls of yen while collecting accolades, applause and fandom by producing bizarre original works. They kill ANYONE they feel like and it works as though they were humans instead of a bunch of lifeless puppets and it sticks because they have a functional narrative flow. Good guys, bad guys, civilians caught in the middle are all on the menu and after they're dead there's drama to be discussed and it's always powerful, intense stuff that makes you FEEL things no matter how weird the premise giving gravity to the events occurring.
Most anime deaths end up being lazy moments of poor, misguided writing. A character lay dying and suddenly a story will take a break to catch its breath, the same character who is dying (with their throat ripped out sometimes) is suddenly so talkative that everything comes to the surface for the duration of half an episode or more. I understand wanting to give an audience a chance to say goodbye, but fuck you.
The point of a character's death is to fortify a purpose in the cast to propel a story forward, NOT to slow things down to screeching halt so they can whip out the family album and it is certainly not to sit there dicking around in mourning with a dangerous villain still standing there reloading for another killshot since everyone's conveniently in one place. Even if the villain is chased off or runs away laughing or whatever, stopping the show in a way that puts story progression on hold is the option of the lame.
Here's a positive example: In Gurren Lagann the first major death is one that defines the rest of the series as it is constantly referred to, but it's actually the catalyst that changes everything: Loss is only the beginning of their problems as our heroes fumble around in the dark working through pain, anger and frustration as power struggles ensue to fill a vacuum that our primary hero is too afraid to fill.
Granted, this loss also makes for a lot of screwing around (fixing stuff, meeting new faces, growing up), but events HAPPEN and they happen fast on both sides as our heroes grow in dramatic ways you can SEE while they work towards something better. This particular guy's death turns out to be almost more important than his life was because it inspires a movement bigger than himself and that's truly epic. Hell, I'm still coming to grips with the fact that they killed him and I didn't even CARE about the guy!
If a character's death can't mean as much as their life within the scope of the story then why should any of these characters bother living? Just get your shit together Japan and stop making it hard to enjoy new anime.
(Note the madness ensuing in the Halloween Town-like "Death City" in the opening for Soul Eater, the show boasts some sharp visuals that never fade throughout so it looks consistently crisp and spastic.)
So, to sum up the image of Soul Eater it's like Harry Potter meets Bleach wherein students learning at the bony feet of the Grim Reaper as they slay tainted souls before they become something worse and try to upgrade their human/weapon partners to be worthy enough to be wielded by Death himself!
Let's cover some significant aspects that might entice you to watch this:
-A Zombie Commando is amongst the primary faculty for the school. He's got a female mummy for a partner that turns into a heavy duty combat knife. No joke.
-Death talks funny, acts silly and wears a mask to keep the kids from being afraid.
-The Legendary sword Excalibur is revealed to be pampered snob who demands to bore everyone to tears with constantly contradictory tales of his exploits, youth and preference in beverages.
-Death's son is OCD and obsessed with symmetry, to the point that he will run home to make sure he flushed something properly or that his picture frame is aligned in perfect symmetry.
-Blackstar the assassin is unable to approach his targets in silence without screaming wild boasts at the top of his lungs.
-There's a Twin Peaks reference that is consistently present throughout the show wherein Maka's partner soul enters the Red Room where a devilish little man dances out of time with Jazz music and spouts cryptic attempts at temptation for Soul to turn to the dark side.
I'll blather more on the matter at another time, but I wanted to get this thing out there ASAP. I would have had this on sooner, but my entire Halloween weekend was spent picking fights with a Honda dealership. This is a fun series to enjoy around Halloween and even more so with it on Netflix's Instant watch in four separate sections.
(This closing give a good look at the main characters & human weapon pairings including Maka/Soul, Blackstar/Tsubaki, Death the Kid/Thompson Sisters, Crona/Ragnarok and a look at the opposition that develops around the second primary story arc.)
Over the last 10-20 years Japan has realized the substantial value of nostalgia. Astro Boy has seen all kinds of attention, most notably in TV series and complete bomb of a motion picture, Cyborg 009 went from hokey old anime to distressingly serious drama punctuated by death and despair with its reboot.
It’s difficult to express the cultural relevance of Giant Robo to the Japanese since it was a hokey live action show originally about a boy in short shorts who would summon a hideous abomination distinguished by its ugly pharoh-esque head to do battle with equally ridiculous robots.
But that's NOT entirely what is shown, in fact the deal in making the series was that one manga artist/writer would be able to fold his original characters into the Giant Robo mythos and populate the entire cast with completely original characters and integrated ones.
So I’m going to explain it this way: Imagine if Magnum P.I. were turned into a 7 episode cartoon with a ridiculous budget, a world renowned orchestra contracted to perform the ENTIRE soundtrack in an epic homage to the Hawaiian-based, private detective portrayed by Tom Selleck as he punches holes through mountains, stabs someone with his mustache, drop kicks a Godzilla into the sky, takes a catwoman to bed and hops into a spaceship to fight space crime with Cyborg Higgins.
That’s a weird image, right? Good, because that’s what the anime essentially represents in terms of its accuracy and "wtf?!" factor.
It’s retro appearance is a smokescreen to hide an epic story behind the illusion of a unique homage to a Japanese classic. Don’t get me wrong, it’s goofy as all hell when you consider the basic premise, but there’s layers to this thing which border on genius and the action doesn’t leave you wanting considering that at least 2-3 entire cities are laid to waste as a result of a few scuffles.
As an amalgamation of an artist's considerable library of characters and stories (since they couldn't use the original characters from the live action tv show) it's very similar to the franchise bridging works of CLAMP. For instance, the primary antagonist, Big Fire, is actually badass alien-inheritor psychic Babel II, complete with his giant robot, bird monster and tar-like black panther. Additionally, characters from the Romance of Three Kingdoms game series populate much of the ranks of the Experts of Justice.
Let's talk about genius for a moment though...
For instance, I owned the first VHS tape of this back in the mid nineties. It was a copy of the original US Renditions English dub, which was actually pretty damn good for that bunch of goofballs. I’m watching this thinking about how iconically goofy it looks and imagining the budget behind it when… Out of nowhere… Shit got REAL.
(Von Vogler unleashes his beautiful night in the original US Renditions dub)
I had to watch and re-watch this scene about twenty times. I didn’t even care about the rest of the series because nothing was going to top this scene! And this was just a flashback of all things! This was the epitome of anime mad science, with magnificent music permeating every inch of this snapshot in time, painting a vivid descent into madness coupled with the single best delivery in both voice and dub script for this intensely disturbing moment of horror and confusion shattering the preconceptions of this show's Mighty Mouse-ish exterior.
What. The. Hell?!
This particular moment only gets more disturbing as the series progresses because when you first see this, it makes no sense. Probably as little as it does to you right now. The event is fleshed out and explained, then re-explained as the series progresses, but this entire scene is the defining moment of the story that only becomes more crucial to understanding the characters and the world they live in. Hell, this single event practically turns the damn series in Rashomon as lies become half-truths and truths become excuses all covering a rather surprising little series of details neglected in the first taste of Bashtarle's tragedy. Furthermore, this specific english dub simply comes off as the single best representation of this scene and that probably made it a strong incentive to include this audio track alongside AnimeWorks’ new, better refined dub.
That’s not to say that the rest of the series doesn’t have its own strengths, after all there’s a pharaoh-headed robot who still needs to punch the hell out of things; Never mind all the freaky, superhuman bastards fighting over the attache case that holds the key to revisiting the horrible event in question that could destroy the world.
Giant Robo is an amazing series that simply MUST be experienced as majestically re-imagined Japanese icon and as a totally kick ass anime. It's not perfect though, even in only 7 episodes they found a consistent detriment to the epic level of cool this series wields.
It's... it's those damn kids again.
Like in Evangelion, the protagonist is an insufferable fucking whiner, but without all the likeable human complication. Watch Daisaku piss, moan, bitch, whine, cry, sob, mewl, mope and sniffle his way through 6 and a half of the 7 episodes while he keeps company with guys whose very expressions can quite literally slice through mountains, whose fingers can fire laser beams and whose fists can puncture the very heavens. While it's easy to appreciate the thoughtful contrast of a mortal fighting amongst the Gods as their ace-in-the-hole, that doesn't require him to do everything he can to bring down the rest of the show be being a less compelling character than his giant robot.
To make things completely insufferable dub-wise, Animeworks' Daisaku is the screechiest little bastard ever. He sounds like he's crying AT ALL TIMES! Even when he's happy he sounds like he's sobbing his eyes out or he's got a rabid ferret biting away in his short shorts! He makes the effeminate Professor Go look butch by comparison. I get that for the sake of accuracy he sounds like a child, but no child with a giant robot is that much of a fucking crybaby. There's laws against that kind of thing. By comparison, the original Daisaku dub wasn't remotely as annoying voice-wise.
There's also the ending. I won't spoil it, but good god... It's like a knock-knock joke that had explosive shrapnel and artificial laughter to make light of your fatal wounds as you bleed out, confused and alone.
The differences between the US Renditions (USR) dub and the Animeworks (AW) dub are like night and day. USR seemed to have a twisted, campy style that showed up in a lot of their dubs like Ambassador Magma and Macross II, be it intentional or as a result of inexperience in acting/writing. AW corrects the camp issue entirely, making it a slightly more serious affair with something called "acting".
Well, alright that's not fair because Giant Robo was probably one of the finest dubs to come out of USR (it was good enough for Manga Video when they bought the domestic rights to it because the camp feels appropriate in a retro cartoon way), but with the exception of the Tragedy of Bashtarle, the USR versions pales in every respect to the new AW english dub which feels dramatically more powerful and generally more likable than USR's.
Fortunately, since AW is precisely THAT cool, the USR English Dub was bundled in with the plethora of audio available for the entire series. Add to that the Ginrei Special OAV tossed in and you have a perfect collection that puts all previous to shame. Mine came in a typical DVD case except that it stores 4 DVDs, I was tempted to go big and get "Eye of Volger" boxed set which comes in the ominous Volger Eye though I'm sort of short on room, but that's still one of the coolest things I've ever heard of!
The BEST thing about this is that it includes the Ginrei Special, a collection of three OAVs that are all gag-filled spoofs mocking Giant Robo and other anime while casually resetting character deaths so that the entire cast is at their whimsical disposal. There's a lot of goofy sexual humor and Daisaku even switches sides at one point to work for Big Fire, or rather "Blue Flower" as they refer to them in the OAVs. As awesome as Giant Robo is on its own, to have the Ginrei Special bundled in is to have your cake AND eat it.
So find yourself a copy of the set and eat up because treats this tasty are unheard of. Anyone with the Vogler Eye please send pictures. Seriously.
There's good news and bad news. This post is all GOOD though.
I've come across some new stuff: Kaze no Stigma (AKA Stigma of the Wind), Samurai 7, Full Metal Panic: FUMOFFU, Gankotsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo, DNA2 and some classic OAVs.
This is good news because the above stuff is pretty swanky and swanky is good. So I'll have some glowing stuff and lower amounts of venom on tap for these upcoming spiels. Currently clogging the pipe is the Catgirl Nuku Nuku franchise, or rather its two spinoff series (TV & DASH, respectively).
(US Manga Corps trailer)
Additionally, I'm trying to finish up my articles regarding Project A-ko, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Compiler and a loving look at the now-defunct Central Park Meda, AKA US Manga Corps.
There's still plenty of venom and some genuine cheer to go around and I'll have this stuff up and running soon.
An 80's piece of genius that took from the films Blade Runner and Streets of Fire with both hands making for a fun and unique vision of the future propelled by granting humanity to the inhuman to the sound of eighties pop rock as a group of lady mercenary/vigilantes fight the good fight against boomer manufacturer Genom, rogue Boomers loose in the city, fast & furious speed demons in android-cars, vampire driven mecha and vengeance craving rock stars. This is one of my favorite anime series of all time.
Following the lawsuit that killed the series, half the staff from the original came back to give us closure we never found. In this heavily disliked portion of BGC an old enemy comes back from the dead and manipulates Mercenaries, AI scientists and every boomer in MegaTokyo in his attempt to permanently end the Knight Sabers and humanity. This 3-part series is meant to give closure, but it leaves more issues hanging than it can resolve.
Set before the original BGC, Leon McNichol is a rookie paired with a somewhat disturbed lady cyborg partner in his rise from ADP shock trooper to detective. Steeped in sex and violence, ADP strays pretty far from the mark of the original series making for a very disturbing experience.
It's not clear why Leon's pinning down a boomer with grunts in the same episode as he's running investigations, but who needs that "accuracy" crap, right?
The Knight Sabers get a new lease on life with a TV series that gives a clear beginning and end to a great story that takes a few artistic liberties with the original story and cast. Putting BGC back into pop-culture relevance and opening the door for a potential follow-up series and bringing the girls in armor back into the pubic eye.
RUmblings of an ADP tv series made my pants explode, unfortunately the actualy result was a 12-episode mini series that has no ties to any BGC continuity. Genom City is rough place, but if you're chasing rogue Boomers it gets much harder to live there as for ADP officers Hans & Kenji soon learn in their wild antics endangering the innocent, killing partners and otherwise being some of the worst cops ever animated. There's so much I wanted to like about it, but you can't polish a turd. This my friends... is a turd.
The most recent BGC entry to date. There's no Knight Sabers and the ADP are essentially an eyesore as in three episodes we learn of a shadowy investigative branch of ADP known only as "Branch". Yeah, kind of redundant... Anyway, these guys make life for Genom and Politicians difficult in Genom City, and making those kinds of ways makes for some high-profile enemies. It's basically a desperate grasp at the series' Blade Runner origins that serves to add more pointless sex and violence in lieu of an actual story and ironically that same intention takes it further away from its origins than ever.
BGC... the movie?
It's said that an asian/caucasian cast has been assembled as of 2009 to release a Bubblegum Crisis live action film! Rumors persist saying that we can expect its arrival sometime in 2012. Given all the disappointing events surrounding BGC, I can only hope that this one film can galvanize the efforts of the former staff members in either remaking or finishing the original series as it deserves. My hopes and prayers have been going out to this effort since I first heard of it.
I bitch and moan, yeah. It's kind of my thing. It's cathartic! But you see, BGC is possibly one of my most important anime favorites. It molded my appreciation of anime throughout and gave me critical insight throughout the very legal drama that tore it apart.
I could make all kinds of wild accusations that it was its greatness that killed it and all the pale imitators are to be expected given its fine pedigree as they grasp into a light so bright it blinds them and they keep coming back empty handed... So I will! That's right! It was THAT damn good.
