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Originally Posted by Guaporense
Indeed. Several years ago, when I was 16-17 I remember I watched movies with Romans in it because it was about Ancient Rome since I was into history. I also watched the TV show Rome, which is vastly superior to anything else about ancient Rome (except I, Claudius). Now I tend to look for stuff more based on quality rather than theme.

I made a similar mistake when I watched Band of Brothers and then decided to try to find WW2 themed movies and series and found all of them vastly inferior to Band of Brothers. I was looking for quality not the theme.
To once again re-emphasize: I consume so much stuff, I often watch things blind if not based on extremely limited information. There are still concepts which appeal to me though, and often what I've seen done with them can be done much better.

I feel bad for anyone that thinks The Hunger Games is THE free-for-all survival movie. I'd seen The Running Man, Battle Royale, and The Condemned beforehand... and was apparently the ONLY one not swept up in that ********* of popularity. ...I hate that movie.

But on the flip side there are themes and concepts I still want to see done really well. I've never seen a Steampunk movie I really liked, and it wasn't until very recently that I discovered In The Mouth of Madness which turns out to be a great Lovecraft-themed movie.

Honestly it's strange to hear someone try to dissuade me from choosing what to watch based on theme when that's precisely how I choose which video games to play. Which one's concept seems more interesting?

As popular as the creators might have been there was no thought about them going into the purchase of Brutal Legend, a game in which you play as Jack Black as he tries to save a Heavy Metal-themed world with the power of rock and roll.


Turned out to be a fine game. I might even go so far as call it Double Fine.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
I mean't READ youtsuba!
Interesting tidbit you may not have known: Yostubato, as it's officially pronounced tacks the "&" at the end because "to" means "and" in Japanese. The "and" in the title is in reference to the new experience/episodic nature of the series:

Yotsuba AND bicycles.
Yotsuba AND teddy bears.
Yotsuba AND global warming.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
Now I am mostly reading manga because there are many more great manga compared to anime titles: I think I have watched >90% of the great anime in existence by now.
Ohh pfbt...

Originally Posted by Guaporense
I have watched all of these except Rose of Versailles, Full Metal Panic: Fumoffu?, Paranoia Agent,
Watch Paranoia Agent and you will weep to know that it was placed beneath Kino's Journey, FLCL, and 5 Centimeters Per Second.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
By the way, I agree with Madoka in 1st place, it's a really exceptional show since it suceeds on all levels.
If Madoka Magicka was that good I don't think I'd be putting it off in favor of Higurashi, a show in which cute little girls violently murder the protagonist.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
Not only in terms of pretty but in overall artistic terms: direction, style, symbolic significance, sound, music, etc. After I watched Spirited Away, which was the first Miyazaki movie I watched, it changed the whole way that I view animation since it moved me to tears.
It's difficult and complicated for me to explain what I think of this so 'no comment'.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
There is no typical Japanese approach to animation since Japanese animation is enormous and very varied.
Variety does not discount typicality. You can create a range of numbers from 1 to 1 Billion, but you're still going to get an average.

Most anime share a range of distinctively similar characteristics.


There IS a typical anime style, but not every anime falls into it in all the same ways. Death Note is an exceptionally photo-realistic anime, but it still retains some small subtle elements of traditional anime.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
What liking anime means? It means to like animation.
In Japan perhaps, but not outside of it.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
To me Cat Returns is perhaps Ghibli's weakest movie.
I strongly prefer it to Porco Rosso. And Ponyo.
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Omni (and anyone else that wants to chime in) are you also a fan of classic Disney? The early DACs and the old Mickey Mouse cartoons had an enormous influence on modern anime.



Omni (and anyone else that wants to chime in) are you also a fan of classic Disney? The early DACs and the old Mickey Mouse cartoons had an enormous influence on modern anime.
Early Disney (as in Pre-Snow White?)? Not so much. I haven't seen a whole lot of them, but I used to own some great books on animation by old-school Disney animators.


Now WARNER BROS. and PARAMOUNT on the other hand, I still own some of those on tape. I have a particular fondness for the Merrie Melodies and Color Classics.

Here's one of my favorites:



Nah Snow White counts, DAC= Disney Animated Classics and Snow White was the first one, I'd say from early Mickey Mouse (Steamboat Willie) til maybe The Jungle Book is classic Disney, imo at least.

I remember reading about Osamu Tezuka (I'm sure you know him so I won't insult your intelligence) and he apparently saw Bambi over 40 times throughout his life.

Oh and Kingdom Hearts is one of my favorite games ever; the Steamboat Willie world from the second game is probably my favorite world out of any of the games!



Originally Posted by False Writer
Nah Snow White counts, DAC= Disney Animated Classics and Snow White was the first one, I'd say from early Mickey Mouse (Steamboat Willie) til maybe The Jungle Book is classic Disney, imo at least.
OOOHHH you're talkin' about Golden Age stuff. Hell yeah, I've seen almost all of those.


Simultaneously depressing, horrifying, and racist.

Originally Posted by False Writer
I remember reading about Osamu Tezuka (I'm sure you know him so I won't insult your intelligence) and he apparently saw Bambi over 40 times throughout his life.
Well thank you, but I still had to Google it. X_X

ASTRO BOY, that's about as old school as it gets. I've honestly never seen any outside of one episode from one of the newer TV adaptions. I haven't seen it for the same reasons I haven't seen the Megaman anime.

Originally Posted by False Writer
Oh and Kingdom Hearts is one of my favorite games ever; the Steamboat Willie world from the second game is probably my favorite world out of any of the games!
Fun Fact: I just recently finished both 1.5 ReMIX on Proud and 2.5 ReMIX on Critical. They get FRIGGEN HARD.

Oh, and Ursula on Proud difficulty makes you hate life itself.

Like, she's a cakewalk on Normal, but on Proud the game breaks and just starts to eat away at your brain cells like some HORRIBLE FLESH-EATING BACTERIA OH MY GOD I'M OVERLEVELED FOR THIS STAGE AND SHE CAN DAMAGE ME FASTER THAN I CAN HEAL



Dirty Pair: Project Eden (Dub) Status: COMPLETE
Movie

Dirty Pair: Project Eden is considered by some to be the ultimate summation of the Dirty Pair series. If that's true, I am once again disappointed.

Firstly, I like the concept of Dirty Pair: Two female "trouble consultants" with a reputation for creating a spectacular amount of collateral damage take missions to fight crime and alien abominations in a retrofuture setting. HELLS YES.

And what else? This is the style they're going for:


Okay, let's be honest, with Yuri raising her leg like that and Kei crouching, the whole focus of the image zones straight into her crotch which really isn't a great sign, BUT IGNORE THAT, look at everything else. It's retro, it's sci-fi, it's gadgety, it's over-designed, it's B-MOVIE SLEAZE and that's just about exactly what you get.


The positives out of the way first: Project Eden is AWESOMELY animated.


Lots of neon colors, visual effects, heavily detailed backgrounds, computer monitors of all kinds, and surprisingly well-animated, Project Eden is nothing if not a feast for the eyes. It opens up like James Bond and it looks like the quality of something made today, except this was made in the 80s, and it certainly FEELS 80s.

Mostly because of the style of music, which doesn't really kick in until the climax, but the music seems to be the single biggest thing that wants to steal the show since the movie's sound effects become weirdly muted during huge action sequences which essentially presents those scenes as music videos.


It's not entirely unlike a music video either since the characters themselves seem exactly like the kind of thing you'd see in an 80s music video. There's one sequence early on where Yuri is just dancing to the background music for no apparent reason. She even winks at the camera near the end of the movie like there's no fourth wall at all.


Now, while you're totally observing only her eyes in that image, I'm sure it will come as a surprise when I point out that she actually has breasts too. Not just breasts, but exposed cleavage with jiggle physics to boot.

Let me be clear here: If you want to have skimpily clad girls in your movie, that's totally cool with me. I honestly don't care.

I only have a problem with it when it's absorbing the camera's attention away from something ACTUALLY IMPORTANT or presented in a demonstrably sexist context.

Fortunately that doesn't happen here, in fact our male lead is stuck in his boxers for the majority of the movie too, so it seems fair. HOWEVER...


I have a big problem with WORDS. *SHOCK GASP!*

Namely, the words that come out of these characters mouths.

The sort that form sentences. The sentences that echo one of the most damning godawful tropes in movies and television shows that I WILL NEVER EVER GET OVER:

Overnight Romance
A.K.A. Love At First Sight


This isn't just any old ordinary Overnight Romance either, oh no, this is the special variety with an extra dose of offensive!

Let's go over the identifying symptoms:

1.) A minimum of one character expresses an irrational attraction with another given character after literally knowing them for less time in-universe that the actual run-length of the movie.

Yuri: Let's go.
Kei: You mean, just leave him lying here?
Yuri: Well he did leave us behind.
Kei: He might be injured, maybe even-
Yuri: You IN LOVE!?
Carson: I heard that you're IN LOVE with me. Even if you act cold to me, I'd know that.
Kei: ...Just because you're a little handsome, don't... be so darn vain...
Carson: I won't tell you not to fall in love with me, but if you like me, act like it.

2. The scriptwriter demonstrates horrible chemistry and sexual discrimination with offensive stereotypes of both men and women.


*male lead picks up a large object by himself*
*both female leads struggle and fail to lift an identical object cooperatively*
Kei: Oh, I hit him too hard.
Yuri: He's just too weak, even for a man.
Carson: How heavy are you two girls!?
Kei: It's not that bad, a REAL man would have been able to support us.
Carson: What!? I kept quiet because you're women, because you're so annoying like a little **** of minnows swimming in front of my eyes!
Kei: A little **** of minnows?!
Yuri: *bursts out crying*
Carson: Be a good girl, don't bother me.
Kei: Only trash listens to a woman sleeptalk!
Carson: Don't you dare jump on me, I didn't want to listen to your crazy talk anyway! And I'll give you a really good warning right now, there's no one that didn't get wrecked after they hit me, got it!?
Kei: W-What do you mean by that?
Carson: You know what I mean, I'm telling you that you're the worst possible kind!

3. Both characters literally try to kill each other out of hate.


*Kei fires weapons at Carson repeatedly*
*Kei kicks Carson in the head*
*Carson punches Kei in the face*
*Kei slaps Carson in the face*

4. Story concludes with a Frodo.


Carson: I messed it all up. I'm so unlucky. I'll really miss being a professional. *heavy breathing*
Kei: That's not true, you're a real pro, a professional thief... *watery eyes*
Carson: You almost make me feel good.

5. But not really.




Dirty Pair: Project Eden gets a couple other things wrong like having relatively sub-par voice acting and spending a gratuitous amount of time on the mad scientist just monologuing incessantly to himself. The story's instantly forgettable too, all it serves to do is put the characters together in a place where aliens and explosions can drive the action.

The movie ends on a pretty fantastic climax in which the characters inexplicably pull those cyber-suits from the poster out of their ass and just wreak mayhem to 80s pop for several minutes before we dramatically cut to silence when Carson gets stabbed by a lightsaber.

Honestly, it's the coolest part of the whole movie, and it made me wish all of the dialog, story, and set up was cut out just so we could have a crazy long 80s sci-fi anime music video montage of girls in bikinis shooting lasers, bazookas, cluster missiles, and swinging lightsabers at a mad scientist and his legion of aliens for 40 minutes.

It'd be shallow as hell, but it'd be one glorious piece of trash.

It'd kinda be like what Lollipop Chainsaw would be if it were a movie.



Why aren't those things, things?



Final Verdict:
[Friggen' Awesome][Pretty Good][Meh...][Just... Bad][Irredeemably Awful]



Kara no Kyoukai/Garden of Sinners: The Hollow Shrine (Sub) Status: COMPLETE
Movie

Can Kara no Kyoukai get even better? We've been on a steady rise since Overlooking View, so let's see!



Kara no Kyoukai's The Hollow takes place after the events of Murder Speculation (First Half) which would make it the second movie chronologically thus far. It's worth noting that in Murder Speculation there was virtually no supernatural elements whatsoever. This movie apparently serves to show how they come into play.

A note of confusion arises with the movie immediately as soon as you realize The Hollow Takes place after a "Part 1". When do we get "Part 2"? Who knows.

At the end of Murder Speculation, Shiki is hit by a vehicle and sent to a hospital. We pick up just as she's being brought to the hospital and after a wicked 2 YEAR timeskip she wakes up.

Throughout the movie we're treated to extended trip-out sequences representing her near-death experience and after she wakes up she appears to notice her visual power for the first time which manifests as a sight that superimposes lines over living subjects showing how they can be disassembled. There are a few shots which I personally found interesting, but for the most part these sequences only serve to suck up time.

After we're told that the time she's been out has been 2 years and Kokutou is still visiting while being referred to as "puppy-kun", we're immediately struck by another horrible realization: Kokutou has the hots for her.


Great. It was hinted at in Murder Speculation, but in that movie I could at least pretend this wasn't obviously what the movie was going for. But now we can't just chalk it up to Kokutou being a good citizen or a nice guy to a near-total stranger, no sir he's got to be IN LOVE with a psychopath. UUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHH...

You know, if they in any way established his character, I STILL WOULDN'T HAVE BOUGHT IT, but it would at least hurt a tiny bit less, but instead we have a direct sequel and we still don't develop Kokutou or learn anything substantial about him at all.

Now the EXPOSITION FAIRY, now that's a character we learn about. It took 4 ******* movies for me to finally pick up your name, Touko, and you can bet it wasn't because it's difficult to pronounce.

Apparently Touko is a "magus" masquerading as a speech therapist who possesses not only magic spells, but an intimate familiarity with Shiki's unique power, even citing it's 'official' name, "The Mystic Eyes of Death Perception". She explains that the eyes are able to perceive deconstruction: basically which parts of somebody to attack in order to kill them. This explains her ability to kill ghosts, namely by suggesting that all beings, dead or alive, have these "cutting lines" for her to see.

It doesn't quite explain her ability to perceive the other girl's powers in Remaining Sense of Pain, but whatever, we're not there yet.

So at the climax of the movie- oh. Wait.

I skipped a part.

My bad, let's back up a second, okay, so there's actually this one part where the entire movie stops dead and Kokutou's standing indoors looks out into empty space and literally does a spoken rendition of "Singing in the Rain" in rough English.


Yeah. That one.

It's raining in the scene. At the very least. But holy hell I wasn't this caught off guard since the live-action Death Note ended with a Red Hot Chili Peppers song.

Well anyway, they're going for a dramatic contrast thing, which I didn't think worked, because meanwhile Shiki's getting choked out of her bed by a zombie of some sort.

Shiki with her supernatural ability to see how to kill the zombie JUMPS OUT THE WINDOW. And survives... a several story fall.

Okay, Rule of Cool is one thing, but you've got to explain this if so much of your setting is rooted in reality. When did she get the ability to cast Feather Fall? Did she gain a level in Wizard while she was in a coma? Or did she dual-class into Magus?

Whatever, Shiki survives the fall, takes off her eye bandages (she had eye bandages), gets tossed her dagger, cuts her hair (her hair was long), and then kills the zombie.

Then she stabs herself. WHICH DOESN'T KILL HER.

Get it? Cause she can see the kill lines and stuff? It only kills the BAD Shiki personality, the Shiki that was killing people. Right? Cause OBVIOUSLY, right?

Anyway now the bad Shiki's gone, Shiki's only left with one personality, and so Touko offers to teach her how to use her new eye power and Shiki agrees on the grounds that she'll be able to kill people.


...


Ummm...

Movie?

That was the twist, right? The twist was she killed the good personality? Not that the murderous one is dead now? Didn't we just-?

Movie?

**** it, this doesn't make any ******* sense, and what makes even less sense is that in the middle of the movie Touko states that Shiki doesn't even have split personalities, she says that her personalities are present at the same time and both contribute to her actions.

They even make up a new ******* name for it: "composite individual personality disorder".

What. A. Total. Load.

What to hear an even bigger one? Touko says Shiki's hollow because she doesn't have any feelings, thoughts, or ambitions other than a desire to kill.

Did you catch that?


The entire theme of the movie, the TITLE OF THE MOVIE, is in reference to the main character being a completely blank canvas.




THAT'S GENIUS.


Final Verdict:
[Friggen' Awesome][Pretty Good][Meh...][Just... Bad][Irredeemably Awful]



Yu Yu Hakusho (Dub) Status: INTERESTED
Episodes: 66-68

I'm pretty mixed on Episode 66.

One one hand we develop Toguro a little more, establishing that his desire to achieve perfection was driven by the loss of his friends at the hands of the last tournament champion, and this guilty complex contributed to why that now he's dead, he's volunteering to be sent to eternal torment in limbo even though his supposed crimes are somewhat mitigated by his reasons. He's outward demeanor and what he says are contradicted by his actions prompting Genkai to call him a liar.

It's seems like a well done baton pass, transferring his experiences as a partner of Genkai to Yusuke as a moral lesson of what not to do as a student of Genkai.

On the other hand, the Dragon of the Darkness Flame animation spike returns and so does Genkai.

I understand why they wanted to bring Genkai back, it seems like a slap in the face to the characters to be denied a reward for winning the tournament, but slaps in the face are what drama is all about, and I feel like they undid a lot of the goodwill I had for the series by undoing both Genkai and Kuwabara's deaths.

Undo one of them, fine, but not both, especially not Genkai. What she's done wrong is very slightly less offensive if we assume that SHE KNEW that Toguro would never actually kill one of Yusuke's friends, but the whole anime just seems to forget the hundreds of demon bystanders he killed and ate over the course of the tournament, and that fact obscures a lot of what makes Toguro otherwise redeemable.

The fact that they brought back the two most important protagonists just reinforces the trope that Nobody Dies which goes a long way towards reducing future tensions or threats. I'd have much preferred it if one or both characters stayed dead. I'd have also preferred it if they had taken this last opportunity to explain why Genkai had to die at all.

Also my thoughts about the animation switch haven't changed. It's much more fluid, but the more rounded and childish character designs clash with the tone.

Episode 67 opens with a new opening sequence, if not a new song, emphasizing that we're moving into a whole new arc, which is confirmed by Yusuke's return to school.

Kuwabara is hanging around him like an actual friend for the first time, Kurama is attending classes under a false name, and Hiei is supposedly confined to the city for some reason that probably makes a lot of sense.

The new arc kicks off with the appearance of 3 (only 3?) human students who are apparently fully aware of the 4's participation in the Dark Tournament and posses spirit powers of their own.

They manage to kidnap Yusuke do some strange new ability relating to their respective "territories" and they lure the other 3 to an old mansion which from my extremely vague recollections forces a one-on-one showdown on each floor or something.

Also, Kuwabara can't use his spirit power at all anymore which he suggests may have to do with the demon sword he used, but I suspect it's just a contrivance to drive up the tension for when he'll actually need it.


Claymore (Sub) Status: LOSING INTEREST
Episodes: 4

Clare's outed as a Claymore, but the priest let's her heal up at the church for two days, during which time she's inexplicably left alive by the Yoma which wanders the church at night. Why? How? Dunno.

When she wakes up she performs a search among the gathered priests and confirms that none of them are the Yoma concluding instead that it's NOT one of the guards, like I was suspecting, which are never checked for sooooooome reason, but instead it's the preserved corpse that's in the church for some reason. I guess it's a decent twist.

There's a drawn-out fight during which everyone gets injured and Clare sees fit to use her Yoma powers to bulk up and win the fight which reminds me that using them is a severe risk which- YEP, she's turning into a Yoma.

I'm actually glad they didn't dawdle around before getting to her eventual transformation and just presented it upfront, but instead of offing Clare on the spot, which obviously wouldn't happen considering the rest of the series, they "cure" her transformation when her sidekick whose name I don't remember says he'll die with her.

BOOM. MAGICALLY BETTER.

I don't know why. Are Yoma cells like, violently averse to the power of love? I hope not, because that's one of the worst Deus Ex Machinas in existence. Fortunately a grimdark setting like this seems unlikely to pull such a card, but we're literally one line away from that sort of thing, so I'm still concerned.

What happens next? No idea, the two just keep traveling. My personal hope is that despite Clare not sending out the Black Card which indicates other Claymores should arrive to stop her transformation, they find out anyway and try to kill her. I seriously don't know if that's how the series plays out or not, but that seems to be the most logical sequence of events to follow this in terms of propelling action.


Joshiraku (Sub) Status: INTERESTED
Episodes: 1

Joshiraku opens up extremely flat with a girl performing rakugo for a nearly-vacant theater in which she tells a dull pun.

She then leaves the theater, enters an adjacent room and sits down to face 4 others who all sit in complete silence during which I'm thinking, "Well this is boring."

Then OUT OF FLIPPIN' NOWHERE the characters shatter the fourth wall and openly slam the fact that this anime exists. They criticize the fact that the whole point of an anime is to present things through animation, and yet the manga the show is based on is dialog centric, which they emphasize through overly-animated gestures while speaking. The characters basically have a round-table discussion pointing out the various flaws and idiosyncrasies of their situation, at one point even suggesting that while an anime will net them more viewers, anime is free to watch on television, so they're only attracting windowshoppers.

The conversation eventually branches and drifts into other topics all while retaining an ongoing self-awareness about the nature of their show and the topics they discuss. It's sort of like Lucky Star if the dialog was even more meaningless, but simultaneously more intelligent. It's less parody than it is subtle critique.

Wordplay is obviously a big game this show likes to play, with entire sequences running the gamut of what a single pun has to offer.

At times it can be hilarious, but other times, the punny dialog just gets old. An extended sequence near the end of the episode have the characters bantering back and forth about whether cats or dogs are better provided the massive onslaught of connotations each has in a cultural and lingual context with about the only real joke being that they won't change the topic.

The shockingly amusing intro and following half easily sold me on another couple episodes, but if you have a deep hatred of puns, Joshiraku probably won't be your thing.



To once again re-emphasize: I consume so much stuff, I often watch things blind if not based on extremely limited information. There are still concepts which appeal to me though, and often what I've seen done with them can be done much better.
I see. I do the same as well.

I feel bad for anyone that thinks The Hunger Games is THE free-for-all survival movie. I'd seen The Running Man, Battle Royale, and The Condemned beforehand... and was apparently the ONLY one not swept up in that ********* of popularity. ...I hate that movie.
I think it was an ok movie.

But on the flip side there are themes and concepts I still want to see done really well. I've never seen a Steampunk movie I really liked, and it wasn't until very recently that I discovered In The Mouth of Madness which turns out to be a great Lovecraft-themed movie.
I don't think many genres of fiction have a great movie, specially if you are really especific.

Watch Paranoia Agent and you will weep to know that it was placed beneath Kino's Journey, FLCL, and 5 Centimeters Per Second.
This one I need to watch for 2016. Do you think that 5 Centimeters per Second is among the worst titles above it? I think that Code Geass is pretty mediocre as well as Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, which feels like a season of Law and Order: SVU.

If Madoka Magicka was that good I don't think I'd be putting it off in favor of Higurashi, a show in which cute little girls violently murder the protagonist.
Haven't watched Higurashi but Madoka is a masterpiece due to a combination of qualities. It's a very special show and very unique as well.

Variety does not discount typicality. You can create a range of numbers from 1 to 1 Billion, but you're still going to get an average.

Most anime share a range of distinctively similar characteristics.

These girls all have pretty different designs actually. Its more varied than American animation in terms of facial designs. Madoka's design looks very distinct from the girl at her right, for instance.

There IS a typical anime style
You mean the Tezuka manga style he invented in the 1950's which is by far the most popular drawing style for comics in the world. While it is by far the most popular it is not the only one and it is not as dominant as western anime fans think it is.

The most popular TV anime and the most popular film anime do not use Tezuka's style:

This is Sazae-san, the most popular animation in Japan:


This is Spirited Away, the most popular animated film in Japan:


In fact, a lot of the most popular mangas use drawing styles pretty different from Tezuka's:



Well, compared to the most typical style today which is like Food Wars:




This is what I perceive as being what Westerners in the internet perceive as the typical "anime style", which is typical for manga aimed at teenager and young adult males.

Still not even One Piece looks quite like the typical "anime style", which is actually more typical for male Otaku oriented material which is the type of stuff that is more popular in the internet in the West.

but not every anime falls into it in all the same ways. Death Note is an exceptionally photo-realistic anime, but it still retains some small subtle elements of traditional anime.
There are many hundreds of pieces of Japanese animation whose art style has nothing to do with Tezuka's manga.

Examples?

Patlabor 2


Ping Pong: The Animation


The Flowers of Evil


While it's true Tezuka's influence is very heavy the more common animeism is the design of characters with strong lines and high level of detail. Thing is that since there does not exist non-Japanese hand drawn animation that tries to design more attractive characters that we don't see those styles outside of Japan.

In Japan perhaps, but not outside of it.
Well, a person would have to be very, very, very close minded to claim to be a fan of animation and only watch Western stuff, which is a very small field compared to the Japanese stuff.

Anime is a huge and diverse medium, hence, you cannot even use terms "like" and "dislike" for it. It's like Hollywood movies: you cannot say that you dislike "American movies", you like movies or not. There is not a single real fan of film who dislikes all movies made in the US and there is not a fan of animation who dislikes all animation made in Japan.

That is why I actually dislike the use of the term "anime". It carries a lot of prejudice with it, I prefer the term "animation", or show or film or short film, for animated TV series, movies and shorts made in Japan. Some people are scared if they heard of a Miayzaki movie being "anime" but if you show a movie like Wind Rises to someone and doesn't tell them it's anime they might like it.

Why call a animated American TV show like Avatar anime? Because it looks like anime? Well, it doesn't look like Patlabor 2 nor Ping Pong, which are genre defining classics of anime. Also, it is not written nor directed like 90% of anime and it reflects American sensibilities.

Why call it anime? Because it shares some elements with a specific genre of martial arts shounen manga? It's possible to find anime similar to any titles of western animation, even Frederick Back's and Yuri Norstein's work has anime very similar to it (because, well, Yuri Norstein worked in Japan for a while so his work there is anime, technically speaking). Japan also produces children's CGI movies equivalent to Pixar and Dreamworks. And there is plenty of children's comedy shows equivalent to those in cartoon network. Sazae-san is similar to The Simpsons, for instance, but without some of the adult content and violence.

I strongly prefer it to Porco Rosso. And Ponyo.
The worst Ghibli movies are Tales from Earthsea and The Cat Returns.

Porco Rosso is a masterpiece and one of the greatest films ever made, it is a film that touches the human soul. Watching it is an espiritual experience for me.

Ponyo is very good, below average for Miyazaki but still contains the magic of Miazaki's directing style which makes it superior to Ghibli stuff that was not directed by him.



A shame that you're losing interest in Claymore, that's one of my favorite series and the only one besides Berserk where I started reading the manga afterwards.




Haven't watched Higurashi but Madoka is a masterpiece due to a combination of qualities. It's a very special show and very unique as well.

I HIGHLY recommend it!!!


The worst Ghibli movies are Tales from Earthsea and The Cat Returns.

Why do you hate The Cat Returns so much? Granted I don't think it's quite as good as say Totoro or Spirited Away but I thought it was very entertaining.



Originally Posted by Guaporense
I don't think many genres of fiction have a great movie, specially if you are really especific.
Maybe not yet, but perhaps someday.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
This one I need to watch for 2016. Do you think that 5 Centimeters per Second is among the worst titles above it?
No, but I think it's highly overrated for what it is.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
I think that Code Geass is pretty mediocre as well as Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, which feels like a season of Law and Order: SVU.
I would call Code Geass mediocre as a whole series, but exceptional by it's first season alone.

I can see why people like Stand Alone Complex, it explores interesting ideas, presents unique situations, and memorable setpiece moments. That said, I think it suffers, above all else, by utterly failing to present it's story in a digestable way.

Stand Alone Complex's story is rooted in corporate politics, and it's very hard to interest viewers in fictional politics unless they're already invested in some area of it, which Stand Alone Complex fails to do. A lot of talking about what might be interesting just turns into a lot of boring exposition of people, places, and things we haven't oriented ourselves to.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
Haven't watched Higurashi but Madoka is a masterpiece due to a combination of qualities. It's a very special show and very unique as well.
It's definitely unique, I'll give it that, but to be honest, I'd have probably given it up by now if I wasn't already pressed to watch until the 3rd episode to really understand why.

I'll be continuing Madoka on here shortly.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
These girls all have pretty different designs actually. Its more varied than American animation in terms of facial designs. Madoka's design looks very distinct from the girl at her right, for instance.
Distinct differences doesn't change the fact that there are conceptual similarities. The first well-known anime-themed tabletop RPG was called "Big Eyes Small Mouth" for a reason.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
You mean the Tezuka manga style he invented in the 1950's which is by far the most popular drawing style for comics in the world. While it is by far the most popular it is not the only one and it is not as dominant as western anime fans think it is.
No, I'm referring to Tezuka and the following grabbag template of styles that most anime creators have borrowed from, used, adapted, and updated over the years. It's by no means the ONLY way anime are made, but it heavily informs the majority of how most anime are made.


Originally Posted by Guaporense
The most popular TV anime and the most popular film anime do not use Tezuka's style:

This is Sazae-san, the most popular animation in Japan:

This is Spirited Away, the most popular animated film in Japan:

In fact, a lot of the most popular mangas use drawing styles pretty different from Tezuka's:
First and third examples you present are extremes in both their lack and inclusion of details. Some are more cartoony, others aim to be photorealistic. They're all "anime" (the third one's a manga of course), but they're all varying degrees away from the traditional "anime style", with Spirited Away being the closest.

They're not really an argument for what's most popular though. Sure they're each well known and accepted in their own right, but none of them are purely representative of anime as a whole. Of course, what then is?

Originally Posted by Guaporense
Well, compared to the most typical style today which is like Food Wars:

This is what I perceive as being what Westerners in the internet perceive as the typical "anime style", which is typical for manga aimed at teenager and young adult males.
I honestly don't know where we might be disagreeing here. Outliers from the norm can be popular, many works are popular simply because they're unusual. All I'm saying is Food Wars represents the most popular form of anime because the teenage and young adult male audience is the demographic that consumes it the most.

Movies like Transformers are as popular and pervasive as they are for precisely the same reason.

When SpongeBob Squarepants took over, it's no surprise that it became as popular as it did borrowing the same music, direction, and style of Ren & Stimpy before it.




I'm not advocating a distinction between whether something "is anime" or "isn't anime" unless the point is to distinguish animated works coming from Japan or not. That's all.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
There are many hundreds of pieces of Japanese animation whose art style has nothing to do with Tezuka's manga.

Examples?

Patlabor 2

Ping Pong: The Animation

The Flowers of Evil
I know, however Flowers of Evil is a particularly odd one to reference considering it was designed explicitly to replicate what a typical anime looks like with live-action actors.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
While it's true Tezuka's influence is very heavy the more common animeism is the design of characters with strong lines and high level of detail. Thing is that since there does not exist non-Japanese hand drawn animation that tries to design more attractive characters that we don't see those styles outside of Japan.
You lost me with your wording here.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
Well, a person would have to be very, very, very close minded to claim to be a fan of animation and only watch Western stuff, which is a very small field compared to the Japanese stuff.
That's just it, you're referring to people who say "I like anime", right?

That's just semantics, dude. If they meant "animation" in the general context, they'd use the English word, "animation" to describe it. Otherwise, why else would they be using a foreign term if not to specifically refer to the foreign form of that subject?

I saw Song of the Sea recently and if I wanted to I could refer to it inclusively as 'beochan', since that's the Irish word for animation and Ireland is where it was made.

However unlike Japan, Irish animation isn't a massmarketed industry in their country. Japan is well aware that anime and manga are a huge source of profit overseas, so they're explicitly marketed overseas as "anime" as means to specifically target an audience towards their particular brand of animation.

It's the same thing with restaurants. "Chinese Food" has a very specific meaning outside of China, but in China it's practically meaningless.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
Anime is a huge and diverse medium, hence, you cannot even use terms "like" and "dislike" for it.
I disagree. There's a trend, and I don't see the point in pretending it doesn't exist, especially when lack of variety is a worthy criticism.



Originally Posted by Guaporense
It's like Hollywood movies: you cannot say that you dislike "American movies", you like movies or not. There is not a single real fan of film who dislikes all movies made in the US and there is not a fan of animation who dislikes all animation made in Japan.

That is why I actually dislike the use of the term "anime". It carries a lot of prejudice with it, I prefer the term "animation", or show or film or short film, for animated TV series, movies and shorts made in Japan. Some people are scared if they heard of a Miayzaki movie being "anime" but if you show a movie like Wind Rises to someone and doesn't tell them it's anime they might like it.

Why call a animated American TV show like Avatar anime? Because it looks like anime? Well, it doesn't look like Patlabor 2 nor Ping Pong, which are genre defining classics of anime. Also, it is not written nor directed like 90% of anime and it reflects American sensibilities.

Why call it anime? Because it shares some elements with a specific genre of martial arts shounen manga? It's possible to find anime similar to any titles of western animation, even Frederick Back's and Yuri Norstein's work has anime very similar to it (because, well, Yuri Norstein worked in Japan for a while so his work there is anime, technically speaking). Japan also produces children's CGI movies equivalent to Pixar and Dreamworks. And there is plenty of children's comedy shows equivalent to those in cartoon network. Sazae-san is similar to The Simpsons, for instance, but without some of the adult content and violence.
I think I've answered all of this by now.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
The worst Ghibli movies are Tales from Earthsea and The Cat Returns.
"Because it's a different director and a different art style, therefor inferior."

Whether that's entirely your perspective or not, I'm kind of tired about hearing how terrible Tales from Earthsea is. I saw it. It was forgettable. It's not the first Ghibli movie to make me feel that way.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
Porco Rosso is a masterpiece and one of the greatest films ever made, it is a film that touches the human soul. Watching it is an espiritual experience for me.
Guess I watched the wrong version again.

I keep seeing these "masterpieces" and coming away with a very different impression than everyone else. Eraserhead is supposed to make sense from a biblical perspective, and I've never had any sort of "spiritual experience", so...

I'm thinking I just don't have a soul or something.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
Ponyo is very good, below average for Miyazaki but still contains the magic of Miazaki's directing style which makes it superior to Ghibli stuff that was not directed by him.
That sounds almost like a parody.



A shame that you're losing interest in Claymore, that's one of my favorite series and the only one besides Berserk where I started reading the manga afterwards.
I may well prefer the manga, we'll see how it pans out, but Claymore's already pushed one of my buttons.



Kara no Kyoukai/Garden of Sinners: Paradox Spiral (Sub) Status: COMPLETE
Movie

If movies 1-3 were the climb to the top of the rollercoaster and 4 was the drop, then Kara no Kyoukai's Paradox Spiral is the aptly named loopdeeloop.

Seemingly taking place last chronologically and over twice the length of every previous entry, Paradox Spiral has plenty of time to tell a complete story, but instead it opts to play the Memento card and chooses to tell a fragmented story through flashback, flashforward, and a profuse amount of smash cuts. In fact, the title of this movie could very well have been Kara no Kyoukai: Smash Cut since it most accurately encapsulates my biggest problems with it.


Opening with a scattered mess of flashforwards to various shots throughout the movie, we eventually come to grips with the idea that a murder was reported to the police and publicized in the news. The movie will later contradict this information, but don't think about that.

We settle on Enjou, a red-headed kid who we eventually come to learn is homeless and living off the street and trying to avoid the cops after he apparently killed his family. Shiki appears, totally whups the asses of two other kids picking on him in a pretty cool way (I'd love to be able to induce vomiting in people just by touching their secret vomit button), and agrees to let him stay at her place in a peculiar twist of character.

What follows is a great time lapse of the characters coming and going out of her apartment with little interaction besides Shiki bringing home a single cup of Haagen Daz ice cream for him to eat with a frightening reference to Overlooking View and a doubly frightening implication of Enjou's health.

We end shortly before a revelation in which Enjou expresses concern over Shiki's safety and when pressed as to why ("we're both murderers, why do you care?") he admits he's in love with her. NO WAIT! It's not as bad as it sounds actually, because Shiki laughs it off as ridiculous and Enjou is later revealed to be a puppet that was programmed to seek her out anyway. Soooo... still totally needed to be a scene.


I mean it.

Anyway, Enjou's prodded to explain his situation and he describes that he's been having nightmares (and hallucinations?) about his mother killing him, so he reasons, logically of course, to kill his mother before she kills him. OBVIOUSLY.

But Shiki's genre-savvy and knows when something's up so she takes him to his apartment and discovers that the entire building is stuck in The Twilight Zone and that the elevator rotates INASPIRALGETITITSINTHETITLE and that it opens up onto two identical floors, one of which contains him and his family apparently living out his nightmare on repeat without him, and the other opens up to his family dead after he's killed them.

A villain who we're just supposed to know about already shows up, claims credit for the building, says it will help him learn about the spiral of death.


Guy's obviously a bad guy so Shiki fights him in what is the second cool fight of the movie and then

SMASH CUT

We start playing ghost camera to Kokutou and Touko talking a LOT about things and things and more things and strangely even when Shiki's in the scene and exchanging dialog, she's simply cropped out or the view is from her perspective. This is NEVER explained throughout the whole movie. It just happens.

We get told about Touko attending some Magi Academy or something, they banter on about whether Shiki's a man or a woman because of how she talks. Touko suggests she does it intentionally to remind Kokutou of the Animus personality she carved out (BUT IS STILL TOTALLY THERE BECAUSE SHE NEVER SHOWS HER OLD HAPPY-GO-LUCKY SIDE AND SHE SAYS SHE'S COMPELLED TO KILL PEOPLE MEANINGLESSLY) and then we get an extraordinarily awkward dialog exchange in which Kokutou is asked by some useless character whether Kokutou would care if Shiki were male or female.

In a refreshing show of taste, Kokutou says no and gets called gross.


Really?

We're putting him down for not being sexist?

Or bisexual?

Screw off.

Touko repeats the same question and Kokutou says it doesn't matter to him, but he would prefer that she be a girl which elicits GREAT RELIEF from Touko.


Crisis averted, people! He's NOT gay!

The only thing actually useful to come out of this whole third of the movie is this one line, blink and you'll miss it, about the "Akashic Record", the true name of the spiral of death the villain is after and the apparent source of all supernatural phenomenon.

During this whole period of nothing happening Kokutou is regularly trying to visit Shiki who's apparently just started to lock her door at night (there's a pretty pointless theme involving house keys in this movie), until at one point he actually manages to get in and then he runs in Enjou just as he's about to

SMASH CUT

At this point the movie just overdoses on it's medication and **** gets REALLY ****ed up. We have another cool action sequence between Touko and the villain in which Touko dies HORRIBLY by having her heart punched out, held in front of her as she flawlessly monologues for several minutes, and then has it crushed in front of her eyes before her head gets twisted off. All that with blood and lots of squishy sound effects.


HOLY HELL, this makes the rape scene in Remaining Sense of Pain look tame by comparison.

Course, she's not really dead, that was just a PUPPET! Which is just one of several bizarre twists in this third act. Enjou turns out to be a puppet, which, you know, why? I mean seriously, how was this whole plan supposed to work?

We spend a HUMONGOUS amount of time on Haagen Daz, Shiki's gender, Kokutou's driving lessons (yeah, that happens), Touko's past (we never get a firm grasp of anything strong enough to establish this Cornelius guy who's a friend or not a friend to the villain), and not only don't we have a firm grasp of what these new characters' have against the main cast, but also how this villain's plan was supposed to work?

1.) He collected families who were going to kill each other.

2.) He placed them in a building which somehow compelled them to kill each other.

3.) They killed each other.

4.) He made puppets with their brains to recreate the day in which they kill each other over and over.

5.) Enjou on one of his Groundhog Days got off the elevator at the wrong point and walked in on his puppet family? But he's a puppet?

6.) So he kills his family which we show didn't bleed to prove that they're not puppets? Even though puppets bleed?

5.) Or did he, as a puppet, walk in on his real family and kill them? But he's already there. Did he kill himself? I thought his mom killed him. NONE OF THIS MAKES ANY

SMASH CUT

We pull the whole bit where the movie rewinds to the beginning and plays everything out chronologically revealing dialog snippets between characters we only saw talking in silence during montages and we learn...

...nothing. Like the whole point of this kind of flashback is to clue the viewer into some undisclosed information where all the pieces come together and we can figure something out, but no. It's not even simply that they say something that doesn't make sense, all the dialog that's exchanged during this sequence seems purely mundane, like it was edited out of our first viewing of these scenes because they literally contribute nothing to the story.

Hell, I don't know. Shiki reappears because she disappeared, but she could come back because a sword which was with her, isn't with her, but the elevator goes crazy and then suddenly TADA! EPIC FINAL ENCOUNTER, SHE WAS DOWN BUT NOT OUT AND I don't really care anymore by this point.


Paradox Spiral has flashes of brilliance with some well done sequences and a concept that seems like it could be really interesting. At it's best it felt like a really good Twilight Zone episode, but at it's worst it felt like the worst parts of Overlooking View on acid. There are pretty long lucid sequences of total clarity in which everything begins to click into place and then it SMASH CUTs into something unfamiliar, confusing, and pointless.

There are way too many scenes of useless dialog: I don't care about Kokutou learning to drive, I don't care about Tokou's backstory, I don't care about ANYTHING having to with Cornelius for all of what little his purposes, motivations, or backstory were explored and what few things there WAS to talk about were either overlooked entirely, like whatever the hell the villain's thing about "the counterforce" was, or overexplained, like the technical details of the building and how it's designed to confuse. When it comes right down to it, they simply admit, "it's different here". You know what? That's enough. Let's move on.

This movie's way too long and the choppy way the story is presented makes what might otherwise be a straightforward, yet thought-provoking psychological thriller feel like the writer tripped and fell over Memento, spilling all his pages over The Twilight Zone and then rearranged them while he was distracted by Into The Void.

If several scenes were cut out and the movie were rearranged in chronological order, it'd be a fine watch. As it is, it's easy to get lost and recede into boredom.


Final Verdict:
[Friggen' Awesome][Pretty Good][Meh...][Just... Bad][Irredeemably Awful]



Yu Yu Hakusho (Dub) Status: INTERESTED
Episodes: 69-70

Hiei breaks the rule of the first enemy's territory by saying "hot" which steals his soul and turns him to stone. Kuwabara says "hot" by using words ending in "h" and beginning in "ot", and then Botan just blows it.

At this point it's just Kurama vs the new guy and he challenges him to change the taboo word by increasingly deducting useable letters from the alphabet over the next 4 minutes with the promise that he'll make him break the taboo by then.

I like this idea of mind games with the main cast and playing to their character if not their actual abilities, but this is somewhat spoiled by the new guy monologuing how Kurama intends to win before he does it. Rather than simply startle him to make a sound when there are no letters yet, he manages to make him laugh by producing a funny face off-screen which is atypical.

Episode 70 returns with the Hiei, Kuwabara, Kurama, and Botan approaching the next guy who insists they each truck up one of four individual staircases which lead into different M.C.Escher drawings.

Botan pulls out Chekov's Gun in the form of little magic stickers which can only be removed by the person who put them on and monitors that person's health.

Hiei obviously refuses and threatens to break Botan's wrist if she tries to give him one, but Kurama slaps one on him anyway which actually results in one of the many new jokes the series has made involving Hiei's personality post-Dark Tournament.

It's interesting that Hiei is probably the second most powerful character in the main cast, but I find it amusing that he reluctantly lets Kurama push him around and manipulate him in subtle ways. Hmmmm...


Oh. *AHEM* Anyway, so they climb the stairs and each come out at the top where Urameshi is held trapped (because the third guy can still you by stepping on your shadow). The third guy says the second guy is actually pretending to be one of them and Yusuke has to choose. At this point I go, "The magic stickers! The magic stickers!", then the characters all go, "The magic stickers!", and I'm like, "Yeah!", and they're like, "They don't work!", and I'm like, "You made Chekov sad."


Urameshi takesa blind guess, gets it right, and everyone's like GOOD JOB, MATE and it's revealed it was Genkai testing them, the new characters being her freshest students. Genkai says they've mastered their bodies, but now they have to master their minds in order to survive a new threat which WILL BE REVEALED IN THE NEXT EPISODE-ODE-ODE-ODE.


Joshiraku (Sub) Status: LOSING INTEREST
Episodes: 2-3

I'm not going to start explaining jokes or anything since it's largely a comedy of dialog, but I'll just briefly cover what's touched upon.

The characters talk about money, financial ambitions (which leads to a funny throwaway about funding a criminal investigation offscreen), the lottery, and eventually the characters just start plucking evidence out of thin air using stereotypes of rich people to accuse each other of secretly harboring lottery winnings.

This segment's pretty funny and it leads to them admitting that they don't have the gifted sense for sniffing out money like a professional which is when just such a professional comes along.


Oh yeah. They went there.

The second segment involves the characters seeing sights around Tokyo like Asakusa which lead to a rather surreal moment when I noticed anime characters standing somewhere in the real world where I had once stood.

The dialog here just seems like someone stabbed an encyclopedia in the back and it bled all over the script. I didn't think it was very funny to be honest.

The third segment talks about the flu and queuing up to get vaccinated, eventually leading to the topic of who gets priority, one of which being pregnant mothers which leads to the characters deliberating on how any one of them might get knocked up to get a flu shot. Eventually they settle on "false pregnancy" and one of them just totally shifts into mama mode. It has moments of humor, but it's largely just banter, and not even in the Seinfeld kinda way.


That's really my biggest problem with Joshiraku. We start on a mundane topic, analyze it far deeper that it probably should be, and then draw a couple amusing extremes out of it.

Episode 3 opens with one of the characters being accused of not actually being a girl and we quickly sink into gender stereotypes and traditional sexist etiquette.

If this were a critical analysis of those things like the beginning of Joshiraku, I'd have been all in favor of it, but instead we have a character forcing herself to "sit feminine", "walk feminine", and "talk feminine" which just gets offensive and drives home that Japan's treatment of women is still pretty godawful which I think is a perfect segue into Cross Ange.


Cross Ange (Sub) Status: INTERESTED
Episodes: 2

With no time wasted at all, Cross Ange opens with the correlation to the opening shot of the series and the rest of the first episode by explaining that magic beings known as Dragons (they're literally dragons) are warping into the world and Norma are the front line defense using ships that transform into mecha.

Our princess, Ange, is introduced to the cast, which look way too colorful for the kind of story they're telling, and we continue to show that she's in total denial which rubs many of the resident Norma the wrong way immediately.

As the show goes on, multiple opportunities are taken to sex up the story, from one woman getting oral in the shower, to the same woman having a sex scene later on, and then that same woman AGAIN attempting to molest Ange.

It occurs to me that as much as the anime clearly wants lesbianism to be a part of the show, it's well aware that a harem cast of characters doesn't serve the plot, so only a select few characters are actually lascivious (which is realistic) with the rest of the sexually-charged moments on screen being at least somewhat rationalized.

The moment when Ange gets her suit has her immediately complain about how "scandalous" it is, but the scene involving it is heavily screwed in favor of drawing attention to the fact that it isn't just a skimpy pilot suit, it's a BLOODY pilot suit with the nametag of the last Norma who died in it casually ripped off.

So, two things really strike me the most in this episode, the first is the loli characters. They make sense within the context of the world, most of the Norma brought to be trained here are children, so it makes sense that the cast is a range of ages. When a couple of them start being really nice to Ange, my genre-savviness kicks in and I'm thinkin' THEY'RE GOING TO KILL A LOLI.


In addition to this I'm silently PLEADING that the writers don't make the most obvious plot mistake they could make at this point: send Ange out in a real mech, while she's still in denial and NOT have her bail and try to escape. We timeskip over her training period and we're told that she enjoys flying so for all we know, we could just be falling back into the sort of anime that makes you go, "WHY ARE YOU HAPPY!? WHY AREN'T YOU RESISTING!? YOUR SITUATION IS TURRIBLE!!!"

But instead...

"Hey, where's Ange going?"

"Ange! Get back in formation!"

"No! I'm a princess! I belong in the magic world!"

"Take me with you! I want to see the magic world too!"



BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSHHHH!!!!!!!!


Oh god, that was terrible, but I don't think it could have been done much better. The anime simultaneously fulfilled my expectations for a realistic character, and then RAMMED home the fact that this anime's not afraid to kill them off, both of which are BIG points in my book.

Honestly, if the show can keep up this approach, I think i can definitely keep with it. There really isn't much in the way of those infuriatingly common "make-me-your-waifu" moe traits, it's just sex centered around certain characters which isn't unlike The Shawshank Redeption, so I can't really take issue with it.

What I STILL take issue with is the outfits and overall design. The cast of characters should look like this:


Not THIS:


There's absolutely no good reason why only women become Norma other than to put an all female cast into skimpy outfits and sexy situations. It irks me on a fundamental level and it makes it very difficult to recommend to people who would usually take one look at this and write it off as trash.

It's not FREEZING! I swear! It's actually GOOD!


Pictured Above: A really stupid anime.



Yu Yu Hakusho (Dub) Status: INTERESTED
Episodes: 71-72

Genkai explains that the whole wormhole from the demon world into the human world is still a thing and that someone's taken over the evil CEO's job. We don't know who he is yet, but villainous dialog sequences suggest that he recovered Shoulder Monkey's still-alive head from the Dark Tournament for some reason.

It's at this point we're told that Toguro was only a "Class B" demon, which is predictable as far as upping-the-ante developments are concerned, BUUUUUUUUUUT it irritates me because Toguro's wish for winning the last Dark Tournament was to specifically become "THE HIGHEST CLASS OF DEMON". I'm not making excuses for this, this is just a bloody retcon.

The three newbies join the crew just as Hiei leaves (I'm sure he won't be gone for long) and everyone hauls off to the city of origin to find the person sustaining and growing the wormhole.

The crew stumbles upon another character who has a 30-foot territory of mind-reading which they use to seek out the Big Bad. They find him in a crowd, but they're spotted and it's revealed he has allies. A "Big Seven" as it were (of course there are), and there seems to be a theme involving territories with at least one of them able to fire tiny projectiles at long range with a lot of force.

Looking forward to the next episode since it seems to feature the first of the seven fights and it appears the animation quality peaks around this point.


Joshiraku (Sub)
Status: LOST INTEREST
Episodes: 4-5

Joshiraku's charm is in it's insightful analysis of different subjects, both in-world and beyond the fourth wall, but these few comedy pieces seem padded out by vast stretches of nothing.


On one hand we have a couple hilarious fantasy sequences that are amusing out of sheer absurdity, but then on the other hand we literally have the characters standing around in the middle of an alley exchanging tongue twisters.

Episode 4 and 5 goes super heavy on the references, drawing attention to everything from Hayao Miyazaki to Susan Boyle in the same scene and even at one point have the characters stumble onto Comiket surrounded by tons of recognizable anime cosplayers, but almost none of these opportunities are taken to make jokes or even say anything thoughtful about the subjects they bring up.

There are probably one or two more great moments I'm missing by dropping the series, but I want great episodes, not just moments.



Cross Ange (Sub) Status: INTERESTED
Episodes: 3

The episode opens up on the fight that claims the first of the two loli's lives, Ange continues to try and escape, the other loli gets MAULED THREE-WAY like that scene from The Lost World.


The dragons manage to get around Ange and drive her back to the rest of the team. In the panic, Ange flies straight into the Captain (the "supersexual" I mentioned?), and they both crash into the coast where Ange is the only one to survive.

It's worth mentioning that it's established that even if Ange wanted to escape, there wasn't enough fuel to go anywhere. I appreciated that tidbit.

Ange is confined to a hospital bed and as her entire team stands there and berates her for her behavior, she says, "Norma aren't humans."

I'm thinkin', "Punch her! Punch her! Punch her! Punch her!"


Not what I had in mind, but I like it.

Ange is punished by being forced to pay for the three dead teammate's tombstones and then personally wheel them out to the gravesite in the mud and rain. Ange starts saying she's not Norma again just when it's starting to get old and is once again forced to prove it by performing magic which she once again fails to do. It's further reinforced that it's entirely the fault of people like Ange that Norma are forced to do battle out of sight and out of mind to maintain a false peace.

The battle recommences with the yet unkilled dragon that caused so much damage, but not before Ange, who asks to be killed when she can't perform magic, is forced back into battle, this time not in her trashed mech, but VillKiss, a rusted heap of junk that's not expected to survive.

When she gets back into battle, she's deadset on killing herself, but in a really cliche sequence she remembers her mother who died taking a bullet for her when she was found out, and takes her last words as a reason to live.

I'd think this cliche would be enough, but Deus Ex Machina kicks in, blood stains her ring, and her mech appears to be magically revived.

How the hell does that work? Don't know. Does this reinforce her delusion of how "magic hasn't come to her yet"? That'd be realistic, but no, I suppose the anime feels like it burned enough time on this and decides that this is the moment of redemption Ange needs.

Ange kills the dragon and returns to the gravesite where she cuts her air to finally imitate her appearance on all the promotional material and once again the 3rd episode of an anime marks a true beginning.


Hmmm...

Well, I like it. The episode cranks the drama knob up even further and includes a lot of little bits of information we need to keep the story cohesive, but the question remains of where it all will go from here.

Personally, I hope we build up a revenge story, or some sort of rebellion against the magic world, but I don't know if the show will go that route or not. I'm hoping the ring thing is well explained, but it helps that I'm optimistic.



Just wanna say you're doing a good job with these write-ups. I just wish I actually knew most of them!



Just wanna say you're doing a good job with these write-ups. I just wish I actually knew most of them!
Yeah, that's somewhat of a failure of mine. If you have something real specific (as in a movie, not a tv series) to recommend, I'd give it shot?



Dirty Pair: Affair on Nolandia (Dub) Status: COMPLETE
Movie

Affair on Nolandia is so forgettable I don't even feel like explaining what happens in it. It's just so... standard.

And not in a cliche kind of way, but in a way that tells you this was easily some of the least creative stuff they could come up with.

Affair on Nolandia immediately lags behind Project Eden by changing the setting from a future cityscape to a forest and then skipping on the animation budget that made Project Eden so great to look at (and yes, I realize Project Eden came out later).

Kei and Yuri get assigned to recover a lost girl and they wind up on a forested planet/continent/place where the lost girl, apparently possessed of psychic abilities, has taken down planes and killed people.

Kei and Yuri immediately start tripping balls and having tentacle rape hallucinations (because that's what little girls think of, right?) only to wake up from nightmares in which they're having nightmares in which they're having nightmares.


The characters conclude that all the horrible hallucinations and the wild dangerous animals trying to kill them are all the work of the lost psychic girl somehow so they decide that there's no better solution for finding her than partying it up.

I mean it, they play hide and seek, they have picnics, they JET SKI, all while suffering trippy hallucinations like we just stumbled head-first into Harold and Kumar.

Obviously it works, the little girl comes out, they ask her to come back with them, and she flips out like the kid from Looper.

The bigwigs show up and the movie slows down to the only really great moment in the whole movie where Yuri stops the woman who's explaining the situation and comments on how convenient it was that they arrived just as they were about to learn something.

Hmmmmm?

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM?????



So after literally half the movie of boring setup and ****in' around in the woods the Dirty Pair come to the sudden TWIST REALIZATION that the corporation that sent them on the mission is secretly evil and created the girl and all the forest animals as science experiments.




(O_O ) Whatever.



We finally get back to a city setting that honestly doesn't even look as good as either of the television series and we get an extraordinarily protracted chase sequence with Yuri involving trains, motorcycles, and taxis, while intermixed with a fight sequence with Kei fighting the world's most resilient Terminator.

Both battles end with spectacular explosions just before the little girl is truly rescued and she thanks them all by destroying everything.


A happy ending for everybody.


Affair on Nolandia, despite one or two amusing moments, it's the most underwhelming Dirty Pair incarnation I've seen yet.


"It's a ****ing sausage fest in here, bros. Let's get some poontang, THEN we'll go to White Castle."


Final Verdict:
[Friggen' Awesome][Pretty Good][Meh...][Just... Bad][Irredeemably Awful]



Yeah, that's somewhat of a failure of mine. If you have something real specific (as in a movie, not a tv series) to recommend, I'd give it shot?
I'd say definitely give Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust a shot.





Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust
Fantasy Action / 2000

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
I'd say definitely give Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust a shot.
WHAT'D I THINK?
Having never seen Vampire Hunter D or even knowing anything about the story or it's characters whatsoever, my expectations were pretty much limited to what I can extrapolate from the promotional material which essentially came out to be:


Alucard Vampire Hunter?

Fortunately, I wasn't far off.


Bloodlust opens in what is easily the most epic and impressive introduction to any vampire character I have ever seen: with a dark gothic city at night and the increasing threat of approaching hooves, lights go out, wild dogs recoil in fear, and crucifixes violently contort.

As a terrible carriage stops outside the window of an unknown woman who appears frightened yet resigned, the window opens like Hook's come to take Pan's kids, flowers wilt, a great bat creature swoops in, and the woman is carried off in a manner emblematic of the classic vampire.


If Aura of Decimation was any indication, it's clear we have a story unafraid to take creative liberties with it's vampire lore. And while this could be construed as an implication for a "scintillating" discovery later on, the biggest liberties are clearly taken with the world's setting.

Instead of merely a given period, or even a traditional fantasy setting, we're presented with an alternate future world where gothic architecture reigns supreme despite a variety of anachronistic technology.

Scenes, such as the one in the desert, where colossal manta rays rise up from underground to fly in the air, help to emphasize a world that is both familiar, yet alien which helps maintain intrigue.

Our titular character, D, presented to us as the only one of many vampire bounty hunters who happens to be half-vampire, also known as a dhampir (or as the movie would choose to call him, a "DUNpeel", I don't know why, it's weird), takes a bounty to rescue the woman who was kidnapped in the opening scene for an absurd amount of money, but not before demanding twice the price of the commission. I have no idea how currency works in this sort of world, but it still seems kinda dick to demand what seems to be such an ungodly sum to save someone's life.

Speaking of dick, D's hand also talks to him.

It seems to be nothing more than a Deus Ex Machina disguised as a weak comedy inner monologue to substitute for D's relative silence, so other than it being unique, I didn't much care for him. I don't think D cares much for him either.

Must make masturbating REALLY awkward.

But before that mental image really sinks in, D takes off and he quickly runs into other bounty hunters resulting in a pretty epic moment of arrow-catching.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the bounty hunters' character designs. Their faces look weird, their outfits look weird, and they don't really even have the personality to make up for it.

They do get some well-done dialog if nothing else, but the dialog all throughout the movie is either only sufficient or really good.

For the most part D just sounds like a voice in the crowd, but during certain scenes his inflection and lines combine for some great back-and-forth such as this scene where he first confronts the vampire he's chasing:

Originally Posted by Meier
She's here by her own choice, dunPEEL, so unless you're the kind of man who would take a woman against her will for the money in it, and I'm sure it's a lot, I suggest you save your sorry ass now and leave us to travel in peace.
Originally Posted by D
I would if I could believe you, Meier... but your credibility... is less than impeccable under the circumstances.
This moment actually highlights the beginning of my favorite elements of this movie, the de-villianization (it's a word, I swear) of Meier, the vampire who's mere presence caused a wake of rot in the opening sequence.

We're given plenty of reason to believe he may have merely seduced her, but as the movie goes on it becomes clear that Meier's not really such a bad guy at all. Sure, a couple bounty hunters get killed because of him, but they were undoubtedly the antagonists in this movie if the kidnapped woman's story of actually loving the vampire is to be believed.

Scenes where Meier leans in to bite her and then reels back even when she asks for it do a great deal of lending empathy to his character as he explains that he doesn't want her to suffer the long life of impulses he does. A really great scene is after we've established that D can't remain out in direct sunlight for long before becoming debilitated due to his part-vampire nature, we're shown the full-vampire symptoms when Meier, after all his intimidation, steps out into direct sunlight and catches fire out of a desperate attempt to save the kidnapped girl (I don't remember her name).

I really felt bad for him by the end of the movie, and I was honestly frustrated with D for insisting on fighting him. One particular scene where D tempts Meier with an illusion was particularly jarring because I didn't feel about it the way I think the movie wanted me to feel about it.


There are various clashes with the escaping carriage throughout the movie and the vampire has a few fantasy minions to keep them at bay which reminds me... the animation is pretty good.

No complaints about the animation at all. Good stuff. The minion fights are pretty varied, but I was disappointed with the last one since he pretty much dies by cutaway which instantly deflates all of the build-up I was expecting for that fight.

As the movie goes on, the only female member of the bounty hunting crew, Leila, very predictably starts following D around, out of initial disgust at first, it seems, but she begins to better understand him as the movie goes on and I'm glad it never developed into a romance (even though her motives were confusing at times), but like all the bounty hunters, save the totally unexplained dying guy in their truck, she really didn't interest me much at all.

Actually, the unexplained dying guy is evidence of one of my bigger complaints about the movie which is each characters' wildly varied abilities. We're shown almost every character in fight scenes have all sorts of complex and unique traits that help them in various ways, but extremely little is done to establish what their limits are or why they can do what they do. When Leila fires a rocket launcher at Meier and it harmless detonates on his wing, I kinda feel like I was cheated out of some foreshadowing.

The final confrontation of the movie features some of the best music so far and it really feels like we've made it to the boss room in a video game. Unfortunately, the whole movie just flies off the rails at this point and things just start to get confusing.

After Meier seemingly dies, he reappears unharmed in the next scene somehow with the kidnapped girl only to bite her like he didn't want to, which drains all her blood somehow and revives a corpse that is somehow representative of the castle's resident vampire who is still totally alive somehow. Somehow.


Meier is revealed to still be elsewhere later, so was it a hallucination?

If it was a hallucination, then how did it bite her?

Did the "Carmilla" vampire bite her? So she's alive?

Then who's in the coffin? Someone else?

Why does stabbing one affect the other?

If she's really dead, then is she a ghost vampire?

Can ghost vampires bite people?

I HAVE NO IDEA, but the end result is clear enough: SPACESHIPS.


The final scene, which I will not spoil, actually managed to fool me into thinking I knew what was going on, but in actuality the movie had revealed Chekov's Gun early enough in the film that I had totally forgotten about it by this point, and when it's finally reintroduced it reminded me of the long life Meier didn't want for his beloved.



Final Verdict:
[Pretty Good]
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