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Germany lost, I'm sad, and other things (namely, meeting Satoshi Kon and Macross). · 29 June 2008
Euro Cup is evil…
Germany just lost, 0-1, to Spain. I’m ready to grab a gun of some sort and kill people, though it’s really not that bad. These commentators just have to keep on rubbing it in, “Germany was obviously not the best team tonight.” Christ, I know they weren’t, don’t keep making me feel miserable. I spent the second half of the game rolling around on my living room floor in agony. With about ten minutes left, I just gave up. The last time the Germans won a major title, I was four, I don’t even think I knew what football was! Though, I have to say, Spain played a good game. I just feel so bad for Michael Ballack, he looked so sad. So, here’s to waiting another two years for the World Cup.
Satoshi Kon is not…
In other news, my friend procured tickets to a recent Satoshi Kon retrospective at Lincoln Center and invited me to go along. We were there for the showing of Paprika and an interview with Satoshi Kon afterwards. Seeing Paprika up on a big screen was a gorgeous experience. My first viewing of Paprika was rather miserable, the quality of the video killed it, almost. During the audience Q&A, I was really tempted to ask, “Mr. Kon! Why are you so good?” But I decided against that piece of rather trivial self indulgence.
The man has an incredible sense of humor. He was also a lot taller than I figured him to be, this lanky Japanese man with a pony tail that, if he sat a certain way in his leather armchair, reminded me of my own grandfather. He shared his seat, quite literally, with his Nikon, “the pride of Japan” as he called it and just randomly snapped pictures of the audience throughout the interview. At one point, someone asked him how he came up with characters like Hana from Tokyo Godfathers and he replied that since he had no transvestite or homosexual friends, he took to dressing up like Hana. Apparently, he doesn’t go around looking for work, most of his projects are recommended to him by people who’ve seen his previous films.
He also said that people who meet him for the first time are surprised by how nice he is, most people thought he must’ve been incredibly scary to turn out the stuff he does. Immediately after watching Paranoia Agent, I would’ve agreed with those fans, that show scared me to no end. Now that I’m writing about, I seem to recall so much more of what he said, except I don’t think anyone really wants me to regurgatate the entire interview.
I walked away with an autograph and I have to say, it was an indecently pleasant experience to be in the presence of such genius.
And now, Macross Frontier, finally…
This wasn’t exactly what I planned when I promised to write a Macross Frontier post. I had such a torrent of emotions and things to say right after I watched episodes four through ten, and I lost most of it through a week of finals and the Euro Cup.
I remember Owen S labeling Macross as a mecha centric show, differentiating it from Code Geass, which, in his words, was a Vehicle mecha. While I’m not a big fan of Geass, I do recognize that mecha in Geass is secondary to the plot and character. The recent Frontier spin-off of the series proves that categorization wrong entirely, so wrong I’m willing to say that Frontier pulls off the Vehicle Mecha gambit better than Geass.
What really surprised me was how rich of a romance story Frontier created. The love square (it’s not really a triangle anymore) between Ranka, Alto and Cheryl, and that new kid, that weird robotic kid who saved Ranka’s life during the film shoot and his eventual role in all of it, just makes for this really intriguing and delicious, if you remember all of Ranka’s Nyan Nyan commercials, pork bun of a show. Surrounded on the outside by the tennous and deceptive skin of a generic mecha show, Frontier has just a little bit more of something real, something that made me stop and wonder, something that Gundam 00 missed entirely. I’m thinking along the lines of hope, along the lines of something beautiful, something as big and as impressive as they make Cheryl Nome’s stardom out to be.
There was something incredible to an episode like “First Attack”, the combination of music and action, just the excitement building up during that concert, when Ranka and Cheryl are both singing and Alto is fighting, there was just something so gripping and so poweful. Infinity was the most amazing song, the most amazing song as it played during that episode. The songs, all of Cheryl’s pop star hits are so well tuned to the show. Kanno’s renditions of Cheryl’s pop songs are just so convincing. Diamond Crevasse, Infinity I can see at the top of some Japanese pop chart. They fit the show like a glass slipper, I can’t imagine the show without the music at all.
Really, though, after that episode, the wonder that first had me hook, line and sinker wore off a little. I just saw episode 11 recently and what struck me the most was the animation quality. Though, I really shouldn’t be surprised, animation quality has its way of dipping and climbing. I’m sure with the recent turn of events, something deeper and more sinister is brewing. The movie episode retained some of that wonder, just the way it happened. I’m a fangirl at heart and I love shipping people, and sometimes I wish to god Alto and Ranka would end up together, but the way it’s playing out, he might end up with Cheryl. And now, Cheryl and Alto are off somewhere else and Ranka has that cute, little Green squirrel boy, I’m so conflicted! That kiss between Alto and Cheryl and how Ranka saw it, and her kiss later, the show just has me spinning in circles. Knocked back and force like a pinball between the wavering emotions of these people.
The soundtrack is amazing, need I say more? After reading Paul’s take on the soundtrack, I’ve been looking forward to hearing it. Kanno doesn’t disappoint, she never disappoints.
I guess I was too quick to call Soul Eater the best show of the season because Frontier just stole my heart. And I just realized that I haven’t even finished the rest of the spring shows, people already have summer previews going up! Good god, I need to catch up!
A little distracted… · 14 June 2008
So, the school year’s winding down. Euro ’08 just started (I’m still pissed over Germany loosing to Croatia…), prom’s in a couple hours, finals start next week, I finally caught up with Macross Frontier (the OST is amazing, can’t stop listening, will write, will write, promise) and I’m stuck doing my technical drafting project at home.
Speaking of which, I just got word I need to leave in ten…see what I mean by a little distracted?
Will make good on my promises. Will write about Macross. Will not fail finals…
A little bit of Soul Eater, a lot of Darker Than Black and why I love BONES… · 27 May 2008
Soul Eater, so it seems, is the only show this season that’s inspiring me to write anything. Granted, it’s really the only thing I’m keeping up with, but every episode just leaves me with the urge to impart on the world my two minutes of random commentary.
For starters, can I just say how much I love Bones, as a studio? How much I love the work they do? How much I love their style? How much I love their ending credit font, even, because it’s the same as in Darker Than Black? There’s something to their shows, there’s something to their presentation, that just flawlessly captures an atmosphere, a mood, an ambiance, be it the rich melancholy of a world seeking redemption in DtB, or the eerie yet cartoonish Halloween-esque playground of Soul Eater.
This is the part where I digress, like hell, into Darker Than Black…
I can’t drive down the FDR at night and not wonder how they manage to encapsulate the essence of urban existence into a backdrop. The twinkling amber lights of apartment windows, the violent red lights atop buildings, the abysmal night sky tainted with the faint hue of light pollution, they are things that I’ve never stopped to look at, things I’ve awakened to through an anime.
I can’t drive across the Queensboro Bridge, with the Manhattan skyline spread out in front of me and not think of Hei, and not just stop and think of that first two episode arc. That first arc made everything about the show, it was just so good. The action sequences to the aesthetics, the way the characters played off each other, the chemistry between them, the sheer mystery of everything. Those first two episodes basically hands the audience a cross section of the Darker Than Black world, dripping, just oozing a silent and mysterious cool that is almost too good to refuse. The allure eventually wears off, but the first two episodes define the show.
Darker Than Black has a real love-hate relationship with me. What I love most, what I can’t seem to let go off, despite the somewhat lackluster ending, despite the meta-physical convolution, despite all its seemingly fatal flaws, the show keyed in on something tragically human, struck a note as melancholic and heartbreaking as Kanno’s music.
I spent a bus ride coming back from Pennsylvania staring out at an encroaching sunset, with Kanno playing in my ears, and I just couldn’t shake that feeling, that feeling that accompanies something like Darker Than Black. Actually, everything Yoko Kanno seems to touch, every note she sets down, every song she arranges just tears my heart to shreds. The second the music starts playing a role in the show, the second one notices the soundtrack in the background, is the moment where this bridge, this sturdy yet subtle, this well-constructed yet barely noticeable, this vital yet rarely used bridge is born. And, in due time, it’ll become this well traversed and sacred connection, this link to the emotional memory of a show like Darker Than Black.
I’m trying really hard not to say the music made the show, but it was definitely essential. Darker Than Black without Kanno’s magic is a martini without the gin, a cocktail without the alcohol, a drug without the high, all glitter and gold without substance. The lady works miracles, Bebop, Wolf’s Rain, Darker Than Black, I fall hook line and sinker for almost everything she touches. Don’t even get me started on Bebop…
More to the point, the show carried one helluva of an unforgettable atmosphere. Maybe it’s just so easy for me to open a window, feel a breeze, and just let it sink its teeth in, just sort of let it gnaw away at the inner workings of my soul, tell me a story born from concrete, from a city. It’s one thing to romanticize nature and another completely to do the same to an urban setting. Really, I’ve just never felt anything as tangible as what Darker Than Black gave me from anything else. It’s so close, the white, arched back of a streetlight, the snapshot stillness of a silent block, Hei’s laconic stare that just carries so much weight, Yin and her smile, November 11, Misaki chasing Hei’s shadow, that bleeding sunset to which the show ends, everything, absolutely everything builds up to this grand personification of a city.
On quiet nights, when I look up at the sky and can’t seem to make out any stars, I think of Darker Than Black. I think of Darker Than Black and that elusive sound, that perfectly sublime sound of a track like Water Forest, that pin-drop clarity, that biting edge of In no Piano, that gutsy, foolish and frivolous bravado of Guy’s theme, that soft whisper of ScatCat and that godforsaken nostalgia o,f perhaps, my favorite track, No One’s Home, if I remember correctly, playing to Huang’s arc. And, of course, the ending theme, Tsuki Akari is the perfect closure to Darker Than Black. It’s like the show somehow speaks, speaks of the most tragic of all human suffering, a melancholic search for redemption, a doomed understanding of limitations, just something so poignant and so heavy, it’s going to take me ages to get over it.
God, that was something I need to get off my chest.
Back to Soul Eater…
Ultimately, this all goes back to Soul Eater, which reminded me, at the end of episode seven, of how skilled Bones, as a studio, is at crafting these delectable atmospheres. Soul Eater and Darker Than Black are two different animals entirely, two different things that share this same marvelous quality, the gift of a well-crafted setting. Setting is almost negligible in anime, but somehow Bones makes it as equal in worth with elements like character and plot and sometimes more memorable (in the case of Darker Than Black, or so it seems) than the more central aspects. The Soul Eater world is shockingly convincing, while I have no emotional attachment to a Gothic Halloween town, or the perfect symmetry of a school, one can’t help but marvel at the detail and attention paid to each aspect.
As far as the episode goes, seven serves as the springboard for eight, which, judging from only the previews, looks epic. Stein and Maka’s dad in action, that’s thirty minutes of animation I want to see. Bones, speaking of which, also turns out solid animation every time. Glancing at their pretty impressive list of shows, I can’t say animation ever came up as some sort of a flaw in their work. Gonzo on the other hand, is quite the opposite, amazing plots, terrible animation. Just seeing Ragnorak come to life, this hideous black thing take shape beneath the stained glass windows of a cathedral gave me such squeamish delight, because, just as a rule of thumb, epic battle will ensue.
Epic battle will ensue.
Soul Eater – 06, Awesome Kid! Awesome cannons! · 18 May 2008
Most people hate the Michael Bay FiOS Commercial. I’m actually quite fond of it. It’s Michael Bay making fun of himself (Awesome!), which gets ridiculously annoying after a while (Awesome!) and then stuff blows up (Awesome!). Soul Eater, is, for better or for worse, Michael Bay awesome. Hopefully, it won’t get ridiculously annoying after a while. It’s a shamelessly shonen show and it doesn’t try to advertise itself as anything but. I’ve also learned that Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is the only show that pulls off the hot-blooded, manly, overly dramatic gambit, because Black Star, as much as I love him, needs to be smacked. Humility, boy, humility!
Actually, episodes four, five and six, together, were just awesome. In four, they start out with extra lessons and end with Maka and Soul’s resonance and Witch Hunting. In five, they start with super creepy, super powerful scientist man with a nail through his head and glasses completely decimating Black Star and Maka and Soul and Tsubaki, and end with the whole thing just being extra lessons. In six, they start with Kid being late to school and end with Kid blowing the crap out of everything.
One word: Awesome!
As strange as it sounds, the best part of watching something like Soul Eater is that it’s fine to act like you’re seven. I mean, when I was seven, I used to clap furiously like one of those vapid seals in the water park whenever Goku pulled off a Kamehameha wave. And I still clap furiously like one of those vapid seals whenever Maka pulls off Witch Hunting, or whenever Kid blows everything to hell with his cannons.
And the other best part of watching something like Soul Eater is how hilarious the show is. You can’t have a good shonen anime without the hilarity. Dragon Ball, Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, even Gurren Lagann (which I hesitate to call simply shonen) all have their fair share of humor. Episode five was the biggest laugh in the world. For a while there, I was seriously concerned for their safety. Black Star just got his brain fried, Witch Hunting failed, and Kid forgot to fold the corners of his toilet paper. It’s only episode five, where’s my miracle!? And, then God parts the Red Sea Stein tells Soul that they passed their extra lessons. Extra lessons, ahahaha, I still get a kick out of that.
Stein is a character of particular interest. When he first showed up and I still had him down as evil villain of sorts, my fangirl self pegged him as my next anime crush. What’s not to love about a crazy, psychotic, sadistic scientist with a fetish for dissecting things? He also brought up the whole issue with seeing souls. I thought it was rather cute that the soul is a little, glowing ball that share distinct physical features with the owner. Kid’s soul has his three distinct strips, Stein’s soul has a nail sticking out of its head and Shinigami-sama’s soul is so bloody big that the camera needs to zoom out to catch the whole thing.
By the end of episode six, you’ve got a couple characters anchored as super powerful mentor figures, Stein, Shinigami-sama, and Maka’s dad. This really reminds me of Fullmetal Alchemist sometimes, where Stein ends up being Roy Mustang and Maka and Soul are Ed and Al. Maka and Soul are the ones with latent potential, Black Star and Tsubaki have their thing going on, Kid is just powerful by default. And, sometime soon, something big, something potentially world threatening is going to happen and they’re going to save the world, twice maybe, it’s a year long, fifty some odd episodes show.
And, like any other good shonen series, it’s got the character bonding moments. Ever since episode one, Maka and Soul were just playing off their relationship as weapon and technician and as friends and as, possible, love interests. They’re almost overdoing it with the Maka x Soul thing, but they’re trying to be subtle and it makes really sweet moments like at the end of episode six all the better.
Sometimes, I have the feeling that Black Star’s slap across the face is going to be something bad happening to Tsubaki. I can almost see it in my head, the look on Black Star’s face, Iwaski’s music in the background (which, if I haven’t mentioned already, fits the series to a tee) and the sudden epiphany. Then, he pulls off one of his assassin moves.
It’s tempting, at this point, to say that Soul Eater is probably my favorite show of the season. Of course, I haven’t been exactly following Kurenai and Kaiba, the two other big contenders. But I’m sure they’re not going to rival my love for Soul Eater, which, for a brief moment, reminded me how awesome it was to be a kid, to clap like a vapid seal, to watch Saturday morning cartoons, and how awesome it was when someone’s power level goes over 9,000. It’s corny, it’s cheesy, and after feeding myself pseudo-intellectual shows with their metaphysical babble, deep soul searching moments and mindfuck endings, I tricked myself into thinking that maybe I outgrew the shonen genre. Wrong. Dead wrong. This stuff right here is the stuff I live for.
I just realized, I haven’t really said anything about Kid, or about his cannons. Awesome!
Baccano! – 14 (Now that I've seen it, Holy Jesus mother of God, no one told me about this….) · 13 May 2008
Yeah, I basically freaked out for a good three hours straight when I saw the torrent from BSS, ran around my house, screamed a bit and sat down and clicked on the torrent. I haven’t seen it yet, I will see it soon. The last time I checked it was like two hours, now, Azereus is telling the estimated download time is ten minutes. Time sure flies when you’re blogging. I’ll be back.
I’m back. It was amazing. Utterly amazing, to a point where I’m glad I don’t sleep at night and fail classes, to a point where I’m glad that accidentally cut myself trying to twist off bottle caps while watching the opening. To a point where I’m just flippin’ glad that they even have bonus DVD episodes, and someone subbed them.
Right, so the biggest thing: who the bloody heck is Graham Spector? Does he ever shut up? You know, I used to think people like Ladd Russo was a nutcase, freak of nature, obsessive compulsive, mass-murdering freak, until Graham showed up. I used to think Death the Kid was some sort of a strange anomaly, until Graham showed up. He doesn’t have a gun, no shotgun, no pistols, no knives or anything, he has a wrench. Yes, a really large, really dangerous wrench. He likes, not to kill people or anything normal like that, but he likes to smash and to dismantle. Smash and dismantle. He’s like more psychotic and mentally unstable, more violent and more melodramatic, more bipolar and moody and break out in more soliloquies than anyone, ever. Effectively, he’s like Viral. On crack. And you know what? It was damn amazing!
Halfway through one of his lengthy rants, I stopped and thought to myself, here I am, middle of the night, pile of work to do, watching a blond man, speaking to me in subtitled Japanese, flinging a large, disproportionate wrench repeatedly in the air, quibbling about love and peace, what else do I ever need? Seriously, this is pretty much why I watch anime. At all.
Favorite part, though, after he comes up with a plan to kidnap Eve (again?), he goes, “Sorry, I just had the need to use the word ‘genius’.” Or, something like that. I do have to say that his voice sounds a bit odd for him, but the guy does a pretty, pretty job of convincing me Graham is totally insane. I’ve never heard of Tomogazu Sugita, but apparently he played Soldier Blue and Howlingstar (I never finished Dragonaut, by the way, feel free to spoil the poor thing for me).
Him, and Mr. Smile Junkie, are the only two new people I’ve seen so far. I don’t know who the hell Mr. Smile Junkie is, except that he’s immortal and has, possibly, the best name after Jacuzzi Splot. And for a while, when Huey (worst name, ever? Can I say that? Can I? His name is Huey!) was talking to Mr. Smile Junkie and they cut to a flashback, I thought for a moment, my God, Huey is a nice man after all. And then I realized, my God, Huey just called his daughter an animal experiment, a pitiful guinea pig and had the most twisted smile of not niceness when he gave her a hug. Huey is not a nice man.
I was also expecting to see Claire and Chane together. Aside from Ennis and Firo, Isaac and Miria, they’re probably my favorite couple walking away from the series. For one, I just can’t help liking Claire, even when I didn’t know he, like every single other character, was a freakish mass murderer! Yay! And for another, that whole train top fight thing, I’ll wait for you, God, that was just perfect. But, apparently, I’d have to wait for that, all Chane did was read the paper.
And Isaac and Miria! And their dominoes! I remember the end of Baccano! and those two being the first thing I saw when the episode opened up just made my day. None of these characters are truly essential to the plot, but the way I see it, you wouldn’t want Baccano! without any of these people. The biggest thing I had going against it in the beginning was how many characters the show boasted. I ran out of fingers the very first episode, for one, I couldn’t even keep up with the years. That, in the end, turned out to be the best part. You start out everywhere and everywhere ends up being right here.
You know what? I liked this episode, exactly what I needed. Baccano! has always been this really light, really easy to watch, with the best comic relief, some pretty sick action and just enough weight for it to have a kickass plot, show. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s always been sort of everywhere, and apparently it’s still everywhere (with Mr. Viral on crack filling in for the sadly absent Ladd Russo). I waited ages for episode 13 to be subbed, I’m going to wait ages (I have a feeling) for 15 and 16. But, damn this show is worth waiting for.
(And, Czeslaw Meyer needs to die, that kid bothers me. God, why is he immortal…)
Springs impressions! You're all probably sick of them by now… · 27 April 2008
Alright, so, I think I’ve watched almost everything I wanted to watch this season. I have to say that I’m watching more shows this season than any other season since I’ve started blogging, which is not saying much, but just means I bit off way too much than I can chew. So, in a very particular order, some really, really hasty impressions of the spring season!
Real Drive
Production I.G turns out some really snappy looking series. This is one of them. The story so far, one episode into the series, is a bit blurry. So, there was this diver, he dove and something catastrophic happened and the world changed and he slept in a coma for fifty years. His scientific researcher buddy, in the meanwhile, was extremely busy. They have this thing called Metal or the Material Network. It’s all near future sci-fi happiness.
Macross Frontier
I know almost nothing about Macross, one might call me a Macross virgin of sorts, but since I have feeling that most bloggers out there are not and are probably going to follow this show closely, I picked it up. First impressions? I wasn’t in total shock and awe, it felt like a pretty standard mecha anime. You can almost replace the fighters with gundams and the aliens with the Covenant from Halo, and it’ll still work. Everything was like eye candy, especially that kabuki princess of a protagonist and the cute little girl with puppy dog ears for hair. Then, there’s that pop idol. My only understanding of Macross is the fact that the aliens hate Japanese pop music, I may or may not be wrong. This Cheryl person, with her pretty lollipop pink hair, I just don’t know what to make off. All that aside, I think I’m in for a pretty good show. (Though, I don’t know half as much about Macross as I do gundam, for a serious comparison, you always have this.)
Kurenai
Kurenai’s opening, let me just put this out there, was so damn weird. Moving right along, with two episodes under my belt, I can’t say that I’m impressed by the series. Some moments were boring and I really haven’t worked up the urge to see the rest of it. However, with all the noise over the blogosphere about it, I guess I’ll stick with it. The characters are pretty enjoyable. The little girl was the real surprise of the show. She’s like the little prizes they used to have in cereal. Murasaki’s ignorance to the way the world actually works is quite amusing, especially when she is reprimanded for not thanking the lady at the bath.
That aside, the only real puzzle so far is Shinkuro’s arm. What is up with that arm? When he takes out the thugs at the bar and the old bartender’s cowering under the table, calling him a monster, there was such a look of pain on his face. For a second, I wondered if Kurenai’ll end up being one of those “I’m a monster, the world won’t accept me, but the tiny loli I babysit might” things.
Toshokan Sensou
Thank god someone picked up this show. It was on the top of my list for show I wanted to see this season and one of the last to be subbed. Toshokan Sensou has a ridiculous story. Library Wars, just the name, Library Wars, they’re fighting over books! It’s a completely plausible idea, though. The whole media act and liberty act things escalade into a full scaled conflict. What I love about these military type anime series is the fact that, with the exception of say Code Geass or GiT, they’re completely isolated to Japan. The rest of the world just sits and watches as Japan tears itself up internally over media. The imagery of Kasahara’s (Yoko, Yoko! Marina Inoue is like an omnipresent seiyuu, she’s everywhere, all the time!) librarian savior reminded a bit of Phoenix Wright. The budding romance between Kasahara and her short Lieutenant, Dojo, is cute.
And just one quick question, what’s with the uniforms? My mother thought I was watching a show on the People’s Liberaton Army. Honestly, those green uniforms do make them look like they rolled out of the PLA. As for the Media Act guys, why do the villains in all shows look like Nazis?
That aside, I was rather overjoyed by how funny and how cute the series was. It lived up to all my expectations while I almost died watching for someone to sub the damn thing. I realized that it was a show about fighting librarians, trained, armed librarians and then I loved it all the more.
Soul Eater
Soul Eater took me a bit by surprise. I found out after three episode that it was a Bones production, and I’m not the only one surprised, and I went “Ehhh?” After all twenty five something episodes of Darker Than Black, the pure shonen fun that Soul Eater (I mean, just look at Black Star) seems to just sprout and make out of thin air is large mental speed bump to get over. Then again, I sure as hell am not complaining. Halfway through the first episode, I realized, Christ, I’m going to love blogging about this and for the first time in a really long time, I felt compelled to make a post not to just save my poor dying blog from utter oblivion, but because Soul Eater was just too hard to resist.
And, as an added bonus, I got to see T. M. Revolution (mind you, I was three meters away from a Japanese pop idol and yes, I screamed like a crazy fangirl, he sang Heart of Sword for god’s sake!) perform the opening theme ‘Resonance’ live. The theme and the music (Taku Iwasaki from Gurren Lagann’s fine work) goes indecently well with the whole tone of the show. It’s like the kid’s version, quite possibly the better version, of D.Gray Man (the anime failed me completely after a good two season. Damn fillers.) with quirkier humor and everything else.
Death the Kid is probably about the funniest character ever, not only does Mamoru Miyano do such a wonderful job voicing Kid, but Kid’s freakish OCD for all things perfect and symmetrical is just hilarious. His twin pistols are probably the only thing not balanced in his life and the moment where he grabs there breasts and wails in despair at their unequal sizes had me falling out of my chair.
Speaking of voice actors, there’s a whole thing going on with Maka’s newbie seiyuu, as Owen pointed out, and I have to agree with him that, while I did note how she sounded like an estranged teenager, I thought it was quite fitting. Of course, the presence of one of my favorite seiyuus, Toru Ohkawa (Roy Mustang! More fangirl screaming!) as Death Scythe, Maka’s hilariously melodramatic father, is priceless.
Apparently, the first three episodes made up the prologue and the real story begins thereafter, I’m curious to see what the real story is. The fact that Black Star has collected no eggs so far, that Maka and Soul lost all of their eggs and that Kid, by the end of episode, has no eggs either probably that for the majority of the 50 episode show, they might either 1) spend all of their time collecting the eggs; 2) they do a time skip; 3) I’m completely wrong either way!
Before the season started, I really wasn’t planning on watch Soul Eater. I read the manga and it felt hopelessly generic, but the anime blew me out of the water. I’m not quite sure if I’m just jumping the bandwagon on this one, or maybe it’s because I like Bones, or maybe it’s because I’m still a sucker for shonen, but Soul Eater is a definite must watch, even if it is 50 episodes long.
Kaiba
Kaiba, being what it is, comes highly recommend. I must admit that the animation style caught me a little off guard, even though I was fully prepared for something extraordinary and unconventional. The whole thing felt a bit like Samurai Jack, which really surprised me. It had that eerie sci-fi feel and I was incredibly creeped out by all of it.
Kaiba is a show that needs to be picked apart delicately to be truly understood and enjoyed. So, correct me if I’m wrong, there’s the age old divide between the rich and the poor. The rich live above the clouds and their only interaction with the poor is when they hunt for new bodies. Apparently, people, if you can call them that, can switch bodies. Their entire conscience exists on a little triangular cone (that reminds me so much of Simon’s drill from Gurren Lagann), little flashdrives that carry their personality, their memories and whatever else have you. The protagonist, with a glaring hole in his chest, a locket with a picture of a girl and a strange, triangular symbol on his stomach and no memory is probably just as confused and lost as I am at this point.
The show takes time and effort to expose much of this world to us as possible, in the form of village people gathering to find a kid’s brother, a strange floating, rotating family of geometrically shaped heads and a bickering couple. I found that whole scene, when they were looking for the brother’s memory chip (what are those little things called anyway?) to be quite humorous. People are just like data, your body isn’t really your body, it’s just a vehicle. If your wife can come home as a hippo or a snake, then, well, yeah…There’s also Popo (Romi Paku right there), who divulges another chunk of back story. And the creepy squid things that eat people, and a one eyed bird thing, and, and, and!
I’ve only seen the first episode, I can’t say much at the moment. But I’m going to say that Kaiba is going to be one hell of a sci-fi series. It feels like a combination of all good things about science fiction with cute, cuddly, loose and fluid aesthetics, which adds to the creepiness of everything.
Code Geass R2
Well, well, well, where do I start?
Firstly, the Chinese people, the Chinese people, where the hell did the Chinese people come from? I mean, for one, the representation of the English in Geass was already terrible, and now the Chinese are dragged in as well.
Secondly, Knight of Rounds? Really? Really? You’re going to shove more characters into the show with a cast of a billion already? More, need I say, gorgeous but completely superfluous CLAMP characters that are all going to probably end up dead in the water after this season? More ridiculous names and titles that I won’t remember? And, who the hell is that blond kid with the pretty blue eyes? They all have matching cloaks of varying color, they all apparently watch the news together. But since when did Code Geass turn into Bleach without the shinigamis and with mechs?
Thirdly, why does everyone have a Geass now? You know, the Geass power used to be special, but now the emperor has it and his ridiculous trap of a fake brother has it. Who doesn’t have it? Buy two, get one free deal on freakish alien powers that make pretty lights dance in your eye!
Fourthly, Suzaku’s character is really starting to annoy me. He went from being a nice kid, to a lunatic depressed widow, to turning in his best friend of a promotion and now he’s settled quite nicely in the role of being the Emperor’s cute, little bitch with a fancy mech.
Fifthly, (now, that just sounds odd) why did they do that memory thing? It scared me to pieces! It felt like the show was starting all over again. Zero is dead, the Black Knights are like three people now plus C.C. and Kallen is dressed up in a bunny suit? Thankfully, after a very season one-esque meeting between C.C. and Lelouch, everything’s back on track.
Lastly, I have to commend Sunrise, really, for a not so bad start of the second season. I still refuse to jump the Code Geass bandwagon and hail it as some sort of a brilliant mecha series, or a brilliant any kind of series, but I will admit, it’s getting pretty good. Now, to downloading the fourth episode…
I also watched Monochrome Factor and Crystal Blaze. Nothing to talk about there, unfortunately. Kanokon and Neo Angelique are on my list of possible things to watch later, I just can’t pass up the bishies.
Satoshi Kon – Why are you so good? · 27 April 2008
After ages of having them recommended to me, and after ages of putting them off, I finally watched Paprika, Tokyo Godfathers and Millennium Actress, in that order. I officially hate Satoshi Kon because he’s just way too good at what he does. It’s like everything he touches, everything that he ever makes is a masterpiece. Watching all three of them in a row is like being continuously smacked with large bricks, but they’re very good bricks. And after all of that, you just sorta have to wonder, where the hell do people like him come from?
I watched Paprika, his most recent film, first. It wasn’t such a good torrent, halfway through the thing the audio suddenly died, revived itself and was painfully off for the latter half of the movie. And there was a large blurry streak going across the top of the screen that really bothered the hell out of me. Of course, it doesn’t really matter what condition the poor thing comes in, a good movie is a good movie no matter how you look at it.
Paprika is one of those near future things, where technology isn’t that advanced yet, but it’s getting there. The whole thing is about dreams, which gives him the freedom to do all the crazy, one step short of a total mindfuck things he likes to do, and it’s pretty much, in a word, awesome. Tokyo Godfathers was one hell of a roller coaster ride and Millennium Actress, which I watched at three in the morning, I was barely awake. I was impressed nonetheless with all three.
Really, I feel less compelled to blab about Paprika and Millennium Actress than Tokyo Godfathers, which was my favorite of the three. What Tokyo Godfathers had, or so it seemed to me, was a lot of heart. Something nice, friendly and warm that neither Paprika nor Millennium Actress. The latter two, actually perhaps all three, felt like flamboyant exercises in madness, pure, entertaining madness.
Dancing electronics? That insane music they play while they parade around the city? Paprika turned into something of a chaotic nightmare, strangely reminiscent of Paranoia Agent, in the end. The one problem, the mindfuck ending aside, was how flat Paprika and Atsuko felt. There were certain lines, certain things they did, that just didn’t feel honest to their character. One second she’s yelling at Tokita for how immature he is, and the next she’s risking her own life to save his, and then they get married? What did I miss? And, can I just say that the director is creepy, immensely, immensely creepy? Not Satoshi Kon, but the old guy in the wheelchair. His sudden involvement took me completely by surprise, well not completely, but I didn’t see it coming.
As for Millennium Actress, well, maybe because I wasn’t awake for most of it, but it was like being hit by a bullet train of a story and when the credits start rolling, you’re still reeling from everything’s that happened. I must admit the story was a real treat, another reason why Satoshi Kon is just too good, blending her life and the interview into her movies.
According to Wiki (apparently, I get everything off Wiki), the inspiration behind Tokyo Godfathers came from a John Wayne film. It’s also worth noting that Keiko Nobumoto, yet another other genius responsible for Bebop and Wolf’s rain, had a hand in this.
Kon has a way of weaving incredibly intricate stories, demonstrated in all three of the films, but especially evident in Tokyo Godfathers. He didn’t waste a scene, or a character or anything. Anything and everything was connected, there was a method behind all of his coincidental and serendipitous madness from the start. The idea was something so uncanny that it worked. A homeless bum, a drag queen and a teenage runaway finds an abandoned baby on Christmas eve. And everything just starts from there.
Of course, the drag queen writes haikus, the girl stabbed her father and the bum is a gambler who left his family, rather, his family left him. There’s something deeply tragic about their lives, but it’s masked by this incredible sense of humor the movie carries. Hana’s facial expressions are absolutely priceless, every expression is exaggerated. When the pieces of the puzzle start falling into place, when they all suddenly look at each other and realize, just as I do, that my god, that’s Gin’s daughter, or my god, they just gave the baby back to the thief, it’s wonderful.
One of the best scenes is when they’re staying at a rundown house and Miyuki runs out to go shopping, she realizes that they’re living in Sachiko’s house and as all three of them stare blankly from the photo back to the house, Gin pulls out the keys and walks in through the front door, one of the few things left standing, and goes (or, so the subtitles inform me) “Honey, I’m home.” Then, the door collapses. Moments like that really set this movie apart from the other two. Maybe that’s Nobumoto’s magic right there, or the combination of both of their creative insane awesomeness, but there was something just so pleasant and heartwarming to the whole thing.
Kon has a thing for really abrupt endings, which works in some situations, but in the wrong context just feels strange. In retrospect, they fit in quite perfectly with his quick paced storytelling. Before I gave it much thought, the ending to Tokyo Godfathers kind of irked me. Miyuki sees her father, all of them go “Ehhh?” and it just ends, it almost felt inconclusive, and I usually make a big fuss about inconclusive endings. But, then, it felt kind of good, like the story was going to continue and that the whole baby fiasco was over, but there’s more to it.
That last scene, which really reminded me of Jackie Chan in Rush Hour, when Hana and the baby are falling and this seemingly miraculous gust wind saves them, and the sun suddenly rises and they’re all just watching, maybe everyone’s just looking for a second chance, a new start, maybe everyone, like Sachiko is looking to be reborn, maybe everyone’s just looking to fix all the things that are wrong in their lives, but then, you can’t really fix anything and you just have to keep on walking.
The movie was just such a riot, an ambulance crashes into the market where they were just seconds ago, Gin’s riding a stolen bicycle chasing after Sachiko in a stolen truck, and Hana and Miyuki are in a cab (that poor cab driver) and they’re all chasing after the baby. I’m really tempted to say that there’s just a little bit of Bebop in there, but my only justification is Nobumoto’s involvement. It was just one hell of a story and one hell of a movie.
I’m not saying that the other two movies were lesser movies because they didn’t leave me with a warm and fuzzy feeling at the end of the day. Rather, that I generally tend to gravitate towards the warm and fuzzy movies emotionally. If you’ve known me long enough, warm and fuzzy things are what I live for, and hot guys, guns and mecha. All of his films are lighthearted, with extraordinarily deep undertones. It’s like a really warm and delicious muffin, with a lot of icing and a lot of sprinkles that you have to work through to get to the actual muffin.
Well, now that I got this finally out of my system, when people ask, I can finally say, “Damn right, I watched all of them (with the exception of Perfect Blue)!” Watching films is whole different experience, especially stand alones that aren’t tie-ins to a series. For one, they pay enough attention to the animation so you don’t end up charting animation quality over time and having it look like a sine curve. All of his stuff was done by Madhouse, a powerhouse studio responsible for Claymore, Death Note and the MapleStory anime that I didn’t fully appreciate till now, forgive my ignorance.
It seems that lately all I’ve been doing is just plowing through movie after movie. I started watching Elfen Lied and Serial Experiments Lain, more of those ubiquitous anime series that’ve reached America but have completely escaped my attention. Not to mention, all of the new spring season shows that I started watching but haven’t blogged about….But, it’s a been a nice break.
And, as for why is Satoshi Kon just so damn good? In the words of one of my friends, it’s imagination. Looking at it now, I may or may not disagree with that observation. It’s imagination, and then maybe a little more of something else.
Grave of the Fireflies · 24 April 2008
It’s been a really long time since I’ve tried making a post about anything. The spring season just started, I’m watching a little more than half a dozen shows and just downloading anime left and right, including an entire batch of Satoshi Kon films that I haven’t seen (Paprika, Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress) and then I remembered, I’ve been meaning to watch Grave of the Fireflies, one of those canonical anime movies, for the longest time. What better than time than now, when I have three school projects overdue, to finally watch it.
So, where do I start? I have so much to say, yet nothing at all. Someone a really long time ago told me Grave of the Fireflies was a sad movie. After watching it, I sorta went, “Bummer.” and just cried and cried and cried. You kind of just sit there and watch, and you know what’s coming, you know that Setsuko is going to die, you already know that Seita is dead, in fact, it’s the first thing that happens. When the man, I have no idea what to call him, with the mop flings the empty can of fruit drops into the field and Seita’s spirit picks it up and gives Setsuko one, I was ready to weep. Just that one scene, accompanied with such heartbreaking music, I was ready to just cry about five minutes into the movie.
That’s perhaps the most painful thing about the movie, you already know exactly what’s going to happen, you just have to watch. Setsuko’s voice is so innocent, her mellifluous cries of joy to her wailing sobs, screaming for her mother covers such a range of human emotion. Tucked in there, between all the death, the fires, the grief and pain, are these moments, these incredible moments between Setsuko and Seita. When they’re taking a bath together, when they’re moving away from their aunt, ferrying their things from the house to the shelter, when they’re watching fireflies in the cave, they were just the sweetest things. But that feeling, that feeling of doomed inevitability, hung over everything like American bombers carpeting the cities with bombs, like the smoke rising from the smoldering remains of their home. It was just really, really damn painful because you knew they were going to die and you couldn’t do a damn thing about it!
Their aunt, their aunt was a terrible person. There was something about her that really irked me. Her whole attitude towards Seita and Setsuko made me want to punch her. The whole you don’t do anything for the war effort, the whole you’re a lazy slug thing, god, I wanted to rip off her head! It was their mother’s kimonos you sold for the rice! I’m tempted to say that it’s her negligence that got them killed in the end, but it’s also that little bit of pride on Seita and Setsuko’s behalf. The old farmer urging to go back to their aunt and just deal with it is completely ignored and instead, Seita resorts to stealing.
Everything that happens just exposes mankind at its worst, because no one, no one really bothered to stop and help these kids. There was a war going, everyone thought of saving themselves, and that’s completely understandable. There’s something tragic about all of it, about their lives, about our lives and about all the little things we do. I, admittedly, wouldn’t have stop to help them either and that’s the worst part. In the end, when the family living across from the shelter returns home, safe and sound, having a home to return to, for one, they don’t care that Seita and Setsuko ever lived in the those shelters. In fact, that one thought that ran through my head was that they might think the shelters marred their beautiful view.
It’s really odd, but every time I so much as even look at rice, I’m going to think of Setsuko. Everything anybody does is too little, too late. That shot of the rice and eggs, sitting in the rain, there are just things, and I emphasize things, about this movies that’s going to haunt me. I don’t even have words for it anymore, just things in this movie, they just clump together like the fruit drops sitting at the bottom of the tin can and every once in a while one clinks out and you realize, my god, you’re human.
In the words of Roger Ebert, who surprisingly reviewed this movie as well, “Yes, it’s a cartoon, and the kids have eyes like saucers, but it belongs on any list of the greatest war films ever made.” I’m going to add that it belongs on the list of not only the greatest war films, but the greatest films in general. The thing that always gets me the most is, strangely enough, sometimes anime comes closer to anything even remotely human than we give it credit for.
Anime is bad for me, watching Gundam 00 24 when I should've been working… · 24 March 2008
It’s quite fitting, actually, that my first post since moving in is Gundam 00-centric, I just having built an Exia model and all, despite how tragically I messed up. I’m a beginner, cut me some slack, I was just happy nipping the little pieces of the runners and having them snap together. It’s three in the morning and realistically I should be in bed, but, somewhere between cramming for physics and history, I randomly decided to watch G00 24.
I’m not really sure what to make of the show anymore. It’s like one of those summer blockbusters that you walk away from feeling pretty good because it had action, it had, or attempted to have, minimal drama, it had the good guys win in the end despite innumerable odds, sorta like the anime Die Hard or Lethal Weapon. You know it’s not going to win an Oscar, or even a Golden Globe, but there’s a part of me that indulges in the flash and bangs and sappy character deaths. Speaking of which, did you notice that in the span of two episodes half the cast just dies?
Let’s start with Lockon Stratos. The mystery behind his laughable name is finally revealed in the opening flashback of episodes twenty four, I’m the man that can snipe you from the stratosphere, or something along those lines. He’s my personal favorite of the bunch, as one of friends put it, the relatively rational one of the group. He’s the G00 equivalent of Duo, with the appropriate humor and good looks. Except Duo didn’t die in the end. Seeing him with the eye patch reminded of me of the post-anime Roy Mustang, both looked equally awkward with half their face hidden behind a patch. You know, I was honestly incredibly sad. I built a Dynames model, too. In fact, his gundam was probably the first gundam model I ever assembled. I took for granted that major characters don’t die no matter how many times they try. Hearing that Haro chant “Lockon! Lockon!” was like a slap in the face, Lockon Stratos is dead, Lockon Stratos is dead.
Moving on to episode 24, the death count goes up. Not only does Alex Corner show up with the strangest looking mobile armor, all decked out in gold and what not, but he has the need to blast the living day lights out of the Ptolemy and in the process killing Chris and Lichty. I actual felt tears coming. They had me hook, line and sinker on this one. They never really kill anyone immediately, they make their deaths drawn out, until all the emotional dialog, crying and screaming passes over and then whatever piece of hardware is floating by, on the verge of exploding, explodes. The sad thing is, just moments before, when Chris, Lichty and Feldt were talking, the thought that Christ and Lichty were a cute couple ran through my head.
My only question is: what now? With one episode left to go and a rumored second season (or is it just me?), with Lockon dead, Virtue and Kyrios happly incapacitated, what the hell is going to happen now? I caught some spoiler flak while browsing through gunpla models, Exia and the GN arms combine and turn into, what looked to me, like that oyster Pokemon, and following that train of thought, with Trans Am and all, is it going to blow Alex Corner to hell. (The one thing that you have to love, or at least I love, abot G00 is that Lockon got his revenge. I was just trying to draw a comparison between Claymore and G00 when I realize, gee, Clare never got her revenge.)
Setsuna is the title of the last episode and I’m guessing everything, everything is in his hands. Their existence is to live, there is no God. In world like this, there certainly is no God, Chris and Lichty, Lockon, that Crossroad reporter, Louis, everyone, everyone’s life seems to be marred in one way or another beyond repair by a godless world. I beg you, change the world. I never understood the change the world bit. How are some toy robots with some fancy light up gimmick supposed to change the world? I’m just not feeling it. Maybe that’s what it’s supposed to be, maybe it’s all just futile and whatever they struggle for isn’t going to do anything. Maybe Setsuna will discover a new truth, because G00 isn’t like Gurren Lagann, it’s not even like Gundam Wing, it’s a pragmatic, albeit somewhat naive, take on the world. Something along the lines of this here is the real world, stuff happens, deal with it, move on. Live.
Moving…..(in real life) · 2 March 2008
Due to unforeseen circumstances, I shall be without internet for the next week or two while we move to our new apartment. It is not by my own design that I have been left stranded at my mother’s friends house with faltering internet access and no way to watch anything. I’m, on one hand, anxious to catch up on the latest episodes, and on the other, not looking forward to my ever increasing backlog. In any case, I’ll return to my sporadic and non-existent blogging habits, someday…soon. Moving sucks.