Hicks Posted January 20, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 20, 2011 Paprika(2006 movie)This was definitely an oddball of a movie. But then since it involved technology intruding into dreams, I guess "weird" is to be expected.Taking place in the near future, a scientific team has developed a device capable of monitoring and recording a patient's dream. But it doesn't stop there, as apparently at least one psychologist can take on a dream persona and actually help people through their dreams. Again, all well and good until the devices get stolen. From that point on it becomes more of a "science gone mad" movie that I can't help but nit-pick the hell out of, mostly because of the improbability of what the movie ends up suggesting that technology, however new and amazing, can do.At first it seemed more legitimate, in that some of the head doctors working on the project were losing control of their conscious mind over to a dream, because at this point it was suggested that it happened as a result of having been hooked up to the machine. It still seems plausible there, but where it gets implausible and I lose my willing sense of disbelief is when the movie suggests this device, called the DC Mini, can somehow remotely enter peoples' minds and mess them up. But wait, it gets worse, because later on in the movie, dreams have somehow manifested in the real world. At first I thought this was simply a dream within a dream, but no, the movie tells us that dreams have in fact invaded reality.The whole dream within a dream thing has been done a lot of times before, usually to either wax poetic about the nature of reality, or to philosophize about the nature of dreams vs. the nature of reality. I'm sure this movie was still trying to do that, but I just didn't quite go along for the wild ride this time. While it would still mess with a person's mind if they kept waking up only to find that they were still dreaming, having dreams somehow magically manifest in reality kind of ruins it. Plus, as you can tell, I've really gotten hung up on this, because what started out as science fiction became fantasy. The story about how a new technology could effect humanity, in this case through the abuse of a megalomaniac (who looks a lot like Patrick Stewart's Professor X), just got lost in a jumble of everyone's dream getting mixed together and marching through Tokyo despite there being no way a device made to have the human subconscious interact with a computer should be able to accomplish this.Well, it wasn't a horrible movie or anything, it just wasn't very good. My hang-up aside, there wasn't a whole lot that actually happened. I mean, a fat guy got a hot chick (who happened to be his boss) and a cop got over a recurring nightmare, but that's about it. Mostly this movie was just eye candy, showing us something weird and throwing in some fan service here and there for good measure. There was no real depth, though, at least not that I could see.Pretty much the same thing goes for the characters. Pretty much all of them were bland, and we never really got to learn much about them, other than the shocker that the hot psychologist who is repulsed by the morbidly obese guy is actually in love with him. Well, I guess that was supposed to be shocking, but really it just didn't make a lot of sense because of the part where she was openly disgusted by his appearance and his habits, as most people probably would be, brilliant scientist or not. Actually the most interesting character in this movie was the detective whose dream we start out in, Detective Konakawa Toshimi. He's also about the only one who goes through any kind of growth, finally getting over his recurring nightmare and his completely unreasonable fear/hatred of movies. And then there's the irony of how he ended up playing out the character he played in a student film, in which he played the part of a detective. Well, the movie explains it a bit better than I do, but there's a connection to his dream and what's going on in his life during the movie. Anyway, I actually ended up being a bit disappointed with this movie. I was hoping for something that was a bit more straight-up sci-fi and got a flashy fantasy movie instead. As I already said, that's not to say that it's bad, it's just not very good either. I guess if you have a spare hour and a half this might be a good time-waster. 6/10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hicks Posted January 22, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 22, 2011 The Silent Service(Single episode OVA)In some ways I could almost see this as a movie in the same vein as The Hunt for Red October, and to its credit, it shows submarine warfare fairly realistically. I just can't get over the huge axe this OVA had to grind. It's hugely obvious that whoever wrote this is not a fan of the United States and hates the fact that Japan is bound by treaty to limit itself militarily. Now I could go on a brief rant about how it's basically Japan's own fault for starting WWII in the Pacific, but that would be a waste of time. One might argue that with all the time that's past (though this takes place in the late 1980s), that everyone should probably be over that and the treaty could probably go by the wayside, but this OVA fails completely to make that kind of an argument. Instead it argues that the United States is completely made up of bastards who will violate the treaty with Japan at the drop of a hat and declare war on Japan over one submarine. While it's certainly true that the US Government has a history of going back on its treaties (*cough*Black Hills*cough*), I doubt the treaty it has with Japan would be dropped so quickly, especially since the US has an interest in maintaining its bases there so it can deploy its military to anywhere in the world on short notice, and at the time this OVA was made, that was especially important given tensions with the Soviet Union. And that's about as far as I'm going to get into that.As far as the actual story goes, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The thing starts out with an entire submarine crew faking its own death. Why? Well because there's a secret new submarine they have to crew, that's why. How nice that the entire crew went along with it. Of course it's pretty short-sighted since the crew will eventually have to resurface, since the whole point of this was that the US and Japan had jointly developed a nuclear attack submarine (basically an improved Los Angeles class) with the idea that it would become part of Japan's navy. So unless they're planning on killing this entire crew, wouldn't it have just been easier to look like they were off on some secret mission on their original submarine instead of sinking it and faking the crew's deaths? And I hate to say it, but the US would never develop a top-of-the-line submarine and then just hand it over to another country's crew, no matter how tight we are with said country. But that's pretty much the only way this story can work, because without an uber-sub that can give its captain such a huge advantage over the sub-hunting capabilities of the US Navy to the point he can even show off while he's doing it, they would just get blown away and the story would have to be a lot different, if not just end.Apparently whoever wrote this was a bit worried about losing the audience, though, since they didn't make this an act of the Japanese government. Instead, the captain pulls a Marco Ramius and defects, only instead of to another country he declares the submarine an independent nation and says he has a nuclear weapon on board. Again, how nice that the entire crew is with him on this. Literally the only person on board to give him even intellectual opposition is the American observer/advisor who was on board with them when they decided to show the fact that they'd gone rogue by firing on some other American submarines. The OVA also makes a show of having the Japanese government agonize over the idea of actually supporting this mutinous captain or not, despite the fact that the guy is as much a traitor to Japan as he is a backstabber to the US. There is a lot of convoluted reasoning put forward to support this, and really this is helped along by having the US act completely unreasonable. They even have the president declare war on Japan, even though he can't actually do that, and the only warfare that's happening is between the US Pacific Fleet and the rogue submarine. Oh, that and the JMDF ships that are stupid enough to try defending said rogue submarine. And that's where the story just sort of ends. There's a subplot involving another Japanese captain who's always been a rival of the rogue captain, but that never ends up really going anywhere either. This is probably because the manga this OVA was based on wasn't finished yet, and I'm going to guess that given the story content, no one felt like finishing this OVA series. Can't say I blame them all that much. 1/10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hicks Posted January 23, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2011 Slayers(26 episode series)While not a horrible anime series, it definitely isn't good. This is more one of those boring shows that tries to be funny and occasionally manages to be, kind of like Ah! My Goddess, only without a group like the Motor Club to make things slightly interesting. I can honestly say that after a few episodes I would have given up on this series after only a few episodes. But as it turns out, I'm the sound guy for the local anime club, and this was one of the series they elected to watch this semester.Now to be fair, this series does have its moments where it actually succeeds at being funny, whether intentionally or not. It's obvious that this series doesn't take itself entirely seriously, and it frequently goes over the top with things and breaks the fourth wall. The thing is, a lot of the things that are supposed to be funny, like say main character Lina Inverse's eating habits, generally aren't. There are also a few other moments that lend themselves very well to being riffed and just generally being easy to make fun of. Bad voice acting was one of those things, and interjecting "so when do I get paid?" after an example of it was a fairly easy way to get a few laughs. Then there was a fight toward the end of the series that happened to fit very well with this YTMND, which my friends and I quoted over and over during said fight scene. You'll probably have had to have seen this series to know what I'm talking about, so if you haven't, don't worry if you don't get this joke because frankly it isn't worth it to watch just to find out. Unfortunately, for the most part this series was just plain boring. Usually this was when the series actually got into its plot, which was a very typical quest plot for what was a very typical medieval magic fantasy story. This is actually one of the things I think of when I think "generic anime," mostly because it seems like there are a lot of them, which I hope to never ever watch. There's some magical big bad who wants to and some random hero(ine) with some kind of special skill slowly gathers up allies and goes on side-quests to gain those allies as well as experience. And since this one tries to be funny most of the time, hijinks ensue. Oh, and they end up fighting the big bad twice.I have to say that I was relieved when this show was finally over. It seemed like it wasn't going to for a while, like it would just keep on going around in circles, doing the same tired old crap over and over again. I have to wonder if part of the problem isn't that this series might not have been aimed at a younger audience. I mean, there were more mature jokes in there, but that could have just been parental bonuses. Either way, the humor tended to be rather childish and I tired of it rather quickly thanks to the same types of bad jokes being done constantly.Now this isn't the most horrible anime I've seen, but it is one of the most boring ones. Chobits still has it beat there, as well as in the "jokes that aren't funny" category, but not by a whole lot. 1/10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hicks Posted January 24, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 24, 2011 Submarine 707R(2 episode OVA)I'm not really sure if I can make much sense out of this one. It had a lot of action, but not a whole lot of substance, I'm afraid. That actually isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in this case it isn't really a good thing, either.The best I can figure, the bad guy, Admiral Red, is going around blowing everyone out of the water because he's convinced humanity is polluting and exploiting the oceans. The blowing people up part then doesn't make a lot of sense because, as he even admits himself, he is helping to pollute the oceans with all the junk from the ships he's blowing up. He also calls a secret underwater base home, despite thinking humans shouldn't be out in the ocean, so maybe I just missed something there... Or maybe not. Who knows? The only permanent residents there that I could tell were Red's wife and 4 daughters, who I'm convinced are only there in the hopes that we'll actually feel some kind of sympathy when the inevitable happens.This anime definitely doesn't try to be very realistic, what with the odd-shaped submarines and the city-sized aircraft carriers that can also submerge, but really the best part is the tiny 707, which is way bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. So who is driving this thing? Captain Hayami, who's fat and also has a wife and daughter. Actually the best part is how Admiral Red is able to take out entire fleets of high-tech ships and submarines sent after him, but the rickety old 707 is able to not only take on his high-tech UX submarine, but actually sink him and all the subs he'd recruited to help him.Okay, so it's not "realistic", what about the story and the characters? Well, it tries. It tries to make us like Captain Hayami and his family. It tries to make us like a trio of young cadets that joins the crew (including one that wears a dog collar and often a leash with it) It tries to make us feel some sympathy for Admiral Red and his family, instead of just seeing him as batshit insane. It tries to hide the fact that its story is practically non-existant. It tries.Okay, but is it fun? Well, sort of. I have to admit that I liked some of the ship designs, even if they weren't particularly hydrodynamic. I also have to admit that it managed to be a little fun, but at the same time it also tended to get tedious. Even if this had just been a space show it felt like it wanted to be, I doubt it would have been all that much fun or interesting.Overall, while this was a little interesting to watch early on, mainly because of the action, by the time the second episode started it actually had gotten a little stale. Introducing us to the families of the protagonist and the antagonist didn't really do anything story-wise either, so it probably would've been better if they'd been left out or just barely mentioned. It tried, but I just couldn't get into it. 3/10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hicks Posted January 25, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 25, 2011 Tide-Line Blue(13 episode series)This was a thoroughly enjoyable series to watch, balancing action and a coherent plot that kept me interested enough to watch the next episode. Now, it has a fairly familiar storyline in that most of Earth's surface has been flooded, making most everything take place on or under the ocean, but in this case it's caused by some unknown ecological disaster rather than a madman. While it may have been caused by some kind of "science gone wrong" experiment, no one knows and as far as the plot is concerned, it doesn't matter. Here the conflict is mainly between the New United Nations and the submarine USS Ulysses, commanded by a rogue former US Navy Captain. While they both agree that what's left of the world needs to be united if humanity is to regain anything of its former level of civilization, Aoi, the secretary general of the New United Nations, thinks that this can be accomplished through diplomacy, and Gould, the disillusioned captain of Ulysses thinks the only way to bring peace to the world is through military force.Naturally, the anime doesn't really focus much on these characters, and instead focuses on a teen-aged boy named Keel, who wants to hook up with a girl who's already knocked up named Isla. Both of them are lucky enough to live on an island that just happened to be were a massive nuclear-powered aircraft carrier washed up, so they have basically limitless power. Of course this carrier is also the meeting place of the New United Nations, and Gould has gotten to the point that he actually attacks the NUN at one of its meetings. Being the gentleman he is, he sends his adjutant to formally declare war first. As it turns out this is Teen, twin brother of Keel.The island is devastated by the Ulysses's attack, forcing most of the inhabitants to evacuate because it looks like the carrier's reactor might melt down and spew radiation everywhere. Naturally this is when Isla goes into labor and hijinks ensue when Teen shows up to help a clueless Keel deliver the baby. He also gives Keel his badge and lets him know about the ride he'd planned to take out of there, back to his ship. Teen is then captured, and Keel with Isla and child in tow make it to the ride, which turns out to be a mini-sub from the Ulysses.The series then divides its attention between Teen and Keel, two brothers separated when their evacuation from a space station goes wrong. The space station was supposed to have a pretty mundane mission originally, which I guess is why there's an entire family on it. When the "Eden's Hammer" disaster happens, the space station is damaged and will eventually fall out of orbit, so the father decides to stay on board to complete the new, important mission of mapping Earth's new surface, oceans, and remaining resources, while the mother and twin brothers are evacuated to the surface. Apparently things don't go well and as far as Keel knows, his mother and brother are both killed. As it turned out only the mother was killed, and Teen was rescued by Gould at about the same time he took on a young girl about the same age.There is some interesting character development and interaction while everything goes on, but mostly it's a kind of coming of age story for Keel. No one really stays the same, though. Naturally there's a lot of focus on action, but this doesn't drag down the story, which manages to keep a fairly consistent plot going. It even manages to depict submarine and anti-submarine warfare fairly realistically for an anime. Probably the only place it goes overboard is with the comedy, which really only does so because of the inclusion of an ostrich which is only there for comedy relief, and somehow gets dragged along everywhere. Some of the characters even complain about it, yet they keep dragging it with them everywhere, so it just ends up being one big unfunny joke. Other than that this was a pretty good series. They even made the bad guy fairly sympathetic, though I think they might have been going a bit far with how everything just kind of works out in the end.I would definitely recommend this series, and in fact I'm adding it to my list at the beginning of the thread. 9/10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Koby Posted January 25, 2011 Report Share Posted January 25, 2011 After reading your review of Tide-Line Blue. It made me want to go check it out =P So I'll probably be downloading it soon. Anyways after looking up more about it, I find out it's actually a 12 episode series, not 13 as you stated. The 13th episode is a DVD only 'special' full-length episode.http://myanimelist.net/anime/473/Tide-Line_Bluehttp://myanimelist.net/anime/1001/Tide-Line_Blue_Special Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hicks Posted January 26, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 26, 2011 I still count stuff like that as an episode, though. I did the same with a couple other series, too. And to be fair Wiki tends to do the same thing, though in this case I didn't even notice until you'd said something that the last episode was actually techncially an OVA. I certainly didn't notice while I was watching it.Yukikaze(5 episode OVA)This is one of the better shows I've watched. While it's superficially about humans fighting it out with aliens and flying cool airplanes that aren't very aerodynamic, it actually touches on a few other things that are actually somewhat contemporary. The most obvious one is how this conflict is treated on the home front. Initially, when a mysterious portal forms in Antarctica and some aliens (eventually called the JAM) randomly attack an Antarctic research base, people all over the world are shocked and the world rises up to respond against this new threat. The UN manages to pull together and coordinate a military response that successfully pushes the alien invaders back through their portal. A special military force is then assembled to take the fight to the other side of the portal, in order to keep the aliens from ever making it back to Earth, or so the story goes (and yeah, it's obvious where they were going with that, too). But after the war moves to the other side of the portal and is no longer obviously visible, people start pretending that the war never even existed, to the point that when an author writes a book about the ongoing war, it's popular and sells a lot of copies, because everyone says it's a well thought out science fiction novel. When some pilots from the other side of the portal briefly reappear on Earth, they're treated somewhat coldly by the naval force gathered to keep an eye on the portal, even though these pilots just saved a lot of their asses. In other words no one wants the conflict to be there anymore, so much so that they pretend it doesn't exist, and they shun any reminders that it does. Fortunately at least some of them manage to pull their heads out of their asses, but by then the JAM are stepping things up.The other contemporary issue touched on is the introduction of AI controlled combat aircraft. Not everyone is sold on the idea, and in fact the weaknesses of AI-controlled aircraft are shown quite often. However, the series focuses on the idea of a pilot and an AI developing a kind of bond that makes the both of them together practically unbeatable. The suggestion seems to be that we shouldn't be afraid of technology, but rather than make it do everything itself, we should develop a kind of symbiotic relationship with it.For me, though, the interesting part was the conflict with the JAM. They were tough to beat as it was, but during the part of the conflict that the OVA covers, they've developed some new strategies which made things a bit more interesting. Basically this involved the same old cliché of "conquered from within", because as we find out, the JAM have figured out how to imitate humans and their aircraft. This is also the point where things tend to get a bit confusing, because not only is it hard to find out who may have been replaced with an alien, but the show seems to skip around a bit and it almost feels like I missed something at a few points. In one instance it appears that the main character, Lt. Fukai, his friend, Maj. Bukhar, and the fighter they're flying in (Yukikaze) have been replaced by copies, since they are attacked and it appears beaten ... except they weren't, apparently.There's plenty of action, and it's all quite visually interesting. They even managed not to go completely overboard with things like having impossible missile barrages ... at least until the end. The mad dash back to the portal so all the remaining humans can escape and close the portal behind them is naturally the biggest battle, but this is also where things tend to go way over the top, at least as far as the attacking JAM forces. Mostly this comes from the fact that the writers have essentially set the JAM up so that they are impossible to beat, because they have millions of these tiny aircraft that can literally swarm the human aircraft and rip them to shreds. Yet somehow the humans win, spontaneously developing some new laser weapons, just because, apparently. I'd say the ending is somewhat unsatisfying because of that, and because the short epilogue doesn't really do justice to the massive battle, it just sort of ends and wraps everything up quickly without telling us much.As for the characters, none of them really stood out that much. Lt. Fukai and his plane, Yukikaze, are both stereotypically "mysterious". At points both of them come out a little, the plane even admitting to being afraid a couple of times, but for the most part they are stoic, pragmatic, and do pretty much whatever they want while getting away with all of it because they are just so awesome at killing aliens. Hell, they even figure out that the JAM are replacing humans for everyone so the plan we see come into fruition at the end of the OVA can be developed. Major Bukhar is supposed to be a kind of buddy commander to Fukai, I think, but they tend to go over the top with him. At one point he's actually pretty pathetic. It was just hard to like him at all because he tended to either be a whiny loser or a prick. Pretty much all the other characters were just kind of weird and until the end kind of hard to figure out.Probably the most interesting "character" was the JAM. Their nature and purpose was always shrouded in mystery, and while the human characters made some guesses about them, the JAM are simply left as being the mysterious creatures (or creature) that they (or it) are. The idea that the entire planet and all of the JAM were in fact one single entity was especially intriguing to me, as was the idea that the war was just its way of studying humanity and testing itself.Overall it's pretty fair to say that I was fairly impressed by this OVA. It's not perfect by any means, but it's still pretty good and I'd definitely recommend it. 9/10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FloodControl½ Posted January 26, 2011 Report Share Posted January 26, 2011 nice reviews i'll bookmark this thread and refer to it whenever i run out of anime 2 watch. do your best and tY! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hicks Posted January 27, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 27, 2011 Cool, thanks. Zipang(26 episode series)This series was both good and frustrating, frustrating mostly because of how it ended.The story revolves around a modern Aegis destroyer named Mirai, which gets sucked back in time to just after the Battle of Midway. While in an American show the natural impulse would probably be to have the futuristic ship and crew get into the action (Final Countdown comes to mind), here they decide to try as far away from everything that they can because they're afraid not only of any unforeseen consequences to the timeline, but also of the implications of picking a side. Displaced from their own time, they have no allies, not even the Japanese, because as it is constantly pointed out, they aren't like the Imperial Japanese of this era. Unfortunately for them, they find themselves getting more and more drawn into the war thanks to finding and rescuing an Imperial Japanese officer, and they end up getting involved in some very big ways.If you're thinking that this will be an epic adventure with awesome action scenes, well, prepare to be disappointed. This series definitely comes down on the cerebral side of things, making even the action scenes full of dialog, whether it's to agonize about having to kill in order to survive, or to philosophize about the future and politics. This isn't all bad, and in fact I found most of it to be quite interesting. The problem is that they went so fat with it that it made the action scenes stale and drawn out.The series tends to focus on the Mirai's first officer, Lt. Comm. Kadomatsu, and the Imperial Officer he rescues from a crashed seas plane, Lt. Comm. Kusaka. Basically the crew decides to let Kusaka read through the ship's library to find out what he's in for, but as it turns out Kusaka is a pretty slick individual who ends up basically stabbing them in the back, though it's not entirely clear that this is what he intended. Kusaka is probably the most interesting and the most frustrating character of the series in that it's pretty hard to figure him out. Toward the end of the series he makes it clearer what his actual ambitions are, but things involving him tend to stay somewhat ambiguous. I have to say that I also found the politics and discussion about time travel and its possible consequences pretty interesting, too. While I wish that there had been a bit more about how the Mirai managed to travel back in time and how they might get back, the series never really went there, focusing instead on the philosophy of time travel and how one might manage to inadvertently cause themselves to never have been born. Their agonizing over even the smallest bit of interference from them might cause them to fade out of existence like Marty McFly is thrown for a loop though toward the end of the series, when a crew member's father is run over and killed as a child. By the end of the series, though, the crew has pretty much decided that they are stuck in the past and are just trying to stay as far away from everybody as possible, for fear that the Mirai will be taken from them and used in the war. There's actually quite a bit of complexity that goes into making that decision, but it would make this review a lot longer if I tried to explain it all.At the end of the series, there is still quite a bit going on, Kusaka's plans and actions still somewhat shrouded in mystery. And that leads me to the biggest disappointment of the series: it just ends. The last episode doesn't come off as a series finale so much as a season finale that ends on a cliff hanger. I know the real reason for this is because the manga hadn't been finished yet, but since there hasn't been any more news on this since about 2005 as far as I can tell, I'm more than a little frustrated by the fact that this series might go unfinished.So while I would say that this is a pretty good anime to watch if you're into a more cerebral show that combines history and sci-fi, just know going in that the series is actually incomplete. 7/10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hicks Posted January 28, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 28, 2011 Cowboy Bebop(26 episode series + 1 movie)This is the kind of anime that even non-anime fans might get into, provided that they are either sci-fi fans, or could get into a show that could in some ways be considered a western. It is essentially a space western, and chances are if you like Firefly, you'll probably like this show, too. And as an added bonus, it lasted a lot longer and wasn't screwed by its network.Now for a little background on the setting, humanity has developed something of a means for traveling faster than light using these large gates. This allows rapid travel throughout the system and makes the establishment of colonies on the various planets and large moons much more practical. Note that this is one of the similarities to Firefly in that there are so many terrestrial bodies within one system that have been terraformed and have colonies on them, even if technically this wouldn't be all that practical due to low gravity, low light from the sun, or various other reasons. The main point, though, is that an accident with this FTL system resulted in an explosion which took a good-sized chunk out of Earth's moon, pelting the surface with the debris and making it generally difficult to live there. As a result, most of humanity has spread throughout the system to these various colonies, with Mars essentially becoming the new home world.The series follows a rag-tag group of bounty hunters, here called "cowboys," as they struggle to hunt down their next bounty so they can have a decent meal, keep the Bebop and their other smaller ships running, and in Faye's case so she can gamble it all away in an attempt to get rich quick. At first we are only introduced to the main characters Spike Spiegle, and his partner as well as owner of the Bebop, Jet Black. As the show progresses, we are introduced to more and more of the characters who will end up joining the crew. Ironically, one of the first of these is Ein (as in Einstein), a genetically engineered Corgi dog. Pretty much all of the characters have something special or otherwise unusual about them, which contrasts them with Spike and Jet, who are both pretty laid back guys. Fay Valentine is a victim of some past accident who was put into cryo-stasis and recently thawed out by a group of con artists, and "Radical" Edward Wong Hau Pepulu Tivruskii IV is a young girl with a horrible case of ADHD, who also happens to be a genius hacker. All of them bring something to the table, and by that I mean both to the ship and its band of bounty hunters as well as the show. Which is actually why I started out by introducing them rather than with the story like I usually do. Of course with Cowboy Bebop, it's somewhat difficult to describe what the story is other than an exploration of the characters, who are all very interesting and who all end up developing through the show and discovering something about who they are.The series does have a main plotline, it's just that it doesn't make itself all that readily apparent, and very few of the series' episodes actually deal with it. Spike is really the main character of the series, simply by virtue of the main plot focusing on him and his story. He wasn't always the laid back bounty hunter that he is in the who, and it turns out that he was originally a hit-man for an organized crime syndicate called the Red Dragons. He fell in love with a woman named Julia and decided to leave the syndicate because of his love for her. In doing so, he became a hunted man and he lost Julia. So basically his cause in life other than putting food in his mouth is to find Julia again. This is an especially touching story, and I can't heap enough praise on it even if it is a bit clichéd. Maybe even more than a bit clichéd. Learning about Spike and his past is one of the main draws of the series, or at least it was for me. This is also something that happens with pretty much all the characters except maybe for Ein, who is explained right off the bat as to what the deal was with him. Jet also has a lost love who he finds and has to deal with the reality that she has moved on even if he hasn't, and his reunion with her is also bittersweet. Faye, who suffers from amnesia for most of the series, finally discovers her identity and remembers her past, but she is also denied a happy ending. Not to mention that it's kind of obvious that she has feelings for Spike, and he can't reciprocate. I actually felt a lot of sympathy for her toward the end of the series, even if she generally is the kind of manipulative, selfish character that you just kind of love to hate. Even Ed has something of a bittersweet ending, having finally found her father and learned what her real name is, but ultimately decides not only not to rejoin her father, but to leave Bebop and strike it out on her own, with Ein tagging along to keep her company. So while technically the vast majority of the episodes are filler, they tend not to feel like it. Either they are fun adventures, or dramatic journeys into the lives of the characters. I can't really think of any particularly bad episodes. Some of them can be slow moving, but none of them are really boring in my opinion. Of course it has been a while since I watched the series, so I could just be forgetting something or otherwise missing something while viewing it through my nostalgia glasses. After all, this was one of my first animes, and is just as responsible for getting me into anime as the Ghost in the Shell series is.The series goes through a number of shifts in mood, but the pacing is very good, and nothing ever really feels like an unnatural shift, or mood swing. It just kind of flows naturally as the show progresses, following the crew through good times and bad. The bad tends to accumulate towards the end of the series, especially as the crew breaks up and goes their separate ways again. This is also where the excellent soundtrack really shines, and when Ed leaves, the ship, the song playing in the background actually had me pretty misty-eyed.Now, I'd be neglectful if I didn't also mention the movie, Knockin' on Heaven's Door. Normally I'd give it its own separate review, but as excellent as this movie is, it is essentially just a feature-length episode of the series, fitting in somewhere between some of the last episodes, before Ed and Ein leave the ship. It takes place on Mars and features a plot about a terrorist who is releasing a deadly virus and generally making a huge nuisance of himself. Naturally, he gets a bounty on his head, and this is where our crew comes in. It is a very good movie and addition to the series. In fact, it was so good that even my dad, who didn't really care for the series or anime in general, liked this movie. So while I can't really say much more about this movie than I already did about the series, I can't recommend that you see it more. It makes an excellent addition to the series, and even if you haven't seen the series yet, you could probably still get into it even if you won't know who the characters really are or why there's a colony on Mars. I highly recommend this series and its movie. Cowboy Bebop is currently in my number 2 spot of my favorite animes, so that should tell you something even if my review doesn't convey just how awesome this series is. Seriously, just buy it if you get the chance, it is worth it. Is it perfect? You know what, it's pretty damn close. I'm not saying that it is completely without flaws, but it doesn't have any major ones I can think of. And while Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is still my favorite, Cowboy Bebop completely avoids the face-palm worthy pitfalls that GitS:SAC had thanks to someone at Production I.G having an axe to grind. Cowboy Bebop has no axe to grind, it simply wants to introduce you to some interesting characters and tell you their stories. So based on merit alone, I actually rank Cowboy Bebop higher than my current personal favorite, giving it one of the few if not the only 10/10 rankings that I will ever give. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hicks Posted January 29, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 29, 2011 Outlaw Star(26 episode series)Yet another space western, this series has a lot in common with the likes of Cowboy Bebop and Firefly. In fact, as it came before Firefly, there are a few things I wouldn't be surprised Joss Whedon may have borrowed from Outlaw Star, such as the way the mysterious girl Melfina is introduced – huddled nude in a somewhat fetal position within a box-shaped cryo container. That being said, the resemblance is somewhat superficial, and this series takes itself much less seriously than either Firefly or Cowboy Bebop.The series focuses on protagonist Gene Starwind, and his 11 year old genius business partner and friend, Jim Hawking. They run a business together on a backwater planet when they are basically hired into trouble by outlaw "Hot Ice" Hilda. Outlaws in this series are basically just mercenaries rather than criminals, the "outlaw" apparently just supposed to go toward reminding us that this is a space western since the way Gene dresses and his six-shooter-like gun apparently aren't enough. The thing about the Outlaw Star universe is that there isn't a lot of actual law enforcement due to humanity being somewhat spread out among the stars, rather than confined to just one system. This goes toward making the setting something like the frontier of the old west, or at least the fantasy many people have of it. So with limited law enforcement naturally come pirates to prey on the interstellar shipping. There are mercenary groups which will protect shipping lanes for a price, but these are different from the outlaws, who will do pretty much anything for a price. Gene is the kind of womanizer that everyone seems to think Captain Kirk is, and the business he and Jim are running isn't doing to well, in part because while he dreams of being an outlaw and cruising space in his own ship, he spends most of his money on booze and women. Pirates actually form very powerful crime syndicates, and the helpful narrator (the voice of Jet Black as it turns out) explains to us that this is actually how the absurd notion of having large grappling arms on ships in order to engage in combat came about. Apparently in order to solve this problem they hire on some scientist types, including mad scientist Nguyen Khan to create the ultimate weapon for them – an advanced ship controlled by a bio-engineered android, which is the previously mentioned Melfina. Of course this XGP15A-II is also supposed to be the key to the mysterious "Galactic Leyline", which is what forms the basis of the background plot that holds the series together. Hilda is an outlaw who knows about all of this, and wants to prevent the pirates from getting a hold of the prototype ship and/or Melfina. Her ship ends up getting destroyed, but she is able to make her way to the same backwater planet Gene and Jim are on, and even manages to hire on the two as bodyguards while she gets her next move ready. Not to spoilt too much, but unfortunately Hilda, the not quite good, not quite bad, outlaw, ends up not making it, leaving the prototype ship and Melfina in Gene and Jim's care. They name it the Outlaw Star, give it a snazzy paint job, and fight their way out of the firs big fight with the pirates. But, as cool as the ship is and the fact Gene has finally gotten what he's always wanted, it turns out that it costs a lot of money to keep a ship running, let alone being able to put food on the table for themselves.After the pilot plotline is done and until the final couple of episodes, the series becomes largely episodic as Gene and Jim try to find work so they can finish fixing up the Outlaw Star into top condition as well as keeping themselves fed. Along the way, the main plot of the Galactic Leyline serves as an excuse for the pirates to make attacks on them, as well as for the powerful alien Ctarl-Ctarl Empire to take an interest and make a few attacks of this own. This helps to add both drama and comedy, and also gives the perfect excuse to introduce a couple new crew members to the Outlaw Star. One is cat-girl Aisha Clanclan (who is one of the few I'd put aside the whole anti-furry thing for) of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire, and the other is the deadly assassin "Twilight" Suzuka. And yes, Gene totally uses both his Kirk-like charm and fighting skill on both of them as a major part of the reason they end up joining the crew. Oh, and then there's the hot springs episode, which is definitely not to be missed if you like a good excuse for some fan service along with a healthy dose of perverted comedy. And speaking of fan service, did I mention that Melfina is basically the navigation computer of the ship and has to do her job in the buff? Yeah, it's kind of cool actually, because she jumps into the big tank that holds her fully clothed and somehow ends up nekkid when the tank comes up out of the floor with her inside of it. In any case, it's all the episodes are pretty fun, and lead up to both the main plotline involving finding the Galactic Leyline, as well as Gene being able to get his revenge on the MacDougall brothers, who are outlaws that were hired to kill his dad when he was still a child.As for the characters, there are many, and most of them are fairly interesting. Gene and Jim naturally get the majority of the focus, though Jim falls somewhat by the wayside in order to develop Melfina's character a bit more. She is every bit as afraid and confused as one might expect her to be, basically being woken up and told she's just a machine who is programmed to find the Galactic Leyline, which could potentially bring doom to the entire galaxy. Of course they end up making her and Gene something of an item, but to be frank this could kind of get to me at times because he tended to be an asshole to her. One interesting difference from the norm though was that the Outlaw Star's computer, Gilliam II, is also a character all of his own, much in the same way Rommy was for Andromeda. He's something of the comedy relief along with Aisha Clan-clan, though while she tends to be a kind of silly funny, Gilliam is more of a dry, witty kind of funny, and he really adds to the cast of characters. There are quite a few others who could have used a bit more development but really didn't get it, though. Some of the pirates seemed like they could have been a bit more interesting, but instead ended up being just one-dimensional villains. The same could also be said for Professor Khan (*snicker*), as well as for assassin Suzuka, who tended to be a woman of few words. Hilda was probably one of the most interesting of all the characters (and it didn't hurt to be voiced by Major Kusanagi), but unfortunately she was killed almost right away. On the opposite end of the spectrum was Fred Luo, long time friend of Gene and stereotypical bad gay joke. He really only showed up from time to time to help Gene out, for a price, and to act like a stereotypical effeminate gay guy.Overall, this was a very fun and interesting series to watch. It had a fairly good cast of characters and an interesting plotline that kept me hooked as I watched, along with some fun filler episodes along the way. The pacing was pretty good, and I never felt bored while I was watching this series. I would definitely recommend this series, especially if you liked Cowboy Bebop and/or Firefly. 9/10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myrodis19 Posted January 29, 2011 Report Share Posted January 29, 2011 Ah i remember as a kid watching this on Cartoon Network watching it at 12 in the morning, such memories. Thanks for the review. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hicks Posted January 30, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 30, 2011 Hopefully you never caught the spin-off series. Angel Links(13 episode)This series is supposed to be a spin-off of Outlaw Star, but it doesn't really seem like it. While they throw in a cameo appearance for Fred, the stereotypically gay guy in the first episode, and it does feature one of the types of aliens that showed up in Outlaw Star, but that's about all it has in common with Outlaw Star.It follows the exploits of one of those mercenary security forces I mentioned in the Outlaw Star review. Basically they help to protect the shipping lanes from pirates for a fee. Well, I guess this series wants to be like Gene Roddenberry's revised idea of the Star Trek universe where there's no money, because this security company does its work for free, just because. So I guess either the company is endlessly rich in order to be able to maintain their ships and keep them in top fighting shape and pay all of its employees, or everyone just does it all for free, for no reason. This of course directly contrasts Outlaw Star, which made a point of reminding us that owning a space ship would actually be very expensive. But then, this company was apparently inherited by a busty 16 year old girl who apparently is just supposed to be competent at running this company and commanding the flagship of the company which goes out and fights pirates for free. Just remember, she's 16, and hugely busty. And a lot of characters make really crude remarks about that, especially in light of the fact she has a penchant for wearing a tight, revealing outfit. Japan, bringing us under-aged fan service since 1946. Really, though, this series seems much more interested in showing off than in any kind of actual story. Or at least nothing seemed readily apparent in the first couple of episodes, which is frankly all I cared to endure of this series. Most of the time is spend showing off the ship, using a lot of the same shots of the ship landing or taking off from the water on the planet it's based out of. The first couple of episodes consisted of Meifon Li, the busty jailbait protagonist, going out to help random people with her ship. It went from mind-numbingly boring to just bad. This is a horrible show and you shouldn't bother watching it. 0/10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hicks Posted January 31, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 31, 2011 Pale Cocoon(single episode OVA)At only 23 minutes long, this is a very short OVA, and while it looks good and has a decent story, I can understand why none of the US distributers have picked this OVA up and made a dub for it yet. I was actually introduced to this OVA by another reviewer in his first "Top 10 Unlicensed Anime" list, which he splits into two parts. here and here.I have to say, though, that while I found it very visually appealing, and I found the concept somewhat interesting, it confused me somewhat and I don't really understand it. This being the case, I'm going to spoil the hell out of this OVA, so you've been warned.The setting is basically underground in what was supposed to be an underground climate control infrastructure which once covered the planet. Apparently Earth has been ruined environmentally, and the implication is that things are getting worse as people are being forced to move further and further underground. This seems to be the typical environmental aesop, because everything we see points to humanity ruining the planet.The story itself focuses mainly on two people, a young man named Ura and a young woman named Riko. The two of them work at the "Archive Excavation Department", and are among the last of what used to be a massive work effort. Basically, despite all the advanced technology humanity still possesses, somehow most of human history has been lost, and the job of this department is to dig up as much information out of the archives as they can and restore it. As one might expect, this turns out to be depressing to the vast majority of the people who had worked there as they learn about how Earth used to be and how humanity apparently ruined it through overpopulation and pollution. Ura is actually the only one left who's interested in learning for learning's sake, and everyone else has either already quit, or say that they're going to quit during the OVA. Riko is essentially the voice of the rest of humanity, voicing a very nihilistic view about their work and about the fate of humanity. She's basically stopped caring, and Ura tries to get her interested again by showing her a video file he is in the process of restoring, but she just stops coming into work, choosing instead to lay on a platform next to a glowing core of some kind, staring up at the blackness above. Ura sees something in this video file that changes his perspective along with ours, revealing the thing that confuses me about this OVA. While the video he was restoring is just a music video, apparently a shot of a spiral staircase upside down leading into the sky causes him to climb the staircase around the power core I mentioned up to an old elevator, which seems to take him even higher at a rapid speed, right before it seems to fall... right out into the sky. As it turns out, they've been on the moon all along, humanity apparently having been evacuated there following an environmental disaster on Earth. Apparently everyone has been on a ship which is still sticking out of the lunar surface upside down, though with a cubic dome covering it. Why, I don't know. All I know is that gravity is apparently being generated artificially and Ura managed to work himself out into the weak lunar gravity after actually falling out of the ground. And that kind of confuses me somewhat because that is the best sense I can make out of it. Apparently this is supposed to double as a somewhat optimistic ending despite Ura's fate not looking all that great, because Earth looks like it might have restored itself, appearing to be blue and normal in contrast to one of the first lunar colonists' description of Earth as looking rusted.Now, it's kind of obvious that out focus is supposed to be more on how the characters feel and all that, but I guess I'm too left-brained to see all that far beneath the surface. I say that because what was shown doesn't make all that much sense to me. Riko explained the very understandable depression that would come with seeing Earth all pretty and looking fine when they're all living in post-apocalyptic devastation. One of Ura and Riko's unseen co-workers even expresses some skepticism as to whether any of the stuff in the images and videos they've restored is even real. The thing is, it doesn't make sense to me that a humanity this advanced technologically has forgotten so much of its past that it's apparently forgotten that they aren't even on Earth anymore. At the very basic, wouldn't the original colonists/refuges have passed that little nugget of information onto their children and so on and so forth down the generations? So in a way, it would have made more sense for it to be aliens going through an extinct humanity's archives, but that has been done so many times that it's cliché, so I can understand this OVA wanting to do something a bit different. It also bothers me that no one seems to care what caused the apocalypse. I know some people argue that it doesn't matter, but this is something that tends to bother me even if nothing can be done about it. Another example would be The Road, which has much the same tone as this OVA anyway. I guess if nothing else, I would have thought it would be a goal of this "Archive Excavation Department" to find out what went wrong to put them all in their current predicament, but no one seems to care, not even Ura. But, I think this is supposed to be like one of those "art" films, and art doesn't always have to make sense.I guess you could say that I was somewhat disappointed, because I was hoping that there would be more to it, somehow. It actually seems more like the pilot episode of a series than a one-off OVA. I would still say, though, that this OVA is worth a watch, despite not making all that much sense, at least not to me. It's barely over 20 minutes long, so it's not like you're out all that much even if you end up a bit frustrated like I did. 6/10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hicks Posted February 1, 2011 Author Report Share Posted February 1, 2011 Desert Punk(24 episode series)Though it is set in a post-apocalyptic future in which humanity has devastated itself and its planet, this series is in fact a comedy. An awesome, raunchy comedy.Following the exploits of Desert Punk, aka the Demon of the Desert, aka Kanta Mizuno, this series doesn't really take itself seriously, at least not until the end. Punk is shown to be competent at being a mercenary, at least at first, so much so that there are rumors that he is actually a demon and supernatural. The series starts with what have been another successful job, but thanks to his obsession and weakness for large breasted women, he slips up and lets himself get beaten by Junko Asagiri, who will turn into a recurring foil for him for the majority of the series. This is something of a turning point for Punk, as none of the rest of his jobs go well for him, and we get to watch and laugh at the results.The series itself is very episodic until the last few, with Punk and some of his fellow mercenaries being hired to do random jobs, sometimes on the same side, and sometimes on opposite sides. While the series does have its serious moments, and it doesn't rely all that much on absurdity, it still manages to be very funny. Most of this humor tends to be sexual or toilet humor, though there's also some dark humor thrown in for fun. This is also the area where the dub especially excels, because the cast really does well, and the humor is definitely more fitting for an English-speaking audience. Eric Vale is the star of the show, and for me this is the role I will always remember him for, because he is so awesome as the perverted, smug Desert Punk.Along the way, Punk picks up an apprentice named Kosuna, a young teen-aged girl who wants to become the desert's number one power babe (her words). At first Punk doesn't want to go for it, but Kosuna manages to talk him into it by showing him a picture of a busty bikini-clad woman she claims is her mother. Punk, being the pervert he is, agrees to take her on as an apprentice in what is apparently a long-term goal of getting laid by a busty babe like he's always wanted.As much as the series focuses on comedy, the episodes are all interesting in and of themselves. In some of the later episodes this actually involves learning a bit more about what happened prior to the apocalypse that created the massive desert the series takes place in. Unfortunately this also marks a turn in the series toward a more serious tone. The last few episodes in particular lose pretty much all of their humor and focus on a storyline that involves the reawakening of old weapons of mass destruction and the possibility that humanity might be finished off for good instead of just severely reduced in number like the last time it happened. Or at the very least one of the four governments existing in the desert world will get sole control over these weapons and devastate anyone who doesn't do what they want them to. So, much like Burn-Up W and Burn-Up Excess, this series is somewhat spoiled by getting a serious ending. Other than that, though, it's very good.The characters are part of what makes this series so great, too. I already mentioned what a pervert Desert Punk is, but he's also pretty believable as an expert mercenary, too. Kosuna isn't nearly as perverted, but she definitely has her moments, too, especially when it comes to hating on Junko. She also makes a pretty good apprentice, and when she ends up on her own, she does fairly well for herself as another Desert Punk with an apprentice of her own. Junko, despite being very much the Ms. Fanservice of the show is also very intelligent and uses her body and sexuality to her full advantage, but she doesn't depend on them. She makes a great foil for Desert Punk, because despite being continually fooled by her, he still sets himself up for another one of her schemes, even if he tries to take precautions against it. Plus there are some hints that she might actually like him a little. Another great foil for the Punk is Rain Spider, a fellow pervert and also an expert mercenary with a reputation for being good at what he does. Both he and Desert Punk play well off of each other. And last but not least are the Machine Gun Brothers, three of Desert Punks friends from when they were all kids and also fellow mercenaries. They aren't nearly as good as the others, but they still prove their worth from time to time. They also add a lot to the humor, and not just from being somewhat stupid.Now I have to admit, I'm somewhat at a loss for being able to describe just why I like this series or what makes it so great, so all I can do is show you , which is a compilation of some of the best lines from the show at its best. I just cannot express the awesome that is this show. Just go watch it, trust me. 9/10.Oh, and have blooper reel as an added bonus. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hicks Posted February 2, 2011 Author Report Share Posted February 2, 2011 Dead Space: Aftermath(2011 movie)I'm afraid I have to start this out by saying that even though the "so okay it's average" nature of the first Dead Space movie mad me not really expect all that much out of this movie, I still came away disappointed. And it's not even that this movie sucks so much as there is basically nothing of substance to it.We start the movie by seeing some random military ship dock with a derelict ship named the USG O'Bannon, which is in orbit of what's left of the planet we saw the USG Ishimura carve up in the first movie in order to recover some odd alien artifact they call "the marker" which makes most of the crew go batshit insane and kill most of their fellow crew members so some flying sting ray can turn them into alien zombies. The O'Bannon, as we soon see, suffers much the same fate, having been disabled when the planet when all Genesis on them and it failed to get away, lacking the ability to jump to warp like a certain Klingon Bird of Prey. No one can blame them, though, because there was just no Kirk or Scotty to be found, even though the captain was himself Scottish. The somewhat amusing aspect to this opening sequence is that the faceless marines that board the O'Bannon actually seem to be somewhat concerned for the loss of life they see around them, and it actually looks like they're there to rescue the four survivors they find, right before one of them kills their supposed would-be rescuers. I find this amusing, because Dead Space is all about some vast conspiracy between a cultish religion, the government, a large mining corporation, and military which wants to get the alien marker so it can basically end the world, so sayith the church's scriptures. This is easily Dead Space's greatest weakness, mainly because it's so clichéd that it makes me roll my eyes, since it essentially comes off as cheap pot shots at whoever made this franchise sees as evil, namely religion, corporations, the government, and the military. Where this movie is concerned, the amusing aspect comes from the fact that these few faceless marines who genuinely seem to care about the people they rescued for the most part must be the only ones on board who aren't part of the evil conspiracy, and they probably got sucked out into space when the most insane of the survivors thought he'd just go outside and join the hallucination of his dead daughter.SyFy recently replayed Dead Space: Downfall to celebrate the release of Dead Space 2 along with this hour-long ad for it. Naturally there was plenty of praise for both by the people who made them, but one thing that was supposed to be so awesome about this movie was that it was made up of four different stories as told by the four different survivors. Naturally they showed off some short clips of the show in order to convince people to watch, and what can I say, it worked. Of course what I thought I was getting into was a decently animated mystery movie, because those four stories were said to be treated like witnesses' testimony that had to be deciphered by the rescue team so they could figure out what actually happened. That actually sounded kinda interesting, but the actual movie wasn't what the man on the TV said it would be. I know, shocking. What actually happened was that the four survivors were tortured one by one for their "testimony", which was actually just to determine if the survivor they were questioning had come into direct contact with a shard of the marker the Ishimura had found. I was also fooled into believing that this was a completely animated film, and well, technically it is, it's just that the framing sequences all the torture takes place in is computer generated, and looks about on par with the cut scenes in StarCraft, as in the first one. It really made me understand why the only clips they showed of this movie were from the traditionally animated flashback sequences, which all looked okay, I guess.The part about four different stories is actually true, though. We see most of the movie as flashback scenes during each survivor's interrogation, and as is the case with eye witness testimony, the parts where the stories overlap aren't all the same. Just to over-emphasis this, each sequence has a different animation style, which is marked by completely different character and art design – the characters, the clothes they are wearing, and the sets all look completely different in each sequence. This bothered me, but not nearly as much as how everything was a completely predictable story leading up to where the movie started. The last survivor that was interrogated even finished everything off with the clichéd, "you know the rest." The story is a lackluster rush job with lackluster characters that can't come even close to rescuing this movie by being even remotely interesting – the movie never gives them a chance to be. While the first movie actually moved a bit on the slow side to the point of being somewhat boring, this movie ties to make up for that by moving so fast that the characters are never really delved into beyond bare minimum needed to keep forcing the movie forward. As a result, there is never any reason to feel anything more than apathy toward them, or their fates.As you might guess, the evil overseer (yes, he's actually called "the overseer") sees to it that all of the survivors are either killed or meet a worse fate. One apparently shows up in the second game and ends up in a cryo-tube right next to the game's protagonist, Isaac Clarke. The other, who pulled double duty as the movie's fan service, was lobotomized and brainwashed into being the scapegoat to explain the loss of two ships and a mining colony. Cue evil cackling and the establishing shot of where the game this is a prequel of is going to take place.So as you can tell, I don't like this movie, and while it's not horrible, it definitely isn't good either. No, not even the tits it threw at me in a last desperate attempt to make me interested in it helped in the least. Despite its much to fast pacing, this movie still managed to be boring, and actually felt much longer than the hour it took to watch it. It was just another shallow zombie movie, and while I know both this and the last movie were just ads for their respective games, that doesn't excuse them from their many flaws since they're still supposed to pretend to be movies. I'm really only throwing this movie a bone because it had an interesting premise that it simply failed to live up to, and another because of the quality of the voice acting, which was an improvement over the first movie. It looks like there was some anime voice talent there, but the one I recognized the most was Christopher Judge, who you might know as Teal'c from Stargate SG-1. Here he played Nick Kuttner, a large scary black man, and the nucking futs survivor who spaced himself. It's a shame such good talent was wasted on such a bad movie.Don’t bother watching this movie – it'll leave you wishing that you had an hour of you life back. 2/10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hicks Posted February 3, 2011 Author Report Share Posted February 3, 2011 Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo(24 episode series)This is probably the umpteenth adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's classic novel, so to try to stand out a little more, this animated series changes the setting to something decidedly more sci-fi. Yet, despite taking place in the far future (something like the 5050s is certain headstones are to be believed), this adaptation tries to keep its roots firmly in the original story by presenting us with an odd mix of both futuristic technology and visual design and other technology and visual design which looks more appropriate to the early 19th century and the early 20th century while still trying to look futuristic. Oh, and they do manage to work mechas into the story briefly, because it wouldn't be a sci-fi anime without mechas, apparently.That being said, it wasn't all bad, and it did succeed at making things a bit more visually interesting, except for the mecha part, that was just gratuitous. No, the thing that bothered me the most visually was the odd use of simple photoshop-like textures for almost everything on screen. Characters' clothing and hair, furniture, various buildings – all of them used this odd masking technique which sets a pattern as a background while an unmasked opening allows it to be seen through. So while clothing and the like were animated, the backgrounds didn't move, and overall everything just tended to stand out because of this look, which was almost as if someone had used patterned paper and photographs to cut shapes out of, not unlike South Park's early look. And, it should say a lot about how distracting this was, because I dove right into it as the first thing, rather than making a note of it later, after I talked about the actual story and everything.The story itself was quite good. I have to admit that I've never read the original novel, so I can't say one way or another how good this adaptation is. I've heard that the Count isn't nearly as sympathetic as most adaptations portray him, so I guess in that way this adaptation is somewhat similar, because the Count wasn't portrayed in a much better light than the people who betrayed him and sent him up the river. This especially stand out, because while the other adaptations I've seen tell the story solely from the Count's perspective, this series focuses primarily on the son of the best friend and former fiancé who had betrayed Edmund Dantes. That does give it a somewhat interesting angle, though it is essentially doing the same as a lot of other anime that focuses on youth.Albert de Morcerf is on Luna with his best friend, Franz d'Epinay for a carnival there. As it so happens, the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo is at an opera the two go to. Not long afterwards, Albert has one of his many fits with Franz (who I think is a bit more into Albert than Albert is to him, if you catch my drift), and wanders off on his own. This is all over the fact that Albert has a straight crush on the Count after he has the two boys partake in a rather morbid game which involves pardoning one of three men to be publically guillotined as the final part of the carnival. Naturally the one to get pardoned is the remorseless killer, and as it happens this man also has a part in kidnapping Albert after he wanders off on his own. The Count is the only one to come to Franz's aid and so rescues Albert. This widens the rift between Franz and Albert and draws Albert closer to the Count. Even at this early point, the Count hints that this is no accident, though naturally he tells Albert that it's fate. Of course his true plan is eventually revealed, and anyone familiar with the story really just knows that it's a matter of time before the bad things start happening.By focusing on the children of the people who wronged Edmund, who conveniently form a group of friends so they all know each other, it also gives the series a bit of a chance to flesh out the families of these people a bit more. Naturally there is more than a little soap opera to it, since pretty much all of them are messed up in some way. For example, two of these people had an affair which produced a child, which they buried alive in order to hide. As it turns out, the infant was rescued, and the Count uses him as part of his plan for revenge. Apparently this includes having sex with his own mother, and sexually assaulting his half sister just before he's supposed to marry her. So as messed up as pretty much all of the grown-ups are, the teenaged friends give us some characters to sympathize with when it all goes down. People die or are otherwise ruined, and this naturally effects all of the friends. The main weakness here is actually Albert, because he's a bit of a whiny bastard, who has the unfortunate distinction of reminding me of Shinji from Evangelion. He does grow a pair at one point, but in my opinion it wasn't really enough to make me like him. His friend Franz and his fiancé Eugénie de Danglars come off as way more sympathetic just due to how much they actually care for their friends, and how they react to what's going on around them. Key thing is that they pretty much keep it together while Albert freaks out and does stupid things.That all being said, I was drawn in by the story and I found most of the characters at least somewhat interesting. Not all of them were really given much of a chance to be fleshed out, unfortunately, but other than that it was all fairly good. It's true that this is an adaptation, but I have to say that it's one of the better ones I've seen, and I never really got bored. It was a little slow picking up, but that was just to get all the pieces of the puzzle set up before the Count started making his move to get his revenge. And since he's a bit of a bastard, essentially doing the same thing to some others that he is taking his revenge for, I think it was a good move to focus on another protagonist rather than making the Count the protagonist. I'd say this series is worth a watch. 8/10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hicks Posted February 5, 2011 Author Report Share Posted February 5, 2011 Gantz(26 episode series)This is honestly one of the worst series I've actually bothered to muddy my way all the way through. Basically it's just otaku porn – filled to the brim with the kind of crap that the stereotypical otaku fanboy is supposed to just love the hell out of. On top of that, the series takes every possible opportunity to hit its audience over the head with as much clichéd bullshit as possible when it comes to denouncing how horrible society has become, militaries, the second Iraq War, the United States (you know, 'cuz it's evil), and ironically violence in general, despite being pretty much all about violence. And if that wasn't bad enough, the characters are all either unsympathetic assholes, too stupid to live, or both.So what's it about? Well basically there's this mysterious, magical black ball with a bald guy on life support inside of it that apparently clones various people at their moments of death in order to have them compete in a sadistic game it likes to play. Basically it gives them these skintight powered armor suits and some sci-fi guns to go out and kill random creatures it claims are aliens, giving them a limited amount of time and a limited area in which to complete these missions. It rewards points based on the outcome of the missions, with the goal being to gain 100 points total.The series follows "typical high school student" Kei Kurono, who apparently the average otaku is supposed to identify with. He apparently has a hard time (heh) paying attention in class, undressing his attractive teacher and all the girls in his class with his eyes and popping a boner on a regular enough basis that some of the girls in his class can tell when he's hiding one. They then go on to point out this fact to the teacher, who has some fun embarrassing him about it along with the rest of the class. He's the quintessential pervert, thinking about and doing things that frankly make even me think he's a freak. And if that wasn't enough to make me not like him, he's also a rather selfish asshole. Unfortunately for him, he crosses paths with a creepy old lady who apparently is a recruiter for Gantz. This is as he runs into an old friend of his from elementary school at a subway station, Masaru Kato. Masaru is the kind of noble guy I'm guessing all the otaku want to be like, because he always seems to be doing selfless, sacrificing things for anyone and everyone to the point that he's frankly quite annoying. He also tends to do way to much analyzing about things like the implications of using deadly force to defend himself and others that he's basically useless and indecisive during the various "games" Gantz sends the characters on. I say all this up front, because it's pretty much all Masaru's fault that both he and Kei end up dead with their clones fighting random aliens for Gantz's amusement. In the first episode a drunken bum wanders down into the subway station and manages to collapse onto the tracks. And since society is horrible according to this show, no one but Masaru wants to bother actually doing anything to prevent this guy from getting run over by the incoming train. He also happens to recognize Kei and calls out to him, so Kei apparently feels obligated to help out his old friend. They save the bum, but naturally they both end up getting run over by a train. Despite this happening in front of a crowd, no one believes anyone about what happened because not only are their bodies and all the blood mysteriously gone, but all photographic evidence is also gone.Kei and Masaru find themselves in an unfurnished Tokyo apartment along with several other people, apparently having appeared out of thin air. Not long afterwards, we get to see how this looks when a wet, naked Kei Kishimoto also appears out of thin air, looking somewhat like a 3-D printer has constructed her. She'd apparently tried to commit suicide by slitting her wrists. She's also the reason why it's really obvious that all of the characters who appear in that room are actually clones of the dead originals, because as it turns out, her original was saved (just remember kids, it's down the road, not across the street ). Anyway, Kei Titty McBoobs is basically the main source of fan service for the series, at least until she buys it. She's also our allotment of moé-blob for the series. Actually it's kind of funny because while the opening titles make her look like a hot action girl, really the only function she serves aside from providing about 75% of the massive amount of fan service is to shriek, need rescuing, and ask plaintively for someone to do something. Oh, and there's a dog that likes to lick her crotch pretty much every time it sees her, leading me to believe that the people behind this shoe are even bigger perverts than I am.Fortunately for everyone in that apartment, the stereotypical psycho kid was something of a veteran and smugly explained basically everything to everyone else, and by extension the audience, because Gantz never bothered to explain any of the rules of its twisted little game. Simple rules like not wandering more than a kilometer away from where it beamed them outside to fight whatever random enemies it had sent them after, the importance of the power suits, how to operate the weapons it provided, or to not try talking about anything related to Gantz or its games to anyone. The punishment of breaking the "don’t leave the area" or the "don’t talk about Gantz" rules was for Gantz to set off a little bomb it'd implanted into the clones' heads. Everything else was just a matter of making survivability of the characters and success of their missions more likely, or for that matter even explaining why earning 100 points was a good thing, or that they could leave the room after they'd completed a mission until Gantz transported them back for another "game".There are so many other characters that show up and don’t even last through more than one of these "game" sessions that it would be pretty pointless to describe them all. I'll just say that they're all pathetically stupid to the point that they pretty much all deserved their fate. Don't get me wrong, some of them actually managed to be sympathetic, but they were still all stupid. This is actually the thing that frustrated me the most about this series, because when they should've been gunning down the targets Gantz pitted them against before they killed them, most of the time they just stood around and talked, whether to argue about what was going on or what to do, or to agonize about making the really obvious choice to kill something or someone that represented a deadly threat to their own lives. But even when the characters actually started to do that, they tended to do really stupid things, like running right up to the creatures they were fighting to shoot them instead of doing it from a distance and out of range of the vast majority of these things' attacks, because guns can do that. For that matter, even these alleged aliens tended to just stand there for long periods to let all this discussion or argument take place. This also tended to stretch out the series and really slow down the pacing, so while there is action, it tends to be spread pretty thin. And then there's all the beating over the head we get about how horrible society is and ironically about how horrible violence is, despite how much the series actually glorifies violence in order to attract its audience. It does this by showing us examples of humanity at its worst. For instance, in the subway scene at the beginning of the series, we're given a taste of just how horrible everyone is by being given a window into their inner dialog, and pretty much everyone is messed up in some way. And when the bum falls onto the tracks, the reactions range from thinking that someone should do something while being unwilling to actually do anything themselves to looking forward to the hobo's impending death so they can see someone die. One of the valley girl types even snaps a picture of Kei's decapitated head as it flies toward her. Later, when we're introduced to Masaru's home life, we learn that his parents are dead and that he's staying with his aunt, who is extremely physically and psychologically abusive toward Masaru and his little brother. A bit later on, we're introduced to two characters who like to go around and kill homeless people, including the bum Kei and Masaru gave their lives to save. The fun part is that at the end of the series, one of these psycho killers excuses his actions by going on an anti-military rant, which includes some shots at the United States just for good measure. As for why this series is otaku porn, well, I have a list for that, too. Remember fan service girl Kei McBoobs? She's a virgin. This is only worth mentioning because apparently a lot of otakus consider this to be important, because they want their fan service girls to be "pure" or something like that. They also had her cling to Masaru, who was supposed to represent the kind of nobility that otaku are supposed to aspire for, even while Kei, the character they were supposed to identify with, lusted over her and had some very detailed fantasies involving her. Then there's basically everything Kei has going on in his head, between thinking about sex and women, and going around killing things. He also finally ends up having sex with a busty 30s-something woman who happens to have a thing for otakus, being sure to explain how when she was younger, all the girls were totally all over the cosplaying anime nerds. And then there's Kei's teacher, who aside from carrying on an affair with another teacher, apparently got off on the idea that Kei was getting hard-ons in class because of her.So if this show was so horrible, why did I watch all of it? Well, it managed to keep things just interesting enough for me to want to see what happened next. I admit I was somewhat curious to see who was going to die and how things would turn out. It also didn't hurt that all the clichés, fan service, and perverted content gave me something to laugh at. To be frank, the biggest problems I had with this show were the clichéd and moronic commentaries it offered, the extremely slow pacing, and all the characters acting so stupidly. Even if something isn't really what I'd consider good, if I can laugh at it I don't really mind it that much, but if I'm bored or finding myself rolling my eyes quite a bit, that really drags a series down. So really, despite the reputation this anime has for being nasty and messed up, that isn't what bothered me, it was just pretty much everything else. Actually, being messed up is the only reason I'd even tell anyone to watch this series, just so they can see it for themselves. If you could handle Elfen Lied, then you'd probably be able to handle this one, too. 4/10. 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Wake Posted February 5, 2011 Report Share Posted February 5, 2011 First I would like to say, you do a great job with your reviews, and I have watched a couple of animes because of them; like Tide-Line Blue most recently. I am though having trouble finding the last (13) episode in sub. Might I inquire were you saw the series, or did you watch it raw? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shade_13 Posted February 6, 2011 Report Share Posted February 6, 2011 Very impressive, Hicks, doing good! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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