June 09, 2014

So...What's On ?

I'm suffering from acute fogeyism. 

Most of the best anime shows I've watched recently have been recommendations. Now, I sit and look at the current and approaching line-up and see a vast wasteland, but there must be something that doesn't suck. 

So what's good in the world of anime?

As "Good" is highly subjective, here are the shows that I've most enjoyed over the years. 


more...

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June 01, 2014

Desensitization

I had never thought of A Certain Scientific Railgun as a particularly cheesecake heavy series. Even the "beach" episode seemed pretty demur to me and the lead heroine's habit of wearing shorts under her skirt appeared to be a nice mockery of the squalid trend of gratuitous panty shots. 

It turns out that I must just be desensitized to this sort of thing.  Someone named "John" has summarized the entire series in two minutes and forty three seconds and t turns out that the series is nothing but cheesecake and violence (not necessarily in that order). 

Also dudes in wolf masks, which my desensitization caused me to miss on the first viewing. 
Seriously though...

Just over a month and a half after watching the first half of the series I finally got around to finishing it. 
My verdict: This show is pretty darn good. 
A lot of full length series fall apart towards the end. This one did not, and provides the audience with very satisfying conclusion.

Furthermore, Mikoto Misaka is one of the more likable female leads in recent years, being decent and well grounded as well as very smart. She's also believably written, as are three of the four leads. As for Kuroko...well she's quite entertaining, though she is....well....she's flawed*. 


 Don't whine Kuroko, you know it's true.

The series writer, Seishi Minakami was a protege of the late Satoshi Kon (and did the screenplays for both Paprika and Paranoia Agent) and he throws in little non-explicit bits that develop the characters with some subtlety. For instance, there is, occasionally, a mention of Mikoto collecting merchandise from some Sgt. Frog inspired children's show. In most shows this would be a bit of perfunctory 'cute' ticket punching. In this show, the little frog fobs actually come off as poignant. They speak of a girl who because of her power, had to grow up a lot faster than most and as she approaches college longs for the childhood she skipped. Saten is well intentioned, hard working and quite brave, but she's occasionally quite obnoxious to Uiharu. She's a teenager and the stress and anxiety of not having any powers (in a world where they often define one's worth) is causing her to act out a bit.  

Even the episodes that at first glance appear to be filler, (with one exception) manage, in retrospect, to develop the characters and/ or advance the plot. 

Note that if you clicked on the video above, it includes about EVERY bit of fan service in the 720 minutes of the series and removes some context in the process. 'Railgun is surprisingly light on the cheesecake. While it's not entirely kid friendly in that regard, Mikoto is an unusually admirable heroine, the show pretty much renounces nihilism and it extols the virtues of decency.

This series was a thoroughly enjoyable ride. 

Amongst all the teenage-superhero-highschool-cop-shows this is one of the best. Even without that significant caveat A Certain Scientific Railgun is well above average.  
 



(*She tries (and fails spectacularly) to drug and presumably molest Mikoto at least twice...I mean good Lord, she's pretty much horrible. The only reason she's a "good guy" is because she feels personally invested in her identity as a Judgement officer, likes the power she gets from the job and is the vector for getting Mikoto and the others involved in the larger story. Yes she's comic relief, but.... )

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May 26, 2014

Enjoy the Holiday, But Forget Not Why You Have It.

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May 24, 2014

About 6 Weeks Left To Go



I see the twins are back. (I just wasted ENTIRELY too much of my evening crawling through that with the pause button).

UPDATE:
The arm reversal between her and Jaune  compared to the season 1 OP is a nice touch. It looks like JNPR are indeed going to be the duteragonists.
Velvet's team certainly looks interesting. 
I find it interesting the CRDNL is included.


Wow. The Rooster Teeth eye catch is really irritating. 

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May 20, 2014

This Squirrel Nut Zippers Video

...really captures some of the key elements of early '30s US cartoons.

(Madness being the most important one.) 

It actually doesn't start 'till 0:38


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Well, I Know What I'll Be Watching This Winter.

Like the previous one, this trailer for the upcoming Yamato film has no animation. But it's 31 seconds long as opposed to 16. Also, there is music this time, music that will mean nothing to those who did not watch the old show. The rest of us however, are a bit enthused.




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A Bit of Lost History Found

I just received this via E-Mail. I seem to recall hearing about it years ago, but had no idea it was finished or available or especially on You-Tube.


Behold! The long lost 1946 collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali.


This has been up since 2011 so I guess that Disney just put it out there due to its experimental nature, historical interest and the fact that its a short.  

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The Memetic Madness That is Fandom

Having finally finished Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions - Heart Throb  I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed it, though it's not quite on the same level as its predecessor. 


The original show, in addition to being funny, was a touching, beautifully portrayed love story that amongst all the hilarity, involved Rikka coming to terms with her loss and getting her act together. The sequel has her pretty much back to where she was for most of the series...except that Rikka and Yuta are definitely a couple. I confess that at first I thought the two of them were just joking with regard to Rikka's active fantasy world, but alas no, and no explanation is given for the regression. Were it not for specific references to the Christmas party in the first serie,s this show could easily have been set during the same time frame as that show...and it might have been more satisfying.

Whereas Love, Chunibyo and Other Delusions is about moving forward and growing up, '...Heart Throb' is, in many ways, a renunciation of that. On the surface the show glorifies stability above all else and seems actively hostile to the notion of personal development. For instance, the new character Sophia comes dangerously close to character development...but dodges that bullet with great verve and skill. Great effort is made to ensure that everything remains exactly as it is at the beginning*. I know nothing about the source material for this show, but the this glaring difference makes me wonder if the sequel is a response to fan complaints. 

However, the show is quite entertaining in its own right and it made me laugh out loud several times. 

With the two main lovebirds relationship pretty much fixed, there is some development exploration of the other characters. 



Nibutani in particular, actually comes off as quite likable and decent in this series. She is an important part of a rather unexpected dynamic in the show that it is a bit deeper and more nuanced in its view of Otakudom than one might expect. 

Despite the show's overall tone of aggressive Otaku affirmation '...Heart Throb' is not entirely sanguine about the subject. There is a somewhat creepy cour (with VERY creepy undertones) that involves the implications of fandom as a cult and it's handled pretty well...imaginary magical battle notwithstanding. 

The show is cute, wacky and often quite weird...



...and occasionally even weirder still.



  While it is not quite as good as its predecessor in that it does little to advance the cast, it is still a thoroughly enjoyable show 



*...well...except for Isshiki, who is last seen dealing with a development that might or might not be truly horrible for him...the writers are rather vague on that point.

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May 11, 2014

They Couldn't Just Hire A Couple of Russians?

The Girls Und Panzer DVD has been sitting on my shelf for months and I suddenly realized I have time to look at it.

The dub is a bit uneven and rather rough at the beginning (Miho pronounces Oorai as O-O-R-I amongst other things) making it look like it was done on one take. To be fair, the voicework rapidly gets a lot better as the show progresses and Molly Searcy absolutely NAILS IT with her portayal of Mako. After about episode two the dub is pretty decent.

Then...suddenly.

They'd avoided the temptation of wacky accents...until the Pravda battle at which point there is an ill concieved attempt...from time to time...to affect something that probably sounded Slavic to somebody late one night in the studio when they were all strung out on Red Bull and Mountain Dew. 
It gets worse...There is that moment in the Pravda battle that Crunchyroll edited out the Katushya song. Crunchyroll just cut the scene...the dub keeps the footage (minus the mouth movements) and replaces Katushya with an unrelated accordion solo.

" Well...THAT was regrettable. "

The accordion solo is present on the subtitled track too, indicating that they were not able to resolve the rights issue. However, it's unclear why the scene wasn't simply cut (like Crunchyroll did with the sub) as the result is most jarring. 
Wait...
Can someone explain to me how a commie song from before 1945 is a copyright issue anyway.


Sentai has done some pretty good dubs (and Highschool of the Dead was absolutely superb) so this is more galling than it ought to be. 


UPDATE: The dub on OAV  release is actually excellent. Even when a silly accent raises its head, it's intentionally silly and fits perfectly. 

I'd not seen any of them previously. They are entertainingly odd.

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May 10, 2014

Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions - Heart Throb


Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions was an absolutely superb series, being both hilarious and poignant. It also had a satisfying ending that quite effectively wrapped things up, so I've been ponsdering the sequel with some trepidation.

Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions - Heart Throb is set just a few weeks after the end of the previous show and pretty much takes up where it left off. There is a bit of hand waving regards the progress Rikka seemed to make in the last episode and some hand waving to explain why a class concious climber like Nibutani is still hanging with these whackadoodles, and further hand waiving regards Dekimori's hair, but it otherwise continues the story, and, well, two episodes in, I've laughed out loud a few times. 



It certainly seems to be worth the time thus far. 

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May 08, 2014

Captain America: The Winter Soldier


This film has a lot on it's plate. It's a sequel, a prequel, and a fairly pivitol stand alone thriller that moves the overall plot of the Avengers tie-in franchise quite a bit.  It could easily have become a mess, but Captain America: Winter Soldier is a surprisingly solid film. 

This film is a very interesting hybrid of superhero flick and spy thriller, with the latter predominating at first. The "superheroes" in this movie are not earthshakinglty powerful in comparison to a lot of others, being for the most part, just very skilled people. A good chunk of the movie has a sort of espionage vibe, but the threat the heroes find themselves fighting against is one of earth shaking gravity. Furthermore, the heroes are super-heroic, not so much in their power level, but definitely in their attitude. Three of the leads are fine examples of "The Cape"and the fact that they are decent, ethical people  becomes much more obvious as well as pivotal to the plot as the film progresses. There are also plenty of references reminding the Marvel fans in the audience that this is firmly "in universe".  

All in all, I was quite pleased with it. One minor spoiler; as with most of the films in this franchise, you'll want to stay for the credits. 

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April 29, 2014

What's This?




"Must...text....EVERYBODY!"

  John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Max von Sydow, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, Kenny Baker .

A text with a bunch of random names?
Whatever could this MEAN?
Oh well, I'm sure it's of no interest to anyone. 

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April 25, 2014

Two Examples of Win


Someone animated these Vocaloid videoes and posted them to Nico-Nico Douga two years ago. Who are these people? Have they been hired by a studio?




If not, we need to get a Kickstarter together and headhunt them, because I want to see more of this. 

UPDATE: OK at least for the first one, it looks like Takuya Hosogone directed , Takuya Mitome did the storyboards and "Jin"(?) seems to have been responsible for the music. 


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April 21, 2014

I'll Just Leave This Here


Note that despite the fact that this was tweeted by Wheadon himself, I'm more than a tad skeptical of this.

But it's SO awseome.

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April 16, 2014

I Had No Idea

that there were any videos of Joe and Eddie on You-Tube.






In the second one they're being introduced by Danny Kaye.


Now, even if, for some inexplicable reason, that name doesn't ring a bell, I'd wager that most of you are probably at least famillier with this performance he did with the Andrews Sisters. In any event, because of the wonders of Boolean searches, the tangential Danny Kay connection to the Joe and Eddie search then led to this particularly worthy bit of win. 


I love technology!



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April 13, 2014

A Certain Scientific Railgun 1-12

In keeping with the blogs policy of being on the cutting edge of the Anime scene, we concluded that we ought to actually get around to watching this show from 2009.

A Certain Scientific Railgun was well received  by American fans when it came out  and was successful enough in Japan to have spawned a sequel last year. It is apparently a spinoff/side story to an earlier light novel series called A Certain Magical Index about which I know nothing. 

The series is set in Academy City, a recently incorporated, planned metropolis just west of Tokyo (in present day Okutama perhaps?). The city has been set up in part as a high tech development region; a sort of government subsidized Silicon Valley with additional heavy industry. Its main purpose however, is as an educational mecca. Academy City is a vast collection of junior high schools, high schools and colleges with different specialization's (including nearly all of Japans most prestigious academies) and its atmosphere and infrastructure are both intended to be highly conducive to learning and developing the special talents of Japan's youth. 


...and developing boondoggles like wind turbines...inside a city.

Note that we are not being whimsical or abstract when we say "special talents". Some years prior to the events in this series, ESPer abilities were scientifically confirmed to exist latently in certain people. Intense study revealed ways to exercise and thus improve these abilities. A single person can have one ( but only one) of the hundreds of known talents. However, they are rated on an ability level that goes from 1-5. This seems to be an exponential scale and frequency dwindles rapidly with power. There are less than a dozen level 5's in the entire city. Since these abilities are psychic in nature, improving them is largely a mental discipline. Thus, schools are a good means of pursuing this research. The schools pursue an intense, broad spectrum education since few ESPer abilities have any marketable use and in any event, this many educational institutions in close proximity foster a critical mass that the powers that be no doubt hope will become a high capacity Japanese genius generator. 

  The educational theme extends to certain city services. 

First some cultural background:
 Japanese high schools often have student councils with a great deal of responsibility. They manage the basic janitorial duties of their school, do a good deal of the scutt work in organizing field trips and school activities, assign students to do groundskeeping and equipment inventory and divvy up their budget between various clubs and school events. In some high schools they even provide (through the Home-Ec classes) the cooking staff for lunch and to a very limited extent, discipline (well...hall monitors).There are faculty advisors overseeing this of course, but they only get involved if necessary.The idea behind this affront to the sensibilities of the NEA and DoED is that high school students are young adults and should have organizational skills, be acclimated to work and be given increasing responsibilities. In a high school setting this can work pretty well.

In Academy City they've applied this concept of high school students administering things to the whole metropolis...thus dystopia. 

OK, not quite: In addition to the individual school's councils, there is an inter-school student council that coordinates members of various school's councils to deal with student related concerns throughout Academy City. One can assume that this council co-ordinates, festivals and spelling bees but those activities don't lend themselves to a crime drama so we never see those committees. The manifestation of the inter-school council the audience encounters is JUSTICE...a city-wide network of STASSI glorified hall monitors with limited ticketing and arrest powers. While this seems at first glance to be whacked, remember that this city is overwhelmingly (80%) populated by students, most of whom are teenagers trying to develop their super-powers. Having as much discipline as possible meted out by peers helps to minimize the social dynamic of having a bunch of super powered kids being disciplined by mostly unpowered adults.  The city does have a regular police force as well as a frighteningly well equipped SWAT team in case the teenagers decide to rumble. 

Everything in the city is geared towards technophilia and academic achievement. Students with good marks are local celebrities, but "good marks" has come to mainly mean having an unusual power. Universities, corporations and eclectic individuals have descended upon the city to study the abilities of those with talent and Academy City is as much a scientific observatory as a learning center. This is most harshly expressed in the fact that those who cannot manifest any ESPer abilities are not held in particularly high regard. They are the level 0s and are termed "Human Errors" by medical professionals and while not actively discriminated against they are considered 'broken'. However, if they keep their non paranormal grades up they are allowed to stay in the cities schools. 


Among the more famous people in this odd town is our heroine...

Mikoto Misaka: 



...She is one of the few level 5 ESPers in the city. Her ability is to control electromagnetic forces. She can generate electrical fields, magnetic fields and using the latter propel arcade tokens at mach 3. This latter ability has resulted in the nickname 'Railgun'. She is a top student at the prestigious Tokiwadai Girls School and has become something of a local celebrity, which she finds a bit annoying. She's a fairly reserved and modest person, who responds to her schools alarmingly brief uniform skirts by wearing hiking shorts beneath hers. Mikoto is not part of any student organization and seems to be given somewhat wide latitude to develop her powers which are of considerable interest to the scientific establishment. She is decent, level headed and sane. This latter characteristic is somewhat surprising given that her dorm-mate is....
Kuroko Shirai:



Kuroko is an extremely skilled (high level 4) teleporter and a student at Tokiwadai. She is smitten with her dorm-mate and periodically attempts to romance Mikoto despite constant rebuffs. Kuroko is the vector by which Mikoto gets pulled into any number of adventures, you see she's a field agent for JUDGEMENT. She takes great pride in her job and is considered quite conscientious, though she in fact has been becoming increasingly overconfident of late and in any event has numerous other character flaws. She is currently acting as mentor to her rookie partner...

Kazari Uiharu:



...who looks up to her a great deal. Uiharu is a level one ESPer and her ability seems to be to grow flowers out of her head. This power is of no discernible utility in the scholastic or law enforcement fields so she must get by with determination and wits. She is very good at research and data acquisition and is normally Shirai's support, but she is increasingly being trusted with field work. As she is a mere level one, she is a student at Sakugawa school, which is not particularly prestigious. The school does not provide dorms for it's students and Uiharu lives in a nearby apartment with a classmate from Sakugawa...

Ruiko Saten:



 
...who came from a not terribly affluent family that pretty much put everything they had into getting her into an Academy City school where she could develop her abilities and move up in society. Despite much effort, she appears to be a level zero. This bothers her a great deal more than she lets on. She's quite smart, she just has no super powers in a city full of ESPers being groomed to be the leaders of tomorrow. Despite her brave talk she is becoming increasingly desperate to get in touch with the powers she is sure she must have. Saten frequently assists Uiharu in research, though as she a level zero this is in an unofficial capacity. Saten is quite astonished to find out that Mikoto Misaka is not at all the pompous prima donna she had imagined.

**********

This is actually a pretty good teenage superhero high-school cop show thus far. The adventure elements are well thought out and the show is developing nicely. Misaka, Uiharu and Saten are thoroughly likable, decent characters...and Kuroko is fun to laugh at. 

The show has a lot to say about what happens when one defines worth too narrowly and how credentials of any type can be given too much weight to the exclusion of other qualities. 

 Funimation's dub is pretty good. Allison Viktori's version of Kuroko is a rather annoying.... which is exactly as it should be. The rest of the cast are also very nicely realized with Brina Palencia doing an especially fine job as Saten. 


These 12 episodes were quite enjoyable and I'm eagerly looking forward to the rest of it.

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April 07, 2014

This is REALLY Looking Interesting

...but it's gonna be kind of hard to live up to these trailers




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April 06, 2014

And Now, A Musical Interlude






UPDATE & WARNING: You may THINK it's like SchoolhouseRock but this Russian historical disco video is such a dangerous earworm that we fear it might be a nefarious Kremlin plot.





UPDATE FROM LEGAL: All Voice Actors are 18 years or older.
That is our story...and we are sticking to it. 






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March 30, 2014

"I Tried to Put it all Behind Me...But They Kept Dragging Me Back In."

  On the face of it,  Love Chunibyo and Other Delusions is just a high school slice of life show, but this series possesses a dark secret. It's the tale of a young man trying to put his terrible, shameful past behind him and find happiness as a productive member of society. His quest for redemption is complicated by the fact that fandom is like the Mob, but without the benefit of Omerta.

Yuta Togashi is just starting out in High School. His goal is to be normal.
That's it...
You see, in Jr. High, Mr. Togashi was an imaginative young lad. Actually he was a geek, a fanboy...a RAVING Otaku who became legendary for his bonecrusshingly idiotic antics. He imagined himself to be "The Dark Flame Master" which was a fantasy personality that seems to have been based on a dreadfully cliched TV/ light novel series.
He's better now.
Looking to put his reputation as a complete addle-brained looser behind him he has enrolled in a high school that's a couple of counties removed from his apartment...which necessitates an exceedingly long commute.
He is able to do a pretty good job of passing as normal....




Unfortunately, he has a new neighbor, Rikka Takanashi, who is also in his homeroom, knows about his past and if anything is more delusional than he ever was. She seeks to enlist the Dark Flame Master into her crackerjack team of shortbus commandos who are looking to...chart the areas ley lines.




Rikka is at once obnoxious, pitiable and hilarious as she sets into motion a series of events that bring together a surprisingly well realized cast of characters in a show that is a rare and special kind of treat.  Love, Chunibyo and Other Delusions is masterfully well done. I found it not just funny but genuinely touching.  It has fully lived up to it's early promise.

This blog has 369 posts in the Fanboy Recidivism category, which probably represent 80-100 shows. This is one of the best.

It's still streaming on Crunchyroll for a time, but do note that Sentai it taking pre-orders for the show on DVD and Blue Ray.

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March 29, 2014

Kill-La-Kill Ends

They pretty much went through all the applicable tropes for the climax and cranked them up to 11. I do think it went on one episode too long,
Nevertheless, it is with profound shame and a great deal of rueful self examination that I must admit to having thoroughly enjoyed this show.


Unfortunately, standards and practices has informed us that any images from the final episode that are not spoilers would be inappropriate for the blog. So here is an utterly unrelated landscape by Kasi Takahisa.




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