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The criticisms rightfully listed by Surrender Artist notwithstanding, I still recommend that those enchanted by anime of the 1980s should part with the spare change needed to purchase the Appleseed OVA. Placing it in comparison with the more cerebral outings within its own genre will not exhibit it in the most favourable of fashions, though the price point of the DVD is so low as to merit paying little regard to such a matter. I myself acquired mine from within Manga UK's bargain bin for the price of a bus ticket; a purchase I consider to be quite gratifying given the expenditure involved.

Ok, I finally finished Hakugei, which I totally could've brought with me to my sister's but wanted an excuse to watch anything else (and scored pretty well with Tekkaman Blade, which is most certainly worth the extra money vs Teknoman over at TRSI). Not that it's the worst series I've ever seen, but I liked how my friend who was watching it with me put it: "I really can't get used to how this series wastes potential in exchange for cheap, useless comedy", which pretty much describes the entire second half of the series. Now, the first half was non-serious wacky crew hijinks anyway, but they didn't stop when the plot wanted to get serious. Also the ending was rushed, they didn't build up to it very well, it was like I couldn't tell if the series was rushing or taking it slow at times.
So yeah, I'm going to be watching [i]Rose of Versailles[i] soon, let's hope Osamu Dezaki was just going through a phase when he made Hakugei, not the best way to start off with looking into a prolific director, I'd give Hakugei a 5 out of 10. And if anyone wants to trade me most anything for it, do drop me a PM!

Toaru Hikuushi e no Tsuioku / The Princess and the Pilot (movie)
A couple countries are at war for generic reasons and the other side has a plan to kill the fiance of the country's prince, a beautiful girl from an aristocratic family, and attack her manor. Her father and many others are killed but she survives. The prince decides she should be with him on the mainland but she'll need an escort, the special ops force that was supposed to do it was wiped out so instead a "secret" mission (these people don't apparently know what the word "secret" means) is hatched in which she is smuggled to a warship by a single pilot, an extremely young and talented mercenary pilot, who, because of his mixed heritage (and black hair?) is harshly discriminated by the country's military. They have their adventure together and find out his mother was once her beloved maidservant. Air battles are had, bonding between the couple occurs, prejudices get in the way.
It's squarely in the "good" category for a movie. If it were a series it might get bumped up for it's very good visuals but the story elements aren't anything new. The air battles look pretty damn cool but the actual mission and strategies are pretty damn stupid and while the flight animation is very detailed it largely depends on the miraculous flying through a hail a bullets without being shot down on multiple occasions. Handy. Between the facts that everyone and their mother apparently knew about the mission and that we're talking about a few battle squadrons against a single, mainly unarmed, plane there's no realistic way they'd survive.
Yet, the story lets you suspend your disbelief enough so you can enjoy it.
Nothing to go out of your way to watch, but don't avoid it either. If you like airplane dogfights this is a good movie to catch and the single engine planes often look like they could fly, even if the giant battleships look like Miyazaki or Last Exile knock-offs and run on the power of how cool they look.

Watched all three Patlabor movies last night. First two were good, third one a bit less, but none of them grabbed me the way I expected them to. I can't pin down exactly why though.

Seems like a day to watch movies.
Another Madhouse movie with shades of Ghibli, but maybe a bit more like a mix between Takahata and Miyazaki.

Mai Mai Miracle (movie)
Kiko, A shy girl from Tokyo moves to a rural town and meets and befriends Shinko, an imaginative tomboy, they make other friends and share fantasies about a girl who lived in a grand manor-house 1000 years ago when the area was regional capital.
It's a bit of a coming of age story that touches on Kiko coming to terms with the loss of her mother, a few little stories about the group of friends and a tragedy that deals with one of the group.
It really was a nice and touching story but with a little bit of harsh realities thrown in. If it has a fault it's that it's a bit overstuffed. It's an adaptation of a novel, an autobiographical tale from the POV of Shinko and it feels like they tried to cram everything from the book within its 100 minutes, which means it's hard to focus on any single theme... and as it was an autobiography maybe a stronger focus on Shinko's feelings would have made it better. Still, it was very pleasant movie and I'm giving it a "very good" rating.

Avenger: It had been the top anime in the Netflix queue for awhile, but I kept putting in seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm in the queue and moving them to the top.
I finally let the first disc of Avenger get mailed to me. I knew nothing about the series at all.
When I hit play, on hearing the opening, I thought, did I put in a Noir disc by mistake? From that point on as I watched possibly the most incoherent mess of a story start flung at me the hapless viewer, I kept comparing the show to Noir or Madlax.
When the episode was over, I hit pause and looked it up in the encyclopedia. Ah.... Bee Train.
I liked Madlax, though Noir was ok, and enjoyed parts of El Cazador de la Bruja (that series would have done fine at 12 episodes), but I had zero desire to continue on with Avenger. Ejected the disc and removed the others from the Netflix queue.
Avenger joins MM! as the only series dropped after one episode.

Last edited by Botan24 on Sun Mar 04, 2012 10:36 pm; edited 1 time in total

Spastic Minnow wrote:

Seems like a day to watch movies.

I agree. Here in Michigan we had a huge snowstorm. So, its either go play in the snowbank, or get caught up with my movie back log.

With that, I've been continuing my Studio Ghibli viewing:

My Neighbor Totoro

This simply was a too cute tale of sisters living life. Satsuki and Mei are both so lovingly constructed. They are what they are, nothing more, and the take everything in as it comes at them. Their father is another great character. He handles them so well, again, taking in whatever they throw at him, all in stride. No raised voices, no hovering. Obviously, Totoro, Cat Bus, and the other spirits are very charming. The big smiles, bug eyes, and round bodies. Its almost as if they were designed by kids. I could see myself drawing something similar when I was in grade school. Anyway, loved this, probably my favorite Ghibli thus far.

Then there's:
Metropolis

First of all, the cheesy Disney-esque character designs were hard for me to get over. The slim knees accompanied by thick calves and cankles, plus the cupie doll eyes, and big boy slicked hair. Its all a bit too silly in a movie that’s trying to be mostly serious. The second roadblock to my overall viewing experience was the soundtrack, especially that insert song when the Ziggurat is being destroyed. I laughed, I admit it. And as for the plot, I'm guessing that when the 1949 manga was published its ideas were novel. However, by the time I watched the movie, I’d gleaned some cliches from other media along the way. It was pretty obvious that spoiler[1) the government was corrupt, and 2) the computers/robots would eventually gain sentience, deem the human race unfit and set out to destroy the world.] So, already armed with that knowledge, I found Metropolis to be predictable. My end reaction was, “Well, at least I’ve watched it. Now I never have to again.”

Last edited by Tris8 on Mon Mar 05, 2012 1:01 am; edited 2 times in total

Watched Kamisama Dolls. This is another series to get the "wraps up absolutely nothing" award. I understand many series want to leave themselves windows for second seasons, but they usually address at least one of the plot points they have created before their dozen episodes peter out. It was a good show though. The way we slowly find out about the kakashi (wooden contraptions accepted as gods), how they work and their origins, was really interesting.

Now I'm 2 eps into Nisemonogatari, and I'm concluding this type of series just isn't for me. I liked Bakemonogatari, but Nisemonogatari so far is even more dialogue heavy, more harem-y, and no semblance of plot has yet emerged. It is a very unique series with a different sense of humor, and I can see how this could be very refreshing for some, but for me keeping up with the back-and-forth is a chore. And the reduced presence of Senjogahara is sad.

Edit: on ep 6 now and it's gotten good. Still, not inherently my cup of tea. But I love Shinobu, and Kaiki is an interesting spoiler[villain].

Madoka Magica episode 2-3.

Not bad at all. There continues to be a very strong and well established feeling of foreboding looming behind the proceedings. Episode 2 was a bit heavy on exposition and a little slow but episode 3 really upped the stakes. It remains to be seen whether this show will truly live up to its reputation but I'm definitely feeling quite positive about it. Even more so than after episode 1.

Shiki episode 1-2

Just a few first impressions: Megumi is funny in a sort of stupid way. It's nice to see something at least more or less in the vein of a mystery (although it's blatantly apparent at least in a general sense what's going on here). Still, I appreciate them taking the time to set things up effectively. I'm undecided on the character designs. I'm generally intrigued by anything unique but I'm not entirely sure if they're appropriate for the tone of the series.

Fate/Zero episode 5-7

Overall still a very good show. I won't bother rehashing all the reasons why as I've done so in the past. A couple nitpicks though. Some of the CG stuff doesn't look great. They sorta cover it up but Berserker is still somewhat noticeably out of place. Caster is a bit too much as well. He slaughters children with such frequency that it kinda just stops being dark and becomes comically absurd.

Gewürtztraminer wrote:

Avenger joins MM! as the only series dropped after one episode.

Heh. It gets worse as it goes, so yeah... good call.

Botan24 wrote:

The second roadblock to my overall viewing experience was the soundtrack, especially that insert songspoiler[ when the Ziggurat is being destroyed]. I laughed, I admit it.

Your reactions, and indeed the judgements you have subsequently passed regarding the film, are most antithetical to my own. Certain critics of this work are keen to wield the charge that it is unoriginal in some respects, and yet when presented with the manners in which it is a stylistically original piece within its genre, the same persons might dismiss such features as immature. One can but wonder whether Kaiba would be received in a similar manner.

As I threatened some time ago, I cast all responsibility and restraint into the cruel, cold, fedora-stealing wind and had myself a Bubblegum Weekend, which is to say that I spent most of the past two days watching nearly all that’s been animated of Bubblegum Crisis, namely the following, in the order that they were watched:

Bubblegum Crisis
Bubblegum Crash
A.D. Police Files (OVA)
Parasite Dolls
Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040

The only part of the ‘canon’ that I didn’t watch was the A.D. Police television series, because it didn’t quite fit neatly into my schedule and nobody has much that’s nice to say about it. That’s true of Bubblegum Crash too, but that’s short and, in a sense, more relevant. I do own a copy of A.D. Police; it came in one of those funny ADV double-packs with Parasite Dolls. I will watch it some idle, desperate afternoon.

I must confess that I watched everything in its English dub. I realize that this is a ludicrous sin in some cases, but one that I could bear and I wasn’t going to spend twenty two hours reading a screen.

I must also confess that I regularly turned to trying to think of lyrics for a parody version of “Lydia the Tattooed Lady” about Sylia, but I never got very far because, “that encyclopylia,” never worked. Oy vey, do I ever need some other hobbies. Well, I do write… constitutions…

That’s not all, I also enjoy… wearing hats…

Wait a minute. “Sylia's mother says Sylia's busy, too busy to come to the phone.” Damn, why couldn’t I have thought of that earlier?

I began by watching Bubblegum Crisis itself. I believe that I halfheartedly watched it on Hulu some time last year, but I barely remember that, so I wasn’t very far from seeing it afresh. It’s a strange creature; a sort of New England home of an OVA that just grew as opportunity allowed until the production companies decided to hate one another, or something like that. The episodes vary in length. The first episode, which I believe was originally meant to stand alone, is roughly forty seven minutes long, which is a quite common sort of length for the era. The rest vary from twenty to fifty minutes in length, with the last three being all roughly fifty minutes long.

It seems pretty clear that the series was not planned in advance. There are some recurring characters and storylines, but they feel like the result of the producers just adding as they need to because it was worthwhile to keep doing so, almost more like an American television series. This makes the storytelling slightly ineffective because there isn’t much the move the larger series forward and some episodes try to tie themselves to earlier one by inventing facts that don’t contradict earlier events and create links among the episodes, but seem to have been invented after the fact. For example, one episode is about a sister getting revenge for a character who was murdered in an earlier episode, even though the existence of the sister was not mentioned or indicated in the episode. Still, at least they tried. The episodic stories are at least mostly entertaining enough on their own and have a sort of exuberant simplicity. I liked “Moonlight Rambler”, with its weird principal conceit (spoiler[Vampire sex robots]) and the emotional involvement that it allows Priss for the episode. An unfortunate side-effect of the series’ rambling development and abrupt end is that the ‘series finale’ is some nothing fluff about Nene and a high school girl with aspirations of becoming a photo-journalist. It’s not bad; it’s just not much of a finale. Once again being more in the spirit of an old American television series.

It’s fitting that I would like an episode that gives so much attention and about as much depth as the series is apt to offer to Priss. She’s probably the nearest to a strong character in the series. Her identity as a tough, brooding loner who sings glam rock and, shall we say, wears a lot of leather is not complex, but it’s at least strongly defined. The other Knight Sabers are pretty thin brews. The series spoons some depth into Sylia with a history of personal loss, but she’s mostly just dully cool and confident. Nene is childish, a bit lazy and a hacker and… and… well, let me know if you can come up with one or two more simple adjectives. Then there’s Linna… she has black hair… she was apparently an aerobics instructor… she… Nobody cares about Linna. Bubblegum Crisis is not much of a character piece. The supporting cast often seemed more interesting and appealing than the leads. I actually liked Daley Wong best of all the characters. That he was an openly homosexual character in something made in the eighties is remarkable enough, but he was also not played as campy or comical and had a sly sense of humor that suggested a comfortable confidence in who he was.

The best, least ambiguous virtue of Bubblegum Crisis is it’s designs and animation. The characters move well and the animation seldom conspicuously cheats. The hair and clothes are very much creatures of their era, but the designs are still distinctive an appealing all these years later, even if I can’t help but chuckle at them and want to give the poor dears coupons to Supercuts. The mechanical designs are really strong and aged better. The hardsuits are instantly recognizable, both as part of this series and as an aesthetic keystone of anime. I question the logic of combat armor that so clearly mirrors the form of its pilots and especially that have high heels, but it’s easy to see why they were so popular. The grit of old cel animation also nicely complements the dark, sometimes menacing future cityscape where most of the action happens.

I just can’t find great enthusiasm for Bubblegum Crisis. I enjoyed watching it and it’s of undoubted historical relevance, but, as badly as I hate doing this sort of thing, I can’t help but feel that its reputation is a product of its time. It was, or so I am given to understand, one of the few things available in Japanese with subtitles when it was first put out in the West and I could imagine that it introduced or made popular a lot of conventions and ideas. The production staff is littered with people who later went on to considerable acclaim. Perhaps if I had come to anime a half-decade earlier, it might be far more significant to me.

I lack even ambiguous appreciate for Bubblegum Crash. If I have things right, it was an effort by one of the companies that produced Bubblegum Crisis to conclude the story. It does that, but not in a compelling or good way. It also has a less auspicious staff and lesser budget, so while it inherits some distinctive designs and good will from Bubblegum Crisis, it isn’t a success.

I give Bubblegum Crash great credit for at least giving Linna a real job and an extra, if vacuous, characteristic. She’s now a cheerily avaricious stockbroker. That’s still barely a character, but it’s a lot better than barely even being one. Sadly, the characters still aren’t very interesting, despite the episodes giving them some time to have conversations. The worst mistake is trying very hard to ineptly wring interest from the question of whether the Knight Sabers will disband, despite there being no dramatic tension at all. It isn’t always a bad thing to forestall resolving a conflict or question with an obvious answer if the story of how that obvious answer is come to is interesting or entertaining on its own, but in Bubblegum Crash it’s mere tedium.

All of Bubblegum Crash was written by Emu Arī, so it’s more coherent than Bubblegum Crisis, but that does it little good. The story is mostly very convention, but isn’t as exuberant or stylish as in Bubblegum Crisis. It tries very hard to be serious and grim, but uses ideas that were surely distressingly familiar even back then and has generous helpings with a lot of irritating banalities familiar to anybody who’s encountered more than zero other stories about the perils of widespread use of robots or whatever. There just isn’t anything exciting or interesting about it.

Bubblegum Crash is the nadir of the franchise. It isn’t obnoxiously or offensively bad, but it’s not at all satisfying as either a complement to Bubblegum Crisis or on its own.

A.D. Police Files came mercifully to give me a good way to finish Saturday. I had been hopeful about it because, as should be achingly predictable of me by now, there’s a Buried Treasures column about it.

I was probably doomed to fall for A.D. Police Files just because of its form and style. It’s a set of future-noir pulp vignettes about the hapless, nigh-suicidal A.D. Police that’s steeped in grit, bleakness and sin. I really like short vignettes, as well as other ‘compact’ styles, because of the sort of intense satisfaction that they can offer without much risk of lingering too long. They’re the narrative equivalent of demitasses of strong espresso. I don’t actually drink coffee, but would, “Chinese teacup of lapsang souchong,” have meant anything to anybody?

The three stories are all set some six years before Bubblegum Crisis that have Leon, a recurring A.D. Police detective in Bubblegum Crisis, and his partner Jeena, who never appeared in Bubblegum Crisis appear in rôles of varying significance. The stories are all tinged with darkness, sex and violence. The first, which is about Leon’s earliest work after transferring to the A.D. Police, is probably the most interesting. It’s a depressingly believable story about Boomers who are retrofitted to be prostitutes, how their parts are illegally recycled after they go rogue and how one becomes obsessed with Leon. It’s a very moody story that manages to be very engaging despite a slightly confusing resolution. It’s also the only one where Leon is a lead character. The middle story is about a normal police detective who investigates a series of boomer prostitute murders while at the same time ponders replacing her right eye, which has been hurting, with an artificial one. It plays out of a story of badly damaged, frustrated people that manages to make the otherwise worn-through, “what makes somebody human,” motif dramatically satisfying. The story’s lead character is a little disappointing as she seems too soft-hearted and mousy to be a police detective, although I wish there were more stories about her because I think that she could be built into an interesting character. The last story appears to be a severely derivative of Robocop, but I didn’t see it as that. I’ll grant that I’ve never seen Robocop, but I think that the closing tale of A.D. Police Files played things differently enough to not deserve harsh relegation to the ‘rip-off pile’, whither I feel some people are almost greedily eager to throw things. The story is about an A.D. Police officer who is nearly killed in the line of duty, but saved by conversion into an experimental cyborg. The curious twist to it is that the only part of his body that can still feel anything, especially pain, is his tongue, which he sometimes bites to remind himself that he’s alive. I thought that it had some interesting meditations upon the relationship between fear, pain and what motivates human behavior. It’s also the only story that doesn’t prominently feature boomer prostitutes, although there is some really weird, disturbing sexual stuff in it. These are unhappy stories and pretty relentlessly bleak, but for those who can swallow that sort of stuff, it’s a good, stiff drink.

I also found that I really liked the character of Jeena, who is Leon’s partner in these stories and plays prominent parts in the first and last. She’s most obviously a tough, competent A.D. Police detective who’s little interested in pandering to ideals of femininity. I love that, but what I found most interesting is that the OVA managed to have her emotional shield break down in a way that was convincing and didn’t denature or demean the character. The ‘tough girl’ archetype is a frustrating one because if the character is relentlessly badass, then she’s not much of a character, but when writers try to add to her range of emotions, they usually resort to having her fall apart and ‘need a man’ or something insultingly stupid like that. Here the story seems to flirt with that path by revealing that Jeena had a relationship with the officer who became a cyborg, but instead of having her fall apart, or into Leon’s arms, when events make that a source of emotional strain, it allows her to reveal, but also deal with these emotions and remain an effective character.

Perhaps I am being too effusive about this. I might just have been looking for something to grab onto after having been somewhat unimpressed by Bubblegum Crisis and disappointed by Bubblegum Crash, but I liked this a lot. It’s a little too rough and sometimes too stylistically excessive to be really great, but it’s strong enough to survive its flaws.

I even liked the English dub of it, which I was slightly surprised to find was very much a minority opinion. In fact, so far as I know so far, I am the sole member of that minority, although because so little attention is paid to A.D. Police Files, there aren’t many people on any side of the question. It’s strange that I liked it, because it was recorded by the same studio that did rather poorly with Bubblegum Crisis and Bubblegum Crash. I don’t know why this is. I guess I just must have strange taste in voice acting.

Parasite Dolls was a fitting choice to follow A.D. Police Files. It’s also a future-noir crime story with a lot of boomer prostitutes. I almost want to chide the writers responsible for using that idea too much, but to tell the truth, as soon as we have the technology to make robots with vaginas, people are going to start making robots with vaginas. Hell, they’ll probably make robots with more than one, robots with vaginas and penises and perhaps even robots with new, revolutionary kinds of genitalia that nature hasn’t even thought of yet. It’ll be like buying a car that comes as both a sedan and a station wagon, but instead of optional extra storage space, it’ll be optional extra places to put or things to do to penises.

Man, I’m having one of those, “I wish to apologize for being a man,” moments.

Parasite Dolls has three parts, like A.D. Police Files had, but they’re closer to three acts of a larger story rather than three loosely tied vignettes. Each tells its own story and can in many ways stand apart from the other parts, but they share the same lead characters and are more tightly bound. Parasite Dolls is also has some of the cleverest ideas of any part of the franchise and more willing to do strange, inexplicable things. This is probably owed to Chiaki J. Konaka, who wrote Parasite Dolls. Don’t worry, Parasite Dolls doesn’t have an inscrutable no-ending, unlike some other things with giant robots that blow holes through buildings with concussive air blasts that I could name, but for no good reason am merely very obviously suggesting rather than naming.*

The first part of Parasite Dolls involves, predictably, trouble with rogue boomers, but has a rather novel concept for how they are dealt with. It’s very moody and built around several stories that slowly converge, but not before each playing out in interesting isolation. It also introduces the three principals, who are fairly familiar archetypes, but played with some subtlety and enough competence to be worth caring about. One is a cop with a troubled past who doesn’t like guns. One is the cop’s amiable boomer partner. The last is a tough aggressive woman with anxiety over her femininity. That’s almost the components of a really awkward, “a priest, a rabbi and a minister joke,” but these traits are for the most part not played up too much and are played well enough to be interesting rather than tiresome.

The second part is set a year later and puts the tough female cop in the lead to investigate, and stop me if you’ve heard this one, a series of boomer prostitute murders. This story is made more interesting by Eve, a particularly beautiful and intriguing boomer prostitute who is favored by wealthy clients and struggles with strange dreams, which a boomer shouldn’t even have. It’s slightly less compelling than the other stories, perhaps having not quite enough to fill its allotted time with such focus on a single storyline and having the only thing that approaches Chiaki Konaka’s frustrating signature style for endings, but does well by having an interesting character in Eve and some effective imagery. It does briefly stray into a backwards nation of gender relations, a problem that Konaka slipped into sometimes in Armitage III, but it doesn’t overwhelm anything.

The final act is set a further five years later and ventures more into the territory of thrillers. It has less of the lonely atmospheric quality of the first two, erring more into tense dialogue, excited revelations and even some big, fiery spectacle. It falls upon some cliché’s of the genre that have haunted this franchise before, but plays them with enough deftness and panache for them to be acceptable. It even has a rather clever, if perhaps slightly nonsensical, device for making the big deal go off.

Parasite Dolls is pretty nice looking too. It evidently had more money than a television series, although it isn’t as sumptuously animated as the OVAs of yore, and the designs are sufficiently striking or memorable. It also has a respectable English dub, certainly better than anything from Southwynde Studios, that plays well with the often low-key style of the story. The first story includes a nice performance from Shelley Calene-Black, one of my old favorites in English dubs.

Chiaki J. Konaka also wrote Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040, which tried to create a new complete story rather than complementing another series. The question of which is better is pettily controversial, but I easily prefer it to the original Bubblegum Crisis. I am neutral on the music war, which some consider the decisive point, because I was born too late to absorb much of the eighties and I never cared about popular music in the nineties (or ever). I also can tolerate eighties hair, Zac Morris collars excepted, so that’s not the cause. I prefer it because it has the characterization and sense of story that I found troubling absent from the original.

The Knight Sabers of Bubblegum Crisis, except perhaps for Priss, were barely characters. They might have at most had a few simple traits and different hair. Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 instead gives us a far better realized cast. Lina is the best improved; in the original she was barely relevant and could have been replaced by a lamp with no loss to the story so long as the lamp could pilot a hardsuit. In this series while she’s perhaps the blandest of the leads, perhaps a necessary evil of her being the perspective character for the audience, when she’s first introduced she’s immediately active, seeming to actually have a personality and motivations. She even has some potential for conflict with Priss in the first part of the series, although that tension is never really satisfyingly resolved, but it’s a monumental improvement over ‘cheerful aerobics instructor’. Nene is also far better this time around. She still has some of the childishness of the original Nene, but it isn’t nearly as bad and she actually seems to grow past it as the story goes on. The series also makes a real point of her intelligence and skill as a hacker; while it borders on being plot-serving computer magic, it gives her character more purpose and worth.

Sylia has been changed from a generic leader figure to a very troubled woman. The troubles of her past, which are nigh perfunctory in Bubblegum Crisis are far more potent and strangely horrifying in Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 and as a consequence, Sylia is emotionally volatile, perhaps even bipolar, and sometimes even fragile. Priss is changed the least, although a certain tantalizing ambiguity is removed by her being slipped into a relationship with Leon, but she was the closest thing that Bubblegum Crisis had to a character and she’s played better here. Her brooding and emotional distance seems better motivated and more effective. Episode seven shows parts of an interview with her by some entertainment journalist that does much to make the audience appreciate what she’s like.

Perhaps because the leads are finally worth paying attention to, the supporting cast isn’t as strong, perhaps because I don’t need to look to them for somebody to grab onto. Leon seems mostly like a generically gruntingly masculine macho jerk for much of the series. Daley Wong is still entertaining as the sly ‘smart guy’, but he seems to be heterosexual this time ‘round. (I wonder if Chiaki Konaka isn’t fond of homosexual characters) The brooding Nigel is a serviceable character, although the relationship between him and Sylia is introduced too late, with too little building-up to be as compelling as it was likely meant to be. This series does something more interesting with Sylia’s younger brother Macky, but his relationship with Nene never seemed well-grounded. The butler Henderson is fine as the loyal caring servant, but doesn’t go much beyond that box.

Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 also has a strong, guiding overarching story rather than the loose association among the episodes of Bubblegum Crisis. I found it nicely paced, one or two instances such as the episodes set in the A.D. Police building notwithstanding. Most of the episodes flow very consistently into one another as a continuous story, which makes it very suitable for watching in one great swallow as I did, but does sometimes produce phony cliffhangers that end one episode with some tension that rushes into an anticlimax as soon as the next begins. The story has more than a few twists, but they mostly aren’t packed too tightly together, so didn’t feel like hapless gimmicks to offer excitement when the series was otherwise failing. The writers clearly thought things through, building surprises and implications into nearly every step of the story that keep the supply of tension and complications steady. It is, unfortunately, sometimes drug down by improbably conveniences and one or two deii ex machine. The series also sometimes goes too often to the well of false dramatic tension, especially people threatening to quit the Knight Sabers, and occasional flops in logic, such as some characters not really following up on a revelation for more details. The story is much stronger than its flaws, but sometimes disappoints.

This ending was seemingly written by the ‘bad’ Chiaki J. Konaka. It’s strange, abstract and almost ethereal. I’m not quite sure what happened, but it didn’t actually seem as inscrutable or nonsensical than some of his other efforts, like that one about the guy who lives in a bank in a city where nobody remembers what happened forty years ago.** I suppose that in a way, it undermines some of the effort that lead up to it, but it didn’t feel irritating or nonsensical, despite that being what I expected.

Despite ostensibly being science fiction, Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 is at least as much as horror story, and Chiaki J. Konaka a horror writer, as anything else. The boomers are more monsters than speculations on technology. Fighting them depends upon destroying their cores, which are usually portrayed as pulsing and heart-like, which seems more like the secret to killing a monster than defeating a robot menace, except in a video game. They even look more like eldritch horrors than robots. When they go rogue, they take a monstrous, weirdly organic form with throbbing, twisting forms and gaping, gnashing maws. The series comports very little with science, so despite what it might seem like, it's really a horror series with any science fiction occurring at the margins, perhaps even accidentally. The closing act has a different aesthetic with almost spiritual, somewhat abstract imagery. So despite the apocalyptic theme of the final part of the story, it looks brighter and cleaner than most of what comes before it.

I liked the English dub of Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 a lot. It is very different in form from the original Japanese, but conveys the same story, but with far more life and personality. The delivery and writing in the English version seems more distinctive and diverse than the original. I particularly liked Hilary Haag as Nene; she begins as slightly too shrill and affected, but does a lot to make Nene more appealing and entertaining. Kelly Mansion is slightly limp and sound almost uncomfortable at first, but she settled into the rôle in time. Andy McAvin, who is a favorite of mine, is perfectly slithering as Brian J. Mason. The only actor on the English cast whom I never warmed to was Jason Douglas, who I thought was mostly obnoxious as Leon. Nevertheless, it is, especially after most of the cast settle in, a satisfying, entertaining English dub.

The one thing that Bubblegum Crisis undoubtedly has over Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 is technical merits. Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 is well animated for a television series, but is not and could not be as impressive as a successful OVA from the high holy days of the Japanese bubble economy. The animation does cheat sometimes; the characters slip off model from time to time and it avoids having or even just avoids showing the Knight Sabers in action. In one case, what should’ve been an impressive, triumphal battle happens off screen, with only the lead-up and aftermath shown. The character designs are also a compromise. They eschew the eighties silliness of the original designs, but they aren’t as distinctive; I even sometimes had to sometimes double check to distinguish Linna from Priss. The hardsuit designs are a close match, at least, to the originals, which means they have the same sleek, cool look, but also some silly… sexiness? The designs are changed later on to be a bit less sleekly cool, but also a touch sillier, but not actually bad. The boomers take a very different approach, not just when they go rogue, but also in normal operation. They’re seldom human-looking, instead most of them look more practical and mechanical.

To my surprise, I seemed to have liked the opening sequence and theme song “Y’know.” It doesn’t seem like my kind of song or sequence, but I seldom skipped it.

All told, I enjoyed Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040, especially in comparison to the original. The first one has the thrill of its era and technical advantages, including not being victim to the horrors of computer generated images, but Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 has so much more in story and plot that I can’t see it as a serious contest. Perhaps it is a question of when they were made. I like the old OVAs plenty, but Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 was made in the era of most of the series that I cut my teeth on. I can’t really identify and describe it, but something about its style of storytelling and composition feel like home to me.

Gewürtztraminer wrote:

Ejected the disc and removed the others from the Netflix queue.
Avenger joins MM! as the only series dropped after one episode.

I am a fan of the Bee Train 'girls-with-guns' œuvre, but I didn't like Avenger. It irritates me too, because I think that there were some really good elements that could have made for an interesting, stylish series. It seemingly couldn't reign its excesses in and commit to its emotional content enough to be worthwhile. It also doesn't really resolve much in its finale, so it would've probably been even more aggravating is you'd watched it all.

Botan24 wrote:

Metropolis

First of all, the cheesy Disney-esque character designs were hard for me to get over. The slim knees accompanied by thick calves and cankles, plus the cupie doll eyes, and big boy slicked hair. Its all a bit too silly in a movie that’s trying to be mostly serious. The second roadblock to my overall viewing experience was the soundtrack, especially that insert song when the Ziggurat is being destroyed. I laughed, I admit it. And as for the plot, I'm guessing that when the 1949 manga was published its ideas were novel. However, by the time I watched the movie, I’d gleaned some cliches from other media along the way. It was pretty obvious that spoiler[1) the government was corrupt, and 2) the computers/robots would eventually gain sentience, deem the human race unfit and set out to destroy the world.] So, already armed with that knowledge, I found Metropolis to be predictable. My end reaction was, “Well, at least I’ve watched it. Now I never have to again.”

I found some pleasure in watching Metropolis, but it was mostly for its excellent backgrounds and very good animation. My feelings about it are mostly lukewarm. The story wasn't really impressive, but I could go along with it. I actually did buy into the finale, but perhaps my thorough indoctrination by Doctor Strangelove or How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb explains that. I really loved its score; it's too rare to hear dixieland and I though that Metropolis had excellent song, although one or two were awkwardly placed.

I highly recommend Fritz Lang's Metropolis to anybody who hasn't seen it yet, which has little to do with the animated film or manga, but is excellent enough to be worth shoehorning in, especially now that an restored, extended cut is now available.

*Thank you for putting up with that. The answer is The Big O. I’m kind of a jerk.

**The answer is The Big O, again. I really need to put more effort into these asterisk gags. At this rate, I’ll be writing for Family Guy.

Fate/Zero episodes 8-13

I'm still enjoying this show. The pace definitely drags a bit in the latter half though. We get an entirely pointless filler episode about kid Rin. In general there's just a whole ton of sitting around. Of course, there's also a ton of great character development here. Rider is great. Very interesting character. Caster is also actually kinda neat despite my initial dislike. So it's still real good stuff. Again though, just a bit slow pacing wise.

Final rating: Good

I finished watching Shiki on Hulu. It's Stephen King's Salem's Lot set in Japan at first, combined a few elements of Terry Pratchett's Carpe Jugulum in the middle and then turned into a bit of Richard Matheson's I am Legend near the end before turning back to Salem's Lot so I can't accuse it of being unoriginal.

By setting all those in Japan, I mean. Oh, and by calling "vampires" "shiki" eventually.

I liked it. A bit. The character designs were amazingly over the top, especially the hair. They started with "bad hair", ran past "anime hair" glanced briefly at "unbelievable hair" just to end at "impossible hair". Incidently, the "making a hair stylist tear her own eyes out" award goes to Ritsuko for a do that defies gravity, reality and fashion sense and that's even when compared to Kyoko whose head looks like a mantlepiece.

As an atmospheric horror film, it was good. As a bloody black comedy, it was great. As a sociological piece between prey/predator relationships, it was a failure. Every discussion I've seen of this series painted the Shiki as even slighly relatable, if not better than the villagers, failed to realize that it's not a contest between two intelligent species but between one species and a parasite species. It's a common mistake, one the writers of this series made as well. The following is true of all "vampires as monster" story without any spoilers:

Vampires without people are nothing. {Maybe the writers knew it and they had one character do what he did just to show how and why the lead Shiki was wrong. Hmm, it may need a rewatch...}

Anyway, all Shiki decisions beyond the essential propagation stage baffled the hell out of me. And all the reactions by the villagers, including the good doctor, especially the good doctor, were justified.

spoiler[He who fights monsters becomes one is particuarly off here. The liquor store owner was already a monster, a pure brute. I suppose his character type was borrowed from From Dusk to Dawn; Fight monsters with a monster. I didn't think the Shiki were in the right at all. At least Megumi's jealous murders were better justifications for feedings, feedings used as a cover for murders, than Nao's attempt to bring her family over to her. It's not as if she asked them if they wanted to join her. And we're supposed to feel sorry for her when she only ended up with a dead family rather than a family that killed together? Sweet but sick.

Good is not nice, I knew that. I never knew we also had to say "Evil is not nice" or even "Evil can be nice, if its intentions are good". It kind of defeats the purpose of calling someone "evil".

I viewed all the Shiki's thought on morality as biased if not outright unreliable. Except for Ritsuko who had principles to which she didn't add any sort of exceptions, like Tohru or Natsuno. She did not feed, period and she wasn't evil. Sunako, definitely not and definitely evil. After dying as a human, she had no right to call what she did as a Shiki "living" or justified. She existed, that was all and I won't put any sort of morality to her feedings. But what put her into the "evil" category was propagating her kind through the deaths of the living.]

Now if she had asked first, that would have been different.

Animegomaniac wrote:

And all the reactions by the villagers, including the good doctor, especially the good doctor, were justified.

FINALLY.

Finally someone who isn't a complete retard. I get so sick and bloody tired of morons spouting nonsense, so it is awesome to see someone with an actual brain and a human heart.

What sort of "nonsense" do I mean? Oh, claims such as the villagers were just as bad or almost as bad as the shiki. The series was a morality tale, yes, but between good and evil, not between differing shades of grey. Heck, I think the villagers are bloody saints. Given all that had happened they really let the shiki off easy . . .

So anyway, thank you Animegomaniac for partially restoring my faith in humanity. And no, I'm not joking; it was really bugging me that I seemed to be the only one who wasn't rooting for the mass murdering, sociopathic parasites.

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