Forum - View topicWhat are you watching right now? Why? (please read 1st post)
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Surrender Artist
 Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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I finished watching Mezzo DSA on Hulu a few days ago. All that I had seen of Yasuomi Umetsu's work before was Kite, which is a very different thing from Mezzo DSA. I enjoyed it quite a lot. It suffered from having the budget of a television show, which made it impossible, aside from the first episode, for Yasuomi Umetsu to indulge in the preposterous, exaggerated action that he does so well. On the other hand, his narrative style wasn't so impeded.
I thought it was a really fun show to watch. The first episode has a ghost, then the second has aliens and while it doesn't have anything quite so fantastical after that, those episodes set a freewheeling mood for the series. The characters are very easy to like and I was in the mood to like them, especially Mister Kuro the vivacious and violent Mikura. Even the meek, in spirit and voice, Asami Igarashi become engaging and she gets a very satisfying conclusion to her part in the series. It wasn't a challenging series, but was a very entertaining one. I really enjoyed the English language version. I thought that the lead cast all portrayed their parts well. For me, Andy McAvin as Kenichi Kurokawa nearly stole the show with his endearingly goofy, yet still compelling portrayal. He raves enthusiastically about pasta and women, but never seems vacuous or obnoxious; quite the opposite. I don't know that I would ever buy it, except for the sake of completeness, although I do want to buy Mezzo Forte in due time, even if it won't have the English cast that I so well liked. I definitely want the version that isn't pornography, which is probably what Yasuomi Umetsu prefers anyway. The banner show that watched last week was Madlax, the middle child of Bee Train's supposed 'girls with guns trilogy'. I quite liked it, but with reservations. I'm not nearly so fond of it as I was of Noir, but even so felt a little disappointment that there was no more when it ended. I shall dispose of the comparisons of Madlax to Noir first, because even though they are really rather different shows, its lineage and the advertising link them inextricably. As I wrote before, I liked Noir better than Madlax. Mostly as I found the characters of Noir more compelling. I like the cast of Madlax, but because they were more numerous and could be lost in its grander narrative ambition, they weren't as endearing or interesting as they could have been. Noir is to me chiefly about the emotional relationship between Mireille and Kirika, which I found myself very invested in, which was probably so effective to me because the show has a very intimate scale. I also prefer Noir's music, with the exception of "Nowhere" and one or two other songs, none of them really caught my ear. Madlax also comes in second place on its opening sequence. The opening for Noir is one of my favorites; I probably bought the series because of how cool "Coppelia's Casket" and the stylish, exciting accompanying animation were. "Fragments of an Eye" is nice enough and the animation is fine, but none of it is as cool or distinctive. In fairness, I must give Madlax credit for much greater narrative ambition and a richer supporting cast. It even has several male characters who aren't fatally shot within minutes of appearing! The comparison says a great deal of the broad strokes of what I think about Madlax, but even though I compared the two unfavorably, I by no means misliked it and as I have noted in the past, I don't tend to think comparatively about entertainment. Madlax felt very dry at times. The principal characters spend too much time time interacting with incidental or minor recurring characters rather than each other, which limits the depth of feeling that the audience can share with them. This is especially true during the first ten or so episodes until Vanessa meets Madlax and, if abruptly, a sort of relationship builds between them that... uh... moistens the series a little. So, I suppose that later one when more of the characters come together and begin to play against one another, it gets all wet. Boy, that took a regrettable turn... Regardless, this series had a vast amount of plot to play with, but wasn't always able to make its characters equally detailed or elaborate. I found each of the characters very endearing eventually, but I spent a lot of the time wanting them to grow and intertwine swifter. Madlax herself was quickly, if superficially, endearing from the beginning because of the contrast between her inhuman lethality and her lighthearted, unaffected personality. We see her effectively kill and maim, but then hear her resolve that she wants past, "yeah pasta," for dinner and talk almost like a high school girl. Margaret was interestingly strange from the beginning, but was too blank and aloof to be really endearing. I was disappointed that Vanessa and Elenore never really had a really interesting relationship, even though their catty bickering over the dinner table in the second episode suggested a hope for something interesting. Elenore always seemed like an incomplete character; even though I found her very effectively used in the series' stirring closing episodes. She had little interesting to say or impressive to do for most of the series and was hobbled by spending so much time with Margaret, who was almost psychologically inert for most of the series. To be honest, I sometimes wonder if I was supposed to take it all seriously, become sometimes it played the preposterous parts of its elaborate mythology and plot so straightly that I couldn't help but laugh, but it never seems stupid enough that I can dismiss the idea that the writer knew exactly what he wad doing. On one hand, Yousuke Kuroda also wrote Trigun, Excel Saga and Puni Puni Poemy, but on the other, he wrote Panzer Dragoon and Mao-Chan. Even if it wasn't all meant to be taken seriously, I enjoyed playing along with this puzzle-box of a series. The mysteries that are left mysteries are curious ones and become unpredictable as the supernatural seeps into the series. I found all of it surprisingly intelligible by the end, even though there's a lot open to interpretation and some of it not really explained. I was satisfied with the whole series, but the last six episodes elevated my opinion of it. The finale was different from what I usually like, but I liked it, especially Margaret's speech to Friday Monday, which was very satisfying. The looming antagonist of the series, by the way, is a ranting lunatic named Friday Monday. I've read that this might be a reference to G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, which seems plausible, but damned if I know. Recall how I wondered about whether this should be taken seriously? Also, there was a CGI oscillating fan in some episodes in the middle of the series and it pissed me off. I actually have had a hard time making sense of how I enjoyed Madlax even though I'm sure that I did. That makes sense somehow. Dear mercy that was all a mess. Maybe I'll try to fix it later.
I intend to. I watched the first two episodes on Hulu and I enjoyed them. I really liked the slightly sketch-like artwork and Birdy herself seems to have the qualities that I liked about her in the old episodes. I wanted to watch more, but since I want to own it, I shall resist that desire and just wait for either a very good sale or the exhaustion of my patience.
I have never heard of this before, but I've started reading about it and I'm really interested. I love the vignette approach and this series has an interesting premise that they seem to do some compelling things with. I'm going to have to hope for this to be brought o'er the ocean blue or just resort to something that I almost never resort to. Last edited by Surrender Artist on Wed Jun 01, 2011 5:30 pm; edited 5 times in total |
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Short Fat Otaku
 Posts: 27 Location: Toronto |
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I'm watching Lucky Star now. Mainly because I have to write a review for it soon. But I'm enjoying it, sort of.
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kimbeey13
 Posts: 290 Location: NH |
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Moshidora - The show focuses on Minami's idea to use 'management' to improve her high schools baseball team. I didn't realize how invested I became in not only Minami's character, but the entire team until the last two episodes. I felt like I could feel the same emotions that other characters had felt about being moved by baseball and was also nearly brought to tears. One down side to this show is that you spoiler[get to see them win the final game in order to get to the finals, yet you don't get to see them play in the finals. I suppose this isn't such a huge downside as the main goal was to go to the finals, however, I still would have liked to have seen at least one game or have been told the results.]
I will be watching more episodes of Starry Sky (I'm going on to probably my least favorite character arc going by what I read about the games) next and thinking of another series to pick up to take Moshidora's space. |
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The King of Harts
 Posts: 6712 Location: Mount Crawford, Virginia |
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My copy of Utena box 1 came in today and decided to watch it and see how I felt before taking the dive. Well, I had to stop at 2 episodes...
...because I have to wait until I have the other two boxes to marathon it! *trollface* I don't know what it is, but it just clicks really well with me. It certainly does help that the theme song (the first thing I'm exposed to from the menu) is performed by the same person who does the Slayers OPs, and I love Slayers. Honestly, if you want to hook me into a show, relate to Slayers in some way, and you immediately have my attention. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not simple enough to want to keep on for just that. The whole Rose duel for Anthy-thing is quite an interesting premise, and Utena is a delightful character. But overall, our wavelengths are matching up quite nicely, and I'm eager for the third boxset to show up so I can get both at the same time. And before people warn me about how the beginning and ending are different, keep in mind that I love both the Angel of the week beginning of Eva, and the crazy, warped ending, so story shifts aren't a turnoff. Also, the dub isn't nearly as bad as people made it out to be. I was expecting G-Gundam or Cardcaptor Sakura levels bad, but this is perfectly tolerable for someone like me who's dub first. It's not great, or even good, but it's not bothering me (well, the teacher will if she has more lines). So yea, I'm Utena-hooked. |
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PetrifiedJello
Posts: 3782 |
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This statement has me recalling a cruise liner meeting up with an iceberg. If memory serves, that meeting didn't go so well. Neither will "have to" and "soon". In short: this is a review I will not be interested in reading. *** Back to the topic (because derailing trains can be fun), remember my words regarding Kiddy Grade -and a while ago? Well, "unremember" them because I was too quick to judge this series as garbage. Now, you're probably wondering why I started re-watching it, right? Yeah, well placate me anyway. I started it up again because I can't let a series get the best of me, damn it, even if I didn't pay full price for a box set. It was driving me nuts not to finish it. If only I held on for one more episode because the next one introduces Di-air, a 7 year old girl who has the power to recharge the girls... with a kiss on the lips. Pervert. Anyway, her cute charm really took the episode so I was quite pleased she would be an official member going forward. What's really surprising is how this inclusion changed the dynamic of Ascoure, who doesn't whine anywhere near the amount she does at the series opening. Thank goodness, because now there's a story forming here and the show is back to its roots. The past 7 episodes have flown by and I'm actually anxious to get back to it. Yeah, will you stop thinking about the kissing already, you pervert! Teleporting n |
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Dorcas_Aurelia
 Posts: 5344 Location: Philly |
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Oscar may whine slightly less, but she still has an irritating voice regardless and is a complete moron. The addition of Di-air to the Kiddy Girl-and cast simply emphasizes its decision to make moe the driving force over action and plot, and even after Oscar and Q-feuille are thrust into the position of heroes, they're just barely competent, as opposed to Eclaire and Lumiere, who actually grew into their roles and demonstrated maturity.
And then there's the ridiculous plot point that spoiler[everyone is willing to follow the person who attempted to destroy the galaxy.] Or that the people in charge of the GOTT are terrible at their jobs because they were given convenient amnesia and changed into completely different characters. The ones who weren't killed off-screen between this show and the original, anyway. And the handful that remain consistent are brushed to the sidelines only to appear for occasional cameos. |
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Mylene
 Posts: 2792 Location: Indiana |
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Fear not, she has about 8 lines in total throughout the series. She's mostly seen and not heard (and often not even that). I'm holding off on my Utena rewatch until all of the sets are released. I'm trying to start a Sailor Moon S rewatch, but the audio on the Geneon DVDs is so awful that I almost can't bear it. I'm considering playing my R2 DVDs on my PC for audio, then watching the show muted on the regular TV (so as to have subs available). Not ideal, but maybe my ears won't bleed either. |
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Surrender Artist
Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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I’m more than a little ashamed to admit that I watched the whole first season of Strike Witches this week. On Hulu in English, thank mercy. (It was really strange seeing advertisements for the Criterion Collection in between scenes of fourteen year old girl running around without pants)
Am I certified as being able to say that I hate moe now? I really didn’t like this. I originally only meant to watch three or four episodes as a sort of ‘acid test’ to satisfy my curious about so controversial a series, but because of my misguided stubbornness, I simply couldn’t quit, even though it quickly became a chore. I approached this series in the best faith that I could muster; I expected that I wouldn’t like it, but I'm always looking to be surprised by something that seems terrible on its surface. In the case of Strike Witches, I feel that this good faith was not rewarded. It wasn’t even the fact that the camera for this series could probably be convicted of statory rape. I at first thought that I would write it off as an average show that is drug down by an obnoxious gimmick and inadequately buoyed by military authenticity. What I really detested was the relentless banality of it. Most of this series is just cute girls being cute. Most of the series felt like an unceasing, devastating barrage of giggling and cooing over stupid things. The seventh episode is all about stolen panties. I understand that it was derived from a real incident involving a pilot that one of the characters is derived from, but that doesn’t help. There were a few moments and relationships that skirted endearment, I even half got suckered into the friendship between Yoshika and Lynette, but most of the characters felt like empty props most of the time. There wasn’t enough examination of the stresses that war placed upon them, especially given that the different levels of emotional maturity that their varying ages could have been an interesting lens for that. There are a few moments of tension and some personal tragedies, but they never felt very weighty. Cute is very limited; it offers a warm, fuzzy feeling, but little else. I could accept that it wasn’t meant as a serious war story, but the looming threat of the Neuroi figured in less of the series than I had expected. The battles were tolerable, but the way that each had to be defeated by the destruction of its core is a cliché that I could only have accepted in something better. If I didn’t know a little about just what this series was trying to do, I would be baffled as to whom it was meant for. The onslaught of underwear, fondling or fixating upon breasts and nude bathing are clearly meant for ogling by men, but giggling girly nonsense seems more like something to entertain young girls. This was clearly not for me. Suffice it to say that, unless somebody throws it at me for free, I won’t trouble myself with the second season or the world at large with my opinion of it. Man, I need to wash my mind out with some more traditional exploitative trash. You know, something about people who wear pants, even if they end up being torn off. Is RIN: Daughters of Mnemosyne for sale anywhere? Maybe Witchblade on Hulu… The marquee show for this week was, praise be, not Strike Witches, but El Cazador de la Bruja, which I was a little nervous about, but really liked. I suppose that whereas Strike Witches just isn’t my fetish, languorous tales about girls-with-guns probably is. I’m not even sure that I’d relegate it to being the least of the trilogy that it forms with Noir and Madlax; even if I did, it would be a quite close third place. I'm almost disappointed that I don't have a harder time enjoying these. I think that I enjoyed it because it returned to the intimacy of Noir by keeping closely to the lead characters, although it was more ambitious than its eldest sister in having a larger supporting cast. I just really enjoyed watching Nadie and Ellis play off of one another and develop a relationship. Nadie is delightfully sardonic and Ellis was delightfully out of her head. Her actions had a well tuned oddity; that girl's brain must have been running on some powerful fridge logic unit. The emotional bond that they formed was really endearing and made the climax of the story quite effective. I liked the supporting cast too. Ricardo was too perfectly done as a grizzled spaghetti western hero trying do right by his daughter for me to mind how archetypical he was. His daughter Lirio was a mute for most of the series and despite being achingly cute, never deluged the series with pink spectacle. Blue Eyes was cool; she was less striking than Ricardo, but had a few amusing moments and a character arc that I enjoyed seeing play out. Douglas Rosenberg was a little hard to take sometimes since he spent so much of the series just being detachedly menacing. I suppose that he wasn’t especially interesting, but he sufficed. LA often annoyed me; something about his part in the story always felt slightly wrong to me, but I suppose that worked out in the end. I suppose that I shouldn’t be surprised to find myself less interested in the antagonists in a show that wasn’t especially interested in its own plot. There is a larger story with its haunting memories, portentous signs and sinister utterances, but the series was very relaxed about getting to all of that, not that all of that was very much. El Cazador de la Bruja’s plot is simple, familiar and only shows up sometimes, almost as though it was having more fun just enjoying the characters than doing whatever it was supposed to do. That’s a fault for the series, I suppose, but that matches how I reacted to the series too, so I didn’t much mind. I really liked the English language version of this. Trish Nishimura and Maxey Whitehead gave both Nadie and Ellis pretty well perfect voices and the rest of the cast was excellent as well. Jamie McGonnigal deserves special credit for giving LA a distinctive voice that made the character more palatable to me. I also like Clarine Harp’s authoritative sounding portrayal of Blue Eyes. I Oh, and the music was really good and the backgrounds were sumptuous and the character designs were distinctive as well as appealing. What was the deal with the opening and closing sequences. Both featured many scenes that seemed like they were animated before a radical revision of the series. I too yearned to see more of the sniper cat. My best guess is that they were some sort of joke; oblique parodies of the more elaborate, symbol-laden elder sisters. One thing that I really missed from Noir and Madlax was their packaging. I know that a change of companies, time and tide and the Dow Jones Industrial index probably required it, but I'm a little disappointed that I can't have a twenty-one single disk and chipboard box salute. I miss ADV's extra features too, especially the surprisingly entertaining Conversation with SSS from Madlax. And even though they I found them more a funny idea than funny themselves, I miss watching sock puppets try to kill Chris Patton and stab Hillary Haag in the neck with a fork. I have enjoyed the Bee Train girls-with-guns trilogy far better than I expected or probably should have. Hell, I wouldn’t mind it becoming a tetralogy. After all, they haven’t made one about private detectives yet. I still want to see more shows like them, which makes me wish that somebody would license Michiko to Hatchin, but that seems like a damned forlorn hope. There are a few promising candidates available, nevertheless, it’s probably best for me to move on from the girls-with-guns motif, at least for a while. Otherwise I’d start to worry that I was becoming some sort of yuri fanboy. *Notices the first Revolutionary Girl Utena set sitting expectantly on his DVD player* Oh well, at least that should make up for Strike Witches. Last edited by Surrender Artist on Sun Jun 05, 2011 8:59 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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nickjamesm7
Posts: 1 |
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GunXSword I thought this series was great. The storyline, the characters, the villains. I am not a fan of the whole mechs thing, but this was different. The show used the mechs in a way that was, believable I guess. Believable for mechs anyways.
Samurai Champloo Love me some samurais, and good rap Dragon Ball Z Finished the whole series. Great, a lot of you people hate on it. I have no idea why. This is like the Michael Jordan of anime Eden of the East This was a bit of a different anime for me, but I liked it. Clever plot, looking forward to seeing the movies I'm looking forward to checking out Gunslinger Girl, Death Note (sorry i'm late teacher), and Samurai 7... yeah, I'm in my mid twenties, and spent half my life in a band. I have always been interested in anime and japenese culture, and now I have time to enjoy it |
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ailblentyn
 Posts: 1688 Location: body in Ohio, heart in Sydney |
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Watching GTO because I recently bought it, and know what a classic it is even though I've never seen it.
Great stuff. The most amazing thing about it to me is simply this: it's funny. Few comedy films/shows are capable of making me laugh out loud as I watch them alone, and this has done that many times. |
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luffypirate
 Posts: 3186 |
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Finished Gunslinger Girl. What a great show. Only problem is, where is all this loli stuff people were talking about???? Is the manga what they are referring to?
On to Utena now. Haven't seen this in years! |
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Sentire
 Posts: 981 |
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Recently finished Shikabane Hime: Aka. It was better than I thought it was going to be. Now onto Shikabane Hime: Kuro. Honestly, I thought I was going to be irritated by at least one character. I typically am with that kind of series. Surprisingly, I am not! Kind of a nice change of pace.
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Keekachu
 Posts: 4 |
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I'm currently watching the anime Gosick. I love the mystery, and the whole plot in general. It's a great show, I definitely recommend watching it.
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ManOfRust
 Posts: 1935 Location: Seattle, WA |
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Maybe the manga or the second season of the anime. One of the strengths of the first season is that it managed to avoid going down many of the obvious and unfortunate paths it could have gone down and instead told a powerful and ultimately tragic story about both the girls and their handlers. Though many will disagee, for a lot of us big fans of the first season of the anime, the second season was a huge disappointment. It seems like season 2 focuses more on the "cute little girls with guns" idea and abandons most of what makes the first season so great. It really is a shame, but I guess the second season actually more closely mirrors the manga than the first. |
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Dorcas_Aurelia
Posts: 5344 Location: Philly |
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You might want to hold off that last bit until you meet the American Japanophile shikabane hime. She can be a bit much. Fortunately she's got a pretty minor role. |
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