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Mohawk52
Joined: 16 Oct 2003
Posts: 8202
Location: England, UK
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Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 5:24 am
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WWAanimefan wrote: | I remember seeing this in a store years ago, reading the synopsis a couple of times, and passing on it. After reading this article, I am thankful I did. |
It is not for the faint hearted, no.
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jymmy
Joined: 11 Nov 2011
Posts: 1244
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Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 5:43 am
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Well, it certainly wasn't the worst 80/90s OVA I've seen, but it was little more than a mildly enjoyable diversion. I think the goriness was a bit exaggerated in the article, but there were enough explosions at least. I was enjoying the friendship between Lan and her friend before the latter stopped being in the show.
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vanfanel
Joined: 26 Dec 2008
Posts: 1242
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Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 5:57 am
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I saw this looooooong ago. Memory is very fuzzy wrt to the specifics, but I remember finding its straightforward earnestness rather charming (kind of like another gory SF shoujo work full of psychics: the "Locke the Superman" movie).
I also seem to remember it not having a real ending. Is that correct, or did I somehow not see the last episode?
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Mohawk52
Joined: 16 Oct 2003
Posts: 8202
Location: England, UK
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Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 6:04 am
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vanfanel wrote: | I also seem to remember it not having a real ending. Is that correct, or did I somehow not see the last episode? |
It ended with Sonnet and Bird becoming friends, but parting ways again. Also a hint of a possible love triangle forming.the usual open endedness expected with a manga still running at the time. 'tis reason I researched for it, but found nothing legally translated.
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vanfanel
Joined: 26 Dec 2008
Posts: 1242
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Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 6:10 am
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Mohawk52 wrote: | the usual open endedness expected with a manga still running at the time. |
That's kind of what I thought. Pity, I would've liked to see more too. Thanks!
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Mohawk52
Joined: 16 Oct 2003
Posts: 8202
Location: England, UK
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Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 6:16 am
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It would be nice, as with all the retro-re-releases being done by the publishers these days, if Hakusensha, Media Factory, or someone picked up the manga, translated it, and sold it outside Japan really. I know I'd be preordering it if that was done.
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Chrno2
Joined: 28 May 2004
Posts: 6171
Location: USA
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Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 10:15 am
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Ah good old Blue Sonnet. I saw this one back during my HS days. A close friend of mine was able to acquire a copy from someone else. Y'know the deal, someone shows you a new OVA at a anime clup, you get interested and at the end of the screening you're bugging that person for a copy in exchange for a [tape] trade? Then they show it and the whole deal starts over again. So you end up with a copy from someone who says they copied theirs on SP so that they can get the best quality so that when they run one off for you you're still several generations down and it shows no matter what. I saw Blue Sonnet in the raw and never quite knew what was going on. Those were the days where you had to do your own translation. But to me it seemed kind of interesting. Slow in some parts. But again it was the whole excitement of sitting down with a friend who had a new [OVA] anime to show you. That's really all you could get your hands on. It's not like acquiring TV shows were easy. One had to find a Japanese video store that ran off copies to rent to their customers. Though they weren't all that crazy about "gaijins" renting [or stealing] their merchandise and not bringing back.
I would love to see Blue Sonnet again just so I can actually know what the story was about. Now that one is pretty old and an obscure one. It's during the early period of the 80's. So any later anime fans would only get a chance to see it is if the master exists to make copies from. I think I do recall a fansub group that did try to fansub it. Funny thing is a lot of these older titles are not getting much DVD releases in Japan. Which is a shame but I guess there isn't much of a market.
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GeorgeC
Joined: 22 Nov 2008
Posts: 795
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Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 11:04 am
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This one slipped by me...
At one time, I collected a lot of CPM releases on laserdisc but I never really looked at this one closely. I might have seen the art and been repulsed by it; I'm just not huge into hentai anime and have seen very little of anything above R-rating. (Saw "Legend of the Overfiend" and that set my limits very quickly! Yuck...) Haven't seen anything past the art and maybe that's why I skimmed over the LD when the things were actually sold in the US!
CPM got into LD far more than the other domestic anime companies. They put out dozens of shows on LD with varying degrees of quality in the video transfers... most were mediocre, barely above VHS-quality if that. AnimEigo was very moderate in what it put out on LD. ADV and Viz never put out more than a few discs on the market. Viz put out two Ranma 1/2 OVA LD's with 4 episodes from the original 6-part OVA series and that was it for their LD venture. ADV saw the writing on the wall for $60 LD releases of Blue Seed and EVA and never went beyond a single volume for both series. Streamline also never got that brave about LD and had fewer than 20 LD releases, maybe 8-10, a dozen at most.
CPM must've racked up some debt there, too, because I don't think the domestic LD market was ever that big but they sure released a huge chunk of their title catalog with only a few notable exceptions! (Can we say "Record of Lodoss War"?) CPM LD's weren't that hard to find for a while even after the LD market died in the US.. LD's averaged 1500 copies a print run and that was usually it for any movie or TV series unless it was something everybody wanted like Star Wars. I don't think any show or movie series sold much above 15k -- record holder for LD sales had to be Star Wars and even then that was a very small fraction of what it sold on VHS. VHS titles, even today, hold the all-time sales records with several Disney titles selling in the tens of millions of copies (40-50million or more!) on VHS... there hasn't been a DVD or Blu ray that's matched that.
At any rate, it can't be that expensive to get the old LD's if you can find them... People aren't paying much for LD's now. Fairly dead format unless it's something that people really want but can't have on DVD or Blu ray -- which is about 0.001% even WITH the large number of documentaries and old obscure shows that just don't get shown on TV or released on home video anymore.
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jr240483
Joined: 24 Dec 2005
Posts: 4379
Location: New York City,New York,USA
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Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 1:56 pm
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Mohawk52 wrote: | Dated or no, I really loved Blue Sonnet, and was gutted when I discovered the manga wasn't available. I still have the VHS with the English dub. If a DVD came out with the dub on it I'd preorder it right now. |
You and me both. it showed one time back on Sci Fi Channel's Saturday Anime block back in the 90's. i would definitely get this if it have its dub though the odds of any company licensing it is very slim.
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
Joined: 28 Jul 2003
Posts: 1684
Location: Los Angeles, CA
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Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 2:06 pm
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GeorgeC wrote: | At one time, I collected a lot of CPM releases on laserdisc but I never really looked at this one closely. I might have seen the art and been repulsed by it; I'm just not huge into hentai anime and have seen very little of anything above R-rating. (Saw "Legend of the Overfiend" and that set my limits very quickly! Yuck...) Haven't seen anything past the art and maybe that's why I skimmed over the LD when the things were actually sold in the US! |
WTF?! This isn't hentai. Not even close. Definitely, R-rated, but not beyond, and no sex to speak of.
GeorgeC wrote: | CPM must've racked up some debt there, too, because I don't think the domestic LD market was ever that big but they sure released a huge chunk of their title catalog with only a few notable exceptions! |
Most American LD releases were sublicenses to dedicated LD companies. All of the LDs from CPM were sublicensed to Image, while Streamline's were sublicensed to Lumivision. I'm quite sure nobody lost money.
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GeorgeC
Joined: 22 Nov 2008
Posts: 795
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Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 2:18 pm
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Okay,
it's ecchi then.
After DVD rolled out in select US cities, I saw tons of unsold LD's all over town (Chicago at the time) until perhaps a half-year later when most stores liquidated their LD's/sent them back.
Old Crow (a record store; don't know if it's still there; last time I was in Chicago was October 1999; quite a few stores have closed down since then including Borders, WB Studio Stores, and Virgin Megastore on the Mag Mile) kept their LD section and there were still quite a few unsold anime LD's including "The Humanoid" which had to be among the worst CPM releases. Still think "Overfiend" OVAs and "M.D. Geist" were the worst of the CPM stuff that I ever bought... "Project A-Ko" and "Record of Lodoss War" (OVA's, not the awful spin-off TV series) were among the best CPM releases, period. Heck, they were among the best anime licenses that have ever been released in the States, period.
For worst, most boring anime release I ever bought it had to be the Sakura Wars TV series licensed by ADV Films. I liked the Sakura Wars OVAs fine enough but the TV series was awful!
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
Joined: 28 Jul 2003
Posts: 1684
Location: Los Angeles, CA
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Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 3:55 pm
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GeorgeC wrote: | Okay, it's ecchi then. |
No, it's not. Starting to wonder if you even know what these terms mean. There's barely even any nudity.
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walw6pK4Alo
Joined: 12 Mar 2008
Posts: 9322
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Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 5:23 pm
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It has females, Justin, that makes it ecchi moe uguu pandering.
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Glory Questor
Joined: 28 Sep 2004
Posts: 456
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Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 6:56 pm
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It definitely looks like an interesting one. I'll have to keep an eye out with the local VHS resellers for these.
BTW, Justin, if this is something that you (and obviously many others) seem to want rescued and released on DVD, then why is it part of the "Pile of Shame"? Shouldn't this be classified as a "Buried Treasure"? j/c
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fuuma_monou
Joined: 26 Dec 2005
Posts: 1817
Location: Quezon City, Philippines
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Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 8:06 pm
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Glory Questor wrote: | BTW, Justin, if this is something that you (and obviously many others) seem to want rescued and released on DVD, then why is it part of the "Pile of Shame"? Shouldn't this be classified as a "Buried Treasure"? j/c |
"Pile of shame" means the stuff you've bought/collected and haven't watched/finished yet. In my case that would be most of my recent DVD purchases (currently watching Blu-rays first).
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