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Shelf Life - Sands of Time


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Joe Mello



Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 2251
Location: Online Terminal
PostPosted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 11:00 pm Reply with quote
I know this is out of context, but...

Quote:
I learned everything I know about shojo from Dr. Weeaboo,

That is an awesome statement. I mean nothing but respect when I say you are the Dennis Miller of anime reviewers.
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everapril



Joined: 24 Apr 2009
Posts: 112
PostPosted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 11:21 pm Reply with quote
wandering-dreamer wrote:

Yup, she's rather cute too.


Wow. Thanks to your linking that article, I've realized I can't live without a model of female Kaoru from Evangelion! I could have gone my whole life not knowing such a thing existed and been perfectly happy, but now that I do I want it in a ri-dic-u-lous way.


Last edited by everapril on Mon Mar 15, 2010 11:22 pm; edited 1 time in total
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vashfanatic



Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 3489
Location: Back stateside
PostPosted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 11:21 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Fortunately, about a third of the way into the series, the producers seem to decide the show is more than mere (softcore?) pornography. Suddenly the plot takes the front seat and starts driving the show.

Wait, so you mean at some point it stops being all about how to degrade, torture, and objectify its female leads? 'Cause really, there was nothing in the first two episodes that made me want to endure any more of that single-minded, repeated mistreatment of its main character other than the grim hope that it would finally just stop already.

I really don't count myself as a prude (dear God, I read Berserk!), but there was just something so damn vicious about the way the first two episodes treated Rin. If you're telling me it gets better, I'll believe you, but man was I shocked to see that misogynistic thing get a Shelf Worthy rating from you!
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erinfinnegan
ANN Columnist


Joined: 31 Jan 2005
Posts: 598
PostPosted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 11:22 pm Reply with quote
Julia-the-Great wrote:
Wait, wait wait wait wait. When you say "Wikipe-tan," does that mean somebody anthropomorphized Wikipedia?! I must know more about this. So is Wikipe-tan true to life and one of those annoying know-it-alls who also gets things wrong once in awhile?

I thought of the panel before Jason wrote this, but: http://io9.com/5403562/militant-cute-and-sexy-politics-in-japanese-moe-comics-%5Bnsfw%5D (NSFW)

FlyingFox wrote:
Quote:
First, the fight scenes could be better. For a series with so many fights, none are particularly memorable. The fights are all end quickly without any memorable choreography.

Really? I don't remember there being much action. I do remember the few fight scenes there were, sucking ass though.

The characters fought their way out of several situations, especially in the first half, and specifically in that Colosseum episode.

I may have misread the show, since Morte carries around a huge weapon, and it's based on a video game, I kinda assumed more fighting was going to happen.

Zalis116 wrote:
Quote:
(I highly recommend Video Girl Ai, by the way… why don't I own that?)
Because it's out-of-print and ridiculously expensive now?

I could get it for like $30-ish used on amazon.

psychopuppet wrote:
Hmmm so a release is shoddy now if it has no dub and no extra's? Bad subs I can understand [...snip...] Great it was put as shelf worthy ,but what I basically took from the review is better off going and watching it on Crunchyroll for free instead of putting money into a release that supports it.

There are a lot of reasons one might want to own the DVDs anyway, despite the lackluster release. Say your parents are still on dial-up, or you have a 14 hour flight ahead of you, or you want to loan it to friends...

Quark wrote:
Well, you've sold me on Glass Mask, Erin. I previously had no interest in it, as well...honestly, I had no clue what it was about. But hearing you praise it as being a good, old-fashioned shoujo, that deals with gender issues?

Oops!! 70's shoujo does deal with gender issues, but Glass Mask doesn't - at least, not in the first half. Although there is a Takarazuka-style character, so maybe that counts? If you listen to the podcast episode I linked to (it's a two-parter) you'll get the names of some good gender-issue manga series.
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Dorcas_Aurelia



Joined: 23 Jul 2006
Posts: 5344
Location: Philly
PostPosted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 1:09 am Reply with quote
vashfanatic wrote:
I really don't count myself as a prude (dear God, I read Berserk!), but there was just something so damn vicious about the way the first two episodes treated Rin. If you're telling me it gets better, I'll believe you, but man was I shocked to see that misogynistic thing get a Shelf Worthy rating from you!

No. No it doesn't stop treating the women like their much more than chew toys and sex objects. The plot is also terrible, contrived, and deliberately thick and unintelligible.
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Shinn AsukaGSD



Joined: 16 Mar 2010
Posts: 32
PostPosted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 1:39 am Reply with quote
actually i loved the english dubbed for Rin,the japanese audio i didn't like at all.
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tuxedocat



Joined: 14 Dec 2009
Posts: 2183
PostPosted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 1:54 am Reply with quote
I guess I'm going to check out Sands of Destruction now.

My friends have already warned me off Rin. Ero-Guro is so not my thing.

I plan to buy Glass Mask, it is just other titles and situations keep changing my buying priorities. Last week's news about Media Blasters makes me want to buy thier titles, and now Right Stuff is running a sale on their Nozomi line, ...Bandai sale last week.... Just not enough money for everything I want... Sad Are sales for Glass Mask really that bad? Maybe I should bump it up in priority
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Ai no Kareshi



Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 561
Location: South Africa
PostPosted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 2:31 am Reply with quote
There are some interesting ideas in Mnemosyne, but like Dorcas_Aurelia said, it does not ever stop treating women like dirt. Those ideas deserve better than to be used as excuses for überviolence and fetish sex. I dropped the series after the second-last episode.
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TheTheory



Joined: 23 Mar 2008
Posts: 1029
Location: Central PA
PostPosted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 6:19 am Reply with quote
the dude's shelves wrote:
I try my best to keep my standards high, to enjoy the highest rated games and films


High standards are not a bad thing, but to base that on fallible ratings seems like an iffy proposition at best. Everyone's tastes run differently, so that kind of philosophy really closes the door on discovering neat little gems. Some of my favorite series are those that deviate from the high ratings and are either too obscure to get highly rated, or are simply something that clicked with me in a way that most viewers didn't experience. By the same token, just because something is highly rated doesn't mean that EVERYONE will get anything out of it.
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Mylene



Joined: 07 Feb 2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Indiana
PostPosted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 6:19 am Reply with quote
I wasn't planning on blind buying Glass Mask, but if a fellow Swan fan loves it so much, perhaps it would be a safe bet. It's one I'm interested in, but admittedly moreso in the older versions and manga--I rather enjoy very old-school character designs.
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YotaruVegeta



Joined: 02 Jul 2002
Posts: 1061
Location: New York
PostPosted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 7:09 am Reply with quote
I guess I have to spend a little time on Hulu, because I wanted to see Sands of Destruction (isn't it called World Destruction or something originally?) for a while now.
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SDS



Joined: 21 Nov 2004
Posts: 9
PostPosted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 7:50 am Reply with quote
Glass Mask actually aired at like 2am in Japan.
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FlyingFox



Joined: 25 Jul 2009
Posts: 58
PostPosted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 8:34 am Reply with quote
erinfinnegan wrote:

FlyingFox wrote:
Quote:
First, the fight scenes could be better. For a series with so many fights, none are particularly memorable. The fights are all end quickly without any memorable choreography.

Really? I don't remember there being much action. I do remember the few fight scenes there were, sucking ass though.

The characters fought their way out of several situations, especially in the first half, and specifically in that Colosseum episode.

I may have misread the show, since Morte carries around a huge weapon, and it's based on a video game, I kinda assumed more fighting was going to happen.


Sadly, so did I and I was sorely disappointed for my mistake.
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Moonsaber



Joined: 16 Jan 2007
Posts: 343
Location: USA
PostPosted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 9:14 am Reply with quote
TheTheory wrote:
the dude's shelves wrote:
I try my best to keep my standards high, to enjoy the highest rated games and films


High standards are not a bad thing, but to base that on fallible ratings seems like an iffy proposition at best. Everyone's tastes run differently, so that kind of philosophy really closes the door on discovering neat little gems. Some of my favorite series are those that deviate from the high ratings and are either too obscure to get highly rated, or are simply something that clicked with me in a way that most viewers didn't experience. By the same token, just because something is highly rated doesn't mean that EVERYONE will get anything out of it.


Looks like you read that the same way I did. By filling your shelves with what other people consider the best, what good are you truly doing for yourself? Besides, I didn't see a single film by Studio ghibli there! The shame!

My recommendation, friend, is to keep your standards high, and dispose of things that don't meet your tastes or expectations if you do happen to buy them, if you want to keep your shelves of the highest quality. That, and invest in Ghibli DVDs Very Happy
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vashfanatic



Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 3489
Location: Back stateside
PostPosted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 9:23 am Reply with quote
Dorcas_Aurelia wrote:
vashfanatic wrote:
I really don't count myself as a prude (dear God, I read Berserk!), but there was just something so damn vicious about the way the first two episodes treated Rin. If you're telling me it gets better, I'll believe you, but man was I shocked to see that misogynistic thing get a Shelf Worthy rating from you!

No. No it doesn't stop treating the women like their much more than chew toys and sex objects. The plot is also terrible, contrived, and deliberately thick and unintelligible.

I guess the way I'd characterize the first two episodes of this series is, if you'd told me the writer had just broken up with a woman named Rin and this was his revenge on her, I'd believe you. It was just so single-minded in doing everything nasty it could to her specifically. It would be like if, instead of just implying the awful stuff that happened to Czes in Baccano!, which humanized a character who so far had just been a standard Creepy Child, you'd shown exactly what had happened to him, in detail, for over an hour, while also sexualizing him somehow. At that point, it's like, no, you've gone too far. You can do cruel stuff to your characters, but if the entire story revolves around how to do cruel stuff to your characters (spoiler[because she can't die no matter what you do to her, and the Big Reveal is that she turns into a dribbling idiot around angels and tries to have sex with them as they eat her]), then...

...seriously, Erin, this is the kind of thing that got you into anime in the first place??? Or is that a reference to things that happen later?
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