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Shelf Life - (114) Minutes of Summer

I love Summer Wars. The creative take on the internet (why does the net always look better in fiction?)

Hmmm. I haven't seen the Disgaea anime, but I wonder if it's from the same studio that did the Xenosaga anime, cause that one was also based on a popular Japanese game and suffered from some of the poorest modern animation I've seen in anime.

Also, I thought the translation was pretty awful in that they didn't actually bother to translate any text that appears in the movie, and there's alot of it, and it's actually moderately important to understanding what's going on.

spoiler[(And to the person that didn't get the grandma scene, that is called wielding influence. She was calling important people and motivating them to do what needed doing and calling in family favors to make sure that people who could be endangered by the disruption of public services would be cared for. I didn't think that was too hard to understand, even though I have never been related to anybody that had that kind of personal power. In American terms, the Jinnouchi are a lot like the Kennedys or the Rockafellers, except that they no longer have the money. Being an old samurai family means that they were part of the ruling class of Japan for several centuries and the influence of that legacy is still potent.)]

An interesting read on Gun x Sword. I couldn't help but notice the Spike comparison as well, and I'll now and forever wonder if this series was purposely created to ride the coattails of Cowboy Bebop (this isn't the first review I've seen compare the two, even if by characters only).

The dub is perfectly acceptable. Van is played by David Vincent, who sounds a lot like David Lucas's Spike Spiegel.

Hmmm. I haven't seen the Disgaea anime, but I wonder if it's from the same studio that did the Xenosaga anime, cause that one was also based on a popular Japanese game and suffered from some of the poorest modern animation I've seen in anime.

erinfinnegan wrote:

The dub is perfectly acceptable. Van is played by David Vincent, who sounds a lot like David Lucas's Spike Spiegel.

Not quite Erin.

It was Stephen Jay Blum that played as Spike. Not David Lucas.

To put it another way: Grandma was social networking the old fashioned way. While Love Machine is tapping its network to disrupt traffic and utilities, Grandma's offline calling in favors as a workaround in a way that only the matriarch of a centuries old clan can do. I thought it was a clever touch actually.

I watched Summer Wars last Sunday and loved it. That much of the treatment of technology is absurd didn't bother me a bit, because the movie always takes itself seriously. (In this regard Summer Wars reminded me of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, a favorite 'cult classic' movie.)

I have an adult daughter who generally refuses to watch anime because she hates everything cute, but I'm going to try to talk her into watching this.

PingSoni wrote:

I watched Summer Wars last Sunday and loved it. That much of the treatment of technology is absurd didn't bother me a bit, because the movie always takes itself seriously. (In this regard Summer Wars reminded me of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, a favorite 'cult classic' movie.) I have an adult daughter who generally refuses to watch anime because she hates everything cute, but I'm going to try to talk her into watching this.

Are you serious???

She hates anime cause it's cute.

You should introduce her to anime like Hellsing or Black Lagoon. Their definitely NOT cute. Fun to watch and entertaining, BUT DEFINITELY NOT CUTE.

mdreura wrote:

To put it another way: Grandma was social networking the old fashioned way. While Love Machine is tapping its network to disrupt traffic and utilities, Grandma's offline calling in favors as a workaround in a way that only the matriarch of a centuries old clan can do. I thought it was a clever touch actually.

Yup, I loved that scene... the symbolism of her dialing a phone (literally, a decades-old phone with an actual dial) while everyone she called was answering on something modern.

It might help that I grew up in Middle-of-nowhere, North Dakota, and that kind of family/community get-'r-done attitude is a bit nostalgic. (And I'm old enough to have used a dialed phone, heh.)

See, it's the opposite for me.

I expect the public officials and/or professionals to be competent enough to do their job. And that an old grandma telling them "You can do it!" or "Do you best" or whatever it is she said is completely pointless. Honestly, it was a slap in the face to me, saying that the younger generation can't do their job without the elder generation's guidance instead of being self-sufficient. It's a kind of theme that rubs me the wrong way.