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nightjuan wrote:

And yet I would say that since those moments of greatness are mostly in the second half as opposed to the first, the show as a whole tends to improve rather than worsen.

It's hard to get over first impressions. I never got over my first impression of Vash the Stampede, for example. I suppose there are many shows that start off with me thinking they're going to be horrible and winning me back eventually... But I never got over my first impressions of GunXSword. Unfortunately that first impression was when the show aired, in 2006 (or whatever), and it struck me as a genre I wouldn't like.

I don't normally go for giant robot shows, but GaoGaiGar was exceptional, since it made me feel nostalgic for a childhood I never had. There are many nostalgia scenes in GunXSword, but they're not as effective.

nightjuan wrote:

Honestly, his early work on Infinite Ryvius has more in common with Planetes than any of his other projects and yet it's also not a perfect fit either. You could even argue he should have gotten more opportunities to work on pure science fiction shows instead of all the overly commercial stuff Taniguchi's had to deal with in recent years,

I saw the beginning of Infinite Ryvius and liked it; there was a lot going on in that show. The part I didn't like about it was the AI robot-girl thing with mystic properties. I don't think it was a direction problem, though, I think it was a writing problem.

nightjuan wrote:

...but apparently Planetes flopped in the Japanese market despite all the critical praise.

Just because something flops at the box office or in the marketplace doesn't mean it's a failure. I also don't think it means I'm wrong somehow for liking it. (Besides, flopping in the market could just be a marketing problem.)

erinfinnegan wrote:

It's hard to get over first impressions. I never got over my first impression of Vash the Stampede, for example.

I don't blame you for that. In fact, my own first impressions led to dropping the show at episode 2. Laughing

But I suppose the fact I didn't get to watch Trigun until relatively recently is a rather big difference though. If you had asked me about it back in 2005-6, I couldn't possibly tell you how Vash looked like or anything about him, so at the very least that similarity wasn't what turned me off the series. I just found it boring.

After a couple of years or so, I heard a few interesting things from various people, found myself with a lot of free time...and thus decided to go back and watch a few episodes instead of simply one or two. Turns out that did the trick in my case.

Even today, however, I would say Van himself isn't that great of a main character either and actually benefits from having someone like Wendy at his side, as much as I don't care for her overall character type, or even a would-be rival like Ray. Fortunately, the rest of the cast was easier to sympathize with, in my opinion, and the Claw happened to be surprisingly effective as a disturbingly insane villain....as I believe you've also suggested in the article.

Quote:

There are many nostalgia scenes in GunXSword, but they're not as effective.

Well, you could say that's because GUNxSWORD is indeed referencing GaoGaiGar (among other Super Robot shows) and displaying some genuine appreciation for the past, but nevertheless remains a different kind of story instead of a full-length tribute.

In other words, the series expects to occasionally resonate with the audience's preexisting feelings and memories rather than to recreate them from the ground up. They're really two different approaches.

I can say those moments worked for me, but then again I grew up watching a fair number of robot shows (including not just the cheesy original Transformers but also some dubbed anime) and thus it's not too hard to make me feel nostalgic for them.

Quote:

I saw the beginning of Infinite Ryvius and liked it; there was a lot going on in that show. The part I didn't like about it was the AI robot-girl thing with mystic properties. I don't think it was a direction problem, though, I think it was a writing problem.

I agree, particularly since usually people don’t make that distinction and assume only the director has any real responsibility for such things. Not that he doesn’t have any, mind you, but the writing team itself isn’t exactly uninvolved in the very field where their skills are most relevant.

As for the girl in question...she was more of a device than a character. Incidentally, Ryvius is another show with a slow and, what's worse, confusing beginning. Once things get going I like it more than GUNxSWORD myself though, in terms of characterization and as an experience, but I can also understand why others may consider it far more dull at first glance.

Quote:

Just because something flops at the box office or in the marketplace doesn't mean it's a failure. I also don't think it means I'm wrong somehow for liking it. (Besides, flopping in the market could just be a marketing problem.)

Actually, I absolutely agree with you about that...on both counts. My intention was to point out the many differences between the shows, not to question their quality (ironically enough, this discussion has made me want to re-watch Planetes).

Megiddo wrote:

Summer Wars is a year and a half old from its Summer 2009 theatrical release.

You're right, but I was talking about how he was talking about his recent "marriage" which inspired the film, which had to have happened before the film was finished. Sorrry for not being clear.

Still its been almost 2 years since it released, I think it was July or August 2009 when I first saw it. It should have come out last summer here in the states.

Erin wrote:

Kenji thanks the Shinoharas at one point, saying that his parents rarely have time to eat dinner together. Kenji, like many of us, has never been a part of a huge and merry family like the Shinoharas.

That in itself is also a social commentary flashback to the way Japanese family life use to be like. Now very few if any family there do this anymore, because there just isn't that many members in a typical family and present day life with 18 hour days of work six and seven days a week just doesn't allow it anyway.

Two things about the card game:

1) It's called hanafuda, not Koi-Koi (koi-koi is something you can do in the game to raise the stakes).

2) One way you can learn it, if you have a DS, is to get "Clubhouse Games", which is published by Nintendo. It includes hanafuda with a complete explanation of the rules, which add the interesting factoid that Nintendo's first product, when it was founded in the 1800s, was hanafuda cards.

My understanding is that the cards are called hanafuda, that several games can be played with them, and that among these games are games called Koi-Koi and Hachi-Hachi. Koi-Koi is the simplest of the bunch, appears to be the game being played in Summer Wars, and is the only one of these games I have ever seen implemented on computers. In particular, a little web searching will find an on-line flash version of this.

So, yes, this game is called Hanafuda, as being a common game played with hanafuda. This particular version is also called Koi-Koi. The terminology is somewhat fluid, as these aren't games that someone invented and trademarked. (Understand that I am making a distinction between "the name of the game" and "what the game is called", or even "what the name of the game is called".)

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