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Shelf Life - Gantz Gantz Revolution


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Sanosuke_Inara



Joined: 23 Nov 2009
Posts: 1662
PostPosted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 10:41 am Reply with quote
JuicyB wrote:
Blood- wrote:
Quote:
Sure, it has high production values, a compelling plot and thoughtful themes, but I reserve Shelf Worthy for titles that I would recommend to anyone. I could never recommend Gantz to coworkers.


I find this criterion questionable. I understand assessing a show's rewatch value when determining whether something is worth buying versus renting - that makes sense. But throwing in the consideration of whether you would loan out a series to "anyone" - which presumably includes non-anime fans, or people who are just casual anime fans, doesn't scan for me. Can you not imagine a situation where you come across a title that you know you would re-watch enough to make it Shelfworthy under normal circumstances, yet it has some element that would make you hesitate to loan it to "anyone"? To not buy something just because you wouldn't be comfortable loaning it out to "anyone" seems, well...dopey.


Yeah, I read that and thought it was pretty bizarre, to say the least. So a series isn't worth owning unless it has complete universal appeal? Then in that case I suppose American Idol would be infinitely more shelf-worthy than Gantz, Berserk, Evangelion, even Cowboy Bebop or any other great anime series since it would be easier to recommend to the average joe.
Uh, I 3rd this. Smile

Rutilcaper wrote:
Still, I'm happy Gantz exists even if it's kind of awful.
Hey, Gantz isn't awful, it's awesome. Razz
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gwdone



Joined: 01 May 2008
Posts: 272
PostPosted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 10:54 am Reply with quote
I love Gantz and always will. (Including the live action movie). It's what got me back into anime in a heavy way.
It and Elfen Lied came out around the same time. I was hooked on both. After those two my wallet really got "animated" Smile

I read the entire live action Gantz review. From what I gather the only adjustments to meet Zac's needs would be Kie doing all the bitching at the train station and Kay showing her tits. Those are things I can easily over look. I hope part 2 gets in theaters in the U.S. - I'll for sure attend
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asimpson2006



Joined: 13 May 2008
Posts: 3151
Location: USA
PostPosted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 11:28 am Reply with quote
Quote:
In theory, I should make this Shelf Worthy since I plan on loaning it to my aforementioned friend, (who watched Overdrift without ever seeing Initial D). But I still can't get over a gear shift as a dramatic moment. Initial D is laughably bad to outsiders who aren't familiar with it (even if they are already anime fans). Even the improved CG in this season is embarrassing by today's standards. Fourth Stage Part 2 and this movie might be Shelf Worthy, but I just can't get behind Second Stage (although I can get behind it more than season one).


Didn't Death Note make eating potato chips a dramatic moment?

What makes Stage 2 more shelf worthy than Stage 1 (both at stage worthy IMO) is there is a lot more character development especially Takumi, Itsuki, and Natsumi. Takumi because
spoiler[he starts to care more about cars and what makes them work, especially with the end of the Second Stage he says that he wants to learn more about engines]

Natsumi's change spoiler[realizing that her subsidized dating thing is not a good idea and stops doing it, then gets a regular part time job] is also good for her and shows that spoiler[she's willing to give up something for the one she loves.]

I also though that they character designs were better in Second Stage, but I think everyone can agree that the CGI is bad.
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RoverTX



Joined: 17 Dec 2008
Posts: 424
PostPosted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 12:24 pm Reply with quote
Two things related to your computer. 512MB, G4, wtf?! Do they pay you in burritos or something? The issue there is not only the low ram though but also your processor speed and graphics card I am guessing. Also the fact that no one supports G anything correctly anymore.

Your best bet might be buying a new low end Windows Machine or Netbook and getting some one to install a Crystal HD Card. Even a decent used machine with more then 2GB of ram and the card should work.

Here are some details on the card, basically buy a low end netbook or computer rip out the wireless card and install this thing.

http://www.broadcom.com/products/features/crystal_hd.php
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purplepolecat



Joined: 15 Feb 2008
Posts: 129
PostPosted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 1:01 pm Reply with quote
I liked Gantz's ultra-cynical take on the human condition. What turned me off, and ultimately stopped me from finishing the series, was the pacing. Erin's right, they could have made Gantz 18, or even 13 episodes, just by cutting out all the scenes in which a character stands "paralyzed by fear", and we get a slow zoom or pan across their face while listening to their internal monologue. Whether the intention was to make the viewer frustrated with the characters, or just pad the running time at no additional cost, I guess it worked.
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CareyGrant



Joined: 18 Nov 2009
Posts: 453
PostPosted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 1:23 pm Reply with quote
purplepolecat wrote:
I liked Gantz's ultra-cynical take on the human condition. What turned me off, and ultimately stopped me from finishing the series, was the pacing. Erin's right, they could have made Gantz 18, or even 13 episodes, just by cutting out all the scenes in which a character stands "paralyzed by fear", and we get a slow zoom or pan across their face while listening to their internal monologue. Whether the intention was to make the viewer frustrated with the characters, or just pad the running time at no additional cost, I guess it worked.


Pacing! Yeah, I totally forgot to harp on that--one of the issues I had. I remember watching this series when it was first released in singles and being utterly frustrated beyond all measure that they'd take -most times- an entire DVD or two just to clear up one fight/scene. Talk about painful viewing at a glacial pace; I started to root for the villains just to hurry the story along.

If there was ever a nominee for a Kai treatment, Gantz is it. But then the show'd be the length of an OVA or two.
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14746
PostPosted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 2:33 pm Reply with quote
Hardgear wrote:
When I last lived in Germany (2002), it cost about $2.5k for a driver's license, though exchange rates and other economic factors have likely changed that. That greatly annoyed me because I had to wait until we moved back to the US to get my license, cause my parents were understandably not going to pay that kind of money when we were just 2 years away from moving.


Because Germany has the autobahn with no speed limits!** The autobahn lobby in Germany is as powerful as the NRA lobby in the U.S., so it'll stay with no speed limits for a long long while. So you have to be a serious driver, serious enough to plunk $2k, to drive on the autobahn. You can't just have any green teenager or any old granny there. Laughing

[** There's no speed limits, but they enforce other traffic laws much more strictly, like tail-gating or using the left-lane as passing lane only. You can't have anybody tail-gating or driving on the left-lane at 40 mph when suddenly there's a 200 mph Porsche barreling behind you out of nowhere.]
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belvadeer





PostPosted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 2:42 pm Reply with quote
Adventure Time sucks, and no that's not a blanket statement. I really dislike it. It's ugly, it's stupid and one of CN's worst shows to me.

When you say interspecial, do you mean aliens raping humans or animals trying to?

Durarara is one of those current super popular anime right? Like K-ON?


Last edited by belvadeer on Tue Mar 08, 2011 10:34 am; edited 1 time in total
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Sanosuke_Inara



Joined: 23 Nov 2009
Posts: 1662
PostPosted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 2:58 pm Reply with quote
belvadeer wrote:
Durarara is one of those current super popular anime right? Like K-ON?
No, not really.
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CareyGrant



Joined: 18 Nov 2009
Posts: 453
PostPosted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 4:03 pm Reply with quote
enurtsol wrote:
Hardgear wrote:
When I last lived in Germany (2002), it cost about $2.5k for a driver's license, though exchange rates and other economic factors have likely changed that. That greatly annoyed me because I had to wait until we moved back to the US to get my license, cause my parents were understandably not going to pay that kind of money when we were just 2 years away from moving.


Because Germany has the autobahn with no speed limits!** The autobahn lobby in Germany is as powerful as the NRA lobby in the U.S., so it'll stay with no speed limits for a long long while. So you have to be a serious driver, serious enough to plunk $2k, to drive on the autobahn. You can't just have any green teenager or any old granny there. Laughing

[** There's no speed limits, but they enforce other traffic laws much more strictly, like tail-gating or using the left-lane as passing lane only. You can't have anybody tail-gating or driving on the left-lane at 40 mph when suddenly there's a 200 mph Porsche barreling behind you out of nowhere.]


Funny thing that, the Autobahn. A good friend of mine -a German national who married an American, currently attending Pharmacy school in San Francisco- said that, sure there's no speed limits, but they've got major issues with traffic congestion (especially during peak hours or around major cities) that it makes the "no speed limit" thing moot; unless you happen to be driving in the early AM or some ways from any city.

Also, their public and mass transit systems are light years beyond our own. You really don't "need" a car, in most cases, to get around easily.
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erinfinnegan
ANN Columnist


Joined: 31 Jan 2005
Posts: 598
PostPosted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 6:04 pm Reply with quote
Blood- wrote:
I find this criterion questionable. I understand assessing a show's rewatch value when determining whether something is worth buying versus renting - that makes sense. But throwing in the consideration of whether you would loan out a series to "anyone" - which presumably includes non-anime fans, or people who are just casual anime fans, doesn't scan for me.

I've trying to mention this as often as possible from the time I took over Shelf Life; I have three (major) criteria for Shelf Worthiness. A show doesn't have to meet all three, but the more the merrier. Here they are:

1. Re-watch value
2. Loan-ability
3. Super-cool extras too good to pass up

#3 is why I made at least the first volume of the Dragon Box Shelf Worthy - I didn't want to re-watch it, but the packaging and extras are worthwhile. I suppose "Extras" extends to a nice presentation of the material.

vashfanatic wrote:
You'd be comfortable recommending Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne to anyone, including your co-workers?

Ha HAH I almost included a line about this in the column, but it was running long. Rin doesn't have the same pacing problems, it's better science fiction, but you're right, I wouldn't loan that to a coworker (unless I knew them super-well). I have the three pronged test above, where I would re-watch Rin. I might do an entire podcast about how I found Legend of the Over Fiend and Demon City Shinjuku way less offensive than Gantz. In those titles, like in Rin, there aren't scenes Gantz-like scenes where non-consensual sex is happening and bystanders are simply unwilling to try and stop it. Gantz is punishing you for being a viewer, and condemning you and other pedestrians. I've heard the movie Straw Dogs does this, but I'm way too squeamish to watch it. (Somehow Rin was OK though.)

Rutilcaper wrote:
It's maybe a bit of a stretch to call Gantz intelligent...

No, not really. It is very competently written, and there's a thoughtful message at the end (and for the Straw Dogs reasons above). But I wouldn't have gotten to the end if I wasn't forced...

Hardgear wrote:
While I believe there should be a subtitle track that is word-for-word what is on the dub for those few who watch it dubbed with the subs on, I have no problem with dubbing companies changing the script for the purposes of making it more accessible/understandable to local viewers.

In an ideal world it'd be nice to have a closed caption track of the dub in addition to the subtitles. I mean, I'm not the one funding these productions, so... what's weird is that sometimes anime DOES get closed captions. My brother's friends work at a closed captioning facility and have worked on anime titles before. Those tracks don't make it to the DVD, though.

asimpson2006 wrote:
Didn't Death Note make eating potato chips a dramatic moment?

Yes, and it was ridiculous then, too. I thought the manga was way better for just this sort of reason; dramatic moments in manga don't always translate to the screen very well.

Sailor S wrote:
If it's not on a disc, forget it. On a side note, I find myself getting kinda angry at people for continually saying this, but I just gotta remind myself not to kill the messenger as it were.

I keep forgetting that home video as a market hasn't been around all that long. I mean sure, people made 8mm home movies in the 50's and may have collected 16mm films, but those people were not average consumers. Collecting VHS tapes was only popular in what, the 1980's? That's only 30 years of home video. Especially television...in the 1990's I only owned like two volumes of the X-Files, because it was cumbersome and expensive to collect whole TV series.

enurtsol wrote:
You can burn downloads to discs (or whatever media/flash/crystal are vogue at that time). You just won't get the pretty packaging,

Hahaha, like the old days of taping shows on SLP tapes. Or the more recent old days of filling up external drives and meaning to burn discs but never actually doing it...
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wandering-dreamer



Joined: 21 Jan 2008
Posts: 1733
PostPosted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 8:21 pm Reply with quote
Sanosuke_Inara wrote:
belvadeer wrote:
Durarara is one of those current super popular anime right? Like K-ON?
No, not really.


Considering the amount of fanart and cosplay I've seen in the English speaking fandoms for this show (and, as a general rule of thumb, the English speaking fandom doesn't follow new shows as closely as Japan does) and since the DVDs sold 10,000+ copies of each volume in Japan, yeah I'd compare it to K-ON right now.

Aside from that, I thought that the DVD looked super crisp on my computer (generally DVDs don't look that nice on my Mac actually, been meaning to tweak it to fix that) so it's interesting to hear other people say that. I wonder if Aniplex did something different to their discs to make a difference like that.
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Sanosuke_Inara



Joined: 23 Nov 2009
Posts: 1662
PostPosted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 8:27 pm Reply with quote
wandering-dreamer wrote:
Considering the amount of fanart and cosplay I've seen in the English speaking fandoms for this show (and, as a general rule of thumb, the English speaking fandom doesn't follow new shows as closely as Japan does) and since the DVDs sold 10,000+ copies of each volume in Japan, yeah I'd compare it to K-ON right now.
You've gotta be whacked if you honestly think DRRR!!'s popularity is on the same level of K-On!'s. I mean, I'm not a fan of either series, but I do know that K-On'!'s popularity blows DRRR!!'s out of the water.

K-On has far more fanart than DRRR!! ever will, and yeah--DRRR's DVDs may sold over 10,000+ each volume, but did you know that K-On's Blu-ray numbers recently hit over 500,000?

Am I saying that DRRR!! isn't popular? No. But face it, it's nowhere near as popular as K-On is.
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erinfinnegan
ANN Columnist


Joined: 31 Jan 2005
Posts: 598
PostPosted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 8:50 pm Reply with quote
Sanosuke_Inara wrote:
K-On has far more fanart than DRRR!! ever will, and yeah--DRRR's DVDs may sold over 10,000+ each volume, but did you know that K-On's Blu-ray numbers recently hit over 500,000?

At Comiket last winter (the 2010 Winter Comiket) I was surprised by how many tables were devoted to Durarara. It was a good section of West Hall, about the same size as the Fullmetal Alchemist section (although in 2006 FMA had a huuuuuge hall).

Anyway, the Durarara section was indeed much smaller than the K-On section, which was a huge part of East Hall. I wander which was bigger, the K-On section or the Vocaloid section? Vocaloid or Toho? Toho... or Hetalia?

I should mention that the Durarara fandom was almost all girls reading/drawing slash doujin about the boy characters. The K-On section was in the extra-porn-ridden super-scary section so I didn't investigate it closely.
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CareyGrant



Joined: 18 Nov 2009
Posts: 453
PostPosted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 9:01 pm Reply with quote
erinfinnegan wrote:
The K-On section was in the extra-porn-ridden super-scary section so I didn't investigate it closely.


Remind me again... was that a left or a right turn by the vending machines nearest the furry pleasure dungeons on sub-basement 4?
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