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Shelf Life - NY Noir


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Surrender Artist



Joined: 01 May 2011
Posts: 3264
Location: Pennsylvania, USA
PostPosted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 9:14 pm Reply with quote
erinfinnegan wrote:
Mohawk52 wrote:
Bloody 'ell! Are thing's that slow that you have to give that "Noir is crap" carcase yet another kick? I mean there can't be that much organic matter left on those old bones by now. Noir is like Marmite. You either love it, or hate it, there's nothing in between, and everyone who's been reading your reviews for some time now all know where you stand on the matter, yeah we get it. Rolling Eyes

I just review the DVDs they send me. Anime cry They don't send me every "classic" rerelease, but they sent this one.


Well, you did put it on the rental shelf anyway. Very ambivalently, but the rental shelf nonetheless, which I think fits the divisive status of the series. (I fall on the pro side, as the fact that just uttering its name is enough to summon me might suggest)

Mohawk52 wrote:
agila61 wrote:
Mohawk52 wrote:
I loved Noir from first frame to last, however having said that I consider the others that came after it not as "trilogies", but failed attempts to ride that successful wave with spectacular wipe outs. The "sequels" that never were.
Then again, there's no accounting for taste. I did wish for a flashback skip button after a while in Noir, and El Cazador was my favourite of the three.
Exactly. Case in point.


I liked the whole set; but the original is undoubtedly my favorite. My opinion of them used to match the chronological order, but pending further review, I'll put the younger sisters at par with one another.

PlatinumHawke wrote:
Megiddo wrote:
all the shooting without any blood in the series whatsoever (except in select cases).


If I remember right, Noir aired on TV Tokyo and the general lack of blood was Bee Train's self-censorship.


How I understand it is that the blood was originally absent to comport with broadcast standards and plans to add it for the home video release were abandoned because the staff thought that the effect was cool. I generally liked the effect; it fit the pervasive stylishness of the series and made some of the more preposterous events, such as the ludicrous climax of "The Cold Blooded Killer, acte II" somehow more digestible, although a few time the absence of gore made scenes either confusing or effective.
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erinfinnegan
ANN Columnist


Joined: 31 Jan 2005
Posts: 598
PostPosted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 10:20 pm Reply with quote
Mohawk52 wrote:
Noir is like Marmite. You either love it, or hate it, there's nothing in between...

Several people earlier in the thread said something to the effect that Noir seemed appealing at first but was disappointing with every subsequent episode. I don't think that fits in with your marmite theory unless Marmite tastes good at first and gets grosser with each bite.

I myself don't "hate" Noir. If it was totally without merit I would've given it Perishable.

I was less bothered by El Cazador than Noir, but I think my expectations had already been lowered by Noir.

Surrender Artist wrote:

PlatinumHawke wrote:
Megiddo wrote:
all the shooting without any blood in the series whatsoever (except in select cases).

If I remember right, Noir aired on TV Tokyo and the general lack of blood was Bee Train's self-censorship.

How I understand it is that the blood was originally absent to comport with broadcast standards and plans to add it for the home video release were abandoned because the staff thought that the effect was cool.

Maybe they weren't granted the budget to add blood back in. That said, maybe the lack of blood didn't bother me because I've worked on kids' cartoons and had to write retake notes in response to Standards and Practices emails, or more often than not, in anticipation of S&P's response.
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GhostShell



Joined: 25 Jan 2011
Posts: 1009
Location: Richmond, B.C., Canada
PostPosted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 11:42 pm Reply with quote
It's been a few year's, but I remember enjoying Noir quite a lot, also Madlax. Later, I liked Phantom for many of the same reasons (character designs, backgrounds, music, story). Now I've got an itch to revisit Noir.

I thought Erin's reference to Loups=Garous running off the rails to be fairly close to my own feelings after having watch it. The move had potential, but didn't seem to know which direction it wanted to take. And the whole pop band thing just seemed like it was shoe-horned in as ad placement. Freaky about the Ayumi's gender switch, eh? Not sure what Sentai was thinking there.

Really nice set of shelves this week. Quite a collection, indeed! I'll have to start putting my manga into baggies to protect them, as well. Damned silverfish!
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DSX



Joined: 20 Oct 2008
Posts: 15
Location: Regina, SK
PostPosted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 11:56 pm Reply with quote
Hi everyone,

My collection is this week's "Shelf Obsessed" feature. Thank you for all of your feedback! Sharla and I have no anime friends where we live so we can't share our collection with anyone in real life. I just want to answer a couple of questions people had asked.

B-503_MIA wrote:
To Conlan - excellent collection! Fellow projector owner here (Optoma DV10), what's your rig?

Also notice that you don't have a screen, did you use screen goo or another kind of wall treatment?


We have a ceiling-mounted Optoma HD200X projector running through an Onkyo HT-R380 AV Receiver. We don't have any wall treatment on our screen wall right now. We are currently going with the matte finish light-brown paint that came with our home, but painting that wall is on my to-do list. What would you recommend using?

classicalzawa wrote:
I think the only thing I didn't see was A, A'!


A,A' is there. It's in photo 7, between 3x3 Eyes and Absolute Boyfriend.

classicalzawa wrote:
But it must be a pain to rearrange everything a new volume comes in, but at that size, alphabetical is the way to go. I just don't get where people find the time to read or watch that amount of awesome.


It is definitely a pain to rearrange! What we do now is we will try to plan ahead for what we want and make room on the shelves before we make purchases or we'll wait until we have approximately a full row of items before we rearrange things. Admittedly these pictures are from April and we've added 4 more rows of manga and several anime titles since then.

enurtsol wrote:
CareyGrant wrote:

Lastly, THOSE SHELVES!!! Our should I say that basement! Hell, I'd have a home security system, too,


A serious gamer friend with tens of thousands dollars worth of games --many rare, and double copies (one to play, one to keep)-- put an insurance on the ever-growing collection. Laughing


We have insurance AND a home security system! We really like our stuff and would really really like to keep it ours. Wink

One-Eye wrote:
Really awesome, I wonder what their backlog of unwatched shows is?


Between the two of us we have seen a lot of it, but overall I would prefer not to think about it - it's just too depressing to comprehend.

Forte-sama wrote:
As far as the video games go, I personally counted 334 video games in the pictures. If the unmarked CD cases down by the Wii games also contain legit releases of video games, that would be 350 from my tally. I'll admit, it's pretty impressive, although it only seems to go as far back as the Playstation 2 for the actual systems present.


Actually, Sharla's game collection (she's the gamer in the family!) goes as far back as the original playstation and game boy colour. Thank you for counting the games through - neither of us actually knew how many there were.

GhostShell wrote:
I'll have to start putting my manga into baggies to protect them, as well. Damned silverfish!


Sharla actually developed and ingenious way to create manga bags out of Ziploc freezer bags. They work awesome (though it is labour intensive).

Once again thank you everyone for your feedback! Sharla and I are very proud of our collection and are happy that there is a forum in which we can show it off to people who both understand our love for the medium and appreciate what we have worked together to create.
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maaya



Joined: 14 Oct 2007
Posts: 976
PostPosted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 11:57 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
I'm convinced that everyone was fooled by the soundtrack.


You might be right. The soundtrack is a masterpiece and adds so much to the atmosphere of the series that you can overlook a lot of other things. You can forget that you're supposed to be watching an anime series, and believe that you're watching a beautiful music video Wink
I think this is also true for the other Bee Train series Yuki Kajiura worked on. Especially hack//sign, which I believe wouldn't have worked at all without its music.

When I watched Noir and hack//sign I was like 15 years old, and I liked both. When I watched El Cazador about 7 years later the music wasn't enough to fool me anymore xD The soundtrack is still awesome, but I hated the series. And hack//roots, which doesn't have the soundtrack bonus, was horrible as well ><

I really don't want to rewatch Noir or hack//sign, because I'm scared that I won't like them anymore.
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bglassbrook



Joined: 29 Aug 2006
Posts: 1243
Location: Gaithersburg, MD
PostPosted: Wed Nov 23, 2011 1:18 am Reply with quote
Jrittmayer wrote:
Also, WHY IS EVERYTHING IN SHRINKWRAP? Such untouched beauty!

Shrinkwrap = free dust-covers, so why throw them out? (as long as they are in good condition after opening anyway)
DSX wrote:
We have insurance AND a home security system! We really like our stuff and would really really like to keep it ours. Wink

I've always wondered what category our collections fall under, because scheduled property is the closest that anything seems to come, but is obviously pointless considering the constant changes.
Quote:
We have no clue how many titles or individual disc/books/games we have any more – all we know is that there are a lot, and many of them are out-of-print.

Well, those shelves hold about 400-500 books each (450-500 since you are using the tops,) so I would estimate in the neighborhood of 1,700 books (discs are impossible to guess easily and somebody else already took a stab at the games.) It sure is nice to see how pretty those shelves look when you have room for correct spacing of the rows.
Quote:
It's a good thing we saw it when we did, since the protestors were evicted last week.
After that, we went down to actual Wall Street, which was blocked off for a film shoot with 1100 extras staging a fake riot.

So they white-wash casts, use CGI effects to create oompa-loompas, and now cannot even be bothered to use real protestors? *falls to knees and shakes fists at the sky* Is there no end to Hollywood's rampage of replacements?
Quote:
For the most part, the show looks dated, yet acceptable in HD. Only the opening credits seem to suffer from the passage of time. Oddly, I couldn't get these DVDs to play at anything other than 16:9, whether I used my PS3 or my Mac Mini. I thought it might look better at 4:3, I mean, wasn't it in 4:3 originally?

Nope, check the back of the box (ADV's anyway, FUNi's likely on the bottom): anamorphic widescreen, so 16:9 (but still SD.) You could try to scrunch them into 4:3 but I doubt it will look better.
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B-503_MIA



Joined: 15 Dec 2008
Posts: 149
Location: Green Bay, WI
PostPosted: Wed Nov 23, 2011 6:41 am Reply with quote
DSX wrote:

B-503_MIA wrote:
To Conlan - excellent collection! Fellow projector owner here (Optoma DV10), what's your rig?

Also notice that you don't have a screen, did you use screen goo or another kind of wall treatment?


We have a ceiling-mounted Optoma HD200X projector running through an Onkyo HT-R380 AV Receiver. We don't have any wall treatment on our screen wall right now. We are currently going with the matte finish light-brown paint that came with our home, but painting that wall is on my to-do list. What would you recommend using?


A great resource for Do it Yourself painting or screen making can be found here (whites or light greys are most common) - http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=110

The "screen" I currently use is a piece of Parkland Plastics Poly-Wall paneling.

The DV10 is a nice little projector (has a built-in DVD player & speakers) but is getting long in the tooth as it's native resolution is 480P - may be upgrading in the future & leaning toward Optoma's HD33 as it's 1080p native & also adds 3D Very Happy

I really think projectors are the way to go for the most immersive watching experience - why watch on a computer monitor or 50 inch set when you can go big with a 100+ inch image? Most folks don't realize that they can be had on the cheap & you just need a room with some light control...

Again congrats on such an awesome collection!
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ZakuAce



Joined: 06 Jan 2010
Posts: 525
Location: SE Wisconsin
PostPosted: Wed Nov 23, 2011 8:32 am Reply with quote
Oh boy, Noir. What a disappointment. When I first watched Noir, I liked it. Nothing like "this is best ever," not even close, but I liked it. After rewatching it just a month ago, my opinion has been greatly lowered. I really, really hate Kirika. The ending is really stupid. And the whole getting shot without bleeding thing bothers me. It makes me wish I hadn't bought it (even though I got it for 50% off) and also discourages me from watching Madlax, my favorite of the Bee Train "Girls with guns" shows, because I'm afraid I'll start hating that, too.
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Crisha
Moderator


Joined: 21 Apr 2010
Posts: 4290
PostPosted: Wed Nov 23, 2011 10:12 am Reply with quote
Wow, DSX, that is an impressive collection! It'd be too much for me to maintain though.

And it's pretty awesome that you shrink wrap yours. I wouldn't ever do it (like you said, too labor intensive). Then again, I'm the kind of person who abuses her books like the dirty little hoes they are. Wink I try not to get them dirty/damaged, but neither do I put in extra effort to keep them clean/protect them. I'll read 'em when I'm eating, I'll read 'em on the pot, I bend the spines, I'll fold down corners of the pages. Hell, I've been known to mark in my manga with pen or pencil for particularly grievious errors found in them - like the old Magic Knight Rayearth Mixx volumes where Ferio shouts out Umi's name instead of Fuu's in book 4 (that was a travesty that needed to be corrected... hopefully Dark Horse doesn't make the same mistake).
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Spastic Minnow
Bargain Hunter
Exempt from Grammar Rules


Joined: 02 May 2006
Posts: 4595
Location: Gainesville, FL
PostPosted: Wed Nov 23, 2011 12:04 pm Reply with quote
The big worry I'd have with a basement set-up like that is with the possibility of flooding. Like many parts of the nation, my area got hit by that last year. A sinkhole swallowed an Escalade, hundreds or thousands of basements flooded. They were cleaning up for months and you could drive by certain neighbor hoods and see stacked furniture waiting for garbage pick up that had obviously once made so primo basement offices and entertainment centers. I hope you live in a dry area.
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1945113



Joined: 23 Dec 2010
Posts: 291
PostPosted: Wed Nov 23, 2011 6:28 pm Reply with quote
I am completely jealous of that collection I saw games and shows that I've been dying to get my hands on...
but

Imagine if one of the shelves were to accidentally fall over causing a domino effect knocking the rest over Anime cry omg I would cry if that were to happen to my collection if it was like this.
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eyeresist



Joined: 02 Apr 2007
Posts: 995
Location: a 320x240 resolution igloo (Sydney)
PostPosted: Wed Nov 23, 2011 10:34 pm Reply with quote
bglassbrook wrote:
Quote:
For the most part, the show looks dated, yet acceptable in HD. Only the opening credits seem to suffer from the passage of time. Oddly, I couldn't get these DVDs to play at anything other than 16:9, whether I used my PS3 or my Mac Mini. I thought it might look better at 4:3, I mean, wasn't it in 4:3 originally?

Nope, check the back of the box (ADV's anyway, FUNi's likely on the bottom): anamorphic widescreen, so 16:9 (but still SD.) You could try to scrunch them into 4:3 but I doubt it will look better.

This may be a mini-scandal in the making. So, is this "widescreen" image cropped at top and bottom, or *shudder* stretched horizontally?
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LaFreccia



Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 324
PostPosted: Thu Nov 24, 2011 12:14 am Reply with quote
Noir. I agree that the best thing about Noir was the soundtrack.

Steins;Gate. Maybe I'm one of the weird ones, but I loved this show from the first episode. I think a couple of the plot elements (e.g. the sub-plot with Ruka) were a bit far-fetched, but overall I thought S;G was a great hard Science Fiction show. I was intrigued (and confused) by Primary, but, yeah, if you liked Primary, get on this one.
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bglassbrook



Joined: 29 Aug 2006
Posts: 1243
Location: Gaithersburg, MD
PostPosted: Thu Nov 24, 2011 12:55 am Reply with quote
eyeresist wrote:
bglassbrook wrote:
Quote:
For the most part, the show looks dated, yet acceptable in HD. Only the opening credits seem to suffer from the passage of time. Oddly, I couldn't get these DVDs to play at anything other than 16:9, whether I used my PS3 or my Mac Mini. I thought it might look better at 4:3, I mean, wasn't it in 4:3 originally?

Nope, check the back of the box (ADV's anyway, FUNi's likely on the bottom): anamorphic widescreen, so 16:9 (but still SD.) You could try to scrunch them into 4:3 but I doubt it will look better.

This may be a mini-scandal in the making. So, is this "widescreen" image cropped at top and bottom, or *shudder* stretched horizontally?

It doesn't look to be stretched (circles look even more ovular when compressed down to 4:3,) so cropping is the more likely of the two. That said, the series is only ~10 years old, and taking a quick peek over at FUNi's streams on ANN/Hulu, they are letterboxed, so originally widescreen (at least for home release) is entirely possible.
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eyeresist



Joined: 02 Apr 2007
Posts: 995
Location: a 320x240 resolution igloo (Sydney)
PostPosted: Thu Nov 24, 2011 3:21 am Reply with quote
bglassbrook wrote:
That said, the series is only ~10 years old, and taking a quick peek over at FUNi's streams on ANN/Hulu, they are letterboxed, so originally widescreen (at least for home release) is entirely possible.

I think we're seeing a little rewriting of Noir history here. Looking at Amazon pages for the boxsets, the 2005 release by Section 23 and the 2008 release by AD Vision had 1.33:1 ratios. Only this year's Funimation release lists a 1.78:1 ratio.
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