Holiday Gift Ideas for the Vengeful
by Justin Sevakis,So, with that said, here are my picks for the perfect anime-related Christmas gifts to send to your enemies!
Dollar-store Sailor Moon rip-off toys from China
Whoever these companies are that make these, they should be very proud. Not only have they achieved the acme of mediocrity by imitating something already somewhat lame to begin with, but have done it badly enough that the only person that would possibly buy it would be some grandmother who thinks she saw something like this on a wall scroll in your bedroom. Amazing.The selection of these toys is vast. The one shown at right, according to animejump.com, is made of soft vinyl (probably rich in that plastic-softening chemical all the local news stations are complaining about), and stinks to high heaven! There are plenty of Dragon Ball and Power Rangers rip offs, but why bother with those when you can have Usagi's evil twin "Mary" staring you in the face every night? Pleasant dreams!
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M.D. Geist
Who else other than Ken'ichi Ohata is capable of creating a piece of cinema so lacking of creativity, so want of redeeming value, and so utterly devoid of substantial quality? (Okay, besides Masami Ohbari...) For the life of me, I can't figure out why U.S. Manga Corps is so hell-bent on making this a landmark release. (At least they figured out how to render him now, although he doesn't seem to do anything besides fidget a bit...)If you can, try to find the old one that doesn't say "Director's Cut". I'm not sure if this exists in dubbed form, but if it does, get it, because it will only add to the sheer mediocrity that will prove so lethal to anyone that lays eyes on it. From the little animation "mistakes" (there are at least three) to the totally unintelligible plot (which, from what I can gather, actually is the opposite of what the box says), M.D. Geist is sure to put a hamper on anyone's day.
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Battle Can-Can
While nothing comes close to Cool Devices for the overall filth factor, this one comes pretty close. This saaaaad excuse for an anime has art that is roughly as detailed as the standard Saturday morning cartoon, and a frame rate of MAYBE five frames per second. (Anyone remember "Hammer-Man"?)But never mind that. Battle Can-Can has much more to offer than just lame art! For starters, how about the totally tasteless subject matter? (At the bank, an attendant is being raped, and an old guy being held captive gets a woody...) If this doesn't permanently tattoo the word "sacrilege" on your forehead, I don't know what will.
Of course, the plot involves a crew of sexy (!) female space bounty hunters, most of whom get raped and murdered (exploding vibrators! YES!) while everyone else looks on in terror, but of course does nothing to help...
Personally, I wanted to make a music video out of it to Mae West singing "Twist And Shout", or perhaps a Wesley Willis tune, and even got permission from Kitty owner John Sirabella to do it, but I couldn't stomach renting it again and having to watch it over and over to edit it. Anyone want to take up where I left off?
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A subscription to Smile Magazine
Here's another find that I'm grateful to AnimeJump.com for. Smile, the newest venture by our friends at Mixx Entertainment, is one magazine that truly redefines "train wreck".Let's just drink in this cover for a minute... First of all, who is this girl and why does she look stoned? It doesn't say!! Is it the model they have an interview with? Is it some crack-addict they pulled out of a dumpster, threw some snappy looking clothes on, and shoved a twenty-dollar bill in her bra for her trouble?
But never mind that... Half of the "features" listed on the cover aren't even in the table of contents, and the pages itself are so widely spaced that they're already hard to read. (There's nothing there...) Add the hallucinogenic patterns throughout and you have yourself an instant nervous breakdown. (Let's not even go into the Sailor Moon manga that's printed in that annoying inky-dinky sideways format...)
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Armageddon
Not to be confused with the highly mediocre American movie from last summer, Armageddon the anime is even worse. Well, it's not really Japanese: it's Korean. Now, Korean studios may be able to pull off grunt work from other countries, but this title proves that they should not attempt a project of their own. (Well, okay, so Red Hawk was a little better...)Anyone who has seen Megazone 23 Part 2 remembers how the animation fluctuated from beautifully detailed with a slow frame rate to painfully simple with a very high frame rate, but while still looking very awkward? Well, this project is closer to the latter. With a fairly lame plot and a character design that seems to change with every single scene, this one is sure to make you enemies.
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And now for the grand mother of bad anime Christmas gifts...
Those Obnoxious Aliens!
Seldom is a good dub as awe-inspiring as a really, really, really, REALLY bad dub. Friends, Those Obnoxious Aliens is the worst dub ever released. I didn't think it was even POSSIBLE for a dub to be this God-awful. It's quite amazing...For those that don't know, this is one of AnimEigo's first attempts at a dub, and Urusei Yatsura is the Japanese show from which this was derived. Little to no rewrite was done on the script from the subtitled version, meaning that Ataru uses words like "oni" without there being any explanation as to what that means! Lum speaks in sort of a bizarre Frenchy accent that is impossible to understand, and there is nearly no post-production value to the English version.
Overall, the entire cast is ear-chewingly bad, with Ataru's father and Lum being the two worst. (At the time of its release, AnimEigo bragged, "We found the perfect Lum and Ataru working right in our offices!"
This will cause seizures. Guaranteed.
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