Not Quite So Busy
Posted by erin at July 17, 2003 12:03 AMOK, so, neither internship has actually started yet, and I am expecting a call tomorrow about one part time job that wouldn’t start until next week, and I have a second interview of sorts on Friday night. So basically, I’ve had the week off. And maybe next week, too. It’s OK, because I have just enough money for August’s rent, but this isn’t exactly how I was planning my schedule, either.
Fortunately, the time off gives me the time I need to finish Jerksquad! The Movie, (the screenplay). It also gives me the time to watch lots of anime.
Princess Nine is about an all-girl baseball team. I could see Maggie and Ryan liking it.
Neo Ranga is about three sisters who happen to have inherited a large mecha/monster/god from their deceased brother. Or something. The episodes are weirdly short, and there’s a lot of nudity in the theme song that’s not actually in the show. It’s OK. It’s certainly not as bad as:
Rah-Xephon which has nice music, but is otherwise a total Eva rip-off. So much so that it’s really distracting. It might be an OK show if you’ve never seen Eva, but that’s it. This is disappointing because it’s by Studio Bones, which did Cowboy Bebop. The Rah-Xephon art is really pretty, but goddamnit, the writing sucks.
Slayers is totally awesome D&D anime with an all-star Japanese voice cast. It’s funny, it’s fantasy, it’s classic anime.
I Can Hear the Ocean turns out to be the weakest movie in the illegal Ghibli archive box set. First of all, I can’t hear the ocean. Second, I have some questions, for example, why does the protagonist like that girl? I mean, she’s a total bitch. And third, why does it take him the entire movie to realize he likes her? Maybe there was something in the manga that got lost in the translation. Maybe it’s so Japanese I don’t understand it.
The Big O has been on Cartoon Network all week at midnight. It’s style is huge rip-off of Batman the Animated Series, but that doesn’t really bother me. Even if the protagonist is, indeed, a copyright infringement on Bruce Wayne, the show has other things going on and is overall very enjoyable (except the end theme song, which is horrid). Hell, the Big N. likes this show.
Kikaider. Dear Cartoon Network: Please stop showing Kikaider. It sucks. The art is bad, the plot is bad, and I’d rather see the live-action ‘60’s Kikaider on which the anime is based.
The Animatrix kicked my ass. It was awesome! Some of the stories were bigger on design than storytelling, but I can’t get over the awesome design. They really did get all the best animators in Japan for this DVD.
Gunbuster, which is early Gainax, also kicked my ass and took names. Rick is correct in his praise of the show, even if there is a lot of fanservice.
Comments Individual Archive Index
July 17, 2003 09:39 AM, Rick said:
1. Animatrix wasn't very good.
2. Eva was a total ripoff of Idion, so Rah-Xephon is probably just a second generation ripoff of Idion.
July 17, 2003 09:56 AM, N. said:
1. Rick is incorrect about the Animatrix, 2/3 of which was good, and 1/3 of which was not great but still watchable.
2. I am completely embarrassed about liking The Big O (not just because it's called The Big O), so don't let it get out that I do.
3. I've never seen Idion. I have a hard time believing that Eva was ripped off of anything, but now that I've seen Rose of Versailles (later to become Utena), I guess anything is possible.
4. Why am I coughing up blood? Surely that couldn't be a good sign.
July 17, 2003 12:14 PM, Reina said:
Because you are dying of consumption! Ha!
Hi Erin! You are never on aim anymore, but I still do stalk you faithfully via your blog. Anyway, good on with your very exciting sounding internships. Congragulations, and good luck!
July 17, 2003 12:32 PM, Rick said:
>I have a hard time believing that Eva was ripped off of anything
http://dougram.battletechnology.org/Ideon/Introduction.htm
Ok, maybe it's just a coincidence that both are shows about giant fighting robots piloted by children who are defending some strange government project from otherworldly attackers, while dealing with religious themes.
July 17, 2003 12:32 PM, Rick said:
>I have a hard time believing that Eva was ripped off of anything
http://dougram.battletechnology.org/Ideon/Introduction.htm
Ok, maybe it's just a coincidence that both are shows about giant fighting robots piloted by children who are defending some strange government project from otherworldly attackers, while dealing with religious themes.
July 17, 2003 12:49 PM, Eugene said:
Big O is the silliest thing ever, and not in a good way. Maybe it's the English dubbing, but I don't like it very much, and I really tried to get into it. It also has one of the worst opening themes I have ever seen or heard.
The Animatrix was mostly excellent - "World Record" (which I actually find unwatchable) and "Matriculated" stand out as the worst of the lot. Someone needs to stop giving work to Peter Chung (and those "inspired" by his visual style). Ugh. The rest were pretty great.
July 17, 2003 01:00 PM, thecomicman said:
'The Animatrix' was watchable (except for 'Matriculated'), but not very good. the best things were Shinichiro Watanabe's 'A Detective Story,' 'Beyond,' and 'World Record.' everything else was extremely subpar. c'mon, most of these apparetnly had writers who understood neither Matrix history nor Matrix science. even the stuff written by the Brothers wasn't very good. unless of course they tie everything together in the third movie and then i will just pee my pants and praise them as gods.
July 17, 2003 02:35 PM, Erin said:
Which was the short with the samuri chick with white hair? I liked that, followed by Detective Story and Kid Story, no wait, I liked the one where physics were broken... GAH! Can't... decide!
(Also, hi Reina!)
Also, The Big O's bad opening theme is easily out-done by it's bad closing theme.
July 17, 2003 04:16 PM, N. said:
Re: Animatrix - "World Record" may be ugly, but I found it quite watchable. The idea that someone could push the physical boundaries of the matrix is very cool. Also, "Matriculated," while not being as good as it could have been, was interesting (if you can get past the nonsense) and had a lemur in it. "Beyond," however, was as good as any short I have ever seen. Really good stuff.
I will keep an eye out for Ideon.
July 17, 2003 07:50 PM, Maggie said:
I agree with Eugene. World Record made me cringe in pain. It is a horrible horrible "art" style.
My favorite one was the one toward the end, with the weird house where things levitate. I liked that art style best.
July 18, 2003 12:40 AM, Eugene said:
"World Record" did have a good idea, but the execution was poor. Very poor. I liked the concept of "Matriculated" and actually didn't mind the visual style much, but the extensive psychedelic scenes were terribly boring. "Beyond" (the one where the physics break down) is one of the best things I have seen, and my other favorite was "Detective Story". And I lump many of the others into the pile of good, because I either liked the story or the animation (and in many cases both).
Watching "Detective Story" in Japanese with English subtitles vs. the English dub revealed some subtle differences that change the mood ever so slightly. I think I liked the Japanese better. I haven't watched many of the others in Japanese though, and it's hard to decide what the "preferred" language should be.
July 18, 2003 01:19 PM, Erin said:
Yeah, I couldn't tell which titles on the Animatrix were originally in English, so I just watched the whole thing in Japanese.
I liked the style of "World Record" but I can understand where others might not. It looked, intentionally, like a Nike commercial. But that's not why I liked it - I liked it because the visual style was new and innovative.
July 18, 2003 02:26 PM, Eugene said:
Yes, it was "new and innovative." And now no one ever needs to do that again.
I thought the style of "Kid's Story" was pretty new and innovative too, though I have seen elements of it elsewhere. That's an experiment that works, I think.
July 20, 2003 04:57 PM, thecomicman said:
the style of 'Kid's Story' reminds me of the Plympton cartoons, actually. it didn't seem very new or innovative to me.
July 21, 2003 10:27 AM, Erin said:
TCM: You don't know jack about animation. Plympton cartoons are drawn with colored pencil sometimes, and sometimes paint. Kid's Story was more like ,Waking Life in that it was done with some kind of rotoscoping. Rotoscoping is really cool, but not done very often these days. New kinds of software allow for it to be a million times easier to do. You didn't notice that bits of Kid's Story were live-action footage? That's nothing like Plympton!
July 21, 2003 06:36 PM, John said:
I'm glad that everyone else disliked MATRICULATED as much I did.
KID'S STORY and BEYOND were definitely my favorites and the SECOND RENAISSANCE stuff was pretty interesting.
As to the style of Kid's Story, which i loved, it reminded me a great deal of Brian Michael Bendis' style in his early comic books FIRE, JINX and GOLDFISH, as to the mix of the live action and drawn. Plus, it rocked.
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