Mostly updating this thing for the sake of it really as I tend to neglect it. Firstly I would like to say that I have managed to find myself another job, working as a volunteer in a clothes shop. While is is simple work with few hours , will gain me more experience and basic retail duties it is unfortunetly not the most interesting job nor do I have much to do. As the job is not normal employment I am required to still sign on at a welfare office and look for work everyday minus saturday and sunday until 6 in the evening.
Other than that I may be travelling to England, London to be more specific sometime soon with my brother and a group of friends.
Even though my interest in anime/manga/videogames/films has been waning over the past three years there are still a few out there I consider to be rare gems. I feel myself becoming more attached to western comics as of late after reading watchmen. While I had always enjoyed the old superhero cartoons/movies and still do I would always dismiss the comics more recently I have chosen to become more open minded and give them a chance. Currently I am reading Batman:Vampire and although a stupid concept it works suprisingly well as a well written story with a great narrative and art that turned out to be suprisingly detailed. Even though the pacing was fast and did leave a moment wasted it has thus far achieved (like watchmen did) more in 200-300 pages than most manga I have read. The vampire Batman comic is wonderfully gory, the grim, dark artwork helps the action sequences flow/playout nicely and the authors/artists have achieved creating a genuinely creepy/scary look at the dark knight, this approach was more adult , gritty and mature, something I feel that some of the recent batman cartoons were taking away from the franchise. I enjoyed the portrayal and depiction of Batmans transformation throughout the story.
While it is unlikely to occur, a film adaptation (not that hokey poorly animated batman vs Dracula kiddy tie in) would be something to look forward to.
The downside is that the story feels a little too short, you just don't want it to come to an end. Also this was easily my favourite image of the joker yet and speaking of him not only is he present so is killer croc, two face and even scarecrow makes an appearence along with the many vampires and Dracula himself.
I would sooner read these titles than some subtle pedo pandering crap such as K-ON (sorry fans of that series, although I enjoyed elements of the show and it an be cute/funny at times that does little to change the fact it is an anime aimed at adult males with 17 year olds who look like they are at the very most 12, not that it is the only series that does this, Maria+holic is targetting cross dressing shotacon fanatics, does it make you people feel better inside knowing Mariya is really a boy and not actually the flat chested young girl he looks like? ) .I actually was so impressed I ended up putting in an order some some other western comics aswell, Arkam asylum , battle pope and soon killing joke and sandman will be added to that list.
Never again shall I judge an anime by its title, bar its terrible name Princess tutu (and I have no fear of admitting this or imasculation) is a suprisingly good magical girl series, maybe not on the level of cardcaptor sakura, nanoha and shugo chara. The animations a little weak and the character designs unusual but it feels darker than most, often very amusing to watch too and the English and Japanese voices are quite close together. Additionally it has a nice soundtrack and I am enjoy its more surrealistic/fairytale aspects. Watching I learnt that one doesn't need to be female or knowlegable of dancing to like this. Speaking of judging anime by title I would have never thought legend of the galactic heroes would have kept me interested for more than two episodes, I am now on episode 17 and feel like I can commit to all 110. While, true it can progress very very slowly and the initial animation (though it improves) isn't fantastic there is something there that makes you want to see what is going to happen next. Yang and Reinhardht (the latter especially) are engaging and interesting characters and as far as famous science fiction epics are concerned I consider legend of the galactic heroes to be much better than the stars wars films which only had their visuals to go on. Rather than the action scenes , it was the character interaction /conversations and politics /motivations that were far more interesting.
Also read all of what was available of melty bloods manga, expected a poor drawn cash in but instead got a visually detailed, funny, entertaining series with plenty of good action and a storyline that turned out to be better/stronger/more complex than I thought it would have been which is nice to see , it would have been a shame if it had been another generic fighting game based plot. Anybody who enjoyed tsukihime should try to track the melty blood manga down. It was also welcoming to see that the manga didn't abused its comic relief to much and I quite like how type moon depict vamperism.
Out of perhaps morbid curiousity I checked out MD geist to see how awful it was and aside from some entertaining action scenes, unintentional amusement and good mecha designs, the graphic violance is tame and juvenile now, it is horribly dubbed, plotless and poorly syncronized, the animation and character designs are highly outdated and the scriptwriters must have employed a 10 year old to do the dialogue. In its day it was probably considered mansculine but today it just comes off a campish parody of itself its also cheesy as hell , even the music is terrible.
Another two shows that I experienced which were also rather weak in my opinion were mushishi and last exile. Mishishi follows a short story format for 26 episodes and does not appear to have a continuous plot,however the art and animation are of a good standard for the likes of artland and the English dub offers some very strong performances. Last Exile has some impressive animation and an acceptable voice cast, however the series relies far to much on computer/3D animation , the story moves at a slow, dull pace during the first 15 episodes, not enough is revealed to the audience and the action scenes don't make up for this. The revelations later coupled with plotholes from what I read to see if the series was worth continuing come as a disappointment and having heard there is a plot hole/some neglected information, this discourages me ever further.
Gonzo and I don't have a very good relationship, they did a good futuristic adaptation of monte cristo , the Chrono crusade anime adaptation was actually in some aspects better than the manga counterpart too and though Druaga is only average it offered some entertaining humorous moments and the series didn't suffer from going down the serious route in the second half .
Their adaptation of Bokurano (a series that seems to put a new, unique spin on the mecha genre by having a giant robot that teleports its victims inside , forces them to fight monsters then swallows the pilots spirit afterward until it is left with the last man standing) so far after the the first 14 episodes seems thoroughly enjoyable, I heard that they took many liberties with the storyline but it isn't getting any complaints from me. Though we haven't seen many of them and two characters were killed off quite quickly they still received sufficient character development, the animation could be better and could do with less of gonzo's 3D work but the character designs are more realistic than those ones would see in a moe/harem/romantic comedy series. The fights themselves don't appear to be especially intense right now but I am really liking the strong and sometimes disturbing character driven/development aspect of the series that makes up for its other current shortcomings, especially the poor animation. While the examination of the political and the media is nothing new or as interesting by comparison to the characters it fortunatly does not hold the series back. It was disappointed that towards the end the series began to lose my interest, thankfully though that was only the last couple of episodes. All of the childrens stories were well told in their own way but at least two of them were so good they may have set the bar a little too high .
Lastly, if you haven't seen the following anime yet then I feel that you are really missing out:
Mazinger/Mazinkaiser (as well as the new currently airing series): Does the juvenile super-robot thing right and much better/more entertainingly than gurren lagann. Completely disregards all sense and couldn't be more over the top , the newer series is a good update of an old classic with improved art and animation. There is a story there but its only there for the sake of it and is overshadowed by the ridiculousness nature of the show/fights/mecha designs and their ridiculously) attacks(including which more than forgives the silly and old fashioned plot of boy finds robot and is mankinds only hope to save the world from you guessed it , a mad scientist bent on taking over the world after finding robots of his own. The soundtrack to the franchise was always a strong point and it continues to be here. Above all else the series is light entertainment at its purest and best for and is downright fun to watch. The bad guys pathetic as they are are actually rather creative , a flying black guy with sunglasses and a suit, a transgendered sadistic mummy and a headless nazi. Additionally it can be extremely funny to watch, whether this is intenional or not I do not know. Subtitles aren't needed to watch this either.
Another currently ongoing series scheduled for a movie in a few weeks is east of eden which not only provides strong animation and character design and top quality voice overs (and even a bilingual first episode) but also mixes a mature romance into the story while also including elements of thriller. It brings up issues such as the environment and unemployment and has an original storyline behind it. Sometimes it gets a little boring and while the romantic aspect is good , the other elements of the story such as the lead male are far more interesting.
The story involves a man who may have been a terrorist/secret agent that is said to have paticipated in a missile attack that didn't kill anyone , killing/abandoning a group of unemployed people, taking part in brainwashing as well as a game involving 12 participents given the task to change the world, everyone gets a large sum of money but they must not spend it all or selfishly use it nor can they desert the game, if they do so they will be executed. Also.. Diana Shiratori...a villain that must be seen to be believed, all men should be thankful that she is just a cartoon.
While I dislike the genre I actually found a harem series I quite enjoy, it seems seinen harems are better than shounen ones, I loved Magikano but I find myself also throughly enjoying onihime, the story of boy who sells his life to demons who will consume his heart within a year. They are to protect him from other demons until his time is up. The series is different from the usual harem as it is actually funny, the females aren't 15 year olds that look like they are 12 , they are well developed women, the art is very detailed and this is one harem that tries to be something else and actually succeeds, the action sequences in this manga are excellent. There are archetypes but these characters entertain more than annoy and I'm sure its not just me but I am happy to see a harem series where the females are present in a strong way.
After having not being bothered doing so I checked out sword of the stranger, it is true what people are saying, the art and animation actually succeed in being even stronger than that featured in episodes of kara no kyokai and let me tell you that was some breathtaking animation at that. From the first 15 minutes of the film I can gather that this wasn't trying to be anything more than an actioneer, however the fights seemed to have more than made up for a film I saw as having little in the ways of plot.
I could not find any information on the Japanese voice actors nor am I familiar with them so it is possible they are all first timers and if that is the case they've done a jolly good job despite lacking in experience. As the film went on I found myself bored by the scenes which depicted the samurai and the young boy together , the movie does not hold the viewers interest as well as it could between the plentiful, intense fights. The story itself turned out to be acceptable for an action film.
The highlight of the movie was seeing a welsh corgi puppy actually take part in some of the combat, that was not only entertaining but cute and amusing as well.
I was pleasentlty suprised by Tetragammon labyrith after reading the first volume last night to the point where I went out and ordered all of the currently available and upcoming volumes.Its a bit cheesy with the villains and dialogue but the art is highly detailed and the author tells a fast paced and interesting story while developing his main protagonists, the art allows still frame drawn battles to have roughly the same impact as those that are animated. Though while the yuri/shojo ai is welcome it isn't the focus nor is it enough.
I am always on lookout for tasteful, focused , non-explicit , platonic relationships between female characters in fiction especially those that involve the characters being co-dependent on each other/protecting each other/a stronger character protecting a weaker character. Any sexual relationships I would prefer to be treated as romantic rather than erotic. While we're on the subject of shojo-ai/yuri would it be just so much better if negima had less fanservice and was limited to just a light yuri/shojo ai series centred around magical girl themes and placing the primary attention on konoka and setsuna. All of the characters could age by five years after transforming and combat demons/monsters or something and the battles bring the characters closer together.
Also sorry for dragging this out so long but...Jebus...if you've never read count cain/god child do so now, despite the art style being a bit of a disappointment and myself not being gay (it have shounen ai themes)I feel the series has exceptionally impressive characterization, excellent pacing, is very plentiful in its content (12 volumes , long chapters and very rich in dialogue). It features both episodic moments aswell as a strong continuity and draws inspiration from fairytales/rhymes . The series offers plenty of mysteries, intrigue, interesting characters and a well paced, well written consistant story that is hard to put down and leaves you in a hurry to read whats coming in the next chapter, pretty exciting stuff, the seemingly endlrss number of plot twists and developments in the series add to this. In short its a very engaging manga. Having finished it as of this sentance I will go as far as saying that this is not only my favourite shojo series but my favourite series to ever come from Japan , yes I love this possibly even more than code geass. I feel that it is now compulsory for me to track down and read Kaori Yukis other works, including angel sanctuary.
I am sorry that I took so long to experience such an incredible series and dismissed it at first glance/so many times on the assumption it was a yaoi fanservice story. It was exciting, commpletely unpredictable , compelling and addictive enough for me to read the entire series in one week (sometimes three volumes in one sitting). There were no loose ends/plotholes from what I could see either. I am difficult to impress and I read/watch alot of series that do very little for me but Count cain was a manga that while reading I understood I was continuing not simply to kill time/out of completion but out of sheer enjoyment. I can't recommend it enough. Don't be put off by the yaoi undertones, if you do you are going to be passing up on what in my personal opinion is nothing short of a masterpiece. My complaints? Very few, perhaps the dialogue became overwhelming at times , not every one of the mysteries cain solves are interesting, there were many historical exagerrations,it felt more like a novel and the pages felt a little crowded. I was happy to see elements of action and amusing humor injected into the series as well.
- Mood:
Neutral - Drinking: Fanta/club orange
A few random musings
