Posts Tagged “Anime”

One of the Best Ever.

On the topic of anime, this season lacks a lot of something. Fall usually bring something good. While Summer was usually the weakest in term of offer. Summer 09 had Bakemonogatari, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 and Umineko. Fall? Not so much. With the exception of Darker than Black, IF you liked the first.

I am trying to put what I feel about Endless Eight in simple words. However, I can’t. Just saying it is shit is not enough. To me, it is the same effect as watching Roland Garros tennis tournament where I bet on how long before all french players get kicked out of the tournament, before we get to the more interesting matches.

I would try to justify with, “Well, KyoAni always had pacing problems, just as Makoto arc showed.” However, the pacing issue have nothing to do about it. Laziness? Not really. I mean, while they reanimate the same scenes and revoice the same dialogues, lights, frames and general cinematography are different. With varying degrees of quality.

Whoever thought that it was a good idea to stretch of 30ish pages short story up to… eight episodes until now was very wrong. That guy deserves to be have all kind of unspeakable things done to him. It’s an idea on the level of “let’s bungee jump off the Effeil Tower! Without the bungee cord!”, or “Let’s wear the same board as Bruce Willis in Die Hard 3 in the middle of a ghetto!” You think it is a good idea because it requires sheer balls of titanium, until reality comes to hit you in the face, HARD. However, it appears that the ones behind that idea had NOT realized it, or just did the ostriche trick: stick one’s head in a hole to not confront the reality. There is a difference between productive audacity and vain audacity. Guess on which side I think Endless Eight is sitting.

As for the publicity side of the thing, I think it is on the same level as New Coke in the 1980s or the arrogant advertisement french campain for the Nintendo 64 in the mid 1990s. It promises you it is going to be a great thing, something like reinvented steel, then you see it is not the case.

It is unnecessary. What is sad about it is that I LOVED Endless Eight in its printed form. And they managed to make Sighs, my least favorite of the series, all the more desirable! And people stated that K-on! is the most cynical work by KyoAni as hard cold fact! Personally, I do see the ugly head of mercantile cynicism way more in Endless Eight.

The bottom line, screw Endless Eight, wake me up when it is over. I’ll be somewhere, doing pew pew in Eve Online.

A LOT of animated works had the pretention to deal with war, promising to deliver THE TRUTH about what war is, how people feels about it and should. However, too few of them actually succeed. The biggest offenders, under the “anti-war” clothing, actually does better at glorifying it. By choosing the pilot as archetype, it glamorize it.

As I have said, too few animated works managed to give people a taste of what war is and does, and how it affect people. Grave of the Fireflies is one of them. Waltz with Bashir is another of them. “Them” being the few.

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Yeah, we know what’s happening with Haruhi. However, what’s making me laugh is when some fans saying inanities like “At least, back in the day, when Gainax did it with Evangelion, IT WAS AWESOME.”
Then I look at the age range of those who said that: late 10s (16 to 19) to early 20s, I can only cringe and smirk. Eva aired first in late 1995 and ended in 1996. Do your math according to their age range. Myself, I am 29. Do your math again. So what can I say about “Back in the day, when Gainax did it with Evangelion, IT WAS AWESOME.”? Did all japanese thought it was awesome?

Wrong. In regard of the reaction of a part of the viewer pool and the sponsors, NOT so quite.

Gainax did not get an endless stream of praise mails, the reactions were as polarized. Those were not as many as you would believe or like to think. I am old enough, getting closer to my 30s. I don’t exactly have a first hand experience of Eva, not living in Japan and all. However, I got reports, I read articles and interviews of Anno and some of the Gainax staff who were involved. I talked with the few japanese students who were in Paris and experienced it first hand.

And let’s be blunt, Gainax and Anno also got hate mails. And it had gone so far that Anno got death threats for the direction that Evangelion have taken. Moreover, parts of the otaku crowd grew discomfortable (they felt that Shinji and the cast were mirrors cast before their eyes) and the anime slowly alienated more and more sponsors who would not bring their money on the table after seeing where this is going (not to mention that the Gainax staff suffered from schedule issues). Back in the day, remember that Eva was first a commission from a famous toy manufacturer who wanted a series about young teens fighting in giant robots against an unknown enemy.

Thus, with a very thin budget, Gainax gave us the famous two final episodes. And RAGE ensued. A RAGE that culminated with even more hate mails and death threats. Pressured, Gainax and Anno released the two movies, infamous for their sheer nihilism and the Shinji fap to Asuka, or Shinji choking Asuka scenes. Contrasting with the more heartwarming, although abstract, final episode of the TV series. Then Anno left Eva behind him. Coming back on it only about ten years later, when the flames died out (well, not really).

I told you this story because I could not really stay silent when zealotous Haruhi and Eva fans said that ‘At least, back in the day, Gainax was awesome and got praised for that.”

Not entirely true but HEY PINK-TINTED NOSTALGIA GOGGLES ARE AWESOME, RIGHT?

Did KyoAni get hate mails for making Endless Eight as it is? Surely. Is it as bad as Gainax back in the day? I don’t think so.

However, I think that KyoAni need to get out of what I call Studio Hubris as fast as possible. A stage that some studio had gone through in the past. I really think that firing Yutaka Yamamoto have done more damage to KyoAni than fans would like to think.

Meanwhile, I resume playing Umineko no Naku Koro Ni AND Eve Online, yes I finally left RO ;)

EDIT:

Therefore, I’ll add that you guys need to be careful when you state things like “Back in the day…”

This can be wrong. As examples, Carpenter’s “The Thing” and “Big Trouble in Little China” FLOPPED back in the day, it’s the VHS market and the word-to-mouth from fans of the movie that vindicated the films. Another example, “The Good the Bad & The Ugly” got shot down by the critics of its time period, because of their scorn for the spaghetti western genre, it’s only way latter that they recognized that the movie was, well, awesome.

This an observation from what I read in animeblogs and anime forums, especially when the more popular shows of the season are talked about.

Case in point: K-On

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Thirty years, over one hundred tomes, more than enough to see characters getting old and married, to see kingdoms rise and fall. But a question was never answered: Is Guin’s leopard head a mask or a natural part of himself?

This question will never be answered. Kaoru Kurimoto left us on last evening, May 26th 2009, after a struggle against pancreatic cancer. Guin, Linda, Remus and Ishtvan are now orphans; and the saga will never be concluded. She have now joined Gygax, Jordan, Tolkien and other big names of the genre.

For those who still follow the animated adaptation, I still do, enjoy it.

Source

Better scans should come out soon, along with translations. I mean, Force’s chapter 0 got one after all.

Forgive the puny scans, those were taken from a site you should know. As I have predicted, Vivid focus on Vivio AND the Mahou Shoujo part of the franchise. However, the magitech that gives Nanoha its flavor and its lore are still here.

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At last it arrived. About fucking time.

Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody adds one more piece to the big puzzle that is Haruhi timeline. Anyone who have read it knows what I mean.

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Yuuka and Russia, two psychos made for each other.

The World History remade as a sitcom with yaoi undertones

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The mere act of posting your own anime top 10 may butthurt the Good Taste Police, even if you have Baccano and Kara no Kyoukai in it. <3