Mysterious Girlfriend X Ep. 05

Oh boy! A Beach episode! You all know how this goes. For some reason the whole gang gets together and goes to the beach, Hijinks Ensue, they do traditional things like smash a watermelon, and relax in Yukata while fireworks go off in the distance, having sorted out various relationship things before they get back to fighting in giant robots or whatever they were doing before, at least until the Onsen episode.

Not this time.

This series continues to be unconventional without making a big deal about it.

In the teaser, we see Urabe going for a swim on a deserted beach. It's not a big touristy public beach, and we find out later that this is actually out of sequence. But I have to say, The girl does have a commitment to going armed - something I like in a woman. She goes swimming with her scissors tucked into her bikini bottom.

One OP later, and it's not summer vacation yet. The segregated gym classes continue, with the boys practicing Soccer, and the girls doing Swimming. But even though the soccer field and the swimming pool are adjoining, they are blocked off by tall shrubs. The boys have come up with an inventive way of defeating this obstruction to their view by deliberately flubbing their kicks at the goal, sending the ball off into the trees, so that they have to go retrieve it. Getting a brief look at the girls and coming back, they report back to their fellows what they've seen, compiling a list of the girls' chest sizes.


Ueno lucks out and catches a glimpse of Oka in her school swimsuit, and he's in heaven, reporting back "Very Big". Urabe is the only one not on the list (since she was swimming a lap at the time and clearly creaming every other girl).  When it's Tsubaki's turn, he catches a glimpse of her toweling off and flubs his kick. A shame, because he really really wanted to see her in a swimsuit. (Oka got a good look at her though. Depending on the translation, she either looks cute in a swimsuit, or she has cute armpits. My vocabulary and tiny Japanese dictionary fail me.)


On the way home, eating popsicles (Let's NOT discuss the visual metaphor this time) and discussing the heat and swim classes, they stop briefly in the park. Tsubaki notices the drop of sweat on the nape of Urabe's neck, and then notices her smell. Very interested in that, he begins sniffing and gets a little TOO close, prompting a scissor attack that gets called due to rain.


Taking shelter under a tree, when her spot is under a drip, Urabe leans close to Tsubaki, and he starts sniffing again (or else he's looking at her cleavage...). Now one big problem this couple seems to have is communication. In spite of the Pheromone thing, Urabe is a closed book most of the time, and Tsubaki is terribly terribly inhibited about expressing his feelings. I think though that her obstinateness is slowly training him to tell the truth slightly more often, but he's not very good it it. It's a Japanese thing I guess. He finally asks her if she's wearing perfume. She says she's never used the stuff and asks why he's asking. He says it's because she smells very nice today, and she sniffs herself and says, "It's just the smell of sweat. I'm sweaty right now."


But then it really goes off script when she licks her forearm and remarks on how it's salty. Then she adds, it wipes out the other flavor, the flavor of the sea. But it does give Tsubaki a conversational In, and he asks her if she likes the sea. Finally we get a little background. She loves the sea, and goes to the ocean every summer, since she was little, and she loves swimming (which explains why she's such a fast swimmer). When she turns the question around on him, he gives a weak "I guess I like it" kind of response. So she offers him her arm to lick, so it might remind him of the ocean. He licks, and blam, white-out, followed by a vision of her in a white swimsuit.


He's astonished that her sweat, as well as her saliva will show him the images in her head, but he also wonders if instead it was just his own fantasy. But for once he is infused with enough courage to stammer out a proposal that they go to the beach together during their summer break. And amazingly, after a long moment's consideration, she agrees.


But, when summer break comes around, it's like she's forgotten. She meets him daily for his dose, but doesn't stick around long enough for him to even say a word, until finally he's had enough and makes the bold move to grab her bike before she rides away, which shocks her incredibly. Shocked at himself, he manages to stammer out about their proposed date. But when he suggests tomorrow, she declines, saying that she's going away to visit her father's family. But there's a light at the end of the tunnel, she suggests next week, and on the spot he makes plans (way to think ahead, buster.) and so, next week they'll meet at the station and go to a nearby beach.


Oh, as long as we're mentioning family, I should point out that Tsubaki lives alone in a house with his older sister. There hasn't been much reason to show her picture before, because so far she's had zero impact on the story. No mention has been made of their parents, she just acts like a surrogate mom, and doesn't even seem to have a job. But when Tsubaki comes home that day, she points out that he's grinning like an idiot. And he is.


That night he starts dreaming about going to the beach with Urabe. In his dream they are running along the beach, and then she leaps into the air, becoming a mermaid (a topless one at that!).


If someone can look up where Kazamidai Station is, we could locate where this series takes place. There's probably a nod to Railfans in here too. Anyway, on the appointed day, he rushes there to meet her. Much to his shock, she's already thoroughly tanned. Now personally, I like the look, but I understand that in Japan, the whitest possible skin is the sign of beauty, so Tsubaki is a bit thrown off by this. He asks "Y-your skin..." and she mentions that there's a beach near her dad's house and she went swimming and tanned yesterday. This probably refers to the opening scene. On the train he gives her a looking over and thinks to himself how new and unfamiliar it is to him to see her like this. She notices him staring and gives him the hairy eyeball, and he nervously laughs it off saying "Oh, nothing." Obviously training him in honest communication is going to take a while. I mean, seriously, she's told him about what a strong bond they have, but he is always afraid of how she might react to what he thinks.


Upon arrival at the beach, he spends a brief time gawking at all the skimpy swimsuits, until Urabe arrives in hers, as seen in the preview last time. She looks really good so let me just spam you with screenshots for a bit. Tsubaki comes to the realization that it's not just "New" but "Naughty" to see her like that. Not entirely sure what he means by that....(HorribleSubs translates it as "Different" and "Hot". But the word is Ecchi, so who's to say.)


Now the funny thing is, she suggests that they get something to eat before they swim. She says one needs energy to swim. So unlike the rule we have about waiting an hour before swimming after eating. So they trot over to the Yakisoba stand, where he overhears one girl demand her boyfriend buy her food, but his attempt to be chivalrous is cut off by Urabe's paying before he thinks to act. She is a little strange in her food choices, asking for hers with no meat or cabbage, but extra ginger. When he remarks on how strangely she ordered it, she's never heard this before. But to compound the strangeness, she says that normally she'd like it with some Mayo on it too. She feeds him a little (hey, wasn't that Ueno's dream?) and she ask if it's bad, and of course he says no. Wimp.


Finally they go swimming. Not playing in the water, but full-bore freestyle through the water. Tsubaki begs her to stop because he can't keep up. She promises to slow down. Lucky boy, this gives him a chance to dive and take a look at her, although he wishes she'd ditch the skirt. However, gawking too long, he gets caught in a compromising position. "I thought your skirt has a really interesting pattern!" Nice save! She takes it honestly, and says she doesn't normally wear a skirt while swimming, but she accidentally got some unfortunate tan lines, and shows him. Cue the nosebleed.


On the train ride home, she tells him she had a lot of fun. She asks if he had fun too, and while he stammers, she sneaks in a finger to get a taste of him. (Clearly her boundary issues are one-way.) Cue the nosebleed again. She stares at him asking "Why is my nose bleeding?" And he has to admit that he got a nosebleed when he saw her scissor tan lines.


What comes next is pure evil "Tsubaki-kun, would you like to see my tan lines again?" He stammers out a yes grunt. "Next summer, when we go to the beach again, I'll show you."

Sorry this one is running behind. I have a lot of Pans to de-pan (and it looks like my color profiles don't match between machines). Episode 6 is already out, and it answers one of my big questions.

I have one other observation. I remember one blogger critiquing the old style of the show, but I think it's actually deliberate. I may be proven wrong in the future, but I think the throwback to old, almost Rumiko Takahashi/Urusei Yatsura character designs - minus the modern techniques like the textures and gradients - sets the show in the 80's, or maybe the '90's. The biggest clue to me? Nobody has a cell phone. That and in the next episode he's running around with a polaroid-type camera. (In the opposite direction, one of the action figures in his room is R. Dorothy Wayneright from Big O, but that could just be some kind of shout-out.) The "Expo '70" poster in his room isn't exactly proof. 1970 seems early. But Showa dating stops at 64.

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Deadman Wonderland Ep. 02

We open on Captain Makina's office, where she is studying the fuzzy footage of Ganta's superpowered save from being crushed by the chunk of building (in the shape of a giant ball and chain) the director's bombs tried to drop on him.  She's wondering if Ganta somehow responsible for the flash of light that blew the ball to bits.  She flashes back on the discussion she had with the Director about the plan to "Kill him in an accident" without really knowing why, or why the Director specifies that there won't be any followup attempts.  This strikes me as odd that there is some complicity here between the Director and the Captain, but she is definitely left out of the loop, which makes her curious as to why it was necessary to sacrifice three "Ordinary" inmates for one on death row.

Ganta, in his cell contemplates his situation while sorting through the contents of the supply bag he was given at orientation.  Flipping from his previous desire to die and get his sentence over with, NOW he's determined not to die in this place.


Which apparently sends him to the Nurse's office where he gets his cut cheek plastered up, while the Nurse mentions to him that he should eat his "Candy" since he's on Death Row, and that his first dose should have been in his bag.  It wasn't.  At the end of the last episode, we saw the guy whom Makina slashed open in the infirmary toying with a piece of candy, which was obviously originally Ganta's.  Makina slashed him after he rammed Ganta "Accidentally" with a cart and "Helped" him recover the contents of his bag.  Apparently she knew he had palmed something, and yet, after that harsh punishment, apparently she never did recover that bit of stolen property.  JUST before the nurse is about to tell him what happens if he doesn't eat the candy, that fellow interrupts from his infirmary bed and says that maybe the candy "Fell out" when he bumped him.  The nurse never bothers to finish her sentence, and Ganta is left talking to the guy he thought he'd seen killed by the Captain, still under the impression that the Candy is just candy.  Paying attention doesn't seem to be one of Ganta's strong suits.


Seeing as that bitter tasting Candy is the price of another three day's life for a Death Row Inmate, it could be considered very valuable.  But as we see later on, the price is terribly inflated.

While chatting, Shiro suddenly pops in... from a vent in the ceiling (FINE security you've got there, Deadman Wonderland!)  Ever the happy-go-lucky prisoner, she suggests that Ganta enter the race, because it's got all these big giant toys and it should be fun.  Did I mention she's crazy?


The fellow, who's name has yet to be mentioned, explains that the "Dog Race Show" is one of the events put on for the crowds, and draws money for the prison.  The top prize is "100,000 Casts" - a Cast being the currency of the prison.  Ganta doesn't know any of this because he didn't bother to read the rule book in his bag.  This speaks poorly to his survival prospects, because prisoners must buy their own food, but on the positive side, those who earn a lot can significantly upgrade their provisions and accommodations (Including alcohol and tobacco), or even reduce their sentences!  Ah, now THERE'S a reform system designed to produce productive members of society!

The fact that Ganta hasn't eaten yet, and the prospect of "Sweet Bean Bread" being given to all entrants cements his determination to enter, not knowing what's ahead.  Shiro just wants to snack, so she cheers for the Sweet Bean Bread.  I'm sure I mentioned she's crazy.


As Ganta and Shiro head off to enter the race, we finally find out a lot more about the fellow with the cut chest.  His name is Takami Yoh.  Clearly he's got a lot of cast points, because his room is full of stuff, including a phone, which he is using to call the director (Who is named Tamaki, if I missed mentioning it before) to tell him that Ganta's entering the "Dog Race".  I guess being a stoolie pays well.


In the locker room, Takami surprises Ganta by being there when he looks up from reading the copiously illustrated rule book.  He finally tells Ganta his name, and tells him to "Call me Yoh."  It seems he's about to give Ganta something (maybe his Candy back?) when one of the prison toughs enters the locker room with a gang of thugs to intimidate the other racers into letting him win.  After the thugs beat up Yoh and Ganta, Shiro wanders into the middle of the locker room excitedly bearing the cookies and wanting to share with Ganta, blissfully unaware of what's going on, and stepping on the Tough's foot, who totally loses it and prepares to beat Shiro to death (for some reason, she reminds him of the actress he beat senseless which landed him in here in the first place.  Now, he was a super MMA champion before he lost it, but he should know better than to mix it up with the nutgirl, especially when she's got cookies!




Fortunately Makina steps in and stops the fight before it happens (And slices the tough's shirt open.).  This allows her to talk tough too.  "You can come for my throat at any time, just be prepared to die."


Yoh is conveniently evacuated on a stretcher, and you'll see why that's convenient for the stoolie shortly.


So, it's time to start the exciting race!

No!  It's time to flash back!

Ganta flashes back while at the starting gate to moments earlier, where he FINALLY reads about the slow acting poison they've been dosing him with through his collar (Slow acting until it acts very, very fast with down-to-the-second precision...), and the need to take the candy to live.  And the manual also says that one piece of candy costs 100,000 cast points.  So basically, he would have to win this "Dog Race Show" twice a week or die.  Continued existence costs 233,333 cast points a week, or 12,133,333 a year.  There doesn't seem to be a way to earn that much.  And that's forgetting meals and such.  Clearly, he's dead meat.

And yet we know there are a lot of folks on death row, yet none of them are in the race.  Hmmm.

And then, just before the race starts, we see Director Tamaki.  He sees Ganta on the camera and says to some online voice that Yoh was right about him being there.  Then, ominously, that he's going to set the obstacles to maximum danger, and that there should be a "Clean up crew" ready.  And even worse. "We'll put on a little show for our guests and those human rights groups."  Shiro might be crazy, but Tamaki is a psychopath - one with power, the worst kind.

So here's the course.  It looks benign enough, much like all of those Japanese obstacle course shows.  But there's a twist:


First of all, there's NO prize for second place.  Second, there's a hot girl starting the race.  Okay, I just threw that in there because there was no image for that first.


Third, the obstacles are deadly.  Swinging blades.


And as Ganta sees several guys get splutched to bits, the others head for the sidelines, only to find they can't quit.  There are snipers in mascot suits dishing out headshots to anyone abandoning the race.  How they can aim in those things is anyone's guess.


The crowd is eating it up, assuming it's only special effects, but even if it's not, they're convicted Felons, so who cares?  That's the kind of culture they've got going in this world.


Next, the "Bungee Lottery" where if you pick the wrong rope, Splat!  So of course, Shiro can't wait to go!  Strangely, she got the long rope but landed safely anyway.  Hmmm, something ODD about that girl.


Next, a runway full of archers - in mascot suits.  I really have to wonder about all the guards working this affair.  And if you fall off the edge or into any of the holes in the bridge, it looks like electrocution!  The floor is a giant bug-zapper - For PEOPLE!


Ganta is about to be strafed with arrows, but Shiro knocks him out of the way with a flying butt slam.  She's just being silly, completely unaware of the death all around them.  Even if I have mentioned it before, let me reiterate.  The girl is crazy.


The thug makes it through the arrows by grabbing two of his gang and using them as human shields.  They are completely pincushioned.

Next, leaping from balloon to balloon.  But don't fall, because it's a pit full of low-hanging poison gas/acid mist.  Shiro again saves Ganta's butt by knocking him in the right direction with a flying leap.


Next, a Montage of death traps that Ganta barely escapes, but which Shiro dances through with nary a care.


Then, the final stage, inspired by "Don't break the ice" a grid of platforms that fall away one by one to reveal a pit of spikes.  Ganta, Shiro, and the thug are the only ones to make it this far, and the rules say, there can be only one.  Just before it starts, Ganta looks out at the packed stadium and wonders if this is what he would be watching if they'd come here on his class trip.  Briefly he imagines himself and Mimi there, but then the thug has to break his reverie.  Then the other rule, there's a ball you have to hold onto throughout the event.  You have to be holding it at the end to win.  Now, this doesn't quite make sense.  If there's only one person left, why bother with the ball?


The panels drop at a furious pace.  That is until the thug gets close to Ganta and they have a conversation.  Don't ask me why.  Ganta suddenly gives up his fear and actually decks the guy with the ball (Which Shiro catches) and starts talking tough.  Although he's back to the whole "Kill me already" thing.  But hey, it's part of his character development.  First he was "I have to play by the rules if I want to survive" and now he's "If you're not going to kill me now, I'm playing by my own rules, dammit!"  How he comes to this revelation or what it actually means is utterly unclear.

Then, disaster, the panels under Shiro start to fall (Even though she's holding the ball).  Ganta is stuck in a precarious position on an isolated platform.  The thug makes a daring slide for a spot suddenly marked "Final" (What happened to all the other rules?) and splutches himself on the spikes.  Gravity apparently is funny, because he can make this move and land on the spikes before Shiro even reaches them.  But Ah, in spite of the previous image showing her falling into space, she actually manages to fall UP enough to hang by her knees from a platform!  How's that?


But now she has another shot at doom.  While Ganta finally notices she's bloodied from the events, and that she had actually been saving his ass all the way, the platform she's hanging from falls away and she tosses him the ball.  If he catches it and lets her die, he wins another three days of life.  Every other convict has died, by the way.  Will he do it?


Nope, gravity again fails to work properly, and he's able to reach down and grab her, losing the ball, losing the game, losing the 100,000 cast points, and well, he's got what, one day left now?

I went a bit overboard with the screencaps.  I could have loaded it up with even more cute shots of Shiro. But seriously, the whole thing is so frigging absurd, I had to convey it somehow.  Also, maybe it's the anime, or the Codec, but there must be an alpha channel lightening the top of the image, because getting a good De-Pan is tough.  But I'll leave you with a nice big one of Captain Makina.  As it is, both translations of the next Mysterious Girlfriend X are in, and I have to say, if I had one of those Top Rotation thingies, I'd be capping the hell out of that episode.

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Mysterious Girlfriend X Ep. 04

Ever notice how it is with Superheroes that often it is the person without the powers who comes up with new and better ways for the hero to use them?  Well we get that with Oka this episode.

(I'm going to switch back to last names, since nobody seems to use them in the show, and it might be confusing if you're following along.)

Oka was virtually a non-entity last time out, but she is totally the center of events this time.  Remember that she is Tsubaki's best buddy Ueno's secret girlfriend.  In spite of being a little slip of a thing, behind that big Fuku bow, she's got quite the figure.  And the episode opens with Ueno and Tsubaki eating lunch, and Ueno's face twisted into a bizarre grin at the thought of the girls switching to their summer gym uniforms.  (This might be an error, because I seem to recall in the first episode, when Tsubaki passed out, the girls were in shorts and t-shirts, but then, it has been several months, but on the other hand, winter has not been depicted.  On the gripping hand, Ueno says that her development is a recent, er, development, hidden by her tracksuit.).

Enter Oka, bearing her bento, wrapped in a furoshiki (the most overused word in my first few Japanese classes all those years ago).  She commits the unpardonable sin of waking Urabe from her lunchtime face-down slumber, asking to eat lunch with her.  The response is pure Urabe, no polite words, just "I don't eat lunch" and "Don't wake me up when I'm napping."  It's just like when she blew off the welcoming committee in the first episode, but Oka will not be deterred for some reason, asking if she can still eat next to her if she promises not to wake her up.  "Do whatever you want," is the response from Urabe as she puts her face back down.  It's a trap, and the entire class stares at the bizarre tableau.

Oka, it turns out, is an excellent cook, and the smell of the food entices Urabe to allow Oka to give her a taste.  In fact, Oka ends up giving her a taste of everything, and Ueno is flaming with jealousy.  He wants his girlfriend to feed him like that.  The rest of the class is simply shocked.


On the way home, Tsubaki asks if she and Oka are becoming friends, and Urabe fiercely denies this, although Tsubaki thinks it would be good for her to develop some female friends.  She, however, does not care.  "I don't need any friends.  After all, I have you for my boyfriend."  He has to admit to himself, he does like the sound of that.

A funny thing happens though with that day's daily dose, Tsubaki can taste a bit of lunch.  As they part, the camera pulls back far enough to reveal that they're being watched.

That night, Tsubaki's dreams are filled with Urabe feeding him bits of Tamago, including mouth to mouth.... In fact, he can still kind of taste it in the morning.


But now it's time for Gym, and much to Ueno's disappointment, the girls go outside to do Track, while the boys stay indoors to practice Judo.

Okay, Okay, I skipped the part where the girls are getting changed for gym (in one of the classrooms, must be a poor school), Urabe is shown disarming - so there's a panty shot there... and the other girls comment to Oka about how much she's filled out.


Running relays, it's briefly obvious that Urabe is very fast, but she gets tripped accidentally by one of the other girls (who feels just terrible about it), however, it turns out that Oka is the class Health Representative, and she volunteers to take Urabe to the nurse's office.  When they get there, the Nurse is not in.


Ah, alone at last, the forbidden love between two girls can bloom!  Ah... no.

Oka treats Urabe's knee (There are some interesting exchanges about the potential for a scar, in parallel with something happening between the boys.) then goes to the fridge where she gets a drink.  Urabe asks her if it's okay for her to do that, and Oka explains that since she's there so much, she keeps soda in the fridge.  She offers some to Urabe, who takes a swig, and then Oka takes it back.

You can guess what happens next, but you'd be wrong.

The first thing that happens is that Oka sits next to her and explains that she is very interested in becoming Urabe's friend.  Urabe rebuffs her, but Oka persists, saying that she'll always want to be her friend.  As she leaves the nurse's office though, THEN the big surprise happens.

Oka's knee is suddenly sporting the exact same wound as Urabe's.  (And for those of you keeping score of the visual metaphors, Urabe is suddenly showing an eye.  Oh, and did you notice the dripping water in the sink?).  Even Urabe is shocked.

I'd like to point out that in several spots it seems that Urabe is experimenting with her powers.  She even referred to Ogata as "an independent variable".  I speculate that this power of hers is at the root of why she self-isolates so much, but even more interesting is the idea that it might even be the reason for her school transfer.  In any case, sympathetic injury is something she has never encountered before, so what's a mildly sociopathic girl to do?  Confirm the hypothesis.  She cuts her palm, and induces Oka to taste her saliva, and again, the same wound appears on her.


With that confirmation, she begins to explain what's happening to Oka, what she knows happens with her saliva, and how it works with people connected to her in some way.  Oka seizes on this connection to try to get Urabe to agree to her friendship, but Urabe says no, she's already got someone she shares that bond with.  Oka says "You mean Tsubaki?"  It was Oka on the bridge, and she explains how she saw them and became curious, and has been watching them for a while.  She's kind of interested in the both of them, but decided to approach Urabe because she's a girl, as going after her boyfriend would be problematic since she's seeing Ueno.  She asks if the same kind of thing happens with Tsubaki, and Urabe explains that things that happen with her body, and her feelings are communicated this way, and that she can get across her feelings without needing words.  But as she leaves the office, she says, "...I'm fulfilled by having just one person like that in my life.  You can be as interested in me as you like, but I don't need your friendship." (I get this by averaging the two translations.)  Then for an extra twist of the knife, she throws Oka's own words about women needing to avoid scarring at her with regard to her knee.


That evening, on the way home, She gives Tsubaki his taste, and she suddenly realizes... "Are you hurt?" and Tsubaki is suddenly spontaneously injured on his hand and knee.  She apologizes for forgetting.  (Am I a bad person for wondering what effect she has on him during her period?)

The next day, Oka is shown preparing another delicious bento.  Ueno meets Tsubaki on the way to school and swears that he will get Oka to meet him outside for lunch so she can feed him.  Tsubaki reminds him that he's keeping their relationship secret, so he swears he will do it with telepathy.  Of course, this fails, but to add to his heartbreak, Oka follows Urabe out of the classroom.  Urabe has suddenly had lunchtime hunger pangs and left for the vending machines.


Oka confronts Urabe at the drinks machine.  She concentrates for a minute, and then SHE offers Urabe a wet finger, saying that this will tell her something about her relationship with Tsubaki. (Metaphor warning: watch the drops of condensation on Urabe's drink).  Urabe is shocked by what she gets from the pheromones, it's sweeter than anything she's ever tasted.  Oka explains that she concentrated on the memory of her first kiss, and so she knows that Urabe and Tsubaki haven't gotten that far yet.  (Quite the little detective, isn't she?)


THEN she offers to share lunch.  Urabe admits that eating her lunch the day before seems to have altered her body's rhythms, and Oka offers that even if they can't be friends, at least they can have a lunch-sharing relationship.

The boys go to get drinks, with Ueno bemoaning the failure of his "Connection" to Oka, and wondering where she went, when as they go through the breezeway, they spot Oka and Urabe sharing lunch on one of the benches.


Looks like next week is an infamous "Beach" episode, but Urabe looks pretty good with a tan and a bikini.  Bonus De-panned shots below the cut (Click to embiggen). But to be evil, I'm going to throw in the rather disturbing interstitial pic from this episode too.  Muahaha!
more...

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Mysterious Girlfriend X Ep. 03

They cover a surprising amount of ground in this episode.  Before the opening credits, Akira, in the course of his duties as that week's Nicchoku (Student who takes care of attendence etc - a subtitle note nicely provided by SubDesu, and merely translated as "Class Monitor" by HorribleSubs.  They also differ as to whether it's a one week or one day assignment.) catches his friend Ueno in a classroom after school kissing a girl.  This is the guy who previously told him he had no girlfriend, but it turns out he's been seeing this little slip of a megane-ko since first year, and wants to keep it a secret.

I really can't get over the whole translation differences thing, when the same line comes out so differently:

"Ueno, you're going out with Oka?" - HorribleSubs vs.
"Ueno, were... were you dating Oka all this time?" - SubDesu.

"Ueno mae, Oka to tsukiatta da no?" - My pitiful attempt at romanizing the line.  Even slowing it down didn't make it easier, and it doesn't seem right even to what little Japanese I remember from college, and I can't find that one proper word for dating at Nihongodict.  I suppose I should appreciate the difficulty of the translation process more.  HorribleSubs tends to be more dramatic and less literal, and SubDesu sometimes more awkward, but by being more literal, a little more subtle information comes through.

Anyway, story wise, this moment gets Akira thinking the next day about a) how his buddy kept that relationship a secret for so long, b) that they're at the kissing stage, c) how his relationship with Urabe is also secret, and d) how he'd like to be kissing.  She seems to notice his musings.

(I suppose he might get further along if he started thinking of her as Mikoto instead of Urabe.  How long do Japanese kids have to be dating before they get on a "first" name basis?)

On the way home, she diverts them to the park just off their route, ostensibly to do their short homework assignment on the bench, and he mentions this scene to Mikoto.  At first, she has no reaction.  Akira might not have noticed this, but I have - She often takes time to think through her reactions, and often comes up with odd, but very thoughtful responses, and this is no exception.  After a moment she asks if he wants to kiss her, and in typical anime boy fashion, his surprise at hearing what he wants to hear sends him stammering until he can finally grunt out the affirmative.  But instead of a kiss, she calmly pulls out a test tube from her bookbag and hands it to him (I don't question the kinds of preparations a girl who holsters scissors in her panties makes), steps away from the bench, and assuming a martial arts stance begins to twirl, and once she stops, she takes the test tube, lets her saliva into it, and tells him to taste it before bed.  The subject then is closed.


Akira goes to bed early, and he has a dream where he and Mikoto are walking back from school, and she pops a piece of candy into her mouth (as she has done before).  She asks if he wants one, he says yes, and she goes mouth to mouth with him to transfer her candy, before putting the second piece in her mouth.  He's a bit put off by this, saying that that was their first kiss, but he wanted it to be something more special.

The next day she leads him into the woods, and asks him again if he wants to kiss her.  He shows that he has learned the lesson, replying that he wants to wait.  She smiles.


What she has done is communicate her thoughts and feelings through the pheromones in her saliva, and Akira has translated them into his own viewpoint in the dream.  The reason for the twirling is that apparently she needs to be in a more excited state than normal in order to make them more potent and to carry a more specific message.  Previously she stripped naked in that abandoned house in order to demonstrate to Akira how intense their chemical bond was.  Her fear and excitement (she was afraid he'd break his promise to keep his eyes closed, and ruin everything) was strong enough that Akira ended up with a pounding heart and a bloody nose just from the taste.

This plays a strong part in the next bit.  It turns out that the class handsome Jock has also had his eye on Mikoto, although one might have doubts about his motivations when he makes his pitch.  After class, as the students are cleaning up the classroom, Mikoto leaves to take a load of trash to the incinerator, and he follows her out.  Akira has noticed this, but he hasn't connected the dots yet.  Ogata, the Jock in question, catches up with her in the breezeway and offers to carry it for her.  After he takes it, she turns around and walks back towards the classroom.  I Love this about her.  She's not oblivious about what's going on, she just goes her own way.  (One could say her perceptions are unfiltered by culture.)

He catches her and tells her he wants to talk to her, and by the bike racks, he makes his pitch. "Urabe, well, you're kind of unusual.  Very different from the other girls.  You're "Mystical" I think.  And actually, ever since you transferred here, I've been attracted to you." She looks down "Don't freak out - I'm not asking for a serious relationship.  Just that we start out slow, like walking home from school together.  And once we get to know each other after a while... is what I'm thinking.  What do you say?" (Subdesu).  HorribleSubs makes it sound even worse: "You're a little strange.  You're not like the other girls.  There's something mysterious about you.  To be honest, I've been watching you since you transferred to our school.  I'm not asking you to get in a serious relationship.  We can start by just walking home from school together.  Once we get to know each other better, then maybe... What do you think?"  Creeeee-pyyyyy.


On the way home, just as Akira is about to ask her about it, she stops him and tells him first that Ogata has asked her out.  And when he asks what she told him, she says she told him to wait a day for her answer.  He is ready to go tell Ogata to back off, but no, unlike a woman, she isn't wanting him to fight over her.  She tells him it's her issue to deal with.  Akira has some angst over this.

The next morning, Mikoto is preparing for school (And unless they re-animate, the shower scene is not BD bait).  She gets dressed, but after some thought, decides to not put on any panties.  The why of this becomes clear later.  Unfortunately it's a windy day, which gives her some difficulties with her skirt.  Akira gets no chance to talk to her before she slips out of class at lunchtime and Ogata follows her.  Outside, he asks her for her answer.  She asks him to close his eyes, and gives him the oral wet-willie.  Then she asks him if he feels any different.  When he replies no, she tells him that he has no chance of ever being her boyfriend.  On the way home, Akira asks what happened, and she says she turned Ogata down.  Akira confesses his worries, and Mikoto answers him in her own unique way.  Her daily dose of moistened finger is special today, causing Akira a nosebleed. 


You see, Mikoto left her panties off that day to give herself a bit of a thrill, which would have been very evident if it had worked on Ogata.  She explains this after handing Akira the panties from her pocket (at least they're clean...).  To her, this proves that her bond with Akira is special.  It means their emotions are in sync.  That phrase has been associated with the desire for a kiss, so Akira gets a bit excited and tries to hug her (grab her is more like it), which she evades with a superhuman leap.  This is the second time he's made this dumb move.  The last time, last episode, she went at him with the scissors and the stack of boxes behind him paid the price, being instantly reduced to an outline of his body.  This time he's a little luckier, with no panties, no scissors.  She catches herself before inadvertently giving him a show, then pulls her scissors from her bookbag and gently reminds him not to do that without her permission.


But he has made SOME progress, as she takes his hand for the walk home.

(Hmmm, I notice I picked mostly pictures that show her eyes, which is actually pretty rare, but on the other hand, they show during significant moments in the story, so it's only natural.)

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Mysterious Girlfriend X Ep. 02

(Quick Preface, if you ARE going to start watching this, Get the SubDESU version, which is under the Japanese title Nazo no Kanojo X.  The translation seems to be a lot better, they don't edit out the interstitial, and they translate the songs.)

I'll get back to Deadman Wonderland shortly (I've recently downloaded a different translation), but I just got episode 2 of Mysterious Girlfriend X and I had to say, at least this far, it's very interesting where this is going.

Akira is struggling with the idea of having his first girlfriend, and has no idea of what to do.  He's asking his friends for "Hypothetical" advice, which isn't entirely helpful because they haven't got much experience either, and yet, he doesn't want to admit to anyone he's seeing the weird girl.  But nicely, they haven't gone into the "wacky hijinks of trying to hide their relationship" thing.  I'll be disappointed if they go there.

And Mikoto of course, won't have any of the "normal stuff".  Everything is on her terms.  Not even holding hands while they walk.  She also demonstrates a new skill, which I will call Scissor Fu, a Martial-arts style of paper cutting.  She carries a large pair of scissors tucked into the side of her panties, and she can whip them out and slice the hell out of anything in microseconds.  Maybe there's an anime trope for the dangerous powers girls can have, dating all the way back to Lum's lightning bolts.  Anyway, she's got it.

There is a Very Important scene in this episode, important not only because it's obvious "buy the BD bait", but because it completely explains what's going on with the drool thing.  And I'm going to actually be a little cagy here because I am enthusiastic enough about this show to want others to see this.  Basically she takes him someplace private, an abandoned building up beyond a shrine, and makes him close his eyes so that she can demonstrate just how special what is going on between them is.  Remember what I said about how important visual metaphors are in this show?  Well as I watched it, I thought the images of ants stripping a dead cicada were just part of showing how decrepit the building was, but after it was over, I realized, It's all about Pheromones.

What REALLY surprised me was that it worked both ways.  That is the first time I have EVER seen a girl in anime get a nosebleed, and her reaction was totally unexpected, unless you account for how anti-anime girl she is.

more...

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Mysterious Girlfriend X Ep. 01

A lot of people read the various fall preview Synopses and upon reading the bit about the drool, said "Ugh, not for me." I can totally understand that. But for some reason I decided to give it a try (The anime, not the drool), and I'm actually kind of glad I did. (Although since it's the HorribleSubs translation, I'm curious what I'm going to miss). As usual here, I'm NOT going to hide spoilers, since I'm often talking about shows nobody else intends to see.

Our Hero is Tsubake Akira, who has been having strange dreams lately, being of that age where he's learned about sex, but hasn't had any experiences. He is about as ordinary a high-schooler as you can get. Things get interesting, as they do in most Anime, when a new transfer student is introduced. Urabe Mikoto is clearly an odd bird, so odd that the true depths of her oddness are probably yet to be plumbed. She is definitely withdrawn and in her own little world, and mildly amused by the rest of us, when she can be bothered to pay attention. Right from her introduction you can tell how apart she is, from the funny little martial Left Face she does upon entering, to the way her face is hidden behind her bangs, to her traditional introduction speech, which consists only of the word "Yoroshiku."

Naturally the only open desk is next to Akira, and being the bright innocent soul he is, he offers to give her any help she needs.

What she really needs is a course in how to be Japanese, because throughout the rest of the day she demonstrates how she is completely the opposite of every behavior trait the Japanese have been taught since birth. At lunch, she rudely blows off the girls who try to welcome her to the class so that she can continue to sleep face down on her desk. And in the middle of Algebra, she bursts out laughing so hysterically she falls to the floor.

But you know, that moment is actually what won me over. There was something charming about it. Also, her voice actress has a very unique voice, totally atypical for anime girls, but appealing.

Then comes the infamous drool scene, which many critics jump on saying "Why would he do that?" Well, aside from flashing back on that oddly prophetic sex dream, Akira too suddenly exclaims "Why am I licking her drool?!" and runs home. But that night, he starts thinking about her, and soon, she's appearing in his dreams.

And at this point, I should mention that there are a lot of visual metaphors in this show. You need to pay attention to what you're seeing, whether it's echoes of shapes in pools of various liquids, or the far more telling one of Mikoto's hair. Those bangs represent her barrier to the rest of the world. When Akira wakes her up to tell her school is over, he suddenly gets a look at her whole face, and that glimpse resonates with something in him, even though it takes him a while to realize it.

A couple weeks later Akira is so sick, he starts missing school. Mikoto comes to visit him, totally unexpectedly, and begins explaining things to him. She is remarkably blunt and straightforward, and so un-Japanese, her weirdness manifests even more manifestly (:-) as she tells him why he is sick. Somehow she knows what he did after she left the classroom. Somehow she knows things she couldn't. But on the other hand, it's not so easy to take her word for it. Unlike some say, sorceress or demoness explaining how things are going to be from now on like you'd get anywhere else, when she starts telling him he's going through withdrawal he rightly doesn't believe it. But she denies there's anything special about her saliva (nobody seems to notice its thick, honey-like consistency), and that he's just lovesick for her and that's why he's feeling withdrawal.

It's a very peculiar scene, especially once you notice how her hair works, and because of how matter-of-factly she says he must be in love with her, but she doesn't really seem to react to it. It's oddly dispassionate, but there's something behind it, a mystery that will take time to work out. You really do begin to wonder if she's maybe an alien, or something occult, or really, just a very strange little girl who is leading him into her strange little world.

That gets you about halfway through the episode. The remainder is the beginning of their relationship, which is as others have said, very quirky. You find out why she was holding back earlier, and Akira finds himself getting drawn in more and more. And frankly, I'm very curious how this is going to turn out.

Now I do have to say, this is definitely a show for which the TV Tropes definition of Author Appeal was written.  Yes, clearly someone involved in the creation of this has a near spiritual obsession with drool, or more specifically, women sleeping and drooling.  This is especially evident in the end credits where most of the female cast gets the treatment.  But if you can put that aside for the moment, it's really just a vehicle for this story about a very strange girl and a very ordinary guy who end up getting together, and I think it will become a remarkably unusual, but strangely charming love story.

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Renton Thurston goes to Jail (Deadman Wonderland Ep. 1)

Seriously, that's what I thought the moment I saw the character design. Igarashi Ganta reminded me entirely of Renton Thurston from Eureka Seven. You have a 14-year old boy whose main "Character trait" is alternating between despair and determination like a manic-depressive on crank, all the while being completely unaware of what's really going on around him, and screaming "Why?" about everything not working the way it should.

Right off the bat this series commits Steven Den Beste's cardinal sin. It introduces a cute girl just to kill her brutally in the first scene. It does this so that another character can be said to resemble her, but seriously, I don't see it.

In the first episode, Rent, er, Ganta's classmates are discussing their upcoming class trip to "Deadman Wonderland" a Prison/Amusement park where the prisoners are the attraction. And everyone is okay with this. The discussion also introduces what will surely become an important plot point, that Ganta forgets the past really easily. It helps with his constant state of bewilderment.

Suddenly this monstrous red man floats outside the window and blows the place to bloody smithereens, killing all of Ganta's classmates, and when he comes to, the first thing he sees is his friend Mimi's decapitated head hanging by her hair from the monster's hand. No, wait, apparently he has zoom lenses for eyes and only sees her head at first and asks her if she's okay, THEN he notices that she's bodiless and hanging by her hair and he freaks out. Framing tricks work for cameras, not eyeballs, Mr. Director. Anyway, the big bad man forms his blood into some kind of crystal and jams it into Ganta's chest.

Next, he's in the hospital, and the police come in and charge him with Mass Murder. Evidence? We don't need no stinking evidence. A public defender introduces himself, and one quick trip to Kangaroo Court later, Renton, er, Ganta is sentenced to death. Then the director, in a fit of brilliance, AFTER the sentence is passed has someone pop up some doctored video of him confessing in front of the Public Defender. That must be the overwhelming evidence the Court was talking about, because it sure didn't come up at the trial. This is also the first display of his gear shifting, because he goes from numbly going through the motions stunned at what's happening to him to screaming about it, for all of ten seconds before he collapses on the floor.

Now mind you, this all goes screaming by so fast because they really don't care about HOW he got here, they just need to push him into the "Wrongly accused guy in prison" role as fast as possible. They've got a lot of set-up to get through, and they've got to get through it fast or else you'll start questioning the stupidity.

So Ganta gets shipped off to Deadman Wonderland, which being privately owned, apparently the prisoners are property with no civil rights at all, and everyone's okay with that. Oh, and in passing it's mentioned that Tokyo was wiped out by some kind of black hole thing ten years ago, but moving on, that's not what the story is about. Just know that the proceeds from the prison/tourist attraction are gonna be used for reconstruction, so it's all good.

While he's on the bus, we first see Shiro, which is a VERY imaginative name for an albino girl, don'tcha think? She mentions that Ganta is coming, by name, somehow knowing this from her perch atop the prison. She is very athletic, wears nothing but a white bodysuit with some red designs painted on it, some sort of oversize collar, and what look like boxing gloves that are strapped on. Now supposedly even though she's albino, and dressed like some kind of circus gymnast, and has uncut hair, Ganta thinks she looks like his late classmate Mimi, who had straight black hair cut in bangs (Plus she's got a different voice actress, and their eyes aren't even the same shape). Sure. How could I have missed it?

Maybe it's the smile. But you could chalk that up to the style.

Now I have to say, the Albino nutgirl is the only reason I decided to stick with the series. She's the single most nonsensical thing is this pile of nonsense, which ends up making her the most appealing thing there. In a later scene, when Ganta is moping around saying he wishes they'd just execute him and get it over with, she says "If you wanna die, I'll be happy to kill you," in a cheerful voice, and tries to brain him with a pipe. She uses the fact that he dodges (several times) to prove to him that he's lying about wanting to die, and therefore he should cheer up. Absolutely a nutjob, but she makes more sense than anything else.

"If you wanna die, I'll be happy to kill you,"

"Why'd you move?"

Slightly before this scene, we get our obligatory prison commandant intro. Captain Makina is the perfect fetish prison mistress, with high heeled boots and an enormous chest stuffed into her tightly tailored uniform. She carries a sword and freely slashes the chest of one inmate just to prove she's crazy-bad tough. And one of the new arrivals has to prove what a lowlife he is by talking about her boobs. Unfortunately this is a HorribleSubs job, and they prove how correctly they are named in this scene, because even with my sketchy Japanese, I can tell they've taken some liberties.

Makina: Koko made de nani ka shitsumon wa? (This far, are there any questions?) "Any Questions this far?"

Inmate: Ano, nani cuppu desu ka?(Those, what cup(size) are they?) "How big are those titties?"

Makina: G da. (They're G) "G-cups."

Well, glad we cleared that up. But that prisoner's line is pretty off. Makes you wonder how unreliable the rest of the translation is.

"Thank you Mistress!"

The scene also introduces the control collars, ripped off from god knows how many crappy sci-fi prison movies. They've got tracking, and tasers, and some other stuff in them. But the writer forgot to mention the most important thing, so he had to crowbar in a scene later to explain that for those inmates on death row, the collar doses them with a slow-acting poison and they must earn the antidote candy by working the park in the most deadly attractions every three days.

And yet, the "Slow acting poison" is SO predictable, that the collar has a digital countdown that can be relied on to the SECOND for when the poison will suddenly cause instant death. They show this by having some other death-row inmate take a hostage, and Makina tells the guards and her assistant to just make small talk while he expires. Hmmm, what about the built-in taser?

We also see Makina go up to the office of the prison's director, and what do you know, it's the Public Defender! I DID say it was a Kangaroo Court. Apparently he knows all about the Monster that killed the class, and he wanted Ganta in his prison because of it. Makina though, has been kept in the dark about this.

Then there's a final scene where we discover that Ganta too has this blood-borne power. Hey Prison Director, nothing like blowing up a tower in the middle of your amusement park full of the public to try to drop it on him to force his power to come out. Wish I had your confidence.

The end credits feature photographs of all the characters in their pre-prison pasts. And apparently there are pictures of Ganta and Shiro together as little kids. Good thing Ganta is so forgetful, I can't imagine an albino playmate is the kind of thing anyone with a normally functioning brain wouldn't remember.

Okay, so I'll stop this here for now. I know it's probably pointless to keep reviewing last spring's series, but I've got a LOT of stuff to catch up on, and I finally found a copy of the OVA to cap this off. So I hope my single reader isn't disappointed that I'm not going over Moretsu Space Pirates like everyone else.

One advantage of reviewing old stuff is it really doesn't matter if I reveal spoilers.

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When Bridge Bunnies Lose It

Mostly an image test, but I thought this was a particularly funny bit in a recent episode of Wakfu.  A fleet of Pseudo Atlantean warships are bombarding an Island that is the landing point of an invasion of demons (shu-shus) from dimensional portal in the sky.  They are awesome, but they are being overwhelmed, and the prince's crew of bridge bunnies are starting to crack.  This one ends up screaming and kicking her feet.

Now I've tried using the Re-size tool, and now the listing for the image says it's 640x360, but inserting it again jumps back to the original 960x540 image.  The file directory is the only thing that things I re-sized it.

Posted by: Mauser at 02:02 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Just because you can, doesn't mean you should

In this case, I'm applying it to CGI, and more specifically to Blassreiter.  The messy plot involved a nanomachine virus taking over Germany turning people into mindless biomechanoid horrors (Except main characters who manage to hold on to their minds and thus become superpowered), TWO Messianic figures, Lots of motorcycles and motorcycle-like machines, and ample fodder for those with battle/flight/space-suit fetishes (yes, they exist).  Halfway through it turns into an unbearable morality play about ethnic hatred, repeated over and over through everyone's flashbacks, as if between disks 2 and 3 they changed directors and writers.  You can tell because suddenly the original pseudo military team on motorcycles is replaced with a different force mounting semi-combinable robots, and the plot goes even more to hell (Why would Messianic Figure #2 need a mole in the team if he was the one in charge of the whole thing?)

But to get back to the title of this post.  They did the biomechanoid creatures in CGI, and everything else in traditional animation.  Not only is that jarring when you put them in the same frame, but it really goes wrong when the directors forget some of the basic tenets of filmmaking.  Just because CGI allows you to make a camera zoom in and fly through and spin and twist in the middle of a battle, and also allows you to make excessively elaborate character designs with glowing neon details and animate them in high-speed choreography, doesn't mean you should take all that and turn it up to 11.  The result is that your vision of a mind-blowing string of cool images instead turns into a eye-strain and motion-sickness inducing mess of visual noise that's as hard to make sense of as the plot.

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Rin: Daughter of Mnemosyne

This was pretty cool, but not for the weak stomached.

What do you do when your heroine is immortal, but not indestructible? You torture and kill her in some rather gory ways. But if this anime were simply a vehicle for some nasty snuff (and it IS nasty at some points early on), I certainly wouldn't be writing it up like this, because it was actually rather intelligently written, and I really enjoyed it.

The show itself runs 6 44 minute episodes, so it takes a much different pace than the typical "Half hour" anime. It also spreads the story out over about 60 years, which leads to one of the more interesting aspects: how Rin and the few other Immortals introduced deal with regular society, and in particular, Rin's interaction with several generations of one family.

At this stage of her Immortality, Rin is playing around with being a sort of Private Investigator, with her partner Mimi, who is far older than the youthful appearance she was frozen at makes her seem. Immortality is caused by one of the tree of memory, Yggdrasil's "Timefruit" becoming lodged in the body. For women, this results in immortality, very much along the lines of Captain Jack Harkness from Torchwood being a "Fixed point in time", meaning that eventually they can literally pull themselves together from the most horrific of injuries. For men, they become fearsome "Angels" whose short lifespans are marked with super strength, blood-red wings, and an insatiable appetite for the immortal women, who are absolutely helpless in the face of desire for them - when they're not terrified of them.

But you know what, that's not what the story is about.

Eventually yes, the story becomes a plot about control over Yggdrasil, but the journey is far more interesting. We see the characters they interact with age and advance through their lives (or not), and the observations about the changes in our lives, especially in terms of technology, really comes out in the timeline. From pocket pagers in the '90's, to modern internet phones, to immersive virtual reality to Augmented Reality, and the social changes that result (The young man from the VR generation becomes the father who tells his daughter to put on some REAL clothes for once).  The Humans change while the Immortals do not.

The animation is very well done, and the visualization is brilliant, and within those six episodes all the questions are eventually answered without a single giant info-dump. I have a friend who hates it when Anime gets to its last episode and gets "All glowey" and the characters wander around on a white background spouting nonsense like a perfume commercial that is SUPPOSED to be meaningful. When dealing with the supernatural like this, it's hard to avoid falling into this trap, but Rin keeps it mercifully brief.

Oh, and it's only a slight giveaway that Mnemosyne is the Greek Goddess of memory, mother of the muses.

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NyaaTorrent Trackers down

I was just checking Nyaatorrents, and in the shoutbox they mention that the trackers are down.  Torrents are still available, of course, and DHT seems to be serving me well.  It's a little annoying because I finally figured out how to get the ratio tracker to know it's me.

What's even MORE annoying though is that a lot of torrents are substituting UDP trackers.  Oh, I know it's supposed to be the "Wave of the future" and less bandwidth intensive (really now, how much traffic is there on a tracker vs your peers?).  But the problem is, everyone insists on putting these UDP trackers on Port 80.  Damn near all of them.  And unfortunately, my ISP blocks UDP specifically on port 80 supposedly for some network management purpose.  They even admitted it openly.

It's worse on EZTV though.  Torrents you get through them, they strip off all other trackers and substitute FOUR UDP trackers on port 80, and one on 8080 which never responds.  At least with those, you can go into uTorrent and dump on a whole bunch of other trackers and get the results you should.

I should probably just go to btJunkie instead, but they don't have RSS or the other episode management tools that EZTV has.

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Undead Soldiers

So here's a theme that crops up in a lot of anime: Our hero is dead. But some babe has brought him back to like and acts like she owns the guy. He considers this a burden, but there are perks, like incredible power, and an infinitely prolonged lifespan. On the downside, he's dead, and he never gets the babe.

Four examples leap to mind. The recently started High School DxD, The slightly less recent Kore wa Zombie desu ka?, The terrible "Princess Resurrection/Monster Princess" reviewed below, and when I remembered the ancient 3x3 Eyes, I realized this has been going on for a very long time. The question becomes, how many others can you think of?

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Breath of life

Latest in the mailbox is Princess Resurrection. I'm only partway into the first disk, and I'm seeing so many parallels to the later (And still mostly unwatched) Kore Wa Zombie Desu Ka? I might go into more detail after I've finished both series. But what struck me were the parallels and improvements. Both feature a powerful woman who can raise the dead. But Zombie puts limits on her. On the other hand, the boy in PR gains little except for healing from his return from the dead, plus a time-limit that he can be away from the sorceress ("Hime"). It looks like both involve a collection of supernatural women, PR has just introduced an attractive half-werewolf woman, but really, she can't compare to a chainsaw-wielding magical girl (on the other hand, Hime herself was wielding a chainsaw against an invisible man in one episode).

Anime is like history. It repeats, but not always the same way. Often it improves.

(Update) And boy believe me, there was PLENTY of room for Improvement!

Princess Resurrection, also known as Monster Princess (Kaibutsu Oujo), committed the worst sin any series can commit.  It was DULL.  And it maintained that dullness for 26 episodes.

"and you verified this by watching all 26?"  Well, yeah, I thought the werewolf chick was kinda hot.  Well, a little.  and since I was stuck with the DVD's anyway....  But it DID take me a while to force myself through them all.

So the setup, available on the back of any DVD or plot summary website is that this kid, Hiro, gets killed protecting this strange woman from falling girders, and she brings him back to life, but now he must be her servant.  It turns out she's a princess from the royal family of the Monster world.  It's a chance encounter, since his sister has been hired to be the live-in maid in the mansion that the princess is moving into, and as part of the sweet deal, he was going to live there too.  How Convenient!

So over the course of the first disk we accumulate the cast.  First there's the princess, whose actual name isn't revealed until the end of the series, so she has everyone call her Hime.  Apparently her former estate and all her retainers got wiped out, leaving her with only her android maid, which is why she's moving to this mansion in our world.

Flandre is the robot maid in question.  Built like a little girl, weighing multiple tons, insanely strong, and apparently only capable of saying "Huga" which if you've been around her long enough you can understand as complete sentences.  She has a tendency of running out of power at critical plot junctures.

But why have one maid when you can have two?  Sawawa is the human girl Hime hires as a maid.  She is, apparently, a great cook, and brews a mean cup of Earl Grey.  But she is utterly oblivious to the weird goings on around her (so much so that fairly early on they drop the pretense of her brother trying to shield things from her).  She's also utterly oblivious to the attention her enormous bust attracts from all the men around her, including the proprietor of the Parfait shop she seems to spend her every spare moment in pigging out (Well, at least we know where it all goes.).

Hiro is the "Hero", the center of this... well, I wouldn't call it a Harem, since nobody's really all that interested in him.  He's the viewpoint character, I guess.  He's utterly ineffectual, perpetually out of his depth, and incapable of standing up for himself, so he's usually reduced to stammering "but but but" after being steamrollered by everyone else in the cast.  He occasionally has his moments, which typically go to waste, and frankly, seem out of character for him anyway.  Having him suddenly get brave and interpose himself between Hime and an attacker is usually a wasted effort, as he gets slaughtered and cast aside.  Fortunately, having been gifted with "The Flame of Life" by Hime, his wounds always heal instantly, but he is tied to her by the fact that she has to recharge him every three days or he will die for good.  Thus, slave for life.

And yet like every good Japanese kid, he still goes to school.  That whole thing has always bugged me.

Soon they add Lisa Wildman, a half breed werewolf girl (only her forearms turn into enormous paws).  She's a hot-tempered tough girl, riding around on a dirt bike all the time, always angry, always wearing this tight, tight mare-midriff shirt and loose green cargo pants.  Originally she's going after Hime because she killed her brother, but when she finds out that it was because she was (apparently unbeknownst to her) held hostage by one of Hime's siblings and he was forced to fight and lost, she joins the crew determined to get revenge for her brother.  But she insists she's not one of Hime's entourage, although clearly she is.  Occasionally she shows a moment of softness towards Hiro, but then the writers forget about it and she blasts him as worthless.

Reiri is a Upper-class high school Vampire girl.  As a pure-breed vampire, rather than a converted human, she has powers like flight and the ability to go out in daylight.  For some reason she attends Hiro's school, where all the boys and girls are in love with her, and so once she's nice to Hiro (because of his supernatural associations) the boys all gang up against him (another Anime trope I've never understood).  Of course she thinks rather highly of herself, and speaks in very formal Japanese.  Originally an opponent, she sought to drink Hime's blood because it would make her immortal (apparently these Vampires age), but once she realized she couldn't get it, decided to hover around the group because watching their antics was "Interesting" (Maybe to her, but to us....).  Eventually when the church(!!!) she's living in gets burned down, she moves into the Mansion.  She and Lisa are natural enemies, and she taunts Lisa about being a "Dog" and laughs at her temper tantrums.

The secondary cast includes:

Hime's little sister Princess Sherwood, a pint-sized pettanko  full of ego and self-assurance of her irresistible beauty (stop me if you've seen this before), who for no good reason decides that Hiro is in love with her and should be her #1 servant.  Originally a rival of Hime's, they form an alliance because more Whacky Hijinks can ensue if they add her household to heap more abuse on Hiro.

Francheska is Sherwood's android maid, modeled after a full grown woman, she also only says "Huga" in a lower voice.  But she's also got better combat programming, and an interesting talent where she wields a handful of steel ball bearings like a sniper rifle, flicking them out with her thumb to devastating effect.

Then there's the Panda bear.  Probably the single dumbest addition to the cast.  Sherwood goes to the Zoo, the Panda falls in love with her, escapes and comes to her mansion, wants to be a servant, and is generally worthless, although strong, and moderately capable of fighting.  And for some reason he likes to afflict Hiro by dogpiling him.  For a brief period, there were three of them (his two brothers) but they disappeared shortly thereafter.

So, if you're done rolling your eyes, I'll tell you what they do with this WONDERFUL lineup.

Virtually nothing.

Seriously.  Being a Dispossessed Princess apparently involves a lot of sitting around drinking tea and doing nothing, being "Enigmatic", and waiting for the next assassin to attack.  Apparently there's a highlanderish battle for succession among the offspring of the Monster King, and she's not really inclined to participate.  Occasionally there's an outing where they end up in some haunted town or motel where they are also attacked, and Hime knows something about what's going on, but doesn't really bother to tell anyone.  Hiro "Wah"s and sputters and acts confused and gets his butt kicked,.  Lisa gets to act tough.  Reiri gets to tittle about how entertaining it all is, and Hime whips out her last minute butt-kicking skills and dispatches the foe.

Repeat for 20 episodes with minor variations, with virtually no continuity other than a few encore encounters.  Then at the end they make a stab at some big picture that I'm really not going to go into, because it's just another layer of stupid and contradiction on top of this mess.

As for the DVD's themselves....  Judging by the user reviews on NetFlix, too many people out there are too stupid to find the subtitle button on their remotes, because the menus don't include a subtitle setup page, so the default mode is Japanese with no Subtitles.  It's not dubbed, and thank goodness, because I get the feeling that if it were, the budget would result in something that would make an ADV dub sound like a Disney/Ghibli production by comparison.

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Samurai Gun

So the latest blessing from NetFlix was the Samurai Gun series as mangled by ADV films.

The setting is a little interesting, a time near the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate, with the appearance of some elements of the Industrial Revolution.  But that's about the end of the interesting bits.  The rest of it is purely by the numbers.

The "Samurai Gun" are probably more accurately called Ninjas, simply because they USE guns, which were the downfall of the Samurai as a warrior class, and they operate for a secret underground anti-shogunate "Council" which we don't see.  The earliest members were trained from youth, and often come from a background of personal tragedy.

Our Hero (meh) is one of these, a half-breed Japanese, we get endlessly reminded that his sister was raped and murdered in front of him before he got taken in for the intense Samurai Gun training.  And as a result, when he's fighting, he's some kind of mythically good fighting machine.  Of course, in Anime, he can't be a hero if he doesn't hate himself for being good at killing.  He keeps saying he'll refuse Kill missions, and yet, the missions they give him always result in him killing Mooks by the magazine-load.

He has regular partners, the deadly woman stereotype, who daylights as an entertainer at the tavern where our hero has a cover as a bar back, and another fellow who gives him someone to talk to.  There's nothing special about him, really.

He's also got a hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold girlfriend.  I guess it's a Japanese trope that the hero has a girl in the bordello he spends his time and money on, but doesn't sleep with.

There's not much point in going into any more detail.  The series is incomplete.  Just about the time they let the hero know that someone in the shogunate might be someone who used to be with the council and might have been behind his sister's end JUST to get him as a trainee, it's over.  Guess the second season didn't happen.  Probably for good reason.  The stories are pure overused tropes.

I also get a trifle annoyed at the writing when they try to talk about guns.  These professional shooters try to talk shop about their weapons, and show that the Japanese really don't have any actual experience to base the dialog on.  A real shooter might talk about how the weight of a gun helps steady one's aim or absorb recoil, but an anime writer who's only read about them would say something about a really light but powerful gun being "Faster" and therefore better.

And as for ADV mangling it.  The dub was SO bad and irritating, I HAD to switch to Japanese with Subtitles.  ADV must be run by a bunch of teenagers or twenty-somethings who think you can make something hardcore and edgy by stuffing the dialogue full of profanity and slapping an "adult" label on it.  It was so forced, as well as poorly acted that it just pulled you completely out.  And you can further see their respect for the source material by an Extras feature called "Fun with Audio" where the vouce actors basically make fart joke level humor with their lines.  It's not out-takes, but deliberate, and each outing features an even worse parody of the song the deadly woman sings in the bar.  Although I have to admit, they did save one good joke each time for last.

They also screw up by including an un-aired episode that occurs near the 2/3rd's mark through the series at the END of the last DVD, rather than inserting it in sequence where it might have actually made sense, since the events in it are referred to in the later episodes.  And if I had been buying these, I would have been annoyed at the 3 episodes per disk packaging.

If you like kinky stuff, on each disk there's at least one episode where semi-random females are abused by the bad guys to help prove that they're bad.  But the electro-torture, target practice, and sexual abuse are toned down to broadcast standards, since these were shown on TV.  Perhaps that's part of why it failed.

Posted by: Mauser at 04:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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C - The Money and Soul of Possibility Control

As far as I can tell from the stats, nobody's reading this, but still, the compulsion to review will not be stopped.

I'm not sure why I downloaded C when it was first running.  I never even got around to watching it, although partly that was because my system at the time was choking on the fast-moving details of the opening credits.  But it was there, soaking up space on my hard drive.  I had just updated CCCP because another series I downloaded was only available in 10-bit, which only looks better than 8 bit because it looks crappy on an 8 bit codec. (I'm just waiting for the dicksizing to continue: "My new codec goes to ELEVEN!")  But the codecs were improved enough that it would play better.

The opening wasn't promising either.  "Oh god, not another arena combat Anime." only with an Economic theme.  While this WAS a persistent part of the structure of the show, it slipped out of the main focus.

Our Hero, Kimimaro Yoga, is a young boy in college studying economics, living on his own, and all he wants out of life is the stability of a government job.  He's broke, subsisting on the cheapest ramen in the cafeteria.  And when he gets drafted into the digital/financial world, suddenly he has a small fortune in the bank.

The set-up is this.  People are selected to participate in "The Financial District" and must fight "Deal" at least once a week.  But of course, one's financial power comes at a cost.  Once enrolled, you have mortgaged your future.  Go bankrupt in one of these Deals and your future in the real world is gone, which frequently leads to suicide.

There's the rub, the happenings in the alternate world affect the real world, sometimes disastrously.  After being forced to fight his economics professor, our hero is shocked to discover that the man's children have been retconned out of existence, and only those who participate know the changes are going on.  He is horrified about this, because unlike everyone else, he is not obsessed only with wealth.

That's one of the more interesting aspects of the show, the real-world effects of the combat.  This leads to two important figures, Jennifer Sato, a pretty agent from the IMF with a sweet tooth, who by chance also has access to Japan's Financial District, and Soichirio Mikuni, a fellow who has amassed great wealth and influence from the District, but has now organized a cabal attempting to minimize the effects on the real world by having fights that end with the slimmest possible margin of victory at the time limit, and in the real world by using his wealth to counteract some of the negative effects (This includes shoring up the Japanese Government's debt!).

The problem is, all of this trading in futures to shore up the present is corrosive.  The money injected into the Entre's accounts (Entre being a person with access to the Financial District) shows up as black currency that only an Entre can see is different from the national currency.  As more and more gets injected into an economy, more and more of the future of the nation and its inhabitants is lost.  In an extreme case, Singapore is retconned out of existence when its Financial District collapses.  Mikuni manages to use his fortunes to protect Japan's economy from the cascading Collapse (Called "C"), which seems to be the REAL goal of the Financial District, but the effort, flooding the economy with Wiemar-like quantities of the black "Midas Money" reduces the country to a mid-80's industrial slum.

Another aspect of the series is that within the Financial District, one's mortgaged future is personified as an Pokemon Digimon "Asset", and Kimimaro's is a cute girl with horns and flaming powers named Msyu (Pronounced Mashu).  We almost get a bit of a "Broken Doll" out of her, because in the beginning all she cares about is fighting and winning, but she becomes intrigued by his ways, and curious about his world.  She goes from being disgusted by the idea of his eating Cup Ramen to wanting it.  And there's a classic "What is this Kiss?" scene, except in classic "Broken Doll" form, he refuses her advances, until the final conflict where admitting love is crucial.

But in spite of all this, what C is REALLY about is an Allegory about deficit spending and cost being one's future, or the nation's.

(I dunno if TVTropes has a name for what I call "Broken Doll" but I'm sticking with it.  I should write a more thorough explanation of the key aspects of it.  I was quite surprised to find that even something like Elfin Lied can fit the mold.)

Posted by: Mauser at 01:39 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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So Bad it's...

... bad:  Bludgeoning Angel Dokoro-chan.

Simply put, it's stupid.

Okay, I can give you more.  Dokoro-chan is an angel.  She goes to live with a boy.  Stop me if you've heard this one.  She's from the future, and he's marked for death because later on he apparently invents immortality, with the side effect that all women are frozen at 12-years of age.  The Angels have decreed that he must die to prevent this.  Dokoro plans to stop him without killing him.  Except that she's got a hair trigger about using her spiked bat, Excalibog to smash, eviscerate, bisect, or otherwise kill him.  (It's about as casually employed as Lum's electric shocks) and then she re-animates him because she doesn't want to kill him.  Okay, everyone who's heard of the show knows that much.  And of course there's a rival angel from the future who really wants him dead.

Apparently this formula is SO tired that they pretty much abandon it a few episodes in.  His human love interest falls by the wayside, he falls for Dokoro-chan.  The rival forgets about killing him for real and Dokoro's younger sister (Stated as 9, but built like she's 19) shows up to live with him.  The setup now totally forgotten, it becomes a limp mish-mash of "Wacky Hi-jinks ensue" with very little to recommend it.

Let me spoil the only good moments to save you from watching this turd.  In the beginning, when Dokoro insists on going to school with him (Why do they ALWAYS do this?  At least Lum stayed home) the boy insists that she keep the fact that she's an angel secret - as if the halo isn't a giveaway - and that trope is instantly subverted as she introduces herself as an angel from the future, and everyone in the class is totally cool with it.

The other is when Dokoro and Zakuro (the built younger sister) read a book of Japanese folklore and are terrified of the story of the seductive demoness who hides in cracks in the walls.  That was kind of amusing although the rest of the episode about them bathing together is utterly worthless other than for fan service (which can only be satisfying if you DON'T know who the characters are.)

... good:  Magical Witch Punie-Chan.

So it starts with a princess in this ultra-saccarine, primary-colored magical kingdom... I thought it would be something unwatchable meant for 6 year old girls.  I mean, her magical wand is a heart with a Candy Cane wedged through it.  And she's being sent to earth to spend a year.

Then I saw the opening credits, with a song about fighting being the only way to survive, and she is pictured cutely dancing in front of the flaming Temples, schools, and even flying over the burning city-scape of Tokyo.  And her magical catch-phrase?  "Lyrical Tokarev, Kill them All."  It's a hilarious take-down of the Magical Princess genre, and when forced to fight without magic, Punie reveals her brutal abilities with wrestling submission holds, breaking bones, crushing skulls, and choking out her opponents.  And it's necessary, because everyone's out to kill her, including her cute little sisters, and the daughter of the royal family that Punie's parents usurped.  After all, what's royalty without death schemes for succession?  Even her cute little "Mascot" wants to kill her, when he's not playing along with the light fantastical magical girl motif.  And that facade is very, very thin with Punie, she's a brute.  ( At one point she's about ready to nuke the world to hide her embarrassment because she can't even pass a basic math test.  The world is saved by her Mascot teaming up with an old Vietnam buddy who shoots up the school with an Apache helicopter, providing the distraction that allows Punie to put her own name on someone else's test.)

Violent, yes, but hilarious as a send-up of the genre.

The whole show is so absurd I was laughing throughout.

Posted by: Mauser at 02:56 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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DearS

Remember the joke about the Old Comedian's Home, where all the jokes have been told so many times they replaced them with numbers? One Comedian says "23" and they all laugh. Another says "82" and again they laugh. A third says "107" and they laugh yet again. A curious newcomer decides to take a stab at it and says "72" and gets crickets. He turns to the first old-timer and asks "Why didn't anyone laugh? Did I say something wrong?" and the old-timer replies, "The joke was fine, but your delivery was awful."

I suppose you could take TVTropes and number all the entries, and tell an Anime series by the numbers. For example, I just finished with DearS, and you could look at a review like this 2005 one from DotClue (http://dotclue.org/archives/002400.html) and put it in a format like this table.

• Our Hero is a high-school loser, who’s never had a girlfriend.
• Girl Next Door bullies him because she doesn’t have the courage to confess her true feelings.
• Dream Girl suddenly appears from another world.
• DG moves in with OH, for no apparent reason.
• OH ends up in a Compromising Position with DG, and is caught by GND, who assumes the worst without waiting for an explanation.
• This is just the first CP; there are many more to come.
• DG has big boobs (usually bigger than GND’s), frequently displayed to best advantage.
• DG has superpowers. (optional: frequent property destruction)
• DG has an unusual and/or unusually large appetite.
• DG knows nothing about life on Earth, and needs to be looked after.
• More Strange Cute Girls begin to appear, some of whom compete for OH’s affection.
• Wacky Hijinks ensue.
• OH’s classmates enthusiastically accept the DG and SCGs, even when their WH result in (temporary) injury, embarrassment, or property damage.
• Handsome Rival attempts to steal/seduce/acquire DG, SCGs, and sometimes GND.
• DG is utterly clueless about HR’s intentions.
• More WH ensue.
• Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

DotClue (Jgreeley) was comparing and contrasting DearS, Girls Bravo and Chobits. Having not seen Girls Bravo, I can't comment on that, but the analysis he makes is pretty reasonable.

You could also add a checkmark for the obligatory Bathhouse/Onsen episode.

But you know, boiling DearS down to just the numbers doesn't do it justice. The temptation is to lump it with all the other Harem shows, but really, in spite of the large cast of female characters, OH doesn't end up with a swarm of women competing for his affections and all moving into his tiny apartment.

In fact, now that I think about it, I'm not sure labeling shows like these "Harem Comedies" is quite correct. I'm thinking this is more of a "Broken Doll" Genre, and although that name sounds all Emo, It's actually hopeful as it typically depicts these damaged cast-off girls (frequently not even able to speak the language) becoming whole people through the power of finding love.

Another plus is that the show nailed me with a lot of laugh out loud moments. One would think that the one-note character of Miss Mitsuka, the terribly over-sexed English teacher, whose exhibitionism knows no bounds would get old really fast, but it's played SO far over the top that when it's revealed she's got a whole section in the video shop where Takeya (OH) works, I laughed. And the misunderstanding that develops when she assumes the gang's study group is an orgy forced me to pause I was laughing so hard.

Then there was the run-up to the Onsen episode. A brief shot of Miu (SCG #1) shows her washing her floor length Anime Hair. And as the camera pans up her back, it keeps going up and up and up the huge stack of sudsy hair.

Personally, I dislike humor that depends on humiliation. It embarrasses me. One advantage of Anime is that since I'm not immersed in Japanese Culture, the things that are supposed to be horribly embarrassing to the characters slip right by me only half-noticed. I can accept Ren's (DG) ignorance of Japanese Culture and the problems it causes. I can understand Takeya being mortified, but it doesn't bother me.

Takeya is a pretty decent Center. He's a fairly upstanding guy, not too easily pushed around, although he sometimes takes a passive-aggressive tack by pretending to not care about what's going on and clinging to his previous solitary lifestyle. Yes, he's unwilling, and he takes a strong moral stance. He does not LIKE the idea of Ren being some kind of programmed slave. Twice she senses him in a state of arousal and moves to "take care of" it, and he refuses. Why? Who would refuse a beautiful woman who wants to be your slave and serve your sexual needs? He does, and for a very good reason. Love should be mutual, and the way she says it like it's her duty, a part of this role she has taken on herself that he does not want, makes him doubt her motivations. In fact, he often pushes Ren to think and feel for herself, but she's not really capable of it yet. Is it tough love, or his hatred of things Alien?

It doesn't help that as childhood friend, GND Neneko fed him a steady diet of scary alien sci-fi movies, making him one of the only men in Japan who doesn't absolutely love the cute DearS girls. So Of Course he's the one who finds the accidentally lost and incompletely programmed Ren. Just like the hero of Chobits finds an apparently BSOD'ed Chi in the trash in the alley. And Of Course he ends up unknowingly completing some kind of ritual that makes him her master and her his slave. At least he gets over the nightmares that she's part of an Invasion force and is secretly horrible behind some mask.

It's not all positive though. There are a lot of things in the series that don't really hit the mark, particularly the threat from the DearS hierarchy to break them up. They only send their least capable operative (The cat-like Nia, who unfortunately adds very little to the appeal, in spite of being cat-like - and why is she the only one? It's very incompletely explained.). The two leaders bickering inspire nothing. And there's a third character (Khi) who keeps getting "Punished" by the whip-wielding Dominatrix-styled female leader (Rubi) for failing to do... something (all offscreen thankfully). There are other plot threads that barely pay off, probably because they were longer arcs in the Manga and were set-ups for a second season that never came. The business with a handsome playboy (HR Hirofumi - not even named until his arc peaks, even though he's appeared in about a third of the episodes leading up to it) working his way through the female half of the student body during "Coffee" breaks in an unused Home Ec classroom could have been completely deleted to no ill effect on the story. He's not a threat to the relationship since he isn't taking an active role in trying to steal Ren. (Well, obviously there IS a scene where this happens, but it's just another in a long list of misunderstandings, rather than an existential threat to their relationship, such as it is.)

There are a lot of unanswered questions in the Anime (surely answered in the Manga). Nia briefly describes herself and Khi as being animal derived. But nobody else has mentioned anything about it or indicated what species anyone else is supposed to be. And Nia herself is the only one with any physical indication of this.

Ren is described as being a "Zero Number", in fact, her name Ren means "Nothing" in the DearS language. But what this means other than her being some kind of blank slate is unclear until a big infodump at the end which only explains the what and not the why. And why she was being shipped in a truck in the first episode if they're being "Stored" on the ship? The backstory, in spite of its importance to what's going on, gets the short shrift.

And why is the real leader of the DearS still frozen on the ship?

And why do the outfits all have those gray nipple things on the shoulders and waists? And could the mouths be any smaller?

I think one pointer to the "Broken Doll" Genre is that there is typically some crisis at the end of the series that forces the hero to finally admit what his feelings are for the Dream Girl, and this usually unlocks whatever mental block she has about understanding what love is. (Indeed, in Chobits, virtually ALL of Chi's mind is locked away in the hopes of finding love, as odd as that seems). In Ren's case, she's still a bit unclear on what she really wants, but at least she evolves her motivation for being Takeya's slave because she wants it, rather than it being her duty. Takeya, for his part, sublimates his desire to for his former life, and gives up not caring whether Ren stays or goes, mostly because of the fate that awaits Ren if he does not keep her. He at least cares that much for her.

If you love Dancing Chibis in the end credits, this is a great one for that.

---

On the technical side, the circle (Exiled Destiny) who subbed this anime needs to be smacked around a lot. Their use of bottom-justified subtitles really breaks down when they keep two simultaneous lines (including sign translations) on the screen for different lengths of time, without the use of contrasting colors or anything. You lose track of what you're reading when you see:

Line A

Then

Line A
Line B

then

Line A (again)

then

Line A
Line C

Even worse when the Lines are more than one line. Trying to read the bouncing text sometimes requires the use of a pause and backspace. The worst being an extended scene in Episode Eleven where Takeya's stepsister is upbraiding Ren while Takeya's trying to talk with his stepmother. It's a total mess.

But it could be the result of little to no QC of a commercial release, since it's Dual Audio. Perhaps the circle was concentrating on the English language version, and only included a data dump of the subtitle track. If that's what they did, well, their lack of attention to detail shows.

Posted by: Mauser at 01:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Chicks Dig Giant Robots - Megas XLR

My intention is to review a whole series at a time.  It doesn't help that I've been skipping around a bit.  But I recently stumbled across an old favorite from 2004.

The original short in Cartoon Network's CartoonCartoon show was titled "Lowbrow", which isn't quite the insulting name one might think it is, if you know anything about "Kustom Kar Kulture".  Generally it refers to admittedly some of the tackier, but Iconic stuff, like 8-balls, mudflap chicks and flames and so on.  The short opens with Coop, a huge bellied car and video game junkie revealing his latest creation to his slacker buddy Jamie.  It looks like an ordinary custom car, and Jamie is unimpressed, until Coop flips a hydraulic valve and jacks up a huge giant robot (Destroying the garage in the process) of which the car is the HEAD.  The difference between the two is immediately apparent when Jamie says "D'you know what we could do with this?" and he envisions smashing Fort Knox to seal the gold, abducting a cute Goth girl from her apartment King-Kong style, and presiding over a Gladiatorial Death Match.  Coop, absurdly envisions smashing a hamburger plant to steal the hamburgers, abducting a T-bucket hot rod from the same bedroom (?!?) and watching a pro wrestling match from over the stadium's rim perched on the robot's shoulder.  He doesn't have huge ambitions, he just wants to cruise around, be cool, and smash stuff.

A running gag throughout the series gets its start here,  Without the robot's head, and having no idea what he's got, Coop jury rigged the thing with vast arrays of buttons, and video game controllers.  But he doesn't know what most of it does.  When Jamie asks "Can you drive this thing?" Coop replies, "Sure.  Now where's first gear?"  The first thing he does is accidentally trigger a intergalactic car alarm.

Enter Kiva, robot pilot from the future with her own robot and two drone units in tow.  She demands back the "Megas Prototype", and Coop refuses, a fight ensues, and Coop manages to destroy Kiva's Robots, causing incredible mayhem in the process (Children cheer as their school is crushed.)  Massive destruction is another of the running gags through the show, as well as Coop's penchant for accidental success, and being a great fighter purely through his video game skills.  In fact, after Kiva asks him how he got to be such a great pilot, he has a brief montage of his growing up in front of the TV playing games, until the appearance of Jamie in the montage mentions to him that she's trying to steal his robot.  Of course, with all his changes, she's helpless to do so.  It looks like her mission has failed, Earth a thousand years in the future is doomed.  Then she realizes that she's just going to have to train Coop to be the pilot she needs.

Coop then accidentally triggers the "Tachyon Beacon" which now introduces Earth's enemy from 1000 years hence, The Glorft.  Coop opens fire with a gigantic missile, which zooms in on the Glorft's leading mech, and then abruptly turns skyward never to be seen again.  But that doesn't matter, with a combination of moves including many homages to video games and pro wrestling, as well as Anime (At one point, she shoots a "Kamehameha" blast, which comes out as a flaming 8-ball, and he took out Kiva's drones with a button that made the bow of the Yamato emerge from the robot's chest), he makes short work of thousands of Glorft Mechs.  Until they pull out a technique of combining and recombining their mechs into one gigantic robot so big, Megas only comes up to its ankle.  Just as they're about to be pancaked, a giant Russian space station smashes in the mech's head, with the first missile embedded in it.

All this happens in the original short.  It sets the tone, sets the characterizations, introduces the enemy, and the long-term threat, and the running story elements like Coop's accidental luck, Video game prowess, wanton destruction ("Nobody gets to smash my town.... but me.") and appetite.  It introduces his "Now I'm mad" speeches, where he lists off the offenses before going full-on at the bad guy (although these are usually subverted).

The first real episode re-tells the story, but fleshes out the background and updates the animation.

But here's the funny thing, after all that set-up, in the second episode, instead of getting started in the long term battle against the Glorft and re-destroying Jersey City, the series takes a right turn and the gang is invited by some intergalactic fight promoter named Magnanimous (voiced by Bruce Campbell) to take part in championship tournament.  And from there, it gets even more versatile.

And even better, as the seasons progress, they don't remain static, Coop does become a better pilot.  Kiva comes to accept that it's going to take longer to get what she wants (especially since it turns out that the time drive which got her, Megas, and the Glorft back to the 21st century is missing a controller that Coop smashed as being worthless) and she even comes to appreciate some of what she's trying to save, which is missing from her bleak post-invasion future.  Jamie, well, he remains a feckless coward, but even he picks up a girl at one point.  There are interesting plots, like one where an interstellar Bounty Hunter comes after them, but she's not after Coop and Megas, she wants Kiva, to sell her knowledge of the future.  There's also a Voltron/Gatchaman/Power Rangers parody, as well as Sailor Moon.  They did a lot of good and funny stuff in the two seasons before CN pulled the plug.  And annoyingly, they never released it on DVD (And yet, look at the crap they DID put on DVD!).  I'd still buy it if they'd only release it.

As a real bonus, the torrent included the soundtrack.  There is a LOT of good music here.  90% of which makes me wish I made films or animations or video game cutscenes because it would be perfect for it.

Posted by: Mauser at 10:13 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Sky Crawlers

First and foremost, I have to say the CGI aircraft are beautiful.  Not only are they amazingly detailed and well designed, but the post effects give them a verisimilitude that is hard to beat.

On the other hand, the characters are so bland and pale, even though that fits with the story, it was hard to get too wrapped up in them.

Plot stuff below the fold, including spoilers.

more...

Posted by: Mauser at 11:42 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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And done

The Tenchi DL concluded a short time ago.  I found a different (and better) torrent for Macademi Washoi, and for the Panty and Stocking soundtrack (Which was separate MP3 files.).  Plus I got current on a few other series.  So when in doubt, search for another Torrent.

It was kind of interesting in that uTorrent resolves the addresses of peers, and after a while, I started to recognize a few (the little flag icons help).  I started to refer to one as "The Romanian Firehose" because whenever I had his attention, I would suddenly have a 300kB/s surge in my rate.

It really is amazing what is out there.  On a whim, I looked up Gatchaman, and damned if there weren't SEVERAL different torrents, some very old, but still well populated.  I remember watching "Battle of the Planets" as a kid, and it sure would be nice to see it without the Sandy Stank treatment.  (On the plus side, this version I found includes the English and Japanese audio streams.  On the minus side, it's hardsubbed.)

I still need to figure out the RSS downloader, but I think it's going to make me one happy camper once I do.

This weekend I hope to finally be able to sit down and watch maybe a full season of something and write it up.  Hopefully I didn't commit to a dog....

Posted by: Mauser at 03:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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