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.

Posted by: Mauser at 12:38 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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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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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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... 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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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.

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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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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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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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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Well, almost.

uTorrent has performed admirably.  It kept my bandwidth fully utilized from from around 4:23 AM on the 12th through around 11:00 AM on the 14th, and probably averaged around 30 gigs a day.  Considering my wireless internet connection tops out somewhere at the 4 megabit/sec level, that's pretty good.

Late morning on Saturday I was left with just three torrents I knew would be trouble:  The full BD run of Tenchi Muyo (Which I own on VHS :-P) at about 30 gigs alone there which is coming in pretty nicely now, but is huge enough to take a while; Macademi Washoi, which has only one seed who is feeding it at around 0.2k/sec, when he's putting it out at all; and the Panty and Stocking soundtrack (Which I wanted for the full version of the end theme, and is in this absurd tta format that is even larger than a CD that I can't play with anything, plus a .wav format that isn't broken into tracks) which has no seeds, so I and four other peers are all equalized at 74.2%

Nevertheless, I'm really, really pleased that I was able to recover everything else so quickly.  Actually, that's an understatement, I'm ASTOUNDED that 180 torrents came through the air in a tad over two days. (I nuked one duplicate).  I really like the way uTorrent operates.  I appreciate the control over the queue that is totally lacking in Vuse, so that I could easily move poorly performing torrents to the end of the line.  Vuse has an amazing number of rules and controls you can set over how the program operates, but none of that makes it operate WELL.  I haven't delved too much into uTorrent's settings, but even the defaults kicked butt.

One thing I have set is my altruistic 2.0 share ratio goal.  And I like how they let you spec the bandwidth after you hit that.  (I suppose there can be some merit in continuing to share a trickle after that).  Vuse's odd ruleset would sometimes continue to squander my limited upload capacity (somewhere under 0.5 megabits/sec) on a torrent over that ratio, once running away all the way to the 8's.

Now to start poking around in the RSS feed settings.  It'll be nice to have that working, rather than timing out because "The server at client.vuse.com is not responding."  Just what were they extracting from their users, I wonder....

(Oh, and can anyone tell me how to set up the categories on this system?)

Posted by: Mauser at 01:43 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I was getting rather sick of Vuse, and the way it would hold my RSS feeds and searches hostage to its overloaded ad server.  Also, I was sick of the way it seemed to be corrupting my TCP/IP stack so that my browser and mail would timeout, even when I had bandwidth to spare.

Looking at the peer listing, the choice was obvious, uTorrent.  All the cool kids were using it, by an average of 5 to 1 or better.

Migrating though was not as smooth as it could be.  And worse, I misunderstood how the "Set Download Location" worked because the uTorrent help pages on migration appear to be way out of date.  I made a stupid mistake, and while trying to purge stuff out of Vuse, I accidentally sent it all to the recycle bin, which even worse, started purging itself without asking right before my eyes.  Everything I'd downloaded for the last 6 months or so vanished.  The vast majority of it from the last anime season, and not on my last backup.

Added to that the process of importing the .torrent files wasn't quite perfect either, leaving directories partially converted (thanks to Vuse's odd habit of randomly appending "imported" on the end of a .torrent's name, and the snippet of batch code in the FAQ did not work).  Much hand-renaming and shuffling later, I finally managed to get all the torrents named what they should be, and located in the directories where they should be, and much to my amazement, the vast majority of the files still have at least one seed out there.

But for about a dozen, there is nothing.  Most of those aren't much of a loss, current US TV, for example, which I tend to delete after watching anyway.  But I lost the first season of Wakfu, a delightful French Anime, and Macademy Wasshoi, which SDB recommended, and which I only got a few episodes into.  Those are seedless.

(Oh, and I highly recommend NOT searching of Undelete utilities on the web.  There's "Freeware" out there that doesn't mention it's actually "Crippleware" which won't undelete anything unless you pay them, and they try to slip in some spyware in the uninstaller along the way.  Not to mention all the fake sites you could run into.)

I'll recover, but I'm NOT happy.  It's going to take a while.

And dammit, I've FINALLY got time to watch some of this!

Posted by: Mauser at 05:07 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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