Anime post
Nov. 6th, 2003 11:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaEDIT - unlocked for informational purposes, such as they are
Intentionally slacked off last night and watched some anime: GitS 17-19 and the first ep of Peacemaker Kurogane. (Actually I did about 600 words net regardless, even after the bits I cut - I know, I know, but I have to keep myself sane while I'm at it. Nice, that 600 words can begin to seem incidental.) So here's a run-down of the past two weeks, anime-wise:
Ghost In The Shell TV: well, a lot of it is frankly police procedural, cramming into 25 minutes what an American TV show would take 45 to show (how do they get their information so fast? Forget the mecha, I want their semantic-filtering bots). But even so it's quality police procedural, with emphasis on the underlying ethics of cybernetics et al. Plus I'm just fond of all the gruffly competent Section-Niners. What rather interests me is how the political assumptions of the thing will play once it's on Stateside TV, which appears to be inevitable; it's very... pragmatic and statist, the characters displaying (realistically given where they work) something of a healthy disregard for fundamental freedoms and so forth. ^^; Implicitly nationalistic, too, with Nippon serially solving other countries' problems as they land in Aramaki's lap, and all kinds of crazy shite getting blamed on the CIA. ...Or very likely no one will care. Every few eps the series does throw in a busty yet evil foreign female assassin with an improbable hairstyle, just to remind you it's supposed to be fantasy. ^^;
Shingetsutan Tsukihime: which turns out to be based on a computer game, as I mentioned the other day. It does explain why the animation style is so mainstream-pretty, and the introverted "normal" boy surrounded by the cute schoolgirl and the mysterious sempai and the sexy adult woman and the ojousama and the Japanese maid and the French maid (who're twins), and the eventual evil gothloli - or so say the otoko-muke fansites I rummaged through. ^_^ They're using the TokiMemo visual skeleton to tell a very odd story, though; or at least it has the potential to be very odd. The first episode or two were as creepy as all get out, mostly through direction, music and intentional obscurities of narrative. The next two were not so creepy, I think because the vampire girl is in fact far more grounded and "normal" than most of the human cast. So it also has the potential to descend into supernatural/romance-anime banality. I suppose I'll have to keep watching to find out just how broken the main character is under his veneer of normal schoolboyishness. So far no one's bothered to ask why he kills people for apparently no reason; they're far more interested in how he does it. That being said, he bears a haunting resemblance to Tsutsui out of HikaGo, so if you've ever wanted to see Tsutsui gorily dismember someone with a bowie knife, this is the series for you. ...What'd I say?
Gunslinger Girl: uhh... it would be a pretty good series qua series, if it developed an ongoing storyline (which hopefully it will once it's done with the introductory episodes). Detailed designs, lush vaguely-European atmosphere, so forth. The problem is that it's very hard to think of it as series qua series when it's so obviously child pr0n without the pr0n. It has that child-pr0n text-story feel of elaborately reasoned yet fundamentally fantastic justifications (don't ask me how I know). Kind of obvious, really: with the number of fanbois out there who fetishise busty women who kick ass and take names, and the fangirls who fetishise willowy-but-deadly katana-wielding bishounen, you have to figure some of these hentai oyaji...? XD; Saints alone know if I were an ojisan of impure intent, I'd get real tired real quick of watching saccharine mahou shoujo to get my rocks off. Prepubescent girls with angst-filled backstories who assassinate for the government with very big and realistic guns - now we're talking business.
I'm actually going to keep watching this, insofar as it downloads. Because I Need To Know, dammit.
Gilgamesh: won't download for me. Some series (like Tsukihime) I have BitTrickle luck with, some I don't. That being said I managed to grab the first episode, which... doesn't it start exactly like a J-goth version of A Distant Soil, though? ^_^;;; Looks interesting but nothing's happened. Maybe I'll track down the manga, as it's very obviously manga-based. Also, why the hell is the music AvexTrax?
Peacemaker Kurogane: I have issues with taking any tale of the Shinsengumi seriously, because of Gohatto (which is actually one of my favorite Japanese films of recent years, for all sorts of reasons relating to cinematography and the fact that you finish the film not knowing at all what factually occurred - like Rashomon - to the point where I'm a bit desolated by its fangirl-bait reputation). In fact at this point I think it'd have to be a sober and meticulously reconstructed historical narrative, with voiceovers and possible talking heads. Luckily PMK doesn't really seem as if it's intended to be taken seriously; in a shounen-fighter cartoon pig D00D WHAT THE HELL DID THEY DO TO OKITA SOUJI COLOUR ME AMUSED sort of way. Mind you the way the story (and the history)'s set up allows for BUCKETFULS OF ANGST down by the 20th-episode line, but if it does a Kenshin I guess I'll find out alongside the rest. *g* It'll probably take me a few episodes before I can overcome this persistent feeling that I'm looking at RK from the wrong end of the telescope anyway.
The narrative is "skippy" - it moves fast without much time allowed to establish atmospherics. I've learnt to pin that on the animation team rather than on the mangaka; after all if it isn't in the original canon, the animators can always work it in.
Intentionally slacked off last night and watched some anime: GitS 17-19 and the first ep of Peacemaker Kurogane. (Actually I did about 600 words net regardless, even after the bits I cut - I know, I know, but I have to keep myself sane while I'm at it. Nice, that 600 words can begin to seem incidental.) So here's a run-down of the past two weeks, anime-wise:
Ghost In The Shell TV: well, a lot of it is frankly police procedural, cramming into 25 minutes what an American TV show would take 45 to show (how do they get their information so fast? Forget the mecha, I want their semantic-filtering bots). But even so it's quality police procedural, with emphasis on the underlying ethics of cybernetics et al. Plus I'm just fond of all the gruffly competent Section-Niners. What rather interests me is how the political assumptions of the thing will play once it's on Stateside TV, which appears to be inevitable; it's very... pragmatic and statist, the characters displaying (realistically given where they work) something of a healthy disregard for fundamental freedoms and so forth. ^^; Implicitly nationalistic, too, with Nippon serially solving other countries' problems as they land in Aramaki's lap, and all kinds of crazy shite getting blamed on the CIA. ...Or very likely no one will care. Every few eps the series does throw in a busty yet evil foreign female assassin with an improbable hairstyle, just to remind you it's supposed to be fantasy. ^^;
Shingetsutan Tsukihime: which turns out to be based on a computer game, as I mentioned the other day. It does explain why the animation style is so mainstream-pretty, and the introverted "normal" boy surrounded by the cute schoolgirl and the mysterious sempai and the sexy adult woman and the ojousama and the Japanese maid and the French maid (who're twins), and the eventual evil gothloli - or so say the otoko-muke fansites I rummaged through. ^_^ They're using the TokiMemo visual skeleton to tell a very odd story, though; or at least it has the potential to be very odd. The first episode or two were as creepy as all get out, mostly through direction, music and intentional obscurities of narrative. The next two were not so creepy, I think because the vampire girl is in fact far more grounded and "normal" than most of the human cast. So it also has the potential to descend into supernatural/romance-anime banality. I suppose I'll have to keep watching to find out just how broken the main character is under his veneer of normal schoolboyishness. So far no one's bothered to ask why he kills people for apparently no reason; they're far more interested in how he does it. That being said, he bears a haunting resemblance to Tsutsui out of HikaGo, so if you've ever wanted to see Tsutsui gorily dismember someone with a bowie knife, this is the series for you. ...What'd I say?
Gunslinger Girl: uhh... it would be a pretty good series qua series, if it developed an ongoing storyline (which hopefully it will once it's done with the introductory episodes). Detailed designs, lush vaguely-European atmosphere, so forth. The problem is that it's very hard to think of it as series qua series when it's so obviously child pr0n without the pr0n. It has that child-pr0n text-story feel of elaborately reasoned yet fundamentally fantastic justifications (don't ask me how I know). Kind of obvious, really: with the number of fanbois out there who fetishise busty women who kick ass and take names, and the fangirls who fetishise willowy-but-deadly katana-wielding bishounen, you have to figure some of these hentai oyaji...? XD; Saints alone know if I were an ojisan of impure intent, I'd get real tired real quick of watching saccharine mahou shoujo to get my rocks off. Prepubescent girls with angst-filled backstories who assassinate for the government with very big and realistic guns - now we're talking business.
I'm actually going to keep watching this, insofar as it downloads. Because I Need To Know, dammit.
Gilgamesh: won't download for me. Some series (like Tsukihime) I have BitTrickle luck with, some I don't. That being said I managed to grab the first episode, which... doesn't it start exactly like a J-goth version of A Distant Soil, though? ^_^;;; Looks interesting but nothing's happened. Maybe I'll track down the manga, as it's very obviously manga-based. Also, why the hell is the music AvexTrax?
Peacemaker Kurogane: I have issues with taking any tale of the Shinsengumi seriously, because of Gohatto (which is actually one of my favorite Japanese films of recent years, for all sorts of reasons relating to cinematography and the fact that you finish the film not knowing at all what factually occurred - like Rashomon - to the point where I'm a bit desolated by its fangirl-bait reputation). In fact at this point I think it'd have to be a sober and meticulously reconstructed historical narrative, with voiceovers and possible talking heads. Luckily PMK doesn't really seem as if it's intended to be taken seriously; in a shounen-fighter cartoon pig D00D WHAT THE HELL DID THEY DO TO OKITA SOUJI COLOUR ME AMUSED sort of way. Mind you the way the story (and the history)'s set up allows for BUCKETFULS OF ANGST down by the 20th-episode line, but if it does a Kenshin I guess I'll find out alongside the rest. *g* It'll probably take me a few episodes before I can overcome this persistent feeling that I'm looking at RK from the wrong end of the telescope anyway.
The narrative is "skippy" - it moves fast without much time allowed to establish atmospherics. I've learnt to pin that on the animation team rather than on the mangaka; after all if it isn't in the original canon, the animators can always work it in.
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no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 10:04 am (UTC)::snicker::
Okita is nothing. Just wait until you see Saitou. XD XD XD
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 10:17 am (UTC)that was my initial reaction! lol! but i have come to love and obsess ^_^
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 12:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 12:42 pm (UTC)I'd like it quite a bit better if I could identify the guns. Though I'd also like it better if... no, let's not go there.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 12:46 pm (UTC)(I know my French history through and through; oddly but luckily, they tend to make hash of French history far less egregiously than they do with their own.)
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 01:28 pm (UTC)The manga, though, the art style is completely different. Mood might be also, I haven't checked on that (curse my wretched finances, for it not for them...). But definitely art. I'm pretty sure. (Since it's the guy what did Cyborg 009 and all.)
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 08:54 pm (UTC)Exactly what I said when I watched the teaser episode. "Nooo, Tsutsui! Don't kill that woman - you're such a nice boy!"