Haibane.info

Category: Anime

  • Last Exile

    I am only 4 episodes in thus far, but I am enjoying this series. The little girl, Al, is just a delight – her scene with the stuffed animal and later, her innocent roaming about the ship, and thinking she was unobserved, were just charming. Klaus is also pretty appealing as a straight shooter protagonist.

    I really haven’t noticed the CGI, it isnt intrusive (except for smoke, which uniformly sucks). The landscapes of the world they inhabit are just too piecemeal to really appreciate. Unlike the vistas in gedo Senki, to take an example, you never see anything but a local shot and thus there’s no reference information about what the terrain is on a larger scale. You’re always zoomed in. The only time there is a clear view is up in the sky, and then it’s just a monotonic cloudscape. So, I dont have any sense of what the world is like. I hope we do get a better overview eventually.

  • Jack and Aku

    I am continuing my synopsis and screenshots of the first episode of Samurai Jack.

    full_jack.png

    Follow below the fold… spoilers abound, of course. (more…)

  • Samurai Jack

    The story of Samurai Jack is summarized by his nemesis, Aku, in the voiceover that precedes every episode:

    Long ago in a distant land, I, Aku, the shape-shifting Master of Darkness, unleashed an unspeakable evil! But a foolish Samurai warrior wielding a magic sword stepped forth to oppose me. Before the final blow was struck, I tore open a portal in time and flung him into the future, where my evil is law! Now the fool seeks to return to the past, and undo the future that is Aku!

    It is very, very difficult to convey just what makes this series so incredibly compelling. Part of the reason for this is because it transcends a single “style” of animation. The artwork is clean, simple, and direct. The action unfolds almost like a manga, with multiple panels on screen and different viewpoints; at others. At times, the landscapes are gritty and dysfunctional and crowded; at others, it’s like classical Chinese paintings, especially when Jack journeys across the wilderness. At one moment, the characters are lean and stylized, at others incredibly detailed. There are entire episodes with minimal dialouge, and almost every episode has it’s own musical score.

    And yet, for all the artistic complexity, the story is refreshingly simple: Aku is evil (incarnate). Jack must destroy him, by finding a portal to return to his own time and preventing Aku’s domination of the world. As Jack journeys across the enslaved Earth, he frees groups and entire races from Aku’s tyranny, inspires hope amongst the oppressed masses, and fights off a never-ending stream of robots, monsters, bounty hunters, and mystical creatures. Throughout every trial, he adheres to his code of honor and triumphs with the (literal, as we come to see) power of righteousness.

    Below the fold are some screenshots from the first episode, which covers the events of Aku’s narration. (more…)

  • Americans shouldn’t cosplay

    overwhelming evidence.

    UPDATE: actually, here’s a pretty good counterargument.

  • CrunchyRoll

    crunchyroll.com [logo]There’s a new video site in town, with a particular emphasis on animation and anime. TechCrunch reviewed the site, arguing it “pushes the envelope” on copyright issues::

    All video is uploaded by users and has advertising around it. Premium users who “donate” $6 per month to the site get an ad free version and higher quality video. Rumor has it the company is making $75k/month or so in revenue.

    Crunchyroll’s business model is unique in that users pay them to view high quality versions of the content, much of which is copyright infringing.

    Of course, CR removes content as soon as they receive takedown notices, but the user rating system remains even if the video is gone. And of course users have uploaded their own mashups, OPs, and other fan-driven content, all of which can get rated. The site is organized by series, so all content for a given series is on one page, which is an obvious in hindsight organizational scheme.

  • live-action Robotech movie

    Khyron’s ghost! there’s a live action Robotech movie in the works??

    sdf-1

    Spider-Man star Tobey Maguire will produce and may star in a film based on the classic SF anime Robotech, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

    Warner Brothers Pictures picked up the rights to Robotech, which features giant robots known as mechas. Maguire is producing through his Maguire Entertainment banner and is eyeing the lead role in what the studio plans as an SF franchise a la Paramount’s hit Transformers.
    […]
    Robotech takes place at a time when Earth has developed giant robots from the technology on an alien spacecraft that crashed on a South Pacific isle. Mankind is forced to use the technology to fend off three successive waves of alien invasions. The first invasion concerns a battle with a race of giant warriors who seek to retrieve their flagship’s energy source, known as “protoculture,” and the planet’s survival ends up in the hands of two young pilots.

    There was a debate in the Otakusphere recently about why mecha anime suck/don’t suck, so this is timely news. Robotech was always defined by its mecha, but the mecha are as much characters as anyone else. That goes as much Rick’s jet (formerly Roy’s) in Skull Squadron as it does for the grande dame, the SDF-1 herself. And at the same time, they also blended into the background – the drama that made Robotech such a soap opera was always heavily centered on the characters, from the original Bridge Bunnies to Captain Gloval to the ultimate love triangle of Rick-Minmei-Lisa.

    It obviously goes without saying that if you’re looking for a good mecha anime, I’d recommend Robotech highly.

  • the Kingdom beckons

    Mostly because Nick has been talking about it forever, I slurped down the first episode of The Twelve Kingdoms last night and watched it this morning. It was sufficiently good to motivate me to pull the remaining 44 (!) episodes down. I’m not sure yet what I think but Nick’s enthusiasm for it is compelling.

  • Shingu OP

    pace Steven, but I agree – I liked the Shingu OP, too. Agree that the visuals don’t tell us much about the story, but given all the revelations that occurred maybe that was for the best. Anyway, we do spend most of the series at the school, so it was apropos in that respect.

    However, I admit I tended to skip past it because I was too impatient to get on with the story. Too good, yaar.

  • Mushi-shi

    AICN has a fascinating review of an anime series that got my attention:

    The science fairy tales make real dangers of concerns from the boundary between juvenile “why” questions and profound philosophical queries such as seeing in the dark, the inherent significance of shapes or the cause of dreams. It then addresses these troubles a as procedurals inspired by folk stories.

    (more…)

  • Shingu fin

    I finished Shingu a few days ago. I am entranced. I have to agree with Steven, this series is top-shelf. The length of it makes a rewatch somewhat unlikely though, but I am going to read Steven’s TMW and then make a final post on my own thoughts overall.

    I stitched this poster together out of separate screencaps, since the camera was panning over it:

    bastard.png

    vlcsnap-791388.png

    “Stop staring at those flowers! it’s creepy!”

    more spoilerish screencaps below the fold.

    (more…)