Haibane.info

Category: Anime

  • Samurai Champloo: initial thoughts

    Champloo is (so far) a tale of two samurai who hate each other, but who are (ostensibly) helping a young girl find a mysterious third samurai who “smells of sunflowers”. It’s set in historical Japan but has giant disclaimers about historical accuracy in the title credits (which are annoyingly set to harsh hip hop music; thankfully the actual score during the episodes is much more bearable). The basic theme so far is that Japan has slipped from its moral moorings, and now power matters more than honor – with many of the secondary characters they meet (so far) being enmeshed in the transition between the older tradition and the new lawless era, particularly the two rival yakuza gangs that they deal with in episodes 3 and 4.

    It’s a pretty gripping story. It’s actually quite violent, with plenty of blood and suggestive sexuality (but not overt). However it doesn’t stray into gore, but rather conveys the brutality of the era quite well in a restrained way – characters limbs are severed, but you don’t seethe actual limb, just the agony on the loser’s face, for example, or a fatal blow is inflicted below camera and the victim’s mouth fillls with blood. The characters so far have managed to distinguish themselves from each other, and the usual samurai stereotypes, quite well. The first disc has done enough to capture my interest that I’ve added the whole series to my queue.

  • review: “Batmanime” – Batman Gotham Knight

    Briefly, I didn’t enjoy this as much as I’d hoped. The general idea is that it bridges Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, providing some backstory to the second film, and does so with a series of shorts done in artistic style inspired by various anime.

    I seem to be going against the grain in my general disappointment with this. The best episode of the disc was the first one, because it plays to the image of Batman in the mind of the ordinary criminal as something supernatural or inhuman. Except, instead of criminals, it’s children, who are in a way just as susceptible to Batman’s mystique as the criminals are (though obviously in awe rather than fear). My only gripe was that the animation style was the same as Tekkon Kinkreet, with richly detailed cityscapes that take your breath away, but with bizarrely distorted character art, misshapen limbs and torsos and minimalist faces. Still, it was a good story.

    Gotham City looks gorgeous. Still, a bit too NYC and not Chicago enough for my tastes.
    Gotham City looks gorgeous. Still, a bit too NYC and not Chicago enough for my tastes.

    The rest of the installments were largely forgettable, though seeing Bruce Wayne realized in Oyamada Masumi style (episode 3, Field Test) was a bit of a treat. Also, a supporting character from The Dark Knight gets some character development in episode 2 (Crossfire), and the recurring villain Sandman makes an appearance, as do Batman-universe minor villains like Croc and Deadshot. There’s a few tidbits about Bruce’s attitude towards guns, pain, and gadgetry, but nothing about Batman’s detective skills.

    The animated sequel/prequel is not unique as a concept – the Riddick series has a anime-style bridge installment between Pitch Black and Chronicles, (Dark Fury) and that was far superior an effort both in terms of general art as well as advancing inter-movie plot and character backstory. Still, if you’re really a big fan of the Batman movie franchise reboot (as I am), it’s definitely worth watching.

  • Hellsing looks interesting

    Mark talks about Hellsing and manages to pique my interest – not necessarily because of the blood and gore, but because of the description of Alucard:

    One of the big problems with the series for me is actually that Alucard is way too powerful. There are several villains who crop up in the series, but most don’t even come close to Alucard’s power, and even the one climatic battle in the series is kinda lacking in suspense because even when it seems like Alucard has been defeated, he always manages to come back somehow.

    For some reason, I am reminded of Aang in Avatar here. In his Avatar state, Aang is essentially invincible, but those scenes are incredibly exciting instead of dull – especially the final episode, where Aang fights the ultimate villain of the series, and (not to spoil it too obviously) wins, big time. Another example of this is the Terminator (original movie), where Arnold is literally unstoppable and his eventual demise is almost purely providential rather than because of any strategizing by the overmatched human protagonists.

    Regardless of whether its a hero, villain, or something in between – there’s something very satisfying about a character who wields sheer power. Handled deftly, it can be a fresh change from the usual “hero tested beyond his limits and then succeeds against all odds” formula.

    In fact the ultimate example of this is probably the character of Superman – in my opinion the best stories are those where he has to use his powers, not the ones where he loses them, faces a more powerful being, finds himself weakened by Kryptonite, etc etc. Superman being, well, super is what makes Superman fun.

  • thoroughly enjoying The Last Airbender

    We’ve been watching Avatar: The Last Airbender and are already on Book 3. This has been a fantastic series. It’s what I call Amerime (American animation expressly inspired by anime, like Samurai Jack or the Dark Knight prequel) and follows the story of a hero who has to master his innate power and save the world. Yeah, you’ve heard that before, but what makes Avatar so enjoyable is the sheer fun that the writers have with the characters. Main protagonist Aang is 12 years old an acts like it – goofing off, possessed of that maddening childhood overconfidence one moment, and stressing about facing off in his destined battle with the Fire Lord like a kid worries about an exam the next – including the mandatory dream about showing up without his pants. The basic premise of “benders” who can manipulate each of the primary elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water is both familiar and unique, with the bending styles drawn from real-life asian martial arts styles (with the same attention to choreographic detail as Samurai Jack). The world is richly detailed and the secondary characters are never two-dimensional. It’s just… fun.

    I was also quite excited to hear that M. Night Shymyalan was tapped to make a live-action version of Avatar next year, but my enthusiasm for this has suddenly cooled given how the design for the Dragonball Z movie seems to be going. Not that I know anything about Dragonball, mind you, but it just serves as ample warning of just how profoundly Hollywood can take something and make it suck. That which is truly great has farther to fall.

    In its pristine animated form, however, I can’t recommend Avatar enough. It’s derailed all my more traditional anime watching right now.

  • review of Gedo Senki

    Douglas Cohen reviews Gedo Senki (Legends of Earthsea, by Goro Miyazaki) at TOR.com. Despite my initial skepticism, I quite liked it, I freely admit. Maybe I am not such a purist about UKLG’s writing, though…

  • convenience vs cost

    In an ideal world, you pay more for increased convenience. Want to save money? mow your own lawn. Have no time? Pay the local kid $20. etc.

    This dynamic seems to be inverted online, however, especially with regard to digital content. Here, you pay for decreased convenience – a good example being DRM restrictions on video games, where legitimate, paid users of a game like Spore must suffer through all manner of annoying restrictions and installation limitations and game activations and whatnot. Meanwhile, anyone who downloads the cracked version off the torrents for free, gets a clean, enjoyable gaming experience unmarred by all the nonsense. Therefore we have the curious situation where anti-piracy policies serve to incentivise piracy rather than prevent it[1. Shamus Young’s ongoing DRM rants are the definitive explanation of this dynamic. I think he needs to write a book.].

    A similar dynamic applies to anime, except that instead of invasive DRM you have simple expense. This is partly due to region-coding, which maintains artificial price differences between markets. It’s also due to the increasing cost of producing anime, which gets passed on to the end user. Price is not a barrier for people with steady jobs who enjoy anime as a hobby, but this probably doesn’t describe the target demographic very well. Another problem with paid, legitimate anime is that it comes mostly in DVD form, which is physical media. As such, it must be carried around, doesn’t fit in your pocket, can only be played on specific hardware and displays (ie, a TV with a DVD player attached), might scratch, etc. Even if you circumvent the expense issue by paying for a service like Netflix (which is not free, but significantly cheaper than buying anime outright), you still hae these physical media headaches to deal with. Even a completely free solution like Hulu.com ties you down, as its DRM keeps you locked into your web browser. Meanwhile, users who simply download fansubs get all the benefits – free, totally portable digital content – and even some extras (eg. superior subtitle quality). Again, the incentive on the end user is to encourage downloading rather than paying.

    So the question is, who perpetuates this imbalance? Is there a way to get users to pay for convenience again? The power seems to be solely in the hands of the publishers here. There’s already a set of concrete suggestions for the gaming industry, which are eminently reasonable but probably will never be embraced. A similar set of suggestions could be crafted for the anime industry as well, but I’ll leave that to otaku who have more knowledge of the industry itself than I do.

    Speaking as a consumer though, I can define convenience that I’d pay for. I currently pay Netflix $20/month, so that’s a good guideline for a budget. If I could purchase entire seasons of a given anime for $10, or individual episodes for $1, and have these come in DRM-free files that I can freely reburn to DVD for home viewing or convert to any intermediate format for whatever digital player I might choose, then I’d never need to download again. I would also pay an extra $.50/ep or $5 per season for quality fansubbing. Note that if the anime studios went DRM-free, and completely outsourced subbing to the fansub community, then the latter coudl legitimately charge for the service (which would be a true value-add).

    Of course, the scheme above means someone could just seed the files they buy out to torrent. But so what? That’s what happens now, anyway. at least with my scheme, people like me pay more in. Revenue will increase, and that’s the bottom line.

  • mushi-shi revisited

    About a year ago I tried out Mushi-shi and found it to my liking, in a wierd, abstract kind of way. I didn’t really say much about the series then but now that Steven has started watching it, I feel like I should record some of my impressions. Spoilers possible, so follow below the fold.

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  • Death Note 5cm

    I finished Byousoku 5cm today. I had actualy watched the first “chapter” just before Ramadan began, and then had to set it aside (I pledge to try and engage in acts of piety rather than consume mass entertainment during the holy month. I don’t exactly succeed). That first segment was just an emotional freight train, like Haibane Renmei collapsed into 20 minutes. I originally intended to blog about that chapter alone, but then never got around to it, and today being Eid I figured I wanted to see how the rest turned out. It was no less gripping, though the bulk of the emotional impact was still in the first segment. Still, as a whole, it was something truly special, making you ache in a bittersweet way that is familiar to everyone. It deserves more attention but I dunno what to say. I haven’t felt like this since watching Lost in Translation. I can unequivocally say however that I think this was by far Shinkai’s masterpiece.

    After watching it, though, I was kind of on the mood for something different, so I watched the first episode of Death Note. Um. WOW. The Japanese really don’t f$%k around, do they? Were this series made in the US, the events, and character progression of the main character, would have taken all of season 1. Here thye did it in one episode. “Humans are interesting” indeed. I am hooked, and my brief foray into Fate/Stay Night a few weeks ago is suspended for now.

  • Porco Rosso

    I enjoyed this one, though unfortunately my daughter (for whom I had intended to order it from Netflix) hasn’t really taken to it. I’ve heard a great deal about the movie but never got around to watching it until now, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Some spoilers follow… (more…)

  • The Robotech Ummah

    According to this caffeinated muslim woman blogger, the Zentraedi from Robotech are meant to be muslim:

    The Zentraedi are completely segregated – men and women generally seem to be on different ships. They have no concept of romance and do not have any idea about, y’know, ’stuff’. On one occasion, a Zentraedi ship was able to view a live feed of the the Miss Macross pageant happening on the ship and didn’t know what to make of girls in skimpy outfits. When Rick Hunter, Lisa Hayes, and Max Sterling were caught by the Zentraedi, Rick and Lisa had to show the Zentraedi what a ‘kiss’ was, which resulted in a disgusted group of Zentraedis. Minmei, the singing sensation of Macross, was their downfall as the soldiers were introduced to an entirely different way of life through her songs. Many Zentraedi wanted to defect to the human ship and, thus, embrace the human way of life because of her.

    Of course, that’s how Westerners see the stereotypical muslim. Or political lefties see the stereotypical religious person, for that matter. But if we go with the muslim analogy I guess that makes Khyron the equivalent of Osama bin Laden and Bretai the equivalent of the Mahdi. That’s just awesome. Did I mention that was awesome? Because it’s awesome.