I just finished watching the first episode of Dragonball Kai with my roommate. It was very… strange. It was nostalgic in many ways, but somehow, it also felt like a completely new experience. Dragonball Z, along with Sailor Moon, was one of the first series that really propelled me into anime on the whole. It wasn’t the first anime I’d seen or the first I’d loved (those would be My Neighbor Totoro and Zettai Muteki Raijin-Oh), but I’m sure that I’m not the only one to have ever-sweet memories of coming home from school every day with Toonami to look forward to. I haven’t rewatched DBZ since it ended its initial run on the block years and years ago, and I never did dig up the Japanese original to take a gander at either.
In reality, it really hasn’t been that many years. DBZ’s original dub run ended in April 2003. Six years. That’s not that long… right?
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I probably shouldn’t be as surprised as I am considering how much amazing progress this digital streaming and simulcast thing has seen in the last few months alone, but I am seriously applauding FUNimation for this move. Four days lag time between the Japanese broadcast and an official English sub (presumably) isn’t quite simultaneous, but it’s good enough for me. That’s about how long I generally waited to watch my weekly Soul Eater anyway, so it’s great to see FUNi stepping up like this and beating the fansubbers to the chase since they do already have the series licensed.
I’m really curious to see how many fansub groups this official stream deters. Since the stream is only available for those in the US and France, there will likely still be foreign language sub efforts. It’s probably presumptuous of me, but I feel at least a little confident in guessing that a significant portion of fansubbers and leechers reside in the US. I don’t usually keep up with these things, so I’m not sure if any major fansub groups have already announced FMA:Brotherhood as a project, but if there have been, I wonder if any will drop it out right following this announcement.
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I got back from MomoCon late last night. Still completely exhausted, and it will take me a while to catch up with everything, but it’s a good thing my LJ feeds are one of the first things I check back up on because it let me know that a trailer for the upcoming DOGS OAV is now up on its website! (Click the link that says “movie” near the bottom.)
The animation looks gorgeous and, for me at least, erases many of the doubts that came with the first look at the artwork a few months back. The character designs are very faithful, as are the backgrounds, and the action. The music reminds me a lot of Baccano!, which threw me off a little at first — it’s very energetic, upbeat, and kind of hookey, which clashes with some of DOGS’s darker undertones. But considering that the OAV will only follow the storyline from “Stray dogs howling in the dark” rather than Bullets&Carnage, the humorous energy isn’t all that misplaced.
The trailer itself isn’t a great indication of story, so those unfamiliar with the manga probably won’t be impressed by much, though the action does looks nice. I’m really eager to see a trailer that will show more general background music and that will show speaking parts. I listened to the first drama CD again not long ago; it still sounded great, so I’m excited to see it all match up with their animated images. Gleeeee.
In the meantime, I’ve got “volume 0” of Viz’s release of the DOGS manga on preorder and can’t wait to get it~.
Maybe it’s just because today was a pretty shitty day, but I couldn’t sit through all of episode 5 of Kurokami, so I’m dropping it. I suppose it was only a matter of time. I hated the first episode. It was boring and predictable; all I really wanted to do was punch the protagonist in the face, and I get the feeling I shouldn’t have been laughing my head off when that little girl got flattened by a bus. I considered dropping it then, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to at least watch a few more. The second episode was markedly better, but the third episode tanked again. By the fourth episode, I was quite ready to drop it again, and the beginning of the fifth episode sealed the deal.
It’s a shame, I guess, because the animation is pretty damn slick and the music is interesting. The fight scenes are pretty from a distance, but they’re painfully boring to me. It’s because I feel utterly detatched from all of the characters involved so I don’t care about the outcomes. I don’t care about Keita because he’s whiny and generic and I just couldn’t bring myself to feel sorry for his sobstory. It’s just too convenient. I don’t care about Kuro because she tries too hard to be cute and there’s nothing about her personality that’s interesting at all. I don’t care about her desire to kill her brother, and I don’t even care enough to want to find out more about whatever the hell she is.
The premise was all right enough. The idea of dopplegangers sounded neat enough, but the series has been moving too slow on that front for me to care. The cleverly disguised (or not) antagonists are sneaking around in the background with those snatches of plot, but it isn’t prominent enough to be meaningful. It’s a damn shame. I might continue with the manga since it’s so vastly different from the anime — I don’t doubt that I would have had an easier time sympathizing with Keita if he had been a good-natured computer programmer instead of an emo high school student, and being able to sympathize with the protagonist is pretty key for me. Unfortunately, it’s harder for me to sit down and read manga than it is for me to pop in an episode of an anime.
It’s further disappointing because Kurokami was the only new series I picked up this season. Now that I’m dropping it, the only current series I’m following are Soul Eater and Gundam 00 S2, both of which will be ending soon (well, for the latter, I guess it’s kind of a relief). I have no idea how well the Kurokami dub’s been doing on IATV, but it seems to me that they could have picked a much better series to be groundbreaking with. Then again, they never did announce any kind of official online stream, so maybe it was all irrelevant after all. Not enough people get IATV for it to matter.
Man, today’s been quite the lame day. :\
Usually, I’m very much against spoilers, so maybe it can be considered significant that I just let my brother explain the rest of this to me in lieu of actually watching it. For a series that seems to be universally heralded as being awesome, I was kind of surprised at just how much I didn’t care for Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (+Kai). The art style and animation was a huge turn off. The characters weren’t engaging, and the setup of everything just reminded me of all the things I don’t like in anime. Even the violence and gore wasn’t very entertaining. :\ And the repeating scenarios just… struck that short attention span of mine, I guess. I wanted the explanation to be more obvious. It’s a mystery; I wanted the clues to be more there. I did not want to sit through 26+ episodes of mindfuckery stuck on repeat before knowing what the hell was going on.
There is merit in being sneaky and unexpected, and honestly, I’d say Higurashi’s story and plot is pretty unique, but it really failed at getting me to care. Because I felt nothing towards any of the characters, I wasn’t really even inclined to try and solve the mystery myself, especially when it wasn’t even obvious that it was a mystery at first. It was just, lol retcon! Is it just me? Am I just too stupid to figure things out myself or too stupidly impatient to not wait and see? Maybe, but I have a hard time imagining that anyone was really drawn to the cast. It was a generic assortment of moe girls and your usual loser guy. Who cares? Why should anyone care?
Maybe I’m just too used to characters driving the story and not the other way around.
I’m really curious though, did anyone else start Higurashi and not feel like finishing it at all?
I finished my review for Ouran High School Host Club. I’m still surprised at how great this series actually was, and really want to see a sequel for it. In the meantime, I think I’ll make my way through the manga. I wonder how many chapters of material the anime actually covers? When will there be enough material for a sequel? :3
The first eight episodes of Host Club are available dubbed and streaming from FUNimation’s website. The first three episodes are also available subbed. I highly recommend checking them out~.
As far as the winter season goes, the first episode of Kurokami was amazingly disappointing, and I think I might end up dropping the series after another one or two episodes if nothing improves. It’s really too bad; Bandai picked a really risky series to put so much effort in. If Kurokami does go by the wasteside, I guess I can finish Darker than BLACK or something instead.
Being Asian, the “real” New Year’s has never been as important to me as the Lunar New Year (for 2009, it’s on January 26th), but I guess Planetes is a pretty good series to have reviewed for the new year regardless. I was thoroughly impressed with the depiction of space here: it is amazing, and everyone that considers themselves any kind of sci-fi fan should definitely check it out. It’s the future, guys!
A lot of people seem to recommend Infinite Ryvius for those who like Planetes, probably because Goro Taniguchi directed both of them and both deal with space, but I’m having a hard time moving on with the former. I’m four episodes in, can’t relate to any of the characters, and don’t really feel moved towards caring about their well-being. It’s kind of frustrating. I think finishing it might depend entirely on how much I want to review it because I hate reviewing series I haven’t seen in their entirety; it always feels like I’m missing something that way.
The series I’m breezing through now though is, surprisingly, Ouran High School Host Club, lol. I’ve avoided the series thus far mostly because the premise didn’t interest me. I hear their fanbase is pretty annoying too, but I don’t really concern myself with that usually. As it is now, I’ll probably be finishing off the series tonight and hope to have a review by the time classes start again on Monday. v_vV I’m flying to New Orleans on Friday though, and carpooling the ten hours from there to Savannah on Saturday, so maybe not. We’ll see! I’m sure nobody cares but me! 8D
Finished up the season finale on Christmas Day, so here’s the review for Nodame Cantabile Paris-hen. It wasn’t quite as awesome as the first season, and I’m still a little confused as to why it’s only eleven episodes long because it could have easily been longer, but I’m excited for the third season. Why does it have to wait until Fall 2009 though? So far away. ;3;
Oh, well. I’m thinking of checking out that TV drama in the meantime, especially since two live action movies are coming soon too.
It’s kind of weird switching off between this and Planetes though, lol. I’m halfway finished with that and will get that review in by New Year’s if I’m lucky
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Code Geass is an epicly popular franchise in hard economic times. Why shouldn’t they milk it for all its worth? It’s pretty much guaranteed that everyone’s going to watch whatever they put out anyway. It doesn’t matter whether they loved it or hated it; curiosity trumps everything. They’ll watch it. I know I’ll watch it. I don’t want more; I was very happy with the ending and really want to just leave it as it is, but I’ll watch it anyway.
The final illustration drama is already supposed to address more of what happens after the ending, actually, but the new announcement makes it seem like they have something more up their sleeves. So what’ll it be? Another season? A summary-type movie/OAV? Side-stories or spin-offs? Prequel? SEED Supernova-style crack shorts?
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I saw “Anime Midstream” come up in the titles of a blog or two on my feed today, but didn’t pay much attention until I saw Anime Vice’s post about it, and that’s only because “Raijin-Oh” caught my eye. No one else mentioned that part. …Probably because no one else knows what the hell Raijin-Oh is.
Zettai Muteki Raijin-Oh is an old 90’s kids’ super sentai mecha series (you can watch the opening theme here). It’s also one of the first anime series I’ve ever seen way back… in the 90’s. I saw it as a hilarious Chinese dub. It was amazing. I have many fond memories of it. And it’s apparently been picked up by some new company called Anime Midstream. It’s amazing to me that something so old, random, and obscure should be licensed out of the blue, especially by a newbie company, and especially in the middle of this economic crisis. I love Raijin-Oh, haven’t seen it in years, and would love to revisit it, but there’s a lot about this license that concerns me. Taking a peek at Anime Midstream’s website was all it took.
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