Opinion Prone

Dude. This show is awesome.

As usual, I didn’t pay much attention pre-season and barely remember seeing this show on the preview charts. With Fall gradually starting, I skimmed a few blogs reacting to its apparent insanity, but I wasn’t really interested until I saw someone describe it as Powerpuff Girls x Gurren Lagann x Dexter’s Lab x Sailor Moon x FLCL.

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Well, first off, after two months or so of bumming the Anime Nano feeds, I’ve finally come up with a short list of blogs that I seem to click through regularly, so I’ve updated my blogroll to the side to reflect this. But considering Nano itself is on the list, I end up reading a lot more blogs than that since I’ll generally at least skim anything with an interesting title.

Anyway. I found this strange and slightly disturbing article via Slashdot today. There are people trying to combine human with animal DNA. Seriously, what the hell? Okay, okay, so despite what Slashdot implied, they weren’t actually trying to make crazy mutant hybrids — they were trying to see if mixing the DNA would enable them with a more reliable way to grow stem cells. I still find that goal kind of questionable though; even if the experiment had resulted in living stem cells, would they have been able to grow into anything useful? If you’ve suffered third degree burns, would you want a skin graft with skin grown from human-cow hybrid cells? o_o

I’m not really sure anymore what made the catgirl (and catboy, and various other hybrids) attractive in the first place. I find it especially puzzling when so much of the anime community seems to look down at the furry subculture. I don’t think many people ever considered the fantasy any more than just a fantasy with no scientific plausibility whatsoever, but it’s still kind of a relief to know that it’s now proven not to work. I still never thought anyone would be crazy enough to try it for real though.

If catpeople ever came to be, I’m pretty sure they would take over the world.

A few nights ago, I had a dream. It was hazy, black and white, and I don’t remember much of what happened. But I know the entire thing was in Japanese, and I know there were yellow subtitles floating there too. I woke up with the dialogue still bouncing around in my head. It was kind of disorienting. And kind of sad. I guess.

It’s probably because I watched more anime in December than I ever have in a month. I had the entire month off from school, was stupid and didn’t get a job in that time, and wasn’t particularly motivated to do anything even vaguely relevant to my career. So I watched cartoons. Lots and lots of cartoons. Specifically, I ended up starting and finishing six whole series (Mushishi, Nodame Cantabile, Nodame Cantabile Paris-hen, Gundam 00 S1, Planetes, Ouran High School Host Club) and three movies/OAVs (Ghost in the Shell, 5 Centimeters per Second, GSD C.E. 73: Stargazer), all of which I’ve already reviewed except Host Club. I also started a half dozen other series that I’ve either put on hold or dropped: Ghost Hound (hold@1), Toshokan Sensou (drop@2), Seto no Hanayome (drop@3), Higurashi no Naka Koro ni (hold@7), Infinite Ryvius (hold@4), and Darker than BLACK (hold@5). I reread all of my Gundam Wing manga before I sold it, and I reread all of DOGS and Bullets and Carnage, not to mention keeping up with current episodes/chapters of Soul Eater, Gundam 00 S2, and Bakuman.

It’s probably not impressive as some people’s monthly consumption, but it’s a lot for me, especially compared to the amount I watch when classes are in session or when I’m working in the summers (it took me a month to finish Spice and Wolf, a thirteen episode series, during school; it took me three days to catch up with thirty-five episodes of Gundam 00 during break). I’ve had too much anime on my brain, and that dream probably isn’t the worst of it.

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You know. I’m actually surprised about the number of posts I’ve already made about the upcoming Dragonball movie, but I can’t seem to help making posts when stuff like this comes up:

If that’s Goku’s oozaru form, I think I’m gonna cry.

Okay, okay, so they say that it may not be a final shot, but if Fox requested that it be taken down, then it must be official in some way shape or form, right? Or they might just want the general bad impressions of the movie to slow their rampant circulation. Still… this screenshot makes Goku look more like a creepy lizard than a gorilla. I always wanna say this would have made a better Piccolo, but it wouldn’t really. I can live with Nosferatu!Piccolo all right enough.

In any case, I look forward to any follow-up screenshots that come from this and/or seeing the final product if this is indeed a work-in-progress…

“WTF Japan!” is actually a phrase that leaves my mouth rather frequently. American otaku like to think they’re hot stuff sometimes, but they will never be able to match up to the ridiculousness of the original breed, least of all the country that it all came from. No other countries takes its cartoons and comics as serious as Japan. You don’t hear about the Disney museum nearly as much as you hear about the Ghibli museum. The Japanese will riot and petition for the forest that inspired Totoro to remain as it is, but no one in the States could care less about whatever the heck inspired Walt Disney to draw Mickey Mouse. And what in all of the western world could compare to the otaku paradise that is Akihabara? We don’t have vending machines that sell action figures or crane machines full of high-quality collectables outside of every grocery store, and I could go on and on and on about how outrageous Japan is. I’m sure you could too.

But this is a new high bar for the absurdity that happens over there. Japan, you’re wacky and hilarious and I love you, but really. What the fuck?

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Oh, god. So they announced the dub cast of Gurren Lagann this afternoon at AX. This cast list is one of the most amazing I’ve ever seen, but I can’t decide if it’s because they’ll be fantastic or if it’s because this is just so ridiculous.

Simon will be sharing a voice with Sasuke and Suzaku, two characters I hate! 8D Oh, man, this will be hilarious. Seriously though, Yuri Lowenthal does a fairly decent job, and I look forward to seeing how he does Simon. Yoko will be sharing a voice with Rukia and Euphemia, which is kind of hilarious, but I’ve never really been that impressed with Michelle Ruff’s voices — they all sound fairly generic. Yoko needs to be a badass. Come on! Kyle Hebert as Kamina will also be something to look forward to. To be honest, I don’t remember many of his roles very well, but he’s a friend of friend, and was an active member in one of the only anime forums I was ever really active in, so I really respect the guy for being in touch with fans. From what I know, he’s had it pretty rough (like most VAs, really) in more recent years, and I’m really happy he’s landed such an amazing role.

But the two things on this list that floor me are the following:

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