Gen X Otaku 1971: the OG blog

Book-keeping tidbits

I've added a few additional select categories for future posts;  the more I learn about anime, the more familiar I become with the terminology of the genre and the more I absorb of Japanese culture by osmosis and will adjust my category pool accordingly.

I've been trying out local Japanese restaurants nearby...they're not cheap, but they are good.  I can understand why the Houston Anime Meetup doesn't use them, though, as they rarely have long tables that can easily accomodate the typical turnout for one of our meetings, and also the price factor.

Last night I had a real burst of productivity out of seemingly nowhere.  Tonight I started to watch the classic Boogiepop Phantom as a Netflix DVD rental.  3 episodes in, this is  a pretty f*cked up show...and  very slowly paced and Kafka-esque.  I'll get back to it later.  I switched over on my Netflix queue to Hellgirl because it has dropped off streaming and is now DVD only via Netflix.  I started to watch it back when it was on streaming but never got back to it in time.  I think I will just start over from the beginning and just re-watch the episodes I first saw on streaming.  Which reminds me I also need to finish Beck and I need to re-watch Baccano! which I very nearly finished but didn't quite.

I'm also pissed off that my Magnivox Blu-Ray player is not connecting to Netflix anymore like it did when I first installed it.  It seems as though it lost connection to my home wireless network and for whatever dumb-ass reason can't find it again like it did during initial set-up.  And although it's close enough in proximity to do a wired connection via ethernet, my router doesn't seem to be able to handle directly wired connections from devices.  I've heard indications from 2 friends who know way more about I.T. than I do that my modem /router are horribly outdated and that I probably ought to replace them completely.  I may very well do just that at some point if it will enable me to set up a directly wired connection to both my Blu-Ray Magnivox and also my PS3.  It's certainly close enough in proximity for this but right now the router doesn't seem able to make that kind of direct connection actually work, which is f*cking stupid but there you have it.

So I'm back to watching Netflix streaming on my computer monitor if I so desire.  I have an extended VGA cable and can watch it on the TV via the computer, but the picture quality is so lame compared to what the Blu-Ray was capable of when the Netflix icon on it actually worked...and worked well I might add.

I can also watch Netflix streaming on my iPad and iPhone.  I sometimes squeeze in an Anime episode over lunch if my friends are absent from work that day via my iPhone...

 

Everybody, move your body.

I just can't get enough of this AMV...

 

Manga Minute; Toradora!

I'm currently working my way through the Manga series Toradora!  in English.  So far I've finished volumes 1-2 and am working my way through volume 3.  This series was turned into an Anime, however, the powers that be deemed it would not be enough of a commercial success in America and so it was never dubbed into English and is only available as a subtitle only release.   Which is  a shame because I find it a compelling slice-of-life high school romantic comedy.

I find that one factor that will compell me to buy a manga edition over any other criteria is if the associated Anime does NOT have an English dub.  I also bought the omnibus edition manga to Strawberry Panic!  for exactly the same reason.  If there's an English manga version of Oriemo then someday I'll buy that also.

Ryuuji is a kind-hearted teen who only looks like a tough guy on the outside. And then he gets on the bad side of his school's tiny terror, Taiga Aisaka, aka "the palm-top tiger".  She is the ultimate Tsundere from hell.  It's a story of star-crossed love.  Taiga actually likes Ryuuji's best friend, and Ryuuji likes Taiga's best friend, Minori.  But ironically enough, not only does Ryuuji capture Taiga's rather unwanted attention, he discovers that they're practically next door neighbors.  He also learns Taiga doesn't have the best family life and lives alone and doesn't take very good care of herself.  He takes pity on her and lets her have home cooked meals with him and his mother next door.  Taiga is definitely a little spitfire, full of passion.  She has a reputation for brutally shooting down any boy who has ever asked her out.  Most of the girls except for Minorin think she's a little scary.  Yet Taiga is also lovesick and forelorn.  And she becomes platonic friends with Ryuuji.

They end up spending so much time together that rumours start flying that they are themselves a couple.  And as much as they hotly deny it, people don't seem to believe them.  And with the tender affection that emerges between Ryuuji and Taiga as he comforts her in her moments of pain and anguish, we don't really believe it either.

I have not seen the anime series and have not finished the manga, but I predict this will turn out to be a heart-warming take on the "realizing the boy/girl I love was in front of me the whole time" story-line.

Strike Witches. Blush-worthy Moe.

Strike Witches is another of my guilty pleasures; nearly 98% of its audience is probably male.  I did enjoy the show, but I will admit, it is so embarassingly "moe" that it made even *me* blush, and that's hard to do.

So basically we have here an "alternate WW2 history", "mecha", "sci-fi", magical (witch) girl...thing...where they have to interrupt WW2 and band together to fight an invasion of strange, crystaline aliens from outer space.  The girls wear classic WW2 uniform tunics of their respective nations...with bikini bottoms.  I don't know why they wear bikini bottoms, nobody ever explains why bikini bottoms are necessary, they just all wear them.  Incredibly tightly.  To the point of revealing possibly underage camel-toe through the fabric.  And the girls bend over, stretch, climb, etc, a lot.  Oh, and plenty of teen boob jiggle as well, along with a little playful yuri stuff along the way between some of the girls...

The emotional relationships of the characters are compelling and interesting and emotionally engaging and satisfying....it's just that the visuals are so often such a distraction.  The battle sequences are pretty good.  I admit, also, this was another case where the box art was off putting.  I just thought the girls were anthroporphized airplanes...and while they kind of are...actually a better way to think of it is that they are more like Mecha pilots only using 1940s earth tech of the time, enhanced by mystical magic.  It really ends up not looking nearly as goofy as you might think and really does work visually in motion.  It's just hard to tell that from a still image.

It is a short series and I watched it entirely via Netflix streaming.  It's fun and worth a viewing.  Not the sort of show I would go around bragging about being a fan of, however.  It's a guilty pleasure best kept to oneself. 

Samurai Girls are easy

Hyakka Ryōran Samurai Girls (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Let me say straight up, Samurai Girls is fucking garbage.  Dirty, trashy, guilty fun.  It is NOT a good series, it really is crap.  But that doesn't mean it's not fun to watch.  I sometimes like to joke that Samurai Girls is a failed Hentai, with the best bits inexplicably left on the cutting room floor.  No, seriously, this show walks the line between a fantasy epic Anime and a Hentai like a drunken hooker taking a roadside sobriety test before being hauled off to jail.  It would've honestly made for a better show if it was just a straight Hentai without any pretense of actual fantasy storytelling.

It's like Sentai Filmworks had a look at FUNimation's seasons 1 & 2 of Sekirei (セキレイ, lit. Wagtail), the quintessential so-called "FUNimation Boob Show" and said let's top THAT and make it even TRASHIER.  And they succeeded in reaching that objective at the very least.

This show is so embarassingly trashy that ALL of the English voice cast use stage names rather than their real names (though seasoned otaku know exactly who they really are).  It has some decent action sequences, but the story itself takes itself a little too seriously and collapses a bit under its own ridiculousness.  It'd be fun to rent this one but I'd skip out on buying it.  It was fun to watch the screening of the first four episodes on the big screen at Alamo Drafthouse, and yes, I did actually buy this title for myself to finish at my leisure, which I did a few weeks back.  Meh.  It was okay, I'm glad I got through it, but it was fairly disappointing.  Really mediocre storytelling at best.  Not very emotionally compelling characters either except for the main ditzy red-head with the split personality.  She tries to be for Samurai Girls what Musibi is for Sekirei (セキレイ, lit. Wagtail) but it really doesn't work as well.

If you're short on time or money you can give this one a pass; You're not missing much.  If you mainly want to see cleavage and lots of jiggle, then pick this one up without fail.  I was drawn in by the weird WW2 "revenge fantasy" imagery in the first episode...it's difficult to place the narrative in time until much, much later in the series, and there's a lot of seemingly anachronistic high technology that seems out of place until you understand the unfolding chronology better.

 

Infinite Stratos, worth a look.

IS (Infinite Stratos) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sentai Filmworks also screens new releases at the Alamo Drafthouse West Oaks, and this is always on the 3rd Monday of each month.  This is awesome, but also it is somewhat unfortunate that this means the Sentai screening is back-to-back with a FUNimation screening the very next night.  And watching Anime on the big screen two nights in a row can sometimes be a challenge for an Otaku to convince either parents or significant others that this is still actually a worthwhile investment of time, gas and money!  But I'm glad I made my case successfull and thus was able to take in the screening of Infinite Stratos recently as well as Legend of Legendary Heroes from FUNimation the very next evening.

I had heard a lot of advanced warning that Infinite Stratos was not very good, one reviewer ominously dubbing it "Infinite Shit" and yet another counseling otaku to give this one a pass if they are trying to make tough decisions on which DVDs to buy now.

So I had very low expectations walking into the screening, and came out pleasantly surprised.  I speak only for myself, but I found Infinite Stratos very entertaining and emotionally satisfying.  It manages to marry two improbable genres; your standard "Mecha" show overlaid with the comedy/Harem show, and surprisingly, it works!

Or at least it works for me.  The main male protagonist, who for some reason not yet explained is the only male human on the planet capable of operating an Infinite Stratos mecha exoskeleton combat unit....and thus is enrolled in a prestigeous and heretofore all-girl Flight Academy dedicated to training IS operators located in his native country of Japan, but with students from around the globe, including Great Britain and China.

The male protagonist is voiced by veteran ADV Films (and more recently FUNimation) voice actor Josh Grelle (pronounced "Greely"), who also voiced the title character in Kenichi.  Opposite him, in the role of the female lead in the English dub is Monica Rial, playing the protagonist's longtime childhood friend and now awkwardly his unwilling roommate at the Academy as well.  It's nice to see FUNimation regulars still willing to come down to Houston to record for Sentai Filmworks like this.  I love the ongoing cross-polination of talent that continues to happen despite the legal bad blood between Sentai Filmworks and FUNimation at the corporate level.

Yes, the story is perhaps a tad sexist, but so far at least not egregiously so.  Brittney Karbowski is tapped once more to play a British girl (listen to her performance in Blue Drop for a comparison), and once more she pulls it off acceptably well.  This time Karbowski's character is an aristocrat and quite haughty and a bit of a Tsundere character.  Monica's character is also rather Tsundere herself.  Very quickly the two develop a conflict between each other though the male protagonist doesn't quite catch that the girls feel this antagonism towards each other because they've both fallen in love with him and see each other as rivals for his attention and affection.  Next enter character Rin from China, voiced by Hillary Haag in the English dub, who also happens to be yet another of Josh's character's childhood friends at the Academy...a perky freshman girl...and we have ourselves here the beginnings of a love trapezoid, and it promises to get only worse from here.

The first four episodes are handled "ok" on the emotional story front, I thought. Criticisms I've heard are the improbable emotional reactions of some of the girls later on in the show.  I'll keep my eyes open and see if I agree.  Since I doubt Sentai will be screening any further episodes of this series on the big screen, I'll have to either rent, stream, or buy the series on DVD to know how it all turns out.

As far as action sequences, the Mecha battles are very visually appealing and exciting.  I definitely look forward to more of these in later episodes.  I am very strongly considering purchasing this title on DVD to own, though I don't know if it's worth plopping down the extra coin to get it on Blu-Ray.  Normal DVD will probably suffice for me.

I also realize I don't yet have a category tag for "Harem", which is a major oversight.  My bad.

Anyway, Harem shows are a mixed bag.  The better ones require some suspension of disbelief to work and work best as light comedy.  The ones that play out realistically tend to veer off into vaguely creepy and painful, like Shuffle! which I enjoyed, but fully admit is a creepy, creepy show and sometimes hard to watch...those characters suffer...a lot...and a lot of characters get very deeply emotionally hurt before Shuffle! is done.  I hope that Infinite Stratos manages to swing clear of this problematic ground.

I applaud Infinite Stratos for at least the attempt to mary a Mecha show with a Harem show...the results for me are "so far so good", and I find myself willing to pay Sentai Filmworks to see how the rest of it ends.  Well played, Sentai, well played.

Legend of Legendary Heroes

I recently attended the FUNimation screening of the first four episodes of the amazing anime show with the laughably redundant title of Legend of Legendary Heroes.   Seriously, don't let the goofy title put you off on this show.  I made the same mistake with Tears to Tiara which I now own the box set of and just completely finished last week.  I also made the same mistake with Desert Punk which turned out to be one of my all-time favorites, though in the case of Desert Punk it was more the box art that was off-putting...I just thought the main character's outfit looked ridiculous and so I avoided the show for months, until I finally saw a trailer for it and decided I should give it a chance after all.

Come to think of it, same thing happened to me for Legend of Legendary Heroes as well; I watched the trailer and was immediately hooked; told myself "I have to go see this!!".  It was also a hard sell at first because this screening would be on back to back nights opposite another show, this one by Sentai Filmworks the Monday evening previous, namely Infinite Stratos, which I also attended on a whim and will be reviewing briefly in my next post.

Legend of Legendary Heroes is a very entertaining and so far well written sword and sorcery fantasy epic with an intriguingly dark backstory.  It is the story of an idealistic usurper King of a vaguely European-style Medieval kingdom and his closest friends and allies.  He is a reformist King with high ambition of making the world a better place.  To that end he befriends and later commissions a rogue barbarian sorcerer with fearsome innate powers he himself can barely control to travel across the land in search of ancient magical artifacts in a bid to secure his future hold on power.

The voice cast is excellent, with veteran voice actress Luci Christian voicing the sword-wielding, strong female lead.

Brina Palencia voices a minor character and quasi (early) love interest of the main protagonist, our wayward sorcerer, who is a bit of a slacker and anti-hero.  I've heard she does not really feature much in the main story, which is a bit of a disappointment to hear.

Fair warning, this show contains very gruesome and brutal depictions of very violent death.  It makes Gantz look amateurish by comparison.  If Gantz and, say, Negima!? had an illicit love child it would probably come out looking like Legend of Legendary Heroes.

 

Just finished Summer Wars

I just finished the mind-blowing experience that is the feature-length near-future sci-fi Anime feature film Summer Wars voiced in English dub by FUNimation's best and brightest cast members.  With strong female lead voiced by the amazing Brina Palencia...

In fact, the only reason I knew about this title at all was hearing Brina mention it on her most recent appearance of That Anime Show with hosts J. Michael Tatum (who plays Brina's character's favorite uncle) and Terry Doty...Brina let fans in a little insider knowledge...namely that when she was recording in the booth she focused mentally on her personal very close relationship to her own grandmother, and for the death and grieving scenes for her character, those emotions you hear, her crying, her sobs, everything are 100% genuine.  A lesser actor might've lost it entirely, but Brina was able to pull up those raw emotions from deep within herself and transfer them to the character and push through the scenes and the lines, delivering them spot on in one take.

The story is set in the very near future and is a cautionary tale about becoming too overly reliant on the virtual world at the expense of the real world.

It is an epic, heroic tale that will make you laugh, cry and cheer...and it is a very Japanese story about honoring one's ancestors, remembering the lessons of history, and staying true to your values.

I honestly would've been completely entertained by these characters if all it turned out to be was a romantic comedy farce, which is the hook in the beginning...but then it veers quickly off course into a simply AMAZING story....

The only thing I can compare it, and my emotional response to is the series Eden of the East.  I have yet to view the feature-length Eden of the East movie, but I have seen the complete TV series season that starts off that story.  If you liked Eden of the East you will definitely like Summer Wars and vice versa.  The visuals of both are quite impressive, though the Oz sequences of Summer Wars is a little CG heavy and very almost Western cartoon animation in style, and that can be a bit jarring.  The main AI villian at one point reminded me of one of the tougher alien levels in Gantz and kind of freaked me out a little, too.  Flashbacks, man, flashbacks.

(Gantz is excellent but a freakin' gruesome show)

Kudos all around to the English voice cast of this show.  I always watch my Anime with the English subtitles on, even if I'm watching the English dub.  I like judging the differences between the more exact translation of the raw Japanese and the adaptive English scripts.  These really are some of my absolute favorite FUNimation voice actors to listen to and the best part is, none of them are cast as bad guys, though J. Michael Tatum as the adopted son of the family matriarch  is a bit of a dark horse anti-hero until the very end.

The disc I rented from Netflix of Summer Wars had a trailer for the Eden of the East feature film, reminding me I need to watch it to finish out the story which I *love* so much.  It also had a trailer for the relatively new series Black Butler that I have heard of but realize I need to get around to watching as well...don't think I can call myself a proper otaku if I don't.  I've already heard J. Michael Tatum (who plays Sebastian) gush about this show, and the trailer was very impressive.  It looks dark and twisted but also deeply entertaining.  I like a lot of "dark" shows in Anime, actually; seem to have developed an acquired taste for them through the years.

Anyway, I've been very lax with my Anime blogging but hope to resume it more regularly, as I've been consuming lots of it more recently, and also I am now a regular enough listener to things like ANNcast, the podcast of Anime News Network, and Anime World Order (AWO) with host Daryl Surat, who is a writer for OtakuUSA Magazine, which I have an ongoing 2 year subscription to at the moment.  OtakuUSA is now the last in-print magazine in English devoted to Anime/Manga arts and culture.  Shonen Jump has gone all-digital, so I've recommended my local library that they subscribe to OtakuUSA as a replacement as I think their patrons still will want the tangible, physical media that is OtakuUSA Magazine.  At long last I listen to ANNCast with enough frequency that I never miss an epsiode, AND, I've actually become more tuned in to the world of Anime that I actually know what they're talking about more than 50% of the time now and sometimes I even agree with them.  AWO posts less frequently but I always enjoy their discussions as well.  I also have to say thanks to Anime Nation podcast, sometimes with John flying solo, putting out that Anime news and keeping me in the know.  Thanks also to the Ani.me app on my iPhone that I frequently read at lunch.  The Ani.me website itself is great, but I like having it on my phone for quick and easy access anytime...how else to stay on top of breaking news in the Anime industry, am I right?

Thanks also to the Houston Anime Meetup for hooking me up with other individuals nearby who share my interest and passion for these art forms and who bring all sorts of expertise to the table each and every meeting.

Anyway, Summer Wars is a great way to spend two hours being thoroughly entertained and emotionally satisfied.  I honestly did not know what to expect, and that is probably the best way to enjoy this movie.