Gen X Otaku 1971: the OG blog

In lieu of a Tamako Market recap/review

I'm probably actually going to be attending Game 1 of the Atlantic League Championship game between our local Sugar Land Skeeters and the Lancaster Barnstormers at Constellation Field tomorrow rather than attend the local anime screening in Katy, TX of the first four episodes of Tamako Market.  Not that I've got anything against the series, but it's not every day that your local ball club makes it to the Championship round of their League.  Reading the description of Tamako Market sounds like mostly a slice of life show with a romantic thread in it.  It's probably good, but also the kind of bland sounding show that makes me feel not all that guilty about skipping it in favor of rip roaring local Minor League baseball action as I cheer on the Sugar Land Skeeters to victory at home.

Random Netflix viewing of late

Deadman Wonderland (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So not much to report insofar as completed shows, but I am impressed with some of the new(ish) anime that's been uploaded and added to Netflix lately, including the English dub of the acclaimed series Madoka Magica.  I also started in watching Deadman Wonderland on Netflix.  While I do own it on DVD, now I can watch episodes at lunch on my phone when the opportunity presents itself.  Of late I tend to watch an episode or two of Deadman Wonderland before I move on to watch another episode or two of Psycho-Pass.  They fit well together thematically and tonally.  I usually reach a good stopping point in each show then transition to watching something else, like continuing my re-watch of Knights of Sidonia in Spanish for the hell of it.  I also note that Season 2 of Samurai Jack is now on Netflix streaming, so I've resumed watching that as well.  Though I'm pretty sure I saw most of this show when it aired on TV, every now and then I stumble upon an episode that's new to me, but even when it's a re-watch, it's hardly a waste of time--it's still good to re-visit old episodes of this classic cartoon.  I've also been checking out the re-dub of the original Sailor Moon on Neon Alley.  I had thought it was Sailor Moon Crystal but evidently not.  I had known that VIZ/BangZoom! had re-dubbed the original Sailor Moon to re-release on DVD; the new dub is more faithful to the Japanese original and not censored for U.S. television, etc.  I recognize a lot of the BangZoom! voice talents in the cast, like Stephanie Sheh as Usagi/Sailor Moon and Michelle Ruff as the magical cat Luna.  Todd Haberkorn voices one of the bad guys, and I'm almost certain I've heard Johnny Yong Bosch at least once already.  I never watched the original Sailor Moon (I'm not in the target demographic), but the new dub on Neon Alley is mildly entertaining & amusing.  I'm not rushing to finish it, I only watch maybe one maybe two episodes in any one sitting.  Plus I have to sit through advertising, which is kind of a drag.

I've put on hiatus my two Crackle.com shows, Ruroni Kenshin and Viper's Creed because there's so much quality stuff back on Netflix now to watch instead.  Once I'm finished with Psycho-Pass and Deadman Wonderland, I intend to resume watching those Crackle.com shows and maybe get caught up on some of the Sentai Filmworks shows I can only watch on DVD that I still haven't started or finished, OR, I'll go back to some of the FUNimation shows on their Roku channel that I still need to finish up, like Aquarion EVOL Season 2, and Fairy Tail, to name just two.  I also need to finish up Season 2 of Baka & Test.

For the future, I really hope FUNimation will re-release the original Fullmetal Alchemist series on Blu-Ray someday.  I own Brotherhood on Blu-Ray and I love it, but I've also seen the original series and love it too, for different reasons.  The whole tone & flavor of the original anime is very different.  Not superior, just different.  I did pick up the Blu-Ray edition of Conqueror of Shamballa, which is tacked on to the *original* Continuity and not the Brotherhood continuity.   Also coming up  this week I get to attend a screening of the first four episodes of Tamako Market, new  from Sentai Filmworks.  Then on Thursday this week I'm going to be screening the first few episodes of Princess Jellyfish for a small circle of close friends.  I look forward to this very much.  I'm also trying to get caught up a little on Attack on Titan (part 2), and I need to get caught up on Space Dandy as well.  I need to do that also because I'm way behind on the Toonami Faithful Podcast as well.

In manga, I just finished up volume 2 of Flowers of Evil, which finishes up around where the pivotal Episode 7 leaves off in the anime.  I've already put in my Interlibrary Loan request for the next volume.  Ditto Knights of Sidonia, which I finished the 2nd volume of this weekend as well.  Both manga are published by Vertical. 

Speaking of manga, I'm very happy to see that Houston Public Library has enabled its users to now check out short-term loans of digital graphic novels and bona fide manga from VIZ Media, which is frigging amazing.  I played with a few volumes and they look great on my iPad.  I wish my own home county library district did the same, but alas we're not there yet.  I wish Yen Press would partner with this digital library program as well, but as yet they're not yet participating.  I can always hope.  It only makes sense and should help cut down on piracy of digital manga and give the publisher a revenue stream from library subscriptions and give end users a legitimate way to read their favorite manga digitally on their PC or mobile devices.  Kudos to HPL for forging ahead with this, and to VIZ Media for being willing to play ball. 

I'm still stuck on Vol.6 of the printed manga for Toradora!, featuring Aisaka Taiga's deadbeat father.  I'm also still not very far into Vol.1 of the Haganai manga.  I'll finish these eventually but for right now I prefer reading Flowers of Evil and Knights of Sidonia respectively.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to lately with respect to my anime viewing and my manga reading habits.  Not enough to podcast about, but worthy of a quick blog update, more or less.

Sugar Land Happy Anime Fun Time Podcast

So as I mentioned in passing below, this blog now has a podcast associated with it.  Follow the link to subscribe to the RSS feed or whatever, or to selectively listen to individual episodes.

If you'd rather cut & paste the link yourself, here's the URL:

http://www.spreaker.com/user/7429481

Knock yourself out.  I plan to use up all my alloted memory for a "free" Spreaker account as I play around with being an junior league Anime podcaster.  Once I've used up all the available memory, I'll probably download then delete back episodes to free up space or just quit.  It's just an experiment at this stage, as is this blog.  I'm glad if people enjoy it, but I'm doing it mostly for myself, for practice and just as a fun hobby, nothing more.

Quick impression; FATE/KALEID LINER PRISMA ILLYA (TV-14), ep.1-4

So basically this Type-Moon Magical Girl show takes the existing Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night characters and re-imagines a lot of the female cast as stereotypical Anime "magical girls", while the ancient heroes like Lancer, Archer, Saber, et. al. are re-imagined as the embodiment of magical cards, sort of Cardcaptor Sakura style.  It's sort of a "meta" show that's very self-aware and pokes fun at the Magical Girl genre as it goes.

Unforunately, since this is a Sentai Filmworks property, it does mean that none of the original English dub cast from BangZoom! were called back to reprise their roles.  However, since this show is not really canonical and is a creative re-interpretation, the new voice cast is a concession I can accept.  Hell, the fact that if it means I can pay Sentai Filmworks prices for this release instead of goddamn ANIPLEX pricing, it's a concession I'm glad to make as a fan.  And I definitely feel as though I will be picking up this title, since, as I stated before, I'm a big fan of both the original Fate/Stay Night and (a bit grudgingly) the relatively new prequel Fate/Zero.  I don't actually own either Fate/Stay Night or Fate/Zero on physical media.  The former I watched on rental DVD, while the latter I managed to watch the entirety of on Neon Alley.  I do own Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Bladeworks which is also a Sentai Filmworks release (though it utilizes much of the original BangZoom! cast).  I like it because it's a highly condensed retelling of the Fate/Stay Night series.  It's very action packed and gets straight to the point.  The original Fate/Stay Night is long out of print and would be expensive to acquire, and the Fate/Zero release from Aniplex was way out of my budget. 

It is therefore my hope that FATE/KALEID LINER PRISMA ILLYAwill also be within my budget for anime as well.  I thoroughly enjoyed the first four episodes and look forward to seeing how the story continues from there.  It has a lot of nice call backs to the original series...I don't know how enjoyable it would be to someone not already familiar with the Fate/whatever products of Type-Moon, but as someone already a fan, I heartily approve and really enjoy it.

The Sentai voice cast does justice to these characters and I have no complaints.  Cynthia Martinez makes Ilya just as adorable as Stephanie Sheh did. 

The show is kind of insular otaku-bait, I guess, insofar as it's very inside jokey and those who are new to anime might not get all the references or jokes or visual gags.  But I'm still glad it was dubbed.  Definitely check this series out if you're a fan.  If you're not yet a fan, maybe go watch Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Bladeworks at a bare minimum before you try to watch this show.  My concern is the uninitiated fan would miss too much to fully appreciate this show.

News brief

English: Podcast or podcasting icon Français : Icône pour les podcasts ou la baladodiffusion (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So last night I started Part II of Attack on Titan, taking in Episodes 14-15.  I also started Episode 14, Collection 2 of Majestic Prince.

Tonight I'm looking forward to the first four episodes of FATE/KALEID LINER PRISMA ILLYA (rated TV-14) at Alamo Drafthouse Mason Park in Katy, Texas.  And am still wondering why this is a Sentai Filmworks dub and not an Aniplex/BangZoom! property like the rest of the Type Moon Fate/Whatever stuff.

Should be interesting, at any rate.

OH!  And this blog now has a (loosely) associated podcast...well, kind of.

I've basically been futzing around with the "Spreaker" app on my iPad (the web version of Spreaker is more robust, but I haven't tried using it to record a full episode yet) and playing around with recording my own anime podcast.

Anyway, here's a link to my 3rd and most recent episode:

http://www.spreaker.com/user/7429481/love-is-in-the-air

...where I talk briefly about my impressions of Toradora!, Flowers of Evil, and Say I Love You.

It's just me, recording solo for now, with some J-Pop/J-Rock songs for intro and outro music (I try to keep the music thematic to the anime discussed).

The general rule of podcasts are that the first 5 episodes are garbage, and I'm only on episode 3, so...take it with a hefty grain of salt.  I'm too lazy to go back and edit myself (If I really gave a shit I'd record it on audacity, say, where I really could edit well), I tend to record way late at night, so that's why the yawns here and there.  It's not because I'm bored of the material, it's because I'm dead tired.  It's just my dicking around with some easy recording software and blabbering on about Anime & Manga, only in spoken form rather than written form on this here blog.

I actually used show notes for Episode 2, and I was more "off the cuff" for Episode 1 & 3, which I think actually turned out better.  And even with show notes on Episode 2 I still missed some things I would've liked to have covered.  *Sigh*.  I plan to record as many episodes as the free account on Spreaker will allow, but as to when I record, that's going to be pretty irregular...but basically I'm trying to do recap shows when I finish one or more Anime series or movies.  As with this blog, I will typically spoil the hell out of the material, so please don't listen if you haven't completed the shows I discuss.  I'm only interested in podcasting to people who've already committed the time and dedication to the same shows I have.  But mostly it's a medium of self expression.  I don't actually care if I get many listeners; I apparently have a few followers of this blog and even one subscribed listener to my new-ish podcast, both facts that astonish me.

Anyway, I gotta motor here in a bit and get on down the road to Katy, Texas.  I may try to post a quick recap of tonight's screening if the mood strikes me upon returning home.

Addendum; why the Toradora! ending makes sense (Spoilers, duh)

Cover art of the first DVD compilation released by King Records, featuring main characters Ryūji Takasu and Taiga Aisaka (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I had a flash of inspiration on my morning commute yesterday about the ending of Toradora! and why it actually makes sense from a narrative point of view.  I jokingly called it "bullshit", but it's really not.  See, the problem with Ryuji and Taiga's relationship is that, as Ami said, it did have this weirdly "surrogate father/daughter" vibe to it, and one aspect of that was Taiga's initial total dependency on Ryuji and his mother for even her most basic needs like food and good domestic hygene. 

I think Taiga recognized that she had to learn to stand on her own two tiny feet and be her own woman first before she could formally enter into relationship with Ryuji as a full and equal partner.  It was a necessary step for her after their relationship took a decidedly romantic turn.  It wasn't (obviously) a "Goodbye forever" but a "Goodbye for now, there's something I have to do first."; It was already alluded to that Taiga was slowly learning from Ryuji how to fend for herself, cook for herself, clean up after herself, etc.  She also "got over" her longtime "crush" on Kitamura, especially after Kitamura's very public and very embarassing confession to Kano, the Student Council President, who went to America.  It's obvious that Kitamura's not giving up on her, as he announced his own intention to study abroad in America the very next year.  In other words, he still loves her and is following after her.  It's a reality Taiga had to just accept.  Minori had a much tougher time because she did in fact still love Ryuji herself but felt in her heart that Ryuji made a better match for Taiga than herself.

Anyway, as I mentioned below, you have to watch through ALL of the credits to get the true and happy end of Toradora!  The best things come to those who wait, etc.

I for one believe it leads to this...

and this:

 

My best Pre-order Blu-Ray ever; or, Finished Toradora! (spoilers!)

The main characters of Toradora! (from left to right): Ryūji, Yūsaku, Taiga, Minori, and Ami. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well, I just finished my Blu-Ray Deluxe edition of Toradora! last night, including the OVA.  Without a doubt, the best Blu-Ray Pre-order purchase of Anime I've ever made.  I thoroughly enjoyed that series from start to finish.

I know a lot of people complain about the ending, and yeah, it's kind of bullshit, but I wonder how many of the people complaining the loudest simply #ragequit at the credit scroll and stormed off?  Because if you want your happy ending you have to put yourself in Marvel Movie viewing mode and sit through all the credits through the end and f*cking pay attention.  In a perfect ending, Taiga should've broken the fourth wall and cursed the viewer out..."You think I'd give up on my man after all THAT?  DUMBASS!!"  Anyway, it was great, even if the midway point to the credit scroll of Ep.25 was kind of a big middle finger to the audience.   The true ending (post credits) redeems it.

As great as the main characters are, I think the one I feel most for is Minori Kushieda.  That pained expression on her face in the penultimate episode, where Ryuji is attempting to lie about having rescued Taiga in the snowstorm, it was so well rendered as to be simply heartbreaking.  The pain in her quivering eyes was palpable.  Her look of "...how fucking could you!" at Ryuji.  Minori just breaks and refuses to be a part of the farce any longer.  She blurts out the truth, that it was Ryuji who saved Taiga and not Kitamura.  She could've added for emphasis "I was f*cking there!! I started to go after you but HE (points) pulled me back to go after you himself.   Because he loves you dammit and you love him."---of course, the beauty of this anime is that all that extra dialogue is unnecessary, because Minori's face says ALL of it in that scene.

She's totally justified at blowing up at them both...She spends the latter half of the series in a deep depression...because she's in love with the same guy as her best friend whose life is way more effed up than her own and who desperately needs Ryuji to keep her world from falling apart...Minorin has to push aside her own feelings and suffer in silence while Ryuji and Taiga keep deceiving themselves about the nature of their relationship and their feelings for each other.  The series did a good job keeping me guessing at Minorin's true feelings right to the end.  I knew she was upset and in pain and putting on a brave face for several episodes, but her confession did genuinely surprise me a little.  Though I suppose in hindsight it was alluded to indirectly when Taiga forced the two of them together on the street and Minori had to grab Ryuji by the hand to keep him from wandering into traffic and immediately blushed with embarssment and muttered "Stupid Taiga Stupid Taiga Stupid Taiga" under her breath.  The show does a good job of keeping Minorin's feelings opaque and does dangle the possibility of her being an in-denial lesbian.  Minorin even says as much out loud, questioning herself.  Plus she's a jock and aggressive softball player, and a little weird generally.  Hell, she could actually be bi.  But it was oddly gratifying to learn she did have love for Ryuji after all, though that love also caused her enormous pain, too.  But you can't really help who you love...a lot of it's involuntary and it does sometimes hurt, especially when other considerations prevent you from acting on those feelings.  Minorin is the very best friend you could ever want.  She's loyal, quirky, cheerful, and willing to endure a great deal of emotional pain for the friends she loves and cherishes.

I had trouble relating to Ami Kawashima...one of my Twitter friends kept insisting Ami was "best girl" in the show, and I held back my judgement until I had finished, but I just don't see it.  I get that she has strong feelings for Ryuji and she's right to point out and criticize the almost creepy, quasi "(surrogate)father-daughter" dynamic at play in Ryuji and Taiga's day to day relationship...but Ami's such a passive-aggressive b*tch it's no wonder she only knows how to catch Ryuji's attention with her body, but instantly repulses him when she opens her mouth and starts talking.

Anyway, besides Toradora! I also recently watched and finished Flowers of Evil.  I know the rotoscoping is very off putting to a lot of viewers but I didn't mind it myself.  As you know, I generally don't go for sub-only shows but I made an exception for this one.  It was good, but its stock in trade is the emotion of dread, and the episodes themselves have such emotional intensity that I could only stand to watch 2 maybe 3 episodes back to back.  The "bad girl" chick, Nakamura, is actually kind of hot.  I joked on Twitter that I only later realized that she's essentially a gritty "real life" tsundere, insofar as she treats him like shit and curses him out and it takes a long time to figure out she actually has feelings and desires for the main character.  The main character idolizes the popular girl Saeki, but feels unworthy of her.  The whole arc of the show is learning that rough-and-tumble Nakamura is more closer to who he really is rather than what he merely wishes himself to be.  He can't actually handle angelic Saeki as a flesh-and-blood girl.  The real thing could never live up to his abstract ideal.  On the other hand, earthy, vulgar Nakamura represents the dark, untamed female sexuality he actually craves but is too chicken-shit to admit it to himself or acknowledge it.  She's his dark soulmate, every bit as misanthropic and nihilistic and self-loathing as he is.  I'm glad this was picked up by Sentai Filmworks and given a North American home video release (I bought it on Blu-Ray), but it was a commercial flop in Japan, so it's highly doubtful a Season 2 will be forthcoming, which is unfortunate, as the final episode contains a lot of "flash forward" style previews of what a Season 2 would've looked like, and it looks freaking awesome.  *Sigh*  So, like Roundpeg of 2Lazy2Botaku so often says, yet another case of "f*ck you, read the manga" (which I am doing and it is pretty awesome in its own right).

I also liked Knights of Sidonia.  In fact, I liked it so much, I'm rewatching it again on Netflix in Spanish this time for the sheer hell of it.

Other anime I'm futzing around with include the usual Toonami stuff (Space Dandy, Attack on Titan) and also a few selections from Crackle.com, such as old episodes of Ruroni Kenshin (aka Samurai X) and a mediocre sci-fi action series Viper's Creed that I'm mainly watching because it's dubbed in English and looks kind of cool.  I sometimes watch an episode before bed on my iPad, mostly.

Oh, and lastly I'm working my way through Psycho-Pass on Netflix as well, which is a damn fine anime in its own right. Dystopian sci-fi police drama and dark as hell.  Likeable main character, strong supporting male character, etc.

Finished Blu-Ray of The Flowers of Evil (惡の華 Aku no Hana?), Ep. 1-13

I finally finished all 13 episodes of the Sentai Filmworks Blu-Ray release of The Flowers of Evil (惡の華 Aku no Hana^?).  This was no easy task.  I also managed to acquire Volume 1 of the manga via Interlibrary loan and finish it as well, the contents of which cover the first several episodes of the anime adaptation.

The emotion that best describes the experience of watching this anime is one of pure dread, of not knowing where things will go next.  It is the sensation of feeling your own stomach twist in knots at trying to gauge just how screwed the main protagonist actually is at any given point.

It captures the claustrophobia of boring, small town life as a teenager experiences it...a constant bipolar switching between ennui and existential angst.

Disaffected, alienated teen boy Takao Kasuga (春日 高男 Kasuga Takao^?) reads highbrow foreign literature and despises his philistine classmates.  From afar, he admires seemingly untouchable Nanako Saeki (佐伯 奈々子 Saeki Nanako^?), who would surely never give a scumbag like himself the time of day.  Saeki is his muse, his guiding light, more a work of art and a divine presence than a flesh and blood teenage girl.

But Kasuga-kun is a normal heterosexual teen boy with certain lusts and desires.  On a crazy whim, he finds and steals Saeki's gym clothes, but is spotted by Sawa Nakamura (仲村 佐和 Nakamura Sawa^?), the resident "bad girl" of their class.  She's intrigued by Kasuga's brazen act and decides to blackmail him for her own amusement.  This sets up the central conflict of the show.

One day, after the class is already reeling from the scandal of Saeki's stolen gym clothes, another student reports her lunch money has been stolen.  Suspicion falls upon unpopular misanthrope weirdo Nakamura-san.  Nakamura intimidates everyone, even the faculty.  She's always sullen, angry, solitary.  She makes the perfect scapegoat for the busy-body class rep, who levels the acusation that of course Nakamura must've stolen the money.  Takao definantly stands up for Nakamura and the class backs down.  This act of social bravery actually catches the attention of Saeki, who finds Kasuga more attractive now for being willing to take a stand on behalf of Nakamura.  Kasuga can't believe his luck and impulsively asks Saeki on a date, to join him at the local bookstore.  To his great surprise, she accepts.  Unfortunately, Nakamura is just coming up the stairs and overhears everything.

While I guess looking back at the series, you could technically classify Nakamura as a "Tsundere", her personality and character are so much larger than this prefabricated Anime trope.  As we later learn, she's the child of divorce, growing up with a single parent (her befuddled dad) and a kindly grandmother.  While Saeki is definitely drop dead beautiful, rough-around-the-edges Nakamura is not without her charms.  She wears glasses and cuts her hair short, but there's a raw sexual energy and passion that exudes from Nakamura.  She actually has a pretty face and a nice body.

Saeki represents for Kasuga a Platonic Ideal.  He's quite unprepared to deal with Saeki as a flesh and blood ordinary girl.  He's wracked by inexplicable disappointment in what should be his greatest triumph.  Saeki could not be more loving or forgiving of all of Kasuga's flaws and trangressions....but one senses that Kasuga can't deny that Nakamura, despite her constant verbal and physical abuse, actually understands him better than naive Saeki ever could.  There's a certain magnetism that Nakamura exudes that draws Kasuga to her like a moth to a flame.  Nakamura is dangerous, uncontrollable female sexual desire personified.  She's wild, untameable.  She makes Kasuga feel more alive than he ever has in life.  Nakamura is flesh and blood femininity...and when Saeki offers to be the same for Kasuga, it tarnishes his ideal he once held for Saeki.  He can't reconcile his idea of Saeki with the actual frail girl before him.  But he also lacks the courage to push the boundaries past all limits with Nakamura.  He fails to be able to decide between the two girls and in the process (seemingly) loses them both.

This anime is very good, but it is hard to watch except in limited bursts, because it's just so emotionally intense and fills one with so much dread.

I'm a little surprised Nakamura didn't give Kasuga-kun a well deserved knee in the groin in the later episodes.  The last episode finishes on a dramatic climax, but then rolls what I can only assume are possible future scenes from a second season that is unlikely to ever be produced.  All that we will have to continue the story is the original manga, translated into English.  The scenes flash by so quickly it's hard to tell what's going on, but it seems Nakamura will probably wind up being Kasuga's first sexual partner.  But there's a disturbing scene also where Nakamura embraces a distraught Saeki who is apparently bleeding vaginally onto her own legs while wearing a school uniform skirt.  It's unclear if she miscarried or was raped and attempted to give herself an abortion or what.  There seems to be much violence and madness ahead, but alas, only manga readers will actually get to see how it plays out, most likely, since the original DVD/Blu-Ray was a commercial disaster in Japan.  I hope it does decently for Sentai Filmworks in North America, but that would not be enough to get a 2nd season continuation green lit back in Japan.

The manga's dialogue is a bit more explicit, and confirms Nakamura's intensely sexual yearnings and barely contained desires that the rotoscoped performances also convey vividly but much more wordlessly than the manga.  It's more inferred than explicitly stated in the anime adaptation.  Nakamura is bubbling over with sensuality and lust in ways that naive Saeki couldn't possibly compete with, and even attempting to compete on that level with Nakamura destroys her idealized pefect state that Kasuga always held her in his mind as embodying.

The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudillaire is all about unrequited longing, an indictment of modern French bourgeois society around him, and a longing after a perfect, therefore unrealizable artistic ideal.  Kasuga relates to this book of poems and feels similarly trapped and confined by village life in this small Japanese provincial town.  But even he professes not to fully understand Baudillaire's work.  Nakamura isn't as much interested in reading Baudillaire as living out his rebellious ideals and reveling in the condemnation of "normal" society.

When Kasuga speaks of being an "empty person", I also had a passing thought comparing Kasuga to the titlar protagonist of Robert Musil's great unfinished novel, Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaften ("The Man without Qualities"), to whom Kasuga bears at least a superficial resemblance. 

Anway, this anime series is a complex work of art that I will probably revisit again someday, and I look forward to continuing the many volumes of this manga in future as well.

Gatchaman Crowds, Ep.1-4

G-Force, from left to right: Ace, Hooty, Pee Wee, Aggie and Dirk. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So I just got back from a screening of Gatchaman Crowds (Episodes 1-4) and to my great surprise, not only did the ADR Director & cast & crew turn out, but among them was none other than Luci Christian!!  Pretty amazing.  I'd already gotten Luci's autograph at Anime Matsuri, but it was pretty special to see her again.

My brief jokey synopsis of Gatchaman Crowds, Ep.1-4; our team of heroes recruits a loud crazy girl, and they have to battle these mutant Borg-like Rubik's Cubes that they think are bad but crazy girl makes them friendly and then the original cross-dressing big-bad from the original series shows up The End (of Ep.4).

This series bears only very tenuous connections to the original Science Ninja Team Gatchaman; the main influences of which are the Gatchaman "G" logo and the bird iconography.  Beyond that, and the return of even more flamboyant Berg-Katse turned up to 11, that's about it as far as deep connections go.

It's a very weird show so far, and I look forward to seeing where Gatchaman Crowds takes us.  There seems to be an Eden-of-the-East type vibe going on and expanded into a more definitively sci-fi direction, with spontaneous, anarchic Crowd Sourcing solving all of society's problems without the need of plodding, slow, musty ol' government.  This anime feels like some anarchist's wet dream...or Libertarian mental fap fetish....the intellectual masturbation is strong in this one.

It needless to say has a very strong utopian and even pacifistic streak running through it, or at least for the first four episodes.  It's pure fantasy, and if you just go with it, you'll probably enjoy this series a lot more than if you subject it to rational scrutiny, etc.

I enjoyed the first four episodes, but MAN this show is weird.  And it feels like it's only gonna get weirder as the narrative progresses.  My friend Stephen won the Blu-Ray edition in the drawing at the end, so he gets to continue the journey.  As for me, this isn't a "must buy" title, but it's something I might pick up later on down the line, to put along side my original Gatchaman Box Set re-released by Sentai Filmworks.

The English dub seems to like the word play between English slang "Gotcha" and the Japanese title, Gatchaman.  Whatever, it's dumb but it works, so I give it a pass.  Purist weeaboos might hate it, but *shrug*.

It's worth a look, and I'd probably watch beyond Episode 4 if I were renting this volume by volume.