In which a guy old enough to know better talks about...stuff.
Including, but not necessarily limited to: Wrestling, Metal, Anime, Books, Comics, Cartoons, Stuff that pisses me off, AOR and songs with "Metal" in the title.
MinamiCon is now a regular part of the UK Anime calendar but there's a first time for everything and as it so happens, I was there for the very first event.
I think it's fair to say that the scene was very different back then. Put it this way, the number of women at Minamicon was safely in single figures. it was also a bit of a weird period for anime fans. Anime was booming, but a big hunk of the output was the super-violent stuff put out by Manga Video. MinamiCon was set up for people who wanted something else and at the time they were a minority. The idea that something like "Your Name" would be a critical and commercial success in the UK would blow people's minds.
Anyway, here's some flyers I found in an old photo album. I think the artist was one of the regulars at the much-missed Mondo Comics. (Name withheld for his privacy) I also edited out the contact details for the organiser.
Alka is an assassin and the last suvivor of the Clan Of The Sword. After her village was wiped out by the Palme Empire, she sought revenge on the dark-magic users responsible.
Along the way she runs into a hard-drinking bounty-hunter, a strong-willed grave-robber and an enigmatic innkeeper, all of whom have their own plans.
I picked this one up because it looked sort of interesting. (And if you haven't read this blog before, anything involving gorgeous women with swords is going to get my attention. I apologise for nothing)
What I was expecting was fanservice-heavy fluff but Blade And Soul turned out to be a bit of a surprise.
While I was right about the fanservice - lots of seriously stacked female characters here - and there is a bit of fluff, the anime is more serious than I was expecting.
From the bloody opening scene there's plenty of death and this includes characters I was expecting to be important. More importantly, some of those deaths turn out to have repercussions. Remember that our heroine Alka is an assassin and as the series progresses, previous jobs come back to hurt her.
As a general thing, things did not go the way I was expecting at all. A series with this much jiggling should not have got me so invested.
Blade and Soul does have some flaws. Alka is essentially a blank-faced robot for much of the series and it's made even more noticeable compared to some of the dynamic characters around her. Once the cracks start to show, she gets a lot more interesting.
Problem #2 is that with such a short episode count, a number of interesting ideas are either skipped past or don't pay off. Example: Villainess Jin Varrel clearly has an interesting backstory but we never get to see it beyond enigmatic glimpses. Blade And Soul is based on an MMPORG so maybe some things are explained there. Doesn't help me much, though.
And did we really need that beach/hotsprings episode right at the end? It's entertaining and closer to the light-hearted anime I was expected but after the serious tone of the previous episodes it is a bit jarring. I can't help feeling that the time and effort could have been put to better use.
On the plus side, the art and animation are more than respectable, with some effort being put into the fights. Even more effort was put into the ending animation, where a certain character show off her dancing skills. I was genuinely impressed.
Moving on to a pet peeve for a moment, I am always happy to see anime where female characters are obviously grown women, rather than drawn as 12 years olds who just happen to have tits.
To sum up: Blade And Soul isn't ground-breaking but it turned out to be a pleasant surprise and I enjoyed watching it for all the right reasons.
Here's the dance routine I was talking about. Enjoy. .
What with BabyMetal, Band-Maid, Lovebites and the frankly odd Neconomidol the Japanese have created then cornered the market in Kawaii Metal. Metal bands that combine catchiness, melody and a definite Anime soundtrack feel to them.
However Canadian metalheads Kobra and The Lotus have decided to challenge the J-Idols at their own game. Their latest video sees front-woman Kobra Paige not only singing in Japanese and rocking a distinctly cute ensemblebut getting her own crazy anime avatar.
Personally I loved it. I like the song and while the anime vid isn't exactly Studio Madhouse it has a quirky charm and a happy ending. I also have to admire the drummer windmilling as he plays. That can't be easy.
Evil genius Dr. Butler creates a brand new energy thing and uses it to cause havoc by tapping into the world's computers. Planes crash, trains crash, nuclear missiles get fired, and traffic jams get really bad. All of which causes the authorities to call in non-evil genius Dr. Kim and his assistants: ice queen Sheila and hapless loser Keith. Dr. Butler takes exception to their interference so all three are sucked into the computer world where Kim and sheila are put to work on some evil project or another and Keith is forced to play computer games...
To The Death!
Can Keith escape? Can our heroes stop the evil Dr. Butler? Why is there a tiny robot girl with no nose? Why is her sister a sexy pirate chick? What the bloody hell is going on anyway?
I can remember seeing this one on the "Anime" shelf back when the whole Japanimation was starting to get attention in the UK and even then recognised it for what it was: An old anime film repackaged for the kiddie market and subsequently reshelved in the hopes that anime fans might go "Ooh. that looks Japanese. Me buy"
Except it isn't Japanese.
This is a Korean film called Computer Haekjeonham Pokpa Daejakjeon which is a lot of words to say "Blatant Tron Ripoff" There's even a frisbee fight FFS.
Lack of originality isn't the only problem. Even compared to other work from 1983 the animation is nowt special and if I didn't know better I'd be convinced that this was stitched together from a TV series as that's the artwork standard. Then there's the story which drags like hell. A sequence where hapless gamers are dropped into arcade games to see how they like being blasted is stretched out for too long and a car-chase suddenly judders to a halt when Keith becomes playmate to the aforementioned robot girl.
Why anybody thought that was necessary to the plot puzzles me. You couldn't have given the sexy piratess more screen time? She's more fun than Sheila who is about as much fun as televised furniture-polishing.
By the time the climax arrives, I didn't care any more.
The big, bigger, biggest problem, however, is the dubbing because holy crap it is terrible.
Saviour Of The Earth is appallingly bad. Flat, robotic voices, dodgy accents, stilted dialogue...all the hallmarks of disinterested, low-budget voice-dubbers are present and correct. There is literally not a single person who manages to give their performance any kind of sparkle or effort. Were there even professionals involved or did the dubbing director just round up some of his cleaners and stick a mic in their faces?
To sum up: Do not watch this movie. I did and I regret it.
I would post screen shots but I don't want to take up even more of my time on this movie. So let's have a couple of Pirate Captain Ann - who deserved a much better film.
These two are sisters. Don't ask me how.
A shot the animators liked so much they used it twice.
I haven't had much time for blogging lately so I apologise if you've been wondering where the hell I got to.
It's also about time I did an anime review so here we go with a look at:
Japanese title: Chūnibyō demo Koi ga Shitai!
12 episode :TV series & OVA
Highschool Rom-Com/Drama with outbreaks of fantasy.
Chūnibyō: "A state where you're so desperate to stand out that you literally convince yourself of having a secret knowledge and hidden powers"
Which is maybe a polite way of saying "Kids who watched too much anime and got carried away with the cosplaying"
Yūta Togashi was a chūnibyō during middle school, calling himself The Dark Flame Master, and as a result made himself into a social outcast. High school is his chance to start again with a clean slate and put his awkward past behind him once and for all.
But then one night a strange girl with a patch over one eye drops down a rope from the flat above and asks "Did you see? Do you want to see?" before disappearing again.
The next day, the same girl makes a scene in class, declaring that she's been waiting eons to meet him and that her hidden eye "resonates" - whatever the hell that means.
Dark Flame Master, meet The Eye of the Wicked Lord
Her name is Rikka Takanashi, she's got a really bad case of chūnibyō and Yūta's plans for a normal high-school life are completely screwed.
Not only does Rikka know his secret, she's decided that he's her new ally in a quest to find The Hidden Boundary Lines regardless of his feelings on the matter.
Yūta has an interesting line in interrogation techniques
This is another anime I stumbled across through watching Anime Vines. It looked a bit silly so when I found the 2 DVD set in my local CEX, I snapped it up. I then ended up binge-watching the series in two continuous sessions.
As expected there was indeed plenty of silliness. Yūta finds himself the unwilling straight man to Rikka's hyperactive imagination and a supporting cast that's equally peculiar in their own way.
Kumin Tsuri. Her favourite hobby is Napping and her dream is to start a School Napping Club
The first few episodes are essentially Yūta trying to deal with the normal drama of high-school (making friends,, meeting girls and so on) while riding herd on a girl who literally cannot get a can of soda from a vending machine without turning it into a magical ritual.
Offical Class Hottie Shinka Nibutani
So there's a fair bit of amusement to be had in Rikka's attempts to remake reality into something cooler where she's the star and in Yūta's inevitable reaction.
Except there's a wee bit more to it than that. Yūta may be exasperated with Rikka's lunatic behaviour but he's also the closest thing she's got to a friend. (Apart from equally deranged sidekick Sanae Dekomori that is. ) and the two do get some heartwarming moments.
This is not one of them.
Then, as seems to happen a lot with anime, the drama suddenly ramps up a lot in about episode seven and you get a much better insight as to why Rikka prefers her fantasy world to reality. For a lighthearted rom-com, there's some heartbreaking moments. There's also some really good fight scenes even if they do tend to turn into Rikka flailing away with an umbrella once reality kicks back in.
What the hell are Rikka and Sanae trying to do, exactly?
I liked this anime a lot. I was impressed by the animation. (Seriously - the fight scenes are cool) I liked the characters and the way they played off each other. Some people might find Rikka annoying but as somebody else who has trouble with reality, I can kinda relate. The others all get some great moments as well.
Some scenes had me genuinely cracking up and others had me wanting to give everybody onscreen a big hug. That's rare these days.
Chunibyo.. is not one of those anime that takes your breath away but if you want 12+1 episodes of entertaining Highschool Rom-Com/Drama and a character who thinks she's the star of a fantasy anime, this might be a DVD worth looking at.
Hello and welcome to my semi-regular look at Heavy Metal album covers that eschew demons, vikings and bloodshed in favour of pretty girls.
(Although you frequently do get album covers starring pretty girls that just happen to be demons, vikings or running amok with a chainsaw. And I've posted enough of them to prove it )
Today's post is going to feature a slightly different approach to the Cover Girl, courtesy of a nation that has their own unique take on graphic design.
In Japan Manga/Anime is a big, big thing. Naturally some of that bleeds into album covers as well.
You know, 2 years ago I'd never have believed that the words "Cute" and "Metal" would ever appear in the same sentence. Then Babymetal happened. Japan really is a strange place...
In which I dig out an anime cassette that I haven't watched in ...(counts on fingers)...about 10 years.
Tokyo, somewhere in the future. "Headmeters" are powerful espers who can do all sorts of cool psionic shit - flying, blowing stuff up, all that jazz. Kei was a failed attempt at creating a Headmeter who has done a runner with his daughter Ai, ex cop Raiden and a large cat that's way smarter than it ought to be. Kei's bosses want Kei back or dead. And they really want Ai back since she's some sort of living psionic booster. In the process stuff gets broken, people die messily and some seriously weird shit happens.
During the initial anime boom the various companies quickly established a House Style. Manga Video tended towards SciFi and Horror aimed at the "Lad" crowd, the bloodier the better (Urotsukidoji, Fist Of The North Star) . Anime Projects released gentler, subtitled material forthe more hardcore Anime fanbase (Urusei Yatsura, Oh My Goddess) while Kiseki sat somewhere in between the two (Black Magic M66, Plastic Little)
And Western Connection released a bunch of stuff that they could get hold of cheaply. quickly slap subtitles on and dump onto the market with infamously poor tape quality.
Even so, sometimes they released some decent stuff. The Lupin III movies and Devil Hunter Yohko were definitely worth buying. Ladius...um...not so much.
So I had to wonder how well "Love City" would stand up after all this time.
For an anime from the 1980s, Love City holds up surprisingly well although some bits better than others.
The animation isn't bad, especially given the era, although it is a bit strange seeing certain characters mugging like they just popped in from the "Urusei Yatsura" comedy next door.
Espers making people explode followed by borderline slapstick is just odd.
Does this look like a man in a Dystopian SF/Horror?
On the subject of weird, there's some creative ideas in this OVA, starting with the aforementioned Headmeters
"Why are they called that?" I hear you ask cautiously.
Every time a Headmeter uses their power, a handy guide appears on their forehead. Head...Meter. See?
The serious looking redhead above is K2. Later on she gets a costume change.
If I haven't said it already, this is not a comedy so don't ask me why she's dressed as a bunny.
One of the villains is a wrinkly old dude in a robot suit.
The mental image you just had is wrong.
Here he is.
I don't know what that liquid is but I'm fairly certain it's at least 40% piss.
Then there's this bit.
We haven't got to the ending yet. The ending is where it gets really weird.
Allow me to go off on a tangent for a minute. I've been watching anime now for about 20 years so I'm kinda used to it.
But back when this stuff was just starting to trickle into the UK there was nothing around to compare. "Mindblowing" is not the word. Anime introduced me to whole new levels of bizarre.
The storyline is fairly simple by contrast. Bad guys want the girl. Good guys want to stop them. Bad guys want to bring about a messy armageddon. Good guys want to stop that too. Simple but it's done decently and with some little wrinkles to keep things interesting.
It goes without saying that the climax involves flesh squirming and mutating in ways that only happen in horror anime. Luckily there's no tentacle rape involved, which as far as I'm concerned is a bonus.
To sum up: Love City is very much a product of it's era and is not without flaws. That doesn't mean it's without merit and if you like your anime bloody and a bit strange then Love City might be worth keeping an eye out for.
When it comes down to it, one of the major reasons I started this blog was to give me somewhere to go "Here's the cool thing I just discovered. Let me tell you about it." especially where anime was concerned.
So...
This is something cool I've discovered. Let me tell you about it.
Teenage perv Issei Hyudo has finally managed to get a date with a cute girl and it's been going great so far...
Right up until she rams a glowing spear through his chest.
Dying, Issei's last thoughts are of the beautiful redhead he saw that morning.
The next morning Issei finds himself alive and unharmed.
After a confusing day that involves being stabbed again, Issei awakens unharmed as before, except now he's naked.
So is the redhead lying next to him.
Her name is Rias Germory, she is a Devil and Issei is now her servant.
One night I found myself Youtubing Anime Vines (Short, funny vids usually with inappropriate audio tracks) In the process I began thinking "Hmm. Wonder what that anime is..it looks fun. So does that one...WTF is that?" Which in turn lead to me going away with a short list of anime to check out.
I'm trying to remember exactly why I decided to start with Highschool DXD.
Oh yeah. That would be it.
I ended up watching all three seasons in the space of a week because it turns out that while this particular anime might be heavy on the fanservice, there's lots of other stuff to like as well.
I'm not exaggerating about the fanservice. The opening credits start with the female cast butt naked, for crying out loud. I'm also convinced that the guy who drew the eyecatch panels (that bookend the commercial break) thought he was working for a porno anime because they go well beyond the usual anime cheesecake to the point where it gets uncomfortable.
On the positive side, the hero's obsession with boobs leads to him developing some "special attacks" that have to be seen to be believed.
If that hasn't put you off, we'll move on.
As Issei gets used to his new life, he meets the rest of the Gremory household (also devils) and develops his latent powers. It turns out that our slightly-depraved protagonist has a dragon-spirit living in his arm which enables him to do all sorts of spectacular attacks. In traditional anime fashion, as the series progresses, Issei gets more and more powerful. The rest of Team Gremory aren't exactly pushovers either, being either powerful magic users or superpowered.
Which means epic anime fights. You know the sort of thing - lots of powering up, plenty of wilful property damage and, alright, female characters getting their outfits shredded.
It never seems to happen to the blokes, for some reason. Whatever. One of the things I did really like about Highschool DXD is the characters. For a series set in a school that could be described as part fighting anime, part harem show, I was amazed that everybody is likable.
Issei is overly dedicated to boobs but other than that, he's easy to root for being neither a cocky wanker, a doormat or a sex-assault waiting to happen.
The other thing that annoys me about certain anime is female characters treating their male associates like disgusting human beings - even people they're supposed to be friends with - and resorting to violence three times an episode. (What? You said something I didn't like? Let's beat you bloody. Oops. Turns out it was a misunderstanding. Too bad.)
So it's a refreshing change Rias and the other girls seem to be quite fond of their newest member, which is where the "harem" bit starts to come in later on. It starts off with a two-way rivalry between rias and ex-nun Asia, then Rias's lieutenant Akeno gets in on the act once she gets to know Issei better.
The thing is, you can sort of see where they're coming from. Remember what I said about Issei being likable? He gets some really nice character moments with the rest of the team.
You know, for a bunch of literal devils, The Gremory household are a sweet bunch. Rias is probably the most pleasant demon-princess in anime history.
Up until you hurt one of her gang, at which point you discover why she's got the tag "Crimson haired Ruin Princess"
Everybody gets an interesting backstory, everybody has a function in the series. While the storyline and battles revolve and Issei, it's not entirely The Issei Show. I like that.
I also like the show's approach to mythology - you get devils, angels and fallen angels, Norse gods, dragons and Church warrior-nuns all thrown into the mix with regular school politics. Boring it isn't.
Animation quality is servicable rather than spectacular but they do remember to animate the fights and usually quite well.
Summing up: I enjoyed this series a lot. I cannot, in all fairness, describe Highschool DXD as groundbreaking, clever or ,particularly deep. But it does have a lot of entertainment to offer.
You might want to be careful watching this anime around other people though...
As you've probably worked out by now, I'm quite a big fan of Ms. Gremory. Here's an AMV somebody did that might explain why. .
I was digging through a seldom visited folder on my hard-drive when I stumbled across something I forgot I still had.
About ten years ago I was watching a lot more anime than I do these days and I did what an awful lot of anime fans do - I decided to make my own AMV.
(Anime Music Video, for those who don't know)
The end results can best be described as rough around the edges but in my defence I was using the standard technique at the time - copying bits from one VCR to another by frantically mashing "play" and "record" at roughly the same time. You had to get the bit you wanted running on VCR A and hit record on VCR B at just the right moment, allowing for the fact that record had a bit of a lag so you really needed to start recording just before the bit you wanted in the hope that it would sort itself out.
You also needed to make sure the tape you had in VCR B was at just the right spot because otherwise you either recorded over a bit you needed or there was a glaring gap in between scenes.
So I spent many evenings on my knees. fingers poised over two wired-together VCRs trying to create something as cool as the ones I had watched at Minamicon.
Don't even get me started on how I put the bloody music on the end product. More "Play - Record - Swear because you cocked up again" funtime playtime.
These days aspiring music vid makers can use all sots of wonderful computer gizmos. They also don't have to work from 2nd generation bootleg videos that were starting to wear out.
Drat. I'm making excuses, aren't I?
Anyway, I managed to complete three actual videos, each one slightly better than the last. Showed them to family and friends then promptly forgot about them until now.
This is my third and final effort. I kept meaning to do another one but never got round to it. Maybe one day...
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the ( belated) worldwide premiere of something I am still sorta proud of. Hope you like it.
"Ancient temples, sinister villains, and hair-raising chase scenes. These may sound like the highlights of the latest Indiana Jones film, but they are also the domain of Ray Kizuki. Archaeologist and black belt extrodinaire, the explorer woman has come to a remote corner of the world where a vast, legendary temple has been found. With her Ray carries a mysterious, mirror-like object once owned by her father and rumoured to be the key to a lost civilisation. "
One of the things I am grateful to Youtube for is the old, frequently obscure anime, that's been uploaded by fans who refuse to let these titles fade into the darkness.
I have every intention of doing write-ups for some of the more interesting - starting with this one.
Explorer Woman Ray never got a UK release but since it was one of the earliest anime titles to be released onto the US market, I suspect it showed up on a lot of people's tape-trading lists.
I know I saw this anime years and years ago but that was a copy of a copy of a copy, so actually watching it without all that lovely tape-fuzz was a pleasant experience.
Anime fans were a hardy lot back in the day. We'd put up with a level of glitching and Potato Quality that would make kids today punch the monitor. We got a lot of headaches, mind you.
I digress.
The story is pretty much the same for each episode and can best be summed up thus: Bad guy Rieg and his vest wearing henchmen try to misuse the powers of an ancient temple. Rayna "Ray" Kizuki tries to stop them. Stuff gets wrecked.
It's a simple formula but it works quite well. "Indiana Jones" is definitely the right reference point as there's plenty of chases and running around dodging falling masonry.
On the subject of stonework, both episodes take place in the sort of vast, multilayered temple complex you only ever seem to see in Tomb Raider games or adventure movies. Their builders - the vanished PreColumbian civilisation known as the Ords - clearly thought big and seem to have a thing for precarious walkways. And mirrors. Big mirrors.
It's never really explained how Ord temples managed to turn sunlight into some sort of Mystical Super-Energy or what the hell Rieg wants with it.
Then again Rieg wears one of those opera capes with big, flarey collars. That pretty much tells the entire world that he's not only a bad guy, but the sort of bad guy that thinks his destiny is to be God-Emperor of Earth. He has a tendency towards monologuing and gloating that bites him in the ass big time.
Meanwhile heroine Rayna is initially a cold fish but warms up slightly as events progress. In Ep 2 you get a little more insight into her history and why Rieg is not her favourite person in the world.
She's a badass, naturally. Fearless, determined and knocks bad guys about like roided up skittles. Rayna is who Lara Croft wanted to be when she grew up.
Somebody thought it would be a great idea to lumber her with a couple of mildly-annoying teenage girls as sidekicks. Oh joy. I live in hope that Bumbling Comic Relief is a trope that will die off soon.
The whole thing is a little dated, but animated quite well by 80s OVA standards and the action scenes look pretty good. The boat chase in ep 1 is a particular highlight, as is the opening train hijack. .
In short, if you like 1980s action anime, or just fancy a nostalgia trip, "Explorer Woman Ray" is a fun way to kill some time.
DVD quite possibly saved the UK anime scene. (That and torrenting, obviously) but during the switchover, a lot of good titles got forgotten about.
As to why, there's probably all sorts of good reasons - licensing issues, labels preferring to release new material, Illuminati intervention - but wouldn't it be nice if you could sit down and watch the following without tracking errors and tape-snow?
Here's a few things I'd quite like to see back on sale. For the time being I've restricted myself to things that actually got a UK video release first time around. (Some of them do have a US DVD but that's not the same, is it? )
In no particular order:
Wicked City
An uneasy truce between the Human and Demon worlds is protected by agents from both sides. With the treaty up for renewal and terrorists bent on unleashing hell on earth, a human and a beautiful demon woman are paired up to protect the one man crucial to the peace process. Pity he's such a dick.
Normally I loathe "Tits and tentacle" horror anime with a passion but although this one is violent and sometimes downright disturbing, (oh dear gods, there's some places that should never have gnashing teeth) "Wicked City" has more going for it than shock value.
The character designs are quite angular and take a bit of getting used to but it is nice to see female characters that are obviously meant to be grown women. Female lead Maki is cool, collected and competent and although some horrible things happen to her, keeps getting back up to get stuck in again.
Male lead Taki is a bit of a knob sometimes but is likewise competent and it is nice seeing their initial sparring evolve into something warmer.
The bad guys are like something HP Lovecraft would come up with if he got talking with HR Giger after a dose of absinth and then there's the Spider Woman...
Actually, let's not talk about her. I watched this the other day and after that scene it took a crowbar to get my legs uncrossed again.
Wicked City is probably best not watched with company but if you like the darker end of the spectrum, this is worth seeing.
El-Hazard - The Magnificent World (OAV series)
A mysterious woman transports three Japanese pupils and their borderline-alkie teacher to a fantastic new world. A world facing something of a crisis. El-Hazard desperately needs a way to stop the invading Bugrom insect-men and to do that involves teenager Makoto dressing up as ..erm..a Princess.
A cross-dressing hero... a beautiful woman who is really a Weapon of Mass Destruction and who has to be wound up on a regular basis...adorable living armour..spies and giant bugs and priestesses and romance and humour and a giant purple hippo...
This series is certainly inventive. Admittedly the story is the usual "Where the hell are we and why do these people think we're here to save them?" thing we've been seeing since The Wizard Of Oz but it's done with panache and some absolutely glorious Arabian-inspired design work.
Considering this series is stuffed full of memorable, dynamic female characters it's a nice touch that they manage to make hero Makoto, nutjob Jinnai and drunken slob Fujisawa-Sensei strong enough to hang with the girls without coming off as wimps or macho douchenozzles.
An additional bonus is the excellent English dub which features the most crazed laugh in animation history.
One of the best things Pioneer ever released in the UK and if you like "Tenchi Muyo", there's a pretty good chance you'll like this.
Since I am a massive fan of lethal - but curiously sympathetic - War-Doll Ifurita, in lieu of a trailer here's a tribute AMV somebody did. In Russian but it still works.
The SDF-1 Space Fortress and her ill-assorted mixture of crew and civilians were left stranded in space after an engine test went haywire. After fighting off wave upon wave of hostile aliens, the Macross has finally come home to Earth, only to find the militaristic Zentraedi have got there first.
Meanwhile, young fighter pilot Hikaru and aspiring singer Lynn Minmay find themselves thrown together by circumstances. What neither of them realise is that the Zentraedi have taken a special interest in the young songstress...
The Macross tv series was a massive hit in Japan and (after some heavy re-editing) later in the USA so a big-budget movie was inevitable.
Considering this film dates from 1984 it still stands up well. The Macross franchise has always been based on the three pillars of Love, Music... and freaking awesome fighter jets that turn into giant robots. All are present and correct.
At the core of the story is the relationship between Hikaru and Minmay, which gets complicated when no-nonsense officer Misa enters play. Unlike a lot of other movie love triangles, this never seems tacked-on.
Music... Ahh now this is a definite strong point. The orchestral score is majestic all the way through and then you get one of the most peculiarly Japanese moments in anime history when Minmay wins over an entire enemy fleet with a love song.
It makes sense in context.
And just in case this film is sounding sappy, there's the semi-legendary transforming Mecha and some classic anime dogfighting. The short, vicious Mecha duel between human ace Max and alien giantess Millia being a particular highlight. As is the spectacular final battle.
"Macross-Do You Remember Love" was released on VHS by Kiseki but when they fell off the face of the earth nobody was in a hurry to pick up the DVD rights. Since the original Japanese companies have spent the last couple of decades in legal trench warfare, I can't see anybody wanting to get involved in that mess anytime soon.
Bugger.
Rather than posting the trailer, here's that dogfight I was talking about.
I was originally going to do this as a Top Ten but since the piece was already getting rather long, I thought I'd best chop it off here.
There's a few others I can think of that I might cover at a later date: Wings of Honneamise. Venus Wars. Genesis Surviver Gaiarth...
Then of course there's a lot of stuff that never got a UK release that should have done. The second Urusei Yatsura movie immediately springing to mind.
So, anybody out there got any suggestions? I'd love to hear them.
Teenager Kazuto Izuka is a thoroughly ordinary teenage boy. Narue Nanase is an unusual teenage girl who claims to be an alien. Most people think she's a weirdo looking for attention but when Kazuto is attacked by a bizarre mutant dog-monster, he's rescued by Narue and her trusty baseball bat.
It's when she reveals that she can teleport that things get interesting.
As it turns out, she was telling the truth all along.
Urusei Yatsura, Ah! My Goddess, Video Girl Ai, Tenchi Muyo, Onegai Teacher, Kanokon...
Anime has a long and proud tradition of pairing hapless teenage boys up with girls who have something special about them. In fact, there's a reason series like this are known as MagicalGirlfriend anime. There's quite a few of them too.
And that might be the problem I have with this series. It's definitely not the worst anime I've ever seen. (There's a blog post I'll manage one day.) but there's very little here that another series hasn't already done and usually better.
Kazuto and Narue are likeable enough, I suppose, but aren't particularly memorable and since they pair up in episode one there's no real progression in their relationship. No real drama either. They just sort of pootle along having mildly amusing adventures.
The first episode suggests that Narue might have to spend time fighting off hostile aliens but they don't bother showing up again until the very last episode. Narue's sister shows up midway through but after the initial kerfuffle, slots neatly into the cast as though she'd been there all along. There's a UFO-obsessed classmate who is determined to unravel Narue's "secret" - but sends the entire 12 episodes utterly failing to notice that something is going on.
You get the idea. Plot threads that nobody picks up on. A story that has only the sketchiest underlying arc. Characters that aren't as interesting as they ought to be.
To use a Buckaroo Banzai quote: This series goes nowhere and does nothing.
World of Narue isn't horrendous but it's the anime equivalent of digestive biscuits - something to resort to when you haven't anything more interesting available.
I've been an anime fan ever since Manga Video began releasing these strange, violent, new Japanese cartoons in the UK. These days I've drifted away a bit but still put my head round the door from time to time. So I thought I'd share some of my all-time favourite anime scenes. Obviously I'm limited to stuff I could find on Youtube, which is why there's nothing from Studio Ghibli. (Anything that pops up on YT gets nuked almost immediately.) and quite a few others I either could not find at all or the clip was too long or poor quality or somebody put Linkin park over the top of it.
So, in no particular order, here's a buncha scenes I rather liked.None of them are exactly obscure but you try finding clips of Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gotaman on Youtube. Enjoy.
End Of Evangelion - Asuka's Last Stand
Teenage mecha pilot Asuka Langley is on her own, in a mech unit rapidly running out of power, as she battles nine hostile units in a brutal hand to hand fight
Asuka gets a lot of flak for being an utter bitch but she redeems herself here by kicking some righteous ass. And then you get one of the most chilling scenes in anime history.
Macross - Do You Remember Love? - Minmay Sings
In which the fate of the Earth rests on one Space Fortress, a handful of transforming mecha - and a teenage girl singing a gentle love song.
Only the Japanese would think of weaponising Idol Singers and this is the scene I use when I want to explain that Anime does things differently. I also like the song. No seriously. I even went and bought the soundtrack CD.
The Cockpit - The Man Who Didn't Sell His Soul To The Devil
A disgraced Luftwaffe fighter pilot is given a last chance to redeem himself by escorting a captured B17 and her cargo to the rocket testing site at Peenemunde. When he finds out what the cargo is, a terrible choice has to be made. Sacrifice his honour and a woman he loves or allow a horrific weapon to be unleashed on the world.
A very underrated series IMHO and this scene just keeps punching me in the gut every time I see it.
Macross Frontier - The Sing-Off
Another musical moment from the latest entry in the Macross Franchise.
Fighter Pilot Alto is sharing a moment with the two girls in his life - pop idol Sheryl and aspiring songstress Ranka.
When a familiar song comes on the radio, the girls decide to serenade the bewildered Alto.
Poor Alto clearly has no idea what the hell is going on. Can you blame him?
A charming little scene and a ridiculously catchy song to boot.
Dominion Tank Police - The Puma Twins Dance
Masamune Shirow's tale of a dystopic future sees the titular Tank Police facing cyborg badass Buaku and his two catgirl sidekicks. Massive property damage ensues.
Here, the villainous twosome are cornered by a SWAT team. What they need is a distraction...
Along with Project A-Ko, Dominion was one of the first anime on the UK market to go for laughs rather than ultraviolence and tentacle rape. I used to have a t-shirt with the Puma Twins on it.
Because they were frigging cool.
Speaking of Project A-Ko...
Project A-Ko : The Ultimate Chickfight
High School Queen B-Ko Daitokuji has spent the entire film trying to get rid of rival A-Ko Magami. Since nothing else has worked, B-Ko decides to do the job herself.
Oh, did I mention that A-Ko has superpowers? And B-Ko is a genius inventor?
And that there's some hostile aliens invading as well? The result is spectacular.
B-Ko is easily my favourite anime character of all time. How can you not love an elegant young lady who thinks rocket launchers are a fashion accessory? Nuts, obviously, but nobody's perfect.
Black Lagoon - Revy v The Giant Nazi
A Neo Nazi gets the drop on pirate/gunslinger/psycho Revy but then makes the mistake of monologuing. He really should have been paying attention to what his supposed victim was doing...
Black Lagoon is just full of awesome moments and quite a lot of them involve the frankly terrifying Revy. I picked this one because ...well, it's exactly the sort of thing you wish films did more often.
Cowboy Bebop The Movie - Spike vs Elektra
Space Bounty Hunter Spike Spiegel is snooping about somewhere he's not supposed to be when passing agent Elektra busts him. The resulting fight is...well one person is taking it seriously.
Male anime characters tend to come in three varieties:
1. Cocky 2. Moody 3. Hapless doormat.
The easygoing Spike manages to avoid all of these and is, incidentally a bona fide badass.
Macross Plus - Re-entry
Fighter pilot Isamu Dyson tries to sneak through Earths defences by switching off his systems and feefalling. Meanwhile love-interest Myung tries to escape from her trap and rogue AI Sharon Apple uses her hypnotic powers to blow her audience's minds .
In truth it's the music that makes this clip for me. Yoko Kanno couldn't write a bad soundtrack
if she tried and the combination of the very danceable "Information high" plus Sharon Apple's
mindf**k light show make this my favourite scene in the film. Not bad considering the last third of the film is one long procession of coolness.
and finally.
(Replacing the scene I originally had here.)
Ghost In The shell - Kusanagi Beats Up a Bad Guy
Ghost In The Shell is rightly praised for the quality of the animation and an intelligent storyline that combined cyberpunk with some exploration of the human condition. The Wachowski Brothers openly cited GITs as a big influence on The Matrix.
But as far as I'm concerned, the highlight of the entire film was cyborg badass Mtoko Kusanagi's brutal takedown of a fleeing terrorist. When your skin is plastic you can have all sorts of fun extras built in. Like thermal camouflage, for instance. The poor sod literally never knew what hit him.
1. It makes perfect sense to entrust a sophisticated military project to emotionally damaged, hormonal teenagers. For extra effectiveness, try to ensure they’ve never practised with the weapons system.
Or even seen it before.
2. Fighting spirit will overcome superior numbers, combat experience, more advanced technology and the inconsequential matter of the other guy being a foot taller and built like Hulk Hogan. Keep getting back up. Every time he punches you in the face it wears him out just a little more.
3. Pint-sized, teenage girl v army of heavily armed commandos?… bet on the girl every time. Every single schoolgirl in Japan could kick Buffy’s ass and steal her dinner money.
4. No matter how puny you are or how much life keeps kicking you in the face, there is a beautiful girl out there who will love you for who you are.
5. Once one girl decides you are worth bothering with, you will suddenly find yourself surrounded by hotties. Sadly quite a few of them will be utterly nuts. And by “Quite a few” I mean “Nearly all of them”
6. A girl putting you in hospital every other day means she really likes you. Or it could mean she genuinely hates your guts. She doesn’t know herself so you stand no bloody chance. Either way, get used to bruises because you‘re never allowed to tell her “Fuck off, you loonie.”
7. There is always another Martial Arts technique you need to learn. And you will need it because every time you defeat a bad guy, another one steps forward to start making your life miserable.
8. It is generally considered polite to let the other person finish their Transformation Sequence before wading into them. If it’s a magical girl show, you might as well pull out a book. This will take a while.
9. Japanese schools are bloody lethal. If the local delinquents aren’t battering each other with baseball bats, then it’s only because the Karate club put them in hospital - when they weren’t busy fighting the Judo club, the Boxing club, the Chess club and that clique of super powered prefects that even the yakuza are scared of. Oh and half the schools in Tokyo seem to be built over some sort of Hellmouth.
That might explain the overabundance of super powered teenage girls. Natural selection. All the rest got eaten. And finally...
10. Teachers are enormous pervs. Female teachers especially so.
Somehow an oversexed 20-something rubbing her boobs in his face will be the boy's fault and he will get hit with a desk.
And the male teacher trying to get at look at the 15 year old's knickers? Might end up in hospital but he's never going to get fired. Because school boards will ignore everything up to and including the school getting blown to tiny bits provided the exam results are good.
When pretty Natsuki Shinohara asks fellow pupil Kenji Koiso if he wants a job he is more than happy to take her up on the offer, especially since it involves a few days out at her family's countryside home.
What she didn't tell him was that the job involved being introduced to her large, boisterous family as Natsuki's fiance.
Things then get even more complicated when somebody uses Kenji's account to hack into the worldwide OZ network - backbone of world commerce, entertainment and government - and cause all kinds of havoc.
But as the perpetrator is about to find out, pissing off Natsuki''s family was a bad idea.
Because this clan has never yet backed down from a fight and aren't about to start now.
I'm going to come right out and say that I absolutely loved this one.
Studio Madhouse manage to create an anime that covers family drama and cyberspace antics and does both wonderfully. Almost every single one of the extended Jinnouchi clan is established as a vibrant character and their interaction with each other is as good as anything Hayao Miyazaki has ever done.
Then there's the action in Cyberspace which is equal parts charming and jawdropping, building up to a spectacular climax.
Naturally the animation is up to the usual Madhouse quality. The character designs are kept simple but the faces especially are beautifully expressive, while the Oz network itself is astonishing, colourful and bristling with detail.
If you want some sort of underlying theme, I'd interpret "Summer Wars" as highlighting the need for humanity and social bonds, even in the 21st Century.
Personally I'd recommend you just watch, and enjoy, one of the best anime movies I've seen in the last few years.
Here's the trailer if you fancy a sneak peak.
Today's post is devoted to a couple of anime DVDs I watched the other day and I suspect I could not find a more startling contrast if I tried.
Let's start with:
Redline (2009)
"Redline" is the biggest and baddest motor-race in the entire Galaxy, where a select few test themselves and their machines to the limit. There's no restrictions on engine-size, very few safety measures and firing missiles at the competition is actively encouraged.
To add an extra element of fun, this year the contest is being held on the fiercely xenophobic Roboworld and the locals have promised that any "Redline" racer even arriving in their atmosphere is going to get turned into a cloud of singed atoms.
Bequiffed Human racer "Sweet JP" made it through to Redline on a fluke. His car is in bits, his support team detest each other and The Mob are looking over his shoulder but what the hell, he's pretty sure he can win anyway. And he's just met a girl he rather likes.
Pity she's one of the other racers.
There is no other way of describing this anime but "OTT". I mean there are lot's of other words I could use: "Colouful", "Bold" and "Brash" all come to mind. "Restrained", however, doesn't.
The colour palette is all bright colours, the character designs are gloriously unhinged and if you asked a ten year old boy to design a racing car for the year 3000, he'd come up with something like these, only the Redline cars have more engine, more firepower, more everything.
Think "Wacky Races" updated for the 21st century and created by petrolheads fuelled on Red Bull and bad amphetamines.
But is the animation any good?
It's by Studio Madhouse, so what do you think?
Everything is so bright and- one the race gets started - so intense that visually, this is the most jawdropping thing I've seen in quite a while.
Provided you don''t want your anime tainted by anything resembling reality, this one is enormous fun. Here's the trailer. Play loud after eating lots of sugar
Compare and contrast with :
Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack (2012)
Newly engaged Kaori and her friends Erika and Aki arrive in Okinawa for a holiday. With the three being quite different personalities there's a certain amount of tension bubbling under the surface but frankly this is a minor concern compared to the large, angry shark on mechanical legs that just smashed it's way in through the window and tried to eat them.
Understandably shaken by the experience Kaori tries to contact Tadashi, her fiance, but is horrified to discover that Tokyo has been overrun by scuttling fish-cyborgs and Tadashi isn't answering his phone...
I picked up this film expecting it to be goofy monster-fun and I really should have looked at the credits list more closely because "Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack" is based on a manga by Junji Ito.
Over the years I have read precisely two manga that have seriously disturbed me and Junji Ito wrote both of them. (Uzumaki and The Enigma Of Amigara Fault )
So less "Goofy monster fun" and more "Weapons-Grade Nightmare Fuel". The premise may sound silly - and it is - but as Kaori struggles to get back to Tokyo the film gradually descends into something darker and weirder. Without wanting to give too much away, the invasion of fish is only the curtain raiser and by the end we're looking at something between "Zombie Apocalypse" and "Return of The Old Gods." The animation is functional rather than pretty, the characters especially having that "flat" look you see in some tv anime. The animation crew do make up for it with their work on the fish-beasties and the scene where a Jumbo jet tries to land on an infested airfield is quite impressive, as is the initial shark-attack. Apparently there's a lot of changes from the original manga - the story is condensed quite a bit, characters are mucked about with and the ending is quite different - so if you're a fan of the manga you may not like this. I, on the other hand, couldn't really say I enjoyed it but it was an interesting viewing experience. Problem is, I'm confidently expecting my upcoming nightmares to feature lots of scuttling mechanical legs. Trailer here if you're interested:
Set in a world where Sorcery works as well as Steam engines, the use of magic is still a dangerous business. Use magic too much and too often and you will become a hideous, misshapen demon bent only on slaughter. Which is why magic-users armour themselves with the protective suits known as "Molds" or "Strait jackets".
But sometimes the "Molds" fail.
And that's when the Tactical Sorcerists are called in.
Leiot Steinberg is a rogue Tactical Sorcerist - a magic-powered, demon hunter, in other words. His methods are crude, the collateral damage is high and he's a bit of a dick. Nevertheless, with a terrorist cell deliberately causing demon incidents, the Sorcery Management Bureau is forced to enlist his aid.
When slightly unhinged scientist Kyu Natsume works out exactly what his prototype android will be used for, he does a moonlight flit with the android chassis and his young son Ryunosuke.
Company head - and Kyu's wife - Akiko Natsume does not take the news well and sends henchwomen Arisa and Kyouko to bring her husband, the stolen android and her son back. They decide to do this in a helicopter gunship (because they're idiots) and in the crossfire mortally wound Ryuunosuke's newly acquired cat. Kyu looks at the cat, looks at his currently brainless android, and thinks "Hmm..."
And that's how Ryuunosuke ends up with a new big sister. A big sister who can throw treetrunks around and who has to be stopped from chasing mice. With Akiko hellbent on retrieving her son and her stolen hardware Atusko "NukuNuku" Natsume has her work cut out for her.
To sum up the three episodes on this tape
1. Nuku Nuku goes to school and ends up fighting a helicopter gunship.
2. Nuku Nuku goes to the beach and ends up fighting a bloody great mechanical octopus.
3. Nuku Nuku visits the inlaws and ends up fighting a heavily armed Mech.
After Akira had introduced UK audiences to Anime the newly formed Manga Video began capitalising on the attention, releasing a string of titles that tended towards OTT violence and dubious sex. (In all a fairness, they also released daft comedies Project A-Ko and Dominion: Tank Police to significantly less media attention) Naturally the British press were appalled but having managed to convince young British men that "cartoons weren't just for kids" and racked up respectable sales figures in the process, Manga saw no reason to change the winning formula.
Even so, from quite early on there were attempts to introduce the lighter and fluffier side of anime to British audiences and that's where Crusader Video made their one and only attempt at an anime dub.
To the best of my knowledge it's the only dub ever to have featured a Scouse accent and on it's premiere at 1994's Aukcon I can remember it going down very well indeed. Certainly Crusader video were doing a brisk business in Nuku Nuku t-shirts and posters.
Unfortunately the video itself doesn't seem to have fared quite so well. The Manga video "tits n tentacles" crowd weren't interested and the Anime-UK reading hardcore fanbase might have been enthusiastic but there just wasn't enough of them. With one video to their name, Crusader disappeared into the same black hole that would eventually claim Animeigo, Kiseki and Western Connection, among others.
So is the dub any good?
Weeeeelllll...
Honestly, there is no way to describe it beyond "flawed"
There's no attempt to match the lip movements up with the audio, to start with. None whatsoever.
I'm sure I read somewhere that some UK dubs were notorious for having the actors see the script for the first time only when they were in the recording studio and I wouldn't be surprised. It does rather come across like a bunch of fans decided to have a go at dubbing.
To give them credit, everybody concerned does try hard and it pays off more often than you'd expect giving the vid a certain goofy charm. I still think making one of the sidekicks a Liver Bird was a stroke of genius, by the way. She steals every scene she's in. And the source material is entertaining regardless of whatever is going on on the audio track.
If I have a major grip it would be: Who the hell decided to replace the original opening music with what sounds like a pub covers band? The girls in question played live at Aukcon by the way - they were rubbish.
Check it out here:
