Shiki halfway impressions

My interest in this show was twofold. Firstly, I enjoy vampire fiction (apart from that Twilight bollocks, obviously). Secondly, the NoitaminA slot has hosted some innovative and flat-out excellent animated TV that’s in a different league from everything else, so for that reason alone I decided it would be worth watching. For the first half-dozen episodes though, I thought the schedulers had picked up a dud.

The sluggish pacing doesn’t do it any favours. Because the premise is based around an epidemic of vampirism-induced deaths spreading through an entire town, the cast is also fairly large so requires a lot of screen time to keep track of them all. The narrative’s refusal to move from one area to another within each episode means you frequently go for a full week or two before returning to a certain character or household, which makes an already broad-focused story even harder to follow.

The Eve no Jikan movie is as awesome as the series, and then some

I’ve learned to approach feature-length movie retellings of familiar stories with a lot of caution. To put it bluntly, at best they’re unsatisfying summaries and at worst they ruin what I liked about the original in the first place. In the case of Eve no Jikan, one of my favourite pieces of animated SF in recent years, I prayed it would be an exception. Fortunately it does Yasuhiro Yoshiura’s screenplay justice from start to finish, and even though the majority of the film is pretty much the same as that of the six-part ONA there’s enough extra material to keep the old fans happy but it retains that unique winning formula.

The best part of all is the fact that this is in full HD: the series was from the outset a cut above the made-for-TV fare in terms of details in the artwork and fluidity in the animation, so the big screen treatment is what it deserves. If much of the content itself is the same then seeing it all in such glorious resolution is in itself worth the experience…and of course the increased detail means you’re less likely to miss some subtle yet potentially important plot point.

Mouryou no Hako, a boxful of wonderfully hard-boiled madness

I started watching this back in ’08 but for a number of reasons I didn’t get around to finishing it. The subbing was sporadic, the plot derailed into a lengthy period of three blokes sitting around a table talking, other shows caught my interest, etc., etc.. Last week though I finally sat down and practically forced myself to finish the thing; the mid section was as tedious as I remember but pushing on to the finale was worth every minute.

This is an extremely unusual series, which is why I’m not surprised that it’s already virtually forgotten. It’s straight-faced and serious as hell, challenging the viewer from the outset by starting off very weird indeed. And it gets weirder. Even so, I found it to be a piece of sheer bloody genius with a multi-layered maze of a plot that starts off with bizarre yuri overtones, moves into hard-boiled detective fiction with serial killers and femmes fatales, dabbles in esoteric Japanese folklore and rounds it all off with a closing act that reaches Nasu-esque levels of twisted insanity.

Remembering Satoshi Kon

I must admit I didn’t hear about Perfect Blue until around 2004, when the only anime I’d watched were Miyazaki’s Laputa, Anno’s Evangelion and Tsurumaki’s FLCL. It was an eye-opening experience to say the least, but that day was a pretty significant turning-point in making me the fan I am today.

I’m sure the obituaries and tributes to Satoshi Kon from his family and friends will be formed as I type and my sincere condolences go out to them. I’m afraid I know nothing about who he was as a man: I sadly never had the opportunity to meet him. His work however is something I’ve become very familiar with over the years, and it’s my love of this that I want to express, as my way of acknowledging what he achieved.

K-On!!, cats and finally forming an opinion on moe

As of this week I’m looking after my sister’s cat, which is one of the reasons why I’ve been too busy to post and reply to comments lately. Now I have three full weeks of paid leave I’m able to keep an eye on the kitteh, update here, catch up on animu and movies, visit friends, write songs, arrange my career change, etc., etc..


Classy

I’ve been following High School of the Dead and Shiki only a couple of eps behind people who’ve kept up with them properly but K-On!! is the one thing I’ve found time to watch every week. My earlier attempt at explaining my position only caused misunderstandings, although the resulting discussions made up for the disappointment I felt at the time. I just can’t bring myself around to the view of the hypothetical ‘haters’ for the simple reason that the series shouldn’t elicit a stronger negative reaction than a mere lack of interest…a view I can explain with my view on moe. And cats.

News just in: waffling idiot tries to solve the fansub debate

A recent comment thread on GRSI, plus this bit of news and my experience with this site, has led me to ask myself a question so bleeding obvious that I feel stupid asking it. I’ll stress right now that I’m not a professional computer programmer (why else would I be using a stock WP theme?) and I don’t follow the industry too closely (Omo does some very insightful and in-depth analysis on the subject though) but even so, I do wonder: I’ve noticed a potential solution that would help fans AND make money for the industry…two facts that ought to mean it should’ve been done already. Only it hasn’t.

The current attempt at a solution to the fansub/piracy problem is through the streaming with region-locking and paid subscriptions, i.e. Crunchyroll’s model. I’m not aiming to criticise what CR are doing here: they did great things in giving Eve no Jikan exposure, made last year’s Global Shinkai Day even more special and are so far the only independent site that has made a high-profile attempt to seek the middle ground.

Cat Shit One could be more than just rabbits with guns, but that’s fine for now

I’ve been hearing rumblings about this one for quite some time but since my brain makes connections in the most arcane and awkward ways I attached a bizarre preconception to it (something to do with it sounding similar to Cat Soup, which is a show I’ve considered watching for the Yuasa factor but never summoned the courage to try…go figure). It turns out to be nothing like whatever I expected, anyway. It’s all about rabbits with guns.

Cat Shit One is very, very different from pretty much everything else around right now, which is reason enough for me to recommend it on its own. The idea of anthropomorphised rabbits rescuing hostages from armed terrorist camels is indeed absurd but it was surprisingly easy for me to forget the sight of cottontails twitching prior to an all-out firefight because it was, with this quirk aside, hell of a lot of fun. So much so that I was able to accept the concept and simply enjoy the action.

Ookami-san and High School of the Dead first impressions

I try to avoid the lowest-common-denominator trashy titles what with my free time being at such a premium and with the Backlog being the way it is, but there’s no harm in giving new shows a fighting chance. Long story short, there’s a lot of stuff around that doesn’t interest me and I still haven’t found the opportunity to write some deep ‘n’ meaningful editorial for a while. I haven’t got as far as the latest NoitaminA offerings yet though, so all isn’t lost. Legservice, boobs and zombies ought to be a good place to start though, right?

I’m late to the You Can (not) Advance party and spotted familiar faces, but…

Considering the challenges in the ‘feature-length retelling of the TV show’ concept, I sometimes wonder why the studios bother. They need a keen eye for what to retain and what to leave out in order to condense the storyline effectively, it has to entertain the viewers on its own merits so we can momentarily forget the old version but at the same time it has to remain true to what made the original good enough to be worth retelling.

RahXephon for example suffered greatly from the condensed plotline issue and Eureka Seven lost a lot of the spirit of the TV show, so both were disappointing to me. The Evangelion rebuild in particular is an undertaking I personally wouldn’t enjoy being responsible for since it’ll piss off a significant proportion of the fanbase regardless of what the production team do. Over the past decade and a half it’s bred so many conflicting opinions that whatever approach is taken, it’ll hit somebody’s sore spot square-on.

Cossette revisited: Shinbo, Nasu and the Kajiura connection

Looks like I made it to the second round of the tourney thing, but I’m sadly short on topics for writing thanks to the fact that my laptop is the only working PC I have right now. It’s able to cope with DVD playback though so I can at least rewatch old favourites; I’ve had Le Portrait de Petite Cossette for instance on my shelf for a while but only came back to it last week…and I’m glad I did.

The first time I watched this I felt a bit overwhelmed by the visuals so didn’t really grasp what it was trying to say. I guess it was slightly wasted on me at the time but watching the three episodes again, across as many days, worked better for me so now I really feel I appreciate it more than I did then.