Monthly Archives: May 2009

This week’s manga: Beck

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So there are a few titles that are on my to-watch list that are older than the rest. After I’d gone through most of the stuff from the past few years, I worked my way backwards, intent on watching some of the stuff that people won’t shut up about. So far, I think I’ve gotten through a decent number of those. I mean, that list is shrinking and not growing, so that’s good.

Beck was one of these ones that everyone was telling me to watch. And after much procrastination, I ignored everyone and dropped it from my to watch list.

Instead, I put it on my to read list. So far, this term has been all about manga. The only old TV series I’ve managed to finish has been Kaiba, which is a pretty amazing show. I’ve got a ton of others on hold and the only other anime I’ve finished have been movies. Beck was 26 episodes, which, this term, seems like a huge barrier to me.

The other reason is that Beck’s anime ends before the manga does. I have to say that I’m pleased to read that there’s no anime-original ending and that it managed to end at an appropriate spot. Of course, that also means it’s incomplete, and that I’d have to continue on to the manga anyway. I’ve also grown to like the manga’s art, at least when they’re performing, which looks really different from the anime screenshots I’ve seen.

Beck is what I expected. It was a really good story with some great, likable characters. I expected Beck to be stopped at pretty much every turn and I expected awkward but sweet romance between Koyuki and a girl, which I’m glad ended up being Maho and not Izumi. Reaching the end of the manga, I felt it ended really well, tying up all the loose ends and being all symbolic.

If I had criticism, it’d have to be with the gangster subplot. I could believe powerful industry executives trying to impede the band, but having them run around with armed gangs was really pushing the suspension of disbelief. Also, that they’d be so interested in stomping on such a small band.

Since I know most of you who know about Beck have only watched Beck. If you’ve ever wondered to yourself, dang, I wish there were more Beck, well, there is.

Anime that no one thought actually existed: The return of Suzumiya Haruhi

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The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, along with Azumanga Daioh, occupies a special spot in the ever-expanding library of anime that I’ve watched. This is because, when I first watched them almost simultaneously, they were my first exposure to anime beyond Gundam and popular shounen series.

I watched it not too long after it finished up its broadcast, so I also joined in the waiting for the next season to land. During that time, Haruhi became a polarizing force, dividing the world into those who worshiped Haruhi and those who loathed her, Kyoto Animation did several things which weren’t Haruhi, and Kadokawa got in a fight with Haruhi’s author, supposedly the reason for the holdup on everything Haruhi related. At the same time, we had them releasing bits of information and stepping back to watch the fans devour themselves for almost three years.

So of course, after three years of seeing people obsess over Haruhiism and reading flamewars proclaiming that Haruhi was overhyped, the question was ‘Is Haruhi really as good as I remember?’

Yes.

Even though Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody was a one-shot chapter in the third volume and mysteriously didn’t get animated when every other chapter in that volume did, there’s a lot of interesting, and important, material here. Taken in casually, it’s interesting enough, but there are some really interesting tidbits if you do a bit of thinking. It’s pretty amazing how well everything that happens in the entire series fits together.

And I guess the other thing about Haruhi that needs to be addressed is whether it can still be considered a dancing animu. Unfortunately, the answer is no. I’m not too upset that they didn’t do another dancing ED. I mean, the current ED is fine, even though there is a lack of dancing. And if you wanted Hare Hare Yukai 2, it’s called Motteke Sailor Fuku. Otherwise, maybe they’ll surprise us with the OP, since it hasn’t been revealed yet.

So new Haruhi is simply more Haruhi. Look forward to a few months of Haruhiism sweeping over the Internets again.

This week’s old anime: Shigofumi

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So somehow, I missed this winter 2008 show. I only found out about it because I was listening to a Japanator podcast that mentioned it. I went to look it up and the premise sounded pretty interesting, with the whole postman for the dead thing. It seemed to be favourably received too.

Of course, I didn’t know the Japanator podcast was only talking about the first episode. Their discussion made it sound like the entire show was another romantic comedy sort of thing, with the whole letters from the dead thing tied in somehow. This lead to a pretty huge surprise at the end of the first episode.

The show is pretty slice-of-lifey, where each episode is a different situation and a different shigofumi. At the same time, there is a plot thread that runs through the entire show. One of the things I liked was how people from previous stories showed up in later stories.

All in all, it’s a pretty solid show. It delivers what was promised and is satisfying once it reaches its conclusion.

Weird anime: Kaiba

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Kaiba is one of the most amazing and unique series I’ve watched in a long time. Despite the amount of praise that it’s gotten over the last year, I didn’t really feel the need to watch it. This was mostly because I neglected to figure out what the thing was about. So, after listening to a bunch of old podcasts and learning a bit more about Kaiba, I decided to take it on.

Kaiba is really interesting for a lot of reasons. The most obvious one is the art style. It’s definitely outside of what is generally considered the standard anime style. Even more important is that at first glance, it looks like a children’s show. It really isn’t and that is made clear pretty quickly.

One of the things that caught my attention on the podcast I was listening to was the fact that this sci-fi is really far removed from anything that we recognize. For example, Macross F is sci-fi, but a lot of it is still recognizable: we still go to shopping malls, where there are giant screens promoting popular pop stars. Kaiba is incredibly different, with the weird colours and factories processing bodies and orange gels that get shot from guns.

The most interesting part of Kaiba is the whole setup where, in the future, our memories are just data. That means that the contents of our brains can be stored, copied, and manipulated, just like we do with data on computers today. What happens when we can essentially exist forever and are able to change our physical form as we wish?

This makes the beginning a lot more interesting. Our protagonist begins with no memories and only a locket with a picture of a girl. My first thought was how this would help him, in a society where you can swap memories in and out of bodies like you would swap CDs. And yet, he’s pretty fixated on what the girl might mean for the first half of the series.

And through this exploration of these themes and the romance that leads the main character around to different planets, we’re treated to several sad episodes as we learn more about the world. It turns out, it’s very possible for society to continue sucking, even after we’ve essentially achieved immortality.

It’s not really for everyone, but it’s so outside of the usual anime space, that it’s hard to say that it’s really for anyone in particular. If you’re looking for something really, really different, this show is your ticket.

Old school anime: Mobile Suit Gundam

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It’s really, really hard to go from watching 00 Gundam in its 720p GN particle emitting glory flying around to watching the RX-78-2 go around punching Zakus. I mean, I found Evangelion really old and I was really only able to see just how much had changed after I saw my housemate rewatching Gundam Wing.

Anyway, what was more surprising was that I was coming into MSG with my own preconceptions of what Gundam was. My Gundam knowledge consists of Wing, SEED, and 00, along with whatever bits and pieces I’d happened to glean from the UC.

The story was largely something I’d expected, which was thanks to SEED basically being a carbon copy of the original MSG. Even though I knew it was intended to be sort of an homage to the original, it really struck me just how much was lifted from the original. In the same way, it’s interesting to see how different 00 actually is from the original.

I’m not really a fan of the crew of the White Base. I suspect that it’s not because they’re bad, but because the intended audience is so different that they seem uninteresting to me. On the other hand, the villains are so obviously villains, even in the very deliberate attempts to humanize them. Honestly, the only character worth any notice to me was Char and it’s pretty clear that Char is the best Char clone ever.

I think the thing I enjoy most about UC is the mecha designs. The Federation’s mobile suit designs are pretty terrible, blocky constructs. But, Zeon’s mobile suits are awesome weapons of war. I can see why the Zaku II will stay forever in our hearts. My favourite one in action was Char’s Gelgoog, fighting in space with the RX-78-2. That double beam saber is hot.

I think that the first two movies were boring to me because I sort of knew that I’d have to put up with Amuro being whiny and the White Base being under siege all the time. The third movie made it for me, with all of the background for UC that I wanted: Char’s identity, the Newtype concept, the politics of Zeon, large scale battles, and so on.

The first two movies had me wondering if I should stop at MSG and skip over some of the longer UC series, but the third movie had me convinced on continuing through the timeline. Will it be enough to convince me to watch ZZ? I don’t know yet.