Anime released in the UK for 04/02/08

January 31st, 2008 by Brack

Just single volumes again this week, so only buy if you are a rich idiot, and if some of these are ADV I’m not even sure they will be out.

—

Four of these things belong together, four of these things are kind of
the same, but one of these things is doing it’s own thing. Now it’s
time to play our game. It’s time to play our game.

Witchblade: Vol.1

I caught some of the first episode of the TV-edited version, and frankly it bored me stupid. However Witchblade fans might enjoy it. Because they are likely attention deficient morons easily distracted by massive cleavage.

Ergo Proxy: Vol.4 - Wrong Way Home

Talking of things that bored me. Ergo Proxy though is a higher quality of boredom, and I believe there’s a smattering of stylistically interesting episodes later on. Perhaps they are on this volume.

Basilisk: Vol.5 - Shades Of Night

Unlike Manga’s Naruto release you aren’t getting your ninja value for your ninja money here.

Black Cat 3 - Cat and Mouse

Hey something else I saw the first episode of and didn’t like. Shonen Jump adaptation with terrible pacing.

Speed Grapher: Vol.6

I’ve seen more of this, and frankly the best thing about it is the complete opening with the Duran Duran theme. Which I don’t believe this release has.

—

Did you guess which one is the odd one out. It’s Basilisk, as that was made by Manglobe. The other four are by the cancer that is killing the anime industry through flooding the market with shows that look eminently licensable but are in fact crap.

It’s GONZO~!

It’s insane that 4 out of the 5 anime series released on the same day are all by the same production house. It’s strong evidence that:

a) too much anime is being made.
b) too much is being licensed.
c) and above all, there isn’t enough diversity in both what is made and is licensed.

GONZO’s series have a well documented tendency to burn out quickly in terms of quality, and when you look at just how much they make (not even counting outsourced projects they take on) it’s not surprising. I don’t know if it’s Japanese TV, local DVD sales/rental or foreign sales that are fueling this churning out of TV anime, but you can’t help but think if they cut back a bit they could make something as good as Gankutsuo again.

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Brief notes Re:That DragonGate review from a couple of weeks back.

January 30th, 2008 by Brack

* Apparently, DG aren’t passed their peak, this may be their peak. I hear they had a very good year 2007 in terms of attendance etc. Maybe it’s just the demographics of their audience that have changed, or the new pretty boy wrestlers aren’t as over with the female fans yet?

* The woman who was constantly declaring things amazing or scary turned out to be Mikie Hara the model turned actress who is playing Cutie Honey in the live action TV show. And I use actress in the loosest sense of the term. I have a half written thing on the Cutie Honey TV show that I need to finish

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Eugene Mirman’s Tom Cruise Parody

January 30th, 2008 by Brack


via Dead Frog

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CIOASIISAG Part The Thirteenth - Judge Dredd RPG

January 29th, 2008 by Brack

Now I’m moving into the realm of games that other people ran in my teenage gaming days. Though I did buy myself a copy of this later in life (and sold on ebay for a tidy profit year or so back).

Judge Dredd ran on a set of rules that were kind of WFRPG-lite, and similarly your starting character was pretty useless at everything. However that didn’t really matter, as being a Judge you were still better equipped and skilled than most NPCs you’d encounter. The game really caught the mood of the comic, and for a while was probably the closest thing to an encyclopedia of the Judge Dredd world. Mid-Late 80s Games Workshop had a similar sense of humour to 2000AD and the license was a good fit (though 2000AD was still a little more punk, whereas GW was new wave of British heavy metal). It originally came out as a boxset, later reprinted as a hard back book. Despite it’s all round ace-ness at being Judge Dredd, we never really played it that much, and I only ran it with my later gaming groups on a couple of occasions. It’s a shame as I believe the guy who had it also had the “Slaughter Margin” adventure, which I remember as being a critically acclaimed piece of RPG writing at the time.

Mongoose have a Judge Dredd RPG out nowadays, but I don’t know if that’s the old version updated, or something totally new.

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I AM THE WATER BOATMAN! I LIVE IN YOUR DRAINS!

January 28th, 2008 by Brack

From “Families At War“, the great missed opportunity to establish Vic and Bob as mainstream TV stars. This is the Cubiscus, the final round and the highlight of the show. The rest of show was hit and miss, a surreal variant of Generation Game, where instead of learning new skills in a short amount of time, rival families competed using the specialist skills of the family members. For instance challenging running skills by running on a treadmill while carrying Leo Sayer on their back. In the end I think the thing that really killed it was the utterly charmless Alice Beer as co-presenter. I’m not sure it needed a school marm-esque figure there, it was like the BBC felt they needed a “BBC1″ face (Beer had been sour-facing it up on Watchdog) to make it not so scary to people unaccustomed to Reeves and Mortimer.

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Your Sunday Onslaught of Pop Culture

January 27th, 2008 by Brack

HARRY HILL’S TV BURP

Now on it’s 7th (!) series, it’s still slightly weird to me that Harry Hill is now the face of mainstream comedy, alongside Al Murray. Anyway, the series continues in the same vein it always has, it’s “comic look at the week’s TV” modus operandi is still surreal and affectionate in an Iron Fist in Velvet Glove sort of way. The way he’ll say incredibly cruel things about people in a clip and then have them come out and do a skit or song with him is impressive.

MONK - “MR MONK AND THE THREE JULIES”

This week’s episode was a high point in the latest season of Monk. Less reliance on a guest star, an actual mystery, no wringing of pathos and/or tragedy from Monk’s condition, Randy wasn’t a total goof, and lots of stuff for all the characters to do rather than another Tony Shaloub twitch-a-thon.

PSYCH - “LIGHTS! CAMERA! HOMICIDIO!”

Conversely this was a low point for Psych. While the clues in the mystery were fair, the culprit wasn’t ever on the radar as a suspect. And so the normally strong mystery structure was gone, meaning it had to coast on it’s ample charms. Not sure if this was due to some sort of writer’s strike lack of rewrites, or a meta-textual conceit to do with the setting of Spanish language soap opera that the mystery took place in. Still perfectly watchable and rewatchable due to the comedic performances of the ensemble cast.

DETECTIVE CONAN - “CLASH OF RED AND BLACK - THE BEGINNING”


Episode 491 marks the beginning of the end game in the mystery of Eisuke Hondou, the clumsy student who appears to have connections to the Black Organisation. As Conan tries to find the link between him and Rena Mizunashi, the news reporter detained due to her involvement with BO, it leads them to a case that has nothing to with that at all…

In fact the case resembles those times in soaps where they crowbar in a socially relevant message with no subtlety whatsoever. However, the case is completely fair to the home viewer as this series tends to be.

Nonetheless I look forward to see how this overall arc progresses, as the series excels when it drags Conan and the supporting cast from Poirot-style external investigators into the chaos of the case itself.

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Amazing Spider-Man 548

January 26th, 2008 by Brack

And so the first Brand New Day arc finishes.

Overall it was a very good Spider-Man story, which is clearly what they were aiming for. That may sound like an obvious thing to want, but for a long time it looked like they were aiming at writing stories that had Spider-Man in, rather than Spider-Man stories. And in this recent age of event excess, having a self-contained Spider-Man comic feels like a breath of fresh air.

The gelling of McNiven’s art with Slott’s writing picked up through the three issues and by the end you can pretty much forget the reset button they’ve pressed and go with the new flow (of course, Jackpot’s appearance in the next arc may reverse that).

Between the success of this arc and the Messiah Complex storyline in the X-Books recently, there is a strong argument for moving this to a weekly rather than three a month. I thought the X-Books crossover made a bit better use of the pacing opportunities that a weekly format gives you, thought the mish mash of artists hampered the appeal of the lengthy fight scenes that this pacing allows. Spider-Man at the moment feels like a median between the pacing of a US monthly comic and the pacing of 20+ page weekly shonen action series. I think there’s room to push it closer to a weekly manga’s pacing in terms of giving the artist more room to breathe and lessening the hammering home of plot.

For example, there’s a reveal in this latest issue that really could have had more time to breathe. In fact, even if this was a monthly, the reveal would still seem too hasty. Also this issue had some of McNiven’s best action art, looking a lot looser and more natural than his art has in the past, and it would have been nice to see the fights given more panel time.

Next issue we have Marc Guggenheim and Salvador Larroca. I’ve enjoyed Guggenheim’s work on Wolverine, and I think his fast paced, vibrant scripts are a good fit for this format. Larroca’s evolved from a poor man’s Carlos Pacheco into a very good superhero artist, his newuniversal work was very good and look forward to see what he can do on Spider-Man.

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Anime released in the UK for 28/01/08

January 25th, 2008 by Brack

Made it to week two of this thing. POW! The distinct lack of other posts this week was due to my attempt at getting crippling RSI via Dynasty Warriors.

As there is only one thing released this week, let me weigh in on the whole ADV shutting up shop in the UK temporarily malarky. With the weak dollar, it’s the sensible thing to do. As nice as ADV’s UK office was (I dealt with them occasionally in my three years at Videolog), they were the only US anime company that had a UK office (Beez are part of a bigger, global organisation, that isn’t so reliant on anime, namely Bandai).

I imagine whoever puts out ADV’s content in the end will be getting a good deal with the weakness of the dollar, and ADV no longer have to pay what must have been becoming an increasingly expensive UK staff.

And now the one thing released this week!

Tales From Earthsea

Optimum have done a fantastic job with Ghibli releases over the past few years. Not just in terms of DVD releases, but cinema releases too. Many small, local and arthouse cinemas has shown this film over the past few months, meaning that it’s had a good chance to gather fans before it’s DVD release. It’s also meant that this and the other Ghibli films that have had the same tour of screens, have picked up fans that are outside the ghetto anime fandom. My mum owns a copy of Spirited Away for instance.

So, should you buy this on Monday? Well, I’ve not seen it, so I’m going to use two pieces of information to guide me. Firstly, it’s not been that well received. Secondly, if you are willing to wait, Optimum DVDs can usually be picked up for less than a tenner. So, unless you’ve seen it already and were a big fan, I’d wait until you can pick it up at a reduced price.

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Initial Thoughts on Oh! Edo Rocket

January 21st, 2008 by Brack

I’m now 6 episodes into this series, an adaptation of the Gekidan Shinkansen play by Kazuki Nakashima (who also wrote a little thing called Gurren Lagann last year), and I’m enjoying it greatly.

To a certain extent it’s another anime ABOUT anime, but it’s going a bit further than that. From reading about Gekidan Shinkansen and an interview with Nakashima, they have a strong belief in accessible, escapist, mass market entertainment. This has led Gekidan Shinkansen to claim their productions are a modern Kabuki, in that they fulfill the same role as a Kabuki did in it’s prime.

Oh! Edo Rocket is about that belief that art and entertainment should be escapist and available to the masses, not only the elite. This isn’t a metatextual theme, while the plot is ostensibly about getting a shape-changing girl from the moon back to said satellite, the message about art is upfront and blatant. It’s a view the majority of the characters seem to hold, especially the main character.

The story is set in 1842 making much of the enforced frugality in Edo of this era, and what impressed me in the sixth episode was how they drew the connection between this and the budgetary considerations of TV animation production. For a self-admitted filler episode, the script and direction had surprising depth. I’d like to get hold of Murakami’s Superflat book as I understand similar connections are drawn there.

Overall I’m finding it wonderful to find an anime that has something say about the form that isn’t pandering to otaku or overly cynical.

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Anime released in the UK for 21/01/08

January 20th, 2008 by Brack

Let’s see if I can do this more than two weeks in a row this year! Note, I’ve not seen any of these DVDs, I am solely commenting based on my experience with the series, the price, and the staff of the series. Mainly the price.

It’s all single discs of TV shows this week. So that means none of the following is worth buying. I’m sorry, anime industry, you need to catch up with the rest of home video market.

Tsubasa 3: Spectres Of Legend

It’s the recent CLAMP series that wasn’t xxxHolic, and thus not as interesting from an animation POV.

Paniponi Dash: Vol.4

Horrible “comedy” series from SHAFT, the greatest animation studio yet to make anything worthwhile.

Utawarerumono: Vol.4

A series that ranks high on the “what were ADV thinking when they licensed this” list.

School Rumble: Vol.1

Another high school comedy. What little I’ve seen, I found bland. Your mileage may vary.

Shadow Skill: Vol.5

Hmm, this is £7.99 on play.com, almost putting it into a price range I could recommend. Almost, but not quite. Get it down to £5.99 and we might be talking.

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