HATE FUN? SUMMER’S HERE KIDS - ADDENDUM

June 19th, 2008 by Brack

Stay alone, put a record on, listen to the songs, keep yourself at home

You know, I think I failed to actually point out exactly what I am excited about seeing, so lets start with two things I didn’t list, and then the rest in order of excited-ness.

GOTHAM KNIGHT - The Batman OAV is out over here in July and I’ll be picking this up. At least half the directors involved I’m a fan of so this should be fun, fun, fun.

DETROIT METAL CITY - This is DMC’s year (or maybe next year if the film gets an international release). Anyway the manga is, along with Chi’s Sweet Home, the most obvious choice for manga to be released in English, and the Studio 4°C adaptation looks ridiculously faithful to it’s brilliance. Fingers crossed that as it’s Studio 4°C it might have subtitles included. A man can dream.

BIRDY THE MIGHTY DECODE - Noein creative team reunite, with SHAFT visual niceness.

COBRA THE ANIMATION

ULTRAVIOLET: CODE 044

There’s a bit of gap ‘twixt Ultraviolet and the next lot in measure of hopping up and down in expectedness.

SOMEDAY’S DREAMERS: SUMMER’S SORA - I am a mark for Osamu Kobayashi

NATSUME YUUJIN-CHOU - Takahiro Omori has goodwill with me after Baccano!

SLAYERS REVOLUTION - Oh nostalgia.

CHOCOLATE UNDERGROUND - Not holding much hope of seeing it given it’s release format, but if the opportunity arose I’d check it out.

RYOKO’S CASE FILE - I am also a mark for mystery/detective shows

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HATE FUN? SUMMER’S HERE KIDS

June 17th, 2008 by Brack

Take a trip, join me in the sun, but not really though, cause I ain’t having fun.

Yes, the bane of gamesfaqs forum posters is back! Let’s put the boot into summer season anime before they even air.

Ikkitousen Great Guardians
Yuji Shiozaki’s alleged Tenjo Tenge-plagarising Romance of the Three Kingdoms as bouncy high school girls manga get’s it’s third season of anime. The first season had two unfortunate problems - it aired during the far superior Airmaster’s run. And it was shit. At least it only has one of those problems this time.

SEQUEL/REMAKE COUNT: 1

Chocolate Underground

Alex Shearer’s Bootleg gets the Original Net Animation treatment. Quick poll: What’s a more soul destroying phrase - Original Net Animation (ONA) or Mobisode?

Telepathy Shoujo Ran

More light novel fun for NHK. This time from TMS. No director listed on ANN, so no idea if I should be excited or not. However the screenwriter, Makoto Nakamura, has apparently been responsible for many crimes against taste (Air, Clannad, Kanon).

UltraViolet: Code 044

It’s the anime spin off of the crappy vampires vs. werewolves film. But forget that.

It’s Madhouse + Osamu Dezaki + Romi Paku. So it should be well worth a watch.

SEQUEL/REMAKE COUNT: 2

Sekirei

Standard anime for soft boys too afraid to buy actual porn.

Slayers REVOLUTION

As a huge roleplaying game nerd, I was immediately drawn to Slayers when I first saw it in… 96?97? But I eventually lost interest, outside of catching the films and OAVs at cons. I’m interested in this as both a nostalgia kick and as part of possible trend in anime.

SEQUEL/REMAKE COUNT: 3

Someday’s Dreamers: Summer’s Sora

Another sequel~! And, it’s another magical realism anime. Talking of trends, THAT definitely is a trend in recent manga/anime. Geneon had announced this for US release, before disappearing from the US market. Oh, hey, it’s directed by Osamu Kobayashi. Colour me interested.

SEQUEL/REMAKE COUNT: 4

Antique Bakery

I imagine this will have a lot of interest based on the popularity of the manga. However I’m not sure there’s any appeal in the production to non-fans.

Hidamari Sketch x365

The only anime with the codec that will be used to pirate it in it’s title.

SEQUEL/REMAKE COUNT: 5

Strike Witches

GONZO spin off their OAV into a TV series. Director Kazuhiro Takamura has worked on some decent shows, but what he’s been more influential on have been pretty rubbish (Mahoromatic, This Ugly Yet Beautiful World). And by that I mean they were both pretty AND rubbish.

SEQUEL/REMAKE COUNT: 6

Birdy the Mighty Decode

Noein director Kazuki Akane is in charge.
Noein screenwriter Hiroshi Ohnogi is writing.
SHAFT are finally make something I’m interested in watching.

SEQUEL/REMAKE COUNT: 7

Ryoko’s Case File

This is a mystery. Both it’s genre and the fact I don’t know anything about it.

Zero no Tsukaima ~Miyoshi Hime no Rondo~

This show I’ve never heard of gets it’s… (checks) third series. Third!

SEQUEL/REMAKE COUNT: 8

Natsume Yuujin-chou

A young boy has the ability to see ghosts and is shunned by humans because of it. No, it’s not GeGeGe No Kitaro, it’s Yuki Midorikawa’s shojo manga about a boy with book of ghosts. Baccano!’s Takahiro Omori directs this new Brains Base show, so it could be worth a look as he has a proven record in strong adaptations.

Mission-E

Sequel to CODE-E. I think I watched 5 minutes of that once. It was enough.

SEQUEL/REMAKE COUNT: 9

World Destruction

Production IG/Sega’s videogame RPG tie-in. This won’t be any good.

Koihime†Musou

Dogakobo’s moe adventure game tie-in. This will be worse than World Destruction.

Blade of the Immortal

Yay, a Blade of the Immortal anime. Wait… What? Bee Train are making it? Koichi Mashimo is directing it? Can I take that yay back? Thanks.

Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu

Popular moe ideal student is secretly an otaku. I am not so secretly completely disinterested.

Cobra The Animation

That yay I took back for Blade of the Immortal, I’m using it here.

YAY!

oh and…

SEQUEL/REMAKE COUNT: 10

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Thoughts that have crossed my mind while watching E4 during breakfast.

April 26th, 2008 by Brack

Alphabeat resemble an master race breeding programme at the exact point the inbreeding kicks in.

—

Television, stop trying to be the internet. TV shows that broadcast “funny web videos” - I’m talking to you. Anyone who wants to watch these can find them on the internet, they don’t need Lenny Henry, fucking Alex Zane or whoever is presenting Have I Got News For You this week to introduce them. In fact the people want to watch them have most likely already seen them, and so you, television, just look old and out of touch. It’s not 1998, we have hugely popular video websites, we don’t need a “So Graham Norton” to fill us in on internet goofery anymore.

—

THE POINT IN TIME WHERE I DECIDED PANIC AT THE DISCO MUST BE CRUSHED: 2:08 minutes into their Nine In The Afternoon Video.

Posted in Hate Fun?, Music, TV | Tags: alex zane, alphabeat, e4, inbred danes, panic at the disco | No Comments »

Kaiba Episode 1

April 24th, 2008 by Brack

My first thought after watching this was “Why am I even bothering watching any of the other new anime?”.

There’s two reasons for this. Firstly, and most obviously, it’s better animated than anything else right now. There are two wonderful set pieces in this first episode. The opening where Kaiba/Warp is chased by “Skronks” through the alien looking architecture, and a more slapstick section where Cloak is running trying to board a spaceship. One thing that Yuasa doesn’t get complimented enough on is his ability to direct physical comedy in animation. The scene with Cloak and Vanilla is a fantastic combination of the sort of desperation, pain and sadism that great slapstick comedy is born from. Also there’s moments of subtle beauty, such as when a child flies her toy bird through the hole in Kaiba/Warp’s chest.

Secondly, and to an extent it can be seen as an explanation of the first reason, it’s not an adaptation.

Now, part of me likes adaptations, it can be fun to see your favourite thing from one medium in another medium and I’m like an eager little puppy with anticipation for the Iron Man film. Some things do transfer to film wonderfully with little effort, some require panel beating until they are unrecognisable.

But there’s things that bother me about adaptations. One is that they are done often for the wrong reasons, film wants the respectability of literature so it adapts novels to film. Comics wants the respectability of film, so you get comic companies setting up movie studios. Manga wants to sell more copies, so it makes anime to advertise it.

However the main one is that even if you willfully ignore the source material, you are still a slave to it. The very act of denying the source is influenced by that source’s existence. And I think that, in general, gives you less worthwhile results than if you build something from scratch just for the medium it’s made in.

As good as the animation and design is on something like Soul Eater, it still has things that would work far better on the printed page than in animation dragging it down (I’m actually hoping that Square-Enix and Bones pull what they did on FMA and create new stories halfway through).

Whereas, what Kaiba has, and Kemonozune before it, is a sense that every creative decision made was to the benefit of making a cartoon. For instance, I’ve seen people complain that there’s too little talking, which is slightly bewildering to me. You’re watching a cartoon, surely you’d prefer storytelling to be told via animated drawings rather than static talking heads. But when so much anime comes from manga, and increasingly novels, people are more accustomed to anime ruled by writers, rather than animators. Plus talking heads are often cheaper to animate…

It’d be nice to see more original shows from animators with a particular voice, but I’m not sure how many have the cache to be allowed to do so or how many outlets there are for this sort of work. So let’s be thankful we get things like Kaiba, Mononoke, Denno Coil and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

That all being said, this didn’t grip me quite the way Kemonozume did. I’m not overly keen on science fiction and this story, with it’s own strange world and rules of physics, wasn’t as immediately relatable as Kemonozume’s setting and characters were. So I’ve only watched it twice so far, rather than the three times in a row I did with Kemonozume’s first episode.

Posted in Anime, Hate Fun? | Tags: Kaiba, Madhouse, Masaaki Yuasa | No Comments »

HATE FUN? - Uninformed Judgments on Spring Anime Part 10

March 19th, 2008 by Brack

Last one of these posts.

Junjou Romantica

Boys love TV anime based on Shungiku Nakamura’s manga. From the Higurashi director. I suspect this is one of those shows that will be much loved due to the fact there aren’t a lot (any?) out and out boys love anime shown on TV (rather than shows that tease it to let fans’ imaginations do the rest), rather than judged on it’s actual quality.

Itazura na Kiss

Osamu Yamazaki’s series for 2008 is an adaptation Kaoru Tada’s manga. Strange that ANN isn’t listing Minamimachi Bugyousho as animating, as I thought they were Yamazaki’s company and they did a great job with his adaptation of To Terra last year. Yamazaki’s a good director, so I think it all boils down to how hot the source material was.

—

And that’s your lot. There’s no doubt some series I’ve missed both deliberately (not written about any ‘net shows) and accidentally (I wrote all these posts a fortnight ago and there’s some shows that have surfaced out of nowhere since then).

My overall feeling is that there’s not a lot of shows that feel big and important based on talent alone - Kaiba is probably the only one. There also seems to be less truly objectional shows in this season too. I think we’re seeing the successes of the noitaminA slot and adaptations of “light novels” have a real influence on what is getting adapted.

So here’s a recap what I’m looking forward to catching in rough order of excitedness

Kaiba
Soul Eater
Golgo 13
Gag Manga Biyori
Chi’s Sweet Home

Allison & Lillia
Library War
Himitsu Top Secret
Chiko, Heiress of the Phantom Thief
Itazura na Kiss
Nabari no O
Macross Frontier
Real Drive
Zettai Karen Children
Masked Maid Guy
Kyouran Kazoku Nikki
Net Ghost PiPoPa

That seems a lot, but actually only those first five have me really fired up. I don’t expect to see GMB3 in English anytime soon, possibly not Chi’s Sweet Home either. However the manga is 80% understandable without Japanese knowledge so the anime may be even more so. Only Kaiba, Soul Eater and GMB3 have me excited based on the animation talent involved. However, I’m expecting those other 12 shows I’ve highlighted will contain gems.

Posted in Anime, Hate Fun? | Tags: Itazura na Kiss, Junjou Romantica | No Comments »

HATE FUN? - Uninformed Judgments on Spring Anime Part 9

March 18th, 2008 by Brack

Himitsu Top Secret

Reiko Shimizu’s mystery manga gets an adaptation from Madhouse. Yet another show with little in the way of amazing staff, however it’s a mystery show and Iwa Ni Hana is excited by it so I will check it. I’m hoping with all these shows directed by folks with little in the way of amazing back catalogues that we’ll get some talent breaking out, though I’ve not got my hopes up though as most have mediocre non-direction credits too.

Library War

This is going in the successful noitaminA slot in April, so I’m expecting a well made series. It’s from Production IG (is that 3 shows so far this spring?) and it’s far more appealing than RS or xxxHolic to me. This is possibly the show where we may get a talent noticed. Director Takayuki Hamana was on Hakkenden, Jin-Roh and Yuasa’s Vampiyan Kids pilot, but has been entrenched in Prince of Tennis lately, only getting out to do the Sisters of Wellber series (are these any good btw?). The noitaminA shows have been successfully filling the gap between otaku fodder and kids/family shows, and this shouldn’t be any different.

BLASSREITER

More Gonzo. More Shadow Monsters. These shadow monsters are people who turn into demons at will. Goddamn it, now I want a new Devilman series more than ever.

As much as I rip on GONZO, at least they actually post trailers themselves on Youtube, rather than paranoidly remove all potential promotion for their product from the site. From watching the BLASSREITER trailer I have to say it looks tech demo-tastic, which is one of GONZO’s many bad habits.

Nijuu Menzou Musume aka Chiko, Heiress of the Phantom Thief

Again BONES are doing two new series concurrently, last year they had Darker Than Black and Skullman running and DtB suffered. This is a co-production with Telecom, who have plenty of swell credits of their own. This is Ranpo Edogawa pillaging along the lines of Detective Conan’s Kaito Kid. The director is Telecom veteran Nobuo Tomizawa who recently did the far better than you’d ever expect, Ramen Fighter Miki, as well as various Telecom works from Japan, the US and beyond.

Posted in Anime, Hate Fun? | Tags: blassreiter, chiko, himitsu top secret, library war, nijuu menzou musume | No Comments »

HATE FUN? - Uninformed Judgments on Spring Anime Part 8

March 17th, 2008 by Brack

Kaiba

Masaaki Yuasa. Madhouse. WOWOW. Everything is in place for greatness. I’d be happy if this was the only anime I watch all year.

GOLGO 13

Yay! Looks like Answer Studio, who did a decent job on FLAG, are animating. I think it’s Shunji Oga directing, who was asst. director on Golgo 13: The Professional. And the writers are TV veterans that look to have Lupin III projects in their credits. So it’s looking pretty solid right now, the only concern I have is it being on TV Tokyo might mean it gets watered down a little from the manga. Still that one image on the site is reassuring - Golgo stoically walking away from shit blowing up!

Kyouran Kazoku Nikki

This appears to be some kind of moe-tinged nutty sci-fi comedy about really, really weird “family” (Mother is a catgirl, son is a lion, daughter is an alien jellyfish, you know the drill). I have the feeling it will not be anywhere near as a funny as it thinks it should be. I will probably still check it out, as high concept comedies are always interesting just to see if they crash and burn.

By the by, those character designs remind me of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s work somewhat. Especially in facial proportions.

Sugarbunnies

I believe Sanrio did this as a stop motion series a while back, and now it’s a cartoon. I like the character designs on the adult characters, but man those bunnies look depressed on the webpage.

Posted in Anime, Hate Fun? | Tags: golgo 13, Kaiba, kyouran kazoku nikki, sugarbunnies | No Comments »

HATE FUN? - Uninformed Judgments on Spring Anime Part 7

March 16th, 2008 by Brack

Monochrome Factor

Pretty boys fight shadow monsters. This is also pretty much the same plot as the show Neo Angelique Abyss, that I mentioned last post. And there’s yet one more show to come that is said to have shadow monsters.

Oh, Bleach, what have you wrought.

You know what we need right now? A new Devilman series. Preferably directed by Jun Kawagoe.

Uchino 3 Shimai

Anime for normal people! It’s based on a parenting blog. Is this the first televised animation based on a blog?

It also looks like it will be fairly terrible flash animation.

Real Drive

Production IG’s first big show of 2008. This is the second spring season show that Kazuhiro Furuhashi is listed as director on. I’m guessing this is most likely wrapped production already, as it’s likely the show IG want to sell overseas.

Because, it’s yet another Production IG series with some Masamune Shirow input (credited as original creator). I know Shirow’s name helps sell things in the US and UK, but it seems like Production IG go to that well a little too often (along with the Mamoru Oshii well too). It’s probably worth a look, but I found Furuhashi’s Le Chevalier D’Eon rather stiff and disappointing so my hopes aren’t super high.

Glass Maiden aka Crystal Blaze

Talking of shows that have one eye on the international market. Crystal Blaze is Japanese title, Glass Maiden is the international title. Why it has a different English language name for the Japanese title is frankly bewildering.

The show itself looks to be a reunion of staff from Saikano. And it appears to be some kind of reverse engineered Cowboy Bebop (complete with it’s own Corgi) with a extra dash of City Hunter for taste. It doesn’t look terrible, more just desperately US-friendly to the extent of being totally unoriginal.

Posted in Anime, Hate Fun? | Tags: crystal blaze, glass maiden, monochrome factor, real drive, uchino 3 shimai | No Comments »

HATE FUN? - Uninformed Judgments on Spring Anime Part 6

March 15th, 2008 by Brack

Neo Angelique Abyss

The characters in this look like factory farmed bishounen. The same interchangeable ‘tude, just with different haircuts.

Soul Eater

This looks like another series guilty of the sin of ‘tude, but at least it looks different, and the characters look different from one another. The design has something of graphitti quality mixed with videogame iconography to it that I find charming. Definitely one I’m looking forward to catching, particularly as the dependable BONES are producing and Ouran Host Club’s Takuya Igarashi directs. Yes, this should be one of the good ones.

Vampire Knight

And another bishounen manga adaptation. Lots of these this season it seems. High School, Childhood Friends, Vampires, you know the drill. This looks v. generic, with nothing in the way of staff to make me interested. I understand the Viz release of the manga is rather popular, so I expect this to get similar fan attentions thrown it’s way.

Wagaya no Oinarisama

Here’s the hermaphrodite fox-demon anime you were demanding! From the man who gave you the El Hazard episodes that were no good! And Love Hina!

Posted in Anime, Hate Fun? | Tags: neo angelique abyss, soul eater, vampire knight, wagaya no oinarisama | No Comments »

HATE FUN? - Uninformed Judgments on Spring Anime Part 5

March 14th, 2008 by Brack

Zettai Karen Children

Based on the manga by Ghost Sweeper Mikami creator Takashi Shiina, this looks like it’s the replacement series for Hayate The Combat Butler, as it shares staff. It is about a military lieutenant forced to babysit three 10-year old psychic girls. Given it’s an anime made in 2008, that scenario is laden with the potential for creepiness, but I liked GS Mikami so Shiina’s getting the benefit of the doubt. The anime character designs have something of a nineties throwback look to them though not quite as clean as Shiina’s own line work.

God… “Nineties throwback”.

It’s worrying that I can use that phrase and have it mean something. With Slayers coming back I’ve a horrible feeling that angular early nineties anime look is going to become anime’s next “retro” look.

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2

More Code Geass. I’ve not actually seen any of the first series as TTGL was filling my mecha quota at the time. I get the impression from fan reaction that it’s more of a writers’ show, with more emphasis placed on the plot and script than the animation, whereas TTGL was very much an animators’ show (the greatness of TTGL’s writing is that it understands what works in animation). I described the last TTGL arc to my brother the other day and he said - “that sounds like the mecha show Tex Avery would make” - which is about right and A VERY GOOD THING. TTGL fans tend to rave about the animation and the emotion of the show, rather than the story. Code Geass fans come across as sci-fi fans first, animation fans second.

Or ravenous CLAMP fans that must consume anything those ladies come into contact with.

Nabari no O

HIGH SCHOOL NINJAS! It’s directed by Speed Grapher’s Kunihisa Sugishima. Hopefully free from GONZO and only having to do 13 eps means they might actually fulfill their promise. JC Staff can manage 13 ep series quite competently, so this might be fun. Same writer (Michiko Yokote) as xxxHolic though. To be fair she has done a lot that I like - Airmaster, Cowboy Bebop, Genshiken, Patlabor - as well as a lot I don’t, so this could be perfectly fine.

Special A

Some sort of romantic comedy based on the manga by Maki Minami. The anime character designs look soulless and devoid of charm. And Gonzo are involved.

Posted in Anime, Hate Fun? | Tags: code geass, nabari no o, special a, zettai karen children | No Comments »