AWESOME ENGINE » Toei

MAD MONDAYS – Soichiro Matsuda

Brack — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:31:04 +0000

Another from youtube user manuloz01 who continues to lovingly repost nicovideo sakuga MADs on the more easily accessible video site.

Anime News Network has, I’m guessing incomplete, filmography. Certainly he’s mentioned on AniPages Daily as having worked on the awesome Mononoke too. As per usual, if the music is light girly japanese pop, I have no clue as to the artist. Anyway, the vid is another good bit of ammo for those who want to argue against those that Toei doesn’t turn out good animators anymore (good directors… that might be a different case, is Mamoru Hosoda the only great director they’ve turned out in recent memory?).

GeGeGe no Kitaro (2007) Episode 1

Brack — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 20:45:48 +0000

As mentioned when I did a knee jerk look at spring anime a few months back, there was yet another adaptation of Shigeru Mizuki’s kid’s horror comic this year. Of course it being a show based on one of the most important and influential manga, and aimed at a mainstream audience, it was ignored by fansub groups until recently.

Quick recap of the concept of the show, good yokai (a spirit-monster of Japanese Folk Lore) fight bad yokai to protect humankind. Though often the reason the bad yokai pursue humans is human ignorance of the spirit world.

Isamu Tanonaka returns as Kitaro’s eye-ball father, Medama Oyaji. Tanonaka has portrayed him in every incarnation of Kitaro in film, including the recent live action film. Minami Takayama, the voice of Detective Conan, takes the lead role of Kitaro.

Which is probably why when I watched it Detective Conan sprang to mind, not just because of Takayama’s voice, the clean look of the show and pacing felt very Conan-like too. And there’s an element to the next episode previews that has echoes of early Conan episodes.

However it does feel a little too clean and modern. I think I preferred the first black and white episode of the 60s series that was fansubbed a year or so back. It’s an unfortunate truth that Toei’s animation quality has in general fallen from the great heights it had in that decade. Which is not to say this was terribly animated, it just felt it had more visual cues that came from the typical Toei look in 2007 than from Mizuki. But that probably doesn’t matter to it’s target audience of kids new to the series. The first episode felt like a good, fun horror show for kids that draws on folklore and complete with a moral to respect for cultural history. I’m not sure I’ll make a point of watching it regularly, I’d prefer to see more of the original series, but it’s good that English language anime fandom has paid attention to this character once again.

GeGeGe no Kitaro @ Animesuki

#45 – Futari wa Pretty Cure

Brack — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 18:22:00 +0000

Might as well get the other shojo warhorse of the 21st century out the way too.

Now this I have seen one episode of. So that makes me totally qualified to talk about it.

Starting in 2004 and currently on it's third series, Pretty Cure follows the adventures of Nagisa and Honoka, two schoolgirls who are given magic powers by to two (theoretically) cute things called Mipple and Mepple. These powers enable them to become Cure Black and Cure White and fight the forces of The Dusk Zone. The usual deal, y'know.

What struck me however from the episode I saw was that the fight scenes seem choreographed as if from a shonen anime. While some magic powers are used, they resemble fighting game maneuveurs, and Nagisa sure does a lot of kicking and punching. This makes sense when you look at the credits and see Daisuke Nishio listed as series director. What else did he direct? Oh, a little thing called Dragon Ball. And Air Master. And 3×3 Eyes. In fact the only remotely shojo piece on the credits ANN give is as an episode director of Pataliro. Which is pretty far from Pretty Cure in oh so many ways.

Speaking of punching and kicking, which we were before I edited this and put in that stuff about Daisuke Nishio, Nagisa's Cure Black costume struck me as resembling somewhat the ringwear of the wrestler Mima Shimoda. Certainly the intentiion seems to be for it to resemble a pro-wrestling outfit and the colours match Shimoda's favoured LCO colour scheme of Black/Pink.

Interestingly, both this and the previously mentioned Ojamajo Doremi are the creation of the psuedonymous (and non-existant) Izumi Todo. Given that this started the year the Doremi anime ended, and that the characters being just that little bit older than the Doremi characters, you have to guess this is a careful Toei marketing plan aimed at having a show for the girls who feel they've outgrown Doremi.

Story-wise the first episode didn't look like it was planning on setting the world alight with originality, but the execution certainly seems interesting if you like this sort of thing. For me one episode was enough.

Oh, supposedly 4kids have this show too. But who knows if they are planning on doing anything with it.

And, another also, apparently the third series is some kind of restart with all new characters.

#46 – Ojamajo Doremi

Brack — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 17:17:00 +0000

Long running shojo warhorse of the 21st century.

These are the adventures of merchandisable witches whose character design becomes ever increasingly stylised as the series progress.

There are 4 series, a couple of films and an OAV. 4Kids licensed it and launched it in the US.

Doremi, a young girl accidentally discovers the owner of a local shop is a witch. This results in the witch turning into a green blob, and enlisting Doremi as a witch apprentice with the aim of training her up and being able to undo the transformation. Doremi's school friends Hazuki and Aiko end up being enlisted to and heart warming adventures aimed at teaching kids the value of both friendship and the purchasing the toys available based on the series.

Further series introduce more characters and change the theme of the shop (flowers, baking, clothing accessories), and thus the range of toys Bandai can sell.

It's so easy to be cynical about things you've never seen you know.