Figure 17 10
Possibly the best episode of anime I've seen this month, and that's in terms of quality rather than of affection. The perfect combination of cashing in on the previous nine episodes and building the characters for the show's resolution.
The conversation between Tsubasa and Hikaru over the hankerchief was a standout, of course, with Hikaru's calm rejection of her function as a machine - metaphorically and literally dropping the phone. Yet it never crossed over into portraying DD's Maguar-hunting as anything but virtuous, a point driven home by his extra-specially selfless battle.
This is a great show.
Macross 13 Was Pure Win
Showcasing Zentradi spies. Showcasing Lynn Minmay. Showcasing the Macross itself, in all its aircraft-carrier arm'd glory. Showcasing Roy Focker (who is still awesome). Showcasing anaphora - no wait, that's me.
Also, the SDF Macross's OP is great. I can take or leave Triangler, but I can't help but be moved by a guy belting out 'Macross! Macross! Macross!'.
Kaiba 04
Another vignette. Feels Bebop-episodic at the moment, rather than full-blown Kino-episodic. But we'll see what happens.
I said 'whimsical melancholy', and I stick by that. Grandma's story isn't tragic, it's melancholic and every episode has its whimsical scenes (see the opening 'chase' of 04, for example). And the over-arching conceit of the show drips whimsy. Also note how Grandma wasn't an especially nice person - not nasty, but certainly a little grasping - yet 04 made us feel for her nevertheless.
CG R2 06
There's a sense of
value to the mecha action in
Code Geass, because it's not paced to a formula. See, in something like
Zeta Gundam there must be a battle near the close of nearly every episode - they way that the writers play within that boundary is in itself interesting and enjoyable, but it doesn't make you treasure each fight in the way that
Code Geass does, even if
CG's mecha aren't as attractive. And the wings of a giant
Logres class (thankyou, thankyou) floatship are a suitably ludicrous (in all the positive senses of the term) battlefield.
SEED Destiny Special Editions: Final Verdict
It was certainly an interesting exercise watching the
Destiny compilation movies: it was good to remind myself that, yes, there were one or two good things about
Destiny, and good to remind myself that there were also lots of flaws, all without committing myself to rewatching the whole 50 episodes.
Structuring the four movies around Athrun's experience was definitely a wise decision, as he's less irritating and more compromised than Kira. The movies also benefitted from being built by someone who knew where the story was going, so there was a sense of villainy about Durandal from the beginning in the Special Edition which was missing in the original series. The action, too, still rocks if (as I do) you like wings, dongles and flight. Though there's a bit too much flying around for me, but there you go. I can always watch the penultimate episode of
Gasaraki if I feel like I need a break.
Yet
Destiny remains incoherent in plot (and morality - and not in a good way) and fundamentally unsatisfying. Add to this the inherent flaws of the compilation movie format - rapid events, obscurity and a sense that you have to have seen the original series to understand what's going on (which is true), not to mention at one point descending to the level of a music-video summary (in the second one) - and you wind up with something which improves on
Destiny, but not by much.
And it could have been so much better . . .
Rewatching Nadesico: 05
It's amazing just how much Nadesico can fit in one episode. The funeral satire, a homily on deathbed cookery, Yurika's (hilariously doomed) attempt to achieve enlightenment, a mutiny and of course those pesky Jovians on the starboard bow. This is also the first episode to showcase Ruri, so I would imagine its broadcast marks the conception of her fandom.
This show really is as awesome as I remember.
A Child's Time: Amoral Panic
Well, itsubun
convinced me to examine
KnJ for myself. (Though I'm still gobsmacked that it should be declared a 'prodigous achievement'. The
Laocoön Group is a prodigous achievement;
KnJ isn't.) Six chapters later (dropped - no mecha), my impressions broadly line up with her description. Yes, it's quite clever, and yes, there's evidence that an actual, genuinely emotional story is being set up - I'm prepared to take the
word of others that this is the case.
And at the same time, it's laden with fanservice. The instinct is to condemn, but I'm beginning to think that responsibility for arousal rests (along with responsiblity for meaning itself) with the reader. Obviously we don't have control over our physical reactions, but it's certainly up to us what we do with them. The call - as with moe, GAR and all the other responses provoked in us by what we read and watch - is to isolate and examine that reaction sceptically. Or, in other words, you can't just blame fanservice
per se.
So it should've been translated and published, right?
Wrong.
That would be the manga industry loading the gun of controversy and handing it to certain powerful interests within US society. It's a purely consequentialist answer, an amoral panic, if you will, true, but sometimes (business decisions, politics) it's necessary to think that way.
Rewatching Nadesico - 03
Big nostalgia trip time. I remembered what happened in 03, but I'd forgotten how.
How.
BAWWWWWWW!
This episode also had some awesome English-as-a-foreign-language.
Mazinkaiser DVD Boxes
Anime DVD boxes frequently have terrible write-ups on them. The blurb on the back of the first UK volume of Gun X Sword, for example, cuts off in mid sentence. Now I know it's probably asking too much to employ actual writers to compose these things but I would hope MVM's marketing people understand that when you start a sentence, you bloody well finish it.
Anyway, the (now gone from the UK) ADV release of Mazinkaiser is a shining exception to the rule. Not only does the layout of the back covers imitate the style of a comic book, the actual text is rather good. Both volumes have a suitable tagline (I: 'MAZINKAISER meets DR. HELL on earth!', II: 'HELL hath no fury like the MASTER of monsters!'). And the blurb body on the second volume manages to allude to the Harfleurs speech from Henry V.
SEED Density Special Editions: An Exercise in Turd-Polishing?
Someone mentioned these on /m/ the other day, so I wandered off to check them out. The original Destiny (I'll drop the Density nickname now) didn't provoke much RAGE from me; rather, it left me with a lingering sense of disappointed boredom. Justice had not been done to the average-to-averagely-good AU established in SEED.
These compilation movies - well, the first two that I've seen - manage to cut out some of the bad stuff. The plot rattles along (slightly too fast, because it's a compilation) and having the story narrated in retrospect (analeptically?) by Athrun is a good decision. And it's true that Destiny had some attractive animation, decent MS design (provided you like wings and an embarrassment of dongles) and some enjoyable battles.
The second compilation is weaker than the first - at one point it descends to clip-show/music video - though, which makes me wonder if they're going to decrease in quality over time like the source material.
The other thing is that they only really make sense if you've seen Destiny already (unlike, for example, the three movies for the original MSG). It's kindof cheating to rely on the viewer to fill in knowledge about what's going on elsewhere.