deguy's Blog

Anime Relations: Byousoku 5 Centimeter

The spot where I park my car at work is next to a park which has more than a dozen large cherry trees. This year they were in full bloom from last Friday. As of the early this week the cherry blossom petals have begun to fall. One place they get into is the gap between the rear hatch of my car and the roof of the car. So for the past couple of days when I open the rear hatch I get a few cherry blossom petals floating into my car....

Last week I was perusing the list of movies being screened at the Forum and Solaris cinemas in Yamagata after finding that "Dead Dead Demons De De De De Destruction" was being screened there. Given that Yamagata city is an hour's drive from where I live, I've never been there to see a movie. But there was one other movie which I spotted and decided that I would make the effort to go see.

So, this past Wednesday I got up at the unholy hour of 7:15 am and got myself ready to hit the road. After assembling my work materials, I left home around 7:45. About an hour later I found a parking spot in the building that houses the Solaris Cinema.

When I purchased my ticket I noticed that I could possibly be the only person at the screening of the movie. Upon entering the theatre, I was given a promotional clear plastic postcard tie-in product. After settling into my seat with my popcorn and soft drink (the latter was not a good idea as I found myself holding on from about midway through the movie to not leave the theatre to use the facilities) I was bombarded by a number of trailers for anime movies. After about the third one I was thinking to myself, "Who would watch these films?" as I was losing interest in them.

The movie I had ventured out to see is something I haven't watched in about 16 years. So it was interesting to see how my memory of the film differed from the actual product. There were visuals that I had remembered well and there were things I had totally wrong or had just plain forgotten. It was also interesting to note how the artwork of the movie showed its age. Compared to the director's recent works there was a sublte difference in the attention to details (though his standard was quite high for the time the film was made).

All in all, it was a long day. I didn't stay up for all that long once I had arrived home around 10:45pm. The experience of at last having viewed the movie on a big screen had turned out to be a pleasant one with at least one scene where a few tears welled up in my eyes.

And I still have cherry blossom petals lying around in my car....

Anime Relations: Shin Evangelion Movie: ||, Wonder Egg Priority

Earlier today I spotted a forum topic asking whether people had given an anime a score of 1 on MAL. I went through my anime list and had to scroll down for quite a bit before I found a solitary 1 at the bottom. I put emphasis on the "quite a bit" part because there were 999 titles on the list. And tonight there are 1000.

Somewhere earlier this week I realized that I was sitting at 999 titles on my "completed" list. So I stopped to ponder what title would get the number 1000 spot. My two candidates were the latest Evangelion movie (it had opened at the local cinema last Friday) and the series Wonder Egg Priority. At that point in time I was leaning towards finishing the series. It's been an fairly interesting show with some challenging questions. I mentioned this situation on a club comments thread and one person went at length to talk about their recommendation of seeing the movie. After reading the comment I decided to go with the movie. I haven't watched any of the previous movies but I was willing to gamble on the latest installment. Plus, I really wasn't in the mood to wait two more weeks for the series to end.

Before the movie itself started, the audience was bombarded with a short digest of the previous movies. Okay, it looked like I hadn't missed too much when looking at things from the ten thousand foot view...which basically represented what I remembered from watching the original TV series back in the 1990s. Once the movie itself got going that feeling didn't immediately evaporate. It wasn't a smooth ride to the end of the movie but it turned out well enough that I said to myself, "I think I want to see this movie again" when the end credits started to roll. Bravo!

I don't know if there's a buy/sell/trade manga thread on this site so I figured I'd go for the direct marketing route...

I have the following early 90s American comic book size volumes of manga I'd like to sell off:
- Ranma 1/2 - Part 2 - No. 1-7 (Viz)
- Pixy Junket - No. 1-6 (complete) (Viz)
- Appleseed - vol 2 #1, vol 3 #3, vol 3 #4, vol 4 #3 - (Eclipse)
- Dominion - # 2, 3, 4, & 6 - (Eclipse)
- Dirty Pair by Smith & Warren - vol 2 #5, vol 3 #1, 2, 3, & 5 (Eclipse)

C$20 + shipping for the whole lot. ^_^

Anime Relations: Idol Fight Suchie-Pai 2

The above is the title of the second film I took at at our local international film festival. This is a sumptuous movie that makes you want to live in the countryside of Japan, not in the megapolises such as Tokyo. It's also a magical film that has an idyllic and simple facade covering the turmoil of a young junior high school girl coming of age. A couple of surprises for me: Lead actress Sachi Parker not only speaks perfect Japanese but she's Shirley MacLaine's daughter. And the end credits song is an Arai Akino song but it isn't performed by her (something new everyday eh?).

Stopped off at a used CD/DVD shop after the movie. I DID NOT BUY the copy of "Idol Fighter Su-Chi-Pai" that was sitting on the shelf there. I've read the "Buried Garbage" column on ANN and I'll leave it to the pros to suffer through that kind of dreck.

Anime Relations: Mach GoGoGo

Yes, my latest update to my watched anime list is an episode of "Speed Racer"... Actually what I watched was the first episode of "Mach Go! Go! Go!" that came with a tribute CD that was released in Japan. A tribute CD? Yes. Imagine an acapella version of the OP song. Or a reggae version. Of course there is the obligatory remix version.

Anime Relations: Clannad

Was in the Big Apple from June 23rd to July 1st....
1) If you're in your sixties and standing at the luggage carousel at JFK carrying a small backpack with "RX-78-2" stitched on it...you may get spotted by someone who'll see it and know you're carrying a Gundam themed backpack. Even if there is no mention of the word "Gundam" on the backpack. I think it had a Feddie emblem on it though. I suppose the fellow could've been using a backpack he "borrowed" from a grandson.
2) I really only saw one person on the street wearing an anime related t-shirt. Luckily for me I partied enough to forget what that t-shirt said. I thought it was cute when I saw it though. It just wasn't that memorable.
3) Yes, we made a mistake when we wandered into a store on Broadway that sold anime figures. No, I didn't lead the way into the store. 'Nuf said. I didn't even pick up the box with the Furukawa Nagisa figure to check it out...even though I once had a Nagisa wallpaper on my Mac. :P