Recommend me some post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk, psychological stuff!
If I sent you a friend request, it's because I like your taste and I'd like to see your updates to check what other cool things you found. Also, feel free to message me about anything :)
Something happens in my heart when I see Seiya in his first anime cloth... I probably have seen some random episodes of Speed Racer and Kimba before, but I really got into anime when Saint Seiya aired in my country in 1994, and I was 5yo. After its success, there was a huge flood of anime on over-the-air TV. Dragon Ball, Shurato, Ronin Warriors, they'd even show some random OVAs for the kids, like MD Geist and Genocyber, between Sailor Moon and Captain Tsubasa. I also got a VHS of Akira back then and fell absolute in love with it - no wonder I became teenage punk later on. Some anime I watched in the 90's I hold dear are Street Fighter II V, Yu Yu Hakusho and Samurai X (and Akira!).
In 2001, when I was 12, my family got a paid TV service and there was an anime channel. I got to watch tons of random stuff, but also Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell, Serial Experiments Lain, Jin-Roh, Perfect Blue, Animatrix, among others, that blew my mind and completely changed my view of anime. In 2003 we changed the service and I no longer had that channel, the anime on TV were the likes of Yu-Gi-Oh! and Bey Blade, and I couldn't get into those, my bar was set too high already. I didn't watch anime through the rest of my teenage years.
In 2008 I started watching some episodes of One Piece and Naruto on my lunch break. It was either that or watching the news, but they didn't air too many episodes on over-the-air TV. I got curious to see how the story would continue, but my internet wasn't good enough to watch online, so I looked for the manga. I discovered that manga (of those shounen, at least) are so much better than anime - it's fast paced, they don't repeat the same dialogue ten times per episode, nor have a flashback every five minutes. From there, I started reading a lot of manga, and although friends got me reading stuff I regret wasting so much time on (like Fairy Tail and Noblesse), I also discovered Berserk, Basilisk, Gantz, Attack on Titan, Eden, Death Note...
It was late 2015, I was hanging at a friend's house and he said there was this cool anime I had to watch, I thought he was going to show me yet another shounen, and I was pretty bored at the whole genre already, but he showed me the first episode of Gangsta. and I absolutely loved it. When I got back home I watched the whole thing, there were nine episodes out and I was so excited, but then, like a curse, when I finally got back into anime after twelve years, the studio went bankrupt and the anime was dropped two episodes later, not even completing the season haha.
But now I was back at it and started looking for other stuff. I discovered Ergo Proxy, Texhnolyze, The Sky Crawlers, Darker Than Black, Code Geass, From the New World, Terror in Resonance, Psycho-Pass... I was watching a lot of stuff, and then I found MyAnimeList. I joined on Jan 5, 2016, and the rest of my updates you can see on the site :)
- Error: Comickers Manga Collection For Another World (?) - Plan to Read
- Gabuli (?) - Plan to Read
- Global Astroliner Gou (?) - Plan to Read
- Sky Crawlers - Innocent Aces (?) - Plan to Read
Moebius is one of my absolute favourites! What is this panel from? I don't think I recognise it from The Incal, which is the one thing I've read before drawn by him.
Man, I haven't seen those movies in a long time. Come to think of it, I saw part 2 when I was around 8 years old, and that might have been the first exposure to anything punk related in my life. Well, other than all of the villainous street gangs with mohawks that attempted to harass or mug the protagonist of every movie with a city setting during the 80s. But when you say the movie has the most realistic depiction, are you taking Suburbia into account, or does it not qualify for being more of an independent film? Because that would have been my choice. And although I haven't seen SLC Punk in about 20 years, didn't that one also have a decent portrayal? I honestly can't remember anything about that one other than it starred Mathew Lillard.
Hell yeah so happy to hear that, I think the third is super underrated, as you said incredibly anxiety inducing cinema, it's so well done. And yeah the sequels were essentially the director's hail Mary, hoping to get back on his feet after his film, Fear X, bombed so hard, luckily the Pusher sequels were both great and successful. Bleeder's so great too in my opinion, really fun to watch after Pusher as well.
Lmao I have a tradition with my friends that we watch video game movie adaptations every Friday and it just so happened to fit perfectly with the MAW challenge since I hadn't watched a UK movie. We do find some fun things once in a while but it's mostly quite bad.
Happy to hear you found some enjoyment in it! Pusher 2 is my personal favorite but I think they all have merit, even if the third one is very different compared to the others.
lol, the scripting there is weird. It sounds like they're in a revolutionary cell together, but with the way she was explaining things at first, I figured she was part of the status quo trying to comfort the main into adhering to the system. That girl on the right sure likes to sneak a lot of peeks at the camera. XD
It makes sense to me. It's just too boring and meaningless, and they want something else. lol, I was talking about this with sheaswee earlier. This blog post he linked gives an example.
I was expecting some kind of weird sci-fi twist to the scene. I guess it's an interesting concept for porn. Sounds like a Tsai Ming-liang film, and he did have that one pornographic film (though it's an art film and meant more so as anti-porn). :\
Hey Bro! Thanks so much for sharing your blog—it looks awesome! I just checked it out and loved the sci-fi stuff. The titles you picked are really cool; "666: The Mark of the Beast" caught my eye 👀.
And haha, I don’t use Letterboxd, but I’m a total Goodreads nerd! Here’s my profile if you wanna peek. I track all my books, manga, and comics there—this year’s list is here.
We’ve got overlapping taste! Though for me, anthologies are a lifesaver… way kinder to my wallet than other hobbies 😂. Let me know if you spot anything on my lists we should geek out about!
You should probably try some more Miike then. He has an absurd amount of variety. Gozu reminds me a lot of Lynch, just with an equally weird Japanese sensibility. Maybe Ichi the Killer or Izo or worth a look. I'm trying to remember the titles for his more laid back ones, though. Bird People in China, I guess. He also has that comedy musical the Happiness of the Katakuris.
I assumed the entry was old because of that 2024 post on the forum, but I'm guessing the entry was only added recently, because it wasn't there back when I watched the prequel film. Agreed, it's annoying that you can't follow staff and studios. I wonder if those other ones that were recently added are available anywhere.
I've heard a lot about Pusher over the years. I might look into that eventually too. Thought you might be interested in knowing that that horror anime director is doing a sequel or spin-off of his film series:
Totally agree on Fukui (I think this is the name of the Pinocchio director) and Tsukamoto. Tsukamoto also had some pure horror stuff, though some of it isn't as good. I remember liking his Haze a lot, and it kind of reminded me of the film Cube. I'm pretty sure you'd like Junkhead, btw. Not sure if I ever mentioned to it or if you saw it. It's like a more light-hearted dark comedy version of Blame! I don't mind the audio stuff that much when it comes to avant-garde cinema, but many of these directors become inconsiderate when it comes to repetition and glacial pacing. I think those are my primary complaints. Sometimes it works in their favor, but it often detracts. If you ever end up watching Noroi, I'd also recommend the same director's Okaruto. It's a fairly unique spin that blends a cult, murder mystery, supposed Lovecraftian entities, etc. Shiraishi is very hit or miss, but he's one of the few horror directors in Japan consistently trying to do something different. You've probably seen Miike's Gozu, but that's also worth a look.
Oh, maybe so on Herzog. You were watching a lot of these with basically same chara, plot, setting, though it's certainly low key, atmosphere-oriented, and not too exciting. A pretty simple script and the like. More average or slightly above average to me rather than amazing. Herzog from that period can be pretty sparse. I'm not too into that many of them other than Kaspar Hauser. I remember I was reading about the story and was fascinated by it, and I had to watch his film on it.
I think Shimizu's Ring film is okay. But I never liked Ju-on and the countless clones. Dark Water isn't that bad. But it is hard to find unique stuff.
It's true that a lot of those old art films were obnoxious. Like you're talking Weekend's car jam scene that lasted like 10 mins? Just a big middle finger held up to the audience. XD
Kraanerg would probably agree too actually, especially depending on the film. Because a lot of these scenes are borderline art troll stuff. XD
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Happy to hear you found some enjoyment in it! Pusher 2 is my personal favorite but I think they all have merit, even if the third one is very different compared to the others.
It makes sense to me. It's just too boring and meaningless, and they want something else. lol, I was talking about this with sheaswee earlier. This blog post he linked gives an example.
https://retrospring.net/pauseandselect/a/23997
This second one is longer and more detailed. First should be fine if you just want a quickie.
https://blog.psychopopular.com/translations/mass-death-mass-life
And haha, I don’t use Letterboxd, but I’m a total Goodreads nerd! Here’s my profile if you wanna peek. I track all my books, manga, and comics there—this year’s list is here.
We’ve got overlapping taste! Though for me, anthologies are a lifesaver… way kinder to my wallet than other hobbies 😂. Let me know if you spot anything on my lists we should geek out about!
https://myanimelist.net/anime/57797/Calabi_Yau_no_Sukima
I guess you probably heard about this already, as the page has been around for a while, but I didn't see it.
I think Shimizu's Ring film is okay. But I never liked Ju-on and the countless clones. Dark Water isn't that bad. But it is hard to find unique stuff.
It's true that a lot of those old art films were obnoxious. Like you're talking Weekend's car jam scene that lasted like 10 mins? Just a big middle finger held up to the audience. XD
Kraanerg would probably agree too actually, especially depending on the film. Because a lot of these scenes are borderline art troll stuff. XD