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Post by Sucosa on Apr 26, 2007 9:21:39 GMT -5
Eureka 7- Really good series- I am not good with descriptions so I borrowed this synopsis from www.realitylapse.com ( also where you can download a lot of different anime for Free!!). Eureka Seven Description: Excessive amount of time has passed since the human beings were driven from the Earth. Looking for a place to live peacefully, they finally found the Land of the Covenant. It was a desolate planet where the surface of the planet was covered by the substance similar to the coral, and there was an unknown ion called “Traver” in the air. They exploited the earth, and in order to use “Traver” effectively, they built huge towers. Under the towers, countries were built, and unifying these counties, the United States of the Towers was founded. Several hundreds years have passed since then. Renton is a boy who lives with his grand father in a Tower Country, “Belforest”. He has a complaint about his life. He was the son of the Hero, “Adrock”, who saved the world from the disaster, “Summer of Love”, at the cost of his life. It became the burden on him. Furthermore, because his grand father is a mechanic, he has no choice but to take over his business. Only his mental food is “Liff” which is a sport gliding in the air using “Traver”. He yearns for Holland who is a charismatic Liff Rider, and he wants to travel around gliding Liff like him believing that a big wave will come to him some day. I am also on episode 8 of Deathnote: It is a darker series than what I thought it would be. Light (raito) murders people to cover the other murders he has committed with deathnote and it is like when people start telling lies ( you know- you have to tell another lie to cover the first one- well it is same principal but only with murders instead of lies). It seems that he is loosing all sense of the justice that he started with- being his original goal was to kill criminals as a example and now he seems to kill with little conscience about it. Not bloody like Hellsing but it is still pretty dark. Definately something interesting and new to watch And for those Narutards- Naruto Shippuden is awesome. I dare to say it is a bit better than the regular naruto series.
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Post by Sucosa on May 10, 2007 11:31:10 GMT -5
After watching "Funimation Televison" on the colours channel every night I have decided this- shows like : Fruits Basket, Negima, Kodocha, are the reccent times answer to Salior Moon- completely unorginal and aimed directly at girls. Not bad series= but not ones I want to watch really, the plots are copies of each other and everything has been done before. The jury is still out on Kiddy Grade- at least it has mechs and some action in it. The best shows that they play has to be Blue Gender, Baki the Grappler, YuYu Hakusho, Case Closed and Dragon Ball.
Maybe I have Changed tastes but all of these shows that are aimed at the ladies happen to be full of cute furries, No blood, no Violence ( or if it there is no one BLEEDS- Or they bleed Pink hearts) and a lot of boring dialogue with no real interesting points. Is this to say the Japanese think that girls should just be peace loving, furry pet thing loving - airheads? I certainly can't stomach to watch salior moon anymore- not when I found out the joys of blood, gore, aliens and some action sequence is all about.
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Post by T. Miller on May 12, 2007 19:59:25 GMT -5
PINK is EVIL.
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Post by UncleJager on Jun 7, 2007 10:19:07 GMT -5
I just finished watching Mouse and I was happy it was kind of a short series (11 15 minute episodes). The basic story is about a master theif named Mouse who is stealing outragous things like buildings while being chased by police who are best at yelling and making funny faces. Really this series is an excuse for 11 episodes of giant tits and ass, suplied by Mouse's three assistants. There really is barely any story line, there is an attempted made to give a background on each of the three assistants. But mostly it's all about the T&A. There is a wierd arch-enemy named Woof...yes Woof. The really wierd thing was Mouse spent 85% of the show being sexy-phobic (much like DNA2) but then would suddenly turn into a sex machine, which was statigecly covered up by objects, leading me to wonder in the show's begining if they were not just tickling him.
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Post by UncleJager on Jun 11, 2007 17:51:06 GMT -5
Saikano: Another Love SongThis is a short two episode story to accompany Saikano:The Last Lovesong For THis Little Planet/ She the Ultimate Weapon. Another Lovesong explores the events of the larger series from the angle of what happens at the army base where Chise serves. Featuring many of the same characters with the adition of Lt. Colonel Mizuki , who is the test version of the Ultimate Weapon gene. She is also able to hear Chise's thought and is able to offer information on her state to the Army. A major part of the story is how Chise depelops while she is the Ultimate Weapon and away from Shiju. She is torn between her true child self and the demon which she is turning into. A force both sides of the war hate and fear. A major asspect of the manga is also explored in these two episodes, though only breifly (but there is more indications than in the full series) as Chise develops she looses control of her weapon self and destroys entire cities instead of just the enemy. As the episodes end we are left with Chise fully under the control of her destructive self. (This is right before her final battle against her inner demons and the eventual attampt to escape with Shiju. )
These to episodes do little to explain what the war is about or who the enemy is. Some enemy troops speak American english and fly american planes while others appear to be French. Why they are attacking Japan is never fully explained in the Anime, but there are hints that the livable parts of the world have radicaly shrunken because of war...leading one to think that the enemy is attacking to gain land for it's people. The role of Chise in this innitial destruction of the world is never adressed is she has any part at all. What is adressed however is what Chise goes through while on 'assignment' and how she is able to escape on her second or third try. Also explained is why she comes back on her other tries even though she is much more powefull than her army captors. I have not found any indication that Another Lovesong is just the first instalment of a longer series that will revisit the world of the original series. However as popular as Saikano is in Japan I would not be suprised, especialy since there has also been a live action version of the series made recently.
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Post by UncleJager on Jul 4, 2007 15:23:19 GMT -5
Gantz I had innitaly watched the first to episodes of this series back in Savannah a couple of years ago and at that point I was not very impressed. Now however, I have to say that this ranks in the top ten anime series I have thus far scene. Gantz is a series about self examination, sociology, youth culture, religion, moral choices, set in a world of ultra violence and sexual gratuity. In the begining the series is quite confusing, slow paced, the fight scenes are a lot like Dragon Ball Z, characters screaming with things exploding. For some reason, you will not be able to stop watching it, u will want to find out what happens in the end. The basic story revolves around a group of young people, Kei Kurono, Kei Kishimoto, Masaru Kato, each an extreme of a certain personalities. Kurono is the angry/sexualy fustrated youth, Kishimoto is the depresive, somewhat misunderstud seaker of lover and care, Kato is the reformed thug who wants to attone for his past. There are many other important characters who shape the story but the main plot revolves around the relationship of these three. Kato and Kurono are killed while trying to save a homeless man who falls on the subway tracks, right as they die, or the moment right after it they are wisked away to a room by Gantz. Here they meet Kishimoto, who has just commited suicide. Gantz forces them to play a game where they must kill an 'alien' in a alowted amount of time, if they are sucessfull and are alive they are let back into the 'real' world till Gantz calls them again. Unlike many violent animes, I actualy began to care for the characters as the story progressed. I was cheering for them to survive and had some "aww fuck" moments when people died. In an interview the creator of Gantz said he wanted to create a series that did not hold back, and he certainly did, the brutality of the series and it's message caused the heavily censored show to be taken off the air in Japan after only 13 episodes. Which explains why the series gets way better after that point. Warning: The corporate money grubbing is alive and in full strengh in the American release of this series the first 5 disc contain only two episodes each. For almost $30 you get 45 minutes of show, but some rather interesting interviews. There is however a collectos set on the series that contains all episodes which is a much better buy, even though it is a greater initial bill.
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Post by Sucosa on Jul 11, 2007 8:20:07 GMT -5
Fuse played the first four episodes of Ergo Proxy - I was hooked from the first episode. This is a darker themed anime set in a post Armageddon time, where people are co-existing with robots in a city called Romdo. I am a tad lazy today so this is the synopsis of the plot courtesy of Amazon.com, borrowed from L.J lewis ( I thought she summed it up pretty well) :
Ergo Proxy is a very interesting start to a new science fiction anime. I ended up enjoying these first four episodes a lot more than I thought I would, but I find it hard to give this a complete recommendation. Series like this that try to be all philosphical and deep, and with a title like Ergo Proxy how could it try to be anything else, have a tendency to fail spectacularly in the end because their storylines end up being crushed under the wait of philosophical mumbo-jumbo that the creators clearly have only a superficial understanding of. This story takes place far in the future. Earth is all but uninhabitable thanks to ecological disaster. Domed cities exsist where people, the chosen few called Citizens, can live in a comsumers paradise. In one such domed city, Romdo, humanity lives in comfort with help from AutoReivs, robots that serve as companions, walking PDAs, and 24-hour spying devices for the central government. The city currently has two problems. A terrible monster called a Proxy has escaped the government's confinement and is rampaging through the city. The second is that AutoReivs are being infected with the cogito virus, a rogue program that makes the machines self-aware and unruly. Inspector Re-l Mayer, a rather gothy looking policewoman and granddaughter of the city's overlord whose use of eye-shadow makes Tammy Faye Baker's comestic use look moderate in comparision, is investigating an incident where infected AutoReivs have killed civilians. At the crime scene, she runs into the Proxy. When her superiors try to make her think she hallucinated the incident, Re-l starts putting the pieces together between the Proxy and a man named Vincent Law. Besides an interesting plot-line, Ergo Proxy has a very striking dark look to it. It does make some of the scenes hard to see, like the first couple minutes of the first episode, but over-all its very attractive. It's all complimented by an atmospheric soundtrack.
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My suggestion is to watch it- I was drawn into it immediately by the awesome animation. Some concepts like the proxy monster and the government's involvement is really muddled but in the first 4 episodes, I think that is intentional. This is a show for those who like things like Ghost in the Shell: Stand alone complex, Witch hunter robin, and Armitage.
Enjoy.
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Post by UncleJager on Jul 12, 2007 9:41:45 GMT -5
My suggestion is to watch it- I was drawn into it immediately by the awesome animation. Some concepts like the proxy monster and the government's involvement is really muddled but in the first 4 episodes, I think that is intentional. This is a show for those who like things like Ghost in the Shell: Stand alone complex, Witch hunter robin, and Armitage. Enjoy. It's on my list of rentals, but right now I have my finger in too many pies, i'm trying to finish off 3 other series. But it's good to know that I thought right and it will be interesting. I even have a review: Lunar Legend Tsukihime A vampire hunter story set in modern times. The series reminded me somewhat of Witch Hunter Robin in its pacing. The story is more about uncovering a complex mystery involving the main character Shiki, while the hunt for vampires carries the plot forward. Shiki is very forgetful and has lived with his relatives for the past 8 yrs after a mysterious accident he suffered as a small child. Now he is moving back in with his sister who if now the head of the household after the death of their father. On the way to his new home from school Shiki is drawn to a playground where he brutaly murders a young woman, as well as he himself being attacked, later on that evening, by a girl who looks like his classmate. Shiki is soon in the middle of a plot to find a vampire who has been terrorising the city for weeks.
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Post by UncleJager on Jul 16, 2007 13:08:50 GMT -5
Paranoia Agent Directed by Satoshi Koni (who also directed Millenium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers and Perfect Blue) PA has a new central character each episode and their story is tied in with all the rest by Lil' Slugger. Much like most of Koni's other works PA is focused on the mind and deals alot with illusions and fantasy. Some episodes are quite disturbing but overall most have a plenty of dark humor to them. My favorites were the RPG spoof and the one about gossiping. This was another one of those series that I had sceen some of in Savannah and was not impressed then, but really liked on the second watch. Koni has and art and animation style that I really enjoy, if find he is especialy good at placing out of place characters in environments, where the characters now they can't really be there but have to play along if they want to gain what they have come to a certain place for. I also think PA did a good job at being really dark and twisted without appearing so and also not being so crushingly heavy as some of his earlier works, such as Perfect Blue.
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Post by UncleJager on Jul 23, 2007 0:30:02 GMT -5
I just finished watching The Place Promised In Our Early Days directed by the same guy who did Voice Of A Distant Star (which I really didn't like). Many hail these as the new Miyazaki, but anyway I look even at their best they still lack a lot of the charm and magic of Studio Ghilbi works. Place have a pretty simple but well thought out and deep plotline revolving around three middle-school friends. The two boys are building a plane in secret that they are going to use to fly to a neighbouring country to have a look at a mysterious tower. Both boys are strangly drawn to Sairi a girl in their class. A deep friendship develops quickly but is just as quickly destroyed when Sairi mysteriously dissappears. The plane is never finished and the two boys drift apart. One get's intangled in a government run program which researches the mystery tower, claiming it is a doorway to alternate universes. The other boy shuts himself off from the rest of society having strange dreams where he is searching for Sairi in an empty city. In the end it is found out that Sairi is the grand daughter of the creator of the tower and the universal gateway is connected to her. As long as she is kept asleep the doorway stays closed. Opening the gateway however means destruction of our universe because two universes cannot similtaniously occupy the same space. Here comes the only major hole in the plot. The two boys deside to wake up Sairi in other to be able to destroy the tower with a missle, eventhough indications point to the destruction of the universe if she is allowed to fully wake up, thus fully opening the gateway.
Much like Voice of a distant star, Place deals with longing for a loved one, however Place does a much better job developing a story from that basic idea, while Voice's only trick was the use of time passing between messages between the two lover, due to the sheer distance in space travel between them.
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Post by UncleJager on Aug 22, 2007 20:46:10 GMT -5
Hurray not a show review!! U will all laugh but...spending a weekend watching Naruto on Adult Swim I now actually feel a void where the show used to be. I might be becoming a Narutard!!! The fact that I only saw a small portion of the show is really causing considerations about how and should I watch all the rest. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! Soon I might start watching Bleach and DBZ!!!
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Post by Sucosa on Aug 26, 2007 11:47:24 GMT -5
Come to the Darkside Jager- Naruto can be fun to watch- just over cosplayed. lol. I have seen all of the regular Naruto season and I download the new season/arc- Naruto Shippudon religiously, It's interesting to see the characters psuedo- grown up.
I started downloading Blackjack and D-grayman the other day. Haven't yet watched but when I do I'll post about it. BlackJack sounds really interesting.
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Post by UncleJager on Sept 4, 2007 23:29:42 GMT -5
Gankutsuōu - The Count of Monte Cristo created by Mahiro Maeda (key animator of Kill Bill 1, and Animatrix Second Renessance Part 1 and 2 as well as involved in Studio Ghibli during Naussica, Castle In The Sky and Porco Rosso. As the title would imply this series is based around the famed novel Count of Monte Cristo, how true to the plot it is I cannot tell having not read the book in many many years. Gankutsuou is the most ambitions anime, in terms of production, i have scene in many years. Costumes for the series were designed by famed Chinese-American fashion designer Anna Sui. This may be the first anime I have heard of where an actual fashion designer was used for costumes. What sets Gankutsuōu appart is its unique color and pattern design for most everything in the series. The easiest way to describe it is to say that the animation is created as a reverse shape that is hollow to allow an often stationary background pattern to act as the color/pattern for objects. When I originaly saw trailers for the show I hated this design theme, thinking it was too loud, and frankly the reverse of how pattern animation is 'supposed to be done.' However once i strated watching the show I found the style created a perfect match to the excess that is often part of the lives of the characters.If for nothing else it's worth watching a couple of episodes just to experiance the color sceme. Ofcourse the series does not lack in depth and offers a involving story line, though after watching it I do not fill as deeply connected to characters as I did with some other shows. I have no idea if it is possible to replicate the color/pattern look of the show for cosplay but it would surely be award winning. The discs do not lack in this department either. disc five in fact had such a large gallery that I was tempted to break it into sections. In about 3-5 second intervals the gallery must have gone on for nearly half and hour! There is even a full gallery dedicated to Anna Sui's design for some of the ladies' dresses.
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Post by T. Miller on Sept 6, 2007 12:36:07 GMT -5
Come to the Darkside Jager- Naruto can be fun to watch- just over cosplayed. lol. I have seen all of the regular Naruto season and I download the new season/arc- Naruto Shippudon religiously, It's interesting to see the characters psuedo- grown up. I started downloading Blackjack and D-grayman the other day. Haven't yet watched but when I do I'll post about it. BlackJack sounds really interesting. Yay, Blackjack! I like it. ^.^
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Post by UncleJager on Sept 9, 2007 13:52:49 GMT -5
I recently finished watching Outlaw Star. The show turned out way different than I imagined it was. I remember seeing portions of it on Toonami a while back, but apperantly my memory of it doesn't serve me well, I remembered the ship being different and the show being a lot more skrew-ball (in the theme of the Hot springs planet episode) than it really was. Eitherway I still enjoyed watching it, though the characters didn't really stick with me. I especially felt the shows resolution was rushed. I don't know if it was me, but did the character design change somewhat the last three of four episodes? Everyone seemed taller skinier and more harshly drawn.
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