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Post by UncleJager on Oct 10, 2007 10:27:26 GMT -5
Gunslinger Girls This series started pretty much like I imagined it would, lots of shooting, cute little girls with guns and goverment conspiracy ending in assassination. The series takes place in an alternate Italy where the gov. is in a struggle with a Republican Reble Faction along with some other terrorist organization. Under the innocent name of the Social Welfare Organization the government created a secret policing force of which Section 2 uses abandoned/ill children to create cyborg assassins. The series focuses most on the relationship of the girls to there handlers but fails to offer anysort of indepth exploration of this subject. Instead in skims the surface and jumps around between the 6-7 girls. What the series does really well is show/create who innocent/naive these girls are. Many series try to create innocent children characters but most go overboard. Here the characters are appropriatly developed for their ages 9-12, but there childish innocence is nicely ofset by the lack of emotion and thought created in them by their brainwashing and 'conditioning' as killing machines. The series also explores one of animes favorite themes use of machines by humans and that machines eventual destruction of humans. I would have like to see the series developed more beyond it's 13 episodes because I feel that with more room the series could have turned out to be much better than it was.
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Post by Sucosa on Oct 12, 2007 18:47:25 GMT -5
I finally finished Ergo proxy- there were actually 23 episodes ( Jager- the disk I gave you only has 22- sorry) it was kinda surprising but left open for season 2, too bad Geneon is going under.
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Post by UncleJager on Nov 27, 2007 0:51:30 GMT -5
Overfiend Collection: I had read about his quadrilogy when I was writing my thesis and it sounded like one of the more inteligent henti out there. The first movie was true to what I thought I would be like, beyond the usual tenticles and such there was an actually story of a prophecy to unite the 3 worlds of the film by the comming of an ultimate being the Overfiend or Trujan. It turns out that the Overfiend is not exactly what the prophecy led people to belive and the unification of the world is much more complex, lets just say the comming of the Trujan causes world wide destruction. End of movie 1.
Movie 2 goes off the deepend quickly with a story about Nazis trying to raise a dark power. The son of the Nazi scientist tries to raise the same beast in the 90's to kill the Overfiend and thus gain control of all three worlds. The story becomes less focused on implied apocalyptic messages and instead returns to tried and true violance and sex. But most strangely the world wide destruction caused by the Overfiend and the end of the first movie is nowhere to be found even though the timeline says that the film takes place after the first one. Movie 3 returns to the destroyed world created by the Overfiend but the plot becomes even less impressive. A 4th race is created because of the coming of the Overfiend and this race is enslaved by a sorta human called Caesar to raise yet another beast to battle the Overfiend and gain control of the worlds. Which fails leading to the 4th film. With each film not only does the plot worsen but so does the animation and voice work. By the 3rd film the mendatory english dub is reduced to f-bombs and plenty of them some so badly timed and stretched out that it's bordering on stupid comic. I am not really sure where all the parts that the book discused are cause after three movies there are stillm many scenes I read about that I have not seen, and I do not feel like making myself sit through another potentially horrible movie to find out.
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Kratos
Canonised Regular Joe
Posts: 166
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Post by Kratos on Dec 5, 2007 21:29:51 GMT -5
ive recently got stuck on an anime called Tengo Tenje. its another school based fighting type of anime that borderlines on hentai at times. LOL. but its got a good story line of a kid (souichiro nagi) that just loves to fight. he and his friend (bob makihara) go from school to school beating the hell out of everyone until they have control of the school. when they arrive to the school that this takes place at they find they've met their matches. they meet a girl named Maya Natsume who leads one of schools fighting clubs who is among the strongest people in the school. she has a long past with the strongest man in the school and he is also the leader of the executive council, the club that rules the school and is the main opposition to the juken club led by Maya. it has a lot of back story that most other fighters don't have that makes it enjoyable and the fighting and near nakedness makes it fun to watch as well. on a scale of 1-5 i'd give it a 4. very enjoyable overall. it can be found on fuse tv every monday night.
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Post by UncleJager on Dec 15, 2007 21:16:10 GMT -5
New Getter Robo This is a remake of the '74 series about a Getter Ray powered robot that is said to be more accurate to the original manga. In this version humanity are under attack by monsters called Oni which may or maynot be atrchted to earth by the getter beams. So under the tutorage of a half mad scientist three misfits battle the Oni using the Getter Robo. The series starts out interesting telling how the three misfits were requited and began fighting Oni, however by disc two the series falls into a repetative slump which tries to be rescued by developments in the mystery of the Getter but instead only make the plot more confusing. Atlast 4 giant "gods" arrive to battle the Getter because it is leading the world to ruin. The series ends very openly with the otherused theme of "the future is what you make it" I liked the concept of the series and the violent but not so deep (Neon Genesis) plot early on in the series but the series did not go anywhere and what twists they did try to make just made everything more confusing.
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Post by UncleJager on Feb 2, 2008 12:13:56 GMT -5
Elfen Lied It's been a while since I seen something this good. I found the series to be touching even though it didn't do anything that many other series before it have not done. The character development was excellent and the story was well paced with a fair amount of violence and character drama. The series also does a good portraying childish innocence and also managing to not make the characters overly cute or so withdrawn/wooden as the the girls in Gunslinger Girls. There is also plenty of fanboy service with alot of nudity but all of it is tastefully done and their nudeness is used more as a symbolic element of the oppression and dehumanization of the girls. I found one blaring oddity in the series,Yuka is in love Kouta (the male lead), but they are cousins and from what I can gather pretty close ones. This is a pretty important part to Yuka's character and no one finds it strange. Deep down this is a very complex story much like most great films and animes, this time dealing with genetics, human nature, love, biblical references and many others. I was also very impressed by the sound track, especially the opening theme, Lilium, which is very operatic but fits very well into the series and matches the very rich and artsy opening sequence done is the style of Gustav Klimt painting. I was always turned off by many opening themes in anime, somehow alot of them did not seem to fit the series at all. The closing theme with more pop -rockish is also quite pleasant and is meant to reference the more soft innocent side of the main character Lucy/Nyu and his relationship with Kouta. (according to wikipedia).
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Post by T. Miller on Feb 16, 2008 16:58:05 GMT -5
I've been watching Saikano (She, The Ultimate Weapon or The Last Lovesong on This Little Planet ... or something like that - I call it Saikano becuase it's shortest). I usually don't like love stories, but the fact that the girl has to go off and blow things up regularly really helps!
Chise is a schoolgirl that has been modified by the military into a super weapon, and she's not very happy about it; she just want to be a normal person. She is going out with Shuji, who is patient about her various hang-ups/issues and is coming to terms with the fact that she is walking artillery (where DOES she keep those missiles??). There are some interesting visuals, the weapons look awesome, and the fact that no-one has a nose is really distracing, but over all I really like this series and look forward to watching the second disc.
Idunno if we talk about manga in here as well (and I'm the mod. Shame on me!) but I've been reading D. Gray-man, currently on volume 8. Allen Walker is an exorcist of demons (akuma) that joins an order of exorcists. The element giving the exorcists their various abilities is called Innocence and can be of various types - a piece of equipment, a part of their body, etc. There are a lot of very distinctive characters in this manga, some good one liners, and the plot is pretty action-packed, keeping my interest by either some really awesome event or something really preposterous. I don't recall the last manga I read that was this engaging. I know there is an anime of this, and I've been told that it's pretty close to the manga, but I haven't seen that yet.
Bride of the Watergod - one of the newer Korean mangas out there that is very much eye-candy. Basic idea is that a girl is sacrificed to the water god to bring an end to a lengthy drought. She wakes up in the world of the gods and must adapt to her new life and life as wife of the water god, who changes from child by day to adult by night, unbeknownst to her (she thinks they're two different individuals). Very much eye candy, it will be volume 2 before I can say much about the story.
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Post by UncleJager on Feb 22, 2008 12:01:30 GMT -5
Full Metal Panic A sort of war/mecha/romance-comedy, about a clueless teen mercenary, Sakora, sent to protect a headstrong Japanese school girl, Koname, from international badies. Not a very deep series, but still quite entertaining season 1 deals mainly with their battle against Garen super-evildoer who wants to profit from the technology of Mithril (the group protecting the world) and Koname's hidden knowledge. The series takes turns with episodes about battles and love/teen relations between Sakora, Koname and fellow characters. Towards the second third of the season the series takes a darker turn as Sakora is sent on a mission where all his fellow soldiers are killed by Garen who then goes on to orchestrate a fiendish plan to capture the girls and kill Mithril. The series ends on an open note, I guess they knew that they had a second season already signed up. From the cover season two looks more romance-comedy than battle while season three might be returning to the roots of season one.
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Post by Sucosa on Feb 27, 2008 21:43:41 GMT -5
Initial D- ( synopsis from Wilkipedia)- The story begins when street racers of the Red Suns, a team from Mt. Akagi, come to challenge Mt. Akina's local Speed Stars team to a "friendly" race. After seeing how skilled the Red Suns are, the Speed Stars treat it as a race for pride, determined not to be humiliated on their home turf. However, the Speed Stars are left in a bind when their team leader and primary downhill driver Iketani has an accident during a practice run.
Iketani learns from Yuuichi, the manager of the gas station he is working in, that the fastest car in Akina's downhill was a panda-colored AE86 owned by a tofu maker, and traces the car back to a local tofu shop. He discovers that the shop's owner, Bunta Fujiwara, was a street racer of great repute in his younger days. Iketani appeals to the older man to take his place in the race against the Red Suns. Iketani is confident that Bunta will come to save the day. But when the race day comes, his son Takumi appears with his Toyota Trueno AE86 instead. Although at first reluctant to let Takumi race, Ikatani relents after it is revealed that he is actually the "Ghost of Akina," the one who outran Keisuke while on one of his delivery runs. Takumi proceeds to defeat Keisuke Takahashi and his Mazda RX-7 FD3S, causing considerable astonishment in the local racing community and putting an end to the Red Suns winning streak.
Originally apathetic about the notion of racing, having only raced Keisuke on the condition his father would let him have the car with a full tank of fuel for a day to use on a date, Takumi begins to grow more interested as he receives other challenges. He begins to understand the concept of a street racer's pride when everyone advises him to duck a challenge from a driver of Mt. Myogi's Night Kids team who drives an extremely powerful, technologically advanced Nissan Skyline R32. The competition against another member of the Night Kids, Shingo Shoji, becomes personal for Takumi after Shingo attempts to wreck Iketani and later forces his friend and co-worker Itsuki to crash when he mistook Itsuki's car for Takumi's. After this, which resulted in Shoji's defeat (in his Honda Civic EG6 hatchback--reportedly the rival to the AE86--in a "Duct Tape Deathmatch") came a duel with a female driver/navigator duo team hailing from Mt. Usui known as Impact Blue and their Nissan Sileighty.
Each of the races presents seemingly impossible odds to overcome. The opposing cars are almost always much more powerful than Takumi's AE86, and the race against Shingo is a "Duct tape Deathmatch," in which both drivers' right hands are taped to the steering wheel, a format which severely limits ability to steer and highly favors Shingo's Honda Civic EG-6, which is a front-wheel drive. Takumi's rear-wheel drive AE86 would be much harder to control, but by instinct, he figures out his own technique and went on to win the race. Shingo actually tried to crash into Takumi's car planning to end the race with a tie, but the AE86 entered a turn and dodged the EG6 and sent the latter to a major crash. The race against Impact Blue is the first for Takumi outside of Mt. Akina, in the completely unfamiliar environment Mt Usui, the SilEighty team's home course.
Takumi's first wet race was against Kenta Nakamura of the Red Suns, driving an S14, which happened in Myogi after Keisuke's race with Nakazato. That previous battle happened before the rain, with Nakazato leading all throughout until his tires lost grip, letting Keisuke drift his way to victory. Afterwards, the audacious Kenta asked the spectators if they wanted a race against the AE86, and they did. Takumi accepted the challenge. Kenta, having a more powerful car, led during the uphill part but Takumi went ahead on the downhill, finishing with a huge distance. This was among Takumi's easiest races, as he himself had tons of experience in more adverse weather conditions.
While Takumi races others over the course of the summer, Keisuke's brother Ryosuke Takahashi, who is the leader of the Akagi Red Suns, formulates what he refers to as his "Fastest Racer Theory" to defeat Takumi, relying on computer simulations that he had formulated. As summer draws to a close, Ryosuke challenges Takumi to a race and is defeated when he is overtaken by Takumi on one of the last turns before Akina's finish line. Ryosuke acknowledges that Takumi was faster than him, and advises him not to be satisfied with Akina's small stage and to seek out bigger challenges.
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My Opinion of this show was not great, however my brother thought this show was awesome ( he's a mechanic- go figure). It was really bad cgi with 80's cartoon skills and tech slang that you have to have a degree in mechanics to understand. If your really bored I would suggest it- but otherwise there are better ways to spend time.
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Post by UncleJager on Mar 5, 2008 23:25:44 GMT -5
DNA² An old school show running btw 1993-94. DNA2 focuses on Junta, a Japanese schoolboy who has an embarrassing medical condition, he pukes when he sees girls naked/undies/or touches them. Understandable he is not very popular with the ladies. However, his neighbor Ami is secretly in love with him. In the future the world is overpopulated all because of one man, the MEGA-PLAYBOY who has 100 children and all his children have 100 children each, and so on. Well the government comes up with a plan, send back a DNA Operative to change Mega-Playboy’s DNA. This operative is Karin, and the Mega-Playboy is Junta. Karin a 16yr girl befriends Junta, who has not-so-secretly fallen in love with her. She uses this to shoot Junta with a DCN bullet that is supposed to unmega-playboy him. Unfortunately Karin brought the wrong bullet and she instead causes Junta to become a playboy, but only when something emotional triggers it. It is first triggered shortly after he is shot when bullies attack a girl he knows. His aura causes two girls to fall in love with him on the spot, Tomoko and Kotomi. Karin desperately tries to solve the problem she created by getting Ami and Junta fall in love, especially after she learns that Ami is immune to the Mega-Playboy and can cause Junta to turn back into his old self. While Karin tries to unite Ami and Junta, Junta is courted by Tomoko, a flirt, but Junta doesn’t fall for her instead declaring his love for another (Karin). Right when Ami finally tries to tell Junta how she feels, Kotomi intervenes and wins over Junta because she also has an embarrassing condition. She farts when she gets really nervous. Junta and her decide to cure each other. Finally Junta is once again courted by Ami but right before she makes her move Karin intervenes again with a new DCN bullet. But she misses her mark and hits Ryuji, Tomoko's jealous boyfriend. He gains the ability to shape-shift and turns evil first trying to frame Junta so the girls hate him. When this fails he creates an alter-persona and begins to absorb the DNA of various people. Karin and Junta go off to face him and he is finally restored to his normal self. Junta’s DNA finally settles and with the help of Ami his Mega-Playboy Aura disappears. Karin says goodbye and goes back to her time, but soon happily returns to monitor Junta for a little while longer.
The series is overall cutesy romance comedy with plenty of fan-service: panty shots and T&A as well as cartoony puking and super-exaggerated faces, along the line of GTO but older style character design. Towards the end the series takes on a darker note with women-abuse. Then suddenly the series turns all DBZ with the final fight between Junta and Ryuji, before returning to its original style. The last disc contains 3 episodes that were somewhat hastily tacked on with a storyline that doesn’t really fit the rest of the series. Another time-machine arrives and tries to capture Junta to shoot him with another DCN bullet that will cause him to be controlled by high frequency noise. He is shot by his great-granddaughter (the noise controls all his descendants) and enslaved by Mori and evil future bureaucrat. Junta fights off the mind control, something that is not explained well and Mori is trapped by the future police, which makes no sense since the entire story so far rested on the fact that the future did not have enough money to resend DCN bullets or resend Karin to correct her original mistake. In the end Karin shoots Junta with the proper DCN bullet, erasing his Playboy DNA altogether. There is a tearful goodbye and she leaves forever, while Junta forgets all about her and everything that has happened since the beginning of the series.
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Post by Sucosa on Mar 7, 2008 8:18:13 GMT -5
Josh got me reading this manga called Basilisk, which is sadly only 5 volumes long but has all the violence one could want, although not quite as violent as Hellsing. The storyline is kinda like Romeo and Juliet in the Feudal Japanese timeframe- were 2 soon to be leaders of opposing ninja clans fall in love, when the peace treaty between their clans are broken- so is the peace the two love birds have built their relationship on. Now with their clans at war for the shogun's sake- they may be forced to face each other and kill the one they love. This series is also a Anime that is played on IFC currently- worth the time to tune and watch
**Cut from my LJ- Copypasta :>o
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Post by UncleJager on Mar 15, 2008 16:54:20 GMT -5
Oh! My Goddess This was a short series of only 5 episodes that got later turned into Ah! My Goddess. For those who are not familiar with this romance-comedy the basic plot revolves around Keiichi a boy who calls the goddess help-line by mistake and when Belldandy arrives he wishes her to be his girlfriend. Through the next 4 episodes (covering 9 months) they fall in love. The series ends on an open happy note. As the series progressed it got a little too mushy for me, especially in the last two episodes, which were very love drama. I am not interested enough in the series to watch the movie, but I will give the updated tv series a try as well as a spin-off called 'adventures of a mini-goddess' which as it title suggest have the goddess in their chibi size. I had read a manga of the chibi series and it was entertaining.
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Post by T. Miller on Mar 19, 2008 21:50:25 GMT -5
I watched Gankutsuou which is based on the Count of Monte Christo. I enjoyed the story very much, and the series is very distinctive visually. At first I found the visuals to be incredibly distracting, but it's growing on me very much.
I'd put more of a description, but I fail. Please google it since I don't feel like it.
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Post by UncleJager on Mar 20, 2008 9:40:04 GMT -5
Kai Doh Maru A shortish OVA of around 45 minutes that left alot of open ends and expected you to figure out or come in with knowledge of Japanese feudal era. The film is about a Kentoki a girl raised as a boy to the heir of her father's rule but instead is attacked by her uncle, who is hungry for power. She is saved by a passing Samurai from a larger town, Lord Raiko. She moves/follows him into his service as 'knight' in defence of his city. Five years pass and her quite life is interupted by the comming of Ohni-hime, Kentoki's cousin who is now possesed by an Oni (something not made clear in the anime), she is the leader of a rebel group that is terrorising the country side. There are many subplots and twists to the tale that I will leave out incase you decide to watch it. Ohni-hime abducts Kentoki and Raiko must rescue her. Back at her base camp Ohni-hime proffeses her love for Kentoki, but she rejects her instead wanting to reunite with Raiko. There is a struggle (things go a little vague here) and Kentoki stubbles out to find Raiko. The end. At first I thought this was a retelling of an old tale but reading around the internet it doen't seem to be.
This series has a very unique art style. The beggining scene with Kentoki and her uncle is doen like rough sketches , maybe not quite as rough as Neon Genesis. As the story transitions to five year later the art style also changes from the rough rural style (the first scene takes place in rice fields and bamboo forrest) to a very light pastel pallet and the drawings turn to simpler woodblock print style or what is commonly known as Ukio-E. There are no shadows and almost no texture and in the beggining the story is even lightened by having the animation a little washed out over the paper. The colors intensify a bit in the latter part of the story but still stay very muted with the world looking like it's covered in a fine fog.
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Post by UncleJager on Mar 24, 2008 8:50:43 GMT -5
Ghost Talker Daydreams A four episode OVA about a dominatrix who is also a ghostwhisperer of sorts and does freelance work for the govenment solving spirit related issues. The show is an odd mix of sexual humor, T&A and dark themes of abuse and hatred. Which I think was the doom of this series, the contrast was too great between different elements and the story writing and dialogue was mediocar.
The first episode(s) are more light hearted in which Saiki, the main character (who is supposed to be an albino according to Wiki) stumbles into an attempted rape/murder and meets Ai a teen trying to solve her sisters death. We also get to learn that Saiki has a misterious glowing purle beam of energy that acts like spirit rope that comes off her upper leg. She helps Ai solve the murder and somehow also causes Ai to be able to see spirits. Which leads to episode two where Ai is trying to imitate Saiki and solve a ghost mistery but instead is trapped by a vengefull spirit. The last two episodes start off with Saiki going to a medicinal hot springs and shrine because she is completly hairless (i guess she wears a wig) and wants some hair 'down there'. She gets caught up in a 13yr old serial murder of local children, involving a mentaly challanged dual personality who kills children cause she is trying to save them from being abused, while her other personality abuses them, forcing her other self to kill them to save them.
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