Cinema, soapbox, music & musings
According to ANN, the Media Blasters "AnimeWorks" label will be dubbing and releasing Blade of the Immortal to North America at the end of September.
I didn't blog much about this one, as I was less than enthralled about it (though, by my current lack of blogging about Phantom, enthrallment has little to do with it...), but I'm glad to see it's coming over.
Has it really been 5 years? Apparently so. In some ways, everything's more or less the same as it was then -- but in a lot of ways, it's entirely different. Go figure.
The weather has turned exceptionally nice as of today, which is to be expected around Memorial Day weekend. I'm taking a few days off from work to hopefully recharge. And the weird thing is, I'm not planning any sort of anime marathons like I would have in the past. I'm just looking to get the house prepped for summer relaxation, and to enjoy the piece and quiet I have here at the lakeshore.
Someday I'll post about what I've been watching, both TV and anime. Maybe even a movie or two. But for now, a nice beer on the deck in the sun with the refreshing breeze off the water is really all that's important right now.
I see back in April 2006 (when I actually used to write on this dang thing) I grilled a whole 4 days earlier. But today was a gorgeous rare 80F day in late-April, so I washed my car, took a nice drive, and now I'm about to grill up some steak. And some bacon-wrapped sausage. I've been wrapping a number of things in bacon lately, go figure...
The bugs are thick and annoying right now, and a bird deigned to shat on my shorts, so I'm feeling a bit squicky, but a few more beers and a change of pants is alleviating that.
I've actually been watching a whole lot of things, and even have a few post ideas to start on. But there's that ol' inertia in the way. Like I've said before, it's easier to not-blog than to actually blog. But it's nice, I've got great tunes blasting, and I'm in a good mood; so who knows?
(h/t AlexShadow on the forum...)
I was a bit shocked to see this so soon, but FUNimation is posting subtitled streams of Phantom episodes. In the case of episode 4, hours before it's actually aired in Japan!
Over on ANN, in the comments section, a Funi rep clarifies that the license is for streaming-only; DVD releases are a discussion for another day.
Oh, and US-only? Yeah. That's the way it works, I guess.
I guess I'm going to follow along with what I'm doing with Shangri-La and will watch it exclusively through the official channels. As much as I find the FUNimation video player's constant *buffering* an incredible annoyance (leaving it paused for an hour or so to pre-download seems to be the solution), plus the Flash player is rather choppy and blurry when trying to play it fullscreen at 1080p. Oh well, all the more incentive to buy BluRay discs when they're released!
Onward, progress!
I took a peek at the raw of the episode, and was pleased! The "Hand of Mashimo™" is strong in this one. *grin* A hi-def version of the fansub has already hit the torrents, so I'll probably catch that tonight.
More over on the forum, of course. And more later when I'm not actually blogging from work.
(Link updated to point to the new Phantom-only board)
Well, I've glanced quickly at the series that are about to start in the next few weeks, and besides Phantom, I guess I'm only going to give Gonzo's Shangri-La a try.
Artwork by Range Murata evokes my nostalgia for Last Exile, and a soft spot for Gonzo shows that attempt to "go epic". And the animation in the very brief preview looks pretty good. I'm also going to give it a go via Crunchyroll, which will be streaming it at 720p within hours of it's Japanese airing. 2 weeks free trial of that "anime service", then it's for-pay at a price they don't say up-front. But I figure it's time to put my money where my mouth is: I want to see exactly that kind of service and I'd be willing to pay for it. If the stream is good. And if it doesn't cost too much for just the one show I'm going to watch right now.
(and if the show lives up to expectations...)
Production I.G.'s Eden of the East was tempting until I saw how the manga-y bits in the trailer -- a lot of attention paid to backgrounds and wide shots, but nothing much unique about the character expressions. I will probably still give it a chance at some point, because it still seems better-produced than most everything else. But I'm not going to go out of my way.
Michiko to Hatchin ended a little while back, and I didn't have the chance to watch the last 4 or so episodes until just now.
Have I mentioned that I love this show?
It's flawed. So what? I still love it.
There are aspects of the animation that are crude and clumsy, even until the end. Yet there are cuts that are brilliant and perfect. And the art direction is tremendously spot-on, with a sensuous attention to detail and a scintallating use of color.
And the characters... Even the side characters are lively and fun, despite the occasional lapse into cliche. Our leads, though, are a tremendous presence, with noted screen stars doing the voices, as opposed to the usual anime dub artists (who have a following of their own, of course). That presence is nothing without the character design and animation (and "fashion-of-the-week") artistry from the different studios and animators involved. It was subtle but obvious that there were many players doing their part in this, and it added to the enjoyment from my perspective. I hope I can find out more about "who did what" someday.
The writing, well, again, it had it's moments, but in a "journey is greater than the destination" sense. Which I enjoyed quite a bit. There were homages, tropes, shortcuts, and cliches, and yet there was an ultimate sense of the "moment" when it was important to feel something. It was a fine ride.
The best and most unique part of the whole series -- the sort of thing that is the polar opposite of what you typically find in Japanese shows -- is that there was a distinct feminine perspective to many of those "moments". It's hard for me, a crotchety old bachelor, to put my rhetorical finger on it, but it was pretty clear in a few clear sequences that there was definitely a woman's perspective behind it. Certain gestures, expressions, reactions... you never see these little touches in most any other anime to this point. Or much of any animation for that matter (except probably Persepolis or various indie shorts). It make the whole series a little more honest and true, despite its little indulgences into genre homage and trope-a-liciousness.
I really hope this one gets a decent licensing deal. Sign me up for Blu-ray discs the moment they come out! It would be awesome if it made it a wider audience through some sort of TV syndication. But I fear it might be a bit too quirky around the edges to cross over... We'll see.
(Oh, and I wanted to make a crack about Shinchiro Wantanbe seeming to want to be a DJ more than he wants to be an animator, but damnit, the music was excellent and fun and who can fault him for his contribution here?? *grin*)
I haven't researched much about either of these yet (especially the "when?"), but the TAF shaky-cam trailers look promising when added to what little info I've heard so far:
CENCOROLL, a solo effort?
Summer Wars, brought to you by the talent from The Girl Who Leapt Through Time; something about a rural town defending itself from an invasion by the internet.
The ending is a spoiler-rich environment, and yet, maybe a futility-rich one as well.
Not to say I didn't thoroughly enjoy it, because I did. But as I've admitted before, I'm rather easy.
There's quite a bit left unanswered, but overall that's okay. Even with the fact that they tried to introduce new history-via-flashback and tried to shift the previous years' prophecies on to these final buildup, it really did bring some emotional closure; some fine moments, through the extended denoument (and by "extended" I do mean extended).
When you see it, it won't be too much of a surprise. It's closure, after all. Throw in a few bars of the original '70s Galactica theme and it's all forgiven, right?
Like I said, I'm easy. I loved the many moments, buildups, journeys, and projections they threw at us here at the end, and I don't feel any particular loose end worth tugging at. The look and atmosphere has always been superb (the HD broadcast particularly so), and I will never fault this series on it's flair. No siree.
Without spoilers, there's not much more I can think of to say, except "farewell". There'll be the Caprica prequel series, and supposedly another special in the fall about "the Plan" the Cylons had, but otherwise, this one is done and gone.
I enjoyed it, it didn't change my world, and it's done. Moar pleeze!
Bwah-hah-hah-hah-hah!!!
...I finally read the comic after all these years when I was in Portland. The NYT review said the movie was probably aimed at adult males who were 1) sophmores in college in the mid/late 80's, 2) had a large record collection, and 3) didn't collect comic books but had a roommate who did. I was like, "hey, that's me!"
...haven't seen the movie though. I'll probably Netflix the BluRay right away though.
I was going to put the title "Kirika is dead" for this post (I named my computers after the women in Noir, of course), but I thought it would be a bit troll-tastic.
The morning after returning from my trip, I was about to settle in on the couch and catch up with any fansubs and websurfing I hadn't done all week, when I hit the power button on the remote and nothing happened. No spin-up, no POST, nothing. It had been running almost non-stop since Christmas, which isn't unusual for it, and I've had it off for a week on those occasions I take trips, but this time, dead. *sad*
I've ordered a temporary cheap power supply to see if that is the issue (I've tried a dozen other things including the CMOS battery), and then my final attempt will be to totally dismantle it and try to rebuild bit by bit. But if the motherboard has finally given up, I'll be quite sad, as I'm well-invested in all of the equipment on it, and all of the new equipment uses different interfaces. Which means new all-around. *sigh*
The forum is down yet again, due to a couple of failures over at the hosting provider. It will probably be back in the next few hours.
UPDATE: Looks like everything's finally back, much to everyone's relief...
I'll be heading out to the Portland/Wilsonville area in Oregon for business on Monday. I won't have any time to see anything this trip, unfortunately. And I'd say that bloggin' would slack off, but then, I'm already about as slacked as I can get here... *sigh*
ANN reports that FUNimation has officially licensed El Cazador De La Bruja. They'll be "releasing two complete season sets later this year".
For those keeping score, I called it back in August '08. *grin*
AlexShadow already started the discussion over on the forum whilst I was at work. All El Cazador discussions since it aired are there as well, of course!
Grr. Well, I suppose it's been awhile since the last outage at my webhost. Not counting the daily database lockups, but at least those go away in a couple of minutes.
It's going to put a damper on this evening's silliness, I suppose. And epic RPG posts. With luck everything will be back in place in the morning. If not, hang tight.
UPDATE: Looks like it was only for two hours, though the psychic damage was done... *ahem*
