Well, I was stuck at home tonight, so I decided to work up some more anime cheesecake to post, with a bit of a review to go with it. I had some more trouble with the aspect ratio, despite Steven denBeste’s help (see Update 3; it was just my own lack of attention that caused it. I spent an hour taking new shots and they came out much better.

Unfortunately, they don’t come out perfect. For that, I blame ADV, the American distributor. I hadn’t really noticed it until I started taking snapshots, but the transfer has issues with rainbowing, aliasing, and cross-coloration. It’s some of the worst I’ve ever seen. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ll see in pictures.

Speaking of which, lets get on to it. Warning, spoilers ahead! (The worst of the spoilers are blacked out, but I can’t get it to work perfectly; going to have to read up on styles a bit. Edit: finally got it to work. Highlight with your mouse to read them.) Continue reading →

I’m way overdue for an anime post, and there’s nothing better to break the monotony of more stories on corrupt city government than to indulge in a little cheesecake. So when I saw that Steven Den Beste had decided to post a bunch of pictures from the Ah! My Goddess! TV series featuring Urd, I figured, what the heck, I’ll see your goddess and raise you a bunch of robot pilots! I was going to save this for a week, but when isn’t it a good time for fanservice?

Ok, here’s the goddess: Urd, Belldandy’s half-sister. She’s got the enthusiasm to go with that outfit. (Oh fudge, I just realized he used that shot… I need another.)

Robot Pilot Babes below the fold . . .
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Well, my head’s stuffed full of cotton from a head cold, so I’m taking the easier of the two articles: an animè review. I’d accidently bought the 3rd DVD of this series a month ago, so I ordered the first two and waited on them to come in before viewing all three (of six). Summary: If harem comedies are your thing to the point that you have to have every one ever made, get it. Otherwise, don’t bother. This is another example of the writers’ ambition getting ahead of their ability.

Take a top-of-his-class guy who weirdly, fails to graduate from Jr. High. Dump him on a mysterious island with a soon to open amusement park and a special invitation-only school. Then give him 12 girls, all of whom claim to be his younger sisters . . . and are totally devoted to him. The older ones are often a bit non-sisterly in their attention to him (though nothing ecchi goes on). Oddly, not all the girls know each other either. Drop a few hints in here and there about there being a larger backstory, but never resolve it. That’s Sister Princess.

I was going to do the usual first-episode synopsis, but the more I think about it, the less I think this series is worth it, especially given how I feel today. So here’s a few pictures and some more commentary, after the fold.

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So far, I have seen only the first ten episodes, on 2 DVD’s. The menus are good – a bit slow to get to the point, because of animation, but it’s good stuff, and very clear. Music is a plus; the opener and closer are both catchy romantic tunes, and the soundtrack during action shots obviously makes use of a “bass choir” (if there’s a technical term for it, I don’t know what it is) overlaying a good electronic score. The animation is good; underwater landscapes are detailed, and interiors have an authentic worn and rusty look to them. You can look at areas in Adena and know the place is run down and economically blighted.

Voice acting in the Japanese version is outstanding, but avoid the English dub like the plague. They made a horrible, horrible choice for Lt. Vestemona, and she’s the major female lead. Her seiyu comes across as a whiney, bitchy, little twit. I’ve heard more lethargic delivery, but never more revolting. It took all of five lines spoken by her before I cried “Uncle!!!” and switched to the Japanese voice track. It was bad enough to make me cheer her rival Enora on.

Character design is good, with the possible exception (again, unfortunately) of Lt. Vestemona; I am bad about face recognition, and her changes in hair color and styling from on duty to off gave me problems. For some reason, when she’s off duty and lets her hair down, the animators tend to color it more brown, especially in dim light, and that threw me. It wouldn’t have if I’d paid more attention to the opening credits. There’s a beautiful fade there, that highlights her inner conflict over being back on Mars, let alone the other little problem she discovers there.

Gram is fairly typical, just a good-looking hero, but the designers avoided the easy trap of making Captain Elizibeth look too sexy to be the leader or Enora vampish enough to ring false. Bon, Gram’s young friend, is missing a tooth, which helps drive home that these people are poor; neither we nor they can take their health or dental hygine for granted. Life’s hard. Talking cats and robots with an attitude? Done to death. But a talking porpoise that walks around in a robot suit? A bit different.

And that really summarizes Mars Daybreak. There’s not a lot that’s original; it’s one clichè after another. (Edit: it is based on a computer game, after all!) Take a “true prince” story. Hide it under a science-fiction sea pirate adventure. Tuck in political intrigue, revolutionary movements, and a love triangle involving the true prince and two strong-willed women who shouldn’t have anything to do with him, but instead have everything to do with him. Don’t forget to make the pirates be Robin Hood-like heroes, then add a few plucky kids, mecha combat, psychic girls, touchy robots, ancient mysteries, a treasure waiting to be found, a revolutionary leader, double agents, “sea-witches,” talking animals, mercenary bad-guys, manipulative politicians, and a few crackpots. Stir vigorously.

Edit: grrr, sorry about the lack of pictures for the first three hours. Stupid thing will show them in my preview, but not after posting, unless I put a fully qualified URL in the link. Anyway, it’s fixed now. Click on the pics for the full size.

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In the future, I’m going to hold my reviews until I have had time to think about a show and work through it in my mind. A couple of weeks ago, I posted three snap reviews, and in the end, I was only comfortable with one and a half of them. I need to spend more time mulling over my opinion and choosing my words. Also, I find that my opinion often changes around 48-72 hours after I’ve seen something, as the “refrigerator factor” kicks in: i.e.: that odd realization you have after the show on the way to the refrigerator. Ok, so I’m slow. I already posted the re-written Nuku Nuku Dash, and now I’m re-writing Those Who Hunt Elves for this post. However, this is going to be a much briefer review than the original. (Oh, stop thanking me. Grrr. :-[ )

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Edit: 12/28/05: This is a very long review I wrote over two days, and it contains a ton of spoilers, even before the spoiler warning below. My original review here was based on having seen only the first four episodes and then revised after thinking about it overnight. This one is based on the full 12-episode series, and goes into a lot of detail about what’s wrong with the series. If it’s more than you feel like reading, don’t say I didn’t warn you. 🙂 I’ll summarize for the brief-of-attention-span: It sucked. The writers tried to milk the Nuku Nuku franchise by changing it to a serious drama with a romance sub-plot, while keeping a lot of the whacky elements of the original two series. Ultimately, this doomed the story to mediocrity at best. However, a pair of twists the writers threw in during the last two minutes of the last episode left me furious at having my chain yanked. I thought that they’d actually done something daring with the romance sub-plot and was giving them high marks for it when, in the last ten seconds, they chickened out and went for the traditional happy ending.

All Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku Dash:

This review is far different from the original one I wrote, as the original was based solely on the first DVD and how my thoughts developed after watching it. Unfortunately, after watching the last two, my opinion on this anime flipped straight into the “trash and never bother watching again” category. Oh, I might watch it–if and when I feel like screaming at the writers again.

There were 3 Nuku Nuku series, of which this one is the third. The first was an OVA (Original Video Animation, or as we call it, straight-to-video/DVD), the second was a TV series based on the OVA, and this third effort is an OVA — and a mess.

I was tempted to say it was a disaster, but that’s overboard; it wasn’t horrible, it was just a series of bad mistakes. The biggest was that the writers couldn’t make up their mind what story they were telling. The first two Nuku Nuku’s were comedy/farce. This OVA was serious romance/drama. Unfortunately, they chose not to make a clean sweep of characters and start over with a different setting. I am cynically inclined to think that was so they could milk the Nuku Nuku franchise, but for the purpose of this review, I am going to treat it as an artistic decision, not marketing.

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Yesterday I remarked that the fanservice in Ghost in the Shell was mostly the responsibility of the main character. For the unaware, “fanservice” involves closeup shots of panties and cleavage; near-nudity; usually swimsuits or mini-skirts are involved. Some animé is done more for the fanservice than the plot. If it has one…

So why did I say she’s in charge? Because it’s true, of course!

(Warning! Possibly NSFW at more uptight workplaces, which is why it’s not on the front page.)

Unless it’s Firefly. Oh wait, that got canceled didn’t it? Never mind the qualifier then. Well now, this isn’t about to become Chizumatic, and I’m no Steven Den Beste, but rather than discuss the latest attempt by the city employee’s union to get me to sign up, or another whiney film critic, I thought I’d add a new category to the blog and discuss some anime.

Now I’m not exactly a full-blown otaku, but I would rather watch Japanese animation over anything produced in the USA today. I usually can’t sit still in front of a TV to watch Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network unless I’m with a friend (and frankly, as badly as it’s going downhill, I don’t want to at all), and my limited budget keeps me from buying boxed sets. For that matter, I tend to regard time in front of a TV as totally wasted, no matter what. Yet I’ll waste it in front of a computer playing the same old games. (Finally finished Homeworld2 this weekend.) Go figure.

Well, in an effort to break that paradigm, I’ve started hunting up older releases in the bargain bin, and settled on Crest of the Stars. Of course, it’s got something like two sequels, which I’ll probably buy before they get to the bin, so this strategy is of dubious benefit. I only found Vols. 3 and 4 of Crest, so I had to order #1 and 2 online. Unfortunately, I made a poor choice of supplier for vol. 2 and had to re-order. In the meantime, I bit the bullet and watched the remaining three from sheer boredom last Saturday night. (I have no life…) So I missed episodes 5, 6, &7.

I don’t think this was a major problem, as episode 8 finished up the arc from 6 & 7, and we kind of know what happens in 5. It would have made things from #1 much clearer though, and it would be interesting to know if something I figured out in #4 was stated explicitly in that episode. I hope it wasn’t, simply because it would have been more dramatic/effective to leave it until later, but after re-watching the end of the last episode, I suspect it was.

I’m not going to go into the plot much; SDB covers parts of it here and spoilers really suck. Somehow, it never stops me from reading them, though. What I will discuss, is my reaction to it and, if you will, a critique.
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