As much as I’m enjoying the slow unfold of details in Shangri-la, the attempts at humor bug me way more than its issues in plot and pacing. Anime directors love sudden inserts of humor in dramatic scenes and I’m usually down with it, I mean these shows are supposed to be amusing, but the humor in Shangri-la makes Kuniko and Metal Age less credible. So after feeling the weight of a prison full of dead comrades, Kuniko becomes leader of Metal Age and declares they will assault Atlas. Kuniko’s battle plan is a crayon drawing. It just feels like a letdown to see Kuniko be so carefree with other peoples’ lives knowing what she saw at the prison. And like, is everyone in Metal Age stupid? They’re going to risk their lives and spend millions of dollars for Kuniko’s crayon plan? The same people who had written her off earlier in the episode? If Atlas can’t deal with these morons, what does it say about Atlas? *Shrug* (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

I’ve wondered since the beginning of Shangri-la why Metal Age wants Kuniko to lead? They tell you she’s a leader, but don’t show you why. Her grandma says so isn’t a good enough reason. Normally, I let that slide, but the pacing gives me way too much time to wonder about it. Also, since the show drops pieces for you to to pick up and see how they fit, it exposes second thoughts, which creates a disharmony with the image of Kuniko as a leader, where other wacky leader types could just get away with wack no problem.

At least Karin is interesting, or have I just fallen for the pandering? A hikkikimori loli who lives her life and has power on the Internets walks into Akihabara in cosplay (as a bear no less), points to it, and decides she wants to buy all of it. What’s not to find amusing with this? Jokes aside, Karin has turned out to be the most interesting character in Shangri-la. She’s really the character who remains unharmed by the misfired humor.

The humor isn’t all bad, as I generally like it whenever they actually go to Akihabara, and his caused me to laugh a few times, just it’s careless about the impact it has on Kuniko with the type of story they’re telling.

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Post tags: character development, Gonzo, Shangri-la, story development

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Whenever I start feeling a little blah towards anime, I rewatch a favorite from years past instead of trying to find something new. Being in the mood for something fluffy and ridiculous, it felt like a good time to revisit Battle Athletes Victory. It probably would sit next to all of the shows from over ten years ago that nobody remembers, but I think Battle Athletes Victory hangs around fan memory since it’s one of the few sports series out there on dvd. Sports shows have a weird emotional investment thing, so even when it’s really corny and predictable (it usually is), it sticks to fans because of that. Rudy…Rudy…Rudy!

Battle Athletes Victory is about Akari Kanzaki, a clumsy Japanese girl competing with female athletes from around the world to become the Cosmo Beauty. The Cosmo Beauty is the finest athlete in the solar system. Akari’s deceased mom was like the Michael Jordan of her day, the greatest ever who every little girl wanted to emulate, something Akari seems oblivious to, which is good as it keeps the show simple. Each of the characters in the story are pretty narrow, which helps get the plot and humor going, and it goes by pretty quickly. There’s no beach episode, no hot springs episode, so the overall pacing is trimmed down two episodes right there. Actually, there’s really only one throw-away episode and it’s early in the series. Everything else moves the main storyline along, which is nice. Somewhere along the way it feels like a lot of show producers got in their heads that beach episodes were necessary for any show that wasn’t deathly serious business. Different era equals different meta, I suppose.

There are a few moments in the show that came off surprisingly good and that helps keep it worthwhile on re-watch, remembering those. One thing I remembered before re-watch was to get a whole bunch of chocolate bars, since Mr. Miracle will give any chocolate lover an instant craving as soon as he appears midway through the series.

This is probably the fourth time I’ve watched Battle Athletes Victory, but probably six years since the last time. It was a lot easier to re-watch shows back then, but as time wears on and more anime becomes available, revisiting older things happens less often. I am kind of surprised by how different it feels from current stuff. The character designs, the color palette, the environments, I expected, but the overall feeling of the non-visual was a little more out of time than I expected. This made me wonder what Battle Athletes Victory would be like if made today. Obviously, the character designs would get MASSIVE overhauls, but I think the characters would be quite different as well. Overall, I think they’d be a little more vulnerable and waiting for something to make them whole.

Akari isn’t as moe as she probably would have been if made today. While Akari is clumsy, lacks self-confidence, and a couple of other things you could put on the moe checklist, she’s more of a comical Shinji Ikari than anything. But, I have a pretty loose definition of moe, which basically amounts to, “I know it when I see it.”

Anyway, this put a smile on my face and I’m out of my funk. I watched a good bit of anime after re-watching Battle Athletes Victory. Here’s an AMV, picked in part because it had the best video quality amongst what was there on YouTube and captures the emotional side of the show:

(Top image by Kawarajima Kou)

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Post tags: comedy, moe

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Review of Haruhi Gekisou Version from Max Factory

This figure is sweet for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the guitar fan service (note: the Fender Twin Reverb amplifier model does not come with the figure). See what makes this cool is Max Factory’s rendition of the Italia Mondial Deluxe — it has strings, which totally rocks. If the guitar fan service wasn’t enough, well there’s Haruhi and this figure gives her long-legged glory and a costume with details and frill. These things were executed well for a mass produced figure. The macro lens might be a little unkind, showing what looks like a tarnished A-string among a set of clean strings on her Mondial Deluxe, but it’s not that bad.

Kind of wish her face were slightly more refined, but I think it captures Haruhi pretty well. Gekisou Haruhi has really long legs. More normally proportioned and she’d probably look stubby straddling the Fender Twin instead of rocking like she does. About the only thing I’d put on a wish list would be a more sheer looking stocking or shading to make the gray tone less flat, though I’m not actually complaining about how it looks, which looks good as is.

Other Stuff

I’ve passed on the Gekisou Versions of the other characters. To me this one is the best of the bunch, unless you really must have the SG (iirc) that Yuki sports. Mikuri’s dislocated leg just weirds me out. What would be great if Max Factory can do the K-ON! girls with their instruments in the same scale as the Haruhi Gekisou figures, especially with Ritsu on drums, and mix and match for a KyoAni all-star girl band.

Hehe, I have to learn a little self control with pushing the colors and contrast around a little. She’s a bit red here. I like how it looks though, which is why I didn’t bother to fix it. Also added a bunch of noise to the guitar shot. I was going to do it on all of them, but changed my mind. The other ones are a bit more normal.

This figure was reviewed quite a while ago and I’ve seen a number of reviews: foobarbaz, persocom, meronpan, exelica-meteor, YuKi-To, Optic and there’s probably more that I can’t remember off the top of my head — she’s a popular figure, so I think a high proportion of figure blogs have her reviewed. Still, I’ll link you up if you point me to your review.

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Post tags: gothic, guitar, K-ON!, Max Factory, The-Melancholy-of-Haruhi-Suzumiya

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On a bleached out courtyard at Sunpu Castle, two men disfigured by a life of perpetual violence face off to bring sweet destruction to the other man. Shigurui: Death Frenzy then takes the viewer back to the beginning of the story in order to explain this moment. It is blood, guts, and brutality.

Shigurui: Death Frenzy is interesting to watch, but not as cool as samurai swords sound in that it isn’t Samurai Champloo or Kenshin. This is an unromantic presentation of swordsman and samurai as scumbags and not as the badass/cool scumbag of Afro Samurai.

Swordsmanship as far as it is presented in Shigurui is very much a means to dealing damage, which the perfection of is a means toward more effective damage dealing. While this is fairly obvious from a logical perspective, it’s something that gets danced around when swordsmanship becomes romanticized as an art form and means toward self perfection as it is in many stories. Shigurui downplays the romance of the swordsman who grows as a result of self-sacrifice and dedication. Instead, Shigurui takes that away. Change and character evolution isn’t the result of internal inertia and dedicated training, but external force. Damage.

Damage is the vehicle of change in Shigurui. Everything that happens is born from damage. Character evolution begins with damage. And nothing good comes from it. Nobody in the story seems to have the internal inertia to overcome and stand up to that external force, which is why, at least to me, none of the characters are particularly engaging. They’re products of external pressure, rather than internal fortitude, which is antithetical for lead characters in fiction. It’s a story without heroes (or anti-heroes).

The absence of a hero makes me wonder about the intentions of the author. Does this serve to ratchet up the violence or is there a cultural critique in here? Not being Japanese, I have no idea, but I guess I’m just hoping there is to have some point to all of it (since if it isn’t entertaining and cool like, it better be something deeper and worth slogging through if it isn’t funny-fun-fun). A person doesn’t have to be intimately aware of Japanese culture to have heard of the internal criticism of the do as you’re told, conform, follow, don’t stand up culture, to create the wonder if there is some of that going on here.

For me, the focus on damage as grotesque art dulls the brutality (or maybe it was Higurashi that numbed me to brutality) of the blood, guts, and sliced through flesh, split eyeballs, and spilled intestines, which seems to be a favorite of the show, having intestines fall out and splatter to the floor — is this a pun on the lack of intestinal fortitude of individual people that allows insanity to win? At times, the gore crosses into gratuitous, while at others it’s descriptive, the damage revealing sensibility. The “Death Frenzy” bit is a little misleading to me as Shigurui is more deliberate than frenzied. It’s a picture of violence begetting violence. Violence bleeding into more violence. Violence birthing further iterations of violence as the path of least resistance. What makes the violence easy for me to observe, surprisingly since I consider myself a little squeamish, is how everyone in that world accepts and expects violence as normal. It’s not a shock to these people. They take and deal it very matter of fact, though with much pleasure.

What really held my interest in Shigurui is the cinematography of it. This atmosphere created by Madhouse and series director, Hirotsugu Hamazaki, is gorgeous (see ghostlightning’s post on Shigurui’s atmosphere). The stifled hideousness of this world grinds to the bone. Even the overworked anime cicada does more than its usual bit to create a heavy oppressive atmosphere. At times it feels like I’m flipping through a photo album, such is the way time gets stopped and a thousand words worth tell during some transition scenes.

In the end, I’m not entirely sure what to make of Shigurui. Is this just trashy ultra-violence dressed up by Madhouse to masquerade as something more than a splatfest? Given the production values and cinematography it’s easy to hand wave the question away. Part of the problem is the story is only half told when the twelve episode series is done. Is there really a point? If not, I could think of a number of anime that are a lot more entertaining to watch. Still, if you like to be provoked, even if it’s a red herring, Shigurui could lull you into believing there’s more to it. The quality of production and direction inspires trust.

English Dub Notes

The Chris Bevins directed dub takes the low key approach. Nobody really stands out, but that seems by design, since the characters themselves seem less important than the setting. There’s a lot of restraint in the performances. The dub track has the advantage of going through Funimation’s sound engineers, which is usually a good thing. Given the atmospheric nature of Shigurui, the sound shaping done adds a lot to the feeling of immersion.

Random Note

One random thing that distracted me was one of the background tracks that plays in a number of scenes. It sounds so close to something in Dead Poet’s Society, that Dead Poet’s Society just kept popping in my head every time this track was played in Shigurui. This specific piece of soundtrack is striking since the end results are the same in both Dead Poet’s Society and Shigurui.

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Post tags: dystopia, English-dub, Funimation, Madhouse, samurai, violence

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Review of Nanjou Ran from Kotobukiya

Nanjou Ran comes from the game Sengoku Rance, beyond that I don’t really know. I picked her up on a whim at AnimeNEXT. The curves on her back, arms, and legs, are visually appealing, as is her costume in general. The ahoge make a pair of horns, which is interesting since she’s a caster making me think it’s some sort of pact based magic.

This is a decent figure made by Kotobukiya, not great, not bad. Some of the stuff on the back side is fairly sloppy, but otherwise the front view is good. Sculpt doesn’t feel as accomplished as it should to truly wow. While the curves of her body are appealing of themselves, not sure if it’s a solid description of the motion of flaring out her papers like that. It’s half pose, half motion.

Ran is mounted by screw to a clear purplish triangle, which is pretty weak and detracts from the overall look of the figure.

Other Stuff

It’s been a while since I’ve done a “set” for a figure shoot, which I’ve been getting away from more and more. It’s tough to do, so it’s a little because of the lazy. Plus, more often I find it a distraction, which it is here to some extent. I like the red on the white, it’s usually a striking combo, so I kept it in spite of how distracting, rather than complimentary, it can be.

(View the album on Flickr)

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Post tags: 1:8-scale, ahoge, anime figures, Kotobukiya, thigh highs

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Made it out to AnimeNEXT 2009, mainly to do an anime blogging panel with Omo, Moy, and SDS. I got there around quarter to four on Saturday to do a practice run before the panel on Sunday. The aforementioned, the duo from Reverse Thieves, Brad from Japanator, Kransom from Welcome Datacomp, Scott from Anime Almanac, myself and others, hit a nearby Ruby Tuesday for dinner after the Saturday Funimation panel. Breaking bread (or endless fries) was a good time. After that, some of us hit Bad Anime Bad, which is worthwhile if watching awful anime makes you laugh.

Anyway, on top of the sad time slot for our blogging basics panel on Sunday, AnimeNEXT decided to further deter anyone from attending by changing both time and location of the panel the day of. Whatever. Panel was okay. Good thing it was a mostly friendly audience. It went okay, but I feel like I got more out of it than the handful of people who wandered in.

Other than that, I didn’t do all that much but shuffle through the dealer’s room for an hour or so to kill time. Picked up a random Kotobukiya figure that looked nice and was priced well. I also got KYMG: Yusuke Kozaki Illustrations — the character designer on Speed Grapher. I really dig the style, the neutral tones, the hint of a grotesque edge, the balance of detail and simplification. Also, bought three pins and a keychain for the charms.

My goal is to make the flap of my bag like scalemail armor with anime pins. So far I have like 25 on there (I still haven’t found an Etna pin T.T). I use this bag to lug around my laptop and doubles as my D&D bag to carry the books I’m using. So much for getting a 15.4″ screen to keep the weight reasonable. I imagine those pins are closing in on half a pound by now.

(Image Credit: Rei by Yusuke Kozaki)

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Post tags: Conventions

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Anyone out there planning to go to AnimeNEXT, there’s going to be a panel about anime blogging. Omo, Moy, SDS, and I will be on the panel. It’s Sunday at 2pm in Panel Room 1, yeah, I know – the butt-end, but still it should be good, or that’s the plan. If you’re thinking about blogging, hear us out on why it’s a good idea. Or if you just wanna come along for the laughs, that’s good too.

(Photo credit: v1ctory 1s m1ne)

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Post tags: AnimeNEXT, Conventions

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At the end of Shangri-la, episode 9, Kuniko discovered something harsh, something cruel. The burden of leadership isn’t the water on your back. The true burden of leadership is the price paid by those who put their faith in you. Tough lesson, Kuniko. How will you react? You’ve been pretty cavalier and found it easy to take the burden off someone else’s back. Now you see it isn’t that simple to save someone.

Some of the characters have become more interesting besides Kuniko. Karin, who when I first saw her annoyed me as another loli for the sake of loli, through the loss of control also has me curious as to where she’s going as I’m still not sure what column to place her in. So what’s MEDUSA going to do now? I’m still not sure if Ryouko is anything more than a stereotypical sadist antagonist; but man, Atlas is one sick place — re: Hiruko.

I find myself quite interested in following Shangri-la as it continues to pile on questions. I’m glad the elements that have prevented others from continuing the show haven’t stopped me, even if I recognize that they are there.

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Post tags: dystopia, Gonzo, Shangri-la

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Cospa’s Shana Waitress

This figure was released a while ago, but I didn’t get it until some time in March. It’s cute and I totally dig the diner stool Cospa used as the base, which makes up for any of the short-comings the figure has in production value. There’s nothing but gravity holding her onto the base, so when I was turning her for pictures she slid off the diner stool more than a few times. She’s a bit more stable while fully dressed.

A lot of bad figures have been made of Shana. While this one doesn’t top the Max Factory version, it’s a worthy pick-up for a Shana fan.

Headset Service

The headset is pretty plain, but the headset fan service as well as the usual cast-off variety of fan service makes for a good package. There’s extra panchira to show off the headset. “Shana Panchira” is definitely my favorite image in the set.

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Post tags: 1:6-scale, anime figures, Cospa, maid, nice butt, pettanko, Shakugan-no-Shana, thigh highs

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The content section of the front page does away with a lot of the meta data. Just a picture and the title. Hopefully, it works out.

The theme was made with the Hybrid theme framework. It took a little time to get used to working with a framework because it does things a little differently. Like instead of deleting a call to an element in the template files, you add code to a function file to ignore an element. At first it was weird doing it that way, but when I realized I might have to do it on three or more page templates, it works out being better, especially since I can see myself toggling things on/off.

So here’s Dark Canti. My first theme.

Anyway, it’s Memorial Day, a holiday, but I’m not going to a barbecue or the beach. I’m off to work.

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Post tags: blogging, flcl, WordPress

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