Saturday Hanging with Friends + Anime Reviews
Hung out at Gabe's, Christina and others turned up with anime!
A few episodes in to Venture Brothers S2, and then we shifted to some interesting anime that Christina brought along.
Death Note: A bored Oni in the wastelands between heaven and hell drops a 'death note' book in the human world. A clever student, bothered by the mindless crimes all about him, picks the book up, and reads its instructions: writing the name of a person down, and having their face in mind, will cause their death within 40 seconds, possibly longer, if specified in detail. Basically Ringu in a more targeted manner, with a different flavour of the supernatural. In two episodes, a number of flash-forwards and flash-backs are used to convey the increased obsession and neurosis this power gives to this student, and simultaneously sets up a Conan Doyle-ish situation with a secretive Sherlock Holmes investigator hired by Interpol to track down the protagonist.
From what I can tell after two episodes, the series certainly does have legs ... but it's thematic elements of power, death, corruption, and ambition are far less interesting to me now than they would have been, say 15 years ago. I guess I'm out of the target audience.
Black Lagoon: Cute attempt to dress up and sex up modern piracy. An abused salaryman is sent on a business trip to the South China Sea to deliver industrial secrets to a client. The wholely illicit enterprise is double- or triple-crossed with Russian Mafia, hired mercenaries, and other guns-for-hire, and our salaryman protagonist is taken prisoner by the intercepting pirate crew - subsequent double-dealing by his employers leads to a message conveyed to our protagonist that he will receive a posthumous raise and sponsored funeral (echoing classic Japanese film narratives like The Bad Sleep Well), if he fulfill his part of the bargain. The crew is a rough-and-tumble lot with a blonde computer geek from Florida, Lara Croft with kelp tattoos, and the 'silent but strong' character in Dutch. Our salaryman takes up with the crew, and joins in their piratical adventures in the South China Sea, aboard their torpedo speedboat, using Malayan mangroves for cover. In at least one helicopter vs. boat scene, it was all quite evocative of Apocalypse Now...taken to an anime-dramatic Nth degree.
Blood +: Bowing to public pressures over their excellent skills show & tell promo in Blood: The Last Vampire*, Production I.G. went ahead and developed a TV series (with Geneon, I think). The series is set in an alternative narrative universe, set apart from either Blood:TLV, or the videogame. After two episodes I can say they attempted to build more backstory and humanity to the Saya character, but effectively replicate a Buffy narrative, losing some of the mystery that made Blood:TLV's Saya so interesting. The TV's production is also inferior to the Blood:TLV promo film (not surprising), both in graphics and in music (they opted for common anime j-pop). Simultaneously, the TV series' narrative is set in the present, losing some of the flavour of costume drama in the film.
After two episodes I can say that Blood + certainly has enough to keep the average viewer hooked, but I don't know that I would spend my limited entertainment time on that (not with a stack of books by my beside that is starting to pose an earthquake risk; or the high-value-for-time investment a production like Paprika offers in the cinema).
*Incidentally, a live-action version is in production now.
---
Though all three were entertaining in their own right, none of them really jazzed me. I'm off unlimited powertrip narratives, contemporary adventure stories (without some underpinning in greater purpose or message^), and re-iterative vampire-goth narratives bore me.
^Whatever its flaws, Ghost in the Shell's SACs do engage social, political, and identity issues in unexpectedly interesting ways, against a backdrop of high tech near-future (and that always jazzes me).
A few episodes in to Venture Brothers S2, and then we shifted to some interesting anime that Christina brought along.
Death Note: A bored Oni in the wastelands between heaven and hell drops a 'death note' book in the human world. A clever student, bothered by the mindless crimes all about him, picks the book up, and reads its instructions: writing the name of a person down, and having their face in mind, will cause their death within 40 seconds, possibly longer, if specified in detail. Basically Ringu in a more targeted manner, with a different flavour of the supernatural. In two episodes, a number of flash-forwards and flash-backs are used to convey the increased obsession and neurosis this power gives to this student, and simultaneously sets up a Conan Doyle-ish situation with a secretive Sherlock Holmes investigator hired by Interpol to track down the protagonist.
From what I can tell after two episodes, the series certainly does have legs ... but it's thematic elements of power, death, corruption, and ambition are far less interesting to me now than they would have been, say 15 years ago. I guess I'm out of the target audience.
Black Lagoon: Cute attempt to dress up and sex up modern piracy. An abused salaryman is sent on a business trip to the South China Sea to deliver industrial secrets to a client. The wholely illicit enterprise is double- or triple-crossed with Russian Mafia, hired mercenaries, and other guns-for-hire, and our salaryman protagonist is taken prisoner by the intercepting pirate crew - subsequent double-dealing by his employers leads to a message conveyed to our protagonist that he will receive a posthumous raise and sponsored funeral (echoing classic Japanese film narratives like The Bad Sleep Well), if he fulfill his part of the bargain. The crew is a rough-and-tumble lot with a blonde computer geek from Florida, Lara Croft with kelp tattoos, and the 'silent but strong' character in Dutch. Our salaryman takes up with the crew, and joins in their piratical adventures in the South China Sea, aboard their torpedo speedboat, using Malayan mangroves for cover. In at least one helicopter vs. boat scene, it was all quite evocative of Apocalypse Now...taken to an anime-dramatic Nth degree.
Blood +: Bowing to public pressures over their excellent skills show & tell promo in Blood: The Last Vampire*, Production I.G. went ahead and developed a TV series (with Geneon, I think). The series is set in an alternative narrative universe, set apart from either Blood:TLV, or the videogame. After two episodes I can say they attempted to build more backstory and humanity to the Saya character, but effectively replicate a Buffy narrative, losing some of the mystery that made Blood:TLV's Saya so interesting. The TV's production is also inferior to the Blood:TLV promo film (not surprising), both in graphics and in music (they opted for common anime j-pop). Simultaneously, the TV series' narrative is set in the present, losing some of the flavour of costume drama in the film.
After two episodes I can say that Blood + certainly has enough to keep the average viewer hooked, but I don't know that I would spend my limited entertainment time on that (not with a stack of books by my beside that is starting to pose an earthquake risk; or the high-value-for-time investment a production like Paprika offers in the cinema).
*Incidentally, a live-action version is in production now.
---
Though all three were entertaining in their own right, none of them really jazzed me. I'm off unlimited powertrip narratives, contemporary adventure stories (without some underpinning in greater purpose or message^), and re-iterative vampire-goth narratives bore me.
^Whatever its flaws, Ghost in the Shell's SACs do engage social, political, and identity issues in unexpectedly interesting ways, against a backdrop of high tech near-future (and that always jazzes me).