I have this love hate thing going on with Shrio Sagisu.  On the one hand I think that most of his (her?) work on anime is terrible, derivative, and boring.  S/he usually settles for synth instruments when real ones would add so much more to his/her compositions, and it makes her music sound flat and tinny.  Plus so much of it is real bg music – that is, it’s forgettable as all heck!

So why do I like the new Evangelion movie soundtracks so much?

I just don’t know. 

This is one of those series that never gets old for me, and I can’t quite put my finger on it!  After all, there’s nothing particularly amazing about it.  Animation is typical BONES, which is to say the animation framing is perpetually gorgeous, the colors are vibrant, and the characters are always on-design.  Character designs are cute for the most part, and the mechanical designs (or monster designs, if you prefer to think of them as such, since this is a “fantasy” series) are for the most part good.  The music is not particularly memorable, with a few exceptions – I can still find myself humming the end theme at random moments.  The action sequences are few and far between, but when they come they’re usually well-choreographed.  (Is that even the right term to use, as an aside?  Live action fights are choreographed – what is animation?  Keyframed?  Storyboarded?)

Honestly, I’m kind of surprised I find the character designs so agreeable.  I’m not generally one for the doe-eyed, large breasted, absurdly over-complicated fantasy clothing type of character designs.  However, the translation of illustrator Mougdan Nakayohi’s (a somewhat well-known adult doujin artist in Japan, I gather, and also responsible for the character designs in a Hentai strategy game called Brave Soul) character designs into Anime form seems to have done everything right in making them enchanting to me rather than irritating.  Though I still could have done without the shoulder-pads.  God damn shoulder pads.

If there’s one problem I have with this series, it’s that characters that I really was interested in, such as the entire Obstinate Arrow team, never really was fleshed out.  24 episodes was too short, IMO, and much of the second half of the series was taken up with Pacifica’s amnesia plot.  As far as I know the book series is still running; I’d like to read them at some time, though I probably would regret buying them – light novels are just too short and simple to hold my interest.  Maybe there will be an omnibus release of some sort!  I know the first couple of volumes have been translated to english.

If you haven’t seen Scrapped Princess yet, I’d recommend it.  It’s not BONES’ best work, and in fact it was mostly eclipsed even for me during its original broadcast by GONZO’s production, Last Exile, but I heartily enjoyed it when it was first released and still do.  Hikaru Nanase’s music complements the action excellently, except for a few sojourns into accordion music that I could have done without; honestly, I can’t think of a single reason not to want to watch it, unless you don’t like fantasy at all.

I’ve rated it before, but Scrapped Princess still gets 4 out of 5 obsessive-compulsive cat princesses from me.

I’ve been watching Macross Seven lately, because having finally finished Macross Plus I was struck by a desire to watch more shows about transforming robots in space.  Having finished Macross Frontier too recently, I couldn’t bring myself to watch it again – and honestly Frontier was kind of underwhelming.  I would have much rather had a series that didn’t have such godawful CG, and the problem with pretty much all Macross after Do You Remember Love? is that the transforming battleships have lost their cool.  I mean, they’re just big robots now!  Their stupid “carrying their main cannon as an enormous battroid gunpod” thing kind of wears thin too.  And of course the other mecha designs were amazing, but they’re all basically recycled from older Macross anyways.

The point of this article is really that if you have considered watching Macross Seven, and you enjoyed the original series, Plus, and/or Macross Zero, don’t even both watching Seven.  It’s…. just not very good.  Mecha designs are disappointing, spaceship designs are lame (except for the stuff they recycled from Macross, Macross Plus, and DYRL!), animation quality ranges from “recycled a single scene 2-3 times in a single episode” to “bad,” and honestly the music is anywhere from mediocre to awful.  I know, I know, I’m spoiled by Zero and Plus/Frontier, with their soundtracks being done by Kuniaki Haishima and Yoko Kanno, two of my favorite composers.  I got about twenty-seven episodes in, and I’ll probably finish it at some point out of sheer boredom…  But it has dropped way down in my list of priorities, and now sits somewhere between “do the dishes” and “level my sorcerer in Warhammer Online.”

Ultimately, Seven just doesn’t have enough interesting things to make up for the sheer idiocy that is sound energy and Anima Spiritia, and mediocre rock music.  There have been a few stellar moments, but they’ve all been dragged down by the setting.  The worst part is that this Sound Energy and Anima Spiritia bullshit is canon, which means the idiots who dreamed all this nonsense up are probably going to do another series all about it.  By comparison, the fold quartz &c of Frontier was practically brilliant.  (and the old Dude Who is Probably Britai?  fuck yes!  He totally beats out Exedol being part of Battle Seven’s bridge.)

I guess if you want to watch Macross, just watch Frontier again instead of Seven - it’s better in every way, even with the CG factored in (and I know that a lot of people liked the CG, and it was occasionally impressive, but not enough of the time for me.  I was hoping for the sort of high-caliber CGI / cel merging like you see in the (frankly gorgeous) Macross Zero, where sometimes it’s honestly hard to tell if the images are cels or just amazing CGI. Instead we got pretty standard satellight fare, and, well, that just wasn’t good enough.

Even better yet, just watch the original!  The original Super Dimensional Fortress Macross has better characters, plot, worldbuilding, and animation than Macross Seven, and the music is way better!  (I love Mari Iijima [ima anata no koe ga kikoeru...]!)  Or Macross II: Lovers Again, which is very eighties but also pretty good.

My wish list for a new Macross series or OVA is as follows:

• High quality animation, at least equal to that of Macross Frontier’s good episodes.  Let’s try to keep those characters on model, folks!
• CG that is at the very least not offensive, and at best is at least as stellar as the stuff you see in Macross Zero’s best moments.  Please only use it for things where you can honestly tell yourself that regular cel animation wouldn’t be as effective – I’m looking at you, terrible CGI models for Macross Quarter & Battle Frontier in robot mode!  you could have been so much cooler if you had just been cel-animated.
• Space ship designs that don’t suck!  I will also settle for rehashes of original series stuff.  Please no stupid generic CGI monsters a la the Vajra.
• Why don’t you do a series about the Macross II, Megaroad?  I don’t give a shit about this fancy 2058 stuff, let’s see why Hikaru & Misa went missing!
• Music by someone who doesn’t suck. I’m easy on this.  Just please make sure they don’t suck.
• If you’re going to make voice actors / actresses suck, please make sure they are people who can sing!  Macross Frontier did this well, probably because Yoko Kanno helped.  Macross Seven?  Not so much.
• A story that isn’t completely retarded.  Parallel dimensions?  a-ok!  Anima Spiritia?  Stupid, and I’m pretending it’s not part of canon.  Robots with speakers for weapons?  Uh, no thanks.

I would rate Macross Seven, based on what I have watched, 2.5 orgasming soul-stealing alien chicks out of five.

I don’t think I’m going to watch any more of  Toaru Majutsu no Index.  Mostly, I just can’t bring myself to care a whit about this series.  It’s got nice production values, and nothing else.

With Xam’d over and Tytania looking less and less appealing (I have a feeling I’m going to be disappointed by any battles the series has, since the evil empire strategy basically seems to be that “we’re too big to fail,” and the heroes don’t have much of the way of a better plan, so I’m guessing we’re going to see the good guys win through pluck or love or something stupid like that, instead of the overwhelming application of superior tactics to the situation), I’ve currently got nothing on my plate.  Which, of course, begs a couple questions.  What do I watch now, if anything?  Obviously in April I’m going to pick up the new Fullmetal Alchemist series, but until then, what?  I gave Rideback a shot, but I can’t watch it for more than a couple of moments before I’m overcome by the a) terrible character designs, b) laughable cgi, and c) stupid robots, and have to stop watching.

Should I pick up Tetsuwan no Birdy: DECODE again?

When did I turn into an old man, anime tastes wise?

Why isn’t there a new series in the vein of the original, before-it-got-stupid, Macross?

Maybe I’ll just finish watching Turn A Gundam.

A brief update on the state of things as relate to my life, because sometimes it helps me to write things out. All my classes are going swimmingly, which of course isn’t hard because we’ve only had two weeks of classes, which means in some of my classes I’ve not even had to do any real work.  An exception to this is my feminism class, which is fascinating and interesting and also incredibly hard.  It’s hard not to read, say, MacKinnon’s Sexuality as an attack on my sex (gender?), though I’ve no doubt the idea is to inform rather than inspire guilt and anger.  Needless to say that I find it almost impossible to reconcile my own experiences with MacKinnon’s assertions, especially the assertion that male sexuality is violence.  This flies in the face of everything I’ve ever experienced in a relationship.

But at the same time, it begs the question: do I disagree because I really think she’s wrong, or just because I don’t want her to be right?

I don’t know.  It’s distressing to think about it, so I try not to, and instead I while my hours away reading the Old Testament and playing Europa Universalis 3 and Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. (I wonder if I could get away with witing an essay about the objectification of the female form in the context of MMORPGS using WAR as my source?)

How can I say this without seeming too negative?  The answer is really that I can’t: Slayer’s Revolution is boring.  The only enjoyment I’m really deriving from it at this point is the game of “let’s see when they use TRY bgms inappropriately,” which is a fun game but not nearly enough to keep me occupied for twenty-four minutes at a time.  Pokota is the new Filia, which is neither interesting nor particularly well-done.  All the characters are more or less exactly the same, except for Zeldagis being allowed to be more evil, which is how he should be, because he’s a fucking psychotic half-golem-half-demon mercenary walking around with the emotional scars of his grandfather’s torments on his back.  And front.  And all over, really.

Xelloss is being portrayed as more strongly morally bankrupt, which makes me gleeful when he is on screen – before he was always a bad man doing good things because to not do good things was to deny his mistress the chance to rule / destroy.  Now he’s a bad man doing bad things because it’s in his nature – and he’s been ordered to, presumably.  People who are upset at his new behavior are people who are glossing over just how violent and ambiguous the mazoku as a whole in slayers were, especially as the mythology was expanded on in NEXT and TRY.

My biggest worry is that they’re going to have Xelloss switch sides and become the same character he’s always been, because I think that would be just about the worst thing.

Please, please, get to the plot soon, Revolution, because I’m not enjoying watching you, and you don’t seem to have any real interesting twists planned, so I’m worried I’m going to just give up and drop you before too long.

It fell apart in the end, but I enjoyed watching it.  The CGI was a larf, and the combat repetative – and the politics rudimentary at best.  Still, it’s a kind of story that you don’t see very often, and even if I’d rather that the red herring in the middle of the story had turned out to be the truth, when you consider the source material it’s not that surprising that it turned out the way it did.

I’d give this series a solid 7 out of 10, with the caveat that it’s based on a strategy rpg with graphic sex scenes – so your mileage may vary.  Despite the source it’s pretty tasteful, though.

Utawarerumono, despite having the trappings of a harem anime series on the surface, looks like it will be a much better series than I gave it credit for when I first heard of it. This is a good thing. There are a few missteps with direction and voices the first episode, but overall I’m pleased, and I look forwards to watching more. I’ll post more about this series as it pleases me, though knowing me, you won’t get much more on it than “well, I finished it and _________”. Hopefully you’re not expecting more.

Also: my wordpress admin using Fluency appears to be broken (i.e. formatted in a way which is both confusing and irritating, not to mention WRONG) in Firefox 3 on windows XP SP3. I do not know if I did something, if something’s wrong with my host, or if it’s just fate for every one of my Wordpress installations to fail catastrophically.

This post was even going to have screencaptures!  I know, right?  It was all very 2005-esque.  But in glorious slacker tradition, I’ve given up trying to convince Zoomplayer it wants to take screencaps, and so I’m going to post this article without the benefit of pictures to replace my words.

Bounen no Xamdou (Lost Memories: Xam’d) Episode 01 (of 26)

BONES’ new series debuts on the Playstation Network, where each episode is available for $2.99.  It’s even available here in the US!  I know, it’s amazing, right?  someone is finally taking anime fandom seriously, and if not for the ridiculous price and the unwholesome DRM embedded in the file (when you buy it you’re only renting it for 24 hours), I would be very impressed.

But enough about the failures of the PSN video service, and more about the show.  Based on the one episode that’s been released, i’m very impressed – the main character’s transformation is ridiculous, but I can get by that, and meanwhile the character design and mechanical design for everything else is absolutely spectacular.  The world seems deep, and if there are many echoes of eureka seven, well, hopefully this series (which seems to have a much better feel to it) will prove to be superior to its BONES sibling.  Now, here’s hoping we get pirated copies regularly, because as much as I like BONES I sure as hell don’t want to pay three bucks an episode.

Slayers Revolution Episode 03 (of 26)

It’s slayers for the twenty-first century!  I like it, but I also want them to stop with the tiresome character introduction stuff and jut get on to the main plot.  Trust me, no one gives a shit about any of this filler stuff: make with the evil mazoku plots already.

Sekirei Episode 03 (of ??)

Don’t watch this.  Seriously.  I’m ashamed that I watched it, honestly.  It’s like every other crummy harem anime with huge jubblies, with the slight bonus of the main character not being a complete weenie.

Tetsuan Baadi DECODE (Birdy the Mighty DECODE) Episode 01 (of ??)

Oh man.  The guy who did Patlabor was apparently a genius, because this series is utterly awesome.  It’s too soon to say how it’ll actually pan out, but it’s got as much in its favor as Xam’d, with the bonus of being available in much higher quality!

Southern Cross Episode 03 (of 23)

It’s old, it’s bad, and I hate every character.  But I can’t stop watching.

New Slayers.  Why is there a new Slayers series?  What possessed them, over ten years after the last season of the show stopped airing, to start it up again?  I mean, it’s more or less irrelevant because I am excited and can’t wait for a fansub and If I hadn’t managed to outgrow squeeing like a small child I would definitely be doing it right now.  Maybe, just maybe, I’ll finally learn what chaotic blue looks like! (I wouldn’t count on it however)

Funnily enough, I just re-watched all of Slayers TRY last summer, and bought the first season of Slayers on DVD last fall (and was reminded immediately why I like the second and third seasons so much more…)  so this is good timing – I remember enough of what happened in TRY that I’m not going to be dazed and confused! That’s awesome.

In other news, having a girlfriend is a lot of work!  But I am up to the task.