There are probably a bunch of anime which have just had waaaay too much influence amongst western anime fans. So much influence that one begins to wonder, despite the apparent failings of the material itself, just what managed to grab peoples minds. Three that stand out would have to be dragonball, sailor moon and probably pokemon. Titles that were huge in Asia, like doreamon, don't necessarily register, anime was largely invisible in that far off pre-robotech time. Pokemon probably doesn't really count either, it's continuing flurry of game tie-ins and merchandise make it obvious. But what of titles like Sailor moon? The title that launched a million cos-play disasters?

Well, having found good quality material to watch (and the original stuff, not the recut for US tv terror) I was still happy to let it sit and brood on a shelf. The idea of subjecting myself to such an immense number of episodes, of a dated series, aimed at young Japanese girls and best known for having an intensely irritating lead character was easily avoidable. However finding someone crazy enough to volunteer to watch the first season with me tipped the balance. It's going to take a while though.

So have I worked out what it is about this show that has given it such durability? Not really, but a couple of things do come to mind.

- The first is that the show ages quite reasonably. The action is all posing and repeated animation sequences after all, and the rest is just character work which doesn't really need flashy animation to work. The music is quite good, watching the three leads bounce off one another can be entertaining and Usagi's voice really is capable of peeling paint.

- The enemy fields a dark queen who goes a long way towards suggesting secret plans, even though she doesn't do a whole heap. She has a sequence of bishounen generals, disposed of when they fail too often / get boring, who have somewhat different tactics. And those generals summon a freakish monster of the week for the girls to defeat. The action itself is boring, the girls really don't have an immense range of tactical options (poor ami and her unexciting bubble-bath attack) but it does get a decent sense of horror / threat going. The monsters are pretty nasty looking, some of their schemes are quite cruel and it honestly does seem like they are doing their best to really splatter the sailor senshi. They almost remind me of devilman, and are really quite shounen monsters for such a series. Was sailor moon the first magical girl show to have truly monstrous opponents? I know the first magical girl series did not have such oppositional focus.

- Usagi is immensely annoying. This does help somewhat to draw other people, including the other sailors, out as they react to her being off the wall. But I also wonder if her being so boyish, and flawed, is actually part of her popularity. Did her flaws allow fans to see her as someone they could potentially replace? Or is it that she's such an antithesis to the ideal Japanese female that it was all rather exciting at the time? She certainly is somewhat impressive in the scope of her flaws, especially her interactions with her mother.

- And of course, there's the outfits. Near naked transformation sequences, suspiciously busty 14 year olds and extremely short skirts yet relatively simple designs and an extremely recognisable motif go a long way to explain the cosplay popularity. This is assisted by the fact that much of the action consists of nicely staged, but relatively static, poses.

I must say, however, that the eye-catch still scares me. When entering into the adverts a spotlight scans the screen until it highlights sailor moon. That's fine, no problem, but the all male chorus of "sailoooor mooooon" when she is highlighted is frightening. It reeks of fanboy, and those rather older than 14.

Oh well, will be interesting... I hope.

Also bought myself a keyboard. 60$ US + the same in postage (ouch!) in order to buy a modern reproduction of a 20+ year old keyboard from the one place that still makes them. I hope they're as good as I remember them!

Current Mood: curious

A friend at work, discovering I was into anime, offered me a title from his personal collection. The rather mysterious "Heat Guy J". Not mysterious because it's rare or exotic, it had a well funded commercial release, but interesting because it seems to have bypassed all the anime fan's I know. Some knew the title, but not much more.

And I can sort of see why. It has very decent production values showing a substantial investment in it. The backgrounds are almost excessively bright and crisp, obviously computer assisted and having a wonderful time of it. Although they do tend to over-use some of the scenery. The setting is some massive metropolis of the near future. And we are following two characters who are special police tasked with finding crimes before they happen. One is young, cynical and cool, while the other is a towering muscleman in a long black coat (his partner being in white). The large guy is J, the legendary heat guy, and the only legal "machine" (ie. android) in the city. He's super-powered, quite taken with doing huge leaps to get around, but he's not super bright. His "wit" is the endless repetition of rather silly aphorisms which make him sound like a 2$ positive thinking book. He also spends a remarkable amount of time getting his butt kicked, he's a bit of a tactical dunce for all his power.

Between them they tackle one crime after another in this big city with a rotten under-belly... although in reality the main crime they face is the really atrocious writing. It lacks energy, enthusiasm or even logic to a quite alarming degree. Some of the stories we've seen so far, 9 episodes in, have been laugh out loud bad with huge plot holes and weirdly lifeless scenes and dialogue... action too when it comes to that, there's something odd about it (very checked, it always seem to stop short). Also impressive is that their detective work seems to center around asking one old guy meditating in a darkened shop who tells them, seemingly free of charge, all the information they need to know. There's not a great deal of backstory either, or they are being really stingy. What is the history behind this odd city or the characters we follow? no idea. This makes it all feel as if they were too busy playing with the visuals to bother too much about the story logic. Indeed the entire thing feels a lot like a tech demo, an experiment in how to integrate computers into animation, rather than something the creators actually cared about that much. Either that or it's just trying too hard to be cool and is thus afraid to risk experimenting with what they have.

Put simply it's really pretty, but it is also an empty shell yearning to be filled with some energy and life. There's much better stuff out there. Still there are also 17 more episodes (although the anarchic-feline is fading fast) so it could get better... but my hope is not great, they seem too happy to just go through the motions.

The lead characters bike is sort of cool though, I will admit that, but I'd take the one out of FFVII-Advent Children rather.... geeze I must review that, it was such a damn fun film. Exactly the sort of exciting drama and action Heat Guy-J misses.

Current Mood: blah

A new review up... finally. Well, it's not even a new review, I had an old review of Noir but it was based on only 6 episodes. I gave it a worthy, because it seemed to have a really cool start rich with promise, but as I watched I realised how shallow and dull much of the content is. It was really quite a struggle finishing the damn thing. But it was a title I'd never share with Anarch-kitty, so it was good to get it done.

Hm, I guess the review won't be going up immediately... the ftp server isn't talking to me. My bad for ignoring it for so long?

Also saw this anime music video which impressed me rather a lot,
Tra~la~la. Not only does the total over-the-top dramatics of Utena translate well into this format the cutting is brilliant and the sense of humor is rich.

I also got an e-mail from JDM4RSH giving me a good piece of his mind for dissing
Transformers: The Movie. What I really wanted to get across is that you first have to accept the core premise, which is obviously and transparently derived from their toy merchandising, before you can actually appreciate the anime at all. I think quite a few anime fans won't make that leap, being turned off by the very concept of it, so it was worth mentioning. I didn't actually mind the movie (junk planet aside) and I think that was expressed in the closer of the review.

I have some other anime related posts I've ignored for too long. I'll get to those soon, it also gives me more grist so at least my journal isn't as inactive as my page.

( The review I can't ftp at the moment )

So says Lady Death, from the astoundingly average animated movie of the same name. A movie that's not even bad enough to laugh at, it's just soo awfully average, showing clearly the near complete lack of sophistication or imagination on the part of those who brought it into being. It's not anime either, since the script is entirely western (Carl Macek gives rise to another obscenity!), the animation is korean and the funding is ADV showing what it thinks of its own customers taste. It's just very lame, boring and highly derivative... I swear the end battle reminded me an awful lot of diablo! I'll probably write a short review, but only to make it clear that this is neither anime nor something worth actually watching.

It's partly because I'm soo busy, lots of thesis re-work I should be doing in addition to
something far more enjoyable (a.... a.... girlfriend omgwtf!). The other reason is that I
was blessed by the heavens with a girlfriend who enjoys anime... and brings a substantial
personal collection into the deal. As a result I have just been struck by shock and awe
at the immense number of new titles I have the possibility of reviewing. And unlike the normal
random selection I use an intelligent and tasteful mind has already done the initial choosing.

Speaking of random selection, here's a review that's been waiting in the wings unfinished for
quite a while now. I liked the initial thrust of it, that dead leaves is more like a universal
art-house animation, and thus not particularly anime or interesting. But I realised the review
also makes an assumption about context... how much art house animation is there in Japan? is it
another sub-culture of its own that I just haven't experienced? after all, only a narrow subset
of anime makes it out here (especially commercially!). I'm not sure how I'd actually be able to
know the answer to that question, so the review may well be up for some dramatic revisions.

That said... it wasn't that great an anime.

Mmm, a bright Perth Sunday and a long yum-cha ahead, loved one by my side... life is very sweet.