densuke

Okonomiyaki is more like a pancake than a pizza. It's made from a batter of flour, egg and water. Ranma is definitely the best girl in Ranma. I think "Ryouga" and "Tendou" are the proper romanizations of the names. It's just a matter of whether the "o" sounds in each name are long or short and I don't see that commonly-used forms for either name use short "o" sounds.

Huh, I was looking over some old posts and I noticed that I was hoping here for a fresh digisub of this [b]otherwise unobtainable property[/b]. Central Anime did the honors and the entire series has been available for awhile. It was made from the same ancient laser discs the VHS subs were and of course looks far better. And Bakuen CG can still beat the stuffing out of many or most series made ten years later.

Looks like [b]Kimagure Orange Road[/b] needs to be dusted off -- again. It's one of the first shounen romance anime and definitely still the best. No need to go into the characters and so on as you can easily google up some well-made shrines. A couple of classic shoujo romance titles have been licensed and completed, namely [b]Marmalade Boy[/b] and [b]Hana Yori Dango[/b]. Both of these feature the sort of melodrama which drove FY. These titles also have easy-to-find shrines.

CLAMP doesn't even necessarily think up ALL the characters for the anime based on their works. Card Captor Sakura anime (by Madhouse) includes Meirin Li, a character not in the manga. And I consider Gundam to be a SUNRISE property -- take a look at [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gundam[/url] : "...Gundam is the collective term for the Universal Century (UC) series like Mobile Suit Gundam and series in alternative timelines, such as Gundam Wing, made by [b]Sunrise Inc...[/b]"

For a lot of Americans it pretty much IS the "end of the world." The population is getting damn OLD. Putting a Republican in the White House hasn't gotten us any peace or riches -- in fact quite the contrary. And whereas America used to be THE place where everyone just had to come to enjoy a prosperous life, nowadays they just stay home and "steal" "our" jobs... But as far as the stuff in the initial post is concerned, I wish to be reassuring by mentioning that 1) your pastor or whatever is far from the first religious leader to claim to have seen the signs. This sort of thing has been going on for hundreds of years ~_^ 2) unless you are looking for an excuse to commit sins and hurt others it might be useful to think about what you would do with your life if it really WAS the end of the world. Would you learn some new skills? Have some long-forestalled conversations with friends and acquaintances? Fall in love? Lots of people would just sit on their butts and moan -- would you be one of them?

[QUOTE=bismarck_adnu]well,, the story is just great!!! It was obvious thou, Bandai created the series and who knows,, maybe they are making a new batch of anime much like oneagi teacher,, I hope they would extend the shows farther than the original 13,, :animesigh :animesigh :animesigh[/QUOTE][b]Onegai Twins[/b] was already released in the US, wasn't it? For a lot of weird reasons I can't quite remember I thought the second series was awesome, but I doubt I will bother rewatching Onegai Teacher.

This topic is vague enough to mean different things to different people but it seems some people are thinking in terms of ART styles -- cel vs. CG animation. And that's good enough for me for now. I prefer the older style because of the way many scenes in older series tend to revolve around a specific striking image. This sort of thing makes it easier to grasp the point of each scene.

Taxi Driver cheated by using soliloquies. Even there the language is very flat. It's great for hard-boiled stuff but it doesn't compare to a novel by someone like Kenzaburo Oe. Claiming that certain movies do a great job with certain books is too easy. Once you've experienced both you're tainted by knowledge of both.

I can't see the point in pitting these bands against each other. Queen started out in the heyday of British glitter rock; comparable bands from that time include Slade, "Ziggy"-era Bowie and T. Rex. And I'll take T. Rex over Queen as far as that goes... Queen was already a superstar group by the time the Police came out and tastes had changed quite a bit via punk rock. That's why the sound and scale are so different. The Police can be roughly lumped with, say, XTC and the Members. You could also maybe throw in U2.

[quote name='Shadow Blade']Where the heck is the creativity in film making today?[/quote]Well, in South Korea for sure. South Korea's film industry is young and fresh and loaded with talented filmmakers. Try and rent [b]Swiri[/b] (or Shiri) for starters. I had a nice conversation just today with someone at work who was very impressed with Swiri's depth of character and storytelling. "It's not the kind of thing you can just jump into halfway through" said my colleague, which I take to mean that American movies can be viewed in little bits and pieces or just kind of fast-forwarded through because there is no effort put into the story. Or you already read the damn comic book... As for American film? Just boycott the whole damn mess. The only alternative is to reinforce what the Hollywood money men already know - "You'll never go broke underestimating the American public." Booklovers will never find their concerns or favorite books mirrored in cinema because it is an anti-literary medium. Until home media got big moviemakers only ever had one shot at getting the story across -- and movies still have to be made as if this were true. Movies can only hint at the [i]inner life of their characters[/i] while books can be packed with pages and pages of almost nothing else. Some books are much less concerned with thoughts and subtle emotions and are easy to screen more or less intact but those books are not booklovers' books...

OP and ED themes/sequences for anime in Japan are actually [i]90 second[/i] edits -- 3 minutes is an awful long time in American TV. Up until hip-hop became a levelling (downward) influence, Japanese pop was working wonders with recycled rock and pop idioms and doing things that Americans or whoever were either too bored to play with anymore or just too jaded to care about. There are still a few groups and albums from the late '90s that I would like to find or hear more of. I will also recommend enka, which is the sort of thing karaoke was made for -- a stagy and incredibly sentimental ballad form cobbled together out of Asian and Western sounds and themes. It might seem laughable and goofy at first but it is also quite loveable and many of the singers are very skillful. Enka is not an exclusively Japanese form but is common to many Asian countries. Enka songs used in anime include the themes for Oniisama E, Rose of Versailles, the ED for Gokusen and (best of all) the theme for Kazemakase Tsukikage Ran.

I am not going to type out a bunch of lyrics. Lyrics are supposed to go with music -- they don't hold up as a written-word form, no matter how many misguided English teachers or whatever wish it wasn't so. I always liked a lot of the early Who songs because they were rather witty and silly. Loads of Guided By Voices songs are striking because they are non-linear but loaded with great lines. And a guy from New Jersey (or Nashville, TN if you take it back that far) named R. Stevie Moore came up with perhaps hundreds of funny and witty song titles and lyrics in his time.

[quote name='wayofthreversed']Has anyone seen Jubei Chan 2...[/quote]Sure I did and I enjoyed it very much. It is very self-indulgent and very unlike the first series in many ways. If you liked the first Jubei-chan series it is almost certain that you will like it. Just give it a few episodes to grow on you and give it a chance to tell its story in its own way.

The nasty surprise for me at the end of #12 was #13, which dawdled endlessly and came up with one decent scene. The writing staff ran out of things to say after #12 and it's too bad the series wasn't wrapped up right then. One huge blunder in #13 was re-using Agnes' transformation scene -- [spoiler]Agnes no longer possessed the ring by then and that was not a minor plot point.[/spoiler] This sort of inattention to detail helps to make this short series into a minor series. I don't think it had to be that way. Episodes 10-12 contained quite a few touching scenes and there were a few nice digressions along the way. [spoiler]I found some of the premise to be downright anti-intuitive. If you start with a human female and, let's see, add magical powers (+?) but make her sexually unresponsive (-?) and take away her ability to reproduce (-) (I don't get how anyone was anyone else's mother in the show) -- what exactly are you left with? Ureshiko seemed to be able only to "nurture" the men she loved by frustrating and keeping secrrets from them. No wonder her emotional range only covered the ground between wistful and weepy... *sigh*[/spoiler] For me the strengths of the show were the visual design and the palette (it was nice to see some definition and color in a CG-era show) and of course the characterization, which from time to time made for enjoyable viewing at an adult level. The score was also pretty good (there was one woodwind piece which was irritatingly overused, though). Trivia -- "Kurenai" can be read as "I won't give." [color=green]Although my post is top-heavy with complaints I recommend this series because it really is something different. There are too many recyclings and rehashings lately (To Heart 2? BLEAAGH!) and I much prefer this flawed work to any of those franchise-type offerings.[/color]

SAC is an alternate world - it does not belong in any chronology involving the first movie or the manga. Episode 50 was particularly satisfying in terms of visuals and animation. One sequence in particular was simply amazing.

[quote name='duoikari'] i thought' oh, this is something new'[/quote][b]Sailor Moon[/b] [i]was[/i] something new when it came out. It's a mixture of magical girl anime and battle team stuff like Power Rangers. Threads like this always wind up with a lot of people trashing series for younger viewers -- possibly because they are no-brainer targets and enlist few defenders to their cause. But as someone who enjoys them I have to say there's really no point in critiquing those shows -- their flaws are all too well-known (especially to their fans) and saying "I outgrew that show" only needs 4 words to express.

[b]Now and Then, Here and There[/b] would be easy to use in your assignment. The good and bad characters are easy to spot and easy to read. The series is also fairly short and fairly popular. [b]Juuni Kokki[/b] would be harder to use -- it's twice as long, has too many characters and is harder to "get." But I will recommend it anyway because it has a lot to say about good vs. evil as it relates to governance and politics. It is also very entertaining, encompassing wars and rebellions and assassinations and things like that.

Gee, doesn't anyone LIKE cheesy shows? Doesn't the phrase "so bad it's good" mean anything anymore? I could name a million shows which annoyed me, but that would just give me a headache and put me in a rotten mood... I have to agree that picking on kid's shows is a form of bullying. Kids really like seeing the same thing over and over. They just don't care. You can get away with an awful lot with kids. And kid's anime can be made cheaply for this reason. Turning around and saying "I'm a grown-up and that stuff is beneath me now" misses the point and pretty much makes it impossible to have any fun. One of my favorite shows ever is Chou Kuse ni Narisou. For practically any element you can name (voice acting, music, visual design, zzzzzzzz) you will find that this series offends. And the writing is just a bunch of gags in search of a punchline. But it's funny and sharp and lovable and that's all I need. I loved the Sailor Moon live action series in the same way; I was always willing to forgive the show its numerous flaws. And the show got better as it went on -- even the acting made it up to passable by the end of the series. But that's not the point I guess.

There are plenty of romance anime and manga. They might give some of y'all more of what you are looking for -- although some people would miss the fight scenes I suppose. Most of the better titles are old (Kimagure Orange Road, Kare Kano, Marmalade Boy are all top-notch), but a new series called Suzuka is pretty good.

One thing that struck me about this series is that it obscures a lot of fairly heavy stuff -- i.e. the fact that "Wonderland" is completely plastic and subject to the whims of its "Manager" and that there is something strange about male-female relationships in Wonderland. Ureshiko is insanely powerful to boot. But none of this is played up as it would have been in Utena (which managed to make an apocalyptic saga out of a story about an after-school club ^_^). In this context the fanservice barrage of the first few episodes makes a lot of sense. It points back to something peculiar in the setting and probably sets up a lot of false clues. And it gives the story something to hide behind.

The thing I really dislike about these anime wannabes is that they are getting away from whatever it was they know how to do well. And now they are doing something they know little about just so they can be in step. A situation like that is not very promising. And I don't see any point in rewarding this mimicry by confusing it with the original. In the long term, the quality of American animation has been generally negligible for something like 40 years. It's too expensive to do properly anymore (that's why Futurama is mostly made in Korea). And it's a lot less popular than it was back in the day. I don't think plastic surgery will help...

This is what BT is for, distributing files to people who want them and getting to chip in some B/W. If ADV had to pay for all the B/W themselves the trailer would have to be smaller in size and thus not as good-looking. I wonder what other goodies ADV would be willing to part with. OP sequences and omakes seem like good candidates for BT distribution because they are short and their absolute value as a property is fairly small. As long as they keep each torrent seeded they could maintain an archive of available files. I expect that any material released by ADV would have to have been altered in some way by them (via dubbing or subtitles) -- if they released unaltered anime of any sort via BT it would probably conflict with their region-specific licenses.

How about a manga about nothing but eggplants - eggplant-flavored space opera, historical drama etc. It's called Nasu and it's by Iou Kuroda.

The other question is whether or not the people reading this will [b][i]care[/i][/b] if anime dies etc. A lot of what drives fandom is the enthusiasm of young people about using up their free time on something. Will the young anime fans of today be sitting around in their dotage watching One Piece the way old fat rock fans cling to their Beatles albums?

It surprises me that Tokyo Babylon or X:1999 get next to no mention in the thread. It seemed to me at the time that X pretty much made CLAMP's name among English-speaking fans, and is much more ambitious than stuff like MKR or Chobits. Shamanic Princess is nothing to do with CLAMP BTW.