Anime - coasting on emotion rollers

[LittleArmadillo0]

1 minute ago, Bartimaeus said:

Eek, as a big Satoshi Kon guy (see my avatar!), Paranoia Agent is on my to-do list, please make sure to use spoilers!

Will do!

[Bartimaeus]

Just now, LittleArmadillo0 said:

Will do!

I made an edit to that previous post for a little more information. Also, I had no idea it was free to watch - that's good to know. ...I prefer my blurays, but that's certainly useful for almost everyone else, .

[LittleArmadillo0]

2 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I made an edit to that previous post for a little more information. Also, I had no idea it was free to watch - that's good to know. ...I prefer my blurays, but that's certainly useful for almost everyone else, .

Yeah I always try to look around at the big anime production companies like Funimation, Crunchyroll, or Viz media ( or even YouTube I found all the episode of Yuyu Hakusho sub and dub ). These sites typically have mostly free anime to watch. Newer or long time classics are typically behind a paywall which is expected.

[majestic]

  

3 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Eek! As a big Satoshi Kon guy (see my avatar!), Paranoia Agent is on my to-do list, please make sure to use spoilers for anything plot/character-relevant! I believe KP has already seen Paranoia Agent? Not sure about majestic.

No, I don't think I've seen anything by Satoshi Kon yet. Madhouse, the production company he worked with, sure - but it's hard to not have seen anything by Madhouse (Madhouse produced Animatrix... among other things, so it's possible even without explicitly being an anime fan).

6 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

No, it was just on my mind because I'd just talked to them about it yesterday. And I utterly despise how everything about the show looks, but I am trying very hard not to hate the show for it going into it. If it was a longer show, I would have ruled it out already because I would not be able to stick with a show that looks the way Madoka does, but I can try to tolerate it for a very short show, particularly if the art style is deliberately clashing with the style of show that it actually is.

It's hard to talk about the visuals without going into spoilers, because they're just so inextricably linked with the storytelling. If this weren't animation and RLM made a video on it, Mike and Jay would probably talk about how well the scenes are set up. I mean... I could be fanboying this too much. I don't think I am, but it could be.

6 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Yeah, I despise achievements, and I wish I could disable achievements for all my games on Steam. I make do with getting indie games, which is 99% of what I ever play on PC anymore, from GOG where I can instead, . Artificial stat and milestone tracking immediately demotivates and annoys me - let me play how I want, thank you very much.

I don't. I do dislike "Bioware" achievements that are like "Kill 5000 enemies with finishing move X" because they're just boring and not much of an achievement, but a way to show off and make me do fun things in a game? Why not.

I positively hate achievements that become impossible to attain. Plague Inc. for instance has one that you can only get by playing a multiplayer game with someone who was in the beta (or something like that), or has played against someone who was in the beta playtest. It's frustrating now... it'll be unchecked there, forever. Probably. Ahem, much like a certain company's Pillars of Eternity Kickstarter thank you achievement. What WERE you thinking, Obsidian?

6 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Years later, they ended up introducing infinite respeccing in D2, and my relief was immense: no need to always be perfectly min-maxing everything all the time anymore.

Made the game in between levels 18 and 30 much better too, because depending on what you wanted to play, that was an excercise in frustration when playing solo. Changed a little when they introduced synergies of course, but respeccing is great.

4 hours ago, LittleArmadillo0 said:

Also watched the first episode of Sailor Moon. I have never felt so bubbly in watching someone say "Moon Prism Power!"

Gotta ask, Viz dub, DiC dub or original with subs?

 

[LittleArmadillo0]

37 minutes ago, majestic said:

  Gotta ask, Viz dub, DiC dub or original with subs?

Viz dub. I was debating whether or not I should go subs or dubs but in the end I went with dubs. One day I'll watch the DiC dub or maybe I'll just watch some clips of the DiC dub.

[majestic]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

I could be fanboying this too much.

There's an issue in the second film, structurally. For a show, it's not too problematic to spend a full episode on a flashback, but putting this in the middle of the second film (albeit with the best visual hint you're going into a flashback ever) and then transit back to the regular film after the flashback with the (so far unseen) TV version opening sequence is going to be hellishly confusing for first time viewers.

 

Edited May 6, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Great Pretender Wizard of Far East episodes 1 + 2

Whelp this is going to be fun. This time the mark is an evil mob lady who does human trafficking. I'm sure Makoto (the protagonist of this show, not Sailor Jupiter) will probably end up having something bad happen, because the evil old mob lady likes him.

[Bartimaeus]

10 hours ago, majestic said:

I don't. I do dislike "Bioware" achievements that are like "Kill 5000 enemies with finishing move X" because they're just boring and not much of an achievement, but a way to show off and make me do fun things in a game? Why not.

I positively hate achievements that become impossible to attain. Plague Inc. for instance has one that you can only get by playing a multiplayer game with someone who was in the beta (or something like that), or has played against someone who was in the beta playtest. It's frustrating now... it'll be unchecked there, forever. Probably. Ahem, much like a certain company's Pillars of Eternity Kickstarter thank you achievement. What WERE you thinking, Obsidian?

If I love the game, then I'll do everything I want to do in it anyways - why would I need achievements to provide its own set of random goals and tasks? The whole achievement system just feeds into the OCD need to check everything off of a list instead of just playing the game how you want to play it in an organic fashion. The best situation is playing something for an hour, earning a couple of "achievements", realizing you don't much care for the game or didn't want to play anymore for whatever reason, seeing you have achievements for it already, and then being forced to be okay with having just like 2 achievements for the rest of eternity. I've refunded games on Steam before just because of that. In conclusion, screw achievements - thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

10 hours ago, majestic said:

It's hard to talk about the visuals without going into spoilers, because they're just so inextricably linked with the storytelling. If this weren't animation and RLM made a video on it, Mike and Jay would probably talk about how well the scenes are set up. I mean... I could be fanboying this too much. I don't think I am, but it could be.

I'll see what I'll see...sometime soon-ish, .

5 hours ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

I'm sure Makoto

Oh?

5 hours ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

(the protagonist of this show, not Sailor Jupiter)

Oh. It should be illegal for characters to share names.

[majestic]

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

If I love the game, then I'll do everything I want to do in it anyways - why would I need achievements to provide its own set of random goals and tasks? The whole achievement system just feeds into the OCD need to check everything off of a list instead of just playing the game how you want to play it in an organic fashion. The best situation is playing something for an hour, earning a couple of "achievements", realizing you don't much care for the game or didn't want to play anymore for whatever reason, seeing you have achievements for it already, and then being forced to be okay with having just like 2 achievements for the rest of eternity. I've refunded games on Steam before just because of that. In conclusion, screw achievements - thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

How problematic that really is for me depends on a very simple factor that seemingly makes no sense when viewed from the outside. If a game has an achievement that is rarely, uhm, achieved, and I have that achievement, the need to complete the list is replaced by that part of me that goes into competition mode. So mostly, that's fine. Most achievement lists therefore don't bother me, they're either all easy to achieve and no problem, can't be achieved, which I despise but can't help anyway*, or they contain one that I can do to satisfy my need to surpass most other people. Done!

If a game doesn't have achievements then that's fine too, I'll just play it as well. Otherwise I wouldn't play as much on my Switch as I do. I can empathize with your dislike of achievements, of course.

But really, by far and large it is about two things, my inability to challenge myself without any need to and... it really is just that one, actually.
*

Spoiler

 

There's one other part. If an achievement requires me to interact with random elements of the game's community in any meaningful way, my need to check off the achievement is replaced by anxiety.

Priority list is competition > anxiety > checklist OCD - which explains why and how I could play MMORPGs (although, not going to lie, it took me actual years to not just join a voice chat, but talk in it, and that was with the players in the guild I interacted with every day in chat - it's like a hyper problematic version of talking to strangers on the phone).

 

 

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I'll see what I'll see...sometime soon-ish, .

Minako is curious hat you will think of it as much as I am!

No, I just really love using that GIF. Sorry.

edit: I mean the visuals, from a storytelling perspective, framing, shot composition and the like, and if the show manages to overcome your misgivings about how it looks. To be perfectly honest, I didn't like the character art much at first. I still don't really, but I get why it is they way it is. The combination of it all looks fantastic, in my opinion.
 

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

 

10 hours ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

I'm sure Makoto

Oh?

10 hours ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

(the protagonist of this show, not Sailor Jupiter)

Oh. It should be illegal for characters to share names.

 

Edited May 6, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

4 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Oh. It should be illegal for characters to share names.

If it was, we'd end up with names looking like the more memeable German words, for example in Sailor Moon Makoto would have to be Makotojupitermagicalgirltallladynoboyfriend. Which is a bit of a mouthful.

10 minutes ago, majestic said:

No, I just really love using that GIF

[majestic]

Just now, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

If it was, we'd end up with names looking like the more memeable German words, for example in Sailor Moon Makoto would have to be Makotojupitermagicalgirltallladynoboyfriend. Which is a bit of a mouthful.

It's bad form to create composite words with more than three components.

Spoiler

Do I win at the humorless German stereotype competition now? I'm not even German, but I tried.

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 minute ago, majestic said:

It's bad form to create composite words with more than three components.

I'm pretty sure that the most lengthy are actually several words mashed together by non-native speakers to make the "is there a German word for everything" a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You lost to a fictional character. Von Stroheim wins all German competitions by default. It's just German Science.

[majestic]

This is me having a brain fart. Oh boy.

Edited May 6, 2021 by majestic

[majestic]

Woops... that was me getting something wrong about the second Madoka film.

edit:

To explain that... it's not the scenes that are different, it's the dialogue that was rewritten to be clearer. Not sure if it's new subs or an actual change in the original too. Eh.  

Edited May 6, 2021 by majestic

[majestic]

I'm watching Perfect Blue right now... as if the movie wasn't uncomfortable enough to watch on its own, Mima is voiced by the same voice actress that voiced Tomoyo in Card Captor Sakura, with pretty much the same style of speaking. Of course, Perfect Blue came before she voiced Tomoyo, but still... the subject matter combined with images of Tomoyo flashing by, well...

Hello, I'm Tomoyo and talk just like Mima when she's on the internet for the first time!

Edited May 6, 2021 by majestic
Mima, Mami, wami schwami, damned spelling. :p

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Hmmmmm I think I'll watch Perfect Blue this weekend. That or Legend of the Overfiend.

[majestic]

Just now, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

That or Legend of the Overfiend.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 minutes ago, majestic said:

You're the one who told me about it!

[majestic]

14 minutes ago, ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP said:

You're the one who told me about it!

I know. It's fine, as long as you know what you're getting into, anyway. I wash my hands of it! 

Edited May 7, 2021 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

4 minutes ago, majestic said:

I know. It's fine, as long as you know what you're getting into, anyway. I wash my hands of it!

PONTIUS PILATE!

[LittleArmadillo0]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

I know. It's fine, as long as you know what you're getting into, anyway. I wash my hands of it!

To be fair anybody who has watched the Legend of the Overfiend would want to wipe their hands clean. 

Edit:

No, Not that way you perverts!

Edited May 7, 2021 by LittleArmadillo0
For sight had abandoned me

[majestic]

10 minutes ago, LittleArmadillo0 said:

To be fair anybody who has watched the Legend of the Overfiend would want to wipe their hands clean. 

You know that could be read in a very, very wrong way.

Edited May 7, 2021 by majestic

[majestic]

I really hope @Bartimaeus decides to read this post first and follows my advice and does not look up what this discussion is about.

So please don't.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

3 hours ago, LittleArmadillo0 said:

To be fair anybody who has watched the Legend of the Overfiend would want to wipe their hands clean. 

Not Bueno Excellente.

10 minutes into Legend of the Overfiend. Holy ****, this is so bad it ends up being good. It's like a cross between Sailor Moon Says, the Ghost Stories dub, and some really ****ed up hentai.

Ok so this is the censored version, which cut like half an hour of the more explicit stuff. What I said previously is still true, this is like a X-rated version of the Ghost Stories dub.

Edited May 7, 2021 by ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP

[majestic]

Perfect Blue (1997)

A film about the question of which blue is actually the perfect one. For me that's easily ultramarine, but that should surprise nobody at all since it is made from Lapis Lazuli, who incidentially was the best supporting character in Steven Universe, at least until her story arc had a barn dropped on her, no, I mean, until her story arc was dropped liked barn. Apparently there are people who think azure is the best, but we wouldn't entertain such madness now, would we?

The film features three seiyus I recognized: Sailor Jupes, Seiya and Hikari/Tomoyo. Tomoyo I already talked about, it was hard getting her out of this performance even if Mima came first. The vagaries of establishing an association with a single character. So it was Tomoyo first, then Mima, for me. I think the other direction would have been less of an issue, an issue that is predominately mine anyway. Can't be yours, can it? Obviously not, unless we're the same. Which we aren't, even though for a while I thought we would be. Similar, perhaps, but to the point of being a simulacrum? No. Yes?

Does it matter? I was sure once, now I no longer am. I also really should sleep more and watch less at 0200.

Back to character associations for a while. I often do that, for fun. Every time I see Mark Hamill in something I tell others that I saw Colonel Blair in a TV show, or movie. They're usually wondering why someone like me, who has seen Star Wars for several hundred times (to the point of knowing the entire dialogue of the original trilogy by heart, in what seems like a far distant, happier time - you know, before Peter Pan turned out to be a dream, and reality came crashing down hard on me), would associate Mark Hamill with Wing Commander first.

Because I feel like it. For the same reason why I keep calling Neil Patrick Harris Carl Jenkins instead of Doogie Howser. Because psychic space fascists easily beat kid doctors. They're also about equally as realistic. But what's real anyway?

Regardless... so, not sure. I did not recognize Hikari as Tomoyo when watching Neon Genesis Evangelion recently, recreating Tomoyo with the more lighthearted parts of Perfect Blue was apparently a choice, or I failed to pay enough attention. I don't think it was the latter, beause I felt really, really bad for Hikari. Poor girl. I'm sure that's Shinji's fault too, he could have disabled that EVAngel in a different manner. There you go. Finally something to blame on Usagi, other than being obsessed with Mamosuka. Take that you whiner. Whiness? Do we need to properly gender whiner in English, like actor and actress? Would that be whineman and whinewoman otherwise?

I'm not at all sure now. Is that a holdover from the time I spent my days hearing and reading nothing but a language that does have grammatical genders? Nope, probably not. That's just so this post becomes longer, because words are good. Wordcount. Yes. Hah!

Where was I going with this? Oh! Mima was clearly intended to be voiced with a bit of a naive, almost child-like enthusiasm for certain things. Not bad, not bad. Good choice. Bad carreer choice for someone like that though.

Lastly, if you have not seen Perfect Blue and wondered about the color at all, and, let me tell you something straight: You should! Even if it ends up being a film you probably only want to watch once. It's really blue, in the end. Yes.

Warning, actual spoiler content now. While I personally do not think that anything that happens in Perfect Blue is a surprise per se and knowing spoilers will not be detrimental to its enjoyment, that is only my personal opinion. Don't blame me if you click here and find yourself in a situation where you believe otherwise and can't go back.
 

Spoiler

 

I looked up what @Bartimaeus meant with controversy, and noticed that it has something to do with a film that I have steadfastily avoided to see so far: Black Swan, which apparently was clearly inspired by Perfect Blue, with Darren Aronofsky refusing to acknowledge it. The only work of Aronofsky's oeuvre that I have seen is The Wrestler, and that only because I was told by a trusted source that Mickey Rourke was bloody fantastic in the film, and it turns out he really was.

First, before anything else, the technical side of the film - the animation is fantastic. The style is much more realistic than usual, and for a change accurately depicts the living space of Japanese people, even when they're a mildly successful idols or actresses. Mima lives in a single room appartment. The framing and film language used is great, especially when you consider that this was Satoshi Kon's first film. A real shame that his life was cut so short.

It also begs the question of what we think of when talking about anime. Is anime animation from Japan, or is it animation from Japan following a certain set of tropes and (mostly) character design patterns? If it is the latter, than this is simply an animated film. It's an interesting question, seeing how anime is just the Japanese term for animation, and even imported cartoons are anime in Japan. I'm leaning more towards seeing anime as animation produced in Japan when talked about outside of Japan. That's maybe the topic for a later post.

Arguablly the technical aspects of this film are only a minor detail. The animation quality does help in blurring the lines between dreams and reality, fiction and fact, as was clearly the intent. Therein, of course, lies a certain problem. Even without having seein Black Swan prior (even though it comes later, any given person is much more likely to have seen Black Swan than Perfect Blue), the plot of this film is readily obvious. It never really is a question of "is this real" or "is this about dissociative personality disorder" because that was perfectly obvious for me, right from the start. I cannot, of course, know what I would have thought had I seen this when it came out.

If I had to speculate, then yes, this would have been much less clear to a hypothetical version of me that had not seen Fight Club, Identity, The Secret Window, or any of the hundreds of similar films that came in their wake.

As it is, it immediately checks off all the items on the multiple personality film checklist (at this point, I'm not certain where that list really originated, and for the topic at hand this doesn't really matter). Mima keeps seeing this stalker figure wherever she goes. She also sees a much more innocent version of herself that taunts her with what she's lost by her career choices. She plays in a drama called Double Bind. She reads a blog that she seems to have written herself, but has no idea when or where, and she clearly lacks the knowledge to do so.

The devil is in the details. It's fairly clear from early on that she cannot be her own stalker, which is what happend in The Secret Window. The stalker character interacts with reality in a manner that cannot be consistently resolved by her being him. He's not just a red herring, which was pretty neat. He really is an obsessed superfan and not a secretly actually helpful character later on.

More importantly, the super detailed blog the stalker writes was online before Mima even had a computer at home. This really is clearly shown by her friend and manager Rumi showing her how to use a computer after she bought one. This essentially also rules out herself, even if she had a second personality that was capable of using computers in a way her primary personality doesn't. The blog also contains details about her personal life and personality that even the most obsessive stalker wouldn't know. This further narrows down the list to, at best, three people. Her two former band colleagues, who have no reason to either hate or want to harm her and the actual perpetrator.

It does, in the end, fall to the person with the biggest misgivings about everything that happens in Mima's carreer to be the actual person with a split personality. Rumi, who is set up as a former pop idol. She is also implied to haven't truly made a successful carreer out of it, and given her visceral reaction to a certain scene the script has Mima perform, there's also - I think - the implication that Rumi was sexually abused/assaulted while being a pop idol. Something that's the cold, harsh reality for many of them.

One by the one, the people who are by far and large at fault for Mima's perceived corruption by her (acting) career choices are attacked. Her other manager gets a warning letter bomb, the director is stabbed to death, as is the photographer who made nude pictures of Mima, and finally, even the manager is killed after getting Mima another job with a sleazy element.

Putting the hints together wasn't so problematic, I've seen some reviews that claimed the film is too confusing at times, but the confusing elements come from Mima not being able to resolve what is going on around her, what she sees and what reality apparently is, all of which is easily explained by the psychological strain she is under (and her own misgivings about her acting career going to place she didn't want it to go, but they were much less than Rumi's).

Rumi had the motive to intervene and the access to Mima's private life to enable the stalker and his creepy blog and feed into his obsession enough to make him attempt to rape and kill Mima, another hint at Rumi having been sexually assaulted in the past.

It really is a great film, and the reason why I'd argue that knowing the twist beforehand doesn't change one's enjoyment of it is simply because I spent watching over half the film knowing what's going on. Or at least, having arrived at a clear deduction that turned out to be correct. It's a great psychological thriller and (in)arguably explores themes beyond multiple personality disorder. I'd even say the thematic exploration is something that is merely travelling in the wake of the plot in an interesting way. It is there, but not dependent on the plot. That Rumi is the killer, and not someone else, is just incidental. It's also perfectly set up.

This is great, and I am indeed looking forward to never seeing this ever again, much like Grave of the Fireflies. Not because it isn't good, but exactly the opposite. It is far too effective in what it sets out to do to subject myself to seeing it again.

Fantastic work, really.

Edited May 7, 2021 by majestic