Anime and Manga - I respect the first human to have eaten a mushroom

[Sarex]

1 minute ago, KP wants Blue Velvet said:

No One Reads The Back: How We Told You The Hook In The Titile And Became A Bestseller

Or the front depending how you look at it.

[Sarex]

[majestic]

  風の谷のナウシカ

Well, that was a good deal better than もののけ姫, but that is not much of a surprise. Princess Mononoke's animation was more sophisticated, although it's hard to find a lot of faults with the animation in this film. I watched it on Netflix where there's most likely some quality loss of a blu ray version, particularily sometimes the colors of our little protagonist's pants are severely off. They change from white to a pink tinge to sometimes looking a whole lot like the color of Nausicaä's face, which is a little weird.

Nausicaä is a figure of Greek myth, which I guess inspired parts of the film.

There's one particular part that meta knowledge ruined the impact of:

Spoiler

Quite frankly, since this wasn't a Takahata film, I not once believed for a second that Nausicaä would stay dead at the end, and lo, she rose.

Anyway, much like Princess Mononoke, I feel as if this film could easily lose 15 or even 20 minutes and make for a tighter watching experience, there are a few sequences that are basically the animated equivalent of special effects for the sake of having special effects. I can't fault the artists for that, but I really wish they'd cut that out. Grave of the Fireflies and Whisper of the Heart don't have any scenes that seem to be as, well, let's call them filled with artistic self-indulgence, and are all the better for it.

However, that is also probably because neither of the films lend themselves to having sequences that are just there to show off impressive animation.

Anyway, the film was good. As usual, post apocalyptic settings, even if they're as interesting as this one, isn't what I usually look for in films, and Nausicaä herself is quite likeable and a better character than Ashitaka, but at times she has the same issues. What she does, though, is have a much, much better personal motivation and reason for being like that, and that integrates her a lot better into the world. Solid.

Also, not really related but still hilarious, when you might end up regretting a tattoo:

Dude, next time pick someone you can trust.

Spoiler

馬鹿外人 = baka gaijin = silly foreigner

 

On 7/3/2022 at 3:33 PM, Bartimaeus said:

I don't want protagonists that would be like the ideal version of myself if I were dropped into this story with no personal stakes in order to solve it - that would be awful. My favorite protagonists tend to be well-meaning but totally divergent characters that do things in a completely different fashion than I would (sometimes more effectively, sometimes less!)...while actually having some kind of personality combined with their own motivations that makes them different and interesting.

I generally don't have a problem with that, or protagonists or antagonists that are just metaphors instead of real characters, the problem for me with Princess Mononoke in particular is that the film is not overly interesting to begin with and, unlike with Nausicaä, none of the factions or characters really appealed to me. Hence that falls completely on its face, and it kind of ruins the setup which I thought was not a terrible idea, just badly executed - at least while rewatching the film. Now after having watched Nausicaä, it feels almost entirely redundant. Nausicaä is similar and better in every way. Except maybe the usage of colors, but that's subjective.

Then there's probably half an hour of runtime that could be cut without changing the impact of meaning of the film, some of these scenes drag on and on with no clear purpose. Meandering isn't a particularily desirable trait to have for a movie with a 130 minute runtime.

Aside from that, no, I have not played Half-Life 2 and I'm not very likely to ever do that. For a number of reasons, the strongest of which is a dislike for Valve, and the fact that it apparently ends on a stupid cliffhanger that's never going to be resolved. Screw that.

 

[Sarex]

14 minutes ago, majestic said:

the problem for me with Princess Mononoke in particular is that the film is not overly interesting to begin with and, unlike with Nausicaä, none of the factions or characters really appealed to me. Hence that falls completely on its face, and it kind of ruins the setup which I thought was not a terrible idea, just badly executed - at least while rewatching the film. Now after having watched Nausicaä, it feels almost entirely redundant. Nausicaä is similar and better in every way.

I feel exactly the same way just in reverse. For me Nausicaä could have done with some trimming and the characters didn't grab me. It could be that is because I watched Mononoke a couple of time and before Nausicaä.

Plus the music in Princes Mononoke is unrivaled for me.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Bastard!! 

Uhhhh, it's like someone extremely horny made an adult's only Shonen loosely influenced by D&D, metal, and the 1981 Heavy Metal. I don't recommend this.

[majestic]

5 minutes ago, KP wants Blue Velvet said:

Bastard!! 

Uhhhh, it's like someone extremely horny made an adult's only Shonen loosely influenced by D&D, metal, and the 1981 Heavy Metal. I don't recommend this.

I... watched the trailer. Yeah, thanks, but that looks like it wanted to be tentacle porn but didn't dare to.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

8 minutes ago, majestic said:

I... watched the trailer. Yeah, thanks, but that looks like it wanted to be tentacle porn but didn't dare to.

It does slime porn instead.

[InsaneCommander]

Samurai Champloo 13-14

 

Mugen meets with some old friends and agrees to help them. Things don’t go as expected.

 

@KP wants Blue Velvetthanks for the heads up about Bastard. I was wondering if I should check it out. Better continue with my list.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

28 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

Samurai Champloo 13-14

 

Mugen meets with some old friends and agrees to help them. Things don’t go as expected.

 

@KP wants Blue Velvetthanks for the heads up about Bastard. I was wondering if I should check it out. Better continue with my list.

It may work for you if you can deal with a very horny harem anime, but there's really not much there if you can get around that.

[Gorth]

1 hour ago, KP wants Blue Velvet said:

It does slime porn instead.

Hey, leave Rimuru out of this!

[InsaneCommander]

49 minutes ago, Gorth said:

Hey, leave Rimuru out of this!

Don't worry. I'm sure it was not with Rimuru. Maybe with the slimes from the new Isekai Majestic talked about? There seem to be plenty in there.

 

2 hours ago, KP wants Blue Velvet said:

It may work for you if you can deal with a very horny harem anime, but there's really not much there if you can get around that.

I think I'll pass. I did survive the (not really) slime porn scene in Overlord though. At least there these kind of scenes are rare enough.
 

Spoiler

Edit: not sure it can be posted here. It's on YouTube, titled "Overlord - Solution seduces and kills Zach".

 

Edited July 5, 2022 by InsaneCommander

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, Gorth said:

Hey, leave Rimuru out of this!

This slime was green and only could disolve clothes.

39 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

Don't worry. I'm sure it was not with Rimuru. Maybe with the slimes from the new Isekai Majestic talked about? There seem to be plenty in there.

 

I think I'll pass. I did survive the (not really) slime porn scene in Overlord though. At least there these kind of scenes are rare enough.
 

  Reveal hidden contents

Edit: not sure it can be posted here. It's on YouTube, titled "Overlord - Solution seduces and kills Zach".

 

That's tamer tbh.

The slime disolves a girl's clothes while a gang of ninjas watch. It has eyes that cover her nipples to get around any censors.

Every woman in this show has massive titties and ends up in love with Dark Schneider, usually after getting clothes ripped off and groped. It's not so much shocking as it is embarrassing.

[Bartimaeus]

On 6/14/2022 at 6:25 AM, Bartimaeus said:

Angel's Egg (1985) by Mamoru Oshii, aka the director of Ghost in the Shell. Artsy, bold, beautiful, rich...mind-numbingly slow, repetitive, and runs almost entirely on symbolism without any meaningful semblance of plot or characters.

I mentioned that I might re-watch this one because while I saw artistic merit, it felt like I just didn't get it which made it difficult to actually enjoy...but I didn't expect to watch it again so soon when I wrote that (I was thinking more like a year or two from now), and I surely didn't expect that my impression of it would change so much. Well, perhaps that's why I was motivated to re-watch it this quickly, because it stuck with me longer than I expected. Angel's Egg was cute, a little haunting, moody and atmospheric, oh so pretty...and I actually really liked and enjoyed it. It's still incredibly slow, super understated, and laden with symbology, but I was okay with that - heck, I got chills down my spine a few times and even teared up at one part. Still don't think I could recommend this to @majestic based on what I know of his tastes, but I'm glad I gave it another chance - I usually...eventually try to do so in these sorts of "I don't get it, but I don't dislike it either" situations. Also very much what @kirottu said in that you kind of have to find your own meaning/value in it, I think.

Spoiler

This time, I think I understood what the final image the film leaves on is (which it spends several minutes slowly zooming out of), which I definitely did not the first time. Although it's still difficult to comprehend the exact idea behind it, at least I can see what is and get some sort of feel for it, .

 

7 hours ago, majestic said:

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

This is the film I most wanted to re-watch right after Princess Mononoke because I felt as though these two had a number of similarities...but I didn't want to force @majestic into watching it before he was ready, so what a happy coincidence that he decided to watch it all on his lonesome. I'll get back to your post after I've re-watched it in Japanese as well.

7 hours ago, Sarex said:

I feel exactly the same way just in reverse. For me Nausicaä could have done with some trimming and the characters didn't grab me. It could be that is because I watched Mononoke a couple of time and before Nausicaä.

Plus the music in Princes Mononoke is unrivaled for me.

The music is undoubtedly the best part of Princess Mononoke - I may not keep the film around, but I sure will keep the soundtracks.

Edited July 5, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

3 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

  Hide contents

This time, I think I understood what the final image the film leaves on is (which it spends several minutes slowly zooming out of), which I definitely did not the first time. Although it's still difficult to comprehend the exact idea behind it, at least I can see what is and get some sort of feel for it, .

Spoiler

An ark? As in Noah's Ark?

  

3 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

The music is undoubtedly the best part of Princess Mononoke - I may not keep the film around, but I sure will keep the soundtracks.

That's a strange thing to say about the best Ghibli movie ever made.

---------------------

Gave chapter 1 of Gokurakugai a go. It's a very solid start, nothing new or unique, but what was there was very solid.

Edited July 5, 2022 by Sarex

[majestic]

32 minutes ago, Sarex said:

That's a strange thing to say about the best Ghibli movie ever made.

But that's clearly Whisper of the Heart.

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

That's a strange thing to say about the best Ghibli movie ever made.

Oh no, don't worry, I have the soundtracks and the movie for Whisper of the Heart, .

(e): Ninja-ed by majestic.

Spoiler

I rate Princess Mononoke as being definitively worse than Whisper of the Heart, Only Yesterday, Grave of the Fireflies, Pom Poko, Kiki's Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya...and more or less about equal to Laputa, Ocean Waves, The Wind Rises, From Up on Poppy Hill, The Cat Returns, and Porco Rosso. However, re-watching the ones I like about the same or even less may eventually make them out-strip Mononoke as well, as I've only seen exactly Princess Mononoke in Japanese so far.

(e): Small lie - Ocean Waves is only available in Japanese, so I've also watched that in it as well.

A friend of mine actually described watching Princess Mononoke as being like playing a video game - with the viewer being Ashitaka, the protagonist. It's a weird comparison, but it somehow makes sense and is kind of along the same lines as how I felt.

Angel's Egg:

Spoiler

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

An ark? As in Noah's Ark?

Yes, one that's forever aimlessly afloat as per the recounting of the story by the boy/man. What exactly it means...is not clear, but at least I could actually tell what it was this time, .

 

Edited July 5, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

50 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Whisper of the Heart

53 minutes ago, majestic said:

Whisper of the Heart

I need to watch that one. But I am glad you both agree that Princess Mononoke is da best.

50 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Angel's Egg:

  Hide contents

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

An ark? As in Noah's Ark?

Yes, one that's forever aimlessly afloat as per the recounting of the story by the boy/man. What exactly it means...is not clear, but at least I could actually tell what it was this time, .

 

I just let the internet form my opinion on that one. Too much effort to figure things out on my own.

Edited July 5, 2022 by Sarex

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

I just let the internet form my opinion on that one. Too much effort to figure things out on my own.

Ah, now everything starts to fall into place...

[InsaneCommander]

Well, speaking of Overlord…

 

Overlord 4.1

 

Just an introductory episode for the new season. Nothing really important happened, but they gave some basic things the fans were missing (basically all the scenes with a certain Succubus...).

Ainz is pampered by the maids of Nazarick and wonders if he could ever convince them to treat him as an equal. He then proceeds to stamp all the documents prepared by his servants, even though he has absolutely no idea of what they are all about. Surely everything will go well. Just trust the psychopaths under your command. However, we do find out there are some decent people among them, since Yuri Alpha and another one whose name I can't remember right now suggest creating a school/orphanage, which makes Albedo mad since why would they share knowledge with worms?

Aura and Mare make Albedo jealous when they come to see Ainz, who they now consider a father figure.

 

Spoiler

Fith, one of the maids (who seems to be even more of a fanatical than the other characters) is shocked nobody is coming out of their houses to worship the evil undead conqueror who killed tens of thousands and filled the streets with monsters and undead. That is right Fith, WHY would anyone behave like that??? Not that the people he conquered are saints, since they don’t care about elf slavery for example.

The Adventurer's Guild's master agrees to work with Ainz, despite clearly not trusting him. Ainz gets optimistic and vows to create a Utopia for the people he conquered and whose relatives he murdered. I'm sure everyone will be friends now.

 

[uuuhhii]

the light novel was laughably bad

lightnovel editor are really getting lazy in the last decade

[majestic]

ゲド戦記

Quote

Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust,
die eine will sich von der andern trennen:
Die eine hält in derber Liebeslust
sich an die Welt mit klammernden Organen;
die andre hebt gewaltsam sich vom Dust
zu den Gefilden hoher Ahnen.
                                                          -- Faust - der Tragödie erster Teil              

I already used this in a prior post, although translated at the time. The original feels strangely appropriate here. I'm honestly uncertain what to think of the film. As a preface, it stands to necessity that I shall proclaim to be unfamiliar with its source material, and any value - or lack thereof, as seems to be the case here - as an adaptation, as such, shall remain undiscussed herein. I could of course simply take a quote or two from the author of the original, who was unhappy with the adaptation, but that would be disingenuous. I have no emotional or any other connection to the books this film is based on.

Famously, the making of this film lead to a bit of a spat between Hayao and Goro Miyazaki, when his father felt that he lacked the experience to direct such a film. Indeed, prior to this, Goro Miyazaki (wisely, probably) kept his distance from animation. What else could he do, as son of Hayao Miyazaki, no matter how good you eventually might end up being, you'll never be able to step out of your father's shadow. But, well, what is done is done.

I usually don't do this, but I've browsed through a couple of critiques on the internet (I also am fairly I certain I posted this exact sentence before while talking about other movies and series, so perhaps I am more liable to browse critiques of something prior to posting than I think), there seems to be about an even split between favorable and critical reviews, with a slight tilt towards the critical, perhaps. The film has negatively been called everything I've called Memoria in a recent post in the film thread, which I find rather strange, because the slow and meandering parts of the film were clearly the best, and indeed, for the first almost an hour of watching it, I've wondered why the critical reviews came from, outside of the really strange looking two action scenes taking place in said first hour.

Then the plot unfolds, and it becomes a little clearer. The film is a mess, but just not for reasons critics call it so. It promises more than it can keep, it is curiously black and white in its good vs. evil epic fantasy story it tries to tell, and it tells it in a rather unsatisfying manner. These are all things that were the main reason for me liking anime more than Western (and American in particular) cartoons as a kid. From what I read, the source material eschews this approach, which makes it doubly strange, but perhaps this is what Hayao Miyazaki meant when he talked about his son's lack of experience and how he '[was] not an adult yet' after a screening of the film, which seems a little strange to say about an almost fourty year old man at the time. With translations from Japanese one never really knows, they sometimes are really not good.

There's the opening which then has nothing to do with the film for the next 90 minutes, for instance, for both the mythical creatures that show up and a major event that separates the main character from his family, something that looks an awful lot like it should become a major focus at some point in the film, but it never does.

Spoiler

Arren stabs his father to death and flees, and the film's explanation for this is basically that there's no real reason for it (well, there is, in a way, but it's really stupid, Arren is afeared and just stabs his father willy nilly because he sometimes has dark impulses, and yay, that's it), and it is never truly resolved outside of two throwaway lines about it. See, simply changing this particular instance to an unhappy supplicant stabbing his father over all the problems plaguing the kingdom and Arren running away with his father's sword because he's scarred would have made for an opening that makes sense and doesn't truly need to be revisited until it comes to confronting the villain and overcoming his fear. Instead we're looking at an ultimately pointless patricide that only gets the most cursory and unsatisfactory resolution.

The film's depiction of dragons is equally as unsatisfactory, and it includes a reveal of Therru as an actual dragon, which was about as surprising as Arren eventually being able to unsheath his father's sword. This could have been done more interestingly if Therru would have just, say, been the one to draw the sword, and there were no dragons. They're fully unnecessary for the entire film, aside from a little backstory about the world's creation, which could have stayed myth. Alas, we needed to dragons fighting, because fighting dragons are cool, I guess. Maybe this stems from the source material.

The biggest crime the film is guilty of is that it promises to be a fantasy epic with a slowly unfolding plot about light and dark, the dual nature of life and death and how one cannot exist without the other, and it ultimately doesn't deliver this on the scale necessary to have any impact. Thematically it is still there, but it's mired in rote fantasy storytelling and a hackneyed, way too quick resolution for a film that otherwise meanders about. This, too, is something that comes from a lack of experience, I think. It reminds me a little of the stories I wrote when we had writing assignments in German at school and we'd have an hour to come up with a certain amount of words or pages written, and I would always begin to spin a slowly unfolding epic that eventually just has the most cursory resolution because there was simply no time to resolve it properly before the assignment needed to be turned in.

In a way, this is exactly what happens here. There's this really wonderful film that's slow but appealing when it really is just the main characters wandering through the world and later plowing their field, with a promise of a resolution to the mysteries to come, only for the filmmakers to realize that they're out of time and something needs to happen - and what happens is, as already stated, rote and hackneyed and curiously lacking in nuance for a Studio Ghibli. In terms of tone and atmosphere, the final sequence of the film reminded me a little of The Last Unicorn, a 1982 film animated by essentially the team that later went on to make Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and formed Studio Ghibli.

A film that has, however, an unbelievably good voice cast and is elevated simply by that alone. Yeah, I guess, what I'm saying is, go watch The Last Unicorn instead if you haven't. I remain, however, torn. On the one hand, there are flaws in this, on the other hand, I found myself enjoying this film more than I expected to. This is a strange quandary, and one of the instances where I probably would have liked the film a lot less if I went in with different expectations. Would that I could turn back time and check that.

So, ultimately, I don't regret spending the time watching it, but I also wouldn't want to watch it again.

Edited July 6, 2022 by majestic
Formatting, missed an "and", spellink hard.

[Bartimaeus]

15 hours ago, majestic said:

Tales from Earthsea

I once tried to watch The Last Unicorn, think I only got about halfway through. I remember hating the titular unicorn, but I don't remember for sure why. Similarly, it's been two years since I watched Tales from Earthsea, and mostly what I remember is a cast of characters that called into question the wisdom of the current legal status of abortion in the U.S. (particularly with regards to the protagonist), a world that felt like it was only a couple of Baldur's Gate 1 wilderness areas large, a pathetically generic and one-notey soundtrack, wondering what the heck the movie was trying to accomplish throughout its run time given that it's clearly supposed to be a crappy shonen adventure film, and it having an ending so bad that I wanted to turn off the universe. Perhaps I should revisit it so I can possibly upgrade my 2/10 into a 3/10, because that seems like a good use of my time, .

Edited July 7, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

Seems like the author of Yu-Gi-Oh! died at sea.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

29 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Seems like the author of Yu-Gi-Oh! died at sea.

I haven't even thought about Yu-Gi_oh! for years, but it was a huge part of my childhood along with Digimon and DBZ.

[Gfted1]

‘Yu-Gi-Oh!’ creator Takahashi Kazuki, 60, found dead at sea (nbcnews.com)

The Coast Guard also said there were “damages to his body which looked like they were caused by some sort of marine animal."