anime!

[BlacknWhite]

Just finished reading Akira. That was so damn good.

[ADreamofBlue]

Saw Royal Space Force: Wings of Honnêamise recently... I liked it, but I'm not sure why I liked it. I guess the phrase, "a certain je ne sais quois," is applicable here. Anybody else seen it? It's from Gainax.

[eleves]

How does everyone feel about One Punch Man?

[Resonkuken]

It was a blast to watch, quite the excillerating experience. It has a good deal of humour and the action is superb. Predictable but doesn´t take away the fun.

[Ahimsa]

Does anyone have a Crunchyroll subscription? I mostly watch anime on my Roku/TV and have been scraping the bottom of the barrel on Hulu as of late so was wondering if it's worth the monthly fee.

[BlacknWhite]

Ahh Crunchyroll. That brings back memories of the days when it was all free.

Most people just google a site that embeds animes from video host sites. A handful out there to select from, no need to to subscribe to them.

[Dropt]

FLCL will have two additional seasons

That series bathed my teenage years alongside Hellsing & Evangelion. And The Pillows as soundtrack… man, these were the years.

[Ahimsa]

Two amazing films I have seen recently.

Angel's Egg



1985 film by Mamoru Oshii x Yoshitaka Amano

Beautiful drawn existential film with a soundtrack to match.


Belladonna of Sadness



1973 film by Eiichi Yamamoto. Based on 'Satanism and Witchcraft' by Jules Michelet. Extremely beautifully done once again. Has a strong LSD vibe throughout the whole thing.

[ADreamofBlue]

How'd you see Angel's Egg? That's been on my radar for a while. I missed Belladonna when it was in theaters here.

Two series I saw recently, which were total lefthooks from Netflix. I ended up buying both, and I will only buy a show if I really love it if that tells you anything - I only own... say, eight anime series while I've seen over 100?


The cover makes this out to be extremely shoujo. However, you can't pigeonhole the show as such. It's very dense and it doesn't hold your hand at all, so it can be quite disorienting. You'll need patience and you'll need to be comfortable with not knowing e v e r y thing at any given moment - the show will elucidate as you watch. The main characters are very believable, and the character development is well-done. The premise is the girl, Izumiko, is a medium for a goddess while the boy, Sagara, is a novice monk coerced in to being her guardian - he bullied her constantly when they were growing up and finds her loathsome. More or less, it's slice of life mixed in with Japanese mysticism - it has romantic undertones, but it's not the sole focus. Zero fan service.
With that said, I'm apparently in the minority who liked this. If you have Netflix, I recommend it. It's 12 episodes, around twenty minutes each - if you don't end up liking it, you won't have wasted too much time. Another odd thing about this show is I actually enjoyed the opening and ending credits - I willingly sat through the credits, which I usually never do. The ending credits were done by whoever did Haibane Renmei's (one of the eight series I love). The naming scheme to the episodes was also unique, and it was just pretty to look at. It uses some CGI (only prominently in one episode), so that's my only gripe with it. I feel it's the perfect length, but many's complaints are that it doesn't have enough episodes. I felt the ending was fine, but as I wrote I am in the minority.


Moribito is an overlooked series by the same guy who wrote & directed Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (another of the eight series I loved), Kenji Kamiyama. Kenji Kawai, who did Oshii's Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor soundtracks, composed the score for this. It's another slice of life (more or less) in a medieval alternate Japan infused with some fantastical elements which don't really start showing in force until the end. It's a journey of Balsa Yonsa, a bodyguard who seeks to protect eight lives to make up for the eight she's taken, and a prince in exile, whose father, the king, believes that sacrificing him will halt the drought that comes to the kingdom every hundred years. There's not much action in this, but when fight scenes take place they look amazing - that's par for the course with Production I.G., however. There aren't any plot holes - this is a story that gets high marks all around from me, except for the use of CGI toward the end. It reminded me somewhat of Mononoke and in a more abstract way, it reminded me of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Balsa seems like what Motoko would be if you threw her back a millenium. Another plus - this is devoid of fan service.

[Ahimsa]

How'd you see Angel's Egg? That's been on my radar for a while. I missed Belladonna when it was in theaters here.



Moribito is an overlooked series by the same guy who wrote & directed Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (another of the eight series I loved), Kenji Kamiyama.

You can watch Angel's Egg on YouTube oddly enough. (commercial free)

Seconded on Moribito. Solidly good series.

Finished Parasyte
It's a good psychological thriller / drama that feels heavily influenced by John Carpenter's 'The Thing'.

[Monoral]

So what the heck is going on in Angel's egg? was that the some kind of purgatory? The film is so beautiful tho i'll give it that but personally i understood none of it.

[Ahimsa]

So what the heck is going on in Angel's egg? was that the some kind of purgatory? The film is so beautiful tho i'll give it that but personally i understood none of it.

Oshii said so himself that he doesn't quite understand what's going on. However, the production was done right after he lost his faith in Christianity, hence much of the symbolism.

[MJRH]

hey that's weird, my rm just threw on angel's egg earlier today.

So what the heck is going on in Angel's egg?

ya gotta crack a few eggs to make an anime

sorry, sorry.

this film, and there are many others like it, isn't about an answer, it's about questions. try to understand what questions it's asking, and you'll get further than trying to understand what answers it's giving. which makes sense if it was written after a loss of faith.

random thoughts: eggs mean faith or hope (keep your egg close, the cross-fella says to lg). the gal at the end becomes a woman when she manufactures her own eggs, make of that what you will.

the main character carries a cross around. just sayin'. kind of interesting given his role vis-a-vis the egg, later on

speaking of crosses, the egg is found at the top of a tree. true that's where birds roost, but trees are kinda big in christian mythology, too. and then what happens to the egg?

folks are out to kill a whale—what do you know about one cap'n ahab?—but on top of that, the whale doesn't even exist...

and that's just a few. plus there are a lot of scenes that were probably just put in cause they look badass. i didn't get 'purgatory' from it, really, but agree fully with you that the main appeal in it is that it's damned gorgeous

[Monoral]

I get the Ahab reference but the movie as a whole doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The lack of dialogue doesn't help either. Maybe it wasn't suppose the make any sense and just showcasing surreal Amano arts.

[Monoral]

Any love for mecha Anime 'round here?