Tag: anime

Anime and Me – Part 1 -Ghost in the Shell 2.0

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I had heard that Firefly might have been based on an anime series called Cowboy Bebop.  So being a fan I rented it.  And as I noted elsewhere, I tend to agree that Whedon borrowed many thematic and visual elements from Cowboy Bebop.  This being the case I was intrigued by the idea that I might be missing a whole undiscovered land of creative stuff.  I decided to try something else that was recommended by people who had liked Cowboy Bebop.  I rented Ghost in the Shell 2.0.

I’ll put down my impressions and explain my preferences.  First off, the beginning of the story is an introduction to the protagonist.  She is a woman who for obvious reasons is mostly topless.  This while she is jumping off buildings and murdering bad guys with her bare hands.  She’s a cyborg who works for a government agency (I think).  After this intro, there is an about 10-minute sequence of very intricate graphics of the heroine being assembled from molecular components all the way up to her synthetic skin being applied.  So basically 10 minutes of naked girl.

After that we go through the plot and meet her co-workers who are also mostly cyborgs and follow them as they track down bad people and fight them with guns and cyborg fists.  There are all kinds of factions inside and outside the government agencies that are involved in the story line and I’m not really sure who I was supposed to be rooting for.  By the end of the movie all the main characters have been smashed and or dismembered pretty thoroughly but since they can be sent back to the factory for demand and periodic maintenance I guess it’s all in a day’s work for your friendly neighborhood cyborg spy.

I guess I haven’t been subtle enough to leave you guessing which way my thumb is pointing.  This was not a winner.  Pretty girl with no clothes on is not a bad thing.  But to what purpose?  The graphics are well done and the action is occasionally interesting.  But I didn’t care about the characters or the plot at all.  I think it was the flatness of the characters and the lack of humor.  This is in contrast to Cowboy Bebop which includes lots of humor.  Granted some of it is silly and not all of it seems relevant to the story line sometimes, but a certain style builds up which on the whole works pretty well.  And the characters have some personality.  You find yourself sorting out your favorites and enjoying the silly interactions that the crew go through together.  Sometimes it’s closer to Gilligan’s Island than The Odyssey but it has charm.

I will read some more reviews and see if any other anime movies sound like fun.  But so far it looks like Cowboy Bebop has no cousins I want to meet.  If anyone has any suggestions please leave them in the comments and I’ll give it a shot.  But for now the jury is still out.

21SEP2017 Update

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So today is the last full day of summer.  Gahhh!  The horror begins soon so it’s time to have fun while we can.  Saturday I’ll have my two older grandsons over for a Lord of the Rings marathon.  I think the extended version comes to about eleven hours.  Breaking it up with grilled cheese sandwiches for them and corned beef and swiss for me, it will be a full day.  Dinner will be another fan favorite spaghetti and meat balls.  Camera Girl will do the cooking but abstain from the cinema.  She’s a Tolkien agnostic, heaven help her.

As anyone who faithfully reads my reviews knows I consider Justified the most consistently well written and actualized tv drama I’ve ever seen.  I have a theory that it’s because the source material is much better than that of the typical (or even superior) tv-show.  So, I’m putting it to the test.

Right now, I’m reading Elmore Leonard’s Raylan Givens novels and short stories.  I read the short story “Fire in the Hole” that was the basis for the first episode of Justified.  The other stories in the collection (of the same name) were all very good too.  Leonard has an enormous reputation as one of the most popular crime writers.  And he has had over twenty of his books made into movies (not counting the tv series Justified).  Based on all that I figure I’ll find out what all the hype is about.  So, I want to see how I like his stuff.  So far, I’m impressed.

The political scene continues to boil like the spaghetti pot I’ll be involved with on Saturday.  Trump continues to engage all important events in his typical iconic and bombastic style.  Of course, you’d have to be made of stone not to be nervous about all the various balls in the air.  But I’ve learned to give Trump some time to get things done in his own way.  After all he is herding particularly annoying cats (and rats).  The right-wing folks are going through some growing pains on the various sites.  Hopefully it’ll sort itself out sooner than later.  I take a sort of neutral position on these things and wait to see how things are settled.

On the photography front I’ve added the ability to embed photos in the comments so go ahead if something in a post inspires a photo of your own.  The plug-in that makes this possible has the following instructions:

This plugin embeds image links in comments with the img tag so the images are visible in your comment timeline.

Image formats supported:

  1. .jpg
  2. .gif
  3. .png

 

I’m not an expert on this computer stuff so I’ll do my best to get things to work but have patience if there are problems.

On the review front, I’m going to write something on my recent toe-dip into anime.  In addition to my recent viewing of Cowboy Bebop I watched Ghost in the Shell 2.0.  I’ll share my thoughts.

Other film ideas, I rented the second John Wick film and I’ll put together my thoughts on both films after watching it, maybe this weekend.

I haven’t decided what sf&f book to read next.  Suggestions are always welcome.

Cowboy Bebop – A Sci-Fi TV Review – Part 3

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I have now finished off all the Cowboy Bebop (CB) available as DVDs on Netflix (Discs 4 and 6 are permanently unavailable).  This includes the 2-hour movie which I watched last night.  And I think that’s sufficient to allow me to make a definitive judgement on the series vis-à-vis my taste.

It’s good.

It has some weaknesses from my point of view.  There is a silliness that can be annoying for me.  The crazy adolescent girl Edward can be a bit much.  Some of the episodes are pretty thin on plot.  And some of the space battle scenes seem (not surprisingly) cartoonish.  I think most of this can be chalked up to the standard cartoon sci-fi conventions.  Things are simplified and standardized to allow economic production of the animation product.  And to be fair, since I have never been a comic book or movie consumer, I’m not their primary audience.  To an anime consume, CB is probably well to the right side of the standard deviation curve with respect to production values, plot and characterization.

I like the quality of the animation especially the scenes in outer space.  Some of it is strikingly well done.  I liked the scenario of independent contractors moving in and out of the legitimate world acting as bounty hunters while they themselves are not without a certain air of criminality.  And obviously here are the similarities with Firefly.  After viewing the majority of CB I’ll state that I’m convinced that Whedon borrowed heavily from it when making Firefly.  But I’m sure CB borrowed from earlier anime for some of its ideas so I don’t think it’s a big deal.  But I will say that at this point I’d much prefer a big screen (or big budget tv) version of CB were made rather than of Firefly.  Whedon is such an SJW that he’d probably have Serenity going back in time just to battle Donald Trump.   My only hedge on having CB instead of Firefly is that is I’d like to see Jet Black played by Adam Baldwin.  He would be damn near perfect for the part.

Anyway, I would say that the CB movie demonstrates how a longer treatment of the material improves it.  More characterization shows through and there is more scope for interesting story telling.  Also, the animation of the city in the movie was extremely well done.  It looked like whole sections of New York City were digitized to make the action possible in the chase scenes.  And speaking of the chase scenes, one of the flying chases was a little too long.  Although intricate and well laid out it eventually started to drag on.  The fight scenes between the protagonist Spike and his nemesis were very good and enjoyable.  Most of the minor characters were fairly well utilized.  Surprisingly, the seemingly superfluous presence of the welsh corgi dog on the space ship actually felt like a positive addition to me.  But maybe I just like dogs.

So, bottom line, Cowboy Bebop is good sci-fi anime.  If you don’t particularly like anime you still might enjoy it.  It has piqued my interest in the genre enough that I’m going to give another anime movie (Ghosts in the Shell 2.0) a look-see and find out if this was just a one off or not.

See you Space Cowboy!

End of Summer Blues

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In New England, the end of summer is akin to how it must have felt to the pyramid-building slaves when their break period was about to end.  A wonderful but horribly short respite was giving way to endless unimaginable agony.  And this cycle would repeat itself until merciful death interceded.  It’s just like that.

Summer is breathtakingly beautiful because of the contrast to what follows.  It was less than 40◦F here this morning.  On the second day of September.  Still summer!  And it goes rapidly downhill from here.  Sure, we’ll have some warm days.  Over eighty sometimes.  But it’s just a cruel tease meant to highlight just how bad things will soon be.  In the last decade or so New England has unleashed a new and terrifying alternative to winter storms.  This is where a freezing rain or snow descends on us in October while the trees are still full of leaves.  The trees in this condition hold onto much more snow and ice than normally and therefore huge branches and limbs can break off the trees.  And that’s how millions of people end up without power for days or even weeks.  So, what you have is houses without heat, some without a stove, some without water, which means without toilets.  It’s such a joy.  So, installing an emergency generator really isn’t an extreme decision.  It’s sort of mandatory if you want to eat and drink and stay warm and go to the bathroom and, you know, live.

So, why am I writing about this?  Well mostly to let you people living in other parts of the country know how lucky you are.  Sure, they have hurricanes down south and earthquakes in the west and tornadoes in between but those only very infrequently effect you.  Here we know as sure as night follows day that we will be wet, miserable and cold for eight months of the year, every year until we die or we have the good sense to get the hell out of this purgatorial region.

And why don’t I leave?  Ah, I am bound with the strongest and most adamantine of chains, the grandmother/grandchildren bond.  If a woman is possessed of an industrial strength maternal instinct (as, sadly, Camera Girl is) then no power in the ‘Verse short of a strategic thermonuclear strike will pry her away from these rugrats.

So here I am.  The rollercoaster is at the top of the lift hill and the slow ratchet up is done.  We’re staring down but the bottom has not yet dropped out of our stomachs.  Here we go.

End of depressing preamble.

So, I’ve got this cool three-day weekend.  Some relatives are coming up.  I’m going out to take some seasonal photos and I’m bound to hang out with the grandsons too.  Plus, the mystery of the disappearing quail needs to be answered.  I’ve put out a game camera and hope to catch some photos of them gamboling around in the woods and thickets.  And finally, I’m finishing up the available Cowboy Bebop discs from Netflix.  I decided to try out another anime title (Ghost in the Shell 2.0) and it just arrived.  All in all, it sounds like I’ll be having a very good time.

A very happy and relaxing Labor Day Holiday to all you good folks out there reading OCF.  I’ll have more serious stuff right along soon but today just enjoy a good rest and do something fun.

Cowboy Bebop – A Sci-Fi TV Review – Part 2

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Cowboy Bebop – A Sci-Fi TV Review – Part 1

So I’ve watched two and a half of the discs.  Interestingly Netflix says there is “Unknown Availability” for Discs 3 and 6.  How’s that for the customer is always right?  I’m liking the show.  The episodes vary.  Some are back story.  Some introduce new characters.  There’s usually at least a little bounty hunting involved.  The ratio of comedy to drama is high.  The visuals are a mixture of standard cartoon and high-end graphics.  Some of the space scenes are especially well done and interesting.

I’ve been trying to think of what I can compare the viewing experience to.  As I said in my last post, there is a decidedly close resemblance to the look and atmosphere of Firefly.  But because it’s animated it’s obviously not identical.  And in a related sense it is reminiscent of Westerns.

Not being a recent consumer of Japanese cartoons, I guess another thing it reminds me of are the Japanese cartoons that were on when I was a kid back in the sixties.  One that has a little relevance was “Eighth Man.”  The story was completely unrelated.  But just something about the pacing makes it seem akin in my mind.

With respect to back story, the protagonist, Spike, has a history involved with a crime family.  There is an evil brother figure lurking in his past.  Down the road there is sure to be a reckoning for past sins.

I still don’t know what the relevance of the welsh corgi will be.  Maybe he’ll turn out to be super intelligent.  Right now he’s just sort of annoying.  They’ve also added a young girl who is also (of course) a world class hacker to the crew.  I’m guessing she’s the River Tam of the crew.

So, just to update, not sure where it’s going, still liking it.

Cowboy Bebop – A Sci-Fi TV Review – Part 1

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Years ago, I had read that Cowboy Bebop might have been one of the influences on the making of the TV show Firefly.  Being a big fan of Firefly, you would have thought that I would have tracked it down and watched Cowboy Bebop long ago.  And you would have been wrong.  I never did.  Now this might have been because it was an animated series.  Or maybe because it wasn’t originally an English language show.  Or maybe because I figured it wasn’t as good as Firefly.  Who knows?  Anyway, I started watching the first few episodes last week.  My first conclusion is that Joss Whedon definitely borrowed heavily from the look and feel of Cowboy Bebop.  Secondly, it is an enjoyable show and stands on its own merits.  Now let me qualify that second statement.  It’s a cartoon.  The characters and the action are larger than life.  When a gun fight breaks out bullets saturate every last square inch of wall space around the protagonist.  Every fight has fists and feet flying in all directions and every facial close up has clenched jaw muscles and popping eyes.  Basically, everything is exaggerated to cartoon level.  Oh, and there’s a Welsh Corgi as part of the crew of a space travelling bounty hunters.  Suffice it to say that reality is in no way a condition for something showing up in this show.  But the characters have consistent personalities, the look of the show is very well done, there’s a fascinating backstory with terrible enemies and mysterious women and the plots although wildly unrealistic are (in my opinion) enjoyable.  As I’ve said, I’ve only watched the first five episodes but I like it well enough to want to keep watching it.

 

Alright, now what’s it about?  Cowboy Bebop is a space ship that so far has a crew of three humans and one Welsh Corgi.  They are bounty hunters who work for whatever government (or other organization) that can provide a large enough pay day.  Like on Firefly the culture seems to be a combination of American and Chinese culture.  Also, as on Firefly, humans inhabit a number on moons and planets (but this time within our own solar system).  Cowboy Bebop seems to work on both sides of the interface between the criminal and legal spheres.  Their biggest problems seem to be monetary.  They are chronically short of funds.  The protagonist is named Spike and seems to be a young man in his thirties who enjoys his job as much for the fighting as for the rewards.  In his past, he worked for a very high-level mob boss.  Spike’s partner is an older man with a much angrier façade but can also be depended on in a fight.  The similarities to Mal and Jane Cobb in Firefly are pretty strong.  The regularity with which the ship comes up empty handed after a mission is also a point of similarity to Firefly.

I consider that I prefer live action movies to animation but I’ll go on record as saying that Cowboy Bebop seems a highly creative show and has many features that make it interesting and entertaining.  I look forward to seeing the remainder of the series and will report back on its qualities.

 

So now I know where Whedon got his inspiration.  And maybe his own effort may not have been the superior to the model.