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Jan. 7th, 2004 01:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksI live. I am in New York after having done a bunch of running about around Hogmanay and all and seeing a lot of people which was nice. I have syona keleste's respiratory thing, but since I take Claritin on a daily basis to stave off the cat allergies, on me it seems to be staying a middling cold, and I am resting and taking vitamin C and lots of meds to make sure it stays that way. My grades were reasonable and I am happy.
I've been watching a lot of anime lately and some of it has been pretty good, so I figured I'd do some mini-reviews.
Shingetsukan Tsukihime (True Tales of the Moon Princess): What a delightful little series. It's a vampire series without, somehow, really being about vampires (although it is-- it's hard to explain), and a gothic sort of series without ever being pretentious. It's also pretty without being so pretty as to be distracting. And beautifully subtle and I like the protagonists. I haven't finished it and I really want to know where it's going. The one thing that people might find annoying is that the pacing is not only slow, it's glacial. This series can put one in a meditative state of staring at the draperies and feeling mildly Zen. 'The protagonist's problems do not matter...it is karma... ooh, that's a lot of blood... zzzz... pretty... vampires... om... violins.... that was funny.... I think I just achieved enlightenment, but it doesn't really matter....' Now, I don't mind this, in fact rather like it, but I know several people who would probably start screaming after about two episodes of that. So definitely worth a watch, but if it seems slow, well, it's not going to speed up.
Getbackers: This is much more fun than it has any right to be, given that it is not actually, you know, any good. For one thing, it was *designed* for slash fans. It ain't subtext. It's bloody well text. I've seen four episodes, and the makers of this series would now have to spend the entire rest of the series working really, really hard to convince me that the main characters are *not* together, and even then I would probably just nod and smile. Riiight. They're not sleeping together. And I'm Queen Marie of Romania. Mind you, that doesn't make the series any better, though it does make it more fun to think about. Actually, the difficulty in this series is mostly the background and the plotlines. The main characters are just fine. Lovely. I am considering founding some kind of Bishounen Extradition Force to get Mido Ban out of Getbackers and allow him to go join Weiss where he belongs. Actually, the cool thing about him is that he belongs in Schwartz, but he's the hero. However, he wouldn't leave the series without his boyfriend, who seems to like it there. What can you do? (Oh, and the villain stole Alucard's hat, which is not forgivable, dammit.)
Last Exile: At least as of the first disc, this series is perfect. Literally. The Budget of the Gods, the animation crew of Hellsing, voice actors like Miki Shin'ichiro (Tsuzuki in YnM for those of you who don't follow these things), and writing that is intelligent and interesting and creates characters who are intriguing and whom I want to know what happens to. Also all the writing on the sides of everybody's airships-- and there are a *lot* of airships-- is in ancient Greek. Correctly. This is one of the best jobs of world-building I've seen in SF anime. And there's an airship race episode that I just want to send to George Lucas with a note saying 'Learn'. If there's a flaw-- a big if-- it's the opening sequence, but the song may just not have had time to grow on me yet, and the ending sequence is one of the best endings I've seen in anime. Brilliant.
Full Metal Alchemist: I watched part of an episode of this and concluded that it is an interesting premise that I cannot watch until after my thesis because they got all the alchemy and the neo-Pythagorean metaphysics right and watching neo-Pythoagorean metaphysics in a shonen anime where the protagonist looks vaguely like Yu-Gi-Oh while I am trying to write a novel involving said metaphysics and a thesis involving said metaphysics would actually permanently destroy my brain. But hey, they got it right.
I've been watching a lot of anime lately and some of it has been pretty good, so I figured I'd do some mini-reviews.
Shingetsukan Tsukihime (True Tales of the Moon Princess): What a delightful little series. It's a vampire series without, somehow, really being about vampires (although it is-- it's hard to explain), and a gothic sort of series without ever being pretentious. It's also pretty without being so pretty as to be distracting. And beautifully subtle and I like the protagonists. I haven't finished it and I really want to know where it's going. The one thing that people might find annoying is that the pacing is not only slow, it's glacial. This series can put one in a meditative state of staring at the draperies and feeling mildly Zen. 'The protagonist's problems do not matter...it is karma... ooh, that's a lot of blood... zzzz... pretty... vampires... om... violins.... that was funny.... I think I just achieved enlightenment, but it doesn't really matter....' Now, I don't mind this, in fact rather like it, but I know several people who would probably start screaming after about two episodes of that. So definitely worth a watch, but if it seems slow, well, it's not going to speed up.
Getbackers: This is much more fun than it has any right to be, given that it is not actually, you know, any good. For one thing, it was *designed* for slash fans. It ain't subtext. It's bloody well text. I've seen four episodes, and the makers of this series would now have to spend the entire rest of the series working really, really hard to convince me that the main characters are *not* together, and even then I would probably just nod and smile. Riiight. They're not sleeping together. And I'm Queen Marie of Romania. Mind you, that doesn't make the series any better, though it does make it more fun to think about. Actually, the difficulty in this series is mostly the background and the plotlines. The main characters are just fine. Lovely. I am considering founding some kind of Bishounen Extradition Force to get Mido Ban out of Getbackers and allow him to go join Weiss where he belongs. Actually, the cool thing about him is that he belongs in Schwartz, but he's the hero. However, he wouldn't leave the series without his boyfriend, who seems to like it there. What can you do? (Oh, and the villain stole Alucard's hat, which is not forgivable, dammit.)
Last Exile: At least as of the first disc, this series is perfect. Literally. The Budget of the Gods, the animation crew of Hellsing, voice actors like Miki Shin'ichiro (Tsuzuki in YnM for those of you who don't follow these things), and writing that is intelligent and interesting and creates characters who are intriguing and whom I want to know what happens to. Also all the writing on the sides of everybody's airships-- and there are a *lot* of airships-- is in ancient Greek. Correctly. This is one of the best jobs of world-building I've seen in SF anime. And there's an airship race episode that I just want to send to George Lucas with a note saying 'Learn'. If there's a flaw-- a big if-- it's the opening sequence, but the song may just not have had time to grow on me yet, and the ending sequence is one of the best endings I've seen in anime. Brilliant.
Full Metal Alchemist: I watched part of an episode of this and concluded that it is an interesting premise that I cannot watch until after my thesis because they got all the alchemy and the neo-Pythagorean metaphysics right and watching neo-Pythoagorean metaphysics in a shonen anime where the protagonist looks vaguely like Yu-Gi-Oh while I am trying to write a novel involving said metaphysics and a thesis involving said metaphysics would actually permanently destroy my brain. But hey, they got it right.
