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Tuesday, 11 February 2003
2104 - On the run
Got home today from what was supposed to be a short week of travel. It got longer: as I was standing in the baggage claim at MSP, I got a call on my cellphone telling me I need to go back to Silver Spring, Maryland later this week to work on a system that I thought I'd fixed already. Argh. I'm still going to be gone all next week and the week after, too. I'm going to be wasted by the time it's all over.
I did manage to get my taxes filed, finally. Intuit says I should see the $3600 federal refund by the 21st. Whee.
Got all of Card Captor Sakura on CD-ROM. I've got all of Ranma 1/2 coming, too. Once I've seen those, I think I'll be entitled to a little better idea of what I think of anime.
Got HASP installed and running on my MVT system. With luck, I'll have it all ready to go to the CD duplicators by the end of the week. Just in time, too.
Wish I could shake this cough. It's getting really annoying, for Paul as well as me.
current mood: ![[mood icon]](https://www.livejournal.com/img/mood/neko/kaokitty/rushed.gif) rushed
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Comments:
I don't know. Card Captor Sakura and Ranma 1/2 certainly aren't the sort of things I'd pop in if I wanted to watch some Anime. Though that Ranma 1/2 thing does seem to be popular.
I like the more serious stuff, or anything by Miyazaki. While people argue over other stuff, I've never met anyone who didn't love Miyazaki's films. I highly recommend My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Princess Mononoke (the first two being more kid friendly than the third, but all three equal in excellence.)
Of course, if you're looking for funny, those three films wouldn't do you much good at all. And after you've watched those, watch Spirited Away! It can be thought of as the Japanese answer to "Alice in Wonderland". Ahhhh! Great new icon! Yeah...Ranma's ok...from the few episodes I've seen and I really haven't seen CCSakura, but If you want to see the best of anime, do check out Miyazaki! I don't mind if folks hate anime, I'm not a huge fan of most of it, but Miyazaki isn't just great anime, it's great animation and just great stuff all around! I do have Totoro on tape (it was cheap enough I risked it - I tend not to spend anything on anime since all the "free samples" are depressingly rotten) somewhere.
The story isn't too bad, it seems to actually be animated for the most part, and the backgrounds were great -- but I still had trouble with the character design. Conclusion: It is watchable, but it's not something I'd want to watch very often.
So it overcomes some of my objections to anime. I might even go so far as to say it really is 'an-eh-may' and not 'ah-neem' unlike most anime I've seen (which is 'ah-neem' as in 'anemic'). I'm still looking for something that is humorous, well animated, and has non-jarring character design. I suspect I'll be waiting another 5 to 10 years. Longer if things don't go well. Of the top of my head, I can think of some manga where the character design wouldn't be too jarring, but I can't really think of any anime where it wouldn't be. Even with a wide range of styles, everything that I'm familiar with, deep down, has the basic Japanese look to it.
Anyone know of an Anime that really goes against the general style in character design? It also depends on what genre you like. I recommend Trigun and/or Cowboy Bebop, both of which are available in their entirety on DVD here in the States; they're both sci-fi/cowboy series, and they can do some really hilarious things and some really serious and deep/dark things in the same series. It depends on the episode (it's good to watch the teasers for the next episode at the end of each Cowboy Bebop, as they'll give you a good clue as to what the mood of the next ep will be ahead of time). These are nothing at all like Ranma 1/2 or CCS except for being animated, really. Maybe one of these and some Ranma and some Miyazaki, and then you'd have a really good cross-section of what anime is really about. |
