Get Ready... Society's Going to Fall Apart... Oh Wait, No It Ain't

A federal judge in CA struck down the prop 8 ban on gay marriage yesterday. If it goes up to SCOTUS, I doubt the Court will uphold the decision.

But in the meantime, if the judge doesn't grant the requested stay...

SOCIETY IS GOING TO FALL APART AT THE SEAMS. Heterosexual marriages will start to collapse. Children will fall into moral disrepair. Oh-em-gee, the world will END! Just like it did in Massachusetts when these abominable marriages were allowed to occur!....

Oh wait, Massachusetts is still here. Oh wait, so is society.

Putting all the legal arguments aside, I find the whole policy argument opposing gay marriage so . . . unconvincing. To say the least.

Avatar: Deux!!

This fangirl is both excited and worried that there will be a new Avatar series: this time titled "Legend of Korra." At the helm of the show are the same fellows that spearheaded Avatar: The Last Airbender. I hope the spinoff lives up to fan expectations...

OMG A NEW AVATAR SERIES!!!! I'M SO EXCITED!!!!!

Afro Samurai: Review

As much as I like (a) samurai; (b) swords; (c) bloody action scenes; (d) great animation sequences; and (e) Samuel L. Jackson, I must say that Afro Samurai was, well, absolute drivel. Nonsensical and near-retarded storyline. "Characters" who I would barely even call characters. Gratuitous gore and a random tasteless sex scene that might as well be anime porn. Lame-o boring "plot," if you can call it that.

I've already seen the whole anachronistic shtick. Cell phones and RPGs and guns and black people swinging Japanese swords to rap music. Yeah, yeah, yawn. Samurai Champloo did it, and did it MUCH BETTER.

Quite frankly, the action scenes got boring after a while. They were over stylized and overly unrealistic. It made me miss the Rurouni Kenshin OVAs, which had the most beautiful action scenes ever.

Well, I have nothing more to say about Afro Samurai other than . . . thank god it's over. I am stunned that this mini series actually got decent reviews when I scoured the great Internetz. C'mon, people, that was BAD. Really, really BAD! Netflix, send me the next volume of Moribito: Spirit of the Guardian!

Gankutsuou: Series Review

Gankutsuou gives Alexander Dumas's classic novel, The Count of Monte Cristo, the anime treatment. As the book is one of my favorites in all of literature, I was predisposed to liking the story. As it turned out, despite the very strange art style and the weird supernatural / sci-fi / fantasy elements thrown in, I ended up quite liking the anime as well.

ART

The art in this anime was really, really strange, and unlike anything I have ever seen before. Reviews I have read indicate that the disarming part is the static nature of the textiles--the clothes on the characters are superimposed effects, or something, so they do not move as the character moves. They also glitter in really strange ways.

Once I got used to it, though, I thought the show was actually very visually interesting. In addition to the strange static textiles, the show was set in the future--5000+ AD, with space travel and all, instead of 1800s France. I quite liked how the setting was done, though--it was futuristic, but with the 1800s France feel. Quite lovely.

PLOT

The plot varied a little bit from the book, but for the most part, it hewed closely to the storyline, although almost everything was told from Albert Morcerf's POV instead of the Count's. But still, The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the greatest revenge tales of all time, so naturally I loved the anime, which largely lifted that plot. There were changes, of course, but that will happen with any adaptation, and it was done well enough that I didn't need to take offense.

CHARACTERS

My favorite characters were the Count, Albert, Peppo, and Franz. Some of the female characters were rather uninteresting (e.g., Valentine, Eugenie). But I thought the character development was generally very solid. I wish the series had had more time to flesh out the side stories, like how Bertuccio came to be in the Count's service, but... I suppose 24 episodes is long enough.

OVERALL

I really liked this anime overall. I wished that Gankutsuou hadn't been ... some weird supernatural malevolent entity and that Edmond Dantes had been taught by Abbe Faria, as in the novel, and had at least remained human. But ultimately, the malevolent entity took the anime to a far darker place, and I sort of liked that. It meant the themes were kind of hammered over your head (revenge takes away your humanity! REVENGE TAKES AWAY YOUR HUMANITY!), but ... no complaints here, really. Overall, worth watching, even though I really shouldn't have wasted so much time...

As usual.

Collateral Murder

http://www.collateralmurder.com

The news break of the day is the video released by Wikileaks of U.S. army Apache helicopters gunning down what they believed to be insurgents in Iraq. (See link above.) Two Reuters reporters were killed in the incident, and 2 Iraqi civilian children were seriously wounded.

I've watched the video. I've also read some of the media reports of the video and the accompanying outraged comments. I think my reaction is somewhere in between the moral outrage of some and the cavalier "it's war; shit happens" attitude of others.

While I lament the loss of human life (particularly some that were clearly innocent civilians), I don't fault the army guys for firing on the group. It's clear from the video that although the individuals were not taking hostile positions, at least some were carrying weapons. And while the helicopter gunner mistakes the Reuters reporters' wide-angle camera for an RPG, it's easy to see why he did in the video. Taken in the context of the Iraq War in '07, I don't view this as a crime.

And I do hesitate to call the aftermath a cover-up. The military claimed that the helicopters had been actively engaged with hostile insurgents. That's not quite what the video shows. But it's not a complete lie either, given the context.

What I'm most disturbed by, I suppose, is the dialogue from the guys in the helicopter. They may not have violated the rules of engagement or the laws of war, but their attitude toward human life was ... disgusting. It's the kind of stuff people sometimes shout at the screen when shooting down aliens in a computer game.

When the helicopter gunners realized they had injured 2 children in the van, they said something along the lines of, well it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle. When the tank that came to the scene afterwards rolled over something, one of the gunners said, haha, did they just roll over a dead body? Haha!

I suppose we need to demonize the enemy in order to kill them, in order to wage war. But... something about it is just very sad. And disturbing. A reminder of human nature, perhaps?

Afterword

I rewatched 2 episodes of Rurouni Kenshin (the series, not the OVA) after watching and reviewing Samurai Champloo. To be honest... the action sequences in Rurouni Kenshin are a little unsatisfying after watching some of the sword fights in Samurai Champloo. So many cutaway scenes! No fluidity!

Of course, Samurai Champloo doesn't have the epic storyline (I mean, you just don't get lines like "defeating Himura the Battousai is equal to conquering Japan itself!!!" in Samurai Champloo), but... I may like the visuals better! The Kenshin OVA is still my favorite, but in terms of the TV series, I think I may actually prefer Samurai Champloo!

Samurai Champloo: Series Review

I just finished the 26-episode series Samurai Champloo and, to my surprise, found it much to my liking. The series was directed by Shinichiro Watanabe of Cowboy Bebop fame (that anime is on my list but I have yet to watch it). The premise is a little bit of a screwy one: it is a "cross-genre" mix that employs a blend of Japan in the early Edo period (with a revisionist historical bent) with use of anachronistic elements of hip-hop, punk sub-culture, and modernism.

Sounds strange, I know. But the series was done with such style that I ended up quite liking it, despite the fact that the show was a bit uneven and, quite frankly, WEIRD at times.

ART, COLOR & DESIGN

I absolutely loved the action sequences in this anime -- superior to those of Rurouni Kenshin (the anime series, not the OVA) in the way the frames cleaved to the swordsplay without cutaway screens. The fights were deadly, fast, and bloody. Slash, slash, dead body + blood spraying. Instead of having people stand around talking about their special moves, these guys made quick work of their victims. Their motions were fluid and animated beautifully.

Colorwise, I was pleased. The colors in the show were not too bright, not too dull, and also quite varied. Impressive use of contrast. The episode featuring graffiti in particular employed color to good use.

As for character design, I have to admit at first I found it odd and jarring. The designs of Jin and Fuu adhere to traditional archetypes: cold, steely samurai and (yes, sigh) ditzy, cute anime girl (though Fuu was less annoying than most anime girls). But the design of the 3rd main character, Mugen, is clearly taken from street sub-culture, from the way he looks & talks to the way he fights. It was so weird. But the way the show unfolded, the design just seemed to FIT.

In short, the show had STYLE. Action sequences, character designs, animation... meshing with the irrelevant dialogue and hip-hop music. It all meshed together, and it was fun to watch!

PLOT & CHARACTERS

This anime was not a plot-driven one. In fact, its basic plot is, well, basic -- Fuu recruits Jin and Mugen to help her find the Samurai Who Smells of Sunflowers. That's it. Most of the episodes don't advance the plot at all. It's not one of those I-must-find-out-what-happens shows.

Which I appreciated. The episodes ended up being random, mostly unconnected, and, as such, had great range and variety. The show sampled a whole host of topics, with tidbits lifted from Japanese (and Western!) culture: beetle fights, ukiyo-e paintings, zombies!, baseball, graffiti, marijuana, the blind assassin, Musashi Miyamoto, Tale of the Genji... Sometimes the show got really weird (as in the zombies and baseball episodes), but ... I appreciated the breadth of things touched upon.

I guess I would call Samurai Champloo a character-driven show, although I wish the characters' backstories and pasts had been more fully fleshed out. The contrast between the wild, unruly Mugen and the aristocratic, traditional Jin was great, and unfolded in the way they dressed, talked, and fought. That was done really well, and really formed the heart of the show. But I wanted to know more about them. Fuu was boring, as most anime girls are, but I wanted to know more about her too. The director seemed more interested in developing the characters as a trio, in relation to one another.

OVERALL

Overall, I really liked the show. It was a novel and interesting concept that was executed well. There were some really fantastic episodes in there. Episodes of note: "Gamblers and Gallantry" (Ep. 11, where Jin falls in love with and rescues a whore-to-be), "Bogus Booty" (Ep. 15, where Jin and Mugen go to the counterfeiting brothel), "War of the Words" (Ep. 18 - the graffiti episode), "Elegy of Entrapment" (Eps. 20-21, with the kickass female blind assassin who kicks both Jin's and Mugen's asses), and of course the last 3 episodes ("Evanescent Encounter").

And again, as I said before, the show just had such kickass style that it made up for a simplistic plot and slightly underdeveloped characters. And, of course, the animation was really good. Samurai Champloo didn't have the epic, addictive quality of Rurouni Kenshin, but it was just ... really fun.

I can't really say which (Kenshin or Champloo) I like better, though. I think it would depend on my mood. :)