Bullets 'n' Babes

gasteropod wrote:I've been wanting to see this for ages, read a lot of good things. It's not due out here till November, though.

Best animated movie I've ever seen (Though I haven't seen that many). I'm aware of the fact that posts like these create hype which is never good for a movie. I watched this movie with pretty much no expectations and I was blown away by how good it was. I wrote that review right after seeing the movie which is something one should avoid, but in RedLine's case the verdict won't change even after calming down from the intense viewing experience.

Heka wrote:Best animated movie I've ever seen (Though I haven't seen that many)

You need to watch Akira then!

gasteropod wrote:You need to watch Akira then!

Have heard a lot of good thing about Akira but haven't gotten around to seeing it. I try to watch older anime now and then but I've always been more interested about the new shit.

It blows me away every time I watch it, it's incredible.

Well RedLine is the best looking animated thing I've ever seen. It took Madhouse seven years to make it and they had to draw over hundred thousand hand-drawn drawings in the process. There is no CGI in the film and the producer of Madhouse Masao Maruyama has said that this is the last truly hand-drawn anime ever. Lets hope Mr. Maruyama is wrong and we will see anime that is as gorgeous as RedLine in the future.

It's a shame, you can't beat cell animation.

The Shinjuku Incident 3.5/5

Minus Danny Wu's shit acting, it was pretty good.

Spirited Away is by far my favourite animated serious movie. Akira's pretty good, not a keeper IMO. I've been wanting to see Grave of the Fireflies forever but the R1 SE (most/all Euro DVDs are NTSC to PAL conversions) is always expensive and I think OOP.

Haven't really managed to care for any of the new Miyazaki's... Totoro kicks ass, though!

Kiki's good, too. In a very odd turn of events I watched it in Finnish on TV with a Japanese friend who was visiting Finland. " ジジの声かわいくなかった ". ("Kiki's voice wasn't cute!" )

Had seen the original version before, of course, in cinema.

The dubs in Finland are infamous. It's very rare that things get dubbed here in Finland so the quality of the dubs stays very low.

Here is one dub group whose Digimon dub has a cult status for all the wrong reasons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agapio_Racing_Team
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW5ZTBL4DNE&NR=1
And yes the people who made this got money for it.

Of course the movies get a better treatment and have "normal" actors voicing the characters.

If the the Finnish were to dub Spiderman it would sound something like this. Thankfully there were only subtitles in my youth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KR2ove20a0
(The audio track is from some Agapio Racing Team production)

Akira isn't that great as far as I'm concerned, especially not if you compare it to the amazing manga.

Ghibli hasn't been releasing anything REALLY interesting either since Mononoke.

For me, the anime-directors to watch right now are Makato Shinkai (Voices of a Distant Star, 5cm per second, The Place promised in our Early Days) and Mamoru Hosada (Girl who leapt through Time, Summer Wars).

Shinkai is perfection. Hosada I'm trying to stay far away from.

HungFist wrote:Shinkai is perfection. Hosada I'm trying to stay far away from.

What was wrong with GwltT and Summer Wars, in your opinion? I liked them both alot.

Yi-Long wrote:

HungFist wrote:Shinkai is perfection. Hosada I'm trying to stay far away from.

What was wrong with GwltT and Summer Wars, in your opinion? I liked them both alot.

Nothing wrong with tgwltt so far, as I haven't seen it. Everything wrong with SW.

HungFist on Sep 30, 2010 wrote:
Summer Wars (Japan, 2009) – 1/5
Mamoro Hosoda’s unbearable anime hit mixes countryside setting and IT-commentary – of course not managing the latter without brain-dead, mecha-style action mayhem in computer drawn virtual world. The storyline follows a shy school boy following a girl to the countryside to meet her family – an appalling inbred community where family decides for the lives of its members. Not entirely rare even in today’s Japan, it’s sad having to witness Hododa’s non-critical and narrow minded philosophies on cinema screen. The film’s “go abroad, become devil” side-message would be ignorable in any other context, but here one can only wonder if it was intentional after all. Family politics aside Summer Wars still has its healthy load of universally embarrassing bits and pieces from a heroic grandmother to the teary scenes with the daughter overcoming herself. The potentially accurate social commentary – a virtual community taking over people’s lives – drowns itself in noisy action sequences that do not even allow the poor viewer to fall asleep. The few humoristic and romantic bits between the main characters are the film’s only redeeming qualities.

Strange Circus - 4/5

Sion Sono is messed up! He clearly took inspiration from Audition, but I found this film more entertaining due to his dark humour.

HungFist wrote:

Yi-Long wrote:

HungFist wrote:Shinkai is perfection. Hosada I'm trying to stay far away from.

What was wrong with GwltT and Summer Wars, in your opinion? I liked them both alot.

Nothing wrong with tgwltt so far, as I haven't seen it. Everything wrong with SW.

HungFist on Sep 30, 2010 wrote:
Summer Wars (Japan, 2009) – 1/5
Mamoro Hosoda’s unbearable anime hit mixes countryside setting and IT-commentary – of course not managing the latter without brain-dead, mecha-style action mayhem in computer drawn virtual world. The storyline follows a shy school boy following a girl to the countryside to meet her family – an appalling inbred community where family decides for the lives of its members. Not entirely rare even in today’s Japan, it’s sad having to witness Hododa’s non-critical and narrow minded philosophies on cinema screen. The film’s “go abroad, become devil” side-message would be ignorable in any other context, but here one can only wonder if it was intentional after all. Family politics aside Summer Wars still has its healthy load of universally embarrassing bits and pieces from a heroic grandmother to the teary scenes with the daughter overcoming herself. The potentially accurate social commentary – a virtual community taking over people’s lives – drowns itself in noisy action sequences that do not even allow the poor viewer to fall asleep. The few humoristic and romantic bits between the main characters are the film’s only redeeming qualities.

Wow, I didn't get anything like that from it AT ALL. I just really enjoyed the movie, instead of being bothered by any of the messages in there, be they intentional or unintentional...

I feel they're both great GREAT movies.

Shôrinji kenpô (The Killing Machine)(Japan, 1976) - 4/5
This time Sonny Chiba plays a tough war veteran who has to cope with his life in a Japan that has just lost the second world war. This movie is more political and socially critical than the other Chiba movies I've seen. I like the themes explored. The second world war and the aftermath of it was/is a big deal also here in Finland. The action still has the brutal Chiba feel with chopped off balls and many shattered limbs. Also Hung has been trying to sell me the whole Etsuko Shihomi is magical thing and I now have to admit that she looks very lovely with twintails in this movie.

I just marathoned the whole Neon Genesis Evangelion series including the End of Evangelion movie. I'm going to try to review this "mess" in the near future.

Memories of Matsuko - 3.5/5

I watched the Third Window Blu-ray last night and it has the same weird brightness flickering problem as their Cold Fish BD, strange how no reviews mention this.

Neon Genesis Evangelion (Japan, 1995-96) - 4/5

Neon Genesis Evangelion is a real tough series to review. On the one hand you can say that it’s one of the best psychological animes that changed the whole art form. One the other hand you can say that it’s a badly written anime by a mentally unstable man who got his ideas while reading texts by delusional people from the bronze ages and writings of an coked up professor.

If you’ve seen the series skip to part that I’ve underlined. Though the text below contains some interesting info and revelations of the series.

Can’t believe I’m about to try to explain the complicated story of NGE in a few short sentences. Well here it goes.

The story is about world that has suffered a great tragedy that wiped out over half of the human population. This event is called the second impact. The second impact is believed to have been caused by an unknown entity called the Angels. These angels for some reason start appearing one by one and attacking humanity. The story takes place fifteen years past the first impact where a organization that's designed to combat these angels called NERV is commanding mechs (Eva’s) that are piloted by specially selected humans. These mech pilots are all young teenagers. The emotional and physical strain on these teenagers is portrayed very well in the series. This is by far the best mech warfare anime I’ve seen. If you are at this point thinking that this is a anime for kids you are dead wrong. The main focus of the anime is psychology and character development that is as deep as the Mariana Trench. The editor of Finlands biggest anime magazine said recently that NGE is a watershed in the anime industry that marks the beginning of the shift from story driven animation towards character driven animation.

The characters in the series are the reason why the show has become such a hit. I’ll try to condense some information about the main cast.

Shinji Ikari is a highschool kid who at first could be mistaken for any of the dime a dozen male harem leads but whose internal strugle with himself makes him stand out from the crowd. Shinji has had a difficult childhood and his childhood becomes all the more difficult when he is almost forced to pilot an Eva. It has been argued that Shinji is an allegory of the submissive and defeated Japanese male who is paralyzed by the thought what others may think of him. Shinji pilots the Eva 01

Rei Ayanami, a mysterious girl who seems to lack emotions but during the course of the show grows as a person. She’s the pilot of Eva 00. Rei is a very popular character and this is how Anno explains this. ” Anno understands the Japanese national attraction to characters like Rei as the product of a stunted imaginative landscape borne of Japan’s defeat in the Second World War.”

Asuka Langley Soryu, a young female pilot from Germany. She also had a very traumatic childhood but she insists on showing how strong and mature she is to the outside world. So she tries to appear strong but in truth she’s very mentally insecure. She pilots the Eva 02.

Gendo Ikari, he’s Shinjis father but he hasn’t raised his son. He has devoted all his life to work at NERV after the death of his wife. He seems to have no emotional connection to Shinji which is a really hard pill to swallow for our main “hero”. Gendo’s the leader of NERV and he seems to be the mastermind pulling all the strings in the new world order that has risen after the second impact.
There are many more main characters and they are all flawed. I’m not making this shit up, this Anno quote is from NGEs wikipedia page: “It's strange that 'Evangelion' has become such a hit - all the characters are so sick!”
Hideaki Anno who wrote and directed the whole series has a history of depression and mental illness and this shows in NGE. He knows the weaknesses of the human mind and he is very good at exploring these weaknesses. Sometimes you feel that the mental struggle of the character is too much. Almost all the main characters are severely mentally flawed to the point it becomes ridiculous.

Now to the actual review. One can endlessly analyze the symbolic and psychological aspects of NGE but the bottom line when grading a piece of work is that one has to consider the fact of was the piece of art entertaining and/or thought provoking. The series is 26 episodes and 23 of these episodes are fucking awesome. The problem arises in the end when it becomes painfully obvious that the the ending will be a bunch of postmodern existentialism mumbo jumbo. The last two episodes are notorious for this. The flat ending makes all the clever revelation in the show just seem like some pointless intellectual masturbation.

Thankfully the rest of the series is very good and many scenes in the show are like a middle finger to the whole anime industry that (mostly) panders to pathetic low life otakus. Also the willingness to explore subject matters that are not normally discussed in this medium is admirable. Neon Genesis Evangelion is a piece of art that changed the whole anime scene and for that it will always be held in a high regard. It's still far from perfect and many people give it more credit than it deserves.

The art is also very good considering the limited budget they had. The Evas are sometimes frightening and sometimes almost grotesque. It's rare that I become as “shocked” from violence as watching the darker scenes of NGE.

All in all this series is a must see if you if you are interested in anime and its history. Some people love it and some people absolute hate it. I'm leaning towards the “loving it”-side but I've seen many series that I liked better.

Here's a video review by a chick who can put the whole thing more eloquently than a Finnish bafoon who has English as his third language.
http://blip.tv/jesuotaku/neon-genesis-e ... ew-2756447
For the most part I agree with everything in that review.

I would gladly read what you thought of the series if you've seen it. This series also makes me want to see Puella Magi Madoka Magica that's supposed to be the NGE of the Moe generation.

I will review the movies that have followed the series later. Damn this post looks like a distorted mess in my wide monitor. Well it's the content that matters.

Heka

The Man From Nowhere: 4/5

Solid, tension filled thriller from South Korea, kind of a cross between Leon and Oldboy (IMO), with some disturbing scenes and subject matter. Very violent, but a very good film, emotional and sad in places too. Why does every Korean film have to be so damn dark?
The acting and cinematography are great.

Heka wrote:I would gladly read what you thought of the series if you've seen it. This series also makes me want to see Puella Magi Madoka Magica that's supposed to be the NGE of the Moe generation.

I've talked about the show and the subsequent "rebuild" in my review of Evangelion 1.11 here if you're interested.

Shingster wrote:I've talked about the show and the subsequent "rebuild" in my review of Evangelion 1.11 here if you're interested.

Thank you. The review was a very interesting read. I have to get my hands on he two Rebuild of Evangelion movies that have been released. They seem a lot better than the 1997 movies.

I loved the first rebuild movie when I first saw it - actually I saw it on big screen twice. But I had not seen the series back then. Watching the series later made me realize that the film was
a) almost identical to the series - in other words, somewhat unnecessary
b) missing what was my favorite episode in the entire show, episode 4

With the second film it was the opposite. I saw this from BD in Japan and didn't initially care for it quite that much - especially missing the epic score of the first film came as a disappointment. Watching the series later however proved the film was very different from it - a worthy addition to the saga in this sense. I later saw the film in theater and liked it better. Plus the filmmakers showed some great taste by stealing from The Man Who Stole the Sun.

As for the series, I rather love it although it could do with less mecha fighting. The action tends to be a bit boring, but everything else works. And yes, I do kinda love the ending, messy it may be, but interesting, plus reminds me of Japanese video games, and comes with some great visuals and terrific score. Not to be taken overly seriously. I must admit, though, that I greatly enjoy it that the ending pisses most people off

I found The End of Evangelion to be a less interesting ending for it, although I do dig the ending in that one too. It's a shame the original live action ending, which would've been absolutely perfect, wasn't used (bits were used in the brilliant trailer, though).

So, yes, it's all great, but Anno's live action work (no, I'm not talking about Cutie Honey) is better than any Eva stuff.

Eva's still major in Japan. Eva chewing gum is everywhere, every (every) karaoke session starts with the theme song, and especially in Tokyo you can hear it playing everywhere...

Knockabout: 3/5

Yuen Biao's training scenes were very impressive and the final fight scene in particular had suitably good choreography, but overall the film is standard '70s martial arts fare with lame comedy, seen it all before.

Atami no Sousakan: 4.5/5

I recently discovered that Satoshi Miki (Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers, Instant Swamp, etc.) had written and directed a TV series, so decided to check it out and it was really good! Very reminiscent of Twin Peaks and very funny. I really liked the mystery and didn't want it to end, I'd have quite happily watched it for another 8 episodes. Chiaki Kuriyama isn't so hot without the fringe by the way!