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Runa posted:I really want the inside scoop on the production of Stardust Memory because after a certain point the writing is just ???? I'm not clear on the details but I think it has something to do with the back half of the series very clumsily trying to rewrite itself into an origin story for the Titans from Zeta Gundam. There were hints of a conspiracy going on among the Federation higb commans in earlier episodes but in the finale you get a bunch of cameos from future Titans leadership as well as Axis Zeon. It just doesn't gel well and the original plot to steal a nuke gets sidestepped into another colony drop which was the REAL plan all along (after a plot point that was revealed two episodes earlier and never mentioned beforehand) It reads to me like a mandate from Sunrise that came down while the show was in production ND left the writers scrambling to rewrite an extended ending to accommodate for the need to tie into Zeta. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Jul 26, 2022 |
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Jul 26, 2022 17:02
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 06:24 |
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Before the proliferation of fansubs and online culture it was a lot easier to track the pathways to anime that most people in the west took. If you'd seen one notable show there was a good chance you'd seen a lot of them and a lot of the conversation followed this collective community memory. Toonami blocks, Adult Swim, YTV, G4 TechTV and other anime blocks for younger people, vhs tapes, bootlegs and late night showings for the slightly older. Point being that the throughline existed for most anime viewers to have seen the same shows or read the same manga as part of one community. The internet age kind of exploded that shared community because suddenly people could pursue what interested them and find smaller communities rather than a few larger communities consuming what was available.
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Jul 27, 2022 20:27
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SatoshiMiwa posted:I get why your equating the explosion of digital fansubs with the growth of the internet but the early days of the internet absolutely lead to more VHS fansubs getting circulated around than them just staying at certain universities or fan clubs. They certainly did but you're still dealing with the situation where it's people converging on the few available communities for those fansubs. Nowadays you've got much larger community hubs that follow the same route but also hundreds to thousands of smaller circles as well.
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Jul 27, 2022 21:10
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I could go with MD Geist because it's a so bad it's good kind of super edge but Genocyber is just depressing and the child murder and molestation stuff is gross. Like there's a difference between a random kid getting impaled on a spear in MD Geist where the circumstances are so ludicrous it loops back into being hilarious and something like Genocyber where a bunch of kids get fridged to make Elaine dish out ultraviolence.
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Jul 28, 2022 15:17
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I wouldn't mind a redubbed version of Robot Carnival that overhauled the script for the story about the two mechas fighting because they couldn't understand each other's language. The old dub is kinda yikes with the Asian voices.
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Jul 28, 2022 17:30
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Robot Carnival did get a 4K release. I think it came out around the same time Memories was re-issued and finally dubbed. https://www.rightstufanime.com/Robot-Carnival-4K-ULTRA-HD-Blu-ray
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Jul 28, 2022 18:17
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It's one of Katsuhiro Otomo's jam sessions where he and his animator buddies let their creative id run wild.
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Jul 28, 2022 18:44
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Solid is the word I'd use for Gunsmith Cats. It does what it sets out to do well and looks good while doing it. It's not really groundbreaking, but it is entertaining and hit at a good time to be fondly remembered. One place it really excels is in fight scene geometry. The shootouts and fights all make great use of the environment and it's very easy to keep track of the action without getting lost due to wonky storyboarding or excessively flashy animation.
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Jul 30, 2022 04:14
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A lot of dubs back then have a certain wild west energy to them that is mostly lost these days. There's certainly still excellent dubs coming out but I do miss the stuff you'd get from Manga Entertainment or ADV or hell, even Central Park Media. They have their own vibe to them while stuff today is on the whole more in line with the original voice tracks but done in English.
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Jul 30, 2022 06:59
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The original dub of Patlabor is better than the new one. This comparison of the Manga UK dub's take on the Illusion of Peace scene is great. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEPKcMhpHCY
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Jul 30, 2022 20:36
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SatoshiMiwa posted:The problem with the Patlabor Dub for movie 2 is that the acting is really good but the script takes way to many liberties that stand out or change characters that I can't really like it I dont mind so much because I firmly believe that adaptations should make changes to suit the language being spoken. It might not always work out but I roll with it. So long as the story itself is conveying the same feel and message as the original I'm fine with liberties.
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Jul 30, 2022 21:44
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I'd do a coin flip between Bebop or Tokyo Godfathers being Keiko's best screenwriting credit. She knew how to write organic dialogue like nobody else.
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Jul 30, 2022 23:57
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As well they should. gently caress elves. Though being Japan they might take that literally...
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Jul 31, 2022 01:26
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kirbysuperstar posted:Definitely a problem intrinsic to Japan, I say as I wheelbarrow out an entire tonne of Aragorn slash fics Aragorn / Arwen is too vanilla and best bestgirl Eowyn got the better deal with the author self-insert Faramir. If you want the real good stuff you get into the Aragorn/Gildor fic and tell stories about them roaming around Eriador while Glorfindel makes a surprise appearance in the second doujin tankoubon. But when I say gently caress elves I say it in the sense of social revolution overthrowing those poncy upper classholes. Like Goblin Slayer but without the rape and genocide.
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Jul 31, 2022 01:40
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My favourite Ghost Stories story is when I watched Halo Legends and the short film Odd One Out (with Spartan 1337) had some of the dub VAs from Ghost Storires reprise their Sarcasm.
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Jul 31, 2022 02:26
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We'll never get a G Reco dub considering the way the movies continue to tank.
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Jul 31, 2022 03:08
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Also has an incredible dub.
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Aug 1, 2022 15:19
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Heavy Metal posted:That one's the Streamline produced dub I gather, they say Lupin in this Manga one with Hayter (from a DVD around 2000). It's funny when you watch both versions and notice that Kirk Thornton is playing different characters in each. The Streamline dub isn't as good as the Animaze/Manga one but it has some decent parts and it's a worthwhile watch.
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Sep 14, 2022 22:50
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Nah. I like my 90s dubs. You get some wild poo poo.
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Sep 14, 2022 22:53
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Char was neutral Steve Blum. Bright was British which actually made sense since he's from Hong Kong. And I'll always advocate for keeping old dubs available and not letting them vanish into the ether. It's like older editions of Star Wars. They have their place in the cultural memory and we should preserve them. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Sep 14, 2022 |
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Sep 14, 2022 23:25
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUbHXZOkh3s Gundammit Frau, that's one sassy slap from Bright.
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Sep 14, 2022 23:40
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That method has its benefits but then you also get stuff like Khara micromanaging the life out of their preferred English version of Eva. There needs to be some breathing room to allow an adaptation to find its own voice rather than just mimic the original. Otherwise what's the point?
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Sep 15, 2022 01:13
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Looks like David Bowie and his boyfriend David Bowie.
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Sep 17, 2022 03:59
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A Go Nagai story is really insane, you say?
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Oct 3, 2022 14:28
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Since I can't find a proper Ghost in the Shell thread and I'm pretty sure a show that came out 20 years ago is retro I figured I'd ask here rather than turn the general chat thread into my personal recap space. I discovered today that there's a compilation film for Stand Alone Complex just titled "The Laughing Man." and another one for 2nd GIG titled "Individual Eleven." I also found out that they've had their dubs done by the Ocean Group. Is it any good as a compilation film or worth the curiosity of hearing David "Megatron" Kaye voicing Batou? Moreover, why would Ocean Group even get the rights to the compilation films if Animaze had already done the TV shows?
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Jan 5, 2023 00:39
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Heavy Metal posted:My gut take would be that's not a show where compilation movies would be so hot. But I heartily recommend season 1 of Stand Alone Complex, the ol' laughing man etc, it's good times. Season 2 is ok. Yeah I just blitzed the ending of my Season 1 rewatch the other day. Quite enjoyable, last episode of the season being a frustrating exposition dump in lieu of actual drama notwithstanding. I might check out the compilations at some point to listen to the Ocean dub, I had absolutely no idea they'd done anything GITS related and it could be a neat comparison.
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Jan 5, 2023 02:46
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On the other hand, Richard Epcar as Batou. Guy just lives and breathes the character. I miss Animaze dubs. They're not always the best but when they hit they hit perfectly and they had an absolute powerhouse lineup of voice talent. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Jan 5, 2023 |
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Jan 5, 2023 13:33
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Decided to keep watching into 2nd Gig rather than take a break because I'm not really in the mood to watch anything else. I'm six episodes in and I barely remember anything from this season so it's basically a blind watch. So far I haven't been to keen on the standalone (dividual) episodes this season. You had a "what if Taxi Driver but DeNiro was a robot man" and "Major goes cosplaying as the girls from Cat's Eye to pull off a heist during a sex party" and it just feels like they're leaning more heavily on references to other media or to older GITS media than they are using those references to examine how the GITS world is different from ours. It's basically law that the Major has to jump off a building at some point while going invisible. One of my big problems with the first season is when it used fakeouts to pull up shock drama before immediately deflating it with unsatisfactory exposition after the fact. Well here in season 2 it's a different problem, where the drama isn't coming from fakeouts as much as it's coming from times where characters are acting stupid in order to set up a big surprise reveal. So far Togusa has held the idiot stick the most such as how he and Ishikawa checked out the apartment during the helicopter crisis and completely missed the two men in black leaving the area after planting evidence. Then only after listening to a long exposition dump does Togusa suddenly draw a connection to the Individual Eleven during the assassination attempt on the PM, suddenly remembering "oh yeah, those terrorists from episode 1 and also that note we found when we searched the apartment maybe they're connected!" He was even dumber during the last one I watched where he goes to Tokyo, completely forgets he had a Tachikoma with him and willingly walks into a contaminated building with his dosimeter going haywire after hearing firsthand accounts from a former cleanup worker about how radioactive the area is. For a guy who was paranoid about residual radiation he sure as hell didn't do much to protect himself. And maybe this isn't the show's fault given the time in which it released but I'm kinda leery on where it's going with the discussion of refugee policy. It could very easily go into a rather nasty xenophobia bent. That being said there's still some pretty excellent action sequences so far, I'm still a sucker for the Tachikoma antics, and the 2nd OP and ED are good even if they're not as good as the first season's. Also the Major is somewhat more playful and open this time around. Maybe the Tachikomas rubbed off on her a bit. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 05:46 on Jan 6, 2023 |
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Jan 6, 2023 05:42
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Got up to the episode where Togusa is getting smeared in court. Way to make court hearings of the future even shittier. Was a bit of a low key episode but I like how Section 9 jumped right up to vehicular homicide to get back at the defence attorney.
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Jan 6, 2023 18:55
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What was the consensus on the tachikomas back in 2000s discourse? I only really started watching anime around 2011 (as on seeking out shows rather than dismissing everything as porn or pokemon/digimon/Yu-Gi-Oh/ and being too co for it) so I only watched SAC for the first time about a decade ago when the series was aired on official YouTube channels. I didn't like the tachikomas back then as a teenager for much the same reasons I didn't like Ed in Bebop. What's this cutesy poo poo doing in my cool hard-core adult shows? Nowadays i am a lot more lenient on this kind of stuff when it is used well and I really enjoy the counterpoint test characters like Ed or the Tachikomas provide to otherwise grim procedurals. What was the general take on the think tanks back in the day? Was it a similar case of a lot of dumb teens and their opinions changed over time?
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Jan 7, 2023 01:03
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I'm surprised people are put off by the cell shading. There's plenty of janky cgi in SAC but I don't count the think-tanks among that crowd. I actually think they look pretty great even today. As for cuteness, I'm not against it as much as I used to be. I don't really see the think tanks as being kid-friendly mascots to sell a violent show to ten year olds, more that they're hyper-intelligent constructs with the emotional experience of children. They don't get a pass when they screw up because they sound like kids, they get chewed out like anyone else on the team and characters respond to the dichotomy between their philosophical insights and childlike behaviour with an appropriate level of concern rather than a typical "oh you rascals" comment. It helps that they're actually funny a lot of the time which emphasizes their role within the story beyond being the cute spider tanks.
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Jan 7, 2023 04:09
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Couple more episodes down of 2nd GIG. I'm not sure trying to tie in all the standalone episodes to the greater plot was the best idea. One of your prime suspects gets murdered and instead of following it up it's a nearly completely unrelated Pazu episode? It was a good episode but it felt like convenience to have a top suspect dovetail into something unrelated. Or the episode where the Major discovers her past. Her cyber bits get hacked until she goes to the memory house and then they never follow up on it. I also felt that having her past narrated to her in an exposition dump was kind of a waste. You've already set things up with her software hack that she's seeing things that aren't there, why not just have the hack show her memories of her childhood? It's not like it's a mystery when the girl's 10 year old shell is a red eyed purple haired Major copy. I don't know. There's still a lot of good stuff this season but individual episodes aren't holding up as well. But the music is loving phenomenal and the show at least looks a bit better than the first season. Major is still off model every episode but I really like the green glow aesthetic of the season, real Matrix vibes. Edit: Holy poo poo in the Saito sniper episode they finally gave the British characters accents! Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Jan 8, 2023 |
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Jan 8, 2023 00:37
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No Major, do not humour the preteen boy asking you about sex after you crawled into bed with him topless. What the gently caress.
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Jan 8, 2023 04:13
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And with that I've finished 2nd GIG. A much more mixed bag than the first season and I think a big part of that comes from difficulties writing for the narrative structure of the season. Section 9 is on the back foot almost the entire season and the show makes a point to emphasize how the team being forced into a reactive rather than proactive role cripples their ability to prevent incidents from happening. That's a good hook, but unfortunately a lot of times it comes at the expense of making Section 9's characters into idiots who just forget important information or make stupid decisions. I'm thinking Togusa only putting together the Individual Eleven incidents after an exposition dump, or Batou letting a (fake) plutonium handoff get away because he wants to fight Kuze. Other times a lot of stuff that could have been explained through an overall episode plot are relegated to big exposition dumps where we're told what happens rather than experiencing it alongside the characters. Even the standalone episodes suffered this season. There was a conscious effort to tie the standalones into the overall plot, which is fine in some cases, but in others it ended up causing some really contrived moments, like Pazu's episode with the doppelganger or the Tachikomas discovering their creator thanks to a completely unrelated explosion nearby, with the only connective tissue to the main storyline being the thematic element of a creator wanting to leave his mark and be remembered. You can draw the parallels between Asuda wanting to leave a memory of himself to the Tachikomas and Gouda wanting to leave a calling card that he'd engineered the entire refugee crisis. That's not to say that all of the standalones were bad. I really liked the one in Berlin where Batou and the Major are tracking a bomber. It had a good excuse for happening (Gouda wanting top S9 operatives out of the country while he ran his scheme) and was a pretty fun mystery with a sad ending. The Saito episode had the dumbest setup ever with his storytelling over poker but the actual meat of the episode with the sniper battle was great and it was cool seeing more of the outside world than just the sphere Section 9 usually works in. For villains, we had our antihero Kuze and Gouda. I like the idea behind Kuze more than I do the actual execution. It's very, very hard to write a character meant to be very charismatic without it coming off a bit forced, and unfortunately GITS as a franchise often has the subtlety of a sledgehammer when it comes to discussing philosophical themes. So Kuze unfortunately comes off less as a heroic leader breaking free of his programming and more like a walking loudspeaker. He's the equivalent of those delusional "and then everyone clapped" stories you read online, which is kind of a shame because this season already took the piss out of those kinds of stories with the Taxi Driver/Helicopter Pilot episode. Being voiced by Kirk Thornton probably didn't help him in the dub. I like Kirk a lot but the guy gets typecast all the time as the "noble warrior poet" who more often comes off as pretentious than profound. His connection to the Major was telegraphed very early on, so I appreciated that they didn't need to outright say that he was the other plane crash survivor. A rare moment in a talky show where not talking conveyed more information. Gouda on the other hand was a fantastic villain. Just the perfect mix of a slimeball and a ruthless operator with a massive ego. It was so satisfying to see him get his face blown off in the end. I enjoyed every time he appeared onscreen, just completely stole the show away and was by far the best antagonist. Both seasons had the evil cabinet secretaries being the ones pulling strings, but they're more of an interchangeable, banal evil, so having a bastard like Gouda to focus that into a compelling and efficient enemy for Section 9 was a good choice. As for the overall conspiracy of the season, I'm of two minds. On the one hand I could not help but draw comparisons to Oshii's arguments from Patlabor 2 about Japan's hypocrisy over militarism and the comfortable lie the country accepts. I can see elements of Patlabor 2's Tsuge in GITS's Kuze, and the show did a good job of showing the powder keg that existed with Japan having so many armed forces branches just itching for the chance to shoot someone. You've got Article 9 references everywhere and exposition dumps about how Japan managed to avoid committing the armed forces to WW3 and WW4, only to then completely undermine that supposed noble act of neutrality by showing how black ops teams, UN taskforces and post WW4 conflicts have the JSDF actively involved. But I think the politics of GITS are notably difference from Patlabor beyond those comparisons, especially regarding foreign policy. Oshii directly points to Japan's hypocrisy and argues that even if the result is removing the comfortable lie to face harsh reality, that reality is something Japan as a nation needs to accept if they're to survive. GITS on the other hand, ESPECIALLY 2nd GIG, really wants to push for Japanese independence and autonomy from the rest of the world. Prime Minister Kayabuki settles on keeping the rest of the world at arms length, which is understandable on the level given how the American Empire, China and other powers have their own self interests for exploiting Japan. But her cabinet is also a bunch of hawkish conservatives who almost universally despise the refugee issue and actively undermined humanitarian aid for decades to the point where a bastard like Gouda could manipulate information to commit mass murder. But that's fine because the refugees have guns and terrorists and suicide bombers so maybe both sides are bad! It's a very 2000s view of refugees that doesn't sit well with me now after the last decade of anti refugee sentiment. There's very little distinction in 2nd GIG between an armed revolutionary and someone stuck in the refugee slums. So it gets pretty ugly. Overall I enjoyed the season but I felt it was a step down from SAC. SAC has a better finale, last episode notwithstanding, and more of the standalone episodes that I enjoyed. 2nd GIG makes better use of the entirety of Section 9 while SAC felt like it was a Major/Batou/Togusa joint first and foremost. It was nice seeing Boma, Ishikawa and Saito get more stuff to do. They whiffed it with Pazu's episode and what was even the point of Proto. Guy just shows up one episode, and then the next time we see him he's suddenly a Bioroid. I felt like I missed a trick. Anyhow, that's two seasons down. Onto Solid State Society to round this out. Then I might try the CGI shows, if I can stomach them.
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Jan 9, 2023 00:51
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Watched Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society tonight. What a frustratingly "mid" film. This definitely felt like it should have been a third season rather than a film. A lot of stuff that felt like it should be more important is brushed over. It definitely has its moments, and it's easily the best that the SAC art style ever looked, but there's so much stuff holding it back from being truly excellent. There's pretty much zero tension around the fates of any of the characters. Once the Major is able to stop a point blank headshot from killing Togusa you pretty much throw mortality out the window. The Tachikomas being resurrected immediately afterwards is met with "sure, whatever" as a result. The Major is an rear end in a top hat in this movie, too. She often straddles the line between likeable and aloof but in this one she's just a massive prick to everybody. She uses Togusa as bait and she completely disregards Batou's concerns for her when he has always been in her corner even when it wasn't in his best interest. She's got a bad case of main character syndrome going on and the ensemble that makes the show so strong suffers as a result. As for the ending, it's a bit confusing but is this correct? The Major is shown operating multiple shells at once, and the "Puppeteer" that blows his brains out at the brainwashing facility was one of the shells that she was operating to get on the inside of Mune's scheme. Did she let that shell get hacked specifically so she could dive into it with her main body and confront the Puppeteer or had the puppeteer already stolen the body from her safehouse (also she can somehow get Section 6 to give her infinite money for a massive freelance cyber crime investigation operation???). If its the latter shouldn't she be concerned that one of her shells is just walking away without her knowledge? So that brings me to the end of the original SAC show stuff. Overall it feels like a series with untapped potential that unfortunately has diminishing returns with every instalment. The standalone episodes aren't always the best but I think they're desperately needed to help flesh out this version of Ghost in the Shell and let the main plots breathe a little. There is some absolutely fantastic stuff in the SAC timeline but it's often weighed down by poor conclusions that rely way too much on after-the-fact exposition dumps and a shrug. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Jan 23, 2023 |
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Jan 23, 2023 03:17
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Did Ocean/Westwood even dub Dragon Ball? I thought they just did Z, some of the movies and GT. Individual voices aside the Funi voice cast is overall better but I prefer Scott McNeil's Buu and Jeice any day of the week.
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Mar 6, 2023 23:03
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NikkolasKing posted:And hey, I'm all for Brian Drummond as Saiyan Saga or even Namek Vegeta. Nobody an play Vegeta losing his mind like him. I've never watched the Ocean stuff beyond that, though. Maybe he's a good antihero Vegeta, too. The trouble here is that there's a rather large gap between when Ocean stopped dubbing DBZ and when they picked it up again. The last episode they did on Namek was the opening of the Recoome fight, and after that it went over to the Funimation dub until Canadian Content regulations and a whole confusing mess of dubbing rights got Ocean back to dub it during the Dr. Gero episodes of the Android Saga. The entirety of the Frieza fight never got a Canadian voiceover and only a handful of the original Ocean dub wasn't recast when it came back.
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Mar 6, 2023 23:37
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Can't remember was that the version with the English intro with the super cheesy lyrics "dragon baaaaaall the ultimate battle the ultimate fight between evil and good" I will defend the Ocean Dub as having some really quality leading voices and I'll even stan for Blue Water on occasion but they're the budget studio for a reason.
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Mar 19, 2023 22:47
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I can pinpoint the first time I watched Dragon Ball because I was excited to watch a DBZ episode and then I got kid Goku and Bulma getting chased by these weird red ribbon guys and their voices were wrong and it looked cheaper and different and 8 year old me was like "this isn't dragon ball Zeeeeeee"
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Mar 20, 2023 05:27
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 06:24 |
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Outlaw Star is the clear 3rd place runner up to Bebop and Trigun for late 90s sci-fi anime. It's a weird show but it doesn't get hung up on explaining itself so you just roll with it and have a good time.
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Apr 16, 2023 13:43
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