Semi-Review: DOGS vol. 0 (Viz release)

Finally! The announcement of the license came in July of last year, but DOGS finally officially released middle of last week (though a few people have reported seeing them in stores before then). I had had my preorder through HeavyInk, which has only served me well in the past, but I'm beginning to think that their strength is only in subscriptions and US trades, rather than licensed manga -- typical of a comic store, I guess. They seem to have had various complications/delays with my order, so I finally just canceled it and ordered through Amazon. It arrived within three days. Because they only included bubble packaging on one side, my cover was a little warped, but other than that: it's beautiful~.

I've updated my MAL review for DOGS to include some commentary about Viz's release, but I'm going to do an in-depth semi-review here because I feel like it.

PACKAGING & APPEARANCE -- Since I don't buy a lot of manga, this is actually the first Viz release that I've picked up since my old, old Gundam Wing manga -- all my others have been TOKYOPOP releases -- though I still plan to eventually pick up all of Death Note. The volume was actually shrink-wrapped and marked with explicit content, which surprised me until I opened it. The fold-out poster is this illustration on one side and this picture of Naoto on the other side. I forgot about all the nudity that's in this manga, apparently, probably because none of it ever feels gratitious. The manga itself feels very slick -- the DOGS logos and titles on the front and back covers, as well as the spine, are all shiny silver, and the graphic design on all sides is very clean and nice looking. The exception is the text that reads "Stray dogs howling through the dark" on the back; the font used is ill-fitting and kind of ugly, but that's pretty minor.

The print size is a bit larger than most tankoban, and I noticed the paper quality is a little lesser. The pages aren't as heavy and sturdy as I'm used to, and the volume itself is very flexible. I don't mind the larger format at all, but I'm confused as to why the paper quality changed. It can't be just a Viz thing since I've at least flipped through other Viz releases and never noticed a quality difference. I'm hesitant to call it a cost issue since this volume of DOGS is already quite a bit more expensive ($12.99) than other Viz releases ($7.99), so it isn't like they couldn't have offset printing costs on the larger size. It's not that big a deal really, but it was a noticable thing.

EDITNG & TRANSLATION -- As someone who doesn't speak the language, I can really only judge a translation by how natural it feels and much it makes sense. Having read scanlations is a decent basis for meaning, especially since the scanlator always made a point to make notes on the portions she wasn't sure of, but in the end, it's really just about whether the story comes across in a way that isn't confusing or choppy. I was, for the most part, really happy and impressed by Viz's translation. There were a lot of things that were actually made much clearer through this translation. The slang and dialogue localization was less extreme than what TOKYOPOP usually does (though story setting may have something to do with this), so the inevitable shift in character tones wasn't too jarring.

I was kind of confused about some of their choices in diction. For example, Badou once referred to cigarettes as "fags." It's all well and good meaning-wise, but fag in that usage is British slang, not American slang, and I don't imagine that too many people even know that. There was also a part where Badou declares "U. B. DESTROYED!" which was kind of awkward since I think "you be" would have fit in the bubble just fine? Badou also says "Oh shi--" at some point, but that's just awesome.

All of the sound effects in this release are edited and translated, which surprised me since I thought that sort of editing went out when everyone decided perserving the right-to-left reading format was the way to go. Still, compared to Viz's older works, the translated sound effects are much improved. They've gotten more creative with the onomatopoeias ("twip" and "zsh" in addition to your standard "bang" and "whap"), and most of the sound effects actually seem to make sense. The chosen fonts are kind of plain and uninspired at times, but they fit in okay, and I think I'm just biased because I find katakana to be infinitely more interesting to look at even though the "sound" effect part will be lost to me until I sit my ass down and memorize that alphabet.

The font and copy choices for the normal dalogue were pretty standard, though the font size changed a lot to accomodate the bubbles -- this always annoys me, but what can ya do. I always enjoy the out-of-bubble dialogue though (all those tiny comments made by chibi and background characters), and the translations for those were especially fun.

Last note here: Heine's name is offically Heine because that's a real German name. Some fans have been whining about this, and I understand that the change seems trivially annoying because the scanlations use "Haine," but seriously, come on. The romaji has always been transliterated to "Haine" because that's how it'd be pronounced in Japanese. For the transliteration to be "Heine," the katakana would need to be ヘイネ, which the Japanese would pronounce "Hay-nay" or "Heh-ee-nay" instead.

FINAL THOUGHTS -- I'm really happy with Viz's treatment of DOGS for the most part and really look forward to the release of Bullets&Carnage vol. 1 in August (and vol. 2 in December!) It's great to finally be able to hold one of Miwa's works in my hands, though I've come to notice a lot more anatomical mistakes in his art because of it, lol. (Check out Heine's left leg on the cover, serious!) Read the rest of this entry...

Review: Lovely Complex

I still need to write reviews for Soul Eater and Gundam 00 S2, but I still don't feel like writing either. So instead, here is a review for the Lovely Complex anime, which I finished last night because it is adorable. Sickeningly adorable. The premise is exceedingly simple, the characters somewhat predictable, and the animation is all over the place, but damned if it isn't an extremely well done series despite all that. I really want to check out the manga and the live action movie now.

Baww, shoujo. Damn the genre for being so appropriate for adaptation into live action because there are so many series I want to check out now (still need to hunt down the Nodame Cantabile dramas). If the first NANA movie is any indication of how awesome these adaptations can be (granted, I haven't seen the anime nor read the manga in that case), then I'm pretty sure the Nodame and Love★Com are at least worth checking out.

I discovered whilst looking up some information for the review that most of the characters in Love★Com speak in a Kansai/Osaka dialect. What followed was a gigantic "no wonder!" kind of epiphany. I am simultaneously proud of and endlessly amused at the fact that I noticed something was off about the way they were speaking -- sure, it would be LOL OBVIOUS to someone with better knowledge of the language, but for a weeaboo, I'd say just noticing at all isn't bad. :P The easiest indications were the replacement of "aho" for "baka," which I also noticed in BECK way back when, and "na" for "ne." The second easiest was the substituion of "chau" for "chigau" because the dialect apparently likes to contract the hell out of everything (which makes a lot more sense than whatever the hell Shanghainese does to Mandarin!).

Purusing through this list, I spotted a good number of other things that I noticed, including "denna" for "desu ne" though I believe Seiko and a few others still used "desu ne." Actually, I also noticed that a lot of things on that list didn't actually show up. Otani definitely never used "wai" in place of "ore," and Risa never used "wate" in place of "watashi" or "atashi." I really love first person pronouns in Japanese (they're so much fun and can say so much about certain characters!), so I'd have probably noticed much faster if those had been swapped out. Also unmentioned on the list is "-chi" as an affectionate suffix, though I don't know that much about it either way -- why did they only use it for Nakao? And why did both Risa and Nobuko use it?

Fun times, Japanese. I should just get off my ass and learn it some day. I might be going there in December. Maybe that can be some motivation. Read the rest of this entry...

Photoshoot: Domo-kun VS Your Car

Last week, various friends and I found ourselves at the local Target store for some explicable reason. There, amongst their shelves of Easter candy and cheap plushies, we found Domo-kun. Dressed with bunny ears or a chick outfit. Of course, Domo-kun had been licensed States-side for a while now; Nickelodeon has aired the shorts, and Target had a bunch of Domo-related merchandise around Halloween as well. I knew this, but since I apparently didn't hang out at Target in October, I didn't really see any of them out until now. So we crowded around the Domo-kuns and debated buying some for a bit. Three of us took one. They were all retardedly adorable.

But then, later on, while bumming through the toy aisles like the college students we are, we came across bigger Domo-kuns. Posable ones. Exactly three of them. And we all got one of those, in addition to the smaller ones we already had. Great.

Between my roommate and I, we had four Domos, and we brought them to our Environments class on Tuesday. A few of our classmates had 1:18 scale diecast model cars with them since we were using them for reference on our assignment, and in the twenty minutes or so before class actually started... this photoshoot commenced.

You only wished your car was this shiny, red Corvette.

I wish we could have used the white projector screen for a background, but it was too high up. :\

Bunny!Domo-kun wants first dibs.

After a few hours of harassing sports cars, the Domo-kuns hit up the Japanese restaurant three blocks down for some lunch.

The best iced tea in town. Domo-kuns approve!

And some delicious beef teriyaki too. いただきます！

On the way home, we found some interesting graffiti. (Okay, so it's actually been there a while, but I never got around to getting a picture.) Not sure why it's yellow. Someone pointed out that yellow and black were our school colors, to which I replied, "Oh. ... Oh yeah."

But wait! I got a package from a buddy this weekend. They contained some glasses. Leafeon contends that he's more gar than Domo-kun. What do you think?

俺を誰だと思ってやがる？？

Read the rest of this entry...

Review: Dragonball Evolution

You know, I almost didn't want to write this review because it meant I had to keep thinking about this movie, and all I want to do is forget that it exists. My immediate thoughts after viewing Dragonball Evolution were: "LET'S PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED." Sentiments haven't changed much since then, but I'm pleased to hear that it's bombing at the box office. I hope pray this means that they'll put to rest their undoubtedly terrible sequel/trilogy plans. Anyway... this review. It's obviously not going to be pretty, but I'm going to at least try and shelf some of the fan rage in favor of a coherent analysis. Try.

(this review contains no spoilers for neither the anime, manga nor movie... not that the latter has anything to do with the former two)

Dragonball Evolution

STORY & PACING - Honestly, I don't even know where to start. This movie is about a kid who has to fulfill some (lame) prophecy and save the world from an evil alien before the next solar eclipse. That already sounds pretty recycled and uninspired, but the worst of it all is that nothing is ever explained. Ever. Our main character Goku is a high school kid teased by his classmates for being different, but we never see how or why he's different. He just is. Why is this alien Piccolo here? Why is he hellbent on destroying the earth? How did he escape his previous imprisonment? Why is the deadline to stop him the solar eclipse? Beats me. Who is this henchwoman of his and why is she obeying him? No idea. It makes for a troublesome movie when your villains have absolutely no motivation to speak of.

And the protagonists' motivation? Goku wants revenge. Bulma wants fame. Yamcha wants money. Predictable, but it's kind of funny that those three "good guys" should have three of the most popular villain motives, and they act just as one-sided as stereotypical villains. Master Roshi and his saving the world bit seems wonderfully secondary to the others' primary motivations. Way to teach values to the kids, right? Except that there are those awful, inspirational one-liners repeated throughout the movie -- you know, the generic "believe in yourself" stuff, which might have been fine if they could deliever them convincingly, which they couldn't.

The pacing in this movie is also astonishingly bad, which makes it even more obvious just how absurdly weak the story is. I mean, I expected the movie to be bad, but I never expected it to be this bad. We jump from scene to scene with little or no transition; everything seems rushed and cobbled together. There's never a comfortable lull in the action where the viewer's allowed to gather his thoughts, so my impression is that they didn't want the viewer to stop and think too much; having time to think would make it too easy to tell that everything on screen is complete and utter trash. Because of the constant push for mindless action, I couldn't get a good sense of time. Has it been an hour or a day since the last scene? They mention early on that the solar eclipse is in x number of days, which gives a frame of reference for the film on the whole, but that still doesn't help the scene-to-scene pacing.

At times, I wasn't even sure how seriously I was supposed to be taking the movie. Some scenes could have been funny if you knew that they were just making fun of themselves, but the fact that you couldn't tell made it even more confusing. Some scenes were just so over-the-top and ridiculous that you'd think, "This has to be on purpose!" But that feeling of uncertainty remains and kills the humor completely. Some scenes reminded me of the 90's Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: they were campy, but didn't seem intentionally so, and just all around reminiscent of silly, children's action shows with gimmicky fights, familiar plot devices, and hilarious costuming. The sad part is, of course, that Power Rangers was superior.

Even before you start trying to compare it to the source material, there is nothing attractive about the story in this movie. Once you start the comparisons though, the disaster becomes markedly worse. There are very, very few similarities between DBE and Dragonball. Those that are there are mostly superficial things -- characters' names, the word "Dragonball," a trademark costume, and some portions of the character designs. The story is not recognizable. If you take away those names and Goku's bright orange gi, it could be billed as something completely different and no one would be wiser. The things they included for the fans' sake were pointless, really. Yeah, everyone made a fuss when initial photos of Piccolo showed him as not being green, but really? I would have much preferred they put some more effort into making the story not a piece of shit than bother with a fancier make-up job. Bulma had a few strands of blue hair and mentioned Capsule Corp in passing. Great. How about making her less generic of a character?

I think the main problem with Dragonball Evolution's story is that Fox didn't know who to aim the movie to, so they tried for everyone at once. All the generic plots were to tempt the mainstream audience, but it was way too much and the story just started looking like every laughable B-movie ever. Halfway through, they realized they were pissing off every existing Dragonball fan on the face of the planet and tried to tease in some actual references to their source material. By then though, it was too late and the story had been twisted so far out of recognition that the forced references to things like Namek, Oozaru, and Roshi's pervertedness just seemed out of place and stupid. And thus, DBE was born! And we even get a dumb reference to the name of the film in the crappy dialogue of the movie!

CHARACTER & ACTING - My kid brother could probably write a deeper, more rounded, and more relateable characters than any that appear in this film. They single out Goku as being "different" somehow, but how is anyone supposed to relate if they don't know what makes him different in the first place? Is it because he has no parents? Because he lives in the middle of no where? Because his name is weird? (Well, Chi Chi's is too, but she's popular!) Goku is adorably eighteen, but he faces bullies in school. Seriously? Where does this grade school bullying come from? Who in high school really faces these kinds of stereotypical bullies? All he wants is to be left alone and to get the girl! Once again, I can't imagine a further departure from Dragonball's Goku, but even without that comparison, there's nothing redeeming about the movie's character.

In some half-assed, roundabout way, I suppose the movie was trying to have a "coming of age" theme. As such, Goku would need to learn to accept and believe in himself before he could save the world. Dandy. But as much as the movie tried, I remained unconvinced that he had serious self-esteem issues to begin with. He was able to stand up to his bullies fine, and his progress with Chi Chi was only a matter of time. Where's the struggle here? As soon as he realized that Chi Chi was a "fighter" also and knew what ki was, there was very little self-doubt left, which made the climax of the movie very anticlimatic.

Goku also had a few endearing, manga-like traits sneak into the movie, such as his unquestioning devotion to his grandfather ("He said he'd tell me what happened to my parents when I turned eighteen!") and silly daydreaming, but those qualities clashed so much with his otherwise modern-day, typical high school student character that I kind of wish they'd just left them out completely, especially since Justin Chatwin completely failed to capture the child-like innocence and ignorance of Toriyama's Goku. Toriyama's Goku was cute stupid. DBE's Goku is just retarded stupid.

Goku was a flat character, but the rest of the cast was worse. Bulma, Chi Chi, and Mai were all gimmicky fillers for character archetypes. The techy ally, the girlfriend, the evil henchwoman. Yamcha was a completely useless character that served absolutely no purpose beyond becoming Bulma's five minute love interest. Master Roshi got to recite a prophecy, turn a monestary into a bed n' breakfast, and train Goku to paladin level in all of a week. All of these people were (bad) plot devices more than characters. Not to mention Piccolo, who has all of a dozen lines in the entire movie, no motivation, and no purpose beyond giving Goku an obstacle to overcome (except not really). All of the acting was sub par as well, though it might have been because all of the actors were so bewildered at the monstrosity they've signed on to play that they had no idea what to do.

It also bothers me immensely that the best derogatorive name that the bullies could come up with for Goku was "Geeko." /facepalm

MUSIC - I was too shocked and offended at how terrible the story and acting both were to really pay attention to the music, but I suppose it was about average. There were no lyrical inserts in the film, and if Ayumi Hamasaki's "Rule" played in the credits somewhere, I didn't stick around to hear it. As I said all along anyway, Ayu can't save a shitty movie all by herself. (And I feel sorry for her for having her music attached to such an abomination.)

ANIMATION & EFFECTS - I've seen better effects in Disney Channel and Sci-fi original movies. I'm not kidding. The dragonballs and ki blasts were shiny, but poorly integrated into every scene that featured them. They felt out of place and exceedingly silly. More and more, you just feel like the transition from manga and anime to live action was something that should have never been attempted in the first place. Even if the story wasn't terrible and the characters weren't uninteresting, things that work in other mediums don't always work with live action. Dragonball Evolution didn't work visually either. The Kamehameha can suddenly be used to light (and douse) candles and to bring back the dead, but it wasn't much to look at.

Matrix-style slow motion for fights just looked stupid and overdramatic. Bulma's Capsule Corp. vehicles were kind of interesting, but never focused on long enough to be relevant. Piccolo still looks like he walked onto the set for the wrong movie, but decided to stick around for shits and giggles. And he had a giant, floating can opener building with no explanation. Oozaru looked like he came out of a crappy 70's werewolf movie. Shenlong was a hilariously Western-looking dragon. That's just insulting.

OVERALL - Dragonball Evolution was the worst movie I'd seen in a long, long time (arguably the worst I've ever seen, but I can't be sure since I habitually block out all memory of other shitty movies I've seen), and I'm confident that I could make that claim even if I knew nothing about Toriyama's Dragonball. Fox's first mistake was deciding that Dragonball could be adapted in live action at all. Being a weird fusion of myth, sci-fi, and campy humor was fine for a comic and a cartoon, but live action as a format destroys many of the illusions we come to accept in the previous incarnations of the franchise. Ki blasts and green aliens just don't translate well.

Still, the fact that it was doomed from the beginning doesn't excuse Fox from the terrible product that just debuted at #8 in the States. It doesn't excuse the amateur writing, the poorly developed characters, or the horrendous special effects. (I am running out of synonyms for "terrible.") I just hope that a lesson is learned in all this. Some things just weren't meant to be adapted. Dragonball was one of them.

Zac Bertschy of ANN, in all his snarky glory, probably summed it up the best: "[T]his movie appeals to nobody. It was made for no one. People who aren't familiar with the Dragon Ball story at all will be so flabbergasted by what's happening that they will likely tell everyone they know that it's one of the worst movies they've ever seen. Fans who do know what the general story is will be furious at just how unbelievably badly they screwed this entire thing up. Kids are used to better writing than this in their weekday afternoon cartoons. It's a clunky, tiresome, badly executed, horribly written pile of shame that deserves no quarter."

Now. Let's just pretend this never happened. Read the rest of this entry...

FUNimations Puts Everything Everywhere

Apparently, FUNimation announced at Sakura-Con that they'll begin streaming some of their videos on ANN. Earlier this month, they added a bunch of stuff to Veoh. There was also the recent announcement that they'd be adding a bunch of old TOEI properties to the their own video site and that they'd be adding a bunch of shows from their rival, Viz, to their broadcasting station. And of course, they already have a YouTube channel and Hulu channel with a ton of stuff on both. Oh, and their Playstation Store is now up too, the latest of their various Download-to-Own platforms (the others being their own site, Xbox Live, iTunes, and Amazon Unbox). I might have missed some. Is it just me or is this a bit much?

On one hand, I'm always happy to see FUNimation take the initive and find new ways to get their products to their fans and their customers. On the other hand, it's starting to feel kind of disorganized. Many of the titles are available across most of the streaming sources -- YouTube, Hulu, FUNimation Video, and now ANN -- but there still seem to be a number of series that are only available in one place or another; I think the FUNi video site has the most titles, which makes sense, but then I kind of wonder why they bother with everything else? Most video sites are pretty much the same to me; Hulu might have the best quality of the aforementioned, but I find myself using the FUNi site more than anything else because I perceive it to be more beneficial to them.

But they're obviously finding all of these partnerships worthwhile if they keep on adding more. It's curious to note then, that they're still absent from the Crunchyroll chaos. For the DTO stuff, it makes sense that they should spread out as not everyone has Xbox or Playstation or iTunes or use Amazon and all of them use DRM (correct me if I'm wrong; I don't use any of them). The DRM thing is another debate entirely, but as long as people have far, far too many options for DTO products, FUNimation doesn't have much of a choice but to go where their customers go, even if they have their own site for it (also DRM'd? Not sure). Is it the same for streaming video?

Some sites work better for some people, and some sites are available to people in different countries. There are dozens of quirks that set each site apart from the others, but the question remains... why? If we can assume that the FUNimation video site works for everyone in their intended audience, why would spread everything out? (And if we can't assume that, then FUNi should obviously be working to fix that.) Is their primary goal exposure or ad revenue from people bumming around the video sites? If the concern is exposure, why not place trailer videos on the other sites, directing everyone back to their own video site? If the concern is revenue, wouldn't they make more money when they don't need to deal with a contract and a middle man? Is that why they've avoided Crunchyroll?

Me, I'm obsessive-compulsive and want everything to be orderly. That's probably the main reason it's starting to bother me that FUNimation's putting everything everywhere, but hey, if this is what's most beneficial to them, then I guess that's that. On the whole, I hope that eventually this Internet streaming thing starts to simmer down and settle into the status quo and then maybe slowly, everything will become more organized. Read the rest of this entry...

Still Not Sure About This Fullmetal Reboot

Finally saw the first episode of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood tonight. As I've mentioned, I wasn't that eager to see it, but then my RSS feeds started getting cluttered with other bloggers posting about it and I spent the week feeling a little impatient. It's always annoying having to avoid reading things 'cause you're not up-to-date, but I guess that's something I'll just have to deal with since I'm going to be adamant about supporting FUNimation's stream on this one. I'm actually pretty disappointed that so many people seem to have downloaded fansubs anyway since I think a vast majority of anibloggers reside in countries that are getting a simulcast in one form or another. (Sorry, Europe!)

That said, I was surprised to find that I had ton of issues getting the video to work right for the stream. I'd previously seen all of Ouran Host Club and some of Mushishi on FUNi's video site and never had any issues, so I'm not sure what was up -- the video wouldn't load at all in Firefox, so after several attempts, I took it into Chrome. There, it loaded... but very slowly. Like, absurdly slowly. It kept stopping to buffer, so I decided to just let it sit to load the whole thing before playing. It took like two hours to load the whole episode. Unbelievable. I'm sure there was a lot more traffic on the site than usual today, but still... I sure hope it isn't like this every week. :|

The video quality was great once it did load though. The subtitling is consistent with the other subs FUNi offers, and that's pretty damn good, I'd say. I would have liked to see a translation to the opening and ending themes, but that's not a huge deal. It did bug me a little that they used "sneaked" instead of "snuck" twice in the episode; even though the former is actually more correct than the latter, "snuck" has become so much more common these days. Oh, well. All words are created equal, but some are more equal than others!

Anyway, on to the actual content of the episode...

Honestly, I don't know what to make of it. I mean, I still haven't read any of the manga, so I still have nothing to be purist about and can't make constant comparisons between this new series and the source material. Still, this first episode felt... very choppy. It was entirely too obvious that the whole thing was set up to introduce a multitude of characters, concepts, and plots, and even without having read the manga, it felt very fillery and forced. I'd be curious to know if someone new to the franchise would have understood any of what was happening. Ed, Al, Mustang, Hughes, Armstrong, Hawkeye, and Bradley were all introduced in this episode, with last minute appearances by Lust and Gluttony, and it was a bit overwhelming. I'm sure there could have been a much better way to kick things off.

The episode plot was exceedingly predictable, and the Isaac character wasn't very interesting at all. I did like most of the other characterizations though. The great dynamic between Ed and Al seemed much more obvious in this version -- I was really happy to see Al help out a lot more in the fights, and the brothers' relationship felt well established even before they went into that obligatory flashback. The height joke felt a little out of place though, especially in an otherwise serious episode: they just did it one too many times, I guess.

Mustang isn't nearly as big an asshole to Ed in this reindition. His presence just seems more comical all around. The same could be said of both Hughes and Armstrong, really. Sure, they're more easygoing characters to begin with, but since they had been introduced separately in the previous anime, it was more obvious from the get-go that each had a more serious side to their character. I don't doubt that all three of them will eventually get the attention they deserve, and they were certainly all quite endearing in this episode, but it was still a little disappointing to see most of the military start off so gimmicky.

It's my understanding that the original anime kept up with the manga pretty well until about halfway through the series. If that's the case and I'm to assume that the story will be pretty much the same for the first half of FMA:B, then I guess the long-term plot setup for this episode was all right? We know that Ed and Al fucked up with alchemy and lost their bodies, and we know they're looking for the Philosopher's Stone. We know that the military did some shady stuff during the Isbalan War that the brothers are unaware of. We know that there are some characters hiding in the shadows pulling puppet strings of one sort or another. That's all the basics, right? What I didn't get was an impression of how this story is going to play out. The preview for the next episode seems to be entirely flashback, so I don't know what to expect next as far as the "current" timeline goes. Hohenheim being in the opening theme seems oddly suggestive, and considering how late he appeared in the previous series, I wonder if I should expect anything different this time.

Speaking of the opening theme though: it was awesome! YUI has a great voice and the song was very eerie. The tempo and general tone of the song felt very different as far as FMA goes, but I can see it fitting wonderfully if they keep a more serious mood for the series. The animation was great as well, and it worked at getting me more excited about the episode, however brief that feeling was. And the ending theme was pretty much the most adorable thing I've ever seen. Seriously. WHY SO CUTE. The style reminded me a lot of piggyhoho's work for her Chibi SEED Town project. The song was pretty awesome for the ending as well. :3

I've only seen one or two episode of the original series in Japanese -- not nearly enough to get a decent impression of the original voice cast -- so I can't really comment on the new voices either. Mustang sounded pretty good to me though, as did the brothers, Hughes, Armstrong, and everyone else. The animation quality for the episode itself seemed to go back and forth a lot; one thing that really stood out was the lighter outline they used on Ed's hair, which didn't look that great. It makes him look too blonde, which is kind of jarring. They also added in a few thought bubbles, likely to make the series more reminiscent of the manga, but it really felt unnecessary. I want to say that the animation in the original was better, but that might be an unfair assessment based on one episode. Plus, the fact that I watched the original series off a television broadcast and not an online stream is probably significant.

Overall, I feel incredibly neutral about this series thus far. I wasn't disappointed with the episode, but it failed to impress me. Even if it does get better though, I don't think much can be done to sway me from my skepticism about what lies beyond the point at which the manga stops. Read the rest of this entry...

Third Look at the Art of the DOGS OAV

Okay. You know, now I'm just kind of confused.

We had our first look at the art of the DOGS OAV back in December. It was questionable, particularly for Badou and Haine's designs, but I decided to be optimistic. This optimism seemed to have paid off, as the short trailer that surfaced last month looked brilliant. There actually aren't many shots of Haine in the trailer, but Badou, at least, looked terrific. (Camoflague print is still missing from jacket, but I'll live.)

Now, some character sketches seem to have surfaced, and it looks like we took three steps forward just to take ten steps back?

Now, Mihai still looks great. His facial expressions and angles are great, and his outfit is pretty spot on as well. Naoto's turnarounds look fine, and her facial studies aren't half bad either, albeit a little generic-feeling. At first glance, Haine doesn't look terrible either: I love the boots in his turnarounds, and the top row of faces on his facial studies looks pretty good. What gets me are his eyes on second row -- especially on the left-most face. Also, that guy needs more forehead, man. The more I stare at it, the more I want to get into art kid super critique mode.

And Badou. God, look at Badou's face! He doesn't even look consistent from face to face on that design sheet! What is this freaky-eyed, long-faced monstrosity?

AHHHH!!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

....

All kidding aside though, it's really weird to see these sheets, honestly. I've always known character design sheets for anime to be pretty spot-on with their animated counterparts, and these just throw me for a loop because I just rewatched the footage from the trailer and Badou still looks great! What's up with this nonsense? I almost feel like we're being trolled. In the end, I guess it doesn't really matter how shitty these sheets look as the actual animation remains as awesome as it was in the trailer. I find these character sheets kind of insulting to Miwa Shirow's art in general, but it isn't like we haven't seen huge style shifts from manga to anime before. It usually turns out okay, even if it's a little different.

I'm just kind of fearful of some random cheap crap showing up in the backgrounds:

That's what I immediately thought of when I saw that Badou. Do not want.
Read the rest of this entry...

Updated for the Century: Dragonball Kai

I just finished watching the first episode of Dragonball Kai with my roommate. It was very... strange. It was nostalgic in many ways, but somehow, it also felt like a completely new experience. Dragonball Z, along with Sailor Moon, was one of the first series that really propelled me into anime on the whole. It wasn't the first anime I'd seen or the first I'd loved (those would be My Neighbor Totoro and Zettai Muteki Raijin-Oh), but I'm sure that I'm not the only one to have ever-sweet memories of coming home from school every day with Toonami to look forward to. I haven't rewatched DBZ since it ended its initial run on the block years and years ago, and I never did dig up the Japanese original to take a gander at either.

In reality, it really hasn't been that many years. DBZ's original dub run ended in April 2003. Six years. That's not that long... right?

Though I've never seen the Japanese version of DBZ, I have heard its opening theme, and it really struck me just how similar in style and mood the new opening is to the original. I think it's pretty amazing that they were able to do something like that -- the nostalgia factor is definitely there, but it's still a new song set to new animation, allowing for a new experience for everyone. The music is very energetic in that sweet, innocent kind of way: fun, but not that deep. The updates in animation are mostly apparent in the increased levels of shininess all around. It's a great improvement while still maintaining all the charm of the older animation style -- at the very least, no one is going to mistake this as a new series. It's a remastering for sure.

The first episode contains a fair bit of recap and flashback since it's only DBZ that's being remastered and not Dragon Ball. It's a good refresher though, especially since the beginnings of DBZ/K involve so many of the minor characters that don't really make it to the second half of the series. Hearing the original voice cast for the first time was kind of shocking, honestly. Bardock sounds like his balls never dropped, and Goku is similarly afflicted (among other reasons, perhaps this is why everyone is so shocked to find out that Goku has a kid? :P). For the former, that's just hilarious; for the latter, it's humorously appropriate. Of course, both characters are voiced by women (the same one, in fact), and women voicing men in anime isn't exactly a new or strange phenomenon, but considering how manly both characters are supposed to be, it's kind of jarring?

Everyone else sounds pretty awesome though. Bulma doesn't sound nearly as annoying in Japanese, and Gohan is actually kind of cute? (All of Toriyama's silly name puns are also five times more obvious now, haha.) I am kind of excited to know that there will be no dealing with Cartoon Network's censors this time around, so Roshi is free to be as perverted as he wants! The episode goes on to introduce both Raditz and Piccolo. Raditz feels so much more badass here -- his voice is much, much more manlier than his father and brother's, anyway. Meanwhile, Piccolo has been deemed weak and useless already, and I can already imagine the Internet's resounding cheers when we finally get to the "over 9000" part.

I don't remember how the first couple of episodes of the original DBZ went exactly, but the tempo of the series does feel much quicker. They'll be shrinking a 291-episode series into ~100 episodes; even with all the filler axed out, this is going to be some amazing compression job. Nothing in this first episode felt rushed though; on the contrary, it was a pretty relaxing and well-paced episode.

Overall, it was a pretty good time. I'm still kind of surprised at DBK's existence though. It's one thing to just remaster it digitally, but this is really more like an super upgrade than any simple remastering job though. DBK is renamed and re-airing in a different aspect ratio; it's in HD. The series itself is being re-cut to better fit Toriyama's manga, and it's getting new opening and end themes to boot. Compare that to a simple renewed edition like the Blu-ray of Akira or a freaky remake like whatever's happening to Fullmetal Alchemist (haven't watch it yet; holding out for FUNimation's official stream). I find it pretty interesting, too, that DBK feature's DBZ's original voice cast, but FMA doesn't. This is going to be a pretty fun run, but I'm glad DBZ/K is getting the treatment it's getting. I owe this series a lot, after all. I wonder if there's any US-made cartoon that's revered as much to even think about getting something like this.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to sitting down every week with my roommate to watch this, especially considering we first met seven or eight years ago, on the Internet, on a DBZ forum. ;D Oh, the memories! Read the rest of this entry...

FMA: Brotherhood to be Simulcast

I probably shouldn't be as surprised as I am considering how much amazing progress this digital streaming and simulcast thing has seen in the last few months alone, but I am seriously applauding FUNimation for this move. Four days lag time between the Japanese broadcast and an official English sub (presumably) isn't quite simultaneous, but it's good enough for me. That's about how long I generally waited to watch my weekly Soul Eater anyway, so it's great to see FUNi stepping up like this and beating the fansubbers to the chase since they do already have the series licensed.

I'm really curious to see how many fansub groups this official stream deters. Since the stream is only available for those in the US and France, there will likely still be foreign language sub efforts. It's probably presumptious of me, but I feel at least a little confident in guessing that a significant portion of fansubbers and leechers reside in the US. I don't usually keep up with these things, so I'm not sure if any major fansub groups have already announced FMA:Brotherhood as a project, but if there have been, I wonder if any will drop it out right following this announcement.

Dattebayo dropping Naruto when Viz started its simulcast was a big deal. It's exciting to see FUNimation starting to do something similar with a new series -- especially FMA, which is already wildly popular in the States.

As for this series... I'm still kind of pessimistic about it; its very existence right now annoys me. Even though I'm a little relieved that it isn't a sequel after all, the fact that it's a remake doesn't help that much either. The bottom line I have to repeat is that the manga still isn't finished; why are you remaking the series now? If you're going to remake a series so it's more faithful to its source, why don't you wait until the source is actually complete so you aren't inevitably forced to start making stuff up like you did the first time? What's going to change in this remake? Seriously, what's going to change?

Haha, honestly, I think I'm now more excited about FUNimation's stream of the series than the series itself. There's been a lot of experimentating with the digital streaming, and it's been confusing because most companies will have a site stream in addition to a YouTube and Hulu channel. I actually really like FUNi's video site though, so I definitely look forward to having a completely legitmate way of watching this series as it airs. I almost wish FUNi had more ads on its video site -- I do want to support them, and if I can do it without actually buying anything (hey, we're all struggling, y'know?), then all the better. These are still experiments -- they are undoubtedly still messing around and seeing what works -- but I want them to succeed. Read the rest of this entry...