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Kept you waiting, huh? For this episode we’re all reviewing manga titles. Gerald’s reviewing Dororo by Osamu Tezuka and Daryl’s reviewing Ressentiment by Kengo Hanazawa. Clarissa’s review of Part 4 of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure will be postponed. Fear not Jojo’s fans, it’s still going to happen, just not now.
Two hours may not be enough time to make up for the AWO deficit, but in the previous…weeks…Daryl was once again a guest star on the Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast where he talked about Drive in an attempt to restart the Big Month of Mark [Dacascos], and was a guest on the Mistakes of Youth “podcast” (there is no podcast-specific feed!) where he once again talked about Macross Frontier. Also, the original poll was about whether or not you used the BitTorrent link, but it was taken down since we can just look at the tracker statistics to see exactly how many people used it.
And before anyone asks: if you want one of the hats, we can hook you up. Also, mudkip hats. Inquire within!
Introduction (0:00 – 24:25)
Daryl for whatever reason has decided to boost the crap out of the low frequency end of his voice in an attempt to sound cool for this entire episode, but it’s probably just [comically…?] distorted. Further proof that everyone he knows is becoming smarter than him by virtue of their continued educations, though perhaps “smarter” is the new “dumber.” In the emails department, we get some feedback regarding our discussion from the last episode regarding the cancelation of Toonami. We then shill like it’s going out of style for Hulu and its recent anime additions. Cross our hearts, we aren’t on the take. The site just has all kinds of awesome things on it. At some point MTV Music gets brought up, and since Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is on the brain the inevitable ugliness of Dio in the Holy Diver video is mentioned. And do we have toy/figure/model kit collections? PERHAPS.
Let’s News! (24:25 – 45:19)
With the exception of the fact that FUNimation seems to be doing better than expected, there is like, nothing but sleaze to talk about this episode. In an attempt to delay this fact, we go into what some of the top selling anime titles of the last few months have been, but it’s only a matter of time before we start talking about people who want to marry fictional characters, whether or not loli/shota stuff qualifies as obscenity, and a 38 year old guy who really, REALLY hopes the answer to that question is “no” right about now.
Promo: Weeaboobies (45:19 – 46:00)
Aside from the fact that this is the WORST NAME FOR ANYTHING EVER and also that face piercings = automatic disqualification, this all-female hosted anime podcast is out there to be excessively immature so we don’t have to be. But wait…we’re also excessively immature. Actually, I can’t really think of any truly “mature” podcasts dedicated to Japanese cartoons. I think people say that’s us from a relative standpoint. That is terrifying.
Review (manga): Dororo (46:00 – 1:10:27)
Then again, maybe it’s because we’re reviewing the Osamu Tezuka stuff. Gerald gets into this 3-volume manga series that has been released in English courtesy of Vertical Inc, which for our money’s worth is an early precursor to the “shonen” genre of anime that dominates much of the anime we consume in the US. Daryl reviewed this in the pages of Otaku USA magazine, PS buy the latest issue because it is radical kthxbye
Review (manga): Ressentiment (1:10:27 – 1:49:12)
Daryl’s been making offhand references to how good this comic is for quite some time now, but it’s only now that THE TRUTH can be told. Forget about Genshiken, Welcome to the NHK, Otaku no Video, and all that flippity floppity stuff: this is the real shit. Finally a tale of otakudom that tells it like it is…or at least, we think. Despite only being 4 volumes long, it’s not available for sale in the US and the scanlation efforts stopped at Chapter 29. Perhaps this review will inspire Manga-Screener or someone else to FINISH THE FIGHT. We can only hope. Our salvation–or lack thereof–depends on it!
Closing (1:49:12 – 1:55:54)
Hey, you people who responded to the previous poll saying you were interested in buying AWO T-shirts and/or hoodies (as famously depicted here)? Send us emails with some contact information, desired sizes, and the like. Once we get enough people, we’ll be able to put those orders in! How much would you pay for these things? We’re thinking that since they need to be shipped, it might be $10 for a shirt and $20 for a hoodie once we factor in the “buy mailers and postage” cost, but who knows? Let us know. Next episode will probably be a bonus edition where we do a variety of convention reports: Anime Weekend Atlanta, SITACon, and EXPCon. Plus we should have that Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 4 review ready to go. Next episode proper, we’re hoping to get Ryan Gavigan on as our special guest! Daryl will be talking about the original Bubblegum Crisis OAVs, Gerald will be talking about Riding Bean, and Clarissa will not be talking about Gunsmith Cats since she’s going to cover Yakitate! Japan. See you hopefully sooner than it took for this one to come out. Fallout 3 doesn’t play itself, you know! In the meantime, you can look at this picture of the Bureau of ATF:
Woohoo, I picked the best possible time to skip work! 4-day weekend and a new AWO, this is gonna be the best Veteren’s Day ever!
My live bookmark in Firefox said “Anime World Order Show # 74 – Special All-Man…”
I was both intrigued and afraid.
EXCELLENT! Thank you guys. I really enjoyed this episode.
Funny that despite Viz and Funimation being king shit of the mountain for anime DVD’s now, I haven’t bought a single thing from either. ADV’s releasing some new stuff, mostly crap I never heard before but I’m excited for their release (finally) of Guy Double Target. So it’s pretty much Bandai Ent., Media Blasters and picking up the leftover pieces of the meat from CPM corpse.
Hulu & MTV's video thing are all well and good. As long as you are American.
Unlike Youtube, the majority (if not all) of content of these two sites is only viewable within the US.
Boo to that.
Oh and using Batman TAS sound clips in your Ressentiment review. Fucking gold man. I miss that show, mainly because it proved that there COULD be serious animation on U.S. TV.
Also I wanted say, I know that some model kits look great but in this day and age there’s also completed toys that look just as good (@ Clarissa. Yes there’s even Code Geass ones too). I rather have something a bit more sturdy (last kit I bought the new L-Gaim MkII they did).
Even with the lack of Jojo’s, this episode was great!
I second the request for you guys to post pictures of your anime collections; DVDs, Manga, Figures, whatever you have. If you guys have as much stuff as you’ve claimed to have bought, then I can imagine that your collections are terrifyingly huge.
I’m really exited that you guys are finally getting Ryan Gavigan on the podcast; you’ve only been talking about it for, what, two and a half years now? And the stuff you guys are going to be talking about is all awesome. Although, I have to ask, didn’t you guys say in the past that when Ryan comes on the show, you would review The Irresponsible Captain Tylor? I’m sort of intrigued as to why you aren’t reviewing that, but nevertheless, it shall be a great show.
I ditched the poll asking about whether or not you used the torrent link for this latest episode since I can simply look at the tracker statistics for that. Please vote in the new one instead!
Brack: Circumventing the “USA-only” requirements of various websites is actually pretty easy. There are programs that do it. I did a Google search and found one program named Hotspot Shield that’s free, but I’m sure there are tons more.
tj: Ryan’s not actually as big a Tylor fan as I thought, so we’ll save that one until the next time we get Neil Nadelman back on since he translated that and can tell us stories like how he had to fix the Engrish/misspellings on that eyecatch one frame at a time.
I’d marry Mikuru Asahina. But I’d probably marry Kaede first. Or just all characters voiced by Yuuko Gotou. I already emailed the real Yuuko Gotou asking to marry her and that ended in tears 🙁
Stories such as the guy getting busted for loli porn naturally bothers me, since I buy and import that stuff from time to time. I’m probably doubly suspicious being crazy and Iranian.
My Macross show would have probably been better if I actually liked Macross Frontier and cared about any of the characters. I mean, I didn’t even like Ranka in the end. When it was all over I was just glad it was over. In the end it’s mostly just Daryl preaching, which is fine since he actually knows and cares about Macross and I don’t.
Anyways, looking forward to the Riding Bean review since Riding Bean is one of the most awesome cartoons ever. It also has a cut of animation that looks like it came from a scene in the Blues Brothers. Which it probably did.
Daryl: Concerning Hulu and the likes, I thought the main benefit of sites like these is that they’re legal, so I don’t really see the difference between using means to bypass the USA-block and resorting to e.g. Veoh. Except maybe the quality of the videos, which I can’t really judge, since I haven’t watched anything on Hulu.
(And just BTW, Hotspot Shield is a really crappy program.)
Thank you so much for reviewing Ressentiment. Every since you recommended it, I read up to where the translators left off.
It’s become one of my favorite manga, and I would love nothing more than to have it animated, though that would never happen.
Thank you very much for the entertaining review on Ressentiment. I am sure it is something that I will enjoy quite a bit.
Yay! Thanks guys.
How good is the Dororo live action movie? Color me intrigued.
I’m a dick, but I think more people should be arrested for having loli porn. Not because there is anything immoral about it: I just don’t like it, and I irrationally percieve that it’s that sort of shit that is ruining contemporary anime, as well as lower budgets, computer laziness, and shitty writing (though anime and manga have never had a shortage of that).
I read Ressentiment when Daryl mentioned it in the last review (holeee shit), and I couldn’t stop. That night, I read all that has been scanlated so far. It’s such an ugly story–I can’t look away. It’s like Shamo in that regard, except the ugliness isn’t totally bad ass, unlike Shamo.
I didn’t vote in the t-shirt poll, but I want a shirt, so I sent you awesome awo’s two separate emails to that effect: one indicating my interest, and the other, giving you my address and shirt size. It would be the first anime-related shirt I’ve ever bought.
Can’t wait for Clarissa’s review: Clarissa is awesome, the first 3 parts of JoJo are awesome, and part four isn’t full-on FABULOUS yet. I only read the first volume, but I do want to continue someday.
So Chuang Yi (Singapore manga company that did the beginning of Guyver in English) is releasing Black Jack NEO in English sometime this month. Pretty interesting, no? I’ve heard good things about it.
So keep up the great work AWO. And get better jobs so you can dedicate more time to it 😉
Good show as usual guys!
Hearing that one guy’s e-mail about MZ23 and War, I personally think animation is capable of depicting war on the same level as live-action can do, if not better. I also watch Megazone 23 over and over because I find something new every time I watch it (if only because it reminds me solely of the 1980’s), even the sequel, but don’t ever see “The Third” more than once, after that, burn the disc, you’ll be glad you did!
Also to point out Gerald’s pronunciation of “Navarre” which I won’t hold against him at all, just that I’ve been more familiar with that name as there’s a street on the east side of town called Navarre Ave. I might’ve said something about this before but I forgot.
Brack said…
Hulu & MTV's video thing are all well and good. As long as you are American.
Unlike Youtube, the majority (if not all) of content of these two sites is only viewable within the US.
Boo to that.
Here’s always setbacks!
Thanks for the Batman TAS clips too. Sorta makes me want to go hunt down that Clayface episode again. The guy in “Ressentiment” almost sounds a lot awfully like myself (my life has been that way for a long while)! I have yet though to go down that road from model kits, hug pillows to marrying a 2D character yet, so hopefully I will not be taken down that easily.
It’s interesting you mentioned Asperger’s Syndrome here. I often wonder if that’s what I have or not. I haven’t shown a real narrow interest in something as mundane as TV station logos of course, but the amount of vids on YouTube tell a different story I hadn’t really thought of at all. I don’t think there is a real cure at this at all besides the possibility of there being that chance we could grow out of these difficult situations in our lives and move on. If anything, I guess it’s one of those that does take time, and perhaps I could set aside next year to make those steps i my life if I ever want to show my family I could be somebody they likely don’t think I’ll ever be.
My bro finished Fallout 3 the other night and was seriously disappointed in the ending. 🙁
NONETHELESS I WILL STILL FIGHT MY WAY THROUGH.
For those not inclined to play through the prior Fallout games, you can watch The Fallout Retrospective from Gametrailers. Maybe Gerald might want to watch this.
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/42026.html
Dead Space is more exciting than Fallout 3 by something close to a country mile, guys.
Another great episode guys! Daryl, the use of Batman: TAS is always a plus esspecially anything with Hagen. At moments of frustration in our lives my brother and I often yell out “I can’t fix it anymore” if the other is in earshot.
For Clarissa
http://www.animenation.com/9784391626438.html
Two hours, and a part II is coming? I love you guys.
Darryl: I tried Hotspot Shield a while ago in an attempt to watch new Chowder on CN’s site and the new all PFT all the time Best Week Ever on VH1’s site. It just showed me some adverts and failed to show me any cartoons or besuited gap toothed pop culture commentary.
Concerning Hulu and the likes, I thought the main benefit of sites like these is that they’re legal, so I don’t really see the difference between using means to bypass the USA-block and resorting to e.g. Veoh.
On the Internet, nobody cares about legality. Not really, anyway. The only thing that truly matters is utility: “is this useful to me?” In that sense, what makes sites like Hulu (or Youtube, or Vimeo, or Dailymotion, or…) worthwhile is the wide variety of selection they have to see all kinds of stuff coupled with the fact that unlike BitTorrent, you don’t have to be concerned with whether or not something terribly obscure is being seeded or how it may affect your upload:download ratio.
The real advantage of sites like Hulu over Youtube is in its actual utility: the fact that the clips aren’t limited to ten minutes and the resolution/overall quality is higher, all while still being free to the average user. Free is pretty important: it’s not like anyone was lining up to pay $2-$6 per episode or whatever it is for the various other streaming anime initiatives (remember Guyver TV?).
The fact that it’s “legal” is just icing on the cake compared to the fact that it’s easy to use, costs nothing, and is reasonably high quality. As such, if Hotspot Shield doesn’t work (and I’ll take your word for it), then just type “hulu vpn -hotspot” into Google and take a look at the 100,000+ search results all about how to bypass any website’s regional site requirements through the use of a Virtual Private Network. There’s Youtube how-to videos and everything.
It’s interesting you mentioned Asperger’s Syndrome here. I often wonder if that’s what I have or not.
No, you don’t have Asperger’s Syndrome. You’re an otaku.
Hmm, maybe that should be a T-shirt too.
I have a real problem with the idea that anyone can be arrested over a drawing on a piece of paper–much less be sent to prison over it.
It’s even more objectionable when one considers it’s perfectly legal in this country to hold, say, an outdoor neo-Nazi rally. That is “political” speech, and indeed, we like to trumpet our nobility in protecting their First Amendment freedoms to speak hatred in public, even as we despise their views. But take another person–that one over there, who we’ve found out is apparently masturbating to drawings in their home. No, defend the neo-Nazi rally in the streets, but that other person, the one in their living room–they, apparently, should go to prison.
In reality, the only true freedom of speech is that which also includes protection for speech whose content might be (even rightfully) hated or despised. Harming others, or incitement or conspiracy to harm others is one thing, and that is where the line must be drawn–never through the speech alone, whatever its content.
As an American, I find it no more unreasonable to defend speech even though it may be hated or despised, than I do to defend the right of someone to buy a gun, even though thousands of Americans have used and will use such guns to commit murder every year. Murder itself is a crime; but if the line extends as far to allow that loaded gun on your table–despite what it could be used for, at a moment’s notice–what are we to say about a law that disallows a mere drawing on paper to be there?
It shouldn’t be assumed that a case of this type has meaning only for a certain class of book; if it is successfully prosecuted, it is likely to have a wider effect, as publishers of more conventional work decide to err on the side of safety by censoring, or not deciding to release a title at all. This sort of be-on-the-safe-side has happened before, and that’s why I urge people to donate to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which has had much success in protecting freedom of speech: http://www.cbldf.org.
–C.
loli pron is serious business 😐
So let’s say that moe marriage law passes. Can a person marry a character they themselves have created?
But is it really the worst thing to like moe shows or a particular character design motif?
“So let’s say that moe marriage law passes. Can a person marry a character they themselves have created?”
Wouldn’t that be incest?
You know, I never thought I would find myself on the "Sanctity of marriage" side of the argument this year, but yeah, when someone demands that they be allowed to marry an inanimate object, I think you gotta draw the line.
I've absorbed all three versions of Dororo (TV, manga, movie), so I'd like to offer some thoughts…
First, the movie is fantastic and everyone should see it. Dororo is a teenager rather than a kid, but it doesn't hurt the story at all. Ditto the wonky CG. It just makes the demons look more unworldy, which works in context.
What the movie does that the other versions don't is seriously explore the very concept you guys talked about, the fact that Hyakkimaru gets weaker & more vulnerable as he gains more original body parts back. There is also a much stronger point made about how his family can never again see him as normal and will always reject him at some level. In short, it does more with the existentialism of 'what is the body' than the other versions.
Unfortunately, it ends at about the halfway point of the other versions. It needs a sequel to go the distance.
There is a more decisive ending in the TV series. The last episode steps past the manga and has Hyakkimaru gain a lot of parts back in a whirlwind montage. I didn't see it subbed, so I couldn't tell if he got to 100%, but it still ended with the parting of characters we see in the manga.
The manga has stories that didn't appear in either the series or the movie, so other than the ending it can be considered the purest version according to Tezuka.
Also of interest, the series is in B&W but it didn't have to be. It went on the air in '69 and was preceded by a full-color pilot film. So the lack of color was a stylistic choice that seems pretty gutsy in hindsight. Maybe it was a tradition by then that Tezuka TV was meant to be in B&W.
But I'm pretty sure the next one was Triton of the Sea, which was all color and produced by THE NISH. The Tezuka-Yamato connection you always wondered about!
I followed your otaku conversation with great interest, and you did a good job of covering the bases. I personally believe that everyone is capable of change, but they're equally capable of sloth. It's just a question of vigilance and self-awareness. Unfortunately, some cultures are structured to reject those who fall too deeply into the sloth.
It's the very definition of nature vs. nurture.
I was listening to AWO in my usual high-tech manner…by having my laptop propped open on the passenger seat. Interestingly, while Daryl’s voice is usually clearest over the tinny PowerBook speakers, his audio tinkering in #74 ceded this spot to Gerald. Clarissa, as usual, holds the balance, much as Red China did in the US-Soviet rivalry.
May God forgive me for getting into an American comics debate, but it’s my understanding that while Daredevil may have superior senses when it comes to imaging the 3-D world (i.e., his radar), he’s at a real disadvantage when it comes to 2-D things a sighted person would take for granted; it doesn’t enable him to make out a TV image, nor is his sense of touch fine enough to resolve a photograph (although it is good enough to read print).
Anyway, I’m still on the DORORO review, but Gerald’s query about how many parts a person could lose and still live had me consulting my first introduction to Japanese culture, the Bond novel YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (“It is here my agents are trained in one of the arts most dreaded in Japan–ninjutsu…”). At the beginning of the book, M…
Wait a minute, the scene I’m talking about is in DR. NO. At the beginning of the book, M dismisses concerns about Bond’s health after nearly dying on the last job by whipping out a list of parts not strictly necessary for survival: “Gall bladder, spleen, tonsils, appendix, one of his two kidneys, one of his two lungs, two of his four or five quarts of blood, two-fifths of his liver, most of his stomach, four of his twenty-three feet of intestines and half of his brain.” And that was just with British Secret Service medicine in 1958. God knows what Hellsing could do these days.
–C.
By the way…it’s strange but true to note that today is the 20th anniversary of the premiere of the fansub of THE WINGS OF HONNEAMISE. I showed it at my college just as a foreign film, not as an anime per se (there was no anime club). I had three or four more screenings of it while at school. Interestingly, the one scene anime fans often go WTF at–the attempted rape–was seen as depressingly realistic rather than mystifying; I think anime fans get confused by any rape scene that lacks tentacles and vagina dentata.
–C.
Thanks for the Hotspot Shield info Daryl. I’m able to watch the Astro Boy shows
Daryl- Uncomfortable and amusing as your rant was, I think you could have stood to discuss that actual manga a bit more that you did. For all the strength of the concept Ressentiment starts with, the execution really seals the deal. For example:
The fine line the mangaka toes between human hideousness, but not repulsiveness. The characters are clearly unattractive, terrible people, but we are pulled toward them instead of pushed away.
The expertly-timed “pull-back-the-curtain” moments of grim reality, like after “Reinhart” makes his grand speech.
And my favorite, Takuro actually getting close to natural human interaction in a night out with his co-workers, only to nervously vomit into his beer mug in a lovingly rendered full-page spread.
By the way…it’s strange but true to note that today is the 20th anniversary of the premiere of the fansub of THE WINGS OF HONNEAMISE. I showed it at my college just as a foreign film, not as an anime per se (there was no anime club). I had three or four more screenings of it while at school. Interestingly, the one scene anime fans often go WTF at–the attempted rape–was seen as depressingly realistic rather than mystifying; I think anime fans get confused by any rape scene that lacks tentacles and vagina dentata.
Somehow I didn’t think that way about that scene, as I found it the same way described, it is quite so realistic it shouldn’t have to be anything other than it is. Glad you got to celebrate the fansub’s 20th!
The best thing about MTV online is reliving the glory days of hair metal. The videos of Stryper and Cinderella are even more powerful now than they were 20 years ago.
Let’s see, first som comments on Tim Eldred’s comments:
…and by the way, SPOILER WARNING
First, the movie is fantastic and everyone should see it. Dororo is a teenager rather than a kid, but it doesn’t hurt the story at all.
And clearly female, unlike the anime and manga, where she’s young enough to convincingly pass as a boy.
Ditto the wonky CG.
… except for the birds…
What the movie does that the other versions don't is seriously explore…the fact that Hyakkimaru gets weaker & more vulnerable as he gains more original body parts back.
I heard that in the video game he gains new abilities as he loses old ones, for example he gains a dash attach when he loses his acid squirting artificial leg. The manga hints at this, showing him run up a wall after getting both his legs, but that’s about it. The movie hints a bit more strongly, showing that he can read people’s mind when he touches them with his real right arm. I can’t remember if the anime hints at this or not.
Unfortunately, it ends at about the halfway point of the other versions. It needs a sequel to go the distance.
They’re planning to do a trilogy.
I liked the film once they got past the origin–I think changing Hyakkimaru’s parts from prosthetics made by a gifted physician to parts from corpses that the physician “Frankensteined” back to life not only cancels Tezuka’s frequent “Doctors are good” theme, but also makes Hyakkimaru’s desire to regain his real body somewhat unnecessary. I mean, if his arms act just like regular arms, wouldn’t the eyes act like regular eyes? Then again, they clearly indicate that he’s blind during one of the fights, so who knows?
There is a more decisive ending in the TV series. The last episode steps past the manga and has Hyakkimaru gain a lot of parts back in a whirlwind montage. I didn’t see it subbed, so I couldn’t tell if he got to 100%, but it still ended with the parting of characters we see in the manga.
I wanted to link to the episode synopses on the official Tezuka site, which claim Hyakkimaru gets all his parts back, the last one (IIRC, and I might not, as I’m not doing this from home and can’t check) being his right arm after defeating the final demon, his own father, but the sight is going thorough some kind of revamp right now, and there currently seems to be no English version. This is pure speculation, but I’m guessing that for the anime they didn’t want to lose the visual of flinging both arms off to reveal swords. Speaking of changes, I’ll have to watch again to be sure, but I think Tahoumaru, Hyakkimaru’s brother, was much more likeable in the anime, and he and Hyakkimaru even became friends, thus making it much more tragic when Hyakkimaru was forced to kill him. When I read the manga, I was thinking “Yeah, it’s a shame that you had to kill your own brother, but he *was* an evil asshole!”
The manga has stories that didn’t appear in either the series or the movie, so other than the ending it can be considered the purest version according to Tezuka.
Though the anime ending preceded the manga ending (I made a timeline, and I’ll post it once I get home).
Also of interest, the series is in B&W but it didn't have to be. It went on the air in '69 and was preceded by a full-color pilot film. So the lack of color was a stylistic choice that seems pretty gutsy in hindsight. Maybe it was a tradition by then that Tezuka TV was meant to be in B&W.
The Official Tezuka Site speculates that it was budgetary, and I’m inclined to agree. Certainly they wouldn’t have been able to sell it to as many foreign countries (no way Fred Ladd could pretend *this* took place in America).
Incidentally, nobody mentioned much about the shitty shitty covers (except for the shark appearing on the wrong volume), though perhaps that was covered enough in previous episodes? While the front covers seem to be designed to drive people away, the spines seem designed to not be noticed. I almost missed the first volume, which I was specifically looking for, because the spines were so inconspicuous.
E. Bernhard Warg
Otakon Classic Video Track
Wannabe podcaster
Actually, this is a better link to the Dororo spines.
Bernhard
Tadaima~!
Here’s the Dororo timeline I put together:
August 27, 1967-July 22, 1968: Manga runs in Shôgakkan Weekly Shônen Sunday
January, 1968: Anime pilot film made (color)
April 6-September 28, 1969: Anime series runs 26 eps on Fuji TV (black & white)
July-October, 1969: Manga concludes in the monthly Akita Shôten Bôken-Oh (it's the last four stories in the collected edition)
September 9, 2004: PS2 Game by Sega, released in the US September 21 as "Blood Will Tell"
January 6, 2007: Live action feature film, US premier New York Asian Film Festival June 22, 2008, released on US DVD by Universal Sept 23, 2008
E. Bernhard Warg
(working on fansubbing the pilot…)
Thanks Bernhard for the Dororo info! Those Vertical spines would've confused me too. If only they had someone more confident to do those covers justice, I probably would've taken better noticed.
I first heard of Dororo by coincidence through checking out the openings of the TV anime up on YouTube a couple years ago. Especially love this one in particular…
This one came out some episodes into the show that changed the title to "Dororo & Hyakkimaru"…
VZ –
For Clarissa
http://www.animenation.com/9784391626438.html
I actually picked that up already at AWA, but thanks for the heads up!
This one came out some episodes into the show that changed the title to "Dororo & Hyakkimaru"…
Yeah, the first 13 were “Dororo,” the last 13 were “Dororo to Hyakkimaru.” The pace was also sped up–the first half of the series all the stories were two or three episodes long, second half they were all one ep long.
E. Bernhard Warg
I’m 33 years old and I still think of myself has a otaku of sorts. So dose this put me in the category of Takuro in Ressentiment.
I’ve been reading Ressintement as well, just about from when daryl was pimping it out so heavily. One thing I noticed that Daryl didn’t give enough props to Echigo, the Vergil to Takuro’s Dante, who’s even more of a stereotypical otaku than Takuro ends up.
A lot of my favourite Ressentiment moments are pretty much Echigo moments, like the afornamented speech scene, or my personal favourite, the profile of one of Echigo’s pet NPCs that has a side note about his sister dying when he was young…
Total non sequitur: Astro Fighter Sunred is fucking awesome!
I took the opportunity to read Ressentiment today and was not disappointed. The careful study of human ugliness and unpleasantness was quite riveting, and I hope that the conclusion sees the light of day soon.
I must point out, however, that Ressentiment did not strike me as an “otaku” story in quite the same way as Genshiken or Otaku no Video. Takuro is painfully socially awkward in ways that the likes of Kanji Sasahara will never be, but he doesn’t strike me as an otaku– he doesn’t have the media fanboy/nerd thing. Hell, if he did, that would proably make him more sociable and agreeable to others. Part of his total charmlessness is that he doesn’t seem to have anything going on in his life at all except for his lousy job.
I’ve started using Hulu to watch the new Shikabane Hime from the Fall 2008 season. It’s not bad; it’s pretty convenient and the only really crappy thing about it so far are the ads; not bad as in content, but the timing is pretty terrible. I’m fine for 30 second ads, but the times they inserted it at were pretty shitty and the ads were all the same!
I actually bought the sub-only version of Gurren Lagann as it was coming out. I don’t know what others were saying, but there were not extras other than clean opening and closing, which is really fine for me because i don’t really pay to much attention to the extras. Personally, I thought the subtitling job was pretty good, but i’m not much of a judge because i only really use subtitles these days as hints to what the characters are really saying. The cost was reasonable as well; i paid a little over $20 for each box set of about 7 or 8 episodes, which for me is pretty reasonable. I think more titles should be released this way to appeal the fan subbing download community; it’s cheap and easy for companies to simply boot releases like this out the door.
OTAKU NO VIDEO is sometimes called an idealistic view of otaku. That’s literally only half true–the other half, the “Portrait of an Otaku” segments, are often downbeat, depressing, and disturbing–and perhaps more so because they’re done in live-action–suggesting that this, whatever the anime segments tell you, is what’s really going on. Although the interviews are of course contrived and edited by Gainax themselves, and garnished with faux-expose narration and charts, it isn’t done with any attempt to redeem their image, or with a positive, “Otaku Unite” viewpoint.
You notice, for instance, that even though female otaku (and not just the variety who are now called fujoshi) certainly existed in Japan during the period ONV describes, none are represented in the live-action interviews. ONV suggested that otaku relate to women only on screen (“…Isn’t Hiroko-chan cute?”) even though Toshio Okada and Yasuhiro Takeda, for example, were both married at the time to 3-D people–a fellow Gainax employee and an SF author, respectively.
–C.
“Patrick said… The best thing about MTV online is reliving the glory days of hair metal. The videos of Stryper and Cinderella are even more powerful now than they were 20 years ago.”
Oh my GOD!!!! Not hair metal!!!! Damn you Guitar Hero!
Man i really should get around to playing Fallout 3, all though my Xbox360 is well……. I think it’s broken.
This is somewhat off topic, but I feel it’s worth mentioning…
I was on Rightstuf, and I noticed that 4 out of the top 5 bestselling manga volumes of last week are 4 different volumes of Blackjack. I give you guys full credit for this.
I think Lucky Star and Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu are the most idealistic view of otaku.
Just an FYI: Listening to this episode will help you when you play Persona 4. 100% serious!
Sorry to be OT but I wanted to report that ADV is not only putting out Guy Double target on DVD, but Legend of Lyon Flare. Finally!
I’ve tried Ressentiment and I have to say, while I do enjoy it, I have to agree that it is not an otaku story. It is more to a socially-inept person story just like how Welcome to the NHK is more about hikkikomori in general than otaku. My only complaint is there is actually two stories, one is about Takuro and “The Ultimate AI”. The latter isn’t addressed in the review so it isn’t exactly as I was expecting.
Anyway, great show as always.