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After giving our convention/panel coverage of Otakon 2015, Gerald reviews the recently released theatrical film Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection of F (or, if you prefer, Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F’). As Gerald does not actually like Dragon Ball Z, this makes him either the least qualified person to do such a thing…or perhaps the MOST.
Introduction (0:00 – 52:48)
All of us went to Otakon 2015. As usual, we didn’t go to any major events whatsoever. No contests, no premieres, no concerts. The rest of the folks with Press badges have that covered. Our beat is industry guests and live events, specifically panels. We had two: Greatest Anime Openings (list of what was shown here) and Anime’s Appearances in US/Western Media. For the record: the source of Gerald’s Zoom Player crashes that have followed him from one system to another was identified. Turns out the latest stable Combined Community Codec Pack (still from 2014 as of this writing) doesn’t handle h264 10bit. You’ve got to install the 2015 beta. Also, current versions of Zoom Player default to EVR for the renderer, and it tends to choke on 10bit as well. Switch to an older one (that isn’t the Overlay Mixer) and you should be fine. Alternatively, you could just be sure that none of your files are encoded that way, but that requires installing additional software.
Also for the record: we witnessed firsthand in the Otakon videogame room that Teens React: Contra is COMPLETELY AND 100% ACCURATE. Yes, Contra is a hard game. But it should not take people THAT long to figure out that bullets kill you, touching enemies kills you, and falling into pits kills you. After at least 15 years of never playing Contra, Daryl was still able to at least clear the first stages without losing a life. That game doesn’t become a nightmare until the waterfall, okay? Dang kids these days, I swear.
Review – Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection of F (52:48 – 1:26:48)
All of us also went to see the new DBZ movie, which in the days since this was recorded ended up making $8 million in the US, which puts it in the top 10 highest grossing anime films in America of all time, beating out The Wind Rises and Howl’s Moving Castle. For those who missed it, it comes out on video 10/20/15. Since Gerald is the one who doesn’t like DBZ, we thought we’d have him lead with his thoughts on the movie! This will DEFINITELY end up well for us in the comments section as well as on our Twitter accounts. Just remember: “Gerald” is different from “Daryl.” The names do sound kind of similar though.
Woo, more AWO-!
What Otakon will get nervous about is really strange sometimes. I ran the Gainax panel (were any of you there?), and one of the stories I told was the story of how Okada wanted the flare sent up by the power armor in Daicon III to turn into a giant vagina, and the only one who could shut him down was Kazumi Amano. Didn’t say it like that of course, but it was still pretty clear what I was talking about.
Not one mention of that after the panel. What the guy running the room /did/ stop me afterwards to warn me about was…cursing. That’s fair enough – I probably did verge pretty close to the PG13 line – but it’s still kinda funny that /that’s/ what they picked out.
I noticed the lack of good content after 22:00 or whatever the 18+ cutoff was too. It got to the point where my friends managed to drag me to a hentai showing for lack of an alternative better than “sit in the programming ops lounge and watch SDF Macross mostly by myself again.” That’s pretty dire.
[We were unable to attend this, since Saturday around 10 AM was when we were in Panel Ops getting everything squared away for our battery of interviews that started shortly afterwards. Although that room was set up to make sure you didn’t stay in there long by playing Record of Lodoss War dubbed in English on loop, that didn’t stop us. At some point a small child tried to make a break for my mouse, and perhaps also steal away the master project files for Otaku no Video in 1080p from Robert Woodhead. Still, it’s good to know that Blue Blazes has enriched all of our lives. I, for one, view it as a historical reenactment. –Daryl]
Surprising that you said this cost 5 million when Transformers: The movie (the original 1986 movie which Toei animated) cost around 6 million and still looks crazy phenomenal today.
[This isn’t quite apples to apples, as you have to factor for inflation. $6 million USD in 1986 is about $13 million now. I may have brought up in the raw recording in defense of the budget allocation that Ghost in the Shell was done on about $5 million as well, but that was 20 years ago. I suppose the cleaner method would be to look at the cost in yen and consider the value of that, which these days isn’t that great. –Daryl]
I think I enjoyed this film just a smidgen more when my co-host informed me the movie plot was based of a song by Hormone the Maximum about Freiza coming back to life. I was informed thatToriyama liked the song and was like “hell yea, I’ll make a movie about it!” So, that swayed my vote. And our review of this will also come out in a couple of weeks.
I’m assuming the movie Gerald brought up in the recording based off the Colombine shooting was “Duck! Carbine High Massacre,” which had a scene where one of the shooters was watching MD Geist and Gunsmith Cats in his room… next to a nazi flag. I’m actually curious how many people in the room knew that film and picked up on the titles shown in it. Is Gerald going to put out a list of titles that he did for his panel on the site? I’m really curious to know what he showed at his panel.
Also, great review, I’m not that big of a DBZ fan to get butt hurt over the flaws DBZ has as a whole.
Hm, apparently I can’t comment linking to FB. Weird… [You should be able to, but the post is held for moderation. But all I saw was that you wrote “Testing…” so I deleted it. –Daryl]
Anyway, I actually am a pretty big DBZ fan. It’s one of my top ten anime ever up there with Madoka, Fumoffu, Ninja Scroll, Strait Jacket and Princess Mononoke. That being said, I agree most DBZ movies are trash.
Despite this, I am actually part of the contingent that liked the (first) Broly movie and thought he was a bad-ass antagonist, though the version I initially saw was a fan-subbed VHS with gratuitous added swearing. Maybe that made anime seem more edgy and mysterious and taboo and “adult” and therefore more appealing to teenage me then.
What I wanted to add to this was that I saw that Battle of the Gods movie at a local theater here and I was/am definitely in the latter group of DBZ fans that were resoundingly disappointed with it. To wit, I remember the general fanboy enthusiasm as we were getting tickets and the excitement in the audience as the film began, and then the palpable chagrin as everyone silently shuffled out of the theater at the end.
I think what Gerald liked about the Battle of Gods movie is also what I/we disliked about it. It was a “DB” movie and not a “DBZ” movie. Well, it was in the sense that I would categorize it as “another bad DBZ movie,” but you know what I mean. I was underwhelmed by it and not particularly amused by its gags and will probably never feel compelled to watch it again. There was also one phrase/word that it kept repeating all the damn time that was really annoying, but I can’t remember what it was…
I sure hope this new Resurrection F one is closer to what the DBZ (as opposed to the more goofy original Dragon Ball) fan is looking for, as you suggest.
Speaking of Erin Finnegan, did you know that there was an Ebay auction with picture of Gerald in it? It apparently sold!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lady-Armaroid-Cosplay-Costume-Space-Adventure-Cobra-Armored-Lady-/201401043805?nma=true&si=eK2czinB8YD3ezWgoj4uU4Mm2gg%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
It’s like Otaku no Video come true, only Erin and Gerald didn’t end up in the throes of LLUUVVVVV (what with Erin being married and all) 🙂
Um, ekkkTHHHHHUSSSE me, I think you are CONFUSING two DIFFERENT female characters in Otaku no Video. PERHAPS you are thinking of Sato, who indeed DID do the Cobra cosplay with Kubo. HOWEVER, the person who later gazed adoringly at him* was NOT Sato, but Fukuhara (NOT “FUJIHARA” AS IT SAYS ON WIKIPEDIA, OKAY?!?!?!?) THANK YOU VERY MUCH.** Why couldn’t I have been born in this golden country?
–Carl
*Of course, this was the pre-Genshiken era, so they weren’t going to get into squishy stuff like actual love. You see, an otaku’s love is very different from that of a square.
**Whereas the annoying hipster version is “You’re welcome.”
Doing best I can as Carl’s post hits the reply limit, I AM thinking of Sato, and if YOU think she didn’t find Kubo desirable, then, Sir, I say you have no vision! NONE! She was just shy when it came to romance! And maybe she was underage and stuff.
THUS I SPEAK AND SAY GOOD DAY TO YOU ! 🙂
(I still laugh at ‘rallyot shotgun’ when anyone who knows a thing about firearms knows it should have been ‘riot’)
Maybe I was misreading the situation, but as Gerald said, it did seem like there was a certain tension present with the staffer monitoring the “Anime’s Appearances in Western Media” panel.
If it were to have happened that the panel got shut down, it occurs to me it would have been oddly pointless. After all, the whole message of the panel was the ways in which anime has already been portrayed in the wider world, both negative and positive–to consider this unsuitable content for an anime con suggests that only the otaku shouldn’t know about this, when everybody else does. A Lifetime movie may not be such a big deal in the entertainment world, but I bet you far more people saw that movie than bought your average U.S. anime release. Likewise, over 700,000 tickets were sold on Madonna’s Drowned World tour that featured the anime segment. 30 Rock was an acclaimed series; The Price is Right is one of the most famous TV game shows. You get the idea. ^_^
As much as I’ve ended up increasingly disagreeing with both Gerald and Daryl about a whole bunch of new anime [you do know Clarissa doesn’t exactly disagree with us on that much… –Daryl], with them liking stuff I don’t necessarily care for or their dismissing several properties I’m finding to be greatly enjoyable….I think there is definitely some truth to this movie being one of the better DBZ films simply because of the character interactions. I don’t see much of a point regarding criticizing the standard DBZ formula for being exactly the same as it has always been, but they did get that right.
Gerald’s comments about Toei being incredibly cheap with their animation makes me all the more amazed that they were able to make something as lavish as Kyousougiga. Interestingly, just about all of the distinguished creators who did exceptional work at Toei in the past (Kunihiko Ikuhara, Mamoru Hosoda, Kenji Nakamura, Rie Matsumoto, etc.) have since left Toei to do good work elsewhere. Maybe Toei is too much of a hassle to work at for most creators?
I’m glad that Toriyama is having a hand in current Dragon Ball productions and that he’s injecting more humor into them (Battle of Gods and, judging by the screen caps I’ve seen on Twitter, the early episodes of Super).