Posts Tagged “review”

I have previously written a number of times about English dubs out for genuine interest in how well or poorly titles are adapted for American consumption. That’s why I was very pleased to read G.B. Smith’s detailed review of Ouran High School Host Club Part 1 for Mania - the first of what I think should become a regular series of Eigo kudasai columns. (This seems like a more fleshed out spiritual successor to a previous AOD column - “Being a Brief Discussion of Anime Dubs” - that was written by Way Jeng, although it should be easier now to evaluate performances more fully now this age of 13-episode season sets.) The reviewer evaluated how well the respective voice actors’ performances conveyed their characters’ emotions, their ability to reflect the existing character dynamics, and the script issues that appear in varying degrees in any English adaptation, especially FUNimation.

It’s a good read if you want to get a sense of how some of the roles were not much of a challenge (Vic Mignogna’s Tamaki, Luci Christian’s Honey) or were “hardly unique” in the case of Monica Rial’s Renge. I concur with the “recommended” verdict of a “solid effort” after sampling some illicitly uploaded dubbed episodes on a certain video-sharing site. FUNi, I would advise you start clamping down on those out of pure business interest since they may detrimentally affect your box set sales to a certain degree!

When I first saw the trailer for Red Garden, I said that I would be interested in watching it and now that I’ve seen some of it, I see that there is more drama and downer moments than the horror-action-oriented trailer conveyed. I got the first DVD in the mail last week after ordering it from ADV as a part of their 15th Anniversary Sale and also received Wild Arms v.1 as a free gift. The first thing I noticed when I popped in the disc was the larger-than-usual font size on the menus. The video itself has some grain on it when watching on an LCD monitor (similar to what I experienced with Tsubasa v.1) which is kind of sad considering this is a Gonzo title, but it doesn’t show up for the most part on a CRT television.
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This month, I lived up to a “promise” I made back in August 2006 that I would buy Solid State Society when it came out. I managed to get the limited edition for $16 from Best Buy three weeks ago and decided to review all three parts of the package: the feature itself, the extras disc, and the soundtrack CD. I wrote the feature part right after I watched it (and revised it slightly recently) but I somehow managed to misplace the extras disc until a few days ago so this entire thing was delayed until now.
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I just finished watching “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” (Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo), a movie I had been wanting to see but hadn’t gotten around it until tonight because a friend bringing it up a couple days ago reminded me about it. TokiKake was a very touching film - made me cry a couple times. My brain is still trying to think about deeper meanings while my hands are typing this so I’m not going to attempt a detailed analysis. (Besides, that would spoil it for those who haven’t seen it, right?)
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Now that I am finished with finals, I have no excuse to not trudge through my backlog of unwatched and unread anime and manga. The first of these is Moeyo Ken OVA, released in January 2005 by ADV Films. I bought this DVD in Japantown during the Cherry Blossom Festival in April for 5 bucks from a video store that was selling off previously rented anime. I bought it and figured I would give it a shot. I finally got around to watching it this past week.

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Today I watched Pale Cocoon and found it very interesting albeit slow for something that has a duration of 23 minutes. The setup is that it’s the 2600s and a man named Ura works in the Excavation Department, inspecting and restoring visual media from the time when the Earth’s surface was still green. His co-workers, including the somewhat aloof Riko, have grown disinterested in working to preserve and categorize images of things that don’t exist anymore and consider it a waste of time. That is, until an unknown video surfaces in Ura’s workload.
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How not to show off an elfgirl poster

I ordered the Genshiken box set in late December as part of RightStuf’s Christmas sale, got it about a month ago, and finished watching it over the weekend. Before I got the anime in the mail, I had already started reading the manga and recently finished volume 2, the plot points of which are covered in episodes 2-7. It was very entertaining for me to watch as I was familiar with the various subcultures of fandom, like cosplaying and figure building, as well as the societal stigmas that such practioners may encounter in public situations.

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Fujiwara Sunao is a girl who dresses like a guy, casually rebels against the principal, and has the ability to manipulate water. She tries to keep her secret hidden while solving problems like dying birds and a single father unable to control his little daughter. Meanwhile, the class president Ikushima makes “advances” on her and the school nurse “Mr. Shizuki” has playful stalker tendencies.

I liked the stories and their morals as well as the art by author Setsuri Tsuzuki but most of the little comedy there was didn’t really connect. Then again, I didn’t expect much as it was labeled “Fantasy/Romance” so it doesn’t negatively impact it too much. I was already accustomed to woman-in-men’s-clothes gender subversion with Ouran so I didn’t have problems following Sunao but having to remember that the nurse was actually a man took a bit more work considering his pigtails. The rating of “Older Teen 16+” is applied because there are a couple pages where Sunao is naked and there is some contact between Ikushima and a fellow student.

My damn scanner was being cranky so I had to go the analog route.

I stayed up all Sunday night trying to write a paper so I read the first volume of Chibi Vampire (aka Karin) while eating breakfast at about six Monday morning. I thought it was an enjoyable introduction to the romantic comedy story of a high school girl who is a “reverse vampire”. That is, the main character Karin likes the day, hates the night, and produces blood rather sucking it from people. Her “victims” become more energized than before when they were stressed out due to her infusions. Why she is different from the rest of her vampiric family has yet to be explained but I think it will be as the plot progresses further.
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UPDATE (3/2/07 6:30PM PST): I posted some corrections regarding the streaming issue and gave some impressions after watching it.

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I was watching the Oscars last night and thought of the American Anime Awards that were awarded the night before on Saturday at New York Comic-Con. While I am glad that the presentation is more tasteful than other genre-based award shows like the Spike Video Game Awards, I have four suggestions on how to improve the AAA’s (the Anidubs?) for next year.

Suggestion 1: Limit the Eligibility Period
The seemingly only criteria for eligibility is that an anime or manga must be available in the US during the previous year (e.g. 2006). This means that an anime could be nominated in multiple years if it gets a thinpack release in a different calendar year than its debut on the US market. This multi-year nomination problem also affects manga because something like Fruits Basket (the winner for best manga) with more than 10 volumes will likely have its volumes released over a number of years. In an interview with ANN, Milton Griepp from ICv2 was asked about this. Below are both the question and Griepp’s response: Read the rest of this entry »