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Post by Emily on Mar 11, 2006 13:26:32 GMT
yeah as in "bloody reality" obviously...
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Post by stokerino on Mar 11, 2006 19:41:06 GMT
Tsubasa Chronicle - Nendaiki Torikago no Kuni no HimegimiFinally got ahold of this movie, after Shinsen-Subs restricted its release from bittorrent to allow downloads from their IRC server only. I was thus forced to try and work my way through the confusion of IRC once again, only this time with success! And at last, the Tsubasa movie, "The Princess of the Land of the Birdcage", was mine. First thing's first: can this thing really call itself a movie? It's THIRTY-FOUR minutes long. At only ten minutes more than a standard television episode, one would be forgiven for wondering whether it's worth the effort. Although I certainly wouldn't have liked to pay full cinema fare for anything a mere half hour long, I have to say that this far and away surpasses anything the Tsubasa TV series has put out by a substantial margin. The storyline barely needs explanation. The movie essentially encompasses another trip to a different world, wherein there is a feather that is eventually found. Princess Tomoyo plays the significant guest role in this outing which, given that she only had two momentary appearances in the anime, is nice to see. One thing that will strike you about this movie in comparison to its xxxHolic counterpart is: FEEL THE BUDGET~! Due to a combination of having fewer minutes to fill, and that it no doubt was granted more money on the back of the TV series' success (unlike xxxHolic, which was an attempt to convince producers that a TV series could be made...), the Tsubasa movie shines with quality under the glow of all that extra cash. I believe it was in the giant bird battle towards the end when I thought "If the TV series had this kind of budget for every episode, it would probably be the most impressive anime TV series of all time". It would also probably be one of the most expensive of all time, which explains a lot. Still, all of the TV series' niggling problems with too many still frames, slow pacing, etc., are thankfully not a concern here. The character designs are slightly different from those with which we are accustomed, but the only real problem I have with any of them is Syaoran, and that's most likely to do with his hair being too blonde. The soundtrack is, aside from the opening and ending themes, directly lifted from the Yuki Kujiura goodness of the series, so nothing really to say there. In all, this is nothing more or less than a short, stand-alone Tsubasa tale. There could have been more Kurogane/Fai amusement (merely a brief joke of Kuro-puu), but other than that... Actually, Fai seems a little out of character at one stage by sounding deadly serious, but at least he still fights in a silly manner. But anyway: A must-see for any fan of the TV series. I do not reccommend that you try and seek out the file for yourself, unless you want to endure downloading and installing mIRC, and scratching your head as you try to get your mind round IRC code, DCC channels and the like. Instead, I shall distrubute it personally (and Ally can eventually get it from Em or something). The file is 341MB, which brings the combined total of it and the xxxHolic movie to an infuriatingly-just-over-a-CD's-worth of 790MB. But still, easily distributable.
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Post by stokerino on Mar 12, 2006 3:28:46 GMT
Elfen LiedWait, hold up a moment. That picture - courtesy of AnimeNewsNetwork.com - really, really doesn't give an accurate impression of what this anime is like. I'm deadly serious here. What does that picture suggest to you? A bunch of pretty girls, of varying demeanours, including one that has what look a bit like cat ears (they're actually horns). Harem anime, right? I mean, look at that girl on the far right. She's wearing a very reserved (almost puritan) black dress, and has ribbons in her hair. Good lord, it must be the harem's obligatory prim-and-proper girl who despite all reservations will eventually fall in love with the main character, yada yada, several 'moe' moments ensue. So it would probably come as a mild surprise to you that she's a being with psychic powers who's been chained up and tortured in a lab every day since her birth, only managing to mentally cope - as she spends her days permanently surrounded by a pool of her own blood - by deluding herself into the belief that director of the institute is her 'Papa', for whom she has consequently acquired an unwavering loyalty regardless of what he continues to put her through. It would probably also seem slightly unexpected that less than one episode after her debut all four of her limbs are torn from her body, leaving only her mutilated torso to lie shivering on the cold, concrete ground. Yeah. Holy fuck. The main character is actually the one with longer, redder hair in the middle. Her name is Lucy, and is an experimental creation with psychic powers much like the other girl, Nana (literally from 'nana-ban', or specimen #7). Unlike Nana, however, Lucy is not only more powerful but also a lot more psychotic. The first episode begins with Lucy breaking out of her confinement, literally exploding security guards' heads or tearing their bodies apart without so much as batting an eyelid. She's actually naked when she does this (having been in a lab), and they don't try to conceal it because it'd be pretty damn silly if the series became reserved over nudity when the levels of violence are through the roof. We're talking severed heads; limbs here, there, and everywhere; and blood. LOTS of blood. Lucy escapes from the research installation but only makes it as far as a nearby cliff edge before being shot in the head with a sniper's rifle. She's not dead, but falls into the ocean. Clearly, her captors agree, she's a danger to every human being that might have the unfortunate pleasure of being in proximity to her, and must be neutralised. And before you ask, no Lucy does not all cute and adorable when she does this, ala the picture above. She looks more like this: Moving on. In a seaside town somewhere, a boy named Kohto (not pictured) is moving in, and is greeted by his cousin Yuka (the one in the green dress) who already lives in the area. Inevitably, they come across Lucy washed up on the beach. Being shot in the head has unsurprisingly affected Lucy's brain, and she APPEARS cute, innocent, and generally unable to understand what anyone is saying. Oh yeah, and she can only say Nyuu. But of course. And so Kohto and Yuka take this girl, whom they have named Nyuu, in to stay with them. Thoughts of handing her over to the authorities as a missing person are quashed when said-authorities turn up with armed soldiers to search the area for her. The soldiers actually do find her, but cannot believe that this cowering innocent in front of them is the psychotic killing machine that they'd been told about. One rather infuriated soldier (who'd been looking forward to taking on such an opponent) takes his irritation out on Nyuu by slapping her about a bit - including one rather hard shot with the butt of his machine gun to the side of her head. If you hadn't guessed already, that was a bad idea. Nyuu may be all sweet and innocent, but it doesn't take much to bring Lucy out again and have her start decapitating people. Needless to say, those soldiers don't last long. Soon afterward Lucy clutches her head in agony before reverting back to Nyuu...just in time for Kohto and Yuka to find her again. In fact, I'm 1/3 of the way through the series and neither of them have any idea about Lucy's true nature yet. So in summary; this series is 13 episodes long (plus 1 OVA, which I'm told actually fits in around episode 10, but isn't essential to the story), and I'm currently 4 episodes in. It may not be a new series (it's verging on two years old now), but I never got round to looking at it because I saw semi-naked pink haired girl and thought "hm, harem type". However it was reccommended to me by someone online when I stated that "I've been on a run of light-hearted comedies recently...I need some more fucked up anime". And damn, is it fucked up. Obviously this is not for the weak at heart. I intentionally avoided posting any of the especially gorey screenshots that I came across in order to fall on the side of discretion. If you think that you're up to it, then it is a very good anime with a compelling story that just continues to get darker and darker as it goes on. Even though Lucy is indeed a one-woman-massacre, you don't end up hating her because Nyuu is just so damn adorable (very much in a 'Chii'-esque vein). I will keep on watching this series with that kind of sick fascination that inexplicably draws many of us to tales of the fucked up. But frankly, I cannot see Emily wanting to watch it. Not in a million years.
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Post by stokerino on Mar 12, 2006 16:57:32 GMT
Excuse me while I flail over Mai-Otome episode 22:
ARIKA vs TOMOE! MIDORI vs FIA! MIYU vs NINA! MIKOTO!! MAI!!!
...Flailing complete. >_>
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Post by stokerino on Mar 17, 2006 21:33:16 GMT
Pani Poni Dash episode 22 - and there was one screenshot that I just found awesomely funny for some reason. They're talking about how great (and interesting to a nearby TV crew) Becky is. Rei takes a bit of an opposite viewpoint, to which Ichijou - in all her randomness - pops up and says: ...and the fansubbers's addition at the top just set me off. I love this series. >_>
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Post by Emily on Mar 18, 2006 11:11:32 GMT
"guns don't kill people.... CHUCK NORRIS KILLS PEOPLE"
in other news, i finished watching saikano last night... so fucked up, so very very fucked up. But also one of the more believable apocalyptic scenarios i've seen played out (apart from the whole little tiny girl/object of mass destruction business). The whole world gradually gets shitter and shitter, and everyone knows no one is gonna win, but they all keep fighting and wiping each other out anyway, because they don't know how to stop. and everyone dies. (except shuuji of course, but how long is he gonna last in a sand filled apocalyptic wasteland on his own, the pillock.)
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Post by stokerino on Mar 18, 2006 12:33:45 GMT
In the mangas, they take the last scene a little further, and the very last line is "We're going to live."
But then he is talking about an image of Chise that isn't real, just plucked from his mind, so I wouldn't take anything he says seriously. ¬_¬
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Post by Emily on Mar 18, 2006 14:22:24 GMT
yeah and the rest of the world is dead, so, exactly how does he plan to acheive that?
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Post by stokerino on Mar 19, 2006 22:12:47 GMT
Gaaaaaaaaah!
I've been reading my way through some of the manga series hosted on the Anime-Source website and was a fair way into Ichigo 100% - which, DESPITE for some reason feeling the need to give itself a "strawberry panties" gimmick to start off, soon enough settles down into your classic manner of "one guy - three possible girls - witness the neverending dilemma that is his life" and with the needlessly disturbing gimmick disgarded actually manages to be quite good.
ANYWAY, I just so happened to wander into the manga discussion thread on the forums where they're talking about how the series ended. Which girl did the guy end up with? Was it:
The girl who's highlighted from the start and you therefore expect them to end up together, so you can accept the eventuality even if you don't really like her? No.
Was it the one of the three girls that I actually preferred? Of course not.
No, it was the third girl, the one that I didn't like at all. She's boring, and has a slightly controlling personality, and frankly the prospect of reading through the next 2/3 of the series knowing that's how it's going to end has put a bad taste in my mouth. It may even put me off reading it entirely.
I hate it when endings ruin a series.
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Post by Emily on Mar 20, 2006 21:57:13 GMT
see? See how the pit of inevitability can be avoided, even to detrimental ends...? And you said it couldn't be done...
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Post by stokerino on Mar 20, 2006 22:02:20 GMT
Alright, let me put it another way: An ending of this variety has always been a) Predicatable, and/or b) Bad. I have never witnessed an ending that was both Unpredicatable AND Good.
And as I infer above, being Predictable is more acceptable than being Unpredictably BAD. ¬_¬
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Post by Ally on Mar 21, 2006 7:29:59 GMT
Well, you said you hadn't read the last 2/3 of the series...maybe she redeems herself in some way.
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Post by stokerino on Mar 21, 2006 16:26:28 GMT
Well, I doubt it. ¬_¬ I have actually continued to read, and am now on chapter 57...slowly, slowly...
And you know why the anime of Ichigo 100% sucks? It's because they've taken a manga 19 volumes long - that's 167 chapters - GUTTED it of all character, interesting and humourous plot moments, and just about anything of value, and CRAMMED it in 13, yes THIRTEEN, 23 minute episodes. I mean Good God people, the Paradise Kiss mangas have only 5 volumes and even they had to cut out a subplot to make it fit into 13 episodes!
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Post by Ally on Mar 21, 2006 19:12:40 GMT
I got volume 8 of Tsubasa today - God I'd missed it...
"SAKURA IS MISSING THE POINT!" Heeheehee...
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Post by Emily on Mar 21, 2006 20:50:38 GMT
has anyone noticed on the spines of the tsubasa mangas theres a picture of Syaoran on every one, except #1, and thats sakura, now is this just bad continuity on the part of del ray manga, or did someone fuckup and confuse sakura with syaoran?
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Post by stokerino on Mar 21, 2006 21:05:22 GMT
Their original thought was probably "hey, we'll have a different person on every volume" - like a great number of mangas do, such as Fruits Basket, or Genshiken (just taking a quick glance at my bookshelf). I mean, it's an uber CLAMP crossover, right? Tons of characters, so why not? Except it seems that the cover art for each one seems to only have Syaoran (or maybe Syaoran and one other person) on them each time, so they just thought "ah fuck it" and from that point on went with each spine showing the same character (like xxxHolic, Saikano...again, looking at my bookshelf).
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Post by Emily on Mar 21, 2006 21:08:28 GMT
see but surely they've got enough material to plan ahaed with the graphic design?
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Post by stokerino on Mar 21, 2006 21:10:30 GMT
Perhaps it's just something to do with the first volume of CLAMP mangas...I mean, with xxxHolic the title on the spine is written in red on ALL of them except the first one, where it's written in yellow.
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Post by Ally on Mar 21, 2006 21:12:26 GMT
Yeah, that annoys me, it looks all wrong on my shelf.
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