The Anime TV Thread

Does yours come in a light blue color? Only looking for authentic trash

So as part of my ongoing listening to weird/obscure Japanese music from the eighties binge I ended up Haruomi Hosono’s soundtrack album for a 1987 anime of The Tale of the Genji, and I was curious about how it fit in with the film and also just what everything was referring to and The Tale of the Genji more generally (beyond “the first novel, except maybe for some Hellenistic stuff,” which is the extent of my knowledge of The Tale of the Genji, that and that I confuse it with The Tale of the Heiki, which I know better because of Cosmos [and Kwaidan, but really Cosmos] and it turns out they are very different). The film has never been released to DVD, but luckily there’s an old VHS copy that’s been uploaded to youtube.

And it’s interesting. First and foremost Hosono’s score is great in the context of the film—while it’s basically a bunch of haunting, interesting sounds on its own it works very well with the images, and the whole traditional-Japanese-music-filtered-through-a-bit-of-eighties works very well. That’s also the case, in more extreme form, of the film’s aesthetic itself—so much magenta. It’s very striking, and its best looking parts tend to be the slow pans and the stuff that emphasizes we’re looking through—and behind—various screens of palace life. It’s a very well composed film. It’s very good at quiet intensity. When it needs something other than quiet intensity, though, it falters—the characters all have such tiny mouths that I thought it was all internal monologuing at first. This works for the court scenes, but a lot of the film requires more visible passion (and you can hear it in the actors’ voices, which kind of makes it worse). And when “quiet intensity” is your only visual mode it gets tiring after a while.

So I’m not surprised it hasn’t been released. But it’s still worth a watch for its aesthetic (really ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ) and its music, if you are so interested in eighties-traditional fusion Japanese design and music (and conflicted, beautiful, androgynous, child-grooming [wtf medieval Japan‽] fuck-machines).

Hunter x Hunter is weird

Currently slacking off at work. I've been reading about celebrity anime fans. I already knew about Kanye being an anime fan (he made an Akira music video with Daft Punk) and Michael B. Jordan (he was reading Naruto scanlations in 2011, by gawd), but I'm just now finding out that Kim Kardashian claims Darling in the FranXX's It Girl, Zero Two, as a fashion inspiration for her pink hair. Also, Samuel Jackson is not just into anime, but hentai, though he has not named any names.

The Sam Jackson thing isn't such a big surprise since he's a giant comic book geek - the creators of The Ultimates specifically got his permission to use his likeness for Nick Fury, which he gave since he's a big Avengers fan and which got him his MCU gig - and there's a lot of overlap in the geek fanbase. And maybe Kanye turned his wife onto the Japanimation thing.

Anyway, I guess we're almost at the point where we'll see actually decent live action adaptations of anime and manga, rather like how Blade showed Marvel can make movies that aren't awful. We'll see how long it takes before Hollywood starts making movies about 30 year old anime that obsessive fans can argue about.

I meant decent Hollywood adaptations of 30 year old IPs. Remember that TV movie where David Hasselhoff played Nick Fury?

Yep, that is a studio trigger/studio gainax staple.

You know maybe I'm worn down after many, many absurd fanservice shows, but honestly I think DARLING in the FRANXX works well because this is entirely relevant to the Point of the series.

(And I'm very aware I sound like this but I'm going in anyway)


There's a whole lot of sexual-like situations but a complete absence of sex. The pilots position themselves doggy-style but are completely unfamiliar with the concept of kissing; they are referred to as 'parasites' and wonder idly if they will ever become 'adults', a mysterious category that doesn't simply seem to mean living long enough (although given the high mortality rate parasites have, maybe that's true too.)

But the show is also about intimacy and relationships. The two pilots of a mecha have to work together, as a team, as a couple, and have to maintain an emotional stability to do so. The main relationship is between a self-destructive girl and the one boy who understands her. This mirroring of relationships to sci-fi/fantasy action is extremely typical of anime (there's a famous episode of Evangelion where Shinji and Asuka have to get In Sync as two mecha pilots, something accomplished by, among other things, playing Twister, which can have an implicit sexual subtext) but DARLING in the FRANXX takes the kind of sexual subtext of these things and rams it right in your face with all the subtlety of a brick.

I think this gambit works, but I was also a defender of the last project from this director/writer team, Kill la Kill, which also combined very obvious fanservice with the explicit Themes of the program, albeit arguably even more brazenly. It's absolutely something I get audiences having a problem with, but I'm onboard with this, it's the only thing that's lately coming close to supplanting A Place Further Than The Universe as my favourite anime this season (close but no cigar: That show can make me care more about a lost passport than serious Prestige TV can milk out of a character death.) I guess if you get a dumb idea and execute it really, really well, it's the sort of anime that clicks for me, that's the takeaway here.
Unfortunately, not in my region. While Crunchy is very good at providing instantaneous global releases of new anime, almost any time they add something to the back catalogue, it is a US exclusive. There's almost nothing on it in my region that's older than 2008, for example (while, of course, the rebooted Yamato is quite a bit younger than that, and still.) Old anime is more likely to be found in the more niche streaming services here like Viewster (which had a brief moment of relevance around 2015 when it had current shows like Arslan) or Hidive.Also apparently an anime fan? John Boyega.

According to Pacific Rim: Uprising director Steven DeKnight, after Charlie Hunnam had dropped out and they had settled on making the new protagonist the son of Idris Elba's character, Boyega was a top pick, but would he even go for it given he's already attached to a big sci-fi franchise? Well they invited him over and had a big poster in the lobby and apparently the poster of a giant mecha was sufficient to sell him on it, DeKnight giving what I lead with as the reason it did.


Final note is Netflix is just throwing out new anime series this month. There's already two, B: The Beginning (a ridiculous, convoluted show that takes itself pretty damn seriously in spite of that, you can skip) and A.I.C.O. Initiative (not got around to it yet!), and there's still more on the way, like Children of the Whales, which is actually due out today, so just over an hour after I post this.


And then after that but still this month a heavily CGI-leaning-into ... thing... called Sword Gai: The Animation.



I guess the takeaway here is they were damn lucky to get Devilman Crybaby when they did. But if they never even release any other good anime the rest of this year, they released Devilman fucking Crybaby. (Kakegurui was fun too.)

I can't believe it's just over a week or two to the new Legend of the Galactic Heroes. You can see me talking about this show in the very hypothetical sense way back in my first post* on this thread in 2014, and now its got an early April premiere.

Oh and new image:


Midway through Children of the Whales by the way and I'm really liking it, I guess if you watch one of the four or five anime Netflix put out this month it's the good pick.

* First actual post. The two posts before it, one of which was mine, is from a Kill la Kill thread I merged with this one.

Anyway let's have a look at the upcoming Spring Season! First up I want to single out a new, rebooted adaptation of an anime I really liked. That's right, Piano no Mori, which was made into a pretty movie like a decade ago. This looks like it'll be a good one for you folks who enjoy a good classical music anime.


I'm going to bite: I'm not that big a fan of Steins;gate. I thought the plotting and time travel nonsense was clever and fun, and I like the two main characters, but most of the supporting cast was the sort of insufferable I associate with visual novels. I did like it, though, so am I gonna watch the new one, Steins;Gate Zero? Very likely.


I don't want this post to just be new versions of stuff that's already anime (the season also has a new Sword Art Online, I'm not big enough to lie and claim I won't watch it), like Cutie Honey Universe, which, like one of the year's best anime, Devilman Crybaby, celebrates his fiftieth anniversary of anime/manga content... the PV looks good but just skirts the border of NFSW I'm not gonna link it here. So uh instead there's also an anime about a survivor of the Russo-Japanese war partnering with an Ainu in northern Hokkaido to search for gold called Golden Kamuy.


And now, yes, that iconic space opera, Uchuu Senkan Tiramisu, where the hero almost immediately causes a space fuckup of Homer Simpson proportions. Hey, it could be funny.


Finally oh yeah THIS IS HAPPENING THIS IS NOT A DRILL, Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These. I also really prefer this second PV to the first one, the score has a propulsive energy to it that's not entirely unlike John Adams's Short Ride in a Fast Machine if you squint your ears. I'm a little more sold on the CGI ships here too, the action feels more kinetic than the somewhat more glacial shots in the first one.

...I realise I'm probably a little insufferable about that show at this point.

Oh, I completely forgot about Steins;Gate 0!

Confession: when I fist binged the show I was blown away by it and thought it was one of the best TV shows I'd ever seen. When I tried to do a rewatch of it, I couldn't bring myself to finish. I couldn't tell you what was different. Maybe the luster wore off?

This is the show in a nutshell for me, though I have not revisited it since it aired - it was both very good and not good at all, depending which end of the show I was on.
And Funimation will also be streaming the new Legend of the Galactic Heroes with an English dub (with Crunchyroll having the subtitled show.) I actually watched the first Legend of the Galactic Heroes on Crunchyroll back when they were still a mostly illegal streaming platform and when the show was archetypally Will Never Get Licensed Ever; how far we've come.

I mostly liked the new Legend of the Galactic Heroes (shocker, I know); while the starships are CGI now they use that to their advantage, as it's easier to convey just how many ships there are milling around in any given shot with CGI, and there's clearly been a creative effort to rethink the logic of what space combat should look like (the 'spindle formation', more referenced than seen exactly, is an attempt to make all this navy stuff more space 3D.)


On the other hand, I miss the copious classical music - there's contemporary classical-style compositions in the soundtrack, but it's not quite the same as setting the whole show to the 19th century greats, and yet, there's also more energy to the engagement given the showy cameras zipping and zooming around, so maybe that would not have worked here. Slight spoilers next.

I'm also interested how the Corridors are going to work - while we saw Phezzan, the position didn't quite look bottlenecky (there are two 'corridors' of space between the Free Planets Alliance and Galactic Empire that serve as effective bottlenecks. One of them is the Iserlohn Corridor, which has been contested by the two powers for over a hundred years and which the current battle is taking place in, and the other is occupied by the neutral Phezzan Dominion.)

Overall, I liked it. Like the opening, which I don't dislike, but which certainly isn't a favourite yet either. If you've never seen or read any Legend of the Galactic Heroes material this looks like it'll probably be a pretty good starting point if it does interest you.

MHA dub was delayed for the first episode At least I should get two episodes nexy week.

So far this season I've checked out:

GeGeGe no Kitaro. Saw the first episode, was alright. I can see why this has been a long lasting franchise and I like that the protagonist is a lot more dry than your typical shonen hero. I will probably watch another episode, but unless it really grabs me I don't think I will keep up with this one. When it comes to Yokai for some reason it is very hit or miss with me, some series they draw me in like YuYu Hakusho, but others I just find them weird than as effective antagonists.

Megalobox: A reboot of Ashita No Joe. This one set in a dystopianish future where boxers are outfitted with mechanical exoskeletons called "Gears". I have no experience with the franchise, I just checked this one out because the artwork and premise is definitely my jam. I like it A LOT. It has a very 80s early 90s OVA feel. It stands out so much for having that throwback flavor. I also just like grungy scifi mixing with the more cleaner scifi trappings and this seems to have both. Very effective opening episode that explains just who the protagonist is. Would recommend, and I'm definitely gonna keep up with it.

What I haven't checked out but definitely will:

Lupin part 5: I want to get through part 4 first, also hoping Part 5 eventually does get a dub because I really like the dub cast for Part 4. Same dub cast they used for the red suit dub back in the mid 2000s, but they certainly improved since.

LOGH: I love me some LOGH, but with how talkative this series is I also want to wait for the dub and compare it with the sub and see which I prefer.

Full Metal Panic: I need to revisit the old series before checking it out. Been awhile since I've watched any of it and don't want to feel lost.

Gundam Build Drivers: Planning on watching the first episode this weekend.