JELEINEN

Finished Rinne no Lagrange. Not bad. I like the note it ended on (much darker than the characters themselves realize. Now on to finish Symphogear.

I'm so glad they never tried making a sequal to Aim for the Top!/Gunbuster.

Trying to get caught up on the Winter season. Next I'll be working through Rinne no Lagrange in the next couple of days.

Just finished Black★Rock Shooter and Nisemonogatari. The first was very enjoyable. The second only cements my love-hate relationship with Nissio Issin's works.

I have no interest in a remake of Total Recall. Now a new adaptation of the original Dick story could be awesome.

I enjoyed it. The mix of drama, action and goofiness was dead on for classic Matsumoto shows. I loved the ship design for the good guy vessel.

The only movie of his I don`t like however is Grave of the Fireflies that reeks of the Japanese perpetual victim mentality I dislike so much. You know, he could have had at least one scene in that movie that showed Japanese troops advancing across Manchuria or its pilots bombing pearl harbor, just to give Japanese kiddies a little perspective as to why this was happening to two innocent Japanese kids. IS Grave his movie though, or is it just Ghibli? I get confused in my old age...

I think the fact that the kids dying is due entirely to the neglect of their own relatives would be endictment enough. Grave is not a war movie. The war is mostly in the background background and could easily be replaced with any number of natural disasters. The reason the war is used is because that's how it is in the autobiography that the film is very loosely based on.

Of the films, I'd say Laputa is my favorite with Spirited Away a second. Honorable mention to Horus: Prince of the Sun for which he apparently had quite a bit of creative responsibility for in spite of only getting credited as key animator. I'll also add that of his works as a whole, Conan is my favorite.

And with that my interest in Space Pirates has gone into the toilet. I had no problem with the pyshical aspect of space combat in Operators, but damn the plot left a bad taste in my mouth, and the carboard cutout characters doing inexplicably stupid things.

I liked Starship Operators, but honestly, I'm not seeing the comparison between it and Mouretsu Pirates he made myself other than putting a bit more thought into their settings.

Viral video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lpYUW0ekPSA

It's set 60 years before the movie and doesn't really give any more info. Pretty well done though.

I get occasional e-mails from jlist.com that talk about current shows in Japan. Apparently the "bodacious" of Bodacious Space Pirates refers to the original novel the show is based on. The original novel involved beautiful women in zero G spaceships wearing miniskirts.

Yeah, the novel title was in fact "Miniskirt Space Pirates." I just learned that "bodacious" is a portmanteau of "Bold" and "Audacious." Anyway, from what I understand, the author only put in the skirts to sell books and it really focuses on the SF stuff. It definitely shows through in the series. A lot of very well thought out stuff so far. I'm really digging it.

I don't think the writing has changed too much, moreso than the animation style, and the age of us. I can almost guarantee that once the young viewers get older, they're going to remember Full Metal Alchemist, Gurren Laga, and all these popular animes, and say the same thing: "The new anime isn't as good as they used to make them in 2010."

Pretty much. People just need to take the nostagia goggles off.

I never got the love people have for Maison Ikkoku. Idiot main character in an appartment full of douchebags. I gave up after learning that the place didn't catch on fire and kill everyone living there like it should have.

The same.

I just started watching Aquarion and it is a little confusing.

The only thing you need to know in Aquarion: Gattai = Sex.

The fun thing about Lucky Star is that the most of it is great meta commentary on fandom.

And apparently, AnimEigo isn't so dead after all: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2012-01-06/animeigo-adds-growing-up-with-hello-kitty-anime

What the heck though, that's a seriously odd license for them.

Don't watch Ghost Hunt unless you really like haunted stories. I know this is an anime, but it was really scary at some of the haunting parts. It has some comedy mixed in to lighten things up. But I lost many nights of peaceful worry-free sleep because of this show.

Chaos HEAd is excellent, but be prepared to get mind f*d. Your brain will turn into a pile of twisted spaghetti and explode into a pink mist.

Ghost Hunt was very awesome and very, very creepy in places.

Chaos;Head was awful. The first few episodes were kind of fun and showed potential, but then it veered into pure suck.

4kids doesn't count.

-Funimation

-Sentia Filmworks (aka ADV in disguise)

-Media Blasters

-Nozomi (rightstuf's label)

-Manga Entertainment

-NIS

-Aniplex

-AnimEigo (no new licenses, but still releasing stuff they own).

Isn't Manga UK only now? Technically, Disney should be on the list for the Ghibli catalog.

Bought Skyrim yesterday. So far, I'm a bit underwhelmed.

Now if I can just find the other million or so parts, I can make my own never-produced naval stealth attack aircraft!

http://www.ebay.com/...#ht_9829wt_1344

It's kind of cool, but what the heck would anyone do with it?

I remember seeing the trailers for this and thought it looked interesting. Glad to hear I didn't waste any money trying to see it in the theater. Might try catching it cheaply online for the fight scenes.

Finished Ben-to and Mawaru Penguindrum last night. Ben-to was a heck of a lot more fun than it had any right to be. Penguindrum had a great ending, but it definitely faltered along the way getting there. Still pretty good overall though.

Yes! The triumphant return of bubble helmeted space suits at last.

One of my nephews got the singleshot vortex pistol for Christmas the otherday and I have to say, it had a lot of oomph to it. I don't know if it's because the ammo might be heavier, but it felt like it hit signifcanly harder than the darts.

Fang of the Sun Dougram, a 75 episode series chocked full of mecha action and polictics, lots of polictics so far.

I've been watching this off and on myself (I'm almost half way through) and am really enjoying it. The politics aren't particularly deep, but handled better than most other shows. Right now, the main character's brother-in-law is turning into one of my favorites.

Just finished Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo (AKA Children who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below) this afternoon and I enjoyed it very much. It is Shinkai channeling Miyazaki, but it's the more mature Miyazaki of Mononoke Hime and Sen to Chihiro as opposed to his more recent films (which are still good. but don't have a lot of meat to them). I definitely feel I need to see it again, which will be a good excuse to have some friends over for a group viewing.

To me, what's important is that the distribution business is changing to the point where certain important areas could be taken over by other, well established companies. There could be less of a need for a middleman to release anime overseas when the companies that originally had a hand in it are completely capable of doing it themselves. There's also less of a chance for companies like a certain one to go overboard and have enough legal influence to do more than they really should be able to do to maintain a monopoly.

Honestly, outside of cases like the Macross franchise where foreign friendly domestic releases are a good compromise for something impossible to license, I'm not sold on using it for anime in general. First, is the pricing, as Azrael mentions. The Japanese seem dead set on changing the world to their idiotic media prices rather than adapting to the local market. Secondly is that the localization ends up getting handled by some middle management pencil pusher rather than a professional (interesting blog post on the subject here: http://schoolgirlmilkycrisis.com/blog/?p=175).