Saturday, March 22, 2008

Giant Robots are for FUN!

[rant]

As a M.Div student I spend a good portion of my day thinking. I think about the consequences of certain points of theological systematics. My assignments revolve around the uses of certain Greek and Hebrew words, and the implications of verb tenses and adjectival modifiers. Therefore when it is time to relax, it is time to do just that. Where do I turn for some good time just to hang out by myself, either 1st thing in the morning or before going to bed? To movies and anime. Why? Because my creative juices are usually spent by the end of the day, and I don't want to disturb my landlord at 7am with electric guitar. If I want something purposefully deep and compelling I'll turn to a novel, but usually I opt for action/something that only takes 22-25 minutes of my time in a go. Giant animated Mecha have been my downtime of choice this year.

I'll admit it, I liked Gundam Wing (didn't like Gundam SEED). A lot. Why? because it was fun, and my first introduction to anime. The characters were emotionally engaging (I was 15 when it came out so I drew a lot of parallels with most of the characters). I liked the ambiguity between good and bad that was portrayed in the show, I thought the story was compelling. And besides, you have David Kaye and Brian Drummond handling the vocal duties for Treize and Zechs and I was hooked (just look up their lists of characters on imdb.com or animenewsnetwork.com, and its very impressive). I finished re-watching it this year, and dang, it was good times.
Favorite Character: Zechs Marquise/Milliardo Peacecraft

The Transformers movie was fun. Not perfect, but certainly not as ridiculous as it could have been (especially when one considers the episodes Kremzeek, and Carnage in C Minor *shudder*). The designs were definitely new for the series as whole, but a needed breath of fresh air. Yet it gets a lot of hate, apparently. I still say it stands above some of the G1 cartoons, and that it is still better than the 1st 4-issues of the Marvel run, which had approximately the same story ideas. Definitely was not as good as Transformers: Masterforce, which in terms of coherent storytelling, next to G1 Seasons 1 - 4, is a masterpiece with compelling villains, and cool heroes, and a lot of concepts which are very cool, and well executed (Pretenders,and Godmasters specifically). It was fun though, and had really awesome effects. Can't wait for #2 in 2009

Surprise find of the week goes to Dancouga: Nova, a short little 12 episode series. Very nifty, and well animated, although a little more sexualized than I'm used to. (Most of the Gundam series that I've seen [Wing, bits of SEED, 08th MS Team, 0083] are pretty well devoid of of anything even remotely sexual). At any rate it was a fun diversion, that didn't take itself too seriously at all.

Major Disappointment: The last two-three episodes of Transformers: Animated. Really, really boring, and not much fun. If people thought the new movie lacked Decepticon action, they definitely have not seen Animated. Although, it does have David Kaye playing Prime, which is cool, but I'm losing interest in it very rapidly.

Question of the Week: Why is it not possible, now in 2008, to get a new Transformers cartoon/anime that is properly animated, with fluid motion and wicked designs? (See the OP for Gundam 00 on youtube.com for what I'm talking about). The openings I've seen on youtube for Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo suggest it is possible. So come on, after Animated lets see Transformers done up right for the new century.

[\rant]