EVA: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance

Evangelion: 2.0 was finally playing in town this past weekend, so I made it a point to check it out on the big screen. I was a little worried that the nerds would be out in full force, but Evangelion is such a big deal in Japan that normal people actually turned up for the premier. Go figure. While 1.o was more of a flashy retelling of the television series' first story arc, 2.0 turned out to be something entirely different; new characters, new Eva units, ridiculous animation, more streamlined storytelling and character development...dare I say, the finest thing to come out of Eva canon, ever. Without spoiling too much, newcomer Mari manages to be thoroughly interesting and entertaining without butting into the Shinji/Rei/Asuka dynamic, and to top things off, we even get a few glimpses of Kaworu's badass Eva Mark.06.





One last interesting thing was Anno's decision to repeatedly use Kare Kano music in any of the school scenes. While this could be construed as laziness on the part of the producers, it's a little hard to complain about lack of imagination when that familiar soundtrack helps to bring together those classroom exchanges as well as it does.

Not sure what direction 3.0 will take, but I certainly hope that the release comes sooner than later.

Robot Walk

Remember how I said that Eva crap was for sale everywhere? It looks like ABC Mart - a sneaker retailer here in Japan - will be putting out these limited edition Evangelion sneakers to commemorate the release of the latest movie.



Honestly, as a big time sneakerhead and a one time anime nut, I wouldn't mind having a pair just to have them. I wouldn't be caught dead wearing those things around town, but that's sort of beside the point. On the other hand, if there's a pair of mech-inspired footwear that I'd actually use, it's these Gundam house slippers.



Equally ridiculous, but nobody cares how you look at the crib. I knew I would regret not picking them up back when we were in Tokyo.

新世紀コーヒー

You can tell that the second Neon Genesis movie is coming soon, because Eva crap is for sale everywhere down here. How I like my coffee:



Asuka on one side...



...Rei on the other.

My Kryptonite: Kids, Cartoons

Listening to:
The-Dream
Love vs Money

I’ve gotten sick for the first time since coming over to Japan. That's about a 7-month stretch, which is a pretty long time for me. It's nothing but a common cold, but nonetheless proof that 500 mg of Vitamin C per day doesn't make you invincible. I was working closely with a student for most of Friday, and I’m almost positive that she’s the one who got me sick. I told her that she had effectively ruined my weekend, and she proceeded to celebrate like she had just won the lottery. This is my life.

Oh crap, Eureka seveN Blu-Ray boxes are on the way.





Give me strength. I can't spare the 70,000円.

EVA 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone

Watching:
ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版:序

This thing has been out on DVD in Japan for a while now, but I finally caved and bought the LE version the other night. The DVD comes packed with 5 frames of animation from the actual movie, which is pretty darn cool, and as R2 releases generally go, the packaging itself is top notch. The feature is a spectacular visual piece, and though there really isn't much new from a storyline perspective, it's definitely worth watching for the new storyboards and the CG bits. The Ramiel battle (which serves as the climactic scene) has been totally overhauled, and should be pretty breathtaking stuff for fans of the show. No Asuka here, but the trailer for 2.0 looks pretty incredible. Can't wait.

Early Dragon Ball image

Um, wow. An image of Goku from the upcoming Dragon Ball movie has been making the rounds.



That is all.

Eureka Seven and April splurge: the aftermath

Listening to:
Eureka Seven: Complete Best
track: 「虹」by 電気グルーヴ

Some quick Eureka Seven thoughts before I forget. I still like RahXephon a little better, mostly for reasons that are largely aesthetic in nature, but on a purely personal level, I have to stick Eureka Seven ahead of Evangelion on my list of all-time favorite titles. The highlight of the show? Denki Groove's (電気グルーヴ) "Niji" plays at the show's final climatic scene, and contextually, the song is just magic. I can't really go into it any more without coming off as totally cornball here, but the final 5 minutes of the show, coupled with the 50 episode buildup preceding it, is just something that's really quite poignant and incredibly rewarding. Overall, the characters are very deep, and much in the same way that I felt the cowardly protagonist was what made Eva so enigmatic and true to life, the type of self-doubt and the subsequent character growth displayed by Eureka Seven's main players are what really power the show. What's great here is that the character development is set at a slow boil over the course of 50 episodes, and aside from a filler ep. or two, the various tangents never stray particularly far from the main story arc. The thing about Eva was that it turned out to be, for lack of a better term, a tragedy piece, and given the mainstream following that the show eventually garnered, audiences weren't necessarily ready for that type of mindfuck at the time. It's interesting, because Gainax's penchant for terrible endings aside (Eva, KareKano, Mahoromatic, etc.), you don't see that type of tragic, apocalyptic ending with the giant robot shows so much anymore, because studios are afraid of receiving the kind of backlash that Eva initially did. In the end though, I don't really like comparing Eureka to Eva, because though the two shows certainly possess multiple similarities, Eva is truly a unique, groundbreaking beast of a show, while Eureka is a wonderful little love story with a really, really good sci-fi backdrop. Given that the lead character is 14, there's really no shortage of corny lines, and though there are a handful of characters that can get real irritating, most likely by design, the product as a whole is a masterpiece in my humble opinion. Not my favorite show of all time by any means, but it's certainly in the top 5.

April purchases, revisited:

4/1 Kimura Kaela - +1 (album + DVD)
4/1 1969 - Maya (CD)
4/5 Air Jordan XX3 stealth/gold (apparel/footwear)
4/15 Eureka Seven Vol. #12 (DVD)
4/15 Eureka Seven Music (DVD w/ bonus CD)
4/16 Morning Musume - Resonant Blue (single + DVD)
4/18 Bleach Vol. # 33 (manga)
4/22 Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES (PS2)
4/22 The World Ends With You (Nintendo DS)

I couldn't find a copy of the 1969 record anywhere, although I should have figured as much beforehand. That's really the one thing that sucks about not having Tower Records around anymore; if you're looking for anything even remotely obscure, you're going to have to find it on the web. I decided to pass on The World Ends With You for the time being, not because of any current monetary issue, but because I can't realistically play a DS game until I get my new glasses. So, although I did manage to save about 50 bones by cutting out a couple of items from the list, I unfortunately spent $200+ on the aforementioned prescription glasses, another chunk on a physical exam sans any medical insurance, and the usual sum on various impulse DVD (Rob & Big seasons 1&2), literature (Foer's Everything Is Illuminated), game (Arcana Heart), music (She & Him!), and clothing purchases (a pair of jackets to get ready for, uh, summer). That being said...

Projected damage: approx. $400
Actual damage: approx $1000

I'm a little afraid to see what happens when I add my car insurance, gas, food, and phone expenses to that. Of course, the best part is that there are still five days left in April. I'm not trying to shoot down any personal spending records by any means, but certain silly things happen to me when I have the money to throw around. Questionable? Perhaps. But irresponsible? Nah, I don't think so. I was weighing the various pros and cons of the PS3, the Wii, and the X-Box 360, when it occurred to me that I could conceivably afford to get all three if I so wanted to. But the reality is that I can still play the PS2 for days on end when I have the time to do so, and like it or not, I've got to pocket a couple of grand before I head to Japan. So that's me being somewhat levelheaded for a change.

Some required viewing

Just a quick heads up. Best Buy has the Evangelion Platinum collection on sale for $28.99, a huge bargain by anyone's standards. It's not quite as spiffy as the anniversary tin that just came out, but these are the same remastered discs w/ 5.1 audio that ADV put out a few years back. I probably spent about $200 buying the singles as they were releasing. It's safe to assume that most people have seen Eva by now, probably several times over, but it's an important enough show to warrant a spot in everyone's library.



I imagine that the sale will end on Saturday, so pick it up while you still have the chance. Clicky.

April splurging (sorta)

Yes, it's come to this. I'd been pretty good about not spending inordinate amounts of money lately, but April might be a bit rough on the wallet.



4/1 Kimura Kaela - +1 (album + DVD)
4/1 1969 - Maya (CD)
4/5 Air Jordan XX3 stealth/gold (apparel/footwear)
4/15 Eureka Seven Vol. #12 (DVD)
4/15 Eureka Seven Music (DVD w/ bonus CD)
4/16 Morning Musume - Resonant Blue (single + DVD)
4/18 Bleach Vol. # 33 (manga)
4/22 Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES (PS2)
4/22 The World Ends With You (Nintendo DS)

Total damage: approx. $400

I suppose I could think of a worse way to spend my tax returns. But what's up with all the $40 DS games? Maybe I'm just old school, but doesn't portable gaming have so much appeal because it's A) compact, and B) affordable? For the $40 that it'd take me to get, say, FF: Ring of Fates, I could get Persona 3 FES and about 10 double cheeseburgers. Now, I'd have absolutely no discernible use for that sum of double cheeseburgers, but that's totally beside the point. I'd certainly like to play The World Ends With You, but it's probably the one item on the list that I can do without if the MSRP is what I'm thinking it'll be.

Kite Liberator thoughts

Watching:
カイト LIBERATOR

I got my copy of Kite Liberator this past Friday, and though I admittedly went in with pretty low expectations, I was pleasantly surprised as to how much I enjoyed the OVA. I was initially somewhat worried when previews and trailers showed the protagonist battling monsters of all things, a sizable genre step away from the gritty assassin piece that the original Kite was. While the sci-fi elements certainly felt jarring at first, they turned out to be integral cogs in the touching, albeit undeveloped storyline (but hey, there's only so much you can do with 60 minutes). The animation quality is pretty incredible, and Liberator is just as fiercely violent and bloody as the original. I'd go as far as to say that Liberator rivals the first Kite in terms of content, but the fact is that we're dealing with two entirely different animals here, given that Kite was, um, porn, and Liberator is not. A lot of the material is still uncomfortable and almost dangerously edgy - Monaka, our heroine, spends her evenings tracking down and brutally killing pedophiles - but again, sans the sex scenes, Umetsu's latest work simply won't command the type of controversy and infamy that the original Kite did. Overall, it's a pretty spectacular little OVA, but one that is simply begging for a sequel/prequel, whether it be another OVA or a 13 episode TV series ala Mezzo.



Swank packaging. After all these years, I'm still a sucker for slipcovers.

Kite Liberator coming soon

Hitting the shelves on 3/25/08. This is pretty huge, considering that the R2 version in Japan will be releasing the same week. I'm guardedly optimistic about the title, because if nothing else, we'll be getting a big-budget OVA with some crisply animated assassination scenes. On the other hand, Yasuomi Umetsu's body of work as a director is really too small to accurately gauge how Liberator will fare with just an R-rating. Kite and Mezzo, in spite of the brutal fights and shootouts, relied heavily on sex and shock-value, so it'll be a challenge for Liberator to maintain the raw edginess that Umetsu's previous works had.



I'm nonetheless intrigued, which is news in itself. Thoughts on the release when I get my hands on a copy. R1 Cover art (hopefully):

Anime and I. Strictly platonic.

Watching:
Eureka Seven vol. #11

Over the past few years, I've really managed to stay afloat financially by drastically cutting back on the amount of anime I'd been watching as a teen. It's really a painfully expensive hobby, one that I probably would have never taken on had I not been working during my high school years. At its peak, my anime collection was well over 300 DVDs strong, with my overall library totaling something near 600 discs. I've recently resorted to selling off a lot of my DVDs, mostly because I simply don't have the room for all that stuff, but I think the other reality is that the vast majority of anime titles really fail to engage me nowadays. There have really only been a couple of television series since 2000 that I would actively classify as "great." The first, naturally, would be Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (both seasons), and the second would be the brilliant Rahxephon. I have no idea how Eureka Seven ends because I made it a point to stay away from its run on Adult Swim, but pending on the conclusion, Eureka would probably be on that list as well. Other than that though, the new millennium has delivered a lot of good titles, but scant few truly great shows. The mid to late 90s were probably responsible for my initial enthrallment with the medium, with Evangelion (1995), Escaflowne (1996), and Cowboy Bebop (1998) all coming out at the time. Even the period's marginally great niche shows like Cardcaptor Sakura (1998), Kare Kano (1998), and Berserk (1997), were better than almost anything on the market today. It's mostly an issue with the standard 26 episode shows, because we can always pray for an enigmatic OVA like FLCL, or a feature length offering from Studio Ghibli, but overall, it's just really tough for me to get excited about the genre like I used to. Perhaps the scene itself just has me a little jaded, because given the sustained brilliance and sharp writing exhibited in some of these shows, I don't think that I'll ever consider myself too "old" or "mature" for anime. Maybe the new Eva movies and Kite: Liberator will help with this rut. Given the expensive nature of the hobby, perhaps it's in my best interest to just let it die quietly, but I guess it's only natural to secretly cling to things that we were once passionate about. At the very least, I imagine that I'll always be a casual fan.

Since I more or less spent the entirety of last month sick, I've been taking one of those One-A-Day Men's Dietary Supplements in an effort to make sure that my body gets all the vitamins that it needs. My mom calls the pills "the Man."